← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
From Evil, Good: How October 7 Produced Extraordinary Moral Clarity & a Seriousness of Purpose to Defeat Hamas
00:44:19
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- [00:01]
Ben Ferguson
Welcome. It is verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. And Senator, this week has been truly a crazy week. It's been a crazy two weeks with these two hurricanes that hit the people of Florida not once but twice. Our thoughts and prayers go out to them and the recovery efforts that are happening in Florida right now. And I think we should obviously take a moment, just say we are praying for the people of Florida. We are with you right now. And all of those have been affected by these last two hurricanes. But there was also something else that happened that was extremely important and it got overshadowed because of the weather, obviously. And that was the one year anniversary of the attack on the people of Israel.
- [00:49]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, that's exactly right. And let's start by saying to the people of North Carolina that are still suffering from Helene, and Helene was a horrific hurricane. There was enormous death and devastation. And to the people of Florida that are suffering from Hurricane Milton, and I know we've had, I think the latest death count is nine people who've lost their lives. There has been massive suffering. I will say you and I are both Texans. Texas understands full well the misery of hurricanes. We faced hurricane after hurricane. We faced suffering and death. And I just want to say we are praying for the people of North Carolina and Florida and everyone in harm's way, but especially those two states which, which bore the brunt of these two hurricanes. We are praying for the first responders we know are still rescuing people in harm's way and for the federal relief efforts from, from FEMA and HUD and the Small Business Administration. There are enormous resources that become available to those who are hurting. And I will say, having come through Hurricane Harvey which devastated Houston, you're in my hometown and the entire Gulf coast and Rita and Ike and all of the different hurricanes Texas has faced, our prayers are with the people who are suffering from these two hurricanes. This podcast, we wanted to do something different, which is this past week was the one year anniversary of October 7th. And October 7th was truly a horrific day. I believe it's an historic day. I believe 100 years from now we will be talking about the horrors and evils of October 7th. And so on October 7th in Dallas, I gave a speech memorializing and recognizing what happened on October 7, but also acknowledging the positive benefits that ironically came in the wake of October 7th and that have made a real difference. So in this podcast, rather than talk about the news of the day, which is important and we'll talk about again on Monday, we wanted to give you an opportunity to hear the remarks that I gave on October 7th because I think they're important. And so that's what's about to follow right now.
- [03:12]
Ben Ferguson
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- [04:46]
Senator Ted Cruz
God bless Texas and God bless the state of Israel. We're here today on a solemn occasion. We're here today to remember one year ago the horror that the world saw unfold on October 7th. 365 days ago, genocidal Hamas terrorists entered southern Israel. They went from kibbutz to kibbutz and from home to home, murdering virtually everyone they found, deliberately targeting civilians, targeting the elderly, targeting women, targeting children and even toddlers and infants. And they murdered them for one reason. Because they were Jewish. October 7th is the single worst mass murder of Jews in a day since the Holocaust. 1195 people were murdered on October 7th. 251 people were taken hostage on October 7th. We saw terrorists using rape as a deliberate tool of terror. Raping women, raping young girls. I will tell you, I have had the horrible displeasure of watching videos of what unfolded on that day. Videos from security cameras in Israel, videos from body cameras. And cell phones that the Hamas terrorists took. Understand what they did that day, they were not hiding, they were proud of. They were there to murder and rape. And their only regret of the day is that they did not murder more. When you watch those videos. I spent nearly an hour watching videos in the Senate. Roughly half of the US Senate came to watch it. I saw in those videos 137 people being murdered. I will tell you, it makes you violently sick. It's not like watching a Hollywood shoot em up where it's make believe these are real people being murdered for racist and genocidal purposes. It was striking also listening to the Hamas terrorists, to the utter dehumanization of Jews. You saw them severing the heads of Jews, you saw them mutilating the bodies. You saw them referring repeatedly to the Jews they were murdering not as he and not as she, but as it as something less than human. One of the most chilling aspects of watching those videos was listening to an intercepted phone call of one of the Hamas terrorists calling home to his parents. And he was thrilled. He was overjoyed to report how many Jews he had murdered that day. And his father cries out in great celebration. And what does he say? Call your mother, tell your mother about this wonderful act you have done in the wake of the Holocaust. Never forget and never again was said. Many times it should be said the same for October 7th. Now, October 7th was Nazi ends carried out using Nazi purposes. I will say, though, as horrific as what happened on that day was, we also know that God is a good God. The Book of Genesis. After Joseph has been sold into slavery by his brothers, years later he encounters his brothers again. And his brothers are terrified for what they have done to their brother. And Joseph says to them in the Book of Genesis, what you have intended for evil, God intended for good. And I will say, as horrific, as evil as what happened on October 7th was, there have been at least two seriously important, profoundly beneficial consequences that have unfolded in the year that followed October 7th. Number one was clarity. Clarity is important with what is unfolding in Israel. In my view. There are no shades of gray. There is no ambiguity. This is a contest between good and evil. This is a contest between civilization and barbarism. And that clarity is important. It's important in Israel, it's important in Europe, it's important in America. And I'll tell you, it's important in the political sphere. Now listen, this is by design, not a political event. But I will say this. October 7th and each day that followed is an opportunity for everyone holding elected office to make a choice, where do you stand? And everyone in a position of leadership can decide, do you stand with Israel or do you stand with the terrorists? Well, as for me and my house, we will stand with Israel. That clarity is profoundly important throughout elected offices. I will tell you in Congress, there are too many of my colleagues that cannot figure out which side of that divide we should stand on. There are too many of my colleagues whose immediate response following these horrors is we need a ceasefire.
