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Sept. 6, 2024 - System Update - Glenn Greenwald

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Putin Supporting Kamala Fallout and Reactions; Pro-Palestinian Protesters Targeted Under U.K. Anti-Terrorism Law; Interview With Journalist Zaid Jilani | SYSTEM UPDATE #328

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Time	Text
	Good evening.
	It is Thursday, September 5th.
	I'm your old friend, Michael Tracy.
	Welcome to another heart-stopping, chart-topping edition of System Update, our nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
	We're gonna have ourselves a good time again tonight.
	I might even break out into song to celebrate.
	What a fantastically good time we're all undoubtedly going to have.
	First, there's a furor, an uproar, a tsunami of commentary on the latest comments from, who else, but Vladimir Putin, you may have heard of him, who decided to weigh in with his thoughts on the U.S.
	presidential election.
	He might have even endorsed or at least offered his support to or expressed a preference for somebody you might not expect.
	So we'll delve into all the exciting details.
	Next, I'll be joined by Huda Amori, who is an activist in the UK with the group Palestine Action.
	And the UK government has seemingly cracked down pretty hard on Free expression around that particular topic.
	Gee, I wonder why.
	So we'll get some latest details from her.
	And then finally, Zed Jelani, who is a journalist, maybe a bit of a curmudgeon, always willing to mix it up.
	He'll come on and we'll discuss some other developments around events in the news, such as The total lack of any policy detail on Kamala Harris's website that you won't hear much of the rest of the media ever cover and other points of interest.
	So with that, let's begin system update starting now.
	Okay.
	So anyway, beginning now, uh, Putin weighed in on the U.S.
	election.
	Now, he's done this on a number of occasions before.
	He was in Vladivostok.
	I hope I pronounced that correctly.
	It's in the far east of Russia today for some sort of economic forum.
	And he spoke at length, a great length actually, and he took a question from the press who were assembled on the U.S.
	election.
	And he's usually had some consistent themes in the manner in which that he's commented on the election.
	But today was interesting and notable.
	So let's pull up the transcript of what Putin said today in Vladivostok.
	Vladivostok?
	I think that's how you pronounce it, right?
	I should have double checked my Russian pronunciation, but I'm pretty sure that's right.
	Putin said the following.
	In the topic of the election race in the United States, you said before that you had your favorite in it, but he dropped out of the race.
	And the reporters, they're referring to Biden.
	Who is the new one?
	And in November, when the results of this race are known, will you call to congratulate the new head of state or not?
	Okay, so here's what Putin said.
	As for favorites, It is not for us to determine that.
	It is the choice of the American people.
	So that's sort of like a stock answer.
	But then he goes on to say, I have already said our favorite, if I may say so, was the incumbent president, Mr. Biden.
	He was dropped from the race.
	So note the phrasing there.
	He's not saying that Biden dropped out on his own volition, which obviously did not happen.
	He's saying Biden was dropped as if it was something that was imposed upon him, which is accurate.
	He was dropped from the race, Putin said, but he recommended that all of his supporters support Ms.
	Harris.
	So that's what we're going to do.
	We're going to support her.
	That's first of all.
	And Putin continues, she laughs so expressively and contagiously that it shows she is doing well.
	Now, that seemed like a bit of a tongue in cheek remark on Putin's part, right?
	Of course, he's not.
	Genuinely enthralled by Kamala Harris's contagious laugh, I wouldn't think.
	You might even call it a cackle, but that could get into some sort of misogynist or sexist territory, but I shouldn't have even gone there.
	It seems like he's making a bit of a wisecrack, right?
	And she goes on to say that, Putin goes on to say, and if she's doing well then, Trump has imposed so many restrictions and sanctions on Russia that no president has ever imposed before.
	And if Ms.
	Harris is doing well, then maybe she will refrain from such actions.
	So, taking him on a surface level, Putin is saying that he maybe has some faint hope
	That Kamala Harris, because she's so joyous and so carefree and so compelling in her demeanor, maybe she will see to it that she will rescind or refrain from imposing some of these sanctions that Trump had imposed when he was in office.
	This despite the common and still enduring perception that will never go away.
	That Trump is some sort of pawn of Putin or was collusively interfacing with him in some way, despite Trump's entire record as president really starkly contradicting that very stupid caricature.
	And Putin himself has noted this on many occasions.
	Trump imposed heavy, extreme, even according to Putin, unprecedented sanctions on Russia.
	And that's not wrong.
	That can be looked up in the public record.
	So let's go through a number of previous instances of Putin commenting about his preference or lack thereof in the U.S.
	presidential election.
	Back in June, Putin said that he would prefer Biden, and Putin actually chastises people who didn't take it seriously when he said that his preference was for Biden.
	Putin said, quote, everyone took my statement about Mr. Biden with sneers and saw it as some sort of hidden attack on President Biden.
	Indeed, he is a politician of the old school.
	And what he did not like, he then, to a certain extent, began to attack me.
	That's what I thought would happen.
	So I'm right.
	He is predictable.
	So then Putin's contrasting that with Trump, who he regards as less predictable.
	And saying that he would prefer the predictability and the traditional political nature of Joe Biden.
	And now he's saying that Kamala Harris has inherited that mantle that was handed down to her by Biden.
	So he continues to have a preference for the Democratic nominee.
	Now you have lots of people insisting that this cannot be a truthful
	statement on Putin's part and can't possibly reflect his genuine opinion because one of the most unshakable articles of faith in the anti-Trump liberal media is that Trump is in hock to Russia and that Putin obviously favors Trump and would even intervene or interfere in US politics to install Trump into power and yet Putin is saying
	Very clearly that he does not favor Trump because, for among other reasons, Trump imposed a huge amount of sanctions on Russia and is also unpredictable in a way that Putin does not find amenable to Russia's interests.
	And this really does make sense because If you recall, Trump ran in 2016 on a pledge that he would improve relations with Russia.
	He would always say stuff like, can't we just get along with Russia?
	Wouldn't it be nice if we all got along with Russia?
	That they were making 18 years ago, they're not talking about that.
	People are tired, we're fighting, we don't get along with anybody, and yet they... we don't get along with China!
	But they rip us off.
	We don't get along with Russia.
	Wouldn't it be nice if we actually got along with Russia?
	Wouldn't it be nice?
	I mean, is there something wrong? - But yeah, so there's Trump repeating what had been one of his most common refrains in 2016, that he wanted to improve relations with Russia and that he didn't do it.
	So of course Putin, it's relatively sensible for him to observe what actually occurred under Trump's administration.
	Note that Trump's rhetoric did not match up with his actions in terms of forging some sort of detente with Russia.
	And then make a prognosis based on that information for the 2024 election.
	Not that he likes Kamala Harris, right?
	Kamala Harris is just as zealous, as far as anybody can tell, in terms of arming Ukraine and bashing Russia as this great tyrannical foe as Joe Biden has been.
	But Putin seems to be suggesting that because the Democratic nominee is more predictable in the ire that they're projecting out against Russia, That to Putin is preferable than this sort of chaotic mishmash of words and deeds that he's come to expect, possibly with Trump.
	And so that's the point that Putin made today, just as he has many other times.
	Although there have been instances when Putin said stuff to the effect of, it doesn't really matter who gets elected president.
	So here's what Putin said almost a year ago, September 12th, 2023.
	Quote, I find it difficult to say what to expect from a new president, whoever it may be.
	It is unlikely, though, that any crucial change will take place because the current authorities have conditioned American society to be anti-Russia in nature and spirit.
	That is how things are.
	They did this and it will now be very difficult for them to turn that ship around.
	And, you know, Putin has added to that on many occasions that Trump imposed those extreme sanctions that lacked some degree of historical precedent.
	So why then would Putin have a preference for Trump other than it's consistent with this harebrained, myopic, sort of liberal, reflexive, anti-Trump narrative that we've all been Stuck in since 2016.
	It really makes no sense from Putin's standpoint.
	And so there's all kinds of hubbub and chaos and consternation around this latest comment from Putin.
	Maybe we can bring up on the screen what Axios said here.
	So this is one of the headline encapsulations of it.
	Elon Musk said last night on Twitter, uh, Putin must not want Trump elected as though, you know, because Elon Musk is now a huge proponent of Donald Trump.
