Episode 298: Eylon Levy: Debunking the Most Common Israeli Conflict Misconceptions

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins.

You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Gresham.

Welcome to Habits and Hustle.

We have Elon Levy on the podcast today, who is

basically you're the Israeli government spokesperson.

Is that an official title that I can say that you have?

One of a team.

I'm an Israeli government spokesman.

I'm joined by a few other veterans who are putting up a good fight.

Thank you for being here, by the way.

I was actually very excited to speak with you.

I know you've done 400 interviews already today, so it's very late there.

It's 10 p.m.

there.

So I appreciate you being here and talking to me and my audience about the catastrophe that's happening where you are in Israel.

Before we get into all the nitty-gritty of all the things I want to talk to you about, I find it very interesting that October 6th, like you weren't even doing this job.

You weren't a spokesperson.

You weren't in media necessarily.

What were you doing before everything happened on October 7th?

On October 7th, I was a private citizen.

I had a background in media.

I worked as a news anchor in Israeli public television and I-24 News as well, both anchoring in English.

For the past two years, I was also the international media advisor to the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, a position I finished last spring.

But on the 7th of October, I was a private citizen.

Couldn't believe that the earthquake and the cataclysm that we experienced with that massacre would have me a week later on international television and radio making the case for Israel and trying to fight our corner on the airwaves as we deal with the aftermath of that horrific massacre on October 7th and pushed ahead with our campaign to destroy Hamas in response to that massacre so that it can never hurt our people again.

So

how did you become this like the face of?

I think that everyone now pretty much recognizes, especially if you're a Jewish person, recognizes your face as the, maybe you don't say you're the official spokesperson, but in all intents and purposes, that's that's what I think of you as, and most people would.

How did you become that person?

Is it because you were an anchor for, like you said, some of these broadcast stations in Israel?

Or who kind of put this upon you to be this guy?

Yeah, a very surreal twist in the story, especially considering everything that Israel had been through over the past year.

October 7th, I woke up like everyone else in the country to the sound of rocket sirens at 7.30 in the morning, having to run down three stories underground with all of our neighbors because suddenly we were under attack and hamas was firing rockets from the gaza strip and for the first 24 48 hours the whole country was still in shock literally in shock trying to digest what had happened and come to terms with the extent of those atrocities and then very quickly israeli society came together and mobilized and people started doing whatever they could donating food and socks and toothpaste for soldiers going to deliver food parcels to patients in hospitals And Israeli society is incredibly resilient.

It bounces back very quickly because it's used to dealing with big traumas.

This was a huge trauma and it bounced back in a big way.

And so everyone found themselves contributing in whatever way they could.

And with my own background as a TV news anchor and as a former presidential advisor as well, I said, right, we have to make the case for Israel.

We have to explain what is happening.

So I set up this little mini studio at home, put out a tweet saying, I'm available for TV interviews.

I used to work for the president.

Interview me.

And for about a week, I found myself giving interviews to news stations around the world, mostly in India.

They're very interested in our story here.

And then about a week later, Israel is a very small country.

Everyone knows everyone.

So through connections, an offer reaches me whether I want to get involved officially.

with the prime minister's office making the case for Israel.

Everything here, very much on the fly.

The interview process went, do you speak English?

Yes.

Do you have a tie?

Yes.

Okay, you're a government spokesman now.

Good luck.

No, I'm exaggerating.

I'm exaggerating.

No, you're not.

But the following day, I already find myself on television with a stripe saying Israeli government spokesman, which was a surreal twist.

But here we are.

There was an Israel before October 7th.

There's an Israel after October 7th.

And I'm very glad that as a society, given all the polarization and division that we had over the last year, people were able to drop everything and say, now we are dealing with a genuinely existential crisis.

This is not the time to argue.

It's the time to come together, to close ranks, and to defeat the evil terrorists who just perpetrated the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, took 240 hostages into Gaza, and are telling us they want to do it all over again.

I mean, I mean, there's so much to unpack there.

Are you surprised?

Because you've been speaking to so many different outlets.

You said India is one of them that's been very interested in this, but you have been speaking to everyone around the world.

Have you been surprised about how people have actually responded in respect to October 7th?

I mean, if to be honest with you, I actually have been pretty, pretty shocked at the What shocked you?

Well, I'll tell you what shocked me.

I think the level of anti-Semitism, a lot of the mainstream media not kind of showing the reality of what's happening, they have not been very pro-Israel.

It's been shocking to me, the amount of slants and propaganda.

And i wondered if it was shocking to you or you kind of are not as surprised as most of i guess me and a lot of the people i know are i think one of the most shocking things after the october 7th massacre was the number of people who celebrated it and put

it yeah as as an act of resistance and liberation as if rape could ever be a tool of resistance as if burning little babies can ever be an act of liberation and the protests that we saw around the world were sparked not by israel's military campaign.

They were sparked by the initial massacre.

