In-Focus: Blinken Makes Shocking Admission About Hostage Deal
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An arrest warrant against an IDF veteran, a parting interview by Tony Blinken, and a promise by President-elect Donald Trump to go after the International Criminal Court tells us to what depths we've descended and what awaits us in two weeks. I'll give you details and analysis on the ups and downs in the U.S.-Israel relations coming up on In Focus. ♪

Welcome to another In Focus. As you see, we're in the new JNS studio, this one just for the Carolyn Glick Show. Very excited to be here. And I think that we can expect great things to come in this brand new studio. So let me get to it after expressing my excitement and my new digs, which are really, really cool. You have no idea where I am. You just see a little bit.

But it's very neat. So having told you how awesome it is and remind you that you should support JNS, that you can get more cool things from us. Let me go straight into what's happening. A few weeks ago in Focus, I told you about this organization called

what is it called, the Hin Rajab Foundation. It's a foundation that was founded by two terrorist supporters, or really two terrorists from Belgium. The first one is Diab Abu Jajah, and he has a compatriot that have expressed support for the genocide of Jews. Abu Jajah spent some time investigating

in jail, I think, in Brussels in the early 2000s for calling for the murder of the Jews of Antwerp. And he got himself photographed holding an AK-47 and announcing that he was a member of Hezbollah. Anyway, now he's, as everybody does, right? He reimagined himself as a human rights champion on behalf of Hamas and Hezbollah, and he founded this Hind-Oman

Rajab Foundation. And as I said, they've started compiling dossiers to try to submit war crimes allegations against IDF soldiers to courts around the world in conjunction with or supporting the actions of the International Criminal Court, which basically said that Israel's war against Hamas is a criminal enterprise by issuing international arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanyahu

and former Defense Minister Yoav Galant a couple months ago. So what happened over the weekend was that an IDF vet and actually a Nova Music Festival survivor from October 7th

got out of the army, served in the Givati Brigade in Gaza, and he got out and he and I think three of his friends decided to go on their world tour. And one of their first stops was Brazil. And Brazil, as most of you know, is run by a communist named Lula.

And they worked, this Abu Hind terror group, terror booster group, worked with a local attorney there to try to get this IDF veteran summoned to a court in Iraq.

in Brazil and arraigned. And so he basically was facing an arrest warrant and managed to escape with assistance of the foreign ministry to Argentina before they were able to arrest him. He left with his friends over the weekend. So

What happened? What is it that he did? So here, I just want to play you a clip that Abu Jajjai and his fellow terror supporters from the Abu Hind Fake Human Rights Foundation posted on their web page to prove that this guy is a war criminal. So what do we look at? Look at this video for a second. Oh, my God.

So what are we seeing here? What we're seeing here is a soldier. We have seen these kinds of videos all the time. Every time I see them, they make me happy. Why do they make me happy? Because we're blowing up terror infrastructure of this terrorist organization that committed a one-day Holocaust on October 7th and is still holding 100 Israelis hostage in Gaza.

And so, you know, starting when Israel started its ground operation in late October, you know, we started seeing these films of our guys on the ground in Gaza blowing up terror installations in Gaza. And they were a morale booster for the public because we saw, yes, we are going after these people. We are decimating them. We are going to eradicate them as we've been promised, as we're determined to do. And so...

He put up this thing and it makes me happy just to watch it now. And now he's being hunted for. Why would you do that? Why would you hunt down an IDF soldier for blowing up terror targets in Gaza? Well, you would do that because you are of the opinion that Israel doesn't have a right to exist and that Hamas is the hero in this war, that October 7th was a fantastic event.

And genocide against Jews is awesome. And these are all things that Abu Jajjah and his compatriots and his fake human rights terror group, the Abu Hind Foundation, it's part of a project March 30th, which is also a terror-aligned organization that's being investigated by the U.S. Treasury Department, I think.

And so they put together this idea that they're going to go after our soldiers. They go to Facebook. They look for Facebook pages, Instagram pages of young Israelis. And when they see them posting footage of themselves proud because they're patriots of their operations in Gaza or Lebanon or anywhere else,

then they use them to compile a dossier and claim that they're war criminals. Because if Israel is an illegitimate criminal state, then our war is illegitimate, Hamas is legitimate, the annihilation of Jews is legitimate. And that's basically the narrative that we've been seeing

pursued and advanced by all of Israel's enemies since October 7th, right? So whether it's Karim Khan at the ICC or the anti-Israel judges at the International Court of Justice in The Hague that are trying Israel for genocide on the basis of spurious charges that are put up by Hamas fronts in South Africa and other countries.

