Rebel News Podcast - Ezra Levant Show May 11 2018

00:00:00.000 Tonight, law-breaking pipeline protesters appear in a Vancouver court, but why is the media hiding

00:00:05.780 their true identities? It's May 11th, and you're watching The Ezra LeVant Show.

00:00:15.940 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?

00:00:19.760 There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.

00:00:23.500 You come here once a year with a sign, and you feel morally superior.

00:00:26.480 The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my

00:00:31.500 bloody right to do so.

00:00:37.100 It's frustrating to watch the violent alt-left destroy the rule of law in Canada. It bothers

00:00:42.520 me that it's an attack on the oil and gas industry most of the time, which is such an ethical

00:00:47.700 industry, so economically important in this country. But it would bother me no matter what

00:00:51.700 the alt-left was attacking, because really, it's attacking a pillar of our democracy. That

00:00:56.140 is we don't break the laws if we don't get our way in an election. Now, this has been

00:01:01.240 going on for years, and you can't even blame it all on Justin Trudeau and his extremist

00:01:05.100 principal secretary, Gerald Butts. These images I'm showing now of an environmentalist riot

00:01:10.060 on Burnaby Mountain in B.C. against the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, they

00:01:15.580 were from a few years back when Stephen Harper was the prime minister, and he had a majority

00:01:19.840 government, and Christy Clark was the premier of B.C. with a majority government there.

00:01:24.060 So you can't blame that on Justin Trudeau or John Horgan, the NDP premier, can you? I

00:01:28.540 mean, you can a bit. Their parties, their political allies are part of these illegal

00:01:33.120 attacks. The CBC itself not only acts as the PR agency for these eco-terrorists, but

00:01:38.160 they send in their last recognizable on-air personality, David Suzuki, to stand shoulder

00:01:44.000 to shoulder with the criminals, as you can see here. I say criminals because they are breaking

00:01:48.480 the law. The foreign-funded activists have a weird, gross shantytown in Burnaby. They call 0.94

00:01:54.660 it Camp Cloud, which sounds peaceful and like it would smell fresh, like a cloud. In fact,

00:01:59.940 it's squalid and heaped with garbage, just like the Occupy Wall Street slums were. And in fact, 0.96

00:02:05.900 it's pretty much the same people behind it. And they're criminals. I'm sorry, they are. 1.00

00:02:10.580 Again and again, they assault the police, in some cases injuring the police. But as you heard

00:02:15.660 Lee Humphrey tell us the other day, politicized prosecutors are laying the lowest possible charges

00:02:20.460 against these criminals, even when police are assaulted. But there are some charges. I

00:02:26.460 was pleased to see that Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party, was charged with contempt

00:02:30.100 of court for violating a court order by protesting on Kinder Morgan property. And it's appropriate

00:02:35.560 that she was charged. You can't be a lawmaker and a lawbreaker. I mean, that goes to my point

00:02:40.340 before, the rule of law, you know, the rules of democracy, say that you're not going to always

00:02:45.520 get your way in democracy. And you have to accept that. And you have to work within the system.

00:02:48.980 You can't do it the way Elizabeth May wants to do. Be a part of democracy as an honorable member

00:02:53.360 of parliament, as they're called, with all the privileges and powers that come with it. But then,

00:02:58.340 if things don't go your way, if you don't get a vote, just plain old break the law like a criminal.

00:03:02.720 No, you can't. You can't do that. Anyways, to the news of the day. I want to talk about

00:03:06.820 this story in the Vancouver Sun. Earlier this week, Kinder Morgan protester argues the defense

00:03:12.180 of necessity excused court defiance. Let me read a few lines for you. I'm actually going to read

00:03:17.920 quite a bit. And I'm not going to omit a single word. And the reason is, I want to show you how

00:03:22.820 the Vancouver Sun has become a stenographer for these lawbreakers. Just giving them a free platform

00:03:29.220 without any pushback or rebuttal. So bear with me. I'm going to read for about a full minute here,

00:03:33.440 okay? One of the protesters arrested at Kinder Morgan's Trans Mountain Pipeline Expansion

00:03:39.200 Project argued Wednesday that it was necessary for him to act to prevent what he called a bigger

00:03:45.660 crime from being committed. Tom Sandborn, who was taken into custody after allegedly violating a

00:03:52.520 court-ordered injunction at the company's Burnaby worksite and faces a criminal contempt of court charge,

00:03:58.140 said he wants to be able to use the defense of necessity at his upcoming trial. He told BC Supreme

00:04:04.720 Court Justice Kenneth Affleck that the project amounted to what he called serious crimes against

00:04:10.020 First Nations, treaty rights, the environment, and the safety of nearby residents. Quote,

00:04:14.900 the crime that was being conducted by the Canadian state and by Kinder Morgan was a major crime,

00:04:19.960 and we were justified in intervening to try to stop them, said Sandborn.

00:04:24.720 You know, it goes on for quite a bit like that. That's junk law. That's junk politics. It's crazy 0.93

00:04:31.840 talk. But the Vancouver Sun just sort of copies and pastes his speech right in the newspaper.

