0:00

From The Nation

0:03

magazine, this is Start

0:06

Making Sense. I'm

0:11

John Wiener. Later in the show,

0:14

a question about Hamas. Why

0:16

did they decide to provoke

0:18

massive Israeli retaliation now?

0:21

Hussein Ibish, who writes for The Atlantic,

0:23

The New York Times, and The Daily

0:25

Beast, says Hamas had a clear political

0:27

goal on October 7 to

0:30

defeat the Palestinian secular nationalist

0:32

Afata in the PLO. He'll

0:35

explain later in the show. But

0:38

first, the issues and the

0:40

language that win for Democrats. Fazkar

0:42

Sunkara will comment in a

0:44

minute. Who

0:47

loves Aunt Millie's bread? Commuters who are

0:49

running late. And the cops that pull

0:51

them over. Tired parents who live for

0:54

nap time. And energetic

0:56

kiddos who don't. Early birds

0:58

and night owls, teacher's pets and day

1:00

dreamers, the home team and their fans

1:02

that know this is our year. And

1:05

anyone who loves the freshest

1:07

bread delivered daily to Columbus'

1:10

favorite grocers. Because no matter

1:12

where life takes you, Aunt Millie's brings you

1:14

closer to home. Which

1:18

issues work best for Democratic candidates?

1:20

For that, we turn to Fazkar

1:22

Sunkara. He is president of The

1:24

Nation, founding editor of Jacobin, and

1:26

author of the book The Socialist

1:28

Manifesto. He's also been a columnist

1:30

for the Guardian US edition. He's

1:32

written for The New York Times,

1:34

The Washington Post, lots of other

1:37

places. Fazkar, welcome back. Thanks

1:39

for having me. Will you report in

1:41

The Guardian on a new study

1:43

from the Center for Working Class

1:45

Politics of all the Democratic candidates

1:47

for the House and Senate who

1:49

ran in the 2022 midterm elections?

1:53

Almost a thousand of them. Researchers

1:56

for the Center read all their

1:58

websites, records of all their The

2:00

talks to identify the seems,

2:02

the issues, the words the

2:04

candidates use. The. Principal finding

2:06

was not really surprising:

2:09

Democratic candidates running on

2:11

progressive economic issues like

2:13

building infrastructure, resurrecting manufacturing,

2:15

creating jobs, or more

2:17

successful than candidates who

2:19

didn't, especially in white

2:21

working class districts are,

2:24

as you put it

2:26

in the Guardian. Democrats.

2:28

Who attack the rich? do better in

2:31

a lessons. With you

2:33

pointed out a more significant

2:35

than less obvious finding, how

2:37

often do democratic candidates attacks

2:39

Or it's. Less than

2:42

ten percent of the democratic

2:44

candidates are mentioned: Billionaires. Millionaires,

2:48

Last. Read: or the one

2:50

percent or any sort of anti

2:52

weed, so populist rhetoric. Next.

2:55

Question: what proportion of

2:57

democratic candidates came from

3:00

actual working class backgrounds

3:02

themselves? We found that

3:04

only two point three percent of the

3:07

candid we looked at had. Primarily.

3:09

Words are fast backgrounds before entering

3:11

politics, so where you're not. I've

3:14

met people who may be had

3:16

I had a few day jobs

3:18

are an embarassment. People who who

3:20

worked for the majority of their

3:23

their working lives and working class.

3:25

Our professions, post office workers teachers

3:27

are not just talking about the

3:29

manual industrial working class. I'm no

3:32

Differences are a small fraction of

3:34

the Democratic Party tenants. When.

3:36

It comes to democrats attacking the

3:38

rich. There's one historic example of

3:41

a democrat who won a lot

3:43

of by attacking the rich. Reminds

3:46

us, please. bernie sanders

3:48

obviously is be a success

3:50

as example that we have

3:52

on the last of a

3:54

candid back had the perfect

3:56

sort of message discipline that

3:58

talked about bread and butter

4:00

issues and that simplified all

4:02

the complexities of the left-wing

4:04

worldview into a digestible message

4:06

that resonated with millions of

4:08

owners, not just Democrats, but

4:10

independents and even some Republicans.

