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- [00:01]
John Podhoretz
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John Podhoretz
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- [00:33]
Matthew Continetti
Hope for the best, expect the worst Some preach and pain Some die of thirst no way of knowing which way it's going Hope for the best, expect the worst welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily Podcast. Today is Monday, July 28, 2025. I'm John Pothoric, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, Executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [01:05]
Abe Greenwald
Hi John.
- [01:06]
Matthew Continetti
Washington. Commentary columnist Matthew Continetti. Hi Matt.
- [01:09]
Christine Rosen
Hi John.
- [01:10]
Matthew Continetti
And Social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Hi Christine.
- [01:13]
John Podhoretz
Hi John.
- [01:14]
Matthew Continetti
It's gonna be a difficult podcast for me not to completely lose my cool, lose my temper, lose my bearings and lose my faculties. The last 96 hours or so have been among the toughest emotionally for me. And I think for a lot of us, maybe more, maybe 100, maybe, you know, 96 is too short since the early days of the October 7th wars because the successful campaign to tag Israel as a deliberate genocider has gone completely mainstream in a way that it really had not. Obviously, we've been talking for almost getting on to close to two years about the injustice of the way the war has been characterized by a lot of people on the left, by a lot of Europeans, by, by a lot of thinkers and this basic principle that for some reason Israel and Jews are not allowed to defend themselves when they are attacked in the most barbaric and brutal way and to do things that will ensure that those attacks never recur. Obviously, the most successful counterstrike against Israel throughout this period has been the idea that the civilian Gazans are suffering through no fault of their own, that this is a war between Israel and Hamas, and that Israel's tactics have caused not only wholesale destruction in the Gaza Strip, but also a crisis in nutrition. And this is the sort of thing that caused Israel, under American pressure, to halt its advances in early 2000, 2024 for America to support the construction of this doomed dock platform in the Med so that we could somehow bring in supplies, we, America, could somehow bring in supplies from the sea. Spending $330 million, losing some American lives in the construction of the dock, which basically was abandoned three or four months later because it was not seaworthy or usable. And this kind of ongoing conflict between Israel and the UN and other forces that were trying tothat were nominally trying to bring food aid in to Gaza in the middle of a war, claiming that the Israelis are making it impossible to do so, while Israel claimed that when it allowed this food aid to get in, Hamas was stealing it, selling it, using it to feed itself to get to basically extort its own people of money so that it had financial resources to continue fighting on and all of that. And then Israel essentially establishes this Gaza humanitarian foundation system for food distribution about a month ago or six weeks ago. And everything that we hear says that tens of millions of meals have been distributed, but that the sites where they're being distributed have become chaotic and there's firing going on between Hamas and Israel. Israel largely claims that the idea that they are firing wantonly is a complete fabrication and that Hamas is attempting to draw fire or is firing and then saying the Israelis are doing it. And it's all chaos. And now last week, suddenly gaza is starvation. 60 million meals have been distributed in the last month, and Gaza is now starving more than it has before, while UN aid is sitting rotting at the Israeli border because the UN refuses to enter under the conditions under which Israel is demanding that they distribute the aid. And so they're like, we're just not going to go in at all. So there's UN food sitting there, gigantic pallets, enormous amounts of food that are rotting in the open air because the UN has decided to join an effort to tag Israel as the causers of starvation, when in fact the UN has unilaterally decided not to distribute the food that the World Food Program under the, I would say, extremely regrettable leadership of the widow of John McCain, Sidney McCain, who is become a startling force for anti Israel propaganda in a way that I would imagine her late husband would not appreciate. Anyway, so this is where we are. And I am mainly going to finish this monologue by saying that it has now become totally acceptable in mainstream for the New York Times and the Washington Post and AP and Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation and others, to say Israel is starving gods and children, deliberately starving gods and children. And there's a term for this, and it's a blood libel. Blood libel is Jews kill Christian or non Jewish babies for their own reasons to get their blood. Blood libel really is that they get their blood for Passover matzos. But nonetheless, it's not even qualified the front pages of the Times in the post literally said this without qualification. There is starvation in Gaza. The Gazans are starving en masse, and Israel is responsible. So aside from the simple matter that this war could be over in three minutes if Hamas says we are laying down our arms and we. We surrender, which is the only thing that matters here, the only thing, the only reason that there is a problem at all is that Hamas is still a combatant in a war that it is not largely lost. Okay, so I am remembering myself. Yeah.
- [07:36]
Christine Rosen
Remember that the starvation narrative campaign coincided with Hamas breaking off the ceasefire negotiations because Hamas's demands escalated as the global media apparatus accused Israel of starving the Palestinians in Gaza. So this was both a diversion from Hamas not engaging seriously with the United States and with Israel in trying to get a ceasefire, as well as in a way to bolster Hamas in those negotiations. That's the first thing to be said. The second is just for context. There is no historical precedent for a nation to feed another state or statelet or nation that it is currently at war with. And so the responsibility that is placed on Israel is historically novel. And it's also part of the way in which double standards are applied to Jews and Israel as part of anti Zionism and anti Semitism. And can we, can we, can we, can we make the double standard clear before. Before you go on? Because there's another country, there's only one other country that borders the Gaza Strip, and that's Egypt. And since October 7, 2023, Egypt has increased its fortifications along the Gaza border. Egypt sent in apparently one food convoy today as part of the new relaxation of aid that Israel has announced, which we can get into. But Egypt has prevented the Palestinians in Gaza from leaving the Gaza Strip during this conflict, which is also unprecedented. So you have the unprecedented burden that is placed on Israel to feed the people against whom it is fighting.
- [10:08]
Matthew Continetti
To.
