Production and distribution of City Club forums and ideastream public media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland, Inc.. Hello and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland, where we are devoted to conversations of consequence that help democracy thrive.

Today is Friday, September 6th.

My name is Dan Moulthrop I'm the chief executive here.

It's great to have you all with us today.

I'm going to introduce this form with a brief story about yesterday.

We are hosting our state of the county with county executive Chris Ronayne.

And those of you who attended or watched the live stream will know that the executive speech was interrupted several times by pro-Palestinian protesters.

Actually, seven times I was recently informed.

Well, for months now, members of that community have been calling for the county to divest from Israel specifically to end their investments in Israel bonds.

They've done so in public meetings and public comment at council meetings where they've been countered by a similar number of pro-Israel voices.

Yesterday, those seven members of the pro-Palestinian community disrupted the speech and then left the forum.

Now, some of these protests have been these are some version of these protests, rather, have been happening for 11 months now in Cleveland and across the country.

Ever since Hamas's October 7th attack on Israel, attack on Israel precipitated what we've come to refer to simply as the war in Gaza.

Yesterday's protests are evidence of how inflamed passions continue to be here.

Even though we are so many thousands of miles away from the conflict itself.

So we're grateful that Dr. James Zogby has returned to the City Club.

He's been here several times over the years 23, 2011, 2013.

He's the co-founder of the Arab American Institute, a Washington, D.C. based organization which serves as a political and policy research arm for the Arab American community.

And he founded it in 1985, and he continues to serve as its president, co-founded it, I think I'm supposed to say.

He's also the director of Zogby Research Services, a firm that has conducted groundbreaking surveys across the Middle East for the past three decades.

He's also served in leadership roles for the Democratic National Committee, and he currently serves as chair of the DNC Ethnic Council.

And from 2000 to 2017, he served on the DNC as executive committee.

He also has some stories to share about the recent convention.

Joining him on stage is great friend of the City Club's ambassador, Jane Abercrombie and Stanley President Emerita at the Middle East Policy Council.

Ambassador Abercrombie When Stanley is a career diplomat with more than three decades in the State Department, most recently as the department's first ever chief diversity and inclusion officer.

Before that, President Barack Obama had nominated her to serve as the U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Malta, a role she held until 2016.

As always, if you have a question and you're joining us online or over the air, you can text that question to 3305415794.

The number again is 3305415794.

And we'll try to work it into the second half of the program.

Members and Friends of the City Club of Cleveland, please join me in welcoming Dr. James Zogby and Ambassador Gina Abercrombie.

When Stanley.

Thank you very much, Mr. Bolton.

And good afternoon, everyone.

I'm hoping for a lively exchange and discussion today.

I've known you for a long time.

I've known your polling and I would like to start by asking you to share with us what is important for us to know about how our fellow citizens of Middle Eastern Arab Muslim heritage are feeling about their place in America today.

Thank you.

And thanks to the City Club for having me back.

I guess the fourth time, as I wrote in a little note, I guess I didn't offend enough on the first three.

So I'll I'll try harder.

Try harder this time.

It has not impacted their sense of belonging here.

If anything, it's made them more upset that their voices here aren't being heard and determined to make them heard.

So in that sense, it has.

You talked about the leadership conference before.

That is precisely where people want to go.

Younger people in particular want to have their voice heard.

And so it's empowering and and a needed empowerment at this point.

The polling, though, and I just if I could talk about two different kinds of polling.

One is in the Arab community we've polled on issues around elections for decades now, actually going back to the nineties.

And like other Americans, they when they asked whether the most important issues they'll start with health care, education, Social Security, jobs, employment, whatever.

Funny story.

Howard Dean came to an event we did and Leadership Conference 2003.

We had all Democrats, every one of them came, which was really quite striking.

And as he walked in, he said, I I'm nervous about this.

He said, you know, I was with the ADL yesterday, and, you know, this is hard.

This is hard.

So what how should I do this?

I said, Howard, whatever you told them, tell us.

Because if you say something different, it's going to be dishonest to us and it's going to hurt you.

But I think about let me think about.

So he went and he came back and he said, I figured it out.

He said, I to start talking about health care, education and and jobs and then I'll get into your issues.

I said my people need jobs, value education and want their kids to have a healthy future and their parents to have a healthy future.

Those are our issues.

If you're talking about the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, those are your issues.

You made that mess.

We didn't.

So fix them up, man.

Okay, let me think.

Let me think.

And it went back and whatever.

But I mean, you know, this that what was interesting about this poll was that for the first time when we asked rank order of issues, Gaza came out number one.

Wow.

Well, it is I call it Palestine is the wound in the Arab heart that never healed.

