The Daily Signal - Kids as Human Shields: Evolution of Hamas' War on Israel

Episode Date: December 23, 2021

The conflict between Israel and terrorist group Hamas runs back decades. But earlier this year, an 11 day conflict between the two brought the eyes of the world back onto the Middle East. Hamas has resorted to using children in its campaign to destroy Israel. "Hamas uses human shields on a regular basis," Jonathan Schanzer explains. "They actually send kids to the border fence with Israel and militants hide behind them." Schanzer is the senior vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and author of "Gaza Conflict 2021: Hamas, Israel and 11 Days of War," and has detailed Hamas' ongoing campaign to obliterate Israel. He joins the show to break down those 11 days of conflict, and discuss how America should be involved. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I'm Virginia Allen. And I'm Doug Blair. The conflict between Israel and terrorist group Hamas runs back decades. But earlier this year, an 11-day conflict between the two brought the eyes of the world back onto the Middle East. Jonathan Shanzer is the senior vice president of research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, as well as author of the book Gaza Conflict 2021, Hamas, Israel, and 11 days of war. He joins the show to break down those 11 days of conflict as well as discuss how America should be involved. Because it is the week of Christmas, we don't have any news headlines for you this week, but we are excited to keep on sharing some Christmas trivia.

All right, Doug, you ready? Let's do it. Okay. First question, in what modern day country was St. Nicholas born? Now, we had this discussion on an earlier podcast where I wasn't sure if where the Christmas tree went up. was in Germany or Norway. I think I may have confused the two here. So if I am not mistaken, was St. Nicholas born in Norway?

Very good guess. Actually, Turkey. Turkey. I know. I know. Something I would have never guessed. But, yep, St. Nicholas was born in modern day Turkey. Was his name St. Nicholas?

So I assume that his name was Nicholas. Obviously, you're not born as a saint that comes late. later. So he didn't have the saint, but I assume, I've not done my research on this, but I assume his name was Nicholas. That is fascinating. I know. I would have never guessed her. I never would have you either. Really interesting. Okay. Question number two, what was the first company to use Santa Claus in its advertising? Going back to another conversation we had on a previous podcast, I believe that the reason why Santa Claus is red in America is because this company started to use him in their advertising, and the company's color is red. And the company's

color is red. And so I'm going to guess Coca-Cola. Correct. Ding-ding-ding. Well done. Yeah, no, I mean, you think of that classic image of Santa holding the Coke can or on the Coke can. It's very iconic. Definitely. All right. Last question on today's show. In the movie Elf, what was the first rule of the code of the elves? You know, Virginia, I used to watch this movie all the time when I was a kid. It's a great Christmas movie. Oh, it is a phenomenal Christmas movie. Will Ferrell is so funny. I'll never forget the first time that, God, there's that scene where he's at the Macy's, and the manager just goes, 10 a.m., Santa's coming to town, and Will Ferrell just screams Santa.

And it's the funniest scene. That's just so funny to me. Now, that being said, I don't think I have seen Elf in quite a few years, so I do not remember this. I am going to guess the first rule of the code of elves is make good toys. Aw, that's a good guess, but it's wrong. It's treat every day like Christmas. That is an excellent rule. And I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure the second one was there's room for everyone on the nice list.

Oh. For our listeners, if I'm wrong on that, write in and let us know. You can correct me. Well, we should probably take that rule very seriously. Yes. We should all live our lives. I know. I know.

It's a good rule. Yeah. All right. Let's go ahead and turn to Doug's conversation. with Jonathan Shanzer. Our guest today is John Shanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, as well as author of the new book, Gaza Conflict 2021, Hamas, Israel, and the 11 Days of War, available now wherever books are sold. John, welcome to the show. Thank you very much.

So it seems like post-Afghanistan pull out. Americans have kind of lost interest in the Middle East. What does the region now look like at the moment geopolitically now that we have pulled out? Well, I think in short, it's chaos. I think, you know, this is a region that is traditionally looked to the United States for leadership and for organization for that matter. And even when you had countries like Israel that had conflicts with some of its neighbors, they still look to the United States to keep order in the region. So now that we've pulled out of Afghanistan and we're looking to end what critics often call the Forever Wars of the Middle East, and we can talk about

what that means or what it doesn't mean if you'd like. But there is a sense in the region that the United States is just ready to leave it all behind and that they will be forced to fend for themselves. That obviously has significant ramifications for the Iran nuclear issue and the concerns that are mounting there, but also a lot of Iranian proxies that we see operating in places like Iraq and Syria, Lebanon, and of course, Gaza. So you mentioned that there is this sense that America was the country that a lot of these places in the Middle East looked for for guidance. Are you saying now that they don't look to us for guidance anymore, or do you say that they want us to come back to provide that guidance?

