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Oct. 12, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
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THE WATCHMAN Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep684
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Coming up, I'll discuss the road ahead for the House GOP and also the big challenge ahead for Israel in its long war against Islamic terrorism.
Middle Eastern expert Eric Stackelback joins me.
We're going to talk about several aspects of the Israel-Hamas war, including the political situation within Israel and also the insidious motives of Hamas.
Hey, if you're watching on Rumble or listening on Apple, Google, or Spotify, please subscribe to my channel.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
The times are crazy, and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
Guys, so much going on in the country that in this opening segment I'm going to touch on two or three different things and then hone in on an in-depth conversation about what's going on in Israel.
I have Eric Stackelback, the veteran author and journalist And someone who really knows this territory very well.
I'd like to start by talking about Police State.
It is now, what, 11 days until we have the first theatrical run of the movie, October 23rd, Monday, just a week from this coming Monday. So, October 23rd and 25th, those two days, we have bought out hundreds of theaters. The movie tickets are available on the website, which is policestatefilm.net, and it's understandable that people don't like to plan a
month in advance, but now we're getting close, and so it's time to make some plans. This is a great movie to see in the theater. We make it for the theater, and so to go, but also to go with like-minded people.
Round up your extended family or put up a little notice in your church and have people buy tickets and meet you there.
Or go with a conservative or Republican group.
It's fun to see this movie that way.
And so those are two days, October 23rd and 25th.
Lots of theaters. And when you go to the website, you plug in your zip code.
Theaters come up. You just decide.
Just go ahead and buy the tickets right there.
Very easy to do. Now, if you can't go to the theater, there's a virtual premiere, Friday, October 27th, and that's cool.
You can watch the movie at home, and it's going to be terrific.
We have live music, which is related to the movie.
We have the full film, which we'll play, and then a Q&A to follow with Dan Bongino and me, and that's all for the price of a movie ticket.
Again, tickets for that, PoliceStateFilm.net.
It's the one-stop shop to get your tickets.
Now before we get to Israel, I'd like to talk about the speaker race that's going on in the Republican side.
you.
I thought that Jim Jordan would have a really good chance to win this because I think he has that really nice combination of being philosophically sound, but also temperamentally genial.
He's well-liked. But Republicans, by and large, tend to kind of go with the, I'd call it the next in line.
And this has been true for many years with presidential nominations.
Now, it wasn't true with Trump.
But it was true previously.
People like Bob Dole, for example, or John McCain.
Well, it wasn't so much that they were the best candidate, but you know what?
They're next in line, so let's anoint them.
And Steve Scalise is next in line.
He was sort of deputy to Kevin McCarthy, and it looks like he has gotten the most votes.
Now, this was, interestingly, in a secret ballot.
So this was not a case where...
GOP representatives went public and said, I'm for Scalise or I'm for Jordan.
It's a secret ballot. And Scalise appears to have come out ahead, but he doesn't quite have enough votes, which means he would have to make some deals with some wavering or reluctant Republicans to get him the majority nod.
We'll see what happens there.
The other interesting news is that Robert Kennedy Jr.
has made it official he's going to run as an independent.
And no sooner did he announce this that four of his siblings came out and denounced him.
So this is Rory Kennedy, Kerry Kennedy, Joseph P. Kennedy, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.
They say that Bobby might share the same name as our father, but he does not share the same values, vision, or judgment.
Very interesting statement because...
I think that Robert F. Kennedy's point is the exact opposite.
His point is that the Democratic Party is no longer the party of John F. Kennedy or Robert Kennedy, his brother.
The Democratic Party has shifted in dramatic ways ideologically.
It's become more extreme.
It's pivoted sharply to the left.
It's also become a more kind of gangsterized party.
And Robert F. Kennedy knows all this.
Now, he's sometimes accused of being a spoiler, a spoiler for the Democrats.
And I do think there's some debate about this.
Would he take more votes away from Republicans or would he take more votes away from Biden?
I'll leave this topic for another day.
I think he's going to take more votes away from Biden.
But what he says is that he's going to take votes away from both of them.
He says basically that he wants to declare his independence of the Democratic Party and quote, my intention is to spoil it for both of them.
