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- [01:23]
A
Good morning, I'm Sharif Abdul Qudous with dropside news. It's November 11th. As we speak, the genocide in Gaza is continuing. It has slowed with the so called ceasefire, but it has not stopped. There is a ceasefire, but Israel has not ceased fire. The Israeli attacks, the airstrikes, the shellings, the shootings continue. More Palestinians are killed in Gaza nearly every day. The demolition and destruction of Gaza continues. The heavy Israeli restrictions on food, fuel, medicine, reconstruction materials entering Gaza continues. The famine continues. And we're in a stage now where the exchange of captives, according to the so called first phase of the deal, is nearly over. There are four the bodies of four Israeli captives remaining that Hamas holds or is looking for in the rubble alongside thousands of Palestinians buried in the rubble. And there's no real substantive discussion on what comes next. As all eyes have been on Gaza, there's been a massive escalation of violence and attacks by Israeli settlers and soldiers across the occupied west bank and Jerusalem. Israeli troops are conducting daily raids on villages and towns, displacing Palestinians, conducting mass arrests, shooting and killing Palestinians. Meanwhile, settlers operate with complete impunity and in collaboration with the Israeli military. Over a thousand Palestinians have been killed in the west bank and Jerusalem since October 2023, including over 200 children. Of those 200 children who have been killed, 42 have been killed since the beginning of this year alone. So the violence is only accelerating now. October, which marked the start of the olive harvest in Palestine, marked the highest monthly number of recorded Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians by UN OCHA since the agency began documenting such incidents almost 20 years ago. In 2006, OCHA recorded more than 260 attacks in October that resulted in either casualties or property damage or both. So that's an average of eight incidents every single day. The UN also gave another chilling statistic showing children are at the target end of Israeli violence. One in every five Palestinians killed by Israeli forces so far in 2025 across the west bank is a child. So this is a daily state of violence and terror that is being brought down on Palestinians in the West Bank. In Jerusalem again, just In October alone, 442 Palestinians were arrested in the West bank, including 33 children. Now, the condition in Israeli prisons and detention centers. Palestinians are subject to torture, abuse, sexual starvation, medical neglect. And actually today, the UN Committee Against Torture in Geneva is holding a session where it is reviewing Israel as one of a few countries that is under review this year. And there have been numerous submissions about the torture and abuse in Israeli detention centers. Just yesterday, Israel's parliament advanced a bill that would introduce the death penalty for, quote, unquote, terrorism in Israel, in Palestine. So critics say the wording means that in practice, the death penalty would apply almost exclusively to Palestinians who kill Jews, not to Jewish hardliners who carry out attacks on Palestinians. And we saw the Israeli National Security Minister, Itmar Ben gvir, who proposed the bill, handing out sweets in Parliament yesterday after they voted to advance the measure. I could go on and there's a lot to talk about. And I'm also joined today by my drop side colleague, Murtaza Hussain. And a little later in the broadcast, we'll be talking about the incredible series he's been working on with our colleague Ryan Grimm called the Epstein Files, an exclusive series on Jeffrey Epstein's role in Israeli intelligence operations. But first, we're fortunate to be joined today by Diana Bhuttu, a Palestinian human rights attorney and a former advisor to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization. She's joining us from Ramallah. Welcome to the drop site livestream. Diana, thank you for joining us. You are speaking to us from occupied Palestine. Can you put this in perspective for us? What's happening with this continued acceleration of attacks across the occupied west bank and Jerusalem? What should people understand about what is happening right now?
