Background Briefing: February 5, 2025
Netanyahu Meets With the Christian Zionist “Crusader” at the Pentagon Where Top Officials Want to Get Out of the Middle East Quagmire
We begin with the meeting today at the Pentagon between Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Christian Zionist “Crusader” now Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth who has backed Israel’s annexing of the West Bank. Joining us to discuss how senior officials at the Pentagon like Dan Caldwell, Elbridge Colby and Mike DiMino do not want the US sucked into the perpetual quagmire in the Middle East is Jacob Heilbrunn, the Editor at the National Interest, a non-resident senior fellow at The Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and a columnist for The Spectator. His books include They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons and America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators, and we discuss his article at The Spectator, “Trump’s inner real-estate developer targets Gaza.”
A Palestinian Perspective on Trump’s US-Owned Gaza as a “Riviera of the Middle East”
Then we get a Palestinian perspective on Trump’s call to turn Gaza into a US-owned “Riviera of the Middle East” with his racist dismissal of 2 million people from their land in support of Israel’s far-right that the Palestinians should just go away and be someone else’s problem. Joining us is Leila Hilal, a human rights lawyer and an independent analyst who previously served as a legal adviser to the Palestinian Negotiations Department and advised the Palestinian Constitutional Committee during the drafting of the Basic Law. She acted as an external adviser to the Palestinian negotiating team as part of the Annapolis bi-lateral peace talks of 2008 and was a Senior Policy Adviser to the Commissioner-General of the UN Palestinian refugee agency and a Visiting Fellow and Instructor at the Refugee Studies Centre at Oxford University. She has consulted widely and published on conflict mediation policies in the Middle East.
The Growing Alarm at Musk Having Every American’s Social Security Number, Address, Email, Income and Personal Details
Then finally, with growing alarm at the realization that Elon Musk and his twenty-something techies now have the Social Security numbers, addresses, emails, incomes and personal details of every American, we speak with Jeet Heer, a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms” and we discuss his latest article at The Nation, “Who Will Stop Elon Musk’s Coup?”