GOP Senators Demand Tulsi Support Domestic Surveillance To Be Confirmed; Group Tracks IDF War Criminals Around The World; System Pupdate: Pointer’s Determination To Survive
Under pressure from GOP senators, Tulsi Gabbard flips on her FISA position ahead of her confirmation, supporting domestic surveillance. Plus: an interview with an activist tracking IDF war criminals around the world. Finally: the incredible rescue story of "Pointer" in another installment of "System Pupdate."
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every single Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, one of the most notable aspects of Donald Trump's array of nominees to serve in his key cabinet positions is that most of them have provoked zero opposition.
Indeed, Democrats like Liz Warren and various CNN personalities have heaped praise on many of Trump's choices, such as Marco Rubio for Secretary of State, Lee Stefanik for Ambassador to the UN, and Scott Benson for Treasury Secretary.
That's because those are all people who have longstanding loyalties to bipartisan D.C. establishment dogma, and thus Democrats are not just accepting, but are happy about.
Those choices.
It is only a handful of Trump nominees who have created any sort of opposition at all.
One of them, his choice for Attorney General Matt Gaetz, is already out of the picture.
The three remaining ones in question are all people who, like Gaetz, have deviated strongly in the past from bipartisan D.C. orthodoxies.
RFK Jr. is Health and Human Services Secretary, Cash Patel is FBI Director, and Tulsi Gabbard is Director of National Intelligence.
For a while there was concern about Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon, but he has reportedly now assured GOP senators that he will follow their hawkish and internationalist ideology.
Of those remaining difficult nominees, it is really Colsi Gabbard that has generated by far the most anger, with people like Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz calling her a Russian agent last month on MSNBC, and Republican senators as well indicating their widespread reluctance to and Republican senators as well indicating their widespread reluctance to vote for her.
But today it is being reported with on-the-record quotes from Republican senators that Gabbard's nomination is in deep trouble, The only way Republican senators, many of them, like Tom Cotton, have said they will even consider voting for her.
is if she renounces and reverses her longtime opposition to mass warrantless NSA and FBI domestic spying.
And they're demanding that even to be considered, she must instead join the bipartisan consensus in favor of those longtime surveillance powers.
Gabbard, in a last-ditch effort to win confirmation, is reportedly now reversing herself and promising to support those powers.
This incident, like so many others like it, show how Washington really works.
The only way to ascend to power, or to remain there, is if you endorse fully and completely the U.S. security state's agenda.
Then, last week in Brazil, a federal court ordered a criminal investigation of a soldier with the Israeli Defense Forces who had come to Brazil in December for vacation.
The court's reasoning for ordering this investigation, the detention as well of the soldier, was that because the country, Brazil, is a signatory to the ICC, the International Criminal Court, and to the Rome Statute, it is not only permitted but required for the country to investigate and apprehend war criminals found on its soil.
The case was brought based on social media posts that that soldier had posted in which he was blowing up residential buildings, blocks of them, while he and his fellow platoon mates celebrated.
Now, although someone apparently leaked to the Israeli government that this order was about to be issued, which enabled the Israelis to smuggle the IDF soldier out of Brazil to Argentina, which is where Nazi war criminals used to go as well, and then to the U.S., this success has created serious fear in Israel over the ability of its soldiers to travel freely around the world.
...
from high level Israeli officials against the advocacy group, which has been monitoring these IDF soldiers and bringing these legal proceedings against them, which is called the Hinrajab Foundation, named after a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was horrifically murdered while she sat in a car that had been assaulted by Israeli tanks with her named after a six-year-old Palestinian girl who was horrifically murdered while she sat in She called the ambulance and then she ended up dead as well.
...
Now, we speak today to the president of that group, Dayab Abu Jajah, about the group's work in tracking IDF, admissions of war crimes, the legal proceedings this group is bringing against them around the world, and the very serious and credible threats of violence and murder that they are predictably enduring from Israelis as a result.
Finally, tonight is Friday, and so we always end the show with our Friday night segment called System Pup Date, where we feature one of the dogs we rescued that's either at our home or at our shelter to highlight their trajectory and their rescue story.
The state in which we found our starring dog tonight, whose name is Pointer, was so horrifying and gruesome that some of the images of that rescue may be somewhat disturbing, but for me, it makes the happy ending all the happier.
To watch what kind of a happy and healthy dog they are able to become if they have rescue of and care.
And it was what he has been able to become as well as a result of all enduring his recovery together.
I think you'll really enjoy this story.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update, starting right now.
Despite depicting Donald Trump as a Hitler figure who is going to impose white nationalist dictatorship and end American democracy forever, most Democrats and their allies in the corporate media have been perfectly content with, most Democrats and their allies in the corporate media have been perfectly content with, The majority of Donald Trump's choice is to compose his key cabinet positions.
There are only a few of them who have really caused any sort of serious backlash or anger or opposition.
And after Matt Gaetz, who is already out of the picture, already withdrew his nomination because it was clear he couldn't get the votes to get confirmed by the Senate to be Attorney General, the nominee who is causing the most amount of opposition...
Ironically, as somebody who used to be the vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, was a supporter of Bernie Sanders in 2016 and was a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Hawaii for eight years.
She's a lieutenant colonel in the Army that, of course, is Tulsi Gabbard.
And one of the reasons why her nomination is in such trouble is because there's not a single Democratic vote that she's likely to attract, which means that she has to get almost every single...
Senate Republican vote in order to have a chance to be confirmed, but because she has been a critic of the U.S. security state, and in particular, the warrantless domestic spying powers that the FBI and the CIA and the NSA have wielded and abused against American citizens for so long, and because Republican senators are vehement defenders of the U.S. security state, they have become extremely skeptical of whether they can trust her to lead the intelligence community.
And this has been going on for some time now.
The minute Donald Trump unveiled Tulsi Gabbard to be in this position, it created a lot of different sectors of opposition, unlike most of Trump's appointees, like Marco Rubio and Elise Stefanik, who Democrats are thrilled about.
This conflict was signaled months ago.
Back in November, The Economist published an article with this headline, Donald Trump and Tulsi Gabbard are coming for the spooks.
The president-elect's intelligence picks suggest a radical agenda.
It's so radical in Washington.
To criticize the U.S. security state, that's just never done.
And the fact that Tulsi Gabbard has been an outspoken critic of the intelligence agency which Donald Trump now wants her to run is what has made her so anathema to the entire Democratic Party and to many Republican senators as well.
Here's the text of the article.
Of Donald Trump's nominees to high office, few are more suspicious of the government they are pegged to join than Tulsi Gabbard.
The Democrat-turned-Republican warns of a, quote, slow-rolling coup by, quote, the entire permanent Washington machine, as she described it in, quote, For a Love of Country, a campaign book published in April.
Her list of Bushes is long, Catholic, and spook-heavy.
Quote, the Democratic National Committee, propaganda, media, big tech, the FBI, the CIA, and a whole network of rogue intelligence and law enforcement agents working at the highest levels of our government.
Yet she may oversee some of that machinery.
Is it actually supposed to be a bad thing?
