The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - A Weekend That Will Go Down In History

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

The weekend of horror witnessed in Israel and the retaliation that has followed in Gaza may continue for some time and the fallout could be even more catastrophic than what we've already witnessed. Veteran correspondent and conflict analyst Brian Stewart has been joining us every Tuesday for the past year and a half to talk about Ukraine, today he's with us on that but also on the impact of what's now happening in the Middle East.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge, a weekend that will go down in history. That's coming up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge. Normally I would start off this day and saying hope you had a great weekend. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge. Normally I would start off this day in saying, hope you had a great weekend. Thanksgiving weekend, we all have so much to thank for. And yet, this was a tough weekend.

This was a tough weekend for a lot of people. Horrific. Tragic. Watching the events coming in from the Middle East. Watching the situation in Israel and Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and many of the small communities between Tel Aviv and the Gaza Strip, what happened in Gaza, what happened in Israel. We're going to talk about some of that. In this opening episode of the week, a Tuesday, Monday was a holiday, but for a lot of people it was a holiday with tragic overtones

and concern and desperation and wondering what might be happening to relatives and friends in the Middle East. I want to take, we're going to talk about some of this in detail with Brian Stewart. It's a Tuesday, and Brian's been with us talking about Ukraine for the last year and a half. Today he will also use his experience from the Middle East, having covered many conflicts and wars in the Middle East, Israel and Lebanon.

He knows the area and understands the story. And he'll also link it towards Ukraine as well. But I want to start off talking about, I guess, a bit of a Canadian angle to this story. And here it is. In 1975, with South Vietnam in its final hours, before capitulating to the North, Canadians woke up to hear on CBC radio, a correspondent at that time covering those final days in South Vietnam was Mike Duffy. And he was reporting

from Saigon and his story was one that left Canadians feeling terrible about what their country had done in those final hours. Because the story Duffy reported on was about how one of the Canadian planes that had done in those final hours. Because the story Duffy reported on was about how one of the Canadian planes

that had come in to bring Canadians out or to bring those who worked for Canadians out was instead filling its belly with a limousine that belonged to the embassy, I guess was used to move around some of its senior diplomats, but they were taking up space in the plane with a limousine as opposed to taking up space on the plane with those who worked for the embassy.

Maybe not Canadians, but Vietnamese who were trying desperately to get out. It was a nasty little story that left people embarrassed, and the government flummoxed as to what to say and how to try and explain it. It was a black mark on Canada. So then we get to this weekend and reports that in Israel, Canadians who were in Israel, either living there or visiting, were desperately trying to find a way to get out. So what'd they do? When they couldn't get the information they needed, what could have been about passports,

could have been about flights, it could have been about anything, you phone the embassy. Well, they said, and I know this, I know this for a fact, some of them were getting a recorded announcement saying, hey, it's Thanksgiving and we're off for the weekend. Call us on Tuesday or leave a message.

We'll get back to you on Tuesday. This is not actually what you need when you're in a city that's being bombed, or under a rocket attack, or gunfire. But that is what some people got. Now, the Canadian government is saying, no, no, no, no, we were swamped with calls, and the embassy wasn't closed, we were trying to help. But clearly, some people were getting that message. They were definitely getting that message. I know that. So that doesn't look good. Now, that there had been, excuse me just for a second, there had been a G7 meeting, that's the G7 countries, United States, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Japan.

There'd be a G7 meeting to have a common statement on the situation. Yet Canada wasn't at it, hadn't been invited. And obviously, a lot of people, including the opposition, pounced on that story. Well, there's kind of a problem in that story, because it wasn't a G7 meeting. It was a meeting of a group of countries that you rarely hear about, but they're called the Quint Nations. Q-U-I-N-T.

The Quint Nations. There are five of them. And they are the United States, UK, France, Germany, and Italy. Canada's not in that group. Neither is Japan. And it was the Quint nations that put out a statement condemning the Hamas attack on Israel. Now, who are the Quint nation? Well, it's all related to nuclear. They're either nuclear-powered nations like US, UK, and France, or they're nuclear-sharing nations like Germany and Italy. Canada and Japan are neither of those.

