Dave Smith and Robbie the Fire Bernstein dissect the collapsed Israel-Hamas ceasefire, citing Trump administration envoys who admitted misleading intelligence regarding Hamas's rejection. They critique the US for undermining peace while Israel resumes attacks, cutting aid to civilians despite Witkoff describing Gaza as nuclear-destroyed yet refusing a genocide label. The hosts question if this conflict fits traditional war definitions given the captive population dynamic and speculate Netanyahu may become a fall guy for hard-right expansionist goals. Ultimately, the episode exposes the hypocrisy of framing suffering asymmetrically while prolonging hostage leverage. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Strange Dynamic of Being00:02:42
What's up, everybody?
Hope everyone's doing good.
Welcome to a brand new episode of Part of the Problem.
I am Dave Smith.
He, of course, is the beautiful Robbie the Fire Bernstein.
We haven't seen each other for, whew, must be 24 hours.
So it's good to see you again, my friend.
It's good that you're home.
I think this is the first time Rob's been home in what seems like years.
So that's cool.
I think you got all of 48 hours before you have to get back out on the road, right?
What's your next stop?
I got a long weekend in California, Santa Monica, Hawthorne, and Agawanga.
And then got a lot of stuff going on.
New York City, Jacksonville, Savannah, Boston, just added a Bridgeport, Connecticut.
Go to PorchStore.com.
There's a ton of dates.
I got two more long runs out on the road until Skank Fest.
And then finally, December will just stay home.
Oh, there you go.
Look at that.
He's having some having a nice, a nice Chanica at home.
Yeah, that's, you know, go to porchtour.com, of course.
I am pretty, I'm getting to, I take December off every year.
And I think literally Skankfest, we got the festival.
And then me and you are doing one night in Poughkeepsie at Laugh It Up, which we always do at the end of the year.
It's always a really fun time.
So come on out to that, comicdave Smith.com for ticket links.
Great weekend in Tampa.
Damn, man.
I love, man, I love the Tampa comedy crowds.
I love Side Splitters.
One of the best.
Five sold out shows.
Pretty, well, I think one of them had a couple tables open, but grading on a curve.
Five sold out shows and just awesome crowds.
So thanks to everyone who came out and everyone at Side Splitters for a great weekend.
All right.
Let's get into it.
What number one story here, Rob, has got to be the tenuous state of the ceasefire.
And what can you really say other than, man, that was quick?
You know, it's a weird thing, Rob.
There's a strange dynamic being in the world that we're in.
And I know you've experienced this a lot over the years.
I certainly have experienced this a lot over the years.
There's this tragic thing when you're like in the business of being a patriot, which means you hate your government.
You know, like it's just, there's this, there's H.L. Mencken had that quote where he was something like, he was like, any decent, well-thinking man comes to hate the regime he lives under.
I got to think about patriots against the government.
That's great.
Yeah.
Well, it is, you know, it's, it's real, the real dynamic.
Vindicated by Deteriorating Times00:05:18
Like if you love the country, you got to be against the government because there are always corrupt regimes, you know?
And, but anyway, it's the point I was making is you end up, and I know you've had this experience, like you end up being vindicated quite often.
You know, it's when, when, when your priors are not trusting the government and the media, you just end up being vindicated a lot, right?
And there's this thing where like on a personal level, we all kind of, we're all human beings.
We're all flawed.
So there is something about being vindicated where you go, see, I was right.
But whenever me and you are vindicated, it's always a situation where we wish we weren't.
You know, like you wish you weren't right about this.
Like, man, that would have, you know, like, look, obviously, when we were telling you for months and months that like, I don't know about this experimental COVID vaccine and they are making claims that none of the data, we would have liked to figure out that we were wrong and nobody ended up getting vaccine injured.
And the thing actually did a great job of protecting you against COVID.
And it turns out that this really was the key to ending.
Like that would have been better.
I would have taken that and looked bad rather than being vindicated and being like, oh man, you know, this is actually much darker.
And I feel kind of a similar way with this.
Like, you know, obviously we were, and anyone clear thinking was just saying like, okay, like, let's hope for the best, but this is quite likely not going to hold.
And then, of course, you're getting, you know, as I, I was getting attacked because I wasn't celebrating this thing.
You know, I told you on the last episode that Stephen Crowder was coming at me for not celebrating or whatever.
And I had already debunked that argument before I even realized he was using it.
This is the same.
But by the way, I'm not even claiming, I've said this before, not claiming coordination, but man, the Zionists sure do seem, it's like with the Democrats where they seem to get an email in the morning and then everybody is on message.
It just seems that way.
But anyway, this was the message the other day.
And literally, so he was also claiming that I like, I don't show up.
So I said publicly, that's not true.
I already said I'd do the show.
I'll do it again.
So I message back and forth with the guys and I just went, hey, let's stop.
Like, when do you record the show?
What times do you record the show?
And they go, we record weekdays at this time.
And I went, okay, Tuesday, meaning tomorrow.
Let's do it then.
That's what I was trying to do.
Like, let's get it over now.
You're talking shit now.
So let's do it right now.
I'll do Tuesday.
And they go, we can't.
We got a big thing we're doing.
We need like another week or two or something like that.
And the point is just that time already won the argument.
We were supposed to argue about whether I should be celebrating the ceasefire or not.
Like, it's already over.
Time wins arguments sometimes before Stephen Crowder can manage to schedule them, even when he's calling people out for not showing up to shows.
So anyway, I don't even know.
What are we going to argue about now that I should have been celebrating?
Anyway, I wish I wasn't vindicated on this one, but it really seems to be things seem to be deteriorating rather quickly.
Israel, as of in the last 24 hours, has been heavily attacking from the air and the ground, Gaza.
They've killed a bunch of people.
I think it was something like 60 or 70 people were killed yesterday, bunch of innocent civilians.
