half two years, all you heard about was in western media, the inevitable victory of the us and nato, russia would be weakened and eventually putin would fall, of course they said the same thing about assad, and that didn't happen, it certainly didn't happen in ukraine, and now the gaza conflict serves as a distraction for the united states from their failure in ukraine, uh, but but... this is much more dangerous because you have uh of multiple china, russia, saudi arabia, multiple players, pakistan, india who are very sympathetic to palestine, and you india being the one kind of odd hybrid factor here, but china, russia clearly support palestine, saudi arabia. clearly supports palestine,

these and and we have lebanon, we have hezbollah, we have yemen, we have lot of forces surrounding israel that they, israel of course fantasizes about armagedden and flying nuclear bombs into tehran, but this isn't going to happen, they're in no position, they they can't even mount a an effective ground force in. into what is an occupied prison uh, it it so you know they are, it's not possible to imagine them dealing with multiple fronts, um, if if it comes to that, with with uh, all these all these states that are have been and remain extremely hostile toward toward israel, so uh, could it trigger? yeah, i mean, the if

"if this ground incursion becomes even more horrific and and more civilian casuality, there is a tipping point at which you can imagine, um, hezballah joining this, and and what that would mean, or turkey or, you know, it, there are about 20 different scenarios you could, you could imagine, and they are all terrifying, because you're talking about some of these countries with nuclear weapons and and um, nobody wants that, and i don't think a military conflict is going to solve things nearly as effectively as as a political um solution will, israel is vulnerable economically, they can be boycotted to their knees, um, divest, boycot, and israel will crumble, um, a massive war is

is something i don't think any sane person wants, but is it is it possible? yeah, frighteningly possible. all right, john stepling uh author and commentary joining us from androi uh norway uh, i'm going to ask you to stick around with us, we do have uh, we're looking at some uh images uh from uh rafa crossing, if i'm correct, um, don't we don't have? the uh the exact location yet, but it looks like the rafa crossing, and when we talk about the rafa crossing, mr. sepling, it brings us to the issue of of egypt, um, there is lot of criticism towards egypt for not opening the rafa crossing uh up until now, can you tell us more about this reluctance and hesitance that we've seen from the likes of egypt when it it's not opening the rafa uh border crossing, it's obviously getting its cues from elsewhere and it's not helping in at least getting in some much

needed aid uh for the palestinians in gaza. right, well this is um blincon had a meeting with alsi not too long ago, and there's no love loss between those two men, and apparently alc was extraordinarily rude to blincon, something that is representative of of these changing dynamics and uh, sort of. ological positionings if you were, if you will, but but ultimately what egypt decides to do remains very unclear, i've heard 10 different commentators and experts, suggest 10 different things and and reasons for for egypt's not opening that crossing, you know, this goes back to the question. of of

seasfire, that that seas fire, just seasfire is not enough, yes, every sees fire, but you have to, you have to look at... at it can't just stop there because that doesn't change this ongoing occupation, the occupation has to change, the occupation has to end, the bloccade has to end, all of that has to end uh, and it has to end now, and and egypt has role to play in that, and and i can't imagine alce doesn't know that, but i you know, he's has a long history with the united states too, so uh, uh, i "i'm not privy to what those two men said each other or what what decisions were made, but um, it's something that that is of huge importance, and also i don't think, i don't think is a clear cut

question, the the cost benefit uh question of opening uh, that border uh, in terms of hamas and and what is that enough? do we want just that? is that just going to placate um the the status quo? etc. etc. mean, you have to remember israel at this point, has made these extraordinary comments that they can't really uphold, and they are looking for a way out, much as the united states has has been looking for a way out of ukraine, they may have kind of found it by just hoping. but he forgets about it, but um, i think that uh uh, it's hard to know what any of the actors in this conflict think about that particular thing, because just opening for aid, yes

everybody wants that, and that should happen right now, 20 seconds from now, but it's not enough, and and much more has to happen, um, the... "you know, we have hospitals, the healthcare system in gaza is barely functioning right now, and there, the casualties are are going to skyrock it without a huge influx of of money and supplies and water and electricity and all of that turned on and restored, and absolute lifting of the blockade right now will save thousands, tens of thousands of lives, and um, so so just letting in drips and drabs of of aid is not enough, it's just not, so that's one of that's one of the the factors that's being discussed, i'm quite sure. all right, thanks lot to uh, mr. john stepling

