Pod Save the World - The Israeli Ground Invasion Begins

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

Tommy and Ben talk about the latest news out of Israel and Gaza, including the Israeli ground offensive, the death of over 3,000 children in Gaza, a rise in anti-semitic incidents around the world, and what a temporary ceasefire could achieve. Then they define some of the terminology being used to describe what’s happening in this current conflict, the need for long-term thinking about what happens to the people in Gaza, blood thirsty and misguided solutions from GOP Presidential candidates, extremist attacks in Niger, and a lifetime ban for Luis Rubiales from FIFA. Then Tommy speaks with Ayman Mohyeldin, the host of Ayman on MSNBC, who spent years reporting in Gaza, to give context on what life was like there before the war and how Hamas controls all aspects of social and professional life. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Pots Save the World on Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben, it's nice to be back in L.A. for about 48 hours before hitting the road again with you, going to Chicago to see the whole Obama crew. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm not there in studio. I told you, whatever cough my kids have been carrying around for the last 10 days caught to me. But I'm trying to mend so I can go to Chicago for the Obama reunion this weekend. Yes, that is going to be very fun.

I love that team, and it's been way too long. We got a great show for you guys today. We're going to cover the latest news from Israel and Gaza, but also try to take a step back and look at some of the bigger picture questions, like how this Israeli offensive is going after three weeks. And we're going to try to explain to you guys some of the terminology that you're seeing in the media and on social media, terms like war crimes, ethnic cleansing, genocide, all the light stuff that you want to talk about on Halloween. And then how the Trump administration's pursuit of the Abraham Accords helped get us to this current place we're at.

And then we'll hear from some of the Republicans in case you were wondering how they would handle an outbreak of war in the Middle East. And then we're going to quickly talk about the situation in Niger and a good news update from Spain. And then, Ben, I spoke with Amin Mohedin earlier. Someone you know well. I know he's an anchor at MSNBC. Everyone should check out his weekend show, Amen. It's excellent, by the way, on MSNBC. But Amin spent years reporting in and from Gaza.

I just can't recommend this conversation enough because he knows his stuff inside it out and he is like insight and context that I just don't think you're going to find anywhere else and it's just a really good guy. Yeah, he's a terrific guy. And he covered, you know, as you, I'm sure talked to him, he was in Gaza for years reporting. So he knows both how you do that and what's what's going on there in a way that a lot of people don't. Yes, exactly. So the much anticipated Israeli ground offensive into Gaza has begun. Over the last five days, Israeli troops have crossed into Gaza from at least. three different points. The plan appears to be to slowly encircle and attack Gaza City on multiple fronts, both from the north and the south. The Gaza Health Ministry says more than 8,300 people have been killed since October 7th. The international NGO Save the Children International said that 3,195 children have been killed in Gaza so far in this conflict. That number surpassed the annual number of children killed in the world's conflict zone since 2019. And a report by the

economist estimates that over one-tenth of Gaza's housing stock has been destroyed. So some grim statistics there. On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu said that calls for a ceasefire were, quote, calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas to surrender to terrorism. The United States has also rejected calls for a ceasefire and instead wants to push for, quote, temporary localized humanitarian pauses for aid and for people to get out. Over the past few weeks, at least 24 U.S. service members have been injured during nearly two dozen attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq in Syria. Those were attacks by militant groups backed by Iran. In response, the United States bombed two targets in Syria with links to Iran. And then in some rare good news, Ben, Israel was able to rescue

a hostage on Monday. So very, very happy to see that happened. But just stepping back a bit, every week since this conflict has started on October 7th, we have talked about our fears about the ways the war could escalate. With the big exception of Israel not opening a second front with Hezbollah yet, or at least not a full front, all of the fears we had about escalation seem to have happened, and things are getting scarier by the day. Yeah, I think that's definitely right, because if you look at the first, that's just starting the West Bank, right? There are fears that there be violence escalating, and you've seen a lot of people killed there. You've seen settler violence. you've seen Palestinian attacks.

And so you see the West Bank beginning the simmer. And then, you know, I think in Gaza, the Save the Children point is really the important one because, you know, you talk to some people and they say, well, look, you know, you have, and frankly, you heard this from the Israelis. Civilian death is a part of war. We have to take care of Hamas. What we're watching is not a minimal degree of destruction and suffering. When you're talking about more children killed in three weeks than in the previous three years of global conflicts, you're just talking about a scale that is absolutely heartbreaking and astonishing.

And you're witnessing the kind of full destruction of Gaza. And, you know, the Israeli military has proceeded in some respects incrementally. You know, they haven't just kind of rolled into Gaza a whole scale. But what they're doing is they're kind of surrounding it and beginning to encroach in, surrounding it. surrounding Gaza City. We see strikes today, including on a refugee camp that killed a lot of civilians. There are two million people that are still in Gaza. And the basic problem that remains is that they can't leave. And the Egyptians have been very clear about this. In fact, there's a statement from an Egyptian official today saying that Egypt is willing to sacrifice millions of

lives to prevent refugees from coming into their country. That is not, that's not like an ambiguous stance. So they're trapped there. And so there's just no way to do this operation without a continued, like, horrific loss of life that is going to harden attitudes in all sides of this conflict. Obviously, I have a horrific toll on Palestinians is going to potentially risk that additional escalation because Hisblood could get in if they see that scale of suffering continue they may feel compelled to. And frankly, he's going to complicate a lot of things. things for Israel for a long time, but also for the United States, because we are seen as fully owning this, because the president went over there. We're asking for supplemental funding.

It just, this does not feel like the right response. And it doesn't mean there should be no response, first of all. We can talk about alternatives we have in the past, but it's not a binary. It's not a question of whether Israel does nothing or they do this. There have to be other ways. And the tragic reality is that the prime minister of Israel is Bibi Nanyahu. And I don't have a lot of confidence in him carrying out this military operation in a way that respects the laws of war, as everybody said. That's one challenge here. And then the other thing we should just name at the outset here, Tommy, is that people are upset about this and we're going to unpack the ways in which different people are upset about this as we've been doing. That tipping into the kind

of anti-Semitism that we're seeing in places around the world in this country and others is totally fucking wrong. and missing every point too, because blaming Jewish people for things that you don't like that the Israeli government is doing right now is no different than saying, you know, all Palestinians are Hamas. I mean, it's the same misguided thinking. And so hopefully people can separate that out and kind of stamp that that garbage out. Yeah. I mean, I haven't been thinking about this a lot. It's been three weeks now, right? I mean, in the days after October 7th, obviously Israel had to take out the remaining Hamas rockets they could find they needed to.

the target leadership, they need to try to get hostages back. And any country, I think, would have reacted in that same way and taken a military response. But we're now over three weeks into this military response, and I do think it's time to start asking some more tough and pointed questions. The first one is with, you know, there's sort of three elements of the Israeli response. First is the siege. We're now reading reports that Hamas stockpiled months worth of food, fuel, and water in their underground tunnel network.

So in the short term, the siege seems to be primarily punishing civilians. And then meanwhile, you know, the sanitation infrastructure in Gaza has been destroyed. There's not enough clean water for people. So, God forbid, if there's a cholera outbreak or some other infectious disease, the death toll from those illnesses could very quickly dwarf the number of casualties from the airstrikes. So just folks should just know that. Second, the scale of the bombing is already unprecedented. Israel dropped 6,000 bombs in the first six days of the war. There's been more since then.

