Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ How the Abraham Accords are transforming the Middle East

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. I am in Dubai, and we are wrapping up our Abraham Accords journey,

00:00:05.780 a journalistic mission, and we took more than 40 Rebel News superfans. It's been great,

00:00:10.900 so I'm going to have a good catch-up with Joel Pollack, Senior Editor-at-Large of Breitbart.com,

00:00:15.640 who accompanied us. Hey, by the way, it's such a visual feast, some of what we're doing. I'd like

00:00:20.640 you to get the video version of this podcast. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe.

00:00:26.240 It's eight bucks a month. I know that might not be a lot of dough to you, but it really adds up for us.

00:00:32.000 It's how we pay the bills. So please go to rebelnewsplus.com and click subscribe. All right,

00:00:37.280 here's today's podcast.

00:00:38.220 Chabibi, come to Dubai. It's September 12th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show. 0.99

00:00:59.020 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:08.220 Oh, hi there. I am in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. It is sweltering, almost 40 degrees, 0.78

00:01:19.540 even though it's nighttime. It gets hotter during the day. This is a city that wouldn't really exist

00:01:23.980 without air conditioning. Well, I suppose it has existed for centuries, but not the skyscrapers.

00:01:29.060 We're standing in front of a mosque, which is beautiful and historic, but it is not the norm

00:01:36.400 in this city. The norm are the, well, for example, the tallest building in the world,

00:01:40.820 the Burj Khalifa. It is like Las Vegas on steroids. It's an incredible city, and it's really coming

00:01:47.500 into its own in the last 15 years. I don't know if it's true today, but there was a point in time

00:01:52.680 when literally most of the construction cranes in the world that we're operating were in the United

00:02:00.140 Arab Emirates. That's how explosive the growth is in this country. I use the word explosive in other 1.00

00:02:06.160 parts of the Middle East. When you say explosive, you think of terrorism and war, not the United

00:02:10.660 Arab Emirates. And here's another thing. I'm a Jew, as is my friend Joel Pollack, senior editor at

00:02:16.440 large of Breitbart.com, and he's more identifiable as a Jew because he wears the Jewish yarmulke or

00:02:21.520 skullcap. And yet here we are in a Muslim Arab dictatorship. Let's be honest, it's a benign 1.00

00:02:27.160 dictatorship, but a dictatorship nonetheless. And yet Jews and other minorities, including

00:02:31.900 Christians, can walk freely here. And even much more, there are Jewish synagogues and Christian

00:02:38.020 churches here, free of persecution that you find in other places in the Middle East, and even in

00:02:42.960 places like China. We are here because this is, we're one week into our Rebel News trip, where we've

00:02:51.680 taken 40 of our most enthusiastic viewers, and we're going through Israel, and then we just landed

00:02:56.960 today in the UAE to look at the Abraham Accords. That is the peace treaty negotiated by Donald

00:03:03.400 Trump. I have to say, were it any other man or any other political party, he would have received the

00:03:09.000 Nobel Prize for solving the insoluble problem, bringing peace to Jews and Arabs in the Middle

00:03:14.520 East, something that I myself thought was impossible and intractable. I'm going to bring Joel into this

00:03:20.460 conversation in a moment. I promise you I will. But I just want to say that it was personally

00:03:25.160 moving when you fly on the Jewish airline El Al from Tel Aviv over Saudi Arabia, landing in the

00:03:33.360 United Arab Emirates. You go into the immigration line, or you're greeted by an Emirati wearing the

00:03:38.900 keffiyeh, and he stamps your passport and says, welcome to Dubai. It's an incredible feeling of,

00:03:45.480 I'll say it, I don't want to sound emotionally weepy, but it's a feeling of healing and of salving a

00:03:52.300 wound. Because I have to say, growing up, I thought that Arab countries and Muslim people

00:03:57.560 were permanent, perpetual, ancient, and non-negotiable permanent foes of the Jews. And yet 0.93

00:04:09.180 there is a warm, genuine peace that is given life to all the time. At the airport in Tel Aviv, I saw

00:04:16.920 four different flights to the United Arab Emirates, as many as to any other place. It's quite

00:04:22.540 incredible. All right, I've been talking for long enough, and you have my views on things, but I'm

00:04:27.740 excited that for the past week, Joel Pollack of Breitbart has been accompanying us. On a few occasions,

00:04:34.060 he's gone on little excursions himself, while our group in the main has gone other places. But pretty much

00:04:40.220 he's been tracking our journey. And I want to bring him into the conversation and really do an extended

00:04:44.680 conversation with him about our trip, because I think he follows the Israel and Middle East beat

00:04:51.120 more closely than I do. And I think he has a different temperament than me. I'm more enthusiastic.

