 To Keeping the World Company, I'm Jay Fiedel. We're going to talk about an update on Israel's war against Hamas. With Gene Rosenfeld and my co-host, Tim Appichella, we're going to follow up on our discussion last week because an awful lot has happened. Joe Biden went for a day, came back, tried to keep things cool. But today there's more rockets. There's more air attacks. There's a story of some drones and missiles in the Red Sea that were shot down by an American destroyer, possibly heading toward Israel, probably in my view heading toward Israel. And there's increased violence around the Arab world, possibly likely related to the narrative that was put out by Hamas after the hospital explosion. Even though it's pretty clear that the hospital explosion was by the Jihad, not by the Israelis. Okay, so let's get updated here. Tim, you go first. What are the significant events this week? Well, I'm going to go right to where your introduction went in quote Mark Twain. A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth is still putting on its shoes. And as before we came onto the show, Gene correctly said, it's all about the narrative. And if you can capture the narrative and keep throwing it down and repeating it, that becomes the new accepted truth, regardless of what the truth eventually becomes. And as of this morning, about 10 minutes ago, CNN just reported that U.S. intelligent agencies have confirmed that this missile that hit that hospital definitely was from the Islamic Jihad. I mean, it did not come from Israel. And so that's the truth. Yet now we have as a result of what I call suspect reporting and made assumptions. We had reporting that has canceled a critical meeting in the Middle East with Jordan and Egypt with President Biden. That meeting was canceled as a result of those stories and mission half accomplished. This trip there was half accomplished and it should have been 100% accomplished. So that's an update is that this this false narrative put out by Hamas that 432 people were killed. The estimate now is somewhere between 100 and 200 individuals still 100 and 200 too many. But it wasn't Israel that bombed a hospital and Israel wouldn't bomb a hospital on purpose. They just wouldn't do it. But there you go. There's the narrative and Gene's spot on again that it's not the truth is never the important part is how you can just repeat a lie and as an all good propaganda, repeat it and repeat it and get it out there first. And that's what happened in this case. Yeah, indeed, you know, and the number of people who are injured or killed in the hospital parking lot hospital itself was not blown up. It was only the parking lot, you know, keeps changing. And you know, it goes to the question of whether Hamas has ever been telling the truth about the number of people are inflating that number. I noticed also an Israeli analysis of the footage that they've been playing out that Hamas have been playing out to the world. And the Israeli analysis shows that a good part of that footage is made up. It is nothing to do with now or Gaza or the Israelis or Hamas. They just grabbed it elsewhere and been telling everyone that it reflects what happened in Gaza. Interesting, you know. Yeah, let me interrupt here. You know, we've talked about the role of the media for a lot of issues, particularly reporting on Donald Trump. At what point does the media have to look at their sources and say, to what degree of suspicion shall we hold before we put it on the front page or as a leading news item on CNN or MSNBC? I have no answer to that, but I hope it comes soon. In any event, let me go to Jane. And Jane, you mentioned before the show that it really didn't matter what actually happened at the hospital. What counts is the narrative. Can you talk about that? Well, first of all, it does matter that people were killed and injured and they were innocents and civilians. And it's very interesting to look at the traditions in Islam and Judaism over whether civilian casualties are acceptable under the rules of war. There are different rules of war in Islam and Judaism. So that's number one. Number two, what I meant by that is that the stories we tell ourselves motivate our behavior and our attitudes. And we're emotional beings before we're thinking beings. So our emotions rule at times of great crisis and drama. And so what happens in history then becomes a function of that rather than the logical information we can gather about any given thing. History takes place after the event. That's when we reflect and our emotions die down and there's a tranquil period in which we can take a reckoning and after wars, this is what happens. And sometimes we have courts and reconciliation committees and else that not during the time when things are happening. It's happening too fast. And as they say, the history of the event is told by the survivors. Yes and no. We have revisionists in history. That's history is sort of like science. In fact, what I do is a social science. It's qualitative analysis. And after the fact, somebody will write something, put a theory together. It'll sound very