Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/25/24: AIPAC Spends $15 Million To Oust Bowman, Media Lies About Synagogue Protests, War Scholar Says Hamas Has Won

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

Krystal and Saagar discuss AIPAC spends $15 million to defeat Bowman, media lies about synagogue protest, war scholar says Hamas has won.   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.

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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. So today is primary day in New York and also Colorado. Actually, Lauren Boebert is going to be on the ballot, maybe losing her primary. But the one that most people are focused on is in New York, Jamal Bowman versus Westchester County Executive George Latimer. We can put

this up on the screen. A lot of this race hinges on Jamal Bowman's pro-Palestinian stances, his increasingly vocal stance, which is interesting that I'll get into in a moment, and the massive flood of money into this race, which is making it literally the most expensive congressional primary in history. Dan Marans has a look at some of the underlying dynamics here. That's an interesting read. He says, it's not just AIPAC, how Jamal Bowman alienated voters who once supported him. So you guys may recall the way Jamal Bowman originally was able to win the seat was also in a Democratic primary. He took out Eliot Engel. Now, Engel had been a stalwart ally of the pro-Israel crowd. He was, you know, a top recipient of AIPAC funding.

He was, you know, really staunch on that point. And Jabal Bowman at that point was trying to take sort of the liberal Zionist position, the sort of more moderate J Street style positioning there. I think perhaps he hadn't really thought all that much about the issue. He was trying to just say the things that Democrats typically say to try to appease everyone. He wins that seat. It was in the context of the Black Lives Matter protests. Eliot Engel had gotten caught on a hot mic. You remember the soccer? Yes, of course. Saying basically like, the only reason I'm here is because I'm up for reelection. He was never in

the district. He took it for granted. And so Jamal Bowman is able to win. The district has always been a little bit difficult for him because it is a combination of there's a part of the Bronx in there that's very like diverse working class. There are other diverse working class neighborhoods in the district. There's also a significant area of like affluent suburban liberals and a significant Jewish vote as well. So there were a lot of lingering bad feelings among those for whom Israel is their number one issue about Jamal Bowman taking out Elian Engel. And then post-October 7th, when Jamal Bowman emerges as one of the most vocal congresspeople in service of the Palestinian cause and, you know, not going along with all of these resolutions that are being passed through Congress, etc. He ends up with a giant target on his back. And his opponent, Westchester County Executive George Latimer,

who is, you know, very sort of like centrist right-leaning. He's doesn't want to raise, he's really running on like, I won't raise anyone's taxes, including the billionaires. He's taking 100% of the APAC line, et cetera. He's also a really well-known figure in Westchester County because he's been a local politician there. So those are some of the dynamics. We can go ahead and put this, or what do we have next? Is it the terror sheet or the thought that we have next? Oh, we've got a little taste of some of how Jamal Bowman has been talking about the funding that's been going into this race. He and George Latimer in one of their debates, he was talking about how AIPAC has been funding his opponent, et cetera. Let's take a listen to how that exchange went. The wealthy, and particularly for my opponent's campaign, billionaire Republicans are buying our democracy.

The reason why our democracy doesn't work for working class people and the majority of the American people is because of big money in politics. He is running a big money campaign. They are spending more money in this race to get me out than they have ever spent in their history, meaning AIPAC. More money than they have ever spent in their history, meaning AIPAC. More money than they have ever spent in their history. AIPAC is, that sounds like a dog whistle to me. One issue special interest, their issue according to Politico is Israel. Correct. Yeah, so-

Yeah, so let me- How is that- I think I still have time on the clock. Good. So their one issue is Israel, not Mount Vernon, not the Bronx, not New Rochelle, not Portchester, not White Plains, not Tuckahoe, Israel. And they recruited him to run against me. And they're spending more money in this race than they have ever spent in their history. Why? Because I'm fighting against the genocide in Gaza. and because I'm speaking up for black and brown people here. We should not be sending billions of dollars to another country to commit genocide while we are struggling to live day to day right here in this district. Thank you.

I mean, I agree with him, but you can see there he doesn't he doesn't head. She calls it a genocide. And there's a lot that's interesting about this. So, first of all, AIPAC has put in some 15 million dollars into this race, which is astonishing. And most of the ads they're running, by the way, don't have anything to do with Israel. But they obviously prefer George Latimer over Jamal Bowman. So what they've gone with and what Latimer has gone with is this idea that Jamal Bowman is all talk and no substance. And Latimer is this like technocratic executive who's going to be actually able to, you know, work the levers of power and deliver for the district. So that's, you know, that's the dynamics of the campaign.

