Pod Save the World - Biden Heads To Israel

Episode Date: October 18, 2023

Tommy and Ben talk about the breaking news of an airstrike hitting a hospital in Gaza, killing hundreds of staff, patients, and civilians. They also discuss Biden’s upcoming visit to Israel and negotiations around hostage rescue and aid packages, Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s meetings with regional leaders and resistance to taking in Palestinian refugees, new reports on Hamas’ lengthy, detailed planning for the attack on Israel, and thoughts on alternatives to a massive Israeli military response. Then they cover Senator Bob Menendez being charged as a foreign agent, hopeful election results in Poland, a deal that could relieve US sanctions on Venezuela, Pakistan’s deportation order affecting Afghan refugees, and Australia’s failed Indigenous Voice referendum. Then Tommy speaks with Melanie Ward, CEO of Medical Aid for Palestinians (https://www.map.org.uk/ (https://www.map.org.uk/)), about the dire situation on the ground in Gaza for those needing medical attention.Get your virtual tickets to Pod Save America live from DC now at MOMENT.CO/PSA For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast. 

Welcome to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. We still don't have a speaker at the House, Ben. You know, I saw that Jim Jordan just didn't provoke that groundswell of overwhelming enthusiasm that one would think a man like Jim Jordan could do. Is that technically a self-own? I mean, basically being in the Republican House caucus is a bit of a cell phone. We're leading with this because all the news is so depressing today. We just have to like kind of laugh about something.

But obviously today we are going to talk about the ongoing Israeli. Israeli military campaign in Gaza and the efforts to create a humanitarian save zone and get humanitarian relief into the Gaza Strip. President Biden is going to Israel. We're going to talk about that and the U.S. government's response to try to manage this crisis as well as the international community's response and how they're very different. We will also then try to catch you up on some of the other major stories happening in the world, including reports that Senator Bob Menendez maybe was just a Egyptian spy. Straight up spy, actually. I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward that second. Yeah, me too. We're going to talk about some major elections in Poland. Disappointing

votes in Australia and New Zealand in the U.S. may be softening its approach in Venezuela and Pakistan's treatment of refugees. Then you're going to hear my interview with Melanie Ward. She is the CEO of medical aid for Palestinians. It's an organization providing medical relief in the Gaza Strip. And we talk about the dire situation on the ground of Gaza for basically anyone who needs medical services. And then, you know, last week on one of our episodes, we heard a clip from a on her team named Mahmoud. I asked Melanie how he was doing just to check in. And she relayed to us a conversation she had with Mahmood recently

where he said he had been talking with his wife about whether to write their children's names on their back and marker. So if they die, they can be buried together. So that is the status of life for people in God's right now. That's sadly where we are. Yeah, it's a little as bad as it gets. So please listen to the interview and consider supporting our organization.

at www.map.org.uk. They're doing life-saving work. So, Ben, let's start with the latest in Gaza. The Israeli defense forces or IDF continue to pound Gaza with airstrikes. Palestinian officials say that the strikes have killed more than 2,800 people and injured 10,000 more. Of course, that number is going up constantly. As we speak. As we speak. I've seen reports that hundreds, if not more than 1,000 people, maybe just trapped under the rubble, still alive in some cases. Officials in Gaza say they are running dangerously low on food, medical. supplies, fuel, and water. The White House reported that Israel had agreed to restore water access to southern Gaza, but Gaza's interior ministry says that no water has reached Gaza in 10 days.

And Gaza's three desalination plants that they really rely on for fresh drinkable water have run out of fuel. There is a flurry of diplomatic activity happening in an effort to get aid into Gaza, create a humanitarian safe zone, and get foreign citizens out of Gaza. We will cover that diplomacy and humanitarian situation in much more detail later in the show. A few hours before we started recording, the Gaza health ministry said that in Israeli air strike hit a major hospital in northern Gaza, killing at least 500 people. And remember, these hospitals are not only packed with people getting medical treatment, but thousands of others who are just there because they think it will be safe from airstrikes and they have nowhere else to go. So, Ben,

we want to get to the Biden trip to Israel in a second. But the Associated Press already announced that Mukmoudibos, the president of the Palestinian Authority, is canceled his participation in a meeting with Biden, the King of Jordan, and the president of Egypt in Amman in response to this strike on the hospital. The IDF says the hospital is hit by a failed rocket launch from the Islamic jihad militant group. We obviously don't know what happened for sure. But then, you know, if this was an IDF airstrike, it feels like it would be a seminal moment in terms of public opinion about this war and one of the most deadly air strikes in the history of this conflict since 2008. Yeah, we should say, you know, we don't know exactly what happened here other than something absolutely catastrophic happened and many people are dead because of it. You know, we've seen, you know, the IDF say it was a rocket from Islamic Jihad.

We don't know that. I do wonder about what kind of rocket Islamic Jihad might have that could do that much damage, but, you know, we'll have to see. and obviously the Palestinians are saying this is an Israeli air strike. I think that the baseline, you know, while everybody kind of awaits that information, and I should say, by the way, like the United States, I think has a responsibility to have a view on this too. We usually have some capacity to take a look at events and, you know, given how invested we are in this, it's not just Israelis and Palestinians who will be putting forward information here. I think it's worth the U.S. government being asked and answering candidly what did things happen here.

But the bigger point is that whatever happened here, this is going to keep happening as long as there's a war in Gaza, you know. And this, we've already seen a degree of suffering and a degree of casualties in Gaza that exceeds already any of the previous Gaza wars. And there hasn't even been this ground invasion yet. And that's what we have to bear in mind. It's been 10 days. It'll be much, much, much worse. with the ground invasion. And there is not humanitarian equipment or food or water, fuel, or electricity getting into Gaza. And so to me, that's, it matters, obviously. It really matters

what caused this hospital to explode, what struck this hospital. But the baseline point is, the more there's escalation and conflict and bombardment of Gaza and invasion of Gaza, and rocket fire, of course, the more likely it is that things like this are just going to keep happening. That's the nature of fighting a war in a densely populated area with over two million people, half of whom are children. Yeah. And last Friday, we did an episode where we talked about the Israeli government's ordered evacuation of Gazans in northern Gaza to the south.

The UN estimates that 600,000 Gazans have fled from the north to the south, but it's also the case that Israel is still conducting airstrikes in the south. And on that Friday episode, we played some audio sent to us by a journalist named Nor Hazine. She's on the ground in Gaza. We have been trying to reach her since and just check in, maybe get another report, mostly just to see how she's doing. We have not been able to reach her yet. But this is an excerpt from a recent interview that she did, that Nor did, with CGM, another news network about the security situation in southern Gaza.

