Alright, welcome from Parliament, Atte Kaleva, and as we're filming this on Friday, you had been on A-studio on Thursday and you launched that clip, which Yle also highlighted, where you talked about this bounty money that Hamas uses against Jews. And that discussion went quite moderately, in my opinion. Do you agree, and explain this bounty for a start? Yes,
it was a good discussion. You were allowed to speak and no one shouted over you, so for that a big thank you, and I also got to visit Yle after a long time. So maybe maybe I'm not on any blacklist after all, but it's not actually Hamas that pays this bounty money, but it's the one in power in the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority, meaning the PLO and Fatah, Mahmoud Abbas's group. So it's this—they call it themselves a Martyrs' Fund, Martyrs' Fund, but 'pay for slay' is a quite common term for how it is
described. So they have this certain tariff, according to which if an Arab kills a Jew—an Israeli, that is—they receive a reward according to a certain tariff, a compensation, like bounty money. If during the attack, this Arab dies, meaning they become a martyr, then that money is paid to their relatives.
Or if they end up imprisoned in an Israeli jail, then they get— the relatives receive this kind of monthly allowance.
And there are clear tariffs for this. The UN has a lot of material on this.
They have, they have statistics on how it's paid, and Israel, which collects tax money there in the West Bank and then remits it to this Palestinian administration, the Palestinian Authority, then Israel deducts from that tax pool an amount of money—which is many, many millions. What this PA, the Palestinian Authority, has paid as this bounty money. So Israel wants to be involved in contributing to this bounty money itself.
Yes, thank you. And regarding my mistake. I immediately assumed that this murder gang that organized October 7th, meaning Hamas, was behind it, but there are these nuances here, and as this is being recorded, Trump and Netanyahu have apparently reached some kind of agreement on this and given, well, to this Hamas. Hopefully neither to Hamas nor Fatah this kind of, like deadline, to have this 20-step plan. But in a way, since that
background got messed up, since I have those Middle East resea- researchers and best experts in Finland, so explain these different factions that are here. In a way, Netanyahu successfully purged the Iranian army, but left its theocratic regime. Then there's Abbas and Fatah. No, the Iranian army hasn't been purged, but Iran's air defense has been crippled. Yeah. And then in a way these Middle East pieces on the board, who's currently against Israel and the Jews and
Trump or the Americans. Yeah, this is very long, but I'll try to condense it a bit to spare you and the listeners.
If we look at Israel first, Israel has a quite peculiar electoral system. There, the whole country is not one single constituency in parliamentary elections and the voting threshold is quite high, which for this and other reasons results in the electoral system producing many small single-issue parties to the Knesset, the parliament, that don't have very many representatives, but which can have very strict threshold issues. That is, both from the liberal side, but then also
from this kind of very fundamentalist, like extreme Orthodox Jewish side, as we now see in this Netanyahu governing coalition. So there are these small movements.
There are these very radical, like Jews, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and such. And since there are many of these small parties, which can all set their own threshold issues, so when there start to be many of these threshold issues, then its management is quite difficult, leading the country. So one is in quite a could say, that Netanyahu is in a sense a hostage of these small extremist movements in his government, but Netanyahu himself has long opposed the two-
state model. Netanyahu has supported Hamas or allowed Qatar to support Hamas because Netanyahu has known that if Hamas is in power in Gaza, then it is difficult for Western countries to recognize the Palestinian state and said that there's a commitment to a two-state solution, since we can't commit to such a two-state solution where the one state, Israel, is a democracy and the other state, Palestine, is ruled by a terrorist organization. So Netanyahu calculates this, but now this has changed a bit. Let's look at
the Palestinian side. Elections were held there under the Authority elections in 2006. Israel withdrew from Gaza completely. There were many thousands of greenhouses. A lot was produced in these greenhouses. They were very successful businesses and many Palestinians worked in them. Israel withdrew, left the greenhouses and other things there, and they were then looted immediately and that business ended there. But in these Palestinian Authority elections in 2006,
in Gaza, free and democratic elections [elected] Hamas and on the West Bank, Fatah, the successor to the PLO. Well, Fatah contested these results also in the Gaza area, and a situation arose where they were practically in a civil war with each other, Hamas and Fatah, and Hamas's members killed Fatah members and drove the rest out, and they then took control of Gaza and Fatah governs the West Bank. So these are two
completely separate things. Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas and Fatah.
Quick question: have there been elections in either? Not since then, no, so this is one where... well, the terrorist organization Hamas has of course led Gaza very authoritatively, but Mahmud Abbas, who is there—he is already 89 years old—is also quite unpopular. He is accused of corruption—the leader of Fatah in the West Bank— and the grounds for these accusations are probably quite solid; he is not liked.
