Cliff May, good to see you again.
Good to see you, Mandy always.
Well, you got to Colin in the Washington Times today that we must chat about because I have been talking about this obviously. We just passed the horrific anniversary of October seventh, and as if on Q, the pro Hamastikid, you know, fans showed up to I don't know, celebrate the rape and murder and pillaging of twelve hundred Israelis and the continued keeping up the hostages and all of that stuff that's beyond me, Like I can't even get I can't wrap.
My head around that. I don't even want to talk about those people.
That means, I'll just say it is astonishing. Yeah, there are no crazy Japanese celebrating Pearl Harbor Day. There are no crazy Nazis that I know that, you know, celebrate the start of World War two, or I mean, it is really a sign.
It's one.
Look, I totally understand you feel bad for the Palestinian people. I do too, it's awful, But if you're celebrating Hamas Hamas, it is a mus that has caused all this suffering, not just for the Israelis, not just for the Jews.
But for the.
Palestinians, yep, their life was very different. On October six, two years ago. It was a decent life. We can talk with that people so always in prison. No, it wasn't. You can find the pictures online of the restaurants along the beach. It had such promise. We can talk about that. I'll stop.
Look, no, we don't even have to talk about promise. We can talk about what it was when the Jews lived there. I mean, respectfully, the Jews had created a thriving economy. They had greenhouses, they were building their own food.
I mean, we don't have to imagine what that would look like.
But let me jump to your column, because you did a great job here. And I've been trying to do this over the past couple of days with the anti Israel folks that I have in my audience, trying to give them a little bit of the history. I have one young man say, Mandy, I'm just I'm sick of Israel because we give them so much fourign eight and I had to explain that foreign aid to Israel is basically just a job's pro for the defense industry in the United States of America, because so much of that
money just comes right back to our defense industry. But if you could, you do a great job in this column giving the backstory. And I think that the backstory is lost for a lot of younger people especially, which is why we see even higher levels of support for Hamas in people eighteen to twenty four years old.
Yeah, you're absolutely right. Let me. I'll give a little bit of history if I can, But I also want to just say this, our defense industry needs to grow in this world. Given that we're in Cold War two point zero, and the US and Israel worked very closely, and you have to do at a part in this in developing the weapons that war fighters for America, warfighters that both need. The Israelis are very good to do this. They get it done very quickly. They're very inventive with
a test American weapons, they use American weapons. So you know, it was one of the important things that's happened over the last couple of years is the US in Israel combined have stopped the Islamic Republic of Iran, which since nineteen seventy nine has been chanting death to the Israel, death to America, from developing nuclear weapons. May it be permanent,
but they're setback by years. That was done with American F thirty fives flown by Israeli pilots that cleared the way, and then a B two bomber stealth bomber could come from America know that it would not be attacked. Not that I think they'd hit it anyhow, but President Trump would want to risk one and drop massive ordnance penetrators these unbelievable American bombs and do severe damage to the Islamic Republic of Iran's nuclear weapons program. Okay, enough on that,
but I just say, let me just say this. America doesn't need dependents abroad. America needs partners abroad. And if they are fighting, and if the America's partners are fighting common enemies, they are helping us. They are a force multiplier. We need more competent allies who contribute to the collective security, not fewer. That's a whole other show. But I think this is such an important point to make. Our defense industry needs to do more. Anyhow, we can do it
with some recent history and some real distance history. Reason history exist. In two thousand and five, the Israelis withdrew from Gaza. They withdrew every farmer, every soldier, every synagogue, every cemetery, and they did that to test a proposition that there was a possibility of a land for peace solution.
If you just got out.
Of their hair, if you weren't didn't have a Jews around the Palestinian Arabs and Gaza, everything would be called pathetic. Okay, they pulled back and left. They asked for nothing in return.
You know, let me interject something here, because I still remember seeing the news stories. It's not like all the Jews voluntarily got up and left, right, No, it had been dragular. Government literally dragged Jewish people out of homes that they had lived in for decades. They forced the removed Jews from.
The Gaza strip. And I think that gets.
Glossed over by a lot of people who just ignore the fact that these are these things that the Israeli government has done to its own people in order to facilitate peace.
