Gaza: Ethnic and Sovereignty Questions Answered Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is an edited version version of a transcript created using AI technology and may not reflect 100% accuracy.

The video can be found here.

Sarah: Good afternoon and welcome to yet another EMET webinar. Today’s guest is Edwin Black, one of my favorite people. Edwin is a New York Times bestselling author and an historian. He has written 11 books that have been translated into 40 languages and sold in 170 countries. He is the author of the IBM and the Holocaust, The War Against the Weak, Financing the Flames, Nazi Nexus, America’s Corporate Connections to Hitler’s Holocaust, The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Zionist Rescue of Jews from the Third Reich to Jewish Palestine and the Al-Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust. All of these books are extremely compelling and are available on amazon. Edwin, I would like to start by asking you about President Trump who has broken the land for peace paradigm as regards his approach to Gaza. What are your thoughts on this?

Edwin Black: This is a very important question and the crux of what we are going to be discussing today. In order to answer your question correctly, we need to understand the what Gaza is and who the Gazans are. We should ascertain whether two million people can be moved out of Gaza and whether they should actually move. Despite what uninformed reporters and diplomats may say, Gaza is not a sovereign land. Gaza is a non-sovereign territory, illegally occupied by Hamas. For almost 500 years, Gaza was a Bedouin backwater in the Ottoman Empire. Turkey lost its colonies after World War I when its empire was dismantled. At that time, Gaza became a British mandate which was expected to become part of the Jewish homeland. There were numerous other national states created for the Arabs. The League of Nations was familiar with this.

In 1948, Egypt invaded Gaza illegally and Israel reclaimed it in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel built up the economy of Gaza massively at that point. After the ill-fated Oslo courts, Gaza was placed under the administrative non-sovereign authority of the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. In September 2005, Israel withdrew from Gaza completely and world leaders begged the Arabs to create a Mediterranean Singapore. We all remember that. Then the terrorist group Hamas arose. They murdered Palestinian Authority representatives, and seized control of Gaza. Hamas has illegally occupied Gaza since then. They have created a murderous cradle-to-grave society of terror and death financed by Iran, Qatar, the United Nations, and American taxpayers. Gaza’s population grew from a mere quarter million in 1950 to two million today. Children in Gaza learn to kill Israelis before they learn their alphabet.

The Gazans are not indigenous people entitled to the land. They like to claim they are descendants of the Canaanites. This, of course, is quite false. Canaan means the color purple. Canaan was named for the pigment the Lebanese Phoenicians pulled from mollusks that were available at the seashore. The mollusks yielded a purple color for all their majestic and regal flags and masks. These people were Southwest Asians in the land bridge that ran between Asia and Africa. Those Canaanite people from centuries ago were not Arabs. Gaza was a sparsely populated desert transited by Bedouin traders. The name Bedouin comes from the Arabic word Bada, or sleeping outside. The Bedouins come from the bottom of the Arabian Peninsula.

Fixed Gaza populations were first established by Ramses III in about 1200 BC when he defeated the Greek island invaders known as the Plishtim. To subjugate these violent, baby-sacrificing people, Ramesses confined them to five work cities known as the Pentopolis. The five cities, Gaza, Ashkelon, Astad, Ekran, and Gath, collectively became Philistia. Every Sunday school kid knows this. Arabs do not pronounce the letter P so to them, the Greek island invaders were not Plishtim, but Philistines. They enclave became known as Philistia with an F. During ancient times, the area was also home to many Jewish and Christian peoples from across the Levant.

Gaza was swept up in the Islamic conquest. In the 7^th century all the Jews and Christians living there were forcibly converted to Islam. Gaza was ruled by the Ottomans as a little inhabited transit zone between the continents. In the early 19^th century, Ottoman Sultan Mehmed Ali I, who was born Albanian, transferred many thousands of Albanian and Balkan workers to Gaza to help cultivate the land to satisfy the insatiable appetites of the palace.

During Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, many Egyptian tribes were brought into Gaza to fortify the areas adjacent to Egypt. For example, in 1832, Ibrahim Pasha, the head of the Egyptian forces, moved large groups of Egyptian Hanadi tribesmen from Egypt’s Al-Sharqiya province to Gaza. He did this to beef up the Al-Hasni Egyptians who had already been transferred there.

