The UN’s Support for Hamas’ War On Israel

Cliff May:

Well welcome, Bonnie, and welcome, Rich. Good to see you. Look, just start off, Rich, by telling us a little bit about what you saw and heard in Israel, the mood there, the impressions you took away.

RIch Goldberg:

Yeah, thanks. Just got back, obviously an emotional time for anybody who has visited since October 7th to actually see the devastation, the remnants of the massacres in that Gaza envelope area, and understand just the magnitude of what has happened from a humanity perspective and what is at stake in Israel’s response right now. But then also to zoom out a little bit and understand what’s at stake in its response regionally. Understanding that Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world that counts Hamas as one of its terror proxies– remember, Iran training, equipping, funding, directing, all of these terrorist organizations, including Hamas, is ultimately responsible for October 7th, perhaps directly. We still don’t have perfect clear evidence of that in the public domain, but we hold them responsible.

Also, obviously giving direction to Hezbollah in the north on Israel’s border, a threat 10 times larger than Hamas. Giving direction to the militias in Iraq and Syria that have attacked not just the United States, but also Israel. People don’t recognize that a lot of the threat has come from some of these militias even out of Iraq attacking Israel, in addition to US forces. One such attack killing three American soldiers recently in Jordan. Obviously we have three other contractors who have been killed since early 2021. Also giving direction to the Houthis in Yemen, and we see the results of that now with continuing anti-ship ballistic missiles, drone attacks, cruise missile attacks, now using other types of warfare under sea, unmanned vehicles from the Houthis in the Red Sea. All of this stemming back to Iran.

So what’s at stake in Gaza is not just whether or not Hamas lives to see another day to threaten the people who live near Gaza, but whether Iran understands that there is a price to be paid and that its other proxies see what happens to Hamas and say this could happen to Hezbollah in Lebanon. This could happen elsewhere in the region. Israel has a no tolerance policy for this type of brutality. It’s not going to be just another day where, oh, there was a terrorist attack, that’s sad. There will be some small price to be paid. There might be a week or two of war, and we’ll get back on with business as usual. There is no more business as usual in Israel after October 7th.

It’s not just about whether or not Israel finishes the war, which is obviously a big deal. We’re debating it now here in the United States and the question of whether Israel will go into that southernmost city of Rafah now, in very plain sight as a debate and potentially a differing perspective from Washington, and whether Israel will be allowed to finish that job, but also more broadly of whether Israel will support things that we’ve just taken for granted in Washington as conventional wisdom like a two-state solution. The continued use of UN agencies like UNRWA, the UN Relief and Works Agency, to care for Palestinians who live in Palestinian areas like the West Bank and Gaza. It’s not just about the right wing in Israel, it’s about the center of Israel, it’s about the left wing of Israel. All of the preconceived notions, all the premises, all the ideas we’ve had about these debates, being completely reset on October 7th. So that you don’t just see Bibi Netanyahu being opposed to a two-state solution or wanting to see UNRWA dismantled or want to see the war in Gaza finished off and the potential for a conflict to do the same to Hezbollah and Lebanon. You see this from Benny Gantz, who’s in the Unity Government Cabinet, not somebody of the right but actually of the center and left.

So Washington needs to get their heads around the new day in the Middle East, the new day in Israel. Unfortunately, our policies are still in October 6th when I look at the Biden administration.

Cliff May:

That’s a great summary, there’s a lot to unpack there. Maybe start with this, Bonnie: You would think that the United Nations would be making a positive contribution to all this — is it?

Bonnie Glick:

You would think that, given the mandate of the United Nations, that it would look at a genocide perpetrated against a democracy in the Middle East by a terrorist organization and say logically, gosh, this is where the United Nations could really exercise some moral authority. Unfortunately, what we’ve seen coming out, not just of UNRWA, the UN Relief Works Agency for Palestinian refugees, but from the UN Secretary General himself, Antonio Guterres, who believes that there are two sides to the conflict, the current war, that “well, this didn’t begin in a vacuum,” is what he had really the temerity to say. As if a terror attack, the likes of which Jews around the world have not experienced since the Holocaust, an attack on Israel, unprovoked, on October 7th. Forgetting that on October 6th there was a ceasefire with Hamas that Hamas broke. You would think that the United Nations would use this as an opportunity to demonstrate clear thinking and moral authority to the world.

Unfortunately, across the board from the Secretary General on down, UNRWA, UN Women, UNICEF, UN OCHA, the humanitarian assistance arm of the United Nations, none of these organizations came out unequivocally to state that Israel was attacked in an unprovoked terror attack. The war crimes committed, constituted under Hamas’ charter, an effort at genocidal warfare to destroy the Jewish state and destroy the Jewish people worldwide, the massive use of rape, torture, genital mutilation, burning people alive, beheading babies, none of this is acceptable in a normal world. What happened to the UN’s vision of a normal world? It’s been turned on its head and it really does, Cliff, all stem from leadership at the top of the UN not standing up for what the values and principles of the United Nations are.

