The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Hamas's public executions and Zelensky presses Trump for Tomahawk missiles

Episode Date: October 17, 2025

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. Rudyard and Janice start the show with the big news stories coming out of Gaza this week: the public executions Hamas is conducting in the Gaza strip in order to terrorize and intimidate civilians, and the Israeli government's growing concern that Hamas is breaking the ceasefire deal by not returning all of the dead hostages as agreed upon. How will rival Gaza clans thwart Hamas's attempt to cling to power? Could Gaza be on the verge of a civil war? How fast can you get a rudimentary police force to make Hamas pull back? And perhaps most importantly, who would want to go in there? Janice is optimistic that this time, at least, the Arab world is taking ownership over this problem in a way they never have before. In the second half of the show Rudyard and Janice turn to an important phone call that took place this week between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin just ahead of Zelensky's visit today to Washington, where the Ukrainian President intends to make the case for long-range Tomahawk missiles to hit targets deep inside Russia. The transfer of these weapons, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev warned this week, could lead to nuclear war. Meanwhile, Europeans have never been more scared, interpreting Russia's drone excursions into NATO territory as preparation for a larger war with the continent. Are weak European governments using the bogeyman of Russia to rally their public to distract from domestic problems and rising populism? Everybody is rolling the dice here, and when you do that there is always a chance that someone will miscalculate, and everyone will pay the heavy price. To support the Friday Focus podcast consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The following is a complimentary excerpt of this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast by The Monk Debates. To access full-length editions of each and every episode, along with all kinds of great additional benefits and perks, become a donor to the Monk debates. You can do that for as little as $25 a year, and you'll receive each and every year 50 Friday Focus episodes at full length. It's all available right now on our website. in just a few simple clicks. Triple W. The Monk Debates.com. Look for the Friday Focus option in our navigation bar, the top right of the website. Make your donation, and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the

full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast for the 17th of October 2025. I'm Roger Griffiths, chair of the Monk Debates, joined in studio. once again by Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. Janice, great to be in conversation with you today. Another busy week, I think we've got to talk about obviously what we've seen happen in Gaza over the last 72-plus hours. And then let's go over to Europe because there's an important phone call between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, possibly some movement there.

but murky, murky waters for us to swim in. But let's start with what we've seen this week in Gaza. I think two big stories. One, obviously, these very public executions that Hamas is conducting in the strip, seemingly murdering, bound individuals on the ground doing this for social media, clearly to intimidate and to terrorize. What is this? What are we seeing?

What is it foretell? And then let's talk about the fact that the Israeli government is increasingly concerned that Hamas is breaking the agreement by at this point not returning upwards of 19 dead hostages as per what was originally committed last Friday. So let's start first with the first. with the very public executions, and I think you're right on when you say

that those were filmed, they were sending a message. We are the enforcer right now of order in Gaza. There are Hamas people directing traffic inside Gaza City at some of the crossroads in that city. And what's really interesting here, Rudyard, is that in the last several weeks before the ceasefire, there's evidence that Hamas changed its focus and began to organize for the day after. Unlike others, including Israel, who didn't have much of a focus on the day after,

that's what they were focused on so that they were able to deploy because there were their plants that have become available that shows that they were they were squarely focused on what was going to happen the day after and you know this was predictable in some sense and Donald Trump in one of it you know this is negotiation by tweet to a degree we've never seen before I said, well, that's all right. I told them they could kill a few guys along the way until we get organized. But I think we need to be careful with these things because Donald Trump sometimes just lies. And it's quite possible that he and others saw these executions.

They didn't tell anybody anything, but it's embarrassing to them. It makes it look as if they've made a deal with what we know is a bunch of thugs and killers. So he's then retroactively asserting something that's probably, probably, I would say, a very high probability, just ball-face fabrication to put it as politely as possible. It's entirely believable that this happens because I doubt that he, you know, he's not a detailed person and is not something that he would focus on. But the message still sends, his tweets still send a message to the people on the ground. And for Hamas, that's a green light. Let's consolidate local authority. Now, what's really interesting?

