later, a look at the investigation into hillary clinton's e-mails as secretary of state. ♪ announcer: this week on "q&a," institute for policy studies fellow phyllis bennis discusses her book, "understanding isis and the new global war on terror." ms. bennis also talks about u.s. foreign policy since 9-11 and the obama administration's recent negotiations with iran. ♪ brian: phyllis bennis, how would you describe what you do for a living? phyllis: ooh. it is one of those great privileges. i get to work my passion, which is working as a public scholar. for me, it means working against wars and occupation and bad foreign policy, mostly by our own government.

what does it mean day-to-day? i write stuff, i speak, i talk to people. i work in social movements. brian: who pays you? phyllis: i work for the institute of policy studies. it is the longest lasting multi-progressive think tank in the country. it's been around since the early 60's. we raise money partly from foundations and partly from individuals. we do not take any government or corporate money. brian: when people give you money, what do they want from you? phyllis: usually what they want is access to information. isis has been a good example. who is isis? the reason i wrote a book about isis was because the book kept asking me where can i get some basic stuff? i don't need to be an expert. i just want the basics. so i said, ok. i guess i'll write one. i think what people want is information. we cannot rely on mainstream media the way we used to be able to rely on it. the internet provides a huge

amount of information but sorting through it, it is hard to know what is reliable and what is shady stuff. you want something you rely on, so you go to people that you trust and you share your views, maybe about the way to change the world is to build big social movements against war, inequality, and racism. ips over the years has worked with all those movements. i think that is what people want. brian: when did the media give you what you wanted? phyllis: i'm not sure that is true. when i was a kid, everybody trusted walter cronkite. he was condemned after he criticized the war in vietnam. it's not about trusting individual journalists. they work really hard, tried to do their best, but it is a system that doesn't work area well. it is owned by john corporations

-- it is owned by giant corporations that also own a lot of war industries, for example. you have a major network that is owned by the same corporation that owns general electric, which is one of the egg military contractors. that cannot help but affect how they cover wars and the use of military goods. brian: they did get out of it. they sold it. phyllis: eventually. brian: let's go to your book. this is "understanding isis in the new global war on terror"." there is one question i want to ask you to start with what is , the difference between a sunni and a shia? phyllis: it is an important question, although i am not sure it is the most important question in understanding the

complex situation we are dealing with. it goes back to the seventh century, the prophet mohammed. i am not inexpert on all the ins and outs of the ideologically. but it was an argument over who should take over after the prophet died. their word to schools of thought, one that said it should be direct family, another said it should be the person working closest with him and should continue on the line. that was the beginning of the split. it doesn't really matter. you know, the actual theological differences are not as important as the political consequences of those differences. among other things, when you look at the civil war in syria, which is now seven separate wars that are all been fought to the last syrian, one of those wars is a power struggle in the region for who is going to be the regional power between saudi arabia and iran. another is a sectarian war between sunni and shia. and that also puts saudi arabia

and iran and some of the other forces in the region that they support in syria and elsewhere on opposite sides. so, it becomes a political struggle as much as a religious struggle. brian: so, how much of what we've seen happen in the last 15 years would we be seeing if there was not a split between the sunnis and the shia? phyllis: i think all of it would still be happening. it might look a different, but i think the origins of all of this are far more with oil, with the search for military bases, for foreign occupations of a number of things. i think all of those things are far more important than the sunni-shia divide in actually creating the split and the problems in the region. brian: since you have had this book on the market,

"understanding isis and the new global war on terror," what is the reaction you have gotten from people who have read it? phyllis: the book has only been out for a few weeks so i haven't gotten too much response yet. it is probably similar to the response to articles that are right, which is basically, boy, do i need to know all this? do i need to know this detail? and i say, absolutely not. that is why the book it is written in frequently asked questions, where people can stick around or they can just read a few. but it is important to understand who is isis. what are their origins? what do they believe in? why are they so violent? i describe all of those things. is the united states policy regarding isis? why isn't it working? can we really go to war against terrorism? are we doing war wrong or is it wrong to say there should be a war against terrorism at all? those are the questions that in

