The Megyn Kelly Show - What Israel Does Now After Terror Attack, and America's Next Move, with Ben Shapiro, Amb. David Friedman, and Lt. Col. Daniel Davis

00:00:00.560 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:11.780 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.

00:00:14.900 We expect to hear from President Biden within the hour as the stories out of Israel and Gaza get worse by the minute.

00:00:22.760 The news is incredibly difficult to report.

00:00:26.540 It's just about as bad as it can get.

00:00:29.320 I don't remember ever giving a viewer warning at the top of a show in just having to report the news, but I have to give you one today.

00:00:38.880 This is the most disturbing news I could offer.

00:00:43.040 The stories are absolutely horrifying.

00:00:47.080 We are seeing evil incarnate in the aftermath of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

00:00:53.660 And there's no way through it but to make sure people know what they're doing.

00:00:57.600 There's just no way through it.

00:00:59.020 But to make sure you know what they're doing.

00:01:01.940 Because as we go through the next days and weeks, what you're going to start to hear is that Israel needs to back off.

00:01:08.280 That its response is disproportionate.

00:01:11.320 That it's doing too much.

00:01:12.580 That it's not taking enough care of innocent civilians.

00:01:16.280 And you therefore must hear what was done to the Israelis.

00:01:20.720 Israel does its best to not target civilians.

00:01:22.860 That's its entire mission.

00:01:24.760 When it goes over there, it wants to target terrorists, not civilians.

00:01:27.520 It goes the extra mile every time to avoid hitting civilians.

00:01:30.840 And this entire attack that Hamas just unleashed on Israel is about civilians.

00:01:37.620 I mean, they have managed to get a few military-aged men as well.

00:01:42.140 But they seem to be targeting intentionally the most innocent and vulnerable among us.

00:01:48.180 From the Jerusalem Post editor Avi Mayer, a woman was found murdered with her fetus next to her.

00:01:56.500 The baby still attached to its umbilical cord.

00:01:59.520 A child who did not even get the chance to live.

00:02:02.920 An elderly woman found in a pool of blood, her body riddled with bullet holes.

00:02:07.900 They seem to enjoy killing the elderly women.

00:02:11.400 And there are multiple reports like that one.

00:02:14.500 Entire families found burned to death inside their homes.

00:02:17.880 And then there's this report.

00:02:19.380 I'm sorry.

00:02:20.040 Again, I warn you.

00:02:21.280 This is as brutal as it comes.

00:02:23.780 Near the Israel-Gaza border of 40 babies murdered in a kibbutz.

00:02:30.980 It's like an area where Israelis live together.

00:02:34.980 Forgive me for reporting the darkness.

00:02:36.640 Some of them even decapitated.

00:02:41.400 It's hard to even explain exactly just the mass casualties that happened right here.

00:02:48.320 In fact, the Israeli military says they still don't have a clear number.

00:02:51.600 But I'm talking to some of the soldiers.

00:02:53.240 And they say what they've witnessed as they've been walking through these different houses,

00:02:58.180 these different communities, babies, their heads cut off.

00:03:03.000 That's what they said.

00:03:04.560 Gunned down.

00:03:05.480 Families completely gunned down in their beds.

00:03:07.940 One of the commanders here said at least 40 babies were killed.

00:03:13.940 Some of them, their heads cut off.

00:03:15.860 He said he's never seen acts of brutality like this.

00:03:20.120 And as I said, many of these soldiers were called from reserve duties coming down here

00:03:24.000 to the scene of a massacre.

00:03:26.040 None of them knowing exactly what to expect.

00:03:28.220 There are no words that can capture the evil that must exist in a person's heart to be capable

00:03:38.260 of doing something like that.

00:03:40.380 You know, on this show, I always try to keep it at a level where you can hear the news and

00:03:45.240 you can still function on your day.

00:03:46.980 You know, it's sort of one of the things we pride ourselves on.

00:03:49.820 It's just not getting too incredibly dark so that people can still function.

00:03:55.460 I have to admit, it's been hard.

00:03:57.680 I'm feeling it.

00:03:59.660 I'm sure you're feeling it, too, in the wake of this news, which we can't ignore, which

00:04:04.160 you can only fully appreciate if you actually do look at it as the Israelis have been forced

00:04:09.660 to.

00:04:10.140 They're our closest ally in the Middle East.

00:04:11.900 We can't ignore what's happening to them.

00:04:13.640 Our interests are directly aligned with theirs for a whole bunch of really good reasons.

00:04:17.280 As it stands now, more than a thousand people have been killed in Israel that we know of.

00:04:22.720 I'm sure that number is going to climb.

00:04:24.340 Many, many more wounded.

00:04:26.280 The videos we showed you yesterday and we'll show you today are incredibly difficult to

00:04:29.920 watch.

00:04:31.320 In one, terrorists are seen sneaking up on a car, shooting the people inside at point

00:04:36.640 blank range, allowing the terrorists to gain access to a gated compound.

00:04:41.680 There's absolutely no respect for human life.

00:04:43.980 Another shows Hamas stalking homes, going door to door in a farming community near the

00:04:50.260 Gaza border.

00:04:51.460 Just 1,000 people called this area home and 100 of them are now dead.

00:04:56.740 Think of it.

00:04:57.420 A tenth of the community wiped out in the blink of an eye.

00:05:01.680 This attack happened around the same time as that music festival massacre.

00:05:05.860 We reported on yesterday that, according to Tablet Magazine, left more than 260 people

00:05:10.840 dead.

00:05:11.900 Most of them vibrant, beautiful, young people just starting out in life.

00:05:17.440 In the meantime, Hamas's actions have created a hell on earth for those in areas of Gaza,

00:05:23.300 as Israel unleashes an all-out effort to, quote, obliterate Hamas terrorist capabilities.

00:05:28.940 Reporting suggesting 765 people have been killed inside Gaza so far.

00:05:33.200 Israel has urged civilians there to leave their homes immediately, but Hamas, at least in

00:05:39.580 conflicts past, doesn't let the civilians leave.

00:05:43.180 They want the civilians to be hurt.

00:05:46.460 They have shut down all crossings, potentially setting the stage for a ground invasion.

00:05:51.100 It will have to be.

00:05:52.220 How else could Israel get its hostages back if they don't conduct a ground invasion?

00:05:56.820 And then there are the hostages being held, and their estimates range from 100 to 150 being held

00:06:03.220 captive by these terrorists who are now threatening to kill them and to release video of the

00:06:08.380 executions on social media should the aerial attacks by Israel continue.

00:06:13.200 And we believe some number of those hostages are Americans who had been in Israel when this

00:06:19.760 report, when this attack was unleashed.

00:06:21.940 We begin today with Ben Shapiro.

00:06:24.840 He's editor emeritus at The Daily Wire and host of the hugely popular Ben Shapiro show.

00:06:30.100 He just got back from Israel on Friday where he was with his family.

00:06:35.000 Ben, welcome back.

00:06:36.980 My condolences to you and your friends and your family who I'm sure are going through this in

00:06:41.200 a particularly troubling way.

00:06:44.440 I listened to your whole show yesterday.

00:06:45.600 It was incredibly moving.

00:06:47.100 It was incredibly disturbing.

00:06:48.300 And I just don't know what we're supposed to do with 40 babies decapitated.

00:06:56.140 How is that a group we can talk to about anything?

00:07:03.140 Well, obviously, the great moral sickness of the West is its intention to continue moral

00:07:08.000 equivalency between one group of people who wish to defend children and one group of people

00:07:11.880 who wish to who wish to murder them as often as humanly possible.

00:07:16.300 I've seen pictures that have not been made public of families burned and babies beheaded

00:07:22.320 and all the rest of this sort of stuff.

00:07:24.260 And this is what Hamas intended to do.

00:07:26.540 This is what they always intended to do.

00:07:27.820 This has been in their charter since 1987.

00:07:30.060 There are no surprises here.

00:07:31.320 The only surprise is that it took this long for Hamas to be successful.

00:07:34.680 But this has been their intention all along.

00:07:37.980 The Palestinian Authority, the Palestine Liberation Organization, pays actual bounties to terrorist

00:07:42.900 families.

00:07:43.920 Islamic Jihad is a terrorist group.

00:07:45.840 And yet the West has spent the last 30, 40 years pretending that there was some sort of

00:07:50.240 deal that could be cut here.

00:07:51.760 I think that the Israeli government was under the impression since 2006 when they completely

00:07:56.300 pulled out of the Gaza Strip.

00:07:57.500 In 2005, they pulled literally thousands of Jews out of their homes in the northern tip of

00:08:01.020 the Gaza Strip and turned over the entire area to the Palestinians who promptly burned

00:08:05.660 every Jewish home and greenhouse and then voted for Hamas.

00:08:10.300 They voted Hamas into power.

00:08:11.240 Hamas has been the governing power in the Gaza Strip since 2006, so for 17 years.

00:08:16.820 And they've been launching rocket attacks ever since.

00:08:19.020 And Israel believed that because of the security barrier, the touch fence, and because of Iron

00:08:24.060 Dome, which shoots down the rockets that are fired routinely from Gaza, that they could

00:08:28.520 live with some semblance of at least quasi-normalcy, although it's hard to describe normalcy as

00:08:33.200 you have to run into a bunker every few months for a week or so while rockets ran down on

00:08:37.560 your home, but it was at least livable.

00:08:39.400 Well, what's happened over the course of the last few days is not only catastrophic, but

00:08:44.120 it demonstrates, number one, why there needs to be a state of Israel, why the state of Israel

00:08:47.140 exists, why the notion of a Jewish state to defend Jews exists.

00:08:51.300 It really exposes the moral vacuity of many people in the West for precisely what it is.

00:08:59.100 And it shows more than anything else what evil actually looks like.

00:09:02.800 And so it's been my intention throughout this conflict to show what exactly the Hamas terrorists

00:09:09.760 wish to do, what their government wishes to do, what their sympathizers wish to do in

00:09:13.260 the most graphic detail.

00:09:14.220 They're not shy about it.

00:09:15.080 I mean, what's truly incredible is this is the worst weekend.

00:09:19.440 Saturday was the worst day for Jews since the Holocaust in terms of mass death.

00:09:24.260 And what's truly amazing is that even the Nazis were ashamed enough of what they were doing,

00:09:30.300 at least in the public eye, that as World War II ended, they attempted to cover up what

00:09:34.620 they had done.

00:09:35.960 These modern-day Nazis carrying out Eisensatzgruppen-style shootings of Jews, murdering babies, murdering

00:09:44.940 pregnant mothers, pulling the fetuses out of their stomach and letting the babies die, still

00:09:50.260 connected with the mother.

00:09:51.200 There's a report of that.

00:09:53.140 These sorts of reports, these are glorified by Hamas.

00:09:56.140 These are touted on social media.

00:09:57.400 The videos that I've been playing on my show are not videos taken by Israelis.

00:10:00.260 These are videos that are taken by Hamas members and then trumpeted around social media.

00:10:06.520 And it's causing celebrations in places ranging from London to Sydney to the streets of New

00:10:11.120 York by a certain group of people and their sympathizers.

00:10:13.860 And evil exists, and it doesn't just exist inside the Gaza Strip.

00:10:17.300 It exists in the hearts of human beings who somehow believe that there's moral equivalency

00:10:20.700 between people who wish to rape women, murder them, parade their bodies through Gaza, and

00:10:26.320 people who want to defend themselves and live normal lives.

00:10:29.580 I mean, it's just, it's astonishing.

00:10:31.180 And if the world goes back to that level of moral equivalence after this, if the world

00:10:35.320 somehow in the next few days says that Israel has to stop or has to declare a ceasefire

00:10:41.580 with people who just murdered their children and are currently holding babies, literal

00:10:45.080 nine-month-old babies, in captivity, pending their execution, then I don't know.

00:10:50.520 The whole point of the state of Israel is that Jews no longer have to ask permission to

00:10:55.040 defend themselves.

00:10:55.860 And that's certainly the case today.

00:10:58.520 This is about the atrocities that were unleashed on Israel by this terrorist group on Saturday.

00:11:04.020 This isn't about Palestine and the blockade.

00:11:07.240 I don't see it as about any of that, but that's what the left wants to make it about.

00:11:11.560 And so I want to just spend one minute on it because most people don't know their history,

00:11:14.980 Ben, you know, like you do.

00:11:16.400 And you're hearing things like, but, you know, the blockade and collective punishment, that's

00:11:22.540 a war crime.

00:11:23.520 Ilhan Omar's spewing that nonsense saying you can't, you can't, you know, hold all of the

00:11:28.340 Gazans, all of the Palestinians responsible for the actions of Hamas, of their leadership.

00:11:33.080 And I think, you know, you mentioned it, but it's important just to remind the audience

00:11:38.440 what you just said.

00:11:39.620 In 2005, Israel got all of its citizens out of this area.

00:11:44.580 They got them all out, like insisted that they leave at some points at gunpoint and said,

00:11:49.960 take it, have it.

00:11:50.880 It's yours.

00:11:51.620 We're out.

00:11:52.760 And it wasn't until within, what, two years that Hamas won the election, which is a terrorist

00:11:58.440 group.

00:11:58.740 Our State Department recognizes that and started bombing Israel again that Israel said, all right,

00:12:02.640 we're going to have to do something to prevent this group from getting weapons.

00:12:06.140 And they allow food and all that stuff to go in, but they try to do what they can to make

00:12:10.400 sure that they don't amass weapons and rockets to unleash on Israel.

00:12:14.820 That's the so-called blockade.

00:12:16.060 Like, this is what now people are saying, oh, look at how Israel is forcing these poor people

00:12:20.220 to live.

00:12:21.080 Israel wasn't doing that.

00:12:22.720 It gave them this area and said, we're out.

00:12:25.120 You're good.

00:12:25.520 It was Hamas that started the murder back in this 2005, 2006, 2007 period.

00:12:33.220 You tell it because you know it much better than I do.

00:12:35.480 Yeah.

00:12:35.500 I mean, Hamas has been participating in murderous activity since their founding in 1987, 1988,

00:12:39.780 their Muslim Brotherhood offshoot.

00:12:40.840 But the pullout from Gaza is proof positive that when people say that they want context,

00:12:47.200 the context literally does not matter to them because the fact of the matter here is, again,

00:12:50.800 that Israel unilaterally pulled out of the Gaza Strip in an attempt to create some sort

00:12:55.100 of security arrangement and presumably protect the Jews at the northern tip of the Gaza Strip

00:12:59.340 and allow the Palestinians some chance at electing a government.