00:04:36.780 Eventually, the story gets around to quoting the prosecutor for a few sentences of the other side,

00:04:41.180 and then the story ends this way. The judge pointed out to Sandborn that none of the available

00:04:46.780 legal avenues, including appealing the court injunction, had been taken before some people

00:04:51.840 decided to disobey the court order. Unquote. Yeah, that's the thing. That's the point. If you

00:04:57.300 think a court order is wrong, appeal it to a higher court or change the underlying law through the

00:05:02.860 system, through legislation. Don't just say you're going to break the law. Okay, so that's the story,

00:05:08.300 but there's a bit more to this story because who is that Sandborn? I mean, if you relied on the

00:05:13.720 Vancouver Sun to, you know, tell you, you'd think he was just some guy, some random Vancouver guy.

00:05:20.860 In today's Vancouver Sun, he's mentioned again, and he's described only as a professional writer.

00:05:28.560 Really? Is that who Tom Sandborn is? No, that is not who Tom Sandborn is. Tom Sandborn is a

00:05:36.100 professional, lifelong protester, and activist who works for foreign-funded anti-oil lobby groups.

00:05:43.240 How do I know this? Well, I have access to this amazing research machine called Google,

00:05:49.920 unlike the Vancouver Sun, apparently. So I typed in the words, Tom Sandborn. I know. I managed to

00:05:57.860 think of doing that without even going to journalism school or getting a government grant. And nine out of

00:06:02.800 the top ten hits on the very first page of Google results show that he is a professional anti-oil

00:06:08.100 activist. I mean, is he a professional writer? Well, sure, he writes down his activism. It's true.

00:06:15.020 But to call him a professional writer does not illuminate the truth. It actually obscures it.

00:06:20.540 So I clicked on the very first link that came up on Google, the very first one, and it takes you to

00:06:26.380 the website of the TIE, a Vancouver-based left-wing environmentalist website that is explicitly funded

00:06:32.800 by the anti-oil lobby group called the TIEs Foundation. It's actually the very first time I

00:06:37.280 heard the word TIEs Foundation is they were giving money to the TIE. Let me read the very first paragraph

00:06:42.800 to you. So this is literally the first thing that comes up on Google, and this is the first thing that's

00:06:48.600 on that first page. Tom Sanborn was born in Alaska and raised in the wilderness by wolves.

00:06:56.520 Later, Jesuits at the University of San Francisco and radical feminists in Vancouver generously gave 0.97

00:07:00.740 time and energy to the difficult task of educating and humanizing him. Tom has a formal education, too,

00:07:06.660 a BA from UBC. He has been practicing the dark arts of journalism off and on ever since university,

00:07:11.740 and now also has about five decades of social justice, peace, and environmental campaigning under his belt.

00:07:18.600 Now, there's a bit of self-replicating humor there. He wasn't actually raised by wolves. No one he is.

00:07:25.160 But that's not the only liberties taken. What follows on that web page is his professional

00:07:30.780 writing, by which any normal reader would immediately say, holy cow, this guy is a full-time Marxist

00:07:36.420 activist. The second hit on Google when you type in Tom Sanborn is The National Observer, another extremist

00:07:43.360 outfit literally founded by Linda Solomon, the sister of Joel Solomon, the founder of the Ties

00:07:49.480 Foundation. Just a reminder, the Ties Foundation is a $150 million a year San Francisco-based Marxist

00:07:55.220 lobby group that funnels money to literally dozens of anti-oil science activists in Canada.

00:08:00.420 Here's their IRS disclosure called Form 990. There is virtually no left-wing group in Canada they do not

00:08:07.520 fund, but they have a special focus on extremist environmentalist groups. Now, I'm not going to go

00:08:13.360 Sanborn's bio. But do you see my point? Here's a kook in a B.C. court saying he has the legal right 0.99

00:08:20.800 to break the law because this legally approved, fully vetted and regulated pipeline company

00:08:26.460 is committing a larger crime. And the Vancouver Sun just writes that down loyally. And they do not

00:08:31.920 disclose that this Tom Sanborn is a journalist activist paid for by foreign anti-oil lobbyists.

00:08:38.160 They hid that from you. And while we're on this same Vancouver Sun story, look at that main picture

00:08:45.500 again. Look at that man. This was the story. Who's that man being arrested there? He's not named in the

00:08:52.340 photo caption. They just say police arrest protesters, really. They don't say who he is. But if you follow

00:08:59.340 anti-oil science politics, even casually in this country, you know who he is. That man's name is Clayton

00:09:05.320 Thomas Muller. He's not from Burnaby. He's not even from British Columbia. He's from Manitoba,

00:09:11.120 three provinces over. He's a professional protester. He is paid by various U.S.-funded lobby

00:09:18.380 groups, too. He literally jetted to Vancouver to be part of that protest. He got arrested on purpose.

