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Good morning, everybody, Happy Monday.
We have a very solemn and a somber show today to cover these what's going on in Israel and Palestine, Gaza.
What do we have today?
Indeed we do. We're looking to cover this from all angles this morning. You know, I really encourage you if you can to watch the show or listen to this show as a whole. We're going to bring you through the very latest as best as we know, of what is going on on the ground right now after those
horrific Hamas attacks on Israeli citizens. We're also going to bring you into what led up to this moment, some of the history that brought us here, so that everybody has a bit of a fuller picture, fuller context and we're going to bring in some experts to understand the Israeli domestic political situation how that might impact their reaction moving forward, and also expert to doctor Parci, who we've had on the show many times before, to help understand
the geopolitics of this situation and what it might mean for the broader world, which is very significant.
As well of course.
So yeah, as I said, we would really encourage people to either listen to this in full. Obviously we put it out full to be able to watch for our premium subscribers both on Spotify and on YouTube, but you can also listen to it for free as a podcast as well well. Of course, we'll still post the clips in order to keep everybody updated, you know, as soon as possible, but if you are able to, I genuinely
would recommend listening to it in full. We're going to start with the very very latest as of this morning, around seven thirty Eastern time, just so everybody understands in case thing happens after this, what do we have right now?
That's right, so as of this morning, we have a little bit of a glimpse at what the Israeli reaction might be as that's starting to take shape, both the size scope and shall I say, brutality of it. We have a spokesperson from the IDF announcing one hundred thousand Israeli troops have been called up.
Let's take a listen to a little bit of that.
That's the situation now we have mobilized. We have called up approximately one hundred thousand Israeli troops. They are now organizing and preparing to launch and attack at Hamas in Gaza, and as we speak, we are also striking their military targets inside the Gaza Strip and so far we have been able to kill more than four hundred terrorists.
So we know as of this morning.
Some of the targets that have been hit within Gaza include a mosque that was in a densely populated part of the Gaza Strip. Of course, Gaza is some of the most densely populated places, one of the most densely populated places on Earth. There was also a strike of a marketplace, a number of apartment buildings and other targets have also been leveled.
Based on what we know this morning.
In addition put this up on the screen, they have announced is Israel's Defence minister announced that Gaza is going to be put.
Under a complete siege.
Now.
Gaza has already been under a brutal blockade now for sixteen years, which has caused massive problems in terms of access to food, water, basic supplies, poverty rate, unemployment rate, etc. This, though, goes much further, the Defence Minister saying specifically no electricity, no food, no water, and no fuel as Israel begins their response to those horrific attacks on Yes.
That's right, I'll read the full quote here.
He says a quote that he's got no electricity, no food, no fuel quote. We are fighting human animals and we will act accordingly. So all of this is almost forty eight hours or so in response to the attacks, and what we thought we would do is for anybody who wants like a fullsome picture of it, is just put together some of the most shocking moments. We go ahead
and start playing them. Everything began to mount over on Friday and on Saturday during the holidays actually inside of Israel, and what people can see here are thousands of rockets that were initially launched from Gaza towards Israel. That was kind of the prelude to what Crystal eventually turned into one of the most shocking attacks that we have seen
in modern history. Because of the size and the scope of Israel's defense that has justified so much of the security state there, Like, for example, those who are watching right now, you can see guys literally in the middle
of the street, tanks and things getting swarmed. And then there's also been a lot of attention around the incomplete inability for Israel to thwart attacks Crystal air and land and sea, with multiple cities that were completely overrun, infiltrated, and hundreds and hundreds of civilians who were shock dead or in some cases we're also kidnapped.
We'll bring you the latest on that.
This is one of the craziest ones to me, Crystal is them actually demolishing the barrier, the perimeter wall, which was long vaunted as one of the most important things in all of Israel, you know, the high tech perimeter border wall with all these elect all these sensors here we have like burned out cars and other areas from the music festival, so so that you know, the moments and all this were absolutely shocking and immediately invited some Israeli responses.
People can see on the screen in front yeah, and actually.
What we're watching right there is the Israel Israel's retaliation in Gaza City, leveling that apartment building there. But yeah, as you said, Soger, and this was timed to roughly correspond with the fifty year anniversary of the Yan Kapor War, which was another shocking surprise attack where Israel initially struggled to repel a coalition of Arab states. That war looms very large in terms of Israeli national consciousness and has been used to help justify this build up of the
mess security state and the surveillance state. And you know, part of what was so shocking here is there I think had developed a sense of comfort and security and in a sense complacency while the Israeli domestic population was protesting and fighting over Netnyahuo's you know, attacks on the independent judiciary there. So that's part of the backdrop that we'll get into as well. The other piece of this attack, which did directly target Israeli civilians, was a significant program
of hostage taking. So we don't know the exact numbers yet, Israel doesn't know the exact numbers yet, but you're viewing some of the videos of hostages being taken by Hamas militants. The latest numbers I saw are somewhere around one hundred and fifty known hostages. You can see, you know, women, elderly children, all targeted. There are also reports that Americans may be among those hostages. We can actually put that
up on the screen. Still a question still unconfirmed whether or not Americans are among the hostages taken here.
This is a.
Very emotional issue, not only for Israel obviously also for the US, and really complicates what the Israeli response can be because if you have potentially hundreds of Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza, makes it much more difficult to respond because you have an Israeli domestic population which would be very concerned about.
The well being and safety of these.
Hostages, understandably, and of course their families are sick with worry about what is going to happen to them and their fate.
Yeah, exactly right, And we have an exact we don't have an exact figure here on the death toll so far, but it's already horrific in terms of the human costs.
So let's put this up there on the screen.
These were updated as of this morning, we know about seven hundred Israelis have been killed, that is, including civilian and IDF members, twenty three hundred have been injured. On the Gaza side, we have four hundred and ninety three killed so far, two thy seven hundred and fifty one who have been injured. We don't have a breakdown within either of those figures of both IDF and civilian, and same thing on Hamas militant or whatever, HAMAS member and
actual citizens of Gaza. But I think that what really we can try and underscore is the shocking nature of the attack, because, as you said, the modern foundation of the Israeli state is that we will keep these safe. This is already the single largest loss of life in a single day in Israeli history. So this will loom large now for a long time, but well will probably loom even larger then. Not only just the horrific figures, was the ability to have an incursion directly into major
Israeli cities. We have a map that we can go and put there up on the screen just so people can get a little bit of an idea. I mean,
the perimeter around Gaza was effectively useless. Here you can see how Hamas was a to go into multiple major populated areas all in southern Israel that all surround the Gaza Strip, and not just ones directly across the perimeter, but also I mean, you know, several miles into Israeli territory and they were able to terrorize, to shoot, to kidnap many people who were inside of that.
They also their rocket ability.
Is one which has been posing some major tests for the Iron Dome. If we want to go and put the next one that is up there, you can see that rockets were launched from Gaza all the way up to Tel Aviv to the capital. One of the videos that we showed was Ben Gurion National International Airport, which is major airport inside of Israel, which had to shut down and passengers actually were on the tarmac rocket strikes all the way up and down the capital. Major cities
like Ashtad we also had. We also had attacks like towards Jerusalem where Iron Dome was activated. So thousands and thousands of rockets that had been launched there. There's another map that we can show up there. This is from the retaliation so far by Israel, majorly in Gaza City. As Crystal said, though it is difficult, I think for people who are not familiar with this to understand Gaza's dense population. Gaza is the third most densely populated place
on Earth. There are two point two million people who live in this tiny strip and honestly, if you haven't seen it with your own eyes, it is shocking.
And I never got to go inside Gaza.
I can only see like quote unquote into Gaza, but I mean, this is like Tokyo level of population density, which is it comes through a bit in the videos and all of that, but that's why you know, every basically anytime ammunition strikes within there, there's just going to be like one hundred civilians everywhere, which Hamasius is to its effect, and also of course you know is going to invite criticism on the Israeli response.
It's just it's a nightmare situation.
Well, when you put I mean again this Gaza's been under stage for sixteen years and it has completely emiserated the popular. Their unemployment rate is fifty percent. They used to have a vibrant manufacturing sector, including textiles, that has completely fallen apart. Even their ability to fish has been significantly curtailed because there's also a naval blockade. Egypt, by the way, shares a border with Gaza. They also participate
in this blockade. Their living conditions have continued to deteriorate. There's massive issues in terms of their infrastructure, their ability to have clean water. They have one power plant within the territory of Gaza that's able to provide a few hours of electricity a day. So when Israel is cutting off now going even further than their typical blockade, cutting off.
Electricity, water, food, fuel.
I mean, you can't describe this as anything other than a complete siege and also collective punishment. So that is the state of affairs as far as we know in terms of the Israeli response. You know, there's also a lot of questions. We're going to get into this with doctor Parsi about whether Iran was involved. There's some reporting suggesting that they were. Hamasa's actually saying they were a fall.
You went on the record, They're like, yeah, the Iranians helped us.
Iran is saying no, we didn't.
Interestingly, the US intelligence community is saying they don't have any evidence that Iran was involved. But as we think of the broader geopolitical implications here. Obviously, Iran and Israel no great friends. Israel long been very hawkish towards Iran, and you already have voices here in the US on both the Democratic and the Republican side, effectively calling for war with Iran if these reports are true that they
were involved in helping to plan this. But you know, Soccer, you mentioned this, and I don't think that it can possibly be overstated the failure on all levels here in terms of anticipating what was a very sophisticated attack, which for sure took months, if not years to plan.
Yeah, multi year, I think.
So, no intelligence indicating the size and scope of this attack. In fact, all of the commentary from both US and Israeli officials recently was we don't think that Hamas wants a full scale war. They were sort of floating these additional will give you some additional worker permits so that more of your citizens can come over and work in Israel. I mean, their movement is so confined that even just to get a pass to work in Israel is you know, a herculean task, let alone to seek medical care, let
alone to travel anywhere, including the West Bank. So there was a sense of real complacency, and you had all of this deal making going on with the Abraham Accords under Trump and with this new attempt to normalize relations
between Saudi Arabia and Israel that were going on. That's another key piece of this, because you know, the Palestinians were not happy with this direction and all of that deal making, which imagine this quote unquote New Middle East just sort of ignored the fact that you continue to have this brutal apartheid situation. Citizens under occupation in Gaza
two million under these brutal blockade conditions. They just wanted to sort of pretend that didn't exist and invisibilize it, and that is no longer going.
