11/24/25: News Reporting on Netanyahu and Epstein, Mike Huckabee an Israeli Spy, X Update Exposes MAGA accounts

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2:05We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. All right, let's get to Israel. We've got Jeremy Scahill standing by. Let's get to him. So we've got a lot that's going on with Israel this morning that we are tracking and can put D5 up on the screen. They've now violated the ceasefire again, I should say, in Lebanon. This is VO of a building in Beirut's southern suburbs that Israel bombed. They killed at least five people, injured 28, according to Lebanon's health ministry, as reported by DropSite News. They say they have assassinated Hezbollah's chief of staff.

2:39They are claiming that they were able to accomplish that. I don't know if we have confirmation from Hezbollah or not. But joining us to break this down, as well as their continued violations of the ceasefire in Gaza, is Jeremy Scahill, of course, co-founder of DropSite News. Great to see you, Jeremy. Good to see you, man. Great to be back. Thank you. Yeah, of course. So let's start with Lebanon. What do we know about what happened here and give a little bit of context about how routinely Israel has been violating this ceasefire? Well, let's remember that there supposedly has been a ceasefire in Lebanon for roughly the past year, and Israel has just repeatedly violated it, continuing to carry out heavy bombings.

3:18I mean, many Lebanese civilians have died. And what we've seen happen over the past couple of days is that despite this ceasefire to which Hezbollah is a party, Israel has continued to target commanders of Hezbollah. And I just emphasize that because when you sign a ceasefire, you're signing a ceasefire between two armed parties. And so in the case of Gaza, the party that Israel signed its ceasefire with is, in fact, Hamas. And yet Israel continues to conduct these operations where they're killing commanders of the Qassan brigades. Israel's killed more than 340 Palestinians in Gaza since October 10th when this ceasefire was put into place.

3:59The majority of those are women and children, but they are, in fact, continuing to target the armed combatants on the other side of this ceasefire deal. Now, anytime Palestinians are accused of firing at Israeli troops, the portrayal of it is, oh, my God, Hamas is violating the ceasefire, but this is Israeli policy. The late Palestinian poet Rafat al-Arir, who was assassinated by Israel, said that when they signed these agreements, it means you cease and we fire. So what we're seeing is Netanyahu, while Trump is projecting this idea that he's implemented this peace agreement that's the greatest thing to happen in the Middle East in millennia, you know, he called it one of the great moments in civilization, you have Netanyahu clearly concerned that actually some form of a ceasefire will maintain.

4:44And so he's serving as his role that he's perfected as the arsonist in chief in the region. And we're seeing this happening in both Lebanon and certainly in Gaza on a daily basis since October 10th. Yeah. So speaking of Netanyahu, one of the craziest developments I've ever seen, D2 guys, let's put it up here on the screen, is Bibi Netanyahu sharing a Jacobin article about Jeffrey Epstein claimed to have meddled in Israel's elections, which references DropSite reporting. Jeremy, I just, you know, DropSite co-founder, what is your reaction here? And break down some of the reporting that you guys actually put out and why Bibi seems to be entranced by it.

5:27You know, this is a story also that has not, for the most part, penetrated the broader corporate media or the Western media at all. My colleagues, Ryan Grimm and Murtaza Hussein, have just been churning out expose after expose. And, you know, even some people in the alternative media landscape are mischaracterizing what they're actually reporting and saying that it's this salacious gossip thing and sort of comparing it to Russiagate hysteria. This is very serious reporting that is showing these deep ties that Jeffrey Epstein had to very powerful individuals in Israel. Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, has been at the center of a number of these reports showing his connections to Jeffrey Epstein, Mossad figures who were staying at Epstein-linked properties, Epstein weighing in and advising on Israeli electoral politics, which is what caused Netanyahu to come out and post a Jacobin article, which is extraordinary.

