Ezra Levant’s May 11, 2018 episode examines Kinder Morgan pipeline protests, where activists like Tom Sanborn—funded by groups such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund—violated court injunctions, claiming necessity despite decades of incident-free operations and limited public support. The show contrasts this with Trump’s embassy move to Jerusalem, praised for its boldness, and explores Israel’s strategy against Iran, including Syria strikes uniting Sunni allies while Russia avoids escalation by blocking S-300 sales. Levant also defends Sheila Gunread after Dion Bews’ acquittal, celebrating a judge’s "reprehensible" ruling on alt-left violence, despite minimal damages, and criticizes Alberta’s Jason Kenney for potential leadership missteps. Legal battles and geopolitical tensions underscore the fight for accountability and free speech. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, law-breaking pipeline protesters appear in a Vancouver court.
But why is the media hiding their true identities?
It's May 11th, and you're watching The Ezra LeVance Show.
Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.
The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
It's frustrating to watch the violent alt-left destroy the rule of law in Canada.
It bothers me that it's an attack on the oil and gas industry most of the time, which is such an ethical industry, so economically important in this country.
But it would bother me no matter what the alt-left was attacking, because really, it's attacking a pillar of our democracy, that is we don't break the laws if we don't get our way in an election.
Now, this has been going on for years, and you can't even blame it all on Justin Trudeau and his extremist principal secretary, Gerald Butts.
These images I'm showing now of an environmentalist riot on Burnaby Mountain in BC against the Kindermorgan Transmountain pipeline expansion, they were from a few years back when Stephen Harper was the prime minister, and he had a majority government, and Christy Clark was the premier of BC with a majority government there.
So you can't blame that on Justin Trudeau or John Horgan, the NDP Premier, can you?
I mean, you can a bit.
Their parties, their political allies, are part of these illegal attacks.
The CBC itself not only acts as the PR agency for these eco-terrorists, but they send in their last recognizable on-air personality, David Suzuki, to stand shoulder to shoulder with the criminals, as you can see here.
I say criminals because they are breaking the law.
The foreign-funded activists have a weird, gross shanty town in Burnaby.
They call it Camp Cloud, which sounds peaceful and like it would smell fresh, like a cloud.
In fact, it's squalid and heaped with garbage, just like the Occupy Wall Street slums were.
And in fact, it's pretty much the same people behind it.
And they're criminals.
I'm sorry, they are.
Again and again, they assault the police, in some cases injuring the police.
But as you heard Lee Humphrey tell us the other day, politicized prosecutors are laying the lowest possible charges against these criminals, even when police are assaulted.
But there are some charges.
I was pleased to see that Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party, was charged with contempt of court for violating a court order by protesting on Kindermorgan property.
And it's appropriate that she was charged.
You can't be a lawmaker and a lawbreaker.
I mean, that goes to my point before.
The rule of law, you know, the rules of democracy say that you're not going to always get your way in democracy.
And you have to accept that and you have to work within the system.
You can't do it the way Elizabeth May wants to do.
Be a part of democracy as an honorable member of parliament, as they're called, with all the privileges and powers that come with it.
But then, if things don't go your way, if you don't get a vote, just plain old break the law like a criminal.
No, you can't do that.
Anyways, to the news of the day, I want to talk about this story in the Vancouver Sun.
Earlier this week, Kinder Morgan protester argues that defense of necessity excused court defiance.
Let me read a few lines for you.
I'm actually going to read quite a bit, and I'm not going to omit a single word.
And the reason is, I want to show you how the Vancouver Sun has become a stenographer for these lawbreakers.
Just giving them a free platform without any pushback or rebuttal.
So bear with me.
I'm going to read for about a full minute here, okay?
One of the protesters arrested at Kinder Morgan's Transmountain Pipeline Expansion Project argued Wednesday that it was necessary for him to act to prevent what he called a bigger crime from being committed.
Tom Sanborn, who was taken into custody after allegedly violating a court-ordered injunction at the company's Burnaby work site and faces a criminal contempt of court charge, said he wants to be able to use the defense of necessity at his upcoming trial.