It doesn't matter. They are of the opinion that Israel is a criminal state because Jews don't have a right to live freely in our homeland. And so any war that we carry out is by definition a criminal enterprise and our soldiers are criminals, God forbid. So that's why it's happening. But why is it really happening? Why do they feel free to be going after our soldiers in places like Brazil? And by the way, Abu Jajah said that they're compiling dossiers on a thousand Israeli soldiers who were

or wanting to go abroad after they finish their army service or after they finish reserves, and that they're hiring local attorneys in places like Thailand, and I think Chile, in order to go after Israelis who are touring around, hiking around their countries. They're doing it in conjunction with the ICC. They said they're going to present 1,000 cases to the ICC to pursue international arrest warrants against our soldiers.

And why do they feel that they can do this? Why do they feel that now is the time to go after Israel? Well, it's because of the Biden administration. It's because of the way that the Biden administration has treated Israel, has enabled, has legitimized these kinds of

just revolting monstrous claims against Israelis and against the state of Israel and against the Israeli government since October 7th. And I think case in point of how this works and what the Biden administration has been doing all along, really since October 7th came over the weekend with just a stunning interview that Anthony Blinken, the outgoing, thank God, not fast enough, US Secretary of State gave to the New York Times.

Blinken gave this interview where the reporter, who's deeply hateful of Israel, I must say, asked him a bunch of loaded questions. But she didn't just talk about Israel. I mean, basically, she went through the whole moonscape that is the wreckage of American foreign policy due to the Biden administration's catastrophic policies.

policies from Afghanistan, then she went to Ukraine, and then she came to Israel and the war with Hamas in Gaza. And so it was a stunning interview on many levels. Her name is Lula. I think her, I don't have it written down, sorry. Her name, I think is Lula Navarro. And she just like basically thinks the United States is horrible, but mainly she hates Israel.

And so here is Tony Blinken, and he's giving this woman an interview as opposed to, say, you know, somebody who doesn't hate Israel. So he chose to give an interview to a reporter that he had to know, that the State Department had to know, truly despises the state of Israel. And he knew that she was going to ask him at length questions about it so that he had already put himself into a position where he's agreed to ask questions.

answer questions from somebody who's clearly going to say, which he did, "Don't you think that Israel is committing genocide? Don't you think that Israel is committing war crimes?" So he already put himself in that position.

So that was the first thing. Simply by giving the interview, he made clear that he caters to this view, he legitimizes his view, he views this view, this position that Israel is a criminal state as a legitimate one that he's willing to cater to, to give his parting interview as Secretary of State, DAFCA, to The New York Times, to this reporter.

And so he did. And, you know, the interview was sort of the paradigmatic example of how the administration has gaslit Israel, really from the outset of the new government, but even before that, and particularly since the war began on October 7th with Hamas invasion. So first, you know, and I just read through this, so I don't want to forget it. So...

On the one hand, he gives legitimacy to the Abu Judges of this world because the first question that Navarro asked him was, isn't Israel committing genocide? And so what he did was he, you know, he started with October 7th and then he went on and that Israel has a right to defend itself, et cetera, et cetera. But when she said, you know, the UN says that Israel is committing genocide. And what about war crimes? And isn't Israel committing war crimes?

So, what he did was he referred to Israel's efforts to protect civilians in Gaza as inadequate. So, he gave lip service at a minimum to what she was alleging against Israel by saying that we have provided inadequate protection to civilians in Gaza. He essentially tipped his hat to the claim that Israel is committing war crimes, even though the bulk of his remarks, he rejected those.

that he said that Israel is inadequate, then he lent legitimacy to the claim that Israel is in fact a war criminal, that Israel's war is illegitimate, is illegal, whatever. And so it wasn't that he agreed with her, but he gave her her pound of flesh. And by doing that, legitimized the claim. So that is the first thing that helps people like Hamas Hezbollah adjunct Abu Jajah

in his effort to criminalize and then hunt down IDF soldiers who are trekking in, you know, the Andes or the Himalayas or whatever after they get out of the army. And so that's the first thing that he does. He gives legitimacy by A, speaking to her and B, then saying that what Israel did was illegitimate or inadequate. And then, you know, he

He explains that Israel isn't committing genocide. Now, why aren't we committing genocide? Well, we're not committing genocide because of him, because of the pressure that he gave. And here I just want to read a section of what he said, because he talks about how from the outset, essentially, and this is true, and we've talked about this on this show since October 7th, because I've been pointing it out all along. But here it is.

him black on white saying, Carolyn Glick is right. Everything that she alleged that we were doing, that we were gaslighting Israel, that we were accusing Israel of being inherently criminal and therefore needing the grownups from Washington to come in and prevent us from following our instincts of committing genocide. Everything that I claimed that they were doing to Israel from the outset. Yes, Tony Blinken says, absolutely, she is right. So this is how the

The writer posed the question. She said, I want to turn to what has become the defining crisis of this era, which is a conflict in Gaza. You came in thinking that you could broker a historic peace agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel, and then Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th with horrific results, which we saw later.

So that was nice. She mentioned that. But then she goes on because Hamas is just like they did something really bad. But now let me spend the rest of my attention talking about how Israel is just like the worst place in the whole world. Right. And so she says, and Israel's response has been extreme. The latest U.N. figures put the Palestinian death toll at 45,000. Over 90 percent of Gaza's population is now displaced. The population is starving. OK, it doesn't matter that this is false, doesn't matter.