But go ahead, that's absolutely right. These were Jewish villages. They weren't hurting anybody. There weren't a lot of them. They wanted a trade with their Arab neighbors. They were glad to have Arab neighbors in a land gaza that has long time jew a Jewish presence. How long anybody remembers Samson and Elivah, that's how long ago we go back there. But okay, they were going to get but you're right. A lot of them had to be dragged
out some because they said, this is my home. I've made it here, I'm living here, I'm not doing anybody any harm. Others said, if you do this, it's a mistake and you're going to rule the day. And of course it turns out they were right. Now. That was two thousand and five. By two thousand and seven, Hamas a terrorist group, a Muslim brotherhood group talked a little bit about them. Soon What did they do. They overthrew through the palston in authority. I'm talking when I say
I we're through, not in a nice way. Threw people off rooftops, shot people, made chase them away, and said we're taking over here. They took over. By two thousand and seven, huge amounts of money poured in from what we call the international donor community. The UN came in with its agencies to provide services, education, healthcare. Ammas said glad to have you here, but you take your orders from us, and you don't complain about it, right, And they said, yes, sir, you got it. That's what we're
going to do. You know what could have even so, what could have happened is you could have ended up with another thing, now land for peaces and were a two state solution. Because you have a proto state here, right. You have a population, it's governed by Hamas. There are no Jews, there are no Israelis. The Israelis think, you know, maybe we can help. They provide humanitarian aid comes in from anywhere every day through various passes. They supply water
because there wasn't enough fresh water. They supply electricity, wasn't enough electricity. They supply fuel for vehicles, all that cars, Mercedes dealerships, all that existed in gods and Hamas said, okay, that's great. All this is taken care of. We will do what we want to do. And what we're going to do is build a subterranean fortress unlike anything you have ever seen, anything the world has seen, from which we will fight a war. Just had of cost billions
of dollars. They built it. The Israeli should have known they were building it and what they were doing. Why they were building it. Somehow they didn't. October seventh, the Hamas and adjacent those adjacent Toomas break through the fences, very low tech way of doing it. As you know, it's a pogrom, it's a massacre, it's a rape. Young girls who were at a and men who are at a music festival didn't have enough guards. They get killed, they get raped, they get hostages taken away.
All that.
But again, Hamas could have said, we're going to normalize relations with Israel and have a two state solution, and then the same thing would have up on what's called the West Bank, which of course was called Judea and Samaria until the Jordanian army occupied it in nineteen forty eight. They were throwing it. And this is also important. There was never a Palestini Gaza from nineteen forty eight to nineteen sixty seven was administered by Egypt. No one said
let's put a palace Centi state there. The west Bank, actually called again Judaean Samaria, was taken over nineteen forty eight by Jordan. No one said let's put a Palistinian state there. That the Jordanians were there, they expelled all the Jews. They desecrated synagogues in graveyards in sixty seven. In that war, the jew Israelis took it back. So
all that one more thing in history I hate. I don't get too tu wonkey and your listeners, But if you understand Hamas, Hamas is not, doesn't no one want a Palestinian state. They say that what they want is an emirate of the coming Califate. What they believe is that any land ever conquered by a Muslim army remains a walk an endowment from all its and the Muslims, and must be taken back through jihad.
And again.
The Israelis were the last indigenous people to have sovereignty in this land. After that came the Romans. The Romans expelled a lot of the Jews. They had various empires, the Arabs musclim Arabs from Arabia nearby, but not part of the same thing. They brilliant came out That army in the seventh century, went all the way across North Africa and up into Spain, went all the way east to what is now Pakistan and beyond. It was a
great conquest, but it's always empires. All the Jews have done in israel Is decolonize it and say we're going to have sovereignty in a little part.
Of our ancient homeland.
AMAS will not allow that, and that's why there's no two state solution and there was no Land for Peace of solution in two thousand and five.
So, Cliff, let's talk about Trump's strategy and the way that he has kind of blown up traditional diplomacy in the sense that he looked around and said, who can I get on my side that can pressure Hamas? Because how many you've watched the same way I have. You've seen all these stupid peace summits where air Fat shows up with his little entourage and then walks away if he even though he's being offered everything he asked for.