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Christine Rosen
Free its hostages and to destroy this terrorist organization that is responsible for the October 7th massacre. And then you have the novel situation of Israel, of Egypt blocking not only Palestinians in Gaza leaving or becoming refugees, but even the ability to set up which people have advocated some type of system, camp system, right across the border in the Sinai, which is practically empty. Egypt won't even do that. And do we hear a single condemnation of Egypt? Do we hear any pressure placed on Egypt? None.
- [10:50]
Matthew Continetti
No. What do we hear is that the World Food Organization or the World Food Program or whatever it's called, is working with Jordan, is trying to work with Jordan to figure out a way to supply Gaza. Now, Jordan, as you say, does not border Gaza. There is this country called Israel that stands between Jordan and Gaza. So this idea that, well, we can't do anything with the Israelis, so we'll go with the Jordanians, is nonsensical in the extreme. There's no path from Jordan other than it's close. So you could fly a plane from Jordan and to food drops. And we can talk about that in a minute.
- [11:28]
Christine Rosen
What can I.
- [11:29]
John Podhoretz
Can I add one other thing to the, to the, to Matt's point, which is important. We need to spend just a second talking about the particular New York Times story and its sourcing because one of the reasons it's getting a lot of play across all other media platforms is that it claims to have two unidentified IDF soldiers who say that the food aid isn't getting stolen by Hamas. Those are unsolved, you know, so you have these two anonymous sources. The only official source quoted in the story is, of course, the Gaza Health Ministry, which we know is Hamas. And there is no effort on the part of the authors of this piece to contextualize any of it. For example, to note on the record that we do know Hamas has frequently stolen aid, that members of UNWRA, employees of the UN themselves, were also active Hamas forces. And particularly on October 7th and afterwards. We have video proof, we have photographic evidence, we have all of these examples that prove exactly the context under which the story should have been framed. And the reason it wasn't framed in this context is exactly as Matt says, it was an effort to double down on the double standard that Israel has held to. And it is absolutely appalling that this was immediately picked up uncritically across all these different platforms and is being used as evidence to promote this lie that Israel's deliberately trying to starve civilians in Gaza.
- [12:54]
Abe Greenwald
The campaign of official lies now is really what is so striking. There's the. No, as Christine says, there's the no evidence that Hamas steals. I have to laugh as I repeat it. No evidence that Hamas steals UN aid lie. And then there's the starvation question. We don't know at all if there's starvation. We know there's a food crisis, sure. Because we know that Hamas does steal food, does prohibit Gazans from going to get food. But we also know that the picture of a starving child that went around the world in every front page and on every broadcast is of a Gazan child with. I don't want to. I don't want to get the cerebral palsy.
- [13:49]
Matthew Continetti
Cerebral.
- [13:49]
Abe Greenwald
Cerebral palsy. Right.
- [13:51]
Matthew Continetti
Is being carried by. Being carried by mother and the spine, spine is visible. Yes, but the spine is visible because the child has cerebral palsy and it's not from starvation.
- [14:03]
Abe Greenwald
And this is being induced as evidence of starvation. Turns out that child has cerebral palsy and his brother, who does not, looks perfectly healthy, as does his mother. We have no idea when we get these headlines splashed across our screens about starvation, what's really happening. We do know for a fact that, that Israel has been trying for months and months and months to flood the strip with aid. And we also know that Hamas has wanted this starve, this fake starvation campaign for a very long time because they've made attempts in the past. The story didn't get the traction it got this time, but they've been, but the New York Times has been crying Gaza starvation for over a year periodically. So that, that's why this was, there's this, there's been this crying wolf aspect to it in the first place.
- [15:09]
Matthew Continetti
Okay, so two things. One is the story that you reference was published, I think on Saturday or sometime Friday or something like that. Of course, it has four bylines, which is as you, as we have been noting over the last week, week and a half. The more bylines, the worse the story is likely to be because the bylines, the number of bylines is placed there in order to create an image of authoritative multiple sourcing and all of that. And yes, this article that said Israel knows that Hamas is not stealing food, according to two officials who were unnamed. Now I just want to parse this for two seconds.
- [15:53]
Abe Greenwald
Can I just please. Because what the story actually says is while there is, while there is evidence that Hamas has stolen some food on occasion from other sources, there's none. There's. By their own records, like they keep records of the food they steal from whom by their own records. There's no indication that they've stolen food, any food from the UN First, I would say. Isn't that curious, isn't that curious that they don't, that they don't have a recording of their stealing food from, as.
- [16:23]
Matthew Continetti
Christine says, if the food is coming from unwra, their partners, they're not stealing it because UNRA does not consider exactly giving Hamas supplies to be theft.
- [16:37]
Abe Greenwald
Right.
- [16:37]
Matthew Continetti
So that, that's not an issue. But I, but, but just to parse the logic of this story, which is always the problem with Jew hating anti Semitic tropes over the centuries, Israel has spent the last year and a half fighting and stopping and fighting and stopping, and 75% of that, if not more, has been about food distribution. If Israel knew that it was not, that the Hamas was not stealing food aid and that food aid was flowing easily in some fashion or fairly, it would be demented to the point of insanity for them to claim falsely that the food was being stolen. Because either the food is being stolen or it's being distributed to the Gazans. If it's being distributed to the Gazans, they can say, what are you talking about? The food is being distributed to the Gazans. Nobody is starving. We are now going to destroy Hamas. The only thing that is keeping us from doing to, from going in and finishing the job entirely is the hostages and trying to make sure that we, you know, we don't kill the hostages as we are trying to save the hostages. It makes no logical sense to say that Hamas is not for Israel to say Hamas is stealing the food if Hamas is not stealing the food. The narrative that Gazans are starving is the one narrative that has gotten purchase from even people who would tend to be sympathetic to Israel's plight.