Does this mean that attacks are happening in southern Gaza as we speak? Yes, yes, yes. I'm in Shodal Aksa Hospital and most of the people arriving, all of the people arriving, are people that were killed or injured during Israel's strikes in their homes in Dairalbalah, which is located in southern Gaza, just where the Israeli military asked the Palestinian citizens to head for their safety. And as you can see behind me and around me, there is actually nowhere safe here in Gaza. talking about militants, we're talking about whole families, children and women. Their homes were

attacked while these people were inside their homes. You know, Ben, also, I'm not even seeing, like, anyone trying to do a breakdown of, like, this number of militants were killed, and this, like, this, it's occasionally the IDF will say, oh, we took out this senior Hamas leader, but it's just, like, these overwhelming, massive numbers of casualties just get announced day after day after day. And you have to assume that most of these people are just caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yeah.

And look, I mean, just people need to have the capacity to put themselves in other people's shoes and consider what it's like to be a family in Gaza. Consider yourself having a couple of small children like I do. And you can't stay in your house because it's not safe in northern Gaza. And people are telling you it's not safe. They're telling you to evacuate. You have no food. You have no water.

You have no capacity to feed or take care of your family. nowhere that you go is safe. You go to the south. There are airstrikes happening in the south. This is not something that can be like debated. I mean, this is happening. Israel's not denying it. They're not denying it.

There are airstrikes all over Gaza that are happening. And I just want to say like it is one million percent the case that the assholes out there in the world that, you know, cannot find a way to summon any condemnation of the horror of what Hamas did and any empathy with Israelis. those people like have completely told on themselves and it was right that they were called out. I will also say if you cannot see the humanity in these people in Gaza, then you better check yourself too. Because these are human beings. They're human beings just like the people at the music festival. The human beings just like the people in the cabots.

They are children. They are babies. They are mothers and fathers. And these aren't just numbers. And so I just this has to. be policy discussion, all of it has to be informed by being able to see people, Israelis and Gazans, as human beings. And, you know, unfortunately, it doesn't feel like that's what's happening here. Yeah, you should say the latest casualty account from the October 7th Hamas attack

is now up to 1,400 people. And Hamas is believed to be holding 199 hostages on Monday. Hamas released its first hostage video featuring a 21-year-old woman named Mie Hashem. She was one of the many young people at the Nova Music Festival that was attacked. So, Ben, let's talk about President Biden's plan to visit Israel in Jordan tomorrow. So we record this on Tuesday, October 17th. Biden's visit is on the 18th on Wednesday. We talked about this on POTS of America Monday before the trip was announced. I said I personally would not want to send Biden to Israel right now. I'm genuinely worried about the security situation. Remember when Biden went to Ukraine, the U.S. government was able to say to the Russians like, hey, Biden's going. Don't fire

bunch of rockets into Kiev or else you'll start World War III. I'd love to know what you think, but I don't know that that kind of warning would work with a terrorist organization like Hamas or Hezbollah. Also, it's not a surprise video. Usually like a presidential war zone visit is a surprise. They've announced this one in advance. I just don't get how that works. Tony Blinken and Netanyahu had to go to a bomb shelter during their meeting. So like this is a real live, scary situation. I also, listen, this is more political and optical. I don't love the idea of the president of the United States having to run to a bomb shelter because of a terrorist firing a rocket. So that's another thing to think about.

But like most of all, I worry that Biden having this image side by side with Netanyahu in Israel in the midst of this ongoing carpet bombing of Gaza will mean that the U.S. owns fully the fallout and the fallout from whatever comes next. The one important bit of context is that apparently, you know, Tony Blinken spent nine hours negotiating with Netanyahu yesterday. It sounds like what Tony was doing is saying, look, Biden will visit if you agree to delay this ground invasion and if you agree to provide more humanitarian relief. If so, like that was probably a smart use of leverage in the short term, but long term, I'm still very worried about the United States being seen as all in on this just horrific assault on Gaza. Yeah, no, look, I think you articulated that the physical risks well. And obviously, we have to hope that that that won't come

to play. He's not spending the night there. Um, um, so this, you know, feels like it's going to be a pretty quick trip on the ground. Just going to Tel Aviv, right. Yeah, he's just going to Tel Aviv in and out. The Twitter's useless, but I just saw a tweet I sent to our group chat for Ponce of the world that looks like, uh, Olaf Schultz, the chancellor of Germany's entire plane had to be evacuated and everyone's on the ground. People are hitting the tarmac. The rocket was shot at the, at the, at the airport. Yeah. So those, those concerns are real. On the, on the, the broader politics of I mean, there's kind of two ways of looking at this. On the one hand, you know, you have to kind of admire to a point that Biden is really willing to just kind of lean in here and kind of own this.

And if their determination is, and we can get into the diplomacy a bit more, but if their determination is it takes this level of engagement and support because they know that a visit will be perceived globally as, you know, expressing support for what Israel is. doing and and frankly the administration's own messaging is saying that. But that if that can unlock, you know, some humanitarian assistance into Gaza, if that can serve to kind of calibrate or restrain the nature of the Israeli invasion. I mean, it feels to me, Tommy, like a couple of things happened here over the last several days because the administration's messaging has turned a dial here. Definitely. It went from kind of 100% support to Israel to, you know, more nuanced, you know, still leaning in that direction. But this focus. on humanitarian support into Gaza as well as just kind of a, there's a kind of body language

of some concern that you kind of sense. I think that that means that they're, I mean, and I really am just kind of reading Tili's here, but they're, I think they're concerned about what they're already seeing in Gaza and kind of what they are seeing as the Israelis gearing up for a pretty massive invasion. And that's where you had Biden warning against kind of a reoccupation, for instance. But also Tony Blinken was just in all these Arab countries. I'm sure every one of these leaders was like, this whole region is going to explode if this continues. You know, our publics are going to be inflamed.

There's going to be into Fad on the West Bank. You're not going to be able to keep visible out of this thing. And so it does feel like a bit of, you know, Hail Mary in some ways to say Biden's going to go there and really try to kind of pull the reins in, you know, publicly probably embracing Israel, but I hope privately saying, got to let the aid in, got to kind of calibrate the objectives here. You can't just flatten the city. as you say we've already seen the danger here though which is that you know a hospital is bombed uh and again with all the cavi who the day before he goes presumably this ground invasion is still

going to happen because Israel says it is said that could happen as soon as the day he leaves and and and and so that is there's a huge amount of u.s ownership that comes with that so you just have to hope that you know what that they get through to the Israeli government on this thing the worst case in a area be that they announce some aid package a little bit. It's kind of like that they announced the water was turned on and then it didn't get in. You know, you don't want to announce some aid package that then everybody sees, well, not much is happening here. And then the second the ground envision starts, aid turns off anyway. Like that, that would be the worst outcome. Yeah. And also like neither of us particularly like BB Netanyahu, to say the least. But also,

remember, Netanyahu is only in power because of this ultra-nationalist, ultra-far-right coalition that includes people like Itimar Ben-Gavir, his security minister, who said today that the only thing that should enter Gaza until the hostages are released are hundreds of tons of explosives from the Israeli Air Force, not an ounce of humanitarian aid. So they are saying releasing hostages is a precondition for aid, some of the senior members of the Israeli government. So that does not feel like it's going to work, or is a particularly good setup.

