295. Question Time: Israel vs. Hezbollah, legalising cannabis, and Kamala Harris' Middle East strategy

0:00Thanks for listening to The Restus Politics. Sign up to The Restus Politics plus to enjoy ad -free listening and receive a weekly newsletter. Join our members' chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to TheRestusPolitics .com. That's TheRestusPolitics .com. Hi there, it's Alistair here. And in these fast -moving times, I just wanted to preface this week's Q &A by saying that though we focus in large part on the Middle East and in particular the death of 12 young people in the Golan Heights, hit by rocket fire from Lebanon to huge Adriatic events have taken place since we recorded on Monday.

0:32First, Israel announced that it killed a top Hizbola commander, Fouad Shukha, in an air strike on a southern suburb of the Lebanese capital Beirut. And second, even more dramatically, in a strike in Tehran, the capital of Iran, Hamas leader Ismail Hinai has also been killed. We've talked about him on the podcast before. He has been right at the top of the list of people Israel wanted to take out as part of their efforts to destroy Hamas, following the October 7 attacks. As to the consequences, that remains unclear, but it all goes to underline something we are going to discuss here, just how hard it will be for the US and its allies to achieve their stated goal of preventing the Israel Guards of War from spreading.

1:16So so much of this being the so -called silly season, where nothing much is supposed to happen, and of course closer to home, the horrifying, murderous knife assault in Southport, and the disgusting exploitation of it, to stoke hate, violence and attacks on the police. Doubtless will talk about that and more next week, but for now, here's this week's Q &A.

1:45Welcome to the restless politics question time with me, Alastair Campbell, and Mirari Stewart. And we said in the main episode that we would take a look at events in the Middle East in question time. So let's start with this one from Mark. Will the attack on the Golan Heights push Israel and Hezbollah into war? Well, they've already been to some extent fighting for a long, long time. I guess what Mark means is whether the attack the other night, the drone strike on the football field in which 12 mainly children were killed, whether that pushes this into a much more dangerous place. Let's do a little background on this.

2:18So the Golan Heights were originally part of Syria, and they were a part of Syria, which Israel took in the 1967 war. They're just next to the Sea of Galilee. They're an area actually that I was visiting just last year, and you can see still the Syrian trenches and encampments, and then the military, Israeli military positions laid over the top. It's a commanding position. You can see Damascus when you get to the top, and you can see why it's incredibly tactically vital, because when Syria controlled it, Israeli settlements on the edge of the Sea of Galilee were very vulnerable to it, and of course when Israel controls it, Syrian settlements were very vulnerable to it, and under international law, of course, this is a part that still belongs to Syria.

3:01It's under Israeli occupation. Hezbollah, we've described before, as a group, very powerful group, more powerful than Hamas located in Lebanon, where they effectively control a lot of the Lebanese government and are supported and financed by Iran. They have, to some extent, held back from getting fully involved in the conflict after the October, after the October Hamas attacks, but their rockets led to the Israelis having to relocate over 100 ,000 people who were up near the Syrian border, and people had been killed already, and that was already a big problem in Israeli politics, which is the sense of huge numbers of refugees and people being killed.

3:42But as you say, it's this latest event where a Hezbollah rocket attack has killed a dozen people that has really up to the ante, particularly given, as we were saying, two weeks ago, that parts of the Israeli government and Israeli society have been pushing for an attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon for a long time. What it did was somebody called Sarah Copsie, who are the Jews, so these were part of the Jews, which is an Arab sect, essentially, of around about a million people who mainly live between Israel, Lebanon, and Syria. There are about 20 ,000 of them living in the Golan Heights, and they are, although some of them serve in the Israeli militaries, I understand it, they have Israeli residency cards, but are not necessarily viewed as full Israeli citizens.

4:23The Jews became very relevant during the Lebanese Civil War, so as Lebanon disintegrated from 1980, which is why the local block and grief my hometown was traditionally known as Beirut, because when people were, when there was violence in the early 1980s, Beirut was the great symbol of violence. Sorry, sorry, Roy, you completely lost me here. Creep Beirut, I've lost the leg. Yeah, so I'm trying to point to the fact that in the early 1980s, Lebanon, Beirut was such a symbol of civil war and violence, that the slightly rough housing block built on the edge of grief in the early 1980s when things were getting a bit dicey around there, that it was then named Beirut, because this was seen as the kind of the great symbol I suppose at the time of violence.

5:06A name by whom all the posh people out there are states? No, no, no, I didn't think the posh people, no, I think I was a joke from within grief from within the housing of states of grief itself. So in the civil war, Lebanon, which is very, very religiously complicated, has a big Shia community, which is where Hisbalar is drawn from, a big Sunni community, a big Alloite community, and a big Druze community, and two different Christian communities. So an Orthodox Christian community, a Catholic Christian community, found itself dragged into civil war, and as Israel intervened in an ounce of Lebanon in the 1980s, many of the Druze found themselves on sides backed by Israel, and that's why some of these Druze ended up in Israel itself.

5:51And these are, there's a wonderful book by Gerard Russell, who we've talked about on the show before, who's written a book on the minority religions of the Middle East. They are completely fascinating. The Druze, the Alloite, the Yazidis, the Samaritans, these are religious groups which have roots back almost into the old testament. And some of them describe themselves as Muslims, some of them describe themselves as Christians, some of them don't really describe themselves as either. And many of their beliefs are esoteric. In other words, they don't reveal to the outside world what exactly their practices and beliefs are.

