EverydaySpy Podcast - Netanyahu's PREDICTABLE Response Against Hamas | EverydaySpy Podcast Ep. 21

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

The Hamas incursion into Israel shocked the world, but Israel's response did not. The humanitarian crisis developing in Gaza with each passing day is already capturing the attention of the world within days of the surprise attack. And what comes next is both sad and predictable, in much the same way as Netanyahu's response to the original attack was both sad and predictable. Find your Spy Superpower: https://everydayspy.com/spyquiz Learn more from Andy: https://everydayspy.com/ Join the SpyTribe: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EverydaySpy/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everydayspy/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/EverydaySpy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's frustrating to me is that Israel's response to the attacks from Hamas were not compartmentalized. They were emotional. There was pride and there was ego in the immediate next steps when it could have been compartmentalized. You could have delayed your response just long enough to compartmentalize your emotions and come up with a strategically viable option for what to do next. But that didn't happen. And that's why adversaries to the U.S. and adversaries to Israel support this ongoing confrontation between the Palestinians and Israel.

We literally woke up yesterday and Hamas had crossed the border from the Gaza Strip into Israel, had kidnapped people, killed almost 200 people, and launched 5,000 rockets. We've been alive most of the time that the whole Gaza, West Bank, Israel conflict has been really active. I remember the day that I signed up for CIA, right? I remember the headlines showing troops marching from Israel into the Gaza Strip in 2007. I remember it clear as day. Yeah. Clear his day.

And now here we are, 2003, watching it all happen again. And Netanyahu, the leader for Israel, has declared war on Hamas, which in effect is declaring war on the Gaza Strip. Like, I think that's insane. I think that's amazing. that it's happening right now. Really? I'm not laughing, so I'm very curious as to why you're laughing. So my reaction is because even though, you know, I woke up yesterday, I do my usual,

like I roll over to help my brain wake up, I pull up my phone, I have my news emails that come up, I scroll through them, and, you know, I saw it, and everybody was like, surprise attack, and I'm like, okay, yes, surprise attack. there seems to be some kind of until failure that happened. People didn't seem to be expecting it. Nobody saw a buildup. But is it really a surprise that they attacked? Because this has happened, right?

So this region of the world is, you know, they talk about how history repeats itself, but normally it takes a long time to see history repeat itself, right? Like people ask about the fall of Rome and will the United States, really fought like Rome. But this particular region is history repeating itself on a really fast cycle. That's fair. No, that is absolutely fair. Right. Right. The conflict that we've seen here, predominantly though, looks like rockets. True. And hundreds of rockets. Right. Not thousands of rockets. So a bolder, right? A bolder incursion at this point. And the coordinated effort of this attack is nothing to be flippant about, right? No. And flippant is the way that I'm interpreting

your behavior right now. Of course. Right? Because what you had was an organized attack. They blasted holes in, have you seen pictures? I have. Unbelievable. Like it makes the wall that we're talking about in the United States that we talk about building on our southern border. It makes that wall look like a pittance. Right. It makes it look like a chain link fence. Right. Because the wall that actually exists between Israel and the Gaza and Gaza Strip is a giant, thick, concrete, like wall, humongous wall. Yeah. with a moat for crying outside. It's insane. So the fact that they blasted holes in the wall incurred like hundreds of gunmen.

Now, it's only hundreds, which might sound like a lot until you think of like a true invasion is tens of thousands of troops usually. So it's not a true invasion. It's an incursion across a border. But these gunmen crossed through blasted holes in a wall to kidnap Israelis and take them back into the Gaza Strip. Now, again, like you said, history repeats itself. this isn't new, but they launched 5,000 rockets as a cover to distract the Israeli defense force.

While they blasted holes in a wall incurred into Israel, they were able to hijack Israeli defense force weaponry. They got tanks and trucks. My gosh, like this was legitimately a full-scale incursion of an advanced level that took coordination, it took money, it took intelligence, It took, it was mature. And the fact that the Israelis were caught totally flat-footed, so flat-footed that their knee-jerk reaction was to declare war, that is a major, major development. In my opinion, is it history repeating itself? Yes, to your point. But at the same time, it's significant.

I don't think it was an intelligence failure. I don't think we have enough information to know if it was an intelligence failure. But it was absolutely a successful coordinated surprise attack by a force. the, I mean, Hamas is known and recognized worldwide as a terrorist organization. They're also the legitimate or they're the legitimate leadership in the Gaza Strip. So it's all messed up. It's such a departure from what we even can comprehend in the United States, right? So I think it's what's interesting to me is that, you know, like I said, even though history repeats itself and manifest differently every time it happens, right?