- [18:23]
John Podhoretz
But there is, we should add, there's one other layer here and I think the story tries to exploit this in a sense. And certainly the media narrative is that there is this logistical challenge totally understandable in a conflict zone of the IDF overseeing the distribution of these new forms of aid, the non UN forms of aid. There has been a lot of chaos. We've seen video of it. There's been acknowledgement of it that is being used though as a, as a weapon in the information war to argue that, you know, there's firing on civilians, they're preventing aid. But there is an actual challenge that the IDF is facing in terms of those logistics. They are simply not structured to be doing massive food distribution in areas that are conflict zones where obviously a lot of the combatants might, a lot of combatants might be present among civilians and all these issues, like the sophisticated thing would be to say, yeah, this is a, it's a real challenge and let's figure out how best to do it. Which I think is what the US backed efforts and working with Israel are trying to do. But they do use that as a, as a tool in the information war. And the images in particular from that chaos, which again is understandable, regrettable, but exists like. So we can't deny that those food distribution efforts have faced those challenges. But is Israel to blame? Is the only message that I think the media source.
- [19:39]
Christine Rosen
Hamas had one demand and it had a few demands in the most recent round of, yeah, ceasefire negotiations, but one of them was that the Gaza Humanitarian foundation, which is the joint Israeli American aid effort independent of the United Nations.
- [19:56]
Matthew Continetti
Stop.
- [19:56]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, very telling.
- [19:58]
Christine Rosen
The other week.
- [20:00]
Matthew Continetti
What's that? Demand number two.
- [20:01]
Christine Rosen
Demand number two. And then the other week, Hamas had a rocket launch. This rocket wasn't aimed at Israel. It was aimed at a Gaza Humanitarian foundation relief site. So Hamas knows that the Gaza Humanitarian foundation has been successful, and if it were to expand, it would kick out from under Hamas one of the main pillars of Hamas's remaining support, which is its control over the aid. But I want to also point to a very good article in the Free Press this morning by Matty Friedman, the Israeli journalist. He makes. He makes the observation that it's almost impossible for anyone to have a clearer sense of what is happening inside the Gaza Strip, because the way in which we receive information from the Gaza Strip is limited to three sources. And the three sources are the Gaza Health Ministry, which is Hamas wire reporters or reporters associated with journalistic enterprises like the New York Times and the Washington Post, who are all operating at the mercy of Hamas. And the third source is the United nations, which in the case of unwrap, has been intricately connected with Hamas, and in the case of the broad organization, shares Hamas's aim of delegitimizing and ending the state of Israel as it currently exists. So one reason we've all been so skeptical of these stories for the duration of the war is it's not clear where this information is coming from. The current argument over starvation is because Israeli journalists, who have typically been very skeptical toward the food claims, have turned to this one Israeli economist who has studied the price of flour in Gaza and came with a study recently that said the price of flour was spiking so high that it would probably lead to shortages in malnutrition. And that study has come out at exactly the same time as this campaign against the Gaza Humanitarian foundation. At the same time as these stories and photos are being circulated online, and at the same time as the United nations has been locked in this struggle with the Gaza Humanitarian foundation and with Israel over whether or not it can safely distribute the aid that is sitting there just rotting in broad daylight.
- [22:56]
Matthew Continetti
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Two more logistical points and we have to get to the moral framing here because that is what has changed here in a fundamental way or has advanced here in a fundamental way. That is horrifying. So one of them, as you mentioned, is this study by the Hebrew University economist that I'm not going to question it. I haven't really, you know, it hasn't been published in English for one thing. But people that people of reasonable politics look at it and say it seems legit. But there is a fundamental supply and demand incredulousness that springs from my brain as I read about this, which is that one of the things that the Gaza Humanitarian foundation has done is to distribute flour. And one of the things that we know about the Gaza Humanitarian foundation is that it has distributed what they call the equivalent of something like 60 million meals over the last six weeks. So flour is one of the elements in the Gaza Humanitarian foundation package that has been presented to people and Rice also. So maybe you look at flour, but rice. It does not make logical sense that a huge influx of staple foodstuffs is increasing starvation or increasing prices. How he knows that this is what the price is on the, you know, on the ground at a Gaza market, I don't really know. I don't know what numbers he is using to adduce this, this economist, but it doesn't pass a smell test with me. Now, I could be wrong. I'm not seeing raw numbers, and I'm, I'm acknowledging that. I'm saying that simple inference says more food has gone in, not less, through the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. So how is starvation up and how is the price of flour up if millions of tons of flour are going into Gaza? That we're not going into Gaza before it does not compute. So something is off there. But even if it weren't, even if it weren't, and this was happening, and this were happening is the fundamental point that you made earlier, Matt, which is that no country in the history of warfare has ever found itself in the moral position of being blamed for conducting a war that it is attempting to win and then simultaneously being held morally responsible for, for the nutritional condition of the people who are on the other side. You can only say that if you believe that the Gazans, like, I don't know, like Soviets under totalitarianism, are not supporters of Hamas, are not. Are somehow not involved in their country's effort to destroy Israel, and that they are simply bystanders in a grand conflict between Israel and this terrorist organization. And this is where the rubber meets the road, because, I am sorry, we have literally no indications, except for a few demonstrations of a few hundred people every now and then. The Gazans are anything but supportive. And in any