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Oct. 13, 2025 - The Ben Shapiro Show
50:52
TRIUMPH: Trump Frees Hostages, ELECTRIFIES Knesset
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Well, folks, it's been an absolutely extraordinary weekend here in Israel.
I came here to do the holidays with my family over here.
There are a lot of days that I've been taking off as you may have noticed.
Those are the Jewish holidays.
But while we are here, obviously, peace has now broken out.
A ceasefire has been negotiated by the President of the United States and his team between Israel and the remnants of Hamas, most importantly, to release the 20 live hostages and 28 dead bodies that were being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
And this is a near miraculous move by the President of the United States.
He was able to mobilize the entire world, including the Arab world, to put pressure on Hamas to release these 20 live hostages.
And it's an extraordinary thing.
I mean, truly, uh, unless you spend time over in Israel, you you can't really understand the intensity of the feeling around the hostages.
I think that most other countries look at this sort of situation.
They say, okay, you have a terrorist group that took hostages.
Are you really willing to go house to house for two years instead of just aerially bombing the place in order to get those hostages out?
Are you really willing to sacrifice legitimately hundreds of soldiers to death and wounding in order to protect hostages and try to save those hostages?
What are you willing to do?
And the answer in Israel is yes.
That is a thing that Israel has been willing to do.
And this has been the scimitar hanging over the head of the Israelis since the very beginning of the war.
Israel has had to stop and start the war half a dozen times.
Israel has had to take measures that no sane country would have to take in order to try and ensure the safety of its hostages.
Israel has had to move slowly and meticulously and risk the hatred of the world in order for those hostages to get out.
And so the fact that the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were somehow able to put together a deal in which the 20 hostages who are alive came out all at once, which is what happened on Monday morning.
And they were able to do that without allowing Hamas to fully reconstitute in the Gaza Strip.
Israel is still present.
The IDF is still present in some 53% of the Gaza Strip.
Right now, actually, the situation on the ground in Gaza is that Hamas is having firefights with a bunch of local militia groups over who is going to control Gaza next.
And in the end, there will have to be some sort of heavy hand put on the remnants of Hamas, whether that happens from an international group, the way President Trump is talking, whether that happens via the IDF.
We don't know the answer to that yet.
What we do know is that Israel's long national nightmare with regards to these hostages is now effectively over because all 20 of them came out on Monday, and that's an extraordinary credit to President Trump.
Well, Team Trump was on the ground over the weekend.
Jared Kushner, who is very involved with these hostage negotiations, he was on the ground, so was Steve Whitkoff, who of course was quite involved in the hostage negotiations, so is Ivanka Trump.
They were on the ground in Tel Aviv, and they stopped by hostage square, which is a section of Tel Aviv that has been set up where there are protests pretty much every single weekend.
Now, a lot of those protests are merely just a sort of cry of anger and pain over the fact that hostages were held for two long years since October 7th, 2023.
Some of it was political.
There are some members of the hostage forum who are just opposed to the current prime minister of the state of Israel.
But whatever the reason, the unbridled joy felt by all Israelis at the return of the hostages, it's overwhelming.
And by the way, it's not just Israelis, it is Jews everywhere, and I think a lot of good hearted people everywhere, including the president of the United States.
I can say that in my synagogue in Florida, at that synagogue, we say a special prayer for the Chatu theme.
That's the Hebrew word for the hostages.
We've been doing it every single day since the beginning of the war.
That is a reality.
It's why you see all these yellow ribbons everywhere.
Well, Jared Kushner over the weekend went and visited Hostage Square and thanked Steve Whitkoff and President Trump while the crowd went nuts.
The thing to understand is that in Israel, the Trump administration has a 197% approval rating.
There is no one in Israel, with very rare exceptions, typically from the radical Arab parties that does not love President Trump.
Truly.
It's an astonishing thing.
I happen to be in the Knesset for President Trump's speech.
That is why the show is coming out late today.
I was there.
