The Eric Metaxas Show - #181 - John Zmirak / Yair Pinto

Episode Date: August 14, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, John Zmirak joins Eric to examine the rise of post-liberalism and Catholic integralism on the American right. They discuss Patrick Deneen, Adrian Vermeule, JD Vance, religious liberty, natural rights, and whether a growing faction of conservatives has turned against the principles of the American founding. Later, Israeli journalist and IDF reservist Yair Pinto joins Eric to discuss his new book Boots on the Ground, his experience serving after October 7, the accusations against Israel’s conduct in Gaza, and what he says Americans misunderstand about Hamas and the war.⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:🪙 Grace Precious Metals: https://www.metaxasmetals.com/🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/0:00 John Zmirak Joins1:09 The Right-Wing Movement Against The American Founding2:39 What Is Post-Liberalism?5:17 Why Zmirak Is Concerned About JD Vance8:17 Religious Liberty And The “Common Good”15:04 Do Post-Liberals Want To Replace The Founding?18:25 Tucker Carlson, Mike Pence, And The New Right21:19 Yair Pinto Joins27:00 An IDF Soldier Responds To The Gaza Accusations- -LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE:    / @ericmetaxas  #EricMetaxas #TheEricMetaxasShow #News #PoliticsChapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.

Hey there, folks. Welcome to the program. We call it the Eric Metaxus show. Oh, I don't know why. I guess just because it's a show. And I typically go under the name, Eric Metaxus. But I have guests. And one of them, one of my favorites, as you know, and one of your favorites, is my friend, John Zmirak.

John Zmirak, welcome back. Hey, Eric, always a pleasure to talk to you. It's fun to talk to you about anything and everything. but hey, have you heard the story about the Kandahar giant? No, no. Well, evidently in a cave in Afghanistan, a giant appeared. It really is one of the weirdest things. I spoke to L.A. Marzuli about it.

I think we may, I don't know if we've aired that by the time this conversation airs. There's so much to say, but I won't say it now. I'll just say, let's talk about things that are, you know, not in the realm of the kooky. for example we are going to something but let me let me just ask you

what we're facing right now you and I have talked about this a lot off the air that there are people in America who don't believe in America in other words they don't believe

that America is God's idea they think oh it's just something that happened and it's kind of like you know when people say oh Israel becoming a name nation after 2,000 years, big deal.

I don't see anything mystical about that. I think you've got to see something amazing about that. But the story of the United States of America, because of my book on the revolution, more than ever, I see America as God's idea in history, this idea of people going to govern themselves, and there is something sacred about it. And now you can take that too far. But there are plenty people that don't buy that at all. And they would be very happy to rip America apart.

we know that the Marxist, leftists, that the communist, that the DSA people would be happy to tear it down. In fact, they're trying hard to tear it down always. They hate it. But there are people on the right who are similarly inclined. They just have different terminology, but their goals are the same. The people that you have talked about as Catholic integralists. I really learned a lot of this from you. and so I wanted to talk to you about that on the program.

Yeah, and it's a broader movement. It's called post-liberalism, and it emerged from books by Patrick Deney. He is a figure who was long considered a conservative, but in fact, he and a lot of the people associated with him, a lot of people around supporters of J.D. Vance, and J.D. Vance has spoken at events with Patrick Deney. Basically, they say that America

is the result of fringe Protestantism, and that it's cut off from the broader stream of Western civilization, that it's totally individualistic, that essentially gay marriage and legal abortion and transgenderism are all the inevitable result of the ideas in the Declaration of Independence. This is what Patrick Deneen argues in his book, why liberalism failed and his subsequent books,

that the idea that we have natural God-given rights, that we should basically run our own lives without a lot of interference by the government, that the government should not have an official religion which it imposes on the people, whether they like it or not. These are all things we take for granted as Americans, but they were great innovations back in 1776.

The post-liberals say they were bad innovations. They say that plan parented in the ACLU are right when they say the Constitution guarantees same-sex marriage and abortion and pornography. They're right that the founding America was founded on sand. And we need to tear it up and refound it on something like they talk about the common good. But their notion of the common good is basically the state imposing of religious ideology on the people. That's why I call it Catholic Sharia. And most of these thinkers are associated with a kind of traditionalist Catholicism that says that Vatican 2 was wrong. Everything that's happened, everything that's happened since Vatican 2 was fundamentally wrong.

