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Oct. 11, 2023 - Ron Paul Liberty Report
40:05
Israel, Gaza, And WWIII Vibes, With Guest Anya Parampil

Four days after the dramatic assault by Hamas forces on Israel, it appears Tel Aviv is about to send ground forces into an urban warfare situation. Neocons at home are urging a US attack on Iran. One and maybe two US carrier groups are in or approaching the region. War propaganda is blasting full force. Investigative journalist Anya Parampil joins today's Liberty Report to try and make sense of this week's staggering events.

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Hamas Operation Analysis 00:14:36
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning into the Liberty Report.
Dr. Paul is away for the day, but we will soldier on and do our duty.
Thankfully, today, you won't have to just listen to me because we have a special guest joining us.
And that special guest is an old friend of mine.
She's an investigative reporter.
She works at the Gray Zone, which I highly recommend as a top news site if you want to understand what's going on.
She was a speaker at the Ron Paul Institute's most recent conference in Washington, D.C., and is the author of the upcoming book, Corporate Coup.
I'm proud to say that Anya Parampil is joining us from Washington, D.C. Anya, are you there?
I am, and it's an honor to be here.
Oh, that's great.
It's great to have you on.
Well, we were talking before the show started about how we've been, you know, spending about 20 hours a day trying to figure out what the heck is going on in the Middle East and what the response will be, what we might expect, how bad things might be for all sides.
And the conclusion is we don't really know.
Either of us don't, neither of us really know, but we can speculate, and that's basically all we can do.
And really, it looks like about five or ten minutes before we started, there have been some big developments that, again, we don't know what they mean or what's going to happen, but it looks like, just from what we've seen, that there is some activity on Israel's northern border and eastern border, i.e. Lebanon and Syria.
Looks like a lot of drones have been launched.
Again, we don't know what to expect, but do you think this might be Anya Hezbollah entering the war in earnest?
My read right now is that everybody is waiting to see what Israel's next move actually is, if they're going to go ahead with the ground invasion of Gaza.
And what many retired U.S. military generals, I heard General Jack Keene, for example, on Fox call for Israel to dismantle Hamas completely, even discussing the possibility of essentially if Israel's intelligence networks within Gaza fail, which we could probably already say they will, judging from what has taken place over the last several days,
which demonstrated a major intelligence failure on the Israeli part.
General Jack Keene actually said if their intelligence network in Gaza fails to dismantle Hamas through their infiltration and through their double agents, then we might be looking at a Fallujah-style street battle door-to-door fight in Gaza, which I think Israel is very, very wary of carrying out.
They would be essentially a reoccupation, military occupation of Gaza.
And this is something that the Israelis have discussed as an option for years, but never moved forward with because the Israelis would take a serious toll.
And that's if you're just talking about the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.
Hezbollah has already said in Lebanon that they have effectively are part of the war.
Not that they have entered the war, that they will enter the war, but they are a part of the war.
They are there alongside Hamas.
If this escalates to a point where Hamas needs more assistance, I do believe Hezbollah will become engaged.
And honestly, based on my conversations with people throughout the region for years, All throughout Africa and the Middle East, people that I talk to, there is a sense in many ways that Israel has been pushing toward this regional confrontation, which may include Hezbollah, or which will ultimately include Hezbollah and other actors in the region for years, and that it was an inevitability.
The question is just whether or not this is the big war.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a question of timing too, whether this is the big thing with Hezbollah kicking it off.
And I was listening to one of the spaces a couple days ago, I think, and they were saying, well, Hezbollah missed an opportunity.
They should have done it right while the Hamas attack was taking place and the Israeli army were completely discombobulated and disoriented.
A friend of someone that I know who has a long military career, he had a little bit different of a perspective.
And I think it's similar to what you were saying, which is they may well wait until the Israeli military is bogged down in Gaza.
As you say, with urban warfare, the Israelis are very risk-averse.
They're like Americans.
They don't like to see their soldiers die.
And putting 100,000 Israeli troops inside of an urban warfare situation is going to cause a lot of problems.
And this individual that I spoke with said that may be the time that they decide to do it.
