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The Tudor Dixon Podcast: Inside the Israel-Hamas Conflict: Ambassador Yechiel Leiter on Gaza, Ceasefire Challenges, and Media Bias
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Tudor Dixon
This is an iHeart podcast.
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Tudor Dixon
Welcome to the Tudor Dixon Podcast. Today I have Ambassador Yahiel Leiter with me. Thank you so much for joining me. He is Israel's Ambassador to Washington. Thank you for joining today.
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Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
It's good to be with you, Tutor. Thank you for having me.
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Tudor Dixon
Absolutely. So obviously we want to talk about what is going on in the Middle East. There's so much happening. We know that there is the ceasefire, but we've had some breaches and Israel has taken action. Do you expect that to be sort of a back and forth for a while or what are you expecting in this, in this ceasefire?
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Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Well, Tudor Nobody really knows because this has never been done before. Hamas occupies an area which is originally 24 miles long and 8 miles wide with 2.2 million people and terror tunnels that are 450 miles of networking. And you have to understand, it's basically a city underground, a terror city, which initially has some 40, 50,000 armed terrorists teeth. Now we've degraded them considerably. We're sitting on a little over 50% of the territory now and making sure that the tunnels are eliminated, that no terrorists go into that area. And we're very enthused and encouraged by the cease fire that the President has really invested in. President Trump did something really incredible through his envoys, Secretary of State Rubio, vice president fans, Jared Kushner and Steve Wykoff, because basically, not only did we get the 20 live hostages out, which nobody thought could be done except the Prime Minister of Israel, who stuck to his guns throughout this entire process and said, we got to get all the hostages out. We still have 13 deceased hostages. We have to get out. And according to the agreement, they're committed to doing that. But nobody thought that we'd achieve the commitment for complete disarming of Hamas and the demilitarization of Gaza. And that's really the great success of the agreement. Now, the problem is it needs to be implemented. But we do have a firm commitment by all those signed on to the agreement that this will be the case. We cannot have ever again jihadis living on our border. What happened on October 7th cannot be repeated again, whether it's in Gaza or in South Lebanon or on the Syrian border. We're a very small country. We're a tiny country. I mean, we can fit into Indiana four times. We fit into Nebraska about seven times. We don't have territory to give up. And we certainly cannot have jihadis on our border committed to our destruction. Destruction. So we've gone through this year degrading the Iranian proxies. We've degraded Hamas, we've degraded Hezbollah. Assad has fallen in Syria together with the United States. We dramatically degraded Iran, the head of the stake. But we still need to see this deal that the President has brokered, implemented. And that's going to be a challenge, but we're hoping it's going to work.
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Tudor Dixon
Let me ask you, you are an American born Israeli. You lived in the United States until you were 18, is that correct?
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Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
That's correct. Scranton, Pennsylvania.
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Tudor Dixon
Okay. Oh, you're a Scranton guy. Your Scranton guy did not get this done for you, though. It was Donald Trump.
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Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, don't hold Scranton against me. I was just born there. My bank actually is still on Joe Biden Boulevard. But yes, this agreement came through President Trump. Absolutely.
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Tudor Dixon
Well, so I wanted to bring that up because obviously you grew up the way most of us and most of my listeners grew up here in the United obviously then you move to Israel. So you have seen both sides of that. I think many Americans have no idea what we're actually dealing with. When you talk about the Gaza Israel battle that has been going on for years, but you brought up the fact that this is like a city underground, that's something that we don't actually hear a lot about. We've heard kind of grumblings of there's these tunnels and there's, that makes it a challenge. But you said something about what, 250 miles of tunnels and this entire 450 miles. It's 450 miles. Explain that a little bit to us because I don't think that we have a good comprehension of what we're dealing with. These are not citizens in these tunnels, right? This is Hamas.
