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- [00:00]
Jon Podhoretz
Limu Emu and Doug. Here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us.
- [00:22]
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Jon Podhoretz
Hope for the best. Some preach and pain.
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Seth Mandel
Some die of thirst.
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Jon Podhoretz
No way of knowing which way it's going.
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Seth Mandel
Hope for the best, expect the worst.
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Jon Podhoretz
Welcome to the Commentary Magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, September 30, 2025. I am Jon Podhortz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me, as always, executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
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Abe Greenwald
Hi, John.
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Jon Podhoretz
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
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Seth Mandel
Hi, John.
- [01:12]
Jon Podhoretz
And social Commentary columnist Christine Rosen. Sorry I had a little brain glitch. Hi, Christine.
- [01:19]
Christine Rosen
Hi, John.
- [01:22]
Jon Podhoretz
Before we get to the mammoth news about the Trump plan to resolve the Gaza war, I was listening to Matt Condes and my favorite hate. Listen up first from NPR News. Of course, big story domestically today, aside from the coming looming shutdown of the government, which will apparently happen at 12:01 tomorrow morning or, you know, 12:01 tonight, however you want to slice it, is the fact that America's generals are all convening near Quantico, Virginia, for a meet with the secretary of defense. And the president is also going to show up. And this is apparently something that doesn't really happen. So it appears that the only real way to understand the Hegseth Trump idea, or Hexath's idea for convening the generals, basically, I think so he could make the case that he is the secretary of defense and they should listen to him. And particularly with a new quadrennial defense strategy coming out, is that in 1935, you see, Hitler called all the generals together and made them swear an oath to him and not to the republic. And so you know, Hitler, because this is not done. And it's really hard to make all the generals fly in to one place. You know, it's really, it's so difficult and the security is really an issue and liberals are insane. This is I'm not this is a clinical diagnosis based on my years of training as a psychologist, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist. They all need to go into a sanitarium because that it is not done. For all the generals to be convened in one place to have a one day meeting with the secretary of defense does not mean that there is anything wrong with convening all the generals to have a meetup with the Secretary of Defense and assuming that the reason that you're doing this is to. Is to create. Is to echo the Reichs Chancellorship and the rise of the Third Reich is to slip the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of psychosis, why hasn't it been done before? Oh, really? But you can't have generals all in the same. It's not safe.
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Christine Rosen
Well, okay, I'm going to play devil's advocate here. Whatever General Palooza is, is or is about, I don't have a lot of confidence that it was logistically necessary except as a power move on the part of Hegseth and possibly Trump there. And it's costing the taxpayer. That's the cost, is that to bring all these guys from around the globe into one place, which, by the way, is. Is inviting security risk, even though I'm quite confident that we can protect our own military leadership. You know, we know that this is not always a good thing to publicize. And so if it's obviously some show of the administration's power, will it be useful? Who knows? But what it's all about and why they have been talking about it, the press has been talking about it, suggests to me that there is some sort of dramatic moment. I think it's also going to be televised. Hegseth loves to see himself on television. So whether it actually results in something useful for the military, I will withhold judgment to see what General Palooza is all about. But I can't imagine that it's of strategic importance to every general who's had to stop what they're doing in whatever region of the world they're in and come here.
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Jon Podhoretz
I'm very happy to have you play devil's advocate, but I'm just. I'm so. But it's not.
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Christine Rosen
It's not the right day.
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Jon Podhoretz
Having a meeting with the Secretary of defense and then they're going to fly out. And nobody.
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Abe Greenwald
John. Secretary.
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Jon Podhoretz
Okay, Nobody ever did it before. But if Biden had done it, you know, if I. If Lloyd Austin, in between his secret hospitalizations had done it, or. I can't remember nobody criticized it for the same reason Leon Panetta had done it when he was Secretary of Defense or whatever, nobody would have said, boo. And you might have said, oh, this is a good idea. They can all get together and get to know each other or have a meeting together. Big deal. And it's all this paranoia about the coming of Hitler that is causing this. And yes, Hegseth is a showboat. And he's. He also, I think, believes with reason that he. That the general. The sort of. The generals think little of him, and that he's gonna, you know, march around and say, pay attention to me. I'm your boss. And that's. Whatever it is, maybe it's good, maybe it's bad. It's gonna cost the taxpayers money. It's a, you know, it's a show of power. Again, like, big deal. Big deal. That's all I'm saying. Big effing deal.
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Abe Greenwald
Abe, I like, in general that the US Is flexing some military muscle lately in one way or another. You know, I'm the dissenting voice who's fine with calling. Calling it the Department of War. We are taking a tougher stance, reportedly, on Venezuela. Trump has obviously backed Israel to the hilt, changed his tune in support of Ukraine. So for me, I'm just happy to see things moving in an administration regarding the military, an administration where the fear was they're gonna be totally isolationist and, you know, not interested in engagement. Not that this is engaging with the world. This is here. But either way, I'm sorry, there is another audience for all this stuff abroad, and I think they should take note. That's all. Even while Trump says, I make peace. I'm all about peace. This will be my eighth.
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Jon Podhoretz
Okay?
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Abe Greenwald
War resolved and the rest.
- [08:06]
Jon Podhoretz
Generally speaking, I think the point is that every thing that this administration does is thrown into a stew pot at the Atlantic and the Bulwark to provide more, you know, to provide more flavor chunks, or it's like the sourdough. Sourdough starter for the. We're about to become a fascist country. So meeting of all the generals in America does not in and of itself mean anything. And maybe it should happen, maybe it shouldn't happen. It is the presumption of evil. In other words, you presume evil and you're waiting for, you know, the jackboot to come down on the heads of the, you know, American people. And fine. So, you know, enjoy, enjoy. Because I just don't think most people. Does anybody in America know that the generals don't get together once a year like every other, you know, every other organization has the senior executives get together once a year to, like, do trust exercises and hit each other with encounter bats and have an ideation session with a whiteboard, you know, and they are.
