American Thought Leaders - How Biden’s Policies Are Prolonging the Gaza War: Eugene Kontorovich

Episode Date: April 4, 2024

“Israel is fighting Iran on every front, so that America doesn’t have to.”In this episode, I sit down with Prof. Eugene Kontorovich, one of the world’s preeminent experts on the Israeli–Arab conflict, and a professor of international and constitutional law at George Mason University. We get an update on the situation in Gaza and the current status of the war, and try to separate fact from fiction.“Israel is ready to win this war. If Joe Biden had not told Israel, ‘Stand down. Don’t take out Rafah,’ this war would have already been over. Israel is weeks away from winning this war. There’s one last battle to be fought. And then Joe Biden has basically turned on a red light,” says Prof. Kontorovich. “Israel does not want a repeat of Joe Biden’s Afghanistan in Gaza, right, with Hamas taking over again.”Is Israel on the verge of victory, or could this be another forever war? Is Biden helping Israel, or hindering it? And who should control Gaza after the war? Is a two-state solution really viable?“Hamas shoots civilians trying to escape the conflict. Why? Because they need them in Gaza to serve as their own human shields,” says Prof. Kontorovich. “Every time President Biden says ‘We should have a Palestinian state,’ he’s teaching Hamas and other Islamic terrorists: The way to get what you want is murder babies.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

Israel is fighting Iran on every front so that America doesn't have to. In this episode, I sit down with Eugene Kontorovich, one of the world's preeminent experts in the Arab-Israeli conflict and a professor of international and constitutional law. We get an update on the situation in Gaza, the current status of the war, and try to separate fact from fiction. Israel is ready to win this war. If Joe Biden had not told Israel,

stand down, don't take out Rafah, this war would already have been over. Israel does not want a repeat of Joe Biden's Afghanistan in Gaza, right, with Hamas taking over again. Is Israel on the verge of victory? Or could this be another forever war? And who should control Gaza afterwards? Is a two-state solution really viable?

Every time President Biden says we should have a Palestinian state, he is teaching Hamas and other Islamic terrorists the way to get what you want is murder babies. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Eugene Kontorovich, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders. It's great to be here again, Jan. Well, and so why don't you give me an update from your viewpoint? What is the situation in Gaza right now? What's the status of the war?

So the war has been overwhelmingly successful, both from Israel's military objectives of keeping its civilian population safe from another October 7th and also even from the objective of protecting innocent civilians in Gaza but now... Let me just jump in okay because this is very different from what you typically hear about right because a lot of Gazans have lost their lives actually. in, okay, because this is very different from what you typically hear about, right, because a lot of Gazans have lost their lives, actually. So let's talk about what's actually happened since the war started. Israel was invaded by thousands of Hamas members and also random civilians who killed over

a thousand Israeli civilians in a country of less than 10 million people on the magnitude of multiple 9-11s, something like five or six 9-11s, tortured, mutilated, raped, and took hundreds of hostages captive. So that's how the war started. Since then, Israel has been fighting to eliminate Hamas in Gaza. Even by the accounts of Hamas, which there's no particular reason to trust, about 30,000 people have been killed. Perhaps half of them have been Hamas fighters.

So when you talk about the people who've died in Gaza, they have been at least 50% Hamas fighters. That creates one of the best civilian to combatant casualty rates in modern warfare. That is to say, there has not been any war that has been free of civilian casualties. Name whatever war you think is justified. World War II, millions of German civilians were killed by the Allies and

as a result of the war. The goal of a law-abiding military is to keep the civilian casualties down to some reasonable amount. But typically, when the United States has fought in Afghanistan or in Iraq, civilian casualties have been three times, four times, five times that of military casualties. In other words, for every soldier that dies, there's enemy soldier, there's three or four enemy civilians that will die. Israel has achieved what is actually a miracle by

the standards of modern urban warfare of having this amazing ratio, even more amazing because Hamas has had a specific strategy of trying to have its own civilians killed. Okay, explain that to me. Hamas understands that it cannot defeat Israel militarily. If Israel has the will to fight, which it does, that's what Hamas was unsure of, whether Israel would be willing to fight. But if Israel is willing to fight, they will beat Hamas. Hamas has one strategy, and it is working perfectly. Maximize their own civilian casualties.

