Will VanWagenen - Contemporary History of the Genocide in Gaza (2014)

Ajay: Thanks, guys.

Will VanWagenen: As Greg mentioned, I'm going to talk about Palestine. And just really quick, as a show of hands, who in the room feels like they follow this issue, like, really closely, and they know quite a bit about it?

Ajay: OK.

Will VanWagenen: So, hopefully, there'll be some new stuff and some new things that you'll learn tonight. But if there are things that are— I don't know— If I'm too basic, maybe let me know, and I can kind of move on. But I'll try to provide some information that's interesting. But the first thing, when trying to understand the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, is to know what Zionism is. And in short, Zionism is just the Jewish version of ethnic nationalism. And there are a lot of versions of ethnic nationalism that have affected, actually, quite a few wars in the past.

Ajay: Yes.

Will VanWagenen: Even in the United States, you know, essentially, there was white ethnic nationalism. When the European settlers came to the U.S., obviously, it's not like they were trying to incorporate Native Americans or blacks into the government and into the nation. It was not explicitly stated, usually, but the idea was, this is a country for white people. And they essentially displaced the Native Americans.

Chris: Right.

Will VanWagenen: Killed them, took their land, etc., with that kind of idea in mind that, well, this land here in the United States belongs to, like, white Christians. You also get ethnic nationalism in conflicts like Serbia and Bosnia in the '90s. Serbians had a— basically advocated Serbian Christian Orthodox nationalism, basically Serbian ethnicity.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: Is what drove that conflict. You get a similar thing in Sri Lanka. The Buddhists, which are the majority in Sri Lanka, had like— had an ethnic nationalist view, which didn't allow room for the Hindu Tamils, and so there was a war to essentially exterminate them or get rid of any political resistance to the Buddhist government from the Tamil Hindus. And, of course, the other most famous example of ethnic nationalism is— was in Germany with the Nazi Party. A lot of people know, of course, about the type of terrible things that the Nazis did, about the Holocaust, etc., but they don't really know much about the ideology that was behind what they did. But that was German ethnic nationalism. So, the idea was that there's this long history of people from the German race or nation that lived in that particular geographic area. And so, being part of the German race or nation is what gave you basic rights in— as a German. So, if you were living in Germany and you happen to be Jewish, or you happen to be a Slav, or just from any other ethnicity, you're basically considered a foreigner or an alien or someone who didn't belong there. Even though you might have been born in Germany, you speak German, if you're Jewish, tough luck, you don't belong. And so, obviously, we all know what happened there with the Holocaust. Part of that, too, was that the Nazi Party wanted to incorporate parts of other countries where other Germans lived, ethnic Germans lived, like parts of Czechoslovakia, etc. So there is the idea to create a Greater Germany. So, again, Zionism is just basically the Jewish version of ethnic nationalism, the idea that there is a particular homeland that is for Jews, that they have a historical connection to, and that you have to be Jewish in order to have any rights in that particular homeland or to have any rights to the land, to voting, all those different things. And so, again, that is what Zionism, that ideology, is what was behind the establishment of the state of Israel. Unfortunately, when, say, in the 19— in 1946, this is a map of the areas that were owned by Jews, essentially, in the white, and then the areas owned by Arabs in the red.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: The green. It was occupied by the British at the time. But again, unfortunately, even though Zionists were trying to get as many Jews as possible to immigrate to Palestine and make it a Jewish homeland, the obvious problem with that is the same problem that the white settlers in the United States had, which is, there are all these people that already live here and have been living here for a really long time. And those were the Palestinians, who were— some were Jewish, but most were Arab, and most were Christian.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: So, the obvious problem is, how do you make this into a Jewish homeland when it's already populated by Arabs? There are different proposals about how that could be done, but when push came to shove, the way it happened is just through violence and through force and through ethnic cleansing. So, as the Jewish population got bigger in Palestine and support for a Jewish homeland grew, as a result of sympathy for the Jews after the Holocaust and after World War II—

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: There was more and more support for Jews to immigrate to Palestine. They were able to create really strong militias. A lot of them had fought in World War II for the British. They were able to accumulate a lot of weapons and fighting experience that way. And so, finally, in 1947, late 1947, a civil war basically broke out between the Jewish militias, on the one hand, and—

Ajay: The Arabs.

Will VanWagenen: You know, the Arab inhabitants, on the other hand. And the Jewish militias were able to basically ethnically cleanse all of the areas that became the state of Israel, which is this area right here in the white, essentially. So, this remained under Arab control. The Egyptians took over Gaza here, and Jordan took over the West Bank.

Ajay: And Palestine?

Will VanWagenen: But many, many Arabs were ethnically cleansed and kicked out of the white areas in order to basically create a situation where most of the population was Jewish, which, again, is what you're trying to establish or accomplish if you believe in Jewish nationalism and you're trying to create a homeland that has the majority of the people as Jews. So, contrary to what many people think, the state of Israel was not created through a U.N. mandate, although there was a vote to establish like a partition state, where part would be a Jewish state and part would be a Palestinian state. These are the borders here of what that U.N. proposal was, and there was a vote on it just in the General Assembly. But obviously, Palestinians didn't accept that. You know, why should they be kicked out of their homes and kicked off their land just because the United Nations, you know, voted as such? Why should their basic human rights be violated to create a Jewish state, which gives up all this territory? But again, it wasn't through the U.N. vote that Israel was actually created. It was through violence and ethnic cleansing, massacres, things like this. So, Jewish militias would go into a particular Arab town, round up a lot of the people in the center of the town, execute— 1,000. You know, a handful of them, or a few hundred of them, in the worst cases, rape some women, put dynamite in many of the buildings and in the homes, just blow them up, and essentially try to wipe out any remnant of the fact that there was an Arab village there, and send the Arabs basically walking with all their possessions, you know, maybe south to Gaza as refugees, or maybe east to the West Bank, which, again, was still under— stayed under Jordanian control. Or in the case of Haifa, for example, in the very far north, many Palestinians were literally pushed into the sea, and that they had to get on small boats and leave Haifa to escape. And many ended up in Lebanon, just north of Israel. So, that's how the state of Israel was created. And then, as time went on, in 1967— 1967. The Israeli army fought a war against some of the other Arab countries. It's been acknowledged by Israeli military leaders at that time that it was a war of choice on the part of Israel. There was kind of a common misperception that these Arab armies were all attacking Israel, and they, in self-defense, had to fight against Egypt and Syria, for example. But Israeli military leaders have Admitted that that wasn't the case. It was a war of choice, and it was also a war of conquest. So, in the course of the 1967 war, or the Six Days' War— it only happened in 6 days— the Israelis were very successful, and they managed to take over Gaza, actually much of the Sinai of Egypt, and then also the West Bank. And they put those areas under Israeli military occupation. Right. And ever since that time, there's been an ongoing effort to settle the West Bank, meaning to take areas of Palestinian land, push Palestinians off it, and then build settlements for Jews only, or that only Jews can live in, and push Palestinians into smaller and smaller enclaves or, you know, ghettos. Reservations, whatever you want to call it. And so, here is a map that kind of shows this process. So, you can see these areas, again, are still Palestinian areas under military occupation, but where Palestinians still live. But the rest of these areas were essentially confiscated by the Israeli military, and then settlements were built in most of those areas to just slowly take more and more land.

Ajay: Thank you.

Will VanWagenen: Once again, it's the same process that took place in the United States, you know, 200 years ago. Obviously, it wasn't right for the U.S. to do it then. It's not really— it's not right for the Israelis to do it now. Many Zionists kind of say to the Americans, well, why are you giving us a hard time if we're colonizing and taking this land, when you guys did the same thing? And obviously, we did. The difference is, is that—

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: Ideally, hopefully, maybe, Americans kind of realized that was a bad thing to do, obviously way too late. And that's the type of behavior that is— back 200 years ago, was considered normal amongst white Europeans and Americans. Hopefully, today, the world has become a better place, or more progressive, and people understand that it's really terrible just to kill people and take their land.

Ajay: Hi.

Will VanWagenen: Part of the justification for Zionism actually was not even religious. Many people think that the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is a religious conflict. Obviously, there are religious elements, but that's not what's driving the conflict. The conflict is driven by land. Once again, Israelis settling and colonizing and stealing land, doing that with a great amount of violence. Whereas Palestinians are trying to resist that colonization, resist the confiscation of their land, and obviously they, when possible, try to use violence to prevent that aggression on the part of the Israelis. So, there's definitely violence on both sides, but the question is, who is the aggressor? The Israelis, who are colonizing and taking land violently, or the Palestinians, who are trying to resist that aggression?