And so, you know, obviously, this was obviously, it was just ridiculous to start celebrating as if the thing was over.
And I think that the people who got way out over their skis on this and we're talking about Donald Trump deserving a Nobel Peace Prize and historic peace deals and all this stuff.
I mean, it always just seemed that this is, I mean, again, I would have preferred that they ended up being vindicated, but it just seemed like that was kind of, you know, I'm not even trying to like insult maybe wishful thinking, you could describe it as, but just doesn't seem to be what the facts on the ground are baring out.
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Legitimacy in Understanding Conflict00:06:48
All right, let's get back into the show.
Well, I wouldn't call it dead in the water yet, but there certainly was a lot of predictions that the Israelis would figure out how they could get out of this.
And they already are, you know, back to killing innocent civilians in the area.
The claim is that Hamas broke the ceasefire first and was firing upon Israeli personnel.
I think in order for this to last, and I hate to say this, there needs to be a little bit of grace towards Hamas.
I don't understand why they would give up the hostage leverage and then instantly want to be provoking and attacking the Israelis.
It seems more likely to me that it's not the actual Hamas and that it must be individuals that maybe didn't receive standout orders or even more even more hardline terrorists than Hamas itself.
But I think if Israel's actually interested in having a ceasefire, they can't kind of just jump on like it's Hamas.
They're a chaotic organization.
And I'm not saying that Hamas isn't dumb terrorist or actually involved in this.
But if Israel's interested in peace and want to move forward with this, they kind of can't instantly take every excuse to go, oh, this thing's over.
We're now going to go back to killing innocent civilians.
And if they are, then it's kind of channeling that they don't really have an interest in the peace deal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, look, I mean, I think, I think that's right.
And to be like, you know, I try to be fair here.
I think it's, because there's a tendency on people to get into this tribal stuff or whatever.
And it's interesting because with a lot of my critics, you see that like they almost project that onto you.
Like, you know, just for example, like if a Palestinian, you know, whoever, a Hamas guy does something brutal, they always seem to go, oh, you sure this is the side you're defending?
And you're like, no, dude, you're just getting into this tribal game and pretending I'm defending Hamas.
I've never done anything close to that.
And, you know, look, what can you say here?
Like, Israel is claiming that Hamas violated the ceasefire, but like Hamas is claiming they didn't.
And then there's reports saying that there's been like several reports that said that it was actually an unexploded, you know, roadside weapon that was driven over.
Like who knows exactly what happened?
It's oftentimes you never figure out exactly what the truth was.
But by the way, it certainly would not be crazy to me if I did find out that Hamas had violated the ceasefire.
You do make a good point that it's like, you know, you kind of judge based off the information you have and you go, look, like Israel's the one who was just taking out a negotiating team, right?
They even apologized for this, right?
And Hamas just turned over the last little bit of leverage that they have.
So yes, it does seem like it would not follow that then they would immediately try to violate.
Like the way this thing was structured was like Hamas has to give up their last little bit of leverage and then Israel will decide if it wants to move back.
So why on earth would Hamas give up the leverage and then in the phase where they're counting on Israel deciding intentionally provoke them out of that?
Like maybe there is an explanation to that, but certainly on the surface of it, doesn't seem super likely.
But again, as is always the case here, because I think like, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you would probably urge like if Palestinians in Gaza were listening to you, you would probably urge the same thing of them.
Like you'd go like, hey, guys, a little bit of grace here.
Like if one IDF soldier shoots a rifle somewhere, that doesn't mean the whole thing's off, you know?
And just to be clear, to be clear on this, this is something we do know, Israel has not stopped killing Palestinians the entire time.
The numbers went down.
They were killing less Palestinians.
You know, I think there were a couple of days there where they only killed in like the dozens, which is better than many dozens.
But like, that's, you know, my point is just that if you were looking for an excuse to say, hey, that's a violation of the ceasefire, it's you could find them on either side.
But again, none of that really is exactly the point.
And I think like, again, like, even if it was Hamas who violated the ceasefire, I think the point that we ultimately have to come back to, which has been my message through this whole thing, is that it's totally legitimate when you're trying to understand a conflict to put yourself in the Israeli shoes, to put yourself in the Palestinians' shoes, to try to see it from both their perspectives and certainly understand how civilians on both sides could be led into, you know, having certain views.
But that ultimately, when we're deciding what policy we support, we come back to an American's perspective because that's what we are and that's what we're talking about.
We're talking about the politics of the United States of America.
And so from the American perspective, we want to see this thing end.
That's kind of unanimous at this point, right?
Like everybody knows this is not good.
This is not Joe Biden wanted this to end.
Donald Trump wants this to end.
Kamala Harris wanted it to end.
It's not good for us.
And yet it's a policy that we're funding, that we're supporting.
And now if this ceasefire doesn't, it does break down, we have to go right back to supporting something that's not in our interest.
And then, of course, the other thing, which I, you know, I did mention because Israel had already started down this road on our last podcast last week, but now the reaction, as I must say again, because it's just, it's too important to not harp on.
And it's just, it kind of gives away the whole game here of the nature of this war.
But the other thing that, like, yes, as you mentioned, Rob, yes, technically the ceasefire has not been officially broken.
It is right, as you said, not dead in the water, but perhaps wounded and flopping in the water.
But a major part, like, like the best part of the ceasefire or tied for the best part was the hostages being released.
But the other thing that's right up there was increased aid to Gaza.
And Israel's just announced that they're cutting that off.
And so like, again, it's such a blatant illustration of the way in which Israel conducts this war and the mentality that they have that you could just go, okay, so let's say Hamas violated the ceasefire.
And let's just say possibly, Rob, that some members of Hamas violated the ceasefire, right?
Hamas Ceasefire Violations00:02:04
Like even with a government, like with an official government, we know that every part of the government doesn't always work in coordination and different factions have their own different motives.