Cliff May:

Or were at least we’re meant to be, I might say. Rich, the UN doesn’t even recognize– two things, doesn’t recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization, right? Second, Bonnie mentioned genocide. When the UN talks about genocide, they’re probably talking not about what Hamas says it wants to do, what it did on a relatively small scale, at least compared to the Holocaust on October 7th, but pledges to do again and again and again. But rather, we have the South Africans going to the International Court of Justice, which is essentially a UN court, and accusing the Israelis of genocide because they are defending themselves. Now, if the Israelis wanted to commit genocide in Gaza, you would have a considerably smaller population there than you have. The population has been growing, not least since 2005 when the Israelis pulled out entirely. Every soldier, every farmer, every cemetery, every synagogue, in 2007 when Hamas took over entirely. This is a pretty serious perversion of the truth by the UN and a failure to recognize reality. It makes me really wonder if it’s possible to reform the UN. But maybe talk a little bit about it, because you focus a lot on international organizations. There are a lot that we want to speak of, but the UN organizations are among the worst.

RIch Goldberg:

Well, I think Bonnie said it very well. I don’t want to repeat any of her good points here, but I’ll give you an example of another place in the world where the UN operates in a high-risk environment. What do I mean by high-risk environment? An area where we know there are foreign terrorist organizations present, bad, sanctioned actors present, perhaps even in control of the environment. We would find it abhorrent if UN assistance or UN agencies were providing aid to those organizations.

Think of Afghanistan. Okay, Afghanistan now under the control of the Taliban, which is a US-sanctioned organization. It’s obviously also on the UN sanctions list going back more than 20 years, as is al-Qaeda. These are the two organizations we think of that have UN sanctions attached, which means if you’re a UN agency, you should not be doing any business with them. You can’t be providing aid, they can’t be supported by the UN. It’s not just US law that al-Qaeda is a terrorist organization, it’s actually UN law.

So when you think of the money that is now pouring into Afghanistan post-withdrawal when the Taliban took control, this has put the UN in a very difficult position where their support on the ground is the only thing that could provide a semblance of humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan we left behind. The women who are being berated by the Taliban, the children as well, and yet who’s in control of the distribution of aid? It’s the Taliban. In fact, we’ve now learned from our own inspector general that there is some amount of the aid the United States and other countries are providing to Afghanistan through the UN that is being diverted to the Taliban and obviously their close partner is al-Qaeda.

Now, why do I make this point? Even in a situation like this where we have the Taliban in control, but on a UN sanctions list, UN aid is still being diverted and abused. Now move to Gaza or Judea and Samaria or the West Bank. Hamas is not on a UN sanctions list, nor is Islamic Jihad, nor is PFLP, or you name what we consider the foreign terrorist organization that operates in these high-risk environments. USAID knows that, Bonnie knows this well, we’re very concerned that our assistance to NGOs could end up in their hands and we go through extensive vetting to try to prevent this from going on. At least we used to, I should say. To try to get this out of the hands of anybody who could be connected to Hamas or Islamic Jihad. In fact, this dates back to a scandal where in fact, USAID grants were going to a Hamas-controlled school in Gaza. We found this out during the war between Hamas and Fatah back in 2007. We instituted all kinds of big vetting procedures for the US. The UN has nothing like that in place. They might try to do that with the Taliban and al-Qaeda, maybe. They’re not doing that with Hamas.

So we heard a UN official give an interview very recently in which he committed honesty and he said, well, we don’t consider Hamas a terrorist organization, they’re a political movement. Okay, so now you’re in an environment where billions of dollars are flowing in an area controlled by an organization the UN does not recognize as a terrorist group, is not on any sanctions list, and in fact, they view them as potential partners to distribute aid. So ultimately you don’t have UN’s diversion of aid like you might see or call it in Afghanistan. You have UN collaboration with the terrorists in Gaza. You have UN complicity in the war crimes that go on in Gaza. United Nations has lost all moral standing to discuss this issue.

You about the ICJ and charges of genocide. I mean obviously it’s surreal, it’s surreal. An organization founded out of the ashes of the Holocaust turning the victims of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust into supposed perpetrators of genocide. It is, there are words that are lost in trying to describe it. I do know that there are certain D-words that are helpful to put words down and that is ‘defund’. Those are my favorite words right now when I think about US taxpayer funding for these organizations.

Cliff May:

I want both of you to weigh in on this one, Bonnie, start. In the days immediately after October 7th, I have to say I was pleased to see that President Biden appeared to understand the gravity of the situation, that was old enough that he knows what the Holocaust was. He knows how terrible what happened there was, he seemed to be pretty solidly behind Israel. A lot of people are thinking that he’s gone wobbly since then. Do you see it that way? Has he gone wobbly?

Bonnie Glick:

I think it’s impossible not to see it, Cliff. The initial show of support, his initial visit to Israel were both viewed as very valuable as a show of international support for Israel, for Israelis, and Israelis across the board whether they were on the right or on the left or in the center everywhere, including Israeli Arabs, were extremely gratified to see that the United States was standing by them. But then this weird thing happened, this upsurge of antisemitism across the world. The likes of which I don’t think any of us has been prepared to recognize for what it truly is, which is an underground now above the surface feeling of antisemitism that has been lying dormant literally since the Holocaust when it became very uncomfortable in polite society to talk about Jew hatred. But now it became on full display, including in world capitals, and including notably on American college campuses and in congressional races.