Yeah. I mean, and there may be other things afoot, right? I mean, so if you look at what Tony Blinken said last night, I get three in the morning, poor guy, give him credit for how hard he's working. You alluded to the hostages, and I'm sure they're behind the scenes effort to get some hostage releases, to get women and children released. I'm sure Tony's working on getting Americans released. So watch that space to get this kind of corridor of assistance flowing in. What good things are there to look for in this kind of sea of awfulness?

You know, that's it. Can we alleviate the crisis for Gazans? Can some hostages get released? That would be progress here at a time, though, when we're. haven't seen much. Yeah. So, I mean, I hope that Biden's going to push him. Biden is not said publicly that he's going to push Israel on not doing this ground invasion. Just for folks to understand why that's so scary. I mean, I think if you talk to any military, especially the U.S. military, they'll tell you that urban combat is the most deadly. Talk to anyone who served in someplace like

Fallujah and Iraq, right? Like around every corner, there is a potential ambush. The militant groups, they go from house to house and they basically kick down holes in the wall so that they can travel from house to house without being seen and ambush troops who are looking for them. But in Gaza, there is also this massive underground network of tunnels under Gaza City. So that means that fighters can hide in them. They can move around in them. They can set massive tunnel-based explosives to use to detonate underneath Israeli ground forces that they roll in. So I'm hearing reports of like up to 100,000 IDF troops potentially being part of this ground invasion. Like that is a massive force. And again, I think like the reason we're concerned is you will see enormous casualties on the

Israeli side. On the Israeli side. Enormous casualties on the Palestinian side, in particular, civilians. And, you know, once you start to have that cycle, right, once the images in Israel are of, you know, if there are hundreds of Israeli soldiers being killed, and once you see the escalating toll on the Palestinians, the likelihood that reprisal violence in both directions just is lit on fire in a place like the West Bank, where we're already seeing people being killed in clashes between Israeli-Palestinians, the likelihood that Hezboa feels like, you know, we have to do something more to get involved in this conflict because it's in our DNA to be a part of this fight against Israel. This thing can get much worse, and we just have to keep

reminding ourselves with that. Yeah, so, you know, as you mentioned before, Tony Blank and the Secretary of State has been everywhere the last few days he's been doing conducting shuttle diplomacy. He's been to Israel twice. He also went to Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. So Tony's trying to rally support for Israel. He wants these countries to at least soften their criticism of Israel. He's asking them to cut off support for Hamas, to help Hezbollah and Iran stay out of the fight and not do anything stupid, though I should point out that the Iranian foreign minister said recently that if the airstrikes don't stop, the axis of resistance, I assume, meaning Hezbollah, will begin to attack Israel. So the reception, I would say, Ben, has been,

mixed at best. Saudi crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman, kept Tony waiting basically all night. He showed up for this meeting in the morning. He's well known to do that, but to do that in the midst of like an urgent crisis is pretty fucked up. And then basically MBS just called for Israel to stop their military response. There was no sort of balance in the messaging like the U.S. probably would have wanted to see. In Egypt, Tony met with President LCCC. LCC said that Israel's response had exceeded the right to self-defense. He seemed to critic. criticized comments Tony made in Israel about being Jewish, and then LCC questioned whether Jews had ever been oppressed in Egypt, which is just fucking weird. Yeah.

And then this wasn't from Tony's trip, but King Abdullah of Jordan rejected the idea of Jordan taking in refugees during a press conference with the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Schultz. Here's a clip. Part of the question on the issues of refugees coming to Jordan. And I think I can quite strongly speak on behalf, not only of Jordan as a nation, but of our friends in Egypt, that is a red line. Because I think that is the plan by certain of the usual suspects to try and create de facto issues on the ground. No refugees in Jordan, no refugees in Egypt. Egypt was very clear. The foreign minister of Egypt was very clear about no refugees either.

So I just think it's worth everyone knowing how differently this conflict is being received in other political systems than in the U.S. political system. Yeah, and you could feel, you know, that sinking in to Tony Blinken, each time you saw him, you know, like he was absorbing this. Now, to be clear, too, there's effectiveness to these Arab leaders. Let's like, you know, what are they doing? You know, like, what are they doing to help address this? I mean, what they should be doing, if they don't like Hamas and they don't like Hamas,

none of those leaders do, like is literally investing massive amounts of resources in the development of an alternative Palestinian leadership as we've talked about. But again, the fact that we haven't even gotten to a ground invasion and this is the dynamic in the region, that is what is so perilous right now. Yeah, because you would expect that, look, if ever there was going to be more sympathy for the Israeli cause, you would think it would be after a terrorist attack of this scale. Yeah. But the fact that there is none shows that like these first six, seven, eight days of bombing.

As soon as the bombs started falling, it just changes. dynamic. It doesn't mean that's right, but it means that that's what's happening. And, and, you know, that does call into question, like what, because I think what these leaders are also thinking is, you know, we've talked about all these escalation risks in Israel, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, or with Iran, you know, Iran has proxies in Iraq. You know, what if Iraq is on fire again, you know, there could be, Yemen, but there could also start to be kind of major street demonstrations in these countries. The countries that have done these normalization deals with Israel will come under pressure. So there's a going to be, like once you unleash a force of a major

war like this, there are going to be these unintended consequences. And these leaders are kind of retreating back into kind of predictable positions. I mean, one of the things that you do hear clearly in that clip from King Abdullah, Jordan, you heard from Sisi, is they are very suspicious that one of the intents of an Israeli ground invasion might be to create another million or two million Palestinian refugees. And that does start to hit very deep nerves in that region. Because that just, that hasn't happened on that scale since the NACPA in 1948 and to some extent obviously in 1967, which was more about the onset of the occupation.

But the regional dynamic, not even two weeks into this thing, is quite perilous. Yeah. And listen, it's not just countries in the Middle East that are viewing the convales. conflict very differently than Joe Biden is. Spain's social rights minister said that the Spanish government should bring Netanyahu to the international criminal court to face war crime charges. The Israelis push back very hard on that. They accused the coalition government of aligning themselves with ISIS-style terrorism. Humza Yusuf, the first minister of Scotland, has been speaking movingly about how his wife's parents are trapped in Gaza, where they were, happened to be

visiting family when this war started. And even he can't get them out. Here's a clip. I genuinely do not know if I will see my mother-in-law and father-law again. Nari doesn't know if she's going to see her mum and dad again. And all we can do is watch the news, look at the rolling coverage, wait for messages, we can go hours without seeing those messages. And hope and pray, now that's just my experience. How many people across the world are feeling the same? And what about those people in Gaza?

They're again, are innocent, men, women and children. Nothing to do with those terrible attacks. Disgraceful terror attacks we saw. Saturday morning. They don't know what is going to happen to them. They're being told to leave, and they have no way to leave. And that's why the collective punishment is just not justified in any way shape or form. I mean, the leader of Scotland can't get his own family out of Gaza. Yeah. And, you know, I think if you look at the report of the Blinken Netanyahu meeting being seven hours, I mean, that to me is, you know, I give. What do you think that was like?