To be possible. It's completely impossible.
The living symbol of this is going to be this music festival where you can see here people were having a good time, but then in the background you can see little clouds of either missiles smoke, and you know there were also paragliders that were eventually came in. And then this was completely invaded by these Hamas militants who ended up kidnapping, raping, and killing many of the actual attendants, and you could see them absolutely just fleeing for their lives.
It was just broken yesterday that two hundred and thirty six bodies were actually found in a collective pile all together. So this gives you reminiscent of the Paris attack at the Bataklan by Isis. So you know, that is going to be the most one of the most searing elements, and it really just represents the absolute failure on the part of the Israeli state. And we're going to get into a lot of that later with ken Roth and
with others. But the social contract within Israel was always like okay, you know, if you haven't been there before, don't even go into a mall without being wanted, you know, for a suicide vest Like every single part the security is in it is unlike anything I have ever experienced anywhere on the globe.
And the justification is we're going to keep you safe.
They're like, yeah, you know why we do that because we haven't had a terrorist attack or a suicide bombing or whatever in ten years. That is over now, and that when you have that social fabric break. I mean, this is a country with mandatory military service. People there are very civically engaged, so there I think is going to be a massive political backlash, which we're going to talk about with Ken rob as to how the hell
something like this could happen. But an intelligence failure on every single level, you know, from the US, from Israel, even on Iran, you know, even if they were you know, involved or not.
We're going to talk about that with doctor Parsi.
But you know, allegedly we spend all this money, you know, spying on all these people. And Edward Snowden made a great point Nets and Yahoo in the Israeli government have pioneered the most invasive spyware like known to man. And
where what happened? You know, it's like this is being planned basically right across your border, right one hundred feet from your own country in what you allegedly have all these you know, spies, and they love to brag over there about their infiltration of Hezbollah and of Hamas, and
it's like, well, what the hell happened? Guys like you didn't get a single and we know from the response you didn't have an indication because if you would, there would have been a ten x level of the amount of defense that happened in the initial days.
That music festival that turned into absolute horror and carnage was meant to impart celebrate quote unquote infinite freedom three miles from the Gaza border fence. And I think it really does show you that, you know, for a long for a while, there was this sense of like, well, this is going on over here, but we're basically just going to ignore it and pretend that it doesn't exist.
And you can point to a lot of immediate term factors with the net Nyahuu government specifically, which is the most extreme government Israel has ever had, which includes some figures in it who have expressed outright genocidal intent towards Palestinians, like no two ways about it, and they were very wrapped up in this push. Nyahoo's got to get out of his corruption charges, so he's pushing this attack on
the independent judiciary. There was a huge nationwide protest over that, and at the same time, part of why and this has now been fully reported out, part of why there was so little troop presence in this area where you can see things like Hamas just bulldozing. There's you know, special high tech border wall with no problem, is because those troops had been reassigned to the West Bank effectively
to protect these extremist Jewish settlers in that region. And so while people were being you know, civilians being murdered and slaughtered and taken hostage, et cetera, they were on their own because of the way that troops had been redeployed because of nat nyahuo extreme coalition effectively. So you can point to these very specific domestic factors, which is something else we want to talk to ken Roth about.
But you also just have to say, listen, you can have the biggest army, you can have the most invasive security state, you can have your good buddies the US and you billions of dollars every year. You can have all of that. When you're trying to keep two million people locked in a cage effectively in an open air
prison indefinitely, you're never going to have real security. And so, you know, I grieve for the families who have lost loved ones out of a failure of their government, a failure of our government, and you know, an intentional blindness from the politicians to just pretend like this issue no longer exist and to completely invisibilize, yeah, Hammas are terrorists, like there's no, there is no excuse for this kind
of carnage on civilians. But you never see this level of concern for the palestinianszens who are seeing their dreams and their hopes and their aspirations c quashed every day and who are routinely killed, and you don't see the same level of concern. I mean, that is my whole stance in all of this is I just want to see Israeli lives and Palestinian lives be treated with equal care and concern. So you know, to me, that's sort of like the bottom line picture here. But there's a
lot that involves the US as well. As I said, out of the casualties, out of the deaths that occurred on the Israeli side, some of those we now know were Americans. And there's also a high probability I think you could say at this point that there are some American citizens who have also been taken hostage. Secretary of State Tony Blinken spoke about this on the Sunday Shows. Let's take a listen to what he had to say.
Several Americans maybe among the dead. We are very actively working to verify those reports. Similarly, we've seen reports about hostages and there again very actively trying to verify them and nail that down.
Meaning that there could be some US citizens who have been taken hostage as well.
Mister Secretary.
Yeah, so we got the report this morning, Crystal, of the official count is that least nine Americans were killed in Israel. Unfortunately, as you said, it's very likely that figure could go higher, and it's very likely there are also probably some citizens there. If anybody's ever been to Israel, there are Americans all over the place.
There's a lot of people. You also have dual citizenship.
So it is not well outside the realm of possibility to see anything like this and the US response now so far, at least from what we can tell, Can we please put a ten up on the screen. In terms of the United States military, this is pretty significant.
The US aircraft aircraft carrier, the US Gerald R Ford, as well as all the other ships in the carrier Strike Group twelve, which include multiple cruisers, destroyers and others, are now showing and heading towards the Eastern Mediterranean quote in a show of support for Israel and to assist with the possible evacuation of US citizens should the needs of the country arises, multiple other governments also mobilizing military resources towards the area in case they need to evacuate
their citizens. Poland, I believe, Romania, other places where large they have a large dual citizen or population that lives there.
On top of that crystal.
In terms of the weapons requests, we haven't gotten specifics yet from Tel Aviv, but Washington has already begun discussions around shipping multiple more munitions to Israel, either restocking iron dome ammunition. I expect a big interesting discussion to probably occur. We had a massive stockpile of AMMO actually in Israel, which was meant to either be released to the Israelis should the conflict arise, or should us need access to
that AMMO which is forward deployed in the Middle East. Well, we drew down a huge chunk of that and sent it to Ukraine. And I got to say this on the Israeli side, you know, I hate to inject the Ukraine situation into this, but since we're now at least talking about response and all, this, one of the reasons that Israel refused to ship a lot of munitions in arms to Ukraine is they were like, well, we might
need it to defend ourselves. I think that they're probably very vindicated and validated in that decision, and it just goes to show you, in terms of trying to prioritize your own defense, you never know whenever you're going to have to try and have access to those. So just a little bit of an underscore for that. But that's the major In terms of the US response so far, that's basically been it.
Lots of calls from the U S Secretary of State.
He's had a call with Turkey, he had a call with I believe with some of the other the Egyptians. Obviously two calls now so far between President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu. But on the diplomatic side, it seems to be everybody's just sitting back and waiting to see what the hell happens, especially with Gaza and with the hostage situation. So as of right now, there's been no yet invasion of Gaza. Round invasion is what I'm talking about. There's been no US troops or any of that been
mobilized or sent as that we know. The only military response on our so far is a symbolic show of force to the Eastern med with the carrier Strike Group twelve.
But you have US politicians who are calling for much much more. Let's go ahead and put a nine up on the screen. This is this dude, Dean Phillips, who we talked about before. He's quote unquote moderate like problem solver, caucus type Democrat who he's the one you may recall who has been saying Joe Biden should receive a primary challenge. He's floated, maybe he'll do it. So that's the student. I think he had to give up, like his committee
assignments or something. He had some punishment, Oh, out of democratic leadership because daring to challenge your life. But now here he is calling for war with Iran. He says, in response to a Wall Street Journal report that Iron helped to plot the attack on Israel over several weeks, which is what Hamas is saying. Iron is denying, and actually US intelligence, as I mentioned before, says they have no evidence thus far, so we'll wait to see how
all that shakes out. He says, If this reporting that Iran helped plan, support, and initiate the attack on Israel is confirmed, principled nations of the world must unite and neutralize the most repugnant, repressive, destabilizing regime in the world. Evil cannot be appeased any longer. So it sounds very much like he's calling for a war with Iran right now.
Senator Lindsay Graham will surprise no one who knows his history of wanting a war with Iran for quite some time now also jumping on that train and pushing in that direction.
Beating the war drums.
There is going to be a lot of pressure coming from both parties in that direction, and we'll wait and see what Israel's response is, which we really are only now just getting the contours of Sager talk a little bit about what we were discussing earlier, how one of the great Israeli fears and part of what has led to them not going forward with a ground invasion of Gaza yet is because they're concerned about the possibility.
Of a war on two front.
Yes, that's right.
So the two front war is probably the single biggest nightmare for Israeli war planners and for what a broader.
Major escalation would look like.
So we already know right now there have been some rockets that were fired by Hesbola from Lebanon into Israel after the Hamas attack that happened on Israel, so that immediately ignited fears of well, if we invade Gaza, we could then see another front open on our border with Lebanon. They have fought wars with both at the same time. They have fought wars with both, but the idea of having to fight a full scale invasion at the same time is the absolute nightmare because that would obviously would
divide the number of reservists. It would also deplete the iron doome weapons, stock man munitions, and then in general in terms of civilians getting crought in the crossfire. We have seen nightmares now in Israel, in Lebanon in the past, and in Gaza, so it would could embroil Lebanon. Hesbola, of course, has got deep allies with the Iranian government. I haven't even mentioned Syria, which also has a significant
Hezbola situation. Who the hell knows whatever territory you know is there on the ground with the Golan Heights, so they could even have in some cases two fronts, but with multiple other tertiary ones that could open up against them. It would also open the question of Saudi Arabian involvement. Amarati Katari, who all maintain relations with the Hamas government but also have been previously trying to go with Israel. Part of the analysis I saw actually for more hawkish people.
