The Last American Vagabond - Robert Inlakesh Interview - Israel's Ongoing Genocide(s) & The Malicious Greater Israel Project

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Joining me today is Robert Inlakesh, here to discuss the ongoing multi-nation genocide that has now been widely acknowledged across the globe. We discuss the current reality in Gaza, and what the Palestinian people are still suffering daily, as well as in Syria and Lebanon. We also discuss the relationship between Hamas and Israel, why that is such an important connection to interrogate, and its connection to many other aspects of both US and Israeli foreign policy.Source Links:Robert Inlakesh Archives - The Last American Vagabond(24) Robert Inlakesh (@falasteen47) / XKatz says Israeli troops will remain in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria indefinitely | AP NewsAs U.S. and Iran begin nuclear talks amid fresh sanctions, can there be a deal?Israeli Settlers Consistently Use Arson Attacks To Burn Palestinians AliveWithout an independent judiciary, Israel’s cherished democracy will be at risk | The Times of IsraelHundreds of Israeli reservists vow to refuse service if judicial overhaul passes | ReutersThe Israeli army is facing its biggest refusal crisis in decadesMossad Chief Visited Doha, Urged Qatar to Continue Hamas Financial Aid - Middle East News - Haaretz.com(24) Haaretz.com on X: "“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu told his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy" https://t.co/7lTQs9E5Zf" / XPalestinian Authority Does Israel's Dirty Work, One Killed In ClashesIsrael Bombed Al-Ahli Hospital, American Child Killed In Gaza & Gaza Genocide Has Exposed EveryoneThe Israeli Massacre At Al-Ahli Hospital In Gaza: Fact vs FictionThe US Government's Flagrant Attack On Free Speech - Mahmoud Khalil Is Just the Beginning...Trump Could Send Americans To El Salvador & Israel Commits "Largest Child Massacre In Its History"Americans Speaking Out About Israel's Genocide Could Be Next - In Principle It Is The SameBitcoin Donations Are Appreciated:www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/bitcoin-donation(3FSozj9gQ1UniHvEiRmkPnXzHSVMc68U9f)The Last American Vagabond Substack is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Last American Vagabond Substack at tlavagabond.substack.com/subscribe

And so the opposition isn't great enough to force Israel to stop immediately. So what it's doing is now starving the population of Gaza, prevented all aid from coming in. We're in the eighth week of no aid, no medical aid, no food aid, nothing, coming into the Gaza Strip, collective punishment. They're now frequently every single day bombing Lebanon, as they're bombing Gaza, of course. They're running a military operation in the northern West Bank. They're still discussing annexation of the West Bank.

They're ethnically cleansing people from East Jerusalem. and of course they're inside of Syria now. They've expanded their territorial domain. And they don't have any evidence. He hasn't committed a crime. He's exercising free speech. This is something that is enshrined by the constitution in the very being of what America is supposed to be, right?

You have freedom of speech. They are allowed to voice your opinion. Even if everyone hates those opinions, you're allowed to say it. But it doesn't matter anymore. Because again, Israel said this guy's Hamas. They can kill him. and 20 other people next to him, it doesn't matter if he's a journalist and they killed,

you know, women and children next to him, they accused them of being Hamas. And now in the United States, they accuse you of being Hamas. They accuse you of being an anti-Semite. And suddenly, then they can persecute you. They can take you to court endlessly. They can kick you out of the country. They can send you to some facility. And now it's getting even worse because we have this case of like now Trump talking about putting people, you know, U.S. citizens in El Salvador. I don't know whether that's going to happen or not, but it's scary because who are they going to come after? They're going to come after political dissidents. Welcome to the Last American Vagabond.

Joining me today is Robert Inlakesh to discuss some of the updates on foreign policy that may have been lost with all that's going on in the world today. And just really kind of following up on what has been going on in the larger, I mean, kind of as I see it, the greater Israel project, the ongoing execution of invasion of territory, land grabs, destabilization in multiple locations, you know, the ongoing genocide, as I would call it, in multinational genocide. And now right now what's going on in the United States, I see as a very clear constitutional crisis, a lot of dangerous moves being made by just the government. It's, at least in my coverage, forced us to, you know, cover this more intently.

And a lot of what's going on in foreign policy is at least not getting out. much coverage. So I wanted Robert to come on to update us on, you know, the kind of unfortunate realities of what is going on currently in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, and everywhere else. So, Robert, how are you today? Thanks for joining us. Thank you for having me. It's great to do that one. Yeah, man. It's been a minute. And I want to start by just saying that in general, that Robert and I were just talking off the air, you know, we will get back to a point where Robert's going to be doing much more continual work for the Last American Bagabond. But of course, my opinion, that's exactly what the entities out there trying to suppress us and attack us and sue us

frivolously wanted was for the content to diminish, but we're not going to stop. So, you know, and just let's start with this general conversation point. And I think this is so, this is why my mind, you know, it goes to greater Israel. I mean, you take it wherever you want. But I mean, it's so, it's infuriating. And in a way, it's vindicating for those that might have been saying this that have been kicked back on. But the idea that Israel now just as of, actually, I think as of yesterday, saying that they will,

even though I'm sure we could have seen these statements in their Knesset before this will remain indefinitely in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria. And I put this out, I just said, you know, we tried to tell you. You know, I mean, it's been right on there. So start, go wherever you'd like with this, just, you know, that general direction on where Israel is playing this out. Well, as a more general comment, Israel is certainly seeking to expand its borders. It's openly doing that now. So, you know, people for years called everyone who brought up the creator Israel project, a conspiracy theorist, and said, you know, this is like not based in any reality. But of course, it always has been because there was a crisis in Zionism and a crisis in the Israeli overall ideology and goal and direction of the state.

And we saw that manifesting itself prior to October of 2023 when the Gaza genocide began. And of course, with the Hamas attack that preceded the genocide. So that sort of just opened up Pandora's box. And the blow that was dealt to the Israeli military, to the sense of national security, of the mission of the state, were all put in jeopardy. Really, this boils down to what was happening prior, again, going back before October 7,

to the judicial overhaul push by Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition. We have to remember that in less than four years, there were five elections that took place. The Israelis couldn't put together a coalition, government that would be sustainable. Netanyahu even lost power for about a year briefly, where Yer Lepid and Neftali Bennett took over from him. And when he came back into power, he had to use the settler movement, which he had been throwing his weight behind since he was

first elected Prime Minister in 1996, which was also a very consequential election for the Israelis, because that's when the political system underwent a change, which took away power from the big parties and put them into the hands of smaller factions, which Netanyahu has successfully played on. We had to think of Netanyahu and his influence over Israeli politics is a man that's been there basically on and off for three decades now. So he has shaped Israeli society.