The coalition battling ISIS in Iraq and Mosul dropped seven. thousand bombs in two months. So this is a massive, massive number of airstrikes. I think after that number of airstrikes, I think we should ask whether, is the really good intelligence about these targets? Is there really military value in the 7,001 or 7,002 air strike? Those are things we need to question. And now finally, like this, this ground invasion has started and everyone believes this is where the fighting will get even more brutal. So I think it's time to call for at least a temporary ceasefire. I'd like to see President Biden call for a temporary ceasefire. The purpose would be get humanitarian aid into Gaza, get people medical care, create space for hostage negotiations. Ben,

I saw reports that the head of the Mossad went to Qatar over the weekend to discuss a potential prisoner swap. I think that's going to be a necessary step in this process, as awful as it sounds. But like, I would love to see the two parties negotiate the release of children, the elderly, civilians, anybody who needs medical treatment. And look, I know I'm, again, We are both aware that we're saying this from the safety of Los Angeles and like Hamas is not down the street for us the way it is for Israelis. But I think some restraint now will save lives in Gaza and save lives in Israel because history has shown us that you cannot just bomb a terrorist group and defeat it militarily. The fighting has got to come to an end at some point. And these groups tend to reconstitute in worse forms like al-Qaeda and Iraq becoming ISIS.

And then moreover for us, you know, as Americans like this is becoming bigger. than Israel and Hamas and it's happening fast. You mentioned this. The tensions are flaring in the West Bank. Israel and Hezbollah are exchanging fire in the north on a near daily basis. Iran is threatening to get involved directly. And the U.S. and Iran are trading fire via proxy forces. I saw Ben, the FBI director, Chris Ray, was on Capitol Hill at the Senate today, I think. And he said the Israel-Hamas war raises the possibility of an attack on the U.S. There's been this spike in anti-Semitic incidents globally. There was this bloodthirsty mob hunting for Jewish refugees, getting off a plane in Dagestan. So like this feels like it's spinning out of control.

And the Israeli political and military leadership are saying this is going to be a long, bloody battle. We have to root out Hamas. So why not at least pause to like protect some civilians, get some hostages back, plan for what's next? And then the big, big picture, Ben, is just there has to be a serious commitment by the international community to resolve the underlying Palestinian-Israeli conflict. And the problem, as you know, you and I have both said before, is that I don't think that's possible with Bibi Netanyahu in charge. And really like, folks to remember, like a couple months ago, Joe Biden thought that B.B. Netanyahu's coalition was so out of bounds, so right-wing, so basically fascist, that he wouldn't even meet with them, right? And so, like, that is the broader

context that I think we need to keep in mind here. Yeah, I think that last point is really important because, you know, you have to realize that there's, sure, there's a unity government. But all those nutcase far right ministers are still in the government, B.B. is still the prime minister. And this is a government that people concluded, including a lot of Israelis, you know, couldn't really be trusted to defend democracy in Israel itself, doesn't give you a lot of confidence in the manner in which they're going to continue to conduct this operation. That's the first point. And on the humanitarian side and the humanitarian ceasefire side, you know, that you raise a hostage issue.

This, to me, is a front and center issue because I don't know how you try to assure the safety of those hostages in a ground invasion, going into tunnel networks, et cetera, that you'd have to put a ton of confidence and intelligence. And, you know, I just don't think you're going to know where each and every one of these people are. And that's another rationale to take a moment here, to take a minute, to try to see if you could negotiate something around the release of hostages, hopefully all hostages, as a part of some as a part of some humanitarian ceasefire. I'm mindful that Israel's not going to say that they're

just not going to say that they're going to do a permanent ceasefire because of what happened on October 7th and because they feel like it's intolerable that Hamas is still there. As we've said, though, that doesn't necessitate this kind of destruction of Gaza and of civilians in Gaza. It just doesn't. And frankly, Israel itself in the past has proven this. They've won historic victories on battlefields in 1967 and 1973 without destroying cities. They've pretty methodically and ruthlessly gone after terrorist infrastructure in a targeted way in the past. So I just think we're being presented with a bit of a false choice here that you're either supportive of what we're seeing now, this operation, or you don't think that there's, a way that Israel should respond to Hamas.

And ultimately, look, even if you talk about decapitating Hamas, that ultimately becomes a political question too, because guess what? The leadership of Hamas is not in Gaza. They're in Qatar. They're in Turkey. You know? And so ultimately, the right long-term solution that I truly believe would bring more lasting security to Israel and obviously more security and dignity to Palestinians is a kind of rebuilt

different Gaza. And there should be a lot of international will to do that. And to do that, by the way, in a manner that sidelines Amas politically. And Israel can continue to obviously have an interest in targeting the military wing of Amos going forward. But it does seem like a time to level set here because all the consequences you named, I mean, obviously the human consequences are first and foremost. And we've all, I think, been experiencing just how horrific is to watch children in these circumstances or anybody in these circumstances. Just as, you know, we were horrified by what Hamas did to Israeli civilians. But the broader ramifications of this, you mentioned the regional escalation.

Just want to come back to the U.S. piece. This is going to make it a lot harder to get any support for Ukraine going forward. This is going to undermine when the U.S. goes around the world talking about the rules-based international order. We're really going to get a lot of, you know, understandable what-abatism on the, selective use of that kind of terminology. And I think you're seeing young people across the world, including in this country, becoming pretty disaffected and cynical about things because of this. I'd be worried about that politically if I was Joe Biden, but young voters and Muslim American voters and Arab American voters and others, frankly. And just the ability of the U.S. to kind

of marshal people around this, you know, kind of democracy versus autocracy, all those things. They're all connected. And on a public opinion side of things, globally, this is beginning to feel, you know, beyond anything, we even dealt with in the Obama administration. We dealt with a lot of things where the U.S. is doing unpopular things. This kind of harkens back to Bush years. So it's just a lot of warning signs that I hope people are heating. Yeah. And I'm sure there are probably people listening right now and they're screaming at their phones saying, why aren't you guys blaming Hamas?

Why don't you blame Hamas for the suffering of the people in Gaza? And I just want to be clear, I am. I do. Their terrorist organization, what Hamas did on October 7th is fucking monstrous and evil, it has led to enormous suffering in people in Gaza. Hamas should release the hostages now. They should end the fighting. But the problem is they don't care what we think.

They don't care what we say. The U.S. does, though, have leverage when it comes to Israel because of the amount of assistance and diplomatic support, the U.S. provides the Israeli government. And that is why you see this, you know, I guess people would feel disproportionate amount of emphasis placed on the Israeli behavior versus Hamas. But, you know, we also hold democracies to a higher standard. And to the point about Netanyahu, Ben, I mean, this is a guy who pointedly has not apologized to the country or taken ownership for what happened.

A couple nights ago, like 1.10 a.m. on Twitter, Netanyahu posted a message, blaming his military and intelligence chiefs for failing to warn him in advance of the Hamas attack. He woke up, everyone woke up the next day, saw his tweet and was like, what the hell is, you know, B.B. doing, his own coalition government started criticizing him. Benny Gahn said, quote, when we were at war, leadership means displaying responsibility, deciding to do the right things, and strengthening the forces so that they will be able to carry out what we are demanding of them, which led Netanyahu to delete this tweet and apologize. But again, like, he's not taken responsibility for this. And so I think we should again be questioning whether, you know, the right

people are in charge to actually undergo what sounds like a very long-term operation. to deal with a really serious threat from Hamas. Yeah. No, and we can't reinforce enough that, you know, Hamas is absolutely to blame for the completely horrific and unjustifiable slaughter of Israelis. And, you know, they bear a big chunk of the blame for the circumstances that people are facing Gaza.