So there's, you know, it harkens back to the last time it happens, but there's all this new information that, you know, all that these, this new like geopolitical environment that it's happening in. And I think what's interesting about this is when you look at not just, you know, the conflict that began because it's still ongoing and developing and we'll see what happens. But what's going, what else in the world is happening at the same time. And, you know, when I read the news, you know, my first thought was, what's the goal here? Yeah. Right. That's a great question. And I don't think anyone's asking that question. So I'm just, I'm interrupting you to compliment your good question. But please, continue, because I think you were on to something super important right now.

Yeah. So what's fascinating about this specific conflict is, you know, generally when you look at incursions or acts of war, you know, the goal has to do with. territory, right? Russia, Ukraine, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Taiwan, Taiwan, you know, Vietnam, Korea. It all has to do with territory and being, you know, taking control of a land and a people and governing, you know, and having extra resources. But that doesn't seem to be the goal here. And the stated goal is actually, we basically want to kick you in the nuts for all the wrongs that you've been doing to us over the years. But then what? Yeah.

Right. And Hamas is being backed, like for sure, like Hamas is being backed by other, other powers. Right. So what is that goal, right? It's not just what is Hamas' goal. What is the goal of the people backing this development right now? And let's be clear because, I mean, I think there's, we know a lot more here than we're, we're just touching the surface right now. Right.

Who backs Hamas? Iran backs Hamas. It's also important to understand that Hamas around the world, while being labeled by Western Powers as a terrorist organization, is a legit charitable organization specifically for supporting the Palestinians in their plight against Israel. Right. So as a political organization, Hamas actually has a charitable arm. Yeah. And they collect monies specifically from wealthy Sunni Arab countries.

who are those wealthy Sunni Arab countries? Qatar supports Hamas, Saudi Arabia supports Hamas, Iran supports Hamas. That's super relevant here because geopolitically speaking, what you have is an opportunity for Iran to upset Israel and Israel's developments with the Arab world by sending Hamas in to basically cause an international incident. Right. Hamas doesn't have to win. There's no way Hamas can win.

Right. Like the Palestinian enclaves are one-third or less the size of the entire Jewish nation. But they house an equal number of people. There are almost 7 million Israelis in Israel. There are almost 7 million Palestinians in Israel living in a territory less than a third of the size. Split in the middle between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Right. So everybody knows.

knows that those populations are poor, poverty-stricken. They have no formal military. They have no police force. They have no, they're barely surviving. Right. So to send in to launch an attack from the Gaza Strip into Israel, you're not trying to take territory. You're not trying to win legitimacy. You're not trying to take the capital. You are literally, like you said, you're just, you're doing a gut punch. Right. That's all it is, a sucker punch. Right. Because I mean, I guess, you know, defining a win, a win could be, I sucker punched you, right? But normally when it's a, you know, when it's two states interacting, a win is, I took your land, I took your people, I killed all your people, right? But they can't do any of those things. So yeah. So it's a sucker punch for what aim? Not for the, not for Hamas's win.

It's a win for someone else. And I agree with you that the most likely country driving this conflict is Iran. Iran wants Hamas to bloody Israel's eye because they know that Israel is going to continue its history of human rights abuses. And this is something that people do not take this seriously enough. Israel is not a good place. Israel is not a democracy that reflects American values. They are not. They have a long history of human rights abuses, documented, registered. I mean, they're on multiple human rights watch organizational oversight committees. Like, people know Israel is guilty of torture. Israel is guilty of apartheid.

apartheid is still alive in Israel. It's what they do to the Palestinians, right? They restrict human movement. They apply segregation. They intentionally use different laws and a different legal system and a different policing unit when they deal with Palestinians versus Israelis. I mean, the discrepancy in how they treat people based exclusively on religious practice is well-known, not well-known.

It's not well-known in the American population. Right. It's well-known worldwide, particularly in the Arab world, but not to the American population, where we believe that Israel's our friend, because that's what mainstream media tells us. Israel's our friend. Israel is, you know, the big brother's little brother who's super brave. but always victimized. Like, we feel bad for Israel in the United States.

Right. Outside of the United States, the rest of the world sees that Israel's a giant bully, and they are actively exercising racism and segregation. And they are, you know, they are attacking and belittling and oppressing the Palestinians on their territory. On, you even hear it in my own voice, on their territory. The Palestinians were there first. Yeah. Right?