But so if members of Hamas violated that therefore Israel gets to just immediately punish the civilian population for that and not punish them with like, we're canceling your Netflix or we're taking out Wi-Fi or something like that, but punish them with like these desperate war-torn people now don't get the aid that they need.
It's just like, I think it's just very hard for anybody who's a civilized person to support that.
It's like too horrible.
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All right, let's get back into the show.
One State Solution Debate00:15:40
Trump's going to be in a real pickle if this thing breaks apart off of like small little actions by Hamas.
He really needs them to do something completely atrocious that then justifies another, well, another I told you so from the Israelis to go, this is why they can't be here.
But if it's just over little things that are escalating, I mean, I don't know.
I don't know how Trump just continues to send arms over to Israelis and not pretend like he's owned by Netanyahu.
Yeah, it's going to be interesting.
And perhaps, like, I think that's a very interesting question.
And then perhaps an even more interesting question will be like, how do politicians into the future, you know, how are they able to get away with this?
Because, you know, like as John Mearsheimer was on, he's done a couple interviews since the ceasefire.
I always think he's a very interesting person to get his take from.
And, you know, he said it, and I think he's kind of right, was that he was basically just like, look, like even if the immediate killing and dying in Gaza is paused, like, well, that's great.
That's an improvement over this.
But the fundamental realities on the ground, like the fundamental problems are still all there, right?
And like the fundamental problem here is that, well, look, Israel's had control since 1967 of these territories.
These territories have millions of people in them.
Israel does not wish.
Look, they'll all say it, right?
Like they'll say it half, I'd say 50% at least of the debates that I've done on the Israel-Palestine issue are getting down to me just forcing the person to say the thing that they're already saying in blunt terms.
Because if you ask them, if you say to any of the people who support Israel, well, how about a two-state solution?
They'll give you a million reasons why you can't have a two-state solution.
And then if you go, well, how about a one-state solution?
They'll give you a million reasons that you can't have a one-state solution, right?
You can't have a two-state solution because you can't reward Hamas with a state and Israel can't allow their neighbors to have a government that's going to launch rockets into them.
Or then they'll say, well, how come it can't be a one-state solution?
Well, because it wouldn't be a Jewish state anymore.
And now there'd be a majority of Arabs in the region and they would outvote the Jews or something.
But so by default, they're like, well, what is the other answer?
And that's the status quo.
You know, the other individuals.
Yeah, that you just rule over these people and they never have any rights of their own, that you are in control of the territory where millions of people live and they do not have citizenship or voting rights or the right to travel or trade or anything.
And so like, if that's the ask, it look, you can, obviously, me and you are always on the side of asking people to be peaceful, right?
Like our, if we, if, if we weren't first and foremost speaking to people in America and trying to get changes in our government, or we weren't speaking to people in Israel and try, if the only people who could listen to us were Palestinians, like me and you are the type of people who would be saying to them, don't be terrorists, be Gandhi.
Okay.
Like that's your best bet here.
It's your best bet to win people over and to not get your own people slaughtered and to try to move is you got to just like, I know it's hard, but you got to just be Gandhi.
You got to just do hunger strikes and peaceful protests and all this.
And you can't blow up school buses and you can't attack innocent people because like it's evil and it doesn't help.
Like this is what we'd be trying to get them to do.
And you'll always try to push for that.
But like you can also recognize that if the other side is saying to them, not that we're in a peace process where we, this will culminate in a Palestinian state, or not that at some point you're going to be given citizenship in the state that rules over you.
But if the answer is you are to be ruled in perpetuity, you are to be slaves forever.
Let's just say it makes it a lot diff more difficult for someone to tell them to be Gandhi.
When someone says that to you, you end up getting a lot more people who decide to be Hamas.
I mean, you know, it's a little oversimplistic, but it's more true than it's not.
And again, it's the situation is just that like now you get to a point.
And of course, the other thing that Mayor Sharma was, the point he was making was that just like the levels of Israeli control over our government have now been exposed and people aren't going to unsee that.
Unless it goes away or it's lowered, people are going to be aware of that.
So there's major, just like structural problems, because I do think in a lot of ways, you know, what we would all like to see is we'd like to see less people dying.
We'd like to see the temperature get lowered on this issue.
And we'd like to see policies that are in the best interest of the United States of America implemented.
And just all of those things are just major impediments to that happening.
And so it was always hard to get too excited about this ceasefire because it just looked more likely than not that it would go this way.
And hopefully we're still, we're wrong.
And hopefully this turns around and things are better than they otherwise would have been.
We'll see.
Well, yeah, Trump's in an interesting position now because he's kind of acting like project finished.
It's in the hands of Witkoff and my son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
And now he's back to trying to work on the Zelensky thing.
And you never know, Trump, you know, two years from now, we might have peace in both regions.
We'll go, wow, took him some time, but he got it done.
But it does kind of feel like a little seesaw circus of going back and forth on incomplete projects.
Yeah, well, and I also think that, you know, it's well, kind of, one of the things that's interesting is that it seems that every time this happen, Donald Trump comes out to threaten Hamas.
He just did it again today.
He said, we will annihilate you if Hamas doesn't behave.
And, you know, he had threatened them before the weekend too.
And yet anyone paying attention seems to recognize that the only way we get to these points is to pressure Israel.
And there's like this obvious leverage that we have over Israel that we don't like.
We have to threaten to exterminate Hamas or annihilate Hamas.
But to Israel, all you have to do is threaten to stop funding the thing.
And it seems like that, for whatever reason, maybe it's been done privately, but it seems almost impossible to get that, you know, publicly.
Like, look, it was always when Donald Trump.
Zelensky is the same deal.
Well, yeah, but at least with Zelensky, right?
That was always the immediate threat.
Like, from the beginning, that was always like, look, like, Donald Trump threatened the crap out of Putin, and then he threatened the crap out of Zelensky.
You know, he'd threaten one side, we'll cut your funding.