Well, I give Tony some credit, right? I've been in some long meetings. Well, you actually, usually my long meetings in then, you know, that I was in, like, I get kicked out at some point the two of them, maybe with one aid, you know, kept going for hours and hours. But the meeting is not that long as you're agreeing, you know. And it feels like Tony came back and it's like, you've got to do something on the humanitarian side here. And that the Israelis, by their own statements have indicated they don't want to, you know, they've said publicly, they're defense minister. So this is not me grabbing even a like some even more far right figure. It's, you know, that this is going to be a total siege. Nothing's going to get in. And I think

Tony was kind of representing that sense of global sentiment of like, this is, it is not tenable for you to not let stuff in. I do, again, I worry about the thing that we've already talked about, oh, the water's on, but it's not, you know, or there have been an annonsance of things that didn't happen, you know. I think Israel has to take into account here that if this ends up being a multi-month ground invasion, which is, I think, what would be necessary to kind of completely destroy Hamas, they've said they want to do. Like, it's, now is the time to think through the consequences of that because once you

start down that road, this is more likely to spiral than it is to land in a good place. Oh, man, our guy, Greg Carlstrom from the economist, just reported that the Jordanian foreign minister says the summit with Biden and Amman is canceled on Wednesday. Yeah, that's a massive deal, right? I mean, you're talking about Jordan receives enormous assistance with the United States. Egypt obviously receives even more. And if they do cancel that summit, when the President of the United States

has said he's coming, like, that's a big message. I wonder if there's some recalibration in the way to us right now. Well, yeah, I mean, or we'll see if that holds, you know, but to just cancel me. It's one thing for a boss to do it. If that does become what Abdel and CC do,

and they may not, they may rethink it. It does speak to the risks of going into the middle of this thing. Yeah, I saw some reports the people in Jordan or trying to breach the Israeli embassy, like things get real ugly. That's what King Abdullah is worried about. And if he's sitting up there with Biden because he doesn't know what's going to happen with Nanyahu and Biden, you know, and he doesn't want to own that if it looks a certain way. And there's a ton of Palestinians in Jordan because they're refugees.

And yeah, it speaks to the risks of all this. Yeah. Two more things on this topic. So we did want to double back on this question of Hamas planning and the goals for this operation in the first place, the initial terrorist attack and the intelligence failure. because in a previous episode, we talked about there was a quote in some publication from a Hamas official that made it sound like Hamas was surprised by like the scale and for lack of a better word success of their own attack in terms of the massive number of casualties and hostages they were able to take. At the time, that seemed to make sense because I think everyone was shocked by what happened. But subsequent reporting has led me to really rethink whether I buy that view.

The New York Times had a long report on Hamas's planning. A lot of it drew from basically GoPro footage from the Hamas fighters that they took themselves. In that footage, you can see that these fighters have color-coded maps showing them exactly where to go in these Israeli military complexes. In some cases, Hamas need to know where within Israeli facilities to find communications equipment so they could destroy it. The attackers were divided. It's a specific unit with different goals and battle plans. One platoon, according to the Times, had navigators. saboteurs and drivers, as well as mortar units in the rear to provide cover fire.

There were documents that they were holding. One of them was dated October 22nd, suggesting it had been planned for over a year. Hamas also, they clearly intended to capture all this footage and release it into these really like kind of well-produced, frankly, propaganda videos that shows them firing missiles and the fighters running its battle. So, look, I don't have any answers here, Ben, but, you know, everything I've read makes it feel like this was a long planned attack and maybe they had some help. Like, I don't know. I'm rethinking the whole thing. It feels like it was planned for like a year based on some of the

reporting. And it also felt like they had some insight into, and but they clearly had insight into the Israeli military. So whether that's because they had some help, somebody within the intelligence, or whether that's because they themselves have penetrated some aspect of Israel's operations, it does speak to a sophistication. I think what is still, so I think you're right, it does call into question that idea of did they kind of stumble into something much bigger than they intended. Clearly, they intended something really big. I think what is all what also may be true, though, is that they may not have been, they may have been surprised at how little Israeli military presence there was, you know, but, but yeah, it does, it does point out, I mean, this is where Israel

obviously has a legitimate security concern, which is the, sophistication of Hamas is alarming, and they're right there in Gaza. The question is, is the full-scale ground invasion the best way to get after that, or there are other ways of getting after it? Yeah, it doesn't seem like these Hamas fighters stumbled upon this music festival. It sounds like they knew it was happening, closed off any exits, and then they attacked everything. And that's where they had paragliders coming in. So, you know, absolutely here. But, you know, again, like there are there are ways to more ruthlessly and methodically target the faction of Hamas that did this, the military wing while trying to change the game in Gaza maybe via Arab support.

But that's going to get harder and harder as the days go. Well, let's talk about that because I do think, you know, we both experience this. Like when you criticize the way Israel is conducting this campaign, people say, well, of course they have to respond. So what's your better plan? Right. I mean, the sentiment is like, we can't not respond. And I understand that.

I want a caveat that we're obviously the furticing from like military planners. We don't have any access to intelligence. But it's a fair question. and maybe we could just like try it in sort of broad strokes. I do think it's worth saying that there's probably not a good answer here for the Israeli response. Like they probably have bad and worse answers. And I think that the worst possible response is this ground invasion idea because I just don't have any hope that they're going to achieve the goals if the goals are to get hostages back and to take out Hamas's leadership. I mean, do you have any confidence that Hamas's?

leadership is still in Gaza? I mean, some of these people are, and one of their military commanders was apparently killed in an air strike. Hamas themselves announced that. I mean, look, I understand when you feel the emotions that Israel does, that there's this desire for vengeance and to kind of strike back. We've already talked about not even the moral concerns with that, but is that actually going to make Israel more secure? I think in the near term, it's going to make it much less secure, as we've already seen

with rocket fire and violence on the West Bank and threats. some hisblah, you know, is there was, is it most of the other responses, you know, that I can consider here. I mean, you know, because one other response is just kind of a smaller version of this, right, like a more targeted version, like a limited ground incursion, something that looks more like 2014. You go in and you really try to degrade Hamas and, and target a bunch of those people through special operations and maybe try to do some hostage rescues, hit some key targets and then, you know, get out. But again, the more. all the other courses of action, I think, would involve shifting the entire paradigm to essentially saying, okay, look, we Israel, as we've done in the past, are going to ruthlessly go after and kill these Hamas guys for as long as it takes, you know, like 10 years from now, somebody's going to die in hotel room in, you know, Qatar or something because he was involved in this kind of thing.

But at the same time, the situation here is not sustainable. And what we want is maybe, you know, we're going to go to the Arabs and say, okay, we are willing to allow in even like an Arab peacekeeping force into Gaza, you know, coupled with a massive infusion of resources to improve the lives of the people of Gaza with the precondition that like Hamas is out, you know. And, obviously, that's more easier said than done. I don't want to suggest any of that is easy. But the point is that, like, everybody, you know, it's easy to point holes at what I just said. Like, it's much easier to point out what's wrong with the massive ground invasion. You know, like, we have to change the way we think about the options in this conflict. We had to kind of expand the horizon that we're willing to entertain here, right?

