Pod Save the World - Clashes in Israel and Gaza

Episode Date: May 12, 2021

Tommy and Ben talk about the escalating violence in Israel and Gaza, cyberattacks on American infrastructure, a deadly police raid in Brazil, updates on Alexey Navalny’s situation, President Biden��s decision to back coronavirus vaccine patent waivers and more. Then, foreign policy analyst Rula Jebreal joins Ben to discuss the context for the latest outbreak of fighting in Israel and Gaza and how we should be thinking about asymmetries of power.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Potsave the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, a little more serious show this week than some of the recent episodes. So we're going to spend a lot of time talking about the clashes in Israel this week. And later in the show, Ben is going to talk with Palestinian foreign policy analysts and journalist. Rule of Jibril, but we'll also start the shows are walking you guys through what's happened, the Biden administration response, some of the political factors at play here. We're also going to talk about the cyber attack against an energy pipeline in the U.S. brutality in Brazil, and we'll do some quick updates on topics. We've covered before, but there's really significant new news, including about Alexei Navalny, a disgraced Navy SEAL named Eddie Gallagher, Biden and COVID patents, and then Afghanistan. And so before we get to that, a quick ask from me and Ben to our listeners. Well, a couple quick asks. One, if you enjoy the show, consider giving us a little rating and a review wherever you get your podcast, preferably a positive rating and review, but it really does. It helps people find the show. and share it on social media if you want.

And then, Ben, I think your book is almost getting pretty close to coming out, right? Yeah, you know, we're three weeks out. June 1st is publication day. And so my ask plea is to please consider pre-ordering the book. If you order it now, like it'll be here relatively soon. And, you know, I've talked a lot about it. But again, I think this is the audience that I most want to read this book. It's about so many of the things that we've been talking about, where the world is going.

how we got here. I think I'll find I try to be very personal. I try to scrutinize things that we did in the Obama years. I look at Alexei Navalny and talk to him at length, China, Hong Kong, protesters, you know, the opposition in Hungary, but also mainly what's happened to America and what's happened to America in the world. So smash that pre-order link, world, though, it would make me very, very grateful to you. pre-order the book and knock some right-wing idiot off the bestseller list. That too. Two for one here.

Also, Ben, I'm being forced to share that we have some new Pots Day of the World merch in the Cricket store. A portion will go to a nonprofit that helps people vote if you want to buy that. So cricket.com slash store. Also, don't miss what a day this week, Gideon Resnick, one of our excellent hosts, is joined by a very fun roster of guest hosts. You get the biggest news of the day. You get important stories you might have missed in 20 minutes or less, which is a hell of a good deal. And it's free. Okay. So I'm sure listeners to the show have seen a lot of disturbing videos and reports coming out of Israel over the last few days. We're going to start there. I'm going to try to walk through some of the most recent events. It's very hard to pin down where any sort of event started in this conversation, but I'll try to do the quick recent context. So there have been days of protest and fighting between Palestinian protesters, Israeli settlers and Israeli police over an effort to evict six Palestinian families from their homes.

in Sheikh Jara, which is a prominent, predominantly Arab neighborhood in East Jerusalem. The Israeli Supreme Court was supposed to rule on whether or not to evict those families on Monday of this week, but they delayed that decision because of these protests and the violence. There's a longer backstory when it comes to this dispute over the land in question. But the short version is these two Jewish trusts say they purchased the land from Arab landowners back in the late 1800s, and that families lived there until 1948. But that year, Israel lost that territory in the Arab-Israeli war, and those folks were evicted. Then in 1967, in the six-day war, Israel took back control of Jerusalem militarily.

And the Israeli government passed laws that allowed Israelis to reclaim territory that they had lost prior to 1967. It's worth noting that the international community does not recognize Israel's sovereignty over East Jerusalem. And now, right-wing settlers say they bought that land in question in East Jerusalem from this original Jewish truce. trust from those owners and they've been working through the Israeli legal system to evict the Palestinian occupants for many years. The Israeli government argues that there's just a private legal dispute over land in language, Ben, that really kind of echoes Jared Kushner's take on the broader conflict in the Middle East. The Palestinians say, like these evictions are part of a bigger systemic effort to push Palestinians out of East Jerusalem, cement Israeli

control over the broader area, and prevent East Jerusalem from becoming part of the Palestinian state. And frankly, it's hard to argue against that assessment when the deputy mayor of Jerusalem literally says as much in quotes to the media. So, you know, the broader region is home to some of the most sensitive and important religious sites for Jews and Muslims. The court ruling about these evictions also coincided with an annual celebration of Israel's capture of East Jerusalem in 1967. And there's, you know, in this a bunch of far-right settlers we're planning to march through the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's old city, which is obviously a very provocative act. So on Monday, things spiraled completely out of control.

Palestinians protesting the evictions in this plan March clash with settlers. They clashed with Israeli police forces. The Israeli police forces actually raided the Al-Aksa Mosque, which is a very important holy site, fired rubber bullets, stun grenades at protesters who are throwing rocks. I've seen reports that several hundred Palestinians were injured. 21 Israeli police officers were reported injured. Things got even worse on Monday when Hamas fired rockets from Gaza. Israel responded with airstrikes that officials in Gaza say kill 20 people, including three children. Netanyahu promised

a heavy price in response to the Hamas attack. And then just before we started recording, there were videos of, you know, hundreds of rockets being fired out of Gaza by Hamas, inter-central Israel. There's reports that the IDF has already responded with more strikes into Gaza, including hitting a 13-story residential tower. So, Ben, sorry for the very long windup there. It's just, like, hard to follow this. But I mean, I guess my first question to you is, like, how worried do you think we all should be about escalation? And, you know, do you think I left out any important context here that is worth kind of setting the stage? No, look, that's a pretty amazingly succinct summary, Tommy. I'd say a few things. I mean, the first is you'll hear from

Marula Gibriel, I think, a very raw Palestinian perspective on this. Yeah. Which people don't normally hear, right? So some of it's difficult to hear, I think. But, I mean, you know, I think it's important that we we lift up and listen to Palestinian voices that are sometimes, you know, marginalized in these discussions. I'd also say that, you know, what's so frustrating about this. First of all, I think it is necessary to underscore.

and Rula walks us through this from a Palestinian perspective, like how provocative these evictions are and that kind of raid on the Al-Axam mosque was in the sense that these aren't just a real estate dispute, as Jared Kushner says. I mean, East Jerusalem, if there's ever to be a Palestinian state, it has always been the assumption that the capital would be in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem.

And what you have here is a kind of systematic Israeli settler movement instead of policies that is increasingly, you know, displacing Palestinians. I mean, this is literally, you know, people live in homes and they're being forced out of those homes in the most sensitive part of, you know, Palestinian geography, right, East Jerusalem. So you take that and then the only thing I'd add is the raid, you know, this is, this kind of came to a boil during Ramadan. So it's also like the most holy month for Muslims.

