President Trump’s Middle East Trip 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 in the United States and good evening here in Israel. We’re extremely, extremely honored to have with us today Dr. Emmanuel Navon. Dr. Navon got his PhD from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He teaches at Tel Aviv University. He is constantly on i24 news. He is the author of over four books and scores and scores of articles. And it is really an honor and a privilege to have him with us. Dr. Navon really knows the Middle East better than most people. We at EMET had been somewhat taken aback by President Trump’s tour of the Middle East last week, where he visited the United Arab Emirates, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, and he came back with over a trillion dollars, he says, in deals. Of course, among this was the $400 palatial airplane that is supposed to replace Air Force One, a $600 billion investment commitment from the Saudis, the largest defense contract ever in American history and the promise to make the United Arab Emirates the A1 capital of the world or at least of the Middle East. We have some concerns, one of the concerns that I’ve had is that in 2008, a law was signed, this is law, this is legal, that Israel has to always maintain its qualitative military edge against either one or a combination, a coalition of her enemies. And I am wondering with this sort of deal if Israel is in danger of losing that qualitative military edge.

So here with us is Dr. Emmanuel Navon to talk a little bit about the human rights records, perhaps, of these three Gulf nations as opposed to the shared common values that the United States and Israel have always had in terms of democracy, human rights, decency, and what things are legitimate to be up for sale and what aren’t. So, Emmanuel, it’s really an honor and a privilege to have you with us, and if you could just give us an overview of this trip and what your takeaways are from it.

Dr. Emmanuel Navon: Well, thank you, Sarah. Always a pleasure to address EMET. We’ve known each other for many years. And EMET does a wonderful job in Washington, in America. I think that what you’re doing is very important. And I remember when you started EMET many years ago, you were one of the first people who really brought to the attention of congresspeople the deceitfulness of the PLO and the real reason why the Oslo Process failed and you were a lonely voice and I think most people today realize and understand that you were right but you were one of the first people to explain this in Washington. And I think that this realism is always welcome. From the point of view of what president Trump is, in my opinion, trying to change in American foreign policy he has a very, I would say, unorthodox approach to foreign policy, which could be welcome at some point. At the end of the day, don’t forget that in his first term as president, he did bring about the Abraham Accords, which was a very welcome move, besides, of course, transferring the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem in recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. And he did this against the advice of the foreign policy establishment in the United States. So he did not hesitate to confront his foreign policy advisors and establishment, you remember the warnings when he transferred the US embassy to Jerusalem, the doom warnings about the end of the world, and World War III. Of course, none of this happened. So there is a precedent of saying, well, it’s good that he goes against the grain, and he is willing to think out of the box, and he’s willing to confront and challenge the accepted wisdom.

The question is he maybe going too far this time? Is he going too much off the road? So first of all, I would say that if I can think of a precedent in the U.S. foreign policy, you’ve had in the past presidents who question the moral approach to foreign policy. I think about the beginning of the 20th century, Delano Roosevelt, who had a much more political approach to foreign policy. And by the way, got the Peace Nobel Prize at the time for bringing peace between Japan and Russia. And I think also about Richard Nixon, who also confronted the Soviet Union by recognizing communist China and, of course, under the advice of Henry Kissinger, taking a leave from the Realpolitik book, and I think this was a welcome change in a way. And then, of course, don’t forget you had the approach, first of all, I would say under President W. Bush, the son, when he went to war in Iraq and decided to bring democracy to the Arab world, and insisting on having elections in the Palestinian Authority together with Hamas. This whole idea that you can solve the problem in U.S foreign policy between values and interests, between morality and Realpolitik, instead of supporting dictators who are allies of the United States. It doesn’t look good. To quote this, there’s a quote which is attributed to FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, when he supported the dictator of Nicaragua, and at the time, Somoza, because he was anti-communist, but he was also a bloody dictator. So his very famous quote was to say about Somoza, he’s a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch, right?