He is also an extremist thinker; he isn't particularly moderate, even though he presents himself as such. Back when he was studying in Moscow in the 80s and wrote his dissertation there, in that dissertation he, among other things, stated that the Holocaust was a conspiracy between the Nazis and Zionists to get Jews to move from Europe to Palestine. So, in a way, it would be as if the Nazis and Zionists had driven the Holocaust together.
and then against the Palestinians, that it is also quite delusional stuff, what comes out of there. But they were, of course, then these Russian-backed Arabs back then after '67. When Israel was founded, the left in Finland also looked very closely at Israel because it had this kibbutz system pioneered there, and the left saw it as a collective farm.
It's a bit like a collective farm. Over there, socialism is working and doing well and even producing quite good results. Unlike the collective farms, the kibbutzes did have production. But all this changed then in '67, and what's probably behind it is this general leftist view, according to which the Soviet Union back then during the Cold War was good. From the Soviet Union came 'peace weapons', and the United States was evil and U.S. weapons were 'offensive weapons'. So everything
the United States supports was also bad and everything the Soviet Union supports was good. And since the United States has traditionally supported Israel, The Soviet Union, although it didn't in any way particularly love the Arabs, well, it automatically positioned itself as the opponent of the US here to contain that US influence and started supporting this Arab group, from which the term 'Palestinians' was then invented. And this was like, in a way, the reason why even our Finns and European leftists so strongly support Palestine now
specifically, and are anti-Israel. But there's sort of the fact that there are these jihadist groups there in the Palestinian territory as well, enormously, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and, and I mean, there are a huge number of others throughout the entire region, but these are like the main groups, Hamas and then Fatah.
Is Jihad a holy war, by the way? Yes, jihad means a holy war, a kind of struggle. The Quran knows two types of jihad. There is the greater jihad, which means that a person internally, as if, as Christians might say, strives, or fights against those un-Islamic aspirations you want, if for example someone wants to drink beer but doesn't drink it, then one is fighting in the greater jihad against that un-Islamic behavior. And then there is the lesser jihad, which is this external jihad, and if the Islamic community, the Ummah,
is threatened or attacked, then ultimately every healthy Muslim man is obligated to defend the Ummah against that external aggressor. And this concept of jihad, we could make an entire podcast episode about it, how the concept of jihad has changed. I also want to go into the Islamists' internal division, because now we have sort of the inner layer, or sort of the geographical situation of Israel, but if we move on from there to the bigger picture, since now that we have covered Israel and Palestine, there are these
other surrounding countries, and there is Iran, which of course supports through proxies, meaning through these Hezbollah, Hamas, and Houthis in Yemen, through them Iran has traditionally exerted influence in that region through Assad's Syria. Assad was an Alawite, not a Shia, but he was counted into Shiite. So when we talk about this Shia axis in the Middle East, it is Iran, Syria, Hezbollah. Well, now the Israeli security service crushed
Hezbollah's operational capacity, practically eliminated it or shall we say struck it with that pager attack. It was absolutely, incredibly skillful. In it, among others, the Iranian ambassador's pager also exploded in all of that. I wonder where he had gotten a Hezbollah pager? Well, then there is another, this Hamas, which has now been neutralized or is being neutralized, and then there are still the Houthis there in Yemen.
But the Saudis are very afraid of this Iranian influence, because the Saudis' Shia population is located there on the coast of the Persian Gulf, in the Dammam area, where Saudi Arabia's oil and gas are produced. And they fear that if Iran manages to foment such separatist movement there, it will lead to Saudi Arabia's oil production being jeopardized. Which is an existential problem for them. So Iran, Assad's Syria, and these proxies were one side. Well, from that, Assad has fallen. He has been ousted from power.
Hezbollah has been taken out of the game. Russia has been part of this imperialistic Why? Well, not really. Russia did fight in Syria, but they fought on Assad's side, because they have that naval base there, the last Russian naval base in the Mediterranean, so they sought to keep Assad in power, so that they would have some kind of foothold in that area. But then when these Assad fell, Iran's influence has now been quite effectively contained there.
Then there are these other countries, which are practically Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, Sunni Muslim countries that oppose Iran. And this group of countries, which is quite a loose coalition, but Israel also belongs to it. So these are Iran's enemies or the countries that Iran perceives as its enemies. And then we have one more group, which is Turkey and Qatar, which are more like these Muslim Brotherhood—or they are not the Brotherhood in any way. You can't
really say that, but there are certain sympathies towards the Muslim Brotherhood, which here again in other Sunni countries of this region perceived as a terrorist organization in some countries, as a revolutionary terrorist organization.
So this cocktail is quite a mess, one could say. Hopefully the listeners can stay on track at least somewhat with this, but yeah, I'm also interested in this Sunni and Shia thing. No worries. I mean, this is always good and you can always summarize it first; if you lose track, well, this Sunni-Shia divide, which exists here in the Islamist world, and then actually even Iran's in a way, I think when Israel carried out that strike and left these theocrats, like the old geezers, still alive, sort of in the hope that maybe there would be an uprising and
the people themselves would topple that theocratic tyranny. But there was this Persian Empire of sorts, and in a way Iran has apparently always been a dominant regional power. Yes, Persia has been a very dominant power, and Iran also feels they are the leading state of Shia Islam, like the torchbearer there, and of course this is also what probably weighed in the balance for Israel, that if it had eliminated the entire leadership and the country had slipped
into the same kind of chaos that Iraq slipped into, then that, that, it it wouldn't, it would have been a terrible chaos there and it serves no one there, because then no one knows what will emerge from there next, so I do understand that there needs to be something a bit better, that someone is able to lead the country rather than it being in total chaos. Yeah.
this Netanyahu's, like, power is really big right now. Haven't also, the Israelis gone to rescue these Christian minorities? Yes. And Druze.
