Morning Wire - One Year After October 7th: Israel, Hezbollah & Iran | 10.6.24

Episode Date: October 6, 2024

Former U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman shares his insights on the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran’s proxies, the anniversary of the October 7th Hamas terror attacks, and the role of U.S. policy in the region. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Birch Gold: Text "WIRE" to 989898 for your no-cost, no-obligation information kit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's been a year since Hamas terrorists launched a surprise attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 Israeli citizens and kidnapping hundreds more, among them American citizens. Since that terror attack, the worst in Israel's history, Israeli forces have systematically taken out Hamas terrorists, and more recently directed their forces against Hezbollah terrorists to their north. The result has been a dramatic weakening of Iran's terror proxies. In this episode, we talk with former U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman,

about the state of the conflict in the Middle East one year since October 7th. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's October 6th, and this is a Sunday edition of Morning Wire. With the massive tax hikes proposed by Harris, you might be thinking it's time to make more of your savings, tax-sheltered and inflation-sheltered. This is where I trust the good people at Birch-Gold Group to help. Birch-Gold will assist you in converting your existing IRA or 401k into a gold IRA,

a smart move to shelter your savings from both taxes and inflation. The best part, you don't pay a penny out of pocket. Just text the word wire to 9898-9-8-9-8-8 and get a free info kit on gold today. That's the word wire to 9-8-98-8-8 today. Joining us now to discuss the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran and the anniversary of the October 7th Hamas terror attacks, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman. Thank you so much for joining us.

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. All right, so we've seen a lot of action between Israel and Iran's proxies and now Iran directly. the Israeli military began a limited ground operation in southern Lebanon targeting Hezbollah terrorists earlier this week, despite that threat of retaliatory strikes from Iran. First, was this the right move by Israel? Oh, absolutely. I mean, without this, there's no way to bring quiet to the north. You know, Israel's done a good job of decapitating the operatheleons of Hezbollah, but there's still a lot of soldiers there and there's a lot of rockets there. And most importantly, along the north, what they're discovering now are really.

just as ornate and threatening a series of terror tunnels as you have in the south and in Gaza. So in order to really create a meaningful buffer between Israel and Lebanon where the people who live in northern Israel can sleep a night with some comfort, you really have to clean out a good 10 to 20 kilometers of southern Lebanon, and you can't do it any other way but on the ground. And for those who haven't been tracking as closely, what has been the situation for the Israeli citizens who were living in northern Israel over this last year? Well, the assault by Hamas started in October 7th, and by October 8th, as Hezbo had started to sheet rockets from the north,

the Israeli government evacuated 60,000 people from northern towns, from their homes. They haven't been home since. They've been living in makeshift to hotels and people's houses with relatives. Kids haven't gone to school. I mean, it's been almost exactly a year of being refugees in their own country. And so this is a primary objective. objective of Israel's defense is to bring these 60,000 people back home and to bring quiet to the

north. Now, the White House has warned Iran that there will be severe consequences for their retaliatory ballistic missile strikes on Israel. What actual consequences might there be for Iran from the U.S.? It's hard to say. There haven't been any consequences yet for three and a half years of malign activity. The sanctions that should be enforced on Iran are not being enforced. there's no second bill of sanctions, which means that Iran can sell its oil to other countries with a punity. They're selling billions of dollars of oil to both Russia and China, which is sort of self-defeating for America. We're trying to help Ukraine defeat Russia, and we're also helping Iran sell oil to Russia, which Iran takes that money and funds all the malign activity all throughout

the Middle Eastern Crescent. So I don't know what America is prepared to do. I know what we would have done if we were still in office, but that's certainly not what the Biden administration is doing. So I don't know what the threats mean. They've been observed in the breach over the last three and a half years. You mentioned sanctions. President Trump has leveled a lot of accusations against the Biden administration, accusing them of mishandling the Iran situation, particularly when it comes to sanctions. Do you think that these criticisms are fair? Yeah, I think it's the most obvious and the most consequential failure of the Biden administration when we left office Iran had a GDP of under 200 billion dollars,

and now they're over 450 billion dollars all. It's not because they discovered some technology that they're somehow doing all this great business. It's all because we're allowing Iran to sell oil to our greatest adversaries, and they've more than doubled their GDP. They have all this extra money. They use it to fund Hamas and Chazboa and the Houthis and make the world a more dangerous place.

And I think it's been the single greatest foreign policy failure of the Biden administration among many, but I think it's been the single greatest failure because it's the it was the easiest not to do. There was no point in relieving a route of these sanctions. We had them bankrupt. We had them on the ropes. And Biden made them a very powerful country again. And what about the Biden-Harris administration's support for Israel? Do you think they've shown adequate support for Israel over the last year? No, no, of course not at all. I mean, I think there's been a huge disconnect between the platitudes and the facts on the ground. And for example, you'll get a statement repeatedly from Kamala Harris saying Israel has the right

to defend itself, which is essentially a meaningful statement. There's no country in the world that doesn't have the right to defend itself, especially against the type of attacks that Israel experienced. So there are these words that kind of sound get, but you know, you look at the policy towards Iran, you look at the refunding of UNRWA, you look at the consistent interfering with Israel's prosecution of its defense. That famous line where she said, I've read the maps, Israel can't go into Rafa.