- [06:33]
B
Thank you. Thank you, Sharif. And thank you, Marceza. Thank you for having me on today. What's important to keep in mind is that where the settlers are attacking and where the Israeli army is attacking and how the two are so intertwined together right now, as you mentioned, it is the olive harvest. And the areas in which the Israeli settlers and the Israeli soldiers are attacking is precisely in those areas where people are trying to harvest olives. This is a very substantial part of the Palestinian economy. And of course, the agricultural backdrop of the Palestinian cuisine. And so these are areas that are not in the urban centers of the west bank, but on the periphery. And the reason that they're doing so is not just to attack the farmlands and to go after the olive harvest, but also because this is one of the stages and one of the steps for these settlers to then take over Palestinian land. We've seen this time and again, and we've seen this since 1967. What they first do is they start going after the farmlands. They then, this being the Israeli settlers, they then make it so that Palestinians are terrified to go to their land because these settlers either attack them or, or set up these outposts backed by the Israeli army. And then after they set up these outposts, they're Then fortified by the Israeli army. They're then provided with electricity and so on and so forth. And then from that we see an Israeli settlement then go up. And so this is precisely what the Israeli settlers are doing now. They're going again to attack these lands that are on the outskirts of Palestinian cities, towns and villages to terrify Palestinians, to then not only stop them from harvesting, but to also steal their land. And this is why we've seen so many settler attacks over the course of the past two years, is that they want to terrify Palestinians, they want to steal their land, and they're doing so with complete impunity. We just saw earlier this week how Israeli settlers were went after a couple of journalists, including a journalist from Reuters, and they attacked her so fiercely that I was certain that they were actually trying to kill her. Her helmet was damaged so badly that I was certain that they were trying to kill her. And so the ideology is that if we just keep shrinking the space for Palestinians, that we'll be able to take more land. And this is being done because the Israeli government has been putting forward plans to, to annex fully the west bank with the exception of 18 of the west bank, which is the built up areas of, of the West Bank.
- [09:31]
C
Deanna, can you talk a bit about the legal regime that prevails in these situations? Because we see these horrifying videos of attacks against unarmed people, women, children, farmers, so forth. And as you mentioned, the Israeli military is actually in many cases facilitating or overseeing this. And Palestinians, from my understanding, they have no one they can call for help. If you're being attacked anywhere else in the world, you can call some authority to come and help you. What is the situation in the west bank when these attacks are taking place? You mentioned impunity. What is the situation Palestinians face legally when they come under physical attack in these ways?
- [10:07]
B
Okay, so back in the mid-1990s, the West bank was divided as a result of Oslo into three separate areas. Area A, Area B, Area C, Area A being the smallest in terms of size, but the largest in terms of population. It's only 18% of the West Bank. The rest of the West Bank, Area B and Area C are areas that are smaller in terms of the Palestinian population, but obviously larger in size. Those areas, Areas B and Area C, are directly governed by the Israeli army. So if you have lands that are in Areas B and Area C and you come under attack by an Israeli settler, it's the Israeli army that is supposed to come in and remove those settlers. And it's the Israeli army that is supposed to be stopping the settlers. It's the Israeli army that's supposed to facilitate paramedics to come to help Palestinians. But what we've seen time and again is that the army, one, doesn't stop the settlers, it actually facilitates them. Two, that the Israeli army is actually in most cases not only not stopping the settlers, but encourage it, encouraging them. But three, and this is the most terrifying part of them is that they're actually blocking ambulances and paramedics from getting to Palestinians in the event that they get attacked by the settlers. And we've seen a number of Palestinians being killed because of this, including an American citizen who was killed this summer, Sayfallah Musallat, who was killed after Israeli settlers attacked him as he was sitting on his own land. And the Israeli army not only turned a blind eye to the attack on the settler attacks, but also prevented paramedics from getting to him. They prevented everybody from getting to him. So to answer your question directly, it's the Israeli army that is in charge of these areas and it's the Israeli army that is both encouraging settlers and it's the Israeli army that is preventing paramedics from getting to these areas.
- [12:16]
A
I wanted to, well, to stay on this issue of the legal framework and what's happening right now. As I mentioned in the introduction, Israel is now under review at the UN Committee against Torture. There have been several submissions by human rights groups documented hundreds and hundreds of cases of abuse, torture, medical neglect. Over 70 prisoners since October 2023 have died in prison. And we're seeing right now in Palestine a particular case which is now an infamous case of the gang rape of a blindfolded and handcuffed prisoner, Palestinian prisoner in the Sidi Ta main torture detention center. It is a torture facility as well. And the reason this became a prominent case, what we understand now is that the Military Advocate General in Israel leaked surveillance camera video of this gang rape by soldiers, a number of reservists in Sedit Min. The response by Israeli society and the Israeli government to this leak was were riots, violence, justifications for the rape of Palestinian prisoners. And since we've seen the Military Advocate General resign from her post after she admitted to leaking this video. She was subsequently arrested, apparently tried to commit suicide. And this case is ongoing. The Israeli Defense Minister accused her of a blood libel for slandering these so called soldiers for engaging in this attack. But I also want to bring up that this is the exception, not the rule. The Military Advocate General brings almost no cases to prosecution and we've seen since, I mean, for decades, but Since October of 2023 and the genocide in Gaza, just a handful of prosecutions, I think something like three. So can you talk about what this framework is and what's happening right now with the continued torture and abuse of Palestinian prisoners?