Oh, yeah, you don't like this.
We'll double their funding, which at least plausibly makes sense as a strategy for negotiating.
Not that it's been overwhelmingly successful.
Hopefully it is this time.
But it's hard to not notice that in the situation with Israel, it just never is exactly that.
You know, even when like every, even when he's very frustrated with them, there never seems to be like a serious threat that like, well, then maybe we go our separate ways.
It just doesn't seem to come.
And despite that, and this was kind of interesting was this 60 Minutes interview with Witkoff and Jared Kushner, because what they were, and these are the president's two top men on this issue.
And what they're saying seems to kind of back up that point.
So as an aside, Jared Kushner, does he have any formal position or title with the government currently?
It's a good question.
I think he's just been brought in in like this envoy capacity.
A little strange.
Yeah, well, he's also, doesn't he have like a very close relationship with the Netanyahu family?
I'm pretty sure I'm right about that.
That I don't know.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that he's like Netanyahu used to visit his family a lot.
And there's, yeah, I'd have to double check on that.
But like, yeah, pretty sure I'm right about that, which is also, you know, maybe not the best thing for negotiation.
But that's why I was actually, you know, I was not surprised to hear some of this stuff from Steve Witkoff.
I was surprised to hear some of it from Jared Kushner.
But we got a few clips here.
So let's go through some of this.
Here's Witkoff and Kushner on 60 Minutes.
To this.
So the Israelis are on board, at least for part one of the plan.
Now you go to Sharm el-Sheikh, and the whole point is to get Hamas on board.
So tell us about this meeting to set the stage.
Well, before you go to Sharm El-Sheikh, after Bibi was at the White House with President Trump and they announced his agreement to President Trump's 20-point plan, then there was a couple days of waiting to see what would Hamas do.
And that Friday in the afternoon, we were getting word from the mediators that they were going to come out positive, but with a couple of conditions and different things that they wanted to see modified in any final agreement.
But the vibe we were getting was quite positive.
Well, first, one thing, one thing I'm going to point out is that we were getting, because of our relationships, and this goes back to that conflict of interest question you had for us, but our relationships were direct with the leaders of these three countries.
And we were hearing that Hamas was positive on the deal.
And yet I was reading intelligence reports every day and getting briefings from the CIA three times a day.
And those intelligence briefings were suggesting that Hamas was going to say no.
And so Jared and I had to make a decision as to where we thought this was going.
And both of us, you know, we didn't need to convince one another.
We really felt that this was going in a positive way.
And sure enough, Hamas came out and said, you know, we accept the president's plan.
And that allowed us to.
Yeah, so that really was a very interesting admission on a few different levels, right?
Because, well, okay, look.
I guess the first thing that I would say about that is like, oh, okay.
So let's keep in mind the timeline here, right?
So you got these other Arab countries that agree to the terms, the broad terms of this ceasefire.
Netanyahu gets in there and augments them, changes them more, giving Israel more discretion over the timeline of their, you know, partial withdrawal of Gaza.
And many of us at the time saw this as potentially BB slipping poison pills into the deal, or which it still looks like it might be, that it would give them an opportunity to control what a ceasefire actually means and what, you know, what happens after they get the hostages back going forward.
But so the fact that Hamas rather quickly in a couple of days reacted positively, as they both said to this, well, the first thing that probably comes to mind there is like, well, wait, how long were they willing to do this for?
Because there's been lots of reporting that Hamas was willing to give up all of the hostages and relinquish power over like a year and a half ago.
And so, you know, like, that's just a really interesting question right away that you kind of can't get around.
Like, holy shit, like, could we have gotten this much, much sooner with like, and saved so many lives?
So that's a pretty big question.
Also, just not had the hostages in captivity for that much longer.
But then I think the second thing, which is probably even bigger, because this is just like a broader, more important topic that's very interesting.
This is one of the things that's very interesting about the Trump administration.
You just, you never really got too much stuff like this out of any other administration, where he's going, well, look, the intelligence would have totally been misleading us on this.
And ooh, what a coincidence.
The intelligence would be misleading us.
And which direction would that be in Rob?
Oh, to continue a war.
That's just so, it's such a coincidence.
That's always the direction that the intelligence seems to lead us in when it's getting it wrong is toward a war and never away from one.
Because like, look, all I'm saying is, and I don't know, again, I never know, you know, like Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grimm and there's some like kind of left-wing journalists who I really respect very much.
And they've been doing a lot of reporting about like, you know, Hamas is saying they would accept this deal or they're saying they would take this.
And sometimes I'll be like, that's interesting.
I, you know, I always take it with a grain of salt because who the hell knows what Hamas is really willing to do or not do?
And they're certainly engaged in a PR battle too.
So it's not like a give, but this does just seem to indicate that like, yes, those guys are getting it more right than a lot of these other guys.
And there's this dynamic that I've talked about many times before, which I believe it was Daniel Ellsberg who first wrote about Daniel Ellsberg, who famously, you know, released the Pentagon Papers, that these guys in DC, they have this dynamic where like, look, they get the top secret intelligence, right?
And nobody else gets that.
So they read it being like, I get the real stuff that nobody else gets.
But then that becomes all they read.
And they're not reading the newspapers and they're not reading books about the history of the region.
And they're not.
And so they think they're getting the real truth, but oftentimes they're actually just being controlled by intelligence agencies.
And this is why when our friend Liam did that guerrilla journalism where he's asking all the congressmen about what they think about Benjamin Ben Netanyahu propping up Hamas for all these years, and they all go, I haven't seen that report.
Meaning, this wasn't in my intelligence brief because that's not where the reporting was coming from.
It was coming from great journalists who were figuring out what the truth is.
But these guys aren't reading any of them because that's not really their job and they're not really concerned with that.
They got a fundraiser to go to.
They'll read the intelligence briefing and then feel like they know everything that's going on.
And so it's just interesting.
