Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/11/24: Massie Reveals AIPAC Babysitters To Tucker, Oct 7 Sexual Assault Claims Debunked, State Dep Official Resigns Over Gaza

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Krystal and Saagar Thomas Massie reveals AIPAC influence, Oct 7th sexual assault claims debunked, and former State Dep Annelle Sheline on why she resigned over Israel.    To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.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. Let's turn to Republican Congressman Thomas Massey, who you guys probably know him, but just for those of you who don't follow these things closely, he's a libertarian.

And he's one of the few in Congress, and especially one of the few on the Republican side, who's willing to go against the grain. And he has voted against, you know how they've been passing all of these Israel resolutions, condemning anti-Semitism, standing up for this, standing up for that. And also, obviously, tons of money that they just voted on to ship to Israel as well. And he will be frequently one of the lone voices on the Republican side, one of the lone votes against a number of those provisions. That has, of course, made him a huge target of AIPAC. Well, Congressman Massey was recently on with Tucker Carlson, and the subject of AIPAC and how this all works in Congress came up, and his comments are very interesting. Take a listen. Is there any other Republican who has your views on this?

Well, I have Republicans who come to me on the floor and say, I wish I could vote with you today. Yours is the right vote, but I would just take too much flack back home. And I have Republicans who come to me and say, that's wrong what AIPAC is doing to you. Let me talk to my APAC person. By the way, everybody but me has an APAC person. What does that mean, an APAC person? It's like your babysitter, your APAC babysitter who is always talking to you for APAC. They're probably a constituent in your district, but they are firmly embedded in APAC. Every member has something like this? I don't know how it works on the Democrat side, but that's how it works on the Republican side. And when they come to DC, you go have lunch with them and they've got your cell number

and you have conversations with them. So I've had like- That's absolutely crazy. I've had four members of Congress say, I'll talk to my APAC person. And it's clearly what we call them, my APAC guy. I'll talk to my APAC guy and see if I can get him to dial those ads back. Why have I never heard this before? It doesn't benefit anybody. Why would they want to tell their constituents that they've basically got a buddy system with somebody who's representing a foreign country? It doesn't benefit the congressman for people to know that, so they're not going to tell you that.

Have you seen any other country do anything like this? Russia obviously determines the outcome of our elections. We keep hearing that. anyone have a putin guy that they talk to not only do they not have a putin guy look they don't they they don't have a britain guy they don't have an australian guy they you know they don't have a germany dude like it's the only country that does this, that has somebody that like uniformly, I guarantee there's some spreadsheet at APAC where, where, you know, the, the APAC dude is who's matched up with the Congressman is there. And then all the Congressman's votes on the issue. Oh, has the Congressman been to Israel? They pay for trips for congressmen and their spouses to go to Israel. I may be, I mean, I'm not the only Republican who hasn't taken the APAC

trip to Israel, but I'm probably one of a dozen that hasn't taken that trip. And the other ones just haven't got around to it. The APAC babysitter, by the way, that thing about the trips that they pay for, it's not just for politicians. It's also for any number of prominent people and media figures. In fact, I don't know if I talked about this here or somewhere else, but when I started MSNBC, got an email asking if I wanted to go on the APAC trip to Israel? I said no, but, you know, that's part of what they do because then they can take you to Israel and they can show it to you through their lens and have a chance to, you know, subtly and not so subtly propagandize you. And plus just create this human sense of like, oh, I owe this person something because they took me on this great trip and I had a great time, you know, so I like them. They're friends. They're friends with me. Like, I should listen to what they have to say. It's very intelligent in terms of influence peddling, but I think, you know, so I like them. They're friends. They're friends with me. Like I should listen to what they have to say It's very intelligent in terms of influence peddling But I think you know a lot of Americans are very shocked to learn that this is how this all works augur

I mean, yeah, it is as you said, it's almost funny because it is common knowledge here I also been offered many free trips to Israel my only trip to Israel by the way paid on my own dime Thank you. I don't take free trips from anybody and that's the issue. Let's put this up there on the screen. Well, you have very clearly here, quote, bipartisanship or Republican meddling. AIPAC is the biggest source of GOP donations in the Democratic primaries. It says AIPAC sees support for Israel as bipartisan and its donors come from both parties. Its practice of sending money from GOP donors into Democratic races, quote, enraged progressives. But I mean, one of the flagship cases here, Crystal, I'm sure you've been tracking, is Mondaire Jones, who has effectively disavowed all of his former progressive

positions, has been basically, what has he been doing? He's been keeping them not only at arm's length, and he's been a huge beneficiary. Well, he endorsed against Jamal Bowman's primary opponent. Which is crazy. Bowman is under fire. He's been very courageous on Israel. He deserves a lot of credit. And his district has a significant Jewish population. Although, you know, it doesn't cut the way that people necessarily think that it's going to.

