The Megyn Kelly Show - What Israel Does Now After Terror Attack, and America's Next Move, with Ben Shapiro, Amb. David Friedman, and Lt. Col. Daniel Davis | Ep. 644

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

Megyn Kelly begins the show by discussing the horrifying stories coming out of Israel after the terror attack by Hamas, and shares why they must be seen and not ignored. Then Ben Shapiro, host of The Ben Shapiro Show, joins to discuss the brutality of Hamas, the truth about how Israel cares more about the Palestinians than Hamas does, Egypt refusing to help the Palestinians or Israel's effort, our American media's deference to Hamas propaganda, the outrageous anti-Semitism we're seeing from some progressives liberals and the media, the awful pro-Hamas protests in America and Australia, the faction in the GOP pushing "America first" over stronger support for Israel, the response at the United Nations to the Hamas terror attack, the instinct by many on the world stage to critique Israel even as they are being attacked, and more. Then Lt. Col. Daniel Davis to talk about the tactics Israel will have to deploy to rescue hostages from Gaza, the possibility for negotiations ahead to get women and children, the added element that there are Americans being held hostage too, challenges ahead for America because of the uneasiness in the world right now, and more. Then David Friedman, former U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Trump administration, joins to discuss  the possibility a cyber attack could have led to the Hamas terror attack, Iran's role in the planning of the attack on Israel, why America got "duped" in dealings with Iran, the Biden administration blindness on Iran matches with the Obama administration's, Ilhan Omar's outrageous comments about "collective punishment," Harvard students attacking Israel and not Hamas, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow 

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at noon east. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We expect to hear from President Biden within the hour as the stories out of Israel and Gaza get worse by the minute. The news is incredibly difficult to report. It's just about as bad as it can get. I don't remember ever giving a viewer warning at the top of a show in just having to report the news, but I have to give you one today. This is the most disturbing news I could offer. The stories are absolutely horrifying. We are seeing evil incarnate in the aftermath of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. And there's no way through it but to make

sure people know what they're doing. There's just no way through it but to make sure you know what they're doing. Because as we go through the next days and weeks, what you're going to start to hear is that Israel needs to back off, that its response is disproportionate, that it's doing too much, that it's not taking enough care of innocent civilians. And you therefore must hear what was done to the Israelis. Israel does its best to not target civilians. That's its entire mission. When it goes over there, it wants to target terrorists, not civilians. It goes the extra mile every time to avoid hitting civilians. And this entire attack that Hamas just unleashed on Israel is about civilians. I mean, they managed to get a few military-aged men as well, but they seem to be targeting

intentionally the most innocent and vulnerable among us. From the Jerusalem Post editor Avi Mayer, a woman was found murdered with her fetus next to her, the baby still attached to its umbilical cord, a child who did not even get the chance to live. An elderly woman found in a pool of blood, her body riddled with bullet holes. They seem to enjoy killing the elderly women. There are multiple reports like that one. Entire families found burned to death inside their homes. And then there's this report. I'm sorry. Again, I warn you, this is as brutal as it comes. Near the Israel-Gaza border of 40 babies murdered in a kibbutz. It's like an area where Israelis live together.

Forgive me for reporting the darkness. Some of them even decapitated. It's hard to even explain exactly just the mass casualties that happened right here. In fact, the Israeli military says they still don't have a clear number. But I'm talking to some of the soldiers and they say what they've witnessed as they've been walking through these different houses, these different communities, babies, their heads cut off. That's what they said. Gunned down, families completely

gunned down in their beds. One of the commanders here said at least 40 babies were killed. Some of them, their heads cut off. He said he's never seen acts of brutality like this. And as I said, many of these soldiers were called from

reserve duties coming down here to the scene of a massacre. None of them knowing exactly what to expect and no one expecting that it could be something like this. There are no words that can capture the evil that must exist in a person's heart to be capable of doing something like that. You know, on this show, I always try to keep it at a level where you can hear the news and you can still function on your day. You know, it's sort of one of the things we pride ourself on is just not getting too incredibly dark so that people can still function. I have to admit it's

been hard. I I'm, I'm feeling it. I'm sure you're feeling it too. In the wake of this news, which we can't ignore, which you can only fully appreciate if you actually do look at it as the Israelis have been forced to. They're our closest ally in the Middle East. We can't ignore what's happening to them. Our interests are directly aligned with theirs for a whole bunch of really good reasons. As it stands now, more than a thousand people have been killed in Israel that we know of. I'm sure that number is going to climb many, many more wounded. The videos we showed you yesterday and we'll show you today are incredibly difficult to watch. In one, terrorists are seen sneaking up on a car, shooting the people inside at point blank range, allowing the terrorists to gain access to a gated compound. There's absolutely

no respect for human life. Another shows Hamas stalking homes going door to door in a farming community near the Gaza border. Just 1,000 people called this area home and 100 of them are now dead. Think of it, a 10th of the community wiped out in the blink of an eye. This attack happened around the same time as that music festival massacre. We reported on yesterday that according to Tablet Magazine, left more than 260 people dead. Most of them vibrant, beautiful, young people just starting out in life. In the meantime, Hamas's actions have created a hell on earth for those in areas of Gaza,

as Israel unleashes an all out effort to, quote, obliterate Hamas terrorist capabilities. Reporting suggesting 765 people have been killed inside Gaza so far. Israel has urged civilians there to leave their homes immediately. But Hamas, at least in conflicts past, doesn't let the civilians leave. They want the civilians to be hurt. They have shut down all crossings, potentially setting the stage for a ground invasion. It will have to be. How else could Israel get its hostages back if they don't conduct a ground invasion? And then there are the hostages being held, and their estimates range from 100 to 150 being held captive by these terrorists who are now threatening to kill them and to release video of the executions on social media should the aerial attacks by

Israel continue. And we believe some number of those hostages are Americans who had been in Israel when this report, when this attack was unleashed. We begin today with Ben Shapiro. He's editor emeritus at the Daily Wire and host We begin today with Ben Shapiro. He's editor emeritus at The Daily Wire and host of the hugely popular Ben Shapiro show. He just got back from Israel on Friday where he was with his family. Ben, welcome back. My condolences to you and your friends and your family, who I'm sure are going through this in a particularly troubling way. I listened to your whole show yesterday. It was incredibly moving.

It was incredibly disturbing. And I just don't know what we're supposed to do with 40 babies decapitated. How is that a group we can talk to about anything? Well, obviously the great moral sickness of the West is its intention to continue moral equivalency between one group of people who wish to defend children and one group of people who wish to murder them as often as humanly possible. I've seen pictures that have not been made public of families burned and babies beheaded and all the rest of this sort of stuff. And this is what

Hamas intended to do. This is what Hamas intended to do. This is what they always intended to do. This has been in their charter since 1987. There are no surprises here. The only surprise is that it took this long for Hamas to be successful. But this has been their intention all along. The Palestinian Authority, the Palestine Liberation Organization, pays actual bounties to terrorist families,

as long as jihad is a terrorist group. And yet the West has spent the last 30, 40 years pretending that there was some sort of deal that could be cut here. I think that the Israeli government was under the impression since 2006, when they completely pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, they pulled literally thousands of Jews out of their homes in the northern tip of the Gaza Strip and turned over the entire area to the Palestinians who promptly burned every Jewish home and greenhouse and then voted for Hamas. They voted Hamas into power. Hamas has been the governing power in the Gaza Strip since 2006, so for 17 years.

And they've been launching rocket attacks ever since. And Israel believed that because of the security barrier, the touch fence, and because of Iron Dome, which shoots down the rockets that are fired routinely from Gaza, that they could live with some semblance of at least quasi-normalcy, although it's hard to describe normalcy as you have to run into a bunker every few months for a week or so while rockets rain down on your home, but it was at least livable. Well, what's happened over the course of the last few days is not only catastrophic, but it demonstrates, number one, why there needs to be a state of Israel, why the state of Israel exists, why the notion of a Jewish

state to defend Jews exists. It really exposes the moral vacuity of many people in the West for precisely what it is. And it shows more than anything else what evil actually looks like. And so it's been my intention throughout this conflict to show what exactly the Hamas terrorists wish to do, what their government wishes to do, what their sympathizers wish to do in most graphic detail. And they're not shy about it. I mean, what's truly incredible is this is the worst weekend.

Saturday was the worst day for Jews since the Holocaust in terms of mass death. And what's truly amazing is that even the Nazis were ashamed enough of what they were doing, at least in the public eye, that as World Waring babies, murdering pregnant mothers, pulling the, pulling the fetuses out of their stomach and letting the babies die. Still connected with the mother there. There's a report of that. Um, these sorts of reports, these are glorified by Hamas. These are touted on social media. The videos that I've been playing on my show are not videos taken by Israelis. These are videos that are taken by, by Hamas members and then trumpeted around social media.

