Ralph Nader (1:56)

David Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired US Army Colonel. Over his 31 years of service, Colonel Wilkerson served as Secretary of State Colin Powell's Chief of staff from 2002 to 2005 and special assistant to General Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 to 1993. Colonel Wilkerson also served as Deputy Director and director of the U.S. marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia, and for 15 years he was Distinguished Visiting professor of Government and Public Policy at the College of William and Mary. He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, Senior Advisor to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, and and co founder of the All Volunteer Force Forum. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (2:50)

Good to be with you.

David Feldman (2:51)

Thank you as well, Larry. You know, you've made your mark on public opinion quite uniquely by availing yourself of the first Amendment, right to speak, petition our government and assemble. And you've been on Capitol Hill, you've been on media. You're a living example of civic life after military retirement. I have to get your views on the military budget. Trump recently wants to increase it by 500 billion or 50%, and the Washington Post actually editorialized in favor of it. Its editorial positions are now reflective of Jeff Bezos. It's a pretty disgraceful record that they are writing, given their legacy over the decades. I'm talking about the Washington Post.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (3:38)

I use those casualty figures that you gave me some time ago, about six months ago or so I suspected they were that high anyway. And that's based on the matrix that the military used to do bomb damage assessment and casualty assessment post strike. I'd say it was at that time somewhere around 150,000 Gazans that had been killed. Well, I used the stats you sent me and a certain amount of the argument in the paper you sent me, and I called a senior editor at the Washington Post, whom I know quite well, and I asked that individual, what's the problem? And I got essentially the answer of, well, the only figures we have are the Hamas health ministry. Those are the figures that everyone's using. I said, don't you understand there's an incentive both ways on the Israeli side and the Hamas side not to report the casualties accurately. What's wrong with your capacity to go to the region and find out what's going on? Well, we can't. Well, you can't, because Bibi Netanyahu will not let you anywhere near it. But what are you doing to work around that, to subvert that? I know some papers and journalists that are doing that now. They're dying at an inordinate rate. I think we've killed more journalists in the Gospel conflict than we've killed in the last 20 years and all the other wars combined. But that doesn't speak well for your paper. And you really don't have an international section at your paper anymore. You don't have people in Jerusalem, in Tel Aviv, in Doha, in Tehran, wherever they need to be to report accurately or reasonably accurately on the situation there. No, we don't have the money. Well, you aren't a newspaper, not really, if you don't have the guts to go out and get the news wherever it's happening, and you're reporting nonetheless to the American people with people like David Ignatius on the truth, and it's nothing but the truth. It's as bad as what Netanyahu does in his own country in Hebrew. It's propaganda. And in many cases it's not even accurate propaganda. It's falsified propaganda. You know, there used to be a law, and the law prohibited anyone in the Defense Department, for example, but any of the government agencies, Defense Department was the most guilty. That said, you cannot propagandize the American people. You can propagandize foreign audiences. Even in wartime, you can propagandize those audiences, but you must not propagandize the American people. You have to tell them the truth or tell them nothing at all. And if you're a media outlet, you should be telling them the truth, or the truth is you best can determine it. We don't honor that law anymore. The Defense Department propagandizes Americans just like it propagandizes Russians, Iranians or whomever. The same lies or different lies that will have more effect go to the American audience as go to the foreign audience. Voice of America, if you will, when it was propagandizing is now turned legally on America.

David Feldman (6:45)

Veterans for Peace has been trying to talk about this, and you and I belong to the Veterans for Peace. And they're blacked out in the press. There hasn't been a single feature on this wonderful organization, Veterans for Peace, based in St. Louis, with 100 chapters, demonstrations, marches, reports, press releases day after day. Not a single feature has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post or Wall Street Journal or Associated Press. So that's why I'm calling it for some top generals and admirals retired, the kind that used to speak out in the center for Defense Information years ago that you're aware of, because that would tend to break the censorship over the Veterans for Peace activities and expand this important constituency to retire Donald Trump. Your reaction?

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (7:38)

There is a group out there that is, shall we say, fractured to a certain extent in terms of their political power, but they are very much aroused by this and very much active in trying to do something about it. They are mainly on alternative media. And that's why you have people like Judge Napolitano, who now has an audience of about 500,000, which CNN would love to have. That's why you have people like Nima Alcashit down in Brazil, who's now in Tehran, who has a listenership, viewership, if you will, of a quarter million, of sort of. That's why you have all these different podcasts out there, alternative media, all that have bigger audiences than any established visual or print media that's official, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times. The Chicago Herald Tribune, the Miami Herald, they have more of an audience, and they are talking about what you're talking about in the terms you're talking about. But it's not the official thing that Washington reads, that the Congress reads or watches or whatever. So their audience is just people like, you know, the average American out there. And while they might be getting to them and they might be riled, and they are particularly riled even within maga, the most dangerous thing for MAGA right now is the divide between those who think we should be as close to Israel as we are and those who think we are nuts to be that close, and we should change it immediately to include not sending them any more taxpayer dollars. That is fracturing maggot. And that's one of the things that's scaring Trump and scaring the people around Trump, because they understand that, and they understand that the assassination of Charlie Kirk did a lot to ignite that, but it didn't ignite it so much in the mainstream media, which can't even talk about it anymore because it's effervescent for them and it's distracted from what they want to write about. And therefore, we're stuck with a group of Americans who know the truth, as it were, who are beginning to get extremely angry about that knowledge and nothing being done about it. But they have no recourse. They have no recourse other than the ballot box. And that takes a long time. That takes different iterations of elections and so forth. It's happening at the local level. I was just talking with a woman from Texas this morning who lives in Austin, and it's happening in Texas even where people are actually questioning, seriously questioning, the US Relationship with Israel. And it's making its way up, if you will. If we had congressmen who did town hall meetings anymore, most of them don't anymore because they don't want to hear what they hear when they go back to a town.

