The Israel-Gaza War & US Policy Toward It | SYSTEM UPDATE #158
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight...
War between Israel and the Palestinians, both in the West Bank and Gaza, has existed for decades, sometimes actively and sometimes latently.
One of the most dangerous and intense stages of this war exploded just over 48 hours ago when the group that has ruled Gaza since 2006, Hamas, invaded Israel by land, by sea, and even by air, using hang gliders armed with machine guns to fly over the border fence separating Gaza from Israel.
Within hours, They killed hundreds of Israeli civilians, many of whom died from civilian massacres, gunning down young people at an all-night rave as it was ending, or entering family homes and shooting men, women, and children.
At least dozens of Israelis were abducted and taken as hostages back to Gaza.
Israel now places the death toll at more than 900 of its citizens, with more than 1,700 wounded.
Hamas announced that four hostages have already died in Israeli airstrikes and has threatened to execute hostages and post the video online in response to large numbers of civilian deaths in Gaza.
Meanwhile, as has happened so many times before, Israel the following day began bombing from the air and reducing to rubble entire buildings and towers in Gaza, the tiny strip of land that is home to 2.2 million Palestinians, the majority of whom are 18 years of age or younger.
And who are physically blockaded by both Israel and Egypt from leaving that tiny strip of land.
An Israeli ground invasion of Gaza is imminent.
Israel's defense minister, Yoav Golan, ordered, quote, a complete siege on the Gaza Strip, saying Israeli authorities would cut electricity, water, and would block the entry of fuel.
He said in a video statement, quote, no electricity, no food, no water, no gas.
It's all closed.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu went to Axe earlier today, just a few hours ago, formerly known as Twitter, to post a video showing the Israeli Air Force bombing and destroying large high-rises in Gaza City, sometimes with one bomb destroying several towers at once.
The Biden administration immediately did what U.S.
administrations and both parties have done for decades whenever Israel is involved in hostilities, namely, announced various forms of assistance to its close ally in the Middle East, including weapons and large amounts of money for Israel's intended military action.
With a tiny handful of exceptions, and I mean a tiny handful, members of both political parties in Washington found steadfast and unstinting support for Israel and condemned Hamas's actions, particularly those aimed at civilians.
The risk of escalation in wider regional conflict is very high and very self-evident.
There have already been gunfire exchanges between the IDF and Hezbollah, the militia and political party based in southern Lebanon that has previously engaged in bloody and protracted battles with Israel.
The Wall Street Journal cited anonymous sources from Hamas to claim that Iran directly participated in the planning of these attacks, though the U.S.
government denies knowledge of any information confirming that obviously inflammatory claim.
Israeli tourists were shot and killed in Egypt due to their nationality, and several Arab states have already firmly sided with the Palestinians and blamed Israel for these hostilities, including Qatar and Saudi Arabia, with whom Israel had been hoping to conclude a peace deal brokered by the Biden administration.
This is a volatile region in the best of times, making the risk of escalation quite obvious and quite dangerous.
When it comes to U.S.
political debates, there's always been a paradox, or two paradoxes, actually, when it comes to Israel.
The first is that there are few debates, if there are any, that provoke as much emotion, passion, anger, conviction, and absolutism among Americans than conflicts involving this foreign country.
In fact, there's more space to debate almost anything in the United States, including policies that have a direct effect on Americans, even American wars.
Then there is space to discuss and debate questions involving Israel, especially when, as is obviously true now, passions are running extremely high.
The second paradox is that there is far more criticism of the Israeli government and far more debate over Israel's actions in Israel than there is in the United States.
One need only read an Israeli newspaper or listen to an Israeli news broadcast to see how much more vibrant the debates are about their own country than they are in the United States.
Unless one firmly plants oneself on one side of this war or the other, and then proceeds to unquestioningly affirm every last premise of that side, by, for instance, arguing that anything and everything Palestinians do is justifiable in order to resist the occupation of the West Bank and the blockade of Gaza, even including deliberately massacring civilians,
Or by arguing that anything and everything Israel does is justified in the name of stopping Palestinian attacks on their country, including mass indiscriminate bombing of civilian infrastructure, then one is bound to anger a certain portion of one's audience.
We fully realize that delving into this topic can be a thankless task, it often is, but we also strongly believe that the audience we have attracted and cultivated Does not come to the show or to my journalism expecting to always have their most closely held views flattered and unquestioningly vindicated, but instead is not only willing but eager to sometimes have those views questioned and prodded and pushed a bit, provided it's done in a respectful, thoughtful, and substantive manner.
So that is what we are going to endeavor to do tonight.
There is no other way.
The United States is a direct participant in that region and in all conflicts involving Israel, including this one.
The potential consequences of this war are vast and grave.
No matter how much one might wish to, there is no avoiding this topic, no avoiding this war.
And ultimately, the only kind of journalism worth doing is one based in respect and trust for one's audience, that they seek not full and reflexive and constant agreement, but fact-based and thoughtful analysis.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting right now.
System Update When it comes to the new outbreak of a very dangerous war, one that provokes extreme levels of emotion and passion and conviction, as any war involving Israel does, particularly the United States, sometimes it's difficult to know particularly the United States, sometimes it's difficult to know where to begin.
We have a lot of different subjects we want to analyze and break down.
But I think I want to begin by talking about the context of the American debate, the debate that Americans are having, that both political parties are having with regard to this war itself, as well as what the US policy should be there.
And I spent a lot of time thinking as I followed the news over the weekend, as I spoke to people in Israel, including friends and family, as I listened to people who are on the Palestinian side as well, including people I've interviewed previously.
That I think one of the things that ends up happening is if you are thinking about war and how to report on war, how to analyze war, how to discuss it, it's probably often based in the war that was most formative in the creation of your political opinions.
And for people of my generation, I think for most Americans now, the war that was most formative in the creation of their political views, unless you're very young, Wasn't the war in Vietnam?
I think most Americans by now were too young to have lived through that.
Certainly as adults, I wasn't born during the Vietnam War.
It wasn't really the covert wars as part of the Cold War in the 1980s under the Reagan administration in places like El Salvador and Nicaragua.
Certainly, I was too young to really pay much attention to those wars as a young teenager.
And then there were the wars of the 1990s, which was a decade that I've discussed for many reasons, was one where I was largely apolitical.
I had other interests.
But even those wars then, the most significant of which, when it comes to the United States, was probably the war in Yugoslavia and the Balkans.
Again, Serbia was not really a history-making war, a kind that would really shape your ideology for decades to come.
The war that was most formative for me was the gigantic war called the War on Terror that followed the attacks on September 11th and the effects of those wars and the way that they endured for so long.
Ultimately it was the US reaction to the attack on 9-11 that became part of the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq and ultimately the regime change wars of Libya and Syria and the bombing of eight predominantly Muslim countries first during the Bush-Cheney administration and then during the Obama-Biden administration that propelled me to leave the practice of law and instead start writing about politics and become a journalist.
And when I look back on the 9-11 attack and the various wars that followed under the umbrella of the war on terror, I think the one thing I recall most is the amount of unity that the United States had and that Americans had in the wake of the 9-11 attacks and the intensity of the emotions that attack provoked.
As I've talked about before, I lived in Manhattan.
I worked in Manhattan.
When 9-11 happened, I remember like it was yesterday, the sensations of watching those two buildings in southern Manhattan crumble to the ground on top of 3,000 American citizens.
The Pentagon was attacked.
For weeks in New York, you could smell the burning.
of the rubble of the bodies of the chemicals everywhere you went on every corner there were desperate signs filling every street corner every street lamp on every street corner from desperate families hoping against hope that their missing loved ones were somehow with amnesia or unconscious or in a hospital instead of the horrible truth which is that they were almost all dead in fact all dead those missing were under the rubble in the World Trade Center in the
Emotions that everyone I knew felt that I felt as well was extreme amounts of rage and shock and trauma and a desire for vengeance.
And so what ended up happening was that the government successfully exploited those emotions, those very real human emotions, We all watch videos that were heavily provocative and inflammatory of our emotions.
Videos of people jumping out of the World Trade Center as the only hope that they had for escaping a fire that was consuming them, of 9-11 calls or calls to families as people had their lives extinguished when those buildings fell on top of them.
And of course, this generated enormous amounts of disgust and rage and desire for vengeance against the people responsible.
And most people felt that and most people felt it for a long time.
And that's why the government was able to convince Americans to essentially acquiesce to anything and everything that was done in the name of punishing or destroying the people who were responsible for that horrific attack.
That took the form of multiple wars, of the initiation of a worldwide torture regime that didn't just involve waterboarding, but all sorts of other techniques that had long by the United States been punished as torture, of kidnapping programs, of kidnapping people off the streets of Europe and sending them to Egypt and Syria and other countries that were allied with the United States to be tortured.
Of due process free prisons around the world, including at Bagram and Guantanamo, where people are in prison with no charges.
There are still people, of course, in Guantanamo who have never been charged with any crime, never convicted of any crime, and they have sat there for 20 years.
There was the hideous disastrous invasion of Iraq, regime change wars all over the world, and then the transformation of our own domestic politics of the introduction of things like the Patriot Act and mass NSA spying.
And all kinds of authoritarian projects that seeped into and contaminated America's form of government, all justified in the name of fighting against and destroying the people who launched this horrific attack.
And I think the lesson that most Americans have learned from 9-11 is that a lot of what was done ended up being excessive, or abusive, or morally shameful, or at the very least just counterproductive.
We ended up occupying Afghanistan for 20 years, spent trillions of dollars on this war on terror, only at the end of the 20 years for the Taliban to just waltz back into power as though nothing had happened.
Tens of thousands of people, American troops died, hundreds of thousands if not millions in those countries that we were at war with died as well for very little benefit, for very little progress that was ultimately made.
And the lesson ought to have been that no matter how horrific that attack was, no matter how righteous and justified the anger was, that what was crucial at the time was to have the ability to use reason rather than emotion to make assessments about the best course of action.
And most importantly, to create the space to actually debate What the best course of action was.
I think more than any other policy, what most bothered me at the time and what ultimately propelled me into journalism was the fact that the climate that had been created in the wake of 9-11 was so repressive.
That anybody who was at all off note, who was at all questioning of government policy done in the name of fighting terrorists, was immediately accused of being an apologist for terrorism, or supporting terrorism, or being on the side of the terrorist.
Incredibly toxic in a healthy environment that destroyed the ability to engage in reason and to ask, okay, even if you're horrified by these attacks, even if you find them We're completely lacking in anything human and you're enraged by them.
Even if that's true, you still have to question what was the best course of action as well as whether or not we played any role in creating the climate that caused so many people to want to come do harm to the United States.
Obviously 9-11 was not the first terrorist attack against the United States.
There was an attack on the World Trade Center just a few years earlier that succeeded a little bit nowhere near 9-11 obviously.
There have been attacks all over the Muslim world against US forces in Lebanon and in Somalia and in all kinds of other places.