case, throughout the course of human history, kings fight wars with kings. And Hannibal wasn't responsible for feeding the people whose countries that he overran in the 4th century BCE or we were not responsible for feeding Germany in the year after we entered Europe on D Day and were going through the Battle of the Bulge and going through the forest in order to get to Berlin, and no one is ever responsible in that fashion. There may be a slight confusion, but because we have fought wars since World War II in which there is a civil war setup, North Korea versus South Korea, North Vietnam versus South Vietnam, in which we are actually on the side of one of the players in the area, and so we're in South Vietnam helping the South Vietnamese and propping up their civil society and spending a lot of money there while we do not believe that we have any obligation to help the North Vietnam, the starving people of North Vietnam. What we want is for them to rise up and throw off the shackles of their own government. Nothing like this has ever happened before. And when Jews are tagged with obligations and responsibilities that no other people have, that is where the antisemitism comes in. And so we've had a kind of very much calm and civil exploration of this issue now for 27 minutes as we've started this podcast. But it does not get to the mood or the emotions that I myself have been experiencing and that so many other people have been experiencing, as I hear from emails and my friends. And all of that, which is something really evil has started, started in the middle of last week with the instant assertion that Gazans, there is mass starvation in Gaza. This was not said two weeks ago, it was not said three weeks ago. It was said last week. And what happened last week? Hamas became intransigent at the negotiating table. And why, and let's talk about why. Why is this letter from 17 countries saying, Gaza is starving, there needs to be a Palestinian state, Israel is evil. So in an effort to help the poor, suffering Gazans, leaders of the world come in on the side of Hamas and say that Israel's effort needs to be stopped. And what does that do? Does it encourage negotiations? Does it encourage, does it encourage a ceasefire, which you think it might. In other words, Israel's like, all right, we're going to have a ceasefire. We want the hostages out and we're going to release prisoners. But you know what, there's this international pressure and we, you know, we have international pressure. We're sick and tired of fighting this. Let's see, a 60 day ceasefire. And if we can get to the end of the war even without achieving our fundamental aim, which is the actual explicit surrender of Hamas. Like where they say we surrender.
- [32:35]
John Podhoretz
But the conceit is that what happened.
- [32:37]
Matthew Continetti
What happened is Hamas dug its heels in and said, we're winning. All these people are coming in on our side. So screw the Gaza humanitarian foundation. Israel is not allowed, according to Hamas, to create buffer zones between the pop, you know, between the territory of Gaza and the areas in which Israel was attacked in the Gaza envelope or by, down by the Egyptian border that is so heavily fortified, these corridors, that Israel is almost certainly going to establish, whatever happens to ensure that there is a mile or two before anybody can try to break through a fence that it will be patrolling maybe through time immemorial, I mean, maybe until Palestinians See reason. But they said no. Hamas said no. And now it's Hamas says no and Israel is starving Gaza. Hamas said no and Israel should finish the job.
- [33:44]
John Podhoretz
But, but that is, that's the conceit and that and the explanation for the timing of that letter from other countries. Because any time we get to the point where the world might notice that Hamas actually doesn't care about the suffering of the people in Gaza, the goal is the elimination of their goal is the elimination of Israel and the Jews. So the suffering of their people actually becomes a useful propaganda tool, as it long has been. If the people, and there are people in Gaza who have actually tried to raid the storehouses that Hamas keeps under armed guard of UN food A. They had. There have been a few instances of that. So there are people, civilians, innocent, trying to get themselves fed. If Hamas cared about those people, they would release more of the food to those people. But we know they don't care about their own people. This is why they are a terrorist organization, not a nation state. It's why they have been effective in negotiations, because they actually don't have a limiting principle. Israel is being asked by the world community to exercise moral judgment and a limiting principle, as it has long done throughout this conflict, but now to do it at the expense of the remaining hostages and of actually securing their own border against this terrorist group and destroying it forever.
- [34:49]
Matthew Continetti
And it's not just the hostages, because this is another key point. There are apparently 20 living hostages since the first talk of establishing a new ceasefire that would lead to the release of at least some of the hostages and a process to find a path to the release of all of them and some kind of end to the war. Since that has happened, more than 20 Israeli soldiers have died in Gaza. Those are conscripts. They're 19, 20, 21 years old. Some of them are not conscripts. You've heard me tell this story on this podcast back in September, October, when my nephew at the age of 39 was, was nearly killed in an ambush of his convoy. He's a reservist. He has been fighting in Gaza since he got out of high school. Intermittently gone in five times since 2005. So he's a reservist. But these are 19, 20, 21 year old kids. They are conscripts. They are fighting for their country, but they are not, they are not permitted not to there. And so there it is now, really. Israel is now exchanging lives for lives. Israel is now has effectively implicitly elevated the lives of the hostages over the lives of Israeli kids who are fighting in the war in Gaza because it is sacrificing them as Hamas refuses to surrender and achieve this aim. And I don't know at what point the Israeli populace says this isn't right. Like, we know that the suffering of the hostages is unique, awful, and that there is a deep Jewish moral obligation to ransom captives. That is the animating principle behind why it was so brilliant for Hamas and the Gazans to take these hostages in the first place, to cripple Israel with its own, with our own moral, you know, Jewish moral tradition. But it's not right. And it's, it, it is not right to say that a hostage, the life of a hostage is more valuable than the life of a 19 year old Israeli conscript who is patrolling in Gaza and getting blown up by an ied. And so that's also something that no one is talking about.