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Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Absolutely, we're talking about Hamas. I think the best way to explain it would be to ask your, your viewers, your listeners to imagine Ms. 13 okay? A gang, a well known gang in the United States takes over a city and under that city they create underground tunnels to protect themselves so they can shoot missiles into the surrounding areas. And then you can't really respond because they run into the tunnels and to shoot back would mean to kill many civilians. That's the dilemma that we've been in repeatedly. How do you defeat an enemy that both uses above ground and underground facilities? As a matter of fact, the most accomplished expert on urban warfare, John Spencer, who teaches at West Point, has said repeatedly that no army in the world has ever had to confront what we had to confront in Gaza. And you know, the ratio, it's terrible. Every death is terrible, every innocent death is terrible. And we did everything we could possibly do to limit a collateral damage, non combatant damage. And quite frankly, if we did what we're being accused of doing, of killing civilians without any measure, my son might be alive today. I mean look, he went in, he led forces into Gaza by foot seeking terrorists. Now if we just straft bomb the population centers as democratic armies have done all over the world, I don't want to mention any names, right? But if you straft bomb population centers, you'll ultimately get to the, to the terrorists, but you're also going to kill many, many civilians. Our ratio was Better than the ratio that the US had in Mosul, for example, which was 1 to 3. We're at about 1 to 1.5. That's a. That's a. A tremendously. It's hard to say successful ratio, but it's war. And in war, that's a very unusual ratio. And Spencer has made the point that no one has ever had to deal with this kind of complicated warfare. We've done it, really, with two hands tied behind our back, because not only were there civilians there, but they were holding our civilians. They were holding our hostages. Right. So we wanted to prevent civilian deaths and, of course, from that affecting our hostages as well. So it was very complicated, a very difficult challenge that we faced. But overall, we've degraded the Iranian proxies. Iran had this idea that they would create a ring of fire. Okay, how do you destroy Israel, which has a strong, Very strong conventional army? So they had this idea of a ring of fire. They'd have Hamas in the southwest, the Houthis in the southeast, Hezbollah in the north, the Assad regime in Syria, Hezbollah, Iraq. And everybody would attack at the same time. And because we're such a small country, I mean, the whole country is like 40 miles wide, right? So they would shoot missiles at the same time into the center of the country. The center of the country is where 70% of our population is. So if all of these proxies attacked at the same time and our reservists couldn't get out of the center of the country to the periphery would be destroyed. That was the idea. And Sinwar, the leader of Hamas at the time, simply jumped the gun. He didn't wait for everybody else. And had he not done that, we would have been in a much more difficult predicament. So this way we were able to confront Hamas and then confront Hezbollah. And what we've done is we've changed the Middle east because Hamas is degraded, Hezbollah is degraded. We have a government in Lebanon that really wants peace, that talks about disarming Hezbollah. The Assad regime, regime, that cruel, murderous regime in Damascus has fallen. There's a leader there that's now talking about, at least talking about we have to give him a chance, creating a civil society. And Iran has been tremendously degraded because of the incredible partnership that we have with the United States, the intel, sharing, the air forces that shared with each other's capabilities. And we created something just absolutely astounding. Abolished. Abolished. We obliterated, as the President said, the. The Iran nuclear program, which is a existential threat to Israel.
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Tudor Dixon
You Talk about the importance of doing this, but it's also very important to you and very personal to you because your son.
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Tudor Dixon
You mentioned your son. He was an IDF soldier. He went into. Was it one of these tunnels that he went into where he lost his life in battle?
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Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Well, my son was. Spent 15 years in special ops. He'd actually trained together with Delta Force. He was Air Force special ops. And at the age of 33, he decided to leave, although he was in line to take command of the unit. And he went to med school because he said, I spent 15 years in the army and I want to spend the rest of my life saving lives. And he had completed med school, actually, just before the war. He got his white jacket on August 2023. And he was the oldest of my children.
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Tudor Dixon
Just before the war.