And certainly it is true that they are co-located with civilians, but they are. That's just the reality here. And so then the question becomes, what is the best way to sideline them and to deal with what is the legitimate military target of the military wing of Hamas in Gaza. Is the cost of this operation worth the degradation of Hamas' military wing when you stack up the moral cost of this kind of civilian loss of life, the harding of attitudes, the risk of

regional escalation, all the other risks have to be weighed against that? And then, you know, lead to this question of, is there a different way to sideline them and to get after this problem? And again, something I've mentioned before, but a lot of people, there's a lot of blame to go around here. And some of it also goes to the Arab states, which thought they could sideline the Palestinians. But, you know, a lot of those countries, they don't like Hamas, the Saudis, the Emirates, certainly. And they can have the resources to do something about it, to actually try to build a different Palestinian leadership and to try to use their influence in the Arab world to isolate Hamas and to get the, out of power. So a lot of people need to step up here. But again, we should be clear that this is not about in any way having the slightest slither of doubt about Hamas's fault and instigating this.

It is, though, about whether this is the best way of doing things. Yeah. So, Ben, a lot of people are following this issue closely. And I think probably can at times feel intimidated or confused by some of the terminology getting used because a lot of them are sort of loosely or defined. So we thought we might walk you guys through some of the the terminology and language that you're hearing a lot. So one thing that I've found a little confusing, Ben, and this is maybe the simplest one to answer, is just, you know, you're seeing the UN and some international partners calling for a ceasefire. But then the State Department in the White House is saying, no, we want a humanitarian pause. And those kind of sound like the same thing. I think the easiest way to

think about is probably just the duration, like a humanitarian pause could be as short as six hours, 12 hours, usually just to get like aid into a region. A ceasefire is viewed as more permanent and is usually followed by some sort of negotiations to get to a more permanent political settlement. But is there anything else there you think is worth watching? I think that's the main distinction. You know, a pause could just be like a temporary, very temporary thing. If you are a skiddy, then I guess the only other thing I'd say is it like a permanent,

like Israel is just not going to as a matter of fact. I think agree to some permanent ceasefire. No. But the question is, I think there is something in between, you know, a kind of six-hour humanitarian pause and a permanent ceasefire that is a days long, not weeks long effort to stop things to get meaningful assistance to suffering Palestinians and to do some negotiating and to test that negotiating, right? And job one, get the hostages out.

And then part of what you can evaluate is like where might we get through negotiations? Are there things that, are there openings that we're not foreseeing that we can take here? It doesn't even preclude, I think, probably that if Israel saw, like, some Hamas leader moving someplace that they might want to take a shot at that person. But to me, I think there is something more meaningful than a kind of symbolic pause to get some trucks across the border. It's basically creating a window for some negotiation, some moving around the hostages, and just some thinking twice about whether, but what the outcome is, like we said,

Like what is going to happen to the two million people in Gaza? Right. Because there's this document that leaked out, obviously, I think we're going to talk about. Like, that there's not an answer to that question right now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I assume, I think everyone should probably assume that the Mossade, the Israeli government, will be hunting the Hamas leadership that planned the October 7th attack to the ends of the earth to the day they die.

And this will be a very, very long term. Take a look at the movie Munich, you know. Yes, exactly. So another light fun term. you see thrown around the internet all the time, Ben, is ethnic cleansing. Now, this is the state, I mean, ethnic clenic means when a government makes an area ethnically homogenous and they do so by force. That doesn't mean killing everybody. We just witnessed, unfortunately, a textbook example of ethnic cleansing in the Nagorno-Karabakh region where Azerbaijan pushed out about

100,000 plus ethnic Armenians and forced them out of this whole entire region. So, Ben, I think in this context, and you're right, well, we'll get to the this question of the expulsion of Palestinians from Sinai in a second, though. I think people are generally worried about Palestinians being forced out of Gaza, potentially permanently when they're talking about ethnic cleansing. Yeah, and for good reason, obviously, as we've talked about, that's been the experience of Palestinian refugees in the past, you know, most notably in the Nakba in 1948, when you had the first mass displacement of Palestinians

into Lebanon and Jordan and, to some extent, Egypt, and there's now millions of Palestinians that are descended from those refugees, and are still essentially stateless people. And so this is the core question of what happens to those two million gossans, because there have been some indications from some parts of the Israeli government that they should leave, that they should go in Egypt. And look, if you're talking about the displacement of one or two million gossans, that does bring questions around ethnic.

Now, that hasn't happened yet. And Egypt has said that they're not even going to allow refugees in. But yes, that is terminology that bears watching. Yeah, and just let's take it to the substance of this. So several Israeli news outlets now have reported on a document that says, quote, the Israeli Ministry of Intelligence is recommending the forcible and permanent transfer of the Gaza Strip's 2.2 million Palestinian residents to Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, end quote. Now, one important thing to know here is that the Ministry of Intelligence is misleadingly named. This is not a document from like the Israeli equivalent of the CIA

or the intelligence community. This is a different small ministry that prepare studies and policy papers for government agencies. But the fact that this proposal came in an official paper from a government agency that is controlled by a member of Netanyahu's political party is potentially explosive, especially after Israel order the evacuation of northern Gaza. Here's a little more detail about this paper in a report from 972 magazine. So the document recommends that Israel Act to evacuate the civilian population to the Sinai during the war, established 10 cities and later more permanent cities in the northern Sinai that will absorb the expelled population and then create a sterile zone of several kilometers within Egypt and prevent the

return of the population to activities and residences near the border with Israel. So again, like, we don't know if this is actually being contemplated by the Yahoo government. And frankly, there's a good argument that he probably knows that Israel could never pull this off. They would lose all international support and legitimacy. But, you know, this is the deepest fear for for a lot of Palestinians, that they could be pushed out of Gaza and become refugees again and become stateless and why documents like this and this question of ethnic cleansing is so explosive. Yeah, and we should be clear.

Like, we don't, there's not, you know, this could just be a faction of a right-wing government that has a more extreme agenda. And, you know, some of these people have made similar suggestions in the past about parts of the West Bank, too. Right. I think, and just to add to the point about the Palestinian consciousness, a lot of Palestinians in Gaza were refugees. A lot of them were people that lived in other parts of what is now Israel and were displaced in 1948 or in subsequent wars. So this is already kind of a stateless population that some of it has

been moved from other places. So this is, you know, this is obviously triggering like the deepest, you know, nerves in the Palestinian psyche. And it just bears why. watching because this question of what happens to the 2 million people of Gaza, to me, is the biggest unresolved question. Israel says it's dismaling Hamas. Egypt says these people can't leave. The strip is being pretty systematically destroyed. What happens to the 2.2 million people? Yeah, that is again, the biggest question out there that no one is able to answer is what happens after this military offensive is over. No one has a plan. It's exactly the kind of mistake the United States made when we invaded Iraq. Seems like the Israeli government feels like they're going to

it and it's very concerning. Ben, the other terminology or a term you hear is sort of thrown around or allegation, really, is allegations of war crimes. So war crimes are defined by international criminal and humanitarian law. You most often hear people refer to the Geneva conventions because those were ratified by all member states, the United Nations. So some examples of war crimes or torture or taking hostages, attacks that disproportionately harm civilians are also prohibited. The laws of armed conflict are applied differently. when it's a war between two state actors versus a state actor like Israel and a non-state actor like Hamas. But, you know, the broad thrust of like, you know, things you can't do apply to both parties.

Yeah. And in that regard, I mean, so first of all, Hamas, obviously was committing war crimes in their deliberate targeting of civilians. So there's just no question about that. I think with respect to Israel, I think that right now, the, you know, the depressing questions are. one, the collective punishment issue. The collective punishment of a population, a civilian population, is, you know, deemed a war crime. And so the question is when you see a continued siege and cut off of food and fuel and water, and to your point, you could soon see waterborne illnesses, you know, what point does that cross this threshold into collective punishment? The other is the kind of disproportionate use of force where you'll see debates around individual strikes and things like that. but I think that to me, this collective punishment is the issue.

Now, Israel is not a party to the international criminal court. So, and the U.S. has pretty routinely kind of blocked any effort to open any types of investigations into Israeli conduct, which raises this question when the U.S. talks about the need for Israel to follow the laws of war. What is the butt? What's the process. So what if they don't, you know? And the reality, I think, is simply that because Israel is beyond the jurisdiction in the ICC, it really puts more onus on the U.S. to make sure that doesn't happen, to be honest, you know.