I think they would still very much like to see the United States be the glue. for this region. But I think that Afghanistan was a scary moment for anybody watching. In other words, what we've seen, actually really beginning in the Obama era, you know, we were already talking about pivoting to Asia. There was, if you recall that the so-called red line debacle where Obama was going to enforce America's red line after the Syrians used chemical weapons against their own people. And then in the end, decided not to the Iranian nuclear agreement that basically just kicks the can down the road on Iranian nukes and all but guarantees that Iran will at some point get a nuclear weapon. All of these things, I think, put fear into the hearts of our allies. And they're looking to one another right now, wondering, you know, can they ban together?

Can they create diplomatic structures? can they even build military alliances that would help fill the vacuum of the world's only superpower, which had really seen a lot of value in this region after the fall of the Berlin Wall? And I think we're having second thoughts as a country. I would say that even though we saw the beginnings of this with Obama, we saw a fair amount of it with Trump as well. If you remember, I mean, President Trump talked about getting out of Afghanistan and having people sort of pay their way in order to have America stay in this part of the world,

it became very transactional and not so much strategic. And I think the region is growing nervous. Moving on to your book, the book focuses mainly on this 11-day conflict in May of this year between Israel and the Palestinian terror group, Hamas. Can you briefly take our listeners through that week and a half and sort of what happened during this conflict? I think maybe back up to April, there was a moment where we all thought that the Palestinians who've been at war with each other. And I think that's been lost on a lot of people. They've been at war with each other since 2007. We just talked about how Hamasca controls the Gaza Strip.

The PLO controls the West Bank. And these two factions have been at war with each other since 2007. In I guess it was September of last year, they decided that they were going to, to try to hold elections to try to unify politically. This actually happened after the peace agreements that President Trump brokered, known as the Abraham Accords. It became clear that these Arab countries were willing to engage diplomatically with Israel and perhaps to the detriment, let's say, of the Palestinian cause. So the Palestinians said they wanted to have elections. Trump, I think, could have cared less. But when Biden came in, he supported it. He said it was a good idea. It was a terrible idea, primarily because Hamas is a terrorist organization, as you noted. And if Hamas had control

of any component of a Palestinian government, it would have triggered a cut in American funding. There would have been a diplomatic crisis. It could have actually led to war. And so the Biden administration supported it anyway to migrate confusion. And then at the very last minute, prevailed upon the Palestinian authority to not hold these elections. Hamas was furious. And they were looking for an excuse to go to war. They got one in May. They exploited a real estate dispute in East Jerusalem where there were a handful of Palestinian Arab residents who were about lose a court case in Israel. And Hamas tried to make a bigger deal out of it than it was. And if you'd like, we can get into it. But I think it's really a footnote at this point. But, and so basically,

Hamas decided to use that moment to try to capture the hearts and minds of the Palestinian people. And they began firing rockets in Israel into Israel in mid-May. They fired about 4,000 rockets over the course of, of those 11 days. The Israelis neutralized almost all of them with a remarkable air defense system called Iron Dome. It is really a miraculous, life-saving technology that was developed in tandem with the United States, actually. And so the Israelis were able to methodically destroy the Hamas targets that were relevant during the course of this. war. There were 200 people that died during the war, which is remarkable when you consider the sheer amount of munitions flying in both directions during this time. And also, it's important to remember

that Gaza is around the size of Washington, D.C. It's small. There are about 2 million people in this very crowded area, and it could have been a lot messier of a war. It wasn't. And I think to Israel's great credit. But yet Israel emerged from the war, a defensive war by all accounts, Israel emerged bloodied and beaten up in the world press, beaten up here by legislators in the U.S. Congress who were vilifying Israel for defending itself. And so after I watched that war and I watched the response and I watched the media coverage, there was just a moment where I said, you know what, this was bizarre a world. And that maybe it was time to write.

This is actually my fourth book. And I decided to write it in a very short amount of time. I actually wrote the first draft in around eight days, went to Israel, interviewed people for it, came back, finished the edits. And the book came out. We went from ceasefire to bookshelf in 166 days. Wow. Very impressive.