So it's just insane to me because the suck, I'm on a, I'm on a tirade. Thank you for that. I believe that the sucker punch was there so that Iran could draw, could put a wedge between increasing relationships between Saudi Arabia and Israel, because Israel's made fantastic gains with UAE, with Bahrain, with other wealthy Arab countries. And when Israel becomes closer to wealthy Arab countries, Those wealthy Arab countries become less susceptible to Iranian influence. So Iran wants to drive a wedge between the Saudi-Israeli partnership, and they know that they can do that

because they can count on Israel to commit a bunch of atrocities and human rights violations against Palestinians in response to this attack. And Netanyahu is absolutely playing his card right now by promising vengeance. Vengeance is another word for, we're going to go in. kill civilians, blow up residential buildings, and the whole world is going to see that we commit atrocities in the name of our religion. And I think, you know, the unfortunate thing is that the West has a huge role in what's happening now because we essentially created this problem, right?

After World War II, nobody wanted to take the refugees that were coming out. The Jewish refugees. I don't think they wanted to take any refugees, but they weren't notoratively Jewish. and the Western powers were like, what can we do with all these refugees? We don't want them on our soil. And so I'm fairly certain the UK had land, had colonized, you know, that part of that area.

And we're like, you know what? We have some land. It's, you know, historically, we can argue that it's theirs. We'll just kind of move the people that are already there. We'll plop them there. And they'll be great and they'll thrive and have their own country. And we will support them because we're not going to take them. Right.

right so then we put this group of people basically in like a you know din of lions right we're like here's all this land for you that historically belongs to this other group or you know we're going to push them out arguably it belongs to a number of groups right i mean honestly if you look at the bible there a number of groups that that land has belonged to over time so you know but you know we'll make this yours and this is for you and now and then they were surrounded by people you know other countries that hated them and so what was their reaction? The reaction was to build up these giant walls to create these amazing defenses to, you know, react in a way where they, because their lives had actually been at risk. I mean, they were like, I mean, the Holocaust wiped out millions of Jews, right?

Like they were in a place where they were like, never again, you even stick your toe over the line and I am going to punch you in the face so hard. You never want to come back. So that is the reaction that they have built up over time. And I'm not saying it's right to commit human rights abuses. I absolutely have disagreed with the way it's been handled because all it does is create this cycle of violence where nobody at like you just, there's never forgiveness. It will never cease, right? People will continue to suffer on both sides.

What is in my, you know, my liberal again, right? My heart is like, what is the point of this? I understand your suffering, but all of you are suffering now and you're causing it. And that's what's so sad is you're exactly right. The Palestinians are suffering. The Israelis are suffering. And here's the truth is when you look at the conflict objectively, nobody is winning. No.

Like everybody is losing. Right. And their responses are painfully predictable. So predictable that an outside, you know, aggressor like Iran, can essentially throw a few hundred thousand dollars towards Hamas. Yes. And they can create an international incident on command because it's so predictable how Israel is going to respond.

And meanwhile, and meanwhile, I'm sorry, but meanwhile, Nanyahu and the conservative base that's running Israel right now, they have painted themselves into a corner where they have no choice. Even if he wanted to come out and say, hey, world, we believe that this. This was a coordinated attack that was executed on behalf of this country to do this, to separate our people and to drive a wedge, and we're not going to let that happen. If he were to do that, his own internal hardline conservatives would oust him, just like, I mean, again,

speaking of timing, I don't think it's any coincidence that we just ousted the American Speaker of the House. within days of this conflict, you know, kicking off. Right. We have just neutered our own ability to approve funding for our allies militarily by kicking out our Speaker of the House. Right. And we're in a continuing resolution that just barely passed seven days ago. Right.

That included in that continuing resolution was cutting off any funding for Ukraine. Yeah. So we have just like, we have a war in Europe that we have been funding for almost two years. Yeah. And we just terminated our own ability to fund that war. And then Hamas incurs into Israel and Israel declares war on the Gaza Strip and what is America going to do? Are we going to pass an executive order that funds Israel that goes against what the people have wanted and violates our continuing resolution in the lead up to an election year? The timing is so painfully brilliant.

It shows you this was not Hamas just waking up one day and being like, you know what, we need to cause some trouble. This was coordinated and planned carefully by an intelligence. An intelligent American counterpart, like an intelligent, I'm losing my vocabulary. I'm so angry. Right. A foreign aggressor of some sort contributed to the planning and execution of this. Right. And it's somebody who is paying attention to the vulnerabilities that are visible in the various governments, right?