He told BC Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Affleck that the project amounted to what he called serious crimes against First Nations, treaty rights, the environment, and the safety of nearby residents.
Quote, the crime that was being conducted by the Canadian state and by Kinder Morgan was a major crime, and we were justified in intervening to try to stop them, said Sanborn.
You know, it goes on for quite a bit like that.
That's junk law.
That's junk politics.
It's crazy talk.
But the Vancouver Sun just sort of copies and pastes his speech right in the newspaper.
Eventually, the story gets around to quoting the prosecutor for a few sentences of the other side.
And then the story ends this way.
The judge pointed out to Sanborn that none of the available legal avenues, including appealing the court injunction, had been taken before some people decided to disobey the court order, unquote.
Yeah, that's the thing.
That's the point.
If you think a court order is wrong, appeal it to a higher court or change the underlying law through the system, through legislation.
Don't just say you're going to break the law.
Okay, so that's the story.
But there's a bit more to this story because who is that Sanborn?
I mean, if you relied on the Vancouver Sun to, you know, tell you, you'd think he was just some guy, some random Vancouver guy.
In today's Vancouver Sun, he's mentioned again, and he's described only as a professional writer.
Really?
Is that who Tom Sanborn is?
No, that is not who Tom Sanborn is.
Tom Sanborn is a professional, lifelong protester and activist who works for foreign-funded anti-oil lobby groups.
How do I know this?
Well, I have access to this amazing research machine called Google.
Unlike the Vancouver Sun, apparently, so I typed in the words, Tom Sanborn.
I know.
I managed to think of doing that without even going to journalism school or getting a government grant.
And nine out of the top ten hits on the very first page of Google results show that he is a professional anti-oil activist.
I mean, is he a professional writer?
Well, sure, he writes down his activism, it's true, but to call him a professional writer does not illuminate the truth.
It actually obscures it.
So I clicked on the very first link that came up on Google, the very first one, and it takes you to the website of the TIE, a Vancouver-based left-wing environmentalist website that is explicitly funded by the anti-oil lobby group called the Taj Foundation.
It's actually the very first time I heard the word Taj Foundation, is they were giving money to the Taiye.
Let me read the very first paragraph to you.
So this is literally the first thing that comes up on Google, and this is the first thing that's on that first page.
Tom Sanborn was born in Alaska and raised in the wilderness by wolves.
Later Jesuits at the University of San Francisco and radical feminists in Vancouver generously gave time and energy to the difficult task of educating and humanizing him.
Tom has a formal education too, a BA from UBC.
He has been practicing the dark arts of journalism off and on ever since university and now also has about five decades of social justice, peace, and environmental campaigning under his belt.
Now there's a bit of self-deprecating humor there.
He wasn't actually raised by wolves, no one is.
But that's about the only liberties taken.
What follows on that webpage is his professional writing, by which any normal reader would immediately say, holy cow, this guy is a full-time Marxist activist.
The second hit on Google when you type in Tom Sanborn is the National Observer, another extremist outfit literally founded by Linda Solomon, the sister of Joel Solomon, the founder of the Taes Foundation.
Just a reminder, the Taes Foundation is a $150 million a year San Francisco-based Marxist lobby group that funnels money to literally dozens of anti-oil science activists in Canada.
Here's their IRS disclosure called Form 990.
There is virtually no left-wing group in Canada they do not fund, but they have a special focus on extremist environmentalist groups.
Now, I'm not going to go through the rest of Tom Sanborn's bio, but do you see my point?
Here's a kook in a BC court saying he has the legal right to break the law because this legally approved, fully vetted and regulated pipeline company is committing a larger crime, and the Vancouver Sun just writes that down loyally, and they do not disclose that this Tom Sanborn is a journalist activist paid for by foreign anti-oil lobbyists.
They hid that from you.
And while we're on this same Vancouver Sun story, look at that main picture again.
Look at that man.
This was the story.
Who's that man being arrested there?
He's not named in the photo caption.
They just say police arrest protesters, really.
They don't say who he is.
But if you follow anti-oil sands politics, even casually in this country, you know who he is.
That man's name is Clayton Thomas Mueller.
