Pod Save the World - Breaking: Israel Tells Civilians In Gaza To Evacuate

Episode Date: October 14, 2023

Tommy and Ben talk about the developing situation in Gaza where 1.1 million people have been told to evacuate northern Gaza in advance of an anticipated ground invasion by Israel. Two people on the ground in Gaza explain the logistical obstacles to evacuation and why many civilians have refused to leave. Then Ben and Tommy discuss how Republicans are losing their minds talking about Israel, pro-Palestine protests around the world, growing anger towards the Netanyahu government, and they take questions from the Pod Save the world Discord channel. 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. Subscribe to Friends of the Pod to join: crooked.com/friends

Welcome back to POTSave the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. And here we are again, Ben. And the world is very scary. Yes. It feels very unsettled, Tommy. It feels very unsettled, which is why we're doing the third POTSave the World of the week. Again, exclusively focused on the situation, Israel and Gaza. We are going to talk about the latest on the humanitarian situation in Gaza

and reports that Israel may soon launch a ground invasion. The U.S. response, the genuinely crazy Republican response that we're seeing to all this. the pro-Palestine protests that are happening around the globe, the latest on how the intelligence community thinks the Hamas attack went down and was not caught in advance in the political reaction in Israel. And then we're going to take some great questions about Hezbollah, about Iran, about a bunch of stuff from the Pate of the World Discord community. Thank you guys again for submitting those.

And if you want to join that conversation or sending questions or anything, go to kirkid.com slash friends. All right, Ben, you want to turn to Gaza first? Yeah. Okay. So it has been nearly a week since Samas

launched this terrorist attack on southern Israel that killed over 1,300 Israelis, the vast majority of whom were civilians, including women and children. We're recording this at about 2 p.m. Pacific time on Friday,

October 13th. And it seems like Israel is on the cusp of beginning a ground invasion into Gaza. There has been this major Israeli military buildup near the border with Gaza.

There have been over 6,000 Israeli air strikes since last Saturday. The Palestinian Health Ministry says about 1,800 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since the war started, and thousands more have been injured. On Friday, the Israeli military will call them the IDF for short going forward, told people in northern Gaza about 1.1 million people to evacuate to the south. The United Nations says that it will create a humanitarian disaster. Some Gazans have started evacuating, others have refused. Hamas says the evacuation order is fake propaganda.

They've urged people to ignore it. Human Rights Watch called out Israel for reportedly using white phosphorus munitions in Gaza, and in Lebanon, white phosphorus is an incendiary weapon that can leave people with horrific burns and also obviously starts fires in civilian areas. There's reports that Israel has conducted limited cross-border raids into Gaza to take up militants to look for hostages. There are growing calls for Israel to open a humanitarian corridor in Gaza so civilians can get access to food and water and fuel. Then, historically speaking, Israel is really prioritized, getting back. back hostages. This time around, I'm seeing really scary background quotes from government officials saying things like, you know, defeating Hamas has to take priority over hostage rescue. Netanyahu said every Hamas member is, quote, a dead man. Ben-Egan said it's time for war and that the government

was ready to wipe this thing called Hamas off the face of the earth. So, you know, I think as we've discussed, like totally understandable emotion here. But I think the question still remains how, what is the endgame. Is this a plan for revenge or, you know, is there something hopefully behind the scenes? Obviously, they wouldn't tell us in advance. But what is the plan for getting the hostages released, defeating Hamas, and limiting civilian casualties that we still don't know? Well, I think the point is that those three objectives are in tension with each other, right? And, you know, it bears repeating that we have to recognize that Israel is in a profoundly kind of traumatized state. Their casualty count continues to go up. The reports of Hamas atrocities

continue to dominate Israeli society and here as well, understandably. And that has led to both the desire for revenge and for security for Israel. But to those questions of hostages, of how to deal with Hamas, of how to limit civilian casualties, those are all the tradeoffs that they're going to be making as they make a decision about what this ground invasion is. It seems like there is certainly going to be a ground invasion. The tanks are at the border. The reserves have been mobilized. All of the messaging suggests that they're about to go into Gaza. If, and I should add, this has been different than previous Gaza wars already. Like the pace of airstrikes, we're talking 6,000 air strikes in just a few days. That is a pace and scale of air strikes. It,

is much bigger than even the previous four Gaza wars. You know, if they go in overwhelmingly to try to destroy Hamas, as they said, with that as the objective, you know, your capacity to, I don't know, frankly, how you deal with the hostage situation, because essentially Hamas is more likely than not has those hostages in civilian areas, in areas spread out everywhere. That are spread out. And unless we have very good intelligence on exactly. where they are, it would seem like the hostages themselves might be at risk of an overwhelming

bombardment and ground invasion. Now, obviously, I'm sure every intelligence resource is being spent on trying to find places where the hostages are, and there could be some special forces maneuver there. But, you know, and then the civilian casualty front, again, a massive ground invasion with the kind of bombardment that we've seen is going to be, you know, pretty catastrophic in terms of civilian casualties. And there's both, I think, the question that was raised by the UN announcement around the one million Palestinians that they were calling to move, it calls into question whether there could also be mass displacement of Palestinians, which in the Palestinian historical memory,