So essentially what he's arguing is that the two parties have become locked into sort of rival extremisms.
And that he, Robert F. Kennedy, is going to peel certain ideas from the left side of the aisle, certain from the right, and put together a centrist coalition that will actually have a chance to win.
Now, do I think that that is the case?
No. I do think that ultimately he will end up being probably a spoiler for one side or the other.
And... But it's a very interesting development because it changes the complexion of 2024.
We won't have two names on the ballot.
We'll really have three names on the ballot.
And that creates an unpredictability.
I mean, think back to when Ross Perot ran and the unpredictability that it created between Clinton and Bush.
And arguably that the Perot factor may have cost Bush that.
Was it, honey, the 1992 election when Perot ran?
Yeah, I think it was.
It was the, what caused...
Cost pushed the election.
I hope that if that, if we do see a spoiler roll, that this time it's a roll that will go the other way and spoil it for the Democrats.
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Guys, I'd like to welcome to the podcast Eric Stackelback.
He spent two decades covering the Middle East.
He's Senior News Director for Trinity Broadcasting Network.
That's TBN. He's also host of TBN's show.
It's called The Watchman and The Watchman Newscast on YouTube.
The website, by the way, is just watchmantv.com.
Eric, thanks for joining us.
Obviously, tragic circumstances and a lot of the analysis that I'm seeing about the Hamas attacks is starting by looking at the Israeli side, the casualties, the carnage, the babies who were killed.
I'd like to actually start on the other side, which is to say on the Hamas side.
I don't think a lot of people know about Hamas.
They have some very important, all these groups, Dinesh, first of all, thanks for having me again.
All of these groups have certainly similarities.
One of the shared similarities is the annihilation of Jews and the state of Israel.
That's for starters. What makes Hamas different is that it is a self-professed arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement we've heard a lot about over the years.
They've taken some lumps over the past decade or so.
Their main power base in Egypt has been weakened, obviously, but when Hamas It was founded in 1987, Dinesh.
Its founding charter professed, we are the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
When it comes to the brotherhood, that's really kind of the granddaddy of them all when it comes to modern-day Islamic jihadist movements.
So that, number one, sets Hamas apart.
Number two, largely Palestinian-based.
Obviously, Gaza, they rule with an iron fist, but also the West Bank, Judea, and Samaria, a very strong presence there.
What I think is the main thing that sets Hamas apart is its support network right here in the West.
I'm not necessarily talking about physical, tactical support, but the cheerleaders for Hamas that we see throughout the United States We've seen this for many years, these American Islamic umbrella organizations, purported civil rights organizations that are literally cheerleaders for Hamas that will not condemn these demonic atrocities that we saw over the weekend.
So I think that is the main thing, Dinesh, that sets Hamas apart.
In the polite company, quote-unquote, of some of these so-called civil rights organizations, Hamas is accepted and even cheered right here in the West.
Now, let's think about why that is.
Because the ordinary American, even a leftist on a campus or a left-wing professor, is not likely to cheer for Al-Qaeda, right?
They're not likely to cheer for ISIS. Those are like beyond the pale.
But on the other hand, you find that Hamas...
Does have a lobby, if you will, in the West.
Now, is that because Hamas can claim that it is championing the anti-colonial cause, that it's representing an ethnic group of people that have had their rights abridged, if not taken away?
Is that what gives Hamas that kind of special shine that you don't see on ISIS and Al-Qaeda?
I think you hit on it, Dinesh.
Absolutely. I think the struggle against oppression, the Zionist occupier, Israel is an island of Western-style colonialism in the heart of the Middle East.
That is the view of so-called academics here in the West in many cases.
So I think you hit the nail on the head.
Anything that involves Israel.
And look, Hamas has been mostly focused on Israel.
Another reason that it's kind of set apart from other jihadi, which are more global organizations.
Hamas has been more regional focused on Israel.
Guess what?
These so-called academics here in the West have a serious distaste for Israel to say the least.
But remember, that's a key point, Dinesh.
But remember, Hamas also has American blood on its hands.
Obviously, at least 22 American civilians killed over the weekend.
But this goes back.
Hamas has killed dozens of US citizens over the years in its attacks in Israel.
