Welcome to today's podcast sponsored by Hillsdale College All Things Hillsdale Hillsdale dot ed or. I encourage you to take advantage of the many free online courses there, and of course I'll listener to the Hillsdale dialogues, all of them at q for Hillsdale dot com or just Google, Apple, iTunes and Hilldale. Welcome back, America. I'm you, Hewitt, so please to welcome back. Aviv Rettig Gore. Aviv is the Middle East correspondent for The Free Press. He's also the
host of Ask Aviv Anything. I'm a member of his Patreon community. I recommend that you become that because it's really some of the smartest conversations in the world. Ask Aviv Anything podcast is completely for you. I don't miss an episode.
Haveviv. How are you?
I'm good.
I'm good.
How are you, Hugh?
I'm good.
I greatly enjoyed the interview with Jonah Platt, though I did not know who he was until you sat down with him. I was a little bit amused because Jonah's despairing that there isn't enough great Jewish content in Hollywood is like every conversation I've had with an evangelical Christian for the last thirty years I lived in Hollywood, saying we don't have enough evangelical You know, Hollywood makes what sells. I thought it was very interesting, but I also thought
you rebuked him. You people are going to argue, this is the most privileged set of Jews in world history, and you're going to be upset.
Yeah, Look, there isn't enough of the Jewish experience in Hollywood. The Jews kind of in America are too easy to I think, in my opinion, are too easy.
They're too quick.
To dismiss themselves, dismiss their experience, seed the ground to everybody else. And I don't think that's very different from Evangelicals and from Catholics and from other faith groups. By the way, religion is hugely popular when Hollywood actually goes around gets around to doing it. Look at Steven Spielberg's Prince of Egypt. These are things that kids remember all their lives. And so it's a shame that the stories of these groups, minorities not so minorities, aren't aren't told
in Hollywood. Hollywood's not producing all that great stuff lately.
I mean, no.
Offense to the MCU, but what the heck is the MCU You know what I mean?
Yeah, Well, I'm with you because I used to be a two movie a week guy, and now I've turned seventy. I would be a three movie a week guy if I had the time. But there are any movies, so we're not aviv. I have two serious questions and then some big questions. First one, I just don't know. It's about Gaza. Prior to the nineteen sixty seven war, was Gaza considered the people who lived there? Were they considered to be part of the Egyptian tribe writ large.
No, they're They're different from Egyptians. They don't share Egyptian national identity, which is very very cohesive. Egyptians have a whole story about themselves as being you know that that group of people who come from ancient Egypt through Hellenistic Egypt and Gozins are not part of that story. They very very much were either considered themselves local local tribes, local people living in conjunits or Gazza city or whatever, or Palestinian.
Did the identity as Palestinians arise in recent decades because I remember Napoleon carrying out a massacre in Gaza which is horrific. So Gaza has been there a very long time. What was was there identity with the other native peoples of the land after the Jews had been forced out.
So I mean identity is a funny story. Okay, Arabs living under Ottoman rule for four one hundred years thought of themselves as Ottomans, even if the term refers kind of to Turks. But the eats of Gaza, the elites of Jerusalem, the elites of Jaffa, the Arab Muslim elites were diplomats of the Ottoman Empire in France, you know, they they were part of the system. They saw themselves as Muslim before anything else. But Gazza as an ancient heritage,
that's Christian, that's Jewish. There's some important Jewish mystics that lived and worked and published in Gaza. And so whether they consider themselves a different period's more Muslim or Arab or This word Palestinian really comes to be used around World War One to identify a specific group of people in the modern national sense that, by the way, is
not in the rasure of their identity. Germans didn't call themselves Germans until there was a political union under Bismarck in eighteen seventy as part of a war with France. You know, these nations come into being in the modern sense a particular moment in history. So these identities are complicated, they're layered. But one thing Gozins have never been is Egyptian.
And the reason you're asking that question, it's a good question, is that Gaza was ruled by Egypt and kind of claimed by and dominated by Egypt until sixty seven, and Jordan, of course ruled in that time the West Bank, Jordan called it, gave it that name, the West Bank.
Live in Jordan.
It's the other side of the river. It's the west bank of the river, and Jordan annexed it, claimed it's Jordan gave them citizenship in Jordan, and Palestinian elites gathered in the famous Jericho Conference to confirm their Jordainian ness. And so identity is in flux. It's complicated, but there's still Palestinians in the simple sense that they're their own people. They're an Arab people, a Muslim people. By and large,
there are almost no Christians left among Palestinians. There are within Israel, among Palestinian Israelis Israeli Arabs, but they're declining in the West Bank and Gaza, and they're not us, they're someone else, and so they're two people.
I hope at some point you devote and ask Aviv anything to the history of Gaza, because you know your history and you find good experts. And all I know are little episodes and even the I'm an empire I could use some education on. It's just not something I'm familiar with. Second big question that's specific the Heredom, the ultra Orthodox. Do they believe that their prayer work upholds the state of Israel's foundations?
The Old Orthodox are a diverse group of people. The Hassidic and what they call them Ysnagge or the Lithuanian are non Hasidic.
They're not sort of.