00:04:57.180 I either cheer something or condemn it. I think Joel analyzes things perhaps a little bit more

00:05:03.260 neutrally than I do, which is why I think his work is so successful. I think he's very trustworthy and

00:05:09.280 reliable. So let me, without further ado, bring in my friend Joel Pollack. Joel, great to see you.

00:05:13.980 It's a little bit hot. I appreciate you stepping out of the air conditioning. I just wanted that

00:05:17.840 gorgeous mosque in the background. Well, it's just two Jewish guys talking in the steam room out here. 0.99

00:05:22.660 That's what's happening. You know, it's funny. I sent you a note today saying, are we meeting up

00:05:27.120 with you in Abu Dhabi or Dubai? That's a conversation that two Jews would never in a million years have

00:05:32.500 had until the Abraham Accords. And I'm standing in front of this mosque. And in the past, I would have 0.80

00:05:38.040 felt trepidation. I would have said, is it a mosque where terrorism is being fomented and incubated? 0.54

00:05:46.780 And instead of those feelings of fear and loathing, I have the opposite. I feel

00:05:53.420 a friendship which was offered by Dubai to the Jewish people. And I look at that now,

00:06:01.040 I guess with fresh eyes that do not have any condemnation. I look at the beautiful and ornate

00:06:07.040 history and design of it. And I think with true belief that it may well be possible for the

00:06:14.520 Abrahamic religions, Jews, Christians, and Muslims to actually coexist in a meaningful friendship. I

00:06:20.020 don't know if I'm sounding, you know, pie in the sky, but I think that the United Arab Emirates

00:06:25.720 is sort of proof that it can happen. Well, the proof is around us. And as you pointed out,

00:06:30.960 we're here. Nobody's bothering us. We're here on a street corner, two Jewish guys who

00:06:34.760 sat, maybe you sat as I did in my fourth grade Hebrew class looking at a map of the Middle East,

00:06:41.000 and there were all these forbidden countries. And some of these names on a map seemed like places

00:06:46.560 I would never be able to see or visit. And yet here we are. And I actually didn't come to Dubai

00:06:51.500 for many years because until a few years ago and until the Abraham Accords, they would not allow 0.93

00:06:56.580 Israelis into the country. And you even had a problem if you had an Israeli stamp in your passport.

00:07:00.680 That was a discriminatory policy that basically discriminated against Jews, Israelis more generally,

00:07:05.540 but particularly against Jews. And they got into some trouble over it. There were some tennis

00:07:10.080 tournaments. I believe there was a chess tournament once where there was an Israeli competitor who wasn't

00:07:14.960 able to compete because of the fact they were from Israel. And all that changed. 0.56

00:07:20.580 And it changed because the leadership of the United Arab Emirates decided to make it change.

00:07:26.280 And that's in a sense what Jews and particularly Israelis have said for decades, that there will

00:07:33.040 be peace when Arab leaders decide that the future is more important than the past. And that's happened 0.96

00:07:39.880 here. And it's not just happened with regard to Israel. It's not just a change with regard to

00:07:43.880 Jews or Christians. The leadership of UAE, if you look around us, we don't see any oil drilling

00:07:50.200 platforms or anything like that. And obviously, this is still very much an oil-based economy and

00:07:54.600 fossil fuel resources are very important. But they looked at the bigger picture, the long term,

00:07:59.260 and they said, look, we can't survive on the energy industry alone. We want to become an international

00:08:04.440 trade hub. We want to become a travel destination. We want to become a luxury tourist hub. And the

00:08:10.960 leadership of the United Arab Emirates took their own destiny into their own hands and they remade their

00:08:15.120 country. And in so doing, they freed themselves basically to remake their relationships with the

00:08:20.120 rest of the region. So that's what has happened with Israel. And the flights to and fro between 0.54

00:08:26.740 Tel Aviv and Dubai now are almost like the commute from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Israelis love Dubai. They 0.85

00:08:33.320 love the shopping. They love the nightlife. And there's a lot for Emiratis to discover in Israel as well.