some ways are the most important and will be the most useful for people who pick up the book. brian: the isis folks have turned out to be pretty good with video and audio. phyllis: horribly so. brian: people that know more about it than i do say they are well produced. we have seen some of this before but just set up the feeling that you have when you see the isis group and then have you come back and explain some of this. [video clip] >> i call on my friends, family and loved ones to rise up against the real killers, the u.s. government. for what will happen to me is a result of their complacency and criminology. belovedge to my parents, save me some dignity. do not except any meager compensation for my death from the same people who effectively had the last nail on my coffin with their recent aerial attack

on iraq. >> you have been in the forefront of the islamic state. you go for out of your way to interfere in our affairs. , your military has caused casualties. you are no longer fighting an insurgency. we are an islamic army and a state that has been accepted by a large number of muslims worldwide. brian: what do you think of what you saw? phyllis: horrifying. it is absolutely horrifying. their ability to bring that image so up close and personal is what makes it so horrific. the reality is, if you compare the number of people license has killed to the numbers of people killed in the u.s. occupation of iraq, the war in afghanistan, it does not come close. but that is not the only

comparison you can make. when it is this up close and personal, it has a very specific human affect. i look away even because i know what comes, even if i don't watch it. i think most people do. but there is a reason for putting this kind of horrifying reality on video and showing it to people. one, it showed power and it makes them look powerful and strong. two, there are clearly some people attracted to that kind of violence. thankfully, not very many. and third, perhaps the most important, is this is what drives what we used to call the cnn factor. maybe it should be called the twitter factor of news and policy. which is, it outrages people. and when people are outraged, they demand that the government do something. and the something, unfortunately, is almost always military. so it drives a policy of responding to this kind of horrific act with war. which doesn't work. kills far more people than it

prevents being killed. and puts us in the position of being the world's oppressor to so many people are on the world. -- around the world. often theis so decision because there are no good alternatives that are considered politically viable. it may be viable in terms of doing the job, but it is not clinically viable because it does not look powerful enough. and by creating this kind of outrage, these actions, these videos, theture killing videos, the beheadings, the burnings, this pushes people in the united states, in britain, elsewhere, pushes people to demand the government go to war over there. which is what isis wants. they want our troops over there to be targets. they don't want isis to come here. there is no evidence and most intelligence officials have said that, there is no evidence that they are looking to create a terror action in the united

states. their goal is to create, what he just said, a state, an islamic state, a caliphate, in territory that we once knew as part of iraq and part of syria. and it is a very specific and a very local struggle. brian: here is a map that is provided by the military. it shows where the strikes have been. you can see on the screen, it is both in syria on top and down below, in iraq. and you say that's -- those strikes do not have any impact. phyllis: i think certain strikes will have an impact at certain times. i am not saying there is no effect at all. but the idea that we can somehow on terrorism out of existence simply is a fallacy. you don't bomb terrorism. you bomb people. you bomb countries. you bomb cities. you may hit some terrorists. and for every one that you kill, you are creating new enemies in their sons, their daughters, their children, their tribe, the

their religion, their village, their city, their country. i think we know that. policymakers will admit that if you asked them about it. but it doesn't seem to change the fact that come as often as we hear president obama say there is no military solution, what we see is military action after military action. so any specific airstrike might get the right person. more often, it is not. but even if it does, the consequences of that right action -- it got the person it was aiming at -- that person may turn out to have been turned in for a bounty. they may not be the right person at all. if they are, they still have a family. they have children. they have a wife. they have daughters. they have sons. they have people who live with them. people who love them. and when we kill them, chances are there family does not inc. they are a terrorist. particularly because of most of

all, the strikes hit people in their homes or in their cars. when they are sleeping or driving. not when they are actually fighting. so what does people are killed, they are being a father. they are being a neighbor. killedponses, you have my father. you have killed my neighbor. not, thankfully you have killed my terrorist. brian: paul bremmer and president obama made the following comments over the last several years. i want to get your personal reaction to what they both said. [video clip] >> ladies and gentlemen, we got him. [cheers] president obama: good evening. tonight, i can report to the

american people and to the world that the united states has conducted an operation that has killed osama in london, the leader of al qaeda, and a terrorist responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women, and children. it was nearly 10 years ago that a bright september day was darkened by the worst attack on the american people in our history. phyllis: you know, the killing of saddam hussein and the killing of osama bin laden, if we look at it historically, the conditions in iraq, the threat of terrorism, the actual terrorist attacks have gotten worse, and not better since they were killed. so the notion that that somehow is something to cheer about, i can remember the day that saddam hussein was killed. i was in jordan.

