Pod Save the World - Hamas Goes To War With Israel

Episode Date: October 8, 2023

In a special episode, Ben and Tommy talk about the deadly terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel, how Israel’s intelligence community failed to detect it, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declaration that his country is “at war” and what comes next, President Biden’s response, and what this all means for Israel’s political future.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. And Ben and I, we are hosting a special episode of Pod Save the World today on Saturday, October 7th, following the news of this war breaking out between Israel and Hamas militants in Gaza. So this is a developing situation. We're recording at about 3 o'clock Pacific Time Saturday because we just wanted to get you guys sort of the best information as we know it. But, you know, Ben, so far, this is pretty horrifying events and scenes coming out of. Israel so far. Yeah, kind of a worst case scenario situation, Tommy. I really don't look forward at all to the coming days here. Absolutely. So what we know so far is that on the morning of October 7th, there was a coordinated assault launched by Hamas on several different parts of Israel. There were an estimated 2,000 rockets fired. Those rained down from the sky and seemed to get through some of the Israeli missile defense systems that had usually been a lot more capable. At the same time, militants entered more than 20 southern Israeli towns killing and kidnapping civilians and soldiers. They reportedly took over an IDF headquarters that was in charge of military operations for

Gaza for something like 12 or 13 hours. These Hamas fighters, they used explosives to break through the border fence. They crossed with motorcycles, pickup trucks. There were literally guys on hang gliders. There were speedboats on the coast. And these gun clashes, the fighting is on. going. There's hostage situations that are ongoing. This is all over social media, of course. There's scenes of streets lettered with bodies, Hamas militants going house to house seemingly unopposed.

There are, you know, footage of Israeli soldiers being pulled out of a tank and taken hostage. There's civilians being taken hostage. It's the worst situation imaginable. Israel's wasted no time retaliating. They're launching airstrikes into Gaza. There's videos already coming out of high-rise buildings being leveled. So according to Israel, The estimated death toll at the moment is 250 Israelis killed and more than 1,450 wounded. There is also an estimated 50 Israelis who have been taken hostage. Again, these numbers are going to go up and up, unfortunately. But the current estimates is that 234 Palestinians have been killed, and at least 1,600 civilians

have been wounded in the gun battles or airstrikes. And again, the sort of response from the IDF has just begun. So that number is going to go way up. Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu has said, we are at war, and he has told Palestinian civilians to leave Gaza now because the Israeli military is going to, quote, turn all Hamas hiding places into rubble. Ben, no explanation from Netanyahu for how exactly civilians are supposed to get out of Gaza, given that there's a blockade.

The border with Egypt is closed. But, you know, there are videos currently of Israeli tanks heading south towards the Gaza Strip, and it seems like a ground invasion could be. imminent. So, Ben, I mean, the comparison you're seeing a lot right now is that this is Israel's equivalent of the 9-11 attacks for us. I'm wondering if you agree and any sort of other first thoughts on what's been happening. Well, you know, I guess it's not like 9-11 in the sense that 9-11 to most Americans kind of came out of nowhere, right? Whereas this is the fifth Gaza war we've now seen since 2007. But it is like 9-11 in terms of the scale of the loss, you know, per capita in

Israel, it's probably greater than 9-11. And also in terms of the surprise at the complexity of the attack, just like Americans were surprised by the complexity 9-11 attack. I think what stands out to me here, first something on the attack and then on the timing of it, I mean, we've just never seen Hamas do anything like this. We've seen them launch rockets into Israel. We've seen them, you know, kidnap an Israeli soldier and Galad Shalit a few years ago. We've seen them kind of launch discrete attacks. But to have this kind of multifaceted complex land, air, and sea invasion, essentially, of Israel is totally unprecedented. And would suggest months and months and months of planning had to go into this. And that there was clearly some degree of intelligence failure in

Israel, which we can talk about. I mean, the failure to understand what Hamas was doing and the failure to have military resources in place to deal with that. Now, part of the reason for that is a lot of Israeli military resources that might be in the South were up dealing with protecting settlers who engaged in tit-for-tat violence of Palestinians and the West Bank. So that factors into it here, too. I think the timing is an interesting question. I think there are a few different possibilities here. Only Hamas knows the true answer. I mean, one is it was the 50th, anniversary of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. Yeah.

And there was a most surprise attract on Israel from Arab states. Second, the Palestinian leadership is very weak. The Palestinian authorities very weak. Probably the weakest they've ever been. There's this kind of scleratical man and Abu Mazin in charge of it. They're not doing anything to advance Palestinian statehood. And so Hamas is also, I think, potentially making a bid here for, you know, really establishing themselves at the vanguard of the Palestinians.