Yes. In Israel, many Druze live there on the Golan Heights. I've also been to a Druze village there, so they seemed to be very satisfied with their lives under Israeli rule, because they get full civil rights there and they can live in peace, unlike in Syria, where they were oppressed. And now that this Islamist, I mean, Sunni Islamist former jihadist. Well, how former is he. That's what we're now
one can't say for sure yet, but this Assad, who was a Shia, oppressed Sunnis and also these Druze; even then the Christians had a fairly good situation under Assad, but now then the Christians and the Druze are afraid of this new administration, so it's not like, the Middle East is kind of that kind of place, that there aren't really any such things as the Americans always being 'good guys'.
Yeah. Let's also bring in the American factor here, meaning in Trump's first term, I think it was his son-in-law Jared Kushner who, well, sort of made a significant achievement in my opinion, it was these like Abraham Accords, and in a way they managed to get at least part of this Islamist group quite close to starting bilateral relations with Israel. Yes. If it had been anyone else but Trump, it probably would have been a Nobel, Nobel Peace Prize
worthy achievement, the Abraham Accords, but this was also one reason for Hamas's terrorist attack. There were several reasons why it carried it out, but one reason was surely that they wanted to interrupt this implementation of the Abraham Accords. They didn't want the Saudis and others to normalize relations with Israel. And another reason Hamas had there was of course that they quite cleverly calculated that when they carry out a sufficiently brutal terrorist attack, then it would provoke Israel into such strong countermeasures that then the world's sympathies would turn towards this terrorist organization,
which in itself sounds foolish. But now we see that this is exactly what has happened. That strategy of Hamas has actually produced quite good results, as so many European countries have now recognized Palestine, getting what it wants. So here we have this really, perhaps, unholy alliance. So, didn't the Khomeini revolution, which in a way turned the fairly progressive Persian state into a strict theocracy, actually happen with the strength provided by the left?
It did, it did. Specifically, it involved the universities' progressive youth and then the Marxists m and then Khomeini's Islamists.
and when they—and there were these other Mujahideen groups—once they got the Shah ousted and they came to power, then after that, the revolution ate its children, as it usually does, and Khomeini's group killed, imprisoned, or exiled both the other Islamists, Marxists, and the progressive university crowd. And it feels really jarring that people like Greta Thunberg join a leftist flotilla
to promote something like rainbow rights there. It feels, frankly, really naive.
Well, that's what it is. If you consider that even here in these protests, they carry the Palestinian flag in perfect harmony with the hammer and sickle and the rainbow flag. So in Greta's flotilla, there are Islamists, communists, and LGBT activists literally in the same boat. Without realizing—especially these LGBT activists—that once the Islamists come to power, they
kill the LGBT activists first, then the communists. If the communists come to power in that region, the Marxists, then they will kill the Islamists first, then the LGBT activists. If LGBT activists come to power, then they will do everything they can so that either of these other two groups would rise.
Yeah. It's very strange. But now, with this second Trump administration—well, while recording this, apparently Netanyahu and Trump have, like, uh, reached a certain 20-point peace plan, some kind of understanding, and Trump has strongly hinted that at least some group within Hamas would already be supporting this. Trump gave, in a typically Trumpian way, this kind of Trumpian deadline here to Hamas, and at least according to BBC
sources, Hamas is not quite close to accepting this yet, but we could move on to that, or do you want to further explain the pieces on the board in this region before that? Well, no, those were basically already explained; it's quite confusing, and especially the fact that if if like an ordinary person, who hasn't delved into this very deeply, reads that news feed, it can be very difficult to understand why different countries or actors act the way they do. It requires a pretty deep
understanding of the region to see how it fits their way of operating.
It works logically, even if that logic isn't always obvious as soon as you read the news, but when you know the basics of their thinking, then their actions are logical. Yeah. I have maybe two small points.