Because you're either going to allow investigations and inquiries to go forward, or you're going to try to prevent the basis for those things to happen in the first place. I mean, that's really your only two options here. Yeah. And then finally you get to the term genocide, which you're seeing a lot on Twitter. The United Nations sort of defines genocide in two parts. there is intention in action. So for something to be a genocide, the party must show the intent to destroy and whole or part a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The physical elements of that action include killing serious bodily or mental harm, deliberately creating

conditions on a group to bring about its physical destruction, preventing births, or forcible transfers of children. So there are some genocide scholars, I was reading a piece in Jewish currency the other day, who look at the campaign in Gaza and say that, in their opinion, some of the things they're seeing meet those criteria. I personally would not agree with that determination. You know, I think it's, it is true that I think you have heard some leaders use genocidal language and talk about the military campaign as an act of collective punishment, but, you know, or to use terms like, you know, we're going to flatten Gaza. We're going to erase Gaza. But I don't think that there's proof of Israel is intent to kill everyone in the Gaza Strip.

In fact, I think that Israel would understand that doing that would be the worst thing they could possibly do for Israel's security because, again, they would lose all international support and legitimacy. Yeah, I mean, I think I've seen obviously the discourse around this. I mean, what I would just say is, first of all, let's not diminish what we just talked about. You know, like collective punishment is a big deal. like the risk of ethnic cleansing is a big deal. So 8,000 cultures is the huge.

Yeah, yeah. So some, you know, that alone is something to be focused on. The example I give is in the eight Obama years, Tommy. I actually only remember us, and I could be wrong about this, but off the top of my head and thinking about this, I only remember us using the term genocide once, which was the Yazidis in Iraq. ISIS had a document, or multiple documents, I think, that expressly called for the killing of every single Yazidi.

And they were trying to do that. And, you know, the scale, because the Yazidi community wasn't enormous, the scale, genocide is not about the number of casualties. I mean, I think this is the important point. It's about the intent to essentially eliminate a people. And by the way, in the Uyghur context, we've talked about cultural genocide, kind of eliminating an identity, which is all. also different. That's why I think I tend to be more cautious about the terminology, because, you know, in my experience, it's used for a very specific purpose. And yeah, in this case, there's plenty of other things to be concerned about. And, you know, watch the language,

obviously, and be concerned about it. But I think you're right to caveat it. So, Ben, we've talked about, you know, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict many times. and how over the years a lot of Palestinians have lost all hope of a two-state solution of ever living in a Palestinian state. The one key element of that, at least recently, has been the Trump administration's abandonment of any kind of serious peace talks in pursuit of these normalization agreements between Israel and its neighbors in the region and sort of forgetting about the Palestinian people altogether. So let's just hear one quick clip to help set up this part of the conversation. Of course, this is what you mediated. You mediated the Abraham Accords. And for the first time, in a long time, we were all thinking that we could see peace in the Middle East with those normalized relations with Israel.

You're just back from Saudi Arabia. What did you hear from the leadership in terms of potentially joining the pact, joining the Abraham Accords despite this war? Yeah, so it was a very interesting time to be over there. And I've been there many times before. One of the ironies is that as an American Jew, you're safer in Saudi Arabia right now than you are on a college campus like Columbia University. I spoke at the conference. They allowed me to speak freely.

And what I sensed there was that there's obviously a very big disgust at what happened with this tremendous terrorist attack perpetrated by Hamas. The people of Saudi Arabia have a lot of care for the Palestinian civilians. And so they'd like to see, you know, Israel accomplish the mission to, to, to, to, you know, to make sure that the Hamas could be eliminated. They're against terrorism in the region in general. And quite frankly, there's still a lot of enthusiasm to try to continue the trajectory that was set

under the Trump administration and that the Biden administration has embraced to try and bring Israel and Saudi Arabia together. Yeah, Ben, you're safer in Saudi Arabia as a Jewish college student, unless you tweet something critical of Mohammed bin Salman, in which case you can get the death penalty. Other than that.

It's just an insane statement. That was Jared Kushner, by the way. the way, on Maria Bartaromo show, just for our nose. And we wanted to play that. I hope you're watching on YouTube, because watching Ben get triggered by Jared Clips is one of my favorite things in the world. We've been talking about it all morning. Look, I mean, you or me expressed at the outset concern about anti-Semitism that we're seeing in places, including on campuses. But the idea that you really, you think it's safer in Saudi Arabia, I would not recommend, you know, being around some of the demonstrations that are likely to be happening. I mean,

that's just like a not a serious statement. It just shows you how unsurious this whole thing is. And it ties back to the uns seriousness of how the Abraham Accords were sold. Because we always said, we always said. And at the time, Tommy, I said to do the clip of O'Brien, the National Security Advisor saying that Ben Rhodes and the Ayatollah were the only people who opposed to Abraham Accords. It's like, you know, it was all this kind of like crazy Washington energy around it. But what everybody was a critic at the time said, and it wasn't just me and certainly wasn't aligned with the fucking Naitola, is number one, it's not a peace agreement. It's not ending a conflict. It's not ending war. The conflict is between Israelis and Palestinians. So there was this kind of Orwellian cynicism

in calling normalization deals and commercial deals and like spyware deals and arms deals between some Arab autocracies and Bibi Nenia, calling those like a peace agreement. That was the problem one. But the bigger problem was that it completely sidelined the Palestinians. And so people understand this dynamic again. The Saudis, as kind of a leader of the Islamic world, put forward the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002, which kind of ratified and solidified what was a policy in which they said they would normalize relations with Israel as part of a broader Israeli-Palestinian resolution and that they were kind of bringing along the Arab world to this position, which at the time was a step in the direction of

frankly normalization with Israel because they hadn't even gone that far before. But there was this linkage. Now, you may not like that linkage, but it was always going to be an issue that if you cut that linkage and said, we're cutting the Palestinians out of this thing entirely, and we're moving forward with these deals, that the desperation among Palestinians would grow. And it's certainly, possibly one of the factors that informed Amos that they saw the Saudis about to do the mother of all normalization deals and thought this is the moment for us to seize attention here. It doesn't justify a fucking thing. It really, you know, nothing Amas does is justified in the slightest. There is context so to understand. And I think the context that we all have to take away is that you cannot

achieve peace by going over the heads of the Palestinian people and cutting them out. That a normalization process in the region is going to have to include Palestinian state building, not just rhetoric about two state solutions. But the opportunity in that state building is to have a different fucking leadership than Hamas. But yeah, the Abraham Accords, you know, Jared's just, you know, still talking as if like the world hasn't changed when it has. I love it. He just got back from Saudi Arabia for which I think they were hosting their annual Davos in the desert conference, which is where MBS brings it a bunch of business leaders who desperately wants Saudi money. Remember that Jared, his kickback for all the favors he did

for the Saudis. Well, in government was a $2 billion investment by the Saudis in his little fund. But just to remind folks what the Abraham Accords were, it was the series of normalization agreement. So the first one was the UAE and Israel normalized relations. They basically exchanged ambassadors, Israel agreed to, quote, suspend its annexation of the West Bank, but they sure as hell didn't stop settlement construction. And then the U.S. gave the UAE a bunch of weapons systems, the F-35 fighters, advanced drones, some more advanced weapons. And then Bahrain went next. They had a full sort of exchange of ambassadors as well. Then Israel and Morocco agreed to have direct flights, more economic cooperation, liaison offices, et cetera, and in the process of making the Israel,

Morocco deal, the U.S. agreed to recognize Morocco's annexation of the Western Sahara region, which the rest of the world was like, what are you doing? Like the U.N. regards the Moroccan annexation of the Western Sahara as illegal, but Jared Kushner was like, no, no, just have this region and have these people. Then there was Sudan and Israel to incentivize that deal, which didn't even normalize relations between the two countries. It just started that process. But the U.S. agreed to remove Sudan from the state sponsor of Terror List.

we gave some economic aid to Sudan and a $1.2 billion loan to help Sudan clear its debts to the World Bank. So again, you know, the U.S. was giving all kinds of incentives to get these deals to happen. And your choice of words there, Orwellian is exactly right because, you know, Kushner and everyone in the White House called this a peace deal. They talked about peace in the Middle East. But basically, these were just economic deals between countries that were not at war with Israel. And look, there's always transactionalism in diplomacy, but it's one thing if the transactionalism is actually about the underlying conflict. So, for example, the transaction when Israel made peace with Egypt was land for peace. You know, they gave back the cyanide Egypt.

