It Could Happen Here - Israel Invades Lebanon & Other Horrors

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

Mia and Gare discuss a new Israeli push into northern Gaza and their expanding war on Lebanon. Sources: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9vp7dg3ml1o https://archive.is/Y2lUM https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/10/9/live-israel-hits-lebanons-beirut-bekaa-valley-gaza-deaths-near-42000 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/9/israeli-offensives-in-lebanon-and-gaza-kill-dozens-displace-millions https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/10/5/israel-issues-new-evacuation-order-in-gaza-as-attack-on-nuseirat-kills-several https://www.palestinechronicle.com/northern-gaza-under-siege-israel-issues-fresh-evacuation-orders-for-three-hospitals/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/irans-khamenei-warned-nasrallah-israeli-plot-kill-him-sources-say-2024-10-02/ https://apnews.com/article/israel-lebanon-hezbollah-gaza-news-10-01-2024-eb175dff6e46906caea8b9e43dfbd3da https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-airstrikes-rock-beirut-hezbollah-command-centre-hit-2024-09-28/ https://gazette.com/news/wex/biden-and-netanyahu-speak-for-first-time-since-hezbollah-escalation/article_6ac0e235-c376-5900-8a6c-92e1833a5668.html https://www.nbcnews.com/investigations/israel-not-briefed-us-military-officials-plans-retaliation-iran-rcna174443 https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/oct/08/israel-iran-live-blog-hezbollah-lebanon-gaza-hamas-war-middle-east-crisis-news-updates?filterKeyEvents=false&page=with:block-6705c5c68f08f65f2b70052a#block-6705c5c68f08f65f2b70052a https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/10/8/live-israel-kills-dozens-in-gaza-as-palestinians-mark-one-year-of-war https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/oct/08/israel-iran-live-blog-hezbollah-lebanon-gaza-hamas-war-middle-east-crisis-news-updates?page=with:block-670564528f08f65f2b70021d#top-of-blogSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Yeah, there's been a lot of bad things the past week, past year, but the past week and a half, it's been pretty bad. Yeah, and one of the things that's been very bad is literally everything Israel has been up to, like, I mean, since it was founded, but the last three, four weeks, somehow things have gotten worse, which is a sort of unbelievable thing to say about a genocide. But it's expanding. So, yeah, there is at the end of this one of the most bizarre Trump quotes I've ever seen. So that's why I promised you to stick with this. But, oh, boy, everything is very, very bad. But, oh boy, everything is very, very bad. So we now have, I guess, I don't even know if France is the right way to talk about this. But what we have in Gaza, which is where the main Israeli offensive is going right now. Well, we'll get into that.

There's a bunch of stuff in Lebanon, too, where they're pulling troops, too. But in Gaza, everything just continues to get worse even though so the israelis have pulled out some troops from gaza but they're also still making another offensive into northern gaza and the thing about the way that the israelis make offensive into places is that the thing that the israelis do is they just immediately start shooting at hospitals so that's been a big part of what's happening something that used to be like controversial and like widely newsworthy a year ago attacks on hospitals now have become so normalized desensitized that it doesn't even make headlines which that's been one of the most indicative factors that this has gone about as bad as it could have.

I remember a year ago, we were debating whether or not the Israeli military intentionally struck a hospital. And this was a weeks-long debate trying to figure out what exactly happened. And now attacks on hospitals are just complete commonplace. It's like we've just totally lost. complete commonplace it's like we've just totally lost yeah and i mean you know like it's not even just that that the israelis are deliberately targeting hospitals it's that the temporary facilities people have been trying to set up because the hospitals are being blown up are also being attacked yeah which has also been going on for ages yeah almost a year now like almost immediately as soon as like humanitarian aid and like and like like impromptu medical tents were set up those were also the targets and this is this is also discontinued yeah and i think the thing that's you know that's bleak about it right is like

i mean i mean it's not the thing the thing that's bleak about is that they're blowing up hospitals but i mean we've reached a point into this where it's a it's not even news but b the israelis don't even like attempt to justify it anymore i mean if you remember a year ago when they were doing this there'd be all of this stuff about how oh we found hamas tunnels under the hospitals there's just none of that anymore they're just they're just shooting at hospitals sometimes they give evacuation orders they've been this that's the other thing that's been happening periodically is the israelis keep basically you know in in places in northern gaza they'll be like everyone has to leave now and then they'll bomb it and they'll keep bombing it part of the thing about covering gaza right is

