We have dressed in our best and are prepared to go down as gentleman,
as mister Coogan and I have said, as a Titanic foundered. Ask not
what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your
country. Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricaget Podcast with
Peter Robinson and Stephen Hereward sitting in for rob Long. I'm James Blotle likes,
and today we doctor Daniel P. Goldman about China and Anaka Rostein recording
to us live in Jerusalem. So let's reverselves the podcast. War is already
hell. It should not be made worse by misreporting. But I fear that
on Tuesday the media made a bad situation worse. They actually did harm as
opposed to trying to do the opposite. AMST is not divert or steal this
shipment. These shipments, We're going to provide an opening for sustained delivery of
life saving humanitarian assistants for the palest names. I say no US tax dollars
to the Gaza strip. Welcome everybody. It's the Ricachet Podcast for six hundred
and sixty three. Why don't you join us at ricoghet dot com and you
too can be part of the most stimulating conversations in community on the web.
And speaking of stimulating, here's Peter Robinson full of vim and vigor, and
Steveyward standing sitting in for rob Long, gentlemen, how are you today?
I'm very well. I'm curious, Steve, where are you? I'm actually
in Munich, Germany, because Peter, unlike you, when I go overseas,
I can still function, whereas you can barely function even when you're home.
Personally true, I confess it, I confess it. Munich. What
are you doing in Munich? Well, I'm on a few days of vacation.
I spent a month in Budapest with John O'Sullivan AND's Mary Prankster's at the
Danub Institute. And then I'm spending with my spouse as you did over the
summer, a little bit of holiday in Austria, and now ending in Munich.
Spring time. Well at a time to be there. I know we've
seen the footage of the riots of the I think there was something I saw
in Berlin that was quite zesty. I saw some Dutch policemen who, using
only dix did a rather efficient job of moving people out of the airport where
they were protesting, which is against the law. We haven't seen this sort
of anti submitting, i'm sorry, anti Zionist protests in Europe and sometime half
we no if I can Sarah quick story. I took the train this morning
from Saltzburg to Munich, and the train stopped at the German border, whereupon
they're entered a very large police force, must have been eight or ten officers
asked for passports, and so I look at mine and my wife's, and
then they looked at two pairs of Arab passengers in the same train car that
we were in, and they looked them over very hard, asking them where
they were coming from, where they were going, how long they were staying,
who they were staying with. Looks to me like they are on it,
trying to stop a flood of any further agitators into German cities, and
I thought I've seen that before. Now we're at the curious point where we
are applauding the notion of German officers, saying your papers police, right,
Yeah, it was unusual. I've never had that experience on a European train
before. Peter, you've been probably front rowe to some of the academic disputes
that I've had. We'll get back to Steven in just a second here,
but I want to bring you in academia seems to be showing itself in many
ways. All of these people who are signing letters and tweeting ill advised things
and actually in some cases outside of academia, suffering consequences for it. Are
we seeing a revelation of what some believed to be a deep institutional rot in
our educational system? And do you think that it will change anything in the
second week? This is my observation here at Stanford. It's a different kind
of rot. The first week there were all kinds of anti Israel, pro
Palestine protests, although, as I mentioned last weekend, Kandy Rice never had
a finer moment. In the middle of these protests. Kandy went to White
Plaza, which is where the students hold their protests, and she climbed a
set of stairs and he gave a marvelous little beach in favor of Israel and
against brutality and just change the temper on the campus. In any event,
That was week one. Here we are in week two and there's still anti
Israel chalk marks here, there and everywhere. But the protests have died down,
and would you like to know why, Because these kids need grades,
these kids need jobs. The kids have gone back to the classroom, and
like Stanford students, they are extremely industrious and very serious about justifying the money
their parents are spending while they're here at Stanford. So first things first when
it comes to students at fancy institutions, and the first things first, I'm
not entirely thrilled with this, the careerism, but that's for first things first
is getting good grades so you can get a good job in the tech culture
that surrounds this campus. The one disconcerting note, actually I shouldn't say it
disconcerting. In a way, it's reassuring. But it's reassuring that the university
is taking care of this. But at the Hillel House, there has been,
ever since the invasion, a permanent Stanford police presence. They've got a
car parked very conspicuously, police cars parked very conspicuously in front of the Hillel
House, and an officer there. Every time I've walked past, there's been
an officer standing just letting his presence be seen. Everything's quiet, cheerful.
Students going in and out of Hillel House. They stopped and chatted with an
officer, perfectly relaxed. Everything calm, but the police are there. Well,
you mentioned Peter students going back to the classroom, except last Friday.
Maybe you missed this. Stanford Law School last Friday moved all their classes onto
zoom because they thought it was not safe to hold classes in person because of
the whole atmosphere, a Stanford law which I think probably traces back to shouting
down that federal judge a few months ago. Well, I was right on
this campus and you were in Germany. You saw it. I missed it.