i remember hearing how people talk about it. very different from the kind of cheering that i was hearing from the united states. brian: what did they say? phyllis: there was no great love lost. they were not fans of saddam hussein. but since the overthrow of his government, they lost the stability that accompanied the fact that it was a very repressive regime if you did to -- dare to speak against the government. and that is a serious problem that i don't think u.s. policy makers took into account. there is a sense, because we identify someone as a terrorist and, objectively yes, osama bin laden was a terrorist. saddam hussein not so much. a repressive dictator, yes, but a terrorist, no. but, whatever they were, in our view, they were that one thing and that one thing only. for people in the region, people who are closer to them than we are, they are many things. it is a much more nuanced understanding. we do not understand nuance very

well in this country. brian: what about the reaction to president obama? what do you think of him? phyllis: today, i am very proud of president obama for the agreement with iran, which took a lot of political courage. it shouldn't have. there should never have to be political courage to say we support diplomacy over war. this was a huge victory for negotiation and diplomacy over war. president obama had to use political capital into had to be brave is a real terrible statement about the state of our political reality in this country. but he was brave. so i applaud him for that. i applaud him for what he said yesterday about prisons. i was verylast time, proud to have voted for president obama.

brian: so why is it brave to eventually lift sections on cuba -- why is it brave to make this decision on iran? phyllis: it shouldn't have to be brave, it should be normal. brian: but you said it is brave. phyllis: brave politically because there is a political price to be paid because of the right wing character of our politics where there are hardline lobbies. the pro-cuba lobby, which was really the anti-cuba lobby, the anti-fidel lobby based in miami, who are much meeker these days week as it didn't transfer to the next generation. brian: let me ask you this. he didn't do anything his first term. he is not going to run for an office again. again i go back to why is it , brave for him to make a decision in the last two years

in his presidency that will not have an impact on him? phyllis: i think in the real world, in this washington bubble that you and i both live in, there is courage that is required. there shouldn't be. he is going to have a political career after the presidency. he will be running for office. i don't know what he wants to be. but some of it involves in universities and corporate boards, unfortunately. not criticizing corporations. who knows what he is going to want to but he is going to be a young man wanting to do something useful, something interesting, something challenging. so he doesn't want to completely -- undermine his own political reputation with his own party, for instance. i wish that we would have a president who said, you know

what, i have been elected to do certain things, end wars, do what i can to end racism in this country. i am going to do things that my party is what you hate. and that is just the way it was to be. if i don't want a second term, so be it. i wish we had somebody with that kind of courage. barack obama has not been that president. but we have the president that we have and he has been in this context politically brave in the last immediate period. he has done some pretty terrible things in the last period as well. there have been continuing airstrikes and drone attacks. he has escalated the drone war too far more countries than george bush dreamed of. the fact that he has continued responding to acts of terrorism with war means he is continuing the policy of george w. bush. it was not only a failure. it was in my view a crime. i spoke not too long ago at hofstra university that was hosting the official conference on the presidency of george w. bush. and at the opening panel, i said that i thought george w. bush belonged on trial in the hague for war crimes. i believe that's true. i hope that president obama will

do more to distinguish himself from that legacy of his predecessor. brian: back in march -- i want to run a clip of tomaselli, the former senior press advisor. he laid down the accomplishments of the bush administration. we will get you to respond to that. [video clip] tom: despite poor in tall, pour in for structure military assets, essential services, mass looting, a lack of -- indigenous security forces, the iraq mission also realized a range of success is not sufficiently promoted by the administration and remotely ignored by the media. the training of new iraqi security forces began within weeks of the creation of the cpa, which enabled anybody up to the grade of colonel to reapply to a new professional army. ultimately 80% of the officers in the nco's in the new army were from the old army were better trained, better paid, and better equipped.

