Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/2/23: US Plans Troops In Gaza, West Bank Explodes, Republican Claims No Innocent Palestinians, Zelensky Called Dictator, RFK JR Surge, Tesla Freaks After UAW Wins, Biden Arab Support Plummets

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss secret plans to have US troops occupy Gaza, Biden panics as West Bank explodes, Republican denies existence of innocent Palestinians, Zelensky called a dictator by former aide, poll shows RFK Jr support surging, Tesla and Toyota freak after UAW wins, Biden support among Arab Americans plummet. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/ Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Hey, guys. Ready or not, 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. Good morning, everybody. It is Thursday. We have a great show for everyone today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Joe Biden facing a protester calling for a ceasefire. We will tell you his response. He made some news with that. We'll get into that and also additional

American response. We also have a bit of a focus on what is going on in the West Bank. Of course, we know about the brutality in Gaza, but also violence escalating there as well. So we'll break that down for you, what it could mean for the future of this conflict going forward. Also, a lot going on with regard to Ukraine. Yes, tons. Both in terms of U.S. public opinion, but also really the wheels kind of coming off internally and some signs of growing discontent from some people close to Zelensky. We will bring you all of that. Also, some really interesting general election polls. RFK Jr. getting like 22% of the vote.

This is massive. I mean, I feel like this is dramatically undercover at this point for a third-party candidate to be polling this high. So we'll show you that breakdown of, you know, who it's helping, who it's hurting, what it all means. Really fascinating there. We also have our first poll in the Democratic primary with new challengers, Cenk Uygur and Dean Phillips. So that is interesting note as well. And in the wake of the UAW scoring those big victories with regard to the big three, those tentative agreements, you already have reportedly Toyota, which of course is non-union, responding to the pressure by upping the wages for their workers. And you have new union pressure being put on Tesla. So really interesting developments

there. Also excited to be joined by James Zogby to talk about the dramatic, truly stunning fall in Arab American support for Biden's reelect. Really fascinating stuff to get into there. I'm excited to talk to him in particular. Thanks to everybody who's been helping us out with the premium subscription. It really helps us and supports us. We're all working overtime here with Israel-Palestine. We're making sure that we are bringing you the absolute best and most accurate news possible. So we want to start with that. This happened late last night. President Joe Biden was at a fundraiser in Minneapolis when he was confronted by a member who said that she was a rabbi and asked him to call for a ceasefire.

He made some major news in his response. Let's take a listen. Mr. President, if you care about Jewish people as a rabbi, I need you to call for a ceasefire right now. There you can see the rabbi asked him for a ceasefire. Here is what he said, quote, I think that we need a pause. A pause means give time to get the prisoners out. Continuing, quote, I am the guy that convinced Bibi to call for a ceasefire

to let the prisoners out. I don't even know what he means with that. I'm the guy that talked to Cece to convince him to open the door, assuming he means the Rafa crossing. The heckler was then escorted out by security who was singing cease fire now. On Gaza, he continued, quote, I understand the emotion. This is an incredibly complicated for the Israelis. It's incredibly complicated for the Muslim world as well. I supported a two-state solution I have from the beginning. The fact

is the matter is that Hamas is a terrorist organization, a flat out terrorist organization. Look, the big news out of that is when he said, I support a pause or a humanitarian pause. I believe that's previous language that the administration has used, but it's still, I mean, the problem with Biden is, is this an official change of US policy? Is this going to come from the State Department or is this off the cuff at a fundraiser? It just- It's trying to placate the State Department? Or is this off the cuff at a fundraiser? It's trying to placate the person who's in the room. Exactly. This man has made so many pronouncements.

I mean, if you'll recall, remember whenever he said that we were on the brink of nuclear Armageddon and closer than 1960 during Ukraine? Again, at a fundraiser with no camera. The only reason we even know about this lady and the protester is because somebody happened to be filming it, which you're not even supposed to do at one of these fundraisers. It's completely behind the veil. We find out in these offhanded, transcripted, I've been that person before. I can't imagine being her, having to sit there and transcribe the president's remarks on your phone and making sure that you 100% get it right before you send it out to the rest of the world. That's why, Mr. President, if you believe that, then give a damn press conference and say it on the cameras. We're making sure that we don't misquote you or anything.

It's a haphazard nature that Joe Biden has. Classic Biden. Regardless, that is still a massive change in U.S. policy, if it is a change in U.S. policy. I have a lot to say about this. So, first of all, it looks like the group that organized this protest. And, by the way, Biden faced a variety of protests while he was in Minnesota, in Minneapolis, which of course is, you know, one of the hubs actually of Muslim life in America was Jewish Voice for Peace. So they're the people who posted the video of Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg interrupting Biden and calling for the ceasefire. And they were part of

the groups that were staging protests all around Minneapolis to coincide with his trip. That's number one. Number two, very noteworthy that while Biden was in Minneapolis, which, as I just said, major hub of Muslim American life, huge Muslim community there, he did not meet with a single Muslim leader. And they took note of that. And Minnesota, a swing state, of course, there's also a large and significant Muslim population in Michigan as well. So we'll get into some more of this with James Ogby on the politics of how all this is going for Biden. Okay, so that's one piece. Another piece is this whole humanitarian pause thing is such utter and complete made up bullshit. Like, have you ever heard this phrase before? No, never.

This is not a thing that like exists that, you know, oh, of course you call for the humanitarian pause. It's total vague, liberal ass covering. So they have something to say when faced with the fact that, oh, I don't know, you've got 2.3 million people facing a medieval siege and you have more babies, children killed in this three weeks of the conflict than you have had in every international conflict in all of the 2020s. So this is what Bernie Sanders has decided he's going to say. This is what Tony Blinken had already made some noise about this. There was already some indication that this was the new Biden administration line. And so now you have Biden here, you know, with this vague, like,

we need to pause to get the prisoners out, whatever that means. It really is completely, utterly meaningless, especially when you aren't applying any of the considerable pressure and leverage that we have to achieve this undefined pause. Like, how long is the pause? What is the pause for? Does that mean after, you know, OK, you stop bombing for half a day and then we go back to giving them money to bomb the people of Palestine? Like that is basically completely and utterly meaningless. And like I said, was probably drafted on some like Zoom call here in D.C. by some sort of think tank to give liberals some way that they can pretend like they actually care about the bloodshed that's going on here. I think that everybody understands exactly what we're talking about here.

And everybody understands that they're trying to have it like multiple twisted different ways. And it sounds just as tortured as it actually is. So is it an official change in U.S. policy? We'll see, as Trump used to say. What we do know, though, is that there are some serious and very troubling discussions going on behind the scenes. Let's go and put this up there on the screen. So this was a, I guess, trial balloon that has been floated and leaked out, where there is some plan that is currently being discussed, at least at a pretty high level, between the United States, Israel, and the rest of the world, where they are weighing peacekeepers for the Gaza Strip

after Hamas is destroyed in this hypothetical world. Well, these multinational forces would include American, UK, and French troops, aka NATO. And another option would, quote, put Gaza under the United Nations oversight. And again, this is a joint possibility that is being discussed at the highest level of the United States and in Israel to put American forces on the's problem. Israel breaks it. They can buy it and they can occupy it for as long as they want, take all the attenuated casualties because we don't need anything the hell to do with this. UN peacekeepers, I mean, come on. Name a single situation where that has actually worked out. Just completely ridiculous. Then basically they're turning to the P5 plus one. They're looking at US, UK, Germany, and France. I mean, where are the Arab troops in all of this? So there's so many levels to this insane plan. But the TLDR of it is Israel wants to, you know, what?

How many, what percent of Gaza is already gone? A quarter last time I checked. So New York Times analysis based on satellite imagery that just came out yesterday, they destroyed already a quarter of all of Gaza. So let's say at the end of this, what do we got? At best, 50%. It's like, you deal with it. We are not stepping in to clean up your mess and have thousands of our troops who are stationed there. I mean, I can't even imagine the amount of forces that it would take to secure 2.3 million people. I don't remember off the top of my head what the population of Iraq was, but at the time, the calculation for what it should have taken was

half a million American soldiers that would have been out on the ground if we were to properly occupy, quote unquote, that country and have some sort of, have actual peace and restore security. We had 150,000 and we know we failed miserably on the initial invasion. So this thing, and what shocks me, Crystal, is the lack of attention and outrage that it has not garnered in official Washington. These are American, US, UK forces. First of all, we have way better things to do than occupy Gaza. But I don't think anyone is taking seriously what it would actually take to do this. Now, we are responsible for restoring security in this place. Insanity.

Well, not to mention, like you can frame them as quote-unquote peacekeepers. How are the Palestinians in Gaza going to view that force? That's what I'm talking about. Then we're the occupiers directly. I mean, it's bad enough. It's our bombs that are hitting them, okay? That's horrifying enough, and we're funding the occupying force. Now, directly, U.S. troops are going to be on the ground as the occupying force.

Even if you don't care about the morality, think of how that impacts our security situation. Of course, yeah. That's right. Then, I mean, that we become direct target then, you know, all these people who are there, you know, really stretching the truth about what Hamas's aims are and how it's a risk to us, et cetera. Like then, yeah, we are directly at risk. We are directly the subject of their eyes, you know, as if we aren't already putting ourselves in that position by how strongly we're backing Israel in all of this to begin with. So yeah, the fact that this is being floated, the things that are being floated behind the scenes and these

little trial balloons that are being put out there, like the other one that we reported on the other day and we have some updates on of like, maybe we just go ahead and do the whole ethnic cleansing and push all the Palestinians out into the Sinai desert, into tent cities. What do you guys think? Let's put it down to the population, see how it goes, see how the Americans feel about it, see if we can pressure Egypt through their debt status to try to go along with all of this. This is why, you know, however you feel about what Israel is entitled to do, however you feel about watching this horrific carnage unfold, you have to keep in mind that Israel's stated aims here, number one, make no sense, okay? If you actually are trying to go after Hamas,

Hamas leadership, most of Hamas leadership is sitting in Qatar. Like, do a deal with Qatar and go arrest their asses. Go do that instead of bombing multiple times the same refugee camp and massacring probably hundreds of Palestinians. Just in that one instance, we don't have casualty numbers, just to be totally clear. Instead of that, like if you actually care about Hamas leadership, this is not the way you go about it. This is just about revenge. Let me inflict brutality because that is, you know, in the wake of this horrific October 7th attack. That's what the public's calling for. Netanyahu is desperate to hold on to his power.