There was an incredible amount of hatred for the United States that ultimately culminated in the 9-11 attack and it took years to be able to create the space to say, Are we doing anything in terms of interfering in that part of the world, in terms of occupying people's lands, in terms of our policies in that region to interfere in and control their lives, or using violence against them that have caused anti-Americanism to exist?
None of this debate was permissible.
And I think less than 9-11 That if you look at polling in the United States, most people have learned is that a lot of what was done that most of us supported in the aftermath of 9-11 because of our anger and rage and our blinding indignation and desire for vengeance turned out to be, at best, quite misguided.
And that it's extremely important, especially when it comes time to war, when emotions are at their highest, to create space for permissible debate, for permissible questioning.
Now, It is an oddity that when the Russian invasion of Ukraine happened, And it was time for the United States to get involved in that war, even though there was an attempt made to suppress debate, to crush debate or dissent, to call everybody who questioned it a Russian agent, just like anyone questioning the war on terror was called on the side of terrorists.
There was still an ability to have that debate.
I, in fact, did a lot of programs on this show in the days and weeks and months after the invasion of Ukraine and the U.S.
involvement in that war, where I questioned it, where I opposed it, where I denounced it, and of course I got accused of a lot of different things, but being accused of things is something you can live with.
There was at least some space to question it, even though there wasn't much.
I think there was even more space when it came to the war on terror.
There were a lot of people who were opposed to the Iraq War.
There were people after the first few weeks who even opposed the Patriot Act.
And yet somehow when it's not our wars, but when it's Israel, it seems as though there's even less space to question.
In fact, people spent the weekend on a lookout for anybody who is even slightly off note in order to accuse them of being on the side of Hamas or justifying these horrific massacres that fighters for Hamas engaged in deliberately aimed at civilians.
And I think the first thing to note is that in reality, there was virtually nobody defending massacres of civilians against Israeli citizens.
It wasn't that there was nobody.
You can always find people advocating any position.
But certainly nobody in power, not just in the United States or in the West, defended or justified or mitigated The atrocities committed by some of those people who invaded Israel, not who attacked police stations or military bases as some of them did.
Which are generally considered legitimate targets, but who did things like go to a rave where a large number of young people in their 20s were having an all-night party and then just shot them, massacred them.
We don't know how many.
There are lots of claims and wars that get circulated for which there's no evidence.
Things like mass rapes get alleged, but we haven't really seen evidence of that.
But there were clearly horrific atrocities committed And everyone that I heard, at least, pretty much is opposed to that, finds that morally repugnant, because even if you think there are legitimate grievances that the Palestinians have, you have to draw the line.
At basic humanitarianism, you can never sanction the deliberate targeting of civilians.
I think there's even important distinction to be drawn between acts of violence that are likely to cause the death of civilians, and you do it anyway, Everybody at war does those.
Remember the United States did shock and awe in Baghdad.
You could watch Baghdad and see enormous bombs exploding all throughout the city.
And the explicit purpose was to terrorize the population into submission, to use shock and awe to force them to surrender, to believe that it was helpless.
And obviously the United States government knew a large number of civilians were going to die in those bombs and they did.
And obviously the war in Ukraine entails that.
Every war entails that.
When Hamas shoots rockets into Israel, they hope they're going to hit a police station or a military base, but there's a high likelihood they're going to hit civilian targets and they do it anyway.
When Israel goes in, drops massive bombs.
In one of the most densely populated places on Earth, which is Gaza, of course there's a knowledge that they're going to kill large numbers of civilians in Gaza.
They have every time they've done it, and yet they still do it as well.
There's still a difference between what you could call collateral damage and going to a place where you immediately see there are only civilians, like a dance festival or a rave, and gunning people down.
There has to still be a moral line that is drawn where nobody can justifiably cross that the way a lot of the militants that entered Israel didn't.
I don't think anybody can possibly in good conscience justify that.
And the reality is almost nobody did.
In fact, I think the only person I saw who did Was somebody who was at a protest in New York City, a pro-Palestinian protest, sponsored by the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America.
It was a single speaker.
No one knows the person's name.
Even people at this protest objected to it, said that they disassociate themselves from that.
There were a lot of people expressing support for the Palestinian side without justifying what Hamas did.
And the fact that we had to watch this person and search for them and hold them up Shows how difficult it was to find people who actually supported the worst elements of Hamas, the worst actions that Hamas took.
But there's a deliberate attempt to suggest that unless you're 100% on board with everything that Israel does, suggesting that everything they do is justified, everything the Palestinians do is unjustified, the Israelis are the upstanding, morally superior humans, and the Palestinians are animals who don't have human value, unless you're willing to say essentially that, you get accused of being supportive of acts that you're actually actively denouncing.
So here, here's the one person that I think people could find.
And again, the fact that people had to point to this person, who nobody knows, who has no power, who's not an elected official, who has no standing in media, shows how marginalized this view was.
When the Palestinians broke through the fence, they put the F-34 in their palace.
And as you might have seen, There was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters.
But I'm sure they're doing very fine despite what the New York Post says.
No, obviously they're not doing fine.
We all saw the videos of people's corpses.
Laying on the ground because they were shot by the people who invaded Israel and maybe you had two or three people or four people screaming their approval in this crowd but this was a repulsive position that everybody I know including people who have long been critics of Israel or supportive of the Palestinian cause repudiated.
And so the idea that if you at all question The Israeli government, or if you question the Biden administration's support for it, it somehow means that you're a proponent of the worst acts of Hamas, is just as intellectually dishonest, just as manipulative, just as designed to suppress dissent as those who claim that opponents of the Iraq war were pro-Saddam Hussein.
Or that people who question the war on terror were on the side of Al Qaeda.
Or that people who oppose U.S.
support for Ukraine are pro-Putin.
It's all part of the same tactic that you should not fall for and you should not tolerate if you're even a minimally intellectually honest person.
Now, I again understand that the reality is that all those videos that people were subjected to over the weekend, all those claims about atrocities committed against Israelis, obviously it produced a great amount of anger and a great amount of sickness, not just in Israel, but in foreign countries as well for people who feel an affinity toward Israel.
And in the United States, there are a lot of people who feel an affinity for Israel.
There are not just American Jews who do, but evangelical Christians who wield a lot of political power as well and who feel an affinity toward Israel for religious reasons or cultural reasons, but there's also the foreign policy establishment and neocons and militarists who see Israel as an important And always have as an important military ally of the United States.
And so the energy and the emotion surrounding this topic, I'm aware, are very high.
And there's not a lot of people who want to hear any questioning right now.
And I think it's very important to be careful, but not be willing to refrain from asking the questions or making the points that I think ought to be raised.
And one of the things I did when I was thinking about coming on tonight and talking about this war and how to do it was I went back and watched the video that I did immediately following the Russian invasion of Ukraine where pretty much the same thing happened.
We spent the first day or the first two days bombarded with images of Russian violence against Ukrainians, of Ukrainian civilians crying, of mourning, of grieving, of weeping.
The kind of thing that we almost never see when America is involved in wars.
We almost never see interviews with the victims of our bombs or our drones when it's innocent people, but we do get shown that when it comes time for a war that the U.S.
government wants to instigate support for.
And so people were just drowning in videos.
And obviously if you're a decent person and you look at videos of Ukrainian women crying over the death of their children, or you're a decent person, you're going to be emotionally moved by that.
But it can't mean that that means that you're not allowed to question or even oppose your country's involvement in that war because then you get accused of supporting Russian violence or being indifferent to the suffering of people because there's wars all the time in every part of the world.
And obviously there has to be space for you to say, I don't think my government should get involved in this war or I think this war is more complicated than the morality play we're being presented with.
And so I went back and I watched what I tried to communicate in the day after the Russian invasion, knowing that the same kind of propaganda, the same kind of emotional intensity would immediately arrive as is with us now when it comes to What is now a war between Israel and Gaza?
I just want to show you a little bit of what I tried to communicate because I think it's so incredibly relevant to what we have to do now and how we have to think about this war that not only is involving Israel and Gaza, but also the United States and a lot of other countries.
So let me just show you a couple excerpts from this is February 24th, 2022.
So it was the night of or the day after the Russian invasion.
So it's always an extraordinarily horrific episode to watch a new war break out anytime.
That's just always true.
And precisely for that reason, we react very emotionally to the outbreak of a new war, as we should.
Given that it generally means that large numbers of human beings, innocent civilians are going to have their lives extinguished.
Bombs are falling, destroying cities, destroying ancient structures, disrupting lives, causing thousands or hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of displaced.
Human beings, whoever we assign blame to for that war, we naturally are going to have a huge amount of intense emotion toward that country of rage and anger and a desire for vengeance.
And conversely, we're going to have an enormous amount of sympathy and a desire to help and protect and defend whoever we regard As the victim, it's for any normal, healthy, well-adjusted human being, a time of extremely high emotions.
And I think we need to be aware of that for two reasons.
The first of which is that anytime we're in a state of high emotions, by definition, necessarily, our capacity to reason diminishes.
If we're reacting to something with intense emotions, our ability to use rationality to react to the situation, to analyze it, is crowded out by the intensity of those emotions.
Even when those emotions are valid, in fact, particularly when those emotions are valid, as the emotions that are pervasive now, watching what's happening between Russia and Ukraine undoubtedly are, It doesn't matter whether the emotions are valid or not.
The mere existence of intense emotions means that we lose our capacity, at least for the moment, to evaluate events and what our response should be and how we should think about them with reason, with rationality.
Now, it's just that we ought to be aware of what the reaction is when our brains are flooded with high emotions, when our emotions are part of a collective reaction and therefore even more intense given that we're social and political animals and we're tribal and We feed on one another's emotions, and so the more we all feel intense emotions, collectively the emotions intensify.
It's important to realize what that means for our reasoning ability, which is our ability or our willingness even to think about things rationally and through reason as opposed to these emotions.
diminished.
We're in a diminished state of reason when we react to things emotionally.
And that's why whenever events like this happen, you can go through every single event that you might want to compare a new war to.
Look at 9-11, for example.
In the days after 9-11, we were all in lockstep about various ideas and emotions and reactions that a month later, two months later, a year later, 20 years later, many of us who embraced those emotions at the time have come to reevaluate and regard many of us who embraced those emotions at the time have come There's no question that a week from now, a month from now, a year from now, So I think you're seeing an enormous amount of that.
Obviously you're seeing it in Israel, but you're seeing it in the United States too.
And I just think it's important to realize the other.
So I think you're seeing an enormous amount of that.
Obviously, you're seeing it in Israel, but you're seeing in the United States, too.
I cannot tell you how many people I've seen.
Conservatives and liberals and Republicans and Democrats.
Where there's really very little difference or dissent, even though a lot of people try and claim there is.
The reality is that the overwhelming majority of mainstream American politics and the vast majority of the people in both parties have as much unity in support of Israel as they did in this moment in support of Ukraine when Russia invaded.
did.
There are places around the world where we see things much differently.
There are thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people in the Arab world.
out on the street expressing solidarity for Palestinians.
And if you were subjected to that media and that discourse, you would think a lot differently.