And we've had Hamas operatives arrested right here on US soil over the years.
Interesting. Hamas and Hezbollah.
Now, these are two groups that are both operating in Israel.
I understand Hezbollah kind of operating from the north, Hamas from the south.
Hamas, I believe, is primarily a Sunni group, whereas Hezbollah is a Shia group.
Now, is that just a kind of theological distinction, or does it have some relevance in explaining what the two groups are up to, one versus the other?
You're right on the Sunni-Shia distinction, Dinesh Hamas.
Sunni, Hezbollah, Shia.
But when it comes to killing Christians and Jews, they put along those theological differences and get along just fine.
We've seen this again and again.
It was interesting to me when people would say, well, Iran and Al-Qaeda would never work together.
Iran is Shia. Al-Qaeda is Sunni.
Again, they will work towards, maybe they'll turn their guns on each other at a later date, and they already have.
They probably will. But in the meantime, The main enemy, the West, Christians, Jews, the state of Israel, they'll put any theological differences aside and come together towards the furtherance of that evil goal.
So, yes, Hamas, Sunni, Hezbollah, Shia, but brothers in arms when it comes to attacking Israel and antipathy to the West.
We'll be right back with Eric Stackleback, senior news editor for TBN and host of TBN show, The Watchman.
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Get 35% off Your first preferred order by using discount code AMERICA. I'm back with Eric Stackelback, senior news editor of TBN, Trinity Broadcasting Network and host of TBN's The Watchman on YouTube.
It's watchmantv.com.
Eric, we're talking about Hamas.
We're talking about Hezbollah now.
Hamas, as I understand it, does have one distinction, and that is that they were, and I'm not sure if they still are, An elected body in Gaza.
So, nobody elected al-Qaeda, nobody elected Hezbollah or ISIS, but Hamas was able to run for elections and win.
Now, is Hamas still the legitimate representative of Gaza, or was it a case where Hamas got elected one time and that was kind of the end of elections in Gaza?
What is it? Yeah, it's certainly the latter, Dinesh.
Back in 2006, this sent shockwaves around the world when this vicious, murderous terrorist organization was elected by the Palestinians.
In 2007, Hamas, after that election, violently evicted the Palestinian authority of Mahmoud Abbas out of Gaza.
And ever since, for the past 16 years or so, Hamas has been the sole ruler of Gaza.
Now, A second point here, Dinesh.
About Palestinians being the victims of Hamas, and certainly in many cases that's true, but there's also certainly a groundswell of support for Hamas among many Palestinians as well.
I think that's undeniable, and I think you saw that certainly in Gaza with the images over the past few days when these Israeli hostages were dragged into the bowels of hell into Gaza, and they were greeted by Gazan civilians cheering and spitting on them.
So I think, just to summarize and help people understand better, you have the Palestinians concentrated in two pockets.
One is the West Bank, and the other is Gaza.
Gaza has been dominated now for well over a decade by Hamas.
But the ruling power in the West Bank is not Hamas.
It is this group called the Palestinian Authority, which traces its roots to Yasser Arafat and the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization.
So these are two Perhaps related, but obviously separate bodies.
I mean, you just said that they do not hesitate to go to war with each other.
Is it the case right now that Israel's counterattack is not against the West Bank and the Palestinian Authority, but is focused on Hamas and Gaza?
It is. Yes, Dinesh.
And I think a key point here, and I'm glad you brought this up, Gaza and the West Bank are not contiguous.
They're not literally geographically right next to each other.
There's separation. They're separated geographically.
So a key point there.
Right now, yes, you're right.
Israel focused on Gaza, which is Hamas's main power base.
But the concern...
Is that this conflict will broaden.
That the West Bank will flare up.
That Hamas and Iran-backed fighters in the West Bank will also start to stir things up even in the eastern half of Jerusalem.
That's a big concern right now, Dinesh.
And obviously, in a broader sense, does this become a multi-front war?
You mentioned Hezbollah.
One of Iran's proxies.
I call it the ring of fire that surrounds Israel.
By the way, just a reminder for people, Israel is the size of the state of New Jersey.
Those are the geographic limitations of Israel, and yet it is surrounded by this ring of fire movement.
