 Welcome back to Keeping the World Company. I'm Jay Fiedel, and we have here our esteemed guest, Gene Rosenfeld, and my co-host, Tim Epicella, for a discussion of balancing what happened on October 7th with all the protests around the world now we have. So welcome to the show, Gene, Tim. This is an important discussion. Let me start it off by playing a piece from the BBC. BBC has been criticized as other news, cable news networks for being partial in favor of the Palestinians and not even talking about what happened on October 7th. Here's a clip that I think is demonstrative. To call 43, basic rule, the parties to the conflict shall confine their operations to the destruction or weakening of the military resources of the adversary and she'll make a distinction between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives. So I come back. That's exactly what we're doing. That's exactly why we are allowing the civilians to evacuate before pounding them. We're doing the opposite. But it's not exactly what you're doing. No, wait, you asked the question, what would you let me answer? Go ahead. What Hamas, ISIS did is they entered roughly 30 communities. Whenever they can, they butchered babies. They burnt them alive. They pulled a baby out of pregnant moms and then beheaded the baby, beheaded the mom. They raped young girls. This is what we're dealing with. And with all due respect, I think that Geneva Conventions first and foremost tell a country, you need to defend yourself and we will defend ourselves. We're going out of our way. I know that last week, a hospital was fired by Islamic Jihad that fired a rocket on it and BBC said that it was Israel, but it wasn't Israel. And I understand that BBC has taken a side of on the Gazan side because all your questions are only about the Gazan civilians. That's not true. You haven't asked one question. That's not true. You haven't asked one question about those children from the very beginning of this interview. You just are asking me about them. Mr. Bennett, that is not true. But it seems that you cared little about our side. Oh, it is. Mr. Bennett, I began by talking about the hostages. And what I'm asking you about now is... I'm not talking about the hostages. I'm talking about the babies that were murdered and you keep on caring only about one side, but that is the BBC way. But let me tell you something. We're here protecting you. We don't need your protection. And if you think there's a balance here between two equal sides, then you are lacking moral clarity. And BBC, I must say, is lacking moral clarity. What you guys did last week, shape on you. It's hard to understand what's going on. There was an article in our arts this morning trying to understand why people in the liberal center of Manhattan in Washington Square Park, which is across the street from Alamata Law School, NYU, were there in great numbers tearing down photographs of the hostages. This is not the first time we've seen news articles about this. This particular article, which I'll post on our site, was really troubling in the sense that they tried to figure out why people would do that. There was no good answer. Let me shit, let me say. The other thing that happened in New York, which was national headlines, was that a bunch of Jewish students were barricaded in a room, some kind of hard-to-access room in Cooper Union a few blocks away from NYU, by people who were protesting in favor of Hamas. And they were really frightened. And the security people told them, you better lock yourself in that room. And for all I know, they're still there with the threats of violence. And finally, and I'm sure there's more in the paper, finally, there was an American Israeli artist who has been receiving death threats. Why? Because she's an Israeli. That's why. And it lives in the United States. So what we have is the liberal end gone wild. And it's happening in the United States in significant measure. And it's happening all over the world. So, Tim, let me ask you first your reaction to what's going on. Well, my reaction is it's a battle for hearts and minds of not only the American public, but for the world opinion. And I'm still trying to get over last week's reporting from the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times. They get an F minus in their reporting. If my opinion was irresponsible journalists to basically get their set of the other side of the story, their facts from a terrorist organization, an ISIS-like organization. And yet they're trying to get the true, fair representation of the other side's opinion of what's going on. I'm sorry. You don't interview terrorist organizations and put it on the front page of The New York Times. You don't put it on the first five minutes of your news cycle on MSNBC, CNN, and the like. F minus. Gee, let's talk about the newspaper for a minute. There was an article, what, by Mililani Trask. You responded and you sent your article then, which we will post also on our website. Can you talk about the exchange of articles? Well, on October 24th, the Star Advertiser published one side, one narrative, the