And, you know, there is a way to put those Arab leaders on the spot. Some of them have proximity like Egypt. Some of them have bottomless amounts of money that could buy just about anything in Gaza. It could buy, you know, could buy an entirely different leadership in Gaza if they truly wanted to do that. And I just think, you know, that's not how we're wired. And that's not, I understand that that's not how this Israeli coalition is wired and probably not how people feel in Israel right now. But if you actually thought what is more objectively likely to bring security, I don't think the answer is the ground invasion. I just don't.

Yeah. And also, I think historically, Israel's had this incredibly strong commitment to getting back hostages. That usually involves releasing Hamas prisoners. Yeah. Right? Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier who was taken hostage by Hamas held for like five years. The Israelis ended up releasing a thousand people from Israeli prisons to get him back. That's almost certainly going to have to happen in this case to get back all 199 hostages, including Americans. So, I mean, I know that's really hard politics.

It's not just hard politics. It's bad policy because one of the guys who was released by the Israelis to get back Shalit helped plan the Hamas attack. on October 7th, right? So it's terrible all around. But if you want more people to survive, you want to bring them home, you're probably going to have to do that. I also think, like, to your point, though, long term, the harder political thing in Netanyahu's eyes, apparently, is to create some sort of viable political option that is in Hamas. And that's the core point here. Is the end state that you're seeking a peace between Israelis and Palestinians, or is it the total military defeat of Palestinian aspirations for a state? You know, and that's where this gets tricky,

because most of the other courses of action that are not wholly militarized actually involve building up an alternative Palestinian leadership. And that's something Nanyahu's never wanted to do. He's actually wanted to weaken the Palestinian Authority, which is like the much better version of Palestinian leadership, albeit a flawed one, deepened one. One last thing on this. I'm sure people are reading these stories and they'll see reports that Hamas has this exiled political leadership living openly in Qatar.

what role do you think they end up playing in any kind of negotiation here? And can you just give people a little bit of background for like how that's possible that these guys just live out in the open in like hotels and Qatar? I mean, I think that the, you know, essentially, first of all, as we talked about Hamas, is all these different factions and people and people have been in different positions at different times. And, you know, some of these people in Qatar don't know what the hell is going on. Some do.

But the bottom line is that I think the United States and probably even Israel to some extent have kind of tolerated a degree of this, you know, kind of address for a mosque, because the reason you said, like, you have to be able to talk to these people somewhere, you know. Like when we let the Taliban set up an office. So we, yeah, the Taliban set up an office in Doha, same place, because it just became a venue where you were able to have discussions with them. And I'm sure this is some of the most heavily monitored. You know, I don't think these people are coming and going easily. I mean, they have mixers, like, yeah, they're just kind of, they're locked down there. But like, the reason to have it is so that, you know, you know, I don't think

You know, you can go and pass shuttle diplomacy proposals back and forth to people like this to try to get hostages out. Yeah. Okay. We're going to pause on Israel Gaza for now. It's a quick break. And we come back. We'll talk about reports that a U.S. Senator might be a spy for Egypt, some good news out of Poland and much, much more.

But before we take a break, if you can't make it to our POTS of America show in D.C. this Thursday, October 19th, don't worry. We'll be live streaming the whole event exclusively on Moment.com. We're going to be joined by Senator John Fetterman, chef Jose Andres, and Jennifer Carol Foy, and guest host, Simone Sanders. It will be a fantastic show. Join us in your fellow pod listeners live from anywhere. You will feel like you're at the show, but at the same time, you get to be on your couch. Get your virtual tickets now at moment.c.o slash PSA.

Okay, Ben, so we've talked a couple times about this indictment of New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez to catch people up. investigators found cash, gold bars in his house. I think someone leased his wife a car that Menendez got in exchange for doing political favors for business people with connections to the Egyptian government. Last week, though, prosecutors brought new charges alleging that Bob Menendez, remember he's a Democrat, equal opportunity bashing here of both parties from us, was acting as an agent of a foreign government, that government being Egypt. So, like, was he just a spy? Is that what we're learning?

Yeah, because if you read the reports on this and the indictment, it's like, you know, sometimes someone's an agent of foreign government because they didn't register, a fire registration, which is essentially like, you know, you're a lobbyist for that government in D.C. And, you know, you failed to, like, alert the justice or whoever the fuck you have to alert that you're, yeah, yeah. Usually because you're, like, doing PR for that or lobbying. This one was like, the.

head of military intelligence in Washington. So like, you know, we have CIA station chief in other countries. The basically intelligence station chief in Washington for Egypt was meeting with the Menendez's. Like there's a report about Bob Menendez's wife, like saying to the head of intelligence, what would you like the love of my life to do for you? Right. It's just an incredible quote. I mean, this is actually stuff that was happening. This guy was running Bob Menendez's. as an agent. I mean, this is, it's mind-boggling. This is stuff we do in other countries. This is what we do in other countries. I mean, if I told you, like, the plot of a spy movie is the head of the intelligence unit of ex-government goes to Washington, like, makes a like a cash deal with the wife of a prominent

senator and then gets that senator to start to do massive favors for Egypt, like strategizing about Bob Menendez met in a hotel with the head of Egyptian intelligence in Washington, according to these reports, to strategize before the guy met with senators to try to get Egyptian aid unlocked. I mean, the language, you know, resistance tick is like, it's a lie, not a falsehood. This is spying. This isn't just like foreign agent stuff. This is crazy, you know. And by the way, once you're Bob Menendez. And he's still in the Senate.

Like, what is he doing in the Senate? Get him out of the Senate now. Senate, this is crazy. Especially given all this context, given all everything happening, yeah. But also, when you're the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and you take money from the Egyptian government and do their bidding, this is no longer about you profiting for these favors. They then own you.

Yeah. Because they could turn you in at any time. They can blackmail the hell out of you. Blackmail the hell out of you. Yeah. You're theirs. And they're doing it in gold bars. I mean, this is like a bad plot.

If like this was like a Netflix show, people would be like, yeah, that's not believable. The senator wouldn't really just take some gold bars, would it, you know? No. It's truly unbelievable. I cannot believe the man was the chairman of the Senate for Foreign Relations Committee. Yeah. And he's still there.

I mean, Andy Kim, God bless him, is running against him in the Democratic primary. Please support Andy Kim. Like, this is crazy that this guy is still around. Unbelievable. Ben, some rare good news out of Poland, where it looks like voters have ousted the right-wing nationalist law and justice party. So there were three opposition parties running in this election. They were able to get about 53% of the vote. and they will almost certainly control Parliament.