David Feldman (10:30)

For sure. Your point is elaborated in New York Times Sunday Magazine on the growing split inside MAGA over this automatic support for Israel and all the trouble that's coming out of it. Let's go to Steve.

Steve Scrovan (10:45)

Colonel Wilkerson, on a previous program, I had asked you about the relevance of NATO, and you had told us that NATO had long outlived its usefulness with the current events going on, the rhetoric all around Greenland and what is happening at in Doha with the European nations. Give us your assessment of the future of NATO and whether it breaking up would be a good thing or a.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (11:12)

Bad Thing, I think the future of both the European Union and the future of NATO are foreclosed. They don't have a future. I think it for different reasons for each of those institutions, if you will. But I think there is a commonality there, too. And the commonality is no threat. There is no threat to bring NATO into being as there was before. And with the eu, it's a question of autocracy rather than democracy. And so when you have NATO fall apart and you no longer have that elasticity or that glue to keep these disparate countries together, remember their history, then you're going to have the EU having failure after failure, trying to accomplish its purpose, which is increasingly undemocratic and more authoritarian. So I think they're gone. But I think the prospect for the future ought to be that we replace them. We don't just let them go and not have a replacement. And the replacement should be a European security architecture, which includes the Russians. And last time I checked the RAM and ALI map, Russia, at least from the Urals inward, was a part of Europe. And it needs to be based on, not spheres of influence, but on economic and financial and needs other than that, that all of that group of people have. That's how you create something that will keep Europe and Russia together and not at loggerheads. We were going to do that in 1991 and 1992. And the president who wanted to do that, the president who talked about doing that, was eliminated by a combination of Israel, a Texan by the name of Rossborough. Israel supported him, too, in that effort and in other things that were done to make sure that the president who wanted a, quote, new World Order, unquote, which would include Russia very much prominently include Russia, was outed. And then we had a series of presidents who were grossly inexperienced, from Clinton all the way through to the present one, who had billionaires behind them that fought H.W. bush and what he wanted to do, because they wanted a world that they could sit at top of that would be in chaos, more or less, not a world that was headed towards some kind of collaboration, comedy and cooperation. They backed them to the hilt with their money. And now we've had that series of presidents and we're stuck with the one we got right now. Who is the culmination of that series of presidents? My president, George W. Bush, produced a national security strategy in 2002 that essentially said, as I told Colin Powell at the time, this says we're going to create a Hobbesian world and try to sit atop it who is Hobbes? I said, boss, come on, you're just joking me. He said, yeah, why do you think that? I said, because this strategy says what I just said. It says we're going to create chaos with sanctions and military might, and then that chaos we're going to try to sit on top of. And now I've subsequently learned that the real reason we did that was because we feared China and we feared the slippage of power, which is happening and is inexorable to the east from the West. Well, what HW's conception was was that we would accommodate that slippage and we would create a condominium, if you will. And you would have Tokyo, you would have Washington, you would have London, you would have Berlin, you would have Paris, you would have Moscow and you'd have Beijing in that condominium. And we would take on all of the near peer powers and peer powers and we would take on all the problems like the climate crisis that needed concerted and cooperative action. Long came Bill Clinton and put that in the can. Pardon my French. And all the presidents thereafter backed by the billionaires who wanted that strategy of Hobbesian world backed by them. We have created it. And it's no surprise Trump wants greening. It's no surprise Trump what he did in Venezuela, I'm just surprised he didn't do it in Colombia too, and maybe Brazil too, and restore Bolsonaro. That could be in his wicket. I can't believe what he's doing unless I put it against what I understood this strategy to say. And his strategy just released, sort of re amplifies, but concentrates on the Western hemisphere in order to do it. We want a Hobbesian world in complete chaos upon which we can sit. And we are prepared to use nuclear weapons if that world begins to develop in an adverse way for our interests.

David Feldman (15:54)

These nuclear weapon control treaties with the Soviet Union later, Russia are either expiring, not being observed, or not being renewed.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (16:03)

February 20th.

David Feldman (16:04)

Are you worried about that?

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (16:05)

February 26th, New Start goes out. Putin has multiple times. Lavrov has multiple times offered a gentleman's agreement to extend it for a year. Trump has not said anything back, as far as I know, anything positive. So we are going to be treatyless, period across the board. 26 February.