I do think that the far-right nature of the Israeli government, Hamas may have been looking at this and thinking, not only are these people not at all interested in any political process, but they seem divided at home, they seem perhaps focused on their own democratic dysfunction. That may have played into their calculus. And then also the normalization that we've talked about, whether or not that was Hamas' intent. It's certainly the reality that it's going to be very hard for Saudi Arabia to conclude a normalization agreement with Israel after Israel does what it's likely to do. in the coming days, which is going to be, I think, probably a catastrophic humanitarian outcome for the Palestinians. So a lot of reasons why, you know, we've talked a lot in recent months about

the desperation, the growing violence, the growing kind of far-right nature of the Israeli government, and obviously Hamas, like a much more radical version of the Palestinian leadership than the Palestinian authority. The tinderbox has exploded here. And I think we're just at the beginning of what's going to be very complicated and tragic series of weeks, if not months. Yeah, and just one thing to add to the sort of why now question, which is that I read somewhere a Hamas spokesperson saying, you know, this is retaliation for Israeli provocations at the Alaksamask. Again, I'm much more with you that only Hamas knows it's probably a whole bunch of different

factors playing into what's happening right now, including, frankly, perceived weakness among the Israeli military potentially and the Israeli political establishment, given all the judicial coup that Bibi Deng Yao has launched the ongoing protests. I mean, there have been lots and lots of reports, warning after warning after warning from senior military and intelligence leaders about their concern, not only about military readiness and cohesion, but about the perception of Israel's strength in the face of all this protests and dysfunction and what's been happening. But Ben, you know, you talked about this intelligence failure question.

I mean, that is the number one question because Israel is known as having an incredibly capable military, the Israeli intelligence services are considered some of the best in the world. I mean, they, like us, spend billions of dollars per year on signals intelligence collections, spy satellites, sensors, cameras all around the border of Israel. And I think most people assumed that the Mossad had sources deep within Hamas, deep within Hezbollah and other militant groups. And yet, as you pointed out, like, this was not an isolated attack. This was a massive coordinated assaults where I assume hundreds of militants. We don't really

know, but they hit 22 different towns, guys on hang gliders. I mean, that required, that naval assault, it requires some incredibly sophisticated planning. And again, like the hang gliders are, these are based on videos. We're all seeing on social media, the naval assault the same way. So it's still hard to figure out what exactly is real and not. and there's lots of disinformation going around. But I guess the Israeli government is already announced. Obviously, they're going to launch a major investigation into how it's possible they could have missed something like this.

But I'm wondering if you think there's a takeaway from an intelligence failure of this magnitude and sort of what it says about a conflict like this. Well, you're right that I think it's going to come out. And it's certainly been the case that the military and the intelligence community in Israel has been warning. And this isn't just us saying this. I mean, they have been warning that these divisions at home and the divisions in Israeli society and the kind of divisions between the civilian leadership and the military did put them at risk.

But even with those general warnings, they clearly lacked specific intelligence. And to put this into perspective, Israel controls the entire internet access in Gaza. You cannot communicate on the internet in Gaza without interacting with Israeli technology. And so clearly, in order to prepare hundreds of people to act in a coordinated way, right, people have to fire these rockets, people have to smash those barriers, people have to get in the hang gliders, like people have to go out to sea, to do that to attack 22 different sites inside of Israel, towns, settlements. That requires, you know, pretty sophisticated, either counter surveillance technology or maybe they threw, you know, the Israel off the scent.

That is an intelligence fair. I do think, look, Hamas, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, going to have to say this probably a few times, but Hamas is entirely responsible for a horrific loss of life that has no justification. I think, though, with Israeli intelligence failure, it's not just the failure of intelligence, it's the failure of their entire Gaza policy, because their entire Gaza policy is based on the premise that if you blockade this place and you squeeze it and you surveil it, that you can get security. And Netanyahu's nickname was Mr. Security. And his argument was always, I may be, you know, at times brutal with the Palestinians, I may have all these security barriers and I may risk isolation from some countries because of how I treat Gaza.

But the tradeoff is you get to be safe inside of Israel. And this is kind of certainly undermined that argument. I think it just demonstrates that the whole policy was vulnerable to this kind of attack as it built up Palestinian grievance and as the Hamas was built up its capabilities. I do think, unfortunately, the Israeli response is likely going to be there for, we just kind of. kind of need to flatten Gaza. We need to destroy Hamas, you know, not leave anything behind. And that's why I think this could be a really brutal, I mean, particularly if there are all these people who have been taken hostage, you know, there will be a ground invasion of Gaza. And we've seen in the past, that's where the casualty numbers go way, way up among civilians

who are densely, densely packed in there amidst where Hamas targets are, amidst where now Israeli hostages are. So this has the potential to be much, much worse than even the four Gaza's the wars we've seen up to this point. Yeah, I mean, look, we'll get into what comes next in a second, but, you know, there's reports, you know, the Israeli military is not ruling, reoccupying Gaza. You know, they're not taking that off the table. There's reports that Israel has cut off all power to the Gaza Strip. So like drastic actions already being taken. But let's first talk about the White House response, Ben, because obviously, you know, when we were in government, I mean, I'm sure people were basically sleeping at the White House last night through monitoring what's going on.