Because, you know, I'll show you some numbers in just a minute. But, you know, the AIPAC donor base, it's not like your average working class Jewish American or even average like Jewish professional American. It is the elite. It is very, very wealthy, predominantly like CEOs and executives who cut big checks to AIPAC. So it's not like they're reflective of the Jewish community at large. And in fact, there was polling that was done in Jamal Bowman's district that found a very significant majority of voters in his district, which again has a significant Jewish population, said they would be much more likely to support a candidate who backs a ceasefire, which Jamal

Bowman does. However, Mondaire Jones, who's desperately trying to win his congressional seat back, feels that Jamal Bowman's positioning himself as an Israel critic has been damaging for him too. And he feels afraid that that's going to be a problem for him in his congressional race. So he's made this very cynical political move to back Jamal Bowman's primary opponent and basically disavow progressivism altogether. I mean, it's just incredibly craven. And the APAC money is a huge, huge part of that. I want people to think about this, the piece about how APAC is the source of the largest number of Republican donations into Democratic primary races. Like, imagine if it was a George Soros-backed organization that was being incredibly significant,

the largest player in Republican primaries. Conservatives would be outraged at that. They would think that was completely outrageous. And so progressives really feel that way about AIPAC, which gets a significant, you know, about more than a majority of their money from Republican donors. But it's not just that as well. Here's a quote from the piece just giving you a sense of the scale of their efforts here. for AIPAC's affiliated super PAC, which is called the United Democracy Project, which has already spent almost $20 million in the race this year, in Democratic primary races this year, including almost $10 million in that Jamal Bowman, George Latimer race. That makes it by far the biggest outside group in Democratic primaries with more money flowing from that AIPAC super PAC than the next 10 biggest spenders combined. So the biggest player in Democratic primaries is a group that isn't

even about American electoral issues at all. It's about the interests of a foreign government funded by largely a lot of conservatives playing in Democratic primaries. I mean, it really is quite extraordinary, quite astonishing. And the money has a huge impact, both in terms of who wins these races and also in terms of politicians look at this and they're like, I don't want them playing in my race, so I'm just going to do whatever they want me to do. And that's something that Ryan Grimm has done the best reporting on, the way that they have served as a check on Democratic candidates who might otherwise have some level of criticism of Israel.

That is reportedly, again, according to Ryan, the sort of origin story for John Fetterman being the most embarrassingly pro-Israel, Israel no matter what guy who's out there. It wasn't that he cared about it that much before, but he asked his basically AIPAC guy where he should be to keep them out of his Democratic primary race, and he just took that and ran with it. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And to your point about how American Jews are not the monolith that apparently all of media and Congress wants them to be, let's put this up there on the screen from Michael Tracy, because what you see from this survey is that just 23% of American Jews plan to vote for Trump down from 30% in 2020, despite Trump and a lot of Republican donors saying, well, you know,

what do they say? You're basically, if you vote for Biden, you're not a Jew. Absolutely astounding. You can see here very clearly, if the presidential election were held today, who would you most likely vote for? Biden, 61%. Trump, 23%. 10% actually say someone else will not vote as six. Which of the two party candidates for president would be better for the US-Israel relationship? You've got 50% there who say Joe Biden. So, I mean, this is a American Jewish coalition survey, nonpartisan organization, basically from what we can see here. This is a pretty representative sample of American Jews. It turns out that American Jews are just like everybody else. They're stratified.

A lot of them who are wanting to vote for Joe Biden are doing so for multifaceted reasons. Israel not necessarily being the number one issue. Maybe it's a little bit higher than many people who might vote for Biden or for Trump, but they're just like the rest of us. And that's been the most annoying thing about this is Jewish students unsafe from protesters who are also sometimes Jewish. Zionism, you know, if without the thing, I think the most disgusting thing that Biden has said throughout this entire conflict, just for me, is if it weren't for Israel, not a Jew in the world would be safe because it undermines the theory of America itself.