He's shaped the political system. And then when he grew desperate, he used the most extremist hardline settlers who previously, their parties like Osama Yehudit, who is commanded by Itzmar Ben-Gavir, the current security minister, was banned. In 2019, the head of Otsema Yehudit was banned from actually running and holding a position in the Knesset. now these are like the they're crucial to the government so when Netanyahu came in understanding the crisis that had befallen his own political career but also the Israeli political system as a whole used these hardline factions and then attempt to change and overhaul the Israeli judicial system and the Israeli opposition it split the society down the middle, basically. The opposition and those who are on the side of maintaining

Israel's still Jewish supremacist, it's still an apartheid regime, but what they would call a liberal Western-style democracy, right, which is somewhat secular, they were scared that that was going to be taken away from them, that the system was going to be Judaized, that it was going to be made into one more theocratic state. Because if this judicial overhaul occurred, Netanyahu was going to be able to change laws, right, and change the way that Israel functions. Israel doesn't have a constitution. So Israel based its legal system and its basic laws on the British system,

and the British system drew from a lot of what was there already during the Ottoman period. And so there was this crisis of what Israel is, where it's going, and on a strategic level in the long term, something fundamentally had to change. So with Netanyahu, the second October 7 happened, he started blaming his intelligence communities. He blamed the Mossad and the Shimbab. He later apologized because of the backlash, but this already caused the schism. And then throughout the course of the war, as the war crimes intensified and Israel eventually attacked, launched a full-stale attack and killed 3,000 people.

Lebanon. Later, we saw them expand into Syria, as was noted here in this article, they're expanding their territorial gains, expanding their borders, which they still haven't declared. He was eliminating all this opposition. An emergency war cabinet was created at the start of the war, and that factored in people like, for instance, Benny Gantz, who's, you know, he used to be the defense minister. He's a military guy. He's actually integral to the Israeli system. He's somebody important and experienced for them. Also, people like Gaddy Eisencott were included in this, again, as well, somebody with that military background.

He basically forced them out and dissolved the war cabinet. And then we saw, as time went on, he would remove more and more and more. This is Netanyahu with his regime, remove more and more of his opposition and opposing voices. Joav Gallant, his defense minister, he resigned. Later on, we would have obviously these steps taken like him wanting to remove Ronan Barr, the head of the Shimbab, the domestic intelligence services, and he's sort of in a battle with them at the moment with the Shimbabon elements of the security state. And then as well, even with this new chief of staff for the Israeli army. the Israeli military, he's basically reshaped the high command.

And he removed even the spokesperson. I'm forgetting his name now. There is a list guy. Dan Higari. Yeah, Higari. Yeah, his name just skipped me for a moment. He was essentially forced to resign. He was pressured to resign because he was having problems with Nantanyahu.

So he goes ahead and he's removing all of the. these people in his way and then surrounding himself with loyalists. And because he's surrounding himself with these loyalists, they'll do basically whatever he wants. There's one problem is the extremists are too crazy for him and they want him to go further and further and further. The other issue he has now is because his army was not prepared for a long, sustained campaign on multiple fronts and has now been severely weakened because of it. For instance, there's 100,000 Israeli reservists who are refusing to return to duty. We've now got this letter that's signed by at least 10,000 Israeli soldiers, both active duty, but mainly reservists, calling on him to do a ceasefire deal because the Israeli

society is asking for prisoner exchange. That's why they want a ceasefire deal, not because they care about Gaza. You can give a doubt about Gaza, according to all of the polling data and, you know, just common sense looking at what comes out from their media, internally, their discussions that they're having. But this is sort of what has happened during the course of the war, which has made it more extreme. With the collapse of Syria, it enabled the Israelis to go directly into Syria. There's really no opposition other than some local militia forces who want to defend their villages in places like Dara. But there is no real opposition to these aims. And then in Lebanon, with the catastrophe that had befallen the country, in particular Lebanese, Hasbullah, with the assassination of

that senior leadership, the pager attacks and everything, Hezbollah was forced to basically sit back, try and recover, and not fight a war that would just be endless and pointless and drag Lebanon into a situation where maybe we have 20, 30, 50,000 deaths in Lebanon. And so now they're not going to do anything, for instance, Hezbollah, until they have a plan that is going to be able to achieve specific goals. they're not just going to fight for the sake of fighting and they can't fight for the sake of fighting it's just a bad idea for them and then in gaza of course hamas has never been capable alone of

defeating israel it just can't it just doesn't have the military capacity to do it it can fight and it can resist like it does it can you know ambush Israeli soldiers when they come into the populated areas and attack them but you know with very limited weapons with light weapons that have been domestically produced. And so the opposition isn't great enough to force Israel to stop immediately. So what it's doing is now starving the population of Gaza, prevented all aid from coming in. This is we're in the eighth week of no aid, no medical aid, no food aid, nothing, coming into the Gaza Strip, collective punishment. They're now frequently every single day bombing Lebanon as they're bombing Gaza, of course. They're running a military operation in the Northern West Bank. They're still discussing annexation

of the West Bank. They're ethnically cleansing people from East Jerusalem. And of course, they're inside of Syria now. They've expanded their territorial domain inside of Syria. And there's no hope, it seems like in sight for them to want to stop. They have to be forced to stop, which could happen. There could be developments which would force them to stop. But at the moment, they're rampaging through multiple countries and even threatening that they might enter Jordan or Egypt next. Right. And of course, the U.S. government truly wanted to make them stop. They could, right? I mean, and this is the reality. So this is why the complicity needs to be very, it needs to be seen that this is the U.S. and the U.K. and other countries that are actively a part of this,

not just, you know, standing by and watching. This is a, the complicity is very clear. But so to bring that back up, the point again is that so they are now saying they're going to indefinitely remain these countries. So, I mean, there's no legality around this at all. Like, this is exactly what we were talking about from before. This is illegal. occupation and this is exactly what gives these territories the legal right under international law to attack whether or not they're attacked and yet every time they play this kind of cycle of where that's terrorism so but back back to the point about the judicial um reform i thought this was interesting so this is from 2018 and i pointed this out before about where this is a Canadian

Supreme court justice basically saying that if this happens that they they will not have an independent judiciary and what's important i think is important is that the argument of why the ICJICC, like Lindsay Graham in particular, plenty of others argued they couldn't go after Israel's because they had an independent judiciary. And what's interesting is this was the claim in 2018 that should this happen, that that wouldn't exist anymore. Now, as I understand it, this has already largely happened, right? And it's even in 2023, hundreds of Israeli reservists were saying they wouldn't go to service if they did continue to pass this.

And even today, the same thing is happening to what you're saying, though it's an ongoing crisis. But so where is the reality of that, you know, judicial overhaul? I know there's multiple aspects of this. And I know in many cases, this has already happened, correct? There were a number of bills that were being passed and throughout the course of 20, 3 up until October 7. This was like the big thing for Lee Crayley's. Like you noted, there was these massive protests.