And let me tell you, the unbridled, overwhelming love that Israelis have for Donald J. Trump, it's extraordinary.
Truly extraordinary.
And there had to have been 50 standing ovations for President Trump.
Things he said and just him by name in the Knesset in the Israeli parliament today.
I came straight from there to here.
I'm recording about half an hour after the president of the United States finished his speech.
And the love that President Trump gets from every area of the political spectrum is truly unbelievable.
There are some far leftists in Israel who don't like President Trump, even they today love President Trump.
That is the reality.
So here was Jared Kushner at Hostage Square, thanking Steve Woodkoff and Trump.
Listen to the crowd going nuts.
And I have to tell you, it's been an honor to me to work with such a special man who's approached this impossible task with a full heart and with a full commitment.
And when things got tough and we ran into brick walls, every time that happened, we just said, let's make a new plan.
Let's try again.
And that's what being partners with Steve was like.
And I also have to say, working with President Trump on this, his commitment to seeing peace, to seeing the hostages return home, to seeing Israel secure and safe, and to seeing the entire Middle East stable and thriving, is unmatched.
Thank you.
Meanwhile, Jared also said that he couldn't be more proud to support Israel.
Of course, Jared has been extraordinarily instrumental with regard to everything from the movement of the embassy to Jerusalem during Trump's first term to the acknowledgement of the Golan Heights as sovereign Israeli territory during the first term to the insurance that Israel would be able to get its hostages out without having to quote unquote give up Gaza to Hamas.
Here was Kushner talking about his support for Israel.
I couldn't be more proud to see the way that the state of Israel and its people have carried themselves through this traumatic, unthinkable, horrific experience.
Instead of replicating the barbarism of the enemy, you chose to be exceptional.
You chose to stand for the values that you stand for.
And I couldn't be prouder to be a friend of Israel, somebody who supports Israel, and somebody who fights very strongly to see Israel survive, succeed, and to achieve its fullest potential.
Meanwhile, Ivanka, who of course is Jared's wife, and she's a convert to Judaism.
She stopped by Hostage Square, where she said that she was praying that this week would be one of healing.
And so far, so good.
I mean, I have to say, again, the emotion here is just overwhelming.
This evening begins the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, which is a holiday that we celebrate when we get to the end of the reading of the Bible, the five books of Moses.
When we read the five books of Moses, we separate it out week by week.
So every year we go through the entire five books of Moses.
Simchat Torah is where we actually finish reading it.
Simchat Torah.
That October 7th happened.
The reason I say that is because by the Israeli calendar, by the Hebrew calendar, Simchat Torah was the date of October 7th, 2023.
This year it happens to be the evening of October 13th and October 14th.
Okay, but the unremitting giddiness that is overwhelming the country is extraordinary.
Here was Ivanka.
The return of each hostage is not only a moment of homecoming and relief, it's a triumph of faith, of courage, and of our shared humanity.
applause applause applause We pray and so many people are working so hard so hard to ensure that this coming week is one of healing for you all applause applause
One of healing as we begin and embark on the next chapter, which God willing, after far too long, will be a lasting and enduring peace.
Now, to understand what it means that the hostages were released.
And again, it's not just that the hostages were released.
It's that Israel maintains a forward military posture with regard to Hamas.
It's that Israel has defenestrated Hamas.
I mean, totally wiped out their offensive capacity to Do war, at least for the moment.
They may try to reconstitute, and that will require further Israeli action or international action.
But when this war began, as I've said a thousand times, Israel was threatened not just from the Gaza Strip, where 1,200 Jews had been murdered, and 250 had been taken hostage into the Gaza Strip, along with some others.
But Israel was threatened on its northern border by Hezbollah, a massively powerful terrorist group, funded by Iran, run out of Lebanon by Hassan Nasrallah.
Syria was an ally with Hezbollah.
Iran was threatening nuclear development.
There's terrorism brewing in Judea and Samaria, the so-called West Bank.