That's what they're doing. And there is no thought about what comes after. And the thoughts that are have been developed and formulated about what's come out comes after are horrifying. So that's where we are. And, you know, the fact that this just like is this little note in Bloomberg and no one really pays attention to it is insane to me. Completely insane to me. And it's not just Bloomberg. I mean, this was all leaked at the highest levels. The Israeli press, Bloomberg. I know the reporters behind this.

These are incredibly well-sourced people. They're at the White House. They know what they are doing. This is a well-sanctioned leak. This is not. And also, let's be clear. It wasn't denied by the White House or the State Department or the Pentagon. So plans are being drawn up. We could talk counterinsurgency.

We could talk removal of Hamas and all of that. But we all need to make it very, very clear. We are not getting involved in this, period, boots on the ground inside of Gaza. We had well enough experience in Iraq. And I think all of us have had plenty enough. And this is where it's like absolute red line in the sand that needs to be drawn. I'm not delusional. I know that will never happen. Our American political leadership doesn't have the courage to say any of these things at this moment, which is shocking and ridiculous and troubling, even in and of itself. But let's give people an idea of what they're already planning. We'll put this up there on the screen. This is from Haaretz, again, an Israeli organization. Guys, please keep this up. This is a map that just shows you the amount of US

military equipment that is currently in the Middle East right now. We are talking about the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, 2,500 Marines, three ships. We're talking about multiple destroyers, two carrier strike groups. We've got two aircraft carriers, guided missile ships that surround them, multiple US Air Force heavy lifters, 50 civilian cargo planes. We've got evacuation preparation flights sitting in Lebanon. We've got multiple air assets, which are, again, as I described, the P5 plus one powers in addition to some other Europeans, on top of the Patriot and the THAAD missile defense systems, on top of multiple other air units that we have, all spread out across the region.

This is like the last time we had this amount of force that was massed in this, we invaded Iraq. And just look very clearly at what they're prepping for. I don't know what it is, okay? You know, we haven't seen the second front materialize yet in Lebanon. You know, hopefully it never happens, but they're ready certainly if it does. But if you put these pieces of news together, you can begin to see they're preparing for something far more significant than Hamas. You don't need F-16s and aerial refueling tankers and carrier strike groups to go after Hamas. You don't even need that to go after Hezbollah. You know who you need? You need to go after Iran. You

need to go after conventional military forces. And clearly, they are very worried about it. I also would be remiss if I didn't mention, I think CounterPoints covered this yesterday as well, where the Egyptians came out yesterday and they said, we will, quote, sacrifice millions to make sure that nobody comes out on our territories. We're talking about the return of a conflict between Israel and between Egypt. I mean, this is very troubling rhetoric. When an Egyptian dictator is coming out and saying, we're going to sacrifice millions of our people to protect our sovereignty and our territory, you should pay attention considering that they fought multiple wars against Israel in the past. And that all U.S. foreign policy for the last five decades has been centered around let's make sure that never, ever happens again. And instead, we're going in the opposite direction.

We're going in the opposite direction. I mean, this is the reason why we give Egypt and Israel so freaking much aid. The whole idea of the amount of aid we give Israel is it's supposed to be peace for security. Where's the peace part of that? That part just got left to the side. And again, it's really important to keep in mind, like the Netanyahu government, they make no bones about it. They do not want a Palestinian state. They will go to great lengths, including propping up Hamas, which they have been doing to avoid the even possibility of a Palestinian state. that analysis that was leaked from an Israeli government ministry of possible solutions,

solutions after their war on Gaza. One of them was the one they said was the most ideal was to push everybody out into the Sinai desert. They evaluated the idea of having Palestinian authority come in and take over Gaza, which has a whole lot of issues, which we'll get into in a minute when we talk more about the West Bank. But they said this isn't ideal because then that opens up the possibility of Palestinian statehood. So they would rather have Hamas in place than the possibility of Palestinian statehood. So just keep that in mind in terms of where we are with this Israeli government and really all of society. I mean, there barely is a left or a liberal Israeli, you know, political force left, certainly within the Knesset.

You know, when you look at that map, I'm no military expert, but this is the analysis from Haaretz. The breadth of deployment attests to multiple considered scenarios, a multi-directional missile attack on Israel, a second Northern Front between Israel and Hezbollah, escalation into a regional war,

and finally consideration of the need to evacuate thousands of Western citizens. And I would presume that's in the event that you do have this escalation into this, to call it a regional war, I think is to undersell it a bit. Because if you're talking about all of these countries, some of whom have really considerable militaries getting into a war, and the alliances that they already have in place, we're really not talking about a regional war there. We're talking about something much larger. Yeah, we're talking about a massive war. And Secretary Blinken made some troubled comments also yesterday. Let's take

a listen. This is what he said before Congress. Let's do a thought experiment. Hamas at some point in the future is disabled. I think eliminating is a rhetorical flourish that puts us in a position where we will never stop fighting against some offshoot, some first cousin of Hamas, some place on the planet. So let's stipulate that the objective is to disable them to the point where they cannot pose a threat. Who runs Gaza? Well, I think we have two shoals, if you will. One is we can't have a reversion of the status quo with Hamas running Gaza. We also can't have, and the Israelis start with this proposition themselves, Israel running or controlling Gaza. That's not their intent. It's what they want to do. And it's not something that would be supported. So in between those shoals are a variety of possible permutations that we're

looking at very closely now, as are other countries. At some point, let me be more precise. Sure. At some point, what would make the most sense would be for an effective and revitalized Palestinian authority to have governance and ultimately security responsibility for Gaza. Whether you can get there in one step is a big question that we have to look at. And if you can't, then there are other temporary arrangements that may involve a number of other countries in the region. It may involve international agencies that would help provide for both security and governance. Ultimately, though, beyond that, is what we come back to, what this administration believes, which is the imperative of getting to two states for two peoples. Yeah, we're talking about nation building. Let's just be very real about this.

Regime change. Regime change. And nation building. Nation building. All of this. Name one time the United States has been able to do this successfully in the last 30 years. Don't throw Germany and Japan at me, okay? It's been a long time.

And also, I don't think you want to look at the price tag for what that costs. I was going to say, are we going to talk about Marshall Plan? Are we going to talk about how much money we spent to rebuild those countries? You know what's interesting? We actually spent more inflation adjusted on Ukraine than we did on the Marshall Plan, but that's a whole other conversation. We'll get to Ukraine in a minute. I've got a lot of comments on that. But point being, we are talking about nation building, fake international coalition. First, the UN can't even agree on what the hell to do with right now on a ceasefire. You think we're going to agree on how to administer Gaza? Get out of here. And then it becomes a question

of like, who are these entities? Who is now responsible for this mess? It's very simple. What's going to happen is Israel is going to blow, if they accomplish this, they're going to, Gaza, as we know it, as we already know, is gone. But it's going to be even more gone by the time that we get to this stage. And then they're going to pull out and be like, hey, international community, come fix this. And the plan right now is only the Americans, the UK, and the French are dumb enough to be like, you know what? We'll do it, even though we would be the occupying force. And then what's going to happen?

We're going to start taking all the same incoming that we used to take in Afghanistan when we were doing this. And we'll send in these USAID idiots and we'll be like, we'll build you a well as long as you love us. And they're like, yeah, totally. Just give us the money. And then we'll shoot at you on your way out. And then 30 years later, we a billion dollars, a trillion dollars or whatever in the hole. And the Israelis are sitting there laughing because we're dumb enough to do this. Like absolutely not from the get go. It should be a demand and red lines should be drawn.

They're like, we're not doing this. You are responsible. And by that, you can get your ass on a plane and go to Riyadh and to, you know and to Tehran, wherever you need to go, Jordan, Amman, and you guys can figure this out because this is a regional problem. The US will help you, but we are not going to be backstopping and security guaranteeing all this stuff for Gaza. And all of this is – it almost seems fanciful because as we were just talking about while the clip was playing, the idea that they could truly rid Gaza of Hamas just seems ludicrous at this point. I mean, it's possible. It's certainly possible. Does Israel really want to take, you know, 50,000 casualties in Gaza? I'm honestly dubious that that is even politically sustainable or possible, or not even that in terms of Israel and in Gaza, I'm dubious whether the international community doesn't escalate to a much broader level at that point. So maybe all of this is a

moot conversation, but we are all of the crumbs. The crumbs for the disaster in Iraq were laid well before we ever invaded. In fact, many smart people predicted exactly what was going to happen far before the invasion. We are at the same point where we need to read all the tea leaves for what the plans are and all that. And, you know, a year, two years from now when all this stuff starts materializing and these possible scenarios, we'll be like, see, they told us years before they told us. put a eight up on the screen guys because this speaks to the other possibility which is the one that israel has really been pushing um which is and this was laid out by a think tank aligned with the government is also laid out in that government ministry report that we brought to you before where the idea is you basically first, and this goes in phases,

phase number one is you push everybody out of northern Gaza. That's already happened. I mean, there are still people there who couldn't flee and who are sheltering in hospitals, etc. But evacuation order has already come down, even though they're still bombing southern Gaza. Okay. Then you do the ground invasion. Then you push everybody out of southern Gaza and you pressure Egypt and use the U.S. to help pressure Egypt to take in all of the Palestinians and completely displace them from the Gaza Strip. These are the descendants of refugees who went through the original Nakba. So the full like second Nakba is their ideal plan. Now, one way, now you may think, and this is something we talked about before, Egypt and Sisi have already said, hell no, absolutely not, off the table. Sisi told this to Blinken to his face, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, here's the leverage they want to use, which is really gross. They're proposing writing off a significant chunk of Egypt's considerable international debts through the World Bank to entice the cash-strapped government to open its doors for displaced Palestinians. That's the point of leverage reportedly that they want to use. And they even have said in some of these documents, like, listen, yeah, sure, right now they're saying, no way, we don't want these refugees, and we're not going to deal with it, and we're not going to deal with it. And, you know, we're not going to be part of this full ethnic cleansing of the Gaza Strip, et cetera, et cetera. But, you know, you come a year down the road and the pressure is mounting over these debts and the other scenarios, as we've just been laying out, are sort of preposterous and ridiculous.