	He's basically kind of a full-time Russian PR, sorry, not Russian.
	Elon Musk is kind of like a full-time Republican proponent.
	Um, so he's like spinning this latest news as somehow a point in Trump's favor.
	And saying, oh, gee whiz, Putin must really like Kamala Harris.
	So let's all make sure we elect Trump.
	David Sachs, who is another fundraiser and proponent of Donald Trump, spoke at the Republican convention, said, Perhaps somewhat sarcastically, it's hard to tell.
	I asked him for some clarification on the score, but I didn't receive it.
	He said, today, all Americans should stand against Putin by rejecting his preferred candidate, the weak and ineffectual Kamala Harris.
	So my question there would be, okay, so if the inference there is that Trump will be more tough And, quote, effectual against Russia than Kamala Harris would be.
	What are those measures that Trump would purportedly employ in a second term that would demonstrate that he's tougher on Russia and more, quote, effectual against Russia than Kamala Harris would be?
	Because we have a fairly lengthy record from Trump's first term that might give some insight into this.
	Let's just go briefly down the list for people who might Be forgetful.
	Trump imposed massive sanctions on Russia.
	He started arming Ukraine.
	He expanded NATO.
	He still brags about it to this day.
	He expelled scores of Russian diplomats.
	He shuttered a Russian embassy.
	He tried to do regime change in Venezuela, which is Russia's chief client state in the Western Hemisphere.
	He bombed and tried to cripple Syria with sanctions, which is another one of Russia's aligned governments in the Middle East.
	He tried to cripple Iran, which with sanctions, which Russia is also increasingly aligned with and has forged heightened military and political ties with just in the past couple of years.
	Trump wants to escalate economic warfare with China, which Russia is also increasingly aligned with.
	Trump threatened to send nuclear submarines into the coastal waters off Russia to intimidate Russia into capitulating a Ukraine.
	That's true.
	That happened.
	Trump abrogated various arms control treaties with Russia.
	Trump expanded the U.S.
	military force deployments in Russia's periphery in Eastern Europe, which Putin and other top Russian officials have routinely complained about.
	And, you know, I could go on forever with this, But Trump has even said this year that he is strongly considering appointing Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State who ran U.S.
	foreign policy effectively under Trump's first term, to yet another high-ranking national security job in a second term.
	So Russia might not view that especially favorably, and Putin gave voice to that sentiment perhaps.
	So everybody wants to do all this kind of crazy reverse psychology.
	And assume that nothing Putin says can be taken at face value.
	And look, I'm not necessarily in favor of taking anything that any world leader or politician says at face value, but this whole genre of commentary where you're always trying to divine ulterior motives, In what Putin says and get inside his head and psychoanalyze him.
	That's one of the most garbage, tedious genres of commentary that I can personally think of.
	Maybe only second to the same kinds of psychobabble analyses of Donald Trump.
	So that should be probably discarded.
	And I think the best tool we have at our disposal right now is to just look at what Putin actually said, which is that he favors Pamela Harris and he doesn't have a preference for Trump and that would align with the actual record of the Trump administration, which I know is not fashionable to actually evaluate, but I'm beset with that fate, I guess, and I'm sharing it all with you.
	Okay, so we have our first guest with us now is It's Huda Amori.
	Hopefully I pronounced that correctly.
	And I just want to let you know, just for your own information, we are having a bit of technical difficulties tonight with the Rumble platform.
	So if anything I say seems garbled or the graphics don't align, just be aware of that, but we'll try to power our way through it.
	All right, so getting back to the subject matter at hand, Which is the head of your group, if I'm not mistaken, was recently detained or arrested or whatever the precise terminology is under the UK Terrorism Act of 2000, which is a very capacious, sweeping and broad piece of legislation that the UK uses to enforce all kinds of law enforcement actions.
	Often bringing up issues around free expression and whether the state is stifling free expression.
	So could you just explain what happened and what inferences you make from it and what it says or doesn't say about the disposition of the current government, the Labor government under Sir Keir Starmer, in cracking down on pro-Palestinian speech?
	Yeah, so Richard Barnard is the co-founder of Palestine Action, and he was charged, I think it was a couple of weeks ago now, under section 1218 of the Terrorism Act, which basically says that you invite support, you express an opinion that invites support for a prescribed organisation.
	Yeah, and we have that on the screen, actually.
	I did my due diligence prior to this interview, and I actually pulled up the text.
	Oh, you got a lot, so I didn't have to remind you.
	Legislation, yeah.
	And it's kind of shocking to read the text, actually, if you're more of an American background, where at least nominally, or theoretically, we have certain
	Principles around free speech that are enshrined, but this actually does state and if we can go to the second sort of portion here Expresses and a you commit one of the offense under this section of the law if you express an opinion or belief That is supportive of a prescribed organization So what organization is alleged there that was that that support was expressed for?
	Hamas, okay That's basically, I think you can, you know, when it comes to Palestine, that is the allegation that they throw at you.
	Especially, so this was for two speeches.
	One was right after October 7th, on October 8th, and one was on October 11th at two demonstrations.
	Now, as the co-founder of Palestine Action, Richard, as many of us do, often calls for direct action against Israeli weapons factories, and that is what we do as Palestine Action.
	We go straight to the source of the British complicity, with the colonisation of Palestine, and we shut down Israeli weapons factories which are making weapons to massacre Palestinians, and also make weapons which are tested on Palestinians, because Elbit Systems, who have factories here, often use Gaza as a laboratory for this weaponry.
	Now, the state has been actively trying to stop Palestine Action for a very long time and recently has escalated its tactics against us.
	And this has also involved imprisonment.
	We have 16 Palestine Action prisoners right now, 11 of whom are awaiting trial in prison and five of whom have been sentenced after being convicted.
	And on top of this, they are charging Richard Barnard as well as arresting other people in England under the Terrorism Act.
	But he was actually arrested towards the end of last year.
	We were going on trial for other actions against Albert Systems and they arrested him four days before that trial.
	And it was very obvious that it was intimidation tactics as well to throw us off Before we were about to go on a six-week trial anyway for other actions against Elbit Systems.
	And what they do here is they put you on bail for a very long time.
	So from the very start of, from since October 8th basically, when the genocide began or escalated in Gaza, he has been banned from going to protests Forced to sign on a police station regularly so that they can keep track of where you are and other measures like that.
	So it seems that it's a very deliberate tactic to silence people, especially at a time when more and more people want to understand about direct action because of what's happening in Gaza and need to know about the weapons factories working on their doorsteps which are massacring people.
	And so it seems very convenient that at that time the state then silenced Somebody who's advocating for direct action.
	Obviously their silencing tactics haven't worked.
	You know, we've had plenty of people taking action against the Israeli weapons trade and it grows day by day despite the repression that the state is trying to throw at us in Palestine action.
	But as you said, there is no free speech.
	It's more and more obvious, especially with the recent news of the Terrorism Act, and it's very new here.
	Palestine activists are not used to dealing with this type of legislation for speaking out on Palestine, but it's something that we're having to understand very quickly and to be able to fight against it.
	Yeah, I mentioned while we were stalling for time, getting our technical issues sorted, that I happened to be in Birmingham in the UK in October of last year, which is a heavily Muslim population in England, and I went and observed a pro-Palestinian protest, and a police officer just told me, bluntly, matter-of-factly, and nonchalantly, that no, this is not the United States, we don't have even a pretense of free speech here, which is not shocking to me, but
	It could be shocking maybe to American viewers or listeners who kind of see that, would maybe assume that the US and the UK have comparable legal strictures around this issue of free speech, but they're actually quite drastically different as evidenced by things like the difference in libel laws and whatnot, but that's sort of another subject.
	I did want to ask you, though, I mean, what does this tell you?
	I mean, what does the vigor with which these prosecutions are now being continually pursued under the Labor government tell you about the nature of the current Labor government?
	You know, I did follow the recent election somewhat, and it often seemed like Keir Starmer was running more against Jeremy Corbyn than he was against Rishi Sunak.
	At times, you kind of got that impression, right?
	With the idea being that Keir Starmer had forged this triumphant new Labour Party, had purged all its undesirable elements.
	Jeremy Corbyn himself was expelled from the Labour Party.
	He did get re-elected, but as an independent in Islington, in London.