And it doesn't matter if you're third generation Lebanese.

It's like this hurts this because the kids look like our kids.

It's this is us.

And they feel the double standard.

I mean, they hear all this stuff about, you know, and it's terrible the discrimination when Jewish kids get singled out, whatever.

And that was my life and people, my generation that has been our life.

First day on college campus when I went to Temple University, I'd go Israel, beat Arabs.

I'd be speaking at a Vietnam rally.

Had nothing to do with the Middle East at all.

What are they letting the Arabs speak for?

We've been through this.

And so this one bothers us in the sense that it's got to change has taken hold on the American side.

We find that we're not alone, and that's something new for us, too.

We were voices in the wilderness.

And now it doesn't matter so much our voices, but it's young African-American voices.

It's young Latino and Asian.

It's young, progressive Jewish voices who are causing disruptions around the country.

And it's us.

And so young voters in particular and voters, nonwhite voters are where the demographic shift is in the party in the country.

And it's what is moving this this issue forward.

Great.

There was disappointment and unease with the disparate speaking opportunities given to relatives of Israeli victims and relatives of Palestinian victims.

Can you give us an idea about what we should take away from the decision, dance's decision with that balance?

I've called it a boneheaded move and an unforced error.

There was no reason on Earth that they should not have allowed a young woman from San Francisco who was a friend of the.

I call her a young woman.

She's not that young, but younger than me.

Everybody is she she was had been a friend of the of Kamala Harris, raised money for member of the DNC Finance Council.

It would have been a scripted moment no matter what the the Israeli American family that spoke did not talk politics.

They talked about their son, how they would have talked about her family.

She has 100 family members, extended family members and died and it is gripping to hear her tell she should have had the opportunity to do that.

We did not start raising the issue until we knew about the Israeli.

We said, come on, it's this is a no brainer.

The Israeli family agreed that there should have been a Palestinian speaker.

Major Jewish organizations agreed there should have been a speaker.

Where did the decision come from?

I can only make reference rather irreverently to what Jesse Jackson used to call the smart ass white boys.

And they're not all white and they're not all boys anymore, but they're the campaign consultants who are you know, you really got to think about this woman.

We've got to really well, you know, this is really what you and you know, they have no clue.

Ben Rhodes talks about the foreign policy mob that has failed people from past administrations who've never gotten the Middle East right, who keep populating new administrations and the think tanks, not having learned a single lesson, arguing for the same stuff over and over again.

Political consultants.

It's the same world.

They still think that the Democratic Party is the party of 1990.

It is not.

It is a very different constituency today, and they don't get that.

Every time Palestine got mentioned at the convention, there was uproarious cheers, uproarious cheers.

I remember one time Kamala Harris gave a speech before Hispanic Heritage Month event in Washington, spoke about the suffering of Palestinians and called for self-determination.

Standing ovation.

Hispanic Heritage Month event that they don't get.

You know, they made a stupid move.

They've never been able to explain it.

And now they say, well, we don't want to reopen it and we don't want to revisit it and we want to close that.

I said, you may want to close it, but there are significant numbers of voters, Arab and others who don't want to close it and who want actually do want it closed, but want it closed by having you rectify it.

And and so, yeah, it's an issue and it unfortunately is going to be an issue.

And it hurts her in a way that she shouldn't be hurt because I don't think she made that decision.

I just don't think she wouldn't be saying the things she said if she hadn't made that decision.

And when you say Rectify, what does that mean?

There are ideas of how, you know, Palestinian voices can be brought forward and recognized and allowed to tell their stories with her in a way that she's just a peer with holler at an event and say, I know you lost family.

You want to tell tell people about just something to say.

Let's let's just do this and put it behind us.

You know, it could be done.

Okay.

And more more gain.

Less loss.

I mean, there aren't five people in the Jewish community who aren't going to vote for her because she recognizes that the Palestinians are hurting.

Right.

There's not there are people, on the other hand, who may not vote for her because of that.

It's unfair to visited upon her, but it can be fixed.

And I just pray that they will do it in time.

A new administration is coming.

What policy advice would you give the next president to navigate our policies in the Middle East?

I'm obviously thinking Gaza War, Israel, Palestine, but there is beyond that.

There's Iraq, Syria, Libya, the Gulf.

Legislative priorities as to how you want to talk about them and assuming differences in those policies.

Let's start with former President Trump.

Well, you ask what they should do and then you list all those problems.

And the first thought that comes to mind is get in a corner, suck your thumb and huddle up real close in a fetal position.

Something like, oh.

I didn't listen.

All you know, it's it's it's intimidating.