They were sparked by the initial massacre, which was celebrated by people who have spent so long thoroughly dehumanizing Jews and Israelis.

And I mean dehumanizing, because to tear down a poster of a hostage, especially a child, especially a baby, you have to really have dehumanized that person to believe they don't deserve that basic mercy, to believe that they can't possibly be a victim because they belong to a broader people you have consistently demonized and said nasty things about and are now glorifying the violence against them.

So that was shocking.

And I remember that one of the first signs of the magnitude of the crisis was how many liberal progressive Jews, people who identify as being very much on the left, spent October 7th not only being shocked by what Hamas did, but being shocked by the cynical lack of sympathy from people they thought were meant to be on their sides.

Fellow academics, fellow people in the human rights industry, who had just witnessed these horrific crimes against humanity, the unspeakably barbaric savagery of Hamas.

And people found ways to defend it and to justify it.

And that was really horrifying.

And that is something that I think, even after this current conflict goes away and ends, and it will end with an Israeli victory.

That's the only way that this can happen.

That's going to be an open soar.

And people are going to remember the the jubilation and celebration there was when Jews were being massacred on October 7th and the way that people justified that and fit it into their own twisted, warped ideologies.

But even speaking with, I mean, that's a whole other thing.

I mean, the celebrations that were happening on the streets and the protesting and all that stuff, I've been just shook by that.

And so is a lot of other people.

What I'm even referring to is just the overall mass media.

I mean, you've been even asked some crazy questions, some like outrageous questions from me, like from major media outlets where I'm listening while I'm in the kitchen and I've done a double take many times at the like.

Sometimes the questions are so crazy that I only understand when I re-watch it because it's so crazy that I don't believe while I'm hearing the question that that's actually what's being asked.

I was asked

last week, we have CCTV footage of hostages being abducted into the Shifa hospital on the 7th of October.

Do you have CCTV footage of the medical treatment they may have received in that hospital?

Are you serious?

Like, yes, yes.

I just had an interview with Voice of America TV, and they asked me the same question that I was asked on an Irish channel a few days ago, saying that Hamas has been trying to give you back your hostages for the last five weeks.

The deal has been on the table.

Why has Israel only just come around to it?

Which is astonishing.

Obviously, if we had a realistic option to get those children, to get those babies out of Gaza five weeks ago, we would have done it.

It's Hamas Hamas that's responding to pressure, to unrelenting military pressure from Israel.

It's not that Israel had to be convinced to bring back these babies from the inhumane conditions they're being held in.

But yes, some truly bonkers questions.

But I have to say, a lot of the media have been very, very good, continuing over a month and a half after the massacre to shine light on a lot of the stories, on the atrocities.

CNN, for example, has been speaking a lot lately about the use of rape and sexual violence as tools of war during the October 7th massacre.

This is still a cataclysmic moment that is going to continue bringing forth new stories, new testimonies, and it's important that the media cover them.

You know, I worked in news.

I understand that people want fresh images.

And as images come out of Gaza, the news cycle changes because they want to present the new images.

But personally, I've been shocked sometimes.

waiting to go on air.

Sometimes I can be sitting in the chair 10 minutes listening to the broadcast with no mention of the October 7th massacre.

And when I point it out to the news anchors, they'll say, oh, we've discussed that.

We've reported on that.

But it's the immediate context.

It's the immediate context with which you have to understand why this war is being fought.

That it's not just another round of fighting.

We are fighting this war because Hamas committed.

The deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, abducted 240 people and told us it wants to do it again.

And we're fighting because we cannot abandon our hostages in Gaza or leave Hamas free to reoffend And any media coverage that tries to tell the story of what's happening, even of the humanitarian situation inside the Gaza Strip, but doesn't frame it in the context that Hamas launched this war with these barbaric savageries is not presenting the full picture.

In fact, it's not even presenting the picture.

It's presenting something so warped and twisted that it doesn't even approximate the truth and reality.

So why is it that they're doing it?

There's actual footage, there's actual video and audio recordings, and yet they're still sugarcoating it and being biased towards a terrorist organization.

That is where I'm extremely perplexed.

And I think a lot of people are.

I think recently I heard someone ask you the question about: like, do Israelis not value Palestinian life as much because of the three-to-one hostage negotiation?

Which again, like the amount of composure that you have to have to listen to this garbage.

I mean, my question was really to you.

Like, I actually actually can't believe that we're even giving three terrorists for one

innocent hostage.

It doesn't even seem, it doesn't even seem real like that we have to.

Why?

Why are we, in your opinion, I know Israelis, we value every life.

We've given away a thousand

terrorists for one life.

That was what, seven years ago for another situation.

Gilad Shali,

back back in the early 2010s.

Exactly.

Now, why did we,

in this hostage negotiation, was it the pressure we had over from the world?

Or,

like, can you talk about that a little bit?

Yeah, that was a surreal question that I got asked on Sky News and has become absolutely viral.

All the Israeli news channels and news websites sent their own pushers.