00:13:02.260 They then promptly elected Hamas, a State Department designated terror group in an election that

00:13:06.480 was fully legitimate as attested to by Jimmy Carter.

00:13:08.540 They elected Hamas.

00:13:10.720 They haven't had an election since, but the polls tend to show heavy levels of support

00:13:14.220 for Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

00:13:15.680 Israel, by the way, has been providing electricity for free to this area.

00:13:18.840 Israel has been providing water to this area.

00:13:20.800 Israel ships in humanitarian goods to this area.

00:13:23.580 Israel over the last year has provided 15,000 to the, I won't use the Hebrew, the license

00:13:30.200 that allows them to move into Israel and work there.

00:13:33.620 A lot of people are on work permits inside Israel.

00:13:37.080 Israel, if Hamas were not the governing power in the Gaza Strip and if the Palestinians had

00:13:41.880 chosen a government that actually sought to build, Israel would be, there's literally

00:13:44.960 no one in Israel, no one, right, left, center, who would not wish to build up the economy

00:13:49.400 of the Gaza Strip and turn it into a peaceful neighbor.

00:13:51.860 That would be the greatest wish of the Jews in Israel.

00:13:55.500 They don't have a peace partner.

00:13:56.460 They never have.

00:13:57.060 In fact, there's, there's, they wanted a sewage system in the Gaza Strip.

00:13:59.980 And so pipes were shipped into the Gaza Strip.

00:14:02.140 Hamas promptly took those pipes and carved them.

00:14:04.140 They repurposed them into, into the body of rockets, into rocket tubes.

00:14:07.520 This, the, the cement that is poured into the Gaza Strip to build infrastructure was used

00:14:12.280 by Hamas to build terror tunnels.

00:14:13.780 And this, this is what Hamas does.

00:14:15.900 I mean, they, they overtly say this in their charter.

00:14:17.620 Again, it's not as though they're hiding the ball.

00:14:19.000 There are no secrets here.

00:14:20.500 Hamas hides behind civilians.

00:14:22.000 Hamas, it literally places its headquarters.

00:14:24.200 Its military headquarters is underneath a hospital.

00:14:26.480 I mean, imagine if the United States put its Pentagon beneath a hospital deliberately in

00:14:30.040 order to maximize civilian casualties in that there's plentiful video of Israeli forces calling

00:14:35.360 up members of Hamas outside of a building.

00:14:38.260 They, they warned before historically Israel has warned people in areas about to get hit,

00:14:42.640 which is insane, by the way, military targets.

00:14:45.260 They've warned people, get the civilians out before they hit the targets.

00:14:48.280 And there's tape of them calling members of Hamas and saying, get everybody out of this

00:14:51.500 building and members of Hamas saying, we don't want them out of the building.

00:14:53.380 We want them in the building.

00:14:54.200 That's the whole point.

00:14:54.860 Why do you think that we are locating a rocket fire from inside apartment buildings and behind

00:14:58.920 apartment buildings?

00:14:59.600 The whole goal is to maximize Palestinian civilian casualties so that they can then blame Israel.

00:15:04.820 And then they can claim that some human rights violation is going on after they provoke violence

00:15:09.400 in the first place.

00:15:10.780 So again, I'm the, the attempt to tie this to settlements is insane because again, there

00:15:15.340 are no settlements inside the Gaza Strip.

00:15:17.600 The areas that were, that were attacked here have been part of the state of Israel since 1948.

00:15:21.960 And this is not post 67 settlements in the, in the West Bank, uh, in the so-called West

00:15:26.560 Bank, Judea and Samaria, uh, the, the, all of the normal political tropes are, do not

00:15:30.400 apply all of the usual lines here about if only Israel had been more generous during

00:15:34.040 like none of that applies to the Gaza Strip.

00:15:36.460 And it's, it's utterly insane that anybody's attempting to apply that same narrative, especially

00:15:40.300 because Israel has offered Egypt, for example, control over the Gaza Strip.

00:15:44.040 And you know what Egypt said, they said, how no, we don't want control over the Gaza Strip

00:15:47.320 because Hamas is in control.

00:15:48.940 There are a lot of terrorists over there.

00:15:50.000 In fact, right now, Israel has been telling civilians to get out of the most dangerous

00:15:54.460 areas in the Gaza Strip pending some sort of attack and civilians have been rushing down

00:15:58.260 to the Rafah border, which is the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt.

00:16:01.500 Egypt has closed the border.

00:16:02.740 Egypt will not allow Palestinian civilians to enter the, the Sinai desert in order to

00:16:07.700 escape the carnage.

00:16:09.400 Israel is attempting to make provision for those people.

00:16:11.580 Israel cares more about Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip than Hamas does by a long

00:16:15.220 shot.

00:16:15.460 We did a story a couple of years ago.

00:16:18.920 I actually tweeted out the episode.

00:16:20.720 It was like a, you know, Israel, Palestine primer for dummies.

00:16:24.640 Um, and one of the things that I saw in preparing for that show was an AP reporter back in 2014

00:16:32.260 came out and admitted that the AP building, uh, that was in this region was, and was, you

00:16:39.720 know, Hamas was intentionally letting off rockets right next to the AP building, thinking that

00:16:43.140 we wouldn't target or Israel wouldn't target this AP building.

00:16:45.780 But that AP reporter eventually came out and said, our AP photographers would go to the

00:16:50.280 hospital and, and they were basically in on it.

00:16:53.000 They, they would photograph the Palestinians bringing their young children or babies who'd

00:16:58.860 been hit in a retaliatory, uh, Israeli rocket attack.

00:17:02.680 Uh, and, and they would use them for public propaganda to put them on TV saying, look at

00:17:06.220 the terrible Israelis, look what they're doing.

00:17:07.760 And then as soon as all the military age fighters who were coming out of the hospital after being

00:17:12.360 treated or going into the hospital with injuries, they would turn off the cameras.

00:17:16.240 The AP was helping the propaganda war so that the Palestinians could get their message out,

00:17:21.520 which is the terrible evil Israelis.

00:17:23.220 All they do is, is target our children.

00:17:26.100 When of course, the truth is Israel bends over backwards, not to hit the civilians.

00:17:29.900 And the AP was completely, they killed their own soldiers.

00:17:32.380 They killed their own soldiers in order to, in order to save civilians.

00:17:35.620 I mean, this has been the story of Israel for, for many, many years.

00:17:37.900 They literally put their own soldiers in harm's way in order to minimize civilian casualties.

00:17:41.860 In the same way that American soldiers very often put in harm's way with very difficult

00:17:45.340 rules of engagement in order to minimize civilian casualties in war zones.

00:17:48.800 I mean, Israel on, on this score, they, there's a term in Hebrew called

00:17:51.220 which is cleanliness of arms.

00:17:53.440 And that's the basic idea, purity of arms.

00:17:55.320 The basic idea is to, to minimize civilian casualties.

00:17:57.820 I mean, there, there's so many, obviously telling facts about the politics of the situation.

00:18:01.540 Telling fact number one, there are no Jews living in the Gaza Strip.

00:18:05.240 There are no Jews living in Palestinian cities in the West Bank.

00:18:08.600 20% of the population of Israel is Arab.

00:18:11.000 There are Arab parties in Knesset right now who are, who are anti-Hamas, who have come

00:18:15.260 out against these Hamas attacks.

00:18:17.540 Fact number two, Israeli Arabs, when asked if they would like to join a nascent state of

00:18:21.520 Palestine under either Hamas or the Palestinian Authority or Islamic Jihad, overwhelmingly say

00:18:25.980 no.

00:18:26.680 They're not, they're not particularly fond of the state of Israel, but they overwhelmingly

00:18:28.980 would prefer to remain in the state of Israel than go to these supposed zones, even if there

00:18:33.560 were to be some sort of peace deal, because they understand exactly what the governance

00:18:37.000 would look like.

00:18:38.120 And again, fact number three is that the Gaza Strip has been under Palestinian control for

00:18:43.340 20 years.

00:18:44.380 And the Palestine Liberation Organization, which turned into the PA, was founded in 1964, before

00:18:48.160 the Six-Day War, when the so-called Green Line did not exist, when there was no Green Line,

00:18:53.160 because all of that territory was being controlled by Jordan.

00:18:56.160 So anybody who's attempting to, number one, first of all, any justification of beheading

00:19:01.060 babies, it should show you who exactly is doing the justifying.

00:19:04.000 And I don't believe you.

00:19:04.620 If you're a pseudo-sophisticate who's pretending that you don't understand what this conflict

00:19:08.200 is all about at this point, you're beyond repair.

00:19:10.940 I mean, you're just morally broken, and there's no way to fix that.

00:19:13.680 But anybody who's attempting to fit this into the context of a history and pretend that Hamas

00:19:16.820 is some sort of legitimate political party and legitimate political body that shouldn't be

00:19:20.360 eradicated, I don't know what to tell you.

00:19:23.720 Let's just put it this way.

00:19:24.360 If this sort of nonsense happened on America's border, if what we were seeing on America's

00:19:28.220 southern border were not migrants crossing the border, some of whom have criminal records,

00:19:32.340 some of whom commit acts of violence, but if it were 1,500 terrorists who crossed the

00:19:36.320 American southern border and then proceeded to go into El Paso, Texas, and murder like 30,000

00:19:40.860 Americans, which is the population equivalent here, because America's a much larger and more

00:19:44.340 populous country than the state of Israel, I highly doubt anybody would be calling for

00:19:48.980 tremendous levels of restraint from the American government or military in attempting to secure

00:19:53.180 its population.

00:19:54.360 The I mean, it's essentially the murder of a maternity ward, you know, the news that we

00:20:01.520 began the hour with.

00:20:02.380 And that's just one piece of the story.

00:20:03.900 There are so many atrocities.

00:20:05.440 All of it is an atrocity.

00:20:06.880 I may maybe you you saw this coming, Ben.

00:20:10.740 I don't know.

00:20:11.140 I mean, you've been dealing with the up front and close that the depravity of this group,

00:20:15.440 this terrorist group, Hamas.

00:20:17.520 But I don't I didn't.

00:20:20.360 This is ISIS.

00:20:21.400 This is ISIS.

00:20:22.000 But empowered and backed by an entire regime in Iran, encouraged and being cheered across

00:20:28.900 the globe.

00:20:29.640 And then, as you point out, the moral equivalent, even within our own country, at your alma mater,

00:20:34.600 you went to Harvard Law, 31 student groups coming out and siding with them.

00:20:39.100 Do they support the beheading of babies?

00:20:41.180 I mean, literally, these are the questions we have to ask.

00:20:43.360 It's infuriating.

00:20:45.040 I look at it.

00:20:45.720 I think there's only one there's only one thing to do, and that is to this group must

00:20:49.680 no longer exist.

00:20:50.900 There must be no more Hamas after Israel's done here.

00:20:54.900 That's clearly true.

00:20:55.940 Israel has tried to avoid this.

00:20:58.120 I mean, they really have tried to avoid this because, again, Iraq has been fired on Israeli

00:21:01.360 civilians for the last 17 years since Israel gave up the control of the Gaza Strip.

00:21:07.000 And the last thing Israel wants to do is go back in there.

00:21:08.920 They would have preferred to continue low level conflict for for years on end.

00:21:12.820 I mean, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been in power for a combined 12, 13 years

00:21:17.760 at this point.

00:21:18.460 The last thing he wanted to do was launch some sort of overwhelming invasion of the

00:21:22.280 Gaza Strip and have to retake control.

00:21:23.800 They've been forced to do that by the circumstance.

00:21:25.520 The only thing that's surprising about the attack is not the intent of the attack, because

00:21:28.240 if you've been watching what Hamas has been saying and doing for years on end, if you

00:21:31.620 go back to the second intifada when suicide bombers were walking into pizzerias and blowing

00:21:35.160 themselves up, I mean, there's nothing new under the sun.

00:21:37.600 The only thing that's new here is the extent and the scale of the attack.

00:21:40.200 And there's going to be serious fallout for the intelligence community in Israel.

00:21:44.700 There's going to be serious fallout for the military in Israel, for the government of

00:21:48.040 Israel after all this is said and done because of that sort of failure.

00:21:51.240 I mean, it's a catastrophic failure on the order of 9-11 in the United States.

00:21:54.300 I mean, actually, it's order of magnitudes worse in a country that only has 9 million

00:21:57.420 Jews to have 1,000 Jews slaughtered.

00:21:59.600 Every life is one life.

00:22:00.960 So I don't like to do that proportionality argument.

00:22:02.560 But it's important to understand the impact on Israeli society is, again, orders of magnitude

00:22:08.300 greater, I think, than 9-11 even was for most Americans who are not harmed directly by 9-11.

00:22:13.720 But the only surprising thing here is the extent of the damage, not the intention of

00:22:18.880 the people who were doing it.

00:22:20.780 And as you mentioned, the sort of moral equivalence being drawn by the left, it's always been,

00:22:25.820 in this particular case, a mask for anti-Semitism and Jew hatred.

00:22:28.560 And when people are defending even this sort of activity, trying to contextualize this sort

00:22:32.460 of activity, there's only two ways to explain that.

00:22:34.940 One is the unbelievably soft bigotry of low expectation, which just is bigotry.

00:22:38.760 If you expect that people who are living in a bad situation get to have babies, I don't

00:22:43.900 know what that says about you or about the people who you're describing.

00:22:46.600 But second of all, the sort of latent disdain for Jewish life is absurd.

00:22:53.760 And when you say the murder of a maternity war, I think the important, one of the things

00:22:56.720 that the folks should understand is that Israel is filled with children.

00:22:59.760 Demographically, Israel is an incredibly young country.

00:23:01.900 And so a disproportionate number of the people who are going to be killed in these sorts

00:23:05.360 of attacks are going to be very young children, mothers.

00:23:09.320 The fact that we can now see Hamas taking these videos and putting them on social media,

00:23:13.500 I think it's a massive just political error in calculation.

00:23:17.240 But the goal was to frighten Israelis into submission, to force them to leave.

00:23:21.160 It's precisely the opposite.

00:23:22.460 I have friends in the IDF, obviously, who have been called up.

00:23:25.380 Pretty much everybody in Israel has been called up at this point.

00:23:27.660 I have friends from America.

00:23:28.400 As you mentioned at the top of the show, I was just in Israel until Friday morning with

00:23:32.860 my family.