- [14:44]
B
Certainly. So first I want to talk about the case at Statehemen and I want to clarify why this has come up in the first place. And the reason it's come up in the first place is because it was actually an Israeli doctor who reported the case to, to the military police because he's an anesthesiologist and he saw that the man was brutally raped, so brutally raped that his rectum had burst and his intestines had also burst. And he thought that there was no way that this could have been done by Israeli soldiers. And instead he thought that this was something that had been done by Palestinians. So he reported the rape thinking that this had been done by other Palestinian prisoners. And it was only as a result of him of this reporting that it ended up going up through the chain and that there were 10 soldiers who were brought before the military police that we started to see this level of scrutiny. Now this particular prosecutor, the only reason that she leaked the video was not out of that she's on the right side of history. Quite the contrary. The only reason that she leaked a video was because there was such a right wing response to the 10 soldiers being prosecuted in the first place, that she wanted to show Israeli society that what they had done was so egregious, that this wasn't the case of, you know, just the ordinary of what they normally do to Palestinians, but that what they had done was kind of over the top. And so yes, you're right, that they were rioting to rape. And so she wanted to show that this was a little bit above and beyond. And that's it. And so what have we seen that's actually gone on in State? Amen. We've seen it from the bodies that have been returned to Gaza. So far there have been about 300 bodies that have been returned to Gaza, all of them from Saitaman or most of them, excuse me, from state to man. We know this because the body bags, on the body bags, it's written in it in Hebrew, State man. And they're just numbers. There's no names written on it. And we've seen from the, from the bodies and unfortunately I, I saw the pictures. I wish I did not. We've seen everything from people with ropes around their necks, people who were who had blindfolds still on their faces, hands tied behind their backs. At the same time, people whose. You could see the. The track marks from a tank had crossed over over their legs. And still they were blindfolded and their hands tied behind their backs. There was one man whose both of his arms were amputated. His legs had obvious signs of torture. And the only way that his daughter could recognize him was through the clothes that he had been wearing and through a scar on his head and through his teeth. So we know that this level of torture is happening. We also know it because of the people who have been released. These are the 1700 Palestinian hostages that they have so far released who've been speaking about torture over and over and over again. There isn't one person who hasn't spoken about some level of either torture or of starvation or of medical mistreatment. And this includes a woman who is 71 years old who is abducted from Khan Younis as she was in a hospital bed. This includes a double amputee, and it includes one of the people who was also abducted was a boy who is autistic and can't communicate as well. So we know that this level of torture is happening. We also know that there are still over 9,200 Palestinians who are being held hostage. Half of them are being held without charge and without trial. And we also know that there are a number of them that are being held in the equivalent of secret prisons, being held underground. So this is all the stuff that we know. And so it leaves me alarmed about the stuff that we absolutely do not know.
- [19:19]
C
Diana, I want to ask, in the last two years, since the genocide in Gaza started, have there been any meaningful legal prosecutions at all in Israel, soldiers who are accused of war crimes or extraditional killings or torture or anything like that? The reason I ask is because. Yeah, yeah, because what you're describing is exactly the type of conduct that you would. The US Would criticize in Syria or Russia and other countries was happening with in Israel. And very well documented and your testimony and video evidence and so forth. But as you said, there's been no. There's been no. No legal scrutiny at all. Is that the case?