the central bank was reopened and the currency transition to a single stable unit within the first six months. it took us two years to do that and post-world war ii germany. oil production increased. buildings were rebuilt, good hospitals and health care centers. a constitution was developed. systems were created to facilitate an election in an incredibly challenging and degrading security environment. brian: what do you think of it from a philosophical point? how is it you can think so vastly different from him? phyllis: i found it interesting that, unlike all of the other conferences on the presidency -- and they have one for every president in history -- this is the only one where the president, the vice president, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense -- none of them showed up. this is the first time. that's what you have a junior grade pr flack who was on the lead panel because he was the highest-ranking official they could get.

right? so i think that says something , about the philosophical basis. there is a reason george bush doesn't want to appear. not just that he doesn't want to debate me. i mean, i would be flattered to think he did not want to debate me, but i don't think that was the issue. i think the issue was they don't want to remind people when jeb bush is running for president that his brother was responsible for the devastation of a country. brian: go back to the question i asked about what you think happens to two different human beings, two different groups of people when they think so differently about war and the protection of the american people? phyllis: for me, the single word that is most important is internationalism. i don't think of myself first as an american. i think of myself first as an internationalist. my country, the country i was privileged to be born into, is the most powerful, the most wealthy country that has ever existed in the history of the world. we have more power than the roman empire ever imagined.

we have more money than anyone had ever dreamed of. we have more of everything. what we don't have is care for our own people. 20% of our population's children are living in poverty in the wealthiest country by such an enormous scale. the vast wealth disparity in this country. is now athat ceo pay more than 350 times the average pay of the worker. that is not just unfortunate. that is criminal. that is absolutely little. brian: why? phyllis: why does it happen? it is because powerful lobbies, powerful corporations, economic power -- we can trace the history back in a post-world war ii period where most of the developed world had been devastated by the war. the u.s. had gold from the gold rush and it had not been attacked. we were the only one of the major powers that had not been devastated by war. and, boy, did we take it vantage -- advantage of it.

brian: what would you have done back in 9/11, had you been the first woman president in the united states and you are faced with losing 3000 americans in that whole thing? what would you have done, do you think? phyllis: i wrote a book after 9/11 that was looking at u.s. foreign policy and what changed and what did not. it was called "before and after," looking at for policy before and after 9/11. and i wrote this speech that i thought george bush should have given on the night of september 11. he would start by saying we have been attacked in the worst attack on our soil in history. my first pledge is that not one more person anywhere will die as we search for justice. against those who carried out this horrific attack. and then i would have talked about how this means we were wrong about a number of things. we were wrong about the international criminal court. we desperately need such a court and we now are going to commit ourselves to not only building that court, but strengthening it

so it action has a capacity to -- so it actually has the capacity to respond to a horrific crime. brian: you have faith in the international criminal court? phyllis: i don't have faith right now. it is horrifying to see -- all of us knew that the u.s. would not sign on. there was the biggest allegation there, more than 200 members of the u.s. delegation whose sole job it was to weaken every aspect of the court, its jurisdiction, the crimes that it was allowed to include, the punishments -- all of that was weakened by the united states, by convincing diplomats, if we we can adjust this love it, maybe we could get the u.s. to sign on. and the cynics among us said, no of course they are not going to sign it. do not fall for it? brian: why not, though?

phyllis: this was in the middle of the clinton administration that claimed to be multilateralist, but it never was multilateralist. brian: are they evil? phyllis: they are not evil. they have a narrow economically focused understanding of what it means to be pro-american, to keep americans safe means to keep the corporations safe, to keep the ceo pay high, keep the price of oil low. those are all american interests. feeding children who are hungry? that is not an american interest. that is a sideline. so if you understand that it's power that is operative in washington, you become pretty cynical. it is not about being evil. barack obama is certainly not evil. i think barack obama the man understands race and class in a profound way, more than any other president we have ever had. not only because he is the first african american president, although that is a huge part of it, but also because he is april