of course, you know, that is their most traumatic event because essentially the Palestinian refugees who were displaced, you know, around Israel's founding and other times. have not been able to return. Yeah, you're going to people call it. It's the second Nakhpa, which is why they say they won't leave their homes. That's exactly right. And so if you have a million people pushed in Egypt, I think their assumption is I'll never be able to go home and I'll just become, you know, I'll become like the Palestinians who've been stuck in Lebanon or in Jordan. And so this is an incredibly challenging time. And the scale of what Israel chooses to do is going to determine a lot of things. I mean, that,

this is the moment to think hard about what the objectives are, how heavy you want to go in, and whether you want to do things that put at risk, the hostages, whether you want to actually displace, you know, potentially a million or more Gazans, or whether there can be something that is a more limited type of military operation. It feels like the momentum in Israel is towards the more maximalist objectives. Yeah, definitely does. And that's, you know, we are raising skepticism both out of concern for Palestinians, but also out of concern for Israelis and the strategic consequences of that. Yeah, I mean, part of this is about the efficacy of any sort of military operation, the risk to the IDF soldiers who will go in. You could see hundreds, if not a thousand

skilled if we're talking about sustained urban combat for a long time. You know, there's also, frankly, some scary kind of dehumanizing language being used by Israeli officials. Israeli's president. Buzhouerzog said, it is not true this rhetoric about civilians. We're not aware. We're not involved is absolutely not true. They could have risen up against that evil regime that took over Gaza and Akuta. He goes on, you know, to say more in that quote, they don't have the full one in front of me, but, you know, that's disconcerting. There have been some sporadic clashes in the West Bank already between Palestinians there and security forces. There's 70 people were killed after an Israeli air strike hit three convoys of evacuees trying to leave northern Gaza.

So even that, you know, sort of plan the order of evacuation, the Israelis announced is not safe for people. There's also, I just saw coming in here, Ben, a horrifying video circulating on social media of the moment in Israeli shell landed on a bunch of international journalists covering these sporadic clashes in southern Lebanon, killing a Reuters photographer, wounding six others. So this is spilling out and harming a lot of innocent people very quickly. Yeah. And the, you know, the rhetoric, there's two pieces to the rhetoric that I think are worth watching here. The first is the kind of bougie Herzog point that the people of Gaza are somehow responsible for not rising up. You know, that kind of recategorizes essentially the people of Gaza in more of a combatant place than in treating them as civilians.

And that obviously could lead to more indiscriminate use of violence in Gaza. And then also you see this, you know, refrain. this is not human, they're barbarians. You know, it entirely applies to the behavior of Hamas. Like Hamas's behavior, what they did, that pogrom, that massacre, that war crime, that mass atrocity they committed, all of that language, you know, can, I think, describe that behavior. The problem is when it bleeds into describing kind of the people of Gaza. Right. And I just hope that there is an effort to kind of separate these two out.

Even the point about ISIS, what they did was absolutely reminiscent of ISIS. The military wing of Hamas is absolutely behaving as ISIS. But Gaza is not the caliphate. Exactly. Like that's the distinction where it's seemingly subtle, but like it basically gets at, are the two million people there guilty or is Hamas something that needs separated out from them? Yeah. You know, that's not easily done militarily, but I do think there are alternative military strategies that simultaneously try to relentlessly target Hamas and that might try to mobilize resources maybe from the Arab world to try to change the game in Gaza, to try to get rid of Hamas and build something different, you know.

So there are other ways that I think are worth at least considering going about doing this. Yeah, which is why you shouldn't rush. In fairness, Herzog, he was sort of asked later, this meant that Gazans were legitimate military targets. emphatically rejected that. He's sort of pointing out the fact that because Hamas uses civilians and civilian infrastructure to strike Israel, they have no choice but to operate in those areas. That is fair. That is true. But the other part of that quote is very sort of ominous sounding. We reached out to a journalist in Gaza named Nur Hazin. She sent us this message describing what life is like in Gaza now and this ordered evacuation of over a million people from northern to southern Gaza. This clip is a little longer

in the clips we normally played in, but we thought it was incredibly powerful and important for you guys to hear it. So here it is. There is no airplanes, trains. There is only cars, and there is only two streets, basically, that are linking Gaza City with Southern Gaza. So most of the people who are lucky enough, they would take cars. And this is so rare nowadays because there is basically no fuelty cars. And others are walking basically on their foot. I saw today hundreds of people taking that route on their feet. There are hundreds of thousands of people that decided to stay in their homes in central Gaza and northern Gaza.