- [19:52]
B
Yes. None. None. The. The cases in which there has been scrutiny against Israeli soldiers are few. And most of them involve things like stealing money when they raid Palestinian homes. And there's documentation. And there's been one very famous case of an Israeli soldier who shot a Palestinian as he was on the ground in Hebron. He shot him in the head several times killing him. And the only reason that this particular soldier ended up facing prosecution was because that execution was caught on on camera through an Israeli human rights organization, actually through a Palestinian who works for an Israeli human rights organization. The interesting thing about that man, his name is Alora Zaria, was that the sentence that he ended up getting was much lighter than a Palestinian. She was a teenager, Ahed Tamimi, who slapped an Israeli soldier. She ended up going to prison for a lot longer than Allor Azaria, who ended up shooting a Palestinian who was motionless on the ground, shot him in the head. He ends up, Laura Azaria, goes to prison for a lot less. And when he comes out of prison, he's declared a hero. Plus there were a number of members of Knesset who said that he shouldn't have gone to prison in the first place and that it was a travesty that he had gone to prison and there were protests over the fact that he ended up going to prison.
- [21:28]
A
Diana, I wanted to ask about Gaza, you know, just before the broadcast we were talking about. So, you know, the acute genocide has stopped with the ceasefire, the scorched earth bombings, scores of Palestinians being killed every day. But the genocide is continuing. This is really a continuation of it with everyday restrictions on food, fuel, medicine, the attacks are continuing, the destruction's continuing. But it's been a moment where also we're trying to take stock of what happened over the last two years, or trying to at least, which is a very difficult task. And the way things are being talked about after the so called peace deal was signed in Sharm El Sheikh, it seems that we're talking now about peace and reconstruction and there is no talk of accountability for what has happened over the past two years. And also no real talk about the so called next phase. Israel has almost never, I believe, gone past the first phase of a deal. And the exchange of captives is almost complete. The world has focused on the remains of Israeli captives, while tens of thousands of Palestinians are under the rubble as well. And as you mentioned, there are hundreds of Palestinian bodies being held by Israel, some of them for decades, and they're being returned unidentified, tortured, you know, signs of field execution. But yeah, as, as you know, what we were talking about before, how are you trying to take stock of what's happened and what do you think is coming next for Gaza?
- [23:30]
B
You know, Sharif, this has been just the enormity of it all is starting to hit me. It's not starting, but it's hitting me and I think it's hitting every person who has a Conscience. And the minute that this Israeli plan that is being branded as a Trump plan, the minute that it was unveiled, I commented and said that what Israel is trying to do is they're trying to normalize genocide and they have, and they're getting away with it. And you're right, there is no talk of accountability. And, and that was, I think the whole point of this, of, of this plan was that as we saw that world opinion had changed and it has changed, but as we were seeing that there were measures to hold Israel accountable, everything from pushes for arms embargoes to we saw that people were using, were taking matters into their own hands, whether it was the global Samud flotilla to the other flotillas to the boycott movement that was pick, we saw that these measures of accountability were beginning to take shape and there was court case after court case after court case that suddenly we get this plan and we see the world go back to world powers, that is go back to normal and we can now suddenly forget Gaza and we can just go back to business as usual so that the new normal is genocide, that Israel can continue to kill. It just can't be in those same large numbers. But they can continue to kill, they can continue to maim, they continue to starve, and the world doesn't have to worry about it any longer. So what's the future hold for Gaza? I really don't know. And this is why I think that there has to be a continued push for accountability, but I just don't see it happening with this Trump plan. And that, I think, was the whole point of it. So the accountability has to come from us through the continued push for bds, through the continued push for accountability in other fora, because without that, left to its own devices, Israel is going to continue to do what Israel wants to do, which is to try to eliminate us. I mean, the whole Zionist program is a program of genocide, of ethnic cleansing and of elimination. And that's the only way that they created Israel in the first place. This is the only way that they're going to continue to get rid of Palestinians 77 years later. So this is why the push for accountability is so important at this time. But the enormity is definitely hitting everybody, especially as I was saying to you just a few minutes before, is that when you think back to when the ghf, the Gaza Humanitarian foundation, which has nothing humanitarian about it, when you think about how, when the GHF was formed and how 2,500 Palestinians that we know of were gunned down as they were just trying to get food. So somebody thought that it's okay to gun down 2,500 starving Palestinians, and then suddenly it's gone. You know, this is the level of accountability that we need to go after. These are the types of organizations and corporations that need to be gone after. Otherwise, again, it's just the, the normalization of, of genocide.