I confess I did miss that right. Well, there was also the
I'm sure you must have heard the story of the U I guess it electur
or teaching assistant who the Jewish students right, exhilarated. He was exhilarated by
the by the carnage. Oh that was the Cornell professor Jenial that this was
a person. And by the way, he's a product of the Berkeley Black
Studies Department. So you know, John, you and I are part owners
of this debacle in a certain way. He's the one who called out the
Jewish students in class, told him to stand in the corner of the room,
stand closer in the corner and saying, this is what you were doing
to the Palestinians and gods in the West Bank. Uh, anyone ought to
say worse things from there. Now he's been suspended. How does a person
like this get fired? Or the person that you see Davis also a transgender
some kind of gender studies person who threatened on Twitter zionists favoring reporters saying we
know where you live, we know your children go to school. You should
fear us more than you fear you know if something rather and that person's been
suspended too, I believe. But suspended suspense the usual phrase is suspended depending
an investigation. Instigation unbelievable. What's to investigate? Don't forget that the message
that you the last one you referenced, had Twitter emojis of a knife and
drop some blood. So this could reasonably, you know. Here and here
we get inevitably to the point where somebody says, well, I thought you
guys on the right war against cancel culture. I think we when it all
boils down to what we're against is people being losing their job because they misgendered
somebody, or told an off color joke, or were accused of of of
clumsy behavior on a date seven years ago, things like that, which which
seem to be offenses that we can work through without people losing their livelihood.
What we're talking here is a line, another side of a line which is
praising barbarism and justifying barbarism. And that when you start to talk about when
you're a doctor or your teacher, or you're a dentist or something like that,
and he started vilifying an entire group of people and tell and saying that
Hitler didn't go far enough. I don't think that's cancel culture. I think
that's what the left always said. It's it's the consequences of your actions.
And in this case, we see that the speech that we were previously told
was violence, such as you know, a Yale professor telling a student to
not really get their undies in a bundle when it came to cultural appropriation of
Halloween costumes. That was violence. But but we know where you live,
and you know where your kids go to school. Stabby stabbing blood blood that
actually smears more into the violence category. I think than telling somebody on campus
to grow up. Yeah. Amen, Well, there we have it.
We've settled everything. We're all in the Peter somehow turned his microphone off.
I see his lips moving, but no sound is coming out. Well,
I'll just add well Peter is having his usual technical difficulties. Hold on,
hold on, I can't go. I thought, I just thought Ben Sas
got the right for him. Leave it to Ben's to get the right formulation
that as president of the University of He's put out a statement saying that the
Constitution, so he's admitting that the First Amendment extends to the University of Florida.
The Constitution protects the right of everyone to make an abject idiot of himself.
That was the phrase, abject idiot. But then in the next paragraph
he went on to say, however, violence is completely unacceptable, and we
will and the campus police here at the University of Florida will be watching.
That struck me as just right, say what you want, no matter how
stupid, brutal, misguided. But the moment there's any hint of violence,
it stops. Okay, So here's the follow on to that story. The
University of Florida faculty has now said whoa whoa, whoa, wha whah whah
whall wait a moment, that was a that statement was too strongly worded.
That statement in favor of free speech actually discourages free speech. Unbelievable. It
is just unbelievable. Yeah, all right, that's all. I just want
to register my shock, horror, and dismay one more time. I'm done.
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from troubles to one side of the world, about another side of the
world. Let's go to an even other side of the world when we talk
to David Goldman David P. Goldman, President of macro Strategy LLC, a
financial consulting Firmony Rights, the Spangler column for Asia Times. It's also the
author of You Will Be Assimilated, China's plan to sino form the world?
How great borgs to deal with? Now? David, welcome, we've been
talking about the Middle East and the American reaction to it. But of course
it's big world, and China is a player in it. As we're discussing
how Putin is looking at this, how other countries. China certainly has got
something to get get out of this, and some people are worried the China
will be meddlesome because they want to stretch American capabilities beyond what we can do,
so that they can stroll in or assimilate, or take or just do
what they want to do with Taiwan or elsewhere. In a recent column in
The Asia Times underspenter, you had some doubts about this, So walk us
through what you think in China's position is going forward in this new conflict,
China is being opportunistic and trying to damage American interest because it's convinced that the
United States wants to do substantial damage to the Chinese economy and hold back China's
development. This occurred last week. Of course, the Commerce Department propagated a
new set of rules against chip technology sales to China. To give an idea
of the extent of this, in Nvidia book, five billion dollars worth of
orders for artificial intelligence chips to Chinese buyers, and that's only directly. There
are many shipments through third parties which are not included in that. So China
has just been denied what five billion dollars worth of chips, and they're furious
about it. So the United States and China have been at dagger's drawn over
a number of issues. I think Taiwan is not going to come into place
soon for a number of reasons that we can discuss. But absolutely China is
using the discomfiture of the United States and the surge of anti Israeli sentiment in
the Muslim world, in the globe and parts of the Global South to win
points against the United States. And since Israel is an American ally, Israel
is in the middle and getting beaten up by China, which is something Israel
never wanted. That Yahoo very publicly try to pursue a somewhat independent policy towards
China. At the end of last June, for example, he announced a
trip to China. Israel has had an all this investment and a great deal
of trade with China and wanted to keep that up. So this is not
and is really an initiative by any means it's the Chinese deciding to make trouble
for the United States by going after its an ally, and that's most unfortunate
for Israel. David, Could I'm trying to get in before your co conspirators,
Steve Hayward gets in. The two of you know each other too well.
I'm suspicious of what might happen if you start talking. Could I just
ask the threshold question a threshold question, at least as I try to grapp
with all of this. China has done very very well in the last thirty
or forty years in the world system that the United States and its allies constructed.