4:13

And if we go back to the 30s, there's

4:16

a very significant example of a

4:18

Democrat who attacked the rich. Of

4:21

course, and in the article, I

4:23

discussed Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who obviously

4:27

the cousin of a former

4:29

president, he's the

4:31

offspring of two important, powerful, wealthy

4:34

New York families, but he became

4:36

the Tribune of Economic Populism in

4:38

the 1930s. And

4:40

he figured out that the way

4:43

to rebuild the country was to

4:45

mobilize the social base to speak

4:47

to this emerging and increasingly more

4:50

important industrial working class that

4:52

was locked out of politics and to

4:54

try to represent their interests. And he

4:56

managed to do it. And obviously he

4:59

managed to combine some of the most

5:01

important achievements of our

5:03

threadbare welfare state. We

5:05

got that in the 1930s because

5:08

I think Roosevelt realized that he not only needed

5:10

a rhetoric to make a win elections, which

5:12

of course is important, but in

5:14

order to turn politics

5:16

into real policy, into real

5:19

change, he needed a social

5:21

base. He had

5:23

an especially memorable line that you quoted.

5:25

He was talking about what he called

5:27

organized money. And he said, they

5:30

are unanimous in their hatred for me. And

5:32

what did he say about that? He

5:34

said, and I welcome their hatred. I

5:37

welcome their hatred. You don't hear that

5:39

sort of thing from Democrats today, except

5:42

maybe from Bernie and a few members

5:44

of the squad. And

5:46

to be honest, you sometimes do hear

5:48

it from President Biden. I think President

5:50

Biden at his best, at his most

5:52

vigorous during the campaign, almost

5:54

like Bernie Sanders spoke in this

5:57

older sort of democratic.

6:00

party parlance. And it's not that Biden

6:02

was a progressive. He's always been on

6:04

the center, even center right of the

6:06

Democratic Party. But he came from

6:08

this older generation of

6:10

Democratic Party politicians. So he runs

6:12

for his first seat. He becomes

6:14

a senator in the early 1970s.

6:18

So he encounters a Democratic

6:20

Party. He's forced to win

6:22

over unions. He's forced to win

6:24

over progressive constituencies that have been sidelined

6:27

ever since then the Democratic Party. So

6:30

I think that he kind of knew how to speak

6:32

to working class people in a certain way. And he

6:34

knew how to speak in a

6:36

way that didn't seem elitist, that didn't

6:38

seem alienating. He knew how to turn

6:40

it on at times. And obviously, besides

6:43

for some really positive things he's done with the

6:46

National Labor Relations Board appointees

6:48

and other things, he could say that he

6:51

didn't follow through with his pledges to

6:53

organize labor. But you could hear some

6:55

of that in his rhetoric. You hear

6:57

that he was kind of a weapon against class

6:59

the alignment, at least compared to the neo

7:02

sort of new Democrat rhetoric of

7:04

Clinton, compared to these other Democratic

7:06

politicians who were very keen to

7:09

lean into just professional class

7:11

voters and suburbs, and

7:14

that sort of rhetoric to defeat Trump. You

7:16

saw some of this in

7:18

Biden, but the party as a whole, even

7:21

when they're offering far better policies

7:23

for working class people. And I

7:26

have no complaint about saying that

7:28

I'll gladly vote for it. 99.9%

7:30

of Democratic Party candidates when they

7:33

alternative to them on ballots is

7:35

Republicans. But they're still

7:37

associated with professional class

7:39

politics, for lack of a better word.

7:42

They're seen more and more as the

7:44

party of the Ivy League, the party

7:46

of vaguely construed

7:49

elites. And obviously, some of this

7:51

is unfair. I just want to

7:53

look at some of the findings of

7:55

this study. Candidates spend

7:57

most of their money on TV.