As a guy Seth Frantzman, I've followed him for a long time. He used to work over at the Jerusalem Post and others. He made a very interesting comment that other prime ministers would have invaded Gaza. Now at this point they actually believe that Netanyahu is being much more cautious and has displayed some of this in the past. It doesn't drive with his rhetoric, I know, but I'm
talking about at critical junctures in Israeli history. There was one scenario several years ago where Natanya who traded like a thousand Hammas prisoners in exchange for a single Israeli soldier who was taken captive, which is what reminded me of this hostage situation.
There was a significant domestic.
Support for that decision because they're like, we're sick of the death, we're sick of the carnage. We just want to live in some sort of peace. Now, that was a long time ago, but Netaniahuo was the Prime Minister
who is responsible for that decision. In terms of what we have right now now the siege, you know, escalating it to not providing electricity, food and water, that's certainly something, but that's not a full scale ground invasion of Gaza, right, That would lead to hundreds of deaths absolutely on both
if not thousands, on both sides of the conflict. That has not happened, possibly because of the hostage situation, but also troop movements inside of Israel indicate they are sending almost as much armor to the Lebanese border as they
are towards Gaza. And so the idea of the two front escalation or any of that happening, well, the only benefit I think for the entire situation is it could give some sort of diplomacy a chance, because Israel so desperately wants to avoid that to have to fight that two front war, which I think I don't think there's any question that it would spiral into something. I'm not going to say it would draw us, you know fully into World War three, but yeah, already we've got calls to go to.
War with the run.
We have a two front war open up between Israel and Hezbolah and full scale bombings and all that going on with Lebanon. And you know, Hezbolah is not Hamas. They have far more advanced missile and rocket technology which the Iranians have provided them. They could inflict a hell of a lot more damage onto Israel than Hamas has ever done. And so that is the other reason why they have such a nightmare scenario really on their hands. Again, we don't know what is going to happen. This is
the situation right now is still very precarious. But as long as there's no ground invasion of Gaza, the idea of a two front war opening up, you know, remains at least remains lower.
We also could see it's possible.
I would it wouldn't be crazy, I think, for Israel to try and begin talks with Hezbolah or some sort of back channel with Iran or with any other places that have relations with them, where they might try and broke or some agreement about, hey, we won't do anything here as long as we're doing everything here. But obviously they would have to pay a price in terms of that, and I don't know what any of that.
Would look like.
Yeah, Egypt is really trying to reassert their sort of traditional role as diplomatic go betweens between the Palestinians and Hamas in particular and Israel as other groups. Through the Abraham Accord and through you know, what the Biden administration is doing as well, like the UAE have gained more prominence in terms of diplomatic ties with Israel. So there's
just a lot of unanswered questions this morning. I also want to say, with regard to the videos that we're playing, just as a heads up, we're doing the best we can to vet these videos, and actually we're leaning more on quote unquote traditional news sources than perhaps we would because there have been so many fake, wrong, inaccurate old
videos information that's floating around. So, like I said, we're doing the best we can to sort through what is happening right now and bring you some visual elements so you can get a sense of what is happening on the ground. But I just want to throw in there that note of caution because it's very difficult, especially now, to sort through what is what is fact and fiction, What is a real new video of something that happened on the ground, what is old. I even saw videos
that were passing around that we're from video games. I know, so you know, it's difficult to parse through all of this. I just want to put that out there. And also, obviously it's difficult to watch all of this unfold, both on the Israeli side and now with the retaliations, the brutal retaliations on Gaza.
Yeah, let's move on history.
I thought it would be useful because I feel like every time these breakout, we appear to try and talk about it in a vacuum, and you reference some of that. But the truth is, even in the forty something minutes that we've already been speaking, we've only covered what do you think, maybe fifteen years of history. So I was thinking, yeah, we look and we're going to be.
Talking here about Gaza.
We are not going back all the way to the Balfour Declaration and all of that, because otherwise we'd be here for several hours. But I thought it would be at least semi useful to give people a primer on Gaza, what exactly it is, or the development and at least its history in regards to the modern news state, and then very very high level I'm sure that some of this will be not characterized to the liking of scholars and all those other people out there, So please forgive me.
I genuinely am doing my best. Let's put this up there on the screen. This is the map from nineteen forty nine, after the Arab Israeli War, after the establishment of the State of Israel by the United Nations and after the British mandate was terminated. Well you can see are the nineteen forty nine armistice lines. Gaza was under
Egyptian occupation after the Arab Israeli War. Critically, it remained under Egyptian occupation and Egyptian administration along with some United Nations councils and other things, effectively until the nineteen sixty seven war. Let's go ahead and put that up there please on the screen. This is very critical. After the nineteen sixty seven war, what otherwise is known as the Sixth Day War, you could see that the Gaza strip was taken and occupied by Israel, as well as the
West Bank, the gol On Heights and the Sinai Peninsula. Eventually, after a series of international agreements, what has happened is a Gaza fell under a quasi Palestinian authority. Type government, but multiple different international engagements that happened as to how the place would be administered. It eventually led to withdrawal
from the Sinai Peninsula in exchange for peacekeeping. The West Bank and Gaza then had the establishment of the Palestinian Authority, and then much of the sixties, all the way up until the two thousands, that's where we saw things kind of settle.
Then.
This also included though, by the way, Israeli settlers and people who lived inside of Gaza. After the Oslo Accords that were signed in Oslo broker by President Bill Clinton and the international community, they eventually agreed to quote unquote Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip, which meant Israel would no longer occupy the territory, they would no longer have presence, they would no longer have citizens that lived inside of Gaza.
Two thousand and five is when this policy was officially implemented. They were forcibly removed many Israeli citizens from Gaza, and the idea was, okay, now Gaza and the West Bank, you guys hold elections, you guys administer under the Palestinian Authority. What happened then is this let's put this up there on the screen. Hamas ended up winning the Gaza Strip council vote seven out of the ten councils in the
Gaza Strip and crushed the FATA party of Mahmoudabas. And this party was a guess seen by the West, by Israel and others, as more moderate and not more willing to embrace terrorism and violence, whereas Hamas, not only being an Islamist party, has written in his constitution calling for the death of the State of Israel.
Let me back, go ahead, and let me just interject two things there. Number one, because I think in an American context it will help to recall that moment in America and history.
Have got George W.
Bush and this idea of democracy in the Middle East, and we're going to, you know, rebuild these nations in our image, et cetera, et cetera, rock war, all of that. And so the idea here from the Bush administration was, oh.
Well, we'll have for it because we're also doing Iraqi elections at this time, which comes at the Bush second inaugural, which was all about democracy promotion.
And so in any case, they get a result that they do not like, yes, and being the US can't accept that there's a result that they do not like, so they actually got involved in meddling and trying to back up Fatah after Hamas had won the election, And a lot of people argue that are you know, intelligence agencies getting involved in that intra Palestinian conflict and effectively civil war really is what kind of led to Hamas
taking over Gaza. And I also would be remiss if I didn't mention, in the spirit of blowback here that Hamas was actually encouraged and hoarded and funded by Israel in the beginning as an attempt to be a bulwark against the PLO, who they didn't like, and they were sort of more like traditional like leftists, freedom filing, that's how they styled themselves. There were she's there as well, yeah, and corruption, et cetera. But they had bolstered Hamas as
an attempted bulwark against PLO. And then Hamas gets traction in part because of the aid they're able to provide in schools and healthcare, et cetera. And this very extreme you know ideology and openly terroristic ideology. So they gain a lot of support and they end up taking over Gaza. In part because of the actions of both Israel and the.
United States, and that's where everything collapsed.
So after the Bush administration refused to recognize Hamas and then they've effectively disengaged, we saw a split between Gaza and the West Bank where they have different administrations, and that's when the Israeli blockade really began.
So let's go and put this graphic up on the screen.
This is made by Al Jazeero, so it is biased towards them, just giving people's up and what they say. And point is that there have been four before this point major conflicts. I guess you could say two thousand and eight to two thousand and nine there was a twenty three day war with Hamas eventually ended in kind of a ceasefire. Twenty twelve, there was eight days. Twenty fourteen was probably the most significant one before what's happening
right now, a fifty day long war. Again, all of it focused on either violations of ceasefire in some cases on the Israeli side and some cases with the Hamas side, lots of rockets that were being fired, and eventually again ended in a ceasefire and a tentative stalemate. But I think that the most important thing for people to understand, as we said, is that this has been going on now for so long that we've gotten far too comfortable with the situation. It was never supposed to be like this.
We're supposed to have elections and we're supposed to move forward. Then Hamas won the election and we're like, no, we're no longer going to think of this as legitimate. Then is the Israeli government is like, well, we're going to put this under blockade because we've got a bunch of terrorist militants that are inside there, and if we don't, then they're just going to use the ability to have free flow of goods to smuggle weapons in and they're
going to threaten our security. And instead, what we've happened is the yeah, some weapons didn't get in, but a lot did.
As we all just saw.
Then two point two million people in one of the most densely populated areas on Earth, the third most populated, have also been living in basic squalor. And then the Egyptians have also been participating in this blockade and they're basically cool with it at this point. The Egyptians, they don't want to deal with the Palestinians. And I think that's another place where a lot of the Arabs states
they they shouldn't be let off the hook. The Kataris, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Amorantes, the Abraham Accords and all of that was basically an attempt to just move past it.
They're like, we don't want to deal with this anymore.
We're just going to pretorn it doesn't exist.
Right, And this is the Kataris in the Saudi Ice living guitar as people know. And they used to have little drop boxes at the mall and places like for the Palestinian cause. And I just remember looking at that and being like, you're relying on pitidy little charity from people when you were one of the richest people on earth.
I'm like, what are you doing.
You're not doing anything, And it's just clear they don't care, and a lot of people don't even understand.
Even within the Arab.
States, there's a lot of intra racism between the Gulf Arabs and the Egyptians and how they view They very much look at the Palestinians as like poorly, you know, I'm dirty and not my words.
That's the way they look at them we've ever been to Jordan. The Jordanians definitely are not so happy with them either.
Well, Jordan did accept a huge right.
But the actual Jordanians citizens themselves, there's a lot of beef and actually resentment because a huge portion of their population is now Palestinian and they're like, they're not Jordanian, you know. So my point is just that this is a very messy and complicated situation. It gets us to the point though, where this has happened. I think with that background, what's important to remember is that the last fifteen years in particular, have been the tinder box through
which all of these multiple conflicts have happened. The post Hama selection, the decision by the United States, the Arab Israelis, the Arab States, and the Israelis to basically just move past and say blockade, you know, blockade and siege is the status quo where I'm just never going to move on from that.