So this policy of supporting nasty dictators just because they’re anti-communist, or supporting dictators in the Arab world because they were basically stopping the Islamists, and during the Cold War, the communists. So the idea on George W. Bush is that we have a solution to this dilemma if you replace dictators by democratically elected leaders. So it serves your interest, basically, of having democracy in the Arab world. Well, the problem is that having democracy in the Arab world didn’t exactly work as we know. It turned Iraq into an Iranian puppet, and the election in the PA brought Hamas to power. I remind you that Hamas won the elections in the PA in 2006. So this was like the neocon approach, which by the way, Trump criticized in his speech in Riyadh last week. But then you also have the approach of Barack Obama, which when he gave his speech in 2009 in Cairo, saying after eight years of George Bush, we’re going to have a new beginning and Islam is wonderful, it’s a religion of peace and we’re not going to try to impose our values on you, but it would be nice if you could embrace democracy. And then, of course, a year later, you had the Arab Spring with this rebellion against Arab dictators. And then Obama had a dilemma because he didn’t know if he was supposed to abandon the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak or not, because a year later in his capital, he had promoted democracy in the Arab world, so how could he protect an Arab dictator even though he was on America’s side? And of course, Mubarak’s answer to that was always to say, if it’s not me, it’s going to be the Islamists. And guess what, he was right, he knows his country as soon as he was toppled, and there were elections in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood won the elections because they had been the main opposition to Mubarak for so many years, and then eventually you had the army of El-Sisi toppling the Muslim brothers.

And then, of course, you have besides this failed attempt to democratize the Arab world under George W. Bush and also under Obama, and then they had to deal with the consequences of this policy of fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and in Syria. And then, of course, you also have the big theory of peace in the Middle East, which the State Department has been repeating for so many years, the so-called two-state solution, it’s the only way to achieve peace in the Middle East, etc. So the fact that Trump is challenging all those bad ideas is welcome. The question is, what exactly is he trying to do? And my understanding is that his approach to Iran right now is first of all there are negotiations but there is no deal yet and I very much doubt there will be one because when you hear the statements coming from Tehran for the supreme leader, it doesn’t sound exactly like they’re close to a deal. But when you read between the lines of what President Trump has been saying, he said, “Well, I won’t let the Iranians have a nuclear bomb. But if we can reach that without bombing them, that would be better.” Which is interesting because it was more or less the rationale of Obama in 2014 when, eventually, he reached the JCPOA, the nuclear accord in July 2015. The idea at the time was that, okay, Iran is not Iraq in 1981, or it’s not Syria in 2007. At the time Israel, Israel in 1981 bombed a nuclear reactor that had been delivered by the French to the Iraqi dictator. And it was a truncate project. We knew where it was, we bombed it, that was it. In 2007, Israel bombed a nuclear reactor that had been built by the North Koreans for the Syrian dictator. We bombed it. That was the end of it. But Iran has 30 years of accumulated knowledge in nuclear technology. They didn’t buy a truncate project from the French or the Koreans. They have 30 years of nuclear knowledge. And of course, they have those nuclear plants that are very deep underneath the ground, spread around a very big country. So it’s much more complicated operation.

So the rationale back 10 years ago was to say, if you bomb Iran’s nuclear capabilities, you buy time because you’re not going to erase their nuclear knowledge, right? So you’re going to push back their ability to reach the nuclear threshold by a few years between three and eight or ten years, depending on which experts you ask, at a very high cost because eight is war and then you know the Iranians of course would activate all the proxies against Israel, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. And the JCPOA you also basically buy time but at a lower price because you sign an agreement, and then, of course, there was all the criticism coming from Israel, which in my opinion was very justified, that the mechanism for actually implementing the JCPOA was very weak. And then Trump pulled out of it in 2018, but he’s coming back to it because basically what he’s saying today is actually I also want to buy time at low cost because he’s a businessman. You know that there’s a high cost, which is war, and there’s a lower cost, which is an agreement. And that’s what he’s trying to do. Is he going to succeed? I’m very skeptical, the same way that he hasn’t so far succeeded in solving the war in Ukraine in 24 hours as he had committed before he was elected. And I think that the way to understand, the best way to understand his trip to the Middle East last week is that it was for him a way to show to the Iranians that there is a united front of pro-American countries facing them. The three Sunni monarchies, that basically buy each other. The Qataris bought out America, and America bought out Qatar. It’s like a mutual buying each other, but it’s like he was trying to show a very united front of the three countries around America facing Iran. It was a sure force saying to the Iranians, “Look, we are strong and united, you’d better sign a deal,” and of course, all these investments. Now, where I am very concerned is regarding Qatar because Qatar plays a double game: it hosts this huge American military base, but it is an enemy of America. Let’s say the truth. It’s an Islamic country that support the Muslim brotherhood around the world. They are the main financial providers of the Muslim brothers. They finance Al-Jazeera, which is a Muslim brotherhood propaganda machine. They literally buy academics and politicians in the west. So it is a very hostile country, and I’m very concerned about the ties between President Trump and Qatar because they basically buy their way into influence in the West. And that’s very concerning because they are the ones who’ve been funding Hamas during all those years. They are very hostile. And by the way, even Saudi Arabia, let us not fool ourselves. I mean, they didn’t turn from one day to the other from a radical Wahhabi kingdom that, by the way, was involved in 9-11, don’t forget, into this Western democracy or something. I mean, true MBS has made reforms. The kingdom today is less conservative than it used to be. You can walk around Saudi Arabia today without the police looking into how you dress, whether women go out of their house by themselves, etc. That’s wonderful, great, but they’re allowed to drive and allowing movies and foreign investments, great. But it’s still Saudi Arabia, right? It’s not Holland. Let’s be realistic.