And I can't tell you how many interviews I've done in Hebrew where they've replayed that moment and the exaggerated eyebrows that I did.

News Ankara spoke this morning to a hostage negotiator, and he suggested that the fact that Israel is willing to release three Palestinian prisoners for every hostage suggests it values Palestinians' lives less, which really was an astonishing accusation because if we could get one for one, obviously we'd do that.

Obviously we would prefer to get all 240 of our hostages back without releasing a single Palestinian prison.

For zero.

For zero, especially if releasing more of them than we're getting hostages makes them feel undervalued.

That's the last thing that we would want.

So, you know, that's so absurd, though.

Like, how does someone even come to that conclusion?

I think people take facts and they fit them in the stories that make sense in their own head.

And if you are starting with a position that says Israel is ultimately always at fault, Israel is callous about Palestinian lives.

It doesn't really care about civilian lives, despite everything that we've been saying, going blue in the face, trying to get civilians to evacuate from populated areas that are going to be a suffer in this war because Hamas has embedded its infrastructure underneath them, despite all of our efforts, despite everything we do to explain that.

If you're still convinced that Israel doesn't value Palestinian lives, well, then obviously something like that makes sense in your head.

And obviously, it sounds bonkers when you understand the truth about the efforts that Israel has been making, really unprecedented in the history of warfare, to try to get the other side's civilians out of harm's way, despite Hamas's best attempts to keep them in harm's way and use them as human shields.

You know, maybe it's because Hamas's strategy, I'm thinking out loud now maybe it's because hamas's strategy is so evil and so sick and so twisted to build its tunnels and its weapon silos under homes under schools under hospitals that people are struggling to believe that that is genuinely hamas's strategy that hamas is genuinely willing to sacrifice in its words millions of civilians that it doesn't give a damn about them and is happy to see them die because that's propaganda fodder and because that makes Israel look bad.

I mean, that's just so monstrous what I just described that I can understand why people don't believe it's true.

And it's easier to believe a story that says that Israel is being nasty or callous or doesn't care about these people's lives.

And we've just got to continue presenting the truth, telling our story, explaining the reality on the ground and hoping we can shift the needle.

Do you get information before, let's say, anybody else?

I want to know what's going to happen to the rest of the hostages or what happened to that, the woman, the mother that was supposed to be let go with her child?

And then, of course, Hamas were negged on that part of the deal.

No one's talking about.

Sheartbreaking stories there.

Such heartbreaking stories.

Look, I'm plugged into all the various government ministries and advisors to make sure that we always have the best and most accurate information, that our answers are coordinated and approved.

But I don't have secret special knowledge in advance.

My job is to go on TV and say things that are already in the public domain and explain them.

So maybe it wouldn't be wise to tell me any secrets in case I forget what's meant to be a secret that I'm allowed to share with Jake Tapper on CNN.

Right, right.

So then what happens in a situation like that I just mentioned about the mom, the mother that was supposed to be released and then wasn't, right?

Like you're dealing with, again, you're negotiating with terrorists.

I always assumed and I always thought that the main rule of law was never to negotiate with terrorists, right?

It's just a great rule until they have your baby.

Until they have your, exactly.

But what made Israel do like to negotiate negotiate this time?

Was there pressure from the world to be doing this?

Because at the end of the day, we are giving 150 terrorists, probably more attempted suicide, people who are attempted murderers back over there who are who are out there saying they're going to be doing it again.

They can't wait for the time that they can do more violence.

I mean, the world is getting scarier and scarier.

Really?

You know what I mean?

By the moment.

So,

can you just

kind of touch upon that a little bit?

Like, are we to get back the rest of the hostages?

Are we going to have to give away even more?

I mean, it seems like that's where we're going.

You know, Israel has a history of some truly heroic hostage rescues.

The most famous example was in Entebbe in Uganda in 1977.

A plane was hijacked.

It was taken to Uganda, then under Idi Amin's regime.

They kept the Jews and the Israelis and were demanding the release of a ridiculous number of Palestinian terrorists.

And Israel shocked the world by flying in the dead of night to an airport in the middle of Africa.

They dressed up, they took a mock car that looked like Idi Amin's car, they swooped into the airport and they managed to rescue the hostages with only one fatality on the the Israeli side, who was Yoni Netanyahu, the current prime minister's brother.

Now, I was asked in another interview, why haven't you got the hostages out yet?

Now, I wish there were an option to swoop in, to send in the special forces, abseil down a rope, smash through a window, grab the hostages and get out.

But that's not an option here because Hamas has spent a long time planning to abduct our children.

And it's holding them, we believe, underground in tunnels that are impossible to access because they are booby-trapped.

They're not all being held in the same places.

Families were separated.

Not all of them are held by Hamas.

Some are held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad or other factions or mafia groups.

And in fact, we have Hamas now saying we can't actually, this is horrific.

We can't find all of your hostages.

We can't find all of your women and children.

And I don't know whether that's true.

which is horrific or a lie, which is equally horrific.