off and commentator joining us from inderoy norway. we're now bringing in historian and journalist mr. brecht yankers who's joining us from hause of belgium. mr. yankers, welcome to the program, before we get into... uh the uh the recent and the most latest developments uh, i want to get your thoughts on the recent comments coming from leader of iran's islamic revolution, iit ali khamenei, he uh covered some um some various topics, one being uh the fact that he said the world will not forget that the us, the uk and france they actually stood against gaza uh in in this war that is uh has been launched by the israeli regime against the palestinians in gaza and they've turned a blind of... basically uh to uh to the slaughter and massacre of innocent women and children, and also he said that it's shameful that uh the resistance fighters are being labeled as terrorists, yet these very countries they uh are not willing to condemn the massacre of

innocent women and children uh by the israeli regime, yeah i think i think the leader of the islamic revolution is that. definitely correct in in calling out the hypocrisy and the terrible, shameful two facedness, especially of western leaders uh in the face of what is de facto a genocide, mean let's not get ourself this is an act of genocides, or at the very least there is genocide being prepared and being planned right now, mean the we have seen representatives from the idf from the science military from representatives of the party of netanyahu in the knesset and and even netanyahu himself talk in very blatant and open genocidal language, we have seen uh the footage, how they go into gaza, they drive in there with tanks, blow up people's houses, blow up vehicles with civilians inside and then retreat again because they're too coveredly to fight, and we see that they are doing

these these carpet bombings, which again according to the representatives of the idf itself is meant primarily to do as much damage as possible and is not targeted and th. military targets per se, so these are acts of absolute and total genocide, and zionism is genocidal ideology that wants to wipe the slate clean, so to speak, they want to eradicate and exterminate palestine in order to make place. for their zionist state on the entire uh the entire historical region of palestine and possibly beyond, so when you see the absolute mind boggling hypocracy when they call any form of resistance terrorism, this while they basically turn a blind eye to zionist terrorism the past 75 years, this just goes to show how corrupted and how terribly deep into the pockets of the designs these western leaders really are, and in fact if you look, a map uh of the countries in the world that recognize hamas in particular as a

quote and quote terrorist organization, this almost overlaps exactly with the global west with few exceptions such as egypt which also sides against hamas of course, but for the rest, the majority of all these countries that say hamas is a terrorist organization are the same countries that have participated in wars against the islamic world such as the invasion of iraq, the invasion of afghanistan, the destruction of libya, now these are the same west. countries that have the bloods of millions of muslims across the world on their hands and now they have the one they are the ones to have the gal and the audacity to accuse the palestinian resistance of quote and quote terrorism, it's it's mind bogglingly hypocritical, sure and uh we see this this uh hypocrisy, this double standards in in the way that even still now after um the the israel has been... going on for well over what 25 26 days now, it's the western media that's still trying to portray uh the

uh israelis as as the victims and they still try to play the victim card for the israelis, talk to us about that hypocrisy, they absolutely do and it's mean recently the entire uh media here in the west has been uh basically filled with the reports of the claims by the idf that a uh citizen, german, israeli um woman would have been killed in gaza, the the woman, this young woman was present at this rave party that for some reason they decided to organize right outside the gates of the concentration camp, that is gaza, we know for fact that she, along with a whole bunch of other settlers have been captured by the palestinian resistance, few weeks ago they already claimed that thomas murdered her, that turned out not to be true, now again. claim that she has died based exclusively a skull fragment that the idf claims that they have found somewhere in gaza

and that they claim according to their own private dna um sessions a private dna testing which has not been done by an impartial observer they claim that this belongs to her now of course we don't actually know if this um woman has passed away and and why on the within the room like in uh explosion bombing than of but as that is the basically going that is one hamas and of palestinian years really. right, i believe we got some technical difficulties with our guest, brack donkers, who's with us from hazel belgium,

these are live images we're getting now from the rafa uh crossing on the egyptian border with the gaza strip, of course egypt has pledged that it might uh be opening the rafa crossing in order to allow uh the wounded to uh to get some medical treatment, but is egypt has been criticized since the start of this onslot and uh the start of the total siege on the besieged gaza strip as to uh being reluctant and hesitant in opening uh the border crossing to allow at least to allow sufficient amount of aid and assistance into ghaza to uh to help uh the besieg palestinians who've been undergoing incessant israali onslot. since october the 7th, at least 200 palestinians of course were killed

