The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Hostages, Tunnels, Hospitals - The Gaza Story Continues

Episode Date: November 20, 2023

Dr Janice Stein is with us again after a weekend of informative discussions at the Halifax International Security Conference. Janice shares with us some of what she heard and what she learned on both the Middle East situation and the war in Ukraine. The road ahead on both is not going to be easy or short.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Monday, our regular Monday feature. Dr. Janice Stein with the latest on the Middle East, coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Hope you had a great weekend. We had a great weekend here at the bridge. We were kind of celebrating. We passed the 10 million downloads mark on the podcast. As you know, we're broadcast every day on Sirius XM at 12 noon Eastern and then repeated later on in the day.

But we also have a podcast that goes up and is available to you on whatever podcast platform you use. And we started this partnership with SiriusXM not quite three years ago. And we just hit the 10 million download mark over the weekend. And we're pretty proud of that. And I think there's every reason to be proud of it. Exactly what it means, I'm not quite sure. But I know that we've got a great relationship with our listeners who obviously download our podcast quite often.

And so our thanks go to the team at Sirius, who've been great to work with, but mainly to our listeners, who are literally around the world and obviously find something in the bridge that they enjoy and they learn from. And it's been a great experience for me to do this kind of broadcasting

and to get the reaction and the relationship going, a constructive one with most of our listeners. And that's what Thursdays is all about, and offering a Your Turn segment, allowing our listeners to have their say on what they think is going on and the various issues that we touch. And so we'll keep it going and look forward to keeping it going for the next little while anyway.

So enjoying that very much. But as I said, Monday, as I said in the tease at the top of the program, Mondays is all about kind of an international focus. And for the last six weeks, the episode of the bridge that has been often the most listened to part has been our conversations with Dr. Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto, a well-known Middle East analyst, a conflict management analyst, is used by governments and corporations literally around the world. She was in Washington just two weeks ago to conference,

and this past weekend she was at the Halifax International Security Forum, which was celebrating its 15th year. She's one of the founders. It's extremely well respected around the world, this Halifax Conference. It started in 2009. With the generous support of the Canadian government. Peter McKay pushed for this. It was during the Harper years. And that's continued on, although it is an independent organization ever since 2011. Today it includes private individuals, business and donor organizations

as supporters. It extends from North America through Europe, Eurasia, South and East Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The idea is it's an independent, non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington. The conference is in Halifax. It strengthens strategic cooperation among democratic nations. Okay, so that's kind of the handout word on the International Security Forum. You can imagine that this weekend there were two main topics for discussion,

and they've been the two main topics that we've been discussing. First with Brian Stewart, and now with Janice Stein. Over the last, well, almost two years now. Ukraine, Middle East. So what happened this weekend? What really happened this weekend? That's the focus of our conversation this week with our good friend, Dr. Janice Stein. So let's get right at it. Here she is. All right, Janice, we've been at enough of these conferences over the years to realize that there are two sets of things happen. There's what happens at the microphone in public session, and then there's what happens away from the microphones and the cameras. And it could be in the hallways, it could be in the bars,

it could be over a dinner. And so that's what I want to get at. I want to try and get what you were hearing on both Israel, Hamas, and Ukraine. So let's start with Israel and Hamas. What was the overriding thing that you were hearing, no matter who you were talking to, about this situation? Really two things, Peter. The first, and there were a lot of intelligence people there, right?

And they talk in the bars, not in the sessions, so you're completely right. And they came from NATO countries, not only from the United States, because all the democracies that come to the – it's really a forum for the democracies. There wasn't a single one that didn't think that the hospitals were built on top of tunnels and command centers. Because I kept asking.

I said, look, there's, you know, we've seen one, we've seen a shaft. We've seen one locked steel door. And they looked at me as if I were some naive. Like, why would you ask this question? So there was unanimity, no matter who it was. And Nick Schifrin, you probably know from PBS, actually said in an open session, look, folks, when I was in Gaza in 2014, I saw what was under the hospital. There's no doubt.

