The Battle Over Hormuz, Settler Violence, and Turmoil in the Gulf

0:00 Jav Ratiger, thank you so much for being here.

0:02 Thank you for having me.

0:03 Good to be here.

0:05 Let's start with the news of the day.

0:06 We're taping Monday around 100 pm.

0:08 In the past 24 hours, Trump said that US Navy would assist ships

0:14 that are essentially trapped in the Persian Gulf.

0:16 I think there's around 3,000 ships um

0:19 that have not been able to cross the straight.

0:22 This has led to a bunch of confusion in the past

0:25 24 hours on what exactly that would look like.

0:28 And also Iran said it struck a US warship.

0:32 The US then denied it.

0:34 Can you just give us a status update on the straight of Hormuz

0:37 which has been sort of the biggest lynch pin in the recent conflict?

0:43 Well, one is completely untrue which is uh the Iranians have claimed repeatedly

0:48 to have had military successes against

0:49 the Americans that simply never never happened,

0:53 never materialized, nobody can find them.

0:55 Um so that you know this is this Iranian regime uh starts blustering

1:01 when it's uh when it's in trouble and it's obviously in tremendous trouble.

1:05 You know people can argue that they're

1:06 winning that that very well might be true.

1:09 They might survive this and they might have new

1:11 leverage over the straight of Hormuz and that would be

1:13 what a victory would look like for them but they're

1:14 still broken and they have no conventional forces anymore.

1:18 And so the bluster is is of that of that sort.

1:23 But uh two things are true.

1:24 one, the straight of Hormuz remains closed.

1:27 At the same time, the American blockade of Iran is

1:32 uh succeeding um massively and the Iranians are under severe pressure.

1:40 They're still producing the oil.

1:42 They're still trying to put it somewhere.

1:44 Mhm.

1:45 They pulled a a huge oil tanker out of mothballs to fill

1:48 it up at the port at Kag Island uh just to have

1:51 somewhere to put oil that they're still pulling out so they'll

1:54 eventually be able to get it onto the market when something relents.

1:58 Uh it looks like Trump is holding the line on that.

2:02 And it's interesting because I think that obviously the world is

2:06 much less um susceptible to this kind of embargo by Iran

2:11 than Iran is to an embargo by the US Navy

2:14 to a excuse me to a basically a blockade by the US Navy.

2:18 The Iranian regime, specifically the IRGC,

2:23 owns most of the energy uh industry of Iran, the oil, the gas.

2:28 This is a country that is fabulously wealthy.

2:31 uh in gas and oil.

2:32 It's the second biggest producer of one in the world,

2:35 the or the second the second biggest reserves of one

2:37 in the world and the fourth biggest reserves of the other.

2:40 Um and that is one of the major levers of control that the RGC has inside Iran.

2:49 This is a regime that for all the ideology and for all

2:52 of the politics and for all of the religious narrative,

2:56 it basically just owns the Iranian economy.

2:59 Mhm.

3:00 And it uses that as a vast patronage system uh to to sustain its rule

3:07 to create huge interest for every ordinary Iranian

3:10 to work with the regime or be close to the regime or join the besiege or various

3:13 different forces of the regime and and therefore

3:16 have the benefits of the oil economy that are under total control of the regime.

3:20 It's extremely similar in that sense to the North Korean economy basically.

3:24 and Trump is taking away from them the most fundamental driver of that

3:29 for decades of American sanctions.

3:31 The Iranians would evade those sanctions uh by selling to the Chinese

3:37 and they can't get the oil out to the Chinese right now.

3:39 So, um the what is the situation?

3:43 The situation is that the straight of Hormuz is locked up.

3:46 The Iranians are capable of harassing.

3:48 They did shoot apparently at at a at an Emirati

3:52 uh tanker that was trying to make its way through.

3:56 Uh but the Americans have also forced

3:58 the Iranians into the same counter blockade.

4:01 And it's a test of wills.

4:02 Like all, by the way,

4:03 war like like all political contests, it's a test of wills.

4:07 And if the Americans will see this through,

4:11 this regime won't be able to pay its own fighters.

4:14 And that's a game changer.

4:15 I know at the pump it's about $4.29.

4:17 29 cents.

4:18 Um, that was some numbers from this morning.

4:21 So, does the US have time on its side?

4:26 That's an an American domestic political question.

4:29 If the Americans pull back now, then this will be leverage that Iran will

4:37 have over every party in every election forever more.

4:42 You need to be more energy independent.

4:44 Mhm.

4:45 There's now a scramble all over the world for other sources of energy.

4:48 Well, that's not a bad thing.

4:50 Everybody's looking a second and third and fourth time.

4:53 I think I just saw numbers the the number

4:55 of electric vehicles being sold just spiked, right?

4:58 Because the price at the pump is higher.

5:01 Mhm.

5:00 Well, is that a is that a terrible awful thing?

5:03 um this is short-term pain that if you can see it through as a society

5:09 has so many long-term benefits that have nothing to do with the Middle East,

5:13 but also in the Middle East,

5:14 this is the kind of short-term pain that uh you need.

5:17 I also should say one last thing.

5:18 There are indications that if um so far

5:21 the way this is going, I I get the anger.

5:24 The anger is absolutely justified.

5:25 I I should say people can look this up on the free press site.

5:28 Um that just before the war started um I published and others also published

5:34 similar things in a similar vein that uh

5:37 this was not going to be a war where the Iranian regime is felled by bombs.

5:41 That's just a misunderstanding of this regime of what it is.

5:43 This is not a regime.

5:44 This is a regime that is built on a kind of martyrdom ethos that is called

5:48 the resistance or in Arabic mukawa which is

5:51 actually translated borrowed into Persian as the same word.

5:56 And resistance doesn't mean just the literal term resistance in English.

6:01 Resistance is a specific ideology that argues

6:04 that martyrdom is a force multiplier.

6:08 That's the capacity to suffer in the religious framing

6:11 of Shia esquetology that this regime is based on.

6:14 If people read somebody like Ali Shariati,

6:16 the the theologian and sociologist or bone

6:20 trained sociologist whose writings in the 70s um are a kind of Shia version

6:24 of of Catholic liberation theology from Latin America,

6:28 a Marxisification of Shia esquetology and Kumeni read Sharati

6:33 and that's a big part of this regime's ideology.

6:35 Long story short, this is a regime built

6:37 on the principle that you die in the war.

6:42 You sacrifice yourself in the war and that is the victory.

6:45 And if the war itself, the that battle you've lost,

6:48 your death as a martyr creates generations of more willing to fight and die.

6:53 And so victory is assured through martyrdom.

6:55 And so this is not a regime you can actually bring down.

6:58 They're built ideologically, intellectually, culturally to suffer.

7:02 And suffering itself is the redemption.

7:04 And so you can't bring them down

7:05 by bombing them and taking out their leadership.

7:08 Now this is something that luckily we wrote it before the war,

7:10 you know, so we can't come down and say we don't, right?

7:13 Um but also um so how do you bring them down, right?

7:16 And the answer is you make them make their own people suffer.

7:20 You make them not be able to pay literally pay

7:24 their own soldiers that their soldiers can feed their families.