Some of them decided to go to shelters. And when we say shelters, we mean UN schools or hospitals, because there is no shelters basically in Gaza. is basically in Gaza, but people think that schools that belongs to the UN and hospitals are the safest place for them to be in. The infrastructure here in Gaza is totally damaged. We are facing problems with electricity. The internet would barely get Wi-Fi when we are in the hospitals.

The Wi-Fi lines in Gaza are older. down. We cannot even communicate with each other. The lines are also down. It's really bad and this makes things even worse during evacuation because basically families cannot call each other and know what they're planning to do. My children are okay. They are now sleeping actually. They were really tired because they've gone through a very very very rough night of ongoing Israeli strikes. Most actually of these strikes targeted a place that is just 300 meters away from where my children were residing. I've been working as a reporter for like 12 years now and I've seen injured children.

I've seen dead children. I've seen bodies that have been under the rebel for five and four days. I've seen a lot. lot and this is what we're going through now is even worse I cried a lot today I keep it all together because this is the only thing that I should do I mean if I collapsed if I collapse if I am not as strong as I should be in front of my children and in front of my family and in front of my parents they will lose faith because they put all of their faith in me. I take it as a responsibility of telling the

world what is really happening here on the ground in Gaza. So I have no other choice. So Ben, and Nora and her two children are among those evacuating. But we also reached out to Mahmoud Shalabi. He's the acting Gaza director for medical aid for Palestine. He has chosen not to leave his home. Here's a clip. There are people who started fleeing their homes. It's true, but there are also people who are refusing to do so and refusing to be part of a second Nakma. And I am one of those. I am not leaving my home. I am not going to be a refugee again.

I am already a Palestinian refugee. This is not going to be repeated for me or anyone from my family. I understand the safety concerns. I understand how it's going to affect many people, but I will not leave. I will die standing. My existence in itself on this land is resistance. And I am urging all the people of the free world to share this message with the people who care about humanity, about dignity, and about human life. We will not go down tonight.

So Ben, it speaks to the impossible choices that people are facing in Gaza. And, you know, sort of what you mentioned earlier about people not wanting to become a refugee a second time. but obviously also hospitals and people in them can't move. They can't evacuate. Yeah. I mean, to put this in perspective, Gaza's population is bigger than the population of Manhattan, right? I mean, a lot of people have been to New York, like, to Manhattan. I mean, I just try to imagine, try to move all those people in a place where over 80% of people are in extreme poverty already.

There's not much infrastructure to speak of, and there have been 6,000 bombs dropped. And they're running out of gas. And the fuel has been cut off, food, water supplies have been cut off. So this is not a place where you can have an orderly movement of a million people, you know, out of some harm's way. And even if you did, by the way, Hamas is going to move with those people, you know. And so it's, I don't know that if there's a full-scale effort in terms of a ground invasion and occupation of Gaza, ultimately anywhere in Gaza is not going to be safe. I think what I hope people can take away from those clips,

these are not Hamas people, right? These are people, you know, we all were gutted, absolutely gutted by what happened to the Israeli people and the innocent people whose lives were lost and the stories they told. Israel, of course, like any government, will want to defend its population, we'll want to attack a group like Hamas that carried out,

an atrocity like that. But we just have to bear in mind that these people are in the middle of this. These innocent people are in the middle of this. And again, that we should be concerned about that, but also flattening the whole city of Gaza will transform that region forever. You know, it could lead to escalatory violence, wars, Hisblo are coming in, regional conflicts, inflame, Arab opinion, Israel, isolated for a very long time. So this is the time to be careful about how heavily Israel goes in. Yeah, very well said. Let's turn to the response from Washington, specifically President Biden.

So President Biden has gotten a lot of praise from the Jewish community in the U.S. and from Israelis for his response to the tragedy in particular remarks he made to Jewish community leaders where President Biden talked about how he has taken all of his kids and grandkids to Dachau when they turned 14. For those who don't know, Dachau was a horrific Nazi concentration. concentration camp. Had you ever heard him tell that story? I had no idea. And I, you know, Joe Biden usually shares everything. Story the few times. Yeah. I was so, and I was, yeah, I was surprised at him of that. Yeah. Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, whose grandparents were, is he the son or grandparent of Holocaust survivors? Yeah, a grandparent and stepfather. Right. So, you know, deep connection to the Holocaust, a Jew himself, went to Israel. He met with Netanyahu. He was reportedly shown images of some of the worst atrocities, including against children.

and infants. Tony visited a relief center, an incredibly moving moment there where he met a survivor who was at the music festival that was attacked. He also delivered some remarks standing beside Bibi Netanyahu. Here's a clip from Tony. I come before you not only as the United States Secretary of State, but also as a Jew. My grandfather, Maurice Blinken, fled pogroms in Russia. My stepfather, Samuel Pizarre, survived concentration camps, Auschwitz, Dachau, Maidonik. So, Prime Minister, I understand on a personal level the harrowing echoes that Hamas' massacres carry for Israeli Jews, indeed for Jews everywhere. Tony also talked about how much this all impacted him as a parent.