They have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of real poverty. They've
achieved a middle class of what one hundred and fifty million I've read varying estimates.
There are now Chinese billionaires. They have a real tech industry, they
lead the world in manufacturing. And all of this has happened within the international
system that we built. Why does Yuxinping want to take it down? What?
Truly? What does he think he's doing? The Chinese view is that
the United States changed the rules of the rules based in international order, and
those rules included free exchange in technology, particularly semiconductors. Remember, China is
the world's largest market for semiconductors. It imported several years ago nearly four hundred
billion dollars worth of semiconductors, and the United States in twenty twenty determined that
it did not want China to reach past a certain point in development and cut
off the availability of high end shifts, first Huawei and then in October twenty
twenty, reinforced by last week's measures to all of China on the grounds that
China might leap ahead of the United States and artificial intelligence with economic and military
applications. So the United States wanted to hold China back, and China's response
to that is that the United States is trying to ruin our economy. Now
there are knutballs on both sides who are pushing us into a confrontation. There
is a minority of American politicians who want to push for Taiwanese independents, such
as a small group of Republican congressmen who promoted that the Chinese will go to
war over the issue of Taiwanese sovereignty. That's tripwire. The vast majority of
the American foreign policy establishment as well as Donald Trump, are against dancing too
close to that third rail. And they're also knuckballs in China who think that
imperialism has to be destroyed. Those are minorities, but the American consensus has
pushed China into an oppositional position where the Chinese view, to summarize, is
that we had a rules based international order and the United States unilaterally changed.
Well, Kenna, isn't it obvious that the Chinese were cheating and violating that
rules based national order every single day? The massive illegal transfers of intellectual property.
I mean, my question would be, if I may rephrase my question,
since the international order treats them so well, why do they violate it?
Your mind? Quite? I mean, any fair reading of the circumstances
has to say that what the Biden administration has done and cutting off certain kinds
of chips is retaliatory and late at the retaliation. Isn't that right? Or
do you want to argue that we're making a terrible mistake the way we did
when we the way some argue we did when we cut off oil to Japan,
we're forcing them into a box. Well, what we're forcing them into
is a massive national effort to duplicate all the technology of these to buy from
US, which could lead to a glut of semiconductors and a situation in which
China is better placed to win a price war in a saturated market than we
are. That could backfire. I don't think China is going to launch a
missiles ass the way the Japanese attack pro harbor over chips. It's not at
all an analogous situation. The Chinese are certainly serial feeves of technology, and
China the opposite of wrong is poor. They steal from each other, They
steal from us and anyone they can. It is a predatory system. Nonetheless,
we're at a point where the Chinese are now not dependent on stealing technology,
and they're developing their own. Huawei has one hundred thousand research personnel,
spends more money on R and D than Microsoft's or Google. I've toured their
research facilities, I've met with many of their researchers, a large part of
whom, by the way, are not Americans, Europeans, Australians and so
forth, and not Chinese. So the point at which the United States panicked
about China's technological impulse was when China showed its internal capacity to generate R and
D breakthroughs. Remember, China now dominates two high tech industries. One is
a telecom infrastructure five G communications and so on, and secondly electric vehicles.
That's an important industry. China is by far the biggest player in the auto
industry, the world's biggest manufacturing industry, and their best position at the technological
frontier. China now has more robots per industrial worker than the United States does
and a bubble. China advances in the applications of artificial intelligence to manufacturing,
transportation, logistics, and so forth are way ahead of ours. It you'll
pardon me one number. Whilwei claims they have ten thousand customers for their AI
systems in manufacturing. I spoke to one of the three major telcodes in the
US and ask them how they stand, and this particular telco said they at
this point they have no industrial customers for five these systems, So it's complicated.
A retaliatory, Yes, we could call it retaliatory, but that's not
what we're responded to respond to Chinese endogenous innovation, which threatens to leave us
behind in certain strategically critical areas. I hate to interrupt and maybe if you've
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Podcast. David, you you lay out in your latest stage of Times article
China's long term strategy to build global markets for the next generation of Chinese prosperity
and trade. I want to ask you about the Chinese economy at the moment.
I keep talking to people I know in the finance industry who have some
varying degrees of knowledge of China, maybe not as much as yours, but
they think they're very worried about the current state of the Chinese economy. They're
worried that they're close to perhaps a catastrophic recession like the Japanese had thirty years
ago. I guess, and first of all, what did you assessment of
the Chinese economy at the current time, and what are risks not only to
our own economy and the global economic cycle, but also what political effects that
might have on China if their long run of economic prosperity hits a wall.
China has one big problem. They have to transform their economy fundamentally from what
Dung Shaoping created in the reforms of nineteen to seventy nine. Dung did one
thing, which is to take dirt farmers and tournaments of semi skilled manufacturing workers
the workforce that Dung had to deploy in the nineteen eighties, when China began
its great run of growth, had a tertiary education rate of three percent.
They were cheap labor that took a lot of American jobs and other jobs away.
Now that great migration, seven hundred million people have moved from countryside to
city, there are that many people left to move. The semi skilled industrial
model is past. It's used by date, and either they move to a
high tech industrial model or they go through a major crisis. So the entire
emphasis of the Chinese government has been to develop what they call the Fourth Industrial
Revolution. That's a lousy phrase. They stole from the World Economic Form.