8:00

They raised millions of dollars and they

8:02

spent it on TV ads, which we

8:04

think don't really succeed in convincing people

8:06

to vote for them. But the study

8:08

of the center found that just 30%

8:10

of TV ads released in 2022 by

8:12

Democratic candidates

8:16

in competitive districts focused

8:18

primarily on bread and butter

8:20

economic issues. Only

8:23

18% of TV ads said anything at

8:25

all about jobs. Less than

8:27

2% talked about the need for high

8:29

quality, good paying jobs

8:32

or unionized jobs. So it's

8:34

an obvious question here. Why don't

8:37

more Democratic candidates talk

8:39

about populist economic issues?

8:41

Why don't they attack

8:43

billionaires, millionaires, the 1%?

8:47

Yeah, I think that part of it

8:49

is this idea that Democrats need to

8:51

cast a wide as possible net to

8:53

resist Trump. And then

8:56

casting this wide net means

8:58

talking about Trump's extremism, Republican

9:00

extremism, their individual

9:02

qualities as candidates, or

9:04

issues like abortion, which of course are very important issues.

9:08

But I think there's a lack of

9:10

a willingness to focus and say

9:12

that, well, actually the most important

9:14

thing that motivates voters is going

9:16

to be their pocketbooks, is going

9:18

to be jobs. I

9:20

think there was an attempt to almost

9:23

pivot away from the economy and to

9:25

discuss other issues. And Bernie

9:27

Sanders himself brought this up in a column

9:29

in The Guardian that he was attacked for

9:31

by saying that Democrats can't forget to foreground

9:34

bread and butter issues and we can't

9:37

just run as a party of abortion

9:39

rights, even though of course that is

9:41

a major positive differentiator between Democrats and

9:43

Republicans. And if you look at the

9:46

survey, it's not just that only

9:48

18% of ads talked about jobs.

9:52

The survey said around 5% or a little bit

9:54

less than 5% Of

9:56

ads invoked Billionaires or the Rich

9:58

or Wall Street. A big

10:00

corporations are price gouging South Even

10:03

fewer of the ads had any

10:05

sort of class warfare rhetoric. And

10:07

again, I'm not saying that the

10:10

Democratic Party cigar around and and

10:12

sound overnight like the Socialist Party,

10:14

but at the very least, invoking

10:16

this kind of Str economic populist

10:19

rhetoric should be a common sense

10:21

for a left of center party

10:23

that has any interest to portray

10:25

himself as a party of the

10:28

opposition to the establishment. I

10:30

was surprised to see that so few

10:32

of the democratic Tvs talks about Chance.

10:34

I thought. Every. Candidate talks

10:37

about Jobs has Jobs on their

10:39

website. Trump talks about Jobs. So

10:41

it's not just that he should

10:43

talk about jobs. it's how you

10:45

proposes to create jobs and that's

10:48

where the big difference is that

10:50

Democrats need to emphasize. Part.

10:52

Of it as every kind of course

10:54

were mentioned jobs and maybe a stump

10:57

speech on occasion or will have a

10:59

little effect on our side and will

11:01

be part of their platform. A lot

11:03

of these candidates I stand for very

11:06

good things. many them stand for things

11:08

that the act they could really possibly

11:10

transform our American labor might. I think

11:13

this is where we understand what candidates

11:15

are willing to foreground what they want

11:17

to make the canopy about and as

11:19

a whole and again you're seeing that

11:22

that. Jobs or something that that are

11:24

mentioned been of an even when democrats

11:26

wanted to run on and Twenty Twenty

11:28

Two and of course they made some

11:30

games and Twenty Twenty Two psi they

11:32

that might be learning some wrong lessons

11:34

in the meet up to this coming

11:36

presidential election. And of course with. Cats

11:42

are the best way to create jobs.

11:44

We don't think that's right. Yes,

11:46

Of course I'm You know there's

11:48

this is republicans have managed to

11:50

mind as anti establishment rhetoric offered

11:53

in framed as anti book writer

11:55

at him as. working class

11:57

as acts and obviously tied it too

12:00

anti-war-class politics, to the politics of

12:02

redistribution from the poor to the

12:04

rich, but that's all the more

12:06

reason why Democrats need to respond

12:08

with their own fire. People want

12:10

an outlet for some of their

12:12

frustrations. And if we don't correctly

12:14

identify millionaires and billionaires as an

12:16

outlet for that frustration, it's going

12:19

to naturally fall to racial minorities

12:21

and immigrants and all the other

12:23

scapegoats that the Republican right will

12:25

conjure. There was

12:27

one other thing that was not highlighted

12:30

in either the report that you

12:32

cited or in your piece, which

12:36

I thought was also pretty significant.