As we sort of anticipated on Tuesday bend, Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, also went to Israel. We're just texting with our friend Kelly, who was on the trip, so it was incredibly powerful. The Pentagon is surging military assistance to Israel, which I have read is more about contingency planning in the event that Hezbollah or someone else gets involved than really this fight in Gaza. President Biden held a call of families of Americans taken hostage or otherwise unaccounted for. The U.S. is trying to cut a deal with Egypt for safe passage of Americans out of Gaza. I think there's like 500 Americans in Gaza that we know about. And then, Ben, more broadly, I mean, in the U.S., there is this very eerie sort of pervasive fear right now, especially in the Jewish community, that feels a lot like those days post 9-11. That is, I don't know, I think, just really impacting people.

You're also seeing, you know, some progressive start to call for Biden to do more to urge caution, to call for de-escalation, call for descalation, call for, call for a ceasefire, potentially some of the House have called for a ceasefire. The Biden administration, though, is still pointedly not saying any of that publicly. Yeah, I, you know, it's interesting. You and I have been talking about this offline, obviously. What Tony is speaking to, right, and he personally has this experience in his family, and he's usually a pretty private guy, and that's about as revelatory as, you know, you'll hear Tony be in public, and I think that speaks to both how important that history is

to him and his family. I think Tony is in public service because of that history. You know, like there's kind of paid forward mentality. But also kind of speaking to the kind of trauma that is reawakened in people. And look, I'm not stepping out of my depth here a little bit. But, I mean, there is a deep-rooted trauma inside Jewish people. And my mother's Jewish. And I come from a European, you know, Jewish family that has pogroms in it

and the people that didn't come to the United States. you know, obviously, or leave to other countries, obviously, we're in the Holocaust. And so I do think that part of what is happening here is, you know, this kind of sense of trauma and vulnerability is being awakened in the Jewish people, which is completely understandable given the scale of the atrocities we've seen. I think at the same time, you know, I remember 9-11. I saw 9-11. I was in New York, and that transformed my life.

Like I went in national security. I mean, infamously, I was a creative writing graduate student at the time. I was a van driver. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And but witnessing that, I was like, I want to be a part of, you know, the response to it. And I remember being in New York and there were some lefties. I was at NYU, right? So there were some lefties back in the day who were saying everybody's got to chill out and think twice before we start bombing Afghanistan.

And I'll be honest, like, as an angry 23-year-old, old, I was like, I don't want to hear that. Like, let's go fucking get these guys, you know? And that was the wrong mentality. I wish, you know, someone had come, not that I was making decisions back then, but you kind of wish a friend came and said, you better think really carefully about this. If you start a war, you don't know how it's going to end. You know, you never know how a war is going to end. It always ends up having consequences you don't expect. and I do think as hard as it is for some people to hear this message, counseling some restraint, counseling, taking some time here, counseling thinking this through, counseling, being very careful to try to follow the laws of war. That is not a lack of regard for what Israel has gone through.

On the contrary, it's kind of what I wish someone had done for the United States after 9-11 because the decisions we made immediately, the Patriot Act and the way we went in Afghanistan. and then a year later we're still going into Iraq. You know, we all know what that led to. And so I do just think we can hold two thoughts in our head at the same time. We can be horrified by what happened, but, you know, really urging that this is thought through. And look, the die may be cast here by the time this podcast even airs, but that's why we're raising this. Yeah. Listen, I feel like we are watching a horror movie that we've all seen before, you know, horrific terrorist attack.

People are devastated, angry, scared, all completely understandably. And people want revenge, again, understandably. But what I'm praying is that Israelis, you know, learn from the mistakes we made after 9-11. Don't repeat them. I mean, part one, as you said, part one is entering into a protracted bloody war with no clear goal or endgame. But also, you know, the broader 9-11 policy response, the endless wars, the civil liberties violations. The list goes on and on. And the one thing that is making me hopeful, Ben, is, you know, in the way,

wake of 9-11, Susan Songtag wrote that piece in the New Yorker. I remember that. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. Right. The brutal honesty and criticism you're seeing of the Netanyahu government, the intelligence failure in places like Haaretz makes me hopeful that like courageous, sane voices refuse to not be heard and can have some influence. I don't think it's going to come from the United States, but I do think internal Israeli voices are speaking up in ways that I wish more Americans had felt they could in the wake of 9-11.

Yeah, and in part because these issues have been debated for some time, right? The treatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and the absence of any political aspiration, the only thing I can think about it from a hopeful note is if you could get to a place with whatever military operation takes place, you would hope that on the back end of that, you know, there will be a different Palestinian leadership, I think, that. that's for sure, like 87-year-old Nakamura-Bas and Hamas is going to be sidelined. Bibi Nanyahu, it seems like it's not clear to be how long he's going to be Prime Minister Vigrisional.

Yeah, we're getting some polling on that after, yeah. And so maybe, maybe, like, there can be some window that kind of opens up. You know, sometimes after wars is when you make peace. I'm not up, I'm being honest. I'm not optimistic about that. No, no. given where this is headed and given, you know, the political direction of both the Israelis and the Palestinians.