And by the way, this is an evil tactic that no force has ever actually done to this extent in warfare. They're not simply ignoring international law. They're what I would call reverse engineering international law. International law says certain things are legitimate targets, military targets. Certain things are protected. Civilians are protected. Civilians are protected. You cannot directly target civilians, though collateral casualties are tolerated by the laws of war. Hospitals, places of worship, schools all enjoy some level of heightened protection. So that is where Hamas locates all of its operations. Every school, every hospital in Gaza

was turned into a Hamas base. Why? Because they win either way. Either Israel says, well, we shouldn't attack it because it's a school and there's going to be a big controversy, or Israel does attack it, which is allowed under the law of war. The law of war clearly states that placing military objectives in a civilian area, in a protected area, does not protect the military target.

You are not going to get immunity, you're not going to get safety by breaking the law of war. But what it will do is increase the civilian casualties on Hamas's side, and then have the international community attack Israel for the civilian casualties that Hamas has purposefully engineered. I have to say there has never been a military that has fought like this. Even Nazi Germany, our model for an evil force, they didn't care about the Jews, they didn't care about the gypsies, but they did care about their own civilians. When they were care about the Jews, they didn't care about the gypsies, but they did care about their own civilians. When they were fighting on German soil, they were fighting to reduce their

civilian casualties, not maximize them. Hamas wants to maximize their civilian casualties, wants to maximize damage to hospitals, because that creates international pressure. That creates the kind of response we hear, oh, look at all these civilians dying in Gaza, which will get the United States and other Western powers to intervene. It creates the media headlines. We see in the New York Times, Israel killing Gazan children. That is their only hope of victory, to have Israel's Western allies step in and hold it back.

And that's working. That strategy is working for them. Israel is winning the war on the ground, but Hamas is also winning its own war to run up the Gaza body count. By the way, they're only winning at it because the media is letting them win. Again, by any objective standard,

the civilian casualties are extraordinarily low. Extraordinarily low. Lower than in Afghanistan, lower than in Iraq, lower in absolute numbers, lower as a proportion of combatant casualties. But nonetheless, there are some civilian casualties, and that is being weaponized to stop Israel. And that is the current situation of the war. To get back to that question, if you recall, before the war started, all sorts of experts, including American generals, said Israel cannot win. It's going to be a massacre for the Israelis. including American generals, said Israel cannot win. It's going to be a massacre for the Israelis.

The tunnels, there's going to be ambushes. Apparently an American general sent to advise Israel has been predicted on the order of 20 Israeli casualties a day. Thank God it has been nothing like that. In fact, Israel has done an amazing job of beating Hamas. And now Hamas has retreated with many of the hostages, Israeli hostages who they're still holding, women, children, babies even, to Rafah, which is a city on the Egyptian border, where presumably they have tunnels, and they're hiding out there with the hostages, and Israel now needs to take this last stronghold.

And here the United States says, wait, no, that's it. This you can't do. And it's kind of like a cancer treatment, where you get rid of most of the cancer, and then for the last few cancer cells, you say, you know what, that would be too much to get rid of them. So Hamas knows that if they climb out of those tunnels, the leaders of Hamas, Sinwa, if they climb out, if they climb out as survivors, they win. All they need to do to win is stay alive. And then they will be able to rebuild. How are they going to rebuild? Their major ally is Iran. President Biden just released sanctioned funds to Iran. So they're going to have the money from Iran. They're going to have the vast popular

support. They stood up to Israel and they didn't lose. Their defeat needs to be like the defeat of Nazi Germany. Absolute. Like the defeat of the Soviet Union. A total defeat. If they are left standing, they will regroup. Now, and they will do it again. How do we know they'll do it again? They have repeatedly said so. Top Hamas officials have gone on Arab TV over and over and said, سوف نتعامل معهم مرة أخرى. كيف نعرف أنهم سوف نتعامل معهم مرة أخرى؟ لقد قاموا بذلك بسرعة. أصحاب خماسة أكتوبر سيئة قاموا بذلك بسرعة. أكتوبر 7 هو شيء جيد. نريد أن نتعامل معهم مرة أخرى.

