BRETT: No doubt, like me, you’ve been watching very closely what it is that’s going on out there, especially in the Middle East. We will be covering all the big stories that are out there that are moving. But none at this point, I think, is more compelling, more worrisome, and more emblematic of the Biden-Harris foreign policy than what is taking place between Gaza and Israel.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is escalating more over the weekend with yesterday marking the deadliest day since the attacks began a week ago. Israel defended taking out a building that housed various media outlets, including the Associated Press. Israel notes that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad also occupied the space.

This is one of those strategic decisions that’s been made by Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organizations, those organizations hostile to the state of Israel. They think nothing of stationing civilians, media, what have you, right there — cheek-by-jowl — inside these buildings, these high-rises there in Gaza.

And it’s essentially going back to the use of human shields, because that is what we have. And so that building — that “media building,” as it’s being described — was taken down by the Israelis. But it’s important to understand something here. The Israelis don’t just bomb buildings in Gaza. They give advance warning and notice that they’re going to take the building down.

The SMS texts go out to the occupants; announcements are made that this is a place that’s going to be targeted. The Israelis are doing their level best to not target innocent civilians, as opposed to what is happening from rockets being launched from inside civilian communities in Gaza being fired into Israeli. It is absolutely two different metrics.

Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, somebody who’s been targeted by the Obama administration (and now, I don’t think, particularly respected by the Biden administration) appeared on CBS Face the Nation yesterday saying that Israel will do whatever it takes to restore order and quiet but reminded host John Dickerson that they have a right to defend themselves.

NETANYAHU: We are targeting a terrorist organization that is targeting us civilians and hiding behind their civilians, using them as human shields. We’re doing everything we can to hit the terrorists themselves, their rockets, their rocket caches, and their arms. But we’re not going to just let them get away with it. Neither would you. I mean, just imagine what would have happened if you had 2900 rockets fired on Washington and New York and others. I think you would understand our position. I think you do, actually.

BRETT: The reality here is pretty clear. One side is attempting to minimize casualties; the other side is attempting to maximize and take full advantage of casualties. You will almost never — and I’ll have more comments on this in a moment. You will almost never see a moment of video or a photograph of Hamas fighters, Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters, Hezbollah fighters up north.

You will almost never see them engaged in the firing of rockets or the firing of guns. You will only see carefully choreographed images of the victims of retaliation from Israel. You will see rubble. You will see wounded and killed men, women, and children. You will see scenes from hospitals.

But you will never see video of Palestinian Islamic Jihad or Hamas firing rockets out of neighborhoods into communities in Israel. Just follow — firing them randomly. Rush made this abundantly clear early on that diplomacy is not gonna solve this. He did this the last time around.

RUSH: Look, I’m gonna say some things that I think are slam-dunk true and accurate and no-brainers. It’s just that you will not hear things like this in the Drive-By Media. But I gotta at you, folks. I have been paying attention to this issue since I was a teenager. It doesn’t matter who is the president. It doesn’t matter who’s running the Palestinians. It doesn’t matter who the prime minister of Israel is, really.

This dispute has never changed in terms of the way it is presented in the media, and it’s always presented in the media as though there is a diplomatic solution that can be had, that is there for the taking. And there isn’t. There never will be a diplomatic solution. There will be diplomatic moments. But diplomacy is not going to solve this. The only way, it’s not just this; it’s any conflict like this that involves military.

One of these two sides is going to have to win, and the other is going to have to lose. And until that happens, there will not be a solution. And yet, every day of my life I have been force-fed the idea, conventional wisdom — doesn’t matter, every year of my life, every day, every month — I’ve been force-fed news stories wherein the narrative or the template is that a diplomatic solution is at hand, or a diplomatic solution looks grim, or a diplomatic solution is slipping away, or we are on the verge of gaining a diplomatic…

And it’s none of it true. There is no diplomatic solution! We’ve had some of the best diplomats the world’s produced try to solve this and they have failed. We’ve had some of the worst diplomats the world has produced (one of them serving right now) and they have failed. Because there isn’t a diplomatic solution. All you have to do is read the Hamas charter. The Hamas charter explicitly calls for the elimination of Israel. There is no way to negotiate that. There is no middle ground. We’ve been dealing with this episode this way — let me just pick a year — since 1950, all right? 64-years of trying the identical thing.

Now, I understand that there’s a lot of political power to be gained by talking about how much you hate war, and you’ll do anything to stop war, and you’ll do anything you can to stop civilian casualties. There’s great political gain there, if you can convince people that’s what you’re after, either as a Democrat president or a secretary of state or what have you.

