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Unknown A
At the same time, let's take a look at Israel. What the hell's going on over there? Well, it seems that there is a new imperial project in the Middle East. This one is them. Let's put this up there on the screen. Netanyahu now is saying and demanding the, quote, demilitarization, the complete demilitarization of southern Syria. So this was actually after the basically conclusion, I guess you could say, of the Syrian civil war, of the. Not only the Golan Heights, but of further moving there with no plans to leave. But it now seems that in this speech, he said that Israel will remain inside Syria indefinitely to protect our settlements and to neutralize any threat. Let me be clear. We will not allow HTF forces or the new Syrian army to enter any area south of Damascus. So here he's again literally talking about the southern Syrian area of multiple different provinces.
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Unknown A
And he says, we demand the complete demilitarization of southern Syria in these provinces from the forces of the new regime. So this is just the latest in what is, I guess what, like a Greater Israel project. It's funny, too. I've been enmeshed here in Washington for years. Greater Israel has always meant one thing. It's been Gaza and West Bank. Yes, the Golan. But, you know, they could argue, oh, we took it back, 67, et cetera. I don't think, even in the most, like, outwardly Zionist circles in here in Washington that anybody was like, yeah, we're gonna take southern Syria, too. But it's a vacuum. And that's what he's doing, I guess, with the backing here of the United States. We have a map here if people wanna take a look. D1B. I mean, this is not just like a small little area of land or whatever, like the Golan Heights.
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Unknown A
We're talking about a huge swath of what I guess was formerly known as Syria. And this is obviously not only an area with very sensitive religious dynamics, but, you know, might be politically important to that country called Jordan, which it shares a border with. I mean, this would be one of the most destabilizing and changing events in terms of the status quo on the actual borders outside of the Israel area in decades in the Middle East. The whole thing is completely shocking. And there has not really been a word of protest here in Washington from the Trump administration. I mean, frankly, I haven't even seen much from, like, the Capital D Democratic Party or any of those people either. Everyone's just like, yeah, I guess it's happening over there. And, you know, just to return to our debate, earlier over Ukraine and all of that.
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Unknown A
It's pretty hard to like sit there and decry Russian invasion or the liberal, or defend the liberal world order and all this. Whenever this is happening and people don't have a word to say about it.
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Unknown B
Well, yeah, flip it perhaps and say that. It's hard to decry this and be like, but it's fine for Russia or whoever, to victory. This is a manifestation of the new foreign policy approach of the Trump administration. Israel is like, okay, now we see if we can take it, then we're going to take it. No one's going to stop us. And so they are occupying vast swath of Syria, as you saw. They are still occupying Lebanon in spite of that cease supposed cease fire agreement that was supposed to require them to completely withdraw. They continue to occupy Lebanon as well. We're about to show tanks rolling into the occupied West Bank. And of course, it's been a multi decade project to continue to encroach more and more into the West Bank. And then you have Gaza where Trump says, hey, we're going to take it.
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Unknown B
And Netanyahu's like, cool, that sounds good to me. That sounds like a final solution I can get on board with. So, yeah, if you listened to either the most hyperbolic lefties who were warning about Israel and their project and the greater Israel, whatever, or if you listen to the most psychotic settlers in the west bank about what it is that they want and what their goals are and how they're gonna accomplish it, you would be much closer to having predicted the trajectory than anyone who thought there would be any restraint exercise here whatsoever.
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Unknown A
Yeah, well, I think that this one, again, on the Syria one, I'm not even sure if Netanyahu and the Israelis and all those thought that this one was going to happen in the beginning. So I don't know, the whole thing seems completely insane. And yeah, in terms of the. Well, actually, let me return to something you said. Cause you're like, israel can do this. It's actually not true, as you and I know. They can't do anything without us. And this is, again, if we return to the balance sheet conversation, it's like, okay, is this good for us? I would say no. I mean, I don't think it's great to have a bunch of Al Qaeda operatives in charge of Syria either. But maybe we shouldn't have gotten involved in the stupid civil war in the first place. But the next part here, which is interesting, is in terms of the protests inside of Syria, which we can show people.
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Unknown A
Ryan Grim and drop site over that put this out and shows organized protests in the city of Dara about the Netanyahu statements demanding the demilitarization of southern Syria. So we could certainly see some, some sort of internal pushback and maybe even, who knows, some insurgency or something like that explode in the country if they did pursue this.
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Unknown B
Yeah. It's not exactly the most stable country, is it? And if people feel like the new leadership is just like letting Israel take over most of their country, they may be pretty unhappy about that. Just a guess.