It would be like saying, you know, for me as a person of Indian descent, that if it weren't for India's existence, I would not be safe in the United States. No, my passport says United States of America on it. And there's nothing else, the passport that I have, unlike many people in Israel, by the way, who are dual citizens. So it's just, it undermines the theory of the nation state for a select group of people, which is antithetical to the very idea of what it even means to be American. And clearly, many and most Jews see it that way, too. Yeah, that's what it's like. Who are you, Mr. Irish Catholic, to be litigating what that means for everybody else? Yeah. And not to go

too deep into the history here, but it's worth mentioning that, you know, the founding of the state of Israel, there's sort of a corrupt bargain between Western powers that, you know, wanted to basically, wanted to remain, you know, with their image of like, oh, we're on the side of the Jews and we're like, you know, interested in protecting them, et cetera. But they didn't actually want to like take in Jewish refugees themselves. And Zionists, who really found it to be a threat, the idea that Jews could be integrated into America or the UK or France or anywhere else, they saw that as a direct threat to their project. You can understand why, because if you have a safe Jewish diaspora that's integrated into their communities, then there's less of an incentive to move to Israel. So there was sort of this corrupt bargain at the beginning that has

continued to exist as reflected in those comments from Joe Biden. But if we can go to B3, our friend Bronco Marcetti did a very interesting analysis of AIPAC donors versus donors to the squad. And he writes here in this tweet where he tweeted out his analysis, he says he looked at more than 500 donors to APAC's Super PAC, which is United Democracy Project. That's the one we were just talking about. It shows nearly 60% are top level executives, nearly half of whom work in the fire sector, which is finance and real estate. The average donation was nearly $90,000. So not exactly your average person shelling out $90,000. Put the next one up on the screen because he put together some great charts that really illustrate the difference here.

So you can see on the left, he says United Democracy Project. Again, that's APAC, Super PAC, Wall Street, BASE. You can see how many of their donors, what's APAC, Super PAC, Wall Street, BASE. You can see how many of their donors, what percentage come from finance slash insurance, real estate, are retired, probably from one of those industries, miscellaneous business, lawyers and lobbyists, and everything else is pretty small. And then you look at their donors versus donors to the squad, who have been the primary targets of APAC. You have 20% of APAC donors are CEOs, significant percentage who are owners or founders,

another 39% who are top executives. That little yellow bar you see there, that's working people. On the other hand, the donors to squad members, 60% of them are working people and basically none of them from CEOs, founders, top executives, et cetera. So it just shows you part of why the discourse in the media, I mean, there's a whole plethora of reasons why, but part of why the discourse in the media just assumes that all Jewish Americans have the same perspective is because there is a class divide even within the Jewish community about how they view these issues and how they prioritize these issues as well. So I thought Branco really got to the heart of some of that class divide and why you shouldn't

assume that the position of AIPAC is reflective of broader Jewish American sentiment, which I think has been consistently the case. Yes, and this is the same for all ethnic groups. I see this stuff all the time. Indian Americans against it. I'm like, hey, shut up. All right, I'll keep it kind on this one. I'm like, you don't speak for us. You speak for yourselves and your friends. And I don't ever presume to speak, quote unquote, on behalf of the community because who's elected me as representative? Somehow, though, in this ethnic group, that's considered not only okay, but canon and then widely accepted by a bunch of evangelical and Catholic Christians to be canon for what they

presume to speak on behalf of. So totally ridiculous. It's always a class story here in America, which means that really it's about something totally different than what is being presented to you. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? A mainstream outlet has just kicked a hornet's nest, taking direct aim at the claims of mass rape by Hamas on October 7th and finding no evidence to back those claims. No surprise, a massive backlash has already begun, so let's take some time to dig into this one. So as you may know, following October 7th, the Israeli government pushed a series of invented atrocities in order to justify a military campaign filled with unjustifiable horrors. It wasn't enough that Hamas had wantonly murdered civilians, including young partygoers, at a desert rave. The Israeli government and its American accomplices needed more graphic visual imagery that could persuade the world that Gaza

was filled with inhuman monsters who must be wiped off the face of the earth. We heard gruesome stories of 40 beheaded babies. In actuality, one baby was horrifically killed on October 7th. None were beheaded. Another baby, we were told, was baked in an oven. Also completely false. We were told a pregnant woman had a fetus cut out of her, that was also untrue. And that volunteers had seen bodies piled up in a pyramid, once again, false. But nothing has been as persistent or as politically charged as the oft-repeated allegation that Hamas used rape systematically on October 7th as a weapon of war. This allegation has been embraced in polite society as an ironclad fact and

one which should never be questioned. It was the subject of an Israeli government social media campaign, hashtag believe Israeli women, subject of a Sheryl Sandberg documentary, a UN report, a now discredited but hugely hyped New York Times investigation, and even a congressional resolution which claimed Israeli police had evidence of, quote, countless instances of rape, gang rape, sexual mutilation, and other forms of sexual violence. Media elites, current political figures including Joe Biden, and past political figures like Hillary Clinton all repeated the claim that not only did sexual assault occur on October 7th, but that it was widespread and directed from the top down.