I had Keir Giles here as a guest and it was described there when there was this WhatsApp gate, where JD Vance and American war decision-makers, the WhatsApp group leaked and then Vance said we'll smash these Houthis to pieces with bombs and the Europeans should really handle this. So, in a way, that group disrupting shipping has been dealt with quite well. And then, in a way, Netanyahu has
very aggressively destroyed Iran's regional threat with this direct attack. And now, in a way, it would be in a certain sense pretty good, you can't really say a power vacuum, but the pieces are starting, in my opinion, to lock into place in a similar way as during the Abraham Accords' acceptance. Yes, I see it the same way, that I dare now to be, one could say, cautiously optimistic about this Trump peace or shall we say, this is not some peace plan from Trump, but it is
a ceasefire plan. So it aims to get the killing stopped, a ceasefire in place, hostages freed, and Hamas disarmed. And then the peace plan will be looked at. Previously, earlier in the summer, France and Saudi Arabia made this joint statement, which the Arab countries of this region joined. Finland also joined in. And it looked a bit further at these steps, but what is exceptional in this Trump plan is that in this, all these actors in the region are involved in some way. Excluding Hamas
for now, because if we look at the Oslo Accords in the early 90s, the surrounding Arab countries were not involved.
Peres and Arafat, well, somehow it was still close to going through. It was close, but then one must remember that right then in the early 90s after the Soviet collapse, from Eastern Europe there had moved to Israel a great deal of this very fundamentalist ultra-orthodox extremist Jewish element, who then could not accept this, making any agreements with the Arabs. And in a certain sense, since this group is quite influential, and there are quite many of them in Israel
already, so Netanyahu has to take them into account.
So, so pressure is needed on the Arab side, the Palestinian side. Well, that is provided by these Sunni Persian Gulf Arab countries, as Iran's influence has practically been snuffed out. But pressure is also needed on Netanyahu and Netanyahu's administration. And the only person in the world who can pressure Netanyahu is the President of the United States. If Trump puts his own prestige on the line for this in such a way that he says he will become the figurehead of this transition government, then his
his prestige is fully committed to seeing this process move forward. So it's no matter if someone like Netanyahu says, I don't accept the state model, as he stated in Hebrew after their press conference.
First he says in English 'yes, yes, we're in,' but then he immediately speaks to his own supporters in Hebrew, saying we don't accept the two-state model. Trump is such an unpredictable actor, which at this point might even be quite a major benefit, as you really shouldn't anger him because nothing good comes of it. Netanyahu knows very well that, if one can use a mafia term, Trump is the person who is capable of making Netanyahu an offer he can't refuse.
M-hm. In a way, there's a one-and-a-half-state model here. Meaning, at the time of this recording, the Finnish state has not accepted or recognized Palestine and what could actually be recognized when state characteristics are not met. And there's this duality, but in a certain way there would be like a one-and-a-half-state model to get these Gaza and Palestinian like, well, the compartments separately and then we get these surrounding Arab states involved in this. And then I'll bring up a Finnish
angle to this mess, meaning Tony Blair is being considered for this some kind of state monitoring commissioner to lead the commission, and as we know, Sanna Marin is at the Tony Blair Institute, so maybe we'll soon get Sanna Marin as a peacemaker there in Gaza, maybe even playing some kind of role there, so could it be that after being the Finnish Prime Minister, the next is the Gaza prime ministership. But in a way, I... I mean, I...
lived for 13 years in London and I was there during Tony Blair's New Labour era, and then when he made that deal with Brown, things went downhill, and actually just before he went with George W. Bush to do this Gulf War. But until then, I think he was like a brilliant politician and actually I interviewed Martti Ahtisaari for my negotiation mandate, he sort of liked Tony Blair's style there with the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland,
that I'm, I'm kind of a sympathizer, I'm not some Sanna Marin fan, but I'm a Tony Blair fan of sorts. Well, I'm not not, I'm not a Sanna Marin fan, nor am I really a Blair fan either, but I will say that Blair has achieved quite a lot, so he maybe a bit too... like, these were big mistakes like, this goes into this claim that there are these intelligence reports obtained about these weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and others, those were mistakes, but he has also achieved good things and I'll
say that if Sanna Marin can, uh, if that partying has been slightly reduced now, or I don't know if it has or not, but at least photos seem to appear on Instagram at a fairly frequent rate, but if and Mapio's turnover is in the millions, then well, she is a proper capitalist, yes, yes, she's like a socialist has gotten rich and noticed that it wasn't so much fun after all, but but yes yes, if she can play some kind of role as an actress,
then as a Finn I welcome it, because for our country brand and everything, it's not worth it for us either, or I mean I say that I at least won't be reminding her, when Sanna Marin is here through the Tony Blair Institute, implementing the agreement brokered by Trump, then I at least won't be reminding her, hey hey, you were a socialist just a moment ago, so what has happened. Yes, but to get this 20-point plan like
to the finish line, Netanyahu needs to put pressure on that, well, Jewish-conservative-ist... no, sorry, that Jewish block and accept to tolerate this, maybe the West Bank this will be taken one step at a time, meaning Gaza first, then the West Bank later to that Hamas out, as there is probably no benefit to anyone from it except for Hamas because those hostages are probably like mainly
killed, but I guess someone is left there and then Israel will probably like release some Arab prisoners from there and then if we can get these surrounding Arab states to support and participate in this like monitoring committee, then the pieces are starting to fall into place and Netanyahu was already made to apologize for this missile strike. And he did apologize, so, yeah, it really seems like here it looks like now for the first time, like I said, for the first time perhaps throughout history, it feels like there is now a kind of
really serious thought that now this conflict will be resolved in a sustainable way. Then there is one more thing, the population of Gaza are the ones who have suffered the most under Hamas rule and they have been hammered and Hamas has killed them and then they have been subjected to these Israeli countermeasures as targets. There is a lot of this bitterness and resentment and hatred of Jews, antisemitism and a kind of hopelessness. The population there is very young on average. So in some way
we should be able to—or rather not us, but the international community, this, this coalition that goes there to run the transitional administration, well it should be able to create for these Gazans, young people and why not older people too, economic incentives for it. It is in their interest to stop terrorism and move to this kind of market economy.