He's not from Burnaby.
He's not even from British Columbia.
He's from Manitoba, three provinces over.
He's a professional protester.
He is paid by various U.S.-funded lobby groups, too.
He literally jetted to Vancouver to be part of that protest.
He got arrested on purpose.
But you wouldn't know that from the report, would you?
You'd think it's just, you know, just British Columbians.
Here is the seminal 2008 tar sands campaign document from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund in New York.
I've shown this to you many times before.
This is the first draft of the battle plan to attack oil sands and pipelines.
And look at the front groups that agreed to take foreign money to attack the oil sands.
I've shown this to you before.
There's the WWF in the top right corner.
Do you see that?
That's Gerald Butzold organization.
He's working for Trudeau now, but he used to be their president.
But you see that one sort of in the middle there?
It says the Indigenous Environmental Network.
That's Clayton Thomas Mueller.
He's with a lot of these groups, actually.
He's basically a Hollywood actor hired to give an aboriginal look and feel to events.
So it's not all just white liberals from the U.S. like Tom Sanborn.
There has never been an opinion poll in British Columbia that I've ever seen that has shown that the popular support is against pipelines if the pipelines are done in compliance with environmental standards, which of course they are.
The Kinder Morgan Transmountain Expansion Pipeline has been pumping away for nearly 70 years, by the way, without incident, and it has actually been filling up tankerships in the Port of Vancouver for decades without a single navigational incident ever.
This whole Trans Mountain thing is just a modernization and expansion of an existing pipeline.
So BCers know in their bones it's normal, it's fine, it's safe, and there's so many regulators scrutinizing it.
But if you only pay attention to the CBC or the Vancouver Sun, you'd think everyone is against oil and gas and pipelines, your neighbors, your friends, and normal, just folks like Tom Sanborn, who's at most disclosed as a professional writer.
Oh, and that handsome young Aboriginal man on the cover of the Vancouver story.
No, no, no, no.
Tom Sanborn is a professional activist.
Clayton Thomas Mueller is a professional activist who flew in just to make an appearance.
Trump's Impact on Israeli Politics00:12:45
It's bad enough that our country is overrun with foreign-funded extremists looking to shut down ethical oil to the benefit of OPEC conflict oil, our competition.
But what about the mainstream media?
The Vancouver Sun, for God's sakes, that's either too lazy or too complicit to tell their viewers even the basic facts.
Stay with us for more.
Welcome back.
Well, one of the things that every U.S. president for decades has promised, but none have delivered, was the decision to move the embassy from Tel Aviv in Israel to Israel's proper capital, Jerusalem.
Every president said they would when they were courting votes and donations from America's Jewish community, but all of them found some reason to invoke a waiver saying it was not in the national interest.
Well, Donald Trump made the same promise as the rest of them, but lo and behold, he actually kept the promise.
And you know what?
The sky did not fall.
There was not another intifada.
There was not another war.
In fact, nobody cared.
It reminded me of when Donald Trump took America out of the global warming treaty.
The sky did not fall.
The man gets things done.
And it is now imminent that the embassy will open in Jerusalem.
And joining us now via Skype from his cell phone from the city of Ephrat in Israel is our friend Joel Pollock, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.
It's great to see you, Joel.
You're in Israel.
Tell me what the vibe is there.
I see from Breitbart.com that there are pro-Trump posters going up around Israel and that Netanyahu himself seems to be getting a bump in the polls because things are going so well with the American ally.
What's the feeling on the street?
Well, people here are very excited about the embassy move, and the American president is extremely popular right now in Israel.
It's helped Benjamin Etanyahu, as you mentioned, but Donald Trump is basically a hero, at least to Jewish Israelis.
I've had several people stop me spontaneously when they realize I'm from the United States and thank me for President Trump.
The common refrain you hear from Israelis is: he does what he says he's going to do.
And that is a refreshing contrast, not just to American presidents of the past, but also to politicians of all sorts.
So there's a real respect for Donald Trump in a sense that he really loves the state of Israel and loves the Israeli people and the Jewish people.
People here feel like they've never had a better friend in the White House.