	And that's sort of extraordinary for a former leader of a party to have been treated in that fashion.
	So is this, you know, as best you could tell, sort of an instance of, you know, the Labor government putting their money where their mouth is and showing that they can be just as arduous in their pursuit of stamping out so-called anti-Semitic or pro-Palestinian or whatever other elements that Starmer promised he was going to do as he took over the Labor Party and then was ushered into power in July?
	Well, there's a couple of things.
	One is that in some ways it's very similar to the smears on anti-Semitism.
	And, you know, as the Palestine movement over here in England, especially around the Labour Party, there was this constant witch hunt against activists.
	And it's very similar tactics, actually, just one's much more involves the police, counter-terrorism police.
	With the antisemitism stuff, Zionist groups or Zionist individuals would spend a lot of time going through people's social media, going through what people have said, cutting out snippets of what they've said, misrepresenting it and launching a smear campaign against that person.
	And that would, in that context, lead to somebody losing their job.
	Getting kicked out of the Labour Party, being smeared all over the internet etc etc.
	Now it's the exact same tactics except you can get counter-terrorism police coming to your doors.
	And because the counter-terrorism laws are so loose It's very political and the state can basically choose when they apply it.
	So if you imagine having Zionist groups and bad faith actors trolling through your stuff and then they're able to call up the counter-terrorism police, they come banging in and you know that these guys will come with balaclavas and in some instances You know that they've been armed as well when they've been carrying out these raids for what?
	For something you might have said on Twitter or a line cut out of a speech out of context.
	So it's extremely authoritarian and the direction it's being moved in is very worrying but in a lot of senses it's just the same stuff with a lot more weight behind it for the Zionist movement and these are the kind of tactics that they're using After the smears of anti-Semitism haven't worked to silence people, basically.
	And with all of this as well, it's extremely political.
	And we know that policing is political in general, but it's not supposed to be.
	There is supposed to be operational sovereignty when it comes to the police force and these different departments.
	They're supposed to be independent.
	But what happens is so many people get reported to counter-terrorism police because the Zionists are on overdrive reporting I'm trying to find whatever they can on people that they don't like.
	And the police and the state are choosing who to arrest based on political profile that they believe it will gain them.
	So Sarah Wilkinson is one example.
	She's someone who has a lot of influence on social media and has a big audience.
	So for them, that's a big target.
	Richard Barnard, he's a co-founder of Palestine Action.
	And whilst he's not very public on social media, because of that role that he played in founding Palestine Action, They seem as a significant target to go after.
	Can I ask you about one other person actually that was also detained relatively recently under the UK Terrorism Act of 2000, probably would not be, certainly would not be ideologically aligned with the people you just named there.
	But there's this figure, Tommy Robinson, who's a right-wing sort of agitator, I guess you might say, holding street rallies often in London and other places, very much against immigration, actually very ardently pro-Israel, it seems.
	He would go to some pro-Palestinian demonstrations, I recall, last fall and have counter-demonstrations.
	He was actually also detained recently under the same I think it was a different provision of the Terrorism Act of 2000.
	But it just, I think, goes to show you how wide ranging the applicability of this tool of law enforcement can be.
	Just think, what do you make of that?
	And does it, how does that fit or not into this broader narrative in terms of how these mechanisms are being imposed on the populace?
	Yeah, I mean, so Schedule 7, which is what he was stopped under, is different to what's been happening recently.
	I mean, it's the same, it's under the whole terrorism umbrella, but basically in England and Wales, wherever, and in Scotland as well, and in Ireland, wherever you travel, if you go to a border or you go to an airport, You can be stopped.
	And when you're stopped normally, if you're arrested normally, you have the right to no comment, you have the right to a lawyer, you have rights.
	And that's normally what happens.
	And there's a certain process that you will follow.
	And you have a certain degree of rights.
	When you're stopped at the border, they call it a Schedule 7 stop.
	And I've been stopped on the Schedule 7 with Richard Barnard as well.
	And what they will do is they ask you for all of your passwords to all of your laptops and phones that you have on you.
	And if you don't give over this, they will threaten that they will charge you underneath the Terrorism Act and you will get at least three months in prison.
	And then they can interrogate you for hours and hours and hours without a lawyer present.
	And if you don't say if you don't comply, then you're going to prison, or at least that's what they tell you.
	And so this is something that's quite been commonly used.
	against well it's not been that common but it's been commonly used against activists seeing it more being used against journalists and and it's not being used for the correct purposes of because what they all try and say to you the way that they're supposed to use it is to stop people who might be coming in in the country or going out of the country to commit acts of terrorism But it was very clear in my case that they were doing it because of Palestine Action.
	And this was only five months into Palestine Action's existence.
	So it's anything to do with activism, nothing to do with terrorism.
	Tommy Robinson was stopped under something quite similar.
	And I don't know much about his circumstance of why he was stopped underneath that.
	I'm sure it was so they could get his passwords.
	and access to his phone.
	The state loves having everyone's data and so they probably wanted to get that but I would say that the Schedule 7 disproportionately even is used against Muslim people and Muslims who are visibly Muslim and it's just more
	of a profile when it happens to activists or journalists because it's seen as out of the ordinary but it's normally just used against ordinary people who've got nothing to do with terrorism and but they've got they've got a brown face and they've got a Muslim name and this is these are the common powers and the things of terrorism is that you just don't have right Right, and this is the key thing.
	When Westerners, or whatever you are, when you hear the word terrorism, you think, OK, you need these laws because you have to stop the terrorists and all of these things.
	And then when you see how it's being used, And, you know, it's been enlightening for, I think, a lot of us.
	When you see how it's being used in practice, what it really means is that you can be accused of a crime and your rights are taken away from you completely.
	And the state can do whatever they like.
	And, you know, we recently had activists for the first time under Starmer's government.
	And we've never had this before.
	They did an action against an Elbit facility and it cost one million pounds worth of damage to Israeli weapons inside that facility.
	And these are actions that we've done before.
	People will be held, charged, maybe they'll go to prison, maybe they'll be released, and then we'll go to trial and argue that we're not guilty because these companies are the ones perpetrating war crimes.
	This time, they held them, they arrested them under normal powers, and then they detained them under the Terrorism Act.
	Which meant that they could hold them in solitary confinement for seven days and interrogate them day after day after day, raid all of their homes, deny them the right to phone calls.
	So what it allowed them to do was take away their rights and hold them for longer without being able to charge them.
	Normally you're only allowed to hold people for 24 to 36 hours without charge.
	So really, the Terrorism Act is about taking away people's rights and giving the state a lot of power.
	And also, when things are dealt with, they're dealt with by counter-terrorism police, who are the top police officers, basically, in the country.
	More access to surveillance, more of these powers.
	So really, it's a political decision by the state because they're making The decision to spend more resources on cracking down on activists than other things.
	And so we're seeing the weight of the state's resources be thrown at pro-Palestine activists, which has happened since Dahmer has come into power.
	And the thing is, is Dahmer, is that when you have a liberal or someone who's going to look liberal, um in power i think it's much more dangerous than having to lose right wing in power who's obviously right wing and says who they are and says where they stand with someone like kia starmer he has all of the right-wing policies but he'll himself a former prosecutor which is notable and that's much more dangerous yeah i'm sorry i was just going to say that you know
	starmer himself is a former prosecutor which is a bit unusual in british politics for somebody of that background to ascend to the highest echelons of power um as you mentioned terrorism is notoriously nebulous concept that any state can really use for its own purposes to fulfill some sort of pre-existing We see this incessantly in the United States.
	With obviously the Patriot Act going back to 9-11, even after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, there was sort of a precursor counterterrorism bill that Bill Clinton signed into law.
	similar situation, right, where it's somebody who is more perceived as liberal ended up being able to get through a very far-reaching counterterrorism law that abrogated all kinds of civil liberties and was a nightmare for the Fourth Amendment, which protects against warrantless where it's somebody who is more perceived as liberal ended up being able to get through a very So yeah, it seems like this is another opportunity for those powers to be extended in the UK.
	Before we go, I want to ask you about another sort of related issue.
	There was an announcement recently by the Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, that the UK would be suspending 30 out of 350 arms export licenses to Israel.
