Israel and Hezbollah Reach Ceasefire Deal

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Welcome back to Pod Say of the World.

I'm Tommy Vitor.

I'm Ben Rhodes.

Ben, happy preemptive Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving week to you.

Yes,

I'm in New York for Thanksgiving.

We switch off

Thanksgiving Christmas.

It's a nice time of year here.

So happy Thanksgiving to you.

You're going to do the Macy's Day parade?

I did that with my dad a couple times.

It's very fun.

I don't think so this year.

I've done it two or three times with my kids.

It's like a pretty big ordeal with kids, you know, like stand in line.

I think one time, actually,

we had a COVID case

from the close crowds there.

But so we'll be watching on TV like everybody else, I think.

Yeah, that's probably better.

Watch a little turkey pardon footage.

You know, kind of delay our

acceptance that the Trump administration will be returning.

But yeah, all good stuff.

Hey, at least we'll eat a lot of food.

Where do you stand on the turkey pardon gate?

I don't know if people are following this highly online question of whether Joe Biden should do away with the turkey pardon.

I don't quite understand the logic if it's

vindictive towards turkeys or what is it?

But I don't know.

What the fuck are they talking about?

It's a fun, light, silly event for puns.

Yeah, seriously.

It was one time a year, remember, you'd see Sasha and Malia, too.

Yeah.

So it was always fun.

Rolling their eyes at their dad.

Exactly.

We got a great show for everybody this week.

We're going to talk about some late-breaking news of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah.

So some rare good news there.

We're also going to cover some of the new names added to Trump's national security team and the reaction to his threat to slap new tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, Ben.

We're also going to cover the International Criminal Court's arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and another aide, the Israeli government's crackdown on a progressive newspaper called Ha'aretz and what that tells us about the health of its democracy.

And then we're going to talk about Russia's experimental missile attack on Ukraine, the depressing result of the COP29 climate summit, the arrest of dozens of pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong, how Brazil treats former presidents who try to stage coups.

And then, Ben, you got a big interview coming this week.

What do we got?

Yeah, I sat down with Malala and Sarah Mani, who's a filmmaker.

And Malala executive produced a film about several Afghan women and it traces their lives from the collapse in Kabul kind of up till fairly recently.

And these are all women that resisted the Taliban.

Some of them were protesting or all of them were protesting in their own ways.

It's a remarkable peek behind the curtain of what life is like in Kabul, what women are doing to resist the way that life has changed.

So it's an extraordinary film called Bread and Roses that's out on Apple now.

But it's also an extraordinary interview.

Malala has some serious wisdom that she drops, both about the film, but also just about how to be resilient at difficult times.

And, you know, we're in those times and not as difficult as the Afghan women are going through or that Malala's gone through, but everybody should definitely check it out.

Yeah, probably some real good perspective there.

I am excited to see this movie.

And you and I were talking about it last week, and you just made the point that it's like, just to see kind of people living their life normally, street scenes and Kabul, like when you sat in government meetings about Afghanistan, you never saw that perspective.

It was all like security, this, and training of, you know, Afghan security forces and poppy eradication.

And this is just like human beings living their lives in this city now.

That's exactly right.

I mean, I just, there's so many reasons to watch this film, but that's absolutely one of them.

We talk about these places and we so rarely see them.

And I had the same, you know, I thought exactly what you said, right?

Like, how many memos did we read about Afghanistan?

How many, you know.

reports with data.

And what you didn't get from that is the people.

And so I hope everybody watches.

I hope people in government watch this, although I'm not that optimistic about the Trump administration's prioritization of women in Afghanistan.

But we'll see.

I mean, not that Joe Biden was good on that either, but everybody should definitely watch it.

No, Trump's just going to fly a C-17 over to get back some equipment.

It seems like that's the only thing he really cares about in Afghanistan.

But you mentioned Joe Biden, so let's start with this late-breaking news that a ceasefire deal has been reached between Israel and Lebanon.

President Biden just went out and spoke about it, which we'll get to in a second.

Here's what we know about the terms of the deal.

So the Israeli military will have 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah will move its operations and weapons north of the Latani River.

Then the Lebanese military is going to deploy along the border to try and enforce the agreement and keep Hezbollah away from the Israeli border and prevent them from firing into northern Israel.

The U.S.

will take the lead to oversee the implementation of this agreement.

There'll be a group of countries.

I think Biden gave France a shout out as part of this coalition, but the U.S.

will take the lead.

And the U.S.

has agreed to support Israeli action if Hezbollah comes near the border again or threatens Israeli interests, but only if the IDF consults the U.S.

first.

So there can't be unilateral action by the YF as part of the deal.

That latter point about the implementation and the Israelis demanding some freedom of action if Hezbollah does something to violate the agreement, I think is a recognition of the fact that the ceasefire after the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon didn't really hold, and there's been regular bombardment and airstrikes.

So big picture.

I mean, this is obviously a huge relief to everyone in Lebanon and to a lot of Israelis.

The Lebanese health ministry says that over 3,800 people have been killed by Israeli airstrikes since October 2023.

Over a million people in Lebanon have been displaced by this fighting, as were an estimated 60,000 residents of northern Israel.

Here's a clip of Biden speaking about the deal on Tuesday afternoon.

If Hezbollah or anyone else breaks the deal and pose a direct threat to Israel, then Israel retains the right to self-defense consistent with international law, just like any country when facing a terrorist group pledged to that country's destruction.

At the same time, this deal supports Lebanon's sovereignty, and so it heralds a new start for Lebanon.

a country that I've seen most of over the years, a country with a rich history and culture.

If fully implemented, this deal can put Lebanon on a path toward a future that's worthy of a significant past.

So, obviously, a lot of people are also desperate to see a ceasefire in Gaza and have been for many, many months.

It seems like maybe a key difference that helped get this deal done in Lebanon is the fact that the right-wing nationalists in Netanyahu's coalition, people like Itamar Ben-Gavir, said they oppose a ceasefire deal with Hezbollah, but they didn't threaten to topple the government for it.

So I think that allowed it to go through.

But what was your reaction to this thing finally getting done?

Well, look, I mean, it's obviously, as you said, it's a positive step for people in Lebanon who've been under bombardment, perhaps for people in northern Israel if they choose to return to their homes.

And look, the administration has got three open accounts in that region.

They've got the war in Gaza.

They've got the kind of back and forth between Israel and Iran.

And then they've got the war in Lebanon.

And this is the one that was always most likely to be concluded.

You know,

first there's a question of whether it will hold.

And, you know, that's an open question.

Will the Lebanese armed forces really take on Hezbollah if they see them re- Do they have the capacity in any event to blunt them?

I mean, that's a big open question, right?

That's right.

Because some of this is just people from southern Lebanon are in Hezbollah, right?

Will the Israelis show restraint?

These are all open questions.

And importantly, the 60-day deadline takes you into the Trump administration.

So

the U.S.

mediator is going to be the the Trump people.

Not as if Biden's been particularly tough on Israel, but you have to assume that there's going to be an even friendlier ear.

And that may have factored into Netanyahu's timing.

And let's face it, you know, let's look at when the escalation peaked in Lebanon.

I'm not to be cynic here, but it peaked in September and October, right before the election.

And

obviously created political problems for Kamal Harris.

And this is clearing an account at the end of the Biden administration, but also heading into the Trump administration.

And I have to think that that probably factored into Netanyahu's timing as well.

At the end of the day, the main event is Gaza, and it always has been since October 7th, obviously.

And

Netanyahu's remarks, he talked about how this is going to make it easier for them to go after Hamas.

So there was no indication of a ceasefire for hostages deal, no indication that there's any rethinking of essentially this kind of open-ended conflict state and bombardment of Gaza.

And so that kind of remains to me

the war that is actually,

that the Lebanon war was kind of an offshoot of.

So it's a positive step.

