Scott talks to Grant Smith about his organization’s Freedom of Information lawsuit against the IRS, an attempt to get the agency to reveal its policies on tax-exempt organizations overseas. Of particular interest is the shocking fact that billions of dollars of tax-deductible money has been donated by American taxpayers in recent years to fund organizations that build settlements on Palestinian land. This makes no sense, says Smith, since the point of such tax policies is to offset “public good” costs that would otherwise be shouldered by the U.S. government. Not only do these activities service no such need, they are actually causing great harm to Palestinians.

Discussed on the show:

“IRS Must Describe Its Search for Israeli Settlement Policies” (Antiwar.com Original)Neutrality Act of 1794Foreign Agents Registration ActArms Export Control Act“1/10/20 Grant Smith on the Rise of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board” (The Libertarian Institute)

Grant F. Smith is the author of a number of books including Big Israel: How Israel’s Lobby Moves America, Divert!, and most recently The Israel Lobby Enters State Government: Rise of the Virginia Israel Advisory Board. He is director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C.

This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: NoDev NoOps NoIT, by Hussein Badakhchani; The War State, by Mike Swanson; WallStreetWindow.com; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom; ExpandDesigns.com/Scott; Listen and Think Audio; TheBumperSticker.com; and LibertyStickers.com.

Donate to the show through Patreon, PayPal, or Bitcoin: 1KGye7S3pk7XXJT6TzrbFephGDbdhYznTa.

The following is an automatically generated transcript.

Show TranscriptScott Horton 0:10

All right, y'all welcome it's Scott Horton Show. I am the director of the Libertarian Institute editorial director of antiwar.com, author of the book Fool's Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. And I've recorded more than 5000 interviews going back to 2003, all of which are available at ScottHorton.org. You can also sign up to the podcast feed. The full archive is also available at youtube.com/ScottHortonShow. All right, you guys on the line. I've got the great Grant F. Smith. He is the founder and director of the Institute for Research, Middle Eastern policy, that's IR map, IR MEP, ir mip.org. And he wrote a bunch of great books, including big Israel and the latest, the Israel lobby. enters state government, Rise of the Virginia Israel advisory board. Welcome back to the show, Grant. How you doing?

Grant F. Smith 1:08

Hey, I'm doing well. Scott, thanks for having me on. Again.

Scott Horton 1:10

Very happy to have you here. Let's talk about this new [email protected]. IRS must describe its search for Israeli settlement policies. Yeah. So it turns out that people can donate to Israeli racial colonies on the West Bank, and write it off on their taxes, just like when they donate to the Israeli Defense Forces, is that correct?

Grant F. Smith 1:38

That is correct, creates a huge tax gap. And as I argue there's really no demonstrated social welfare benefit to it. That's why you're supposed to be able to get tax exemptions is there supposed to be some offsetting activity that relieves the US government of a burden, but there's no evidence of that. And again, It's worse than in the case of the settlements where you've just got active displacement, which seems to fit the exact letter of the neutrality act of 1794 that US citizens aren't allowed to kind of declare a slow motion war against any group overseas. That's Congress's job to declare those slow motion laws against people overseas. So it's, it's an interesting question.