Ezra Levant critiques Mark Carney’s polling surge, dismissing it as NDP voters shifting from Jagmeet Singh to avoid Pierre Poilievre’s victory rather than genuine support. Carney’s evasive wealth disclosures and ties to the Century Initiative—pushing tripled immigration—undermine credibility amid public backlash on crime and subsidies. Meanwhile, Daniel Pipes reveals Hamas rejected Trump’s pre-2016 deal, retaining Gaza control despite Israeli raids, while Iran’s defiance contrasts with past expectations. Western aid risks fueling Hamas, exposing aid’s inefficacy, as Israel balances hostage recovery over military victory, leaving a fractured region where local governance remains uncertain. [Automatically generated summary]
Are the polls showing that Pierre Polyev is going to lose?
I'm here to say don't count him out and don't get blackpilled, as the kids would say.
Hey, before I get to today's show, let me invite you to become a subscriber to what we call Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
There's a few clips I want to show you of Mark Carney in particular, and I want you to see them, not just hear them.
So go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
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Tonight, the polls suggest Mark Carney is going to win the next Canadian election.
But I'm here to tell you that's possible, but it's absolutely not set in stone.
It's March 21st, and this is the Escher Levant show.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Well, I was in the United Kingdom for one day, not even a day actually.
I flew on Wednesday night, slept on the plane for a couple hours, landed at 6:30 in the morning, made my way down into the heart of the city, where I covered Tommy Robinson's hearing.
I live tweeted, got millions of views.
People just don't trust the mainstream media in the UK.
It was sort of incredible.
I was sitting right next to the guy from The Guardian across the way was the guy from the BBC, and they knew who I was, of course.
And I was being my friendly self.
And this Guardian guy was talking about the fake news media.
And I didn't take the bait because I knew, which is a pretty good feeling, I knew that my stuff would be seen by millions of people.
And his stuff will be read by a few cranky leftists.
But actually, over the course of the hours, we managed to find a modus vivendi to get along.
It was really weird with him to lead with the fake news, but what does that even mean?
I mean, we're both covering the same trial.
What was fake about it?
What a loser.
But I can understand why they feel under attack.
10, 15 years ago, there was no such thing as citizen journalism, no such thing as people having a huge platform on YouTube or Twitter.
So I can see why he's in a dying industry and a dying part of that industry.
Anyways, I didn't fight with him, but he was a little bit snarky.
I enjoy covering Tommy Robinson's case, and I don't mind the flights.
I landed at 6:30, did my work during the day, and then I caught the 6 p.m. flight home.
So I wasn't even on the ground for 12 hours.
I'm lucky I made it out.
I don't know if you heard, but Heathrow, which is such a huge airport, it really is one of the world's busiest airports.
It would be like Chicago O'Hare or New York's JFK.
They had a major fire, which knocked out the power and the backup generators.
Sounds pretty fishy to me.
It wouldn't surprise me if there were some malefactors involved.
So I just got out of Dodge like four hours before the whole place was shut down.
Yeah, I'm lucky to be back.
And I really didn't miss any work because I did my show.
And yeah, I know it's different than being in the studio, but I think it's important.
And I really enjoy the warm welcome I get there.
And I think it's part of our duty as part of the Commonwealth to support other English-speaking liberal democracies when they have free speech problems, which definitely the UK does.
And I guess that's what I learned when I go over there, especially yesterday, to see how the police, the prosecutors, the judges, the prison guards, not the guards themselves, but the prison wardens or governors, we're only about five years behind them.
I mean, all of those elements, all those groups are woke and DEI and politicized there in the UK.
Today, the ruling coming of Tommy was not successful.
He was applying for a judicial review on a speedy basis to lessen his solitary confinement punishment in prison in the UK, and it was rejected.
And there's jubilation on the left.
And going over there, I mean, I love the UK.
I love freedom and things like that, but it's a vision of what could happen here if our police, our prosecutors, our judges, our prison wardens become politicized too.
I also think about the importance of fighting in the first ditch rather than in the last ditch and how much easier it is to fight in the first ditch.
But that's the thing.
No one wants to fight in the first ditch because they say, oh, it's not a problem yet.
Yeah, wouldn't you rather nip a problem in the bud?
It's not just true for societies.
It's true for individual people too.
And I think of Tommy Robinson.
I'm almost done talking about him.
I didn't mean to bring it up, but I just wanted to tell you where I was yesterday if you didn't know.
Because he didn't fight some of his early fights properly, because he didn't have a good lawyer or the right lawyer, or because he didn't even bother to defend, there were certain very early losses he had legally that cast a shadow to this day.
If he did something and got a suspended sentence, but then it was triggered later on, or if he pled guilty to something under pressure, under duress, and he didn't really mean to, but now people keep on saying, well, he broke the law and he admits it.
So I learn a lot by going to the UK and I learn a lot by fighting with Tommy in a way.
I guess I fight with him, alongside him, I mean.
And I try and learn things that we can apply to the battles here in Canada.
Anyway, I am going to go back to the UK for more hearings on April 11th.
There's another one.
It almost feels like it's endless because it's lawfare.
It's how the government goes about eradicating an enemy of the state.