00:08:38.400 It's slightly cooler. So the weather's a little bit better. But there are also so many other things

00:08:43.820 to do in Israel. Obviously, they're the holy sites. But Tel Aviv has this unique nightlife and unique

00:08:49.020 outdoor culture, art, connection to Europe, connection to many different things. And Jewish culture is

00:08:54.700 interesting to Muslims. I was in Abu Dhabi earlier today to visit the Abrahamic Family Mosque, which is a

00:08:59.660 new development that includes a mosque, a synagogue, and a church. The Abrahamic Family House,

00:09:07.220 excuse me, is what it's called. And it was absolutely incredible. The architecture and the design of

00:09:13.280 these buildings was amazing. But more than that, as you pointed out, the welcome that I received when

00:09:16.960 I went there from the Emiratis and from others who are working there who believe that we can get back

00:09:22.980 to the common Abrahamic roots of all of our faiths and get to the tradition, which is right there in

00:09:30.640 Genesis in the Old Testament, of Abraham welcoming guests. And that's become part of Arab tradition

00:09:37.060 in the Middle East. It has been for centuries. It's also part of Jewish culture. And extending that

00:09:42.700 welcome is something that we've experienced already just in the few hours we've been here.

00:09:46.960 And I've been very impressed. So I'm very glad that all of this happened. And as you said, it does

00:09:51.360 resolve a lot of feelings, I think, that you have as a Jewish person, because we care so much about

00:09:56.800 the future of the Jewish people, which is understandable, given that we were nearly wiped

00:10:00.960 out within living memory. And therefore, we care a lot about Israel's survival. And all of that seems

00:10:07.420 up in the air, as strong as Israel is, and as powerful as it has become, and as successful as

00:10:12.260 it has become, it still seems vulnerable when there's a state of war with the rest of the region.

00:10:18.220 And peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan have helped, but especially this very warm peace

00:10:22.860 with the United Arab Emirates, which is not just a peace among leaders, but really a peace between

00:10:26.480 people. It's really just changed the outlook. And we're going to see things happen in the future

00:10:32.060 that we can't believe any more than we could believe that two Jews would be standing here in 1.00

00:10:35.400 front of a mosque in the middle of nighttime traffic in Dubai talking about the world.

00:10:39.340 We are going to see things happen coming out of that relationship that I think will benefit

00:10:43.560 everybody.

00:10:44.560 You raised a good point. Israel has had peace treaties in the past with Egypt, a very major breakthrough in

00:10:50.720 the late seventies with Jordan, but it hasn't been a warm peace. It hasn't been, we've been waiting

00:10:56.660 for you. Welcome Habibi, come set up a synagogue. You know, I, I saw Bahrain, it's a small Gulf 0.90

00:11:03.780 country. I don't remember it offhand, but, but there was some Bahraini leader who was holding a Jewish

00:11:09.480 Torah or something like actually like something that if you were to try that in, let's say the West Bank 0.94

00:11:15.800 or Gaza Strip, the local PLO thugs would, would beat you up or kill you. And, and it's a sign that 0.96

00:11:22.560 this isn't just some paper deal like that. That is a remarkably warm gesture.

00:11:29.800 You just reminded me of something. When we went to Bethlehem, when we were in Israel, we crossed

00:11:35.260 through the checkpoint and we're, we were into a Palestinian authority controlled area. And the driver

00:11:40.700 of our bus asked me if I had a hat. I don't know if you saw this happen, but he asked me if I had a hat

00:11:45.860 and I do have a baseball hat for the sun usually. And he told me to put it on so that my kippah,

00:11:52.960 my yarmulke would be covered. He didn't want people in Bethlehem to see that I was Jewish.