The Law and Justice Party got the most votes of any single party, but the opposition coalition will get more parliamentary seats and get the majority. So there will now be this complicated government formation process that'll take a little bit. But it seems likely that a guy named Donald Tusk will become the next prime minister of Poland. He had the job from 2007 to 2014 as far more moderate than the current government. Long story short, this is a win for those who are worried about the future of democracy. in Poland who care about European integration and who are worried about Poland's rightward tilt on social issues, especially their very restrictive anti-abortion laws.

Yeah, I mean, this is an extraordinary piece of good news. I mean, it really is. Like, we've, you know, checked in here a few times. There's some recent months of some, like, you know, more dire concerns about rising far-right politics in Europe or in Eastern Europe. But to go from the Law and Justice Party, which was, yes, it was supportive of Ukraine, but was basically Orban light kind of in Poland all the way to like a Donald Tusk who was like a, you know, he was previously in the Polish government, but then he was a European Union official, you know, like this is a massive shift and just really good news. And it's a sign, by the way, like in recent years, like the Law and Justice Party was outflanked even by another far right party. And it was this kind of sense of, you know, can this ever be arrested? And the same kind of permanent state of unease was sinking in. This. This. This is a sign like people shouldn't give up. Like, you know, people ran a good campaign and they beat these guys, you know.

And so it's just a reminder. There's nothing inevitable about the drift in some of these countries. This is a huge pendulum swing in a really big and important country. Yeah, very big. Unexpected surprise. Some more good news, Ben. So according to the Washington Post, the Biden administration and the government of Venezuela have agreed to a deal where the U.S. will ease sanctions on Venezuela's oil industry

if President Nicolas Maduro will agree to allow competitive international monitor elections next year. So people might be saying, why is this good news? Well, look, it would be great if they had these fair elections. I don't have a ton of confidence in Maduro allowing them, so we'll have to wait and see and really make sure that he follows through on his end of the deal. And the sanctions relief is time limited so the U.S. can slap back sanctions if he breaks his word. But everyone, I think, agrees that it is in the world's interests, it is in America's interest to improve the humanitarian and economic situation in Venezuela. Hopefully, this sanctions relief will help.

How impactful do you think lifting these sanctions will be? I think it would be quite impactful. I mean, first of all, what's interesting is there may be a connection to the Menendez thing, because Menendez was the biggest proponent of these sanctions on Venezuela and of not making any changes in policy, and having them not as chair of the Senate of Foreign Relations Committee where you can hold up your nominees and mess around with funding, and things might have made this easier

because this has been in the works, I think, for a while from everything I've heard. Like, they've been talking about this for a long time. But the other thing is that, you know, I got a good email from a listener just to show that I read these. There was kind of like, you know, you always talk about like lifting sanctions

but isn't Maduro basically, you know, there aren't there other things that are important as a Maduro a creep? 100% the guy's a creep. But the point is, it's not unlike the conversation, by the way, we just had about the ground invasion. Like these sanctions were not dislodging Maduro. He was becoming worse and life is getting worse for Venezuelans without any horizon of hope.

And here, what you can do here is at least make life better for the Venezuelan people. If suddenly there's more capacity for resources to get in because these kind of blanket sanctions are lifted, life will get better and it won't stop the migration in the United States, but it should affect it certainly over time. And also, by the way, it does create, look, an election, you know, we'll have to see how that goes. I'm sure that there have been negotiations around how that election is monitored and who in the region is helping to do that and the legitimacy that bar that we'd like to see cleared. But, you know, just trying to recognize an alternative government and, you know, squeezing Maduro wasn't working. I mean, I think trying to push this more in the direction of a return to electoral politics is more likely, frankly, to bring about change in Venezuela than what we're doing. It doesn't mean it's going to be easy.

It doesn't mean we should trust Maduro. But I think this is the right call. I think it clearly indicates what Trump did fail. Yeah, better than the Trump era policy of sending John Bolton out to a press briefing with, like, a threat to send troops to Colombia written down on a no-pads where one could see it. Yeah, or like Marco Rubio, like, tweeting from Colombia that the government in Venezuela is about to fall or Mike Pompeo is saying that there's a plane on the tarmac and Caracas about to leave. Well, that wasn't happening. Like, that was all nonsense. I forgot about that last one.

Yeah. A couple more things before we get to the interview. So this has been a really tough story that's gone under the radar. The Pakistani government has declared that all illegal migrants have until November 1st to leave the country voluntarily or they will face deportation. This order is very clearly aimed at about 1.7 million refugees from Afghanistan who are now living in Pakistan. The UN says that 700,000 of them fled to Pakistan after the Taliban took power again into 2020 after the U.S. withdrawal. The Pakistani government is both offering rewards. to people who turn in illegal migrants and threatening Pakistanis who provide accommodations or

facilities to any of them after this deadline. There has been a recent surge in suicide bombings and militant attacks in Pakistan that the government blames on Afghan migrants. Ben, I know that President Biden's got a lot on his plate right now, but, you know, a forced migration of 1.7 million people would have catastrophic consequences, obviously 20 years of U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Afghanistan has contributed enormously to this underlying situation. Any thoughts here on what the U.S. or the international community should be doing to try to head off this disaster? I do think that the U.S. and the national community should, look, Pakistan is in need of significant amount of, you know, monetary and fiscal support. You know, this is not acceptable.

I mean, like, it's just a dark piece of business here. you're going to push like over a million Afghans who left because probably they had credible fears for their safety back in Afghanistan. So I'd be putting on the table here like not just the U.S., but like other countries. Like let's sit down and try to figure out some solution here that does not involve you doing this. I should also say, you know what, like Pakistan is the one that harbored the Taliban. Pakistan's the one that played both sides of this thing. They got the Taliban government they wanted in Kabul. So don't, you know, fucking then say like, you know, oh, what are these Afghans doing here?

Like, they created this as much as anybody else, you know. And it's not the innocent Afghans that are fleeing the Taliban that are engaged in suicide attacks. It's the Taliban cousins, you know, the Pakistani Taliban that has been fighting Pakistan forever, which is why success of U.S. administrations, including us, we're like, why are you getting to bed with these guys? You know, so I just think that this, people should keep the Afghan people in mind. We've had these horrific earthquakes. We now have this. the U.S. has to try to continue to do as right as we can by the Afghan people so that it doesn't

look like we just washed our hands of this thing after the evacuation. Yeah, one to watch. Okay, last story here, Ben. So we usually look to our friends in Australia for fun stories and comic relief, but not today. In Australia, there was a pretty terrible vote. There was an effort to give indigenous Australians a say in Parliament through this new advisory body and to recognize indigenous communities as Australia's first inhabitants. That failed overwhelmingly 60% of voters voted against this referendum.

The referendum started with a lot of support, but it seemed to go down over time. There was rampant disinformation getting spread about really this very modest proposal, but people started to think that it might allow for future land confiscation from people. The reality, though, for life for indigenous communities in Australia is pretty bleak. The life expectancy for indigenous communities is eight years lower than the national average. They have higher rates of suicide incarceration prior to the 1967 constitutional referendum. Indigenous people were not even counted as part of Australia's population. And indigenous people and parts of Australia were hunted and killed by settlers well into the 1900s.