The first thing I would suggest is recognize that we are in a very different world than the analysts would have it be.

The Iraq war changed everything.

People are still living in the post-Cold War victory mode, where in Madeleine Albright's words were the indispensable nation, or Reagan's words were the beacon on the hill.

Or, you know, we have the power that can influence and shape democracy in other countries, or we can change regimes.

That there's this sense of that actually is whether practiced by Democrats or Republicans, is a neoconservative view of the world, which is forces of good forces of evil, the inevitability of conflict and the inevitable triumph of good which incidentally, that worldview is a secularized version of evangelical right wing Christianity.

It's manicheism thickets.

There's good, evil, and they have to compete and good will triumph if we if we have enough resolve to do it that in there anymore.

Iraq, once and for all destroyed that our honeymoon after the Cold War ended with the Iraq War.

We exhausted ourselves financially.

We showed that a ragtag army of what Donald Rumsfeld called dead enders could tie us down for decades.

The vision that the big lie I talk about the Iraq war is not that he had weapons of mass destruction, but it was that as the as the president famously put it, there'd be flowers in the street, we'd be heralded as liberators, and the beacon of democracy would shine, lighting up the whole Middle East.

And that quite what happened was that war empowered Iran and emboldened it, weakened our standing, exhausted our treasury, and and left a disrupted Middle East.

That's not recovered.

And the sense on the part of the military that we just couldn't do this.

We can't reshape other countries, you know, humiliating as it was.

We had to leave Afghanistan.

We had to leave Iraq.

And now we're trying to fight wars long distance or by but by proxy and working either.

So first thing I would do is recognize the limits of power, recognize that the world's view of us is no longer the same.

And if we're going to operate in the world, we need to rebuild credibility.

One of the smartest speeches I remember wasn't Obama's Cairo speech.

It was the anniversary of Cairo speech at the State Department, where he talked about Arab Spring.

It was two year anniversary, and he said after talking the very touching story of the young man who who self-immolated, he said, you know, after saying this is what ignited the the the Arab Spring, he said, we didn't start it.

We can't direct it.

We can't determine its outcome.

All we can do is help provide support for the building blocks of democracy, which is something that our polling had showed.

And I'd spoken with them about many times that instead of focusing so much on democracy training that we needed to create jobs, we needed to create improved health care, we needed to support their education, the best power America exerts is soft power.

Never.

Why did they go to Starbucks in Saudi Arabia?

Is the coffee good?

No.

It's doing an American thing.

I mean, you go to Saudi Arabia or Egypt or whatever and you see McDonald's.

It's not good hamburgers.

No.

I mean, I'd rather go there.

I'd rather go to Abu Chakra and have roast lamb right on the fire.

But that's not what that's not where they go.

They go because it's doing an American thing, because there's something about the the value, the cultural orientation, the sense of being in a business model of uniformity.

You know what you're going to get every time you go into one, wherever it is.

And I would focus on that.

I would I would sort of downgrade our our expectations of changing the world through power and focus instead on the model of exporting the what we do best, which is our values in soft power ways, our culture and our educational models that are the envy of the of the world.

That means that in some cases, we'd have to make a hard turn in with Israel.

There's no question that if we're going to continue to say we stand for rule of law, they not only have to be applied to them, they have to be punished for what they do.

You cannot we cannot be saying to Russia, you can't do this.

And meanwhile, Israel's operating with impunity, doing worse.

We can't say to I mean, that's looks so stupid in the Arab world to take sinwar and have the DOJ spend time indicting him, which he probably needs to be indicted, whatever the hell that means.

I mean, he's probably shivering in this tunnel right now over that.

But at the same time, worse crimes being committed by Israeli units and nothing I mean, 20 billion in the pipeline and no sanctions at all makes no sense.

So either we're going to apply law or we're not.

And it's got to be applied first to us and how we operate.

International Criminal Court, International Court of Justice Respect.

We can't go to the UN Security Council and continue to block things that matter.

So I would say that it's, it's, it's both recognizing our military power can't change our soft power can we have to apply our our policies uniformly across the region.

And it's and I would say one last thing one last thing, and that is that I have long felt that what was needed in the Middle East is what happened in Europe after the Cold War, after the after World War, which was creating the architecture of diplomacy that resulted in the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, competing systems, but creating an architecture that bridged it not to solve problems, but to help mitigate problems and help us move forward.

There's a need for an OSCE in the Middle East.

That means that the hard work of us working with China and Russia to get Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia and everybody else sitting at the same table, they can hate each other.

It can do what Jim Baker and George Herbert Walker Bush did at the end of the Iraq war, the first one, which was Create Madrid, but create a permanent structure for exchange that ultimately will lead to trade.