Palestinian narrative, which was adopted by a Hawaiian activist, very well-known, Mililani Trask, who has been for Hawaiian independence, sovereignty, self-determination, which are good things for a long, long time. But unfortunately, what it shows me is that we have to combat one aspect of this narrative that is going around the world and stimulating so much misunderstanding and inflammatory reactions. I call this rhetorical inflammation, it's syndrome. And this particular part of the narrative is framing it as the colonialists and the colonized. Israel was not colonized by the Jews. The Jews are the indigenous people of the land, as well as the so-called Palestinians who are there. You know, the word Palestine, the province of Palestine, is a very late name that the Ottoman Empire gave to that part of its empire. That land has been called Judea, it's been called Israel, it's been called Canaan, it's been called the land of the Philistines over many years. But if you read the history, you will see that the Jews are the indigenous people of the land. They have never left the land. The last time they were deported on mass from the land was by the Ottomans before the British mandate after World War I, when the Allied powers took control under Britain's mandate from the League of Nations, who partitioned that part of the Ottoman Empire between two indigenous people of the land. They are now called the Palestinians and the Jews. These are not people who are even racially that distinct. They are genetic cousins. So to frame this as apartheid as if it were a racial divide is another falsehood that this narrative, this Palestinian narrative that's going around the world and basically empowered by Hamas, we have to just get back to the facts here. Yes. Well, what did your article cover? Was it that or was it more? Jay, my article, if you're referring to the letter I sent to the editor of the newspaper here in Hawaii, was only giving her a summary of what I did in my quick study of the history of this land. Yes, I've followed it all my life, and it's been a very long life. But I also went back and did a quick study and shared it with people that I felt would appreciate just getting some facts. You sent to Lucy Oda? I did, yes. She's been very good. She's been very kind. So we're here to balance, OK? We're here to balance or at least to examine the possibility of balance. On the one hand, you have what that Israeli was saying about the war crimes and atrocities, which sticks in your head, at least in mine. And on the other hand, you're talking about this worldwide anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic movement that is fed by the media, which Tim was talking about. At the same time, Hamas is still firing rockets into Israel. And they're trying to catch all parts of Israel, not just the South. They're trying to send them into Tel Aviv, even Haifa. And so what you have is a continuing effort by Hamas. Secondly, you have the misinformation, the misinformation about the event itself. Hamas published on what it had done minutes after it started doing it on October 7th. And of course, it was biased. And what strikes me, what is clear and what has been written is that they had this all worked out. They had their PR campaign worked out just the way they had their death squad arrangement worked out. Same thing. And it's part of the war. You have a two-front, three-front, four-front, maybe a five-front war, including the Red Sea. And it's still going on. You have the hostages there and something over 200 hostages that are still in captivity. So Hamas is alive and well. You can say that the Israelis are trying to root him out in small pieces, but the fact is that Joe Biden doesn't want him to do a ground war and he's made it clear and it has had an effect on Israeli strategy. But my question is, how do you balance this? It all seems so totally unfair. Tim? Well, Jay, remember in previous programs, we talked about warfare, kinetic and non-kinetic. We are now dealing with the phase of this war that is the non-kinetic. It's the, as I said, it's the reach for hearts and minds. It's the propaganda efforts from Hamas. And I didn't finish what I wanted to say when I on the opener was that did you hear any sense of apology or retraction or admission from CNN, BBC, MSNBC, that they got it wrong? They basically on the headlines accused Israel of hitting that hospital, killing 300. And they said, we did responsible journalism. We did our responsible reporting by contacting our source. We got our source. Well, what was the source? Spokespeople for Hamas. Give me a break. So here you have bad reporting that basically canceled a very crucial meeting of potential allies in the region, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. That meeting was canceled at the, you know, right in front of Joe Biden's eyes. He was basically holding his hat in hand going, now what do I do? So he went and talked to Israel, of course. But what a disaster that was and who would he have to thank for that? Irresponsible reporting from the major news agencies. So let me just stop