So why so slow then? Two reasons, and they were all agreed. One, because Hamas has had enough time. They've known this is coming. So the tunnel under the hospital tunnels, under the hospital, probably booby-trapped and opening up a door. You need robots or you need dogs because otherwise people who go in will get killed and some concerns still that they're hostages being held in those tunnels well they now have a video that seems to have come out today or at least has been released, that is said to show hostages taken on October 7th

to that hospital. Now, you know, it's a little unclear. They've, you know, they've fuzzified the faces of the hostages or those who are said to be hostages. But nevertheless, the evidence seems to be mounting that there was certainly something going on in the hospital and underneath the hospital. Yeah, yeah. There's consensus about that, right? Second thing people talked about, which is getting some attention outside,

there is enormous concern about what's happening in the West Bank, and there's a lot of discussion about how that could explode. And why is that? Again, because the regular army was pulled out of the West Bank, and untrained units are in the West Bank. Guns have been distributed to individuals. You could argue that that's because of what happened on October 7th, because people all over the country are now applying for guns and gun licenses.

But on the West Bank, when those go to settlers, that is just a huge, explosive risk. And that's why I think, Peter, we got the statement finally in the open from Biden, that the United States would sanction settlers who engage in violence. That is unprecedented for the United States, would prevent them, would deny them entry to the United States. That's an expression of how concerned people are. In a funny way, there's more confidence about containing the risk in the north with Hezbollah and Iran than there is about the West Bank.

And who is the threat in the West Bank? Is it Hamas? It's settlers. Settlers. It's settlers. Yeah. They're mainly concerned about settlers. There is, again, a lot.

There's a consensus that there are, Hamas has support in the West Bank. And some, again, of these captured documents, and these people have seen them from Hamas militants who came over the border on October the 7th. They had maps which would have taken them, if they had succeeded all the way to the West Bank to link up with Hamas fighters that they allege, again, allege are on the West Bank. But if you know no evidence, who knows? But there certainly are Hamas supporters. But the bigger, far bigger fear right now is armed settlers who are taking advantage of what's going on. The level of violence is high and worried that that is just a lit match that could set the West Bank on fire. Some of the people who were at this conference are the ones that understand

where things stand in terms of how well-armed the sides are, and especially how well-armed Hamas is. We all know about the rockets. We see the rockets. We see the impact of rockets, and we see them coming from the north as well, from Hezbollah. What about the innovation, the ability for that side of the Israel-Hamas war to be up to some degree of speed on where things have got to on the digital side of warfare. Yeah. So first of all, on the digital side of war, a ton of time spent on Russia and Iran

and how those two are connected here. Both have their footprints in the Hamas-Israel war and the Ukraine war, and the traffic is going both ways. So a lot of concern about the disinformation strategies and disinformation war right now. And of course, they're tracking and monitoring. So we have the cyber people there, too, who really can tell you on any given hour how many bots there are. I mean, it's kind of, you know, really granular tracking. Russian and Iranian disinformation since October 7th. And there are several who suggest these two are working together, Peter. You know, there's arms going from Iran to Moscow. There's money going from Russia to Iran. And it's no coincidence that there is this simultaneous burst of disinformation, which frankly is overwhelming the information space. There is nothing like the response from either Ukraine or from Israel or from the United States.

They are way, way, way behind in the game. And who is it directed at? Who is the misinformation directed at? So, again, the disinformation, certainly the disinformation is coming out of Iran. The target is what we misleadingly, I think, call the global south, because that suggests, you know, that countries in the global south share similar attitudes and that they cohere as a bloc. I think that's just wrong. But it is targeted at countries who don't buy the Western arguments about Ukraine and Ukraine being a democracy and this being a fight to preserve democracy.

So it ranges from the Brazils to the Egyptians to the Nigerians. That's who the targets are, as well as, of course, the Arab world. Now, again, in the Arab world, if these were identified as Iranian, let me tell you, they would not get the kind of circulation. But this is very sophisticated disinformation. Very, very sophisticated. You know, we are getting a glimpse.