After World War I, during the British Mandate, thousands of Egyptian, Sudanese, Libyan, Lebanese, Syrian, and Arabian Peninsula Arabs were brought to Gaza. They came to work on major projects such as railroads, and supported a concept called absorptive capacity. Absorptive capacity referred to the process of importing workers to enlarge the economy in what had become a flourishing Jewish Palestine.

Trump is thinking boldly as have some other global leaders before him. After every major war, the map is realigned to address past hostilities and to attempt to prevent future conflicts. The empires were dissolved after World War I under American leadership and in accordance with the concept of self-determination. Colonies were liberated and dozens of countries were created under the auspices of the League of Nations. After World War II, more countries were created, others were merged, and colonies were transformed.

Gaza has become a cradle-to-death terror enclave cultivated by Hamas. In Gaza, children are taught to kill Jews before they memorize their alphabet. The entire strip has been developed into a terror infrastructure with more kilometers of terror tunnels than the London Underground, and without a single bomb-shelter for the population. The population has been repeatedly urged to die for Hamas’ ideology, which rejects all concepts of peace, or even talk of peace. Billions of dollars of aid have been vanquished on creating an ISIS-style populace. These funds dwarf what Europe received after World War II. Hamas refuses to heed the spirit of the biblical injunction found in Micah 4:3, “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” Instead of following that injunction, they follow Satan’s Creed. They use their water pipes as missile tubes, their million-dollar benefactions to map murder and their hospitals and schools as terror operations. They captured the UN’s pseudo welfare group, UNRWA and used it as the shiny conduit to make it all happen. This enclave can no longer continue to exist in its current form.

The ISIS-style terror enclave in Gaza is completely different from the realm of Judea and Samaria, an area now falsely called the West Bank. The population there, who call themselves Palestinians, pretend to contemplate coexistence with us. This is a lie we can live with. However, ISIS in Gaza is another matter and we need to look to history to determine how to change the culture and ideology there.

After World War II, it took two generations to de-radicalize the Japanese Bushido death culture. That culture that caused a nation to rape and pillage throughout the Asian Pacific. It also took two generations to de-radicalize Nazi Germany’s monstrous hate cult which was complete with Aryan youth and Nazi baby factories. In Germany today, it is still forbidden to display the Nazi swastika.

More recently and more pointedly, we can look to the ISIS men, their brides and the children they created during the hellish reign of the Islamic State. Where are they now? About 10,000 men from the ISIS state are imprisoned in Northern Syria in 28 jails, the largest of which is Al-Sinah prison. It is just outside the tiny Syrian city of Hasakah. These ISIS fighters are considered too dangerous to release. They have not been tried and they have not been rehabilitated. They have simply been incarcerated. They are guarded by an internationally armed and financed militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces. Countries from Jordan to Washington pay to maintain them there.

World leaders, led by the UN, have created isolation and rehabilitation camps for their wives and children. These camps house about 6,000 women and children. They are about 93% female and they are not receiving training or rehabilitation. They have no way to get out and only the flimsiest efforts are being made to de-radicalize them. These camps are also in northern Syria not far from the prisons. Alhaw and Raj are two of the main camps. They are typical camps administered by the International Red Cross, and UN bodies. The children in these camps continue to maintain a blood-curdling devotion to murder, terror, and mayhem, similar to that of their parents. All of this was documented in a recent NBC special report. Even the youngest of the children showed a desire to behead the reporter.

So, moving ISIS-style Gazans to other countries is one idea. However, we will simply be moving a murder cult to different countries. We have seen this play out in Australia. Australia took in more than 2,000 Gazans and we have now seen polite, congenial Sydney explode. We have seen mass Arab demonstrations right in front of the opera house. We have heard protestors screaming, gas the Jews, gas the Jews. In fact, they have become the vanguard of the anti-Jewish surge we have witnessed across the entire English-speaking world including Ireland, Great Britain. Canada, Australia and South Africa. We have heard calls to hunt and expel the Jews. This is the vanguard of what people like me fear could be a second Holocaust.

Remember, ladies and gentlemen, the war with Hamas is not a conflict about territory. It is a religious war, like the one waged by ISIS. It cannot be solved by any means other than the total defeat of the enemy and de-radicalization of that society over two or three generations. The road to statehood cannot be paved over our burned and battered babies and our raped and tortured hostages. This is irrespective of the lies, distortions, and deepest of deepfakes practiced in Gaza for the international media or the useful idiots at Harvard University.

Thank you, Sarah. I would be happy to answer any questions and discuss any other topics of interest.