Like, whatever. All hospitals have been destroyed. Doesn't matter that all the hospitals are Hamas terrorist centers. All the hospitals have been destroyed. In November, a UN committee released a report that found Israel's warfare practices

practices, quote, consistence with the characteristics of genocide. And she says, I know you don't agree with that estimation, but do you believe that Israel's actions have been consistent with the rules of war? That is, don't you think that Israel is a war criminal? So then he goes on, like I said, he talks about October 7th, but then he says this, after he said,

you know, or this is actually before he, says this, since October 7th, we've had some core goals in mind. I was there, I was in Israel, blah, blah, blah. And then he says this, that we've done everything in our power to find a way to end the conflict through getting hostages back and getting a ceasefire. So he said, our plan all along, our intention, our goal has been to get to a ceasefire that would also bring the hostages home.

That not Israel winning, not Israel eradicating Hamas, not Israel preventing Gaza from ever posing a threat to the state of Israel along the lines of October 7th in the future. Those are Israel's problems. They're not ours. All we want is a ceasefire and getting the hostages back. And of course, we want to do that by preventing Israel from following its, what would you call it, its, its,

its psychological need for revenge against the Gazans and if we hadn't checked Israel, then they would have committed genocide. So this is how he says it.

when it comes to the action that Israel has taken in its defense, in its just defense, and trying to make sure that October 7th never happens again, we've said from day one that how Israel does that matters. And throughout, starting on day one, we tried to ensure that people had what they needed to get by. And that's true. Starting on day one, the first statement that President Biden made also indicated how Israel fights is important, which was gaslighting, which was saying,

no, no, no, you are latent war criminals. We know that. So we're going to just remind you that you have to act in accordance with international law, as if Israel was planning not to work in accordance with international law, right? So they did that. And then they said, the very first trip that I made to Israel, five days after October 7th, I spent with my team nine hours in the IDF's headquarters in Tel Aviv, six stories underground with the Israeli government, including the prime minister, including our intelligence,

arguing for hours on end about the basic proposition that humanitarian assistance needed to get to the Palestinians in Gaza. And that was an argument that took place because you had in Israel in the days after October 7th, a totally traumatized society. This wasn't just the prime minister or a given leader in Israel. This was an entire society that didn't want any assistance getting to a single Palestinian in Gaza. I argued that for nine hours.

President Biden was planning to come to Israel a few days later. And in the course of that argument, when I was getting resistance to the proposition of humanitarian assistance getting in, I told the prime minister, I'm going to call the president and tell him not to come if you don't allow assistance to start flowing.

And then he called President Biden and Biden said, "Yes, and true, I'm not going to come unless they start providing supplies, resupplies to Hamas." Because what is humanitarian assistance? As I've said a billion times on this show, humanitarian assistance is a euphemism for resupply of Hamas because who controls the dispersion of the aid? Hamas.

And it wasn't food and water and medicine, as they all said. It was food, water, medicine, fuel, electricity that Israel has to supply. So it was all of these things that enabled Hamas to maintain its regime in Gaza, maintain its control over Gaza. Because who is going to rebel against Hamas if Hamas is in charge of distributing the food? Nobody. So if the international community...

is providing unlimited supplies to Hamas to maintain the regime in Gaza in accordance with the American demands on Israel, the traumatized society, then of course what you're going to see is Hamas retaining power in Gaza.

because Hamas gets to control everything. So there was no way that you'd ever have an uprising, that you'd ever have Gazans making side deals with Israel. Hey, if you give us a passage out of here, we'll give you the hostages that we're holding. None of that would ever happen because Hamas remains the regime in Gaza. And that's been true till the present day because of American pressure and what

what Tony Blinken said to the New York Times reporter is it's because we did this that Israel didn't commit genocide because Israel was psychotic. They were a traumatized society. It doesn't matter. You can be traumatized and completely rational. And what is trauma? Trauma gives you the sense of a psychosis, right? That you're not in control, that you're hysterical, that you're not...

thinking rationally about anything that as a result, you need somebody to come in and give you a bear hug, which is what they did and restrain you from doing anything. And so that was what they were saying by asserting this sort of psychological position on Israel and saying that we weren't in control of our own emotions and therefore they came in and blocked us from doing what we'd otherwise be doing, which is committing genocide.

And this is an appalling thing to say, because on the one hand, we're not committing genocide. But the reason we're not committing genocide is because the good people in Washington blocked us from doing that. That's precisely what Tony Blinken said in this interview with The New York Times, which is just sick. And then by doing that, they give evidence.

of course, the means to the International Criminal Court to go after Israel. Because if it's not a green light to basically say to Kareem Khan and to his terror-supporting associates, hey, go after Israel, they don't give them a red light. They don't say don't do that because they say Israel's protection of civilians is inadequate. You had Samantha Power and others in the administration

claiming that there was a near starvation, near famine situation in northern Gaza, which was a total lie, which was enabling them to claim that Israel was deliberately starving the people of Gaza. And then you have Tony Blinken even still to this day saying that Israel's response to protecting the civilians in Gaza was inadequate.