But if we could have swooped in with a helicopter and picked them up and taken them, we would have.

The fact is Hamas has been planning for a long time to commit this unspeakable crime against humanity of abducting our babies and children and innocent people and holding them hostage in the Gaza Strip.

And that's why from day one, Israel's strategy has been to try to force Hamas to release the hostages.

And that's what we've done through unrelenting military pressure.

That air offensive, that ground offensive, in addition to advancing the goal of destroying Hamas's infrastructure, so that by the end of this war, it doesn't exist and it can't hurt us again.

That ground offensive has also created the conditions for getting our hostages back because we've had Hamas begging for a breather.

We have been clobbering Hamas and after it's come under so much pressure, it said, listen, we want a few days to catch our breath.

Please take hostages in exchange for time.

So that's part of the agreement we find ourselves in.

Now, a four-day hostage release pause in exchange for 50 women and children.

We've then lined up enough Palestinian prisoners, all violent criminals, by the way.

And whatever the media is reporting about women and children, half of them are men.

Half of them are males aged 18 and over.

Okay.

We've lined up enough of these prisoners to facilitate another five days of a hostage release pause if Hamas wants to give us back another 10 hostages a day for each day of the pause.

If Hamas wants to spend the next five days giving us back another 50 hostages, we'll have a pause.

As soon as Hamas stops giving us back hostages we're going to continue thumping it until it begs us to give us back hostages the next time so the how did you even choose the 150 murderers to give them in the first place not you personally i know that you're not in there going i'll take this one and that one

i can't comment on the sensitive negotiations that took place behind the scenes they were led by the uh by the head of mossad through the Qataris, through the Americans and the Egyptians.

There are many considerations taking place behind the scenes, but those were secret discussions and I can't comment.

You can't comment on that.

And so

you'll probably say

what I can tell you, but what I can tell you is, because we have seen some really appalling attempts to create symmetry, as if Israel is releasing women and children, the Palestinians are releasing women and children.

Okay, you're even now.

First of all, note the people we're releasing, half of them are men.

They are males over the age of 18.

You can go through the database and check it yourself.

The rest of them, all in jail on violent offenses, attempted stabbings, attempted shootings.

There's one woman in there who has become the icon of the prisoner release because she's disfigured.

She's disfigured because she tried to set off a car bomb and it exploded early and seriously injured a police officer and blew off her nose, but that's why she was in jail.

And you can't compare the prisoners who are in jail because they are dangerous, violent criminals, to the innocent children.

who were abducted from their beds on October 7th by the death squads that massacred and tortured and raped their neighbors.

And that is really infuriating sometimes to see in the media that attempt to create a false symmetry.

Oh, these are Israeli parents who are happy to get their kids back.

These are Palestinian parents who are happy to get their kids back.

No,

nothing, no comparison.

You simply cannot compare the innocent people who were abducted on October 7th to the really vile individuals that we're releasing because it's the only way to get our innocent civilians out of Hamas captivity.

Also, I find it interesting that woman that you're talking about, the poster child for the 150 terrorists that are being released or have been released, she had the gall to ask Israel, I heard, for plastic surgery to fix her face.

That is the dictionary definition of chutzpah.

Yeah, chhutzpa.

Your nose in an attempted car bombing and then asking the victims to pay for your cosmetic surgery.

It's unbelievable.

And I will say that what I, again, what I find another thing that's interesting is it's not apples to apples.

And when I post even on my social media, like the difference between an innocent baby hostage and

a murderer terrorist who's being swapped out, the amount of venom that I get, like, how dare you?

These are innocent women and children that Israel is holding.

Even with information out there, I'm not the first one to be posting it.

It's out there in in the zeitgeist right that these are people who are attempted car bombers people who attempted to people who stabbed innocent israeli women in front of their children and yet with all these these are the heroes these are the heroes of many of the people you're arguing against who think that these acts of violence against civilians against police officers are legitimate uh legitimate acts of political violence it's i i don't know how you argue with a twisted worldview like that it's i don't think you can i think that i don't know if it's ignorance, that they didn't see them.

They don't want to, like you said earlier, it's so vicious that you don't, your brain doesn't want to believe it.

So then you go to the next thing.

There's one positive thing about this current awful situation is that perhaps that movement that is so enamored.

with violence against Jews and Israelis and finds all sorts of twisted ideological ways to justify it.

The mask has come off.

The mask has come off.

I remember for years as a student activist talking about the link between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism, talking about how this movement on the radical end of academia was very problematic.

And maybe now the evidence is out there for everyone to see and they understand what damage these ideological fringes can do.

At least that's my hope, because if that kind of thinking takes over these institutions, then the free world is really lost.

I think, yeah, I think the free world is very lost right now.

Look what's happening in the American.

Do you know what's happening in the college campuses around the U.S.?

I mean,

you don't know?

Well, I wonder whether you're thinking what I'm thinking, but I'm interested to hear from you.