But the reality is there is a unity of thought and emotion, which sometimes is justified.
But it also creates the danger that because we're tribal animals, because we're social and political animals, and especially now with social media, that we feed on the same collective notions.
And nobody wants to be cast aside.
No one wants to be excluded.
Societal scorn is a big punishment for social animals.
There is a danger that we can get swept away in these emotions.
I'm so angry with the Palestinians, with these Hamas monsters, that I'm just ready to turn Gaza into a parking lot without regard to the implications of that, of the wider war that would spark, of the humanitarian disaster that would generate.
And I think it's important to try and step back and use your reason and not just your emotion.
Because we have so many examples where using that emotion led us wildly astray.
Now, there's one other point that I wanted to that I made about, remember, this is the day or the day after the Russian invasion when it was very difficult to have this discussion.
It's much easier now to stand up and say you don't support the war in Ukraine.
But back then it was extremely difficult.
There were very few people doing it.
The emotions were running almost as high.
And it's not just that emotion blinds you to reason, it's also that it makes you very susceptible to propaganda.
Here's how I tried to describe that then.
Misguided.
There's no question that a week from now, a month from now, a year from now, we're going to be thinking about these events differently than we're able to think about them right now.
And I just think it's important to realize The other and I think more important thing to realize about how we react to war and the intensity of the emotions it provokes is that emotions by their very nature are very susceptible to manipulation.
All power centers know how to manipulate and control emotions.
They use fear, they use anger, they use revenge, they use a sense of righteous justice to move people.
Governments have been studying this for a long time and we are More easily manipulated in terms of how we react to things, how we think about things, who we trust, who we don't trust when we're in a state of high emotions because of the ease with which emotions can be trifled with, can be controlled.
And it's not just governments that know how to do that.
Obviously, media corporations think a lot about that.
Social media companies and technology companies think a lot about that.
A central prong of the strategy of those corporations is to use your emotions to keep you engaged with whatever they're offering, to make sure that your level of anger and rage and righteousness and interest are as high as possible.
These are all things that many, many large institutions are thinking about right at this moment, consciously or otherwise, with good or bad or neutral intentions about how they can play on these emotions that we all have in order to manipulate So we all want to think we're immune from that.
We all want to think we're not vulnerable to being manipulated, to being propagandized.
We all want to think we're independent minded and critically thinking human beings.
And maybe we are, but none of us is vulnerable to those things.
None of us is because they're intrinsic to human nature.
And as I said, you can be as supportive of or as empathetic toward the desire of Palestinians to be free of occupation in the West Bank, to be free of that blockade in the Gaza as much as you want.
But if you're a healthy person, psychologically and emotionally healthy person, you're going to see those videos.
of young dead people on the ground or families being terrorized in their homes with people with guns who are arbitrarily shooting part of the family or kidnapping other parts in front of them.
And you're going to feel anger.
You're going to feel rage.
We all are.
And the important thing is to safeguard against having those emotions either mislead us or let others exploit them for their own ends.
And so no matter how self-assured you are about your view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and like I said, in the United States, for whatever reason, I think it generates more absolutism than even wars involved in the United States, our own country, it's so important to be on guard against this.
Now, the other point I think is so worth making before delving into the substance of the war itself, the context for it, the reasons for it, Is that it is just the case that in the United States there is an overwhelming consensus, especially on the elite political media level, in favor of Israel.
I know there's a desire to always believe that whatever view you have is the minority view, is the view that's repressed, is the view that's persecuted.
People always want to believe that institutions are against them, that public opinion is against them, that governments are against them.
It gives us a sense of conviction and righteousness to believe that.
But the irrefutable and easily provable reality in the United States is that the vast, vast majority of the two political parties in Washington And virtually the entire corporate media, liberal and conservative, all have the same exact view when it comes to Israel and Palestine or when it comes to Israel in general.
The United States is and for decades has been an unstinting and loyal supporter of Israel and all of its wars and all of its conflicts, regardless of which party wins.
And if you don't know that about the United States and Israel, you know very little about U.S.
foreign policy because that has been central to U.S.
foreign policy for decades, an unwavering siding with Israel.
And so as a result, if you're American, if you live in the United States, if you're exposed to U.S.
political culture, almost all of what you're going to be hearing is pushing you in that direction.
And I know, again, there's an attempt to pretend that the Democratic Party Is somehow critical of Israel or opposed to Israel?
This is madness.
Or to believe that American liberals, meaning the mainstream type of person supporting the Democratic Party, is opposed to Israel.
This is not true.
This is just not true.
And it's so easily proven.
Let's just start with Joe Biden.
Whoever controls Joe Biden and his Twitter account tweeted the following on October 8th yesterday, quote, this morning, I spoke with the Israeli Prime Minister to express my full support for the people of Israel in the face of an unprecedented and appalling assault by Hamas terrorists.
We will remain in close contact over the coming days.
The U.S.
will continue to stand with the people of Israel.
Not a syllable of sympathy for the Palestinian cause.
I'm not saying right for the moment that there should be or that you expect to be.
I'm just saying the position of the Democratic Party is the same as the position of the Republican Party and has been for decades, which is that Israel is in the right and that our duty is to support Israel in every war that it has.
One of the last things President Obama did in office took place on September 14, 2016, so just about six weeks before the 2016 election.
Here you see the headline in the New York Times, the U.S.
finalizes a deal to give Israel $38 billion in military aid.
Quote, the United States has finalized a $38 billion package of military aid for Israel over the next 10 years, the largest of its kind ever.
And the two allies plan to sign the agreement on Wednesday, American and Israeli officials said.
The State Department scheduled a ceremony to formally announce the pact, which will be signed by Jacob Nagel, the acting national security advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and Thomas Shannon, the undersecretary of state for political affairs.
Susan Rice, President Obama's national security advisor, who handled negotiations, plans to be on hand.
The package represents a major commitment to Israel's security in the waning months of Mr. Obama's presidency after years of fractious relations with Mr. Netanyahu over issues like the Iran nuclear agreement.
Mr. Netanyahu agreed to several concessions to cement the deal rather than gamble on winning better terms from the next president.
The package will provide an average of $3.8 billion a year over the next decade to Israel, already the largest recipient of American aid.
Including financing for missile defense systems that defend against rockets fired by groups like Hezbollah and Hamas.
Under a previous 10-year agreement that expires in 2018, the United States provides about $3 billion a year, but lately Congress has added up to $500 million a year for missile defense.
And it's true President Obama had conflicts with Benjamin Netanyahu, who often sided openly with the Republican Party.
President Obama was a big admirer of the first President Bush and Brent Scowcroft and James Baker.
He came from that realist kind of foreign policy and they were angry about Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
In fact, President Obama abstained from a vote of the Security Council to make those settlements illegal.
But despite that, it was President Obama's administration that negotiated the largest aid package in history for Israel.
More than $3 billion a year, $38 billion over 10 years.
And every time there's a vote regarding Israel, the vote in Congress is something like 410 to 10 in favor of Israel.
Both political parties automatically back resolutions supporting Israel, including when they're bombing Gaza, including when they're at war with the Palestinians.
Here from NBC, July 18, 2023.
This is only two months ago.
The House Republicans pass a resolution backing Israel after a Democrat calls it a, quote, racist state.
So you have Priscilla Jayapal, the head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, that said that Israel was becoming an apartheid state, something that senior Israeli officials have been warning for years.
And in response, the Republicans introduced a resolution basically to condemn or denounce or disassociate themselves from that sentiment.
And here's what happened.
Quote, the GOP-led effort highlighted the divide among House Democrats over Israel, with younger progressives adopting a more critical stance toward the longtime US ally than party leaders.
Quote, the House on Tuesday passed a Republican resolution reaffirming its support for Israel with strong bipartisan approval, an implicit rebuke of a leading Democrat who over the weekend called the country a racist state but later apologized.
The resolution introduced by Congressman August Pflueger of Texas passed with over 400 lawmakers backing the measure.
It did not mention Congresswoman Jayapal by name but was clearly a response to her recent remarks about the Jewish state.
The measure was drafted soon after she criticized Israel and its treatment of Palestinians.
Jayapal and the Congressional Progressive Caucus walked back the comments the next day, insisting they were aimed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and not the Jewish state.
Quote, I do not believe the idea of Israel as a nation is racist, Jayapal said in a statement.
I do, however, believe Netanyahu's extremist right-wing government has engaged in discriminatory and outright racist policies and that there are extreme races driving that policy within leadership of the current government.
Top Democratic leaders in the House reaffirmed their support for Israel ahead of the vote, responding to Sunday to Jayapal's comments with a blistering joint statement.
Right.
The statement, from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the Democrat of New York, and members of his leadership team, declared that, quote, Israel is not a racist state.
It also said America's long-held commitment to a, quote, safe and secure Israel as an invaluable ally, partner, and beacon of democracy in the Middle East is ironclad.
Hours later, more than 40 House Democrats, including a large group of Jewish members, issued a separate letter condemning Jayapal's comments.
Quote, any efforts to rewrite history and question the Jewish state's right to exist or our historic bipartisan relationship will never succeed in Congress, the group led by Congressman Josh Gottmeier, Democrat of New Jersey, said Monday night.
Most Democrats supported the GOP resolution Tuesday, even as they accused Republicans of playing politics.
These are straightforward things that we should be supporting, Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said.
So, you had 410 members of the House, and only 9 against, in support of that resolution.
That's how overwhelming and bipartisan support for Israel is, that they were even willing to adopt a resolution denouncing and condemning one of their own members for speaking critically of Israel.
And this is what happens every time a vote comes before Congress.
Here from Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper, in July of 2014, which is another time Israel was bombing Gaza, the U.S.
Senate unanimously approved a resolution giving full support of Israel on Gaza.
Quote, the United States Senate unanimously approved a non-binding resolution in support of Israel's right to defend itself against rocket fire from the Gaza Strip.
The resolution, which had 78 bipartisan sponsors, passed late Thursday by unanimous consent a week after it was introduced by Senators Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire.
There's probably no issue.
That generates that level of unanimity, that kind of bipartisan support like support for Israel.
It is absolutely a stable, central conviction of the US political class in Washington and of the US media.
Which I say because I saw a lot of efforts this weekend to pretend that somehow large numbers of Americans, large numbers of Democrats, large numbers of American liberals somehow hate Israel, are anti-Semitic.
Look at what the government does in every instance.
It overwhelmingly supports Israel more than it supports any other program, including ones involving the American citizens.
You don't get unanimous votes like that.
Or 410 to 9 votes like that.
On almost anything involving American political debates, you do get it on Israel.
And it's been like this for decades.
Here in September of 2021, the House approves a billion dollars for the Iron Dome as Democrats feud over Israel.
And we'll see what that feuding was.
But in addition to the close to $4 billion a year that the Obama administration negotiated for Israel, the House approved a separate $1 billion to fund the Iron Dome in Israel.
I kept hearing Republicans opposed to the US, role in Ukraine, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, saying, we can't afford to spend tens of billions of dollars on Ukraine.
Ukraine's not the 51st American state.