Spiritualists in the same way. They're very different groups. Among the Hassidic groups, there are a lot of different sects and divides, and sometimes they work together and sometimes they hate each other. It's big and complicated and different, and all of that's just the Ashkenazi Horeadium. There's also the Safardi Colaradium, and all of them have different answers to these questions. What they do genuinely and authentically believe all
of them. By definition, that's who they are, is that they are the survival of the Jews, because they are the most stringent bearers of the bookshelf, of the Jewish bookshelf, from the Torah itself, the revelation and everything that proceeded from it over the millennia. And so they do see themselves as the carriers of Jewishness and Judaism, and therefore anything that endangers their ability to study Torah as a profession full time majority of the men endangers Jews and
Jewishness strategically over the long arc of Jewish history. And that's why they should sit and study all day and not serve in a military.
I should say.
That that's a new idea. That is a new idea. Until the seventies, the horeadium of Israel served in the military. They lost soldiers in the forties, and it's also grown to become these just astonishingly huge numbers. The founding of the State of Israel, four hundred young men got exemptions to go study Torah in the same way that a
couple hundred athletes and very great artists. Because if you take somebody who's an extremely who was extraordinary at something, whether it's sports or arts or tourist study, and you take them three years into military service, they're going to lose a great deal of what it is that they contribute and what it is that they can give. And so there are these exemptions for extraordinary people to the military. It was four hundred students at the time. Today it's tens of thousands in every cohort.
And so it's just.
Become a ridiculous, you know, draft dodging by a population that relies on a special welfare state because half the men refuse to work as a cultural choice, never mind military service, they also don't work, and so it's it's it's gone way. It's no longer seriously a religious debate. This isn't actually about religion.
It's the exactly inject there.
I listened to you, I listened to Yoshi kleinel Avy and Donille Hartman. I listened to Michael Oran, I listened to Dan Senor with his guests. Nobody gives the Haridam the time of day to their argument. And what I'm asking is, do they have an argument based either on their preservation Jewish Jewishness or upon their appeal to Hashem to protect the state. Do they have an argument whether or not it's correct? But do they have an argument they claim?
They claim. I don't think they themselves take it seriously. They claim that because they study, is there a win's wars? And the reason I don't think they take it seriously is that Jewish law says the opposite. If you sit and study when we need you at war, when it's a command a war of commandment, a defensive war, a war that's legal in Jewish law. You can't just have random aggressive wars, but you can have defensive wars. And when there is a defensive war, you are required to
go fight that war. That's not something you're And there are all these laws in Jewish law about how if you can work but refuse to work and go study, only study and live off other people's money. My monot thees rules that that's a that's a kind of a crime. I think it calls it an abomination. They they make these claims, but they only make them politically. I don't take it seriously. What are they in their own view?
How did this actually come about? Sort of in the sympathetic version of this the Holocaust is the basic story. This is still an aftershock of the Holocaust. Everybody when they think of the Holocaust in the West, thinks of Anne Frank, or thinks of, you know, people who look like Westerners. But in fact, eighty five percent of the Jews killed in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers. They didn't look like Anne Frank. They looked like the Galician Jews
of the Hungarian you know, rural provinces. They looked Haredi. And the Kardi religious world was wiped out, was destroyed, was erased in the Holocaust. And the primordial fundamental impulse of Horadi society at the beginning of the state of Israel literally in the late forties, was to rebuild what
had been lost. And so they set about building these very tight knit communities and institutions and have this in culture that everything depends on them, having the kids teaching the Torah, rebuilding the institutions and the cultural you know. And and they were in that sense, rekindling the fire that was destroyed. I mean, you know, the Allies remember winning World War Two, the Jews remember losing World War Two. The Nazis won their war against the Jews, the Jewish
European Jewish civilization was wiped out. It is no longer there. It doesn't exist anymore. That the thousand year Yiddish civilization is gone. And what the Harideem in Israel and also a little bit in the US, but not quite in the same sense of urgency, what the Haredim in Israel have basically tried to do for seventy seven years is rebuild what was lost. Here's the thing they've done that
they've done that. Above and beyond that, one of the finest and greatest yeshivas of the Houridi world, the seminaries, religious seminaris of the Hoidi world, is the Mir Yeshiva, which is now in Jerusalem. It used to be in a town called Mir in what is today Belarus, Mir and Belarus. At it's this is one of the great yeshivas of tours study in history. At its height it had four hundred students a year. The Mere Yeshiva in Jerusalem today has five thousand, and it is in elite.
It is the harvard of the Haredi world. And so they have rebuilt massively. And the questions that are now arising about the welfare state, about military service is because they're thirteen percent of the population. We can no longer
afford to have half their men not work. It's the questions we face now are banal the big giant, traumatic, beautiful thing that they did, the restoration of what was last that's over successfully, they've done it, and now we have just sort of simple questions of how we live together to answer, and they're not really equipped for that debate.
So they're still saying things like we're the only reason there will be Jews left, you know, and like okay, yeah, we get it, and you know you've built it out and thank God and hello, and you're part of us and you're our brothers. Now we have to talk about this welfare state that you built around yourself that's unaffordable.
That is the most sympathetic and actually understandable explanation to a gentile in the West, and I thank you for it. Did they not have anyone out there making these arguments.
Israelis generally barely have the cultural ability to explain themselves because they have a culture that says, you know, you don't stand in judgment before the world, you don't excuse your existence, and Haredine have an extreme version of that. They barely explain themselves to other Israeli Jews.
Never mind, Okay, all right, now I have my hard questions. I have to give an address. I'm looking forward to giving an address at a Christian college in about a month, and I'm going to talk about the obligation of Christian colleges and Christian kids. These are the anti Semitism and anti Zionism. And I know from decades of talks with Dennis Praeger the difference between anti shpe and anti Semitism and anti Zionism is overstated, and that the latter is
often a cover for the former. But when I want to ask you, because you're independent of the American experience except for your ears in Wisconsin, when do you understand in human history anti Semitism to have begotten?