They are betting on people's minds changing and this becoming, you know, essentially a fait accompli where there is no other real option available. And I think that is a very real possibility as well. So that's what they're really banking on. You know, the U.S., I don't know if they're, I don't, I can't believe they're this stupid, but they're sort of floating and pushing behind the scenes. Like maybe the ideal thing is for the Palestinian Authority to come in and rule Gaza. Palestinian Authority has been so neutered. Even the West Bank, it has no credibility.

There is no way that it is in a position to govern Gaza. No. Not a chance. And, as I mentioned before, the Netanyahu government, and not just Netanyahu, by the way, like Vassouas of the Knesset, have no interest in having any sort of unity between the West Bank and between the Gaza Strip. Why? Because that creates the possibility of a Palestinian statehood, and that is something they are so opposed to that they were willing to back Hamas and risk exactly the type of atrocity that ended up

unfolding. So to them, it's completely off the table. And again, it's fanciful to think that the PA would even be capable of pulling this off to start with. So there are really zero good options here for what comes after. And then you raised an important point, Sagar, and it reminds me so much of this, just reminds me of the way all of the war on terror stuff unfolded, Like war on terror. Well, that is an incredibly squishy concept. And we've seen the way that the powers we gave our government during that time have been now used to like wage war wherever they want, whatever they want,

without consulting us all over the world. Hamas is also a very squishy concept. I would like to hear someone in the Israeli government define exactly what they mean when they talk about, quote unquote, Hamas, because we're going to get to this in a minute. You know, you have quite a number of Israeli government officials at this point defining Hamas as literally everyone in Gaza. You have a Republican member of Congress who seems to be defining Hamas in that same way. So when we're talking about eliminating Hamas, what exactly does that even mean? Based on their words, you know,

it's a pretty scary possibility of what they're laying out here. Yeah, that's an important point. And it actually takes us back just, you know, we're talking about Iraq, we're talking about lessons. One of the things that America, probably the single biggest mistake other than invading in the first place that we made in Iraq is that we went in and anybody who belonged to the Ba'ath party, aka the Saddam regime, we're like, no, you're done. It was called de-Ba'athification. And, you know, it's on paper, you're like, oh, that makes sense. These are the bad guys, right? Also, you're like, oh, wait, all the teachers are gone. Oh, wait, the police are gone. Oh, wait, we're disbanding everybody who knows how to do literally anything in all of civil society.

And then three months later, lo and behold, all these guys start to become terrorists and shoot at American soldiers. Like, oh, shocking. It's absolutely shocking. Yeah, we took their job. They're still armed and equipped and trained. And what do you think is going to happen? Thank you, Mr. President Bush. These are some lessons that we should really not forget.

It wasn't that long ago, guys. It was only 20 years. And yet we're repeating all the same mistakes. And it's just ridiculous. But let's move on. There's another important point of news here that we don't want to forget that's part of all this, which is Americans who are currently inside of Gaza. Initially, we talked a little bit about it.

It's been more than three weeks now at this point, and they're still not out of Gaza, which bears so many questions about why and how and why is this taking so long? Only just yesterday, we can go and put this up there on the screen, the Rafah crossing from Gaza into the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt opened for the first time. You can see some of the crowds here of people being allowed out into the Rafah crossing. These are mostly foreign passport holders, but there's a lot of questions, Crystal, as to why no American passport holders were allowed to pass through. Nobody still actually is aware. It appears that the Americans are telling them that the passing will come soon. Can we put A9, please, up there on the screen,

just so people can say? The U.S. citizens were excluded from the list of approved foreign nationals. The attorney for the Massachusetts family tells Fox News, they say that nationals permitted to cross were from Japan, Austria, Bulgaria, Indonesia, Jordan, Australia, the Czech Republic, and Finland. So it's an open question here of whether these people are being held hostage or not. Now, President Biden is claiming that we expect American citizens to depart today. But he said that yesterday. And as of now, the shooting of our show, it's morning time, which means afternoon or sometime in Israel or in Gaza. Right now, from what we can see, that has not yet happened.

So there is an open question as to the success even of this so-called deal that they've had, Crystal, to get these people out. On top of that, there were some 76 critically injured Palestinians that were allowed to go through to go to a hospital. But the vast majority and pretty much the only people who are going to be coming through that crossing are very, very critically injured people and foreign passport holders, period. But our citizens remain inside of this country. And again, it's sort of the hypocrisy of the press. Everybody cared about all these American citizens in Afghanistan. They're like, Joe Biden left them behind and all of this. These are our citizens sitting in God. There's 500 of them. Where are they? We have no clue. You know, they could be dead for all we know

at this point. That's very true. According to State Department spokesperson yesterday, Matthew Miller, he said an initial group of foreign nationals, including some U.S. citizens, departed Gaza through Rafah, he said today. That was yesterday. So they claim some Americans went through. But the reporting suggests the bulk of Americans still remain in Gaza. The reporter goes on to note, doesn't say if they were dual nationals using other passports. That's a possibility, is that they were, what were the list? Japanese and American passport holders. And so they were able to get out because they were Japanese passport holders. We don't know. Yeah, does not answer the question

on whether it was a handful or more. And again, the Biden administration saying that the bulk of them will be allowed to leave today. We'll see if that ultimately unfolds. And some of the reporting also suggested that it was kind of intentional from the U.S. that they wanted to wait and see how this crossing went, whether it was safe, whether it was actually possible to achieve. So definitely something that we want to keep our eye on. You can understand from Israel's perspective, they have a lot of incentive to want this crossing to occur because obviously for, you know, their big ally, the United States of America, this was a really point of pressure here and discomfort. I mean, the number of Americans who are at risk of dying in these

bombings is relatively significant. So that's what's going on there. You know, I also want to you mentioned the the number of dozens of injured, critically injured Palestinians who were allowed out to these field hospitals in the Sinai Desert in Egypt. And I am glad that they were able to get out and get treatment because most many of the hospitals in Gaza have already shut down at this point. The very latest, put this A10 up on the screen. This hospital, which was the only place, the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital in Gaza, this was the only hospital remaining that performs cancer treatments. This has now shut down. We're now at a place where 16 of the Gaza Strip's 35 hospitals are already out of service, as are more than 50 of Gaza's 72 primary health care clinics. This is all just to underscore the 70-some critically injured who were able to go to this Egyptian field hospital. I mean, this is less than a drop in the bucket. It really it's really in line with, you know, the liberal ass covering of the, oh, we quote unquote want a

humanitarian pause. We're not going to do anything to achieve it. And it doesn't really mean anything even if we did, but that's what we want. Or the, we really hope that Israel follows international law, even as we already know from the jump, the minute they announced we're going to do a complete like medieval siege here, we know they're not following international law, but still three weeks later, we're still hand wringing Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Warren, sending out tweets, gee, I really hope they'll follow international law. This Egyptian field hospital appears to be the same level of bullshit, minimal, ass-covering, something you can point to. Or the other one I would put in this saga is like, oh, we increased the number of aid trucks from, I'm making these numbers up, but they're pathetically small numbers from like 20 to 25. Aren't we so amazing? Look at how humanitarian we are. Meanwhile,

the UN is like, they need a hundred trucks of aid every single day. If you're going to be even close to providing sufficient resources for a population that is being starved and dehydrated and has no fuel as we speak. So just keep that in mind when you see, and I saw the New York Times and watched, they were all in on this like, oh, 70 people got treatment in the Egyptian desert. Compare that to the number of people injured, let alone killed. It is pathetically insufficient, pathetically insufficient. And it also comes after, I know that Ryan and Emily did a great job talking about some of this yesterday. We've got some of this that we can put, you know, up there on the screen that just shows you some of the damage that continues inside of Gaza. And

this is the daily reality now at this point. It almost, you know, it's difficult because it just shows you that we are slow walking ourselves to a point of something. You know, this is an unsustainable situation where we've got airstrikes that are dropping, international outcry after this refugee camp was bombed. The Israelis say that there was Hamas terrorists that was inside of the refugee camp. But I think really what this highlights as you're talking, you know, with the Rafah crossing, with this U.S. peacekeeper plan and more is someone has got to deal with this. And we are either going to get to that final point, you know, it's very unlikely in my opinion, without it just breaking into an open, full-scale international crisis. And the war drums are beating.

The tension is high. The international situation, I mean, things are crumbling in a way that most Americans don't really seem to comprehend. The Jordanians, their neighbor, kicked out the Israeli ambassador. He said, get the hell out of here. I just checked. The Bahrain just did the exact same thing, where a bunch of US troops are, just so you know. Yemen, whatever, the Houthi government or whatever has officially declared war on Israel, whatever that means.

Turkey, we have freaking Erdogan out there in Turkish being like, hey, maybe we'll go to war with Israel. The Egyptians are telling us we're willing to lose millions of people to keep people off of our soil. It's like every single actor, Nasrallah, by the way, the leader of Hezbollah, he is expected to make an appearance in a statement sometime soon. It could either be today or tomorrow. That's what some of the reporting coming out of Lebanon is. The Iranians, the foreign minister, they've made several claims. We've got multiple US troops now who you know, they've made several claims. We've got multiple U.S. troops now who've got TBIs, traumatic brain injuries. We've had evacuated positions. And then on top of that, we've got all this firepower, which is in the region. The stage is set. You

know, things don't just happen all at once. They build up. But if you can read carefully what's happening, all of the, you know, all of the ingredients in the powder keg have been assembled. So it just takes the match. Who knows what that is? Nobody ever knows. Yeah. You learn from history, but it's like all it takes is the assemblage. And then the possibility now starts to reach like 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent, 40, 50. We're rapidly approaching the coin toss. The match may already have been lit for all we know. I mean, they hit that refugee camp where they claimed there was one Hamas guy that they initially claimed, oh, we got him. And then they proceeded to bomb the same refugee camp two more times. That was enough

of a like clear atrocity that even Wolf Blitzer, who used to be with AIPAC. Yeah, I read that. Was you guys, I'm sure probably watch watched that on CounterPoints or somewhere else yesterday as well. Even he was like, you knew there were women and children there, and you still bombed it? And the IDF guy was like, eh, it's the cost of war. Cost of war. Just imagine, just imagine if we were talking about Israeli citizens. And would you bomb an entire neighborhood of tens of thousands of people to get one Hamas guy if those were Israeli citizens? Not a chance.