Let me be clear. Hamas using rape, sexual violence, and terrorism, and torture, Israeli women and girls, is appalling and unforgivable. And you should, when I was there, saw some of the photographs. And it's beyond, It's beyond comprehension. We had two events last week. We had three panels about Ukraine and they were superb. They went off without a hitch. We learned a lot and were challenged. Two days later, we had panels on conflict-related sexual violence. It included Ukraine, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Israel. And it was

protested. You just have to ask yourself how you could have an event focused on using rape as a tactic of war against women and girls, which is in conflict across the world, and you include the most recent horrendous example out of Israel, and that brings out the protesters. So there is an invidious strain of anti-Semitism that has never gone away, but we had hopes it had been certainly submerged, that has been poking its head up for quite some time now. 15,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes, three quarters of whom are women and children. And it's horrible, but you don't see Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian women. Well, Dana, I think we're not...

I could probably do entire monologues about each of those clips, but the last one with Dana Bash really gives up the game. Sure, Palestinians getting killed, it's terrible, but at least they aren't getting raped like Israeli women. She uses the mass rape claims to dismiss in real time the horrors of Palestinians, which of course is the whole reason why these claims were marketed so aggressively by the Israeli government to begin with. But from the beginning, there were some brave voices out there asking for evidence that just had not yet been produced.

Electronic Intifada, The Gray Zone, Z Squirrel, The Intercept, and many more began looking critically at the reports, pointing out where narratives collapsed, evidence was lacking, or stories were ever-shifting. All of these attempts at actual journalism, as opposed to just writing up whatever government spokesperson wants you to say, all of these were roundly smeared. The individuals involved were personally attacked as pro-Hamas rape apologists. Breonna Joy Gray was just fired from the Hill because of her willingness to question this narrative.

Well, now a mainstream outlet, the Times of London, has conducted an investigation into those mass rape allegations in an attempt to sort fact from fiction. And while, listen, there are some parts I could take some issue with, I still really highly recommend it. The piece is very sympathetic to Israeli perspectives, even to the ultra-religious Zaka volunteers whose lies formed a core of the mass rape evidence and other atrocity fictions as well. But ultimately, Times of London concludes the bottom line is this. There is no forensic evidence of rape. There is no video evidence of October 7th rape. The government of Israel

claimed they had evidence of thousands of sexual assaults. They have produced zero evidence to support a single claim. Here is the report, quote, "'To this date, police have not interviewed a single survivor.' On December 24, the police issued a decree to hospitals ordering them to hand over accounts of any rape survivor who had sought treatment. On January 4th, the police put out a fresh appeal

for witnesses, saying they had succeeded in interviewing just three and had been unable to match their accounts with the bodies collected from the massacre site. The Times of London also discusses the lack of evidence in the UN report compiled by Pramila Patten. Quote, in all the Hamas video footage Patten's team had watched and all the photographs they had seen, there were no depictions of rape. We hired a leading Israeli dark web researcher to look for evidence of those images, including footage deleted from public sources. None could be found. They also detail how the rape claims were obsessed over and politically weaponized in a way that actually was damaging

to other survivors. After 300,000 people marched in London to protest the ongoing genocide, an Israeli government spokesperson smeared them all as rape apologists. What's more, the quest to prove the mass rape narrative erased the focus on other horrific trauma and atrocities that were meted out on that day. Dr. Ruth Plonsker, a senior psychologist

with non-governmental organization SafeHeart, believes the focus on sexual violence has been unhelpful for Nova Festival survivors wrestling with their trauma. She said, I don't think there were a lot of sexual assaults. There was a lot of murder. That's what happened there. People were hiding and watching very horrible things. She's skeptical that political leaders have the victims' interests in mind. Quote, therapists are interested in the victims and the survivors.

I think politicians are interested in the image of Israel. The head of an Israeli rape crisis center told the Times of London she was disgusted by the way the rape allegations had been politicized. Quote, on October 11th, the foreign ministry launched a campaign under the hashtag Believe Israeli Women. I did not think that was sensible, she said. They didn't mean believe Israeli women. They meant believe Israel.