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Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Just before the war, yeah. He was supposed to start his rounds in the hospital on August. On October 8th, the attack. Yeah. But that. He was the father of six children, and he was my oldest, the oldest of eight children. He was my best friend. He was an incredible human being. And he led forces. Actually, the forces entered Gaza in kind of a pyramid. He was the lead company because he was so smart and really a field fox, and he understood the field of battle. And on Friday, November 10, he received an order to find the shaft of a tunnel in the northern town of Gaza called Beit Khanun, which was, according to intel, in a mosque. And he took his command team, they scoured the mosque. They didn't find it. And he didn't give up, even though he could have pulled back and said, I didn't find. It's over. But he knew there was a tunnel there from which they were exiting and firing missiles into Ashkelon. So he said, we have to do this. And he never gave up on an assignment. So he continued to scour the area around the mosque. And in the second building, he went into an inner room and found the shaft to the tunnel. And as soon as he wired to the forces, we found the tunnel. And he said, shabbat Shalom, which means, you know, Friday afternoon, you wish each other a happy Sabb, wished everybody a happy Sabbath. And then they. They set off a. A booby trap, which was a very, very powerful explosion which they set off from inside the tunnel. They followed them in a hidden camera, and they waited for their soldiers to come into that room, find the shaft. And the explosion was so strong that it blew out their lower torso and then brought down the walls on them from the top. So they really didn't have A chance. So he together with three of his command team were killed. And it really is indicative of the quality and the commitment and the resilience of our soldiers as a whole. You know, you have to understand next to, next to my oldest son was my fourth son who was a soldier of his and he was 30 meters away from the explosion. He basically saw his brother, you know, go up to heaven and, and my second son was on the northern border opposite Hezbollah. And my third child, girl, daughter, her husband is a battalion commander. He was fighting at the same time. It's just one family, but I'm not an exception. All of my kids were on the front. I do have one child with down syndrome, so he wasn't on the front, but he was packing bags for the soldiers of the base. Everybody's enlisted, everybody's part. This is a, you know, a citizen, a citizen army. And look, the people, the soldiers, we lost over 900, many, most I think were reservists, about 60% reservists with families, you know, people who, who have day jobs. They're, they're, you know, they're bankers and they're lawyers and they're engineers and they're, they have cyber companies and you know, every regular people and they left their homes, they left their families and did in many cases 300, 400 days of reserve duty over the past two years. So it's been a tremendous national commitment to seeing to it that Israel survived and we don't allow, you know, this attempt by Iran and its proxies to destroy us.
- [15:33]
Tudor Dixon
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tudor Dixon podcast.
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- [16:40]
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- [17:10]
Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
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- [17:42]
Tudor Dixon
It's very hard because when you are in the United States, you, you genuinely do. We don't know what is true. We keep hearing all of these stories of people dying in Gaza and it's devastating. Anytime you hear stories of young people losing their lives, anybody losing their life, it's devastating. But there's also a real manipulation of the media that is coming out of there. And so there is a lot of question as to exactly what is going on. I know that you've talked about the fact that Israel was very careful to warn people, to try to get people out of there, to continue to feed people and take care of people. That is not the story that the media is spinning. So I want you to kind of explain what that's like on the ground and the difference too, because I know when you look at Israel, this is a very free society and a very modern society, and when you look at Gaza, it is very oppressed by Hamas.
- [18:36]
Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Oh, absolutely. I mean, if people would only appreciate the fact that part of what we're doing, I mean, that's not the, you know, initial and primary reason, but at the end of the day, there's potential here for 2 million people living under tyranny to be free. Hamas. When Hamas opposes you, you oppose Hamas, you get dropped off a roof. I mean, the day after the ceasefire was announced, what Hamas did was take out the. The clans who don't agree with them and work.
- [19:04]
Tudor Dixon
I don't think we heard enough about that. I don't think people understand what that meant, that these were, these were Families. These were men. Who was it that actually was murdered that day?
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Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
These are, you know, we call them clans or extended families.
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Tudor Dixon
Okay.
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Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
And, and, and many of them, you know, not everybody in Gaza is Hamas. We estimate of the 2.2 million, there's actually about 300, 350,000 who are, you know, signed steal, deliver, committed Hamas people. But, you know, 75% of the population are not committed to Hamas. And among them, you have people who actually oppose Hamas. I mean, remember when Hamas took over in 2006, they took the Fatah people from the Palestinian Authority and they dropped them off buildings, you know, nine stories high.
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Tudor Dixon
And now I think this is the story that we don't hear because we are living in the United States, where it is a very black and white society. It's like, one is good, one is bad. And we keep hearing that there are people on one side saying everybody in Gaza supports Hamas, but that is. I mean, you were really saying it's. It's minority compared to the population.
