00:02:57.880So basically, that was 10 a.m. on Monday, which was Holocaust Remembrance Day.
00:03:04.760It's a day when all of Israel stops, like cars on the highway stop driving, people stop moving, they stop talking.
00:03:12.440And it's total silence across the country, except for the artillery fire.
00:03:17.880And when we heard that, we thought an attack was underway, and it wasn't.
00:03:22.380It was the IDF deploying artillery, firing off shots to deter Hamas from attacking during this moment of reflection and quiet.
00:03:37.540Because apparently they've done that before.
00:03:39.020And like this country, Israel can't even have a moment of reflection for their dead, because their enemies will use that moment of reflection to kill more of them.
00:04:20.160In the mornings, you know, when they have the included breakfast, you can see exhausted parents trying to corral their kids, who are wearing pajamas all the time.
00:04:30.760And they look sadder than a kid ever should.
00:04:33.620And out on the streets, the restaurants and shops are mostly empty.
00:04:38.680Fewer people than usual can be seen walking around.
00:04:42.220And outside the cities like Jerusalem, you see soldiers everywhere.
00:06:37.640As they live refugee lives and cramp hotel rooms far from their homes, Israelis watch the news carefully because there's not much else to do.
00:06:46.900They see the hate rallies in our streets.
00:06:48.940They see the attacks on Canadian synagogues and Jewish community centers and businesses.
00:06:53.860They see our kids, white, privileged kids, hiding behind masks, camping out at universities, making tributes to actual terrorists.
00:07:06.620The Israelis see all that and they feel utterly and completely alone.
00:07:11.840They feel abandoned by those they considered allies and friends, like Canadians.
00:07:15.600And they wonder if October 7th, 2023 is some new Kristallnacht, a reprise of what followed it.
00:07:24.280They wonder if Hamas and Iran and their satanic brethren will finish what the Nazis started.
00:07:30.280And over and over, Israelis express bewilderment to me.
00:07:34.800Why do so many in the West regard us as this warmongering, white supremacist, Islamophobic, apartheid regime led by a fascist?
00:07:47.580Like, lots of people think Israelis fully support the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and his senior leadership and the armed forces and the intelligence agencies.
00:16:40.800And we're back after a week apart with my buddy and colleague, Brian Lilly.
00:16:46.780I was in Israel, as Brian previously was, in January.
00:16:53.400And he had some insights then and now.
00:16:57.760And I wanted to talk to him about those.
00:17:00.200One of the people who will be featured on the podcast this week, Brian, and apologies for my jet lag, is a former ranking officer in the Israeli Defense Forces.
00:17:14.600And one of the things he said to me, and the media colleagues are with me on this mission to Israel, was that Israel has no choice but to go into Rafa.
00:17:49.360Well, I'm amazed it's taken them this long to go into Rafa.
00:17:55.540And they still are doing incursions in northern Gaza.
00:18:01.440Despite the rhetoric of Israel's critics, even now, they're not occupying Gaza.
00:18:08.380They're going back into areas of northern Gaza, which most people had thought had been previously cleared, and doing strikes in areas.
00:18:18.040They've been holding off on going into Rafa for months now.
00:18:25.200I remember talking to people shortly after we came back from Israel in late January, and it was all a discussion about when will the ground offensive in Rafa happen.
00:18:42.300It has ensured humanitarian corridors.
00:18:44.320It has ensured the ability of actual civilians to be able to get out, and it's being very careful.
00:18:51.460So, yes, they do have to go into Rafa.
00:18:53.480They have to go into Rafa now, and they will not eliminate Hamas and all of its supporters,
00:19:01.960because any polling that you see shows that the vast majority of people in Gaza support Hamas.
00:19:09.940It's why, you know, people will, you'll hear the Israeli government talk about, oh, we're not fighting the people of Gaza, we're fighting Hamas.
00:19:20.040The people of Gaza want Hamas back in.
00:19:22.260So they're never going to get rid of Hamas and the ideology, but what they will do is make sure that they are severely degraded militarily,
00:19:29.880and their ability to launch future strikes on Israel like they did on October 7th.
00:19:39.140And, you know, the two words you used just a minute ago, I want to emphasize as well, because I agree with every word you said, do it very carefully.
00:19:48.440Like, the notion that the world has this mythology that they're going to, you know, eliminate Rafa, like bomb the place till it's rubble, well, that's killing their own people.
00:20:04.680I think one of the objectives is to close the tunnel between Egypt and Gaza, through which all these munitions that have been used against Israelis and others has gone.