I mean, it's happening without us.

Iran and UAE are trading.

Iran and Saudi Arabia are exchanging diplomatic relations.

Some countries have peace with Israel to create a structure out of that that actually sets terms for regional integration and cooperation, but does so on the basis of justice, would be absolutely, absolutely critical and nonintervention.

Iran would have to feel secure.

Israel would have to make the concessions that must be made to provide real justice for Palestinians and self-determination for Palestinians.

So I really am going to interrupt you.

Okay.

Because you've been speaking what sounds very sensible.

And yet the reality is we can be clearly, publicly, robustly working against what we say we stand for.

Many argue that that's what we're doing now and that's what we have done.

So to say that we have to do X, Y and Z is not what I'm looking for from you because I'm looking for recommendations that actually will be followed.

And in the meantime, how do we get to this place that makes sense to you?

That makes sense to many of us who believe in American values and integrity and what we say we stand for.

But we clearly are not applying that to this.

Close the beloved ally.

How do we get out of our own heads or do we do you expect that?

It's a tough call.

It's a very tough call.

Look, like I said, the political consultant class will go berserk if you challenge Israel.

But it must be done.

We look like crap everywhere over this and among our own people.

We do.

We're you know, we ask the question and in a recent poll, one that released yesterday of do you sympathize with Israel?

Yes, they do.

Do you support Israel's war?

No, we don't.

Has Israel used too much more U.S. force?

Yes, they have.

Do you think that we should give unrestricted aid or should we tie aid to Israel's stopping using it in a way that violates our laws?

2 to 1, they say we should stop the aid.

I mean, the people have spoken is there.

But getting political consultants and administrations to do it is what is going on on campuses, which is what is going on at your.

Yesterday.

And frankly, it's the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about.

But it's got to be talked about and not just on the campus, not just on the street, but policymakers have to do it.

I mean, thank God for somebody like a Chris Van Hollen who actually will put it into a a Senate bill or a Senate letter or some of the courageous folks in the House doing it.

But it's going to be sustained.

And the talking heads have to stop ignoring it and focus on it.

It's going to take a shift in the political culture here for us to do the right thing.

There.

But that's that's where this is heading.

At some point, there's going to be we're at a tipping point where you can't ignore it anymore.

Look, the decision to not have a Palestinian speaker at the convention cost Harris more than it benefited her.

It was a stupid move.

500.

Somebody did it.

Can't do the 588 broadcast mentions of the denial in two days that was they they they dumped on their own convention.

Do they know it?

You know, they're impervious to new thinking and change.

They are.

But, you know, we have to continue.

I mean, I think the target right now, the immediate target is them.

The people who make those decisions.

The immediate target are the members of Congress, the people in policy world, the people in the political world who continue to make the wrong decisions because they're the fault.

It's not just the president.

It's not just the it's the people who reinforce that view and think that they're smart.

That's why Jesse used to call them the smart ass white boys, because they actually I mean and actually they are.

Well, you know what?

We really got a you know, when I wrote this essay of 15 years ago and, you know, I argued of whatever and they're convinced they're right, but they keep making the same mistake over and over again.

And they think that the guys who spent 20 million to defeat Jamaal Bowman, the folks who spent 11 million to defeat Cori Bush, or who spent seven or eight billions to defeat Nina Turner, they think they're really smart.

They think they're smart, and we let them off the hook.

But you know what?

If you think about it, voices in the Jewish community are now saying you didn't help us.

That has created a resentment in the black community, in the progressive world of politics.

That is going to take a long time to overcome.

They're feuding.

They're fueling a rift between blacks and Jews that didn't have to be if they weren't so stupid, but so self-righteously stupid to think they're doing the right thing.

And so, yeah, the challenge is a continuing one of not just challenging on the woman who beat Nina or the guy who beat Jamal or the guy who beat Corey.

But it's the people who made that happen, thinking they were being smart and actually winning.

Sometimes you lose when you win and sometimes you win when you lose.

I think as I wrote in an essay after the convention, Palestine won at the convention because it was elevated as an issue that had never been done before.

And and they helped us do it.

They're too stupid to know it and to answer your question.

But that's all right.

They just keep blundering their way into oblivion.

And I'll play the funeral march what they do so well.

I don't want to lead the Republicans off the hook here.

Impervious to change.

They have gone off the rails to the point where I do not know.

My brother argues we need a third party in America, a Republican Party.

This is not a political party anymore.

It's a cult.

It's the cult of Trumpism.

And I do not know how that it's like the what he calls the Wizard of Oz.

I don't know who gets to pull back the curtain.

The curtain and see the little little guy operate in the machine.