- [37:41]
Christine Rosen
And yeah, I mean, it's almost that they're talking about it indirectly in the discussions that you're hearing about concerning a change in strategy or a change in tactics. So to just wind the clock back a little bit. After the ceasefire talks ended last week and Wyckoff came back to the United States, Trump gave those comments at the White House where he said that he thought that Hamas wants to die. The Hamas is going nowhere, and that we're going to take a new look at ways to return the hostages and to end the war. And Netanyahu said something similar, and so did Secretary of State Marco Rubio. What those new methods are, we really don't know. We, we do know the IDF has started to go into parts of the Gaza Strip that it has avoided since the beginning of the war for fear that Hamas may, you know, kill the hostages if it feels that they're on the verge of being rescued. But we also know that this calumny about starving Gazans arrived right as Trump was saying, Hamas wants to die and we need to do something different. And so what has happened over the past weekend is a shift in strategy on food delivery as well. And now we've had, over the weekend there have been airdrops of food for the first time in a very long time. It's like since the beginning of the war where the first, first or second ceasefire, there are these convoys we mentioned earlier. Trump today, appearing next to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, said that the United States was going to have some more sites. He was a little bit unclear whether that just meant an expansion of the Gaza Humanitarian foundation, which is probably likely, or something New. But the more you're talking about the food, the less you're talking about how do we end this war? Because talking about the food means essentially stay the course. And one other tactic that was announced by Israel over the weekend was these new, basically humanitarian pauses in certain parts of the Gaza Strip where the IDF is not active. They will cease operations for, I think, about 12 hours a day to allow the Palestinians to get access to food. Again, pausing the war just means the war will be prolonged. And I think that's one tactic. Again, this is all in the service of Hamas's strategy of trying to remain in power, trying to prolong the war, because it believes among the few, you know, whatever command structure still exists, it believes the longer the war goes on, the more international pressure will be put on Israel, and that furthers Hamas's aims.
- [41:01]
Matthew Continetti
And it's not just international pressure on Israel. That is where things are getting morally hairy and very upsetting because again, the New York Times story that we have been referencing, though it does not name it, let's say that they're not lying and that they have two sources in the Israeli military who are saying Hamas never stole food. That is, if Hamas never stole food, let the UNRWA trucks in and leave them alone and let them do whatever it is they do, because Hamas never stole the food anyway. So there's no reason to hold them up and search them and insist that they go through a checkpoint process. That for some reason, gee, I wonder what it is. The UN doesn't want Israel to be searching those trucks and making sure that arms aren't coming in in the, you know, among everything else. But it is Israel itself. There are two faces of this. One is the world seems to be saying. And Ross Douthat, in a shameful column, basically said it, and others have been saying it. You know what? It's too much. It's just too much. You know, like, okay, I was on Israel's side, but it's just too much now. It's too much of a muchness. Enough. I want to talk about other things. You're making me think about this. I don't want to think about this anymore. So I'm. Israel's lost the moral high ground as far as I'm concerned, because apparently moral high grounds have time limits. Israel's fine as long as the war only goes on a year. But apparently it's not fine if the war goes on for two years. The war, again, it is in Hamas's hands to end the war. It is in Hamas's hands to end the war. There are two combatants. One side is losing and it could say uncle. The other side has said that the end goal of this war is the elimination of the government of the territory that attacked us, the governing terrorist group that attacked us. And if we do not achieve that aim, we will not effectively win this war, which you, Ross Douthen and other people say is theoretically just. But practically, I'm bored and I don't like watching this and it's on my TV screen and I want to talk about what's going on with the Pope or something like that and stop making me write columns about this and having podcasts with Brett. Steven, I've had enough. And there's a lot of I've had enough and there's a lot of I've had enough. Among liberal American Jews who are sick and tired of having to defend Bibi, whom they don't like, or the government that they don't like, and they would like it all to stop so they don't have to do it anymore because it's hard on them. And they get yelled at and they're in a chat group at their school and the other mothers are yelling at them and saying, what about the starvation? And they don't have the arguments or the tools to make these arguments. And they are, as Jews often do, when push comes to show saying, what are we doing wrong? Obviously, let's be self critical, it's our fault, we're doing something wrong, we're lame, we're terrible, something, you know, let's sue for peace so people will think that we're nice because we're not being nice enough. And so that is one of the reasons that this is so incredibly distressing. Things anecdotally that I'm hearing and things I'm seeing on social media and all that, which is like, I just, you know what? I'm Yair Rosenberg and I just know no more. No more. Like when I go into my office at the Atlantic, everybody like gives me the fisheye. I mean, that is the quality of the objection. Now, if you're an Israeli and you have family, it's 20 months, 21 months. And your family, you have kids who are about to go in and you're like, you know what? Give me a strategy for this to be over. And this is where there is an issue which is that it is not clear that the Netanyahu government knows how to end this. And so if it is losing the confidence of its own, including its own coalition, if it's Losing the confidence, its own coalition, that it has an end game in mind while they're getting a green light from the President of the United States, who is saying, finish this, end this, let's get this over with. Problem is, getting it over with threatens the hostages. Problem with not getting over with is it threatens Israeli kids who are going into the military and who are, who are, who are functioning in Gaza. It's an incredible, incredibly difficult situation. But American Jews and others going wobbly on this is extraordinarily distressing to me. And if you're listening, it should be extraordinarily distressing to you. And if you agree with me, go into your chat groups and your WhatsApp groups and your school groups and all of that and don't stay silent, because people are going to believe that everybody thinks that the war has gone on too long and that Israel is at fault here. The only way to prevent that kind of conversation from gaining total purchase is for people to stand up and argue back.