6:31And in the Hebrew language press, people are sort of losing their mind about this and saying, you know, Netanyahu, you know, is so desperate to sort of distract from, you know, his other narratives, that he's even willing to put forward stories from, quote unquote, anti-Israel news outlets. But this is very serious reporting that Ryan Grimm and Murtaza Hussein are doing. And it's really malpractice that other major news organizations are not focusing on this. They're going straight for some of the other things that are newsworthy. And this is all sort of being distilled through the lens of Capitol Hill politics.

7:04But we're showing yet again that someone who was in contact with Bill Clinton, someone who was in contact with Donald Trump, someone who was in contact with very powerful people in both corporate and government entities in the United States, was simultaneously in communication with the power brokers in Israel and clearly had ties to Israeli intelligence. Yeah, it's crazy. It's so crazy. Yeah, I mean, what could be more important than understanding these dimensions of power that are usually invisible to the public, whether it's the American public or the global public, and to get a window into these emails back and forth in the way these deals are being done.

7:43I mean, it's hard for me to think of what topic you could explore that would be more significant, more consequential. To your point about the freak out of this Bibi Netanyahu's sharing of a Jacobin article, which is a pretty wild thing. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who, of course, is the subject and whose email inbox was the one that was hacked, which is why Ryan and Maz have been able to do so much of this reporting. He actually got asked a question about this and responded to it. Let's go ahead and play D3. The publication was in a kind of publication named Jacobin or something like this, which is extremely anti-Semitic and extremely anti-Israeli publication.

8:23I wonder how it comes that the prime minister found the time to identify. Probably it was held by his son who spent his time now not in the front, but in Miami. And the whole story is nonsense. You know, it's probably Epstein tried to aggrandize a little bit his role and his activities and so on. I regret of ever meeting him. I was quite friendly with him for years, met many times on business issues and others. This story of intervening in Israeli election is total nonsense. Classic to frame them as anti-Semitic, of course. Well, also, you know, when you're desperate, when you've been exposed, what you try to do then is attack the messenger, implying that facts are not facts because of the news outlet where they happen to be published.

9:18And I should say, by the way, that, you know, Jacobin does very rigorous journalism. And certainly the stories that we've been doing for DropSite have been fact checked. They've been legally reviewed. We go for comment to the relevant parties involved. Ehud Barak has refused to offer any comment on this. So the facts are going to speak for themselves as in all responsible journalism they should. So, you know, whether whether Barack wants to actually take this on or he wants to minimize his relationship with Epstein, I think that his own emails tell a story that is very devastating for him and speaks to something much broader about the cozy relationship that Jeffrey Epstein had to power brokers across continents.

9:58I think what's so fascinating to me about this entire story is how the Israelis are currently feuding amongst themselves over whether Epstein was an Israeli asset. But the U.S. media is ignoring all of this work. And I think the reason why it's important at a more meta level is for what we began this with, is that Israel is currently violating this Lebanon ceasefire. We also have, I believe we have some of the reports here about this most recent attack in Gaza, D6. Can we put that up there on the screen? I mean, they just launched strikes in Gaza in a, quote, latest test of ceasefire as some 24 Gazans were killed.

10:35So, Jeremy, even this tenuous ceasefire is not sticking, and the strikes, at the very least, are continuing at a much lower level. Yeah, imagine if, sorry, imagine if Hamas had killed 24 Israelis. Do you think it will be a test of the ceasefire? Anyway, go ahead, Jeremy. Yeah, I mean, what we're seeing here is that, you know, Trump essentially saved Israel from itself when he pushed through this deal. You know, Israel had totally failed to cause a surrender of the Palestinian resistance. The Qasam Brigades and Soraya Al-Quds and the broader armed resistance in Gaza didn't wave the white flag. They were still holding 20 Israeli captives.

11:15And Israel killed a number of its own captives over the two years of the genocide. Those Israeli captives were not going to be released by military force. Trump put a big emphasis on wanting to get them freed for his own reason. I think Trump genuinely didn't understand the Nobel Peace Prize process. And I think he thought he was going to sort of get in under the wire and force this deal so that he could pick up the Nobel Peace Prize, even though the voting had already happened and he wasn't up for it in this round. But also this constellation that we've talked about on this program before of these corporate and business interests involving the Trump family business, the Trump organization, money from Arab Gulf states.