Steve Scrovan (16:24)

Colonel Wilkinson, when Trump says if we don't take Greenland, we don't control Venezuela, China and Russia will, is that just old Cold War rhetoric? Is there any truth to that?

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (16:37)

There is truth to it. If you look at the port that China just built on the coast of Peru. That port is so elaborate, so modern, so technologically sophisticated, so much a boon to the Peruvian economy. That's the way China does things. They don't sanction, they don't start wars, they don't bomb, they go in and build ports. This port is going to negate the Panama Canal eventually because the bigger ships cannot use the canal and the canal cannot be enlarged any further than because of geographic and geologic and water problems and such. And China is also talking to Nicaragua about building a new canal across the isthmus. But in Nicaragua, China's move is formidable. 60% of the economies of the major countries in South America, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela is with China. Their trade is with China. So there was a part of this move into Venezuela to say to China, Monroe Doctrine, dude, get your butt out of here. We don't want you here. But with the money they've got, that's going to be a tough fight, a really tough fight. And like I said, their help for countries, we don't know what it'll mean in the future when China becomes a little more imperialistic if they do. But right now it's delivered with goods for the country receiving it. We don't do that anymore. We sanction them or we invade them.

David Feldman (18:10)

So, yeah, let's go to David.

Ralph Nader (18:12)

So you were talking about Trump trying to create a Hobbesian nightmare globally, and he's also trying to create a Hobbesian nightmare here in the United States.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (18:21)

Yep.

Ralph Nader (18:22)

Ralph Nader, during the first Trump administration, warned that we were one huge terrorism attack away from Trump trashing all our civil liberties. Where were you in the immediate aftermath of 9 11? And could you speak to the authoritarian impulses in the George W. Bush administration in the immediate aftermath of 9 11, and how different are they? Or similar to the authoritarian impulses we're seeing right now in the Trump administration? And what happens if, God forbid, the unmentionable happens?

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (19:02)

That's a good question. And I wish some historian or just general pundit, if you will, would write something about the transformation that took place from essentially the terrorist attacks to the present Donald Trump, and particularly focus on the erosion of our civil liberties. Because when we started with the Patriot act in the Bush administration, we had such things occur as have great applicability today. Think AI for a minute. When I describe this one, you go into a meeting with sprint AT&T, Verizon and other lesser telecommunications companies in the United States, and you begin to tell them, at least to the level that they could be brief, what you're going to do with information on average American citizens, all American citizens, if you can get it. And now with AI, you can. We assemble so much data, we couldn't even manage it. We couldn't do anything but build algorithms and search with those algorithms and try to find stuff. Now you can go into that kind of metadata, you can go into that significant load of data with AI, and you can pull something out in a heartbeat. And what we were going to do was we were going to track every single person on American soil and we were going to find out when the next terrorist attack was going to happen. If you can imagine that grandiose scheme. Well, you would have thought that these companies would have been appalled. No, they salivated. They salivated because they realized what kind of access they were going to have to information that would be commercially viable, valuable even. And so you didn't have any pushback. You had cooperation. Let's spy on these dudes. Let's keep spying on them, and let's spy even more.

Ralph Nader (20:53)

Were the authoritarian impulses back? I mean, even Cheney eventually came out against Trump. Did you have authoritarians, Fascists? In the immediate aftermath of 9 11.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (21:05)

We had people who I would call neoconservatives. Others might call them something else, but that's my term of art. We had people like that. But even Cheney kept them more or less at bay. People kept calling Cheney a neoconservative to my face. And I would say, no, no, no, no, no, you got that wrong. Cheney is an ultra nationalist. We've had him in the Republican Party since the very beginning. Alexander Hamilton, to a certain extent, was one. We have people who believe in America first, second, third, fourth and fifth. And in that way, it reflects Trump. But it was a saying, rational approach to America first. It wasn't this kind of, let's make the world a chaotic place, and then we'll be first because we got nukes. So, yes, there were people like that around, but even Cheney kept them at bay, and certainly Powell kept them at bay. And so did George W. Bush keep him at bay? And to a certain extent, Donald Russell did. Donald Russell, for example, one time walked out in the Pentagon, and I have this from an impeccable authority. And he said, I don't run this building. Mossad does, because he saw his undersecretary Defense for Policies office invested by Mossad 24 7. They were running the Iraq war from their point of view, from Donald Douglas vice office, and to a certain extent from Paul Wolfowitz's office. But these people were despite their neoconservative bent, they were more interested in what you and I would probably call the genuine security of America than they were in some kind of fantastical scheme to dominate the world by making it chaotic and unlivable in except for you. So it was a progression from that point. And I think the billionaires were back there, and the billionaires were working on call it the Deep State. I don't like that term. The Turks invented it, but it nonetheless is descriptive. They're in the behind the curtains, and they're working on each of these very inexperienced presidents. So you keep this going. So you come to Obama, for example, whom you think was an exception, au contraire. He killed more people with drones than George W. Bush ever thought of doing. And it was because he could keep it out of the limelight. He could kill people and he could use force, but he could do it out of the limelight. I had a conversation with President Obama in the Roosevelt Room in November of his last year, in his second term. It was an incredible conversation. He started off with, quote, there's a bias in this town toward war, unquote. I wanted to say, you think, Mr. President, if you think maybe with Libya and maybe a few other places, you became subject to that bias. That bias has been building and building and building to where today the two tools of American statecraft are sanctions and military force. And they're the only two tools.