Like there's much bigger, broader implications of what Witcoff's saying there, but it's very interesting he's saying that.
So that was kind of my takeaway from it.
Rob, what are your thoughts?
Well, if your intelligence agencies are giving you information that seemingly is incorrect, you got to wonder if the intelligence agencies are just a waste of our money, if the intelligence agencies just really love war, they particularly like this war, and so they're trying to keep everyone involved with it.
Or, and this is something that you've been debating quite a few people with, if perhaps Radcliffe, not specifically this, but if Radcliffe has heavy ties to Israeli intelligence, and maybe we're working with Israeli intelligence when we're coming to these conclusions.
Now, I can't prove that to you, but it would certainly seem like the Israeli government was not all that interested in Witcoff's efforts here.
Israeli Intelligence Ties Questioned00:06:13
And they were even upset the last time he got a hostage back.
And then, you know, they did try and kill the Qatar team, which we're going to play another clip soon that, you know, seemingly Trump was rather upset about this.
But you also have to wonder if the American intelligence reporting that's pushing that there is no possibility for peace here might actually be an Israeli agenda that's infiltrated our intelligence or is just giving over that information to our intelligence and they're going, well, our partners at the Mossad are telling us this.
Yep.
And even if that's not true, it's like, in effect, what's happening, right?
So, which is enough to be the same problem, but or the same problematic outcome.
But yeah, it does make you wonder about some of that stuff.
Here, let's go to the next clip.
To find out that there had been this attack.
Wow.
And of course, I was called by the president.
You had no idea, obviously.
None whatsoever.
You know, I think both Jared and I felt, I just feel we felt a little bit betrayed.
Now, I had heard that the president that he was furious.
I think he felt like the Israelis were getting a little bit out of control in what they were doing and that it was time to be very strong and stop them from doing things that he felt were not in their long-term interests.
People should understand that Netanyahu, the Israelis, bombed the peacemakers.
Bombed the negotiating team.
And by the way, Leslie, it had a metastasizing effect because the Qataris were critical to the negotiation, as were the Egyptians and the Turks.
And we had lost the confidence of the Qataris.
And so Hamas went underground.
And it was very, very difficult to get to them.
And they were a link to Hamas.
Absolutely.
You were dealing through the Qataris to make your proposals to Hamas.
And it became very, very evident as to how important and how critical that role was.
I mean, I just, just to be clear here, because you kind of can't overstate how big a deal this comment is.
Like, these are, to be clear, these are the two-point people tasked with these negotiations in the most pro-Israel administration in American history.
Jared Kushner is, man, I want to look that up.
Am I right about that, Jared Kushner?
Here, let me look at gave up bed for BB.
This is the story that I remember.
These people don't have extra beds for some house guests.
Reports indicate that when Jared Kushner was a teenager, he gave up his bedroom for a night so that Benjamin Netanyahu, a friend of the Kushner family, could sleep there while visiting.
This is the story I remember reading.
But whether or not he actually gave up his bed or not, just saying that's like, this is who you've got here.
You've got the envoy of the most pro-Israel president in the history of the United States of America and Jared Kushner.
Like these are not pro-Pally, you know, college protesters.
All right.
And they are saying in the most diplomatic language possible, you know, Jared Kushner is saying he felt that maybe Israel was getting a little bit out of control.
You're a little bit behind the rest of us on that, but okay.
Yes.
Yeah, we felt like that happened a little while ago, but okay, fine.
Yes, perhaps a tad, perhaps a tad bit too much.
But obviously, the broader implication here, and I'm sorry, but you can't downplay how damning of an indictment this is, right?
Because they're saying it without saying it.
Like even when Jared Kushner is kind of saying this might not even be in the long-term interest of Israel is a very kind way to put it.
Forgive us if that's not the number one priority to some of us.
But what is the obvious comment here, Rob?
Who's the impediment to peace?
Who bombs negotiating teams?
And who's who's, you know, like, what is this?
They're saying, okay, well, like, Israel wants the war to continue.
Israel doesn't want this negotiation.
And that is the obvious charge here.
And like, you know, again, this isn't alleging like some secret conspiracy.
You've got the two, the two members of this administration who are best equipped to speak to this subject, who are the most incentivized to come away from it with a pro-Israeli conclusion.
And even they are saying here that, like, look, put it all together.
Like, yeah, the intelligence is telling us that Hamas doesn't want peace.
But in practice, it's Israel who's out of control.
And they're the ones who are thwarting the peace process.
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Unclear Genocide Conclusions00:15:47
What certainly quite the opposite story from what we usually hear of Hamas doesn't want peace, doesn't accept Israel, and that's why we can never have peace with them.
And Israel, how many times they offer them a secondary state or whatever is their talking points, and they clearly didn't want it.
And now in this case, you've got the American team working on their behalf, trying to create ties and a conversation for peace.
And I mean, I didn't know that it was entirely fact-checked that it was actually the negotiating team.
I remember that reporting, but I guess this is pretty much 100% validated if Witkoff's saying yes, that's what happened.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, I think this is overwhelmingly conclusive at this point.
Yeah, nobody's denying it.
It's like whether Charlie Kerr sent that text or not.
After Turning Points confirms it and Josh Hammer confirms it, you're like, I guess it's real.
I mean, and then the balls of Israel that America's having a conversation with someone to try and get something done and America and Israel undermines that conversation while we're funding them.
I mean, you would think any other country would be like, we're done with you.
Yes.
Like, look, this is like what I said all the time, right?
Like, if you, if you're, um, you know, your brother or something like that, he loses his job and he's broke and he goes, listen, man, I'm having a tough time.
Like, can I come stay on your couch for a few months?
And you go, yeah, okay, no problem.
And then, like, if you come home one day and he just starts yelling at you because like you drank some of the milk and he bought the milk, you'd be like, hey, dude, you could either do the first or the second, but you can't do both, right?