And Biden was at the White House. He didn't go home to Wilmington. He didn't go to Camp David this weekend. He stuck around, presumably, to deal with this. And he gave a speech on Saturday afternoon talking about a call he had just made to Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Let's play a clip of that. You know, when I spoke of Prime Minister Netanyahu this morning, I told him the United States

stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist assaults. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people, full stop. there's never justification for terrorist attacks. And my administration and support for Israel's security is rock, solid, and unwavering. So, you know, Ben, there's also reports that Net Yahoo asked President Biden for emergency funding for the purchase of more interceptors for the Iron Dome missile defense system. The Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, said the Pentagon is going to work to give Israel whatever they need to defend themselves.

Alexandra from the crooked media, Potta of the World Discord, we asked, some of our Discord users for questions to help us to schedule this episode. They send in some great questions. Alexander asked, what do you think about the response from Biden? Other officials, what was missing? What would you guys do to respond if you were still working for the administration? So, I mean, like, I think the first point is, you know, Israel just suffered this horrific terrorist attack, you know, hundreds of people are dead and all these hostages are missing. I think this is exactly the tone I would have expected out of Biden or President Obama or really any other president in a moment like this to express solidarity to pledge unwavering support and basically said BB,

I got your back, you know, I'll help you sort of fight back against terrorists. I wonder if I hope, Ben, that in the private messages on the phone call, Biden is also counseling restraint and hoping that Netanyahu doesn't rush a response or sense a massive ground evasion because of the casualty concerns that you just referenced. But I was wondering what you made of Biden's speech and what else you might have wanted him to say. I mean, I think it's exactly what you expect, like you said. And I think, look, in terms of the policy response, you know, the immediate effort is to call, you know, if you're in the White House right now, you're drafting those statements, you're looking at those requests for additional Iron Dome support. There's obviously a lot of incoming rockets. Israel is enough to deal with that. What's clearly happened, though, is that when you fire so many rockets, you kind of overwhelm the system. Never mind, the fact that that the system itself can defend against like dudes, you know, hang gliding into Israel. But still, they'll be diminishing those stockpiles, so they'll need to be replenished.

The U.S. has, I think, some prepositioned military reserve equipment in Israel that can be used. Israel may request additional support. I think Israel will importantly want intelligence support for trying to identify where these hostages are, maybe to try to look at whether there was any Iranian support or Hezbollah support for this. But in terms of the rhetoric, the Biden statement's familiar, and I think part of what is unsatisfying about it that I don't, again, this is not to single up Biden, because what I'm about to say is that that language sounds so familiar, you know. Obama said stuff like that, you know, Trump in his own way said stuff like that. George W. Bush said stuff like that. Part of what's missing here, and I don't expect it in the first day. But to your point, I think over time, what's clearly broken down, here is the status quo. And the status quo is, you know, you ignore the Palestinians, you normalize relations with the other Arab states, particularly the oil, rich Gulf states. And you

just kind of ignore this issue. You maybe engage in, like, diplomacy with Machmur Abbas, who's, like, you know, a million years old and has no credibility with the Palestinians. Like, that's not working. And it's been obvious that that hasn't been working for a while. And I think to a certain point, like the language has to change to some description of what, where is, where is it? this going with the Palestinians? Like this, we're about to have a major war here probably. It's going to kill a lot of people, Israelis and Palestinians tragically. But I think, you know, you don't, you want to keep it from escalating. So you want to keep this from being a regional war. Like, I don't know if Israel is going to be considering attacks on Iran. I don't know if Hezbo is going to be considering getting involved. The U.S. is going to want to prevent, I think that kind of regional escalation. To your point, I think, you know, I hope that we're counseling restraint in terms of the kind of wholesale targeting of Palestinian civilian targets. But I'm not sure how influential we're going to be in the coming days, given the mood in Israel and the nature of this government. But I just think at some point, you know, we have to break out of the conventional language on this thing and find a new way of

talking about and diplomatically approaching the Palestinian issue, you know, that brings in these regional countries because this, this unfortunately is just not a sustainable status quo anymore. Yeah, I mean, I think the Biden administration, has a very clear record. And I think they've basically said it on the record that they think the way that they get Bibi Net and Yahoo to do things is not to publicly criticize him or tell him what to do, what's to do it all behind the scenes with this quiet, intensive diplomacy. You and I, I think in the past have expressed our disagreement with that approach as a general

matter, though I do think in this moment that the day of, when a terrorist attack is ongoing is probably the least effective moment for that kind of public messaging. you're probably going to be more effective privately, so I understand it. It is interesting, though, how much politics in Israel are in flux right now. I mean, we've talked for months and months and months about how Bibi Netanyahu is only the prime minister because he assembled the most far-right coalition in Israeli history with lawmakers who were considered completely out of bounds because they were a right-wing because they supported, you know, basically terrorist attack against Palestinian communities.

Netanyahu has been battling, you know, through this judicial. reform judicial coup, some would call it, effort and been in real trouble. He also has these corruption cases that are ongoing. But today, it looks like members of the opposition leaders like Yaira Lepid and Benny Gantz have expressed willingness to come back into government for a sort of larger unity government with Netanyahu if Netanyahu will agree to remove some of the most, you know, disgusting right-wing ministers, guys like Yitamar Ben-Givir. There's sort of some history to an approach like this. A bunch of opposition leaders joined the government before the 1967 war.