logical. And then somebody will investigate their sources and go back over it, get new sources and then come back with a revised idea in history. This is why we have Confederate flags disappearing from the American south because the narrative was that it was all states rights that caused the Civil War and freedom for the South. In fact, they've suppressed the true facts, which was it was about slavery that took a hundred years, almost not quite 75 years, let's say for that to become to replace the dominant narrative. So you see how fast a narrative and the stories we tell ourselves becomes more important than what we put together in a cool, logical fashion. You know, you were also mentioning before the show that, you know, the press doesn't want to talk about controversial things. Doesn't want to publish articles that talk about controversial things. The media doing on this, we're in day 13 now, and I'm wondering how you feel the media has done in terms of reporting the things the way they happen. Well, that's a big word, the media. I guess the media are the major outlets that people listen to on television, on their on their screens, which includes print media, New York Times, Washington Post, largely the Guardian in the in the Western world anyway. In general, they're governed by very strong canons of journalism. Their their objective is is to gather information. Information must be carefully confirmed by their own organizations. And NBC did a very good job of this, for example, when it came up with actual documents from dead Jihadi terrorists in Kaboots and found in their pockets, they found maps of schools and school cafeterias and residences. And in these Kaboots is where they were to go and take hostages. They were given these instructions in Arabic and it's very, very detailed. And they came out with that. And and that's what they do best. What they do worst is everyone is invested in this one way or another, emotionally and we don't realize the extent to which our preconceived notions determine what we select to present. Thirdly, we're going through a period in the United States where. Discussion is being censored. It's being censored on many different levels. I mean, the Republicans have a point when they talk about school campuses where certain discussions can't take place in class or people report on other people. That is chilling and Stanford, for example, has a whole new initiative now to increase the freedom of speech on campuses. So we have to be be careful because the media is very, very there's no more controversial subject than religion and war. And the media is also, in a sense, preventing some ideas from coming out because they're too controversial. I believe I'm pretty careful about what I write and I document it. And I sent in a couple little essays recently to our local newspaper, and which normally print, fortunately, I'm very happy with them. What I write and I didn't get any responses. And I figured, oh, my, you know, it's just too too hot a potato right now. That's too bad because you're a scholar. And what you write is going to be important for public consumption. In this climate, a laboratory scientist's conclusion is equivalent to an influencer's opinion. You know, the kind of knowledge and the epidemic of ignorance in our country is you can track it with the rise of the Internet. Where does religion play in this war now? You know, you've been writing about religion and terrorism for a long time. Where does it play? And you did write an article about that. Can you talk about it? Oh, the one on religious confrontations played by different rules? Yes. Yes. Okay. I went back to an experience I had in 1996 when I was called by the FBI to give them an interpretation of what a religious war is. What a hostile person said inside of a farmhouse that was ringed by FBI people and was holding, quote, hostages. And in that experience, which took place with two of my colleagues. After that, I wrote an analysis of the whole thing, but it ended peacefully and it ended peacefully because the FBI employed novel methods of resolving it and didn't listen to the clamor of the press and the population of go in there with guns blazing. That was an 81 day standoff. It was the Freeman standoff in Jordan, Montana. And it took what we did is we employed different, different things. And one of the most important things that the FBI did differently is that they gave the ultimate say in how to handle things on a daily basis to their negotiators, not to their hostage rescue team, which is military, basically paramilitary. So what happened at Waco is they gave they gave more power to the field commanders who reversed the agreement that they had made as to how they were going to handle things at the end and there was a bloodbath. And so scholars came in and the FBI consulted with scholars and eventually they did some self-analysis and they did things differently. So I took the principles that I learned from that and the analysis I wrote up and I applied them to this situation under a Jewish logical rule called Calva Homer, which means what obtains in the smaller case may