These are just different things that have been said to me by people on the street, taxi drivers, people I run into at conferences here.
They're very impressed with Trump.
They feel he has a lot of courage.
And they're deeply moved that he kept his promise and that on Monday the United States will open its embassy in Jerusalem.
That's very symbolic because it's an affirmation of the legitimacy and sovereignty of Israel.
But I would imagine, because I go to Israel from time to time, in fact, we're taking a trip of rebels, 60 or so of us.
We're coming next month, so we're going to be there again.
But in the last 10 years, there's been this cloud in the background of the Israeli psyche, if I may say so, and that is Iran, because Iran was developing the nukes and would talk about scorching Israel in a way that felt like an existential threat more than any conventional military threat.
Israel has always been under a conventional military threat, but the Iranian threat felt a little bit like an echo of the Holocaust, and some of the language mimicked the Holocaust, and it was matched with Iranian Holocaust denial.
So I think my theory is Trump taking on that existential threat is actually far more important psychologically, emotionally, existentially to Israelis than moving the embassy building.
Well, the embassy is tremendously important, but you're right about the threat.
Iran fired 20 missiles at the Golan Heights at Israeli positions there, and Israel knocked down four of them with the Iron Dome anti-missile system.
And the rest did not reach Israeli-held territory in the Golan Heights.
But you're absolutely right.
It was a watershed this week, and it had nothing to do with the Jerusalem embassy or even the Iran deal, which President Trump pulled out of.
It had to do with Israeli strikes on Iranian positions in Syria a few days ago.
There's already been a kind of proxy war between Israel and Iran for many years, either with Iranian proxies in Hamas or Hezbollah attacking Israel.
But now this is becoming a live conflict direct between Israel and Iran.
And Iran fired at Israel for the first time this week.
So although tactically that attack didn't really lead anywhere, in fact, it led Iran to lose many of its assets in Syria as Israel targeted Iranian positions from the air for about four hours.
Strategically, it marks a new beginning, a new chapter in this conflict, one that could be more dangerous and one that was probably inevitable given Iran's regional ambitions, which the Iran deal only helped, sadly.
So now we're going to see where it goes from here.
Israel is definitely prepared and preparing for a next stage of conflict.
But here, you already have Iranian forces in Syria, right up next to the Israeli border.
And you, of course, still have Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, who are Iran's proxies for all intents and purposes.
So it's still quite a tense situation in the region.
There's still a long way to go before there's anything like peace.
But certainly affirming Jerusalem as Israel's capital is a way of the world's superpower saying to everybody else, this is not going to end.
This is not going away.
And by the way, the Russians also have recognized Israeli sovereignty, at least over West Jerusalem.
And Russia now refers to Israel by the term West Jerusalem, referring to the capital of Israel.
When West Jerusalem speaks, West Jerusalem does this, and so on.
So there's a growing recognition that Jerusalem is Israel forever, at least the western part, even if the eastern part's still up for negotiation.
And that's a very significant development.
I think it makes Israel stronger and more secure.
And Israelis definitely feel more secure as they face the growing threat of Iran, knowing that the world is slowly coming around to the idea that Jerusalem is Israel's permanent capital.
I have one more question about the military situation, and then I want to ask you about Jews and Republicans and conservatives.
But let me just ask, when you talked about Israel defeating those rockets shot in using the Iron Dome technology, and I know Israel has been raiding Iranian assets in Syria, it reminded me a little bit of when Israel first deployed the F-15 and F-16 fighter jets in the Baca Valley more than 30 years ago.
And they shot down, I don't know something like 80 MiG fighters and lost none.
And it was such a staggering military victory.
And it was the first time those American weapons had really been put to the test.
It was a proxy war back then between Russia and America, fought between Israel and the Arab states over Syria and Lebanon.
I wonder if that's what's going on here too, because we've recently had American military attacks on, for example, that chemical factory in Syria.
But this kind of broader attack, maybe using the new F-35 jets, I'm sort of surprised that Israel's doing the heavy lifting here, but maybe it's not surprising.
Is Israel, do you think this is a prelude to a larger attack?
Can I think of when Israel took out Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor at Osirak, literally flying over into Baghdad, F-15s, F-16s?
