Joel Rosenberg: "The Beirut Project"
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All right, we are welcoming back a very special guest on this week's Live in the Bream. You all know him from our TV conversations, our podcast conversations, but more importantly, because he happens to be a multiple New York Times bestseller. He's been a political analyst. He now is the founder and editor-in-chief of two brand new news and analysis websites, allisrael.com, allarab.news. He joins us from halfway around the world. Joel Rosenberg, welcome back.

Shannon, great to be with you. And I wish I could be back in Washington, but our airports are closed here in Israel because of COVID. So my ability to get back and launch this book tour for the Beirut Protocol, not going to do it.

No, we're dead. Apparently wouldn't be prudent at this juncture. Exactly. The whole world is turned upside down, but thank God in multiple ways for you and for this new book, because Marcus Riker, the seminal character to this series is man. If you need a distraction, if you need something super entertaining and that will just help you pass the time on your COVID lockdowns,

This is an amazing book, another chapter in the series. And tell us a little bit about Marcus. And you pull from so many different experiences in your life and experts that you know to put together these behind the scenes thrillers that take us into very modern twists and turns, terrorism, kidnappings. And I listen every time I put the book down, one of your books down. I'm just sort of like, OK, when's the next one? And here we have it, The Beirut Protocol.

Thank you, Shannon. Well, you've been such a great fan and supporter of the books. I'm just very, very grateful. Look, Marcus, you know, it was a year ago that we were sitting together and doing this podcast and talking about another Marcus adventure. But a Marcus is a Marine. And once a Marine, always a Marine, right? He has done combat duty in Iraq, in Afghanistan. He has been wounded in combat. He has been decorated for combat.

He comes back to the United States and he joins the United States Secret Service. And he ends up working on the presidential protective detail. This is a guy who's highly trained in

And his training and his personality is one of a protector. He's not an assassin. He's not Jason Bourne. He's not, he is a trained killer. And he does what he has to do. He does what he has to do, but the instinct and the training is to protect, not to hunt. Okay. So that's who he is. But a tragedy in his life in one of the earlier books pulled him out of government service for a while and

until a series of new events pulled him back in. Now, as we set up the Beirut Protocol, everybody thinks that he works for the Diplomatic Security Service, right? The DSS. This is essentially the secret service of the State Department and the Diplomatic Corps. But he actually works for the Central Intelligence Agency.

And so that's a little bit of who he is. He's a widower and he's lost a son. And now alone in the world, he is defending his country and its leaders from very, very

bad people. And the premise of this book really has a jolt, a kidnapping essentially, or a taking of a hostage. It was pretty high profile. Yeah. So as the Beirut Protocol opens, the U.S. Secretary of State is planning a Middle East peace, sort of, you know, the shuttle diplomacy that Kissinger used to be known for. So it's a woman, the Secretary of State, and she's planning to come to Israel as part of the

the regional tour in about 24 hours. Marcus and his team are assigned to do an advanced trip along the Israeli-Lebanon border. Why? Because the Secretary of State is trying to make peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia in this case. However,

She is very concerned. The United States is increasingly concerned with Iran and Iran's proxy forces, terrorist forces like Hezbollah, which is the terrorist force based in Lebanon.

So she's concerned. There's 150,000 missiles aimed at Israel in southern Lebanon, and she wants to go take an assessment of the situation. So tomorrow, in a sense, she's going to drive along this border road. Today, Marcus Reicher and his team and an Israeli team are going to make sure everything is OK, but it's not. They're ambushed.

massive firefight. It's not a spoiler alert because this is chapter one. It is. Massive firefight. And by the end of this firefight, Marcus and two of his colleagues have been captured by Hezbollah and pulled into a terror tunnel deep behind enemy lines. And so what I've essentially done, Shannon, is in the first three books, set up his strengths and

set up his skills, and now I've knocked them all out. Well, he is very creative.

when he has to be. He's very tough and he's had all kinds of different training and experiences. He's had some wild adventures out there. So the Beirut Protocol is out March 9th and it is a wild ride. And I would encourage people to go back and get the whole story of Marcus Riker because you'll understand him and kind of how he operates the way he does, as you mentioned, because of the things that have happened in his life.

You are somebody who I think is the rare find in that you are an amazing author, both fiction and nonfiction, and you've written important books on both sides of the fiction aisle. And you're also doing other things that are very important in the region with this allisrael.com and allarab.news.

Tell us about that, because so much of what you draw into your books is really their modern day headlines. The characters may be fictional, but the issues aren't. Right. Right. This issue, look, the threat from Iran is something that the whole world's

talking about, right? President Biden is trying to figure out, is he going back in to the nuclear deal that he and President Obama negotiated five, six years ago, and which President Trump pulled out of because he

President Trump and his team so deeply disagreed with the deal. I also deeply disagree with that deal. So Iran threat, we sort of know, and I've explored in many ways, the Persian gamble a few books ago and so forth, but Hezbollah and, and, and what's going on in Lebanon is almost not been in the news at all until the last few weeks. There was a war of words going on between the head of Hezbollah, a horrible, horrible person, uh,

As they say in Texas, bless his heart. We know what that means down south. Yeah, yeah. They are very sarcastic about it. But Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is threatening to annihilate Israel, devastate Israel with his 150,000 missiles. And it's a serious threat.