And the peace advocates have always said.
They're like, this is an untenable situation, it cannot hold, and yeah, look, nobody is justifying Hamas.
Here is so.
Horrific what they have done to so many of these Israeli citizens and it's just one of those where I think with that broader context, people can at least understand why this one is going to be a burn and possibly could go on for a long time because we got fifteen and in some cases one hundred year old beefs now to settle and where the lines are and who will accept whom, For example, Israel being like we're going to put under blockade, Well, the Egyptians aren't going
to let them in. And in some cases they're like, oh, you know, Palestinian citizens should evacuate from this area, but in many cases, like where are they supposed to go? They literally do not have a border that they control. That's very difficult and that will lead certainly. So I really what I'm hoping from this is that the Arab Is, the Arab States, and the Egyptians have got to insert themselves into this process. Otherwise we're just see a massive
loss of human life. The Israelis are going to go in or there's going to be something, and if that happens, there will be tens of.
Thousands of people who are killed. Yeah, tens of thousands, and many Israelis will be killed too.
Already, even without the ground invasion, the fact that you have this siege, complete siege, cut of food, water, electricity on two point two million citizens. And by the way, just as there is descent in Israel, just as there is descent here, there's descent in Gaza, there's descent in the West Bank. And and not everyone is Hamas. We're
talking children, women, families, people just trying to live. So please remember that as we see all of this moving forward, and you know, all of those Israeli wars on Gaza, those they have an expression for that. They call it mowing the grass, which is the ideas periodically we have to come in and we have to blow up a bunch of billings, we have to kill a bunch of people.
And by the way, it's not just Hamas militants, it's also many civilians and children who are killed in these incursions, in part, you know, because it is so densely popular.
And Hamas uses it to their benefit too, There's no.
Doubt about it.
I mean, these there's no defense of the tactics that they deployed here and that they you know, frequently deploy but thousands of Palestinians and people living in Gaza killed routinely in these incursions. And so if the thought is, Okay, we're going to do it again, only more brutal, you think that's going to solve anything.
Well, my hope is that the Israeli population because again the reason why that that the population was willing to accept that is they thought it was working. They were like, oh, okay, our people know the IDF knows exactly where they are. Would they know what they're planning. We've got them infiltrated. That's why we can go in and mow the grass.
It's an effective strategy. It is a colossal failure. Yeah, colossal failure at this point, right, And in fact, you know, the Israelis are like, oh, well, we know exactly where they are and on which floor.
Now I'm like, I don't know, man, I'm not sure I believe you. I used to.
I honestly did, because their their surveillance and infrastructure was so good or it was so vaunted, you know here in the West and elsewhere. As the premier intelligence agency in the world, you know, nothing is off limits and there will do whatever it takes to defend them. But now after this, I mean, this is this is equivalent with a nine to eleven intelligence failure on the CIA and the FBI.
They're calling it.
There's nine to eleven there not their Pearl Harbor like combined into one, just because politic we're not talking about the death hole. We're talking about how it shakes the political foundation of how they think about their entire infrastructure.
And that's a real warning because whether you agree with that analogy or not, I think your correct saga in the way that it has completely, in an instant, reshaped the way that Israelis are looking at the situation.
Previously, they weren't even looking at the situation.
No, they didn't care.
It was just completely invisible. Again, as as you know, emblematic of that is a festival in favor of infinite freedom three miles from the God's border, right, And so that's not an option anymore. And let's recall the way we responded to nine to eleven, which was horrific and which we would have been better if we did nothing. The amount of death and treasure spent, American lives lost,
certainly a rocky lives lost, Afghani lives lost. You know, the decades that we spent in both of those countries destabilizing the entire region, and by the way, spurring and helping create a lot more terrorism unfortunately far you know, far beyond what we were supposedly fighting and combating in the region. So when you have a real shock to the system like this, it can go in a lot of ugly directions which will reverberate for years and years
to come. The last thing I want to say here, we've got put B five up on the screen because oftentimes this is presented and I get it like it's news. You're trying to cover what's happening now, et cetera, and so it can feel like, oh, this just came out of nowhere, like this conflict just started two days ago. Even in this past year, there have been a lot of warning signs because there has been real escalating violence. They go through a timeline here from the Washington Post.
You know, going back a year ago in January, you had an Israeli military operation in refugee camp in Jeanine result in a shootout, killed nine Palestinians. The next day, then you have a Palestinian gunman who goes to a synagogue in retaliation, killing seven people, including children.
So you have that.
Then in the spring, you had during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Palestinian worshippers at al Aksa Mosque, which is one of the most holy sites in the Muslim religion, barricaded themselves inside the mosque. Israeli police stormed the site in the old city that you've done grenades, tear gas, far its, punge tip bullets, indiscriminately beat Muslim worshippers, including elderly people and women, with batons and rifle butts. That's
according to the UN Human Rights Office. This is been an increasing point of tension, in part directly because of one of the Netanyahu's cabinet ministers, Ben Gavie, who's been intentionally provocative with regard to Alaxa and disrupting what has been a long held status quo there. About a month later, Israel launches surprise airstrikes in Godza, targeting leaders of Islamic Jahad and another militant organization which sometimes allies with Hamas.
Those kill three top militants and ten others, including four women and four children. You had a summer that included more military raids on the city of Janine and the refugee camp there. You had more drones strikes actually inside of the West Bank, and significantly you had increasing violence between Palestinians and Jewish settlers.
Yes, that's a big part of it.
These settlements are illegal under international law. They're part of the immediate problem here is the fact that these settlements were being protected by the IDF in lieu of protecting you know, these border towns around Gaza.
So there'd been a huge redeployment towards.
This area, and you had Israeli settlers who were rampaging through Palestinian towns, tons of violence there, and so you know, it's not like there was nothing going on and it was all peace and quiet, and then this attack comes out of nowhere. And then you add to that the geopolitical situation of this potential deal Saudi normalization with Israel that obviously they're very unhappy with, and it led to, you know, absolute horror.
I also want to say there were some signs here with which the Israelis were ignoring. A good friend of mine, Trey Yanks. I used to cover the White House with him. He's now the Fox News correspondent actually in Israel. He's one of the I'm telling you, one of those unbiased people just because he just points the camera and he'll be like, here's what's happening right now at this state.
He flagged this.
Actually, he's done multiple interviews with Hamas, with Palestinian Islamic Jihad and with the IDF, and he flagged this from August of twenty fifth, twenty twenty three, almost a month ago. A little bit over a month ago. He says, quote, we are preparing for all out war. The deputy head of the Political Bureau of Hamash they were not like they weren't they were doing working. Yeah, exactly, they were practicing.
And this was known.
They were practicing raids on Israeli villages. I mean, you know, they were pretending like they were going in, and the IDF and Masad and Yahoo, they all thought this was just a fate, that this was just bluster there. They also had started I guess there's at times Hamas will prohibit people from protesting at the border fence. They had allowed these protests to restart. This was also just seen as trying to get leverage to get more work permits
into Israel. And so in any case, just an unbelievable failure.
And it's so.
Hard to put into words how tragic this situation is, the horror on the Israeli side and the horror on the Palestinian side, and what they're you know, this complete siege now and attacks on marketplace and moss and apartment buildings, et cetera, which are also murdering innocent civilians.
And what's so.
Difficult about it is it's just so hard to see a way out at this point. And we're about to talk to to ken Roth and I'll bring him in a moment. But I think in the US we continue to hold on to this fiction of like, oh, we're going to get to a two state solution. Nanna, who has abandoned any pretense that they're working towards a two state solution. He has his whole policy has been basically like, no, this is the status quo.
We're just going to keep it as it is.
We're gonna have the blockade, we're going to occupy West Bank, we're going to continue to build out these illegal settlements, which in previous agreements they had agreed not to do. While they continue to build it out. They've even within the West Bank, they're like, it's not you think of that as Oh, it's this one territory. No, it's all
divided up to make room for these illegal settlements. There are certain roads you're not even allowed to drive on if you're Palestinian that are built just for the settlers, and so it's made it a real impossibility to actually have a feasible two state solution.
They're not interested in it.
I don't think so.
I mean that's part of I think the reality here is. You know again, I just want to be one hundred percent clear. Nothing justifies attacks on civilians. Nothing we say here justifies this whatsoever. But if you're looking at it on the Palestine, they've tried nonviolent It's not like they haven't tried nonviolent protests and been met with bullets.
By the way, you know BDS.
If you support BDS, you're anti Semite, so that's off the table. They've tried violent resistance before certainly too that hasn't worked either.
And it seems like a.
Completely untenable, unsustainable situation that is just going to certainly lead to more pain, chaos, and death moving forward.
And it's hard to see a.
Real way of That's what I was going to say.
I don't think that it is possible to see any political ceasefire settlement on this until a colossal loss of life is going to happen. And I don't say that because I want it to happen. I just don't think. I don't really see a scenario. I mean, think about you know, post nine eleven, it was politically untenable to try and pursue like basically nothing. The only thing that was politically tenable was to basically just full scale war.
That's why the American people, even though Sadamasayin had nothing to do with nine to eleven, two years later, we're willing to have a massive ground invasion. I wouldn't be very much doubt the ability for the Israelis not to have the same domestic thing also, although I hope not, given that they have a lot more experience with war.
Same on the Palestinian side.
You know, at this point you're locked in and then and then all it takes is one actual attack that you know, one bomb that goes wrong, a couple hundred civilians are killed, and now that's your justification for fighting, and everything just keeps upping the ante over and over and over and over again. So without the direct intervention of the Arab States, the Egyptians and the United States. This is almost certain to just go and drag on now for a long time, basically as.
It has been.