So today, those populations make up less than 4% of the total population of Australia. This very modest effort would have just given them a little more political representation, but it failed and it's really ugly. Also, Ben, New Zealand has been a bright spot over the past few years. Jacinda Ardern was a great progressive leader until she decided to resign. Unfortunately, New Zealand has voted in its most conservative government in decades in support for the Labor Party was nearly cut in half. So a very couple of terrible election outcomes there.

Yeah, it's pretty shitty. You know, I mean, Australia, what I'd say is like, you know, the thing about their reckoning with the treatment of their indigenous peoples is like, you know, you do all the symbolism. And they do some important things. Like you go to Australia and have to, you know, obviously before you speak in public settings, you know, you give thanks to the traditional owners of the land. But like then you get to kind of concrete proposals like this.

And suddenly it's like, no, no, let's not do that. I mean, it just, and look, we have a long way to go in this country with support to our own indigenous populations. And so we're in a huge glass house, the biggest glass house in the world in this issue. But it does just show that there's, you know, it's hard to kind of make the symbolic reckoning lead to substantive outcomes. In New Zealand, it just kind of sucks. I mean, there was a pendulum poised to swing back there, but, you know, you hate to see it after someone like to send Ardorne. Yeah, it seems like there was just a. a real backlash over cost of living increases?

Yeah, they've got a huge cost of living crisis. They had a rough COVID down there. She was kind of, I think, a relatively popular figure who left, you know, the people coming after her didn't have the same allure to the public. And, yeah, the pendulum just swung back. But I think the challenge here is that the guy before Jacinda Ardern was this guy, John Key, who actually was like one of Obama's favorite center-right guys, because he was like a country club Republican kind of guy, right? Like, he wasn't a lunatic. And this feels like a farther right government

that New Zealand has had. So it's got that kind of mega flavor, you know, like everybody's got their own flavor of that. And that's what's worrisome, you know. Yeah, a little culture war. A little culture war stuff. Social media. Wonderful. Okay, we are going to take another quick break and we come back. You will hear my interview with Melanie Ward, who's the CEO of an organization called Medical Aid for Palestinians. She has a bunch of folks on the ground in Gaza providing medical relief. So you will want to hear from her about what that is like and how listeners can help out. The situation on the ground remains dire for Palestinians in Gaza, especially those who need medical treatment as fuel, water, and electricity are running out. Joining us today is Melanie Ward.

She is the CEO of Medical Aid for Palestinians. Her organization has about 20 people in Gaza, doing everything they can to help. Melanie, thank you so much for joining. Thank you. So your organization is trying to provide medical relief in Gaza at a time, when, you know, an already fragile medical infrastructure is being severely stressed by air strikes, limited fuel, electricity, water. I believe that Gaza's largest hospital is in northern Gaza, in Gaza City, which is the area Israel said should be evacuated. What kind of access to medical care to people have in Gaza right now? It's absolutely desperate. And to be honest with you, it's important to understand that even at the best of times, access to medical care in Gaza is

severely limited. Drugs and essential supplies for hospitals at the best of times in Gaza are something between 25 and 50% of what is actually needed. We call it zero stock. There's just not enough of them at the best of times anyway. And so right now, when Israeli military has given orders to hospitals to evacuate, which, by the way, almost none of them have, and trying to just move medical supplies around in a war zone when bombs are falling,

is incredibly hard. I have an amazing team of staff on the ground. 18 of them are now displaced. And despite it all, they are continuing to try to work. My colleague Motaz was sitting in the dark the other night. He had a little bit of phone left in his cell phone battery. So he had a little bit of power left on his cell phone battery.

And he was using it to try to make sure that we're still trying to get supplies into the hospitals. But medical supplies are running out. and today we had word both that the only cancer hospital in Gaza is about to shut down because it's run out of fuel for the generators. We also had an emergency SOS call go out from hospitals for any citizens in Gaza, any gas station owners with even small amounts of diesel to bring them to the hospitals for the generators. And then devastatingly, we just heard in the last hour that it looks like Israel has bombed

a major church run hospital in Gaza as well and potentially dozens of dead people from that as well. And my understanding is that not only are hospitals a place where people are seeking medical treatment, obviously, but it's also become sort of a shelter of last resort for a lot of individuals. Is that right? Yeah, that's absolutely right. We've got a medical aid for Palestinians doctor. He's a British doctor who's gone out to volunteer. He flew out to Gaza the Sunday after this started. And he's a, a war surgeon, he's gone out to volunteer in Shifa Hospital, which is the hospital you're referring to the main hospital in Gaza City. He said the grounds of the hospital are filled with 15,000

people who are trying to seek shelter there because they think it might be safer and be less likely to be bombed. And he said that the number of people there, the sheer numbers of people is making it really difficult for the hospital to function. It's obviously not designed to host that number of people. And then you put on top of that the fact that the sheer numbers of dead people, sorry it's so grim, but the sheer numbers of dead people mean that the morgues in the hospital are overflowing. They've run out with body bags. And so that's why we saw the horrific site yesterday of them beginning to bury dead Palestinians, including dead children in mass graves. So the situation is utterly horrific. One of the things that's been hampering the efforts from my own

team to deliver the last remaining medical supplies in Gaza into the hospitals is the sheer numbers of people in the grounds mean that it took four hours a couple of days ago for a truck laden with medical supplies to move through the grounds of the hospital and get to the warehouse where it was dropping the supplies. Usually that would take a couple of minutes just because it's absolutely flooded with people, desperate people trying to seek safety. My God. I mean, I've also seen that you know, a lot of reports and officials say that while air strikes are an obvious and very serious risk, the even greater threat to the broader population is access to clean water. What do we know about water access in Gaza at the moment and the potential health risks?

I mean, it's horrific and it couldn't be more desperate. One of my own staff, Asma, she's a neonatal specialist. She's been displaced with her family. They've run out of clean water to drink, and so they're boiling dirty water. which still isn't good enough, it's making the children sick. People are literally running out of water. And the problem isn't just that Israel had cut off the water coming into Gaza. It's also that the electricity and the fuel have been cut off because Gaza does have some of its own water well, some of which, by the way, have been bombed. But it does have some of them still. They need

electricity, though, to be able to pump the water around so it comes out of the taps. They need the generator to be able to do the same. And so it's the, it's the, the water having been cut off, compounded by the fuel and electricity being cut off. And like, you don't need me to tell you that people can't live very long without water. In normal times, never mind in a war zone, where you have dead bodies under the rubble

where hospitals can get the water they need to try to keep the hospital clean. So it's a public health disaster. Yeah. I've seen reports today, I think I heard on the BBC this morning, that there's something like 4,000 trucks worth of relief aid sort of sitting in in Egypt like six kilometers from the Gaza strip waiting to be