One of the things that's really interesting with Jamal Bowman is, as I was saying before, when he was first running, it seems like, I don't know that he had a really well-formed opinion on the issue. You know, he had. Yeah. You and I interviewed him at the time. He was, yeah, he was kind of all over the place. I mean, he just, you know, it was sort of like very typical. And there's a lot of new politicians who are like this. They just haven't thought all that much about it. They don't know all that much about it. So he gets into office and he agrees to go on a trip to Israel that was sponsored by J Street. Now, J Street is meant to be the like liberal Zionist alternative to AIPAC. Yes. So they're not as hardline, they're not as right

wing, they're in favor of a two state solution, but they're still Zionist. So he decides to go on this trip. And actually at the time, it was a big like thing on the left. The DSA was very upset about the fact he was going on this trip, et etc. But as it turns out, according to his own telling, actually going to Israel and seeing the reality and meeting with Palestinian, these young Palestinian students, actually visualizing and experiencing the reality of the apartheid system there and how some places are just, you know, off limits if you're not Jewish, off limits certainly if you're Palestinian. That actually really changed his view and even made him feel like, you know, this nonsense we've been fed about the two-state solution, how this is an ongoing process, like, this is a fantasy. So the more that he came in contact with the reality of what Israel is today, not just the sort of, like, top-line talking

points that liberals have been speaking to for years and years and years in the absence of like an actual desire among the Israeli government to pursue any sort of a peace. Once he actually had exposure to that, it hardened him in terms of his pro-Palestinian positions and made it so he's not just a liberal Zionist. Now it's shifted him to really being an anti-Zionist. And he speaks about that now and has a lot of sort of moral force. So, you know, the bottom line here is he's very, very, very likely to lose today. We've got the New York Times article we can put up on the screen here. AIPAC unleashes record $14.5 million in a bid to defeat Jamal Bowman, critic of Israel. The delusion outside spending, they say, also includes another one million

from a different pro-Israel group. There have been some other groups that have come in on Jamal Bowman's side, but obviously can't even come close to matching that amount of money. This is AIPAC also making good on their promise to unleash $100 million to take out and punish anyone who is a critic

of their pro-Israel policies. So, you know, they really want to make an example of him. And I think they have a very good chance to do it. Let's put this up on the screen from Ryan. This is the latest poll, and it has Jamal Bowman losing badly to George Latimer, 48 to 31. And that polling has shifted. There's limited polling in the context of a primary, but what we've seen, it has shifted dramatically since that APAC money has come in. Definitely. Friend of the show, Dan Marans, in the Huffington Post, in his write-up, though, he did say that Bowman has kind of been not at odds with the district, but he gave himself an

opening that October 7th was going to be exploited. So they talk about that vote against the bipartisan infrastructure bill back in 2021, which is very important to people in New York because of various tax breaks hidden within there, thanks to Chuck Schumer. They also talk apparently here about that pulling of the fire alarm. A lot of people were very embarrassed about that entire situation. They say, and this is a, he has a quote here from a chair of the Democratic Committee who actually was a Bowman donor as recently as January. And he said he had been frustrated with Bowman's failure to follow through on efforts apparently to arrange conversations, quote, with her rabbi and other Jewish friends, as well as his July 2023 decision not to attend

Israeli President Isaac Herzog's speech to Congress, which Bowman, as you said, cited his previous Israeli visit as reason for not doing so. And Herzog is the one who said there were no uninvolved civilians. With the Mehdi Hassan interview, which was after October 7th. What Marins writes in the piece is basically, you have the fire alarm thing. You already had some previous just like annoyance with these like normie liberal Democrats. And then Israel poured gasoline on the fire and gave all the money in the world to anybody who wanted to exploit that. You put all of that together and you've got the perfect storm to be able to kick him out of office.

Yeah. And I always appreciate Dan's writing. And I think the piece is worth reading. But I will say that, you know, if you just look at the polling and the way it's moved since the money came in, like, clearly, the AIPAC money has been very significant part of this race. And it's also really clear, I mean, from the way AIPAC has positioned itself and some of the races they've got involved in, Dan seems to suggest that if Jamal Bowman had just moderated a little bit on Israel, he may have placated them.