And then they're at, you know, at one of the principal holy sites of Islam. And so obviously that's going to be provocative. The other thing I'd say is, you know, Hamas, who are a bunch of assholes, a bunch of terrorists, you know, they want this to blow up. And so they're probably watching this and thinking, well, nothing will kind of set the world on fire than if there is some, God forbid, awful event that, you know, damages one of the holy sites that escalates this thing. Hamas, you know, it's like a parasite. that exist on conflict, right? And so I, but I think it's, you know, as we condemn Hamas, that's not representative of what every Palestinian thinks or how every Palestinian wants to address these issues. That is, you know, they're extremists, you know,

that are fueling each other on both sides of this conflict in the sense that you have, you know, we can't avert our eyes from, you know, what we saw in terms of pretty bright-wing groups of Israeli Jews, kind of chanting and singing, you know, pretty, pretty stark songs and slogans about essentially expelling Palestinians. And then you obviously have Hamas that wants there to be conflict because that brings them to the fore. And so what you worry about is, first of all, the human cost on both the Israeli and Palestinian side here as rockets are fired and discriminately into places like

Tel Aviv. But as we know, the Israeli response tends to be overwhelming and tends to kill a lot of civilians in Gaza, which has already, you know, been blockaded, already suffering a COVID outbreak and they can't get vaccines. So the, you know, the humanitarian piece is front and center, but then also the risk of this thing really escalating. And I think it shows that we talked a bit about this, like, I understand the mentality of the Biden administration kind of wanting to not have their foreign policy dominated by a, you know, futile pursuit of Middle East peace. this is a kind of reminder. It's hard to put this issue into the second tier bucket, you know, because it has a way of rearing up, you know.

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's a reminder that like you're the most powerful man or woman in the world when you're president and you don't have control over what happens around the world and events you're going to have to deal with. Yeah. And like, to your point, you know, like Hamas is a bunch of terrorists. They're monsters. They're arsonists. But also that's true. And we'll talk about the reasons why later that. the average Palestinian doesn't really have a government that's doing anything for them right now.

They are even more feckless than usual, and we'll get into that. So let's talk about Biden's response. And I think maybe we should divide it into two different buckets, which is to say, like, before the Hamas rocket attack and after the Hamas rocket attack, because that's obviously an enormous escalation. So before the Hamas rocket attack, the State Department had expressed concern about the confrontation, and they called on both sides to de-escalate the situation. And they also, the State Department spokesman, expressed concern about the evictions that we just discussed and said it's critical to, quote, avoid steps that exacerbate tensions like evictions like settlement activity.

What I think a lot of people found frustrating about that statement was that it glosses over the fact that these are state-sponsored, state-sanctioned evictions, and it ignores this broader power dynamic between the Israelis and the Palestinians. in the way the U.S. frankly, greatly contributes to that imbalance by giving Israel billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic support and cover. And then, you know, post-Hamas, right after that first barrage of rockets from Hamas, which is a terrorist act, which, you know, effort to indiscriminately kill civilians. I think one of the rockets hit a school, which, thank God, was empty. And a lot of the other rockets were intercepted by the Iron Dome system. The State Department condemned the rocket attack. They urged the escalation on all sides. recognized Israel's right to defend itself. And when Ned Price, the State Department spokesman,

was pressed on whether this right to self-defense included Israel's retaliatory strike on Gaza, which reportedly killed 26 Palestinians, including nine children. He says self-defense often does authorize a use of force. So, you know, Ben, I don't think we've seen more comments about this latest round of attacks. I think I saw something like that Biden had sent a letter to President Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority. I'm not sure what he, is going to be able to do here in actuality. So just like a few thoughts. Like I think Biden will probably be pressed on whether these initial Israeli airstrikes were proportionate. And I think that's a fair question to ask. Again, the good news is that the Iron Dome missile defense system intercepted a lot of

these rockets. It's worth noting that that system was funded by the Obama administration and President Obama himself and above and beyond the money the U.S. normally gives to the Israeli military. And, you know, like to state the obvious, the Trump, Jared Kushner, Abraham Accords, did absolutely nothing to facilitate peace talks or create peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians, which has been at the heart of the conflict. So I was curious what you made of Biden's response so far, and what else you think he could or should be doing? Yeah. Well, you know, first of all, there's something I've said about this before that I was thinking as I was watching, Ned, you know, who's obviously a friend, struggle up there to deal with this. The talking points on this issue

are kind of outdated in the U.S. Because there's been like a set of talking points, and you know it, you've used them, Tommy, right? There's been a set of talking points for like two decades. You know, we supported two-state solution. And then the talking points kind of assume equal agency among Israelis and Palestinians. And this is, again, what I think the State Department press score was cleverly pressing net on, which is, you know, it's always both sides need to deescalate, both sides need to do X and Y and Z, when in fact the power dynamic is shifted so overwhelmingly over the last 10, 20 years that the Palestinians have like very little agency. And also the talking points don't kind of, they deal with events as they occur, but they

they don't seem to take into account the kind of structural momentum behind the settlements and the displacement of Palestinians and the kind of just degradation of Palestinian self-determination. And so they just feel like they don't fit anymore, you know? And so I think part of this is like just finding a language where you're just describing, honestly, what is occurring, you know? And it doesn't feel like you're using, you know, decade old or two decade old, in some cases, talking points about a peace process or a two-state solution or both sides need to de-escalate that feel disconnected from the reality on the ground.

I think there are other kind of practical things that I think the Biden team needs to take into account here. They've been slow to announce kind of a, you know, who's their ambassador to Israel, who's their representative to the Palestinians, which Trump essentially got rid of. but the idea that we used to have consul general in Jerusalem, that kind of was a diplomatic representation to the Palestinians. As much as a peace process is not going to lead to two-state solution, there's clearly not much in a way of dialogue happening here

between the U.S. and Israel and the Palestinians. So even short of like a two-state solution peace process, just the United States being able to be more engaged diplomatically to de-escalate situations, we had to intervene a couple times diplomatically to kind of broker ceasefires on previous wars in Gaza. That comes to mind. The question of Gaza itself and, you know, who's going to rebuild Gaza? It's going to be flattened yet again. It's already humanitarian catastrophe. There are always, you know, challenges getting assistance in because you don't

want to give assistance to Hamas. But like, if there's any humanitarian concern here, it has to be addressed. And then, yeah, you mentioned, I'm glad you mentioned Iron Dome, but there's, I'm proud when I watch, you know, the Iron Dome system save Israeli lives, there are certain kinds of aid to Israel that is essential. It's imperative. And this is one case of it. But there's this bigger question we've raised here of just how does the United States think about what is our policy on the Palestinian issue? And if this just continues on the path that it's on, what mechanisms do we have to kind of