Another example the technology effect, but what it means is the application of artificial
intelligence to industrial automation. They've had mixed success. They've done some very impressive
things, as I mentioned, an auto, telecom and so forth. I
could give you some examples. I was in China and saw some of them
recently. Their tertiary education rate is not three percent Underdune, it's sixty four
percent. It's about equal to Germany. They graduate one point four million engineers
a year, and they need to redirect the capital of the country into this
industrial project. Now for the past thirty years, the savings of the Chinese
people have gone mainly into real estate. Seventy percent of the assets of Chinese
households are in real estate. That's created a bubble in some of the major
cities and a huge deformation of the Chinese economy. Real estate is a quarter
of GDP. They've got to reduce that. So for the past two or
three years they've been tightening credit and restricting activity in the real estate sector to
pop the bubble, and that's produced a lot of pain. They've managed to
have sluggish but still positive growth for the last year while they go through that
Namathur organization, and so far I don't believe they have a crisis. They
simply have the mother of all hangovers. After this thirty year spring on real
estate, can they make the transition? I don't know. They've made progress
in some areas, less progress than others, but that's the nature of the
problem. Right now. I don't see a crisis. I just see a
somewhat luggish economy. Jobs are scars from some places. People are complaining,
but most people are working. Most people are making good money. Real wages
are going up, and I don't see a political problem. Yet it could
turn bad, but so far they've been able to keep the balancing at going.
I mean, in America, when we say that fifty percent of my
net worth is in real estate, we mean our house perhaps, or a
place down the street that we bought and rent out. In China, as
I understand it, and gregt me if I'm wrong, a lot of this
is just investment in a property that is a place in the sky. It's
not finished, it doesn't have the appointments. It's just investment in a complex
which itself is completely unoccupied. So there's this sort of ghost building, ghost
cities problem that can be exaggerated. When you move seven hundred million people,
you build homes for seven hundred million people, if you have a five or
ten percent error rate, you're going to have tens of millions of unoccupied houses.
And it's also the case that typically between sale of a house and occupancy
in China, there is about two or three years of improvements that need to
be made. So yes, there are a lot of unoccupied houses, but
there's also an enormous pent up demand for houses. This generation of Chinese that
went from living with a dirt floor in an outhouse to having central heating and
plumbing but a very small apartment, so there is a great deal of pentive
demand for more space. I don't think that. I think the ghost cities
argument it reflects a problem, but it's exaggerated. Basic problem is in America
is something like forty percent of household assets and gen pension funds and everything else
are in corporate ASID stocks and bonds we invest in America. In China it's
perhaps eight percent, and the Chinese government has to convince the Chinese people to
invest in its high tech industrial project as opposed to in houses. If they
want to make this transition, it's not going to be an easy thing to
do, and it's probably two years of a sluggish and unpleasant economy at least
before they turn the corner, if indeed they do. All right, David,
let me ask you about Israel, and the problem is, I don't
know where to begin or end. So let me just ask you to give
us your two top observations or concerns about whether it's the disposition of is capabilities
to subdue Gaza or whether they should attack Hesbala first. I don't know.
Just give me your top two things on your mind. On the Israeli scene
right now, Urban warfare is a horrible and nasty business. There's no way
to neutralize Hamas without going in underground, and Hamas has had sixteen years to
dig in, including building a tunnel system that's probably larger than the London Metro
in terms of length. So doing this would without doubt involve a lot of
Israeli casualties and a very large amount of collateral damage, by which I mean
civilian cancers. If you look at the mass demonstrations in Europe against European governments
by Muslims and their sympathizers, the amount of political blowback that Israel will get
if it follows this policy is frightening. It's a very difficult line to walk.
And my second problem is that if Israel looks weak, no one in
the Muslim world will want to negotiate with it. No one likes Israel.
The Saudis and others are willing to negotiate with Israel because Israel looked strong,
and if Israel does nothing, it will look weak and its position will deteriorate.
So either alternative is going to entail terrible costs, and I think they'll
take the first with all the attendant costs as bloody and unpleasant as it will
be. Very simple question here, is there any solution. I'm hesitant to
use the word solution because really it suggests something that can a problem that can
be solved, and we're dealing with human societies. There are trade offs.
As Tom Soul said, there are no solutions, only trade offs. Does
has the moment come when Israel and the United States have no choice but to
take out the Iranian nuclear facilities or to attempt to do so. I don't
know, and I have no comment on that because I don't have a technological
reading on this. Taking out Iran would lead to all kinds of chaotic developments,
and I'm not willing to recommend it without having access to intelligence about their
state of nuclear development. I think the core problem in the Middle East goes
back to nineteen forty eight, when you had roughly equal numbers of Jews and
Arabs expelled respectively from Jewish and Muslim zones. The Jews, of course,
absorbed eight hundred thousand refugees expelled from Muslim countries, so Israel's Jewish population went
from six hundred and thirty thousand in nineteen forty eight to five to one point
six million. In nineteen fifty five, no Arab country accepted Arab refugees.