Well, then maybe they split the difference because if what we're seeing right now, and we haven't been able to verify very much, if that is Hezbollah going in big, well, we know that Israel has amassed its troops outside of Gaza and it's ready to go in.
It also might be an opportune moment for them to do this to distract them from going in or to cause them to split their forces.
I don't know.
What do you make of the timing?
I think really we should look at what happened on October 7th as a military operation.
I mean, it is true that there was this music festival that was taking place right next to a military base.
Extremely unfortunate timing and location.
I am not sure.
I'm not convinced that was the target of the Hamas operation.
It's very clear to me that there was this long-standing plan to infiltrate Israel and take these military hostages.
And that's the goal, I believe, of that operation was to get the hostages, take them into Gaza, into Palestinian, into Hamas-controlled territory, and force the Israelis to actually negotiate a prisoner swap because there are thousands of Palestinian political prisoners in Israel, including children, including grandfathers,
including the kind of people that you're hearing about having been taken hostage by Hamas and currently in Gaza.
So I certainly think the best outcome, if I were in the U.S. leadership as an American right now, I would say our only interest is an immediate cessation of hostilities and a prisoner swap.
I think that would be an excellent outcome here.
I don't want to see the Israeli hostages executed.
I don't want to see Gaza bombed into a million pieces.
And I don't want to see a war.
And I don't think Hezbollah wants to see a war either when someone might criticize, you pointed out someone criticizing Hezbollah for not acting right away or getting involved.
No one.
And I don't even think Hamas, in this case, Israel for once, does not want this full-scale war because it will be so incredibly ugly.
We think Ukraine has been horrendous.
Well, if this urban war warfare scenario plays out in Gaza, that would be Ukraine on steroids and then add to the mix the possibility for Hezbollah and more regional forces to enter.
You're opening up the door to World War III and because of the Israelis nuclear conflict.
So I don't think Hezbollah wanted to pull the trigger right away.
This is really a test of the Israelis.
Netanyahu is in a very weak political position.
Israel internally is facing a lot of political strife.
And so I think the Palestinians took this moment to strike, catch them by surprise, which by all accounts, as far as I understand, they did.
Netyahu had maybe they had some warning, but they could never have believed that something like this, which was on a military level a successful Operation Hamas for Hamas, would be possible.
It's interesting that we're not really hearing much about the military success of it, which you have to say in any measure was a great military success in the sense that you have a non-army, you have a militia essentially that was able to penetrate what was supposed to be impenetrable.
You weren't supposed to be able to get into Israel.
You weren't supposed to be able to take over military bases and take prisoners from military bases.
It's somewhat interesting that we're not hearing a lot about that.
And it's understandable why.
Because, as you say, it was a massive failure on the part of Israel.
It does strike me a little bit, and I've said it, I think, yesterday, of how when our weapons were actually tested in warfare in Ukraine, they turned out to be not that great.
Our patriot systems not that great.
And now we're seeing the Iron Dome not that great.
The Israeli military not that great, at least in terms of how it was advertised as being invincible.
But I think what we're seeing in the propaganda instead, and this is no way to excuse it, is the humanitarian disaster, is the what looks at least to many people, myself included, like a wanton slaughter of civilians initially on the part of whether it was Hamas or people affiliated with them.
That seems to be taking front and center over the slightly more interesting, I guess from an analytical perspective, ability of Hamas to be very innovative in the use of all sorts of different techniques.
It's almost a David and Goliath situation because they were able to overcome this military that was supposed to be the strongest in the Middle East.
Absolutely.
And I think that was part of the operation.
The goal of the operation was to demonstrate to the world, I believe, the perspective of the Palestinians, which is that Israel is a paper tiger.
And this is part of, as you brought up U.S. weapons in Ukraine, an overall history that we're living through right now that is a reflection of the decline of this, what is mostly the transatlantic West, which Israel is an extension of.
Israel is essentially the satellite host in the Middle East representing the British, United States, Western European, transatlantic axis that emerged after World War II.
And that network, that axis, which was supposed to have reigned supreme or did have has reigned supreme since then is collapsing on so many levels, whether in terms of the financial networks or in terms of whether or not it can actually confront Russia, which it thought would just be easy like that, right?
That the Russians would be defeated, that their economy would sink.