And therefore, weren't part of that meeting. Now, should it have been a G7 meeting? I don't know, but it wasn't one. That's the point. So while Canada is being held up under some criticism for not being in that meeting, they weren't part of the group of countries that were in that meeting. And Canada has been out front with a condemnation of what happened.

Prime Minister has been on the phone to leaders in the region, the Middle East region, including Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel. I'm sure there's lots to question the Canadian government on, and we will see that today. Not the least of which may be this whole issue about whether the embassy was closed or not, and why it was closed, and how it was helping, and whether or not there are flights going in because Air Canada is not flying at the moment into Tel Aviv.

And neither are some other airlines, not just Air Canada. So how are they getting countries out, or how are they getting citizens out who want to get out? Other countries have already started airlifts, but so far not Canada. Anyway, enough on that. I want to get to some of the questions that arise out of what happened on the weekend, including how does this impact the situation in Ukraine? Because there will be an impact. So our regular Friday guest, Friday, our regular Tuesday guest,

Brian Stewart, is with us. And we're going to talk to him about all of that. So enough from me. Let's get out the questions for my good friend, my colleague, correspondent, war correspondent, seen it all, Brian Stewart. Brian, we've often talked in the last year and a half about the intelligence factor. Who knows what, when they know it, and how they use that intelligence. And whenever you talk about intelligence, people have always said, well, you know, nobody does it better than the Israelis. People get their intelligence data from the Israelis sometimes.

So here we've witnessed over these last couple of days what appears to be an enormous intelligence failure. You've got an air, land, sea invasion from Gaza into Israel, rockets firing, everything, with apparently absolutely no sense from the Israelis that this was about to happen. How do you read that? Is it the massive intelligence failure that everyone is talking about? It is massive, and there's no way to undercut that diagnosis. It is massive. You know, in 1973, there was a major, major intelligence failure by Israel

when it had a surprise attack against it by Arab nations. But at least then, the intelligence services had at least picked up indications that there were real dangers. The failure was not putting all the pieces together and coming soon enough to the right conclusion. So that was a failure. This time, the failure is five times worse because they didn't even have the indications. They really didn't have, they weren't picking up anything, it seems, of a very detailed, sophisticated, and lengthy in planning and swift in execution military operation. So they came up with a blank, and that is really something that nobody would have anticipated.

And they weren't alone on that. The Americans didn't have a clue either of what was going on. Many nations also have a close watch on the Middle East for obvious reasons the british nobody seemed to have picked up anything that was happening and it seems to me what the uh the uh hamas was able to do uh this was obviously planned for months in advance there had to be a lot of training this is sophisticated stuff hang hang gliders and breaking through incredible Israeli defenses and spreading as quickly as you can into the countryside. It had to have command and control and all those kind of sophisticated operations. And nothing was picked up. What they had to have done, I think, and others have thought too, is they went low-tech,

as low as you could possibly get. Perhaps intelligence services now have become so high-tech sophisticated that they're all trying to read each other and pick up little signals of this, that, and the rest of it. I think what they clearly did, perhaps with a lot of help from Iran, but that's not clear yet. But anyways, they certainly were financed and trained to the extent by Iran, was to go really low tech. They went back to passing messages by hand, you know, voice only, back and forth. Even that would take an enormous skill, but they did everything that couldn't be listened to, spotted from above, seen from drones, and then just worked out by even normal human where different people were going. It'll take months to try and figure out how they did this,

but that's, I think, what the secret is. You you go low tech as possible to defeat the high tech yeah and that's what they did here i'd say it seems it seems that i i'm still i still find it you know it's one thing to send a small team of your fighters in to do something this This was spread over, as you said, like, you know, land, sea, and air, a thousand, at least a thousand of your fighters. So there must have been a vast amount of knowledge on the part of a lot of people that this was about to happen, and yet nothing got out. And, you know, the Israelis pride themselves, or always have prided themselves, in the fact that they were able to infiltrate some of these groups,