- [13:01]
Now.
- [13:05]
I will tell you. On the night of October 7th, at three in the morning, the State Department sent out a tweet from the Office of Palestinian affairs and it said, Israel must not respond. There must be no military response whatsoever. My team and I saw that at three in the morning and we responded on Twitter immediately and said, this is disgraceful. Whoever wrote it should be fired and it should be deleted immediately. Within minutes, the State Department deleted the tweet. The next day, October 8th, we discovered that the tweet was not an anomaly sent by some low level staffer because Tony Blinken, the US secretary of state, on October 8 sent out a tweet and said, I have just finished speaking with the Turkish Foreign Minister and we have agreed that Israel must not retaliate and there must be no military response whatsoever. Again, I responded and said, this is utterly disgraceful and should be deleted. Again, they deleted it within, within minutes. Every day since then, elected officials have had a choice. Where are you? Who are you? Who do you stand with? Some have risen to the occasion and others have not. There's also been clarity on college campuses. I know that every one of us here has been utterly horrified that October 7th has revealed the vicious anti Semitism on so many of our campuses. And I point out to you that I will use the word revealed on purpose because nobody with any sense could possibly maintain that, that anti Semitism wasn't there on October 6th. But a whole lot of people had difficulty seeing it. And we've seen across our country, we've seen viciously anti Israel, anti Semitic protests, many of which are unequivocally pro Hamas. Columbia University, one of the first places these protests started. It got so bad that the Orthodox rabbi at Columbia sent an email to two hundred and seventy Jewish students at Columbia advising the Jews who are students there, stay home, do not come to class, do not come to campus, because Columbia University cannot and will not protect your safety. I got to say that is utterly and completely disgraceful. If you watch the videos of those protests, you listen to what they're chanting Protesters at Colombia were chanting, among other things, we love Hamas. To understand the viciousness of it. Some Columbia students were bravely standing up, waving American flags and Israeli flags. Jewish students who had the courage to face the mob. There was a picture on Twitter of a woman wearing a mask because these protesters are oh so brave, they hide and are terrified for the world to know who they are. But she was wearing a mask and holding up a sign, a cardboard sign that she had hand lettered. The sign said Al Qassam's next targets with an arrow pointing at the Jewish students behind her. Al Qassam is the military arm of Hamas. I'm going to tell you something amazing, the Internet being what it is, the mask did not serve to hide this young woman's identity. She was not Palestinian. She was a young blonde girl from Atlanta, Georgia whose parents are multimillionaires. And they sent her off to the Ivy League to go learn something. She was taught that it is perfectly acceptable and even praiseworthy to call for the murder of your fellow students because they are Jews if you don't understand the poison that is being taught to our students. It was powerfully, powerfully illustrated. The University of Washington, the protesters chanted to Jews, go back to the ovens. This is not ambiguous. Now I will tell you. I was visiting with a friend of mine on the left, very successful tech entrepreneur, he's been a Democrat his entire life. And he expressed frustration, bewilderment, where is this vicious anti Semitism coming from? And I told him it is the consequence of the poison that has been poured into the minds of our children at so called elite universities now for many years. This is the fruits of cultural Marxism. This is the fruits of a leftist ideology that divides the world into two categories, oppressors and victims. And for the modern day leftists, they have defined Palestinians as victims and Jews as oppressors. And I want you to note that I didn't say Israelis, I said Jews. Because the target of their enmity is not just those who live in Israel, but any Jew anywhere on the face of the planet. And to the academic Marxist, once you have someone defined as an oppressor and as a victim, our children are taught to favor the violent revolutionary overthrow by the victims of, of the so called oppressors, to cheer on the violence, to celebrate it. If you don't understand that, take a look on October 8th at the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter that tweeted out a meme said we stand with Palestine. And in the meme was an image of a paraglider now understand they were not saying, we think geopolitically we ought to approach a two state solution. The paragliders, as you know, is how the Hamas terrorists came to the music festival to murder young people. And the Chicago chapter of Black Lives Matter was not being ambiguous on where they stand. They stand with Hamas because they were murdering Jews. That clarity is important. And I will say some commentators have said, well, it is terrible that this is happening all over the country. And I have to say in the interest of accuracy, that facts matter. It is not happening all over the