And so that was a transaction, but it was a transaction about the thing that was in play. This is, if you have to give a country Western Sahara to get them to normalize relations with Israel, doesn't feel like a really sincere gesture for peace. If you have to take a country off of the state sponsor of terrorism list, that has nothing, none of this has anything to do with the Arab-Israeli conflict. It's just a bunch of transactions. And if you want the proof of that, it's not like these countries are lining up behind Israel now. They don't like Hamas.

That's certainly the case, but they're mindful, their own public opinions. Peace ultimately has to be made with your neighbors and it has to be made in a way that is with people across different countries and not just like these kind of autocratic deals on the side. And that's what we've learned, is that normalization, which should happen. Israel should be accepted by the community of nations. It should be a part of a broader resolution of the actual conflict. Yeah. So we expressed some frustration with Biden's handling of the war so far.

But let's hear a little clip of what his Republican opponents proposed to do. If Israel and Mossad want to pull off Munich 2.0 and take out every last leader of Hamas, wherever they may be hiding from Doha to Dresden, host a red wedding. at the four seasons in Qatar the next time Hanier and Mashal show up, they should go ahead and do it. I personally hope for a successful in-and-out operation. I would love nothing more than for the IDF to put the heads of the top 100 Hamas leaders on stakes. I said you don't want the Gaza, and what they said was, well, they're not all Hamas. Well, look, they elected Hamas. Let's just be clear. They were cheering for Hamas when Hamas perpetrated this tax.

just like they cheered when al-Qaeda knocked down the Twin Towers, they were cheering Palestinian Arabs when that happened. I'll also be implementing strong ideological screenings for all immigrants coming in. If you hate America, if you want to abolish Israel, if you sympathize with jihadists, then we don't want you in our country, and you're not going to be getting into our country.

I will cancel the student visas of Hamas and sympathizers on college campuses. We don't want to be like Europe with jihads on every corner. So that was Vivek Ramoswamy, Ronda Santis, and then of course Donald Trump. Vivek Ramoswami is just going for like the most lurid, bloodthirsty commentary

and imagery he can. Ron DeSantis is suggesting that a bunch of young kids in Gaza who weren't alive for the last election somehow deserve what's happening there. And then Trump, I guess, wants to punish foreign exchange students That's how we're going to solve the conflict, so excellent all around. Yeah, it's striking to hear them like just kind of full culture war this thing. Like it just kind of like put it through some culture war filter and it comes out with like heads on pikes.

Which if you think about is it is a completely insane thing and sociopathic thing for anybody to say. Yeah. It's not a movie. Yeah, yeah. Well, exactly. It's like not some action movie or some Fox News talking point. And Trump taking into migration and student visas and college campuses. I mean, I worry about the culture war of this thing going.

And I guess one point I'd make, it's not like you and I have the biggest platform in the world. But part of what's so distressing is I'm sure, Tommy, you're the same. Like, I have friends who wildly disagree about this, you know, people who are like really understandably upset about what is happening in Gaza every day. And then people, many Jewish Americans who are really upset that there don't seem to be more outrage about what Hamas did and some of the stuff that's happening on campuses. And what's so painful is that these are good and well-meaning people in different places. And what we just heard is bad faith actors, you know.

And so I hope we can continue to talk amongst ourselves. And this is, by the way, the whole Democratic Party, because the Democratic Party encompasses all of this. I hope that we can continue to talk about ourselves in a way that doesn't create openings for the fuckers we just heard to, like, create more divisions between us and among us, you know. Yeah. Right. People follow leaders, right? and you can sort of fan the flames and push people into corners and make them want revenge more, or you can try to bring them together and, you know, take the temperature down.

And it's very clear what the Republicans are trying to do. Also, been in the House. So the new House Speaker, Mike Johnson, said that the $14.3 billion worth of emergency funding for Israel has to be offset by slashing funding for the IRS. So basically, this guy's in the House of Representatives, these Republicans, who pretend to care about, you know, deficits, want to make this bill even more expensive by making it harder for the IRS to get tax money from rich people. So great stuff. Yeah, it just shows you like the, you know, hierarchy of priorities in the Republican Party. Demagoguing some IRS people trying to collect tax cheats money is, I guess, more important than anything else, including their whatever their, you know, pledge of support for Israel is Mike Johnson. Not the most serious guy in Maga Mike. No, I don't like Maga Mike either.

So two other quick things that are not Israel Hamas related. So Ben, just a quick update on Niger, because we haven't talked about it in a while. So unfortunately, extremist attacks in Niger have significantly increased since the military coup in July. Islamist militants have been stepping up their attacks while the new government pushes out. The French, the French ambassador was told to leave. And 1,500 French troops in Niger are expected to depart in the coming months. The coup leaders have also expelled the United Nations top diplomat and U.S. assistance in Niger's military has been paused. The U.S. officially called what happened a coup earlier this month. So this uptick in violence is similar to what happened after the 2021 coup in Mali and the 2022 coup in Burkina Faso.

The U.S. is still working to get the democratically elected president in Niger, Muhammad Bazoum, released by the military junta. It doesn't look very hopeful. And then on Monday, the U.S. said it's going to evisive. Gabon, Niger, Uganda, and the Central African Republic in the African Growth and Opportunity Act trade program, which allows exports from qualifying countries to defray access to the U.S. market. So it seems like, you know, the U.S. is kind of moving on from this securitized relationship with Niger beginning a process that could include some sort of sanctions and punishments, but very bad and predictable outcome here. Yeah, I mean, basically like pretty

comprehensive success of this coup. And look, I think that that was always going to force the U.S. to kind have to step back and recalibrate. I don't think you can continue giving military assistance to such a flagrant coup government. It just undermines everything. And so, you know, that kind of means you're restarting from scratch and figuring out how to affect this region in different ways. But yeah, I mean, this is pretty comprehensive across this one coup belt, essentially. You know, this is going to be the dynamic for a few years. And it is going to lead to probably increasing extremist violence because that military assistance was keeping a bit of a lid on that. But over time, maybe those approaches weren't sustainable to begin with because they were destabilizing these

countries, and we have to keep that in mind. Yeah. And then finally some good news. So the former president of the Spanish Football Federation Luis Rubiales has been suspended for the next three years following a FIFA disciplinary committee investigation into his conduct at the Women's World Cup final. That is where he kissed the Spain for Jenny Hermoso on the lips without her consent. First, Rubialis had been suspended for 90 days. Now he's out for three years. He said on Twitter, he's going to appeal the decision. But to him, we say good riddance. And it's hope he never comes back. Yeah. First of all, you know, when FIFA actually does the right thing, you know somebody must have very overstepped it, right? It's not like this is the most pure organization that has as its top priority,

the protection of female athletes in Spain. So it just shows you how much the, what it shows you is that the public backlash and the leadership by the Spanish women's soccer team got forced their hand. So to me, it's a story about the success of activism. But also, this guy would probably wash up. He'll become like the Pears Morgan of Spain or something, right? Like a probably like, he looks kind of prime for like a right-wing talk show host, you know. Yeah, he could probably do. He could be the Vivek of Spain.

