American Thought Leaders - How to End the War in Gaza: Netanyahu Adviser Caroline Glick

Episode Date: March 30, 2025

Caroline Glick is a journalist, author, and recently, adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.“The discussion that we’ve had about the war itself is just sort of blind to the basic realities of the situation. And that, to me, is the ground zero of all of the problems,” she says.“The stronger Israel is, the more secure the United States is. I think that the more Israel is able to project its power in the region, the more stable the region is, because Israel is a fundamentally peaceful country that doesn’t seek war and does everything to avoid it. The more powerful Israel is, the less likely there are to be wars in the region.”Glick breaks down Israel’s perspective on various developments in the region, from resuming wartime operations in Gaza, to the situation in Syria, to U.S. President Donald Trump’s strikes on the Houthis in Yemen.“When somebody tells you that they want to kill you, you have to believe them—like, you have no choice. You have to take them at their word,” she says. “By showing [Gazans] that the only thing that they get from being with Hamas is death and destruction, and giving them an alternative, which is what the Trump plan does ... you have this opportunity to build a life in a different place.”Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

The discussion that we've had about the war is just sort of blind to the basic realities of the situation. And that, to me, is the ground zero of all of the problems. Caroline Glick is a journalist, author, and recently, advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. By showing them that the only thing that they get from being with Hamas is death and destruction. And giving them an alternative, which is what the Trump plan does, you have this opportunity to build a life in a different place. She breaks down Israel's perspective on various developments in the region, from resuming

wartime operations in Gaza, to the situation in Syria, to Trump's strikes on the Houthis in Yemen. When somebody tells you that they want to kill you, Syria, to Trump's strikes on the Houthis in Yemen. When somebody tells you that they want to kill you, you have to believe them. You have no choice. You have to take them at their word. This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jan Jekielek. Caroline Glick, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders. Oh, it's a pleasure to be on your program, Jan. So Israel has resumed war activity in Gaza. There's different narratives around why that's happened. Explain to me from the perspective of Israel what's going on.

So the proximate cause of the reinstatement of military operations in Gaza is that Hamas broke the ceasefire. We had a ceasefire where they got respite in the sense of a ceasefire and removal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip except for the perimeter around Israel and the border zone with Egypt so that they don't control smuggling routes for weapons and personnel and they were supposed to return the hostages that they're still holding. You know they took 251 hostages on October 7th, 210 live hostages from Israel in an act of sadism and war crimes unseen before. And they continued to hold 59 hostages, 25 of whom are alive, and they refused to give them up. During the course of this ceasefire, we were able to secure the release

of several hostages, of many hostages, in exchange for releasing hundreds of terrorists from our prisons in Israel. And they were supposed to continue along with this. And we were waiting and waiting. Ambassador Witkoff, the President's special envoy for handling the hostages issue, from the American perspective, had offered a compromise to prolong the ceasefire where they would give us ten more live hostages and about an equal number of deceased hostages who they murdered in exchange for continue along on the ceasefire and they rejected

it and still they got an extra two weeks of ceasefire sort of as a freebie because Israel was waiting for them to agree to release more hostages and they refused. And so we realized that continuing the ceasefire was actually threatening the lives of the hostages. That the longer that we prolonged it, the longer they felt that they weren't going to have to pay any price for continuing to hold the hostages. And so right now, as Prime Minister Netanyahu said, you said, we're going to continue to conduct the hostage negotiations, but under fire. Because doing it during a ceasefire

wasn't bringing about the release of any more hostages. So we're restoring our control over what's called the Nasserim corridor, which sort of cuts Gaza in half from north to south to prevent the movement of terrorists and the receding of Hamas and all of the areas that they've seized control over again since the IDF removed its forces from Gaza at the beginning of the hostage deal in late January. And so that's where we are right now. We have two goals in this war, or three really, but I mean, two immediate goals. One is the

release of all of the hostages and the other is the destruction of Hamas as a military organization and as a political entity. And this is in furtherance of both of them. What is the third? The third is to prevent Gaza from every posing threat to Israel in the future. And that goes along with the Trump plan for rebuilding Gaza.

Okay, that's something I definitely want to ask you about. I'd be happy to talk about it. But going back to the military operations, there were reports of, I think, 400 Gazans who had been killed very quickly. It seems like a large number. There's concerns that this is too hard of a strike. We hear a lot about this. What's your reaction? First of all, I think it's very important to note that Israel doesn't deliberately target civilians. That's what Hamas does. That's why we're in this war, because they deliberately targeted civilians on October 7th when they invaded Israel. You had over 75 percent of

the casualties that day of the 1,400 people that they murdered were civilians. It was deliberate targeting of families of women who were subjected to mass brutal rape, gang rape, children who were murdered in front of their parents, parents who were murdered in front of their children, immolation, burning alive of families. There were over 800 civilians who were murdered out of 1,200

people who were killed. And the rest were military personnel. And they were mainly not engaged in combat. They were in their beds. They were butchered in their beds. And also the female soldiers who they murdered were brutally raped. So we don't do that.