I'm never seen this and all the years of watching this. Saudi Arabia and the Emirates are protesting vigorously to Donald Trump that he is putting this deal at risk by allowing Hamas to take control of the streets. And that's what got Trump's attention. Just to jump in on that, isn't the problem, Janice, that allowing assumes that you could disallow? Yeah. And the reality is we're seeing pictures of heavily armed men. I would note that many of them look not simply well-fed, but I would say portly to be as polite as possible.

Or just simply, these are people that have done very well during the last two years. Their calorie intake seemingly was quite high for the duration of the war. They're now on the street with powerful automatic weapons conducting what public executions we know. Who knows what private killings and assassinations are going on? So this doesn't look good, does it? This looks as if we've made an agreement whereby one party, Hamas, has quickly reconstituted itself, is clearly in charge. And we can fantasize about other hypothetical futures

of a demilitarized, banished, degraded Hamas. But boy, we seem a long way from that today based on these hundreds of photos now that are coming out of the strip. Yeah, there's for sure every reason to be concerned. But I don't think the story's over yet. First of all, it's not over. because just as Hamas was getting organized for the day after,

there are rival clans with long and bitter histories with Hamas that predates this war. This goes back, believe it or not, to 2007, this internal fight inside Gaza, when Hamas took over and kicked out Fatah and the Palestinian Authority in 2017. So some of these clans in Gaza City a long time, you know, just as we described, the Hamas people who live in Qatar's hotel guys, these are known as the Fatah guys in Gaza City. They also have equipment. They are not giving up. And so there was a gunfight yesterday where some of these, one of the largest clans, used mortars against Hamas. They, what I'm more concerned about right now is that we could. be on the verge of a civil war inside Gaza because these clans aren't, they know what the future is, they've lifted, they're not walking away from this fight. So when you look at it that way, because I think that's a possibility too. The question becomes that how fast can you get any kind of even rudimentary police force in there that gives them all the reasons to pull back.

want to go in there with Hamas heavily armed with thousands probably pounds of unexploded high explosives that have been extracted from Israeli duds bombs that fell on the strip and did not explode we know from Afghanistan and Iraq that that is a fertile source of IEDs and you know and in a sense a powerful reserve I wouldn't it be able to a little naive to think that Hamas hasn't been collecting for months, stockpiles of high explosives out of unexploded bombs for precisely this purpose? That's what they're doing. You're absolutely right, but so are these clients.

And that's what makes me say it's free for all to. But you're going to send Canadian peacekeepers, as Mark Carney has talked about a Canadian peacekeeping force in Gaza? There's not a chance that we're going to send. anybody. So what was the prime minister talking about? I don't know, but we are not going to be able to put any. We

don't have the manpower, as you know, we're fully committed in Lafayette. And actually, I don't think it would be welcome. What the Saudis and the Qataris and the Emirates and this, what we're seeing play out in part here, Roger, is a longstanding dispute between

the Saudis, the Emirates on the one hand and the Qataris and the Turks on the other. But where there is agreement, it's got to be a so-called Muslim peacekeeping force. Because the expectation is that Hamas will not fire against the units that come from backers in their case. Certainly Turkey. But even it would be tough for Hamas to fire against the Egyptians. I've always thought that.

And so that's a whole different ballgame. I mean, that's why, frankly, I don't think Europe really gets it. Nobody wants any Europeans or Canadians on the ground right now. This problem is now, and this is what's different this time. Every time I say that, I think, well, I'm going to be proved wrong because it's never different. But what's different this time is the Arab world has taken ownership of this problem in a way they never have. We'll see for how long. We'll see what costs they're willing to bear.

They don't have much of a history. None. None. In this regard. Let's talk about the fact that Hamas has failed to return within the 72-hour deadline. Now seemingly 19 dead Israeli hostages and soldiers. The Israeli intelligence has shared information with the Trump administration indicating where they believe these bodies are.

