Latest / Project 2028 / Israel, Palestine, October 7th, and More

Transcript

Israel, Palestine, October 7th, and More · Project 2028

0:00
Alright, welcome to Project 2028.
0:10
Today I have been solely tasked with recounting the Israel Hamas war over the past year, some
0:17
of the contexts that have led up to it, and where we stand today with the unfolding somewhat
0:25
of a crisis in the Middle East, as a lot of people would see it.
0:30
It's very pertinent right now to foreign relations, to domestic policy that even surrounds the
0:37
United States, but we'll get into that later.
0:40
I hope you enjoy the episode.
0:45
Yeah.
0:49
Alright so to get into the episode, full disclosure, this has been recorded a few hours actually
0:54
after I did that intro because the whole thing deleted.
1:00
So I gotta thank Apple for that one, but nevertheless we're gonna get into it, and obviously to
1:07
understand the full scale of the unfolding war that we have going on today, you have
1:13
to know the history, or at least some of it.
1:16
So that's where we're gonna start, and we're gonna start around 1947.
1:23
So let's get going.
1:26
So the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dates back to the end of the 19th century.
1:31
The United Nations adopted what's known as Resolution 181, or some people call it the
1:36
Partition Plan, which sought to divide the British Mandate of Palestine into Arab and
1:43
Jewish states.
1:45
On May 14th, 1948, the State of Israel was created, sparking the first of many Arab-Israeli
1:52
wars.
1:53
The war ended in 1949 with Israeli victory, but over 750,000 Palestinians were displaced,
2:02
and many were killed.
2:03
The territory was divided into three parts, obviously the State of Israel, the West Bank
2:08
of the Jordan River, and the Gaza Strip, which is quite pertinent today.
2:16
Over the following years, tensions rose and fell in the region, but generally rose, especially
2:22
between Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.
2:26
Following the 1956 Suez Crisis and Israel's invasion of the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, Jordan,
2:33
and Syria signed a mutual defense pact in anticipation for the possible mobilization
2:38
of Israeli troops.
2:40
In June of 1967, following a series of maneuvers by the Egyptian president, Israel preemptively
2:48
attacked Egyptian and Syrian air forces, starting the Six-Day War, quite infamous, at least
2:56
at this point.
2:57
After the war, Israel gained territorial control over the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip,
3:02
and the West Bank, along with the Golan Heights from Syria.
3:05
It was quite the astounding victory with much land that they still have today.
3:11
Six years later, in what's referred to as the Yom Kippur War, or the October War, Egypt
3:17
and Syria launched a surprise two-fronted attack on Israel to regain their territory,
3:24
the territory that they lost in the Six-Day War.
3:27
The conflict did not result in significant gains for Egypt, Israel, or Syria, but the
3:33
Egyptian president, Awan Anwar al-Sadat, declared a victory for Egypt, as it allowed Egypt and
3:40
Syria to negotiate over some of that previously ceded and overtaken territory.
3:46
Finally, in 1979, following a series of ceasefires and peace negotiations, representatives from
3:53
Egypt and Israel signed the quite important now Camp David Accords, a peace treaty that
3:59
ended the 30-year conflict between Egypt and Israel at that point.
4:05
And then we're going to kind of jump ahead now, because obviously we've just recounted
4:10
some of the previous tensions in the region, and especially in Israel.
4:15
But now we're going to jump to around 2006 in Palestine.
4:20
And factionalism was just starting to pop up a bit when Hamas won the Palestinian Authority's
4:26
parliamentary elections in 2006, deposing a longtime majority, the party Fada.
4:33
This gave Hamas, the political and the militant movement, inspired by the Palestinian-Muslim
4:39
brotherhood, controlled the Gaza Strip, and just for geography.
4:45
So you know where we're talking about when I reference it.
4:48
It's kind of a small piece of land on the Mediterranean Sea that borders Egypt to the
4:52
south, and it's kind of been under semi-autonomous Palestinian authority since 1993.
4:59
The United States and the European Union did not acknowledge Hamas' electoral victory,
5:04
as the group's been considered a terrorist organization by Western governments since
5:09
the late 1990s.