They were a weekly protest, sometimes even more frequent than that. Some of them, you know, garnered over 100,000 people that would protest in the streets in Tel Aviv and lockdown roads. Even the top Israeli labor union, the Histradruth, had got behind an effort for a general strike. So this was serious. And like you noted, there with that article, there were elements of the reserves who decided, you know, that they were going to protest against this and even some people, active duty in the military. And this got the full backing of the opposition, of course. And they passed bills, like, for instance, the reasonableness clause, the reasonableness clause, a reasonableness bill, sorry, which was essentially this bill that they were pushing through,

and it received a huge amount of backlash, was to prevent the Israeli Supreme Court, which basically acts for the Israeli political system as like, you know, a moderator. Like it stops it from going too far. And it sort of creates like a buffer so that the political, like whatever government is in, in place, right, cannot just push through an agenda if it has a majority and completely change what Israel looks like. And so this prevented the Israeli Supreme Court from jumping in and saying that's extremely unreasonable as a law, right? It doesn't have it, it's not grounded in Israeli law. And so we're going to challenge it and we're going to block it. And of course,

this bill would enable a number of things. You know, a lot of people, especially on the Israeli side, we're going, well, this maybe means that Netanyahu personally can pass through bills now that can benefit himself when it comes to his corruption trial. So it had a personal aspect there, and people were very much opposed to Netanyahu because of that. What we saw with October 7 is it shifted in terms of the focus. They were not focusing on this judicial overhaul anymore because, of course, what was in front of them was more urgent than they needed to do it. needed to address. But now, funnily enough, with the expulsion, the firing of Ronan Barr, the head of the Shimbab, it appears that because the Supreme Court has blocked it, if Barr does not

decide to step down by himself, there could be now a situation where the Israeli government is dragged into the judicial realm and we have this battle between, again, the judiciary and the Israeli government. And so we could find herself back in, you know, the situation where it looks like this is now the conversation of the day, the Supreme Court versus Netanyahu, basically. I was just going to say it's very interesting to see how many overlaps there are with many other, I would argue, authoritarian governments in similar ways. Even in the United States government with the discussion with the courts and the,

I argue the way that the system is essentially meant to work, whether or not they're politically motivated and essentially abusing that to argue they should be removed or in El Salvador where he removed the justices and put people in place or in Honduras where they did the same thing before Prospero was put in place. Very interesting how many, you know, I see it all is kind of the same agenda. I just wanted to point that out, the overlap of it all. But you mentioned the funding or the, the settler aspect of that to where, and you brought this up many times, you've written articles about this for TLA, very interesting to see that

he clearly leaned into kind of the most radical elements to gain that power with the radical parts of their government, which is allow you, have you, you explained well, which is kind of why he has power today, right? The Ben-Gavir, Smotrich, settler movement, which you were talking about. So what's interesting to me, the overlap to that is hopefully people out there are very aware today that Israel had been funding Hamas to some degree and other, basically up until October 7. You can prove this with different statements, funding. You know, the nuance there is discussed, we, you know, get into that, but the idea is that clearly this was not for aid for many reasons.

But the interesting part of this, oh, good, you have a comment, go ahead. I just dispute the funding that went to Hamas directly from Israel. There were a few hundred thousand dollars sent back in, I think it ended in the early 80s to an organization called Mujama al-Islamia. The Mujama was like the precursor organization to Hamas. So Hamas, Harakata al-Muqaamia means the Islamic Resistance Movement, was different to the Mujama. The leadership was the same, essentially, but what happened is they turned into an armed group.

The Mujama was strictly against violence. It was against armed rebellion against the Israelis. It pushed its Islamic message and was a social group, essentially. It looked at building the Islamic civil society sector. It focused on building mosques and schools, and it wanted to Islamize society. that was its goal. And it actually opposed another group called Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian Islamic Shihad, which at the time in the early 80s basically had street clashes with these Mujama activists

because they were essentially saying that, you know, we need to do nonviolently. We can't attack the Israelis, whereas Islamic Jihad said, no, it's our mission to defeat Israel and liberate Palestine. But when Hamas became Hamas and also in the mid-1980s, the Mujama, started transporting weapons into the Gaza Strip and formed what was known as El Majid, which was a security apparatus for Hamas. When that happened, the leaders of the Majama like Ahmed Yassin and others were arrested, put in Israeli detention facilities.

And then in the first intifada in 1987, Hamas became a thing. In 1988, it really started operating and put out his charter, not to go for his entire history. but the financing that came through to the Gaza Strip was not from Israel after that. It was from Qatar. And so there was this period where what happened is after 2018, where Hamas, prior to that, had tried diplomatic initiatives, for instance, with the Palestinian Authority to have them take over the Gaza Strip. They even signed an agreement in 2017 to do that.

But it failed because of Israeli and U.S. pressure to make sure that that wouldn't happen. there wouldn't be unifying of the territories. And then it backed it through its weight behind the nonviolent movement, which was created in Gaza called the Great Return March, which started on March 30, 2018. And it stopped fighting Israel during that period, by the way. Israel was bombing Gaza at that time. It was killing hundreds of civilians, but, you know, shooting innocent people, injuring tens of thousands.

But Hamas stepped back and it didn't do anything. But the problem was the Palestinian Authority, at the end of 2018, decided to stop paying the salaries of people in the Gaza Strip. And so the salaries for many of these people who are aligned with the Fatah Party, which opposes Hamas, in Gaza, this was something that was keeping them afloat, you know, economically. When that was starting to be withdrawn, there was suddenly this crisis. There wasn't as much money in the Gaza Strip. Salaries weren't being able to be paid.

There was more restrictions. In 2017, the Saudis, UAE and others, enforced a blockade on Qatar. And so Qatar as well was being pressured not only to stop its financing of Hamas, which historically has done, not in the form of these cash in suitcases, handouts, which would come later, but it was forced to stop its financing of Hamas, which meant that Iran could come in and take over that role more. But also, it was being pressured to even close down Al Jazeera. So there was an enormous amount of pressure on Hamas, Hamas with a renewed leadership, was in a very difficult position. So the Israelis decided to do a number of things.

One of them was to allow more workers from the Gaza Strip to obtain permits to go on the Israeli side and work on the Israeli side. Another thing that they did, for instance, is they periodically open the fishing zones further so people can fish further, small little restrictions. Then the major thing that they did were these, you know, multimillion dollar cash handouts to Hamas, which would come through the Ares, crossing at first they were in suitcases that was the way that they've just bringing the suitcases of cash the kathari officials would get off the plane from doha they would go uh straight to the gaza strip and hand this over to hamas right now the statistical breakdown because israel uses this to claim that they were taking that money and funneling i can't remember exactly this statistic i think it was six million or four million to the kassan brigades

which is the armed wing of hamas um what really happened is all of that money according to all of the mainstream accounts of what was happening to that money at the time was that it was not being handed over to the armed way. But of course, it was helping Hamas because Hamas used that money to basically subsidize fuel, to pay salaries, to do the things that have been taken away. The reason on the Israeli side to do that was to stop there from being some conflict breaking out at the time. They weren't prepared to go to an all-out conflict. There was no reason for it. It was in a very precarious political position. and so Netanyahu endorsed a strategy very like sort of you know backdoor uh dirty sort of a way of transferring

but that money was from Qatar not not Israel Israel doesn't fund Hamas to be just to better flesh this out the argument is and thank you for there's the nuances is important you know when you're when you're making what we I wanted to get into when we'll go to next was the relevance of how often that's happened through the U.S. and Israel of funding radical elements, like settlers, Hamas, so on. But to better flesh this out, what I find is important. So this is what, the way I'm framing

this is the idea that we have things like this where you know that they are in a part of this process. Now, I'm not saying you can argue for what or what form it ended up in, right? But simply that we know that you have examples where Israel through Mossad is facilitating the process of

some measure of funding going to Hamas. I think that's very relevant. So the why and how of it, which I'm sure you know more than most. I think it ends of the day, you don't, like, for example, the election process in 2006. I still argue I don't think it makes sense to me that they would have allowed an element to, you know, people that they're calling terrorists to elect people they call terrorists. You see what I'm saying?

