 Battles in the Gaza Strip continue. If anything, they seem to get this week. In particular, the battles have been in particular fierce. One gets the impression that Hamas is kind of being put into a corner. They have no option but to come out and fight. We also saw hundreds of them surrender. Israel is taking a lot of prisoners of war, I guess you would call them. But Hamas is also fighting. So there is intense battles on the ground between Israeli troops and Hamas. Of course, because Hamas lives inside the tunnels, it is almost impossible to just get rid of them from the air. So this requires kind of face-to-face battles. And Israel has taken quite a few casualties. There have been quite a few traps set by Hamas for the Israelis. And some senior officers were killed earlier in the week. So it's been a tough week, but Israel continues to make progress. That is, in hundreds of Hamas fighters are being killed as well as, again, being taken prisoner. I assume this kind of fighting is going to continue. As I told you when this started, Gaza is a very dense place with homes and apartment buildings and structures built one on top of the other, one next to each other. It is very difficult to maneuver. It is very difficult to maneuver ground troops and tanks and everything else. Again, some of the flattening can be done from the air, but those tunnels are still there. Israel continues to destroy the tunnels, but there are hundreds of kilometers of tunnels, and it's going to be a while. So this war is not going to end quickly. It's going to take weeks, months, at least at some level. The Biden administration, of course, is putting huge pressure on Israel to slow things down, to spare civilians, which means stop fighting, to stop bombing from the air, and to turn this operation into more kind of a pinprick operation, which will only deal with Hamas elements when they were identified on a localized basis. But this is, of course, a way to guarantee that Israel does not achieve its aim, the aim of destroying Hamas completely. That requires a real war. And that requires the kind of action that Israel is engaged in here. But the Biden administration, while saying they completely support America, they're putting huge amount of pressure publicly in public statements. And personally, Sullivan was in Israel. Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor, was in Israel to put that pressure on personally. And what the US wants are narrow, targeted operations against Hamas leaders. What Israel wants is a complete destruction of the infrastructure, the leadership, and the troops. They want to destroy Hamas, not just to kill a few leaders and call it a day. But the United States doesn't get it. We'll get to some other areas where the United States doesn't get it. This administration is doing what it can to handcuff Israel. Israel committed to allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza from Egypt, into Gaza through Egypt. And it committed to 200 trucks a day. Again, I think a huge compromise that was unjustified. I've seen lots of videos that show that that aid has all been going to Hamas. Some of it goes to the population. Most of it goes to Hamas. Anyway, it turned out that because of the security concern that Israel reviews checks every truck that enters, it's very slow going. And the place where, in Egypt, where the transporting trucks into Gaza can only handle about 100 a day. As a consequence, in order to deal with that, and here you get Israel again compromising for the sake of the Biden administration, Israel has agreed to open up one of the checkpoints in its border between Gaza and Israel and for the trucks to go through there, or another 100 trucks a day, to go through there so it can fulfill its 200 trucks of aid a day. So Israel is now literally being a transport hub for aid into Gaza, basically aid to its enemy while it is fighting a war with that enemy. It really is. The absurdity and the craziness of all of this is harder phantom. It's almost science fiction-like. It is completely self-sacrificial. You're fighting a war. You're supplying troops. This is the way America fights wars. And by the way, it loses them and has lost almost every war it's fought this way, or has lost every single war it's fought this way. Israel has been adapting the American style of warfare for the last 30 years, and that continues here, again, under intense pressure from the Biden administration. One of the claims being made, and you'll see this in various newspapers, the claims that Israel doesn't care about the civilian population, is that about half the bombs that have been dropped in Gaza are what are called dumb bombs. They're not guided bombs. This is stupid. Israel does not use unguided bombs in that sense. So while the bombs are unguided, they're all guided, ultimately. What happens when they use the non-guided bombs, the less sophisticated bombs, the bombs that are not, that don't by themselves thread themselves through a window, is that pilots engage in a maneuver where they dive very low to the ground and release