00:09:26.360 But you wouldn't know that from the report, would you? You'd think it's just, you know, just British 0.88

00:09:29.660 Columbians. Here is the seminal 2008 Tar Sands campaign document from the Rockefeller Brothers

00:09:35.480 Fund in New York. I've shown this to you many times before. This is the first draft of the battle plan

00:09:40.200 to attack oil sands and pipelines. And look at the front groups that agreed to take foreign money to

00:09:44.820 attack the oil sands. I've shown this to you before. There's the WWF in the top right corner. Do you see

00:09:49.440 that? That's Gerald Butts' old organization. He's working for Trudeau now, but he used to be the

00:09:54.660 president. But you see that one sort of in the middle there? It says the Indigenous Environmental

00:10:00.440 Network. That's Clayton Thomas Muller. He's with a lot of these groups, actually. He's basically a

00:10:08.500 Hollywood actor hired to give an aboriginal look and feel to events. So it's not all just white

00:10:13.880 liberals from the U.S. like Tom Sanborn. There has never been an opinion poll in British Columbia that

00:10:19.320 I've ever seen that has shown that the popular support is against pipelines if the pipelines are

00:10:25.440 done in compliance with environmental standards, which of course they are. The Kinder Morgan Trans

00:10:29.520 Mountain Expansion Pipeline has been pumping away for nearly 70 years, by the way, without incident.

00:10:34.740 And it has actually been filling up tanker ships in the Port of Vancouver for decades without a single

00:10:39.460 navigational incident ever. This whole Trans Mountain thing is just a modernization and expansion of an

00:10:45.480 existing pipeline. So BCers know in their bones it's normal, it's fine, it's safe, and there's so

00:10:51.040 many regulators scrutinizing it. But if you only pay attention to the CBC or the Vancouver Sun,

00:10:58.280 you'd think everyone is against oil and gas and pipelines. Your neighbors, your friends, and normal

00:11:03.600 just folks like Tom Sanborn, who's at most disclosed as a professional writer. Oh, and that handsome

00:11:09.920 young aboriginal man on the cover of the Vancouver story. No, no, no, no. Tom Sanborn is a professional

00:11:16.600 activist. Clayton Thomas Muller is a professional activist who flew in just to make an appearance.

00:11:23.020 It's bad enough that our country is overrun with foreign-funded extremists looking to shut down ethical

00:11:28.120 oil to the benefit of OPEC conflict oil, our competition. But what about the mainstream media?

00:11:34.540 The Vancouver Sun, for God's sakes, that's either too lazy or too complicit to tell their viewers

00:11:41.260 even the basic facts? Stay with us for more.

00:11:45.080 Welcome back. Well, one of the things that every U.S. president for decades has promised,

00:12:05.900 but none have delivered, was the decision to move the embassy from Tel Aviv in Israel to Israel's

00:12:13.460 proper capital, Jerusalem. Every president said they would when they were courting votes and

00:12:18.180 donations from America's Jewish community, but all of them found some reason to invoke a waiver

00:12:23.620 saying it was not in the national interest. Well, Donald Trump made the same promise as the rest of

00:12:27.560 them, but lo and behold, he actually kept the promise. And you know what? The sky did not fall.

00:12:32.180 There was not another intifada. There was not another war. In fact, nobody cared. It reminded me of 0.67

00:12:38.380 when Donald Trump took America out of the global warming treaty. The sky did not fall. The man gets

00:12:44.280 things done. And it is now imminent that the embassy will open in Jerusalem. And joining us now via Skype

00:12:51.100 from his cell phone from the city of Efrat in Israel is our friend Joel Pollack, senior editor at large

00:12:58.640 at Breitbart.com. It's great to see you, Joel. You're in Israel. Tell me what the vibe is there. I see from

00:13:07.120 Breitbart.com that there are pro-Trump posters going up around Israel and that Netanyahu himself seems to be

00:13:15.040 getting a bump in the polls because things are going so well with the American ally. What's the feeling on the street?

00:13:20.800 Well, people here are very excited about the embassy move and the American president is extremely popular

00:13:31.480 right now in Israel. It's helped Benjamin Netanyahu, as you mentioned, but Donald Trump is basically a

00:13:37.860 hero, at least to Jewish Israelis. I've had several people stop me spontaneously when they realize I'm

00:13:43.680 from the United States and thank me for President Trump. The common refrain you hear from Israelis is

00:13:49.600 he does what he says he's going to do. And that is a refreshing contrast, not just to American

00:13:57.780 presidents of the past, but also to politicians of all sorts. So there's a real respect for Donald

00:14:02.880 Trump, a sense that he really loves the state of Israel and loves the Israeli people and the Jewish

00:14:08.020 people. People here feel like they've never had a better friend in the White House. These are just

00:14:11.680 different things that have been said to me by people on the street, taxi drivers, people I run into at

00:14:15.880 conferences here. They're very impressed with Trump. They feel he has a lot of courage and they're

00:14:20.640 deeply moved that he kept his promise and that on Monday, the United States will open its embassy in

00:14:26.880 Jerusalem. That's very symbolic because it's an affirmation of the legitimacy and sovereignty of

00:14:34.280 Israel. But I would imagine, because I go to Israel from time to time, in fact, we're taking a trip of

00:14:40.200 rebels. 60 or so of us were coming next month. So we're going to be there again. But in the last 10

00:14:47.740 years, there's been this cloud in the background of the Israeli psyche, if I may say so. And that is

00:14:54.980 Iran, because Iran was developing the nukes and would talk about scorching Israel in a way that felt like 0.75

00:15:04.760 an existential threat more than any conventional military threat. Israel has always been under a

00:15:10.780 conventional military threat. But the Iranian threat felt a little bit like an echo of the Holocaust

00:15:16.920 and some of the language mimicked the Holocaust. And it was matched with Iranian Holocaust denial.