Not that there were flaws in the implementation, not that a lot of bad things have happened in the church, but that it was fundamentally corrupt that liberalism and the sense of classical liberalism, the views of Madison and Adams and Jefferson is a heresy that it leads directly

to the kind of moral depravity that we see suffusing America. And so we have to refound it basically on kind of almost fascist, factious basis. And one of the people who talks this way is Jack Bozobich. And he's

He's always talking about a great Francisco Franco was in Spain. Now, he was way better than the communist, but he's not a model for us, not here in America. So when I see conservative institutions, like in a Collegiate Studies Institute where I used to work, and to some degree people at the Heritage Foundation, when I see them looking to the medieval Catholicism, the Inquisition,

and saying, you know what, these things got a bad record. This whole America thing, it's kind of a heresy and it leads to moral chaos. This is profoundly disturbing to me, profoundly unsettling. And it makes me very uncomfortable with the idea of J.B. Vance as the nominee for the Republican Party. I really think we need to give another look to Ron DeSantis, who is maybe the best governor in American history, a virtuous, sincere, principled American conservative patriot,

J.D. Vance was a senator for two years and never really accomplished anything. And by the way, spoke horribly about Donald Trump compared him to opium, to heroin addiction. The things J.D. Vance said about Trump in like 2022 are appalling. He called himself a never Trumper at one point.

I don't see why we're rushing to canonize J.D. Vance as the obvious presumptive nominee for the Republican Party when he surrounds himself with people who think America never should have been founded, that our founding fathers were heretics and that the Declaration of Independence is a bad document. People like that. When you say he surrounds himself with people, we're talking about J.D. Vance, whom are you referring to? he spoke at a conference with Patrick Deneen

with this guy Gladden Pappen the long list of people who call themselves Catholic integralists he is he is like gone to their events endorsed their books and he

and when asked to like criticize then he won't do it he's very cagey about it and he's not very comfortable with the American capitalism system. He's always talking about how economics is kind of a junk science and it undermines the common good for us to look at the economic price of things. More and more, Vance is sounding like someone who wants to use the methods of the left, top-down government control,

but to impose conservative values. So we want the state to micromanage the citizens in pursuit of virtue. This is Professor Adrian Vermeel at Harvard. He's the one of the other godfather of the post-liberal movement. And he explicitly says that the state should be pushing people towards the true religion. In his mind, Catholicism. I don't want the state meddling with religion. I don't want a closing church is the way it did during COVID. I still don't understand like specifically what, because this is, I still find this hazy. this idea. In other words, to me, and I assume to you, you want the government to, you know, help people to make the right choices without being intrusive. There's a line, right? In other words,

there are things like if people decide like, we think stealing is okay, it's the government's job to say no, even though a lot of people think stealing is okay. We have these laws. It's part of the Constitution. We have this moral order behind our laws. So how does this differ from that? I don't really quite get it. Very clear, bright one. The government should promote things that accorded with natural law, with good and evil as we can perceive to reason alone, which is often echoed in scriptures. Like most of the Ten Commandments, you could deduce by reason alone. The government should pursue the natural law, the law written in the human heart with St. Paul said everyone can see or else the pagans would have no excuse. The government should not impose things that are only

knowable by divine revelation. Okay, so the term common good that people are throwing around. Eric, Eric, please. I don't get it. I, sorry, I have to finish my point. Okay. The natural law is knowable by reason alone. That is what it's okay for the government to enforce. Abortion, stealing, adultery. Things that you have to rely on the Bible or church councils to know, the government should not enforce. So the government should not enforce belief in the resurrection of Jesus. It should not enforce belief in the divinity of Christ because you can't know those things by reason alone. In fact, you need the Holy Spirit to infuse the grace for the virtue of faith. So you want the state imposing things that reason can know and you want the state not imposing things that are based purely on faith. Sorry. Very important. Well, no, no, I mean, I get that, but I still don't get specifically. I don't expect J.D. Vans to want to impose that everybody in America has to sign a statement agreeing to the resurrection.