David Feldman (23:52)

Before we conclude, Bruce Fine asked us to ask you two questions. And drawing on your military experience and your continuing monitoring of the military today, the two questions are, would the military obey Trump's invocation of insurrection act in opposing peaceful opposition to his xenophobic immigration policies? Second question, would the military obey Trump's direction to seize voting machines and cancel the 2026 congressional elections?

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (24:23)

Those are two good questions I ask myself every day, in essence, on both of them. My answer would be that Secretary Hegseth, General Kane, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and others whom they have retained in the seminal leadership of the US Military, and this goes for the active and the reserve components, is being carefully and systematically weeded out in terms of those who might object and retained those who wouldn't object. And it's very, very visible if you know what's going on at the same time in the ranks where you might have some opposition to something that the president wanted to do, domestically or otherwise, you were having a leavening of those ranks. First by cutting out the women in significant numbers, second by recruiting in those states that are the richest, most Luxurious areas for recruiters to recruit in. You could name them. And third, by recruiting those people who will be more malleable and those people who already show MAGA tendencies. And what do I mean by more malleable? The army was restricted last year by Congress from recruiting any more than 4%. Category fours, mental category four. Think McNamara is 100,000 if you remember that from Vietnam. These are people who oftentimes can't even read their name on a guard roster. These are people who should not be carrying a rifle and not be in combat with the military. In fact, they shouldn't be wearing a uniform, period. What did the army do? Well, Hegseth wanted to meet. First of all, he wanted to meet the recruiting demands of this past year. Army hadn't done it for three years in a row. Been fairly substantially short. He did. He met it. How did he meet it? He took 11%. Mental category fours. Wait a minute. Congress restricted him to 4%? Well, what he did was he took 11% and then he formed a school inside the military, sent these people to school and declared them at the end of the school having achieved mental, having left four and achieved three or even higher. The army inspector general just wrote a report on that, smelled a rat, gave it to the Congress. Everyone wonders what's going to happen on it. Probably nothing. Probably the IG will be fired. But nonetheless, those are the kind of sneaky ways that Hegseth is. Preacher packing. I call it the lower ranks. In addition to rooting out the people in the upper ranks who might be opposed to something approaching a coup. Here's the last thing I'll leave you with. I've said this a number of times. Publicly, I've said it. The January 6th attempt to overthrow the United States government in favor of Donald Trump didn't fail because the system held. It failed because the coup plotters were incompetent. And their incompetence was most visible in not having the military or a sizable segment thereof. They will not do that again.

David Feldman (27:34)

Well, on that note, we're going to have to conclude we've been talking with retired Colonel Larry Wilkerson and listeners. I have a question. How are you going to react to this program? Are you going to escape the contented classes who are sitting on the bylines observing the destruction of our republic? Or are you going to become active or intensify your existing activity in order to reverse course in the American political economy? Question 2 Is you now have even better arguments to get your local radio station to pick up this program. Because I don't think it has many competitors in terms of the content and the quality of guests that come on to share their experience, their judgments and their projection for future trends in our country and our world. Thank you very much, Larry.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (28:29)

Thank you for having me. Ralph.

Steve Scrovan (28:31)

We've been speaking with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. We will link to his work@ralphnaderradiohour.com when we come back. We'll be speaking with Rabbi Alyssa Wise, founding director of Rabbis for Ceasefire and one of the organizers behind Jews for Food Aid for people in Gaza. But first, let's check in with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhyber from the.

Russell Mulkheimer (28:51)

National Press building in Washington D.C. this is your corporate crime reporter Morning minute for Friday, February 6, 2026. I'm Russell. On the eve of the opening of what would have been a bellwether US trial over allegations that a widely used weed killer causes Parkinson's disease, paraquat maker Syngenta reached a settlement with the retired landscaper who blamed the company for his diagnosis with the incurable brain disease. That's according to a report from Kerry Gillum. The trial, which was set to open last Wednesday in Philadelphia, was to be the first public examination of evidence that Syngenta's patient Paraquat weed killing products can cause Parkinson's. Syngenta's paraquat based gramoxone herbicide brand is popular with U S farmers. The case was expected to spotlight decades of scientific research and a cache of internal corporate files related to the safety of Paraquat and specifically the impacts exposures to the chemical can have on the brain. For the corporate crime reporter, I'm Russell Mulkheimer.

Steve Scrovan (29:50)

Thank you, Russell. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. I'm Steve Scrovan along with David Feldman, Hannah and Ralph. More than 21,000American Jews have signed onto the Jews for Food Aid for People in Gaza campaign to demand humanitarian access and an end to Israel's food aid blockade. Let's hear from one of the leaders of that campaign. David.