5:10
Obviously, some governments recognized it earlier as a terrorist group, some as a bit
5:15
later.
5:16
Some have not recognized it at all and restrained, but that's mainly a political and foreign
5:21
policy of their respective countries.
5:25
Following the seizure of control, violence broke out between the two parties, Hamas and
5:29
the Fada, between 2006 and 2011.
5:32
A series of failed peace talks and deadly confrontations and coups culminated in an
5:38
agreement to reconcile.
5:39
They entered a unity government in 2014, which brings us closer to where we are today.
5:47
And that's going to bring us almost directly to October 7th.
5:50
Now I would like to say something before we hit on October 7th, is that obviously I've
5:56
just skimmed over the past history of Israel in about six minutes, just a bit less, and
6:03
it's not a thing to be skimmed over.
6:06
It obviously, I've read or seen a thousand page books written on just portions or just
6:12
wars in Israel's history.
6:15
So that was a very, very extremely brief subsection of the most important events in Israel's
6:22
history.
6:23
But if you want further reading, we're going to attach a Council on Foreign Relations article
6:28
that should have a bit more in depth information and we'll hope you read that after.
6:34
But I just wanted to say that that is not the full history of Israeli conflict in the
6:39
Middle East.
6:40
That's basically a skimming over for the general topics and points that you would need to know
6:44
up until this point.
6:47
So Hamas launched its deadliest attack on October 7th, killing more than 1,300 Israelis,
6:54
around 50 American citizens were taken or killed and injuring over 3,300 and taking
7:02
hundreds hostage.
7:06
Immediately the IDF conducted airstrikes in the region.
7:11
However, aerial campaigns and ground operations we will talk about a bit later.
7:18
Efforts to free the more than 100 hostages have been largely unsuccessful.
7:23
We'll also talk about that later.
7:25
And their location and health status are unknown.
7:29
And now this kind of brings me on to a separate point about why it is so hard, at least in
7:34
part to eradicate Hamas, which is the stated Israeli mission from the IDF in the Mossad.
7:40
And we will talk about the Mossad a bit later.
7:43
But they have these tunnel systems built under a lot of Gaza and Rafah and a few other places
7:52
that help conduct operation.
7:54
It is immensely easier for them to go through a city underground where it's almost impossible
8:01
to see without sensors that would have needed to be built into the ground.
8:06
And this allows them to conduct hostages through cities and territories, well staying, relatively
8:15
undetected by Israeli satellites and Israeli military and its respective intelligence operations.
8:24
So this is one of the main reasons why it is extremely hard and it has been extremely
8:28
hard to recover a lot of these hostages, which is why every hostage recovered is a significant
8:34
win for Israel.
8:36
And for the United States as its joint coalition.
8:41
So when the Israeli aerial assaults and ground invasion started, almost 2 million Gazans
8:48
or 85% of the population fled their homes since October.
8:53
And just kind of looking at some recent casualty estimates from the Hamas run, Gazan Health
8:58
Ministry that placed the death toll around 42,000.
9:02
So because it's very hard to get international peacekeepers and stuff there, it's really
9:10
hard to corroborate those numbers.
9:12
That's what we've heard from obviously state sponsored media and medical organizations.
9:21
Meanwhile US Secretary Antony Blinken, as we'll talk about later also, has been attempting
9:26
to facilitate ceasefires between the two parties, largely unsuccessful.
9:32
So kind of to preface, in October 2023, the Hamas fighters fired rockets into Israel and
9:39
subsequently stormed southern Israeli cities and towns.
9:45
It was the most significant escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in several
9:49
decades at this point.
9:51
And Israel ordered over 1 million Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza to evacuate ahead
9:57
of the ground invasion that began October 27th of 2023.
10:02
The ground invasion began in the north in the conjunction with Israel's continued aerial
10:07
assault that they had started nearly the day of October 7th in conjunction with the Israeli
10:13
Air Force and other weapons and military assets.
