10-7-24 *INTERVIEW* Best-Selling Author Joel Rosenberg on Israel vs Iran

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, let's do something completely different. I am so
pleased to welcome back to Koa my friend and kowa's
Middle East correspondent, Joel Rosenberg.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Joel lives in Israel, but he.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Has lots of friends and family in Colorado, so I
think Joel might be in Colorado today, and he lives
lives in Israel. And as I mentioned kind of previewing
Joel's appearance in case you don't know of him or
haven't heard him on.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
The show, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
And I don't know of any person, or at least
any person who isn't in government, who has better connections
in the Middle East than Joel Rosenberg. Joel, it's really
good to see you again. Thanks for being here. Ross,
great to be with you.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
I am in Denver and I was so hoping to
be able to come and do this in studio in person.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
I haven't seen you in a while.

Speaker 3 (00:46):
Especially through this war, but the day has filled up
with so many interviews that I just I as much
as that. The driving time to see you and back
was two other interviews, so I apologize for that, but
it great to be with you.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Yeah, thank you, thank you. One very quick thing before
we talk to the Middle East about the Middle East.
It's been a while since I've seen a Marcus Reicher novel.
I guess you've got one coming out in about six
months now.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
Yeah, I do.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
I wrote one last year, but with all that's happened
in the Middle East, it seemed like a bad time
to try to put out a political thriller about worst
case scenarios when we were living through the worst thing
I've ever gone through my fifty seven years.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
For sure.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
But yeah, the Beijing Betrayal is the next novel. It
comes out March eleventh, and for that I ought to
come to Denver and sit with you in person. And
actually that's gonna be the last in the Marcus Rakers series, really.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
And it is a about finale, I sell.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
I'll tell you one of my sons, we have four,
but one of them, who served in the Israeli military,
is like dead.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
The Middle East. We get it. We know you've done
a lot of novels on this.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
You really need to focus on change you He was
sort of doing a trumpet bane.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
You know, they're the threat. Did we get the Middle East? Iran? Yeah?
Chane and you got in Chane is anyway the Beijing
Betrayal of March.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
You can reorder it now, all right, the Beijing Betrayal
coming out in several months, and yeah, we'll do it.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
We'll do it in studio.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
So, uh, before we do sort of political analysis of
what's going on in the Middle East and what you expect,
could you just give me a little more of a
personal take of what it's been like living there for
the last several months or or a year. But the
last several months have been there, right well, you know, so.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
There's several pieces.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
So the October seventh itself was horrific because we actually
had our oldest son and his wife and her twin brother.
They had all come to first week. We took them
to Egypt and we climbed in pyramids, and we took
a you know, a dinner cruise on the Nile, and
we saw a ting King Tut's treasure at the museum,

(03:01):
and then we took them all over Israel and it
was such a glorious time, beautiful weather, just a lovely,
lovely time. Caleb, of course, had come to Israel when
we did ten years ago, but his wife and brother
had never been there because of COVID and all the
other things, and they we woke up on the morning
of October seventh, on that beautiful Saturday, going to have

(03:24):
a brunch with them and then take them to the
airport and say goodbye. And there were eight rounds of
missiles fired at Jerusalem. We spent most of that day
in our bomb shelter, and it just got worse and
darker from there. I think after the initial shock of
three thousand missiles that day, a record thirty thousand so far,

(03:48):
thirty thousand missiles fired at Israel in a year.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
It just nothing ever like it.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
And the beheading of Israelis, and the burning alive of Israelis,
and murder of children in front of their parents, and
parents in front of their children, and body parts cut
off in the rape of women, of men, a baby
put in an oven and burned alive like it just
so demonic. But then the reaction of the world, of

(04:15):
college students, of world leaders of the UN that we're
at fault. I was literally covering the Israeli President's first
press conference to the international press a few, you know,
four days after October seventh and four or five, and

(04:35):
he President Herzog said to us something that we'd just
not heard.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
It was a fact that wasn't.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
Out yet that more Jews had been murdered on October
seventh than on any day since the Holocaust. So most
of us were processing that, and then the first question
comes from a CNN correspondent who accuses Israel. Aren't you
ashamed of yourself for being engaged in genocide against the Palestinians?