That people who are critical of an agency and who believe that it has abused its power in the past are now going to run it in order to reform it?
That to me seems like a good thing.
If all you're supposed to do is just appoint people who love these agencies and believe in everything they've been doing, it really doesn't matter what the outcome of elections are.
You just put the same people in.
Like you go from Antony Blinken as Secretary of State to Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and it really makes no difference.
It's the few picks of Trump's who really have deviated in the past from bipartisan orthodoxy.
Those are the only ones that are causing any concern that's led by Tulsi Gabbard.
Quote, Mr. Trump and Ms. Gabbard are both opposed to Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA, which authorizes electronic surveillance on American soil.
It was renewed this year after a fierce debate in the Senate, but it is due to lapse in 2026. The FISA court has proven to be a dependable rubber stamp for government requests, said Ms. Gabbard.
Not inaccurately, adds the economist.
If Mr. Trump decides to quash it, the FBI will lose a major source of intelligence.
So this whole news article is obviously written from the perspective of people who want these surveillance powers to continue.
And it is true that Donald Trump has criticized him in the past, although he did become an advocate of renewing the FISA law when he was president.
But Gabbard has been quite vocal in her critiques of this very unlimited ability for the U.S. government to spy without warrants on American citizens, and that's why she has upset so many people.
Here on CNN, this was also around the same time back in November, Katie Bo Lillis, who's the national security reporter for CNN, had this to say about Tulsi Gow.
Remember, this is not an opinion sector of the show.
CNN, this is reporting, just like The Economist story.
If confirmed, she will be perhaps the most markedly or most publicly anti-surveillance official to ever lead the part of the U.S. government that is tasked with doing surveillance on foreign entities.
In 2020, back when she was still a Democrat...
Already that's a lie.
Tulsi Gabbard is not anti-surveillance.
She's in favor of surveilling people when you get a court warrant that authorizes the surveillance.
She's in favor of surveillance with reforms and safeguards and guidelines.
What she opposes is unlimited mass domestic surveillance because that's actually contrary to the core guarantees of the Constitution.
This reporter chooses to describe her as anti-surveillance.
2020, back when she was still a Democrat and she was in Congress, she introduced a series of bills that would have been pretty profoundly antithetical to how the intelligence community thinks.
Two of them...
Oh no, not that.
Of all the things you can be, the worst possible thing you can be is someone who is antithetical to the way in which the intelligence communities think.
You can't oppose the U.S. Intelligence Committees, otherwise you will be described in these terms as some radical extremist who's unfit to serve at the highest levels of the American government.
No criticizing or deviating from the agenda of the U.S. security state.
...intelligence community thinks.
Two of them were aimed at persuading the government to drop its prosecution of Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who revealed the existence of bulk NSA collection of Americans' data back in 2013, as well as of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.
Both of these men are seen really as almost enemies of the state within the intelligence community, even as they've attracted some support from kind of the sort of libertarian wing of the Republican Party as well.
Okay.
Okay.
As well as...
Okay.
Do you know whose support those two people, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, should have more than anybody?
Anybody who purports to call themselves a journalist.
Those two did what is supposed to be supposedly the work of journalists like this person.
Edward Snowden leaked and made public government domestic surveillance programs that U.S. courts ruled were illegal and constitutional.
It's the ultimate whistleblower act to undertake.
And in doing so, he enabled journalists, including myself and others, to win every top journalism award like the Pulitzer Prize and the Polk and journalism awards around the world because that's what journalism is supposed to be.
And then Julian Assange did the same thing.
So for a woman like this to come on the air and talk about how Tulsi Gabbard's defending Julian Assange and Edward Snowden somehow means that she is unfit to lead the intelligence agencies because it makes her, quote, an enemy of the state in their eyes and how those people only got support among a few libertarians and a handful of progressives just shows how much these people identify with.
And are servants of the U.S. intelligence agencies that they purport to report on and oversee.
Gabbard also, in 2020, introduced this piece of legislation that would have wholesale repealed one of the most powerful surveillance authorities that the U.S. government has to spy on foreigners overseas, something called Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
And note, too, that while this is all going on, this attack on Tulsi Gabbard's character for the crime of questioning U.S. intelligence agencies and wanting to impose some reform on them, on the screen the whole time it reads, Nikki Haley blasts Tulsi Gabbard as Trump's picture.
Now, that is legislation that has drawn some criticism from civil liberties advocates who say that it impinges on Americans' data privacy as well.
But to wholesale repeal it without replacing it would be tantamount, according to some former U.S. intelligence officials, to effectively blinding the commander-in-chief.
This is an authority under which as much as half of what's known as the president's daily brief is drawn from every day.
Now, do you notice just the tactic these people use?
And this is why I have so much contempt for them.
So much contempt.
They need to always put the slightest facade of objectivity on this layer of garbage and crap and propagandistic sewage that they're spewing.
So she got all excited and she said, how can you possibly want to reform or replace or repeal?
This powerful intelligence tool that, and then she remembered, oh wait, I'm not supposed to be arguing this.
And then she just inserted that some intelligence officials argue is crucial to the president's daily briefing and without which we would be blind.
Do you see what propagandists these people are through the CIA and the NSA and the FBI? It's so easy to see when you just look for it.
This is who has become the leading opponents of Tulsi Gabbard, the CNN, the Democratic Party.
The Hawks and establishment wing and the Republican Party, all the people that were just rejected in this election.
But election outcomes don't matter.
The permanent power faction in Washington always gets what they want.
Here in December the following month, Reuters reported, exclusive, some Republican senators are reluctant to vote for Tulsi Gabbard for spy chief.
Quote, eight Republican senators are unsure about supporting former Democratic member of Congress Tulsi Gabbard to become America's top spy, according to a Trump transition source and a second source with knowledge of the issue, increasing doubts about whether her nomination will secure Senate confirmation.
I thought all along that after Matt Gaetz told he was the most likely to be rejected, Because I didn't think he'd get any Democratic votes, because the one thing you cannot do in Democratic Party politics is be a critic of the U.S. security state, because the Democratic Party now sees the FBI, the CIA, the NSA as their key allies, and polling data shows that by far the people who worship those agencies most, who love them, who approve of them, are Democrats.
And because Tulsi Gabbard is a critic of them, that's a no-go in Democratic Party politics.
And a lot of Republicans feel exactly the same way, despite their desire not to oppose Donald Trump.
Their higher loyalty is to the U.S. security state, just like that CNN person, the national security correspondent, who goes on the air every day to say what her secret intelligence sources are whispering in her ear.
So it's been this conflict that's been coming for a while.
And today, Punchbowl News, which is a ridiculous name and sounds like a ridiculous outlet and often is, but in this case they have...
What is reliable reporting, and I say that because they have on-the-record sources, reported this, quote, Tulsi Gabbard reverses course on a key intel-gathering tool as her nomination teeters.
Quote, in her first public comment since being nominated, Gabbard told us in an exclusive interview that she now supports Section 702, saying the program is, quote, crucial, end quote, must be safeguarded to protect our nation while ensuring the civil liberties of Americans.