It this it continues to amaze me how this has unfolded.

I know all the reasons it unfolded.

I know what the demographics are of the movement.

I know what's caused it.

But I too have watched it happen in slow motion.

It started with the Democrats abandoning white working class.

It started with that and it continued to move.

When I go to Pennsylvania and I hear people say, I lost my job, my factory closed, my mine closed, I lost whatever, and there's drugs and whatever.

And nobody cares about us.

Democrats don't talk to us anymore.

Or they call us deplorable or they call us non-college-educated.

Whites.

You've seen that bumper sticker, I'm non-college-educated, white, and I vote no because nobody calls themselves a non-college educated white.

But that sense of taking 70% of the electorate and casting them into oblivion is what has created the condition.

And, you know, there used to be a guy out.

Saying 70% are impervious to what is going.

On.

No.

Okay.

No, I'm saying that the people on the Democratic side and the people on the good Republican side, the moderate Republicans are impervious.

They don't know how this happened.

They got caught in the like, you know, just surprised.

And they they think that by spending ads denouncing Trump, they actually will pull votes away from him.

And it doesn't work.

But I was asking about the Republican view of Gaza and Israel.

In this case.

There is no Republican view of Gaza.

What there is is a Donald Trump view of Gaza.

And you try to figure out what exactly that is.

Okay, which is he alternates between, you know, telling Israel you should finish the job.

And a letter he sent to Mahmoud Abbas saying, I'm with you.

Stay, stay tall.

Something like I mean, it's like nobody knows what the hell he's saying and he doesn't know, we say, because words don't matter to him as much as creating the reality of Donald Trump, the illusion of Donald Trump is what matters.

It's like a high school boy with a girl in the backseat of a car on steroids, you know, saying anything he can say at any moment that he wants to say it, thinking that it will work.

And he sort of throws it all out there hoping that one of them will catch with somebody.

And it does.

There's the illusion of Trump and the reality of Trump, and the illusion has taken hold.

I tell people all the time, think about the guy on Connecticut Ave and K Street outside the Metro.

Stop who has the bullhorn.

The end of the world is at hand.

Come to Jesus.

Come to me.

I've got the end for whatever.

And He's ignored.

And if he's ignored, you don't pay attention to what he says.

But if a crowd of a thousand people come around him, then you got to pay attention.

Not to him, because he's been saying the same nutty stuff all the time.

But what happened in the thousand that made them want to listen to him?

My postdoctoral work after I studied religion in the doctoral and my postdoctoral work was in religions under stress, cultures under stress, and the cults that emerge.

This is a cult.

Nobody listens to what he says.

What they listen to is their hurt, their anger, their frustration, their sense of being left behind, of being alienated and not being paid attention to.

And he cares.

And the angrier he gets and the crazier he, it's a schtick.

If you if you want to understand him, take Henny Youngman, Rodney Dangerfield and and what's his name?

Don Rickles.

I put it all together.

It's a Catskills routine.

Got it.

And it works because people say, yeah, he gets it.

He knows me.

Well.

And they don't.

All right.

Sorry.

We're going to open it up to the audience at this point.

I get I get excited.

Sorry.

Jim Zogby, Jean Abercrombie and Stan, we are about to begin the Q&A with all of you for our live stream and radio audience.

For those just joining, I'm Dan Waltrip with the City Club.

And today, as I said, we're joined by Dr. James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute.

Moderating our conversation is Ambassador Jean Abercrombie and Stan Lee, President emerita at the Middle East, policy counsel and former chief diversity and inclusion officer for the US Department of State.

We welcome questions from everyone city club members, guests and those joining us via our live stream on City Club Board or radio broadcast on 89.7 ideastream Public Media.

If you'd like to text a question, please text it to 3305415794 and our team will work it into the program.

Let's go with our first question over here.

Thank you.

Please ask Mr. Zogby to address the actual length of the Palestinian struggle, which began in 1948, when they were displaced from their land and homes in what is now apartheid.

Israel.

The conflict goes back to the early part of the 19th century, 20th century, rather, when the idea was that there'd be a British and French mandate and that the British portion was promised by Balfour to the Zionist movement.

And it was interesting because Woodrow Wilson, about whom many awful things can be said, I mean, a racist segregationist in the White House who did enormous damage to the federal government by segregating the federal workplaces.

We had colored only and white only water fountains at the Department of Labor.

I mean, really classy guy.

But he had a democratic instinct abroad, not at home, and he uttered the principle of self-determination.

And so what he did was and I'm a fan of this because it was the first poll ever conducted in the Middle East, the King Crane Commission and the King Crane Commission.