Speaker 2 (05:00):
And it was so jarring.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
We're like, this is day four, this is day five,
we are being accused of genocide.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
What do you did? You not just see what it
just happened.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
And that has gone on and on and on up
to an including last night sixty minutes. Vice President Kamala
Harris won't say that she's Americans a friend or ally
of our democratically elected prime minister Benjamin Yahoo. You have disagreements.
I have disagreements with Benjamin net Yahoo, But like she won,
she couldn't bring herself to call him an ally. She's

(05:33):
and she used the language of pressuring Israel to stop
fighting against Israel's enemies. That's tantamount's surrender. And one word
she never used in the interview, victory. What happened to
the term victory Winston Churchill against the Nazis. Victory at
all costs, victory in the air, victory at sea, victory

(05:55):
on land, whatever it costs, victory. The President Biden and
Kamala Harris don't understand the language of victory. They only
understand the language of surrender. Surrender in Afghanistan, surrender in
the Middle East. And it is it's making Israelis feel
very much alone in a world of which the British

(06:16):
have just put up arms embargo on us, the French
have just put arms bar so. So what I'm saying
is is not just the horrors of a year ago. Today,
it's what has happened since the anti Semitism that a
skyrocket around the world, including here in the United States,
and the isolation of Israel when you see we're the
only democracy in the Middle East. We are fighting a

(06:37):
seventh front war against the Iranian regime that every country
in the world except the Chinese and the Russians and
the North Koreans have said is the main enemy of
the planet in terms of radical Islamism. Why is the
world against us? Why isn't the world coming to help us?

Speaker 2 (06:53):
You know?

Speaker 3 (06:54):
Yeah, as a journalist, I cover it for allgel News,
my TV show, Weekly Show, Rosenberg Report, and as an
Evan Jako, I mobilize, prayer and I educate, you know,
and bring money into Israel to help strengthen Israel. But wow, wow,
it's still hard to process ross.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
The level of abandonment.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
And an attack legally in the media and certainly on
social media against Israel when you're when we're trying to
defend ourselves on us in a seven front existential war.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yeah, I should.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
I should remind listeners that Joel does some incredible coverage
of what's going on in and near Israel at allisrael
dot Com, which is all Israel News. It's a it's
a must read site again in part because Joel has
such good connections and can get insights that other people
can't get. I want to focus with you specifically for
a few minutes on Hesbelah and Lebanon, and then I

(07:50):
want to do a couple of minutes on Iran. So
I can can Hesbelah be essentially destroyed, destroyed enough that
they even lose power over the government of Lebanon to
give Lebanon some small, even if remote chance of becoming

(08:12):
a non failed state.

Speaker 3 (08:14):
Yes, I think a month ago, people would have said, well,
I guess theoretically that's possible that Lebanon could be liberated
from Cosboa, but we don't.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
See how it could happen.

Speaker 3 (08:24):
Okay, well, now we can see. Israel has just destroyed
fifty percent of Ksbola's missile force in a month.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Fifty percent. That's the latest.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
US in the US as well as Israeli intelligent estimate.
So of one hundred and fifty thousand missiles or so,
we've destroyed about seventy five thousand of them.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
We have killed.

Speaker 3 (08:46):
We've assassinated eighteen of the top eighteen Cosbola leaders, including
Sheik Hasan Mazrala, the thirty two year veteran of that
wicked terror organization. In addition to the top eighteen being
removed from the battle field, the next four thousand Husbilla
terrorists have been either killed or severely wounded because of

(09:09):
the Mossad's mastermind strategy of selling to Husbilla without them
realizing it, pagers and walkie talkies that were all wired
with explosives. So we've never seen a decapitation strike in history.
Nobody has ever tried to pull this off or done
it successfully and it's happened, and so now you can picture,

(09:31):
I mean, much more has to happen. Seventy five thousand
missiles aimed at US and still big. There's probably been
almost two hundred missiles fired at Israel today. But yes,
we're just we are within weeks of intentionally finishing off
Cosbolah and empowering the Lebanese army and government to rise

(09:52):
up and overthrow Husbolah and take back the country for itself.
I think that's what's going to happen. You know, I
would be sad to be wrong, but I think I'm right.
I think that's where we're headed. And I could picture
a year from now Lebanon could become a Abraham Accords
peace partner with Israel. That's how dramatic the situation is

(10:14):
changing on the ground right now, All.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Right, we got about two minutes left. Let's talk about Iran.