And so, yeah, the powder keg is lit. We have already stated clearly all of Biden's like, oh, humanitarian pause or whatever nonsense aside. The most clear statement we made is we've given Israel no red lines. And that's very clear. And even if you do not care about the Palestinians who are being massacred, that is extraordinarily dangerous for the world and for our own security as well. Yeah, look, I mean, I'll be honest, that's mostly the framework that I take. I don't really, I mean, I care about all people. I care about our people the most, just from a political

perspective and in terms of what we have a responsibility to. And I got to say this too, for all of the veterans, I know a lot of veterans watch this show, the United States military, we had a lot of bad things that we did, mostly in the drone war whenever it came to this. But the way that we behaved in Iraq, I feel so validated in so many of our troops who went out of their way. Now, I'm not saying that there weren't many atrocities, but many of our troops, the official rules of engagement, especially 2005 and all of that onward, they put their lives on the line to try and protect the civilian populace in Iraq. And more and more, I'm watching GWAT veterans, people who served in Iraq and

Afghanistan, who are honestly shocked at the way that't even seem like it. Exactly. Until nobody really knows what's going on. So those were some of the bigger mistakes. So I think a lot of veterans out there should be proud of the way that they conducted themselves whenever they were actually engaged in a full-scale operation. Because watching this, I'm like, there's no way. The United States military, this is anathema. And I think a lot of people know that in terms of the way that we fought. I'll take it one further. The brutality we've seen in the short period of time puts Russia to shame and their atrocious conduct in Ukraine. Like the level of total disregard for civilian life, the willingness to level an entire refugee camp where you know there are so many children, so many women, the proportion of Hamas fighters, of actual combatants that they're killing versus civilians.

I mean, this is it's astonishing. It is truly shocking. And that's why you see liberals getting uncomfortable. They want to have a you know, they want to have this language about a humanitarian pause or whatever, because it's undeniable. I saw Chris Van Hollen yesterday. He personally knows a family who have lost loved ones in this conflict. They weren't Hamas. They weren't terrorists. They were just regular people. And so, I mean, the horror of this is shocking and, again, for the whole world, extremely dangerous. Let's go ahead and transition into what's going on in the West Bank. CounterPoints talked about some of this yesterday. This is really important and we hadn't gone into it. So I want to make sure people understand what's going on here as well.

The West Bank is absolutely also a powder keg right now. And you have had even before the October 7th massacre from Hamas, even before then, you had a huge increase in violence, settler attacks on residents of the West Bank. And basically the idea here is that, you know, the Netanyahu government, they don't want a Palestinian state. And so over decades, and long before the Netanyahu government too, by the way, they slowly, slowly, slowly encroach on Palestinian land, build more settlements, build more illegal settlements, build more illegal settlements. And they really want to push all of the Palestinians out of this area they call area C and leave them with like basically a quarter of the West Bank, the most densely populated areas. And they use a variety of

mechanisms to achieve this. Partly they use this like bureaucratic process of technical laws and jargon that's like they don't give Palestinians any building permits. And then they'll like condemn their buildings and push them off their land that way. And that's this like slow, bloodless, but still horrifying process of pushing Palestinians off of their land. And then they also, enabled by the state, directly by IDF soldiers, these Jewish settler extremists will go in and, using violence, directly push people off of their land. And that is the piece that has dramatically, dramatically accelerated, especially during this conflict. But all year that process has been developing. This is enough of a concern that even our State Department is starting to warn about what's going

on here. Let's take a listen to State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller talking about the violence of the West Bank. We consistently and unequivocally condemn all acts of terrorism and violence and the targeting of civilians, including the recent attacks by Israeli extremist settlers in the West Bank. Israel must take measures to protect Palestinians from such attacks and to hold accountable any settlers who carry out attacks, as well as any members of the Israeli Defense Forces who stand by or fail to intervene when these attacks occur. And I will just say that we have made clear privately to the Israeli government and publicly that these attacks are unacceptable. They need to stop and those responsible need

to be held accountable. If we could go to A4, just so I can show you the numbers of what's going on here. We've had 115 Palestinians in the occupied West Bank killed, more than 2,000 injured, nearly 1,000 others forcibly displaced from their homes just since October 7th. These are not Hamas numbers. These are not PA numbers. This is according to the UN. So in this short, several-week period of time, 115 killed. Among the dead are 33 children. And I want you to

understand when we're talking about Jewish settler violence and these threats that sometimes result directly in murder, sometimes just result just, quote unquote, in Palestinians being pushed off the land, sometimes it's land that they've farmed for hundreds of years, them and their ancestors. A majority of these attacks by Jewish settlers, again, according to the UN, are directly backed and protected by the Israeli military. So IDF soldiers are there. They're enabling this. Ben-Gavir actually, at the beginning of the hostilities on October 7th, he distributed rifles mostly to the Jewish settlers. You can imagine what they're going to use them for. And so this is a process that has dramatically accelerated, that is horrifying, that the U.S. is very concerned about. And, you know, we say like, oh, we hope the Israeli government will do something about it.

Well, the Israeli government is like actively backing this. This is not a surprise to them. They are involved in this process and long have been involved directly in pushing this process. Let's get to the second element in this block. We talked some about, you know, the idea of the Palestinian authority coming in and being able to take over Gaza, et cetera, et cetera. This was an important report from the L.A. Times so people can understand some of the nuance here, Sagar, of how Palestinians feel about the PA in the West Bank. And they freaking hate him. And the reason they hate him is because they feel like they are just collaborating with the occupying force. And they also feel like, and I don't think this is just a feeling, I think this is reality,

that as these rampages have been occurring, the Palestinian Authority does nothing about it. You know, they have no one, there is no one there that will protect them. There is no authority they can go to. There's no police department they can go to. There is no judge they can go to. There is no institution that they can go to that is going to say, we're going to protect you from having these extremists come with guns and push you off your land. Yeah, the problem for the Palestinian Authority is, like you said, they don't have any authority. They haven't, I mean, the last time they were elected was 2005. Then there was a whole war.

And now they, you know, they keep scheduling elections and then they don't happen. They're effectively looked at from the Palestinian people, either fairly or unfairly, you can decide, as a prop by the West and by Israel, as some sort of legitimate authority that you can just put in front of the UN and be like, see, we got Palestinian representation. See, we're working with Palestinians. See, President Biden is meeting with them. And look, some of these people, they have a long time, like they're caught between a rock and a hard place because at least they get representation, right?

Like they can sit in front of the President of the United States and they can deal with them, but they don't have increasing democratic legitimacy. The reason why I think that we are spending time on this is because we want people to understand that the more violence that occurs here, the more the people in the West Bank are going to look away from the PA as a legitimate authority on their behalf, and they are going to turn to Hamas. I brought this up previously. Hamas has a very high approval rating the last time that there was a poll in the West Bank that was pre the conflict in Gaza. Just to be totally honest, I mean, that does validate some Israeli talking points, but I do think it is true. The reason why is because they're seen as

these people will fight. These people will do this on our behalf. We've tried decades now at this point, almost 15, 17 years with people who are nonviolent. And listen, I want it to be nonviolent and I want it to be good. But the unfortunate reality is that from their perspective, they are clearly losing legitimacy, especially the more that they face violence. I think that's what makes it such a powder keg. Because imagine this, Crystal. We have a whole plan predicated on the PA that's going to take over Gaza. But what if the PA falls in the West Bank in the interim?

We could see actually Israel, I've talked about this before, they fear a two-front war. They actually could end up one, but it doesn't have with Hezbollah. They could have a full-blown spark like this. We're inches away from that. That's part of the reason why I think even the US and the West have not been silent at all whenever it comes to the settler violence is because they know very clearly that this could easily derail the only, in their eyes, legitimate political actor in the entire region that supposedly speaks for Palestinians. And then we truly are, we're set back decades. Right. Well, it also, we also should keep in mind the PA being incredibly weak and discredited

and having, you know, much more traction with Hamas. Like that is actually the outcome the Israeli government wanted and helped to effectuate. So let's be clear also about this is exactly the scenario they wanted. Because if you have a strong PA, the Palestinians actually feel like, oh, they actually represent us, they actually protect us, they actually are fighting for us. If they are able to then gain control in the Gaza Strip,

then you have a unified – then they're talking point about – well, there's no one we can negotiate with. So what are we going to do? What are we going to do? You know, of course we'd love for there to be a Palestinian, but we can't talk about a Palestinian state until we have someone to negotiate with. Well, then you lose that talking point, and they don't want to lose that talking point. So this is exactly the outcome that they desired and helped, I'm not saying it's 100% them, but helped to engineer. I want to show you also just in terms of what this looks like, because it sounds very abstract when we talk about these settlers coming

and pushing people off the land. Put this up on the screen. It's in Arabic, so I'll read the subtitles here. But you can see these are Palestinians who are being pushed off the screen. This is all, it's in Arabic, so I'll read the subtitles here, but you can see these are Palestinians who are being pushed off the land. This man says, I was born in this community. My mother gave birth to me here. I don't know how our difficulty began when the settler arrived. And they're packing up their things. You can see in the truck. Since the third day of the war, he hasn't let us sleep a single night. Every day he comes with the army. He attacked us and our children more than once. He goes on to say, and you can see them packing up, about four days ago, he came and smashed the windows. They drained the water tanks and attacked us with stones. And you've had a huge number of

people just in this past three weeks pushed off of their land in exactly the same way. So to go back to the way that the Palestinians are viewing the actions of the Israeli government, you not only have these plans being released, leaked by a government ministry of like, what we really want to do is push you into the Sinai. And then you have this acceleration of pushing Palestinians off the land in the West Bank. I mean, they are not wrong to see this as a coordinated plan to completely, quote unquote, solve their Palestinian problem for good, which again, is not a new position for Netanyahu and his party. This is what they have long wanted. And this crisis they are hoping is going to be the spark that enables them to achieve their

longtime goals. Yeah, that's right. To give you a sense also of just how, you know, when we're talking about, we use this language like that's the most extreme government history, et cetera, et cetera. And also when we're talking about the West Bank and what a powder keg it is and what an untenable situation. Put this up on the screen. This guy that they just picked to head the subcommittee on the West Bank,