They do that. And the numbers that we've seen by the way of the dead, you know, these all come from Hamas. And they use these kinds of numbers which have been largely debunked by studies like the University of Pennsylvania put out a study at the height of the combat operations last year that showed that the numbers that the Hamas Health Ministry in Gaza are putting out or faked. So we've seen a lot of these things, but because they remain the regime in Gaza, they remain in control of the health ministry in Gaza,

so you keep getting these numbers, and they're automatic numbers. You know, at the beginning of the war there were reports that a missile had fallen on Al-Ali Hospital in Gaza, and they claimed, I don't remember what it was, something like 500 dead, five minutes after a missile fell in the parking lot of this hotel. But there were already 500 dead 10 minutes later. Nobody knows these numbers. It took us weeks and weeks and weeks

to figure out how many people they killed on October 7th because they immolated the bodies. They burned people alive. There were bodies that took months to identify through broken teeth shards. And so we didn't know, but they know there are 523 people dead within 10 minutes. And it worked out it was a missile that was shot

into Israel by the Islamic Jihad terrorists who work with Hamas that had fallen short of its target inside of Gaza. And how many casualties there were, who knows, but in the meantime you've had three news cycles going out across the world saying that Israel is deliberately targeting sick people, wounded people in this Gaza hospital. It wasn't our missile. Nobody knows how many were killed, probably very few, but this was sort of the thing that happened

every day. You know, by their own statistics, like you'd think that most of the people who were killed were non-combatants, all women and children, so that you can see that this is deliberately falsified information. But again, Israel doesn't target civilians. Hamas does. And every act of war that they carry out against Israel because they hide behind civilians is actually under international law a war crime. You can test these numbers and I understand why based on what you just said. What would be other misconceptions that you deal with in your role regularly that you

would like to share? I mean, there's this very strange moral equivalence that people make between the state of Israel and Hamas terrorists. And so I think that in a lot of ways, this moral equivalence, which is fundamentally fraudulent, there is no equivalence. We're fundamentally different societies. We're fundamentally different types of people in the way that we view the sanctity of life. We view it as sacred. They view death as sacred. I mean, this fundamental disparity between Israel and then have a rational discussion about the war. So I think that when you look at sort of the grounding assumptions on which the entire discourse of the war is predicated,

and you realize that they're fundamentally flawed from a moral perspective and from a practical perspective, then you understand that a lot of the discussion that we've had about the war itself is just sort of blind to the basic realities of the situation. And that, to me, is the ground zero of all of the problems in the discourse about the war. I mean, we don't want to kill people. You know, we don't want to be at war with our neighbors. We're peace-seeking people. We've done, you know, even silly things, even stupid things, even irresponsible things in our ardent desire to live at peace with our neighbors. It's all we ever want is peace.

And on the other hand, they teach their children that their greatest aspiration should be the annihilation of the Jewish state year, they were entering into these apartment buildings. And I remember this one, and it was just, it wasn't rare, it happens every day. You have pictures of Mein Kampf, and copies of Mein Kampf,

you have all of this Nazi literature, all of this annihilationist, anti-Semitic literature, posters, et cetera, and they found an iPad that belonged to a teenage girl in this apartment. And they turned it on. And her screen saver was Adolf Hitler. I have teenage boys, and they're interested in all

kinds of things. I have one boy who loves the NFL, and everything is NFL. And the other one loves soccer, and everything is messy, messy, messy. everything is NFL and the other one loves soccer and everything is messy, messy, messy. Who would think of putting Adolf Hitler as their screen saver? But I mean it's indicative of the nature of a society that's been deformed by indoctrination and constant drumbeat of annihilationist hatred of Jewish people and of Western civilization that they get everywhere in Gaza.

When you internalize that and anybody looking at what happened on October 7th, really it's like, how could you not see that? The whole discussion of the war seems irrelevant to actual realities on the ground. You know, let me tell you how I've heard it described. Israel has been so dominant and so destructive, and so some people have even used the term genocidal, right, towards the Gazan people. That this, that's the reason that there might be a Hitler screensaver or something like that. Like how do you respond to that kind of a situation? This is fundamentally false. Hitler screensaver or something like that.

How do you respond to that kind of a situation? This is fundamentally false. If we're genocidal, we're the worst conductors of genocide ever because the data speak for themselves, the actual data speak for themselves. And you have the head of urban warfare at West Point, Colonel John Spencer, who has put out report after report attesting to the fact that the casualty rate in Gaza of civilians to military personnel is the lowest in recorded history, the lowest. I mean, you've never had anything like that in an urban warfare situation.