I mean, I know it's really early to Del. I was wondering what you made of Lepid and Benny Gauntz making this announcement and kind of what it might mean for Netanyahu. I mean, there's always this moment where a horrific thing happens on a leader's watch. Does the country blame him or her for it or do they rally around him or for it? It's never clear where it's going to go. Yeah, I mean, I thought it was interesting. I think, you know, first of all, on the Palestinian side, we're reminded, you know, what a bunch of assholes, Hamas are, you know, and how ideological they are. I mean, I think sometimes, you know, we can make the mistake of seeing them as this kind of governing, corrupt governing, repressive entity in Gaza that occasionally fires rockets. But these are people that, you know, are committed, you know, don't recognize Israel's right to exist, are committed to armed resistance. And, they're acting on that in the most extreme way that they ever have. If, you know, they're doing that in part because of the calculus of the divisions in the Israeli government, which I think is, as we said,

quite possible, my guess here is that all of Israel rallies together. Like Israel has like a society that has kind of within its DNA, I think, an ability when threatened to kind of put aside differences and rally together and for reserves to be called up and for politicians to put aside even really deep grievances. And so I would expect, you know, some effort to pull together unity government. It will be interesting to see, you know, whether, you know, if I'm BB, I'd take that out, right? You know, try to get rid of some of the more crazy people around you and stabilize the politics while you're doing this. Even the more moderate Israeli politicians like Gans, you talk about, will probably be supportive.

of a very brutal response here. So that's my expectation. Now, it's possible that some of these far-right people, you know, are, start challenging maybe from the right, you know, like you should just completely destroy and flatten this place. I worry about that. I also worry Tommy about, like, Israeli settlers going all vigilante and just attacking Palestinians, which was already happening, by the way, in the West Bank. So you could have a situation where Israel's rallying together and that may bring about a unity government of sorts, but you also have the far right kind of acting on its own or Israeli-Palestinian clashes separate and apart from kind of the action in Gaza. And that has the real risk of spiraling too. So, you know, even a more cohesive Israeli government

doesn't necessarily mean that there won't be these fractures with some Israelis wanting to go even harder at the Palestinians. Yeah. So speaking of the far right, before we get to some of the discord questions, the far-right Maga Republicans in the U.S. wasted not one second before politicizing this issue and using what's happening in Israel, an ongoing terrorist attack to attack Joe Biden. Here's a clip from Donald Trump. They got five hostages. We got five hostages. Okay, that's the good news. The bad news is, and their hostages were tough, by the way, I have to tell you. That was, okay, let's assume they're doing just fine. But it was five for five. But in addition to that, We agreed to free up $6 billion.

And that is an absolute disaster. And I would not be at all surprised if part of that tremendous wealth that they just accumulated went into all of a sudden watching this level of aggression. So that was Donald Trump. J.D. Vance, Republican Senator from Ohio, tweeted, as we watched this horrible situation in Israel unfold, Americans must face the stark truth. Our tax dollars funded this.

Money is fungible in many of the dollars we sent to Iran, are being used to now kill innocent people. This most stop. Israel has every right to defend itself. I wish our friends well, but most of all, I wish they weren't fighting its weapons bought with our money. So just to clarify, no U.S. tax dollars went to Iran. I assume what J.D. Vance and Trump are referencing is the hostage negotiation that just got back a bunch of American prisoners from Iran. In that instance, money that had been frozen in a South Korean bank was transferred to Qatar. By the way, that was Iranian money from Iranian oil sales that were made before sanctions, lock them up in South Korea.

That money is now sitting in this Qatari bank. It can only be spent on non-sanctioned goods like food and medicine, medical devices, things that are approved by Washington, by the Treasury Department. Qatar directly pays those suppliers. The money doesn't go to Iran. And by the way, none of that money has been spent yet. That's a pretty important detail. So if you want to claim that all money is fungible, sure, we can go into that.

that sort of like, you know, reductive, ridiculous place, but unspent money isn't fungible, you fucking idiot. So it's just like, it's so disgusting then that these guys immediately would leap to politicize an ongoing terror attack. And by the way, of course, Iran does provide Hamas with money that they use for terrorist attacks. That is true. But none of this money that went from South Korea to a Qatari bank was used in what happened today and to suggest otherwise is just you're either an idiot or you're a liar. Yeah, I mean, you know, you've pointed out a number of ways in which it's stupid. I'll just point out one more. As we were saying, this is really complicated piece of business. They clearly were planning this for many, many months. There's just no way that they

got together in a couple weeks and put this together, right? So they were planning this long before that deal was even done, you know? So not only is the money not been spent, it's kind of impossible that, you know, eight months ago, the Hamas got together and was like, we anticipate that on, you know, six months from now, there'll be a deal for these hostages. It's just stupid. And I think what it speaks to is a couple of things. One is this entire issue, much to the detriment of Israelis and Palestinians, in the U.S. is just, there's just these stupid domestic politics around it, right? Like Donald Trump is someone who wants to be president of the United States in year. He has no policy. He has nothing to say about, like, what he'd actually do here, what he'd do