Multiple senators from both parties who met with the former Hawaii lawmaker in recent days told us they emerged from those sessions unsure about Gabbard's position on the 702 program.
During these meetings, senators have pressed Gabbard on her previous public statements on the issue, as well as on her votes against 702 reauthorization throughout her eight years in Congress.
GOP national security hawks, in particular, viewed this as problematic, we're told.
Fueling renewed doubts about her confirmation prospects, Senator James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggested on a Wall Street Journal podcast Wednesday that Gabbard should disavow her previous opposition to the 702 program.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, also sent us a statement Thursday night supporting Gabbard's 702 stance, a key indicator of how the GOP leadership is thinking about her nomination.
The last part is important because if confirmed as DNI, Gabbard would need to certify the statute annually in order for intelligence collection to continue under the 702 program.
There's also the fact that Gabbard's foreign policy views aren't out with Republicans, particularly defense hawks.
Gabbard isn't expected to get any Democratic votes.
So she can't refuse to lose more than a few Republicans.
So look at what happens in Washington.
You get these people who are principled, vocal, committed opponents of the abuses of the U.S. security state.
For years, it's part of their public identity.
And Tulsi Gabbard supported Donald Trump.
He won the election.
She was at his side.
He named her to be the Director of National Intelligence.
His party took over the Senate and the House, maintained their...
Maintained their control of the House, took over the Senate.
And none of these people care.
No matter what the outcome of elections is, if you are not on board with, acquiescent to, willing to rubber stamp everything the U.S. security wants, state wants, you cannot wield power in Washington.
They will block you from ascending to power or remove you if you're there.
It's very, very redolent of what happened with the current House Speaker, Mike Johnson, on this very issue.
Mike Johnson was on my show in July of 2023, shortly before he was named House Speaker unexpectedly.
The reason I had him on is because he had become so eloquent, so forceful on the abuses of the U.S. security states, particularly with regard to domestic spying power and the need for there to be reforms.
Here's what he told me when he was on my show about FISA 702 and the abuses of the U.S. security state when it comes to domestic surveillance.
I think that's exactly right.
And that is what keeps us up at night, Glenn.
We're worried about what has become of these agencies that have such broad and expansive powers.
The top law enforcement agency in the country that is supposed to be protecting and serving the American people is being used against them.
It's violating the privacy of Americans.
It is trampling upon their fundamental constitutional rights.
And it goes without check because what so many people are frustrated about is They ask me today, why can't you guys get accountability?
Why can't you bring some order to this?
Well, you know, the political reality is here that people sometimes forget.
We only have the majority in one House of Congress right now, and it's a bare majority of that.
We don't have in Congress the ability to indict someone for violating the law or to put them on trial in a court.
All we can do is put them on trial in the court of public opinion.
That's what the hearings are.
And then bring legislative reforms to do our best to ensure that these So,
he wasn't just saying he was concerned about the abuses under 702. He was saying he was so concerned about it that it keeps him up at night.
That's how much reform was needed, he said.
And it was the same argument as Tulsi Gabbard.
In fact, despite CNN's attempt and The Economist's attempt to depict Tulsi Gabbard's opposition to 702 spying as radical and extremist, the reality is there was bipartisan support for reforming that law.
And the reason it ended up not being reformed, first under Donald Trump and then under Joe Biden, was because in both administrations, the White House...
Biden demanded renewal of those laws, those spying powers with no reforms.
And the party loyal to the White House ended up putting up most of their votes against reforms and FISA renewal ended up passing.
In the case of Mike Johnson, though, he was Speaker under the Biden administration, not the Trump administration.
So he doesn't have that excuse.
Well, the White House of my party told me that they wanted it.
Mike Johnson told me...
That this was an issue of such grave importance to him that it was keeping him up at night.
He gets elected speaker.
The bill to renew FISA is on the floor.
Not only does he bring that bill to the floor to just renew this law, he blocks any attempts to reform it.
He did a complete 180. The minute he's third in line to the presidency, becomes House Speaker, he told me this law was keeping him up at night, and then he did everything in his power to make sure it continued and got extended.
Finally, somebody asked him about that in April of 2024. What happened?
You were one of the leading, most vocal opponents of domestic spying power, and then you became its most important supporter after you got elected to House Speaker.
Why would you change your mind so radically in such a short time?
And here's what he said.
When I was a member of the judiciary, I saw the abuses of the FBI, the terrible abuses over and over and over, the hundreds of thousands of abuses.
And then when I became speaker, I went to the SCF and got the confidential briefing from sort of the other perspective on that to understand the necessity of Section 702 of FISA and how important it is for national security.
And it gave me a different perspective.
So I encouraged all the members to go to the classified briefing and hear all that and see it so they can evaluate the situation for themselves.
Some opinions have changed both ways, but that's part of the process.
You've got to be fully informed.
Okay, I just want you to listen to how deceitful that answer was.
He said the reason he changed his mind is because they took him to this super secretive room, the SCIF, and they showed him things in that room that made him understand that those powers that he was so worried about are in fact incredibly important.
You cannot do without them.
He was in Congress before he was Speaker.
As he just said, House members have access to those same briefings.
He was out there speaking about the evils of FISA and the need to reform it.
Had he not been informed?
Had he not gotten any briefings on this law that he was trying to radically overhaul?
It makes no sense, that excuse.
Of course he was in briefings previously to becoming Speaker when he was radically opposed, vocally opposed to this law and its renewal with no reforms.
I don't know what they did to him in that super secret room they took him in in the NSA or the FBI or the CIA, but it's not what he said.
But whatever they did to him there, it absolutely worked to force him to do a complete 180, much like they just did with Elsie Gabbard, by basically telling her either you renounce your long-time views and your opposition to unlimited domestic warrantless spying, or you have no chance to get nominated and you'll be completely out of the government and out of power.
Pick one, one or the other.
This has been going all the way back to the Obama administration.
Here was the Atlantic in August of 2013, just a couple months after we started the Snowden reporting.
All the ways Obama wanted to reform the NSA before he was president.
So when he was running, he was like, I want to do this to the NSA. I want to curb spying here.
Then he gets to be president.
And he oversees the largest expansion of warrantless spying ever seen in human history.
Quote, when the House of Representatives recently considered an amendment.
That would have dismantled the NSA's bulk phone record collection program.
That's the program we were able to reveal through Edward Snowden.
The White House swiftly condemned the measure, condemned the effort to reform that program.
But only five years previously, Senator Barack Obama, then a Democrat of Illinois, was part of a group of legislators that supported substantial changes to NSA surveillance programs.
People voted for him on that basis.
And then he gets him to be president.
And suddenly he becomes the leading advocate.
Do you see this extremely obvious trend here?
It makes undeniably clear who runs Washington.
It has nothing to do with the people who win elections.
It's a permanent power faction in Washington that always gets its way.
They wield far more power than elected officials.
And despite the attempt by The Economist and CNN enlisting Tulsi's Agencies that she blames to suggest this is some dark, deranged conspiracy.