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: And preserve their basic rights as human beings to live in their own home, to not live under military occupation, to not be arrested and thrown in jail for years at a time without a trial, to not have their homes bulldozed, to not have their water stolen, to not have their olive orchards demolished, all those basic things that are human rights according to, you know, international law. But again, the Israelis, when they took over the West Bank and Gaza, they were very fortunate in that they took over the land that they wanted. But of course, they didn't want the people, the Arabs, because they're trying to maintain a Jewish demographic majority. They want to have most of the population to be Jews so that they have a Jewish state, and it can be a democracy, and they can vote, etc. But if you have too many Arabs, what would happen? Suddenly— They would be oppressed. If the population of Israel was majority Arab, they could simply vote to make changes to the laws, and there would no longer be special rules and special privileges for Jews. It would no longer be a Jewish state. It would just be a state where everyone has equal rights, like we have now in the U.S. So, there's this major effort on the part of the Israelis to manage what they call the demographic problem, which is, again, having too many non-Jews. In the territory that is Israel. So, rather than just simply annexing these areas outright, as they did to all the areas in the white to make the state of Israel, they simply put Gaza and the West Bank under military occupation. And then, again, they can go ahead and continue colonizing the area, but make sure that the Arabs that live here and here never actually become Israeli citizens and get to vote or any of those things. So, that brings us to— one more note on how it's not a religious conflict. The basic idea behind Zionism is that in the Bible, there's this historical record that Jews lived in Palestine, say, you know, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000 years ago. And so, the early Zionists, they were not religious. They were actually quite against Judaism. They were very secular. Right. But they just looked at the Bible as a secular proof or document or historical document that Jews used to live there, and that created the connection that Jews had to the land, which then, under that worldview of being a Jewish nationalist, means that that land belongs to them. So, like Hitler would talk about the Teutonic Knights and the Germanic tribes that used to live in Germany, And that created the bond between Germans living now and the land. Hitler always talked about blood and soil, Blut und Boden. And so, for the Zionists, it was the same thing, which was, look, we have our race, the Jewish race has a connection to the land, as evidenced by the Bible historically. So, again, that gives us the right to come in, and even though there are all these Arabs here, kill them, take their land, etc., because they're thinking in terms of That idea of blood and soil, or ethnic nationalism. So, again, it wasn't even a religious concept. It was just this idea of ethnic nationalism that got the conflict going. Over time, it has become— taken on more religious overtones, but, again, that wasn't the source. So, jumping forward to the situation in Gaza more recently, since that's What's been in the news. In 2005, the then-Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, he made the decision to unilaterally disengage from Gaza. And at the time, as you can see here, this little white spot, there were settlements in Gaza, but there were not very many Israeli settlers there.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: There are many, many more settlements in the West Bank, but there's a huge population in Gaza. There's, like, maybe 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, something like that. And Gaza, too, doesn't actually, from a Zionist perspective, have any value for them. In the Bible, there is nothing really significant that happens in Gaza. There's a few mentions of Gaza, but where the Jewish homeland is, according to Zionists, is in Judea and Samaria.

Chris: Right.

Will VanWagenen: Israel in the rest of these areas, including the West Bank, which they refer to as Judea and Samaria. So, this is really what's valuable to the Israelis from a Zionist perspective. There's biblical sites there, such as, like, the tomb of Abraham, the prophet Abraham, or the tomb of where— of the prophet Joseph, where he was supposedly buried.

Ajay: Thank you.

Will VanWagenen: This is the place that's really valuable to them, whereas Gaza was just kind of this shithole with a bunch of Palestinians that the Israelis needed to make sure that under no circumstances would they ever be incorporated into the Israeli state, because that would really mess up the demographic and have all these extra Palestinians in the state that they don't want. So, Ariel Sharon basically said, well, we're just going to pull out of Gaza. We'll force the settlers to leave. And by doing that, there's a couple reasons why he thought that would be beneficial. Again, so there's no chance that these Palestinians would be incorporated into the Israeli state at some future time through an annexation. And secondly, so it would make it appear as if, look at what we gave up. You know, we're getting out of Gaza, giving the land back to them. And that would basically upset and piss off so many Israelis on the right, and it would be so traumatic for the country Right. —as a whole, that then they would never accept giving up any portions of the West Bank. It was kind of a throwback, actually, to the time when they had occupied the Sinai in 1967, and then later, in 1979, when there was a peace accord with the Egyptian government, the Israelis gave the Sinai back, and they had to remove a bunch of settlers from the Sinai. And again, it was this supposed national trauma that all the Israelis were upset about. And so, he was trying to invoke that same feeling in order to basically say, get credit for supposedly giving Palestinians something back, while just basically consolidating control over the West Bank and being able to continue to build settlements and ensure that Israelis would never accept a withdrawal, and that the international community would never expect a withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, which were, again, the areas that they really wanted. So, that's what happened in 2005. Shortly after that, there— in 2006, I believe, there were Palestinian elections. Hamas ended up winning those elections, and so they had a majority in the Palestinian Parliament. Ismail Haniyeh is a Hamas official who became prime minister. And that upset the Israelis so badly that they immediately— they weren't giving much freedom to Gaza in general, in terms of letting people come and go, but they immediately put even heavier economic sanctions or a siege on the Gaza Strip. There was an effort to try to get the other Palestinian faction, Fatah, whose leader is Mahmoud Abbas, the current Palestinian president, To try to do a coup and take over Gaza from Hamas after they had won those elections. Hamas anticipated the coup. They ended up rounding up a bunch of the Fatah leadership and have controlled Gaza ever since. So, that led, in 2008, To a conflict. Again, during that time, after the Israelis had put that siege on Gaza, they would occasionally invade, occasionally bomb, target Hamas personnel, do assassinations, arrest people, as usual, but their actual army was not inside the Strip. They were just surrounding it and putting— laying siege to it. So, there had been violence on the Israeli side. Palestinians would respond by shooting rudimentary rockets into Israel.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: And in 2008, there was largely calm in— between Israel and the Palestinians. They had actually reached a truce or a ceasefire. There wasn't any violence. The truce was holding pretty well. And then, on November 4th, which was Election Day here in the United States, when Barack Obama was elected, The Israeli military did a cross-border raid into Gaza and killed some Hamas militants, killed like 4 Hamas militants, broke the ceasefire. Hamas shot some rockets in response, and things snowballed from there. And so, by the end of the year, by like late December, early January, the Israelis did a full assault on Gaza, which is very similar to the one that took place recently.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: They ended up killing about 2,000— well, I think it was about 1,400 people, and just really destroyed a lot of infrastructure, and really tried to show who's boss, so to speak.

Ajay: Sorry. Out of the 1,400, roughly, how many were combatants versus civilians?

Will VanWagenen: I feel bad I don't have percentages, but it was probably about 75% civilians.

Ajay: And while I have your attention, can you talk about Hezbollah and the attack that it was like, or conflict, in 2006?

Will VanWagenen: Sure. Something similar happened in 2006 between Israel and Lebanon. Hezbollah is a Shiite militant group that was formed in the early '80s to resist the Israelis who had invaded Lebanon. And occupied southern Lebanon. And Hezbollah was successful in kicking out the Israelis and ending the occupation of southern Lebanon. I believe it was in 2000 when the Israelis pulled their final forces out. And so, the Israelis still had done raids into Lebanon and arrested and had a lot of Lebanese in prison.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: So, in 2006, Hezbollah did a cross-border raid and kidnapped a couple Israeli soldiers. I think they killed one, kind of in response to the kidnapping of Lebanese civilians on the part of the Israelis. And the Israelis took that opportunity to basically unleash a war against southern Lebanon. And they— I don't know, I don't recall how many people they killed, but—

Ajay: 1,000.

Will VanWagenen: You know, several thousand people. They destroyed a lot of infrastructure in southern Lebanon. But Hezbollah was successful in shooting rockets into Israel and preventing the Israelis from successfully invading southern Lebanon on the ground, through a ground invasion. So, the Israeli military establishment saw that as essentially— their effort was to invade Lebanon to establish the idea of deterrence. They had been humiliated by Hezbollah.

Ajay: Right. Yeah.

Will VanWagenen: —back in, you know, 2000, when they had forced the Israelis to withdraw. So, the idea with the Israelis was, OK, we're going to go in, we're going to just cause massive amounts of destruction, kill a lot of people, and this is basically just going to scare the shit out of our enemies and maintain deterrence, so that no one will have the courage to try to challenge us moving forward. And that was a similar idea that they had with the war in 2008 and 2009 against Gaza. The idea was, if you can just— Use massive, massive amounts of force, kill a lot of people, destroy a lot of civilian infrastructure, then that scares people, and so that they won't challenge the Israelis, to establish deterrence. It was largely a massacre. I mean, Hamas, at that time, they barely fought back. Anytime there was an encounter between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants from Hamas, the Hamas militants largely just disappeared.

Chris: Right.

Will VanWagenen: They were able to shoot some rockets, but they weren't able to do a whole lot of damage to the Israelis. But it was really bad for Israel's image internationally. There were a number of U.N. human rights reports that condemned the Israelis, that said they were targeting civilians on purpose. The U.N. commission that issued this report was led by a South African judge named— whose last name was Gold.

Ajay: Goldstone.

Will VanWagenen: Goldstone, who himself was Jewish and a Zionist, but from South Africa. But when he issued this report, it completely condemned the Israelis, and so it was a really bad PR defeat for the Israelis, because you even had a supporter of Israel in Judge Goldstone saying, look, it was— you know, the Israeli military committed these terrible atrocities. And there was a lot of testimony from Israeli soldiers themselves, basically saying, look, it was a massacre. We'd go into—

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: To— not to mention the bombing, which killed a lot of people, but we'd go into a neighborhood, and basically, we were told we can just shoot anything that moves, bulldozing houses. They would bulldoze entire neighborhoods. They spent days and days and days just bulldozing things, again, with basically no resistance, resistance from Hamas. So, eventually, that war ended, and there was a truce. Ever since then, there's again been—

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: In 2012, there was another war between Hamas and the Israelis that was more minor. But ever since that time, long story short, the Palestinians have been under siege and have done their best to keep their economy going and to basically continue to build up their military capabilities to resist Israeli aggression. They've done that largely from smuggling weapons through tunnels underneath the Egypt-Gaza Strip.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: Mm-hmm. Gaza border, getting some assistance from Iran, but making a lot of their rockets just on their own, and, in addition, digging a really extensive tunnel network, not only between Gaza and Egypt, but between Gaza and Israel, tunnels that they didn't use, but were there in case of another Israeli invasion, which they then used in this most recent war. So, what are some of the causes of the most recent war? Earlier this year, John Kerry was spending a lot of time in the Middle East to try to get peace negotiations going, and the Israelis kind of just told him to fuck off, for the most part. And then, finally, when Hamas and Fatah, or the Palestinian Authority—

Ajay: Fatah.