And at the end of this war, Israel stands in a strong military posture with regard to the Gaza Strip, having completely destroyed every member of the upper echelon of Hamas.
They killed Hassan Nasrallah and destroyed Hezbollah's rocket capacity with extraordinarily creative military action, including that famous beeper attack.
They hit Hezbollah so hard that the Assad regime fell thanks to the predations of Turkey, pushing HTS into power in Syria.
And then Israel launched Operation Amkilavi Rising Lion, which involved the attacks on the Iranian nuclear facilities capped off by President Trump's attacks with B2 bombers, one sortie finishing off the Fordau nuclear facility in Tehran in Iran.
I mean, that's an astonishing turnabout.
And none of that.
Without that happening, the hostages don't come out.
Because Hamas just would have had that support level.
By the way, the hostages probably don't come out unless Israel also tries to take out the Hamas leadership in Qatar, sending the signal to Qatar that either they start to play ball or things might start happening in their country as well.
Alrighty, folks, more on a historic day and time in Israel and in the Middle East more broadly first.
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Whatever the rationale, the hostages coming home is an extraordinary historic moment.
Truly a historic moment.
Here's what it looked like as the hostages drove by and were welcomed home by thousands of Israelis back into their homeland.
Thank you.
We are coming soon!
Andy!
Ali!
Meanwhile, in Hostage Square, which is where Jared and Ivanka and Steve Woodkoff had been speaking over the weekend.
Cheers erupted as it was announced that the hostages had been safely returned to Israeli forces.
By the way, the hostages, they look gaunt.
They looked they're they're alive.
Many of them are with their family, some of them have had to go to hospitals for recovery periods.
But they were starved.
I mean, the hostages were starved.
We know this because we've seen the pictures of them.
One picture in particular of Eviatar David.
He looks like a Holocaust victim.
Looking gaunt as death.
He was released.
Okay, here is what it looked like, however, in hostage square in Tel Aviv, when people found out that the Israeli hostages were coming home.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Meanwhile, President Trump gets on Air Force One and comes to the Middle East.
He has had obviously an extraordinary run in the Middle East, the most transformative president of mine or any lifetime actually, in the Middle East, totally reshuffling the cards in the Middle East.
Remember, when President Trump took office in the first place, Iran was on the rise.
Its terror proxies were threatening pretty much every American allied country in the region, including places like UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.
And President Trump has now transformed the region into a place where peace seems to be on the rise.
Not just the Abraham Accords in his first term, but now thanks to the defenestration of Hamas, the end of Hezbollah, or at least the complete hampering of Hezbollah, the killing of its leadership, the destruction, or massive setbacks to the Iranian nuclear facilities.
Now it looks as though peace could be on the way.
Here is President Trump in a kind of surprisingly moving moment, I think, talking about what he believes that he has done for the world and his place with God.
You know, I'm being a little cute.
I don't think there's anything going to get me in heaven, okay?
I think I'm not maybe heaven bound.
I may be in heaven right now as we fly an Air Force One.
I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make heaven.
But I've made life a lot better for a lot of people.
And truly it's kind of an amazingly introspective idea there.
President Trump saying that he doesn't think he's heaven bound, but he's done a lot of good things for a lot of people.
That's pretty moving, honestly.
It's rare that I say anything that President Trump says is like actually moving.
But I think that's an actually moving sentiment.
And President Trump likes to think of himself as somebody who does good for people.
You know, with all of the craziness and the truth socialing and the riffing and the comedy.
That in the end, he wants to be thought of as somebody who did good for people.
And that's why I think he finds what he's been able to accomplish in the Middle East so moving himself.
Meanwhile, the Israelis thanked President Trump as he deserved to be thanked.
They put out a gigantic display on the beach in Tel Aviv.
So President Trump would see it as Air Force One was flying into the Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.
In fact, President Trump's Air Force One actually detoured past the window of a Twitter poster named Sal Sadka.