The numbers are almost impossible to get your head around. The lengths that Israel goes to to protect civilians in Gaza are unprecedented in the history of warfare. And it doesn't matter, because the discourse has an intrinsic logic of moral equivalence. Look at what we're doing. We're sending out leaflets. Leave, we're going to start bombing. We've made millions of phone calls to people on their cell phones saying,

leave where you are right now. Go to a safe area so that you're not harmed. We set up humanitarian safe zones throughout Gaza. We have to do that because the Egyptians blocked the Gazans from fleeing the war zone. You know, you have millions of people flee every war zone, but thanks to the Egyptians, the Gazans have been boxed in and not allowed to flee. So Israel instead has set up, you know, at extraordinary cost, these humanitarian safe zones for the people of Gaza so that they

will be kept out of harm's way. We did it before the operation in Ra'afah. Everybody said it couldn't be done. 1.4 million civilians in Ra'afah. How can you go in there? Well, we moved them out. Prime Minister Netanyahu constantly has been showing the data in all of his statements, not only to the media but also to visiting people who

are concerned about these kinds of things that you're talking about. And yet the discourse continues apace. The facts be damned. There is no truth whatsoever to these allegations. And at a certain point you have to wonder, well, facts don't matter. People don't care. People aren't looking at the actual number of dead. They're not looking at the actions that Israel has taken to prevent civilian deaths.

And they're just asserting these slanderous allegations time after time after time. And you're wondering, you know, what is motivating this? How can it be that you have these so-called humanitarian organizations, international organizations, media organizations that are just parroting these slanders? They're just unsupported entirely by FAC. Maybe there's another nuance here, which is that it's just quite simply Israel has been in control of the area for a long time and has been able to impose its will on the area in some significant manner. And that is the problem.

That's unfair. That's unreasonable. That's how it's characterized. But it's not true. Israel hasn't been in control of Gaza, or wasn't in control of Gaza since 2005 when Israel withdrew lock, stock, and barrel from Gaza. We expelled 8,500 Israelis who lived in flourishing communities in Gaza, in northern Gaza and along southern Gaza, along the area that Israel currently controls to prevent smuggling.

And we withdrew them. We destroyed the communities. We withdrew all of our military forces, including from the international border between Gaza and Egypt. And we said, take over. Here's your Palestinian state. Why don't you turn this into Singapore? They were given billions and billions of dollars in international aid money from the United

States, from other Western countries, and from the countries of the Middle East. And rather than do what we were hoping that they would do, rather than turning Gaza into Singapore along the lines that President Trump has sort of laid out in his plan and his vision for post-war Gaza, they turned Gaza into Afghanistan with 450 miles of subterranean tunnels that exist for the sole purpose of attacking Israel. They took all of the building materials, they took the money, and rather than build up, build Gaza up, they built an underground Gaza, the preconceived notion of which was to be used as the most entrenched enemy encampments and battle stations in history. You're talking about a regime of the Palestinians under Hamas that is dedicated solely not to the building of

a state but to the annihilation of the Jewish state. And everybody thought, everybody, so many people thought the consensus opinion of the international community led by the United States was just give them the opportunity. If you leave Gaza, if you give it to them, say here, the first time ever that Palestinians have had full sovereignty over anything. There's never been a Palestinian state. They had all of Gaza built.

You want a state, start. Start here. Who knows where it will lead, but here, make your lives good. We're going to give you all of the ability to do that. Billions and billions of dollars Israel left. It'll let you take your goods to market through Israel. If you want, you can build a port in Gaza. All of these things were on the table, being discussed, people were willing to fund them. And all of this stuff they took and they built a death factory. And they indoctrinated their people not to want to build a state, but to want to annihilate the Jewish state. Is, given everything you've just told me, is it even possible to win this war somehow militarily?

Yes, it is. It's possible to win this war militarily by destroying their ability to conduct war, which we mainly did. But what we're seeing now in terms of Hamas' reorganization as a military organization is much more along the lines of a guerrilla warfare operation than a standing army. It was a standing army that invaded Israel on October 7th. They had air cover with their missiles, they had drones, they had ground forces, they had a navy that invaded Israel from the beaches. And they were organized in brigade units that were centrally commanded by chief of staff

of their military forces, Mohammed Def. So they had organized as military force. And that military force was largely destroyed. And now we're facing more of a guerrilla organization. So from that perspective, we conducted a military operation that destroyed their military, and now we're going after them in more of a counterterrorism offensive. The question of the way the enmeshment of Hamas with the people of Gaza who share the same ideological sensibilities that Hamas does and seeks the same goals that Hamas does.

Well, how do you do that? I mean, the same way as Prime Minister Netanyahu said repeatedly, that the German people became disabused of the notion that Nazism was going to get them somewhere good. And so by showing them that the only thing that they get from being with Hamas is death and destruction, and giving them an alternative, which is what the Trump plan does, which is, you know, you have this opportunity to build a life in a different place. Gaza will be rebuilt. And, you know, you can return, if you're willing to sign onto this deal, to a place that is humane, that seeks peace, that wants a different future, that is building a different future, if you wish.