Why would Hamas be ragging the power? so to speak in this very gruesome way. And I guess taking a risk here that Israel uses this as a tripwire, as a reason to either renege on phase two. Certainly I don't think we can even contemplate a phase two on the basis of what seems to be some kind of strategy here on the part of Hamas to maintain leverage. This is a huge domestic politics issue inside Israel right now, inside Netanyahu's coalition, where the leader of one of the largest religious parties still inside his coalition, just said yesterday that he'll withdraw from the coalition if there's no further progress on the return of these dead bodies.

So Nathaniel has a huge domestic political issue around this. Why the body's not coming back? I think it's twofold. I think part of it is they feel this is the only leverage they have left. But I also think there's some element of chaos there. But 19 bodies, Janice. This isn't like, well, we can't find five or six. I mean, this is doubled.

There is. This is double digits. I find that hard to believe that this is simply the chaos of war. They would, again, if these bodies, as we know, were such important negotiating chips and assets for them, they would know where they're located. And to think that, you know, 19 of them would suddenly be inaccessible or have disappeared. Doesn't that really more go to the leverage piece? It does.

It does. But I also think they're, you know, you know where they are, right here. But then there's rubble. top of knowing where they are, which is what's gone on in Gaza. And interestingly enough, Israeli intelligence is less upset because they know they have to go in with bulldozers. They know locations, but they have to be able. The Hamas people have to get access to bulldozers and remove rubble in order to go to the

locations. But that's kind of Hamas' narrative. I mean, we can take that or not. That's what Hamas is saying. I just... No, that's what Israeli intelligence is saying. Well, I think Israeli intelligence is saying is that these bodies are possibly in tunnels and other areas where, gruesomely, they were kind of stored as assets in the negotiation.

And this is despite Israel having released all the prisoners, fully met their side of the deal. They've withdrawn to the agreed upon line. how much longer is it fair to sit here and wait? How long until the clock runs out and some punitive step has to be taken to acknowledge that Hamas is in breach of the agreement? So the clock running out, the issue is Trump. Nathaniel does not have full degrees of freedom at this point.

You know what you. I understand really well that Netanyahu would have to do, this would be a very tough negotiation with Donald Trump, who does not want to give up on this agreement in any way, right? And that's the constraint. And that's what pushed Netanyahu to the table. So I think there is time, but I think those bodies have to come back. It's not open it. But is it a matter of days?

Is it a weeks? It depends whether you're right. I don't think Israel is going to, I don't think the political environment. Israel will allow, you know, weeks to go by. It's explosive issue. It's an explosive issue. To remain. And there's indications now that the bodies that have been returned show clear signs of

torture. Yeah. No doubt. Acute, acute mistreatment. And that's coming out, by the way, in the stories from the hostages, too, that are beginning to talk to their families. and some of it is very gruesome is all I can say. It ultimately depends whether you're right or not.

If you're right that those bodies are in the tunnels and they're accessible and there's good intelligence that they're there and they're not coming back, that's one world. If they're not in the tunnels, they're above ground and they're in areas where there were strikes subsequent to what the to one intelligent because they have good information. They had good information is where all the hostages were and they deliberately stayed away

from those areas after six were killed because the IDF approached. But they have good information. So my hunch is that some of these are above ground in rubble and they are working now to get teams either, you know, IDF teams in with Hamas to look for those bodies that are above ground. So I think there's some time, but not a lot here. The proposal is, of course, Turkey wants to go in. But Turkey for a whole variety of reasons, largely the rhetoric that it, that it's present,

that Erdogan has used is simply non-acceptable partner on the ground to Israel. Yeah. Well, let's say goodbye to our complimentary listeners and viewers here. Join our monk donors on the other side of their short break. We're going to talk about Putin's call with Donald Trump, supposed meeting in the works and Zelensky into the White House. So a lot happening regarding the Ukraine war. We'll bring that exclusively to our monk donors after this short break.

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