00:11:59.140 And for me to come from Israel and we had just come from the town of Hebron where we had seen

00:12:03.240 the cave of the patriarchs, the tomb of the patriarchs, this very Jewish experience. And yes,

00:12:08.700 that tomb is holy to Muslims and Christians as well. But, you know, to have that spiritual

00:12:14.100 enmeshment in Jewish faith, and then literally a few meters away, cross over into a town where even

00:12:22.540 though Bethlehem is known as the town of peace, I'm getting told by the bus driver, I have to cover up

00:12:27.240 my religious identity and I'm in the Holy Land. And it was so jarring. So that's obviously the worst

00:12:33.740 case scenario where people have to hide their faith to interact with one another. But in Dubai,

00:12:38.940 again, because the leadership has taken a very different approach and they've emphasized tolerance

00:12:43.940 and they've actually built institutions that emphasize tolerance, it wasn't always that way.

00:12:48.420 15 years ago, there was a huge controversy over a donation that Harvard received from one of the

00:12:54.560 members, I believe, of the Emirati royal family who had very staunchly anti-Israel views. And I think

00:12:59.380 Harvard returned that donation. There were some controversies over some of the anti-Israel and

00:13:04.820 sometimes anti-Semitic positions of some of the leaders in this country, but they changed.

00:13:08.940 That change happened. And once you have a leadership that's willing to change, as the Palestinians are 1.00

00:13:14.420 not, but as the Emiratis clearly were, then you can suddenly open up all these relationships and you

00:13:19.620 can build a better foundation for peace and cooperation.

00:13:22.380 You know, I think part of it is, do you want a deal to succeed? And Trump is essentially a dealmaker.

00:13:27.080 I mean, if you can handle real estate commerce in Manhattan, perhaps one of the most intensely

00:13:34.080 competitive, cutthroat places in the world, maybe you can handle Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, 1.00

00:13:41.220 Palestinians. Like really, the man, like the art of the deal, he actually does know that. It's not 1.00

00:13:47.300 just a slogan or a catchphrase. The guy knows how to solve problems. I think the first thing is to have

00:13:53.540 a problem-solving mindset. You've got a point, but let me just throw you to a contrasting video.

00:13:58.820 Here is John Kerry, who was the Secretary of State, who basically said there will be no

00:14:05.680 peace deal. There will not be a peace deal if the Palestinians are dealt with first. And anyone who 1.00

00:14:11.660 thinks that Israel can make peace with an Arab or Muslim country is, and listen to how emphatic he was, 0.53

00:14:19.120 John Kerry, who's never had any real-life experience. He's been a political hack his entire life.

00:14:25.320 I can't think of anything successful he's done. He gave the whole show away to Iran in an atrocious 1.00

00:14:30.820 deal. He said, no, no, it's impossible. But he's never done a deal before, at least not one that

00:14:36.920 benefits America or the West. Here's John Kerry saying there will never be peace with the Arabs

00:14:41.240 until there's peace with the Palestinians. Take a look. 1.00

00:14:43.360 There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world. I want to make that very clear

00:14:49.660 to all of you. I've heard several prominent politicians in Israel sometimes saying,

00:14:56.660 well, the Arab world's in a different place now. We just have to reach out to them, and

00:15:00.460 we can work some things with the Arab world, and we'll deal with the Palestinians. No, no, 1.00

00:15:05.280 no, no, and no. I can tell you that reaffirmed even in the last week as I have talked to leaders

00:15:12.780 of the Arab community. There will be no advance and separate peace with the Arab world without 0.80

00:15:19.120 the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace. Everybody needs to understand that.

00:15:25.020 Well, he obviously didn't want there to be peace. Trump wanted a deal because I think he believes in

00:15:30.760 peace actually, but he also wanted to be the guy to solve the once-in-a-century problem.

00:15:36.960 When you look at Trump's career and how he made his billions, it's right there in his book,

00:15:41.800 The Art of the Deal. He had a pattern in New York real estate, which was that he would look at

00:15:48.500 projects other people had started and then abandoned for whatever reason. There was one project,

00:15:54.440 the Hudson Yards, I think, where there was an Argentinian investor, a very wealthy guy who had a vision

00:15:59.240 for what this piece of property could be, but he didn't get the zoning regulations lined up ahead

00:16:04.700 of time, and so he had to abandon it. Trump swooped in and bought him out at a very low price and then

00:16:11.120 built this development and created massive amounts of wealth and value. And that is the pattern

00:16:16.980 throughout Trump's real estate career, that he finds distressed properties, takes over the project

00:16:23.040 at a very low price, and then creates something valuable. So the John Kerry perspective was essentially

00:16:28.640 the retail perspective, if you want to put it that way, of Middle East peace, that the only peace 0.75

00:16:33.840 that's acceptable is the best possible peace, which is one that includes Israel and the Palestinians 0.57

00:16:37.480 and builds out from there. And there was this idea that unless you get that, you don't have anything.