But this cycle of violence, it just creates more violence. It begets more violence and more trauma. And something needs to arrest it at some point. President Biden did do a press conference earlier today where he mentioned the need to protect civilians. Let's play a clip. At my direction, our teams are working. in the region, including communicating directly with the governments of Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab nations and the United Nations to surge support the humanitarian consequences

for Hamas attack to help Israel. You know, we can't lose sight of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Palestinians had nothing to do with Hamas, and Hamas is appalling attacks, and they're suffering as a result as well. So good is here, Biden, and Lee say that. So, you know, Ben, once again, this is a very heavy, very emotional episode. So we're going to give you all a quick reprieve and do a segment about Republicans losing their fucking minds. Good, good, good, good.

Let's start with Donald Trump. Here's a clip. And this is, let me tell you, this is a cut down from something that could be a lot longer. You know, Hesble is very smart. They're all very smart. The press doesn't like when they say, but Hesb, they're very smart. I'll never forget that B.B. Net and Yahoo let us down. That was a very terrible thing.

I will say that they've got to straighten it out because they're fighting potentially a very big force, they're fighting potentially Iran. And when they have people saying the wrong things, everything they say is being digested by these people because they're vicious and they're smart. So they got to strengthen themselves up. And they said, gee, I hope Hezbollah doesn't attack from the north because that's the most vulnerable spot. I said, wait a minute. You know, Hezbollah is very smart. They're all very smart. The press doesn't like when they say it before. You know, I said that President Xi of China, 1.4 billion people, he could. controls it with an iron fist.

I said, he's a very smart man. They killed me the next day. I said he was smart. Whatever I'm going to say. But Hezbo, they're very smart. And they have a national defense minister or somebody saying, I hope Hezbole doesn't attack us from the north. So the following morning they attacked.

They might not have been doing it. But if you listen to this jerk, you would attack from the north because he said that's our weak spot. I like when the people start to applaud him. And they're like, what, Hezbo's smart? I didn't even like the applause. It's amazing. It's amazing.

So Trump's saying, He's able to smart. He attacks on Yahoo. He calls the Israeli defense minister a jerk. Ben, do you think there's a chance that Hezbollah attacked from the north because they're based in Lebanon, which is north of Israel? Could that be what happened here? Yeah. I don't think it was genius. I think it was like geography and physics.

He said smart like 20 times. 100 times. What is, what briefing did he read about Hezbollah that, um, what classified documents did he take with him that, uh, I don't know. And he's clearly just mad at Netanyahu because he didn't go along with the election and because he congratulated Biden when Biden legitimately won the election. And it was called for him. But he's just like, all he also truth, quote, the attack on Israel would never have happened to zero chance if the election of 2020 was not rigged and stolen. So the world's biggest narcissist rides again. It's all he can think about. It does, you know, we are at this place where there's two wars now. Ukraine and this one that, you know, could be a more regional war in the Middle East. And that guy being in charge during like that kind of global instability is a truly terrifying thought. Truly. Lindsay Graham weighed in. Let's hear a clip of that. We're in a religious war here. I am with Israel. Do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.

You know who wants a religious war. Hamas. Yeah. George Bush weighed in. Did his swaggering Texas bullshit. Florida. Congressman Brian Maast wore an IDF uniform to a Republican caucus meeting. Nikki Haley, the supposedly sane one, is out there saying, don't tell Israel to stop, don't call for restraint. I mean, it is really scary over there on the conservatives. Lindsay Graham just always seems so gleeful in these kind of situations. He can't wait to go on television and talk about a war and leveling places and killing people. And by the way, saying this is a religious war is like the most counterproductive fucking thing

you would possibly say, right? Yeah, it's a lot of nerve. Yeah, it's, I mean, I thought we'd talk about it in 9-11 lesson. I thought, you know, even George Bush said it was wrong to say it was a crusade, you know. So let's, I mean, these people are so fundamentally unsurious, you know. I mean, it's bonkers. Dangerously stupid. And George Bush basically used the 9-11 language.

He's like, I have with him or against them. Oh, yeah. It's all black and white. It was just, oh, talk about it. I thought he'd learn through all this painting therapy that he's doing, but I guess not. Yeah, just go paint anything. Like, just turn off the news, George. Just go paint a picture of beauty.

Yeah. So around the world then, there have been huge protests, most of them pro-Palestine. In the Arab world, you know, you're seeing protests in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen, Jordan, many other places. In France, they banned pro-Palestinian protests after the former leader of Hamas called for protests. In the UK, the right-wing, nutjob, home secretary, Swellab Braverman, warned demonstrators against waving the Palestinian flag. There's also been rallies in Australia and a bunch of cities in the U.S., etc. So I don't know, I hope everyone listening is offended by the idea of banning speech or banning protests that is dumb and ineffective. That said, just a quick flag for everyone out there planning a protest. If you're a protest advertisement includes a photo of the Hamas guy on a hang glider, I think is the University of Washington College pro-Palestine rally did, you're an asshole. If your speakers condone violence, you are in fact an asshole.

