Trump has already changed everything in the Middle East
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Summary
After more than 470 days, Israel began seeing some of the hostages taken on October 7th return to them. The hostages continue to be released, and the Israeli people are now trying to make sense of this deal. To talk about all of this and how it's playing out in Israel, I reached out to Vivian Berkovich, who served as Canada's ambassador to Israel from 2014 to 2016. She's a Canadian who now spends most of her time in Israel and served as the Canadian Ambassador to Israel until 2016.
Transcript
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After more than 470 days, Israel began seeing some of the hostages taken on October 7th return
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to them. The hostages continue to be released, and the Israeli people are now trying to make
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sense of this deal. Hello and welcome to the Full Comment Podcast. My name is Brian Lilly, your host.
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On the one hand, everyone wanted the hostages to come home, whether they were dead or alive.
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The question has always been, at what price? The deal that was struck has been controversial.
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You might say it was the deal that no one wanted for the result that everyone wanted. Also came
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about in a very strange way. Most of it was negotiated with the Biden administration and
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Israel on one side, Qatar and Egypt on the other side, acting on behalf of Hamas. But it only really
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came together after the Trump administration sent their point man, Steve Wyckoff, into the talks before
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Donald Trump was even sworn in. To talk about all of this and how it's playing out in Israel, I reached
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out to Vivian Berkovich, your lawyer, a writer. You may have read her in the National Post or heard her
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own podcast, State of Tel Aviv. She's a Canadian who now spends most of her time in Israel and from
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2014 until 2016 served as Canada's ambassador to Israel, all of which gives her unique insights.
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Vivian, would I be wrong in describing this as the deal nobody wanted, but the result everyone
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demanded in the sense that you're getting hostages back, but at a terrible price?
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Yeah, I think it's a terrible deal. It's a horrible deal. So it's the deal, as you say, that nobody
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wants, but that I believe we need desperately, that Israel needs desperately. You know, I was speaking
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with someone, Yossi Klein-Halevi, who's a really fantastic writer and kind of interpreter of society
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here, a couple weeks ago, and he said, you know, we lost the war of October 7th, which I agree,
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but we've almost won the war of October 8th. But we have to, we can't win October 8th until we go back
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and finish up October 7th. And that was the day, of course, of the horrible massacre, torture, murders,
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taking of hostages, and this country needs to get them back.
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That was the big debate when I was in Israel with you a year ago, January 2024. People saying,
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well, how big of a price? Do we bring back the hostages at any price? And in some ways,
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it seems like the answer is yes. Now, it's a year later, people are more desperate. The elation,
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though, among the families. What has the mood been like with the general public as the hostages come
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back? And we'll separate out those two things. The mood at seeing people reunited with their families
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versus the politics of it. As you know, it's very hard to kind of untangle those two things
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in this crazy country. But I'll do my best. First of all, the debate that was going on when you were
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here a year ago, has never ceased. Right? It's just been constant. It mutates, it takes on different
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shape and urgency. And the issue of price is a very, very profound issue. The reaction of people
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is so interesting. Before the first hostages came out, it'll be two weeks tomorrow, there were three
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young women, civilian women, released. And there was a very strong contingent of Israeli society that
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was absolutely against the deal. Under any cost. They felt they wanted to defeat Hamas,
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worry about hostages later. Well, I mean, I think there were a number of things, you know,
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they weren't a monolith that camp, but I would say that a significant contingent had bought into this
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total victory defeat Hamas. Okay. Not sure what the total victory thing means.
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Um, but my response to that would be, it's absolutely not achievable until we bring home
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the hostages. And there are many reasons for that. So there's this one demographic that is like,
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no, we must not, we must pulverize Hamas, which is probably a longer term goal than one year.
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And I don't think many Israelis would disagree. I mean, nobody wants ISIS living on their doorstep
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and in their bedrooms, literally. And that's, um, but there were also people who felt we can't release
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these terrorist murderers. I mean, these are some of the most vicious, violent terrorists of the last
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20, 30 years, horrific crimes. It's why it's been so frustrating for me watching so much Western
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media, including here in Canada. And it's the, the usual suspects describe it as a hostage exchange.
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Yeah. I'm sorry. The, these people are not hostages that they were in prison for very good reasons.
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And there's also for, also understand that this, uh, so-called deal does not include the elite
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Nahba Hamas soldiers who invaded Israel on October 7th. Um, and many of the, most of the people who have
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been arrested or detained since October 7th. This is all for, you know, the guys and mostly guys very,
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I don't think any women have been, are in, on multiple life sentences. This includes the guys
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who blow up buses, blow up pizza parlors on school holidays when they're full of families. Um,
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they are Islamist extremists. They believe that Israel should be annihilated and that every Jew,
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not just in Israel, but anyway, in the world should be killed. And so, but the cohort that was saying,
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we can't give in, we can't exchange these murderers for civilians. And, you know, about 95% of the
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hostages still in detention or still in captivity, pardon me, um, in the Gaza Strip are civilians.
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There may be one or two actual soldiers, male soldiers, but in their mind, they consider any
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male under the age of 50, whether he's in the army or not to be a soldier. Clearly, you know,
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based on who they released yesterday, they also seem to consider 80 year olds to be soldiers.