11:56But what I would say in the broader sense is that this so-called peace agreement is a net positive for Israel and Netanyahu because Netanyahu was facing indictment by the International Criminal Court. He had his own criminal proceedings that are still underway inside of Israel. Israel wasn't militarily actually winning the war against Gaza. What it was succeeding in doing was mass murdering large numbers of Palestinians, overwhelmingly women and children. And what Trump is doing here is twofold. On the one hand, they're trying to rebrand what Israel has done over the past two years of this genocide as somehow the precursor to this epic peace.

12:36And he went to the Knesset. He gave this kind of reverse Nuremberg Tribunal performance where it was the war criminals celebrating themselves. And Israel's war of annihilation agenda is going to continue in a rebranded format. And now they're saying that the main issue is we need to disarm the Palestinians. Trump pulled off an enormous diplomatic coup by getting the United Nations Security Council to endorse his so-called Board of Peace. What this is, is the UN authorizing Trump to be commander in chief of what is almost certainly going to be a largely privatized military force that is going to deploy in Gaza with a central mission of disarming the Palestinians.

13:18This is a huge victory for Israel also, because Israel, which constantly attacks the United Nations, can say, now the UN Security Council has said the Palestinians need to bend the knee. The Palestinians don't actually have a right to armed resistance. And so what I think we're going to see now is this huge push demanding that the Palestinians disarm. I just got done speaking to a wide range of leaders from Palestinian resistance factions, both armed and unarmed. And what I think we're seeing is that with the exception of Mahmoud Abbas, who has single digit popularity from the Palestinian Authority, he endorsed this move at the UN Security Council.

13:58Every single other Palestinian faction is rejecting it right now. And so if this is going to call the question on it, if Trump actually wants there to be a lasting peace agreement, they need to back off of this colonialist agenda. Whether Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad are sort of gone from the scene is irrelevant to this history. There's going to be other groups that are going to rise up. One bit of nuance here, though, that I want to report to you guys. When I was speaking to Mohammed al-Hindi, who is one of the co-founders of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, one of the most senior Palestinian resistance figures still alive and participated directly in the negotiations, and I asked him about this issue of disarmament, he said something interesting, which is that if you establish a Palestinian state and you have a Palestinian armed force capable of defending itself, you won't have a need for Islamic Jihad or Hamas.

14:48But he also said that they told Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner very clearly that they are open to something that is akin to a sort of decommissioning process. That is that if you had a UN peacekeeping force coming in, separating the Israelis from the Palestinians and stopping the genocide, standing in the middle, and you established a Palestinian force, it could even be a police force, and it could even be under the control of the Palestinian Authority, which has endorse Trump's plan, that they would engage in a long-term truce with Israel, where any weapons that appear on the street from someone, that that individual could be arrested, that they would shut down the training sites, and that they would make a long-term commitment that the resistance would not use its weapons.

15:29If you actually want to preserve Palestinian rights, and you also want to achieve an idea that there isn't going to be armed groups running around with weapons, the Palestinians have a very moderate position on this that no one ever wants to talk about. It's this maximalist position of Israel, which isn't actually even about the guns, because we're talking about very small arms that are overwhelmingly homemade inside of Gaza. Israel is using this as a proxy to try to win the surrender of the Palestinian cause, something it hasn't been able to do militarily for 77 years. So, you know, if there's any U.S.

16:03negotiators watching this, I suggest you actually listen to the nuance of what the Palestinians are saying, because it's not a secret. And their position, quite honestly, is a very reasonable one, given the fact that there's been this genocide. But telling the people that have had a genocide committed against them, now is the time that you have to be stripped of all of your weapons, it's a sick sentiment that is being foisted upon the Palestinian people right now. And it's not a serious negotiating position. Interesting. All right, Jeremy. Control room, let's put Jeremy's reporting up on the screen here as the first element in the block.