So what is it that we're talking about when you talk about post liberals or you talk about the people enforcing the common good? What do they mean by common good? Well, their notion of the, okay, their notion of the common good. one A real I'm sorry Post liberals believe that religious truth

is part of the common good they believe that the true religion imposing the true religion helping people get to heaven is part of the common good therefore the state can

restrict religious practice they argue this in their books they say the idea Specifically, what are we talking about? The state in France, okay, in France, they say you cannot wear a burqa. I don't really have much of a problem with that. I mean, France is a pretty secular country, but they're saying we're not going to allow that kind of expression of Islam here. So there's a line.

I'm trying to figure out where is that line? What is we talking about specifically? The line to be things you can argue for purely based on reason, not based on faith. And I'm telling you that J.D. Vance appears at conferences with people who don't believe that. People who believe that the government's job is to get people to heaven. And that it would be perfectly all right to restrict churches because you don't believe those churches are true. Adrian Rameel says that J.D. Vance speaks to him with conferences. J.D. Vance seems to like him.

I find it unsettling that people are willing to look at the American cons, the American founding and see it as anything other than good and wholesome. The Pope's, Pope Leo the 13th, praised the American founding. John Paul II said that the individual rights, which classical liberalism endorses, like life, liberty, and the procedural happiness, they are the actual political implications of Christianity. The Christianity really fundamentally supports the idea of individual rights. The post-liberals don't believe that.

Well, this is what I'm trying to get at because I understand the theory, but when you say post-liberals don't believe that, let me give you something specific, okay? Jack Posobitch is always talking about how great Francisco Franco was. Francisco Franco closed all the Protestant churches in Spain, would not allow Protestant churches,

would not allow Protestant books. people who think outline Protestant churches because the state should be imposing the true religion should have no place

in American politics. Okay, but what about saying like I have made the statement Islam is incompatible with American values? So then the question is what does that mean?

You can make a statement, it's a broad statement, but does that mean we cannot have mosques? I think probably we can have mosques. What about Sharia law? I don't think we should have Sharia law. In other words, you have to figure out where that line is.

Basically, the U.S. Constitution was not written with the idea of mass Muslim immigration in mind. So it's a huge problem to have people who believe that the government should impose Islam by force on the whole population, which is a fundamental doctrine of Islam. The answer to this is immigration policy. We need to deport illegals, and we need to stop taking large numbers of immigrants from third world countries whose values are not compatible with ours. I think we're stuck with any Muslim who's become a citizen who came here legally. We're stuck with them back to the First Amendment, and we should not bother them. We shouldn't take one more Muslim immigrant into America ever again. Well, let me ask you to go back to this term post-liberal, which I still don't understand.

Do people, why would somebody even come up with the term post-liberalism? In other words, what do they feel is insufficient? They don't think America first, make America great again. They don't think conservatism, traditional conservatism, Edmund Burke. That's not good enough. They say there's nothing left to conserve. that we have to basically tear it down and build, start from scratch, and that America was always flawed because it was too focused on individual rights.

It was too focused on the individual. And again, they believe that Roe v. Wade was correctly decided because the American Constitution is fundamentally it only about individual rights and abortion is included on that. They believe that Obergefell was rightly decided. because our founders set up this machine, this liberal machine, which would eventually tear down every institution, including the family, including the church. They basically are accepting what the left says about the U.S. Constitution and saying,

therefore, it's a bad constitution, it's a bad declaration. We need to start over with a completely religious state. Okay. the last chapter or chapters of Tom Holland's great book Dominion, he talks about how Christian faith taken to a logical extreme ends up in wokeism. And I differ with him, and I think you do as well, to say that that's not Christian faith taken to a logical extreme. It's Christian faith taken to an extreme and then twisting it away from fundamental Christian faith. but it's sort of like a particularly Christian heresy.