It's a little ghoulish to see kind of an administration victory lap on this thing when they wanted to prevent this from happening in the first place, the war in Lebanon.

And

ultimately, it's Gaza that is the thing that obviously has caused the most loss of life and the most instability in the region.

But

a positive step that people worked very hard to reach.

Yeah, I mean, Lebanon is definitely an offshoot of the war in Gaza, albeit against, I I think, a better armed and more sort of fearsome actor in Hezbollah.

I should have said that another reason this deal got done is because Hassan Nasrallah, the former head of Hezbollah, who was assassinated by the Israelis, used to make a ceasefire in Gaza a precondition to a ceasefire between Hezbollah and Israel.

And that condition changed after his death.

So you're right that

there's still this huge

challenge in Gaza, this horrible humanitarian nightmare that's just getting worse every single day.

But good to see people in Beirut not getting bombarded anymore.

Absolutely.

One other thing we should say is that the Israelis were taking some tough losses

in their ground invasion into Lebanon.

There was some tough fighting.

Hezbollah was still firing back.

And Netanyahu, in his statement about this, talked pretty, I thought.

candidly about this is a time for them to kind of regroup, rearm.

And so I think they wanted to ease the pressure on the IDF.

At the same time, that's what's in it for Hezbollah is that they get to regroup.

They obviously need to figure out what they are after all the losses they've had um so everybody kind of takes a breath here um let's hope that it it holds though um it's no guarantee by the way that this holds you know one incident could kind of ratchet things up again but but but uh i think you know first and foremost yeah if those million people can return home uh that's a huge positive step Yeah, for the Israelis in northern Israel who basically have been home for a year, you know, 60,000 people.

Absolutely.

We're going to talk about a couple more Israel-specific stories in a minute.

But first, we're going to do a quick update on the latest national security cabinet or staffing news from the Trump team.

So, after teenager and Venmo enthusiast Matt Gates withdrew from consideration to be attorney general, Trump made this flurry of personnel appointments to kind of change the narrative.

It was like a Friday news dump.

That included two key national security roles.

The first of the two is a guy named Alex Wong, who's going to be Trump's deputy national security advisor.

Wong served in the first Trump administration.

He was the special representative for North Korea.

He apparently helped broker the bromance and symmetry with Kim Jong-un.

He also served as deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the State Department.

Seems like a pretty normie national security pick for Trump, albeit another China hawk.

He'll report up to Mike Waltz, the incoming national security advisor.

Neither of those guys has to be confirmed by the Senate, so they got the job.

It's over.

But, you know, the pattern, Ben, has been for every kind of normie selection, like a Marco Rubio, you get a total freak show like a Tolstoy Gavard.

This is no different.

So that gets us to a guy named Seb Gorka.

Seb Gorka will now be the deputy assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism.

You might remember Gorka from Trump 1.0.

He is this like comically bombastic British-Hungarian-American radio host.

His credentials are dubious at best.

I think his own PhD advisor said he wouldn't consider Gorka to be an expert on terrorism.

Someone connected to the Trump transition team said on background to the Washington Post, quote, Almost universally, the entire team considers Gorka a clown.

Great quote there.

Gorka's views on Islam are just way out there.

He's like one of those guys who thinks that the United States is just days away from living under Sharia law.

Back in 2017, he was at the White House for like a cup of coffee at a couple of months, but then it got pushed out along with Steve Bannon.

Here's a clip of Trump's former national security advisor, John Bolton, talking about Gorkha on CNN.

Well, Sebastian Gorka is a con man.

I wouldn't have him in any U.S.

government.

Fortunately, it's not

the highest position he had been mentioned for, but I don't think it's going to bode well for counterterrorism efforts when the NSC senior director is somebody like that.

I think he is

a perfect example of somebody who owes his position purely to Donald Trump.

He doesn't display loyalty.

He displays fealty.

And that's what Trump wants.

He doesn't want Gorka's opinions.

He wants Gorka to say, yes, sir.

And I am fully confident that's exactly what will happen no matter what it is Trump says.

So, man, Gorka's an asshole.

He's a clown.

He has no business being in this job.

But I think my, honestly, my reaction was relief that he's not the deputy national security advisor.

But what was your take?

Yeah, well, you're right.

Normie for crazy.

And look, you know, Gorka was probably floating himself for that deputy national security advisor.

Oh, yeah, big time.

And I'm sure Waltz is like, no way that guy's going to be my fucking deputy.

But if you think about it, and Bolton, who we don't agree with about anything, points this out, if he actually is the senior director for counterterrorism,

that's not an insignificant position.

I mean, post-9-11, this was seen as one of the most important positions in the government.

And so people understand what that means: you're both the principal White House advisor to the president on counterterrorism issues.

You also coordinate all the parts of the government that are involved in counterterrorism, which is a lot, right?

Because it's the FBI, it's the CIA, it's a DOD, it's the State Department, there's military operations involved, you know.

So, were he to actually do this job, and that's an open question.

Maybe he's just there to wander in and out of meetings, which is what he did last time.

But if actually this guy's taking the reins, it's quite concerning, you know?

Yeah, like he'll probably be able to order people killed.

That's what we're talking about, like drone strikes.

Yeah, and that doesn't make me sleep better.

I do think I'm kind of curious what the expiration date is on Seb Gorka because he has a unique capacity to piss off even his MAGA colleagues.

So he may go in for the victory lap and so he can put this once more on his social media biography.

We'll see.

But it does feel like there's a pattern of him kind of burrowing these extreme nutcases into some of these staff positions.

And I think what's worth watching is, again, whether he sticks around and takes actual authority.

That's what would be concerning versus whether he's just like an ornament.

Yeah.

The other name we've been watching in kind of the like the extremist unqualified staffing group is this guy, Cash Patel, that we've talked about a bunch of times.

He's the one who wrote the kids book about King Trump.

Apparently, Axios reported that Trump doesn't think Patel will get confirmed as FBI director by the Senate or thinks he might struggle.

So he's considering making him the deputy director or some other top role at DOJ to investigate, I don't know, the 2020 election or whatever Trump's mad about.

Again, remember that Christopher Wray was appointed by Trump to the job of FBI director in 2017.

It's supposed to be a 10-year term, but Trump wants to toss him.

And it sounds like the kind of hardcore MAGA influencers have killed the prospect of Mike Rogers, this kind of normie Republican congressman from Michigan, of getting FBI director.

And then, one other bit of staffing news that I thought you'd enjoy, Ben, is there's a Trump legal advisor named Boris Epstein.

He is reportedly being investigated for shaking down would-be Trump administration members who want jobs, including asking for $100,000 per month from someone to promote them for a position.

Just like incredible stuff happening over the transition team this year.

I think that the main pattern to watch of the entire Trump administration, including on foreign policy, is just corruption and the monetization of everything.

You know, some griffs will be completely hackish like this one, like shaking people down for cash.

Some will be like a degree more subtle like we've talked about, like flying around the Gulf and trying to shake down some very rich countries for some money for Jared and things like that.

So it's just another indication of how much all these characters know Trump's there for four years, and they're all just looking to squeeze whatever they can, whatever juice they can out of this.

But, you know, Cash Patel, deputy FBI,

that's not comforting.

You know, that's a very important position that helps run the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

He could do a lot of damage there.

It seems like that's where this is headed.

And I just got a name, Tommy, something that always bugs me.

It's not like the FBI is some left-wing organization.

When I was there, I thought it was the most right-wing collection of people in the government.

So I don't know who they're purging, but

beyond the people that have already left,

I can't even remember the name of the two FBI agents who had an affair that Trump hates.

But I'm sure Cash Percell will find things to investigate, people to go after, and that's not good.

Yeah, it's the FBI is a bunch of, you know, white guys that love law enforcement.

It's a pretty conservative organization.

I'm just trying to imagine the Obama transition in 2008.