But, you know, but at the end of the day, I don't know because I feel like it makes sense that the information that we see shows that there was an election, and I'm not going to dispute that Palestinians could have and have the right to choose whoever they want. But it's just an interesting kind of self-fulfilling prophecy as you see this go forward, or the many examples that I'm sure you're familiar with, this one, for example, where Horat's told us right after October 7th

that he made very clear that they need to continue to transfer money to Hamas to make sure that they're divided. You know, things like that that show you that there is an element of this, at least him stating publicly, for the getting money in the hands of the group that they claim they're fighting to keep them divided. You know, things like that.

Or I might as well just play the clip since we're talking about it. Just a brief note that's from 2019, just to class. Yes, no, yes. Yeah, for the podcast, very much. I'll read the direct quote. I'm just skimming over it since I've mentioned this so many times. Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas.

He said this to his L'Kud Party in the Knesset, men. In the Kud party's Knesset members in March 2019, this is part of our strategy. And he goes on to make it clear, you know, that that's about dividing them and, you know, in a surreptitious manner. Then I'll play this too since we're talking about it. So are you saying Benjamin Netanyahu deliberately boosted Hamas? to try to prevent a Palestinian state. You are sure. He deliberately and systematically,

even told, is on record. Whoever wants to avoid the threat of a two-state solution has to support my policy of paying protection money to the Hamas. So what we did with the permission of our prime minister is to let Qatar to transfer a huge amount of money cash, probably more than $1.4 billion. By doing it, we increase the power of Hamas. We did everything

in order to make sure that Hamas will go on controlling Gaza, and Palestinian authority will control the West Bank, so they will fight each other. Now, of course, these are people with their agendas. You know, Barack is no one that should be trusted, right? You know, but nonetheless, the point is that the overarching idea. is that money was facilitated to the hands of a moss. And I think that's very relevant. Now, the nuance, people can feel free to film it in for themselves. My point is simply just that if we know that, to some degree,

there's at least the question of to what the intent is and whether or not, especially with all the foreknowledge and all the weirdness around October 7th. You know, you just, the question is posed, I think, is whether or not there's something to that. And go ahead, you have some comments, but I would like to go into the overarching point of just the general idea of funding, you know, your own enemy for the purposes. of manipulation in a way, but go ahead. No, look, I completely agree with the assessment that this was to divide the Palestinian territories.

I think that's an established fact that that has been the agenda to divide the territories. They wanted to keep, and this has been a policy position, which we found out for WikiLeaks documents in the early 20 teens. It was released that the agenda was to keep Gaza on a diet. to keep it basically on the barrier of the poverty line, to squeeze the population, to get them to rebel against Hamas, basically, but to just keep them right there, essentially,

but not collapse the territory completely because then that would beget armed action and armed conflict. And they didn't care to do that. And they knew through armed conflict, they can't defeat Hamas, as we've seen over the past 18 months, they haven't been able to defeat Hamas. They just have been able to do it.

So there's a few different elements here. Number one is those is really politicians and those is really, you know, former leaders in the intelligence community and then also IHud Barak and former prime minister. They have an anti-Nehawah agenda. You hear that Ihood Barack, he said, like, we transferred the money to Hamas,

which is obviously not accurate. Then afterwards, now you're hearing the former head of the Mossad say, no, no, no, we allowed Qatar. to transfer the cash in this $1.3 billion. It wasn't $1.3 billion. I don't think it was that much. But regardless, that's beside the point.

There's an agenda to divide the two territories, for instance. That's why, for instance, Israel has not allowed as a political solution for the Palestinian authority, which is incredibly corrupt, by the way, and works with Israel and security coordination and does not fight Israel. And is financed by, you know, the United States before the U.S. is pulling out some funding now, but the United States and mainly the Europeans. who financed the Palestinian Authority to be like a domestic security service for the Palestinians in the West Bank to take the burden off of the occupying forces. But they didn't want the Palestinian Authority to go into Gaza after the war as a settlement for the ceasefire settlement.

And they also didn't want it to happen in 2017. That's why they axed it. In 2014, when Hamas and Fatah, the Palestinian Authority led by Fatah, came together in 2014, Israel launched a military assault, a 51-day war. against the Gaza Strip, trying to uproot Hamas. Again, they failed to do that through military means. And what happened after that is their failure to uproot Hamas completely, and the armed wing at least, and to limit their ability to be able to launch rockets and do things which are a nuisance,

but they don't really do that much. But there's still a nuisance, right? And obviously Hamas has the capacity to inflict some damage on the Israelis. Not that much. It won't take down Israel, but it will, you know, cause a domestic crisis. It will cause a stir, you know, a rocket going into Tel Aviv, it's a problem, even if it doesn't do anything. Like Ansar al-Lah now fires its missiles at Tel Aviv.

They don't normally hit anything, but, you know, it's still a huge problem. The sirens go off, you know, crisis. So after, you know, this situation where Hamas is basically trying everything, everything to try and hand over the authority to somebody else, you know, to govern Gaza, do something to make the living conditions back. better. What year are you talking about here? What year are we at? What you're describing? We're at like 2018.

Okay. In the 2018 here. Hamas had basically been put in the position where it tried diplomacy. It amended its charter. It tried nonviolence as a strategy even. It even tors nonviolence for a while. It had tried, even if you look at its 2017 charter, it talks about perhaps accepting a two-state solution. Hamas would be able to accept it.

Obviously, they have stipulations about what that two-state. solution looks like, of course, but they had the idea that we'd accept it, right, if it meant that it could be a prolonged, you know, ceasefire, at least and truce with the Israeli side. We don't want to recognize Israel, but we'll do a two-state solution so we can have a prolonged truth. I won't go into the ins and out to that, but it shows a level of moderation that they had, and they were trying to move towards something different. And look, the situation in Gaza, you had to realize that by 2020, even before that was called out by UN officials as being unlivable. The situation,

that was extremely dire. The unemployment rate was through the roof, one of the highest in the world, especially amongst the youth. There was, you know, the people had nothing to do there. Like, you know, the majority of the population was dependent on humanitarian aid. You know, 97% of the water was undrinkable. The situation there was horrific prior to October 7. So Hamas, being this political leadership, and again, this goes back to something, I know this is sort of a little bit complex, but it's really important for the context. You said about in 2006, then being allowed to run, and that's weird that they're allowed to run. Well, interestingly enough, George Bush is the one that encouraged the election to happen. And then on top of that as well, the MI6 was the one pushing and pushing and pushing. Hamas, Hamas, you need to go. You need to run. And Hamas at that time, it had thrown its hands up in the air and said, no, we're just about armed struggle.

We don't care. But they ended up being pushed into it. And then when they won, it was the perfect excuse, right? Because, of course, the Palestinian Authority was led by Fatah, it being taken over by Hamas or never going to allow. They can say, look, a terrorist organization took over. To be clear, though, every single Palestinian political party, other than the mainstream branch of Fatah are considered terrorist organizations, whether they be Islamic parties, nationalists, socialists, it doesn't matter. And whether they are or not, to be clear. Of course, this is the thing that, like, it is quite. and nuanced history, but that 2006 election instantly, there was a blockade imposed upon Gaza, not just by the Israelis, but an economic embargo put in place where they put sanctions on

from the European Union and from the United States, which squeezed Gaza. Then, of course, what was going to happen? What did they do? The Bush administration, which we found out for Vanity Fair, many people had their suspicions about what we found the details out with the Vanity Fair article, endorsed. basically for ferrying weapons through Egypt and other countries and sending cash through to the head of the then preventative security force head for the Palestinian Authority, Mahmahman Dahlan, tried to launch a coup.