-- he is a brilliant scholar. but what barack obama the man thinks is not that important as far as what barack obama the president is going to do. brian: in this video, they are not americans that we will be watching, but isis that you wrote this book about. this is one of the ways that they kill some of the people that they pick up. [video clip] [chanting]

brian: we stopped it, but these men die. phyllis: is horrifying. brian: you are president of the united states and you are in a democracy and people react. phyllis: you say to the world this is horrific and our obligation is to figure out how to stop this. if we are serious about stopping it, we have to understand why people would do this, why some people think it is a good thing, why they are attracting more recruits rather than fewer when they show these things, what is happening in our country and in the regions where there are troops operating, where

our corporations are in control. where we are buying oil. what is happening that is creating this? if we don't understand that -- it is not about excusing it. for god's sakes, this has to be condemned. condemnation is only the beginning. but if we are not serious about understanding what causes it, we will never be serious about stopping it, because you cannot bomb terrorism out of existence. brian: what you think about the relationship with the saudi arabians? phyllis: it is always a mistake to talk about friendship. these are interests and they have not changed in a very long time. one of the things i talk about my book in dealing with the section dealing with violence and isis, these things are not new. used the's have headings as capital punishment. beheadings as capital punishment. before james foley was killed,

the saudis had some prisoners and the free syrian army had beheaded them. it is a huge problem. it is a cultural problem.so this not only isis. it is a huge problem. it is a cultural problem. people feel like there is something legitimate about beheading prisoners. if we are serious about stopping it, we've got to be looking at what causes it, rather than just saying these people are animals, we are going to kill them. you can't kill them all. brian: do you have any idea what causes it? phyllis: i think it is a variety of things. when you look at people who are attracted to isis, who support isis, from the west, people in britain, people in belgium, these are countries that are sending large numbers of people. i think it has to do with the sense, in certain communities, second and third generation immigrant communities, that they have never been respected. they have never been welcomed as members of the society.

even when they are born and raised in that country. we see this in france. we see it here less, but it is a huge problem. it is not only poverty. we see many wealthy young people with a lot of opportunities who don't feel they belong, who don't feel they have an opportunity. here, they see somebody declaring a state. i could go live in that state. as horrifying as these videos are, you've shown to of the worst of them, there are other videos, recruitment videos. there's one that shows isis fighters and their families taking the children to an amusement park. they have pony rides and cotton candy. it looks like families out for a lovely afternoon. they recruited a woman gynecologist from the u.k. who opened a pregnancy clinic for the lives of isis fighters in their self-declared capital.

these are not only people who can't get a job. it is people who are feeling a profound sense of dislocation, disempowerment, disconnection, from everything about where they live, where they thought they should be long. brian: you thought a lot about this, you've done work with the u.n., your president -- what do you do? you pick up the phone? phyllis: i think there's a fundamental reality that no president has been willing to say to the american people. we are not capable of responding in a way that will protect every horrific act and stop it from happening. we can't necessarily stop isis from every horrific act of torture or act of beheading. we have to look broader than that. we are a global power. we need to use our money differently. we need to stop supporting these

horrifying absolute dictatorships, absolute monarchies, that pass power not only from for other to son, but brother to brother, excluding the entire population from any aspect of political life, that treat foreign workers as if they were pack animals. we have to stop engaging with them as if they were our friends and not even treat them as our allies. brian: one of the things george w. bush said is that we need to free up the people of iraq, create a democracy so they can be as free as we are here. do you think every country in the world should be a democracy? phyls: every country in the world should have a right to decide what kind of democracy they want. i don't think the people of iraq wanted u.s. occupation disguised as democracy. we heard from a colleague on that panel who was defending the gains in iraq. one of the things he mentioned was there was a constitution that was created with sunni and

shia at the table. they were all at the table, but it was the u.s. academics from harvard who were drafting the thing. those individuals were there to give it political cover. the people of iraq were not choosing their own constitution. brian: go back to the beginning of all this. you had saddam hussein and his sunni group, 20% of the country, the rest of them shia. he controlled the whole thing. if you are shia, how do you get out of that? phyllis: there's a huge set of challenges. it wasn't a situation where every shia was terribly oppressed. there was discrimination. there was privileging of sunnis. the same is true in syria. the other branch of the party. but in those situations, it is up to people themselves to rise up. when the shia rose up after the u.s. invasion in 1990-91, and at

that point george bush the first set, we've had enough, we are pulling off. those shia who resisted were slaughtered. it was a bloodbath. it was really a situation where people in their own country have to figure out how they are going to engage with the rest of the world to gain the solidarity, the support, the money. maybe it is fighters they need. if you look at the origin of the spanish civil war, people from all over the world went to fight against fascism in spain, seeing it as a global fight. that was led by anti-fascists in spain. it wasn't an invasion by some other country. the invasion was on the side of the loyalists. brian: the united states senate in may of 2015. listen to what senator john mccain is saying, and give us your view of this.