In other words, a particularly Christian heresy is how you end up with wokeism. So it is a heresy that comes out of Christian faith, but it is a heresy. It sounds like that's what you're talking about here, something similar. These people are saying that abortion, gay marriage, transgenderism are the legitimate and proper

and logically inevitable results of the, American founding. And you and I are saying, no, it's a heresy. It's a new gospel of Antichrist. The post-liberals agree with the left that America is fundamentally a country of pornographers and abortionists. And we don't believe that. There's the difference. And who are some of the leading voices that are touting these views? Adrian Vermeel at Harvard, Patrick Deneen at Notre Dame, Gleynne-Gleynne-at-Nobin, who was at the University of Dallas, and who was at the University of Dallas and then went to work in Hungary

for the president Victor Orban. For Victor Orban. But also, a lot of the young people at organizations like the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, a lot of the people who have been hired at the Heritage Foundation. And the sad thing is

a lot of the people who are speaking out against the post-liberal movement are just old neocon hack. who think Mike Pence is an ideal conservative. So that's the problem. Screw tape tries to play both sides of the chessboard. He creates the post-liberals, and then when people react against them,

they're like, yeah, yeah, we have to go back to the good old days of Paul Ryan and Mike Pence and Mitt Romney. Okay, what I say is, I want the post-liberals to publicly disavow Tucker Carlson. I want the conservatives to disavow Mike Pence. Because to me, Mike Pence and Tucker Carlson are equally sinister, equally dangerous to America in very different ways.

Tucker Carlson endorses insane conspiracy theories. Mike Pence repeats deep state propaganda. Mike Pence says the January 6 protesters were basically insurrectionists who deserved to be in prison. Tucker Carlson says Israel invented the Hunter Biden laptop. We're surrounded by lunatics and hacks on every side. It's really, really been tough since the murder of Charlie Kirk. It basically was like churning on the likes in the kitchen

and you see how many cockroaches are in your New York City apart. We're living in such strange times, John. Thank you for helping us navigate this. It's very, very important. I need to do some research of my own on post-liberalism so I can understand it a little bit better. My friend James Patterson is a book called Why Post-Liberalism Failed. I recommend you give it a reason.

Why Post-Liberalism Failed, the author? James Patterson. James Patterson. Yeah. Okay, we'll leave it there. John Zemarick, my friend, thank you very much. Thank you. Today's show is brought to you by Grace Precious Metals.

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Yeah, yeah, we're against Jew hatred, which is my new term for anti-Semitism, which sounds so clinical and okay. And so I thought, wouldn't it be great if I could talk to somebody who's served with the IDF, who is a TV host, Director of Operations at TBN in Israel. And we found that guy. His name is Yair, Pinto. He's TV host, journalist, director of operations, as I just said, at CBN, Israel.

And he has a new book out called Boots on the Ground, a war journal of an IDF reservist, forward to the book written by my friend, Ambassador Mike Huckabee, Yair Pinto, welcome to this program. Thank you for having me, Eric. I'm very excited and I really enjoy the opener that you just stated about, you know, the new anti-Semitism, which is basically Jew hatred or Israel hatred.

There's like all kinds of evolutions that hatred have changed in order to basically hate what God is doing here in this land and all over the world. That's what it is, basically. Well, there's a lot of confusion out there. There's a lot of willful confusion, and there's a lot of Jew hatred masquerading as confusion and asking questions. Notice I didn't mention Tucker Carlson's name on this program. But I want to talk to you because you've served with the IDF. You believe in Jesus. You believe in Yeshua.

You're a Jew. You've written a book called Boots on the Ground. I'm very happy, honestly, to get you on the program to talk with you. So tell us, I mean, give us the basic background, because you've been on here before, but people won't remember. the basic background of your life and how you came to serve with the IDF and now you've written a book about it. Well, I was born and raised in Jerusalem, in Israel. I grew up in a believing family in Jesus, which is already very, very rare in the Israeli society. I think that the percentages of Jews that believe in Jesus in Israel are 0.001%. So throughout all my life, I was the only,

Jewish follower of Jesus in my school, in my basketball team, and then at the age of 18, like all the other Israelis, I joined the IDF. And again, I was the only follower of Jesus then. But fast forward to the October 7 events and the attacks against Israel that started this ongoing war that we're in right now, together with my fellow reserve soldiers,

I was called to fight against Hamas terrorists in Gaza and against Chisbalah terrorists in the north. I had to leave my wife and three kids. My youngest boy was three months old at the time. And I had to leave my job and everything wear a uniform and serve again. At the age of, what was I, like 36 years old. And the idea to defend the country. And God was acting throughout this entire time.