all of the stuff that we're saying is stuff that was a major news story like six months ago and is no longer a major news story because the slaughter has become just sort of so routinized but you know so people are fleeing from northern gaza into what's supposed to be the safe zone in central gaza except the israelis keep shooting at the refugee camps in central Gaza. So it's not actually, there's, there's not actually a place you can be in Gaza where you're not getting bombed. What there is,

is some places sometimes are less bombed than other places. And, you know, than other places and you know i i think there had been a tiny amount of hope that the only conceivable upside about the invasion of lebanon was that there would be a pullout of troops and we'd see less offensive but you know they've just been escalating bombing campaigns they're doing some offensive anyways so yeah there's there's there's continuing sort of Israeli attacks into parts of northern Gaza. The other big thing, and this is what most of this episode is going to be about, is a new front. After already having this entire thing in Gaza, there was also an invasion of the West Bank, which, again, is... I don't know how to express how insane it is to have a war where you're nominally fighting against hamas and then invade the west bank a place where there isn't hamas

but they've just they've done that too there's been parts of the west bank there's been a bunch of israeli troops and you know we know they've been fighting in yemen as much bombings in yemen but also now they've just straight up invaded leban And this is the sort of chain of events of this was, I don't know if kicked off is the right word, but it was, it was dramatically accelerated by the assassination of Hassan Nusrallah, who is, I think most people are aware that he's the head of Hezbollah and has been the

head of Hezbollah since like 1992, which is longer than anyone who's on this episode right now has been alive was this the one who was killed in those like apartment like carpet carpet bombings yeah yeah so i mean yeah even still assassination is a strong word for uh or i guess a light word for just bombing like it was like what three complexes? Yeah, they just obliterated a bunch of apartment complexes with something like 80 bunker busters. Yeah. So this is actually the second time

that the Israelis have just straight up killed someone they were supposed to nominally be negotiating with. They killed the head of Hamas in Iran. So, you know, we talked about on this show the initial wave of attacks on Lebanon, which is the sort of the Pager explosions. And the follow up to the Pager explosions was that they figured out what bunker that there's Rala was in and they just killed him. This is extremely bad for a lot of reasons, one of which is that Hezbollah kind of hadn't really been on full war footing until this point. Like, they've been doing a bunch of rocket attacks on northern Israel, right?

There have been these sort of exchanges of rocket fire across the border, but they hadn't really escalated beyond that. And then the Israelis were like, well, just fuck it. were like, well, just fuck it. Okay, we want our invasion of Lebanon, and Nasrallah was kind of like, I don't know if moderating force is quite the right term here, but his policy wasn't that Hezbollah was going to fight a total war against Israel, and the Israelis just fucking murdered him anyways. So we should probably talk about who Nasrallah is. He's not from the original Hezbollah cadres, from the original Lebanese Civil War when when it emerges in 82.

He's not from that cadre, but he's a pretty old school Hezbollah guy by this point. He's, you know, he's been in charge of Hezbollah for fucking ever. Like I am not old enough to remember a time when he was not in charge of Hezbollah because I wasn't born yet. I wasn't born yet. I don't know. He's one of the people who's seen Hezbollah's sort of expansion and also seen Hezbollah be able to be like the only of the sort of major Lebanese political parties who are in negotiations to end the civil war. He kind of oversaw the process of Hezbollah being like the only armed party

like left in Lebanon other than like the regular army right he was also very famously in charge of Hezbollah's I don't know how exactly you wanted I don't know there's a whole bunch of stuff about how the war in 2006 started but in 2006 Israel made this attempt to sort of like do their big anti-Hezbollah push. They invaded Lebanon and Israel didn't do very well. They were expecting, and I think most people were expecting Hezbollah to fight like, you know, like a guerrilla army, right? Doing hit and run attacks, doing the sort of like the whole sort of last century of guerrilla hit and run campaigns. And they didn't do that.