You could be like an anti-woke crusader. Oh, God. That's definitely going to happen. Two quick things before we take a break. First, we're rolling out ad-free episodes of Pod Save the World and twice per month bonus Q&As exclusively to our friends of the pod subscribers. So as always, when you join Friends of the Pod, You are not just supporting Crooked's mission.

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gets donated to Votesave America's Every Last Vote Fund. our first Karayuma collaboration sold out very fast the last time. So if you want a pair, go now. They make the perfect gift for the holiday season and there's free returns. Just go to crooked.com slash store. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. We come back. You'll hear my interview with Amin Moedin, who is the anchor at MSNBC.

He's a brilliant reporter who spent years reporting in and out of Gaza, so stick around for that. My guest today is Amin Mojideen. He is an anchor at MSNBC. He's a political commentator. and he has spent years reporting in and from Gaza. So I'm so excited to have him on the show today. Amen, great to see it. It's great to be with you.

Thanks for having me. So listen, I really appreciate you know, you've given us the time because you have spent a considerable amount of time in Gaza on the ground. You actually know people. It's not, you know, an abstraction to you. And I was wondering if we could just start with kind of basics. Like, can you help folks understand what life was like in Gaza before this conflict? I know I've heard you talk about how there's been five major conflicts on a

right? If you're 15 years old, all you've known as war. But what were the people like? What was the infrastructure and economy like before this latest sort of massive Israeli ground invasion? Yeah, no, it's a really good question because I don't think a lot of people know. You know, Gaza is a very ancient city. Gaza city, I should say, is a very ancient city that goes back centuries. And so it has a very rich history, very rich tradition. People that are from Gaza, Palestinians who are from Gaza, very proud of their heritage. And so it has a very rich history. And so it has a very rich because for centuries, Gaza was one of the major land routes between Asia and North Africa, the one part that crosses over on land, obviously anywhere in that part of the Middle East.

So people who are there come from a tradition of merchants, tremendous amount of academia, incredible history, unbelievable food, very proud culture, very rich traditions. But over the years, obviously, and we can spend hours just talking about how that began to erode as a result of wars, of occupation, of oppression, of in recent years of a blockade. So in the most recent years, I'd probably say, you know, in the last 15 years or 16 years, it had become an extremely difficult place to live, a very congested place to live, a place that had very subpar infrastructure, and a place that was extremely crowded and cramped. And all of the basic aspects of life had been completely diminished as a result of war, as a result of economic

of blockade as a result of political stagnation, as a result of a variety of issues that just kind of kept people down, kept people degraded, kept people oppressed. And as a result of that, you could feel that when you were there, that this was a place that was not functioning like a healthy and normal society. There is a resilience about the people there. There's no doubt about it.

And it's a people Palestinians in Gaza are very proud, as I said, they have a tremendous amount of appreciation for everything that happens beyond Gaza's borders because despite the lack of connectivity, they always had a draw to the outside world, especially in recent years. So it is a world of, I would say, contradictions, a place where people can't leave easily, but a place that on the Mediterranean Sea would look out to the world. And people always had this aspiration of what life beyond their borders could look like if they were a free and independent people.

And so, you know, just to get folks a little bit of a tiny bit of history. So the Bush and again, in their infinite wisdom, pushes for elections in Gaza in 2006. Hamas wins a majority of those seats and then essentially takes over the rest of the governing process by force. They, you know, essentially occupied the Fattah's building. And I believe most of your reporting in Gaza has been since that time. Is that right? Yes and no. I actually went to Gaza in 2005 to cover disengagement. So that was the first time I went there on assignment. but then I went back there and was based in Gaza as a foreign correspondent for two years from 2008 till 2010. And then I would subsequently go back on assignments like covering the 2014 war and various other trips in and out of the Gaza trip.

And so that gets my question, which was like, how did the process for you of reporting from Gaza change before and after Hamas? Did Hamas have to provide permission? Were you concerned about your treatment by them? Like, how did you manage with them? Yeah, that's a really good question. And I just want to correct one thing, and it's not to say that it's incorrect, but it's very important because I think a lot of people say that, you know, Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, which is accurate. Yes, it did take over the Gaza Strip after it had won Democratic elections. But what prompted that violent takeover was an attempt by Fattah to wrestle control of Gaza back.

So essentially, you had people like Mahmoud Dahlane and others who were backed by the Americans at the time, who was backed by the Americans at the time and who was, if you will, the Westland and. guy in Gaza, who was very pro-Western, was part of the Palestinian Authority, he did not ideologically agree with the way Hamas wanted to rule the Gaza Strip politically. And so he tried to orchestrate a very well-known at the time coup, which Hamas put down. And after putting down, then basically expelled all members of Fatah out of the Gaza Strip into the West Bank and into Egypt. And that's how they controlled militarily the rest of Gaza for the past several years. In terms of how it affected me personally, when I arrived in 2008, I was working for

Al Jazeera English. I never, in my experience there, had any problems as a foreign journalist. I was never put under any pressure as to what I could report, what I could not report. I was a lot to travel freely in and out of Gaza because I was an American citizen. So I was one of the few privileged reporters because the Israelis gave me what is known as a government press card or a GPO card, which would allow me to leave Israel and come back from Gaza. And then once I was in Gaza, I was basically, as a foreign journalist, allowed to live and report in the Gaza Strip. But even when I was there, because I spoke the language, I felt very comfortable being able

to move in and out of the territory. And I know that journalists like yourself who cover conflicts generally, and again, you personally have witnessed some pretty horrific things in the course of these wars and conflicts, how do you manage the difficulty of, like, you know, you know, you know, the difficulty of, like, you. witnessing and experiencing these horrific events with the need to cover them and to tell that part of the story, especially when the story that I know that you've really focused on is the impact of these wars on children. Yeah, I mean, you know, I had one advantage that my colleagues in Gaza did not have. I did not have any immediate family in the Gaza Strip. I did not have to worry about

children or parents or cousins when I was living there. I was actually living with another producer and we were sharing an apartment in some ways it was a very kind of surreal experience and as a result of that when you don't have to worry about your life in Gaza you can really just kind of focus on your job and of course I took my job seriously and I took my personal health and safety seriously but you're focused solely on the job and nothing takes you away from that and that's what that's what I was allowed to do while I was living there and report it's hard because you're fighting so many different types of battles. You're fighting the kind of logistical battle of how to stay on the air.

And certainly in broadcast, it's very difficult. You need satellite trucks. You need to have connectivity. So you can broadcast your images to the world. You need to be able to be live on the air. So there was the logistical challenge of it. But there's also the narrative challenge of it, which is when you're inside Gaza and you see the narrative outside of what the world is describing, there's always a bit of a

The world is obviously trying to portray. And when I say the world, obviously, that's in itself a generalization, but specific media outlets and reporters and narratives and various parties want to drive a specific narrative about what is happening in Gaza. And they're not there on the ground. And so sometimes they will almost kind of make you

question what you're seeing with your own eyes. You see something, but then you hear how everybody else outside is describing it and you realize, wait a minute, I'm literally standing here on the ground in the site of a specific location. I'm telling you what I'm seeing. And the rest of the world is trying to describe it

in a different way. So you were dealing with these two challenges in addition to security concerns. And yes, even though we're not, even though I never experienced anything as bad as what is now, fuel shortages, internet cutoffs, blackouts, lack of food, and personal security and danger. Well, and speaking those narratives, I mean, I believe there was, you had this horrific experience of seeing children get targeted in an airstrike and then hearing the official explanation from the IDF, which was that, oh, there were Hamas militants firing from that area. You knew because you were there that had not happened. I mean, is that the kind of thing you were constantly battling against?