00:16:42.700 And Kerry really wanted to discourage anybody from thinking about it any differently.

00:16:46.660 Trump came into office and tried it that way for a little while. He met with Mahmoud Abbas,

00:16:50.940 the anti-Semitic leader of the Palestinian Authority, and then he realized he wasn't getting anywhere.

00:16:55.320 So he said, okay, let's try something else. And essentially, he took over the peace process

00:16:58.900 as a distressed property. And he said, let's see if we can do this at a discount. Let's go to other

00:17:05.020 people. If you allow one company to monopolize a market, you're going to pay a higher price. So

00:17:10.360 the Palestinians were monopolizing peace. Trump said, I'm going to a competitor. I'm going to go

00:17:14.260 talk to these other regimes. Let me talk to the Saudis. Let me talk to the Emiratis. Let me talk to the

00:17:17.700 Bahrainis. Let me talk to whoever else is willing to make peace. It turned out there was a huge interest

00:17:21.380 in doing so because of their self-interest. They want commercial ties to the West. They

00:17:25.460 want commercial ties to Israel. And so was it the peace that everyone hopes for still? A

00:17:31.800 peace between Israelis and Palestinians? No. But it provides a foundation for that future 0.94

00:17:35.620 peace because it shows that there's nothing intrinsic to these cultures that means that

00:17:39.960 they have to be at war. And again, if you visit the Abrahamic family house in Abu Dhabi, you see

00:17:46.700 an incredible respect for all three of the main monotheistic faiths. There's nothing in Islam- in 1.00

00:17:52.540 fact, Islam historically has been very tolerant towards Jews and Christians, both of whom are

00:17:56.540 described as people of the book. There have also been wars and so forth and lots of conflict, but

00:18:01.660 there are ideas in there that one can focus on and bring to the fore that encourage tolerance. And

00:18:07.660 so Trump basically said, I'm going to take this distressed property and I'm going to turn it into

00:18:11.260 something valuable. And it's been immensely valuable. How do you get the Palestinians on board? Well, 1.00

00:18:15.500 I think it became clear in recent days when Mahmoud Abbas made another crazy anti-Semitic statement, 0.67

00:18:20.300 basically blaming the Jews for the Holocaust. It's clear that he's in his 80s and he's not helping.

00:18:25.740 And the Palestinian leadership is basically of that generation, the old Soviet-trained generation, 0.99

00:18:30.540 the old anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda generation. There are younger Palestinians who have had to

00:18:36.300 navigate the terrible world that their parents left them. And we talked to some of them when we were

00:18:40.860 in Israel. We talked to Arab Israelis. Those are Arabs or Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship,

00:18:46.060 and they've had to move between these two worlds. But they are young people trying to build a better

00:18:49.740 future for themselves. We talked to them at the factory in Ariel, people who actually moved from

00:18:53.980 Dubai back to the West Bank to live in what we are told by the left is a horrible occupation. But for

00:19:00.540 them, it was actually a place of economic potential as long as they could work with Israeli companies.

00:19:05.020 There are young Palestinians who want a better life. And so I think once this present generation 1.00

00:19:09.020 of Palestinian leaders leaves the stage, there will be an opening and hopefully an opening like 0.96

00:19:13.100 the one we're experiencing in Dubai. Yeah, I want to ask you one last question because

00:19:18.060 I think that Bahrain and UAE and Morocco and Sudan, obviously they won Donald Trump's favor. And I'm sure

00:19:26.220 they got certain concessions directly from Trump in America. One of those rewards being just face time

00:19:31.420 with the most powerful man in the world. And I'm sure that there were bilateral things that each of

00:19:36.620 those countries wanted from America. I'm sure of it. But I think other than just some horse trading or log 0.66

00:19:43.180 rolling, as they might call it, I think it was genuinely a peace for peace deal. As in, we're going to

00:19:50.860 offer you peace. What are you offering us in return? Also peace. Whereas the other peace deals that

00:19:56.620 Israel has had, for example, with Egypt, it was land for peace. Okay, well, did you want peace at

00:20:02.220 all? Or are you just going to say you want peace until we give you the Sinai back? And I think with 0.83

00:20:06.460 the Palestinians, it has never been peace for peace. It was, what can we get by offering peace? Let's get

00:20:12.700 the most we can through negotiations, get that. And then that's the new starting point for the next

00:20:18.700 intifada. So I think that there's a qualitative difference between, I mean, of course,

00:20:24.380 the UAE wants things from Trump and America and all these other countries do. But I think what

00:20:29.740 you've described and what we've both observed is that actually peace is the payoff.