I think you know because it's in the public domain that Elon Musk is paying for some of the legal bills out there, but we still are crowdfunding for the children in a trust fund set up for his kids because I don't mean to be morbid, but I have a fear, and I've talked to Tommy about this directly, that he may one day die, either at the hands of the police or more likely at the hands of some violent prisoner who is accidentally led into where Tommy is and polishes him off.
I hate to say those words out loud, but it is something I think we have to think about and plan for.
So what I'm doing with Tommy these days is besides talking to his lawyers and trying to marshal them, we have crowdfunded a trust fund for his kids in case, God forbid, Tommy leaves us too soon.
I think my journalism is making a difference.
I know it was read millions of times yesterday and the mainstream media there hates it, so I'll keep doing it.
A foreigner, like me, I'm a foreigner over there, can in a way operate better because I don't stick around for the peer pressure.
I think a reason why so many journalists are anti-Tommy is to say otherwise is so socially unacceptable over there.
Conflict of Interest00:15:11
You are disinvited to Christmas parties.
You're not invited to hang out with the cool kids, but I'm not going to those Christmas parties anyways.
I don't really have a big friend network there that might turn against me.
I have friends there for sure, but I think in a way a foreigner can write about Tommy Robinson more freely than a Brit can.
Anyways, forgive me that preamble.
It's just on my mind.
I'm slightly jet lagged.
But the reason I came home so quickly is obvious.
Canada has a big battle here.
And while it's important that I still cover Tommy Robinson, because that will have an effect not just in the UK, but around the world, we have a battle here, and it is a special duty.
The rebel news fights like hell.
And it was looking pretty good for a couple of years there, wasn't it?
I mean, really, around the start of the convoy in February 2022, that's when Justin Trudeau started declining in the polls.
And by the time 2023 came around, he was pretty far back.
And 2024 was pretty cool.
We were all daydreaming about super majorities and what we wanted Pierre Polyev to do next.
And then a series of unusual events happened.
Justin Trudeau was replaced by Mark Carney.
I call him Trudeau 2.0, but he's smarter and harder working.
And more than that, he doesn't have the scandals and the plagues that Trudeau had associated with him.
So of course you take him out of the picture.
Of course, the liberal vote is going to go up.
Mark Carney is now ahead in certain polls.
And in some betting markets, if you know what I mean, there are some of these online political betting markets where you can, really like betting on a basketball game or something, you can bet on an election and you put real money in.
And the thing about betting on an election is you don't have to root for the team that you like.
You can say, you know, I don't like the liberals, but I really think they're going to win.
And I'm going to put my money where my mouth is.
That's the difference.
Anyone can tell a pollster how they feel or tell their friends and family how they feel.
But if you had $100 riding on it, who do you really think is going to win?
And so in some ways, these betting markets can be more accurate than other opinion polls, especially when you have an enormous number of participants.
And some of these political betting markets have a huge base, so they shouldn't be taken lightly.
In other words, it is time to worry.
But it's not time to panic.
And it's important not to be demoralized.
First of all, you're not going crazy.
Don't worry.
People are not suddenly being fooled into thinking that Mark Carney is some great savior.
They're not.
If you look at polls, including from one of my favorite pollsters, David Coletto and Abacus, a lot of Mark Carney's support, support for the Liberal Party these days, is the collapse of the NDP.
Now, I know a vote is a vote, and so it doesn't necessarily make you feel better to know that the NDP is collapsing into the Liberals.
But it's important when I say don't be demoralized because it's not like conservatives who have been skeptical about Justin Trudeau for years are suddenly being tricked or horn-swoggled into voting for Mark Carney.
No, it's just NDPers who were really never serious about it.
Jagmeet Singh is not a serious person.
The NDP is not a serious party.
They just sort of park their vote with the NDP as a political statement, like wearing a Shea Guevara shirt.
But now that they see, and they probably would have voted for the NDP if it was going to be a Pierre Polyev conservative blowout.
I mean, why not then?
But if it's actually a closed vote, a lot of those NDP voters are smart enough to strategically say, wow, a vote actually matters now, and we should probably give it to the guy with the greatest likelihood of beating the Tory.
So don't think that suddenly people have gone mad and think that Mark Carney is a genius.
It's that they're saying, oh, this guy actually has a chance.
The media are certainly fresh and friendly.
The poll suggests he could pull off an upset, so let's vote strategically.
I think that's a lot of what's happening.
Like I said before, obviously just getting rid of Trudeau is going to move those numbers up because so many of his scandals are personally associated with him.
Now, of course, the media are awful.
They would look for an excuse to support anyone other than Pierre Polyev for ideological reasons and for personal and selfish reasons too, because, of course, Polyev has said he will end funding the CBC, and he has intimated that he would do similar for other media subsidies.
So just out of pure survival instincts, the media are going to support whoever is against Polyev.
But there are some journalists who are waking up.
Here's a clip of Bob Fife.
This is about a week old now, starting to ask some questions about Mark Carney and his failure to answer basic public policy questions, basic accountability questions.
Here's Bob Fife.
Well, what he doesn't tell us is how much he's worth.
I mean, that's really the question here.
Are you worth $10 million, $20 million, $50 million?
We have no idea.
Who is the person who's running the blind trust?
Is it your brother?
Is it, you know, I mean, if you're having an independent person who's supposed to take care of the blind trust, that person should be independent and far removed from Mr. Carney's assets.
