Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 11/3/23: BREAKING: Biden HUMILIATED as Israel Rejects Pause

Episode Date: November 3, 2023

Krystal and Saagar discuss Israel rejecting the Biden administrations request for a humanitarian pause in Gaza. 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. Hello, everybody. Happy Friday. We are coming to you with a immediate reaction to some major developments between Israel and the United States. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken

is present today in Israel, where he met with the Israeli war cabinet and asked for a series of, quote, humanitarian pauses. However, developments almost immediately after showed that he was very coldly rejected, even while he was still inside of Israel. I'm reading here, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken urged Israel to protect the Palestinian civilians in Gaza and allow more humanitarian aid. However, soon after meeting with Mr. Blinken, Prime Minister Netanyahu appeared to rebuff the Biden administration's call for a series of humanitarian pauses to allow these more deliveries of aid. Netanyahu said any ceasefire is contingent on the release of Israeli hostages who were abducted on October 7th, saying, quote, I have made clear we are continuing forcefully. The Israel refuses a temporary ceasefire that does not include the release of our hostages held by Hamas. He also stood fast on the Israeli refusal to let fuel inside of Gaza, saying that these shipments and fuel are being used by Hamas for military operations. So this is obviously on the heels

of this major new diplomatic salvo after this announced by President Biden, where he called for a humanitarian pause. We brought everybody the news on Thursday. It also comes in what is probably best described as a series of cover your ass maneuvers. we can put this quote, please, up on the screen from NBC News, was, quote, a senior U.S. official who is saying on background, quote, if this goes really bad, we want to be able to point to our past statements. The official said the administration is particularly worried about a narrative taking hold that Biden supports all Israeli military actions and that the U.S. provided weapons have been used to kill Palestinian civilians, many of them women and children. The Defense Department has said the U.S. is not putting any limits or restrictions on the weapons

it is providing to Israel. So, Crystal, the Biden administration is waking up to the growing backlash across the Middle East. Hezbollah leader Nasrallah spoke today, didn't officially declare war on Israel, but did call for a continuation of hostilities. We don't yet know how that is going to materialize. But overall, a pretty humiliating rejection of Secretary of State Blinken in Israel. Basically an outright smack in the face because he was still in the country when they were actually openly violating what he asked them to do. Utterly humiliating and utterly unsurprising because Netanyahu and the Israeli government, they don't care about our words.

There isn't any threat to withhold aid coming along with these new strong words about how they want a humanitarian pause, which is like a made up thing to start with. Like, OK, we'll pause. We'll stop bombing your kids for however long and then we'll go back to bombing your kids. Like, you know, the real ask here, the real demand is a ceasefire, which we're starting to see increasing calls. We saw Dick Durbin was the first United States senator to come out and call for a ceasefire. So you can see the pressure really building. I mean, the other thing about that quote that you cited there, Sagar, is just extraordinary how naked, like in reaction to you've now had one out of every 250

Palestinians in Gaza killed. Like those are the numbers which are astonishing. I mean, when you apply it to the American public, you're talking about if it was proportional, it would be over a million Americans killed. OK, that's what we're talking about in terms of how many have been slaughtered in Gaza at this point. And your concern about that is like, we've got to make sure we've got the right narrative and we're worried that there this might go badly. It's like it's already going badly. It's already a disaster.

And, you know, this country that we basically, you know, certainly prop up in terms of their military and send massive amounts of money to every single year, let country that we basically, you know, certainly prop up in terms of their military and send massive amounts of money to every single year, let alone what they're, you know, getting ready to send to right now in this particular moment. You send your secretary of state over there and he's like, no, we're not going to do that. And not only that, put this up on the screen. I mean, this talk about horrors, talk about a slap in the face. Minutes after this meeting ended, apparently, Israel bombed a convoy of ambulances outside al-Shifa hospital. That's according to, you know, sources on the ground. It's also according to Al Jazeera. So I want to be clear. We're still

getting the details about how many casualties, what exactly happened there, et cetera. But it looks like outside of this hospital which if memory serves is the largest still operating hospital in gaza it's also the hospital where do you remember the saturn netanyahu released this like bizarre computer animation yes claiming that hamas had tunnels underneath the hospital and so they've been urging they've been telling them they have to evacuate so here you have this convoy of ambulances of the critically wounded trying to evacuate this hospital to go to the Rafa Krausing in the south with hopes that they'd be able to go to these newly set up field hospitals in the south. And this is what was hit. And this is where all of the new casualties and injuries, et cetera, are.

And this happens right after this meeting where Tony Blinken is calling for humanitarian pauses. So, yeah, there is like our words mean nothing at this point without coming with using our actual leverage. And they've already heard everything they need to hear from us, which is we were 100 percent with you. We stand with you no matter what, and we're not drawing a single red line. So that's, you know, we sort of made this bed. Yeah. From what I can tell, as you said on the El Shifa crossing, we're still getting some of the details on what happened there. It appears to have been a convoy and also outside of the hospital. As you said, the Israelis are claiming that this is a hotbed of a Hamas may or may not be true.