And it's causing celebrations in places ranging from London to Sydney to the streets of New York by a certain group of people and their sympathizers. And evil exists, and it doesn't just exist inside the Gaza Strip. It exists in the hearts of human beings who somehow believe that there's moral equivalency between people who wish to rape women, murder them, parade their bodies through Gaza, and people who want to defend themselves and live normal lives. I mean, it's just, it's astonishing. And if the world goes back to that level of moral equivalence after this, if the world somehow in the next few days says that Israel has to stop or has to declare a ceasefire with people who just murdered their children and are currently holding babies, literal nine-month-old babies, in captivity, pending their execution, then I don't know. The whole point of the state of Israel is that Jews no longer have to ask

permission to defend themselves, and that's certainly the case today. This is about the atrocities that were unleashed on Israel by this terrorist group on Saturday. This isn't about Palestine and the blockade. I don't see it as about any of that, but that's what the left wants to make it about. And so I want to just spend one minute on it because most people don't know the history, Ben, you know, like you do. And you're hearing things like, but, you know, the blockade and collective punishment, that's a war crime. Ilhan Omar spewing that nonsense saying you can't you can't hold all of the Gazans, all of the Palestinians responsible for the actions of

Hamas, of their leadership. And I think, you know, you mentioned it, but it's important just to remind the audience what you just said. In 2005, Israel got all of its citizens out of this area. They got them all out, like insisted that they leave at some points at gunpoint and said, take it, have it. It's yours. We're out. And it wasn't until within, what, two years that Hamas won the election, which is a terrorist group. Our State Department recognizes that and started bombing Israel again. That Israel said, all right, we're going to have to do something to prevent this group from getting weapons. And they allow food and all that stuff to go in, but they try to do what they can

to make sure that they don't amass weapons and rockets to unleash on Israel. That's the so-called blockade. Like, this is what now people are saying, oh, look at how Israel's forcing these poor people to live. Israel wasn't doing that. It gave them this area and said, we're out. You're good. It was Hamas that started the murder back in this 2005, 2006, 2007 period. You tell it because you

know it better, much better than I do. I mean, Hamas has been participating in murderous activity since their founding in 1987, 1988, their Muslim Brotherhood offshoot. But the the pullout from Gaza is proof positive that when people say that they want context, the context literally does not matter to them. Because the fact of the matter here is, again, that Israel unilaterally pulled out of the Gaza Strip in an attempt to create some sort of security arrangement and presumably protect the Jews at the northern tip of the Gaza Strip and allow the Palestinians some chance at electing a government. They then promptly elected Hamas, a State Department designated terror group, in an election that was fully legitimate, as attested to by Jimmy

Carter. They elected Hamas. They haven't had an election since, but the polls tend to show heavy levels of support for Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Israel, by the way, has been providing electricity for free to this area. Israel has been providing water to this area. Israel ships in humanitarian goods to this area. Israel over the last year has provided 15,000 to, I won't use the Hebrew, the license that allows them to move into Israel and work there. A lot of people are on work permits inside Israel. If Hamas were not the governing power in the Gaza Strip, and if the Palestinians had chosen a government that actually sought to build, Israel would be, there's literally no one in Israel, no one, right, left, center,

who would not wish to build up the economy of the Gaza Strip and turn it into a peaceful neighbor. That would be the greatest wish of the Jews in Israel. They don't have a peace partner. They never have. In fact, there's,

they wanted a sewage system in the Gaza Strip. And so pipes were shipped into the Gaza Strip. Hamas promptly took those pipes and carved them. They repurposed them into the body of rockets, into rocket tubes. The cement that is poured into the Gaza Strip to build infrastructure was used by Hamas to build terror tunnels.

And this is what Hamas does. I mean, they overtly say this in their charter. Again, it's not as though they're hiding the ball. There are no secrets here. Hamas hides behind civilians. Hamas literally places its headquarters, its military headquarters, underneath a hospital.

I mean, imagine if the United States put its Pentagon beneath a hospital, deliberately, in order to maximize civilian casualties. And there's plentiful video of Israeli forces calling up members of Hamas outside of a building. They warn before, historically,

Israel has warned people in areas about to get hit, which is insane, by the way. Military targets. They've warned people, get the civilians out before they which is insane, by the way. Military targets. They've warned people, get the civilians out before they hit the targets. And there's tape of them calling members of Hamas and saying, get everybody out of this building. And members of Hamas saying, we don't want them out of the building.

We want them in the building. That's the whole point. Why do you think that we are locating a rocket fire from inside apartment buildings and behind apartment buildings? The whole goal is to maximize Palestinian civilian casualties so that they can then blame Israel. And then they can claim that some can then blame Israel. And then they can claim that some human rights violation is going on after they provoke violence in the first

place. So again, the attempt to tie this to settlements is insane because again, there are no settlements inside the Gaza Strip. The areas that were attacked here have been part of the state of Israel since 1948. And this is not post 67 settlements in the, in the West bank, in the so-called West bank, Judea and Samaria, all of the normal political tropes are, do not apply all of the usual lines here about if only Israel had been more generous during like none of that applies to the Gaza strip.

And it's, it's utterly insane that anybody's attempting to apply that same narrative, especially because Israel has offered Egypt, for example, control over the Gaza strip. And you know what Egypt said? It said, how about we don't want control over the Gaza Strip. And you know what Egypt said? It said, hell no, we don't want control over the Gaza Strip because Hamas is in control. There are a lot of terrorists over there.

In fact, right now, Israel has been telling civilians to get out of the most dangerous areas in the Gaza Strip pending some sort of attack. And civilians have been rushing down to the Rafah border, which is the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Egypt has closed the border. Egypt will not allow Palestinian civilians to enter the Sinai Desert in order to escape the carnage. Israel is attempting to make provision for those people. Israel cares more about Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip than Hamas does by a long shot. We did a story a couple of years ago. I actually tweeted out the episode. It was like a, you know, Israel-Palestine primer for dummies. And one of the things that I saw

in preparing for that show was an AP reporter back in 2014 came out and admitted that the AP building that was in this region was, and was, you know, Hamas was intentionally letting off rockets right next to the AP building, thinking that we wouldn't target or Israel wouldn't target this AP building. But that AP reporter eventually came out and said our AP photographers would go to the hospital and and they were basically in on it. They they would photograph the Palestinians bringing their young children or babies who'd been hit in a retaliatory Israeli rocket attack. And and they would use them for propaganda to put them on TV saying, look at the terrible Israelis, look what they're doing. And then as soon as all the military age fighters who were coming out of the hospital after being treated or going into the hospital

with injuries, they would turn off the cameras. The AP was helping the propaganda war so that the Palestinians could get their message out, which is the terrible, evil Israelis. All they do is target our children when, of course, the truth is Israel bends over backwards not to hit the civilians. And the AP was completely- They killed their own soldiers. They killed their own soldiers in order to save civilians. I mean, this has been the story of Israel for many, many years. They literally put their own soldiers in harm's way in order to minimize civilian casualties in the same way that American soldiers very often put in harm's way with very difficult rules of engagement in order to minimize civilian casualties in the same way that American soldiers very often put in harm's way with very difficult rules of engagement in order to minimize civilian casualties

in war zones. In Israel, on this score, there's a term in Hebrew called Tahirat HaNeshek, which is cleanliness of arms. And that's the basic idea, purity of arms. The basic idea is to minimize civilian casualties. I mean, there are so many, obviously, telling facts about the politics of the situation. Telling fact number one, there are no Jews living in the Gaza Strip. There are no Jews living in Palestinian cities in the West Bank. 20% of the population of Israel is Arab. There are Arab parties in Knesset right now

who are anti-Hamas, who have come out against these Hamas attacks. Fact number two, Israeli Arabs, when asked if they would like to join a nascent state of Palestine under either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority or Islamic Jihad, overwhelmingly say no. They're not particularly fond of the state of Israel, but they overwhelmingly would prefer to remain in the state of Israel than go to these supposed zones, even if there were to be some sort of peace deal, because they understand exactly what the governance would look like.

And again, fact number three is that the Gaza Strip has been under Palestinian control for 20 years. And the Palestine Liberation Organization, which turned into the PA, was founded in 1964 before the Six-Day War, when the so-called Green Line did not exist, when there was no Green Line, because all of that territory was being controlled by Jordan. So anybody who's attempting to, number one, first of all, any justification of beheading babies, it should show you who exactly is doing the justifying.

And I don't believe you. If you're a pseudo-sophisticate who's pretending that you don't understand what this conflict is all about at this point, you're beyond repair. I mean, you're just morally broken and there's no way to fix that. But anybody who's attempting to fit this into the context of a history and pretend that Hamas is some sort of legitimate political party and legitimate political body that shouldn't be eradicated, I don't know what to tell you. Let's just put it this way. If this sort of nonsense happened on America's border, if what we were seeing on America's southern border were not

migrants crossing the border, some of whom have criminal records, some of whom commit acts of violence, but if it were 1,500 terrorists who crossed the American southern border and then proceeded to go into El Paso, Texas and murder like 30,000 Americans, which is the population equivalent here

because America is a much larger and more populous country than the state of Israel. I highly doubt anybody would be calling for tremendous levels of restraint from the American government or military in attempting to secure its population. I mean, it's essentially the murder of a maternity ward, you know, the news that we began the hour with. And that's just one piece of the story.

There are so many atrocities. All of it is an atrocity. I may maybe you you saw this coming, Ben. I don't know. I mean, you've been dealing with the upfront and close that the depravity of this group, this terrorist group, Hamas. But I don't I didn't. This is ISIS. This is ISIS, but empowered and backed by an entire regime in Iran, encouraged and being cheered across the globe. And then, as you point out, the moral equivalence, even within our own country at your alma mater, you went to Harvard Law, 31 student these are the questions we have to ask. It's infuriating. I look at it. I think there's only one there's only one thing to do, and that is to this group must no longer exist. There must be no more Hamas after Israel's done here. That's clearly true. Israel has tried to avoid this. I mean, they really have tried to avoid this because, again, Iraq has been fired on Israeli civilians for the last 17 years since Israel gave up the control of the Gaza Strip.

And the last thing Israel wants to do is go back in there. They would have preferred to continue low-level conflict for years on end. I mean, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been in power for a combined 12, 13 years at this point. The last thing he wanted to do was launch some sort of overwhelming invasion of the Gaza Strip and have to retake control. They've been forced to do that by the circumstance. The only thing that's surprising about the attack is not the intent of the attack, because if you've been watching what Hamas has been saying and doing for years on end, if you go back to the second Intifada, when suicide bombers were walking into pizzerias and blowing themselves up, I mean, there's nothing new under the sun.