7:28 You make this regime insolvent.

7:29 And when you do that, um, it still has to fall.

7:34 It still has to pay an army.

7:35 It still has to build, you know, run an economy.

7:37 And and if so, the the options are very stark.

7:41 Either you see this through for the West, I think.

7:43 Either you see this through and this regime is

7:46 weakened to the point where it is best case scenario,

7:49 North Korea, worst case scenario, false.

7:51 I mean, for the regime, or you don't see this through and the straight

7:55 of Hormuz is forever in someone else's hands.

7:58 What does seeing it through look like?

8:00 Because I think right now, you know,

8:01 people are looking at these failed negotiation attempts and there's an impass.

8:06 And the question is, does the US walk away?

8:09 Does the US escalate?

8:10 What would every single person commenting on this very nearly in the west,

8:15 certainly in the most prestige media, um,

8:18 has been arguing that the West is weak.

8:21 The Americans will eventually have to give up.

8:23 The Iranians are reading all of it and they're saying, "Well, we're strong.

8:27 Apparently, we have the upper hand.

8:29 Trump will break because of oil prices long

8:32 before we have to break because our economy bottoms

8:35 out and we don't have a budget to pay

8:37 our soldiers." That's what that that's their calculation.

8:40 Now, they also feel like because so much of the leadership is taken out,

8:44 because so many of their conventional forces are taken out,

8:46 so many assets of the regime are taken out, they have less to lose, right?

8:50 That you've already hit us.

8:51 you've already taken away all everything that could be taken.

8:54 You in a sense America has spent its escalation at the beginning

8:58 and now we hold out for a better option.

9:01 So they have this posture that says we could probably negotiate

9:06 a better solution because the other side will get more desperate over time.

9:10 When you face an enemy like that, you have to be better.

9:15 You have to be more steadfast than them.

9:18 This is a test of wills.

9:20 What does going forward look like?

9:22 What do you actually need to do?

9:24 You have to hold the blockade.

9:25 Hold it for as long as it takes.

9:27 And if it's as long as it takes isn't three months,

9:29 but three years, hold the blockade.

9:32 Let the Iranian regime find other ways to feed its people.

9:37 Find other ways to take care of its soldiers.

9:39 Find other ways to finance its oppression mechanisms inside Iran.

9:43 You have to bring it down.

9:44 This is an incredibly important distinction

9:47 and really useful for people to understand

9:49 if they want to understand what's about to happen in the Middle East

9:52 going forward between how the Israelis perceive this war and how the just

9:56 about everybody else probably the Trump administration

9:58 seems to get what the Israelis see, but just about everybody else doesn't.

10:02 The Israelis look at the enemies that surround them,

10:06 specifically Kamasbah and the Iranian regime,

10:11 and they understand deeply that these are Mukawa organizations, Mukawa actors,

10:16 actors built on a sustained, permanent,

10:20 total martyrdom ethos of neverending war until the other side because

10:24 it is powerful and therefore also arrogant and therefore also ultimately weak.

10:30 But we who are willing to suffer have divine favor

10:32 and therefore we will continue forever and ever the war.

10:35 We will never stop the war and eventually the bad guy, the enemy will fall.

10:38 And so Israel faces abah that will never walk away from the battlefield.

10:43 A kamas that will never give up its guns and allow Gaza to be rebuilt.

10:46 And an Iranian regime that doesn't care how much

10:48 suffering it has inflicted on Iran for 47 years.

10:51 And the Israeli response, and this is the key, this is the important thing.

10:55 the Israeli response to meeting an enemy of this sort which

10:58 after October 7th the Israelis became convinced will never not attack.

11:02 The question is if you have a war guaranteed,

11:05 do you let the war happen on the enemy schedule or on your schedule?

11:08 That's the only question the Israelis believe they have to to make.

11:12 And given those two choices,

11:13 they're making the choice to have it be

11:14 on the Israeli schedule rather than on the Iranian orb schedule.

11:19 So the Israeli response is very simple.

11:21 We were not going to be self-sacrificial.

11:23 We're not going to martyr our own population on the altar of your destruction.

11:27 We don't have that religious impulse to redeem

11:29 Islam through that kind of catastrophic collapse.

11:33 But what we mean is we will fight and we will

11:37 be steadfast and we will go to round after round after round

11:40 and we will see you everywhere you are and we will

11:43 meet you there and you will come for us in any arena.

11:46 We will meet you there on your terms no matter what the international

11:49 press says or the think tanks say and we will still defeat you.

11:52 That's the Israeli perception.

11:54 And we're used to having to meet them not in one round, not in two rounds,

11:58 but in two decades of rounds of war and then through their sheer defeat,

12:04 them having moved on, them having to move on from it.

12:08 Well, this understanding is really contrasted by how a lot of Americans

12:11 and I think even a lot of American politicians understood this most

12:15 recent war on February 28th because I think a lot of people

12:19 in the US said this is going to be a short encounter,

12:22 a few weeks and it has been much longer than

12:26 a few weeks and has potential to go months ahead.

12:30 I'm curious if you could comment on maybe

12:33 some of the fissure between how the US understood

12:36 this was going to play out and how

12:38 Israel maybe understood this was going to play out

12:40 in the immediate aftermath of October 7.

12:42 I think it was October 8, maybe October 9.

12:45 Um I was on a podcast where I said this would go to Iran.

12:49 This the logic of it doesn't have any other logic in terms of Israeli

12:52 strategy and in terms of the union of fronts as the Mukawa Axis calls it.

12:57 Yeah.

12:57 um that this would not expand into the regional war between Israel and Iran.

13:01 And I got I got letters, you know, you crazy wararmongering idiot,

13:05 what do you really think it's going to go?

13:07 Come on.

13:07 It's um but of course it then it then it then did and it could never not have.

13:13 And the last three years,

13:14 the Israelis have shown that they're not actually exhaustable.

13:18 And the Mukawaba Access has shown that all it

13:20 can deliver is mass destruction to their own side.

13:23 They literally have no capacity to build out a serious internal economy.

13:26 They're not built for it.

13:27 They're only a martyrdom cult and the Iranian regime.

13:32 And um and so no, it was never going to just be one round.

13:37 And I I don't I don't know where that perception ever became a valid perception.

13:42 I I get why a government going to a war

13:44 wants to sell it as fine as like a small thing,

13:47 contained, cheap, we're going to succeed.

13:50 Okay.

13:51 But why did the entirety of the western press like think that that was true?

13:56 But also that the fact that it will be ongoing doesn't make it wrong.

14:00 I mean this regime has destabilized vast tracks of the Middle East.

14:04 I mean I think that what the mistake that was made in the White

14:07 House I suspect speaking from the outside um is that the June war

14:15 was unbelievably successful.

14:18 Unbelievable.

14:19 It It demonstrated truly incredible Israeli capabilities

14:24 that nobody expected to see on the ground.

14:28 And that convinced, I think, the Americans,

14:31 the White House, that a new round of war.

14:36 How did the Israelis pull off what they pulled off in June in 12 days?

14:39 American hardware.

14:40 Well, who else has American hardware?

14:42 America.

14:43 So, we obviously can do this as well.