- [27:16]
C
Dana, I want to ask you one final question that just gets your reaction to something. Actually, presently in D.C. there's a letter circulating among Democratic lawmakers talking about the next stage of the Trump Plan, quote, unquote. And in the letter, it envisions some sort of Palestinian state being created at the end of some process by which certain thresholds, but it's very vague, to be honest, what they would see as the threshold for that to happen. But then also the letter, very notably, it didn't seem to mention the democracy or the future constitution of the state or borders and so forth. I'm just curious, you know, your own perspective. Like, now there's talk, you know, many countries, for the reasons you point out, are talking about the need for a political horizon. They want this problem to go away. They don't necessarily want to have accountability, but they want to get it off their plate and have some sort of political solution thereafter which does that. What do you make of this proposal that would create some sort of barely defined state without very clear criteria? And how do you view it in the longer history of proposals like this, which have tried to give the Palestinians some sort of quasi sovereignty and then call it a day?
- [28:23]
B
You know, Martasa, this is the problem. I always feel like they're always trying to go around the problem rather and make Palestinians pay the price for Zionism rather than address the problem, which is Zionism. So the whole idea is like, if you think back, you know, the 20th century was all about decolonization and the idea that we're not going to look down on people and say, oh, you know, you're a good child until you prove that you're no longer a child and not willing and unable to govern yourself, then we're going to have a government that governs for you. And this is what the Trump Plan is about. And this is what this letter in D.C. is about, is that if you prove yourself worthy of freedom, then we will think about giving you your freedom. But until that time, we're going to treat you as though you're a child. But the real issue here is Zionism, and the real issue here is that there's a country called Israel that has been allowed to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their homes and homeland. And there's a country here called Israel that has been given billions upon billions upon billions now trillions of dollars, in dollars and in weapons to ethnically cleansed Palestinians and to now also commit genocide. So rather than them looking at the, you know, you good Palestinians, when you start to behave, we will give you a state. They should be focused on Israel. But instead it's always the other way around. Like somehow Palestinians have to prove themselves worthy of being, of being good humans, that they can then somehow have their freedom. And it's actually the other way around. So, you know, and it ties back into Sharif's question. When I look around and look at this issue of accountability, the Israeli soldiers are not being held to account within, within the Israeli system and they're not being held to account internationally. So the message that that Israeli soldiers are getting is that what they did is cool, it's that it's okay and that they can continue to do anything that they want to do, including killing kids by the Israelis own reporting. 83% of the people they killed are civilians. This is their own statistics and so they can continue to do that. So I think rather than turning things on their head and always demanding a peace process in order to delay, delay, delay, I think they should be looking at the real issue here and that is Israel and the fact that Israel has been allowed to ethnically cleanse Palestinians. It's now been allowed to commit genocide. And I think we should be looking at that and trying to address that rather than pretending that somehow Palestinians need to prove themselves worthy of their freedom before Palestinians get it.
- [31:21]
A
Well, Diana Butu, want to thank you very much for joining us for your voice. Diana Bhuttu, a Palestinian human rights attorney and a former advisor to the negotiating team of the Palestine Liberation Organization, joining us from Ramallah. Thank you very much. We hope to have you on another time.
- [31:40]
B
Thank you.
- [31:42]
A
We're going to turn right now to the Epstein Files, which is a new series that my colleague Murtaza and Ryan Grimm have been publishing at dropsite news dropsignews.com it's based on a trove of leaked emails from the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. And this is a set of emails that is publicly available. It was leaked by Handela, which is a pro Palestinian hacking group. And the documents were posted online by Distributed Denial of Secrets, which is a whistleblower and file sharing website and they have been largely ignored by the mainstream press. These are publicly available emails. Maaz, you have been. You and Ryan have been just really digging into these emails. We just published the latest in the series this morning of the Epstein files about an Israeli military intelligence officer who stayed at Jeffrey Epstein's Manhattan apartment on at least three occasions. But can you first explain what these emails are, what they contain, and take us through some of your reporting, you know, starting with whichever one you want. Maybe the latest one we published this morning.