They turned into the Palestinian people by being dumped in camps as a bargaining chip
against Israel. When Saudi Arabia appeared poised a sign a peace agreement with Israel,
that would have meant that the refugees had become irrelevant. And I believe
that's why Hamask wants the attacks of what it did to stop those negotiations,
and they did it effectively and they succeeded. So this is a victory for
hamas they maintained the relevancy of the Palestinian refugee problem. The ideal solution would
be for Gaza to be incorporated into Egypt. Let the Egyptians deal with it
great a national boundary, solve the refugee problem by making them citizens of a
nation state which is responsible for security. That's not good to happen because they're
going to be an effective cudgel to be used. Her hereditary status of being
a refugee never resolved, but I was useful when some needs to be derailed
or some well, the rest of it. David we thank you for joining
us in the podcast today. David Goldman is spangler column appears in Asia Times
and he's the author of it. You will be assimilated China's plan to Sino
form the world. Thanks for joining us today. I'll pleasure thanks, thank
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sorry, the Ricochet podcast and now we're happy to have Anakar Rothstein, the
author of Exile Portraits of the Jewish Diaspora. She's contributed to the journalism posts
Hablet Commentary and Ricochet, and she's reporting from Israel today. Welcome. Thank
you your Twitter page. You have images that the world needs to see and
that the world would prefer to turn away from. All the things that are
coming out left in the wake of October seventh attack, and we see more
and more and more. Tell us about your day there at the Kabbutz.
Well, it was the longest day. As some of you know. I've
had the pleasure of being on your podcast before, and sometimes I've been on
from well usually i'm on from one of the conflict zones of the world,
and it turns out it's very very different when it's family. And I'm usually
very proud of not being scared of things, but this morning I was genuinely
frightened to go see for myself the things that you know, I've been like
any other Jew in the diaspora before. Now I'm in Jerusalem and I came
here after the Mass, but before that, I'm sitting there doom scrolling and
I'm seeing all the videos and I'm crying and I'm anxious. But when you
go for yourself and you see for yourself, it's it's a hole that I
was very worried about falling into, and that I was right to worry.
But but I'm glad i went, if that makes sense. I was able
to speak to the rescue personnel there, the Zaka, we're basically the forensic
teen in Israel, and they told me stories that you know, no person
can never forget of women pregnant women whose stomachs were cut open and breast were
cut off, and babies with hatchets in their head, babies that were tortured,
babies that were tied together and burned alive. And then you walk around.
I was able to walk around house to house to house to house,
and because of the situation and because it's still chaotic, Yes, most the
bodies have been taken away, but there's no cleanup yet, which means that
you smell it before you see it, and it hits you with all the
senses, and of course you know as a Jew, it's it's impossible not
to feel as if, bizarrely you're standing in the Holocaust. And I had
to call my Rabbi in the middle of it, and I haven't prayed in
a long time, and I said, I don't know what to do because
a part of me just wants to kill somebody. I'm so angry. I'm
filled with such rage, and yet I can't. So all I know how
to do is pray. And I said, send me some to Helen,
send me some psalms because I want to stand in this unholy place and pray,
because I don't know what to do. Anika, you're in Jerusalem now,
as I understand it, Jerusalem is feels relatively relatively safe. But it's
a small country, and Americans, I at least, am always surprised by
how small it feels when you're there. From Jerusalem where you are right now,
and that's a safe place to thet kibutsum that we're attacked, to the
site of the big dance or rave where a slaughter took place. What is
the distance two hours by car. Okay at a leisurely pace. Israel is
tiny, you know, it's like it's not even an American states, right,
So the distance and when you say, okay, Jerusalem is safe,
yes, relatively, but also Jerusalem is a mixed city. Everybody is incredibly
test. I was here in March and I was doing the usual hanging out
with my friends, and we drink a lot of good wine and a lot
of good meats. You know, we walk around in the city. None
of that is here. Now. What we do is we sit and we
we ask our use when when is it coming? We know it's coming right
when the war is breaking out in Earnest Is it opening on one front?
Is Cusbola gonna as a lot of us suspect when we go in on the
ground, it is cus Bela and Iran going to attack from the north,
which means that we're in at least the two front war right at the same
time, in a tiny country. So the first thing, I mean,
I'm staying at a hotel. Everywhere it says mahmud, you know, shelter
bomb, shelter. We The first thing you do is you check, okay,
on my floor, where's the bombshell because we know it's it's tomorrow morning,
it's the next day, but we're gonna have to run. And on
my way back from from the south today sirens, you get out of the
car, you lay on the ground. This is this is the life now
in Jerusalem is supposedly, supposedly or relatively safe place, right because also you
know, I'm sure that you've discussed this at length, but we thought we
did not realize or at least there was a significant intelligence failure at some point,
and Hamas is not is not as weak as we had hopes. The
you know, the sirens are going off in Tel Aviv, they're going off
in Jerusalem, they're going off in the south, they're going off in the
north. This is terror and anika. I'm struck. Population of Israel is
about nine million. Standing army typically of about one hundred thousand. Reservists have
been called up of three hundred and sixty thousand, which puts the number of
people bearing arms on the ground at four hundred and sixty thousand. The active
duty United States Army is only four hundred and forty thousand, so in a
nation of nine million, four hundred and sixty thousand people called up to military
service. Quite apart from the military situation, they place that must leave shops
without attendance. I mean it has to be visible everywhere the people who were
engaged. That's what I was getting. What does it feel like? It's
you know, it's it's the simple things as the night I arrived. And
of course I'm always excited to be able to go eat kosher food or you
know, being an israel like it. It's an exciting experience. But even
at the hotel, the answer now is sorry, we don't have it because
of the situation. Sorry, we don't do this because of the situation.