You know, Trump looked at this and said, obviously, we can't pressure Hamas in a way that they need to be pressured. So now he's brought in Turkey, he's brought in Cutter, he's brought in all of these nations, the UAE. He's not brought in all of these Arab states to basically go to Hamas. Yeah, this is the best deal you're gonna get, and you should take it. Has this ever been tried. This particular strategy been tried in that region before.
I'm not sure it has been. You're right that it's the secret sauce. You know, the after October seventh, when it was clear the Israelis we're going to do a lot of damage to a Moss, people immediately said, well, what's your plan for the day after, as if that's their responsibility. But even so, any plan the Reelies had come up with would have been dead on arrival throughout the hour world. And if Trump had just said I got my plan by all by myself, people said, oh, well,
it's Trump's plant. What Trump did was to say, I need backing from you guys, and he got backing from Egypt, he got backing from Jordan, he got back into the studies, got backing from the Amoradis, and even from the Turks and the Qataris. I say even from because the Cirks and the Qataris are long time fervent supporters of Hamas. Right now, how much pressure they're putting on Hamas I can't accept. I don't know, we don't know. I don't I don't I can't even tell you how it's going
exactly over there. I can update you from what I'm seeing in the news, but I don't know the camass not doesn't I want to give up the twenty living hostages we believe that are living, and the twenty five or so dead bodies of those sub that they've killed, except for a lot, a lot of concessions, some of which the Israelis probably are going to give, and Trump may twist their arm to give a lot of concessions.
Among the concessions, we know about two hundred and fifty convicted terror convicted of the serving life sentences for murder. They're going to be released, and they'll go back to the g out against Israel. Seventeen hundred Gosins who have been detained since this war began two years ago. They're going to be released. They'll go back to the Ghad all that. But the Hamas will be saying, that's that's not quite enough. We also want this, this, this, this, and I don't know that we can get all the
all the hostage. That was the other thing that that Trump did, that's different. He said, no, I want the hostages, all of them released first, then everything else falls, not the other way around, because otherwise will never happen. But Hamas will try to say, Hey, I'm not giving up all my bargaining chips. I want to continue to have them. How long any of these twenty can survive in any case torture as they are, Who knows really.
Cliff May is my guest. His column about this is super good. I don't know if you saw cal Thomas's piece where essentially the entire column is it doesn't matter what Hamas says, we can't trust them anyway. And I think that's a very fair assessment. I mean, I have somebody said, do you really think this peace steal is
going to happen? They asked me, and I said, I will believe it when I see hostages walking free and anew in government that doesn't include Hamas in charge of the Gaza strip and Hamas is completely disarmed, that is when I will believe that Hamas is going to do what Hamas says. Otherwise, realistically, none of these paperwork is worth the paper that it's written on until they follow through.
And Hamas is part of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Muslim Brotherhood is going back to the nineteen twenties in Egypt when it started, it started not long after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, which was the last caliphate, and the idea was and remains we need to re establish an Islamic caliphate and empire, and it must in time come to dominate the world, because that's what our religion demands. We must have Sharia law. It's not everywhere.
We have to conquer Rome, we have to conquer Britain, we have to conquer France. And by the they're not doing a bad job at any of that.
Well, yeah, I mean bad job. Good job will depend on what I'm saying.
They're making progress, Yeah, I making Listen, even in Denver, as you say, you've got prohamas in Denver, they're not saying, hey, all these people who have been saying this a genocide going on, Oh my god, the humanity. If they think there's a genocide, then why aren't they pressing for a deal aday that would end the genocide today? Why do they say, no, let's let the genocide go on a little longer because we want to do more damage to Israel. Genocide's okay, We'll take the genocide.
Of course.
It's easier for that. It's easier to say if you're living in Denver, then if you're somebody in Gaza who would just love to see this war end, and I do believe many godsins perhaps most would really like this conflict to end. I'm not gonna say they're going to love the Israelis. I am going to say they may believe a mus has ruined our lives for a generation. Do we have to continue to go? Can we not get some life back for ourselves?
Amen to that cliff Day from the cliff May from the Foundation for the Defensive Democracies. Good to see my friend will talk again soon. Any time May always thinks class