In Gaza, it would be possible for everything to become, say, the Dubai of the Mediterranean. They could declare a free trade zone there, start trading, and once they see—get that kind of economic outlook—that from this comes prosperity, our standard of living rises and we are doing well when we are part of this, then the appeal of going to the desert to do jihad, well it is quite a bit smaller after realizing that I have quite a lot to lose. So this Trump's, uh, real estate project, even though it
was mocked, there is a small seed of truth in it.
Yeah, it was again this 'Orange Man Bad' narrative, that whatever Trump says, you have to laugh at it here so that you are a good person and a conscious person. But actually, that local Riviera idea, of course the population cannot be forcibly moved from there as that would be a war crime, it cannot be done.
But why couldn't Gaza become a Riviera or Dubai? What's the issue? What is preventing it? Why, right now that area is full of killing and misery and poverty and death and suffering, but it doesn't have to be that way, it's enough that Hamas is pulled out of there and the mindset of the Gazans changes. They say, okay, we no longer want to hold onto hatred because we ourselves suffer from it. We accept this plan of Trump's. Trump is, after all, a very credible actor in that region. Both in Arab countries and one must remember that in Israel he is
more popular than Netanyahu. Mm. By the way, here, well, I've, well been following Lebanon through this Nicolas Nassim Taleb, who is like a really smart, well, mathematician, but a really annoying, well, political influencer. So in a way, this Levant, is this like a kind of somewhat unifying area and like a positive culture in it?
The Levant is this kind of thing, the Levant region is known in the Quran, it was spoken of as these Fertile Crescent areas. So it comes from there, from like the Mediterranean, uh, it goes through Jordan and Syria, through the twin rivers, through the Euphrates and Tigris to the Persian Gulf. So it was like this, uh, it was like one... well, in the time of the Quran they didn't know these modern states, of course, and, and very fundamentalist Muslims might refuse to talk about
Syria, for example. To them, this area is Sham, meaning the Levant region in Arabic. That's why ISIS wasn't... or Daesh, it was Dawlat al-Islamiya fi ash-Sham, meaning the Islamic State in the Levant. Not of Syria, not of Iraq, but in the Levant region. And and these... but it's still like that among Muslims in that area, so the influence is such
that when Syrians cross the border, they don't really see them as these man-made secular borders, but they do feel it more like that, yeah. Is there then again, for this piece, well, that... Jordan and Egypt? So generally here in Finland it's always forgotten that there is still that one border in Gaza then with Egypt. Yes, but in a way, are these like, in a way Egypt and Jordan, in a way they probably don't want those people
from there to then form, like, that opposition absolutely not. In both countries there are quite big problems with the Muslim Brotherhood, as I said, Hamas was never really part of the Muslim Brotherhood organically, but was founded very closely in connection with it. In Egypt, after Mubarak fell, the only functioning opposition force there was specifically the Muslim Brotherhood, which was then elected to power in free elections. And after that, this Brotherhood seized more power for itself than Mubarak had
ever had. And then the army had to overthrow the Brotherhood from power when they were already seizing the power for themselves. Excuse me, in Jordan there are many Palestinian refugees and they cause a clear threat there, a clear opposition and then also this kind of revolutionary movement. The Jordanians don't want any more Palestinians there in their own country. The Egyptians certainly didn't want any more of these Hamas sympathizers. And actually, no country in that region
views the Brotherhood very positively, except perhaps Qatar and Turkey to some extent. But everyone else feels that this is, this is a revolutionary opposition force, whose influence should be contained within their own country. Yes. All this from Trump's like previous real estate project, there was another point for the Abraham Accords, that there was still a bit of that thing where some part of this Gaza crowd should be moved away, so in this new
plan it's no longer mentioned. So in a way, for this Gaza they want specifically for the current population, well, functional conditions. Trump, after all, acts in foreign policy like in everything, kind of a bull-in-a-china-shop model, where he goes crashing through and sees how the pieces land. I have noticed a pretty clear pattern in his actions, that he first presents something completely insane, which is known to be impossible to realize, and then everyone is horrified by it, but after it is walked back
a little bit, it already sounds much more realistic, since there has already been discussion about this completely insane thing. It's a bit like what can be used in negotiations, and Trump is a negotiator, he wants to make deals, he is a strongly transactional actor. So now, if we could—if we got from that area, talking about the Gaza Strip, if we got a solution there that would benefit both Gazans, Israelis, surrounding Arab countries, the United States, and the only losers would be
actually Iran and Hamas, well, this is starting to sound to my ears quite attractive, and many actors in that region feel that this is such an attractive thing now that a better deal is actually not possible to achieve. And Iran has been brought pretty much to its knees in this attack. Iran—well, Iran, surely the Iranian army is still quite capable and, as you said, these ayatollahs are still there alive and leading that country. But what is very noteworthy is
the fact that Israel has been able to paralyze Iran's air defense practically completely. At the moment, the Israeli Air Force or the U.S. ones can fly over Iran just as they please.