00:20:36.700 Peace is the payoff. And look, there were things that were offered to the UAE and Bahrain and these

00:20:42.380 other countries. Interestingly, President Biden pulled back on some of those commitments.

00:20:48.140 Give me an example of what those were. There was a weapons system. I think it was the F-35

00:20:52.940 new fighter jet that the United States is using across the different branches of the armed forces.

00:20:58.380 I think we were going to go into a deal. And that had to be worked out with Israel as well,

00:21:01.660 because Israel has a strategic understanding with the United States that the Arab countries

00:21:05.980 won't be allowed to have weapons equivalent to what Israel has, because Israel has no strategic

00:21:11.340 depth whatsoever. It's a very tiny country. And so they want that qualitative military edge and

00:21:15.020 equipment that they buy from the United States. But Israel basically said, we're going to make an

00:21:19.020 exception. We'll let the UAE get these weapons systems as well. For the sake of peace with the

00:21:23.180 UAE, we're not going to go to war with the UAE. And it worked out. But the Biden administration

00:21:27.020 started reneging on some of these things. And it's interesting that since Joe Biden has taken office,

00:21:31.100 there hasn't been one new country added to the Abraham Accords. When Bahrain and the United Arab 0.89

00:21:36.140 Emirates signed on, very quickly you had Morocco, you had Sudan, you had Kosovo, you had other countries

00:21:41.260 jumping in when Trump was president. Biden has not been as interested in creating these separate

00:21:48.220 peace agreements. He has reneged on some of the goodwill and some of the promises that Trump made

00:21:53.500 to other countries. And only for domestic policy reasons. Democrats, unfortunately, in the United

00:21:58.540 States today, don't really have a foreign policy. They have a domestic policy, which is that anyone who

00:22:02.460 sides with Trump, any foreign leader, any foreign country is now an enemy of the United States.

00:22:07.980 So the UAE had a really tough time with the Biden administration in the early months because the

00:22:12.060 Biden administration treated them almost as a hostile country because they had done business

00:22:16.540 with Trump. So Biden has closed down a lot of the avenues and a lot of the horse trading that might

00:22:22.940 have helped some other countries develop peace agreements. There's now talk of a Saudi peace deal

00:22:28.460 that the Biden administration is trying to negotiate. And they are bringing in the Palestinians, 0.71

00:22:33.100 apparently at the insistence of the Saudis. But I don't know that that's going to go

00:22:37.100 anywhere because the Palestinians tend to veto these agreements. I think everybody would welcome

00:22:40.780 it if there were an Israeli-Saudi peace deal. But the progress has been so slow, whereas it was almost

00:22:47.340 every week under the Trump administration, you were seeing a new country added to this peace arrangement.

00:22:52.220 I think when America is strong and when America follows through on commitments to our allies,

00:22:57.180 then more people want to be part of the peace club. When we hang back and when we say that

00:23:03.660 we don't want peace for peace, but we are willing to sacrifice all kinds of other things, we create

00:23:09.660 an incentive, as you point out, to delay a final peace agreement because people want to see what

00:23:13.420 else they can get from us. So I think Biden, for all his talk about being a diplomacy president,

00:23:20.060 he gave a speech in his first week or so in office where he said, diplomacy is back, diplomacy is back.

00:23:24.700 We've seen no diplomacy. And in fact, this can take us further afield. We've seen

00:23:29.660 the Biden administration stoking conflict in some places rather than diplomacy. So look,

00:23:36.060 the reason a peace for peace deal is more effective in the long run is it is based on mutual respect.

