Pod Save the World - Democracy resurgent in Europe(?) and Israeli elections

Episode Date: April 3, 2019

First, Tommy and Ben discuss Trump's decision to cut off aid to central America, whether recent elections in Turkey and Slovakia mean that Democracy is resurgent in Europe, and the Algerian President's resignation. Then Khaled Elgindy joins to discuss protests in Gaza, the middle east peace process, Palestinian politics and the upcoming Israeli elections.

Welcome back to POTSave the world. This is Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben Rhodes is here in studio. As always, later on, you will hear my conversation with Khaled El Gindi. We talked about the upcoming Israeli elections, the ongoing protests weekly, really, in Gaza and frankly just about Palestinian politics. Ben and I have talked a lot about BB Netanyahu in Israeli politics. And it was really interesting and important, I think, to hear from a Palestinian perspective. Ben and I are going to talk through Trump's decision to cut off aid to three countries in Central America, Turkey, and an interesting election in Slovakia. Then we are going to talk about some big news out of Algeria. How often do you get to say that, Ben? Yeah. And six months after Jamal Khashoggi's brutal murder in Saudi Arabia, how different are things or are they not? So let's start with President Trump threatening to cut off $500 million worth of funding to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, supposedly in retaliation for these governments, quote, arranging

caravans. That's not accurate. He also threatened to seal the U.S.-Mexico border, which is just so ludicrous and self-defeating and stupid that it's like hard to believe if he'll actually do it. But, hey, hope springs eternal for this moron. But the funding for these Northern Triangle countries is intended to reduce violence, unemployment, and poverty and thus encourage people not to leave the country and try to migrate to the U.S. So it seems like Trumpled me making the immigration problem he's seeking to solve worse. So I guess there's two pieces to this. So, like first, there's the process, which per usual, I guess the announcement wasn't vetted. It caught everyone in his own administration by surprise.

But then there's the substance, which, again, per usual, Trump doesn't understand. So the money we provide doesn't go to these governments. It goes mostly to nonprofit groups to administer programs that I think we helped design. So, Ben, I know you worked a lot on this. Obama increased funding for these countries. Do you think those programs are effective? And what did you make of Trump's decision here? Well, it's the most self-defeating thing you could choose to do if you actually want to slow migration.

We dramatically increased in the Obama administration funding for Central America in the last two or three years after we had this significant surge and unaccompanied children coming to the border from Central America in 2014. The basic analysis we made is that if we wanted to stop migration, we had to go to the source. So you have to recall, too, Tommy, that the people coming, a lot of the uptick is people seeking asylum. So it's people who are leaving dire circumstances because of the rampant gun violence and gang violence in Central America, because of the lack of opportunity there. The only way that you can deal with those push factors, the factors that are pushing people to try to come to the United States, is by having a strategy aimed at improving security and governance in Central America.

And so we were up to a billion dollars by the end of the Obama administration, although we always had trouble getting that out of the Republican Congress, which sounds like a lot of money, but it's a fraction of what a wall would cost and a much better investment. And frankly, some of that money went to advertising about how dangerous it is for people to try to come to the border, to try to communicate that if you come to the border, you're not necessarily going to get in. So part of this was, frankly, discouraging migration. Part of it, again, was working with the governments of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, to put in place programs that could deal with these factors that are fueling migration.

And we frankly had a template for how to do this in Colombia, where a sustained U.S. investment over a period of years dramatically improved the security situation in the economy in Colombia and did lead to downturn in migration. So, like a lot of things Trump does, if he's actually serious about solving the problem of people wanting to come into the United States, the last thing you would do is cut this funding. Just like, you know, closing the border with Mexico, it's not going to do anything other than have huge convulsions and disruptions and billions of dollars in trade and families and workers coming back and forth across the border. Yeah, so I saw a stat, I think it was Doctors Without Borders at a study in 2015 where 39% of individuals fleeing from those Northern Triangle countries were fleeing violence. Yeah. So again, like no wall will be high enough to convince you not to leave a country where you think your kid's going to get killed.

But I want to drill down on their point you made about the funding, right? Because Republicans constantly demagogue foreign assistance and hate, and yet building a wall is seen as, a perfectly good use of money in something, the same individuals who hate foreign aid, literally chant for at events. Like, was there ever an aha moment for you during the campaigns or during the White House about how Democrats could better message the value or the ROI for taxpayers for these kinds of programs? Well, the obvious answer right now, you mentioned the violence, you know, is essentially

MS-13, right? So, you know, we have this problem where there really is a problem of violent gang members in the United States from MS-13. But the reason those gangs exist is because they're unchecked in Central America. And, you know, we can deport gang members back there. They will reenter their gangs. They will perpetrate acts of violence, which will drive people into caravans to try to cross our border. And the gangs will thrive and they'll be able to continue to recruit the United States. So if you really want to deal with the violence of MS-13 in our cities and you want to deal with the migration, you have to both help those governments root out those gangs so they're not able to recruit here in the United States.

And you have to help slow this flood of migration. When we were in the administration, the aha moment, I guess I would say, stands out the most is Ebola, where Americans were understandably terrified. at the concept of there even being this single case of a bull in Texas in the summer of 2014. And what we did, in addition to the emergency efforts of deploying our military to West Africa and facilitating a lot of aid workers, we kind of had to help rebuild the public health infrastructure in Liberia in West Africa to help stamp out this epidemic. And what you're talking about is hundreds of millions of funding behind public health. But if that can stop a horrific epidemic disease from getting to the United States and killing lots of people, that's something I think Americans would much rather spend that money.