00:23:33.540 We got out and 15 hours later, we heard about what was going on over there.

00:23:38.520 But there are a lot of our friends who are still over there in Israel.

00:23:41.420 And Israel put out a call for anybody with medical background to volunteer.

00:23:45.820 I have friends right now who are American doctors, one who's a neurosurgeon, who literally

00:23:49.840 traveled down to the border of Gaza and is operating in a field hospital right now, trying

00:23:53.260 to help out.

00:23:54.080 So the notion that, you know, the back of Israelis, the back of Jews is broken in some

00:23:59.980 way by this sort of stuff is absolute sheer nonsense.

00:24:01.940 And and the the what's to come is going to is going to be something very different than

00:24:08.060 what has come before.

00:24:09.420 They've been they've been so divided politically within Israel over the past year plus.

00:24:14.300 It's been all over the papers.

00:24:15.560 But I mean, the leader of the opposition party has come out and said, unity government, let's

00:24:19.880 we're putting all this to the side.

00:24:21.380 I mean, Israel's come together in a profound way and they are united when it comes to this

00:24:26.360 issue.

00:24:26.820 They understand it's truly existential.

00:24:29.920 But I don't want to skip past, you know, what what terror does.

00:24:34.880 You know, we live this here in our country after 9-11 and what's being unleashed on the

00:24:39.060 Israelis here and the day to day discovery, Ben, of the horrors that were committed in the

00:24:44.780 time that Hamas managed to make it across that border.

00:24:47.660 However, it's incredibly jarring.

00:24:49.820 It's it's incredibly jarring for me.

00:24:51.880 I live here.

00:24:53.000 I didn't I'm not anywhere near it.

00:24:54.620 I wasn't in Israel.

00:24:55.540 I can't imagine what the Israelis are going through.

00:24:58.220 Even this people that's used to being attacked.

00:25:00.340 I mean, they haven't seen anything like this.

00:25:02.120 And so how do you think I mean, how do they get past this?

00:25:05.040 How do they I know this is a strong lot, but how do you get past atrocities like this?

00:25:11.080 I mean, there's no way to get past the atrocities.

00:25:12.440 Obviously, they're I mean, it is the only way to imagine it is for anybody who's listening

00:25:16.720 or watching.

00:25:17.600 You're just living your daily life and somebody comes into your home and literally drags you

00:25:22.040 and your children across the border to a hellscape and then and then murder you on camera and

00:25:27.720 threaten to murder you on camera.

00:25:28.680 That's that's exactly what's had.

00:25:29.740 And these were people who are just living their lives.

00:25:31.360 This is not a military attack, as I mentioned, in any way, shape or form.

00:25:34.280 It was just pure carnage.

00:25:35.740 Kill as many Jews as possible.

00:25:37.300 Murder as many Jews as possible.

00:25:38.380 Scare as many people as possible.

00:25:40.160 The time for mourning is going to be later.

00:25:42.320 And as I said, there's going to be tremendous fallout in the state of Israel politically

00:25:45.060 and otherwise.

00:25:46.600 But right now, the prevailing mood over there is absolute determination.

00:25:50.840 People mobilizing.

00:25:51.800 What can we do to help?

00:25:53.120 What can what can you know, what can be done?

00:25:55.520 As I said, there's been a mobilization of 300,000 Israelis, the largest single military

00:26:00.660 mobilization in the history of the state of Israel.

00:26:03.740 The Miluim, the reserves have all been have all been called up multiple members of each

00:26:08.260 family.

00:26:08.660 Again, I know a lot of these people and I certainly have a lot of friends who have relatives who

00:26:13.360 are in the Miluim who have been called up.

00:26:16.420 When times of crisis happen, Israel does draw together in an extraordinary and unique way.

00:26:21.860 And one of the things that's been sort of ironic for people like me who watch Israeli

00:26:25.220 politics pretty closely, all of the arguments about judicial reform were somewhat puzzling

00:26:29.960 to people who actually watch Israeli society.

00:26:31.740 Because the truth is that everybody who's on one side of the aisle there has a cousin who's

00:26:35.880 on the other side of the aisle there.

00:26:37.320 It's very tight in society.

00:26:38.400 It's very well, what I usually say about Israel, because I've been there multiple times with

00:26:41.280 my crew, is is that to understand Israel, the first thing you have to understand really

00:26:45.700 is that in America, there are seven degrees of Kevin Bacon separation.

00:26:48.740 In Israel, there's one.

00:26:49.840 I mean, literally any person in the state of Israel with like one go between, I can find

00:26:53.320 somebody who knows that person.

00:26:54.200 And so it's because of that, when crisis happens, the ability of the society to draw together

00:26:59.880 and mobilize is extraordinary.

00:27:03.140 The key focus for Israelis right now is obviously on fighting, on securing themselves, on making

00:27:10.720 sure that Gaza is never again a threat to life and limb, intimidating Hezbollah into staying

00:27:16.460 out of the war on the northern front so this doesn't escalate into a broader regional war,

00:27:19.840 protecting the so-called settlements, the shtachim that are out in Judea and Samaria, making sure

00:27:25.440 that a conflagration does not begin in Judea and Samaria that would stretch the Israeli forces

00:27:31.020 thin.

00:27:31.500 I think that one of the things that Israel's enemies really have relied upon, yeah, the

00:27:35.200 West Bank, one of the things that Israel's enemies have really relied upon is actually

00:27:39.280 Israel's overwhelming military superiority.

00:27:41.180 Because when you pinprick strike with rockets, and Israel can shoot down most of those, it doesn't

00:27:46.260 necessitate massive action.

00:27:47.800 In fact, massive action looks wildly disproportionate if a rocket falls in an empty area, and then

00:27:52.280 you go in and you take over the Gaza Strip, for example, then Israel's enemies know that

00:27:57.240 that's probably not going to be the likely outcome.

00:27:58.780 If Israel gets stretched very thin, however, and it really does become an existential crisis,

00:28:03.020 then all of the rules are off the table.

00:28:05.760 And so if Hezbollah were to come in on the northern border, for example, they have about

00:28:08.360 150,000 rockets pointed at the northern towns in Israel.

00:28:12.700 If they were to come in in any serious way, then Israel would unleash the full might of

00:28:17.440 its air force.

00:28:18.240 And that no one has seen.

00:28:19.320 I mean, everyone keeps pretending what's going on in Gaza right now is Israel unleashing.

00:28:22.980 This is Israel in extraordinarily contained fashion, hitting particular areas in particular

00:28:27.180 buildings.

00:28:27.600 But if Israel feels that it's stretched to its limit, if Israel really feels as though

00:28:31.180 it's an existential grave crisis, then the full in the same way that if America felt

00:28:35.840 that we were ever in existential danger, no, this is why nobody wants to bleep with America,

00:28:40.740 because if if someone really did and we really went whole hog, no, it just it would be it

00:28:46.640 would be a parking lot.

00:28:47.840 The same if Israel feels stretched to the limit and they don't have any choice, that

00:28:52.100 will be the result.

00:28:52.740 That's why it's a very good thing, actually, that the Biden administration moved an aircraft

00:28:55.300 carrier into the Mediterranean and is telling Hezbollah, you guys best stay out, because

00:28:58.740 that is a wise move, because if Hezbollah were to get in, the chance that this turns

00:29:03.120 into a regional war with Iran then getting in in Syria, getting in in America, forced

00:29:07.720 to to intervene, it would get extremely ugly, extremely quickly.

00:29:11.660 It would be a war.

00:29:12.080 The West wins, obviously.

00:29:13.140 I mean, especially with America's health.

00:29:14.700 It's a war.

00:29:15.040 Israel even by itself probably could win, but it would certainly stretch Israel to the

00:29:18.200 breaking point.

00:29:18.640 Again, you're talking about a country of a grand total of nine million citizens, seven

00:29:22.320 million Jews.

00:29:24.340 There are reports that people who are even beyond the age of service are rushing to

00:29:28.700 volunteer.

00:29:29.200 They don't care about the rules.

00:29:30.240 They just want to go fight for their country.

00:29:32.140 I mean, it's similar to what we saw right here after 9-11, where everybody wanted to

00:29:35.500 volunteer.

00:29:36.040 You know, it caused people to join the military who never had.

00:29:38.300 It caused people like Pat Tillman to leave the NFL and volunteer to go serve.

00:29:41.840 I mean, you could go down the list.

00:29:43.980 So the viewers know, here's Bibi Netanyahu yesterday talking about what's happened.

00:29:50.360 Israel is at war.

00:29:51.860 Hamas will understand that by attacking us, they've made a mistake of historic proportions.

00:29:57.980 Slaughtering families in their homes, kidnapping scores of women, children, and elderly, even

00:30:03.900 Holocaust survivors.

00:30:06.200 Hamas terrorists bound, burned, and executed children.

00:30:09.820 They are savages.

00:30:12.360 Hamas is ISIS.

00:30:14.140 The forces of civilization must support Israel in defeating Hamas.

00:30:18.700 I want to thank President Biden for his unequivocal support.

00:30:22.400 I want to thank leaders across the world who are standing with Israel today.

00:30:26.220 Israel will win this war.

00:30:28.740 And when Israel wins, the entire civilized world wins.

00:30:35.000 Ben, how about it?

00:30:36.020 Because so far, the Biden administration, well, the president is saying the right things.

00:30:39.620 I can't say the same for a State Department, you know, taking down the tweets about, well,

00:30:43.420 ceasefire repeatedly.

00:30:44.980 But he's saying the right things.

00:30:48.100 But that's today.

00:30:50.440 And as you know, these things have a history of the United States runs out of patience for

00:30:54.080 Israel's right to defend itself really quickly.

00:30:56.880 I don't know whether these circumstances are going to extend the window.

00:31:00.540 One would think it would extend the window somewhat.

00:31:03.080 But how do you see this playing out?

00:31:04.180 Well, I mean, the first time that there was a major sort of assault from Gaza, the Bush

00:31:09.500 administration was in power.

00:31:11.260 And the amount of time that they were given was approximately 32 days.

00:31:14.800 It's basically 32 days where America basically sat it out.

00:31:18.460 The possibility that it's longer than that in light of the circumstances is probably greater.

00:31:24.160 I mean, right now, we know that there are American citizens who are currently being held

00:31:27.200 hostage by Hamas.

00:31:29.780 And apparently there are reports that America is deploying some some Navy SEALs in an attempt

00:31:34.720 to possibly get them out.

00:31:36.320 I think that the window always is very short for Israel to to do what it needs to do in

00:31:41.040 these particular circumstances.

00:31:42.240 You can see, I mean, there are entrenched forces that hate the state of Israel that are

00:31:46.600 anti-Semitic.

00:31:47.840 The European Union yesterday considered the possibility of cutting off aid to the Palestinian

00:31:52.100 authority in Hamas in light of what's going on, which obviously is the correct move.

00:31:55.760 And that was immediately shut down by multiple countries in the European Union.

00:31:58.500 And so money will continue to flow to many of the same people who conducted these sorts

00:32:01.800 of attacks.

00:32:02.500 So, you know, Israel does not have and they know that they don't have an open ended timeline,

00:32:07.700 but it is going to take time.

00:32:08.720 In fact, the open ended timeline in some ways is is what is going to guarantee the possibility

00:32:13.780 of more careful use of human rights.

00:32:16.260 And if you have more time to do this, then it gives you more time to actually be pinpoint

00:32:20.800 and exact about how you do things.

00:32:22.500 The faster you do it, the sloppier it's going to be.

00:32:24.920 Israel doesn't have a choice right now.

00:32:26.220 The possibility of the end of this being Gaza being ruled in any way by Hamas or even any

00:32:32.920 substitute Palestinian government is extremely low right now.

00:32:36.980 I mean, no country worth its salt could allow that sort of thing.

00:32:41.120 The disgusting response from the so-called UN Human Rights Council.

00:32:45.180 I mean, there's been a lot of bad responses.

00:32:46.660 That one may take the cake.

00:32:47.660 I saw you responding to it yesterday.

00:32:49.240 Let's play it for the audience.

00:32:51.360 What is it?

00:32:52.760 Sat 8.

00:32:53.420 Do we have it?

00:32:54.740 Yeah.

00:32:54.960 On behalf of the OIC member states, we express our deep concerns over the loss of innocent

00:33:00.440 lives in the occupied Palestinian territory and elsewhere.

00:33:04.360 Regrettably, this whole huge loss of lives and unabated violence is a sad reminder of

00:33:08.980 more than seven decades of illegal foreign occupation, aggression and disrespect for the

00:33:13.780 international law and efforts to normalize and perpetuate illegal foreign occupation is

00:33:17.780 breathing violence.

00:33:18.620 We call on all parties to exercise restraint and honor the human rights obligations.

00:33:24.100 In this context, the so-called declaration of war and attacks on civilian population and their

00:33:29.300 properties is deeply distressing.

00:33:30.800 They actually held a moment of silence for the loss of innocent lives in Palestine, in the, quote, occupied

00:33:38.020 Palestinian territory.

00:33:39.640 That's that's where their focus was.

00:33:42.320 Well, it makes perfect sense.

00:33:43.580 I mean, the UN the UN is in general, most honestly, it's a it's a wretched hive of scum and

00:33:47.480 villainy.

00:33:47.780 It's literally just a conglomeration of some of the worst people on the planet.

00:33:51.760 The the number of countries that are absolute vicious human rights violators that are on

00:33:57.540 the Human Rights Council is obviously like extremely, extremely high.

00:34:01.040 You're talking about some of the worst countries on Earth that are on the Human Rights Council.

00:34:03.900 And so when they proclaim that they are very upset about the the situation in the Palestinian

00:34:09.020 areas without actively pointing out that it's Hamas that's literally violating the laws

00:34:14.240 of war by hiding behind civilians and then ignoring, obviously, the issue of the day, which

00:34:18.080 of the murder of a thousand Israeli civilians for just vicious anti-Semitic reasons, they

00:34:23.380 are what they are.

00:34:24.060 I don't think anybody has expectations.

00:34:25.300 But I think that what what has been shown here is that the all the masks are off, all

00:34:30.340 the veils are off.

00:34:31.260 If somehow you can't find moral clarity in this moment, then I don't know what to tell

00:34:35.200 you.

00:34:35.320 You're a fool.

00:34:36.120 You're either a fool or something significantly worse.

00:34:39.140 We are seeing a failure of moral clarity.

00:34:42.080 That's where I'm going to pick it up next.