14:45 and we can actually win this and it can

14:46 be this fast and quick uh kind of u attack.

14:51 The June war was limited in its success.

14:54 Forget the rhetoric.

14:55 It was limited in its success, but it was successful.

14:58 This war so far is limited in its success.

15:01 There's much that still isn't accomplished, but it's incredibly successful.

15:05 Huge amount of things were accomplished.

15:08 And and so if you don't have that expectation

15:11 that this is going to be long and grueling and is necessary,

15:16 then you're going to constantly be disappointed

15:17 even as you go from success to success.

15:20 Don't think it'll end fast.

15:21 This is something luckily we said before

15:23 the war first right before February war started.

15:26 So we can say it now without um it won't end fast,

15:30 but that doesn't mean it's not succeeding

15:32 and that doesn't mean you don't see it through.

15:34 Otherwise, you're conceding the straight overh to Iran.

15:36 Aside from reopening up the Straight of Hormuz

15:38 and ensuring that Iran doesn't have control over it,

15:40 what else needs to happen for Israel to comfortably

15:45 walk away and for the US to comfortably walk away?

15:47 I think the Americans can't walk away with Iran exercising a new power

15:52 it didn't have before, which is what the straight of our moose represents.

15:54 Iran is demanding the right Got it.

15:56 to exact fees.

15:57 Everything else is a slightly weaker Iran.

16:01 Okay.

16:01 Round, you know, point to America.

16:02 You can walk away.

16:03 in Israel.

16:05 Um, Israel is not ever going to walk away unless the regime is no longer

16:09 unless it's a fundamentally different Iran.

16:11 Okay.

16:12 Yeah.

16:12 Incidentally, um, you'd be surprised how many Gulf states say this now.

16:18 How much pressure Qatar is now putting on Kamas

16:20 because Kamas wouldn't condemn Iran for bombing Qatar.

16:23 How much the UAE leaving OPEC is a result of this war.

16:27 People are worried about the gas prices because Iran controls the hormuz.

16:32 The break up of OPEC will do wonderful things for gas prices.

16:36 It's a it's a gigantic cartel that sets oil prices.

16:40 Um there's a lot of good that comes out of this war and if you walk away now,

16:44 you lose all the good and are left with all the bad.

16:46 UAE left OPEC.

16:48 It could be good for, as you're saying,

16:49 oil prices that they'll drop because they'll pump

16:51 more than what they were constrained within the agreement.

16:54 Can you tell us a little bit more about how it signals also um maybe

16:59 a new phase of the relationship between UAE and Israel and UAE and the US?

17:03 We discovered um you know after the guns

17:07 stopped firing um although Iranian missiles uh

17:11 targeting the UAE today uh we discovered

17:15 that Israel had sent u Iron Dome batteries

17:20 but operated with Israeli soldiers by Israeli soldiers on Emirati territory.

17:24 Right.

17:24 We discovered that when the chips were down,

17:27 we discovered the Amiradis themselves had built out

17:29 a missile defense system that was nothing to sneeze at.

17:33 Um, secondly, that the Israelis would come would put

17:36 life and limb on the line uh to defend them.

17:39 And the Amiradis looked around and they said, "Well,

17:42 who actually will fight with us in a war?" Actually,

17:45 practically, everywhere you go, you see this alliance.

17:49 um you see this this sense that they're dependable uh by both sides.

17:54 And so the Amiratis are looking around and what what is OPEC?

17:56 OPEC is a way to ensure that small oil producers don't

18:00 go independent and ruin everybody else's high price high energy prices.

18:05 The Amiradis want to be able to undermine the energy prices that Iran can pull.

18:10 The Amiradis want to be able to pressure everyone around them.

18:13 The Amiradis want to play the game at a high level,

18:17 aggressively, and serve their own interests.

18:21 This is a very good thing.

18:22 Okay, this means that the Americans will have an ally undermining

18:26 the people trying to raise gas prices whenever they need it.

18:29 And um it's sustainable and it's permanent

18:33 and billions have already been invested in it.

18:35 And we're going to see shipping corridors through Israel uh over land.

18:40 We're going to see new pipelines that were already activated.

18:42 the Saudis, the Emiratis, they're talking about it openly.

18:45 New pipelines over land to prevent the Iranians from ever having

18:48 the ability to shut down the straight again in that way.

18:50 Everything is changing.

18:52 Everything is changing.

18:52 And the longer America holds the line,

18:55 the more powerful and deep and long-lasting that change will

18:58 be and the better for America in the long term.

19:01 Let's move on the map to Lebanon,

19:03 which is another puzzle piece in all of this, specifically Hezbollah,

19:06 which controls the southern region.

19:08 and hundreds if not thousands of rockets have

19:10 been fired from Hezbollah controlled territory towards Israel.

19:15 There's been uh uptick in the response.

19:19 Can you just talk us through what's happening in Lebanon right now

19:23 after the uh killing of K the assassination of K

19:27 by the joint USI Israeli war effort um Lebanon uhah

19:35 made the decision to step inh the the leader ofah

19:39 has been under tremendous pressure by a lot of the um

19:43 a lot of the commanders on the ground who are

19:45 humiliated by how the the actual fight with Israel They've

19:49 been building for 30 years to fight Israel in a great

19:51 war that was supposed to be October 7* 50.

19:55 And then when the actual war

19:56 came between various Israeli intelligence operations,

20:00 famously the pagers, but there were quite a few ones that were less famous,

20:04 uh, and the unbelievable intelligence penetration that allowed the Israelis

20:08 to chase after NASA from one hiding place to another.

20:12 Um, was was was brought to its knees uh without the Israelis suffering,

20:18 you know, much at all.

20:20 It took a year of emptying the Israeli north and rocketing Israel with tens

20:24 of thousands of rockets for the Israelis to then turn their attention to.

20:27 But once it did, broke and there was a lot of pressure for a a you know, rematch

20:33 and to reclaim the honor of Lebanon doesn't want this.

20:38 The Lebanese have desperately said everywhere, everywhere you turn,

20:41 everywhere you go in Lebanon, they don't want this war.

20:45 When K was taken out, the leadership of decided they had no choice.

20:50 This they were going back to war to reclaim their honor.

20:54 There are Lebanese analysts writing um just heartbreaking things.

21:00 For example, um I talked to my contact,

21:05 writes one of them, they're ready to die.

21:10 This is it.

21:11 There's nothing to live for if they just crumble before Israel after.

21:15 That is what that was their defining purpose was to be that Iranian front,

21:19 to be the great front of the mukawa,

21:21 of the resistance to that would defeat Israel,

21:23 to be the crown jewel of the resistance.

21:26 and now they're ready to die just just so that they don't lose that honor.

21:32 And this person was writing this as a great tragedy and warning

21:36 to his people in Lebanon because he was saying they're going to drag us down.

21:41 Nothing will stop them from dragging us down.

21:43 There's nothing we can do to there's nothing the Israelis can

21:45 do to the Israelis unfortunately uh basically think that can't be broken.

21:53 There's no damage you can cause to Lebanon that will deter them,

21:56 that will phase them.

21:57 The lesson from Gaza is that even what Gaza has faced won't break Kamas,

22:02 won't even convince Kamas it's a bad idea.