The only thing that's new here is the extent and the scale of the attack. And there's going to be serious fallout for the intelligence community in Israel. There's going to be serious fallout for the military in Israel, for the government of Israel after all this is said and done because of that sort of failure. I mean, it's a catastrophic failure on the order of 9-11 in the United States. I mean, actually, it's important to understand the impact on Israeli society is, again, orders of magnitude greater, I think, than 9-11 even was for most Americans who were not harmed directly by 9-11. But the only surprising thing here is the extent of the damage, not the intention of the people who were doing it. And as you mentioned, the sort of moral equivalence being drawn by the left, it's always been, in this particular case, a mask for anti-Semitism and Jew hatred. And when people are defending even this sort of activity, trying to contextualize this sort of activity, there's only two ways to explain that. One is the unbelievably soft bigotry of low

expectation, which just is bigotry. If you expect that people who are living in a bad situation get to be head babies, I don't know what that says about you or about the people who you're describing. But second of all, the sort of latent disdain for Jewish life is absurd. And when you say the murder of a maternity ward, I think the important one of the things that the folks should understand is that Israel is filled with children. Demographically, Israel is an incredibly young country. And so a disproportionate number of the people who are going to be killed in these sorts of attacks are going to be very young children, mothers. The fact that we can now see Hamas taking these videos and putting them on social media, I think it's precisely the opposite. I have, I have friends in the IDF, obviously who have been called up. Pretty much everybody in Israel has been called up at this point. I have friends from America. We were, as you mentioned at the top of the show,

you know, I was just in Israel until Friday morning with my family. We got out and, you know, 15 hours later, we heard about what was going on over there, but there are a lot of our friends who are still over there in Israel. And, um, and Israel put out a call for, for anybody with medical background to volunteer. I have friends right now who are American doctors, one who's a neurosurgeon, who literally traveled down to the border of Gaza and is operating in a field hospital right now trying to help out. So the notion that the back of Israelis or the back of Jews is broken in some way by this sort of stuff is absolute sheer nonsense. And and the the what's to come is

going to is going to be something very different than what has come before. They've been they've been so divided politically within Israel over the past year plus. It's been all over the papers. But I mean, the leader of the opposition party has come out and said, unity government, let's we're putting all this to the side. I mean, Israel's come together in a profound way and they are united when it comes to this issue. They understand it's truly existential. But I don't want to skip past, you know, what what terror does.

You know, we live this here in our country after 9-11 and what's being unleashed on the Israelis here and the day to day discovery, Ben, of the horrors that were committed in the time that Hamas managed to make it across that border. It's incredibly jarring. It's incredibly jarring for me. I live here. I'm not anywhere near it. I wasn't in Israel. I can't imagine what the Israelis are going through, even this people that's used to being attacked. I mean, they haven't seen anything like this. And so how do you think, I mean, how do they get past this? How do they, I know this is a strong lot,

but how do you get past atrocities like this? I mean, there's no way to get past the atrocities. Obviously, I mean, it is, the only way to imagine it is for anybody who's listening or watching, you're just living your daily life and somebody comes into your home and literally drags you and your children across the border to a hellscape and then murder you on camera and threaten to murder you on camera. That's exactly what's

happening. These were people who are just living their lives. This was not a military attack, as I mentioned, in any way, shape, or form. It was just pure carnage, kill as many Jews as possible, murder as many Jews as possible, scare as many people as possible. The time for mourning is going to be later. And as I said, there's going to be tremendous fallout in the state of Israel politically and Israel. The Miluim, the reserves, have all been called up, multiple members of each family. Again, I know a lot of these people, and I certainly have a lot of friends who have relatives who are in the Miluim who have been called up. When times of crisis happen, Israel does draw together in an extraordinary and unique way. And one of the things that's been sort of ironic for people like me who watch Israeli politics pretty closely,

all of the arguments about judicial reform were somewhat puzzling to people who actually watch Israeli society, because the truth is that everybody who's on one side of the aisle there has a cousin who's on the other side of the aisle there. It's a very tight-knit society. It's a very, well, what I usually say about Israel,

because I've been there multiple times with my crew, is that to understand Israel, the first thing you have to understand really is that in America, there's seven degrees of Kevin Bacon separation. In Israel, there's one. I mean, literally any person in the state of Israel with like one go-between, I can find somebody who knows that person. And so it's because of that, when crisis happens, the ability of the society to draw together and mobilize is extraordinary. The key focus for Israelis right now is obviously on fighting, on securing themselves, on making sure that Gaza is never again a threat to life and limb,

intimidating Hezbollah into staying out of the war on the northern front so this doesn't escalate into a broader regional war, protecting the so-called settlements, the Shtakhim that are out in Judea and Samaria, making sure that a confakhim that are out in Judea and Samaria, making sure that a conflagration does not begin in Judea and Samaria that would stretch the Israeli forces thin. I think that one of the things that Israel's enemies really have relied upon, yeah, the West Bank, one of the things that Israel's enemies have really relied upon is actually Israel's overwhelming military superiority. Because when you pinprick strike with rockets and Israel can shoot down most of those, it doesn't necessitate massive action. In fact, massive action looks wildly disproportionate. If a rocket falls in an empty area and then you go in and you take over

the Gaza Strip, for example, then Israel's enemies know that that's probably not going to be the likely outcome. If Israel gets stretched very thin, however, and it really does become an existential crisis, then all of the rules are off the table. And so if Hezbollah were to come in on the northern border, for example, they have about 150,000 rockets pointed at the northern towns in Israel. If they were to come in in any serious way, then Israel would unleash the full might of its air force. And that no one has seen. I mean, everyone keeps pretending that what's going on in Gaza right now is Israel unleashing. This is Israel in extraordinarily contained fashion, hitting particular areas in particular buildings.

But if Israel feels that it's stretched to its limit, if Israel really feels as though it's an existential grave crisis, then the full in the same way that if America felt that we were ever in existential danger, no, this is why nobody wants to bleep with America. Because if someone really did and we really went whole hog, no, just it would be it would be a parking lot. The same if Israel feels stretched to the limit and they don't have any choice, that will be the result. That's why it's a very good thing, actually, that the Biden administration moved an aircraft carrier into the Mediterranean and is telling Hezbollah, you guys best stay out, because that is a wise move, because if Hezbollah were to get in,

the chance of this turns into a regional war with Iran then getting in and Syria getting in and America forced to intervene, it would get extremely ugly extremely quickly. It would be a war the West wins, obviously. I mean, especially with America's help. It's a war Israel even by itself probably could win, but it would certainly stretch Israel to the breaking point. Again, you're talking about a country of a grand total of 9 million citizens, 7 million Jews. There are reports that people who are even beyond the age of service are rushing to volunteer. They don't care about the rules. They just want to go fight for their country.

I mean, it's similar to what we saw right here after 9-11, where everybody wanted to volunteer. You know, it caused people to join the military who never had. It caused people like Pat Tillman to leave the NFL and volunteer to go serve. I mean, you could go down the list. So the viewers know, here's Bibi Netanyahu yesterday talking about what's happened. Israel is at war.

Hamas will understand that by attacking us, they've made a mistake of historic proportions, slaughtering families in their homes, kidnapping scores of women, children, and elderly, even Holocaust survivors. Hamas terrorists bound, burned, and executed children. They are savages. Hamas is ISIS.

The forces of civilization must support Israel in defeating Hamas. I want to thank President Biden for his unequivocal support. I want to thank leaders across the world who are standing with Israel today. Israel will win this war. And when Israel wins, the entire civilized world wins. Ben, how about it? Because so far, the Biden administration, well, the president is saying the right things. I can't say the same for a State Department, you know, taking down the tweets about, well, ceasefire repeatedly. But he's saying the right things. But that's today. And as you know, these things have a history of the United States runs out of patience for Israel's

right to defend itself really quickly. I don't know whether these circumstances are going to extend the window. One would think it would extend the window somewhat. But how do you see this playing out? Well, I mean, the first time that there was a major sort of assault from Gaza, the Bush administration was in power and the amount of time that they were given was approximately 32 days, basically 32 days where America basically sat it out. The possibility that it's longer than that in light of the circumstances is probably greater. I mean, right now we know that there are American citizens who are currently being held hostage by Hamas. And apparently there are reports that America is deploying some Navy SEALs in an attempt to possibly get them out. I think that the window always is very short for Israel to do what it needs to do in these particular circumstances.

You can see, I mean, there are entrenched forces that hate the state of Israel that are anti-Semitic. The European Union yesterday considered the possibility of cutting off aid to the Palestinian Authority in Hamas in light of what's going on, which obviously is the correct move. And that was immediately shut down by multiple countries in the European Union. And so money will continue to flow to many of the same people who conducted these sorts of attacks. So, you know, Israel does not have, and they know that they don't have an open-ended timeline, but it is going to take time. In fact, the open-ended timeline in some ways is what is going to guarantee the possibility of more careful use of human rights. And if you have, you know, more time to do this, then it gives you more time to actually be pinpoint and exact about how you do things. The faster you do it, the sloppier

it's going to be. Israel doesn't have a choice right now. The possibility of the end of this being Gaza being ruled in any way by Hamas or even any substitute Palestinian government is extremely low right now. I mean, no country worth its salt could allow that sort of thing. The disgusting response from the so-called UN Human Rights Council. I mean, there's been a lot of bad responses. That one may take the cake. I saw you responding to it yesterday. Let's play it for the audience.

What is it? SOT 8? Do we have it? Yeah, let's listen. On behalf of the OIC member states, we express our deep concerns over the loss of innocent lives in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere. Regrettably, this whole huge loss of lives and animated violence is a sad reminder of more than seven decades of illegal foreign occupation, aggression

and disrespect for the international law and efforts to normalize and perpetuate illegal foreign occupation is breeding violence. We call on all parties to exercise restraint and honor the human rights obligations. In this context, the so-called declaration of war and attacks on civilian population and their properties is deeply distressing. They actually held a moment of silence for the loss of innocent lives in Palestine, in the, quote, occupied Palestinian territory. That's where their focus was. Well, it makes perfect sense. I mean, the UN, the UN is in general, most honestly, it's a, it's a wretched hive of scum and villainy. It's, it's literally

just a conglomeration of some of the worst people on the planet. Uh, the, the number of, of countries that are absolute vicious human rights violators that are on the human rights council is obviously like extremely, extremely high. You're talking about some of the worst countries on earth that are on the human rights council. And so when they proclaim that they are very upset about the situation in the Palestinian areas without actively pointing out that it's Hamas that's literally violating the laws of war by hiding behind civilians and then ignoring, obviously, the issue of the day, which is the murder of a thousand Israeli civilians for just vicious, anti-Semitic reasons. They are what they are. I don't think anybody has expectations.