country. It is happening in bright blue states where the elected officials agree with the protesters. It's happening in New York, it's happening in Pennsylvania, it's happening in New Jersey, it's happening in Illinois, it's happening in Washington state, it's happening in Connecticut, it's happening in Massachusetts, it's happening in California. You know where it's not happening. It's not happening in Florida. You know where it's not happening. It's not happening in Texas. In Texas. We saw protesters at the University of Texas, and within hours the police arrived and arrested them. I talked about clarity. This is an opportunity for everyone in leadership, every elected official, every university president, every dean of a faculty, every professor, to say where you stand. But I'll tell you what the answer should be, which is that no one has the right to threaten the safety of another student. And if you threaten and harass another student because they are Jewish, you should be arrested, you should be prosecuted, you should be expelled. And if you're a foreign student, you, you should be deported.
- [23:00]
Ben Ferguson
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- [25:15]
Senator Ted Cruz
Jewish students reported that they were afraid to go to class because of threats of violence. The president of MIT said, well, we cannot discipline the people threatening the Jewish students because if we discipline them, they'll lose their student visa and be deported. You need to understand the ideological rotation that has infused so much of our elite academy. And by the way, it's been a year since October 7th. Have you noticed the protests on the campus? They're not springing up organically. They're not spontaneous. Am I the only one who's noticed that the tents all match? There is real money funding these anti Israel, anti Semitic, anti American protests. And that money is coming from Iran. That money is coming from Qatar. And that money is coming from prominent leftists in this country who are also funding prominent politicians in this country. I want to ask you, in a year, has there been a single investigation by the Department of Justice or the FBI to follow the money? Under Title 6 of our Civil Rights Law, a university cannot create an environment that is threatening to the safety of a student based on race or ethnicity. Has there been a single university in America who's had their federal funding cut off because they refused to protect Jewish students on campus? The answer is no. Not one. That's not an accident. We need a Department of justice that stands with our students. By the way, I will note the protesters that were arrested in the University of Texas, roughly half of them had no connection to ut. They weren't students there. They just came in to agitate and threaten violence. The same was true at Columbia. The same was true at Fordham. They when people have been arrested, about half of them are either radical Islamist or Marxists or just anti American paid violent thugs. Clarity matters. And by the way, I will say that clarity is not entirely delineated on partisan bases. I will say one of the most astonishing things to me has been the courage my colleague John Fetterman has shown on this topic. I'll confess, when Senator Fetterman was elected from Pennsylvania, I had no reason to anticipate that he would show that kind of courage. But he has been astonishing. And I will say when giving a commencement address, when he removed his hood from Harvard University as a fellow Harvard grad, I was proud that he was willing to stand up to the shameful behavior of his and my alma mater. Clarity is an opportunity for everyone on each and every day to decide, where do I stand? There is a second enormously beneficial outcome of the horror and evil that was October 7th, which is that Israel has stated its commitment to utterly and completely eliminate Hamas and now eliminate Hezbollah. And I have to say, eliminating Hamas and eliminating Hezbollah is unquestionably in the national security interest of Israel and unquestionably in the national security interest of America. And US Policy should very simply be, we stand unequivocally with Israel for as long as it takes. I listen to colleagues of mine in the Senate and the House who their only response to what happens in Israel is we need a ceasefire now. What is it that leads American politicians to say our view should be, please, please, please stop killing the terrorists. When I got on Southwest Airlines this morning and flew from Houston to Dallas to come here today, a woman standing in the line came up to me and said, please, we need a ceasefire now. On the one year anniversary of October 7th, I'll tell you, month after month after month, every Saturday morning at 7am I had anti Israel, anti Semitic protesters in my front lawn, screaming, yelling, ringing cowbells, blowing whistles, screaming expletives at the top of their lungs, waking up my daughters, waking up my neighbors and their young children week after week after week. And I'll tell you when I encounter, as I do with some regularity, people on airplanes who will yell at me, we need a ceasefire now. And I ask them, really tell me, why is it that you side with genocidal maniacs carrying out Nazi ends? How do you look at what happened and say the murderers and rapists are the ones we stand with? But part of