Benjamin Netanyahu

He said he had no regrets over the Iran war and would do exactly the same thing again, claiming that he's eliminated Iran's nuclear threat while the US stock market remains at record highs.

But what do you make of that? Because given numerous experts have claimed that Trump and Netanyahu and various people in his inner circle did ignore these earlier warnings, uh, about what would happen, how Iran would retaliate.

Well, the president has to say that, you know, it, uh, that he would do the same thing because, you know, otherwise, you know, it would, uh, open up a political vulnerability.

Uh, so and every president s- says that, you know, about conflicts even when they're going badly, as, you know, for example, President Bush said the same thing.

... about the changing mood in the United States about Israel.

Um, I don't think Bibi Netanyahu is flavor of the week in, in the White House at the moment.

Maybe, maybe we can ask Donald Trump about that this weekend.

Yeah.

And they got to a point where they said, OK, I think we've covered everything up.

And they probably took out Netanyahu because you can't find anything about Netanyahu.

So it's pretty evident to me that there were certain people they were really covering for.

There's just absolutely no doubt about it.

Yes.

From like pre-Christ.

And if you listen to Netanyahu, who has to be seen as the king of the Jews now, he's talking about...

Blood libel.

We haven't seen any response, to my knowledge, from the U.S. government, at least not in a a substantial way uh but the israeli government announced among other things that it is closing the uk's east jerusalem consulate uh which itself is also sort of an act of theater it doesn't really uh inconvenience the uk government uh that much it does punish palestinians who might be seeking british consular services but uh you know i guess that's part of the course

And what is, I think, some of the biggest news of the week, although it didn't really get that much coverage, is that a new report has been released that alleges that Benjamin Netanyahu actually had warnings about October 7th and also ignored a chance to recover hostages in its aftermath.

Right.

This was in Haaretz on Tuesday.

The piece basically says that UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed personally talked to Benjamin Netanyahu in late September of 2023, warning him about the possibility of a major forthcoming Hamas attack.

The background to this is that the Israelis and Hamas were engaged in, you know, back-channel kind of indirect negotiations over potentially lifting the Gaza blockade.

Those negotiations had stalled, and Yahya Sinwar, who was the leader of Hamas at the time, passed messages to an unnamed official in the Fatah party of the Palestinian Authority saying, asking him to convey a warning to the Israeli government that if things didn't start moving soon, he was gonna move ahead with a plan for a significant attack.

That official did warn people in the Israeli government, also passed a message on to another sort of Fatah affiliated or orbiting figure, who is an advisor to MBZ in Abu Dhabi, who then passed it on to MBZ, who called Netanyahu to try and reinforce the seriousness of the threat.

Because what they decided to do is, it's not Israel.

It's all Netanyahu.

Netanyahu's the sinning.

He's the issue.

He's the problem.

Well, right.

I think the second part is true.

But the point that Hillary Clinton is talking about it, and then she's making this argument like it's all Netanyahu.

And even within the Republican circles who are very strong supporters of Israel, there are some voices talking about the excesses of Israel.

And Benjamin Netanyahu is increasingly becoming, and not exactly a persona non grata, but he's certainly becoming an unpopular figure.

And if you look at the polls in the States, you see that that sentiment against Israel has increased inexorably in the past year.

So you're seeing that momentum happening, perhaps at a greater rate in Europe, but there are still the standouts, those who refuse to do it.

So, We have a deep state.

To be fair, though, isn't Ratcliffe, according to at least Jonathan Swan and Maggie Habelstam and the New York Times reporters in their much quoted book, Regime Change, they say that Ratcliffe actually had serious reservations about the strikes that Trump and Netanyahu authorized on February 28th.

Could be.

I don't know.

Sorry to say we've been here before.

These are idiots.

You don't start wars, you can't win, bring the whole world into an economic crisis on a whim of Bibi Netanyahu, who is a war criminal, and Donald Trump, who, as I said, is an utterly incompetent, octogenarian, corrupt real estate developer from New York.

They're playing games.

In his book, Fighting Terrorism.

Israeli Defense Minister at the time and future Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu wrote, quote, What road should the United States and other democracies pursue if they are to overcome the insidious international terror which produced the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and which may very well produce other such tragedies? And he went on the right, in the worst of such scenarios, the consequences could be not a car bomb, but a nuclear bomb in the basement of the World Trade Center.

This is 1995, right? Here he is talking about that.

I

Yet the media today, so far anyway, is curiously silent about Bush and Cheney's lies.

Given the cost of both those wars, and Netanyahu and Trump using October 7th in a similar fashion to justify this insane war with Iran, it's an important moment to discuss our history of wars, both illegal and unnecessary, and those that are arguably essential to the survival of democracy in the world.

To be clear, I support U.S. involvement and even an expanded U.S. involvement in the defense of the Ukrainian democracy.

Against Putin's, Hitler grabs Poland-like attack and mass slaughter of Ukrainian civilians.