Wilson sent them over to find out what people want because he he believed that in the postwar period after World War One, colonized people should determine their own fate.

And the poll came back that overwhelming rejection of the mandate, overwhelming rejection of a Jewish state and Palestine, and a desire for democracy and self-determination on their own in an Arab state.

Balfour, on hearing it, said The aspirations of the indigenous people of that land mean nothing to us.

Far more important is what the Zionist movement can do for us, and that was where it began.

And it has been a process of displacement and ignoring their indigenous rights ever, ever since.

And that is precisely what needs to turn around it.

Like to bring us back to a moment of our founding as a country.

We were founded on the revolutionary spirit and on descent dissent against the authority when injustice becomes too great.

I think it's enshrined in our history as Americans.

I think it's something that can't hold this down and to hear all the time.

What about the disruptions?

What about the students?

They're so unruly.

Thank God they're unruly.

I wonder if you might address this issue of dissent in a free society and how it balances power among the people and those who have other advantages economic, racial or whatever.

We see that we've seen this dissent in the civil rights movement, in the labor movement all through history.

So for today, to make it a black mark or something that's embarrassing.

We know it's the only way to bring change when power is unfairly weighted on the opposite side against people.

That also is a question and an answer, but I'll elaborate.

Thank you.

Look, we were founded in that revolutionary spirit.

We were also founded with to speaking as a Catholic to original sins, slavery and genocide.

They were part of our we are.

And we ignored them.

And we still, to some extent, ignore the reality of them and the consequences.

But as a result of those original as in humans who are both have aspirations for perfection and aspirations for damnation, we the tension is there all the time.

It is when you say that, why is it a black mark?

It was a black mark then.

I mean, Martin Luther King was hounded.

Every civil rights leader was hounded.

There was the segregationists in the South.

And when it came north, the civil, the civilized, elected officials of the North, the threat of black disruption.

And they it was demonized everywhere.

And the same with the labor movement.

That was not a pretty picture at all in how the labor leaders were were treated as communists and etc., etc..

I mean, change has never come easily.

My only concern about what's happening today, as much as I appreciate what the kids are doing on campuses and what others are doing in in across the country is that there are those elements, as there were in each of those other movements, who can end up up casting the movement in a more negative light than it ought to be.

And some of the behaviors of the kids I mean, look, there is no reason for pro-Palestinian students to be taunting Jewish kids going into Hillel Center.

No reason at all other than to create its almost like when you have felt repressed for too long.

You feel anything goes, it doesn't.

There needs to be a sort of a self-consciousness within the movement that says, Let's think about what's working here.

Let's think about what?

How do we win people over instead of cause people to leave us?

When you when a speaker comes to campus that you don't agree with shouting that speaker down and creating such a disruption that it can't happen.

I wouldn't let anybody do that to me.

And believe me, I've had it happen before.

But I blame college administrators for not.

What happened at Brown University after October was brilliant.

They had a Judaic studies program and a middle East studies program.

They brought the heads of the departments together and they convened forums on campus for students and took tough questions and exchanged views.

That's what universities do.

But, you know, sort of seeing one side is the victim and the other side as potential victimizers.

And shutting down protest only creates a more tense situation that ultimately is going to erupt.

And it has erupted now in ways that are wholly negative.

And like I said, I don't like the things, the tactics that are being used right now.

But it's tough to talk to kids and say you shouldn't be doing that.

Don't go to the the Jewish house, the head of the Jewish guy and put a swastika on it.

Don't do that stuff.

Don't chant things that are painful to hear and painful to hear.

I don't mean from the river to the sea.

Palestine, we'll be free.

That's.

I mean, Hillel, go to hell.

That's wrong.

Protest.

Yeah.

Yeah, they are.

Yeah, they are.

And we are.

We have to be the first one to call it out when it happens.

Well, it has happened and we need to be the first ones to call it out when it happens, because it hurts us.

That's the point.

And we shouldn't.

That's not free Palestine.

Okay.

But the responsibility also has to be on the administrators of the campuses.

I mean, for them to call the cops and for them to submit at Columbia to Elaine Stefanik, who has a clear partizan agenda in provoking a crisis, she succeeded in provoking a crisis.

And the stupid administrators who followed her word were, I think, made a huge mistake here.

So there's fault on all sides on this one.

But protest part of America and it ought to be part of America, but it needs to be civil protest in a way that wins support, doesn't lose support.

And I think there's a danger, I think, in in the way that it has been met with repression that has actually pushed people to some extreme places that they don't need to be, shouldn't be that are hurting more than helping.

Sorry.

Yes.

Please talk about the immigration process from the Middle East to the United States and what suggestions would you make for improving it?