One of the things that has caused the wobbliness from President Biden is his grave concern about the 2024 presidential election and the swing state of Michigan. Now, one of the interesting things about Michigan is it does have in certain pockets, Detroit and Dearborn, two other Ds for your list, Rich. Detroit and Dearborn have the largest concentrations of Arab and Muslim populations of cities in the United States. There has been a whipping of fury directed against what is perceived to be the Biden administration’s solid support for Israel. That has transferred into a sense among those who are looking at the election and saying maybe the president has to soften his stand and talk not just about this resurgence of Jew hatred but Islamophobia. That Islamophobia honestly is the least concern for police departments across cities in the United States.

There’s been something like a 60 or 70% uptick in hate crimes directed against Jews since October 7th, and the next most attacked group of people in the United States with something like a 6% uptick has been Sikhs, so not even Muslims. This is something that I think has been the root cause of the president’s wobbliness, as well as what we’re also seeing, which is that his closest advisors are looking not at what is in the national security interest of the United States standing by our strongest ally in the Middle East and a fellow democracy, but instead, weighing the political calculations of standing with Israel.

What has come out in a particularly nasty way is two things. One is these demands from lower level staff, which I find it would be hilarious if it wasn’t so upsetting, but lower level staff across the National Security Council, across Hill staffs, even in my former agency, the US Agency for International Development, where people anonymously write letters about how angry they are at the Biden administration. Interns, new hires, contractors, grant recipients, people who don’t control policy, but in an effort to be inclusive, the Biden administration tries to listen to them.

The other very complex thing that’s happening, and Rich started to talk about this at the UN, is this persistent call both on Capitol Hill as well as bubbling up from lower level people in the administration, is this call for a ceasefire, which ultimately means a call for Israel to lose the war. Every single time we’ve had a pause in the fighting in order to let in humanitarian aid, it has led to two things. Hamas stealing the aid and Hamas having an opportunity to rebuild and retrench during those pause periods, both of which are harmful to Israel’s efforts to win the war.

Cliff May:

Yeah, I mean, Rich, one of the reasons that Israel has to go into Rafah is, well, a number of reasons. One is that the leadership, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif are believed to be in the tunnels under Rafah or maybe under Khan Yunis, or maybe they’re interconnected. You have to, if you’re going to win this war, you’re going have to destroy the leadership. Two, there are the remaining battalions, there are probably, the Israelis are saying something like 18 and 24 have been destroyed, but there are probably four remaining battalions so-called, in Rafah, they have to be destroyed.

But there’s one more thing. We now know, despite the fact that for years people have been telling us that Gaza was blockaded, that Gaza was sealed hermetically, that Gaza was an open air prison. We know that a huge arsenal of weapons have been entering and probably entering under the border with Egypt. Egypt didn’t succeed in closing those borders, the Israelis may not have known that. Israelis have to close that or Hamas will be resupplied, not just with fuel and food, which is what Israel is allowing to happen, but also with weapons as well. If that border is not secured, Hamas with its leadership intact will have continuing weapons to do what they’re doing right now, which is not cease firing, but firing on Israelis at every opportunity they have with whatever they have.

RIch Goldberg:

Well, that’s exactly right. I don’t want to simplify these things because the people who are detractors of Israel like to make things simple. It is simple in some ways, which is, Israel needs to be allowed to finish the job and destroy Hamas, destroy its leadership, take Rafah for all the reasons you said. The process of how you do that is not simple. I don’t want to downplay the fact that there are more than a million internally displaced people who have moved from north to south who are in Rafah, and the IDF does need to ensure that they are evacuated safely and provide the safe zones and understand where those people will go. It’s actually to the Israeli benefit to conduct a very thorough evacuation because if Hamas leaders try to embed themselves in the civilian population, what’s different this time is that Israel controls the territory surrounding the evacuation site. Therefore as people pass through checkpoints, potentially with facial recognition software, you will get people on your baseball cards as they try to leave.

But at the same time, let’s not make this overly complicated and crazily complex. Israel can in fact, enable the evacuation of a million people out of Rafah, there are other places to go. It’s not to say that life is easy for the people who are being asked to move, but this is a war that Hamas started, that Hamas refuses to end, and Israel has the right and in fact the obligation as a democracy to defend itself and to finish the job of destroying Hamas, and to do so in the ways that minimize civilian casualties. That’s exactly what they plan to do.

So for all the reasons you named, the strategic imperatives of going to Rafah, of securing Rafah, destroying the remaining Hamas battalions, of trying to track down Hamas leaders, destroy the remaining command and control that allows maybe the mid-level fighters to continue fighting, perhaps they would otherwise surrender. Perhaps there’s some number of individuals who’d raise their hand and say, “I’ll trade hostages if I get a free ticket to Doha or to somewhere else in the world.” Nobody can do that while Sinwar and Deif are alive. So hunting them down, destroying the infrastructure, ensuring there is no command and control to launch terror attacks, completely important.