differently from Joe Biden. Probably wouldn't be doing anything differently than Joe Biden. And he's just like, you know, playing some old hits, you know. And that's the other thing I'd say is that they get away with this crap, you know, like they're rewarded for it. Like they issue statements like this. The statements are reported on. They're playing, they're doing this because they think it worked for them in the past when they said Obama gave them money and that was responsible for every bad thing Iran did. Or they say things like J.D. Van saying it's American taxpayer funded. He knows like, you know, 99% of people consume that statement. or it's just going to be given to them with no fact-checking,

nobody's saying it's wrong, right? And so I think part of the status quo I described that has failed is a status quo where in the U.S., like you're kind of rewarded for having, like, dumb takes that have the lowest-comdominated partisan frame on this thing and absolutely no responsibility for actually solving this issue. Another domestic talking point was that the Abraham Accords was a peace agreement.

It wasn't a piece. It was a normalization deal with countries that Israel wasn't at war with. It was not peace, clearly, but with the Palestinians who are the people that are in conflict with Israel. So, you know, our own politics and media is part of a status quo that is completely broken down. Yeah. And by the way, I mean, there's a clip going around now on Twitter of a Fox News correspondent, fact-checking these claims. But when you share that with, you know, sort of the MAGA people, they don't care. They're like, oh, you must be so naive, you know, money is fungible. You know, a bunch of crypto bros

trying to explain the concept of fungibility to me. Anyway, so Ben, some Discord question. So Zach asks, a major debate in the media will be between the, this is an unprovoked attack response, sort of characterization versus Israel brought this on themselves due to their own actions, characterization. How do you think people should be thinking about fault and justification as this conflict unfolds? I think this is a really good question. It's a really hard question. Just a couple of thoughts from me. I mean, I do think it's important to say, as you did earlier, this was a terrorist attack. I think it's important to condemn terrorist attacks and the murder of civilians always forever. You know, like there's just unequivocal condemnation of what Hamas did here. But we also can't

view this event in abstraction, right? There's decades of history in this conflict. And I think diplomacy and our job here on this show is trying to understand and sometimes even have empathy for your enemy so you can figure out how to solve these problems. And just we have to remember that, you know, Hamas has been in control of the Gaza Strip since 2007. And it is a lot of the Gaza Strip since 2007. and Israel has had a blockade on Gaza for the entirety of that time. It's led to really deplorable conditions. And there are regular IDF bombings on Gaza. There have been several brutal extended wars that you mentioned earlier.

And Gaza's never really recovered from those. So the conditions are terrible. And again, terrorism is evil. Killing civilians is never justifiable. But you also have to try to understand how people who are desperate do awful things and how a brutal occupation can empower and radicalize the worst elements and militant leaders. And so, you know, I think the reason people want to see Middle East peace talks lead to the creation of the Palestinian state is because the only way Israelis and Palestinians are going to break this cycle of violence is through some sort of political solution. And neither side is going to be able to solve it militarily, right?

I mean, even with an unbelievably powerful IDF, all the resources that the Israeli government has for intelligence, like they can't prevent or solve this problem in that way. There's got to be some sort of diplomatic solution. So that's the very long-winded, but I think, you know, relevant context to think about. Yeah, I mean, this is the question. And I think, like, we have, you know, you look at, this is a tough one to weigh in on on Twitter. You know, like, it's hard to distill this. And frankly, like, U.S. politicians, like, don't do a lot of nuance on this. I think we have a responsibility to do a little nuance in this here, not nuanced in the sense of, look, what Hamas did, there's no nuance there at all that that's wrong. I mean, the decision to, you know, take civilians hostage to just start shooting people in Israeli settlements and towns to launch rockets indiscriminately into Israel, like that's horrific, that should be condemned. there's no justification for that. At the same time, like, we can't act like this is happening in some total vacuum where, you know, we have no idea why this is happening. The reality is, first of all, things have been building in recent months. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me,

but hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Palestinians have been killed this year by Israeli security forces and a significant number of Israel Israelis have been killed by Palestinian militants. This has not been like a totally peaceful situation that just exploded. There's been a lot of warning signs, you know, from confrontations at holy sites to this violence around Israeli settlements in the West Bank, to terrorist attacks in Israel. So this is a massive, massive escalation by Hamas, but I think it has to be seen as an escalation of what has been an ongoing conflict and an ongoing low-level war. And I also think we have to like acknowledge, we say this every time. This is the fifth Gaza war since 2007. And the idea that you can just squeeze these people,