Ralph Nader (30:11)

Rabbi Elisa Wise is the lead organizer of Rabbis for Ceasefire which she founded in October of 2023. She was a staff leader at Jewish Voice for Peace from 2011 until 2021 and co founded the Jewish Voice for Peace rabbinical council in 2010. She is co author of Solidarity Is the political version of Lessons from Jewish Anti Zionist Organizing. Welcome to the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Rabbi Elisa Weiss.

Rabbi Alyssa Wise (30:45)

Thanks for having me.

David Feldman (30:46)

Thank you for coming on. Rabbi Weiss, I saw a notice that you put in the New York Times a few Weeks ago. And the title was Jewish People Support Food Aid for People in Gaza. An immediate end to the Israeli government's food aid blockade. It was signed then by 20,000 Jews, 700 rabbis and counting. And you asked readers to add their voice to the website foodaidforgaza.org but what impressed me the most was how you rooted your position in the Torah. And while we hear a lot about the Jewish state of Israel, we don't hear enough about Judaism and its principles that many Jews think are being violated grossly, violently, and continually by the Netanyahu regime. So, quoting again from your notice quote, torah is clear. If there's a hungry person, one must feed them. And then you have the translation in Hebrew. I want to ask you, Rabbi Wise, how's it going? Are you getting a good response? Are groups like AIPAC criticizing you? What's the response from Palestine or the members of Congress?

Rabbi Alyssa Wise (32:04)

Yeah, there was this moment where it felt like the tables were starting to turn in the summer when the starvation crisis reached a fever pitch. We have seen we did reach about 30,000 signers and almost 900 rabbis signing on to that since we placed that ad. You know, I think there is a lot of support in the Jewish community for living up to core liberatory values that there are within Jewish tradition. This is true in every religious tradition. It's true in Judaism, where you can open the sacred texts and find a justification for oppression, or you could open a sacred text and find a pathway to liberation. And so what we're inviting people into is to pull the thread of liberatory Judaism. Right. And making the conscious choice that those are the threads of the tradition that we want to pull on. And part of what we're seeing is there's a wide swath of just humans, people and Jews who are appalled by the US And Israel's behavior in Gaza, meaning allowing the mass starvation of people in Gaza, the lack of entry, especially in this winter, of supplies for people to survive. Given that over 80% of Gaza's buildings were destroyed, we are now seeing that in Gaza there is wet tent syndrome, where babies and elderly and young people are dying from the conditions that they are living in, in these tents that get flooded with water, are bitterly cold, don't have access to proper hygiene, because Israel, with the participation of the US Is refusing entry of aid supplies, of tents, of blankets, of medical supplies. You know, we heard throughout the past few years that there was not adequate medical supplies and people were undergoing surgeries without anesthesia. And it was for a long time the Warning was there's going to be a starvation crisis in Gaza. This actually started on October 8th of 2023, right? The day after the Hamas attack on October 7th, when Israeli government leader Ganth said, no food, no fuel, no water to Gaza. Right. And those of us who have been paying attention to Israel's actions in Gaza knew to believe them, that that was actually going to be their policy for the people of Gaza and actually came to be true. That literally is their policy. And even in this charade of a quote, unquote ceasefire, and we are not seeing the entry of aid at the level that it needs to be, there are still hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza who are experiencing severe malnutrition. And we know that in particular for children, this is very dangerous because the lack of nutrition at a young age can deter their growth and development throughout their life. It is still an urgent crisis. And you asked about if AIPAC or others are attacking us. They're not attacking us directly, but indirectly because they continue to deny, to issue false statements. Really lies about is there a starvation, Is there not a starvation, what kind of aid they're letting in? It's become a game of pr. And as most media is no longer covering adequately the crisis on the ground, or now this new US occupation of sorts of Gaza that's taking place, the crisis is continuing, but it's not in the headlines. And so it's harder and harder to get people mobilized and activated when the crisis is still ongoing.

David Feldman (36:03)

Let me ask you, Rabbi Weiss, how have you gotten what food you have pulled together into Gaza?

Rabbi Alyssa Wise (36:09)

Well, we partnered with a group called the Gaza Soup Kitchen. It was founded by a chef in Gaza early on in 2024. He sadly was killed in an Israeli drone attack in the fall of 2024. His brother took on continuing the organization after his death. This past year, we, because of this Jews for Food, Aid for People in Gaza campaign and the ad that you saw in the New York Times, we were able to move over $600,000 to Gaza soup Kitchen to allow them to continue their operations. The truth is that there has always been some amount of food getting in. And then what was happening is that it was exorbitantly expensive, because that's how it goes under capitalism in these dire conditions. So the way that we were able to make an impact was by moving that money. And I am super proud that the Jewish community mobilized at that scale and we're able to do that. So that key partnership with the Gaza Soup Kitchen has been our main vehicle and they've been able to continue to operate their kitchens. They've been incredibly, I mean, it's really a testament to Palestinian resilience that they have continuously maintained their kitchens. So they're both making hot meals and also preparing food boxes and the resources that they get from a broader essential to helping them do that.