00:34:43.200 Quick break.

00:34:43.680 Back to Ben Shapiro in one minute.

00:34:45.880 Stand by.

00:34:48.080 Ben, this headline out of Forbes is unbelievable, even in a disgusting media landscape that we

00:34:55.820 already know is dishonest.

00:34:57.480 Hamas threatens to execute Israeli civilian hostages for unprompted attacks on Gaza.

00:35:06.420 Unprompted attacks on Gaza.

00:35:09.260 Well, it's good to see the Hamas members have finally found employment as Forbes headline

00:35:12.280 writers.

00:35:12.920 That's that's exciting stuff.

00:35:14.100 Uh, so it's it is it is tremendously impressive what the media are capable of doing when they

00:35:19.080 really put their minds to it.

00:35:20.640 And this seems to be, you know, not not in quite as bald face statements.

00:35:24.840 It seems to be the general attack at many of the many of the places like MSNBC, a little

00:35:29.840 bit less so at CNN.

00:35:31.320 But yeah, there's certainly a lot of mainstream outlets that they have a vested interest in

00:35:34.680 pretending that there is both a cycle of violence and a moral equivalence between Israel and

00:35:39.480 terrorist groups like Hamas, that this has been their agenda for a very, very long time.

00:35:43.620 And when the agenda gets exposed, I mean, yes, I mean, yes, people die, people, people

00:35:48.340 die.

00:35:48.960 Yes.

00:35:49.960 The leftist control of the media and the leftist control of the so-called academy, you know,

00:35:55.460 colleges, universities in America and elsewhere really matters.

00:35:58.520 And we're seeing it.

00:35:59.480 I mean, we're seeing the outpouring of anti-Semitism that has come in the wake of this attack.

00:36:02.720 I say I say the outpouring of anti-Semitism.

00:36:06.480 It's crazy.

00:36:07.500 You would think now would be a time where people will be rallying behind our Jewish friends,

00:36:11.640 behind Israel.

00:36:12.560 And in some instances, we're seeing it.

00:36:14.580 But in too many pockets, we're we're not.

00:36:16.780 We're not.

00:36:17.420 And here's just a couple of other examples.

00:36:19.420 New York pro-Palestinian protest mocking Israelis.

00:36:24.060 This posted on Sunday.

00:36:25.360 I'll just give you a little flavor.

00:36:26.420 Saw 17.

00:36:26.980 There was some sort of wave or desert party where they were having a great time until

00:36:34.080 the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters.

00:36:43.320 Every Israeli official said it was a complete surprise.

00:36:47.420 Just a couple of days ago, they said that surprise wasn't possible.

00:36:52.300 They said we control every inch of Palestine.

00:36:55.400 They were so arrogant on the land, from the sea and from the air.

00:37:03.200 The people of the Gaza Strip.

00:37:08.600 Young people are riding their bikes.

00:37:12.600 That's enough of him.

00:37:13.720 That's enough.

00:37:14.320 We get it.

00:37:14.960 It's disgusting.

00:37:16.340 It's disgusting.

00:37:17.980 Matched only by what we've seen in Australia.

00:37:20.000 But it's not just the United States and Australia where they went openly Nazi.

00:37:23.860 I mean, openly Nazi in Australia.

00:37:25.720 Take a listen.

00:37:26.180 It's a huge crowd.

00:37:40.900 There are thousands of people there, at least hundreds, maybe over thousands, chanting gas

00:37:45.940 the Jews and F the Jews.

00:37:47.700 Ben, like, I don't get it.

00:37:50.000 I know it's existed.

00:37:52.500 I just, I guess I didn't fully appreciate just in what kind of numbers and with what

00:37:57.580 fervor anti-Semitism was lurking right beneath the surface.

00:38:01.800 One of my favorite things about our beloved media is how much time they will spend on a

00:38:05.660 random swastika drawn on a dorm room wall in one of our universities and how little they

00:38:09.920 seem to care about the mass murder of Jews around the world and huge crowds of terrorist

00:38:14.500 supporters chanting gas the Jews.

00:38:16.760 Apparently, you're a Nazi sometimes if you're a Trump supporter.

00:38:19.760 But if you're an actual Nazi, then you're not necessarily a Nazi, right?

00:38:23.220 Then we have to understand the context of what exactly is going on.

00:38:26.840 But to a point that you made earlier, Megan, this stuff does have consequences.

00:38:30.020 And when I say it has consequences, Hamas knows what they are doing.

00:38:33.340 Hamas knows that there's a reason they are taking these videos.

00:38:35.460 There is a reason that they are propagating what they propagate.

00:38:39.240 And it's because they understand that they have people who sympathize with them and who

00:38:41.820 will make excuses for them.

00:38:43.440 They understand exactly what it is that they're attempting to do.

00:38:45.980 Iran knows exactly what they're attempting to do here.

00:38:48.640 And if you're a useful idiot for the Iranian regime or for the evil human scum that are

00:38:54.740 Hamas, then you ought to re-examine your life.

00:38:57.840 You are the baddie here.

00:38:59.420 It's just, it is an incredible thing.

00:39:01.380 Listen, for 30 years, I've been watching as the media twist the narrative with regard

00:39:06.540 to Israel and the Palestinians into some sort of cycle of violence, moral equivalence that

00:39:11.140 could be just solved if Israel would only make more territorial concessions.

00:39:14.440 This is not a territorial conflict.

00:39:16.020 It is not a territorial conflict.

00:39:17.180 I mean, again, this isn't, these cities are not historical, quote unquote, Palestinian

00:39:22.700 territory.

00:39:23.360 This is, we are not talking about, quote unquote, settlements.

00:39:26.000 We are talking about Heartland, Israel.

00:39:28.840 We are talking about, they just want to kill Jews.

00:39:30.800 They just want to kill Jews.

00:39:31.740 Notice, by the way, notice those chants.

00:39:33.420 Is it gas the Israelis?

00:39:34.480 Is it kill the Israelis?

00:39:35.500 Is it shoot the Israelis?

00:39:36.380 Shoot the Jews?

00:39:36.900 They're shouting gas the Jews because anti-Zionism is, was, and will continue to be a cover, a

00:39:43.080 very, very thin veneer of cover over anti-Semitism and Jew hatred.

00:39:47.580 There's the natural consequence of the sort of sloganeering that you hear sometimes.

00:39:51.980 People say things like, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

00:39:54.780 These sorts of slogans, they mean something.

00:39:56.600 They mean the extermination of millions of Jews.

00:39:58.760 And is there any doubt that if Hamas had the capacity to eliminate every Jew in Israel

00:40:03.640 that they would do it?

00:40:04.800 After the weekend, I don't know how you could possibly make that argument.

00:40:09.300 And that saying that you just mentioned was being chanted by the Democratic Socialists

00:40:12.780 of America at a rally in Times Square on Saturday as the attack was underway.

00:40:18.000 This is, you know, Democratic Socialists of America.

00:40:20.120 That's who's in that.

00:40:21.300 And AOC calls herself Democratic Socialists.

00:40:23.200 So does Ilhan Omar.

00:40:23.900 The squad, they align with that group.

00:40:26.500 Hakeem Jeffries, the leader of the squad, of the Dems, has not said anything to condemn

00:40:31.440 the anti-Semitism coming from Cori Bush and Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

00:40:36.780 Nothing.

00:40:37.160 It's fine.

00:40:37.580 So that's on the Democrats.

00:40:38.420 I guess they're fine with that.

00:40:40.000 We've seen just time and time again where Democratic leadership doesn't feel any need,

00:40:44.680 never mind President Biden, to call out this radical piece of their constituency.

00:40:49.440 But what's, I don't know, almost more troubling, Ben, is like what's happening in some Republican

00:40:55.200 pockets.

00:40:56.280 You know, some of the same faction on the right that's anti the war in Ukraine seems to feel

00:41:01.580 hesitant to be bold in calling out this terrorist attack by Hamas.

00:41:06.560 I mean, there's some faction that just seems to be like, you know, somehow I'm going to be

00:41:09.520 inconsistent if I say Israel's, you know, should go crush Hamas.

00:41:14.680 And you can hear the hesitancy in their response.

00:41:18.100 Now, I don't know if it's fair for me to say that Vivek Ramaswamy is in that group, but

00:41:21.280 I'll just give you a flavor of what he said to Tucker on Tucker's show yesterday.

00:41:26.900 What happened against Israel?

00:41:29.360 You said it.

00:41:29.960 I believe it.

00:41:30.520 It is barbaric.

00:41:31.720 It is medieval.

00:41:32.920 It is wrong.

00:41:33.620 And Israel as a nation absolutely has the right to self-defense, to its own national existence.

00:41:40.360 And I think they should have our moral and diplomatic support.

00:41:43.860 The job of American leaders is to advance American interests.

00:41:46.620 And I think we support Israeli leaders asking what advances and defends Israel as we should

00:41:51.580 morally and diplomatically.

00:41:53.180 But leaders here need to look after American interests first.

00:41:57.440 So America first is sort of the resounding message from this group.

00:42:02.860 And if you listen to the whole interview, you'd hear a lot more of that.

00:42:05.480 What do you make of that?

00:42:06.080 I mean, again, I think America does have interests that are distinct from the interests of the

00:42:10.000 state of Israel.

00:42:10.780 But in this case, they're coincident.

00:42:11.980 So it's not always coincident.

00:42:13.540 Obviously, America has its own interests.

00:42:15.480 Those interests are first priority for all Americans and should be first priority for all

00:42:19.260 Americans.

00:42:19.740 When you're talking about a key ally of the United States under eight terror assault from

00:42:24.000 a group supported by Iran, which has global ambitions to spread terrorism.

00:42:29.740 Khamas itself, by the way, has global ambitions to spread terrorism.

00:42:32.020 And you watch a thousand Jews get slaughtered in Israel.

00:42:35.100 And the moral and the practical sometimes cross streams.

00:42:39.060 I think that there's been a large scale mistake made in some corners of the right to suggest

00:42:43.340 that because it is easy to get sucked into whatever is bad, we should do something about.

00:42:47.900 That means that whatever is bad, we should do nothing about.

00:42:50.380 And I don't think that that is that that is the case.

00:42:53.040 Again, Israel right now is just calling for some baseline support.

00:42:56.180 They're calling for resupply in military means.

00:42:59.280 They're calling for America to basically dissuade Hezbollah from getting into a war and broadening

00:43:05.800 this into a regional war.

00:43:06.640 And by the way, that is just good foreign policy for the United States.

00:43:08.760 The last thing the United States wants is a conflagration.

00:43:11.020 Say America stays completely out.

00:43:12.440 Hezbollah comes in.

00:43:13.460 And now Israel is at war with Hezbollah and Hamas and Iran and the Syrian government.

00:43:19.160 How is that going to end well for United States foreign interests?

00:43:21.860 Or maybe there's the idea that there is no interest in watching a second Holocaust.

00:43:25.760 It doesn't really matter very much.

00:43:26.780 It won't have any geopolitical impact that obviously is why it's obviously untrue.

00:43:30.180 There's a there's a sophisticated realism that I think is useful.

00:43:33.280 And then there's a radically unsophisticated isolationism that is deeply unuseful.

00:43:37.200 And I think that when one masquerades is the other, you got a problem.

00:43:40.480 So how how involved do we get?

00:43:42.780 Do you think the United States in this conflict, given that I mean, right or wrong, the appetite

00:43:47.560 for us involving ourselves in foreign wars as a result of what's going on in Ukraine

00:43:51.620 is low and dwindling, especially on the Republican side?

00:43:54.400 So I don't think Israel wants to be involved in a mass scale foreign war.

00:43:58.500 I mean, the idea that Israel wants Israel doesn't want to be in Gaza.

00:44:01.620 I mean, if this had not happened, then the status quo ante would have just been preserved

00:44:04.420 and it would have been a few rockets flying over and most of them being shot down, a few

00:44:07.420 Jews dying per year because of this.

00:44:08.940 So what Israel wants at this point is to regain control of its own territory to protect

00:44:13.860 itself from Gaza.

00:44:14.540 This is never again a problem.

00:44:15.420 And to keep Hezbollah out, it seems to me like those are all in America's interest.

00:44:19.400 Because if Hezbollah comes in, this is going to a broader regional war.

00:44:21.600 I don't think Israel wants to go to war with Iran.

00:44:23.680 I don't think that America wants to go to war with Iran.

00:44:25.500 I don't think that anybody is interested in a long term military engagement.

00:44:29.080 By the way, I don't think Iran wants to go to war over this, which is why Hezbollah has

00:44:32.060 not come in yet.

00:44:33.680 Iran wants to use Hamas as a proxy specifically so that resources are spent on Hamas.

00:44:38.720 And that's exactly what they're going to get, except they're going to be taken off the

00:44:40.920 board by the Israeli military forces, which is exactly what should happen.

00:44:44.460 Iran has enough caution that they actually don't want Hezbollah taken off the board.

00:44:47.680 As I mentioned earlier, for Hezbollah to come in, the overwhelming Israeli military might

00:44:51.140 be brought on the northern border because it's a greater danger.

00:44:53.480 So I think everybody has aligned interests here.

00:44:56.200 Everybody wants this conflict to remain contained and to end as soon as possible with the only

00:45:02.040 difference being that Israel and the United States have an interest in Israeli victory

00:45:04.920 in the Gaza Strip.

00:45:05.980 Whereas Iran would, of course, love to preserve Hamas's victory over there, or at least Hamas

00:45:12.420 maintaining power over there and to sink the Saudi peace process, which, of course, is the

00:45:16.440 sort of unspoken part of all of this.

00:45:18.700 The real reason for the timing here is because, yes, sure, America was providing monetary support

00:45:24.240 to Iran, and the Iranians thought that they could push where they saw mush in terms of

00:45:28.240 the Biden administration.

00:45:30.160 And they're meeting, I think, an unexpected resistance from the Biden administration in

00:45:32.980 that quarter.

00:45:33.360 But the real reason that they decided to prompt this war, which has now been confirmed by

00:45:38.040 both The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, the reason that they're doing this

00:45:40.960 is because they're attempting to prevent Israel from allying with the Saudis.

00:45:44.040 Because if that does, that radically reshifts the balance of power in the region.

00:45:46.760 The balance of power in the region for essentially 75 years, really, since the establishment of

00:45:52.460 the state of Israel, has been Israel alone, and then it's been the Sunnis, and then it's

00:45:56.520 been the Shia.