Well, we're learning that we in the West didn't have a full picture of the world, the strength of rising powers and other forces.
And part of that other world is the Palestinian resistance.
People might not understand also how the Palestinian resistance relates to Iran or Russia, for example.
As Russia rises as a strengthened power, that does create space for Palestine to assert more of its strength.
And so I prefer to look at because, yes, the propaganda is there, the images of war are horrible.
To get an emotional reaction out of us, that's why they're telling us this is Israel's 9-11, because they're asking for our permission to escalate to an extreme manner that we should resist.
Because look what happened during our 9-11.
Did our emotional, impassioned, rah-rah response work out for us or anyone else?
No, it didn't.
We have to be measured.
And I prefer to look at events like what happened on October 7th and try to interpret the history in kind of a scientific way where it's about force.
Every force, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
Israel's occupation, Israel's military aggressions against Palestine and against, I mean, I've been to Gaza, I've seen the horrible humanitarian conditions that they're forced to live under by the Israeli regime.
This all has a reaction.
You can't stop history from and people from moving and responding to the conditions around them.
And that's all we're seeing play out here.
It is kind of, it feels as though history is boiling over, bubbling over in this really intense pot.
What's interesting is you talk about the shifting sand, the tectonic shift that we're seeing.
Call it the rise of the global south.
There are many ways of referring to it.
Some say it's overplayed.
But what I find ironic is that the U.S. has actually hastened everything that's happening with the neocon involvement in trying to overthrow Russia.
You know, I mean, I think that's the U.S. policy in Russia and Ukraine that has had the reverberations that have left Israel, in a sense, sort of an orphan in the region because you're seeing Iran and Saudi Arabia, with the help of China of all places, burying the hatchet.
You're seeing Syria being brought back into the fold of the Arab community there.
You're seeing all sorts of things that you never would have expected to happen.
The only place in the region that really wasn't evolving was Israel.
They were sort of stuck, you know, frozen in an iceberg.
And as you say, the pressure sort of exploded.
And it's just sort of ironic for an American foreign policy that seems unilateral or completely without exception in favor of Israel.
It's somewhat ironic that they've been put, I think, into this precarious position by the aggressive neocon foreign policy in Ukraine and Russia.
Yeah, it's the downfall of every empire is hubris and bad policy.
And it's why there's that great Ron Paul ad from what was it, 2012 or no, 2008, when something about how like the greatest Chinese plot to destroy the United States is just to sit back and watch what the U.S. does from the inside.
U.S. Carriers and Regional Tensions 00:11:53
And that is true.
We are our own worst enemy.
And to see how our policy in Ukraine has backfired and now Israel as well, I think, I mean, think about the fact that there are now U.S. ships sailing into the region, 5,000 U.S. troops.
Israel cannot move forward with this war, I don't believe, because of everything we just said earlier about how the warfare in the actual street, Fallujah-style street fighting, will play out, how Hezbollah could become involved.
And in fact, actually, I was watching CNN because this is the time when I like to watch mainstream media the most during events like this because you really get a picture, a window into the way our elite, the people making decisions, are thinking.
And or maybe it was actually MSNBC.
They had Jeremy Bash on, this retired CIA functionary.
And he said that Israel is regarded, if you're just speaking from a technical aspect, is pretty much a collection of 10 military targets.
Hezbollah can come in there with their air power and strike them right now if they wanted to.
And Israel would be militarily incapacitated.
It would be that easy.
And their soldiers, as you're saying, aren't necessarily prepared or wanting to fight in direct insane combat.
So Israel can really only move forward in this conflict with real U.S. help and support.
That's why it's so dangerous that you have figures like Nikki Haley that are out there and not setting a boundary or defining how U.S. interests are different from Israel's security interests.
If we define our interests as Israel's security interests, then we are days away from having a U.S. ship, naval ship sunk by who knows which player in the region if this escalates to a regional war.
And I don't want that.
Well, you said out there when you said Nikki Haley.
So I think that's probably the quote of the day.
She's definitely out there.
U.S. involvement is serious.
You're right.
We've got a carrier group there already.
Supposedly another one is coming.
And it does raise a question of U.S. direct involvement if it gets to that point.