So to me, Ebola is a classic example where not just the emergency, but the longer term investments in, say, public health in Africa that seem like charity is actually profoundly in our own self-interest. because if they have public health systems that can deal with epidemic disease, then they're not going to reach our borders. And if you take every security challenge we face, terrorism, the disruptions from climate change, all of this can be better dealt with through smart foreign assistance that is a fraction of what we end up paying on the back end to deal with the effects of terrorism or the effects of climate change or the effects of migration. So it would be interesting to hear if Democratic candidates running are able to articulate in the 2020 election a case for, frankly, a more cost-effective way of dealing with our national security challenges. It's a really good point. I hope they do do that. So let's turn to Turkey. So interesting development over the weekend.

Prime Minister Erdogan's party lost in municipal elections in Ankara, the capital, and in Istanbul, which is the biggest city and his key base of support. They're going to challenge these results, but it would be challenging. There would be a major course correction for Turkey, which has been led by Erdogan's Justice and Development Party for like two decades. And over time, he has really consolidated control and frankly freaked people out with his authoritarian tendencies. Interestingly, and maybe related and maybe won't be, on Saturday, a liberal lawyer named Zuzana Kaputova won Slovakia's presidential elections. She will be Slovakia's first female president and has been called Slovakia's Aaron Brockovich, which is pretty badass. Yeah. So, I mean, look, you and I are not experts on municipal,

politics in Turkey or Slovakia. But both of these results bucked the trend of ascendant populists anti-EU candidates winning across Europe. And, you know, for a while, all these nationalist right-wing candidates were seen as a backlash to the financial crisis and to increase immigration. I guess the question is, are we seeing a backlash to the backlash, and the pendulum might swing back in a more democratic direction? Yeah, I think that's exactly the case. And, you know, we've talked about this, but I think the central challenge of our time at home and around the world is this question of what direction or democracy is going to go, more authoritarian right-wing brand of politics or a more inclusive problem-solving brand of politics. And, you know, Erdogan has steadily

consolidated power while aiming to divide the opposition and keep them off balance. For him to see this result, he was the mayor of Istanbul. You know, he's suffering. defeats in places that had long been strongholds for his party, it signals that there's a frustration that is pent up that is now directed at him, whereas he had harnessed a lot of the grievances that people held in Turkey for many years. Now the grievances are about Erdogan and his corrupt and authoritarian brand of leadership. In Slovakia, Capatova was able to essentially parry the right and people, there was a populace to her left and right, and she ran as a problem solver. And she said when she one, you know, that it showed that it's possible not to succumb to populism and to tell the truth.

Those are her words. And so I think there really is an opportunity out there for there to be a backlash to the backlash. We've now had a number of years for these right-wing populists to see what they can do. And the UK, you see what Brexit has yielded. In the U.S. you see what Trump has yielded. You know, across Europe, you're seeing that the right-wing populace are good at blaming other people for problems, but not at solving them. And so if people are organized and if leaders step up,

you know, I think what we see in these results is the pendulum is poised to swing back. It's not going to happen on its own, though. People have to get in the arena and be committed to doing it. Yeah. I mean, she's exciting. What, 45-year-old, like young lawyer, totally outside the political system and just kick-d-ass. And just wasn't going to take the bullshit from either side and call them both out and said, look, you know, and I don't mean that in a both-sides-y kind of way.

No, no, you're not Howard Shelton. I just mean that you need campaigns that are about more than blaming somebody that are about actually putting forward a program for getting things done. Yeah. Sticking with Turkey for a second. I saw this morning that NATO announced that they will suspend sales of the F-35 fighter jet to Turkey. If Turkey decides to go through with the purchase of a Russian-made S-400 missile defense system, I think we've talked about this previously on the show. But the issue is basically that the S-400 system. is a Russian missile defense system

doesn't work with all the other NATO components and Turkey's part of NATO. And there's also concern that the Russians could essentially use that system being in Turkey to track the F-35, our most advanced jet, learn how to shoot it down. I mean, you know,

who knows how real or not these concerns are out of the Pentagon, but I have no reason to doubt it. Yeah. So, Ben, I mean, this tension between Turkey and Erdogan and NATO has building for a while now, but this seems like it's, really coming to a head if we're going to suspend this sale. Are you worried at all about a rupture in the alliance or should we be? Yeah, I mean, people have been worried about this for a number of years.

You know, Putin and Erdogan aren't necessarily, you know, made for one another. You may even remember a few years ago the Turks shot down a Russian plane. Right. Yeah. But at the same time, what Putin does offer is this kind of authoritarian embrace, the same embrace that Trump has fallen into, where, you know, you can say to Erdogan, look, I won't raise these concerns with you about human rights, and, you know, I'm going to kind of back up your brand of politics. Frankly, whenever you have, like, a major arm sale between a corrupt leader like Putin and a corrupt leader like Erdogan, you kind of wonder about what's happening under the table. Yeah, for sure.

And so for a lot of time, there's been this worry that Putin would try to make inroads with Turkey. We've been in this kind of awkward embrace with Turkey where we have a lot that we fault Erdogan about. we disagree with Erdogan about the Kurds who we've supported in northern Syria. But at the same time, we're using Turkey as a base for our counter-Isul campaign. We're using Turkey to help stem the flow of foreign fighters in and out of Syria. So Turkey, we needed them in some ways, even though that made us uncomfortable. What you may be seeing now is as the counter-IS campaign winds down, and that kind of mutual co-dependence fades.