It's just a recurring and also politically, there will be the I don't think these really populous at this at some point. This two taste pollution things, two tastes, two states. Solution inside of Israel is always complicated in terms of how the ultra orthodox and the religious Jews felt about versus how the secular is really Jews. But at this point, the talking point from the right has always been, well, if we give them a state, they're just going to
use the state in order to attack us. And now this is the ultimate gift that Hamas has given them, because they're like, see, we gave it to them. Even under blockade, even under occupation, they were still able to get their stuff. So that means, you know, their solution to this is full scale occupation, complete reconquest to drive out Hamas. And that's basically what a counterinsurgency. That just means you have a slow burn conflict again now for
a long time, and no political settlement. So I think it's going to be a long time, and I think it's a really horrific human tragedy. And I think with that, you know, we've got a good guest standing by Ken Roth.
Let's get to it.
Honored to be joined this morning by a front of the show. Ken Roth, who is the former longtime executive director of Human Rights Watch and also now a visiting professor at Princeton, has a book coming out probably next fall.
We're looking forward to that as well. Great to have you, sir.
Thank be back. Thank you.
First, just your initial thoughts on some of the domestic political context within Israel as we watched, you know, the horror of this carnage that unfolded on Israeli citizens.
Well, you know, obviously this Hamas attack was a blatant war crime. You know, they went after civilians. You know, they went to this music festival and seemed to have massacred two hundred and fifty, you know, just music enjoyers. They went around you know, villages and towns near Gaza and rounded up civilians and brought them back to Gaza as hostages. You know, these are all blatant war crimes. And I guess people are asking how did this happen?
Because Israeli intelligence is known for being you know, kind of well integrated into Gaza.
They tend to know what's going on.
And you know, if you listen to Hamas, they clearly were planning this for months and months. So I don't know why it broke down. I mean, clearly some people saw it. For the people higher up just didn't believe it. You know, often the key to intelligence is not so much what are the physical things that are happening, but what are the intentions behind those events? And you know,
somebody misread the intentions. They thought that Hamas was much more interested at this stage and you know, making money and running Gaza than in launching an attack of this sort.
So you know, there will have to be a clear inquiry.
You know, what we don't really know is to what extent have the divisions within Israel contributed to this failure, because you know, as everybody is aware, Netanyahu's far right government has been you know, not only rapidly expanding settlements in the West Bank, but they've been attacking the independence of Israel's judiciary, you know, really undermining the checks and
balances of a democracy. This has led to massive protests in Israel, really unprecedented protests, Real divisions within the society. You know, did that contribute to the intelligence failure here? You know, we don't know yet. There will clearly be inquiries, but that was the backdrop that may have been a big factor here.
Yeah, that's an important one that actually one of the lead editorials, and Haratz can put this up there on the screen just yesterday, was calling for the removal of Neta Yahu. They say Notata Yaho bears responsibility for this Israel Gaza war, specifically highlighting the issues that you're talking about, not only in terms of the protest but also deployment
with regards to settlement. So I'm curious if you could give the audience some background that might have played there in terms of the IDF response then immediately, and then how the political impact then on that decision and how Israelis could be digesting that news in real time.
Well, I mean, clearly, if you look back at the last couple of months, I mean, not only has Israel been preoccupied by Netanyahu's assaults on Israel's democracy, but it has also been a violent period in the West Bank. You know, Nettayah, who really in order to save his skin in order to avoid corruption charges, made this far right government is the only one he could assemble because most of the moderates did not want to join with
him while he faced these corruption charges. And you know, they have pursued, you know, not only an active settlement building process, which itself is a war crime under the fortunate of convention, but they also seem to have given the green light to settlers to engage in acts of violence. There have been a series of raids on you know, what are said to be armed groups in the West Bank, and so you know, really the idea has been largely
focused on the West Bank. And you know, again, I know, I can't say, you know why they were asleep with the switch on this. And it was also a Saturday that the Jewish Sabbath. It was an important holiday. You know, the idea that Israel's enemies would use an important Jewish holiday to attack Israel is hardly unprecedented, and you would think that people would have been awake to this possibility.
Yes, I found it remarkable that at Haretz, which is sort of like I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's sort of like the New York Times of Israel, that their lead editorial was so scathing of net Nyahoo and so immediately, I mean that was the instant reactions. They said, the disaster that befelt Israel was the responsibility
of one person. Benjamin Netanyaho, the Prime Minister, has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession. Goes on to name check some of the most extreme cabinet officials that he has included in his government.
There have been a lot of comparisons made to nine to eleven, saying, you know, this is basically Israel's nine to eleven and in terms of the shock to the system, But there was a very different immediate reaction here to nine to eleven, which was rally around the flag.
No one could criticize George W. Bush. I mean that lasted for.
Quite some time. His approval ratings ended up being sky high. It doesn't seem in the initial phases like there is that unanimity of analysis in Israel right now about the person of Netanyahu himself.
Yeah, I mean that Tenneho is a very controversial figure. You know, precisely because his top priority has always been to save himself. Now, Howatz, I mean, I think the analogy to the New York Times is accurate, and that it's it's highly respected, it's also left of center, and it's it's a big thing atayah who critic you know, the way the New York Times would have been saying Trump critics. So, you know, it's not that surprising that
this comes from Howatz. You know, there is a rally around the flag tendency whenever, you know, a major attack comes like this, and clearly the you know, the loss of civilian light has just been tragic. I do think though, that there are lessons to be learned from nine to eleven, because, you know, if we look back then, at first, you know, the US government really had the moral high ground around
the world. There was this you know, outpouring of sympathy or horror, and over the course of a couple of years,
Bush dissipated that. That's but he lost the moral high ground, you know, because of his highly abusive ground war in Iraq, you know, because of his use of torture and secret detention centers, because of his long term detention without trial at Guantanamo, and I think that that is a lesson that I hope the Israeli government heats that, you know, if it wants to maintain the moral high ground that at this moment it enjoys because of these attacks on
its civilians, it has to be careful how it responds. And you know, already there have been elements of the response that are troubling.
You know.
Obviously, you know, Israel has every right under the laws of war to attack hamas military facilities. But you know, there's already been a mosque hit, a market hit. There was a deliberate destruction of a large apartment building, which.
Has happened in prior wars.
I'm sure these Raelies will say, oh, there was you know, some tiny comas office somewhere in there. But you know, the end result is that there are you know, one hundred people who suddenly have lost their homes. Israeli give they give a warning first, so people evacuate, but then this massive apartment building is destroyed.
So this is the kind of thing that does lose the moral high ground.
Just this morning, the Defense Minister announced that there would be a total seed of Gaza, So you know, no food, no electricity, no nothing gets in.
Now, this is you know, a.
Territory of two million plus people that already was suffering under you know, the perennial Israeli blockade. But in a war, warring parties have a duty to permit the free flow of humanitarian aid. And so what the Defense Minister is basically saying is, you know, we don't care about the laws of world We're just going to block all aid going into Gaza. Now, you know, this is just a
statement so far. We don't know if they will actually do it, but you know it's a statement of an intention to commit a work on and this is the kind of response that will very quickly lose Israel.
This sympathy that it has.
People are going to Yes, you know, they'll be appalled at the loss of Israeli civilian life, but very quickly, if this continues, they're going to be appalled at the loss of Palestinian civilian life and the tables will turn very quickly.
Yeah. One of the things that's part of that statement, that's your question.
But he said, we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.
Yeah.
One of the things I wanted to ask you, Ken is you've been emphasizing and long have international humanitarian law. So as we enter this next phase of the conflict, we still await any possible it is really you know, invasion of Gaza, a reoccupation, or a future possible two
front war breakout. Can you just lay out what that can look like, as you alluded to, in terms of rights of how to strike militants, how Hamas itself is guilty of war crimes, and then what that should adhere to in the future, even though it's very.
Likely will not okay.
Well, the laws of war, you know, basically the Geneva Conventions and their protocols are pretty straightforward in this area. You know, you are allowed, in the context of a war to shoot and try to kill the other sides combat, so you know, that's what war is about. Unfortunate that it is. But you cannot is deliberately target civilians. On the other side, you cannot indiscriminately fire into civilian areas.
You can not attack even a military target if the harm to civilians will be disproportionate, And obviously you cannot take civilians hostages. You know, you can capture combatants. You can capture a soldier. That's okay, but you cannot see civilians. You've got to allow free flow of humanitarian aid. As I mentioned. Now, you know these are the laws. I mean, Hamas clearly was breaching them, you know, right extremely in its attack on Saturday.
The question is real the Israeli government followed these rules and you.
Know often in the past they haven't and their initial forays are not that encouraging. This is not simply an abstract issue. The International Criminal Court, you know, the kind of the Global War Crimes Tribunal, does have jurisdiction over anything that happens in Gaza. And so you know, if there are blatant war crimes, the prosecutor could act. I mean, he has been slow to act on Israel Palestine. He's had an open investigation now for some time. This could
spur him finally to act. And so you know, everybody's got to think about do they really want an arrest warrant for them, the ability to travel really, you know, any place in Europe because all of Europe is a member.
Of the ICC.
You know, these are things that are are kind of a real threat hanging over not only Hamas, but also is really official.
Do you really think it's a real threat though, because I mean, the whole reason they could be so brazen in pre announcing a war crime is because it's they've gotten away with it before. I mean, it would not be I mean, the settlements are illegal. I mean, there's there's war crimes committed from the Israeli side all the time.
And not only is there no accountability in terms of international criminal corps, but there's no accountability with regard to you know, their greatest run, the United States of America, which continues to do what they want and send them, you know, all the aid and condition it on absolutely nothing.
So isn't it the right?
Yeah, anyway, horrible in that regard.
So do you actually think that there could be something that's different this time? Because I'll say, on the other side of things, you know, we talked about the New York Times of Israel, the New York Times of the New York Times actually has a little bit of a different tone this time than in previous Israeli wars. On Gaza, Israeli Palestinian conflicts. You're seeing even some dissident voices on CNN, some Palestinian voices on CNN. You see a little more
dissent within the Democratic Caucus. So do you think there could be a change in perception and coverage this time that actually may change the outcome here.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, let me just first, in terms of the broader political background that you're alluding to, there has been a change in i think the tone of the debate in the United States, a growing recognition that the Israeli government has been imposing apartheid on the occupy territory, a growing real dislike for the far right government.
That Natanya who is leading.