12:38

There are dozens of topics that

12:40

millions of Americans think define

12:43

today's Democratic Party. Defund

12:45

the police, open borders.

12:48

How many Democratic candidates did

12:50

your study find

12:52

said anything about

12:55

defunding the police or

12:57

open borders? Yeah, so

12:59

our study found that very

13:01

few Democrats actually

13:04

were running on, is

13:06

kind of for lack of a better word, woke

13:09

or if you want to call

13:12

it progressive, cultural rhetoric terms, very,

13:14

very few. I don't have

13:16

the exact figures around me. I, as far

13:18

as I know, the defund the police amount

13:21

was zero and open borders was pretty close

13:23

to zero. Many

13:25

more candidates, almost all of them ran

13:28

on abortion and then

13:30

there was other mentions of LGBT

13:32

issues and support for

13:34

undocumented immigrants and their rights.

13:38

But in general, candidates didn't

13:40

really campaign on polarizing

13:42

cultural rhetoric. Yeah, so

13:44

then the big question

13:46

is how have the

13:49

Democrats become so closely identified with

13:51

defund the police and open the

13:53

borders? One, there was

13:55

a period where we have to be honest that at least

13:57

when it comes to defund the police, this was... a

14:00

demand that was embraced in various

14:02

forms by certain progressive candidates. And

14:04

I personally don't think

14:07

it was a positive response to

14:09

a real crisis, crisis of

14:11

not only police violence, but also crises of

14:13

crime and insecurity that we have in the

14:16

country. I don't think the solution is

14:19

a carceral solution, but I think it kind

14:21

of smacked as a sort of denialism

14:24

that America can be a

14:26

normal, well-functioning social democratic society

14:28

in which we have accountable

14:30

police that are well-trained and well-funded,

14:33

but also don't commit violence against

14:35

innocent people. And we could

14:37

have a social safety net that helps

14:39

create the sort of environment and good

14:41

jobs, create the environments in which ordinary

14:43

people don't fall victim to

14:45

crime and can in confidence be in the

14:47

public sphere. So I think first of all,

14:49

it's worth acknowledging that this really did happen.

14:51

I think a lot of Democrats embraced

14:54

this rhetoric, at least a strong minority of

14:56

them embraced this rhetoric. Especially

15:00

in city council races,

15:02

I know in Minneapolis, this was a

15:04

big issue in LA. There were three

15:07

city council candidates who ran on a

15:10

variety of defund the police. I

15:12

don't think it was more than about

15:14

5% of candidates for the

15:16

House or the Senate. Yeah, I think

15:19

by the time that the races came

15:21

around in 2020, I think the moment

15:23

had changed. I don't have the

15:25

figures in front of me. I would guess that

15:27

maybe 10, 15%

15:29

again, this is a guess, might

15:32

have embraced the rhetoric at one point or

15:34

the other in the summer of 2020. This

15:37

is all to say that even though the

15:39

study found that no one's running on it

15:41

in 2022, doesn't mean that this was all

15:43

conjured as a right-wing lie. And there

15:46

are people who honestly believe

15:48

in defunding the police. I

15:51

don't use the rhetoric of open borders but I'm

15:53

in favor of really liberalizing

15:55

our immigration regime with

15:58

checks and processing but

16:00

a much more radical liberalization than I think

16:03

a lot of Americans today would be comfortable

16:05

with. But I think the

16:07

association wasn't conjured out of anywhere. I

16:09

think one of the reasons why it's sticking

16:11

is because Republicans, of course, have found that

16:13

that's one place where

16:15

Democrats are particularly vulnerable.