They basically, they sat there and fought like a conventional army with a bunch of bunker networks, and the Israelis did extremely poorly in that war. And I think this has influenced a lot of the way that people were thinking about how this fight was going to work, and it just hasn't. But, you know, the fact that Hezbollah was able to sort of stave off the initial attack,

and then the Israelis spent, like, 40 more days doing a bombing campaign and everyone just called it quits was absolutely huge for Hezbollah as a political force unfortunately for them I guess they burned an unbelievable amount of of that political capital that they'd gotten from being really the first people in a long time to like actually be able to valiantly claim that they defeated israel and i mean it's obviously like both both sides of that declare victory but hezbollah puts up a better fight against the israelis and like it's like stops their ground advance in a way that like was almost unimaginable at that point even though hezbollah had sort of fought pretty well between the Lebanese civil war, at least better than most of the other sort of like anti-Israeli

factions that weren't a state. And even, I mean, even most of the states that have fought Israel have done extremely poorly. We're going to go to ads, and then when we come back, we're going to talk a bit about how Hezbollah's position weakened and how the Israelis have just sort of decided that this is a moment they can just murder everyone in. Hey, I'm Gianna Prandenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, the early career podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. One of the most exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck.

You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm like every single year, you need to be asking for a raise

of somewhere between 10 to 15%. I'm not saying you're gonna get 15% every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit

is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life.

Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Off offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming

and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German, and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game.

If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs

and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh.

And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Atian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy

and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeart

radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So we are back with more, I guess, very, very short summary of what Hezbollah's been up to over the last about 30 years. So part of the reason that things haven't been going enormously well for Hezbollah is that a lot of their capacity was weakened by the big ones is it's hideously unpopular in like in palestine um i i forgot i forget who ran the poll but there so there's a very famous poll that was showing like the disapproval rating in palestine of different world leaders i mean they didn't pull netanyahu because obviously like isn't that yahoo but the two the two highest ones that weren't netanyahu were it was like biden at 80 and then slightly higher than biden was bashar al-assad because he is hideously unpopular partially for a bunch of shit that he did in a very very large palestinian refugee camp there that you know hezbollah fucking backed them for and so Hezbollah spent a lot of the last decade just sort of running around Syria

backing the Assad regime. And that, I don't know, Garrison, that doesn't make you popular anywhere other than like extremely weird sections of the American left. Yeah, I mean... And I guess some of the American right. When you're backing a guy who is just like,

who is doing the thing the israelis do like obviously on a smaller scale but like shooting up like palestinian refugee camps he's not going to be enormously popular whenever there's a guy who's like seriously maimed your family members yeah it's pretty pretty easy to dislike him yeah and like one of the things that's going on in the story that like we need a fucking 70 part episode to talk about but Syria occupied a bunch of Lebanon for a long time and that also like hasn't made him enormously popular in the region but you know Hezbollah's position is that they had like they have the slogan that goes the road to Jerusalem runs to Aleppo which is just like just not how any of this has worked. It's been a complete fiasco. Hezbollah's

performance in Syria hasn't been very good. Can you explain what that phrase means? Yeah, yeah. So the point of this basically was that in order to defeat the Zionists through some incredibly murky logic like the Assad regime had to be kept in power, and this was

sort of a justification that was used by hezbollah to just send a bunch of troops there to coordinate with a bunch of other different groups there and i mean like it's it's a really terrible decision both on a moral and a strategic level in the sense that like it caused a rift between what is supposed to be the resistance factions in in palestine and it just killed a bunch of people and like, like, the Iranians are sending... I don't actually know how many people know about this story, but one of the, like, terrifying things that's happening in this

is that there's a bunch of refugees from Afghanistan who flee to Iran, and the Iranians, like, basically conscript a bunch of these people and send them into Syria with rifles. So, like, these people are, like, fighting alongside Hezbollah. And Hezbollah, they don't do great because hasbala has always been good at fighting like fairly obviously morally justified defensive wars inside of lebanon and then they go off and fight basically a like a semi-imperial war in in syria it's fucking shit show and this has been extremely bad for their capacity and it also really hurt hezbollah politically because again it was also very very unpopular in lebanon and this kind of all leads

us to the last few weeks of like terrible shit that's been happening where yeah which is the israelis just fucking launched this hideous bombing campaign i mean just really just all over lebanon right you know most of the most of the reporting has been about their attacks in the south but like they've bombed the capital they bombed tripoli they've killed i think so far it's one of these things where the death counts kind of have stopped updating but in the last few days it looks like they've killed about 2 000 people it's not enormously clear but yeah it's things that things have gotten extremely unbelievably bad and this this is also really i think been a kind of mask off moment for both the u.s and the