This is a debate. You know, there's anti Semitism in ancient Egypt because there were some Jews in ancient Egypt who came in from Judea and had a slightly different religion, and some of the Egyptian priests were very upset about it, and they wrote bad things about them. Anti Semitism, as we understand it, the Western phenomenon that we're talking about. Not just everyone in all of human history didn't like the religion next door. That's not what we're talking about.
The specific idea that the Jews stands in the way of the redemption of the world. I think, as far as I can tell from the great professors I have read, this is not my obviously original scholarship. Anything begins in a subset of early Christianity, and it's a subset of
early Christianity that's grappling with a real big problem. And the problem is Christ came to fulfill the redemptive arc of the Jews and to spread that you know, that flame, spread that light to the world, and the Jews, at the heart of that story won't accept it, won't believe it. And that was a gaping lacuna that was experienced by again, not everyone, probably not most, but some, and justin Martyr and Saint Augustine and not insignificant Christian thinkers and theologians
and leaders over the centuries. That was experienced as a genuinely profound attack on Christianity, the Jews refusal to accept Christ. And Augustine writes explicitly the Jews he has this witness theory of what Jews are, where he says the Jews have to remain oppressed for all time. I'm paraphrasing, but people can look this up as a message to my people, to Christians, they fail to accept Christ, and therefore they
will be oppressed for all time. When Crusaders murdered the Jews in the cities of the Rhine on their way to the Holy Land, they left, we have diaries of bishops who saved Jews in various cities who explained what the Crusaders who were murdering Jews were saying. And what they were saying was, we are the new Israel. We superseded you, and you refuse to accept Christ, and therefore you are preventing even this is not, you know, some kind of Catholic dogma, but this is something that has
been said to Jews routinely throughout Christian Jewish relations. We superseded you, and you are preventing the coming of Christ, the return of Christ by refusing to accept Christ. And so that's the heart of it. That's the core of it. And this positioning of the Jew as the thing standing in the way of redemption is what marks secularizes the jew becomes you know, he has this whole vision of
class war and of capital. Well, the Jew becomes the distillation the perfect capitalist and overclass and manipulative and not landed, and the Jew is the thing standing in the way of redemption. And Hitler, of course, the Jew is the great threat to the folk. And because they're internationalist or something, and so everyone, by the way, on today's university campus, for some reason, Israel is the distillation of all imperialism and all colonialism and all the sins of the West
in all of the Western history. And if you can project all those sins onto Israel, you are now on the right side of history. And that self hatred of the West projected onto Israel allows you to suddenly be okay with yourself. And so Israel is the worst thing in the world. Even if literally five hundred miles away there's a worse war with four times the death toll of Gaza, that doesn't matter, because that's not telling me
a story about myself. The Jews stand in the way of redemption for all these different people, and it begins in that problem of the Jews not accepting Christ among that subset of early Christians.
Now I'm a post Vatican two Catholic, so John Paul the Second and Benedict did a lot of expiation for anti Semitism in the Catholic Church. That work went a little bit backwards with Francis, but I'm hoping Leo picks it up again. But that is to me, I'm just a secular supporter of Israel, not a Catholic supporter of Israel, but a secular American saying there are greatest ally in the world. I would like to know when does anti
Semitism spring up? I mean, when does anti Zionism spring up as a very poor but nevertheless often turn to substitute for anti Semitism. I think Antizionism is just anti Semitism with a Z instead of an S.
But when did that happen?
Just to simplify, because you know it's pompl there are some Jewish anti Zionists whose complaint about Zionism is that there's a certain vision of how the Messianic age is to come about. The Jews all come to the land. Well, if they come to the land early, they delay that Messianic return. And that's for example, the sotmar Hacidim of New York believe that that is not bigotry. That is a literally internal to the Jewish bookshelf, a theological debate
about the nature of history. That's that's something we can set aside. There's all kinds of anti Zionisms, but the anti Zionism we're talking about, the ideological anti Zionism, really is this projection that I was talking about. It begins in the sixties, especially after the sixty seven War, where the Soviets had built up these vast Arab armies, and these Arab armies were decimated by little Israel, and it
wasn't even in Israel, supported by the United States. Yet it was in Israel fighting with you know, not very good French weapons, and it wins this spectacular, spectacular victory. And so the Soviets turn probably the most enormous, expensive and competent and successful propaganda machine ever developed in the
history of the world. They spent billions upon billions on developing these vast propaganda networks through trade unions and student unions all over the non aligned world, all over the Third World, and they built out Zionology departments they called it, at these universities in Moscow that they invited the elites of all of the Third World to study at and the point of Zionology. The study of Zionism wasn't to study Zionism.
In any way.
It was to transform this image of this jew this thing that had defeated Soviet designs to push America out of the Middle East by defeating those Arab armies, or to push the West out of the Middle East by defeating those Arab armies. To turn it into the most evil thing that ever was, and so to frame these refugee people who survived only by you know, through solid darity and gunction, into the distillation of all the evils of imperialism and colonialism and every Western evil, capitalist sin.