- [20:11]
Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Well, certainly now, I mean, look, there was a vote. We warned, by the way, we suggested, you know, at the time, to the Bush administration, it's not a very good idea to have an election right now because Hamas is going to get elected. So Hamas was elected. There was a majority. They took over through an election. But, you know, there were elections in the Soviet Union. You know, 90% of the population voted for the only candidate. Not everything works the way it does back in Scranton, Pennsylvania, or, you know, or in Chicago, Illinois. This is the Middle east. And there isn't a long history, you know, of Jeffersonian democracies and the process that the US and the west went through in creating a democratic system. The notion that we could. You could do democracy from the top down is a huge mistake, because democracy is, by its definition, is the power of the people. It has to come up from the bottom. You know, people have to will it. That's why, for example, with the operation against Iran's nuclear facilities, people said, why didn't you guys take out the government, you know, the ayatollahs? Why didn't you eliminate the. They're causing all the problems. Regime change. Well, you can't do regime change. The people have to do it. The people in Iran have to rise up and they're trying to. And throw off this dictatorship. So hopefully, if we facilitated the wherewithal for the people of Gaza to say, enough of this. We want something else. Hopefully they won't exchange one tyranny for another one. But what happened as soon as the ceasefire was signed. Hamas just went into these neighborhoods where their opposing clans took out the men, lined them up in the street, and absolutely insisted that crowds came around and cheered. If you don't cheer when they tell you to cheer, you can be put down on your knees and shot in the back of the head. So people are cheering and then they just shot them. No extrajudicial. Whoever they are opposed to, don't like or claim that they're homosexual or that they worked with Israel. You can make all sorts of claims. They throw homosexuals off rooftops. I mean, it's very, very clear. It's really just a horrific, ghoulish kind of death cult that we've opposed there. And hopefully the after effect of all of this could be a new Gaza. I mean, the dream of President Trump to create a new Gaza as opposed to an old Gaza can really be something that could serve as a template for other places in the Middle East. Right. If you really do it.
- [22:53]
Tudor Dixon
But how do you deradicalize and demilitarize Hamas? I mean, they have. Even. Even if it is a minority. I mean, if you're 300, 400,000 strong, and these are. These are very radicalized people and they have military equipment, how do you. How do you get rid of that?
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Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
That's a great question. And frankly, you know, my. My field of academic study is political theory, and I wasn't sure that that could really be done, certainly not in the short term. But I spent time before I went back into government and, you know, think tanks, and I spent a lot of time in Abu Dhabi, and I'll tell you, I wear a kiba. And I felt more comfortable as a Jew walking around Abu Dhabi with my head covering than I do in most European cities. I felt safer in Abu Dhabi as a Jew than I feel in many neighborhoods of London or Paris, because they have accomplished it. They deradicalized. They took the Muslim Brotherhood out of the system. No more Muslim Brotherhood teachers, no more Muslim Brotherhood government employees. And they deradicalized society. And it worked very quickly. As a matter of fact, they prove that it's possible. The UAE is just an exemplar of what can be done. Similarly, in many cases, Bahrain as well, although it has a larger radical population that's identified with Iran. They have their own issues, but they certainly tried to do that. Morocco, another signator of the Abraham Accords, same thing. There is an element of society that's radical, but, you know, there is within Islam this battle between those who want to reform and live side by side with Judeo Christian civilization, with the west and those led by Iran, whether they're Shia or Sunni, who still want to oppose Judeo Christian civilization, want to oppose the west and impose Islamic culture upon it. And Israel is like this Judeo Christian transplant in the middle of the Middle East. So if you make peace with Israel, you make peace with Judeo Christian civilization. If you try to destroy Israel, what you're really trying to do is destroy Judeo Christian civilization. And that's why the leader of Iran often says that we're the small Satan and the United States is the big Satan. That's. That's a theological statement. That's what he really believes. So the importance of this war against Iran and its proxies, not just Hamas, but Iran and all its proxies, is really a war for civilization and for moderation and for accommodation. And when I think about it on a personal level, I know that's what my son died for. He was fighting for civilization. He was fighting for mediation and accommodation. And please God that this can move forward in that direction.
- [25:53]
Tudor Dixon
I find it interesting that you sit here and you say there is a way for these societies to live side by side, respect each other, and love one another. Because we are seeing that. I mean, you brought up London. We see people in the United States who are saying, gosh, we're so afraid of becoming. Being in that situation where we have neighborhoods that we're not welcome in anymore. That isn't necessarily. That doesn't necessarily have to be the case. But how do you know, how. How do you break that down to someone who doesn't understand the two different cultures?
- [26:25]
Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Well, you know, first of all, you need to. To study and read and listen to people like yourself podcast and that you're bringing facts and figures to the, to the general public. There are some podcasters that are, on the contrary, that are poisoning people's minds with crazy agendas, you know, really crazy agendas. I mean, I could pick them apart one by one if I had the time, but it's. It's poison. And it's very important that people identify what's true and what is propaganda and what is populism.