There is, there's no stat everybody. You see it everywhere, every able
bodied man is in the army. Now everybody I know is either in the
army or has said goodbye to their husband, their brother, their father,
their you know, to go to the army. You drive around, I
drove from Jerusalem to the south. What you see are not cars going to
work or you know, going to visit friends. What you see is military.
You meet the military h and you feel it. It's it's an interesting
sense for a Jew, because of course we tell stories, that's what Jews
do. And of my generation. I was raised in a generation where we
told the stories of our grandparents and you know, the time that changed the
world for the Jews, the Jewish world right. And I was sitting with
my friends here yesterday and we said, do you realize that we're now in
those shivering few days before we're in those times? We're about to live in
the times that our grandchildren speak about, the times that change, you know,
the status quo that changed the history of the Jews. Never would we
have imagined. You feel it on every stream corner, You feel it everywhere,
and you also feel the tension between Jews and Arabs. I have one
I have one more question before James and Steve come in, and it's this.
I have been watching it that closely. But my impress is that the
traffic, the Jewish traffic in Bengurian Airport is inbound rather than outbound. That
lots of American Jews, lots of Jews from Europe lots is an odd way
of putting it. Because of the way the twentieth century turned out, there
aren't as many as Jews as there should be, but Jews are flying too
Israel to be there, and the younger ones, the more able bodied,
are flying to Israel to fight. And I have not been aware of streams
of mothers and children or old people lining up at Bengurian to get out of
the country to safety. Am I generally correct about this? You're absolutely correct
today. I check the numbers today, two hundred thousand Jews out of a
population of nine million have returned to fight. And I said to you know,
when as I left on Thursday, I said, I live in Ghana
now and I work in Ghana, and my employees were very puzzled by the
fact that I wanted to go home to go to Israel during the war,
and I said, I wish for you, and even more so, I
wish for the Western world to have what we have. These are dark,
dark times for the Jewish people. But my God, am I proud and
happy to be a Jew because we do not sit and say, oh,
somebody else has got this, so I can go about my day, or
even worse, you know, say oh he's got this, and then we
complain about how how he's doing it. We all do. We all come
home and we all have this sense, almost childlike that when something is wrong
in the world, where do we want to go? We come home,
and I didn't know what I was going to do here. I didn't know
how I was going to help. But I know that there's no other place
that I can be right now than home, because my people are hurting,
my people are bleeding. We're about to face one of the greatest battles that
we faced in fifty years or even more. And this is a pivotal time
for the Jewish people and Wese. We come home. Well this year,
this year, in Jerusalem, this year, I'm in. I'm in,
I'm in exactly. Oh yeah, Stephen, Oh that's good. It's Steve
Hayward talking to you tonight from Munich, Germany. Actually, and wow,
I see. I hope I can get through my question. You know,
I'm not Jewish, but I always understood growing up, would never forget meant.
And of course one thing is our member is coming here to Munich as
a teenager forty years ago and doing what American tourists did. I went and
visited doc Ow. I'm not sure Americans are doing that anymore. I hope
they are. I don't know. I was struck by the way. It's
just, you know, an impressional teenager that the German bus driver who pointed
where we wanted to go was clearly ashamed as you should have been, right.
I mean, we go through that for a long time, but and
now suddenly the point is it seems that people have forgotten or are willfully forgetting.
I mean, the thing that outrages me so much is you know these
you've heard the stories we were talked about that earlier in the show, the
tenured professors on campus openly siding with hamas right, in other words, from
the river to the sea, it may as well be seguile. And I've
been saying for a long time that I've been talking about American universities as our
East German universities. Well now that's becoming more literally true, because you know,
as German universities ninety years ago, we're an awful lot of the vileness
and anti semitism spread as official intellectual doctrine. Okay, enough of a rant.
What are you hearing about the hostages? Doesn't seem to be a lot
of talk about it in the media right now? What are people there saying?
What are I'll just stop there and let you try and help out flesh
out my question. These are the things that you know. One of I've,
like I said, I've been doom scrolling a lot, and the video
that got me the most. And of course I'm also a mother. As
parents, we all can relate to this. As the father whose eight year
old daughter when he found out that she had been indeed murdered and her body
was found, he said, yes, thank God. And I don't think
there's a Jew in the world that is not constantly thinking about these faces,
these children, and these women and these men and thinking what it would be
to be in the hands of ramas. I think about it because as a
Jewish woman, the images I've seen, it's not difficult to imagine what it
is to be in Ghaza and be in the hands of these animals. And
as one parent said, they're neither alive nor dead in her mind, They're
living in the hell that we cannot imagine as it is now. You know,
of course, some of you know is has the Hannibal doctrine. There's
there, there are there are rules, and there are practices when it comes
to not negotiating over and allowing the leverage that it means to be held hostage
by by terrorists in this way I can tell you for myself. Of course,
we speak about them every day. We wonder about the babies every day.
Where are they? Are they alive? Is somebody holding them? Is
somebody putting them to bed? Are they eating? What has happened to them?
I think that we all we say cottage for them already in our way.
I don't know if you know what that means, but it's it's a
difficult thing to say, but cottage is the it's the Jewish prayer of morning,
and we say for the dead, and and this is it's a very
difficult thing. We We cannot we cannot be held hostage by them holding hostages.