So all of these things together are the backwind that push forward people like this New York Times reporter or Diababu Dja Dja, who's literally pursuing, chasing IDF soldiers with an attempt to get them arrested as if they are terrorists. And he himself is a terror or a terrorist or a terror adjacent person who is acting

in to advance the goals of the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah that are waging wars and have been waging wars since their outset to annihilate the Jewish people and the Jewish state, all things that he supports and has an open record of supporting the annihilation of the Jewish people, including in...

his country of Belgium and worldwide. So this is a very, very key thing to understand that it's the Biden administration and their gaslighting of Israel. No, Israel isn't committing genocide, but it's only not committing genocide because we have it in a bear hug.

Right? And yes, they have a right to self-defense, but how Israel fights matters. And then that brings us to the second thing, which is, of course, the arms embargo that they imposed on Israel to block us from carrying out the kind of operations that would eradicate Hamas. So they blocked Israel from achieving its war goals of eradicating Hamas, preventing Gaza from posing a threat to Israel in the future. And then the shared war goal

of the United States and Israel, what was interesting is that Blinken himself said, yes, but our bear hug on Israel, our threat, our open threats against Israel, and our allegations that were it not for American pressure, Israel would be committing genocide. All of those things blocked

the release of the hostages. And he says this too, black on white, that the reason why the hostages were not released is because Hamas never felt under pressure to release them because of the daylight that he imposed on the Israel-American relationship through his pressure, which is a stunning acknowledgement. But he's taking credit for it.

Right. For blocking Israel from committing genocide. So from his perspective, his his his his policies are totally reasonable. They're totally right, because I mean, hello. Right. He blocked a genocide from happening. So it's true that collateral damage to this action on his part is the fact that 100 hostages are still being held in Gaza.

Because if he had supported Israel from the outset and he hadn't imposed any sunlight on, you know, between the United States and Israel and done this kind of gaslighting strategy of on the one hand saying that Israel has a right to defend itself and on the other hand implicitly claiming that Israel is a latent criminal state, then...

then the hostages would have been released already. And so that is what Tony Blinken did that, you know, enables people like Abu Jajjah to go after our citizens, that enables the ICC to go after our elected leaders, that enables the ICJ, the International Court of Justice, to try us for genocide.

They wouldn't have done this if it hadn't been for this kind of policy, which is a disaster because as we see, not only are the hostages still in captivity,

And Hamas is still acting coherently, even if it's not in the same military, their military capabilities have largely been obliterated, but they're acting as guerrillas. And because of the humanitarian aid, they still are the regime in Gaza. And they're only getting that humanitarian aid to distribute because of American pressure, continued to this day, American pressure on Israel.

and the administration has let it be known that they aren't done yet. They have two weeks left in power and they still have that threat on Israel. What is a threat? Well, the threat is that sort of along the lines of what Tony Blinken said here, there's a lot of push. Michael Duran talked about it in the podcast that he does with Dottie Taub last week, that there are two camps in the administration and one of them with most of the people in the administration in this camp are saying, look,

You know, we have to find along the lines of what the New York Times reporter is claiming, that Israel is not allowing humanitarian aid to go in sufficiently, American humanitarian aid, and therefore it's in violation of the Foreign Military Assistance Act, and we impose an entire arms embargo on Israel.

Now, what Mike Doran claimed was that the plan is that they would make this finding that Israel is in violation of U.S. law. And then Biden, again, as part of the gaslighting strategy, would say, but I'm not going to impose an embargo on Israel. And then but but simply the finding itself would be sufficient for the U.N. Security Council to go after Israel and the United States to abstain in a vote at the Security Council against Israel.

and for the ICC to pursue claims against our soldiers and others, and for the EU to sanction Israel, among other things, so that it would be, it's a gateway drug, basically, to international isolation and sanctions against Israel. That's the idea, that, okay, Trump won't do it, but simply by making this finding,

that Israel should be embargoed by the United States, it opens a door for international agencies and organizations, including the United Nations, to sanction Israel in a way that would really undermine us. So that that's what the most officials in the administration want to do because they really have, they hate Israel. They hate Israel as much as Abu Jajja does. They hate Israel as much as the New York Times reporter does. And

and as your average professor at Columbia University does. So that's

that's what they want to do. And then there are others saying, no, we don't want to do this. And Mike Durant said that the ultimate decision is Tony Blinken's to make. Obviously it would be Biden's, but who knows whether Biden is even cognizant of what's happening. At any rate, that's where things stand right now. I think my reading of Tony Blinken's interview indicates that he's not going to do that, but who knows. And this brings us to the second aspect of what's happening. So if we look at the administration's actions,

you know, at sort of the dearth, the bottom of American-Israel relations, then we can look forward. Now, here I just want to summarize for a second. Overall, American-Israel relations from an Israeli perspective, it's been, you know, we have a lot of

We have a lot of rhetoric about it, which is all true about common values and aspirations for peace, etc. But a brass tacks from an Israeli perspective, there are basically two things that the United States is essential for. One is protection in international arenas, and then you get that because of our common interests and our common values and the fact that these international organizations are controlled by autocracies, which as we've seen are overwhelmingly hateful of Jewish people.