- [27:00]
Tudor Dixon
What do you think that is behind that? Because it does seem like this is. There's been this sudden rise in that. And actually, I was talking to someone yesterday, and they believe that there. This is not organic, that there is money behind that. Could that possibly be the case?
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Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Not only possibly. Is definitely the case. Definitely the case. You know, it's a funny thing when people Ask about, you know, there's a question posed just last night. I don't know if this is timely, if it's okay if I, If I.
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Tudor Dixon
No, go ahead. Yeah.
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Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
But, you know, last night when the vice president was speaking at Ole Miss and somebody asked about the, you know, a certain very wealthy American, Israeli who contributed to the campaign, and is that not a question of, you know, loyalty and is that acceptable? And, and I was sorry that the response wasn't like, what about Qatar putting in $7 billion into the university system? How about, how about that kind of influence? You're talking about one person making a large donation. I mean, that's been done from the beginning of time. Right? People make donations to campaigns. Sometimes they're Jewish and sometimes they're Catholic, and sometimes they're Protestant and sometimes they're Muslim. And as long as the law allows for that, people make big donations. But is it not a question when we see Qatar putting in seven and a half billion dollars in a decade into the university system, does somebody really mean to say that university professors are not chosen because of the money that they're getting and that core syllabi are not chosen because of the money they'. And does not have anything to do with the fact that as soon as October 7 happened on October 8, there were already students running out into the streets with their professors screaming, globalize the Intifada and Free, free Palestine. You know, I had two of my employees here in the Washington Embassy of Israel's Washington embassy shot dead by somebody screaming, Free, free Palestine. He was influenced by these, by these crazy, you know, expressions, expressions of hate.
- [29:15]
Tudor Dixon
And that stunned me because I. We had that happen in the capitol, in the U.S. capitol, two staffers of a foreign diplomat of an allied country, and there was barely any media coverage of that. But you make such an incredibly, incredibly strong point that, that we don't blink an eye at foreign money that is controlling our universities. I would say it's so much farther beyond. And whether it is Qatar or China or whatever country it is, these are. Oftentimes we see adversarial countries that have control, have controlling factions in our universities for our, our next generation, which we know that if you were to read any history book, they would tell you that the way you change a country is you to the youth. You go to those people at their most vulnerable time, when they are just about to become adults and be out on their own.
- [30:14]
Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Yeah, look, there's so much to talk about here. The accusations against Jews of, you know, influence in Israel controlling Washington and it's all nonsense. Look, I've been in every meeting the Prime Minister has had with the President. There's a lot of respect there for each other. There's personal respect, there's admiration between the administration officials. I don't think, you know, Prime Minister Netanyahu was the first foreign dignitary to be invited to the White House right after the President came in. Not because he controls Washington. Does anybody really control Donald Trump? I mean, how can you say something. No, how could anybody say something so stupid? Right. But you know, they make these claims on air and tens of millions of people listen to this nonsense. You know, when the Prime Minister came in, we didn't even ask the United States to participate in the bombing of Iran. We came in and said, this is an existential threat. We're going to have to deal with it. These are our options. And it's for you to choose if you want to come in and when you want to come in and how you want to come in. And I think when the story is told about the four months leading up to operations Rising lion and Midnight Hammer, it's going to be studied in international relations faculties for 50 years to come. Because the President went through the process of hearing out all the departments, his intelligence departments, the Defense Department, everybody who had an opinion on the subject. He waited. We actually saw the President go through this process and weighing heavily on each side, and he made the decision to say that Israel pressured the United States. I mean, just so stupid. Iran poses a threat to American interests. America wants Abraham Accords. America wants there to be regional alliances. Well, who's in the way of regional alliance? The biggest threat to Saudi Arabia is Iran. So if we can go into an alliance, a military alliance with the uae, with Saudi Arabia, with Bahrain, with our old peace partners Jordan and Egypt, the US could lighten its military footprint in the Middle east and rely more on the regional alliance. And then they can focus more, for example, on, on Asia. We can create a kind of NATO. So we take responsibility. We're ready to do that. We never asked the United States to put boots on the ground. We fight our own. We fight our own wars. And, and what we asked for in this war, I'll tell you what we did ask for. We asked for help on missile defense because we knew we were going to get hit with ballistic missiles. And God bless the American people who helped us with these Thaad and Aegis anti missile systems, saved thousands of people's lives.