10:19
The first stage of the ground invasion ended around November 24th, the one that was started
10:24
obviously on October 27th, with a few hostage for prisoner swaps that allowed a bit more
10:29
aid into Gaza.
10:31
Seven days later, of course, the war resumed, particularly in Khan Yunis, the largest city
10:36
in southern Gaza that Israel claims is Hamas stronghold.
10:42
And then Israel was under severe pressure from the United States and its principal ally.
10:50
And Israel announced that it would begin to withdraw soldiers from the Gaza Strip in January
10:54
of 2024.
10:56
Since then, military analysts speculate that the IDF has pulled out at least 90 percent
11:01
of the troops that were in the territory a few months ago, leaving around one remaining
11:06
brigade, as what estimates say.
11:09
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, however, is unwavering in his position that
11:14
the Israeli offensive in Ra'afah is imperative to their mission and is essential in eradicating
11:20
Hamas.
11:21
However, humanitarian people have, obviously, the numbers are there.
11:26
There are over a million civilians in Ra'afah and it is quite hard to hit targets of strategy
11:36
without injuring others.
11:38
Hamas also has widely been admonished for using a lot of hostages and their own citizens
11:48
as shields, basically coalescing in places like hospitals and in places where there are
11:55
people who are in desperate need of attention or just regular people in which if Israel
12:01
was to bomb those places or to, however, conduct a drone strike, it would kill civilians.
12:07
And that's obviously not the goal of the IDF right now.
12:11
The goal, at least stated, is to carry out the eradication of Hamas.
12:17
So then we're going to kind of go to mid-March.
12:21
And this kind of ties into the human shields point, is that Israel conducted a two-week
12:26
raid on Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical center in Gaza.
12:30
And we'll talk about some of the actual health center numbers in a bit later.
12:35
Israel claimed that Hamas was operating out of Al-Shifa, reporting it killed over 200
12:40
fighters and captured an additional 500.
12:43
The U.S. Intelligence Community, CIA, NSA, FBI later determined that Hamas had used Al-Shifa
12:49
as a command center.
12:50
It held some of the hostages there.
12:52
But the Islamist group evacuated the complex states prior to the Israeli operation and
12:58
then kind of to move it just a month.
13:01
In late April, two mass graves were discovered around Al-Shifa and Nasser Hospital in Khan
13:06
Yunis, which was another target of an Israeli operation around that time.
13:12
More than 300 bodies were found among the two sites, quite an atrocity of any scale.
13:19
As we mentioned earlier, 300 bodies is an immense amount of people to be found dead
13:26
in mass graves and the United Nations has subsequently called for an independent investigation,
13:33
as probably warranted.
13:35
And then on April 1st, Israel started launching airstrikes.
13:38
And this is where it pertains a lot to today, because today, as we'll talk about later,
13:44
there is a wider war in Iran and in the Middle East breaking out.
13:49
And it is most certainly becoming much more of a concerning point for U.S. foreign policy
13:55
and for the U.S. State Department day by day.
13:59
But to go back a bit, on April 1st, Israel launched an airstrike on Iranian consular
14:04
building in Damascus, killing multiple senior Iranian military officials.
14:11
In response, Iran engaged directly in the war by launching over 300 drones and missiles
14:15
at Israel on April 13th, my birthday.
14:19
This was prevented, at least in part by the Iron Dome system, which has been quite the
14:26
resource throughout the war for Israel, preventing an immense amount of deaths and helping sustain
14:32
infrastructure in the country paramount to any other defense system that is really out
14:37
there and fully funded, almost in full by the United States.
14:43
So because they were able to ward off the attack, they only sustained minor damage to
14:47
a singular air base, and the escalation marked Iran's first ever direct attack on Israel
14:54
as Israel kind of weighed an extensive counterstrike on multiple targets in Iran, the United States,
15:01
and others advised against such actions as they were seeing what was about to come of
15:05
it.
15:06
They feared that it would widen the war in the Middle East, and Israel ultimately launched
15:11
a more limited aerial strike on the bases in two cities on April 19th.