And the United States is a champion of civil rights, particularly of the most threatened, which in this case are the Jews. You know, they protect Israel in the international arena, particularly at the UN Security Council. So that's one that Israel needs the United States for that. And then the other thing has always been unitions. And so Israel's

Under the Biden administration, Israel has faced massive slowdown, slow walking of provision of the munitions that were already requisitioned and approved in Congress and approved and signed into law by Biden. They weren't giving us the artillery shells. They weren't giving us the tank shells that we needed in order to continue our ground defensive in Gaza, Lebanon. They weren't providing us with the ordinance for our Air Force jets.

And of course, the JDAMs, they've publicly embargoed against Israel 2,000 pound bombs that you need to bust bunkers like the ones in Iran that hold Iran's nuclear capabilities. So they have used the munitions just as they've used Israel's dependence for the United States in the international arena as ways to extort concessions from Israel that have blocked Israel from winning the war.

And so those two things that sort of are the basis of the American-Israel relationship from the perspective of Israeli dependence have been completely betrayed by the Biden administration over the past year and three months. And from

From the outset, the Trump administration is apparently going to—not apparently, it has declared its intention to end these practices. So President-elect Trump has said that from the minute that he gets into office, all limitations on the transfer of arms to Israel are going to disappear and the United States is going to keep its promise.

and transferred to Israel the munitions that have already been requisitioned, already approved by Congress and signed into law by President Biden. And that first and foremost includes the J-DEMs, which are required for an Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear installations or successful Israeli strike against Iran's nuclear installations.

and other things as well, obviously. So he's already said that all this slow walking of arms is going to end, all of these unofficial and official embargoes of weapons and weapons systems to Israel is going to end. And the other thing that the Trump administration and Congress, for that matter, have made clear is that they're going after the ICC. There was a report, I think yesterday, that said that the administration, the incoming administration intends to, that President Trump intends to issue an executive order that goes after

ICC personnel personally blocks ICC as an institution all of its

all of its facilities, all of whatever it has, all of its properties in the United States. It freezes them, freezes the bank accounts, blocks, denies visas to the United States for all ICC personnel and their immediate family members. Basically a reinstatement of Trump's executive order that Biden abrogated and then Schumer blocked the passage of legislation that would reimpose as law. All of that Trump is going to do and he's also going to issue warnings against

member states in the ICC against actually operating or taking action in furtherance of the ICC's arrest warrants against Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Gallant. So those are very important because what they're saying and also what is Elise Stefanik's nomination as the next UN ambassador also

indicate is that those two basic foundations of Israel's relationship with the United States are going to be fully reinstated on day one. So if on day one, the Biden administration essentially collapsed those foundations, they're going to be reimposed by the Trump administration on day one, which is very important.

But I want to actually speak to the larger, more fundamental question is, okay, so now everybody, I mean, literally in Israel, we're going to be, you know, we're panting and waiting for these 14 days to pass. Everybody is just with a stopwatch. You know, when is this going to be over? When is this long nightmare going to end finally? And

14 days. So how many hours? It's going to be broken down into hours and minutes next week, I guarantee you. Everybody is just waiting with bated breath for Trump to come into office. But what do we have to do when Trump comes to office? It's not that everything goes on autopilot. I think that what we've seen with the Biden administration,

is that we have to reconceive the American-Israel relationship. We have to rebuild it, not just say, okay, well, we're going to reinstate what

existed until Biden came into office until October 7th, which was this American military support in terms of provision of munitions that are necessary, particularly in times of emergency and war, and American protection in the international arena. I think that we have to reimagine the American-Israel relationship. We need to reconceive it. And we need to reconceive it as

as an alliance. So part of that means lowering the dependency that Israel has on the United States because the Americans know just as well as Israel that politics today in our polarized

environment, not only in Israel, but in the United States and really throughout the Western world is such that bilateral relationships are often a roller coaster. And so when you're in an environment as hostile as Israel's is, you have to have, you have to have treads, you have to have, what are they called? Like bumpers, right?

And so how do you protect, how do you insulate a relationship from the shocks of the change in administration over time? And hopefully, you know, things will change. Hopefully, Trump's presidency itself is going to lower that pressure

polarization in the United States and hopefully have a significant impact also on lowering the polarization in Israel by going after the deep state in the United States and through that, and perhaps also directly the deep state in Israel that has played the key role in polarizing our politics in Israeli society, just as they did in the United States with the criminalization of politics, the

politicization of the criminal justice system in the United States to go after people that the deep states in both countries hate.