00:15:24.420 So I think my theory is Trump taking on that existential threat is actually far more important

00:15:31.780 psychologically, emotionally, existentially to the Israelis than moving the embassy building.

00:15:40.400 Well, the embassy is tremendously important, but you're right about the threat.

00:15:44.420 Iran fired 20 missiles at the Golan Heights at Israeli positions there, and Israel knocked down four of

00:15:50.560 them with the Iron Dome anti-missile system, and the rest did not reach Israeli-held territory in the

00:15:56.560 Golan Heights. But you're absolutely right. It was a watershed this week, and it had nothing

00:16:01.780 to do with the Jerusalem embassy or even the Iran deal, which President Trump pulled out of. It had

00:16:06.500 to do with Israeli strikes on Iranian positions in Syria a few days ago. There's already been a kind

00:16:12.260 of proxy war between Israel and Iran for many years, either with Iranian proxies in Hamas or Hezbollah

00:16:18.640 attacking Israel. But now this is becoming a live conflict, direct between Israel and Iran.

00:16:24.700 Iran fired at Israel for the first time this week. So although tactically that attack didn't really

00:16:30.760 lead anywhere, in fact, it led Iran to lose many of its assets in Syria as Israel targeted Iranian

00:16:37.520 positions from the air for about four hours. Strategically, it marks a new beginning, a new

00:16:43.280 chapter in this conflict, one that could be more dangerous and one that was probably inevitable given

00:16:49.480 Iran's regional ambitions, which the Iran deal only helped, sadly. So now we're going to see where

00:16:55.860 it goes from here. Israel is definitely prepared and preparing for a next stage of conflict. But here 0.83

00:17:02.440 you already have Iranian forces in Syria right up next to the Israeli border. And you, of course,

00:17:09.080 still have Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, who are Iran's proxies for all intents and

00:17:15.180 purposes. So it's still quite a tense situation in the region. There's still a long way to go before

00:17:20.400 there's anything like peace. But certainly affirming Jerusalem as Israel's capital is a way of the

00:17:25.360 world's superpower saying to everybody else, this is not going to end. This is not going away. And by

00:17:31.020 the way, the Russians also have recognized Israeli sovereignty, at least over West Jerusalem. And Russia

00:17:36.660 now refers to Israel by the term West Jerusalem, referring to the capital of Israel. When West

00:17:42.480 Jerusalem speaks, West Jerusalem does this and so on. So there's a growing recognition that Jerusalem

00:17:47.220 is Israel forever, at least the Western part, even if the Eastern part is still up for negotiation.

00:17:53.100 And that's a very significant development. I think it makes Israel stronger, more secure. And

00:17:57.540 Israelis definitely feel more secure as they face the growing threat of Iran, knowing that the world 1.00

00:18:03.080 is slowly coming around to the idea that Jerusalem is Israel's permanent capital.

00:18:06.420 I have one more question about the military situation. And then I want to ask you about

00:18:11.720 Jews and Republicans and conservatives. But let me just ask, when you talked about Israel

00:18:17.740 defeating those rockets shot in using the Iron Dome technology, and I know Israel has been raiding 0.99

00:18:25.160 Iranian assets in Syria. It reminded me a little bit of when Israel first deployed the F-15 and F-16

00:18:31.460 fighter jets in the Bakah Valley more than 30 years ago. And they shot down, I don't know,

00:18:37.640 something like 80 MiG fighters and lost none. And it was such a staggering military victory. And it was

00:18:46.200 the first time those American weapons had really been put to the test. It was a proxy war back then

00:18:50.400 between Russia and America, fought between Israel and the Arab states over Syria and Lebanon.

00:18:56.040 I wonder if that's what's going on here too, because we've recently had American military

00:19:02.260 attacks on, for example, that chemical factory in Syria. But this kind of broader attack,

00:19:08.540 maybe using the new F-35 jets, I'm sort of surprised that Israel's doing the heavy lifting here, 0.90

00:19:15.140 but maybe it's not surprising. Is Israel, do you think this is a prelude to a larger attack? And I think 0.83

00:19:21.640 of when Israel took out Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor at Osirak, literally flying over into

00:19:28.380 Baghdad, F-15s, F-16s. Like it's just, it's military dominance using American tools that helps the West, 0.86

00:19:38.640 but Israel's doing the heavy lifting. Is there an analogy here? Is a bigger war coming? Tell me what

00:19:44.180 you think.