سنتعامل معهم مرة أخرى. نصيحة يجب أن نأدبها. ونأدبها مرة ثانية وثالثة. وليس أنها ستكون طوفان الأقصى أول مرة. لا، ستكون ثانية وثالثة ورابعة. لأننا لدينا إصرار ولدينا قرار ولدينا إمكانيات. أن نقاتل وأن نحرب. be the second, third and fourth because we have a determination, a decision and we have the capabilities to fight and to fight. But as I told you, we will pay a price, yes, we are ready. I'm sorry, I'm telling you the truth.

We are the people of martyrs. On October 7, October 10, October 1, we are the ones who will make it justified. They think it is a victory for them and in a sense they're right. Who was talking about a Palestinian state before October 7th? Nobody. They have raised the profile of their issue by murdering civilians. Why? Because the international media and the Western powers are rewarding that. Every time President Biden says we should have a Palestinian state. He is teaching Hamas and other Islamic terrorists the way to get what you want is murder babies. Murder babies, and on the first day people will say, it's bad what you did.

And on the second day they'll say, but now what can we give you? I want to touch on something else just very briefly because, you know, we talked, you hear about Hamas using human shields. Outline to me the evidence around this whole picture, just for the benefit of our viewers. Absolutely. The basic premise of the law of war, the basic requirement, is what's called distinction. Distinction means combatants, fighters, have to distinguish themselves from the civilian population. That's what uniforms come from. Uniforms, when you think about it, don't make sense. If you're trying to kill a bunch of hostile people, all dressing the same is just like putting a big

shoot me sign on yourself. But you wear uniforms so that the people with the uniforms become legitimate targets, not the civilians. You don't put your bases in civilian areas. You don't use protected places like hospitals. There's a reason Israel does not put their headquarters underneath the hospital so as not to get the hospital targeted. Hamas violates all those rules. They routinely fight without uniforms on, and this can be seen in abundant videos starting with October 7 and going on today, so as to make themselves indistinguishable

from the civilian population. And they locate all of their facilities in civilian facilities, their headquarters in regular apartment buildings, in schools. And Israel has gone into hospitals, like the big Gaza hospital, Shifa hospital, and there's a terrorist base underneath. There's tunnels, tunnels that were dug as terrorist hideouts, tunnels that were used to keep hostages prisoner. Weapons are found in every United Nations relief work agency facility. So in other words, they take humanitarian-sized schools, and they turn them into bases.

And soldiers coming back from Gaza now, they say, it's worse than you've heard. Every single house has guns hidden in it or a tunnel underneath it. They basically turned the entire civilian infrastructure into a terror base. As a result, Israel has a choice. Let's say Hamas is hiding out in a tunnel complex. They have literally hundreds of miles of tunnels

in Gaza, in a tunnel complex underneath an apartment building. If Israel does not target them, in Gaza, in a tunnel complex underneath an apartment building. If Israel does not target them, they will eventually come out and kill another thousand Israeli civilians. If Israel does target them, they will also damage the civilian building above. The law of war allows that facility to be targeted, but they're doing it purposefully because for them it's heads we win, tails you lose. They have absolute disregard for their civilians. We also see, for example, when there's attempts to provide humanitarian supplies to Gazan civilians, they shoot at civilians trying to take the supplies because they take it for themselves. incident earlier on in the war when a United Nations relief agency tweeted

that all of their warehouses of food were stolen by armed men. They don't have any more food. And then two hours later it was deleted. Everything's fine. So we know that Hamas plunders supplies intended for their own civilians, shoots civilians seeking to escape. That's another thing. If they cared about their civilians, they would let them maybe run away. Take a look at any other conflict with a war going on.