So, you know, we may see some of that, which if that happens, then suddenly we would lower the volume on the hatred and the internecine warfare inside of our societies. That would be important. And then that itself, I think, would be one of the main kind of bumpers that block that. But other things that have to happen is that, as we've talked about repeatedly, and just last week I had an important conversation

with Rafael Ben-Yishai about how do we lower Israel's dependency on American military assistance with a goal of ending it. And not military sales, but military assistance handouts.

And so we talked about that. Israel has to become an independent in its production of its munitions, less so than the platforms, but definitely our munitions, they have to be blue and white. They have to be made in Israel overwhelmingly so that we're not dependent on artillery shells from the United States or from any other foreign supplier in times of emergency. So that's one thing that we have to end that dependency. And that's one pillar of the

Of the partnership, the other is, of course, the international arena. Now, you know, Israel is strategically, I would argue, more important to the United States than Britain is as an ally. And we'll get to that in a second. But Israel is never going to be in the position that Britain is for two reasons. First, one is that it's going to be a very important ally to the United States.

were Jewish, right? And so there's always going to be anti-Semitism directed against the Jewish state, which means that we're always going to be subjected to international isolation in a way that the British never will be. And we mustn't forget, of course, that Britain, as one of the allied powers that was victorious in the Second World War,

received a veto power in the UN Security Council. So those two things, that Britain is not a Jewish state and that Britain has a UN Security Council veto,

It's like in a different stratosphere in terms of its needs and requirements from the United States. It doesn't have that dependence that Israel inherently will always have. We don't have a U.N. Security Council veto. We're not. I don't think we're even we might be a member of some geographic grouping now in the U.N. system. But who cares? I mean, we're the Jewish state. So we are a pariah.

by definition. And that may change as anti-Semitism hopefully recedes over time, but we know that it's a wave and it goes up and it goes down and we're going to remain Jewish. So that's one problem. And the other problem is, of course, we don't have the veto. So we are always going to be more vulnerable. And how do you fix that over time? What would be the bumper there? Well, the bumper there would be to dismantle various aspects of the international system that pose existential threats to

the Jews. And so one of them is UNRWA that has to be dismantled. They're going to end because of the Knesset law that was passed outlawing operations with UNRWA. UNRWA is going to be shutting down in Judea and Samaria and Gaza. That's very important. You have to be able to dismantle those things. So once we have the independence from munitions worked out, and as we work towards trying to diffuse some of these

international organizations that have become menaces. And of course, when they start with the Jews, they never end with the Jews, and they have gone after American personnel. And we can't expect for more of that to happen in the future if these organizations become more powerful over time. And what we have to do is push back against them and weaken them over the next couple of years. The other thing that we have to do is say, okay,

Israel has certain things we know, they've become very clear over the past year and three months, that it has to do in order to protect itself, protect its existence, but also ensure that it exists not only for the next five years, but for the next hundred years. And so some of those things we know that we have to maintain military control over the Gaza Strip. This idea that of a day after we're going to get a reinstatement of Palestinian control over Gaza is

You know, that just has to end. The whole concept of Palestinian statehood, which I'll get to in a second, also has to just die. I mean, Arafat, I heard Reserve Major General, former head of the Israeli National Security Council, Uzi Dayan, say on the radio, I think earlier today, he said, you know, Arafat killed the two-state solution. Hamas buried it.

And now it's Israel's responsibility to ensure that it's never resurrected. Okay, so we have to take action in that regard. And so part of it is that Israel has to control Gaza militarily, and we have to annex areas of Gaza to have a buffer zone so that

No entity inside of that area is ever able to pose the kind of threat that Hamas posed and was able to enact on October 7th. That's one thing that we're talking about with Gaza, and that's to secure Israel's military goals of eradicating Hamas and preventing Hamas or any successor group from ever posing a threat to Israel in the future. We have to do something similar in Lebanon. We'll talk more about this.

in the coming weeks, but we're already seeing Israel is not going to be able to withdraw its forces from South Lebanon on January 25th at the end of the 90 days of the ceasefire because the Lebanese armed forces, as I've said repeatedly, as our guests have talked about repeatedly over the past year, the Lebanese armed force is not a real military force and they're not going to fight Hezbollah and they're not going to replace Hezbollah in its installation south of the Litani River in Lebanon.

And if Israel is serious about allowing, and we are, the residents of the northern communities along the border with Lebanon to come home and live securely in their homes in the future, then Israel has to have a buffer zone inside of South Lebanon. We cannot allow the situation that existed on October 7th to continue to exist.