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So no, there's no comparison. You're absolutely right. There's no comparison. And it's, it's a
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disgusting, it's understandable why there'd be opposition though, to the deal based on who's
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getting released. But what about those who are being reunited with their loved ones? The,
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one of the kibbutz is that you took me to Kavarasa, um, when I posted the, an image of that kibbutz on
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the day that the hostages were being released, I said, remember, this is what these people did.
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Someone got back to me immediately on X and said, uh, two of the women, uh, released today lived on
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that street. They didn't say they lived in that kibbutz. I posted a photo of the, the, um, uh,
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the youth area on the kibbutz neighborhood. Yeah. The young generation neighborhood. And
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so those two women have been reunited with their families. The, the joy that you see watching the
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video is immense. Has that changed any sympathies, any view of the deal since those images came out?
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Yes, absolutely. And interestingly, I just had coffee this morning with, um, someone who I met by
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chance, um, who is doing reserve service, uh, in the army, a lot of it, and initially was very strongly
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opposed to the deal. And the images have kind of rekindled, um, helped people, I think in Israel
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reconnect with how urgent and critical this mission is. This is who we are morally. If we do not go to
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the ends of the earth to bring home civilians who have been captured so brutally, to bring home
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soldiers who have been captured so brutally and detained so humane, inhumanely, who's going to
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send their children to fight? The grounding ethos of this country is leave no one behind. And it's more
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than just a saying. We've really leave no one behind. So many soldiers who fell in Gaza died because they
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were trying to rescue their injured colleagues, you know, and they walked into booby traps and ambushes
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because it's just not done. And that is such important glue for this society.
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A friend just got back from a trip to Israel. Uh, our, our mutual friend, Larry, uh, took another
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group and, um, they went and met with the, uh, he said they were called tunnel weasels.
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These are the guys that go into the tunnels and I have a friend whose son is in that unit. Yeah.
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Yeah. One of them had lost his arm trying to rescue people. Um, it's, there has been an incredible
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price paid. Now you had Donald Trump saying before inauguration that if the hostages weren't released,
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there would be hell to pay all hell to pay, all hell to pay. Well, not all the hostages have been
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released. Um, but they started before inauguration on purpose. I think Hamas was forced to take a deal,
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but as I read the, uh, the reports on it, um, it looks like Trump forced a deal on Netanyahu and his government
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as well. It was great writing in the guardian about how, uh, Steve Wyckoff shows up in Jerusalem during
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Shabbat and says, uh, I want to see the prime minister. And they say, oh no, Mr. Netanyahu doesn't take
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meetings, uh, during Shabbat. You'll have to wait a few hours. And he ordered Netanyahu out and got
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the meeting and then told everyone what they were going to do and then flew to Doha and sat on
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everyone. So, um, you know, allow me to use a Catholic imagery here. Everyone had to put a lot
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of water into their wine. It seemed like, and that was forced by Trump. Uh, I completely agree based on
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what I know and what I've heard. Absolutely. And why are people still loving Trump and Wyckoff? Like,
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you know, my understanding is it, you know, driving into, uh, along the highways a week or so ago,
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you would see big posters thanking Trump. Big posters along the highways. You, everybody,
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this country feels and knows that without the pressure from president Trump and when he was
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president-elect and without the incredible job that Steve Wyckoff has done since he was appointed
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Trump's envoy to deal with this crisis, it's extraordinary. That would never have happened.
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I mean, Netanyahu has been sitting on this in my view and prioritizing coalition politics
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and maintaining his governing coalition intact over the return of the hostages. This deal,
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everyone knows, this is not news. Basically the identical deal has been on the table since May
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and it was not seen to fruition. And there is a very strong feeling here among not just the left
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wing or the centrists, but the right wing too, that it is the government that has stood in the way.
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Not Hamas putting on extra conditions at the last minute, which is what we've often been told.
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You know, none of us have been in the room. Yes, we have been told that. And that's probably true.
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But, you know, I mean, I don't think that the Netanyahu government was enthusiastic about making a
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hostage deal. I think they were enthusiastic publicly about, as we talked about earlier, destroying Hamas.
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You know, they openly talked about reestablishing settlements in the Gaza Strip again.
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This was what they were moving towards. And it's been very open here. And one of the interesting
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things is that the Religious Zionist Party, which is led by Bezalel Smotrich, and he's a very important
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part of the governing coalition, and also Axis Minister of Finance. He was driving this,
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we have to resettle, total victory, we can't give up, we can't let these terrorists out.
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Well, you know what? You asked me right at the beginning of this conversation, well,
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has public opinion shifted? Or is all the opposition that prevailed before the release,
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has it changed? You're damn straight it's changed. And people see those pictures, and they see those
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young female soldiers reunited with their families. And they hear, we're starting to hear more and more
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of the horrors of the captivity. 60%. This was a few days ago, it's probably higher now. 60% of
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Bezalel Smotrich's Religious Party, Religious Zionist Party voters support continuing with the deal
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on the terms, and support continuing until every last hostage living and dead is brought home.
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So what that tells you is that even what are considered to be the hard right voters
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are seeing this very differently. You know, when the hostages were released, and we've now had three
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releases over the last two weeks, and we have another one coming tomorrow. You know, everyone
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thanks President Trump, Steve Witkoff, you should see them beaming, you know, and...