Then you mentioned the border itself with Egypt. Again, not an easy simple question of Israel’s long-term control over the border. It’s easy in some ways for us to say from a strategic perspective, Israel cannot allow tunneling to continue between Egypt and Gaza. Israel cannot allow weapons flow and human being flow. Thinking of IRGC personnel or others going in and out of Gaza through that Egyptian border. Clearly the Egyptians have a lot to answer for and who knows what the IDF will find when they take that border crossing that the Egyptians don’t want people to know about. But remember, there was a time before Israel left Gaza that that border was under Israeli control, and over time, the Israelis fatigued over constant terror attacks on that border and against IDF outposts. That’s going to be something that’s in the Israeli equation here for the long term, for the day after what’s going to be there.

Now, again, let’s not overcomplicate this because there are always answers, there are always solutions. What the opponents, the detractors of Israel, the propagandists for Hamas want to make this as simple for everyone to believe is there’s no way to control the border, you’re going to anger the Egyptians, you’re going to endanger the peace treaty with Egypt. Israel can’t be in control of this border. It will impede economic flows, it’s impossible for the day after. None of that is true. “Israel can’t go after Rafah, they can’t go in, you’re going to kill a million civilians. You won’t be able to mitigate civilian damage.” None of that is true.

So let’s peel away their oversimplification for the Hamas narrative. Let’s not allow ourselves into an oversimplification into a different narrative, but understand what are the core objectives? How do you achieve them in short order? Understand that the IDF in fact is capable of doing that and they are planning to do that.

Bonnie Glick:

Rich, if I may add to that, because the border is a really critical area that there isn’t enough focus on. That is largely due to American foreign policy decision making. What do I mean by that? It’s an international border. There is an international airport that’s located about 50 kilometers from Rafah inside Egypt, an international airport that could whisk refugees away to a third country, as you mentioned, Qatar, but there are countries that are willing to take Gazan civilians and have them resettled there. The point of a refugee–

Cliff May:

Which countries would those be?

Bonnie Glick:

Those are Scotland, Canada, Chechnya, Turkey, Qatar. These are all country… Egypt doesn’t want them resettling in Egypt. But Egypt–

Cliff May:

Even taking temporary refuge for the duration of the war, which seems to be–

RIch Goldberg:

Of course amazing, Bonnie and Cliff, no security council resolution demanding Egypt open that border once since October 7th.

Bonnie Glick:

Correct.

RIch Goldberg:

No condemnation of keeping people in Gaza when they could be moving into completely isolated empty desert land that doesn’t threaten Egypt at all. I mean, that–

Bonnie Glick:

Part of that, Rich, is because America insists that no Gazan leave Gaza. There’s no other war zone in the world where refugees are not allowed to leave. You’ve had a million people leave Ukraine. You’ve had millions of people leave Venezuela. You’ve had a million Rohingya refugees leave Burma for Bangladesh. Third countries are willing to accept refugees, and that’s the point of refugee resettlement. Giving people the opportunity for a new life. 850,000 Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews left their Arab and Muslim countries in 1948 and came to Israel as refugees. The Jewish homeland and Israel helped them make lives there. That’s the point of refugee resettlement, and it is the key piece that UNRWA refuses to do. UNRWA requires that Palestinians remain in these what they call, so-called occupied areas in the hope of return to a future Palestine. Well, it’s not happening anytime soon. Wouldn’t it be nice to help the people who are in such dire circumstances to get to a safe haven and eventually to be resettled?

Cliff May:

I just want to point out, they were not in such dire circumstances it turns out, prior to this. If you’ve seen on Twitter and other social media what Gaza actually looked like, it was actually rather remarkably nice when people have been saying that it’s an open air prison. We had the mayor of Gaza City in the New York Times saying, “this is so terrible because my town, it had a library, it had a theater, it had a cultural center, it had parks, it had restaurants, it had seaside promenades.” Wow, that’s what it was like. By the way, these people can’t be refugees in a third country according to, I guess you say the US and the UN, but somehow these could be refugees from Palestine, even if they were born in Palestine, but they were in an occupied territory, except it wasn’t occupied since 2005. None of this makes any sense. Of course, I don’t think the protestors on college campuses understand any of what I just said. They don’t have any of those facts, but if you are born in what you say is Palestine, how can you be a refugee from Palestine? Of course, you want to return and replace Israel with a new Palestine.

By the way, I have a problem with this too. People talk of the Palestinian national movement. There is nothing about Hamas’ ambitions that are nationalistic. Hamas doesn’t want a Palestinian state. Could have had one in Gaza. In fact, I’ve asked this in a column. What attributes of statehood or sovereignty did Hamas not have in Gaza that Lichtenstein or Malta or Monaco or Luxembourg have? I can’t think of any except maybe voting in the UN General Assembly. If that is all the case, I don’t know, Rich, maybe you take off from there. You see where I’m going? But it’s not a national movement from Hamas because they don’t want a nation state, they want an emirate that would be part of a future caliphate. I mean, isn’t that what we should be understanding?

RIch Goldberg:

Yes.

Cliff May:

If we understand that, then when we talk about a two-state solution, how does it solve anything to say we are going to recognize a Palestinian state and who’s going to lead that Palestinian state? Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian Authority that doesn’t condemn Hamas?