You know, one of the interesting side discussions that really struck me last night, somebody said, there are going to be 70 elections this year, Peter, 70 in 2024. Three billion people are going to vote. Some of the real elections, some of them pro forma. And they are looking at this disinformation and at deep fakes. And you, I mean, just and you were so right the way you just talked about those videos. Alleged, were they geolocated? Nobody has any confidence anymore that anything they see or read or get on social media is true.

And it goes viral. Yeah. What's the impact on the battlefield in the Middle East? So right now, if you look at the way this battle is being fought, big picture, nobody has any doubt that Israel can win this war. When you look at the relative resources between Hamas and Israel. But there's a big question mark there. The goal of actually, never mind eradicating Hamas, which I've already said I thought was completely unachievable. But breaking the military capabilities of Hamas, genuinely removing the capacity of Hamas to launch rockets,

to launch ambushes, that would take months, Peter, because you have to get into those tunnels. Israel's in the north of Gaza. Its forces, it is not in the south. Overwhelming odds that Hamas has moved through that tunnel network. They're certainly not waiting around in the north. So it will take months. There's also an overwhelming consensus Israel lives in half months it's called weeks two or three weeks is the number I heard over and over again

so we could end up with a stalemate here now the digital battlefield Hamas had the tactical victory on day one October the 7th. So it's really stunning when you think about it, that Israel's a digital superpower. You know, it is.

It's one of the five or six digital superpowers in the world. It was taken by surprise. It was defeated by low tech on that first day. And it is fighting a conventional war above ground. My own view is that we are seeing a classic trap that you pull in conventional forces. You don't stand and fight. The Hamas has not.

But you prepare for insurgency and for entrapment. Which is the way we've seen war in this century so far. It's what we saw in Afghanistan. It's what we saw in Iraq. It's what we're seeing there now. It's a repetition of that war. The people who were at this conference are some of the kind of brightest minds in security and intelligence from around the world. Yeah. if you had to take a vote in that room about whether they gave thumbs up

or thumbs down to the way Israel was conducting the war, what do you think that would have been? So, again, let's frame this as to who these are, right? You've met these people in the field. These are people who spend their full time. They are military officers. There's intelligence officers. There's cyber people.

So I would tell you it was, oh, my God, this is a nightmare. And a lot of concern about how you conceivably fight a war like this with no good answer, Speaker. So I think there was some sympathy for the dilemmas that Israel faced here, more so than you would find in public opinion, more so than you would find in the press, that's for sure, because these are professionals looking at this. And you got the sense, oh my God, I wouldn't want to be in their shoes of facing these kinds of conditions with a timeline of this sort,

there is some sympathy for saying, look, when you use hospitals and schools, we cannot consider that these are, you know, this is a violation of the laws of war. If we're there, then we might as well stop, you know, say we're never going to fight a war again. So it's in that sense, it was a lot of professional frustration and concern. Are these the kinds of wars we're going to fight? Because if we are, developed democracies are at a real disadvantage. Yeah, well, you can certainly see that. And you see it around the debate on the ceasefire or some kind of pause of more than a few hours because there's a total lack of trust on what the other side's going to do in using that time. So nobody there would support a ceasefire.

And why wouldn't they support a ceasefire? Nobody. And they couldn't even understand how a humanitarian pause would work. So why is that? Because they think, what does that mean? The soldiers stop firing at 7 p.m. in the middle of a city or, you know, with tunnels behind them, tunnels in front of them, who's going to monitor who fires first? If somebody pops out of a tunnel and kills five of your soldiers, who's going to verify that? Who's going to believe the story if who starts first?

So there's a lot of concern and worry that even if you get a deal on a pause or a ceasefire, it's so fragile, it's so unstable. How long will it last? Well. Yeah. One last point, one last one that, you know, if you ask me what, nobody thinks there's any possibility of an arab force coming in zero

chance egyptians are never going to do this never going to do this somebody said moroccan everybody in the room kind of rolled their eyes there is no possibility of an Arab peace force coming into Gaza the day after. And in fact, everybody acknowledges there is no plan for the day after. No plan. Well, if we can even get to the day after. If we can get to the day after. Yeah. You mentioned something about youth and leadership.