In a low altitude flyby over that Tel Aviv beachfront.
that look like from the ground.
Thank you.
Then, of course, Air Force One landed in Israel, and here is the tape of that.
So President Trump gets out and he hobnobs with the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the rest of Netanyahu's team, the presidents of Israel, Bouji Herzog, Isaac Herzog is there as well.
And the president then offers a ride to Netanyahu in his car in the beast over to the Knesset.
So it's about a 45-minute drive from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The roads are at least partially shut down to allow for that to happen.
Now, in the meantime, I got an invite from the ambassador, Huckabee.
Thank you very much for that, because it's an amazing, amazing experience, to actually watch this historic moment.
Probably the most historic moment in Israeli history since maybe the founding in 1948.
Other contenders might be the liberation of Jerusalem in 1967.
But probably those are the only three that are on the table is the establishment of the state in 48, the liberation of Jerusalem in 1967 with the six-day war, and President Trump culminating a two-year-long war against foes on seven fronts with a victory speech at the Knesset.
So I had the opportunity to actually get there and walk around a fair bit.
Again, the mood was extraordinary.
A lot of red hats.
There are a lot of people who had brought hats that say Trump, the peace president, which you can see on the tape, actually in the crowd when President Trump was speaking.
President Trump didn't go directly into the Knesset Chamber, the parliamentary chamber, which pulled maybe seven, eight hundred people.
Instead, he actually met with the Prime Minister and the President of Israel and some of the hostage families.
And that went for a while.
And then the president signed a message to the Knesset in Israel.
The message that he signing here is this is my great honor, a great and beautiful day, a new beginning.
And that's clearly how President Trump is thinking about this as a new beginning.
Now, meanwhile, in the chamber, I have to say again, the the sort of excitement was off the charts.
Truly off the charts.
I see much of the cabinet came.
Secretary Rubio was there.
Secretary Hegseth was there.
Stephen Miller came as well.
Jared Kushner and Ivanka were there.
Steve Whitcoff was there.
General Raisin Kane, Dan Raising Cain was there as well.
And as they all came in, there were big ovations for pretty much everybody who came in out of gratitude by Israelis for the Trump administration.
And then there was a fanfare, and President Trump entered the Israeli Knesset, and he was essentially introduced by Amir Ohana, who is the speaker of the Knesset.
Here he was receiving a standing ovation.
And I see Donald J. Trump.
Thank you.
Now, again, I will say that I have a lot of friends in the room.
People's hands were sore from clapping.
I mean, it was it was that enthusiastic.
It was that loud in the room.
It was that raucous in the room.
Amir Ohana praised President Trump as a giant of Jewish history ahead of his address, President Trump's address.
And President Trump took all of this in uh extremely good humor.
Here was Amir Ohana, the speaker of the Knesset praising President Trump.
Mr. President.
You stand before the people of Israel not as another American president, but as a giant of Jewish history.
One for whom we must look back two and a half millennia into the mists of time to find a parallel relationship.
Cyrus the Great.
You, President Donald J. Trump, are a colossus who will be enshrined in the pantheon of history.
Thousands of years from now, Mr. President, the Jewish people will remember you.
We are a nation that remembers.
So after paying tribute to the President of the United States, Amir Ohana also paid tribute to the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who's a very controversial figure in Israel.
There are a lot of people on the left who do not like him very much.
There are some people who have been, you know, extraordinarily hateful toward him and his family, for sure.
He has taken an enormous number of slings and arrows, has the Prime Minister over the course of the last couple of years.
Politics is a rough game for sure.
But the overwhelming feeling in the room, and I think in general, is gratitude for the leadership that he has displayed during the war.
Now, again, that's not going to you you couldn't say that about any political leader in any democratic country, that everyone is grateful.
Everybody is happy.