00:45:57.120 And that's been sort of the tripartite balance that's been taking place in the Middle East.

00:46:00.620 Well, because of the Abraham Accords, they're starting to see a Sunni-Jewish team-up, which

00:46:04.500 was the one thing that nobody thought could happen.

00:46:06.400 If Saudi jumped in, which seemed very, very probable, actually, the timeline was very quick on

00:46:12.180 that.

00:46:12.300 People were suggesting by the end of the year there might even be Saudi normalization with

00:46:15.420 Israel.

00:46:15.780 That happens, and suddenly Iran is totally isolated.

00:46:17.700 It's Iran, Qatar, Lebanon, Syria, and that's the entire axis of Iranian power.

00:46:23.500 And so that, in the face of Sunni power, Egypt, Jordan, Israel, basically allied, that was

00:46:30.200 something that Iran simply could not allow.

00:46:31.720 And so one of the goals here was to throw the Saudis off the peace deal by essentially

00:46:37.640 forcing Israel to go into the Gaza Strip.

00:46:39.900 So that's exactly what you're seeing in the propagandistic Al Jazeera Shia backing press.

00:46:44.760 What you're seeing there is an attempt to basically tell the Saudis that there's no

00:46:48.320 way they can make peace with Israel so long as Israel's going into the Gaza Strip, even

00:46:51.080 if Israel's going into the Gaza Strip for very good reasons.

00:46:53.400 So I think that's going to put Mohammed bin Salman off the scent for very long.

00:46:56.800 I really, really don't.

00:46:57.860 I think it's going to delay everything that's going on between Israel and the Saudis by a

00:47:00.960 couple of months just for public relations purposes.

00:47:03.160 But if there's one regime that hates Hamas more, actually, than Israel does, it may be

00:47:09.880 the Saudis.

00:47:10.480 The Saudis have no interest in propping up Hamas, which is an Iranian tool.

00:47:14.040 In the minute we have left, Ben, please remind the audience why we care, why Americans care,

00:47:19.260 why they need to care about Israel in the Middle East.

00:47:22.140 So on a purely rationalistic, realist perspective, Israel is the only serious ally the United

00:47:29.020 States has in the Middle East.

00:47:30.160 They share intelligence.

00:47:31.180 They share military supply.

00:47:32.480 They share military technology.

00:47:33.860 They're a powerful economy in the region.

00:47:35.240 Now, on a moral level, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.

00:47:39.340 Israel is not only the only democracy in the Middle East.

00:47:40.980 It shares a Judeo-Christian heritage with the West.

00:47:44.460 The root of Christianity is in Judaism.

00:47:46.260 The roots of the West are in Sinai.

00:47:48.480 They come, we share a heritage together.

00:47:51.160 I'm a Jew, and I'm an American, and those two things are not in conflict.

00:47:54.800 And the reason they're not in conflict is because Jewish values and American values in

00:47:58.300 almost every way are coincident.

00:48:00.360 The only reason I say almost is because there are Christian values that are added to Judeo-Christian

00:48:04.060 there.

00:48:04.580 But to be a Jewish American is not a conflict.

00:48:06.740 To be an American in favor of Jewry is not a conflict.

00:48:09.420 Those are, in fact, absolutely coincident.

00:48:11.940 And when you watch any, if Britain were attacked this way, it would be the same thing.

00:48:15.840 If France were attacked this way, it would be the same thing.

00:48:18.160 And just because it's Jews doesn't make it any less true.

00:48:20.460 Jews being beheaded in the streets by Islamic savages is a reason for anyone to worry.

00:48:27.680 Ben Shapiro, thank you so much.

00:48:29.400 If you guys have not listened to Ben's show from yesterday, I'm sure today's is great,

00:48:32.560 too.

00:48:32.720 I just haven't had the chance to listen to it yet.

00:48:34.900 You should.

00:48:35.780 All the best to you.

00:48:36.540 Thank you for coming on.

00:48:38.100 Thanks so much.

00:48:39.860 My God.

00:48:40.820 Much, much more on the opposite side of this break.

00:48:42.620 Don't go away.

00:48:43.080 We're now going to dive into the complex military decisions Israel faces as it responds to Hamas

00:48:53.360 while also trying to save who knows how many hostages at this point, but they include Americans.

00:48:59.620 We care about the Israelis, too, but we don't.

00:49:02.060 We do care deeply about American hostages.

00:49:04.640 The message by the United States of America has always been, you don't mess with our people.

00:49:09.040 You get us involved, you live to regret it.

00:49:11.780 Israel has now mobilized 360,000 reservists.

00:49:15.140 This is the most in such a short period of time since the country's founding.

00:49:19.080 This is video from outside an Israeli military base near Gaza, cars lining the highway, left

00:49:25.140 behind by reservists reporting for duty.

00:49:27.380 While much of the coverage has been focused on the civilian victims for the obvious reasons,

00:49:32.700 Hamas terrorists were also seen on video celebrating attacks against Israeli soldiers.

00:49:38.640 A warning that this video we are about to show you is graphic.

00:49:42.900 The terrorists are seen jumping onto an Israeli tank.

00:49:45.980 They then pull the soldier out of it, drag him down to the ground.

00:49:49.940 The crowd then surrounds him and beats him mercilessly.

00:49:54.500 We don't know what happened to him.

00:49:55.860 We're also hearing stories of the regular Israelis who sacrificed themselves to help and save

00:50:03.680 others.

00:50:04.600 This is Yanev Saruti.

00:50:06.940 Listen to this story.

00:50:08.320 According to Eyewitness Reports, Yanev picked up nine people fleeing attacks in his car.

00:50:14.700 He drove them to a military base, but only to find that it was under Hamas's control.

00:50:18.800 So he kept driving until he got those victims to safety.

00:50:22.540 Somewhere along the way, however, he suffered injuries as well.

00:50:26.280 And later died.

00:50:27.540 He's a hero.

00:50:28.840 And there are many just like him.

00:50:31.280 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel's response will, quote,

00:50:35.940 change the Middle East.

00:50:37.680 Our next guest says Israel conducting a large scale operation in Gaza will be urban warfare.

00:50:44.080 And unlike anything Israel has undertaken in years, though, we have seen it elsewhere.

00:50:48.640 And it's not easy.

00:50:50.900 Joining me now, retired Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis.

00:50:54.060 He's a former combat veteran of Desert Storm and the war in Afghanistan.

00:50:57.780 He is also the host of his own YouTube show, Daniel Davis Deep Dive.

00:51:01.540 Colonel Davis, thank you so much for being here.

00:51:03.160 And so the challenge of conducting this urban warfare, A, to get hostages back and B, to

00:51:09.220 then level Gaza and potentially just engage in the hand-to-hand combat that it's going

00:51:13.860 to take on mission A is, I mean, it can't be the complexity of it can't be overstated.

00:51:19.060 So, boy, you hit the nail right on the head.

00:51:21.980 You cannot overstate how hard this is going to be for so many reasons.

00:51:26.300 And really, at the top of that list is that Hamas has clearly shown that they don't care

00:51:30.960 about life.

00:51:31.540 They don't care about their own life.

00:51:32.900 And that's actually a dangerous situation because they're willing to take a lot of risk

00:51:36.900 with that.

00:51:37.320 And so that also implies that whenever Israel or if the U.S. Special Forces ever get involved

00:51:44.120 as well, get involved with this, the risk is going to be very, very high for the hostages

00:51:49.820 as well as for those trying to get them out.

00:51:52.480 And even if you're talking about a conventional fight like this, you've got to know that as

00:51:56.140 prepared as Hamas was to launch this operation, they also had equal preparation for the expected

00:52:02.200 Israeli defense.

00:52:03.100 And they have had many years to understand the tactics, techniques, and procedures Israel

00:52:08.380 uses when they come in.

00:52:09.420 So they have probably defenses already constructed and are waiting for Israel, which probably

00:52:14.100 will include, you know, booby traps, actually what they call fire bags, where they'll try

00:52:18.860 to draw them in and draw them into certain areas where they can then have pre-planned bombs

00:52:23.360 or snobbers.

00:52:25.060 This is going to be hard in every capacity.

00:52:28.700 I mean, there's no way that the Israelis don't know all of that.

00:52:31.900 And yet they want to get their hostages back.

00:52:34.520 I mean, these are women, their children, their babies, like their fellow Defense Force members.

00:52:38.880 But, you know, like what country would leave its women and its children and its elderly

00:52:43.200 citizens just aside and say, oh, well, you know, they got them.

00:52:46.580 I guess they're as good as dead anyway.

00:52:47.840 Israel is not going to do that.

00:52:49.200 So will it not require a ground force invasion or incursion into Gaza?

00:52:55.400 Well, here's the situation.

00:52:56.760 You know, one of the most famous hostage situations was the raid in Entebbe many years ago in Uganda

00:53:04.300 that Israel launched.

00:53:05.960 And, you know, that's a very complex issue.

00:53:08.300 And then you try to get the hostages out.

00:53:10.540 And, you know, and that's when it's really easy to identify.

00:53:13.120 This time, Hamas almost certainly has spread however many of these hostages there are throughout

00:53:19.320 the Gaza Strip and all these different locations.

00:53:21.980 And they almost certainly have visibility on the routes that would come in.

00:53:26.340 So they would know if the Hamas or the Israeli team side is coming to get them, you know,

00:53:31.020 if they want to try to covert situation.

00:53:33.060 So it's going to be really hard in any case.

00:53:35.920 And there's no question that if they get it cornered, I think we can expect that Hamas

00:53:40.140 would kill those hostages.

00:53:41.740 And if Israel goes in and tries several of them and they start backfiring, you know,

00:53:47.060 then that's going to cause a lot of backlash within this, especially the family members

00:53:51.560 in Israel.

00:53:52.560 So, again, there is no easy path to this.

00:53:56.000 Every way that you would suggest has a big negative side on it.

00:53:59.180 And honestly, I'm not real sure what Israel is going to do and how they're going to try

00:54:02.460 to get these back short of negotiations.

00:54:05.840 I mean, there's a report out today just looking it up here via the Wall Street Journal that

00:54:10.220 Israel may be exploring a possible deal to secure at least the release of women and children

00:54:15.100 using Egypt as an intermediary.

00:54:17.320 This is according to Egyptian officials.

00:54:19.320 But Hamas is given little indication, quoting from the report here in Wall Street Journal again,

00:54:23.620 that it is prepared to negotiate unless it can secure the release of thousands of Palestinians

00:54:28.920 in Israeli detention, according to these officials.

00:54:33.340 Either way, they're saying this is a lose-lose because, you know, you exchange thousands of

00:54:38.080 Palestinian prisoners for one or two, you know, a small handful of Israeli prisoners.

00:54:43.100 That's that's obviously a propaganda victory for Hamas.

00:54:48.820 But if you send the Israelis into Gaza, you know, boots on the ground, you're going to suffer a huge

00:54:55.900 loss of life on the Israeli side.

00:54:57.800 And there's no guarantee you're ever getting those hostages back.

00:55:00.360 Even so.

00:55:02.480 That's exactly right.

00:55:03.200 And that just underscores the conundrum, even for the government of Israel, because, I mean,

00:55:08.420 you can imagine the backlash they would get if they, you know, even if they got the women

00:55:12.860 and children out, that would be, you know, obviously great for every reason you can imagine.

00:55:17.240 But then if it resulted in more experienced and hardcore Hamas fighters getting returned

00:55:24.780 back into the potential battlefield to continue fighting, that's going to be bad for Israel.

00:55:29.400 And that's a definitely lose-lose situation.

00:55:32.000 Bottom line is that the operation that Hamas launched here has put the Israeli government

00:55:37.460 in a horrible situation at the beginning, and it remains in that case right now.

00:55:42.260 At some point, though, because Netanyahu has said their declared position is that they will

00:55:47.860 destroy Hamas, he's going to have to go in at some point.

00:55:51.020 Otherwise, all they're doing is, you know, guarding the fence, and they can't get by with that

00:55:54.860 with the casualties that have already been launched into.

00:55:57.820 So there's just no good path for Israel to take.

00:56:00.980 Every path they go on has really big negatives.

00:56:04.340 And unfortunately, they're going to have to choose some negative at some point to get this result.

00:56:09.600 What does it mean for us and for Hamas that they've managed to involve Americans,

00:56:16.280 that they have, you know, some number of American hostages now?

00:56:19.240 In fact, the families of some of them actually just held a press conference.

00:56:23.380 Hold on.

00:56:23.640 Let me just pull some of the facts from it.

00:56:25.800 They just held a press conference today.

00:56:27.360 The family of at least four Americans spoke.

00:56:30.660 One hostage taken is a 66-year-old California-born mother.

00:56:34.700 She's a hostage.

00:56:36.280 The family said that they expect to have their family member back home safe and sound.

00:56:43.940 They said they've had zero communication from Israel or the U.S. government.

00:56:46.760 There's another man, Ruby Chen, said his son is an Israeli soldier.

00:56:51.400 He's asking the United States not to take a back seat.

00:56:54.040 Says no formal attempt by the U.S. government to update the families of the missing Americans yet.

00:56:59.540 And then there's Jonathan Dekel Chen spoke.

00:57:02.000 His son is missing.

00:57:02.900 Appeal to U.S. leaders to do what they can on the side of good.

00:57:06.340 So we're starting to get some information about who was taken.

00:57:09.620 But they took Americans.

00:57:11.640 You know, I mean, I've spent years talking to our most well-known and beloved veterans and soldiers.

00:57:18.620 I mean, guys like Marcus Luttrell, guys like Dakota Meyer, Medal of Honor winner.

00:57:22.360 You know, we don't leave men behind.

00:57:24.700 We don't.

00:57:25.720 And those are even murdered, assassinated, dead soldiers.

00:57:31.320 We don't leave them behind.

00:57:32.920 We go in.

00:57:33.560 We risk our soldiers' lives to get them.

00:57:35.780 These are live Americans who are civilians who were taken.

00:57:39.420 So what does that do for us in our calculation here?

00:57:42.460 Yeah, you're right.

00:57:43.520 I mean, it is an article of faith.

00:57:45.440 We don't leave anyone behind.

00:57:47.160 That's drilled into us from day one.

00:57:49.000 And it's part of our DNA in the I think of Americans, not only just military.

00:57:54.200 We just don't leave people behind because that's who we are.