Hamas saw this coming and they purged the Palestinian Authority, created what was known as a Palestinian in civil war in 2007. And then Israel imposed this full-scale blockade. And then that led to all of these wars. And it sort of led to the position we're in today. But the reason why this is all relevant to the financing is because when it comes to the Israelis, their assessment was Hamas cannot do significant, they can't destroy us. They can't do significant damage alone.

And so you've got two options. Either you can go to war with them and you can try and destroy them, which they knew. was not going to happen. I mean, look at 18 months of struggle to try and destroy Hamas, and they haven't been able to do it through the most horrific means of doing it, because they're not going directly and attacking Hamas in tunnels and stuff. They don't know where they are, number one, and they're not trying to fight them directly. They're trying to do it through squeezing the population, because they know it will be very costly to their soldiers if they tried to fight Hamas directly.

And they learned this in 2014 with the catastrophe that befell their forces in Shiajaia. in Gaza City. So what they've done essentially is like, strangle the civilian population, kill the civilian population, bomb all of the buildings, you know, commit all these war crimes, a genocide, as a strategy to force Hamas out, and they still not been able to do it. So understanding this and having enough intelligence information to know that that strategy is not very good, up until that point, what they had been doing was attempting to essentially provide that money, which before was coming from the Palestinian Authority into the Gaza Strip for the salaries, for instance,

and was coming in, even Qatar before it was still aiding and transferring to Hamas, but allow this money to come through to sort of keep Hamas at bay. And the agenda, of course, has always been to divide the West Bank in Gaza. They didn't want, you know, a joint entity in both, whether that's Hamas. They would oppose completely Hamas having any role in governing the, the West Bank, as we saw with the legislative elections, the free and democratic elections that happened in 2006. They blocked that. And they also oppose the Palestinian Authority taking over the Gaza Strip, because if the Palestinian Authority takes over the Gaza Strip or Hamas takes over

the West Bank, then suddenly it's a singular, it's a unified Palestinian entity with a seat at the United Nations and a claim to a state based on international law. And they don't want that. So they need to divide them, but again, they need to make sure that the situation in Gaza did collapse into a situation where Hamas would be forced into taking some drastic military action, because then it froze them into this situation that they have today. Right. So that's the reason behind why the money was allowed to be transferred. And then there's sort of like the background Israeli political dynamics with the opposition. And I know I've went into this really. No, no, no. I'm glad you did. I'm really glad you did.

So let's unpack it a little bit, though, because this is what's so fascinating. And I didn't intend to make this the focal point, but I think this is important. We've talked about this before, though, and this is so, you know, okay, so what you just laid out there. Yes. And it's exactly as I think an honest journalist should, right? The facts, the nuance, you know, not jumping to conclusions, but just your opinion, with what you just laid out there, is it not likely that you can see that it's arguable, like a logical argument that 2006, was, like you said, driven into reality

so it could be used against them. That's not the same as saying that, like, you could say that could exist at the same time that Palestinians also likely wanted Hamas for the obvious reason that it's a powerful entity and that it's fighting back and, you know, whatever else. So do you think, just your opinion, was 2006 driven into reality

so they could use Hamas against them? Oh, yeah, I think that's, I would not dispute that at all. So it's interesting to me. Go ahead. And obviously what they did is because Hamas didn't end up just going, you know, contrary to how it's portrayed in the Western corporate media, Hamas didn't just end up going door to door and just shooting people for no reason.

They had to give it a little push, right? When it won the legislative elections, it should have seized power, right? So it was ready to take over power. But of course, the Palestinian Authority was not going to allow it to happen because the backing, again, of the European Union at the time Britain was part of it, and the United States. And so they were not going to allow Hamas to take power. And that's why they launched in 2007 or they attempted to launch a coup against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which was, you know, it was uncovered by the Plessam brigades.

And they defeated it. They put it down violently. And then it caused this civil war conflict where, you know, for some time, people in fact that and Hamas were shooting at each other and killing each other. You know, it was a bloody conflict. But that's what it was, again, it's obvious that it. It was designed to cause this division. Right. And it was an agenda.

So that's where I'm wondering is, you know, at the same time, then going forward, is it not likely all of that? Like, like the funding is the point. So then if they continue on, like understanding that it is being facilitated through Qatar and it's possible that might not have always been their drive. It seems like it makes sense from that point forward that yes, then obviously they would continue to at least like put hands, money in the hands of Hamas, whether they even know it's coming from Israel in order to keep this thing moving forward.

You see what I'm saying? So the nuance doesn't have to be that it's like Israel's writing checks right to Hamas, but ultimately that the money is getting in the hands of Hamas because Israel wants to maintain the thing we clearly agree was manufactured to be the division factor. That's what I think this all comes down to. Well, there's also the equal, you have to look at the point where equally the Israelis that control like the tax revenue that comes through the Palestinian Authority, for instance, they control the money to go into the Palestinian Authority too and they have to release it to them. And so having an occupied territory under international law, if you're the occupier, you're supposed to be the one providing for it. And Israel said, we're not going to actually provide for it, right? And they say Hamas is the reason. But in the West Bank now with the Palestinian Authority, they don't even release the tax revenue.

So they're going to have an excuse with the Palestinian Authority, which works together with their security forces on security coordination. But they don't want, this is the thing. With the West Bank, yes, it's been economically squeezed, especially from, since October 7, but they're still allowing money to trickle in. They're still allowing investments and things to be built in the Ramallah in other areas in the West Bank because at the end of the day, if the entire territory collapses, they have some level of responsibility and some political crisis that will come as a result of a complete collapse. So they need some sort of political entity there to run the place to sort of keep it stable

for them, you know, and to do all the things that an occupying for, normally is going to have to foot the bill for, but they want that to be done by somebody else. And so, for instance, with Hamas and them being empowered there, the situation was getting very, very, very bad in Gaza leading up to this period into this period of late 2018. And they were taking very drastic measures to try and somehow get anything, just an easing of the blockade. And that was, you know, the Great Return March, obviously they were asking for the implementation of UN Resolution 194 and others, you know, they were asking for like the right of return and stuff like this. But really, like the core of the demand was we want to at least ease,

if not lift the blockade. That was the big demand, lift the blockade. And, you know, they were just trying to ease it essentially. Like the political factions knew that they wouldn't, they weren't just going to lift the blockade. But they just wanted at least to ease the blockade just so that the situation would, you know, at least get a little. bit better for the average person in Gaza and it would have been slowly deteriorating and deteriorating. And the only path forward would have been armed conflict and then complete chaos in Gaza, which again would create this political crisis. And without like any reason for this to happen, the Israelis would be thrown into a very, very difficult position in front of the international

community, their own population, dealing with this, having all of these different crises with, you neighboring countries because of the predicament with a collapse of Gaza. So they had to allow this money to come in. And that's the money that had been coming in before for different means. It wasn't coming for suitcases and stuff before, whether it be the Palestinian Authority or international humanitarian efforts, for instance. And Qatar had been providing its funding for quite some time. The money had been coming in before and the situation had at least been semi-stabilized. And now when we say that, we're still talking about a territory descending into an unlivable condition, even when we're talking about this.