I've been telling the perspective from Israel.

I want to hear the perspective from the U.S.

as well.

I mean, the amount of venom and hatred and vitriol towards a lot of Jewish people, Jewish students don't feel safe.

The professors here are saying it was like exhilarating to see what happened on October 7th.

People are getting

funniest, most prestigious institutions.

And I was going to say, this is not like little, little bow dunk colleges.

These are like the biggest Ivy Leagues in the world, Harvard and Cornell and UCLA.

These are like the majors.

Scary, because these student activists are tomorrow's law interns and their law partners are the biggest firms in 10 years.

And they're running for Congress in 15.

That is why, yeah,

that's what I'm saying.

Do you know how what's happening here and like how it's happening?

Like, I guess people didn't realize that there was so much money coming out of Qatar funding these places.

And then that brings back another thing.

Like, Qatar is like the mediator, right, between Israel and Hamas.

But isn't Qatar also protecting Hamas and funding Hamas?

Can you explain the...

what's going on with that?

Afraid played a very problematic role.

And when this war began, the prime minister was very clear.

Hamas is ISIS.

Hamas is worse than ISIS.

And just as no country in the world would think to give shelter to ISIS terrorists, to host them on their own soil, to accept diplomatic delegations from them, to have diplomatic links with them, no country in the world should harbor Hamas.

And we've also been very clear.

Every Hamas terrorist, wherever they are, is a dead man walking.

In response to the October 7th massacre, we're going to come after them and we're going to settle a score because we cannot, cannot allow that evil to roam the earth a day longer after the horrifying atrocities we saw on October 7th.

Not the first Hamas terror attacks, of course, coming off on the back of 20 years of rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, 30 years of suicide bombings and other horrific attacks.

But it was the straw that broke the camel's back.

And we said, that's it.

We're going after Hamas.

We simply cannot live next to this evil organization.

And we think that any country that is giving harbor to that organization should be held to account.

Even though they're the ones who are mediating and doing the negotiations.

At the moment, Russia is playing a role in facilitating that.

And we hope that it will continue to play a role and get all of the hostages out.

That is our demand.

We want to get everyone out.

And we'll go through the channels that exist in order to do so.

What are some of the, can you give us some of the misconceptions that are out there that we should know in the in the West and the, you know, in America and Canada, wherever, that maybe we're not aware of are there some or a couple that you can think of that you you know we're we're a storytelling people we tell ourselves stories and we understand the world and crises taking place halfway around the globe through the stories that we tell ourselves about ourselves and so often we see the conflict between israel and the palestinians being described through a lens that has nothing to do with the reality here and everything to do with the reality of the people telling those stories.

The United States, for example, is deeply concerned, quite rightly, about the question of race.

After the brutal history of racial oppression and segregation and subjugation in the United States, race is a sensitive and very important historical question in the United States.

And then people take that question of white and black people and apply that to a reality in Israel where it simply makes no sense.

It is bizarre for us as Israelis to hear ourselves being described as white when more than half of the country traces its ancestry to the Arab world.

My grandparents came from Iraq.

This is a country that has absorbed Jewish immigration from Morocco, Libya, and Algeria, and Tunisia, and Egypt, and Syria, and Lebanon, and Yemen, and Iraq, and Iran.

We are not white.

We

We took in Jews from Ethiopia.

Israel is the only country that's ever organized an airlift in order to take desperate people in Africa and take them on planes to another country because we believe this is their homeland.

And we're suddenly the white people in this story against the Palestinians.

That's one example.

And the other one is colonialism.

I have no idea.

how Hamas's project to extend an Islamic caliphate over the whole land of Israel ever became a totem of the anti-colonial movement.

Because it is Zionism.

It is the ideology of building a national home for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, Zionism, that is the most successful example of decolonization anywhere in the world, certainly in the Middle East.

Out of the rubble of multiple Muslim empires across the Middle East, from the Atlas Mountains to the Zagreb Mountains, there is only one minority, one non-Arab Muslim minority that was able to build a state of its own and claim its own sovereign dignity and equality and independence.

The Druze couldn't do it.

The Kurds couldn't do it.

It's only the Jewish people.

And where did they do it?

Literally in our ancestral homeland, in the land where we're speaking Hebrew, the language that was spoken here 2,000 years ago.

That was...

The creation of Israel was a revolt against empire.

It was a revolt against colonialism.

It was an indigenous people reclaiming their right to live in their ancestral homeland.

So for us, when we hear people taking an American lens about white settlers and applying it to a reality of lots of brown people reclaiming land that is their own ancestral historical homeland, even though the whole region is Arab Muslim countries and we're the only tiny not, is bizarre.

And I think it's important to put that on the table and say that when we make the case for Israel, this isn't about pointing out little facts because people sort facts within stories that make sense for them the problem isn't the facts the problem is the stories the stories that make sense and i think when people come to israel and they travel around israel and they go in the market in jerusalem and tel aviv and they look around they go hey you know this isn't brooklyn this isn't just brooklyn with with with more sunshine it's very different and you just cannot take those foreign lenses to try to understand our conflict because you you do an injustice to us but you also do an injustice to yourself because you're not understanding the world and the way that it works absolutely that's very well said.