obtain in the larger case. So you have a smaller case of a confrontation with a religious group in Montana. The principles that guide the peaceful resolution of that may have something to say about what applies in the larger case of a religious war in Israel. So I just wrote about that. And as a result of that, I said, and this happens to agree with Jewish rules of just war, by the way, that before you go in to lay siege to a city, you have to initiate negotiations. And we all know that the principles of negotiations are governed by what happens on the ground in any kind of a hot conflict. So it's probably best to open up an avenue for negotiations, even if the parties don't yet want to sit down. And I think that's what Lincoln did when he went to cutter because cutter is the logical place mediator in this before you go in with guns blazing. And the longer you take time, I said, is on Israel's side. The the power that's doing the sieging can determine how long it's going to take and what steps it's going to take. So that is in accord also with Jewish just war principles. And if you have a minute, I'll just lay out the four principles that I got from Margo Kitt's book on religion or war. And that is on laying siege to a city. You have to determine first, can it be captured without destroying it? Secondly, negotiations must precede any subject gating of the city to hunger, thirst or disease. So that's an important principle in this case. Three, you have to send emissaries of peace for three days before you lay siege. That would be equivalent to approaching cutter and saying, would you please talk to Hamas, some of whose leaders are actually in your country and see if we can establish at a track of negotiation parallel with the track of the military and for. A side to the city must be left open as an escape route. Now that you might apply that to Israel's attempt to tell the Palestinians, they have to go south. There are complicating factors of that that don't work too well. But those are the main four rules. There's nothing approaching that in Islam, I must say. So let me let me turn it to Tim for a minute and taking those four principles and, you know, everything we know, including what we know about the way Hamas operates and the fact of the massacre and the fact that they have a few hundred hostages. You think it would work? You know, actually, Jean makes a great point is that time does help because Israelis, Americans, we're we're emotional. Everyone's emotional. That's the human condition. And when Joe Biden said yesterday, he compared our experience with the 9-11 and he understood, you know, the need for justice, the need for immediate justice. But he also said in the same sentence almost is that mistakes were made as we as we dished out justice as a result of the 9-11 attacks. And I think that was a very controversial thing for him to do. But he did it and I'm glad he did it because it was to say to Israel and the world at the same time at the same podium microphone that let's not be hasty and let's not get into something that you're going to regret and can't extricate yourself out of. I think he's referring into, you know, boots on the ground invasion. So, yeah, I think it does work. And I think these four rules are very, very wise for us to keep in mind. And hopefully the American public also has that in mind as before we blunder into our next military conflict. Hmm. I'm sorry, Jean, I wanted to pose it to Tim, but I also want to pose it to you with those four rules work. And what gloss would you put on them? You know, what details would you modify to make it more likely they would work? Well, you know, I'm not alone who was here. Tom Friedman wrote a wonderful column a few days ago in the New York Times and other columnists have also echoed this. That going into Gaza and executing urban warfare is not something that should proceed without determining whether you can handle that and isolate the 30,000 Hamas members from the two million Gazans that are there. These people are hostages in a way because the rules that the jihadists play by are different even from the rules in classical Islam. They have their own rules based on a scholar named Ibn Tamiya and the 1200s that al-Qaeda privileges about. You know, they'll make martyrs of anybody. Martyrdom is is held in very high esteem. And they will basically not take cognizance of the impact on their own civilian population. Yes, what they're aiming for is the victory of their version of Islam, which is very puritanical over and above any other governing power or any other identity. And even those that are Muslims that side with the non-Muslims are considered fair game. They're just as bad. So it's a very stark polarization between those that are on your side and the rest of the world. So that the ends then justify the means, but martyrdom becomes a a desired, almost outcome. And the fact is that the people are the sea in which the terrorists are swimming. And I don't see how Israel can possibly go into Gaza City while there are one million civilians there, hold up. They have to take care of those people in the south