Ukraine. There's millions of Ukrainians, I believe six million, in Europe outside of Ukraine. Even Israel, if people want to escape the conflict, they get on a plane and they fly away. Hamas shoots civilians trying to escape the conflict. Why? Because they need them in Gaza to serve as their own human shields. And of course, they also use the hostages as human shields, which is another massive violation of the laws of war. They've surrounded themselves with the hostages. And they have said explicitly to Israel, if you bomb us, you're going to kill your own hostages.

You know, this is something interesting, actually, that there aren't a lot of Palestinians that have actually managed to leave. Right? So explain that picture to me. Every war that has been fought in modern times has had large numbers of people try to escape the conflict. Refugees. Millions of people from Iraq. Millions of people from Afghanistan. Many of them have come to America. President Biden says it's good for people to be able to seek refuge from conflicts, even conflicts that aren't really conflicts, like bad economies in Latin America, and come to the United States. The conflict in Gaza is the only conflict, certainly of such a scale,

which has resulted in basically zero refugees. And that is for two reasons. First of all, Hamas does not let people escape. Even before the war started, people could not freely leave Gaza. It was like there was an iron curtain. It was the Soviet Union. They didn't let people just leave. They made people pay about $10,000 in bribes to get across the border, because they need the people there

suffering under Hamas's rule to then blame on Israel. They want those people there. Since the war started, not only does Hamas's rule to then blame on Israel. They want those people there. Since the war started, not only does Hamas not let people leave, Egypt is the only neutral country with a border with Gaza. Obviously, Israel's not going to let enemy nationals come into Israel. But Egypt, which supposedly is a fellow Arab country,

supports the Palestinians. They have a border which they have sealed completely. Right, I was going to say it's a pretty ferocious looking border. They have built three rows of massive walls with dozens of tanks parked behind them with their guns aimed straight at Gaza. And they will shoot anyone who comes across.

Nobody has made it across. And who is the top financial and military supporter of Egypt? The United States. So the United States could pressure Egypt to open the border, but President Biden has never said a word to that effect. All of the pressure is rather on Israel to not win the war, rather than, if you really care about Gazans, if they're really suffering, why not let them leave? And of course, the reason is that would reduce the pressure on Israel.

Let me just touch on something you just said. You said Biden is putting all his effort to have Israel not win the war. I mean, I hear a lot from different people that Biden isn't doing enough to support the Palestinians, the Gazans. So what do you mean he's not doing enough? He's trying to stop Israel from winning the war. So first of all, Biden's policy on the war has evolved a little bit during the war. It began with a speech and a visit to Israel, which sounded largely supportive. That seemed to anger progressives and Muslims, including in potential swing states like Michigan, which we know has caused the administration significant distress.

Since then, his policy has evolved over the war to be increasingly critical of Israel. He's implemented sanctions against Israelis, and he's lifted sanctions on Iran, and they have begun to restrict and slow walk and condition arms sales to Israel in the middle of this war for Israel's survival. But now it's quite clear he has told the Israeli government not to attack Hamas' last holdout, where Hamas is sitting with the hostages, where Hamas' leadership is. And if you don't take out Hamas' last holdout, you're letting them win, as I explained before. So he's basically saying Israel has a right to defend itself against Hamas, but not to the point of victory.