Can we talk a little bit about Hamas and the tactics that they've been using to really kind of sway the public's opinion?

And can you debunk them for us?

Because I think people don't understand as clearly as

they should of what they're doing and how they're doing it, like how they are doing it.

I think a lot of people who look at the situation in the Gaza Strip now haven't been paying close attention to what has been happening there over the last 16 years.

Hamas spent 16 years since its violent takeover in 2007 following Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip 18 years ago.

Hamas has spent those 16 years deliberately embedding itself underneath civilian areas with one goal in mind to launch attacks against the Israeli people and then hide behind women and children in order to escape Israel's response.

As Israeli soldiers have been going through the Gaza Strip, just like the Allies marching through Nazi Germany in 1945, they have been uncovering evidence of Hamas's war crimes.

We've found a tunnel shaft poking out under a child's bed.

We found missiles under a girl's mattress.

There's a sign on the door that says, baby girl, you lift the mattress and there are missiles inside.

We found rocket-propelled grenades in a baby's crib.

We found mosques that had been converted into weapons factories.

We found schools and classrooms being used to store weapons.

We found booby trap cables that lead into mosques and to clinics.

And most grotesque of all, we have exposed for the whole world the terror command and control center that Hamas built underneath the Shifa hospital.

People have spent a month telling us it's the new Saddam WMDs.

They don't exist.

We evacuated the hospital.

We uncovered evidence of those tunnels underneath the hospital.

Now, why did Hamas build tunnels under a hospital?

Why did Hamas build rooms from which it could leech from the hospital's own electricity into its command center?

So that Hamas terrorists can go outside, fire rockets at Israel, and then run back underneath the hospital and be safe from retaliation.

So we have evidence that they held hostages there as well to hide them underneath the hospital.

Now, the international community has been complicit with Hamas's strategy of human shields.

The World Health Organization has said nothing about Hamas putting a command center under a hospital.

The Red Cross has said nothing.

Here's how absurd it is.

The World Health Organization ran a risk assessment at the hospital last weekend, and they didn't think to mention once that at the same time, there were soldiers outside digging up Hamas tunnels under the hospital.

It's insane.

And Israel's having to deal with things where people say, well, the UN says.

Well, you know, there are a lot of things the UN doesn't say.

And the things the UN doesn't say, because those agencies are covering up for Hamas, that's also really galling.

So Hamas has spent this time embedding itself under civilian areas in order to escape Israel's response when they commit atrocities against our people.

And the damage and destruction that we're seeing in Gaza is a result of Israel having to target that infrastructure that Hamas built under people's houses.

And to do that, we ask people to get out of the way because we don't want them to be hurt.

But we still have to get to the infrastructure that they hid under their homes or they'll use it to perpetrate another October 7th massacre, like they're telling us that they want to do again and again and again.

But why are they?

Why is the UN, the Red Cross, why are they covering up for Hamas, which is a terrorist organization?

This is the part that is a disconnect from my brain.

I can't wrap my head around this.

Like, why are these major world organizations covering up for a terrorist organization, as opposed to basically siding with people like Israel, who really do have the best interests, who are constantly just defending themselves.

Not once.

And if people look back in history, Israel doesn't ever start a war.

They just defend themselves and then they have to defend themselves for defending themselves.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There's a world of difference between doing things that feel good and doing things that do good.

It's much easier to do things that feel good.

Doing things that feel good is saying we must send more humanitarian aid into Gaza.

We should support the poor refugees who are living there.

Doing good is asking, wait, why are there still people who are classified as refugees in the Gaza Strip?

They were never displaced from anywhere.

Their parents were never displaced from anywhere.

Their grandparents were probably never displaced anywhere.

Only the Palestinians get to hand down the title of refugee down the generations because they have a different definition of refugee from everyone else in the world.

They have their own refugee agency called UNRWA.

And UNRWA is effectively a branch of Hamas.

It's a branch of the Palestinian national movement.

UNRWA, the UN Refugee Agency for Palestinians, you can check this afterwards, has not tweeted about Hamas once ever,

which is shocking.

They've never mentioned Hamas because it is entirely complicit.

And so Hamas can take its casualty figures, pass them on to UNRWA, which is a Palestinian manned almost entirely by Palestinians, and then that gets parroted by the media as the United Nations said.

No, it was said by a refugee agency that is completely commandeered by the Palestinian national movement to advance their war against Israel.

Now trying to dismantle that.

Trying to tell the Palestinians, you need to accept that Israel is real and it exists and you need to build houses in Gaza and live there and live next to Israel.

That's difficult.

That's difficult to do.

It would do good, but it's difficult to do.