But it’s still all fluff. When one of the combatants has in, their essentially, their constitution — they call charter, their constitution — the elimination, eradication, the demolishing, the abolishment of the Jewish state, there is no diplomatic solution to that. And yet every day we get breathless reporters working and reporting on the next proposal as though this might be the magic moment.

And there isn’t a magic moment, because there is not a diplomatic solution. It’s not possible. And especially if you send somebody over there like Kerry, who’s got his own agenda for his own legacy and his own bio and what have you. Ditto Obama. So Kerry wants a ceasefire. What happens in ceasefires is that the bad guys take advantage of the time-out to retool, to regroup, and rearm.

It is a fact that the two countries involved here have a different definition of peace. To Hamas and the Palestinians, peace is a momentary lull in the normal state of affairs, which is war. That is normalcy for them. They raise their children on it. They strap bombs to their children to go blow themselves up in Israel and bus depots and on buses and in schools. War is their way of life.

You may not like hearing it, you may find it difficult or impossible to believe, but don’t doubt me. So any time the United States pushes for a ceasefire, whether they know it or not, they’re aiding Hamas. But I don’t think that’s why they do it, don’t misunderstand. I think they push for a ceasefire because they all want to be seen as brokers of peace.

And they all got this dream of being the guy who finally brought peace to the Middle East. They all have that much hubris, they all have that kind of ego to think they — with the power of their personality and their ideas (and the fact that they served in Vietnam) — can bring to these negotiations elements that others have never had. Every one of these guys thinks they have the magic bullet, and there isn’t one, if it is involved in diplomacy.

BRETT: We were told throughout the campaign that Joe Biden is an old, experienced hand at foreign policy. “Ah, he’s been at this for a long time. He knows a lot of these people.” He’s been bragging in the last week that, you know, the foreign leaders are asking him, “Are you really back? Is America really back?”

Remember in June of 2020, Bob Gates — who was one time head of the CIA and was one time secretary of defense, worked closely with Obama and Biden. Remember, it was Bob Gates who said that Joe Biden never been right on foreign policy issues. Never. He’s seen him. He’s seen him for 40 years. He’s never been right. He warned about that and then stood by that very statement.

Joe Biden is not directly involved in this conversation. He had one conversation with Bibi Netanyahu yesterday; that was it. Kamala Harris is MIA, hasn’t been seen, hasn’t done a press conference in two months. And Tony Blinken (who’s supposed to be this wizard of foreign policy) is in Copenhagen. He’s visiting the Danes. He ought to be visiting Bibi.

This is worse than The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.

This is a gang that is incompetent.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

BRETT: Rush was alluding to the notions of diplomacy and discussions and trying to bring the parties together as it relates to Hamas and, of course, what it is that’s happening with the nation of Israel. “United Nations Security Council ceasefire talks took place on Sunday, according to the Associated Press,” which was stationed in that building in Gaza, as we heard repeated, especially from Gary Pruitt, the CEO of Associated Press.

“We didn’t know. (muttering) We didn’t know Hamas was in that building.” Sure. Sure, you didn’t know. “U.S. secretary of state Antony Blinken signaled Monday the U.S. would not join growing calls for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers as fighting entered its second week with more than 200 people dead.

“Reuters is reporting the United States told the United Nations Security Council on Sunday, it’s made it clear to Israel, the Palestinians and others, that it is ready to offer support should the parties seek a ceasefire to end the worsening violence between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza.” Rush talked about this and how it is that ceasefires actually benefit Hamas. Here’s what he said.

RUSH: One thing, folks, about in the Middle East: Whoever calls for ’em is losing, and generally a ceasefire is to benefit Hamas. Hamas is getting creamed here again. Don’t forget Hamas, they’re also allies of the Iranians. And they said early on, they launched all this, the Hamas forces did, missile attacks into Israel. The Israelis responded and took out Hamas, their Osama Bin Laden, their leader. And traditionally, ceasefires in this region are for the losing side, which is always Hamas or the Palestinians to rearm, to reorganize. It’s the purpose of them: To stop Israeli successful operations.

BRETT: Who’s the biggest supporter for Hamas out there? Qatar? That’s one of the most important financial backers. They’ve sent a bunch of money into the Hamas organization. The Iranians are also big-time supporters. There was a belief and a hope that the Abraham Accords would be effective in that regard of knocking Qatar out of the mix there.