blockade these people, you know, occasionally go to, you know, bombard them, and that somehow that's going to lead this resistance to go away, this is not even about assigning blame. This is about just pointing out that that policy has not worked in preventing this from occurring. And so absent a political settlement that involves some kind of power, Palestinian state, you are either going to have continued flare-ups and escalations of a conflict like this, or you're going to have to have the kind of wholesale destruction of Hamas and probably significant, you know, dislocation of Palestinians. And there's not some third way. I think people in the U.S. keep hoping that if they ignore this, it'll just settle down. And no, there are only

a couple ways this can go. And right now we're seeing the worst place that can go, which is a lot violence and loss of life. Yeah. And, you know, in terms of those negotiations in a possible Middle East peace settlement, I mean, we focus more on the Israeli side of those negotiations than the Palestinian Authority side because of the power dynamic, right? Because, because one is an occupying power, the other is being occupied. One side has the backing of the United States. One does not. But it's also worth pointing out that, you know, Mahmoudabas released a statement about what happened this terrorist attack. And he said, quote, of the Palestinian people's right to defend themselves against settler terrorism and occupation forces,

was part of it he stressed. So, you know, I think that people who feel like the Israelis are lacking a credible partner to negotiate with when it comes to a boss are not wrong. This is a guy who, you know, basically lived with Arafat in Tunisia 60 years ago, and that has led into this moment, but he has no actual authority among the Palestinian people or really ability to, to negotiate. I mean, doesn't have a lot of space because it's just sort of an old man hanging on. Yeah. You know, everyone has some stake in that, right? Palestinians have obviously responsibility for the nature of their leadership to some extent, but so does everybody else, right? Because Israel has kind of not allowed, if you're like a peaceful, popular alternative to either Hamas or the PA,

like, you know, there's not a lot of space for you to merge. Like Israel has been in this scenario where they're comfortable having a totally corrupt, broken Palestinian Authority, and then a totally radical Hamas. And then the U.S., same thing. We fund the Palestinian Authority, kind of ignore like how out of touch it is, how sclerotic it is. You've got Iran and others who've obviously funded Hamas. You've got Qatar that puts a lot of money. Like, nobody who has relationships into Palestinian leadership has done much to create some alternative to what we've talked about here. Obviously, some people have worse intentions than others in that regard. So I'm not suggesting equivalency across the board. What I am saying is the current state of the Palestinian leadership is

not just the fault of the Palestinians. It's the fault of the entire dynamic that has been created over the course of the decade since Oslo. Yeah, well said. So Mark Y from the Patsale Discord asks Netanyahu and Laku generally have entrenched themselves pretty deeply with American conservatism. What does any kind of lasting peace deal look like in that world? How has Biden or any Democrat work for peace in that environment. You know, Ben, I think we've talked about this a lot. I mean, I think we've long questioned whether Netanyahu is really interested in Middle East peace negotiations because any outcome would require concessions and giving up territory.

And clearly his right-wing basis support sees those concessions as a non-starter. I mean, they viewed pausing settlement construction as a non-starter. So instead, the Trump administration and Netanyahu poured all their efforts into the Abraham Accords, which you mentioned earlier. I mean, these were not peace deals. There were deals where the U.S. gave lots of stuff, usually weapons, to countries that were not at war with Israel and then convinced them to announce the normalization of relations. But, you know, those agreements had nothing to do with the Palestinians. They were arms sales and they just sort of left the Palestinian issue as an afterthought. So how does Biden work for that?

I mean, I don't know in this context. I mean, everything has changed in the last 48 hours. And it felt like the Middle East peace process was completely dead before this. It's worse now. But, you know, I do think that what we've seen over the past couple of years is just the slow erosion of the possibility of a Palestinian state because of settlement construction, because of bad faith and politics, et cetera. The list goes on and on. And I don't have a lot of hope for it getting better now.

Yeah, I mean, you know, Trump, in addition to normalization deals, you know, they also moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. It kind of abandoned, like, support for two-state solution began to resolve final status issues, like moving the capital, you know, the status of Jerusalem and Israel's capital was a final status issue that was supposed to be negotiated between Israelis and Palestinians. And so steps like that kind of combined with the growth of Israeli settlements into the West Bank, you know, makes even talking about a Palestinian state seem ridiculous and absurd, given the realities on the ground.

And if you're Israel, this attack is going to make, you know, incentivize only a focus on security, which is going to probably contribute to obviously less movement for peace and, you know, a lot of destruction in the days ahead. What can you do, though? I just say a couple of things that I'll try to say things that are different than the obvious things that people say get back to peace negotiations. I think one, you know, there's been this effort in recent days to say we want normalization, but maybe we can try to get some things for the Saudis, for the Palestinians, like some investment in Palestinian territories. I think let's just, we have to start to bring the Palestinian issue much more into this kind of regional diplomacy. I think the smart thing to do on the back end of what I hope is not that long of a military confrontation would be to say, like, how do we all get together here and try to build an alternative and more coherent