Immigration has actually, with the exception of Donald Trump's hiccup, which again is that was like I talked about unforced errors and it was hilarious when I say Hillary's now, it wasn't it was very painful.

The the Muslim ban that was actually it was mostly Arab countries and they added a couple others to kind of make it look good.

And and what happened was a spontaneous movement erupted of people protesting.

And it was funny because I remember it was at Dulles Airport, people were there.

Welcome, welcome.

And I'd get off a plane and there'd be a welcome sign signs.

I came in from Chicago.

It took me a long and, you know, and it was everywhere.

And the funniest ones were some people telling me, like in Indianapolis, where no international flights arrive at all.

And people anybody sort of tanned skin or something getting off a plane saying welcome, you're welcome here, whatever it's like.

Right.

Thank you.

It's really nice.

It's like the neighborhood, what do you call it, welcoming party.

But there was this sense of goodness that came forward and that's actually what's happening in the broader sense.

If I go back to the women's March and then then to the anti Muslim ban thing and then to the gun violence rallies, then to black Lives Matter and then to this.

It's the same people in that I hate the word because I'm not into woke language, but the intersectional anti the connectedness young people are.

I mean, I sit in awe sometimes of the global vision they have of the world, how they see the environment and race and all this.

All of them are connected in their minds.

They know in as they have, and they smell injustice faster than anybody.

And it's brilliant to watch.

And and I have great hope because they're driving the train right now.

Our jet, my generation screwed up.

And I do not want another person from my generation anywhere near the halls of power.

We can't overcome complexes or our stupidity.

And so these that's why one of the reasons I like Kamala Harris, a different generation, a woman of color with an entirely different life experience and worldview, and I hope that comes to the fore.

And then she puts the smart as white boys in their place.

Anyway.

No, I mean, I think that that if you look at the consciousness my brother wrote a book years ago about America demographic groups.

He called that generation the first globals because he said they have because of the Internet, because of social media, because of the way that they've grown up.

They have this view of the world.

They know places that most adults don't know where they are.

They don't wiggers.

What's the weaker than soft drink or they don't know.

They know the Rohingya, they know Darfur, they know Palestine, and they feel each one of them deeply.

And and it's just it's fantastic to see gives me hope.

I wanted to ask you about where the leadership is and the past in the Palestinian community.

If there were a predisposition of Israel or a different leadership in Israel to work on it, really work on a two state solution, with whom would they work?

Hamas has proven to be to be a terrorist organization.

The leaders of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has also been discredited by corruption.

So where is the indigenous leadership that will that will rise up and really represent the Palestinian people with whom a partner for peace can work?

And I just have one other comment.

Your comment about Palestinian the Palestinians one I think just fanned the flames of division, which undercuts the rest of your message today.

Which part you said you said the Palestinians in my opinion, the Palestinians one is part of the DNC issue.

So anyway, I'd like to hear your position on Palestinian leadership and where it is.

When I say Palestine one, I mean that the issue which has been ignored for 30 years, the last person to speak about Palestine at the Democratic Convention was me, 1988.

And after I spoke, after I spoke, I was a member of the Democratic National Committee.

I was asked to step down because of the fear that Jewish groups and Republican groups would come after Michael Dukakis.

Because I was a member of the Democratic National Committee and I did step down and thank God Ron Brown promised me he'd make it up to me, and he did.

But that was the last time Palestine got mentioned at the convention, believe it or not.

And so it did win.

And I think it was really it didn't fanned the flames of anything.

It recognizes the reality that this issue can't be ignored and wasn't ignored despite the fact that there was a hurtful thing that happened.

Now, with regard to your other question about.

Leadership.

Leadership, there there is no leadership and there's no leadership by design.

They did not become leadership lists because they're inherently uncontrollable.

Israel literally did everything it could to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, discredit the Palestinian Authority, and make it rudderless, give it the position of being a subordinate to their interests.

They were given one job.

You control the people and we'll give you money.

Your money that according to the Paris Accords in 1994, was Israel insisted on collecting the VAT tax that comes from imports to Palestinian.

Israel collected it.

It was supposed to go immediately to palaces.

It's their damn money.

And Israel continues to withhold it or put conditions on it, whatever.

Not their business.

But that's how they keep a stranglehold on the Palestinian Authority.

And when they nightly go into Palestinian towns and villages when they continue to operate with impunity in terms of building new settlements, building new roads, building new infrastructure, and giving settlers free reign.

And 62% of the West Bank is state land controlled by Israel, and state land means that it can easily be converted at any time as it is to settlements or outposts.

They have made the Palestinian Authority a running joke that is only supported to the extent to which it creates jobs.