And that means, in practice, that Israel must live with this threat of genocide and torture constantly at its neck. That Israel cannot remove this threat. And that's absurd. Imagine if America invaded Afghanistan after 9-11, not to get rid of the Taliban, but just to knock them around a little. Now, maybe that would be okay with Joe Biden, because, of course, he left Afghanistan and let the Taliban take over. But Israel does not want to repeat Joe

Biden's Afghanistan in Gaza, right, with Hamas taking over again. This is interesting what you're saying because, you know, one of the criticisms of, let's say, the U.S. support of Israel, much as the sort of financial support of the war in Ukraine is that it's creating another forever war. So I'd say it's actually the opposite. It's not America's support for Israel that could create a forever war. It's the pulling out of that support,

as Joe Biden is doing. Israel is ready to win this war. If Joe Biden had not told Israel, stand down, don't take out Rafah, this war would already have been over. Israel is weeks away from winning this war. There's one last battle to be fought. And then Joe Biden has basically turned on a red light, and Israel's waiting or hoping that that red light will go away. Joe Biden clearly wants a forever war because he wants to balance, to have Hamas basically continuing to exist, Iran continuing to have their Mullah regime, as a counterweight to Israel.

Israel wants to win, and Israel can and will win. And I completely understand the position of American conservatives who don't want open-ended foreign entanglements, expensive foreign entanglements. That's not what Israel is looking for, right? Israel is simply looking for the ability to not be stopped before it wins. It doesn't need help. It needs to do its own. And if Israel doesn't win this war, that's a victory for Iran. And it's a victory for Islamic terrorism. And they're not going to stop with Israel. They've made it clear.

So indeed, I don't think America should be expending its efforts, let alone the lives of its soldiers in foreign wars. And what support for Israel allows America to do is to have someone else fight the jihadis before they come through the southern border because Joe Biden amazingly he is treating America's own southern border the way he should be treating the board Gaza's border with Egypt anyone can come through but on the other hand Gaza's border with Egypt that room that remains remains shut. So support for Israel is really crucial to allowing America not to involve itself further because America doesn't need to deal with these issues as long as it lets Israel do so.

Not entirely because it's also the U.S. has been providing military material support to Israel in this process. So they are involved. I mean, yeah. America is support because this support allows America to basically stay out of the region, only provide the support, not send troops in. I want to make it clear, it is the position of the Biden administration and the position that wants to prevent Israel from winning that is the most likely to entangle America in this region. For example, Biden in his State of the Union speech announced something insane. He is having American troops build a port for Hamas in Gaza.

It makes no sense. That's going to be run by Gata, an ally of Iran. That is not something Israel asked for. All Israel wants is a clear field to finish this war. And indeed, the munitions that America is providing principally is to advance interests of the Biden administration. These are smart guided munitions. They're JDAM kits, kits to convert gravity bombs into guided missiles, into smart bombs.

The administration is insisting Israel use these very expensive, hard to manufacture missiles to reduce civilian casualties. Israel could also win this war the old-fashioned way, with artillery. And there's nothing illegal about that, but it would increase civilian casualties. So the administration's insistence on Israel setting the world record in minimizing civilian casualties is what makes these munitions so crucial.

But Israel could win without them, but at higher civilian cost. Now America should not stop military supplies in the middle of this war, but at higher civilian cost. Now, America should not stop military supplies in the middle of this war, but this is not Ukraine versus Russia. Nobody thinks this is a stalemate, right? This is Israel on the verge of victory. After this, Israel will have victory against Hezbollah on the north. These are all fights against Iran. Whether one is an isolationist or not an isolationist, a globalist, Iran is an enemy of the United States. And America should consider itself lucky, and Israel unlucky, that Israel is fighting Iran on every front so that America doesn't have to. So let's just discuss, you mentioned Hezbollah, let's just discuss for a little bit, because that's kind of, well, it's not exactly the elephant in the room, but Hezbollah is a potent force in the north. And that presumably if Hamas is defeated

entirely, that Hezbollah is sort of the, I don't know, takes the mantle or something like, I don't know if you would say that, but that's kind of what I would imagine. Maybe if you could comment on that. So the attack of October 7 was not a one-front attack. Israel was attacked by Iranian-controlled assets around the Middle East, in Yemen, in Lebanon in the north, as well as in Gaza. And since then, and people might not know this, Hezbollah has been constantly shooting rockets