Will VanWagenen: Ended up coming to an agreement to form a national unity government. That was kind of the last straw for the Israelis. They broke off the talks altogether. And those ended. And then there was an incident just before the war started, where 3 Israeli teens Were kidnapped by Hamas militants— sorry, I'll get to you— and they were killed. And then some Israeli settlers kidnapped a young Palestinian boy, and early in the morning, they dumped gasoline on him, and they burned him to death. And then the Israelis did a lot of raids in the West Bank to arrest Hamas representatives. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Political representatives. And then, finally, the Israelis started bombing Gaza. Chris, question?

Chris: Yeah, I was wondering if you could clarify or elaborate on the relationship that Israel has with the West Bank, and maybe the differences they have with Gaza itself, because Palestine's obviously split now into 2.

Will VanWagenen: Great question. Ever since 2005, when the Israelis disengaged from Gaza, there was a deliberate policy under Prime Minister Olmert, who took over from Ariel Sharon, to basically try as much as possible to separate Gaza from the West Bank, in all facets, to try to split it up so that there would not be this idea that there's a unified— that both Gaza and the West Bank would be unified. That was somewhat exacerbated by conflicts between Palestinians themselves, as, again, Fatah and the Palestinian Authority essentially controlled the West Bank, whereas Hamas controlled Gaza. In fact, during that war in 2008, the Palestinian President Abbas— there are some diplomatic cables that were leaked where he was basically asking or telling the Israelis to bomb Gaza. And he knew about the war in advance, but, of course, didn't let Hamas know, 'cause he wanted it to happen. And that was actually pretty tragic, because the very first day of that war in 2008, the very first thing the Israelis did to open up that particular war was to bomb a Hamas gathering of police cadets. There were a bunch of brand-new police cadets that graduated from, like, the police academy. They weren't members of Hamas's militant wing.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: They were just policemen. They were all gathered together, and Israel bombed that graduation ceremony, killed about 400 people. So, Abbas knew about that. So, he's a pretty terrible guy and is essentially, largely, for the most part, an agent of the Israelis, it seems. But, again, that's been a policy on the part of the Israelis, because their strategy is, number one, we want to separate these two, and we want to be able to annex as much of the West Bank and take as much of this land as we can, make sure a Palestinian state does not get created, while keeping Gaza just totally isolated. So, in my opinion, one of the main reasons for this war, despite the pretext of those 3 Israeli settlers that were kidnapped and killed, one of the main reasons for the war was essentially to make sure that, number one, the Israelis establish deterrence again.

Chris: Right.

Will VanWagenen: So they could just— they would just go wild and bomb all these different targets for the same reasons in 2008. But also, they were trying to make sure that that Hamas-Palestinian Authority unity government would never continue. And then, secondly, in my opinion, at least, although they wanted to weaken Hamas, they did actually want to keep Hamas in power.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: A member of the Israeli Knesset who used to be, like, deputy secretary of the Israeli intelligence— I apologize, I forget his name and his exact title. And in his opinion, the Israelis, they did all the bombing from the air. They actually did a ground invasion to destroy a lot of the tunnels. And had they gone just a little bit farther, another, like, 0.3 miles, in this guy's opinion, They could have dealt such a blow to Hamas and killed so many of their militants and eliminated so much of their military capabilities that they basically would have— Hamas would have basically been destroyed, and then the Israelis could have brought Mahmoud Abbas from the Palestinian Authority into Gaza to rule the place. They didn't do that, though. Just before that was imminent or possible, the Israelis suddenly stopped the invasion. — withdrew and didn't take that final step that they probably could have taken to destroy Hamas. Give it 2 seconds. And, again, the big reason for that is that if Israel's main intention is to prevent a Palestinian state, it's good for them for Hamas to be in power, because then they can always say, look, you know, we can't make peace with the Palestinians. How can you make peace with— People that want to destroy you and that deny your right to exist, you can't make peace with these people. If we allowed a Palestinian state, then, just like rockets are being shot out of Gaza into Israel, you know, all of the West Bank will be militarized, and they'll be shooting rockets at us, you know, from the West Bank. And so, you know, what can we do besides just maintain the status quo and continue building— which is to continue building settlements and to continue taking Palestinian land? I think that's a very good question. The Israelis benefit greatly from the status quo, which is, you know, keeping Gaza as a big prison, and then taking more and more land in the West Bank. So, in my view, that was essentially a big reason for the war. Another reason is that a lot of things have changed in the Middle East. Well, let me get your question before I talk about that. Yeah, I was going to ask about Israel's relationship with Hamas, because didn't Israel kind of promote Hamas? Hamas and other non-secular, like, Islamic groups in the '70s and '80s to kind of counteract the influence of the PFLP and PFLP? Wasn't that sort of their strategy, like, releasing them early from prison and stuff like that? It was. I mean, they— there are some people that say that Israel created Hamas, and that's not the case, but they definitely tolerated them and preferred them to The PLO at the time, because the PLO in the '80s was saying things like, OK, we recognize a 2-state solution. We're not going to— even though we lost all of this land, we're not going to try to win it back. We're just going to be content with a state along the 1967 borders. They recognized Israel. They really wanted to have like a 2-state solution. And so, the Israelis, once again, that's kind of their nightmare scenario, because that prevents continued colonization of land that they feel like is theirs, and that's part of Greater Israel. And so, they tried to undermine the secular Palestinian resistance, which was Fatah, who are nationalists, or the PFLP, or the DFLP, who are Marxists. And so, they did allow Hamas to kind of grow and flourish, while they were suppressing the more secular groups. So, again, that's how religion came to take more of a role in the conflict, where the secular Palestinian factions Even though they had been fighting the Israelis ever since the displacement of Palestinians through ethnic cleansing in 1947, they had basically failed. And so, at that point, Palestinians kind of turned away from the secular resistance and said, well, you know, maybe Islam is the solution, which is the Muslim Brotherhood slogan, al-Islam ho al-hal. Islam is the solution. Anyway, so, another reason for the recent war is that the regional dynamic had changed quite a bit. Typically, Egypt had treated Palestinians relatively poorly and helped maintain, to some extent, that siege. But there were still these tunnels underneath the border that the Egyptians allowed money and weapons and basic humanitarian or construction goods to be smuggled under those tunnels. But when there was a revolution in Egypt in 2011, Hosni Mubarak was deposed, and the army took control of the country. They allowed elections, thinking that the army's candidate would win. They were very surprised and taken aback when a Muslim Brotherhood candidate won, who was the longstanding enemy of the Egyptian army. So, Mohamed Morsi was the Muslim Brotherhood president who won. And Hamas, their roots are in the Muslim Brotherhood. They started out as basically a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. So, the new Palestinian— or Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, was very close with Hamas. And so, in 2012, when the— or, sorry, 2013, when the Egyptian army carried out a coup and deposed the Egyptian president, Morsi, as soon as he got elected, they were like, whoa, there's no— there's not going to be a Muslim Brotherhood president. They worked really hard for the next year to create the conditions for a coup. They deposed him. And as part of that coup, there was this terrible hate campaign against Palestinians, saying that the Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi, had colluded with Hamas, that Hamas had, you know, killed a bunch of Egyptian guards at the jail to break him out of prison. Morsi was in prison in 2011, at the beginning of the revolution. And basically, there's this campaign to characterize both the Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinians in general as just terrorists. So, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the new Egyptian president, he took over after the coup. He has done his best to basically cut off all access of Hamas through these tunnels. They've destroyed all the tunnels and have deepened that siege. So, it's— the siege became much, much worse.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: And in addition to that, Saudi Arabia also deeply, deeply hates the Muslim Brotherhood. They helped the Egyptian army pull off the coup to get rid of Mohamed Morsi. The Saudi government sees the Muslim Brotherhood as their enemies and like competitors for— as basically competition. The Saudis like to see themselves as the main regional power in the Middle East. Right. Another reason why they hate Iran so much. And in addition, they want to be seen as like the legitimate representatives of Islam, and the Muslim Brotherhood is competition for that. And in addition, the Muslim Brotherhood is democratic. They believe in elections and all these different things. So, if that model is able to take hold, where Islamists like the Muslim Brotherhood are able to win elections and do a good job governing a nearby country like Egypt, which is the most populous and important country in the Middle East, then Saudis would begin to doubt the legitimacy of their system, which is a dictatorship, a monarchy. And so, the Saudi Arabian government has also labeled the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorists. So, in the past, you might have gotten at least some support for Palestinians from Egypt if a war broke out, or from the Arab world more broadly, including Saudi Arabia. But now, both Egypt and Saudi Arabia, because Hamas is affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, just like they wanted to see the Muslim Brotherhood smashed in Egypt, they were happy to see Hamas smashed in Palestine. And so, the Israelis seemed to realize that they were actually doing the Egyptians and the Saudis a big favor by carrying out this terrible war against Hamas. And weakening them and making sure that, you know, they don't have power and they're not seen as a viable alternative in the Middle East, keeping them weak. And so, the Israelis, in a way, are deepening, like, a new strategic relationship between themselves and the Saudis and the Egyptians, all of whom are allied against Iran. So, in a way, the Israelis, according to one commentator, a political science professional— professor who wrote in The National Review that the Israelis were essentially, like, trying out, like, trying to impress the Israelis— or, sorry, the Israelis were trying to impress the Egyptians and the Saudis to kind of let them into this club to resist the Iranians, try to form a closer strategic bond between those countries. So, on the Hamas side of things, they didn't—

Chris: OK.