00:20:16.500I mean, that's one of the objectives as well that's quite legitimate, isn't it?
00:20:21.360And, you know, if Israel was conducting a genocide, as their critics claim, as all these misinformed students and agitators and useful idiots are proclaiming day after day, well, then they would have just bombed Rafa to rubble.
00:20:41.340They would have done that with the entire Gaza Strip, and they haven't done that.
00:20:45.860Has there been devastation of infrastructure?
00:20:50.560Absolutely, because the infrastructure was tied into a terror tunnel network.
00:20:54.320And that is the fault of the organization that has been governing Gaza effectively since 2005, officially since 2007, I believe it was.
00:21:03.540They have taken billions of dollars of aid, and instead of building water treatment plants and water provisions to provide clean drinking water to their people or to provide electricity, they built terror tunnels.
00:21:23.100And I remember speaking with one retired IDF officer while I was there who spent a lot of time in Gaza working alongside civilian authorities long before October 7th, and Israel provided a certain amount of electricity.
00:21:41.060And the local authorities would come and say, well, we need you to provide more.
00:21:48.400Well, that electricity was also being diverted to Hamas's terror tunnel activities.
00:21:55.120And everybody knew that, and they would just say, well, we need it for the civilians.
00:22:00.500You know, this idea of Israel starving people to death, bombing them into the Stone Age is simply not backed up by facts.
00:22:13.260The amount of aid, the amount of aid going in is crazy.
00:22:18.400The population of Gaza has increased year after year after year.
00:22:25.000If that is anyone's version of a genocide, I think you need to look up what the meaning of the word is again.
00:22:31.600And, you know, the aid that has gone in and then sat there because it will not be picked up by UNRWA or Hamas or the other organizations that are in there supposedly distributing food, food has rotted because they've tried to go in.
00:22:50.340And so they are being careful, and they are not doing what the critics worldwide are claiming.
00:22:59.320One more person that I'm going to be featuring on the podcast along with you and the former general is a guy at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem.
00:24:09.360Have you seen evidence that this is showing up in other places and not just Canada?
00:24:14.900Well, unlike CBC, which did a quote-unquote fact check that I think you'll be dealing with shortly, we actually look for evidence as opposed to CBC saying, well, we looked and didn't really look, and so we didn't find anything.
00:24:29.220You and I have looked, and we've seen the reports.
00:24:45.560And whether it was in Glasgow or in Edinburgh, the profile of the people who are showing up and saying free Palestine is virtually identical.
00:24:55.120You know, the student groups, the left-wing groups, I was at the Scottish Parliament a few days ago, and the encampments look exactly like they do here.
00:25:11.780I was on the Royal Mile, just steps from Edinburgh Castle, outside of St. Giles Cathedral, where Queen Elizabeth laid in state after her passing at Balmoral Castle.
00:25:23.400And there's a group of, you know, effectively, they're like the raging grannies singing for a ceasefire outside of the church.
00:25:30.720And you look at all these groups, and you say, if we went back 30, 30-plus years to before the fall of the Iron Curtain, these exact same people would be doing the exact same things, denouncing the West, praising the USSR, praising Soviet-style politics and ways of life.
00:25:54.380They're using the same playbook that was used during the Cold War, and it's the same groups of people.
00:25:59.580These are what Lenin called the useful idiots, and they are a fifth column in our midst, willing to undermine democracy, willing to undermine our way of life.
00:26:13.220But what we have to acknowledge, though, unlike, you know, 40, 50 years ago, these groups, they just seem more numerous and better organized.
00:26:24.800I mean, it's reached the point where they're projecting, you know, the logo of the Hamas military wing on the side of buildings at the University of Toronto.
00:26:33.680Like, it's reached the point where they're advocating online, you know, federally registered non-profits, so-called, advocating for martyrdom online and getting away with it.
00:26:45.900Like, you know, you've got people showing up with 100 flags.
00:26:52.980I sent you the video of these guys showing up with 100 flags on poles at U of T.
00:27:00.960This is all people affiliated with the, I believe it's the Palestine group.
00:27:08.460Yeah, and then they're putting them on poles, they're stapling them, they've got vehicles, they've got organization, they've got warehouses.
00:27:16.720The other day, they were promoting that they had 20,000 wristbands, those little plastic wristbands with Free Palestine printed on them.
00:27:28.200This does not happen, as you and I both know, in a grassroots way.
00:27:32.360And it's, you know, I had a gentleman on the Full Comment podcast a couple of weeks ago, and he was talking about how this is Qatari money.