We can't allow Hezbollah to exist. We can't allow Hezbollah or any successor group to be on the border with Israel. There's no way. So if we had to secure Israel, Israeli territory, Israel needs a security frontier inside of Lebanon. And that requires the reinstatement of a security zone that Israel had in Lebanon from 1984 to 2000, when it withdrew from it in May of 2000. So Israel has to reinstate that in Lebanon. And then in Syria, you know,

Almost on a day, actually on a daily basis, we get more and more indications that in fact, the successor regime to Assad is ISIS. I mean, they are ISIS. They have the morality police patrolling around.

They're, you know, they're embracing Hamas. Hamas has a resurgence. We had an attack today in Samaria that killed three Israelis and wounded, I think, nine this morning on an attack on a bus. And this is because due to the ISIS takeover of Syria, you have this feeling inside of Judea and Samaria and other places in Jordan and elsewhere that, OK, the Muslim Brotherhood is again on the march and that they're going to take over. And that provides inspiration.

and a backwind to these terrorists to go ahead and murder Jews. So that has to be pushed back. And so that is in Syria. We have to keep these people away from the border. We have to keep them away from the Golan Heights. And that means continuous Israeli control over the formerly demilitarized zone, particularly the peak of the Hermon, but not only. And an Israeli alliance with the Druze, who themselves are calling for Israel to annex them and to become Israeli citizens. I don't think we should do that, but they should be the security frontier for Israel and Israel.

Syria. And finally, when we talk about Judea and Samaria, Israel is going to have to dismantle the Palestinian Authority, whose forces took part in the October 7th attack, their forces in Gaza, who are

involved, engaged directly in terrorism against Israel from Judea and Samaria, who work with Hamas and Islamic Jihad sometimes, and sometimes they fight them in their terrorist attacks against Israel. And they have to be dismantled. I mean, they've been in charge for 30 years, and for 30 years they have

instituted a jihadist or jihadist society, not only in Gaza, but also in Judea and Samaria, which is why Hamas enjoys even higher levels of support in Judea and Samaria, which is supposedly run by the moderate Palestinian Authority than it does in Gaza. Okay, so this is something that has to happen. And obviously, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror cells in Judea and Samaria have to be dismantled. I mean, the threat that was

implemented by Hamas on October 7th is something that the terrorists in Judea and Samaria can also carry out, except that there are idea forces already in Judea and Samaria in control of it. So what October 7th showed us was not that Israel should

should constrain itself, should become smaller in Judea and Samaria, but that Israel has to be bigger in Judea and Samaria. That the reason that they didn't, for instance, set upon Kfar Saba or my community, God forbid, of a fraud or any community in Israel on October 7th is the presence of idea forces in Judea and Samaria. But the fact that they have the capability, the latent capability of doing that is something that has to be eradicated. Because they have the will,

They have the means, but they don't have the power because of Israel's presence. So we have to take away the means, and then hopefully that will take away the will.

And so Israel has to dismantle these areas. And you do that through military operations and also through the civil act of imposing Israeli, of implementing Israeli law in Judea and Samaria. So these are things that Israel is going to have to do in order to secure a position. Now, why would that be an American interest? Obviously, it's an Israeli interest. Why is it an American interest? And this goes to the question of, okay, say we have the munitions. Say that the United States is protecting us at the ICC, at the UN, at wherever.

The reason why it's in America's national interest is because what Israel has proven over the past 15 months where we haven't had American support, where the United States hasn't provided us with the munitions that we need in order to win, and the United States has not protected us in the international arena. To the contrary, it's enabled this kind of mass assault, this gangrape diplomatically of Israel everywhere, right, is that Israel has won.

We've transformed the Middle East. We've denuded Iran's ring of proxies, not only around Israel, but around all the nations of the region. Imagine if Israel had done what...

what Blinken and Sullivan and of course Biden wanted us to do after October 7th, which is sound and light show and then empty our prisons of Hamas and other terrorists in exchange for some of the hostages. After Afghanistan, right, how would the United States have looked if after the United States abandoned the Afghans who worked with the U.S. forces in Afghanistan for 20 years,

Abandoned American forces, which is why 13 of them were murdered at Abbey Gate outside of the airport in Kabul as the United States was trying to exit in an uncoordinated manner. And the Taliban that has reinstituted the Taliban regime that existed in Afghanistan before 9-11.

What would have happened if after all of that betrayal, after the United States betrayed its own forces, its allies, its Afghan allies, the women of Afghanistan, it had then betrayed Israel and Israel had collapsed? What would have happened to America? Well, we know what would have happened to America. China would have come in. China has already instituted itself, insinuated itself in the region because of America's assessed weakness.

And, you know, I mean, China, a report came out this week that China is arming the Houthis, that China is arming, you know, China got Saudi Arabia and Iran to rebuild their ties, etc. So, you know, you have China that has insinuated itself into the region because the United States has failed. Right.

But what's pushing China away, what's making people think that, okay, we should go back to America now that Trump is coming in, is that Israel didn't capitulate, is that Israel...

destroyed Hamas despite the United States, that Israel seized control over the international border with Egypt and that it refuses to leave. It's that Israel acted and decimated Hezbollah in Lebanon. Even the United States went out of its way to protect Hezbollah from Israel.