And that propaganda machine today is basically the vocabulary on campus in the entirety of the West about Zionism. And so it has its origins in that Soviet propaganda world, but it really it's psychologically important for the West's progressive elites. It's Zoron Mumdani, for example, Zoran Mumdani repeatedly said on panels over the last five years when he was talking about defunding the NYPD, he said the NYPD learned to
abuse the minorities from the IDF. He was talking about some kind of exchange program of twenty cops a year. The NYPD has exchange programs with Singapore and Qatar and Amman Jordan. It has an actual permanent office in Jordan at Mexico, where there's thousands of extra judicial killings by police. But for some reason, Mamdani thought that the thirty four thousand officers of the NYPD, when they abuse a minority person in New York, which happens sometimes, he literally would
have this favorite line of his. He would say on panels, I've seen these videos. He would say, the NYPD abuses minorities or whatever. And then he would say, and the IDEF laced its boots. And it's this idea that how could a twenty cop a year exchange program where they learn, among other things, how to police multi ethnic areas, which the Israel police has pretty a lot of experience in,
among other things, tactics for hostage situations. How could those twenty cops come back to the thirty four thousand strong NYPD and.
Teach them how to abuse.
I mean, do American police really need the Israelis in principle to know that they can fail to serve minorities properly. Back in the whole idea of positioning Israel as the distillation of whatever the evil is that you perceive, that's anti Semitism perfectly, that's the structure, that's the purpose of antisemitism, and it's now applied to Israel in ways that are totally intellectually incoherent. He can't defend that with numbers and data, but he said it on pen I.
Started when I preparing my remarks. I'm about halfway through just with the math. They're only fifteen million Jews on a globe full of eight point seven billion people. And it's astonishing what anti Semites fall for because it's so stupid, but it's nevertheless real. Now I want to I want to ask you to do some homework for me here and give me a start. I listened to Brett Stevens State of World World Jewry address where he said anti Semitism comes from resentment, simmered in envy, and I think
he made a lot of sense. But his admonitions was to the Jewish community to stop worrying about anti Semitism and start building up Jewish day schools in the Jewish thick culture, and that made sense. What I want to ask you I forgot to thank you, by the way, for Dan Shifton, who turned out to be a brilliant gash and much beloved by my audience. Thank you for that. Now I'm going to ask you to do my work
for me. What ought Christian colleges to do about this anti Semitism problem which is everywhere and getting bigger.
Look, there is a real and serious and honest disagreement between Christians and Jews about the meaning of some of the most fundamental prophecies that produce both are religions. And that's an honest and legitimate religious and theological disagreement. And as you said, you know, there had been popes who hold you know, sometimes kicking and screaming, but not really
kicking and screaming. By the time nostrae Tante came around, by the time the Catholic Church really wanted to distance itself from the sections of its history that talked about superseding the Jews and also the standing in the way of redemption and all of that, most Catholics really were there. I mean, Christianity isn't anti semitic anymore, and just fundamentally
the vast, vast majority. But when somebody wants to be anti Semitic, they can still you know, a drop a bucket into that well and pull it out because it's still there in the in the you know background. What do they need to know about this issue?
Just learn the people.
That's my answer for everything. Jews are a lot less than the anti semi imagines. They're ordinary people, They're unbelievably ordinary. They are a millennia old conversation, and if you learn something about that conversation, you will immunize yourself to a lot of the insane stories about them and a lot of the insane conspiracy theories about them. We keep hearing
that we control everything. And one of the running jokes among Jews, just constantly among Jewish people, Jewish comedians, Jewish press, is, you know, if we control the media, why is the media so set against us?
And we control the world.
Does that mean that if we just had eighty years of the most prosperous and happy and safe period in human history, the Jews get the credit for that, not most.
Yes, that makes sense.
The only other you know, and I had somebody, a pretty famous American asked me because they heard from Nick Flintes that Jews wanted to lead mass immigration into America. It was Jewish organizations, Jewish activists like Highest, which is a Jewish you know, refugee agency, a Jewish immigration advocacy agency. I'm not going to say a single word for or against. I don't actually understand this topic.
In American politics.
But there is this progressive Jewish organization that works on these issues. But all the mainline Christian churches supported basically the core of the Democratic Party's immigration policy. You have the biggest, vastest mainline churches of America pushing it, But this small Jewish organization is the reason it happened. It's a way of ducking responsibility. Societies that turn anti Semitic fail. Why do they fail because they can no longer perceive
responsibility and accountability properly. The Arab world is in collapse, it's in free fall. It has incompetent governments. The most anti submitted of them are the go to Algeria and Hugh has these amazing polls and anti Semitism in places like Algeria, vast vast anti Sunday. They think about Jews all the time. There hasn't been a Jew in Algeria since the nineteen sixties. But they constantly obsess about Jews.
Well guess what.
They also don't run their country all that well. So this is not a good place for a country, a good you know, path for a country to take, and it's not a Christian path for a country to take. It's not what I understand Christianity to be as an outsider, and not what the popes have understood Christianity to be.
No, you're right, and that's the point I want to make. I just think that your recommendation got to know some Jews is a good one because and also get to know the lunacy of anti Semitism, because it is lunatic and it doesn't hold up to even five seconds of serious thought. It belongs to dumb people and two people who are making a buck. They're two kinds of anti Semis, those are as stupid and those who are making a buck. And into those two camps they shall all fall heavy.
That's all the time I have for it today. But you've been an immense help to me on a bunch of questions I lined up. I will talk to you, hopefully in a couple of months after Iran is at least closer to being free. I didn't ask you any about Iran because nobody knows anyth about I ran right now. But I appreciate the time today. Thank you so much for it.
Thanks you.
With Ambassador Michael Waltz, our ambassador to the United Nations, fresh from Munich, where the United States has seemed to win every other round. We won when he spoke, Ambassador Waltz, when Ambassador Whittaker was on the round table with AOC and Governor Whitmer, and when, of course Marco Rubio gave his speech, and then we lost whenever AOC or Whittmer or Gavin talk. Mister ambassador, welcome home. That was a really schizophrenic experience.