I want to tackle two things that you mentioned in that. rundown. So the first is, you mentioned that a lot of the Arab states were now more willing to work with Israel than they had been in the past. What reason do you think that is? Well, I think there were two things, really. There are probably some other factors as well, but the big factors were, one, that the United States was engaging with Iran, negotiating with Iran, providing sanctions, relief to Iran, and effectively paving a pathway for the Iranians to get that. nuclear weapon down the line, whether it was in 20, 25 years, 30 years, it was going to happen, probably sooner and they still may. And so it put the fear of God in both the Arabs and Israelis,

and they began to realize with the United States leaving the region and really, I think, engaging, I would actually say in bad faith with the Iranians, nobody has any illusions about what Iran once, which is they want the bomb and they want to be able to destroy Israel, as well as dominate the Middle East, attack Saudi Arabia. I mean, no one was happy about this. So they came together and they began talking and they began to realize that maybe they really weren't enemies after all, that they had a lot in common. The other thing that I think is also worth noting is that the Arab world opposed the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, and then for the last 70-plus years have continued to hold fast to that idea that Israel shouldn't exist. And over the course of those 70

plus years, the Arab world has fought a lot of wars. They've funded a number of initiatives that I think backfired, political initiatives, economic initiatives, boycotts. It just never amounted to anything. And I think there was a sense, at least among some of the more pragmatic Arab states, that there would be no defeating the Israelis. And that in fact, the Israelis had built up a remarkable country, incredible technology, agriculture, weapon systems, and that these countries could benefit from having a neighbor that could share these things with them and that cooperation would be better than conflict. And so they gave up on the idea of war. And so that was last year we saw the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan all decide to

beat their swords into plowshares, as they say. And they joined already the ranks of Jordan and Egypt, which had made peace in the late 1970s and in the mid-1990s. So the numbers of Arab countries that are making peace with Israel are growing, and that's a very positive thing. The second thing that I wanted to touch on was you mentioned that the press in the aftermath of this conflict between Israel and Hamas vilified Israel. Why do you think that is? Oh, I think that it's sort of a well-known thing at this point that the press almost always gangs up on Israel during these sorts of conflicts. I was struck at the end of this conflict, the New York Times elected to devote half of its front page above the fold to pictures of Gazans, young Gazans, that were killed during the U.S.

a conflict. And it was remarkable. It was quite a message that they were trying to send that Israel was to blame for the conflict, that, you know, I think the implication was that they were targeting young people deliberately or engaging in war crimes. It was truly remarkable to me for a few reasons. I mean, one, Israel didn't start this war. Israel responded to a volley of several hundred rockets fired by Hamas in the early hours of the conflict. And that's what was ultimately the escalation. That was the reason for the escalation. But even, I think, more remarkable than that to me was that there were several dozen photos that made it onto the front page of the New York Times of Hamas fighters. And the editors just didn't realize that they were. It was that they

were posting photos. I think they were trying to convey that these were sort of, you know, civilian martyrs for the Palestinian cause, but in fact, they posted these photos of young men who took up arms and fought against the Israelis under the banner of a terrorist group. And I would say this is somewhat par for the course, but really what was shocking to me. So I went to graduate school in Israel years ago, and I studied Arabic in Cairo after that. And so I, I, um, During the pandemic, I brushed up on both my Arabic and Hebrew. And during the war, I was able to watch live television, and I was able to see it out of the region. And my sense was that the American media coverage was just so incredibly vapid,

that it wasn't even covering the events that were taking place on the ground as they were being reported in the region. And, you know, it was just, bias doesn't cover it. Fake news doesn't cover it. I'm not sure that those words are helpful in this case. It was about editorial choices that were made, and they almost always worked out to the detriment of Israel. And that was really one of the reasons why I wanted to write the book. I felt that the American public just had really poor awareness of what happened during that conflict, and that there was just a lot more to the story than New York Times, AP, even, you know, Wall Street Journal.

I think a lot of our cable channels didn't do the war justice either. Maybe it was bandwidth. Maybe it was just that we're having our own domestic debates that are taking a lot of oxygen out of the room. But the coverage was, in fact, very poor. One of the things that that reminds me of, and you mentioned this a little bit, is that Hamas doesn't really seem to be held accountable for their actions in the way Israel. So, for example, the use of human shields by Hamas. Hamas, I'm reminded of a story that I believe came out earlier this year about the AP building that was located in the Middle East that was being used by Hamas as a base. Israel bombs this building. It looks as if they bombed an AP press building, and it turns out it's a base for Hamas militants.

