The Media, Academia, and International Community’s Cognitive War on Israel 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.

Lauri: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to EMET’s weekly webinar. Today’s webinar features Alex Traiman. Alex will discuss Israel’s cognitive war. We appreciate your support for all of our work. As a reminder, our annual Rays of Light in the Darkness Gala will be held on November 19^th. I hope you can join us for what will be a very special evening. As always, today’s webinar will be recorded. If you have any questions for our speaker, please put them in the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen.

Alex Traiman is CEO and Jerusalem Bureau Chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, or JNS. Alex is a veteran Israeli journalist, radio show host, documentary filmmaker, and a startup consultant. His writings focus on Israeli politics and US-Israel relations. He has appeared on the BBC, Bloomberg, CBS, NBC, Fox, News Nation and Newsmax, and he is a frequent guest on WABC and CBS Radio. For those who don’t already subscribe to JNS, I encourage you all to do so. Their newsletters are one of my go-to resources on Israel-Middle East related news. I encourage you to follow Alex’s important work. Welcome Alex. As always, thanks so much for joining us this afternoon.

Alex Traiman: Lauri, thanks for having me.

Lauri: I want to focus today’s discussion on anti-Israel media bias and on Israel’s battle on the cognitive war. Before that, I want to spend a few minutes talking about Israel’s retaliatory strike on Iran over the weekend. Earlier this month, I heard you discussing your predictions for Israel’s retaliation. You shared that you thought the strike would be significant and not proportional. Were you satisfied with the results of the attack? It focused on ballistic missiles and air defenses, but excluded nuclear and oil facilities. The Biden administration told Bibi not to hit oil and gas, or the nuclear capabilities. Do you think Biden played a role in limiting the extent of the attack? What are your thoughts on the strike in general, and the role of the administration in particular? Biden and Harris have argued that hitting Iran’s nuclear capabilities would be an escalation. Do you agree with that assessment?

Alex: I think the conflict has already escalated. Pre-October 6^th 2023, there was a shadow war between Israel and Iran. That war is now out in the open. This October, Iran unleashed the largest ballistic missile attack in war history. It was Iran’s second ballistic missile attack on Israel. The first occurred on April 13^th. For the first time, Israel has reacted with more than a symbolic response. In April, Israel hit one air defense system inside Iran. The April response was a symbolic one which demonstrated Israel’s capabilities. Israel’s retaliation over the past weekend was something much more significant. Over 100 planes participated in the attack. They hit over 20 targets. Reportedly, they have basically destroyed all of Iran’s air defense systems. This leaves the entire country vulnerable. That includes every single one of Iran’s strategic sites.

In addition to destroying Iran’s air defense systems, Israel attacked their missile production capabilities. Iran was producing ballistic missiles on a regular basis. They were producing an ever-increasing supply of missiles which could be used to attack Israel. The ballistic missiles are the Iranian regime’s most dangerous weapons. In April, their attack on Israel included cruise missiles and drones. The Israelis defended against the drones and the cruise missiles very successfully. The ballistic missiles, on the other hand, get to Israel in about 10 minutes. On October 1^st, many of the ballistic missiles penetrated Israeli air defenses. Iran’s ability to produce an unlimited number of these ballistic missiles is the most dangerous threat to Israeli security. This is why Israel destroyed Iran’s ability to manufacture ballistic missiles.

Iran has also been providing ballistic missiles to Russia for its war in Ukraine. Israel aided Ukraine and the entire world by destroying Iran’s missile production facilities. As such, I do think that the attack was significant. That said, I certainly think that the Biden administration tried to prevent Israel from attacking Iran’s oil and the nuclear facilities.

You are correct in saying that Israel considers this to be its first salvo against the Islamic regime. They do not believe this war is over. The focus of their attack over the weekend supports this supposition. I think that Iran, Israel and the entire world are now waiting to see what happens on Tuesday of this coming week. I think Israel will recalibrate its strategy on the basis of who wins the election. This will determine the nature of their future attacks. If Donald Trump wins the presidency, I think there will be very close coordination between Israel and the United States. They will work together to ensure Iran does not cross the nuclear threshold. I do think this will include a very significant military threat and that there will be a coalition. If Harris wins the election, then I think that we are more likely to see a continuation of the tit for tat war. In this scenario, Israel will continue to escalate slowly and to wait for an Iranian escalation. They will likely retaliate only after obtaining sign off from the United States. We will have to wait and see what happens, it is hard to predict. On October 8^th 2023, I do not think anyone would have predicted we would be where we are today. At this point, a lot of Israeli leaders do not know what is going to happen. A lot depends on what happens next week.