And I asked her about that when she was on my show.
I've asked other American first politicians about that on my show.
And they say, no, Israel comes first or not comes first.
But Israel is a country that we will support no matter what.
And here is the United States giving an additional billion dollars to Israel to fund their Iron Dome, even though Israel is a very prosperous country.
They have a lot of benefits, social benefits, that the United States doesn't have, that not all Americans have, including more wider access to free college and health care.
And yet, whenever funding comes up to support Israel, it passes overwhelmingly.
That is the ethos of the United States as a pro-Israel country.
Quote, progressives balked at sending military aid to a country they accused of human rights abuses, angering centrists and Jewish lawmakers who said the United States must support a crucial ally.
And yet, listen to what actually happened.
Quote, the House on Thursday overwhelmingly approved $1 billion in new funding for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system after a debate that exposed bitter divisions among Democrats over U.S.
policy toward one of its closest allies.
They keep saying there was like a bitter debate, that Democrats had a feud, but, quote, the vote was 420 to 9.
420 to 9 to help Israel replace missile interceptors used during heavy fighting in a devastating rocket and missile war with the Palestinians in May, reflecting the widespread bipartisan support in Congress for Jerusalem that has persisted for decades.
Which is exactly correct.
There is an overwhelming bipartisan support for Israel in Washington that has persisted for decades.
I think it's important to realize that, because if you're an American, that is the ethos to which you're always subjected.
There is not any significant anti-Israel, let alone Jew-hating sentiments within the mainstream of the United States political and media class.
It does not exist.
Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate Majority Leader, was in China today meeting with leading Chinese officials and he looked directly at them and denounced them.
Because in their statement about Israel and Palestine, they issued a neutral statement urging restraint.
And he told them he was angry that they weren't more supportive of Israel.
This is Chuck Schumer in China, speaking directly to Chinese officials.
Listen to what he said.
The ongoing events in Israel over the past few days are horrific.
I urge you and the Chinese people to stand with the Israeli people and condemn these cowardly and vicious attacks.
250 young people gathered at a dance and the Hamas terrorists took machine guns and shot them all dead.
I was very disappointed to be honest by the foreign ministry statement that showed no sympathy or support for Israel during these tough troubled times.
I mean that is showing what a huge priority Israel is for Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Democrat in the Senate, that he would go to China.
Obviously there's immensely consequential matters for the Chinese and the United States and Americans to try and negotiate and resolve.
And he chided them in public, not because they sided with the Palestinians, but because they refused to intervene on Israel's side to support Israel.
Here is the Congressional Research Service, which is one of the most, I think, reliable sources of information.
It's a part of Congress that has remained more or less steadfastly nonpartisan.
And in March of this year, they issued a report entitled Foreign Aid to Israel that gives a good sense for how Central pro-Israel sentiment is to the political class in the United States in both political parties.
Here's part of what it said.
Quote, Israel is the largest cumulative recipient of U.S.
foreign assistance since World War II.
Successive administrations working with Congress have provided Israel with assistance reflective of robust domestic U.S.
support for Israel and its security, shared strategic goals in the Middle East, a mutual avowed commitment to democratic values and historical ties dating from U.S. support for the creation of Israel in 1948.
To date, the United States has provided Israel $158 billion, current or non-inflation adjusted dollars in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding.
At present, all U.S. politicians, bilateral aid to Israel is in the form of military assistance from 1971 to 2007.
Israel also received significant economic assistance in 2016.
The U.S.
and Israeli governments signed their third 10-year Memorandum of Understanding on military aid covering fiscal year 2019 to 2028.
Under the terms of the memo, the United States pledged to provide subject to congressional appropriation $38 billion in military aid.
Grants plus $5 billion in missile defense appropriations to Israel for fiscal year 2023.
Congress authorized another $520 million for joint US-Israel defense programs, including $550 million for missile defense.
Per the terms of the memorandum, Congress appropriated $3.8 billion for Israel in the 2023 Consolidated Appropriations Act and added $98.58 million in funding for other cooperative defense and non-defense programs.
Now, the only time, there were only really two times that I ever saw major political officials suggest that we should have a different policy toward Israel.
You have to go back all the way to the Bush 41 administration, as I mentioned earlier.
Because back then, Israeli settlements in the West Bank were expanding aggressively.
And George Bush, who had been previously the director of the CIA, and James Baker and Brent Scowcroft, who were realists, meaning they're kind of in the tradition of John Mearsheimer, We hope to get on our program within the next few days or next couple weeks to talk about Israel and Palestine as well as several other voices with different perspectives as well.
But their view was that the U.S.
is supporting Israel and settlements in the West Bank were destroying the potential for a two-state solution, which the United States viewed as crucial to its own security because it has to operate in the Middle East.
And the anger and rage and hatred that the U.S., the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been causing was causing a lot of anti-American sentiment as well.
And so the one thing the Americans wanted Israel to do is stop expanding settlements.
And the Israelis refused, notwithstanding how much aid the U.S.
was giving to the Israelis.
And those settlements were making a peace plan impossible because it was making a contiguous Palestinian state A pipe dream.
And obviously since then, the Israelis have expanded wildly more into the West Bank.
But one of the things James Baker and the Bush administration did finally, with frustration, is tell the Israelis, we are not going to continue to give you aid and loan guarantees unless you stop your settlement building.
There you see from the Washington Post.
This is the only time I remember in my lifetime in American presidency trying to put real constraints on the Israelis.
By threatening to withhold loan guarantees, this is the Republican Presidency, George Bush.
Here you see the Washington Post, February of 1992.
Baker bars Israeli loan aid unless settlements are halted.
Quote, Secretary of State James Baker gave Israel a blunt public warning yesterday that unless it stops building Jewish settlements in occupied territories, it will not get $10 billion in U.S.
loan guarantees to help resettle hundreds of thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union.
Quote, the choice is Israel's, Baker said, appearing before Congress as Middle East peace talks resumed here and delivering what amounted to a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum to Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's government.
Quote, this administration is ready to support loan guarantees for absorption of assistance to Israel of up to $2 billion a year for five years, provided though there is a halt or end to settlement activities, Baker told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations.
From our standpoint, it's up to Israel.
She can determine whether she wants to take action which would permit the strong support of both the legislative and executive branches for these loan guarantees or not.
The administration's stance marks one of the few times in Israel's 44-year history that the United States, the Jewish state's principal financial and political backer, has threatened to withhold aid if the Israeli government refuses to abandon a policy representing its top political and ideological priorities.
The U.S.
position could open the most serious rift with Israel since the 1956 Suez Canal crisis when President Dwight Eisenhower used the threat of a U.S.
aid cutoff to force Israel to withdraw its forces from the Sinai Peninsula.
So before that you had to go all the way back to 1992 in order to find any tension between the United States and Israel of a genuine kind and ultimately It didn't really even work.
Here was the New York Times in March of 1992 showing that George Bush, the president, also was supportive of that policy.
There you see the headline, Bush rejects Israeli loan guarantees from the New York Times.
But ultimately, the political pressure in both parties on the Bush administration in favor of Israel was so strong That those loan guarantees ended up being made, and then all throughout the 1990s under Bill Clinton, the Israelis expanded settlements anyway, even though the official U.S.
position was that was a direct threat to American national security.
And the Israelis did it anyway, and the political pressure was so great that those loan guarantees and that aid continued, even though the Israelis were taking actions that, according to top U.S.
officials, was increasing anti-U.S.
sentiment in the Middle East.
Now, there has been, on the right, certain opposition to U.S.
support for Israel, and even support for the view that the Israelis are the ones persecuting the Palestinians rather than the other way around.
There has been, on the American right, some support for that view.
In particular from Ron Paul, who, in my view, is one of the most courageous politicians of the last, say, half century.
Because even though you may not agree with Ron Paul on a lot of things, there was never a time when he refrained from supporting the views he believed in.
He went deep into South Carolina and Iowa in the Republican presidential primary and denounced neoconservatives and the war in Iraq and what he called the racist war on drugs.
Even though obviously that's not standard Republican policy ideology to say if you want to win a presidential race.
And in both 2008 and 2012, Ron Paul came in second place in the primary, even though he never once uttered a word he didn't believe.
So here's Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan just to give you a sense for the fact that there was, obviously there is some views that are pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli on the left, though they're especially now quite marginalized as those votes in Congress show, as well as the fact that every Democrat in Congress except for Cori Bush and Rashida Tlaib issued a statement Not only condemning Hamas, which both of them did, but also supporting Israel.
It was only those two, out of 435 members of Congress, who said, I think we need to stop supporting Israel until the occupation ends.
But every other member of Congress, and the Squad, and the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders, all of them, and the Republican Party all said the same thing.
But there was some space on the right until quite recently where there was dissent on this view.
Let's show you what Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan, the kinds of things they were saying.
Republican Congressman Ron Paul recently called the onslaught in Gaza an atrocious massacre.
It's our money and our weapons, but I think we encouraged it.
Certainly the president has said nothing to diminish it.
Matter of fact, he justifies it on moral grounds.
They have a right to this without ever mentioning the tragedy of Gaza.
You know, the real problems are there.
To me, I look at it like a concentration camp and people are making homemade bombs and like they're the aggressors.
The Israelis have been hit with, for six months, with these little rockets, which didn't kill anybody.
It was outrageous, cruel, and stupid.
And they triggered a blitzkrieg against the Palestinians in Gaza, which in my judgment is an Israeli concentration camp where a million and a half people are locked up, cannot come out or go in.
They've been controlling food, electricity, fuel, and the innocent people in Gaza are the ones suffering.
Concentration camp, Pat, doesn't that diminish the significance of the real concentration camps?
I'm not talking about a death camp.
I'm talking about what the British had in concentration camps in South Africa and what the Spanish had in Cuba and what others have had where they bring all these people, lock them in there.
and treat him with great cruelty and a humanitarian disaster, despite what Zippy Livni says.
Obviously, Pat Buchanan was a virulent opponent of the invasion of Iraq, saying we have no business in the Middle East, that there are no American interests there in invading Iraq.
Ron Paul, same thing.
Here's John Mearsheimer, who I think has proven to be the most prescient analyst when it comes to Russia and Ukraine.
He's been warning about this war that was likely to break out because of NATO and American attempts to expand into Ukraine, to control Ukraine right on the Russian border.
He wrote a book with another professor, Stephen Waldrop Harvard, in, I believe it was 2008, 2009, a very controversial book called The Israel Lobby.
It was 2007, called The Israel Lobby, that essentially tried to explain everything I just went through about why steadfast support for this foreign country in Israel is such a central, passionately felt cause for both political parties and has been for decades.
And they talk about the fact that there are a lot of very powerful political lobbies in Washington, but most of them are more associated with one party than the other.
You have the NRA or the Chamber of Commerce that are more associated with the Republican Party.
You have Planned Parenthood and the NAACP or the Human Rights Campaign that are more associated with the Democratic Party.
But the Israel lobby, AIPAC, the ADL, has sway equally in both political parties.
It is fully bipartisan.