I mean, you make a good point about an aircraft carrier being sunk.
I mean, there are so many possibilities of that happening, including false flags.
We've seen those in the past.
You're right.
I'm sure your viewers are very aware of the USS Liberty and the history there.
It happens.
It's happened.
It could happen again.
Here's an interesting quote I was going to read from Vladimir Putin.
He's commenting on the U.S. carrier group there.
And I think it's something certainly to ponder.
He says, I don't understand why the United States is dragging aircraft carrier groups there into the Mediterranean Sea.
One, are they announcing, one, are they announcing a second one?
I don't really see at this point, are they going to bomb Lebanon or what?
What are they going to do?
Or did you just decide to scare someone?
There are people there who are no longer afraid of anything.
It is not necessary to solve problems this way, but to look for a compromise solution.
This is what you need to do.
Of course, such actions escalate the situation.
And it does remind me sort of of the nature of U.S. diplomacy.
There's no such thing as compromise.
They only know you do what we say, you know?
I mean, what U.S. diplomacy?
All I see Anthony Blinken doing is opening up soft power cuisine State Department bureaus about food, now hiring every famous chef in the United States to act as an agent of U.S. soft power.
Then he launched his music diplomacy initiative where he's tarnishing the legacy of muddy waters and great Americans.
That was the only decent thing he did.
If he would just do that all the time, it would be fine.
Just sit there and do your thing, man.
Well, that's the only thing he does.
He doesn't actually do real diplomacy.
And so, yeah, the fact that there's no U.S. official out there immediately calling for a cessation of hostilities and a prisoner swap and offering to negotiate that, I think, speaks volumes.
That should be the position of anyone who wants peace.
Instead, you have people saying that we need to give Israel everything it needs to defend itself, which is frightening because the Israelis are ultimately going to want us.
They want us.
And when you send a carrier to the, I mean, the Putin quote is very good because, oh, yeah, we can talk about the U.S. liberty and possibilities for false flags, but once you put a U.S. carrier in the region, you are also making it a sitting duck for not only our allies to do a false flag, but an enemy.
Talking about a trophy.
Yeah, it's a sitting duck sitting there just, and what Putin said is true.
There are people in the region that aren't afraid of anything anymore.
And why?
Because we have waged this insane, endless war on them, whether it was through Syria, whether it was through Iraq.
All of these wars are connected.
All of the groups that we are dealing with that we are facing right now in the Middle East came out of that, came out of the war that has been waging for the past 20 years and longer.
I mean, including since 1948.
So how are we really going to deal with that ultimately unless we get involved?
I think that Americans should be focused on calling for peace and also withdrawing our presence from the region, whether that means our troops sitting in Iraq, Syria, anywhere else, they are also sitting ducks.
I don't want them to be hit.
And the people in our government are marching us in a direction that is putting Americans in danger.
Yeah, you know, there are so many people in the foreign policy establishment in the U.S., the UNI Party, really, who are, as you well know, who have pledged themselves to Israel.
But the thing that I find strange is that they support Israel, so they say, but they put Israel in a position, I mean, they've done the same thing with Ukraine.
People like, and we'll talk about Graham, Lindsey Graham, and others, I mean, all of these people, you know who they are.
They purport to be so pro-Israel, but it seems to me as if they're using Israel as a means, as a proxy to get to Iran, which is their real enemy.
It's the same way they used Ukraine to get to Russia, which is their big enemy.
They're doing Israel no favors by encouraging a multi-front war against them.
Iran, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinians.
I mean, this is literally what they're encouraging, these people to go to war with Israel.
I think, like, with friends like these, who needs enemies, right?
I can't imagine the average Israeli being thrilled about having war on all sides.
Absolutely not.
And I think there's a faction of the American and the Israeli establishment that are part of the same, where they both, or both this single network, would like to see the United States and Israel in a direct confrontation with Iran.
There are people in Israel and people in Washington who would like that to happen.
And you can see from how certain pro-Israel, Israel-aligned voices in the United States immediately turned this and said this is Iran declaring war.
And Nikki Haley said this is basically Iran declaring war on us too, because they say death to America, death to America.
So what are they saying with that?
They're saying that we are at war with Iran.
