 Let's talk a little bit about, but the Wongaza, I've talked a lot about the Wongaza, obviously since it began, and there's a lot to say about it in a lot of different dimensions. But you know, there's a lot of discussion about, can this war be won? Has Israel won? Is Israel winning? What does winning look like? And there's a lot of skepticism about the ability to win. But I want to emphasize here that there seems to be always skepticism about the ability of the military forces of, call them the good guys, Israel certainly qualifies for that, to actually defeat evil. Military experts who appear on television, and maybe military experts in the military too, in the U.S., are really, really bad. They have, you know, surprisingly, shockingly, really, a very little understanding of warfare and winning and what it takes and who the enemy is and what the enemy is capable of and so on. You saw that in the first days of the Ukraine war, which we were told at the time would be over in two weeks, everybody on television, every single general, colonel, major, whatever, who appeared on television was just, you know, it was just a question of whether it would be one week, two weeks or three weeks, but Ukraine would collapse and the Russians would control Kiev. It was imminent. Before Israel went to Gaza, we were told over and over again how difficult this would be and indeed it was. This is, and I talked about this, the urban warfare, very, very, very dense population, tunnels, high rises, I mean, the potential, the massive potential, massive potential for huge Israeli casualties. Everybody said Israel is going to be crushed, you know, they can't defeat Hamas, Hamas says tunnels and they're going to ambush them and they're going to be everywhere and they're just going to kill Israelis and Israeli soldiers are going to die en masse and Israel will lose its commitment to the fight because of that. And every military expert, the majors, the generals, the colonels, they all said the same thing. Israel can't do it. And it's shocking to me. It's shocking to me. You'd think that, I don't know, these military experts would know something about the really pathetic nature of the military equipment that the Russians used in Ukraine. They'd know something about motivation and the role of motivation in warfare and how the Ukrainians were motivated and the Russians were not. You think they understand this kind of stuff. The doctrine, the ability of small units to destroy, you know, static strategy that just sends tanks, anyway, it was shocking, shocking. Then the failure of logistics. But again, this was not, shouldn't have been completely shocking to people. The Russian army did not do well in Afghanistan. The Russian army has not done well anyway. On the other hand, the Israeli army has done phenomenally well, at least on occasion. And they underestimate the motivation of the Israeli army. They underestimate the ability to use technology. They underestimate the quality of the Israeli military. Israelis don't send 18-year-olds without training into battle like the Russians do. Israelis are trained at least for a year, nine months, basic training, specialized training before they're sent into combat. Israelis value the lives of their soldiers. Israeli tanks, the Merkava, is better protected than any tank in the world. So even though Hamas had plenty of Russian anti-tank missiles, they did almost no damage to the tanks. Not only did they have particularly thick armor, but then they have overlaid. They have a anti-tank missile defense system, every single tank. The troop carrier that carries troops around doesn't have any openings. But inside, but it has layered into its, layered into the body of the vehicle, or cameras. And the troops inside have large screen TVs, and they have a 360 view of everything that is going on outside. They also, these troop movers, have the thickest steel of any troop movers in any army anywhere in the world. One way you can tell a country is a good country, is how it treats its own soldiers. A country that protects its own soldiers, a country that defends its own troops, a country that respects the lives of its own people, is basically a good country, a country that sends its soldiers to die, like what's going on in Ukraine, Russia, sending tens of thousands of soldiers into just battles where they're just being mowed down. Yes, they're making advances. With the cost of thousands of young men in more bad country, the U.S. is mixed. The U.S. values its troops, but it values the civilians on the other side even more. Israel suffers from their disease as well, although this time in Gaza, less so than in the past. Do you know that by American estimates, 315,000, 315,000 Russians have been killed or injured in the war in Ukraine, 315,000. I think that the Russian army at the beginning of the war was something under 500,000. The entire army, the size of it, was being basically incapacitated. It doesn't matter. They'll recruit more. They'll just send bodies and bodies and bodies. America has a volunteer army. It's a huge difference. So you volunteer, you know the rules of engagement, you volunteer. It's