The Turks need us a little bit less to beat ISIS. We need the Kurds a little bit less. Now you see Erdogan drifting in this direction of Putin. Putin using this as a convenient way to create a rupture in the alliance. And, you know, I frankly think that this will depend a bit on the direction of what we're just talking about, which is Turkish politics. You know, if we're dealing with like 10 more years of Erdogan, it's hard to see how there's not a growing gap between NATO and Turkey. and the kind of growing affinity between Putin and Erdogan.

But that's going to take a long time. As you alluded to, the Turkish military is built to be compatible with NATO, not with Russia. So it's not as simple as you buy one system and suddenly you're like in the Russian orbit. They'd have to kind of rejigger their entire military. So it's not going to happen fast, but it's something to watch. Yeah. We don't often get to say this, but big news out of Algeria today. So after weeks of protests, President Boutiflika,

finally resigned. Budaflika is 82 years old. He has been in charge since 1999, but has barely been seen in public since he had a stroke in 2013. Despite that fact, he had been planning to run for a fifth term, kind of a Woodrow Wilson situation here, until protesters forced his hand. So, Ben, two questions. Why the hell should Americans care about what's happening in Algeria? And two, do you feel like this is a continuation of the Arab Spring protests that ultimately took down leaders in Algeria's neighbors, Tunisia, and Libya? Yeah, I think it's a direct line from the Arab Spring. Budaflika, you know, not only was he incapacitated, he hasn't even appeared in public.

When this announcement was made that he's going to run for another term, it was so cynical that his campaign consisted of people bringing a picture of him someplace. So it wasn't even like trotting the old guy out and shooting full steroids. I was trying. He's not even sitting there whole. like the newspaper with like the day on it to prove that he's alive. Like for all we know this guy's dead. This is straight up weekend of Bernie. Yeah, it's straight up weekend Bernie. They're just putting a picture of the guy up at rallies. And you saw a very kind of grassroots, Arab Spring-style

set of protests emerge where people are just like, we're just not going to take this. Now, the challenge is that there's an entrenched elite in Algeria that is basically the military and a bunch of corrupt business people who've benefited from the, you know, status quo, who don't want to see some rapid transition to democracy. And so they're now recognizing that Budaphaelika has to be tossed overboard and the military is stepping in. And so you're kind of seeing the Arab Spring play out in hyperspeed, you know, the protest dislodge the leader. The military is not waiting for the Democratic election that it doesn't like. They're just stepping in now. The question is whether that will be enough to quell these protests. I'm not convinced it will be. And so we'll have to see whether

this leads to some constitutional reform in Algeria that can at least make incremental progress. I think Americans should care for a couple reasons. I mean, you know, one, Algeria, northern African country, big country, significant, you know, terrorist threats have emanated from that part of the world, obviously, migration into Europe. And so, you know, we have the traditional security concerns. But I think more broadly, as I was watching this time, he's a reminder that the Arab Spring is not something that fully reconciled yet. These protests that we saw in Algeria, they could come back to Egypt.

You know, C.C. Trump is hosting Cici in the coming weeks and fully embracing this dictator in Egypt who looks like he's kind of fully in charge of the country again. He's got his hand on the iron, you know, he's got an iron fist that he's using. to keep people down, this could explode again in Egypt. You know, until these societies find a way to be more responsive to their people and less corrupt and more democratic, you're going to see this express itself in popular protest. And so I think it's an important reminder that we don't know how this is going to play out. It didn't end at the end of the Obama administration.

It didn't end even when the Egyptian military took power, this could keep happening. Algeria is also home to a terrorist named Mokhtar, Bel Mokhtar, who I remember was one of those guys who was reported dead in like 2013, 2015, 2016. This guy was just always kicking around somewhere. There was just like wild open range for these terrorist groups to hang. I do think that at the same time that we take the threat seriously, you know, the militaries in these places, you know, pretty cynically use the... threat of terrorism as a kind of vehicle to present themselves as like indispensable to the West.

And at a certain point we have to realize that the presence of these dictatorial regimes continues to be a source of grievances that the terrorists prey on. So, you know, we have to be careful to realize that we don't necessarily, you know, benefit from the status quo where corrupt militaries are repressing their people. Yeah, very good point. So it has been about six months since Jamal Khashoggi journalist for the Washington Post was brutally murdered by the Saudis. David Ignatius, a great columnist of the Washington Post, has a long, very deeply reported piece about how he believes that the U.S. Saudi relationship has been rocked by the incident. So there's a lot of really great reporting in this story.

And he found that members of the Saudi assassination team had received training in the U.S. There were all these contractors that have ties to U.S. persons and intelligence agencies that were helping out the Saudis. But, you know, Ignatius seems to think that the U.S. Saudi relationship just like will never be the same unless Muhammad bin Salman and the Crown Prince fully comes clean about what happened and what his role was in Khashoggi's murder, because Ignatius believes it'll just sort of fundamentally hamper defense and intelligence cooperation. I can't help but read that and think it might be a little bit of wishful thinking. I mean, Trump wants things back to normal. Jared already went and visited MBS in Riyadh. I guess, like, my question is, what do you

think the nature of the U.S. Saudi relationship should be at this point? It's interesting to read this from Ignatius because you dealt with him a lot when we were in government, I'm sure, and I like him. He's a smart guy. But he was, you know, the kind of guy who was, like, deeply sourced in the Gulf. I probably would have slotted him as kind of a proponent of the U.S. Saudi relationship. So, you know, he's moved a long way. Yeah, yeah, obviously in part because of what happened to his colleague. Right. I think that, you know, the key point here is stepping back and realizing two things. One is, like, Muhammad bin Salman is not going to change, right?