press the Israelis to actually recognize Palestinian rights, you know, if we're kind of removing our assistance entirely from that conversation. And the last thing I'd say, I know I've covered a lot here, but this idea, there was a letter to Abbas, and the report suggests that, you know, Biden kind of urged Abbas to de-escalate. I mean, Mahmoud Abbas does not control Hamas. He's not firing rockets. He, the Palestinian Authority, in part of its own kind of corruption and degradation as well as the fact that's been starved with assistance. Like they can't do this, right? And so it's almost like the talking points are out to date. Like, you know, the letter to a boss is not going to end the conflict here. So they just

need a new paradigm to deal with this or else this is just going to keep happening, you know? Yeah. I mean, look, I don't think like you or in any way like trying to defend a boss here. It's like an efficacy question. Yeah. Yeah. What's a point of sending a letter to a guy who can't stop the party that's actually firing these rockets? Or what's the point of setting a letter to a guy who doesn't really have a lot of sway over a young person protesting on the street who's upset that one of the holiest sites they revere was taken over by Israeli police forces? And they're now mad about it. I'm just not sure who the audience for that letter really is. And here's my core point, Tommy, on all this stuff. And it's been such, you know, this is so contentious.

We try to talk as honestly and candidly as we can as people have been in government, as people who care about this. The thing that I continue to come back to again and again is what is going to be done about the Palestinians. They are human beings who live there. Like the Israeli government's stated policy is to not allow them to have a state. Their own leadership is kind of collapsed, the Palestinian Authority. Hamas is an extremist terrorist.

faction in Gaza. But there are millions of Palestinians who live, you know, in the area controlled by Israel. And we've yet to hear from Israel or from the U.S. government, like what, in the absence of a two-state solution, like what is our policy, you know? And so that's going to lead a lot of people, and you hear Rula say this, and you hear people like Peter Bynart say this. A lot of people are just going to start advocating a one-state solution in which Palestinians have equal rights, which obviously Israel rejects that policy too. But, you know, people used to dunk on me and us about warning that, you know, moving the embassy to Jerusalem or the Abraham Accords was going to create more problems ultimately because, like, the whole world didn't blow up right at once. But I think the point is that the Palestinians are going to get increasingly desperate and are increasingly, you know, being essentially marginalized in some cases dehumanized.

and what, you know, the Abraham Accords was this kind of normalization agreement with, with the Emirates at the center of it. It didn't solve anything. There's no peace because of it. There's no, I mean, it solved the problem of, yes, more governments recognize Israel, and that's important. But it didn't on the Palestinian issue, which is what we used to talk about when we talked about Middle East peace. It's just sitting there. And people need to come up with different ways of talking about it and acting on it. Yeah, I mean, the Trump people try to do a bait and swished where they talked about peace in the Middle East as if that meant, you know, a reproachment between Israel and Morocco or Sudan.

When everyone knows what we're talking about is Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I mean, also, but in the background of all of this is just continued political instability, right? Because you have, you've had four elections since 2019. Prime Minister Netanyahu, again was unable to build a coalition in form of government. So now his rivals are giving it a try. if they fail, Israel will have its fifth election. But right now, that means you have, you know, a country, a people that's sort of in this political no man's land. And, you know, Prime Minister Bibi Nanjahou is primarily focused on how to keep himself from getting prosecuted. So you always

have to sort of wonder what's in the back of his mind with every security-based decision that he makes. The Palestinian Authority is also a complete mess, right? They just delayed indefinitely parliamentary elections that were supposed to happen in May. President Abbas said that delay was because Israel refused to allow voting in East Jerusalem. So again, these structural problems just bubble back up. But, you know, the Palestinians haven't voted since 2006. So, you know, like neither side is being particularly well served by elected leaders or the political process right now. And it's just, who knows how like this recent set of events, like, well, one, we're in the middle of it, right? so we don't know how this will end if there'll be a ceasefire hopefully soon, but also you don't know

what forces will be emboldened on either side politically. And, you know, we're seeing Hamas assert itself now through terrorism. You're also seeing, and I'm not equating the two, I'm just pointing out things we're seeing. You're also seeing like really hard line right-wing settler groups becoming increasingly emboldened and aggressive in ways that are exacerbating problems and not de-escalating anything. For all the calls for de-escalation, we've seen zero de-escalation in the past few weeks. Yeah. And you're right to point to the political context, which we've talked about in Israel, which is there's kind of a vacuum, right? And part of what happens in a vacuum, particularly when you're trying to form coalitions is sometimes the loudest voices or the more

extreme voices feel like they have more running room, right? Because there is a political vacuum or because they think political leaders will need to court their support to form a coalition. And so this does feel tied to this kind of quicksand of Israeli politics. But I think more broadly, again, just to frame this for people, like, in the main, what are the three ways this could play, right? There's a two-state solution, which feels like basically almost impossible at this point. And so the people like, you know, who think that's the best option. And I do, too, like need new answers to how you're going to get there. or you certainly need a different change in Israel and among the Palestinian leadership to get there.

Then the second option is this, I think what you're going to hear more and more of from the left in the Palestinian territories, in Israel itself, and in the United States, you know, the kind of Peter Barnard idea and others of like, okay, this is, you know, all one state, but the Palestinians deserve equal rights. And the Israelis will say, well, that's an effort, you know, to kind of a Trojan horse effort. But that, you know, that's a second option. And then the third is really just the Palestinians are pushed out of the land and, you know, go to other Arab countries. And which is, you know, against international law and obviously potential huge humanitarian concerns. There's not another, there's not another option, you know.

And so I just think it's incumbent on everybody to realize that's what's in front of us here. They're increasing voices on the Israeli right who are not shying away from saying, therefore, for the last option I said. This is our land. You know, the Palestinians need to get out. If you, and the Israeli voices and American voices who don't like the binational state idea are going to have to figure out a different way to approach the pursuit of two-state solution because there's no other way that this ends. Yeah, agreed. Well, I'm really glad you talked to Rula because I do think it's important to hear more Palestinian voices on this. So everyone should stick around from that. And I want to say real quick on that because, again, she was very, you know,

like she reflects, I think, the emotion the Palestinians feel now. I understand how hard it is for Israelis. You know, I have friends in Tel Aviv. I feel like horrible watching those rockets and just how terrifying it must be. So I want people to know, like we tend to focus on Israel because they're the more powerful actor here. But that in no way diminishes our sympathy for what Israelis are going through themselves. I think it speaks to the human tragedy of all this on both. both sides. The one thing is, the one thing that absolutely is the both sides issue is that