But I think that what has been shown here is that all the masks are off. All the veils are off. If somehow you can't find moral clarity in this moment, then I don't know what to tell you. You're a fool. You're either a fool or something significantly worse. We are seeing a failure of moral clarity.

That's where I'm going to pick it up next. Quick break. Back to Ben Shapiro in one minute. Stand by. Ben, this headline out of Forbes is unbelievable, even in a disgusting media landscape that we already know is dishonest. Hamas threatens to execute Israeli civilian hostages for unprompted attacks on Gaza. Unprompted attacks on Gaza. Well, it's good to see the Hamas members have finally found employment as Forbes headline writers. That's exciting stuff. So it is tremendously impressive what the media are capable of doing when they really put their minds to it. This seems to be, you know, not in quite as

bald-faced statements. It seems to be the general attack at many of the places like MSNBC, a little bit less so at CNN. But, yeah, there are certainly a lot of mainstream outlets that have a vested interest in pretending that there is both a cycle of violence and a moral equivalence between Israel and terrorist groups like Hamas, that this has been their agenda for a very, very long time. And when the agenda gets exposed… Well, it has a real-life effect. yes, I mean, yes, people die. People, people, leftist. Yes. The leftist control of the media and the leftist control of the so-called academy, you know, colleges, universities in America and elsewhere really matters.

And we're seeing it. I mean, we're seeing the outpouring of anti-Semitism that has come in the wake of this attack. I say I say the outpouring of anti-Semitism that has come in the wake of this attack. I say the outpouring of anti-Semitism. It's crazy. You would think now would be a time where people will be rallying behind our Jewish friends, behind Israel. And in some instances, we're seeing it, but in too many pockets, we're not. We're not. And here's just a couple of other examples. New York pro-Palestinian protest mocking Israelis. This posted on Sunday. I'll just give you a little flavor, Sa17. There was some sort of wave or desert party where they were having a great time until

the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters. Every Israeli official said it was a complete surprise. Just a couple days ago they said that surprise wasn't possible. They said we control every inch of Palestine. It was so arrogant on the land from the sea and from the air. That's enough of him. That's enough. We get it. It's disgusting. It's disgusting. Matched only by what we've seen in Australia, but it's not just the United States and Australia where they went openly Nazi. I mean, openly Nazi in Australia. Take a listen. The listening audience is a huge crowd. There are thousands of people there, at least hundreds, maybe over thousands chanting chanting, gas the Jews and F the Jews. Ben, I don't get it. I know it's existed.

I guess I didn't fully appreciate just in what kind of numbers and with what fervor anti-Semitism was lurking right beneath the surface. One of my favorite things about our beloved media is how much time they will spend on a random swastika drawn on a dorm room wall in one of our universities and how little they seem to care about the mass murder of Jews around the world and huge crowds of terrorist supporters chanting gas the Jews. Apparently, you're a Nazi sometimes if you're a Trump supporter,

but if you're an actual Nazi, then you're not necessarily a Nazi, right? Then we have to understand the context of what exactly is going on. But to a point you made earlier, Megan, this stuff does have consequences. And when I say it has consequences, Hamas knows what they are doing. Hamas knows that there's a reason they are taking these videos. There is a reason that they are propagating what they propagate. And it's because they understand that they have people who sympathize with them and who

will make excuses for them. They understand exactly what it is that they're attempting to do. Iran knows exactly what they're attempting to do here. And if you're a useful idiot for the Iranian regime or for the evil human scum that are Hamas, then you ought to re-examine your life. You are the baddie here. It is an incredible thing. Listen, for 30 years, I've been watching as, as the media twists the narrative with regards to Israel and the Palestinians into some sort of cycle of violence, moral equivalence that could be just solved. Israel would only make more territorial concessions.

This is not a territorial conflict. It is not a territorial. I mean, again, this isn't, these cities are not historic quote unquote Palestinian territory. This is what we are not talking about. Quote unquote settlements. We are talking about Heartland Israel. We are talking historical, quote unquote, Palestinian territory. This is, we are not talking about quote unquote settlements. We are talking about Heartland, Israel. We are talking about, they just want to kill Jews. They just want to kill Jews. Notice, by the way, notice those chants.

Is it gas the Israelis? Is it kill the Israelis? Is it shoot the Israelis? Shoot the, they're shouting gas the Jews because anti-Zionism is, was, and will continue to be a cover, a very, very thin veneer of cover over anti-Semitism and Jew hatred. There's the natural consequence of the sort of sloganeering that you hear sometimes. People say things like, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, these sorts of slogans.

They mean something. They mean the extermination of millions of Jews. And is there any doubt that if Hamas had the capacity to eliminate every Jew in Israel, that they would do it? After the weekend. I don't know how you could possibly make that argument. And that saying that you just mentioned was being chanted by the Democratic Socialists of America at a rally in Times Square on Saturday as the attack was underway. This is, you know, Democratic Socialists of America. That's who's in that. And AOC calls herself a Democratic Socialist.

So does Ilhan Omar. The squad, they align with that group. Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the squad of the of the Dems, has not said anything to condemn the anti-Semitism coming from Cori Bush and Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Nothing. It's fine. So that's on the Democrats. I guess they're fine with that. We've seen just time and time again where Democratic leadership doesn't feel any need, never mind President Biden, to call out this radical piece of their constituency. But what's, I don't know, almost more troubling, Ben, is like what's happening in some Republican pockets. You know, some of the same faction on the right that's anti the war in Ukraine seems

to feel hesitant to be bold in calling out this terrorist attack by Hamas. I mean, there's some faction that just seems to be like, you know, somehow I'm going to be inconsistent if I say Israel's, you know, should should go crush Hamas. And you can hear the hesitancy in their response. Now, I don't know if it's fair for me to say that Vivek Ramaswamy is in that group, but I'll just give you a flavor of what he said to Tucker on Tucker's show yesterday. What happened against Israel? You said it. I believe it. It is barbaric. It is medieval. It is wrong. And Israel as a nation absolutely has the right to self-defense to its own national existence. And I think they should have our moral and diplomatic support. The job of American leaders is to advance American interests. And I think they should have our moral and diplomatic support. The job of American leaders is to advance American interests. And I think we support Israeli leaders asking what

advances and defends Israel as we should morally and diplomatically. But leaders here need to look after American interests first. So America first is sort of the the resounding message from this group. And if you listen to the whole interview, you'd hear a lot more of that. What do you make of that? I mean, again, I think America does have interests that are distinct from the interests of the state of Israel. But in this case, they're coincident. So it's not always coincident.

Obviously, America has its own interests. Those interests are first priority for all Americans and should be first priority for all Americans. When you're talking about a key ally of the United States under a terror assault from a group supported by Iran, which has global ambitions to spread terrorism. Hamas itself, by the way, has global ambitions to spread terrorism. And you watch a thousand Jews get slaughtered in Israel. The moral and the practical sometimes cross streams. I think that there's been a large

scale mistake made in some corners of the right to suggest that because it is easy to get sucked into whatever is bad, we should do something about that means that whatever is bad, we should do nothing about. And I don't think that that is that that is the case. Again, Israel right now is just calling for some baseline support. They're calling for resupply in military means. They're calling for America to basically dissuade Hezbollah from getting into a war and broadening this into a regional war. And by the way, that is just good foreign policy for the United States. The last thing the United States wants is a conflagration. Say America stays completely out, Hezbollah comes in, and now Israel is at war with Hezbollah and Hamas and Iran and the Syrian government.

How is that going to end well for United States foreign interests? Or maybe there's the idea that there is no interest in watching a second Holocaust. It doesn't really matter very much. It won't have any geopolitical impact. That obviously is why. It's obviously untrue. There's a sophisticated realism that I think is useful. And then there's a radically unsophisticated isolationism

that is deeply unuseful. And I think that when one masquerades as the other, you got a problem. So how involved do we get, do you think, the United States in this conflict, given, I mean, right or wrong, the appetite for us involving ourselves in foreign wars as a result of what's going on in Ukraine is low and dwindling, especially on the Republican side?

So I don't think Israel wants to be involved in a mass scale foreign war. I mean, the idea that Israel wants Israel doesn't want to be in Gaza. I mean, if this did not happen, then the status quo ante would have just been preserved and would have been a few rockets flying over and most of them being shot down, a few Jews dying per year because of this. So what Israel wants at this point is to regain control of its own territory, to protect itself from Gaza. This is never again a problem. And to keep Hezbollah out. It seems to me like those are all in America's interest. If Hezbollah comes in, this is going to a broader regional war. I don't think Israel wants to go to war with Iran. I don't

think that America wants to go to war with Iran. I don't think that anybody is interested in a long-term military engagement. By the way, I don't think Iran wants to go to war over this, which is why Hezbollah has not come in yet. Iran wants to use Hamas as a proxy specifically so that resources are spent on Hamas. And that's exactly what they're going to get, except they're going to be taken off the board by the Israeli military forces, which is exactly what should happen. Iran has enough caution that they actually don't want Hezbollah taken off the board. As I mentioned earlier, were Hezbollah to come in, the overwhelming Israeli military might be brought on the northern border

because it's a greater danger. So I think everybody has aligned interests here. Everybody wants this conflict to remain contained and to end as soon as possible, with the only difference being that Israel and the United States have an interest in Israeli victory in the Gaza Strip, whereas Iran would, of course, love to preserve Hamas's victory over there, or at least Hamas maintaining power over there and to sink the Saudi peace process, which, of course, is the sort of unspoken part of all of this. The real reason for the timing here

is because, yes, sure, America was providing monetary support to Iran and the Iranians thought that they could push where they saw mush in terms of the Biden administration. And they're meeting, I think, unexpected resistance from the Biden administration in that quarter. But the real reason that they decided to prompt this war, which has now been confirmed

by both the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, the reason that they're doing this is because they're attempting to prevent Israel from allying with the Saudis. Because if that does, that radically reshifts the balance of power in the region. The balance of power in the region for essentially 75 years, really, since the establishment of the state of Israel has been Israel alone. And then it's been the Sunnis and then it's been the Shia. And that's been sort of the tripartite balance that's been taking place in the Middle East.