So, to conclude, I would say that there are no common values, obviously. We’re not talking here about values. There are no common values between those countries, Israel and the United States, but there are common interests. It’s nice when you have both common values and both common interests. It’s not always the case. It’s definitely not the case with those countries. But on the other hand, as I said, with the UAE, the denormalization agreement has survived the current war. And the question will be how and when the Saudis will join the Abraham Accords. President Trump himself said last week in Riyadh, Whenever you guys are ready. So it doesn’t look like he’s going to put pressure on them. But first, Israel has to win this war to finish the job. And then we’ll be able to talk about which type of normalization is possible with Saudi Arabia, which, by the way, just like the UAE, but unlike Qatar, of course, they want Israel to win that war and make sure that we neutralize all the proxies of Iran in the region.

Sarah: Unlike President Biden, President Trump has not actually admonished Israel to give up land for peace. He never really pushed during his trip for a Palestinian state. I don’t think he mentioned the Palestinians once. So there are some positive lights from this trip. But then, on the other hand, I mentioned the legal necessity for Israel to maintain a qualitative military edge. And he is selling more than 200 airplanes to the Qataris, F-15s. How is Israel supposed to be able to maintain its qualitative if you back that up and you look at, there’s also a chance that America could help Saudi Arabia build another nuclear reactor for “Peaceful purposes” when they’re sitting on top of massive, massive oil fields. So, how are we to evaluate the qualitative military edge? And it’s up to the president of the United States to sign these documents that Israel maintains this.

Dr. Emmanuel: So first of all, regarding the first part of your question, it’s definitely a welcome move that when he was in Saudi Arabia, thankfully, he didn’t say so, he did say, whenever you guys are ready, whenever it works for you. But of course, thankfully, he didn’t say. We, of course, realize that you’re not going to normalize until there is a Palestinian state. Fortunately, he did not say that nonsense. We all remember, and I think it’s still available online, I think on YouTube, those words from John Kerry when he was Secretary of State a few years ago, I think it was at the Chaim Saban conference, when he said, “If you think that there can be normalization between Israel and Arab states, like in the Gulf without a Palestinian state, you’re completely wrong. It will never happen, no, no, no, no.” He said no four times, and then we had normalization with four Arab countries. Anyway, thankfully, Trump did not say this nonsense of you need a Palestinian state in order to have peace with the Arab states. Of course, the Arab states themselves, being Arab countries, know very well that this Palestinian nonsense is an invention of Soviet propaganda and that there’s no such thing as a Palestinian people because they know it. There’s an Arab nation of which they’re part, but they know exactly that it’s a propaganda nonsense. So thankfully Trump has not fallen into that trap, but then of course there’s the sale of all those military aircraft, and here of course it’s very important for Israel to maintain its qualitative advantage. And this depends also on Israel’s research and development on Israeli technology. And here Israel does have an advantage over Arab countries because they buy their technology. They have very little homemade technology. And that’s one of the big advantages of Israel. And the question is, of course, how many of those planes would actually be sold? Don’t forget that when Israel and the UAE normalized their relation, there was a commitment from America to sell this very advanced aircraft to the UAE. It hasn’t happened yet. So we have also to be aware of the fact that those agreements signed, they look very impressive on paper. It’s a lot of money. It’s a lot of airplanes, a lot of stuff. But which part of it is actually going to happen? A much smaller one than what it says on paper.