We don't know who that is.
You know, is he requiring to sell all the stocks, which apparently you're supposed to, but has he sold all the stocks and his investments and anything that may put him in a conflict with the government?
Those are things that he needs to answer to Canadians.
And, you know, he doesn't want to answer those questions.
And you said he was a little testy.
He does not like tough questions from journalists.
He's used to a more compliant financial press when he was a central banker, and they're very much respectful of him.
Well, we're political reporters.
We have an obligation to ask the tough questions.
And that's something we're going to have to watch for during the campaign.
It's when he gets angry or annoyed or arrogant at journalists for pressing him on issues that he doesn't want to answer.
Bob Fife works for the Globe and Mail.
Of course, in so many ways, they're an official establishment regime media.
But I've got to give Bob Fife credit.
Him and the small team that he works with, have not been afraid to take on the liberals.
They broke, for example, the Jody Wilson-Raybold scandal.
They break much of the China scandals in this country.
So even though the Globe and Mail is typically a liberal-leaning newspaper, you have to give credit to their journalists.
Sometimes they actually fight the liberals.
Mark Carney, whenever he's pressed, it shows that he's brittle.
And it shows that he's not exactly used to being candid about things that he regards as private.
He's never been asked tough questions before, certainly not tough personal questions.
And I predict that he will campaign a little bit like how Joe Biden campaigned in the 2020 election, which is basically hiding, hiding in the basement.
What I mean by that is doing an announcement in a super-friendly media setting and just generally not going out into a circumstance where he's vulnerable.
There's been some interesting photo ops lately.
Both Pierre Polyev and Mark Carney have gone to heavy industrial sites like Steelworkers site.
When Polyev goes, all the people dressed up as steelworkers are, in fact, the steelworkers.
But when Mark Carney recently went, it was just him and a couple of his candidates dressed up as steelworkers.
There were no steel workers there.
I think that the shop was probably too certain that the steel workers would have heckled or bad-mouthed Carney.
I thought that was sort of fun.
But you're going to see a lot more screening out reporters because that's the best way of screening out uneasy questions.
Like a serious question we have is about his relationship with Ghillain Maxwell, the fixer for Jeffrey Epstein, the pedophile rapist.
I think that Mark Carney has a lot going for him.
He has a strong resume.
He is sort of likable on the outside.
He looks good.
He's not as theatrical and dramatique as Justin Trudeau is.
He's unlikely to say things like people kind.
But on the inside, he's actually just as mean as Trudeau.
His response to Rosemary Barton, the CBC's flagship liberal, was sort of astonishing.
Stephanie Levitz and then Rosemary Barton asked some really basic ethics questions that any MP, any party leader should ask.
And the response by Mark Carney was so startling.
It was sort of, how dare you?
How dare you imply that I'm not saint-like?
And don't you see I'm doing you such a favor by coming down from Olympus to save the country?
I want to play this.
I've played this before, but you just got to see this clip again.
Mark Carney thinks he is above us, above you, above journalists, above skeptical questions, and above complying with ex-thex disclosure.
Take a look.
I'm complying with the rules in advance.
Point final.
Yes.
There's no possible conflict of interest in your assets.
It's very difficult to believe.
Look inside yourself, Rosemary.
I mean, you start from a prior of conflict and ill will.
I have served in the private sector.
I have stood up for Canada.
I have left my roles in the private sector at a time of crisis for our country.
I'm complying with all the rules.
Your line of questioning is trying to invent new rules.
I'm complying with the rules that Parliament has laid out and the responsibilities of Ethics Commissioner.
And I will continue to comply with those rules.
You know, when I was a kid, I heard that Mr. T, the wrestler and larger-than-life personality, had a rider in his contract that no one was allowed to look him in the eye.
Now, I don't believe that.
I think that was just some urban legend.
But it wouldn't surprise me if Mark Carney has something like that.
You're not allowed to look at Mr. Carney in the eyes.
I don't know.
He has other things that are just a hubris that I'm sure he gets away with when he's with his friends and they clap and nod along.
He says things like, I know how the world works.
I mean, here's a clip of him saying that.
No, brother, I don't think you know how the world works.
The world is an enormous place, and I don't think any one person knows how the whole thing works.
I don't think you know how a lawnmower works.
I think you have someone else do it for you.
I don't think you've ever changed a tire in your car.
I don't think you have spent any time in a factory other than maybe in some merger and acquisition for Brookfield.
I don't think you know how it works when you have to struggle to make the bills to pay the bills and you have to cut back.
I don't think he actually knows how the world works.
Maybe how palaces work, but not how ordinary people who are just trying to make a go of it in our insane housing prices work.
No, I don't think that Mark Carney actually knows how to make the world, how the world works.
And I think he's actually always been a bit of a cheater.
Now, he wouldn't agree with that.
He would say, no, no, I just take opportunities and I know how the world works.
But here's what I mean by a cheater.
He has worked for public sector entities that have given him incredible inside information for decades.
First, he was the head of the Bank of Canada, then he was the head of the Bank of England.
In recent years, he's been a United Nations special emissary of climate or something.
So how does he amass so many millions of dollars when he's working as a civil servant?
Well, the answer is at the same time, he's got other things on the go, including being the chair of Brookfield Asset Management.