Armed to the teeth, tens of thousands of rockets, missiles, attack drones, all of these Iranian proxies, whether it's Gaza, southern Lebanon, Syria, even Yemen further to the south, a ring surrounding Israel.
Hezbollah, who you mentioned, Dinesh, the most lethal in that ring.
And the big question now is, does Hezbollah get involved in this and spark a multi-front devastating war?
Trump just said something that's getting a lot of attacks, and he called the attack, quote, smart.
Now, I think that the people who are expressing outrage are expressing moral outrage, but I don't think that Trump was making a moral point.
I think Trump was saying that there is a kind of sly and cunning purpose to these attacks.
They weren't See, a lot of times when these things occur, people seem to think, this is a death cult.
This is totally irrational.
These people don't care about their lives.
But you can imagine that there are probably Hamas operatives thinking about, what's going to be the effect if we do this?
What can we anticipate that Israel will do?
What do we think that the other Arabs will do?
Is this a way to draw other people into this conflict?
So, let's take a pause because our segment is up, but we'll come right back.
And I'd like you to explain...
What do you think is Hamas' objective, rational or otherwise, for having launched this attack?
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I'm back with Eric Stackelback, Senior News Director of Trinity Broadcasting Network, TBN, host of TBN's The Watchman Show.
Eric Hamas, what were they thinking?
A few things here, Dinesh. You made a great point before the break.
Yes, they have a strategy.
This is not haphazard.
They're barbarians, certainly.
But there is a strategy.
It's not just thousands of men rushing in headlong.
This was planned out for years.
according to an interview I just watched, Dinesh, with a top Hamas official who said, we planned this for at least two years.
They are very strategic in the most evil and sinister of ways.
These are not stupid people, I hate to say it, intrinsically evil, but they do have a strategy.
And what the strategy is here, what the goal is here is simple, in that you have to look back at the head of the snake, the Iranian regime.
This cannot be overstated, Dinesh.
The role that Iran plays in all of this, remember, Hamas is a proxy of Iran, funded, armed, and backed by the Iranian regime in Tehran.
When Iran says go, Hamas goes, Hezbollah goes.
Iran, according to various reports, gave the order here about a week and a half ago for Hamas to proceed with this attack.
Iran, according to various reports gave the order here about a week and a half ago for Hamas to proceed with this attack. And on The Watchman, Dinesh, I've been reporting over the past few weeks on this pattern of meetings, I call them terror summits, taking place in Beirut involving Hamas, Hezbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps leaders. They certainly weren't planning to talk about having a picnic. They were talking, planning and talking about this
And on The Watchman, Dinesh, I've been reporting over the past few weeks on this pattern of meetings.
I call them terror summits taking place in Beirut involving Hamas, Hezbollah, Iranian regime. This cannot be under overstated Dinesh, the role that Iran plays in all of this. Remember, Hamas is a proxy of Iran, funded, armed and backed by the Iranian regime in Tehran. When Iran says go, Hamas goes, Hezbollah goes.
and launching a multi-front onslaught against Israel. I think it's pretty clear. So Hamas has its own goals, which are the destruction of the Jewish state, the so-called Zionist entity, push the Jews into the sea. That's basic. But they are also serving their Iranian masters who have larger goals.
And this attack doesn't happen without the support of the Iranian regime.
And I think that's something Israel and the world's going to have to contend with right now.
Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said, look, we're going to change the Middle East for generations.
Well, you can change your immediate neighborhood by crushing Hamas, certainly, in Gaza, and that's a good thing.
But to change the region for generations, that means, quite frankly, crushing Hezbollah and not directly, perhaps, confronting Iran, but through indirect means.
Israel has done that many times over the years.
But eventually, Iran is going to have to pay consequences for this.
There's no way around it. That is the head of the snake.
Now, to understand the snake, I'm going to put on my kind of mullah hat for a bit, and I'm going to look around the region as one of the Iranian mullahs, and I'm going to say that in recent years, and especially under Trump, things were taking sort of a troubling turn.
Israel was making deals and pacts with leading Arab nations, and this offered the prospect not only of peace in the Middle East, But also of sidelining Iran, because suddenly you now have Israel, you have Saudi Arabia, you have Jordan, you have possibly Egypt.