at Israel, killing civilians on an almost weekly basis. And this is despite the fact that Israel has evacuated the entire northern part of the country. Over 100,000 people are not in their homes. There's now a serious discussion as to whether those kids from the north will even be able to start school in the fall or remain as internally displaced

persons, quasi-refugees, in their own country. The goal of all of these attacks is to make it impossible for Jews to live in Israel. And currently Hezbollah has succeeded. They've made it impossible to live in the entire northern part of the country. That is not a situation any country could tolerate. If you have an entire zone in your country, nobody can live. This is not in what they call the West

Bank. This is not occupied territory. This is in lesser Israel. So this is not something any Israeli government can tolerate, and it will require eliminating the threat of Hezbollah. Now, ironically, United Nations resolutions have for many years, for decades, called on Hezbollah to be disarmed and pushed away from Israel's borders. Those resolutions have been completely ignored, which means Israel is going to have to do it itself. You know, another thing that you mentioned earlier was that, you know, post-October 7th,

suddenly now there's more discussion of this two-state solution. Let me read you a quote from someone we both know, Gaddy Taub. He says in Tablet, compelling as it is as a debating strategy or as a form of self-therapy. The two-state solution is sadly no solution at all. Rather, it is a big step down the road to another Lebanon while producing much greater misery and more bloodshed for Israelis and Palestinians alike. The two-state solution was based on an idea that if only Israel left territory, traded land for peace, the Palestinians would happily accept it, govern themselves, and leave Israel alone. I think everything since then has disproven this.

Hamas is shooting rockets at Israel, and Lebanon is shooting rockets at Israel. So maybe people would say about Lebanon, like they do about Gaza, if only the Lebanese had their own state, if only they had a country, they wouldn't shoot rockets at Israel. They do have a country. It's called Lebanon. And the fact that they have a country makes Hezbollah a much bigger threat, because they don't just have homemade rockets or things they can smuggle through the border. They're a country, and they have all of the weaponry a country can get. They control the Lebanese army. The biggest difference is you can buy weapons on the open market. Imagine if Hamas had access to fighter planes, artillery, for October 7th.

There'd be nothing left of Israel. There'd be nothing left. So a two-state solution means two things. It means Israel abandoning territory, and no Jews could ever live there. Why is that? Because that's a Palestinian demand. They want territory in which Jews currently live to be part of their state, and their initial demand is that it come free of Jews. So all the Jews have to be evicted. A Jewish state, Israel, with Jews and Arabs in it, Israel has 20% Arab population,

and a Palestinian state with no Jews in it. It's a unique and, I would say, morally disgusting demand, which the international community humors. Israel would be sandwiched in the middle of two parts of a Palestinian state, Gaza and the West Bank, eight miles across at the narrowest point. An attack like October 7th would wipe it out. And of course, they would have much bigger weapons to attack with. Now, what about this idea that if only Israel were to leave them alone, they'd stop bothering Israel? Israel left Gaza in 2005 completely. Since 2005, Gaza has had an entirely Palestinian government. Israel doesn't tax them. Israel does not regulate them. Israel's only relationship to Gaza since

2005 has been trying to keep them from killing Israelis. There's not a single Israeli soldier there. That's how they got a Hamas government. And to say that Israel de facto occupies them is absurd. What kind of de facto occupier would let over 300 miles of tunnels be built right underneath the ground? They have run their own affairs and we have seen, you can see by what people choose to do what's important to them. turned their country into a genocide laboratory with every single part of it geared to attacking, kidnapping, and killing Israeli civilians. So a state for that? They maintain that they are pledged to the destruction of the Jewish state.