Sarah: It has to go through Congress.

Dr. Emmanuel: Yes.

Sarah: All of this has to be approved by Congress.

Dr. Emmanuel: Exactly.

Sarah: Okay. Also, he met with Mohammed Al-Jawlani, Ahmed Al-Shara, and after a brief meeting, decided to remove all sanctions on Syria. I mean, we know his roots are in Al-Qaeda and ISIS. So, you put on a suit and a tie and change out of your army fatigues. Does that make you a diplomat? Does that make you an ally of the United States? What are your feelings about this?

Dr. Emmanuel: It goes to show that Trump lessened to MBS, who put a lot of pressure on him, but also to Erdoğan, which is very worrying, I must say. It does show in a way that you can influence him and change his mind, which is also a good thing, because that means that Israel can also try to explain a few things to him, and that, again, he did listen and agree when he transferred the embassy to Jerusalem. He did listen and agree when he signed the Abraham Accords, but unfortunately, it seems that he also listened to Erdoğan, who is getting away, by the way, with his occupation of Syria. He’s occupying about 20% of Syrian territory, and he’s getting away with it. And Trump, when Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu was in Washington a couple of months ago, among other things, to convince Trump to push Turkey out of Syria, Trump was to say that Erdoğan is a great friend and Israel should be reasonable. And you’re like, okay, well, I guess this is not going to happen. So here, of course, Al-Sharaa, or in his [inaudible] Al-Jawlani, got a free pass. I mean, there was a price on his head by the United States. I think it was $10 million.

Sarah: $10 million up until December.

Dr. Emmanuel: Yeah, I mean, maybe Trump was hoping to get those $10 million, and he finally found them or something. I don’t know. It’s just like $10 million, and suddenly he has a meeting with the guy. He is an Al-Qaeda killer. So on the other hand, just because he’s not aligned with Iran, does it really make sense to give him all these free pass? It’s very risky. So I think that for Trump, again, the main purpose of his trip was, we’re just going to have a happy family event with all the Sunni states that are against Iran, and it doesn’t matter if it’s Turkey and if it’s Al-Sharaa, and I think that was his idea.

Sarah: Yeah.

Dr. Emmanuel: But he’s taking a very, very big risk. A very big risk because at the end of the day, Syria is not really a country anymore. It’s been completely destroyed. Al-Sharaa just wants to survive politically and, of course, he wants the sanctions to be removed. But at the end of the day, he is de facto. The country is controlled mostly today, not by Iran, but by Turkey and by Qatar, and they might be against Iran, but it doesn’t mean that they’re reliable, certainly not for Israel.

Sarah: Right. Have you investigated at all the Al-Thani family and some of their more nefarious activities, and what Qatar has been doing in the United States? There are many, many think tanks, tons of universities that they have been funding. Betsy DeVos, our former Secretary of Education, said they were the number one foreign funder of US universities, and they’ve put together curriculum guides for kindergarten through 12th grade students. So, do you know anything about the Al-Thani family, the relationship, as you mentioned, to Hamas or the Muslim Brotherhood, and what they’re doing?

