always enjoyed exemptions from, doing military service. let's have your take on that. you said tel aviv, in speaking of the israeli government, this assessment, unfortunately says jerusalem, things have changed, the cia used to be lot more objective. uh, let me start with the good news. the good news is that there was no middle east section to the... annual threat assessment last year, jacob, the national security advisor, pretty much is very smart guy, knew what was going to happen, and so he had a 700 word essay in foreign affairs and it concluded 5 days before the october 7th attacks, the middle east, i quote, the middle east is quieter, than it has been in decades,

serious frictions have decreased and we have of quote this deescalated crises in gaza and quote, so this is small praise, but at least they have section on gaza, and atypically they have section on israel. now, what does that section section amount to? not much at all. we have fifth grade. son who is exposed to 10 minutes of cnn every morning at elementary school, cnn 10 minutes for grade schoolers, it could have written, and it sounds very much like what was written here, main the main issues are not addressed, and when the when they are mentioned, the fact that netanyahu may be in trouble and that a more moderate government might come in, well that's not very... help, you can clean that

from any newspaper, so again, i'm not surprised, but i am disappointed, except for a couple of things which are more positive and i can mention those later. okay, now uh, george, this report, what's interesting is that they're kind of actually alluding to the military and commit wititness of the hamas movement, and that this will going to take a long time for israel, and also some other. aspects which we'll also discuss a later time. let's have your perspective of this. well, i agree with ray that there's really very little that's new here and very little that's um surprising. um, the one thing that i found, maybe surprising isn't quite word, but that the the the cia evidently um doesn't believe that... "there's much likelihood of a

war between israel and iran, you would have thought that they want to maybe hype up the possibility of of a confrontation, they're always warning about the the dire threat posed by iran, but here they kind of minimize this, they say that no, no, no, israel and iran are unlikely to reach a military confrontation, and indeed the report of the..." also says it's unlikely that israel and hesbollah will go lead to a greater confrontation than just simply skirmishes across the border, so i though that was quite surprising that it you say that's reasonably optimistic assessment, however, overall, one can one can say that this... is likely to go

on for quite some time, and i think they the the threat assessment does confirm that that there is not likely to be any resolution or any prospect of something, a workable framework developing anyt soon. okay, now another aspect, the media coverage of the destruction and loss of life, that's the reports is being amplified by social media is roiling. reactions by both neighboring countries and other countries elsewhere in the world, instances just we had netherlands the other day, vienna rally, for instance, and many other places, even inside the united states. now do you agree that israel has gained a hatred and indignation of the people in many countries by what is doing in gaza? well, it has of course, and this is again a symptom of playing down controversial issues.

it's not very revealing that social media are playing major role in this conflict. i would add one thing that george and i have not yet mentioned, there are two rather positive things. things here, one is the reiteration that iran had nothing to do with the october 7 attacks, matter of fact, it goes further and it says iran didn't know about the october 7th attack, so that that was big. the other thing, and this is not negligible when you're talking about iran, israel, israel of course always says that heran is iran is working working a nuclear weapon. the us intelligence community to its credit, okay, for the 17th, 17th straight year says, let me read this so i don't paraphrase it, quote, iran is not currently undertaking the key

nuclear weapons development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device, that's big. intelligence community has resisted all kinds of pressure, not only from the likes of netanyahu, but from the likes of the neo conservatives in the united states to change that reading, it was in 2007 that an honest system was done in that, the fact that it's reiterated here is more than more than just looking for something favorable, this is significant, and the fact that the rest of it is pretty much pedestrian, well this included as a... positive sign. all right, george, the report also warns that the conflict in gaza highlights the potential for a spillover into a larger and more dangerous conflict. this is what terran has warned on multiple occasions. uh, what's your assessment? well, it does say that, but as i said, it uh, draws a line um

on on the possibility, which is clearly the one that everyone's afraid of, which is that there could be a war between. israel and iran, which would of course drag the united states into it, but the report rather minimizes that, it really doesn't think that that either israel or iran wants to get into a military confrontation, i does talk about iran's proxies and and possibility of increased skirmishes between israel and these proxies um, but "it doesn't really go where you would expect a threat assessment to go, which is that, well there could be a massive war in the middle east, he doesn't seem to say that, and above all the way you might have been thinking, well what about his bolah, because that's obviously the the the

big enchilada, there somehow again they says, well you bolah is very wary of israel knows that it it will lead to the destruction of lebanon." is unlikely to want major confrontation with israel, so it's it's not that pessimistic as far as the wider war goes, it's quite pessimistic about gaza, however, not really, what's your opinion about the spillover, how likely is that and what could be repercussions be in that case? well, the likelihood of spillover is very, very great, the fact that it's sort of... dusted off just to testifies to the prosaic uh aspect of this briefing, and that is the big question, whether is israel will attack lebanon as it said it would, um, what's missing here in a word is any realistic