It was Dwight Eisenhower who warned of that back in 1961. Of the military-industrial complex, he saw the permanent power state, the national security state, the unaccountable, undemocratic national security state growing in the 1950s during the Cold War right under his nose when he was the president, and yet they were doing things under Alan Dulles, the CIA director, that he was never aware of and never told about.
He had no control over that agency.
And that was 60 years ago.
That was before the expansion of Vietnam.
That was before the expansion in the 80s under Ronald Reagan and the dirty wars he fought in Central America and the height of the Cold War.
It was before 9-11 and the war on terror that exploded these powers even more.
And what you see over and over are people who obviously have a sincere and passionate, thoughtful opposition to these powers.
And then they immediately reverse it the minute that they themselves might get into power because it's made very clear to them that it doesn't matter what the elections say.
It doesn't matter what people want.
We are the ones who control Washington.
And if you don't embrace us and cheer us and promise to support everything we want, you're going to be destroyed.
You're not going to get anywhere.
And people in Washington are willing to give up whatever views they have to to...
Get ahead, and that's what they've done, and that's what they just did to Tulsi Gabbard, and I'm not even sure it will be enough for her to get the nomination.
She may end up publicly cheering for this program that you know she opposes and then end up getting rejected anyway, but it really shows you where power really lies in Washington and toward what end and for whose interests, and this is yet another case that makes that as clear as it can be made.
There was a fascinating case in Brazil last week where a federal judge, unbeknownst to anybody, had a case before the court that urged the court to detain and criminally investigate a soldier from the Israeli Defense Forces, an Israeli citizen who had traveled to Brazil in December to vacation in Brazil, and the court accepted that request and ordered that soldier criminally investigated.
As it turned out, though, that before the court could issue that order, Either the police or the prosecutor or someone inside the court leaked to the Israeli government that this was about to happen and they were able to smuggle the soldier out in the middle of the night to Argentina.
And obviously it's pretty interesting that the person charged with war crimes was in Brazil and then fled to Argentina, given that's where most Nazi war criminals went after the Nuremberg trials and after World War II to hide.
That's where all the Nazi hunters...
The iconic Nazi hunters like Simon Wiesenthal and others would find all the Nazis, including Adolf Eichmann.
In 1961, he was hiding in Argentina.
So that symbolism shouldn't be lost.
But the reason this is happening is because Israeli soldiers have been endlessly posting on social media.
They even got criticized by Donald Trump for doing it.
Incredibly sadistic and obviously criminal and illegal actions that they're proud of and that they film and they post on their social media and celebrate with music and dance and jokes and fun.
The Hin Rajab Foundation was created in the wake of an absolutely horrific murder of a six-year-old Palestinian girl in Gaza that you're about to hear about.
That was her name, Hin Rajab.
And this foundation was created to track down and create dossiers on the war criminals in the IDF who are publicly boasting about their war crimes and then use the force of the law, nothing else, to go around the world in order to...
Make sure that countries that are signatories to the International Criminal Court and the Rome Statute and therefore duty-bound to investigate war criminals on their soil actually do so.
And that's what just happened in Brazil.
It brought the attention to a lot of people's attention, the work of this group.
And just a little bit ago, we spoke to the president of this group, Dayab Aboujaja, about the group's work in tracking these IDF admissions of war crimes, the legal proceedings the group is bringing against them around the world, including the one they just brought in Brazil.
There are many others.
And also the very serious, incredible threats of violence, of terrorism that they are getting, not from anonymous Israelis, but from top-level Israeli officials in public, all as a result of the success that they are now having in scaring Israelis about whether or not they're going to be able to travel freely.
If they participated in war crimes and publicly documented it.
I found this work that he's doing very noble, not just because of the obvious need to enforce laws about war criminality, but because of the obvious dangers that he's knowingly incurring.
And that he knew, obviously, before he did it, he would incur threats that are very real, given the complete sociopathic willingness of the Israeli government to cross any line that they've demonstrated over and over again.
and yet he's continuing in this work and it's starting to have a real effect.
And I found the interview very affecting and very enlightening and I strongly believe that you will too.
Here is our conversation with Mr. Zsa Zsa.
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.
It's great to see you and I appreciate your coming on.
My pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
Absolutely.
So the organization of which you're a part is the Henra Job Foundation, and it made a lot of big news over the last couple of weeks, in large part because of a success that you had in Brazil, where you were able to convince a federal court that the presence of an IDF soldier where you were able to convince a federal court that the presence of an IDF soldier on Brazilian soil obligated the Brazilian government to
He was able to end up escaping Brazil, fleeing Brazil, but it caused a lot of concern in Israel, a lot of anger in Israel.
And I want to get into the details of that.
But before we do, can you talk to me a little bit about The Hinrajab Foundation and how it got that name?
Right.
So, you know, some 14 months ago, a group of people convened to think of what we can do in order to try to organize something around the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
It was November 2023, and then we started something called the March 30 movement.
The idea was to do some advocacy, but also to do some legal work.
After a while, we noticed that our legal work is quite developing on an important base and that a lot of lawyers are starting to volunteer.
So we decided to separate the advocacy from the legal work and to create an organization that can streamline everything and focus on litigation.
So based on that, we launched the Hind Rajab Foundation.
We selected to call it the Hind Rajab Foundation because of the story of Hind Rajab, a six-year-old girl that was killed together with her family in Gaza.
I believe many people are familiar with the story, but for those who are not, you know, to sum it up, Hind was with her family in a car.
The car was taken under fire from an Israeli tank.
Almost everyone in the car died except Hind and a cousin of hers, also a 12-year-old.
Eventually, the cousin managed to call the equivalent of 911. The people were talking to her on the phone.
The cousin died.
Hind could take the phone.
She stayed on the call.
Even after her young cousin, also a 12-year-old, died.
And she was...
Talking to the ambulance service, and that call obviously was recorded, and you could hear her begging the people to come and take her, talking about how she's surrounded by the dead bodies of her family.
Eventually, you know, the whole world was aware of the situation as it was unfolding.
It went viral.
An ambulance was sent to save her.
That ambulance was also...
She took fire also from an Israeli tank and two rescue workers died in that ambulance and eventually when Hind was found she was dead and some reports speak of some 300 bullets through her body.
So for us, this is a very telling event or story to represent what's going on in Gaza since end of October or mid-October 2023, especially because many of the this is a very telling event or story to represent what's going on in
And so this is a bit the idea that, you know, seeking justice for him is also seeking justice for everybody who's a victim of this genocide. - Yeah, I think one of the things that story illustrates, and unfortunately, it's by far not the only one, there are many, many like it, is that in war you sometimes have there are many, many like it, is that in war What people in the West have been trained to call collateral damage, where people who aren't the intended targets end up being killed even though they're innocent civilians.
But in this case, and lots of them like it, it seems at best reckless and probably deliberate given who the people are and what the repercussions of their continuing to live might be.
The description of the group is quite ambitious, and it's pretty straightforward, and it says the group is, quote, devoted to ending Israeli impunity and achieving justice for the Hind Rajabs and all the victims of the Gaza genocide.
What means are you using to achieve the ending of Israeli impunity and justice for Hind Rajab and people like her?
Well, of course, this is a mission that...