22:04 It won't deter.

22:05 And that's true of Lebanon.

22:07 Now, you can make the argument in Gaza,

22:09 yeah, but kamas are fighting for Palestinians.

22:12 The Palestin It's not like the Palestinian conflict has ended.

22:14 It's not like the Palestinian needs

22:16 or claims on the Israelis have somehow evaporated.

22:21 What about Lebanon?

22:23 What's the excuse in Lebanon?

22:25 What is the excuse for a martyrdom called

22:27 dragging the country into a war it doesn't

22:29 want in which the Israelis over time are

22:31 going to destroy more and more and more?

22:34 People are talking now about how the Israelis are taking outbat tunnels,

22:37 a vast tunnel system under those villages.

22:40 Everybody knows about the tunnel systems.

22:41 People who don't know are pretending.

22:43 It's it's vast.

22:44 It's real.

22:44 It's it's big.

22:46 And the Israelis are taking them out.

22:47 And Lebanese villages are being broken.

22:51 There's demolition happening on a large scale in that front

22:54 line of villages right up against the border

22:56 of the armed to the teeth with tens of thousands

22:58 and even hundreds of thousands of rockets and missiles.

23:01 Why?

23:01 Because there's no other way to push back from the border.

23:04 The Israelis have discovered that if you just bulldoze

23:07 everything for a few kilometers past the first mountain ridge,

23:11 then they can't fire direct line of sight into Israeli towns and villages.

23:15 We have had people at their kitchen table

23:17 in the northern Israel northern Israeli villages killed by rocket

23:21 fire or or RPG fire or or you know

23:25 rifle fire from that uh first line of villages.

23:29 And so where do things stand?

23:30 The Israelis have moved in.

23:32 The Israelis are demolishing every asset they can get their hands on.

23:36 Is not engaging the Israelis much on the ground.

23:38 They're playing all kinds of footsy and guerrilla warfare kind of stuff.

23:41 There's not going to be a pitched battle.

23:42 It's going to be a long, slow degradation war that will leave southern

23:46 Lebanon looking uh like parts of Gaza.

23:48 Look, some of Israel's critics see the images on Lebanon's southern border,

23:54 the demolition of these small towns, and say, "This is a land grab.

23:58 How do you respond to those critics?

24:02 How do you debate intention with people who don't even know

24:05 the language of the people they're interpreting the intentions of?" Mhm.

24:11 Um should test the Israelis.

24:13 Uh don't shoot so many rockets at our northern towns and villages that you empty

24:18 our north for a year and then complain that we are doing a land grab.

24:24 Uh ifah disarms, which is not Israeli request,

24:30 it's a Lebanese government policy.

24:32 It's the Lebanese government request.

24:34 UN Security Council resolutions, UN General Assembly resolutions,

24:38 has to disarm according to literally everybody.

24:41 If you don't think disarm, fantastic.

24:42 The international community on this issue is on my side,

24:45 not on your side, dear activist, in the name of international law.

24:49 Um, disarm, walk away from the battlefield,

24:54 become a pacifist political party interested in the greater

24:59 prosperity and development of a free market, free politics kind of Lebanon.

25:04 and the Israelis will pull out to the line.

25:06 And if they don't, you're right.

25:08 But it's not like you were pushing them out.

25:10 You're the reason they're back in.

25:12 The Israelis went left Lebanon in 2000.

25:15 They only had the the war in Lebanon 2006 because carried

25:20 out a crossber raid that killed soldiers and kidnapped two soldiers.

25:24 And then they left Lebanon again.

25:26 And then they were dragged back in after October 7 because

25:29 insisted for a year when the Israelis were not in the north,

25:31 they were not in Lebanon on bombing

25:34 our cities again and again and again and again.

25:36 And so if the Israelis genuinely believe that there's nothing they can

25:39 do that will make stop this war because that is its religious vision,

25:43 religious doctrine for the redemption of Islam and is

25:46 willing to destroy Lebanon on the altar of that.

25:49 If the Israelis believe that, then this war isn't going to end.

25:53 So disarm, dearbah.

25:56 Test whether the Israelis intentions are to stay in Lebanon.

25:59 If you hold them there for 10 years because you tell them that the only way

26:02 you're going to have safe northern towns and villages

26:05 is if you take a piece of Lebanon,

26:07 then you have held them there for 10 years while blaming them for the land grab.

26:12 Again, there's so many reasons

26:16 to think that the Israelis owe the Palestinians answers.

26:20 owe the Palestinians a completely reshaped in the West Bank in in Gaza.

26:26 That that you you know what?

26:28 You don't want to justify Hamas.

26:29 Kamas are also incidentally the mass murders of Palestinians.

26:32 Maybe you don't want to justify Hamas,

26:33 but you get the point of the Palestinian cause.

26:36 There are no excuses anyone could possibly make

26:39 forbah and they still try to make them.

26:42 Will Hezbollah disarm?

26:44 No, they will never disarm um of their own valition.

26:49 They are willing to fight to the death

26:51 of themselves and of their entire country.

26:54 Israel has been as clear as possible.

26:58 I've been extremely critical of this government, this Israeli government,

27:02 uh, for the entirety of the terrible war in Gaza, the painful,

27:06 excruciating war in Gaza, which had led to, you know,

27:09 mass displacement, uh, not clarifying, right?

27:12 Only the far right of Israel actually spoke out loud about Israeli intentions.

27:16 And they said it was about ethnic cleansing.

27:18 And the Israeli government Netanyahu has refused

27:21 to actually he did a few months ago, okay?

27:24 But for a good year and a half,

27:25 two years of the war, when the whole world was watching Gaza,

27:29 he refused to actually lay out a vision

27:31 for the future of Gaza that explained what Israeli thinking was.

27:34 None of that's true in Lebanon.

27:36 The Israelis have said a thousand times, "We don't want Lebanon.

27:39 We don't want to go into Lebanon.

27:40 We don't want to know about Lebanon.

27:42 We don't want to think about Lebanon.

27:43 You're over there.

27:44 We're over here.

27:45 Stop shooting rockets at us." Right?

27:47 andbah was unable to meet that standard, that very low bar.

27:51 So I think at this point um will never lay down

27:54 its arms and the Israelis will never stop pushing back on

27:59 and poor Lebanon will be caught in the middle.

28:01 And I I I if you ask me, well, what what policy would get us out of that?

28:08 I can't see a policy that changes.

28:10 And so I can't see a policy that gets anybody out of it.

28:13 While most of the media has had its

28:15 attention on Iran and on Hezbollah and Lebanon,

28:19 something that's fallen off the radar a little bit is the situation

28:21 in the Gaza Strip and what's going on with Hamas at a high level.

28:26 Can you just give us a status update on what is happening inside Gaza?

28:31 The Yeah.

28:32 So, inside Gaza, Hamas of course runs half of Gaza, give or take,

28:37 40 to 50% of Gaza.

28:39 uh the Israelis have built out in the last

28:41 few months since the October ceasefire uh some buffer zones.

28:44 So they started out controlling 53% probably you could say

28:48 that under Israeli control now are something like 58 59%.