So the Iranians go, what can we do that would send a shockwave through the Muslim world, cause Muslims to go crazy and make it impossible for their own leaders to take a pro-Israel stance?
Well, what if we launch an attack on Israel? What is Israel going to do? Launch an attack back.
We're bound to get tremendous images of places being bombed, people running for their lives, you know, people with missing an arm and a leg, blood over them, Muslim children killed.
And so then we flash those pictures throughout the world.
There's outrage in Pakistan.
There's outrage across the Muslim world.
Suddenly it becomes impossible for anyone, at least publicly, to do any kind of deal with Israel.
Do you think that this is actually...
Yes, they've been thinking this for years.
Dinesh, you laid it out beautifully.
You really did. For years, this has been the strategy.
I call it death by a thousand cuts, the pinprick strategy.
Attack Israel incrementally.
Israel responds with overwhelming force.
The images are beamed out around the world of what's happening in Gaza, a building turned to rubble.
but by the way, not just arbitrarily turned to rubble by the IDF. The Israel Defense Forces, I would argue, Dinesh, along with the U.S. military, of course, are the most humane fighting forces in human history. I know that sounds like a big statement, but the rules of engagement for the IDF and the U.S. military are so extraordinary in the lengths that they go to avoid civilian casualties to the point where they will put their own, Israel and the U.S. for that matter,
will put their own soldiers at risk in order to save civilians.
So that's number one.
But number two, yes, this is the strategy as you laid it out.
But I wonder if this time is...
Different in that, yes, Israel is going to respond with unprecedented force.
An unprecedented attack requires an unprecedented response, certainly.
So Israel is going to do exactly that.
I believe Hamas will be destroyed and completely devastated.
And Gaza certainly will pay a heavy price here, no doubt.
Hamas is power-based.
But I think the one thing that perhaps...
What certainly sets this time apart is the images of Hamas atrocities.
Many times Israel says, hey, they're killing civilians, and the footage perhaps wasn't there in some cases.
Hamas themselves, Hamas terrorists, filmed all of this butchering children, the elderly Holocaust survivors.
Babies beheaded, families burn alive, and Hamas filmed it all gleefully, dragging civilians as hostages across the border back into Gaza.
So right now, much of world opinion, not all sadly, is with Israel and sees that this is clearly a battle of good versus evil.
There's really no gray areas here.
And yet... As you alluded to, Dinesh, as Israel continues the offensive against Hamas and Gaza, we'll see footage beamed out from Gaza.
It will be interesting to see if the tide of world opinion changes and turns against Israel.
Even the Biden administration forcefully pro-Israel statements over the past few days.
But does that change when the reality of the situation, when Israel does what needs to be done, does world opinion suddenly go back to its default position, quite frankly, and turn against Israel?
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I'm back with Eric Stackelback, Senior News Director for TBN, host of TBN's The Watchman Show.
At YouTube, it's WatchmanTV.com.
Eric, you said something that struck me, which is that Hamas, with almost sadistic delight, has been putting these videos out.
Now, why would they do that?
In other words, I think, for example, of the Nazis, who were very careful to locate their death camps outside of Germany.
They didn't want the Germans to see what they were doing.
They recognized that there's a part of human nature that cannot be okay with that, even if you don't like Jews.
Now, didn't Hamas foresee that this kind of exhibitionism of death would not only turn most people against them, but make it difficult for their own allies?
I mean, think of people like the squad in the United States, these socialists who have been very pro-Palestine, very pro-Hamas, but suddenly they're like, oh, we can't say anything.
Rashida Tlaib won't say a word when she's asked about this.
So, Hamas has sort of made it awkward for their own supporters to Why wouldn't they do this carnage and try to sort of hide it?
At least hide it from the cameras?
I think the sheer...
Opportunity for them, Dinesh, to have such, what they see for their cause, such a propaganda coup for them, for their cause, was irresistible.
These images have galvanized jihadists around the world.
These images of Hamas atrocities have emboldened the Iranian regime, Hezbollah.
We see rallies in New York City.
In London, Germany, even Australia, large pro-Hamas demonstrations.
In Sydney, Australia, of all places, Dinesh, we had Hamas supporters chanting, gas the Jews.