And here he is in 2017, quite presciently predicting the reason why Israel was going to be harming itself if it continued to pursue these policies, just like he was so prescient on Ukraine and the United States and NATO and Russia.
Let's just listen to a little bit of what he said.
The United States has a special relationship with Israel that has no parallel in modern history and it is almost wholly due to the lobby.
The aid is given unconditionally.
In other words, Israel gets this aid even when it does things that the United States opposes.
Like building settlements in the West Bank.
Only someone who is blind and deaf would not recognize that the United States is deeply committed to defending Israel's behavior at almost every turn.
Public support for Israel in the United States has never been particularly strong.
One way that the lobby deals with this thin support is to have significant influence both inside the Democratic and Republican parties.
There has been a marked erosion in support for Israel within the Democratic Party in recent years, which raises serious questions as to whether the lobby will be able to maintain bipartisan support for the special relationship in the years ahead.
Anyone who wants to be a serious player in the making of U.S.
foreign policy understands full well that if he or she criticizes Israel, there will be a price to pay.
The result is that there is no serious debate about Israel or the special relationship in Congress, the mainstream media, or prominent think tanks like the Council on Foreign Relations.
A key stain on Israel's reputation is its brutal treatment of the Palestinians and the fact that it has become an apartheid state.
Until recently, Israel and its supporters were able to maintain the fiction that there would eventually be a legitimate Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel.
But it is now clear that there is virtually no chance that will happen.
Bottom line is that the days when Israel was seen as a morally upright David taking on an evil Goliath are over.
The damage to Israel's reputation probably started in 1982 when it invaded Lebanon, but it has accelerated at a marked pace over the past decade.
So he did say there that this was 2017, the Trump administration, it was true that the Netanyahu government was openly siding with the Republican Party in the House, and that turned some Democrats for the first time against the Netanyahu government.
And so he was suggesting that perhaps that was foretelling some sort of partisan split finally on Israel.
And yet now you see, with the Biden administration leading the way, that nothing of the sort has happened.
Now, I mentioned George Bush as being the only one of two officials with real power that I mentioned that had ever questioned the role of the United States in Israel.
The other one Was Donald Trump, when he first started running in 2015, when he said he thinks the US has been too pro-Israel, and that has jeopardized the Americans' ability to negotiate a deal between the Palestinians and the Israelis because we're perceived as being too much on one side, and that we should be more even-handed, he said.
That was one of the first things that turned neocons against him.
But within a pretty short time, I think Trump realized the political danger of that.
He was in front of AIPAC delivering a very pro-Israel speech and ultimately became one of the most steadfast supporters of Israel, including moving the capital or the embassy to Jerusalem rather than Tel Aviv, which Democrats at the time claimed that they were so outraged by.
But then Chuck Schumer came out and said, I actually support President Trump's decision to do that.
And it's not moved back during the Biden administration.
So that was it.
Those are the only two times.
Now, the idea that the Democratic Party is somehow against Israel, or doesn't support Israel steadfastly, was negated not only by President Biden's speech, but also by the administration's actions.
Here is a report from Andrew Desiderio who reports for Punchbowl and other sites have reported this well about what the United States is doing in order to help Israel in this current conflict.
This is from today.
Quote, The Biden officials, The Biden officials, acting officials, acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and acting Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Sasha Baker, suggested an imminent funding package isn't necessary, acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and acting Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Sasha Baker, suggested an imminent
stall.
Republican hawks are very into this, meaning the Biden administration's view, led by Victoria Nuland.
Adding Israel security assistance to a Ukraine-focused supplemental funding package could help ease passage of the whole bill.
Republican Ukraine skeptics have been making pro-Israel arguments with the same talking points that are used for Ukrainian money.
The importance of defending our allies, the importance of not showing weakness, etc.
And so it's likely to ensure, by putting Israel funding in to fund the Israeli war with and attached to the funding for Ukraine that the difficulty of the Ukraine funding had in getting approval will likely now pass by an overwhelming vote because it will be tied to aid to Israel.
That's the Biden administration ensuring that we will now have two proxy wars that we're funding at the same time and by linking them together and President Zelensky has been trying to link them together by suggesting that the Hamas attack on Israel is the same as the Russian attack on Ukraine
And by in general invoking this idea that it's not just our words that we have to fund and fight, but other countries as well, that that's likely to lead to much easier and faster approval for the new spending package that the Biden administration wants so eagerly for Ukraine.
Now we're going to look at a couple of aspects of the situation in Gaza, the situation in the West Bank, the conflict between Israel and Palestine that provoked this latest outbreak of war in just a minute.
But we have a sponsor who we're happy to share with you, and we will be right back after this.
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So I was looking at a little bit of the chat during that commercial break and seeing that people are quite spirited in their convictions one way or the other.
And I do find it interesting that I think that some of the rhetoric, the rhetoric that I saw a little bit of in the chat, it didn't look much, so I don't want to generalize it because it's been the last few comments I saw.
There's obviously a lot of them.
But also a lot of the discourse that I heard over the weekend is Really kind of, I guess, hateful is the best way to put it on both sides.
I think there's this conflict is a conflict that has been going on for so long that we're essentially in the territory where there's complete and utter dehumanization.
All wars at some point involve a kind of dehumanization in order to be able to shoot people and kill people.
You have to detach yourself from their humanity.
That's part of good military training.
But we're not talking here about just militaries.
We're talking about each side seeing the other as subhuman.
And obviously there's a kind of sense that in the West, especially with immigration, angers, and other things that, oh, Muslims are these people who are inherently dangerous and animalistic.
There were Israeli officials calling them animals, and I think that was the mistake of 9-11.
I mean, if you think that 9-11 ended up being positive in terms of the U.S.
reaction to it, then by all means continue with that rhetoric that, oh, these people are subhuman.
They deserve to die in large numbers.
Who cares that they're civilian?
We can't afford the luxury anymore of distinguishing.
We just have to destroy these people.
I mean, I thought we all lived through that after 9-11 and the madness and the destruction that that leads to, as satisfying as it might seem in the moment.
Now, the thing about Israel and Gaza is that it is depressing to have to talk about and watch because it's been going on forever.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been going on forever with no one in sight.
The Israelis have been occupying the West Bank since the 1967 war.
And again, there's all kinds of views on the Israeli side that there's no such thing as the West Bank or Gaza, that that's all greater Israel, that the occupation is justified or necessary, that the blockade of Gaza is justified and necessary.
But the reality is it's been going on for decades and it's not being solved.
And the idea that the Israelis can just go in and destroy Gaza, just level it to the ground, kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people, children, again, the majority of people in Gaza are under the age of 18, is, I think, the sort of thing that you can say easily if you're in the West and don't have to deal with the fallout.
But if you look at Israeli media and Israeli politicians, some of them are saying that, but a lot of them are being quite cautious because they understand that they're surrounded By serious countries.
It is not 1997 anymore where there are only two powerful countries, the United States and Israel.
Turkey is powerful.
Iran is powerful.
Saudi Arabia is powerful.
The Gulf states are powerful.
And in a lot of ways, Israel has kind of isolated itself and turned its allies into the Gulf states in that region.
But they have populations as well, all of whom are Muslim or most of whom are Muslim, and no one's going to stand by in that region and watch the Israelis incinerate Gaza or suffocate it or blockade food out of it the way the Israelis are threatening to do.
It's so easy to cheer that and want that if you're sitting in a safe distance in the West, in the United States.
Just like it's easy to send Ukrainians to their death so you can feel powerful and good about fighting the Russians, even though you're not really fighting the Russians.
I mean, if you want to see this as kind of like civilization war between elevated, superior culture on one side, which is the Israelis, and subhuman animals on the other, which are Muslims in general, or Palestinians in particular, just look at what kind of results that mentality in the past has fostered, including in our own recent history.
Now, I've been covering this conflict for a long time.
I've been writing about it forever.
And just to give you a sense of how static this conflict is, no matter how many times each side kills each other, here's this article I wrote in The Guardian.
I was at The Guardian in November of 2012, so more than a decade ago.
This is about six months before the Snowden reporting began.
It was during an outbreak of violence between Hamas and Israel.
Israel was bombing Gaza wildly.
And this is the headline of the article I wrote, quote, the both sides are awful dismissal of Gaza ignores the key role of the US government.
And listen to how applicable all of this is to now.
Quote, everything about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict follows the same pattern over and over, including the reaction of Americans.
In the first couple of days after a new round of violence breaks out, there is intense interest and passion, which is quickly replaced by weariness, irritation, and even anger that one has to even be bothered by this never ending, always ugly, and seemingly irresolvable conflict.
These sentiments then morph into an attempt to separate oneself from the entire matter by declaring both sides to be equally horrendous, and then washing one's hands from any responsibility for thinking further about it.
I'm sick of both sides.
Followed by recriminations against anyone who actually has an opinion that is more supportive of one side than the other.
This temptation is genuinely understandable.
Few things are more depressing than paying attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The carnage and mutual hatred seem infinite.
The arguments are so repetitive and fruitless.
As is true in all wars, including those depicted in pleasing good versus evil terms, atrocities end up being committed by all sides, leading one to want to disassociate oneself from all parties involved.
It is just as untenable to defend this indiscriminate launching by Hamas of projectiles into Israeli neighborhoods as it is to defend the massive air bombing by Israel that they have turned into an open-air prison that is designed to collectively punish hundreds of thousands of human beings.
Virtually everyone wishes the entire conflict would just go away.
With the exception of extremists on both sides who benefit in various ways, nobody relishes having to become involved in any of this.
It is exhausting, draining, soul-crushing, and miserable.
Embracing screwball sides, nihilism, and doing nothing else is so tempting because it appears to provide relief from the burden of paying any further attention to the horrific violence or bearing responsibility for any of it.
But for two independent reasons, this reasoning, understandable though may it be, depends upon patent fictions and is thus invalid.
The government which Americans fund and elect, and for which they thus bear responsibility, at least some responsibility, is anything but neutral in this conflict.
That government, certainly including the Democratic Party, is categorically, uncritically, and unfailingly on the side of Israel in every respect.
For years now, U.S.
financial, military, and diplomatic support of Israel has been the central enabling force driving this endless conflict.
You might want to think about this war as just some tribal religious conflict that's hundreds or thousands of years old with no one in sight.
But the reality is, if you're an American, your government is directly involved in it.
And that's the perception all throughout that region.
And the U.S.
is already involved in this latest outbreak of this part of the war, even though it's barely 48 hours old.
Here from MSNBC is a report on the way in which the United States government is already directly involved in the conflict.
Let's bring in NBC Pentagon correspondent Courtney Kubi to discuss all this.
Courtney, welcome.
So what do we know about the U.S.
military support in the region?
How large of a presence might it be?
How close does it get to Israel?
What is the significant message that it sends by its presence?
So it's both a big presence and it's a very significant capability that the U.S.
is providing.
So starting at sea, they're going to send, in fact, it's already on its way there, the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group.
That's the aircraft carrier of the Ford, but it's also a missile-guided cruiser.