16:37And, you know, Jeremy, you can you can tell me the headline you have here is weapons of willpower Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Trump's Gaza plan. And people really need to go and read this. First of all, you have sort of the tick tock of how this deal came to be and what the thinking was from the Palestinian resistance factions, how they're viewing the quote unquote ceasefire at this point, the sort of gamble that they took in deciding to make this deal and what their current thinking and position is now. But in a sense, and you could tell me if I'm wrong about this, I'm sort of getting like Abraham Accord vibes where there's this, oh, we've achieved peace in the Middle East.

17:10And you're just completely pretending like the Palestinians don't exist anymore, like they're not going to have any kind of a say in what the final outcome is here. And, of course, you know, we saw the way that that thinking all blew up on October 7th. You know, is that kind of the picture is we're just going to pretend like these people don't exist and don't really have a say and we're just going to bulldoze forward and pretend like we've achieved some sort of monumental Middle Eastern peace without working out any of these more difficult details? Yeah, of course. I mean, my colleague Jawa Ahmed and I interviewed major Palestinian resistance figures from both Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

17:47And I would just say that it is journalistic malpractice on the part of Western news organizations not to conduct these kinds of interviews. It's also a disservice to the public because when you actually speak to Palestinians that are often demonized and dehumanized in the media, primarily those that represent the armed resistance factions in Hamas, you get a very different sense of what their position is than when you just allow it to be filtered through the microphone of Netanyahu or unfortunately even Steve Witkoff. And so, you know, what we tried to do was basically say, this is a real story and we should understand what their position is.

18:22And what they're saying to us is that almost all of the discussions happening about what should happen in Palestine are taking place without actually speaking to the Palestinians who are going to be impacted by it or need to sign up for any agreement. It seems like they want to just try to make a deal, not even involving Mahmoud Abbas, but using the fact that he's head of the Palestinian Authority. When you have a wide range of Palestinian factions that have agreed on a set of principles that are a sound basis for negotiating. So if I, as an independent journalist, can seek out these people and talk to them to just fact check what is their actual position, then U.S.

18:55negotiators should be doing the same on a regular basis before announcing to the world decisions they've made on behalf of an occupied people or that's going to be imposed on an occupied people. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Jeremy. Incredible reporting as always. We appreciate you, man. Thank you, guys. Keep up the great work. Thanks.

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20:33Not your guru. And back then, I lied to my parents, I lied to police, I lied to everybody. There were years right where I could not say your name. I've decided to go back to my hometown in Northern California, interview my friends, family, talk to police, journalists, whomever I can, to try to find out what actually happened. Isn't it a little bit weird that they obsess over hippies in the woods and not the obvious boyfriend? They have had this case for 30 years. I'll teach you sons of bitches to come around here and my wife. Boom, boom. This is The Red Weather. Listen to The Red Weather on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

21:14You know Roald Dahl, the writer who thought up Willy Wonka, Matilda, and the BFG. But did you know he was also a spy? Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Our new podcast series, The Secret World of Roald Dahl, is a wild journey through the hidden chapters of his extraordinary, controversial life. His job was literally to seduce the wives of powerful Americans. What? And he was really good at it. You probably won't believe it either. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you. The guy was a spy. Did you know Dahl got cozy with the Roosevelt's? Played poker with Harry Truman.

21:48And had a long affair with a congresswoman. And then he took his talents to Hollywood, where he worked alongside Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock, before writing a hit James Bond film. How did The Secret Agent wind up as the most successful children's author ever? and what darkness from his covert past seeped into the stories we read as kids. The true story is stranger than anything he ever wrote. Listen to The Secret World of Roald Dahl on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Turning now to Jonathan Pollard. So if you watched The Friday Show, you would have known Jonathan Pollard, a convicted traitor to the United States.