israelis where all of the things that they've like been pretending for the last year they're just straight up saying that they don't believe anymore i think that the best indicator of this is there was a white house press conference and matthew miller who's one of the white house spokesperson answered a question about yeah just about the conflict and he said quote yes we do support israel launching these incursions to degrade Hezbollah's infrastructure, which like kind of sounds like a standard like the U.S. support Israel thing. But if you actually read into what that's saying, he's saying the U.S.'s official position is no longer whether try to get a ceasefire. Right. That's that's what he's saying. This is immediate and active support for the Israelis, not not only not attempting to end the war but expanding it into lebanon and this is something that like hadn't been in an explicit like war

goal for for israel sort of until this point the line had always been that the the point of this was to bring back the hostages right but like there's no fucking hostages in lebanon like there isn't there just aren't, right? That's not how any of this works. And at this point, all of the sort of pretense is falling away and it just degrading into this pure slaughter. And when we come back from this ads,

we're going to wrap up with more stuff that mostly sucks and also Trump's latest thing on this, which is very weird. exciting things about having your first real job is that first real paycheck. You're probably thinking, yay, I can finally buy a new phone. But you also have a lot of questions like, how should I be investing this money? I mean, how much do I save? And what about my 401k? Well, we're talking with finance expert Vivian Tu, aka Your Rich BFF, to break it all down. I always get roasted on the internet when I say this out loud, but I'm

like every single year you need to be asking for a raise of somewhere between 10 to 15 percent. I'm not saying you're going to get 15 percent every single year, but if you ask for 10 to 15 and you end up getting eight, that is actually a true raise. Listen to this week's episode of Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters.

From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again. The podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, películas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters,

this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral.

Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. that time's unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible.

Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. everywhere. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well.

Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are back. So as this has been going on in the past couple of days, Netanyahu posted a... I don't even know how to describe it. One of the weirdest videos I've seen since that insane Kevin Bacon one. That's just him threatening Lebanonbanon he says quote you

have an opportunity to save lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in gaza he's just straight up threatening lebanon as as israeli troops are moving across the border as really choose for occupying attempting to occupy cities he's just straight up saying like lebanon needs to just throw out hezbollah somehow even though it's just like a political party they need to completely destroy hezbollah somehow otherwise israel is going to do to lebanon what they've done to gaza and that i don't know is a unbelievably hideous expansion of the war could you give some context for like why israel is making moves into lebanon we know like they're targeting hezbollah but there's also like a degree of

territorial dispute over where israel ends and lebanon begins yeah that israel has been kind of like wanting to increase tensions over for a while and it feels like they're just using the war in gaza as a cover to also try to claim like territory of southern lebanon yeah and i mean this gets into so i think there's three kind of reasons and i think that are all overlapping factors for different groups of people you know because like different israeli political factions and different sort of strategic like elements of the military etc etc are doing things for sometimes overlapping sometimes different reasons like there's the obvious one which is like okay there's a dislike for hezbollah that's being that's been funneled because a bunch of

people in settlements in northern israel have been like have been evacuated because they keep getting bombed right and those people are unbelievably pissed off and they've been pushing for this for a long time there's the second one which is i think the one that liberals use as like the excuse for the entire the entire genocide was wrong but it is also true that netanyahu does like personally need this war to keep going because the moment the war stops he's gonna be out of office he's screwed yeah yeah so like that that's a personal incentive for netanyahu there's also another one outside of the political pressure from from the northern settlers and you know the general idea is bluffing and then personally which is like he's really so does have always been

it's it's most extreme like most sort of far right most genocidal like political element right but increasingly we're watching them get radicalized even further in real time and we're watching them become increasingly powerful. And one of the things that those people want is they have this unbelievably deranged thing that, I mean, I guess all nationalist movements eventually get to their greater whatever your country is thing. But they've entered the greater Israel phase where they're talking about just like you're talking about Israel as this as a state that's supposed to, like, encompass, like, all of Lebanon and, like, I mean, I've seen so many different maps, like, encompassing a bunch of

parts of Syria. Well, I mean, and this is also what's influenced their continued attacks in the West Bank specifically in the past few months, where they're similarly using what's going on in Gaza, like, hiding behind their own atrocities in Gaza as a cover to like try to actually claim more territory in the West Bank

or at least push more of like the Palestinian people out of their homes to expand the Israeli settlements. So I think both of these are kind of happening for similar reasons. And Israel is trying to like just weaponize the actual atrocities that are going on in Gaza as, like, a big shield, because those are getting so much more attention trying to get away with this territorial expansion in other areas, not just the Strip.