So, you know, it has been possible in the US political context, certainly in the broader public, maybe less so for the moment in Congress, but it's changing to speak, you know, much more critically about Israel. Now the other interesting development, I mean you talk about how you know, Israel's committed these war crimes in the past and has gotten away with that, and that's you know, completely true.
I mean, the US basically protects it.
You may recall that when the International Criminal Court prosecuted the prior one, Fatu Bensuda announced that she was opening an investigation into Palestine because Palestine is the member of the court, so you know, looking at crimes committed on the territory of Palestine. Trump imposed sanctions on the prosecutor and her deputy, you know, an outrageous interference with the independence of this judicial institution. Now, you know, Biden, his credit,
lifted those sanctions. But more interestingly, the US government traditionally has opposed the Court having jurisdiction simply because a crime is committed on the territory of a member of the Court.
They said it should only.
Go after people whose governments have joined the Nobody else believes that.
But that's the US position.
But the US has now changed that position in Ukraine because Ukraine has given the Court jurisdiction. Russia is not a member, and the US even Biden himself the charges against Putin, so in essence, at least in that context, they have thrown away the US objection to territorial jurisdiction. That's the only reason to object to the Court acting on crimes committed in Palestinian territory. So the US can be completely unprincipled and say it's okay in Ukraine but
not okay in Gaza. You know, suddenly the Court will have the latitude to act in a way that never had before.
I wouldn't put it past them. But you are right.
We appreciate you joining us, mister Roth. You're always such a great person to talk to, and I'm sure we'll have you back.
So thank you, yeah, thank you so much for taking the time.
Good singing.
At the same time, we have some major implicants for US policy, both on the presidential side and on the House speaker side. Don't forget the House speakership remains completely empty.
Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen.
The Israel War has now added major urgency to the US Republican House speaker crisis, because as long as there's no speaker, nothing can happen on the floor of the House of Representatives. We've narrowed it down to two candidates, Steve Scalice and Jim Jordan. Both have basically announced like unequivocal aid for Israel. But the main thing is that whenever it comes to the speakership is that many who have called for more US military aid to Israel. Obviously
that cannot pass if there is no speaker. So that is now a major incentive, I guess for a lot of Republicans. In order to wrap this up earlier, and just so people remember, for how this all works, there will be a secret meeting, secret ballot or whatever tonight, another meeting on Tuesday, and then a vote is scheduled for the speaker on Wednesday. There is no indication that will actually happen, that in terms of it will actually
get resolved in terms of the two major candidates. Like we said, things have basically been narrowed down Crystal to Jim Jordan and to Steve Scalise. But it is interesting because prior to this the only major international question was Ukraine AID. Jim Jordan specifically came out against AID two Ukraine. Steve Scalie has been silent on a to Ukraine. But now Israel being the preeminent international issue here in Washington, obviously there's far more bipars and consensus on that one
in terms of in Congress. And the thing is though, is that that well then add major urgency to some of the possible holdouts, people like Nancy Mace, Matt Gates and others in order to actually have a speedy election. That said, and I know, but I had, we still have to follow obviously the political news. Nancy Mace and Matt Gates and many others have come out in support of Jim Jordan some of these holdouts.
So that's pretty much Trump and Donald Trump.
Has backed Jim Jordan right now.
I'm curious from your perspective, if Trump's endorsement of Jordan is one hundred percent a good thing, whether there is some complications with that, because you do have some moderate Republicans in particular who are just elected New York in Joe Biden districts, who are you know, doing their best to try to distance themselves from the more extreme ranks of the party and from Donald Trump himself.
So what do you think about that.
I think I'd rather have it than not, because especially because the people who all voted to als. Kevin McCarthy, Yeah, all of those people are you know, disciples of Trump, except for Nancy Mace, who, as Kevin said, what did he say, He's like, well, she's in the league of her owner. That's a whole other story. And I think he's correct, But you're correct.
What she just seems like one she got her finger in the very ambitious finger in the winds go and wear out.
Because she's herself as like a moderate.
You know, now she's stalling herself as some like dissident Matt Gates.
Type, whatever, let's put her to the side.
Yes, there are other New York Republicans that he said, guys like Mike Lawler and others who they would not necessarily vote somebody for Trump. But I think what the Republicans will do in the Israel situation actually adds this if they can try and hammer this all out behind and also with some demands and other things made by Matt Gates where he basically said, I'll give up the entire motion to vacate if you guys agree to this legislation that Rokana is introduced about term limits, about stock
trade and bands and others. There could be some interesting horse trading behind the scenes. Obviously we're massively supportive of that, and we will. This show is all about mostly about Israel and its impact, but we'll get to that later in the week. So please don't worry, especially whenever we
do have a speaker election. What I think that adds the complication to this is that because he only needs seven or eight, as you said, you may be able to get the seven or eight holdouts on the anti McCarthy side, But now you might have seven or eight holdouts on the Steve Scalise side, who may not agree
to have Jim Jordan. I would though, think that the amount of pressure that the Israel situation is putting on Congress there is much more of a apt like a push from party leaders from colleagues to fold nearly immediately. So whoever does win that first ballot, I think they're going to have a major advantage because there can be Look, guys, we got to coalesce, We've got.
To get this done. That's what I think that that's this situation really does speed up. I think the speaker electtion.
That's my read of the situation as well. And moderates quote unquote moderates would be the first to like cave to that kind of pressure too, and they tend to be the most overtly pro Israel as well. So that's my read of the situation too. There is an interesting dynamic here. So you know, we've been saying, and everybody's been saying, like, oh, you can't do anything in the House until you have an official speaker. So the speaker ProTem really can't do anything except for hold votes to
get a speaker. That's all you can do until you actually have a speaker. Well, now that there's a question of support for Israel and Israeli aid, now they're like, well, maybe it's a little different than what we were saying before. Put this up on the screen from Axios. They say, scoop, House members tee up pro Israel resolution and part of the idea here with this, it's an apac written resolution just basically to say we stand with Israel and they
have a right to self defense or whatever it says. Basically, the idea is to push a new precedent of what the speaker ProTem can actually do and can actually accomplish. They quote this Georgetown law professor Josh Chafitz, who says if they pass a resolution, it does then create a precedent that they can do substantive business. Another individual is director of Structural Democracy at the Bipytisan Policy Center, said there's probably very little, if any, actual restriction on what
a majority of the House could do right now. So that's another avenue is that they continue to push off the resolution of who's actually going to be Speaker of the House, but they just decide they can do whatever they want anyway.
In the meantime, well, they can always find a way can't they Christian?
Yeah, when they want to. It's amazing how quickly they're able to act.
The other funny constitutional questions are whether Patrick McHenry, the Speaker pro temper, is even allowed to get an intelligence briefing. That's been a big brew haha, here in Washington. Can he be briefed? Can he not be briefed? He's the interim speaker, you know, in the meantime. But the major thing I think you need to know is that this
will accelerate the process. It will put a lot of pressure, especially because they want to be able to pass not necessarily just a military package, although I do think that will come with time, but a resolution or something like that expressing support for the Israeli people. The government itself wants to be able to have some nimble action, and without a speaker, you quite literally can't do anything in Congress, pass any legislation.
I would also.
Remind everyone there are multiple other big bills that still need to pass. The NDAA, the actual funding of the National Defense Authorization Act for the Pentagon.
Almost certainly that's going to.
Include a writer quote unquote, which is like an addition for Ukraine and for Israel.
Wall.
Will the politics like that look like. How will the Israeli Ukraine debate be affected. It could be linked together, it could be split apart. They could argue we need to favor one over the other. I'll enjoy watching them that one fight out that will play out in the party.
That's one potential direction is they tie additional Ukraine aid and additional is AID together. And a lot of the people who are opposed to Ukraine aid are very much in favor of Israel Aid, so that could be one tool that they use to try to get the next round of Ukrainian aid through the House. We'll see how this all shakes out. Still a lot of questions there how this is going to move forward, but certainly puts a lot of pressure and changes a lot.
Of political dynamic. That is the major thing that you need to know about that.
Now.
In terms of the actual political response, there has been a major war now breaking out within the GOP about how the response should be. Nikki Hayley obviously taking up the Neo Khon mantle and basically calling for war with Iran as a result of this and a complete flattening of Gaza.
Here's what she had to say.
But let's step back because I want the American people to kind of take this in for a second. Just imagine that here, the Israelis woke up and communities were bombarded. Families were murdered, women and children were taken hostage, dragged through the street, the elderly were taken. All of this has happened in front of everyone, on top of thousands.
Of rockets that hit Israel.
This should be personal for every woman and man in America. Why because when they did this, when they did this surprise attack, when they took these hostages, when they murdered these families, they were celebrating. And what were they celebrating. They were saying death to Israel, Death to America.
This is not just.
An attack on Israel. This is an attack on America because they hate us just as much. America can never be so arrogant to think we don't need friends just like we needed them on nine to eleven. That's why Ukraine needs us when Russia is doing this, That's why Israel needs us when Hamas and Iran are doing this. And I'll say this to Prime Minister Netanyahu, finish them, Finish them. Hamas did this, you know Iran's behind it. Finish them. They should have hell to pay for what they've.
Just done, calling for war with Hamas, calling for war with Iran's saying that this is an attack on America. Former Vice President Mike Pen's taking shot at his old running mate Donald Trump, as well as vivig Ramaswami and Ron DeSantis also in reaction.
Let's take a listen.
Well, I am, but let me begin at where we ought to start. I mean that disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan is emboldened the enemies of freedom around the world, and now war is raging in Eastern Europe. And President Joe Biden's cow towing for the last two and a half years to the Malas in Iran, lifting sanctions, begging them to get back in the Iran Nuclear Deal, and then paying six billion dollars in a ransom for hostages. I think set the conditions for this unprecedented terrorist attack by
Hamas against Israel. But I also believe this is what happens when we have leading voices like Donald Trump, vivek Ramswami, and Ron DeSantis signaling retreat from America's role as leader of the free world. Look what happened in Ukraine was an unprovoked invasion by Russia. What happened this weekend was
an unprovoked invasion by Hamas into Israel. And I really believe now more than ever, both the debate within the Republican Party and the debate within America is whether or not we're going to once again stand without apology as the leader of the free world, as the arsenal of democracy.