And otherwise stay where you've relocated to, and that's how you achieve the goals of this war. You have to change the internal calculations so when you have a discourse that says, hey, Israel's guilty of genocide. Everything that Israel does is an illegal act. Israel isn't even the moral equivalent of Hamas. Israel is worse than Hamas. What kind of incentive are you giving the people of Gaza

to walk away from Hamas? You're not. You're incentivizing them to stay with Hamas. You're rewarding their bad behavior by saying that the people that they just carried out a one-day Holocaust against on October 7 and continue to aspire to do it over and over and over again, as they repeatedly claim or proclaim, you're saying,

good for you. We appreciate you. We think what you're doing is fantastic, and we agree with you that the Jewish state is evil. So when you have that kind of discourse, you're not giving them any reason to walk away from this death factory. Let's talk briefly about the Trump plan, because when we first heard about it, there's a lot of shock. A lot of people weren't even sure how this might actually work. Presumably, that's been thought about in Israel to some extent.

Why don't you give me a picture of where we're at with this Trump's plan for Gaza and how much is the Netanyahu government aligned with that? The Netanyahu government is completely aligned with the Trump program. Look, it's new thinking, as the prime minister has said. This is the first time that somebody has actually looked at the problem in a different way. When you're constantly looking at the issue in a manner of moral equivalence, or the only thing that you can do is keep them there, there's no other alternative to doing the exact same thing that's failed for, you know,

100 years. Then you're going to always get the same result because you're not doing anything different. You're doing the same thing that brought us to this point. So President Trump looks at it and says, no, that's the problem. There has to be a different way. Let these people have another option. There was a Gallup poll that was put out. Asked them, are you interested in relocating?

Over 50% of them said yes. Why? Why not? Wouldn't anybody? I mean, you have over a million, many more than a million, I guess, Ukrainians who left their country during the war. You have over a million Syrians who left.

You have over a million Iraqis who left. You have over a million Afghans who left. I mean people leave war zones. They want to go somewhere else and build a future. So same thing with the Palestinians. They've just been blocked. You know, the Prime Minister said they call Gaza an outdoor prison, but they're being imprisoned by Egypt, and you could say by the nations of the world who support the idea that Egypt put forward, that they're not

allowed to leave. By keeping them in, that's what turns it into a prison. If you let them out, then it wouldn't be one anymore. And even just giving them the option of leaving means that it's not a prison anymore. People can breathe in a different way when they know that they have an out. It's just, it's like a safety valve that you open it up and you let people feel like they have an alternative to what they're

doing. And the whole world looks different. Well, people will say, of course, but they can't leave to Israel. They can leave through Israel. I mean, if we would let them leave by sea through the Ashdod port or by air through the Ramon Airfield, if they have a place to go, certainly they would be allowed out. But in the middle of the war, and the truth

is that before Israel took over the Rafah crossing, the crossing between Egypt and Gaza, 130,000 of them left. They had to pay bribes or whatever to Egyptian border guards, $10,000 per person, $5,000 I think for kids. They paid, and they left. There were over 130,000 I think in Egypt, or in third countries that left. So people who had money left, give them the

option and over 150,000 left in the years preceding October 7th. So just let them make their own decision. Because right now, the only choice they have is Hamas. So bottom line, what will it take to end the war? Victory. We have very clear goals. We need to get the hostages back, and we need to destroy Hamas. You're saying that there's so many people that are aligned with the vision of Hamas. Let's say you were to remove every single Hamas fighter. Wouldn't there be other people that would take their place? It takes time. It takes time. And you can stop things from happening if you're in a position to stop them.

When we're standing inside of Israel with no human, no intelligence inside of Gaza, and Hamas has total control over all aspects of life, then you can't solve it. But you fundamentally change the situation by decimating Hamas in a way that allows other actions to happen in the future. You know, one of the things that people look at is say, oh, it's all or nothing. You know, you either get an unconditional surrender, which of course would be ideal, or you don't win. And that's not true because the way that the world works, the way that life works, because the way that the world works, the way that life works, is that people are constantly making cost-benefit analyses between alternative futures.

And so the more that you change the present, the more you change the calculations going forward. And so with Israel in control of security in Gaza, you have a different dynamic that develops inside of Gaza that changes the situation in a positive way. And so, you know, you have to be able to look at the way that things change over time to understand this is what a victory looks like. They can't attack us anymore.