right there because that is a crucial part of what today's topic is. And that is, where is the media going with this slanted flawed reporting? Now, do they have the right to talk about the, you know, the Palestinians trying to relieve the, you know, Northern Gaza? Yes, they have the right to talk about that. Do they have the right to talk about shortage of food and water? Yes, they have the right to talk about that. Do they have the right to talk about what the genesis is of those shortages? You bet they have the right to talk about it. Are they? Not as much. A couple of thoughts. As much as I admire the times, they did publish a kind of apology for bad reporting. I didn't see it. So I'm glad you're bringing it up. It was very soft. So, and, you know, first paragraph, I said what we were wrong and the rest of it was not an apology at all. Have you heard anything from CNN, BBC, MSNBC? Critics. I understand fired six journalists who they felt were being unfair on the subject yesterday. So, you know, there is some reaction to the reaction. I mean, there has been reaction just as your reaction. And this has had some effect, although I think it's really a minimal effect because if you look at the media today, you see pretty much the same thing. And what is really sad about this is that they know, we know, everyone knows that Hamas is lying. Hamas is lying about what happened in that parking lot outside the hospital. Hamas is lying about the number of people who were injured or killed. That number changed about five times. And any reasonable reporter would have looked for verification elsewhere and would have noticed that the number changed five times. They are not to be trusted. Yesterday, the Israelis pointed out that Hamas, according to their intelligence, has a million, not gallons, but kilos of fuel in reserve to light their tunnels, a million. And they're not sharing that with the hospitals or anybody. So when you hear about these preemies buying in the crib for lack of fuel, that is pretty much a crock because Hamas has the fuel. And so anyway, what we had is lies coming out. Yeah, go ahead. Let me just ask this quick question. To our memories, how often was ISIS consulted for their facts and their side of the story? Not much. I don't see this any different. I hate to say there's a comparison between Hamas and ISIS. They're one and the same, and particularly in the brutal attack of the Kibbutz. In some ways, they're worse than ISIS. Well, if they're gonna kill mothers and babies and all the things they've done, horrible, horrible, unspeakable things they've done, you think they're into telling the truth? Do you think there's a moral fiber there? Let me go to you, Gene. Well, what would prompt a journalist to even approach them for the facts? That's what I don't understand and I'm flummoxed by that thought. It's press releases, Tim. They release this information and the press, true to its capitalistic motivations, wants raw meat news. This happens in this country all the time. That's why Trump can always get on the headlines. Well, that's lazy journalism. It's a kind of journalism we haven't seen before. It's a journalism of fools is what it is. Well, it's lazy. They don't have time to check out the facts. Yeah. So, Gene, your thoughts about this, I know you would like to see a balance, but can there be a balance? You remember what Golda Maier said? And she said, you can never negotiate for peace with someone who is dedicated to killing you. I think it's just as true today as it was then. And I'll take it one step further with Tim as saying that what the Israelis are doing is part of defending themselves against a repetition of exactly the same thing. That's the way they see it. And indeed it would seem to me, and this is based on what the Palestinians and the Hamas and the Hezbollah have done in the past is you give them something, they demand something, you give them something and then you repeat the conduct. And so it would seem to me, and I'll make a wager on this if anybody's interested, that if you gave them a concession, they would happily take the concession, negotiate for something and then break the deal and repeat the evil conduct. So anyway, Gene, how do you feel about balancing this? Can it be balanced? First and foremost, we have to understand that this is a multi-front war and this is a hybrid war. And it is in a sense, even larger than a Middle East war. That one of the purposes of Hamas is to score propaganda points globally and to realign nations that are important nations like Turkey toward their cause. And it is also involving the United States. Iran's paramilitaries have been launching attacks on American bases in Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Joe Biden, it seems, and Tom Friedman, who writes for the New York Times, probably their most prestigious columnist, seem to agree that their approach toward Israel is to first and foremost, yes, affirm Israel's right to self-defense. And that is backed by UN and international accords as well as just more theology in Judaism and Christianity. So he affirms that Israel