Needless to say, this person you're seeing on the screen, like every one of the employees for these media corporations, gets information directly from the Pentagon and the Biden White House and goes on air and repeats it.
In fact, Fox News has become at least as much of an offender of this as CNN and MSNBC are.
Jennifer Griffin, the senior national security correspondent for Fox News, I've almost never seen her do anything but mindlessly read Pentagon news releases as truth and news.
So this person is not reporting anything, she's just repeating what the government has told her it is doing to support Israel in the war.
and four missile-guided destroyers.
So those have the ability to fire off missiles.
They have torpedoes.
And those are not only the kinds of missiles that can hit a target on land, but they also have the ability to do missile defense.
So let's say that there's a missile coming in.
They have ones that they can go up and they can intercept incoming missiles.
So in addition to that, the carrier and some of the ships, they have fixed-wing aircraft, they have helicopters, they even have surveillance aircraft.
So 6,000 sailors, huge capability at sea.
This is largely a show of presence or force or support for Israel at sea.
But in addition to that, the U.S. is also sending a number of aircraft.
We're told, according to U.S. officials, officials, it's somewhere in the neighborhood of 20, 25 additional aircraft going into the region.
Those include F-15s, F-16s, A-10s, all attack fighter aircraft.
This, again, is in addition to the F-18s that are on the carrier out in the Eastern Med.
But in addition to that, the U.S.
is sending F-35s.
And why that's so important, Alex, is because that's not only an attack aircraft, but it also has intelligence surveillance capabilities, very extensive capabilities, in fact.
It also has electronic warfare abilities.
So that includes being able to jam.
So this is a huge suite of assets that the U.S. is sending to the region.
It really provides not only a potential deterrent to Hamas, to other groups that may be supporting Hamas from continuing these attacks or furthering their attacks, but it also provides a real ability to respond if necessary.
Again, I want to really stress here, at this point, U.S. officials I'm talking to are not talking about the U.S. getting actively involved in the ground conflict there in Israel, but they're putting some assets in place that they'll be able to support Israel if need be, Alex.
She was really excited to go through that whole list of assets that the United States is sending.
And this is what we're doing.
And I would like to ask, we actually did a show on this once before, that the Republican Party has largely decided that it believes in an America first ideology.
America first ideology.
Based on the argument that the United States should not be using its resources to fight wars that are designed to affect other countries, unless our national security is directly at stake.
That's the reason why the Trump wing of the Republican Party opposed the war in Ukraine, opposed U.S.
involvement in the war in Ukraine.
Why should we spend tens of billions of dollars on this foreign country to help it fight a war that is not about the United States?
Ukraine is not the 51st state, we're told.
We don't have the money to go to Ukraine and help Ukraine defend itself against Russia.
What is the distinguishing rationale for why the United States should be so heavily involved in Israel's war?
Especially given the massive amount of aid we're already giving to Israel every year.
What is the difference between going and helping Ukraine fight against Russia and going and helping Israel fight against the people of Gaza who don't even have a military?
The reason why they have to use hang gliders and tractors to invade Israel is because they don't have an army.
They have weapons, primitive weapons in comparison to, they don't even have an airport, let alone an air force.
Israel bombed the only airport in Gaza, preventing the people of Gaza from leaving.
The civilian airport, they don't have an air force, they don't have a military.
So why is it?
How do you justify or reconcile the view that the United States should not be involving itself in the war in Ukraine and Russia, but spending billions and billions of dollars in all of our military assets to go and involve ourselves in this war?
Why is Israel different than Ukraine?
What is the reason for that?
Here from NBC News is more information on what the Biden administration is doing to intervene on behalf of Israel.
Quote, US is sending a carrier strike group closer to Israel and will begin supplying munitions starting Sunday.
Now munitions are the thing that the Ukrainians have been so short of.
One of the main reasons they're losing to Russia is they don't have enough munitions.
The West can't produce enough munitions to keep the Ukrainians supplied.
We're now going to start sending a ton of munitions, apparently, to Israel starting on Sunday.
Quote, the U.S. military is moving an aircraft carrier strike group and military aircraft closer to Israel as a show of support.
And it will also begin supplying Israel with munitions and other military supplies immediately.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said, Austin said Sunday afternoon that he had directed the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the eastern Mediterranean.
The group includes a carrier, the carrier, as well as a guided missile cruiser and four guided missile destroyers.
We have taken steps to augment U.S.
Air Force F-35, F-15, F-16, and A-10 fighter aircraft squadrons in the region, he said.
In addition, the United States government will be rapidly providing the Israeli Defense Forces with additional equipment and resources, including munitions.
The first security assistance will begin moving today and arriving in the coming days.
Here is a report from the Washington Post's Jeff Stein, who today tweeted the following, quote, senior administration officials told senators last night in a briefing that the White House will be asking Congress to approve additional military aid to Israel.
Can we put this tweet on the screen?
Including to replenish the Iron Dome and for artillery.
The dollar amount is unclear.
The U.S.
already provides more than $38 billion to Israel.
So this is the kind of immense aid that the United States, the Biden administration, is announcing through its media.
It is providing to Israel, again, on top of the $38 million a year support that it provides each year.
Now, here is, just so you can just kind of underscore the issue, the military aid is to repunish the Iron Dome, which is what that vote was about that passed the House by 410 to 9 to repunish the Iron Dome, as well as for artillery.
We don't yet know the dollar amount.
It's obviously going to be a significant amount, especially as we move forward.
As I indicated, there's no question that if you go on a show or you write an article questioning U.S.
support for Israel, the Biden administration's actions, or what Israel is doing, as I said at the start, somehow people will start accusing you of supporting Civilian massacres of the kind Hamas carried out on Saturday in Israel or rapes or whatever the worst form of behavior that they can point to that Hamas did.
Just like if you oppose intervention in the war in Ukraine you get accused of supporting everything the Russians are doing.
Here is a message from a viewer of the show, and we got several like this by email and other means.
Earlier today, once we announced we were covering this conflict on tonight's show, this person said, and we blurt out the name because it doesn't matter, but they said, will this be the last podcast I listen to of yours?
If you and I are witnessing a brutal rape in real time, I won't be impressed if your immediate response is, well, Mitch, let's try to understand the thing in context.
The idea that the minute you question Israel, the minute you question U.S.
policy toward Israel, it somehow means that you are supportive of everything Amastad on Saturday is obviously grotesque, but this is the tactic that's used to force everybody on one side or the other.
To give you a sense of how unhinged and deranged the rhetoric has become in the United States,
Let's look at former Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley, who, if you recall, was the Trump administration's ambassador to the UN, and when she resigned, she went to the private sector and made $8 million in personal wealth within about 18 months, in part from sitting on the board of Boeing, and in part from going and speaking at various neocon groups and pro-Israel groups in Washington.
And she isn't just condemning Hamas, which again, everybody who's decent did for what they did.
She is egging on maximal force used by the Israeli government.
Now again, why this is the central priority of somebody running for U.S.
President or of the Washington political class in general is a question that is difficult to answer.
But listen to what Nikki Haley says, the way she talks about war like it's a game.
Because again, it's not her or her family that's going to have to deal with the fallout of what she's urging.
But let's step back because I want the American people to kind of take this in for a second.
Just imagine that here the Israelis woke up.
Yeah, why?
That's what I want to know.
bombarded, families were murdered, women and children were taken hostage, dragged through the streets, the elderly were taken.
All of this has happened in front of everyone, on top of thousands of rockets that hit Israel.
This should be personal for every woman and man in America.
Why? - Yeah, why?
That's what I wanna know.
Why should this be personal for every woman and man in the United States?
I understand why it's personal to people in Israel.
That's their country.
Israel, though, is a separate country from the United States.
It's quite far away from the United States.
And yet Nikki Haley is not content to say that the United States should support Israel.
She's insisting that we see this as our own war.
Why are we at war with Gaza?
Or Palestinians in the West Bank?
Why would the United States be at war With a conflict that has nothing to do with the United States.
This is why, according to her.
Why?
Why do they hate us just as much?
When they did this, when they did this surprise attack, when they took these hostages, when they murdered these families, they were celebrating.
And what were they celebrating?
They were saying death to Israel, death to America.
This is not just an attack on Israel.
This is an attack on America because they hate us just as much.
Why?
Why do they hate us just as much?
Why do Palestinians way far away from the United States hate us?
Now, that was the question that people were asking after 9-11.
For those of you who didn't live through 9-11, those of you who did may not remember, a lot of people who weren't paying close attention rightfully wanted to know.
It wasn't easy to understand.
Why would these people hate the United States so much that they would commit suicide, 19 of them, on airplanes in order to kill as many Americans as possible?
Why did we spend the 90s watching people from the Muslim world do the same thing?
Why?
Why would they hate us that much?
Why did then, after that, people try and detonate bombs in Times Square on airplanes over Detroit?
Why?
Why would that happen?
Why would they hate us that much?
Why would they chant Death to America?
What is the answer?
People rightly wanted to know.
And the neocons and the Bush and Cheney administration invented one of the most propagandistic claims invented ever in history, which is they hate us for our freedoms.
They hate us because we're free.
That's why they hate us.
That's why they are willing to wanting to kill us because we're free.
Now, there are free countries all over the world that Muslims have never attacked.
Japan is free, they haven't attacked Japan.
Peru is free, they haven't attacked Peru.
Brazil is free, they haven't attacked Brazil.
South Korea is free, they haven't attacked South Korea.
You can go on and on and on and on.
All kinds of free countries have never been attacked that way.
Why was the United States?
Why are they chanting death to Israel, death to America?
Which, by the way, I haven't seen any reports that they actually were doing that, but maybe they were.
Maybe a couple were.
So why would they?
Why would people in Gaza hate the United States?
The answer is obvious.
Just like the answer was obvious as to why people in the Muslim part of the world were wanting to bring violence to the United States because of the perception that we bring violence to their part of the world all the time.
Which is true.
That is a historical fact.
And Al Qaeda had a series of grievances, long expressed, that the United States had stationed troops in Saudi Arabia, which they consider sacred, that the United States had imposed a sanctions regime on Iraq.
That killed, according to Madeleine Albright, 500,000 people.
And when she was asked in 60 Minutes whether it was worth it to kill 500,000 Iraqi children, she said it was through those sanctions.
And that the United States has been arming and funding Israel to occupy that part of the land and to grow into that part of the land.
They don't just hate us because they picked our names out of a hat or because we're free.
There's a cost to these policies.
If you go around the world bombing and arming and invading and engineering coups, you're going to incur a lot of hatred from the people in those regions who are affected by that.
But the fact that they're chanting death to America, and again, I haven't seen those reports.
That's often a chant in Iran.
But, I don't know, I haven't seen Hamas doing that, but let's say they were.
The reason why they hate the United States, it's obvious, is because of that long decade's worth of history I just walked you through, that every time Israel starts bombing Gaza or starts fortifying its occupation of the West Bank, the United States is immediately there to fight alongside Israel to provide it with those weapons.
So if you're in Gaza and you see a bomb dropped that kills a bunch of innocent civilians, you know who provided that bomb.