00:27:48.120And, yes, Iran's part of it, but while the rest of the Gulf states are moving to minimize things, to go in a different route, not to court extremism, Qatar is going in the opposite way.
00:28:07.120It is being laundered in Canada at times, and it's going around the world.
00:28:12.260So, unlike CBC, we've shown our work, and the other organizations have shown their work.
00:28:21.620The federal government has to start dealing with this.
00:28:24.760Unfortunately, we've got a very weak federal government right now that has just decided to make a major policy shift on Friday.
00:28:33.340I don't know if you saw that due to your travels and schedule, but they have decided that they no longer need to wait for peace to recognize a Palestinian state.
00:28:44.200So they didn't vote yes at the UN, but they abstained and said, we'll look at rewarding, and this is my view, rewarding Hamas sooner rather than later.
00:28:54.780They just sent a major signal to Hamas, hold on, hold off, don't surrender, because more countries are coming your way to give you the political support and backing that you need.
00:29:08.760Well, my hope is, and, you know, when I came back, my partner, E, who you know and is not a political person, she said, you know, I watched what Polly have said about these recent developments with Israel, and I agreed with every single word, and I did as well.
00:29:25.260You know, a change in government cannot come soon enough on this issue in particular, because I just feel that we are led by a government that has zero moral compass, zero sense of what is right.
00:29:39.840Brian Lilly, it's so great to hear your voice. Thank you, my friend.
00:29:44.240You're going to tee up what follows in the podcast, these important people I spoke to in Israel, and then I think after that, both of us need to have a nap somewhere and get rid of this jet lag.
00:33:46.440The infrastructure for the existence of this has been set up years ago under other pretextes.
00:33:56.200Whether it be, oh, look what they're doing in Afghanistan or Iraq,
00:34:01.420we need to organize around that, or Israel and Palestinians, we need to organize around that.
00:34:09.480But there's a force, a state-driven force that has been pushing and investing.
00:34:18.880An extremely wealthy force that has been investing a lot of money.
00:34:25.900And a lot of, not just money, but time, which is way more important into shaping what he wants a response to be when the day comes when he needs it.
00:34:39.960Everyone sort of does this with, it's called public diplomacy, or you can call it light diplomacy, but this is more than that.
00:34:55.040This is heavy investing into changing or rearranging the political map of other countries.
00:35:22.500This is an infrastructure that has been built into, we want to change the other.
00:35:29.700So this hidden hand, this power that has been moving by very influential state actors has been set up for decades now.
00:35:41.500Is the target Israel or beyond Israel, Western democracy, decency, tolerance?
00:35:47.380It is Western liberal democracy that is on the line.
00:35:52.240That we are the bastion of this in a very tough environment.
00:36:01.820The Western democracy that is represented in Canada, the United States, Western Europe, and also in Israel, that is the aim at the end of the day.
00:36:13.800In order to change that into something else, something that we might be more agreeable with, something that is not going to hinder our actions.
00:36:31.860It is a transformative or a case for transformation of that society.
00:36:41.280Earlier you mentioned resources and a state actor.
00:36:46.200What about, to get specific, something like TikTok, headquartered in the People's Republic of China.
00:36:53.200It's one of, I know, to be one of the principal platforms for anti-Semitism and Jew hatred and anti-Israelism, but also anti-democracy on the planet.
00:37:03.300You know, what meaningful steps can states take?
00:37:07.340You know, the United States has representatives, both sides, both parties have said it, unless you change your ownership structure, you know, we're going to remove you from the United States.
00:40:11.580It seems like Gen Z, as we define them, that 18 to 25-year-olds, even a bit younger, maybe 16 to 25-year-olds,
00:40:22.380they have moved away enough from the Holocaust, from what happened to Jews, from the birth of the State of Israel and the reasons for that birth.
00:40:38.140They have moved far enough to build a different reality, or to be open to ideas that don't necessarily have truth built into them,
00:40:53.380maybe half-truths, which is worse than a lie.
00:40:56.460And they are now adapting other points of view, maybe to rebel against previous generations.
00:41:11.600Maybe to build something that is new as they are, because they are probably the first generation that was completely born into this digital world.
00:43:09.220The next politicians, we've seen some young politicians in this world, prime ministers and presidents, as early as 37.
00:43:16.560And just mentioning the chancellor of Austria, but the investment must be made, not just in them, but also in this reality that surrounds them.
00:43:30.240This fluid reality, these uncontrollable digital walls in order to present something a bit more truthful because truth exists.