Like, it's just, it's military dominance using American tools that helps the West, but Israel's doing the heavy lifting.
Is there an analogy here?
Is a bigger war coming?
Tell me what you think.
There may be one coming, and certainly Israel partners with the United States in a lot of this, although I think it also reserves the right to act independently for its own security, and the United States respects that right, just as Israel respects the right of the United States to do what it wants for its own security.
I think what is interesting is just as in the former Soviet Union, where you had internal politics ultimately brought the USSR down, now you have a very volatile situation in Iran with the economy in shambles, with people protesting and so forth.
There's now a greater probability, I won't say likelihood, but I'll say a greater probability that the Iranian regime actually topples and ends all this military adventurism.
The Iranian people generally are tired of it because their scarce resources are being spent on terrorism abroad and invading other countries and so forth.
So I think there's a very real possibility that Iran breaks politically before a very significant military conflict develops.
You have to hope that happens because war, of course, is the worst possible outcome.
If the Iranian regime would topple, then the region would become safer overnight.
Last question.
You started by saying how pro-Trump Israel is, or at least Jewish Israelis, and I believe you.
The embassy stopping the obsession with the Palestinians, helping to move Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states into a more pro-Israel orbit, and now canceling the Iran deal.
But here in North America, and you know this as well as me because you're from LA, here in Toronto, Jews are liberal.
A leftist Jew the other day was saying, what's Trump's angle here moving?
Like they think it's a trick.
They refuse to accept that Trump is pro-Israel.
They hate him anyways.
Like, what is wrong with Jews in general politically that they side with their enemies, that they would side with Hillary Clinton, who met Habedin Sid Blumenthal, that they would side with Barack Obama instead of a guy who's aesthetically, frankly, he's very Jewish, Donald Trump in many ways.
What's the problem with our people?
Well, it wasn't so long ago, two or three decades ago, that the Democratic Party in the States was very pro-Israel.
And what's happened is that Jews continue to vote for the Democratic Party for other reasons.
Some have liberal positions on abortion.
Some are very attached to sort of nostalgia around the civil rights movement.
Although the civil rights movement was largely fought against Democrats, but that's a topic for another day.
So there's an attachment to the Democratic Party that comes from a time when the Democratic Party was actually very pro-Israel.
In the last 10 to 15 years, especially since the second Indifada, the parties of the left in general around the world have become more anti-Israel.
They used to be pro-Israel, now they're anti-Israel.
And the voting behavior of American Jews hasn't yet caught up to that reality.
In addition, Israel is no longer high on the priority list for liberal American Jews.
It's very important for conservative American Jews and particularly religious American Jews.
But for liberal American Jews, other issues like abortion and so forth are much higher priorities.
Whether that's right or wrong, it's just the reality.
And so American Jews, the majority of American Jews who vote Democratic, are doing so for other reasons.
There are some who vote Republican on Israel, but it's a small sliver.
And increasingly, they just simply become Republicans because they're fed up with their party's indulgence of the anti-Israel left.
Yeah.
Joel, I'd tell you, I could talk to you all all day, but I know you've got to do a lot of other things, so you're on the ground.
I appreciate you jamming us in and talking to us from your cell phone.
It's actually been a remarkably clear interview, and it's just so pretty to see the town of Efrat behind you.
I'm jealous that you're there at this exciting moment, but we'll be leading our own delegation to Israel in a couple of months.
Thanks for being with us today, Joel.
Thank you, and Shabbat.
Shalom to everyone in Canada.
Thanks very much for that.
And you too.
Well, there's our friend Joel Pollack, who's on the ground in Israel.
He, of course, is the senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com.
Stay with us.
more ahead on The Rebel.
Inside Israel's Middle East Strategy00:09:20
Well, Israel is at the crossroads of three continents, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
And it's the place where so much news is happening, but never more so than these days.
Between the United States moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, to Donald Trump deciding to remove the United States from the informal agreement agreed to by Barack Obama that gave hundreds of billions of, more than $100 billion worth of sanctions relief to Iran, more than a billion dollars in cash delivered in pallets, in exchange for a few trinkets of concessions from Iran on their nuclear program.