It's like guys like you and me who are like relatively young but been around for a while, like going up to Tim Geithner being like, yo, if you give us 100 grand a month, we'll talk you up in the press.

Like that's what's happening here.

Totally.

Totally.

Again, so another bit of Trump news.

Obviously, every president at this point is a lame duck when there's an incoming administration, but Trump is really just assuming power and crowding out Biden in ways that I don't know that we've seen before.

One such example came last night when Trump, I think, just just tweeted it, that he put out a statement or tweeted that he wants to put 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada and then an additional 10% tariff on all products coming in from China.

The rationale was, quote, this tariff will remain in effect until such time as drugs, in particular fentanyl, and all illegal aliens stop this invasion of our country, end quote.

These tariffs would upend the USMCA trade agreement that Trump negotiated with Mexico and Canada just a few years ago in the first term.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the U.S.-MCA trade agreement covered $1.8 trillion worth of goods in 2022 alone.

So this is a lot of stuff.

The economic impact would be huge.

The Canadian government told the journal that Ottawa buys more stuff from the U.S.

than China, Japan, France, and the U.K.

combined.

Mexico, China, and Canada account for over 40% of imports to the U.S.

this year so far.

So long story short, putting these huge tariffs in place would be have a major economic impact.

The president of Mexico, Claudia Scheinbaum, responded to Trump Tuesday morning saying basically, okay, if you did that, we'd have to retaliate.

It would hurt businesses.

She also pointed out that the drug trade requires supply and demand, and the U.S.

is causing the demand problem, and that 70% of illegal weapons seized from criminals in Mexico come from the U.S.

So she's getting a little spicy.

Justin Trudeau in Canada spoke with Trump after this statement went out.

I think he offered more of a low-key response.

But Ben, I think what's notable about this to me is the way the markets and the media are kind of brushing it off a little bit like trump has made a lot of threats like this i i hope the reaction so far is an indication of a less hair on fire approach to covering this administration or maybe they're just all thinking well it could be worse it could be a 60 tariff on china like he's talked about before but i don't i don't know

first of all

We always say this.

It's a version of what you just said, but it's pretty bizarre for the president-elect to start a trade war two months before he takes office.

But I guess guess

norms are things that don't exist anymore.

But we have to be aware of this.

We have to be aware that this is not normal.

So just posit that.

In terms of what Trump's trying to do, I think, is he links all these things into one transaction, right?

So he's putting tariffs, which are an economic penalty in place.

But what he wants from Mexico, I think, is to essentially crack down on border crossings on the northern, you know, their northern border, our southern border.

So the the deployment of the Mexican National Guard, which is now part of the Mexican military, actually, to stop migrants before they get there.

And I guess in some bank shot on fentanyl, you know, the Mexicans doing more to crack down on fentanyl, the Chinese doing more to crack down on precursors of fentanyl.

This is all quite complicated stuff.

Mexican cartels are famously the move if you tariff them.

They care a lot about, you know, trade duties and taxes and things like that, right?

I mean, like, none of it makes sense.

Like, such a bank shot, but sorry to cut you off.

No, that's right.

It's a huge bank shot.

And so we'll see.

I mean, he may be able to squeeze Mexico to do certain things at the border.

But the reality that people have to understand is this is a tax on Americans.

You know, we litigated this in the campaign.

The price is not paid by Mexico.

It's not like they pay extra on imports.

It's 20% that is going to be passed to the American consumer because they're going to have to pay an extra price for what's coming across the border.

Mexico is our biggest trading partner.

Canada, a huge trading partner.

China, huge trading partner.

This is very inflationary.

And the longer these tariffs stay in place, the more it's going to have inflationary pressure.

Prices are going to go up in this country.

So all those people who voted because they're pissed about inflation kind of voted for policies that raise prices, including on things like food, right?

A lot of food comes in from Mexico.

And then if there's reprisal tariffs, which they certainly will be, well, that's going to make it harder for U.S.

exporters.

So if this is quick, if this is like he puts the tariffs in place and squeezes something out and there's an agreement within a few weeks, then I think it's

not that disruptive.

But if these tariffs kind of become a new normal, it's going to create all kinds of economic pressures.

And another thing it's going to do is it's going to incentivize a country like Mexico to get closer to China, to countries that don't do things like this.

And so I think the U.S.

is going to be economically isolated over time, and China is going to become more of a center of gravity here, as well as other countries.

So welcome to the new Trump normal here.

Yeah.

And once again, we're in a position where the long-term economic impact could be really bad and really devastating.

But in the short term, a headline that's like Trump threatens major action on Mexico over fentanyl, like that's a great headline.

I'm sure it's wildly popular.

People will like it.

It still stops short of some of the things they talked about in the campaign, like sending the U.S.

military to, you know, conduct airstrikes on, you know, whatever cartel

he mentioned at the time.

So yeah, we'll see.

It's probably smart politics, but yeah, kind of crazy.

Yeah, and you're right.

This is the key question for all these things.

Is this the first step of a slippery slope, right, that could lead to more terrorists, or to your point, could lead all the way to military action in Mexico?

Or is this kind of the thing that he's going to do and get the headline?

And that's, to me, the meta question of the.

second Trump term is how much this stuff spirals, you know?

Absolutely.

All right, so let's turn back to Israel because there was another major development last week, which was the fact that the International Criminal Court or ICC issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Galant.

It was for committing war crimes like using starvation as a weapon of war and directing strikes against civilians, both in Gaza.

This is the first time we've seen the ICC issue an arrest warrant for a Western leader, and it means both men could risk arrest if they travel to any of the 124 countries that are members of the ICC.

Remember, the U.S.

and Israel did not sign the Rome Statute and are not parties to the ICC.

So we're not under this, we wouldn't fall under this agreement.

Netanyahu and most of the Israeli government reacted with outrage.

They said the charges were wrong on the facts and equated the Israeli government with Hamas because the ICC also put forward some charges against some Hamas figures, I believe.

Many politicians in the U.S.

denounced the ICC as well, including the Biden White House, which called the arrest warrants outrageous.

And then Trump's incoming national security advisor said the ICC has no credibility and said to expect a strong response from the Trump team when they take over in January.

Many people have pointed out, Ben, how U.S.

officials welcomed the ICC arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin, but are now denouncing the court as lawless.

So it looks very hypocritical.

So, Ben, in practice, like obviously this will make Netanyahu and Galat more physically isolated because they won't want to risk traveling to certain countries.

For example, every member of the European Union is part of the ICC, so we'll see if those countries all enforce this ruling.

It'll make Israel more isolated diplomatically and culturally.

It creates political challenges internally in some countries, like the Germans are now going to decide whether they are going to enforce an arrest warrant.

But on the Trump piece, like back in 2020, Trump issued an executive order sanctioning ICC officials that went after Israeli or U.S.

officials.

I'm guessing their reaction now will be similar.

They'll probably try to punish the ICC rather than seek any accountability for Netanyahu.

But, I mean, with the caveat that obviously getting charged with war crimes is a huge deal for anyone, in practice, how significant do you think this is for Netanyahu, Galant, and the current government?

I think it's significant.

And one of the ways, you know, it is, is that they wouldn't respond so hyperbolically if they were concerned about it.

There's the practical significance, as you said, that countries that are party to this, which are most countries in the world, are obligated to arrest Netanyahu or Galant if they travel there.

And that's not nothing, right?

I mean, but even if he doesn't end up in The Hague, this will always follow him around.

You know, you never, it never goes away, you know.

And the ICC is the most important global body when it comes to the prosecution of war crimes.

And frankly, the fact that they did this, despite the Trump election, you know, this was a prosecutor who made a request to judges.

The prosecutor was informed by an expert panel that included, by the way, a 91-year-old Holocaust surviving Israeli.

Then it was these judges making this decision to approve the arrest warrants after the Trump election.

I think that this is actually going to give the ICC a lot of credibility in the rest of the world, in the global south in particular, where there have been complaints for a long time that the ICC always goes after, you know, African dictators for war crimes, but never white people or Westerners.