David Feldman (37:38)

Rabbi Weiss, let me ask you about another injunction in Judaism. Eye for eye, tooth for a tooth. The esteemed Princeton historian Arno Mayer, who has written a book on the history of Zionism, he once said to us, you know what the reason was behind eye for eye, tooth for a tooth? Did no professor mayor tell us said it was to prevent the escalating cycle of violence. And that seems to be a principle that has been massively violated with hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, infants, children, women, men, fathers, mothers who've been massacred since October 7th. Could we have your comment on the strange vast death undercount? It has never been applied to any other situation in the world. The press has no problem estimating half a million dead in Syria due to Assad dictatorship or casualties in Ukraine and Sudan. And somehow they're not willing to look into the full range of slaughter in Gaza. Could we have your views on this and why isn't the Judaic principle here being articulated more forcefully?

Rabbi Alyssa Wise (38:57)

So I think there's a number of systemic issues that are at play here, some of which are political that I feel like I'm not an expert to weigh in on. I think one of them is that Israel is not allowing news agencies and journalists into Gaza. There has been a real media blackout. It's really hard to get into and out of Gaza for anybody. Gazans who need medical treatment, journalists, aid workers. And so I think that's part of the issue. But I think what I really want to say is that there's nothing Jewish about what the state of Israel is doing about the State of Israel at all. It's not actually a fulfillment of Jewish practice or tradition or Torah. It's not a Torah based government. It's government. It's a nation state, it's a military. And it uses, as I was saying before, one could open the Torah and identify justification for endless war or justification for freedom. And I think they often use their Jewishness as a fig leaf in order to shield themselves from criticism. Because when you criticize them, you being anti Semitic and they pull on certain quotes or elements of Jewish teachings that either seem to uphold what they're doing while at the same time being palatable and accessible to the Christian Zionists that actually have for a long time been empowering U.S. foreign policy. You have Mike Huckabee, evangelical Christian Zionist, who is the US Ambassador to Israel for a long time since the Moral Majority, in particular the Reagan administration, you've seen huge amounts of Christian Zionist influence, which has become laid extremely bare during the Trump eras. So I think I would just want to underscore that they're not guided by Torah. They're guided by other values around their desires, around trade and security and militarism and state building, and not by Jewish values. And so I think it's really important to clarify that if they were living according to Jewish values, like the most sacred Jewish law of keeping the Shabbat, one of the teachings in Jewish tradition is that you can't break Shabbat for any reason except for Pikuach nefesh, saving a life, being a tradition that loves life, that affirms life, that the obligation to save life trumps any other tradition. If they were following that element of Jewish life, then they would maybe make a case that what they were doing was in interest of or in the lineage of Jews. But unfortunately, that's not what they're doing. And they're putting Jews around the world in peril by claiming to be acting in their name, by perpetrating mass murder and genocide. And.

David Feldman (42:06)

Well, I haven't seen much coverage of what you all have been doing in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, negotiated press, and what has been the response on Capitol Hill? Have you been invited to participate in any of the hearings? I have not put your statements in the Congressional Record.

Rabbi Alyssa Wise (42:26)

I have not. Though we do plan to be heading to the Hill a couple times this spring as rabbis to advocate for aid, not arms, and that the aid crisis in Gaza continues to be at a full blown crisis level. And so we will continue to lobby members of Congress. We have had support from the members of the Progressive Caucus and we've supported the legislation that they've put forward, in particular the Block the Bombs bill, which is a really important bill to just ensure that Israel isn't getting blank checks for weapons that destroy whole neighborhoods and destroy whole families. And you know, we're going to continue to keep at it. It is an uphill battle. But I think even if you're not seeing it in the streets or in Congress, there's something happening, something shifting at the level of the street. And I think, I believe that power will shift as grassroots power grows from below and forces those in power to make change.

David Feldman (43:30)

What's your explanation for the lack of coverage. Your group is almost an automatic human interest feature for newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post.

Rabbi Alyssa Wise (43:41)

I think that there's been a right wing takeover. Yeah, I feel like there's been a right wing takeover of a lot of media. And I think it's just really hard to get voices from the left honestly into mainstream media. And so I think this is actually part of why it's really important that we are building media institutions and other kinds of institutions outside of the mainstream. That's something I'm thinking about in the Jewish community, of wanting to build new kinds of Jewish institutions that can supplant the existing ones that are living by a very oppressive agenda. So I think as we see, we need to create new kinds of media, which I know here we are doing that as we speak and creating other ways for people to get that information. We can't just rely on the traditional modes of power. We need to create new ones and through, from below, create that change. I think it's hard. There's a way in which there's a fear culture, a chilling effect of criticizing Israel and showing a Jewish voice because you can be charged with being anti Semitic and nobody wants that. Right. And there's a way in which it's become too scary. We've seen so many people lose their jobs and livelihoods for standing up for their values. Right. So I think that's actually a big reason where we need to be able to shift the culture, that it doesn't take bravery, that you don't have to put your ability to feed your family on the line to live in accordance with your values. And that's actually up to all of us. That's something that can change if all of us agree that that's important.