first. So negotiation has to also take place. It's not impossible to negotiate with any entity if you take into consideration what their ultimate objectives are and you are willing to give up something that is valuable to them. Well, I remind you that Golden Maiaz had a lot of good quotes. And one of them was you can't negotiate for peace with someone who has committed to destroy and kill you. She said that way back when. And I really wonder if this the four rules will work to separate the 30,000 Hamas from the two million ordinary work a day, although there are not a lot of jobs in Gaza, the ordinary Palestinians in Gaza. That's pretty hard. And Hamas is not going to easily agree to that. So these negotiations would have to result in some kind of separation between those who are committed to killing Israelis and the ordinary people. And since Hamas has the guns and is already using them in many, many ways as human shields, why would Hamas ever negotiate a kindly result there? Because they've already set forth their conditions. They have conditions that are not acceptable to the Israelis, but they have conditions that is always a starting point. Secondly, what happens on the ground influences the negotiations. Negotiations should precede what happens on the ground. That's why the Israelis need to hold back. Not only that. Thirdly, if they go in under these conditions now, they will suffer higher casualties on their own forces because urban warfare is the absolute worst type of warfare. And military commanders will tell you that. Thirdly, they're going to lose the hostages because they will be. The consequence of a purely military attack initiative. So it has to be it has to go on a two track thing. And time is on the Israeli side. They're the ones that control the time factor. And we found in this smaller case of a religious confrontation, it made all the difference in the outcome. If you if you compare Waco and its consequence of Oklahoma City, which you can kind of extrapolate to the consequence on world opinion. Vis-a-vis Israel and these outbursts vis-a-vis Israel. If you compare that with the Freeman crisis and what happened there. Now, you can't always guarantee that these principles will work, but we have some evidence that they do work. Yeah, I'd like to add maybe a subset or a fourth point to Jean's previous points, and that is urban warfare. All we have to do is go back in history and look at the siege of Stalingrad and how the buildings that were decimated, which Israel is doing right now, became the perfect hiding place for all all the all the Russians and the Germans to hide behind. And so the casualty rate went exponentially higher because you didn't have an open playground of the field of battle. And so if Israel goes in with with ground troops, it's going to be a hard, bloody slog, and I think Israel will sustain a lot of casualties trying to root out Hamas fighters. Nobody will disagree with that. Nobody will disagree that it's not a bad idea to try mediation, to try negotiation before any further action. But query, Jean, what what are the conditions that Hamas laid out and how far are they from the reality of an agreeable solution? Well, they're very far from the reality of a solution, but that's how things always start out. I mean, we negotiated with the North Koreans to put a ceasefire in place for the Korean War. We negotiated with the Vietnamese. We've negotiated with some pretty hard individuals and whether you get a cessation of hostilities, whether you get a different objective from an end to the war, still you aim for a better outcome. And one of the conditions is for the release of the hostages. They want every single Palestinian hostage released seven thousand from Israeli jails. Yes, that's number one that they want. Secondly, they don't want to be rooted out of power. They want to be left alone and not punished for what they've done. Those are the two initial objectives and they threaten. And if that isn't the case, then they will involve their other allies in a multi-front war with Israel. The narrative will proceed right now. I said time is on the Israeli side, but time also governs the narrative that goes around the world and especially in the Middle East, which is a tinderbox, but we don't want to have explode. That has implications for what's happening with China and Russia, who in the meantime right now are meeting to for their outreach to the unaligned world to replace the American hegemony, the Pax Americana that's in the world. So things are happening on a global stage as well that can be affected by this hot war. I see these things as all connected. And that's another essay that I wrote. And it's also I've talked about it on this program. We have to bear in mind all the dots connect one way or another. And if you if a butterfly, you know, moves its wings here, it's going to result in some sort of calamity there. So, Tim, one of the things that that James suggested is is we have to look Israel has. However, this works out, let's assume for this discussion that the four points apply that there is a negotiated result along the