00:23:40.780 And that's what's happened with Israel and the UAE. Also, I got to give credit to the

00:23:45.900 Emirati government. Again, they did something very clever, which was when Netanyahu, who also did

00:23:51.260 something clever, when Netanyahu was talking about annexing Judea and Samaria, annexing the West Bank,

00:23:56.860 the Emiratis said, don't do that. We still want there to be the potential for a Palestinian state

00:24:02.700 one day. And if you back away from that pledge to annex this territory, we might have a peace deal.

00:24:09.180 So both sides, in a sense, created this trade-off where Netanyahu agreed to maintain the status quo.

00:24:14.620 It didn't cost him anything. All he did was kind of create this asset of an annexed West Bank and then

00:24:20.860 give that to the Emiratis. And they said, okay, well, now we can talk about peace. And so

00:24:25.580 there was creative thinking on both sides about how to make it easier for the other to move into

00:24:30.220 a negotiation.

00:24:31.420 Well, Joel, it's great to have you on this trip. And I know that the dozens of Rebel News

00:24:37.820 superfans who were here have enjoyed hearing your talks on the bus. And I mean, you obviously have a

00:24:44.700 very deep knowledge of these things. And it's been fun to hang out with you. And I appreciate you taking

00:24:49.980 so much time away from work. We used to do these trips more frequently. This is actually the second

00:24:56.060 Israel trip we've done before. We have had cruises. We have events. We're getting back into these

00:25:02.300 events. I find them very interesting. They do take up time away from the office. But I think that you

00:25:06.940 learn so much. I think by being in the United Emirates, by being, for example, we had a tour of the

00:25:13.580 security fence with Colonel Danny Tirza, the retired colonel who built the things. You learn

00:25:19.420 more in one hour on the scene, a thousand little colorful details than you could by watching a TV

00:25:25.660 report or reading a book, just being there. And I think that the dozens of people on our trip

00:25:31.740 certainly feel that way. They are now going back to Canada, the US, UK, Australia. We have peoples from

00:25:37.100 all those countries. And I think in their own way, they are lay experts on the subject matter. And

00:25:42.940 some of that expertise comes from you. So thanks very much for joining us. And hopefully we'll have

00:25:46.940 you in the future. I don't want to pin you down right now, but I'd love it if you came

00:25:50.540 on future trips with us. Great to see you. You too. It's been amazing being here. And just to add to

00:25:54.540 what you just said, this isn't the kind of trip where you just go from one hotel to another. This has been

00:25:59.020 a real trip of getting out there, which is what journalism is all about. So it has allowed

00:26:02.780 the participants who are viewers and readers of Rebel News. It's allowed them to experience some

00:26:09.820 of what it's like to be a journalist and to be out in the field. And so I think it's been

00:26:12.860 valuable. And I've learned from them as well. They're very interesting and fun people.

00:26:16.140 Yeah, that's for sure. Well, there you have it. Joel Pollack, friend of ours, senior editor at large

00:26:20.300 of Breitbart.com, regular guest of the Ezra Levant Show, where we talked to him from his LA base. But

00:26:27.420 here we are in Dubai and it's only 37 degrees now. So it's cooled off tremendously.

00:26:33.100 Great to see you. And I'll be back in Toronto on Friday, looking forward to getting back to Canada,

00:26:39.020 getting back to work. I will not be in the city for long though, because I've got to cover Arthur

00:26:44.140 Pawlowski's sentencing hearing on Monday. I'm in court on Tuesday in Calgary, the Calgary police service

00:26:50.300 demanding production of our files. Derek Reimer in trial in Calgary the next day for violating the

00:26:56.860 bubble zone around the drag queen story hour. And then the next day I'm on trial again in Toronto

00:27:03.580 for my book, The Libranos. I tell you, I'm spending more time in court than I am in journalism. And of

00:27:07.980 course, Tamara Leach on trial all next week. That's rebel news for you. We tell the other side of the 1.00

00:27:13.580 story. That's our motto. But you know what we do every once in a while. It's not enough just to be

00:27:17.660 voyeurs. We have to jump in there and try and change the world, fix it a little bit. And next

00:27:23.740 week will be a mighty week for that. So I'm just catching my breath now. I've got some miles to put

00:27:28.780 on before I sleep. Thanks for joining us. Until next time, from all of us at Rebel News here in Dubai

00:27:34.780 and around the world, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - September 12, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ How the Abraham Accords are transforming the Middle East

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