And I thought, people need to know that God is acting. and using hard times in order to share his love with the world and to share that he is a faithful God. So that's how I came to writing the book. It's basically a world journal about my day-to-day lives. And I think the cool thing about it, maybe you'll enjoy it. I want to hear your thoughts about this also, Eric,

is that every single day I reported from the grounds on the front lines with TBN. So I shared what happens on the ground using my phone from the Gaza Strip, from the border with Lebanon, as a soldier. And the book now is connecting these moments with the readers using QR codes. So the reader can read a chapter and then see me actually in the location in Gaza or on the border with Lebanon on that very day. So this is something that I think is very interesting. another way to share the truth of what's happening for Israel with people around the world so that they can pray about the situation. So that's what it's all about.

It's amazing. I wanted to use that same QR code technology with my book on the American Revolution, but it was very hard finding videos from the American Revolution. And in the end, we had to give up because there's only so much time. We looked and looked, but I'm sure they exist, but who knows where they are. Well, this is amazing to me that, You are there in Israel, or as you pronounce it, Israel.

Every time I'm talking to somebody who pronounces things in their native way, I feel kind of guilt like I should say this. Like instead of saying Jai'er, I should say, Yair, right? How do you say it? Yeah. How do you say your first name? Jai'i. Yeah, we don't have the, we don't have the in the English world here.

But you are there. And I'm just amazed, really, that we get to talk because I want to dispel the lies that are circulating. That, you know, when we talk, I mean, no kidding. When I did my research on my own book on the American Revolution, I was astonished at how sadistic the British were and how Christian the Americans colonists were. And when we're talking about a war, you have to talk about that. Are you dealing with people that are on the same page, fighting for noble principles, or are you dealing with sadistic monsters? I think this idea that people throw around the term genocide, you have served with the IDF.

If you don't mind my just asking you, because you've been there. You were literally wearing boots on the ground, literally. And why do you suppose there are people who want to characterize Israel defending itself, doing what they did as genocide? I guess I'm curious because you've now written a book on this subject. How do you deal with that? Because it seems almost impossible to parry those. thrusts. Yeah, listen, it's very hard, but if you look at it from a biblical perspective,

it's nothing new. Like, the enemy is trying to use all the tricks up his sleeves, such as, you know, spreading lies, distorting the truth, changing reality. And we see that as like evil spirits that are taking control of our world. Today, you have alliances between the gay community and radical Muslims, which don't make any sense whatsoever, between liberal and human rights activists and Hamas terrorists. So when you see these things come together,

you understand that something spiritual is happening here, and it doesn't make any sense. Let me add another layer to that. Isla does not have, resources, we don't have like abundance of gas or oil or something like that that will be worth all the enemies launching attacks against us. All we have here in the land of Israel is God's promise to the people of Israel. And that's what the enemy is trying to destroy. And that's why he's trying to launch all these attacks against us. And the only way that I know how to battle lies

and misinformation is to share the truth. And the only way that I know how to fight a spiritual war is to pray. So my purpose in the last three years, and that's what I've been doing every single day, around two hours a day in Gaza and now after the war from Jerusalem or from wherever I am in Israel, and now with the book also, is to share the truth of what's happening here,

from my perspective, to share that I don't want to fight. I had to go to fight to defend my family, my kids, because these terrorists, they just enter the country and started to kill everybody. Women, children, the elderly. That's the evil spirit that we're fighting against. And we need to unite in knowing, first of all, what's happening and also in praying for the situation.

The important thing for American audience to understand is that this war will not end in Israel. It's not about Israel alone. They want to reach the United States. They want to reach Europe. They want to reach your hearts, each and every one of your hearts, because they want to separate God from his promises. They want to destroy Islam because it symbolizes that God is faithful for thousands of years and that he's performing biblical level miracles today. So if they succeed in destroying us, they already destroyed God's promises in the Bible. And who wants to serve a God that doesn't keep his promises, right?

When we look at the headlines coming out of Iran and Israel right now, the fog of war is real. It's hard to know whom to trust. That same feeling of confusion often hits home when you're trying to navigate Medicare. There are so many bad actors in this space looking to capitalize on confusion rather than provide clarity. That's exactly why I am proud to partner with Chapter. Chapter acts as a trusted advocate, helping you cut through the noise to understand your Medicare options, Unlike most agents who only show you a few plans, Chapter looks at every plan nationwide.