Yeah, and I mean, also, I should say that there's a lot of... A lot of the people on the ground are pretty convinced that the Israelis are trying to basically just, like ethnically cleanse like parts of the strip so they can annex it. And I mean, it's not something that we like have like we don't have like a document from Israeli high command that says we're going to annex all of this stuff. But it's it's it's something that's very least consistent with everything they've been doing and this is also like another sort of one of the cyclical factors here this is a cyclical factor behind the settlements we've talked about this

uh back when we did episodes about the west bank is that the israeli housing market is such a fucking disaster and this this is something that you know like this kind of real estate speculation shit in the same way that like george washington was as a real estate speculator was was sort of like motivated to do more tax on on indigenous land in the US. And this sort of like field westward expansion is all these land speculators, you know, moved out and people who couldn't afford like houses in like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where housing prices are really high. in like tel aviv and jerusalem where housing prices are really high those people have become this political force to keep pushing this and this is you know fueling the expansion of the israeli occupation into more and more places yeah so right now where we're at with lebanon is that 1.2 million people have fled their homes which is i mean even if like the israelis had literally done nothing else in the entire time that this has been happening right forcing 1.2 million people to flee their homes is it a

unimaginable level of suffering and this is like just effectively being reported as a footnote in the fact that they've fucking done all of this other shit and just in the past week and a half they've killed 1300 people yeah it's insane like that's more than the number of people that were killed in israel on october like seventh yeah that just doesn't matter because of because of like all of the racialized aspects of of how how like israel's genocide campaign has been able to operate like you're not going to see memorials in the states oh for the 13 for the 1300 people killed in lebanon the same way that we will for october 7th yeah you might get them on a college campus for the cops destroy it but like that's and that's just in one week it's over they've done

over a thousand airstrikes the past week they've killed all these people and that that's i don't yeah i don't know what else to say yeah i'm gonna close by on a slightly lighter note from this one of the way even by trump standards an extremely weird quote that he gave about gaza that this is from the guardian quote asked by hewitt which is a guy whose podcast he was on if gaza could be transformed into monaco if properly rebuilt trump replied quote it could be better than monaco it has the best location in the middle east the best water the best everything it's got it's it's the best i said for years, I've been there and it's rough. It's a rough place. Before all the attacks and back and forth that's happened over the last couple

of years, he went on, I mean, they have the back of a plant facing the ocean, you know, there was no ocean as far as that was concerned. They never took advantage of it. You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place. The weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate, it was so beautiful. It could be the best thing in the Middle East. Yeah, I mean that's in line with stuff that Kushner's been saying for a long time. Yep. In how they are hoping to turn Gaza

into a part of Israel, specifically to do real estate development. Yeah. To turn it into like a resort, to turn it into a golf course, and they're willing to kill tens of thousands of people to do it. And that is the primary driver, at least for them, for Trump's team, for why

they're very happy to see Netanyahu just do whatever he wants. Yeah. And I think there's something else here, too, which is that a lot of the kind of Marxist analysis of this from a very certain kind of Marxist has been about how Palestine has been rendered as surplus population.

This is a population that has been kicked out of the circuit of capital accumulation. They're not necessary for capital to reproduce itself to make more capital. And so no one cares if you kill them. And I think that's wrong. And I think this quote is actually evidence of why they're wrong like this you know these people think purely and like people like trump right think purely in terms of economic assets and there are an unbelievable amount of economic assets like in palestine that a regime that is like maybe only 30 percent less like hideously cruel and murderous could have turned

into viable economic engines. But the Israelis don't want that. They have made a decision, like an actual conscious decision, that instead of trying to exploit people for labor, they'd rather just fucking kill them all and try to steal their land. They have decided that this fucking real estate speculation bullshit

on a bunch of land that they're taking by just fucking slaughtering all of its inhabitants is more efficient for them than even doing fucking regular capitalism. And that's an absolutely fucking hideous note. And it's it's it's the kind of thing that Biden is saying OK to and Trump fucking loves because fundamentally, like Trump's fucking real estate brand is pro genocide. And Biden doesn't give a shit about stopping them and he's also pro this so yeah the the gears of genocide continue to grind the israelis are plotting their attack against iran that they're going to do in response to iran shooting missiles at them in response to them killing the leader of Hezbollah.

I don't know. By the time this comes out, it's possible that attack will have happened. They're going to do something. It's going to make everything worse. But, yeah, until then, this has been an update on the genocide in Palestine and the

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