We do not know. And I pray every day that the IDF and
the intelligence knows something that I don't. But I'm afraid that that's they're lost
to us in one way or another. We pray that's not the case.
But we also know that it will not stop a ground invasion either way.
It will have to happen because there is no way to defeat Hamas. There
would be no way to retrieve these hostages without having a ground invasion either way.
We also know where Hamas keeps their weapons, right, so we can
assume that they are keeping their hostages where they keep their weapons. We are
assuming that they have placed these Jewish babies as human shields, and that is
the best case scenario. So when I say that we are living in a
NonStop heartbreak, it is no it is no exaggeration. And I will also
I also want to add that there's no jew that is not paying attention to
what is being said on these campuses across the Jewish world. And I will
say, and I say, you know, I half jokingly say I didn't
think I could become more right wing. You know, I've always been to
the right of Genghis Khan. But but at this point there, I know
these names, I know these institutions. I know every single person and what
they are doing at this time. And none of us will forget. Although
the Western world forgets willfully or otherwise, we don't. I certainly don't.
And when this time is over, when it is all said and done,
and we have beaten back Khmans beyond, you know, to the edges of
history, as we have everybody else who has ever come for us, then
we will remember that list. Good. Yeah, in one sense, when
it comes to the students, you can always say, well, now you
know youthful, stupidity and naivete, But no, it's something else. It's
a failure to apprehend the namesnature of barbarism and horror and evil in the world.
But today is hard, tomorrow is unknowable. But the future there will
be reckoning. There will be an evaluation. There will be amongst many people.
Some of it will be political, some of it will be technological,
you know, and whatever intelligence failures there were, But there also has to
be or maybe there won't, but there should be an intellectual reappraising of the
way people on the left see the world, because it seems to me that
here in the States that there are something there. There are many people who
are waking up to the fact that just because they thought they were a good
person, because they bought into all of these clever words like decolonization and the
rest of it, without really realizing the true intention of the people behind it,
that that's the how many people on the left, how many Jewish people
on the left secular content to have an easy feeling of virtue by siding with
the Palestinian cause, how many of them are going to look at this and
say, wait a minute, the people who I thought were on my side
because we said the same buzzwords are not. They hate me, and they
hate me for the most fundamental reason of them all. Do you think this
will have this lasting impact, he said, finishing up his long winded speech
as a question, Well, I see it happening. I mean, I
certainly see it. Among the journalists that I meet here in Jerusalemon. There
are a lot of very difficult conversations being had now. It is a loss
of innocence, if you will. But again, I'm not of a forgiving
nature, I'll say that. And I find it curious that when Hamas tells
you, for God's sakes, they wear go pros when they kill our children.
If they have told you what they think about you, they are in
no way unclear about where they stand. So if you want to take up
for them, I don't know. I have. I have very little time
for you, and whatever you you know, internal struggle they have. I
won't be losing any sleep over that. If they come to the right side,
then they're welcome. I welcome them, not with open arms, but
I welcome them. Well, what I will say is what I wish for
them then, is that they can go to Gaza, but I pray that
when we speak again in three months time that Gaza will be very different.
So so who knows, maybe I will move to Gaza after all is said
and done. So what I can say is, you know, we're all
very focused on not even tomorrow, but the next hour, right like we're
we know what's coming. And there's also a somber feeling. I'm in a
different position now than I was all those years ago, when you're very raw
about work. My oldest son is twenty now, and as I drive across
Israel, the faces that I see in those tanks, they're twenty and I
want to hold them and I want to You know, there's this free may
we earn the sacrifice that you are about to make for all of us,
because I feel it in my heart, Sos. As much as I am
excited for us to win and to regain a little of that security that was
lost two weeks ago, I also feel that the absolute heft of what we
are about to live through and the lives that are about to be lost,
because these young men and women are about to enter what can only be described
as the pits of hell, and they are doing it for all of us,
and the Jewish people knows a lot about sacrifice. And like I said,
this will echo through time. This will really echo through time. And
as I sit here and you know our eternal city, it's it's a it's
a heavy heart. It's it's a very heavy heart that I have, and
and we're all we're all waiting for that big, great, big unknown.
I'm saying nothing because I don't want to blesspheme your remarks with anything other than
thank you for joining us, good luck, best wishes, thank you,
Anica, strength and victory. Thank you, thank you. And now we
go to a commercial. I was gonna say, James, how are you
going to do a normal segu after that? To be had? Rob's not
here, so it's up to you to get us out with a joke.
No, well, maybe try to rally, but it's impossible. It's impossible.
I have to ask you though, are you you're in Germany during Octoberfest?
Right? Is Octoberfest going on? Well? Actually, you know,
I think Octoberfest is actually in September. I've always been confused about this.
Right, that would be very very typical German, just you know, revery
efficient. Why wait, till I get it, get it out of the
way September right. Yeah, well, it's been no shortage of beer consumption
on my part the last six weeks, that's for sure. Have you consumed
the beer in leader hose? And though that's just the question, no,
because I'm not I'm not trans anything, James. Why I am not going
to do that? You're not trans cultural? You didn't you didn't bring the
leader hoses on your vacational Germany. You know the thing that I would like
about, you know, if I'd lived in a leader host in culture,
they look like you know, it's kind of vague in the sizing of it
that you know, you pretty much lead leader hose and fits nobody, so
it's just always going to be baggy or the rest of it. Me I
have problem getting closed because I just have one of those absurd little uh sets
of measurements that I can't find anywhere, never find anything pants wise that I
can get at the grow at the department store. Now I got to order
them online and that means that you're at the vagaias and the wishes of what
different companies think your way size mean. I've got about six seven pair of
fans that all of the same way size, and every single one of them
is different. It's just absolutely mad things. Some of the bags of them
are tight. Ah well, Rone solved my life throwne solved my closet problems.