So if you're somehow waiting for him to come clean or waiting for some accounting of this, it's not going to happen. Anybody who would send an assassination team with bonesaws to another country to kill a journalist and then incinerate his body is not the kind of guy who's going to have some progressive. of evolution. And we should just add, it is fucking gross that the Trump administration just continues to roll out the red carpet for this guy. You know, Pompeo's medium, Jared. I mean, it's really sickening that knowing what we know about what they did to this journalist and knowing everything that we see about the war in Yemen, further reports recently told me about like child soldiers being recruited to fight with the Saudi Emirati coalition. All of this suggests that we don't need any more data about Muhammad Salman.

That leads to my second point, which is that it's time to fundamentally question why do our relationships in the Middle East have to be this way? You know, the reason that we had this longstanding partnership with Saudi Arabia, it was largely rooted first in the need for stable production of oil, and then later for the cause of fighting terrorism. But at the same time, we are much less dependent on oil from Saudi Arabia. I think Democrats have a capacity here to step forward and say, it's time to rethink in general our broad approach to this region.

If we are moving in the direction of the Green New Deal and the total transition in our energy economy, and if we're moving beyond this hyper-focused on terrorism and spending trillions of dollars to fight terrorists, we just don't need Saudi Arabia like we used to. And so we don't need to try to find a way to get to some comfort zone with Mahm bin Salman. We can move in a different direction here, where we're much less reliant on this partnership. I don't know what the Trump people, there's not like some massive strategic necessity to have this close partnership with Mahm bin Salman.

It's one of the reasons why we've long suspected there could be some. corruption at play here. So for me, it should be incumbent on Democrats running for president to articulate what it means to care about democracy at home and around the world. This is what brings together everything we've been talking about. If you're for democracy, the democratic reforms that we support here in the United States to make it easier to vote, to make institutions more democratic, a smart strategy for a 2020 candidate is uniting that theme with their foreign policy and saying everything I'm doing at home and around the world is about democracy and about standing up to authoritarianism. And that means we don't need this Saudi relationship. We may have some

legacy areas where we do certain things together, but this should not count as one of our closer partnerships in the world. It just shouldn't after what was done to Jamal Khashugi, after what was done in Yemen, after what, frankly, the Saudi farm policy has done across the Middle East since Mahm bin Salman came to power. Yeah, I mean, And there's also, it's been a very weird story to track. But now the security contractor who has been investigating Jeff Bezos's intercepted or maybe leaked text messages is back to believing that the Saudis may have collected on him, in part, to get back at him for investigating the Khashoggi murder.

I mean, there's a lot of nefarious things potentially happening here. Yeah. And I think this story should make people realize that for all the focus on Russian interference in our election and in our democracy and on social media, this problem is not limited to Russia. You know, a country like Saudi Arabia that has basically unlimited money, if they choose that they want to go after an American and denigrate that American, they will do so. And I'm sure they are doing so. It's kind of chilling to think about how if you've got bottomless pockets, you know,

think about what you can do in the world today. Yeah. And the intelligence collection is now a for-profit industry. It's not something the governments alone do, as you know, better than anything. I've had this Israeli intelligence firm Black Cube that was investigating my family trying to dig up dirt, same people, you know, same crowd that did that to Harvey Weinstein's accusers. You know, I think there's not enough thought being given to when you're dealing in a world in which certain political actors are willing to cross. I mean, if Mohammed Sama is willing to kill somebody inside of Turkey. he'd certainly be willing to spend a lot of money to cause a lot of problems with Jeff Bezos,

to embarrass Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos is a powerful man, so he can kind of deal with that. But what did they come after us, Tommy? I know. And you saw in the Israeli election, this story in the Times the other day, that all of these Twitter accounts that were created to denigrate Netanyahu's opponents, right? They're doing that in Israel. There's no reason they couldn't do that in the United States.

So I think we have to broadly be aware of this risk that we could just be in this new normal where foreign governments are aiming to tear down people they don't like in media and business and politics in our country. That's something we're not to develop antibodies for, and we just don't have them right. No, we do not. We have the opposite. We just destroy each other online. You're welcome them in. Yeah. You mentioned the Israeli elections. I mean, is there anything you're watching?

I've been trying to study up on this and what I realize, is how complicated it is. I mean, I think basically you have so many parties and so many candidates running for legislative seats. They need to reach a very small threshold, like two and a half percent of the vote to get a seat in the Knesset, and then, you know, you jock you to get them as part of your coalition. It feels like almost impossible to predict. Yeah, the problem that the devil, you know, those of us who've been concerned about the direction of Israeli politics, is that, you know, it's not like Nanyahu wins over 50 percent of the vote. In fact, in 2009, when he was elected prime minister for the first time under Obama, he got less votes than Zippy Livni, his centrist rival.

What Netanyahu is a master at is piecing together a coalition amongst all these different parties that get into these Israeli parliament so that he has the biggest block. The way that he does that is he moves further and further to the right. So all these kind of crazy right-wing parties, settler parties, Jewish power parties, you know, they get into parliament with these very small numbers of members. But then, you know, Netanyahu makes some deal where he embraces an element of their agenda. He moves farther to the right, and that allows him to stay and cling to power. And so what's happening in this election that's interesting is that all the other, you know, non-Netanyahu backing parties are coalescing behind this guy, Benny Jr. Gans, who's not like a natural politician. And so you'll have essentially a showdown between, you know, all the Netanyahu and far right parties and everybody else. And it's causing this to be a

pretty ugly campaign because, you know, it's about the fundamental future direction of Israel. It's not like Gans as far as the left, but it's people saying like, you know, this has gone too far. And Nenayas dragged us too far to the right. You know, we're now contemplating. seriously the potential for there to be an annexation of the West Bank, a permanent second-class citizen for Israeli Arabs, and just a further and further movement to the right such that Israel is not really both a democracy and a Jewish state. And Gans is kind of standing, you know, at the threshold of that and saying stop, you know. And you sent me the article about him even raising Netanyahu's role in inciting the Rabin assassination, which, you know, has long been

something that, you know, people on the left in Israel have felt didn't get enough scrutiny because Netanyahu was attacking Rabin politically, obviously, before that took place. I think that gets at, you know, how fundamental the questions are in this election for Israel right now. And people feel like this is about what is the fundamental nature of this country going to be? And so you see this very emotional campaign being waged. Yeah, I mean, this thing is getting ugly. As you mentioned, I mean, Ben, Ben,