Well, because of the Abraham Accords, you're starting to see a Sunni Jewish team up, which was the one thing that nobody thought could happen if Saudi jumped in, which seemed very, very probable, actually. The timeline was very quick on that. People were suggesting by the end of the year there might even be Saudi normalization with Israel. That happens and suddenly Iran is totally isolated. It's Iran, Qatar, Lebanon, Syria, and that's the entire axis of Iranian power. And so that in the face of Sunni power, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, basically allied, that was something that Iran simply could not allow. And so one of the goals here was to throw the Saudis off the peace deal by essentially forcing Israel to go into the Gaza Strip. So that's exactly what you're seeing in the propagandistic

Al Jazeera, Shia backing press. What you're seeing there is an attempt to basically tell the Saudis that there's no way they can make peace with Israel so long as Israel is going into the Gaza Strip, even if Israel is going to the Gaza Strip for very good reasons. So I think that's going to put Mohammed bin Salman off the scent for very long. I really, really don't. I think it's going to delay everything that's going on between Israel and the Saudis by a couple of months, just for public relations purposes. But if there's one regime that hates Hamas more, actually, than Israel does, it may be the Saudis. The Saudis have no interest in propping up Hamas, which is an Iranian tool. In the minute we have left, Ben, please remind the audience why we care, why Americans care, why they need to care about Israel in the Middle East. So on a purely rationalistic, realist perspective, Israel is the only serious ally the United States has in the Middle East. They share intelligence,

they share military supply, they share military technology, they're a powerful economy in the region. Now, on a moral level, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is not only the only democracy in the Middle East, it shares a Judeo-Christian heritage with the West. The root of Christianity is in Judaism. The roots of the West are in Sinai. We share a heritage together. I'm a Jew and I'm an American, and those two things are not in conflict. And the reason they're not in conflict is because Jewish values and American values in almost every way are coincident. The only reason I say almost is because there are Christian values that are added to Judeo-Christian there. But to be a Jewish American is not a conflict. To be an American in favor of Jewry is not a conflict.

Those are, in fact, absolutely coincident. And when you watch any – if Britain were attacked this way, it would be the same thing. If France were attacked this way, it would be the same thing. And just because it's Jews doesn't make it any less true. Jews being beheaded in the streets by Islamic savages is a reason for anyone to worry. Ben Shapiro, thank you so much. If you guys have not listened to Ben's show from yesterday, I'm sure today's is great too. I just haven't had the chance to listen to it yet. You should. All the best to you. Thank you for coming on.

Thanks so much. My God. Much, much more on the opposite side of this break. Don't go away. We're now going to dive into the complex military decisions Israel faces as it responds to Hamas while also trying to save who knows how many hostages at this point, but they include Americans. We care about the Israelis too, but we don't, we do care deeply about American hostages. The message by the United States of America has always been, you don't mess with our people. You get us involved, you live to regret it. Israel has now mobilized 360,000 reservists. This is the most in such a short period of time since the country's founding.

This is video from outside an Israeli military base near Gaza, cars lining the highway, left behind by reservists reporting for duty. While much of the coverage has been focused on the civilian victims for the obvious reasons, Hamas terrorists were also seen on video celebrating attacks against Israeli soldiers. A warning that this video we are about to show you is graphic. The terrorists are seen jumping onto an Israeli tank. They then pull the soldier out of it, drag him down to the ground. The crowd then surrounds him and beats him mercilessly. We don't know what happened to him. We're also hearing stories of

the regular Israelis who sacrificed themselves to help and save others. This is Yanev Saroudi. Listen to this story. According to eyewitness reports, Yanev picked up nine people fleeing attacks in his car. He drove them to a military base, but only to find that it was under Hamas's control. So he kept driving until he got those victims to safety. Somewhere along the way, however, he suffered injuries as well and later died. He's a hero, and there are many just like him. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel's response will, quote, change the Middle East. Our next guest says Israel conducting a large-scale operation in Gaza will be urban warfare, and unlike anything Israel has undertaken

in years, though we have seen it elsewhere, and it's not easy. Joining me now, retired Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis. He's a former combat veteran of Desert Storm and the war in Afghanistan. He is also the host of his own YouTube show, Daniel Davis Deep Dive. Colonel Davis, thank you so much for being here. And so the challenge of conducting this urban warfare, A, to get hostages back, and B, to then level Gaza and potentially just engage in the hand-to-hand combat that it's going to take on mission A, is, I mean, it can't be, the complexity of it can't be overstated. Boy, you hit the nail right on the head. You cannot overstate how hard this is going to be for so many reasons. And really at the top of that list is that Hamas has clearly shown that they don't care about life.

They don't care about their own life. And that's actually a dangerous situation because they're willing to take a lot of risk with that. And so that also implies that whenever Israel or if the U.S. Special Forces ever get involved as well, get involved with this, the risk is going to be very, very high for the hostages as well as for those trying to get them out. And even if you're talking about a conventional fight like this, you've got to know that as prepared as Hamas was to launch this operation, they also had equal preparation for the expected Israeli defense. And they have had many years to understand the tactics, techniques, and procedures Israel uses when they come in. So they have probably defenses already constructed and are waiting for Israel, which probably will include, you know, booby traps, actually what they call firebags, where they'll try to draw them in and draw them into certain areas where they can then have preplanned bombs or snobbers. This is going to be hard in every capacity. I mean, there's no way that the Israelis don't

know all of that. And yet they want to get their hostages back. I mean, these are women, their children, their babies, like their fellow defense force members. But, you know, what country would leave its women and its children and its elderly citizens just aside and say, oh, well, you know, they got them. I guess they're as good as dead anyway. Israel is not going to do that. So will it not require a ground force invasion or incursion into Gaza? Well, here's the situation. You know, one of the most famous hostage situations was the the raid in Entebbe many years ago in Uganda that Israel launched. And, you know, that's a very complex issue. And then you try to get the hostages out.

And that's when it's really easy to identify. This time, Hamas almost certainly has spread however many of these hostages there are throughout the Gaza Strip and all these different locations. And they almost certainly have visibility on the routes that would come in. So they would know if the Hamas or the Israeli side is coming to get them, you know, if they want to try to covert situation. So it's going to be really hard in any case. And there's no question that if they get it cornered,

I think we can expect that Hamas would kill those hostages. And if Israel goes in and tries several of them and they start backfiring, you know, then that's going to cause a lot of backlash within this, especially the family members in Israel. So again, there is no easy path to this. Every way that you would suggest has a big negative side on it. And honestly, I'm not real sure what Israel is going to do and how they're going to try to get these back short of negotiations. I mean, there's a report out today, just looking it up here via the Wall Street Journal, that Israel may be exploring a possible deal to secure at least the release of women and children using Egypt as an intermediary.

This is according to Egyptian officials. But Hamas has given little indication, quoting from the report here in Wall Street Journal again, that it is prepared to negotiate unless it can secure the release of thousands of Palestinians in Israeli detention, according to these officials. Either way, they're saying this is a lose lose because, you know, you exchange thousands of Palestinian prisoners for one or two, you know, a small handful of Israeli prisoners. That's obviously propaganda victory for Hamas. But if you send the Israelis into Gaza, you know, boots on the ground, you're going to suffer a huge loss of life on the Israeli side. And there's no guarantee you're ever getting those hostages back, even so. That's exactly right. And that just underscores the conundrum, even for the government

of Israel, because, I mean, you can imagine the backlash they would get if they, you know, even if they got the women and children out, that would be, you know, obviously great for every reason you can imagine. But then if it resulted in more experienced and hardcore Hamas fighters getting returned back into the potential battlefield to continue fighting, that's going to be bad for Israel. And that's a definitely lose-lose situation. Bottom line is that the operation that Hamas launched here has put the Israeli government in a horrible situation at the beginning, and it remains in that case right now. At some point, though, because Netanyahu has said their declared

position is that they will destroy Hamas, he's going to have to go in at some point. Otherwise, all they're doing is guarding the fence, and they can't get by with that with the casualties that have already been launched into. So there's just no good path for Israel to take. Every path they go on has really big negatives. And unfortunately, they're going to have to choose some negative at some point to get this result. What does it mean for us and for Hamas that they've managed to involve Americans, that they have some number of American hostages now? In fact, the families of some of them actually just held a press conference. Hold on, Let me just pull some of the facts from it. They just held a press conference today.

The family of at least four Americans spoke. One hostage taken is a 66-year-old California-born mother. She's a hostage. The family said that they expect to have their family member back home safe and sound. They said they've had zero communication from Israel or the U.S. government. There's another man, Ruby Chen, said his son is an Israeli soldier. He's asking the United States not to take a back seat, says no formal attempt by the U.S. government to update the families of the missing Americans yet.

And then there's Jonathan Deckel Chen spoke. His son is missing. Appeal to U.S. leaders to do what they can on the side of good. So we're starting to get some information about who was taken. But they took Americans. You know, I mean, I've spent years talking to our most well-known and beloved veterans and soldiers. I mean, guys like Marcus Luttrell, guys like Dakota Meyer, Medal of Honor winner. You know, we're we don't leave men behind. We don't. And those are even even murdered, assassinated dead soldiers. We don't leave them behind. We go in, we risk our soldiers lives to get them. These are live Americans

who are civilians who were taken. So what does that do for us in our calculation here? Yeah, you're right. I mean, it is an article of faith. We don't leave anyone behind. That's drilled into us from day one, and it's part of our DNA. I think of Americans, not only just military. We just don't leave people behind because that's who we are. And I suspect that Hamas did not plan on capturing Americans because I don't think that they really want the heat that we can bring to bear added on top of what they are already planning to do. And this puts them in a bit of a conundrum, because if they start killing American hostages, that may look good on the surface of it for their cause, you know, for what they're trying to get done. But the heat that that

will bring for us, because I think then you might see some direct American involvement in the event that Americans are killed by Hamas. I just can't imagine that we would stay out. And I think that they don't want us adding in there because that'll just add to their difficulty. So let's hope that that reasonable fear on their part might prevent them from killing any Americans and release those hostages. Do you feel, I mean, on the other hand, we don't want a full-fledged war in the Middle East that we didn't have four days ago, right? So it's, I mean, that will other hand, we don't want a full fledged war in the Middle East that we didn't have four days ago. Right. So it's I mean, that will lead to the death of a whole lot other of more of Americans.