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I have to ask, sometimes I come across as naive or ignorant, and that's fine because I know there are people out there who have similar questions as I do. Why would Hamas say they launched this attack on Israel, October 7th? Was it 23 now? I'm getting the years confused. 2020. Yeah, October 7, 2023. Why would they say, in other words, I'm no fan of Hamas, I think that they're evil people. But what is their statement that they come across the border, thousands of them, and murder thousands of Israelis in cold blood, one of the most brutal acts of war, almost unimaginable, really. But what do they say? Because the reason I ask is because when the Nazis invaded Poland, whatever it was, August 30th or 31st, 1939, they did what Nazis do and liars do and demonically inspired forces do.

They create a lie. So they said that we're going to tell the world that Poland attacked us and we retaliated. So this was the lie they put out. I write about it in my Bonhoeffer book. What does Hamas say that would prompt them to come across the border and murder women and children in this sadistic way and to do what they did? What do they say?

What is the lie that they put out there? Well, sadly, it's a lie that we hear a lot in the Western world. The lie of free Palestine is the number one lie, the lie of occupation over the land of Israel by the Jewish people is the second lie. And then you have the lie of the blockade over the Gaza Strip by Israel. Okay, all three lies and let's like rebuke them one by one. Talking about the free Palestine lie, the Gaza Strip has been given to the Palestinian people by Israel.

We used to have cities inside the Gaza. Gaza Strip and Israel removed its own population from Gaza and gave that territory to Hamas, including an airport, a port, and its own borders. They were able to... What year, what year roughly was this, did this happen? It was around 20 years ago, okay, a little less than that, 20-something years ago. In the early 2000, I remember that. While Yasser Arafat was the head of the PLO?

It was, I think it was after, after Yasser Arafat. Okay, all right. In any case, go ahead, keep going. Yeah, anyway, so the IDF, we drew our citizens from the Gaza Strip, and we gave it to the Palestinian Authority back then. And then in the first elections that they had in the Gaza Strip, Hamas won the elections. And since then, there were no elections.

of the Gaza Strip by the Palestinian people, and Hamas murdered all the opposition, threw them off roofs, and started rebuilding its military presence in Gaza. If you open the Hamas Charter, you will see that their goal is to take control of all Israel, no two-state solution, no cooperation, no coexistence with the Jewish people, okay?

So that's what's happening in the Gaza Strip. That's number one. Number two is that Israel is conducting a blockade against the Hamas and against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. Every single day, since October 7th, Israel is allowing a-trucks to enter into the Gaza Strip with tons and tons of humanitarian food, baby formula, construction materials and agricultural supplies that they need in order to live there. And that happened even while the IDF was fighting Hamas before the Seasfar took place. Now there are around 600 trucks that are going into the Gaza Strip every single day through Israel, not through Egypt, by the way. Even though the Gaza Strip has a border also with Egypt, but the Egyptians are not providing any kind of support to the Gaza population. Israel is the one that is providing support to the Gaza Strip, despite the fact that they launched an attack against us more than the U.S.

three years ago. So this is the big lie. And then if you talk about, you know, two-state solution and stuff like that, okay, Israel wants to talk about that. Israel has relationship with the Palestinian Liberation Organization,

with the Fatah Movement in Today as Samaria, which is, by the way, behind me, you can see Palestinian villages right behind me in the background. But when the other side, which is the Hamas Territish organization, a recognized terror group by the international community, by the United States,

they don't want to live side by side. Their goal is to annihilate all the Jewish people and to take control of all Israel. So how can you negotiate with that? Should I say, okay, you destroy only 50% of my population, not all of it. Let's meet in the middle. Maybe annihilate just half of my people, not all of it.

You can't reach a common ground with some. somebody whose goal is to annihilate you. And that's how they teach their schools. That's how they teach their kids. That the only future for them is to destroy the Jewish people and take back all of Israel. And take back is also a wrong word to be used. Because if you look geographically or, you know, you start with the biblical times, Israel was the nation of the Jewish people.