Andy Gantz saying that Netanyahu's language essentially incited the assassin who killed a former prime minister. Yeah, yeah. That's a tough blow. And a national hero. In the waning days. Yeah, absolutely. Although I was listening to a podcast with, I think it was Marty Indick, who is saying that, you know, he's

concerned that no matter who wins, there's just zero appetite or interest in a peace process. Literally no one's talking about it. Jared Custer's playing his dead on arrival either way. Full stop. Yeah. And, you know, part of the thing. about the Rabin assassination is that there wasn't a lot of the degree of self-examination about the right wing in Israel. I mean, here you have this hero, Yitzikra being a hero in the Israeli

military and politics, and then the man who reached out to make peace of the Palestinians and the Oslo Accords, you know, killed by a right-wing assassin. There was this question of the degree to which that caused some introspection on the Israeli right, you know. And I think that, whether you think Gans went too far or not, he's speaking to this view that there wasn't enough soul-searching on the Israeli right about. Did we try to stem this rising tide of right-wing blowback to the peace process, or did we not do that because it was uncomfortable? And, you know, yeah, like the idea that there's going to be any near-term movement on the Palestinian issue, though, Israel has to, it's like a lot of other places, like we talked about, like, they have to get their own house in order here for there to be any possibility of peace.

Yeah. Last most important news. The World As It Is is going on sale in paperback form. Yes. That's exciting. All you worldos who may not have yet read the world as it is, my book that came out last spring, can now get this in paperback. That's huge.

So you can get it under $20. You can break the spine. You know, you can be treating. if you're someplace warm. You can virtue signal on the subway. You can virtue signal on subway, self-identify as a world-o. So this is on sale today, April 2nd, in Paperback, you know, a nice, handsome addition.

I want to also add that I will be going on a college tour, maybe not quite the same scale as the POD Save America Tour, but I will be just give you the dates, and there'll be more, but April 16th at Pomona College here in the L.A. area, then April 18th at Oxed dental. Obama. Yes.

Sort of alumni. Former kind of alumni as well. Then I will be at Princeton where I never could have gotten in on April 23rd. Then I will be in D.C. at both American University and Georgetown University doing a double header. That's great. What do you do? Do you do Q&A or is it a speech? Yeah, I give a talk and then I'm interviewed by somebody I do Q&A. I always stay to sign books. I really like meeting friends of the pod. people turn up in merch, you know, I answer your questions.

I do a bit of a mini version of World Those Want to Know in the signing line. And I'll further have events at UCLA and at the University of Chicago. So, yeah, I'll be out there this spring. You're owning the California market. Look. Yeah, I'm saturating. It's a big city, though. The World As It is, look, this show can get wonky.

The World As Is It is not a Wonky book. It's a bunch of great stories about foreign policy and Barack Obama and what it's like to be government, but also what it's like to, like, grow up under the most intense scrutiny you could possibly manage and come out on the other side of human being, even if it takes us all some time to find ourselves again. So I highly recommend. Well, thank you. Yeah. Thanks. And, yeah, I mean, it really is, I was 29 when I went to work for Obama in 2007. And it's kind of a coming age to you about what's it like to enter into that experience and be spit out the other end when you're 39 and, you know,

haven't gone through a decade of that. You're like, what happens? Yeah, what happened? How old were you at the beginning of Obama campaign yet? 2007, I was 27. I started working for him when I was 23 or 24. Yeah. So it's funny because we got to, you know, get to know each other in that primary when you're in Iowa.

And I can't help but think about those days now as I see these campaigns gearing up. I see the best. But, you know, I was writing all the, you know, Iraq was central to our campaign. It's weird that there's no one central foreign policy issue that's at the heart of this campaign. Because I remember getting on the phone with you, like, right away. because you're answering all these questions. I remember the first thing I had to do, and I tell the story in the book,

I wrote this speech where we said we'd go to Pakistan to get bin Laden. Oh, yeah. Unfortunately, because the way it came out, it sounded like we were going to invade Pakistan, which kind of cut against our anti-war credentials. And I kept saying, like, no, no, no, we're talking about actually what exactly what happened, like a special operation or something.