16:17

But I think also the Democrats haven't

16:20

really switched the narrative by

16:22

saying, no, what defines me

16:24

as a Democrat is about

16:26

my belief that organized

16:28

money, to use the language you

16:30

summoned before from FDR, that organized

16:33

money shouldn't run government, that

16:35

government needs to be run by

16:37

the people in a democratic way.

16:40

And that means finding ways to

16:42

control the wealth and power of

16:44

billionaires and large corporations. I think

16:47

that's the main thing that defines

16:49

a Democrat. Along with that comes

16:51

other egalitarian priorities, like, for

16:53

example, our quest for racial justice, like

16:55

our quest for reproductive rights

16:58

for women, and so on. But

17:01

I think that without this clarity, it

17:04

becomes very easy for the right to

17:06

redefine what it means to be a

17:08

progressive in America, or even more broadly,

17:10

what it means to be a Democrat

17:12

in America. Basquiat

17:14

Shinkara, his article, Democrats Who

17:16

Attack the Rich Do Better

17:19

in Elections, co-authored by

17:21

Jared Abbott, appeared in The

17:23

Guardian. Thank you, Basgar. Thanks

17:26

so much. Appreciate it. We

17:41

have a question about Hamas. Why

17:44

did they decide to provoke

17:46

a massive Israeli response now?

17:49

For comment, we turn to Hussein Ibbesh. He's

17:52

a senior resident scholar at the

17:54

Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

17:57

He's written for The Atlantic, The

17:59

Daily Beast. the New Republic and

18:01

the New York Times, and he's appeared

18:03

widely on the network news shows. Hussein

18:05

Amish, welcome to the program. Great

18:07

to be with you, Joe. Thank you. A

18:10

near universal assumption is that Hamas

18:12

viewed its surprise attack on October

18:14

7th as the

18:16

opening to another phase in a

18:19

long-term war against Israel. You say

18:21

there's some truth to that, but

18:23

there's a different reason that explains

18:25

why they did it now.

18:27

Please explain. Of

18:30

course, Hamas does see itself in

18:32

a long-term war with Israel, although the

18:34

contours of that are to

18:37

be defined over time. But I

18:40

think the reason for the

18:43

October 7 attack, the

18:45

timing of it, the nature of it, and

18:48

virtually all of its specific

18:50

contours and attributes were

18:52

shaped not by the

18:55

Palestinian-Israeli relationship or the

18:57

Hamas-Israeli relationship, but rather

18:59

by internal Palestinian power

19:01

struggle, by internal Palestinian

19:04

power dynamics, and a

19:06

kind of a partisan

19:08

competition between Hamas

19:11

and the secular nationalists in Fatah.