Sarah: Thank you so much, Edwin. Very comprehensive. The Jewish community is still traumatized by the events of October 7^th, 2023. The results of the recent probe of the events of October 7^th, revealed the immense failure of military intelligence. Residents and spotters in Nahal Oz, Kibbutz Be’eri and throughout the Gaza envelope, suffered tremendously. Did you have a chance to look at the report that was released recently? And are there some lessons to be learned from this that you can tell us about?

Edwin: I did look at that intelligence report. I looked at many reports and I consider all of them to be preliminary. I think the more painful realities will come out soon. I think that October 7^th comes down to Israeli arrogance, self-assuredness and a geographical error. The Israelis thought they were in midtown Manhattan. They believed they could make a deal to keep the monster at bay. They thought they could pacify them with hospitals and jobs. They believed they could buy them off by shuttling them into the best medical centers in Israel. They thought they could authorize the Qataris, the big Satan’s in this whole operation, to bring in suitcases of cash. They witnessed the maneuvers. They saw Hamas practicing and they saw the missiles they fired every couple of months to test the Iron Dome and the will of the Israeli people. The Israelis figured Hamas would not attack as long as they brought in another suitcase of cash.

The Israelis have finally figured out they are not in Midtown Manhattan. They have been reminded they are in the Middle East and they have to contend with the forces that rule there. There is no such thing as a peace treaty in the Middle East, there are only alliances, and alliances are made with the strong horse. The enemy may agree to Hudna, a temporary truce but they will never adhere to a peace treaty even if they sign it. The Israelis have now figured out they need to move against those who promise to assault and kill them, burn their babies, rape their women and behead their men. We know now that we need to take the threat they pose seriously and act against them.

Israel has moved in miraculous and biblical ways. We saw this with the pagers and with the taking down of the 300 missiles coming in from Iran. This is very different from our parents’ days when helpless Jews were forced into pits. Now, we allowed nothing to stop us. We fought back under the ground, on top of the ground, in the air and on the waves. However, if you are asking if we fought back late and if we were asleep at the switch, the answer is yes. What we experienced was a Pearl Harbor slumber multiplied by 100. Do we need to support our Jewish leaders today? Yes – 100% but when this war is done there will be hell to pay.

Sarah: Okay, there were so many misconceptions. The female spotters noted something was going on and their higher-ups dismissed their concerns.

There are many plans about what should happen next in Gaza. The Arab- League met in Cairo yesterday and proposed a $53 billion five-year alternative to President Trump’s plan. Their proposal includes removing 50 million tons of rubble, setting up temporary housing for hundreds of thousands, and allowing no population displacement whatsoever. Hamas would share power with an interim political administration, and would remain in Gaza. Jordan would be tasked with training the PA police force, and the Palestinians would be offered a viable path towards statehood. What are your thoughts about this plan, Edwin?

Edwin: First, no to Palestinian statehood. Do not even discuss it with me. Call me in 50 years and we can think about it. The last generation, the current generation and the one after that, have no right to even suggest they are entitled to statehood. Second of all, this plan is just a piece of paper. They do not have $56 billion and they did not figure out where it would come from. They do not know how they are going to implement the plan. If Hamas remains in Gaza, any money coming into Gaza, will go to Hamas irrespective of whether it enters Gaza by wire transfer, by suitcase, or by any other means. The only answer is to defeat Hamas militarily, similar to the way ISIS was defeated. Gaza is an artificially populated area. Israel has been accused of committing genocide in Gaza. The population there has grown from a quarter million to two million and is projected to grow to three million. As such, Israel has done a really crappy job of committing genocide.

Every mother in Gaza currently has a duty to raise her children to die as Shahids while trying to kill Jews. This is something they openly admit. For that reason, they should be treated like ISIS. I do not have the solution figured out as to how it would work but I think they should be segregated, given viable homes and education, and they should be deradicalized. Ramses III created some sort of Pentapolis. We could do the same somewhere in the northern African deserts or in an empty Saudi Arabian quarter. Hamas should be eliminated, flattened, and removed in Gaza.

I should note that for the past 48 hours, American B-52s have been circling low and practicing joint exercises over Gaza with the Israeli Air Force.