And if you go to modern days, even before the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel, the Jews bought this land with money from the Arabs that lived here, some parts, and other parts from the Turks, and they got half of it from the British. So everything was done legally according to international law. There was never a Palestinian state here. So your book is titled Boots on the Ground, a war journal of an IDF, reservist. So you are one of these Israeli soldiers. You have been one whom the pro-Palestinian leftists are accusing of genocide and of all these kinds of things. I mean, you are risking your life.

You have a family to fight in the IDF. You have done this. And how do you respond? I mean, you've already respondent to some extent, but how do you respond to these accusations that you're committing genocide? I mean, my take on the term genocide is that they throw these words around deliberately. I mean, you can say anything you like, but it's not a genocide. I mean, no matter the worst of it would still not be a genocide, but they throw this term around because it's propaganda. I mean, this is Goebbels-level propaganda, and it's simply what they do because a lot of the news media, a lot of the left-leaning news media accepts it. Yeah, exactly.

So let's start that if Israel was trying to commit genocide against the Palestinian people, were doing a very terrible job because the population of the Gaza Strip is just increasing. And who gives food and truckloads of humanitarian aid every single day to a population that you are trying to commit genocide against them? But let me explain from a personal point of view because I'm an IDF officer and I fought inside the Gaza Strip. Before we enter a neighborhood inside the Gaza Strip, first of all, we send an airplane that throws leaflets. Basically paper notes that tells the population and sadly also the terrorists that we are coming. We are coming to destroy terrorist infrastructure in that neighborhood.

In this note, it tells the population, the civilians to move from that location. It marks a safe route to move that the IDF will protect because the Hamas terrorists are also launching attacks against their own people, preventing them from moving the communities because they have a goal of increasing the civilian casualty because it makes the IDF looks bad. And then we are also preparing a safe zone for these population to resign with housing and with food and protection from the terrorists. So that's one. Second of all, we are also making phone calls with IDF officers that speak Arabic to the population, telling them also to move away from that location. And then there are very strict rules of engagement that the IDF needs to take into account before carrying out any kind of attack against a so-called civilian facility, such as a hospital,

a school, a mosque, or a church, or any kind of religious building inside the Gaza street, even though Hamas has been using these buildings as its basis of operations. So we need to think and get a million kinds of approvals before we carry out an attack against a Hamas stronghold because it is based underneath a hospital. And we've seen in this wall all the bad media that Israel got because of launching attacks against Hamas operatives that operated from inside hospitals and schools. By the way, the international law and the international war of engagement states that if a compound, a civilian compound, is being used by a terrorist group or a militant group, it is no longer safe from retaliatory attacks by the army that is facing it. So still, maybe, I mean, honestly, doesn't talk about that. Well, the thing is this, that the people who hate the Jews believe everything you're saying is just lies. You know, the Nazis call it Jewish propaganda.

And there are many people who believe that. And there's no dealing with them. No matter what you say or whatever it ends you show, they think you're liars. And that's the situation we're in right now. I know that you and Ambassador Mike Huckabee and others whom I trust know this is true and we're in a situation now where the people who just hate Israel

and they cannot believe any truth about this they're going to spin everything you said as they want to spin it but I know that what you're saying is true and it does amaze me I keep thinking of how America conducts war and how different we are in conducting war than the Japanese in

World War II who were incredibly sadistic and the Nazis in World War II incredibly sadistic. There are people, there are, there are nations that fight war in an honorable way. And to me, it's evidence of their trust in God that we're going to do the honorable thing and we believe God is with us if we do the honorable thing. And so everything I know about the way Israel has fought has been along those lines. You've been giving us some of those details about it. So your book is titled boots on the ground and you tell us your story anybody who wants to know what's really going on i think it's very important that americans understand what's going on so i'm grateful for you're coming on this

show uh and uh i i just can't imagine what it's like to live over there so uh yair pinto uh author of boots on the ground thanks for being my guest thank you so much aleck Hey there, folks, Suzanne and I want to invite you to join us for something extraordinary. It is a Socrates in the city cruise on the Mediterranean, August 24th through September 1st, 27. That's a year from now. We'll spend eight glorious nights aboard the magnificent sea cloud spirit sailing under full canvas through Sardinia, Corsica, and Elba. But this is not your typical cruise. Throughout the voyage, I'll host special Socrates in the city conference.

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