Dr. Emmanuel: You’re right. They’ve been putting all this money in America, by the way, not only in America, but also in Europe. And then you wonder why suddenly you have a jihadist core threaters burning babies alive and raping women and the first reaction on so-called elite campuses in America is that basically Israel deserved it. And you’re like, How can supposedly educated people say such horrible things? And the answer is they’ve been brainwashed. And they’ve been brainwashed by all those professors who were bought by Qatari money. And what’s very worrying is that, but it’s not surprising actually, is this alliance between this middle-age radical Islam and a pre-modern Islamic ideology and post-modern radical left-wing ideology. So on paper, they have absolutely nothing in common; they are the opposite of each other. But this alliance between the radical left and radical Islam on US campuses is actually not new and is not surprising. Why? Because historically, radical Islam has always used the useful idiots of the radical left in the West for their purposes. And by the way, if you go back to the Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979, the two main oppositions to the Shah were the Islamists and the Communists. Because they had a common enemy, they worked together to topple the Shah. And once the Shah was overthrown, the Islamists got rid of the Communists. It’s very simple. They’re just like useful idiots. They use them to topple the common enemy, and then they say, There’s a new dress code here, you don’t belong, goodbye. And you had, by the way, the same fascination of the radical left for radical Islam when Ruhollah Khomeini was in exile in France in the Paris suburb called Neuf-le-Château. He was visited by all the radical left-wing French intellectual at the time, such as Michel Foucault and Jean-Paul Sartre. Foucault described Khomeini as “a holy man,” right? Foucault was an expert on holiness, obviously, and given his lifestyle, he would not have survived five minutes in Islamic Iran. But they really described Khomeini as like this Mahatma Gandhi or something who was so wonderful. He was going to topple this Western [inaudible], and what they have in common is this complete hatred of the West and of Western values. So, on that, they’re willing to cooperate, and that’s why you have the radical left and radical Islam cooperating against what they perceive as a common enemy, which is Western civilization. Now they have an obsession, of course, with Israel because the Jewish people and Judaism are one of the pillars of this Western civilization, and they know that they have to go after one of the pillars, and that’s why they hate Israel. So they work together and that’s how you have those so-called radical lefties praising Islam saying it’s so wonderful and you have queers for Palestine because they have no idea what they’re talking about, but at the end of the day the Qataris are buying them out and using them as useful idiots and I’m very glad that the current administration is finally getting its acts together about looking into the funding of all those universities because they’re really destroying the next generation of leaders in America. It’s terrible.

Sarah: It’s terrible. If you remember the Weimar Republic in Germany prior to Nazism, the very first institutions that embraced Nazism were universities.

Dr. Emmanuel: Of course.

Sarah: It’s always useful idiots, and Stalin would slaughter all of these useful idiots, especially the Jews, immediately. So over the last few days, there have been reports coming out of the United States saying that Israel is preparing to strike Iran very soon. What is your take on these reports? Do you think Israel is trying to strengthen the United States in the negotiations or is just realizing that we’re playing against the clock here, that the window of opportunity for a successful attack might be closing very soon?

Dr. Emmanuel: Well, I think we need to understand that the war that broke out on October 7 is the outcome of a long process. And from day one, it was always a war between Israel and Iran. Because we’re fighting Iran’s proxies, but Iran has been building those proxies for many decades. And the war will not be over and will not be won until Iran is hit and defeated. We have to understand this. The war, let me repeat myself, will not be won until Iran is defeated. They are the head of the snake and they have to be hit. Otherwise, we haven’t done the job. We’re just running after the proxies. Of course, there are very important achievements. The fact that Israel has knocked down mostly Hezbollah and Hamas and the Assad regime fell and the Syrian army has been decimated, all these are very important achievements. But the origin of all this is in Tehran. And until the regime and its infrastructure and its military and nuclear infrastructure is not hit, the job would not have been completed. And it has to be done, no matter what. So again, going back to what I said earlier, I don’t know, I doubt, actually, that there’s going to be an agreement between the US and Iran on the nuclear program. But whether or not there is one, Israel will have to finish the job.

Sarah: So there are a few very concerning questions that are lingering in my mind. One is President Trump feels that he’s the ultimate negotiator. He wrote the art of the deal, and we’re seeing, I think, the latest IAEA report said there are at least 450 kilograms of highly enriched uranium at the 60% level. That can easily, within a week, be converted into the 90% level, which is sufficient for a nuclear bomb. I’m not sure if they have the capability to put this highly enriched uranium on nuclear warheads, but perhaps they do. We don’t know. So Israel is playing against the clock, and we know that there’s a tremendous amount of pressure on Israel from many quarters throughout the United States, throughout Western Europe, to withdraw from Gaza. How does this pressure play out? And do you think that Israel has the capability, while it’s fighting so many wars on several fronts, to go after Iran and its nuclear installations?