And I just don't buy that because we saw them come in, for example, to a race in California where the person who was running, whose name I'm blanking on, he hadn't even, he'd been a little bit critical of Benjamin Netanyahu, but he was pro-Israel. He was on all of the talking points, But they still, because they were worried about him dissenting even a little bit, they still put millions into that race to try to defeat him. And so, Jamal Bowman had already said enough that I think there was, if you don't go along with every single thing that they want, they know George Latimer is going to do everything. And they already were upset that he had taken out Eliot Engel. So I don't think that there was a space for him to position himself. There just isn't, you know, at this point, the sort of positioning of a quote unquote liberal Zionist, it really isn't possible anymore. It's just that that space

is gone because we've all been faced with too much of the reality of what Israel is, what it does, the way it lies, the way it oppresses the occupation, the way the occupation has expanded under every Israeli administration, whether they were right wing or quote unquote moderate or not. So, you know, to me, what was interesting is that Jamal Bowman, the more that he came in contact with that reality, the more his position shifted against, you know, what had been the liberal Zionist sort of standard talking points. And you see this, you know, the stance with Joe Biden, where he's kind of in no man's land, still trying to parrot the liberal Zionist position when it makes, it doesn't really make sense to anyone.

It's become very binary. You're either, you know, against the, what I see and what Jamal Bowman and others see as a genocide or you're not. So, uh, I don't know that there was like a middle ground that he could have occupied that would have kept AIPAC out of this race, which is why people like John Fetterman, you know, when he was looking to keep AIPAC and their affiliated or allied, um, super PACs out of the race, he just went to them and was like, tell me what I need to say, literally according to Ryan Graham. And that's the only way that you can get away with it, is you're just literally like, I will sub out my Israel policy to you. I will do 100% of what you say. If there's even like a hint of independent thinking or daylight, forget it. They want you gone.

I don't think it's, yeah, I mean, it's a smart political strategy here, obviously, especially with the constituents that you've got. It's like the perfect storm. And, yeah, I mean, look, in general, it was a problem for him. It always was. We'll see how things go. But it's not looking good. Yeah.

It's not looking good. Yeah, I think it would be a massive—at least the crazier things have happened. But I think it would be a massive— It would be crazy if he wins. I will say, media-wise, it would be nuts. Well, and what a blow to AIPAC would be massive. It would be crazy if he wins. I will say it would be nuts. What a blow to APAC would that be? It would be shocking. Yeah. I will say, I was telling you guys, I was at the gym yesterday and somebody random asked me to go, hey, who is that congressman who can bench 405? That is Jamal Bowman. So maybe he is winning over the critical bodybuilder demographic. They're like, that's all I need to know about.

It was crazy. I'm just saying, there are a lot of bros out there who are impressed. He did three reps, four or five decent form. That's, I'm impressed. Yeah. Color me impressed. Completely. I mean, I don't know that much about, I know that that's a lot of weight, but people were saying, this is like the, you know, he's like in the top 0.5% of like power lifters. I would put it this way. If you're not juicing and you're able to do that naturally, that is shocking. So, you know, I always thought, no offense, I thought he was fat. But now after seeing that, I'm like, no, he's got that that power lifting body. Yeah, he's got like the he's got the meat and he's got the muscle. So respect where it's deserved.

Yeah. Last thing I'll say on this before we move on to what's going on in Ukraine is just, you know, Jamal Bowman is not stupid. I'm sure he knew that this was going to be an issue for him in this race. He knows his district. He knows, I think there's about 150,000 Jewish people. Now, Jewish people aren't a monolith, right? They don't all see the things that the way that AIPAC does. However, and there's also class divide among Jewish people that we've seen as well. However, the Jewish people in his district are predominantly relatively affluent. And he knew this was an issue, right? And he said genocide. And he called into question some of the lies and the propaganda. And he's been very outspoken. He's taken votes that I'm sure he knew were going to be a problem for him. And he deserves credit

for it. That is actual political courage. I'm sure he knew he was risking his seat when he was taking those votes. And so I just want to say I appreciate that. I respect it. And we'll see what happens for him tonight for AIPAC if they lose. Oh, boy, that would be devastating for them. If they win, you know, it's they're successfully demonstrating once again that you are punished if you dissent from their line on Israel. And that's really their goal here is to, you know, put a target on his back to make an example of him to show they've got the muscle to prevail in, you know, at least in certain places in the country. So we'll see what happens. All right. Over the past six years of making my true crime

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at a synagogue where they were selling off stolen land in the West Bank, exclusively available, by the way, to Jewish people. Now, in America, restrictive covenants are illegal. You can't say this neighborhood is for whites only anymore. But in Israel, you can say this neighborhood is for Jews only. And so there's been a series of these real estate events. There was one in Teaneck, New Jersey. There have been some in Canada. This was the latest happening in LA.