So I think it was irresistible for Hamas.
We have finally done it.
We have invaded Israel, thousands, probably in the thousands of Hamas fighters, at least 1,500, streamed into southern Israel and butchered, at last count, Dinesh, at least 1,300 Israeli civilians and killed over 100 Israeli soldiers as well.
This was Hamas' dream.
For decades, they finally realized it, so they wanted to broadcast this to the world in almost a triumphalist way, of course.
But secondly, the propaganda value, even if one contingent, a small battalion of Hamas fighters, had been able to cross over the border, infiltrate Israel, plant that green Hamas flag and send those images across the world, that would be seen as a huge propaganda victory for Hamas, no doubt. But this?
The largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, an unprecedented assault on Israel, on Israeli soil.
Look, Dinesh, these Hamas terrorists, in some cases in these towns along the border, and I've spent a lot of time along that Gaza border in these very towns, Hamas terrorists occupied some of these towns for 48 hours.
Completely unprecedented. They had to broadcast this throughout the world, including the atrocities.
Sadly, there's a large segment in the world that cheers on those kinds of atrocities and wants to see more, and Hamas knows that, and that's who they are trying to attract, in addition to the so-called intellectual class in the West, which seems beyond any kind of moral compass when it comes to this and will support Hamas regardless.
Speaking of the intellectual class, a very interesting episode at Harvard where a large constellation of student organizations come out right in the aftermath of this in solidarity with Palestine and seemingly with approval of the attacks.
Now, when some corporate people have stepped in and said, you know, okay, give us the list of the names of all these students who are taking this brave stance because we'll make sure never to hire any of them.
I notice now these students are distancing themselves.
Oh, we didn't really personally sign the statement.
It was never approved by the appropriate committees.
And a very interesting statement by Larry Sommer is kind of a man of the establishment, prominent Democrat, former president of Harvard.
He says, I'm very disappointed in Harvard, but...
You know, these are the very people who have made Harvard what it is.
These are the people who made peace with the left, allowed left-wing faculty to take over these departments, ran the conservatives out, shut down effective debate on these campuses, gave a vent to identity politics, and now aren't they living, in a sense, with the fruit of their own creation?
Sadly, yes. And in one sense, hey, you said these folks might not get hired by companies.
That's one encouraging sign, Dinesh, that finally the morally repugnant and morally bankrupt views and ideology of the radical left is being held accountable, apparently, in this case.
So that's actually kind of refreshing to see.
But on the other hand, completely distressing that These are supposed to be our leading lights, leading academic lights in the younger generation and Generation Z. As you said, the dust had not even settled from this carnage, and they're coming out in full-throated support of Hamas.
You've covered this for years, Dinesh, more than anyone so eloquently.
Folks, we have a problem on America's college campuses, in case you have not realized.
This is the Ivy League, the gold standard, so to speak, and the leading lights at Harvard are pro-Hamas.
There's no other way to say it.
They are pro-Hamas.
They support terror and looks to me like they support genocide because that's what Hamas stands for.
And Hamas conducted a mini-genocide over the weekend, over a two-day span.
No denying that. The image is now...
You mentioned the Nazis earlier, Dinesh, hidden largely and then liberating troops, found evidence of the Holocaust, the carnage.
This is out there for everyone to see, fully documented by Hamas.
We'll be right back with Eric Stackelbach, senior news editor for TBN. Guys, with the new movie just right up ahead, I'd like to invite you to check out my Locals channel.
The movie will be featured on Locals, and if you're an annual subscriber, you will get the movie for free.
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I'd love to have you along for this great ride.
Again, it's dinesh.locals.com.
I'm back with Eric Stackelbeck, Senior News Director for TBN. WatchmanTV.com Eric, you know, there was a professor at, I believe, Yale, who describes herself as a radical Muslim, and she was putting out on X, tweeting out that settlers are not civilians.
I mean, kind of a shocking thing to say, because she's saying that families that live, that are not military families, that are not armed, they're not combatants, By virtue of having settled in these disputed areas are somehow should be treated like soldiers who it is fine to launch military attacks on.
I mean, there's a controversy about it now, but what do you make of that statement?