And the Israeli defense establishment is pushing back and warning him, don't go there. That's all happened in just the last few weeks as the Beirut Protocol is about to release. Now, as you say, I set up two new websites last year, All Israel News, All Arab News. They're cross-linked. They're two peas in a pod. But the reason is because I write an annual political thriller. Okay, that's how I take people into the world because most people don't

would prefer to be entertained than educated. Exactly. But if you could be educated about things you think, I probably ought to know about those things. But if I could do it in this high speed roller coaster, pump, you know, adrenaline pumping, heart pounding way, that might be more fun than reading some 900 page book about radical Islam or whatever. So, but everything

But every day there's something interesting. And I found I couldn't bear the media bias on the one hand and the fact there's so much going on. I needed a better outlet to write about it, to analyze it. So I set up these two websites with Israeli journalists

and Lebanese journalists, young journalists with me, editors. And we need to get, we need to do an interview with you at some point and turn this around. I love it. Because you were covering some of the newsmakers on the other side of the planet that are really shaping Middle East policy. But that's what we're doing. And we had, we've had our biggest month since we started September 1st.

because I did a piece on Rush Limbaugh's love for Israel and the region, but also how Rush Limbaugh came to faith in Jesus Christ very late in his life. And it changed everything. He began talking about his faith in that final year of battling cancer that he never really had done well because he didn't have that faith. He had the values, but

that he'd been raised with, but he didn't have a personal relationship with Christ. Well, that was our lead story and that went viral. Almost a million people read it. - Well, and since you brought him up, you have a long, very personal connection to Rush and you give him a lot of credit. I mean, listen, you're an incredible gifted writer and we thank you that you share your gifts with the world, but you give him a lot of credit for kind of launching you. You worked for him and then you became a best-selling author.

Well, I had the opportunity. Look, in the early 1990s, I was newly married, trying to, you know, make it in Washington, you know, making no money, but having a lot of fun. And

And Lynn was pregnant with our first child. And I was making $25,000 a year working for Bill Bennett at a group that's now defunct called Empower America. It doesn't go far in DC. It doesn't go far. She was working too, fortunately. But basically, we needed to double our income if she was going to stay home and raise our first child. And that's what we wanted. But you know, it's not always possible. Long story short, I went into Bill Bennett's office. I said, Dr. Bennett,

Now I understand why they call it nonprofit. I really can't do this. I, with all respect, I need to, you know, and I explained, and of course he's pro family. I mean, nobody, nobody loves the families more. So he said, you know what? I just had dinner with Rush Limbaugh and he's looking for a research director based in Washington. Would you be interested? I'm like, I could be interested in that.

And I flew up to New York and I was, I got interviewed by Rush and I had, I had to confess to him as part of the interview, Shannon, that I'd been a Democrat. I'd been raised Democrat. I'm Jewish by background. So that means my family was Democrat going back to the Bolsheviks. I mean, Jews are mostly Democrats in America. You come by it honestly. Yeah. I had voted for Al Gore in the New York primaries in 1988. I voted for Dukakis. I,

I was finding my way, let's say. Well, I thought I better confess this in case he finds out later. And I, you know, because he's, this is the exact opposite of him. He roared. He thought that was so funny. And he said, Joel, you're exactly the person I'm talking to. Somebody who was raised with something, but is now has been on a journey away from trying to align your actual values with your politics. He goes, no.

I would love to have you work for me. I said, okay, as long as you know, I'm, but I don't believe those things anymore, but now, you know, so anyway, I was hired as his resource director. What an amazing job. He, of course he was his own research director. He would say things on the air and I'm like, where do you get that from? He didn't get it from me. So I learned a lot from him. The crazy thing was when I left and I went on to go do other political things,

helping people lose mostly. But I mean- Well, listen, you have other gifts, luckily for you. Well, unfortunately, it was helping people lose. Everybody I worked for after that, they all lost in politics. But-

When I wrote my first political thriller, The Last Jihad, about a kamikaze attack on the United States into an American city with a hijacked plane, radical Muslims leading to a war with Iraq. Okay, that was The Last Jihad. And just so people know, this was written before 9-11. Right, all before 9-11, nine months before. I sent an advanced copy to Rush. Now, Rush never had people on his program unless he was the president of the United States. Right.

the vice president, or he used to call him Mr. Newt, right? The speaker of the house. Right, that's about it. That's it. Like, he's not going to have a former staff person, you know, 30 years his junior or whatever I am,

It's just not done. He didn't have anybody else on. He certainly didn't have staff people on. So, but he loved that book. And he decided, he calls me up one day and he goes, Rosenberg. I said, yeah, I didn't know you could write. I said, well, thanks Rush. I was working for you. I was your research director. I ghost wrote for you. I didn't know you could write fiction. Now I didn't have the heart to tell him that all my liberal friends thought that I was writing fiction when I wrote for him, but that was not the moment to say it.