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He dropped in on to see some of them when they were released the other day, right?
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Only one family has thanked Prime Minister Netanyahu, and I must say grudgingly. Prime Minister Netanyahu
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has not had a photo op with the families, or the hostages. Witkoff could have, but instead,
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just like you just reminded me and raised, Witkoff is, you know, I was one of these two. I was a
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diplomat who, you know, came from the outside and drives them crazy because you actually do things
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and get things done, and that's what Witkoff is doing. So what does he do? Yesterday, we had three
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hostages released. I'm sure your listeners saw the horrific scenes from the Gaza Strip,
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just chaotic, and an 80-year-old and a 29-year-old slip of a woman, a tiny little thing. They really
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were close to being lynched. And so Witkoff was all over the place yesterday, and I'm sure he was
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also on the phone burning up the lines to Qatar in the middle of this chaotic scene saying,
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you guys better fix this or else. He also, yesterday, unannounced, popped into, there's a
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special family room in Hostage Square in Tel Aviv, which is a very public gathering space that you
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visited. Yep. Very moving. There are a number, but there's one big sort of family room where they
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can just go as groups of families and be on their own and not have anyone around them. And Witkoff just
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popped in. And it was on, you know, the news I watched, I think, for 12 hours straight yesterday.
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I just could not stop. And he was just so incredible with families and down to earth and talking to them
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like he's just talking to his next-door neighbor. And their gratitude and the force of their
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gratitude and their expression, their expressions of gratitude to Witkoff were just beyond moving.
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And, you know, more than one said, this would not have happened without you.
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Witkoff, they say in Hebrew. Mr. Witkoff. Steve Witkoff has completely charmed this country,
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left to right, upside down. And so has Trump. These guys, and he also went to see the female
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hostages, the soldiers who were released and their families. I mean, and he's saying, we're going to
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get them all out. Like yesterday, he was talking about, you know, yesterday was a complete sort of
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bonus. It wasn't supposed to happen, but it was because of some Hamas breaches last Saturday.
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So then we get these three additionals yesterday. And now there are actually eight, because five
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Thai hostages also came out, Thai workers. And then on Saturday, tomorrow, there'll be three more.
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And Witkoff yesterday was saying, I don't know why we're waiting. Why don't we just get them all
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out like now? Yeah. This is how he's talking. And good question, Steve.
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So there have been plenty of scenes of elation, but also some horrible stories told. And I remember
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one of the most heartbreaking things that I heard anyone tell me was in that young person's
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neighborhood of Kibbutz Kfar Asad, this woman was talking about how, so remember, the women were
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taken October 7th. We were there January 2024. And this woman was saying, we have to get the female
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hostages out soon before it's too late. And she was meaning before they were pregnant. We've heard
00:19:04.620
the stories of sexual abuse. That's got to be hitting people hard.
00:19:10.800
Yeah. So there's a lot that's hitting people hard. And that's one of the things I have to say
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that the army and the government and the health ministry have done an extraordinary job of protecting
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the people returning. It's not just the women who have been sexually abused. There's been very
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violent sexual abuse of male captives as well. And they've just, they're honored, they are not
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disclosing details. We know every once in a while, like over the last few days, there have been little
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bits that have kind of been shared with the public, but it's on a non, it's not attributed to a
00:19:54.380
particular individual. So it's bad. We're hearing all kinds of things about the conditions in which
00:20:02.420
they were kept, and how they were treated. And you know, the world has chosen to focus on the fact that
00:20:09.360
they came out wearing these ridiculous suits that Hamas, of course, said were IDF uniforms,
00:20:16.580
which they were not. And that they looked, you know, healthy, their hair was combed back,
00:20:21.620
and they were up there on stage for the propaganda film, you know, waving. And one of the returning
00:20:27.300
female hostages, the soldiers, looked quite plump. She is plump. But we know that they feed them
00:20:36.760
a lot in the weeks leading up. They get them ready. Now, we also know the condition
00:20:43.320
that hostages who had not been fed and given additional nutrition and exposure to sunlight,
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we know how starved they were, and how abused and how filthy. So there's a lot of show going on,
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a lot of smoke and mirrors. There are a lot of heart, it is heartbreaking, the whole country is
00:21:05.920
braced tomorrow for, we just learned a few hours ago, the return of three men. So there are no more
00:21:12.320
surviving females, because the order was female civilians who are alive, then female soldiers who
00:21:18.560
are alive, and now males who are alive. And three men are returning tomorrow, Keith Siegel,
00:21:28.100
a 65 year old American Israeli, who's thought to be in poor health. His wife was with him until last
00:21:36.180
November, and she's been campaigning for his release ever since. And another, Erez Calderon,
00:21:44.580
another kibbutz member, who's 53 years old, and Yarden Bibas. Now, the Bibas story is very well known,
00:21:53.700
it's Shiri Bibas was, is, was maybe the wife of Yarden Bibas, early 30s couple from kibbutz near Oz,
00:22:03.300
which was absolutely slaughtered, decimated by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Okay, not Hamas,
00:22:09.860
Palestinian Islamic Jihad are worse. And Shiri was the one whose photograph became iconic,
00:22:16.580
holding those two orange haired babies. Her eldest son at the time was days away from his fourth
00:22:21.380
birthday, her youngest was nine months old. It is believed that they died in an airstrike on October
00:22:30.260
27, 2023. So three weeks after their capture. But we don't know that, for certain. Yarden was also taken
00:22:40.820
captive. He was tortured in captivity in November 23. An Israeli who spoke Arabic translated for him
00:22:52.340
under the glare of Hamas cameras. So they said, you, you're going to come in and translate and tell
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him. And he told him that his wife and two children had died in this strike.