has the right to strike back and defend itself, but also he is holding the Israelis to the consideration and the promise of reigniting the two-state solution, not just normalization and putting the Palestinian state on the back burner, but offering a two-state solution. And in a sense, this is a good counter to the Palestinian Hamas narrative that's false and is going around the world right now because it gives the Palestinians something to hope for and they need that and the world needs that. In terms of moral clarity, there is no moral equivalence between the attack on the Israelis and what they carried out and how they did it. That is 13th century al-Qaeda theology and the Israeli response, which is based on Jewish just war and Christian just war concepts of evacuating civilians as much as possible, but defending because as the rabbi of Sinai temple in Los Angeles recently wrote in an important article, the right of self-defense is essential to all peoples who want self-determination. If you do not take out an enemy who is dedicated to the extinction of your own people, then you are doomed historically to have to repeat again and again war against that enemy who's going to be attacking you and carrying out its genocidal objective. And let's be honest here, Hamas is a genocidal entity. The Palestinian people, we have to separate from Hamas. Nevertheless, they are also hostages to the people who rule them as well. Yeah, but so is Hezbollah and so is Iran. They're all constitutionally dedicated to wiping out the state of Israel and every Jew. It's extraordinary how much hatred there is and this is spreading. And even today, I understand, Mr. Erdogan, our favorite leader of Turkey has come out in favor of Hamas. How about that potato? Tim, you wanted to say something. Well, it's more than just Iran's support against Israel. Today, the foreign minister of Iran announced that the U.S. will not escape the fires if Israel doesn't stop this aggressive campaign against Hamas. When I saw that on CNN today, I instantly thought, oh my God, he's threatening another 9-11. Well, let me ask Gene for a moment. Gene, there are those with all this insanity and it really is insanity. There is no justification. You can say that they're looking for a two-state solution, which I don't feel should be discussed at all until this war is over. I don't think you want to discuss these kinds of negotiations until the war is over. In any event, what we have here is insanity and people want to kill and they want to hate, including people in New York, which is a bastion of Jewish society. Unbelievable. And the protests are against the Jews, against the Israelis. It's unbelievable. But going beyond that, looking at the United States position, its role in the Middle East with its carriers and destroyers and weapons and the like, no boots on the ground, but there's definitely a presence by Biden's military. The problem I see is that this is spreading, despite our wishes to the contrary, despite our hopes and dreams that it will stop. It's not stopping. And it seems to be expanding every day. You look at the news and say, my God, there's something else happening here in some other country with some other crowd or people want to kill and so forth. Including this country. And I'm saying, Jean, are we in World War III now? Yes, I'm a historian, not a journalist. And I have said for some time that we are in a hybrid World War III or the run up to it. I analogized it to 1938, 1939, but this war will not be fought in the same way as World War II. It will be fought with different types of weapons. It will be fought as much in the PR and internet battlefields. Even more so, what we call information warfare is a force multiplier in this world today as technologically sophisticated as it is. There will be even less separation between civilians and military targets because the way in which what I consider to be the other side is fighting is utilizing terroristic tactics. We've just been through what's called the war on terror and some people have criticized that nomenclature that basically we've endured a fourth wave of religious terrorism in the modern world globally. And it is now subsiding into a run up to an intense polarization between Russia on the one hand and the United States on the other and their associated powers and allies and objectives. And as I've said before, Putin has very clear vision about dispossessing Western influence and utilizing the propaganda war as much as possible to stir up chaos within states like the United States and also throughout the world. And what is a bigger tinderbox in the world than the Middle East? For 70 some years, people have dreaded in the United States, statesmen have dreaded that the Middle East would flare up into a tinderbox. And what Joe Biden is doing by sending our carrier groups and our military people to that area is trying to prevent a wider war. Iran is not a significant world power militarily or economically, it is aligned with Russia. It is in a sense an arm of Russia right now but it is utilizing asymmetric warfare in the Middle East to