Israeli Ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, joins Glenn to explain what President Donald Trump is really trying to do in Gaza. Ambassador Leiter argues that Trump’s unconventional negotiation strategy has 2 goals: to give the people of Gaza a choice about whether they want to stay in a war-torn land and to give the surrounding Muslim nations a choice to return to the negotiation table on the Abraham Accords. Ambassador Leiter also comments on Israel’s hostage deal with Hamas and the disturbing truth about how Hamas has handled the hostage swaps.
Transcript
Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors
GLENN: Well, we -- it's not every day we have an ambassador pop in. But we have the Israeli ambassador to the United States.
Ambassador Leiter, welcome. How are you, sir?
LEITER: I'm good. It's good to be with you, Glenn.
GLENN: Yeah. You have it easy than your predecessor, dealing with Trump than President Biden. So you must be breathing a little easier. How are things in Israel?
LEITER: Well, I just got here. Five weeks ago, just landed.
GLENN: I know. I know. I know.
LEITER: I was actually the first ambassador to present his credentials to Trump. Yeah. And as my Prime Minister, Netanyahu was the first foreign leader to visit the White House.
So feeling pretty good about that.
GLENN: Yeah. So let me go back to the speech that President Biden gave. Because he said something in his speech, with Benjamin Netanyahu, or his -- his -- his answer. Question-and-answer session.
That even the Prime Minister couldn't have said. You know, saying, the Palestinians, they have to go some place else.
He couldn't have said. Nobody could have said that. Donald Trump know comes out and says it.
And we will build a beautiful resort.
What strategically, what do you think he was doing?
LEITER: Well, frankly, Glenn. I didn't hear the president say, he was going to force the Arabs and Palestinians out.
GLENN: No, he didn't say that. He didn't say that.
LEITER: I think what the president is saying, let's give these people a choice.
I mean, these people have been kept in Gaza. Egypt refused to open the gates.
Nobody brought ships to the coasts.
GLENN: Uh-huh.
LEITER: To offer them safe passage anywhere. Why do we just open up Gaza. And say, look, if you would like to leave. You have that option to do so. Many have left. Tens of thousands have left, by pagan exorbitant amount of money to the border crossing in Rafa. We don't need to do that. Let's just say, open the gates. Let the people out. Let's destroy Hamas. And, by the way, if they choose to leave, like Arafah left Beirut in 1982, by boat, some country that wants to absorb, I don't think anybody wants to take Hamas. I think they want to take the Gazans. Many people will take Gazans. They are an industrial bunch of people. And they will be very, very helpful to any country that wants to absorb them, but not Hamas. Nobody will take them.
But if they are going to leave, that's fine. Otherwise, we will have to destroy Hamas.
GLENN: Well, you're going to have to do it anyway. I saw -- when I was watching him, I -- I thought, nobody is going to be talking about that part tomorrow.
They're all going to be talking about building a big, beautiful city. And the Arab nations are going to say, immediately.
No, no, no, no. America is not doing that. They are doing that.
You think, part of his strategy was to get everybody back to the table, where they were with the Abrahamic accords, and everybody kind of working together for some peace with Israel.
LEITER: Glenn, I think your question is straight-on. It's very perceptive. There's been a narrative for the past, really since Israel was created.
That if Israel does not give up land. And we don't withdraw. There can't be peace. Yet, every time we've withdrawn, we've only gotten war.
And everybody has gotten into the habit of kind of using Israel as a whipping boy.
Israel not doing enough, it's doing too much. And what the president has done. It's taking everything out of the bag. And you said, look, in the Abraham accords, Israel wasn't demanded to withdraw, to give up land. How much territory do we have, by the way?
You know, we're the size of New Jersey, except come a hamburger. We're a hot dog.
It's very easy to cut in half. We're a tiny little country. We're in Texas. Israel fits into Texas 31 different times.
GLENN: Sorry.
LEITER: I'll never forget when -- when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon took Bush 41 in a helicopter ride over all of Israel. And when they got out of the helicopter, President Bush said, yeah, that's about the size of my ranch.
Right? That's the state of Israel. So if we don't have too much territory, and it also doesn't work.
If the Abrahamic Accords, and the magic of the Abraham Accords is, you know, recognize Israel unconditionally. Let's just be friends.
Let's live together. And that's where we have to go now.
Saudi Arabia is ready. Okay? Other Arab countries, other Muslim countries are ready. Can you imagine if we have peace tomorrow with Indonesia? 300 million Muslims?
And, you know, it's going to be better for them. It will be better for us. It will be better for the region. It will be better for the world.
GLENN: So what do you think about this?
Because everybody was freaking out about what happened to the White House on Friday. By the way, the way Joe Biden treated Benjamin Netanyahu, making him wait for hours. And just treating him like garbage. And having the Democrats walk out.
Please don't talk to me about how President Trump treated Zelinsky.
He treated him like a king until things were turned around.
But the -- the -- what Trump is doing, is he is thinking on almost all fronts, out of the box.
He's breaking all of the -- the calcium, that's on all of our thinking.
He's just breaking it all off.
And thinking in new ways.
And -- and talking about peace, in a different way, that if you would -- you would get out of yourself or your old think, you would see, there's a real chance, this works.
But he's realigning everything.