Israelis and Palestinians have suffered. Again, I do think, though, when you have an asymmetry of power that is this great, it's impossible not to focus on what the more powerful actor is doing. And in this case, the Israeli government has not been trying to address these issues. They've been pushing the envelope. Yeah. And look, I think in these conversations, it's just important to remember that, like, when we talk about U.S. political leaders, we're not condemning a country. you're criticizing decisions made by elected officials, their judgment, et cetera. Like, that's what's happening here. Like criticizing Bibi Nat and Yahoo is not criticizing the Jewish people or the entire,

or Zionism or the state of Israel. It's terrible policies made by a racist, corrupt man over time that have made problems worse, not better. And keep in mind that when you see those videos of kind of pretty right-wing, if not, you know, full-on extremist Jewish Israelis, kind of chanting at the Western Wall and kind of chasing Palestinians, they don't represent all Israelis. But that also means that Hamas doesn't represent all Palestinians. You know, so you know, you have to remember that for all people, right? That you can't, because often I think the Palestinians get tarred with the kind of worst factions,

right? That's not true of either the Jewish people, the Jewish-Israeli people, or certainly the Palestinians either, whether they're Muslim or Christian or whatever. Okay, let's turn to this pipeline ransom attack that happened in the U.S. So on Sunday there was a cyber attack on one of the largest gasoline and jet fuel pipelines in the country that forced it to be temporarily shut down for several days, including, I believe, like, as we speak and record right now. And, you know, you're starting to see like small increases in gas prices and some of these southeastern states was having an economic impact. The FBI said that this attack was carried out by an organized crime group called Darkside. and that it was a ransomware attack. We don't have all the details, but usually that means like some entity, some hackers.

Take control of your systems. Maybe they encrypt a bunch of your data. They threaten to delete your data unless you pay them a ransom. Colonial Pipeline, this company said they had shut down 5,500 miles of pipeline, which carries 45% of the East Coast fuel supplies. So it's a big deal. Ben, I've seen security experts saying that, you know, this group Darkside is based in Russia and that it couldn't operate without at least tacit approval from the United States.

the Russian government. I'm sure we'll learn more about that over time. I just saw a headline from CNN where U.S. cybersecurity officials expressed frustration at how shitty the pipeline operator's network security was. So, you know, this feels sort of very familiar, frankly. So the whole debate is upbing the urgency and pressure on Biden to put in place some sort of executive order or policy that strengthens the government cybersecurity defenses. We talked about like, I can't even, I've lost count of the number of major hacks we've talked about on the show, including the recent Solar Winds hack, which also originated in Russia.

But it's hard for me to get my mind around how you formulate a policy that deals with the whole federal government, finds all the critical infrastructure like this pipeline that I'd never heard of until Sunday and then actually get them to implement better policies. I mean, you were in the White House four years longer than I was. Do you have any sense of like what the conversations might be like about how to solve this or what needs to be?

be accomplished. Well, the two things that jumped out to me when this happened. The first is, like you said, look, we don't know for sure what Russian involvement there was, but what I couldn't help but thinking is this feels like something the Russians might have something to do with, you know, and what it made me think is we're just kind of in this new world where there's kind of a low-grade war, you know, that's happening. You know, we sanctioned the Russians, you know, who knows what we're doing in the cyberspace. There were some news reports that, you know, we might have had some offensive cyber operations. Again, we don't know that, but that was reported. The Russians respond in ways that, you know, are pretty sensitive. Solar winds disrupted government systems or stole the information.

Even if this wasn't the Russians, it did just kind of, to me, kind of call to mind, like, this is the new normal, this kind of constant hacking and vulnerability and back and forth and back and forth with nation states like Russian China or back and forth with, you know, shadowy cyber criminals. Then in terms of what do you do about it, I mean, like part of the issue here is that a member when this, you know, began to come up in the Obama administration, there's no solution in which the government isn't working with the private sector. And all the policy solutions are basically around. What are we desigating as quote-unquote critical infrastructure? And what that does is allow you to set certain standards for how effective the cyber defenses are, what information is

shared back and forth with the government. That sometimes makes the private sector, you know, get their antenna up because they don't want to be, you know, held to costly standards or they don't want to share information maybe. But there's just no other solution than some harmonization and standardization, which again, we start in the bomb years. I'm sure they continued in the Trump years, the pieces of the government that just operate. But, you know, part of what it reminds you of is what we think of as critical infrastructure is a kind of a growing definition too, right? Because, you know, a pipeline seems like it is, right? What about the cloud? Where all the data is. I mean, and so I think we're moving in a direction where there's just going to have to be a greater

harmonization of standards and greater, ever greater collaboration between government and the private sector on this stuff. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. Quick update out of Rio. So late last week, police in Rio de Janeiro launched this raid on a favela near, near the city near Rio that killed at least 28 people and wounded many others. For listeners who don't know, a favela is like, it's an informal settlement. It's sort of on the outskirts of these cities. The residents are often impoverished. They often live in structures that are built with like temporary materials. They're basically, you know, poor, ignored neighborhoods by the, ignored by the government. So the police said they were looking for drug traffickers, but the residents said the police were basically executing unarmed people.

Brazil's Supreme Court had ordered that the police limit these kinds of operations during the pandemic, but obviously that didn't happen here. Experts told the intercept, which did a lot of good reporting on this, that it was a revenge operation. So a cop was killed, and the police raided this favela to just, you know, get revenge. But I just wanted to raise this because, you know, we've talked so much about police violence over the last year. And because the videos and images out of this raid were just horrifying, they destroyed, you know, the lives of innocent residents. But, you know, this kind of culture of impunity for police to just murder, poor, often black and brown resilience is kind of par for the course under Bolsonaro. And I think, you know, it's up in the international community is going to need to focus on.

Yeah, well, I think it shows the kind of global. globalization of these police violence questions. And that means that the responses, the policy responses should be globalized. Like if we're, we should learn from other countries and they should learn from us if we're able to address some of it, which we have a lot of work to do. I think the other thing is, you know, having, you know, having, I remember going to one of these favelas, you know, they're over. Yeah, with Obama, there, there, you know, tens of thousands of people. So this is not just some small pocket in some cases. And overwhelmingly black. And there's a, you know, there's a large Afro-Brazil.

population and just think, how often do you see black political leaders from Brazil, right? There's a huge representation issue, a kind of racial justice issue that goes, that kind of bubbles underneath the surface in Brazil. So not unlike here, you know, there's very similar structural issues around both police violence and also just kind of a lack of political power vested in the Afro-Brazilian population. Yeah, no, I totally agree with that. and well said. So Ben, let's sort of conclude with some quicker updates on stories we've covered before. So one is just an update on Alexei Navalny, the Russian anti-corruption activist and opposition leader. So Amnesty International announced that they had reversed a decision that they'd taken earlier

this year where they decided to stop calling Alexei Navalny a prisoner of conscience, and they also apologize to him for revoking his prisoner of conscience status. Amnesty had resented that designation because of past statements. that Navalny had made that were discriminatory or could be perceived as inciting violence. Navalny is currently serving out a prison term in a Russian penal colony. Second, there were reports that yet another doctor who had treated Navalny when he was poisoned last year had gone missing. This doctor had been on a hunting trip in Siberia, as one does in Russia.