sad, but it's not the same as conscription and then send them as cannon fodder into the battle. How? Anyway, Israel has fought a war now for over 125 days. You know, it has lost about 200 soldiers during battles in the Gaza Strip. It has occupied space, which housed 2 million people. It is basically, it has killed well over 10,000 Hamas fighters. The ratio is, what, 500 or 1? I think that's right, 500, so that's 250,000. All right, 50 to 1, 50 to 1, 50 Hamas fighters for every one is really killed. A quarter of the Israeli killed have been killed by friendly fire because of the complexity of the mission. They are using technology like no other army in human history has used technology. They are destroying tunnels. They have an entire unit that is just, that they've been training for 20 years, 20 years this unit has existed, that is just specializes in fighting in tunnels, destroying tunnels. It's a unit of engineers. And you know, they have basically pushed Hamas, 10,000 by the way, is how many, they've killed Hamas. They've injured many more, many more of that. They've killed very few civilians when taken into account. They've destroyed Gaza. Gaza's basically been flattened. It appears that something like 50% of all the buildings in Gaza are not habitable anymore. They've inflicted real pain on the enemy, taken very few casualties, protected their own soldiers, used some of the best technology in the world. Israel is really the first country to have used drones extensively in warfare. It's been using drones for, you know, the first drones that Israel launched was 60 years ago. But in warfare, Israel was using drones in the 1980s, in the 70s and 80s. I remember Israel using drones in the Lebanon war in 1982. Israel is using smarter drones than any other army in the world and it is using drones again in a city environment, which is very unusual. And it has been more successful. I mean, and it surprises me because I thought they would wimp out. But Israel has been more successful in Gaza than any army that we have stats on has ever been in urban warfare. They've taken fewer casualties and destroyed more of the enemy than any other army ever has. And you've got to say that Israel has reestablished itself after a period, I think, of about 15 years, maybe 20 years of a lot of doubts about Israel's capabilities as a military. Israel has reestablished itself as a dominant military force, maybe the best trained, maybe the best competent military form, military in the world. I put them up against anybody. Now they don't have the numbers, but in terms of size. If you want to ask a question, I'll say it again, about anything. There is a super chat available, so stop asking me questions in the chat. Use the super chat for it. Do $2, $5, $20, $500, whatever you want, but the super chat feature exists for a reason. It exists for a reason. All right. So yes, so you have to say the success is amazing. You know, it's just important to note that this is the success of the military. It's the success of the soldiers on the ground. It is a strategic success of the Israeli military over many decades, building the kind of weapons systems that they will be able to use. It's the success of a military that emphasizes and places first and foremost the protection of its own troops. It's a very, very sophisticated military that has used technology in ways that other militaries are only starting to imagine its use. So the credit here goes to the strategizers, the generals, the trainers, but also to the troops themselves, the people on the ground who are fighting, who are obviously highly motivated, highly incentivized, and who are doing the work. You know, there was a story in Israel that one of the brigades was asked to basically evacuate with the intention of them being replaced with fresh troops, and they refused the order. They said, if we're evacuating Gaza, we're not evacuating Gaza. We haven't finished our job. We haven't finished the duty. But once they heard that no, it wasn't evacuation, it was a rotation, fresh troops coming in, they said, oh, okay, okay. But no, one of the reasons Netanyahu can be as tough as he is, which is unusual for him, is because if he was weak, he wouldn't survive. The military would not let him, the troops on the ground would not let him, the Israeli population would not let him. This is one case in which the Israeli population and the military are more, you know, radical if you will, more concerned about, you know, winning and more concerned about doing whatever is necessary in order to win than the politicians. Politicians are wimps standing by the sidelines, putting their finger into the wind and adjusting their views based on which way the wind is blowing, which is pretty typical of politicians. All right, so by the standard of victory, by the standard of pacifying the enemy, by the standard of how few troops on your own side get killed versus how many troops on the bad guy's side you kill, Israel has done a phenomenal job. And this war so far, at least, has been a success. It is not over. And of course, I think that it could have been done better. They could have been less regard for civilian