appraisal of the situation, because the united states of america is key player here, right, and what you get here is: not the question that is really to be posed and that is, what would it take netanyahu to stop the genocide? how much us pressure would that take? would it take just a telephone call? my view is, yes, that's all it would take, and that would end all this business about hisbollah coming in. so you have instead of this addressing the key question, you have things pitched at the, as i said before, the fifth. grade elementary school level, which i suppose is appropriate for most congress people, i i regret to say, but it's a kind of a briefing for for them, yeah, this is the state of the world and this is way it looks, it doesn't really help the president or the congress to say, well, how do we stop this

thing before it evolves out of control, hamas, hezballah, iran are trying to control it, it's israel that's the main problem, and we have... hold over israel because we are enabling the genocide with our weapons and with our political support, our vetos at the security council, etc., etc., all we have to do is change our policy and... and of course intelligence people have to pretty much shy away from that, because to be too blunt on that is to expose yourself to charges of politicization and worse. okay, now george, let's not turn to number of arab states in the midst of this, and this gaza war is said to be posing a challenge to many of them, you know, uh, on the streets, people are expressing their views, they are standing by palestinian. is that they condemn is really crimes uh, but to arab states that the authorities do not necessarily share the same

views and some of them even you know they already uh signed the so-called deal of the century to normalize relations and some of them of course regretted uh at this point but you see that number of them are just sitting there doing nothing or maximum what they're doing is simply giving service and condemning but every now and then, well, that's that's right, it's it's very unfortunate that number the arab states are mostly concerned with how can they make more money, and they're uh thinking of those, well, we can make um deals involving israel, so we have the uh, the plan that the united states are signed to as kind of alternative to china's belt and... initiative which will involve kind of a big infrastructure project, going from india and

then through uh the gulf states and into israel and then on into the mediterranean and then onto greece. um this is this is the way they're thinking way this is fantastic we can we can make lot of money and this is obviously also the way netanyahu is thinking if recall when netanyahu was stood before the un general assembly. last september, basically just few days before the 7th of october, and he pointed to map of the new middle east, in which there was no room for palestine, um, that's what he was thinking about, he was thinking about, hey, this is fantastic, we're going to have this great infrastructure project, you linking israel to the to these wealthy gulf states and to the mediterranean, no room there for palestinians, but unfortunately, and this is why netanyahu thought, hey, i don't have to worry about the palestinians, he has the support of these, arab states all looking to make some money out of all this. now right,

another aspect, mentioned this report is has to do with the resistance front with hesbollah and lebanon, iraqi resistance, and also the yemenis that are operating in the red sea and arabian sea, targeting israelink ships and recently us and uk uh ships, and this report uh foresees that those operations uh by these three fronts will be going on, so do you also agree with the same prediction? yeah, i do, and you know, it's interesting that they always use the term resistance. well, resistance to what, like maybe genocide, like maybe oppression for 70 years, so that's the resistance, and unless the the causes of the resistance are addressed, there will be resistance forever. one one puzzling part of this thing or one complicating part

is that the head of the cia is member of the cabinet making decisions and also trying to negotiate exchange of of hostages and so forth, that is really, really koxious, because nobody can take seriously intelligence officer who is also implementing and forming policy, so this kind of document, under the the hand of william burnes and his nominal supervisor abril haynes, really is hostage to what the director of the cia is actually doing operationally as well, and ipsofactor cannot be, cannot be viewed as totally objective briefing from intelligence. okay, now george, this us intelligence report also argues that the distrust of netanyahu's ability, i'm quoting, "this stress of the ability to rule has deepened and broadened across the public from its already high

levels before the war, and that they expect large protests demanding his resignation and new elections. a different, more moderate government is a possibility. well, this is, this is the us intelligence assessment. what's yours? well, it's it's very interesting, because of course that is the view of the us government, which is always found netanyahu." a little bit of an embarrassment just as it was always found a bit of an embarrassment even going back to the days of manah and begin. one shouldn't take any of that too seriously. um, the united states is obviously more comfortable with the so-called liberals of israel who really don't uh disagree with netanyahu very much on the issue of palestine, they don't disagree with his policies in in west bank or in gaza, they do disagree on other issues which are basically about internal israeli politics, it's not really important, but

somehow american liberals feel more comfortable embracing people they deem to be israeli liberals even though these israeli liberals actually like you know ganz who's also who's a member of netanhu's government even though they pursue exactly the same policies so but they think okay well at least those policy will have the same policies but we'll have niceer people uh running it so i don't take that terrible seriously right yeah r how do you look at it does the us really want what they call more moderate government the us is fixed. stated on the united states presidential election right now, biden and his his rival need money, the israel lobby has the money, that's what they fixated on. now as for the israelis, in 2001, when netanyahu thought he was off the microphone,