I don't know where they expect that rhetoric to lead in terms of actual action, but it's very scary.
And Israel is in this position where, yes, they don't want a multi-pronged war.
They cannot confront the powers that are prepared to battle them in the region.
But at the same time, the existence of what they define as a Jewish state in the Holy Land, which is a land that is holy to all of the Abrahamic faiths, the act of defining it as a Jewish state, the act of building an apartheid, a militarized apartheid wall through Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, through separating the land,
dividing it that actually is at the center of the Bible and the story of how people traveled throughout it.
I don't even think the three wise men would be able to make their journey today because of the Israeli occupation.
So Israel and the ultimate goal that now you hear even on CNN and mainstream media acknowledging that there are these, they call them far-right elements within Netanyahu's cabinet that they say the United States was concerned with.
Well, they're not far-right elements in the way that you or I in the United States would understand right and left.
This isn't really even a political statement when they say far-right in the Israeli cabinet.
When they say far-right, it means extreme religious Zionists who not only believe that they are entitled to the land above Christians, Muslims, and everybody else, but that they have a divine destiny to establish this Temple Mount, a temple, a Jewish temple on land that is actually currently a Muslim holy site, the Al-As Aqsa Mosque.
And Israel has been increasing attacks on these religious sites.
And in fact, even in the last few years, they've been seizing Christian churches and converting them into land for settlements, for illegal Jewish settlements.
So especially as the attacks on Muslim holy sites increased, and they're destined to increase because of the people that are in the Israeli government.
Like people are in power who really want to usher in the end times.
As that happens, I do think the region, even we're seeing now Saudi Arabia, which was considered the linchpin between the Arab world and the Muslim world and the Israeli West.
And of course, we had the Abraham Accords that Jared Kushner brokered.
We can talk about that if you want.
I think that also plays a role in the conflict now.
It was not good for peace.
But there is only one direction Israel is moving in with that kind of politics and that really what is not even a political mission, but a religious mission.
And that is not good, not good for Israel within the regional dynamic.
Yeah, the days of Rabin are over.
You know, I was living in Budapest at the time he was murdered.
And I remember going to their embassy and signing a condolence.
That has been replaced by, as you say, now the left is what the far right was back then.
Yeah, so there is this crazy idea that God is somehow a real estate agent.
That just tends to fuel, as you say, fuel anger and fighting.
There's a couple of things to cover based on what you've said and a couple of other things to deal with.
First of all, the idea that Iran is not the Iran that it was at the time the U.S. was using it as a cat's paw against Iraq and vice versa in the 80s, you know, when they were basically bled dry by the CIA's wars in the 80s between the two.
It's a very much different country now.
It's to the point where they're actually, the technology that they have developed is being used in Russia very effectively from what we've seen.
Lot of Ways Israel Debates 00:08:33
So I mean, I think the neocons, the think tankers in DC are not that awfully smart.
It's sort of a circular motion that they all say the same things because things have changed quite a bit.
I think that's one.
And the other one I just wanted to bring up is also the idea that Israel is unified behind one idea.
And I meant to say this on the program yesterday, and a colleague reminded me that I didn't, but is the fact, and I know you know this, Anya, which is that Netanyahu was himself in an extremely precarious political situation before this happened, which is not to say he let it happen, but it's to say that that same situation that he was in prevails.
And I pulled up a couple of editorials from today.
One is from YNetNews.com, an Israeli outlet, a top Israeli outlet.
The headline of their lead editorial, Netanyahu and his messianic cohorts must go.
The government has failed Israel in every way and has lost public trust.
So that is a tough editorial.
Later in that editorial, they say the surprise attack of Arab armies that started the 73 Yom Kippur War was a result of the military brass's arrogance and the government's excessive reliance on them.
The surprise attack that is the start of the 2023 Simchat Torah war is the result of a catastrophic, perverted list of priorities of this government that has, since its establishment last January, concentrated almost entirely on its harmful and unnecessary judicial legislation and had capitulated to the financial and political demands of the ultra-Orthodox members.
So there's one editorial, heavily critical, Horetz, which is a liberal-ish paper.
Their lead editorial said, the disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Sinchator is clear responsibility of one person, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister.