This makes these very, very vulnerable targets in Iran, meaning fixed targets, uranium enrichment plants, other nuclear weapon project facilities, government facilities, everything is kind of exposed to bombings from aircraft. And when Israel carried out these airstrikes there, the U.S. made that precision strike, and other nations in this region didn't protest in any way. Yeah. I actually had an episode about that with Teresa Lahti and Onni Rostila, which I named somewhat mischievously
penetration bombs, which were used to hit the sort of nuclear enrichment facility inside the mountain.
Uh, but yeah, there is this, and it's kind of unbelievable if these Shahed drones have sort of become the most important part of Russia's war of aggression as a weapon, then how is Iran itself so helpless in its own, well, drone defense? But Israel is apparently on a completely different level since they have those David's Slings, which we are also buying here, sort of, as an air defense system. Yes, they are, and certainly Israel's air force is also of a completely different caliber than Ukraine's, so you have to
say that Israel has, in military technology, quite a lot of products that no one else really has, as they have been forced to develop them out of necessity when you look at how narrow the state is at its narrowest point and how small and surrounded by hostile Arab countries, so it's understandable. They have simply had to be significantly better than those surrounding them. By the way, are these fundamentalist Jews, who, well, reproduce a lot and thereby get more and more of a democratic
vote share there in Israel? Is it true that they don't even have to go to the army? Yes. Yeah, that was, well, wasn't someone threatening there that you have to join the army now, you can't ...like resist and even skip national defense?
Well, it was the former Defense Minister Gallant who said, why should you serve in the army? The reason is that when Israel was founded, it was immediately attacked by all the surrounding Arab countries.
And at that time, there were quite few of these fundamentalist Jews there in Israel. Many of them opposed—or they opposed the founding of the State of Israel because they had the idea that only when the Messiah has come to Earth, the Messiah will establish the State of Israel. And according to their understanding, the Messiah has not yet appeared, so the founding of the State of Israel is an abomination. But then Ben-Gurion got them on board by saying that they wouldn't then have to perform military service. For men,
it's a mandatory three years in Israel, and two years for women. Well, at that time, the group was so small that the Israelis thought, okay, they're performing this kind of spiritual service, reading the Torah and praying, so it's like their conscription and others do their military service. But now, there are so many of these fundamentalist Orthodox Jews that, quite understandably, the people think, why do I have to go to the army for three years while that
Orthodox guy... and Gallant tried to change this, so Netanyahu kicked him out. Yes, but now that's starting too. There is probably pressure on that end as well, so you can't really block this, as I understand it, at least some of them also oppose this increase in the independence of the West Bank, in a way.
Yes, of course. And the Oslo Accords' Areas A, B, and C, which divided the whole area so that some parts were administered by Israel and some were the Palestinian-administered parts and some a bit in between. Well, Israel hasn't cared about these divisions for a long time. They are establishing these settlements against international law without hesitation. And this is certainly something that must belong to this Trump initiative, so that the peace there can be sustainable, so by some
means, the Israelis must sort of quiet down the resistance of these ultra-Orthodox Jews against this two-state agreement, this peace agreement, and even primarily against this ceasefire agreement, so that they need to get their own house in order. And of course, specifically the pressure from Trump, the pressure he is able to exert on Israel if he so chooses, it plays a completely crucial role, because from nowhere else can such pressure be applied. Doesn't Netanyahu himself have a bit of a
thing, where he is of course quite an old man and has been in power for too long and in a way, under the shadow of this war, this Oct 7th, he got the coalition and this Gaza counter-offensive going. So, didn't he have some kind of filibuster-type obstruction that he bypassed, meaning he implemented a constitutional reform, and in a way, is he being prosecuted for that or for something else? Back then, before this
terrorist attack on Oct 7, '23, Israel didn't have a constitution, but there is a collection of these basic laws and it's because they didn't have time to write the constitution, since indeed as soon as the state was founded, their attack was quite immediate when the Arabs sought to drive Israel into the sea and kill all the Jews, so they had to defend themselves and they didn't have time to write a constitution, but then they have a Supreme Court which acts as if it were a constitutional court, which judges according to the spirit of these basic laws
whether some bill that the government wants to submit is in accordance with the spirit of the basic laws or not. This constitutional or Supreme Court, which acts as if it were a constitutional court, well it's politicized, it's been accused of being very leftist and the problem is that the judges themselves choose the successors, when someone dies there, then these remaining judges themselves choose a new successor for themselves. So it has happened that as it has become leftist, then the leftist judges choose new
leftist judges. Mm-hm. And this has then caused Netanyahu to accuse it of being politicized and Netanyahu is seeking to take for himself, that is for the head of state, the right for the prime minister to be able to appoint new judges to the Supreme Court here, and that didn't suit the left-wing opposition or, of course, the Supreme Court and then he is accused that this is now, like, against Israel's basic laws, as if
unconstitutional. Yeah, by the way, I think Nalle might have once written a book for Libera about how we should also have a constitutional court, but then I was chatting here with Heikki Westman and invited him as a guest. I've now changed my mind, actually Finland's system is quite good, because these constitutional judges, it corrupts in the same way, most likely. I don't know if they would become so easily leftists in Finland, but well, at least the risk is high. So I like this, that within some reasonable time
one can, like, renew these heavy-duty laws in Finland.