And just as the same time he was a special advisor to Justin Trudeau, Brookfield was doing deals with the government.
So, you see what I mean about a double dealer?
He was on both sides of that.
He was an advisor to the Canadian government while he was doing deals with the Canadian government.
You can't do that.
I know he thinks he's really important, and I know he's above scrutiny.
And how dare you ask him that and look inside yourself and all that.
But no, that is exactly what most people would call a conflict of interest.
Now, maybe at the UN, they don't care about that.
And maybe everyone at the UN is some kind of crook, but that's not actually how the world works.
For 99.9% of the people, the world does not work that you can be on both sides of a deal.
That's called an inside job.
That's called a conflict of interest.
It's called insider trading.
I mean, how do you get as rich as this guy by working as a public servant?
That ain't a public servant.
You know, I saw, I mean, Donald Trump is talking about Canada almost every day.
Let me show you a clip.
He's had a few.
Here he is saying he would prefer to battle against a liberal as prime minister than a conservative.
He's saying he would rather have Mark Carney beat Pierre Polly, but I don't think he knows either's name.
Take a look.
I've heard you say this in all of the talk about Canada becoming the 51st state.
Are you concerned that if they became the 51st state, they would be a very, very blue state, very, very big and very, very blue.
No, they might be, but it would, you know, you have that artificial line that goes that straight artifact that looked like it was drawn by a ruler, somebody with a, I don't mean a ruler like a king, I mean like a ruler, like a ruler, this way.
And it's just an artificial line that was drawn in the sand or in the ice.
And you know, Jen, Peter, just you add that to this country.
What a beautiful landmass, the most beautiful landmass anywhere in the world.
And it was just cut off for whatever reason.
It would be great.
Now, is it liberal?
Maybe.
But, you know, a conservative until I got involved, because I don't care who wins up there.
Frankly, probably would do better with the liberal than the conservative if you want to know the truth.
But just a little while ago, before I got involved and totally changed the election, which I don't care about, probably it's our advantage, actually.
But the conservative was leading against, I call him Governor Trudeau.
The Conservative was leading by 35 points.
So, you know, so I don't know about that.
I think Canada is a place like a lot of other places.
If you have a good candidate, the candidate's going to.
Patriotism and Politics00:06:33
Now, I don't know exactly what Trump means by this.
Maybe he, maybe just take it at face value.
Maybe he's saying he would rather negotiate against a liberal.
Maybe he thinks that a liberal is more pliable, more push-aroundable.
Maybe he thinks a liberal, by definition, is weaker.
I don't know what he means by that.
Maybe he thinks someone who's Canada first might be tougher or harder to get along with.
I really don't know.
As far as I know, neither Mark Carney nor Pierre Polyev have spoken to Trump, which is sort of crazy from Mark Carney's point of view, given that he's been prime minister for about a week.
I know why Pierre Polyev is worried.
Because if he makes contact with Donald Trump, which again would be non-standard given that Polyev is just the leader of the opposition, he would be painted as a traitor and a sellout and a mini Trump.
I think that's why Polyev has not actually reached out to Trump to try and solve things because he would be pilloried in the press.
But here's the thing about that patriotism and the Team Canada and all that.
It's fake.
The people who are now suddenly discovering their patriotism have, for the last 10 years, tried to destroy patriotism.
They're woke.
Are the ones who have dehistoried the country, de-eracinated it, vanilified our history?
There are people who, for example, are working on the black justice strategy that would have black reparations in Canada.
Reparations.
We didn't have slavery in this country.
It's where the black refugee slaves ran away to under the Underground Railroad.
That's so ahistorical, and it's about building divisiveness and importing foreign narratives of racial interaction.
That's just not Canada.
You cannot be a Canadian patriot.
You cannot say you love Canadian history and culture and our story and our geography, but also be the kind of party that takes Johnny McDonald off the dollar bill, takes the $10 bill, strips imagery off our passport, hides John A. McDonald's statues.
Doug Ford did that, but you just can't do that and say you're a patriot.
Here's Mark Carney saying he really believes in being woke.
There's a fever gripping America.
And while it rages, Canadians will remain resolute and true to our values.
While America engages in a war on woke, Canadians will continue to value inclusiveness.
You can't be woke and a Canadian patriot.
The two are at odds on purpose, because if you're woke, you say Canada is settlers, racist settlers who committed a genocide.
That's what woke means when it comes to Canada.
Mark Carney believes in carbon taxes, maybe not at the retail side, but if you look at his announcement when he said he was going to ban the carbon tax, not because it doesn't work, not because he's ideologically opposed to it.
He simply said that it was divisive.
Well, yeah, of course it is.
But he's not saying he doesn't like it.
It's so obviously just a tactical change on his part.
Mark Carney is not a Canadian patriot.
We don't even know how much time he's spent in this country at all in the last 10 or so years.
Why does he have three passports?
Does he have the Irish one for tax dodge reasons?
Why are his wife and kids still living outside of the country?
Are they going to come back to Canada or only if he wins?
There's so many questions.
And that's not even a malicious question about his patriotism, although he would surely be offended by it.
But really, has he just come back, like just in recent weeks, to rule over us?
If so, that's astonishing.
And all of this is my way of saying, look, don't lose your head.