Lauri: Yeah, I think it is probably difficult for the war cabinet in Israel to plan ahead. On your podcast, you discussed what victory looks like for Israel. You said victory is beating the terrorists and normalizing with the moderates. Presumably the moderates you were referring to are the Gulf nations and Arab countries in the neighborhood. Do you think victory includes regime change in Iran? Obviously stopping the regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon is essential, but what are your thoughts on regime change in Iran?

Alex: Well, the regime is the number one state sponsor of terror. The Islamic Republic has destabilized the entire region. They destabilized Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza and they are trying to do the same in Jordan. They are also trying to cause chaos in Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank. Iran’s nuclear and ballistic weapons represent an existential threat to Israel. The biggest cause for concern is the people who are responsible for developing those weapons and who have their fingers on the button.

An argument could be made that a demilitarized Islamic Republic will no longer present a danger to Israel. The regime will no longer pose a significant threat once they are stripped of their forward-facing army. The supposition in this case is that the Islamic Republic will be defanged without Hezbollah, Hamas or the Houthis and without ballistic missiles

There is also a different way of looking at how best to deal with the regime in Iran. Israel made the elimination of proxy leaders a priority in Gaza and Lebanon. Israel took out Yahya Sinwar in Gaza and assassinated Muhammad Deif and many other Hamas leaders. In the North, we took out Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah. We assassinated Fuad Shukr, the number two in command and Hashem Safieddine, who was going to take over from Nasrallah. Naim Qassem has now taken over as the leader of Hezbollah. Israel’s defense Minister Yoav Gallant tweeted yesterday that he thinks it will be a temporary appointment because Qassem is high on the target list.

The benefits of eliminating the leaders of terror organizations, should be extrapolated to the Iranian regime. The way to stabilize the region is to follow a similar approach to the one followed by Israel in Gaza and Lebanon. Iran needs to be taken from the Ayatollahs and returned to the Iranian people. They have a very distinct and centuries old culture. They are proud and intelligent people. They can make many contributions if they are allowed to modernize. The regime should be replaced with leaders who are not consumed with a goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate across the Middle East and beyond.

There is still a question of how to achieve regime change. Should regime change in Iran be achieved by assassinating its leadership? Ebrahim Raisi was the former president of Iran. He was killed in a plane crash. We do not really know the circumstances behind that crash but we can imagine what actually happened. In the past, Israel has assassinated nuclear scientists inside Iran. Hezbollah just tried to assassinate Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by hitting his house with a drone. All of this suggests that Israel may have the capability and the impetus to target Ayatollah Khomeini but we do not know if they will do it.

Khomeini is 85 years old and there are reports that he is in poor health. We do not know what this means with respect to regime change. We do not know if efforts will be made to support the Iranian people to overthrow their own regime. In 2008, during the Green Revolution, Iranians poured out into the streets in large numbers. We witnessed scenes comparable to those we saw during the original Islamic Revolution of 1979. Unfortunately, president Barack Obama threw his support behind the regime and not behind the protestors.

I think we need to recognize that the leaders of the Islamic Republic are causing the current instability in the Middle East. Thereafter, we have to figure out a path for replacing them. We will have to determine the best way to achieve this.

Lauri: Thanks, Alex. Now, I want to turn to a discussion on media bias since the October 7^th attacks. I want to focus on Israel’s battle in this cognitive war. This battle may be even more dangerous than the one being fought on the ground. The media reacted fiercely and relentlessly to Israel’s defensive response after the October 7^th attacks. Almost immediately, the narrative shifted from support for Israel to delegitimization and demonization. This was in spite of the fact that Israel was simply defending its citizens from future attacks. Accusations of genocide began almost immediately, and they continue until today. The Vice President of the United States and Democrat party nominee recently joined this chorus. She seemingly agreed with the insane labeling of Israel’s defense war as a genocide of the Palestinian people.

Mainstream media outlets regularly regurgitate Hamas provided numbers of civilian casualties in Gaza. We know these numbers are incorrect. Also, they ignore the fact that Israel has achieved a historically low civilian casualty rate in this war. Why do you think the media turned against Israel so quickly, especially in the face of the horrific October 7^th attack? Why is the world ignoring the fact that Israel has the most moral army in the history of the war?

Alex: Yeah. This was Hamas’ strategy from day one. Hamas was a pretty large terror organization. Initially, they had as many as 40,000 troops with up to 50,000 Qassam rockets. They succeeded in committing a horrific massacre against Israel on October 7^th. Since then, they have achieved almost nothing in terms of meeting their goals. Since October 8^th, they only managed to kill two Israelis via a rocket that hit near the Erez crossing. They cannot defeat the state of Israel because they are fighting the IDF. The IDF is one of the world’s most technologically advanced and battle-ready militaries.