- [09:27]
Seth Mandel
Now I'm picturing all the. Each of the generals falling backwards into the next general's arm like a.
- [09:34]
Jon Podhoretz
That's very important, like someone from the Air Force should fall back in a trust exercise with somebody from the Navy because they have, they're not going to catch each other.
- [09:42]
Christine Rosen
There's a lot of beef power rivalries among the generals too.
- [09:46]
Jon Podhoretz
This is now the other thing that we're hearing is that they're drafting the Quadrennial Defense Review, which means, which is the American military strategy that is issued by every administration. And that it's different, it has a different set of emphases. More turn to Asia, less emphasis on Europe. A couple of other things. And that there are arguments inside the administration between the joint, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, you know, General Raisin Cain and Hegseth and Elbridge Colby, who is apparently drafting the, you know, the QDR or the National Defense Strategy or whatever you want to call it. And that is as it should be. Like we revisit our defense strategy every four years for a reason. A, there are changes in administration and B, maybe the military posture that has been set up needs revision because the world has changed. And particularly, and you know, this is, I can't even believe I'm saying this, but if there is an idea of de emphasizing Europe to some extent to turn your attention south, right to the drug interdiction stuff or to China and all of that and to de emphasize Europe, part of that could be acceptable based on the response of Europe to stepping up to its own defense in relation to Ukraine. If Europe is actually doing this and taking a larger role, then we don't have to be as numerous and as central in the European theater, even if that's only symbolic. Now maybe I'm wrong and maybe I'll have my, my friends Fred Kagan and others tell me that I'm insane and all of that. But I'm just saying having the conversation about changing the defense posture of the United States is what happens at every think tank every day among people.
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Christine Rosen
Okay. But that's important because this comes in the context of a Defense Department that gutted its Office of Net Assessment, that gutted a lot of its long term strategic planners who had that sort of wealth of information and knowledge and could contribute to a discussion of if we're going to make a major pivot to Asia and change our posture towards Europe and you know, the threat of China. These folks have been studying this for decades and they completely eliminated those positions. So I, when Hegseth came in, came into the Pentagon, he destroyed a lot of that institutional knowledge on purpose, arguing that it was, you know, for all the reasons that that MAGA argues that institutions need reform by revolutionary means. That was the argument. Now, is it correct? We don't know. So it'll be very interesting to see that if Elbridge Colby is the one devising this plan, he's got a lot less strategic experience than some of the people who'd been there for a long time through multiple administrations, both Democratic and Republican. So I think healthy skepticism, as you say, is perfectly appropriate. But it should. We should understand Hegseth's changing administration policy within a larger context of some of the institutional knowledge that the Defense Department in particular has lost.
- [12:43]
Jon Podhoretz
Okay, but now to bite back at you. Lloyd Austin and the senior leadership under Biden said that their chief purpose in how they were going to administer and run the Pentagon was to make it a more equitable institution that would elevate people of color and LGBTQ people aspect.
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Christine Rosen
Of what they talk about 50 years, not just the previous woke. I agree with you on the woke stuff, totally.
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Jon Podhoretz
Okay. But I'm just saying that HEGSA was not operating in a vacuum. And the idea of changing America's defense posture when the posture of the previous administration, which pulled out of Afghanistan and refused to give either Israel or Ukraine the proper tools to fight the wars that we supported against enemies that we believed were unjustified and needed to be defeated because the Defense Department was obsessed with basically some form of numerical quota system that is illegal, without saying that they were obsessed with numerical quotas and creating a revolutionary condition inside the military to adopt, make it look more like America. Which is fine, but is Hegseth's entire career as a pundit was in contradistinction to this right. We have a military to fight and win things and not to, you know, enact social justice in a parallel to the US Population to the extent that we harm our readiness, as we certainly did when the army was segregated, or when it did not take sufficient advantage of the skills of women who might be able to do wonderful things in the military, that sort of thing, then that's one thing. But to do it, to do it just to do it, to reflect the, you know, progressive concerns of an increasingly ideologically driven Democratic Party. That's maybe part of the corrective that he's summoning them to talk about, but whatever. He's not my favorite cabinet secretary. And it may all be stupid and all of that, but like when I heard the 1935 Hitler meeting mentioned on an NPR broadcast this morning as the explanation for why Hegseth might be calling all the generals together, I Thought it was a moment to defend Hegseth a little bit, you know, and that's all. But look, maybe I'll, maybe I'm going to be marched into a camp in a year and I'll say, oh, I shouldn't have said that. Oops, I got it wrong. But I'm, I, you know what? I kind of doubt it. Sorry.
- [15:29]
Christine Rosen
I'm preparing the bunker, don't worry. Out in the hills of West Virginia. Okay, good.
- [15:32]
Jon Podhoretz
Okay, so, so that, that's, that's me now trumpet Netanyahu in the Oval Office. 20 point or 21 point? I can't tell. Some people say 20, some people say 21. It's just like year zero. Things like, are we counting policy point number one is zero and then going to 20, I don't know, it's not clear. 20 or 21 points to end the Gaza war. I'm going to read you a tweet from Peter Baker of the New York Times, the dean of the White House press corps, though I remember him when he was like a 21 year old whelp working at the Washington Times, which he will never tell you that he worked at the Washington Times because it's not good for his image, but that's where he, that's where he made his bones as a reporter. Trump casts his plan for a ceasefire in Gaza as a landmark deal to bring peace after two years of catastrophic violence. But in reality, it was more of an, like an ultimatum to Hamas. Right. Luke Ward Broadwater and Sean McCreesh. But in reality it was more like an ultimatum to Hamas. Yeah, Hamas has basically lost this war or is on the verge of losing this war, that it started through mass murder and rape and hostage kidnapping and you know how you end wars properly when people are on their back foot and are like bleeding to death and dying and being bombed, you give them ultimatums. He thinks this is an attack on Trump by saying, you see, he's not being fair to Hamas, not being fair as a negotiating partner to deliver Hamas an ultimatum. You know, like we, you know, we didn't negotiate fairly with. Let's go back to their favorite analogy, Hitler. Did we say, okay, come out of the bunker, let's have a nice meeting. Come on, we're all friends at the end of the day, we're all friends here. Okay. I just thought that it was an incredibly revealing tweet about where the mindset is of the world of people who have gone so morally sideways when it comes to the purpose, meaning and effect of this war.