Is that something that's more common that we just don't hear about in the news more frequently? And then, I guess, is Hamas actually being held responsible for their actions? Well, you know, it's a great question. So first of all, Hamas uses human shields on a regular basis. They actually send kids to the border fence with Israel and militants hide behind them. They diverted untold amounts of money that were destined for humanitarian projects, but instead used them, diverted them toward the building of commando tunnels that snaked beneath homes and hospitals and apartment buildings inside the Gaza. a strip. And so Israel, when it destroyed, it was colloquially, yeah, that's a tough word to say on the podcast. But it was widely known in Israel as the metro system that Hamas had created. And targeting it was just, you know, it was incredibly difficult for them to do without killing civilians. That was considered the use of human shields as well. And that's a war crime, by the way. And it's illegal according to the U.S. Congress. It's illegal according to the United Nations. And yet Hamas does it with

regularity. And most of Iran's proxies do the same. But that AP building, by the way, was a fascinating story. The Israelis learned that Hamas had an office in there, but it wasn't just an office. They were trying to jam Iron Dome that missile defense system that I was just telling you about earlier that had saved thousands of lives during the conflict in previous rounds of conflict as well. The Israelis learned about the existence of this office, and what they did is they first called the owner and told the owner to vacate the building. And the owner went floor to floor. The Israelis also called every cell phone that they could identify in the building. I don't know how they use that technology, but they zeroed in on the people that were in there and told them to leave.

Then on top of that, they dropped what is known as a knock-knock bomb on the top of the building. a low-impact explosive that gave anybody who might have still been in the building a little taste of what was to come. And then at that point, they destroyed the building. By the time they destroyed it, everyone was out and no one was killed as a result of this. And yet even after all of that, they came under immense fire from AP, from Al Jazeera, which also had an office in that building. and you know, you saw NGOs coming after Israel tooth and nail, vilifying them for trying to obstruct coverage of this war. Of course, let's just recall that there are thousands of reporters in the region. It is one of the most highly covered conflicts in the world. The coverage was saturated. I don't think

anybody noticed even a blip on the radar in terms of the kinds of coverage that it got. But the last thing that I'll just note here on that AP bill, building dust up, if you will. You know, no one talks about the fact that Al Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar, and Qatar is a funder of Hamas. And also, if you recall from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States has had a number of dustups with Al Jazeera and the government of Qatar, because somehow Al Jazeera always was at the scene of attacks right before they happened.

in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, there were a couple of occasions where the U.S. military bombed terrorist sites that were co-located with Al Jazeera. Nobody mentioned this at all. And in fact, it was really just Israel that kept taking it on the chin in the aftermath of that strike. So again, I think there was just poor coverage, thin coverage, lack of context. And, you know, It's for that reason that I actually devoted an entire chapter in my book to that very episode. Yeah, I mean, speaking of some of these places that have been funding Hamas, you mentioned Iran and Qatar recently, but I believe Turkey and Malaysia were also responsible for quite a bit of funding for this terrorist group. I guess what are they getting out of it? Is it more they have a fundamental belief that Israel student exists still, or is this a geopolitical thing?

What is the motivation here? So, you know, each one has a little bit of a different motivation. I mean, the Iranians are the world's foremost state sponsors of terrorism. They seek the destruction of the state of Israel and they fund a wide range of proxies to try to do just that, to try to destroy Israel. So they support Hezbollah, they support Palestinian Islamic jihad, they support about a dozen and a half. They're called popular mobilization units, but they're basically just Shiite militias operating

in places like Iraq and Syria. and we've seen even some activity on their part in terms of, you know, the potential to target Israel. You know, the Houthis in Yemen, believe it or not, are developing longer range weapons that may be able to target Israel in the near future. And this is something that the Saudis and Israelis are both watching very carefully. So the Iranians do this for, you know, really military means. The Qataris are the ATM of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. And people forget that Hamas is a splinter faction of the Muslim Brotherhood, born in the late 1980s. And so, especially during the Arab Spring, you know, beginning 2011, 2012, kind of through the end of the last decade, you saw a huge amount of support flowing out of Qatar, which is a very tiny and wealthy country.