28:52 Um the rest is under kamas control.

28:55 The vast majority of the population are in the kamas controlled area.

28:59 Uh aid is flooding in.

29:01 There's no restrictions.

29:03 It's immense.

29:04 There's I don't think in the history of war

29:05 there's been this much uh this much aid coming in.

29:09 But the point is that there is vast amounts

29:11 of of aid and stability in Gaza right now,

29:15 but a stability that is sort of a Gaza

29:17 divided between an Israeli zone and a kamas zone.

29:20 But people are living in tents.

29:22 So the the the thing that has stabilized is

29:26 essentially a vast tent encampment uh for most Gazins.

29:30 And uh the anger at kamas is deep.

29:35 It's real.

29:36 It's building vast anger at Israel, but a lot a lot of anger at Kamas.

29:41 And uh one of the ways that that's

29:43 expressed is that we saw Palestinian local elections

29:47 in different places, which kamas pointedly sat out

29:51 often because it would have just been clobbered.

29:54 A lot of Palestinians in different places in the West

29:57 Bank and also in different places in Gaza, uh,

30:00 favor technocrats, favor local families,

30:03 favor stepping back from the ideological groups,

30:06 Fat the Hamas, and focusing on their real lives.

30:10 They think that just about every leader they have had,

30:12 whether it's Mahmud Abbas's government in the West Bank or Kamas in Gaza,

30:17 has led them into, you know, into a brick wall, into destruction.

30:21 And so um so that's where things stand.

30:26 There was a lot of attention on the increase

30:28 in territory controlled by Israel from the 53% to the 59%.

30:34 You should explain why that percentage increased.

30:37 What the Israelis have said publicly is that uh there are buffer zones.

30:42 I can tell you that Kamas has never stopped harassing the Israeli positions.

30:46 So, what that means is that it's really just zones of military control that have

30:52 pushed forward a little bit as Hamas has

30:55 tried to nevertheless get past and and attack.

30:57 Um, and that's what the expansion is.

31:00 It wasn't an expansion into areas where people are living.

31:02 It wasn't an expansion into areas that it's it's not to my understanding,

31:07 not from firsthand, it's not something

31:08 that has fundamentally changed anything on the ground.

31:11 It's not an Israeli claim to that extra 6% of Gaza or anything like that.

31:15 uh Hamas aren't stopping the fight and so neither is the IDF.

31:19 Early in the war, one of the ideas

31:20 was to eradicate Hamas and that clearly hasn't happened.

31:23 They still control there some 50%.

31:27 How are Israelis understanding the success or lack thereof of the war in Gaza

31:31 given that Hamas still controls its territory

31:33 and doesn't seem willing to disband or disarm?

31:36 You're going to hear a lot of Israeli uh conversations about this.

31:38 I mean, assuming the Western press translates it, uh,

31:42 because of course, we're going into an election in Israel.

31:44 And Netanyahu spent the first year declaiming at every

31:49 opportunity that there'll be what it's called in Hebrew, an absolute victory.

31:55 And you know, there's Kamas immediately after the ceasefire uh,

31:58 achieved by Trump popping out of the tunnels.

32:02 So, there'll be a lot of posturing on this.

32:04 There'll be a lot of claims that Netanyahu failed.

32:07 I'll say a very simple thing.

32:08 Hamas is a mukawa actor.

32:11 It doesn't matter how much Gaza is destroyed.

32:13 All death and all destruction is a great martyrdom ethos

32:16 that will give us ultimate religiously assured divinely assured victory.

32:21 Um and uh and therefore the Israeli my sense of the Israeli

32:25 just sense of whether or not Kamas can be defeated

32:32 is a kind of bitter shrug in which you

32:35 just say okay well it would be great if kamas

32:38 could be defeated because if kamas were defeated hundred billion

32:42 dollars would now be flowing into Gaza for the rebuilding

32:45 real fast and the whole world's sympathy would be

32:47 focused on them and the Trump administration would make

32:50 sure as in Trump's 20point plan that was approved

32:52 by the UN Security Council and even maybe under pressure,

32:56 I don't know, approved by Netanyahu himself and had the buyin

32:59 of Russia and China that didn't veto it at the Security Council.

33:02 Um, the Israelis would be pushed out of Gaza,

33:04 the international community led by the Arab world would be

33:07 rebuilding Gaza to the tune of if kamas had been defeated.

33:10 But you know what?

33:11 If kamas won't allow itself to fall, won't allow itself to disarm,

33:15 um, then Gaza can't be rebuilt knowing everything.

33:18 That's right.

33:18 Now, I think what the the Israelis are sort of shrugged off Gaza.

33:21 It's a Basky case.

33:22 The the Hamas Mukawa strategy used to be a threat to Israel.

33:27 Now, it's basically the long-term threat to Gaza.

33:30 Knowing everything you know now, do you think Hamas can be defeated?

33:34 Yes.

33:34 On one hand, people would say, well, all of these Gazin children are growing

33:37 up in this strip where everything is destroyed,

33:40 and that makes Hamas's recruitment effort easier.

33:44 And then there's another camp of people that says, "No,

33:47 a lot of these kids will grow up saying like,

33:49 how could Hamas have walked us into this situation?" And I'm wondering how you

33:54 think about the next generation and how

33:56 they'll fall on what side of that question.

34:00 So, it's not like I can know what people who say,

34:02 "Well, the Gaza war radicalized the youth of Gaza."

34:05 You you can't radicalize the youth of Gaza.

34:07 They were probably the most radicalized youth there has ever been.

34:12 They're they grew up in a kamas education system

34:14 in which the songs in fourth grade are about martyrdom.

34:19 They grew up in the most unbelievably imaginable radicalization.

34:24 There's there's more and there's less.

34:26 Of course, there's people who are diehard

34:27 kamas learning in dieard kamas schools in Gaza.

34:29 It's it's obviously it's a spectrum.

34:31 It's a society.

34:32 It's it's complex.

34:33 Within the complexity,

34:34 they are utterly radicalized in the sense that we're talking about here,

34:37 which is that buying into this mass martyrdom kind of ideology.

34:41 and Kamas has done nothing but push it.

34:42 In other words, anyone who's not radicalized

34:44 in Gaza is because of Kamas educational failure.

34:46 And so, um, the idea that the war radicalized them,

34:51 you can argue absolutely and I have argued

34:54 repeatedly sometimes in bitter frustration that you dradicalize

35:01 by allowing people to imagine that different path

35:06 that needed to have been part of the Israeli strategy.

35:09 It needed to be you you have to articulate it.

35:12 So dradicalization is absolutely possible.

35:14 It involves crushing kamas

35:17 without compromise for as long as it takes and it might take 20 years.

35:21 Secular panarabism took 20 years to kill in war.

35:25 This is stronger.

35:27 What is the plan for the areas of Gaza that are still controlled by Hamas?

35:32 I don't think anyone has a plan.

35:34 I don't think anyone knows how to do it.

35:35 You right now you have a 20point plan endorsed again by the Arab world,

35:38 UN Security Council,

35:39 everybody in which uh everybody wants to come in and rebuild.

35:43 Vast amounts of money for it, vast amounts of political will,

35:46 the deep desire of everyone to do it.