Yeah, you know, next year I'll get on the panel with AOC and Whitmer, because frankly, it was a pretty low bar.
Yeah, it's not even fair, mister ambassador. I have three things to touch to you about. The first of it is the Gouse of Peace deal.
You got that.
Through the Security Council, the Trump Peace Plan. My hat is off to you for that. I didn't think it would get through. What happens if Amasu is not disarmed.
Well, not only did we get it through to you, we got it through unanimously. And you know, President Trump loves to keep score. And the fact that his peace plan was endorsed by the international community thirteen to zero was truly significant on probably the most contentious issue there is for the UN, which is Israel Palestine. And I was reminding in Munich all of our European friends that this wasn't invented out of whole cloth by President Trump.
The UN Security Council endorsed it, including the UK and France and Denmark and other countries that were on And what does it do? It Number one, creates an international security force, which the Indonesians have announced publicly eight thousand troops they pledged. It creates a Palestinian technocratic authority, and it creates a World Bank Fund. And I think you'll see next week the President's already previewed at for the first board of.
Piece meeting five billion dollars.
So what you saw was a lot of hand ringing from the Europeans.
Are you replacing the UN?
Are you doing creating an alternative?
Well, you know what the President's doing.
He's creating something that's working when nothing else has worked.
It's not guaranteed to that it will get us the full distance.
But the hostages are out, the ceasefires in place, the humanitarian aid is flowing, and we're about to go to round two.
To what you're talking about is Hamas.
We've made it clear they either are going to disarm the hard way or the easy way.
Let's hope they choose the hard way.
And what significant you from a diplomatic standpoint, is on the boarder piece or all of the countries that Hamas usually relies on to.
Help it out of a jam.
It relied on Cutter, It's relied on Turkey, it's relied on Egypt. Well you know what, all of those countries are on the boarder piece singing the same tune as the United States and Israel is on too. I mean, what a diplomatic feat that only President Trump could pull off.
Now, if it works, it will be extraordinary. But I don't believe the Indonesians are going to deploy if Hamas is not disarmed. Is that your understanding, mister ambassador.
Well, those conversations are still ongoing.
There's still a lot to do besides walking down the street and taking a rifle out of Hamas's arms. There's demining unexploded ordnance, clearing debris, creating shelter for the Palestinians, defending humanitarian aid from getting stolen and diverted.
So there's a lot that needs to be done.
And our message over and over again is you've got three choices.
You either have Hamas staying in.
Charge, endless occupation by the idea, or a third way that may be unconventional, never tried before. Again, it's not guaranteed, but it is a hell of a lot better chance of working than those other two alternatives.
It's an extraordinary achievement. My head is off to now. I want to turn to Iran. Snap back sanctions from the United Nations went into effect in September. They are helping cripple the Iranian.
Me.
Is there any effort underway to undermine those sanctions, as that would be a disaster.
Uh, there is to a degree.
The both the Russians and to a lesser extent, the Chinese are saying that they weren't snapped back properly in accordance with you in procedure. But look to the UN's credit for a change their legal office. You know the UN kind of infrastructure, saying no, it was done properly.
The snapback sanctions.
Are in place and you will be violating those sanctions if you do business with the Iranian regime. So look, this is one of those few when I get asked, as I'm sure you do all the time, what the heck do we need the UN for? What good is it done? Well, we just talked about Gaza. I don't want US troops there. We're going to have an international force there. Uh, you know, we're doing things like Haiti or Sudan that need to be dealt with.
But again, burden sharing is a part of America.
First, let's have UN member nations deal with those kinds of flicks. And then you just mentioned snapback when the United States decided it was a bad deal, that the Iran deal was a bad deal for the world, and we reimpose sanctions.
Now we have a mechanism through the UN to bring the rest of the world with us.
And that the regime is feeling it in their wallet. The thing they care about the most is their money. The IRGC controls forty to fifty percent of the Iranian economy and it is there in bad shape all.
Around, mister Ambasser.
In December, retired Admiral Bill McGavin was my guest talking about his book on being Prepared for Crisis and he helps seze Iraqi oil tanker in the Indian Ocean pursuing two UN resolution prior to Desert Storm.
First I rock invasion.
Does the United States and other allies have the authority under the UN sanctions to seize the Iranian ghost fleet?
Look?
I believe that we do under those sanctions. Of course that's disputed by others. I think the UN could be doing a lot more writ large about the ghost fleet issue, whether it's Venezuela, Iran, Russia or otherwise. And at the end of the day, when you're talking about over one thousand unregistered ships out there using different flags, oftentimes there's kind of horrific stories about the crews being used as forced laver.
There's all kinds of pollution.
Issues in addition to the fact that they're just blatantly violating sanctions. There's more we could do in the insurance industry from an ownership standpoint, from a sanction standpoint, and there's these organizations like the International Maritime Organization out of London under the UN umbrella that's supposed to be enforcing all of these issues. So my point to not only the UN, but to the Europeans and other action should
have been taken a long time ago under the Biden administration. Thankfully, President Trump is taking action and not just sending strongly worded letters. And the Venezuelans felt it, the Iranians are feeling it.
I think there's a lot more that canon should be done.
So I want to end, mister ambassador by telling you about the presentation that the President and you arranged about Iran where you brought in Iranian dissonance to speak directly to Iran. It was powerful. Her testimony, his testimony was I thought, lacerating of the Iranian Islamic regime.