So, you know, Israel and Hamas have glaring vulnerabilities that make them susceptible to manipulation, right? So whether or not, and, you know, part of manipulation, you know, if you do it the right way, the person doesn't even know that they're being manipulator, right? They think it's their idea. So maybe Hamas is like, this is a great idea. We definitely, like, we're pissed off. Like, let's do this. But if it's, but it could be somebody else's hand guiding them like, yeah, you're, you need to do something about. this, whatever, and we're just going to wait for the right time, right? We'll give you these

resources. We're just waiting for the right time. And then somebody sees America's vulnerabilities shining right, right? Right on the stage, right? And then they take action. That's how intelligence works, right? Intelligence is people paying attention to vulnerabilities so then they can manipulate and have the unfair advantage. So I think you're totally right. Can you define vulnerability because I want to make sure that everyone who's engaging in this conversation with us understands the terminology that we're using. So what is a vulnerability when you use the word vulnerability? So a vulnerability in my mind is a pain point that can be used by somebody else

to essentially manipulate you and get you to do something that they want to do. And a vulnerability can be anything. Yeah. In essence, a vulnerability is a leverability. point that you can use against someone to do something that is not in their own best interest. Yes. That's what a vulnerability is. So whenever we're manipulated by our parents, whenever we're manipulated by abusive boyfriends

or girlfriends, whenever we as spouses and manipulate each other, when you make me feel guilty about not taking out the trash, what you're doing there is you're leaning on a vulnerability. Yeah. It's an area where you can lean into me to get me to take some kind of action that is not in my best interest. Right. That is exactly what happened. here, right? The action that Hamas took is not in their best interest.

Right. Somebody used a vulnerability to get them to take that action. And now Israel is responding in a way that is not in their best interest. Right. But it's predictable because somebody else understood, like you said, the vulnerabilities on both sides. Yes. The only way to shore up those vulnerabilities is to acknowledge them, communicate them, and then intentionally take an action that does not execute, right? That's not what we're seeing right now, right? Instead, what we're seeing is hundreds of Palestinians dead. Like, Israel is running air raids, dropping bombs on residential buildings.

Yeah. I mean, come on. That is not how you win the popular support of the world by dropping bombs on residential buildings in a poverty-stricken section of your own country to further oppress and repress the people who are an ethnic minority who you treat with discrimination as an ethnic minority. That's not how you win a war. That might be how a conservative base

and hawkish military leaders tell their own people, vengeance has been served. But that's not how you actually demonstrate to the world that you are a responsible democracy. It's not how you do it. If they care, though, because there's an assessment being done by somebody right now. Yeah.

And this entire time, there's somebody assessing what's going to be the blowback of every military decision that's been made, right? And it might not even affect the decisions that are being made by the military, but it is affecting somebody who's like, okay, this is the blowback we expect, and this is how we're going to manage that. And if it's not too horrible, nobody's going to say anything to a general anywhere. So here's what kills me. What kills me is that, you know, I absolutely sympathize with the Jewish plight.

Yeah. Worldwide, forever, absolutely, right? And I understand the close relationship that the United States and the responsibility the United States has to support the Jewish people. Absolutely. Yeah. After having lived in a Muslim country with my family, I also understand the Palestinian plight. I mean, it's not until you spend time with Muslims and you hear them talk about

Palestine and you hear them talk about, you know, Islam being repressed in their own religious center as well, that you start to understand that their point of view is very similar to the Israeli point of view. Yeah. It's incredible how much these two groups have in common. And yet when it comes to the actual borders where they collide, the clash is intense. Layer on top of that, the rule of law. Yeah. And that's when it starts to. fall apart. When you layer on the rule of law, you start to see that nobody has such a significant plight that they earn the right to discriminate and repress another group based exclusively on their ethnicity and their religious beliefs. Right. So it's, I'm sorry. That's just where the facts lead.

It's unfortunate, but that is where the facts take us. And that's the truth of what's happening in Israel. So as long as Israel and Palestine allow this continuing issue to bleed, right, this cancer to continue, they're going to leave themselves ripe for manipulation from outside parties. Right. Because in this, I, the thing that gets me is that Israel was making such incredible gains seeking cooperation and diplomatic recognition across the Middle East. And now that is going to come to a screeching halt because their relationship with UAE, their relationship with Bahrain, their relationship with Saudi Arabia is all contingent on them treating with humanity and fairness the Sunni Muslim population that exists in Palestine. All three of those countries are some of

the strongest supporters of Palestine. So the longer this war lasts, the longer that Palestinians die, the more Israel is at risk of... ostracizing itself from all the benefits, all the gains that it's made with the Arab world in the last three years. Yeah. And Iran knows that. And Iran knows that a fractured Sunni population, a fractured, uh, collegi Middle East is beneficial to Iran. Because it gives them the grounds that they need to spread Sunni Islam and to spread their red

crescent and increase their influence, which is why they use groups like Hamas. Hezbollah has entered the fray, right? And now Hezbollah is involved in attacks in northern Israel. Hezbollah is another group, another terrorist organization, backed by Iran, and they're the legitimate government in Lebanon. Yeah. So it's just we are watching, ah, just tyranny. We're watching it unfold in the Middle East at a very opportunistic time with the Biden presidency,