19:14

Hamas was founded in 1987 during

19:17

the crucible of the first

19:19

Intifada, the first uprising

19:22

by ordinary Palestinians against

19:24

Israeli military rule, where

19:26

there was a kind of vacuum of

19:29

leadership. And at the time,

19:31

it was left-wing grassroots

19:33

committees that were directing

19:36

the uprising. And then the PLO,

19:39

which was kind of the secular

19:41

nationalist organization, began to claw back

19:43

control of the movement. But there

19:45

was an opening, and the Muslim

19:48

Brotherhood in Gaza founded Hamas with

19:50

the founding directive of trying

19:52

to marginalize the secular

19:55

nationalists, take over the national

19:57

movement, and make the Palestinian

19:59

cause. in the long run, an

20:01

Islamist one run by them. And

20:04

that has never changed. They've made a lot

20:06

of progress over the decades in

20:09

getting there, but they still don't have

20:11

control of the national movement. They are

20:13

in control of Gaza, but

20:15

not of area A in the West

20:17

Bank, which is the sort of prime

20:19

real estate under Palestinian control. And

20:22

more importantly, they don't control or even

20:24

belong to the PLO. The

20:27

opinion polls show that this

20:29

Hamas strategy worked for

20:31

a while after October 7th to

20:33

dramatically increase support for Hamas among

20:36

Palestinians, both in Gaza and in

20:38

the West Bank, and to weaken

20:41

Hamas's rival, as you have said,

20:43

Fatah and the Palestinian Authority. But

20:46

you say things are changing now in this

20:49

power struggle within the Palestinian

20:51

movement. You wrote recently about

20:53

what you called a mood

20:55

shift among Palestinians. Tell us

20:57

about that. Yeah, I

21:00

think you are starting to see a mood

21:02

shift. And there are a number

21:04

of pieces of evidence for it. One

21:06

is there's a lot more grumbling

21:09

coming out of Gaza about Hamas,

21:11

about what did they do to

21:14

us, about what on earth did

21:16

they mean by this attack? How could they

21:19

play with our lives like that? I

21:23

think after October 7th, it was

21:25

a sentiment that got buried, both

21:28

in terms of public opinion on the

21:30

ground and in terms of what the Fatah

21:32

leaders were like Mahmoud Abbas and others were

21:35

willing to say about Hamas, underneath

21:37

the kind of shared outrage at Israel's

21:40

behavior in Gaza and the kind of

21:42

rally around the flag and national solidarity

21:44

and all that. But over time, what's

21:46

happened is I think the question has

21:48

started to be raised like that. And

21:52

I think after October 7th, it

21:55

was a sentiment that got buried,

21:58

both in terms of public opinion on

22:00

the ground and in terms of what the

22:02

Fatah leaders were like Mahmoud Abbas and others

22:04

were willing to say about Hamas, underneath

22:07

the kind of shared outrage at Israel's

22:10

behavior in Gaza and the kind of

22:12

rally around the flag and national solidarity

22:14

and all of that. But over time

22:16

what's happened is I think the question

22:19

has started to be raised about what

22:22

did Hamas think it was doing? Now that's

22:24

a question that will become almost

22:26

inevitable and in a very dangerous way

22:29

for Hamas if Israel were to leave

22:31

Gaza anytime in the near term. But

22:33

as long as Israel is there it

22:35

does sort of suppress the

22:38

impulse to ask the question. Nonetheless,

22:40

the question is being asked more

22:42

and more and you can see

22:44

it in the kind of statements

22:46

that are getting out into the

22:49

media and certainly in the Fatah

22:51

response to Hamas's criticism. Yes, you

22:53

quote Fatah in your

22:55

piece in The Daily Beast saying that

22:58

Hamas was responsible for a Nakba

23:00

that is more severe than the

23:03

1948 Nakba. That

23:06

sounds pretty strong. It's

23:08

the strongest thing you can say in Palestinian

23:10

national politics. I mean the Nakba 48 represents

23:13

the destruction of Palestine

23:16

as a society. I mean

23:18

before the 1947-48 war there

23:21

was a Palestinian

23:23

society, a country in a

23:25

fledgling country. It was

23:27

there. It was coming into being.

23:30

And at the end of the war it was gone. And

23:33

most of the Palestinians were outside

23:35

of historical Palestine and were

23:38

refugees and the national movement

23:40

was decimated for decades. So

23:42

if you say this is a Nakba,

23:45

a calamity, worse than a calamity of

23:47

48, you're saying it's

23:49

worse than the worst. It's like saying worse

23:51

than the Holocaust among Jews. And

23:54

I think what you point to there is the fact

23:56

that you know you've got 35,000 people killed.

24:00

in a few months. And that's a number

24:02

that is off the charts in terms of

24:04

dead Palestinians. So it's not a silly thing

24:06

to say, it's just a very strong thing

24:09

to say. And while

24:11

a million Palestinians in Gaza

24:13

are homeless, Fatah said

24:15

Hamas leaders now quote, live a

24:18

life of luxury in seven star

24:20

hotels of reference to Qatar, where

24:23

the Hamas leadership lives now. That's on

24:27

a different register, but still a very

24:29

powerful point. It's a powerful point.

24:32

I mean, the Hamas

24:34

Politburo was expelled from

24:36

Gaza, went to Syria,

24:39

and then they fled Syria in 2012 during

24:42

the Arab Spring Uprisings and ended up in

24:44

Qatar. And they've been

24:46

there living a life

24:48

of relative luxury, and it's in stark

24:51

contrast to the kind

24:53

of life of martyrdom and sacrifice

24:55

struggle and blood, toil and tears

24:57

that they prescribe to ordinary people.