00:57:56.340 And I suspect that Hamas did not plan on capturing Americans because I don't think that they really want

00:58:02.500 the heat that we can bring to bear added on top of what they are already planning to do.

00:58:07.040 And this puts them in a bit of a conundrum because if they start killing American hostages,

00:58:11.640 that may look good on the surface of it for their cause, you know, for what they're trying to get done.

00:58:16.960 But the heat that that will bring for us, because I think then you might see some direct American involvement

00:58:22.520 in the event that Americans are killed by Hamas.

00:58:26.220 I just can't imagine that we would stay out.

00:58:28.120 And I think that they don't want us adding in there because that will just add to their difficulty.

00:58:32.080 So let's hope that that reasonable fear on their part might prevent them from killing

00:58:37.240 any Americans and release those hostages.

00:58:39.800 Do you feel I mean, on the other hand, we don't want a full fledged war in the Middle East

00:58:43.380 that we didn't have four days ago.

00:58:45.060 Right.

00:58:45.360 So it's I mean, that will lead to the death of a whole lot other of more of Americans.

00:58:49.700 So we have to be smart about how we get involved in what we do.

00:58:52.680 Do you there's some report that we're sending some some Navy SEALs over there right now?

00:58:56.200 I mean, this seems like a mission for our best and brightest and most talented to somehow

00:59:00.720 get in there.

00:59:01.520 But as I'm saying, and I'm thinking about what you just said, they probably rehearsed

00:59:05.620 for months for somebody trying to come in to get into these so-called terror tunnels that

00:59:10.160 are underground, get onto these streets that they've got eyes on.

00:59:12.980 I mean, our Navy SEALs are still human.

00:59:15.620 Right.

00:59:15.820 No, I can't believe me.

00:59:17.020 I am a strong advocate of not expanding this war any.

00:59:20.840 In fact, I've been arguing from the minute we've heard about this.

00:59:23.260 We've got to contain it within the Gaza Strip.

00:59:25.860 We can't even allow it to get into the West Bank or God forbid, if it gets into Lebanon

00:59:29.840 or Iran, because then that would be catastrophic for everybody.

00:59:33.960 Most assuredly, our interests as well.

00:59:36.100 We cannot afford to get into another war no matter what.

00:59:39.560 But what I was suggesting is that there could come a time when there could be some targeted

00:59:43.760 operations, whether that's drones, whether that's intelligence or perhaps.

00:59:48.420 And this is a big perhaps, like you say, some specific special forces.

00:59:52.740 But but honestly, I don't think that would be necessary because Israel has great special

00:59:56.540 forces themselves.

00:59:57.820 And although they were caught off guard by this, they are going to recover because they

01:00:01.500 have the capacity to do that.

01:00:03.480 And if this takes a long time and especially wants to get the hostage issue resolved, you

01:00:08.540 know, the future is not good for Hamas.

01:00:10.700 I don't see a path to victory for them, even if they got all the hostages given away and

01:00:15.620 they got all the five thousand that they wanted.

01:00:17.500 They still can't win a long term war and all they can do is die slowly as long as we keep

01:00:24.180 this thing contained.

01:00:25.140 You are so right on that.

01:00:26.400 That's critical for our needs.

01:00:28.720 What we're doing right now, our secretary of defense, Lloyd Austin, made a statement

01:00:32.820 yesterday.

01:00:33.880 We will supply Israel with munitions, military equipment.

01:00:36.880 U.S.

01:00:37.120 CENTCOM began moving the USS Gerald R.

01:00:39.120 Ford carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean, which includes, as we mentioned earlier in the

01:00:43.840 show, an aircraft carrier, the USS General Gerald R.

01:00:46.340 Ford, that's the world's largest aircraft carrier and the largest warship ever constructed.

01:00:51.460 A Ticonderoga class guided missile cruiser for Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyers.

01:00:57.540 We've also taken steps, said Austin, to augment U.S.

01:01:00.560 Air Force F-35s, F-15, F-16, A-10 fighter aircraft squadrons in the region.

01:01:06.400 Can you translate that?

01:01:07.960 Missile cruisers, missile destroyers, fighter aircraft squadrons coming, going near the

01:01:12.660 route.

01:01:12.840 Translate that for us civilians.

01:01:14.120 Yeah, what you really have is that the primary focus is the Gerald R.

01:01:18.580 Ford, because that's how we project power.

01:01:20.380 You go up to 500 miles to project combat power from the decks of that ship.

01:01:27.040 But you can't just send an aircraft carrier out there by itself.

01:01:29.540 You've got to have lots of support.

01:01:30.940 So a lot of those Arleigh Burke missile carriers are actually designed for air defense to make

01:01:36.100 sure that missiles can't come and attack our ships from any source, wherever they may come

01:01:42.100 from.

01:01:44.100 Now, those ships are, I don't think, have anything to do with what's happening in the Gaza Strip.

01:01:47.400 Israel can handle all of it.

01:01:48.920 They've got, we've been giving them $3.8 billion a year to help their defense, you know, for

01:01:53.400 many, many years.

01:01:54.440 And they have a good, solid capability and technological and manpower pool.

01:01:58.860 I think that, though, is more of a warning to the region saying, do not expand this.

01:02:03.880 It's to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

01:02:06.680 Don't start messing with Israel because we have their back.

01:02:10.120 And certainly to Iran, don't don't take any action here because we're in the area.

01:02:14.640 We've got firepower.

01:02:15.640 I think that's the primary purpose of those flotilla.

01:02:18.420 Let me let me run this by you.

01:02:21.640 A former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, in an interview with The Atlantic.

01:02:26.780 Some disturbing forecasts here that go against exactly what you're saying we don't want.

01:02:33.780 This war will at best conclude with Hamas's uprooting from Gaza and almost certainly its

01:02:39.760 leader's deaths.

01:02:40.820 So so far, good.

01:02:42.280 Um, but then it goes on with an Israeli ground incursion into Gaza, almost certain to be

01:02:48.380 launched.

01:02:48.880 It is difficult to imagine Hamas in the West Bank because there's Hamas in Gaza, but there's

01:02:53.340 also Hamas in the West Bank, which is the neighboring territory, uh, Hezbollah in Lebanon.

01:02:57.740 That's the northern border of Israel and even radicalized Israeli Arabs remaining passive

01:03:03.940 because there are a lot of Arabs living in Israel, some very peacefully and getting along

01:03:08.660 fine.

01:03:09.100 Some who are more radicalized who would respond to a ground incursion.

01:03:12.280 And into Gaza in this way, he's saying it would be extremely tempting to all of those

01:03:17.080 groups.

01:03:17.440 If there's group boots on the ground, Israeli boots on the ground in Gaza, a regional war

01:03:21.780 in which terrorists fire tens of thousands of rockets at Israel and Israeli forces fight

01:03:25.960 on multiple fronts, quote, is a very real possibility.

01:03:31.060 Iran might also exploit the chaos to further enrich its uranium stockpile and rush to make

01:03:36.960 nuclear bombs.

01:03:38.440 Um, so that's none of that is good.

01:03:42.160 Is there any chance?

01:03:43.560 And again, this is somebody who knows what he's talking about, former U.S. Israeli ambassador

01:03:47.120 to the United States.

01:03:48.120 Is there any chance understanding those enormous risks?

01:03:50.480 Israel doesn't pursue a ground invasion incursion.

01:03:53.780 I honestly, I don't see how they can avoid it right now.

01:03:56.740 There's no question that is a legitimate risk and one of my big fears and why I say that

01:04:01.700 we need to communicate diplomatically very firmly to everybody in the region, not just

01:04:06.280 threats, but diplomatically like say, hey, this nobody wins here.

01:04:09.860 If you guys get involved, we'll be forced to actually get involved as well.

01:04:13.720 And it'll be bad for everybody.

01:04:15.640 We cannot let this, you know, expand.

01:04:17.960 So we need to tell them that diplomatically.

01:04:20.040 But the, you know, these reports of babies being beheaded and civilians being mowed down

01:04:26.040 with machine guns at a concert.

01:04:28.340 I think the emotional component for Israel is just so high.

01:04:31.920 I just don't see how Netanyahu could avoid actually sending the troops in because he's

01:04:36.580 basically already promised that's what he's going to do, that he's going to destroy Hamas.

01:04:39.700 Let me ask you why.

01:04:40.560 Let me ask you why, Colonel.

01:04:41.520 Is it because there are hostages?

01:04:43.300 If there weren't hostages, would, I realize there's still civilians, you know, and we care

01:04:48.480 about them.

01:04:49.000 But given what's happened, I mean, all the rules of war have been broken already.

01:04:52.720 But is it because of the hostages that we think there has to be a ground invasion?

01:04:57.440 No, no, it's not.

01:04:58.560 I think that actually the hostages are working in the opposite directions is what's hesitating,

01:05:02.980 making them hesitate, go in.

01:05:04.520 But it's just like our issue on 9-11.

01:05:06.640 The emotions of seeing the Twin Towers fall, of seeing the Pentagon in flames, it's just

01:05:12.560 so strong of an emotional pull that all of these civilians being killed, I mean, that's

01:05:17.520 the Israeli version of that, was, you know, they see, you know, that concert may have been

01:05:22.760 the worst one, but there's many others.

01:05:24.420 You had that one story there you just put on, and there's lots of others like it, is

01:05:28.560 that they, you know, demand revenge.

01:05:30.700 They demand retribution and justice for what's happened.

01:05:33.280 And I just can't see Netanyahu being passive for more than enough reasonable amount of time

01:05:39.860 because it's going to take time to get an offensive operation of this type set up and

01:05:43.740 prepare and the people train.

01:05:46.280 You know, as we talk about at the top, it's going to be hard.

01:05:49.040 But I don't get it, Colonel.

01:05:49.660 I don't get it.

01:05:50.340 Because Israel, in about two days, could bomb Gaza into smithereens.

01:05:54.460 I mean, it could make it into one large parking lot.

01:05:56.700 They could, but then they're going to be killing hundreds of thousands, probably, of

01:06:03.300 innocent civilians.

01:06:04.000 And they can't do that.

01:06:05.200 They just can't do that because then that would undercut their support probably around

01:06:09.400 the world and then harm their own interests.

01:06:12.580 That's why I say this is so hard.

01:06:15.360 To take out Hamas, to end Hamas, it's going to require the army to be in Gaza hand-to-hand

01:06:21.540 combat.

01:06:21.900 Yeah, I just don't see any way around it.

01:06:24.440 I mean, the number of Hamas fighters is probably not that great.

01:06:27.840 It's probably in the single thousands, if even that.

01:06:30.700 But there's two million people living in the Gaza Strip who are not Hamas and are just

01:06:35.540 as terrified of what's going on as anybody else.

01:06:37.800 But to get there, Hamas is, you know, dug in.

01:06:40.900 They're in the middle of all those people.

01:06:42.400 They know that that's an inhibition for Israel, and they're counting on that.

01:06:46.700 And they're unconcerned about this collateral damage that it would cause if they fight.

01:06:50.640 But that's the conundrum that's weighing on Netanyahu.

01:06:53.740 He has to weigh all of this.

01:06:55.120 And there's just no good path.

01:06:57.900 You have to say Hamas was good at setting a no-win situation up for Netanyahu because

01:07:03.340 he can't allow them to remain in power.

01:07:06.040 And he can't allow them to just continue to live in the Gaza Strip.

01:07:09.340 So something has to give.

01:07:11.140 So how would we how would we most cleverly prevent Hezbollah from getting interested

01:07:18.160 in joining this, prevent Iran from joining it any more than it reportedly may have?

01:07:23.600 How I mean, if we understand Israel is about to do this thing, which we understand and support,

01:07:28.200 but will be provocative to those actors.

01:07:30.620 How do we prevent it from becoming a more, you know, a regional war?

01:07:34.460 Yeah, the one thing that we can that's working in our favor is that Iran cares about Iran and

01:07:40.620 Iran cares about staying in power and their their leaders want to protect a regime above

01:07:45.740 everything else.

01:07:47.220 And that's the reason why that they have been very calculated in what they've been doing

01:07:50.740 for years with the United States.

01:07:53.080 You know, they'll push a little bit, but then they won't push too far.

01:07:56.240 When Qasem Soleimani was assassinated years ago and they were vowing revenge or whatever,

01:08:01.200 they were constrained by how far they could go because they know that our ability to counter

01:08:05.620 strike dwarfs anything that they have.

01:08:08.700 And that that condition will still remain here.

01:08:11.840 So they can't go too far because they know we could take them out if it gets into an all

01:08:16.640 out fight and they don't want that.

01:08:18.280 So we can use that to to restrict them.

01:08:20.880 Same with the issue in the Hezbollah, though there there's less control there because they

01:08:25.800 may also not care as much.

01:08:27.200 They don't have a state to protect, so to speak, because Lebanon is actually its own

01:08:31.140 state.

01:08:31.680 So there's a bigger risk there.

01:08:33.260 But, you know, you just have to do the best you can and with no guarantees.

01:08:37.700 Hmm.

01:08:38.540 You mentioned that the raided in Tebby, the kidnap, the hostages who were taken back then.

01:08:45.060 This is a famous story, and it involves the sitting prime minister of Israel, Benjamin

01:08:48.760 Netanyahu, and his brother.

01:08:50.160 It happened back in 1976, where they his brother, Jonathan, was killed during this daring mission

01:08:58.980 to rescue.

01:08:59.700 It was 106 Israelis at Entebbe Airport in Uganda after an aircraft hijacking by Palestinian led

01:09:07.100 gunmen.

01:09:08.220 All but four of the hostages and Jonathan Netanyahu made it home alive.

01:09:14.420 And there's just no question that Bibi Netanyahu is well familiar with the value of every life

01:09:21.380 matters.

01:09:21.900 Every Israeli life matters.

01:09:23.020 Every American life matters.

01:09:24.340 He's going to want to try to save the hostages.

01:09:26.580 It's just a question of whether they can.

01:09:28.820 And, you know, the barbarism of this group, which is matched, in my experience, only by

01:09:35.620 ISIS in recent memory.

01:09:37.420 I haven't seen this kind of barbarism in my adult lifetime by any actor with whom, you

01:09:43.440 know, we don't have diplomatic relations with Hamas, but, you know, we haven't been treating

01:09:49.440 them like ISIS.

01:09:50.480 Now we now we have no choice.

01:09:53.140 That's that's right.

01:09:53.900 This this appears to have been born out of desperation for the the Hamas side and for

01:10:00.060 the Palestinian side.