	So obviously, the United States provides the overwhelming majority of armaments to Israel, including the munitions themselves, not just licenses and parts and things, but But the actual bombs and other sorts of material.
	So the overwhelming majority of the country, the United States, but the UK does play this supplementary role in furnishing certain forms of armaments to Israel, which is obviously a focus of your activism.
	Is this just sort of a bit of a triangulation on the government's part, would you say?
	Is there actually some real substantive import to it?
	Is it just kind of lip service?
	How do you sort of synthesize how people should understand the meaning of this?
	Well, one, they haven't given us much details at all.
	So they say, so I think it's less than 10% of arms export licences basically have been stopped.
	We don't know how much those licences are worth in terms of equipment that could be sent.
	So it could be a tiny percentage of arms, it could be a larger percentage of arms.
	But either way, it's hard to celebrate the concept of 80% less arms, weapons, going from England to Israel to commit genocide, when the inverse of that is that there is over 90% of weapons are still going from this country to massacre people when the inverse of that is that there is over 90% of weapons are still going And we see what the effects of that are to the Palestinian people.
	And in addition to that, this is one of the things with Starmer and the Labour government, They know how to play the PR game.
	They know how to play the liberal face of things.
	So you do this thing where you stop a tiny proportion to keep some people on side of the government, whilst really in other ways they are continuing the UK Israel weapons trade.
	One example of that is that they still purchase Hundreds of millions of pounds worth of Israeli weapons and these weapons are first tested in Gaza.
	So every time they're buying these weapons they are encouraging them to continue bombing Gaza because they're developing new weapons which the UK government will then buy from them at a later point.
	Israeli weapons factories are still operating across this country, building these weapons which are tested on Palestinians.
	And in addition to that, over 90% of weapons are still going over to commit genocide in Gaza.
	So it really is a tiny proportion.
	In one sense, it is a victory.
	In a sense, I would say that they had to concede the idea that they had to impose some sort of appearance of restricting arms to Israel in order to try and keep the peace a little bit, which I would say shows that the pressure is working.
	But at this point is not the point to go, well, you know, we've got that, let's back off.
	This is a time when you double down.
	Because actually, after all of this, after 11 months of protests, of mass protests, lobbying, etc, they basically said to us, the government, This is as far as we'll go when it comes to sanctions.
	And that is pathetic.
	And so this is a time for everyone to double down and go, that's as far as you can go.
	We're going to take direct action to shut down these sites ourselves, as we've been doing in Palestine Action.
	And we have successfully permanently shut down three Israeli weapons factories.
	And we will continue until we shut down the rest of them.
	And we don't need the government's permission to do that.
	We can go out and do that ourselves.
	Actually, one other question I did want to ask you before we go relates to the United States.
	I'm not sure how closely you've been following the political situation here, but obviously the United States, as I mentioned before, is far and away the chief funder and subsidizer and armorer of Israel.
	And there was a similar dynamic in the U.S.
	in terms of activist pressure that's been employed against the Democratic Party and the new Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris, We cover the Democratic Convention recently in Chicago, and there was a small subset of delegates who were elected as uncommitted delegates by a campaign led by pro-Palestinian activists to get them on certain ballots.
	And my takeaway in covering those efforts was that they really had no leverage whatsoever.
	They've been kind of just Neglected and shunned to the side.
	You may have seen that there was an effort to get a really minor concession from the Democratic National Committee under Kamala Harris, which is just to have a Palestinian American state legislator Give a vetted speech on the convention station, which she would vehemently endorse Kamala Harris, but nonetheless raise some issues of concern to Arabs and Palestinians and progressives who might feel similarly about this issue.
	And even the DNC wouldn't allow for that.
	Not to mention that Kamala Harris, now for the first time in one of the very few interviews, it's actually the only interview that she's done since being coordinated as Democratic nominee, said that there would be no difference on a policy level Between a forthcoming Harris administration and the current Biden-Harris administration.
	So you talk about, you know, this announcement from the labor government perhaps being significant in that it shows that there's some pressure being exerted in the U.S.
	The pressure has gotten nowhere, it seems.
	So there's even less headway being made by the activists who kind of just sort of subsumed themselves into the Democratic Borg, for the most part, as far as I could tell, in Chicago.
	And really didn't manage to extract anything at all except some, you know, they got like a panel in a hotel on a on an afternoon on a secondary convention site and that was it.
	So what do you make of the state of play in the US in this regard?
	Well, I think in a lot of ways it's similar.
	It might be more of a dire outlook in one place than the other, but ultimately it's about the tactic of appealing to the oppressors to create those changes in whichever means that is, if that's through protests or lobbying, and realising that you're still going through the same people who have the same funding and are lobbied by the Israel lobby significantly.
	And that if those things don't work, then You have to try something different.
	You can't keep trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
	And that's why we in Palestine Action started Palestine Action, was because we were sick and tired of lobbying the same politicians.
	You know, here we are in a country which started, you know, issued the Balfour Declaration, allowed for the ethnic cleansing of Palestine to begin.
	And that we couldn't appeal, and every successive government, and it's the same in the US, every administration has continued those links with Israel.
	And that rather than appealing to them, we were going to go straight to the source, go to these factories and shut them down and take direct action to do so.
	And I think there has to be, you know, it doesn't have to look exactly the same, but there needs to be a similar movement happening in the US rather than appealing to the same politicians who are going to happily continue massacring Palestinians as long as they keep power and arguably it's more important to do that in in the US and it's much more empowering as well I would say.
	I mean, you know, we do have people in prison and it's not an easy thing to go through facing these ridiculous charges and facing state repression.
	But at least we know that we are on the right side of history and that we're pulling up a really good fight against these Israeli weapons factories.
	And that the state are desperate to stop us.
	So they deploy these crazy tactics like using the Terrorism Act.
	It shows that it's working.
	You know, there was a report by, we have Lords here, you know, un-elected politicians, basically.
	We have a whole house of them, actually.
	Yeah, and a lot of them are funded by the Israel lobby, literally funded, and the arms industry.
	One is this guy who was writing a report about trying to ban us, and he was commissioned to do this by the government, and he said that he wants to ban Palestine action.
	And in that report, he had to do that report, he discussed of Albert Systems as well as biggest weapons manufacturer.
	And Albert Systems has said to him, which he wrote in the report, that we were having a detrimental impact to their operations in England.
	And, you know, for us, that's brilliant that they've that they've, you know, written that down and said that.
	And that's exactly what we want to continue to do.
	And we know this is why the state, especially in the past month, Has ramped things up because no matter how much security they've gotten, you know, no matter how much protection they've tried to get and people that they've put in prison, people are continuing to take direct action against them.
	And I think they've gotten to a point when they realise they can't stop us.
	So they try something new.
	They try and interrogate people day after day, hold them in solitary confinement.
	And, you know, all of those who were held under solitary confinement are now in a prison.
	Many of whom have taken weeks just to have a phone call and held in the most high security part of the prison.
	And despite that, people aren't stopping.
	It's not going to stop.
	People are more motivated than ever to take direct action.
	And it's much more empowering than asking the politicians to create the changes, even if it means, and much more liberating, even if that sounds contradictory, considering often you end up being, you might end up being arrested or in prison.
	All right.
	Well, Huda Amari, thank you for joining us.
	Really appreciated it.
	And people should follow your organization, Palestine Action, if they're interested in more information.
	So thanks a lot.
	Thank you.
	The our next guest is Zed Jelani, who you'll hopefully be getting on here soon.
	He's a journalist.
	Commentator, polemicist, observer, tweeter, he's a jack of all trades.
	I consulted Kamala Harris' website, and I've seen you comment on this.
	She's still, she's now the nominee.
	She's officially, formally nominated.
	Democratic convention was, what, two weeks ago or so now?
	She still does not have a single policy position enumerated on her website.
	Now, I know what politicians put on their websites is not all that important, but what's jarring and striking and audacious about this is that she's not even giving a pretense of formulating A policy agenda that people can go and evaluate and scrutinize.
	Trump does have policy items on his website.
	She's not even pretending that it's something that's required of her.
	So what do you make of that, and how does it contrast or compare historically to other campaigns you've followed?
	Yeah, I mean, look, I think part of this, and this is something you hear, I think, More defensive of her is that she was kind of an emergency nominee, right?