Why is that worth it to the United States?
Why is that worth getting involved in these wars?
So Nikki Haley wants you to think this is America's war.
Which is, in a lot of ways, how the Biden administration is reacting.
We have to understand is, this is the reason that we have to unite around making sure our enemies do not hurt our friends.
America can never be so arrogant to think we don't need friends, just like we needed them on 9-11.
That's why Ukraine needs us when Russia's doing this.
That's why Israel needs us when Hamas and Iran are doing this.
And I'll say this to Prime Minister Netanyahu, finish them.
Finish them.
Okay, so before I get to that psychotic remark, finish them.
Finish them.
She, Nikki Haley, I think coherently Linked her view that the United States should be involved in the war in Russia and Ukraine on the Ukraine side to the view that the United States should also be involved in this war.
And if China and Taiwan have a war, she'll want the United States to intervene in that war as well.
She supported every U.S.
war that has ever been proposed or ever been fought for decades now.
That's her vision of the United States and its role in the world is to constantly fight wars.
The vision that Donald Trump ran against.
But the one thing Nikki Haley is saying here that's valid is that the same rationale that would lead the United States to fight on the side of Israel is the same rationale that would lead the United States to fight on the side of Ukraine, even though neither is our war.
Now, again, Nikki Haley is sitting in a comfortable studio in New York in the United States, and this is her message to Netanyahu.
Israel needs us when Hamas and Iran are doing this.
And I'll say this to Prime Minister Netanyahu, finish them.
Finish them.
Hamas did this.
You know Iran's behind it.
Finish them.
They should have hell to pay for what they've just done.
All right, so it sounds like, and of course she's not going to state it explicitly, but she wants there to be a massive air bombardment and ground attack on Gaza.
Finish them.
Finish Hamas.
Hamas is embedded into Gaza, just like the Taliban was embedded into Afghanistan.
It's the reason why you couldn't go to Afghanistan and get rid of the Taliban.
The Taliban is Afghanistan.
And while not every Gaza supports Hamas, the last time Gaza had an election, When George Bush and Dick Cheney encouraged them to do so, the people elected Hamas as their leaders.
How are you going to finish Hamas, meaning eradicate them, when they're completely integrated into civilian life in Gaza?
Gaza's a tiny little place that's densely populated.
That's why it sounds psychotic.
It's not like bombing Al-Qaeda in some cave somewhere.
You're talking about an extremely densely populated strip of land filled with children.
And she didn't just say finish them with regard to Hamas, she said that with Iran too.
She's saying there should be hell to pay for both of those countries.
Now, again, I know there's a lot of conservatives who get excited when it comes to talking about war with Iran and war with China and war with Gaza and war with Hezbollah.
I mean, I thought conservative politics was now about opposing these kinds of constant interventions and using our military only in defense of our own country and our own national security, and yet it seems like there's a lot of inconsistency with that.
Now, it is true Nikki Haley is an unpopular figure in the Republican Party, but I have a strong belief, based on everything I'm seeing, including from members of Congress who are Republicans and Democrats, that those particular views that she's expressing on Fox
Are ones that are quite popular among conservatives even though to me it sounds extremely inconsistent with the America First ideology as it's expressed and defended and are advocated by Donald Trump and his supporters and I've made that point many times before.
Now speaking of inhumane policies is easy and I think required to express disgust and horror at going to a rave and massacring civilians or going into people's homes and shooting their children in front of them and abducting the rest.
But here is the Israeli Defense Minister, Yoav Galant, announcing Israeli policy today.
And there is no way to feign indignation and disgust for what Hamas did while finding this To be any better.
We are fighting human animals and we have to act accordingly, he said.
We are fighting human animals and we have to act accordingly, he said.
No electricity, no food, no water, no gas.
Now the reason Israel can do that is because Israel has been blockading Gaza since it withdrew in 2005 under Ariel Sharon, the former Israeli Prime Minister.
Israel used to occupy Gaza the way it occupies the West Bank, with troops there, with settlements.
And Israel did withdraw from Gaza in 2005 and took its troops out and even removed forcibly its own citizens who were settled there on Gazan land.
But it still controls the airspace and the sea and the land space of Gaza, blockades Gaza.
The only things allowed into Gaza are what the Israelis permit.
And they've talked before about putting the Gazans on a diet, meaning only allowing in a minimal amount of food that they need for survival and nothing else.
They control the entire country, even though they're not in it, they're not governing it, they control.
If a foreign country is controlling your airspace, bombing your airport, not allowing you to leave, controlling the border, controlling the sea, call that an occupation or don't, it's obviously a blockade.
And now they're saying the Egyptians block and control one border entry, it's border with Gaza.
So they don't allow the Egyptians, the Egyptians don't allow the Gazans out either, but Israel doesn't allow them out any other way It controls every other part of Gaza and it's saying with this blockade we're going to prevent the entrance of food and water because they're animals and that's how we have to treat them.
So go ahead and condemn Hamas all you want and what they did on Saturday.
I do too.
But if you're not condemning this, it's not because you have consistent moral standards.
It's because you believe that some people are human and some people aren't.
And that's a train I run off of.
Now, the idea that Israel has become an apartheid state is something that is a view that provokes a lot of rage in the West.
And yet, The people who've been saying this, in criticism of Prime Minister Netanyahu and the parties with whom he's now aligned, are top Israeli officials.
Not Israeli leftists, Israeli military and intelligence officials.
Just last month, September 6, 2023, from The Guardian, the headline, Israel is imposing apartheid on Palestinians, says a former Mossad chief.
A former head of the Mossad intelligence agency has said Israel is imposing a form of apartheid on the Palestinians, joining a growing number of prominent Israelis, to compare the occupation of the West Bank to South Africa's defunct system of racial oppression.
But Tamir Pardo's views have added impact because of the high regard for Mossad in Israel, and because they come at a time when far-right members of Israel's government are moving to kill off any prospect of an independent Palestinian state.
Pardo told the Associated Press that Israel's mechanism for controlling the Palestinians from restrictions on movement to placing them under military law, while Jewish settlers in the occupied territory are governed by civilian courts, match the old South Africa.
Quote, there is an apartheid state here, he said, in a territory where two people are judged under two different legal systems, that is an apartheid state.
Pardo, 70, was appointed to head Mossad in 2011 by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's Prime Minister then and now.
Netanyahu's legal coup party said Pardo, quote, should be ashamed of his comments.
Quote, instead of defending Israel and the Israeli minister, Pardo slanders Israel, it said.
It'd be like if the former head of the CIA came out and said that the United States is engaged in genocide through one of its wars or coups.
People would pay attention to that because of who that was.
He's by far not the first Israeli to say it.
Here in The Guardian from 2010, the former Israeli Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, said that the Israelis have a choice.
Make peace with the Palestinians, or they will inevitably have to impose apartheid because there will be more Palestinians than Israelis, and Israelis, the minority, will rule over the Palestinian majority.
Quote, Ahud Barak, Israel's defense minister, last night delivered an unusually blunt warning to his country that a failure to make peace with the Palestinians would leave either a state with no Jewish majority or a, quote, apartheid regime.
His stark language in the South African analogy might have been unthinkable for a senior Israeli official only a few years ago and is a rare admission of the gravity of the deadlocked peace process.
Barak, a former general and Israel's most decorated soldier, sought to appeal to Israelis on both right and left by saying a peace agreement with the Palestinians was the only way to secure Israel's future as a, quote, Zionist, Jewish, democratic state.
Quote, as long as in this territory west of the Jordan River, there is only one political entity called Israel, it is either going to be non-Jewish or non-democratic, he said.
If this block of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.
Now, I know a lot of Americans talk about the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms and their necessity to be able to defend themselves against repression if it comes to their home.
What would you do if you're an American citizen and you have your conceptions of basic freedom?
And you live in the West Bank, which is controlled and occupied by a foreign military that imposes all these restrictions on you that both the former head of the Mossad and the Israeli defense minister just got done detailing?
Or you lived in Gaza and your children couldn't leave the country.
They were born into a country or a place that a foreign government controlled in terms of the air, the sea, and the land.
Would you just accept that and swallow that?
I don't think many people would.
Here is what's now happening in Gaza, what has happened before in Gaza, what will continue to happen in Gaza.
For those of you up in arms about civilian deaths, from AP, October 8, 2023, an Israeli airstrike kills 19 members of the same family in a southern Gaza refugee camp.
Quote, the evacuation warning came shortly after dark.
The Israeli military fired the shot just a short distance from Nasser Abou Kouda's home in southern Gaza Strip, a precautionary measure meant to allow people to evacuate before airstrikes.
Abou Kouda, 57, thought he and his extended family would be safe several hundred meters away from the house that was alerted to the pending strike.
He huddled with his relatives on the ground floor of his four-story building, bracing for an impact in the area.
But the house of Abukuda's neighbor was never hit.
In an instant, an explosion ripped through his own home, wiping out 19 members of his family, including his wife and cousins, he said.
The airstrike also killed five of his neighbors, who were standing outside in the jam-packed refugee camp, a jumble of buildings and alleyways.
Now, if you want to justify that, as many people will, by saying that they get what they deserve, that it's Hamas's fault, that leads to the same kind of justification for Hamas's violence.
Well, the Israelis got what they deserved.
They elected the Netanyahu government, which is keeping our country under blockade and occupying the West Bank.
Just, if you have that mentality, at least admit that there's no consistent moral standard you're applying.
You're just applying a tribalistic identifier to this conflict.
Here from the New York Times, Israel orders a, quote, siege of Gaza.
Hamas threatens to kill hostages.
Israel's defense minister said the authorities would block deliveries of food, water, and fuel into the already blockaded enclave.
A spokesman for Hamas's military wing threatened to execute a hostage each time an Israeli airstrike hits Gazans in their homes.
Here's what the article says, quote, Israel's defense minister ordered a, quote, complete siege of the long blockaded Gaza Strip on Monday as battles to drive Palestinian militants out of the southern towns near the border stretch into a third day after a stunning incursion that killed hundreds and provoked furious Israeli retaliatory strikes on Gaza. complete siege of the long blockaded Gaza Strip on Monday Defense minister Yoav Gallant said that, quote, no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel would be allowed into Gaza, in effect, cutting off a territory already under a 16-year blockade.
As Israeli airstrikes continued to pound the tiny coastal strip.
Earlier today, Benjamin Netanyahu went onto Twitter and no comments, no narrative, nothing.
He just posted the following video showing large towers and high-rises in Gaza being collapsed and destroyed by Israeli airstrikes.
Again, this is a tweet from Prime Minister Netanyahu, who I guess is doing what Hamas is doing, doing, which is posting videos showing the Israeli willingness to use deadly force to its ability to do so, trying to terrorize the population, much like Hamas posted all those videos showing the killing and abuse of Israeli civilians much like Hamas posted all those videos showing the killing and abuse of
And again, the idea that these are targeted Hamas locations makes no sense given the nature of Gaza and Hamas, just like Afghanistan and the Taliban.