Now, the article did not conclude that no rape had occurred and left open the possibility that mass systematic rape had indeed been part of the Hamas October 7th attack, but simply pointed out what is inescapable at this point. As of now, there is no evidence to back those claims. Now, naturally, the backlash has been both swift and very revealing. Those three Israeli experts that were interviewed for the piece wrote a joint response, claiming their words had been, quote,

"'misrepresented, twisted, and cynically exploited.'" One can only imagine what pressure these experts are under in Israel itself. Notably, though, they don't actually dispute any of the facts from the piece, nor do they specify these supposed misrepresentations or directly claim that they were actually misquoted. It's all left very vague. Nonetheless, this response has fueled calls for the Times of London to apologize or even to retract the report entirely.

Needless to say, that would be a strange thing to do, given that no error has actually been revealed. Meanwhile, however, the New York Times has published an explosive new report that does detail sexual assault used as a tool of war in a systematic way with actual evidence to back it up. But you probably didn't hear about that report because it was about Palestinian prisoners being tortured and sodomized by their Israeli captors. In a lengthy investigation into abuse to Palestinians at an Israeli military base turned prison, they write that Palestinians were subjected to brutal beatings, electric shocks, intentional degradation, including being forced to wear beatings, electric shocks, intentional degradation, including being forced to wear only diapers, and sexual assault. Quote, Mr. Al-Hamlawi,

the senior nurse, said a female officer had ordered two soldiers to lift him up and press his rectum against a metal stick that was fixed to the ground. He said the stick penetrated his rectum for roughly five seconds, causing it to bleed and leaving him with unbearable pain. A leaked draft of the Unruh Report detailed an interview that gave a similar account. It cited a 41-year-old detainee

who said that interrogators, quote, made me sit on something like a hot metal stick and it felt like fire, and also said that another detainee died after they put the electric stick up his anus. But there will be no congressional resolutions about these assaults, no Sheryl Sandberg film, no convenings with Hillary Clinton to discuss why we should hashtag believe Palestinian men. Because Bibi and Biden, they never cared about human rights or protection from sexual assault. Hell, they never cared about human rights or protection

from sexual assault. Hell, they don't even actually care about Israeli women since they're content to continue to let hostages languish in Gaza with no ceasefire deal. They care about cynical, emotional manipulation for their own political ends and to justify their own atrocities. Just a couple of dudes who couldn't care less about violence against women using fake feminism to justify a genocide. At least one outlet is no longer falling for the ruse. And Sagar, we mentioned this. And if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. We are very fortunate to be joined this morning by Dr. Anel Shiline.

She is a former State Department official who resigned over our government's policy vis-a-vis Israel and especially the Israeli assault on Gaza. Great to have you, doctor. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. And I understand now I should give a shout out to our friends over at Quincy Institute that you are a research fellow for the Middle East there as well. Just start by introducing yourself a little bit to our audience, what your position was at the State Department and what led you finally to resign. So I was a foreign affairs officer with the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor's Office of Near Eastern Affairs. So DRL, NEA, the office that works on

human rights, does the human rights reports. And I had only been at the State Department briefly when October 7th happened. I'd only been there about six months. And in the end, I served for a year, which I had an obligation to the government to serve for a year. And I resigned over the unconditional support for Gaza, in particular the ways that the Biden administration is violating American law. I think that obviously not only is this having a devastating effect for Palestinians in Syk-Fesa, but also for America's leadership in the world. I think we are doing incredible damage to the international order, to international law. And I think that this is going to come back to bite us because as other countries see that the

U.S. behaves in a way that, you know, that the U.S. and Israel have total disregard for international law, what is to prevent other countries from behaving similarly. Obviously, we saw Russia do that with the invasion of Ukraine. But as we enter a world where other countries are growing increasingly more powerful, I think the U.S. and Israel may come to regret the ways that they thought they could just violate international law, that there would be no consequences. Can you talk to us about what it was like inside the State Department at that time? And I presume that you were trying to voice dissent, you know, within the department. What was it like in terms of the incoming from other countries and then trying to bubble that

up to Anthony Blinken? And how receptive was he to the criticism? So, yes, exactly. There is the dissent channel inside the State Department. So I co-authored a dissent cable and signed two other cables expressing my opposition and that of my colleagues to the unconditional U.S. Department was aware of the deep level of concern and alarm over what these policies were doing, again, not only to the people directly affected, but also just more broadly. So from my office, trying to promote human rights in the Middle East, which already was not an easy thing to do, to be clear. I mean, this is a deeply autocratic system. Many of these are governments where the U.S. is much more interested in maintaining the security relationship or, you know, just the nature of U.S. relationships is not really governed by human rights sort of as a rule.