- [33:03]
Tudor Dixon
But you're talking about 50 years from now. This is what we May study. Today we are hearing something different, and I would argue it is because of those podcasters that you mentioned, which is shocking to me, that they would have that much influence. However they do, because they were supporters of Donald Trump. And I think this magical switch, and they were also strong Christians. And as Christians, we do believe what the Bible tells us, that there is a protection for the remnant, that Israel is important, that we do care for Israel, and yet they have turned against that. That has power. When you see someone who is in a position of influence, who claims to be a Christian, who claim to be a supporter of Donald Trump, to suddenly switch and say, all of this is evil, this whole regime is a problem, this whole connection between America and Israel is somehow dark. You're hearing that from very powerful, influential people on the Internet. How do you get through that? And how much money could there be that could convince these people to give up their moral values that they. They claim to have always had and change their narrative so starkly overnight?
- [34:17]
Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Well, I, you know, look, I, I think it's a combination of two things. It's obviously a lot of money. There's a lot of money there, but there's also a lack of personal integrity. I mean, if, you know, you say in the name of Christianity, out of the Christianity that I know and I've studied extensively, there are Christianity. People who are Christians don't pedal hate. They pedal love. And these people, these people, these people, they're few. They're few, might be growing, but they're peddling hate. I mean, if, if you, if you get on the air every single day and find a way to demonize Israel, to delegitimize Jews? I mean, we have questions, say, like, are we really Jews? Are we the same Jews as the Bible? Do we really carry the. Is the Bible referred to us? I mean, all sorts of, you know, crazy things like that. Look, my, my ancestors, throughout the 2000 year exile we faced, gave their lives for Judaism. I mean, people refused to give up their Judaism and were slaughtered because of it. Community after community after community. I mean, we went from one country of exile to another because we were chased out. I mean, it wasn't only the Spanish Inquisition. There was an Inquisition from England, there was an Inquisition from France, it was an Inquisition from Spain. We were rolling stones for 2,000 years. And why? Because we were loyal to our Judaism. And then we got some yokel get on the line and say, who says that these people are the same Jews as the Bible? We gave our lives for the Jews of the Bible. And most of the Christians that I know and I go to churches pretty much every Sunday I'm invited to speak. And I want to tell you I think they have less power than the perception is because the, you know, certainly in middle America where I go out there to churches and meet with people and see the love for Israel and see the willingness and appreciation, you know, sometimes I'm more critical of some of my own co religionists who are a little hesitant to be, you know, too cozy with other religions. The more confident you are in your religion, the easier it is to be to celebrate somebody else's. And I sell it. I celebrate. I celebrate when I see people going to church. I see, I celebrate when I see Christmas lights. I celebrate when I see people speaking in the name of God. You know, it's, it's, it's become almost taboo. But on every dollar bill we've got in God We Trust is it not possible to say that beyond a dollar bill in God We Trust to wake up in the morning and say in God I Trust? I mean, you know, the first thing a Jew is obligated to say in the morning is the following. I give thanks to you God for breathing life into me. That's the. And you're supposed to say that even before like you wash your hands and face because the first thing you got to do is enter in and a character. Right? A life characteristic of giving thanks. Right? That's where we should be, you know, of being thankful of recognizing that we owe our life to a creator.
- [37:35]
Tudor Dixon
Let's take a quick commercial break. We'll continue next on the Tudor Dixon Podcast.
- [37:41]
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- [38:42]
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- [39:05]
Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Nice.
- [39:05]
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- [39:13]
Tudor Dixon
I think we're easily manipulated, though, because we hear about October 7th, we don't know what October 6th and 5th and every day before was like. We don't know what Israel was going through with Hamas because we were not educated on it. And so now we see this battle that many Americans were gas lit afterwards, saying, oh, what you saw, you didn't. Didn't see that that was manipulated. The rapes didn't happen, the murders didn't happen, the children didn't die. And people somehow started to believe that they have no idea what the battle was before. They don't understand the history.
- [39:50]
Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Well, Tudor, you're absolutely right. You know, when I was growing up and I heard about Holocaust denial, I said, well, how can people deny the Holocaust? Well, that was, you know, 60, 70, 80 years ago. People are denying what happened yesterday. Right? On October 8, you had people saying, well, the women really weren't raped as they were being murdered. Right? But they were. And we have the testimonies of the people who saw it. It doesn't matter. You know, the babies were thrown into ovens and people were decapitated. I know who. Some of the people who were decapitated. Okay, you can't tell me that they weren't thinking, you know, and then. And what? They weren't held hostages either?