00:23:05.540
That, that is the horror. The horror. And he's coming home tomorrow. He's coming home alive.
00:23:11.700
And, and, but everyone kept holding out hope for baby Bibas. And I just thought that there is no way
00:23:17.700
that those animals have kept this baby alive. No, but they kept him alive for three weeks. They took him.
00:23:27.060
They took a three-year-old more than one, I think there were two or three without their parents. They took
00:23:32.980
three-year-old twin girls with their mom and their aunt. And then they just took one of the three-year-olds
00:23:39.620
for a few weeks. They took, and her father's still in captivity.
00:23:49.380
One of the women who came out yesterday, Arbel Yehud, beautiful slip of a woman who I mentioned from
00:23:56.100
Kibbutz near Oz, the ones that Palestinian Islamic Jihad took over. She's 29 now. She and her boyfriend,
00:24:02.580
who is still in captivity, were taken. It's a family that's been ravaged, both their families.
00:24:13.140
She had no contact with anyone other than Pidge captors. God knows what that woman has been through.
00:24:21.860
And they showed her right before they were released into this braying mob that wanted to lynch
00:24:29.060
them, you know, for the handover to the Red Cross. They showed her embracing 80-year-old
00:24:33.940
Gadi Moses, who was from the same Kibbutz, a bear of a man, if you see pictures of him before.
00:24:39.700
And very, very frail now. Very, very frail. A world-leading agronomist. You know, he's lectures all over the
00:24:47.300
world. He's incredible. And they see one another for the first time, and the embrace would just melt the
00:24:54.420
polar ice cap. You know, it was so moving. The two of them, our bell, we think first,
00:25:02.820
is taken through, surrounded by these thugs, these masked thugs, taken through this throng.
00:25:08.580
And they particularly wanted to get our bell. You know why? Because Israel refused to open up the
00:25:18.020
corridor to allow people back into north Gaza, until our bell was released. Because they had
00:25:24.260
intelligence about the cruelty of her captivity, and because of some lies and games that Hamas had
00:25:30.740
played in the previous week's release. So the crowd's yelling, they want our bell, they want her,
00:25:36.020
because you held back, you know, a million people from going north for one our bell.
00:25:40.740
She became this symbol that they so hated. And this you will never see, because Al Jazeera,
00:25:48.660
the propaganda arm of the Qatari government, which had exclusive access and has been doing
00:25:54.180
all the stage managing for these handovers, they lost control of what went on yesterday.
00:26:00.100
80-year-old Gadi Moses, who could not walk that far. And, you know, the Israeli press is referring
00:26:05.780
to it as the Via Dolorosa, which, you know, as a Catholic will appeal to you. This gauntlet,
00:26:13.460
they were forced to pass. Gadi Moses, this bear of a man, very diminished, was being held up on both
00:26:19.700
sides by Palestinian Islamic Jihad goons. And he fainted. They cut that out. He fainted. The stress,
00:26:30.420
this man has survived almost 16 months of captivity in barbaric conditions. And this was
00:26:38.100
almost broke him. It's just unreal. You said that that embrace would melt the polar ice caps,
00:26:43.620
but it obviously will not touch the hearts of those thugs. We need to take a quick break. And when we
00:26:49.140
come back, I want to talk about those stage managed handovers, why groups like the RRC and UNRWA need to
00:26:56.260
go. And a little bit about what Donald Trump means when he talks about changing Northern Gaza and
00:27:04.180
clearing people out back in moments. One of the reasons that the International Red Cross was
00:27:09.460
founded, why it exists, is to look after prisoners. And they did so admirably during the First World
00:27:16.820
War, the Second World War, conflicts around the world. And yet they never visited the hostages taken
00:27:24.260
on October 7th. And in fact, the first time the Red Cross saw these hostages was during a highly
00:27:29.700
stage managed handover run by the terrorist groups, either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad as
00:27:38.340
propaganda events. Vivian, how furious are people at the way that these hostages are being handed over?
00:27:48.420
I mean, it makes it look like the crowds are huge. Now, if you get a wider shot, you see that
00:27:53.940
everyone's jammed into a little spot. But you've got every, you know, all the folks around the
00:27:59.780
hostages being released with their weapons out and the green bandanas and trying to look really tough
00:28:06.980
and a show of force. How is this being allowed to happen that the handing over of hostages becomes a
00:28:14.660
propaganda moment, complete with people filming from every angle to produce propaganda videos?