So we have to be smart about how we get involved in what we do. Do you there's some report that we're sending some some Navy SEALs over there right now. I mean, this seems like a mission for our best and brightest and most talented to somehow get in there. But as I'm saying, and I'm thinking about what you just said, they probably rehearsed for months for somebody trying to come in to get into these so-called terror tunnels that are underground, get onto these streets that they've got eyes on. I mean, our Navy SEALs are still human. Right. No, I can believe me. I am a strong advocate of not expanding this war any. In fact, I've been arguing from the minute we've heard about this, we've got to contain it within the Gaza Strip. We can't even allow it to get into the West Bank or, God forbid, if it gets into Lebanon or Iran, because then that would be catastrophic for everybody, most

assuredly our interests as well. We cannot afford to get into another war no matter what. But what I was suggesting is that there could come a time when there could be some targeted operations, whether that's drones, whether that's intelligence, or perhaps, and this is a big perhaps, like you say, some specific special forces. But honestly, I don't think that will be necessary because Israel has great special forces themselves. And although they were caught off guard by this, they are going to recover because they have the capacity to do that. And if this takes a long time and especially once they get the hostage issue resolved, you know, the future is not good for Hamas. I don't see a path to victory for them. Even if they got all the hostages given away and they got all the 5,000 that they wanted, they still can't win a long-term war.

And all they can do is die slowly as long as we keep this thing contained. You were so right on that. That's critical for our needs. What we're doing right now, our Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made a statement yesterday. We will supply Israel with munitions, military equipment. U.S. CENTCOM began moving the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean, which includes, as we mentioned earlier in the show, an aircraft carrier, the USS General Gerald R. Ford. That's the world's largest aircraft carrier and the largest warship ever constructed. A Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser, four Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyers. We've also taken steps, said Austin, to augment U.S. Air Force F-35s, F-15, F-16, A-10 fighter aircraft squadrons in the region.

Can you translate that? Missile cruisers, missile destroyers, fighter aircraft squadrons going near the – translate that for us civilians. Yeah. What you really have is the primary focus is at Gerald R. Ford because that's how we project power. You have to 500 miles to project combat power from the decks of that ship. But you can't just send an aircraft carrier out there by itself. You've got to have lots of support. So a lot of those Arleigh Burke missile carriers are actually designed for air defense to make sure that missiles can't come and attack our ships from any source, wherever they may come from.

Now, those ships, I don't think, have anything to do with what's happening in the Gaza Strip. Israel can handle all of it. We've been giving them $3.8 billion a year to help their defense for many, many years, and they have a good, solid capability and technological and manpower pool. I think that, though, is more of a warning to the region saying, do not expand this. To Hezbollah in Lebanon, don't start messing with Israel because we have their back. And certainly to Iran, don't take any action here because we're in the area, we've got firepower. I think that's the primary purpose of those flotilla. Let me run this by you. A former Israeli ambassador to the

United States, Michael Oren, in an interview with the Atlantic, some disturbing forecasts here that go against exactly what you're saying. We don't want, um, this war will at best conclude with Hamas's uprooting from Gaza and almost certainly its leaders deaths. So, so far good. Um, but then it goes on with an Israeli ground incursion into Gaza, almost certain to be launched. It is difficult to imagine Hamas in the West bank because there's Hamas in Gaza, but there's also Hamas in the West bank, which is the neighboring territory, uh, Hezbollah in Lebanon. That's the Northern border of Israel and even radicalized Israeli Arabs remaining passive because there are a lot of Arabs living in Israel,

some very peacefully and getting along fine. Some who are more radicalized who would respond to a ground incursion in into Gaza in this way. He's saying it would be extremely tempting to all those groups if there's boots on the ground, Israeli boots on the ground in Gaza, a regional war in which terrorists fire tens of thousands of rockets at Israel and Israeli forces fight on multiple fronts, quote, is a very real possibility. Iran might also exploit the chaos to further enrich its uranium stockpile and rush to make nuclear bombs. So that's none of that is good. Is there any chance? And again, this is somebody who knows what he's talking about, former U.S. Israeli ambassador to the United States. Is there any chance understanding those enormous risks Israel doesn't pursue a ground invasion incursion? big fears and why I say that we need to communicate diplomatically very firmly to everybody in the region, not just threats, but diplomatically, like say, hey, this nobody wins here. If you guys get involved, we'll be forced to actually get involved as well.

And it'll be bad for everybody. We cannot let this expand. So we need to tell them that diplomatically. But the you know, these reports of babies being beheaded and civilians being mowed down with machine guns at a concert. I think the emotional component for Israel is just so high. I just don't see how Netanyahu could avoid actually sending the troops in because he's basically already promised that's what he's going to do, that he's going to destroy the mosque. Let me ask you why. Let me ask you why, Colonel. Is it because there are hostages? If there weren't hostages, would I realize there's still civilians, you know, and we care about them. But given what's issue on 9-11, the emotions of seeing the Twin Towers fall, of seeing the Pentagon in flames. It's just so strong of an emotional pull that all of these

civilians being killed. I mean, that's the Israeli version of that was, you know, they see, you know, that concert may have been the worst one, but there's many others. You had that one story there you just put on. There's lots of others like it, is that they, you know, demand revenge. They demand retribution and justice for what's happened. And I just can't see Netanyahu being passive for more than enough reasonable amount of time because it's going to take time to get an offensive operation of this type set up and prepare and the people train. You know, as we talk about at the top, it's going to be hard. But I don't get it, Colonel. I don't get it. Because Israel in about two days could bomb Gaza into smithereens.

I mean, it could it could make it into one large parking lot. They could, but then they're going to be killing hundreds. But then they would be killing hundreds of thousands, probably, of innocent civilians. And they can't do that. They just can't do that that because then that would undercut their support probably around the world and then harm their own interests. That's why I say this is so hard. To take out Hamas, to end Hamas, it's going to require the army to be in Gaza hand-to-hand combat. I just don't see any way around it. I mean, the number of Hamas fighters

is probably not that great. It's probably in the single thousands, if even that. But there's two million people living in the Gaza Strip who are not Hamas and are just as terrified of what's going on as anybody else. But to get there, Hamas is, you know, dug in. They're in the middle of all those people. They know that that's an inhibition for Israel, and they're counting on that. And they're unconcerned about this collateral damage that it would cause if they fought. But that's the conundrum that's weighing on Netanyahu. He has to weigh all of this, and there's just no good path. You have to say Hamas was good at setting a no-win situation up for Netanyahu because he he can't allow them to remain in power and he can't

allow them to just continue to live in the Gaza Strip. So something has to give. So how would we how would we most cleverly prevent Hezbollah from getting interested in joining this, prevent Iran from joining it any more than it reportedly may have? How I mean, if we understand Israel is about to do this thing, which we understand and support, but we'll be provocative to those actors, how do we prevent it from becoming a more, you know, a regional war?

Yeah, the one thing that we can, that's working in our favor is that Iran cares about Iran and Iran cares about staying in power and their leaders want to protect their regime above everything else. And that's the reason why they have been very calculated in what they've been doing for years with the United States. They'll push a little bit, but then they were constrained by how far they could go because they know that our ability to counter-strike dwarfs anything that they have. And that condition will still remain here. So they can't go too far because they know we could take them out if it gets into an all-out fight, and they don't want that.

So we can use that to restrict them. Same with the issue in Hezbollah. There's less control there because they may also not care as much. They don't have a state to protect, so to speak, because Lebanon is actually its own state. So there's a bigger risk there, but you just have to do the best you can with no guarantees. You mentioned that the raided in Tebbi, the kidnapped, the hostages who were taken back then. This is a famous story, and it involves the sitting prime Entebbe, the kidnap, the hostages who were taken back then. This is a famous story, and it involves the sitting prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his brother.