Look, I ran a project for Vice President Gore in the nineties called Builders of Peace.

We were promoting the Palestinian economy, hoping to create a private sector.

Israel would not allow imports and exports without Israeli control.

I can tell you funny stories about them denying soccer balls to come in or or the Department of Agriculture wanting to bring 50,000 bulbs to Gaza to start a flower industry.

And the Israelis letting the bulbs rot in the harbor because they wouldn't let them come in to compete with theirs.

I mean, one after another after another, to the point where today the two largest sources of income in the West Bank are jobs in Israel, and by permit or jobs with the Palestinian Authority, that's no economy, and that is by design.

Hamas, on the other hand, Netanyahu specifically said that he did what he did with Hamas to create division.

He knew it was a terrorist group, but he wanted it.

And I mean, look there remember the negotiations John Kerry was doing between Israel and and and Abu Mazen, fourth round of of prisoner releases.

There were 75 in each round.

The fourth round.

Netanyahu refused to do and Abu Mazen to save face, had to call off negotiations at that point.

Within a month after that, Israel freed 1000 prisoners to Hamas in exchange for the dead body of an Israeli soldier.

What the hell message is that?

Sending 75 prisoners to keep negotiations going versus 1000 to get back a soldier who'd been captured dead and they they took his body back.

The message was, we will deal with Hamas, will elevate.

We'll play Hamas for everything we can in order to elevate it over against the Palestinian Authority that we want to discredit.

They felt they could control Hamas.

I think the the shocker for Israel is that they found out that Hamas not only couldn't be controlled or trusted, but that it was actually more lethal than they expected it to be.

Could you talk about Marwan Barghouti?

Yeah.

You know, he's a he's a I. I never met him.

I remember speaking with Arafat about Marwan Barghouti, who felt a lot of pressure from Marwan back during the second intifada.

He I don't know whether his popularity is the fact that he's imprisoned or whether or not there is a Nelson Mandela like character there that for us to see, we don't know because he has been off the stage for decades now and we just don't know.

But he was the head of the the group Fatah armed wing that did, in fact, kill people, a lot of soldiers and also some civilians during the second intifada, which is not to say that Israel doesn't kill militants and also civilians, lots of them, but Palestinians only the capacity to arrest Israeli leaders and hold them in prison, whatever.

So there's no parity there.

But he should be freed.

I mean, in all the polling that we do, for whatever reason, his are highest favorable rating among Palestinians.

He's become a mythic in many ways, and I hope he lives up to the myth.

I mean, just like we hoped Mandela would live up the myth and thank God he did.

That he was elected to the legislature.

So he was and he was and he headed this armed wing.

He was the sort of the general of US group who resisted getting involved in the second intifada until Hamas was seizing more.

The dynamic in public opinion was, Thank God Hamas is resisting because Fatah is doing nothing.

And Marwan kept going to Arafat saying, we got to do something or else we're going to lose all the the support and look.

But he's also someone who accepted the Oslo.

Accords course, of course.

But the question was about a partner to have.

Yeah, the point right now is that I don't know who could be a partner, even if Marwan Barghouti did, because the the well of bitterness is so deep on the Palestinian side and the empowerment of the right and weakening of the left.

And one of the reasons I say arms embargo to Israel, not a but enforcing our law and suspending weapons is because it would be a shock to the system in Israel that would help spur.

You and I both went through that period, the nineties when there was a peace movement in Israel, and they would come to us and say, the president's got to do this.

And the president should say that, feeling that if the US did something, it would strengthen their position against the right wing in Israel that was moving because we ignored them, because we allowed Israel to do whatever it wanted to do without saying Clinton on the Clinton did some really clever things to send a message that I don't want this to happen it had an impact but once you got to George Bush, it was over and we allowed free rein for the right wing.

One of the things that happened was we created a sense of impunity, one, but we also created an empowering of the right wing in Israel.

So today, I can't imagine how you would come up with a 60 members of the Knesset, 61 members who would actually want peace.

There's no partner on either side, which is why the US has to do something dramatic to challenge Israel to help reshape the internal political dynamic there, and also to empower Palestinians to feel that maybe we should give moderates respect because the US is paying attention to them.

I don't know.

I think the key lies with us, not with them or.

I want to thank Dr. James Zogby and Ambassador Jane Abercrombie, one Stanley, for joining us at the City Club today.

Thank you so much.

Honestly, I was hoping for a little more hope, but you get what you get.

Yeah, no, young kids are the hope.

They are changing America.

Ice.

Ice.

I see it every day on almost every issue.

They are beginning the transformative process of making America recognize who and what we are and what we're capable of.

I They give me hope.

Jim Zogby.

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