Dr. Emmanuel: Well, Israel has been preparing for such a military operation in Iran for years, and we’ve seen, by the way, how Israel has been able to reach as far as the Houthis in Yemen and bomb their airport, bomb their port and infrastructure. So Israel has the ability to go very far and to make considerable damage to Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. It is possible. Of course, it would be better with this full support and logistical support from the United States, but Israel has been working on it for many, many years. As for the Gaza Strip, again, the job there also has to be finished. Now I found it amazing how you hear from European capitals and from Canada that Israel has to stop. And the question is, why? Why do you have to stop before you win? Like the job is not finished yet. And they say no, that’s it. You just finish. And I’m like, When you guys were fighting the Islamic state in Mosul, in Raqqa, and you flattened all the cities, did you say before you were almost done, you know what it’s over, let’s go back and whatever the Islamic State want to do, we don’t care. No, you fought for many years and you finished the job because that’s why you went there. And these double standards of saying, no, you can’t, you just can’t finish the job. And it is precisely at this point that Israel has to be very firm and very tough, saying, I’m sorry, but we are going to finish the job. Now, thankfully, there is an administration in America right now, and hopefully it will continue to be the case that understand we have to finish the job. And as long as the administration of President Trump is supporting Israel’s war objectives, we should be able to withstand the calls from France, Canada, and the UK saying you have to stop. We have to finish the job. And that means getting back our hostages, that means making sure that Hamas is completely disarmed, that its leaders leave the Gaza Strip. Because otherwise, they said themselves, they want to do many other October 7s on a much larger scale. And they have to be denied this ability, and they’re not going to be denied this ability if Israel allows them to maintain part of their power and eventually to rebuild. It’s simply out of the question.

Sarah: That’s right. So we were able to defeat the Nazis and there was a denazification program but there is this culture that we all have to acknowledge within Gaza, within Judea and Sameria, where they are really respecting the Muslim Brotherhood, they’re respecting Jabhat al-Nusra, all of these very pernicious Sunni Arab movements. How does one eradicate that? Can we finish this job militarily, or does it take something more?

Dr. Emmanuel: Well, I think that you cannot completely eradicate an ideology, but you can deny those ideologies military power. Thankfully, Nazism has been defeated, and the Soviet Union has crumbled. You still have communists and Nazis around the world, but they don’t control a state or a territory or an army. And that’s the point. When people say, well, you cannot defeat the Islamists, etc. As I said, Nazi Germany and communist Russia were defeated. It doesn’t mean that you no longer have Nazis and communists. You do. But as long as they don’t control a territory, an army, or a country, you can live with it. Same thing with the Islamists. You still have Islamists. You always will have Islamists. But the Islamic state has been defeated. In the same way, Hamas has to be defeated and the Islamic Republic of Iran has to be defeated. The ideologies themselves, they will continue to exist, and you’ll still have people believing in them. But they can believe in whatever they want as long as they’re denied the power to impose their demented ideologies on others.

Sarah: That’s wonderful. Emmanuel, can you give us your assessment of the deal that the United States entered into with the Houthis? So they said they’ve submitted to us, but since I’ve been in Israel a week ago, we’ve undergone four bombs or missile attempts from the Houthis.

Dr. Emmanuel: It’s basically an agreement between the United States and the Houthis. And it only includes US vessels going through the Red Sea, which again, it’s very much an America-first foreign policy. The advantage of that, by the way, is that the US administration is not telling us, thankfully, well, we have a deal with the Houthis, so no more need for you to bomb them, you can do whatever you want. Basically, they’re committed to stop targeting US ships, so we stop bombing them, and they really dropped a lot of bombs there. Again, we have to understand and realize that this administration is very much America first. We just have to be aware of it. On the other hand, the advantage of that is that they don’t come to you preaching nonsense all the time, saying you know, two-state solution, you establish a Palestinian state and then you’ll have heaven on earth or we’re just going to have democracy in the Arab world or this kind of stuff. You can’t have everything. So, at least we don’t have this nonsensical preaching, which is good, but yes, it’s very much America first. But as long as they don’t get into our way to defend, to have our own Israel-first policy, I guess we can live with that.

Sarah: What was your feeling about the release of the dual American Israeli citizen, Edan Alexander, without the Trump administration speaking at all to Prime Minister Netanyahu or even the IDF?