like Hamas, like Hezbollah, and others, you know, to get information. So they were always kind of on top of it. But here, nothing, or apparently nothing, or if they were getting anything, they weren't taking it seriously. Right. It's possible to be a massive scandal, which will come out, and we'll learn in coming weeks that, oh, well, one branch did have these warnings, but it wasn't taken seriously by another branch,

or they didn't think it was urgent, it was something down the road they should deal with. I would be not at all surprised if that's what we started hearing. Oh, we forgot to connect with the military branch on this possibility because we thought it's so unlikely. Part of it, too, is anticipation. Clearly, nobody anticipated a Hamas would be this skill. Nobody anticipated they could pull this kind of, I hate to say the term, given the casualty rates and everything

else, but the sophistication of this kind of operation. They say, well, you know, in their dreams, we hear talk of some kind of, you know, coming in by air, by sea, that'll be the day. That kind of arrogant approach that often very brainy intelligence people can tend to fall into. And I think that might be partially or maybe a very important indication of how on earth such a fiasco, such a dangerous and deadly fiasco occurred. One of the other things, you know, like you, I'm sure, have been doing, you've probably been doing

what I've been doing for the last couple of days, is watching a lot of TV, reading a lot of stuff on uh online uh in in terms of the analysis of what's been going on but one of the the streams of of some thought is that what we are witnessing not just uh in what we saw over the weekend but in the bigger picture over the last couple of years we're witnessing a kind of change in the world order and part of it is based on the fact that the Americans have kind of gone more isolationist in the last half dozen years, pulling out of Iraq, pulling out of Afghanistan, being very careful about where they send people. Not where they send money, not where they send arms, because clearly they've been doing that in Ukraine,

but their footprint isn't what it used to be, which tended to make other people more cautious about what they were about to do. So you've had Russia go into Ukraine, you've had China talk about Taiwan, you've witnessed what Hamas has just done. And there are other examples too. But it all filters down to this question of whether or not there's kind of a change in the world order that's taking place. Do you go that far? I think there is. One of the ironies is that things seem to be going quite well for American diplomacy in the last couple of years, in terms of working towards getting more Arab states to deal with Israel,

even getting the Saudis to be sort of talking back channel about opening the kind of almost alliance between Israel, Saudi, and the United States, it all seemed to be going quite well. And then it falls apart, or at least is delayed, significantly delayed. Because I think if anything else, this attack on Israel was a warning to the Arab governments as well. Watch it. We're not going to let you get away with peace deals with Israel as long as, you know, we're still in this war. This is what we can do. Take fair notice. This is very much Hamas putting its flag up there and then saying, we now have a capability you didn't even dream of. You better beware. I think, but I think the lack of big power, I mean, the fact that all the big

powers are squabbling at times, almost like children, you know, as Russia, China, there's nothing in the EU, European countries, there's not the solidity there that would help. I don't know how much it would help, because I think there are a couple of other things really ominously at play here. It's not just the lack of American footprint that is noticeable, but there's an element of the American incompetence that is seen in the world, the withdrawal from Afghanistan, for instance, has been mentioned by many, many people, the fall of Kabul, the shambles of Kabul, which was really remarkable. That has convinced a lot of people the Americans just aren't up to the same kind of quality as stuff they were abroad before. And the other thing is, I think, to me, the most scary thing of all is this is proving just how deadly small groups of human beings can be with modern technology and with the kind of murderous weaponry. I shouldn't say murderous,

all weaponry, potentially murderous, but ferocious weaponry that is out there with the missiles, the drones, the various explosive devices and killing devices. It's making guerrilla forces potentially more damaging all the time, and I don't know what the answer to that is. You know, it's really something the world has to take very seriously. When a major military power like Israel can be dealt this kind of damage within the first 24 hours is just mind-boggling. I mean, it's like 9-11, isn't it? It's just, who could have imagined nearly 4,000 people killed in New York in a space of an hour? So we have to sit down and start reimagining what really can happen and how to deal with it