it is a lot of people are lied to. They don't know the truth they are being told. The victims in our definition are the good and the oppressors are the Evil. That's why that clarity needs to continue. I will say if you look at Israel's distribution of pagers, I've got to say that is one of the most extraordinary intelligence and military operations I have ever seen. When I saw it on the news, when I read about it, it read like a James Bond novel. If you. I don't know if any of y'all are fans of the show Fowda, Fowda is phenomenal. If you tried to write it in a plot of Fowda, they wouldn't publish it because they would have said, this is ridiculous. And I will say what was truly elegant about it is the people who received the pagers were decided by the leadership of Hezbollah. The leaders of Hezbollah said, all right, you are enough of a genocidal murderer that I want you on page. They selected every person, and then they got their page. And then a few days later, they said, let's go to walkie talkies. And the walkie talkies blew up. And then at the head of Hezbollah said, let's go to a basement bunker and meet in person. And then the basement bunker blew up. And if you want to understand where someone stands, look to their reaction to that. Let me tell you, I think it is beautiful that psychopathic terrorists are terrified now to pick up the phone and pick up the pager and go meet with another terrorist. That is unequivocally good for Israel and America. We are seeing forces across the globe arrayed against the people of Israel. And I will tell you in particular, if you want to prevent another October 7th, if you want to save innocent lives in Israel and America, then you've got to start by focusing on the nation of Iran. Iran is the head of the stake, I will say. In the last four years, the U.S. government has funneled over $100 billion to Iran. We all know about the 6 billion that got the most attention. That was 6 billion in ransom for five Americans. I and many others at the time said, that's a terrible policy. It will only encourage more Americans to be taken hostage. It effectively puts a bounty of 1.2 billion per hostage. Tragically, when we said that, I didn't realize it would be just a couple of months before we would see more Americans taken hostage. Some of you may also know about the 10 billion in funds that were frozen in Iraq from electricity receipts that the administration unfroze to flow to Iran. Both of those, however, pale in comparison to the real source of revenue. Iran derives the bulk of its revenue from oil and gas sales. When Joe Biden and Kamala Harris came into office four years ago. Iran was at the time selling roughly 300,000 barrels of oil a day. That was a consequence of the previous administration vigorously enforcing oil sanctions. I had spent hundreds of hours urging President Trump to vigorously enforce oil sanctions on Iran. He did so, and their oil sales plummeted from a million barrels a day to 300,000 in January of 2021. The Iranian economy was in shambles. The Iranian regime was teetering and near collapse. And the current administration came in and immediately stopped enforcing those oil sanctions. What are the consequences of that? Iran's oil sales went from 300,000 barrels a day where they were in January of 2021. Do you know what they are today? Roughly 2 million barrels of oil a day, primarily sold to Communist China. What is the delta? Between 300,000 barrels a day and 2 million barrels a day. It is more than $80 billion that came in like a lifeline to save the regime. I told you, this is a battle between good and evil. The Ayatollah Khamenei is unambiguously evil. He leads mobs in chants of death to Israel and death to America. Now, if history teaches anything, it is that when somebody tells you they want to kill, you believe them. And you need to understand this is not just a threat to Israel. There is a reason the Ayatollah refers to Israel as the Little Satan and America is the Great Satan. The enemies of Israel are enemies of America. Those who hate Jews hate Christians. And I have to say, if any sanity comes from the aftermath of October 7, it is that we should agree to come together and cut off all of the funds for Iran. Two statistics that are important to know. Over 90% of the funding for Hamas comes from Iran. Over 90% of the funding for Hezbollah comes from Iran. If you are giving $100 billion to Iran, you are giving the money to the terrorists who are committing these atrocities. I gotta say, regardless of your politics, it should not be a complicated proposition to say, do not give money to people who want to murder you. And yet somehow in Washington, that's deemed a controversial statement. Look, I want to thank all of you all for being here. I want to thank the unity we see. It's easy if you look at the viciousness on a campus, to think that's where America is. And one message. I'm glad we have reporters here. I'm glad we have TV cameras here. If there's one message that I want people to hear, it's that the people of Texas stand with The State of Israel and the people of America stand with the State of Israel. May justice prevail. May Israel prevail. May God continue to bless the people of Israel and the people of America. And may God's mercy and blessings be upon all of us.
- [41:18]
Ben Ferguson
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