On October 7^th, they committed a large enough act to bait the IDF and make sure they would have to enter Gaza. They booby trapped the Gaza Strip. They built tunnels and took positions designed to kill Israeli troops They hoped that hundreds of Israeli soldiers would be killed and that Israel would rethink its attack. They wanted to defeat the IDF by making it stop in its tracks. If this failed, they planned on hiding themselves in the civilian population. They knew that the death toll inside the Gaza Strip would rise once the IDF began fighting against them. They were aware this would be reported through mainstream media and elsewhere and it would galvanize international pressure against Israel. This would include pressure from western governments, including that of the Biden administration. Obviously, the United Nations, the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice would try and force Israel to stop in its tracks. Hamas would then declare victory. This has been Hamas’ strategy from day one.

They have been planting seeds for this for a long time. In 1975, the UN adopted a resolution declaring Zionism to be a form of racism. The 2021 conflict between Israel and Gaza was a much smaller one than that of 2023. During this conflict, Israel bombed Hamas’ headquarters in the Gaza Strip. The international community criticized Israel severely for bombing the headquarters of the Associated Press. No one asked why Hamas’ headquarters were in the same building as the Associated Press.  You do not need to be a genius to figure out the answer to that.

The world supported Israel from October 7^th 2023, through the following morning. For one day, Israel was the victim. From the afternoon of October 8^th until today, Israel has been regarded as the aggressor. Ten days into the war, Hamas asserted that Israel had bombed the Al-Ahli hospital. Headlines in every mainstream media publication around the world accused Israel of bombing the hospital and of killing 500 people. However, Israel was not responsible for hitting the hospital. An errant Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket aimed towards Haifa misfired and hit the parking lot outside the hospital. The morning after, you could see the little shrapnel marks on the facade of the hospital. The entire hospital building was still standing. Because the hospital parking lot was hit after midnight, it is impossible that 500 people were killed. It is unlikely that more than 20 people were killed by that rocket.

All three material details about this incident were reported incorrectly. The hospital was not bombed, the IDF did not do it and 500 people were not killed. That did not stop AP, Reuters, BBC, the New York Times, and every other publication from reporting the three material errors as fact. At the time, our heads were in our hands because we knew that there was a possibility that Israel had inadvertently struck a civilian target. Then, suddenly there was chatter suggesting that maybe Israel was not culpable. I am on chat in real time with the Prime Minister’s office and with the main spokesperson from the IDF. At the time, I asked them if the IDF had actually bombed the hospital and they responded that they were still checking. I reminded them that we were being crucified by the mainstream media and I needed to get the truth published as soon as possible. They refused to deny culpability until they were completely sure Israel did not bomb the hospital. They insisted on fully checking the veracity of any information before publishing it. It was extremely important to them that people could trust the information they gave out. You can imagine how many different points of contact there were during a simultaneous aerial sea and land attack. Any of those could have hit that hospital at that time.

Within about an hour, I received statements from the IDF and the Prime Minister’s office. The statements confirmed they were not responsible for the strike. Because I was in real time contact with them, I received the statements before other media organizations. JNS was the first organization to report that it was not the IDF that bombed that hospital and they did not kill 500 people. If you google the incident right now, you will see a Reuters headline indicating that the IDF bombed a hospital in Gaza and killed 500 people. You will see 20 different articles detailing how the IDF bombed the hospital in the Gaza Strip and killed 500 people and you will read the reactions from the international community. These reactions have not been updated to this day. This is just one example illustrating who the mainstream media is working for. There are multiple others. Hamas understood this from the outset. They had set this up before October 7^th.

There are 19 or 20 different Palestinian news agencies. The Qataris fund Al Jazeera to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars a year. AP and Reuters are other examples of outlets accused of pro-Hamas bias. Photo-journalists from both Reuters’ and CNN were filmed participating in the October 7^th attack. A photo journalist posted a video from October 7^th on his own Facebook page. The video showed him holding a hand grenade while actually participating in the attack. These so-called journalists were not simply documenting an attack that they should not have known about. They were actually participating in the attack.

Similarly, UNRWA employees are actually Hamas terrorists. The mainstream media and UN organizations all collaborate with one another. It is a grand conspiracy against the state of Israel and few in the Jewish media are fighting back. There is very little money available for the Jewish media who are attempting to fight back and they are not doing a good job of it.