But this became a huge problem in Iowa where all our lefty friends or something. saying, I thought you got against Iraq war. So I get to work and I describe, I thought it was going to be fired like the first day I got there because I wake up and there's mass protests in Pakistan. And Pervez Musharraf, the president of the time, was blaming Obama. We'd caused this international incident. And I'm sleeping on a friend's couch at four in the morning. I got an email from Dan Fifer because he oddly always woke up at like four in the morning. So early. And I'm on the email chain with Axelrod and Pluff and Dan and everybody. And you were probably on that.

and he's like, this is the worst thing that's happened to us yet. And I'm like, I'm the new guy who caused this. So I thought he's getting fired. Instead I get to work. And Favre was there, and he's like, hey, man, like, how's it? Good to see you. And I was like, oh, I wasn't expecting a warm welcome. And he's like, yeah, Pluff wants you to write an op-ed to kind of put this, this

Pakistan thing to bed. And I was like, okay, Washington Post here I come. And he said, no, no, it's for the Mason City Globe Gazette. Damn right it was. So that must have been your handiwork there, placing the op-ed in the Mason City Globe Gazette. Look, that's worth its weight in gold. Some of my finest work. A reminder, by the way, that for all these national polls, I think we were probably down 30 points in national polls at the time, don't pay any attention to them.

Totally irrelevant. Totally relevant. Because, you know, one of these people you see in the single digits in the national polls could win Iowa and then everything changes. I mean, for God's sake, no one knew Mayor Pete was three months ago. Now everybody's talking about them. And the thing you take a deep breath. Well, and the thing you taught me, Tommy, is that I'd be stressing about our, you know, press coverage in the New York Times and the Post. and you'd be like, you're not reading the press coverage in the Mason City Club Gazette and the Des Moines Register, which was much better.

That's a good shit. Yeah, that's a good shit. That's the crack right there. By the world as it is. It's a bunch of great stories. And after the break, I'll be back with my conversation with Khalid El Gindi. On the line is Khalid al-Gindi. He's a non-resident fellow at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute and a founding board member of the Egyptian-American Rule of Law Association.

He previously served as an advisor to the Palestinian leadership. in Ramallah. Kala, thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for having me. Over the weekend, thousands of Palestinians gathered at the Gaza border to protest Israel's blockade of the Gaza Strip. Four protesters were killed by Israeli troops, including three 17-year-old kids. I mean, a sign of, you know, frankly, just how bad some of these previous clashes have been. Israeli Prime Minister B.B. Netanyahu actually described this weekend's events as calm. Can you describe what the March of Return is in why? there are these frequent protests at the Gaza border?

Yeah, sure. I mean, for the past year, Palestinians have been going up to the Gaza border fence with Israel and having these mass protests. They've been weekly, usually on Fridays. They come out in pretty large numbers. And it's a way of drawing attention to the plight of Palestinians inside the Gaza Strip. For those who don't know, the Gaza Strip has been under an Israeli-led blockade by air, land, and sea since 2007. So for about the past 12 years.

And another factor in the protests is a majority of the population of the Gaza Strip are actually Palestinian refugees who came from towns and villages in what is now Israel after being displaced in 1948. Israel's creation and its independence. So you have kind of two dimensions to this. One is Palestinians demanding an end to the blockade that has caused enormous suffering in Gaza, massive poverty. The water is undrinkable. You have massive infrastructure damage over repeated wars that hasn't been repaired over the years because of the lack of supplies. coming in and out of Gaza, there are strict controls as to who and what enters the Gaza Strip. And so on the one hand, it's a way for Palestinians in Gaza to say, we've had enough, this blockade has to end. And in another way, given, you know, if you look at the name, it's called the Great March of Return,

it's a way, really a mostly symbolic way to emphasize another issue that has been long and neglected by the world and even by the peace process, which is the fate of Palestinian refugees. And it's an issue that is supposed to be taken up in so-called permanent status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. But it is an issue that was mostly sidelined during the Oslo peace process and which most recently the Trump administration has essentially taken off the table in long. with Israeli demands. Israel refuses to even, the current Israeli government anyway, refuses to even deal with the issue of the right of Palestinians to return, which is something that is

enshrined in UN resolutions, but has always been subject to negotiations. And so those are the two main dimensions to the protests. Yeah. So sticking with the protests for a minute, I mean, you mentioned that these happened weekly. In May of last year when President Trump officially moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, there was a day of far more deadly protests. I saw one news report from the time that said Israeli military forces killed 58 protesters and nearly 1,200 more were wounded on just that day alone. The UN has since said that the IDF's conduct at those protests might constitute war crimes. But there are others who say that, you know, actually Hamas is to blame for the death at the border at these Gaza protests, because

they're fomenting violence. Essentially, their argument is they are Hamas sending innocent people, including women and children to the front lines to essentially martyr them and have people killed to create controversy or get news stories. What is your response to that rejoinder that you often hear from people debating this? And what's your sense of who is actually at these protests and why they're there? Yeah, I mean, let me try to unpack that a little bit. There's a couple different points that I would make on that charge. First of all, it's a very popular. popular one. It sort of crops up periodically whenever there is violence, the notion that Palestinians are essentially putting their people out there to be in a position to be killed or injured in order

to make Israel look bad. That's a popular trope, I would call it, and we've been hearing various iterations of it for the past two decades. Let's look first at the facts. I think it's absolutely true that Hamas has capitalized on and even tried to co-opt the great march of return, including by busing in its supporters and through other means they've tried to kind of take ownership over this initiative, which is an unusual for a political party or for a political movement to want to do. But it's not true that Hamas initiated or invented the march of return. It was really an initiative that was pushed by grassroots activists and Palestinian civil society in Gaza, and that was later kind of co-opted or seized on by Hamas, which of course rules over the Gaza Strip,

because they saw a political advantage to raising awareness of the plight of Gaza. This is something I think that is not unexpected for a political group to want to do. We've seen both the PLO and Hamas do that in the second intifada and even the first Palestinian uprising in 1987 where the PLO tried to control and co-opt what was in reality or a sort of spontaneous grassroots mobilization. So that's one part of it. But I think, you know, there's another reality also in terms of what is actually happening at the border. The vast majority of protesters who show us.

up are nonviolent. They're unarmed. There have been a few instances where individuals and groups of individuals have tried to breach the border fence. But for the most part, they are many dozens of meters away from the border fence. But what we've seen time and again is that the IDF have consistently used live ammunition, usually by snipers who are, you know, on a hilltop or sort of, you know, have some kind of height advantage, who are essentially sniping at unarmed civilians. We've seen reports by Palestinian, Israeli, and international human rights groups. According to the World Health Organization, for example, the IDF has killed about 260 Palestinians, about 50 of whom were children, and injured about 6,400 Palestinians with live ammunition.