They can't invade us anymore. They have no prospect of developing the capacity to invade Israel in the future. They have no capacity to organize themselves as a military in order to do that sort of a thing. A number of times I've heard this narrative, and I want to get you to respond to it. It's basically that actually Israel is kind of responsible for all this because Israel funded Hamas,

or even the prime minister funded Hamas. How do you respond to that? The prime minister didn't fund Hamas. I mean, they took over. They ousted the Palestinian Authority from power in 2007. Israel withdrew in 2005. In August, they had elections. In 2006, Hamas won a parliamentary majority.

And the Palestinian Authority, which was supported by the West and recognized by Israel, continued to rule Gaza. And then Hamas carried out a mini civil war in June of 2007. They threw a bunch of people off the tops of buildings. The Fatah, which is the ruling faction of the Palestinian Authority, they fled to Israel. And Hamas took over. And they've been carrying out a series of mini wars against Israel since. The first one started in late 2008, 2009, and then another

one in 2010, I think another one in 2011, another one in 2014, and so on and so forth. So Israel has fought these things, didn't want to reassert control over Gaza. I mean, we left with the intention of not returning. And I mean, if I fall to Israel, it's with this belief, which isn't that different from the people who want to draw moral equivalents between Israel and Hamas, which is if we give them the option of having a better life, then they'll choose it.

If we give them the option of economic development, then they'll choose it. Then if we give them options of quality of life issues, taking precedence over jihad, they'll go with that. And so that was the concept that was driving Israeli decision-making regarding Hamas. And the Qataris, who are state funders of terrorism, they fund the Muslim Brotherhood. They're the world headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood. They're aligned with Al-Qaeda. They funded Al-Qaeda.

And the Taliban are almost state sponsors of the Taliban. They have. Hamas had its headquarters for many years in Doha, including on October 7 and still today. And ISIS as well. So Qatar, they present this very pro-Western, moderate face to the West. They have all of these American universities

with campuses in Doha. And they have nice conferences that a lot of Western intellectuals participate in. Brookings has a big center in Doha, et cetera. You have the Al Ude Air Base there, which is a central hub of US air operations in the Middle East. So it's like this Janus-like presents itself as a savior of the situation, will come in, will give Hamas its operating budget so that they won't attack Israel.

And really what happened was like they do with the two faces, they were presenting it as being helpful, but really what it was doing was providing Hamas with the financial wherewithal to build up the tunnels, to build up the military that they used to invade Israel. There were a lot of calls, you know, they put out public programs, how they were gonna destroy Israel and what they would do once Israel is destroyed, that I remember I talked about when I had a podcast and I wrote about it at the time

and how dangerous it was. And Israelis were aware of the dangers, but we got addicted to the quiet. You know, we wanted to believe, we wanted to believe that Hamas was moderating, that they wanted to secure the economic future of Gaza and provide for the welfare of the people of Gaza, and that if we kept up this arrangement with Qatar, that they would shift, they would change. I mean, even the kibbutzim that were overrun and massacred, on October 7th, these were the biggest peace activists in Israel. And nobody supported the people of Gaza and this concept more than the kibbutznikim who were murdered on October 7th. George Orwell said basically that everybody wants to believe lies. You know, we all want to tell ourselves things that comfort us.

And unfortunately, Israel, you know, writ large, allowed this fantasy to drive its policy and its interpretation of intelligence to disastrous ends. And, you know, one of the lessons of the war is that you have to listen to when somebody tells you that they want to kill you, you have to believe them. You have no choice. You have to take them at their word. Nobody wants to. Everybody wants to say, Oh, he doesn't, he just saying that. Oh, that's not true. But it is true. I want to pivot a little bit to some other things going on in the Middle East right now. And specifically, the U.S. has started strikes against the Houthis who have been active in the

region. I wonder if you could just kind of give me a bit of a picture of what's going on there. Is it reasonable for the U.S. to attack the Houthis? One of the narratives that I've heard also is that the US is somehow supporting Israel in doing that. Anyway, if you can get your thoughts. Yeah, the United States is supporting Israel. It's supporting Egypt. It's supporting the Gulf states. Because the Houthis, which is a regime that runs most of Yemen, that is controlled by Iran, much as Hezbollah has

long controlled Lebanon as Iran's foreign legion. And Hamas was guided by, funded by, armed by, trained by Iran in its operations, in its operations and its building of its military and planning for the invasion of Israel etc. And so the Houthis are another Iranian proxy. Iran had this concept a strategic concept of a ring of fire around Israel that would invade annihilate Israel at the same time as Iran was crossing the nuclear threshold and becoming a nuclear armed state so that it could then become the regional hegemon and extend its power,

project its power into Europe and beyond through a bunch of alliances that they have, for instance, with countries like Venezuela in the Western Hemisphere against the United States. So you have the Houthis. They're just like Hamas. They're just like the Iranians. They're Islamic jihadists. They wake up in the morning just like they do in Tehran and they call out, Death to America, Death to Israel. Again, believe them when they talk about this. And starting after the October 7th invasion, they effectively, they launched a combined assault that included an effective maritime blockade of the Red Sea through the Bab-O-Mandab, which is a choke point that controls the entrance to the Suez Canal that enables maritime traffic between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. And they choked that off through a campaign of international piracy

and the use of ballistic missiles against ships and, of course, against Israel specifically since I landed in Washington. My family, for instance, has had to go to the bomb shelter in our house twice because we were under a ballistic missile attack from the Houthis. It's always nice to talk to the husband and kids at four o'clock in the morning in Israel because they're sitting in the bomb shelter going, mommy, when is this going to end? But be that as it may, that's the Houthis. And so they are armed and trained by Iran. They're financed by Iran.