00:28:24.260
So first of all, I just have to comment about in World War Two, because the Red Cross
00:28:30.100
betrayed Jews during the Holocaust profoundly. And we know that there were, there was at least one,
00:28:36.260
maybe two very staged visits to Theresienstadt, which was a way station concentration camp,
00:28:43.060
primarily for German and Czech Jews on their way to Auschwitz. And the Nazis scrubbed up the camp
00:28:50.660
and brought the Red Cross in, in World War Two. And they, they said, this is great. You know,
00:28:57.140
I mean, it's a war, so maybe they're not living quite as comfortably as they're used to. But yeah,
00:29:02.100
no, no problem here. And they knew, everyone knew by that point. So Red Cross and Jewish people is,
00:29:08.580
is a bit of a kind of, it's a difficult history. With respect to the handover, there has been a lot
00:29:19.300
of criticism of the Red Cross. I have lots of criticism for them, but I'm going to actually
00:29:25.540
speak in their defense, surprisingly, in this case. The Red Cross is not negotiating these agreements.
00:29:31.940
Agreements are negotiated by Qatar and Egypt as the kind of intermediaries, and they are negotiating
00:29:37.620
with Hamas. Palestinian Islamic Jihad is not at the table. It's Hamas. And so Hamas is responsible
00:29:46.580
with Qatar and Egypt for everything that transpires on the ground. Israel is in an unfortunate position
00:29:53.460
now in which it has very little leverage in terms of demands. And even though it has made and agreed to
00:30:04.820
certain conditions with respect to the release, they've been breached from the very beginning by
00:30:12.820
Hamas. And so we can talk just a bit about how Israel has leveraged with the support of the Trump
00:30:20.580
administration. Israel would not have had that support from Biden. The Red Cross, many Israelis
00:30:26.180
sort of demean it and say, oh, they're just operating like a taxi service, you know, an Uber service.
00:30:31.060
They go pick them up, and they bring them out. They are in no position to dictate the terms.
00:30:37.380
These are unarmed civilian humanitarian workers.
00:30:40.980
Fair enough. But they're allowing themselves to be used.
00:30:46.180
Yeah, they're being used. But what are they going to do? Are they going to say to these thugs,
00:30:52.740
no, we're not signing the certificate of release? And really, are we going to leave these girls there?
00:31:04.100
I wouldn't. I'm going to do whatever you want. They make the girls stand there and hold certificates
00:31:08.820
with their souvenir bags of their time in Gaza. Should they refuse to do that and not be let out?
00:31:15.860
The Red Cross, I say go, sign the stupid certificates. It doesn't mean anything. And get them out.
00:31:23.780
If anyone watched what happened yesterday, and the Red Cross is right in the middle of that surge
00:31:29.140
in Khan Yunus, they're taking a lot of risk. And they deserve a lot of opprobium for so much
00:31:38.420
bad conduct throughout this crisis. But in terms of doing the job of getting in there,
00:31:44.820
getting them in the cars and getting them safely out, I say thank you.
00:31:49.460
Now, my understanding is that the Trump administration did intervene. Witkoff did
00:31:56.580
make demands and held back releasing the terrorist prisoners.
00:32:00.980
That happened yesterday. I mean, every time there has been an, quote, exchange,
00:32:05.140
there has been some dramatic breach on the part of Hamas. And what happened yesterday in Khan
00:32:12.500
Yunus at the handover was really dangerous and beyond chaotic, and Hamas is responsible for that.
00:32:22.580
And what Israel did was said, we're not letting the busloads of terrorists leave the security prisons in
00:32:31.540
Israel. Until Egypt and Qatar work the phones, get back to us and tell us this will not happen again.
00:32:42.660
This is completely not on. And I'm sure that the phone lines were absolutely like singed yesterday
00:32:52.740
while we were watching the spectacle on TV. The Egyptians and Qataris reportedly did come back
00:32:57.860
with assurances that Hamas understands they have to control things more effectively. And it's all staged,
00:33:06.500
you know, to make people freak out and to show the Arab world how strong Hamas is and how great Hamas is.
00:33:13.220
And of course, your listeners may or may not be aware of the fact that the only media allowed in to the
00:33:21.140
Gaza Strip to film this parody is Al Jazeera, which is the state owned propaganda slash media arm of the
00:33:32.500
government of Qatar. And they're in there, and they stage manage, they do the production, the production
00:33:38.500
values are really good, they've got great equipment, and you can see them.
00:33:43.940
How many journalists that have been killed that had all kinds of access from October 7th on,
00:33:52.900
we find out were actually members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. The idea that Al Jazeera is some beacon of
00:34:02.100
truth, some independent media is beyond ridicule. The going forward. There's a couple of things to
00:34:11.860
talk about with. At the end of this, what happens? Israel has taken the decision that
00:34:20.980
they don't want UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for the Middle East to be part of
00:34:26.980
the solution or the future anymore. But they can't stop them from operating in Gaza.