create the kind of chaos and emotion that has set fire rhetorically to the world. And in terms of protests, as well as kinetically as Tim has noticed, the Israelis have been conducting low level kinetic warfare in Gaza. They have been targeting senior officials of Hamash. They have been trying to find out where the hostages are. They have been targeting Hamash and there have been over 16,000 civilian casualties. Now that number is not a firm number because we don't have good reporting from Gaza. Nevertheless, despite that, Israel has to defend itself. It didn't ask for this war. Let's focus, let's turn the cameras around media and let's focus on the people who started this war. Let's focus on Hamash and what they did and what they're doing now, hiding from their, from retribution and justice behind their own people, whose lives they do not value. So there is no moral equivalence and those in the United States in our intellectual centers like New York City, we have failed to educate a couple of generations about fascism and about the consequences of World War. Yes, I think we are in World War III, I do. And I think we have to not lose sight of Ukraine either because it's all part and parcel of the same thing. So Jean, I wanna ask you a completely unfair question, especially in view of your reluctance to be a prognosticator. But what should we do? How can we avoid the expansion of this, the increase in violence, the increase in players? What can we do? Let's say that we had the political will, which is not clear. Let's say we had political will and we could implement whatever plan we came up with. Let's assume that for this discussion, what should we do? First and foremost, journalists by and large in the major news outlets in the United States are very intelligent and well-educated people, but they need to do a quick study like I've been doing as well in being able to separate out the strands of the data that's coming across their desks and they need to get back to journalistic practice, which is when you hear both sides of the story, go to the window and see what it looks like outside. Go there, find out on the ground. They're doing that, it's very dangerous and it needs to be done. So the media has to reform itself and not take sides. And secondly, I think that the United States needs to get its political house in order. I don't think we can wait on this. I think we have to somehow, with our three branches of government, figure out how to, I don't know exactly the right word, I don't wanna say fight against, but prevent our own political terrorists from taking over control of our democratic system. And thirdly, I think that right now, the administration is doing what it can do, militarily, politically. And in terms of trying to prove in a wider war, of trying to get the real story out, in trying to create conditions for peace and a lasting settlement in Gaza. You know, it's like fires breaking out. In climate change, fires are now breaking out geopolitically. And I think this administration at least has a handle on things, has a view of what's going on, is aware of what Russia is doing, what Iran is doing, and how it is attempting to overthrow the Pax Americana that has kept the world relatively safe since World War II. And those of us who are alive during World War II, like Joe Biden, they know what a war is really like. This generation is shocked because this is the first time in Ukraine and Israel that they have seen what happened in World War II. The Holocaust, Dresden, Hiroshima, Normandy, Okinawa, these were incredible things. And they weren't that long ago. We can't ever, ever forget. Well, Putin has called his group together and they are now voting on withdrawing from all nuclear non-proliferation treaties, another threat. But I think we have to add that to the list of possible horrors, a nuclear war. This could turn into that, thanks to him. But let me ask you, I mean, you suggest an examination of how things were in World War II. It's my old reference to Charles Dickens and the Christmas Carol and the Ghost of Christmas Future. And what would you tell Scrooge? What would you tell him is going to happen if we don't address this? We'll just continue going down the same path where very, I hate to say effective, alliances where state powers like Iran are using era militaries and asymmetrical organizations to carry out their bidding in order to escape direct retribution from the International Consortium of Responsible Nations. As long as you're giving license to terrorists to carry out your bidding, there are going to be these terrible things. We forget too that Russia went into Chechnya and pacified it in two wars. But the reason why Russia did that is because they were suffering terrorist attacks in Russia. And we talk about China going after the Uyghurs and pacifying that whole population in ways that we find repellent. But there were beginning to be terrorist attacks in China. So terrorism has become a weapon of choice in a hybrid war. And our quote, what we've learned from our quote war on terrorism, we can also apply to these entities. And