I don't think it's too far to say that he was at least at one time basically an accused terrorist, Jewish, certainly Jewish extremist. Let me read you this report from Haaretz, far right Israeli Knesset member Zvi Sukkot to head subcommittee on the West Bank. A longtime target of the Shin Bet security service. Zikot has been arrested numerous times. In 2011, he was questioned on suspicion of involvement in setting fire to a police commander's car against the backdrop of demolition of structures by Israeli authorities at an unauthorized West Bank Jewish outpost. He was never charged. During the same period, restraining orders were issued against him on several occasions,

barring him from the West Bank. The last of the restraining orders was issued against him on several occasions, barring him from the West Bank. The last of the restraining orders was issued in 2012. Following intelligence, he was leading what was described as covert and violent activity against Palestinians. So this is the guy that they just put in charge of the West Bank subcommittee. I thought this was an interesting comment from a peace activist group called Peace Now. They called the appointment testament to quote the national irresponsibility of a dangerous messianic government, which is doing everything to open a third war front in the West Bank. And the reason I thought that was noteworthy, Sagar, is we've sort of assumed maybe that Israel didn't really want another front in the war,

but this group is like, no, they actually want it, which would be the logic of sort of like Zelensky. Like for him, you know, opening up the broader war would bring us in fully on their side. And there's a possibility that the similar calculus is going on here with the Netanyahu government. Israel is a coalition with a lot of different people and a lot of different interest groups. Some people want to heighten the contradictions. They want to take it all out. And they're like, look, let's go. Let's take Gaza in. Let's take the West Bank. There's a huge portion of the Israeli current coalition who absolutely believes that. What is the term? It's like Judea and Samaria. That's how they would refer to the two regions. So it's very possible. And they refer to that because they believe

that Jews are entitled by birthright to this land. Something about the Bible. I'm not the person to ask. Yeah, goes back thousands of years. The Hebrew Bible. The point, I guess, just being that these are troubling developments. It can explode. And the reason the U.S. and the entire Western world, really, it feels very comfortable talking about this and not even just Gaza. It's because they understand very clearly. If the PA falls in the West Bank, it will be a titanic event. There will be no, quote, unquote, legitimate actor. Now we're talking about elections. We're talking about a full-blown terrorism. It is already,

and probably was, on its last legs in 2021. This every day that goes on, it erodes its type of support. And if they fall or if there is some sort of coup or uprising or something like that, it will be a highly significant, highly significant event that will dramatically impact all of the events to come. Yeah, it's that and it's also Hamas doesn't run the West Bank. So there's no cover of like, oh, well, they're killing civilians. But, you know, I know they're really trying to get at Hamas here. There's no cover here. So it makes them look bad when innocent Palestinians are just getting murdered to get pushed off their land. So it's also part of their ass covering projects.

So that's what the liberals are up to in terms of their rhetorical spin of how they're justifying what's going on here. We had a pretty stunning example of what at least one Republican in the house, Brian Mass. This is the dude who wore his IDF uniform to work one day. Who can forget. Yes, indeed. This is his take on why what Israel is doing is completely fine and justified. Take a listen. I would encourage the other side to not so lightly throw around the idea of innocent Palestinian civilians, as is frequently said. I don't think we would so lightly throw around the term innocent Nazi civilians during World War II. So the Republican, this Republican, Brian Mast, his response to the fact that, you know, the killing of so many women and children is

undeniable at this point is to say, well, maybe they're not so innocent after all. I mean, this really echoes, Sagar, the language of supposedly moderate Israeli president Isaac Herzog, who said similarly that there were really no innocent civilians here. I don't have to tell you this is the kind of language that throughout history has been used to justify genocides. It was the sort of language that Osama bin Laden used to justify 9-11. It's the sort of language that Hamas would use to justify the massacre of innocent Israeli citizens. They'd say, hey, they all voted. They elected Netanyahu.

They support these policies. They're not innocent. That's the sort of logic they would use. So this is now the direction that a number of individuals are moving in on the right. Yeah, of course. And, you know, this is psychotic. It also is one of those where it's so funny because these guys don't know anything. Nazi has become something that is almost meaningless at this point. If you go back to World War II, we took extraordinary steps,

rhetorically, to always be like, we want the surrender of the Nazi regime and of Hitler. Our beef is not with the German people. We always said that. For what reason? We knew we were going to have to occupy and rebuild, and we wanted to have some credibility with the German people at that time. We also would often say, we were like, look, they are not fully representative. There's a reason we treated the SS very differently than the regular German army, even after the war. This is one of those where he's like, well, we would never say that there were innocent German civilians at times. That's not even true. That's not what we said. That's not what anybody said at that time. Now, of course, you know, it didn't stop the bombing of Dresden or some of

these other activities, but at the least ostensibly that was to win the war against the Nazis. And civilians, even at that time, were considered collateral damage, but they were not considered to actually be targets that are justified in themselves. So this guy's taking it to the most extreme. I mean, that's basically what Hitler said about Jews, just so people are clear. He was like, there's no such thing as an innocent one. They're all the same. They work to the same end. So no, it's crazy. It's, it's totally crazy. And it just like goes with the breeze or something like that to say these things. Also who, you know, why is a U S congressman wearing the uniform of a foreign military in the hall? Can anyone explain that to me? Does anyone want to tell me about that? Um, because that's pretty crazy. If you

ask me, well, he's actually not Jewish. No, that's the craziest part. It does play into some anti-Semitic tropes about like dual loyalty, et cetera, et cetera. Go ahead and put B9 up on the screen because what Representative Mast is basically echoing here is effectively the position of the Israeli government as articulated to U.S. officials. This is a quote that was caught from a New York Times article. Let me read this in full. They say, it became evident to U.S. officials that Israeli leaders believed mass civilian casualties were an acceptable price in the military campaign. In private conversations with American counterparts,

Israeli officials referred to how the U.S. and other allied powers resorted to devastating bombings in Germany and Japan during World War II, including the dropping of the two atomic warheads in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to try to defeat those countries. So they're literally talking about drop it, like comparing this situation, not only to World War II, not only to the Nazis, but like, hey, you dropped nukes. So any amount of civilian death is totally fine here. So that's effectively what Representative Mast is echoing there. And then, you know, just to give another example of an official in the Israeli government, one of the members of the Knesset who is in the Likud party, which is Netanyahu's party, put this up on the screen, Gallet Distel. She also was the minister of information in this government.

So like, you know, a real like cabinet official until just a couple weeks ago. This is what she wrote on Twitter. This is the translation, just so we're clear. Hate the enemy, hate the monsters. Any vestige of internal bickering is a maddeningly stupid waste of energy. Invest this energy in one thing, erasing all of Gaza from the face of the earth, that the Gazan monsters will fly to the southern fence

and try to enter Egyptian territory or they will die. And their death is evil. Gaza should be erased and fire and smoke on the heads of the Nazis in Judea and Samaria. That's the West Bank. Haran is also a Jew who will shake the earth of the world. I don't know what that reference is, some biblical thing, I guess. A vengeful and cruel IDF is needed here. Anything less is immoral, just unethical. So Gaza should be erased. The Gazan monsters will fly to the southern fence and try to enter Egyptian territory. So you have here not only the total just like there are no innocent civilians, wipe Gaza off the map, punish them all.

We need a cruel IDF, but also the desire to have the complete fullness of the ethnic cleansing program that was laid out in that government report. And again, this isn't some just like random nobody. This is someone who was directly in the government and who is a Likud member of the Knesset as we speak. This is the sort of thing, the rhetoric, that is just like flying within Israeli society right now. Yeah, and look, we wanted to make sure, just to show everyone, it's like we're not cherry picking,

you know, just to show Israel. It's like part of the problem is that we are in a doom loop, basically, at this point, where the top representatives of both sides are effectively calling for genociding each other. Like here we have a video we can play. This is the head of Hamas. This is just a couple of days ago. He says we must remove that country.

It constitutes a security, military, and political catastrophe to the Arab and to the Islamic nation. It must be finished. We are not ashamed to say this with full force. We must teach Israel a lesson. We will do this again and again. The Al-Aqsa flood is the first time and the second time because we have the determination, the resolve, and the capabilities to fight. So just to be clear, we can come out of this, guys, now, is he says we will do October 7

over and over and over again. And I see this shared around all the time. You know, we don't see some of these really stuff once, but we're trying to put everybody together a portrait. The top, you know, this is the leader of Hamas. He says, we're going to just keep doing it over and over again. It's like, okay, dude, well, you are inviting pain and suffering on your own people because at this point, like, And he says, I don't care. I mean, he says that at the end. He's like, we're ready to sacrifice martyrs. Yes.

This is the fundamental jihadist belief. They're like, yeah, we may- I mean, Zarqawi used to be asked about that all the time. He's like, you are killing Muslims. He's like, yeah, but we're killing invaders too and infidels at the same time. I don't care. This is the-

We've fought and seen people just like this. And the Israelis are responding basically with calls now for complete ethnic cleansing. And for just, you know, getting rid and quote unquote solving the problem. And now they've got a U.S. congressman who is parroting this nonsense on the floor of the House of Representatives. Well, and Lindsey Graham said something very similar. Yeah, he did. I mean, he was asked point blank, okay, how many innocent civilians is too many? Is there a number? He's like, no. No. No. Okay, then do you really consider them innocent

civilians then? And would you apply, I mean, he maybe would apply that situation in a lot of different circumstances, but it is so disturbing to me to watch how quickly the descent into outright justification of genocide has happened here. And it's happened on both sides. Let's be clear about it. But, I mean, the Israeli government is the one that our taxpayer dollars are going to. And it's our bombs that are being dropped on this population by a government that has outright genocidal intent and language. So it's incumbent on us to pay really close attention

to what's going on there at the very least. You know, one of the things that I'll just say as a side point, and Saver, maybe you can answer this, I don't understand. So if your goal is to eliminate Hamas, like they know where this, this guy's like in Lebanon, I think,

somewhere, he's going to a TV studio. Like, they know where this, this guy's like in Lebanon, I think, somewhere. He's going to a TV studio. Like, if you're trying to get, most of Hamas leadership is in Qatar. If you're trying to take out Hamas, why are there no efforts to get these people?