like the Biden presidency in decline, an election year coming up. Yeah. conflict inside the United States, we're out of money. There's a financial issue, a financial crisis around the world. And this is exactly when extremism is at its best, right? It flourishes when civilization is distracted. Yeah, I think it is interesting if people are paying attention to, you know, global, you know, global politics and global, you know, economics, you know, and then they, and they view the, view events like actions that China takes,

actions that Russia takes, actions that, you know, Hamas is taking through the lens, through a broader lens of what is going on everywhere else, then it really does help you understand. And I think be able, I mean, you're getting closer to what analysts do at the CIA, right? you're better able to predict that this is a riskier time right now, right? Because this creates opportunity, like all these other things happening, create opportunity for somebody to come in and do something when the rest of the world is vulnerable. Yeah, you know, we had a friend come up to us recently who is Jewish and has friends in the IDF

who are reservists who are now being called into action. Right. And that friend came to us and asked us, you know, What does, because, I mean, they were very upset. Yes. Very upset. And I think that what they were hinting at is that their intent or they were considering volunteering for the IDF from here in the United States.

Jumping on a plane. I think they even told us the plane tickets were 800 bucks. Yeah. Yeah. They were ready. They were like, I can go right now. Right. Jump on a plane, fly to Israel, pick up a gun and start fighting or pick up whatever the IDF told

them to pick up. Like that's, that was where they were coming from. Yeah. when they approached us. Yeah. And they essentially asked us like, hey, what does CIA teach you to do when the people you love and care about are at risk? Right.

Yeah. And I thought it was a really fascinating question because we have been in those exact situations where, you know, on a much quieter scale where, you know, a fellow officer of ours, we knew they were out in a dangerous place on a dangerous mission. And you don't hear from them for possibly, you know, weeks at a time. and the whole time you are personally worried, but you have a job to do, right? And, you know, the way that we handle it. And I've talked to other, you know, we had a friend who's, you know, was Delta Force. And I asked him the same question because I was like, you are out there like,

like your buddy is like dies right next to you. Like how do you handle that? And he had the same answer that we use, which is compartmentalization. You have to compartmentalize. your feelings apart from what your job is that you need to get done because whether or not, like, something horrible is happening or you are wondering if something horrible has happened, you have to continue with the job. You cannot falter because then everything hits the fan, right? You have to stay professional and continue. Yeah, what we're talking about here is compartmentalizing, which means separating.

Yeah. You have to separate your emotions. about the event from your actions within the event. And that's compartmentalizing. You can be yourself, but you have to recognize that the emotional self gets pushed aside. Temporarily, when you are in the mission, because if you let the two clash, you're going to have an event that we call compounding errors. Right. Which is the same thing our Delta friends have talked about, right?

Yes. And compounding errors means that your emotions influence your professional. decisions. Yes. And then you don't make the best professional decisions, which then lead to more emotions that lead to more impact to professional decisions, and you end up being suboptimal in both. Right. Suboptimal in both at a moment in time when you need to be optimized. Yep. And I mean, that is why when you are hired and, you know, when you go through the hiring process for the CIA and when you go through the process to become special forces, they do a lot

have psychological testing, right? And they have psychiatrists on hand for after an event or right before you go out, right? Constant re-evaluation. Because they need people who are able to, I mean, when you say separate, it's not just like, I'm going to, you know, it's like, it's not like, you know, everything's on a table and you just shove it a little bit to the side. No, compartmentalization is like you take those feelings and you shove them into a walker and you spin that lock and you don't see them anymore, right? And you know that that lockers there. And when you're all done, you can go back and you can unlock it and you can open it and kind of deal with what's going on there. But you, like that is gone. Like you have to not feel those things or see those things so you can really

focus because just like you said, if you don't focus, then your job doesn't get done. If your job doesn't get done, worse things happen. Worse things happen. Right? Other people suffer. Yeah. It reminds me of the FBI negotiator that we worked with where she was the lead negotiator. in a hostage negotiation in Southeast Asia where Americans and Canadians and I think French were all being kidnapped and detained by some sort of extremist group. And she was on the phone. I want to say she was actually on a cellular phone, like on a satellite phone with the head of the group. And the group was making demands. And she was trying to ask for time to fulfill those demands. And then she heard gunshots. And then the leader got back on the phone and said,

two Americans are dead, fix it now. Right. And like to hear her story, it's a chilling story. Yeah. Because she had to leverage what she could leverage to process through what her options professionally were. And then she was there for, I think, another like 48 hours negotiating. And then she got on a plane.