And so protesters showed up to protest this event. Counterprotesters also showed up. And the whole thing, as the cops are just standing by and letting it happen, devolves into chaos and violence. A little bit of a taste of that. You've got, I don't know who's instigating, etc. I can tell you there were journalists who had their, one journalist who had his phone stolen by a pro-Israel protester. I also want to mention that there were protests outside of that Teaneck, New Jersey synagogue real estate event as well.

And those remained peaceful because the cops kept the two sides separated. So there have been, this isn't even the first time that protests have erupted at this thing. Okay. So that is what it looked like. Let me show you the poster of the real estate event that was, you know, for what was occurring at the synagogue. They say, come and meet representatives of housing projects in all the best Anglo neighborhoods in Israel. And again, this group, the My Home in Israel real estate company, they offer properties that are for sale in the occupied West Bank. And, you know, this is illegal by international law, probably illegal in U.S. law, too, certainly against U.S. policy, etc. The way this was covered in the press was so incredibly dishonest. It was unbelievable. Unbelievable. Well, actually, it's totally believable in part

for the course, honestly, of the way that they approach it. Because as you so I check in, I log in. I was like, OK, wow, it's unbelievable. So I check in. I log in. I was like, okay, wow. It was like some crazy stuff went down in Los Angeles. And so I look into it. I'm like, by the way, as people know, I'm pretty neutral on this. I'm open to it. Bunch of Palestine keffiyeh maskies, you know, beating people up.

It's possible. I'm skeptical. So we look into it and we're like, oh yeah, it doesn't seem good. Now all of us, all these politicians start condemning the act. Everyone's like, oh my God, this is terrible. There was a pogrom that happened in Los Angeles. Now I'm starting to get suspicious because anytime I start to see that language come out, I'm like, wait a second. So then, you know, our producer is like, well, you know, it was in response to a real estate event. And I said, what, what are you talking about? So then we start to look and we checked it. We had to check that flyer. We confirmed it. We go to the

Los Angeles Times and we read, you know, the local paper about what happened. And you have to read, I want to say 20 paragraphs. We have this and put it up on the screen. We can put D3, please, guys up on the screen. And it takes scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling to discover the context of the real estate event. And in my opinion, that kind of does change everything though, because all the rhetoric that I see online is everyone's like, why are they protesting in synagogue? This is disgusting. This is a religious temple. Like how can they do this out of all the places to choose? I'm like, okay, well, if you're hosting a real estate event, auctioning off land

in the West Bank, and it says Anglo neighborhoods early, that's a little bit crazy. Can we all agree with that? All right. Now, I'm not saying anybody gets deserved violence. You know, I don't think there should be any violence. Again, on the other side. Agreed. But, you know, legitimate. I think ground for a protest. So, I mean, this is what I mean. Let's flip it around. So I'm Indian. Let's say that there is a Hindu temple, like the one I used to go to where I was growing up. And there was an event there where they were auctioning off land in Kashmir. That would be a little bit crazy.

Yeah. And we said it was only for Hindus. And then a bunch of Pakistanis showed up. And then there was like a clash or whatever. And people said that they had unprovoked attacked a bunch of Hindus me, I'd be like, come on guys, like this, look, they're within their rights, you know, to show up. This is America. Last time I checked, none of that is in the public sphere. The way people are talking about it, it's asked if it was totally unprovoked. And I just think, look, again, I condemn violence. I don't think

it should have happened. I think the police should have kept them separate, et cetera. That said, if you don't report that, you are just being blatantly dishonest. So dishonest. And that's the issue. Here's the way. To be honest with you, the LA Times, the fact they even mentioned that there was a quote unquote real estate event with none of the like, oh, and by the way, they're selling illegal stolen land, et cetera, and it's for Jews only. The fact they even mentioned that puts them better than like

95% of mainstream coverage, which all portrayed this as like, people just hate Jews, so they were protesting a synagogue with none of the context. Now, listen, I think it's fair if people want to say, listen, I don't care fair if people want to say, listen, I don't care what they were doing in a synagogue. I think that a house of worship should be off limits period. You shouldn't protest. I don't agree, but I think that's a reasonable position you could take. Okay. If you want to say, you know, certainly you can say there shouldn't be violence. Okay. That's fine. I don't agree with the nature of the protest. I think also you could say from a tactical perspective, was it wise to go and protest this and knowing the way the media may portray it, et cetera. So I think that's a

legitimate point of view to make that argument as well. But to pretend people just showed up because they hate Jews and they wanted to protest a synagogue is so incredibly dishonest. And this turns into, of course, a whole thing. Joe Biden puts out a statement condemning the anti-Semitism. Gavin Newsom, the mayor of LA, Karen Bass, none of them acknowledging that, by the way, also selling occupied land in the West Bank, that is supposed to be counter to US policy as well. So in theory, they should be on the same ideological side of the protesters. And then there's also just the double standard of every time a Palestinian protester, pro-Palestine protester does anything that the she was from and then tried to drown her kids when she learned that they were Palestinian-American. Where's the statement on that?