This is its two thousand and five. If I listen to these.
People, seriously, how many wars did these people want to get in? Yea, I know, so we just had China the list while we're at it, just for fun. I mean, a lot of folks beyond very happy.
Right now.
I am in the bridge Colby Camp.
I am personally doubtful we could win a single war, let alone like five wars as a result of the current state of the US military.
One of the reasons I'm so against a to Ukraine.
And they have these to them, there's the limitless number and the checkbook for what can happen, and also that there's no idea that you have to irioritize certain things that actually advocate and work for your national interest. And uh, Nikki Haley, this is an attack on America, begging Prime Minister Natanyahu basically to strike Iran. I mean, Iran is not some pitally little country. This is a massive country, huge population, huge army. I'm not saying that they're you know,
like I'm not saying they're like a great power. But it's not a joke. And there's a reason why we have not undertaken strikes on Iran. And one there's a reason why US military planners consider it a nightmare scenario because it has a neighbor with Iraq. They have a proven military capability with the IRGC and others, and it would just cause even more chaos and destabilization in the region. Same with Mike Pence, as you're saying, it's like to them,
everything stems back to Ukraine and then to Afghanistan. How about this. The world is messy and not everything is interconnected. I hear the from the Ukraine first people all the time too. They're like, well, we got to support Ukraine because that means we've got to support Taiwan.
I'm like, we'll hold on a second.
They're actually completely disparate situations with different actors and different histories.
Same thing here.
It's like if this had happened in two thousand and five, they would have been like, oh, this is a result of nine to eleven. They always have to try and tie it to something else that's bigger, and going on to try and justify even more military conflict in others. And it's like, okay, well, what has that policy gotten us? I ain't winning, and it certainly ain't. It certainly is not you know, peace or prosperity for them or for
us as a result of this. So look, I'm happy that these voices are not prevailing right now in the Republican Party, at least right now with the actual voters.
But this is the actually think in Washington.
Well, and let's be clear, like there isn't actually any dissent on Israel within the Republican Party. Trump was incredibly hawkish, did everything that you know, Israel wanted him to do, incredibly hawkish towards Iran, took us out of around nuclear deal,
assassinated costoms, a little money, all of these things. Right, So it's not like they're trying to paint this picture like there's some descent here when there really isn't the only person who was a little bit different on Israel, who quickly like backtracked and tried to pretend like he wasn't actually different on Israel was Vivik Ramaswami, who made some comments about how he would like, in the fullness
of time, to not be supporting them militarily. Here he is with Sean Hannity getting questioned on those comments after Nikki Haley specifically attacked him over at Lit's take alism.
You know, you said aid to Israel, our number one ally only democracy in the region, should end in twenty twenty eight and that they should be integrated with their neighbors.
I was an exact quote.
Well hot to read it.
That's actually yeah, I can tell you the exact quote.
What I said is it would be a mark of success if we ever got to a point in our relationship with Israel, if Israel never needed the United States's aid.
And Sean, you know how politics is played.
A lot of the other professional politicians who have been threatened by my rise have used that statement to say that I would cut off aid to Israel.
That's not correct.
So in any case, he's like backtracking, and it just shows you how sensitive this issue is, how influential. You know, people for whom this is like their number one issue are within the Republican Party, also within the Democratic Party.
You've only very recently had a few voices in the Democratic Party that are even a little bit dissident on this issue and also want to talk about Palestinian lives as well, and the unconscurable blockade and occupation apartheid conditions that have been imposed on these people for years and years now. But within the Republican Party, you know, there's basically only one position that you can take on this issue, and it's being extraordinarily hawkish, well.
A lot of it.
Actually, it's interesting, you could think about it a little bit like the pro life issue. Some of the most vehement and like extreme supportes of Israel are Evangelical Christians. I'm not a biblical scholar, so I cannot even attempt to explain it, but it just has something to do with the end of days and why the state of Israel needs to exist and Christian Tians. There's also been actually a very heavy attempt in Israel by the Israeli government to cultivate a lot of these people. They help
fund a lot of trips back and forth. Yeah, if you're ever on a flight to Israel.
It's funny. Half the people on the plane will be Evangelical Christians, the other half will be Jews, and a lot of them are coming to visit some of the holy sites, and a lot of it is funded by both churches, nonprofits, and of these other organizations which have not existed in it for a long time. They put an immense amount of pressure, an immense amount of pressure on GOP lawmakers. You also, I think, have the old nine to eleven tie in. It's very much.
You know, a lot of people like to have black and white thinking. It takes a long time to actually separate that to think about it, and most people haven't been over there. They just look at the news and they're like, well, you know, one is allied with our enemies and one always has our back. So they're like, okay, this is a simple equation. So that's how a lot
of Americans are going to think about it. I mean, I think there's a reason that the entire all opposition to Israel is predominantly in the US an elite left project, and it's because it comes from the university in academia class.
Because they have more of an interest.
Obviously, they have probably more sympathies to like the ideas around human rights and all of that, but they have more of a like awareness generally of what's going on.
So I think that's a huge age divide here, that's true.
Yeah, huge age.
Divide and the politics on this, I mean that might be if you look at the numbers, one of the biggest generational gaps on the Democratic parties between older folks and younger folks in terms of the prism with which they view this conflict. And we were talking, you know, I mean, in some ways it feels so depressing, the cycle of violence, the you know, just knowledge that there's no there's not going to be a simple, easy, straightforward solution. There just can't be at this point, after all, all
of these decades of absolute horror. But you do see even in the media coverage, you see, you know, different perspectives you never would have seen before, even like the New York Times and CNN with voices you never would have heard before, you know, actually talking to Palestinians in addition to the Israelis, who you know are suffering and
grieving right now. So you do see some partly This is a result directly of Netanyahu becoming very partisan during the Obama era, yes, and really throwing in with Republicans and actively trying to thwart Obama's re election. And that has created a very different political dynamic within the Democratic Party than used to exist. And I'm talking not at
the elite level, where there's still mostly unanimity. Like I said, with a few You've got Rashida Telip who is actually Palestinian American who is being blocked by the way from visiting her gramma in Palestine by the Israeli government. So you have a few voice different voices on the Democratic side. But there's also it's been an overwhelming campaign to try to defeat in primaries anyone who would have a different view on how to approach this conflict whatsoever.
That's a good point. I remember saying it at the time. I've said it many times here on the show. Is probably the single biggest mistake bebe ever made in terms
of US political support. He aligned himself with an opposition party against the sitting president of the US, which allowed the Obama administration to say, look at this man coming to my soil to speak out against my policy in my Congress, you know, having that dramatically opened the Overton window, because when you were allowed to criticize Babe, then you
were allowed to criticize Israeli policy. That led to some There was some moment at the end of the Obama administration where they even allowed some UN Security Council resolutions to pass that they never would have allowed to happen in the past. Even the Biden administration, I mean mostly been one hundred percent pro Israel. The Israelis wouldn't say so, but not a huge departure, Yeah, from previous policible.
Even they've had a few there's some friction between, like friction between between n Naho and Biden, but it hasn't really amounted to different policy. I pulled up the numbers just to give people a sense of how this is becoming. There's starting to be a more partisan valance to this. In twenty twenty three, Gallup asked, in the Middle East situation, are your sympathies more with Israelis or more with the Palestinians.
Obviously this is before the current situation and atrocities that were just committed.
For Democrats. For the first time ever, more.
People said their sympathies were with Palestinians than Israelis. Forty nine percent of Democrats said Palestinians, thirty eight percent said Israelis, and thirteen percent said neither are no opinion independence. They also increased their level of support with Palestinians, but they still overall have more sympathy towards Israelis's forty nine percent sympathy towards Israelis, thirty two percent Palestinians, nineteen percent neither,
both or no opinion. With Republicans very different landscape, seventy eight percent say their sympathies live dominantly with Israelis. Only eleven percent say they're more sympathetic towards Palestinians.
So, you know, that is a very new phenomenon.
If you look back at you look back at like twenty ten, you had sixty percent of Democrats saying their sympathies were more with Israelis, so in only thirteen percent
saying that their sympathies were more with Palestinians. So there's been a you know, there's been a really dramatic shift in terms of the level of the level of I guess support for Palestinian statehood and the complexity with the which the situation is viewed within the Democratic Party, and I do think a lot of that goes back to net Yahoo making it very partisan.
Now we're delighted to be joined by doctor Tree T. Parsi.
He is executive vice president of the Quincy Institute and a long time front of the show. Great to see ze our good Caeesar.
Good to be back with you, guys.
So we have a lot of questions for you about the sort of geopolitical fallout here, the context within which these attacks occurred. But first I wanted to ask you about this report from the Wall Street Journal. Let's put this up on the screen, guys. This is the second piece here. They say that Iran helped plot the attack on Israel over several weeks. Islamic Revolutionary GUARDCORE gave the
final go ahead last Monday in Beirut. Now what's really interesting here is this is actually according to senior members of Hamas and Hezbola. However, US officials made it very clear they had not seen any evidence of Tehran's involvement. And now you also have Israeli officials being very clear in saying they have not seen evidence of Iranian involvement here. So I wonder what your reaction is to the story and why this is significant and people should care.
Well, it's very significant because if you take the story at face value, it was really pushing the United States towards getting involved in a larger war in the region, because if the Iranians were involved in that operational sense, you would have significant calls on the US side for acts against Iran. However, the story in my view is not particularly credible. As you mentioned, this is not the
position shared by the US government. It's also not shared by the Israeli government, with the idea of spokesperson coming out and saying that they don't see evidence for it, which is quite a statement coming from these Raelis who otherwise are quite keen on pointing out Iran's involvement in various things. But also because I think that the story
itself I find really difficult to digest. So for instance, they say that there's been biweekly meetings since August in Beirut, which is a place room in which the Israelis have excellent intelligence, of course, between senior leaders of Hamas Islamic Jihad, Hezbolah and Yvan, including on two occasions, the Ivanian foreign minister attending. I mean, these are the very same people the Israeli intelligence would keep a very very close eye on.
