Gaza war

The Moscow Patriarchate mission, headed by Archimandrite Vassian Zemeyev since late 2023, and the ROKOR mission, headed by Hieromonk Roman Krasovsky since 2025.

And since the 2023 Gaza War, the mission has been, in the reported phrase, living under attack.

Missile strikes and drone fragments reported as recently as March.

Meanwhile, the compound itself has flipped completely.

My guest, Akbar Shahid Hamed, interviewed more than 150 people to tell the inside story of the Biden administration's handling of the war.

Today, he explains why he considers that policy both morally and strategically disastrous.

Published just yesterday, Crossing the Red Line, Biden, His Advisors, and Israel's War on Gaza is now available at Collected Works or at your nearest independent bookstore.

Akbar is a diplomatic correspondent at Notice, News of the United States.

His track record of breaking major stories is a testament to the trust he has built over his career with Washington insiders and others to tell this tragic and important story.

I think that really influenced Biden's thinking on the US needs to be attached to Israel kind of emotionally.

But also strategically, President Biden had come out and said, if there wasn't an Israel, we would have to create one, right? This idea that Israel is a strategic asset for the United States, where, however, there are many national security experts, including inside the government, including inside Biden's own administration, who would dispute that, right? And who would say that there's been a strategic toll, actually, for the US of being so identified with really unpopular Israeli policies and policies that have driven a lot of backlash.

Let's talk a little bit more about his decision so quickly to go to Israel, actually sit in, I believe, with the War Council.

Given that history, it appears you knew exactly whom you were inviting onto your stage and were willing to platform him and die on that hill.

Any musician knows how much preparation goes into a concert of this magnitude: sound checks, lighting checks, AV checks, including, presumably, the Gaza war video Macklemore aired alongside his anti-Zionist song.

It is inconceivable that you and your team failed to notice his intentions.

Plausible deniability does not exist in this scenario.

And the grant is called Foreign Conflicts, Domestic Divides.

So we are looking at how things that happen outside the country, like the Russia-Ukraine War or the Gaza War, And how they have spillover effects in a multicultural country like Australia that can then impact the public sphere, right? So it's a continuation of, of course, this discursive digital analysis, but because it's hopefully an example of one of those things that I'm calling for.

It's bringing together scholars from media and comms, with me and a couple of other colleagues, and a big team from political science and deliberative democracy theorists, We've got journalism researchers.

So it's an interdisciplinary team that is trying to look at exactly the different sites or like sites of news generation or platforms or political discussions and debates and disagreements in the parliament and media and press and international relations between Australia.

to Israel.

Now, the Biden administration provided close to $38 billion in weaponry to Israel during the Gaza war.

This is in addition to the $3.8 billion that goes to Israel every year, so supplemental.

And the Trump administration upped the figure by about another, I think it was $8 billion.

I certainly hope not.

None of us do.

As a result of the immensely strong American official support for Israel during the Gaza war, So the conclusion to the book throws out a lot of information about attitudes, polls, possible security impacts to get people thinking about, again, how does what's going on over there and American policy toward what's going on in the Middle East, how does that affect our politics here? How does that affect domestic security?

I did say it's the last question, but with your permission, I'll ask just one quick question as well, one final one.

to Israel.

Now, the Biden administration provided close to $38 billion in weaponry to Israel during the Gaza War.

This is in addition to the $3.8 billion that goes to Israel every year, so supplemental.

And the Trump administration upped that figure by about another, I think it was $8 billion.

I certainly hope not.

None of us do.

As a result of the immensely strong American official support for Israel during the Gaza war, So the conclusion to the book throws out a lot of information about attitudes, polls, possible security impacts to get people thinking about, again, how does what's going on over there and American policy toward what's going on in the Middle East, how does that affect our politics here? How does that affect domestic security?

I did say it's the last question, but with your permission, I'll ask just one quick question as well, one final one.

to Israel.

Now, the Biden administration provided close to $38 billion in weaponry to Israel during the Gaza war.

This is in addition to the $3.8 billion that goes to Israel every year, so supplemental.

And the Trump administration upped that.

I certainly hope not.

None of us do.

As a result of the immensely strong American official support for Israel during the Gaza War, So the conclusion to the book throws out a lot of information about attitudes, polls, possible security impacts to get people thinking about, again, how does what's going on over there and American policy toward what's going on in the Middle East, how does that affect our politics here? How does that affect domestic security?

I did say it's the last question, but with your permission, I'll ask just one quick question as well, one final one.