Two things. Number one, how was she hired in the first place?
She's a self-professed radical Muslim.
How does she have a job at an American university, let alone Yale University?
Number two, she's calling the people of southern Israel settlers Dinesh.
That territory that Hamas invaded over the weekend, that has not been disputed.
That's been part of Israel proper since 1948, since the modern rebirth of the state of Israel.
So these are not disputed territories.
So you have to dig deeper here, Dinesh, behind her comments and see that she considers any Jew living in the land of Israel as a settler from Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, southern Israel, and beyond.
She's not referring to the settlers in Judea and Samaria, the West Bank, She's calling any Jew in Israel.
What she's saying is the Jews in Israel have no right to be there and should be removed once and for all.
That's my translation of what she said on X and what she tweeted out.
That's really what these folks want.
Not only in the military sense, Hamas obviously, a terror organization, guns, bombs, and slaughter, but these groups that seek to boycott and divest from Israel, their goal is also the destruction of Israel just by other means, and I think the academic class certainly falls in that category, and they will cheerlead for the violent wing of this anti-Israel movement time and again.
Eric, let's turn to the Israeli side for a moment, because Israel has been, at least of late, a highly polarized society.
A lot of controversies around Netanyahu.
I remember the massive demonstrations in Israel over the reform of the Supreme Court and other things.
Netanyahu himself facing the possibility of investigations going on, potential indictments.
My question is, is Israel coming together as one over this?
Are they able to create, I remember Winston Churchill created kind of a war cabinet after the Nazi attacks.
He brought in members of the opposition party.
It was essentially one Britain facing the Nazis.
Is Israel able to do something similar now?
And what is Israel's war objective?
Yes. To the first part first, Dinesh, yes.
Israel just announced an emergency unity government where Netanyahu is trying to bring people from all sides of the political aisle in together on a united government.
and he has succeeded. Benny Gantz, who was one of Netanyahu's rivals, has now joined the government. It's an emergency unity government, so yes.
And the demonstrations, large scale, which you mentioned, Dinesh, over the past nine, ten months or so, that's out the window now. That's forgotten now. The people of Israel have come together in a way they really haven't in decades, I would say. People across all points of the spectrum, politically and otherwise, have been horrified and angered by this, and rightfully so.
And they are united. We see footage of Israelis flying back to Israel from around the world to fight.
We've got over 300,000 reserves called up.
I have friends right now, dear friends, Dinesh, who are on the front lines.
They've left their wives and children.
They're on the front lines right now.
They don't know when they'll return to their families.
So yes, Israelis realize that any internal squabbles must be put aside in this instance to, quite frankly, preserve the very existence of the Jewish state.
So that's number one.
Number two, Israel's goals.
Bibi, as I mentioned earlier, Dinesh said, look, we want to change the face of the Middle East for generations.
I think number one there, clearly, destroy Hamas.
And that sounds simplistic, but listen, at this point there's been so much nuance and hand-wringing over the decades.
What do we do about Hamas?
If we destroy Hamas, then what?
Better the devil you do know than the devil you don't know.
That's largely been the philosophy among successive Israeli governments.
Clearly, Dinesh, that strategy, the strategy of so-called deterrence, Has not worked.
Hamas just carried out an unprecedented massacre on Israeli soil.
So now, there's only one answer there.
Destroy this entity once and for all so that it never threatens Israel again.
That's first. But secondly, Dinesh, and we touched on this earlier, if and when this turns into a multi-front war, Israel's goals may broaden.
To, quite frankly, destroying Hezbollah as well.
And to challenging Iran head-to-head.
It may sound crazy to some people, but in today's Middle East, expect the unexpected.
I don't think any of us sitting here right now can say where this is going.
I think that's pretty clear.
But number one, what is clear in terms of Israel's goals, Dinesh?
Destroy Hamas. That's number one, and we'll see what comes after that.
But the Middle East will never be the same, no doubt, after what happened over the weekend and after this war.
Eric Stackelback, thanks for joining me.
I really appreciate it. Eric Stackelback, folks, Senior News Director for TBN and the website WatchmanTV.com.
Thanks. Thank you, Dinesh.