But that's why the money went in. And the money really was a very, very small amount for what Gaza needed. You know, this was used primarily to subsidize fuel and to subsidize salaries, like to go in and provide salaries to people. And they needed to do that. And like you said, look, there is that underlying agenda of they want to divide the territory. territories. But I think there's a fundamental difference between they funded Hamas to, you know, do armed action against them versus they have a strategy to divide the Palestinians and they want to keep them at bay. Maybe they want them to fight each other, but they don't really want to

endorse something that's going to fight them unless they could control that completely. And they can control the direction of it. And so that's that's where I diverge. They have their agendas. They're not going to let this money come in for no reason. Right. But yeah, like the way that I sort of like diverge from the view that's taken, but by many, it's a popular view. And it's fruit like I think understanding the nuances and doing a lot of reading and research and interviews with officials as well that I've come to the position where I'm at. And I hope I outlined that as well as I possibly pan.

You still may not agree with me and that's completely fine. I think we're saying the same thing, to be quite honest. I just think what at the end of the day, it is nuance about whether the intention. And that's the thing is I'm in no way arguing intention in any way, just really that you put money in the hands of Hamas. They're going to do what they want with that money. And that very well could be any number of things, including armed resistance. You know, so it depends on how you go at the end of the day, I just have of the mind that you can clearly prove that they had the intention to put money in their hands as they stated to keep that division going. And that could mean any number of things, including what we just saw take place.

You know, so it's worth considering all that. So what I think is important to note as well is that in no way, regardless of whether every single person in Hamas is working for Netanyahu, does that undermine the legal act of armed resistance of anybody, any group in Gaza, right? So that's one point you can push back on if people think that's like a surreptitious argument to undermine that Hamas or anybody else had the right to act against Israel. Because it is, as you know, the legal act of armed resistance for any occupied territory. That's important to note.

I also think, sorry to linger on this point so much, but I also think that often what happens is we take the model, for instance, of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, and the CIA and MI6 role in backing them to fight the Soviets, and then all the way up to, you know, L'Qaeda and the relationship between Osama bin Laden and the Bush family and all of this history. and how that developed with, you know, for instance, the Taliban and al-Qaeda and these sort of groups, and also the U.S. role in facilitating the rise of Daesh with like Kambuqa and these sort of places where they had these people in their detention. I think this history has to be separated from Hamas because there's an enormous amount of nuance in the Palestinian political arena, which it's not as simple as depicting it, the way that the most, Mujahideen in Afghanistan were depicted, for instance. Even that has some nuance, of course, but it's very obvious what the U.S. agenda was there. It's very obvious how it panned out and the blowback that resulted from it.

But trying to, I don't know, model what has happened with Hamas on the strategy that the U.S. and the U.K. implemented in Afghanistan, which obviously led to al-Qaeda in these groups, I think has a fundamental flaw in the analysis. And so I just encourage, like, you know, to look at the nuance of the situation because it's not as simple as that. And it also presents Hamas in this framing of things. It presents Hamas as being similar to al-Qaeda or Daesh. And these are groups who are, you know, internationalist extremist groups. They have an agenda to take over, you know, this is their ideology, to take over the entire world, right? and create a system which they impose upon people and sort of kill anybody that opposes now.

Whereas Hamas is a self-described national liberation organization. And it's focused inside the borders of Palestine. It doesn't give a damn for anything going on really beyond that. It might, you know, offer its, you know, opinions on things. But at the end of the day, it's focused in occupied Palestine. And it's a Palestinian political entity. So it's not the same as like using like, when we're talking about, about, you know, these power plays and the manipulation from the Israeli side.

And it is a little bit more nuanced than looking at, you know, the developing of one of these groups. Absolutely agree. But you could argue that that difference could be rooted in the fact that Hamas just did not go the same. You know, like you wonder whether after, like, if there was some kind of like direct influence control, even, which people argue, that you wonder whether that change simply because this is a different nationalistic focus discussion. And all that Israel's continued to do in Gaza has led to more people joining and younger

people coming into it, which could drastically change the momentum of this group to where now it is not something that is influential control. And before, you know, the point is we don't know. All we know is that the money had been given and so on. And you're right to highlight that it's a very different thing than some of these groups that are even arguably, like even insight coming from Saudi Arabian leadership to argue that some of the heads of these groups don't even believe the religious mindset that they push on everybody else. You know, so there's a very different, I'm glad you make that point, very different

things. But let's get into the idea of what, what's going on in the ground. Let's finish by, you know, Gaza, Lebanon, Syria. Give the audience the update on where we are right now because, you know, it's actually, it's actually, I mean, it's almost disgusting, it is disgusting that how many churches have been bombed, how many hospitals have been bombed, how many, you know, tents and groupings where just people like, oh, is that the story? we saw yesterday. No, that's a new one. It happens every day. It's like this nonstop thing. It just kind of becomes background noise for a lot of people. And I'm trying to fight against that to be like, you know, this is something that needs constant daily attention. You know, what's going on there.

So let's start with Gaza. And, you know, I know it's a lot to get into and there's a thousand things we could talk about, but kind of a concise overview of where Gaza is right now in the context of what Israel's trying to accomplish and their fight to stop it. Well, Gaza is being starved. That's the policy right now. Israel doesn't really have a coherent military strategy. They keep talking about this strategy and that strategy and they're going to do this and they're going to do that. They put their troops into around 65% of the Gaza Strip, which is like all of the open areas essentially away from the built up areas where population centers are like, well, now the population is centered. And, you know, they're talking about remaining. They're talking about, you know,

ethnic cleansing, they're talking about all these different strategies, you know, taking the north or taking the south and all of these different strategies they have. Really what they're doing is they're starving Gaza. You know, it was calculated that these supplies that are left in Gaza after three months, they'll completely be out. There will be nothing left and the people will just completely starve. And so now we're into a week eight of nothing being allowed into the Gaza Strip. So this is a manufacturing of a full-scale famine against the Gaza Strip. That's basically the pressure tactic they're putting in place. Things may change within the next few weeks because of the political circumstance on the Israeli side. I'm going to get into

that so much. But we're looking at a situation, and this is important to note what they do in Gaza and what they get away with in Gaza, they are pushing, you know, that barrier back and back and back in terms of what's internationally acceptable for any force to do to a civilian population. At the start of the conflict, you'll remember that when you have Gallant, the defense minister, came out and said, nothing's coming in to Gaza, no electricity, food, water, aid, nothing.

That created a huge stir. And even, you know, the Biden administration had to lie and had to obfuscate. And it had to, in the end, pressure the Israelis to let a little bit of aid to come in, to say, no, at least we're letting something in. Now there's not even a need for that anymore because they've pushed that back, that need, that, you know, legal basis or that, that, that, you know, moral barrier that we collectively on this planet accept. And so the same comes for these executions of the medical workers that we saw, the assassination of journalists.

you know this conflict that's killed more journalists than were murdered in world war two and the vietnam war combined right that's how many journalists we're talking about just in gaza alone out of gaza's small population nothing compared to the populations who are involved uh overall in world war two and in vietnam just in gaza right more journalists it's it's the most uh the most deadly war for journalists on record, the most deadly war for abetical workers. And this is the issue that we cannot see this in isolation that it's just occurring there. Because now, you know, with all the horrors that we've seen inflicted on Gaza, we're seeing it every single day. So we're becoming desensitized.