And they go on to say, if I may just say one more quote here, the Heretz editorial calls on Netanyahu's anti-Palestine crusade that he slapped the multi-dimensional effort to crush the Palestinian national movement in both its wings in Gaza, in the West Bank, etc., etc.
So there is a lot of criticism inside Israel that we don't often see here in the U.S. for Netanyahu's handling of his own domestic problems and also of he and his allies' handling of the Palestinian situation.
So there is, I think, a diverse debate.
Now, obviously, after these attacks, people, like we did after 9-11 for the most part, pulled the wagons together.
But there has been a pretty vigorous debate in Israel about what's going on.
Yeah, Israeli politics are fascinating.
I was there in 2018 when one of the indictments of Netanyahu was actually handed down.
These were for corruption.
I did a documentary actually.
Unfortunately, it was removed from YouTube because it was for RT, but I can dig it up and probably I should post it myself.
But it was called Prime or Crime Minister, and it broke down all of the allegations and the case against Netanyahu.
And he was, of course, taken out for a period and facing trial, but came back.
And I actually do think there's something, as much as I, I mean, I'm open about how I feel about the Israeli government, as much as I despise Netanyahu and what he stands for, he is a very like in terms of a political figure, someone needs to do a very in-depth biography of him because he is the essence of the Israeli state.
And he's in a lot of ways the perfect person to lead it and to have been leading it throughout this whole time.
He's basically been prime minister for life.
So he's, but what he's up against are The extreme religious faction of his cabinet, these messianic Zionist parties that are in there that he had to bring in in order to govern, otherwise, he wouldn't have had a majority.
But he himself, I don't think, is personally invested that much in the religious aspect.
But what he's facing in terms of the Israeli streets are it's in a lot of ways reminds me of a U.S.-backed color revolution scenario.
The kind of people that oppose him are the liberal, educated class, the kind of people who would be involved with the NGOs and whatnot, but that are concerned that because Netanyahu is giving Israel a bad face, where he's seen as this authoritarian because of his domestic policy, because of these reforms he wants to do with the judiciary, they oppose him in that regard.
So it's this very kind of yuppie way of opposing a figure like Netanyahu.
And they watched this PBS report, which was actually really eye-opening.
They were interviewing some of the people in the streets protesting Netanyahu.
And they had this collection of the Israeli army veterans, these three vets that they interviewed who were kind of leading the protests.
And one was a woman who said very explicitly, she was a retired helicopter pilot, maybe in her 30s or 40s.
And she said, without any self-awareness or any shred of shame, and I was surprised that the producers didn't even catch this and think, hey, this doesn't make them look so great.
She said, and I tweeted the clip if you wanted to pull it up.
She said, when you're asking people to fly a helicopter and bomb a home, knowing that innocent women and children are in there, they need to trust their government.
Oh, wow.
And we don't trust Netanyahu.
Wow.
And so that, I think, really captured the mentality of the kind of people that are against Netanyahu in the street right now.
They have no problem with what he's accused of, in terms of crimes against Palestinians.
In fact, they want to commit crimes against Palestinians, many of them.
They just don't like that he's kind of made them look like a dictatorship because he's limiting the powers of the judiciary.
And that's what it comes down to.
But then without Netanyahu, if you get rid of Netanyahu, who comes into power?
The U.S., the West, I think, would love some technocrat liberal who's open to Davos and the green revolution and tech revolution.
But in Israel, what you're going to get is really insane extremism, something even more extreme than Netanyahu.
So he's basically a buffer holding back this, his national security establishment.
These figures have been pushing him to go harder into the West Bank, to commit more raids, clear out the land, go harder on the Israeli settlement activity.
Like that is what they are pushing for.
And those are the people standing behind Netanyahu if and when his government falls.
That's interesting.
Yeah, I mean, I've been fascinated with Netanyahu since 96 at least.
You know, you're right.
I never thought at the time, because we thought he was a right-winger.
Now, you're right.
I mean, he sort of looks like a liberal now compared to what's happened.
I never thought I would see that.
So we're getting out of time, but I want to read one thing before we go.
And you can comment on it if you want.
I just think it's indicative of the sentiment in the U.S.