35:48 Imagine a a Democratic administration coming in after the Trump administration

35:52 able to suddenly do it because for some reason Kamas then decides to disarm.

35:57 How much will would there be there to rebuild Gaza?

35:59 It' be tremendous will and and therefore tremendous resources.

36:02 Yeah, Gaza has all of that going for it, but nobody will operate on the ground.

36:07 Nobody will send peacekeeping forces when they're going

36:10 to have to engage kamas in gun battles.

36:13 Nobody anywhere, not Arab countries, never mind the Americans or the Europeans.

36:18 So nothing changes until Kamas disarms.

36:21 Basically, I think that it is fair

36:23 to say that the Israeli strategy against this Mukawa

36:26 actor who cannot be deterred has been

36:29 to transform them from a strategic threat to us

36:33 to a strategic threat to their own societies, their own politics.

36:37 Is no longer a strategic threat to Israel.

36:39 It is a dire threat to Lebanon internally and the Iranian regime.

36:45 I don't know if anybody still needs to be told this, although

36:47 I don't really see the New York Times reporting and grasping this properly.

36:51 The Iranian regime has gutted Iran.

36:55 It's done worse for Iran than it has ever done to any of their enemies,

36:58 any of their neighbors, and certainly to Israel.

37:02 This video is sponsored by Unpacking Israeli History, a podcast hosted by Dr.

37:06 Nome Weissman.

37:08 On unpacking Israeli history, Nome pushes the listener to engage

37:12 with and understand Israel's history and story.

37:15 He really dives into how Israel got to where it is

37:18 with the rigor and empathy and a real willingness to sit with the complexity.

37:23 It's deeply researched storytelling for people who want to understand

37:27 Israel rather than just confirm what they already think.

37:30 Find Unpacking Israeli History on your favorite

37:33 podcast app or YouTube and subscribe today.

37:38 A few weeks ago, you wrote a piece about something very different,

37:40 which is extremism and violence happening

37:44 amongst some settlers in the West Bank.

37:48 Why was it important for you to write about that topic?

37:52 It's escalating.

37:53 It's growing.

37:54 It's part of a kind of um

37:56 lawlessness and incompetence that this government has produced.

38:00 Um inside Israel, organized crime in the Arab community is skyrocketing.

38:09 There are murders constantly.

38:11 And organized crime never stops.

38:13 You know, we have a minister of police in Israel who

38:17 uh is the most far-right uh political party you can be.

38:21 I mean, there's no humans to the right of him.

38:23 This is Ben Israeli politics.

38:24 This is Ben Greer and he's in charge of the police

38:27 and he has been a very forceful minister of police who has

38:31 made sure that the enforcement and the ability and willingness

38:34 of the police to tackle organized crime in the Arab community is reduced

38:38 and part of that weakening of that institution of the police

38:43 just you know if people think that it's merely I say

38:46 that in air quotes merely a racist sort of ignoring of the government's

38:51 responsibility to also offer law and order to the Arab community.

38:55 Um, crime is rising across the board.

38:58 It's rising in Jewish communities.

39:00 It's rising in Arab communities.

39:01 It's rising everywhere.

39:02 And so, we have a we have a government that is

39:06 not running the I don't know how to say this politely.

39:11 They're not running the country.

39:13 They're not running the country.

39:14 and specifically in a tiny sliver of the entire

39:21 settlement movement which is a very big and diverse

39:24 and varied and complex movement and that was

39:26 also we explained some of that in the piece.

39:28 Y its most ideologically fervent 20%.

39:35 Has a a marginalized ideologically extreme 1%.

39:44 That has turned violent.

39:46 And not only is the army struggling to crack down,

39:49 the political class namely Bengir and Betalism Motridge are doing

39:53 everything possible to prevent any kind of crackdown on that violence.

39:57 Let me just say first of all as a caveat um not all the violence claimed to be

40:04 Israeli extremist violence is actually Israeli extremist violence.

40:07 Stories of of of Christian villages or Christian uh churches being

40:12 attacked that turned out not to have been attacked or a fire

40:14 in one particular church that wasn't even set by the people

40:17 that were filmed separately from a different place as part of a pro.

40:21 So there's we're all operating in this fog of propaganda.

40:24 we're all also uh ignoring a lot of the violence

40:28 that has nothing to do with this particular kind of extremism.

40:31 M and when you normalize all of that out

40:33 and you erase all of you remove that all out,

40:36 you're still left with a serious and rising extremist

40:40 violence problem that you cannot pretend isn't there because

40:42 it's there and they're not cracking down on it

40:46 because I think that there's a vision um with Bengir

40:50 and Smidge and Bengri in this government have voting

40:55 have have enough votes to be able to topple

40:58 Netanyahu if he doesn't do their bidding and he's

41:00 given him free reign because he's off dealing with Iran.

41:04 And what they I think are trying to do

41:06 is pressure Palestinian the very small numbers of Palestinians

41:11 in the part of the West Bank controlled totally

41:13 by Israel to as much as possible move to parts

41:17 controlled by ostensibly on paper at least by the PA

41:20 and uh to expand uh Israeli control of certain

41:24 areas uh that will prevent any possibility in the future

41:28 of any kind of Palestinian state in those areas.

41:30 and they're trying to advance that through

41:32 this kind of lawlessness kind of structure.

41:39 Um I think this is a terrible idea.

41:41 And so when you have a lawlessness, you have military rule,

41:45 you have a West Bank that doesn't have serious

41:48 institutions and is kept that way by people who think

41:51 that it help it's helpful to their political agendas

41:54 that will eventually bleed back into Israel and it'll hurt everybody.

41:58 The thing I think that people want to understand

42:01 more is does Ben Gavir tacitly support this happening?

42:08 Yes.

42:07 And so what do we do with that?

42:09 Like will there be an adequate response so

42:11 long as he is the commissioner of police?

42:14 Like probably no there won't be.

42:16 He'll make sure of it.

42:17 I think also a question is I mean one this should be taken

42:22 care of because it's wrong in the first place and the secondary thing is

42:27 that it's terrible for Israel's international reputation

42:31 when these videos come out of I

42:33 mean I was watching one that was just like really hard to watch.

42:36 It was this I think 75year-old man and he had been beaten and like

42:41 there's that there's the video recently of a nun getting pushed to the ground.

42:44 I don't know if you saw that.

42:45 And like I said, the the priority is

42:49 holding people accountable for doing things that are terrible.

42:51 And the secondary is it's just not good for the state.

42:54 So this is the point.

42:55 There's so much propaganda, but even when you remove all the propaganda,

42:58 the police caught that guy who pushed down the nun, right?

43:01 And it's exactly what it looked like.

43:04 Yeah.

43:03 So there's there's enough happening.

43:05 Separate out the there's a lot of propaganda.

43:07 There there were incidents that we looked into and we they're just simply false,

43:11 right?

43:12 And then you're like, well, everyone will believe it.

43:13 It ran in the CNN.

43:15 It ran here.

43:15 It ran.

43:16 But then there's so many incidents that are not false.