And then in the United States or in the United Kingdom or in Germany, then, you know, the authorities can come and crack down on you. Okay, the Israelis use it as a justification because somebody, you know, know, expressed a pro-Palestine sentiment. They said something online. Here is the evidence that this person is Hamas now. So let's accuse this person of Hamas and put them in a detention center. Let's accuse this person of being Hamas and let's arrest them. Let's accuse this person of being Hamas and bring a legal case against them. Real quick, can't miss the overlap to what's happening in this country right now. We don't have to get into that, but just recognize that that's your government doing the same thing to people, whether American citizens or not and saying,

you're this, you're a terrorist, going, you know, sending to a foreign gulag. So please continue. And that's exactly what it is. The Israelis started this. At the start, you know, again, their propaganda, even though it was all lies, it was a bit more sophisticated. You know, I remember writing pieces as well, and we discussed the topics, like for instance, the bombing of the Al-Ahali hospital. That was a big one at the start where Israel bombed the hospital. It's very obvious that they bombed it, but they created all this propaganda, fake, so-called Hamas phone calls and doctor videos that they put in and all these contradicting stories which they put out to try and say that Islamic Shah had fire a rocket

and somehow it caused this massacre in a hospital. And so they tried to like cover it and hide it. And you know, everything they're doing, oh, there is Hamas. They have a list of this and that. And here's a machine gun that I found in the hospital. They don't even bother doing that anymore. And the problem here that we have is Israel simply needs to do one thing.

They just accuse somebody of being Hamas, right? No evidence at all needed to be presented. and now the media doesn't investigate it. The governments around the world don't question it. Nobody says a thing. They're just like, oh, yeah, he's Hamas. Okay. All right.

And they killed him because Hamas. It doesn't matter that this Hamas militant was a four-year-old child, right? Or a baby in a cot, right? And the father standing next to him was, you know, somebody that was clearly a civilian. That doesn't matter because Israel just said it. And that's the problem now. The media doesn't interrogate it anymore. They don't even question it.

They don't even pose a question. Maybe, but we're waiting for the evidence like they did before. They'd still try and hide it. Israel did this purposefully, and it's very obvious. But they at least try to like, you know, interrogate the claim a little bit. Or, you know, say, oh, we don't know 100%. We're not sure. But it needs to be investigated.

Israel's investigating itself. Well, that's not even needed anymore. We're not even at that point anymore. So you can imagine for the United States now, while the Trump administration goes, Mahmoud Khalil is Hamas supporter. is Hamas. Shalom. We're going to take you and put you in detention and we're going to deport you, even though you have a green card and your wife is a U.S. citizen and you have a baby on the way. And we're going to get plain clothes ice officers to come and abduct you because you're Hamas.

But you look at whether there's any evidence that he has any affiliation with Hamas. No, of course he doesn't have any. And even a Canary Mission, which tried to do the deepest dive I saw to try and pull out evidence on him, to try and frame him as Hamas. Do you know the only piece of evidence they found to frame him as his support of Hamas? When I looked at their website, he was in a protest where somebody next to him was chanting from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. And then they said, that is a quote that has been used by Hamas officials to mean the eradication

of Israel. That's the Hamas support that they said. And they don't have any evidence. He hasn't committed a crime. He's exercising free speech. this is something that is enshrined by the Constitution and the very being of what America is supposed to be, right? You have freedom of speech that you are allowed to voice your opinion, even if everyone hates those opinions. You're allowed to say it.

But it doesn't matter anymore because, again, Israel said this guy's Hamas. They can kill him and 20 other people next to him. It doesn't matter if he's a journalist and they killed, you know, women and children next to him. They accused him of being Hamas. And now in the United States, they accuse you of being Hamas. mask. They accuse you of being an anti-Semite. And suddenly then they can persecute you. They can take you to court endlessly. They can kick you out of the country. They can send you to some facility. And now it's getting even worse because we have this case of like now Trump talking about putting

people, you know, U.S. citizens in El Salvador. I don't know whether that's going to happen or not, but it's scary because who are they going to come after? They're going to come after political dissidents. when the Israelis get away with this, and I'll give you an example of how bad this is, when Israel assassinated the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, they openly admitted that they estimated 300 people were killed in that air strike. I don't know if you even heard that 300 people were killed in that air strike. Most people, when I tell them that 300 people were killed, they're shocked. I didn't hear about how many people were killed.

Israel openly said we estimated 300 people would be killed. Why is this significant? because Joe Biden endorsed that assassination. He praised that assassination. Let's zoom back to the early 2000s when Israel assassinated the head of Hamas, Ahmad Yassine. Ahmed Yassin, I believe seven civilians were killed when Ahmed Yassine was killed. I believe it's seven civilians. It might be a little bit more from my memory at seven civilians.

The Bush administration slammed Israel. They condemned Israel. because of them killing civilians along with Ahmed Yassim, and an indiscriminate bombing of a densely populated civilian area. Now 300 people can be incinerated in an entire city block, and the United States government endorses it. And that's not Trump. That's Joe Biden.

Trump now, with his backing from Miriam Edelson, his number one donor and all of these lobby groups behind him, now is even more extreme than Biden was. And now we're looking at it's coming back to the United States. You know, the old saying of, you know, the chickens come home to roost. Right. What's happening is what you do overseas comes back to bite you. And that is what happening now because this has been allowed to happen from their side.

Then it doesn't just give the United States free reign to do this to their own citizens or in other countries and new conflicts that they commit. Now they can raise the bar of how many civilians they're allowed to kill. We're now talking about other countries can do the same thing. What's stopping another country? Let's say like Russia wants to take out a high level target now, right? Before, they might go, okay, there's five civilians there. No, it's not a good idea.

Let's try and get that guy when they're not around civilians. Now, Israel can kill 300 civilians and take down an entire city block to kill one person. Well, they're not going to think about 300, five kill them. That's the decision-making process because I'm not saying that, you know, Russia would adopt that or China would adopt that. But it will happen in some sense. And it does enable that sort of action because there's a certain threshold that when you pass it, it's like the use of nuclear weapons. It's the same concept of nuclear weapons. Once you've passed that threshold, there's no going back.

And that's how it's linked to what's going on in the United States. And a good example is Netanyahu. in fact, others, by the way, other authoritarian despotic countries do the same because they're taking cues, but Netanyahu more than once has said, well, look at what you guys did in Iraq. Now you're going to accuse me of, you know, and that's the point right there. You open that door. You allow that become normal. Or they, through their own actions, drive that into becoming the thing they then point to, you know, either way, manufacturing it or not,

then now we're at a point where you're, like we were saying in the beginning, where it's just becoming like the Ali Hospital, but now there's not even a narrative anymore for why those are happening. I was going to say when I forget if it was Shifa or no, it was one of the refugee camps. And I'm blanking on which one. But where I think it might be the one you're referencing with 300 people where Wolf Blitzer, live on the air was confronted with that. Do you remember that? Where he literally brought it up and he couldn't swallow that.

Like civilians? And it was just like this moment where you recognized even the corporate media was having a hard time swallowing the idea that you killed 300 innocent people to go after one person that turned out to not even be there. You know, that's another case of them killing 300 people. Right. I was referring to what they did in Lebanon. Okay, right. This is another, there you go. They've done this so many times.

And even not only this case, and you were saying about Wolf Blitzer, and Wolf Blitzer is an APAC guy. Right. But even for him, he's sitting there. And in his mind, he's been a journalist for a very long time. He's, you know, he's a veteran of, you know, this propaganda game. He knows, you know, the rules of the game. And he knows the rules of engagement for conflict. on conflict.