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thank Rome for sponsoring this the ricosht podcast. Well, gentlemen, before we
go, the bruhaha kerfluffle in the house continues, and I'm profoundly uninterested in
it. I'm just I'm just not except apparently aid to Israel is dependent upon
them getting their their ship and order right, and it seems to be.
And this is what is irritating a lot of the GOP's base, I think,
and not without reason, is that we're spending an awful lot of money
in Ukrainian and Israeli security, but our bone border security seems to be a
bit lax. And I'm of the walking shoe gum schools that I believe that
we actually can walk chew gum and I don't know, snapper fingers. We
can do Israel and Ukraine and border security as well, but Abbott is sending
more immigrants and buses to New York, which is compounding their difficulties. As
such, Ben Dominic had a great piece I think he linked to it the
other day in the Federalist about his experience in New York and going to the
Roosevelt Hotel, and I remember that rose of what Velt Hotel is an absolutely
wonderful gilded lobby, which apparently now is somewhat worse for wear. Anyway,
what in there would you like to take? Would you want to talk about
the speaker, the aid, the migrant crisis, or do you just want
to throw up your hands and say, for heaven's sakes, we've dealt with
two huge topics already. It's Friday, Let us go, Let us go,
James. As it turns out, you can't operate too terribly long without
a functioning house of representatives. The government's going to run out of money on
November seventeenth, that's less than a month away. Israel Aid. There's a
certain amount that the Pentagon can do with grawing down reserves and using standing orders
and so forth. They get it all lawyered up. What else can we
do? What else can we do? And it turns out you come to
an end to what you can do, So we do need a functioning house.
I understand. I feel to me that I understand what the Republicans are
going through. They're angry with each other. They're really angry. These guys
fought a very hard campaign. They ended up with a majority of just four
if I have that right, just four seats. And with four seats,
everybody has to put up with a lot. They have to put up with
each other. They have to engage in a certain generosity with each other in
order to hold the coalition together. I have have had a high view of
Kevin McCarthy, who was through sheer jollity and good spirits and really hard work
to raise money even for Republicans of the left and of the right, of
whom he personally might not have approved, who wouldn't have gotten elected in his
district in Bakersfield, California. He crisscrossed the country month after month to raise
money hold it all together. And then eight sons of bitches turned on him
and broke it all apart. And Jim Jordan now has run and Jim Jordan
unleashed aspects of his support who started attacking but Republican moderates on Fox News and
other outlets, and the Republican moderates said, Jordan, you tell them to
knock it off, or you're not getting my vote. And Jim Jordan didn't
tell them to knock it off. So these guys are just guys and women
have had it up to here with each other. It's a mess, as
far as I can tell. The only workable solution, and I'm surprised they
haven't tweaked to it already. They've got to give Patrick McHenry, whom no
one seems to dislike, he's a speaker pro tem. He has extremely limited
powers as a temporary speaker. They need to pass some sort of resolution that
gives him the powers to hold votes and get the government funded and get aid
to Israel properly underway. That's that's my event. I'm kind of angry that
they're angry. Steve. Yeah, well, so by the way, ye,
Peter, you could have that letter solution of what was that? Patrick
mc henry's at his name. By the way, I didn't know we had
a speaker pro tem until this all happened, And apparently it's some very strange
arrangement from the semi secret Order of succession in the event of a catastrophic terroor
strike. Right, we've never needed one before except right, well, guess
what the catastrophic terrorist strike was named? Matt Gates look, you know,
I actually have a little more sympathy than you guys do for let's try a
little chaos once in a while. However, by the way, I like
Kevin McCarthy just fine. I thought that was dumb to throw him out.
However, what we have right now is a de facto government shutdown. I'm
just restating what you just said. Right. Second of all, we can
have speaker temporary Speaker McHenry if twenty Democrats said yes tomorrow, right, let's
remember that. And I think, by the way, Democrats may regret their
opportunism and all this before long, because if we get to a real government
shut down with you budgetary authority expiring here in three weeks. And I think,
by the way, this puts a do Ukraine in jeopardy more than it
might have been if you carried on with Speaker McCarthy. So I think there's
going to be a pox in all our houses, not just Republicans, but
I think some sober Democrats are going to have second thoughts on their own role
in all this before it's all over, Sober Democrats. And with that faint,
I know off before we go there, we want to tell you one
thing and that is if you enjoyed this podcast, although enjoying really is the
word. If you were struck and moved Bionica's testimony, the other Ricochet podcast
network, and there are so many other podcasts here. What's bugging Me with
Dennis Neil. He speaks to two women, a Jew and a Muslim,
Tall Harcouve and Azra Nomani, and they discuss their fight against radical Islam and
Jihadis and the horrible bowl of events that drove them to do what they do
now. So that's something we wanted to tell you to walk listen to as
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