Like, if you're, you could either be like pissed off about like the two dollars I owe you, or you can depend on me for your bills to be paid, but you can't do both.
It's like that.
Like, look, you could, you could either take all of our help, which is, again, pretty substantial, or you can undermine us when we're trying to get a deal done, but you can't do both.
No country should be allowed to do both.
It's just too much of an outrage for any country to be asked to accept that.
And then here, there was one more clip that we had that was also really worth playing.
So let's jump into that and give our thoughts.
Before the hostages actually come out, you decide to go to Gaza.
And what did you see?
It looked almost like a nuclear bomb had been set off in that area.
And then you see these people moving back.
And I asked the idea, where are they going?
Like, I'm looking around.
These are all runes.
And they said, well, they're going back to the areas where their destroyed home was onto their plot and they're going to pitch a tent.
And it's very sad because you think to yourself, they really have nowhere else to go.
Would you say now, having been there, that it was genocide?
No.
No, absolutely not.
No.
Oh, there was a war being fought.
So that very night, you go to hostage square where the families of the hostages have been protesting, mourning, being very frustrated, and sometimes.
And every time you mention President Trump.
To President Donald J. Trump.
I had to stop because they were cheering.
But then you tried to thank Netanyahu.
Yeah.
And.
To Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Every time you said his name, I know.
Look, that's how they feel.
I don't feel that way.
And I thought he steered his country through some really difficult circumstances.
People think that he prolonged.
All right.
There it is.
There's the clip.
So it looked like a nuclear bomb went off.
And these people are going to have to live in tents above the ruins of them.
Like, is it a genocide?
No, nothing like that.
Let's not go crazy.
Like, whatever.
I mean, it's just, I don't know.
I guess there's just, it's something, there's something funny about just the like what's being described there are like the facts on the ground.
What did it look like?
What was the state of Gaza?
What was the reaction of the Israelis protesting when you brought up their names?
And then to have to take in that information, but then spit back out the just standard thing that they know they have to say because they are members of this administration.
Like that's what it is to be one of the president's men.
You don't actually get to determine what the conclusion is to this.
You got to just repeat what the boss wants you to say.
But it's just sad to watch them have to try to do it.
Like it's like, I guess my point is just this, Rob.
So like out of just, and you watch the whole interview.
But just even just judging off the bit that we've shown here so far.
So even though like their conclusion there is it wasn't genocide and I still support Netanyahu.
Okay.
Who do you think this interview like helps more?
A critic of Israel or a supporter of Israel.
You know what I'm saying?
Like if you just looked at that whole thing, would you look at that and go, well, the conclusion was still that?
Or would you go, they gave up some pretty damning information in there.
Yeah, I mean, having them not just toe the traditional party line of no Israel is the most moral, the greatest.
They've done nothing wrong.
That's clearly not what's happening here.
It's also just interesting to hear that someone was on the ground in Gaza and got to observe it.
We still don't have a lot of direct media reporting because I don't think Israel allows for it for safety reasons.
Correct me if I'm wrong there, but I don't think CNN is allowed to just return to Gaza.
No, Israel is not allowed international journalists in the whole time.
I mean, there are journalists who were already embedded in Gaza, but there's international journalists have not been writing.
Yes, Rob, for safety reasons.
And just admits the lies that have existed through this war.
I haven't heard this much over the last two years, but I remember when they first started striking civilian homes, it was, well, we're letting the people know that they have to leave that location.
And it's because it's a dangerous target to us because Hamas is making use of that location.
As there are just as many Hamas fighters to now as there were at the start of the war, I think you're forced to come to one of two conclusions.
One, they were completely lying about that and they were just flattening civilian infrastructure and displacing people from their homes.
Or two is there's no way to justify ever engaging in this behavior again because it doesn't seem to actually accomplish any goal in any capacity.
And so what right do you have to, you know, squash civilian homes if it doesn't actually, you know, if it's not actually killing or destroying your enemy?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, you know, when they say that, you know, you go, was this a genocide?
Like, no, it was a war.
You know, a war was conducted here.
It's like, look, the thing about it is, is, again, it's really hard, at least in the traditional understanding of the word war, to consider something a war when the other side doesn't have a government.
You know, like war typically means two militaries fighting it out.
And, you know, one of the things, so I was just, by the way, I was just listening to over this last week, Martyr Mate, Daryl Cooper's Martyr Maid podcast.
He's he just put out the first episode of his World War II series, which is, you know, highly anticipated.
And of course, it was excellent.
I mean, it's just Daryl's gift, you know, of storytelling and, you know, engaging with history is just unparalleled.
It's just unbelievable.
Anyway, I'm going to try my best to get him on the podcast soon to talk about it.
But anyway, so one of the things, you know, it starts, the first episode just came out, which is all about World War I. Because of course, you can't really tell the story of World War II without at least, you know, starting with World War I.
And he's talking about just, you know, doing Daryl Cooper graphic details of what trench warfare looked like in World War I.
And it's powerful and it really puts you there.
And it's unbelievable to think about the hell that some of these boys went through, these young kids in World War I.
But like in World War I, and is also the case in World War II, was you had these situations where like there were armies fighting each other with at least a certain degree of parody.
You know what I mean?
Like you could maybe call an airstrikes, but the other side could call in airstrikes too.
And you have a navy, but the other side has a navy too.
And you have an army, but the other side has an army too.
And oftentimes it is unclear what the outcome of this war is going to be.
And I don't mean unclear, like the way the war in Iraq, it was unclear whether democracy would take root or whether the Shiites would be repressive to the Sunnis who had been holding them down or something like that.
I mean, it was unclear which, like, it was never unclear in the war in Iraq whether Saddam's forces were going to topple the United States of America, right?
But that was the situation in World War I. We've been fighting these wars for so long now where it's the most powerful world empire fighting against puny third world countries where our side can call in airstrikes and our side has, you know, Navy SEAL teams and night vision and snipers and like all this stuff that really the other side just doesn't have.