Don't lose your head over these polls showing that it's neck and neck.
Obviously, the Conservatives need a new campaign tactic.
I mean, Trudeau's personality doesn't transpose over to Carney, and some of his policies don't either.
I think one thing is you can't out-liberal the Liberals, and they're trying to out-conservative the Conservatives.
That's what their move is on, for example, the Northern military initiatives.
So their move is on the carbon tax.
But I think it's still absolutely possible for the Conservatives to win.
I think the Liberals are, in fact, making it easier than they should for the Conservatives to win.
I see that Mark Carney recently hired the senior executive from an outrageous thing called the Century Initiative.
I don't know if you've heard of that.
That's this wacky NGO dedicated to tripling Canadian immigration levels to make it so there are 100 million people in the country, not the 40 million we have now.
Could you imagine if everything Trudeau has done on immigration, shocking numbers, which has made all of us poor, which has brought enormous crime, cultural friction, especially anti-Semitism and Sikh extremism and all sorts of battles on our streets.
Could you imagine someone saying that's not enough?
What we have to do is triple those numbers.
We have to bring in two times more Canada into Canada in the next 10 or 15 years.
Could you imagine someone doing that?
That's who Mark Carney has hired as a senior position.
I think that shouts as a weakness.
If you look at Canadian issues, immigration has really grown as an issue in the past couple of years.
There's no longer a, I think it was always a fake consensus in favor of mass immigration, but it is no longer here.
I think this is the time for the Conservative Party to go tough on immigration.
That's something that Mark Carney and the Liberals will never be able to steal.
I think going hard on crime is a similar issue, too.
I guess what I'm here to say is it's not over.
Don't lose your mind.
Don't read too much into the polls.
In fact, sometimes those polls are designed to demoralize us.
Don't worry that conservatives are being tricked.
They're not.
In fact, I think this is the opportunity for the conservatives to become more conservative and go places Mark Carney can't go.
And by the way, I think the election is going to be called this weekend.
There's still a lot of times to put questions to Mark Carney, questions that even Bob Fife won't ask.
Israelis Allow Hamas Control?00:09:27
We'll show you some of those in the weeks ahead.
Stay with us.
My interview with Daniel Pipes is next.
Well, the world has been riveted by Donald Trump's attempts to broker a peace between Russia and Ukraine and Vladimir Zelensky's frenetic diplomacy, both in the United States and in Europe.
At the same time, Canada has been navel-gazing with our own political internal problems, the Liberal Party putting parliament on hold till they sort things out.
And now we're in a crash election, or we will be in about 48 hours.
And of course, the tariffs and Donald Trump basically takes up all the oxygen in the room, which is different from a few months ago when every day the news was focused on the war between Israel and Hamas.
It's almost as if that fell off the front pages.
But alas, things are heating back up again.
What is going on between Israel and Gaza?
What's going on in the region?
Is it possible that Donald Trump can have an Abraham Accords round two?
He's mused about ideas, some of them creative, like his idea to turn Gaza into a Dubai-like gem in the Middle East.
I'm not sure how realistic that is.
Who follows these things closely?
Who can we trust to let us know what's actually going on?
Well, it's our friend Daniel Pipes.
He's the boss of the Middle East Forum, and we're delighted to have him back on the show.
Dr. Pipes, great to see you again.
I suppose we're here in Canada, and Canada seems so important when you're in Canada.
And of course, it's important to 40 million Canadians.
What happened to the story we were all following until January, namely the war between Israel and Hamas?
Has that war started to ratchet up again?
What's the status?
Well, thank you for the kind words, Hezra.
As you may recall, just before his inauguration, Donald Trump, while still president-elect, pushed through a deal between Israel and Hamas.
He really pushed it.
I mean, notably, his envoy demanded that Benjamin Antony break this out to talk to him about the deal.
So it was very much pushed through.
And it was a complex deal with three different stages, many different paragraphs and clauses.
The first one was implemented, and the second one was being discussed.
And basically what happened is that Israel-Hamas did not come to terms on the second round.
And therefore, Israel, a few days ago, restarted the war with Hamas.
And therefore, the Houthis in Yemen are threatening to restart the attacks on Red Sea shipping.
And therefore, all sorts of other lux is taking place in and around Israel and the Palestinians.
The war is not just being fought in the Middle East.
That's where the guns and the bombs and the rockets are being shot.
But of course, it's a psychological political war all around the world.
It's been a propaganda battlefield on social media and elsewhere.
And it felt like the mood of that psychological battle changed when Trump won in November, because, of course, he's much less permissive of Islamic terrorism and basically America being, he's very assertive militarily.
And he showed in his first term not to have a lot of patience for Palestinian terrorism.
So it felt like the glorious October 7th massacre revolutionaries had a moral setback.
I don't know, maybe that's an aesthetic observation that has no ties to what's happening on the ground.
I guess another way I'm saying that is it felt like in the November election of Trump, Hamas lost and their momentum would soon be spent.
And of course, when Hezbollah was decimated and the head of Hezbollah was killed and then Syria fell, it felt like a general collapse of Islamist or terrorist groups.
Is Hamas still powerful?
What do they still run?
I guess I'm trying to separate the propaganda battles which play out in social media with the military battles on the ground.
How is Hamas doing?