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Seth Mandel
Yeah, I mean Hamas is treated as the way we treat Qatar. That's been the result of our sucking up to Qatar. The way we have is that they represent Hamas. And so Hamas and Qatar are sort of treated the same way. And so it's like, just like Israel shouldn't try to assassinate Hamas Nix in Qatar. I guess it also shouldn't try to assassinate Hamas Niks in Gaza or whatever. But that's been unfortunately one of the, one of the side effects of treating Cutter like, you know, this legitimate playmaker in the, on the world scene, when they don't know, they, they don't have the capacity to do this. This is watching. Watching Cutter has been like watching, you know, a seventh round quarterback start game one for the Jets. Like, welcome to the NFL. And you know, this is. This is that.
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Jon Podhoretz
Why not?
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Seth Mandel
They could use that.
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Jon Podhoretz
Yes, they could use the Jets. The jets could start you, Seth, and you would do better than Justin Fields.
- [19:09]
Seth Mandel
Couldn't do worse. Yeah, okay, but they, but they just, they have no. Like that. This, this world moves at a speed, right? Like, as everybody, every new rookie to the NFL says, the speed. This world of geopolitics moves at a speed that the Qatari simply can't play at. And so, you know, we've had a number of these, of these side effects of like, what is essentially trying to drag Qatar over the finish line, trying to prop them up as some kind of legitimate geopolitical actor, when the lesson of all this is really to arrange our foreign affairs in the future as best as possible to avoid Qatari influence as much as possible.
- [19:52]
Oliver Darcy
I'm Oliver Darcy.
- [19:54]
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Oliver Darcy
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Oliver Darcy
My understanding, having reported this, is that the Pentagon protested to CNN and tried to effectively exile the CNN producer. And when the moment calls for it, we've got some hot takes. I just think Brad Pitt, honestly, he kind of seems a little washed up.
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- [21:46]
Abe Greenwald
It's also about this insane laundering of Hamas in the media because to make the case that Israel is so brutal and so overreacting, you have to make Israel's enemy less monstrous than it is. So, you know, from everything from, you know, buying the Gaza Ministry of Health numbers to, you know, saying we shouldn't be strong arming Hamas at this point, there is this push to make Hamas seem much less of a monstrous threat than it is and always has been.
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Christine Rosen
There's also a poll, by the way.
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Jon Podhoretz
There'S a New York Times Sienna poll just to, just to follow up on that, there's a New York Times Siena poll out with very shocking numbers on American support for Israel and the Palestinians that show a sort of tie between whether you support Israel more, support the Palestinians more at around 35% each, and who's sympathetic and do you support more Israeli military aid and are the Israelis deliberately trying to kill Gaza civilians? But even that is an example of this whitewashing, because what you were doing there is alighting Hamas with the Palestinians. Israel, it is a war with Hamas. Hamas is the governing body. The, the sort of, the dictatorial government has been the dictatorial governing body of Gaza. You know, no election since 2006. So it is, it is not, you know, it has not been reaffirmed by popular mandate. It got Gaza into this war. Israel keeps saying it's at war with Hamas. And every time you say the Palestinians, which refers to the population of Arabs who live from the Mediterranean to actually the east bank of the Jordan in Jordan as, as though they entire are whom Israel is at war with, you are, you are offering a false polling choice to the American people. If the question were, do you support Israel or do you support Hamas? I have no doubt that, that while the numbers for Israel should, will not be what they should be and are very alarming and we need to talk about that too. That's how you do it. You say Israel's at war with the Palestinians. It is not at war with the Palestinians. It is at war with the group that is holding the hostages and has been firing the rockets. And that has cut, you know, and that has built the, the tunnel city and that is the dictatorial regime. Israel would not, you know, blow up a building in Gaza to save its life. It left Gaza, pulled out of Gaza 20 years ago this year so that it wouldn't have to bother with Gaza. They want to kill Gazans, it wants to ignore Gazans. That was the entire strategy of the disengagement. So I'm sorry I interrupted, Christine, I apologize.
- [24:50]
Christine Rosen
No, no, it's fine. This actually to that point a little bit further is that one of the things that was so interesting about this joint statement with Netanyahu and Trump was how once again, this is where Trump's weird savvy in foreign policy and it is savvy is important. It's not just Qatar. They also got Turkey on board with this, which was important. But they said the quiet part out loud. This is, this comes a week after all of these European countries very, with all their moral grandstanding about declaring Palestinian statehood. You have Netanyahu and Trump coming to a podium and just going, yeah, none of that matters. Here's what we're dealing with. And I think it's very important that Trump said a version of what you just said, John, which is that the Palestinian people are being, being punished by Hamas as well. And it's time for them to have a chance to rebuild. Now, of course there's going to be the, you know, he's the chairman of the board that's going to rebuild. But that's actually important. I mean, I think it's vain as always, but what it signals is really strong American support for whatever this post war effort is. If Hamas accepts this deal, there's an immediate cease fire. So that, that silences all the ridiculous claims of a genocide. So it's a very good deal for Israel. Yes, but it has a lot of the things that the so called international human rights community claims to be worried about. They're going to release a lot of terrorists from Israeli prisons and they're going to also release a lot of Gazans who had been detained since October 7th. So it is a deal. I mean, both sides get something. But I do. I really thought it was important that Trump said that about the distinction between the Palestinian people and Hamas and the deradicalization efforts that they say must happen to if this deals to go forward.