00:19:45.140 There may be one coming. And certainly Israel partners with the United States in a lot of this,

00:19:50.440 although I think it also reserves the right to act independently for its own security, and the United

00:19:54.740 States respects that right, just as Israel respects the right of the United States to do what it wants 0.68

00:19:59.640 for its own security. I think what is interesting is, just as in the former Soviet Union, where you had

00:20:05.840 internal politics ultimately brought the USSR down, now you have a very volatile situation in Iran,

00:20:11.880 with the economy in shambles, with people protesting and so forth. There's now a greater probability,

00:20:18.360 I won't say likelihood, but I'll say a greater probability that the Iranian regime actually

00:20:23.880 topples and ends all this military adventurism. The Iranian people generally are tired of it

00:20:28.400 because their scarce resources are being spent on terrorism abroad and invading other countries and

00:20:34.080 so forth. So I think there's a very real possibility that Iran breaks politically before a

00:20:41.560 very significant military conflict develops. You have to hope that happens because war, of course, 0.88

00:20:45.880 is the worst possible outcome. If the Iranian regime would topple, then the region would become 1.00

00:20:51.400 safer overnight.

00:20:52.840 Last question. You started by saying how pro-Trump Israel is, or at least Jewish Israelis, and I believe

00:20:59.760 you. The embassy stopping the obsession with the Palestinians, helping to move Saudi Arabia and other

00:21:09.220 Sunni states into a more pro-Israel orbit, and now canceling the Iran deal. But here in North America,

00:21:15.480 and you know this as well as me because you're from L.A., here in Toronto, Jews are liberal.

00:21:24.220 A leftist Jew the other day was saying, what's Trump's angle here? They think it's a trick.

00:21:31.420 They refuse to accept that Trump is pro-Israel. They hate him anyways. Like, what is wrong with

00:21:41.180 Jews in general politically that they side with their enemies, that they would side with Hillary 0.91

00:21:48.140 Clinton, Huma Abedin, Sid Blumenthal, that they would side with Barack Obama instead of a guy who's

00:21:54.740 aesthetically, frankly, he's very Jewish, Donald Trump, in many ways.

00:21:58.600 Right. What's the problem with our people?

00:22:02.700 Well, it wasn't so long ago, two or three decades ago, that the Democratic Party in the states was

00:22:08.440 very pro-Israel. And what's happened is that Jews continue to vote for the Democratic Party for other 0.53

00:22:13.960 reasons. Some have liberal positions on abortion. Some are very attached to sort of nostalgia around the

00:22:20.920 civil rights movement. Although the civil rights movement was largely fought against Democrats, but

00:22:25.180 that's a topic for another day. So there's an attachment to the Democratic Party.

00:22:28.600 Party that comes from a time when the Democratic Party was actually very pro-Israel.

00:22:32.840 In the last 10 to 15 years, especially since the Second Intifada, the parties of the left in general

00:22:38.360 around the world have become more anti-Israel. They used to be pro-Israel, now they're anti-Israel.

00:22:42.720 And the voting behavior of American Jews hasn't yet caught up to that reality. In addition,

00:22:49.000 Israel is no longer high on the priority list for liberal American Jews. It's very important for

00:22:53.980 conservative American Jews and particularly religious American Jews. But for liberal American 0.67

00:22:58.760 Jews, other issues like abortion and so forth are much higher priorities. Whether that's right or 0.99

00:23:05.060 wrong, it's just the reality. And so American Jews, the majority of American Jews who vote Democratic

00:23:10.680 are doing so for other reasons. There are some who vote Republican on Israel, but it's a small

00:23:17.540 sliver. And increasingly, they just simply become Republicans because they're fed up with their party's

00:23:21.500 indulgence of the anti-Israel left. Yeah. Joel, I could talk to you all day, but I know you've got

00:23:26.640 to do a lot of other things. So you're on the ground. I appreciate you jamming us in and talking to us

00:23:31.280 from your cell phone. It's actually been a remarkably clear interview, and it's just so pretty to see

00:23:36.640 the town of Efrat behind you. I'm jealous that you're there at this exciting moment, but we'll be

00:23:41.080 leading our own delegation to Israel in a couple of months. Thanks for being with us today, Joel.

00:23:45.960 Thank you, and Shabbat Shalom to everyone in Canada.

00:23:47.620 Thanks very much for that, and you too. Well, there's our friend Joel Pollack, who's on the ground

00:23:51.420 in Israel. He, of course, is the senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com. Stay with us.

00:23:56.960 More ahead on The Rebel.

00:24:08.680 Well, Israel is at the crossroads of three continents, Europe, Africa, and Asia,

00:24:13.260 and it's the place where so much news is happening, but never more so than these days,

00:24:18.760 between the United States moving its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to Donald Trump deciding to

00:24:26.040 remove the United States from the informal agreement agreed to by Barack Obama that gave hundreds of

00:24:34.180 billions, more than $100 billion worth of sanctions relief to Iran, more than a billion dollars in cash

00:24:39.480 delivered in pallets in exchange for a few trinkets of concessions from Iran on their nuclear program.

00:24:45.660 Well, Trump has removed America from that, and a lot of things are in play. Joining us now is an

00:24:50.640 expert on this very complicated region, our friend Jonathan Schanzer, who is the senior vice president

00:24:56.340 with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He is in Israel today. Jonathan, thanks for joining us.

00:25:02.880 I know it's seven hours later there, so it's nighttime over there. There's a lot going on right now. Israel

00:25:10.020 is always in a state of war, but it's been in a hot war against Iranian troops in Syria. Do I have that right?