Trying to pass on the buck and saying, oh, we'll donate more money to refugees because they're poor people while keeping in place this architecture of jihad and of extremism.

That's something that feels good.

And it's easier to do something that feels good.

And so I think even if you are not talking about agencies that are openly complicit with Hamas or openly taking its side, and as we're seeing on campuses around the world, there are people who openly take Hamas's side.

Genuinely trying to solve this conflict, genuinely trying to address the root cause, which is the Palestinian refusal to accept a Jewish state anywhere within the borders of the land of Israel.

That's something that's very, very difficult to do.

And sending more money to refugees and blaming Israel every time something goes wrong, that's easy to do.

And people do what it's easy to do.

I mean, it's remarkable.

Like the fact that the Shippah hospital, like that was not reported on.

Doesn't this make people complicated?

Gaza's biggest open secret.

It was such an open secret that it had been reported on.

In 2014, the Washington Post published a story saying the Al-Shifa Hospital has long been known to serve as the de facto headquarters of Hamas in Gaza.

This was known.

But too many people who want to deny Israel its right to defend itself because they align with the Palestinian ideology.

had a vested interest to deny that Hamas was committing this crime against humanity of using a hospital to shield its own military infrastructure.

And then, when the World Health Organization and the Red Cross are willing to go along with it, is it any wonder that good people think that maybe Israel is making it up?

Because the organizations that have UN on their business card haven't said anything.

But that's why we are continuing not only to fight Hamas, but also to expose the evidence of its crimes against humanity, to expose the truth, so that we can shift the needle and make people understand the extent of Hamas's evil strategy of using human shields and the complicity, the complicity of the international agencies that turned a blind eye to it and played along with it.

How about the complicity of, I mean,

a while ago, maybe now, a couple of weeks back, two, three weeks back, we saw all these images of photojournalists like from CNN, Reuters, AP, who were there on October 7th, who were...

who were like videotaping it and like there, like either waiting for Hamas to come or like with them alongside.

How come those people are not considered complicit with war crimes?

Like, how are they getting away with this?

You have a background in media and working for this.

Like, how is this possible?

And was that confirmed to be accurate?

These were really shocking allegations that some of the stringers may have known in advance that the massacre was happening.

And if they didn't, some of them found themselves inside Israeli territory.

But I think the story is bigger than that.

The media needs stories, it needs information, and sometimes, in order to get stories and information, there are sacrifices you're willing to make.

And in order to get information out of Gaza, you have to pretend that Hamas does not control the flow of information out of Gaza.

There is no free press in Gaza.

There is no such thing as a freelance journalist in Gaza.

Hamas is an authoritarian regime that decides what comes out.

That's why you've never seen an image of a dead Palestinian terrorist being pulled out of the rubble, because Hamas doesn't want you to see it.

And because none of the journalists who are working for the journalists who are working for international media outlets are going to film something that Hamas doesn't want the world to see.

They are either on Hamas's side or they just know that they're not free to tell the whole story.

And I don't know the extent to which the news bureaus in the West know that the information that is coming out is not the full truth, that so much of it is being self-censored, whether

they're not aware of that or they know that and say that's just the price in order to get images out of Gaza because those images bring ratings, even though we have serious questions about the veracity or at least the possibility to put things in proper context.

Because if those journalists, quote-unquote journalists, were also sending back footage of rockets being fired from inside civilian areas, suddenly Israel's argument about Hamas using human shields sounds a lot stronger.

And if those journalists, quote unquote, were sending back images of Hamas terrorists being pulled out of the rubble, Israel's claim that it's targeting terrorists and trying to get civilians out of harm's way would also seem much stronger.

And those cases are being undermined because Hamas controls the flow of information out of the Gaza Strip and because that that authoritarian regime and that control of information is not put in proper context.

And you just end up reinforcing those narratives that it must be Israel's fault, strong, violent, aggressive Israel against the poor, innocent Palestinians.

Repeat, repeat, repeat.

Yeah.

So were they working for CNN, AP, and Rooter?

Were they working for these organizations or were they not working for them?

That's what I'm so confused, like from your answer.

There were several camera people who were

freelancers.

I don't know whether they were retained on a contract or whether they were paid per job basis, but had been contractually connected to the major news outlets.

I'm not sure the specific allegations who was alleged to have been inside Israeli territory, who only took pictures as they abducted Israelis and took them inside on that awful day on October 7th.

But I think that was really a wake-up call about the information we get out of the Gaza Strip and the need to be skeptical about it, because you know that an authoritarian regime is not allowing journalists or anyone there to tell the full story, even if they're not actively co-opted into Hamas's struggle and into Hamas's narrative.

But if they knew prior,

if anybody knew prior, isn't that,

shouldn't they be like, shouldn't the FBI or shouldn't they be in jail?

Like,

where are they?

Where are these people now?

Does anyone know?

Knew in advance.

I don't personally know, but if these people knew in advance that Hamas was planning to perpetrate these atrocities, then they definitely need to be held accountable.