- [32:59]
C
Yeah. So just before we went live, we published a story, the latest in the series he mentioned about again about Epstein, based on a combination of emails from the Handala archive from former Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak. But the documents are also based on House Oversight Committee disclosures about Epstein because currently there is a dispute in the US Government by releasing what they describe as the Epstein files. Some of those files and very limited number are public. So this story is actually based on both. And what it shows is that, you know, an Israeli military intelligence officer, a very senior Israeli military intelligence officer, a very well known one, actually lived at Epstein's house in Manhattan on multiple occasions between 2013 and 2015, perhaps before that as well too. But this would be documents we have. And he was living there. He was living there and he was engaging in transactions with Epstein and Barack. We don't know the full scope of what he was doing at that time, but he was still, among other things, acting as an intermediary between Israeli military intelligence and Barak, even though he'd left the Defense Ministry officially at that time, and also acting as intermediary between Israeli intelligence and US Intelligence. He was very close to people close to former Secretary Leon Panetta, others in the US Intelligence establishment. So he was very much active. And one thing in the intelligence world, there are very few people, especially that level, whoever really leave their position. He was doing intelligence work for Israel. He was a very well known agent. And he stayed in Epstein's apartment on street in Manhattan. So, you know, that's the latest story. Previously we've done three other stories based on this archive. All of them deal with Epstein's activities on behalf of Israeli intelligence in different parts of the world. We did one story about his work setting up an Israeli security agreement or laying the groundwork for an agreement in Mongolia, another one showing that Epstein was acting as a setting up back channels between Israel and the Russian government. He had close ties both to Israel and Russia, individuals in both those systems. And then finally a story about his work in Cote d', Ivoire, or him and Barack working to set up, lay the groundwork. And Epstein was actually negotiating, seems like on behalf of the Israeli government with the Ivorian government again to set up security deals and set the sale of Israeli security and the surveillance technology to the Cote d' Ivoire government. So Epstein was somebody who was, you know, he seemed to be effectively a freelance diplomat or agent acting on behalf of Israeli interests. And this was coming in the context of his relationship with Barack. It's pretty well known he had a relationship with Barack. It's kind of been reported. But the details of what they were doing has never really been dug into in great detail. And what I think we see from the emails is that, you know, Epstein was helping Barack make money when he left public service, as is often the case in the US and European and Israeli public life. People who are very powerful public figures try to make money in the private sector after Epstein was helping Barack do that. But in doing so, he was also helping him promote Israeli intelligence linked security firms and technology firms to foreign governments. So it accomplished a dual purpose. It helped make money and it helped further Israel's security interests, in many cases leading to formal security agreements signed between Israeli government and foreign governments in that manner. So Epstein was really at the core of all this. And you know, all. Everything we know about Epstein, he's been reported in the press. You know, obviously his horrifying sex crimes he was involved in, so forth. What's really not been reported is who he was and what he was doing. He was an extremely important node in this world of intelligence contacts and elite contacts. And he was very invested in the security interest and well being of Israel. And he acted on that basis through his relationship with Barack and beyond that as well.
- [36:49]
A
For someone who's unfamiliar with Epstein with, with these connections, was this an ideological kind of drive that for him to be, as you said, like a freelance diplomat for Israel and someone who could connect different people to each other or was it based on just financial interests? What's your sense from reading these emails? And also if you can go through. I know it's a very. A lot of these are very complicated connections with lots of different moving parts. But one of your pieces showing how Epstein and Barak were working to engineer a Russia led solution to remove Bashar Al Assad in Syria.