And this is the part that always just breaks my heart. She got on a plane. And it wasn't until she sat down in her coach class seat for an international flight back to wherever, that it struck her finally, that she could process. That she could start the processing. Yep. That she, and what she believed was that she had contributed to the death of two Americans. Right.

In her role as an FBI agent. Right. And then she just bawled. Yeah. And, but that's as heartbreaking as the story is. What a professional. Yeah. Because had she not been able to compartmentalize that in the moment?

Yep. Had she bawled on the phone in the moment? Yeah. Who knows who else would have died? That whole operation would have turned out differently. If she had lost her focus because she had let her emotions get in the way, that would have been a completely unsuccessful negotiation. Right?

And in truth, there's probably nothing she could have done about the two lives that were lost because you're just negotiating with terrorists, right? But yeah, absolutely. She was professional enough and trained enough and had the right mindset that she knew she had a job to get done and she just had to wait, you know, because you have to process the emotions, right? It's not like you compartmentalize forever. You're not walking it away in a safe and dropping it to the bottom of an ocean, right?

It's in a locker. You have to get to it later. You have to, right? But not in the moment. So essentially what we have here is, I mean, that was the guidance we gave our friend, was, hey, you've got a job to do right now. Right. And jumping on a plane to fly to Israel, to be close to the people you care about,

is actually not going to help them. Yes. Because you are untrained and you are a liability. So once you land on the ground in Tel Aviv and pick up a gun or pick up whatever you're going to pick up, now all of the people that you care about who are in Israel, they didn't have to worry about you when you were here in Florida. Right. But now they have to worry about you because you're there in Israel.

Right. And that's going to distract them. Like we talk about victims and volunteers at CIA. volunteers are people who put themselves in harm's way. Right. For whatever reason, they do it intentionally. If you are part of the IDF, if you live in Israel, if you choose to exercise your right as a Jewish citizen to be part of the homeland, you are volunteering to protect the homeland against exactly this kind of threat, which has been persistent for decades. Yeah.

You are a volunteer. Right. You are not a victim. Yeah. Right. Victims are people who have violence forced upon them from a position of expected safety. Yeah. That's a victim. That is not what's happening in Israel. So I applaud anybody who wants to support and protect a victim. But when somebody is a volunteer, you have to trust the volunteer. You have to

trust their intentions. You have to trust their training. You have to trust their purpose. You have to trust their values and let them execute what they were there to execute. That's exactly how we were taught to compartmentalize. People volunteer for the war zone. People volunteer for dangerous places. You and I volunteered for dozens of dangerous operations. Yeah. And every time the last thing we wanted was to get ourselves in trouble and then have one

of our friends try to parachute in unprepared to help us. Yeah. That was a nightmare scenario. Yeah. I mean, that's why contingency plans are always built into any operation because... When the worst happens. When the worst happens, you have a plan and everybody sticks to it. It's very professional.

Absolutely. Yeah. So I think part of what's now that we've walked through this conversation, I think that part of what really frustrates me about the current war in the Middle East, and that's what we have. That's what they declared. So there's a war in Europe and there's a war in the Middle East. Yeah.

Going into an election year. Yeah. I mean, America is, if Americans aren't understanding how we are being manipulated by foreign forces and adversaries right now, there's not much I can do to convince them, right? it's all happening. What's frustrating to me is that Israel's response to the attacks from Hamas were not compartmentalized. They were emotional.

There was pride and there was ego and there was history and there were feelings involved in the immediate next steps when it could have been compartmentalized. It could have been delayed six hours, 12 hours, 24 hours, 36 hours. Who knows? You could have delayed your response just long enough to compartmentalize your motions and come up with a strategically viable option for what to do next. Yeah, that's interesting. But that didn't happen.

Instead, it was knee jerk. And that knee jerk was predictable. And that's why adversaries to the U.S. and adversaries to Israel support this ongoing confrontation, this ongoing cancerous infection that exists inside the Israeli, like, landmass between the Palestinians and Israel. And it benefits, it benefits bad guys for that conflict to continue. It does. And right now, bad guys are the only ones winning because the Israelis aren't winning,

the Palestinians aren't winning. Nobody's walking out of this better than they were Saturday or a Friday night, right? So thank you for letting me get it all out. Letting me get all the anger out. Now, I think there's a really interesting question that we got that's relevant to this because somebody sent us a message and asked us, how do we train our children to be secure in an unsecure world without scaring them in the process? Yeah, which is a great question because it's actually something I struggle with quite

consistently. I mean, every time I think I have, you know, something figured out, there's some new danger that pops up, you know, especially as they get older, they get more freedom. You know, when they're a babe and, you know, when they're two and they're always at your, you know, your leg, there's different dangers than when they're 10 and they're allowed to walk across the neighborhood to their friend's house, right? So we have our son is 10 and our daughter is 6. Yeah.