00:25:19.960 You have it right. What the Iranians have been doing ever since the Iran deal was struck back in 2015, 1.00

00:25:27.440 perhaps even earlier than that. They have been steadily building up an arsenal in Syria. They've been taking

00:25:34.280 advantage of the fog of war, the chaos that has ensued inside Syria. And so what they've done is they've brought in

00:25:40.240 Shiite militias. These are Shiite fighters from places like Pakistan and Afghanistan and Iraq and, of course, Iran. 0.50

00:25:49.000 They've got Hezbollah on the ground over there as well. So they've been building up a ground force.

00:25:53.520 Meanwhile, also building up a rocket force, building up their drone capabilities, moving everything

00:26:00.840 closer and closer to Israel's borders. And what we've seen over the last year or so is that Israel 0.96

00:26:07.160 has been taking these assets out one by one. And then more recently, it's been a full flare-up where

00:26:14.540 the Israelis have gone on a full offensive. Isn't that interesting that Iran is using 1.00

00:26:19.400 almost mercenaries from a variety of Muslim countries, including Pakistan and Afghanistan?

00:26:24.880 You made me think of something that I learned when I was on the ground in northern Iraq and

00:26:28.820 Kurdistan last summer. I was surprised to, I was at the border of Kurdistan and sort of no man's land.

00:26:35.880 And the Kurdish military, forgive me for this little tangent, but maybe you have some

00:26:39.280 insight into it. I thought that on the other side of this no man's land was ISIS.

00:26:43.580 But the Kurdish Peshmerga said, no, across that no man's land is a Shiite militia called

00:26:51.600 Hashtel Shabi. I had never heard of that word before. And they said it was filling the void

00:26:58.060 left by ISIS. It was Iran backed and it was just as hostile. So I felt I was confused. This

00:27:04.700 is the first I'd heard of it. But what they led me to believe was that Iran is filling the 0.78

00:27:10.660 void. First the void left by Barack Obama and then the void left by ISIS. Iran is sort of 0.92

00:27:16.260 consolidating the region. Is that what's happening?

00:27:19.960 That's exactly right. And Hashtel Shabi, the term that you just used, is effectively just

00:27:24.060 popular mobilization units. So each one of these units have different names. Some of them are Iraqi,

00:27:30.980 some of them are Syrian, some of them are coming from other places around the Muslim world.

00:27:37.060 And Iran is deploying them. They have absolutely filled the void inside Iraq, where they have 0.97

00:27:44.100 ousted ISIS. That's where you're seeing them fill in the gaps. And that same thing is happening

00:27:49.020 inside Syria. And the goal has been to establish what we call the Shiite Crescent. This is an area

00:27:55.960 stretching from Iran's border through Iraq into Syria, all the way into Lebanon to the Mediterranean.

00:28:01.160 This is Iran's designs for regional hegemony. We can, I think, be unambiguous about this at this 0.99

00:28:08.460 point. And so finally, you have the Israelis pushing back on this. But the real challenge,

00:28:14.200 I think, was that the counter-ISIL coalition, they were very happy to defeat ISIS because,

00:28:20.000 after all, ISIS is just kind of a ragtag group, not professionally trained, not terribly formidable,

00:28:25.560 despite what you heard in the news. But nobody wanted to tangle with the post-ISIS reality,

00:28:31.260 which was that Iran and its proxies were taking over the region. That's a far nastier battle. 0.80

00:28:37.080 And it's one that the Israelis are taking on single-handedly right now. 0.53

00:28:40.480 Hmm. You know, it's interesting. They're taking it on militarily. But I see that

00:28:44.120 Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, these are Muslim countries that are either quiet, 1.00

00:28:51.680 as most Sunni Muslim countries are, or actually morally and publicly supportive of Israel. And

00:28:59.200 even the king of Saudi Arabia has been emitting positive vibrations, I guess, about Israel.

00:29:07.460 You know, I saw some pundit the other day say, one thing Barack Obama did inadvertently was he made

00:29:14.760 Iran such a looming threat that he inadvertently caused Israel and the Sunni Arab states to make 0.99

00:29:21.720 common cause because they were so panicked. I don't think that was Barack Obama's goal. And it's

00:29:26.300 certainly not a good way to achieve that goal. But it seems to me that everyone in the region is

00:29:31.320 petrified of a nuclear Iran. And so they put aside, I suppose, smaller quarrels to focus on that 0.95

00:29:37.920 existential threat. Is that accurate? Absolutely accurate. And I mean, I like to joke that Barack

00:29:44.540 Obama got his Nobel Prize about six years too soon, he should have got it, after he signed the Iran 1.00

00:29:50.340 nuclear deal. Not for the fact that the Iranians were prevented from going nuclear, but because he 0.64

00:29:56.400 did draw the Arab states and Israel closer together. They're talking in ways that they never spoke before.