But just the point was that after October 7th, it just became completely impossible to try to advocate for human rights, not only because these governments would immediately turn around and say, how can you criticize us on human rights, given what you're doing and supporting? And also that organizations, you know, civil society organizations on the ground in these countries, many of them were no longer interested in having anything to do with the State Department. You know, you clearly didn't go in with the Pollyanna view. You're an experienced professional. You didn't go in thinking like, oh, the U.S. always stands with human rights and that's the utmost priority. And yet still you were shocked and horrified enough to, you know, to ultimately feel like you had to, for your own integrity, resign. Was there a particular breaking point?

Were you truly shocked by the blanket support, even for things that were just outrageously, clearly violations of U.S. law either? What was it that really surprised you about the response, given that you came in sort of clear-eyed about the pragmatic nature of what you were going to be doing at the State Department? Well, it's definitely true that I did not come in with, you know, under any illusion that human rights were going to be the top priority, even for the, you know, for the Human Rights Office. However, you know, for me, there was not one particular point. I think it was really just the slow accumulation, just realizing day in and day out that just kind of no matter what Israel did, the U.S. just continued to provide more and more weapons and more and more money.

And it just seemed that there was really no red line that Israel could cross that would suddenly push the Biden administration to finally say, all right, that's it. You know, we can no longer support this. And, you know, so as I mentioned, I was there exactly a year because I owed the government a year. I'd had a fellowship that obligated a year service. So I decided that I would fulfill the obligation. And then on, you know, exactly 365 days after I started was when I handed in my resignation. I had not planned to go public initially because I was so new there. I didn't think I was important enough to go public, but it was speaking with colleagues who said, please reconsider, please consider going public because, you know, these were colleagues who weren't in a position to resign.

And so they really, at that time, it had only been Josh Paul who'd resigned very early in the war. And then Tara Kabash, who's a political appointee from the Department of Education, were the only two public resignations at that point. But that after I resigned in late March, we've subsequently seen three or four more public resignations. And the hope was that by resigning publicly to build this pressure, you know, that we're seeing from many parts of American society, obviously from college campuses, from the uncommitted movement and others really trying to say that the American people do not support what the administration is doing. Can you tell us about, as you just referenced, a lot of those colleagues who may not be what the administration is doing. Can you tell us about, as you just referenced, a lot of those colleagues who may not be in the same position, you obviously had, you know,

you could make alternative arrangements, et cetera, for a lot of the people who are lifers and others who are inside of the State Department. What would you say the prevailing opinion is? Is it the vast majority? Is it, you know, half and half? Are there, you know, how representative, I guess, would your views be inside of the State Department amongst normal career officers? It's really hard to say. I mean, the State Department is massive and I don't, you know, I'm not in touch with the thousands of people who work there. But I can just speak to, you know, those that I was in touch with. There's a group called Feds United for Peace, for example, which represents not only people at state, but people across the federal government

who are deeply, deeply opposed to what's going on. And so they were the ones who really supported me as I made the decision, well, contributed to me making the decision to go public and then supported me, especially through the bit of a, just a lot of media attention that followed, which I was not expecting. Like I said, I didn't think people would care. So, I mean, it's really hard to say the level of opposition, but I do think in particular from those who know the region well and who have worked on this issue, that's often where you see some of the most, the deepest levels of opposition. You know, these are people like Josh Paul, like Stacey Gilbert, who recently resigned from the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration because she had been working directly on the NSM-20 and that the final report that came out

did not reflect the work that she and her colleagues had done on it, which just reflects the ways that the State Department is ignoring the expertise of these many hundreds of individuals who know so much about the region and know this incredible damage that these policies are doing to U.S. interests. Again, this is not just motivated by sort of a bleeding heart concern for Palestinians, although that is obviously, you know, part of it for many people. But it's also just this is directly harmful to American interests and arguably to Israeli interests. We saw the myth of Israeli security punctured on October 7th, that clearly perpetual occupation is not a recipe for Israeli security. And so the U.S. would best serve, you know, American donors who

are so concerned about the future of the state of Israel. If that's their primary motivation, they should be supporting some kind of stable resolution that allows Palestinians to live in a circumstance where they don't, they're not motivated to react violently, you know, to engage in an action like October 7th. You know, like the extent to which this is also self-defeating is, it's truly mind-boggling because many of the people working on this are such experts and know so much, and yet we continue to see this same futile and failed policy over and over and over again. Yeah, I think that's so well said. I wanted to get your reaction to the U.N. Security Council resolution that the U.S.