I could have drawn the map on a napkin. I mean, as if she had undertaken some major academic effort. And of course, Netanyahu, to his credit, didn't listen to them, went into Rafa. Had he not gone in, he wouldn't have saved five hostages. And he also wouldn't have discovered the smuggling tunnels from Egypt into Gaza that were the primary source of Hamas's weapons. So they will say enough to placate kind of the most naive, least informed, most insecure members of the Jewish community or the pro-Israel community.

But when it comes to actually helping Israel win this war, I think they've caused Israel both to be delayed by months. I think this war in Gaza would have been over many months ago. They've caused Israel to take efforts that I think no army would have taken, putting their soldiers at greater risk and exposing their soldiers to both. death and being injured. And I think they've done nothing to convince Israel's adversaries that America will be there with Israel. There'll be no daylight. There's been cast in daylight, which is only empowered Israel's enemies. And frankly, it's raised the price of all the hostage negotiations. Every time Biden blames Netanyahu for not making a deal, it just raises the price and makes it harder to make a deal. And of course, it's not true. So I'm quite critical of what

Harris and Biden they were done. I think they really made it much harder for Israel to win this war. And unfortunately, Israel's paid a heavy price for that malfeasance. Let's turn to the infamous day that started this entire conflict over this last year, October 7th. It's been nearly a year since the deadliest terror attack ever on Israel. At the time, Israel put together a war cabinet, hoped for a short conflict. Do you believe they've made progress in their goals? I think they've made enormous progress. Hamas was a terrorist group, but they were a hell of a good terrorist group. I mean, I say good at meaning a threatening. I mean, they had created for themselves the largest, most powerful

home-quoit advantage in the history of ground warfare. You know, Israel cannot have defeated them without going in on the ground. And I think Israel, maybe they knew about it. Maybe they discovered more than they were aware of. But the extent of 350 miles of terror tunnels with advanced the weaponry, I think, was something which posed an enormous challenge to Israel. They have largely destroyed that apparatus, both the soldiers, the equipment, the tunnels, the leadership. Sinwar, we don't know if he's alive redoubt, but he's obviously not able to have the kind of command and control that he once had. So I think this threat was greater than, certainly was greater than what Israel appreciated on October 6th. I think it took them a while to really respond effectively because they were caught by surprise.

But I think they've done great work in the aftermath of that attack. And because they weren't caught by surprise with Lebanon, they were kind of on the receiving end of rockets for almost 11 months. They had a lot of time to plan and the kind of response that they were able to generate in Lebanon, whether it was through the exploding beepers or the walkie-talkies or blowing up meetings of top-level Hezbollah commanders or killing Nasrallah. I mean, the actions taken by Israel in the last, say, three weeks against Lebanon, against Thuswellah, I think we'll be talked about in written. about for 100 years. They were so creative and effective. So I think the Israeli army has done a very good job. I think ultimately we'll need a better answer as to how this happened in the first place on October 7th. But since that happened, I think they've performed incredibly well. Is it too optimistic to say that Hamas is effectively over? I think Hamas has been deeply degraded.

It's hard to say over because Israel lives in a very dangerous neighborhood. And throughout its history, as it defeats its enemies, others continuously pop up. There's plenty of money behind the desire to hurt Israel. There's plenty of evil in the world, plenty of misguided clerics who will continue to teach their parishioners to hate Israel and to maybe give their own lives in killing Israelis and killing Jews. So we're not going to destroy anti-Semitism. We're not going to destroy anti-Zionism.

So people will continue to pop up because there's a lot of money behind it. And unfortunately, that's a reality. But I think is Israel safer today than it was on October 6th, undoubtedly? I mean, Israel, it's like, you know, a patient that discovered that it had cancer and it went and it took the therapies. The therapies may have been painful. They may have thrown up. They may have lost their hair or whatever.

But on the other end of that therapy, they were about healthier than never discovering the cancer and let it just eat away. you. So on our cover six, I think Israel, the Israeli body, if you will, was racked with cancer. And I think that today, much of that cancer has been eliminated. Israel, just like a cancer patient, they have to get checked every couple of years, they have to check themselves and check their surroundings to make sure it doesn't come back. But I think they are definitely healthier than they were before October 7th. Where do you see the issue of who controls Gaza going forward? How can a sustainable situation be attained in the coming months. Look, there's a short run and a long run. I mean, the short run, there needs to be

a lot of rebuilding, a lot of money needs to be put there. The people who live there have to either find a way to live there safely and securely or they need to leave and hopefully other countries will take them in. I don't know, unlike the Civil War in Syria, where hundreds of thousands of refugees were taken in by Turkey and other countries, because of this anti-Israel sentiment, I don't think there's going to be that much appetite to take in Gaza refugees. I know that when I was in office, we used to ask Egypt to help, and they've never been willing to help. Jordan is not willing to help. So Gaza will have to get rebuilt as best as possible.