00:30:03.100 I can tell you that I was just in Saudi Arabia two weeks ago. I was in the United Arab Emirates

00:30:08.400 in October, as well as Bahrain in October. And it's really remarkable. I mean, you hear the

00:30:14.140 leadership there speaking about the region, and there is no doubt that Iran is their number one

00:30:20.080 concern. And increasingly, I think they're just not as concerned with this Palestinian issue. They'd like 0.76

00:30:27.020 it to go away. They feel solidarity with their Arab brethren, but they also understand that it's not in 0.99

00:30:32.840 their national interest to promote the Palestinian cause above these other core threats. And so that's 0.92

00:30:39.840 the equation that we're looking at here. The Arab world is drawing closer to Israel, because after all, 0.95

00:30:44.920 the Israelis are the only army tangling with Iran. They're the ones who just pilfered a half a ton of 0.97

00:30:50.320 documents out of a nuclear document warehouse in Tehran. They're the ones who are bombing Iranian targets 0.89

00:30:57.140 in Syria and dominating while they do it. So I think this has really been an important message to 0.99

00:31:03.680 convey to Iran from Israel's perspective, but also to the rest of the Arab world. They see leadership

00:31:09.960 and they're drawn to it.

00:31:11.260 Yeah. Well, let me ask you about Russia, because I know that Russia and Israel have an interesting

00:31:16.480 relationship. There's about a million Russian emigres in Israel. And Benjamin Netanyahu has a

00:31:23.140 fairly constant and high-level communication with Russia, meeting with Vladimir Putin and talking

00:31:29.440 with him even very recently. How does Israel fight against Iran in Syria without fighting with Russia

00:31:39.440 in Syria? How is that delicate balance achieved?

00:31:45.140 It's a delicate balance. And, you know, a part of how this is accomplished is by the Israelis 1.00

00:31:51.020 making regular trips to Russia. You have to remember the defense minister of Israel is

00:31:56.500 actually of Russian extraction, Avigdor Lieberman, so he can speak to them literally in their own

00:32:01.700 language. But you also just, for example, just had Bibi Netanyahu go to Russia two days ago.

00:32:08.000 And as I understand it, these discussions, this is not with the Israelis coming hat in hand and saying,

00:32:12.840 can we please do this or that in Syria? As I understand it, these discussions are usually with

00:32:19.180 the Israelis coming in, very professional, saying, these are our concerns. We're going to be taking 0.99

00:32:23.900 care of them in the coming days, and we expect you to stand down. Now, there is room for error.

00:32:30.400 We have seen, for example, reports of Russian mercenaries that have been hit by Israeli fire

00:32:37.020 as they've gone in and taken out Iranian assets. But my sense right now is that the Russians have very

00:32:42.860 little stomach for this. They have pulled, I think, a number of their troops or mercenaries

00:32:47.840 targets where Iran has had a dominant position. We just heard yesterday, for example, that Putin

00:32:57.300 has agreed to not sell these S-300 anti-aircraft systems to Syria. We may be at a place where he

00:33:05.440 is maybe satisfied with having defeated ISIS and doesn't want to get Russia drawn into a broader

00:33:11.520 conflict between Israel and Iran.

00:33:13.740 Very interesting. Well, I very much appreciate you giving us the briefing from Israel. A lot of

00:33:20.600 things are on the move in the region, and hopefully, hopefully, I'm not going to say it'll be peaceful,

00:33:26.080 but hopefully it'll be quiet, which is as close as I think it'll get there. Thanks for taking the

00:33:30.240 time with us today.

00:33:32.340 Pleasure.

00:33:32.940 All right. There you have it. Jonathan Schenzer is the Senior Vice President of the Foundation for

00:33:38.180 Defense of Democracies. He joined us tonight from Israel via Skype. Stay with us. More ahead on The Rebel.

00:33:55.640 Hey, welcome back. Your viewer mail. On my monologue yesterday about Dion Buse in court,

00:34:01.860 Liza writes, absolutely the right thing to do taking Buse back to court. These cretins have to 1.00

00:34:07.360 know they aren't going to get away with this sort of violence against the rebel. I am all in favor. 0.98

00:34:12.120 I am all in for legal pushback every time. Liza, I appreciate you saying that. The police did the

00:34:19.540 right thing. They arrested him. But for some reason, and they charged him with crimes, which he committed.

00:34:24.640 But for some reason, I won't get into the details, Sheila was not advised on this court date.

00:34:28.960 She had no chance to put any evidence forward, no chance to put a victim impact statement forward.

00:34:34.640 So he got off. Dion Buse got off with the lightest slap on the wrist possible. 30 hours of community

00:34:40.020 service and a conditional discharge. It'll be taken off his record soon. No, no, that's not good enough.