They're basically the Iranian colony that's controlling the Bab al-Mandab, while Iran itself controls the Straits of Hormuz. That is another choke point for the flow of international energy to Europe, to the West, et cetera, from the Middle East. And so those two choke points are controlled on the one hand in the Straits of Hormuz by Iran, and on the other hand, the Red Sea by the Houthis that are controlled by Iran.

And Israel has attacked them. The Biden administration didn't want Israel to sink an Iranian espionage ship in the mouth of the Red Sea that controlled all of the Houthi attacks. And so Israel was sort of left reacting. The Biden administration said it's our responsibility as United States. We're responsible for the safety of maritime traffic in the high seas. They built a coalition of other Western forces, including Britain as a primary one, but also the French were engaged in this task force that was supposed

to undermine the Houthi campaign against the high seas. And what the Biden administration's policy was, was to do things in a reactive way, not to attack the Houthis' core strength, their formations at home, their installations in Yemen. Israel attacked a major airstrike against the port of Hudaydah after they accelerated and escalated their missile attacks against Israel. But the American-led policy of this coalition was basically to just intercept missiles en route to ships traversing the Bab el-Mantab. There were hundreds of attacks that the Houthis carried out against U.S. naval craft. So

they've been carrying out a maritime war against the United States, the U.S. Navy, U.S. shipping, international shipping, and the Gulf of the Port of Elat in southern Israel, our Red Sea point, has been effectively closed for a year and a half, and all of the traffic, all the imports that usually come from Asia through the Red Sea have had to go around extending their trip by over two weeks to get to the Mediterranean ports of Israel. Egypt has launched billions and billions of dollars in traffic that didn't go through the Suez Canal because of the Houthis. So this has been a disaster for the region.

But the Biden administration's policy of just reacting and trying to intercept missiles en route to naval craft wasn't bringing any results and so President Trump said we have to put an end to this and we're gonna do that and that's basically what the US operation against the Houthis is geared towards it's to end this unlawful block on navigation of the seas by this terrorist regime that's controlled by Iran. How successful is it thus far? Looks pretty successful to me.

I mean, the battle damage estimates that the Americans have put out have been pretty impressive. And Iran is trying to pretend that they have nothing to do with the Houthis, which is always a clear indicator that they're worried that they're next, which is exactly what President Trump has said. And I think that they believe him. If there was any doubt, I think what's happening in Yemen

is indicating to them that he's serious. And so even though it's manifestly obvious that the Houthis are an Iranian proxy, they're trying to pretend that it's not while still trying to direct money and arms to them through various routes. Let's talk about Syria. Just describe to me that situation from the Israel's perspective. So Hezbollah was basically the guardian of the Syrian regime. As well, Bashar Assad was another Iranian proxy. He existed at Iran's pleasure. And his military wasn't the Syrian military, such as it was, it was Hezbollah and Iranian

Revolutionary Guard forces that operated inside of Syria openly. And they were the defenders of his regime. The Russian military was his air force. So when Hezbollah was decimated, when Israel decimated Hezbollah last summer with the beepers and a series of other actions that we took against their missiles and their mid and high level commanders, among other things. And the ground maneuver in Lebanon, they weren't in a position to defend his country and his regime.

And so Turkey, which is the sponsor of the HTS, ISIS-affiliated organization that seized control over most of the country, they saw an opportunity to oust Assad and they took it. And so it was the weakening of Hezbollah, the decimation of Hezbollah by Israel essentially led to the, made Assad's fall inevitable. It's inevitable in retrospect. I'm not sure that people necessarily realized it at the time. In fact, I'm fairly sure that they didn't because I don't think that people realized what it, just how much of a hulking empty shell the Syrian military was. But when Hezbollah couldn't come to the aid of Assad because it had been decimated in Lebanon, that was the end of his regime.