24:59

Now there's a contrast here, which

25:01

is the leadership on the ground

25:04

in Gaza. Yahya Sinwar, the

25:06

political and maximum Hamas

25:08

leader, and Muhammad

25:10

Dave, the paramilitary leader who

25:12

are presumably in tunnels underground,

25:15

underneath Hanyunas or underneath Southern

25:17

Gaza somewhere. And they

25:19

don't live lives of luxury, but the

25:21

former Politburo or the Politburo leaders who

25:24

are now the diplomats of Qatar do.

25:27

And it's a way of jabbing at them

25:29

for sure, and it's not false. We

25:32

talked earlier about the Palestine Liberation

25:34

Organization, the

25:36

PLO, which Hamas would like

25:39

to control. How important is

25:41

the PLO to the Palestinian

25:44

cause internationally? Yeah,

25:46

so this is the thing people

25:48

need to understand. The PLO's diplomatic

25:50

standing and global presence is

25:53

the crown jewel in the Palestinian

25:55

sort of hat car in

25:57

it. Whatever they've created since...

26:00

1967 and the rejuvenation of the Palestinian

26:03

national movement under Arafat and beyond. The

26:05

main thing that the Palestinians have

26:08

built that Israel can't take away

26:10

from them is exactly the international

26:12

role and standing in presence of

26:14

the POO. So we've

26:16

got 130 missions around the world,

26:19

embassies, other missions

26:21

everywhere, and non-member

26:25

observer state status in the UN

26:27

General Assembly and membership in countless

26:30

multinational and multilateral organizations from UNICEF

26:33

to the WHO to, I mean,

26:35

all kinds of things. And

26:38

whoever gets up to speak for

26:40

the Palestinians in an international forum,

26:42

whether it's the Arab League, at

26:44

the UN, and any of these

26:46

organizations at embassies all over

26:48

the world, is going to be

26:50

a PLO representative. Hamas has never been a part

26:53

of the PLO. It's never

26:55

participated in the PLO. And until

26:57

Hamas gains control

26:59

over that international voice, it

27:02

can't really pretend to speak for

27:05

the Palestinians. At the same

27:07

time, Hamas not being a part of the

27:09

PLO and not being in

27:11

sync with Fatah is a problem

27:13

for the Palestinians because you have

27:15

this big faction that's kind of

27:17

outside the whale, and the user-aids

27:19

take advantage of it a lot.

27:21

But it's still the case that

27:23

Hamas needs to claw that international

27:26

voice away from their secular rival.

27:29

And what exactly was Hamas's

27:31

situation on the eve of

27:33

October 7th? Where

27:35

did they stand at that point in

27:38

their rivalry with Fatah? They

27:40

were in a really bad situation, actually.

27:42

And I think people who followed the

27:45

Middle East closely knew how

27:47

dire their situation was. Very

27:50

few of us knew what they were going

27:52

to do or had a sense that they were

27:54

going to lash out. But yeah, they were in

27:56

big trouble. First of all, I think Gaza had

27:58

turned more and more. into a kind

28:00

of a quagmire for them rather than a

28:02

launching pad. They seem to be stuck there,

28:05

just kind of bogged down in Gaza, couldn't

28:07

get back into the West Bank and just

28:09

kind of trapped in this little sort of

28:11

hole in Gaza. They were

28:13

losing support from their international backers

28:15

from Turkey and from Qatar. Both

28:18

of them were saying, you've got to do more for

28:20

yourself. The Turks kind of point

28:22

away from them diplomatically. The Qatar is kind of

28:25

suggesting that they weren't interested in continuing

28:27

to pay the bills for Hamas on

28:30

an ongoing basis.