RIch Goldberg:

Listen, this is ultimately why you have a crash ahead of you, if you keep trying to barrel trains down towards this idea of a two-state solution. It’s going to be a devastating train crash in foreign policy terms if this is where the United States keeps pushing the trains, because not only do you have Hamas with what you just described as its ideology, but you fundamentally have a narrative indoctrinated for all Palestinians institutionalized by the United Nations and UNRWA, as Bonnie laid out, that is all about the vision of genocide of Jews. It’s inherent in the narrative that if you are waiting for your moment, your October 7th moment to invade and throw all the Jews into the sea and reclaim what’s really yours, and until then you are refugees, until then you cannot achieve the true two state vision. Who are you dealing with from the Israeli side? Who are you dealing with in Washington? This is outrageous. This is like the campus protests from the river to the sea, but actually operationalized to perform the act from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. That is to say to genocide the Jews.

Why does UNRWA exist? Why is there a refugee narrative? It’s all part of the political warfare set up by the Arab countries when they failed to defeat Israel in 1948. It has been lingering for 75 plus years. The idea that one day the Arab armies will come back, throw the Jews into the sea, and we’ll all go to live in the Jewish homes. If you don’t stop that narrative, you condemn every generation to all kinds of forms of where we are today in the status quo.

It plays out in the education system of the Palestinian Authority. The textbooks we talk about in Gaza that are horrific, that we say UNRWA shouldn’t be using and they should never have been using them. They aren’t Hamas textbooks. Palestinian Authority textbooks, right? So your problem’s actually with Ramallah. If you think that it’s a problem to have genocidal textbooks being taught to Palestinians of how to kill Jews and incite antisemitism, don’t look at Hamas. Look at the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. You want to put them in charge of both the West Bank and Gaza? You think they’re going to bring a two-state solution about? It’s not going to happen. It’s not going to happen. There has to be an international rejection, and it starts with a US rejection of this narrative and ultimately an acceptance that Israel won the war in 1948. That’s really what it’s all about. Israel won the war. They’re not going anywhere.

Cliff May:

I certainly reject the idea that the UN represents a world government or a proto world government or should be anything like that, but the UN Security Council does exert considerable pressure. Full disclosure, we’re recording this on Tuesday, the 20th of October. You’ve been following what’s been happening on the UN Security Council, Rich. Maybe fill us in. More could happen this week, although I doubt it, based on the tea leaves I’ve been reading.

RIch Goldberg:

Well, we have of course, the Hamas posse of the international community coming to their rescue in the 11th hour, as Hamas prepares for its last stand in Rafah that we’ve talked about. In order to try to embolden Hamas, shore up support for Hamas, stop Israel from going forward into Rafah, there is a resolution that was put forward by Algeria on behalf of the Arab League. This was just an outright “there should be an immediate ceasefire, a permanent ceasefire,” blaming Israel for everything. The US was never going to support it because it was so outlandishly biased against Israel and calls for a permanent ceasefire, which is not, at least in rhetoric, is not US policy.

So instead of saying, “okay, we reject this, we’re going to veto it, it’s dead on arrival,” getting our allies in line to say it’s dead on arrival, let’s talk serious here. What’s really the core issue here? Hamas should be a terrorist organization at the UN, let’s have a resolution that considers that. Let’s force China and Russia to veto a resolution designating Hamas as a formal UN terror organization. No, we don’t put that forward. Okay, can we at least put forward a counter resolution that says “we, the United Nations Security Council, call out Hamas to unconditionally surrender and release all hostages to end this war?” No, we can’t do that because for some reason, the diplomatic cocktail parties in New York, this US mission under this administration feels the need to try to triangulate between good and evil. That somehow that makes it more acceptable to our allies. We’re not as isolated. We can say we tried to get a ceasefire, we were opposed to certain things.

So what is the resolution the US put forward as an alternative the night before the vote on the Algerian resolution? It’s this, give something to everybody. Blame Hamas for some things, call for the hostages to be released, call for a temporary ceasefire but at the right time and ensuring that hostages are released as part of that. Sounds okay. A little bit of condemnation for UNRWA in there, that’s pretty good. Calling out the news that UNRWA employees were part of the October 7th attack. Reiterating long-term support for UNRWA, not so good. You’re starting to see the even-handedness behind this resolution. Then really bad, operative paragraph three of the US resolution saying that the US opposes Israel going into Rafah to finish the job against Hamas. So fundamentally, you take all of the bells and whistles away, all of the lipstick off this resolution, and it is nothing more than a big win for Hamas to see that the US is taking what’s already been said publicly at the podium in Washington now to the security council, and that is to oppose Israel taking the final step to eliminate Hamas in Gaza and Rafah. Undermining hostage negotiations, undermining Israel in the battlefield, potentially leading to a delay in operations in Rafah, we’ll see. That’s where we stand.

I don’t know if the US will push for this vote. I think they invented this in their own mind, some diplomatic alternative that allows them to still talk to their Arab partners and talk to the Europeans and say, “oh no, we put forward a ceasefire resolution and it was balanced. It was more balanced.” I don’t know why we need to be balanced between good and evil. Why can’t we just be for good and against evil? Why is that so hard in diplomatic circles?

Cliff May:

When is a vote likely to take place? Do you have any idea?