David Feldman (45:20)

Right.

Rabbi Alyssa Wise (45:20)

And refuse to play by those rules. Thank you so much for having me.

David Feldman (45:24)

In touch with the brave Israeli human rights groups, which include Rabbis for Justice and Reservists and civil liberties group be'. Salem.

Rabbi Alyssa Wise (45:34)

Yes, definitely. We are definitely in touch with them and trying to build with them. The culture in Israel around critique is actually more extreme than it is here. And we are working to be able to support their efforts on the ground and for them to also be able to bring what they're seeing and experiencing here. And, you know, we need to have more, I think in this time of rising authoritarianism around the world, that having interconnection and interdependence with people across the globe is more important than it's ever been, to have a more international approach. And for me, as someone who understands that Judaism is a tradition that was built by and for the experience of diaspora. And Jews have been a people who have sometimes suffered and sometimes thrived and mostly thrived in relationships of interdependence and solidarity with their neighbors. I'm really interested in building that on an international scale.

David Feldman (46:34)

Can you give our listeners your website slowly and what they can find on it?

Rabbi Alyssa Wise (46:40)

Yes. Rabbis number four ceasefire. So Rabbis four Ceasefire. But the four is with the number four. And you could see there lots of videos from some of the public rituals we've done, statements that we continue to make as the political situation evolves and other ways to plug into the work to realize that the truth that all life is sacred and what will need to shift for us to live by that truth. Thank you so much for having me.

Steve Scrovan (47:10)

We're even speaking with Rabbi Elissa Wise. We will link to her work@ralphneiderradiohour.com Stand up.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (47:18)

Stand up.

Steve Scrovan (47:19)

All right, Ralph, you have a few things in the news you wanted to comment on. What have you had for us?

David Feldman (47:24)

Well, add to the description of Trump as vicious, cruel, self enriching, serial law violator, the word treachery. After he had a press conference early in his administration, 2025, he was praising beautiful clean coal. End quote. Can you imagine? But he was flanked by more than two dozen coal miners wearing hard hats. He then rewarded them. In April, he fired all the employees in the black lung screening program in the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health agency in Morgantown, West Virginia. So all the free black lung screeners for coal miners and their deadly disease from coal mine source dust was abolished. And then he refused to enforce the landmark safety standard limiting miners exposure to coal dust. And that was in April. So then there was an uproar and protests from the United Mineworkers, protests from families in coal country. And in January this year, they reinstated the thousands of people who they fired at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. So we hope the screenings that are provided to coal miners will continue as they were before Trump took office and that the inspection offices in states like Kentucky will be reopened and the enforcement will start on the coal dust standard. It does show that if there's pushback from the citizenry, from labor, sometimes the Trumpsters back off. A second item, we got a response from Bob o' Brien in Maryland, which really is the epitome of the kind of active engagement that we'd like our listeners to do all over the country. He heard us say that we should ask their members of Congress about the impeachment issue and ask for a written letter in response. So he wrote his two senators and he wrote Congressman Jamie Raskin, Congressman Jimmy Raskin sent him a letter that covered a lot of ground, was really a great letter, with one exception. He didn't address the need for him as ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee to have a shadow hearing, as we've been talking about often on this program. He can have a House committee room, have prominent witnesses, the press all there, and educate the public about impeachment, especially based on his knowledge of constitutional law. And the lead prosecutor on the second impeachment of Trump, after Trump unleashed the crowd on Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. And we're going to put that up, listeners on our website just to show you the effect you can have one by one, senator by senator. And Representative Jamie Raskin is now on the record saying a number of very important things. And I'm sure Bob o' Brien will follow up and say, what about a shadow hearing? So that's very good. And the New York Times recently, they actually have a series going of scientists who've lost their jobs or funding after cuts by the Trump administration. They interviewed Marina Vance, who's an environmental engineer at the University of Colorado. And this one was a scientist who is dealing with the health risks of firefighters in these wildfires in California and elsewhere is high level of cancer mortality. And she received under Biden, a grant of 549,000 to study wildfires wherever they may be and provide critical advice not only for firefighters, but for homeowners and other installations that are exposed. And on April 24, you got an email from EPA which said, quote, attached is your termination of award from US epa. The objectives of the award are no longer consistent with EPA funding priorities, end quote. She had to return the money that was still unexpended. And she was totally astonished at the coarseness of the announcement and the absurd rationale. And so she's just part of a series in the New York Times of what the Trump administration is doing to scientific research in the country. They're closing down the major lab in Maryland for NASA, for example. They're closing all kinds of facilities at NIH and Centers for Disease Control, agencies that are dealing with anticipating climate violence, not to mention a whole range of other domestic issues that are being dealt with by ongoing scientific research and application.

Steve Scrovan (52:40)

Ralph, we're hearing Trump talk a lot these days about nationalizing elections. And I just wanted to get your take on that, whether you think that's possible. What you think he could do to disrupt elections? And also, what would be your reforms to the electoral process, knowing that you've been through all of this before?