Who's running it?
What are their weapons like?
Who's funding them?
Well, you're absolutely right that towards the end of the Biden administration, the very weak, passive Biden administration, a number of developments took place in the Middle East, very conducive to Israel and indeed American and Western interests more broadly.
Then came Donald Trump, even before his presidency, as I just indicated, with this plethora of energy and doing everything all the time.
The surprising thing, and really I can't account for it, is that there are two developments in the Middle East that don't make sense to me, one of which is what you're pointing to.
Hamas did not go on to do the second stage.
From my point of view, this was a good deal for Hamas.
Basically what it did was give the Hamas possession of some 50 Israelis, dead and alive, the ability to close an Israeli attack on Gaza.
It looked very good from the Hamas point of view.
And simultaneously, Donald Trump has offered to negotiate with the Iranians.
And the Iranians are, like Hamas, in a weak position.
As you indicated, they lost their ally in Syria.
They also lost their air defense network after the Israelis destroyed it in late 2024.
They're weak.
The real, their currency, has gone up to nearly a million to the U.S. dollar.
Everything is looking bad.
And yet, abruptly, immediately, the Iranian government said, no, Trump can go jump in a lake.
We're not going to discuss anything with him.
I would have thought they would negotiate.
And the Iranians are known as wily, bizarre-i rug merchants who would extend the negotiations over weeks and months, yet it didn't happen.
So in both cases, Hamas and Tehran chose not to go the negotiating route and therefore opening themselves up to both Israeli and American military action.
I can't explain it.
I don't know what's going on through their heads.
It really does make no sense to me.
Well, help me understand something, and I don't know if you can.
I mean, in Canada, our Canadian government, which I think is very much supportive, one of the most supportive NATO countries in respect of Hamas, just sending tens of millions of dollars more into Gaza.
I think a lot of that is going to be either stolen or outrightly just received by Hamas or Hamas-affiliated organizations.
Who is actually running things in the Gaza Strip?
Is it under Israeli domination?
Like, is the border with Egypt sealed?
Are there Hamas mayors running around?
Who's in control of the territory?
It doesn't feel like it is pacified or demilitarized.
Like, I just, I don't know what it would look like on the ground.
It feels like it's unfinished work.
Well, the Israelis appear to have decided not to take control of the territory.
It's not that big.
It's about 30 kilometers by 20.
They could have.
They chose not to.
They have been engaged in raids, but they have not actually taken control of the territory.
And therefore, there's a chaotic quality to it.
Hamas, to the best of my understanding, retains control.
It doesn't control everything everywhere.
But insofar as there is an authority in Gaza, it is not the Israeli defense forces.
It is Hamas.
And the Israelis appear to have allowed this.
They appear to have not made efforts to disrupt the Hamas control.
So, for example, the aid that you mentioned, Canadian and otherwise, goes to Hamas, which then distributes it, keeps a great deal for itself, whether it be food, fuel, or money, and then distributes some of it to the population at large.
But it's Hamas that's in charge.
Hamas is still in charge.
It has not been destroyed.
The Israelis have talked about destroying Hamas.
They've talked about total, complete victory.
They have not, in fact, from what I can tell at a distance, taken the steps necessary to accomplish those two goals of destruction of Hamas and victory over Hamas.
Hamas In Charge00:14:56
You know, Trump has been very sympathetic to the hostages.
He's met with released hostages or the family of hostages that were murdered.
Even on his inauguration day, he called them up to his speech and he sort of forgot to dismiss them.
So they stood on the stage as he gave an enormous part of his inauguration remarks.
He's met with them at the White House.
And after that, he's talked about the horrific things done to them.
And he's used language like Israel can do anything, you know, finish them off.
Like he's used such dramatic language, very different from the, you know, ambiguous, ambivalent language of the left.
I wonder, does that follow through?
Like Trump is a very rhetorical person.
He uses language dramatically, hyperbole, social media.
Like it's riveting, it's entertaining.
How much of that gets implemented in the field?
Like I remember Israel, he once said, well, Israel, why did you sell a bunch of weapons to Israel?
I think he said, because they paid for it or something.
Like, I mean, just funny little one-liners.
But has Israel indeed been given the green light to finish the job?
Is the holdup on the Israeli side?
I just, maybe there's a larger deal at play.
Let me throw one more thing into it.
I remember when Israel detonated all those pagers and it just decimated the leadership of Hezbollah in almost a Hollywood movie style.
Jared Kushner, who I think was instrumental in the first Abraham Accords, he wrote a long letter on Twitter.
It was a public letter.
And he said that he had studied the map for hours and he could never figure out a way around Hezbollah.
He felt like it was giving Iran a veto in the region because it had so many weapons and it was much more sophisticated than Hamas.
And he remarked after that amazing preemptive strike by Israel that this made a whole raft of possible things.
This had different scenarios possible than never were before.
Maybe that's obvious, but it was interesting to hear it from one of the architects of the original Abraham Accords.
He said, finally, maybe we can solve the regional issues because this implacable problem has been solved.
So maybe something is afoot beneath the surface that we don't see with the Saudis, with other parties.
Maybe that's a reason Israel is holding off.
I don't know.
That's nothing but speculation on my part.
I'm just waiting for things to be mopped up and I don't see it.