RIch Goldberg:

It may happen, it may not happen. The US has said as of today, it’s not rushing to a vote. So we’ll see how the Hamas propagandists recover from their loss, the veto of their resolution. Again, commend the Biden administration for vetoing it. They don’t have to veto something, right? They could not veto, they could allow such a horrible resolution to take force. It would be horrific. It would be contrary to public statements you’ve heard from John Kirby, the White House spokesperson on national security repeatedly from the podium.

In fact, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, during the debate was quite eloquent in expressing why the resolution undermined talks for the hostages, undermined Israel, was actually working against peace. Yet, I don’t know why her words can’t match the actions, and why they would still put forward a resolution that would try to halt Israel from going into Rafah, which to me, if I’m Hamas and I’m thinking about maybe I’ll deal on the hostages. I hear that the US is trying to hold Israel back from going into Rafah, my incentive to negotiate is dropping.

Cliff May:

Yeah, I doubt the Israelis are going to be held back. I think it’s too imperative that they do so. Going back to Lyndon Johnson trying to discourage the Israelis from understanding that that war was going to be fought by Egypt and Syria and Jordan and others in ’67, and they knew what they had to do, or taking out the nuclear reactor at Osirak and Iraq, or the Syrian nuclear reactor. I think the Israelis sometimes know they have to do what they have to do and they’ll ask forgiveness rather than permission at the end of the day.

One who I give the credit for this, David Satterfield, did say that the White House had decided to stop funding for UNRWA and he said it’s not a suspension, it’s a prohibition on providing further funding. That strikes me as a good move. I saw that two congressmen, representative Andy Ogles and Mary Miller, both Republicans, introduced a resolution to designate UNRWA as a foreign terrorist organization, that’s going even further. What do you think of those, Bonnie?

Bonnie Glick:

So it’s super interesting, and I think Senator Cruz also has something in the works where he wants to designate UNRWA as a foreign terrorist organization, remove the 501C3 benefit for UNRWA where Americans can get a tax benefit for giving to a 501C3 organization associated with UNRWA, and taking it a step further and saying donations to UNRWA are material support for terrorism.

So there are these good moves to cut not just US government, but also good-willed, well-meaning Americans who have been duped by little kids on Halloween going around with trick or treat for UNICEF boxes. Foreign terrorism organization designation of UNRWA likely won’t happen. I think what’s much more likely is that UNRWA will simply be shut down, tail between its legs and it’ll retreat into the darkness, and the leadership of UNRWA will take up new leadership roles in other equally as perverse UN agencies like UN Women, the International Committee for the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, the World Health Organization, all of which have been complicit since October 7th in either the coverup.

Cliff May:

And long before. They were complicit for years, which we now know that.

Bonnie Glick:

And long before, right, but they’ve been unmasked for their true colors, which are really dark and evil. I actually think Israel, which has said “we’re standing by until the start of Ramadan before we consider a Rafah invasion.”

Cliff May:

Well, what they’re doing, they’re saying, “we’re standing by if the hostages are released, we won’t invade but if you don’t release the hostages by Ramadan, we’re going to move forward.”

Bonnie Glick:

Good.

Cliff May:

That’s what we’re saying.

Bonnie Glick:

Correct. Ramadan, which will start around March 10th.

Cliff May:

March 10th, by the way, for people who don’t have that on their calendar. Yeah.

Bonnie Glick:

Right around then, depending on the moon. So it’ll start around March 10th. Well, March 8th is another significant UN date that you guys might not be aware of, but the International Day of the Woman. How interesting would it be to see what UN Women does, given that it took about 90 days for them even to condemn Hamas for the brutalization of women and only because they were shamed by women all over the world for their inability to act.

So your first question on UNRWA and the FTO designation, it’s a clever move, but I don’t think it will advance. I do think UNRWA ultimately will have so little funding left that it will be forced to shut down. In addition to that, the UN will make an effort to take care of Palestinians possibly by the only logical means available, and that is to roll them into UNHCR, the UN High Commission for Refugees. That of course will take away all of the permanent refugee status for Palestinians.

Cliff May:

Yeah, my only question that is, I think the UN High Commission for Refugees should be in charge of Palestinians who are in Lebanon, say, where they’ve been mistreated, or other countries where they don’t have citizenship and were never going to have citizenship.

But I don’t think they should be in charge of Palestinians in places that are called Palestine. I don’t think they should be in areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority or whoever it takes control of Gaza. Look, I think it should be a relief and rehabilitation commission of some kind, because Gaza needs to be rebuilt, but it needs to be rebuilt under a government that’s not at war or authority that’s not a war with Israel, that’s not committing terrorism or attempting to.

At least two, well, two of the subjects I want to make sure we hit on today. Rich, when you were in Israel, did you go to the north or talk to people about what’s happening in the north?

RIch Goldberg:

I did, I was up there, yeah.

Cliff May:

Because we talk about the Gaza war, but the fact of the matter is there’s a slow simmer war going on in the north that could be a more destructive war on both sides of the Lebanese-Israeli border before too long.

RIch Goldberg:

Yes, I went up there. It’s actually the first thing I did off the plane was I said, “get me a car and let’s go to the north. Let’s go as far as we can.” So maybe that makes me crazy but in my view, that is ultimately right now today, the larger threat that Israel faces as it progresses in Gaza moving south. Obviously we have the debate over Rafah.