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Seth Mandel
At the same time, he did say they elected Hamas, which I thought was interesting. He said, you know, let's remember how this all began. And he said they elected Hamas and Hamas did this. And that was. I thought that was an interesting place to. To start because it was Trump basically saying, look, you can't have it both ways. You can't say that it. This is just, you know, Hamas is not the Palestinian people. And also that Israel is at war with the Palestinian people. You have to choose. You know, this is the norm. The normal conflict set up is here's a territory, it invaded another territory, and it turned out to have been an enormous mistake to have invaded that other territory. Gaza invaded Israel. Israel punished Gaza. That's what happened. And everybody throughout this war has taken such great pains to say, well, Gaza didn't invade Israel, Gaza didn't attack Israel. It's Hamas. As if anything happens in Gaza without Hamas's explicit say so. I mean, we saw, you know, this morning, the IDF is posting documents, you know, showing ties between the Greta Thunberg flotilla boat and Hamas. Nothing happens in Gaza without Hamas's say so. And I think that was Trump's way of saying, look, you know, you can't have it both ways. And it was a bit of realism.
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Jon Podhoretz
Look, Bibi Netanyahu, maybe both domestically and internationally, domestically in his own country and internationally, the most unfairly abused leader of our time. And I say that not because if people think that he did criminal things, which he didn't, in my view. So it's good that he's prosecuted or that he's bloodthirsty or he's, you know, he's a. He's a Machiavellian figure. It's terrible. And whatever he has said from the outset, give us back the hostages and leave Gaza and the war is over. That has been the Israeli position in this war from the minute that the war started. He basically is saying, I have no beef. I. We have no interest. We don't want to reoccupy Gaza. We don't want to control Gaza. All we want is military protection against, you know, weaponry from Gaza and. And militants from Gaza coming into our country, and we will do what is necessary to do that. This plan features essentially a buffer zone that Israel will control probably permanently, you know, to cutting in a mile or a mile and a half into Gaza from the Mediterranean in the south on the Egyptian border, all the way around the Strip to the Mediterranean again. So that is Israel's territorial demand is for a. It's not a demilitarized zone because they're going to have. They're going to have standing military there, but they don't want Gaza. Israel pulled out of Gaza. And he wants the hostages back and to. And to get. And to remove Hamas from power. Because there were six military, I mean, mini wars before this war, from the time Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. And this is going to be the last one. There was never going to be another one one way or the other. And that's all he ever wanted. And it is everybody else who has said, you should have a ceasefire, and then we'll figure something out. It's like, we can't just have a ceasefire because they're firing rocket. They'll fire, you know, okay, then they fire rockets us and we go back in. They have our people, they have a tunnel city. If they're not removed, they'll go back to being a threat to our people. They murdered 1200 and they injured 3500 people in a. In, you know, basically in a single morning. And this isn't going to happen again. This Trump plan is that announcement that Bibi made in, I don't know, November of 2023, about what would happen at the beginning of the war, the terms to end the war. So in that sense, we have now spent close to two years to get back to par and imagine a world in which Egypt and Turkey and Gutter and Indonesia and other, you know, other countries in the world had lined up behind what Trump lined up yesterday. Instead of doing the, well, let's see how this goes. This will be fun. Let's have worldwide anti Semitism and let's have, you know, Israel do things that will make it look terrible in the eyes of everybody and scream genocide and scream famine and all of that. That world in which the Arab, you know, in which sort of like the leading countries of the Arab world turned on Hamas and said, you better get the hell out of there. I know that Iran is now hurting and Iran was its proxy, and they would have then been at war with Iran would be a different world. Israel's view has not changed. Israel's stance has not changed. Israel's goal has not changed. What's happened here is that Trump has now said, this is The American goal we are now, our plan is immediate ceasefire accompanied by the release of all hostages, living or dead. And then three phases after that. Hamas's removal voluntarily or, you know, not, or, you know, getting paid a bounty or something like that. They'll release prisoners. Then, then Israel will move back to one position away from the cities, and then it will move back another step as these terms are met. And then finally there will be these, there will be this buffer zone. So in that sense, it's an amazing achievement that Trump has struck because this was always going to be where it went. And the question is whether the hostages survive. I mean, Israel. And what did Trump say? He said, do this or do your worst. There's no middle ground anymore. That's what the, that's what the Trump peace deal says. He said it time and again. He said, go do what you have to do to Bibi. But this was an explicit on paper thing that says, here's the deal, Hamas accepts this deal or we will not say a word of complaint about anything that you do from here on in. Everything.
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Seth Mandel
Well, that's why, you know, to go back to the, to the tweet that you talked about. That's why, why this is seen as Trump, you know, giving Hamas an ultimatum. The reason Trump is giving Hamas an ultimatum is because Trump has gone out of his way to resurrect a process of negotiation time and again when Hamas has scuttled it and he has given whatever remains of Hamas several chances now to stay alive and they keep not taking it. So, yeah, it's an ultimatum to Hamas because the entire process has been Trump taking time out of his schedule to achieve some sort of deal so that the war isn't over when the last Hamas nick is dead, or they could take their, you know, take some cash and leave and go to wherever they're going to go to, you know, and just release the hostages. And so, yeah, it's an ultimatum, but it's precisely because of that, because Trump keeps saying, look, let's have a deal. And then, you know, if there's no deal, the alternative to the deal is Israel doing what it has to do. And then a few months later, it's like, well, we should have a deal. And Trump says, well, fine, we can have a deal, but the alternative to a deal is Israel gets to do whatever it needs to do to Hamas, you know, repeatedly.