just pushed through. We can put this first element up on the screen, guys, with the numbers here. This is from Axios reporter Barack Ravid. Breaking the U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution on Monday calling on Hamas to accept their proposal for a hostage and ceasefire deal. 14 member states voted yes and Russia abstained. This has all been very strange, but I wanted to get your reaction to it. So Biden comes down, he gives this big speech. He says, Israel has made this very generous proposal for a permanent ceasefire. Here's

the phases. Now we're calling on Hamas to accept it. Well, Hamas, in reaction also to this resolution for the U.N. Security Council, said, OK, we're open to it. Let's talk. Like, yes, if it's going to end the war, we are open to that. And in fact, yesterday, you know, directly indicated that they supported the text of the Security Council resolution. Israel, on the other hand, whose ceasefire proposal this allegedly was, has been much more reluctant. There was really divided opinion within the war cabinet. You know how Benny Gantz out of the war cabinet, Netanyahu reiterating that he will not accept any deal that will end the war without completely eliminating Hamas, which we all know has always been a preposterous goal. So what do you make of this whole situation? And what do you make specifically of the significance of this ceasefire resolution

passing through the UNSC? It is confusing. I agree. I think the reason we're seeing this, at least to my interpretation, is that the Biden administration believes that if they portray this as sort of Israel's idea, and then they have to get Hamas to agree, then that, I guess, would allow Bibi to maintain sort of the argument that like he was the one in charge and he's the one, you know, Hamas is agreeing to his terms. But this just reflects this ongoing blindness or naivete of the Biden administration because Bibi Netanyahu has no interest in ending the violence because if the violence and the war stop,

then we're going to have elections and he's going to lose the prime ministership and then he's most likely going to go to jail. So from, because of corruption, I mean, he's, you know, that's that's his future, most likely. And he's hoping to face accountability for his crimes. And so, you know, this notion that the Biden administration has that if they frame this in such a way that it looks as if Israel's the one, you know, winning here or setting the terms, that then they'll agree to it just reflects the same failed approach that's been going on this whole time, which is that Israel does not want the violence to end. They've said that they're not going to accept anything that ends the war, which as you just pointed out, their military objective of completely eliminating Hamas is impossible. And not only would it be, you know,

I mean, you've heard horrifying statements from whether it's, you know, far right members in Israel or even in this country just saying to, you know, nuke the whole place. Still, I mean, survivors and there are, there's a massive Palestinian diaspora. I mean, there will always be opposition, you know, there will always be those trying to seek revenge. The state of Israel will never be secure as long as there is not a just, stable, you know, secure solution for Palestinians. And so even if they somehow managed to eliminate Hamas, which as you said, is like clearly not happening, it's not going to end.

You know, it may take a little while, but this will continue to happen as long as we continue to see Israel occupying. So I don't understand really why it is that the Biden administration continues to pursue this failed policy. You know, we've also seen a lot of emphasis on the Israeli-Saudi normalization deal, including the announcement that Biden wants to extend the security guarantee to the Saudis, even if there isn't a normalization deal, which is crazy. Like, why? How is it in U.S. interest to extend this, you know, very ironclad security guarantee to the House of Saud when they're not even getting, you know, the supposed objective

was kind of Israeli-Saudi normalization, let Israel feel more secure. I mean, that's been the modus operandi all along, this notion that if you make help Israel feel secure, then they'll be in a position to feel like they can move towards peace, which is the opposite of true. Instead, the more unconditional support the U.S. gives to Israel, the more they have been emboldened to expand the occupation, to annex more territory, to engage in greater and greater violence against Palestinians because they know that there's no red line and that the U.S. will continue to provide them support no matter what they do. So all that to say, it just, you know, they're ostensibly, they're very smart people inside

the White House making these decisions. And I really just don't get it. Can you speak to something that I don't know, I'm sort of personally fascinated by, which is you see people like Matthew Miller, who, you know, State Department spokesperson, probably would describe himself as having very similar worldview as you do, you know, like he's this, I'm sure he sees himself as like a liberal internationalist. I'm sure he sees himself as a liberal internationalist. I'm sure he sees himself as believing in these laws that are on the US books that are supposed to prohibit transfer of weapons to human rights abusers and to countries that are blocking humanitarian aid,

as Israel clearly is doing. And you see them get up there day after day and, you know, ask us to defy what our own eyes and ears are seeing in front of us. Like, having been inside, what is the, like, how do you get to that place mentally where you're just willing to go out there and say things like, oh, we're waiting for Hamas to accept the deal and Israel's on board when Israel is out here being like, no, we're not on board. That allows you to say, no, no, I didn't really see that report about Israel blocking aid, even though obviously you have, obviously you know what we're talking about. Or to say, oh, we're going to look into that. There's going to be an investigation when you know there's never going to be an investigation, certainly not one that we ever hear the results of. Like, how do you how do you end up there? That's a good question. You know, I thought the point about kind of the difference between the position that I was in as someone who came in later. You know, I have an academic background. I was coming from the think tank sector.