lines that she has just described somewhere in the middle of the two positions that somehow would would result in a peace. But she has also suggested that Israel has to be very careful about the security of its borders, more careful perhaps than Netanyahu has been recently. So query, how in the world can Israel prevent this from happening again, assuming all that? How can it secure its borders in a way to avoid a repetition? Oh, boy, that's a tough question, Jay, because we all know that walls don't work, be it the wall trying to separate Mexico from southern United States, or in this case, an impenetrable wall between, you know, the Gaza area and Israel. Walls are they're permeable and there's ways of getting around it. And so that I don't have an answer to that because I think it takes, obviously it's going to take negotiations and an improvement of relations. And I don't see that happening anytime soon. It's going to take a regional effort to to calm the temperature down right now. And certainly to improve, you know, life in between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And that we're talking decades that have been attempted to do this. And it hasn't worked yet. We've seen some small improvements, you know, the the agreements with Egypt and the Sinai position and things like that in the past and the Camp David peace agreements. But it's it's going to take time and a military solution to a humanitarian crisis. I don't think it's going to always work and it's not working. Well, that's my long answer. My short answer is time is not on our side now. CNN just reported before we came on the air is that two of the hostages have been found dead. It was a family of five that were kidnapped and the granddaughter and the grandmother have been found murdered. And so now that you have reports of hostages dead in in the Gaza area, that just up the ante for Israel to take action. Also, they keep firing rockets into Israel from Gaza. Today they resumed in great numbers. So, Jean, but let me let me go back to, you know, the four points, the possibility of a negotiated result. You know, Israel's had, you know, what five wars since 1948 in each case it was attacked. And then there have been resolutions of those five wars one way or the other where there was a truce or some sort of peace. And in each case, what it gave up was Perik. What I mean is, for example, you give up Gaza and you're supposed to get peace. There was never peace. This is what is the third Gaza war already and only the past generation or so. So how can Israel protect its borders in the event of a negotiated peace, if at all? Before this attack by Jihadists on Israel, there was a process of normalization occurring in which there was an acceleration peaceful agreements between Israel and its neighbors. We were facing at that time an incipient agreement with Saudi Arabia, which represents all of the Sunni world in Islam, Islam is split right now between Shia and Sunni. We can exploit that for peace. Israel can exploit that for peace, because Saudi Arabia has concern about the growing power of Iran. So it makes sense, maybe, for Mohammed bin Salman to make peace with Israel. Secondly, and we need we need not lose sight of the of the what has happened that is good. Netanyahu is very unpopular right now in Israel. Gershengorenberg, who is an American who made Aliyah to Israel about 20 years ago, told me then that the election of Netanyahu was not a good sign because he's a hardliner and he supports the settlements in the West Bank is is under all kinds of pressures. And and this new generation is forming new terrorist groups to combat. It's a symmetrical warfare on the West Bank. And and Israel. You know, needs a new regime in power with new objectives and needs to reach out to partners for peace. The spirit of the Oslo agreements is still is still part of the Abrahamic Accords and normalization can proceed. But Jihadists want to disrupt that. That was a major major of terrorist objective. And these are not your ordinary, even original Hamas people. These are more like Al Qaeda. They have the support of Al Qaeda and Somalia in the Indian subcontinent right now. They are forming agreements with Al Qaeda. Shia and Sunni terrorist groups are getting together for the first time since ISIS. So it really is kind of a fractured situation where you have this terrorist against states like Jordan and Egypt and Saudi Arabia who want a peaceful solution for all of their people and also between the Gazans, who are many of them, are ordinary Muslims who don't subscribe to the extreme genocidal and martyrdom concepts of the Hamas militants that are holding them hostage as well as the Israelis hostage. It's a complicated situation. Yeah, how confident are you, Tim? This will be resolved in an amicable way. What's your level of optimism or pessimism? After Joe Biden's trip, which had positive implications for sure. And not only there, but here. What are your thoughts about the future? Well, I think on the short term, it's going to continue to get worse. I think in the near term, it will cool down. And in the long term, I