The Arabs could have proposed solutions for Gaza a year and a half ago, or even years before that. They are only putting something on paper now to appease the masses. No country wants to host the Palestinians. Jordan tried and was rewarded with Black September. Lebanon tried and the result was Fatahland, PLO controlled areas in Southern Lebanon where some villagers had their organs removed for Fatah fighters. Egypt tried hosting them and was rewarded with the Muslim Brotherhood. Syria tried it and experienced many problems as a result. So, I think we have to recognize that the world has created, tolerated, inculcated and financed Hamas’ ideology with its billions of dollars.

To institute real change, we have to move people out from where they are living, as we did with ISIS. We have to do what Ramses III did and give them viable, healthy lives while they are de-radicalized. Unfortunately, I do not think you will find Gazans who are willing to live in peace with their neighbors right now. We know there are survey results indicating the Gazans are dissatisfied with Hamas but I think they are misleading. The Gazans support Hamas’ agenda. They do not disavow the notion of murdering Jews, much less cessation of hostilities with Israel. The dissatisfaction they express with Hamas may indicate they want the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Al-Aqsa brigades or some other organization with a similar ideology to govern them.

Sarah: Right, so we had to fight a world war to defeat the Nazi ideology. It still exists, but has been largely defeated. How do you propose we defeat Hamas’ ideology? How do “de-Hamasify” the population of Gaza?

Edwin: We definitely succeeded in changing the Japanese Bushido death culture. The Japanese are now our buddies and are investing billions of dollars in our economy. We succeeded in removing the Nazi culture from Germany. As an aside, tomorrow I will be hosting Merrill Eisenhower on my show, the Edwin Black Show. Merrill Eisenhower is the great-grandson of the famous Dwight D. Eisenhower. Dwight Eisenhower changed the world. He determined that every single person in Germany would be exposed to the horrors of the Nazi regime. He instituted a non-fraternization policy under which no one was allowed to say good morning to a German or to shake their hand. It was a rule. He did not allow polite conversations with Germans. As a result, Germany slowly became denazified and has now evolved into a pretty much de-radicalized country.

In Iraq, we instituted a policy of de-Ba’athification which I think was partially successful. I know George Bush thought he was going to have fancy shopping centers in Baghdad. In the case of India, we failed to de-radicalize people and so we created two separate countries, India and Pakistan.

De-radicalization will be difficult. To obtain an idea of how difficult, we need to consider the 6,000 ISIS family members held in confinement camps under international auspices. These family members include children and babies, some born in the confinement camp. I prefer to refer to the camp as a confinement, rather than a concentration camp, it is a prettier name. The international community believes they are too dangerous to release them and they have not yet figured out how to de-radicalize them. In many cases, it is virtually impossible to de-radicalize a religious zealot. This is different from deradicalizing a national zealot and it is very, very hard. Someone who has more brains and rabbinical training than I do is going to have to figure out how to do it. That said, we need to get it done. Many of these people have the potential to be leaders of the Middle East but cannot do so if they are members of a death cult. They have to learn to live in peace with their neighbors.

We have been discussing this issue for 80 years and there is nothing new here. Eventually, the Palestinians are going to have to agree to live in peace with the Jewish state next door. They are going to have to accept what those who have joined the Abraham Accords have already done. That said, the signatories of the Abraham Accords are across the Gulf over on another continent and the issue of Gaza is going to be a problem for mankind.

The world created the situation in Gaza while ISIS grew of its own accord. We need to call a sword a sword and a terrorist a terrorist. The ISIS death cult in Gaza was created with the assistance of a giant advertising campaign by the nations of the world, the EU, academia and the UN. Israel permitted it and Qatar funded it. Now we have reached the breaking point and Israel is not going to tolerate it anymore.

Sarah: Looking north to Syria, what are your thoughts about Ahmed al-Sharaa, formerly Mohammed al-Jolani? How much do you think Turkey is involved in Syria? Do you think that al-Sharaa is a Salafi jihadist? Do you have any advice for Israel on how to deal with him?

Edwin: I am not sure you will be able to ask me questions about Syria in two months’ time because I am not sure there will still be Syria at that time. First of all, Syria is a huge threat to Israel but Israel succeeded in disarming their munitions and radar installations in another biblical-sized military miracle. They did this over three days, flying hundreds of sorties.

Al- Jolani conquered Syria with the help of Turkey and others and we are watching Syria being dismembered and dissolved right now. So, what do I mean by that?