The fact that they did this knowing that they were going to have a ton of bricks fall on them from Congress and from the Trump people, I think, shows that they were calling balls and strikes.

Look, the easiest way to not get prosecuted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court is not to commit war crimes.

And if you, you know, we've talked about this,

yeah, BI, we've talked about this at length.

You know, they've been using starvation as a weapon.

They announced it, you know,

as a tactic that they were going to squeeze Gaza.

They've been restricting aid.

They've over 20,000

children have been killed in Gaza.

Those are not combatants in Hamas, right?

And

so this is something

that has a short and medium term inconvenience to Israel, but is a long-term, I think, stain on Netanyahu and frankly on this government in Israel.

The sanctions, they could turn a dial up if they really want to.

They could try to kind of make it impossible for the ICC to investigate other war crimes by restricting their travel, by trying to sanction third countries that cooperate with ICC investigations.

So they could really try to disrupt the court, which just think of how that would look, Tommy, that

because you're vindictive about this, you're going to stop the investigation of other war crimes.

This is beyond hypocrisy.

This is now into the U.S.

being a shield.

If we cripple the ICC, we become a shield, not just for Netanyahu, but to all war crimes everywhere.

because we're trying to neuter the body that the world came together to create to do it.

So I'm pessimistic about where this is going, but I think it's going to show how out of step the U.S.

is with international opinion.

Before we take a quick break, make sure you listen to Dan's exclusive sit-down with Jenna Malley Dillon, David Pluff, and Quentin Foulkes, and Stephanie Cutter from the Harris campaign on yesterday's Pod Save America.

They had a lot to say about what went wrong in the 2024 race.

And if you want to hear Dan's reaction to it all and his answers to subscriber questions, head over to the Friends of the Pod for an exclusive bonus episode.

When you subscribe to Friends of the Pod, you're also supporting Crooked's mission to build a progressive media ecosystem.

Plus, we're offering 25% off annual subscriptions right now.

Head to crooked.com/slash friends or subscribe now from Pod Save America's feed on Apple Podcasts.

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And there's another really important story ahead of Israel that's about press freedom and the future of their democracy.

Listeners have probably heard us talking about an Israeli newspaper or news outlet called Ha'aretz on the show a bunch because one, I can't pronounce it correctly and it's everyone makes fun of me.

And second, it's a left-leaning independent newspaper in Israel that has long been critical of Netanyahu and is also one of the few outlets in Israel that really covers the impact of the war in Gaza.

on the people living there.

If you talk to Israelis or people who go to Israel, they will tell you they're always struck by how much the news is still about October 7th or IDF casualties or stories about the hostages.

All real important stories, but there is very little coverage of just like the nightmare of life on the ground in Gaza and the impact on the Palestinian people.

However, now the Haaretz's future is in doubt because on Sunday, the Israeli cabinet voted to sanction it.

That means that they're going to cut off all government advertising in Haaretz.

They're going to cancel subscriptions for state employees and for those who work at state-owned companies.

So it's a real revenue hit.

The Netanyahu government was particularly mad by comments made by the publisher of the paper, Amos Schachen, who said in October: The Netanyahu government doesn't care about imposing a cruel apartheid regime on the Palestinian population.

It dismisses the costs of both sides for defending the settlements while fighting the Palestinian freedom fighters that Israel calls terrorists.

Schachen later clarified that he was not referring to Hamas as freedom fighters, but you can understand why

that word choice did not go over well in lots of parts of Israel.

In that speech, he also called for sanctions on Israel and its leaders to end the war.

So there were obviously those discreet comments made by the publisher in that speech, but the people driving this effort to sanction Haaretz were also very clear that they were just generally pissed about their coverage of the war.

So Haaretz responded by saying, quote, like his friends Putin, Erdogan, and Orban, and Netanyahu, who is trying to silence a critical independent newspaper, Haaretz will not balk and will not morph into a government pamphlet that publishes messages approved by the government and its leader.

We caught up with Anat Saragusti.

She's a veteran Israeli journalist and currently in charge of press freedom at the Union of Journalists in Israel.

She spoke about how this move is part of a broader campaign to attack press freedom by Netanyahu's government.

Let's listen.

The decision to boycott Aretz by imposing sanctions on it and forbid the use of public funds for advertising or subscribing to the paper is not a standalone event.

It is part of a well-crafted master plan to weaken and then destroy the free press and independent media in Israel.

The master plan plays out in several dimensions.

The legislation dimension.

New laws target the independence of Israel's media outlets.

Some proposed laws focus on the public broadcasting media.

Others aim to grant political players with the authority to shut down media outlets that endanger the security of the state.

A very broad definition.

If passed, these bills would effectively give political leaders the right and power to shut down any news outlet that doesn't totally align with the government.

So Ben, I mean, this attack on Haaretz also comes just a few months after the Israeli government raided and shut down Al Jazeera offices in Israel and the West Bank.

It just, it seems like it's a pretty remarkable attack on press freedom that is following the Victor Orban playbook to a T.

And you're not really hearing like denunciations from the State Department or other places, are you?

no uh those uh you know

there have not been a lot of profiles encouraged on anything related to israel and the united states government under joe biden which is a part of his legacy um essentially running interference for the uh strangling of israeli democracy by bibi nanyao um so i'm just going to name that this is really extraordinary i mean this is not howts is is it an illustrious newspaper

oldest paper i think right and yeah it's to the left but it i mean

to americans i don't know this isn't even like Grey Zone or, you know,

this isn't some super left outlet, right?

This is, you know, left to center opinion that people, you know, in television and around the world read, right?

And

you're right.

This is the Orban playbook to a T.

You intimidate media, you try to force them, you bend them to your will, you use state funds, state sanctions.

I recently watched a documentary people should check out on Streaming Tom.

You'd like it called BB Files, where they got the deposition tapes of BB and all of his criminal trials.

And keep in mind, one of the criminal trials was basically about him and his son, you know, leaning on the biggest website in Israel for news and literally getting down into the weeds of trying to pick their editor and telling them what content and what pictures to use.

And he wants to control the media and he's following the playbook of Orban.

In this country, we see some of that already.

I mean, that's another thing to think about: is how far will Trump go?

He's threatened people's licenses, you know, MSNBC and others, their broadcast licenses.

So we should be aware that this is a trend across the board.

But on Israel, like people just need to stop and think about this.

This is literally sanctioning newspapers for things that you don't like.

And so when people want to use the talking point about Israel's the only democracy in the Middle East or whatever, ask, you know, someone who lives in the occupied territories or ask someone who works at Haaretz whether this feels like a democracy, you know?

And I say that with all humility because I don't think the United States is going to feel entirely like a democracy at times in the next four years.

But this, you're right, this is something that should be getting more attention.

Yeah, it'll be a big revenue hit for the paper.

Hopefully they can recoup some of those losses by the international attention that will come from people seeing this attack and finding it offensive and subscribing.

But I do think it's really important and it's worth highlighting that Israel has a robust censorship process for any national security story that can keep certain reporting out of the press generally.

That's why there's this big scandal happening right now where people are wondering whether Bibi Nanyahoo directed one of his aides to leak classified information that seemed to back up

some of his approach to hostage negotiations with Hamas.

And that aide had to leak that information to a German newspaper because it couldn't get through the sort of Israeli censorship regime.

So there's a concerning trajectory here, Ben.

It's not just the war, it's not just these sanctions on Haretz.

It's also the attack on the judiciary that happened just a couple of years ago.

Like a a lot of blinking lights here for Israel's democracy.

And let's just point out that this was for speech, right?

This is something they didn't, you know, they didn't like what the publisher said.

They didn't like some of the stories that they were writing or the opinion that they were writing about the war.

Tommy, do you think that the free speech stands, Elon and all the Silicon Valley bros who are harping on about free speech are going to rally to the defense of Haretz

and the Israeli media?