28:33

Then also Hamas was losing its

28:35

brand because Hamas's competitive advantage against

28:37

the PLO, the PA and FATA

28:39

has been armed struggle because since

28:42

1993, the PLO, the

28:45

PA and FATA have staked

28:47

everything on negotiating a two-state agreement

28:49

with Israel. Whereas Hamas continues

28:52

to use the rhetoric, if

28:54

not the practice always in armed struggle. There

28:57

are these youth groups that have cropped up

28:59

in the West Bank,

29:01

in the Old City of Nablus, the

29:03

Lion's Den, in the Jainen refugee camp,

29:06

the Jainen Brigades and others. Young

29:09

men with guns, doing what young men

29:11

with guns do and certainly

29:13

confronting Israeli occupation soldiers and

29:15

armed settlers. They

29:18

were becoming the vanguard of

29:20

the confrontation with armed Israelis, whether

29:23

it was armed Israeli soldiers or

29:25

armed Israeli settlers. Hamas was even

29:27

losing their one main brand, which

29:29

was armed struggle. They were in

29:31

big trouble. I think they really

29:33

felt that something needed to be

29:36

done. The worst thing was they

29:38

could see that whatever benefits Palestinians

29:40

were going to get, no matter

29:42

how limited, from a US-Israeli-Saudi

29:46

agreement, were all going to

29:48

go to FATA in the West Bank. It

29:50

was going to be money from Saudi Arabia.

29:52

It was going to be some political

29:55

goodies for the PA, maybe even some

29:57

additional standing for the PLO. they

30:00

just couldn't afford it. The Palestinian

30:02

National scene was very evenly

30:05

divided, a delicate equilibrium, and I

30:07

think a Saudi American finger was

30:09

going to come down on the

30:11

scale on the other side

30:14

of the equilibrium from Hamas, and they thought

30:16

it's just got to be stopped, and they

30:18

did stop it, and I think that was

30:20

a very key reason why they acted when

30:22

they did. So the

30:24

United States in all this, what should

30:27

be the political goal of the United

30:29

States in Israel if

30:31

they seriously want to defeat Hamas?

30:34

Well, if they want to defeat Hamas,

30:36

they need to understand what Hamas political

30:38

goal is, and recognize that

30:40

Hamas political goal is internal to

30:43

the Palestinian National Movement. It's not

30:46

primarily to do with Israel, though eventually

30:48

it may be. It's

30:50

not mainly about Iran and

30:52

Saudi-Israeli thing as a regional

30:55

issue, but rather about

30:57

the competition for power

30:59

between Palestinian Islamists and

31:02

Palestinian secularists, and that's where

31:04

the name of the game really is. If

31:07

you want to defeat Hamas and

31:09

thwart Hamas and answer October 7

31:12

on its own terms, it's

31:14

not enough to deal Hamas

31:16

blows from the outside. You've got

31:18

to support their rivals, otherwise it

31:20

won't be a defeat for them,

31:23

otherwise it'll be a matter of

31:25

them kind of like

31:27

braising it out and and toughing

31:29

it out, and then emerging, waving

31:31

the bloody shirt, which is

31:34

the ultimate banner of power and victory,

31:36

and saying, look, we are

31:38

the national movement, we are the right ones,

31:40

you know, we are the true people. These

31:42

guys in the West Bank aren't doing anything,

31:45

they're ridiculous. We are

31:47

fighting Israeli occupation forces every

31:49

day for control of Palestinian

31:51

land. In Gaza, we're dying,

31:54

we're killing, we're doing everything that

31:56

men do In a

31:58

freedom struggle, and the others aren't. That's

32:00

because we are the national robots.

32:03

Can we should be the representatives

32:05

internationally as well? And we

32:07

are really the only ones. Who. Stand

32:09

for the people and that's what they want

32:11

to say. Answer: To deny them that. You've.

32:14

Got to bolster the others. that is no

32:16

other way. The bottom line

32:18

is if you wanted to feed Hamas,

32:20

you have got to strengthen. The.

32:22

Pillow the p I sorta.

32:25

There's no other way. otherwise.

32:27

ultimately, Hamas will win. The

32:30

only way to truly defeat her

32:32

is to strengthen the Palestinian Authority

32:34

to be alone in Fata. That's

32:37

the conclusion of Hussein is he

32:39

wrote about it for The Daily

32:41

Beast the same if is you've

32:43

convinced me. Thanks for talking with

32:45

us today. Start

32:53

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