Now, the news agencies, to their credit, say we had absolutely no prior knowledge.

We were blindsided like everyone else.

But I think they do need to ask serious questions of all of the people they are hiring inside the Gaza Strip to check their affiliations and possible connections to terrorist organizations and ask tough questions about how do we know that the camera is being pointed at what the real story is.

And it's not that Hamas is standing behind the camera saying, we want you to point the camera at this because this is the image we want the world to see because this is what's going to make Israel look bad.

I mean, yeah, I mean, that to me is just that when that story came out, I was just like, well, how are these people getting away with it?

It doesn't make, there's so much that's going on, I guess, just as an outsider, of course, looking in, that's just so perplexing, right?

That people are getting away with certain things and the way the world has really flipped upside down, in my opinion, in a lot of ways.

And your job is quite difficult, I would imagine.

But have you been asked this question?

Because I know that this is one of the things, again, in the Zeitgeist, how this even happened to the level it did, because Israel is so known for its security and its high-level intelligence.

And the fact that nobody was even available for seven, eight, nine hours to even go and help the civilians

that were being raped and pillaged.

What happened?

Like, what was the disconnect in that whole thing?

Where was everybody?

This was such a horrific fiasco on every single level.

And when this war is over, we're committed to investigating that and working out, was it because of specific intelligence failures?

Was there a problem with the whole security architecture?

How did this happen?

And that's a question we're still asking in shock.

How did this happen?

One theory that's been raised is that, you know, for many years, Israel wanted to believe, perhaps, that Hamas could be contained.

That yes, Hamas keeps saying it wants to murder the Jews, and yes, it would do that if it had an opportunity.

But we've built a very strong ring of defenses around the Gaza Strip.

Hamas is interested in remaining in power.

If it attacks us, it knows that we would have to retaliate.

And so Hamas is deterred.

Hamas is deterred.

Maybe it would in its own wildest dreams, but now it wouldn't dare.

And Hamas seems to have taken steps to convince Israelis of that and mislead them into thinking that it was deterred all the while it was planning this horrific, horrific, horrific tragedy.

And when this war is over, we as a country are going to be opening up some very painful wounds and painful questions as we ask, how did this happen?

How, how, you know,

we're still aghast and asking how, how, how, how is it possible that thousands of terrorists could spill over the border?

and abduct and burn and torture and mutilate and rape for hours and hours on end.

How did that happen?

How is it possible it took so long to put a lid on it?

And that will happen after the war.

We'll interrogate how that happened.

And for now, we're focusing on winning that war and making sure that Hamas is removed from power so that it can never, ever hurt our people again.

I also heard that there were people,

some Palestinians that were within Israel who were helping Hamas by drawing maps for them and showing them like places where they can cut off communication.

So then people in the IDF or in the in the higher intelligence areas had no access to even know this was happening the atrocities were even happening yeah this is this is the sad thing for for a while Israel had actually been letting in tens of thousands of Gazans every day into Israel to work in the hope that if they could go home and give their families an honest pay and bring up their families in dignity, that would help to stabilize the situation and they wouldn't want to attack us.

And it's been widely reported that Hamas may have been operating based on information passed on from people inside who had prior knowledge of where everything was inside this kibbutzim.

And on October 7th, there were also civilians, Palestinian civilians who followed into the Gaza, who followed into Israel and participated in those acts of violence and looting.

Jewish insider ran a horrific story about people who were hiding in their rocket shelter as they heard a woman cooking in their kitchen and even changing their netflix settings to arabic which was how long it took for the security services to get back so yeah that there are a lot of questions about about how wide how wide this went how this happened and and questions about how we prevent this happening again wow well elon i know it's late over there i'll let you i'll wrap it up because you know i haven't i have i can ask you questions for another hour, but I won't do that to you.

I will gladly come back, but I think you've got more than enough material for a whole podcast.

Yeah, I think I do.

Thank you.

I appreciate you coming on.

It was a really, it was very informative.

And I, like I said, I appreciate your time.

I know it's late there.

Thank you.

I'll just say on a note to

any Jewish visitor, any Jewish listeners you have, we are busy fighting this war against Hamas, but the question of anti-Semitism around the globe has been a top news story here in Israel.

Everyone here has been horrified, just as you have family here in Israel.

We all have family in the diaspora, and really our hearts are with you in this very difficult moment.

And hope that you too will be able to rebuild better and stronger out of the current crisis.

Well, thank you.

Yeah, I didn't touch upon the anti-Semitism as much as I would normally, just because I've covered it so many times with so many people.

I wanted to ask you questions that other people would not have the knowledge base because they're not doing what you're doing.

So, but I appreciate you saying that.

And I wish you peace and safety.

Be safe over there.

Be safe over there.

We get all the hostages back home safely.

And let's hope this war ends as soon as possible, but ends thoroughly and properly.

Thoroughly and properly is exactly a great way to say it.

We have to finish the job.

We don't have a choice, and we will.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

Bye.