Lauri: Amen to that last point in particular. I am glad you brought up the Al-Ahli hospital. I think it serves as a great illustration of extreme media bias against Israel. It is distressing to witness the extent to which journalistic standards have been violated by our mainstream media. Let’s talk about Al Jazeera for a minute. Al Jazeera is funded by Qatar. Qatar has been funneling money to Hamas for years. They continue to harbor Hamas terrorists, including Khaled Meshaal, the highest-ranking Hamas official alive today. The IDF has released documents proving there are direct ties between Hamas and Al Jazeera. Their latest documents show there are six active Al Jazeera reporters who were operatives in Palestinian terror groups. The IDF also published documents captured in Gaza. Those documents indicated close cooperation between Hamas and Al Jazeera. The documents include instructions from the terror group advising a Qatari network not to criticize them. Given Al Jazeera’s close connections with Hamas, Israel imposed a temporary ban on Al Jazeera over the summer. In September it shut down the Al Jazeera headquarters in Ramallah. Do you agree with that measure? There has been a strong backlash against this. Do you think other countries, like the US, should do the same?

Alex: As I mentioned, collusion with the media is actually part of Hamas’ strategy to win the war. The Qataris are the main backers of Hamas. They are harboring Hamas’ leaders in Qatar and they are using Al Jazeera to set the pace for other mainstream media coverage. In many cases, AP, Reuters and the New York Times follow Al Jazeera’s lead with regard to what to cover and how to cover it. That is why the mainstream media coverage often looks the same as that of Al Jazeera. It is all coordinated and it is how Hamas expects to defeat the state of Israel. As such, it is a strategic imperative to shut down Al Jazeera in Israel.

If the United States can figure out how to brand Al Jazeera as a terrorist organization, they may be able to ban them from operating there. Obviously, the First Amendment protects freedom of speech. Even hate speech in the US is protected by the First Amendment. In many respects, it is much better than a regime of censorship but that is a webinar for another time. Al Jazeera provides material aid to a terrorist organization. Certainly, as far as Israel is concerned, I do not think it should be able to operate freely in the Jewish state at this time.

Lauri: That’s a good answer. I wish we could find a way to label Al Jazeera a terrorist organization here. The anti-Israel bias in the BBC’s reporting, is also egregious. In September of this year, a team of lawyers and data scientists published a 200-page report. The report identified 1500 breaches of the BBC’s editorial guidelines. It exposed the BBC’s systemic failure to maintain impartiality and accuracy with respect to its reporting on the conflict. It exposed a significant bias in favor of the Palestinian narratives and a misrepresentation of the facts they reported about Israel. The BBC and Al Jazeera may not have a wide reach in the US but they have a very far reach internationally. This makes it extremely challenging for Israel to counter the lies they are disseminating.  I know that Israeli television can be picked up in the US, but I am not sure how many people are actually watching it. Is there a way to get the truth about Israel out to the international community?

Alex: Israeli news is reported and digested in Hebrew. This is a big disadvantage for the state of Israel. We have a very robust media in Israel, but the news is reported almost exclusively in Hebrew. There is no state-run English language media organization in Israel. Also, Israel is a democracy which can veer from left to right at any point. As such, English messaging from an Israeli-based state funded media organization would not necessarily be helpful. Some state funded Israeli media are highly critical of the Netanyahu government. This is not needed during a war, by the way. The country’s media should not be attacking the government in the midst of a war against its enemies. The English language media coming out of Israel today is private and not funded by the government. Day after day, it delegitimizes the government of the state of Israel. Rather than helping the Israeli war effort, it actually harms it.

The first thing we should do is to get the Israeli media to stop harming the war effort. After that, we can actually try and help it. Even then, we are dealing with a numbers game. There are also issues with staying on message. Al Jazeera and all the other media outlets colluded to perpetuate the lie that Israel bombed the hospital and killed 500 people. They did not check the facts and nobody held them accountable for their untruths.

There are organizations like Honest Reporting and CAMERA who try to get the media to make corrections. As an example, the year before the war, the New York Times published a two-page spread describing how Israel was destroying the Gazan fishing industry. The spread included many sob stories and photographs. No other conflict would have merited such an extensive report. The initial report was published on Sunday morning. On the Wednesday of that week, they published a very small correction on the bottom of a page. There they noted they had forgotten to mention the number of fish caught in Gaza that year was three times the amount collected the year before. They left that detail out of the story because they stayed on message. That is something we, as Jews, never do. We never stay on message because we each have a different idea about what the message should be and how to say it. We are at a significant disadvantage here and it is not easy to overcome. We are going to have to get better at it.

Lauri: I had not considered the language barrier. The one station we get here in the US is i24NEWS.