There's been lots of reports of religious targeting, murdering of Christians, other groups. The Alawites. The Alawites, of course. It's a complicated picture, but is this a better regime than the previous? Look, Syria under Assad committed genocide against the Sunnis. They killed over half a million of them. It was a very preconceived

plan that they carried out chemical warfare attacks, massacres, and then of course expulsion. We had over a million refugees leaving Syria, mainly Sunni, because they were targeted for annihilation by Assad and the Iranians. And so he carried out a genocide, an actual one, not a fake one. And Syria itself is a sectarian society. His regime was of the minority Alawite sect, which is loosely related to Shi'ite Islam. And they are now being targeted by the Sunnis, who have this

jihadist regime, HTS, that wants vengeance or hates them or whatever, and so they're being killed. Christians, then you have the Druze in southwest Syria that border Israel that are being targeted. So what Israel did and Israel is protecting all of these minorities, the Kurds are closer to Iraq and Turkey on the eastern side of Syria and they're aligned more with the United States but what Israel did was we took over the peak of the Hermon Mountain Ridge, which traverses the Israeli-Syrian border, to control that area to block them from getting close to Israel.

We've announced our enforcing a protective zone for the Druze in southwest Syria so that they're not harmed harmed and we're allowing them to come into Israel to work. We have Druze villages in the northern Golan Heights that are right next to the border with Syria. And we just had a historic pilgrimage to Israel, to the Golan Heights, by the Syrian Druze leaders a week ago, which was extraordinary, last weekend. And so we're protecting the Druze and anybody who can come to southwest Syria in the area

that we're capable of easily defending, including the Christians. So our suggestion is that anybody who feels that they're being targeted, that they come to an area where they'll be protected. And we destroyed the Syrian army's armaments, their arsenals, the Navy, Air Force, ground forces in a lightning operation that we carried out after Assad fled the country to protect ourselves from a possibility that the successor regime would use those arms against Israel to mitigate that threat. So you know I think we're doing everything that we can both to protect ourselves from whatever

happens in Syria and to protect people who are aligned with Israel, particularly the Druze and the Christians, in this precarious transition period. As I was preparing for this interview, I reached out to a friend of mine in Israel. And he told me, this is an interesting time that you're calling me, because actually the Netanyahu government, there's questions whether it

will survive and so forth. I don't know. Can you tell me about that? So in the United States, you have issues with the permanent bureaucracy that thinks that they should have more power over policymaking than elected leaders. You see that with everything that's coming out with Doge and Elon Musk's efforts to clear a path for the executive to carry out its constitutional functions. We have a very similar situation in Israel

with our empowered elites, our bureaucracies, our judiciary, very similar to the district court in Washington where you have a lone judge saying that, you know, trying to interfere in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy of the president with the expulsions of the criminals from Venezuela. So we have similar challenges in Israel, but the coalition itself is very stable. We just had one of the coalition parties left in anger over the hostage deal that they opposed.

But now that we've resumed military operations in Gaza, they came back into the coalition this week. So I think from the perspective of the internal dynamics of the governing coalition, it's very stable. We have elections that are supposed to take place in November of 26, I think. So I don't think that they're going to be earlier than that, at least not significantly. So the internal politics on that level politically are stable.

The question of challenges to the authority of the government, you know, I think that the public is pretty clear that what we have to do right now is fight the enemy that we face on the battlefield and not one another. So there are calls of all kinds of retired justices of the Supreme Court and generals and things like that, oh, let's bring about an internal uprising against the government. Prime Minister Netanyahu has rightly secured the support and the faith and confidence of the Israeli people in his incredibly courageous and successful navigation of Israel during these dire straits and this dire time in our history after the worst day in our history

of October 7, 2023. And people admire him for that. I know I certainly do, which is why I joined his government recently. He has earned the respect of the public, and the dogs bark, as we say, and the caravan moves on, and I think that that's what we're seeing today. And I think the partnership that he has with President Trump and the trust that the two of them have for one another and the faith that they have in one another is extraordinary and gets unprecedented.

I know that the support that Israel receives from the Trump administration in terms of their clear recognition of the importance for America of the alliance with Israel, it takes your breath away. So there's a significant number of people in this coalition that elected President Trump into office recently that questions aid to Israel. In fact, I actually know even in Israel, some people we questions aid to Israel. In fact, I actually know even in Israel, some people we

mutually know, themselves question that aid. What's your take? There are reasons for the assistance on both sides. Basically, it's also a subsidy for US military industries. It's like a coupon that you get. And instead of sending the F-35 to the US Air Force, they send it to an Israeli Air Force. But it's American systems that are sent to Israel.

It's not anything else. It's not like cash. It's not like go here, take some money and go use it. So I think that it does breed pathologies in the relationship that aren't healthy for both sides. Main thing that we're concerned about or what we want to do and the main vulnerability that was exposed was partially as a result of that military assistance, which is that we saw the cost-benefit analysis.

It made more sense to buy basic equipment in the United States than to produce it at home. And so we shut down a lot of the military production plants that we had in Israel because of that aid. And as a result, we didn't have the capacity to produce the artillery shells, the tank shells, that we needed to continue on. And we found ourselves with an extraordinary vulnerability.