But the leadership that Netanyahu has displayed over the course of the last two years, taking on the slings and arrows, taking on the lies that have been told about Israel, standing up against the slow walking of aid from Joe Biden, attempting to navigate the difficulties of a dual purpose war, one to free the hostages, two to defeat Hamas, and then take on challenges on a wide variety of other fronts, ranging from an existential threat in Hezbollah to another existential threat in Iran.
That's an extraordinary performance.
Here was the Knesset's response when Amir Ohana praised the Prime Minister, President Trump also stood up and uh and gave BB innovation.
Thank you very much for the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the President of the United States.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We'll get to more on this historic day in just a moment.
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So I think that this entire event, just so folks know, the entire event was scheduled to run an hour, an hour and a half.
Basically, the idea was going to be that the president landed at Bengorian Airport at maybe 9 20 a.m.
Israel time, did a quick event on the tarmac, and then made his way to the Knesset.
He ended up getting to the Knesset probably around 11 a.m.
He was supposed to originally speak around 11 a.m.
Instead, because of the meeting with the hostages and everything, he probably didn't enter the room until 12 30.
Then the speaker of the Knesset, Amir Ohana, gave quite a beautiful speech.
Actually, there's quite a moving moment in Amir Ohana's speech where he took the pin, these famous yellow hostage pins that you've seen, not just on Israelis, but on a lot of caring people of all different sorts.
He actually took his hostage pin off because all the live hostages were back in Israel.
Here's what that looked like.
And I will do something spontaneous, and I will remove the pin of that I received from Tvi Kamor.
I am removing it because a minute ago I spoke to Tsvikimar brother and they are celebrating this unification.
Thank you so much, President Trump.
Thank you so much, President Trump.
That was a highly moving moment, obviously.
And then he introduced Prime Minister Netanyahu, who got up to speak.
And Prime Minister Netanyahu, of course, paid extraordinary tribute to the President of the United States, and the entire room burst out into chants of President Trump.
But it's enough to affirm what I've said time and again.
Donald Trump is the greatest friend that the state of Israel has ever had in the White House.
Thank you.
Netanyahu also, of course, didn't just praise Trump's decision-making acumen with regard to the hostage deal.
He also thanked him for Operation Midnight Hammer, which was the B2 Sortie that President Trump authorized to blow up the Ford nuclear facility in Iran.
Here was Prime Minister Netanyahu.
Thank you for supporting Operation Rising Line and for your bold decision to launch Operation Midnight Hammer.
Boy, is that...
You gotta hear this.
This is the most fitting name ever named for a military operation because a little after midnight you really hammered them.
Oh, yeah.
My friends, this is only a partial list.
But it's enough to affirm what I've said time and again.
Donald Trump is the greatest friend that the state of Israel has ever had in the White House.
After Netanyahu spoke, then, because it was a session of parliament, they had to let the opposition leader speak.
That was Yahir Lapid.
Yayir Lapid is the head of his own party there and the leader of the opposition bloc.
Lapid gave uh what I thought was actually quite a gracious and and wonderful speech.
He talked about how the attempt by the world to isolate Israel by telling lies about it, how that was wrong.
He also, of course, had words of extraordinarily warm praise for President Trump.
Here's a little bit of what he had to say.
From here, I say to all those who demonstrated against Israel these past two years on the streets of London and Rome, in Paris, and in Columbia University.
I do not represent the government as you know.
I am the leader of the opposition.
And I tell you, then you were deceived.
You were deceived propaganda experts, funded by terror money, manipulated you.
Now that the war is stopped, you have time and a chance to go and learn the facts.
The truth is there was no genocide.
No intentional starvation.
And then it was time for President Trump to speak.
And again, when he got up, the place about exploded.
I mean, it just went up.
I mean, the energy in the room was so high.
The way that the room was seated, just for those who are in the room, the way the room is seated, it's kind of a U shape around the president of the United States who's standing at the front.
The bottom floor is all the members of the Israeli parliament.
Up and to the president's right would have been members of the press for the most part.
Ahead of him were members of the cabinet, cabinet officials and friends of the president.