you know scary stuff very scary stuff you know you mentioned 9-11 and in your earlier comment about wondering whether or not the intelligence failure was based on the fact that perhaps one agency knew something didn't tell another agency that's exactly what we found out right in 9-11, that those kind of things happened there. And they had to restructure a lot of the intelligence service in the United States when they realized in the investigations that followed 9-11, of which I'm sure there are going to be many investigations in Israel too, that there was this intelligence failure partly caused by the fact they weren't talking to each other about what they did know. Let me move it to,

let's bring back our normal Tuesday conversation, which is about, well, first of all, just before I get to Ukraine, one other thing I noticed in this last day or so, the Americans have moved the biggest aircraft carrier they have, the USS Gerald Ford, named after the former president, off into the eastern Mediterranean, not far from the coast, as a clear signal to everybody that they're there and they have a lot of power and might if needed. And the reason I looked at the images of that Gerald R. Ford is it reminded me

of when you were in Beirut in the early 80s and New Jersey, the big battleship, the american battleship from second world war era was sitting out there in the mediterranean lobbing you know volkswagen bus size payloads into the shoof mountains um but it was it was the same kind of thing although it kind of didn't work in in the sense that they wanted it to but showing american might in the waters off off that coast just north of where we're talking now exactly and i think it's more warning to other uh arab states don't get involved in this or to other even guerrilla groups not to get involved in this. But you're absolutely right. I thought of that myself. I looked out and saw the New Jersey, which was almost the sister of the German Bismarck,

same size, same firepower. I heard the shells went over. My eyes kind of blurred because of the vacuum created in the air. It was like nothing. It landed up in the Shoe Mountains to try and deter rebels up there. I went up the next day. There were big holes in the Shute Mountains to try and deter rebels up there. I went up the next day. There were big holes in the ground. And kids were walking around proudly with sweaters saying, I was fired on by the New Jersey.

It was zero. Zero impact. People thought it was a status symbol. And I think it's really just show the flag. The big foot is back. But what use it can be is very, of course, limited in that regard. Okay, let's move to the Ukraine situation. For starters, this focus of attention, the world's eyes are on Israel and Gaza right now.

And it may last a while. This is not going to be over in a couple hours. What is the impact it has on the story in Ukraine? Because nobody's talking about Ukraine in the last three days. And you wonder how much talking about Ukraine is going on in the White House with all this happening in Israel. What's the impact? Well, you put your finger on it. I think the really serious problem here for Ukraine, this is horrendously bad news for Ukraine, is that at the very time they were trying to

reinstill more attention on Kiev and its demands and financial needs and its weaponry, certainly in the United States after a rather lukewarm reception there. The last month, at the very time it's trying to get more attention back on the war, along comes this, which will absolutely, possibly for months now, take away the world's attention from Ukraine. And also, it's going to hit, you know, it will give more armor, I think, to all those American, well, the Republicans mainly, politicians who have been

claiming we're spending too much money on Ukraine. We have to look to our own defenses. We have other concerns. You will now be saying, you know, even more reason to cut back support and help for Ukraine, because the really big issue for America has always been the Middle East. We have this obligation to Israel that trumps everything else. No, no, unintended there. And we have China to worry about at the same time. So I think the Ukraine government fears a loss of attention, potentially a loss of support, and more than anything else, potentially a decline of morale, decline of belief in Ukraine.