Where's the statement on the, you know, Bezalel Smotrich, Israeli minister, a speech just came out where he said, hey, we're going to annex the whole West Bank. Or, you know, the video we showed you yesterday where they tied an injured Palestinian to the hood of an IDF vehicle and are using him as a literal human shield. Like, where is the outrage and the statements over that? But, so, this one, this drove me absolutely insane. Just to give you a little bit more background, here's D4. We can put this up on the screen. As I mentioned before, this wasn't the first of these events. This has been a series of events across our country and also in Canada.

This one is focused on the Teaneck, New Jersey event. They describe it as the disastrous great Israeli real estate event. And most of the events, they say, was a company called My Home in Israel, which also was involved in this one in LA, brought along to showcase available properties in both Israel and the Palestinian territories it occupies. Multiple units in a building in East Jerusalem, townhouses in the heart of the West Bank, and a five-bedroom villa with a pool in the luxury enclave of Efrat, south of Bethlehem. From the first stop, they say, in Montreal, protesters have shown up to condemn the sale of houses built on settlements illegally expropriated from Palestinians in the West Bank. And in Teaneck, I believe we actually

covered here, there was a Jewish man who showed up at a community meeting and said, you know, this is outrageous. It's illegal. It's immoral. It shouldn't be happening here. And in his words, he said, there's going to be a protest because I'm going to lead it. This was a Jewish man in that community. So that's the truth of what happened here. But maybe the most outrageous and dishonest coverage came from where else? CNN, where they had Van Jones joined to call it a pogrom, as you rightly said, Sagar. Just listen to this insanity and the way that he portrays this. If you don't like what's happening in Gaza, it's your right to protest. That's not

a problem. But you protest a policy. You don't protest a people. When you protest a policy, you go to City Hall and you protest. You go to the Israeli consulate peacefully, you protest. Maybe you go to your elected representative, you protest. You don't bum rush a Jewish neighborhood and run up on a synagogue. That's not protesting a policy, that's protesting a people. And that is across any line in America, and it has to be called out. You cannot protest a people. That is not a protest, that's a pogrom, and that has to stop.

Let's talk about the policy. Let's talk about how the Biden administration, how the president's handling the policy van. How do you see it? Where does he need to improve on this? Well, listen, I think that the president is in a tough position because the base of the party is very concerned about these images that we keep seeing from Gaza. And he wants to take a strong stand on behalf of human rights for everybody. That's Joe Biden. At the same time, I think it's a little bit naive for some people to think that if Israel

would just suddenly just stop doing what it's doing, that rainbows and bunnies and sunshine would break out over the Middle East and it would all be fine. The hostages have to be returned. If you can call for a ceasefire, call for a ceasefire on both sides. Hamas is still firing its rockets. They still have hostages kidnapped. So this is a complex issue, but here's what's not complicated. Politics can be complicated. Geopolitics can be really complicated. How you treat your neighbors, how you treat people in your community is not complicated. You don't run up, I haven't seen any Jewish people running up on mosques with Israeli

flags. If they did that, I'd be denouncing that too. There's certain things you don't do. It is a red line. If you wanna be a part of a protest and they say, we're gonna go to a Jewish community center, we're gonna go to a mosque, we're gonna go to a Jewish restaurant. That's not a protest, that's a pogrom. My God. So if you listen to that whole segment, you would never know why the protesters were there. It's not just because they hate Jews and they wanted to protest in a Jewish neighborhood

outside of a synagogue. It's so dishonest. He says you protested policy, not a people. They literally were protesting a policy. That's why they were there. But you are too dumb or too much of a liar to actually inform your audience about what was going on. And like I was saying, listen, if you've got an issue, you don't think that that's acceptable. Okay, lay that out. But give people the facts of why they were actually there. They weren't just quote, quote, quote, unquote, bum rushing a Jewish neighborhood and running up on a synagogue. Disgusting. Disgusting. Such liars. It's unbelievable. As long as they put out the context, then you can say whatever you want. But it's like,