casualties. They could have been even more aggressive. But given the international pressure, given the fact that if there had been a lot of more civilian casualties, even within Israel, there would have been pressure. I think the military has done an amazing, an amazing, amazing job. Now they have to finish it. And that means going into Rafa. It means going into a place that now has one and a half million people as compared to just a couple of hundred thousand before the war started. It means figuring out how to evacuate Rafa so that the Israeli troops can go in, evacuate in a way that does not allow Hamas to evacuate. But it only allows civilians so that Israel can capture, kill, destroy the remnants of Hamas in Rafa. It's going to be an interesting few weeks as the Biden administration ramps up pressure on Israel not to fight, ramps up pressure on Israel to fold, to give in. But the pressure from within Israel is intense. And I don't think Israel is going to compromise. I don't think Israel will fold. I don't think Israel will give in to the Biden administration or to the Egyptians or to the Europeans. I think they're actually going to go in and finish the job. The Egyptians, the latest reports are the Egyptians are building a tent city that could house a hundred thousand refugees on their side of the border. Maybe that is part of going to Rafa is evacuating a certain percentage of the population into the tent city, into Egypt. Egypt had been refusing to accept any Palestinians. It still claims to be refusing that, but this tent city is being built. So maybe they will, you know, is weakening and they will take some refugees. It's going to be an interesting few weeks. I know that very little attention in America is to what is going on in Gaza. But the fighting continues to be intense. Israel continues to push to the south towards Rafa and to the west towards the Mediterranean, where Israel has not completely cleared the territory on the west of the southwest of the Gaza Strip. But it continues to push forward and it continues to clean up the territory where it's at. Yesterday or the day before yesterday, Israel went into the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip inside the, the arrested and killed a number of Hamas members. We still haven't seen all the evidence they find within the tunnels underneath this particular hospital, but they're convinced that the hostages were there. They were also convinced, sadly, that once they went to the hospital, they would discover bodies of killed hostages. We will see if that materializes, we'll probably know, probably tomorrow, maybe, maybe on Sunday, maybe on Sunday, they will provide information about what was discovered within the hospital. All right, let's see. What else? What else about Israel? Can I tell you about the war? Yeah, I'll add this related. Israel has engaged in a tit for tat with Hezbollah in the north. Israel has seems to have intensified its response over the last few days. It is bombing more. It is killing more of Hezbollah leadership. There's a real possibility that if there's any kind of ceasefire or once Israel completes whatever it is doing in Gaza, that they will launch an offensive into Lebanon and kick Hezbollah to the north. We will see. I hope that is what happens. I think it's the only way to bring any kind of security and any kind of peace long term to north of Israel. Israel should actually occupy southern Lebanon. I think that is what it needs to do, given the impotence of the Lebanese army, of the Lebanese government, actually to impose its will on its own territory. If the Lebanese army can't keep Hezbollah out from the border area, maybe Israel can by occupying that part of Lebanon and making it peaceful. So at some point I expect there to be some increased intensity of battles in the north and potentially an Israeli invasion into Lebanon and a pushing the Hezbollah further north. You might have noticed Iran is much quieter. The Houthis are much quieter than they were. Even a little bit of American bombing of the Houthis, even a little bit of American bombing of Iranian-affiliated groups in Iraq goes a long way. Appeasement is the worst thing you can do. But if you go in and America has so much firepower, it's hard to even imagine the quantities of firepower. And even a little bit that they did, which was pretty pathetic in my view, and they never went after Iran. So it's a short-term cure, not a long-term cure, but short-term asylum. The Houthis, the last ship they attacked, they landed up attacking an Iranian ship. So one of their own, friendly fire. So with Iran and the United States, even America standing up a little bit to Iran has huge impact. Imagine, just imagine, if once in a while at some point the United States actually stood up to Iran, actually dealt with Iran, actually inflicted real damage on them. The Iranian regime would crumble. They would crumble. America could win at a very low cost. But that would require strategic foresight. That would require what Israel and America unfortunately lost for a while. Maybe Israel is regaining it. Maybe, maybe we'll see. We'll see if that actually happens.