David Feldman (53:03)

Well, this is the next step in the Trumpian dictatorship. He is now moving to disrupt the 2026 elections because he's facing the prospect of losing the House and the Senate to the Democrats and he fears the impeachment process starting again. So he's made a demand on the states turn over the identification information associated with the voter rolls. And that is a real chilling move of a dictatorship because once they get the identification information, which is totally illegal under the Constitution. Constitution rests authority for elections in the states in the hands of the states. Once they get it, then they can start intimidating, threatening and keeping selective voters because they'll have the demographics who would ordinarily vote for the Democrats in a state of fear, intimidation, resulting in withdrawal and not voting? Secretary of State of Arizona has challenged him, refused to turn over the voting rolls. On an interview on Amy Goodman's Democracy now, he said again and again to the voters, to the citizenry, you got to fight back. It's in your hands. You've got to exercise your citizen duty. Don't leave it for others. We can do only so much as state secretary of state in saying no and meaning it. It was very eloquent the way he pushed it right back on the citizenry, the way we often do on our program. Now the question is he is not going to get this information from states that are under the Democrats control, but he may start increasingly getting them from the red states. There's going to be litigation already, and I think it's a pretty easy win because the Constitution is very clear on this. But it shows you the extent to which Trump is willing to overthrow our systems of government. Apart from invading the cities of America with his stormtroopers, he knows no boundaries, which of course his critics think are going to be the cause of his demise.

Ralph Nader (55:15)

Ralph, I'd like to know how you think Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, and Chuck Schumer, the Senate Minority Leader, are doing standing up to Trump specifically on stripping out the Department of Homeland Security funding bill. By the time people hear this, Congress will have maybe seven days to fund the Department of Homeland Security. It feels like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have been very specific what they want to rein in Border Patrol and ICE body cams on masks, off identifiable badge numbers and judicial warrants, not administrative warrants. What should they be willing to compromise on?

David Feldman (56:03)

No compromise on the list you just expressed this is simple constitutional observance and due process of law. Jeffries and Schumer have always been lagging behind public opinion, lagging behind the rage in PAC town meetings back home. They're beginning to catch up. Jeffries is starting to do more than mouth simple sound bites. And now given what's happened in Minneapolis and elsewhere, they're finally saying to themselves, time to drop the finger to the wind here and become leaders. So I think they've thrown down the gauntlet on the funding timetable for the so called Department of Homeland Security and ice. It seems like they're going to hold firm on that and the Republicans are on the defensive here for once in Congress. But we'll see what happens.

Steve Scrovan (56:56)

All right, that's our show. I want to thank our guests again, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson and Rabbi Alyssa Wise. For those of you listening on the radio, we're going to cut out right now for you podcast listeners. Stay tuned for some bonus material and we got a lot of it. We call that the Wrap up and it features Francesco De Santis with In Case youe Haven't Heard. A transcript of this program will appear on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour substack site soon after the episode is posted. And remember to continue the conversation after each show. You can go to the comments section@ralphnaderradiohour.com and post a comment or question on this week's episode.

Ralph Nader (57:31)

The producers of the Ralph Nader Radio Hour are Jimmy Lee Wirt, Hannah Feldman and Matthew Marin. Our executive producer is Alan Minsky.

Steve Scrovan (57:40)

Our theme music, Stand Up, Rise up, was written and performed by Kemp Harris. Our proofreader is Elizabeth Solomon.

Ralph Nader (57:46)

Join us next week on the Ralph Nader Radio Hour. Thank you, Ralph.

David Feldman (57:51)

Thank you everybody.

Rabbi Alyssa Wise (57:57)

Stand up, Step up. You are to step.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (58:25)

LA Theatre Works airs here on KPFK every Sunday evening from 10pm until midnight. Coming up tonight, are we stuck with.

Rabbi Alyssa Wise (58:34)

Our memories or can we fix them? It's the first time we've got proof that memories are unstable after they've been consolidated. It means we're not just stuck with our memories as they are.

Ralph Nader (58:44)

That's what got you into neuroscience in.

Rabbi Alyssa Wise (58:46)

The first place though, right?

Ralph Nader (58:47)

Working with fear based memories and ptsd.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (58:49)

How did you know that?

Ralph Nader (58:50)

Your family. You're Cambodian, right?

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (58:53)

What you are now by Sam Chatz.

Rabbi Alyssa Wise (58:55)

Next time on LA Flow.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (58:58)

That's LA Theatre Works coming up here on KPFK tonight at 10:00pm. Greetings. I'm Chuck Foster. Join me at 2pm Sundays for reggae Central playing ska, Rocksteady, Roots dub and and dancehall. New releases, old favorites and delightful obscurities right here on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA.

Dan McCrory (59:38)

Hi, this is Dan McCrory, author of Capitalism Killed the Middle Class and former president of Communication Workers of America, Local 9503. Join us Mondays at 5am for Working Voices is with hosts Joy, Ella and Enrique Sanchez for the news and views of what's happening within the labor community here in Southern California and the rest of the world. Whether it's striking TV writers organizing successes at your striking TV writers organizing successes at your local Starbucks or justice for hotel workers, Working Voices is all.