Correct. You know, there were things that we would see in real time. And ultimately, as statements would come out from the Israeli military that would try to undercut or explain or justify, it would put you in a situation where you were trying to describe to the world what you saw. And by the way, it wasn't just me. There were several other foreign journalists that were there as well from the New York Times who were able to capture those photographs. And as a result of that strong documentation,

as a as a result of that strong presence of foreign journalists, it somehow elevated the eyewitness accounts that we are providing. And right now, as you can, as you know, because there are no foreign journalists inside, when you hear Palestinian journalists describe what is happening, there is always this kind of couched, you know, assumption that they're Palestinian. So let's just kind of treat everything with a little bit of caution because we're not able to independently verify it ourselves, that somehow the eyewitness accounts of what the reporters on the ground there are saying has to be couched as opposed to entrusted. In the case of what happened in 2014 on the beach, there were several journalists there, many of them working for very prominent Western news organizations

like the New York Times and other European publications as well as Al Jazeera English. And so that lent a tremendous amount of credibility to what we were all describing. And it undermined very quickly the narrative that there was rocket fire coming out of the vicinity of the hotel on the beach where that strike took place. And so, you know, we're on, you know, three weeks into this current conflict. When you have seen reports, seeing the way the news has been framed on social media or spoken about, you know, onto the evening news, what do you think is getting lost? What is the, what part of the narrative is wrong this time, do you think? I don't know if I would just say something is wrong. I'll tell you what is getting lost. What is getting lost? What is getting lost? What is getting

Lost is the complexity of the landscape in Gaza, the idea that somehow everything and everywhere is a legitimate target. Sometimes the narratives and the language that is used is not challenged, it's not contested. You know, we obviously hear the phrasing all the time. Hames is using human shields. And I'm not sure if anyone actually stops to ask, what does that mean? How does that look like? What does that justify? What does it not justify? That robust discussion, that robust challenging of the phraseology and the terminology does not reflect sometimes the reality on the ground. And I think that sometimes is a little bit missing from the conversation. There's an oversimplification to think Hamas is in Gaza. That means by definition, all of Gaza is a target.

And sometimes even the logical explanation of what is presented sometimes doesn't get questioned or challenged. If you say that Hamas is part of the civilian population and they're hiding among civilians, but then you're saying to tell civilians to escape to the south, why would Hamas not just escape with the civilians to the south? Why would you think that if you are saying they are part of the civilian population, they are using human shields, why would they not melt away into the population to survive and then come back and fight another day? So it's not that it's wrong. It's just that I think sometimes that gets a little bit lost. We don't question that. We don't challenge that. We don't try to understand the nuance of some of these terms.

or expressions that are just thrown around on the surface to sound like a justification for what the Israeli military is doing. And as you mentioned, it also doesn't reflect sometimes the demographics of the situation Gaza. You mentioned that I am focusing on the children. And the reason why I highlight that is for a few reasons. Half of the population of Gaza, if not slightly more, are under the age of 18.

They did not vote for HEMAS. They were not even politically involved. They could not have voted for HEMES. And yet somehow they're paying the price now when you see the number of people. You know, I had the founder of the Palestinian Children's Relief Fund on my program this past weekend. And he said this very profound thing that kind of put it in context, which was if you take the 3,000 or so Palestinian children that have died in these three weeks of war, that would be the equivalent of about 200,000 American children killed in terms of just percentage of the population.

So we think of 3,000 and we think, okay, what is that number? I can't really fathom it. But when you put it in ratio or in proportion of the overall 2 million people that live in the Gaza, 50% of them under the age of 18, you're talking about the equivalent of 216,000 American children killed in the span of three weeks. And I think that crystallizes for us, wait a minute, are you trying to tell me that we can kill 216,000 American children in the span of three weeks in a justified act? of self-defense. And those are the kinds of questions that I think sometimes we need to have more

of in the mainstream media discussion. Yeah, I'll say. Another thing you hear a lot, especially from conservative commentators, is the point you made earlier that there is some, they believe there's majority support for Hamas because of this election in 2006. And as you pointed out, half the population wasn't old enough to vote in those elections. But to the extent that there is political support for Hamas, you know, sort of in the times you've been there, do you get the sense that support comes from the fact that there is this political side of Hamas. They do provide services, right, that people might appreciate and need. There's also, you know, maybe people view Hamas just as a tool of resistance in a place to put their frustrations. Or maybe there's coercion. They feel forced to

support Hamas, right? Because if not, you might not be safe. We certainly saw that with the Taliban. But what was your read on, like, the mix of things that led people to maybe actually support Hamas? I'm so glad you asked that question because, again, that is a perfect example of the kind of conversation we should be having more of. And sometimes we see a very reductive labeling of Hamas as Hamas is ISIS because of the tactics of the terror tactics that they used on October 7th, which I completely understand that comparison. However, Hamas is different in the context that it is not a transnational movement. It's not made up of foreign fighters who are coming in from Arab countries. It's not led by a single individual the way that al-Qaeda had Osama bin Laden

or the way that ISIS had Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, these kind of demagogue leaders who, once they were killed, kind of dissolved these organizations or led to their collapse. You're absolutely right that Hamas is a multitude of things, including a social resistance movement, as they describe themselves, that is accepted by the Palestinian society. They run social services, clinics, schools, summer camps, women's programs, employment programs. They have clinics. And they have a military wing. And that military wing is the military wing that is responsible for.

or the attacks that they carry out against Israel and what we saw on October 7th. And they have the political wing, which is mostly in exile, including key figures who were inside Gaza when I was there that now live abroad. But there is something important that you talked about, which is what kind of brought support do they have?

And put aside the elections, and we can talk about why there haven't been elections, but since 2006, when Hamas basically took over the legislative part of the Palestinian Authority, and then in 2008, when they took over, the entire executive part of Gaza, they have had to deal with running the Gaza Strip. So what does that actually mean? It means like employees who were working as garbage collectors or sanitation workers,

teachers in schools who had no affiliation to Hamas before Hamas took over. Let's say you were a police officer who was actually part of the Palestinian Authority, but then Hamas took over in 2008. You find yourself in a very difficult position, which is, I'm about to lose my job. I'm about to lose my sustenance to take care of the family. or I can work for the government of Gaza, which is currently being run by Hamas. And I can assure you that a lot of the civil servant employees who worked in Gaza, the teachers, the sanitation workers, if you're a traffic cop there, you are not an ideological member of Hamas,

but you made a decision that I had to earn a salary because I needed to live in a territory that was blockaded. So in that context, Hamas has broad sympathetic appeal. Does that mean every Palestinian agrees with every decision Hamas making? or every tactic it does, absolutely not. It wouldn't be, it's kind of like assuming every American agrees with the modern-day Republican Party or even within the modern Republican Party saying that everybody who's a Republican in America agrees with the MAGA extremists of the Republican Party. It's just not that simplistic and it doesn't do a service to be able to just use these broad generalizations to say all of Gaza supports Hamas or all the Palestinian people support

Hamas. In fact, Foreign Affairs Magazine just had a recent survey conducted before October 7th that showed Hamesh actually does not have broad popular support inside the Gaza Strip. And that had it completely waned over the years. Yeah, I mean, it's so dangerous to draw out with a broad brush. I mean, I think there's millions and millions of people in the Chinese Communist Party who are part of it because it's the only way to get a job where they live. Exactly. Right.

Or else you get run out. The other thing I've been struggling to wrap my head around is there was a sense, maybe in government circles and U.S. government circles, that support for the Palestinian cause abroad had waned. For example, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman seemed a lot less interested in the plight of the Palestinian people than his father. I'm wondering if you think that read is accurate and if this latest fight might actually drive up support for Hamas in the region and sort of get that cause back on the map in a bigger way. Yeah, I think it's important to make the distinction here on two first. One is what does the Arab street think?