that takes in especially the message because terrorism is an act by a weaker group to send a message to a particular audience. It's the message that can make the difference on the battlefield as well. It's a force multiplier, as I said. Well, terrorism after a while, it gets to be ubiquitous. It gets to be chaos. It means the whole world is chaos. And I suggest we have to watch out for that because these indications are the winds of war, the winds of chaos. So, Tim, your thoughts about this, we have a few minutes left and I would like to know how you feel about it. Like we've seen that we're in a hybrid war, World War III. I don't know if we're in World War III. I don't know if I believe that quite yet, but I've certainly seen the move to it. And that is the alignment of allies. China, North Korea, Iran, excuse me, Belarus, Russia. You see this alignment of the autocratic states versus the alignment of democratic states and that tug-of-war. That's what I'm seeing here. I remember Vietnam, one of the rationales for Vietnam is you had to stop the domino theory of communism taking over in the Southeast Asia. That might be taking place now is the alignment of allies or access, whatever you want to call them. I also think my last thought is that before there's a full-fledged invasion of Gaza is that, as Gene said properly and rightly so, is that they're not wearing uniforms. How do you differentiate between an innocent citizen of Gaza versus a Hamas agent of chaos and terrorism? And there is no distinction. You can't tell. And so there is the problem. Unless Israel somehow has pre-identified a bad actor of Hamas, an invasion of ground troops isn't going to ferret them out. And so how do you cut the head off a terrorist organization when they can easily infiltrate back into a civilian population? Yeah, I want to mention a news clip I saw on one of those cable news channels. And it was, first, it was a story about how the Israelis were dropping leaflets into northern Gaza, in which there are still hundreds of thousands of people who hadn't moved south and don't have any intention to move south. And so they had some footage. It's interesting how many cameras, they got so many cameras in Gaza. It's like a PR machine. Everything that happens and some of it is acted out. Anyway, they had this guy and he picked up a leaflet from the ground that had just been dropped by an Israeli plane. And he said, no way. I mean, it was a translation. No way. We aren't leaving. This is our home. We hate the Jews. We're gonna stay here. And so, I mean, query, is he Hamas or is he Palestinian or is the line between the two of them blurred? I'm gonna give you the last word, Jean, if you don't mind. Give me a short summary of everything we have discussed. The PR war and what it means in terms of actual consequences. Is it getting worse? Are we managing chaos or is chaos managing us? Secondly, what can we do about it? And how can we combat it? Because it depends on rhetorical inflammation, which we are seeing in our own country with protests against Jews and in our opinion pages and also in our allies' interviews, such as the BBC, presenting only one side of the story or accepting information which is tainted because it comes from sources which are not reliable who have the intent of using information as a weapon where they are weaponizing information. Thirdly, what can we learn from our past that we can employ now? By making the proper analogy, and I'm not saying that World War III is a fact right now, I'm not saying that we could call it World War III, but we can analogize from World War II how we learned to fight back. And we can analogize from our recent World War on Terror how we can fight back against an asymmetrical enemy that has been utilized by nation-states to escape responsibility for what they have put in motion. Iran really is the supplier and supporter and planner for the so-called axis of resistance of four asymmetrical groups, Hamas, Hezbollah, the front for the liberation of Palestine and Palestinian Islamic jihad. And fourthly, we have to consider that this generation is being shocked for the first time by the wars in Ukraine and Israel because they are so brutal. And that brutality has been forgotten over the 70-some years since World War II. But we have to remember that we have to counter misinformation with information. We have to utilize our powerful weapons in a geopolitical way that says, before there's a kinetic war, says to Iran, for example, don't stand back, don't get involved. So it's a multi-front war. We have to keep that in mind. We have to not disentangle Ukraine from Israel and we might expect more outwars to break out in sensitive areas as well. It's not a pleasant scenario. It's a very threatening scenario. But I invite anyone who wants to look at the future to go back and study World War II because that was pretty threatening too and we did prevail. Okay, we got to go. Jean Rosenfeld, a scholar, historian, researcher, and Tim Epicella co-host and student of global affairs. Thank you so much, Jean, Tim. We'll see you next time. Aloha. Thank you.