Dr. Emmanuel: It’s something that of course it’s creating a lot of unease in Israel, especially because of the fact that, at the end of the day, he was released as a gesture of Hamas to President Trump because he has US citizenship, which of course creates a lot of discomfort in Israel because the idea is like, okay, so if you’re sent by your country to fight for your country and let’s say you’re being kidnapped, you’re basically better off having a US passport in addition to your Israeli passport, which is like, we really don’t want to believe that, and in that case, of course, we’re all ecstatic for Edan Alexander and his parents and his family, but at the end of the day, we still have 58 hostages there. According to estimation, 20 of them or 21 of them are still alive. And when you just think about the tragedy, the horror for them, for their families, it’s just unspeakable. The testimonies of what they’ve gone through, what they’re going through, it’s just horrible. And on the other hand, all the attempts to free them via negotiations, so far, regarding the remaining ones, have failed, and we all want them out, but when people say just get them out, you have the feeling sometimes that they’re being held by Israel or something. They’re not. It’s not that we’re holding them. So, of course, we all want them out. When people say, Just get them out, they say we’re not the one holding them. They’re being held by Hamas.

Sarah: Right. Which is, again, you were backed up against a wall because who do we deal with but Qatar, mostly, and Egypt, in terms of getting these hostages out. But we know that Qatar is the Muslim Brotherhood. It is Hamas.

Dr. Emmanuel: Exactly.

Sarah: Now this is a very fragile and delicate situation, and of course, we would love to eradicate Hamas, but we don’t know where the hostages are, and I think that’s what’s been really constraining the IDF.

Dr. Emmanuel: Yeah. If it hadn’t been for the hostages, obviously, we would have finished the job much faster. But we’re being cautious, of course, because of the hostages for sure, and Hamas knows that, which is also why they took the hostages in the first place.

Sarah: So I’m wondering if you know anything about the various strains within the Republican Party, because right now there is an isolationist strain with Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Candace Owens. That might have the president’s ear. Have you heard anything about this or read anything about this?

Dr. Emmanuel: So we know that there are definitely different trends today within the Republican Party, and the people you mentioned, such as Tucker Carlson, they’ve even been described as the woke right, like they’re like the mirror of the woke movement but on the right conspiracy theories with a very clear antisemitic tone basically excusing Putin and blaming Zelenskyy, and then, of course, from there they blame Winston Churchill for World War II etc. So I think those people are very toxic. I don’t know how much influence they have on President Trump, but what I think is probably more relevant and interesting is to listen to what the vice president has to say on foreign policy. Because I do think that he has an interesting approach, which is also challenging the establishment, challenging what is considered the established or accepted wisdom. Not necessarily isolationist, but very much America first, American national interests. And again, when JD Vance speaks about Israel, he’s very much committed to Israel on the value level, saying because he’s a Christian and because America is also a land of the Bible, he talks about this very strong link with Israel. Which is also why when people would ask me if you could throw Zelenskyy under the bus, maybe Trump can also throw Israel under the bus. And my answer was always, well, we’re not Ukraine. We’re Israel, and we have a special place in America’s foreign policy and in the heart and minds of Americans, especially of American Christians. And JD Vance has been speaking about this, about this special connection to Israel. So I’m not concerned about this option of abandoning Israel, at least when you listen to JD Vance. Definitely, if you listen to the woke right, such as Carlson, it’s a different story. But, thankfully, they’re not the ones who are in… I mean, they’re journalists, they have influence, they have followers, but I think that people like JD Vance have much more impact and influence. They’re very much America-first type of people. This being said, they also have, I think, I mean, when it comes to JD Vance, a very strong commitment to Israel.

Sarah: And think about Mike Huckabee, our American ambassador.

Dr. Emmanuel: Yeah, wonderful. Absolutely.

Sarah: Yes. Fantastic. So, what do you make of the French Saudi proposal that they’re planning for June to have a conference to compel the creation of a Palestinian state? Have you heard anything about that?

Dr. Emmanuel: So we need to understand that President Macron… I mean, don’t get me started on him. Look, he’s basically a failure. His presidency is going to end in two years, and his record is very poor, right? A couple of weeks ago, he had this long TV program when he was interviewed by all types of journalists and hearing comments from simple citizens, and everybody was so critical of him. He’s so unpopular in France. Everybody hates him basically. The right hates him, the left hates him. The only reason why he was re-elected is because people voted for him by default, because in the runoff he was facing Marine Le Pen. But most people who voted for him don’t want him, don’t like him. And then last year, he called for a snap election, and it blew up in his face because he lost his… He didn’t really have a majority, but then he lost even more seats. So he’s heading a minority government. He’s not able to run the country because he doesn’t really have a majority, he doesn’t really have a government. So he’s trying to be relevant. Okay, and what do presidents in France under the Fifth Republic do when they want to be relevant? They do foreign policy. You failed in domestic politics, you do foreign policy, and that’s where he’s trying to be relevant.