But in the north is a much greater threat. Just to put in perspective the kind of numbers that we are talking about. We always thought about Hamas having something like 15,000 rockets available in its arsenal. Most of them short-range, maybe some as we’ve seen that go into central Israel. Nothing that you would call existential or game changer, strategic in a sense of their weaponry. They do damage, they cause terrorism. Israel learned to live with that threat over many years with the Iron Dome system.

But you look north at the threat from Hezbollah. Since the 2006 war, so what are we talking about, almost 18 years ago, 17-plus years ago, where Israel and Hezbollah had its last major conflict. The UN had stepped in with a Security Council resolution, trying to get the Lebanese armed forces and the UN interim forces in Lebanon to step in to be a buffer south of the Litani River in southern Lebanon, trying to with a mandate disarm Hezbollah south of Litani River so that it could not be a force right on Israel’s northern border. Never happened. It never happened.

Cliff May:

A resolution passed, 1901, but it was never enforced by anybody.

RIch Goldberg:

Resolution passed, it was never enforced by anyone. UNIFIL has never disarmed Hezbollah. They claim, well, the resolution says we have to have a request from the LAF, the Lebanese Armed Forces under the resolution to actually disarm and we’ve never been requested to disarm by the LAF. Well, Hezbollah at this point over the last 17 years, has taken effective political control of the country. They exert an immense amount of influence over the LAF itself. The LAF is never going to get into a battle with Hezbollah, it’s never going to happen. UNIFIL is not going to engage with Hezbollah, either citing whatever excuse they want, they’re there to document all the violations and report it into the security council so that we can do nothing about it but write them another big check every year of hundreds of millions of dollars to keep writing reports.

But this is what has happened over 17 years of the Iranians funneling weapons into Hezbollah to beef up their capabilities in that area, to create a deterrence on Israel’s northern border, not just for Hezbollah itself, but the potential if Israel ever went to try to attack Iran and its nuclear program, who’s going to respond first? Hezbollah in the north, not just the Iranian missile capability itself.

140,000 mortars that can travel 10 kilometers. 65,000 short-range rockets and missiles that can go up to 80 kilometers. 5,000 or so longer range that can go over 200 kilometers. 5,000 or so mid-range missiles from 80 to 200 kilometers. Thousands of drones, thousands or hundreds of thousands, there’s differing opinions of precision guided munitions. They might have cruise missiles. They might have short-range ballistic missiles provided from Iran. All of these threats, a massive, massive threat. More than 10 times the size of Hamas, both in capability, size, scope, lethality, however you want to define it. With thousands of fighters right on the border who live in the villages in southern Lebanon. Their families live there. Their missiles are there inside the civilian communities, under their homes, under the schools, under the hospitals. Remember who taught Hamas to use human shields? It was Hezbollah. Hezbollah is the master in using human shields. They also taught the Houthis in Yemen how to do this, as well.

So right now, since October 7th, we have seen a limited war going on between Lebanon and Israel by any other standard since October 7th. We would never call this a limited war, to have daily rocket fire, daily anti-tank guided missiles. Israelis dying in the North as residents who are still in some of the northern cities left behind, most have evacuated, but some there being killed. Israeli soldiers being killed.

Cliff May:

By the way it’s really important we talk about the refugees which are really internally displaced people in Gaza, but they’re also internally displaced people in Israel, more than 100,000. The northern cities they’ve been evacuated from, they’re internally displaced and they can’t go back until they feel safe, which is why I also think that even if Hezbollah were to back down a little bit, I’m not sure the Israelis can say, “okay, we’ll go back to the status quo ante” at this point, not after what has happened in Gaza. By the way, this tunnel building that has been going on, I don’t know how successfully, also in Lebanon that we’ve heard of recently, which is meant to either get terrorists into Israel or provide shelter for terrorists in the event of a war with Israel.

RIch Goldberg:

That is exactly right, it’s a major domestic political issue going on. The fact that you have all these families, as you said, 100,000 or so evacuated from every community within five miles or so of the border of Lebanon. Kids who have been taken out of their schools, and the question of, will they be able to go back to their schools and their homes before the next school year starts? Because right now you just see a massive threat from Hezbollah every day, and the Israelis respond in a tit-for-tat fashion, but absent some sort of larger warfare to drive Hezbollah back, it’s very unlikely you will get these fighters who live in the villages to leave the villages, that you will ever destroy the capabilities they hide in the villages.

So what is going on right now? There’s two different things. One is the question of, what is actually necessary to de-fang Hezbollah, to dismantle Hezbollah in southern Lebanon? What would that even mean? How would that look? To diminish the deterrent effect that Iran has created on Israel’s northern border for a whole lot of reasons. That’s a big, big, big strategic question.

Then there’s this other question of, what is the United States negotiating? What is Israel negotiating through the United States and France with the government of Lebanon, potentially Hezbollah, to at least prevent the imminent threat of an October 7th invasion on the northern border that does not actually diminish the threat from Hezbollah overall to Israel. Noting the ranges of the missiles and rockets I just talked about, the ability to send swarming drones throughout northern and central Israel. But at least give some confidence to 100,000 people to go back to their homes and communities with the belief that the IDF has beefed up border security. The special forces units called the Redwan forces of Hezbollah have been moved off the border to a certain distance where they won’t wake up on the next Simchat Torah next year and learn that there is an invasion going on in their communities by Hezbollah. How do you get people to believe and have confidence that that won’t happen, without actually destroying the threat that has been built up in southern Lebanon?