Will VanWagenen: So, they didn't want the war. It's unclear why those 3 Israeli teens were kidnapped. It doesn't seem like the Hamas leadership knew about it, even though, later, a Hamas representative that's based out of Turkey gave a talk acknowledging that Hamas operatives in the West Bank did kidnap those 3 settlers, which gave the pretext for Netanyahu to launch the war. Again, it's not clear that the top levels of the Hamas leadership, like Khaled Meshaal in Qatar, I don't know if everyone knew about that. So it might have been kind of like a rogue decision that was taken without the top leadership. But for whatever reason, when the war broke out, Hamas's basic goal was to simply survive. Once again, when Egypt destroyed all these tunnels, they weren't even able to get enough money into Gaza to pay civil servants and to pay employees of the government. So they're extremely cash-strapped.

Chris: Right.

Will VanWagenen: And the siege was just taking such a toll, especially when Egypt closed off those tunnels, that they basically were backed against a wall and had no choice but to really fight like a full-on war, as long as they could, to try to hurt the Israelis enough to get the Israelis to make concessions and to lift the siege. So that was Hamas's goal, is, number one, just survive, but also to have the siege lifted. So that's why they're— that was one of their requests for a ceasefire. They're trying to get the Israelis to allow them to build tunnels. And they're trying to get the Israelis to allow them to build To build an airport, to have a seaport. Those were some of their main demands. And so, even though the Israelis would bomb, bomb, bomb, and then all of a sudden say, oh, we're going to have a ceasefire, sometimes the Hamas government would say, no, well, what does that get us if we just go back to this siege that we've been living under for, you know, since 2005? That doesn't get us anything. We're going to continue the fight. And so, they were very successful, unlike in 2008, when Hamas militants would largely just flee and disperse when they encountered Israeli forces. This time around, through that network of tunnels, they were able to go underneath those tunnels into areas of Israel and attack Israeli soldiers. And I believe they killed about 60 soldiers. Someone can correct me on those numbers if you know better. But they were—

Ajay: How many civilians? What?

Chris: How many civilians?

Will VanWagenen: I think something like 3 Israeli civilians were killed.

Chris: Well, that's just total throughout the entire conflict?

Will VanWagenen: Throughout the entire conflict, and about 2,000 Palestinians. Once again, about 75% Israeli civilians— or Palestinian civilians, and about 25% Hamas militants. But Hamas was much, much more successful in killing Israeli soldiers through those tunnels. And they were also able to shoot rockets in order— that got all the way to Tel Aviv and were able to shut down the Tel Aviv airport, which was a big success in terms of just simply disrupting life in Israel, Hamas knows that these rockets aren't going to kill anybody, or if they kill someone, it's more of like due to an accident or by luck, but they are— they still shoot them in order to continue resisting and make sure that the Israeli population, that their lives are at least disrupted, and that there's some cost that they have to pay for bombing Gaza, in addition to the soldiers that the Hamas— the Israeli soldiers that Hamas is able to kill through the tunnels. Okay, sorry, Ajay, and then Greg.

Ajay: Yeah, I just wanted to add something, that the numbers of Israeli deaths that you quoted are actually officially acknowledged by the Israeli leadership, whereas the Palestinians, Hamas-armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, claim that They have killed over 150 Israeli soldiers, just soldiers, at least until about just a few days before this final ceasefire went into effect. And so I wanted to just add that, that, you know, the Israelis say, oh, it was about 65, but actual— in actuality—

Will VanWagenen: 150.

Ajay: But in actual reality, it was closer to 150.

Will VanWagenen: Okay. Yeah, and sorry I didn't come better prepared with more exact numbers. But the, the, and the main takeaway, again, is that Hamas was way more successful in killing Israeli soldiers during this conflict than they had ever been in the past. So that is seen as, like, a great success that, you know, hopefully will provide some deterrence Against the Israelis. You know, now they know if they're going to do a ground invasion or if they're going to bomb again, that they're going to actually have some significant casualties as far as their soldiers go, whereas in 2008, it was the Israeli soldiers— I mean, it was just like, you know, shooting fish in a barrel. I mean, Israeli soldiers weren't under threat at all, basically.

Chris: What about Islamic Jihad? Who are they connected to, and what's kind of their interest? I don't know a lot about them, but they seem like they're connected to the Gulf state. And I was reading somewhere that after the 2008 ceasefire, like, Hamas fired no rockets for, like, years, but militants from, like, Islamic Jihad would fire rockets. And I thought they were connected to the Gulf states, or—

Will VanWagenen: My understanding is— I could be wrong, but my understanding is that Islamic Jihad has more support from Iran. Islamic Jihad is another militant group. It's much smaller, so they're present in the Gaza Strip, as well. A lot of times, they fight alongside Hamas, but they have different leadership. They sometimes do their own thing. There's also the Popular Resistance Committees, which are another militant groups that sometimes fire rockets into Israel. So Hamas, when they've wanted to keep a ceasefire, they've been very successful at, of course, not shooting rockets themselves, but also preventing the other militant groups from doing so. And they're the ones that are And that's, again, all the time the Israelis are going to war, they constantly say, the rockets, rockets. Well, what would you do if Canada was shooting rockets into Seattle or Mexican— Mexico was shooting rockets into Dallas? You know, what would you do? You know, it's kind of their big propaganda talking point. But if they want the rocket fire to stop, well, it's very easy. You don't even have to lift the siege.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: Even though that would be the ethical thing to do. All they have to do is simply maintain a truce with Hamas. And Hamas has indicated that, you know, they don't want a conflict, and so they're going to prevent other groups from firing rockets, and also not fire rockets themselves. But again, just like in 2008, when the Israelis broke that truce that had been holding for about 7 or 8 months, you know, the Israelis continually would break truces, and then Hamas would feel like, well, we need to respond.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: So, they'll shoot rockets. But the way to— for the Israelis to keep peace in South Israel and not have their residents worried about rockets, you know, being fired, is to just simply keep a truce with Hamas. So, anytime they say, well, this is why we're fighting the war, that's not the reason why. Again, they're just trying to weaken Hamas, allow them to stay in power, but weaken them so that they can't actually build up significant military force.

Ajay: Yeah.

Will VanWagenen: But just maintain, you know, the status quo, where they can continue building settlements and make sure that they never actually have to enter into good-faith negotiations with the Palestinians to allow a Palestinian state. Sorry, who's next, was it? Yeah, I had a question about, like, the change in tactics that we've seen from Hamas and Palestinian resistance in general. It seems like suicide bombings are more popular. In the '90s and early 2000s, and now we've shifted to rockets that are much less like— it's almost like a less lethal munition or something like that. It's meant to be symbolic and kind of scare people. There's no— people aren't walking into restaurants and blowing themselves up anymore. And I wondered if you knew anything about the shift in tactics and if that reflects a change in Hamas's attitude or PLO's attitude towards What causes this war? It's a— it seems to be a combination of things. On the one hand, when suicide bombings started, the very first one was in 1994. So there's a long record of conflict between the 2 groups. Hamas itself was founded probably in 1987, and they initially carried out attacks against Israeli soldiers, like in the West Bank. Initially, they didn't even have any guns, and so the first, like, Hamas cell that attacked some Israeli soldiers. They did it with knives. That's all they had. Later, in 1994— I mean, in all periods where the Israelis have fought against Palestinians, they've pretty much targeted civilians and killed a lot of civilians. And that was even the case in the First Intifada in the late '80s, when Palestinians rose up against Israeli occupation. They didn't have weapons either. They were basically throwing rocks at soldiers and rioting. Right. That was what they were doing. And the Israeli army would move in with pretty overwhelming force, shoot people, arrest lots of people, torture lots of people. It was even very famous, because the— I think it was Yitzhak Rabin, the prime minister at the time, gave an order for Israeli forces to, quote-unquote, break the bones of the Palestinian youths that were throwing rocks at the soldiers. So Israeli soldiers would They would grab a kid, maybe a 14-, 15-year-old, who was throwing rocks at the soldiers, back during the First Intifada, and they would just take him out into a field somewhere, break both his arms, break both his legs, and just let him sit there. That was kind of a common tactic. So, there's always been overwhelming brutality and violence that the Israelis have used against Palestinian civilians. And then, finally, in 1994, there was this rogue settler named Baruch Goldstein.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: Who walked into the main mosque in Hebron, where the tomb of Abraham supposedly is, which is shared between Israelis on the one hand and Palestinians on the other. It's, like, split. And he walked in with a machine gun and opened fire and killed something like 30, 40 Palestinians that were praying in a mosque. And so, at that point, Hamas, in response, did their first suicide bombing, where they—

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: They targeted Israeli buses. I think it was a bus. I could be wrong. And so, Palestinians' mentality was kind of twofold in the age of— during the period of time when they were doing suicide bombings. Number one was, if Israelis— if the Israeli army is going to kill our civilians, then we're going to kill your civilians. And in particular, they would try to target buses. Many of the buses were full of Israeli soldiers.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: Every civilian in Israel has to join the army. And they go back and forth from their bases to their homes all the time. So, if you ever go to Israel, as a tourist, even, you'll see, like, Israeli soldiers on the public buses, because they just use public transportation to go back and forth from their base to their home. It'd be like if you were in the Army, and you were deployed in, like, Lehi or something. You know, on the weekends, you can go home, because it's like 40 miles away. So they'd— with their gun, they'd hop on a bus. Yeah.