You're setting back the cause of Palestinian rights. So this is how this works. Your right to free speech is absolute. You have the right to assembly. We have the right to tell you you're a dumb asshole. Yeah, like, what the fuck is that about? You know, the whole hang glider thing. I mean, I...

Don't ban protests. No, no. Yeah. But absolutely, if you want to talk about Palestinian statehood or support for people in Gaza or support for the Palestinian people generally, of course that is good. That is fine. That is that look, and there's also this, you know, movement to kind of cast this as some completely new woke phenomenon. That's not the case.

Like in the 60s and 70s and 8, always, there's always been student movements that are sympathetic to the Palestinians. I haven't been when I was in college. Yeah, yeah. Like, this is not some new thing that happened just because of social media. But what social media does is it allows you to take the biggest dumb fuckery out there, like the hang glider, and say that that's everybody who's protest. thing. And that's just not, that's not the case. And look, we should be, we should be willing and open and able to have, for some reason, this issue is like the hardest to discuss, you know, openly. But that actually, I think it feeds the hardening on both sides. Because if there's

not a space to have conversation and protest and debate, well, then, you know, people go into their corners and they believe that the other side is the worst version of themselves. So if you or not at all support of the Palestinians, you believe that everybody that's sympathetic to the Palestinians is got like a hang glider thing. And if you're someone who is sympathetic to the protesters, you think that everybody who is sympathetic to Israel is like the worst version of the clip you heard

from some far right person saying they want to eradicate Palestinians. And that's actually not the reality. Most people are somewhere in a spectrum here. But the only way we can experience that is if there is a place for speech and protest and debate and dialogue. And it's always going to be the case that a lot of young people, are sympathetic to who they see as the underdogs.

I mean, that's just as old as time. And let's just hope that none of this, you know, that the violence is obviously, that that doesn't enter into it. Yeah, for sure. You know, it's interesting. Before this most recent conflict, there was this debate about whether kind of the Arab street

is sort of the shorthand, whether, you know, people had lost interest in the Palestinian cause. I think these protests are showing that there is still a lot of energy behind these movements. I think it's maybe an open question about how much of that energy

is pro-Palestinian statehood versus just anti-Israel, right? You probably have a mix of both. I also saw that Vladimir Putin weighed in and he said that civilian casualties in Gaza would be unacceptable. So just, you know, to keep you updated

on the most cynical man on the planet's musings. Yeah, but the point is, though, that argument, this is going to be turbocharged by Russian social media. You know, the argument is going to be that the U.S. is, total hypocrite because, you know, we raised these concerns about war crimes in Ukraine and not in Gaza. And so this is going to be part, this is the backdrop. This conflict is always got a global dimension.

You, you're the one who flagged for me, too, the wisdom of Henry Kissinger coming into this, which is essentially like saying that this proves that Germany shouldn't have led in any, any, I guess, refugees or immigrants because they're supportive of Palestinians like that. Thanks for weighing in. Hank. Yeah. Yeah, once again, just reminder to everyone that Joe Biden is the only president in modern history not to invite Henry Kisinger to the White House. Yeah, that's definitely a notch.

Another reason to vote for the guy. Ben, so, you know, people in Israel are still trying to figure out how this Hamas attack happened and how the intelligence community there didn't catch it. Aretz reported today that the three IDF observation balloons that had been used to monitor the Gaza border broke down in recent weeks and hadn't been repaired or replaced at the time. of the attack. The Israeli government is examining whether Hamas kind of took them out in preparation for this assault. We're also seeing more and more clips about how Hamas used small, cheap drones in these attacks. They dropped, you know, munitions on tanks. They dropped them on observation towers. They dropped them on a mechanical machine gun that apparently was used to sort of like fire at the border and took that out as well. These videos, I think we're probably familiar to anyone who

spends time on Twitter and sees, you know, similar clips of like Ukrainian military using kind of ad hoc military hardware like that. You mentioned this earlier, Ben. So the Jerusalem Post commissioned a poll about the attack. It found that 85% of respondents said that the Hamas attack was a failure of the country's leadership. 56% said Netanyahu must resign at the end of the war. So, you know, we've been debating whether there would be a rally around the flag effect

or whether people would blame Beebe, certainly post-9-11. We saw the ultimate rally around the flag effect. Bush was at, like, what, 91% approval or something like that? But here it certainly seems that in the short term, despite the fact that there's this unity government and probably near unanimous support for responding to Hamas militarily, still over half the country wants BB to go. That's hopeful. Yeah. And again, it just shows you that Israelis, you know, in some ways, have a more robust, like, you know, debate. What they're doing to is they're holding two things in their head at the same time because what's interesting is they are rallying around the flag. And they're blaming BB, you know, like. Yeah.