And then of course, you have this French attitude to foreign policy, which is very much part of the DNA since the days of de Gaulle, it’s kind of the of the French diplomatic version of René Descartes saying I think therefore I am. It’s more in French diplomacy that I poke America in the eye, therefore I am. So that’s what every Americans do, do the opposite, and then you’re relevant. We talked before about the war in Iraq in 2003. You remember David Powell[?] speaking at the security council, etc. Trump is talking about his plan for Gaza, and Macron has to do the very opposite. What’s worrying is that basically what he’s saying is that he’s so out of touch with reality. He’s like, Of course, what Hamas did is horrible. I condemn it completely. But at the end of the day, what is the root cause of the conflict? It’s that you need a Palestinian state. It’s unbelievable that somebody would still think that. And the truth of the matter, I have to tell you, His advisor on Israel and on the Middle East is no other than a far-left Israeli called Ofer Bronchtein, who’s this type of Oslo type of people. Like he’s still in the 90s. This guy, Ofer Bronstein, met with Khaled Mashal in the past. He received a Palestinian passport from Mahmoud Abbas, and he’s French and Israeli, and this guy, Ofer Bronchtein, is the one who keeps pushing Macron to recognize the Palestinian state. It’s unbelievable. But he’s just going to ridicule himself in New York because he’s having this summit with the Saudis, but the Saudis really don’t care about him because, unlike the United States, the French are not able to give the Saudis any guarantees in terms of security. And Macron is very theatrical, it’s all about theory. And by the way, that’s how he met his wife, she was his theory teacher and he still is in this theater world. He might recognize the so-called Palestinian state, but the truth of the matter is that in the EU, he’s quite isolated. He’s not going to be followed: not by the Germans, not by the Italians, not by the eastern Europeans and he’s going to lose even more influence when it comes to Israel and the Middle East because the Israelis will just stop dealing with him until their elections in France in two years from now.

Sarah: So are you worried about the demographics, the demographic reality in France?

Dr. Emmanuel: Not only in France, also in Belgium, also in the UK, also in Sweden. And by the way, the foreign policy of all those countries, of course, is very much related to their demographics. At the end of the day, you need to be elected. And when you see how the Labour Party today in the UK caters to the Muslims, they got elected thanks to them. And so, yes, at the end of the day, the demographics is also driving the foreign policy of those countries. But on the other hand, and that’s interesting, when you look at the polls about public opinion, the general public opinion in those countries is still actually very supportive of Israel and they’re really getting sick of this Muslim takeover of those countries and those Europeans who want their countries back are also very supportive of Israel because they know exactly for which values Israel is fighting and against what Israel is fighting. And again, when you look at those elections in Europe, when people rebel against the general ideology, and then they say, Israel is our only hope, Israel is our last hope. And by the way, you see it even with the Eurovision last week, like the popular vote was very much for Israel, not because of the story, not only because of the story of Yuval Raphael, but also because, again, when you look at polls in Europe today, in-depth polls, the general public opinion is much more supportive of Israel than the governments, the media and academia.

Sarah: Right. The problem is academia that’s been infecting so many brains and so many young hearts and minds. So, of course, we believe that Israel is fighting the civilizational fight for the entire world, even the Sunni Muslim world right now against Iran, but certainly for Western civilization. And I strongly believe that if we don’t come to the Middle East, if the United States doesn’t come to Israel’s aid with the fight against Iran, then the Middle East comes to the United States eventually. The first target is always Israel, but eventually it will go to the rest of the world. So, and I know Emmanuel, you were one of my first advisory board members. You’ve seen the world through sober, rational lenses from day one, from the beginning of the takeover and the Oslo Accords of Yasser Arafat, during the Hitnatkut in 2005 until the elections in 2006 and the takeover by Hamas in 2007. You’ve always seen the world through clear, sober lenses. And for that, I will always be eternally grateful to you, Emmanuel.

Dr. Emmanuel: Well, thank you. Likewise. Thank you.

Sarah: Thank you so much. This was really a pleasure.

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