Has the UN remained.
Fixed on the thirty five to forty thousand people murdered by the regime in January?
Yeah, the numbers that were briefed to that meeting from the UN, that was verified by a number of NGOs and infrastructure on the ground was eighteen regardless, it is horrific. It was a wholesale, at scale massacre from the regime of its own people. And to your point, again in the bucket of kind of where can the UN do good? It's a platform that reaches the entire world, and we received a volume of feedback that it was reaching every village, every city, and really kind of stiffened the spine of
the resistance as they were being just wholesale massacred. When we hosted a forum at the UN Security Council with Masa Alina John who was almost assassinated three times on US soil and imprisoned herself, and a gentleman who was tortured in Iranian prison for nine years, and to hear their voices and to hear the international community saying we're not going to stand for this, we are going to stand for the freedom and the basic rights of the Iranian people was incredibly powerful.
So, mister Ambassador at very hard. President Trump has once again achieved strategic confusion. It's better than strategic ambiguity. No one has any idea what's going to happen when when is there a window on Iran capitulating to all of our demands closed?
What's your understanding of when that window closes?
Well, I'm not going to.
Get ahead of the President, Hugh and kind of boxing that or certainly advertising his decision space.
But you know, it's the greatest military in the world.
We can project around the world anytime, anywhere. Obviously there's been a convergence of forces, but if the President decides to keep that for the foreseeable future, we have the capability.
That's you know, what the Defense Department does is present him options, and he's presented a very clear option to the.
Iranians step forward and step up to finally walk away from enrichment, to walk away from long range ballistic missiles, from to walk away from its terraced proxies, and don't slaughter your own people. These shouldn't be anything near controversial for any type of reasonable government that seeks to get along with the with its neighbors and with the international community.
And I think he's demonstrated the or else means something, So we'll see what they decide.
I hope the or else is real. And thank you for joining the minister, Ambassador. Always a pleasure, Ambassador.
Michael Wall of the United States representative the United Nations and doing a fabulous job there.
Thank you, mister ambassador. I'll be right back walking back to America.
I'm Hugh Hewett joined now by Ambassador Michael arn formerly is Reel's ambassador to the United States, also former Deputy minister. In an earlier netting out who government doctor or in good Monday to you, what do you hear about Iran right now?
I think Israel's gearing up, you know, this is gearing up for what they see as a likelyghood.
I can't stress it more than a likelihood.
It's something less than a probability of American kinetic action against Iran. It seems at this point that there's not a lot to talk about these negotiations between the Iran and the United States.
Iran wants to whittle the terms of reference to.
The nuclear program. No, talk about ballistic missiles. No, certainly, don't talk about support for terrorist organizations. And then at least and beyond and even then whittling down the nuclear issue.
They're not talking about giving up in any way.
The so called right of return had a return that was recognized by the Bomb administration. They're talking about maybe freezing the enrichment process and perhaps exporting the enriched uranium they have already.
That's about four hundred and fifty kilograms of enrich ranium.
That's physsile material can be made into a bomb to a third country, perhaps Russia. I can't speak for the president, but that is so marginally, marginally better perhaps than what the JCPOA was. In twenty fifteen, remember when we started having high talk negotiations with the United States at that time very secretive about the Iround nuclear program. There was a notion of freeze the freeze, that the United States would freeze sanctions against Iran in return for freezing the
enrichment process. Sound familiar, Yep. That was about twenty eleven. So we haven't moved beyond that. I don't know if that would be remotely susceptible to this administration. I ardently hope that it will not, And if that's the case, then the military option becomes almost unavoidable.
So doctor Arnt, you study this a lot more closely than I do. The United States has got probably at least one of its Columbia class submarines that can fire one hundred and fifty Tomahawk missills off. They've got hundreds of airplanes on the carrier and in the surrounding regions, and destroyers all have missile capability as well as well. It's defensive capability combined with Israel, can they deal a devastating blow to the missile delivery system before anything else begins.
They can't, They can't. No, it's very hard to find launchers.
Now.
My frame of reference is now forty years old.
It's from the First Gulf War when Saddam Hussein was fighting scud missiles at US from launchers in the western Iraqi desert. We couldn't find them. The United States couldn't find them. Now, certainly technology has advanced, you know, light years since then, but it still may be difficult to find launchers that are underground. Look how the difficulties we had finding launchers in.
Gaza again and again. These people are finding rockets in downtown Tel Aviv.
It's only an hour away by car, and we had trouble finding the launchers because they're underground and they sort of lift up, they fired the rocket and then you know they're underground again and they're camouflaged.
So it's very difficult to find them.
And yes, Iran may have an arsenal of upwards of two thousands of these very heavy ballistic missiles, each carrying many hundreds of pounds of TNT of explosives, but.
They only have a limited number of launchers.
And which you want to do is hit the launchers even before you hit the missiles. It's finding them. It's finding them that's going to be the big challenge. And to do that you may have to see where one gets fired and then see where that you know that flash goes off, and hit it again.
I don't know.
I'm not up to date on the actual technology of loking locating me. I know the technology of locating tunnels, but not of launchers.
And if there's a first right now, if there's a first strike, do you think the United States and Israel combined could do serious damage to the tentacles of repression that have slaughtered the Iranian people and keep them down.
I think that's a bigger that's acts strangely enough, counterintuitively, that's a that's a higher bar.
And I'll explain why you can get the missile launchers.
Perhaps you know we have penetrated Iran's intelligence.