- [37:35]
C
Yeah, so it's interesting because our understanding of the story continues to evolve the more that we dig into files and the more public disclosures gradually come out about Epstein. Obviously there's a big deadlock in the US government about doing more disclosures. And our stories are partly based on things that the government's released or that have come out in lawsuits. There's still so much to know about this, but, you know, provisionally. It's very interesting when you look at the emails, people always ask me, is Epstein a Mossad agent? That's a question which is circling around a lot for many years. You know, my impression is that no, he probably was not a Mossad agent per se. He was somebody who appeared to, look, let me put this way, in his relationship with Barack. You can see from the emails that the power dynamic, even though Barack was extremely influential, one of the most influential people in the Israeli security establishment at that time, the power dynamic is very favorable to Epstein. It's not like Epstein is dying to get Barack's attention. It's really, if anything, vice versa. Epstein was somebody who had far more contacts in governments and the business world at the highest levels around the world then I think any one person can organically have. How he develop those contacts I think is something we still need to learn over time. But really it was Barack who was trying to leverage Epstein for his own benefit. He wanted to help make money, he wanted to help promote Israeli security interest, and Epstein was there to do that. Regarding Epstein's own motives, you know, I think that in the emails and you know, again, this is a fraction of all the communications Epstein engaged in with everybody over this time. It's just his ties with Barack, with whom he's very close, but he definitely is very sympathetic to the Israeli security interest. He's very sympathetic. You can see it in his things. He's proposing the things, helping Barack do his own commentary on events. He's trying to help further Israeli political and geopolitical interests around the world. And the context we refer to the Syria talks, Epstein was specifically helping to organize a back channel between Israeli officials and Russian officials to remove Bashar Al Assad for the benefit of Israel, as you saw at that time. Because the war at that time, 2013 was getting out of hand from Israel's perspective. They were concerned about spillover. They didn't want democracy to come about in Syria per se. They wanted the. Their proposal was that a Russian backed dictator would come to power instead and Assad would go aside and the war would end on that basis. So that was the nature of the back channel. And as I mentioned, Epstein had very close ties with not just Israeli elites, but Russian elites and elites of other countries, including the U.S. and of course as well too. So that was his interest. And also, you know, just to add another point of that, just to get a sense of his views. He also was very much hoping that the U. S. Would bomb Iran at that time. And he was hoping that following, you know, the conflict between US and Syria that they hope would come about, maybe at least briefly, that the congress would then authorize U.S. attacks against Iran. So he was very much in line with the hawkish Israeli segment of the political establishment, on top of what other views or activities may have engaged in.
- [40:38]
A
So, yes, there's, you know, there's a lot of chatter online that, you know, Epstein's a Mossad agent, but he's certainly. There's no question, as you know, from your reporting, that he is. Has very strong ties to the Israeli security state and helped facilitate different dealings for Israel across the world.
- [40:59]
C
Yeah, you know, many years ago, there was a very interesting book written by this gentleman named Victor Ostrovsky, and Ostrovsky was a former Mossad agent. He worked with the Mossad for a brief time, and then he left. He became disillusioned and left. And he wrote a book about his experiences. And there's a very interesting part of this book where he mentions that the Mossad relied on this very wide network of people who were like, basically volunteers, people who they identified for, you know, ideological or personal reasons that would help them even if they didn't work for them per se. I think they were called the sayan or Sayanim or something like that. So, you know, the implication was that, you know, not everyone who was helping us is employed by us per se, and we have powerful contacts and individuals in critical areas who will give us information we need just out of ideological sympathy or some other reason in that way. So my impression of Epstein, well, what I'll say is this. That really underlines that a lot of the way that these things apparently work are more informal than necessarily need to be an agent for a certain organization, so forth. And my impression with Epstein, looking at his communications activities, Is that he was doing it because he believed it was right, most likely. And also everything served a dual purpose. There was an economic interest behind this as well, too, on top of political interests and security interests. So he was somebody who, you know, again, we're still learning more about this. But he seemed to work for himself in a way, but he didn't see. He seemed to be above the governments of Israel per se, and the way he interacted with them. And when I see the way that these Israeli linked intelligence firms were operating, it seemed like they're almost being deployed by Epstein and Barack and whether they knew what was behind it all the time, or what the full purpose of their work was. It's not always necessarily clear, but it was almost like the relationships inverted, like Mossad is working for Epstein rather than Epstein's working for Mossad. That's just the impression one gets from looking at their interactions.
- [42:56]
A
And finally, can you just take us through for viewers and listeners what it takes to kind of report these stories out? You have this massive kind of dump of emails. How do you go through them? How do you begin reporting them, making the connections, finding, pulling on these threads? And why do you think other news outlets haven't really focused on this, given that a lot of this is publicly available?