How could they have bi weekly meetings since August about this issue plan and these Raelies never finding out It just sounds to me quite difficult to believe. So I think there's a lot of elements of this that raises question marks as to the accuracy of this story.
On top of that, the.
Former boss of one of the reporters byline in that story has come out and said that he fired her from her earlier position in Reuters for inventing stories. So I think we should deal it with a bit of grain of salt and really investigate further. Having said that, let me also say this. I think it is quite clear that the Iranians have been involved in army and training hamas. That is different from them being involved operationally in this attack green lighting attack. Those are very very
different things. Moreover, we should also be clear that Tehran probably wants the world to believe that they had a bigger role in this than what they actually did, because from their perspective, this gives them credibility amongst the Arab street in the vision, which is their audience. Their audience
is not Europe or the United States. So even when they have not been involved in things, they like the idea that the world thinks they were involved because it gives them an edge in their competition with Saudi Arabia and other governments in the region by them claiming to stand and raising the Palestinian flag.
Wow, very important context, I think on that story.
We also, though, have seen elements of the former US officials and others beginning to blame Iran for the attack, possibly setting up for possible US involvement. Here's the former Director of National Intelligence saying that, and I want to get your reaction.
My reaction, Kayley, is as it has been from day one. Those words ring hollow from the Biden administration. They're disingenuous at best. Look, it's not even just this six billion dollars which which clearly is going to further enrich Iran.
It's close sort of sixty billion dollars if you look at what the Biden administration has done to help this Islamic terrorist regime in Iran by stop enforcing sanctions, by lifting restrictions, by allowing Iranian oil to increase by six hundred and fifty percent over the last two years, from four hundred thousand barrels of oil a day to three
million barrels of oil a day. All of this has strengthened an Iranian regime that you know, Kayley, we left weaker and poorer than it had been in the last twenty years, and instead they've largely been funded by the Biden Administration's actions and allowing them to strengthen their position and to create this kind of mayhem. I don't think it's unfair Kaylee, to say that, you know, Iran funded Hamas here, but the Biden administration helped fund Iran.
This is the basically coalescing position of a lot of the repub Party. So I'm curious, just back from fiction, what do you make of that.
Well, there's quite a lot of fiction there.
But I think, first of all, the larger context here is that, unfortunately, these are really serious issues and in Washington right now, we're turning everything into political football.
This is an attempt to blame everything on the Biden administration.
You guys know me. I've been on the show many times. I have plenty of critiques of the Biden administration and I do so today as well, in part of handling this and trying to push for a Saudi U Israelian normalization deal, which I think, frankly has contributed to some of the violence that we're seeing right now. But this is just filled with a lot of fiction. First of all, the six billion dollars sits in a bank in Kutar. Essentially the United States decide what type of food and
medicine the Audians can buy. It's actually a very humiliating deal in the sense that the Aunians cannot even spend their money as they want to, but they have to get approval from the United States to do so.
In terms of three.
Million barrels of oily day, I've never heard that number. I've heard something up to two. And it's absolutely true that as a result of an effort to de escalate, the Biden administration I don't think has been implementing some
of Trump's sanctions as harshly as Trump was. But it's also in the context of the Ukraine War, in which pursuing the implementation of that would further increase oil prices at a time when the Biden administration actually has an interest and lowering the old prices because of the impact you will have on the US economy. And this is one of those things that I think the Trump administration didn't take into account in the same way because it
was partly in a different geopolitical context. The idea then to go all the way of saying that, you know, the Biden administration is funding Iran, which then is funding Hamas is really a masterful way of connecting dots that doesn't exist in order to score a political point here in Washington, but that unfortunately Kahan devis stating geopolitical effects not only in the region but for the United States itself, because this is these kind of narratives that can push
the United States wrongfully into a conflict that the US should not be involved in.
Yeah, and we've already seen Dean Phillips, who's a Democratic congressman, effectively calling for war with Iron and Lindsay Graham re upping his practical constant desire for war with Iran.
So these are very real concerns right now.
And doctor Parci, part of why we wanted to have you on is because even when the Abraham Accords were you know, very popular and they had a lot of attraction with it Washington, DC. You were raising some alarms about what they left out and some of the shortcomings of them. And now, as you alluded to, there's also this attempt from the Biden administration. Abraham Accords were under
the Trump administration. Under the Biden administration, you now have a similarly veined attempt to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel that effectively ignored and invisibilized what was going on here in Palestine. Can you take us through those pieces and why you said that the Saudi normalization in particular may have contributed to the timing of these attacks.
Absolutely so.
As you remember, I was on the show and I wrote about this when the Abram Court first came out, and was this belief that this is some sort of a peace deal, even though Sad the UAE in Israel had never been at war. That very core of this agreement was the belief that the Palestinian issue no longer mattered and that one could then devise a deal that
would move beyond the Palestinian issue. This is specific terminology that was used by Jarrett Kushner at the time, and this was partly born out of the reality that after the Arab Spring, the Palestinian issue wasn't as potent of a force in the Arab world as it had been earlier prior to the Arab Spring, but to believe that that was a permanent state and the permanent shift was
a huge mistake. And by Asen moving forward with the Europeans forgetting the Palestinians, the United States long having forgotten the Palestinians, and now some Arab countries forgetting the Palatians, and the belief was created that the world had forgotten the Palestinians, but there was one element that had not forgotten the Palestinians.
That was the Palestinians.
They distill believed themselves they still were suffering on their occupation, they were still suffering from a tremendous and increasingly intensified repression, and leaving them with that in that situation in which essentially a narrative was created amongst the Palestinians that negotiations and peace process had actually brought them to a worse position over the course of the last thirty years, just objectively dramatically increased the likelihood that at some point their
struggle would shift towards a much much more militant and violent resistance than what we had seen during the Oslo process. This is not to condone it, this is not to justify it. This is just to say this is a reality.
Some of us called it out before this happened, and I think it's a reminder to us, particularly in the context of how the narrative on Ukraine has developed in the United States, that if there is this belief that, of course the Ukrainians have to have agency, etc. To at the same time deprive the Palestinians of any of such agency, then we should not be surprised if they then try to manifest that agency in a completely different way. Again,
this is not to justify it. So this is part of the reason why a lot of people in the region as well as elsewhere, we're very concerned about this because essentially it sought to uninvent or it's not the wrong way word. Essentially, it sought to create a scenario in which the Palestinians were permanently irrelevant, and that was a dramatically dangerous bet that is now backfiring in a horrific way.
My last thing for you, sir, is about the idea of possibility that in Israel where they're very afraid of a two front war of Hezbola and then potential embroilment with Iran. How should people what context can you get with them about what that might look like and what the trigger points would be for a broader conflict that we would look like outside of the Gaza strip.
I think, first of all, as an absolutely to the point question, it's a very important question. I think it's part of the reason why the Israelis themselves are not going out there and saying that they don't see Iran's operational involvement in this, because if they were to go out and say that and incentivize Hisbola to actually get into the fight, then Israel would be facing a two
front war. Moreover, the fact that Hebela has not been part of this war so far, it's further indication that this probably was not something that the Iranians were involved in designing, because if they wanted to do something to really go after these Raelis, they would probably have done it in a manner that was more detrimental to the Israelis by creating that two front war. But if that were to happen, it would be stating situation for the israelis both hamas and has both our much better armed.
There's been this false belief that Israel's technological superiority create a permanent imbalance between the two sides, and as a result, that they simply could manage permanent occupation because these Palestinians could not do anything about it. We've now seen that the Palaestinis have managed to catch up technologically and really surprised not just the Israeli military but also the Israeli
intelligence services. So in that context, this is something that the Israelis should be very worried about.
Well, doctor Parsi, it is always so great to have all of your thoughts and well considered commentary here as we sort through a very complex situation.
Thank you so much for joining us as always.
Thank you, sir, thank you so much for having me appreciate it.
Ja.
Yeah, I mean, I guess the last thing I will say is I'm just I think we should all gird ourselves for this is going to be a long conflict. I think unfortunately a lot of people are going to die. I think things will be less safe. We're going to do our best to sift through a lot of this information. It's very very difficult. We're not on the ground in Israel. Even those who are on the ground, we don't know what they're able to show us. You know, they can
only give us a small picture. We're doing our best to verify all of the information, and you know, I just hope that something can actually come, something can possibly prevent a tremendous loss of life.
I've got personal friends.
One of my best friends who was in high school was Palaestinium, was one of those people who wouldn't even say the name Israel. One of my childhood best friends is Israeli currently you know who served in the IDF.
I've known some people on a human.
Level on both sides of this, which it's both difficult, but I also I think it was a blessing to be able to look at it, especially when stuff like this happens, and to try and be able to help everybody sort through all of this.
I know it's very, very difficult.
I also know there's a lot of people out there for this is such an emotional issue, and look, we're doing our best. We're just that's all we can tell you. We are absolutely trying to sift through all of this. Give you our perspective. None of this is from a place of malice.
And if you take offense, that's okay, because we're still going to be I will still be here the next day. Yeah.
If there is one thing I could say, it's to just implore people to value all life equally, to have as much Karen concern for Palestinian life as we see whatever the Israeli response has been, which we're already getting a taste of with this complete siege, with calling Palestinians animals, to have as much Karen concern for innocent Palestinian life
as you do for innocent Israeli life. And there was a quote, this was actually surprisingly in the New York Times, from a woman who's a Palestinian lawyer who lives in Israel, and she said, if there's one lesson of this is not that this was a security failure. It was a failure on the part of the world to address the conflict. Every day is violent, We wake up to violence, we
go to bed, to violence against Palestinians. Again, nothing justifies the slaughter of innocent civilians, including women and children, not when it's done by Hamas and not when it is done by Israel. But you will ever have true peace and security so long as you have such oppression, and so long as you are trying to keep millions of people locked in a cage effectively in an open air prison,
and their dreams and hopes and aspirations crushed. You have the biggest military in the world, the most intrusive surveillance state in the world. You have the biggest, baddest friends in the United States and the world. But there is no substitute for a real, lasting, and just peace. And I hope that in some way we can move towards those ends eventually.
I hope so too.
We're going to keep everybody updated all throughout the week. We can expect more things like this. We're going to do our best, and we'll see you all tomorrow.