22:22He was an American citizen. He was working for the U.S. security establishment. He sold secrets to Israel. Israel sold many of those secrets to the Soviet Union, endangering a lot of U.S. national security imperatives at the time. He was caught. He was convicted. He spent some 30 years in the United States prison system. He was released. After his release, he was actually granted special release from his parole conditions by the Trump administration. And Miriam Adelson herself had her jet fly him to Israel where he got a hero's welcome. He's attained citizenship there. While he's been enjoying his time in Israel, his country that he has chosen himself.

23:00He, in fact, recently in July, got an invitation from the United States Ambassador Mike Huckabee. So he set foot back on U.S. soil in the U.S. Embassy of Jerusalem. And while he was there at the U.S. Embassy of Jerusalem, he confirmed his meeting with Mike Huckabee. He thanked Mike Huckabee for advocating for his release while he was a convicted traitor to the United States. And perhaps they discussed a few other things. And we just wanted to give everyone a taste of who Mr. Pollard is. So here he is in a recent interview where he says that if the United States threatens a ceasefire on Israel and forces them to accept a ceasefire, they should consider nuking the United States of America.

23:39Let's take a listen. I said, well, I believe that the O 'Biden administration, as I called it, did threaten us. But I said, you're mistaken if you think there's never a choice. There was a choice. He said, well, what, is it to have our weapons cut off? I said, no, let me bring you back to October 1973 during the Yom Kippur War when Henry Kissinger instituted an arms embargo against us. He stopped the aerial resupply of our army at that point to extract diplomatic concessions from us. And what happened? What happened was an A-4 Skyhawk was parked at Telnoff Air Base with some interesting weapons under its wings.

24:31And we told the Americans, take your eye in the sky and take a good look at the airplane that's on that runway. And the next day, the airlift started. So, the guy that I was talking to. Which airlift? To Israel. The armed airlift. So, in other words, we threatened their... We threatened to use unconventional weapons. I'll leave it at that. And so, he said, is this what you want us to threaten now? I said, absolutely. Except this time, I want us to go forward with it if necessary. If they think we're bluffing, we go forward with it. Look, in turn. Wait, some people might look at this and hear you saying these things and say, he's a dangerous dude.

25:20You know, he's he he could, you know, blow up the entire Middle East. Well, I guess people really haven't been keeping their eyes open since October 7th because the whole Middle East has blown up. So that's who we're dealing with. Yeah. I mean, by the way, my favorite part of that video is he's still pretending Israel doesn't have nukes like nukes. nuclear ambiguity, like some interesting weapons. I'm like, Jonathan, we all know that you, we know you have nuclear weapons, brother. You know, it's one of those where - I like the part where she's like, some might say this is dangerous. Like, yeah, you think so?

25:57But this is the guy that our ambassador has decided to spend his time with. This man, it's, I mean, it's completely insane. And by the way, Trump condoned it. He condoned it. Let's play that. From the White House podium, they condoned this meeting. Let's take a listen. Ambassador Mike Huckabee had a meeting with Jonathan Pollard, a former U.S. citizen who was convicted and spent three decades in jail for selling state secrets to Israel. Did the White House know that that meeting was going to happen? Does the administration condone it? The White House was not aware of that meeting, but the president stands by our ambassador, Mike Huckabee, and all that he's doing for the United States and Israel.

26:37The White House, you know, stands behind my cup. Okay. Okay. I don't know. I mean, this, this really sent me over the edge. I was so upset about this. And I think it's just, I think it just clicks all the boxes, right? You have our ambassador, he's, I mean, this guy's a traitor, like an actual traitor, like a, you know, like convicted traitor, sold secrets to Israel. and I mean the whole time he was in prison there was a huge campaign Bibi Netanyahu used to visit him in prison by the way he was you know all of these pro-Israel billionaires and others agitated multiple presidents from Bill Clinton on up to pardon him they were like oh it's just spying amongst like no he sold secrets from America to Israel he endangered the United States by the way the Israelis didn't give a shit about the United States they just sold them to the Soviets right They're happy to do it.