Ajay: Yes.

Will VanWagenen: And so, Palestinians tried to justify suicide bombings by saying, well, number one, you're killing our civilians, so if you're going to kill ours, then we can kill yours. And secondly, every Israeli is part of the army, so therefore we consider them legitimate targets, was kind of the mentality that Palestinians took. Why has that changed? A couple possible reasons. Number one is that in the past, there was— it was much easier to get between the West Bank and Israel, so a suicide bomber typically came from the West West Bank, they would go into Israel and do a suicide bombing. But in the inter— in the, say, the last— I forget when they started building it, maybe 2004— the Israelis started building the separation barrier. So that prevented Palestinians who used to maybe go into Israel to work and then come back to the West Bank— that prevented Palestinians from going into the West Bank. Now, the separation barrier wasn't just there to prevent Palestinians from going into Israel. Largely, it was there to steal more land, because the wall didn't Right. If the wall had followed this internationally recognized border between Israel and the Palestinian territories, fine, okay, you're doing it for security purposes, you know, great, build a wall as big as you want. But that's not what they did. They built it more like this, in order to just take more land and enclose, keep more Israeli settlements on that side of the— on the Israeli side of the wall, essentially. So, again, that's kind of— that's just a false argument, that they built the wall purely for security reasons. But at the same time, it did have an effect. And then the same thing with the siege in Gaza. There used to be a lot of workers that would go from Gaza into Israel to work, and that, ever since the siege, has been shut down. So, my sense is that, on the one hand, some members in Hamas have kind of realized that that was a bad strategy to take. That, you know, it's bad for PR, it's bad for trying to achieve their goals, and it's also just less feasible to do now, is my understanding. Those are my guesses. So, and again, you see now, they're shooting rockets largely with the understanding it's not going to kill people, or if it kills, you know, again, largely due to accident. But they're trying to target soldiers more. I think there's a— they've kind of understood that they need to have support of the West. And even if the Israelis are indiscriminately bombing Palestinian civilians, you know, Hamas isn't going to win much by returning the favor.

Chris: You cited 3 civilian casualties, Israeli civilians. One of the guys happened to be killed by shrapnel. And also, he was doing, like, a lunchathon for Israeli soldiers, too.

Will VanWagenen: There was one, like, Filipino, like, worker. Ever since they prevented Palestinians from coming into Israel to work, they lost that source of cheap labor. And so, they've been having, like, you know, people from the Philippines and other really poor countries come into Israel to work as— and do, like, low-wage labor.

Chris: —launching a rocket and aiming indiscriminately, or, you know, maybe discriminately, versus just one-time destruction from the air, these airstrikes, where you're blowing up buildings and blowing up UN hospitals.

Will VanWagenen: Right. So, to cite some of the things that the Israelis did, which they have done in almost every one of these conflicts, whether it's been in Lebanon or whether it's been in Gaza, like, they pretty much bomb a UN compound or school or 2. During each conflict. Israelis also will say, well, we dropped leaflets on people's houses telling them, you know, to leave. Well, those leaflets never actually tell Palestinians where they could go to be safe. They can't get out of the Strip. They can't go to Egypt. They can't leave. Nobody knows which areas of the Gaza Strip are going to be bombed and which are not. So, there's basically nowhere for them to go. So, those leaflets that say, hey, leave the area, we're going to bomb it, Mm-hmm. That largely are just there to create terror and have, like, a psychological effect on Palestinians, like, oh, my gosh, we're going to get bombed. But there's nowhere they can actually go. And when they do go to places that they feel like are going to be safe, which would be like a hospital or like a UN school or United Nations compound of some kind, those typically get bombed, as well. So, again, it is important to point out that the Israeli targeting of Palestinians, It's been indiscriminate, random, or actually, to be fair, they've just deliberately targeted civilian areas, so it's not even indiscriminate. They're deliberately targeting a lot of Palestinian civilians. Even just in the last days before the most recent ceasefire, you know, they blew up a bunch of apartment buildings. Supposedly, they— those were notified in advance. The particular building was notified, and people did leave. My understanding is there weren't any deaths. There were some injuries. But it's just very cruel to say, OK, we're just going to blow up apartment buildings, like 4 or 5 big apartment buildings, so that we leave a few more thousand people homeless, you know, before the— in addition, with the Hamas rockets, they don't even have the technology to direct them at a particular place. So, they have to try to respond in some way.

Ajay: Yeah.

Will VanWagenen: But the rockets are so rudimentary, they don't even have a way to target them on Israeli military facilities. All they can do is just, you know, shoot them in the direction of Israel, and that's it, you know.

Chris: So, it seems like Saudi Arabia and Egypt are basically forming a strategic alliance, you know, with the Israelis to destroy Palestine. Who in the region is Who's still standing with Palestine, and, like, who is now joining in this sort of strategic alliance, you know, to disrupt Palestinian resistance?

Will VanWagenen: Say the last part of the question again.

Chris: So, basically, we have Egypt and Saudi Arabia who are working together.

Will VanWagenen: So, who's still standing with the Palestinians? And then the second part was?

Chris: Yeah, and who's still supporting the Palestinian resistance in whatever ways possible? Because I thought Turkey also— was no longer giving as much aid to Palestine. I'm not 100% sure on that, but I remember hearing now that they're backing off because of NATO and whatnot. I was just wondering if you—

Will VanWagenen: Yeah, my understanding is that currently, again, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are actual enemies of Palestinians currently. The one Arab country that still provided support is Qatar.

Ajay: To Hamas?

Will VanWagenen: So, in the past, Khaled Meshaal, who was like the secretary general of Hamas, he was based in Damascus. When the Syrian uprising started, they cut— Hamas kind of made a strategic decision to leave Syria. They kind of tacitly supported the Syrian opposition, because the Syrian opposition then, not really so much anymore, but then was largely led by the Muslim Brotherhood. And so, Meshal and Hamas made the decision to leave Syria, where they had their headquarters, or where Assad had been giving them refuge, essentially, and he went to Qatar instead. So they basically kind of said, you know, fuck you to Assad, and went to Qatar and kind of threw their lot in with the Qataris. So, Qatar seems to be pretty much the only organization that— or the only country that's actively supporting them and trying to provide some diplomatic assistance to the Palestinians. During these ceasefire negotiations, Hamas wanted Qatar to be the intermediary, rather than Egypt, because they realized, of course, now Egypt is their full-on enemy. So, it's largely Qatar. They still get some assistance from Iran, but, like, less than they did in the past. They kind of alienated both Assad and the Iranians, to some degree.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: So, Hamas, yeah, they definitely don't have too many friends left.

Chris: But do Syria and Iran also support other Palestinian resistance groups?

Will VanWagenen: Again, there's some support from the Iranians to Hamas still, and then to Islamic Jihad, is my understanding. But I haven't researched that super closely, so I could be wrong.

Chris: I thought they also support Hezbollah.

Will VanWagenen: Well, Hezbollah is still supportive of Hamas, not so much directly, but kind of they still express solidarity with Hamas. And there was kind of rumblings that maybe Hezbollah would shoot some rockets from the north. But Iran and Syria definitely support Hezbollah, but their support for Hamas has lessened a little bit in recent years.

Ajay: Yeah, I somewhat disagree with your assessment of the alliance of Palestinians with regional states, although there is— yeah, there has been plenty of Qatari financial support for Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Yeah. I see it as very opportunistic, of course, as Gulf monarchies have been restored. But anyways, going back to the main question that Brett had, I see despite Hamas's betrayal of Syrians during the Syrian the Syrian internal conflict, where Hamas has thrown their lot with the so-called revolutionaries who have been fomenting a strife, violent strife, from the outside, mainly with the assistance of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, and of course plenty of political and logistical assistance from the United States and Israel. I just wanted to say that Syria is still supporting If not Hamas directly, they are supporting the other Palestinian resistance factions, like the PFLP, the DFLP, and— yeah, but mainly those 2 factions who form the— who are the main actors in the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Yeah. Hamas, of course, is part of that organization. But— and also Hezbollah, which is the Lebanese national resistance group that you mentioned, they're also assisting the Palestinians in Gaza. And they did this through military ties. Training, actively training Palestinian resistance fighters, and which is one of the reasons they— Hamas and the resistance in Gaza was able to withstand the Israeli onslaught so effectively, whereas before they would have been pretty much— it would have been like shooting ducks in a pond. Right.

Will VanWagenen: Well, to use the analogy you used, fish in a barrel. Yeah. My first language, so I'm not too familiar with the terminology.

Ajay: But anyways, it would have been very easy for them to crush the Palestinian resistance. Yeah. So I wanted to add that and explain that the Lebanese Hezbollah, as well as the Syrian government and Iran do assist the Palestinians in Gaza in different ways to form this resistance axis against the Israeli expansionism, which has been manifest in these days in the issue of Gaza.