in israeli air strike on the jab the refugee camp, this is uh big news that has been circulating recently as the regime continues, it's atrocities uh on the gaza strip for over 26 days now, i believe we have uh mr. yankers back with us now from hazled belgium, mr. yankers, if you're with us, please pick up where you left off, um, yeah, i was uh saying before the uh the technical interruption, um, the fact is at this moment that western media they put uh front and center the story uh the idf claim that this german israeli, woman who attended the rave party in near gaza uh would allegedly have passed away, and as unfortunate and tragic as any death of course is, this completely um leaves out of the picture the thousands of palestinians who have died recently, for example just yesterday when footage broke about an israeli tank going into gaza and blowing up three

palestanians in a civilian car. these are also three civilians, these are three innocent people who were driving a... in their own country, in their own city and were just randomly targeted and and killed, and this gets way less media attention. now i must admit that thanks to the the commandable work of the palestinian, the pro palestinian solidarity campaigns across the world. the mainstream media here in in the west has been forced to dedicate way more screen time, at least to admitting the the the civilian casualties on the palestinian site. in the past years and decades they would barely even mention the loss of palestinian life, nowadays they are forced to admit under public pressure to talk about the thousands of palestinians who are dying, that being said, they're not giving it the due attention, they not, they're not, they don't explain the real causes of the violence, and of course western mainstream media is still in the end fundamentally blaming all of the

violence on hamas, they still claim that basically they they they try to convince people that this violence started on october the 7th, and instead of explaing to people that this violence started at least as far back as 1948, maybe as far back as the belfford declaration of 1917, this keeps going back for decades, this is not a hamas, conflict, this is not in hamas war, hamas is just now at this moment the leading military group of the palestinian resistance, but hamas is only been around since 1987, and before that there was already decades and decades of resistance and decades of zionist repression and genocide. right, bolivia, as we know is become the first country to cut diplomatic relations with israel, um, please share with us your perspective on that issue, and also uh, lot of criticism has been directed towards arab uh governments and and regional arab countries uh for not taking a

similar course of action. it could have been done, it could be. a collective action from the arab world, from the muslim world to uh to cut off relations with israel, to uh to recall their ambassador specifically those countries who would recently normalized ties with the israelis, so why is the arab world lagging behind in this regard? i think that unfortunately in many ways and over the past let's say you know 30, 40 years we have seen that this uh what used to be a pan. arab movement and the pan arab cause being the cause of palestinian liberation, has significantly lost it support amongst the ruling elites of lot of arab countries. i mean, this is no longer, unfortunately no longer the time of of people like jamal abdul nasir in charge of egypt, so people who were absolutely fundamentally opposed to zionism

and dedicated to the liberation of palestine, we have seen countries like egypt like like morocco, like bahrain, establish diplomatic relationships and and of give official recognition to the designous entity, and that this is it's absolutely terrible, it's absolutely unjustifiable that they're doing this, and and now what we see instead, especially, of course since the islamic revolution in iran, that it has become upon islamic movement, a movement of the dedicated islamic countries as... well as aside from that dedicated anti-imperialist countries, it is very strange it is very strange fact that we see more action being taken by a country like bolivia halfway across the world and even like like colombia which until not so long ago was on basically an american puppet state which has now also expelled a while back the israeli ambassador these people are these countries are doing more uh for

palestine than many of these arab states are doing and even countries that have no official relationship. and did not give official recognition to the zionist entities such as saudi arabia, they have at least stopped their negotiations uh for the time being for recognition of design entity, but they have also not really lifted finger at all to help, i mean saudi arabia still is holding several hamas members, prisoner in their own country for crimes that that did not exist, that they have never committed any crime whatsoever against the saudi state, we we know that um yemen has now uh the... the national salvation government and sana that is what what the westerners called the huthies, the yemenis they have now said they've made a report in which they said that they have they have consulted riad and abu dhabi uh right before they launched the recent missile and drone strikes against the sionist entity, yemen asked the saudis to help facilitate a military confrontation in

support of palestine, they wanted yemen wanted to support the palestinians, wanted to launch these missiles and these drone attacks against the zionist occupiers and they asked for saudi arabia to at the very least not stand in the way of this righteous action, saudi arabia refused because they are. still busy with the fact that they're waiting a war against yemen, which for some reason apparently is still a more of a priority for riad at the moment than the liberation of the palestinian people, so this these are unjustifiable, horrible acts by corrupt governments, that's the only real way i can say it, and this goes to show that it is no longer something that you can just rely on the states and the governments that are arabic, but you have to rely on the states and the government. that oppose corruption and that are dedicated to justice and to truth. then there's the issue of accountability, mr. there has to be some