15:19
Iranian President Ebrahim Rasi later downplayed the response, suggesting Iran avoided further
15:26
escalation in that scenario.
15:29
This kind of brings us to the more humanitarian situation that we have to, obviously we'll
15:33
get back to Iran in just a second and how that relates to Israel.
15:38
But Gaza is desperately low on water, fuel, and supplies as Hamas has rejected the most
15:44
recent ceasefire proposals.
15:46
Obviously Israel's not doing its necessary, they're not fully goodwill negotiating, but
15:52
they are certainly at least trying to get something done.
15:55
But Hamas has rejected a lot of the offers.
15:59
However, a lot of Netanyahu's coalition in his government, and this is more domestic
16:05
policy but this heavily ties into the war, is built upon a set of median right and far
16:13
right lawmakers and advisors like Iman Ben-Gavir.
16:18
These people are heavily against a ceasefire and would want to see the extinction of Hamas
16:23
and the takeover of all the land as their main priority.
16:27
Obviously this has not been fully stated by the Israeli military, but a lot of these far
16:32
right people who he has to obey to remain in coalition in government have significant
16:38
sway over the influence in military and defense stuff.
16:45
Ben-Gavir is the defense minister, so as you can see, it has pervaded the upper echelons
16:51
of their government.
16:52
However, Israel has limited the amount of food and aid that can enter.
16:58
Many humanitarian agencies suspended their operation after Israel killed seven World
17:02
Center kitchen employees in an airstrike.
17:04
The World Food Program warns famine is almost now imminent in Gaza, and only 11 out of the
17:11
35 hospitals in the Strip remain partially functional due to the attacks on medical infrastructure
17:17
and the lack of basic supplies.
17:19
The World Health Organization has warned that disease spread and mounting civilian casualties
17:25
could amount to much worse than what we are seeing right now, but a death toll that far
17:31
exceeds the current projections.
17:35
And while the United States said there was no direct evidence that Iranian intelligence
17:39
and security forces helped Hamas' plan on October 7th, and this kind of ties back to
17:45
our last part, which is kind of moving right up until today with Iran and the unfolding
17:49
conflict in the Middle East, the United States intelligence and its allies have said that
17:55
there was no direct evidence that Iranian intelligence and security forces helped Hamas'
18:00
plan on October 7th attack.
18:02
Iran has a well-established patronage, however, with Hamas and other extremist groups across
18:06
the Middle East.
18:08
Israel has obviously exchanged a lot of artillery fire with Iran back to Hezbollah almost daily
18:13
at this point, and struck Syrian military targets and airports, prompting much concern
18:18
that the war could expand north.
18:21
To the south, Yemen Houthi rebels have launched multiple rounds of missiles at Israel, a good
18:25
amount predicted by Iron Dome, but obviously it's not foolproof.
18:30
And meanwhile, the Islamic resistance of Iraq, a coalition of Iranian-backed militants, has
18:35
claimed responsibility for dozens of attacks on U.S. military targets in Iraq and Syria
18:40
since the war began, and that brings us, at least in part, to today.
18:44
Firstly, you have to talk about the intelligence failure of October 7th, because that's paramount
18:49
to where we are today.
18:52
The Mossad is the intelligence agency that conducts intelligence gathering outside of
18:57
Israel.
18:58
Obviously, unlike the CIA, which does not operate in the United States for at least
19:03
intelligence gathering, the Mossad does because it's such a small confine and because the
19:08
borders are kind of loose, as you could say, and where they're getting intelligence from
19:14
is could be both domestic and foreign.
19:16
But they mainly operate to provide for the defense and the defense department as would
19:24
be comparable to in the United States.
19:27
And they really let down, and there have been immense review boards and much strife inside
19:34
the government about why there was such a failure, intelligence-wise, regarding October
19:40
7th, regarding all of the lack of information distributed in that timeframe and why the
19:47
one agency that has its primary mission goal to have information about Hamas and other
19:54
terrorist groups' current actions had had no clue what was coming for them.