Yes, and the fact that when it's always accused that the Constitutional Law Committee, which performs preliminary review for us, not post-review, no, as I sit there myself In the Constitutional Law Committee, we review the laws that might have some connection to fundamental rights, human rights, or international treaties, so we check whether they are in accordance with the Constitution. If they are not, then they must be enacted via the constitutional procedure. Either a two-thirds majority, left pending until the next parliamentary term, or a five-sixths majority as urgent,
as happened with border security, for example, so the constitutional legislator specifically wanted to leave this kind of backdoor so things aren't completely set in stone, but still so no government can, with a simple majority, enact restrictions regarding people's fundamental rights, and I think this is good. And when it is said that the Constitutional Law Committee has become politicized, of course it has become politicized, because I don't leave my values behind when I go to that committee, as if I could forget my values, attitudes, and old
ideology and this kind of thing, what I think is right and how things should be.
work. But what made it so that it hasn't become politicized is that when I go there, I no longer wear the National Coalition cloak.
So none of the parties—after all, we have party discipline in parliament where usually in the votes, as a government party, you press the green button for government proposals. Even for those that I personally might not consider that sensible, I still press the green button because I'm committed to the government program as a whole. But in that committee, I don't think that way; instead, I listen to the experts and make my own judgment based on whether this can be done, even when the bill itself is a bit silly in my opinion. But the question is,
whether it can be enacted through the regular legislative process or the constitutional one.
But then if we had this constitutional court, through which people like the likes of Nalle and company imagine we would somehow avoid this politicization, then I have one question for them, and that is: who appoints those judges? Well, if they appoint them themselves and there if a leftist clique emerges, then it'll be like how things are in the US, so it seems to be a bit stuffy in the other direction. And when you also consider the fact that if a right-leaning person in Finland goes to study law, what law do they study? Criminal law, some
corporate law, something like that where they can get a good salary, whereas instead, this kind of thing like constitutionality, constitutional law, leftists more easily gravitate toward that direction in those law studies, so it can automatically be thought that this division is already a bit politicized at that stage. Yeah, a good theory like that, but let's get back to Netanyahu. So he could have in this deal
something like, well, if he now kind of concedes against his values to, like, the Palestinians', at least the starting of the recognition of the Gaza area, then maybe for him then there would be a carrot, that he won't be immediately lynched at home. Yeah, or why couldn't there be something like this, that Netanyahu gets some kind of, uh like immunity and some kind of arrangement, so he could, for example,
step down from his status as Israel's, uh, head of state to some kind of advisory role, like an associate of Marin or something like that, so he could basically wash his hands of it. He wouldn't have to make those 18 changes, but it would open doors to something that could be—well, there certainly are options, but for the first time in history, I see that there is now really a situation, or since
the start of this conflict, there is now a somewhat credible plan for how we could achieve a lasting peace so that it, practically, would address all the other aspects of this massive, multifaceted problem the only ones suffering would be Iran, Hamas, and Islamist groups, and it seems that indeed, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, and in a way where the money is and which haven't really seen any
major wars lately, if they could be brought in on this and then Egypt and Jordan would tolerate it, then this could like to even move forward. Well, when I talk to the representatives of these countries, uh, unofficially, a very strong message comes from there that they are completely fed up with this constant victimhood of the Palestinians, as it were, and with the fact that money has been pumped in there. You know how much, I mean billions and billions, and
what has it achieved? Just terrorism, hostility, and violence. Yes, but hey, these countries cannot go into Gaza. There can't be any Saudi troops or troops from Morocco or elsewhere if there's a threat that Arab-on-Arab fighting would break out there. So they cannot end up fighting Hamas operatives; someone has to handle the dirty work first to clear the way, and then they can come to a clean slate to stabilize the security situation in the Gaza area. Yes.
