Welcome to the weekly standard podcast. I'm your host, Michael Graham. This is the weekly standard is Lee Smith and Lee, it's almost like Deja vu all over again. I check out the weekly standard and I see Jimmy Carter, Iran and Israel in the front section of the blog.
What the heck's going on over there? Yeah, well, those are popular features, of course. Well, as you're nodding, the big item today, one of the big items today is that the humanitarian ceasefire to an Israel and Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip, which looks like it may become a last thing ceasefire. Of course, you see fires in the past.
That's lasted for maybe two years when they were up into conflict again. But yeah, it seems like we're going to have a ceasefire here. And of course, these are the exact same terms that Hamas could have had three weeks ago. And in that period of time, those three weeks, the Israelis at this sort of week, 31 of their attack panels, they've depleted at least half of Hamas's rocket and missile arsenal.
So in spite of their sad loss of life, IDF forces and also a number of innocent Palestinian civilians, these lives were sacrificed by Hamas. In spite of these very sad facts, I think we have to look at, you know, I mean, the tally is that Israel won. But Jimmy Carter says that Israel never should have fought, that they should have accepted the coalition government with Hamas and Fatah governing all of the, both of the territory areas, but with Hamas playing no role in the actual governance, you know, no technocratic role, if you will. And he puts the burden right back solely on Israel, he and another, and Mary Robinson from Ireland is, is that a legitimate argument?
So it's preposterous, I've seen the former president's article now. And of course, we have a good piece and a weekly standard on it. He blames this on Israel. And one of the fact is that it was the Hamas kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers that set much of this in motion.
I mean, of course, it's violated. Like I thought the unity deal between Fatah and Hamas is a bad idea to begin with. And I thought it was Abu Madam trying to run circles around the sale peace process. And we showed they did nothing to, they did nothing to show his constituents.
This was the best he thought he could do. This and go to the UN and win, you know, and win acceptance for a number of Palestinian institutions and UN, you know, UN institutions. So this was, you know, this was nothing but the best is play to the unity government and it blew up in his face. So Hamas kidnapped and then killed three Israeli teenagers.
And then Hamas kept firing on Israel. So yes, Israel was not happy about the unity agreement, but it was not going to negotiate with the unity government like this, except it's not Israel that started this war. Again, it was the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers, and it was a constant rocket fire. And what actually blew up the unity government, frankly, astonishing that President Carter doesn't know this or that no one fact-checked the silver and foreign policy.
But the problem was the kidnapping. That's what blew up the unity deal. But what about the argument that Israel should accept governance with Hamas? They shouldn't take the no, you know, Hamas equals no deal approach.
Should they be negotiated with Hamas as a player in the Middle East? No, because Hamas is not, and again, Carter fudges this in his article, but Hamas has not accepted the basic quartet principles as Carter seems to indicate that they have. Carter tries to fudge this case by saying that the unity government accepted quartet principles and that they were technocrats in the government and know Hamas is supposed in the government. Well, yeah, this is true.
Officially, there were no actual Hamas ministers in the government, and various Hamas ministers have resigned, except the fact was, is that there was going to be a number of different people who were going to be paid for, who were going to be taken care of by the PEA, who included lots of Hamas people. That was the whole point of it. I mean, it was not the unity government between Fatah and Hamas, not covered over by the appointment of technocratic ministers, while it was the point of the unity agreement to begin with. It's a unity agreement with what?
Fatah and a bunch of, you know, sort of nameless figurehead technocrats in Gaza. The whole point of it is preposterous. Of course, with the bad fact on Hamas, everyone understood this, including the best, which was the entire point of the deal. So, for Carter, not to understand this again, it's nonsense.
Well, it's interesting, too, to have Jimmy Carter and Iran in the, you know, news at the same time, of course, that happened once in 1979, that didn't work out too well. But I thought it was fascinating that, according to press reports from the Middle East, Iran is openly saying, yes, we've given support to Hamas for their rockets in the past, which is not really news, and we intend to continue to do so. In other words, Hamas will be rearmed. Doesn't that kind of legitimize Israel's actions even more, saying, you know, you can't have a ceasefire with someone whose entire daily activity is how can we get more rockets to shoot at Israel?
Well, this is one of the issues that we've seen unfolding over the last three weeks now. I wrote about this actually last week on our blog, talking about, I guess, what we've seen is Hamas and Iran repairing the different damage that had been done to the relationship. In 2012, when Hamas and Iran had fallen out over the Syrians of the war, when Iran was backing Bashar al-Assad, they were a client, and when Hamas felt that it could not be in the position of backing the brutal slaughter of the fellows in equal religion. So, they got falling out over that.
So, you know, there was a steadily building on our approach, not, but definitely what we've seen over the last three weeks is these ties being repaired with Hamas's, you know, with Hamas's war against Israel. And I believe that this was one of the purposes of the war, and Hamas was started. Hamas was in big trouble. They couldn't pay salaries.