- [46:50]
Christine Rosen
I do think part of the strategy that the United States and Israel may be contemplating involves increased pressure on Arab powers, including Qatar, which hosts the Hamas leadership. There should be a concerted effort to have Qatar exile, at the very least the Hamas niks who live there in the. In the gilded condos and hotels. There should also be pressure on Egypt. Trump uses our economic leverage and the threat of tariffs to achieve diplomatic ends all the time. He just did it again with this recently announced ceasefire between Thailand and Cambodia. Why hasn't he threatened huge tariffs on Egypt unless Egypt agrees to open up some parts of the Sinai to Gazan resettlement? These are the types of moves that could change the conversation and change the game. The problem with the arguments of Ross Douthat and others is they essentially are arguing for an end to the conflict that would mean a Hamas victory. And that is just. You can't countenance that. It's just not acceptable. I laughed out loud when I got to this part of the Rostout column. So there is no way to look at the rubble in Gaza and the death toll estimates and offer a mathematical proof that Israel is failing to exercise adequate restra. I just think it's true. Yeah, well, that's great. Okay, so it's completely arbitrary.
- [48:46]
Abe Greenwald
You know what I mean?
- [48:49]
Christine Rosen
That's your argument. And just one more thing that made me. I think that reveals the content of this column. I recommend my recent podcast conversation with my colleague Bret Stephens for a longer discussion on these points, but suffice it to say, I do think that certain Things America did in World War II were intrinsically immoral, including the firebombing of Dresden and the use of the atomic bomb against Japanese population centers. Now, whoa, leave aside the World War II revisionism which is going on in certain quarters of the Right, along with the move against Israel. They're paired as usual. And leave aside Dresden. You know, that's a strategic bombing. That's an interesting historical discussion. But when you say that the use of the atomic bomb was immoral and unjustified, kind of giving the game away. Because without the bomb, all historical evidence, evidence rather than arbitrary feeling, which seems to be the rule. But all the evidence shows that the invasion of the Japanese home islands would have killed a million Americans and millions more Japanese. And in war, you have to make these unfortunate calculuses. But I firmly believe that the use of the atomic bomb is justified in order to prevent the mass death that would have happened had we not used it. Just as I believe this war against the terrorists is absolutely justified in order to prevent the mass death that will occur if Hamas is left in power at the end of the conflict.
- [50:26]
Abe Greenwald
Can I say something?
- [50:27]
Matthew Continetti
Please, go ahead.
- [50:28]
Abe Greenwald
I just want to say a few things about this. When Ross says, I just think it's true. That's exactly. He's being honest. Because that is. There is. No one has calculated and come out with a figure that they have determined means that Israel is committing atrocities against the Gazans. What's happened is they've seen countless images, they've heard countless arguments and billion harangues and seen a billion headlines and they go, all right, I just think it's true. That's because they've been. They've been sort of overwhelmed by this campaign. And for everyone who's, including Ross and everyone who's. Who's now coming around with this, you know, I was on Israel's side. It's a just war. I understand. But this is really, at this point, a line has been crossed. I just want to say congratulations, you have now been instrumentalized by Hamas. This was the plan. You knew this was the plan. I'm sure at some point you wrote somewhere that this was the plan. There is never. This is another unique thing about this war. Not just that that Israel is unique in history in feeding the population that has waged war on it. There has never been this villainous moral blackmail by a combatant that started a war, stole its enemy's people, and then waged a war of moral atrocity on its own people until the world would turn and say, stop it at Any call, you win, you win. Stop. Just, just. I don't want to see headlines. I don't want to see pictures anymore. That was always the plan and now you've fallen for it. You had a little spine at some point, but just not enough. And that's where you are now.
- [52:37]
John Podhoretz
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- [53:07]
Matthew Continetti
Ebert, CEO and founder of Crash Champions. Welcome to Pod Crash on podcrash. We'll dive deep with industry leaders and game changers because we want to uncover their secrets to success. We're going to explore everything from building trust, building a rock solid team, to champion blue collar work. And we also want to talk about creating explosive growth in your business. You'll hear actionable advice, real leadership and business lessons along with what's worked for these incredible people throughout their career. We're even going to go in depth into what I call a Champions mindset. This is the very philosophy that I use to champion people and take Crash Champions from one single shop to over 650 locations today. And now I want to share that information with you. Watch or listen to pod crash on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast.
- [54:01]
John Podhoretz
It's such an important point because it from the minute that first Hamas terrorists flipped on his GoPro camera, as they all did, to film their atrocities, they knew exactly the information war they wanted to fight and they are winning. And the fact that people like Ross, who, you know, he's our colleague, you know, decent guy, he is being rewarded for this form of performative empathy that they have in droves for anyone in Gaza and now for Hamas, but lack entirely when it comes to the situation of Israeli citizens. And that's where the rewards that these platforms fuel they are now seeking. Because in part, that's actually, that's the world we live in, but we should not be rewarding. This is performative empathy. I find it appalling, quite frankly.