	She came in with less than 100 days to go before the election that toppled Joe Biden, which is pretty much unprecedented for that to be happening.
	And then she kind of built a campaign.
	That campaign is largely Joe Biden's staff.
	And with a few of her people thrown in that were loyal to her and part of her office and campaign and previous campaigns.
	So I think, you know, she approached this as someone who is largely carrying Joe Biden's torch.
	Right.
	And I think a lot of the themes, a lot of the sort of campaign pitches that she's thrown out there are basically identical to Joe Biden.
	Right.
	When she's asked if she would break with Biden on this or that.
	You know, she really hasn't indicated a whole lot in the way of that.
	And so to some extent, it's understandable because she was kind of an emergency nominee.
	She didn't really have an opportunity to put these things together.
	On the other hand, I think some of it's also strategic on their part, right?
	So like they could just put up.
	Just to interject for a second.
	I mean, she might have been an emergency nominee.
	I think that's a little bit of a charitable way to put it.
	But it's now been, what, six weeks since she was swapped out for Biden in that.
	Right.
	It was like July 20th, 21st, I think.
	I mean, she could have had some policy people throw together a platform.
	Right.
	Well, the other thing is also she could have just picked up the Biden 2024 platform, copied and pasted it and put it on our website.
	Right.
	And carried that forward.
	I think they're actually to some extent being strategically vague.
	Right.
	Right.
	They don't they don't necessarily want to alienate this group or alienate that group by saying we're going to break with Biden on this.
	We're going to go with this direction or that direction.
	And And, you know, it also means that she has less to explain, right?
	She doesn't have to sit down and explain every new policy in a long form interview or do a forum on health care policy, on foreign affairs, on climate, so on and so forth.
	It kind of is attuned to the kind of candidate she is, which is that in 2020, when she ran for president, she didn't do very well when she was trying to do those things.
	Right.
	She would often change her mind within 24 hours when she got negative feedback or she wouldn't be able to hold to a position.
	And so I think running more on vibes than on policies is almost, you know, partly it's understandable because she's an emergency nominee, but partly also I think it's strategic on their part.
	They don't want her to commit to too many things because it could end up putting her in a tough spot.
	Right.
	I think hence why she's done So few interviews.
	She's done a total of one relatively softball interview since being coronated as nominee, which is with CNN's Dana Bash last week.
	It was not that informative of an interview.
	That's the only one she's done.
	I don't know if they've even No, I wrote a piece.
	I have a sub stack I launched last month in a newsletter where I'm just throwing stuff up when I'm not freelancing elsewhere and so I just wrote a quick piece about this.
	It's called The American Saga, theamericansaga.com.
	It's my sub stack and so in the piece actually what I did is I went back in history a little bit And I looked at the fact that in 2021, she did an interview with Lester Holt about the border.
	She had been assigned sort of this immigration project where she was going to go to these Northern Triangle countries and sort of Central America and try to figure out ways to stem out the immigration flow.
	And so Lester Holt was asking her, have you been to the border?
	Have you visited the border?
	And she just really stumbled on that question really hard.
	I don't know why she stumbled on it so hard, but if you go back and you read some of the news reporting after that, or some of the books and so on and so forth, they kept her out of major interviews again for a year after that, right?
	Between 2021 and 2022.
	This was the Vice President of the United States, maybe unprecedented.
	And just to add to that point, I mean, if you go and read some of these inside baseball accounts of her selection as Vice President by Biden in 2020, and then How her vice presidency was handled over the course of the early stages of the Biden administration, Biden's inner circle wanted to basically cloister her away from public scrutiny because she was seen to be doing such a terrible job, or her political chops were really subpar.
	Right.
	And her and Biden didn't even really have a particularly good rapport.
	Remember, she kind of accused Biden of being a racist in one of those early Democratic primary debates.
	And then after the George Floyd brouhaha broke out, there was this idea that Biden was somehow obliged to pick a black woman.
	And she kind of strong armed other people out of the race or out of the vice presidential selection process, like Karen Bass, who's now the mayor of Los Angeles and a couple of others.
	And kind of positioned herself as the natural choice.
	And she.
	People in Biden's orbit kind of were seemingly inclined to freeze her out.
	This was in Jonathan Martin's book.
	I forget the name of it now from like a year or two ago.
	So anyway, yeah, it was it was due to her perceived lack of political adroitness or aptitude.
	That she was kind of sequestered out of the limelight for a time, and now she's been thrust into it, and she's still sequestering herself from the limelight, which is kind of amazing two months ahead of an election.
	It is, you know, it is interesting because, you know, I went back and I looked at also some of the other presidents who had done interviews, right, or they were presidential candidates at the time, and you know, Barack Obama was running in 2008, right?
	He sat down with, not only did he sit down in many different interviews and forums and questions from professionals and voters alike.
	Of course, some of that was because he had a full, you know, real primary campaign.
	Harris was anointed.
	But also, like, in the fall of 2008, he sat down with Bill O'Reilly, right?
	Who's the equivalent of Bill O'Reilly today?
	I mean, he would be sitting down with Handy or maybe Tucker, right?
	and doing a long form interview where he kind of demonstrated his chops, was able to defend himself and his worldview and his policies against a very adversarial host who was 180 degrees opposite from him on the other side.
	And the other question is like, could Kamala Harris do that, right?
	And I think privately, a lot of people in the Democratic Party don't think she could do it.
	I don't think that they think she is.
	She's really prepared to be able to handle that kind of full service environment where you would end up perhaps having a gaffe or tripping on her words or flip-flopping on a policy or anything.
	Ironically, she might be doing fewer media appearances than Joe Biden would have done despite Joe Biden being widely regarded as lacking the cognitive capacity Well, that's exactly it, right?
	Like Biden had an excuse in 2020, you know, they call it the Trump people call it the bunker strategy, you know, disparagingly, but he had kind of had an excuse.
	He's an old guy.
	There was a terrible pandemic happening.
	There's no vaccine until the very end of it, uh, that period.
	And, you know, Biden kind of have an excuse to not get out there that much and not talk to people that much.
	Right.
	Like he's an old, you know, we kind of like, okay, that makes sense.
	Uh, what is Harris's excuse?
	Right.
	She's much younger.
	She's healthy.
	She's been vice president for four years.
	If I was vice president for like four months, I feel like I'd have a whole laundry list of things I wanted to do as soon as I got the power.
	Sometimes it feels like she's not really eager to do the actual job.
	Anyone who's been in public life for a long time Should be able to sit down and speak to voters and be enthusiastic about their ideas.
	And generally speaking, someone like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, who are not in these atypical situations, were very enthusiastic to get out there and talk to people and pitch their ideas and do interviews even with hostile interviewers because they were confident in them, right?
	And they had conviction about what they wanted to do and they were very capable politicians.
	All of this is adding up to me to kind of come to the conclusion that maybe the Democrats don't think she's that strong of a politician and they don't think maybe she's even that would be even that strong of a president but she's just kind of filling that spot for right now right and what they've been doing so far has more or less been working right if the election was tomorrow she'd only go 50 or maybe 51% chance of winning.
	That's not bad, but it does speak a lot to their confidence and maybe to their capability that they think that if she behaved as a normal politician or a normal candidate, then maybe their chances would go down dramatically.
	And also it makes you wonder, like, if she can't handle like doing like a series of interviews or voter forums and she's scared of saying the wrong thing, how is she going to handle difficult foreign policy situations?
	How is she going to handle negotiating with Congress?
	How is she going to handle a national crisis?
	Those things are much more stressful than sitting down and talking to Fox News, right, which other Democratic presidential candidates do.
	And Pete Buttigieg is a transportation secretary.
	He does it all the time.
	But she hasn't done it.
	And it seems to me like they don't want her to do it because they probably don't think she'd do very well.
	Yeah, so on that note, here's a clip.
	Hopefully we can get this up.
	This is from the one interview that she has done thus far.
	She was flanked by Tim Walz.
	So she's not done a single solo interview since being ushered to the nomination.
	But she did do this joint interview with Tim Walz last week.
	And I think Tim Walz actually would be more than capable of probably doing these interviews if you could brush up on national issues a little more, having obviously focused on State-level issues for the past seven years or so in Minnesota.
	But here's what Kamala Harris said in one portion I want to play to you in her CNN interview from August 29th.