And, okay, but for the most part, even in those conflicts, they did have governments.
And you're talking about Gaza.
It's a captive people.
The war is being fought by the captors against their captive population.
So, you know, again, like, even if people want to mince what if they want to argue with the word genocide, it's just like, okay, but you can also argue with the word war here.
Like that doesn't exactly apply either.
And so it's like, call it what you're going to call it.
But like keeping in mind, like a couple facts, right?
Like keeping in mind what I said earlier, that Israel, just openly, this isn't like a, I'm alleging something, Israel's response to Gaza violating the ceasefire is to cut aid to the civilian population.
That's how the war is conducted.
If they do something bad, we get to collectively punish all these people.
And then when you just think about Rob, and, you know, I've heard this thrown at me quite a lot, that this isn't a genocide and the deaths are on Gaza because human shields.
And the reason why Israel has to do all of this is because human shields.
But then if you look and you say, well, it looks like an atom bomb went off and they destroyed the whole thing, then what are we to conclude other than the entire population is human shields or the entire population has Hamas weaponry hidden underneath it?
And once you get to the point where you're saying, hey, the entire population is fair game, there's a word that might come to people's minds, right?
I mean, like, how do you, you know, again, like, I hate getting into the semantics of this.
There are genocide scholars and many of them consider this a genocide, but there is division amongst them.
There are some who have argued it's not.
I don't want to get into the semantics of any of that.
But if you're getting into the area where you say we can punish the civilian population and in fact, we can destroy the civilian population.
Whatever word you want to call that.
Okay.
Well, that's what it is.
And that seems to any normal, decent person, I think, pretty damn horrific.
I don't know.
Does that sound reasonable to you, Rob?
I think it's fair to say that what was done was inhumane.
Right.
So let's just stay with, let's just stick with that then, because that seems to be more than enough.
You know, one of the things that I think has been an interesting question on a lot of our minds is what, you know, like when the ceasefire started first taking place, like, well, what if this was the end of the war, which I think we were all hoping for, if this was like the end of it, what would the political realities look like after that?
Like, would that lower the temperature on this issue?
And we live in such a crazy time where there's so many things going on that like, hey, if that did calm down a bit, would other things start getting more attention?
You know, Benjamin Netanyahu himself was asked about the rise in anti-Semitism recently.
And that's what he said.
He said, well, when the war is over, this is all going to calm down a bit.
And that might be true to some degree.
But I think that most people seem to be realizing that it's going to take a little bit more than that.
And I wonder if more people aren't starting to think that Netanyahu is going to have to be the fall guy for this.
It's just kind of interesting, even the way 60 Minutes Lady is conducting this interview, which is really not favorable to Benjamin Netanyahu.
The amount of criticism against him, the amount of people who even aren't Israel critics, but are at least going like, yeah, you know, turning on Netanyahu.
It just seems to me like maybe he's being set up here to be the fall guy.
I don't know.
We'll see.
Well, I kind of thought at the beginning of this war that that's kind of a natural conclusion.
If Israel wanted to conduct all this behavior and then wipe themselves clean of it, making Netanyahu the fall guy kind of is the way of having a pass towards engaging and doing something.
I don't believe that Netanyahu actually cares enough about the country and not himself, or that this was a strategic agenda for the country that was so important that he was willing to sacrifice himself.
Firstly, I don't agree with it as a strategic agenda.
But if you saw it as a strategic agenda and go, well, there's no way that we can actually get away with this.
Well, you know what?
I'm just going to do it.
And then you guys are going to have to outcast me or whatever.
But I don't think Netanyahu is going for that.
And he seems to just be a powerful enough individual that he must have some cards up his sleeve to be thwarting that as the as the as the conclusion to this.
Yeah, well, you know, it's going to be interesting to see kind of what the next moves are.
And in a sense, perhaps Netanyahu's next moves might give us an indication of if it is one of those two scenarios, you know, but there's no question that there were, look, Benjamin Netanyahu himself said, you know, when I was when I was on Coleman Hughes' show, he asked me at one point where he said, do you think that Netanyahu's goal all along has been greater Israel, this greater Israel project?
And I kind of said, I don't know, you know, but he was on record just a couple weeks ago saying that the greater Israel project is very near and dear to his heart.
So that's something.
But I said, I would, what I would feel comfortable arguing is that the thwarting of a Palestinian state has been the centerpiece of his life's political work.
You know, that being said, like he is on record saying that the Greater Israel project is a big part of his, a big part of his heart or something like that.
I think it was a translation from Hebrew.
So, you know, it's like gets a little sloppy with the turn of phrases.
But there's right, like, obviously there's some very religious Jews in Israel who will openly tell you that that's right, that what God promised them is not just what Israel has right now, but actually is a chunk of Egypt and Jordan and a part of Iraq and a part of Lebanon and like this great.
And look, I don't know.
Thwarting Palestinian State Goals00:06:09
Some people, you know, seem to be very committed to that project.
Obviously, the hard right wingers, Ben Gavir and Smotrich and Katz and some of the other guys in Benjamin Netanyahu's government have been openly talking about their plans with Gaza, which included the Palestinians leaving.
And then, of course, Donald Trump has floated out plans of the Palestinians leaving and America taking it over.
It'll just be interesting to see, like, maybe those guys are pushed to the point where they realize they got to give up on that plan, you know?
However, over the last two years, we, it, we've seen that they can be quite brazen.
And it, it leads you to at least wonder that, you know, if possibly they just feel like, as always seems to be the case, right?
Like, and you can even, even in this like Witcoff-Kushner interview, even with all that they're revealing, you kind of know, you kind of know that at the end of the day, if all of this negotiations fall apart and we're right back to killing, they'll come out siding with Benjamin Netanyahu, despite everything that they just said to you.