300 people being eliminated in a single strike who had nothing to do with the alleged target. And then you don't even know. And I remember, he said, did you even get the guy? And they said, oh, we can't confirm that. That's insane. They apparently did the strike. That was a shifting moment like you're talking about.

From that point forward, that got a little easier for them. Right. And that's the disgusting reality of this. And, you know, I mean, I think this is a good place to leave it only because I really want what we just discussed right there to kind of hang. with people and discuss this and we need to do this more every week. I'd like to talk to you more about this, especially while the writing is, you know, less than it has been for. But, you know, it's, it's really chilling the connection you just made there. And it's not hard to see. You know, I mean,

this is, I mean, you know, you know, this interesting is this whole argument that always gets put forward by the neocons or, you know, the U.S. government, Israel, you know, that it's coming to you next, right? That if you don't stop them, it's going to be you next. It's like, maybe that has always been a threat. You know what I mean? The idea is that we can literally see that actually happening. The very things that they are doing overseas are now here. Not possibly, not a, you know, theorized idea of what some memo said, like literally being shoved in your face now for the fifth time. Donald Trump has floated the idea of sending Americans to a foreign prison for Israel. Not my opinion.

That's the stated reality of what's happening. And I just still can't believe we're here. So thank you for being here again today, brother. Let's do this again very soon. You know, anything you want to leave us with as long as you want to get into it. Give me your final thoughts here. No, I'd say that we're heading in unfortunately a very dark direction. It will take, you know, the will of the people to defeat it.

You know, historically, it takes, you know, popular movements, grassroots movements that have to sort of fight and combat these sort of things. But, you know, at the moment we haven't seen a big enough opposition mounted to these policies. That may change. And then there may be people who try and co-op these movements. But, you know, it's a very dangerous president that has been set. And what they're doing in Gaza is linked to everything that's happening in the United States. There's no other way of seeing it.

And it's not just Gaza. We're talking about now they're, you know, threatening war with Iran. Well, that's going to affect you in your pockets very deeply as well. Over in whatever Western country you're in, that is going to affect you if that war blows up into an all-out conflict with Iran. You know, and they're not stopping with Gaza or the West. Bang or even Lebanon or even Syria. They want to go further. And the United States is there backing this whole thing

and then cracking down on political dissidents. And it's not just a crack down on political dissidents in the United States. And it's not just to do with Israel. Like, let's make this very clear. They obviously it's the number one target are anti-Israel activists. But then when they go into the universities, what are they doing? They use the excuse of we're going after DEI because they know amongst the Republican voter base,

DEI is not very popular at all. Majority of Republicans want to get rid of it, right? So that's their excuse. But what do they really do? They go into the African American Studies Program, they go into the Middle East Studies Program, and now we're at a point where the government has control over university courses. It has control over the education to such an extent that it can go.

I don't like that. That's critical of U.S. foreign policy. We're not putting it in there. I don't like that. That's, you know, will encourage people to make unions. I don't want that. You know, whatever it is that they feel is threatening. And then also what that does is for the next administration. If you're a Republican now and you're going, oh, yeah, but Trump is doing everything I like. Well, what happens if a Democratic Party administration comes in and they now have oversight over those programs? What then? Now it's federal oversight over your university programs and the ability of the donor class to those and the federal government

who give the money to those universities to say, we don't like this, you're going to do this, you're going to implement this program, you're going to teach this, you're going to teach that, you're going to take this out of the syllabus, you can't say this word, you can't do that, and that works both ways. Now a Republican Party administration is in.

So yes, you're getting all the Republican Party talking points and everything and you're reshaping the education, but what happens if a Democratic Party administration comes in? Then you don't get, what you like. And this is the danger because both sides, if this holds and this stands and this attack on academic institutions is going to continue, it's not going to end that Donald Trump. It's going to be pulling out all the things the Republicans don't like and then pulling out

all the things the Democrats don't like. And then at the end of the day, you have no education system because you can't teach anything anymore. You can't say anything anymore because both sides are censoring. Both sides, they talk about snowflakes and oh, they're, they like to censor and they don't like free speech. Both sides are like that. They just have different angles and they're snowflakes about different things and they have different complaints that they want to silence you based upon. And it's all coming from an elite. It's not coming from a grassroots level. None of this is actually about anti-Semitism. They couldn't give a damn about genuine anti-Semitism. You know, like this is not something that the Heritage Foundation writes an entire document on how to

combat anti-Semitism because actually is trying to combat genuine anti-Semitism. Read the document. It's all about Israel. It's all about foreign policy. Listen to Palantir CEO, Alex Karp, and what he had to say about the university encampments. He didn't oppose them just because, oh, well, they're saying some things they don't. He's saying, if we lose the debate on the university campuses, we can never deploy the U.S. military anywhere in the world ever again. Right. That is the point. So this is something that it affects everyone across the political spectrum. It's not left. It's not right. It's not Republican. It's not Democrat. It affects everyone at this point. And it's something that everyone should stand up to. And it's undeniably linked to what's happening in Gaza and undeniably linked to what the Israelis

are being able to get away with. So it's a sort of long note to end on. But I think that that point has to be brought home, you know, like I think people have to understand the connection. I think it's a very important point to end on. And, you know, the reality being is that that central thread, you know, the real agenda behind the left-right paradigm flavoring that keeps you thinking things are different, right? Where, you know, now you're getting a certain push, but like you're saying, when it swings around, the Democrats are in power, well, now you're going to get your forced pronouns and DEI and whatever else. But the point is those are the, those are the window dressing, right? The same, the agenda as you're highlighting continues behind it, the censorship,

the control, the role, you know, like, I'm glad you mentioned carp and the rest on the way out, and Dresen, Tiel, you know, it's, the screaming Zionist, very clear. They're not hiding that, but on top of that, this weird edge to it that's like this technocratic kind of like, elitist, you know, you need the good oligarchs and elitist to make sure you're safe. You know, let us win out against the bad guy. That's this big push they're putting forward right now. And so it's weird, like you're saying, it all comes back to just the controlling structure over your life and the rest is just, you know, it's just actionary.

And people buy into it, you know, but the censorship, like the joke is, you know, woke left, woke right, snowflake, broflake. It's the same different thing, different side, you know. But thank you for tuning in today, brother, or being here today, brother. And I definitely want to connect with you again very soon. and everybody out there as always question everything. Come to your own conclusions. Stay vigilant.

At some respect, it's just as bad now, the authoritarianism that is coming. Gerald, I am really, really fearful for the president of the United States of America to suggest, as he did on Air Force One on Sunday night, that American citizens could be deported for his press secretary to say, we're looking into a way to see if this is legal. We don't know if it's legal or not. A is terrifying. B, betrays such a profound ignorance of first principles to which he is sworn.

He is sworn to preserve protect and defend the Constitution and to enforce federal law. You mentioned that you're open to deporting individuals that aren't foreign aliens, brought criminals to El Salvador. Does that include potentially U.S. citizens, fully naturalized? If they're criminals and if they hit people with baseball bats over their head that happen to be 90 years old, and if they rape 87-year-old women in Coney Island, Brooklyn, yeah, yeah, that includes them. Why do you think there's a special category of person? They're as bad as anybody that comes in.

We have bad ones too. Profoundly un-American, utterly unconstitutional, and I'm sorry to say is coming.