the bombs very low to the ground. The bombs hit their targets. Israel is not copper-bombing Gaza, and you could argue it should. But it's not copper-bombing Gaza, even when so-called dumb bombs are being used. They're being used as precision weapons and they're used with precision. Israel's been using guided bombs and threading bombs through windows and destroying particular places in very crowded urban areas for decades. Israel knows how to do this. Its Air Force is master at this. We did this in the early 1980s. That's how early, even before the US showed what guided bombs could do in its war with Iraq in 1991, Israel was already doing it in the 1980s. This is just horrible journalism to paint Israel as uncaring when Israel is probably fighting one of the most per bomb dropped, per, I don't know how you measure these things, per time spent. Fewer civilians are dying in Gaza than pretty much in any other war in an urban location. Certainly, this doesn't compare to what Assad did to his own people in Syria, or what the Russians did to Syrians in Syria, or what the Saudis did in Yemen, or what the US did in Iraq. This is probably, and again, on a capita basis, on a per bomb basis, the safest war ever for civilians. It's brutal. A lot of civilians are dying because Hamas is usually using them as human shields. And it's human shields. And there's just no way to avoid that. You want to stop this, stop Hamas. Of course, there is the question of whether all this effort should be engaged in. But that's for a different show. All right. Other aspects of the war, there have been more and more reports now that the Houthis, the Houthis are a Shiite faction in Yemen who have been fighting a civil war in Yemen with the Yemenite government, which is Sunni, and that government is backed by Saudi Arabia. The Houthis are funded and supported by Iran, and they've been fighting a civil war for control of Yemen for years now. At the beginning of the Israel-Palestinian War, hate calling it Israel-Hamas War, because Hamas is the government of Gaza. So it's the Israel-Gaza-Palestinian War. At the beginning of the Israel-War in Gaza, the Houthis launched a barrage of drones and missiles towards southern Israel. Basically, all of those drones and missiles have been either landed in the middle of nowhere or were shot down by a defense system, primarily Israeli, but US shot down a few of those. So they switched tactics. And the tactic now is to try to stop shipping along the Red Sea, not just shipping going to Israel, but shipping along the Red Sea. And they have attacked several boats and several ships, including over the last 72 hours, they've attacked a couple of ships. And as a consequence, they basically achieve what they set out to do. That is, the port of Elat in the southern tip of Israel is now basically empty. Boats are not traveling to the port. It boats from Asia who are either traveling to Israel or traveling to Europe are now not traveling through the Red Sea into the Suez Canal. They're going around the Horn of Africa, which adds three weeks and huge amounts of costs. So the Houthis have actually succeeded into a large extent shutting down shipping along one of the most crucial lanes of shipping in the world. That is, the lane that carries goods from Asia to Europe, to Africa, to Israel, but primarily to Europe. I suppose one of the ships attacked over the last 48 hours was a Chinese ship, so they're not even discriminating in terms of whose ships they were attacking. But they have managed to shut it down. The United States has a significant presence in the region. It has destroyers in the region. Of course, it has troops and an aircraft in the Gulf. It has troops and aircraft in Saudi Arabia and in Qatar and elsewhere in the region. It has an aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf. We'll get to that aircraft carrier in a minute. And the US is basically doing nothing. The US Navy, which is kind of one of its roles globally, has been secure shipping in the world. And in particular, it has been responsible of securing shipping around this part of the Indian Ocean and into the Red Sea and into the Persian Gulf. The American Navy is basically doing nothing. These are the Houdis. This is a pipsqueak, nothing military force that can't even win a war in Yemen. And this wouldn't require the US to put ground troops in Yemen. No, I mean, that would be horrible. All this would require is a steady bombardment of the Houdis from the air or from ships offshore. The United States has the capacity, cruise missiles, and others to basically wipe out the Houdis if they so chose. But at least to wipe out their military capabilities to shoot rockets at ships or at least make it costly for them. But the US is doing nothing so far. Now, they claim that they're coordinating a international presence of ships in this part of the world that would include, I guess, British and French and other, that will defend and protect the ships. But the reality is that only the United States can, and I think has the capabilities, to actually deploy