Yeah. So, you know, first of all, it was really interesting. It's the 15th year of the forum, Peter. And we ran a new program this year called 15 for 15. And these were 15-year-olds who were eligible. And you had to make a 15-second video. And we got 15 young people who came from all over the world. And let me tell you, these kids are just fantastic, is all I can say. So savvy. You know, talk about kids who don't know anything except a digital world. They are just great.

But I was really, really struck by the Ukrainians that we had there. And, you know, these are young people. They're in their 20s, their 30s. And let me take just a minute or two to tell you about a deputy minister who runs their cyber and their digital war. GPS, you know, weapons that use GPS for guidance systems? Done. Old. Finished. Old. Finished.

Okay. It was like in the Gulf War. Yeah. When it kind of started and we thought, oh, my gosh, this gives pinpoint accuracy to bombing right after decades of bombing being hidden. There was this woman, you know, young woman who just kind of said, well, that's in the rearview mirror. We're done with that, right?

And why are they done? And it's really interesting because she says they're trackable. So we can't fight a war where the Russians can see everything we're doing and we can see everything the Russians are doing. We can't win that way. So they are now, they are homegrown in Ukraine, not supplied by outsiders.

They are, in fact, they're about, I think we will see this very soon, over the next few months. They are going to have the next generation of drones that work on sensulars using ocular sensors that are going to swarm the battlefield. And that will not use electronic communication. Because if you use electronic communication because if you use electronic communication, you can be hacked and you can be seen and you're visible

at home, at home, um, doing this. And, you know, she was talking and around her were 40 and 50-year-olds who were just sitting there and understanding that what they're doing in their ministries,

already obsolete. You know why none of this surprises me about the Ukrainians, that they have these abilities? Before the war, before the Ukraine-Russia war, the most popular machines to hack cable companies so you get free television from wherever you want, anywhere in the world, were made in Ukraine. Yeah. They were the best ones. Yeah. They were the best ones. Yeah. There you go.

Yeah. There you go. And you know what's so interesting? And it's true in both countries right now. So when the war started in Ukraine, people who were developing cables to hack, they all joined. They all joined. They flooded the government.

And it's these people who've come in since the war started. It's these people who've come in since the war started that are running these ministries. And they are just the top of their game. When I compare, you know, I will say we have a lot of difficulty in this country when we talk about buying equipment from ventures and our procurement policy. These people are getting it done in real time. Their back is to the wall, and they are getting it done in real time. They're young, they're committed, and they understand that they need the edge. They have to be a generation ahead.

You know, the same thing. We had some young Israelis there in addition to all the usual suspects. And who were these people? They were before October the 7 suspects. And who were these people? They were, before October the 7th, they were all doing other things. They were running, you know, they were in the high-tech sector. They were running companies.

They were on the streets protesting against judicial reform. This happens. They switched on a dime. And they are doing tech innovation. They're running. They're looking after all the displaced people. So you get a glimpse, Peter, of what, first of all,

the capacity of these societies and the young people in them, but also what a difference it makes when you've got your back to the wall and you're not lazy and you're not comfortable. And you know who I'm talking about here. Okay, I'm going to take a quick break and I want to come back and ask a couple of questions about what you were hearing in terms of the actual war in Ukraine. So let's take that break and we'll be right back. And welcome back.

You're listening to The Bridge, the Monday episode. Janice Stein is with us, and she's just back from the Halifax Security Intelligence Conference. And we're talking both Israel-Hamas war and Ukraine. And we've got a couple of questions here on Ukraine. Janice, I want to start by reading you this. It came over CNN over the weekend. I found this fascinating.

In the days before the Israel-Hamas war, the battle in Ukraine amounted to about 8% of CNN's television coverage. Now, that doesn't sound like a lot, but that's actually quite a bit. One out of every 10 minutes. After the attacks of October 7th, CNN provided the most Ukraine coverage, yet it fell to under 1%. So who did that favor in terms of was it a good thing for them or not? It was obviously a good thing for Putin if the world's attention

moved off Ukraine. And I assume there was some discussion about that because it has dropped off the face of most international media ever since October 7th. It's very clear. This attack is a huge gift to Putin, a huge gift to him. And that's where, again, I doubt very much that the Russians knew about it. But once it happened, they have been actively exploiting it. The Ukrainians are really worried.