What do Arabs feel across the board? And what do Arab governments and monarchies and regimes face towards or feel towards the Palestinians? And then even within the Palestinians, are you talking about the Palestinian cause? Or are you talking about the idea of Hamas and what Hamas has done? I think it is safe to say that over the years, the governments of the Arab world looked with frustration at the lack of progress that is being made on the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations as a result of Oslo. I mean, all you'd have to do is look back to, I think it was around 2002 or

2003, the Arab Peace Initiative, which came out from then Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, who at the Arab League, offered the Israelis. Full normalization with the entire Arab world, if Israel accepted 1967 borders and the basic tenets of previous Oslo agreements. Israel did not accept that. They did not want to accept the Arab Peace Initiative. So I think the calculation among some leaders in the Arab world was like, look, we are not going to spend a lot of time, diplomatic resources, energy on trying to get the Israelis to accept when we've just offered this incredible peace proposal that would include normalization with the full Arab world. And they wanted to move on with their developments. They saw that there was all kinds of risks at home as a result of

the Arab Spring, the destabilization factor of the Iraq War. And so they calculated perhaps that trying to fight on behalf of Palestinians diplomatically was going to stall their own development. And some made the calculation that perhaps if you engaged with the Israelis bilaterally, you can have some leverage over the Israelis and try to get them to feel safe and comfortable that if they negotiated with the UAE or Morocco or Saudi Arabia, that they can perhaps realize they don't have to maintain their occupation or control of Palestinians under the pretext that is for security purposes. So there is that calculation that has been, made over the years. I can assure you that even if the leaders of the Arab world had distanced

themselves from the Palestinian negotiations or the idea of pursuing negotiations diplomatically and how much that effort cost them, the idea of the Palestinian cause for statehood and liberation and freedom has not waned among ordinary Arabs or the Arab street. In fact, if anything, it has always been central to Arab identity. And that's why what you see now is despite the fact that there are peace treaties between many of these countries and Israel, the Arab street remains firmly in support of the Palestinian cause and tremendous amount of sympathy for the Palestinians and their right to self-determination. Yeah, there seems like a huge disconnect between a lot of these leaders and the populations.

I mean, do you think that disconnect and the real concern on the street is why you've seen, you know, leaders in Jordan and Egypt come out and basically say, no refugees, there will not be a second knock by, you know, But that is the great fear, right, that folks in the Gaza Strip get pushed out and are never able to return. And that's why they're taking a hard line on this. Yeah, absolutely. And there's a few components within that. Look, the trauma of 1948 and the trauma being the exodus of Palestinians and the removal

from their historic homeland, that trauma is baked into the DNA of every Palestinian. It's passed down from one generation to the next as one of the biggest regrets that they left their homes or they were expelled from their homes or ethnically cleansed from their homes. And as a result of that, they definitely do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past. And the countries in the region who have learned those mistakes, all they have to do is see what has happened to places like Lebanon, places like Jordan, places even now in modern times, Syria and Turkey. They see how the international community, while they promise the right of return for these refugees, ultimately does nothing to ensure that these refugees, whether they be Syrian refugees in Turkey or Iraqi refugees

elsewhere or now generations of Palestinians in Lebanon elsewhere, they don't allow them to return to their homes. And so that fear is baked into the calculation of Arab leaders. And to your point, they probably also don't want the destabilizing factor that if you had refugees in your country that are demanding to go back, that you economically cannot provide for and provide health care for or education for or economic opportunity for, that would then risk destabilizing your own country in these fragile autocracies. Yeah, and it's important to remember that a lot of these countries have taken a lot of refugees years and years ago, right, and are supporting a lot of people and have not received

compensation for that. One last question for you is, I think a lot of listeners to this show have seen this heartbreaking video of the Al Jazeera Bureau Chief in Gaza finding out that his entire family had been killed in an airstrike. I know he's a friend of yours. I was wondering what you could tell us about him, the toll this is taking on, you know, journalists and everybody in Gaza. Yeah. Muehald Dahdoha is a personal friend of mine. I've known him since I went to Gaza many, many times. And obviously, I worked very closely with him when I was based in Gaza from 2008 to 2010. I was the head of the Al Jazeera English office. He was and still is the head of the Al Jazeera Arabic office. So we

worked very closely. He was a, he is a larger than life. He is a guy who has an encyclopedic knowledge of Gaza. He knows every inch of that place. He knows almost every single person in Gaza, as hard as it is to imagine. He was such a loyal colleague. He is an amazing family man, and I think that's what made this particularly hard. You know, his brother, Wehans brother, was my cameraman when I was in Gaza. And his nephew is also a cameraman in Gaza.

And he has a surviving son, Hamza, who is the oldest, of the children. So he lost his wife and he lost two kids, including a daughter, grandson, and his son, the 15-year-old son. So yes, he lost the large part of his family. And so it's very difficult. But as I was saying to you earlier, you know, that's not something I had to worry about as a journalist. It's something that every Palestinian journalist has to worry about. They know that right now there are the eyes and ears of Palestinians in Gaza to the outside world. So he was back on the air the very next day. I think it's a testament to the professionalism of the journalist there,

how they view their jobs, how serious the work of journalism still is, in a world where people say journalists are the enemy of this state and we take for granted what it means to have good, hardworking journalists. They are a reminder that the profession of journalism is a calling and it's a noble one. And, you know, my heart breaks for him and all of the Palestinian journalists that are there. And listen, as the Committee to Protect Journalists said, there have been, as of Monday, there were 31 journalists killed, including four in Israel, one in Lebanon and the rest in inside Gaza. And I think for us in this profession, the hashtag I always use, journalism is not a crime. Journalists should be protected. No journalist should ever be targeted for doing their job.

And it just goes to show in this current day and age when you have so many outlets of information, so much. social media information that sometimes is wrong, the importance of having good journalists who know what is happening on the ground, know the lay of the land, know the politics of it, and provide that context to viewers and readers and listeners. Yeah, truly. I mean, I just, I can't imagine waking up the next day and doing my job after losing my family. It's unspeakably awful. Unimaginable.

Yeah. Yeah, truly. Amen, thank you so much for doing the show. Thank you for, you know, the voice you're providing more broadly in the media of just sort of factual, incredibly helpful context about a conflict where it's very easy for people to get dug in and to repeat bullshit that they saw on Elon Musk's little website or wherever else. So thanks for doing the show. I really appreciate these questions.

I think they're very important questions that we need to be having more of across all of the media. And it's a conversation that's tough. But I think if we want to try to change and not repeat the mistakes of the past, we have to have tough conversations and honest conversations on where mistakes. are being made and where we can learn from them. So thank you. Thanks again to Aiman for joining the show. And what else we got here, Ben? You know, two things I just heard because I read these this morning. One is Ronan Bergman's coverage of the Israeli ground operation. That guy has some

serious sources in the Israeli military. So it basically like sketches out the plans. So it's worth people checking that if they want to go deeper. And then I sent you Tommy this piece in the Guardian by Zarlaj Talamzai who's been on this podcast. It's called I Remember the Silence between the Falling Shells and the Guardian. It's about her experience of being a child at war. Yeah. And in hearing rockets every night and having food and water shortages and the trauma that goes along with that. It's worth checking out because to me, it puts you inside the experience of a child in these circumstances and ways that I've rarely seen.

So those are two reading recommendations I have for folks. Great idea. All right. Talk to you guys next week. See you. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Reed Cherlin. Our producer is Alona Minkowski, and Associate Producer is Ashley Mizuo.

It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, audio support by Kyle Seaglin and Charlotte Landis. Our studio technician is David Tolls. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Phoebe Bradford, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube.com slash Pod Save the World.