This is a vocation of our group, of our organization.
As I said, the very, you know, the mean to that end is litigation, is what we call offensive litigation.
You have, obviously, different levels of law, and when someone is speaking about war crimes or crimes against humanity...
People think mostly about international tribunals like the International Criminal Court, the ICC or the ICJ, the International Court of Justice.
And these are obviously the most important courts when it comes to international law.
But international law on that level works slowly and is also subjected to a lot of geopolitical influence, which doesn't mean that it is not...
Important to keep working on that level, but we thought at a certain moment that we should also implicate national courts in this, especially when we are dealing with thousands of dual nationals who are participating in this genocide, who are serving in the Israeli army in Gaza, and committing, or some of them...
We believe that these people, their countries of origin, the countries of which they carry a passport, have absolute jurisdiction on their actions.
So we thought, okay, that work is being done on the international level.
We also work with the ICC. We have also submitted a lot of complaints, actually 1,000 complaints to the ICC. To work on the level of national courses for us is very important and I could call it our priority.
So there are two strategies that you can actually deploy on the national level and these are first and foremost and the most important is dual nationals in their countries.
So if you go to the United States or to Belgium, my country or any other country and say, look, this is a citizen of yours and he's doing this.
What are you going to do about it?
This is very important.
To illustrate this, why it's important, because take the United States again, for example.
The United States does not recognize the ICC. It has even a law, an act, that is called the Hague Invasion Act.
And this is not a joke.
This is an actual act.
Actually allowing the United States to invade Holland to free any American citizen that could be apprehended by the International Criminal Court.
So obviously the Americans, or at least the American politicians, feel very strongly about the ICC and not in a very positive way.
But what we are saying is now, okay, we leave it for what it is, but when you go to the American courts and say, look...
We're not going to the ICC with your citizens.
We're going to you with your citizens.
So what are you going to do about this?
And we present a case there.
I think this is a totally different dynamic.
And the same, I mean, with lesser level, obviously, because in Belgium, Belgium does recognize the ICC. But still, it is much stronger when you go to the national court when you are speaking about dual national.
So this is one avenue.
The most important avenue is this.
The second, when you're talking about...
National courts is when somebody is visiting a country.
That country immediately has jurisdiction over the acts of this person if that country is a signatory of the Rome Statute.
In some cases, even if that country is just abiding by the Geneva Convention.
So it depends.
So you could argument, based on the Geneva Convention, even if the Rome Statute was not acknowledged by that country.
But if that country is a signatory of the Rome Statute, like, for example, in the case of Brazil, then that country has absolutely jurisdiction on anyone who breaches the rules that are stipulated in the Rome Statute and enters Brazil, or Argentina, or most countries who signed.
So these are the two, let's say, main strategic avenues that we are using in our litigation at the moment.
Yeah, just to add just a little bit of context to what you described about the U.S. posture, that Hague Invasion Act, as you all know, was implemented in 2002, right when the United States knew that it was about to embark on this war on terror, commit a lot of war crimes, torture regimes, hidden CIA black sites, kidnapping off the streets of hidden CIA black sites, kidnapping off the streets of Europe.
It was a very deliberate attempt to say we're about to go commit war crimes and we want to make sure our soldiers and our government officials aren't held accountable.
But the other part is you said the United States doesn't really like the ICC and that's true when the ICC directs its powers to the United States or its allies.
But when the United States incited Vladimir Putin, the American government celebrated this.
They heap praise on the ICC. You know, as you say, any country that's a signatory to it, I remember when South Africa was hosting the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, they consider Russia and Vladimir Putin an ally of theirs.
They don't believe that Vladimir Putin committed war crimes and the war in Ukraine.
But they couldn't allow him to come to their soil because they're a law-abiding country.
That doesn't see itself as exempt.
And they said, if he does come here, given the CICC indictment, we're going to have to indict him.
We may not agree with the indictment, and we don't.
We may not want to.
But we're nonetheless required to.
Has that been the same kind of principled or law-abiding posture on the part of governments around the world who are signatories to the ICC and the Rome Statue when it comes to the ICC indictment against Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant?
My feeling, and that is an assessment, obviously, because we have to see this happening before we can really believe it, but as far as communication is concerned, most European countries at least have said that they would abide by the arrest warrant and implement it.
There are only two countries who are on the record saying that they will not in Europe, and these are Hungary and Germany.
Well, Germany said it mildly, put it mildly.
Hungary was very expressive about it.
But most other European countries, European Union countries, communicated one way or the other that they will abide by the arrest warrants.
And recently Netanyahu decided not to go visit Poland based on the fear of the Polish implementing the ICC. I think this is kind of hopeful, you know, and I think that it shows that you cannot,
on the one hand, claim that you are a law-abiding country, that you have, you know, a separation of powers, and at the same time say, well, I will neglect or I will not apply law.
On the other hand, you know, even if a politician, because who is communicating?
Politicians are communicating.
And even in a country like Germany, where politicians are saying, well, we do not see ourselves, you know, upholding this arrest warrant.
You know, I don't see Netanyahu visiting Germany because there could be a court order against him without politicians having to agree with it or having anything to say about it.
So, in a proper state of law...
You know, this is how things normally happen without politicians interfering.
Obviously, the world is not an ideal place.
We do not live, you know, always according to the letter of the law.
But I am personally, I must say that the issuing of the arrest warrants at the ACC level is groundbreaking.
And I believe that it has also opened the way for what we are doing.
It gave a lot of...
A lot of power, a lot of, you know, fuel to a lot of credibility to our work on the national level.
Because now, when we are, for example, going after, let's say, a suspect who have been involved in attacking a hospital, you know, and giving the fact that one of the pillars of the arrest warrant against Netanyahu was the policy or the attacks on hospitals, you know.
This invigorates what we are doing, gives it more power.
And so I believe it was an important decision.
And I don't think that the Israelis can go just...
Obviously, as I said in the beginning, international law and international bodies are subject to geopolitical pressure.
They could withstand that.
From the United States under the current administration, even though that pressure was there.
But everybody's curious to see how is it going to go down in the coming five years, especially that there's serious talk about sanctions against the ICC from the United States.
So things might change, but it can go still either way.
Yeah, the United States is actually at the point where it's now willing to sanction the only real, judicially credible body that prosecutes war crimes because that's the extent to which they're devoted to Israel.
Let me ask you about your work, and I want to just kind of transition a little bit, not completely into what just happened in Brazil, what you're doing in Argentina, which is, you know, a lot of people say that what makes, obviously we've had genocides before, we've had hideous massacres.
A lot of people say what makes this different is that it's being streamed in real time.
The ability of people to show things on the Internet has reached, obviously, its peak, and therefore people can see with so much vividness, it's impossible for the Israelis to hide it.
And that's what distinguishes this.
But what also distinguishes it, and this is something that a lot of Israel supporters, even Donald Trump, has been pointing out and even complaining about.
is that the Israeli soldiers, the Israeli military, have such an arrogance to them, such a belief that nobody can touch them because they're shielded by the world's most powerful government in the United States, that they have been routinely posting to the Internet on their social media accounts that are public the clear videotaped that they have been routinely posting to the Internet on their social media accounts that are
They film themselves laughing as they blow up entire residential blocks, as they invade people's homes and steal their things and try and humiliate the people who are there.