It happened back in 1976, where his brother, Jonathan, was killed during this daring mission to rescue, it was 106 Israelis, at Entebbe Airport in Uganda after an aircraft hijacking by Palestinian-led gunmen. All but four of the hostages and Jonathan Netanyahu made it home alive. And there's just no question that Bibi Netanyahu is well familiar with the value of every life matters. Every Israeli life matters. Every American life matters. He's going to want to try to save the hostages. It's just a question of whether they can. And, and, you know, the barbarism of this group, which is matched in my experience only by like ISIS in recent memory. I haven't seen this kind of barbarism in my adult lifetime, uh, by any actor with whom, you know, we don't have diplomatic relations with Hamas, but

you know, we haven't been treating them like ISIS. Now we, now we have no choice. That's, that's right. This, this appears to have been born out of desperation for the, the Hamas side and for the Palestinian side. But I mean, I think that history will show that they have overplayed their hand because if they had any global sympathy, it's evaporating. And that's one of the other issues that I mentioned that Netanyahu has to be careful with. They can't do, as you suggested, some are talking about just leveling Gaza City because then he would be doing even worse to the innocent people there. If he can keep all the focus on the Hamas brutality and that Israel is doing its best to be professional and defend its citizens and to get those back who've been captured, then they can continue to undercut the support for

Hamas. And I think that's maybe where there's some room for Israel. And again, another reason why maybe some tactical patients might help, at least something to try. Again, there's no obvious right answer. They got to try whatever they can. But Israel has to avoid basically doing the same thing Hamas did and killing a lot of innocent people in the process of trying to get Hamas. Israel's air force is much revered. They would certainly be the ones to go after Lebanon and after Hezbollah in Lebanon. If they got involved, it's going to be trickier to just level Hamas for the reasons we discussed from the air. Um, but there is an article in the Atlantic

that was interesting about conscript and here's their headline. Uh, they write the Israeli military wasn't ready for this. I mean, no one was ready for this, but this is their take. They say Israel has an excellent air force and elite special ops unit, but it's conventional line units made up mostly of conscripts are neither particularly well-trained nor well-disciplined, at least by American standards. They write full-time professional militaries like ours, of course, can dedicate themselves to rehearsing collective tasks that high intensity combat situations often require reacting to ambushes, conducting raids, incorporating artillery and air power into maneuvers, but conscript militaries

where you're forced to serve, you know, everybody in Israel has to for a couple of years by contrast are forever bringing on and training new people. And then they go on to say discipline may be another issue. In 2006, Hezbollah was able to locate Israeli positions by intercepting Israeli reservists calling home on their mobile phones, meaning these are not professional soldiers. And so what we're about to ask of them, boy, it seems like a tall order. Megan, you led into one of the key things I wanted to make sure we talk about today, and that is expectation management. So there's been lots of images of macabre tanks driving around and howitzers preparing and armored vehicles. It looks like they're massing for an attack. And I think the assumption is and the expectation, at least among many American viewers,

is that there'll be this massive army that rolls in there and will be able to conquer the enemy. But I cannot stress how difficult a large-scale operation of this nature is. And especially if you've never conducted one before as an institution, much less as the individuals, it is even more difficult than you can imagine. We have recent experience with this. The Russian army had trained for 10 years in maneuver warfare before they launched into the Ukraine army. But once the bullets were real and they start flying and it's no longer training but operations, you saw so many mistakes and so many avoidable errors that the Russian army committed that was just egregious. Likewise, you saw when the Ukrainian army this summer, when they launched their first offensive of a large scale into the Zaporizhia area, they too made so many mistakes and they were just hammered because they didn't have the experience and the training on how to conduct those.

Israel has never conducted an operation of this magnitude, of this type, to go into a city more than just a small section here and there. They've never had to go into the whole area than just a small section here and there. They've never had to go into the whole area. So this is brand new for them. And as you pointed out, even at the individual level, they're not that well trained. So the casualties are going to be much, much higher and it's going to be so much more difficult than anybody is imagining, even aside from the hostage issue. Once that's resolved and if this gets into a conventional war, like with Bakhmut, it took nine months for the Russian army to take Bakhmut. You had like 70,000 or to 50,000 casualties on each side. And you're probably going to see something similar to that

here among the Israeli side, potentially. Colonel, how vulnerable is the United States right now? We're shipping all this ammunition and arms to Ukraine. Now we're definitely going to help Israel out with munitions at a minimum, but potentially more, as we point out, moving the aircraft carrier there and so on. We've got unprecedented numbers of people flooding across our southern border right now, which we know, we know include known terrorists without any screening. It just kind of feels like we've gone from a secure place just a couple of years ago to a less secure place now. But how less secure is my question? Let me put some numbers on it. So I have been outspoken that

we are giving away too much stuff to Ukraine. And it's understandable that you want to help them defend themselves. They were attacked. They were invaded. They have a foreign occupation army in their country. But our primary obligation is to Americans and to our national security. We have to date given over 5,000 military vehicles to Ukraine. And that's everything from tanks to armored personnel carriers, to armored ambulances, to resupply trucks, 5,000. Those were in our inventory in the event that we needed to. If we get into an unexpected fight, we've got to be able to sustain operations.

Two million of our artillery shells have gone to Ukraine. Two million of those things we're producing at the rate of about twenty five thousand a month right now. It will take years to replace what's lost, but most of it's still going to Ukraine. And now that you're talking an additional two billion on top of the three point eight billion that we always give Israel is now going there to include more rockets, air defense systems, et cetera. We can't keep giving all of these things away and not have a negative impact on our ability, on our capacity to defend ourselves. And it's time. We're to the point now that we're getting there. We are to the point where hard decisions are going to be have to made by our government. Are we going to continue to dissipate our own capacity so that if we have to get into a war, we'll have less ability to sustain and maintain that? Or are we going to keep just giving whatever either Israel and Ukraine want, no matter what, you know, as long as it takes is the phrase that keeps getting used. And

I argue that that's not an American interest. And look, it's going to have negative implications for Ukraine, especially. But unfortunately, the combat realities on the ground say that if you keep giving stuff away, it's not going to change the outcome. So why do we need to keep diminishing our capacity for national security when it's not even going to change the outcome? And I think that we need to start making some different decisions. Wow. Well, Lieutenant Colonel, thank you so much for being here. Daniel Davis, I thank you for being here and I thank you for your service. All the best. Thank you very much. I appreciate being here. Thank you. We're going to be right back with former ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.

Don't go away. Our next guest, David Friedman, is an important voice on this topic with his service as ambassador to Israel under the Trump administration. During his time as ambassador, he was part of the group responsible for the Abraham Accords, moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and working toward President Trump's vision for peace. Ambassador Friedman says this is the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, but like the Nazis or ISIS, that Hamas will be obliterated. He joins me now. Welcome to the show, Ambassador. So good to have you here. Sorry for the circumstances. The amazing response from some on the left takes none of that into account. And that brings me to Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, whose tweets say,

in part, Gaza's two plus million population are mostly children who live under blockade in Israel's own former, in what Israel's own former intelligence chief has called an open air prison. The overwhelming majority live in poverty. Many suffer lifelong psychological and physical trauma as the world is condemning Hamas's attacks. We must also oppose an Israeli military response that has already taken the lives of hundreds of Palestinians, including nearly two dozen children. And she goes on to say this is collective punishment, a war crime. The US should oppose any violations of international law like this. Targeting an entire civilian population will only sow more discord and penetrate the cycle, perpetuate the cycle of violence. What do you say to that message, which is coming from some

on what I'd describe as the far left here? Well, Megan, thanks for having me. I think the first thing people need to understand is what is Gaza and how did it get there? And I think that answers a lot of Congresswoman Tlaib's criticisms. There's not a single Israeli there, not a single Israeli soldier there. There's not a single Jew living in Gaza. Israel left Gaza in 2005 because they no longer wanted to rule over the Palestinian population there. When Israel left, it was a beautiful place. You know, Gaza is almost, it runs entirely along the eastern Mediterranean. If you've been to Tel Aviv or to Haifa, it's the same beach.

I mean, gorgeous beachfront that could be made into a beautiful resort. Israel used to grow lettuce and tomatoes there for the entire country. OK, that's all barren now. You know, when Israel left, the Palestinian Authority was in charge for a little bit. And then Hamas took over. You know, is it an open air graveyard? I mean, it's 141 square miles. That's seven times the size of Manhattan, right? Eight million people coming in and out of Manhattan every day.

And one seventh the size. There's two million people in Gaza. There's beautiful mansions there where all the corrupt leaders live. The reason that the Palestinian people in Gaza are living lives that you or I would not want to live is entirely because of Hamas. It's because they subjugate them. It's because they subjugate women. It's because if they find out that someone's gay, they take them off to the top of a building and they throw them off. So if the Palestinian people are suffering, all that Hamas needs to do is look in the mirror. And the fact that Congresswoman Tlaib is so ill-informed as to blame Israel for this. This one's Ilhan Omar, but Tlaib has said exactly the same thing. I think they're all the same, and they all say the same dumb things.

And I think it's just, it's absurd. Why is there a blockade of Gaza? For one reason only, because Hamas wants to kill Jews. And if they get through with Israel, that's what they're going to do. And we know that for sure now because they did get into Israel, unfortunately, a couple of days ago and committed the worst atrocity against the Jewish people, as I said before, since the Holocaust. If Hamas got up tomorrow and said, we're putting down our arms, we're going to live in peace with Israel, we're going to work on creating a society that's peaceful, they can do that tomorrow. But they are intent on destroying Israel and destroying the Jewish people. So, you know, I really have no sympathy at all for these

pointless arguments made by the squad and others on the left. They're making this up as they go along. I mean, there's some promise in response to this. And I'll give you one example, those 31 student groups at Harvard who spoke out against Israel, not in any way against the horrors being perpetrated by Hamas. By the way, the university president has still said nothing. And the former university president, Lawrence Summers, is saying, I've never felt so alienated from this institution in 50 years. How could he not speak out? But I'll give you this one, one bit of good news. Bill Ackman, who's a hedge fund investor, uh, very well known, of course, over here, he just tweeted out, I have been asked by a number of CEOs. If Harvard would release a list of the members of each of these Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas's

anus acts to Israel. So as to ensure that none of us inadvertently hire any of them. That's good news. That's that should be the response, right? Like you can feel however you want to feel. You can say whichever you want to say, but you don't have to get jobs in corporate America where we still care about the value of human life. Look, this this is the best proof I've heard that there's no correlation between SAP scores and intelligence, right? Because this is just, these people may have done well in their SAPs, but they don't know what they're talking about. And their ignorance is breathtaking. So yeah, look, let them say what they want to say.

They have the right to do so. And when they want to go work for Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley or, you know, Davis Polk or Sullivan and Cromwell, let those guys look on Google and see what kind of people they really are. Yeah. What student groups were you affiliated with and whether your name comes up when this issue gets Googled? Right. So just following up on the military discussion that we had in our last block with Israel's

options right now, and Michael Oren had said in an interview with the Atlantic, uh, you know, the likelihood of a ground invasion obviously seems extremely high, uh, incursion now, and that that could create a regional war, right? It could, it could tempt Hezbollah. It could tempt Iran. It could tempt radicalized Arabs, um, in the region. So what do you agree with that? A substance, do you think that a ground incursion is the most likely thing to happen within the next

short while as a result of what Hamas has done? Yeah, I mean, I think it has to happen. I think there's no other way to eradicate Hamas, to get them out of their hiding places. It's a shame. It's a costly operation. The real winners, I think, are going to be the people of Gaza, actually, when the dust settles, because the Gaza Strip will be free of Hamas. And then, you know, everybody says, well, what's Israel going to do with it if they conquer Gaza, which they have the capability of doing?