Palestinian leadership, you know? There's a lot of money in that region. This is not cash poor people in the Gulf. And so there's a true, concerted, sincere effort. And look, Israel would have to some extent go along with this. But to say, you know what, like there is something unsustainable. about Hamas and the PA right now. What does it mean to develop inside of a Palestine, a different kind of partner that can be dealt with and that can give some hope to Palestinians at the same

time and some sense of the Israelis that we don't have to either rely on an old man, like you said, some chain-smoking old man that used to hang out of Arafat and then you got Hamas down in Gaza, right? That's one thing. But ultimately, the only way this changes is it's not something that the U.S. can do. There's no peace form. here that can change the politics. Israel and the Palestinians are going to have to change internally and decide that they want to make peace of each other. And again, that seems incredibly distant now. Maybe, maybe on the back end of what could be a horrific conflict, some people stand up and say, we're tired of doing this. But whatever the U.S. can do to foster a movement

inside of these societies, it is for peace and not this kind of protracted endless war or the complete, you know, disregard for Israeli safety or disregard for Palestinian aspirations. Like, that's, I think, where you have to focus more attention. Yeah. And a lot of people ask about what, you know, what the last couple of days events could mean for these U.S. efforts to normalize relations between the Saudis and the Israelis. You know, I do think it's worth just pointing out that Mahab bin Salman during his Fox News interview said that any normalization deal would require, meaningful progress towards a Palestinian state. Tony Blinken made similar comments to us when we interviewed him then.

I do think that those concessions that would be required from Netanyahu probably get a lot harder politically for him after this attack. I would also just point out that despite all this talk of rapprochement and normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, the Saudi statement. about what just happened was not particularly supportive of the Israelis. I mean, they talked about sort of both sides of the whole thing. They called for a halt of escalation. And then it says, the kingdom recalls its repeated warnings of the dangers of the explosion of the situation as a result of the continued occupation, the deprivation of the Palestinian people of their legitimate rights,

and the repetition of the systematic provocations against its sanctities. Again, like, things that I think, we've talked about it in context in this show, but it wasn't a statement that seemed like a future partner, a future ally showing support for a country in its sort of darkest moment. In fact, it seemed like a criticism more than anything else. Yeah, I think that like a short-term consequence of this is probably going to be to, you know, make normalization impossible in the near term. If the Saudi statement out of the gate on the day in which there's the maximum, horrific Israeli loss of life. If they can't even focus on that and are already in a state where they're essentially casting most of the blame on Israel, after there starts to be these images

of what are probably going to be like an enormous Palestinian loss of life, MBS's capacity. I mean, a man who doesn't worry that much about public opinion, but I mean, to cut a deal with Israel in that context gets very hard for him, because there is such a thing as there are public opinion. Now also, like as you said, for Netanyahu to make some concessions to a Palestinian state that would be necessary to get the deal done in the first place, well, that also gets harder for him too. So it doesn't kill normalization forever because I think, you know, it's still something that MBS wants if he gets all this stuff from us. But I think in the near term, at least, it pushes it forward. And the whole, you know, the whole region is going to have to digest this.

And, you know, like I said, is there a bigger war with Hezbollah or with, or the Iranian? or is there other violence in the region? Are there protests on the Arab street? Like, we just don't know. And so I think the region is going to have to take a minute here to see what happens and to digest it before kind of looking at where normalization stands. Yeah. We have to have one more.

We're going a little long. But Katz-Staya from the Discord asks, to what extent can we blame BB specifically, meaning to the, I assume, Netanyahu's judicial coup efforts? Like, to what extent was that response? in some way for what happened today. And, you know, I think the short answer is, you know, Hamas is responsible for what happened today. But I think in addition to that, there are lots of reports, as we mentioned at the top of the Israeli

military, the Mossad, again, the Shindbet warning about the military's readiness and this perception of weakness. There was a, I saw a reporter from Yaddeot or a note tweet about how on July 28th, the IDF's intelligence chief alerted the prime minister with four urgent letters suggesting that Israel's adversaries perceived it as historically weak, given all that context. I think this was especially true in the Air Force. And as you mentioned earlier, Ben, I mean, there was all these reports that IDF units were in the West Bank dealing with settler violence, and that some of these bases in the south near Gaza that were overrun were understaffed. So again, I mean, I think there's a lot we don't know,

and there will be a lot of questions and investigations into how this happened and how these sort of like really well-armed bases were overrun and whether people blame that in Yahoo for that or not. But it's a big question. Yeah. And I'm glad you said it though. I mean, look, we are, it's hard to find bigger critics of BB, you know. And, you know, we've not shod from that on this podcast even. But I mean, this, what happened today is Hamas's responsibility.