So this really raises the question of Israeli rules of inhuman. engagement and what sort of constraints are in place. It's clear, according to groups like Human Rights Watch, that the vast majority of Palestinians who were killed were not posing a threat to Israeli soldiers or to Israeli citizens further behind the border. There was a UN Commission of Inquiry that was put out a report late last year in 2018 that determined that Israeli forces killed Palestinian protesters, quote, many while standing hundreds of meters from the snipers. These are essentially snipers who are unaccountable to anyone.

I think that's one of the main problems. So when you hear charges of the Palestinians are to blame, that's really a way of denying Israeli responsibility, of denying Israeli agency. The reality is that to understand why Gazans are willing to go and do these protests on a weekly basis, oftentimes even risking their lives in doing so, you have to look at the conditions of life in Gaza. After 12 years of blockade, Gaza has essentially become one very large humanitarian catastrophe. Unemployment is at 42 percent. The poverty rate is around 39 percent.

80% of the population of 2 million is dependent on food aid from international groups. According to the United Nations, 97% of Gaza's water is unfit for human consumption because it's been contaminated by sewage and seawater. And so these are the conditions that have prompted Palestinians to go in very large numbers. And I think if you go to the border protests, you'll find that it's pretty much a cross-section of Palestinian society in Gaza. All Palestinian factions are represented all ages because the situation is so dire. That doesn't mean that groups like Hamas or even the Palestinian Authority are not to blame. I think they clearly are.

And we've even seen recently protests. directed by Palestinians at their leaders in the Gaza Strip at Hamas. And we've seen similar protests against the Palestinian Authority. But the overriding responsibility for the humanitarian situation in Gaza, I think, does rest with Israel. It's Israel that controls Gaza's borders for the most part. It's Israel that controls, that imposes a blockade on the territorial waters, that imposes a, that controls the airspace, and controls most of the land crossings in and out of Gaza. And in fact, Israel even controls the population registry in the Gaza Strip.

So it's very, I think, problematic when we try to divorce Israeli control from Israeli responsibility. You know, with control comes responsibility. And at the end of the day, Israel is the occupying power. And so has responsibility for the welfare of the two million Palestinians who live in the Gaza. a strip. But there's a, I think there's another aspect to this that I think is as important, if not more important. I think it needs to be said that this idea that Palestinians send their children to die on TV for PR reasons or to make Israel look bad is thoroughly dehumanizing, as if Palestinians are not motivated by the same forces or impulses that other human beings have,

whether it's a love for their children or the desire for freedom, ultimately, I think it says a lot more about people who make that sort of a charge than it does about Palestinians themselves. Yeah. I want to turn to the peace process for a minute. I think the U.S. has been deeply engaged in the Middle East peace process for decades. You have particular experience in this realm. You were an advisor to the Palestinian leadership on these permanent status negotiations with Israel from I think 2004 to 2009. Now, I know we're all waiting with bated breath for Jared Kushner's secret Middle East plan that he's been working on for fucking lifetime. But you have a book out today called Blind Spot, America in the Palestinians, which argues that the U.S. is actually ill-suited to broker peace in the Middle East. Why do you believe that? Well, just a quick clarification. I'm not arguing that the United States is ill-suited. I think it's very well-suited.

What I am arguing is that the United States hasn't been very effective as a mediator. I think it's very well positioned to be an effective mediator. It has very close relationship with Israel, a special relationship, in fact. It has enormous influence with the Palestinians. It is a global superpower. It has been the chief sponsor of not just Israeli-Palestinian peace process, but also the entire Arab-Israeli peace process for nearly half a century. And so I think it is very well-suited to be an effective mediator, but it hasn't been. in practice is essentially what I'm arguing in the book.

And so that's sort of what makes my book different, I think, than a lot of other peace process books, is its focus on the U.S. role. Well, so help me understand that because all the things you described have been true for a long time, right? What has the U.S. gotten wrong? How have they screwed it up? Well, essentially what they get wrong, and this gets to the title of the book, Blindspot, Essentially what I argue is that the United States has a blind spot when it comes to this conflict because of its special relationship with Israel and because of the enormous influence of the pro-Israel lobby. I don't think that in and of itself is in dispute.

I think everyone understands that the United States has pretty much always leaned toward the Israeli side, particularly when it comes to the case of the Palestinians, but also more in general. But I think the way that it has gone about structuring the peace process as the sole mediator, in a lot of ways, I think, defies traditional mediation models. So, for example, you know, we often hear that the United States is basically doing the best that it can under very difficult circumstances and, you know, that the United States can't want it more than the parties. And then there are those who argue the opposite. Well, the United States canon actually should want peace more than the parties because it has vital national security interests in the region and elsewhere that depend on it. What I argue in the book is that that whole debate sort of misses the point. It's not a matter of whether Israelis or Palestinians want peace. They absolutely both want peace.