Well, Trump has removed America from that.
And a lot of things are in play.
Joining us now is an expert on this very complicated region, our friend Jonathan Shanzer, who is the senior vice president with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
He is in Israel today.
Jonathan, thanks for joining us.
I know it's seven hours later there, so it's nighttime over there.
There's a lot going on right now.
Israel is always in a state of war, but it's been in a hot war against Iranian troops in Syria.
Do I have that right?
You have it right.
What the Iranians have been doing ever since the Iran deal was struck back in 2015, perhaps even earlier than that, they have been steadily building up an arsenal in Syria.
They've been taking advantage of the fog of war, the chaos that has ensued inside Syria.
And so what they've done is they've brought in Shiite militias.
These are Shiite fighters from places like Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq and of course Iran.
They've got Hezbollah on the ground over there as well.
So they've been building up a ground force.
Meanwhile, also building up a rocket force, building up their drone capabilities, moving everything closer and closer to Israel's borders.
And what we've seen over the last year or so is that Israel has been taking these assets out one by one.
And then more recently, it's been a full flare-up where the Israelis have gone on a full offensive.
Isn't that interesting that Iran is using almost mercenaries from a variety of Muslim countries, including Pakistan and Afghanistan?
You made me think of something that I learned when I was on the ground in northern Iraq and Kurdistan last summer.
I was surprised to, I was at the border of Kurdistan and sort of no man's land, and the Kurdish military, forgive me for this little tangent, but maybe you have some insight into it.
I thought that on the other side of this no man's land was ISIS, but the Kurdish Peshmerga said no.
Across that no man's land is a Shiite militia called Hashtel Shabi.
I had never heard of that word before.
And they said it was filling the void left by ISIS.
It was Iran-backed, and it was just as hostile.
So I was confused.
This is the first I'd heard of it.
But what they led me to believe was that Iran is filling the void.
First the void left by Barack Obama and then the void left by ISIS.
Iran's sort of consolidating the region.
Is that what's happening?
That's exactly right.
And Hashdul-Shabi, the term that you just used is effectively just popular mobilization units.
So each one of these units have different names.
Some of them are Iraqi.
Some of them are Syrian.
Some of them are coming from other places around the Muslim world.
And Iran is deploying them.
They have absolutely filled the void inside Iraq where they have ousted ISIS.
That's where you're seeing them fill in the gaps.
And that same thing is happening inside Syria.
And the goal has been for Iran to establish what we call the Shiite Crescent.
This is an area stretching from Iran's border through Iraq into Syria all the way into Lebanon to the Mediterranean.
This is Iran's designs for regional hegemony.
We can, I think, be unambiguous about this at this point.
And so finally, you have the Israelis pushing back on this.
But the real challenge, I think, was that the counter-ISIL coalition, they were very happy to defeat ISIS because after all, ISIS was just kind of a ragtag group, not professionally trained, not terribly formidable, despite what you heard in the news.
But nobody wanted to tangle with the post-ISIS reality, which was that Iran and its proxies were taking over the region.
That's a far nastier battle, and it's one that the Israelis are taking on single-handedly right now.
You know, it's interesting.
They're taking it on militarily, but I see that Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, these are Muslim countries that are either quiet, as most Sunni Muslim countries are, or actually morally and publicly supportive of Israel.
And even the king of Saudi Arabia has been emitting positive vibrations, I guess, about Israel.
You know, I saw some pundit the other day say one thing Barack Obama did inadvertently was he made Iran such a looming threat that he inadvertently caused Israel and the Sunni Arab states to make common cause because they were so panicked.
I don't think that was Barack Obama's goal, and it's certainly not a good way to achieve that goal.
But it seems to me that everyone in the region is petrified of a nuclear Iran, and so they put aside, I suppose, smaller quarrels to focus on that existential threat.
Is that accurate?
Absolutely accurate.
And I mean, I like to joke that Barack Obama got his Nobel Prize about six years too soon.
He should have got it after he signed the Iran nuclear deal.
Not for the fact that the Iranians were prevented from going nuclear, but because he did draw the Arab states and Israel closer together.