when you put it out of the context, that's what really pisses me off. And why is it that me as a news professional has to dig deep just to figure out the most basics? And at the same time, I'm like, yeah, that's why I even have a job, right? Like, in a perfect world, you don't even need to exist. But this is exactly what the issue is. So regardless of where you are, like, you know, some of the rhetoric out here, it's like, what are you going to do? Like, are you going to send in the National Guard? I'm like, yo, this is nuts. You're allowing foreign sales to happen in houses of worship. I mean, first of all, shouldn't you have your tax status pulled if you're going to be doing stuff like that? I don't think that should be allowed in American soil. Maybe just me. I don't think you should be having foreign sales going down in houses of worship and

stuff like this, which are official events. So anyways, I think this whole situation is crazy. Exclusionary too. No, literally. I mean, it's crazy. You can't go in and buy that real estate. I mean, that's not how we do things in America. It's, you know, since the Civil Rights Act and the Fair Housing Act, you have to allow people of all backgrounds, races, genders, etc. to be able to. So you're having this exclusionary event that is counter to international law. And you're saying people are not allowed to protest that. And the only reason that they possibly could have been protesting that is because of anti-Semitism.

Yeah, exactly. Can't stand it. All right, Crystal, what do you take? Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders.

I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her, and it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe.

With guests like Corinne Steffens. I've never seen so many women protect predatory men. And then me too happened. And then everybody else wanted to get pissed off because the white said it was okay. Problem. My oldest daughter, her first day in ninth grade, and I called to ask how I was doing. She was like, oh, dad, all they were doing was talking about your thing in class. I ruined my baby's first day of high school.

And slumflower. What turns me on is when a man sends me money. Like, I feel the moisture between my legs when a man sends me money. I'm like, oh, my God, it's go time. You actually sent it? Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday She was a decorated veteran, a Marine who saved her comrades, a hero. She was stoic, modest, tough, someone who inspired people. Everyone thought they knew her until they didn't. I remember sitting on her couch and asking her, is this real? Is this real? Is this real? Is this real? I just couldn't wrap my head around what kind of person would do that to another person that was getting treatment, that was, you know, dying.

This is a story all about trust and about a woman named Sarah Kavanaugh. I've always been told I'm a really good listener, right? And I maximized that while I was lying. Listen to Deep Cover, The Truth About Sarah on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled

the golden years of hip hop. It's Black Music Month and We Need to Talk is tapping in. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives. My favorite line on there was, my son and my daughter gonna be proud when they hear my old tapes. Yeah. Now, I'm curious, do they, like, rap along now? Yeah, because I bring him on tour with

me, and he's getting older now, too, so his friends are starting to understand what that type of music is, and they're starting to be like, yo, your dad's like really the GOAT. Like he's a legend. So he gets it. What does it mean to leave behind a music legacy for your family? It means a lot to me. Just having a good catalog and just being able to make people feel good. Like that's what's really important.

And that's what stands out is that our music changes people's lives for the better. So the fact that my kids get to benefit off of that, I'm really happy. Or my family in general. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide, listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is your girl T.S.

Madison, and I'm coming to you loud, live, and in color from the Outlaws podcast. Let me tell you something. I broke the internet with a 22-inch weave. 22 inches. My superpower? I've got the voice. My kryptonite? It don't exist.

Get a job. My podcast? The one they never saw coming. Each week, I sit down with the culture creators and scroll stoppers. Tina knows. Lil Nas X. Will we ever see a dating show for the love of Lil Nas X?

I'm just gonna show all my exes. No, here it is. My next ex. That's actually cute though. Laverne Cox. I have a core group of girlfriends that like, they taught me how to love. and Chapel Rome I was dropped in 2020 working the drive-thru

and here we are now we turn side eye into sermons pain into punchline and grief we turn those into galaxies listen make sure

you tell Beyonce I'm going right on the phone right now and call her listen to Outlaws with T.S. Madison on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts, honey. More than 40,000 dead, majority women and children,

more devastation than Dresden, Hamburg, and London combined. Brutal siege, which has led to dozens of starvation deaths and an entire population on the brink of famine. An all-out assault that has left nothing sacred from schools to mosques to hospitals, cemeteries, and refugee camps. There's no world in which these atrocities committed by Israel and Gaza are justifiable, let alone righteous.