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Christine Rosen
Well, this also, this allows Netanyahu to say, we have a post war plan, which is something that they haven't been discussing recently. Because obviously the goal is to end the war. But the other thing that was interesting to me was the concession to. And I'm not sure how this practically would be implemented, but I was really interested in the de radicalization offer, saying, if you're a member of Hamas and you disarm, you get amnesty. That strikes me as A, unlikely for them to disarm, but. But B, if they did, how. What would that look like? Because we know from the history of how Hamas operates that it is happy to bide its time and rebuild. So that's why I think the other part of the agreement that's really important are some of the security, territorial security zones for Israel, so that Israel is never going to have to have everybody keeping opprobrium on them for just simply guarding its own border after October 7th.
- [35:28]
Jon Podhoretz
Can I translate the word amnesty for you? Okay.
- [35:34]
Christine Rosen
Please.
- [35:35]
Jon Podhoretz
Amnesty is you de radicalize and you leave. And we're not going to hunt you down and kill you after the war. That is actually what this is about, which is we're not going to activate the Munich Protocol, which is kill 11 Israeli athletes in Munich, and over the next three years, every single one of you will be dead. So Hamas is, we know who you are. You know, we know who the leadership is. They've had two years to map out and chart who everybody in Hamas is who's remaining. They eliminated all these people, which means they understand the org chart and they have stuff like that. And they're like, if you go away, there are two things we can do once the war is over. You can go find a villa, take whatever bribe money we might even pay you, and live there and be quiet. But if we pick up cell phone traffic that says you're thinking of flying to Amman and taking a car ride somewhere, we're going to blow you up. So that's your deal. The deal is you not only you get to live, that's the amnesty. And whether they hear it that way or not, that's what the amnesty means. There's no legal amnesty. And you could even, in theory, stay in Gaza because for all we know, they're going to put chips in everybody's body. I'm not joking. Like, you know, they're going to have gone into their, you know, cells and put a geo, you know, when they're sleeping and put a geochip in their. In their. In their neck. And they'll watch them forever. Or at least Hamas will think that they did that. Or the Hamas next who are released will think that they did that. I know that sounds Totalitarian and evil.
- [37:48]
Seth Mandel
And that only, only happens if they got the second Covid booster. Then they have the Bill Gates chip.
- [37:55]
Jon Podhoretz
No, we all have it. That's right. We all have it. We all have it from the second booster.
- [38:00]
Christine Rosen
Like Find My Friends.
- [38:01]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah, it's like a Find My Friends for Hamas. We're not. We want to know where you are so we know if you're going to class. You know, it's like parents, like helicopter parents. We want to know where you are. So we know if you're going to class or if you're in your dorm. But if you're in your dorm, you know we're going to like press the screeching alarm button on to make your iPhone go. So you know that we're watching. Only in this case, it will be a beeper and you will blow up. I'm just saying the beeper, exercise beeper. Munich and the Beepers both provide.
- [38:39]
Seth Mandel
I saw, I saw them, I saw them open for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
- [38:43]
Jon Podhoretz
Munich and the Beepers. Yeah, but I mean, I'm just saying the Munich and the Beepers, not only a top, you know, like an all time cover band, but that's the thing. Like what's happened in the, in the war, in the sort of the Middle Eastern Muslim world is Israel's got eyes everywhere. That's, that's the story. The story is they can see inside Iran, they can see inside Gadar, they can see inside Lebanon. And that's the ongoing security challenge for Israel is not to slacken, which is what happened with Gaza. But you're going to have to keep up this level of vigilance in watching to see that assuming the steel, some version of the steel goes through, that what happens never happens again or that they don't rise again in any way, shape or form. Of course, one of the reasons that we're doing this in phases or that there will be this arrangement in phases is so that Israel can have a relatively clear hand at blowing up the tunnel system, which it started to do, but is very complicated and, you know, dangerous. And particularly with the hostages still alive, you know, dangerous. But if they get the hostages out, then they just, they not only deal with this personnel question, but they also then destroy Hamas's infrastructure inside Israel that will not be so readily rebuilt.
- [40:14]
Abe Greenwald
So how do we think Hamas is going to respond?
- [40:19]
Jon Podhoretz
Well, okay, so my sister, just to give you an example, my sister who is a very, you know, is a, is what we call a right wing, but, you know, not thinks they'll say no, me too. Okay. I have a theory. There is no Hamas anymore. How about this theory that there's Hamas? I mean, there's like scattered members of Hamas and there's all. There's a. There's Hamas that's in Israeli jails, by the way, which is what's really important because they have all these people in jails. And as we know, the leadership of Hamas reconstituted itself and led to the building of the tunnel system and the war in 2023. Not based on indigenous Gazans rising up in the political ranks, you know, but, but from prisoner release, the Sinwar brothers after Yay Simar having been, you know, cured of his cancer by Israel. So there's them, right? So, so they could reconstitute Hamas once released. Although as I say, Israel will know where they are at all times for the rest of their lives. So, you know, I don't think that's really necessarily a threat. Israel has been moving the, the advance in Gaza has now been, or you know, sort of the military operation in Gaza has now been on for a couple of weeks with no resistance whatsoever. Now, I don't know how you resist a conventional military rolling through with tanks, with total air, you know, with total command of the air and everything else with this first class army. And after two years of destruction, wouldn't say that there's a lot of sign of Hamas's potency, except for the fact that every now and then somebody takes a collaborationist and breaks his leg or shoots him on camera or something like that for taking food. Maybe there is no Hamas anymore. Maybe the guys who are sitting, as Amit Seagal says in his newsletter today, who are in gutter, but are basically, according to Israeli intelligence, locked inside their.
- [42:39]
Abe Greenwald
Hotel rooms, but somebody has the hostages in Gaza.
- [42:46]
Seth Mandel
So the mostly Hamas is already getting messages, excuses, saying that they lost track of. We lost two so and so.