Yeah. Let's also take Greta Thunberg's, like, confusing turn from a climate activist to, well, a proper woke-leftist inside a bubble, then into this kind of, maybe it's wrong to say Islamist, but nonetheless this kind of, like, Hamas, well, as an activist for this area. What, what happened here with this flotilla?
Right, it wasn't long ago when Greta had to cross the Atlantic in a sailboat, because otherwise she would have polluted so terribly much. And now these were chugging along with that, uh, diesel, these, these flotilla boats with marine diesel, there were quite a few of them, dozens. So, so how much fuel was consumed there too? Greta doesn't talk about that anymore, as if it's already been forgotten. Uh, then I saw videos of how these Flotilla members had packed it.
Not much aid can even fit into those boats anyway, but they had packed them into these plastic containers and wrapped baskets and threw them into the sea, so that if by Allah's help they drifted to the Gaza shore, then it would save the starving people of Gaza. And I thought about how we have to keep these milk carton caps attached because of that silly EU rule or we drink from paper straws so that no plastic pollution ends up in the sea. And these pathetic people are throwing that plastic into the sea on purpose. They all threw their phones in there, so
it wasn't... it was purely a kind of virtue signaling, moral posing, a stunt to boost one's public image, this whole flotilla. It wasn't about wanting to help the people of Gaza, but about getting publicity. Yeah, I think they were playing Abba from a helicopter and then offered a possible movie session where they would watch, well...
by the way, a couple of journalist friends have watched that, uh, Israel-compiled video of the October 7th, uh, October 7th atrocities, so it's apparently, like, impactful, but Greta's group didn't want to watch it. Well, Greta already previously, when she was there with an earlier flotilla on the same mission, when they were detained, she was given these sandwiches and some juice and then she was asked if she wanted to watch this,
and she had turned it away and said she didn't want to watch this, like, 'no way'.
it's somehow like when the ideology is so strong, it doesn't... so there, yeah like, that's when facts give way. then it's just like this, this now, this Palestinian cause, so this is indeed very strange, this, like, this, this and of course, like I mentioned before, this Islamism, Marxism and communism and LGBT activism, this woke thing so, so all of these are united by the fact that they oppose Western society. They oppose the West, they oppose capitalism and
market economy. That's what's in the background, that's what's behind Antifa. Now the question arises: who benefits? Which entity benefits from the fact that in the West there are these kinds of fifth columnists who then erode Western cohesion from within? M could it be Russia, Iran, even China. Well, China isn't as actively destabilizing, but Russia. Yeah. Well, maybe then in a Trumpian way, Hamas was then given a very short
well, acceptance time, and then it was hinted with a baton that if you don't accepted, then we will continue with Netanyahu on that path, presumably following Iran's line of destruction. So, tougher measures will be taken. Is it your view that Hamas could somehow humble themselves and dissolve? Well, if one were to think from a Western logical perspective, it would certainly be quite sensible. They also guarantee Hamas members that if they repent and disarm, they will receive either amnesty
or safe passage out of Gaza. But which country would take them? That wasn't mentioned in this agreement. Hardly anyone is very eager to receive them, but when I think about this certain Salafist, Muslim Brotherhood-style mindset of Hamas, which has worked quite well for them. They have achieved the goals that by killing Israeli civilians and
killing their own civilians, they have reached their goal where several countries have recognized Palestine. They have received the reward they aimed for with those terrorist acts, so one can to say that the terrorist attack has been quite successful from their perspective.
They don't care at all about their own civilians dying, or that Israeli civilians, since they don't value human life at all. So now if I think about what factor could have, at this stage, made them change this, because with the current mindset, because now with this threat from Trump, it contains exactly what you said: that we then give Netanyahu a free hand in Gaza, so Hamas might perhaps think they could provoke Israel into even stronger
reactions, making Western support for Hamas even stronger.
Not for Hamas, but for Palestine, meaning in practice for Gaza's Hamas, whereby even more countries might recognize Palestine. So, I'm not sure if they have any interest in not continuing that war until the last Palestinian civilian.
Mm. Yes, that sounds likely. Thank you. Now that you've made this nasty mess of these leftist Greta Thunbergs and, well...
peaceful nuclear weapons, well, you distinguished yourself a few years ago if I recall, by saying, referring to Kirsi Piha, 'no communists in Helsinki' 'no communists anywhere.' This was probably, well, a bit like a counter-phrase of sorts. 'No Nazis... no Nazis anywhere.' And I laughed out loud, but this was frowned upon a few years ago, so I suggest we go over to the insider side and discuss
a bit about how in the latest poll, well thanks to Keskisarja's sort of bold speeches, perhaps, and thanks to the Finns Party's, well, maybe this kind of budget discipline, finally the Finns Party has recovered a bit as the third-largest party, so I'd like to spar with you a bit on whether the final days of civilized bourgeoisie and sort of bowing to the left are ahead. Well, this isn't—
so, so, well, let's save this for the insider side. I've had with guest Atte Kaleva, and since you've watched or listened this far, please subscribe to the channel and see you on the insider side. Thank you.
Thank you.