Speaker 1 (10:19):
So my take on Iran is Iranian nuclear nuclear weapon
capacity needs to be destroyed. And if you know the
same way they say, like the best time to plant
a tree is yesterday, and the second best time to
plant a tree is today, That's how I feel about
taking out Iranian nuclear capacity, right the best time would

(10:40):
have been when it was a little easier and a
little smaller, but tomorrow will be harder.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Why not do it now?

Speaker 1 (10:46):
They've certainly given the given reason to do it. So
do you think Israel should go after Iranian nuclear facilities?
Do you think they will? And how much of a
factor in the decision do you think is the fact
that Joe Biden is beyond worthless?

Speaker 3 (11:04):
Okay, and I got less than two minutes to answer that,
So the answer is yes, Israel should do it. Last
week I wrote a column said, you know, basically, this
is the moment. Israel should not only take out Iran's
entire nuclear program and destroy its oil refinery capacity so
that it can't keep making money to war into terrorism,

(11:27):
but Israel should launch a decapitation strike against the Iranian leadership,
as it did against the husbal On leadership. I think
that's what Netanya, who's actively contemplating. I think he's going
to pull the trigger. My lead column on All Israel News,
all Israel dot Com right now is that, you know,
it's the question, will will net Nyahu pull.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
The trigger on Teyran?

Speaker 3 (11:48):
I believe it will, and that's why I think we're
in the most dangerous week of the war over the
last year, because I think Israel's about to go.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
Now.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
The question is, is Israel knock out Iran so badly
and so quickly that it's like the Sixth Day War
and suddenly it's over.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Or does Iran.

Speaker 3 (12:07):
Unleashed the apocalypse thousands of missiles at US about tens
of thousands from Lebanon and then unleashing terror sleeper cells
in the United States, Europe and beyond.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
That's what we're up against.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
But yeah, we need to deliver a knockout blow to
the existential threat that wants a And remember, Israel's only
the little Satan in their end Times theology.

Speaker 2 (12:31):
The United States is the great Satan. So America should.

Speaker 3 (12:34):
Be praising and supporting and helping the Israel because ultimately
Iran is the United States most serious enemy. And Biden
Harris would rather surrender than win.

Speaker 1 (12:50):
It's it's beyond frustrating, it's it's infuriating. And yeah, as
critical as I've been of Joe Biden, including this morning,
it still isn't enough. And his utter failure of morality
and spine and everything just adds to the enormous pile

(13:10):
of why he's the worst president of my lifetime, Joel.
I got to leave it there, but I sure.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah, but he should be removed under a twenty fifth amendment.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
It's really Harris is running this thing, and so all
I should be on her.

Speaker 2 (13:21):
Biden is a non player, nonfactor at this point.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
All Right, we'll see. I have no idea what to
think of Harris. Part of me thinks she's a left
wing anti Semite, just like the rest of them, and
part of me thinks she's married to a very pro
Israel Jew, so maybe she'll be better, And I just
have no way to guess.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
I have no way to guess.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
She's not an anti Semite, but she's just so cluelessly
wrong that the effect is the same. She's not anti Israel,
and she's not anti Jewish, but just so colossally under educated,
underinformed and wrong on these issues that the effect is

(14:00):
still anti Jewish and anti Israel. But no, in her heart,
I don't think she is. Obviously, she married Wmov. He's Jewish,
he loves Israel. The love Israel is not to is
not the same thing as understanding how to be an ally,
and it's not just Israel. Every ally of America on
the planet is watching this going seriously, that's how the
Americans do it. Think if you're Taiwan, I think, if

(14:22):
you're anybody in NATO, you're thinking, oh my god, what
if Kamala Harris becomes the commander in chief? We are
we are doomed, like she won't help us, even while
she creates worlds World's word.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
Savage saying that she will.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
Folks, you can follow Joela his primary website at Joel
Rosenberg dot com and also is fantastic Israel and Middle
Eastern news site, which is All Israel dot com. Great
to see you next time in person, Joel sounds good,
all right, and Shanatova Happy New Year.

Speaker 2 (14:53):
A couple of days late. I appreciate it you as well.
Thank you, all right,