He's like, I love this book. I didn't, I had no idea. I want you on my program. I just wanted him to do a blurb. I just wanted him to endorse it. Say one nice thing about it. That's all, you know. That's all you need from him. All I needed. But he had me on. I'm telling you, I just didn't understand. Even though I knew him, I didn't understand the power. Within a few hours, the book was number one on Amazon. Wow.

It went on to spend 11 straight weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. I was a nobody. Nobody had ever heard of me. No one had ever heard of the book. And out of the blue. Now, it was a timely book. It came out six months before the war in Iraq. It just, you know, it just hit this moment. But without him, I mean, Sean Hannity was a friend and he supported it. But there was just a jet stream.

behind the last jihad when it came out and he had me on multiple times over the years interviewed me for his newsletter i mean he was so gracious like a yeah i i just um he didn't need to do it he didn't need to do it but he really did like the books and he didn't let his bias that i had been a former staffer prevent him from thinking well you know because even this guy a whirl we'll have more live in the bream in a moment

Fox News Radio on demand on the Fox News app. Download the app and just click listen. When you swipe left, you can listen to your favorite Fox News talk shows live. Swipe right for the latest Fox News Radio newscasts on demand. Fox News Radio on the Fox News app. Download it today. Your product has proven on its own multiple times to be bestseller material. And like you said, it's a great way to educate and inform people while also entertaining them. I think a lot of people need

things fed to them that way that, you know, you can feel it, you can understand it, you know, the characters, you get caught up in the plot. And so it's really helpful in that way. And like I said, you've written, I recommend Implosion, one of your nonfiction books to people all the time, because I think a lot of times people feel like the country is at a breaking point.

It feels very divisive right now. And, you know, we've talked about this book before, but I recommend it to people now because I say everybody thinks the moment in history they're living in, especially when it feels like this, where people canceling each other and very hateful and can't even talk to each other about can't even discuss topics anymore.

and see very much us versus them. And it's just a really tough place to be. But implosion, in that book, you talk about inflection points for the country in the past and in times that we've seemed like we're really off the rails and could break apart

literally, but that so often it was a spiritual revival that came in and mended a lot of those wounds and helped the country put itself back together. I mean, where do you feel like you're across the pond right now, but obviously your heart and your friends and so much of what your life has been about is about the U.S. Where do you think the U.S. is right now kind of on that trajectory? Yeah.

Well, after the events of January, it was looking pretty bad. I mean, maybe we've stepped back from the brink a little bit. That was bad. And to watch it from, I mean, having lived in Washington for almost 25 years with Lynn and the boys, and now to be in Jerusalem, it's

When you see your country in grave danger and at that level, it's not just division. It's, you know, it looks like on the verge of civil war. I mean, people are talking and people are polling about civil war. I mean, to watch it from a distance was even more painful.

I think to see a city that's like militarized in many ways now, it was very, very painful because the rest of the world is watching. You're watching a country that you love, a country that, you know, my mom's side is English Methodist WASP. They came, they're literally, my mom is eligible. She's not a member, but she could be part of the Daughters of the American Revolution. That's how far back my mom's side goes. But my dad is a first-generation American, right?

his parents and grandparents escaped out of Russia as Orthodox Jews escaping from the pogroms, the anti-Semitic attacks that left 60,000 Jews dead and many, many more raped and murdered or beaten and their things stolen. So they escaped out of Russia and got to Brooklyn, like every good Jewish family. You got to set up shop in Brooklyn, Woody Allen and everybody else. So from both sides of my family, there was this deep appreciation for

for America and what God has done there, but also a sobering realization that it's like you can hear the ice cracking under our feet.

You mentioned to me when we did the podcast last year, you were the first to mention that implosion was sort of echoing in your head. That was a year ago. And it was interesting because as I set out into that book tour for the Jerusalem assassin, implosion kept coming up from people all over the country, but they're like, yeah, yeah. The novel fascinating, interesting, but I keep, you know, people who had read implosion were like, what do you think? Where do you think we are now? Look,

But for the grace of God, I mean, we need a revival. We need a great awakening. But I'm very worried where America is right now. Well, I recommend that folks go back and check out all of your books. But Implosion is going to feel very timely if you read it now about...

The American experiment and where we are and what will get us back on track and being hopeful about that. Your new fiction book is the Beirut protocol out March 9th, another adventure with Marcus Riker. And again, your two websites, which are full of very unique, interesting news out of the middle East and elsewhere, all Israel.com and all Arab.news, Joel Rosenberg, you do a little bit of everything and you do it all very well.

So thanks for visiting with us again on Living the Bream. Oh, great to be. I'm very much enjoying Living the Bream. Thank you for having me on the program. I appreciate it. See you soon. From the Fox News Podcasts Network, subscribe and listen to the Trey Gowdy Podcast. Former federal prosecutor and four-term U.S. congressman from South Carolina brings you a one-of-a-kind podcast. Subscribe and listen now by going to foxnewspodcasts.com.