19:58
Obviously, the IDF did, and the Iron Dome did a really good job defending at least some
20:03
of the October 7th attack, but Mossad has been under much scrutiny recently for its
20:10
lack of contribution into the impending situation that was October 7th before it had happened.
20:19
However, with all that said, it does bring us to today.
20:23
Today you have Iran and Israel with rising tensions.
20:28
Israel has repeatedly said that they might or might not strike Iran's nuclear program,
20:34
and that's where the war in the Middle East could become a war in the world.
20:39
It could expand if nuclear weapons or even tactical nuclear weapons are used.
20:45
Iran has a nuclear weapon that should be ready in around two weeks, according to most analytics
20:52
and reports.
20:53
And Israel has always denied that they had a nuclear program, but it is widely regarded
20:58
that they do.
20:59
They have around 80 nuclear warheads, as estimated, so most certainly enough to take Iran off
21:05
the map and possibly destroy a good chunk of the Middle East, along with causing a cloud
21:13
of radiation, but that's besides the point.
21:16
A nuclear war would be, at least in this point, unfathomable.
21:21
However, Israel has been extremely concerned about Iran's nuclear capabilities, and they
21:27
are significantly considering bombing their centrifuges and uranium enrichment plants.
21:34
The US and all the other allies have warned against this, as just stated earlier, it's
21:39
just going to widen the war in the Middle East and could actually cause use of nuclear
21:43
weapons.
21:44
However, it is up to Israel's discretion, mostly whether to do this or not, and we will
21:50
update you if the podcast comes out and we have some more information on this.
21:55
This is kind of unfolding.
21:57
I've gotten some of my information that just came in less than 20 minutes ago, but US negotiations
22:03
with Israel over what the situation is, not negotiations, but advising, are currently
22:08
impending.
22:09
The State Department certainly has a lot on its plate, and that ties into my last point
22:13
about US elections.
22:15
Obviously, we love talking about foreign policy, foreign affairs, current events, but we always
22:20
have to do a bit of a tie back to some US policy and politics, and this is where the
22:26
election comes into play.
22:29
Obviously, foreign policy is not number one on a lot of people's lists of most important
22:35
topics.
22:36
Usually, it's around 2% or 3% of people's first topics, so if you pull 100 people, 3
22:40
or 2, we'll say that that's their most important topic in the election.
22:44
However, over 70% usually say it is a topic of good or very high importance in their decision
22:51
to vote.
22:52
It could most certainly play a role.
22:55
If you look at even the Democratic primaries with super high intensity, super high turnout
23:02
voters, you saw over 90,000 Muslim and Arab voters in Michigan state that Harris desperately
23:09
needs to win.
23:10
Abstained from voting for Biden, Harris has nearly the same identical views as Biden on
23:17
the issue, saying that Israel needs to be able to defend itself all within reason.
23:23
They do not believe this is enough.
23:25
Obviously, there were protests outside of the DNC regarding this, and this could certainly
23:30
pose a bit of a problem for a Democratic ticket that could lose some of its heavy base if
23:38
this were to become more of a problem with people who tend to lean more pro-Palestinian
23:45
on the issue.
23:46
Obviously, the Republicans coalition is much, much stancher on Israel's right to defend
23:51
itself and have its own self-determination when it comes to defense, so they're much
23:56
less vulnerable to the political implications of this.
24:00
However, nobody's foolproof from this, and obviously, things may change before the election.
24:05
We still have around two and a half weeks to go.
24:09
That is well, well enough time for the Middle East situation to change immensely.
24:13
If there was a ceasefire that could skyrocket Harris in the polls, if there continues not
24:19
to be a ceasefire, it could definitely be a big vulnerability.
24:24
That will be mostly all we are going to talk about today.
24:27
We hoped we gave you, or I gave you, a pretty good quasi-comprehensive history of Israel
24:34
up until now.
24:35
Obviously, we're going to include some stuff for further reading down below, but if you
24:41
enjoy the episode, make sure to give it five stars, all that stuff.
24:45
We hope we'll see you soon.
24:47
Thank you for listening.
24:48
Thank you for tuning in.
24:49
This is Project 28.
24:50
We're out.