Solzhenitsyn writes that at the end of 1944, when our army entered the Balkans, and especially in 1945 when it reached Central Europe, a wave of Russian emigres flowed into the channels of the Gulag.
Most of them were old men who had left at the time of the Revolution, but there were also young people who had grown up outside Russia.
They usually dragged off the menfolk and left the women and children where they were.
It was true, they didn't take everyone, but they took all those who, in the course of 25 years, this is from the Bolchuk Revolution to 1944, had expressed even the mildest political views or who had expressed them earlier, during the Revolution.
So, the Soviets have long memories.
They remember that even though you have these Russians who are now not living in Russia, they're living in Eastern and Central Europe, But the truth of it is once the Soviet armies occupy those territories, you scoop up all those people and you bring them back to Russia and you go, wait a minute, weren't you the guy who opposed the Bolshevik Revolution 25 years ago?
Or weren't you the guy when the Bolshevik Revolution was first established, expressed some critical views to your neighbors and we've got a report that you were not on the side of the revolution?
And guess what?
It's time for you to be punished now.
I mean, you think with the war, the massive carnage, the Soviet victory, they would be like, who cares about any of that?
Let's forget about all that.
That's all ancient history.
Let's welcome these people back into the Soviet Union.
And maybe, no, none of that.
This is not the attitude of a police state.
And so they take these guys and ship them right off to the Gulag.
And now Solzhenitsyn turns to something that is actually very uncomfortable, which is that he points out that after World War II, the British and American governments rounded up Russian people who were in territories not under Soviet control, but under British control and American control, and sent them back to the Soviet Union where they were promptly locked up in the Gulag.
And this is an An absolutely horrific chapter in the history of World War II. And it's not a well-known chapter, because think about it, in the sort of triumphalism that came after the war, the tremendous sense of relief, America won the war, we've defeated Nazism, it's the greatest generation, blah, blah, blah.
And a lot of that was right, and it was warranted, and it was justified.
But here was the problem.
The problem was that the United States and Great Britain were allied with Stalin in World War II. This was not really an alliance, I would say, of friends, but it was an alliance of convenience because Hitler had invaded Poland, provoking World War II and causing the British to declare war against Hitler.
Later, Hitler invaded Russia, so obviously Stalin was now on the warpath against Hitler, and so The mutual enemies of Hitler made an alliance, which is the British, the Americans, and the Russians.
But as a result of that alliance, the British and the Americans go, okay, well, at the end of the war, the Soviet government is demanding that all Russians who are now in British or American-occupied territories be sent home.
Now, Solzhenitsyn goes into this.
He says... That the Russians who were living under the British or living under the Americans had left the Soviet Union because they knew that they would be hunted over there.
They were opponents of the Soviet regime.
They were anti-communists.
They didn't want to live in Soviet Russia.
And so they had a false sense of security.
We're living in the free world.
We're living in the West. We're completely protected.
So he goes...
They were all sent to destruction on the archipelago.
The American authorities did the same in Bavaria as well as on the U.S. territory.
They delivered tens of thousands of Soviet citizens to a cruel fate, turning them over to the Soviets against their will.
I mean, this is a horrible scene where American and British troops come to these Soviet citizens.
They're like, please, do not send us back.
Why? Because you are sending us to our depths.
And the American and British soldiers go, sorry, get on the airplane, get on the train, off you go to Soviet Russia, there's going to be no...
In other words, there was a deal made with Stalin, or at least there was a succumbing to Stalin's demand at the end of the war, send all my people back for me to deal with them however I see fit.
And, says Solzhenitsyn, that there were Russians delivered into the hands of Stalin, but not only Russians.
He goes, a certain number of Poles, members of the Home Army, arrived in the Gulag in 1945.
There were a certain number of Romanians and Hungarians.
At the end of the war and for many years after, there flowed, uninterruptedly, an abundant wave of Ukrainian nationalists.
And so you have this remarkable phenomenon that even in the wake of victory, Stalin's approach is not, let bygones be bygones, let's now work hard to reunify the Soviet Union, let's try to reconcile with Russians who have left our country, who are now coming back.
It's rather Let me tighten my hold on power.
Let me wreak vengeance on the Russians who never agreed with me or with the revolution.
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