Now, the long-term question is how do you run Gaza? Look, my view is I think you run Gaza the same way that Israel ought to run the West Bank, around Judean and Samaria. I think Israel is the only sovereign that has the ability to rew over these territories in a way which both brings security to Israel, but also brings potentially prosperity and security and human rights to the Palestinian people. Israel's population, as you know, is 20% Arab and more than 20% of the students at Israel's elite universities are Arab. Israel is a track record of empowering an Arab minority, and I think that's Israel is the best candidate. That's very controversial right now. I just, you know, my book called One Jewish State advocates for Israeli sovereignty over a Judean Samaria just came out three weeks ago.

So I hope that that's the model for Gaza as well, but I think Gaza, unlike Judean Samaria, is still too raw, still too many unanswered questions. So it's hard to say what the long-term answer is. But I think Israel is the only sovereign in the area, which has the ability to run these places in a way that doesn't cause them to return to their terrorist hotbeds. You noted the role of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in this. Since October 7th, do you believe anti-Semitism has gotten, worse in the U.S. and abroad? Oh, of course. I mean, by massive powers, yes, by nothing we've seen before.

So is it even more challenging on the international stage for Israel now post-October 7th than it was before? Well, yes and no. I think there has been a lot of anti-Israel sentiment that's been fomented in a very well-financed, very orchestrated manner in America. I think there is a lot of homegrown anti-Semitism in places like London and Paris, largely because of their immigration mistakes that they've made over the last 10 years. It's going to be harder than it was before. But the flip side of it is that I think there's now much more clarity to the situation than there had been before. I think Israel knows who his friends are. It knows who his enemies are. And knows what it can accomplish, what it can't accomplish. I think Israel has to stop trying to justify its existence. I don't think there's any

country in the world that's put through those paces of justifying their existence. Israel exists. act. It has to take care of its citizens. It has to create whatever strategic alliances it can. It's obviously very important for Israel to be on good terms with the United States. It's its most strategic asset. That's always better, I think, under a Republican administration, but it's got to find a way to deal with both alternatives. But when you're kind of fighting for your life, when you're fighting for your existence, you kind of obsess less about all these other issues and you just basically protect your citizens. You get stronger. You worry about the right things and you basically tell the world, look, you can join us or you can fight us. And I think

with that kind of self-respect, I believe Israel will restore a lot of the respect of the world. It's an incredible country with a lot to be proud of, but it has to pursue its agenda from a position of strength and self-respect and not beg other countries to be nice to it. It's just not necessary, and I think it's counterproductive. Related to this, the final question, how has the sequence of events over this last year changed our understanding of the situation in the Middle East? Well, a couple of things. I think it's told us that Israel's enemies, mostly the same as America's enemies, we're not going to negotiate some deal with them. We're just not. They hate us. They are fanatical. They have a warped sense of religion in God. And we need to focus more on

defeating them than placating and appeasing them. That's on the negative side. On the positive side, Look, the Abraham Accords have held, there's been riding at Columbia and Harvard and UCLA, a lot less so in UAE and Morocco and Saudi Arabia. I mean, challenges in those countries for sure because of what they're seeing, but the countries that Jordan, the Abraham Accords, haven't left it and have indicated that they don't intend to leave it. So our friends are our friends, our enemies are our enemies. The same is true for the United States and for Israel. And I think we need to empower our friends more, and we need to make sure that we're

our enemies never again get these opportunities to hurt the U.S. or to hurt the state of Israel. Again, the clarity is there. We know what needs to be done. I think we need to be much more cognizant at home domestically of the forces that are getting these students to really hate Israel because they hate America as well. I mean, I noticed the demands at Columbia in the spring where, you know, Palestine from the river to the sea. Now they've come back after summer break. and their first demand is to eradicate the American colonial empire, right? That's where they're going.

These are Marxist, anarchists. They hate America. They hate Israel, but they're on American soil. They can do a lot of damage to us here in American soil. And I think that the Biden-Harris administration will continue to look at them in the first instance as potential voters. And then only after that really take a stand against what they're doing. That's horrible.

A lot of these people are fallingers. A lot of them need to be deported. A lot of them are committed. crying. A lot of them need to be prosecuted. There's just been too much indulgence of this internal cancer that we're facing in America. Well, Ambassador, thank you so much for talking with us. My pleasure. That was former U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, and this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.