- [42:54]
Jon Podhoretz
Haven't you ever lost anything? They lost a couple. Theoretically, the hostages are being held in separate look fair. So I'm not saying there's no Hamas. So there are, you know, 20 Hamas nicks who are holding 20 hostages or, you know, or they farm them out to these, you know, apartments where they're living like slaves to, you know, to evil people saying there may be no Hamas in the sense that who's the boss of Hamas, we know who the people are that weren't killed and got her supposedly. But, you know, so maybe there is no deal because there's no one to make a deal with. And then the question just is gutter says there's a deal. Hamas says the war is over and they're going to release the hot and the hostages are being released. They may not have control over it, but, I mean, they can sort of like play that kind of game where they announce that they've worked their will. But let's say this brings up a.
- [44:10]
Seth Mandel
Couple interesting points, though. One is the lesson, I think, from that is that the Israeli strike in Qatar was actually something of a success, a strategic success. Right. Because Qatar is now reduced to putting those guys, locking those guys in a vault and saying, you know, say yes to the dress or get out or whatever. Qatar has skin in the game in a way it doesn't before because the deal says, well, if we sign a deal, we won't blow up Hamas Nixon Doha anymore. If we don't sign the deal. We haven't agreed, you know, not to. I mean, I know Bibi had this conversation in private with Craig. Right.
- [44:50]
Jon Podhoretz
No Trump. That's true, that's true. But this is important. You making a very important point. The idea is it failed because they weren't killed. But Gutter is a different place now than it was two weeks ago. And Gutter apparently is playing ball in a way that it hasn't before because it has agreed to the terms of this deal. So. Yes. So once again, you know, let's not be hasty and assume that aggressive action taken by Israel has positive consequences for Israeli security. Always. I mean, there are moments when there have been catastrophes. Like there was a failed assassination attempt on, I guess, Hezbollah leaders, I can't even remember, in a Jordanian hotel lobby in 2009. That was bad and like, it was internationally bad. And it set back various intelligence arrangements and stuff like that. So it's not automatically a positive.
- [45:57]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, it was against Mashal.
- [45:59]
Jon Podhoretz
It was against.
- [46:01]
Seth Mandel
It was a Hamas attempted assassination of the Hamas leader.
- [46:04]
Jon Podhoretz
And it failed. And obviously.
- [46:06]
Seth Mandel
And they had to give him the. The antidote. Right?
- [46:09]
Jon Podhoretz
Right. That's right. Yeah. It's such a crazy story that of course I forgot the details because I'm getting old. But. But I'm saying it's not that it always works, but in the last two years, Israel saying we, we are, you know, we feel ourselves to be relatively unlimited. And even, by the way, the apology to Gutter, if you read the readout of the phone call, is, we're sorry we killed your civilian and we'll never do it again. But we didn't want to kill the civilian anyway. But we appreciate and we're going to pay Restitution and we're really, really sorry that we killed your civilian. It's not like we violated international law, we did a terrible thing. We violated your sovereignty. It's an apology without being that much of an apology. And the fact that Qatar accepts it and thanked Trump and Trump thanked Gutter, and Bibi said he was thanking whatever itself along with the Erdogan agreement. Erdogan, of course, being an out and out enemy of Israel now for almost 20 years, saying he wants this over with, and Sisi in Egypt saying he wants it over with. The one thing that I will mention that is a little upsetting or to me is that there was no mention of the Houthis or doing something about the Houthis. Like, this is very focused on Hamas and Gaza, which is because Trump's saying, we're going to make peace in the Middle East. Like there hasn't been thousands of years. This fight has been going on thousands of years, and I'm ending it. Well, I mean, it's not the same fight and all that, but the fight won't be over if the Houthis continue to fire. You know, Israel is going to be at war with Yemen, with the Houthis, not with Yemen for the, for the foreseeable future. They're the last, like, extension of the Iranian military arm and they are firing, you know, rockets twice a week or drones or whatever. And so that was left out of the calculation. Okay, let's move on to Trump and what he said, Bibi said, President Trump, I've said it before. You are the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House. And then he said, and it's not even close. And is that ever true? Like, so haters can hate and lovers can love and people can say all this stuff I've never heard that was like, I, I mean, without the Department of Peace and all that stuff. You know, what Trump said could have been an article in Commentary. Seth could have written that article as a blog post on Sunday.
- [49:14]
Christine Rosen
Seth says, Trump's amanuensis is not what I had on my bingo card.
- [49:17]
Jon Podhoretz
I know. What I mean is he basically said Israel is in no way, in any way, shape or form at fault for anything that it has done. And he did not bring up famine, he did not bring up genocide. He did not say there's been too much killing. He didn't say Israel has gone too far. He did no balancing. Basically said Palestinians elected Hamas. Hamas attacked Israel. This has been going on too long. It's thousands of years. I'm ending it. Here's how it's ending. Bibi's a great guy. Sisi is a great guy. Erdogan is a great guy. The Prime Minister of Qatar is a great guy. The Emir of UAE is a great guy. Mohammed bin Salman is a great guy. But, you know, Bibi is really the greatest of the guys because he's the one who's standing next to me. I mean, it is an absolutely astounding thing to see.
- [50:25]
Seth Mandel
He also, the way he said it was, you know, he's a warrior, you know, and it's like he's. It's hard for him to. You know, he knows war, he knows how to fight and all this stuff, and now it's time for peace. But he's a warrior, and. And Israel's lucky to have him or whatever like that was.
- [50:41]
Jon Podhoretz
It is hilarious because BB Is not a warrior. That's a total misunderstanding of what BB Is. One of the reasons that Israel is in this situation that it's in is the Bibi was not enough of a warrior and. And did not do enough to prevent Hamas from becoming what Hamas became and was f. Turn you know, lost his focus, as did most of Israel. But that's the highest value that Trump can put on Bibi to do this. And what he also said, though, by.
- [51:17]
Abe Greenwald
The way, that Seth could have written, is that if Hamas doesn't accept this order, this offer, that he supports Israel doing whatever it has to do to end the war to win.