- [40:30]
Tudor Dixon
And we've seen them come home. That's the thing that. And we see these families who don't have their people back yet, that they've never received the bodies of their loved ones. We know they exist. And yet somehow people have believed that this didn't happen.
- [40:46]
Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
You know, people have asked me why, why it's so important that we get the bodies back. Okay? And first of all, I tell them, every family deserves to have a marker of their loved one, to be able to sit next to their loved one in the grave that has a specific place and to unite with them and to talk with them and have a place to go, know where the body is. But it's of particular importance to us because when we lost 6 million in Auschwitz, they were just ashes that went up in the chimneys into Nazi barbarism. They don't have a grave grave. They don't have a marker. There's no name. There's no name which says, here lies so and so who was born on this date and died on this date. It is incredibly important for us in the state of Israel, the reborn state of Israel after a holocaust, to have graves that is part of the change of Jewish history, that we're not, you know, sheep to the slaughter in Auschwitz anymore. That people have to understand. You know, I've heard some people say to me, you know, how is it that you lost your support on October 8th? Everybody was very supportive of Israel, but you lost our support. So. Well, you know, excuse me for being so crass, but the world does okay with Daechus. They've been doing it for a long time. And October 8th, those who recognize that we're dead Jews, they have sympathy when we fight back and we say, no, we are not going to go like lambs to the slaughter. All of a sudden we lose support and we're accused of the most horrendous things. There was no genocide. Where's all the genocide now? When you have genocide in Darfur, you see bodies. There's evidence. They talked about genocide, and what they produced was, I think, 182 bodies. There's no genocide. We're a civilian army. Do you think that our children could actually commit genocide? I mean, the whole thing is just insane. And what they're doing is trying to delegitimize and demonize the state of Israel, call our leaders war criminals, call our soldiers war criminals with the intent of demonizing Jews. This is no different than the blood libels of the Middle Ages. You know, saying that we poison wells and now we starve people, star people. We facilitated the transfer of over 2 million tons of food into Gaza during the war. That's.
- [43:20]
Tudor Dixon
But people. But people have been told that didn't happen. I mean, that's the crazy part about this. People said, oh, no, they stopped all the aid. They didn't let anything in.
- [43:30]
Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
You know, Duda, I was at a meeting with five senators who were very critical of Israel, you know, and they said, well, what about the food going to Gaza? Why aren't you allowing food into Gaza? I said, senators, we're not preventing food coming into Gaza. Hamas is hijacking the trucks. And that's how they reconstitute themselves. They give it to the people who are fighting with them, and then they sell it to everybody else. They tax it. And one of the senators went like this. So come on. I said, no, no, no, it's 90%. 90%. He said, no, it's maybe 10%. I said, no, it's not 10%. It's 90%. Few days later, one of my assistants here went into the UN website and they have a tracking system and they're sitting right on the screen. It says, you know, black on white. According to the UN tracking system, 10% is reaching its destination. 90% is being hijacked.
- [44:25]
Tudor Dixon
But we are spoiled by knowledge. And no one has called out the fact that there is not a CBS reporter there. There is not an abc, a CNN, or a Fox reporter because you cannot have a reporter on the ground in Gaza.
- [44:38]
Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Of course not. You know what would happen is Hamas would kill them and we'd be blamed. Okay? So the important thing is you just have to keep repeating the truth. It's, it's going up against the the grain. But you know, truth is slow. It's always on the defensive, but you have to keep repeating.
- [45:00]
Tudor Dixon
Well, I appreciate you coming on today to share the truth with, with us. I know I kept you longer than you expected, but it was just the conversation was so good. I really appreciate it. Ambassador Leiter, thank you so much for being here today on the Tudor Dixon podcast.
- [45:15]
Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Good to be with you tutor. All the best of luck.
- [45:17]
Tudor Dixon
Thank you. And thank you all for joining us on the podcast. For this episode and others, you can go to the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast and join us next time. Have a blessed day.
- [45:29]
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- [46:29]
Downy Unstoppables Advertiser
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- [46:52]
Ambassador Yahiel Leiter
Nice.
- [46:53]
Downy Unstoppables Advertiser
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- [46:59]
Tudor Dixon
This is an I heart podcast.