That it's just one of many conflagrations around the world. We're going to have to look to others and more and more American attention. And it's a short attention nation. It's very limited in attention span. The United States, as most democracies are, but more so, switches elsewhere. Ukraine's going to feel, I think, a real cool air of neglect starting to creep under the door. That's a pessimistic outcome, but it's a pessimistic time right now for Ukraine. It may also explain why there has been kind of renewed discussion again, and when this comes up with us every month or so,

renewed discussion about, gee, you know, that offensive's not going that well. Maybe it really is time to start talking about finding a way out of this, some kind of negotiated settlement. That's come up again just in the last week or so before the things happened in Israel. Do we take it any more seriously than at any time in the past? I think so. I mean, in the past, I mean, they're always from the first firings going on,

people calling for negotiations as to war, but we're really not really based on the reality of the situation. We're right now at a position where with the offensive not going as well as so many anticipated, there are second thoughts about what we can anticipate Ukraine can actually do in this war. And, you know, people are now looking at some of the most respected analysts of this war and seeing that they're starting to shift position. And almost no one's more respected than an American historian, academic, military historian,

historian of Russia, Stephen Kotkin, who has written massively about Russia and its wars. He has come out of late very reluctantly and sadly saying he thinks unless the West is going to go for it, regime change to overthrow Putin, which it's not going to do, he admits, it really is time for Ukraine and the world to start looking now at how to end this war. Because he says, even if the Ukrainians get to the CSI, even if they split the Russians in half, what then? They're not going to take the Crimea. That seems absolutely impossible at the moment.

And even if they did, most of the population, there is Russian speaking, so they'd have their own security problem there. It's not going to achieve all its goals. He wishes it could. He would be behind it fully if he thought it could, but he doesn't think it can. And in the meantime, there's Putin who doesn't care about the losses that much. He's in a mystical sense of Russia, exceptionalism, following its destiny, and it'll stay in there. So he thinks that the West and Ukraine have to really start talking now about what kind of peace process, ceasefire, long-term negotiation could take place. And this has alarmed a lot of people because,

of course, once that begins, Kantkin referenced something that really caught my attention. He said, you know, the failure of the Ukraine, not the failure, but the underachievement of the Ukraine offensive might be its Tet Offensive moment. Now, for those who don't remember back to January 1968, that was the time in the Vietnam War when the Americans were making great pronouncements of how well they were doing and how well the war was going. When the communist insurgency in the South, aided by forces from North Vietnam, launched a surprise, again, a surprise offensive right into Saigon and the major cities of the South. And that so shook American confidence. It really shook American confidence that this war could be in any way won soon or even long term, that it realized it would have to have a negotiated settlement of the Vietnam

War. And that we should know took years to pull off, but it started the process. And maybe it's going to be the underachievement of Ukraine in this offensive, barring, as analysts will point out, barring a meltdown or crash of the Russian military, which is always possible and can't be dismissed this fall and winter, it will mean basically we're going to have to start some kind of peace process, long, hard, and difficult, though it may well be, almost certainly will be. Okay. I've got a question for you from one of our listeners. But I'm going to take a quick break first

and then come back with the question. So right back after this. And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here. The Tuesday episode of The Bridge. That means Brian Stewart. We've been talking about, well, we started off talking about Israel and Hamas. We've moved it to Ukraine. Although there's still kind of a, there's a thread running through today's broadcast.

So there's very much about both these two issues. Okay, you're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. However you're listening, we're glad you're with us. Okay, Brian, we get to a question. It's from Catherine Tamanin. She's a professor at the University of Toronto.

She says, my question today is for Brian Stewart. I appreciate your Tuesday episodes with him and the ongoing coverage of the war in Ukraine. His analysis is incredibly helpful in understanding what's going on. I appreciate both of your discussions and commentary about the historical context of current affairs. I was wondering, and here's her question, I was wondering if you might ask Brian about the role of women in this war,

the Ukraine war. So why don't I ask you that? What can you tell us? Okay. It's a really good question. And in fact, the role of women on the Ukraine side is very significant. There are something like 50,000. There are always a bit dodgy with figures, both sides of this war. But there are 50,000 women in military positions in Ukraine now, which is about 15, 20 percent of the whole military force. And 5,000 of those female soldiers are on the front line doing remarkable work as drone commanders. One has even been head of a battalion in combat. But significantly, there are several roles that are seen to be areas where the women perform extremely well indeed.