The problem is that they have totally different understandings of what peace. looks like. And more importantly, they're stuck in this very dysfunctional dynamic that perpetuates the conflict. That's what makes it a conflict. And that conflict has to do with, I think, two key factors. One is power and one is politics. And the way the United States interacts with, in particular, Israeli power and Palestinian politics has really, I think, hobbled its ability to serve as an effective mediator. Basically, Israelis and Palestinians act the way you would expect them to act. Israel is an occupying power.

The Palestinians are an occupied population. Israel tries to impose its will unilaterally by force. Palestinians use whatever means at their disposal, oftentimes illegal and illegitimate means to resist that. Israel also oftentimes uses illegitimate and illegal means to impose its will. So that's the dynamic of the conflict. It's not really a conflict between two co-equal parties. So the reality of American mediation has been kind of blind to that reality, treating the two sides as though they were co-equal.

Now, that doesn't mean that the United States is solely to blame. Obviously, the parties play a big role in perpetuating their own conflict. But as the sole mediator, as the self-appointed sole mediator in the conflict, the United States, I think, has an enormous responsibility for these failures, essentially what the United States has done because of the political dynamics and the relationship with Israel and because of our domestic politics here in Washington is to not pressure Israel. So in any normal mediation, the mediator has to be prepared to use both positive and negative inducements with both sides. Recognizing the differences in power and trying to account for that in some way. What we've seen the United

States do is actually the opposite of a traditional mediation model where they put more pressure on the weak side, the Palestinians, while simultaneously working to ensure that Israel doesn't face any pressure. And so that has resulted in kind of maintaining the status quo. And very often actually aggravating the conflict on the ground because Israel is already the stronger power that has the ability to impose certain outcomes unilaterally that Palestinians do not have. And so what we've seen is a lot of carrots for the Israelis and a lot of sticks for the Palestinians. So what I'm arguing is that even before Trump came along, this model of mediation had essentially failed. A peace process, you know, it wasn't Donald Trump who killed the peace process. It was already

dead. And it died, frankly, on Barack Obama's watch. I want to ask you about the upcoming Israeli elections in a minute. But, you know, we talk a lot about Netanyahu and Israeli politics on this show, but very little about the Palestinian political parties. Can you talk about, you know, Hamas and Fatah, like who's in them, what they believe and how popular they are among Palestinian voters? Yeah, we don't know exactly how popular each party is. I mean, basically, as you pointed out, there are two main political factions in Palestinian politics today. There are others, but the only two real political, competitive political movements are Fetach, which is led by Mahmoud Abbas and rules over the West Bank, and Hamas, which is the Islamist organization that rules over the Gaza Strip.

I would say, you know, we haven't had an election in more than a decade. So it's hard to know exactly which party is more dominant at any given moment. I would say there has been more or less parity between the two for a while. I think, you know, circumstances change and one party may gain an advantage vis-a-vis the other at certain moments. But on the whole, I think there's a stalemate. and the two parties are more or less kind of entrenched and, you know, more or less, you know, we see parity between them. And so that's led to this kind of stalemate where even though there are popular demands by the Palestinian public to end this division between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the political division, and the two sides have agreed in theory, they've reached, you know, at least half a dozen reconciliating. agreements that haven't really been implemented because each side is not really prepared to pay a

political cost for what it takes to reunify the Palestinian polity. And so that is, it's one of the major disfunctions that wasn't created by the U.S.-led peace process, but it was certainly reinforced and even, I would say, institutionalized by American diplomacy. see. So last question for you, the Israelis are about to have elections next week. Prime Minister Netanyahu is running, you know, with the full backing of the Trump administration, basically. He has photos of himself, posters with President Trump. He was given this gift of, you know, control over the Golan Heights and an Oval Office addressed last week. But Netanyahu is running against an Israeli general named Benny Gantz. I'm curious if you have any predictions about the outcome. And really more importantly, if you think that the outcome of the Israeli elections are likely to have a meaningful impact on the quality of life for people living in the West Bank and Gaza, or you think it's likely to jumpstart the peace process, which, as you note, has been dead for some time.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I think what we've seen an overall trend in Israeli politics that is moving more and more to the right with each election, Israel and Israel's kind of center of gravity politically shifts more. and more to the right. And that's certainly true in this election, where Netanyahu is already has a very right-wing coalition, has now kind of even been flirting with these khanists who are, you know, described in Israel as Israel's KKK, and some of whom whose members are actually barred from entry in the United States as designated terrorists. And so that's on one side. And on the other side, the more centrist coalition that's led by Gantz, it's interesting because there's nobody in Israeli politics who's talking about a two-state solution or about

even the Palestinians in general. It's just not an issue. It's not an issue because I think both the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been sort of neutralized in their own respective ways. and there's no pressure to have a meaningful peace process, certainly not from Washington, which is wholly on board with not just the, with an Israeli agenda, but with a very far-right Israeli agenda that is, for the most part, opposed to a two-state solution. And so I can't make predictions about who will or won't win.

I think the polls in Israel show that it's very, very close. in one moment, Netanyahu looks like he's edging out Gantz. On the other hand, in other moments, it looks like, you know, Gantz may have had a good run for a while. So it's very hard to predict, but it's clear, I think, that neither of these two blocks is talking about peace, is talking about a two-state solution. And I don't think that either of them are likely to move the ball forward in terms of a genuine two-state solution. if only because Washington is no longer really pushing the ball forward on a two-state solution. Yeah, agreed.

Khalid O'Gindy, thank you so much for joining me. The book is called Blind Spot. I look forward to reading it, and thank you so much for joining the show. Thanks for having me, Tony. That's it for POTS of the World. Thank you all for tuning in. Thank you, Collid. Talk to you guys next week.