And even Trump has said this is madness that they've been doing this, This is destroying Israel's reputation.
It's giving grounds for the war crimes prosecution.
How much of that sickness, which is really what I consider to be when Israeli soldiers are doing it, Has empowered your work, made your work, I guess you could say, easier or more viable to prove these war crimes and who specifically is carrying them out?
Right.
Before going into that, I want to add to what you just mentioned in the introduction to this question about the fact that the difference with other genocides or other crimes that are horrendous that take place in other parts of the world is also the communication, which is true.
But on the other hand, there's also another difference, which is the attitude of the, let's say, the...
The western hemisphere of this planet towards this particular genocide, whereas in many cases, or in most cases, the West is always there to, you know, represent the legal side of things and sometimes even, you know, a bit too eager to talk about genocide and crimes against humanity or war crimes where you can debate whether you can talk of that, you know, based on, you know...
If you look at the war in Ukraine, definitely every war has war crimes in it, but if you compare with Gaza, the combat in Ukraine is mostly military against military.
But let's leave it at that.
The thing is, this...
This perpetrator, in the case of the State of Israel, until the arrest warrants that were not really very eagerly welcomed by anyone, including the European Union, but they became a fact.
But until then, you could actually almost, you know, say that not just the United States, but the whole Western, let's say, political establishment supports that state.
That state's finance, that state's committing this.
So this is a big difference, and this is why there's a lot of indignation also on the Palestine issue than on other issues.
But, you know, let's go back to your question regarding whether this filming and this, let's say, exhibitionism of macabre exhibitionism.
Of the Israeli soldiers while committing crimes and posting them, and that hubris, that arrogance that is present, whether that facilitated our work, definitely in terms of gathering of evidence, you know, we work almost exclusively with open-source intelligence, intelligence and most of it is published by the israeli soldiers themselves so it is absolutely the case and um you know it is interesting what you said
like how can you you call it the sickness or madness or yeah i mean i think one day you know psychological books will be written about that and i think these books will be very interesting to read but when we come to our work which is mainly legal and legalistic even.
this is...
You know, a treasure of evidence that we have.
And, you know, this is going to come and haunt these people, these people responsible for these crimes forever.
Because it has been published, it has been sent to the world, and it can never be undone.
You know, a lot of soldiers, when we...
You know, file a lot of cases against them, start deleting their Instagram or something, which is naive because, you know, as if, you know, like once it's there, you know, there are legal means to extract it and to save it and, you know, the data that we have gathered.
It's huge, and it's never going anywhere.
And, you know, these are crimes against humanity.
They do not really, you know, they're not dependent on time, whether we can get justice for it this year, next year, within five years, or even within 50 years.
This evidence is going nowhere.
Yeah, I really believe that we don't have even a small fraction yet of an understanding, at least documented understanding, of what has been done in Gaza, the atrocities that have been committed, how many people have been killed.
All of these stories are going to continue to emerge.
Let me ask you about this case in Brazil, because that, I think, is really what put this work on a lot of people's radar.
We're based in Brazil, so it was an immense story here, a gigantic story, where...
Essentially, you discovered, and I want you to tell the story and how this happened, but you discovered that there was an IDF soldier who was vacationing in Brazil.
I'd come here, I think, in late December, the second half of December, and had a long social history record of documenting a lot of these war crimes.
And so you went into a federal court and argued to the judge, not to the government, but to the judge.
That Brazil, as a signatory to the Rome statue, is not only permitted but required to investigate the person, to hold him, to see whether or not he's guilty of these crimes under the Rome statue.
And the court agreed with you, and then the Israelis were able to kind of covertly, if they had help from the Brazilian military, we'll find out, from Brazilian intelligence, but able to get him out of the country and have him flee.
How did that all happen?
I don't think it was really public until the court order was issued.
How was it that you discovered that he was here?
How do you get ready to bring a case like that in such a short time while the person is vacationing?
Right.
Right.
Well, you know, the main important or the main issue that we, I mean, the main way of operating is that we do not wait until somebody is in a country before we start preparing the evidence.
So, as I said, we have extensive data.
This data is being analyzed by our legal teams continuously.
And we are building files continuously against war criminals or suspected war criminals.
So, you know, we have priority lists.
And these priority lists are, of course, depending on the crimes committed.
What did these people do?
Did they actually, you know, commit?
And, you know, so the case against Mr. Yuval Bagdani was already ready.
It was already one of the priority cases.
How do we discover that a certain person is in a country?
It's because they tell us they are.
You know, they just post this on their social media.
And so our researchers monitor that, obviously.
And, you know, we just receive an alert that somebody posted, and they check that post.
And then when somebody's posting that they are in Rio de Janeiro or they are in Sao Paulo, then you know they are in Brazil.
So the system that we have internally, I mean, the process that we set up, is that the researchers then inform the legal teams.
The legal teams look at the file.
And then decide of the action to do.
And this is what we did.
So the file was already ready on the level of evidence.
Obviously, we did some paralegal preparation work, and then we chose a lawyer in Brazil, and we gave them the file.
And then the lawyer, of course, completed the file, adapted the file to Brazilian legislation, because you have always two levels on the level of...
The conception of the complaint of all the international law and the local law.
So the Brazilian lawyer obviously completed the file, did some tremendous work on it, and then filed it, launched it as an official complaint.
That complaint goes to the prosecutor.
The prosecutor cannot but acknowledge the facts and the jurisdiction, passes it to a court.
The court actually gave an order to the police.
To execute.
So there was a court order to the Brazilian Federal Police to actually intercept, investigate, and then, you know, couple back to the judge to see what to do with Mr. Bagdani.
So this is the situation.
And for us, it wasn't a surprise.
We knew that sooner or later this was going to happen because initially in Cyprus, you know, the same thing happened with another case, but then the Israelis smuggled.
The guy out of Cyprus before the judge could issue an order.
So in Thailand and Sri Lanka, the Israelis smuggled other soldiers out of the countries, even though in these countries the legal mechanism and dynamic is different.
So when this happened, obviously, we did not communicate.
Most of our cases, we do not communicate about them.
So we only communicated when we had clear indication that the subject has been alerted.
Because, you know, when we saw that he started deleting his posts, that he closed his profiles, you know, and then we realized that he's on the move, that he has been alerted, and that was the case.
So there was a leak, okay?
And that leak, we cannot, we have no evidence where did it come from, but there was definitely a leak to him.
And then we decided to communicate.
So this is what happened.
Obviously, the subject then went to Argentina.
He was actually smuggled to Argentina.
The Israelis openly said that it was a joint operation from the Ministry of, I think, Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice.
In Brazil?
In Brazil, with the collaboration of the Brazilian Ministry of Justice and Foreign Affairs?
No, no, no.
With the Argentine?
No, the Israeli.
Oh, with the Israeli?
Yeah.
Exactly.
But did they indicate whether they worked with...