Like, what's going on with that? Because, you know, that seems a lot more effective to me than bombing an entire freaking refugee camp and massacring however many people they massacred

their majority women and children. Like, where's the effort to get this political leadership? Well, that's a great question. That's a question for the Qatari government. It also is a question for the Israelis as to like, hey, you know, the whole point of the Abraham Accords and others was to restore relations with the Gulf Arab states. So maybe ask for their expulsion. That could be, would be very clear and a simple one. It's actually one that some people are talking about. Or they don't actually care about the stated goal. I mean, because the stated goal is impossible to achieve, as we said.

And so really what the actual operation that they are pursuing right now has no other strategic end than punishment. It doesn't make them safer. It's not being very effective at taking out Hamas. It's just like massacring and brutalizing and tormenting millions of Palestinian civilians. It's, listen, I mean, I also find it very odd that the political leadership of a full-blown terrorist organization effectively is like untouched. At the same time, though, if I had to expect, the main reason is we got to negotiate with these people. You know, like we could still got US citizens inside of Gaza. Like you got to have somebody to talk to. So fortunately, that's probably the most likely thing is that they want to preserve the political

leadership because they need somebody that they can meet with for the hostage situation, for our American citizens, and for other things as well. So that just shows you how gross the entire thing is. Let's move on now to Ukraine. There's some major news out of Ukraine. First, we wanted to start with some absolutely shocking allegations being made by a former advisor to Zelensky. Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. This is a translation of something that he put out and includes some of the quotes from that extraordinary Time Magazine piece. Of Zelensky, he says, someone behaves like a dictator and instead of following the normal path of accelerated development, he chooses stagnation. Then someone breeds massive corruption. Then someone breeds hatred for any opinion different

from their own. And then a year and a half later, autumn comes, both in relations with the West and with our own people. No matter how much you deny reality, it doesn't go away. One of the stages of denial of this reality is an attempt to blame the damned Schusters for everything. He's talking about the reporter who wrote the Time Magazine piece. Instead of looking yourself in the eye, quote, Simon Schuster is an artist who perfectly senses the moment of truth. The Time magazine article reflects an unpleasant and vaguely familiar image. And really what he points to is that it's a dictator abandoned by everyone, wandering through the back streets of a bunker, unwilling to face reality, hysterically exclaiming about quick victory, which is unable to achieve. An authoritarian leader to whom those around him are afraid to tell the truth. I think that that fits very neatly, actually, with the portrait of a delusional Zelensky inside of his military bunker, where his own advisors are telling a Time magazine reporter on background openly that they are corrupt as hell, stealing everything that's not nailed to

the ground like there's no tomorrow. They say that Zelensky cannot be reasoned with, that even though their battlefield victory is completely and totally unachievable and unrealistic, that they are continuing to say that publicly. But let's overlay that with some also breaking news that we want to say thank you to Gallup for providing us so that we could prepare these elements with how the American people feel about this. Let's go and put this up there on the screen, please. This is an extraordinary statistic. This is a question for Americans. Do you think the United States is doing too much to help Ukraine, not enough or the right amount. 41% now say too much. 25% say not enough. 33% say the right amount. The extraordinary part is not that the plurality say too much, but that just a few months ago, Crystal, in June of 2023, it was 29% who said too much and 43% who said the right amount.

The too much figure is rapidly accelerating. Now, let's go to the next one there, please, because this is another very important development. Would you prefer the United States end the conflict ASAP or support Ukraine in recapturing territory? No answer is 3%. Support reclaim is 54%, So it's still an extreme majority. But end quickly is 43%. Again, though, rapidly changing in that direction. June of 2023, it was only 36% who wanted to rapidly end the conflict. So things are, again, accelerating. And then finally, let's put this one up there on the screen, please. Should the US maintain its financial support to Ukraine, or should there be a time limit on that support? 37% say indefinitely, 61% now say it should be limited. And again, from the previous

way that that has been asked, that is an overall increase. So the final one, which again, just shows you why I, at the end of the day, you can't help, but just trust Americans who is currently winning the Ukraine, Russia war. If you're going to ask the media, they were going to say Ukraine, 20% say Ukraine, 14% say Russia, neither side, 64%. Americans are smart. Uh, as usual, they in the, what is it on a long enough timeline? Um, timeline, they will eventually come to the right answer. And even though they're being propagandized to all hell and being bombarded with all these fake offenses and all that, they know reality. They're like, we gave these people $50 billion. They didn't move an inch.

And a bunch of people died in the interim. Doesn't seem fun to me. Doesn't seem like something that we should just keep continuing with the blank check. And it fits completely with also a new interview that we can put there, please up on the screen that underscores this, that in a new interview with The Economist, the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces says, quote, just like in the first world war, we have reached the level of technology that puts us into a stalemate. So when the head of the actual Ukrainian, I mean, imagine the chairman of the Joint Chiefs or someone like that equivalent, when America is in the middle of the war, just coming out and saying on the record,

we are in the middle of a stalemate. That's what's just happened. So you would be called a Russian propagandist if you said this on MSNBC. But I guess anybody who wants to in the future, Crystal, can just say, I'm quoting the head of the Ukrainian general staff. It's not difficult. Yeah. Yeah. And he goes on to say he thinks it would take some sort of a massive technological break. People should read the interviews. It actually is remarkably honest because he talks about like, okay, at first I was like, maybe it's the commanders. Maybe it's the soldiers themselves. Maybe it's this, maybe it's the commanders, maybe it's the soldiers themselves, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. And then he started reading this book about World War I and was like, shit,

this is exactly what's happening with us right now. And he says that although he hopes that there would be some massive unforeseen technological leap to break the deadlock, quote, there will most likely be no deep and beautiful breakthrough. Think of that admission from this man. So the American people agree with the guy who's running the Ukrainian military. And I think what, I mean, there's so much to say about this. Between this and that Time article and then this former Zelensky aide just putting him on full blast, you can see that, you know, there is a sense of real

impending doom setting in and a realization. They're not stupid. They can see these polls. They can see the way that, you know, what's going on in Israel has taken the spotlight off of them. They can see the way that like constant attention on Ukraine has already long fallen off, that they really needed that to have any sort of a prayer here. They can see the huge disappointment in terms of the counteroffensive. They don't know what to tell their own people about this and what the failure was and how things are ever going to change and be different in the future. And so, you know, when you've got a losing team effectively at this point, not to use a, you know, a sort of trite sports analogy, but suddenly you get a lot of people

complaining, you get a lot of people fighting suddenly you get a lot of people complaining, you get a lot of people fighting, you get a lot of score settling, you get a little bit of truth that starts to come out. And Sagar, I know I say this over and over again, but I cannot stop going back to that original possibility of a peace deal being negotiated in Turkey that we said, we said, no, we don't want a deal. We don't want a settlement. We want you to fight. And we sent these people into the meat grinder. We did it. Our government pushed them into the meat grinder. And guess what? Now, if they decided, all right, we're going to try to go to the table now and negotiate, they won't be able to get the deal that they could have gotten back then. Because

back then they had momentum. They had caught, you know, the Russians were not doing well. They had dramatically underperformed. The Ukrainians were dramatically overperformed. They had a lot more leverage in that negotiation at that time. So, all this time of war and death and misery and suffering and all of that for what? To be in a worse negotiating position than they were at that time when we, along with the Brits, scuttled those negotiations. Well, look, I mean, I got to say, I am enraged that we are funding a military. He's like, yeah, I finally picked up a book on World War I. I'm like, dude, what, you eventually in the middle of the conflict decided, it's like, this is your job. Freaking amateur people from the very beginning.

You can go back and roll the tape. We've been talking about it for two years now at this point, specifically the World War I analogy. But it's very similar. The average age of the Ukrainian military right now is 43 years old. And again, average. So what does that mean on the outer bound of that? What does the tail end? We're talking about like 65-year-olds. That's what the Army of Northern Virginia looked like whenever it capitulated in 1865. They even remarked on it. They're like, we got teenagers and old men who are the people in the trenches who are up against us. So just like in the First World War, the flowery youth, some of the greatest men who ever lived

were thrown into the trunch and are dead. And people at that time, they knew that. They understood that some of the best people, truly some of the bravest citizens, specifically from the UK, they didn't even need a draft for two years because people were so enthusiastic and they believed in the war. And they were crunched and they were killed almost immediately when they were thrown into that war. And also, this is the true lesson. Think about why World War I ended. World War I did not end just because of a military breakthrough. It ended because the German regime collapsed politically and no longer was able to sustain the war effort because its civilian population revolted against the Kaiser. Ukraine is setting itself up for a similar situation.

You can hang on until the end if you want. You're not going to do it with our money, at least hopefully. And what will happen is that years and years will go by. People will start to starve. They're going to start to question. You're going to get violently overthrown. And that brings you to just like what happened to the Tsar or just like what happened to the German Kaiser, if you don't capitulate or if you don't sign a negotiation, because it's very clear that if they don't do it

to preserve their current political regime, the Russians are going to win. Time is on their side. Russia's war machine is doing better than ever. Sure, they've lost a couple hundred thousand people, but they've got millions. They don't care. They've got, you know, their economy is basically sanction proof at this point. I was just talking with Bridge Colby yesterday. They're selling oil at $20 above the price cap. They're fine. They're not doing well, but they're doing fine. Ukraine is not doing fine. They're really on their last legs. And when you are in that situation, Russia is probably least likely to negotiate now at this point. And the Ukrainians are the ones who have put themselves in that situation. But ultimately,ians are the ones who have put themselves in that

situation. But ultimately, we are the ones who, we're the ones to blame more than anything. We were driving this train. We killed the peace deals. We let them think incorrectly that we would be there forever. And now we're basically pulling the rug out from under them. So in a sense, I even understand some of the outrage. But I mean, we always knew it was politically unsustainable from the very beginning. The correct thing to do would have been to try and strike something. They decided not to do it. Hundreds of thousands of people are now dead. Billions of dollars have been wasted completely. I guess a bunch of weapons manufacturers got very wealthy and very rich. But that's the end result and the end state of this, as it almost always is.