Will VanWagenen: So like the— The PFLP, a split-off of the main PFLP, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, there's a split-off called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command. And they still have a stronger presence in Syria and are supported by the regime. But they don't seem to have any presence in Gaza itself, is my understanding. But, again, I—

Chris: Right.

Will VanWagenen: You may be very well correct in terms of more support from Hezbollah than I'm aware of. I mean, there's always been solidarity, especially between Hezbollah and Hamas, especially in this— the last 10 years, when sectarianism has become so bad in the Middle East, Sunni versus Shia. Hamas and Hezbollah have been kind of the 2 organizations that have really refrained from engaging in extremely sectarian behavior and have tried to maintain— Solidarity. That unity of Muslims against the U.S. and Israel, for example. So, I mean, that's an example, or that's obviously to be appreciated. But as far as Hamas leaving Syria goes, my impression is that, you know, when Mohamed Morsi was elected president from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in 2012, he was a very, very strong critic of Assad and was openly calling for Assad's overthrow. And he was also very close with Hamas, being from the Muslim Brotherhood. And I think at that time, just like Mubarak fell pretty quickly, obviously Gaddafi was overthrown, the government in Tunisia was overthrown, pretty much everyone underestimated Assad and the amount of support that he had in Syria. And I think a lot of people just thought, well, just like all these other dictators were deposed pretty easily, Bashar al-Assad will be deposed pretty quickly. And again, early on, the opposition, the Syrian armed opposition, was largely led by the Muslim Brotherhood. So my assumption is, is that Hamas also thought, along with Mohamed Morsi and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, that Syria would fall soon. And so they again threw their lot in with Qatar, who's the main supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East. And, you know, A.J. referred to that as a betrayal, which it probably was, because Assad had supported them for a long time. But I think they just kind of said, well, a lot of things are shifting, and they made the decision, right or wrong, to jump in with the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt at the time, and Qatar, not realizing that less than a year later, the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt would be overthrown, and the army would be back in power. Right. Not realizing that Assad would hold on a lot longer than other people thought. And then, of course, in Syria, the opposition now is— the Muslim Brotherhood has very little influence in the opposition in Syria. Now it's mostly jihadi militant groups funded by the Saudis and the Qataris, namely Jabhat al-Nusra or the Islamic State. They're all getting money and weapons from Qatar and the Saudis and the Turks. And this— the dynamic has changed a lot. Sorry, Chris, and then AJ.

Chris: Yeah, speaking of Syria, in the recent news, well, this goes back, you mentioned the Six-Day War, where Israel basically collected territory in an optional war. Golan Heights was one of the territories they seized and have occupied since. But there's been spillover of the Syrian conflict, and now with the sort of ISIS-ISIL extravaganza, There's a lot of guerrilla work going on that's been taking headlines by storm. That's sort of spilling over into the Golan Heights. I'm wondering if you have a sense of where that might go to, whether that might force Israel into conflict, or whether that's just—

Will VanWagenen: Well, I guess it's hard to say if— 'cause I believe it was Jabhat al-Nusra that was— where there was some fighting between them and the Israelis in the Golan. But the Israeli government has tried to portray, like, ISIS and all these Salafi jihadist groups, al-Qaeda, etc., as being the same as Hamas, because, you know, everyone in the United States thinks that the Islamic State or ISIS are barbarians and bad, etc., so the Israelis want to make it seem like Palestinians are just the same. But there's actually no link or connection between Hamas and these jihadi groups, like ISIS or like Jabhat al-Nusra, who have just a totally different ideology from Hamas. Hamas are Islamist, but they're mostly nationalist. So, all these, like, Salafi Muslim theologians and theorists, who basically provide the ideological arguments or justifications to support the type of activities that the Islamic State in Iraq and Sham are engaged in, they all basically hate Hamas and think that they are like— that they're all kuffar, unbelievers, because they are supporting democracy and trying to have a state that is not based on some interpretation of Sharia law. So there's even instances recently where some ISIS fighters in Iraq were seen burning a Palestinian flag, and there's all these statements by some of these Muslim theologians saying, you know, you shouldn't support Palestinians' resistance against Israel, because all that— they're just fighting for, you know, nationalist reasons or whatever. If they were real Muslims, they'd be fighting for to establish an Islamic state. So those groups actually really hate Hamas and don't like them at all. So there's just not a connection between those 2 particular, like, trends of thought, as far as, like, political Islam goes.

Chris: That's a very helpful clarification. But I— maybe more of the question—

Will VanWagenen: Sorry, maybe I didn't understand your question. Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is that In my opinion, Israel is not really in any danger. Like, there's no interest on the part, it seems, despite those— some of that violence in the Golan, there does not seem to be any interest on the part of, like, Jabhat al-Nusra or ISIS, the groups that are trying to overthrow the Assad government, or the groups that are taking over territory in Iraq now. There's virtually no interest on the part of those groups to try to liberate Palestine or fight against the Zionist entity.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: That's just like the last thing they give a shit about, which is messed up. But they're messed up assholes. Oh, sorry. Well, is it AJ and then Craig?

Ajay: Yeah, I just wanted to clarify, maybe maintain my earlier statement about what I see as a betrayal by Hamas. In the Syrian internal conflict, I see, I see that Hamas betrayed Syrians, the Syrian government, and the Syrian people, because Syria, unlike the rest of the regional Arab states, The United States, since the founding of Israel and the Nakba, which is the catastrophe that happened after Israel was founded, has been the only state that has granted Palestinian refugees citizenship and democratic rights.

Will VanWagenen: And so—

Ajay: At least as far as I see it, anytime you, you throw your lot in with the enemies of a state that has actually done those things for you, you are betraying it, whether you like to admit it or not.

Will VanWagenen: Mm-hmm.

Ajay: And so, yes, there are other factors that come into play, but I think that's one of the primary Thanks. That should be pointed out. And yeah, personally, I'm a Marxist-Leninist, so I am by no means a Hamas political supporter, but I do see them currently— I mean, I do recognize that they are the elected government in Gaza. And it should be pointed out that as far as Syria is concerned, they did betray the government and people there, who massively support the government, which has been—

Will VanWagenen: Assad.

Ajay: Has been suffering a foreign-backed, a continuous destabilization, 3.5 years, from the outside. Yeah, that's my thought.

Will VanWagenen: Okay. Thanks for coming. So, again, hopefully the camera could hear that, but basically you're reiterating the idea that Hamas betrayed Syria by leaving Syria, and despite all of the things that the Syrian regime had done for Hamas over all those decades, which is very true. From the Hamas— if you were going to defend Hamas on that point, again, I don't know what's right, I don't have strong opinions on it, but Hamas would say, well, our policy is like nonintervention in other countries' affairs, like our only concern is resistance against the Israelis. And so, we're not going to intervene in Egyptian internal politics, nor did they supposedly want to intervene in Syrian politics or Lebanese politics. And it got to the point where, with the Syrian war, you kind of just had— I mean, they were— essentially, they left to try to maintain neutrality, essentially. Right. Unlike Hezbollah, who obviously has actively fought on the side of the Assad regime. Like, there were some people trying to accuse Hamas of fighting, sending fighters to fight with the Syrian opposition, the Free Syrian Army, etc., but those don't seem to ever have been substantiated. It was more like accusations and people trying to slander them. So they largely have kind of taken a largely neutral approach to the Syrian war. Except for the fact that, you know, had they stayed, had Meshal stayed in Syria, he basically would have been seen as taking a particular side in the conflict. So, by leaving, they kind of claim, well, we were just trying to stay neutral. Going to Qatar, given Qatar's known support for Jabhat al-Nusra now, means that maybe it wasn't quite such a neutral act. But that's kind of the idea. But there's a long history of Palestinians running into trouble when they actually take sides in particular conflicts. For example, in the 1991 Gulf War, Palestinians openly took the side of Saddam Hussein, because he had been providing a lot of support to the Palestinians throughout his years in power. And then, as soon as they did that, and Palestinian— all the Palestinians who were living in Kuwait were basically deported from Kuwait, and a lot of the financial assets of the PLO were confiscated.

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Will VanWagenen: And they lost a lot of their power and influence, because they took Saddam's side in that particular conflict. And that's what led the PLO to being in such a weak position once the actual Oslo Accord negotiations started. Yasser Arafat had no friends, which is a big reason why he sold out Palestinians during the Oslo negotiations. So, that's at least something that Palestinians are leery of, is getting caught up in other conflicts, in addition to the history in Lebanon, in the civil war. In Lebanon, from '78 to the late '80s, Palestinian factions were fighting in the Lebanese civil war. And that was a really— because there were so many refugees in Lebanon, every group was fighting everybody, the Shiites, the Druze, the Christians, the Palestinians, the Syrians. And it was just this really bad, bad outcome. So, another reason why Palestinians are reluctant to get too involved So maybe this is just a dumb question.

Chris: I mean, I have my own theories about it. But Qatar was supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, and now they're supporting the Islamic State. It seems like there's a regional conflict or power struggle between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. But now they're supporting the same guys in Syria and Iraq. So are they just like, fuck it, we're rich oil theocracies, we We're don't give a shit? Yeah. just going to throw money at groups that hopefully one of them comes to power, and then they'll be our buddies? Or like, what's the— is there a rationale? Or is it sort of like U.S., who's like, fuck it, I'll support whoever will destroy our enemies?