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Unknown A
Right. And we're watching the same thing actually happen right now in the West Bank. Let's put that one up there on the screen. We have some video there. Palestinian residents in the west bank were throwing stones at some Israeli tanks that were entering the Sydiriful Janine apparently for the first time since 2002. I mean, this one par for the course, I think with the Trump administration and what the plan was there. But I do certainly think that this, like new. This is the policy that the people who gave a lot of money to Donald Trump, people like Miriam Adelson.
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Unknown B
Yeah.
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Unknown A
This is what they care about. Absolutely the most. I would say maybe even they are taken aback by Trump taking over or Trump saying the US Will take over Gaza because it's actually their preference that Israel takes it over and they can get to do what they want. But the west bank action and all of that is very clearly a result, I think, of at least some sort of green light, tacit admission from the US Administration on this policy.
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Unknown B
Absolutely the case. And that is part of where there's even if you accept Sagris, read the world about the balance sheet and just pursue the naked self interest. Part of what compromises that and may have been the case in Iraq as well, is the influence of money in politics. And that there's so much of like, it's not the national interest, it's the donor's interest. Like, you know, I mean, part of why Trump is pursuing this rare earth minerals thing in Ukraine is because one of his billionaire donors was like, hey, I think that'd be good and it'd be profitable and I want to make a buck on that. Same thing with Greenland. There's all kinds of talk among billionaires about like how they want to carve out Greenland and whatever. So it becomes very difficult when you have such massive influence of people like Miriam Adelson who we all know what her foreign policy is and what her goals are and what she wants to pursue.
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Unknown B
Is that in the national interest or is that just in Miriam Adelson's ideological interest. I think we all know the answer to that. And with Trump, Trump has his Trump and Elon, my God, Trump looks like nothing in terms of conflicts of interest compared to Elon, who has this richest man on the planet and has these sprawling geopolitical interests, including in China, et cetera. So it becomes incredibly, it becomes impossible to disentangle what you might think is being pursued in the national interest and what is actually being pursued in the interest of the donor class.
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Unknown A
Yeah, it's absolutely insane as we continue to just look at it. Let's put the next part up here. Actually, I was curious for what you think about this. Maybe you can explain some of it to me. So the International Criminal Court is saying that they're going to investigate Biden, Blinken and Austin for quote, aiding and abetting Israeli crimes in Gaza. But I mean, isn't it, I just, this is where I need somebody to explain to me the jurisdictional efforts. So let me how this all works with respect to the U.S. beyond that also, like their ability to compel or put out a report. How does it all work?
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Unknown B
Yeah. So this actually isn't, this is this organization dawn, which was founded by Jamal Khashoggi.
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Unknown A
Yes.
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Unknown B
Calling on the International Crime Criminal Court to investigate Biden, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin for war crimes, for aiding and abetting, they say, Israeli crimes in Gaza. And you know, I would not expect that anything actually comes of, makes more.
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Unknown A
Sense because I was reading it, I was like, I don't understand how that would even work at like a procedural level.
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Unknown B
But it's just trying to, you know, they, they put in a 172 page filing documenting why they believe that the ICC should investigate Biden and for war crimes. Something I certainly agree with. And I think anyone who is reasonable looking at the situation would say they certainly were complicit in aiding and abetting these crimes against humanity in Gaza. So I think it's more of an effort of a public pressure campaign and also to just compile in a comprehensive way the case against them. So that's how I would view it versus like an actual expectation that the ICC is going to take this up, especially since as you point out, we aren't actually party to the ICC seems.
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Unknown A
To be the overall problem. And then last but not least is the update here with Hamas and the negotiations that are currently happening with the ceasefire deal. Hamas, currently, this is from dropside, has halted negotiations until Israel frees the 620 prisoners. The senior Hamas official has, quote, announced that the group will not engage in further discussions through mediators until Israel releases 620 Palestinian prisoners who are set to be freed on Saturday. Israel postponed the release, demanding assurances that Hamas will have what are termed humiliating handovers or captives and a male Israeli captive kissed two Hamas shoulders in stage as he was being released so this is the open question about the transition to phase two of the overall ceasefire deal. It definitely seems unlikely, even though rhetorically Steve Witkoff and others remain committed and say that something like that is going to happen. But just reason we all have to keep an eye on it is an explosion of hostilities again happening seems very likely on the horizon, or at least very possible in the very near future.
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Unknown A
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Unknown B
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Unknown A
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