hate to say it. I think it's just the quagmire we've been in for 50 some odd years in the Middle East. I had a question for Jean and this this alliance that was being forged between Saudi Arabia, the United States and Israel. To what degree, Jean, do you think that was a motivating factor for Hamas to attack Israel? Well, you know, the plans for this attack have been in place since May of 2021. The Abraham Accords have been proceeding, but I don't think at the time Hamas considered this, they were thinking of such wider causes for their terrorist attack. I think they were looking at the fact that the al-Aqsa mosque had been trespassed on again by hardline Israeli types. And anytime you mess with al-Aqsa mosque, you're going to have a blowback from Palestinians because it's a sacred issue, sacred ground and sacred issues. Sacrilege is different from just ordinary grievances and crimes, and it's like a trigger point. But I do think now and in the final planning stages, they are very, very concerned to disrupt the normalization process and the Abraham Accords and the Oslo peace process because they see that these states like Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt are putting the Palestinians on the back burner. And this is like a kid in a class who's being ignored and has grievance, wants to come to the attention of everybody's going to act out like a juvenile link went almost out of time. Jean, let me ask you this. What's your level of confidence that a solution, an amicable solution will be reached? What's your level of pessimism or optimism? Not only for the solution of this current conflagration, but also for the continuation of the state of Israel. I think one of the negotiating factors could be that the current Israeli government step down and a new government be put in place. Secondly, I think Israel has to take a hit. It was defeated by a surprise attack. It was caught on awareness and Netanyahu regime is being blamed for that. And I will remind you that even Golda Meir had to step down after the 1973 war. This normally takes place afterward, but it could be a negotiated one. Thirdly, Israel is going to have to give up prisoners. They're going to have to take the hit because they suffered a defeat. And fourthly, I don't think the IDF is going to stand down. I think they're going to go into Gaza at some point. And they're going to try to root out this jihadist factor in Hamas, because there's no going forward when the jihadists are in in control of two million people and holding them hostage while Israel is trying to contain the situation and is creating a situation that has blowback with Palestinians throughout the world, claiming that Israel is imprisoning them as an apartheid regime is doing all these things and bringing them up before the criminal court. So I think very, very pragmatic and tough things have to take place. And yes, the idea has to go in there at some point. But in the meantime, what's not being done by Israel, even more so than it should be done, it should be working with Egypt and Jordan to ameliorate the condition of the Gazans who are suffering, who have evacuated Gaza and at Gaza City. And they have to be very, very careful how they use force in this. It has to somehow be part of a larger process with other parties involved, including the United States for bringing peace back to the situation. I'll add a point, see if you agree. Israel has to get much sharper on public relations. They have to have, you know, privacy in their narrative, which they really haven't had, I think they operate on the assumption that people will read and think and find the truth. But it doesn't really work that way in today's world. You have to present the truth and you have to present it in all media, especially social media, and you have to keep on presenting it. Israel should learn to do that better. Don't you agree? Unfortunately, the time for reflection is after not during. Right now, Israel has to secure its borders, protect itself. It's still being attacked by rockets. And it's still suffering from very bad PR right now at the moment. And its hostages are at risk. Jean Rosenthal has two articles on our website. You can look them up and read them. And they're under articles and blogs in the top menu of our website. There'll be more, I hope, looking forward to that. Tim, you get the last chance. What are your closing thoughts? Closing thought is that Israel can stop the incoming missiles, regardless of where they're coming from. Hopefully, this does not expand from the other countries. These missiles came from Yemen this morning, that that stops and the four principles that Jean outlined are followed. And that leads to a cooling of tempers, so to speak, of emotions. And that Jean's right that this current administration probably should step down and allow a coalition government in Israel to replace it. And also, you consider the United States to try to hold on to Joe Biden because of the players on the platform. He is the best suited to deal with this on behalf of the United States. Thank you, Jean Rosenthal. Thank you, Tim Epichella. Aloha.