Alex: Yeah. By the way, i24 has pivoted. They have diverted a significant amount of their resources that used to go into English and other languages. They have reduced their English language coverage by about two thirds and moved it to Hebrew. From the international perspective, this is not helpful at all. Again, Al Jazeera has hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on just their own media organization. Here at JNS, we are trying to do a better job than all the other Israeli and Jewish-based media. Many of them have bigger budgets than we do, but we are trying to fight the biased coverage on Israel. We are also fighting against all the Palestinian media organizations, Al Jazeera and all the mainstream media.

More than a billion dollars-worth is being invested in an industry dedicated to de-legitimizing and demonizing the state of Israel. There is an attempt to create international pressure against the Jewish state and it is working. We are trying to fight against it with a $5 million budget. I think we are punching above our weight, and doing a pretty good job with the amount of money we have.

I have not even addressed algorithms like those of Google news which specifically suppress pro-Israel content. On TikTok, for example, pro-Palestinian messaging outperforms pro-Israel messaging by a thousand to one. Many other social media algorithms have been programmed to fight against Israel. The Palestinians and the Qataris have invested a great deal of money in this and the Jewish community has found itself left completely flatfooted. We are way behind and I don’t even know how we win this war.

When Prime Minister Netanyahu was appointed ambassador to the United Nations, he visited the Lubavitcher Rebbe in New York. The Rebbe told him he was going into a sea of lies in darkness. He said it was Netanyahu’s job to be the candle of truth in that sea of darkness. That is what we try to do and it is the best we can do at this point. Fortunately, a single candle is a very attractive light in a dark room. We shine the light on the truth and hope the good people of the world recognize the grand conspiracy going on here. We hope they feel in their hearts that the state of Israel is the force of truth and good in the world. We hope they realize that the terrorists are the force of evil in the world and they gravitate towards good information.

Lauri: I think the reporting in US newspapers has been taken over by liberal elites, for lack of a better word. I gave up my subscription to the New York Times in 2003. I could not stomach the anti-Israel and anti-American reporting.  Now reporting in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has become as bad as the other mainstream newspapers.

Alex: I think that is true for the news pages of the WSJ. The editorial pages are good. There is a big internal dispute between the op-ed pages and the news pages at the WSJ. However, you are correct in saying that the news pages are currently as bad as those of the New York Times.

Lauri: You discussed the example of the Al-Ahli hospital. You mentioned how the media actively reported false facts to demonize Israel. Some of the media is also denying the truth about what happened on October 7^th. They are denying that people were raped, beheaded and burned alive. Hamas recorded the atrocities on their GoPro cameras and published it on social media. The Israeli government compiled a 47-minute movie with clips from Hamas’ footage. They made it available to journalists, politicians, and anybody else that wanted to view it. Despite the availability of this video, we continue to see denial of the October 7^th atrocities. I thought the video should have been shown to students on college campuses and maybe seniors in high schools. What are your thoughts on that video? Could it help to educate people about the truth of what actually really happened on October 7^th?

Alex: Yeah. I don’t know if that is a good idea. The video shows gruesome barbarism. I did not watch it and I do not want to see it. That said, I do understand it is important for policymakers and other journalists to watch it. With time, I imagine there will be memorials, monuments, other videos and other information out there. At this point, Israel has to focus on winning the war. If we are regarded as a strong horse once again, we may be able to sway public opinion. I think the only way for Israel to regain its standing, is to win a very decisive victory over Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic. Then we can normalize relations with the Saudis and effectively end this Arab-Israeli conflict.

Israel is transforming the Middle East. It has proven it can make peace through normalization agreements like the Abraham Accords. It is policing the Middle East and removing the terrorists. Israel should reposition itself at the end of this war. If it does this successfully, I think that people are going to be very impressed by the state of Israel and they are going to want to start working with us.

God forbid, the remaining Hamas terrorists continue to hold the hostages and declare victory in the Gaza Strip. If this were to happen, the international community would pour billions of dollars into Gaza and push Israel out. If Hezbollah maintains the ability to fire rockets and Iran can still fire ballistic missiles, the international community will accuse Israel of causing extensive damage and killing Palestinians without achieving any strategic objectives.

At this point, I think the only way for Israel to regain public trust is to win. Israel must make those in the region understand it has done something amazing and incredible. Looking back in time, the greatest moment for Israel was the aftermath of the 1967 war. In 1967, Israel defeated the Arab armies that attacked us in a stunning victory. Suddenly, the entire world aligned with the state of Israel. They were proud of the state of Israel. I think that is Israel’s best card right now. Israel needs to win the war and do it conclusively.

Lauri: I would like to believe that many of those watching Israel now are impressed by its recent achievements. Israel has achieved miraculous victories and is proving to be the strong horse in the region.