LEITER: He's realigning everything. You know, for a while now, the world has been in search of a new international paradigm. You know, international relations works on the basis of a paradigm. So the first half of the 20th century, we had a multi-lateral, multi-polar paradigm. It didn't work. It ended up in two world Wars. Second half of the 20th century, we had a bipolar world.
It was a Cold War. It was on the brink of nuclear war extinction. Then we had unipolar moment. A unipolar world.
But which, the United States is stepping back from. Because we don't want to lead everywhere in the world. Take responsibility for the globe anymore.
So the world is in need of a new global paradigm. And I believe President Trump is establishing that global paradigm. And it may not have a very simple name. Like multi polar. Bipolar. And unipolar.
It may be Trumpian polar.
It will be less polar. If it's not mutually assured destruction. But mutually assured construction. Right?
Everybody can benefit from this approach to foreign relations. We certainly want to be part of that.
I think we're the best ally the United States has. We've never asked for boots on the ground.
Okay? We fight enemies. The common enemies that we have, particularly Iran. Particularly Iran.
GLENN: Yeah. Kind of scary.
You know, J.D. Vance, our vice president said, when he was speaking about a year ago. He said, you know, the Islamic country that you should be worried about, with nuclear missiles.
Will some day soon, maybe be the UK. I mean, I'm not going to ask you to comment on that.
But, you know, Europe, I think you guys could maybe show them the history of Israel.
Europe is appeasing an awful lot of stuff right now.
And the people are starting to feel like we're losing our country, and our -- our place. And it's becoming very -- very Sharia law, in some places.
LEITER: Yeah. Well, you're bringing up a fascinating point. And I will say something very undiplomatic. Even though I'm in the world of diplomacy.
This all boils down to the fact that, the 36 countries, in the developed world. The OECD. There's only one country in the world with replacement fertility.
We're having kids in Israel. We're preparing the next generation -- one country, of the developed nations that have replacement fertility. That's the state of Israel. That's three generations of a Holocaust. Talk about miracles. Huh?
So, you know, it -- the -- the -- the West has to believe in itself again. And part of believing in itself. And being happy with its existence. And believing in the ideals that it created to the Judeo Christian culture. Needs to be -- to celebrate a revival.
GLENN: Right. And I don't think we did.
And I don't think Joe Biden believed in that.
And based on their reaction to J.D. Vance over in Germany. I'm not sure that Europe actually believes in itself. Jason Buttrill is with us. He's our chief researcher. Watches over foreign affairs as well. You have something over the ambassador before he has to leave?
JASON: Yeah. Ambassador, I was in Israel before the October 7th anniversary, and I -- the flood of emotions, throughout the entire country. I can't imagine what the -- what the -- I just can't. What everyone is going thew.
How do you balance getting hostages back, versus releasing, you know, tons more Hamas hostages.
How do you even balance that? And can you put someone like me at ease. That wants all this Hamas terrorists dead. What's going to happen to them, once they go out. Are they going to reestablish back in Gaza? Are they going to go somewhere else and still threaten Israel? I mean, how do you get hostages back, but still deal with the -- the Hamas terrorists that are still getting out there?
LEITER: Like you, Jason, I want my mind to be at ease. It's been a very traumatic year for me personally. I lost my oldest son, who led the forces into Gaza, and was killed in the second week of the war, when he entered a Hamas booby trap together with his command team.
He had spent 15 years in Special Ops. And he went to med school. And he was supposed to start his rounds in the hospital on October 8th. So it's a traumatic year for many.
We lost 1200 people on October 7th. Another 850 soldiers have been killed in this war. Over 2,000 people.
By United States statistics.
That would be about 65, 70,000 people killed.
Imagine. In a year! Year and a half.
So we also had tens of thousands of people, removed from their homes. Living in temporary quarters, because of the missiles fired from Hezbollah.
From the Houthis. In the Gaza envelope.
It's been a traumatic year. But I can tell you this, the people of Israel are resilient.
Our soldiers are very brave and courageous.
The fight goes on. I can guarantee you, we will release all the hostages. But we will do our damnest to do so.
Get them out alive. You're talking about a -- a cruel and brutal ghoulish group of people.
GLENN: Yes. Can I ask -- did they ever get -- the mother of the Bibas children.
Did they ever get her body back? I know they delivered a coffin.
LEITER: They deliberately delivered a coffin with someone else's body.
By the way, the locks that they put on the caskets. They provide keys that don't open the locks.
Just -- you know, just to stick it in our eye, a little further. We received the -- received the body. But you know how they were killed, again.
They were murdered.
By strangulation. And then a -- a -- effacement of the bodies. In order to be able to try -- and this was verified by autopsies. So we're dealing with a horrific group of people.
And we're going to make sure that they are not standing in Gaza any longer. It will be a difficult, long process, but we will come out on top, in the end.
GLENN: You will. Because you're not ashamed of who you are. Nor should you be. Nor should we. And we support you. We thank you.
LEITER: Thank you. Let me conclude with this one sentence. My son taught his soldiers when they go into battle. He said, always remember, where you are, where your friends are, and where the enemy is. And I learned from my son, that we always have to wake up in the morning and say, who am I? Who are my friends? And who is my enemy?
And don't confuse those three.
GLENN: Hmm.
LEITER: Categories.
GLENN: Thank you very much. The ambassador to -- to the United States. The Israeli ambassador. Ambassador Lighter.