00:34:33.300
The whole world seems to believe that without UNRWA, Gaza would fall apart, and there would be chaos,
00:34:42.100
as opposed to what's really happened. They've been there promoting the chaos. But they did kick,
00:34:47.780
the Israeli government has kicked UNRWA out of Jerusalem. They've told them to vacate their offices
00:34:53.860
and to get out of Israel. Is there a world where the Western donors of UNRWA, like Canada,
00:35:02.500
wake up and say, you know what, this is a problem. And we've got to, you know, not only stop funding
00:35:09.540
UNRWA, but get reform at the UN. Yes. And I think we're kind of, you know, at the dawn of, I hope,
00:35:17.620
that new world. The Trump administration has made clear in the 10 or 11 days since they've come into
00:35:25.860
power that they will no longer be funding UNRWA. Now, the largest chunk of funding for UNRWA came
00:35:31.380
from the U.S. Now, in defense of Biden, they froze it. And my understanding is never released that
00:35:37.860
funding again, unlike Canada, which announced a freeze between two large payments, meaning we never froze
00:35:45.060
on risk funding. Well, actually, Canada did worse than that. Canada announced a freeze
00:35:49.700
and did a rush advance payment of the second payment. And then they made the announcement
00:35:54.900
we're freezing. That was Minister Ahmed Hussain. And so the payment wasn't due until late April,
00:36:02.980
but he rushed it out the door in December or January, right before he made the announcement.
00:36:07.300
It's never done. No one ever pays those, those fees or, you know, support the financing in advance.
00:36:15.220
It's just absurd. So first of all, yes, the U.S. is not going to continue to fund UNRWA.
00:36:24.020
Sweden, interestingly, recently announced that they are pulling all UNRWA funding. The Netherlands.
00:36:35.380
Switzerland. Yep. So we have Sweden, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and we have a Germany,
00:36:40.340
uh, sorry, we have an election coming up in Germany on February 23rd. And the likelihood is high that it
00:36:48.260
is going to be a right leaning government and it's going to probably involve the AFD party in a coalition.
00:36:56.580
And if that should transpire, I think it's highly likely that Germany will also pull UNRWA funding.
00:37:04.340
Um, Hungary, I don't know if they even fund right now, Czech Republic does like,
00:37:10.020
the dominoes are falling. UNRWA is not a humanitarian organization at all.
00:37:17.780
No, they're, they're, they're, they're evil. And I've been documenting that for 15 years.
00:37:22.740
Exactly. So, you know, but you know, Canada, I mean, look, if this government, if we have a Trudeau
00:37:28.900
government and should, um, Mark Carney prevail in an election, if they ever hold one, um, then I
00:37:37.620
expect he would probably double Canada's support or maybe triple it for UNRWA. Um, and Canada is one
00:37:44.900
of the largest funders right now, way out of whack. We don't fund NATO, but we fund UNRWA like nobody's
00:37:50.260
business. Um, I think that I will safely conjecture total speculation that should Pierre
00:37:58.420
Paulie have become the next prime minister of Canada that UNRWA funding will be pulled.
00:38:02.500
Oh, it, it'll be gone. Believe me, it will be gone. Uh, I haven't, um, I haven't spoken directly to,
00:38:09.220
uh, to Pierre about that, but knowing his thinking and knowing the thinking of those around him,
00:38:13.380
these were the guys that pulled it when Stephen Harper was in power, which was the right thing to do.
00:38:18.580
And I was ambassador to Israel at that time. And I can tell you that both prime minister Harper,
00:38:23.380
um, and I took a lot of heat from some of the same parties, all kind of backroom stuff.
00:38:35.940
Donald Trump, um, made some comments the other day about clearing out the Gaza Strip.
00:38:41.700
And I'm not sure what he means by that exactly. And then he was asked again, and by the time this
00:38:49.540
is posted, I mean, he may have had five more news conferences cause he's doing about two a day
00:38:53.540
recently. Um, he was, it seems like he's talking about moving people out of Gaza and into Egypt.
00:39:02.020
Um, and he was asked, well, will they even take them? I mean, anybody that has seen the giant wall
00:39:08.340
between Egypt. I know there's tunnels underneath. I know there's all kinds of problems,
00:39:12.420
but for the general population, Egypt built a really big nasty wall that is, you know,
00:39:19.140
better defenses than anything Israel had apparently. Um, what do you think Trump is,
00:39:27.540
So it's really interesting. He's been saying, making these comments for quite some time now,
00:39:33.300
um, maybe more frequently and more kind of vociferously in recent days. Um, I think that
00:39:41.540
what he said, a number of things consistently. One is that the population in the Gaza Strip is so
00:39:49.060
intensely radicalized. It is just, it's like the third Reich. It's like the German people.
00:39:57.780
during World War II, who had just been so, some brainwashed, some of course chose to believe it,
00:40:06.980
but education, media, propaganda, everything just constantly drove home these themes relentlessly.
00:40:18.660
And that's what has been happening in the Gaza Strip, aided and abetted of course by UNRWA and Western
00:40:24.900
funding. And this is a population. And we know this from polls. I mean, people in the West love to
00:40:31.300
say, Oh, but the civilians, Oh, but they're not all guilty. Well, you know what? It's a really
00:40:37.620
radicalized population, overwhelmingly Islamist, which means they believe that the state of Israel
00:40:45.620
is a cancer, a blight on the world, that it must be annihilated. Allah must prevail. All Jews are
00:40:56.100
rightfully killed. I mean, they keep saying it, you know, they, their ceremonies and, and all their
00:41:02.820
statements, even, you know, with the deal release, all the propaganda behind the, the hostages as
00:41:09.300
they're being released is we will liberate, you know, Al-Aqsa, we will liberate all of Palestine.
00:41:15.220
I mean, they haven't given up the dream. So number one, Trump looks at that and he says, you know what,
00:41:21.940
what are we going to do? Reconstitute this? That's insane.