They're talking in ways that they never spoke before.
I can tell you that I was just in Saudi Arabia two weeks ago.
I was in the United Arab Emirates in October, as well as Bahrain in October.
And it's really remarkable.
I mean, you hear the leadership there speaking about the region, and there is no doubt that Iran is their number one concern.
And increasingly, I think they're just not as concerned with this Palestinian issue.
They like it to go away.
They feel solidarity with their Arab brethren, but they also understand that it's not in their national interest to promote the Palestinian cause above these other core threats.
And so that's the equation that we're looking at here.
The Arab world is drawing closer to Israel because after all, the Israelis are the only army tangling with Iran.
They're the ones who just pilfered a half a ton of documents out of a nuclear document warehouse in Tehran.
They're the ones who are bombing Iranian targets in Syria and dominating while they do it.
So I think this has really been an important message to convey to Iran from Israel's perspective, but also to the rest of the Arab world.
They see leadership and they're drawn to it.
Yeah.
Well, let me ask you about Russia, because I know that Russia and Israel have an interesting relationship.
There's about a million Russian émigrés in Israel, and Benjamin Netanyahu, who has a fairly constant and high-level communication with Russia, meeting with Vladimir Putin and talking with him even very recently.
How does Israel fight against Iran in Syria without fighting with Russia?
in Syria.
How is that delicate balance achieved?
It's a delicate balance.
And, you know, a part of how this is accomplished is by the Israelis making regular trips to Russia.
You have to remember the defense minister of Israel is actually of Russian extraction, Avidor Lieberman, so he can speak to them literally in their own language.
But you also, just, for example, just had Bibi Netsanyahu go to Russia two days ago.
And as I understand it, these discussions, this is not with the Israelis coming hat in hand and saying, can we please do this or that in Syria?
As I understand it, these discussions are usually with the Israelis coming in very professional saying, these are our concerns.
We're going to be taking care of them in the coming days, and we expect you to stand down.
Now, there is room for error.
We have seen, for example, reports of Russian mercenaries that have been hit by Israeli fire as they've gone in and taken out Iranian assets.
But my sense right now is that the Russians have very little stomach for this.
They have pulled, I think, a number of their troops or mercenaries out of targets where Iran has had a dominant position.
We just heard yesterday, for example, that Putin has agreed to not sell these S-300 anti-aircraft systems to Syria.
We may be at a place where he is maybe satisfied with having defeated ISIS and doesn't want to get Russia drawn into a broader conflict between Israel and Iran.
Very interesting.
Well, I very much appreciate you giving us the briefing from Israel.
A lot of things are on the move in the region, and hopefully, hopefully, I'm not going to say it'll be peaceful, but hopefully it'll be quiet, which is as close as I think it'll get there.
Categorical Statement00:04:53
Thanks for taking the time with us today.
Pleasure.
All right, there you have it.
Jonathan Shenzer is the senior vice president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
He joined us tonight from Israel via Skype.
Stay with us.
more ahead on the rebel hey welcome back your viewer mail On my monologue yesterday about Dion Buse in court, Liza writes, absolutely the right thing to do taking Buse back to court.
These Cretans have to know they aren't going to get away with this sort of violence against the rebel.
I am all in favor.
I am all in for legal pushback every time.
Liza, I appreciate you saying that.
The police did the right thing.
They arrested him.
But for some reason, and they charged him with crimes, which he committed.
But for some reason, I won't get into the details.
Sheila was not advised of this court date.
She had no chance to put any evidence forward, no chance to put a victim impact statement forward.
So he got off.
Deion Beez got off with the lightest slap on the wrist possible.
30 hours of community service and a conditional discharge.
It'll be taken off his record soon.
No, no, that's not good enough.
So we had to sue.
Not for the money.
I mean, I know enough about the law to know that the quantum of damages you get for a punch in the face, it's going to be four fingers maxed.
So we got what we were owed financially, but what we needed and what we did finally get in civil court for Sheila was a categorical statement by the judge that what Dion Bews did to Sheila Gunread was, quote, reprehensible and it was illegal and it was worthy of punitive damages.