He disappeared on his ATV. He didn't return for a couple days. The good news is that this guy has been found alive and he's getting treated in a hospital. but two other doctors who treated Navalny have died since that time. So there were fears that these guys were being murdered. Ben, you know, I mean, good news about this doctor. I guess I want to know what you made of this reversal by amnesty because, you know, I remember when we talked about it at the time, it seemed like sort of an inexplicable

decision to revoke his prisoner of conscience status as he was sitting in a jail. Well, yeah, I mean, it's a welcome decision. It was absurd that this guy was on the death's doorstep. and if you see the images of him clearly suffering greatly for his beliefs. And if that doesn't, you know, amount to being a prisoner of conscience, I don't know what does. You know, the couple of the things that came to my mind, you know, first is like this was about stuff that Navalny said, in some cases, 20 years ago. But the reality is when you're in such an extreme situation, you know, I don't agree. You know, Navalny is a bit of a nationalist, right? But like I, I,

we're in an emergency here. I mean, the extremity of Putin killing people in other countries, potentially killing doctors who know the truth about Navalny. They've been smashing his organization, rounding people up. This is really extreme stuff. I mean, this is a degree of authoritarianism that is dialed up from, you know, certainly what we would have seen even like a decade ago in Russia. And we just got to circle wagons here. And Alexei Navalny is for democracy. He's a He's for political freedoms. He's for free speech and anti-corruption. Like, there's enough common ground where, you know, we have to have a big tent over people

that are trying to stand up for those basic universal values. And it reminded me this thing Navalny said to me, and it's in the book where I kind of let Navalny speak at length in this book, but he would get frustrated with the way in which some of the criticism of him would basically be turbocharged by Russian disinformation. And that's what happened in this case. is like the Russian disinformation machine kicked into gear to try to affect the amnesty decision. But Navalny even, he kind of jokes with me in this very dark humor in the book of like, there are even people on the left who say, well, you know, if Navalny was really against Putin,

they would have killed him by now, so he must be like a double agent. And then there was a whole Russian disinformation campaign to call him a double agent. And it's like, no, guys, he is what he appears to be a man who's risking his life because of the things he believes in. Let's support him, full stop. Yeah. Another update here. So we covered the case of a retired Navy SEAL named Eddie Gallagher on the show a couple of times. So Eddie Gallagher was arrested in 2018 and he faced formal charges in a court martial proceeding that included a bunch of charges, but there was attempted murder and premeditated murder. And he faced the possibility of life in prison. In March of 2019, Trump first intervened in his case and he ordered Eddie Gallagher to be moved to less restrictive confinement as he awaited trial, which, you know, was, sort of a surprising interference by the President of the United States. And then in June, Gallagher was acquitted on all of the charges, all the most serious charges, after another member of his SEAL team testified after getting an immunity agreement that this guy and not Gallagher had murdered this

alleged member of ISIS that they had taken captive. So Gallagher's legal team had links to Trump. After the verdict, Trump congratulated Gallagher on Twitter, made it sort of a big cause in the right wing. And then when the Navy tried to demote Eddie Gallagher and take away his Navy SEAL Trident, which is this like symbol of seal team status, Trump intervened again to restore Gallagher's rank. So Ben, the update is during a recent podcast interview, Gallagher said, quote, we killed that guy. Our intention was to kill him. Everybody was on board, end quote. He also made it sound like he tortured the captive that they murdered. So I know, great work, President Trump.

great work to the Eddie Gallagher defenders. Great work, 60 Minutes, which did this ridiculous puff piece on Eddie Gallagher back in 2020. You all had the back of a guy who now admits that he tortured and murdered a captive. And Fox News, you should say, you know, Fox and Friends and all this stuff that probably was symbiotic with Trump's decision making. And again, it's like, you know, there's nothing more fundamental to the rule of law and to to being a, you know, a superpower, then whether or not there's any standards for, you know, the people you deploy in combat. And the thing that's so important about the story is that the

reason Eddie Gallagher is popular on the right is because he killed somebody. I mean, they're not suggesting he, you know, him coming out and just saying it kind of confirms what's been pretty clear all along, which is it was less about defending his innocence and more about just defending the idea that an AVC. should be able to kill a captive with impunity, you know? Yeah. And that's a truly chilling thing because once you remove that line, you know, there's no real rule of law anymore that is governing the use of violence by the, by the American military.

And that's why, to their credit, the American military, there were the ones that wanted to prosecute Andy Gallagher, you know? They're the ones, Navy SEALs, his fellow Navy SEALs are the ones that came forward, because they know that those rules protect them, because if there's not international rules about how POWs are treated, like it ends up hitting American troops here. So, you know, this is, this is not, I mean, this is kind of a time capsule story of where the American right has gone, that here we are. And they're actually basically defending the guy, not just defending, celebrating him, making kind of a figure on the American right because of what he did.

Yeah. I mean, there was talk of him potentially joining Trump on the campaign trail, all these weird things. I mean, yeah, the U.S. military, they're against committing war crimes. in large part, because what you just said, which they don't want them committed back against them. We also want to have some sort of moral authority in the wars we fight, which brings me to Afghanistan where over the weekend, 85 people were killed and at least 147 people were wounded in an attack by Islamic militants in Afghanistan. This attack was in a Shia minority neighborhood, and it targeted young girls, little girls, as they left school.

Most of the dead are children, girls between, I think, 11 and 15 years old. Afghan authorities think that either ISIS or the Taliban were behind this attack. The Taliban denied involvement. Obviously, we don't trust them. But this like completely barbaric act has exacerbated fears that Taliban attacks will increase when U.S. troops fully depart later this year, although I think it's worth pointing out that this was not even close to the first time that the Taliban have attacked either an elementary school or a hospital or, you know, a place where children are. and they frequently target minority groups like Hazaras and Shia as well as women who are seeking education or sort of, you know, otherwise not following their completely backwards ways. So this was just truly horrific incident that, you know, look, I still think it's time for the U.S. to withdraw from Afghanistan, but we all have to be aware that, you know, that the Taliban are still there. They have not been defang. There's no peace agreement. There's a lot of diplomatic work that has to be done before this is a safe place. to live. Yeah. And look, we talked about the diplomatic work. There are going to be these risks.