Israel is portrayed as an apartheid state occupying Palestinian land. The media bias we are seeing against the state of Israel, probably originates in academia. I think academia has played a huge role in the massive propaganda and indoctrination we are seeing across the world. Can the media play a role in putting pressure on university administrations and boards of trustees to enforce codes of conduct? Can the media help pressure federal and state governments to enforce the law to protect Jewish students and to eliminate the indoctrination of our young people? Do you have any thoughts on the role of academia and how to reverse false narratives being taught as fact?

Alex: Foreign actors have invested heavily into indoctrinating students at the universities. The Qataris in particular are very involved in this, while the Saudis are a little less involved than they were a few decades ago. Specifically, they have funded Middle East study centers on university campuses. They selected the deans and professors who sowed the anti-Israel narrative there. They have been indoctrinating our youth for decades and the graduates of their programs are now employed in the halls of Congress. We now have Congressmen and State and Defense Department staffers coming from these Middle Eastern studies programs. They have been brainwashed and we are already feeling the impact of their ideology. It is a very bad situation. They have worked strategically to accomplish their goals and we have been caught flatfooted. After October 7^th, we saw the encampments being erected on university campuses. It was only then that we realized we have a problem.

Certainly, the mainstream media can have a role in countering antisemitism on university campuses. JNS has done it many times. Jewish organizations often try and get the university presidents to act against antisemitic incidents on their campuses. In other cases, they ask the presidents to disavow BDS or something related. University presidents are more likely to act against antisemitism when the media asks their office for comment and when they understand there will be a media report on the issue. As such, once a Jewish media organization reports on antisemitism or anti-Israel bias, the New York Post and Fox and others pick it up and it snowballs. So, the media should certainly play a police officer role on the university campuses.

Philanthropists have long been blindly donating money to universities in exchange for having their names displayed on campus buildings. At those same universities, professors in Middle Eastern studies programs and in liberal arts departments preach against the Jewish state and intimidate Jewish students. These philanthropists can threaten to withhold donations if the universities do not clean up their campuses.

The presidents of four or five different major Ivy League schools have already resigned. The threat of media reports and donor action can also push politicians to enforce the law. FLaurida is a good example. Governor DeSantis has threatened that schools in FLaurida will not receive state funding if they do not follow the law. So, there are tools that can be used to counter antisemitism and anti-Israel bias on campus if there is sufficient will to do it. Title VI can be enforced. Universities that fail to protect Jewish students can have their funding removed at the private and state and federal levels.

Lauri: Thanks, Alex. I want to touch on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). As we discussed, the IDF uncovered evidence revealing ties between Hamas and Al Jazeera. Similarly, the IDF has also provided extensive evidence that UNRWA is directly tied to Hamas. President Trump was aware of the problems within UNRWA and cut off their funding. Biden reversed this and reinstated funding for both UNRWA and the Palestinian Authority (PA). Israel has now proven that UNRWA employees double as Hamas terrorists. They have shown UNRWA employees aiding and abetting Hamas and holding hostages in their homes. Israel has provided evidence that Hamas has used UNRWA’s infrastructure to conceal tunnels and weapons. In fact, Sinwar was found with a UNRWA teacher’s ID card on him. The international community is ignoring this evidence. However, Israel passed a very important piece of legislation this past week. They banned UNRWA from operating within Israel. How impactful do you think this ban will be? Do you think it will impact the existence of UNRWA? Do you believe UNRWA will survive given the international community’s backlash to Israel’s legislation?

Alex: Yeah. Well, we have to back up to before October 7^tht to answer this question. UNRWA is a multi-billion-dollar organization founded specifically for the purpose of perpetuating the Palestinian refugee crisis. It basically guarantees the continuation of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. There can never be peace between Israelis and Palestinians as long as UNRWA remains in place. In the 1948 War of Independence, around 700,000 Palestinians were displaced. I am not sure of the number. Irrespective, since that time, no Palestinian refugee has been resettled by UNRWA and taken off the list. Not only that, the refugee status of the supposedly displaced Palestinians gets conferred onto second, third, and fourth generations.

There is no other refugee crisis in the world with its own independent UN agency. A single, different UN agency deals with every other refugee crisis in the world. There are no other refugee crises where supposed refugees live in the country from which they were supposedly displaced. They are living in homes, and their refugee status is conferred onto second, third, fourth, and fifth generations. So, today we have five times as many refugees as we did in 1948.

UNRWA is the largest employer inside the Gaza Strip and potentially in Judea and Samaria and elsewhere. UNRWA runs most of the schools in those places. The textbooks in their schools incite violence directly. This has been proven time and time again. Until somewhat recently, their textbooks phrased math problems in terms of the number of Jews killed. UNRWA institutions have been inciting children to kill Jews for many years. Many suicide bombers and perpetrators of car ramming attacks in Israel, are products of these UNRWA institutions.