Even under the best of circumstances, putting yourself in a position of utter dependence on the productive capabilities and the transfer in time of munitions from abroad was exposed as terrible folly, as a terrible mistake. And so Prime Minister Netanyahu announced the Israeli independence campaign, I think it's called, in January of 24, of rapid expansion of our domestic manufacturing capability for military goods.

We're not going to build F-35s in Israel. Those are the kinds of things that require continued work with the Americans and good, because then our militaries are also interoperable. It's important. We're allies. But we're not a dependency. We're not a welfare recipient. And I think that the problem with the aid is that it blinds Americans and some Israelis to that fact. We forget how important we are because we so value our alliance with the United States.

And so that impacts our, the way that we view America and ourselves in a bad way. And it also impacts the way that Americans, some Americans, view Israel. And so I think when we have leaders like Netanyahu and President Trump, who are very clear-minded in the imperative nature of the US-Israel alliance from a strategic perspective for both countries, I think that the idea is that we work out a manner of

continuing our partnership in weapons production, weapons development. I mean, we provided the United States with so many different technologies that have saved the lives of thousands of American forces in the region, in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and in other theaters, and that have secured the homeland. You know, Iron Dome that President Trump says he wants to build to defend the United States, what he calls the Golden Dome, that's all

Israeli technology. Israel developed all of this, all of these interceptor missiles for everything from mortars to ICBMs and with American funding. So that's the partnership is that Israeli technology, American dollars, we put these synergies together to protect Israel and to protect the United States and to protect other allies in a way that we wouldn't be able to do separately. That's the whole purpose. That's like the very definition of an alliance, right? People have complementary gifts.

They bring different things to the table. And since they share the same basic outlook on humanity, life is sacred, for instance, and we share the same enemies who view death as sacred, then obviously obviously when we sit down together at a table and we talk about how do we secure our future separately and together, we see the complementarity of our gifts, of our capabilities, we work out how to do it together. So I think that that alliance will get stronger

going forward because of what Israel has accomplished in this war and because of the threats that America faces, whether from China or from Iran, from other enemies, that we together are in a position to face, I have faith in the wisdom of our leadership in both countries and their ability to figure that out. You did describe quite a different approach in the previous administration, to the Trump administration, to dealing with issues in the region. Are you concerned that American democracy is volatile and that there could be a government that isn't nearly as supportive? I think that it's very important for countries, and certainly our country, for Israel to be capable of defending itself by itself under all situations.

And I think that the stronger Israel is, the more secure the United States is. I think that the more Israel is able to project its power in the region, the more stable the region is. Because Israel, as a fundamentally peaceful country that doesn't seek war and does everything to avoid it, the more powerful Israel is, the less likely there are to be wars in the region.

So stronger Israel is, the more, not only the more secure the United States is and the more secure and stable the region, the Middle East is, but the less likely we are to have clashes with governments in the United States. You know, I think it's something that we've seen all over the free world recently, is the appearance of woke elements, progressive elements in our societies that view politics as a zero-sum game game and they demonize their political opponents instead of being able to see the similarities and the shared interests that rather than understand that whether as Americans or Israelis or British or

French or whatever you know you share more with your compatriots than divides you and yes you have disagreements on different aspects of national policy, but you want to work together for the betterment of your societies. I think you've seen elements rise up in all these countries that highlight the disparity rather than the commonality. And it's made politics across the world much more tendentious and much uglier, more violent, more hateful.

And I think it's important in all of our societies to try to work on repairing the ties that bind us to one another. And to the extent that we're capable of doing that, the impact going forward on the international arena will be very positive. Well, this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. Any final thought as we finish?

Yeah, I think one of the things that's important when we talk about war and peace and when we talk about alliances, I'm a very rational thinker, I guess. But I think it's also important to talk a little bit about love and what it means to love your country, what it means to love people who think about the world the way that you do, and what really drives us. Because we're not driven only by interests. We are driven by interests. And they're paramount in most cases, particularly when

you're dealing with issues of national survival. But behind all of that is a profound sense of attachment, of brotherhood, of the Jewish people for one another, of the people of Israel for one another, of families for one another, of the people of Israel for the people of the United States, extraordinary admiration, and yeah, love. We love America and Israel, and we want the United States to succeed. And just as we are committed to Israel's survival and to Israel's victory in this war and to the perpetuation of Jewish life and Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel in perpetuity. So too, you know, we're committed to our friendship and our alliance with the way that the Trump administration and President Trump specifically has really shown their appreciation and admiration and support and love.

Oh, Caroline Glick, it's such a pleasure to have had you on. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. And I've been a long fan of your work, Jan. I think you're doing extraordinary things here and I congratulate you and Epic Times and all your colleagues. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you all for joining Caroline Glick and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders. I'm your host Jan Jekielek.