Here's the one thing I'd say, Tommy, which is, in addition to this, there's this kind of ongoing campaign of assassination, targeting all the people that, you know, stood up for civil society or certain kind of governance or an Afghanistan that, you know, embraces certain human rights. The Biden team, it's hard, I know, but there has to be an open door. Yeah, we got to get them out of there. We got to get them, you know, if there's an Afghan who is threatened, because even in the best case scenario where there's some peace deal, people are still getting assassinated, people are being targeted because they worked with us or because they stood up to support the values that we talked about whenever we talked about Afghanistan, those people should be able to come here. And the same way that South Vietnamese came here, like at the end of the Vietnam War, it's politically hard to let in a whole bunch of refugees. It's logistically hard. I don't care. Like, there's a moral obligation that the United States has. has as part of ending its involvement in this war to open the door to the Afghans who worked with us or the Afghans who stood up for the things that we said we believed in. Yeah, agreed. Very, very, very important story for the Biden team. While we're talking about Joe Biden,

let's give him some credit because last week, President Biden agreed to waive international patent protections for COVID vaccines. We've talked about this many times, but this could allow manufacturers in places like India, South Africa, Bangladesh to manufacture their own vaccine doses so that they don't have to rely on exports from other countries. Obviously, you've seen countries like the U.S. or, you know, EU countries really tell companies that all their manufacturing, all the doses they're making have to go to people in those countries. Pharma is very upset about the decision. German Chancellor Angela Merkel also disagrees with Biden's decision, and she argues it's going to have severe complications that it doesn't address

the real manufacturing issues and that it will harm innovation. I doubt it's a coincidence that Biontech, the company that developed one of the vaccines with Pfizer is based in Germany, so some self-interest there. But the rest of the world seems to think this is a very important long-term play to help the world develop enough COVID vaccines and treatments to cure, or, you know, get us to global herd immunity, I guess. Unfortunately, it's not going to do anything to help near-term supply shortages or acute outbreaks in places like India.

But I think President Biden, Ron Clayne, that whole White House team, deserve a lot of credit for doing the right thing here because I think one thing I know is that the lobbying from drug companies was probably massive in the Chamber of Commerce and all these business entities were just going full ham on them. So credits of the Biden team for doing the right thing. I think they deserve a lot of credit because, you know, I'm sure there was intense pressure from the other direction, but also because politically, right, you know, they probably could have put their head down and, you know, just counted on the fact. that most Americans, you know, we're not going to mobilize around pressuring them to do this.

I do think it's important that there was a very vocal progressive, and not just progressive, a coalition of people calling for this, which I think, you know, probably made a difference. And so people should feel good that they made a difference in raising their voices. It's still very complicated in just how this goes down. Yeah. I don't claim to. Yeah. I don't claim to understand.

the intricacies of this, but the basic principle, which we've talked about, which is that, yes, while for the purpose of innovation and national security, there are going to be sometimes limits on how you share this kind of intellectual property or what have you. Like, this is a global pandemic. We haven't had one in 100 years. If you can make an exception in that circumstances, like, come on. You know, so they did the right thing. There's a lot of hurdles to jump over. They've got good people in place. Obviously, the NIH people know this and, you know, Gail Smith and Sam Power from the assistant side. And, and hopefully we can, you know, get this out there because people have to recognize, like, we're coming out of this. We have, you know, you and I are vaccinated,

have this kind of feeling of turning a corner. Most of the world is nowhere near that. So even though it won't solve near-term problems like India challenges or tragedies like India, you know, it's going to make a huge difference potentially over the next year or two about how many people die and how fast the world can come out of this and how much we can prevent new variants from emerging. Yeah, I mean, look, the self-interested reasons are we don't want new variants to come back to the U.S. and start re-infecting people. We want the global economy to rev back up and that won't happen if countries are just getting sick constantly. And you're right. I mean, look, this patent waiver is a piece of the puzzle. It will also, the broader puzzle involves the U.S. giving doses to

entities like Kovacs, which are trying to get the developing world vaccinated, just giving giving away, you know, paying for doses, paying for treatments, being part of a global effort to just ramp up production. It's in all of the above thing, you know, giving some of these AstraZeneca doses, hopefully as soon as humanly possible to countries that really need them. But this is a very good step. And again, credit to President Biden. Yep, absolutely. Last thing, Ben, before we get to your conversation with Rule of Gibreal, I just wanted to read a tweet I just saw, which is that Vladimir Putin scored an amazing eight goals today

to lead his hockey team to a 13 to 9 victory. Everyone should check out the highlights on Russian TV. If you want to see like literally guys diving away from Putin and playing the worst defense that they possibly can as if their lives depended on it because, you know, as this Twitter account points out, it probably did. You don't want to fuck with him and his propaganda. So here we are.

I mean, again, the bottomless knee-year. for self-aggrandizement that leads to this occasional hockey demonstration is, you know, that's the, that's all you need to know by Putin's psychology, that this man, even though he's like, you know, probably the richest man in the world because of the money stolen and one of the most powerful needs to go out every now and then and score like eight goals. But Tommy, it made me think like watching the video, like, how'd you like to be the goalie? Yeah, yeah. Because you must be terrified that like by mistake, you're going to stop his shot. You know, like he might dribble like some slow thing and you try to get out of the way and you slip and you block it. You know, I mean,

it's tough being the goalie, you know, facing up to Putin because you're just weirdly terrified that you're going to reflexively do what you do as a goalie and block the puck, you know? Yeah. And like basically, I think the goleys are like trying to avoid the puck. So it's not like he's like picking, picking corners and going like on the upper deck. Also, have you ever seen the video where Putin is like skating around the rink after one of these stupid events? And he's like holding up a trophy and he doesn't notice that someone had rolled out a red carpet or something and he's eat shit. Yeah.

It is. I just feared for everyone's life. I could barely even laugh at it. Okay. When we come back, we'll have Ben's interview with Palestinian journalists and author Rula Gibral, so stick around for that. So I'm very glad to welcome back to the podcast, my friend Rula Gibriel, who's a journalist, foreign policy analyst and the author of several books, including Mural.

Thanks so much, Rula, for coming back on the show. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. So, Rula, obviously, we're taping this as situation is escalating in Gaza and Israel. But I thought that what might be most useful, you know, you're from East Jerusalem. You've looked at these issues personally and professionally for decades now. And I want to kind of walk people through how we got here. So I thought, you know, we obviously had the expulsions of Palestinians in the East Jerusalem

neighborhood of Sheikh Jara, the police raids on the auks, mosque and then the rocket fire by Hamas in the Israeli government's response. But I want to break those apart and just begin, you know, explain to listeners what happened in Sheikh Jara with these potential expulsions and these Israeli settlers. And why was that provocative, both in terms of the action being taken and the timing of the action? So I grew up in East Jerusalem. I grew up actually in the old city of Yerusalem, but my school was in Sheikh Jara. It's called Darifal, and it's next to all these houses where people are being basically forced to leave, evicted. And we've seen this in Jerusalem.