>> have we completely lost our sense of moral caring and concern about thousands and thousands of people who are murdered, who are made refugees, who are dying as we speak, and the secretary of state says that we should not light our hair on fire? and what does the president have to say today? the president of the united states says, it is climate change we have to worry about. i'm worried about climate change. do we give a damn about what is happening in the streets of ramadi and the thousands of refugees and the innocent men, children being executed, their bodies burned in the street? brian: he sounds a little bit like you. phyllis: please. brian: about people and refugees. phyllis: this is the same

senator mccain whose recipe what to do about iran for instance was not to support a solution on negotiations rather than war. his solution was a very clever, , bomb bomb, bomb, bomb iran." what he is calling for is war in the interest of protecting people. this notion of humanitarian intervention has always created more refugees and casualties than it was designed to prevent. you can perhaps stop a certain action from taking place, but then you are playing whack -a-mole. you stop it in syria and it pops up in iran. it pops up over in syria. this isn't a strategy or stopping the conditions that give rise to this. as long as people say, if you want to understand what these crazy people are doing, you must be supporting them -- as long as

that is our opinion, we will never have a way out. we will be sending troops on the ground, sending bombers, sending drones to kill more and more people, creating more and more refugees. where was john mccain when the refugees were being created in iraq, when 500,000 children under the age of five were dying because of the sanctions imposed by this country, and the best madeleine albright could say was, we think the price is worth it? brian: john mccain spent five years in prison in vietnam. back to some vietnam history. a lot of your involvement in antiwar stuff started with vietnam. here is marcus raskin, who invented the institute of policy studies. he is now 81 years old. a panel discussion of people who were antiwar in vietnam. watch a little bit of this. thatere's certain things

we should be very happy about. first of all, that we are all together, and that -- [applause] all, that you should always hire a good lawyer. [laughter] don't have a good lawyer, you are in trouble. is, you need street feet. you need to be able to organize from the street, to get people in the offices to hear what is going on in the street. so there's this dialectic, if you will, between those two relationships. that dialectic becomes the basis upon which real change can

occur. not forever. never forever. not for 10,000 years. give us a few generations and let us begin again. let us move a tiny bit further ahead. brian: as you know, he worked for george bonnie, who was an adviser to kennedy and johnson. didn't get along over the vietnam war. were you in the crowd that night? phyllis: i was. brian: donahue moderated. phyllis: this was the panel of the elders. they were each welcomed and introduced by one of the young activists. brian: how do you think they all feel about what happened back when they protested the vietnam war, the outcome? phyllis: i think all of them felt they were part of history, that that movement transformed

the world. as mark said, not forever. we are back at war now. but there was a sense of engagement. there was a sense of this as a global movement. i think if we look further ahead, we can see the origins of the vietnam era also in the war against, the antiwar movement against the war in iraq. if you look at the global protests of 2003, the day the world said no to war, and according to the guinness book of world records, somewhere over 14 million people on that day flooded the capitals of their countries to say no to bush war, it was very reminiscent of the massive protests of the vietnam era. except now we can do it globally. that protest had been organized in less than six weeks. brian: it didn't work. phyllis: it worked in a certain way. it did not work to stop the war. we were not able to stop the

war, but we were able to do something else. we were able to raise the political price of going to war. wasn 2007, when george bush i think very close to going to war against iran, his calculation was, i think i won't. i think part of the reason we were not at war with iran over the last five years, part of the reason we were able to have this extraordinary victory of diplomacy over war with the iran nuclear deal, is precisely because of the antiwar movement around the of, because of february 15, 2003, because the price of going to war has become too high. the reason president obama is relying on drones is because he thinks he can do it with no one paying attention. he thinks that because the pilots are in las vegas and they can go home to dinner every night, that they won't get ptsd like pilots do when they are

dropping bombs on people that they see below. he was wrong. because getting ptsd they are killing people. i think the reason president obama has emphasized the drone war is because it comes at lesser cost than direct troops on the ground. brian: i've heard you talk about your beginning at the university of california santa barbara. your upbringing in california. your parents. i want to find out what it was that made you first angry about war. start with your parents. what were they like? phyllis: my parents were quite extraordinary people. they were world war ii era. like so many of that generation, when he came home, he put away his uniform and never talked about it until a few months before he died. my sister and i never really knew what he did in the war. he never talked about it and we never asked.