- [54:44]
Matthew Continetti
Two aspects of this. I'm gonna spend 30 seconds on Dresden because everybody knows you're not supposed to like Dresden. And you know why? Because Everybody, because it's 127 pages long, reads Slaughterhouse 5, which is half of it, you know, is this science fiction story about somebody captive on a planet called Tralfamador. And then half of it is Kurt Vonnegut's memoir of being a German POW living through the firebombing of Dresden. And so the firebombing of Dresden is one of the few events known to people who go to American high school from World War II because of Slaughterhouse Five. Dresden was firebombed as a response to the blitz of London. And Churchill did not feel the strategy of how England was going to engage with Nazi Germany for this massive series of raids on its capital city was a long dispute over the course of the war. But that the firebombing of London needed to be addressed, kind for kind, was something that there was literally no one on the planet Earth did not understand, that you could not let your capital city being bombed from afar for the. Pretty much for the first time, by the way, in human history, because that didn't happen during World War I. It was a response to an attack. It wasn't an attack on its own. And it destroyed wonderful buildings with beautiful architecture and all of that. And Churchill didn't care, and nobody cared, and nobody should care now because that was a very important act of historical deterrence, which said, you firebomb my capitol, it may take me three years, it may take me four years, but I'm not letting you get away with that. And if you try to destroy a city of ours, we are going to destroy a city of yours. That is mutual destruction or something like that. And for some reason over the course of the last 80 years, that has been forgotten in the tears over Dresden's beautiful architecture being bombed by the raf. And it should not, because it was a highly moral act to bomb Dresden in terms of human history and establishing guidelines and boundaries and guideposts for how wars were going to be conducted in the future. You hit us, we hit you. We're going to hit, as George W. Bush once said, at a time and a place of our choosing. And that's what happened with Dresden. That's number one. Number two, okay, so that I just wanted to. Correct. Correct to say, okay, you know what, Dresden, but not Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Every word of which I agree with Matt about, secondarily, the central point here was expressed last week in a column by Ezra Klein, not a supporter of the war, I don't think, or whatever what Israel is and how it works and what. Where the morality of all this is. And his line, I think we talked about this last week was Israel is stronger than Hamas, Israel is bigger than Hamas. Israel is the strongest country in the Middle east, it has the biggest military whatever. So its existence and its survival has never been in doubt. And therefore continuing the war in Gaza is unjust because the attack is disproportionate to the threat. That is simply not true. This was a seven front war staged, begun by an Iranian proxy with the theoretical construct of a seven front attack on Israel that would follow on October 8th. Hezbollah would hit, Yemen would hit, Iran would hit, the west bank would rise up and maybe Arab populaces inside Israel would rise up. There was a theoretical structure to the idea that Israel could be destroyed after October 7th. That did not go operational for all kinds of reasons, but was not a bad plan. If you think about it. If everything had worked like clockwork, if Hezbollah had fired 100,000 missiles on October 8, if Iran had decided to fire ballistic missiles on October 9, if Yemen had sent drones on October 10, and if the Palestinian population on the west bank had risen up on October 11, it is impossible to say what condition Israel would have been in. It didn't happen. But think about, what if it. Think about what if it had. Think about which was Hamas's plan. Hamas didn't have the plan. We're going to go in and have like a murder spree and then take some people back in and then go, nyah nyah, nya behind our fence.
- [60:06]
Christine Rosen
We had a glimpse of it, not so much from Hamas in those first two days where, yes, that Israel did not have control of the Gaza envelope. But then for months afterward, before the threat from Hezbollah was neutralized, when we had the evacuation of the Israelis living in the northern sector and people were gone from their homes for a year. People were kids, were not in school for a year. They had to move out of the range of Hezbollah rockets. And that's the point. That's why Israel's existence is always up for grabs. Because Israel's purpose is to be the national home of the Jewish people. And if you, you convince Jews that that national home is threatened and this national home cannot perform the basic function of a state which is to have a monopoly of the force and thus protecting its citizenry, then Israel is not viable. And you saw, you saw it, I mean, you saw it, as you say, on October 7th and into October 8th for a little bit, but then you saw it for a long time in the north.
- [61:22]
Matthew Continetti
Yeah.
- [61:22]
Christine Rosen
And so that's, this is all about Israel reasserting itself as a safe haven.
- [61:27]
Matthew Continetti
For the Jewish People re establishing deterrence, reestablishing what deterrence was about. Okay, yeah. One last.
- [61:35]
John Podhoretz
I was just going to add, because may he rest in peace, the great Tom Lehrer passed away this weekend. And I always remember. You remember one of the taglines and one of his song, wonderful satirical songs. When he's going through all the different religious faiths, he says, everybody hates the.
- [61:48]
Matthew Continetti
Jews, the Catholics, and Catholics hate the Protestants, and the Hindus hate the Muslims, and everybody hates the Jews. But during National Brotherhood Week. National Brotherhood Week.
- [61:59]
John Podhoretz
So Ezra Klein needs to go listen to that song for a few minutes before he writes.
- [62:03]
Matthew Continetti
Tummler was fantastic and it's amazing. His output was 37 songs.
- [62:07]
John Podhoretz
I know each one a gem.
- [62:09]
Matthew Continetti
Every single word of the. Okay, one. One final point about Ross Douthat, our great Catholic moralist. Being in the right does not have a time limit. Either Israel's war to defend itself is just or it's unjust. Wars don't suddenly turn unjust. Like the effort, the thing that makes the war moral doesn't end because you hit month 21. Either it is or it isn't. Now, it's possible that the tactics at any given moment in a war, which is the debate over Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Dresden, that the tactics may extend into evil, or that there are war crimes along the way. And God knows, the behavior of some Americans in the Pacific theater that we read about in the course of our lives were pretty savage, although what they were facing was a much greater savagery. But the essential morality of the war never changed. America was attacked by Japan, and the Western civilization was under attack. The entirety of civilization and the core civilization that gave birth to America in Britain was under attack by the Axis. And that never altered whatever happened. If there was an atrocity here, if there was an atrocity there, the overall morality was a real thing. And that is, if you want to be a moralist, you better own up to the idea that morality is not conditional. Because you know what that means, Ross Douth? That it means, you know, maybe that abortion is okay. You don't like abortion. You think abortion is evil and is murder. But you know what? Murdering this kid is okay, given X, Y or Z circumstance. That's not how morality works. You don't get to pull. You go get to pull the moral card and say, now that's immoral. Either things are right or they're wrong. Either things are just or they're unjust. It's not. It's not a spectrum. And if Israel was justified in fighting back against hamas on October 7, it is justified today by the fact that Hamas has not surrendered. And it is an act of, I would say, deep emotional weakness not to be able to stiffen your spine when the side that you're on comes under attack from people that you are often extraordinarily contemptuous of for their conditional morality when it comes to subjects matters that you care about the most. And that's just something that I thought would be obvious to people and seems not to be obvious to people. Matt, you have thankfully, a lighthearted recommendation for everybody before we go. Well.