Again, we don't know. International, but I just want to say international doctors who worked at that hospital for years say they do not believe that that is true. They've seen absolutely no evidence of that. But even so, even if you accept their, you know, computer generation, Hamas terror, you know, offices under the hospital situation. They were trying to do exactly what you asked. They're trying to evacuate these critically injured people. And then it's a convoy of ambulances outside the hospital that appears to have been struck.

This is the issue for Israel. I mean, there any goodwill that is going towards them really has taken so many multiple hits, I think, in the international community and often, of course, now by the Biden White House, especially when you saw the previous confirmation, for example, of that strike on the refugee camp. There's now an official siege going on of Gaza City that is included not just in terms of water and electricity. In terms of the maps we've been trying to show everybody, Israeli troops are actually engaged on the outskirts. And in some cases, according to the IDF, they are actually inside the city of Gaza. There's small arms fire battles that are now beginning to erupt. So we very well may well be entering the bloodiest phase of this, both for the idf and actually in terms of gaza city because now is when some of that hand-to-hand combat is really going to begin i'm already seeing floods i'm sure you

are as well crystal of people bodies scattered on the streets israel's claiming hamas shot him hamas is claiming israel shot him nobody knows they appear to be killed by small arms fire i mean it's one of those where the bodies are there that are on the street. And that is just going to continue as this happened. Israeli casualties also are beginning to increase. We've gotten, you know, more than a dozen or so now killed in the last couple of days. And these are the ones who are confirmed. It's just killed, not even terms of wounded. So as I also saw actually a call back to Vietnam, their images that the IDF

is putting out of Israeli soldiers going tunnel by tunnel and trying to clear some of these. I mean, this is a complete nightmare. They're 300 miles, remember, tunnels. And actually, the majority of that tunnel infrastructure exists in northern Gaza, which they are claiming for evacuation. So we are very, very much getting to the beginning of this. The overall death toll, again, who knows for sure, the Gazans say 9,200 or so, as you said, in terms of putting it in perspective. They claim the vast majority of women and children. They've actually put out names of the actual lists of who they're claiming are dead. Journalists are trying to go through and fact check that. I'd be curious to actually see that soon.

Ryan has done. Ryan actually did an analysis cross-checking the family members of someone he knows who had multiple family members who they know were killed with the names on this list. And actually, it undercounted the names. Some of the family members were not there. In past conflicts, the Gaza Health Ministry, which, yes, is run by Hamas, has been accurate in terms of their casualty and death counts. So that's important context based on what we can tell based on the journalistic analyses that have occurred, it does appear that that number is largely accurate. In fact, the fear is because there are so many people that are trapped under the rubble, it appears that there are still thousands

of people who are trapped under rubble. It may actually be undercounting the number of injuries and the number of deaths. But we know the toll is extreme. And we also know that the toll is overwhelmingly civilian. It is largely women and children who know that the toll is overwhelmingly civilian um you know it is largely women and children who are bearing the brunt of this horror and so you know that's where we are right now and i just to to pick up just for a quick minute on uh what you said about the speech from nasrallah who is the head of hezbollah of course and we were watching this very closely and you know it's basically just like sort of their typical rhetoric and bluster and et cetera, et cetera. He's in between kind of a rock and a hard place because, you know, he has his own politics to deal with,

which is in order for Hezbollah to keep their kind of street cred, they got to appear tough. They got to appear like they're taking on Israel. They got to appear like they're standing up for the Palestinians. But they also have to think about the domestic population in Lebanon. Lebanon is sort of in freefall, you know, economically, politically, etc. And so the domestic population in Lebanon, not super excited about being staging around for another front of this war. So, you know, that may be part of why this was mostly just bluster and not an active engagement in and, you know, escalation into a regional war. So I guess we can all be relieved about that. But

the danger still remains, obviously. I have the direct translated quote here from the Wall Street Journal. For those who say Hezbollah should start the war in the region, I say, wait, these are the beginnings from Nasrallah. More actions will be taken against Israel from several different fronts. This issue will become more obvious in the next few days. He also praised the Iranian-backed attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. So this is not a declaration of war, but it is, you know, just a continuation of ongoing military action, which the danger always is. You never know when one of those is going to pop off and is going to significantly affect the major geopolitical situation. So that's pretty much the update that we have for everybody so far.

It's the biggest diplomatic development, I think, in the last couple of days. Of course, the Secretary Blinken's first trip to the region after the cancellation of that Middle East summit with President Biden. And it's the latest round of shuttle diplomacy,

which has been a failure so far. So anything to add, Crystal, before we go? No, I think that pretty much sums it up. Utter humiliation for Tony Blinken and Joe Biden in Israel. There we go. go all right we'll see you guys later this is an iheart podcast