But according to the Israeli government and our own, they are acceptable, to be celebrated even, because they've been committed in service of a noble war aim, eliminating Hamas. That's the logic that the Israeli public and a decent portion of our own has bought. Yes, the civilian deaths are bad, but it's a price we must accept in order to get the Hamas bad guys. But a new analysis in Foreign Affairs by political scientist and international security expert Robert Pape reveals that not only has Israel's genocide in Gaza been morally outrageous,

it has actually strengthened Hamas. Israel isn't just falling short in their war objectives. They have bolstered the very group they are supposedly seeking to destroy. They have murdered countless civilians in service of making Hamas vastly stronger. Incredible, but also, let's be honest, predictable. Turns out death and destruction are not the same as victory. So here is Pape in that article headlined, Hamas is winning. Quote, the central flaw in Israel's strategy is not a failure of tactics or the imposition of constraints on military force, just as the failure of the US's military strategy in Vietnam had little to do with the technical proficiency of its troops or political and moral limits on the uses of military power.

Rather, the overarching failure has been a gross misunderstanding of the sources of Hamas's power. To its great detriment, Israel has failed to realize that the carnage and devastation it has unleashed in Gaza has only made its enemy stronger. So essentially, Israel and the U.S. have focused on how many Hamas fighters have been killed as a measure of the success of the war. That is entirely the wrong metric. It almost doesn't matter how many fighters Hamas has today. What matters is its recruitment potential for the future. How many new recruits can they pull from the next generation? Media reports and local polling suggest that number has surged massively. Here's the Jerusalem Post. Reportedly, Hamas is already looking to capitalize on this IDF-enabled

surge in popularity. Now, this is a right-wing outlet, so you've got to sort through the propaganda about quote-unquote Gaza youths, which appears to be an attempt to legitimize killing children, and their credulous acceptance of Israeli lies about how many Hamas fighters they've actually killed. But the basics of the reporting are that Hamas is holding recruitment camps and training sessions to replace the fighters they've lost to death, injury, and arrest. They claim that Hamas is looking to add some 20,000 new members to their ranks. But even this biased outlet has a pretty straightforward accounting of the risk landscape potential Hamas recruits face. Quote, 18-year-olds choosing whether to join Hamas or not, on the one hand, face the reality that so many who have joined

Hamas have been beaten and killed by the IDF. On the other hand, they currently have no horizon for finding work or doing much of anything other than sitting around in refugee camps, since no one has even started planning the rebuilding Gaza process, which is likely to take many years. What they don't note is that those 18-year-olds face potential death and torture by the IDF, whether or not they join Hamas, since the Israeli government has so indiscriminately slaughtered civilians and has operated under a presumption that all men and boys are to be assumed Hamas. Now, going back to Pape, Israel's actions have created ripe conditions for Hamas propaganda, according to him,

which has been received favorably by many Palestinians. He points out the polls have found Hamas support and support for violence against Israeli civilians both surging after October 7th. In addition, Israeli atrocities have fueled what he describes as a, quote, cult of martyrdom, increasing the allure of Hamas membership.

Quote, people are less likely to volunteer for high-risk missions if their sacrifices go unnoticed. A community that honors the fallen fighters of a terrorist group helps sustain it. Martyrdom legitimizes terrorist actions and encourages new recruits. Terrorists will act as they see fit, but it is the community that ultimately decides where an individual's sacrifice is accorded high status or whether it is broadly viewed as irrational, criminal, and worthy of contempt. The community's support for Hamas has also directly hindered the IDF's ability to successfully target Hamas leadership and locate hostages to additional supposed war aims. After all, what Palestinian with a shred of integrity would collaborate with the genocidal IDF?

Yep, turns out indiscriminately murdering civilians while blocking peaceful pathways to a negotiated settlement is a great way to search support for violent resistance. If you create massive amounts of grief, despair, and rage and block all nonviolent political processes, don't be surprised when that rage finds an expression in violence. In the words of security analyst Internet Hippo, quote, I'm not a political expert, but if you eliminated Hamas but killed my whole family in the process, my first move would be to start Hamas 2.0. The truth is, just as we would have been better off if we had done literally nothing in response to 9-11, Israel would have been better off if they had done literally nothing in response to October 7th. Now, that's to say nothing, of course, of the Iraqi innocents and Palestinian innocents who were sacrificed on the altar of personal political interests masquerading as counterterror. For my part, I've got enough respect for Bibi to reject the notion that he was too dumb to

operate at the intellectual level of internet hippo. They knew their campaign wasn't going to eliminate Hamas. But in a sixth sense, strengthening Hamas actually serves Bibi's political interests. After all, he has consistently worked to bolster Hamas in order to block a potential peace deal and to maintain division between Gaza and the West Bank. I don't see why that logic would be any different today. So long as Hamas remains, the IDF has endless justification for raids, bombings, and occupation, endlessly prolonging a war that Bibi wants to be endlessly prolonged. He can proclaim to gradualist international leaders that they have no partner for peace, even as he makes