43:18 And so the suggestion that just because

43:20 they hate us and there's insane, you know,

43:23 lies about us doesn't mean that there also

43:25 isn't to say these are not mutually exclusive,

43:28 also this immense rise in this violence that nobody's cracking down on.

43:32 And the Minister of Police tacitly uh implicitly supports

43:36 and allows and thinks that it's helpful to his cause.

43:40 And uh we will pay a price.

43:42 You know, I'm a big believer in responsibility

43:46 and accountability and being adults in the world.

43:50 We will deserve to pay a price when we screw up this badly.

43:54 The thing that I keep coming back to is

43:56 how do they not care about the international world's perception

44:00 of them in the sense of it further isolates

44:04 the country which could be a problem for future generations.

44:08 And I'll just point to this thing that was in the news,

44:09 which was Ben Gavir's 50th birthday cake,

44:12 which had essentially a noose on it to celebrate

44:14 the death penalty bill that he put forward, but it just looks so bad.

44:20 And it's like I keep asking myself like why would he do that?

44:24 And I just I'm trying to understand it more.

44:27 He's appealing to his voters.

44:29 His voters are the rightmost 5 to 7% depends on the polls of of all of that.

44:37 it is possible to be in Israel.

44:39 But more importantly than that, if it was just him, I could say,

44:42 "Oh, well, you know, Ben, we can move on." Uh, it's everybody.

44:46 It's everybody.

44:46 It's mainstream Leude MK's who just don't notice

44:50 that the world exists when they open their mouths.

44:52 Um, by the way, on things that have, you know,

44:54 that aren't even liquid policy or that they're not even,

44:58 you know, to every time there's an MK named Nissim Vatoui,

45:03 nobody's ever heard of him until he started clowning,

45:06 being like a real silly person who just says insane things,

45:09 by the way, insane things about how other Israelis are traitors,

45:11 and saying things within the terms of Israeli politics.

45:14 And then he'll say something about how we have

45:16 to destroy all of Gaza or something like that.

45:18 And that actually makes it into some legal brief filed at the ICC.

45:23 Uh he's a backbencher Liood MK who everyone in Israel,

45:26 every single member of Likood considers a nut

45:29 and a fool and who doesn't have any position and who nobody listens to.

45:32 But it but it's part of the great right proof the the data

45:36 points strung together to demonstrate uh that Israel is fundamentally evil.

45:42 I don't take that seriously because Israel

45:45 is big and complex and it's a society.

45:47 Um, Israelis don't push back on their own right-wing extremists largely because

45:55 they think the other side only offers them more death and blood.

45:58 And so why have that internal war between the Jew

46:01 among the Jews when it's what to the other side will

46:05 not give you anything but right when Israelis believe that there

46:08 was another side that could reciprocate an Israeli withdrawal with peace.

46:12 Israelis voted for governments that would do so

46:14 three times and they no longer believe it.

46:17 And they no longer believe it might have might have

46:19 might have it might be just that Israelis are evil.

46:21 But it also might have something to do with the fact that the main

46:24 factions of Palestinian politics have been telling them that for 30 years.

46:28 And so there's there's there's complexity here and and you can't get away

46:32 from it if you want to actually get anything done on the ground.

46:34 But separate from that whole international perception,

46:37 why do none of them care that the world has no idea, good people

46:43 who who are just decent people watching what's going on, have

46:47 no access to an Israeli voice that tells them that an Israel,

46:51 an Israeli voice that isn't, you know, I don't know what an activist that tells

46:54 them that Israel wants good things for the future.

46:58 Israel wants a prosperous Lebanon.

47:00 Lebanon is the closest possible place an Israeli can go skiing.

47:04 Israelis don't want to ski in Lebanon.

47:06 Ifah was gone from the equation.

47:09 Lebanon would only benefit from this, you know, peaceful border.

47:13 Would there be great trade and love and connection and and mutual tourism?

47:17 I have no idea.

47:18 I truly have no idea.

47:20 But at the very least, there wouldn't be a war and the Israelis would not

47:23 be in Lebanon and they wouldn't want to be in Lebanon.

47:26 And and so, you know, people like to pretend like Israelis are just as evil

47:30 as they need them to be for the purposes of their politics.

47:35 My entire adult life,

47:38 I have had to listen to the Arab world tell me they want me dead.

47:43 And it is difficult for an ordinary person no matter how much they try

47:50 to be decent and open-minded and dig into the ideologies of the Arab world,

47:53 the politics of the Arab world and the social trends

47:56 in the Arab world and try to understand all these voices from where

47:59 they come from and where they're going and where the potential

48:01 is to make peace and move forward in a new path.

48:04 It's awfully hard to listen to a lifetime of genocidal rhetoric

48:09 against us and not think that they should all just go themselves.

48:15 And that is the ordinary Israeli.

48:18 And so put reigning in Benvir is an absolute necessity.

48:23 He he behaves in this way because Netanyahu lets him behave in this way.

48:26 And it's terribly damaging to the country

48:28 and he doesn't care because that's who he is.

48:31 And Netanyahu is willing to pay that cost.

48:33 is willing to have the country pay that cost for his own

48:35 stability in politics but never but we will fix them.

48:39 Our neighbors need to fix some of their own deep problems and deep

48:42 right and being able to look all of that in the eye.

48:46 Benvir doesn't validate the genocidal ideology of it's not

48:52 like oh well if there's a Benvir Israel loses

48:54 what a moral popularity contest and because it's lost

48:57 a moral popularity contest it no longer deserves to exist.

49:00 It is a fascinating thing to me visiting college campuses

49:03 in the United States where a 19-year-old who knows literally nothing

49:08 and on campus is literally cannot does not have access

49:13 to courses on my people's actual history any history we would recognize

49:19 and half of what actually happened to us

49:20 in our history they don't they're not able

49:23 to get that information nevertheless thinking that it

49:26 is their duty to have a great moral position

49:29 right on whether my people gets to live or die.

49:32 I mean the result of this has sort of manifested

49:36 in a few news stories that came up this week.

49:38 For example, British folk putting Francesca Albany

49:41 is the UN special rapaapore on its cover.

49:44 Someone who said that the victims of October 7 massacre were

49:47 killed not because of their Judaism but in response to Israeli oppression.

49:50 Obviously that's crazy.

49:51 It fundamentally misunderstands the anti-semitism detail

49:55 and Israel controls the world and controls the the global economy.

49:58 She said a lot.

49:59 That was one thing this week.

50:01 There's the flotilla, the a new flotilla that was intercepted

50:05 that had 175 people on it doing cartwheels.

50:07 Can I just Can I just be Israeli for a minute?

50:10 None of it matters.

50:13 None of it matters.

50:15 Franchesca Albanesei being on the cover of Vogue UK doesn't matter.

50:21 It doesn't matter that the marches for Gaza were bigger in regularity

50:27 and in duration and in scale and more coherent and cohesive.

50:31 There were a million in in in Pakistan marching

50:34 and a million in Alger's marching and Paris in London.

50:37 If it's not the biggest, it's the second biggest march there ever was in London.

50:41 But it's also the next 50 marches after that second biggest in the scale.

50:46 There was one in 2003 against the Iraq war that was

50:49 probably bigger than any single March for Gaza, but it was oneoff.