00:34:45.220 So we had to sue. Not for the money. I mean, I know enough about the law to know that the quantum

00:34:50.620 of damages you get for a punch in the face, it's going to be four figures max. So we got what we

00:34:58.820 were owed financially. But what we needed and what we did finally get in civil court for Sheila

00:35:03.660 was a categorical statement by the judge that what Dion Buse did to Sheila Gunn-Reed was, quote,

00:35:10.400 reprehensible. And it was illegal and it was worthy of punitive damages. And we also got an indication

00:35:18.960 that the first criminal court was not proper. It didn't have the full hearing. So it was very

00:35:23.880 valuable morally. And as the boss of the rebel, I felt it was important to stand by Sheila,

00:35:30.080 who was assaulted by the alt-left, and to stand up for her rights and freedom and to show her that

00:35:34.560 we have her back. She has our back, right? I mean, she does. She's there for us every time. I think

00:35:38.960 it's so important we're there for her. And obviously, we spent a lot more money on the lawsuit

00:35:44.540 than the thousand dollars in costs we got back. And by the way, we have to collect that from this

00:35:49.620 deadbeat. I don't know if Dion Buse has two pennies to rub together. But it was the moral victory

00:35:54.160 that was important. By the way, if you want to read the whole ruling, and it's a pretty quick read,

00:35:59.000 and it's in pretty plain English, you can find it at DionBuse.com, D-I-O-N-B-E-W-S.com. And yeah,

00:36:05.540 I'm going to have that website with his name pointing at this story until, well, forever. Maybe if he

00:36:12.620 comes forward and makes a genuine apology and statement of contrition to Sheila, we'll consider

00:36:18.360 taking the website down. But until then, his name will forever point to the facts about him.

00:36:23.960 Tammy writes, lawyers are expensive. Principals are priceless. Tammy, that's a very nice way of

00:36:30.020 saying it. The lawyer we used, a young guy, I think he billed us fairly. And I know you're thinking

00:36:36.580 $36,000 for a two-day trial. How could that possibly be? Well, it was all the work in advance,

00:36:42.240 filing the statement of claim, pre-trial hearings, the trial itself, and just, you know, reviewing,

00:36:48.360 getting the witness there, et cetera. So yeah, it is expensive. There is no two ways about it.

00:36:54.640 I did not attend court myself. I didn't want my presence to be seen in some way as political

00:37:00.680 interference. But we sent our VP editorial to show solidarity with Sheila. And I heard other lawyers

00:37:06.180 were sitting in to watch it, young student lawyers, because they said lawsuits like this proceed so rarely

00:37:10.880 because it's true. Who would spend $36,000 on a punch in the face? Economically, it doesn't make

00:37:19.060 sense. So most people don't do it. We did it, as you said, for the principle of it. So actually,

00:37:24.060 other young lawyers were coming to watch a civil trial on assault and battery because it happened

00:37:28.680 so rarely. We did it on a point of principle. And I would do it again. I would spend $36,000 again

00:37:35.560 to get justice for Sheila, and I'm sure you would too. And if you want to help us, you can ship in

00:37:40.160 at deonbus.com. That's just something we have to do. On my interview with Derek Fildebrand, Bruce writes,

00:37:46.280 Jason Kenney is behaving like the old PCs who people voted out. I was afraid this would happen,

00:37:51.180 and now it has. I voted against the merger for that reason, and now I know I was right. Let's hope

00:37:55.700 enough pressure gets put on Jason to resign or change his top-down ways. Well, let me be clear. I

00:38:01.080 certainly do not want him to resign. And as I said to Derek, I think twice or at least once,

00:38:07.700 I said, it is absolutely critically important that Jason Kenney become the next premier of

00:38:12.300 Alberta, just like Doug Ford, must become the next premier of Ontario. The people they're running

00:38:17.480 against, Kathleen Wynne and Rachel Notley, are absolute disasters, some of the worst premiers ever

00:38:21.460 for their provinces. But that doesn't mean we have to excuse Doug Ford or Jason Kenney when they veer

00:38:27.040 off course. I think I also put on the record yesterday that I disagree with Derek Fildebrand's

00:38:31.500 idea of a new party. I think that kind of splittism goes nowhere. I don't think that's a good idea. I

00:38:35.700 think if Derek wanted to be the leader of the party, he should have run for the leader. In fact,

00:38:38.580 I think I encouraged him to do so. But yeah, we are going to be the good faith critics of Doug Ford

00:38:44.960 and Jason Kenney. And by good faith critics, I mean we won't engage in unfair, malicious,

00:38:49.140 gotcha-style journalism. We'll leave that to the CBC and, you know, other mainstream media party

00:38:54.940 journalists. We will be critics and we'll be fair critics from the right, which is, I think,

00:38:59.740 what our viewers want us to do. Well, that's our shows for the week. It's been a busy and hectic

00:39:04.540 week, hasn't it? I don't know if you're tuning in, by the way. You're probably working. But at 12

00:39:10.420 noon Eastern time, 10 a.m. Alberta time, 9 a.m. B.C. time, I do a one-hour live chit-chat on YouTube

00:39:16.880 where you can ask me any questions in real time. It's not, this is a pre-recorded segment here,

00:39:20.540 but I'm live and you can just type questions to me at 12 noon Eastern. So feel free to join in

00:39:25.800 every weekday is what I do with that. So that's something to watch if you're interested. Until

00:39:31.020 Monday. I guess keep watching our YouTube vids. We put them up all weekend. I'll be back with the

00:39:35.840 show on Monday night. Till then, good night. Have a great weekend and keep fighting for freedom.

00:39:50.800 So

00:39:53.000 you

00:39:53.580 you

Rebel News Podcast - May 12, 2018

Ezra Levant Show May 11 2018

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