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--:-- John Bickley: Good morning, I'm Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Sunday, October 29th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Welcome to Morning Wire. Today, we're discussing the ongoing conflict in Israel and how the U.S. can best support its efforts.
--:-- John Bickley: In this episode, we talked to Aryeh Lightstone, former senior advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, about the situation on the ground and what steps the U.S. could take to best support Israel's mission to root out Hamas.
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--:-- John Bickley: Joining us now is Aryeh Lightstone, former senior advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to Israel. Aryeh, thank you so much for coming on.
--:-- Aryeh Lightstone: Thank you for giving me the opportunity. I appreciate it greatly.
--:-- John Bickley: So first of all, there's, of course, a lot of interest in the attempt to rescue hostages. There's still several American hostages and over 200 hostages total. What is the latest on the hostage situation?
--:-- Aryeh Lightstone: Yeah, I mean, this is the greatest X factor of all. And I'd say that there are at least three different permutations. They've released four different hostages so far. And it was a catastrophe post the release of one of the hostages because the media interviewed her. The government allowed the media to interview her. Her husband is still a hostage, and they allowed this to be a media ploy on behalf of Hamas.
--:-- Georgia Howe: What are the totals, the estimated number of hostages still in the terrorist's hands?
--:-- Aryeh Lightstone: Yeah, well, there are at least another 100 bodies that haven't yet been identified in Israel and be a process of elimination once they're found to be deceased, murdered in Israel. Then they can go off the prospective hostage list. The guesstimate is anywhere between 215 and 230 with more than 10 Americans more than 30 other nations being represented.
--:-- John Bickley: And here is the fear that exists in Israel in addition to all of the other fears that are here is that they will separate Israelis from non and they will separate Jews from non-Jews, reminding people of both Entebbe, the famous hijacking of the Air France plane in 1976, and hearkening back the memories even further than that is the separations that they had them between Jews and non-Jews during the Holocaust. It's a deep felt fear here in Israel.
--:-- Aryeh Lightstone: Yeah, horrific.
--:-- John Bickley: Now, as to the ground operation, why hasn't Israel started the ground war yet? Can you describe some of the forces that work there?
--:-- Aryeh Lightstone: Yeah, there's enormous anxiousness from the parents of the kids at the front, from the people themselves at the front. There are at least three meaningful challenges here. Number one is the location, the identity, and the well-being of the hostages, there is not a doubt that they will be used as the first sacrifices with a meaningful Israeli invasion.
--:-- Georgia Howe: The second is this U.S. administration is doing everything humanly possible to stop Israel from doing a land invasion of Gaza, and you can see that both in terms of the speed and the timing of the funding for resupply for Israel, but also the pattern of Western leaders who show up in Israel day after day after day, knowing that Israel will not begin a ground offensive while that happens.
--:-- Aryeh Lightstone: And then you've got the third issue that existed for the first 10 days. It does not exist anymore, which is Israel never contemplated having a 400,000-person strong standing army. It just was not equipped for that. Israel has been fighting battles with fighter planes and Iron Dome, not with soldiers and tanks. So it's taken a little while for the supply chain to catch up. The supply chain is fully caught up.
--:-- John Bickley: You have the other two issues now of the U.S. support, flash handcuffs, and the hostages where Israel, as opposed to Hamas, cares about the lives of each and every person, both Palestinian and certainly not Palestinian, whereas Hamas uses them as shields.
--:-- Aryeh Lightstone: Right.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Israel has formed an emergency war cabinet during this crisis. How is that cabinet functioning? How is that going so far?
--:-- Aryeh Lightstone: challenging uh you have the last four years where the names that were hurtled in between bb and gants and eisenkot and yoav galant so the sort of two different factions of this were words that are currently being used against israel in the public sphere for a period of time i think israel forgot that a lot of the world hates Israel so they can beat the garbage out of each other That message has been changed The unity is there, at least superficially, but there have been leaks from the army not pleased with the decisions of the war cabinet, and there have been leaks from the war cabinet not pleased with decisions from the army.