50:52 Nothing like the Marches for Gaza has ever existed in the history of war.

50:57 And I'll tell you a dark secret, please don't tell anybody.

51:00 It'll offend everybody's sensibilities.

51:02 It'll never happen again unless Jews are involved.

51:05 And anybody who thinks otherwise, who actually thinks there'll be another war

51:08 in which this kind of m because you'll see

51:10 the victims on your phone because the algorithms will

51:12 care about the victims if the Jews aren't involved, you're lying to yourself.

51:17 And there was absolutely no actual justification for that scale of of uh

51:22 in terms of the scale of other conflicts and the responses to other conflicts.

51:26 It is entirely possible that the Israelis are terrible people and the response

51:31 was driven fundamentally by deeply embedded

51:33 societal bigotries and none of it matters.

51:38 None of it matters.

51:39 America will turn on Israel.

51:41 America will never mind stop the you know the military aid.

51:45 Let's say America actually turns on Israel.

51:47 Stop selling parts to system weapon systems we've got.

51:50 I mean, this came up in a viral clip where Rah Rahm Emanuel said on Bill Maher,

51:53 "The days of taxpayers subsidizing Israeli military are over.

51:56 No more no more financial aid." Of course,

51:58 a lot of people responded to that saying he understands how it works.

52:01 But what I'm trying to get at is he knows that he's

52:05 but it's interesting that he feels the need to play the game.

52:07 He knows that that money is spent in America.

52:09 He knows that Netanyahu in the 90s tried to cancel it uh

52:12 but but Congress sees it as a great way to subsidize certain things.

52:15 He knows that uh America co-owns all of our missile defense tech,

52:20 which was more advanced than American missile defense tech

52:22 in many ways and different parts of it at different ranges.

52:25 Uh because it helps subsidize it.

52:27 He he knows all of it.

52:29 Um and he's nevertheless choosing to pretend

52:31 like he doesn't know it for the sake

52:32 of that the the leadership of the Democratic Party has decided to throw Israel

52:36 to the to the far left and it hopes that the far left will

52:39 be satisfied and not come and take

52:40 over the Democratic party on every other issue.

52:42 Uh, you know, I suspect this is something that a wonderful writer,

52:45 Hussein Mansour, has written.

52:47 I suspect that the Democratic Party is going to ru the day that it threw

52:50 Israel to the to the radicals because

52:52 the radicals will take over everything else as well.

52:54 This is something that generally happens in leftwing movements.

52:56 It happens in Europe.

52:57 It happens everywhere.

52:58 Um, but you know, whatever.

53:00 Good luck to them.

53:01 If the only question that Rahm Emanuel was raising was the 3.8 billion a year,

53:05 sure, take that away.

53:06 Israel is not a poor country.

53:07 Israel can afford it.

53:08 Uh, is that going to solve your healthcare problem?

53:10 Great.

53:11 All of it has to be spent in America.

53:13 It's mostly spent on American jobs.

53:14 You have a better way of spending it on America.

53:16 Great.

53:17 American jobs that build basically the defense American defense contract.

53:20 Yes.

53:20 I think people don't understand that that it's not really

53:23 aid is like it's not like here's have some money.

53:25 It's a buy spending in the American defense industry is what it is.

53:28 And by the way, it's a huge help to Israel.

53:31 I'm not saying it's I'm not saying Israeli shouldn't be grateful.

53:33 They have to be grateful.

53:34 The American taxpayer can do anything they want with that money.

53:36 They don't need to give it to the Israelis.

53:38 But but um there are people on the left that don't

53:41 want to just say the Israelis need to pay their own way.

53:44 There are people on the left who are saying the Israelis should not get planes.

53:47 They should not get missiles.

53:48 They should not have missile defense.

53:50 Iron Dome is a terrible thing according to the left of the Democratic

53:54 party because protecting Israelis allows Israelis

53:57 to live with their terrible, terrible deeds.

54:01 If they faced the full brunt of their enemies,

54:05 then they would not be quite so trigger happy.

54:08 That's the theory.

54:09 And all of it doesn't matter.

54:11 None of it matters.

54:12 We face enemies in the region who have a religious vision,

54:15 a religious ideology that demands our extermination.

54:18 And if they achieve us being up against a wall without support,

54:22 without weapon systems that are advanced, without the ability to fight,

54:25 then we will have to fight because they will

54:27 definitely attack because they will think we are weak.

54:30 They have spent generations telling their kids

54:33 the only reason the Jews keep winning,

54:35 which is a horrific embarrassment to the great Arab,

54:38 to the great Mujaheden, to the great the only reason the Jews keep winning,

54:41 they say, is that they have this American backing.

54:43 But when we lose the American backing,

54:45 they will attack us and they will discover that we

54:47 are in fact not the artificial weak little colonialist European

54:53 project burning ourselves in the sun because we're so white

54:56 and desperate to leave and as soon as they attack, we're all going to run away.

54:59 They will discover that in fact we will have to fight as if our lives depend

55:03 on it and they will discover that we

55:06 will fight more fiercely and they will discover

55:08 that they will suffer more and they will

55:10 discover that in fact they don't have a good

55:12 path to defeating us because we are a democracy

55:15 and therefore also more competent than they are.

55:17 They could be a democracy.

55:19 Nothing prevents an Arab country from being competent.

55:21 They choose incompetence and and and tyrannical

55:24 dictatorships and and bad universities.

55:26 These are cultural choices and they could change those cultural choices,

55:30 but they don't change them.

55:31 They live their lives on this ideological framing of of of dictatorships

55:35 that have sold their people on the Jews being the problem.

55:38 It sounds like I'm exaggerating.

55:39 It sounds like and then you actually go to Egypt

55:42 and you read the newspapers and you discover the extent

55:44 to which the regime blames Israel for every single failing

55:47 of that regime as the Egyptian economy slowly melts away.

55:51 And so if we lose that American backing, we will probably be attacked more.

55:57 And to survive, we will probably have to attack much harder.

56:02 And you know what?

56:04 Maybe that'll finally settle this fantasy that our enemies

56:07 have that the only reason we survive is American help.

56:11 And once we survive and actually defeat them

56:14 more powerfully because we have lost that American

56:17 backing and we have to actually fight tooth

56:18 and nail because we don't have that strategic depth.

56:22 Maybe then they start to reconsider whether or not we're actually defeatable.

56:26 So maybe the removal of American backing is

56:29 the best thing that could happen in the Middle East.

56:32 Either way, the only thing that matters is not the conversation,

56:35 the obsessive insane politics reordering conversation about the Jews.

56:40 out there in the West.

56:42 The only thing that matters is what Israelis on the ground think and do,

56:46 what Palestinians on the ground think and do.

56:49 Kamas will fall one day.

56:51 Palestinians will fail it.

56:53 No one else can.

56:55 Can only really be defeated by the Lebanese.

56:57 Israel can create the conditions for it, but Israel can't do it.

57:01 And the Iranian regime as well.

57:03 At the end of the day, it has to fall from within.

57:06 We can certainly starve it of oil funding, but we can't do more than that.

57:12 I think that's where we'll end.

57:13 Hav, thank you so much.

57:14 Thanks for having me.