And I'm trying to understand why.
As you're saying, maybe there are things going on that we don't know about.
That's certainly possible.
But assuming that's not the case, and that we basically do understand the situation.
The Israelis have been ambivalent because they've had two goals.
On the one hand, as Benjamin Etanyahu has articulated, I count some 80 times.
He wants total victory, complete victory, absolute victory, and the like over Hamas.
Very clear.
Destruction of Hamas.
No more Hamas.
On the other hand, Hamas took some 250 hostages, of which some 50, dead and alive, remain.
And the return of the hostages, whether alive or dead, has been a parallel, urgent, paramount goal, not so much of the government, but of the population.
Poll after poll has shown the population sees the return of hostages as the most important goal.
More important by implication than victory or destruction of Hamas.
Victory over or destruction of Hamas.
So they've been at least two goals, and they're incompatible.
Because either you're negotiating with Hamas for the hostages or you're destroying it.
Can't do both at once.
And it's a very bizarre thing.
I like to contrast, this may sound odd at first, but I'd like to contrast Pearl Harbor, December 7th, 1941, with Hamas' attack on October 7th, 2023.
Hamas' attack led to 1,200 deaths.
Pearl Harbor led to 2,400 deaths.
So, same order of magnitude.
Pearl Harbor was about destroying ships and planes, not about killing people.
Yeah, that's nice from a Japanese point of view.
But the point was there was all out war coming and you destroy the ships and the planes.
Hamas did not attack a military base.
It attacked young people at a music festival.
It wasn't interested in war, the implements of war.
It was interested in people, killing people and taking hostages.
Imagine that the Japanese had gone to Hawaii and taken hostages.
Imagine that the whole American approach in response was to get the return of hostages.
It's absurd.
And yet that is what the Israelis have done.
They've made the return of hostages so important.
And therefore, the government, the military, have been constrained because they are worried that if they are too aggressive, they take too many steps to destroy Hamas and control Gaza, the hostages will be killed, will be murdered.
So that's why I think the Israelis have been so reticent and inconsistent, talking absolute victory on the one hand, negotiating in fine detail over how the hostages are going to be released, where and when and who and so forth.
It's a very, very strange thing.
And I fall really not in general, I've been a critic of the Israeli security establishment.
I've seen the Israeli public as being tough, security establishment as being appeasing.
I'm sorry to say it's the reverse now.
It's the Israeli public that's been appeasing.
Let me ask you one last question.
I appreciate your time.
Trump talked about Gaza, taking it over, rebuilding it, maybe relocating Palestinians.
I could see glimmers of an idea under it, like to create, I mean, Gaza should be beautiful.
It's on the Mediterranean, which is notorious in a good way for its beautiful beaches.
I mean, this is the same place where, you know, Barcelona or so many Italian or even Tel Aviv has got a great beach.
It could be wonderful.
It could be a Dubai.
But you've brainwashed 2 million people there over decades to be absolutely Nazi-like in their views towards Israel.
Like it's shocking to me that the popular people say, oh, it's just amongst the population.
In polls by Arab pollsters, 75% of the population supports terrorism even now.
I don't read it differently.
Go ahead and tell me.
I think if you look at the polls, both before October 7th and after, now after is very difficult, but especially before, polls of Gaza in particular, you see a lot of dissent.
You also anecdotally see a lot of dissent.
There are quite a few Gazans who are really upset, who want real changes.
And I think it's a mistake to dismiss the entire population as Nazi-like, as murderous.
I think there are plenty of Gazans who want out, especially now.
But look, you know, historically, the West Bank was less hardline vis-à-vis Israel than Gaza.
Gaza was the place where they really, really felt strongly, anti-Zionist.
But as a result of experience of the last close to 20 years, where the West Bank has basically been left alone, the Israelis go in, they take someone out, but they basically left it alone.
In contrast, Gaza, because Hamas has over and over again, I think six times, attacked Israel and therefore been attacked and returned by Israel and had massive destruction of buildings and infrastructure and water and sewage, electricity.
The Gazans are no longer the hardliners.
Poll after poll after poll for years now have shown the Gazans are more open to working with Israel.
So I think it would be very advantageous to Israel to find those Gazans to encourage that sentiment.
I believe what the Israelis should be doing is looking for Gazans who will work with them, not necessarily friends, but people who work with them.
And I would like to see the Israelis sponsor the Gaza-run administration and security force that will control Gaza.
I'd like to see them do what they did not do after they took Gaza and the West Bank in 1967, which is to run a tough, police state-like operation where if you stay out of politics, you're fine.
You get involved in politics, you're in trouble.
Police state, I mean like Egypt and Jordan, the neighboring countries.
This is not North Korea, but you and I, as North Americans, would not want to live there.
But you can live a peaceful life there.
I'd like to see the Israelis build that kind of administration.
They've not done it.
Netanyahu has talked about it about a year ago.
He talked about this as the goal.
But there's so many distractions, so many tensions and pressures that it's not been implemented.
I hope they will get to that point.
You know, it was August of 2023 that Rebel News had a mission.
We called it the Abraham Accords trip.
We went to Israel for a week, and then we flew directly from Tel Aviv to Dubai.
And on both sides, we met with people talking about the Abraham Accords.
And it felt almost like a utopian time.