I don't know.

You know, I haven't looked.

I would also love to know what Barry Weiss is up to on this one.

I'm not someone who's been probably very fond of Haretz's general coverage, but maybe I could be wrong.

I'll take a look after the show.

But yeah, a story worth watching.

Ben, so another sort of big piece of the kind of outbox legacy of the Biden administration is Ukraine in the war there.

Last week, we talked about their 11th hour decision to let Ukraine hit targets in Russian territory with U.S.-made weapons and the ways in which that Ukraine had started to do that with these attack of missiles and other things.

The Russians decided to respond pretty quickly and show their displeasure by escalating and firing back Ukraine with what's been described as an experimental medium-range ballistic missile.

What makes this kind of missile so dangerous is that it can carry a nuclear warhead.

It can be outfitted with multiple warheads.

Apparently, this missile had six warheads.

I don't know if it was a MERV system, which lets the warheads re-enter the atmosphere and then target different locations, but it was very sophisticated, six warheads.

And then, according to Putin, the missile traveled at up to 10 times the speed of sound.

So there was no Western air defense that could stop it.

Putin said in a speech last week, quote, I would recommend the ruling elites of the countries that are hatching plans to use their military contingents against Russia to seriously think about it.

And then Russia's deputy foreign minister said this week that Russia could deploy short and medium range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region.

So again, more very worrisome saber rattling there and also just real escalation in the forms of

these cross-border attacks.

I think you and I have assumed that when Trump takes office, he'll basically force the Ukrainians to cut a peace deal.

But I did want to play for you this recent clip of the aforementioned incoming Trump counterterrorism czar Seb Gorka on, I don't know, some TV show somewhere.

I'll give one tip away that the president has mentioned.

He will say to that murderous former KGB colonel, that thug who runs the Russian Federation, you will negotiate now or the aid that we have given to Ukraine thus far will look like peanuts.

That's how he will force those gentlemen to come to an arrangement that stops the bloodshed.

What do you think, man?

I don't think Joe Rogan's going to like that answer.

It's funny, when you started to play the clip and he started to

trash somebody, I didn't know whether he was going to go Putin or Zelensky.

You never know what these things are.

I know, I know.

So it's kind of a surprise twist there.

I don't think Seb Gorka is going to be the guy whispering in Trump's ear on Ukraine.

Look, what is distressing about what's happening is Biden people are lifting all these restrictions.

They can fire on Western targets.

They also lifted the ban on the use of anti-personnel mines inside of Ukraine, which is a huge deal.

Big deal.

The U.S.

has spent decades trying to fortify the norm against the use of landmines.

So that goes out the window.

Russia responding in kind.

Part of this is tit-for-tat, but part of this, I think, is both sides are going to try to do as much as they can in the next two months to put themselves in the strongest position heading into this incoming Trump negotiation that is going to commence.

And it's worrisome because we're just in this escalatory period in the war at a time when it's frankly not going well for Ukraine to begin with.

This is the kind of missile that makes me long for arms control, Tommy.

Maybe shredding all the arms control agreements of the post-Cold War period, which is something that George W.

Bush and Donald Trump with John Bolton as national security advisor and Putin have done.

So, you know, now suddenly we're using ICBMs.

That's never a good thing.

It just shows you how much they're, you know, goodbye international or liberal or international order.

There are no norms on the use of these types of missiles.

So it's a lot to be concerned about.

I think it's preparing for the Trump team.

And one personnel point is that there have been these triaboons of Rick Rinnell,

a friend of the pod,

who most notably of recent was negotiating with Jared Kushner on real estate developments in Albania.

So I don't know if he's bringing the anti-corruption mindset to these negotiations, but I just think it's going to be harder than the Trump team obviously suggested of ending the war on day one.

Yeah, they can cut off arms to Ukraine, but they can't make them stop fighting.

They can't make them not be an insurgency.

They can't make the Europeans stop supplying them with certain kinds of weapons.

I'm really glad you mentioned the landmines thing.

I'd forgotten to include that, but you're right.

That's a big deal and significant backsliding in terms of an effort to get just truly awful weapons off of battlefields because the problem with these mines is they can linger for decades and little kids run over them and lose feet and hands or die and it's just horrific um also ben you know you're right on to mention the arms control piece i think this kind of uh missile that putin launched at ukraine would have been covered under the inf treaty yes now obviously we're not naive here we're not suggesting that putin' following all these treaty obligations recently but it you know this was the the u.s withdrew from the i and f treaty in 2019 under the trump administration under the trump administration so these things have a tail you know there's a a cost over time to shredding these things.

Yes.

Okay, let's switch gears, Ben, to another massive challenge, which is climate change.

So the COP29 UN climate summit is finally complete.

It was not great.

There were serious concerns about the process, the fact that it was in Azerbaijan to begin with.

There were reports that the Saudis were unilaterally editing negotiating texts, which is not supposed to happen.

The big picture goal of the summit was to get developed countries to cough up some money to help developing countries transition to a clean energy economy and deal with the impacts of climate change that are already harming them.

On that front, the parties announced a non-binding commitment for rich countries to contribute $300 billion a year by 2035, which is three times the current $100 billion target, but far short of the $1.3 trillion that experts say is needed to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Ben, I don't know,

better than nothing, I guess.

But I just came away from this cop and the last cop wondering if I should continue to have faith in the process and anxious about Trump taking over the reins.

But I don't know.

Anything that jumped out at you?

I think on the process point, it's clear that the cop process has been captured by the fossil fuel industry.

The last two summits were in

the UAE and now Azerbaijan, obviously major fossil fuel producers.

But even more than that, the fossil fuel companies flood the zone with lobbyists.

They're taking the pen.

The Saudi edits were all about kind of defending fossil fuel interests.

Brazil hosts next year.

That's a much bigger improvement.

I think that the UN and Brazil as a host need to take a look at this process and make sure that it's climate people driving the train and not the fossil fuel industry.

Sure, you know, you need those people at the table to make a transition.

Also, there was such a crackdown on civil society.

It's useful.

to have activists protesting outside of cops.

I was there at Glasgow a few years ago where there were like tens of thousands of protesters.

That put pressure on the people inside the room to be more ambitious.

There were no protesters, no activists allowed in a place like Azerbaijan.

So that was missing too.

And yes, this number was whittled down.

I would be unsatisfied with it if I was in a country that is suffering the effects of climate change.

Ambition is going to have to go up at a time when Donald Trump's withdrawing from the agreement or pledging to at least.

So other people are, you know, unfortunately going to have to step up here.

And inside the United States, obviously, states are going to have to step up to defend certain clean energy policies.

Yes.

And speaking of crackdowns in civil society, Ben,

last week, there were reports that 45 political prisoners were sentenced to prison in Hong Kong, which is the latest indication that even advocating on behalf of democracy is now going to be treated as a crime by the Chinese government in Hong Kong.

The crime, in air quotes, there is that back in 2020, these individuals either helped put together or ran in an unofficial unofficial primary designed to help unify the pro-democracy groups ahead of local elections.

But I guess in doing so, they ran afoul of this draconian national security law put in place after Hong Kong's mass protests in 2019.

We spoke with activist Nathan Law.

He was a former legislator in Hong Kong who now lives in exile in London about the prisoners and the state of democracy in Hong Kong.

Here's a clip.

Just look at what these 45 people have done.

They ran a primary election in which it is such a mundane practice for every party in democratic countries.

Some organized it, some ran as a participant.

And then the government says that, oh, you ran a primary election, you wanted to get a majority in the legislature, you wanted to block government's bill, including the budget, you want to paralyze the government so that you're committing an act of subverting the state.

So this kind of logic doesn't really make sense, but that is exactly what the government wants us to send the message.

The idea of having a monopoly of power is to do whatever outrageous and ridiculous things, no one can hold them accountable.

And this is exactly what happened.