Every time the Israelis airbomb Gaza, huge numbers of civilians are killed.
That's just the reality.
You don't have to care, but that is the reality.
Now, I think one of the most important things is that the, oh, actually this is, I do want to show oh, actually this is, I do want to show this video actually.
This is a video from one of the towns in southern Israel from 2014 when the Israelis were massively bombing Gaza and Israeli citizens in this town, this is one of the towns attacked this weekend by Hamas.
went and watched and cheered the bombs dropping on Gaza.
They went to a hillside to be able to see it.
And the reporters went there and interviewed some of the Israelis cheering the bombs about why they were celebrating the death of Palestinians, and this is what they said.
We want to see it in our own eyes, not from a television point of view.
They chose Hamas to rule them.
It's their fault.
They got it to where it is now, not us.
But don't you think it'll get worse by bombing them?
No, I think that's the only solution.
I think they should just clear off all the city.
Just take it off the ground.
Yes, I'm a little bit fascist.
And you can see another rocket I'm a little bit fascist, she said.
Now again, once you have this level of hatred on both sides, and that is what it is on both sides, then people just lose their humanity.
And if you're participating in that, if you're cheering that, if you think that's a good thing, if you feel strong because you get to cheer it from a safe distance, at least don't think you're moral about it.
If you're doing that.
If you think that's funny, if you like that, that they're going to watch the bombs personally fall on this incredibly densely populated, highly impoverished population, and then just casually saying, I think they should just take it off the map, the whole thing, just destroy it all, I'm a little bit fascist.
...slowly making its way, presumably a precision-guided missile, coming into the northern part of the Gaza Strip, and it seems as though the bombardment has been very much in Bethlehem.
Now, the sound that you are hearing here, we're on the top of a hill, and I think you can probably see there are lots of Israelis gathered around who are cheering when they see these kinds of Israeli strikes.
And it is an astonishing, macabre, and an awful thing, really, to watch this display of fire in the air.
But really, it is what is going on in the ground, Wolf, that is significant.
Now, as I said, there is a difference between Israeli discourse and American discourse because there's a big difference when it war actually affects you and when it doesn't.
I've often cited the quote from Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations from 300 years ago, 250 years ago, and he talked about how the big danger of empire is that a lot of people who live in the capitals of the empire We'll love war, we'll cheer war, we'll feel good about it because they get to cheer it from a safe distance.
And he said, even if they pay a little bit more taxes, it's so worth it to them from the sense of strength and entertainment they get reading about their army's conquests far away.
That there's this frivolous part of human nature, this sociopathic part of human nature that takes pleasure in killing and the suffering of others because there's a sense of entertainment that you get, of cheering on war.
You feel strong and powerful and purposeful from doing it.
But you're not affected by it, so it's just a game.
Which is why I think Nikki Haley can say, finish them!
Finish them!
And just implying that the Israelis should go attack Iran, which would cause a massive regional conflagration.
Now, the Israeli press speaks more soberly.
Not all of them, a lot of them are echoing that same thing, just like there were calls after 9-11 to do the same, turn the Middle East into a parking lot.
But there's a lot of Sober discussion as well about the gravity and seriousness of the dilemma that Israel faces about what to do.
And yes, this is Heretz, which is a more anti-Netanyahu outlet, but I've seen a lot of similar Grappling in other Israeli outlets including ones that are more on the right.
This is from an editorial.
It's entitled for bad options face Israel and the Gaza Strip quote beyond the shock that the attack evolved evoked and the failures of military intelligence and the army's readiness Israel is left with a hard nut to crack.
Its leaders have a few options urgent negotiations on a prisoner exchange agreement in which Hamas will demand an astronomical price in the form of the release from Israeli prisons of Palestinians convicted of murdering Israelis thereby scoring another tremendous morale boost.
A crushing aerial campaign against Hamas targets in the Strip in which thousands of Palestinian civilians will also be killed or injured?
A tightening of the blockade on the Strip and damaging of its infrastructure that could cause a humanitarian disaster and an international debacle?
Or an extensive ground operation that will result in multiple losses on both sides and may eventually even fail?
They're not quite as giddy as Nikki Haley and a lot of people I've seen this weekend.
Pounding out their chest, talking about the need to erase Gaza from the map, just like a lot of people do every day on social media, talking about the need to go destroy Russia.
These are not healthy impulses, especially if you're not involved in that war.
Now, it is impossible to understand this conflict without thinking about the blockade of Gaza.
It doesn't mean that what Hamas does is justified.
Any more than it means that if you try and understand the reasons anti-American terrorists wanted to do things like 9-11, it meant that you thought 9-11 was justified.
It's just trying not to be a child about understanding world events as a pure battle of good versus evil.
One of the things that annoyed me and frustrated me about the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was that a lot of people tried to analyze that event in isolation.
Like, oh, Ukraine was just sitting there minding its own business.
One day Russia decided to invade for no other reason other than that they're pygmies and mongrels.
Who are just genocidal, that even though every American president, starting with Bill Clinton, through George Bush and Barack Obama, have talked about Vladimir Putin as this cunning, rational, reasoned figure, suddenly overnight he became a psychopath who just wanted to become Hitler and invade and conquer Ukraine on his way to invading Eastern Europe.
If you don't want to fall into that childish moronics fairytale, you have to understand the context of the war.
What had been happening right on the other side of the Russian border, the reason the Russians regard the Ukrainian border as so important to it, what has happened on that border to Russia historically, the fact that the United States changed the government of Ukraine Before the constitutional term was up of the elected official because they wanted a pro-western leader whom they helped install through Victoria Nuland and how threatening that was to the Russians along with expansion of NATO.
You just can't understand the war unless you're willing to talk about those things.
The same is true for the 25-year blockade.
25-year blockade, the 15-year blockade, 17 years, The suffocation and strangulation of Gaza by the Israelis.
Yes, they let some food in.
But they control the country.
They don't allow Gazans out.
That's 2.2 million people who can't leave that tiny strip of land ever.
You can go on Instagram and see their accounts and the dreams that they have of which countries they want to visit.
They can never leave.
It's 70% unemployment.
Incredible amounts of poverty.
And it's just like with other countries that the United States sanctions.
You cannot suffocate a country and then act as though the reason they're poor is because they're primitive or their policies don't work.
Obviously the suffocation matters.
That's why it's done.
Here is Reuters, just less than a week ago, a few days before the outbreak of this conflict, the headline, Gaza unrest shows economic misery under Israeli blockade.
Quote, weeks of violent protests by young men in Gaza have sent a message about the dire financial squeeze in the Israeli-blockaded enclave, economists and even some Israeli officials believe, and relief measures may be in the offing.
Some 2.3 million people live in the narrow coastal strip, where per capita income is around a quarter the level in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and where over half the population lives below the poverty line, according to IMF estimates.
A recent International Monetary Fund report said that for any stable long-term economic recovery in Gaza, quote, lifting of the blockade and easing of the Israeli-imposed restrictions are essential.
It noted that Gaza had lagged far beyond the West Bank over the past 15 years, mainly due to the years of isolation and repeated conflict after Hamas came to power in 2007.
With 77% of households receiving aid, mainly cash or food, with an official unemployment rate in Gaza of over 46%, Hamas itself has faced rumbling discontent over its economic mismanagement, although for its part, the movement blames the Israeli blockade for the enclave's economic woes.
Now again, I understand that some people are going to try and claim that by my talking about the extreme deprivations of the Israeli blockade that somehow I'm justifying what Hamas did.
And one last time, I'm absolutely not.
In fact, a lot of that disgusted me as much as it disgusted every other decent person to see it.
But it also disgusts me to see huge numbers of Palestinians dying and a lot of people talking about like it doesn't matter because they're all just indistinguishable animals and subhuman, which is absolutely part of the mentality driving a lot of this.
And again, I know it would be easier to avoid this topic or to just talk about it for 15 minutes.
To avoid this inflammatory material, but sorry, there's no way to analyze this journalistically without recounting the reality of what this conflict is about.
Here is a report from the New York Times in 2018 about the effects of the blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel.
They've come of age in a place that's been under blockade since they were seven years old.
And even they can't be sure that they'll ever get out.
The other 99% of Gazans are far worse off.
They're stuck here, in one of the most densely populated places on Earth, with little or no work, sporadic electricity, filthy water, and worsening public health.
The most acute shortage is of hope.
So if you leave a population hopeless and deprived, with no basic political sovereignty or freedom, filled with rage for all the violence they see, half the population knowing nothing different because they were born into this, unless you want to genocide them and ethically cleanse them, which is what people like Nikki Haley seem to be encouraging, You're going to just guarantee an endless cycle of violence.
Of course, people in that position are going to use violence.
Remember, part of what they tried to do was a political movement of urging people to boycott Israel.
And the West basically made it illegal, called it anti-Semitic.
There are a lot of places in the West where it is criminal to advocate for boycott and divestment strategies proposed by the Palestinians because it's declared to be inherently anti-Semitic even though it's designed to end this blockade and the occupation.
So they're told they cannot protest politically, they cannot organize a boycott the way the South African minority did.
And then they also can't resist violently.
So there's apparently no valid tactic that they have to protest what any person of dignity would end up protesting eventually, you know, and using force and violence to resist it.
And it doesn't mean the Palestinians have the right to do anything with no moral limits.
It's just a fact that when you put human beings in this position, This conflict will be eternal, which is basically what it's become, especially with the elimination of what we were always told was the reason it's justified to intervene on Israel's side, which is the two-state solution that has now become impossible as a result of the Israeli settlement on the West Bank that the United States futilely urged Israel not to pursue, even while it funded Israel while they defied the United States and claims about what is harming our interests.
And so I am still left with the question, independent of all the morality and geostrategic components of the war itself, of what interest the United States has in constantly intervening on the side of Israel, other than the fact that obviously there's strong political pressure for the United States to do so.
But I genuinely do not understand how people can claim to be isolationist or anti-war or putting America first, any of those ideologies on the left and right.
And then suddenly on the other insists that somehow this is our war, the way Nikki Haley said that we have an obligation to continue for decades to intervene with our economic weight, with our military force, with our diplomatic activities, with our national interests constantly intervening in this war that in reality is not ours.
And this is only day three of this war.
This war is going to go on for at least weeks, if not months.
It's going to involve some of the most grotesque atrocities you've ever seen.
And it's impossible to imagine anything other than the United States continuing to The United States is and for decades has been almost unanimous in its political media class.
claim that there's some kind of broad anti-Israeli sentiment in the United States or in one of the two political parties because that's an insult to the truth.
The United States is and for decades has been almost unanimous in its political media class.
Not unanimous, but almost unanimous in support for everything Israel does.
And even when Israel does things that the Americans dislike, the support continues.
And that's going to continue to happen.
This war is going to continue to worsen.
And the only conceivable outcome other than the destruction of enormous amounts of human life and property and the risk of regional conflagration, just like is true in Ukraine and Russia, is that there will just be more and more cycles of this and worse cycles in the future.
And I can't understand anybody who regards that as a desirable outcome.
So that concludes our show for this evening.
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