They are really worried about it. They're worried that they're very well aware of what you just said, Peter. They're worried about it. They're so concerned that attention to the war and will lead to a drop-off in support for Ukraine. They are terrified about the United States going into an election year and taking their eye off the ball.

We had three senators there. We always get a really good delegation from the U.S. Senate. Probably get more senators every year in Halifax than any other Canadian organization gets anywhere in Canada. They always come. And they were saying, look, it's going to be a struggle. We have both Republicans and Democrats. It's going to be a struggle to get that aid package for Ukraine through. Every Ukrainian stopped and asked,

what's the likelihood of that aid package going through? And is that the last aid package that goes through before the U.S. presidential election? It could well be. It could well be. And that, you know, they know that they are so worried about it. It's impossible to exaggerate how worried they are about what you just described.

What was their sense of how the war is actually going at the moment? Is it, as we've talked to the last few weeks, about stalemate? Yeah. They, again, quietly, not on the public panels, but quietly, they acknowledged there's a stalemate. Some of them said that's what they expected. I'm not surprised. than they would have liked because they understand the political support that they need to maintain. So they had to show that they could do something and keep on winning. And they recognize that they are fighting in information war too

for democratic support, for supporting democratic countries. Without that, they understand they will lose. Russia can outweigh them. So that's where these young people really matter. They are now,

they are working on the next generation of digital warfare. And they think they can do it, and they think they can do it in a very short time. This is like some, you know, seedbed. They understand that if they don't break through with technology that Russia cannot counter, and there's a prolonged stalemate in an election year in the United States, they're actually concerned Russia can go on the offensive under those conditions.

There's a lot of concern. I asked you on the Middle East situation, if there'd been a vote in that room how strong the vote would have been in favor of the way israel was conducting the war if there was a similar vote on how zelensky is on is running the war i mean it for the most part for the last two years he's been talked of and in the most heroic terms, and justifiably so in many cases. But it is coming up on two years now. And is there anyone having second thoughts about the way this is being run? So there's a big difference. There's a big difference.

Is there support for Zelensky in that room? Overwhelming. Support for Ukraine? Overwhelming. in that room overwhelming over support for ukraine overwhelmed um is there are there arguments about the way the ukrainian army has fought uh about the way the kind of war the ukrainian army has fought yeah uh there sure are um you, it's really interesting. The Ukrainian army, of course, trained as a Soviet army. And then in a relatively short period of time, under the gun, the Brits, the Germans, you know, the French, the United States comes in and said, no, no, no, no, no, that's not how you fight. You fight combined arms, you know, air, sea, land,

all integrated, cyber, mobile, not stationary war. And there's some sense that that advice may have caught the Ukrainians in the middle. It wasn't long enough to really train and become adept and flexible in the way that a highly trained American force would be, but it was enough to destabilize what they did very well. And so we got a bit of both this winter, spring, and summer. And there's a discussion going on. Did we make a mistake?

So it's not a lack of support, but it's a questioning by some of the military people. Did we make a mistake? Should we have, in fact, let the Ukrainians fight the kind of war that they're really comfortable at fighting with their strategy and their tactics? Or was this just too soon and they didn't have enough time to integrate all the equipment? What is clear, Peter, is that a lot of the expensive armor, the tanks, the armored vehicles have not yet been thrown into the battle by the Ukrainians. That's still being held in reserve. So there's another round coming. There's another ground.

So that's why this question of how do you fight with that equipment is really important. F-16s, again, people said that was deliberately slowed down. Not really, because you have to be trained in English. You have to be trained in English to pilot an F-16. Six months, nine months. So they're caught, they're in an in-between position, and that's what the military folks who have trained them were saying. They were self-questioning by some of the Western militaries. Not a bad thing.