Any Brazilian military officials?
There's obviously a lot of Israel support among the Brazilian right in particular.
Do you have any knowledge about that?
Well, one Israeli minister just actually revealed a few days ago that he sent notes to Eduardo Bolsonaro and he asked him to intervene on this.
Eduardo Bolsonaro being also an officer of the federal police.
So there are suspicions.
I don't want to create theories here or conspiracy theories on this.
But, you know, the fact...
The fact of the matter is the soldier was alerted.
And, you know, there are three possibilities.
We know this did not come from us.
So it's the prosecution, it's the judge, or it's the police.
So it's one of the three.
So, I don't know.
Let's keep it at that.
Anyway, when he went to Argentina, we filed the case against him in Argentina.
He was then smuggled to Miami in the United States.
And then he was taken from Miami to Israel, taken back to Israel.
So this is what happened.
For us, regardless of this outcome, which can be, I think, interesting from an anecdotic point of view, but on the legal level, what happened is that a Brazilian court acknowledged jurisdiction based on the Rome Statute without any order or arrest warrant from the ICC, which is the first time that this happens.
And this sets a precedent for...
Judges everywhere.
That's why the Israelis became very nervous.
A lot of people do not realize that.
It's maybe technical.
It's boring.
But I think this is the news here, that a judge in a country on the national level said, oh, I don't need the ICC to apply the Rome Statute.
I can't do that.
So far, we have been asking that, but nobody really answered positively, oh, yes, we will apply the Rome Statute ourselves.
So this happened in Brazil.
And this sets a precedent now.
A lot of judges now feel...
That they maybe can do that also in other countries.
So, you know, it always takes that first step, that first judge that will take the risk and say, look, actually, according to the book, I do not need to wait for the ICC. So this is why it's a huge legal breakthrough.
And yeah, we are very hopeful because of that.
Well, I also think it's important to note that it's not just a breakthrough legally.
But it's also a breakthrough in the sense that it puts a certain level of fear in Israel and in the IDF soldiers that they didn't previously really have to worry about.
And there's been now articles that have appeared in the military, in the Israeli press.
There's been guidance issued by the Israeli military about where soldiers should avoid traveling, what they should do if something like this happens.
This is obviously now something that IDF soldiers are starting to feel in terms of limitations on their ability to travel in the world, something, as you said, Netanyahu obviously, of course has as well.
And for that reason, it's not surprising that the Israelis are becoming very aggressive about And so you had a tweet that I just want to put up on the screen where...
You said the following, We're talking about random people
online who have been saying mean things about you.
There was an actual Israeli minister, Amiki Shikli, who threatened you openly on X. Here is the tweet that he posted to you.
He said, Hello to our human rights activists.
Watch your pagers.
Obviously, referring to what they did in Lebanon and killing thousands of people by exploding their pagers.
It was obviously a direct threat of violence against you, against your group.
Are those the only threats that you've experienced and have received, or have you and your colleagues been receiving others?
Well, we have been receiving a lot of threats by anonymous accounts, you know, basically trolling, and we don't take these much seriously.
Obviously, we are aware of the risk, and I have before received a video even from an armed person in Israel, you know, with...
Pointing almost his gun and saying, well, pay attention, be cool.
But the thing is, this is totally different.
And let me be clear about this, Glenn.
You know, I don't take this lightly at all.
But three weeks, you know, maybe we were a bit in denial.
But three weeks ago, you know, I received also some, you know, advice from the Belgian security services asking me not to travel abroad.
And because of what they consider as, you know, Quite a substantial threat against my person.
So I remember my reaction to the person who was communicating this to me.
I was like thinking, oh, what are they trying to intimidate me?
Do they want me to stop?
I mean, I did not think it came from the Israelis.
I don't know.
There was something naive maybe about that.
Because, you know, I have been involved with this kind of thing for a long time.
Like in 2000, beginning of 2000, I was also involved in legal action against Ariel Sharon at the time.
So my information or my way of looking at the world is informed by that experience.
So obviously there's something different now.
There's something different about how they're doing things.
There's something different about how they're looking at the world.
And when the Israeli minister, who is from the same party as Benjamin Netanyahu...
You know, you have to see the context of the conversation, because what happened is he was posting what he sent to Bolsonaro, who was also tagging me with, you know, propaganda material, half-truths, all kind of stuff.
I just reacted saying, look, you know what, why are you acting like that?
The only thing, we're seeking justice.
The only thing, if you have nothing to hide, just take a good lawyer, you know?
It's as simple as that.
And then his answer, that was his answer to that.
Me saying, just take a lawyer, he said, oh, you know.
What's your pager?
So, for me, it's even like when I see it in this context and I connect it to the other things, actually, he's asking, no, we will not deal with this legally.
We will deal with this through intimidation, threatening, and maybe acting upon that.
I hope not.
I mean, nobody wants to, you know, especially a father, like I said in that.
So, yeah, it is not something that you expect or maybe we should expect that.
But on the other hand, considering...
What was happening in Gaza, but you always think, well, you know, I'm a European citizen in Europe, so it's a different dynamic.
Obviously not.
Obviously, you know, it's enough to just pose a legal threat.
We're not talking about anything else, a legal threat to become a target.
But, look, the Hindrasha Foundation is not dependent on one person.
It's not dependent on myself or anybody else.
We have already crossed that threshold a long time ago.
There's no way that this endeavor will be stopped.
There's no way that anyone, even if I'm no more active or I'm not there anymore, it will not make a difference.
This is beyond us even.
I don't think it's even dependent on the foundation itself.
Imagine in some way, which I cannot imagine how, but imagine they could stop our work.
I believe other organizations will do it.
I believe other groups, other legal bodies will take this task on.
I think this is something that they cannot control.
So, again, the only thing I can say to the Israelis, we are seeking justice.
If people are afraid, okay, I always say, if an Israeli soldier did nothing incriminating in Gaza, they have no reason to afraid.
We know now that there are hundreds of Israeli soldiers in Brazil and in other countries, in Thailand.
We're not filing cases against every Israeli soldier.
But if you blew up homes of people, if you killed people, if you looted, if you was a sniper and you were sniping at people, well, then you know yourself that you've done criminal stuff.
And, well, then in that case, of course, we will find cases against you if we are aware of this and if we know where you are.
And, again, take a good lawyer.
This is the only thing that anybody who is decent or he is...
Convinced because I heard Mr. Bagdani, when he came back to Israel, he gave an interview to an Israeli paper, and what did he say?
He doubled down.
He said, oh, I've done and posted a beautiful explosion, and they are acting as if I killed children and thousands of people.
No, we know that.
We don't know if you killed people, but we are not suing Mr. Bagdani because we think he killed people.
We don't know about that.
Maybe he did.
But destroying civilian infrastructure, destroying homes of people.
And by the way, in the case in Brazil, the plaintiffs were the owners of the houses that he destroyed, that he destroyed and that he's again qualifying as beautiful explosions.
These are people, these are journalists, these are people who are, you know, fully civilian, have no contacts with any organization whatsoever.
One of them had even a work permit in Israel.