This discussion has appendages. We can start with the fact that Turkey is a huge threat to Israel. Turkey has openly proclaimed it wants to recover and recoup the Ottoman Empire. They have actually expressed that they cannot confine themselves to what constitutes Turkish territory right now. Turkey cut a deal with ISIS 3.0. ISIS 3.0 is Jolani in Syria. They concluded a mutual defense pact and agreed to create a Turkish air base on the other side of the Golan Heights. Erdogan’s son is leading giant marches and declaring Turkey’s intent to recapture Jerusalem and to throw the Jews out. Sarah, you and I were in Washington when the Turkish embassy reached out to all the Jewish communities with free food and other gifts and some friends invited everybody to partake. We all know that Turkey cannot be trusted. Turkey already dominates two Syrian provinces, which it wants to annex as part of the Ottoman Empire.

Then we have the Druze community with whom Israel has a covenant of blood. There are Druze communities on both sides of the Northern fence between Syria and Israel. The Druze were being assaulted by Jolani’s forces. Jolani was smart and received good advice. He shaved the beard short and replaced his terrorist uniform with a three-piece suit and a $70,000 watch. He is talking the talk and walking the talk. He appears to be doing everything right, but he is not to be trusted. He claims to have nothing against Israel and to be willing to coexist with them. As you well know, these are just words and he is authorized by the Koran to say what is needed to achieve his goals. The Druze are now realizing they need to defend themselves. Israel has sent its own troops more than 18 kilometers into Syria to establish a safe zone. This safe zone will dwarf the cordon sanitaire that they had with the South Lebanese Army at the Lebanese border. Some sort of confederation between the Druze on the Israeli side and the Druze on the Syrian side will persist. Israel is not going to let anybody into those 18 kilometers. The Druze are jumping up and down and singing songs and welcoming the Israelis in.

The Kurds also want their homeland realized. One of the head Kurds from the PKK, which has been considered a terrorist organization, was compelled or induced to make a public statement. He said, “Well, it is all okay now. We are okay with Turkey, irrespective of what happened in the past. Can’t we all just get along?” The Kurds in Syria do not actually want that. They want to create their own autonomous region, probably in conjunction with the Iraqi, and other, Kurds. The Christians in Syria are going to be affiliated with the Christians in Lebanon, right next door. Russia has left Syria, although there are people trying to keep them there for the purpose of stability. The next problem is going to be what Turkey does on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights and that leads to the question of what that means for NATO.

NATO has got a problem. Turkey is a NATO member but Turkey is buying S-400 defenses from Russia meant to defeat NATO F-35s. Turkey is also specifically advancing an aggressive war against Israel, and has cut a military alliance with ISIS 3.0 in Syria. What happens if Turkish forces and Israel clash on either side of the Golan Heights? I think there is a 45% to 48% chance that Israel and Turkey get into a skirmish. What does that mean with respect to Chapter 5 of the NATO agreement? Based on Chapter 5 of the NATO agreement, Israel would be suddenly at war with the United States of America, Canada, and all the member states of NATO. That cannot work.

I have been working on this whole NATO question. Many experts believe there is no way to kick Turkey out of NATO but I have reviewed the NATO charter, and I believe with enough pretzel logic and enough inside out-ism, you could make a case for it. I think you could work Chapter 13 of the NATO Charter inside out to get rid of Turkey. Chapter 13 calls for a country to withdraw.

The fact of the matter is that NATO has a problem. A couple of days ago, they convened an emergency meeting over Ukraine and they did not invite the United States of America. When American naval vessels attempted to refuel in Norway, a member of NATO, refused to sell them fuel.

We have to remember the past and we have to be honest. We have to be honest and say that NATO and the EU are the custodians of centuries of colonization, slavery, exploitation and dismemberment on the various continents of this planet. Belgium cut the fingers and toes and heads off of little children to make sure their rubber content was maintained in the Congo. At the Berlin Conference of 1884, European powers established rules for dividing Africa among European countries. There, they decided to dismember and colonize Africa and enslave people. As another example, France made Haiti pay millions of dollars for their own release from slavery. When they defaulted on the loan, they had to refinance it with a special bank. That special bank took that money and the Eiffel Tower. All of these European nations represent a legacy system of death and destruction that they wielded around the world. Sarah, you and I both love going to Europe. We both love the old bridges and the cathedrals and everything else but we need to be honest about what these countries are actually guilty of.