Last question. As all the delegates were heading out of the meeting rooms and the conferences and all the speeches had been finished and they were heading on that long drive in Halifax to the airport, what do you think they're assuming will be the situation when they meet again a year from now? You know, I hate to sound a pessimistic note. There's a recognition these are dark times,

which they are. There's a recognition of the kind of security challenges we face. We have not faced in this order of magnitude. You know, we talk about Iraq. That was a war of choice, Peter, right? The Americans chose to do that. Afghanistan, you could argue, was a different story because it was a response to 9-11.

But Iraq truly was a war of choice. Ukraine is not fighting a war of choice. And nobody expected this in Europe, and they now understand there's no quick victory. There's no easy out here. And so the worry is there's a resolute determination that Ukraine cannot lose. But the path to that, people are worried about. How do we finance it?

How do we sustain it? How do we sustain the political support? That is a big concern. With respect to Israel, it's the same kind. You won't be surprised when I say there's a lot of criticism, which predated the Hamas attack of the government in Israel. There is the expectation by everybody that that government is history. It's just a question of how long it's going to take for history to unfold.

But there is a very kind of grim recognition. There's no easy political solution. There's no day after here. And the path to get to the day after is going to be very tough. So these are people that are buckling down for a much harder decade in front than we've had behind. Dark times, no doubt about it. But we're lucky to have you with us to shed a little light into a few corners of all this. Listen, Peter, I can't leave us on that note. When you saw those 15 kids, you know, from Nigeria, from Jamaica, one from Canada, these kids are so able. They're so adept.

They're so creative. They're committed. And they're these 15-year-olds. You know, we had 300 people in that hotel. Those 15-year-olds were everywhere, talking to everybody, asking questions. You got to say, there's hope. There's hope, leaders of tomorrow. Yeah.

All right, Janice, thank you for this. We'll talk again in seven days. Take care. Dr. Janice Stein. With us again, a really thoughtful discussion on a lot of issues in there, prompted by some of the things that happened at the International Security Conference in Halifax over the weekend. And a reminder, Janice was one of the founding members of that conference and still is there every year listening, participating, and we're lucky enough to have the fact that she was reporting back to us.

And I thank her again for another great conversation. As I said earlier, the conversations with Janice over the last six weeks have been some of the most listened to programs that we've had during that period. And so that's great. And helped us push towards that 10 million download mark. And the fact that once again, when I looked this morning at the Apple ratings for political podcasts in Canada, guess which is number one? The Bridge. We're happy for that.

All right. A couple of notes about the days ahead. Tomorrow I'm looking for another big day here at The Bridge because tomorrow Mark Bulguch is going to be along. Mark is the co-author of our new book, How Canada Works. We co-authored the book Extraordinary Canadians a few years ago, which many of you purchased and enjoyed, at least that's what you told me. And so we've got together again for, well, it's similar in a way, but very different as well, in terms of the people who we focus on and how Canada works. So Mark is going to be with us tomorrow to talk about the book,

because tomorrow is the official launch day. Simon & Schuster, the publisher, puts the book out as of tomorrow officially. I think it's already on sale at various bookstores, so you can pick it up if you wish, or you can order it online. It's all very simple these days to get books in your hand. I go on a book tour starting next week, going to a number of places in the country from Halifax to Calgary and points in between. Somebody asked me the other day, well, why aren't you in such and such a community? Because you can see the book tour and where I'm going on my website, thepetermansbridge.com. Well, you know, it's coordinated

with bookstores and those who are willing to help organize some form of stop for the book tour. And so we've picked and agreed with a number of bookstores and community organizations over the next sort of the first 10 days of December, really, and looking forward to that. And I hope I get a chance to meet you if you're able to connect in the communities that we are going to. Okay, that's tomorrow's program. Wednesday, it's Smoke Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson.

Thursday, your turn. So if you have thoughts on what you've heard today or what you're going to hear in the next couple of days, send those thoughts along to the Peter Mansbridge, or no, excuse me, getting my websites mixed up, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. That's Thursday along with the Random Ranter, and then Friday, of course, is Good Talk with Chantal Hébert and Bruce Anderson. Great to have you with us today

as we launch another week of The Bridge. And looking forward to talking to you again tomorrow. Thanks for listening. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Take care for now. See you in 24 hours.