	Hopefully we can play that.
	Would you do anything differently?
	For example, would you withhold some US weapons shipments to Israel?
	That's what a lot of people on the progressive left want you to do.
	Let me be very clear.
	I'm unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel's defense and its ability to defend itself.
	And that's not going to change.
	But let's take a step back.
	October 7, 1,200 people were massacred.
	Many young people who were simply attending a music festival.
	Women were horribly raped.
	As I said then, I say today, Israel has a right to defend itself.
	We would.
	And how it does so matters.
	Far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.
	We have got to get a deal done.
	We were in Doha.
	We have to get a deal done.
	This war must end, and we must get a deal that is about getting the hostages out.
	I've met with the families of the American hostages.
	Let's get the hostages out.
	Let's get the ceasefire done.
	But no change in policy in terms of arms and so forth?
	No, we have to get a deal done.
	Dana, we have to get a deal done.
	Would you do anything differently than Joe Biden on the issue of Israel?
	Dana Bash referenced that there are some progressive or left-wing or factions that have been clamoring for Limitation on arms supplies to Israel, maybe even an arms embargo.
	And I don't know if you followed the, I'm sure you did, the consternation around the Democratic Convention where you had these handful of uncommitted delegates, we covered it in Chicago last month, who were thinking that they could exert some sort of pressure On Kamala and the DNC under her command to modulate her position on Israel relative to Biden.
	There were all this.
	There were all this.
	There was all this talk about how she conveyed different vibes and impressions and like intangible ethereal qualities around her views on Israel that might suggest that she was a departure from Biden in some unknown fashion on Israel policy.
	I don't know why people had this foolish notion in their heads, but it was something that was widely conveyed, including among the more activist oriented faction to the Democratic Party coalition who were disillusioned with Biden and wanted to be hopeful about
	Kamala Harris and as you I'm sure know the one Palestinian American state legislature from Georgia who wanted to speak at the convention was blocked from even giving a vetted speech in which she would have endorsed Kamala Harris but yet raised some you know very tepidly raised some concerns around US policy in Israel.
	And, you know, not to say anything of an actual tangible shift on the substance of the policy agenda that Kamala was running on with regard to Israel, but she in this interview with Dana Bash, which I was going to play for you, but we unfortunately cannot because of technical problems.
	She said explicitly, no, that's the direct quote, no, there will be no difference between her position on Israel and the Biden administration.
	Do you think?
	I mean, again, that should have been easily foreseeable to anybody who was rational about it.
	But do you think that?
	Some of these maybe more left-wing liberal elements who were kind of projecting their unfounded hopes onto her.
	Do you think they've kind of snookered themselves?
	Or have they contributed to kind of like a weird sort of duplicity around this campaign?
	I mean, it's possible she could even be more hardline than Biden on I mean, you know, the one time I spoke to her was on Capitol Hill when I was doing Hill reporting.
	She was a senator.
	It was actually about this issue.
	They were going to vote for a resolution that said Jerusalem is the united capital of Israel.
	It's very like, you know, fluff, you know, symbolic resolution.
	I asked her like, well, if you're going to vote for that resolution, can we really have a two state solution?
	Because they have to divide Jerusalem, you know, East and West Jerusalem for the Palestinians to have a country of their own.
	And she said, well, I'm for a two state solution.
	I said, but is that really possible if they don't divide Jerusalem?
	She said, well, we have to stick by our values.
	And I just kept asking.
	And she just kind of kept saying that.
	And, you know, she struck me as just kind of Trying to get away from the question.
	I think Democrats, particularly of her age and generation, generally think the safest thing to do is just to say nice things about Israel.
	You can say nice things about Palestinians, but don't say the Israelis are doing anything wrong with the Palestinians, because that's what gets you in trouble, right?
	That's when, like, the organized interest groups start saying you're anti-Israel or anti-Semitic, when they start spending money against you.
	It's just a whole lot of bother when, you know, the Palestinian side doesn't have a lot of resources to help you.
	It doesn't have a lot of ways to kind of manufacture a positive narrative for you in the media, so on and so forth.
	So I think she probably in the back of her mind has a lot of that thinking going into this issue, particularly when she would be like a complete rookie as president, right?
	Like, she doesn't really have foreign policy experience.
	She doesn't have like a relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu, the way Joe Biden does going back decades.
	She doesn't have a relationship, by the way, with any of the other foreign leaders, because she's so new to the scene.
	And she doesn't really have much of a grounding there, right?
	I think like Barack Obama used to You know, he used to travel abroad when he was younger, he used to write about these issues, he engaged with them quite a bit when he was a senator.
	You can kind of tell where he was gonna go, you know, he wanted to kind of push an Israeli-Palestinian peace process, even though he wasn't really willing to use American leverage either, so it didn't really go anywhere, but like, he was interested in it, right?
	If I, my best guess about- Wasn't Rashid Khalidi, wasn't Rashid Khalidi Obama's professor?
	He had some relationship with him at Columbia?
	Yeah, in Chicago actually, yeah.
	Was it Chicago?
	Yeah, I remember like, you know, there was a right-wing attack line that was kind of...
	That's the thing.
	I think you have to have two things to really want to take this issue on and do something different with it.
	He obviously had a record that people can take serious issue with, but at least there was evidence that he engaged on the issue.
	Well, that's the thing.
	I think you have to have two things to really want to take this issue on and do something different with it.
	One, you have to have an interest in it because if you're just doing what's politically convenient, you're just going to tote the party line on this.
	You have to have some kind of interest in it or reason to want to do something.
	And two, you have to have a lot of political courage.
	And Kamala Harris is not really known for either of those things.
	If you look at her history in the Senate, I don't think she ever did anything other than what was a safe thing to do, right?
	Anything that could have created a whole lot of backlash or that.
	She was standing alone in her party on this, or she was the first one to do this kind of thing.
	If you go through her entire history as a politician, she really hasn't done a ton of that.
	I think the closest example might be when she opposed the death penalty, because she got a lot of heat from the local police union and from the media about that.
	But then again, she was in San Francisco doing that, right?
	Which is the survivable thing to do in San Francisco, right?
	She wasn't doing that in Macon, Georgia, right?
	In that time period.
	When she ran for Attorney General in California in 2010, did she run in opposition to the death penalty?
	I actually don't know.
	I think she's still opposed it, but what happened was, and I think there's a CNN piece about this, was that there were some instances where the death penalty was being pursued.
	She didn't do as much to block it as she could have, because I think there was some back and forth politicking about it.
	I do think that formally, though, she's opposed it, but hey, here's a question we could ask her.
	As you probably know, the Democratic Convention in the platform dropped opposition to the death penalty in the platform.
	They've had that opposition in there since 2004.
	There's a lot of issues where she can say, look, my team is still looking at it.
	We're still putting things together.
	This was all rushed and put together.
	But she knows about the death penalty.
	She's opposed it her whole life, supposedly.
	She can say, hey, do you agree with the platform in that?
	Or was the platform wrong?
	Because some of the platform was assembled, from what I understand, before she was even kind of put in there.
	I mean, it still had Joe Biden's name in it at certain points, right?
	But it would be a great question to ask her in an interview.
	Like, do you still plan to oppose the death penalty?
	Will your DOJ pursue the death penalty at the federal level?
	Or do you want the state to abolish it?
	The death penalty has been abolished in Minnesota since 1911.
	So the state that Tim Walz is the governor of, we could ask Kamala Harris for her view on the policy around the death penalty in Minnesota.
	That would be an interesting, you know, jumping off point to approach that issue.
	Yeah, I think it totally would be.
	You know, to your point, I don't know.
	I think Walls is probably more prepared than she is just because he's been an executive and he's had to, like, make tough policy calls and manage a big staff and, you know, do so on and so forth.
	But my guess is they're telling him not to do too many interviews either because, you know, he can't step out in front of her.
	She's the nominee, right?
	Like, he can't make policy for her.
	He has to stick to her script and he can't overshadow her or outshine her, which in the case where you have a candidate who's kind of hiding is a possibility, right, if he got out there like that.
	Yeah.
	So finally, I wanted to ask you a little bit about Donald J. Trump.
	You may have heard of him.
	He addressed today the Republican Jewish Coalition, one of his favorite groups.