I think we have a little bit of a contradiction here of the politics and the machinations around the politics. The US wants to see “de-escalation”, they want to “contain the conflict”. They don’t want to see Israel go to war in Lebanon in an election year. The Israelis want to try to pacify the public and get people back to the border as quickly as possible for economic life, for socioeconomic life, et cetera. But what are you trading? What are you really getting? Whose deal are you going to get? Hezbollah is going to move some people back a few miles from the border with capabilities that they can just launch from 10 miles back or 10 kilometers back with missiles that can go farther than 10 kilometers. The border communities aren’t actually safe, nor is, by the way, other parts of northern Israel all the way down into central Israel and beyond, given the ranges that Hezbollah has. Would you even get anything from a deal that supposedly Hezbollah has withdrawn 10 kilometers, if the fighters themselves live in the communities within 10 kilometers of Israel’s border? It’s doubtful. By the way, who enforces all of this under the deal being proposed?

Bonnie Glick:

The UN.

RIch Goldberg:

The UN, along with the Lebanese Armed Forces, the same enforcers of the last 17 years, who we know will do nothing. So, I’m very nervous about the North, I’m very nervous. I understand that the situation Israel is in domestically, I understand why the administration is pushing against a larger conflict there. I disagree with it, I think it sends a terrible message, but ultimately, Israel is going to have to deal with that threat in a very robust way. Not some deal for a few buildings taken down and a couple thousand people walking 10 kilometers away from the border, that’s not going to solve the crisis.

Bonnie Glick:

On top of that, Rich, the Hezbollah fighters who are right there on the border, they’re great enforcers in the form of the Lebanese Armed Forces, are solving the problem in their own peculiar way. According to some Israeli intelligence reports, which is that they are simply uniforming them as Lebanese Armed Forces soldiers. So that you have the same Hezbollah mentality, the genocidier of Hezbollah who are preparing to launch the next attack onto Israel, but they’re in the uniforms of the LAF, which is supposed to, in some way be more secure for Israel. Meanwhile, the Americans continue to pour $100 million plus a year into training for the LAF. Who does that mean that our DOD is actually training? That’s a big question mark.

The other thing that makes me very nervous about the north is Israel’s access to ammunition and weapons. This is another thing that the Biden administration has been wobbly on. Going back to your first question, Cliff, and that is the resupply efforts that are so vital right now to Israel. You’ll remember maybe that back in, I think it was January 2023, the stockpile of weapons that were held in Israel in the event of… Were transferred to Ukraine because there was perceived in the White House to be this real imminent threat on Ukraine. Certainly, it’s very real, but also Jake Sullivan’s perspective, the National Security Advisor, that the Middle East had “never been so calm” as it was back then. So Israel had lost access to hundreds of thousands of munitions, which we’re sitting back in the United States comfortably, not thinking about, “am I going to have the tank munitions that I need on the northern border, which really will be a tank war? Do I have the munitions that I’m going to need to win that battle? Do I have the aircraft and the munitions that will drop into Gaza? Or there was a very tragic day, or my saving those because I don’t know what’s going to happen in Israel?”

There was a tragedy in Gaza one day, the IDF lost the most IDF forces. 21 soldiers were killed when they were in the process of arming a vacated building with bombs to blow it up because it housed Hamas tunnels. There was nobody inside the building. Just as the Israeli troops, the engineering corps were pulling out of the building itself. They were hit on the ground by Gaza, and really that was a destruction of a building that could have taken place from the air, but the IDF say they were concerned about the need to conserve munitions for a future series of battles. That’s something that we haven’t even touched on, but really is, I would imagine, front of mind for the IDF.

Cliff May:

Well, we haven’t solved any of this. And I think it’s important that people recognize that the defensive war that Israel is fighting against Hamas and its supporters is a long way from over. It’s not over in Gaza, it’s not over in the north. This is going to stretch out for some time. This is going to be a strain, but I’m glad you’re working on it, Rich. I’m glad you’re working on it, Bonnie. It’s important that American policymakers understand what’s happening there and not delude themselves, and that we not be funding and supporting both sides in this and other wars. That seems to be not useful.

Thanks again for being with us today, Bonnie. I know you’re going off to Geneva pretty soon. Give us 30 seconds on what you’re going to do there.

Bonnie Glick:

30 seconds in Geneva, the UN Watch, which is headquartered in Geneva and focuses on trying to make UN agencies better, is holding an international summit on the sidelines of the opening of the, also very corrupt but not discussed on this program, the UN Human Rights Council, is opening their session. UN Watch is organizing a summit with leaders to talk about UNRWA specifically and the war in Gaza.

Cliff May:

We’ll talk to you when you get back from that. Rich, you’ve got a lot on your plate. Thanks for being with us today.

Bonnie Glick:

Thank you so much.

RIch Goldberg:

Thanks as always, Cliff.

Cliff May:

Thanks to all of you who have been with us for this conversation, here today, on Foreign Podicy.