Hamas is also supported by Turkey, though, too. And in talks prior to the Hamas rocket launches that took place against Israel, Turkish president, Erdogan, “expressed political backing for it.” For many years Hamas has gotten their weapons from Iran, from Iran. “This week the Jerusalem Post quoted Israeli intelligence sources that estimates Hamas has an arsenal of between 5,000 and 6,000 rockets.

“Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which cooperates with Hamas, is believed to have stockpiled a further 8,000 rockets.” So what are we at right now? I think we’re at about 3,000 to 4,000 rockets that have been fired onto Israel. So if you want to take the low end there, they’ve got at least, between the two of them, 9,000 rockets left, assuming that they haven’t been degraded by bombing runs by the IDF.

Iranian rockets used to be smuggled into Gaza via Sudan, and then they were smuggled in by Egypt. Ever since the Sudanese dictator Bashir was ousted in 2019, they started trying to look to run things through Egypt, and the Egyptians don’t want to find themselves in that sort of a situation with Israel.

So the leader in Egypt doesn’t want to create a condition by which you can smuggle these missiles into Gaza and fire them into Israel. We’re talking about a very short space here. Gaza to Jerusalem, you’re looking at 40 miles. Think about where you live and think about what’s 40 miles away, and that’s distance we’re talking about between Gaza and Jerusalem.

It’s a very tight, small, compact area.

But to go back to diplomacy and what Rush was saying about diplomacy, and to go back to effective diplomacy and understanding how things work in the real world “governed by the aggressive use of force,” as Rush has often said, one of the most effective peace treaties that’s ever been established was the treaty between Israel and Egypt, brokered by Jimmy Carter, who seems to be back in the form of Joe Biden, but not toward any productive end.

We’re living in a world of Carter-type chaos, but the Camp David Accords effectively guarantees you peace between Egypt and Israel. Why? Because the Egyptians stopped trying to invade and shoot into Israel, and the Israelis agreed that they wouldn’t shoot into Egypt. All diplomacy is a contract. That’s all diplomacy. It’s a contract.

Like if you contract to buy a car, you pay me this money; I give you the car. If you contract with me to buy a house, you give me this money and some earnest money that I get to keep if the deal falls through and then I give you the keys to the house once the deal closes. But for there to be any kind of a contract, any kind of a contract — marriage contract, car contract, a home purchase, a peace agreement — there has to be an enforcement mechanism.

There has to be an enforcement mechanism, and there has to be a genuine desire to pursue and keep peace. When Sadat signed that peace treaty in the late seventies — the treaty he would lose his life for at the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt — he was saying, “I want peace with Israel, and Begin was saying the exact same thing, and Carter cosigned on that deal.” Hamas does not want peace, as Rush said.

They want to wipe out the state of Israel. It’s a hugely important point to understand when you look at this just this terms of the backdrop of this in terms of the history, and so little of this history is taught in the public arena, let alone in the public schools or any of the outlets out there. People don’t understand how this works.

Golda Meir, one of the most effective politicians in the twentieth century, who was prime minister in Israel, said, “We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs. We have no place to go.” It’s the only democracy, functioning democracy in the Middle East. Israeli Arabs have more rights than Arabs in other states in the Middle East.

There’s a rule of law. There is a functioning court system. There is relative peace when rockets are not coming in. There is a functioning economy. And the testimony to this is the Abraham Accords and the fact that he did have peace. The knock on President Trump from the elites on the left and in the media was, “He’s an America-alone guy, America-only guy.”

Wow. For being an American alone, a America only guy, he was able to cobble together deals with Canada and Mexico with NAFTA, doing the redo of NAFTA, was willing to talk to crazy Kim Jong-un, was willing to negotiate these deals between Israel and partners in the Middle East — which tells you something right there, that the Israelis were ready to play ball.

They understood that it was important to have relationships with these other Arab states because Iran is the ultimate threat. Hamas is their proxy. Hezbollah is their proxy. They’re stationed on both the northern and southern borders of Israel. This is not a complicated thing to understand. It’s just about having an agreement, but an enforceable agreement and an agreement that will be honored.

The first clip we played for you from Rush back in 2014 was the last time there was effectively a shooting war going on between Hamas and Israel. Then they behaved themselves for about seven years, restocked, reloaded, got a new influx of cash — not just from the Iranians, but from the Biden administration releasing $238 million in aid that had been sequestered — and now they’re back at it.

So you tell me who has commitment to trying to seek peace in the region.

Who has the commitment?