he worked -- he was a salesman. never made much money. he was working for my mother's father. i never worried that he would lose his job. my mother went back to work when my sister and i were in junior high school. they never got to go to college. they were already married when the war ended. they were about to have kids. they couldn't use the g.i. bill. my sister and i were the first of the family to go to college. i grew up a very active zionist. israel was kind of my framework. when i went to college, it was all about the annan. i was too young to have really understood the civil rights movement, but i wasn't too young to understand vietnam. suddenly, that took over my life. brian: when you were in college, there was a draft. what impact did the fact there

was a draft have on your attitude about the annan, because the people around you were worried about going to the service? phyllis: the question of the draft unquestionably broadened the appeal of the antiwar movement. people were individually being drafted. i don't think it played that much of a role in my own thinking, mostly because the people around me had their deferments. that was where the whole class privilege came in. it was the college students who were not going to be drafted. then they went to graduate school. they could still wait and not be drafted yet. it was just a couple years later that the draft ended and suddenly it was by the lottery. it was determined differently. i think that for the creation of that movement, there's no doubt that the fact that young americans were being drafted played a huge part in it.

the race and class disparity was overwhelmingly young black and brown people from the ghettos of this country being drafted to fight in vietnam. when the war in iraq took off and we saw huge numbers of people joining the military in what we called the poverty draft , because it wasn't really voluntary, it was the lack of other options, the lack of other jobs, the lack of money to go to college. all those things drove people into the military. the dynamics were somewhat different. you didn't see disproportionately bracken brown -- black and brown people. what you saw was disproportionate people coming from tiny towns and rural areas, where they had no options. there were no jobs, no colleges, no scholarships. they had no options. brian: what would we have seen it -- if i had seen you when you were 17 years old, what would i

have seen you the most angry at? phyllis: it would have been nixon's invasion of cambodia that galvanized students across the country. the chicago conspiracy trial was underway. when he invaded cambodia, a country, a neutral country, escalating the war massively, claiming a secret plan to end the war -- yes, it is called escalation. that was the economy of the ofer of my -- the epitome the anger of my generation. what some people on my campus did was burned down the bank of america. that was a level of anger that was happening because, as one person said in a film that was made about it, it was the biggest capitalist thing around. there was a growing understanding that these things were related. i have been working with the to raise money for the farmworker boycott.

we started to understand how that was linked to the war in vietnam. those who had an interest in maintaining this war were the same forces that had an interest in not paying farmworkers a wage. all of that started in santa barbara. we had to deal with oil leaks. all these things started to come together and changed our lives. brian: i'm going to run a piece of video of a person you knew well. he died in 2003. he's palestinian by birth. you are a reformed jh by birthew -- reformed jew birth. [video clip] palestinians have always been a problem for the zionist project. many solutions have been proposed that minimize, rather than solve the problem.

the official israeli policy, whether arial sharon uses the word occupation or not, or whether or not he dismantles a rusty, unused tower or two, has always been not to accept the reality of the palestinian people as equals, nor even to admit that their rights were violated all along by israel. whereas a few courageous israelis spoke about this concealed history, most israelis and what seems like the majority of american jews have made every effort to deny, avoid, or negate the palestinian reality. that is why there is no peace. come to bedid you such an admirer of him, and why palestinian,e a whatever, protector? phyllis: i'm not a protector.