- [51:37]
Jon Podhoretz
I mean, he has said over the course of this second presidency, I'm worried about the food. You know, I'm worried about this. There's too much killing. That's what I'm saying. Very striking that there was literally no rhetoric used, except we want to end this war. And I think it's important. And again, I think Bibi is an incredibly maligned figure, and I just said that, you know, history will judge him for having been the leader of Israel for 15 years in which he did not take care of business with Hamas and thus force this war to happen. And that's going to be the stain on his legacy. But he doesn't want to be fighting this war. There is a psychosis among Americans who hate him and Israelis who hate him, who seem to think that he likes the war and it's good for him domestically and that he likes it, and he wants to kill Arabs, he wants to kill Palestinians, and he. He doesn't care about the hostages and all of that. And like I said, this is the deal that he wanted in November of 2023 that he may get in October of 2025. And you know, he accepted every single term, he has accepted every single thing that Americans from Biden to Trump have put before him. When they say don't do X, he doesn't do X. If it's Biden, he doesn't do it. If it's Trump, Trump says there needs to be more food. They work to set up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. If Biden says more food, they let the UN bring in the trucks that are then stolen for Hamas and they're still, you know, criticized for leading to starvation. Bibi has been, has spent two years conceding. It's like whatever you say, guys, like, you're our friends, you're our only friends. We need your weapons and we need your support and I'm here and that's real. It's not like he's doing this because he, you know, he's doing it because he understands tactically, strategically, like the alliance with the United States is the crucial thing for Israel, Israel's continued survival. And he has done what was asked of him and that did him absolutely no favors with the Biden people and has done him great favors with the Trump people.
- [54:27]
Christine Rosen
Well, and as aren't looking at him.
- [54:29]
Jon Podhoretz
And saying, oh, he's one of those intransigent Jew boys, you know, oh, these is the stiff necked who will rid me of these stiff necked. I hate, you know, every American president is like hated every Israeli prime minister except for Clinton and Rabin because it's like, why don't you just give the Palestinians estate? I can't do that. Oh, they're so impossible. Well, but this is so terrible anyway.
- [54:52]
Christine Rosen
This is where Netanyahu is more politician than warrior because he understood from the very beginning what he needed to do to, to get Trump to where Trump was yesterday. He understood Trump. He didn't try to antagonize him. He and some of the times when he seemed to be conceding to Trump's demands, he wasn't entirely conceding. He's very savvy and I think understanding even to the point of giving Trump his chairman of the board position in this deal. He understands what Trump needs for himself on the world stage in order for Netanyahu to get what he needs for Israel's safety and security. And I think that, that, I mean Biden was completely oblivious to that if he indeed was even thinking about it. And previous and Obama obviously had his own vision for what the world should look like and what the map should look like and couldn't listen. And I think that's. That, again, is it's not something that we should praise Trump for. It's something that Netanyahu deserves a great deal of credit for understanding from the very beginning.
- [55:53]
Seth Mandel
Well, I mean, both to an extent, but there's a parallel here, right, which is the last time Israel got out of Gaza, which is the Bush administration said, we understand, said to Ariel Sharon, we understand that in order for you to take this great leap, and also the Bush administration, in my view, smartly pushed Sharon to also include at least some token part of the west bank in a withdrawal to some extent, just to show that it was possible in the west bank, even if it's just, you know, symbolic. We understand that you need, you know, to take this step. You need guarantees, you need, people need to see that, you know, we understand that you have security concerns that are legitimate and therefore we recognize that it's not going to be the 67 borders. Exactly. That some of the, you know, settlements are not going to, you know, be, you know, evacuated and put back into Israel. That, that, that things change, that there are realities on the ground. And again, you know, 20 years later, the next time they're leaving Gaza, the thing that facilitates that happening is the American president saying, look, you know, Israel has legitimate security concerns. So rather than stand up at the UN and say, I recognize a Palestinian state and all that other nonsense, and rather than pull, you know, weapons from Israel in the middle of a war and rather than, you know, ban them from Eurovision contests and all the other stupid things that Europeans are doing, we're going to work with them and we're going to make them feel comfortable to leave Gaza 20 years apart. Same thing, same ends. You make the Israelis feel comfortable security wise, and you make them understand that we get it. We in America understand the enemy that you're facing and what needs to be done to keep you safe. And therefore, you know, and that's how things get done and any other way does not get them done.
- [57:56]
Christine Rosen
Well. And this, this is where, though, the one big difference between then and now in that 20 years is younger generation, American support for Israel and understanding of anti Semitism and acknowledgement of the risk that terrorist groups like Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas posed Israel security. And that's where I do think that, that the other thing Netanyahu did is release the text of the letter that Charlie Kirk sent him. And all of that was about American domestic risk. If a, if future generations of Americans don't understand that history that you just sketched, out, Seth. And even the longer history of the Jews in the Middle East. I mean, this is like, this is the Holy Land is holy for a reason. And it's shocking to me how often I come across a young person who thinks the history of Israel started in the, in, you know, just after World War II. So that is very concerning. And I know it was released in part to quiet the anti Semitic right wing that's been claiming Kirk had a last minute change of heart. But what he said in that letter, it struck me as exactly the conversation we were having in the immediate aftermath of October 7th and our concerns about the domestic situation with regard to continued support for Israel among future generations of Americans.