Will VanWagenen: Well, there seems to be a division, as far as Syria goes. As I'm sure you guys all know, the Syrian opposi— armed opposi— Syrian armed opposition started out with The Free Syrian Army was largely like a front for the Muslim Brotherhood in getting weapons and support from the West. They weren't particularly successful, and the Saudis and the Qataris stepped in, because they're trying to get rid of Assad as part of essentially a proxy war against the Iranians, for just to try to be the big dog in the Middle East. The Saudis want to be it, the Qataris want to be it, and the Iranians want to be it. So there's a proxy war going on.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: So, as time went on, though, the Qataris supposedly had been supporting Jabhat al-Nusra, which is the official faction of al-Qaeda, or representative of al-Qaeda, in Syria. But the Saudis, on the other hand, have been supporting the Islamic State. Those groups actually are fighting against each other actively now. And so, there is that competition, yes, between the Saudis and the Qataris for influence and— And money. in Syria and throughout the Middle East in general. One reason why the Qataris probably feel like they want to support Hamas, it's just a way for them to extend their influence. That's why Qatar did support the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. They're just, again, trying to make— trying to increase their influence. But the Qataris haven't been supporting ISIS, supposedly. It's the Saudis that have been doing that, in particular Prince Bandar, who you guys might know from—

Ajay: Sheikh Bandar.

Will VanWagenen: He was the Saudi— what do you call it?

Ajay: Ambassador.

Will VanWagenen: The Saudi ambassador to the U.S. for a long time. He helped George Bush get elected president. Supposedly, that's when George Bush decided to run for office, is he was having dinner one night with Prince Bandar at their home in Texas, and Bandar was trying to get him to run. And supposedly, one reason why the U.S.— there are many reasons why the U.S. went to war in Iraq, but the Saudis were definitely pushing for it.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: So, Prince Bandar and the Bushes, they're like good friends. They go on vacation all the time. But Prince Bandar was basically direct— he took over the Syria file for Saudi intelligence, and he was directing money and weapons to the Islamic State. He's even threatening President Putin. He went to Russia at one point and threatened President Putin, saying, you know, I'm going to unleash all these crazy Chechen jihadis on you. They're going to be doing suicide bombings in Moscow, etc., etc. If you keep up your support for Assad in Syria. And Bandar could do that, because, you know, he's the one funding these militant groups, namely ISIS. And so, again, all that's just part of this proxy war. ISIS now has been going into Iraq. And you'll notice that the U.S. didn't seem to be too concerned about ISIS when they were in Syria. Right. They didn't seem to be too concerned about ISIS, even after they had taken over Mosul, after they had taken over a bunch of Iraqi military bases and confiscated American military equipment, after they had stolen half a billion dollars from the Mosul Central Bank, after they had taken over an oil refinery in a city called Baiji in Iraq, and after they had taken over Fallujah and almost— and Tikrit, essentially. And did nothing, didn't even really say anything about ISIS. It wasn't until they started attacking the Kurds that suddenly the U.S. was like, oh, we're going to intervene. And in my opinion, a lot of that is that, again, the Saudis, just as they wanted to bring Assad down, they also wanted to bring Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, down, because he's a close ally of Iran. And so, the Iranians— or, sorry, the Saudis deliberately created ISIS as a way to, again, take out Assad.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: And weaken Iran that way, to have them go into Iraq so that, you know, they could try to make the Maliki government fall. And, in fact, they were finally successful now, through negotiations with the Iranians and the Americans. Maliki had to step down, and there's a new prime minister in Iraq. So it's curious that the U.S. didn't bother to intervene in Iraq or start bombing ISIS positions until suddenly they had gotten a new prime minister in power in Iraq who they liked better. Right. So, again, ISIS seems to be a Saudi creation that the Saudis are using for whatever kind of aims they have. There's a lot of speculation, too, that the Turks, again, are supporting Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS to some degree, letting fighters go through Turkish territory into Iraq and into Syria. The Kurdish political leadership is constantly complaining about the Turks doing that and giving support. So there's just a lot of this— again, it all comes kind of down to this proxy war between the Saudis, largely, on the one hand, the Qataris, as well, versus the Iranians. And then the U.S., you know, kind of has their hand in it here and there, it seems like, but— I have a more rudimentary question. It brings us back to the topic, probably closer to him. I understand that obviously there are Palestinians that live in Palestine, but in the territory that's now considered Israel, there's also a lot of ethnic Palestinians as well.

Chris: Is that correct?

Will VanWagenen: I also understand that they actually make up like a lion's share of the population. Is that also correct? I think that's correct. The last numbers that I recall— again, this would be for— in 19— when it looked like this, in 1947, and then the Israelis were able to take over all the white areas, they were able to ethnically cleanse most of the Palestinians, about 750,000. But there was a small percentage that remained in Israel. And for about the next 20 years, they lived under military rule within Israel itself.

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: Didn't have any civil rights. But it's a small enough population, about 20% of the overall Israeli population, that the Israelis currently are able to get away with this idea that they're largely a democratic state. There's few enough Israeli Arabs, who are Palestinians, but with Israeli citizenship— there are few enough of them that it's fine if they let them vote. They get discriminated against in a lot of ways. They can't buy land. Right. They don't get much funding at all. All their cities are totally underfunded, as far as infrastructure and schools and all those things. But they can vote. They do have representatives in the Israeli parliament. But the Israelis are OK with that, as long as that number of Palestinians doesn't get, you know, over, say, 30, 40, 50%, so they can still maintain a Jewish state that's majority Jewish, where they can make all the rules and control everything. So, they can tolerate some non-Jews in the state, but they need to absolutely make sure that the number of non-Jews never becomes the majority, hence the reasons you need to exclude Gaza, which is very populous, and exclude the bigger population centers of the West Bank. Again, that's why they don't just simply annex this and annex that. I mean, this is the land they want. Why don't they just annex it, make it part of Israel, give all these Palestinians Israeli citizenship?

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: And just live together like in every other normal country, where it doesn't matter what your ethnicity is? Well, the reason for that is that there would be more Palestinians if these areas were actually incorporated into the state, and those people could all vote. And that's the idea why there is apartheid in the West Bank itself, different laws for Jews and for Palestinians that live in the West Bank itself. But even within Israel, again, there's some discrimination against Palestinians, but they can still actually vote. But that's why Israel is faced, essentially, with a couple choices. People who say they are supporters of the state of Israel will still say, well, we want a 2-state solution. People who are Zionists say they love Israel. They say, well, we still want a 2-state solution. What they're doing is saying, we don't mind giving up land in order to— To keep it. Have a state for Palestinians here, but have a state for Israelis here, where Israelis stay the majority. There's the demographic problem of there being too many Palestinians in the land as a whole. And if you just annex the whole thing, you would have to have full-on, full-blown apartheid, where you've got one country, and the Jews can vote, and the non-Jews can't vote. And so, that's what people say they're—

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: And so, what their friends of Israel, or supporters of Israel, are trying to do is save Israel by creating a Palestinian state in order to just get rid of all those Palestinians and make sure they can never be part of the state of Israel, and threaten the demographics, and threaten the Jewish majority. Whereas— so, that's a lot of the liberal Zionists, essentially, argue that, 'cause they do want to hold on to democracy.

Ajay: Yeah.

Will VanWagenen: But they don't want the Palestinians around in order to, again, maintain Zionism. But the right-wing Israelis just say, fuck it, let's just annex everything. And why do we give a shit if Palestinians live in little ghettos and they don't have any voting rights? Who cares? You know, that's their kind of view on it. They just— because to them, the land is important. So there's kind of those splits between—

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: That's very illuminating. That actually covers all the questions I was going to ask.

Ajay: Oh, cool.

Will VanWagenen: That might be it. I was wondering if you could tell us, like, what the United States' aim is in, like, always having Israel's back. Like, what purpose does Israel serve for the United States in the region? Yeah. This is kind of a topic of debate. The first view is that when the Israelis, in 1967, in just 6 days, were so successful at defeating these other Arab armies and taking over, conquering the West Bank and Gaza and the Sinai and the Golan Heights, as Chris mentioned, is that the U.S. viewed Israel as basically Hey, look how impressive they were fighting this war. Wouldn't that be great if Israel is essentially our military base in the Middle East, where we have a lot of interests, there's a lot of oil? So, if we can essentially have a Spartan society that's our ally in the middle of this hostile, important, energy-rich region, that's a benefit for us. So, we started giving them military aid, doing all kinds of military exchanges, and that close relationship developed. So, that's kind of how it began. And then, what happened over time is that then there was this kind of movement within the U.S., as a part of Israeli efforts to increase support for Israel. There was more promotion of the Holocaust in American schools and building museums and trying to basically generate sympathy for Jews. Obviously, the Holocaust happened, and all— 5 million Jews were killed, etc., etc. But that— the Holocaust was largely ignored. It wasn't really talked about much in the U.S. before 1967. After 1967, again, for political reasons, to increase support for Israel and help it— help the U.S. make Israel its very close ally, and, again, kind of like its own little military base in the Middle East, promotion of the Holocaust, like Massively increased within the U.S. As time has gone on, the Israeli lobby developed, where— I mean, there are a lot of lobbies in the United States, right, where there's one particular ethnic group that cares a lot about one issue, and they don't give a shit about anything else. For example, the Cuban lobby. What do they care about? Cuba. All they care about is the U.S. maintains sanctions against Cuba, because they had their property taken by Castro, and they hate him. That's all they care about. So that's all they lobby about. And no one else in America really gives a shit about that issue. So a congressman has these Cubans come to him, and they're like, hey, you need to keep sanctions on Cuba. He's like, OK, great. Give me some money. Give me your donations. Sounds good to me. It's the same thing with the Israelis. There's no one in Congress— there's no counterlobby in the United States to advocate for the Palestinians in a strong way. So, over the years, the Israeli lobby would come to U.S. politicians and say, hey, you need to support Israel. And they'd be like, OK, give me money, sure. In addition, a lot of the military aid that the United States sends to Israel every year— weapons, just cash, technology, etc., military technology— if the U.S. is giving that aid to Israel, what does that really mean? The Israelis are taking that money—

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: And they're buying U.S. weapons, right? So, McDonnell Douglas or Boeing, they benefit a lot from aid to Israel, because that just means that the U.S. government, indirectly through the Israeli government, is buying a lot of their shit. So, all the defense industry in the United States, they do the same thing to congressmen. They go to them and say, hey, you need to support Israel and increase aid to them. And the congressmen say, great, sounds good, give me some money. Right.