consequences, definitely has to be justice for the crimes that the israelis have committed against the palestinians, not just with regards to this war, to the previous wars against uh gazans and as you mentioned what's been going on for over seven decades against the palestinian people, when will we see that uh... repercussions, when we we see the accountability uh and consequences for the israeli actions, will we ever see it? uh, how can the status quo over change given uh the unequivocal support that the likes of the united states give to the israeli regime? yeah, that's that's the that's the problem of course there, i think there is a two pront approach that needs to be taken and that is first and foremost the palestinians, they the their only option, their only recours is for this. they know this, they have tried the negotiated solution back in 1993 with the oslow accords, it has been an abjact failure uh we know that the uh after the oslo accords

were signed and after the ziners even even signed the document saying that the west bank is palestinian land, they still kept colonizing it anyway, back in 2005 it was the palestinian resistance that liberated gaza from the colon from the colonists there, that's the only reason why there are no colonial settlements in gaza, but of course... even right after that happened, the very fact that the gazan people democratically elected hamas as their representatives led to their entire region becoming defact a concentration camp under constant sie with the explicit goal of starving the gazan people into submission, so the the palestinians, they only have the option that so many other people in the past have had, it's the same option that the vietnamese and the algerians and the kongoles and the afghans and the iraqis and the syrians have had and that is you know the... option of resistance, armed resistance unfortunately is the only way designs will listen to him, secondly, as you have mentioned, the the the foreign support,

especially the western support, the american support in particular, is lifeline that the zionist entity has, the the zionists are around, i believe six million jewish with in what they call israel, which is numerically just not enough for them to to survive there, to to survive in this colonial entity, mean they cannot keep up this occupation of the land when there are already way more palestinians, if you count all the palestinians within what is now called israel, within the west bank and ghaza and within the refugee camps in syria, there are already now, still now after 75 years way more palestinians than there are zionist settlers, even if you were to count all the jews in the world - to arm them, they would still not be enough to win a conventional war, and they know this, they know that that is, it is them to keep if it's just a one

versus battle, and that is why they on excessive force, on sheer brutality, and of course on military superiority in terms of technology and all of that, of course with the monetary supply comes exclusively um from foreign support, and these come from the the the countries that... are so influenced by sionist lobbies such as the majority of the european union, in particular of course the united kingdom and the united states, these are countries that are completely oversaturated behind the scenes with bizionist lobbists, so it is important for the countries and for the people, i mean of the countries in the west to keep up the palestinian solidarity movement and to really rary support for the fact that israel, that the zinus entity does not represent anyone. for themselves and that it is not even in the interest of the western powers, for the western peoples at least to keep supporting this artificial colonial entity on

palestinian land, so it's palestinian. resistance on one hand and resistance by the people in the west against the support for the science santity on the other, that's that's the way this is going to work, combined, hopefully let's say with economic pressure from the other arab states, for example, qatar has already suggested an oil embargo, i think those kind of things are the are at the very least that other arab states can do. mr. yunkers, another comment coming from uh um leader of iran's islamic revolution is uh with regards it. has to be parallel to uh the the notion and the concept the resistance of the palestinians in the face of the israeli occupation uh said that the ultimate and final victory will be for the people of palestine so if you can't elaborate on that for us uh this is parallel to to the uh concept that many experts and many observers uh have been echoing over the past years that uh resistance is the only

viable option uh for palestinians, that is absolutely right, i mean, there is no, there is other way, if you, if you let's say roll over and accept it happening, then nothing will ever change, there has never been in the entirety of history, there has never been an occupiing power that voluntarily decided to see this occupation and give back the land and give back the power to the oppressed minority, even in situations that were eventually settled peacefully, such as the end of apartite in south africa, this was only possible. after decades and decades of struggle and even arm struggling nelson mandela himself engaged an arm struggle, that's why it was locked up originally, so this it it's these this this struggle and this constant resistance by the masses of the people are the only way in which an oppressor can finally uh give in and can finally give up and decide uh to end its occupation, this can either be done through volt to military means and and violent means to the very end,

or it can be done to for in a way that resistance will eventually force the occupier uh to at least compromise, for example, um, if the zionist to more of design entity were to, quite simply, this is very simple solution, were to allow a referendum on the entirety of palestine, in which every single palestinian, including every descendant of palestinian refugees abroad, were to be allowed to vote, then even if you were to allow every single jewish settler in israel to vote as well, this referendum would very easy. uh and in in a victory for a one-state palestinian solution, and that is the exact reason of course why the zionists don't allow this, even though this would be simply democratical, and i'm not even excluding the zionist settlers from exercising their their right in in a referendum as well, but the problem is, and they know that is that they are quite simply a minority in the region and they have absolutely no way of of exercising control over...