allowed into Gaza. How much do you think that aid would help? And what would you like to see the international community do to increase that flow of aid? Yeah, like that aid coming in is really essential. However, Israel bombed raffa crossing, the Palestinian side of raffa crossing this morning. And that aid has got to get in. We're running out of medical supplies. We're running out of food. My colleague Mahmood couldn't find enough bread for his kids today. We're running out of clean water and electricity, as I just said, but also there's a shelter situation. You know, I've worked in humanitarian responses in other places to the Syria crisis, to the crisis caused by Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria. And I've never seen anything like this. It's absolutely

terrifying because so many people have fled from the north of Gaza to the south. There's no functioning humanitarian system. And so there's no shelter. People are sleeping in the streets. They're sleeping in their cars. Everything is completely overcrowded. There's no sanitation and no water. And so actually, thousands of people have gone home to the north just to try and survive. So we need aid to come in. But if it's going to be able to do so safely, then Israel will have to guarantee not to bomb the aid convoys. It will have to guarantee their safety. The truth is, though, we can't truck in enough water for two million people. The water has to come back on, the electricity and fuel have to come back on as well. Yeah, and I imagine the desalination

plants need fuel to run, and that's a critical piece of this. You know, you mentioned your colleague Mukboud. We spoke with him last week. He was kind enough to send some voice memos to us that got through even with limited internet access. He said he had decided to stay in his home in northern Gaza rather than evacuate southern Gaza. He basically said, like, I'm not going to live through it a second Nakba. I'm not going to be a refugee again. So you've been able to maintain contact with him. do you know more about how he and his family are doing? Yeah, I mean, he's still alive. And to be honest, that's at this point one of the best things I can hope for for my team.

You know, every day, we can't contact everyone every day at the moment because, well, we have to hope it's because they run out of battery and their phone. But to be honest, when you don't get a response, you don't know why it is that people aren't able to get back in touch with you. Mahmoud is still there. He's determined to stay there. but what he tells me day by day about what they're living through, and particularly for his children,

it is devastating and heartbreaking. You know, I mentioned him earlier. He went out to get bread for the kids and for his elderly parents earlier, and there wasn't enough. He got one piece of bread for each person. Mahmoud is a highly educated man. He studied at Durham University in the UK.

He's a really smart guy, and he's really, really good at his job. He's a normal person. like us and what he's living through is, is complete hell. He told me of this awful conversation that he had with his wife where his wife said to him that they should perhaps think about writing the names of their children on the backs of their children so that when they die, people will know that they're related to each other and can bury them together. And imagine, imagine that as a, as parents thinking about that. But then,

what he said is his wife hadn't realized that one of the things that parents and kids are starting to do in Gaza is to write the names on the palms of their hand so that when they die, people will know who they are and can bury them together with their family. And so they had this conversation about whether it's better to write your kid's name on the palm of your hand or of their hand or on their back. It feels like humanity is kind of deserting us in this moment. And one of my other colleagues Muhammad, he spent Friday working to get the last of the medical supplies in Gaza into the hospitals. On Friday night, his home was bombed when he was in it. Somehow he and his wife and kids survived, but his 13-year-old niece, Farah, was killed. And he told me it took six hours,

searching through the rubble and all the dead bodies to find Farah. And he told me that it was like a scene from the last day of humanity on earth. It's just, it's unimaginable. Yeah, I saw reports this morning, you know, for every kind of report you see about, you know, confirmed number of people killed and wounded, that there are hundreds of not thousands more just trapped under the rubble, some alive, some not, some will never know. It's, it is unimaginable. And I think one of the things, if I may, that the world has lost sight of here is that there are a million children in Gaza, a million children. And I heard a really moving interview within an Israeli man whose mother is one of the hostages who's been taken. And one of the

things he said was that you can't cure killed babies with more dead babies. And I think that's a really important point to remember right now. Like you shouldn't need to say that. But it feels like the world has lost sight of that. There are a million children in Gaza. Today we reach the horrific landmark of a thousand children having been killed in the Israeli bombing of the last 10. days and they're killing one child in Gaza every 15 minutes. That's who's really suffering here as kids. Yeah, this bombing campaign seems to be fucking madness to me. So listen, listeners, I'm sure I've heard your story, heard about the work your team is doing, would love to help. How can they support you? Can they donate? Is money the best way to do it? How can they help?

Yeah, I mean, if people can donate, give what they can, it would be massively beneficial right now. Our website address is map.org.uk. You can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Twitter, you can find us on Just Giving as well. I have to say that the response so far has been amazing. We've had support from over 103 countries around the world. So it gives you a little bit of hope that most people still care about humanity and about doing the right thing.

But the scale of the crisis is completely unprecedented. And so we're going to need as much support as we can to try and save as many lives as possible in the days ahead. And the other thing I would say, particularly that you've got a lot of listeners in the US, is making contact with your representatives, phoning your representatives on the hill and telling them that this has got to stop. That really, really matters right now. Yeah, I agree. Absolutely. Everyone should check your website. Again, it's medical aid for Palestinians. Melani, thank you so much for joining the show. Thanks for the work you're doing. And I hope your entire team stay safe and that you get to see them soon.

Thank you. the Melanie Ward for joining the show. And I don't know who else we thank in these days. The Polish voters. The Polish voters. You know, seriously, like, that's a, you know, thanks for the slice of good news on the timeline there, guys. We really needed it. You came through at a good point, you know. Yeah, thanks to Bob Menendez for being just corrupt enough to get yourself out of power so that better things can happen in places like Cuba and Venezuela. Yeah, that's, yeah. Well, thanks to like the process, by the way, like, I mean, It sounded like he was kind of walking around with a catch-me sign on his back in what they were doing, or at least his wife was.

Yes, yes. But good work by those guys, thanks to the, you know, the SD&Y people that unraveled the scheme of the gold bars and the halal and the whole thing. There's another weird story about her killing someone with her car and him maybe helping sort of send someone to help get her out of it. Well, yeah, that was super dark too because it was like there's this fatal car accident and then like 10 minutes into the police being on the scene, some man shows up and it. And it's like, I'm here to like, how long the buddy's wife. Yeah, yeah. So that's not weird. But look, I'm not on a serious note.

Like, thanks. You know, you mentioned this already, but it just bears repeating like, because we all see this horrible and us, you know, Hamas and then these airstrikes. And there are so many people like that you see in Gaza, like trying to help, you know, in hospitals, like working. Can you imagine being a doctor in one of those hospitals? Like those people. Those people are heroes beyond comprehension. and the people that are just trying to like help as they can. And so that we should keep that in mind.

You see the goodness of humanity underneath a lot of the badness. Yeah. The journalists too, like Norhazian. The journalists are telling these stories, you know. Absolutely. Okay, that's it for us for today. Talk to you again soon. Pots Day of the World is a crooked media production.

Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Reed Churlin. Our producer is Alona Minkowski. and associate producer is Ashley Mizuo. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, audio support by Kyle Seglan and Charlotte Landis. Our studio technician is David Tolls. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Phoebe Bradford, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube.com slash Pod Save the World.

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