	And he was introduced by Miriam Adelson, who's also introduced him recently at other events we've covered on the show.
	She's pledged at least $100 million to elect Trump in 2024.
	Honoring the legacy of her late departed husband, Sheldon Adelson, who was one of the top funders of the Republican Party and Trump campaigns in recent election cycles.
	So 2020 for the Trump campaign, 2016, 2018 midterms, 2022 midterms.
	Sheldon and Miriam have been the paramount funders of the Republican Party and they are fanatical in their views on Israel.
	And so I just want to play you a little bit of this clip.
	He is our best friend.
	He will save us.
	And I am eagerly waiting for him to enter the White House and to save the Jewish people.
	They will try to save themselves, but We must, we need America, and we need President Trump, that I am honored to call my friend, and maybe he is honored that I am his friend.
	So, we'll see!
	Mr. President, the stage, the stage is all yours.
	Thank you.
	The bond between the United States and Israel is a special one.
	More than just an alliance, it's an unbreakable partnership rooted in shared values, strategic strength, and spiritual kinship.
	No president has defended Israel and Jewish Americans more than President Donald J. Trump.
	He declared Jerusalem the undivided eternal capital of Israel and moved our embassy there.
	Donald Trump will crack down and take decisive action against anti-Semitism on the streets and college campuses, restoring safety and security for Jewish Americans.
	To every college president, I say remove the encampments immediately, vanquish the radicals, and take back our campuses for all of the normal students who want a safe place from which to learn.
	Donald Trump stands as the most pro-Israel president in U.S.
	history.
	Someone the Jewish community can count on.
	When I'm back in the White House, the United States will stand with Israel all the way, 100%, without hesitation, without qualification, and without any apology.
	We're not going to be apologizing.
	Stand up and vote for security.
	We have a choice.
	Donald Trump kept our nation and the Jewish community secure.
	I especially want to thank my friend Miriam.
	She's an incredible woman.
	I've gotten to know her very well over the years, but she is an incredible person.
	So that's Mary Madison introducing Trump as the savior of the Jewish people.
	And you have this montage where Trump is proclaimed to be the most pro-Israel president in U.S.
	history, that he's gonna crack down even harder on quote-unquote anti-Semitism, whatever that might consist of, and whatever speech that might involve curtailing.
	And Trump basically saying there's gonna be total Fidelity to to Israel that somehow exceeds the Biden administration which Trump claims has abandoned Israel That he says he's people like Chuck Schumer or agents of Hamas He calls Schumer and co-Palestinians, as though that's a term of derision.
	So one thing that I scream at Glenn at sometimes is that maybe there should be more coverage of the fact that Trump, I think indisputably, is running on the most extreme, quote unquote, pro-Israel platform of any major party nominee ever, based in part on his record as president and also what he's campaigning on now.
	So obviously that has some sort of downstream effect on The Democrats, one would think.
	I mean, Trump and the Republicans seem to think that they can peel off some degree of Jewish voters in Pennsylvania or wherever.
	So how is the Trump position on this?
	How does that figure into this broader kind of political dynamic around Israel?
	And do you think it's been getting adequate coverage?
	Because I don't.
	Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, what's really obvious, and this comes into his first term as well, is that Trump Trump is more blatant about this than your average politician.
	When he goes and he speaks to Republican-Jewish coalition audiences, he says things like, I will support your country.
	He says that Jews need their heads examined if they're not voting for him.
	He more or less just says like what other politicians say in a subtle way, which is that he believes that at least Adopting a policy or saying he's going to adopt a policy around Israel is essential to securing certain Republican Jewish donors.
	He thinks that policy around Israel should decide the Jewish vote, which traditionally goes Democratic by 60 to 70%.
	Maybe it'll be a little bit less this time.
	I doubt it, though.
	And he's just being transactional, right?
	Like, he's not making a values-based argument like, you know, Israel shares our values, going back decades, you know, something a Democrat might say, right?
	He's just like, no, like, I want the Jewish vote and I want the support of these donors like Miriam Adelson.
	And so I'm going to say that the best thing, whatever you want for Israel, is what you'll get.
	Now, whether that's true, I don't know.
	Trump has a habit of giving hyperbole to the audiences he's speaking to when he's courting them.
	He does, to me, seem a little uncomfortable with the war, like even his earliest comments about the war.
	See, keeps talking about how he wants it to end and it doesn't look like he wants to end by Israel taking off the gloves.
	And yeah, but I'm not escalating the pulverization campaigns, but I'm not sure how they can declare victory.
	They really could escalate more.
	I, I, I guess what I'm trying to say is like, if I'm Netanyahu and my political coalition won't let me in the war, which is what's happening, right?
	Like his coalition will fall apart if he agrees to a ceasefire.
	He has to actually end the war at some point, right?
	Like there has to be like an end point.
	It's stressing Israel's economy, the global reputation.
	All their allies are upset about it, including England, America, so on and so forth.
	I kind of feel like what will happen if Trump wins the election is that Netanyahu will say, OK, we really beat the tar out of Hamas.
	We got rid of the Democrats.
	I think that's a great point to declare victory.
	I'm going to declare victory.
	And then Trump's going to be like, I brought peace, even though it really wasn't Trump.
	Right.
	Netanyahu needs a win in his pocket to declare an endpoint, because at this point there really is no endpoint, I think largely for political reasons, right?
	And I don't think that really has to do with Trump.
	It's more like the dynamics, including the regional dynamics, by the way, right?
	What is Trump's one big interest in the Middle East that he actually, like, cares about?
	Probably the Abraham Accords, right?
	Which were those deals he made with those Gulf countries.
	Well, according to Jared Kushner, developing beachfront property.
	And it's making his family money, right?
	It's making Kushner money.
	And the next country he wants to get in there is Saudi Arabia.
	And Saudi Arabia can't get in there as long as this war is going on, right?
	So I think Trump probably does authentically want the war to end.
	I don't know if he would be willing to do anything to get it done at all, like if he'd be willing to make any threats or anything, but- Everybody claims they want the war to end.
	I mean, what does that actually mean in practice?
	I think actually, I'm pretty sure like most American politicians do no matter what they're saying, like politically wise, like Biden does.
	I mean, the Biden's have been insistent that they're pursuing a ceasefire, however shambolically.
	Well, I think that I think the reality is that like.
	But Trump is Trump opposes a ceasefire.
	I don't know.
	I mean, sometimes he says, I mean, his last comments on it.
	Well, his last comments about it at his press conference in Mar-a-Lago was that he wants to stop the killing.
	And I'm like, what does that mean?
	Like, what does Trump want to actually do?
	He's going to say whatever Biden's doing is wrong anyway, because that's what he does against his political opponents, right?
	But what if, like, him and Biden both actually just want the war to end?
	But as you said, does it really matter all that much if they're not willing to do anything about it?
	So that's what I'm saying.
	Like, the way the war could conceivably end is just that Netanyahu needs to pick an endpoint to declare victory.
	He also wants the Abraham Accords to expand.
	He also wants to deal with MBS and Saudi Arabia.
	And he hates the Democrats and he likes Trump.
	So he might just tie it on a bow and say, OK, we're done now.
	We'll work out some kind of arrangement on these final status things.
	And the war will come to an end early next year that way.
	But, you know, if that isn't what happened and Netanyahu just wanted to keep fighting, would Trump exert any political pressure on him to end the war?
	It's kind of hard to see because Trump's political coalition is so supportive of Israel.
	On the other hand, I don't think Trump authentically likes the war whatsoever.
	Like, he doesn't come, he doesn't come across that way to me.
	He comes across like he's using it as a political battering ram against his opponents.
	But I don't think he's, I don't think he's ideologically.
	It's a PR headache.
	He's complained that like too many unfortunate images of the destruction have gotten out.
	So it's not like he's ever given like a moral.
	Have you read or seen the hunger games, like trilogy?
	Like, are you familiar with what I'm talking about?
	I know of it.
	I've never actually.
	Okay.
	So there's a, there's a president in it called president snow.
	He's like the tyrant.
	Right.
	And at one point he's like, I'm not above killing children, but I'm not wasteful.
	Right.
	That's kind of like what Trump is like, like Trump is like totally for using force.
	Like when he feels like it's useful for him or useful for the United States.