And one is snipers, which takes some people by surprise. But they have to remember during the Second World War, the Russians used women snipers to an enormous effect. They were very active in Stalingrad. They were very active whenever there was close quarter with the Germans. In fact, the Germans feared them very greatly. And the women have been told by commanders in Ukraine that that's something they seem to perform. For some reason, nobody can figure out better than men. Maybe that's just a myth.

I don't know, but it seems to be believed. And there's one, as an example, there is one woman fighter there with a wonderful name, Virginia Emerald, who's been a mother of three and, sorry, mother of a three-year-old. She ran a jewelry business before the war, and she's now one of their leading and famed snipers, very renowned for her casualty score. And she said when asked why she was chosen to be a sniper, why women seem to be doing this particularly well, she says, quote, I quote her, if a man hesitates whether to make a shot or not, a woman never will. End of quote. I don't know how true that is, but she put it in very blunt terms.

And that seems to be quite a score. They're active, again, in the Second World War. War, the Russians who haven't made that much use of women in this war, but are starting to recruit them more, used women as not only as snipers, and obviously as close in combat medics and the rest of that, but as fighter pilots. It's a very successful Russian women fighter pilots. I don't, both air forces in this case give out very little detail. So I don't know if women are piloting fighter planes right now little detail. So I don't know if women are piloting fighter planes right now or not. I simply don't know. But that is interesting. And it looks like as the casualty rate has increased for both armies, and particularly for the Russian,

they're going to have to turn more and more to women to fill in a lot of those slots. And when women get into the military, as was the case in our Western armies in World War II, and it's the case more so, much more so now, women want to take on very, very effective roles. Did you see the movie Enemy at the Gates? Yes, I did. Yes. Stalingrad.

Stalingrad. Oh, my gosh. Jude Law. Joseph Fiennes. Amazing movie. But it was all about snipers, right? On both sides. Right.

Yes. And it was the Russians and the Germans, snipers. Okay. last question. And this brings us back to Ukraine and relates these two stories between Israel and Ukraine. Here's the question. We talked about the effect of the fighting in Israel and Gaza on Ukraine. What did both sides in Ukraine,

or what perhaps are both sides learning from what they're witnessing? Or what, let me rephrase this, what did both sides in Israel, so in other words, Hamas and israel what did they learn from watching what happened or what's been happening in ukraine or what do you think they might have learned well i think all of our armies they they learned a lot because they've had now well over a year and a half of watching amazing coverage of this war i think what they would probably led to emphasize i think hamas may have taken a lot of information from this was the the

usefulness of small groups of uh soldiers using soldier fire soldier fire soldier soldier fired weapons, and had very swift movements. They've also learned certainly new techniques of fighting house to house and close in fighting for villages and stuff like that. The basic tactic that both sides are using, which is not to send in tanks and armored cars first, because armored vehicles first, because they will be knocked out by a higher technology, but to send in infantry again in small units,

but is, you know, doing incredible damage. So I think they've learned a lot of that. I'm not so much sure how much they had to learn, given that they've been thinking about war and modern war nonstop for decades on end. But what strikes me now when I look at Gaza and remember what Gaza's like to visit and know that the Israelis seem determined to go in and clear Gaza out of Hamas. I think your reference to Stalingrad actually is almost more in tune with what might be coming up on a somewhat smaller scale, but horrifying scale. The Israelis must be thinking this will be the most difficult task they've ever faced.