00:41:27.700
Look, in our country, in Canada, and in other world capitals, we just keep hearing,
00:41:34.260
well, we need a two state solution. And my response is always, who's the other partner?
00:41:40.740
Who's the partner, the guys that want to sit across and say, okay, we want to do October 7th again.
00:41:46.420
Our opening position is Vivian and all Jews should be dead.
00:41:51.460
Exactly. And, and what people seem to have, you know, everyone in the West understood ISIS.
00:41:56.900
They just like, wow, this is really bad. This is evil. This is extreme.
00:42:00.980
They understood that with Al-Qaeda. For some reason, there's this, this desire to
00:42:07.380
romanticize Hamas as resistance fighters, you know, as they're just seeking truth,
00:42:14.660
beauty and justice. No, they're not. This is a savage culture. And so I think Trump is saying, no,
00:42:22.740
we're not, we're not repeating the same mistakes. This is insanity. Number one, this population has
00:42:30.260
to be re-educated. Number two, as a practical matter, particularly in the northern part of the
00:42:35.940
Gaza Strip, it's rubble. There is nothing left. We can get into how and why that happened. The fact is,
00:42:44.260
there's rubble, there's no infrastructure, people cannot live there. So we're going to have to
00:42:50.180
find a way for them to continue their lives elsewhere, while the Gaza Strip is restored,
00:42:58.900
but no one's going to restore it for Hamas to rule.
00:43:06.660
No, exactly. Exactly. And one of the impasses, one of the many impasses is, you know, you've got Saudi
00:43:14.100
Arabia, you've got the UAE kind of salivating over this prime coastline and really very good land.
00:43:21.300
I mean, it's the same, same part of the small country that I now live in. It's very fertile. It's,
00:43:27.700
it's the breadbasket of, of Israel. But they've chosen to turn it into a bristling kind of munitions
00:43:34.020
factory in war zone. It could have been Singapore.
00:43:36.820
This is what I kept hearing when I was in Israel. Everyone's saying this could be Singapore. This
00:43:48.500
It's unbelievably beautiful. So both UAE and Saudi want to come in and develop it,
00:43:54.580
but they want to keep their, their powder dry and their hands clean. They don't want to get involved
00:43:59.060
in, it's like, really guys? No, sorry. So there's going to be some very heavy arm twisting by the
00:44:05.860
Trump administration, I expect, because Trump is saying, you know what, Egypt, you've got to take
00:44:13.140
some of these people in. Why do you expect Israel to continue to put up with this incredibly radical,
00:44:24.500
hostile death cult on its border? It's, this is just not sustainable. Well, guess what? Egypt doesn't
00:44:33.540
want them. No Muslim country wants them. There are how many 56 Muslim majority countries?
00:44:41.060
And not one, not one is stepping up to take them. You know who the four countries are who so far have
00:44:46.740
kind of put their hands up for President Trump when he said, we've got to resettle some of these people?
00:44:50.820
Albania, Indonesia, Canada, and Egypt's getting its arm twisted very hard. Albania and Indonesia,
00:45:08.420
there's money, and those are poorer countries, right? Yeah.
00:45:11.380
Yeah. In Canada, we want to pretend we're taking them for the right reasons we're not. It's politics
00:45:19.460
on Justin Trudeau's part. Yep. I really, really hope that Canadians start looking at what's going on
00:45:26.980
and what we're bringing in and how they behave. And for the most part, don't assimilate, don't respect
00:45:33.380
our national values. And we've got the hate marches on the streets every week, multiple times a week
00:45:40.020
here in Toronto, in Montreal, in Victoria. And that's without bringing in a completely radicalized
00:45:48.900
population that, what's the number, as we said, 5,000 people. 99% of those 5,000 people will believe
00:45:58.100
that October 7th was justified and should happen again. How do we assimilate in any way that kind
00:46:07.620
of a population? We don't. You cannot force assimilate. I think that all you have to do is
00:46:15.380
look at much of Western Europe, you know, countries that have the same liberal democratic values that
00:46:22.020
Canada does or did, and what has happened in those countries. I mean, even in Germany,
00:46:27.620
a country of 85 million people, Angela Merkel famously, you know, decided, and I'm actually
00:46:32.740
working my way through her autobiography, which is about as sizzling as she is. But, you know,
00:46:38.900
I'm now at the 2015 point where she very much, quite impulsively, made the decision to let in
00:46:47.580
over 1 million Muslim immigrants, asylum seekers. And this is in a country at the time of 84 million.
00:46:55.360
And she now says, that was a mistake. We now see what's going on in Germany. And that's one of
00:47:03.300
the reasons that I'm traveling to Germany next week is to really get a good handle on what we
00:47:09.100
in Canada are looking at 5, 10 years down the road, possibly sooner. Because people in Germany feel
00:47:17.180
very threatened. And they are. Because most of these asylum seekers do not want to assimilate.
00:47:26.120
They do not respect the values of the host country. They come in, they very much stick
00:47:32.460
within their own community. And their values are to promote Islam. They don't make it.