Now I'm back in the think tank sector. That is very different from someone who spent their whole career inside government. This is their entire professional network. The prospect of trying to leave, especially to have left publicly where you've burned all those bridges and suddenly you're seen as a traitor by your colleagues with whom you've worked your whole career. I understand why for many people it is really challenging to think of resigning and especially to do so publicly. When it comes to Matt Miller or others who are in this position of having to essentially lie, I shouldn't say essentially, to lie to reporters, to the public, we know he's lying because of statements from people like Hala Raret,

who was the Arabic spokesperson who resigned over Gaza a matter of weeks ago, she would send these horrifying videos coming out of Gaza and send the clear evidence, photos and videos and clear statements that Israel is blocking U.S. humanitarian support, therefore they are no longer eligible to receive U.S. security assistance. That is the law. All of this stuff, she and many others are making sure is in the inboxes of all of these high-level officials every day. So, you know, for someone in that position, it's, you know, I mean, it's perhaps gets to things like the banality of evil.

You know, Hannah Arendt talked about how it was that the Nazis were able to function, that it's people just doing their jobs, being told, you know, these are your orders. And if you don't do them, you know, you're out of a job, you lose your income, you lose your status. I mean, I think for many people inside state, there is very much this sense of status. There is this feeling that you are involved in something very important. I've been in touch with colleagues who are opposed to what's happening, but they believe it's important that they continue to do what they're doing. Maybe they're not working on anything related to Israel-Palestine, but they feel that their own work is important. And I don't want to discount

that, but I do think that everyone, you know, everyone in this whole town, you know, Washington is full of people who came to do this work because they want to make a difference. They believe in making a difference. And yet I do feel that I hope that everyone sometimes takes a step back and really ask themselves, like, what impact am I having? What is the impact of me continuing to go in and do my job every day? You know, whether it's something really little or something really important, are you really changing anything? Because it doesn't seem like much is changing. So all of these people who, you know, got the degrees and put in the legwork and now have the position they were hoping for, they're angling for the position, they feel like we'll let them

finally make a difference. I just would challenge them to look in the mirror and question what impact are you really having other than to perpetuate the status quo, to perpetuate this system within which, you know, the primary motivation for politicians is, you know, the money from big donors and big donors are actors like major, you know, defense contractor, you know, the big five and, you know, like the military industrial complex is such a huge driver of our foreign policy and our politics. So, you know, and I get it, you know, for kind of any individual person, how are they supposed to like take that down? But I do think that if you're in a position to come out publicly against what's going on, and especially at a moment like this, where we do have, you know, I mean, history will

judge those who were in positions to have made different choices and yet continue to make the same choice. And this is part of why I decided to go public, even though I, you know, was not anyone in a position of particular power. But I did just want to be able to, you know, look myself in the face. And, you know, I've spoken about this before that I have a young daughter and the you know imagining that she one day will be studying this and will ask what doing like weren't you in government at this time and if I had said yeah I mean I was but you know I there's really wasn't much I could do you know I I would be lying. I think, you know, I wanted to be able to tell her, you know, I tried to do what I could. Yeah.

Well, Dr. Sheline, we're really glad you landed at Quincy. We love their work and we're especially grateful to you for your courage and also for your time today. Thank you so much. Tell people where they can follow you, by the way. I'm on Twitter, Annel Sheline. And you can find my work at the Quincy Institute, quincyinst.org. And, you know, we'll be working on these issues, you know, look forward, you know, really appreciate all the work that you all are doing to draw attention to this, because I think the media narrative has been so influential. And unfortunately, the mainstream media has been so detrimental. And so I so appreciate those who are bringing,

who are really drawing attention to what's actually going on. Well, thank you. Thank you. We're very grateful for that. And great to have you, and we'll hope to talk to you again. Thank you guys so much for watching. We really appreciate it. We're going to have a great counterpoint show for everybody tomorrow.

We will see you all on thursday this is an iHeart podcast