significant force here. The United States, and to play defensive in terms of just trying to shoot these missiles out of the air. There's too much sea there to be able to protect every ship. You're just not going to be able to achieve this without actually bombing Yemen. Now, the idea is that the Navy ships in the area will cause the Houdis not to use force, but it's bizarre to just let them get away with it. It's just weird. Now, Israel itself has decided not to take military action at the moment against the Houdis, because it's busy in Gaza and does not want to distract the IDF. I don't believe them. This is not a big distraction for the IDF. It would not be the same people. And there's no, like, what is the risk? The Houdis are going to what? Are they going to come to Israel and attack it? I mean, Yemen is far away. There's absolutely no reason why Israel should not be launching planes and launching cruise missiles. And given the Houdis have declared war on Israel by attacking it directly with missiles and now attacking ships, there's no question in my mind that the only reason Israel is not attacking the Houdis is because the United States has told them to back off and has told them not to. So again, the US is just appeasing. It's just projecting weakness. This weakness and this appeasement will play out in direct attacks on the United States. It will play out in real damage for the United States. This will not end. Appeasement never ends nicely or pleasantly or well. This is going to really hood the United States. I mean, the US has an envoy in Yemen and the discussion and the debating. But this is pathetic. This is pathetic. The mightiest military force in all of human history standing down in front of the Houdis in the face of the Houdis of Yemen, even more pathetic. I don't know how much credence to give to this because this strikes me as Iranian propaganda. But there is a video out there claiming to be from the Iranian Republican God of footage that reportedly is showing the Iranian National Republican God directing US Navy out of the Persian Gulf. Now, I find that completely unlikely. The video depicts the Iranian Republican God dictating terms to the US Navy, resulting in the prompt landing of helicopters in the Eisenhower aircraft carrier and its subsequent exit from the region. I mean, if that's true, then it's all over, guys. Then might as well just convert to Islam and join the Islamic Revolution. I mean, if the United States wants to stand up to the dinky Iranian Republican God, I don't know what's left. My assumption here is, and maybe I'm wrong, but my assumption here is that the ships are leaving. If American ships are leaving the Persian Gulf, they're leaving in order to beef up presence around the Red Sea where the hoodies are. And maybe the US wants to put an aircraft carrier there so that it has the ability to short range, basically attack the hoodies. I mean, the video shows the Iranians in speedboats, in little boats, kind of intimidating the United States. But just the fact that news like that is reported, that that goes out there, that people take it seriously, and it's just, I can't express how absurd and ridiculous this American weakness and this projection of weakness actually is and how absurd and pathetic America looks and is given all of this. Finally, again, in kind of our Israel war update, seven people have been arrested in Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands over suspicions over a terrorist plot. You know, of the seven people, four highly likely to be affiliated with Hamas. The other three are also Islamists. All of them were planning terrorist attacks against Jewish targets within Europe. So again, Germany, Denmark, and Netherlands. And I expect to see a lot more stories like this. I'm sure there's no question about this, that internal security forces in Europe are on heightened alert for terrorist attacks against Jewish and Israeli sites. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw more arrests, including in places like Belgium, which has a high population of Muslims and many of them radicalized France and even the UK. So yes, I mean, Europe is going to become, at the margin, more dangerous, particularly for Jews and Israelis, to be traveling to. There's a lot of sympathy among radicalized or Islam-messized Muslims for Hamas. And whenever you see a terrorist organization like ISIS in its time be successful. What you see is a rise in terrorist attacks in places like Europe and the United States to kind of out of this sense of confidence that Islam is winning, God is on our side, Allah is with us. And it's only when they're defeated and thoroughly crushed that that goes away. So Israel needs to get on with it. And the faster Israel wins this, the faster Israel crushes and destroys Hamas, the safer Europe becomes, the safer America becomes. It works exactly the opposite. The tougher you are, the tougher you are, the less terrorism there is, the more appeasing you're seeing, the weaker you are, the more terrorism sky rockets. This is very well documented.