Ajay: Mm-hmm.

Will VanWagenen: All right, you know? They have nothing to gain by taking a neutral position. They have everything to gain by just basically doing whatever the Israeli lobby wants them to do. So, there's this whole kind of feedback loop that keeps support for Israel going. There are finally some people that are starting to say, well, Israel is now a liability. We've got all these other Arab countries All these other Arab allies, the Saudis, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Bahrainis, etc., etc. We've got military bases all throughout the Middle East. And the Israelis now, by doing what they do to the Palestinians, all they're doing is causing us problems. You know, the reason that the 9/11 hijackers did what they did, they all cited U.S. support for Israel as one of their reasons. And the Israelis are kind of becoming a pain in our ass. And when we ask them to do stuff, they don't do it, and blah, blah, blah. And they're spying on us.

Ajay: Yeah.

Will VanWagenen: You know, like this guy, Jonathan Pollard. So, there is a debate now going on between people who say the U.S. is the boss and we tell Israel what to do. They're— you know, we're the boss and they are subservient to us, and we benefit from them, and that's why the aid flows. And then there's other people that say, no, now the Israeli lobby is so powerful that actually they're doing all kinds of things that are against American interests. And they're But the Israeli lobby is so powerful that no one in the U.S. government will stand up to them. And there's this kind of back and forth, you know, which is it? You know, who's really calling the shots, the Israelis or the Americans? And people just debate about that. But there is just that dynamic where U.S. politicians benefit from that relationship with Israel, and so it seems to keep going.

Chris: Maybe just to tack on to that. I just have one historical footnote. During the Six-Day War, the Soviet Union was around, and they were backing Nasser in Egypt. So that makes sense in that narrative, where it's just they recognized Israel as a potential ally to fight the Soviet Union and fight proxy war with Egypt. Would that be a reason to stay?

Will VanWagenen: Right. So, and that's a good point. That's Cold War. So we're always fighting proxy wars with the Soviets during that time. And so, if we have a strong ally in the Middle East, where there's all that oil, and the Soviets are trying to do the same thing, they're trying to get Allies, Egyptians, etc. So, that's another reason to support the Israelis. Yeah, good point. But before '67, the U.S. didn't really have that strong of a relationship with Israel. They didn't give them all that much military support. Like, when the state of Israel was— when the Zionist militias were able to ethnically cleanse those Palestinians and then kind of beat back the pretty weak attempts by the Arab states to intervene, The Israelis didn't have any U.S. weapons. They had mostly, like, Russian and Czechoslovakian weapons. It wasn't until '67 that that relationship kind of took off. So, I've seen videos surface of right-wing Israeli youth marching in the streets, sort of gloating about the fact that there are no children in Palestinian schools because they've been killed, and videos of people setting up couches, looking over Gaza to see the bombardment as if it's like 4th of July fireworks, and then people asking them, so what do you think about this? Well, we should level the whole fucking place because we just need to destroy these people. And the interviewer is like, well, what the hell? And the person responds, yeah, I know, I'm a little bit fascist. So what is going on with that? With this rise in the right-wing segment of Israeli society, and I've heard that they've even used some, like, Nazi symbolism. Have you heard anything about that? Not of Nazi symbolism, but it— again, at its root, Zionism is very similar in ideology to Nazism, again, just the Jewish version of ethnic nationalism. But within the early Zionist movement, there were a couple different wings. There was like the labor side, which was more like socialist Jews, and there was the revisionist wing, which were basically fascists. So, Vladimir Jabotinsky was the leader of like the fascist faction of the Zionist movement, and they established youth militias, like Brownshirts. I mean, they were very open in their—

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: And when was this? This was way back at the beginning of the Zionist movement, so at the beginning of the century. So there is that, those fascist roots that do come out at times with, like, the far Israeli right. But it also, again, ever— even though Zionism started as a secular movement, and they largely hated Judaism as a religion, Over time, it became more and more religious. Traditionally, Orthodox Jews always rejected the idea of the state of Israel. There was this idea that before the end of the world, or at the end of the world, the Jews would be gathered and come back to Israel and, like, rebuild the temple. But the idea was that God would be the one who would, like, return, like a messiah would return, and God would be the one who would gather the Jews. Like it talks about in certain books in the Hebrew Bible. And so, Orthodox Jews would say, look, the secular Zionists' attempt to build the Israeli state is not accepted by God. God needs to be the one to do that. So, there are many Orthodox Jews, even today, that think the state of Israel is illegitimate.

Ajay: Mm-hmm.

Will VanWagenen: However— and so, the Zionists were all secular. However, in 1967, when the Israelis were so successful in just those 6 days, many religious Jews started to change their thinking and start to think to themselves, oh, this was like a miracle that, you know, we defeated these Arab armies, and we returned all these holy sites. Judea and Samaria are now under Jewish control. And so, that right wing of the Israeli Zionist movement came to be increasingly religious, or more religious people adopted that mindset. So, now, when you get certain crazy Israelis going around saying, yeah, we just should kill— we should just kill all the Palestinians, we should just wipe them out, they'll point to, like, stories in the Hebrew Bible where, for example, the Israelites, after they came from Egypt and they came into the Promised Land, where they went into different cities, like Jericho and elsewhere, and just basically exterminated the local populations. There's like passages in the Hebrew Bible that talks about how the Israelites came in, and they would invade a city, because God gave them the land, and they just killed every man, woman and child, and they killed the cattle, even, because God had given them the land. That wasn't the way that early secular Zionists thought, but the religious folks, as they started to adopt Zionism more and more, rejected that old stance of the Orthodox Jews that the state of Israel was illegitimate, They would start looking back at these stories in the Hebrew Bible, saying, well, look, you know, God gave us this land, and if, you know, Aaron and the Israelites exterminated all of the Canaanites, well, we should do the same thing to the Palestinians. The Palestinians are just Canaanites today. They're sitting on our land that God gave us, even though many of these people are, like, from New York or Texas. But in their mind—

Ajay: Right.

Will VanWagenen: They've never even set foot in Palestine, but they leave the U.S. when they're 21, join the Israeli army, move to Israel, and they don't even speak the language. They don't speak Hebrew or Arabic, whatever. They're setting foot in Israel for the first time, and they think that this land was given to them by God, and they think it's OK to literally just kill every Palestinian man, woman, and child, and that that would be a good thing, you know? So, you can—

Chris: You were talking a lot about the political right within Israel. And I mean, I saw a little bit about it, but I guess there probably hasn't been a ton. What kind of opposition to the recent aggression by Israel has there been within Israel? And to what degree has that existed?

Will VanWagenen: I'm not— I didn't read or come across— I didn't look, necessarily, but I didn't come across anything about any major demonstrations against what was happening. There's always a little bit of that, and there's like Israeli journalists that are pretty prominent that will write against the Israeli government, criticizing what they did. There's a couple really good Israeli journalists, like Amir Haas is a really good one, or Akiva Eldar, are all people that are Israeli that, you know, always condemn the crazy things that the Israeli government's doing. But as far as, like, big protests or— I mean, it seems like maybe, you know, 2 or 3% of the population in Israel is against what goes on here, the type of things that go on here. Most of the time, though, it's like really just kind of— Everybody else is on board, kind of like when 9/11 happened in the United States, you know? How many people were like, no, let's not invade Afghanistan? Like, you know? Sorry for the reductionist language, but the Black Cats and Orthodox Jews in New York actually did, like, a huge protest of, like, 40,000 people. And that's— yeah, that's the thing. They do a lot, and they have a really, really hard time getting newspaper coverage of it. Like, you know, if it's pro-Zionists doing a demonstration or this or that, they get some coverage. They will— there will be big demonstrations. I haven't heard of any recently, but apparently there were. But in the past, there definitely have been, where they would, you know, have tens of thousands of people out to protest against the state of Israel and different things they're doing. They're all Orthodox Jews, but it just kind of gets ignored. There was a group of Holocaust survivors, like 300 Holocaust survivors, that put out a letter condemning Israel. What the Israelis did, and the comments that people left online, the Israelis left online about these Holocaust survivors, were really terrible, like, Hitler should have finished the job, and, you're dogs, and all these crazy things. If you're kind of interested in that, like, right-wing Israeli politics, ideology, and stuff like that, and the settlers, there's a book by Max Blumenthal. And I think it's called Goliath. That's pretty thick. He's an American Jewish guy, but spent a lot of time in Israel, wrote a book about that whole kind of right-wing Israeli Zionist culture.