We can't get this wrong, right? This is not something like you could say, oh, you know what, but give them a state and see if it works out. Because the cost of a mistake is the end of the Jewish people. We cannot afford that, especially now. Imagine if the Palestinians, they've been trying to get a Palestinian state for some decades now, since the 60s or 70s. Imagine if it failed in the 60s when they hijacked planes. It failed in the 70s when they hijacked planes. It failed in the 80s when they were targeting Israeli buses, Israeli civilian targets.

It failed in the first and second Intifada when they started blowing up cafes and restaurants in Israel. Ah, but now that they actually invade Israel, massacre a whole bunch of people and take hundreds of hostages, then it will succeed? What's the lesson to the Palestinians? You want more territory? Easy recipe.

Murder, torture, rape, and hostage taking. That cannot be a recipe for getting a state. What people has ever gotten a state through a genocide? After World War II, did anyone say, you know what? Maybe the Germans need more territory. Maybe they didn't have enough territory. Let's give them more territory to keep them from

doing this again. No! They took away their territory. So one of the proposed solutions has been to basically have the UN take control of Gaza. What's your reaction to that? The UN has no capacity to control Gaza. The UN has never successfully controlled any territory.

And in particular, in terms of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the UN's record has been a dismal failure. The UN has had peacekeeping missions that were supposed to create a buffer between Israel and its hostile neighbors since 1948. Each one of them was a failure. There was a peacekeeping mission called the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization, based in Jerusalem, that was supposed to separate between Israel and Jordan. When the Jordanians started attacking Israel in 1967, they just bugged out and ran away.

There was a UN peacekeeping force in the Golan Heights. As soon as the jihadis showed up during the Syrian civil war, they abandoned their positions in the demilitarized zone, and it was no longer demilitarized. UN peacekeepers in the Sinai ran away as soon as the Egyptians said they were going to attack. And now, of course, in Gaza, we see that UN agencies were completely taken over by Hamas. Also, we mentioned Lebanon.

There's a UN peacekeeping force there. Their very mission is to disarm Hezbollah and keep them from shooting at Israel. Instead of doing that, they become human shields for Hezbollah, and Hezbollah digs tunnels underneath their bases. So such a record of failure is no recommendation for giving them any authority. And even worse than failed, been co-opted, infiltrated, and taken over by Hamas. So you mentioned that you feel like the war could be weeks away from being over. And I'm very curious to see how this will play out. It will be over as soon as Biden lets it be over. Well, so that's interesting because out of the National Security Council,

there's been this discussion already or some like what will happen once it is over. So it's interesting that you're saying that you believe on the one side, the administration is not letting it be over. And on the other hand, they seem to be discussing what happens when it be over. And on the other hand, they seem to be discussing what happens when it is over. So what do you make of that? They don't mind it being over, as long as it's not on terms favorable to Israel.

When they say when the war is over, they don't want the war to end with a decisive Israeli victory. They want the war to end with a decisive Israeli victory. They want the war to end with some kind of ignominious capitulation, a trade of large numbers of murderers, Palestinian murderers, for the hostages, and an extended ceasefire that turns into a permanent one, which effectively means Hamas winning. When they say the war over, they want to pivot. The war has been bad for the administration's support with its base because progressives think there should be even more against Israel than there have been.

So they want to pivot very quickly from this and then play to their far-left base by rewarding Hamas with a country. That's what they mean by the day after. So a Palestinian state, absolutely non-starter for the day after, and there's no Israeli government that would allow it. This is not a matter of BB. UN control, totally not serious.

We see the only possible recipe for security in Gaza in the future is Israeli security control. Now that does not mean Israel is going to be governing the lives of Palestinians. Israel has no interest in doing that. But in terms of being the only armed force in the area, Israel is the only power that can keep this area safe. And we see, did anything like this happen from 1967 to 2005 when Israel controlled the area? Nothing. Nothing like this ever happened. That is why Israel needs to re-implement its security control.