Israel should have expelled UNRWA a long time ago but did not have a trigger to make it happen. Now Israel has that trigger. They have demonstrated the links between Sinwar, Hamas, and UNRWA and they can finally justify UNRWA’s expulsion. I think it is one of the most important moves the Israelis have made.

The follow up question is what happens in the absence of UNRWA. UNRWA runs the schools and distributes humanitarian aid in Gaza. The absence of UNRWA creates a vacuum of leadership there. Israel has said that neither Hamas, UNRWA, nor the Palestinian Authority is going to govern the Gaza Strip. I think Israel is going to play a much more assertive role in the governance of the Gaza Strip. They are going to be more active in the distribution of humanitarian aid and they will seek ways to task local Palestinians with regional responsibilities. There may be local mayors or sheiks who will run different areas in Gaza and who will work with, and answer to, the state of Israel.

The longer-term question is what Israel will do about the PA and the Fatah Movement. The PA is basically the other side of the Hamas coin. The PA also works with UNRWA. They fund the families of terrorists in Israeli jails and the families of terrorists killed in the act of committing first-degree murder. The PA’s Martyrs’ Fund is part of their Pay for Slay program. Since October 7^th, Israel has degraded Hamas. Israel has now passed important legislation banning UNRWA. Next, we have to see what they will do with the PA.

Lauri: We alluded to next Tuesday’s US election. How important is a strong US-Israel relationship to Israel’s survival? How does that relationship impact Israel’s ability to win the war? I bring this up because we discussed how the international community demonizes Israel. We know anti-Israel bias is rife at the UN and we are aware of what has happened at the ICC and ICJ. We know that Britain, France, Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands are all imposing a partial or full arms embargo on Israel. The Biden-Harris administration is threatening to join them if Israel does not meet certain conditions. From an Israeli perspective, how do you all see the US-Israel relationship right now?

Alex: The Biden administration is seemingly somewhat supportive of Israel. It helps to provide weapons but does not provide all missile defense and other capabilities critical to protecting the home front, Israel is certainly a lot stronger with a strong America fully behind it. However, Israel has seen that it cannot necessarily count on the United States for full support. Similarly, it cannot count on its allies in Western Europe and elsewhere. They have already hinted very strongly that there could be economic sanctions against the Jewish state and against specific Israelis and organizations. They might also impose arms embargoes on Israel. Some people in Israel liken this war to the War of Independence. This war is different from the War of Independence as regards the establishment of boundaries and borders. However, it is becoming a war for Israel’s full independence. Israel cannot and should not rely on the United States or any other country to protect it.

The Prime Minister and Ron Dermer, the former ambassador to the United States, have said many times that Israel defends itself, by itself. This means that Israel must have the weapons to defend itself. We can buy weapons from the United States, but we should not be relying on them. This War of Independence means being weapons independent, energy independent, and food independent. It means full independence. I think that there are some important lessons here for the state of Israel. We are looking at the relationship with the US in a little bit of a different light than before the war. We know that nobody is coming to save the state of Israel.

Israel wants to establish itself as the superpower in the region. It wants to be regarded as a strong force that cannot be defeated and it knows it is going to have to do it on its own. I think the lessons we have learned were important ones. Even if the administration turns over next week, the lessons we learned are still important. President Trump has stated that if Kamala Harris is elected president, Israel will cease to exist. Let me tell you, not one Israeli agrees with that statement. Israelis are offended by that statement. Even without a strong US-Israel alliance Israel is going to figure out a way to survive and thrive.

The story of the Jewish people is so much stronger and deeper than its ties with the United States over the past 75 years. Ours is a 3000-year-old story. Ron Dermer said the Israelis will fight with their fingernails if needed. Israelis are a brave, and spectacular people. We are ingenious and we will find a way to win. It will be easier if the United States backs us. It will be easier to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities using the United States’ bunker busting technology. The United States can help Israel tremendously in fighting the diplomatic onslaught it is facing. It could use its veto in the UN Security Council and use its leverage over UN agencies, the ICC and the ICJ. I Whether the United States does that, depends on who wins the election next week. There is definitely a lot at stake in the short term. At the same time, Israel is not only going to survive, it is going to thrive here in the Middle East.

Lauri: Yeah. Thank you for that answer. I think Israelis are tremendously brave and unique people, they are survivors. I think American Jews do not understand that side of Israelis and it is admirable.