And that's, it's a complicated situation. Like, there's, their context does matter, even though Hamas is entirely responsible. Like, Bibi did let down his guard and move resources up to the West Bank, you know, even again, as Hamas is responsible. Like, there's, there's a place to be able to digest that. It will be interesting to see what happens in the coming days as the military operation unfolds. and how durable that support is for BB, whether it maybe it goes up, maybe it goes back down. So it bears watching.

Okay, so we'll take some questions from the Discord chat here. Again, crooked.com slash friends if you want to join and submit questions or to participate in the conversation. So a listener asks, how much is there a connection between what has happened and the reporting of Trump leaking Israeli intelligence operatives? Or is it like everything else too early to tell? I'm seeing a lot of this on Twitter. I think this is referring to an incident in 2017 when Trump reportedly told a bunch of Russian officials, I think it was Sergei Lavrov and the ambassador at the time, about a what we have since learned was a covert Israeli mission to penetrate ISIS, an ISIS on Syria that was developing bombs that we thought could evade airport security. I think there's probably zero connection between what just happened with Hamas in Israel and that incident, as much as people, you know, the resistance wants to blame. Trump and I get it, but I don't know. What's your take? Yeah, I don't. I mean, that was in,

you know, 2017. And so the, the possibility that some intelligence source that was compromised by that disclosure by Trump was relevant to an event in 2023 is pretty, pretty minuscule to me. Yeah. Another listener asked a bunch of questions about Hezbollah, kind of like, what's Hezbollah? What do you think they're going to go to war? And there was a report in the post that was relevant to this. So they, the Washington Post, folks remember, they got the so-called Discord leaks. That was when this airman in Massachusetts leaked all this highly classified Pentagon stuff to a Discord server that he was hanging out with with his friends. This one, this report about Hezbollah from February is a top secret U.S. intelligence document. They assessed that a massive attack by Hezbollah was unlikely.

That was obviously before this Hamas incident. And that historically speaking, though, Hezbollah and Israel tended to clash in more limited, proportionate ways. So it says this assessment. Just a quick 101 on Hezbollah. So it means party of God in Arabic. They are a Lebanon-based Shiite militant group and political party. Hezbollah emerged out of Lebanon Civil War in the 1970s, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982 when the Israelis were going after the Palestine Liberation Organization or PLO. So Iran provides Hezbollah with a ton of money and weapons and training. And they have since their inception, Hezbollah is responsible for the bombing of the U.S. and French military barracks in Beirut in 1983. They killed more than 300 people. Like Hamas, Hezbollah is committed to the destruction of Israel, but they also have a larger, more sprawling set of ambitions and operations.

They operate in Iraq and Syria and Yemen. They've done stuff in Africa, Asia. They've attempted things in the U.S. The State Department says Iran provides Hezbollah with about $700 million per year. So that's about 10x, I think, what they provide. Hamas, according to the State Department, but they also make money off of both legal and criminal enterprises. So they're kind of this weird hybrid thing. And Hezbollah's had a cabinet-level position in the Lebanese government since 2005. So, Ben, any further thoughts on sort of like what the deal

with Hezbollah is and your thoughts today about the possibility that they might get involved? Yeah, I mean, the few points I make just to add to that very good summary. I mean, first of all, they are a much kind of bigger, and I don't know, echo Trump with this. They're so smart. You think they're just a sophisticated, let's say. They're a bigger organization politically. They are deeply integrated into the government of Lebanon, which is a dysfunctional government. But to give people a flavor of that, I remember when we were in government and we would do bilateral meetings with the Lebanese prime minister, we'd have to have like a very short meeting.

You know, you have the meeting where there's like, you know, eight people at a table on each side and, you know, the two heads of state or heads of government are sitting in chairs. and you'd meet for very brief time, and then you'd skinny that meeting down to, like, the president and prime minister with, like, one or two people because there's some fucking Hezboa guys, like literally, like, rolling with the prime minister. You know, like, they are part of the government of Lebanon.

So they have this kind of political standing in Lebanon. At the same time, they're much bigger than Hamas on their military side. They have a much bigger and more sophisticated rocket stockpile. And then in terms of military tactics, like what I would underscore is they fought in Syria for like a decade. So these people, and by the way, the Israelis are often bombing Hezboa targets in Syria. Yes. Because if they saw Hezbo getting transfers of weapons in from the Iranians or whomever, they would hit them.

But the point is that these people have serious experience more than Hamas in recent wars, including in Syria. So this is like an army getting involved. I mean, they are terrorists too, and they commit terrorist attacks. They've blown up buses with Israeli tourists in parts of the world. But that's why people warn of this escalation because they're actually a bigger and more well-equipped and experienced version of Hamas, closer to Iran too, because they're Shia and more ideologically aligned with Iran. So they're seen as much more like almost an extension of Iranian interests.