And then on the left, there would have been guests of both the embassy of the United States as well as guests of the Speaker of the Knesset, Amir Ohana.
I was on that left section as sort of a friend of the embassy.
And then behind that, there's glass and there are many, many more guests there, including a whole block of hostage families.
The president of the United States gets up to speak.
The place comes unglued.
Amazing, amazing stuff.
And here's President Trump announcing that the hostages are indeed back.
Deeply, deeply moving moment, triumphal moment for the president of the United States, who has done more heavy lifting in the most difficult region of the world than any other person, bar none in American history.
This president of the United States, he won't just go down in Jewish history, obviously, he'll go down in American history and in world history for the work that he's done in the Middle East.
Here is the president announcing that the hostages are back.
After two harrowing years in darkness and captivity, 20 courageous hostages are returning to the glorious embrace of their families, and it is glorious.
Twenty-eight more precious loved ones are coming home at last to rest in this sacred soil for all of time.
And after so many years of unceasing war and endless danger, today the skies are calm, the guns are silent, the sirens are still, and the sun rises on a holy land that is finally at peace, a land and a region that will live, God willing, in peace for all eternity.
And then the president made some moving statements about his thanks to Now, I will say it was partially a religious event for people who believe in the Bible.
There were actual blessings that were said by Jews.
There was a point at which the speaker of the Knesset actually put on a yarmulke.
He doesn't normally wear yamaka, he put on yamaka in order to say a blessing over the presence of Donald J. Trump.
And a blessing was said.
Uh it's it that Jews say when something unusual or extraordinary happens, they say a blessing called Shaheyanu, which is thanks to God for bringing us to this time.
And that was said in the parliament as well.
And then the president returned the favor by giving his deepest thanks to the Almighty God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Mr. Speaker, esteemed members of the Knesset and cherished citizens of Israel.
We gather on a day of profound joy, of soaring hope of renewed faith, and above all, a day to give our deepest thanks to the almighty God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Alrighty, more coming up in just a moment.
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Now there was one fraught moment.
This happened maybe 15 or 20 minutes into the president's speech.
And the president was riffing, man.
He was going.
And the president must have spoken for about an hour.
And he he did, you know, some of his favorite hits.
He talked about General Raising Cain and ISIS.
He talked about Steve Woodcoff's negotiations with Russia.
He made fun of the of Joe Biden and and uh and of Kamala Harris and all the rest.
Barack Obama came in for some licks.
But the most fraught moment happened when two members of the Israeli parliament, okay.
This is why when people say Israel's an apartheid state, it's ridiculous.
Two members of the Israeli parliament, like sitting members of the Israeli Knesset are from the Arab parties.
There are two Arab parties in the Israeli Knesset.
One is considered slightly more moderate than the other, but neither is particularly moderate.
And two of these members of the Israeli Knesset, there'd been an announcement at the beginning by the speaker of the Knesset that there wouldn't be any disturbances, any disturbances, people would be removed.
And so they knew this.
And at a certain point, they got up and they started shouting about genocide, and they held up pieces of paper and they were cleared from the room by Israeli security and some of the other members of the Knesset.
And President Trump's response was classic Trump.
Please expel this message.
Knesset member please.
Expel this Knesset member.
Knesset member Cassim.
Please expel him immediately.
Sorry for that, Mr. President.
I'm that was very efficient.
Now again, many of the clips that I'm gonna play here are are some of President Trump's more serious efforts here.
The reality is that the speech was hilarious.
It was so funny.
I mean, truly, truly, truly funny.
There were many moments that were hilariously funny, but obviously the the overall tenor of the speech was triumphal, but it had its serious moments for sure.
President Trump said that there are two messages that America understands when it comes to Israel.
Never forget and never again.
And to all the families whose lives were forever changed by the atrocities of that day and all of the people of Israel, please know that America joins you in those two everlasting vows.
Never forget and never again.
The president also laid out what comes next, and that is not just the return of hostages, but a fully disarmed Hamas and a demilitarized Gaza.