And we absolutely, you and I, I think more than most people, agree that we live in a very dangerous world. Yeah. It's not, I'm not paranoid about our world. I am. Unfortunately, and that's part of my struggle. But I very objectively recognize that we are in it, we live in an unsafe time. Right.

An unstable time. Yeah. So we do. We have to impart certain skills and certain behavioral practices on them. One of the first things that jumps to my mind that I'm very proud of with our kids is that they don't answer the door. We have taught our children not to answer the door for anybody. Even if they, even if they recognize a person on visual, they know it's grandpa. They know it's their friend from across the street.

They know it's whatever. Even upon visual confirmation, they still do. don't answer the door. Yeah. Unless we as adults have told them that we're expecting the visitor and that we give them permission to answer the door. Right. The only exception to, well, it's not an exception.

The rule that we have for when they can answer the door is when we leave. Yeah. And when we come back to a locked door, we have a code word. We have a passphrase that we use so that when the children look out the window or when they ask through the door, who is it, we give them a passphrase. And they know that only mommy or daddy knows the passphrase. Or only mommy or daddy would have sent someone to the door with the passphrase. So I'm very proud of that element because that's served us in hotels.

Oh, yeah. That's served us in resorts. That's served us on cruise ships. That's served us here at the house. That has absolutely served us, you know, upon dozens of times. Even though your dad still looks at me and is like, why can't the guy, why can't they just open the door? It's like, well, tell us when you're coming. and we'll give them permission to open the door in advance.

Yeah. And one of the techniques I've been using, which I think has been fairly successful, is when I've chosen to focus on the safety skill and not on the story that's going to scare them into using the skill, if that makes sense. So I will think of, you know, what's the thing that scares me that's going to happen? I know better than they do, right, from experience. And then I think, okay, how can I prevent that from happening? So what are the skills and the processes that I need to teach them? And then I make a plan to teach them and then drill them over time. But without quite saying, you know, don't do this

because you might get kidnapped and raped, right? I've never said that to the children. We actually have one of their friends who lives in the neighborhood, she's eight. And she actually, a couple of times has said, you know, I don't like to walk home alone because somebody might kidnap and rape me. And so clearly her mom has drilled that into her because she says it fairly often. Like she is terrified of that happening to her. Which defeats the purpose because now you're making a child feel unsafe. Yeah. And what I... Like they have no control when the whole goal of preparing them for unsafe world is to make them feel like they do have control and to equip them with the skills to be in control. Right. Not to make, not to dest in them to feel out of control. Right. And so I try to,

you know, drill the skills into them and we, you know, do these drills of, you know, if there's a fire, if somebody comes to the door. And then if I feel it's appropriate, you know, or needed, I'll say something like, you know, because you can't always trust people, right? You know, if you don't know them, even if you do know them, there's a whole, there's a whole concept of tricky people. It's like the new stranger danger, right? And then tricky people came out because it's not always a stranger that's dangerous. It could be somebody you know. So we have taught them the whole concept of tricky people. And then we talk about, you know, people don't always want to do the right thing. Sometimes people might want to hurt you. I don't have to go in.

into the details of how they might want to hurt some, you know, hurt the children because I don't think that that's helpful. But they understand. They understand a word like hurt. Yes. They understand that, yeah. And they understand that even they themselves, this is something else we do. The children understand from their own experience that sometimes they do things to trick the other kid. Sometimes they tell lies to get what they want. Yeah. Sometimes they take things that don't belong to them. So it's really easy to categorize and to help them conceptualize using their own experiences, which are not terrifying, right? I agree with you totally. Like, in order for an eight-year-old to be able to say, I'm afraid of being kidnapped and raped. They must have some concept of what

that means. Of what kidnap and rape is. Yeah. And that's, I could not imagine having to carry that burden as an eight-year-old. Yeah. Not when the same message gets across when you say something like, there are people out there who want to keep you from getting home. Yeah. Or keep you from getting home safe. Yeah.