But that effectively means kind of occupation, right? No, not necessarily. First of all, I don't think you can occupy Gaza because you can only occupy sovereign countries. Gaza is not a sovereign country, and it would not be subject to military occupation. PAUL IRISHONENKOWSKIY, It's just you hear this moniker, occupation, all the time. DAVID EASTMAN, Israel does not want to run Gaza.

Israel wants to keep them from doing what they did. And that means you cannot allow rearmament by Hamas. You need to be there controlling things. And for example, after America won World War II, did it leave Nazi Germany right away? That would have been crazy. They would have regrouped. PAUL LEWISOHNSKI- There's still

soldiers in Germany today. DAVID EASTMAN. And as a formal matter, the occupation of Berlin ended in 1990. Occupation of parts of Japan lasted in the 1970s. There needs to first be a denazification procedure. We cannot have the same people running things who work for Hamas. And just like after World War II, there was a

denazification party. After the war in Iraq, there was a debathification process. Anyone who ties to Hamas needs to be removed from government. That's going to be a very difficult task. But it's ridiculous to think that things can go back to normal. That would be waiting for another October 7th. And what we cannot have, and what there's too much of,

is formalistic expressions of sympathy for October 7th. Of course we condemn what happened, without a commitment to allow Israel to make sure it never happens again. So there's a lot of sympathy when Jews are being killed, but when they then start to defend themselves to prevent themselves from getting killed again, all of a sudden the sympathy runs out. And that's what needs to stop. So you mentioned you don't like the UN controlling Gaza.

Hamas couldn't control Gaza, obviously. What about the Palestinian Authority? So the Palestinian Authority, the government of the Palestinians is split in two. Hamas is a political party, an Islamic political party, which rules Gaza. And the Palestinian Authority is an Arab nationalist party party which rules in the West Bank. The only difference between the two is Hamas is more energetic and successful, and Israel is not in Gaza, which has allowed Hamas to become stronger. Fatah, the Palestinian Authority, is not currently

able to launch attacks like October 7th because Israel is in the West Bank preventing it. But we know that they would if they could. How do we know this? First of all, Palestinian Authority leaders have praised October 7th. They have said that Hamas did a great thing. And we have even found out that members of the Palestinian Authority, Fatah Party's military units, fought alongside with Hamas invading Israel. They were in the Kibbutzim. They were killing civilians. And the Palestinian Authority, imagine if there are two parties in a country competing for power. And one of them goes and murders and rapes and tortures people in a neighboring country. You'd think that would be a great moment for the opposing

party to say, oh, we're not like them. The opposite. They said, this is a Palestinian dream. We're fighting alongside them. And they're paying salary payments, rewards to terror, what's called the pay for slay program, which America has made illegal, to the Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel. They're putting them on the payroll. They have not denounced, they have not tried to arrest or punish anyone involved with this. So it would be

allowing them to run it would basically be allowing people who supported October 7th to take over, which is absurd. Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. A final thought as we finish? Yeah. October 7th was the worst attack on Jews and one of the worst civilian atrocities since the Holocaust. And the only thing more shocking than October 7th was what I would call October 10th or even October 8th. In other words, what Hamas did was outrageous, but we never had high expectations from them. But the reaction of the international community, which started accusing Israel of genocide the moment it started to defend itself, that's been heartbreaking.

That's been heartbreaking. Because this reaction, trying to hold Israel back, trying to restrain Israel when Israel is already greatly self-restrained, says you are not allowed to defend yourself. We want to be able to turn the colors of our building blue and white when Jews get killed, but God forbid Jews do something to stop themselves from getting killed. Israel's not going to listen to that advice. It cannot. There's no choice. And this conflation of so-called Israeli genocide, which is simply Israel's act of self-defense, is horrific and could also blow back at the West. If Israel's defense against this attack is genocide, no war any Western country could ever fight in its own defense

would ever be legitimate or justified. Well, Eugene Kontorovich, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you so much, Ian. It was great. Thank you all for joining Eugene Kontorovich and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host, Jan Jekielek.