So you can imagine the level of screening that you undergo before getting that work permit.
One of our main plaintiffs, who is now living abroad, and that's why he dared, because many people do not dare to file cases.
So I want to say, you know, these people do not have a sense of justice because they believe that, OK, you only have to kill children or kill people to be maybe called maybe and not surely, in their perspective, called a criminal.
But criminal law starts, I mean, international criminal law, but also...
War crimes is a whole spectrum of things.
And for us, somebody who destroyed a whole neighborhood and is boasting about it is a war criminal.
And this is what also the judge saw because the proof was damning.
We have a picture of him planting the explosives.
We have the video of the explosive.
We have what he was saying afterward.
It was filmed from several angles.
And he posted that all.
And other soldiers, of course, from the same platoon.
So this is what I want to say.
This is not going to stop.
I personally decided for myself that I'm not going to stop, but even if I did at a certain moment feel, oh, I cannot take it anymore, believe me, the work does not depend on that.
The work will continue, and I believe justice is coming.
And again, justice is in the interest of everyone, including these Israeli soldiers who now are acting as if they are not human, because that...
Attitude of we are untouchable, we can do whatever.
This is not human, you know.
And this is what a friend of mine told me recently.
He said we are actually re-humanizing them by holding them accountable.
We are telling them you are human beings, just like anybody else.
You can also fear.
You can also feel, oh, I cannot just post things like that and think that I'm above humanity and above the law and above everything.
So for the future of everyone.
Including them, including their children.
This is important work.
And I believe people will see that one day.
Yeah, there was actually some recent psychological studies published in the Israeli media that documented how a lot of IDF soldiers start getting God complexes when they enter into Gaza because they can kill anybody they want, they can order people to do whatever they want, they can blow up whatever they want.
And that is extremely toxic and healthy for human beings.
Of course you get to humanize.
The more you start thinking that you have absolute power, then nobody can hold you accountable in any way.
That's just not a healthy way to live.
Absolutely.
I don't want to give you false assurances.
My personal view has always been that if somebody intends to take action against you, they keep it to themselves.
And if they're just frustrated and angry and need to pull off steam, they threaten you.
I think everything you just said is something Israelis are well aware of, too.
It's not as though you and you alone have some sort of secret that you're about to reveal so that taking you out of the picture would prevent it.
But you are definitely doing risky work.
It's work that is extremely important.
I have a lot of admiration for what you're doing.
Can you just let people know how, if they want to support your organization and this work, they can do so before I let you go?
Well, the easiest way is to go on our website.
It's hindrajabfoundation.org.
And you have all the information about us.
You have all the information about our cases, running cases that we communicated about, and how you can support a volunteer or donate or any other way of supporting us.
So I know I don't need to say this, but keep up the great work.
We'd love to have you back on when other things start developing, and I appreciate your taking the time.
All right.
Bye-bye.
It was great talking to you, Glenn.
Yeah, you too.
Have a nice day.
Okay.
Fortunately, as many of you know, we end each week with our newly installed System Pupdate segment, where every Friday night as our last segment, just to end on kind of an inspiring note and a high note to leave you with for the weekend before we come back on Monday with worse news, we show you a...
We feature a dog who we have rescued who's either living with us at home or who is living in our shelter.
One of the 200 or so dogs that we rescued, we talked about their unique rescue story, the way in which they responded to it, the trajectory and evolution of the dog through the life after having been rescued.
It's often a very inspirational story, both for the dog but for the humans to participate as well.
Both sides get enormous benefit.
And there's usually really interesting lessons to learn as well about humanity and just navigating through life from these stories as well.
Tonight's starring dog is named Pointer.
As I indicated at the top of the show, he was found by me in such a hideous...
Brutal state.
Very close to death, obviously, as you'll see.
Some of the images and videos that show the rescue can be a little bit disturbing, but just know that it all has a happy outcome, a very happy ending.
And so I think it's really worth seeing just because you'll be able to see how extreme the resilience that he needed was to get through all of that and how much it has paid off for him and for everybody around him in the end.
And so here's Pointer starring in tonight's episode of System Pupdate.
Hey everybody, meet the star of tonight's newest episode of System Pupdate.
Here he is in front of me.
He is Poynter, that is his name.
We named him that because we weren't sure what was going to happen with him.
For a reason I'm about to explain, it's quite a dramatic and difficult rescue story that obviously has a happy ending.
But he looks like a pointer, even though he's not.
He looks like that breed.
So we just temporarily named him that.
We don't want to get too attached to him.
And the reason is that the way we found him was I was driving up the hill to go to our house where we lived in kind of the middle of the forest.
That's when we started having a lot of dogs.
And there was somebody who worked at one of the houses, kind of like a handyman or whatever.
And he was walking with this dog, and I've never seen a dog in the state that he was.
He was utterly emaciated.
You could see his ribs, his bones, everything just sticking out of his body.
And the thing that was shocking was he had a gigantic wound all across his body, just open, red, seeing, you know, the blood vessels, the veins.
It was like the skin was no longer there.
And...
I never imagined that he was going to survive.
I mean, and then I stopped and I talked to the guy and he said, I just found him like this.
I'm not sure what to do.
He didn't have money to bring him to a clinic, which he obviously needed, but he was doing what he could to do.
He was definitely abused because of his personality, but he was also so traumatized.
I mean, who wouldn't be by that?
And he had a lot of other things wrong with him as well, but that was just the most shocking, the most viscerally shocking.
So I took him, I took him to the vet.
The vet said, don't expect this dog to leave the clinic because they too had really never seen a dog in that state.
But somehow he was determined to live and he got slightly better and slightly better, probably stayed like two weeks in the clinic until he could come home.
There was obviously a huge amount of care involved.
And kind of every day that went by, that wound closed just a tiny little bit.
And all the other ailments started to get treated.
And he started to become more active.
Even to this very day, he's not the most trusting dog.
You can kind of see there's some kind of fear in his eyes.
He's super sweet.
But he never became like an incredibly trusting dog because...
I don't even know what he went through, but whatever it was, it was quite traumatizing and quite difficult.
It would be for anybody.
But he's comfortable around other dogs now.
He loves people.
He's been with us for, I would say, eight years or so, seven, eight years.
And I think when we found him, he was probably about a year old.
He got through all that.
It took him like a full year to be recovered.
And then he started running.
He started walking first.
Then he started running.
Then he learned how to play with other dogs.
He became integrated.
He became integrated with other people.
And now he's just a cool dog.
I mean, he's pretty independent.
He's pretty chill.
We're in a part of the house where he isn't often, so he's a little on guard.
But especially when he's in his areas, he's very, very active and a happy dog.
He wags his tail all the time.
Sometimes I can't even believe myself when I look at those pictures and videos that he was able to survive.
As you can see, it's incredibly...
Grave and horrifying, but this is one of the most gratifying rescues we've ever done because when we picked him up, he was just almost worse than his physical state was his mental state.
As you might imagine, he just didn't know what was happening.
He was on the verge of death in the most painful and horrible way.
And as that got better, so did his personality.
And now he's, you know, this awesome dog, and he's been with us for a long time.