How on earth do you go into a built-up area of two and a half to over 2.3 million people who have nowhere really to run to, can't forage as refugees? Where do they actually go? Also, rescue hostages, but fight not only street by street, but building by building, room by room virtually. It's just a horrifying prospect for the Israelis, and it's something I'm sure Hamas has put a lot of study into getting ready for. I think just as much as they studied long and hard for the offensive, they've been also studying very long and hard about the Israeli counteroffensive that they knew was going to come. And they prepared for it a multitude of ways we can probably hardly imagine even now, but heavily dynamiting,

use of mines, use of hostages, obviously. I think military study groups around the world, officer corps around the world are just scratching their head right now saying this is the worst nightmare scenario ever to fall before a modern military command to pull off. I think for those who haven't been to Israel, haven't seen the Gaza Strip or haven't read about it enough or or haven't seen films on it. This is one of the most densely populated

small areas in the world. As you said, what, two and a half million people. I think it's the third most densely populated place on Earth. Think of Manhattan, the island of Manhattan, even smaller than that. I mean, really. Right. Built up. And a great number of these, the population are children,

a normally high number of children. So they, at the moment, have really no secure drinking water. Their infrastructure has been pounded. It's hardly existing, and now it's going to become total cutoff. I don't know, see how they're going to do it. I think they probably, and this is thinking long term probably wrongly, they're going to have to go for a siege first, The hope that they can wear down, starve down even, the population is, whatever that horror show looks like, it probably may cost less lives than going in and fighting full out.

Either way. Because those buildings, those buildings are not always well constructed. Those high rises can collapse, as we've seen in many other locations. The casualties will just be beyond imagine. And the danger, obviously, for Israel is it seems to have the support of much of the world right now as a result of what happened on the weekend. But that will start to ebb away if they try to starve the place out i mean listen yes and then yeah as you said you know one of the reasons that they've taken hostages and they took them straight back to gaza is for that very reason

that's their that's their negotiating ticket, right, to try to prevent what appears to be coming. The one big mistake, I think, Hamas made, maybe it was not calculated, maybe it was just runaway, no discipline. But the massacre stories of civilians we're hearing from inside Israel, they are, the pictures are going to start coming out in great numbers. They are going to shock the world. And you really wonder, you know, to Hamas, wouldn't it have been wiser to say, for heaven's sakes, don't create massacres, don't create civilians, get hostages, yes, but trying to keep the moral upper hand. I think basically they just couldn't discipline a population that has been cooped up in Gaza all these years and has great psychological stress factors running through them.

They just couldn't get the discipline they really needed for this kind of attack. Well, unless they just murderously went to say, kill as many as you can and that that'll come out but one way or another israel's got the old expression got his blood up and it is is going to enact a ferocious revenge i think we can all expect that all right well on that note um you know obviously we're all going to be watching and listening and trying to. And both of us want to make the point that we're not, you know, we're not forgiving the ills of one side by the ills of another side. You don't get it. Right now, it's the massacre story that is going to cause so much attention.

That was a really bad move by Hamas. All right. I'm going to leave it at that. Thanks, Brian. And, you know, it's going to be, you know, obviously you're going to be watching both these stories as they continue to unfold over the next days and weeks because neither one of them

are on the verge of ending. And they are sober days. And the impact that could result in a broader conflict is horrifying just to think of. If things are bad enough as they are, the fact that they could get worse is very scary. All right, Brian, thanks so much. We will talk again in a week's time. Hey, Peter. Thank you. Brian Stewart with us to talk about, well, you heard him,

to talk about Israel, to talk about Ukraine, to talk about the links between the two, to talk about how, to talk about Ukraine, to talk about the links between the two, to talk about how other countries are reacting and how the days forward may look. Now, I'm sure you have many thoughts on this as well, and I'm happy to read them and consider them for Thursday's Your Turn program. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com.

That is where to write. Please remember to include your name and where you are writing from. And if you can, keep your letters short. As you know, I usually take out one sort of element from each of these letters that make it onto where. Not every letter makes it onto where, but many of them do. So we'll look forward to hearing from you. Tomorrow, it's Smoke Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson.

And I'm sure we'll touch on a lot of this as well tomorrow. Thursday, your turn. That's your letters. And the random renter. I don't know what he has in store for this week. Friday, it's good talk with Chantal and Bruce. So that's the week ahead. It's going to be quite the week, I'm sure.

Thanks so much for listening on this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.