Ukraine does not have clean hands either. During the Ukrainian Chmielnicki Massacres, the Cossacks killed tens of thousands of Jews. Between 1919 and 1921, General Symon Petliura killed 80,000 Jews in Ukraine. Very few people are aware of that because Petliura’s actions were overshadowed by Adolf Hitler 13 years later. We should not forget who shot the bullets at Babi Yar. There were 9,000 Germans outnumbered between 10 and 20 to one by Ukrainians who enforced the will of the Third Reich. The Germans could not have done what they did without the local villagers. When the Jews were marched out to the pits, the locals took their property, their cows and their clothing.

We need to think clearly and understand that after every major military upheaval, the international order and the territorial order has been reordered by our best minds or sometimes or not so innocent minds. This was true for World War I and World War II.

Sarah: Yesterday, it was announced that Russia and the United States will work together to broker nuclear negotiations with Iran. We have to remember that Iran provided Russia with the drones with which to bomb Ukraine. Iran and Russia are very tight. I do not see Russia as a neutral arbitrator. What are your views on this?

Edwin: Okay. Before I address your question, I should mention that Ukraine also blackmailed Israel for a meeting with a giant multimillion dollar loan and a missile defense. Ask yourself how many times Ukraine has voted against Israel in the United Nations. I grew up in Albany Park in Chicago. My parents used to take me to a Ukrainian woman for a haircut. She used to ask me where my horns were. I got a short haircut and so I was able to prove to her I did not have horns. While we stand for Ukraine’s dignity and for liberty, I hope we remember the Ukranians and the Russians have been the biggest killers of Jews over generations after the Germans.

With respect to Iran, you are mistaken. You are listening to the noise of the tailpipe on the car. Trump has objectives rather than policies. It does not matter what he says today, what matters is his objective. Trump will not be willing to sidle up to Iran. We all know Iran is the number one specialist in the history of civilization at dragging out a negotiation. Trump is trying to settle this one war now. That said, I can tell you what is going to happen soon. Trump is going to say to Iran, “We would like to have a peaceful negotiation to avoid bombing you to smithereens.” That is his quotation. When you want to know what kind of sausage Trump is making, please don’t examine or smell the ingredients, wait for the final sausage.

I know people are concerned because Trump said he is going to negotiate with Iran. Please remember, he has given Israel the five things that they need. I won’t say what those five things are. Not everything can be accomplished right now. Some of it will take a little time.

Sarah: Good answer. Yesterday the State Department unfroze $95 million for the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF). We know they still have strong ties with the Iranian Shia and with Hezbollah. The Lebanese speaker of the House, Neba Barra, has strong connections with the Amal Movement and with Hezbollah. Hezbollah was able to name four cabinet members, including the very significant Ministry of Finance, Yassine Shabar. Yassine Shabar is very strongly affiliated with Hezbollah. Do you believe that Lebanon can finally pull itself away from the powerful grip of Hezbollah and that the LAF represent a reasonable deterrent against Hezbollah?

Edwin: That is a really good question. The answer has numerous tunnels, mazes, and potentialities. I am in close touch with our Maronite Christian friends in Lebanon, as I am sure you are too. I am also in contact with the Lebanese diaspora. Hezbollah has been defanged and this provides the potential for different opportunities. In Lebanon, the enemy of my enemy is my friend and friend of my friend is my potential enemy, it is crazy. The developments in Syria have defanged Iran and the route of Iranian supplies to Lebanon and elsewhere. This means there is a good possibility the LAF can be rehabilitated. They have clean, washed uniforms and they are getting cars but not offensive weapons. We want to rebuild them.

I can tell you that the political force of Hezbollah has been radically taken down. Leading figures in Lebanon admit they have been fighting the wrong wars. My friends in Lebanon say, there is a potential for Lebanon to join the Abraham Accords and Witkoff is saying the same thing. They used to say that Lebanon will not be the first to make peace with Israel, but it will certainly be the second. I think there are many opportunities for peace in Lebanon even though further defanging is needed. The LAF now has jeeps and not all of them have been delivered. Positive steps can be accomplished incrementally via the art of the deal. We should not judge the sausage making but rather the product at the end of the process.

Trump handles every situation as if he was building a hotel. There is hell that goes along with building a hotel. People die on cranes and subcontractors go bankrupt. Guess what? Once the hotel is built and it is beautiful, that is all anyone cares about. The same will be true if we achieve a viable, insurable, reliable basis for peace, genuine peace in Lebanon, Syria, Ukraine and Russia. We should also remember Russia is verbally threatening to go nuclear at any time. I think it is worthwhile to endure the ups and downs and ins and outs. Rather than witnessing the sausage making, wait for it to appear on your plate.