And we also got an indication that the First Criminal Court was not proper.
It didn't have the full hearing.
So it was very valuable morally and as the boss of the rebel, I felt it was important to stand by Sheila, who was assaulted by the alt-left, and to stand up for her rights and freedom and to show her that we have her back.
She has our back, right?
I mean, she does, she's there for us every time.
I think it's so important we're there for her.
And obviously, we spent a lot more money on the lawsuit than the $1,000 in costs we got back.
And by the way, we have to collect that from this deadbeat.
I don't know if Dion Buse's two pennies to rub together, but it was the moral victory that was important.
By the way, if you want to read the whole ruling, it's a pretty quick read, and it's in pretty plain English.
You can find it at DionBuse.com, D-I-O-N-B-E-W-S.com.
And yeah, I'm going to have that website with his name pointing at this story until, well, forever.
Maybe if he comes forward and he makes a genuine apology and statement of contrition to Sheila, we'll consider taking the website down.
But until then, his name will forever point to the facts about him.
Tammy writes, lawyers are expensive.
Principals are priceless.
Tammy, that's a very nice way of saying it.
The lawyer we used, a young guy, I think he billed us fairly.
And I know you're thinking $36,000 for a two-day trial, how could that possibly be?
Well, it was all the work in advance, filing the statement of claim, pre-trial hearings, the trial itself, and just, you know, reviewing, getting the witness there, et cetera.
So yeah, it is expensive.
There is no two ways about it.
I did not attend court myself.
I didn't want my presence to be seen in some way as political interference, but we sent our VP editorial to show solidarity with Sheila.
And I heard other lawyers were sitting in to watch it, young student lawyers, because they said lawsuits like this proceed so rarely, because it's true.
Who would spend $36,000 on a punch in the face?
Economically, it doesn't make sense, so most people don't do it.
We did it, as you said, for the principle of it.
So actually, other young lawyers were coming to watch a civil trial on assault and battery because it happened so rarely.
We did it on a point of principle.
And I would do it again.
I would spend $36,000 again to get justice for Sheila, and I'm sure you would, too.
And if you want to help us, you can ship in at DionBuse.com.
It's just something we have to do.
On my interview with Derek Fildebrand, Bruce writes, Jason Kenney is behaving like the old PCs who people voted out.
I was afraid this would happen, and now it has.
I voted against the merger for that reason, and now I know I was right.
Let's hope enough pressure gets put on Jason to resign or change his top-down ways.
Well, let me be clear, I certainly do not want him to resign.
And as I said to Derek, I think twice or at least once, I said it is absolutely critically important that Jason Kenney become the next Premier of Alberta, just like Doug Ford must become the next Premier of Ontario.
The people they're running against, Kathleen Wynne and Rachel Notley, are absolute disasters, some of the worst premiers ever for their provinces.
Doug Ford's Legacy00:01:16
But that doesn't mean we have to excuse Doug Ford or Jason Kenney when they veer off course.
I think I also put on the record yesterday that I disagree with Derek Fildebrand's idea of a new party.
I think that kind of splitism goes nowhere.
I don't think that's a good idea.
I think if Derek wanted to be the leader of the party, he should have run for the leader.
In fact, I think I encouraged him to do so.
But yeah, we are going to be the good faith critics of Doug Ford and Jason Kenney.
And by good faith critics, I mean we won't engage in unfair, malicious, gotcha-style journalism.
We'll leave that to the CBC and other mainstream media party journalists.
We will be critics and will be fair critics from the right, which is, I think, what our viewers want us to do.
Well, that's our shows for the week.
It's been a busy and hectic week, hasn't it?
I don't know if you're tuning in, by the way.
You're probably working, but at 12 noon Eastern time, 10 a.m. Alberta time, 9 a.m. BC time, I do a one-hour live chit-chat on YouTube where you can ask me any questions in real time.
This is a pre-recorded segment here, but I'm live and you can just type questions to me at 12 noon Eastern.
So feel free to join in every weekday is what I do with that.
So that's something to watch if you're interested.
Until Monday, I guess keep watching our YouTube vids.