They have obviously their own independent issues in standing in Lebanon. but Hamas is Sunni Muslim versus Hezbole being a Shi organization. So them getting involved would be a game changer in a bad way. And the question is if they see, you know, if the humanitarian, if things get really ugly in Gaza, or did they feel themselves somehow compelled to get involved? And then that's, you know, then we're back to, you know, a two-front war and maybe a war that further devastates Lebanon and Beirut, which is already a mess. So, you know, it's not good.

Like that's what you don't want to happen. Lebanon's basically a failed state at the moment. I think I saw a State Department report from 2019 that said they estimated as well as like tens of thousands of members globally. And also, you know, the other, the stat you always see is 150,000 rockets. Hezbollah pointed at Israel. So, yeah, it would be a big, big deal. Last question, Ben.

So the U.S. and Qatar decided to block Iran's access to the $6 billion in oil revenue that we've been talking about that was transferred from South Korea to Qatar. as part of that hostage swap. Is this Discord user asked, is that denial of funds a cause this belly for Iran to go nuts? I don't know. I mean, domestic politically,

this seemed like the only path forward, right? They're not saying Iran will never get this money. They're saying it's indefinitely paused. I don't know. Again, we don't make deals with the Iranians because we like them. We do it because it's in our interest. And in this case, it was to get hostages home.

I do wonder what you think, though. It's like the U.S. cuts a deal with Iran to put in place the JCPOA. We pull out of it. We do this hostage swap. Yeah. We refuse them the funds. At some point, you're going to foreclose diplomacy with the Iranians. I'm not saying that's my like foremost concern at the moment, but long term, it is something that it's just worth thinking about.

Yeah, look, the Iranians like do plenty of bad shit. I'm going to raise an issue that, you know, this $6 billion thing keeps getting raised because it's like the only Republican attack on Biden that they can make. And we've talked about why it's a bullshit attack. I don't believe. And Iran has more, Iran has hundreds of billions of dollars. It's a nation state with a lot of oil. So it's not like they're sitting there with no money. And then they're just waiting for a check to come through from like a, you know, from this kind of deal.

So this is kind of a, and we've already talked about the amounts that Hamas and Hezboa are like a fraction of the Iranian overall budget. You know, like they can find that money without this deal. So I understand why politically we're not doing it. The one thing I'm going to say, because nobody makes arguments on the other side of these things, is, you know what, maybe pulling out of the Iran nuclear agreement and re-escalating tensions in that region was not a good idea. Empowering the most hardline factions in the country. Exactly. Like, you're humiliating the government that did the Iran nuclear deal, pushing Iranian politics in a hardline direction. I could list a whole bunch of other things. We've already talked about the Abraham Accords, obviously, like, not during a cause. causal analysis, I'm just saying that like if you turn these things into constant zero-sum

like hardline approaches, that's kind of what that's the Middle East you're going to get, you know? Some place there has to be some space for diplomacy. They just does. Otherwise, the wars are going to go on forever. Now, I get in your term, just cut off all funding for Iran, squeeze, squeeze, squeeze. That makes total sense to me. But it's not going to like solve this problem. It's not going to like prevent Iran from having any resourcing to, to Hamas, and it is wrong to tell people that. It's wrong to make people think that if we turn off the $6 billion, that somehow Hamas will never get any money from Iran again. That's just not true. No, no. They're, yeah, they're not overly concerned about the humanitarian supplies that they

were able to purchase with that $6 billion, if it were not turn off. We're almost at an hour. Anything else you want to talk about before we wrap here? The only thing I'm to say on the Iran point is that we just should note, because it came after the last international response roundup we did. MBS, Mbhamban, did a phone call with the president of Iran, which he'd never done before, not done for. And then read out of the call was expressing concern about it, like Israeli war crimes. And so it is just a signal. MBS is a weather vein, you know, for where the Gulf Arabs are going. Like, you know, that, I think, is a sign of these leaders being worried almost preemptively about public opinion.

You know, so it shows how much those normalization deals are kind of on ice right now. Yeah, I would not suspect that MBS is going to jump into those talks, at least publicly, anytime soon, the normalization talks. I did see one tweet, just to mention. Someone tweeted Jackie Heinrich that the U.S. urged Israel to delay its ground operation in Gaza until safe passage for Palestinians can be secured. So that would be good. But hopefully they actually follow through with it. Yeah.

Okay, that's it for us from today. We're obviously going to cover this next week, and we appreciate you all listening. And thank you, especially to Nor Hazin, for sending us that incredibly powerful audio clip. And also thank you to Mok Mu Shalabi for reaching out, talking to us about his experience, and also for all the work he's doing to provide people with support on the ground. And, you know, send us any questions you have. Yeah. It helps produce the show.

And my only last note would be to echo Greg Carlstrom's point, like, none of us know what the fuck is going on. We're giving you our best sense of things. But we're just trying to figure this out, and we're glad. that you all are listening to us as we all do that together. Yeah, absolutely. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Reed Cherlin. Our producer is Alona Minkowski, and Associate Producer is Ashley Mizuo.

It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, audio support by Kyle Seaglin 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.