he said, and i quote, i know the americans, they're easily moved in the right direction, would you believe it? 80% of the americans supporters no matter what we do, that's absurd, and quote, now it's no longer 80%, maybe 50%, but it's still an appreciable majority because of our press and because of the congress people who need the money, of which george spoke before, so that's what the us faces in terms of its political structure, netanyahu is writing high, he's very vulnerable. but until the war ends, he's the guy you have to deal with, george, if the us really doesn't want somebody like netanyahu, why does it keep supporting this regime, saying stop uh the killing, protect civilians and all that jazz, but on the ground you see it's us made weapons taking the lives of civilians, of course it is, that's why all

this talk about how they don't like netanhu, that biden's patience is running th'. that they're supposedly putting pressure on netanyahu behind the scenes, all of that is just lot of nonsense. uh, the biden administration has a problem, as alluded to by ray, there's an election coming up, he saw what happened in michigan, and he is clearly very worried that many people, particularly muslim americans, arab americans, are not going to vote for him, and so he has to... put on this uh this front that somehow he's terribly terribly unhappy with what israel is doing, when if he was true that he was unhappy with what israel was doing, he could bring it to an end, mean you know it's it wouldn't be hard, mean you know it really would take a phone call to say, that's it, we're cutting you off, you're not getting another penny from us, he's not going to do

it, so therefore his only resort is to leak things to the new york times or the washington post to tell them how very... happy is and he's really getting very tired of uh netanyahu and netanyahu contemptuously uh said the other day apropo of biden's red line about going into rafa and he said hey you know what my red line is no more october the 7th attacks so you new rightly treats uh the us administrations with disdain right now ray uh what what do you see on the horizon uh where will all of this and in, let me try to put some threads together here, sure, we have the the palestinian people, huge populations in jordan, in lebanon, even in saudi arabia, in egypt, when will the rulers of those countries give appropriate head to their

wishes, well they aren't doing it yet, but let's say biden's. existent red line, which he said to msnbc, they - a red line, but not a red line, and you know, if if 30,00 more palestinians are killed, my god, that's no red line, so there is is there no limit to the patience of these cowardly arab countries and turkey that talk a big game but don't do anything, i don't know, but has... is not going to wait forever and if the israelis hitbillah there will be a war on the northern front as well. israel will not be able to continue. it's side in gaza much longer in my view. okay, on that note we come to the end of this show. thank you, my guest ray macover and riley north carolina, george samley in

budapest, and thank you for watching this edition of the spotlight. i've been your host and i'll see you next time. the israeli occupation demonstrates its hatrid on houses of the lord. this mask was reduced to rubble by f16 warjet. their way led to the destruction of the houses around the mask, causing the fall of martters and injuries amongst neighbors of the mask. the

palestinians did not stand on the romans of the mask id, but they created temporary mos that don't protect them from neither the cold of winter nor the heat of the summer. the rivers of mesopotamia are going through their most critical times. with the deaths of

the tigris and the euphretes, what will the future hold for the people of iraq and syria? will the aras river end up the way the tigris and the euphretes did? the future for millions of people. is tied to the freedom of captive called water. this is forest. in this week's show we'll be inspecting the role of zinus spirings on us university campuses who are using covert methods to stamp out criticism of israel and crush pro- palestine student groups directly recruiting students on campuses to spy for hostile foreign state to pass the information back to israel so it can then be weaponized

and so in particular people are docs the personal details are given out they try and stop getting careers or jobs or or to rem the their posts in universities for example so it's it's very much a um covert intelligence involvement in in campus politics the growth um the numbers of students from all backgrounds who are joining these movements, but this the growth in their strength and bravery, and in their willingness to confront and challenge in a more sophisticated way than i'd seen in 203 years. iran and turkmenistan do not consider themselves just neighbors, but relatives. throughout ages, they have bolstered their ties from culture economy and science and

technology and a myriad other fields. yet they have set the stage for bolder steps in order to foster vibrant trade ecosystem between the two nations and make the region an energy hub. iranian entrepreneurs, officials and business people have held an exhibition in the land of their relatives to pave the path for greater synergy. watch this documentary to catch a glimpse of the neighborly ties.

torreras deben de morir, prestaciones no tienen derecho.

the headlines, as us is really genocide in gas enters its 159th day, honors says the onslot has claimed more lives of children. and then in four years of conflicts around the world, the situation in the occupied west bank and algod is getting tense as israely forces escalate their deadly crackdown on palestinians during the holy month of ramadon and also in our headlines uh the israeli military conducts a drone attack a car in southern lebanon killing at least two civilians there.