What are they going to do next? And look, you know, we have seen this movie before. I mean, there have been wars in the past. And, you know, you look at World War II, where, you, the Allies, American, the Allies cleaned the Nazis out of Germany. They held the land for a while and they waited until they could give it over to someone who would live with them in peace. And it turned out to be a great success in terms of the relationship with Germany. Same with the relationship in Japan. I mean, Israel does not want to hold Gaza as no territorial aspirations with regard to Gaza. There aren't a lot of people who really want to step in and run Gaza.

But, you know, that's the only way out. The only way out is for Israel to conquer it, to kill the terrorists, to embrace those who want to live in peace, to help organize some sort of a government there and then to leave. And that's, you know, that's and when they leave to make sure they have enough assets in place to make sure that they'll know a lot earlier than they do now when trouble is brewing. There's some speculation that on the intelligence failure, that perhaps there was some sort of a cyber attack that, you know, who would be capable of possibly interfering with Israel's ability to see that, for example, its wall had been breached in several locations? Could it be the Russians? Could it be the Chinese? Who would have had the capability and the desire to assist Hamas? Is there say, you know, Iran might have, but probably

didn't have the capability. But what do you make of the possibility of this having started with a cyber attack? It could have been a cyber attack. And I'm assuming that there was some hacking involved because otherwise I just can't imagine how Israel would not have seen this coming. But understand, everything in the world today runs on computers. And Israel is one of the great cyber defense countries in the world that has enormous capabilities in that regard. So I still don't get it. You know when you're hacked, if you know you've been hacked, the next second you wake up everybody on the army base and tell them that you don't see what you need to see

and get things going you know there ought to be lots of redundancies i mean you know um you know even cars today you know can be hacked airplanes can be hacked banks can be hacked i mean they it happens all the time but there are redundancies in place that keep that from creating damage and so i'm just i'm wrestling with how this happened it's it's the country's in shock i mean this is a country as you know that prides itself very much on its technological capabilities, on the quality of its military and the quality of its intelligence. This kind of a failure that resulted, you know, you've seen the pictures and you've

seen the films of the horrors that have occurred from this. I mean, it's absolutely stunning and inexplicable to me how this could have happened. Just to update our earlier discussion, Claudine Gay is the Harvard president, is female, and just issued a statement. As the events of recent days continue to reverberate,

let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. Such inhumanity is abhorrent whether one's individual views of the origins of longstanding conflicts in the region, whatever she says, whatever individual views of the origins of longstanding conflicts in the region. Let me also state on the matter as on others, that while our students have the right to speak

for themselves, no student group, not even 30 student groups speaks for Harvard University or its leadership. We will all be well served in such a difficult moment by rhetoric that aims to illuminate and not inflame. And I appeal to all of us in this community of learning to keep this in mind as our conversations continue. Does that get it done? That's a word salad. You know, that doesn't get anything done. I mean, as you point out, she speaks in the first person about her views. Look, a thousand people were killed, right? Terrorists marched into their homes, pulled them out of bed, raped women, took old women who were Holocaust survivors and put them into jeeps and sent them to become hostage, decapitated babies, separated families from each other, you know, forced children to watch their parents being slaughtered and vice versa. If you can't condemn that straight out, you know, full stop, something wrong with you.

You know, and, you know, again, you know, I, I've, it's making it very easy for those of us who went to Ivy League schools to give our money someplace else. Yeah. I mean, it's, I don't want my kids going anywhere near this place. I don't want them being indoctrinated in this kind of thinking or taught by these kinds of professors or sitting in class next to people who feel this way. I mean, what they're doing is indefensible and it's very clear it's evil. It's evil. I mean, period. End of story. has not committed to denying Iran that $6 billion we agreed to pay them for the exchange of these five American hostages. So far, and we'll see because the president's going to speak any moment now, I think my understanding is he and Vice President Harris just got off the phone with Bibi Netanyahu. So far, they are not saying that they're going to stop payment of this $6 billion

to Iran, which at least according to the Wall Street Journal and now the Washington Post adding its own reporting saying was behind this attack. Look, it's really extraordinary the way this is juxtaposed, the attack with the $6 billion, because at the same time, at the very same time that the U.S. and Iran are negotiating this five against five prison swap with a $6 billion sweetener for Iran, the U.S. and Iran are negotiating this five against five prison swap with a $6 billion sweetener for Iran. The U.S. says the $6 billion was to show America's good faith, as if as between America and Iran, America has to show its good faith.

And as they're doing that, at the very same time that they're making that deal and discussing and offering that $6 billion in cash, Iran is planning with Hamas, orchestrating funding, training, and working through this extraordinary plan to kill 1,000 Jews. And somehow, America is not looking to get their money back? I mean, we got duped here. We got completely duped. You know, we made a gesture that, you know, again, I wouldn't have done it under any circumstances, but made a gesture of good faith only to find out that the person you're dealing with is planning a Holocaust. I mean,

take the money back for God's sake. I don't, it's not, it's not complicated to me. Why, why is the Biden administration, much like the Obama administration, so blind when it comes to Iran and so bent on signing this feckless nuclear deal. Yeah, look, this is, this, this, you know, has been a problem for, for over a decade. And, you know, there's so many, there's so many flaws in that deal. You know, even people say, well, if, you know, we hadn't gotten out of the deal, we wouldn't have this problem. No, we were never in a deal. You know, we were never in a deal. Iran was cheating from day one. And in any event, if the deal was still in place and fully complied with by Iran, which they weren't, they'd be nuclear anyway another year or two. So it's not like this deal made any sense under any circumstances.

But, you know, this is, you know, forget about the $6 billion for a second, you know, which is to me a big insult. Look at the, you know, look at a graph of the sales by Iran per month of oil. The barrels of oil are selling every month. And the number has gone up massively, dramatically over the last three years. We have taken, we had our, I hate to use the phrase, but we had our foot on their neck. We had this massive pressure on them. And they were reeling. And you know what? People say, well, Trump let them off the hook by getting out of the deal. No,

Iran was not. After we got out of the deal with Iran, Iran was still not enriching uranium beyond their prior levels. It was only after the election and Trump lost that they began to ramp up their enrichment of uranium. And the Biden administration didn't do anything about it. And they embraced them and they appeased them and they let them, you know, sell oil all around the world and sell oil to China and make billions and billions of dollars. And they didn't take that money and build hospitals or schools.

They took that money and put it into their nuclear program. They put it into their ballistic weapons program and they put it into their projects all around the region to, to, to create, to create these satellite organizations that are- But why? Why did the Biden administration do that? Is it naivete? Is it this utopic belief that we can be friends, and if we just extend the hand of friendship and be super nice, they're going to change?

Yeah. I mean, you'd have to be a psychologist to know that I'm not. I mean, I think Obama started it with this view that Iran was just waiting to be let back into the community of nations with a pat on the back. And it was just a question of kind of speaking to them with respect. Massive, massive miscalculation. Iran has no interest in any of that. And they've, look, they've played us for fools now for 10 years. The only time, look, when Trump killed Qasem Soleimani, I can tell you they were really, really nervous. I mean, you look at their response. Their response was like a pop gun, you know, in response.

They had to do something, but it was really nothing. We had them on the ropes. We let them off the ropes. They built their own nuclear program, and they helped all these malign actors around the world. And I think it's, you know, I think it might be as basic as, you know, they, you know, Obama and Biden kind of invested heavily in this deal. And they never want to admit they made a mistake. You know, so they're just going to double down on it and triple down on it and keep pursuing it.

But there is no. Yeah. What could happen now if I mean, obviously, Trump is the leading candidate to win the GOP nomination and is likely to be running against Joe Biden. If Trump were reelected, what could he do to help undo some of this damage? Look, I think that I think, you know, a couple of things. Number one, you know, massive sanctions on Iran, return them, you know, bankrupt them. They were almost bankrupt. I mean, get them back into that, you know, pre bankruptcy stage where they really don't have the resources.

That's that's number one. Number two is to restore American deterrence, which right now, Iran is not afraid of America at all. I mean, there was zero chance that America is going to go to war against Iran, and they know it. I mean, you know, unfortunately, after Afghanistan and Ukraine, nobody thinks the Biden administration wants to open up another front. And so they got nothing to worry about there. But there is a country that's willing to take on Iran's nuclear program, and that's Israel. And so, you know, I think, frankly, why did you do this now and not wait for Trump to get elected? Give Israel what it needs to establish deterrence.

Give them the bunker busters. Give them the refueling equipment. Give them the radar jamming equipment. Give them whatever they need. And then have an understanding with Israel as to what the red line is beyond which Israel can go in and take out Iran's nuclear facility. If that system were in place, I think that's the only way to keep Iran from going nuclear. Iran will only avoid going nuclear if they think that they're going to lose more than gain. And the only country in the whole world that they're afraid of right now is Israel.

Ambassador Friedman, I'm sure you have a lot of friends and possibly family involved in all of this over there. It seems like most of our friends do. God bless them and you. I hope everyone you love is well. And all I can say is we're praying for you. Well, I appreciate you. Just to tell you, my daughter spent two years at Tel Aviv University. And one of her close friends just was killed.

I mean, it's a really, really tough time for the Israeli people. Tougher for others than for me, but it's a really tough time. Our hearts go out to them all. All the best, sir. Thank you again. Thanks for your service to the country. Thank you, Megan. And thanks to all of you for joining us today.

We know these days are hard, especially the beginning of the show. My God, it's hard. I'm sure it's affecting you as it's affecting me. I've just been walking around with a heavy heart these days, but I feel like it's in service of our nation and our friend Israel, and it's important. So thank you for spending the time with us.

We'll see you tomorrow.