Sarah: Okay, we have received tons of questions from our audience. Maybe I could forward them to you and you can answer them directly if you have a chance. Our wonderful friend and colleague, Claire Lopez, has spoken about Amir Avivi’s plan to keep the Gazans in Gaza so they cannot spread their jihadist ideology throughout the world. What are your thoughts about that? Amir Avivi seems to believe it is possible.

Edwin: Yes, he was down here talking about it. We all know that the Gazans cannot remain where they are. Gaza is not habitable and it is inhumane to keep the Gazans there. If we attempt to move people from place to place in Gaza while rebuilding, the ISIS death cult mentality will continue and will rise again. They will figure out another way to tunnel, fly, hang glide or paddle board to the Israeli side and commit murder and mayhem. As such, I believe that taking people out of Gaza is the best way forward. We should offer them good, proper, decent, enriching lives, but we should segregate them for our safety. We should de-radicalize and rehabilitate them. They have some of the finest minds in the Middle East and the Balkans, and all these other places. Within a couple of generations, they could rise again, as long as no one talks about silly stuff like statehood.

Sarah: Excellent. Robert Nash asked if he was to read just one of your books that is most pertinent to the challenges of today, which would it be?

Edwin: Well, for the challenges of today, I would recommend two of my books. The first is Financing the Flames. This was the first book to reveal the existence of pay-for-slay. I testified in Congress, and no one in Congress could believe that American taxpayer money was going to pay salaries for terrorists. The second would be The Farhud: Roots of the Arab-Nazi Alliance in the Holocaust. Both of these books would provide an orientation for what we are witnessing in the world right now.

Sarah: Wonderful. Can you explain a little bit about the Farhud and its impact on anti-Semitism throughout the Middle East?

Edwin: The Farhud, refers to the June 1^st and 2^nd, 1941 Arab Nazi pogrom. I say Arab Nazi pogrom because it was committed by swastika waving fatwa groups, essentially Hitler youth. The Iraqis staged a confrontation to aid the Nazis in taking over British Iraqi oil. The Jews got caught up in this confrontation by greeting the sovereign when he came back to Baghdad. That unleashed a holy hell and hundreds of murders and rapes. Babies were killed in front of their parents and parents were killed in front of their children. The wording used by the perpetrators of October 7^th was similar to that used during the Farhud, I was terrified about that. Infants were cut in half using swords and were thrown into the river. Perpetrators raped, pillaged and burned Jews. The British knew what was happening and let it happen, calling it an internal affair. The affair continued for two days and served as the trigger for the alliance between the Nazis and the entire Arab higher committee and international Arab community, led by Haj Amin al-Husseini. The Grand Mufti was elected Mufti, but the British enhanced his title and made him the Grand Mufti. They appointed him but he later received a salary from Adolf Hitler. The Grand Mufti was a confidant of Hitler. He toured the concentration camps. Husseini recruited 8,000 Bosnian Muslims for the 13th Mountain Waffen-SS division, which partnered with the bloodthirsty Ustashi in the Nazi puppet state of Croatia. There they committed some of the most heinous crimes of the Holocaust. He became a hero amongst the Arabs but he was a war criminal who was never brought to justice.

The Farhud, was the beginning of the end of 2,700 years of Jewish existence in Iraq which began a thousand years before Mohammed. It led to the expulsion of 850,000 Jews. They were penniless and threatened with death and were rescued by airlift. I hope that our Jewish communities and our governments have not forgotten about that. We waged a war to ensure the Holocaust Museum at least recognized the fact that the Farhud took place. Thank you for that important question.

Sarah: Thank you so much. Edwin. Speaking of heroes, you are a hero among the Jewish people. Everyone should read your wonderful, insightful, well-researched and well-documented books. I want to remind our audience that EMET’s staff is on Capitol Hill every day working to alert people to the many crises the state of Israel continues to face after 500 days of this war on seven fronts. We need Israel to be able to survive. So please, if you can support EMET, go to https://emetonline.org/. Thank you so much.

Edwin: And I would just like to emphasize that EMET is our strongest voice, sword and shield and warrior in the US Congress. Sarah, thank you for everything that you do.

Sarah: Thank you, Edwin. Thank you so much.

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