We knew an awful lot about Iran.
Where they're their scientists were sleeping, where their commanders were sleeping. My guesses we know at the location of a certain number of these launchers, But the means of oppression at the hands of the Iranic regime is not something can necessarily be bombed. We're talking about the IRGC, which has about half a million men under arms. You have the army itself, there's about a half million people under arms,
and then you have the besiege. These are these thugs, and the numbers of the besiege arrange for about two million, upwards of five million people.
You can't bomb them. And all they need, all they need is a machine gun.
All they need is an AK four to seven to take down groups of protesters. They don't need ballistic missiles, they don't need a nuclear program. And the hope is, and again it's an art and hope here that once the United States and Israel begins to weaken this regime to an extent that it's almost emasculated, that the people
will rise up again. And the people, whether the people of your own, will take on the besiege, they'll take on the thugs, they'll take on the IRGC, and that's what will bring the regime down.
And a last comment, doctor, I think they're out of money. I mean literally out of money. They're not able to ship ghost fleet oil will seize their tankers, the UN snap back sanctions or in place. Ambassador Walsh has told me that they might have a pipeline or two through Azerberjean, but they're out of money. When does the regime collapse when it's out of money?
Well, I think certainly that that imposing a naval blockade on Iran, which by the way, under his Assa law is an act of war.
A naval blockade they're already in war.
If that's the case, would be very I think, very prudent at this point and put tremendous, tremendous pressure, perhaps even more pressure than a massive first strike.
It's possible that that's what would bring the regime down to his knees.
And what do you expect would follow the capitulation or murder of the Iatola and his molocracy.
Well, I think that we don't know what comes next. We don't know who would take over power. Could be probably something from the IRGC. The IRGC person could be less practical and could be more radical and may think, oh, this is not going to happen to us again. The first thing I'm gonna do breakout and create a nuclear weapons. So nobody dares, dude, nearly tries us again. We're going to become the North Korea of the Middle East. And that's always been a consideration of the Iranian regime. They
wanted a nuclear weapon for many reasons. It was a matter of pride.
They'll say that the Indians have one, the pack of Standis have one.
They'll say that the Jews have one. How is it that sites don't have one? But the major reason is you know that Saddam Husein got invaded by the United States because he didn't.
Have a nuclear weapon. Libya mar Maar Kadafi was overthrown because he didn't have a nuclear weapon.
If we have a nuclear weapon, we won't be Libya, we won't be Iraq, we will be North Korea.
I Sir, hope that we act before then. And doctor Gorn thirty second, is the mood in Israel tense?
The Moon says was tense.
But I've never seen attension like this before. I only can called that hearken back to the weeks before the nineteen sixty seven work, when Israeli mothers went out to protests against the government to tail the government wasn't going to war.
I haven't seen it since then. Taring me about this using Focus against War and every Days Ready.
I talk to him for everybody in my family, and it's kind of less the sensive to say, we.
Know what the price is, we know what the dangers are, but we.
Need this for what we really need this, want it now and bestor Mike Lawn thank you as always, I appreciate the time.
Stay tuned in America. Hi, it's you, Hewett. You've heard me.
Talk a lot about Consumer Cellular how you can switch your carrier and save money without sacrifice. That's because Consumer Cellular uses the same towers as the major carrier. You'll save money every month on your bill without having to sacrifice the quality of coverage. Right now, you get your second month free, plus folks that are fifty get two lines of unlimited talk, text and data for sixty dollars
a month. That's in addition to the second month totally free using promo code Q And are you tired of your wireless company telling you have to talk to an AI robot, download an app, or Horizon pay ten dollars to talk to someone when paying your bill? Yeah?
No, thanks.
Consumer Cellular ranks number one for network coverage and customer satisfaction. According to ACSI, whether you're switching online or over the phone, you'll be working with an actual human being based right here in the US. So switch and get your second
month free plus two unlimited lines of sixty dollars. If you're over fifty, go to consumer sllular dot com slash hu promo Hugh, or call one hundred eight or call one eight hundred four one one forty four fifty four one eight hundred four one one forty four to fifty four. That's one eight hundred four one one forty four to fifty four. Don't forget. My code is Hugh.
It was raining hard in Frisco. I needed one more fare. Welcome back to America.
I'm Hugh Hewett. That, of course, a very familiar song to people my generation. Not sure Bethany Mandel has ever heard it before. I play it because it is pouring in California. Have you ever heard that? Bethany.
As soon as he started playing it, I was like, what am I walking into?
Because Harry the late Great Harry Chapin and his Cat's Cradle. I would recommend it strongly to you.
I think, taxi? What's what's that? Taxi?
He only had two songs Cat's Cradle and Taxi. But I recommend that wrong, Bethany, I've seen you at a John and Rasic conference concert. What is your music outside of John and Drawsic?
So Seth has has named it alt country. I think that's that's what he calls it. I'm looking at him as he's sitting on the yes, he's nodding alt country.
Okay, I don't know what that is, but I'll find out. Do you know that Matt Continetti came up with a nickname for Prime Minister at Taka She who's very anti China, but he's very thatcher like. Matt calls her the Iron Maiden because she was a drummer in a punk rock group like Iron Maiden was.
Isn't that nifty?
That's amazing? I love it.
Yeah, I hope she's the Iron Maiden, Bethany. What do you think is gonna happen with Iron?