It felt like everything was possible.
And to land on an El Al jet, flying over Saudi Arabia, landing in Dubai, having people with Emirati headdress saying, Welcome to Dubai and stamping you with a passport that obviously just came from Israel was so heartwarming.
Like, I mean, myself, I thought anything is possible.
And for the first time, as I walked around Dubai and then Abu Dhabi, look, they have a Holocaust Museum in the UAE and not celebrating the Holocaust.
Let me jump in, you know, lamenting it, mourning it, memorializing it.
There's actually a state-built synagogue and church next to a mosque in Abu Dhabi that's used.
There's Chabad rabbis say they get less hassle in Dubai than they do in New York City, incredibly.
I felt like everything was possible.
And I remember standing in front of a large mosque in Dubai, and instead of feeling fear, I felt curiosity.
And I could admire the art and the design of it because I no longer felt like it was a source of danger to me.
For the first time in my life, I was in a Muslim country and I didn't feel danger or hate.
And I left that trip so encouraged and enthused.
And then two months later, a Nazi-like massacre.
Do you think we can get back on track for that hopeful Abraham Accords round two?
Like, do you think it's possible?
Or has Gaza screwed things up, which I think was part of the purpose of it?
I do think it's possible.
Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the United Arab Emirates more broadly, are the leaders of the Arab/slash Muslim world.
What Egypt was in the 1960s, what Iran was in the 1990s, UAE is today.
It is the leader.
It has money.
It has worldwide networks.
It has prestige.
It's a place people aspire to go to.
So I think that model endures.
Yes, it's been pushed aside for the time being by Gaza.
But I don't think Gaza, as a model, has no money, has no high-rises, has no glamour, has no attraction.
I think we will come out of this period intact.
Well, I'm going to disagree with you only on one thing: the glamour.
I look across the West.
I look at New York City, Toronto, Montreal, London, and all that Gaza has is glamour in the hearts of Marxist, anti-Fa, anti-Western dissidents across the West.
It is the glamorous movement of the era.
Even Girata Thunberg has, you know, thrown away her climate activism.
She's now a Gaza activist.
And of course, that's fueled by the- For the hard left, yes.
Yeah.
But the hard left is not that powerful.
Well, it feels powerful to me when I look at our universities.
When I see 100,000 people marching in London, England, chanting from the river to the sea, I feel like they're powerful.
Demographically, I feel like they're powerful.
They have will and impact that's beyond their numbers, to be sure.
But I think their moment has passed.
Let me give the illustration of the United States House of Representatives, where the so-called squad is made up, depends how you're candidate of four to six members, maybe eight even out of 435.
1%, 2%.
It's very small demographically, but very loud and drove the agenda to a certain extent.
I think that moment has passed.
I think the period of 2020 to 22 was a high watermark for the hard left.
And it leached into all sorts of predictable areas, such as toilets, public toilets, such as fashion.
Having fat people become fashion models.
I think that's all in a treat.
Now, I don't deny that the outspoken, determined hard left has an outsized impact, but I don't think it can drive developments.
I don't think that Gaza can outpace the UAE.
Well, I hope you're right because I'm here in Canada and I see the relentless march of the hard left.
Now, I think a lot of that's driven by mass immigration, but we won't get into that now.
Thanks For Spending The Time00:02:35
Dr. Pipes, what a pleasure to catch up with you.
And we followed this battle quite closely.
Of course, Donald Trump has completely disrupted everything: foreign affairs, economics, Western relations, NATO.
It's quite a dramatic moment.
So it's good to talk about this important issue again.
Thanks very much for spending the time with us.
Thank you for inviting me.
Right on.
There you have it.
Dr. Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum.
Stay with us.
More ahead.
Hey, welcome back.
Your letters to me on Trudeau's two pensions, Crazy Boy Radio, says, not to mention the extra $400 million he has received in office.
You know what?
I don't think that there is a source for that.
We know that Mark Carney has made a lot of money on the side while working for government.
And we know that American senators have, and some of them disclose that wealth, and that's how we know they're so wealthy.
They're fancy stock trades.
But I don't think there's any evidence that Justin Trudeau has amassed $400 million while in office.
It wouldn't shock me if he had.
I mean, we know the Chinese would happily have paid it, but I don't think there's any evidence of that.
If you have any, he's sent it over, and boy, we'll toot that horn.
Mikey Boy says, Franco Territano's name and the way he looks is a character out of Goodfellas.
And that is exactly who I want staying on top of the far-left liberals, taxpayer-funded deficit spending, a smart young man who has a great future ahead of him.
Thank you for serving Canadians.
Well, I like Franco a lot, and I hope you're not casting an aspersion there.
I really like Franco.
I think he's got a great attitude.
He's got high energy.
He's loyal to taxpayers.
I love his name too.
I think he's just an absolutely top-notch guy.
I'm sure he'll take your compliment in the spirit it's intended.
On Tommy Robinson, ABM says, what a disgrace that has taken someone outside Britain to bring this to the court.
Well done, Elon.
You're referring to Elon Musk and the fact that he has, since the beginning of the year, been funding Tommy's legal fees.
And I think it's amazing, and it shows that Elon puts his money where his mouth is.
Well, that's the show for today, and that's it for the week.
Until next time, on behalf of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home.