And you know what? The people who say, like, actually, we should have given them the long-range missiles right away. Like, they actually have a point. If we were going to give them anyway, right? If we were going to eventually do it, they're actually correct that, you know, they might have had a better shot if they'd had everything that we were planning on eventually giving them from the beginning. And so instead, you know, they're in're in a very difficult position and it's starting to become very clear. It's starting to become very public at a moment when U.S. support is absolutely faltering. So what the future holds, I don't know. But, you know, there are a lot of regrets for our missed opportunities to achieve a peace that would have avoided so many lost lives and so much devastation.

Yeah. so many lost lives and so much devastation. Yep. All right, let's talk a little bit about the way the general election is shaping up, which, you know, there's very little drama at this point within the Democratic primary. There's very little drama at this point within the Republican primary. But the general election is shaping up to be one of the most unusual, odd, historic, whatever word you want to put on it that you can imagine. Put this up on the screen. I cannot understand why this has not gotten more coverage. Take a look. Okay, so I'll go through all of these. This is a new national general election poll. So if it's head-to-head, they've gotten, this is Quinnipiac, they've got Biden and Trump basically tied. Biden's got a one point edge. Then you throw RFK Jr. onto the ballot and the Biden lead edges up a bit. Biden 39, Trump 36, Kennedy 22. I mean, that is a lot, guys. That is really, really significant.

And then they also did one, if you add Cornel West into the mix, then you go back to Biden with a one-point lead, 36, Trump, 35, Kennedy, 19, Cornel West at six. Now, you know, I don't know how many ballots Cornel West is going to be able to get on. He's changed what party he's affiliated with a couple times. So I think there's a lot of questions about whether people are going to even really have the option of Cordell West on their ballot, but whether or not he is there. RFK Jr., listen, I don't have a lot of intel into how well organized his campaign is, et cetera, but I know he's got a lot of money.

So I think it is very feasible that he ends up on the ballot in most, if not all states. And right now he's pulling 22%. Now I'll put out the caveat that I always do with regard to third parties. Usually their support is higher initially than later on. He also, you know, within the Democratic primary, he suffered the more people got to know his positions and see him out there. That's possible that that happens with the general electorate as well. You know, the numbers of who he takes from that could all shift, et cetera, et cetera. But that he's clocking 20 plus percent right out of the gates and he's a Kennedy and he's got a lot of money. People ought to be taking notice. Let me read this direct quote, actually. Let's put this please up on the screen

from Quinnipiac that they say, quote, with minority and younger voters seeming intrigued, Kennedy for now enjoys the kind of demographic support his charismatic father and uncles generated decades ago. A.K.A. it is disaffected minorities and it is younger voters who usually skew left and who want at least some sort of different option who are going RFK for now. Now, listen, it's possible that things could change. My advice for RFK, honestly, would just be keep doing what you're doing. Keep a low profile. The less people honestly know about you, the better,

because then they can just project. Seriously, they can just project whatever they want onto you. They're like, oh, he's a Kennedy, and he doesn't like the two-party system. He's not Biden or Trump. Cool, yeah. I mean, that's a great pitch,

just so people are aware. And it's funny, because even a lot of his communications that I'm looking at, I'm like, this is brilliant. Because most of it, yeah, for example, this is an infographic. Half the electorate no longer identifies with any political party. 63% of Americans want an independent run for president. What is politics going to look like when it's no longer us versus them? RFK Jr. I love it. And it's got a picture of him looking yoked in a Western shirt and wearing jeans in the sun. That's all you need. It's just you keep things at a level where it's like, it's not even really what you're running on. It's you're running against the two-party system. It's like negative partisanship, but weaponized against both, which is a brilliant pitch. And to put it in historical perspective, Ross Perot, probably the most successful third party candidate of our time, won 19% of the vote. So including Cornel West in the general election ballot, which in my opinion

is not really fair because if Cornel does not get all 50, but RFK is on all 50 states and actually does have the ballot operation and it will really just be between the three of them, he could be the most successful third party candidate in, I mean, decades, since maybe George Wallace, Ross Perot. I mean, his name would be all the way up there. And then it becomes a very open question of how much is this going to affect the race? I mean, in terms of the numbers, it does look like he draws a little bit more away from Trump than he does from Biden, but he does also draw a decent amount from Biden. And it's one of those where, look, even Arab Americans, we're going to talk with James Ogsby soon. I'm curious to hear what he thinks. I know RFK is supportive of Israel,

but again, most people probably don't even know what he thinks about Israel. So they might just vote for him as a protest candidate. And I could easily see that with younger people, with Arab Americans. I mean, it could just be one of those like Hail Mary, screw it type of things. And you never know. I mean, he could win a state or two. It's very possible if that happened. I want to see some state-level polling, you know, swing state-level polling. Like what do Pennsylvanians think about you?

What does Michigan think about you? Michiganders, isn't that what they are? I think so. What do Minnesotans think about you? Like, I want to see some of that swing state polling and where the strength is. It'd be interesting to see where the strength is regionally as well. I mean, I've been pitching internally here that we need to do a focus group. We're doing it.

Of RFK voters because there is so little analysis so far of like, who are they? What draws them to him? What do they know about how engaged are they? What sort of media are they consuming? I'm absolutely fascinated by who this group is. And you're right. Like on Israel, he is one lockstep. He's probably more hawkish than Biden on Israel. I mean, it seems very like personal and ideological and whatever he's he's all Um, so it's not like there's any real daylight between him and Biden or Trump for that matter on the issue, but people don't really know, like they don't follow it that closely. So if they just have this vague feeling of like, ah, he's a Kennedy and he's different, like, sure. He's not Biden. I don't like Biden. He's not Trump. I don't like Trump. Why not?

There was a Politico analysis to the point of like who he's drawing from currently. This guy really, I mean, I think it's very likely he ends up being the deciding factor. How his campaign goes ends up deciding who the next president is. So he's collecting checks, Politico says, from past Donald Trump donors at a much higher rate than former Biden contributors. A sign he may be pulling more from the Republican electorate than Democratic voters. But he also is being financed in terms of contributions by huge numbers of people who have never given politically before, which also makes sense. People who are responding to his anti-Democrat, anti-Republican message and are activated by that. And that's not only a very difficult group to get engaged, it's also a very difficult group to poll. They tend to be the ones that sort of fall out of traditional surveys. So anyway,

that is very fascinating. There was also, just as a note, in that same poll, they tested the Democratic primary race. Now that you have the addition of Dean Phillips, that Minnesota moderate representative, and Cenk Uygur. And they find, I mean, this isn't all that surprising. So 77% support Biden. Marianne gets 8%. Dean Phillips gets 6%. And Cenk gets 2%. So, I mean, it basically looks like Cenk and Marianne are pulling from the same pool of, like, 10% of voters. And then Dean Phillips is getting 6%. It's kind of tracks with what I was expecting, basically. Yeah, that's not necessarily a surprise. I think RFK, as you said, he is now the absolute deciding factor. How he runs his campaign, who he appeals to. And if he can get more than that, I mean,

he's starting now. I mean, basically starting at 19% to 22%, something like that. And he hasn't even really campaigned. So the more the people hear about him, the more people pay attention. He's got a choice. My thing is you just keep leaning into that anti-two-party message. I mean, who knows? We could go triple, triple. Like if we go 33%, 33%. He doesn't have that far away. And the next thing you know, he could be in a head-to-head race. It would be absolutely shocking. I truly have no idea. But honestly, it's kind of fun. This will be a nice shock to the political system that people need. Some intrigue.

All right. This we also wanted to update on. So we brought you that the UAW was able to reach tentative agreements with all of the big three at this point. Huge win for them. The members, of course, have to approve it. But some major gains that they were able to achieve in terms of wages. And it looks like the other non-union automakers are really taking notice, and they are very concerned about their own workforces potentially unionizing, and they realize they have to compete with these increased wages that big three workers were able to achieve. So put this up on the screen. From Toyota,

they are saying that they are, this is a report, it hasn't been totally confirmed yet, but this is from Labor Notes. Toyota is saying that they are immediately raising the wages of their non-union factory workers. This, of course, comes on the heels of those agreements. And what a sort of leaked memo indicated is that they're raising their top pay to $32 per hour. This would not be a surprise, not only because their workers, I'm sure, are following like, oh, the person who does my exact same job, this is what they're getting?

Why am I so dramatically underpaid? So Toyota's feeling that pressure. They don't want to have to, you know, they don't want to face a union drive. So they're trying to short circuit that. Tesla actually had already, you pointed out, given raises in the context of these negotiations going on. So, you know, this is something we've talked about with the labor movement is, yes, obviously directly benefits workers who are in a union, but it can really have ripple effects across the economy and across industries as well. Additional context on this, put this up on the screen, from the UAW.

They're making some real noises here, Sagar, basically about a potential general strike in 2028. They say, we invite unions around the country to align your contract expirations with our own so that together we can begin to flex our collective muscles. They go on to say if we're going to truly take on the billionaire class and rebuild the economy so it starts to work for the benefit of the many and not the few, then it's important we not only strike, but that we strike together. When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won't be just with the big three, but with the big five or big six. So real warning shot there to all of the non-union automakers out there. That would include Tesla.

And apparently there's already some stuff, union stuff, going on at Tesla. I'm going to put this up on the screen. Bloomberg reporting Monday, and this is written up in this publication in the street, that Tesla's 20,000 worker plant in Fremont, California is currently playing host to a UAW organizing committee. The group, according to a source, is talking to Tesla workers about the value of collective bargaining and is reportedly committed to funding any such campaign. UAW did not respond to the street's request for comment. This effort to actively expand the UAW's membership in a threat to Elon Musk and Tesla is, you know, is very noteworthy. And earlier in October, Fain referred to workers at Tesla and other non-union automakers, including Toyota and Honda, as, quote, the UAW members of the future.