01:10:01.240 But I mean, I think that history will show that they have overplayed their hand because

01:10:05.120 if they had any global sympathy, it's evaporating.

01:10:09.060 And that's one of the other issues that I mentioned that Netanyahu has to be careful

01:10:13.140 with.

01:10:13.540 They can't do, as you suggested, some are talking about, of just leveling Gaza City because

01:10:19.580 then he would be doing even worse to the innocent people there.

01:10:22.740 If he can keep all the focus on the Hamas brutality and that Israel is doing its best to be professional

01:10:29.860 and defend its citizens and to get those back who've been captured, then they can continue

01:10:35.740 to undercut the support for Hamas.

01:10:37.760 And I think that's maybe where there's some some room for Israel.

01:10:42.300 And again, another reason why some maybe some tactical patience might help, at least something

01:10:46.500 to try.

01:10:47.160 There's again, there's no obvious right answer.

01:10:49.320 They got to try whatever they can.

01:10:50.660 But the guy Israel has to avoid, you know, basically doing the same thing Hamas did and

01:10:57.180 killing a lot of innocent people in the process of trying to get Hamas.

01:11:01.560 Israel's air force is much revered.

01:11:04.740 They would certainly be the ones to go after Lebanon and after Hezbollah in Lebanon if they

01:11:08.880 got involved.

01:11:09.700 It's going to be trickier to just level Hamas for the reasons we discussed from the air.

01:11:13.640 Um, but there is an article in the Atlantic that was interesting about conscript and here's

01:11:19.460 their headline.

01:11:20.480 Uh, they write the Israeli military wasn't ready for this.

01:11:25.020 I mean, no one was ready for this, but this is their take.

01:11:27.400 They say Israel has an excellent air force and elite special ops unit, but it's conventional

01:11:32.640 line units made up.

01:11:33.740 Mostly of conscripts are neither particularly well-trained nor well-disciplined, at least by

01:11:38.700 American standards.

01:11:39.780 They write full-time professional militaries that like ours, of course, can dedicate themselves

01:11:44.860 to rehearsing collective tasks that high intensity combat situations often require reacting to

01:11:50.140 ambushes, conducting raids, incorporating artillery and air power into maneuvers.

01:11:53.820 But conscript militaries where you're forced to serve, you know, everybody in Israel has

01:11:57.760 to for a couple of years.

01:11:58.760 By contrast, are forever bringing on and training new people.

01:12:03.220 And then they go on to say discipline may be another issue.

01:12:06.000 In 2006, Hezbollah was able to locate Israeli positions by intercepting Israel, Israeli reservists

01:12:11.520 calling home on their mobile phones, phones, meaning these are not professional soldiers.

01:12:16.380 And so what we're about to ask of them, boy, it seems like a tall order.

01:12:20.720 Megan, you, you, you led into one of the key things I wanted to make sure we talk about

01:12:24.740 today, and that is expectation management.

01:12:27.240 So there's been lots of images of, of Merkabic tanks driving around and, and howitzers, you

01:12:32.560 know, preparing and armored vehicles.

01:12:34.540 It looks like they're massing for an attack.

01:12:36.220 And I think the assumption is, and the expectation, and at least among many American viewers, is

01:12:41.020 that there'll be this massive army that rolls in there and, and we'll be able to conquer,

01:12:45.280 you know, the, the enemy.

01:12:46.580 But I cannot stress how difficult a large scale operation of this nature is.

01:12:52.840 And, and especially if you've never conducted one before as an institution, much less as the

01:12:57.300 individuals, it is even more difficult than you can imagine.

01:13:00.680 We have recent experience with this.

01:13:02.240 The Russian army had trained for 10 years in maneuver warfare before they launched into,

01:13:07.280 to the Ukraine army.

01:13:08.400 But once the bullets were real and they start flying in, it's no longer training, but operations.

01:13:12.840 You saw so many mistakes and so many, uh, avoidable errors that the Russian army committed

01:13:18.880 that was just egregious.

01:13:20.220 Likewise, you saw when the Ukrainian army this summer, when they launched their first offensive

01:13:25.260 of a large scale into the, uh, Zaporizhia area, they too made so many mistakes and they

01:13:31.820 were just hammered because they didn't have the experience and the training on how to conduct

01:13:36.320 those.

01:13:37.040 Israel has never conducted an operation of this magnitude of this type to go into a city more

01:13:43.080 than just a small section here and there.

01:13:44.860 They've never had to go into the whole area.

01:13:47.220 So this is brand new for them.

01:13:49.200 And as you pointed out, even at the individual level, they're not that well-trained.

01:13:52.860 So the casualties are going to be much, much higher in the, it's going to be so much more

01:13:57.260 difficult than anybody is imagining.

01:13:59.640 Even aside from the hostage issue, once that's resolved and if this gets into a, you know,

01:14:04.480 a conventional war, like with Bakhmut, it took nine months for the Russian army to take

01:14:09.500 Bakhmut and you had like 70,000 or to 50,000 casualties on each side, and you're probably

01:14:15.260 going to see something similar to that here among their regular side, potentially.

01:14:19.620 Colonel, how vulnerable is the United States right now?

01:14:22.640 You know, we've got, we're shipping all this ammunition and arms to Ukraine.

01:14:26.900 Now we're definitely going to help Israel out and with munitions at a minimum, but potentially

01:14:31.940 more, as we pointed out, moving the aircraft carrier there and so on.

01:14:34.940 Um, we've got unprecedented numbers of people flooding across our Southern border right now,

01:14:40.640 which we know, we know include known terrorists without any screening.

01:14:45.480 It just, it just kind of feels like we've gone from, uh, you know, a secure place just

01:14:50.940 a couple of years ago to a less secure place now, but how, how less secure is my question.

01:14:56.820 You know, let me put some numbers on it.

01:14:58.800 So I have been outspoken that we are giving away too much stuff to Ukraine and it's

01:15:04.400 understandable that you want to help them defend themselves.

01:15:06.600 They were attacked, they were invaded.

01:15:08.060 They have a foreign occupation army in their country, but our primary obligation is to

01:15:13.260 Americans and to our national security.

01:15:15.940 We have to date given over 5,000 military vehicles to Ukraine and that's everything from

01:15:22.600 tanks to armored personnel carriers to, uh, ambulance, armored ambulances to, to resupply

01:15:28.540 trucks, 5,000.

01:15:30.040 Those were in our inventory in the event that we needed to, if we get into an unexpected fight,

01:15:34.980 we've got to be able to sustain operations.

01:15:37.640 2 million of our shells have gone of artillery shells have gone to Ukraine.

01:15:42.240 2 million of those things we're producing at the rate of about 25,000 a month right now.

01:15:47.920 It will take years to replace what's lost, but most of it's still going to Ukraine.

01:15:52.640 And now that you're talking an additional 2 billion on top of the 3.8 billion that we always

01:15:57.620 give Israel is now going there to include more rockets, air defense systems, et cetera.

01:16:03.300 We can't keep giving all of these things away and it not have a negative impact on our ability,

01:16:08.360 on our capacity to defend ourselves.

01:16:10.920 And it's time we're to the point now that we're getting there.

01:16:13.920 We are to the point where hard decisions are going to be have to make by our government.

01:16:17.860 Are we going to continue to dissipate our own capacity so that if we have to get into a war,

01:16:22.840 we'll have less ability to sustain and maintain that?

01:16:26.020 Or are we going to keep just giving whatever either Israel and Ukraine want, no matter what,

01:16:31.040 you know, as long as it takes is the phrase that keeps getting used.

01:16:33.640 And I argue that that's not an American interest.

01:16:36.740 And look, it's going to have negative implications for Ukraine especially.

01:16:41.040 But unfortunately, the combat realities on the ground say that this, if you keep giving stuff

01:16:46.560 away, it's not going to change the outcome.

01:16:48.260 So why do we need to keep diminishing our capacity for national security when it's not

01:16:53.380 even going to change the outcome?

01:16:54.380 And I think that we need to start making some different decisions.

01:16:58.180 Wow.

01:16:59.680 Well, Lieutenant Colonel, thank you so much for being here.

01:17:01.720 Daniel Davis, I thank you for being here and I thank you for your service.

01:17:04.800 All the best.

01:17:05.340 Thank you very much.

01:17:05.960 I appreciate being here.

01:17:07.020 Thank you.

01:17:08.000 We're going to be right back with former ambassador to Israel, David Friedman.

01:17:11.600 Don't go away.

01:17:16.560 Our next guest, David Friedman, is an important voice on this topic with his service as ambassador

01:17:21.820 to Israel under the Trump administration.

01:17:24.580 During his time as ambassador, he was part of the group responsible for the Abraham Accords,

01:17:29.000 moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and working toward President Trump's vision for peace.

01:17:34.400 Ambassador Friedman says this is the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, but like the

01:17:38.880 Nazis or ISIS, that Hamas will be obliterated.

01:17:43.140 He joins me now.

01:17:43.880 Welcome to the show, Ambassador.

01:17:44.800 It's so good to have you here.

01:17:45.860 Sorry for the circumstances.

01:17:48.300 The amazing response from some on the left takes none of that into account.

01:17:53.420 And that brings me to Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar, whose tweets say, in part,

01:17:59.900 Gaza's two plus million population are mostly children who live under blockade in Israel's

01:18:05.020 own former in what Israel's own former intelligence chief has called an open air prison.

01:18:10.020 The overwhelming majority live in poverty.

01:18:11.640 Many suffer lifelong psychological and physical trauma as the world is condemning Hamas's attacks.

01:18:17.260 We must also oppose an Israeli military response that has already taken the lives of hundreds

01:18:21.800 of Palestinians, including nearly two dozen children.

01:18:24.840 And she goes on to say, this is collective punishment, a war crime.

01:18:29.160 The U.S. should oppose any violations of international law like this.

01:18:35.360 Targeting an entire civilian population will only sow more discord and penetrate the cycle,

01:18:40.900 perpetuate the cycle of violence.

01:18:43.180 What do you say to that message, which is coming from some on what I describe as the far left here?

01:18:48.720 Well, Megan, thanks for having me.

01:18:49.780 I think the first thing people need to understand is, is what is Gaza and how did it get there?

01:18:54.580 And I think that answers a lot of of Congresswoman Tlaib's criticisms.

01:19:00.780 There's not a single Israeli there, not a single Israeli soldier there.

01:19:04.160 There's not a single Jew living in Gaza.

01:19:05.660 Israel left Gaza in 2005 because they no longer wanted to rule over the Palestinian population there.

01:19:12.940 When Israel left, it was it was a beautiful place.

01:19:15.980 You know, Gaza is almost in it runs entirely along the eastern Mediterranean.

01:19:20.360 If you've been to Tel Aviv or to Haifa, it's the same beach.

01:19:23.640 I mean, gorgeous beachfront that could be made into a beautiful resorts.

01:19:27.960 Israel used to grow lettuce and tomatoes there for the entire country.

01:19:32.400 OK, that's all barren now.

01:19:33.520 Now, you know, when Israel left, the Palestinian Authority was in charge for a little bit and then Hamas took over.

01:19:41.560 You know, is it an open air graveyard?

01:19:44.300 I mean, it's one hundred and forty one square miles.

01:19:47.740 That's seven times the size of Manhattan.

01:19:50.920 Right. Eight million people coming in out of Manhattan every day in one seventh the size.

01:19:56.360 There's two million people in in Gaza.

01:19:59.260 There's beautiful mansions there where all the corrupt leaders live.

01:20:01.960 The reason that the Palestinian people in in Gaza are living lives that you or I would not want to live is entirely because of Hamas.

01:20:10.300 It's because they subjugate them.

01:20:11.560 It's because they subjugate women.

01:20:14.140 It's because they if they find out that someone's gay, they take them off to the top of a building and they throw them off.

01:20:19.720 You know, so if the Palestinian people are suffering, all that Hamas needs to do is look in the mirror.

01:20:24.320 And the fact that that Congresswoman Tlaib, you know, Tlaib is so ill informed as to blame.

01:20:29.220 This one's Ilhan Omar, but Tlaib has said exactly the same.

01:20:32.380 I think I think they're all the same and they all say the same.

01:20:35.080 And I think it's I think it's just it's absurd.

01:20:38.220 Why? Why is there a blockade of Gaza?

01:20:40.040 For one reason only, because Hamas wants to kill Jews.

01:20:43.200 And if they get through with Israel, that's what they're going to do.

01:20:45.300 And we know that for sure now because they did get into Israel, unfortunately, a couple of days ago and committed the worst atrocity as the Jewish people, as I said before, since the Holocaust.

01:20:54.080 If Hamas got up tomorrow and said, we're putting down our arms, we're going to live in peace with Israel, we're going to work on creating a society that's that's peaceful.

01:21:02.300 They can do that tomorrow, but they are intent on destroying Israel and destroying the Jewish people.

01:21:07.420 So, you know, you know, I really have no sympathy at all for these these these pointless arguments made by the squad and others on the left.

01:21:15.140 They they're they're making this up as they go along.

01:21:17.940 I mean, there's some promise in response to this.

01:21:21.340 And I'll give you one example.

01:21:22.740 Those 31 student groups at Harvard who spoke out against Israel, not in any way against the horrors being perpetrated by Hamas.

01:21:32.700 By the way, the university president has still said nothing.

01:21:35.060 And the former university president, Lawrence Summers, is saying, I've never felt so alienated from this institution in 50 years.

01:21:40.680 How could he not speak out?

01:21:41.960 But I'll give you this one one bit of good news.

01:21:44.620 Bill Ackman, who's a hedge fund investor, very well known, of course, over here.

01:21:48.480 He just tweeted out.

01:21:50.000 I have been asked by a number of CEOs if Harvard would release a list of the members of each of these Harvard organizations that have issued the letter assigning sole responsibility for Hamas's anus acts to Israel so as to ensure that none of us inadvertently hire any of them.

01:22:05.560 That that's good news.

01:22:06.760 That's that should be the response.

01:22:08.440 Right. Like you can feel however you want to feel.

01:22:10.340 You can say whichever you want to say, but you don't have to get jobs in corporate America where we still care about the value of human life.

01:22:16.140 Look, this this is the best proof I've heard that there's no correlation between SAP scores and intelligence, right?

01:22:23.780 Because this is just these people may may have done well in their SATs, but they they don't know what they're talking about.

01:22:29.160 And their their ignorance is breathtaking.

01:22:32.060 So, yeah, look, let them let them say what they want to say there.