How that happens is still up in the air, right?
Phase one has been solved.
But if the president does what he has pledged to do and applies pressure to all of the erswhile Arab allies and Muslim allies of Hamas, then Hamas will have very few choices left.
Again, there have been ongoing firefights over the course of the last few days inside the Gaza Strip between Hamas and other tribes attempting to gain control.
Several dozen people have been killed already by Hamas.
So this is gonna be an effort.
But the president said that he intends to ensure that the commitments that he made and that the international community made are kept, and that Hamas is disarmed and Gaza demilitarized.
You know, some people say 3,000 years, some people say 500 years, whatever it is.
It's uh the granddaddy of them all.
And in an unprecedented achievement, virtually the entire region has endorsed the plan that Gaza will be immediately demilitarized, that Hamas will be disarmed, and Israel's security will no longer be threatened in any way, shape or form.
And with that done, the president also talked about what he hoped would come next, and that was a golden age, a golden age for Israel, golden age in the Middle East, peace breaking out all over.
And that is the hope.
The president of the United States got it done in his first term with Morocco, with UAE, with Bahrain.
And the president intends to now expand that out to include places like Syria, like Saudi Arabia, like Indonesia.
They also convey my tremendous appreciation for all of the nations of the Arab and Muslim world that came together to press Hamas to set the hostages free.
And to send them home.
We had a lot of help.
We had a lot of help from a lot of people that you wouldn't suspect.
And I want to thank them very much for that.
It's an incredible triumph for Israel and the world to have all of these nations working together as partners in peace.
And it's pretty unusual for you to see that, but it it happened in this case.
This was a very unusual point in time.
A brilliant point in time.
Generations from now, this will be remembered as the moment that everything began to change and change very much for the better.
Like the USA right now, it will be the golden age of Israel and the golden age of the Middle East.
It's going to work together.
Perhaps the funniest moment of the speech came when the president called on President Isaac Herzog, Bougie Herzog of Israel to pardon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, so So Netanyahu, of course, has been under indictment for a couple of what can best be described as ticky tack offenses if they occurred.
It's a little complex to get into right now.
Suffice it to say the lawfare has been unleashed on Netanyahu in much the same way that it was unleashed on President Trump.
Isaac Kurzak doesn't have the unilateral capacity to pardon Bibi Netanyahu.
He has to go through some sort of committee, is apparently the way that it works over here in Israel.
But President Trump, in front of everybody, in front of the Knesset, in front of everyone, called on Herzog to try to pardon Netanyahu.
Because he says, listen, you have right here a war leader, a highly successful war leader, and you're going to go after him because he supposedly took some champagne and cigars or something.
Here's the president.
Again, there are many, many applause lines.
was one of the bigger ones.
And this man is a good man right here.
These two men are good men right here.
Hey, I have an idea.
Mr. President, why don't you give him a pardon?
Give him a pardon.
By the way, there was not in the speech as you probably know.
But I happen to like this gentleman right over here, and it just seems to make so much sense.
You know, whether we like it or not, this has been one of the greatest wartime presidents.
This has been one of the greatest wartime presidents.
And cigars and champagne, who the hell cares about that.
And finally, the president ended by saying that what would come next was something bigger, better, and stronger, a bigger, better, and stronger Israel.
Obviously, Israelis are grateful to him.
Civilization should be grateful to the presidents of the United States, because let's be real about this entire conflict.
This conflict has been between a death cult in Hamas and its supporters in the Gaza Strip, in Judea and Samaria, yes in Qatar, yes in Iran, yes in Syria, yes in Lebanon, and a Western civilized country attempting to fight for its own existence and preservation.
The President says listen, everybody who has gone to war with Israel has lost.
Everybody who's gone to war with the Trump administration has ended up worse for the where.
And so what comes next is a bigger, better, stronger Israel, and as soon as Israel's opponents recognize that and seek to make peace, then you will get a burgeoning, bustling region that is headed for peace and growth.