They were being starved, shut up by the Egyptians. They were, you know, again, they had nothing. They had little to show from the Iranian to this point. Yes, this was effectively an audition to say that, see, we can be a useful deterrent against Israel, and we'll fire thousands and thousands of rockets and put many hundreds of our people in front of those rockets as human shields.
And so, Iran looked on a proving way, and yes, we're seeing those ties being repaired now. There's an argument being made that it doesn't matter how Israel does on the ground, it's matter how many tunnels they shut down, and how many rockets they take out, that they're losing the real war, which is the war for world opinion, public opinion, you know, undermining their own standing as the good guys in a bad region. Gallup pulled today, 42 percent of Americans support the actions Israel's taken towards Hamas, 38 percent don't, which is a pretty close number. Is that something that Israel should be worried about?
Is it something that America should be helping with? And is it possible for Israel to win the war on the ground, but then set themselves back to a great degree when it comes to international and public diplomacy? Yeah, I mean, I think these polls go, I mean, again, look, we look at the most important poll in this country, which shows an overwhelming majority of Americans, I believe the number of most recent fewer Gallup polls, something like 64 percent of Americans support Israel. And yes, of course, like most Americans aren't home following the news in all its closest details.
So, when they see the when they see the suffering, again, of innocent Palestinians, it's frustrating for lots of people or downright upsetting. So, I think that people don't necessarily want to see this continue to happen. Again, this was after, we're talking about after several weeks of this war, and the numbers were the numbers were getting higher and higher. These ladies' assessments are something that at least half of the people who have been killed are Hamas fighters.
So, as these numbers start to unfold, these people start to realize what happened here. And as news evaporates get that more and more clearly, as people see, as people see, I'm not sure if you saw the film clip from the Indian news crew in Gaza, when they actually showed the rockets were being fired, and they were using, you know, and also the sinister and the crew as well, showing rockets being fired from the civil hospital. So, as these facts start to unfold more and more, people understand what's going on here and what's happened here. So, I thought they're not along by these polls.
Well, we'll see these change as they were different from three weeks ago, when after the kidnap of three Israeli teams, and continent Hamas rocket missile fire on Israel. There's a lot of focus on how Israel's been getting beaten up in the press and how, you know, the willingness of Hamas to use Gaza and children as, you know, as PR fodder, their bodies, as PR fodder, I should say, is tough. But I think Hamas has struggled in this as well, number one, continually breaking, you know, cease fires. But also, this disturbing interview that's been making the rounds, not just on CNN, where it's originally, but now other news sources have started to pick it up, where you have a Hamas spokesperson kind of either repeating or refusing to denounce the blood libel of Israel.
And that's the kind of extremism that the dopey, you know, college kids, I'm, you know, divest, you know, from Israel people, they hear that and they go, oh my gosh, these people really are extreme. Right. I mean, it's not surprising that they, I believe you're talking about the interview with Wolf Blitzer, and then one of the Hamas spokesman in Beirut. Yeah, this is not surprising.
I mean, anyone knows anything about the Hamas charter, which is with anti-Semitic tropes, you know, copying back to this from the protocols of the others designed. It's just hardly coming to any surprise that this is what these guys think. A lot of different times, there are people on the people scattered throughout the American political spectrum that used to ignore this vile garbage. That, that, I can't really explain.
Again, we have all sorts of, this is a very large country, a few hundred million people, where people believe all sorts of corrupt and crazy things. And it's very unfortunate to see people, people swallowing these anti-Semitic tropes or people having no problem. Yeah, it's disgusting. Why it happens?
Hard to explain it. But the point is that for the first time in, you know, the media world, you know, that, I would, for lack of a term, normal people live in. You know what I mean? The more mainstream media, you have this idea, most people think this is some fringe argument that some, you know, nutter makes against the Hamas out in the, you know, wilds of the interwebs.
And in fact, here's a guy on television and he will blitzer the disappointment on his face that thinks he's saying, I really was expecting you to shoot this down. I don't understand. And the Hamas spokesperson to his credit stands by the vile beliefs of Hamas right there on international television. Sure.
Sure. I mean, I, I, I don't know how much effect I will have on luck. I mean, the television, the American television audience who understands that Hamas is a bag will not be surprised by that. And the American television audience by and large that is anti-Israel.
Again, I'm much, much smaller number of Americans, but it's anti-Israel and deploys Israel's actions and self-defense against Palestinian terrorists will either ignore that statement or, or they won't care at all. So I, this, for me, is not surprising. You know, and it just marks another divide in public opinion. Lee Smith on the Weekly Standard.
Thanks so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. Thank you very much, Michael. You've been listening to the Weekly Standard podcast, please be sure to check weeklystandard.com regularly for podcast updates.
I'm your host, Michael Graham.