And so, it just kind of you wonder if Israel is just at this point incentivized to go, we'll just keep messing this up until we can say, hey, look, there's no partner for peace again, like always.
And America will come away saying it was Hamas who blew it.
They were offered this deal and they blew it.
And if that's the case, and those, you know, if those hardliners have the desires that they've openly stated they do, you kind of wonder why wouldn't they do that?
I mean, the reason that why they wouldn't do that is that they'd have to read the room and go, guys, we are seriously putting our long-term interests in jeopardy here by doing this.
And we have already turned the world opinion sharply against us.
And we're even frustrating the Americans.
And we're going a little bit too far with all of this.
But like, I don't know.
There just hasn't been a lot over the last two years that indicates to me that they are even capable of having that moment.
Because if they were capable of it, wouldn't they have had that moment already right now by now, you know?
Like, and the fact that they haven't, I don't know, seems to indicate that maybe they're just not capable of that.
That's kind of how I'm feeling.
Now, that being said, you know, I don't want to overstate that case too much because, like, for example, you know how there'll be like drunks who hit rock bottom and then get their life together.
And you could have looked at the three bottoms they hit before that and been like, I mean, I don't know.
He hit this bot.
He lost his marriage and he still didn't get sober.
He lost his kids and he still didn't get sober.
There are moments sometimes people are just pushed far enough to hit a rock bottom and then recalculate things in their lives and make changes.
So like, perhaps we will see something like that.
But at the same time, it just does, it's not very confidence inspiring to see to just see how many opportunities they've had to do that so far and haven't.
You know, I mean, like, there's, it seems to me like there's really no question that they let's just say it like this, Rob.
Tell me if you think this is a fair conclusion to reach.
Because I was going to say, I don't want to overstate this.
Sometimes I do overstate my case a little bit.
Given all the information that we have, and then including the information that we got out of this interview, perhaps it's not the case that Israel could have had the hostages back and could have had a ceasefire in place and could have been moving toward the end of this conflict a long time ago.
But it seems overwhelmingly conclusive that they could have pursued that and weren't, right?
Like that it was, there was at least an opportunity for that.
And, you know, it's for all the people who really used, and I mean, this literally includes every single supporter of Israel, who like used the hostages for so long as like, well, we got to do this.
We got hostages in there.
And think about how horrible that is.
I mean, from literally from October 8th on, there were, there were, you know, the posters of the hostages all over New York City and stuff.
And it wasn't a help-wanted sign.
They didn't think they were going to find him in New York City.
It was to let you know you better support this policy because of these hostages.
Isn't it just such an outrage if those houses just had to be in there one day longer than they had to be?
Like, I don't know, dude, Rob, if you were held in captivity somewhere and there were any way that I could get you out of there, I wouldn't be dragging my feet on it.
I'd be like every second would be precious.
And I don't know.
I mean, that just seems to be like an obvious conclusion to make here that at least from the Israeli government, they just were not doing everything they could to get these guys out.
Just that alone, you know, is something.
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Crazy Asymmetry of Death00:03:49
All right, let's get back into the show.
Thank you.
I can't go long periods of time without good snacks.
So I appreciate that you're diligent in procuring my release.
Yeah, I've always said Rob, excellent comedian, is a great co-host on this podcast, but would not make much of a captive hostage.
That is not, that's not Rob's scenario.
There's going to be a lot of whining in the first few hours of that.
This is all we have to eat.
What is this?
Hummus?
That's it?
Oh, okay.
But before we wrap this up, I guess there was one other thing that I want to say.
And it's kind of in theme with like, you know, it's just on the major theme, which has been one of the major themes of the last two years, is not just like the inability of the pro-Israel side to play the PR game with today's dynamics.
And so, because a bunch of people were saying that, you know, it was like as soon as the ceasefire came in, they all desperately tried to like dunk on everyone else.
Oh, you're not celebrating enough or you're not saying this.
So another one of the big things was that there were these images that came out of what appear to be Hamas militants kind of like lining people up and shooting them.
There were, in fact, a few like video images of people just being, you know, straight up just killed in the middle of a field.
Pretty gruesome stuff.
And of course, right away, like, again, as if they've gotten their morning Democrats email, every single Zionist commentator who you know started going, look at what Hamas is doing and look at the people dying in Israel.
And where are, where are the people who cared so much about people dying in Gaza now?
And again, it's like it's just very bizarre because you're like, you guys just can't even help yourselves.
You can't even help yourself from like losing another argument.
And because obviously they're trying to accuse the other side of hypocrisy.
Oh, you guys say you care about people dying in Gaza, but look at this.
And it's like, okay, Did any of the critics of Israel say that they supported that?
Also, our government's not funding it.
So, like, it's just a totally different thing.
There's just this crazy asymmetry.
But then, of course, for you, there is no asymmetry.
And it's the hypocrisy all falls on you.
Oh, no, you all of a sudden care about innocent people dying in Gaza.
Oh, all of the now, now you're the one who has a bleeding heart for the loss of life in Gaza or something like that.
And like, look, I don't know.
There were reports that the people being executed were accused of being collaborators with Israel.
Perhaps some of them were, but I don't know.
None of them have been through a goddamn fair trial.
So I'm presuming all of them innocent the same way I presume the 1700 people Israel was holding without charges are innocent.
Okay.
But so yeah, that's horrible.
None of us support that.
So what on earth could your point possibly be?
Like, I just don't know.
I just felt like I had to at least address that on some level.
But it just, I don't know.
One more, it's almost sad in a way when you see these guys like getting excited.
You're like, guys, this is going to go down just like every single other point you had.
But anyway, I wanted to get on record saying that.
That's fair.
It showcases some real inconsistency where all of a sudden someone else is doing killing in the area and you guys are like, look, look at how horrible the area is when we're not there and people are getting killed.
Yeah.
People are getting killed when we're not there at a much lower rate.