	But if you see something as wasteful as just going on forever with no real benefit to himself, no real benefit to the United States or anything, I don't think I, I really don't think he likes it.
	And I don't think that the current American leaders like it either.
	I don't think Joe Biden likes it.
	The problem is that they're all still just terrified politically.
	Of taking any action against it, because all these people of Trump and Biden's age have come up in an era where you're told you just gotta stand by Israel, no matter what it does.
	There's a quote from Bob Gates, who worked under several presidents, Republican and Democratic.
	This was at the end of Bush Sr.' 's term, they interviewed him.
	And he said, look, every president I've ever worked under got red in the face, angry and upset at Israel, but they didn't do anything about it because of domestic politics.
	And I think For people of Trump and Biden's age who still came of age being fearful of these of these interest groups, I think that's how they think about it.
	But I don't think they authentically, like, think that the war is a good thing for the United States, because we're not really getting anything out of it, right?
	Like, Hamas is not our enemy.
	We have hostages there, too.
	We have a few Americans who are still in Gaza and those hostages could be released if we had a ceasefire.
	The Biden DOJ just indicted The leaders of Hamas, including Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed, assassinated in July on the on the ground that they You know, killed or took hostage Americans.
	So, I mean, there's an argument that the DOJ is making right now, anyway, that Hamas is.
	I mean, look, we consider them terrorist organizations.
	We don't like that they took over, you know, America.
	They took American hostages.
	We're supporting Israel in the fight against them.
	But ultimately, like all this is not good for our interests, right?
	All this fighting, everything that it's doing to our military preparedness, all our carriers are like In the Middle East for some reason.
	I don't know why we're in the Middle East because we're not really, we're not in a war.
	We're not, shouldn't be in a war there.
	I remember when both parties were supposedly alienated and disillusioned with these long-term entanglements in the Middle East and now they're all cheering.
	It's like massive US military assets, I guess, now just being stationed in the Middle East again.
	Yeah.
	I mean, look, it's, it's, it's a, it's a really stupid situation that a country with like 60 times less our GDP, you know, we can't just tell them to cut it out and stop when like, largely we do, we just want them to cut it out and stop.
	Cause it's, it's just too much.
	It's stressing our country and a lot of other countries and same thing with like the leadership in Canada or UK or France or Germany.
	I think they all wanted to end too, but like, they just haven't gotten over this political hump of like, You don't always have to agree with this, but I don't always have to stand with Israel doing everything.
	You can, you know, the UK cut off a small percentage of their arms to, to Israel recently.
	And even that was a huge, hugely controversial thing in the past.
	People were arguing about it.
	I'm like, I don't think the average person cares that much.
	Like it's, it's a different era than when they were growing up.
	I think after the 67 war, Israel became like intensely popular in a lot of these countries.
	And a lot of people really felt like we have to defend and support this underdog, right.
	Against these more powerful countries.
	Now Israel's a nuclear armed country.
	It's very powerful, easily leveled Gaza.
	It's not under any kind of essential threat.
	But I think to a certain generation of Americans in politics, they still feel like that, you know, that that dynamic in politics is there.
	Yeah, I think it'll take a generational shift to really get someone with a different attitude.
	I think a lot of the people being elected to, like, the U.S.
	Congress now, who are a little bit younger, maybe have a different point of view about this.
	Kamala Harris is not quite there.
	I think she still has the kind of cynical political take on it, which is just, just go with it, you know?
	Like, but it's good.
	It's stressing our, look, it's stressing our society a lot.
	Everything from college campuses.
	And the FBI says, the FBI says that whatever blowback Happens as a response to the Israeli campaign in Gaza is going to down to the U.S.
	I mean, there's going to be blowback against the U.S.
	And so that's another potential.
	Like the FBI director, Christopher Wray, has said the light is blinking red for terrorism in the United States because of There was a piece somewhere recently, I forget where it was, but they looked at a lot of the polling in East Asia.
	About America and countries like, you know, Indonesia, Malaysia, those islands, a lot of them have shifted to becoming more pro-China in the past year.
	Like nothing really happened in the world that would have done that, except maybe just America, like ruining its reputation with a lot of these Muslim majority publics in the Pacific because, uh, in the East Indian Ocean, because like they're thinking like, look, we, these Americans, they all talk about human rights and the international law.
	And they're talking about that in Ukraine, but they don't apply it to the Palestinians.
	Right.
	They don't even apply it in the West Bank, which there wasn't any Hamas terror attack from the West Bank.
	And yet, suddenly Israeli soldiers are rampaging through there every day.
	Our State Department says, oh, we don't like that.
	We wish they wouldn't do that.
	But like, we don't do anything about it.
	Right.
	Like we're still trapped by this, you know, this mindset or just domestic policy box that that's domestic politics box that says, you know, we just got to go with it.
	Like we can't stand up to these people.
	They'll ruin your life.
	I mean, this is the kind of story I used to hear when I would talk to people who worked in Congress.
	There's lots of people in Congress who apparently privately do not agree with what Israel does, but like, they don't want to get called anti-Semitic, they don't want to get phone calls, people angry at them, and, you know, the other side of the equation... We just had two Democratic incumbents who lost races, which is very unusual, because of the massive spending of AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups.
	That is true, but I think we should also keep in mind that, like, If AIPAC really had its draw, they would have taken out dozens of people this race.
	Taking out two is quite a few.
	It's very rare for an economy to lose a primary.
	It is, but I think also it's important for us to remember AIPAC invests in races where it's going to win, right?
	They don't want losses.
	It's very important for them not to have losses because they kind of want to have a reputation of being career enders.
	I also think that we should bear in mind that there's a lot of people in Congress who they probably would want to remove, but they just can't remove.
	They can't remove Bernie Sanders.
	They can't get involved in races against a lot of House Democrats who started saying we should hold back some offensive weapons from Israel.
	I mean, that's a red line for them, right?
	Yeah, they would have liked to remove Ilhan Omar, but she now has a political base in Minneapolis where it wasn't viable.
	But it was viable for Jamaal Bowman in New York and Cori Bush in And look, Jamal Bowman and Cori Bush, yes, AIPAC spent a ton of money against them and they make a difference.
	They have their own flaws.
	But they are deeply flawed, right?
	They did extremely stupid things.
	I don't know why they're playing fire alarms in the Capitol and Cori Bush hired her husband in security with campaign funds.
	They were deeply flawed, right?
	If both of them were not deeply flawed and it was just the Israel stuff, I don't know, maybe they would have survived.
	It's hard to say.
	Yep.
	All right, Zed.
	I think we're going to have to leave it there.
	Thank you for bearing with us as we try to power through some of our technical difficulties.
	And we'll talk again soon.
	Just remind us what your website is and whatever else you want to plug.
	Yeah, look, I just started a sub stack last month because I wanted to throw up a lot of stuff that, you know, I don't have to go through the full freelancing, finding an editor, doing it.
	And, you know, I think I've had a lot of success there.
	Yeah, actually, so far, I've not paywalled any content.
	So I do.
	I was making a joke.
	It's a pain to go through the whole process.
	Yeah, it is a pain.
	I'm still doing that sometimes for like, yeah, I do it sometimes.
	You want to keep yourself grounded, but.
	Yeah.
	But I think just having the sub stack is good because, you know, if I have an idea one night and I want to publish something next morning, I can just write it up.
	And so I've been doing a lot of that.
	It's called The American Saga.
	You can go to TheAmericanSaga.com.
	And yeah, I think it's been a lot of fun.
	I have good comment loyal commenters who are sticking with me.
	I'm trying to build a community of people who are not Just left wing, not just right wing, kind of across the spectrum, just so that keep me in check so I don't get biased too much in one direction and have a lot of interesting stories.
	So that's the main place I'd say people should come check it out.
	I'd be happy just to get a free subscription and have you guys reading and commenting and sharing.
	Yeah.
	And also I don't plug my own website enough, which is also a sub stack, mtracy.net, doing it for several years.
	I should have a new piece out relatively soon so people can go onto that.
	As well.
	Alright, so that'll be it for tonight's episode of System Update.
	Thank you, Zed.
	Thank you, viewers, for enduring what was an amusingly shambolic technical performance by our Rumble platform.
	Hopefully we'll get that sorted out for tomorrow.
	But either way, we'll be back.

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