- [59:05]
Jon Podhoretz
I mean, there is this problem. I mentioned Biden and his team and their weird behavior, really from October through the election, 13 months later. And what we have now is Kamala Harris's book in which she said that they were out of touch on Gaza. And we have Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor to Biden, openly advocating an arms embargo against Israel. Now, there are two ways of looking at this, one of which is Israel has lost the Democrats and Israel's become too partisan and they're too associated with Republicans. And this started under Obama. And Netanyahu gave the speech in Congress attacking Obama's jcpoa and they were mad at him and they allowed a vote against Israel with the UN that bb, you know, antagonized Democrats and made Israel a partisan issue. And that has been the excuse of the liberals in the United States who are supporters of Israel who don't want to take a good hard look at the existential crisis facing them. And their liberalism in relation to the party that they most often support is. It's kind of Bibi's fault and it's the Republicans fault because they're all a bunch of crazy Christians who want to bring about the end times and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. That is sort of, I. This is no longer if it were tenable, which I don't think it was, I think it was arguable that BB, you know, accepted the outstretched hand of Republicans in 2015 in a way that was maybe injurious to Israel in ways or led the, you know, led to this helped push this boulder downhill, this sort of lessening support for Israel. But now it's just simply the fact that it's something like 75% of Democrats favor the Palestinians over Israel in this poll. And now it just is the case that it is going to be extremely difficult to reconcile American social liberalism with, with Zionism. And I don't know where this goes, and it's existentially very alarming to me. But, and I wish it were not the case, but it is. And, and, you know, people who are unwilling to understand that what Trump did yesterday was a historic moment in the American, the relationship between the United States and Israel, even people who loathe and hate Trump and maybe think that he is doing what he's doing with Pete Hegseth to bring about, you know, a Nazi regime. Though it's kind of weird that the Nazi regime is the most pro Israel regime on earth. Another, by the way, not to be totally, you know, senile, but if you were watching the press conference yesterday, Vice President Vance was sitting, Ron Dermer was on the left aisle in the front row. That's BB's amanuensis. And Vance was opposite him, like, was right next to him, but with the aisle in between them. And they were kidding around. Vance and Dermer were kidding around. And Trump kept alluding to Vance. We have a great team here, Marco and JD and we're all on the same page and everybody knows what's important. And I don't know the extent to which Trump understands that Vance's office and the people that Vance kind of represents in small bore inside the White House are as hostile to Israel as they are. And that, of course, I think he does know that Tucker Carlson's son works on Vance's staff and that Vance is the one who keeps trying to mediate deals between Carlson and Trump and keep their friendship going. And it was almost as though he was pointing to Vance and saying, do not get in the middle here. I don't want to hear a word out of your people about how, you know, this is bad. You know, I am. This is very important to me. You're on our team. Maybe even go sell this to your bunch of psycho, anti Semitic pieces of shit that you, you know, cater to and speak to on the phone, you know, in between their doses of Thorazine, like, don't go there anymore.
- [64:09]
Christine Rosen
He won't sell this to those people. He's biding his time for his own electoral ambitions in the future where he is going to rely on those very same people to rally troops for him.
- [64:19]
Seth Mandel
But he'll sell it. He'll sell it on Twitter. He will tweet something about this on Twitter, and therefore he will be written, you know, he will have written something publicly in his name backing the deal, and that will be enough for Trump for now to show, yes, everybody said so. At the time that, look, they all said this is a great deal.
- [64:39]
Jon Podhoretz
Or he could just not, you know, he would just basically go to ground on this matter and not play. Which is also what appears to have happened with Ukraine in the last two weeks. I'm not hearing a lot of screaming about, about Ukraine since Trump said, you know, Zelenskyy is brave and, you know, maybe they should win. You know, these political realities change based on certain kinds of circumstances. And I, I, you know, I just. Anyway, it's a remarkable day. Abe thinks. Okay, so a quick round. Hamas will say no, right?
- [65:19]
Abe Greenwald
Correct.
- [65:20]
Jon Podhoretz
Okay, Seth, what do you think?
- [65:23]
Seth Mandel
Yeah, I think Hamas will probably say no, but I think it's put into place in the stages that it is because it's already essentially being implemented.
- [65:33]
Jon Podhoretz
So that means the hostages come home. That's the. Because that's the. I mean, that, that's, that's move number one according to the deal. Hostages come home, cease fire. It's not ceasefire, then hostages. It's hostages, Then ceasefire, ceasefire. 72 hours after the hostages is a return. So I have no idea. I've literally, I'm not even going to. I mean, Christine, you can guess. I have no idea.
- [66:06]
Christine Rosen
I mean, the hostages are their only leverage. That's it. That's all they have. I doubt. And they are a death cult. I do not see them agreeing to anything that looks like any kind of disarmament or surrender, unfortunately, which means that the lives of the hostages remain seriously at risk. But it is a sign that that debate about allowing them to continue and release hostage here and there and this going on and on and on, that period has ended with this announcement, I think. But I do. I have nothing but terror and fear for the fate of those hostages.
- [66:40]
Jon Podhoretz
One final thought here in relation to this is that if you start things in motion, one of the things that the Israelis need is better intelligence on where the hostages are. And so even by making this an issue that Hamas has to deal with, the possibilities that communications will start flowing. As you know, Hamas said we need a ceasefire because we lost two of the hostages. We don't know if they lost two of the hostages or what. That's ridiculous. But if it leads to people having to pull out a cell phone and send a text message that Israel, we now know Israel can control all the cell phones in Gaza since they forced them to start broadcasting Bibi's speech from the UN last week, which is another fantastic. Like out of a weird dystopian spy novel.
- [67:43]
Seth Mandel
One of, One of my. Not to interrupt, but One of my favorite stories anybody ever told me was a journalist who was with the Wall Street Journal Company and with Dow Jones and covering Kissinger's shuttle diplomacy once told me that they came, they would, you know, there was no email, obviously, so they would come back to their hotel rooms, they would call the newsroom and a night desk editor would literally transcribe the article over the phone. And he got on the phone to, you know, make his call for that day, and he got into the second sentence of his article and a voice came on the line said, you can't write that.
- [68:18]
Jon Podhoretz
Yeah, you can't say that. So Israeli, actually, that's the funny part. Or American, I don't know. But there is that. Hilarious, you know. What are you doing? You know, we on the censorship. Don't say that to your editor. What is the matter with you? Anyway, we'll be back tomorrow. Just reminder, no, no show on Thursday. For Yom Kippur. And for Abe, Seth and Christine, I'm John Pot. Horace, keep the candle bur.