Many of these defendants have actually been in jail since 2021.

The majority chose to plead guilty for more lenient sentences.

The longest sentence given was 10 years in prison.

So, Ben, I mean, the Hong Kong's democracy was crushed after these protests during the Trump administration.

Things obviously didn't get any better the last four years during the Biden administration.

It's hard now to see a viable path forward for those who want to see democracy in Hong Kong.

But I do fear, like, look,

the incoming Trump administration is full of China hawks, but the things that Trump cares about are, you know, like economic forces, tariffs,

military development.

I just worry that any kind of like democracy or human rights-related question could end up being something he just trades away.

Yeah.

And I think on these sentences, you know, I wrote about the Hong Kong protest movement in my last book after the fall, and a lot of these types of people who are now being prosecuted.

And the reality is that, one, it's a human tragedy.

I mean, these are people that are losing, you know, in some cases, more than a decade of their life in prison for pretty mundane activities of running for local office or advocating for democracy or being in the kind of freer media.

And that's not a coincidence.

The targeting of people that are kind of pro-civil society or pro-democracy or media outlets that report on this, that's intended to kind of squelch that entirely.

So beyond punishing these people, the message is nobody's allowed to do that anymore.

There's no criticism of the government allowed.

There's no kind of freedom of speech allowed.

And it's an effort to make Hong Kong, which was supposed to be this separate system, just another Chinese city that all the rules are the same as they would be in mainland China.

That's the effect of what's happening.

There's a major trial coming up of a guy named Jimmy Lai, who ran Apple Daily, which is the biggest kind of more independent newspaper there.

That's kind of the final piece of this message that's being sent.

I don't think that the Trump people, even with all these hawks, are going to do anything about that.

I mean,

they could, in their big transactionalism, say, if you want to get out from under these tariffs, you know, we want to see these people freed from prison.

But I doubt that's a priority for them.

Yeah, I do too.

Okay, we can't end this episode without talking about at least one big L for an autocrat around the world.

So that's going to bring us to Jair Bolsonaro, the former right-wing president of Brazil.

After he lost to the current president, Lula Da Silva, back in 2022, Bolsonaro refused to concede.

And now Brazil's federal police have recommended that he, along with 36 other people, be charged with planning a coup to stay in office.

The police have made the recommendation to Brazil's attorney general, who will now have to decide whether or not to formally charge Bolsonaro.

This is the result of a sprawling investigation that took two years.

It produced a 700-page report and comes a couple days after five people, one of whom was an aide to Bolsonaro, were arrested for plotting to assassinate Lula in 2022.

Bolsonaro is also under investigation for ordering an official to falsify his and his daughter's COVID vaccine records before he traveled to the U.S.

and for smuggling jewelry gifted to Bolsonaro from Saudi Arabia in Bahrain.

Bolsonaro had already been banned from running for office until 2030 as a result of yet another case where he'd spread misinformation about election fraud.

Ben, it must be nice to live in a country where these former presidents who try to stage coups have to face consequences.

That feels like a good idea.

Yeah, I don't know that Merrick Garland was the legal advisor to Lula on these ones.

No.

I mean, Tommy, when I look back and think about the strangeness of if you are going to try to prosecute Trump for January 6th, waiting.

you know, years into the Biden term and doing it just in time for the investigations to run into the campaign was not exactly the most brilliant strategy.

I mean, I think what we learned about from Lula is that, you know, if you want to be serious about democratic, you know, the rule of law and democracy, you know, there has to be accountability.

And if you fuck around, you're going to find out, you know, and

that's what's been happening to Bolsonaro.

He earned this through what he did, too.

This is not a politically vindictive prosecution.

It was methodical and

followed a number of people and obviously built a fact picture to get here.

So,

you know, you're right.

It's a rare glimpse of how to push back on authoritarianism.

I think another thing people have pointed out, Tommy, is that both in terms of counter-authoritarianism and in terms of kind of democracy, we don't often look to people like Lula, you know, because

in the West, maybe we get too hyper-focused on the U.S.

and Europe.

Maybe there's something we can learn from how in Brazil they're beating back literally the exact same forces.

I mean, just think about what you talked about.

You talked about like Saudi jewels and misinformation and COVID denialism.

I mean, Bolsonaro is swimming in the same stew as Don Jr.

and Elon and our autocrats and oligarchs.

Lula's doing something different and seems to be thus far working.

Now, we'll see how the next election goes in Brazil, but we should be learning from the Brazilian example as much as we often look to

countries in Europe for how they're dealing with this.

Yeah, maybe because the Brazilians remember what it was like to be a military dictatorship because it was like not that long ago.

Good point.

Good point.

Very good point.

And they were more acutely aware of the threat than someone like Americ Garland, who's, I'm sure, a brilliant jurist and a good guy, but at times seemed like somebody who was so desperate to be seen as nonpartisan and fair that all of a sudden we forgot the whole part of the job that was, I don't know, pursuing criminal activities and seeking accountability and justice.

Yeah, I don't know if Pam Bondi, is that her name, Pam Bondi?

Pam Bondi, yeah.

I don't know how wedded she's going to be to norm defenses as Merrick Garland was.

No, no.

Pam Bondi, who famously was looking into fraud at Trump University in 2013, got a $25,000 check from Trump's trust or charity or whatever, and then dropped the investigation.

So, no,

I'm not hopeful that she's going to be someone who's scrupulous with her ethics and norms.

Finally, Ben, because America is once again going to be led by a draft dodger, we wanted to highlight a strange story about some attempted draft dodging in South Korea.

So the context for folks who don't know is ever since the Korean War, South Korea has mandatory conscription for all able-bodied men over 18.

Those men have to serve in the army for at least 18 months by the time they're 28 years old.

But there was one creative young guy who tried to avoid his military service by binge eating before his final exam.

We don't know how much weight he actually gained, but the end result was enough that he was ruled unfit to serve.

Now, here's where the story gets weird.

First of all, this guy got sentenced to a year in prison.

A year in prison.

Why not just enlist him until he's in shape and ready to rock?

I don't understand that part.

And then, second, even stranger, apparently, he had a friend who, according to the government, helped him devise this binge eating plan.

And that person was given a six-month suspended sentence.

How could that possibly be a crime?

Like, what kind of criminal knowledge do you need to say, eat bad for you stuff, lots of it, and don't exercise?

In America, we just call that like NFL Sundays.

Yeah,

not exactly like mastermind here, you know.

Maybe he was just trying to kind of learn what it's like to be Kim Jong-un.

That's right.

He was perhaps just trying to put him in the shoes of the adversary.

I don't know, but I assume he'll lose that weight in prison.

But

you got to admire the creativity here, Tommy.

I do too.

And what a fun way to get in trouble.

Hopefully he had some good meals on the way out, you know?

Yeah, I hope it was delicious.

It's funny because we have talked about the draft before, like BTS, the K-pop band, they went on hiatus because I think a couple of them had to do their compulsory service.

I also was reading that there's big majorities of young men in South Korea who are unbelievably angry that women don't also have to do compulsory service.

I think there's a very low percentage of women in actually volunteer to join the military.

So all these guys feel like they get ripped into it.

So interesting.

It's sort of a broader, I don't know, cultural challenge.

Maybe we should send Pete Hegseth over there to get rid of these woke men and women serve, you know?

Whip them, that's right.

Whip them into shape.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break and then we come back.

You're going to hear Ben's interview with Malala about life in Afghanistan for women these days.

So stick around for that.

A very powerful interview that you're going to hear.

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Okay, so since the fall of Kabul and the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban in August of 2021, we've watched as the situation for women and girls in Afghanistan has beyond deteriorated, it's kind of collapsed.

Women are not allowed to go to school, to go to work, to speak in public.

And there's an incredibly important and powerful new documentary film, Bread and Roses, which shows the drastic change that has taken place since the collapse of Kabul and the withdrawal of American and coalition forces.