There's about 250,000 Qataris in the world, and they sit on a massive energy reserve. so they've got bottomless pockets, and so they support a range of Islamist groups, and Hamas is one of them. Turkey has similar aspirations. They're also supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, but they're a fallen empire, and they have aspirations for regaining that lost place in the Muslim world. So the word that we hear a lot about this particular regime in Turkey is neo-Ottomanism, that they are looking to resurrect the Ottoman Empire, and they see Hamas. Hamas is sort of a popular cause, particularly among Islamists and Arabs. And so they've made that bet.

And actually, we see a huge number of Hamas operatives active in Turkey to this day. And then Malaysia, I have to say that was really one of the more bizarre things. I've watched. There have been a number of Hamas operatives that have studied in Malaysia or have stood up businesses in Malaysia. There's a lot of weapons development there, also in Islamist country. but one of the wackiest moments of the war, I had tweeted out something about how Malaysia could be held to account when the Israelis declared that any Hamas activists anywhere outside of the West Bank Gaza Strip in Israel could potentially be targeted by their security apparatus. And I said, you know, that's bad news for Iran, Turkey, Qatar, and Malaysia. And I was immediately attacked by a troll army out of Malaysia.

tens of thousands of tweets. I received all out of Malaysia. And I found out after the war that the government actually directed troll armies to target people that were saying negative things about Habas and about the Malaysian government. Wow. I mean, it sounds like that there was a pretty intense network of multifaceted countries here. So given that this has so many far-reaching geopolitical consequences. This isn't just in the Middle East. Obviously, it's in Malaysia as well. What role should America play in this conflict between Hamas and Israel? So, you know, I think the United States has always tried to be the broker of peace. We're obviously not in a place right now where peace is going to break out anytime soon. You've got, you know,

people are still talking about a two-state solution. But as I mentioned, you've got the West Bank and the Gaza strip that are divided amongst themselves. So really, when you think about it between West Bank, Gaza, and Israel, you're not talking about a two-state solution. You're talking about a three-state solution, and that's not much of a solution at all. And so I think the odds of the U.S. achieving some success in diplomacy is very low. So the question is, what can we do to help, you know, how can we do no harm? And in my view, there are probably two things. One is to stop the flow of funds to terrorist groups that attack our ally. And, you know, some people would say, well, Israel's not our ally. I'm thinking primarily a couple of members of Congress that are

widely known as the squad. I would say after the most recent conflict, they earned the nickname the Hamas Caucus. They really seem to be advocates of the Hamas terrorist organization. But I think they are a minority at the end of the day. And I think what the United States should be doing is trying to cut off funds that are flowing from places like Iran and Turkey and Qatar and Malaysia. We should be doing everything that we can to crack down on this kind of patronage. And I don't think we are right now. I don't see the United States actively involved. I think, you know, we're we're we've turned our gaze inward, as I'm sure you're aware. You know, the conversations are about masks and COVID mandates and, you know, the, the, the,

kind of political divide in this country, January 6th. I mean, these are the things that I think are capturing the minds of most Americans. So, you know, we're just not seeing foreign policy plays like that really resonate with the American public. And I think that's a problem because, primarily because America's leaving the Middle East, as we discussed. And so if America is going to leave, what we should be doing is identifying partners that we can trust, that we, believe will still uphold the American-led world order that we built some 76, 77 years ago that has brought immense wealth and stability to the rest of the world. And I'm not ready to give up on that world order. And I hope we're not as a country ready to give up on it either. But, you know,

there are only a handful of countries, I think, in the Middle East in particular, that are ready to do this, whether the United States is there or not. And I think Israel is one of them. And again, it's just remarkable to me how much heat a country like that took during a war this year where it defended itself. And so I think there needs to be a recalibration of American foreign policy to make sure that Israel gets the support that it needs. All right. Well, let's begin to wrap up. I want to give you the opportunity to maybe give our listeners a place to get more resources. So if our listeners want to learn more about this conflict, this ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, where should they go?

Well, first is the new book, came out in early November. It's called Gaza Conflict 2021. And the subhead is Hamas, Israel, and 11 days of war. We actually put it out through Amazon services. So that's the easiest place for you to get it. And I certainly would welcome a follow on Twitter. I do a lot of tweeting about this particular conference. but also Iran and Turkey and a lot of the other malign actors in the region.

And so my Twitter handle is Jay Shanzer, J-S-C-H-A-N-Z-E-R. Excellent. Well, that was John Shanzer, senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, as well as the author of the new book Gaza Conflict 2021, Hamas, Israel, and 11 Days of War, available now, wherever books are sold. John, thank you so much for your time. Very, very much appreciate it. My pleasure.

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