And it was only because Israel acted against the United States and behind America's back and went after Hezbollah's entire leadership with the beepers and went after Nasrallah without telling the United States. That's what enabled Israel to win a strategic victory in Lebanon. And of course, in Syria, all of these things Israel did. Israel did despite the United States. But by doing all of these things despite the United States,

Israel was able to protect the United States as a global power in the region because Israel, which is largely viewed as an American proxy, hadn't done any of these things and had, in fact, collapsed under American pressure from people like Tony Blinken, who came in here, right, on October 12th and told us that we had to supply Hamas.

then the United States' position in the region would have collapsed completely. And so now that the United States is coming back and Trump is rational and doesn't view Israel as a traumatized society that is a latent Nazi state or whatever, God forbid, then he is looking at what Israel did, and we know that.

And his people are looking at what Israel has did with admiration and also looking at it as, wow, okay, Israel just proved that even despite the United States, Israel's protecting American interests, even when the United States wanted to capitulate to Iran and all of its proxies after what they did to Israel on October 7th, Israel wouldn't. And in so refusing, Israel protected the United States. Israel's

Israel's achievements are so vast that one of the most appalling things that the Biden administration has done is they've tried to take credit for Israel's achievements that Israel achieved despite the administration, not due to the administration. So here, the Wall Street Journal simply had a fantastic editorial about this that came out, I think, on Sunday. And I'm just going to read a couple of lines from it because it's just that good. It's called, what do they call it?

Blinken fesses up on Biden and Hamas. So they, just as I've been and just as I did in my recent article in JNS, they were talking about his appalling interview with the New York Times. But then he talked about, the journal's editorialist talked about the fact that really what the United States is doing now after everything fell apart is they're looking at Israel's achievement and they're trying to pretend that they're America's achievement. So he said here,

So instead of continuing to complain about its failure to stop Israel, the Biden team is taking credit for Israel's accomplishment. Mr. Biden, who pushed de-escalation, that is, don't win. Right. We just want to calm things down and leave Hamas in power. Right. So Biden, who pushed for de-escalation, leave Hezbollah on your doorstep with weapons capable of.

of control, of invading and conquering the Galilee and maybe down to the Gulf of Haifa, right? So he pushed de-escalation throughout the conflict in December, boasted

In December, that is last month, Mr. Biden boasted that he had shifted the balance of power in the Middle East. Mr. Blinken now says Israel has destroyed Hamas's capabilities. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan says Iran's major proxy in the region, Hezbollah, is absolutely weak and shattered.

And then Washington Post's David Ignatius, an amplifier for Biden's policies, writes in his December 31st exit interview with Mr. Sullivan that, quote, the Biden team bet on Israel, which, quote, began to run the table against Iran and its proxies.

resulting in a transformed Middle East. Then the Wall Street Journal said, "Who knew de-escalation meant transformation?" Perfect. So the point is that

Even the Biden administration realized that the only true achievement that they can look to in the Middle East, with a wreckage of their entire foreign policy, I would argue worldwide, is Israel's achievements. And so all of those achievements that Israel has accomplished, Israel accomplished despite the administration, against the wishes of the administration, as Blinken made clear in his interview with The New York Times.

Right. And yet now they're saying that it's because of them that Israel was able to achieve these transformation, transformative goals or whatever in the strategic balance of the Middle East. So the Biden administration says this. The Trump administration is not stupid. They know how Israel did it against the wills of the Biden administration. And so when we're looking towards the future and looking to how do we rebuild our relationship with the United States, how do we reconsider our relationship? How do we configure our

What are the foundations of that relationship? The main foundation of that relationship is Israeli strength.

And so when we talk about what Israel needs in order to survive, we're also talking about what Israel needs in order to be strong. And an America looking to the future to disengage from the Middle East, to lower America's footprint here, but know that America's interests are secure in this region and that this region will be more stable. I wouldn't say an island of stability because, I mean, really, but much more stable and

and their need to be involved is much diminished, then they have to be looking at a relationship with Israel that is based on a powerful Israel, on Israel as a regional power. And to do that, the things that we need to accomplish in the next year or so,

will be the foundation of an American-Israel alliance as opposed to dependency that can have the bumpers installed, the shock absorbers installed, that will survive to the benefit of both sides moving forward together.

no matter who is in the White House. And so I think that has to be the goal going forward with America and Israel. We have two years with America completely controlled by the federal government, controlled by the Republicans until the midterm elections. We have two years left of the Netanyahu government's tenure in office. So I think that that should basically be the goal. How do we reconfigure the relationship

that's based on Israeli power, Israeli strength to secure not only our future, but also regional stability and American interests and America's position as a global superpower that is dominant in the Middle East for the years to come. Anyway, those are my thoughts from my brand new studio here in JNS. And I will see you again this week. Take care.