Somebody from the audience asked, and why major US Media outlets have displayed so much anti-Israel bias in their coverage of the Hamas-Israeli war? Examples of these outlets include CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Alex: In some cases, we have to look at the owners of the publications. Some of them have Chinese, or even Qatari, owners. Qatar provides a lot of the advertising and other financing for organizations like CNN. There are also many progressive-owned media outlets. An example is Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post. Ironically, their slogan is, “Democracy Dies in Darkness”. Many of these publications are only anti-Israel, they promote anti-American values as well.

Anti-Israel bias is just one component of a larger progressive and anti-American ideology. In many ways, what they believe is similar to what the Ayatollahs in Iran have been articulating. According to them, Israel is the little Satan while America’s the big Satan. So, no one wants Israel to thrive in place of America. This progressive, woke ideology is prevalent in Israel’s media as well. It is a sad fact.

Lauri: Somebody asked how long Israel can continue this war from an economic perspective?

Alex: Well, the economic component of the war is a major one. The Iranians, Hezbollah and Hamas are well aware of this and that is why they are in no rush to declare a ceasefire. They know every day of fighting results in economic damage to the state of Israel. Thank God, the state of Israel is financially secure as a country. In spite of that, economic growth in Israel has slowed. The tourism industry has been destroyed and investment into the Israeli economy has slowed down as well. The Israeli economy is on pause but it has not been destroyed in any way, shape or form. God willing, this conflict will end with an Israeli victory. Then, the economy will pick up and restore itself to what it was. Israel is a country that has over $200 billion in foreign currency reserves and it is going to find a way to recover. The war cost Israel much more than it cost Hezbollah, Hamas or even Iran. That said, I think Israel is a lot more financially sound than any of its enemies is. I do not think Israel’s ability to continue the war from an economic perspective is the greatest concern right now. This is true, even if the war takes another year or more to win.

Lauri: Thank you, Alex. An audience member asked why the US will not give Iran an ultimatum. They have ratcheted up their military attacks and have been involved in the kidnapping of US citizens. Do you have any thoughts on threats that the US could be issuing to deter the Iranian regime?

Alex: Of course. The US could be using all of its leverage. It could have used its leverage against Qatar to make Hamas surrender. Earlier on, it could have used its leverage against Iran and against Lebanon. It is still not doing it. I think the Biden administration and the policy professionals at State and Defense Departments do not actually want to see Israel win the war. They seem to be willing for all Israel to fight on some level. They do not want to see Israel wiped off the map. That is why they continue to provide additional missile defenses. However, they do not want Israel to fully defeat Hamas and they have said as much. They do not want Israel to eradicate Hamas. They do not want Israel to destroy Hezbollah and to return Lebanon to the Christian Maronite minority that essentially lost their country to Hezbollah. They do want Israel to hit Iran’s nuclear or oil facilities and they do not want the Iranian regime overthrown. Perhaps their policy is to push for balance throughout the Middle East. They are trying to balance the Israelis with the Palestinians and Israel with Iran. They are trying to balance the Saudis with Iran. For whatever reason, they seem intent on making sure that Israel is not the grand victor of this conflict.

Lauri: As a final question for today, people want to know how you work with conservative outlets in the US.

Alex: Since the war started, I have done more than 600 interviews with mainstream media outlets. My colleagues and I often appear on conservative outlets as analysts. These colleagues include Caroline Glick and Jonathan Tobin. Publications like the New York Post, Newsmax and the National Posts in Canada, are syndication partners of JNS and we are always looking for more. We provide daily analysis through our articles, which you can find on our website at https://www.jns.org/. You can also find read analyses in our newsletter. Twice daily, we send out over 150,000 emails with news-reports. We also do long-form analysis on our JNS TV YouTube channel. I have a podcast called Jerusalem Minute. Caroline Glick appears on it several times a week, as does Jonathan Tobin. Former ambassadors Mark Regev and Ruthie Blum also record a podcast for JNS.

We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. This is because our objective is not to make money. This is not about money. We write what is right and true. We are a reader supported news organization and fortunately our readers have helped us to grow. So, we encourage you to get your information from JNS. If you appreciate the information we provide and want more people to see it, please support us so we can grow. I will also put in a plug for EMET. What you guys do is incredible. I have been a friend of the organization for many, many years. Sarah Stern is a personal hero of mine, as are you, Lauri. You are tireless activists and defenders of Israel and I know you punch well above your weight in terms of your own budget. So, if you are supporting EMET, thank you. If you can support a little bit more, do that. If you are not supporting EMET yet, do so, it is a worthwhile organization to support.

Lauri: Thank you so much, Alex. Both Sarah and I have had articles published in JNS numerous times. We will continue to write for you guys and hopefully we can continue to work together. Thank you so much for everything you do and for your kind words about the work we do at EMET. Thank you all for joining this afternoon. I wish everybody a good afternoon.

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