And so today I'm very pleased to be joined by the director of this film, Bread and Roses, Saurah Mani, as well as the executive producer, Mulala Yousafzai, who of course runs the Malala Fund, the world's youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.

And before we start our conversation, I just want to note the film starts, premieres on Apple TV, so it should be widely accessible on November 22nd, and I really, really encourage people to see it.

But thank you for joining us to talk about this.

So, Sarah, I want to start with you as a filmmaker, as an Afghan woman.

When did you decide to make this film?

And how did you find these characters, the women who really guide us through their experiences as a vehicle for telling the story.

When the Kabul collapsed,

I had to travel out of Afghanistan to attend a film festival in Europe a few days before the Kabul collapse.

So

then I didn't have any idea that I will not be able to go back to Afghanistan.

So when this happened, I was witnessing how the situation of women and girls become so harsh and difficult, especially for the women who were the only breadwinner of their families so I thought what can I do and then I find out that I can start working with the charities who are supporting women in this situation then we provide the women with the urgent needs so after sometimes they start sending me video about their daily lives and how they organizing meeting for to doing demonstration in the Kabul Street and asking for their rights.

So later on

I find out that they actually they trusted me as a filmmaker to raise their voice in larger scale than just simply documenting.

I was very lucky and it was by chance that Jennifer Lawrence expressed her willingness to support this project.

And then later on Malalai joined us and then we built a team on the ground.

We train several protagonists how to filming their daily lives with their cell phone and we had cameramen and camera women on the ground to support them and then I had huge archive of Kabul City that I was shooting myself a year before for another purpose that it's fit the story in editing room and that's how the journey started.

I have to say just to note that the scenes of Kabul are absolutely breathtaking and beautiful

and shows the humanity of a place that people in the United States have seen through the prism of war.

So, these women, they're remarkable stories because, so people understand,

these are exactly the kind of women that were inspiring, I think, to people around the world in terms of the transformations that had taken place over the course of the previous 20 years.

I mean, you have a successful dentist, you have someone who worked for the government, you have an activist.

How did you train them or

show them how to film their lives?

And they're also participating in various forms of protest against the government.

And how, because you obviously worry for these women as you're watching it, how did you and they manage the risk?

You know, because I imagine if the Taliban knew they were filming a movie like this, they'd be in danger.

How did you manage that risk of

them taking that stuff?

Yeah.

First of all, they didn't went to Kabul Street for our film.

They were already there.

And they were already sending, shooting their

life and sharing with social media and so many journalists.

Some of this material they send it to me, they also send it to other media too, which is a really brave and brave act of them to share their daily life with media to that everyone understand what exactly happening there.

So, but we did some kind of training how to send the material and how to take care of themselves to that if they are arrested by Taliban and they find out about their cell phone, they face

less risk.

So, but I have to say that if I want to make this film now, today, it's impossible because as Malalai mentioned it,

Taliban is imposed more ideas and decreased against women since that time.

And the situation getting more difficult, and it's impossible to do it right now.

So I think I was very lucky that Jennifer Lawrence expressed her willingness to make a film about Afghan woman that time.

Otherwise, we even didn't have this movie by now.

Yeah, well, because you captured the deterioration, you know, you can feel over the course, you know, even at the beginning, the movie begins on the day that the Taliban comes into Kabul.

And there's still almost like a, it's certainly not a hopefulness, but there's a kind of belief of protest.

And by the end of it, you feel like there's just no space for that anymore.

Now, Malala, you've been very outspoken about issues, obviously, over a long period of time around education, but you really focused on Afghan women and girls since the collapse of Kabul.

I wanted to ask you, given all of your advocacy over the years, what is the role of storytelling in advocacy and activism?

You're someone who talks to politicians.

You're someone who works with NGOs.

This is a different kind of activism.

Why did you believe that storytelling needed to be a part of what you're doing?

I became an activist at age 11, and I had no training in how to be an activist.

The only

tool that I had was to share my own story.

And at that time, girls' education was banned for girls in my hometown by the

Taliban from and they took control from 2007 till 2009.

Right now, when I look at the situation that Afghan women and girls are witnessing, it is so important for us to bring attention to their stories that they're telling us in their own way.

because the Taliban do not want us to talk about this topic.

They want us to look away.

And we all are aware how the news cycle works.

This issue might pop pop up

once in a while.

And there's rarely any discussion about what the life of a girl actually looks like and what women are going through right now.

The Taliban have imposed systematic oppression on the Afghan women and girls, where they have issued more than 100 decrees in edicts, majority of which are targeting women and girls, limiting them from work, education, and any form of political participation or presence in public life.

Afghan women activists and other human rights defenders are calling it a gender apartheid

because

just because of a group's gender, they're living a completely different life, not being treated as equal citizens.

And if they dare to even seek these human rights and basic things, they're being punished for it.

They're being beaten up and put in jails and harassed.

This is the price that women are paying right now for simply wanting to be in school or having the opportunity to to do work for which they had fought really hard.

Right now,

they are trying to use every tool, every opportunity that they can get to raise their voice.

They're using social media to bring attention to what is happening.

They also volunteered and stepped forward to share their story through Bread and Roses, this documentary.

And the three women, working women, did it because

they are doing it on behalf of the 20 million Afghan women and girls who we may never never meet, may never see.

They're hoping that they put their lives at risk so that we start thinking about the rest of Afghan women and do something for them.

So storytelling and all of these different forms of activism are so critical and are giving us a sense of hope in this time.

Well, you mentioned the gender apartheid effort.

We recently, or a couple of times, we've had Sahar Halamzai, who works at Malalafan with you, on to talk about this effort.

This is an effort to codify gender apartheid as a crime against humanity, to create some accountability and some international tools, to treat gender apartheid in the same way that racial apartheid is treated under the law.

Where does that effort stand?

I know that

you're part of an effort to get more and more countries to sign on.

There are votes coming in the UN system.

Where does that effort stand, and what do you hope advancing this idea of gender apartheid could do for women in Afghanistan and other places?

I started as a young activist, and for me,

the question has always been around, why is this happening?

How could the Taliban be in control once again and impose the same restriction?

And this continues to happen for three and a half years and yet we are falling short of ways in which we can hold them accountable.

For me, it is accountability.

They need to be questioned.

They need to be

brought to justice.

And

looking at the current international system, words like gender discrimination and gender persecution actually fall short in describing the scale of the oppression that Afghan women are facing under the Taliban.

And that's why this conversation around gender apartheid became so important to me.

And this is something that has been led by women, including Afghan women, and this was even brought up back in the time of the first Taliban government.

This is giving a sense of hope because if we can make gender apartheid a part of the crime against humanity treaty and it gets codified, this would give a sense of hope to women in Afghanistan that the Taliban will be held accountable, that the countries who are complicit in supporting the Taliban will also be held accountable, and that there would be more pressure on leaders to feel like they have a responsibility.

Right now, so many of them are just getting away by ignoring this topic, not talking about it.

And

so I do believe that this is giving a sense of hope to women in Afghanistan, but also around the world.

It is giving a sense of protection.

And for me, it's the hope that it does not happen again.

I was 11 years old when girls' education was banned.

At 15, the Taliban tried to attack me.

Sahara remembers the time when

the Taliban had taken control back in 1996.

This is not happening for the first time.

Nobody was expecting that the Taliban would be back in power in 2021.

And we all know they have not changed.

They are the same Taliban.

They are even more oppressive than before.

And And if we don't have the right system of accountability in place, this will keep happening again and again.

And Afghan women, they fight so hard and they lose everything all over again.

So for me, that's why the gender apartheid campaign is so critical to be supported.

Aaron Ross Powell,

there is one more question I want to ask both of you about the kind of policy dimension of this, which is there's a debate about whether to try to make things a little bit better through negotiation with the Taliban, you know, in exchange for more formal diplomatic recognition or some form of relief from sanctions to try to negotiate improvements.