- [65:25]
Christine Rosen
I find it to be lighthearted. Some of my fellow panelists say it's stressful. But I would like to recommend the Studio the Apple TV plus series by Evan Goldberg and his partner Seth Rogen. In the Studio, Seth Rogen plays a Hollywood executive named Matt Rennert who is thrust into being the studio head after his boss and mentor, played by Catherine o' Hara, is fired. And he accepts his job on the condition that his first major tentpole film be a adaptation of the Kool aid commercial featuring Mr. Kool Aid. And it's a 10 episode series. I've watched eight of the 10 episodes. I love it. I think it has a very dry sense of humor that I appreciate, but I also love all the Hollywood stuff. And it's not just kind of the, you know, glimpse inside the movie industry from people who have been connected with it pretty much their whole lives, but it's also this, the sets and locations and you get to see parts of LA that I had not really ever seen. Some of the homes featured are just incredible Louisiana masterpieces. The you get to see the move. I'm not sure where they film it, but you get to see the film lots and such. So I do recommend the Studio on.
- [67:01]
Matthew Continetti
Apple TV plus two things about the studio. One, my wife works in show business. We know a lot of show business people. I've never heard people say that anything was ever as accurate to the experience of working in the motion picture industry as the Studio is. In other words, it's a satire of how movies are made now that like all good satires, has no sacred cows. And so everybody is a shyster con artist out for himself. These great moral battles where Ron Howard, playing himself, has made a movie in which everybody knows that there is a scene that is deep to his traumatic past that has to be cut because it's terrible, it's 20 minutes long, it's gonna ruin the movie which otherwise tests really well and nobody can figure out how to tell Ron Ron Howard that He has to take this scene out. And every moment somebody chickens out and doesn't do it and won't do it and every. And the person says, okay, I'll do it. And then he's in front of Ron Howard and he can't do it. And who's going to tell Ron Howard? And Ron Howard is giving this brilliant performance as nasty Ron Howard, who you know is going to kill anybody who tries to touch. Touch his movie. And it's on and on.
- [68:39]
Christine Rosen
Like, the guest stars are great. Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard. You mentioned Anthony Mackie.
- [68:48]
John Podhoretz
Yeah, they also do. For the younger set. They might not understand that this is a radical return to something I miss, which is the long cut. I think one episode they do in a single shot.
- [68:58]
Christine Rosen
Oh, huge cuts.
- [69:00]
John Podhoretz
Makes me so pleased. I can. I feel kind of, even though some of I was joking with Matt, that there's an episode that caused me some secondhand anxiety. But. But watching it is sort of a pleasure in a way that I had forgotten because so many shows these days just, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.
- [69:16]
Christine Rosen
Also, I should mention the fantastic episode about casting the Kool Aid movie where the Hollywood executives get tripped. They get tripped up over their own wokeness. And it features a cameo by Ice Cube, which is also hilarious.
- [69:32]
Matthew Continetti
No, it really isn't a great show inspired piece of work. I will tell. I'm in LA as we're talking, and I will tell you one story from this weekend that lights, sort of like illuminates this and then we'll go. Which is so part of the story here is that Seth Rogen gets his dream. His dream is to become a studio executive, to run the studio. And it's a nightmare. The show is basically about how he is staving off humiliation and shame and, like, terrible, like, showing off his cowardice and his lowness and his. His acquisitiveness and all of this. And all he thinks all he wants to do is make really great movies the way they used to. And then every time he has to make a choice that would be for the great movie as opposed to something that is completely expedient, he, of course, chooses the expedient thing so that he isn't 86th. And the first seat you mentioned, his boss is Catherine o'. Hara. He. She's fired. He goes to see her, she bursts into tears as he opens the door. And, like, he says, I'm so sorry. And she says, you shouldn't have taken the job. And he's like, well, somebody else would have taken the job. And Then she's there throughout the series, kind of both to help him and bedevil him and kind of screw around with him. Okay, so Friday night here with. With my wife and I go out to dinner at a restaurant in Santa Monica with somebody in the industry. And it's a kind of show busy restaurant, so people keep coming over to the table to say hello to. To my wife and to the end to the other person in the industry. And then as we're leaving, we're in this weird semicircle of people as someone comes and says hi and talks about a show that they all worked on together. And there's this guy standing there very uncomfortably BALD Guy, around 55, like 6ft tall. Looks very uncomfortable. Finally, we're sort of introduced around and the five of us and shake hands. And this guy who seemed very much like, you know, he didn't know what was. He wanted to get out of there and wasn't enjoying this, was a former studio head who was now brought so low that he had to stand on the sidelines of a conversation between people two or three rungs below him in the show business hierarchy, because he's not in the hierarchy anymore. He's now just an independent producer and is hustling for work just like anybody else. And that guy that I met on Friday night is who Seth Rogen's character, Matt, is terrified of becoming at every single moment and will inevitably become because he will get fired and he will have to make a new living and figure out how to live. And that's part of the genius. And so I had this real.
- [72:37]
Christine Rosen
At the same time, Catherine Ohara's character seems much happier than Seth Rogen's character over the course of the series. So maybe there's hope yet for that manual on Friday.
- [72:47]
Matthew Continetti
Yes. Okay, so we'll be back tomorrow for Abe, Christine and Madame John. Pod Horiz. Keep the candle burning.