And you have to, right now, like, feel a great degree of empathy for, like, look, some of the Israelis who are, you know, being targeted here are people that have been fighting against the judicial coup. You know, this is indiscriminate. No doubt. And nobody should be, I mean, like, it's not okay to target anybody. But the point is that this is indiscriminate violence. This is Samasa's fault. This is who they are. And I think we should all, like, think about and, you know, keeping our thoughts, obviously, like the Israelis who are dealing with rockets and, you know, the people being kidnapped and there's many horrific images in stories. to come out in the coming days. I think the BB of it all, though, is that there's this presumption

that there's not a consequence to kind of this brand of far-right politics, and there's not a consequence to the provocations that we've seen, the attacks on Palestinians, the kind of complete loss of any hope or even rhetoric or, you know, words being mouthed about Palestinian state, like that has not made Israel secure. And that, that, that, was Netanyahu's core argument, Mr. Security is an nickname he gave himself, right? And it will be fascinating to see whether Israelis kind of are willing to sweep this under the rug and say, let's rally around the flag. I think that'll be the initial impulse. But as the days go on, people are going to ask, like, how did this happen? Why did this happen? And is this really the best

way to protect Israel? I hope that that leads to a healthy debate and not just kind of a lurch to the right and ignoring, you know, that maybe having this kind of far-right government is a really unsustainable thing because it's added to the kind of sense of a tinderbox that, you know, exploded bigger this time than it did the last time. There was a Gaza war even two years ago. And we'll see. I think right now we should all, like, I feel so much for the Israelis who are in the line of fire. I feel so much for the Palestinians in Gaza. I mean, can you imagine just being a normal Palestinian family living in some high-rise apartment in Gaza, you didn't plan this attack. You're not in Hamas. You can't get out of Gaza like when Bibi Naniaus has evacuated.

And these are people that did nothing wrong. They're going to suffer a lot. And that to me is the ultimate tragedy of this whole thing. Yeah, I mean, they're going to suffer from, essentially from the bombings. They're going to suffer from, you know, the crumbling infrastructure, the power getting cut off. But also, I think the Israeli government allows about 20,000 Gaza to cross the border and work in Israel and then bring that money home. That is absolutely critical for the economy in Gaza. I'm sure that will get cut off. And to your point, Ben, yeah, I mean, like, there's reports that Hamas attacked a bunch of young kids at a music festival.

Like, I guarantee you those were kids who were out in the streets protesting the judicial coup. There's reports. I read this just horrifying story about a man whose wife and two young girls were kidnapped. and taken and they geolocated her phone and it's now in Gaza. You know, right? So these are innocent people being terrorized by fucking evil terrorists. I do think, though, you know, the question will become just for basic accountability. Like, how does this happen?

How does it, how do we prevent it from happening again? And I do wonder if Israeli citizens think Netanyahu created this political dysfunction that allowed for an event like this to happen or if Netanyahu blames the protesters for this happening and is able to sort of make this politically advantageous to him. Obviously, that kind of right-wing attack in the name of total security is something we're familiar with here in the U.S. and something that is pretty powerful politics. Yeah, especially in politics in moments like this. I think what to look for coming next is obviously the scale and brutality of the Israeli response, whether Hamas has any other tactics, any other surprises up its sleeve, whether this escalates

in terms of Hezboa getting involved, whether there's an escalation between Israel and Iran, but also these hostages. I mean, that's where this is going. That's the scary part, yeah. A couple of Israeli soldiers taken by Hezbo in 2006 led to a pretty major war. One Israeli soldier taken led to Israel going into Gaza, and ultimately a prisoner exchange in which a thousand plus, you know, for all the criticisms of Biden's prisoner exchanges, a thousand plus Palestinians were released in exchange for this one soldier. if as it appears there are dozens and dozens and maybe even hundreds of Israeli hostages.

And Hamas is claiming that they have more than the Israeli governments even said. And the Israeli governments acknowledge dozens. That could go on for years. You know, I mean, this could be a feature of this whole conflict for a long time. And so to me, that's where this is ultimately going, is what, where are those people? What is their fate? Does Israel try to just destroy Hamas militarily to get those people back? Or do they stop at some point and negotiate, you know, some ceasefire and prisoner exchange?

We don't know. But right now, I have to say, I fear the worst in terms of at least the immediate loss of life for Israelis. And, you know, frankly, more Palestinians likely to die in the coming days. And most of the people, you know, who are going to die, almost all the people who are going to die, didn't do anything to deserve it. And that's the real tragedy of this whole thing. Yeah. Yeah, well said.

I, every subsequent thing I read about this gives me just a deeper pit in my stomach for what comes next, as you said, because, yeah, I mean, I think what's most likely is a horrific war in Gaza that could include ground forces and casualty counts that we've, we've not seen the likes of in a long time or an occupation or something much broader in a regional war that could include some sort of direct conflict with Iran. I mean, those are the things people are worried about right now. So all I can do is hope and pray. And, um, Wish for the best, man, but it's bad. Okay, I think that is it for us. Obviously, we'll cover this again on Tuesday. Thank you to everyone in the Crooked Discord for sending such great questions.

Really smart, thoughtful people, crooked.com slash friends if you want to check it out. And that's it for us. Thanks for listening. Yeah, thanks so much for those great questions. And we'll see you guys on Melissa. Potsie of the World is a Crooked Media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Reed Cherlin. Our producer is Alona Minkowski. and associate producer is Ashley Mizuo. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, audio support by Kyle Seglan and Charlotte Landis. Our studio technician is David Tolls.

Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Phoebe Bradford, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube.com slash Pod Save the World.