And then there's some people who say that's a futile effort.

The Taliban, this is their ideology, this is who they are.

And so we have to focus more on just accountability and taking kind of a longer view.

I'm curious what you both think about this question of whether to pursue diplomacy or whether that is kind of doomed to fail, or maybe you pursue it anyway and it's doomed to fail, but I'm curious where you come down on that question.

I believe that any negotiations or peace talks with the Taliban should not be done in the absence of women.

This is

a real question to us because

we are talking about our commitment to gender equality and the importance of women in the room.

But when it comes to how the situation for Afghanistan is treated, it is completely heartbreaking.

It was not that long ago, in June this year that the Taliban's demand of excluding women from the Doha talks was accepted.

And UN representatives agreed to sit down with the Taliban and women's rights was not even a priority on the agenda and Afghan women were told you cannot be in those discussions.

I don't think any sort of engagement that excludes Afghan women is helpful.

and it is actually not in service of the country because women are half of the population and there is no hope for a better future for Afghanistan if half of the population is living under an oppression and they're not getting education, they cannot do work.

I would highlight that it is so critical that in any engagements, Afghan women are included.

I'm not going to debate about whether engagement should happen or not, but I do know that the engagements have to be principled engagements.

And the people whose future is determined through those conversations have to be in the room.

So that's why the civil society, the minorities, the different ethnic groups, and specifically women, have to be in those rooms.

And women's rights and girls' education have to be a non-negotiable condition.

Why is that even being debated?

It's a human right.

And if the Taliban cannot guarantee that, how do we expect them to be treating women any better?

And the other thing is that in the beginning, countries were saying, or some people had this view that we should give the Taliban some time.

They are different.

They have changed.

Now, three and a half years later, the Taliban have already proven to us who they are and how extreme their ideologies are.

Till now, they have issued more than 100 decrees and edicts limiting women.

I think that is enough.

evidence out there for us that the Taliban, even if you sit down with them, we should not be accepting ifs and buts and all of that and really challenge them and say that there is no conversation going ahead if women's rights are not guaranteed and girls' education is not given.

And

I hope that, you know, we do not fall into this argument that sometimes comes from their side that, or, you know, those who are sympathizing with them saying that, oh, it's culture, religion, it's none of that.

The true representatives of the Afghan culture are the Afghan women and the Afghan people themselves.

And Afghan women within that culture have been fighting so hard to get their education.

And the education system is already in line with the culture.

And then with the religion, again, like I'm still trying to figure out how the Taliban in three and a half years cannot figure out what a more Islamic education looks like.

There are a dozen of Muslim countries in the world and in none of those Muslim countries, girls are prohibited from access to school or women are systematically prohibited from work.

So the Taliban are completely abusing the power that they have using these as excuses.

And I believe when it comes to the protection protection of women's rights,

none of these excuses should be accepted.

That should not even be a conversation.

And these should be non-negotiable conditions.

And

that makes a gender apartheid campaign also quite important.

Yeah.

Sarah, so just to put it a slightly different way to you too, and I just want to echo what you said.

I want to acknowledge as someone who's in the U.S.

government for part of this 20 years after 9-11,

if I look back and the single biggest thing that we did wrong, not even just one matter of policy, but when I was there, we have these conversations and these meetings about policy in Afghanistan, and there were not Afghans in those rooms.

And part of what's so powerful about this film is that

you're hearing directly the lived experience.

These women that were so fascinating to watch and so inspiring to watch,

took these risks to protest.

And presumably now most of them are out of the country.

But I'm curious what, Sara, what they would

think about

how to change things.

Because clearly they were protesting in part just out of frustration, but probably also out of a belief that someone needed to protest to have any hope of things getting better.

How do you think that the women whose stories you told, and from your own perspective, what's the best way to try to think about how to change this?

The most challenging part of making this film was emotionally, that because we were facing with the

deep human story of loss, resilience and hope.

And Afghan women they never lost their hope and they keep fighting.

So and it was very important for us to tell their stories with authenticity and respect.

In this situation, when we decide, the world decides to replace Taliban by Taliban, and then since three years and a half of Taliban doing everything to prove that they are the same same Taliban and we all keep denying saying the Taliban changed and I don't know when we will accept it that Taliban are the same terrorists that we were considering them as international terrorists for many years and then suddenly we decide to hand it part of our world to the terrorists and what we expecting from this situation.

So

We have to think deeply that if Afghan women are paying the price, high price, now, today,

we might pay the price tomorrow.

If we want to make a decision and bring some change to the situation, it's good to make a decision now, today, and not

waste time on this, what we're going to do with the Taliban.

So I think, and also it's not about women and education, it's about all the artists.

In Afghanistan, there is filmmaking considered as a crime.

Musicians are not able to express themselves.

So in this situation, Taliban keep radicalizing young men and

boys to take them as a next soldier.

And they're growing, really.

Do the people thinking about that is dangerous for our world?

Or are they still thinking this is Afghan women issues and is not linking to the rest of the world?

So this is some matter that we have to consider it seriously, I believe.

Well, look, one last question I want to ask you, Malala, which is, you know, right now it's very difficult in global politics.

You know, I mean, we're here in the United States, we just had an election.

Probably a lot of people in our audience are not happy about the result, but it's nowhere nearly as dire a circumstance as in places like Afghanistan.

But even to return to the Taliban, it feels like this thing that people couldn't conceive happened and happened.

And we see the rise of a kind of a nationalist brand of politics around the world.

But yet you continue to do this work and motivate many people around the world.

I'm sure there are things you'd even rather be doing than doing a round of interviews in a hotel,

but you do it.

And the question I want to ask you is, what keeps you going?

What keeps you motivated to keep working for that change in things or that change in attitudes or that change in norms or that moment in global politics when the winds might shift in a better direction?

What keeps you going?

There is a clip in this documentary where we see a little girl, and she's raising her voice, challenging all of us.

What are we doing?

Why can a girl not be in school?

Why can a woman not be going to work?

And I could see my little self in her.

And I think we're not able to answer the questions that we are getting from Afghan girls and Afghan women.

And that is

the push that I feel that wakes me up every day and pushes me to do my activism for Afghan women and girls.

And I will highlight that this is the activism that is led by Afghan women and girls.

We are here as their sisters, as their supporters, and we are using all the tools and the opportunities and platforms we have to bring attention to what is happening in the country.

And it is purely on these human principles and on the principle of humanity.

And I really hope that we can show as much resilience as the Afghan women are showing.

You can clearly see in this documentary that the Afghan women are not resting for a single day to keep fighting for their right

to work and education.

And they're putting their lives at risk because they do not see a future under the oppression of the Taliban.

And they know that it's worth fighting for to see the day when they can be living under

a non-Taliban government where they can practice their rights once again and they can be back to work, they can be getting their education.

And it's still, it's that hope and dream for me that schools can reopen and Afghan girls can have the rights

that girls in other parts of the world have.

And

in this time, I want to say that The Taliban are using everything that they can to silence women.

To resist them, we have to uplift the voices of Afghan women.

The Taliban are attempting to erase women from public life and make them invisible.

Making the stories of Afghan women visible is a form of resistance against the Taliban.

And I see this documentary a part of that resistance and activism that Afghan women are leading in opposition of the Taliban.

Well, look, that's an incredibly powerful note, and I'm glad you raised the children because in a way that I was kind of haunted by these children because in some ways it's a movie about them, you know, as much as it's about the women you're profiling.

And they're so full of life and

incredulity about

the rights being denied them.

So I really encourage people to watch Bread and Roses.

It's on Apple TV starting November 22nd.

Sara, thank you for making such a powerful film.

Malala, thank you for supporting the film and all that you're doing.

And we look forward to your future films as well.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thanks again to Malala for joining the show and happy Thanksgiving to everybody.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

Enjoy.

All you turkeys out there.

Thanks for listening.

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