And you can imagine this being said about any other, and I hate this sort of whataboutism, but about any other group.
This is Marco Rubio, who I don't know.
I mean, he may be worse than Lindsey Graham.
It's hard to know.
I almost wanted to title this segment Rubio or Hitler, but I thought that might be provocative.
But here's what Rubio said.
And I got this from our friends at anti-war.com.
Egyptians Offer Peace? 00:03:34
He said, yeah, I don't think there's any way Israel could be expected to coexist or find some diplomatic off-ramp with these savages.
I mean, these are people, you know, have been reporting and others have seen that deliberately targeted teenage girls, women, children, the elderly.
Just horrifying things.
And I don't think we know the full extent of it yet.
I mean, there's more to come in the days and weeks ahead.
You can't exist.
They have to be eradicated.
What a wild sentence.
I mean, it's hard to imagine someone could say that in this day and age.
Yeah, it's like Nikki Haley saying, finish them.
Finish them.
Yeah.
Well, we should say that.
And these people, any American who says that is putting Americans in danger with that rhetoric.
And that is what I think we have to say most loudly.
Look, we can debate the issue of Palestine and Israel all day.
The question is, what is the interest, what is in the interest of the American public and American servicemen and women who are scattered all throughout the region.
And to me, it's clear that cessation of hostilities, a prisoner swap, the least bloodshed, the better, because ultimately the only way this war can progress is with American support and American death.
And I think there are acceptable mediators in the region.
I think the Egyptians have offered.
I think Erdogan and Turkey have offered to mediate.
I think they're ready to step in.
If we can just shut the Haley's and the Marcos and the Lindsays of the world, and even people, by the way, that I'm surprised that I've seen them become so, what's the word, extreme on this issue.
Obviously, there'll be emotional reaction, but to step back like you say, there are people in the region waiting to mediate this.
We can back it down.
It doesn't have to go where it seems like it's going.
Yeah, if there were just some adults in the room, I mean, I think they would have the ability to end this, just like the Ukraine conflict, overnight.
Make a phone call, make a phone call to the Israelis and say, look, we have these options.
The Egyptians, the Qataris, maybe even the South Africans, other parties are able and willing to negotiate some sort of swap.
The problem is that the Israelis, I think, they can never accept a peaceful outcome.
Netanyahu's now in the position where he feels like he needs to get blood because of this emotional response.
And you can hear it in the way the mainstream media are covering it.
Just watch CNN.
Suddenly, all of the mainstream primetime anchors are down in Israel, just like they immediately went to Ukraine.
And they're interviewing people and presenting things in a way where they are calling for more bloodshed.
They want revenge.
No, that's not how humans should respond to this.
We don't want more death.
We don't want the hostages in Israel to die.
I would like them to be returned to their families.
I think the Americans, if we had leadership, real leadership and willingness, we could broker that kind of deal and agreement.
But what is it preventing people from accepting that kind of approach to the world?
I don't know.
There seems to just be this insane, rabid ideology in this town that I still don't fully understand.
Well, they're insulated from the fallout, that's for sure.
Well, I think we're going to have to end it, Anya.
Venezuela's Complex Role 00:01:16
I thank you very much for lending your expertise and your time to our discussion.
I personally found it very interesting.
I know our audience found it interesting.
So, thank you, Anya.
And go ahead, and if you just take a second and talk about your book, if you like.
Sure, yeah.
You can order it from my publisher directly, ORBooks, ORBooks.com, because then you'll get it earlier in November.
If you buy it from Amazon or somewhere else, it comes in January.
But send us the link, we'll put it on the description too, so they can get to it.
Very sweet.
So, it's compiling all of my reporting on Venezuela and the world, really.
It's about how U.S. sanctions and hybrid warfare, it's not just about Venezuela, it's mostly about how our policies are backfiring all the stuff that we're just talking about.
I talk about the petrodollar, gold, but how it exists in the current world makeup with Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China, all these rising powers, and how the world is changing.
And it has all my first-hand accounts and stories.
So, yeah, I hope people will enjoy it.
That sounds great.
We'll have to have you come back on when the book comes out.
So, I want to thank you, Anya, for joining us.
I want to thank our audience very much.
I hope you enjoyed the show.
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