01:22:35.280 They have the right to do so.

01:22:36.180 And let when they want to go work for Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley or or, you know, Davis Polk or Sullivan and Cromwell.

01:22:43.840 Let let let let those guys look on the on Google and see, you know, what kind of people they really are.

01:22:49.620 Yeah. What student groups were you affiliated with and whether your name comes up when this issue gets Googled?

01:22:53.920 Right. So just following up on the military discussion that we had in our last block with Israel's options right now.

01:22:59.940 And yeah, Michael Oren had said in an interview with the Atlantic, you know, the likelihood of a ground invasion obviously seems extremely high incursion now and that that could create a regional war.

01:23:12.580 Right. It could it could tempt Hezbollah. It could tempt Iran. It could tempt radicalized Arabs in the region.

01:23:18.840 So what do you agree with that assumption? Do you think that a ground incursion is the most likely thing to happen within the next short while as a result of what's what Hamas has done?

01:23:28.860 Yeah. I mean, I think it has to happen. I think there's no other way to to eradicate Hamas, to get them, you know, out of their hiding places.

01:23:38.860 It's a shame. It's a costly operation. The real winners, I think, are going to be the people of Gaza, actually, when the dust settles, because there'll be a the Gaza Strip will be free of Hamas.

01:23:48.680 And then, you know, everybody says, well, what's Israel going to do with it if they do if they if they conquer Gaza, which they have the capability of doing?

01:23:55.500 What are they going to do next? And look, you know, we have seen this movie before.

01:24:00.240 I mean, there have been wars in the past. And, you know, you look at you look at World War Two where, you know, the allies, American, the allies cleaned the Nazis out of Germany.

01:24:09.280 They held the land for a while and they waited until they could give it over to someone who would live with them in peace.

01:24:14.500 And it turned out to be a great success in terms of the relationship with Germany. Same with the relationship in Japan.

01:24:19.180 I mean, Israel does not want to hold Gaza as no territorial aspirations with regard to Gaza.

01:24:25.560 There aren't a lot of people who really want to step in and run Gaza.

01:24:28.980 But, you know, that's that's that's the only way out.

01:24:32.760 The only way out is for Israel to conquer it, to kill the terrorists, to to to embrace those who who want to live in peace, to help organize some sort of a government there and then to leave.

01:24:44.460 And that's, you know, that's and when they leave to make sure they have enough assets in place to make sure that they'll know a lot earlier than they do now when trouble is brewing.

01:24:55.880 There's some speculation that on the intelligence failure that perhaps there was some sort of a cyber attack that, you know, who would be capable of possibly interfering with Israel's ability to see that, for example, its wall had been breached in several locations.

01:25:12.120 Could it be the Russians? Could it be the Russians? Could it be the Chinese who would have had the capability and the desire to assist Hamas?

01:25:18.200 Is there say, you know, Iran might have, but probably didn't have the capability.

01:25:21.760 But what do you make of the possibility of this having started with a cyber attack?

01:25:26.980 It could have been a cyber attack.

01:25:28.340 Look, and I'm assuming that there was some some hacking involved because otherwise I can't I just can't imagine how Israel would not have seen this coming.

01:25:38.260 But understand, you know, everything in the world today runs on on on on computers.

01:25:45.200 And Israel is one of the great cyber defense countries in the world that has enormous capabilities in that regard.

01:25:52.480 So I just I still don't get it. You know, you know, when you're hacked, if you know you've been hacked, the next second you wake up, wake up everybody on the army base and tell them that that you don't see what you need to see and and get things going.

01:26:05.680 And there ought to be lots of redundancies.

01:26:07.680 I mean, you know, you know, even cars today, you know, can be hacked.

01:26:11.520 Airplanes can be hacked. Banks can be hacked.

01:26:13.760 I mean, it happens all the time, but there are redundancies in place that keep that from creating damage.

01:26:19.220 And so I'm just I'm wrestling with how this happened. It's it's the country's in shock.

01:26:23.580 I mean, this is a country, as you know, that prides itself very much on its technological capabilities, on its on the quality of its military and the quality of its intelligence.

01:26:31.940 This kind of a failure, you know, that, you know, you know, resulted.

01:26:36.200 You know, you've seen the pictures and you've seen the films of the horrors that have come that have occurred from this.

01:26:41.520 I mean, it's absolutely stunning and inexplicable to me how this could have happened.

01:26:46.900 Just just to update.

01:26:49.220 Our earlier discussion, Claudine Gay is the Harvard president, is female, and just issued a statement as the events of recent days continue to reverberate.

01:26:57.580 Let there be no doubt that I condemn the terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas.

01:27:03.780 Such inhumanity is abhorrent whether one's individual views of the origins of longstanding conflicts in the region, whatever she says,

01:27:11.280 whatever individual views of the origins of longstanding conflicts in the region.

01:27:15.480 Let me also state on the matter, as on others, that while our students have the right to speak for themselves, no student group, not even 30 student groups, speaks for Harvard University or its leadership.

01:27:25.480 We will all be well served in such a difficult moment by rhetoric that aims to illuminate and not inflame.

01:27:30.760 And I appeal to all of us in this community of learning to keep this in mind as our conversations continue.

01:27:35.240 Does that get it done?

01:27:38.560 No, that's a word salad.

01:27:39.820 You know, that's that doesn't doesn't get anything done.

01:27:41.760 I mean, as you point out, she speaks in the first person about what her views.

01:27:46.920 Look, a thousand people were killed.

01:27:49.840 Right.

01:27:50.000 Terrorists marched into their homes, pulled women out of bed, raped women, took old women who were Holocaust survivors and put them into Jeeps and sent them to become hostage, decapitated babies, separated families from each other, you know, forced children to watch their parents being slaughtered and vice versa.

01:28:05.820 If you can't condemn that straight out, you know, full stop, something wrong with you.

01:28:09.380 You know, and, you know, again, you know, I I've it's making it very easy for for those of us who went to Ivy League schools to give our money someplace else.

01:28:20.600 Yeah. I mean, it's I don't want my kids going anywhere near this place.

01:28:24.500 I don't want them being indoctrinated in this kind of thinking or taught by these kinds of professors or sitting in class next to people who feel this way.

01:28:30.600 I mean, what they're doing is indefensible and it's very clear.

01:28:33.180 It's evil. It's evil.

01:28:34.620 I mean, period.

01:28:35.100 End of story.

01:28:36.020 What do you make of it, though? Because so far, our administration over here has not committed to denying Iran that six billion dollars we agreed to pay them for the exchange of these five American hostages so far.

01:28:49.260 And we'll see because the president's going to speak any moment now.

01:28:51.860 I think my understanding is he and Vice President Harris just got off the phone with Bibi Netanyahu.

01:28:56.440 So far, they are not saying that they're going to stop payment of the six billion to Iran, which at least according to The Wall Street Journal and now The Washington Post adding its own reporting saying was behind this attack.

01:29:06.020 Look, it's really extraordinary the way this is juxtaposed, the attack with the six billion dollars, because at the same time, at the very same time that the U.S. and Iran are negotiating this five against five prisoner swap with a six billion dollar sweetener for Iran, the U.S. says the six billion dollars was to show America's good faith.

01:29:31.760 As if as between America and Iran, America has to show its good faith.

01:29:36.440 And as they're doing that, at the very same time that they're making that deal and discussing and offering those that six billion dollars in cash, Iran is is planning with Hamas, orchestrating, funding, training and working through this extraordinary plan to kill a thousand Jews.

01:29:52.360 And somehow America is not looking to get their money back. I mean, we got duped here. We got completely duped.

01:29:58.460 You know, we made we made a gesture that, you know, again, I wouldn't have done it under any circumstances, but made a gesture of good faith only to find out that the person you're dealing with is planning a Holocaust.

01:30:07.760 I mean, take the money back, I mean, take the money back, for God's sake. I don't it's not it's not complicated to me.

01:30:14.140 Why? Why is the Biden administration, much like the Obama administration, so blind when it comes to Iran and so bent on signing this feckless nuclear deal?

01:30:22.960 Yeah, look, this is this this, you know, has been a problem for for over a decade.

01:30:30.840 And, you know, there's so many there's so many flaws in that deal.

01:30:36.240 You know, even people say, well, if, you know, we hadn't gotten out of the deal, we wouldn't have this problem.

01:30:39.640 No, we were never in a deal. You know, we were never in a deal.

01:30:42.980 Iran was cheating from day one. And in any event, if the deal was still in place and fully complied with by Iran, which they weren't, they'd be nuclear anyway another year or two.

01:30:50.320 So it's not like this deal made any sense under any circumstances.

01:30:53.620 But, you know, this is what, you know, forget about the six billion for a second, you know, which is which is to me a big insult.

01:31:00.740 Look at the look at, you know, look at a graph of the sales by Iran, you know, per month of oil, the barrels of oil is selling every month.

01:31:10.360 And the number has gone up massively, dramatically over the last three years.

01:31:14.740 We have taken we had our we had our, you know, I hate to use the phrase, we had our our, you know, our foot on their neck.

01:31:22.120 You know, we had this massive pressure on them and they were reeling.

01:31:25.720 And you know what? You know, people say, well, Trump, you know, let him off the hook by getting out of the deal.

01:31:29.520 No, Iran was was not after we got out of the deal with Iran.

01:31:34.300 Iran was still not enriching uranium beyond their their prior levels.

01:31:38.260 It was only after the election and Trump lost that they began to ramp up their their enrichment of uranium.

01:31:46.180 And the Biden administration didn't do anything about it.

01:31:48.420 And they embraced them and they appeased them and they let them, you know, sell oil all around the world and sell oil to China and make billions and billions of dollars.

01:31:54.960 And they didn't take that money and build hospitals or schools.

01:31:57.100 They took that money and put it into their nuclear program.

01:31:59.280 They put it into their realistic weapons program and they put it into their projects all around the region to to create to create these these satellite organizations.

01:32:08.160 That are that are why. Why did the administration do that?

01:32:11.740 Is it naivete? Is it that, you know, this utopic belief that we can be friends and if we just extend the hand of friendship and be super nice, they're going to change.

01:32:20.920 Yeah, I mean, I you'd have to you'd have to kind of you'd have to be a psychologist to know that I'm not.

01:32:26.940 I mean, I I think, you know, I think Obama started it with this view that, you know, Iran was just was just waiting to be let back into the community of nations with with a pat on the back.

01:32:38.120 And, you know, it was just a question of kind of speaking to them with respect.

01:32:42.320 Massive, massive miscalculation.

01:32:44.360 You know, Iran has has no interest in any of that.

01:32:48.420 And they've like they played us for fools now for 10 years.

01:32:51.000 The only time when when when Trump killed Qasem Soleimani, I can tell you they were really, really nervous.

01:32:58.040 I mean, you look at their response. The response was like a pop gun, you know, in response added to something.

01:33:02.280 But it was it was really nothing.

01:33:04.760 We had him on the ropes. We let him off the ropes.

01:33:07.520 They they they built their own nuclear program and they helped all these malign actors around the world.

01:33:13.680 And I think it's, you know, I think it might be as basic as, you know, they you know, Obama and Biden kind of invested heavily in this deal.

01:33:24.300 And and they never want to admit they made a mistake.

01:33:27.120 You know, so they're just going to double down on it and triple down on it and keep pursuing it.

01:33:30.880 But there is no.

01:33:33.700 So, yeah. What could happen now if if I mean, obviously, Trump is the leading candidate to win the GOP nomination and is likely to be running against Joe Biden.

01:33:42.080 If Trump were reelected. What could he do to help undo some of this damage?

01:33:48.740 Look, I think I think, you know, a couple of things.

01:33:50.900 Number one, you know, massive sanctions on Iran, return them, you know, bankrupt them.

01:33:55.160 They were almost bankrupt. I mean, get them back into that, you know, pre-bankruptcy stage where they really don't have the resources.

01:34:00.380 That's that's number one. Number two is to restore American deterrence, which right now Iran is not afraid of America at all.

01:34:08.220 I mean, there was zero chance that America is going to go to war against Iran and they know it.

01:34:12.860 I mean, you know, unfortunately, after Afghanistan and Ukraine, nobody thinks the Biden administration wants to open up another front.

01:34:19.120 And so they got nothing to worry about there.

01:34:21.440 But there is a country that's willing to take on Iran's nuclear program.

01:34:24.700 And that's Israel. And so, you know, I think, frankly, why did you do this now?

01:34:28.660 I'm not waiting for Trump to get elected. Give Israel what it needs to establish deterrence.

01:34:34.320 Give them the bunker busters. Give them the refueling equipment.

01:34:37.620 Give them give them the radar jamming equipment. Give them whatever they need.

01:34:41.320 And then have an understanding with Israel as to what the red line is beyond which Israel can can go in and take out Iran's nuclear facility.

01:34:48.560 If that system were in place, I think that's the only way to keep Iran from going nuclear.

01:34:53.500 Iran will only will only avoid going nuclear if they think that they're going to lose more than gain.

01:34:58.280 And the only country in the whole world that they're afraid of right now is Israel.

01:35:04.440 Ambassador Friedman, I'm sure you have a lot of friends and possibly family involved in all of this over there.

01:35:09.240 It seems like most of our friends do. God bless them and you.

01:35:13.080 I hope everyone you love is as well. And all I can say is we're praying for you.

01:35:19.080 Well, I appreciate it. You know, my just to tell you, my my daughter spent two years at Tel Aviv University and one of her close friends just just was killed.

01:35:26.820 I mean, it's it's a really, really tough time for the Israeli people, tougher for others than for me.

01:35:32.240 But it's it's a really tough time.

01:35:34.360 Our hearts go out to them all. All the best, sir.

01:35:36.620 Thank you again. Thanks for your service to the country for joining us today.

01:35:41.340 We know these days are hard, especially the beginning of the show.

01:35:43.660 My God, it's hard. I'm sure it's affecting you as it's affecting me.

01:35:46.780 I've just been walking around with a heavy heart these days, but I feel like it's in service of our nation and our friend Israel.

01:35:54.280 And it's important. So thank you for spending the time with us.

01:35:56.720 We'll see you tomorrow.

01:35:57.200 We'll see you tomorrow.

The Megyn Kelly Show - October 10, 2023

What Israel Does Now After Terror Attack, and America's Next Move, with Ben Shapiro, Amb. David Friedman, and Lt. Col. Daniel Davis ｜ Ep. 644

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