--:-- John Bickley: Prime Minister Netanyahu's national security advisor had a tweet about support of Qatar And the vast majority of the war cabinet is violently against that concept and that philosophy. And Naftali Bennett, the prime minister, two prime ministers ago, did something that I haven't seen anybody of his stature do during the war where the goal is unity and destroyed Tzachiyan Agbi as the closest thing to being a traitor that he can perceive, saying that he's weakening Israel, he's weakening the morale, he's weakening the opportunity to do what needs to be done.
--:-- Aryeh Lightstone: What about on the northern front? What are we seeing there? Are there signs of escalation or is that getting more under control?
--:-- Georgia Howe: No, you're seeing signs of escalation. It absolutely is teetering on the wrong person making the wrong decision at the wrong time, leading to an all out war with the North. When I say the wrong decision, there is nobody not in Hezbollah or in Israel or in Iran or in the United States of America who wants to see the Northern Front turn into a war. But when you have enough back and forth, it takes the wrong person making the wrong decision that leads to the wrong result that could wind up forcing the hands of any one of those four powers that could lead immediately to a regional war.
--:-- John Bickley: And if that happens, again, I don't want to panic monger, but in a regional war with all of the challenges that that might exist, who knows what that would trigger even larger.
--:-- Aryeh Lightstone: Now, you've been traveling all over Israel. What's the mood on the ground there?
--:-- Georgia Howe: The mood is resolute. Israel understands that they have a job to do. Israel knows that they're capable of doing the job. And the Israeli people are practically begging their leaders to let them go do that job. There's enormous frustration with having sat out. They know the job that they need to do. They will not live with Hamas on its border any longer. And there's tremendous prayer and fear and hope that the hostages are able to come back.
--:-- John Bickley: In terms of the media coverage of this do you feel like there is important information or aspects of this conflict that are not being highlighted enough?
--:-- Aryeh Lightstone: Yeah I mean in terms of the things that are not being highlighted enough Yemen shot enormous missiles at Israel just days ago There are Americans being attacked throughout the Middle East that we are not reporting on. There were 24 American servicemen that were injured over a week ago, and I just found out about it this morning. For people who want to say that this is a war in between Israel and Gaza, Israel and Hamas, Jews and Palestinians or Jews and Muslims, they're missing the entire point. And the allies here need to be not just people of Judeo-Christian values, but frankly, moderate Muslims. And they have not been challenged enough to stand up and condemn this vile, horrendous activity in a way that they should, because that's what Islam will be known for.
--:-- Georgia Howe: If somebody Jewish stands up and does something offensive and repulsive, it's up to the Jewish community to come and condemn it, the same way it would be the Christian community. The same way we have this all the time. If a Republican does something, we as Republicans must condemn them. Democrat does something. They as Democrats need to condemn them. There is a battle going on throughout the Middle East for the hearts and minds of 1.8 billion Muslims. And we need to hope that the builders of the UAE and Saudi and Bahrain and Morocco, the Abraham Accord countries will win this battle. Because if not, the battle will come to each and every one of our homes.
--:-- John Bickley: Final question. What could or what should America be doing now to most empower Israel to complete its mission to wipe out Hamas?
--:-- Aryeh Lightstone: It should not bundle a bill in between Israel and Ukraine. Israel is a standalone issue. We should be sitting in Qatar and say you've got 48 hours to return all of the hostages, not just the American hostages. And if not, we will take our Air Force base out of there. And if you don't have it 48 hours later, we will have you on a list of sanctions of terror supporting states. and then we should stand with Egypt and Jordan and the rest of the moderate states in the region and explain that you take the Palestinian innocent civilians and you deal with them. And if we do all of those things, we can keep this war to a minimum. We can prevent the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people. And most importantly, we can restore deterrence for Israel and the United States and the region.
--:-- Georgia Howe: Well, what we all certainly hope to see. Aryeh, thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you for everything you guys do. You're really doing the Lord's work. I appreciate it.
--:-- Aryeh Lightstone: Thank you for everything you guys do.
--:-- John Bickley: That was Aryeh Lightstone, and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.