it clear he has absolutely no interest in a two-state solution or any other long-term peace. The brutality of that annihilation campaign can satiate the post-October 7th bloodlust from the Israeli public and begin to rebuild Netanyahu's political standing. That's been working. All while accomplishing Bibi's stated goal of, quote, thinning out the Gaza population, which is the constant ethnostate imperative. After all, if the whole logic of your state is that it must be controlled by a Jewish majority, then the very existence of non-Jewish children is a looming threat to the entire national project. Eliminating Hamas is a convenient pretext for neutralizing that demographic threat during the mass slaughter of Palestinian children

and mothers in particular. Now in Gaza, Bibi and the IDF have seemingly destroyed everything but Hamas, and that may well have been the point. It's a great piece from Robert Pape. I know you took a look at it as well. He talks about, you know, the body count figures in terms of the number of Hamas fighters they've killed are very disputed. The Israelis say somewhere around 15,000. U.S. intelligence says 10,000. Hamas says more like 5,000 to 6,000. In any case, the amount of support for Hamas has been predictably dramatically surged. There has not

been, they were betting or there was some analysis of like, oh, if we, you know, make this really horrible for them, people will turn on Hamas. The opposite has happened. There's been a like rally around the flag effect. Again, very predictable and very consistent with what we've seen historically in terms of bombed and besieged civilian populations. And so in spite of the technological military vast superiority, in terms of the actual stated war aims, it's been a total and complete failure on every level. Yeah, I keep coming back to North Vietnam. And I really recommend, people need to go and read Robert Pape.

He is incredibly smart. He's a scholar. He's a long-studied air power, civilian populations, World War II. I've read about his stuff for a long time. And since the October 7th conflict, he's been doing amazing work. This is a very well-reasoned piece. There's nothing emotional within it. It's just pointing to data. You're looking in your point of look together, the recruitment numbers. And look, if bombs could solve things, then we would have won the Vietnam War. If bombs could solve things, we would have won the Vietnam War. If bombs could solve things,

we would have won the Iraq War and Afghanistan. Guess what happened in every single case is that it was counterproductive, usually, unless it was for a direct military purpose. And in the long run, they outlasted us and they won. I think in the same case, they have the will. They have the ability to stay forever and to operate in the same case, they have the will. They have the ability to stay forever and to operate in the shadows and to now fundraise and recruit for the people who have been victimized as a result of the policy.

All they have to do is survive. Israel is warring against a quote-unquote ideology. Good luck. I've seen people try before. They always lose. It's not just that they're not defeated. It's that they actively like our operations in Iraq and the attacks on civilians led to a surge in popularity for Iraqi resistance groups and helped to create ISIS.

Our operations in Afghanistan led to a surge, the Taliban was like down to almost nothing. And they were able to rebuild and be such a formidable force that they just immediately take back over when we leave because our occupation and our atrocities provided the moral justification and surge the support for these groups. So our actions, and now it's, you know, obviously what's happening with Israel and Gaza, have actually surged support for that group. Again, it's entirely predictable. This is something that we've been saying from the beginning. We highlighted those Jocko comments from the beginning of like, this is not the way you go. If you are actually serious about taking out Hamas leadership, getting the hostages back,

you have to win over the population. You need them to collaborate with. You need to provide them a different path that isn't Hamas. None of that was done. And I don't think it's because they just didn't understand and they were stupid and foolish. I think it's because the goal was never really eliminate Hamas, especially from Bibi's perspective. Again, he's always supported Hamas. I think he still finds Hamas to be very useful there because it gives him the pretext to do whatever the hell he wants, prolong the war as long as he wants, be as brutal as he wants, maintain his position of power, continue to block a two-state solution by saying there's no partner for peace. All that logic still remains. So I can't be so naive as to think that he doesn't also understand what's going on here

and how the idea of eliminating Hamas was always doomed to fail from the job. Absolutely. and this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter, and it brings a face to them.

It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever but not your mommy. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday

on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcast. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about, call

678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Here's the deal. We got to set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We got to make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispreetirement.org. Brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. High Key.

Looking for your next obsession? Listen to High Key, a new weekly podcast hosted by Ben O'Keefe, Ryan Mitchell, and Evie Oddly. We got a lot of things to get into. We're going to gush about the random stuff we can't stop thinking about. I am high key going to lose my mind over all things Cowboy Carter. I know. Girl, the way she about to yank my bank account. Correct. And one thing I really love about this is that she's celebrating her daughter.

Oh, I know. Listen to High Key on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.