Follow these rules and you will always get home safe. Yeah. Also a focus on behaviors, right? Because it's difficult for them to conceptualize what they've never experienced and will hopefully never experience. So a behavior of, you know, if you are walking on the sidewalk and you see a adult walking towards you, just cross the street and walk on the other side, right? Look both ways, obviously, you have to remind them. Or if a car pulls up to the front of the

driveway, don't get near the car. If somebody starts talking to you, I want you to stay this far back, right? So behavioral is something that they can. And drilling them. You've mentioned this several times, and I want to make sure it's underscored. Like, we drill, we practice. Yeah. We practice, they practice every time family comes over without even realizing it now. They're practicing. Yeah. And that's exactly how we want it to be. Not because, and our children are not paranoid. Our children do not think that the world necessarily is a dangerous place. What they know is that they do certain things to protect their own safety. Yeah. And now it's just ingrained in them. This is just the way it works. Yeah. And you can tell that they take pride and knowing the drill.

Yeah. When I'm like, all right, I have to step out. What do you do with this fire? And they, they blur it out. You know, and now they love it. They like, yeah, we do this and this. And we're great. We're okay, mom. Like, it's fine. We got it. So one of the things, just to give some practical examples, we use walkie-talkies in the house instead of cell phones. Yeah.

And there's two reasons for that. One, there's a limited range to a walkie-talkie. So the child can't be out of range of a walkie. Right. And then we check in on those walkie-talkies. And we follow time limitations. Yeah. So we say, it's 12 o'clock now.

We're going to check in at 1230, right? And they know to expect a radio call at 1230. Sometimes they'll even radio us just a few minutes before 1230 and say, hey, I know I'm but just checking in. Yeah. And that now we know from our position how far they are from the house because they can't be further than a certain distance

based on the walkie-talkie that we use. And we know that they're aware of the time and we can check in on their safety. Yep. We also do drills when it comes to the front door. We do drills about fires. We do drills about emergencies. We review a safety plan every night

partially for our own sanity, but also partially for them, about what constitutes an emergency in the middle of the night. Yes. Right? So if someone's sick, if someone's hurt, if someone, you know, if something happens at your window, there are certain things that constitute an emergency.

And that also prevents them from coming in and saying, hey, my, I can't find my stuffed animal, even though sometimes they still do that. Yeah, it's okay. But there are certain rules so that we can understand safety. Yep. The whole thing about tricky people. I love the tricky people concept. Yeah.

Because you and I and our families, we actually have convicted felons in our families. Right? We have people who have broken laws who have been hurt by other members within the family. So the idea of tricky people expand, like tricky people is a behavior that you see in people. Yeah. It can be anybody. It can be a police officer. It can be a teacher.

It can be a family member. It can be a friend. If you see these tricky behaviors, then here's how you counteract those tricky behaviors. Things like candy, things like money, things like getting in my car, things like coming into my room. They understand these tricky things. Things like secrets. Things like secrets. We have an absolute rule of if anybody says this is a secret.

Including us. Including us. Including us. You say something right away. There are no secrets. Zero. That's a bad sign. That's a sign of a tricky person.

I remember when I tried to give our son like a chocolate and I didn't want to give one to our daughter. Oh, I do remember that. It was just a few months ago. And I was like, here you can have these two Hershey's Kisses Kiss. and he was like, what about a lie? And I said, no, Sina, let's just keep this a secret between us. And then he looked at me and he was like, Daddy, tricky people say keep secrets.

And I was like, oh, you are so right. So then I guess we should give a lie some candy. He was like, yeah, that's the right thing to do. Yeah. Right? Convicted by my own best practices. Yeah. But it was brilliant and I was so proud. And he's exactly right.

Right. I was wrong to say, let's keep this a secret because that is not. That's not what we're teaching them. Right. We're teaching, which is kind of funny when we're two spies, two former spies, trying to tell our kids not to keep secrets. But what we really mean is don't keep secrets within the unit. Well, and you have to remember their age and where they are developmentally, right? I mean, when they are 18, I can have a more nuanced conversation about secrets and white lies and gray areas, right? But at 10 and 6, we absolutely aren't going to do those things. And then I just wanted to mention, you know, when we're out,

There are some rules we have where, you know, like we go to Legoland or we go to a museum or whatever and we have the rules about we have to be able to see each other. We always pick a meeting point. So if we do get separated, we know where we're going to be standing looking for each other. And we always point out the people that we assess as being trustworthy. So like the security guard. But even then we'll be like, you know, if you need help, see the people. people in the uniform with the badge. You go to one of them and you say that you need help.

But if they want to take you into a private space, you say no. Right? They have to be in public with you and they can help you where everybody can see you as well. Right. So we do little things like that every time, right, they forget. So every time we go to a museum or theme park or whatever, we make sure we do the drill. Yeah, absolutely. Well, awesome. So folks, thank you very much for being part of this conversation. It was a great opportunity for, for me, to dive in with you and talk about current events that are really important, really significant in what's happening in the American experience and for sure in the Israeli experience and the Muslim experience. So if you enjoyed today's conversation, please go ahead and subscribe to the channel,

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