So pretty extraordinary how quickly things appear to be moving here after the major wins that they were able to achieve. And I think the fact that Fain did it in such a public fashion is also really noteworthy and was very intentional because previous UAW leadership was, by the way, extraordinarily corrupt, totally in bed with, you know, they were taking skim and I mean, it was it was a mess, you know, and they elected this new leadership in Sean Fain. And they had also conducted a lot of the negotiations like behind the scenes and secret, not drawing a lot of attention to it. And they were taking major concessions in terms of the deals that they were striking. So this is a dramatic shift in the way things have been going previously.

Yeah, it's actually really interesting on the Toyota piece. You know, they say that the increase of $2.94 to the maximum of $34.80 per hour for the production workers and a $3.70 raise to $43 per hour for skilled trades employees. I mean, that's a pretty significant raise, up to $43 per hour. And it does show you also where labor pressure comes from. It makes sense too, because think about the overall environment for minimum wage workers. I mean, prior to the pandemic, people were getting away with 11 and 12. Then as we have a labor shortage and we have more labor activism all throughout 2021 and 2022, we're at almost a minimum floor at this point for a lot of major brands, between $15 to $20 an hour. I'm even seeing that in terms of the pressure on the consumers and consumer prices,

where people are expecting a down quarter for the fourth quarter, and yet Walmart and others are still paying some $20-something per hour, even seasonal holiday wages. So the wages are higher, honestly, in some cases they've ever been before. Now, to be clear, it has not kept up with inflation. And I think that's really bad, but this does show you where the pressure comes from and how it will all look like. It also, you know, people were like, oh, but now GM cars and all that are going to be too expensive. We'll see. I actually am still, I'm still, I still want to know, but it does show you too, like with the pressure that we'll be lifting, it's not like it's going to be restricted just to the American auto workers or auto companies. It's going to be all of the auto sector because they're at the end of the day, pulling from the same labor pool. So

it's an overall positive development. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, very interesting to me the way that Sean Fain is calling for other unions to align their contracts with theirs so that they can have an even larger, you know, just not just in the auto industry, but much larger impact on the economy. So something to watch there. He's the one that I wish would run for president. He probably would win. He would do quite well. He would do well. All right, guys. Very excited to have James Zogby here. He's the founder and president of the American Arab Institute. Arab American Institute.

Let me get that right. And he also is an alumni of both the Jesse Jackson campaigns in 84 and 88 and both Bernie Sanders campaigns. So this man has a lot of political insight. We're lucky to have him join us now. Let's get to it. James Zogby, so great to have you. Welcome, sir. Good to see you, sir.

Thank you. Thank you. So it caught our attention, the absolute plummeting support of Arab Americans for Joe Biden's reelect. Let's put this up on the screen. This was the first national poll. You're actually quoted, I believe, in this article of Arab Americans since the war in Gaza began, shows how deep that sense of betrayal goes. they say, with only 17 percent of Arab American voters saying they will vote for Biden in 2024. That is a staggering drop from 59 percent in 2020. Your reaction to those poll numbers, James? Well, we expected there to be a reaction to the community.

In the community, I didn't expect it to be this way. It was much larger than anything I'd ever seen. There was a similar drop in support for Republicans and Bush, but it took six years to accumulate. Wow. There was a very immediate reaction after Obama to Trump, but that again took over a year. This was like a four-week drop in support. And while to some extent there had been a decline in favorable ratings as the national

numbers went, this drop was not only significant in terms of support for the president, but look, I've been on the DNC for 30 years. And when we'd had an almost two to one Democratic ID as opposed to Republican ID, and now it's like 23% say they identify as Democrat and 32% Republicans. The first time in 27 years of polling that Democrats are in the minority. That was really striking.

There's a kind of a frustration. And interesting, it was across the minority. That was really striking. There's a kind of a frustration. And interesting, it was across the board. The first, second generation born here versus the immigrant, all the different religious subgroups, country of origin, people are just traumatized by what he is and is not doing on this situation. James, what states in particular, everyone talks about Michigan, perhaps there are others you can highlight, where this is going to be a particular problem for Joe Biden? Should this continue? Should his actions continue and we get to election day? Well, the states I think that we most focus on are the ones that the Biden campaign focused on with us in 2020. They put a lot of energy into getting us out and giving us support in Pennsylvania and Michigan. That's going to be a tough lift. It's going to be a difficult one this time. We have important

numbers in Virginia, but the margin of Virginia was larger than the Pennsylvania-Michigan margins. And we have lots of people in California, but again, that's the state where the numbers overall, I mean, almost a half million Arab Americans in California, but the number of Californians is so large that the fraction isn't as great as it is in Michigan and Pennsylvania. Those two states are the ones I think are the most concerning right now. So what the Biden team is telling reporters is like, yeah, we know they're not happy, but it's a long way till election day, number one. And number two, the opponent's going to be Donald Trump. And Trump is out there floating Muslim ban. He was the best friend of

Bibi Netanyahu, gave him everything he wanted when he's in office. So they're betting that the, you know, visceral rawness of the emotion right now fades over time. And that also with the, you know, greater evil of Trump hanging out here, that that will be enough to get people back in the Democratic camp. What's your response to that theory of the case? I don't want to alienate myself or the community from the Biden White House, but that's rude and condescending, basically. It's like, you guys don't matter and screw you. You don't have a choice, so you'll come back. That's not the case.

I saw in 2020 people's frustration. I worked on the Gore. I was a senior advisor to the Gore campaign. 13.5% voted for Nader. They just weren't going to do it. They did the same with Hillary in 2016. They stayed away. The question is, I personally, myself, DNC member for 30 years, I'll vote for Joe Biden.

I mean, because I know what the alternative is. But can I go, having built credibility with my community over the last 50 years of doing this work, 40 of them full time, can I go to them in Michigan and say, I need you to blah, blah, blah? I don't know if I'm willing to risk, you know, 40, 50 years of credibility and organizing a community to get booed out of the room. And so they have to be a little sensitive to the fact that if Jewish votes matter, Arab votes matter, Latino votes matter, Black votes, we all matter. And you got to give us something. You just spent three years telling us that Palestinians and Israelis deserve equal measures of blah, blah, blah, and did nothing in those three years to show you meant it. And now we're seeing the consequences of that, an enabled Israel, an abused Palestinian population,

and you're telling us, oh, you'll forget about it in a year. Sorry, probably won't. Right, yeah, probably won't indeed. I wanna come back to something that you said about the rapid decline. You're talking about the decline, how it took several years for this to materialize against the Bush administration, how it took a while for this to materialize against Trump. You also spoke there about increased Republican identification. Have

you talked or thought a little bit about why that is? Is it just Israel-Gaza? Is there attempts by, or successful efforts by Republicans in order to increase Arab American-Rep American Republican identification? What are some of the issues that you see behind that? Number one, it's not an actual increase in Republican identification. The Republican numbers have been fairly stable. They've dropped five, six points over years, but they've been in the high 20s, 30% range. And that's where they've been. That's, you know, look, in every life, a little rain must fall. We've got about 30 something percent Republicans in the Arab community. I mean, what can I do? That's where they are. Even in the years of Obama, when it was two to one Democrat Republican, it was 54% Democrat, 27% Republican. They were hardcore. Even in Trump, they were where they were in the

high 20s. The question is the precipitous drop in Democrats. Do I think that they will stay non-Democratic? Do I think that they'll vote for Trump? I don't. They may stay home. They may find a third candidate. Right now, they're in the independent or not sure camp, which means they're parking there waiting to figure out what they do. Will they go back as the White House suggests, just because they don't have a choice? More likely they just won't vote. And I've, you know, we've had hold your nose elections before, and you got to give people a reason to go.

And frankly, at this point, they're not seeing it. And I'll tell you one, just one last point here, is that when I said that was across the board with almost every subgroup in the community, the issue of Palestine is different than Iraq. It's different than Muslim ban. It's different than civil liberty issues and stuff. It's the wound in the heart that doesn't heal. And so even though your second, third generation Egyptian, when Palestinians are getting massacred the way they are, it strikes a chord and it says, why is this happening? This should not be happening to these people. And three years of doing nothing except enabling Israel to do whatever it wanted to do in the West Bank. And now this and people have had enough and they're and they're they're they're demonstrating it.

And I think it needs to be paid attention to. I don't want it to stay this way, but something has to give. They have to do something to change direction here. Yeah. What does that something look like, in your opinion? You know, I took note of the fact Biden was in Minnesota and Minneapolis. Obviously, there's a sizable Muslim community there. And he didn't have on his schedule a single meeting with a Muslim leader. So it doesn't even appear like they're taking, you know, they're taking the issue seriously in terms of outreach either to Arab Americans or to Muslims. Let's distinguish between Muslim and Arab.

They are distinct communities here. Of course, yeah. And the Muslim community in Michigan is a significant number of Somalis. Ilhan is from that community. And African American, Keith Ellison, is a part of that community. And he's heard from both of them. They've not been happy. But I think that Michigan is largely Arab American. That's a different story. And you say, what can he do? Meeting with them right now, he hasn't had a meeting with Arab Americans, period, right? That goes without saying. The issue, though, is that something dramatic. I mean, look, could he say no to Benjamin Netanyahu and say, stop it now? He could. He could do that. That would help. I mean, why there's no ceasefire, I don't understand. They talk about

Palestinian self-determination. What are they going to do to get there? What are they going to do to stop the rampaging? They say we're concerned about settlers rampaging in the West Bank. Dozens of villages have been evacuated of Palestinians, afraid for their lives because they're out of control in the West Bank. The settlers are just rampaging through and scaring people from their homes. What is he gonna do?

The only thing that would make a difference is if he said to Netanyahu, stop it now and then made an impact. That would actually happen. We've never told Israel, stop, no. If you don't do it, you're not gonna get that damn $14 billion. And you may not get it anyway

because Palestinians needed to rebuild Gaza. There are things he can do concretely, he just hasn't done them. Yeah, I think that's a very good point that at this point, it's not enough to have this sort of hand, oh, maybe I want a humanitarian pause. There needs to be some sort of real concrete action using the leverage and the tools that United States has in droves. James, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today. It's so great to have

your analysis on this. Yeah, appreciate you, James. Thank you. Thank you guys for watching. We really appreciate it. We'll have breaking coverage if needed over the weekend. You can probably expect at least something. Otherwise, we will see you all on Monday. This is an iHeart Podcast.