Since 1967, there was a project, and the project was to change the demographic makeup of East Jerusalem, basically force people through deportation, eviction, expulsion, taking away the residency from people, never giving them permit to build, basically squeeze them, choke them, until they are forced either to leave or unleash these hordes, mobs of extremists so they can terrorize people all of my life. I left Jerusalem when I was 20 years old then. My father worked in Al-Aksa Mosque for 30 years. He was the groundkeeper. He basically built the gardens together with the people later on in life. He led the prayer early in the morning. His biggest fear and something that he lived in his life when I was a child. In 1984, there was a plot of these extremists. They placed

five bombs all over the holy sites and in various buses. Actually, the head of the Shimbab, the security services of Israel, said that we came so close to blow up those holy sites. They were arrested all of these terrorists, and then later on they were pardoned. So it was like slap on the wrist, nothing, no accountability. And from that moment, moment on, we've seen these extremist elements who conducted terrorist attacks all over the country in Jerusalem, in the West Bank. The Kahanis movement are now so mainstream. They're sitting in parliament. They're actually proposing legislation how to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. They're calling for a holy war. They're marching in the city of Jerusalem, especially in

neighborhood, the Muslim neighborhood, the Armenian neighborhood. They did two marches, one, I think two, three days before the escalation in Gaza and the bombing of Gaza, where they were calling to kill Arabs, Palestinians. The deputy mayor of Jerusalem was standing there and pointing at one activist said, we should shoot you in the head. He's on camera, on video. In the same time, we have on video, many of these extremists trying to take the homes. Many of them are American citizens who are telling a woman, Palestinian Native woman who lived there all of her life, whose family was basically forced to exile from Haifa, came to East Jerusalem, they took half of her home, they're about to take the other half, and he was telling her on camera,

if I don't steal it, somebody else will steal it. And we have, we've moved of extremists. This is what Zionism has done to Judaism. They weaponized a religion. and in the name of ethnic national purity and exclusion, they're building this kind of project where Jerusalem can be only for one group and one group only. So you have these, as you said, in probably the most provocative place possible, East Jerusalem, these efforts to have settlers literally expel

and take the homes of Palestinians. Obviously, that has raised a certain amount of tensions. Then you had the police raise, on the Al-Axam mosque. And again, if you could explain to people kind of what you saw when you witness those police raids and, you know, explain to people the context of it being Ramadan, why that, you know, was such a particularly sensitive thing to do, both in terms of where these raids took place, what they looked like and the timing of them.

So you have the holiest months of Ramadan, which during this month in the city of Jerusalem, you ever visited or you are a resident or basically it's a holy month where people gather and pray and eat together in the city of Jerusalem. Even the Christian of Jerusalem who are Palestinians, they usually host each other and they celebrate each other. Exactly like we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate our holidays. So you have a community of people coming from all over the country to pray together, to be together, to live together. And in those moments, imagine if during Russia Shana or during any Jewish holiday or even, let's say, in Christmas, people would invade churches and start screaming at people and harassing them, bullying them. So you have the state

police and troopers basically throwing grenades and gassing people, worshippers, while they were praying. They went to the Axel mosque officials. They took the keys. They confiscated the They are planning to act to expel the authorities have been in charge of the mosque for decades. And it's pure provocation. They basically are itching. And I know that many people think that BB is manufacturing this crisis to distract from his political failures and his legal issues. But this is a bigger issue because we have these extremists who are mainstream. They are basically now the main voice of Israel politics in parliament.

in the judiciary system, in the Supreme Court, and many of these judges in the Supreme Court, they actually live in settlements. They live in illegal settlements in the occupied territories. Then you have the head of the police and the head of Shabak, the head of Shibbe. Many of them are religious. So you have this infiltration. And I think if you can, if I can give an analogy, look at Trumpism in America. What is Trumpism? It's an anti-democratic movement in the United States that wage a war in democracy. was willing to carry an attack, a terrorist attack against Congress on January 6 to undermine voters. If you think that we rejected that in the United States, however, our foreign policy is still enabling that kind of politics elsewhere. This is what we're seeing, our support to the Israeli

politicians to Israel itself for years and years and shielding them from any kind of criticism at international level has embolellan these extremists and now this monster is coming back to hunt us all. What's happening in Israel is undermining America's national security in front of the world. Imagine 1.8 billion Muslims watching the mosque burning while you're watching on the other side these extremist Jews dancing, celebrating,

calling for ethnic cleansing. You know this image that is circulating around the world? the impact of that is not, will not only fall in Israel. America is viewed as complicit. You cannot claim to pay $3.8 billion in military aid and say, well, I am neutral. You are not neutral. You are part of the equation. You're part of the problem.

So if you want to stand by Israel completely, then you lost any credibility when you go to Ukraine, when you go to Putin, when you go to China and say, well, you know, you shouldn't do that to the Uyghurs or you shouldn't do this to November. by the only because you don't have credibility. You cannot hold your main ally. You're the main benefactor of this ally. If you cannot hold them, if you kind of pressure them to abide by international law, then don't talk about democracy anymore because you don't really believe in democracy. Yeah. Well, I mean, and part of what is so frustrating, obviously, when you watch this play out, is you see the asymmetry and the strength between Israelis and Palestinians is obviously just

grown exponentially as time passed. And as you mentioned, you have kind of non-governmental. You know, settlers and other movements, you know, provoking. You have then the Israeli government, or the Israeli security services in the case of police, using pretty brute force. But then, obviously, the response that the world sees is then Hamas rockets, right? And how should the world look at this where, obviously, you know, you and I know people in Tel Aviv, like, it's heartbreaking to see rockets fired indiscriminately at civilians, I was going back and forth. The friend of mine saying, it's not like the Palestinians have agency over everything Hamas either.

How do you effectively sympathize with the predicament the Palestinians are in while kind of separating it out from the indiscriminate violence that Hamas uses each time to kind of establish its own stature? So Hamas is not only Israel nightmare. Palestinian don't want them either. to be clear. However, the protest that's been taking place inside Jerusalem, in the West Bank, inside Israel, in Haifa, the Galilee, Nazareth, in Imbil-Hiran, where Palestinians are living as second-class citizens, are segregated, discriminated against, they are evicted, they are

forcibly removed from all these areas. These areas, Hamas don't exist in those areas. So to blame Hamas only for the action of the last two, three days when we're looking at 70 years of brutalization of Jim Crow, of an ethnic religious supremacy that enshrine its ethnic in everything that is doing and backed by the United States with billions of dollars to basically erase the Palestinians. You're dehumanizing the Palestinians if you look at Hamas to justify everything that Israel is doing. And I find this really, really heartbreaking because Hamas control Gaza and when they do and operate within their Gaza territories and many and often people protest against Hamas. They've been protesting for months, for years against Hamas. But you cannot blame everything is doing from the ethnic cleansing. I mean, it's the superpower in the Middle East Israel. To blame it on one entity which is confined in one city is actually pure propaganda.