- [43:20]
C
Well, that's a question which I've, myself and Ryan and others working on this have been quite wondering because, you know, the story. We've gone through all the legwork already of doing verification so forth. The archive is just there. And not just the archive. Also the House disclosures and the lawsuit information about Epstein is also out there. The impression I get is that the reporting, you know, and some of it's been okay, but, you know, a lot of it has been almost purposely avoiding the political implications of what he was doing. A lot of stories of the nothing burgers, they're kind of like what I think Richard Nixon called the limited hangout. Whereas you report part of a story and then leave out the most interesting part and then say it's a case closed, and then hope people are satisfied with that. That's the impression I get from looking more deeply into the. What we know, what's currently out there about Epstein and so forth. So, you know, these emails, they contain thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of communications between Barack and other people. But the segment of them that contain his relationship with Epstein, you know, it's a significant part of it, but it's not necessarily overwhelmingly huge number of emails per se. They kept in touch very closely. They were very close, very. Epstein had told him at one point that you were the only people in the world who can talk to. You're very unique to me. They were that intimate. But, you know, there's a digestible number of contacts. And then from them, you can see who he was talking to, what they were talking about and so forth. And when you combine that with the U.S. government and the judiciary disclosures about Epstein, you know, you can put together a certain picture of his activities. So why have people not been reporting on this? You know, for those, it does take some labor and some legwork to put together. So maybe it's a resource issue for some Smaller organizations or individuals and so forth. But for the larger organizations who definitely do have the resources to do this, and the whole job is to do this, you know, the major institutions, it seems like it must be a political choice because this is a major story. It deals with one of the most important, notorious figures of, you know, last decade or so, Jeffrey Epstein, and an ongoing story about him. And the full. The blanks have not been filled in. They're sitting right in front of them.
- [45:26]
A
It's a little strange.
- [45:26]
C
I hope that following our reporting, people do feel compelled to look more into it and do more reporting on that, because there are very good stories in here which are very enlightening for a number of reasons. We haven't seen it to date, but I hope we do it. Either way, we're going to continue reporting on it.
- [45:43]
A
In the meantime, and I encourage everyone to go to our website@dropsidenews.com to read the Epstein files. So, Maaz, you've done just today, one on Israeli spy who stated Jeffrey Epstein's apartment in Manhattan, one on Cote d' Ivoire and the surveillance state that Jeffrey Epstein helped set up with Israel. One on the Syrian civil War, one on Mongolia. Can you give people maybe just an indication of what's coming up in the series as we. As we continue reporting it out?
- [46:16]
C
Yeah. So Epstein and Barack had very deep ties in Africa, and we did one story about Cote d'. Ivoire, but, you know, Epstein at one point said he'd advise African dictators, quote, unquote, in a story, bragged to reporters about that, but no one ever really dug into what that meant. And he also said he made tons of money with guns and diamonds and all these things. That's, you know, what he meant by that or what that actually referred to has never really been the public knowledge. We're going to report more about that, dig more specifically into his activities in Africa. And we have some stories lined up, I think, in the near future, which will run in that sense. And also his relationship with private banks. He had a very close relationship, people know, with JP Morgan Chase and also. But also other banks as well, too, that were very, very deeply involved with Epstein. And, you know, we're gonna do some reporting by that. I don't want to get too. I'd say too much about it at the moment, but it'll be very good stories. I think we'll be coming very soon about that. And, you know, I think that that's just, I think another part of the reason that Epstein is so interesting and maybe why these organizations are so averse to covering or people makes them uncomfortable, uncomfortable to cover it is that this story, it really strikes at the heart of the entire ruling sort of click or the ruling regime of many different countries. Because Epstein, first of all, the crimes are so heinous and he was so tied to so many people and so many institutions who knew him well, who were personally invested with him that the Venn diagram, people who are affected by this or like the network of people affected, is so broad, you know, I think it makes them uncomfortable. I think that they don't really feel comfortable doing it. And the way when you fully dive into what he did and what he meant, who he was, it really undermines the legitimacy of a lot of people, a lot of institutions and, you know, a broader structure of people who've been running the country for a very, very long time. So I think that's why the story is so interesting to people and also why, you know, there has been this reticence or hesitance to follow it to the full extent.
- [48:13]
A
Well, we're going to look forward to more of that reporting by you. And Ryan, thank you for doing that. That does it for Today' stream. We are back to doing the live stream on Tuesdays at 9:30am Eastern Time. If you want to support our work, you can subscribe@dropsitenews.com you can also make a 501c3 tax deductible donation to our work by going to dropsigns.com and clicking on Ways to Give on Behalf of Everyone at Dropsite. Thanks for joining us. I'm Sharif Abdul Kuddus.
- [48:51]
C
Sam sa.