Here is the president ending his speech.
I love Israel.
I'm with you all the way.
You will be bigger, better, stronger, and more loving than ever before.
Thank you very much.
God bless you.
God bless the United States of America and God bless the Middle East.
Thank you, everybody.
Good luck.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
So again, what does this mean in practical terms?
Well, it's not all over.
The President of the United States flew directly from Israel to Sharon al Sheikh in Egypt to meet with a bunch of foreign leaders.
Prime Minister Netanyahu was going to go to it, but it turns out that it's a Jewish holiday, which again is starting like very, very shortly, so I'm gonna be running out of here pretty quickly, actually.
Um but the the president of the United States will be headed over there to try and negotiate what comes next in the Gaza Strip.
Over the weekend, he was on Air Force One, and he said, you know, right now Gaza's demolition site, but now there's a chance it's something better.
If the ceasefire does hold, how long until we get to the part of the 20 point peace plan where developers can go in and make Gaza the Riviera of the Middle East.
Well, I don't know about the Riviera for a while, because you take a look at what you have, you have to get people taken care of first.
But uh it's gonna start really essentially immediately.
I mean, they're gonna have to start by removing a lot of the structures that you see that are down to the ground.
I mean, it's a very it's blasted.
This is like a demolition site.
Almost the entire site is so you you have to you have to get rid of what you have there.
You have structures that are very dangerous, they're falling down if they haven't fallen, they're going to fall down of their own volition.
So uh that process, Peter, is gonna start pretty much immediately.
Like a year from now, in your view.
A year, that's very quick.
But over the years it'll look very good.
It'll be uh it's got the first chance it's had in centuries of being peaceful.
It's always been a very, very uh strange area.
It's always been loaded up with problems, religious problems, uh problems like no other place probably in the world.
And I think it's gonna now normalize.
All you can say, if it normalizes, that would be fantastic.
And what does that mean for the United States?
Well, the vice presidents of the United States on meet the press with Kristen Welker, and he said the goal here is not for the United States to have boots on the ground in Israel or Gaza.
And let's be real about this.
Israel does not want American boots on the ground in Israel or Gaza.
Safety has to be secured, but not at the cost of American boots on the ground.
Here was the vice president.
So we have people in that region of the world who are gonna monitor parts of this peace proposal, but the president is not planning to put boots on the ground in Israel.
What about Gaza?
Will US troops ever be sent into Gaza?
Just yes or no.
That's what I mean, Kristen.
He he he is not planning to put two boots on the ground in Gaza or Israel.
We do have or we're gonna have central command troops that are already there that are gonna monitor this peace proposal.
We've actually had, and this is one of the great successes of the president's diplomacy from Indonesia uh to the to the Gulf Arab states.
We've had a number of Muslim majority countries offer to step up and have them put troops on the ground to secure Gaza.
It's not gonna be necessary uh for American troops to be in Gaza.
So it's rare to say this, But it is a time of hope in the Middle East.
It is a time of hope because the President of the United States did something transformative.
He did something different, something new, and something truly miraculous.
He thought realistically about the problem and then solved it.
He provided aid to an American ally so they could actually win a war.
He applied pressure in all the right places.
He ensured that Israel could achieve its war aims, and also that other countries would understand that if that happened, it was not only not a danger to them, it was a possibility for the future.
There's a reason that Israel is in love with President Trump.
Israel believes many of the same things about President Trump.
The MAGA supporters in the United States believe about President Trump, that he is a person trying to help people, that he is a person who understands the world realistically.
It's a triumph for Trump, no question about it.
We'll just have to see how far that triumph extends as we move forward into what I think everyone can hope and pray is a brighter future for the region.
Alrighty, folks, we've reached the end of the show.
We will be back here actually Thursday with much more.
As I said, it's a Jewish holiday for the next couple of days.
There will be content on the feed, so look out for it.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is the Ben Spiro Show.
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