What do I think is gonna happen with Ron? I? You know, I don't know. It's been a month since we were saying, you know, President Trump said help is on the way, and help has not come, and so I'm loath to make any sort of prognostications. I will say that the Trump Nettunahou meeting was very quiet. Netanyah who came here and we didn't really hear a peep. There was like one photo of him in Blair House with Marco Ruby, and that was kind of it. So
my radar goes off a little bit on that. I think it's a little sus I haven't checked the pizza numbers around the Pentagon recently, but I think that help might still be on the way. Maybe that's just me being hopeful.
I do too, because I think if it doesn't arrive, it will be a shadow over his presidency, but if it does, it will be a great triumph.
When he posted.
The posts, they talked to me, and he talked to Sean Hannity, talked to a bunch of people about the Iranian people marching. I think he was trying to protect them from the regime, but the regime didn't care.
They murdered him anyway.
So I just don't think Trump lets that go by. It's not very trumpy and to ignore that.
Yeah, if I were to guess, I have heard from people inside Israel, and you have a lot of the same sources that I do. If I were to guess I would think that maybe the Israelis are going to do something in the Americans are going to provide back up. That's my best guess as to what might happen. And that was sort of maybe the purpose of the meeting that we just saw over the week the last weekend with a Finnishiyahu.
It was a three hour meeting. I also point out a three hour tour like Gillian's Island. Now let me turn to my homework. I just had a vive ready Guron, and I asked him to come on because I had to prepare. I'm giving a speech at a Christian college next month, and I'm going to make the speech about the obligation of Christian colleges and their students specifically to combat anti Semitism, Why and how to do it?
What do you think are the why and how to do it?
So it's interesting. So I just was at the October seventh play at the Kennedy Center last month and there was a huge contingent behind me of Regent University School students along with former Representative Michelle Bachman. She brought them and she said it very plainly. You know, we are brothers and sisters and you know, it is our obligation
as faithful Christians to defend the Jewish people. And I think that's that's a strong understanding of faith in a way that I'm not seeing from a lot of sort of newcomers to especially Catholicism, like Carrie Prejan, who was the former Miss California who turned the Religious Liberty Commission into a laughing stock. She just converted a couple of months ago, and all of a sudden, she's proclaiming that them to be a Zionist.
I'm a practicing Catholic. That was deeply embarrassing. She has no idea what she's talking about. It was a slander on the Catholic Church. I just got done talking to Heavy John Paul, the second Benedict went to great lengths to repudiate anti Semitism in the church. Historically, there's a lot to repudiate there. But she pops up Bolaga Jack in the box out of nowhere. And I want to know, and no one's done the report who put her on the commission?
Yeah, no, that is that is a good question. She doesn't seem to have a basic understanding of Catholicism, and and that's the case with a lot of these antisemitic and you know they call themselves anti Zionist, but these influencers, they don't have a really basic understanding of what their
faith Truish teaches in a lot of areas. And so I think it's important to you know, when you're speaking to students, to just explain to them be well read on everything, not just as relates to to Jews and anti Semitism, but it all, it all is in the under the same umbrella of you have to be literate in your faith.
Being a community follows you have to be literate. Unlike aoc.
Yes who thought that cowboys didn't come from saying that was what she said.
Yeah, I'm about a man.
It's embarrassing.
It what's very embarrassing now bethe back to the college kids. I don't make a theological argument, as as some evangelical Christians do, that that the end times are upon us in Israel.
That's not for me.
I defend Israel as a secular ally of the United States, and I defend Jews as a Catholic who thinks all human beings have human rights. But I'm curious, do you think they have a special obligation, given the history of anti Semitism in the church to do special things.
Why are you asking the laps to Catholic turned you that question. There's no right way I could possibly answer that question. You might not walk into that trap.
Now, Danny Silva was ahead of you.
I am not walking into that. Everyone should do with their heart and their faith leader thinks they should do.
You know what have ev answered?
He answered, get to know some Jews. I mean, it was pretty quick to saying make a visit to Israel. But he didn't go all Israeli tourism board. But he might have done that. Don't you think that helps?
I mean, I certainly think it helps. I mean people of all faiths should go to Israel. It's a really cool, interesting place with so much amazing history and biblical everything whatever. And you know, being a good person inevitably often follows.
Did you listen to Brett Stevens State of World Jewelry speech at.
The ninety second Street Why it was amazing And he was right.
On he said, and I said, anti Semitism is birthed in resentment, stewed in envy.
Perfect.
Yeah, absolutely perfect, and there's there's no fighting it so don't even try. The Jews should just live their lives and raise and educate as many Jews as possible, and stop apologizing for ourselves.
I agree. Now.
The other part of it is, though I don't believe in calling attention to that lady or any other anti semit online.
I don't use their names.
I don't want to reply to them in posts. Do you believe I think I've got the right way to deal with which is to marginalize.
What do you think?
I don't know if I agree. I mean, when you think about sort of the biggest names right now out there that are spewing this. Candace Owens has one of the biggest podcasts in America, she has an audience. It's not meat platforming Candace Owens. It's you know, I wish it were the case that we could sort of starve them of oxygen, but that's I don't think that that's a reliable action plan right now.
I think it will fade that because it's so intellectually thin.
In fact, there's nothing there. It's not even thin, it's invisible. There's nothing there.
So I have taken a lot of stupid people, though, I.
Know, speaking of which did you see the President Obama interview this weekend.
Yes I did.
I'm going to spend the next hour and a half on that interview. Bethany Mandel, thank you. Follow her on exit, Bethany Shondart, and I'll look up All Country or whatever that is that you listen to. You listen to Harry Chaffin, Stay tuned in the middle