What Palestinians are demanding, whether from Haifa to Jerusalem to the West Bank, to the occupied territory, is to end apartheid, to give them freedom, to give them the possibility to breathe, to be, you know, to have a dignified life. I mean, my father is buried one block from the Oxa Mosque. Yesterday, they were gassing even the cemetery. I mean, people even under the ground cannot die in peace. They cannot live in peace. They cannot die in peace. When I see all of these kids who grew up in Sheikh Jarrah and they live in Jerusalem, all their life live in Jerusalem. And you have their family expelled from all of these cities. And you have these settler coming from the United States,

financed by Jewish organization here by billionaires who are telling them that that land belonged to them to go and basically, you know, partner with the police and steal that land and expel them. And then you see. Mark Gregev on television saying, well, we, you know, we have Jewish people expelled from Arab countries. We should expel those so they can go somewhere else. Where do you want them to go? To Lebanon, where they have refugees or to Syria, where there's a war zone, or to Libya another war zone, or to Iraq. I mean, it's absurd what's happening in the kind of conversation

we're having. Hamas is being used as a scarce career, period. Hamas, in a normal society, in a normal situation, Hamas would not be in power. It was clear anywhere political Islam came to power, people hated them and don't want them. But we cannot hide behind what Hamas is doing in the last two days to cancel 70 years of ethnic cleansing, apartheid. And the discourse in Israel is a genocidal one. And we need to stop looking the other way. We need to look at it because it's been done in the name of the Jewish people that are financing and enabling that, not only in Israel, but also in the United States. when you have Jewish organization attacking you for wanting to have a deal with Iran,

but then saying at the same time, well, we shouldn't, you know, interfere in Israel's affairs and Israel issues. You cannot have it both ways, my friends. You cannot say you're a pro-democracy in America, but we want fascism in Israel. You cannot say that I'm financing this there, and I want ethno-nationalism and supremacy there, but I don't want it in America. You cannot have it both ways. If you want to deal with Iran and peace deal with Iran,

the United States is entitled to have its peace deal with Iran without Israel deciding what the United States should do. But also the United States should condition its aid to how it's spent, especially if we profess to want, you know, and our goal is to have rule-based international order, then we have to put our mouth where we put our, our money. Otherwise, we look hypocrite and complicit. And so, you know, you're obviously, you know, I think people can sense obviously the frustration about the circumstance. Where do Palestinians look right now? Because, you know, 10, 20 years ago, the U.S. government

was probably seen as something more of a, maybe never a fully honest broker, but as more engaged. the Arab governments like, you know, the Emirates and others who recently concluded, you know, their own separate peace deals with Israel or normalization deals, we should call them. Or arms deal, we can't call them. Yeah, normalization and arms deals, you know, kind of no longer seem as invested in the Palestinian cause. You know, Hamas, as you said, is a faction with its own interest. Palestinian Authority has been kind of, you know, starved and, you know, and. And where does a Palestinian look? Yeah, and discredited.

You family members, who can help address this, you know? To democracy, to freedom. I mean, if I look at yesterday, it was the anniversary of Nelson Mandela's becoming the first black president of South Africa. It was yesterday. It was May 10th, 1994. It was the year I left Jerusalem. And Ben, if I look at history and the art of history is really long, but always bent toward justice, I don't know how long it will take before, you know, maybe my grand-grandchildren will be free as human being.

But if I look at it, Israel controls the whole land. It controls it from the river Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. Israel is in charge of the whole population. So at this point, exactly like I said, when I did my movie mural, It's one state reality. Israel was the first one to torpedo the two-state solution. Netanyahu many times said there will never be a Palestinian state. He even went as far as I say, you know, the 16-line border would be taking back Israel to Auschwitz.

Fine, my friend, take it. It's yours. You already took it. So give us equal rights. Let's have a binational democracy, a binational state where we all live. as equal human being. I don't want to look at Hamas or the Palestinian Authority or Bibby Netanyahu. I would like to look at the people of Palestine and Israel, young people, generation after generation who look at each other and they are sick of this conflict and they would

like to live in a different world. We're in the 21st century. The world of Bibi Natania and Donald Trump and Viktor Urban and Vladimir Putin, this is the past. We cannot continue to live in the past. If we want to live in the future, the future is what Americans did in this election, where you basically minorities managed to reject Trumpism and elect Joe Biden, and the mandate was to promote democracy, to defend democracy, and human rights, and international law. So where I look, I look at a younger generation, people from all walks of life, Christian, Jews, and Muslim together, inhabitants of the land, who actually can look back and look at the Declaration of Independence of Israel

that talked about equal rights for all citizens, for all inhabitants, regardless their race, ethnicity, gender, regardless, whatever. So if we look at the Declaration of Independence was written in 1948, only three years after the end of World War II, you can see that the founding father talked about democracy. So let's really revive the dream of democracy for everybody that lives in the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

We cannot have supremacists and extremists because these people go hand in hand. And with that kind of vision, for 70 years, we had war after war. If we want our children to be free, we need to all be free. Well, look, Rila, I think that's, you know, that's a powerful note to end on here.

You know, obviously this is, unfortunately, feels like it's going to be the cycle of escalation. and perhaps another full Gaza war. Is there anything you would leave people with who are going to be watching this for the next few weeks about what you're hearing from your family there, you know, to make sure that they have in mind

that they're human beings on the other side of these conflicts? You know, I lost members of my family in the past and I don't know if they will survive. Honestly, this conflict or the next or the next or the genocidal, you know, and marches in the streets of Haifa, the Galilee, even Tel Aviv, where even liberal Jews are threatened. What I can say is to the American people, in your name, the United States is sending billions of dollars to enable, protect, and defend a supremacist, ethno-religious project of exclusion and purity. If you don't want it here, you should impose on your representative never to want it and

exported anywhere else. Any anywhere else, if you don't want it in Florida, if you don't want it in New York, in California, or in Ohio, you don't want it in Israel because it's a threat to democracy. It's a threat to everybody. And this is all I can say to my American brothers and sisters. It's not because of Muslims or Jews or Christian. This is about human life. This is about all of us. This is about either you are on the side of democracy or you believe in authority. turns and we cannot have both things. Well, thanks so much, Rula, for joining us. And I'm sure we'll have you back at some point, but best to you and your family here.

Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Thanks again, Rula for joining the show. Thanks to all the world of listeners for buying Ben's book and for giving us that five-star singing review in the Apple app, if that's what you use. I don't know. What else? Spotify, whatever. Can you review in Spotify?

you know, I look at the iTunes reviews, Tommy. What I will say is, I do too. Like, you know, we have trolls, so please do review, give us five stars. Yeah. Because it's not like they're not the occasional trolls to pop up. I mean, what annoys to me, Tommy is like I have like, I was actually checking my, like, there's even bizarrely a bunch of book reviews for my book on like good reads and stuff. And I was reading because I genuinely am interested in.

And there's some pretty thoughtful ones. I guess people got their hands on an e-galley. because we gave some of those out. And then there's just always like some dudes who throw like zero star reviews on there with no comment, you know? That's what happens when you have trolls. So please do, if you can, smash that five-star button,

maybe at least the best. Yeah, please. We appreciate it. Counteract the trolls. My poor mother thought she could rate and review every episode and not just the show itself. And there's got in these endless fights, endless fights with Apple the first few months that Cricket Media exists. But we sorted it all out.

So help her out. Good. Pod Save the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our associate producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglan is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yilfried, Nar Malkonian and Milo Kim

who film and share our episodes as videos each week.