00:47:38.560
We've got a conference that's been shut down twice and coming a third time to promote the
00:47:46.040
caliphate. This is a group of people living in Canada who believe that there should be no
00:47:54.060
Canada, that there should be no secular government, that the caliphate, led by a holy Islamic ruler,
00:48:01.040
should govern everybody. That is insane. And a lot of people can't wrap their brains around
00:48:10.180
that. We're going past time. But I've got to ask you one question about the future of government
00:48:17.100
in Israel. The thing I heard time and again, left, right, and center, was, again, a year ago,
00:48:26.140
everyone was angry at Netanyahu for failing to see October 7th coming, for failing to stop it.
00:48:34.460
But left, right, and center, they all said, because, you know, as Westerners were like,
00:48:39.520
well, are you got to get rid of Netanyahu? And they were all like, no, not yet. We need to
00:48:45.380
deal with Hamas first. Has that changed? I've seen the polling. The parties that are currently part of
00:48:52.040
his coalition would lose a lot of seats if there were an election. The, you know, the other coalition
00:48:58.060
would most likely have doubled the number of seats. What do you think is going to happen? What's the
00:49:04.180
future of Netanyahu? Well, the future of Netanyahu is at some point he's going to be gone. But, you
00:49:10.280
know, I know better than to try to predict Israeli politics. But I'll just lay out a few key facts.
00:49:14.280
One is, yes, when October 7th happened, Israel rallied around the urgency of the moment,
00:49:21.840
which is what this country does best. I personally did not agree. I thought at the time that there
00:49:27.740
should be a change of, that the Prime Minister should resign. But the country did come together,
00:49:34.300
and the expectation was that the war would be three months, two to three months, and we'd have
00:49:40.340
it done. It didn't work out that way for a whole bunch of reasons. And there is today, if you fast
00:49:45.800
forward 15, 16 months later, I would say quite widespread dissatisfaction and anger with respect
00:49:53.220
to how this war has been prosecuted. We still have, you know, hundreds of thousands of people
00:50:00.700
displaced from their homes in the north and in the south. And it was very much, you know, one very
00:50:08.320
senior army officer said to me recently, it was like, we were like, it was whack-a-mole. You know,
00:50:15.400
there just seemed to be a lack of a strategic plan. For example, going into Shifa Hospital the first time,
00:50:22.640
Israel had to go in four times. Why? Like, why do you go in, do the job, and then come out and then
00:50:27.760
go back in? So there is now, I think, quite widespread dissatisfaction with the way in which
00:50:34.680
the war has been prosecuted. This government is seen to have way politicized, overly politicized,
00:50:43.440
important security decisions that have had to have been taken. And now we have ourselves
00:50:49.380
in this hostage situation. And if I was to make a prediction, I would say this, that both
00:50:55.640
Witkoff and Trump are going to lean on Netanyahu to get every last hostage out, even if it means a
00:51:04.280
full IDF withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, other than a kind of one kilometer wide, you know, strip
00:51:10.460
within the strip along the border. And that will kill Netanyahu's coalition. There's no doubt. But I don't
00:51:18.900
think he's going to have a choice. I don't. I don't think that the Americans will support Israel going
00:51:26.840
back into Gaza without the release, repatriation of all hostages and bodies. And I frankly don't think
00:51:33.800
most of this country will any longer. I think that there's a line that was crossed. And I think that
00:51:39.580
back to our some of the things we discussed earlier, the emotional, the emotional kind of circuit
00:51:52.020
that's just surging through this country, upon seeing these hostages being released, I think has
00:51:59.080
really helped a lot of people who oppose the deal to reconnect with what is our most fundamental and
00:52:05.780
important value. You know, no one left behind. No one left behind. And many of the people who
00:52:11.200
opposed it, they said, things like, look at them, look at the streets of Gaza, they're celebrating,
00:52:17.100
we look weak, you know, that's why we shouldn't do this. And I look at them. And I say, I'm not going
00:52:22.760
to make my decisions based on what they see as being moral or powerful. We have to know what our own
00:52:30.080
morality is. And, you know, I think that that's really, really important. And I think people have
00:52:37.260
reconnected with that. President Trump, before he was elected, everyone was saying, oh, he's anti-war,
00:52:43.020
he's anti-war, he's going back to this like huge isolationist, you know, traditional kind of,
00:52:47.620
depending on the era, American position. And I wasn't hearing that. What I was hearing him say was,
00:52:52.980
I want the wars to end. Most of them are stupid, and they can be solved pretty easily.
00:52:57.080
But he was also saying, I will not shy away from using American power. Yeah, I will not shy away
00:53:04.960
from using my levers to make those wars stop. And I think that's what we're seeing in the Middle East.
00:53:12.500
You and I heard the same thing. Vivian, it's always great talking to you. We could go on.
00:53:16.360
Thank you so much, Brian. I always love coming on.
00:53:19.960
Thanks for listening today. Full Comment is a post media podcast. My name is Brian Lilly,
00:53:24.160
your host. This episode was produced by Andre Pru, theme music by Bryce Hall. Kevin Libin is the
00:53:29.640
executive producer. You can subscribe to Full Comment, and please do subscribe on Apple Podcasts,
00:53:35.220
on YouTube, Spotify, Amazon, wherever you get your podcasts. Help us out by leaving us a rating,
00:53:41.400
a review, and telling your friends about us. Thanks for listening. Until next time, I'm Brian Lilly.