brian: why did you become anti-zionist? phyllis: edward was a great mentor of mine. this is probably about a year and a half before he died. i think that one of the things i was always most proud of growing up jewish was the concern about ideas. ideas and challenging ideas. my father would challenge me with ideas. push me, reading the newspaper, engaging about politics. we never questioned israel, but for me, it all came back to vietnam. i was focused on vietnam. i put the middle east aside. when i came back to it, i suddenly thought, i might have been wrong about this israel thing. i went to my father's library. of the founders of modern zionism. i've found that he had written

the letters, begging for support from, guess who, the great british colonialist, saying to him, i know your interest is africa. mine is a little slice of arabia. your concern is with englishmen. my concern is with jews. why am i coming to you for support? because they are both something colonial. when i read that, i thought, i was wrong about this. nobody told me this was a colonial project. i started looking for more information. that led me to edward said, one of the greats of the u.s. intellectual tradition as well as the palestinian intellectual tradition. he is very much a product of the united states and it was in working with edward that i came to see the question of palestine as fundamentally american. i changed how i understood my own work rather than saying i'm

in solidarity with the palestinians, to say my job is to build a movement that can challenge u.s. policy. u.s. policy is what enables israeli occupation, israeli apartheid policies. all this is enabled by the full protection of the united states, the $3.1 billion a year we give directly to the israeli military. that is what makes it possible for this very small country to emerge as such a world power. when we look at the influence of great intellectuals like edward said, whose influence far extended beyond his academic work, you see that linkage, the linkage of issues. you see now among young palestinians taking up the cause of the black lives matter movement. you see people from ferguson who went to palestine last year right after the crisis in their own city to see what they could

learn about building movements. we are becoming internationalists in this country. i'm sorry that edward didn't live to see the incredible change in the jewish community. you now have an organization on the left, on the right, in the center, and jewish communities becoming much more ordinary in that sense. it has a left, a right, and a center. as opposed to having the claim that there's only one opinion in the jewish community. brian: how hard has it been for you to get what you believe in published? what kind of reaction have you gotten from the jewish community? phyllis: there was the time the jewish defense league shot into my house in l.a., but that's a long time ago. that doesn't happen anymore. the change has been so profound in this last decade.

something like president carter's book, president or not, he could never have gotten that book published 20 years ago. 10 years ago, he did. that was partly because of the work that we have done on this. it is not easy. i don't get into "the new york times." i haven't pitched much lately, because you get sort of them are allies after being turned -- you moralized after being turned down over and over. i should pitch more actively. that is a good point. "the new york times" has changed dramatically in terms of what appears on their editorial page. their editorial page has changed somewhat. that is very significant. i put a great deal of credence in that. the media in general is not nearly as bad as it used to be.

there are problems of access, but you have the institution for middle east understanding, whose job it is to place palestinian voices in the mainstream u.s. press. they have amazing work. they get into "the new york times" and "the washington post" and "time magazine." they need palestinian voices. during the war in gaza, in 2008 tried to israel keep the international press out. it didn't work. everybody was how her up their get phone or computer to their video and their photographs out into the world. social media has changed everything. ahe new york times" also had full-time journalist based in gaza, who was born and raised in gaza. she was there, reporting for

"the times." all that has changed profoundly. brian: who has published all your books? phyllis: interleague publishing in massachusetts. i used to say it is a small publisher. now medium-sized. the founder is a palestinian musician. she publishes amazing cook books, travel books, fiction in translation from all over the world, and books about the middle east. brian: and if folks want to read what you do, where? phyllis: they can find all the books, they can go to the ipf-dc of my institute, tog, to find reference books, and my colleagues as well. brian: what are the chances that in your lifetime, the palestinian-israeli situation will be solved? phyllis: i hope i'm not too old

to see it. it is not nearly as complicated as people think. it takes a lot of political will. the world is changing profoundly. the arab spring has profoundly changed that region. now being of citizens claimed by people in countries who never believed they had the rights of citizenship. i think we are going to see stage 2 of the arab spring in all of the countries where it began and beyond. brian: you hear this a lot from politicians, that the united states is the greatest country in the history of the world. what would you say to that? phyllis: the united states is the most powerful country in the history of the world. we haven't used that power for good very often. phyllis bennis, thank you so much for joining us. phyllis: it has been a pleasure.

>> for free transcripts, or to give us your comments about this program, visit us at q-and-a .org. "q&a" progress are also available as c-span podcasts. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] c-span city store as we travel outside the washington beltway to communities across america. >> the idea is to take the programming for american history television and book tv out on the road to produce pieces that are more visual, that provide a window into these cities that viewers wouldn't normally go to, that have really rich histories and a rich literary scene as well. >>