6:22I really, really hope I don't get any facts from because Gerard, I remember when he worked for me in Downey Street, is an absolute stickler. But I think I'm right in saying that the Druze don't allow marriage to people outside the Druze, and they don't allow converts, is that right? I think that probably would be right. A lot of these groups are very, very thematically sealed. But it's of course, not that uncommon. I mean, if you're a Muslim getting married, you'd expect your partner to convert to Islam. Yeah, but I understand with the Druze, you can't even do that. The other thing that was interesting was because this was such a big deal, Netanyahu cut shorties visit to America, a number of ministers went to the seat, including Smotrich, who was the hard right part of Netanyahu's very fragile coalition, and was given a very, very hard time by the people at the funeral of these children, essentially saying you never showed up when we've had problems before.

7:14What's all this about? So I think on the point about what you see from the diplomacy, led by the United States, Anthony Blinken was out there straight away. I saw David Lamy saying similar things, the French saying similar things, European Union saying similar things, essentially pleading with both sides not to allow this to escalate. Because I think I'm right, the Hezbollah has the biggest army in the world that is not run by a state. Well, over 25 ,000 trained people, and very, very many veterans because they were dominant in the Syria war. They are of all these Iranian proxies much more powerful than who the Hamas, all the militia groups in Iraq and Syria.

7:51He has a very significant group. And I think the fear there was that along with deep feeling of compassion towards these innocent people killed by the rockets was this fear that Israel has been building up, a justification for an attack on Lebanon for a long time. And so for Blinken and others, the fear was that this event would become the trigger that was used to justify that invasion. Another question here from Martin Lewis, is there a difference between the Middle East strategy of Joe Biden and Vice President Harris? Did you see, Brori, we're going to have to get an agreement on how to pronounce her first name.

8:26Either we call her Vice President Harris all the time, or we have to agree, because I got I got lots of messages saying that you pronounce it correctly, but I pronounce it incorrectly, but I thought I was pronounced it the same way as you, which is Kamala. So this is the great thing that's tripping up all the Brits and I keep talking to my wife about it who calls American. So what all the explainer says is that you have to pronounce it like Kamala. Kamala, these are Americans. Exactly. They say Kaba. Exactly. So it's Shashana's conclusion is that somewhere between an O and an A, then that's also interesting because of course it's a Hindi name that she was given by her mother.

9:03So again, there'll be a question of how it would have been pronounced by her mother, which I imagine would be different again. Do you think there's something a bit sexist in the fact that we have this urge to call her by her first name, rather than Harris or Biden or Trump or Suellac? But then vice president Harris. Okay. Okay. Until she comes on the podcast where we'll say please welcome vice president Kamala or president by that, hopefully. So anyway, the question was whether there's a difference in strategy. I thought her comments in the wake of her meeting with Netanyahu. So people will know Netanyahu went to Washington.

9:37He spoke to both thousands of Congress. I think it's the fourth time that he's done it. Fair number of Democrats didn't turn up, including Nancy Pelosi. You just thought that he shouldn't have been given the invitation, but she did seem to have gone from her from yes and how I would put it is that Joe Biden was yes and and vice president Harris seems to me to be more yes but I think that's possible. She's so difficult to read still there and there's been fascinating reporting on the fact that compared to Obama who by this stage in the electoral cycle, in other words, the July before his 2008 election was doing three events today.

10:13She still seems to be sticking to present Biden's pre -plan schedule, which was pretty modest because of his age. We haven't seen her out and about that much. She's still the incredible rise, you know, and she's now seems to be level pegging with Donald Trump and she's put 10 points on in her popularity is still largely a social media -driven thing. And I'm seeing bits of this because Shashana was invited by her friends at university to join a Zoom call, which I think broke the internet. I think they got two and a half million women on this Zoom call in favor of vice president Harris. So there's something quite remarkable going on, but she herself, vice president Harris, remains a bit of a mystery.

10:55We're still not fully seeing what she believes in and where she's going. But I did think on that that there was an emphasis from her on the need to help Palestinians who'd been very, very badly at by this war. I felt that she moved away in rhetoric, if not in the substance, a little bit from the Biden position. And I wonder whether one of the things that they've been reading is the fact that one of the reasons Joe Biden's popularity had fallen somewhat was actually because they felt he was just far too close to Israel. And Netanyahu, for all that he's a survivor, you know, we talk a lot about leaders' ratings.

11:30I mean, he's a right down there right now. And I suspect that will be with a lot of Americans as well as with Israelis. Well, she may also be looking at the polls, which suggests that she's doing much better than Joe Biden was doing with younger voters and Hispanic voters. And she's doing worse than Joe Biden with older voters and white voters. So and the younger voters tend to be more progressive. So we may see her leaning into that base. But final thing on this just to be wary of when we talk about vice president Harris is that we've got to remember that at this stage going into the elections, a jukakis was running against George W.

12:09Bush, a George H. W. Bush, sorry, he was 18 points ahead at the stage and he still managed to lose the election dramatically. He had one of those absolute horror moments in a TV debate, didn't they? When he was he was told about being against the death penalty and he was asked what he would do with, I think the question was somebody raped and murdered his wife. It was one of those awful sort of really shit you between the eyes. And he just went into a kind of sort of very technocratic exmenation and people just look, wait a minute, this guy's really not got it. You're just complete lacking in empathy.

12:40It connects with the Alistair great theory, which is never to overly believe the polls because the fact that you can have an 18 point lead in July and then lose the election is a real reminder that whatever the polls are showing now, things can change it a lot. Yeah, yeah. Now Rory, here's one that I wanted to come back to, Nancy Hillingdon, a week on from the just stop oil sentences, what are your thoughts now? And this is a really interesting example. So we get thousands of questions, okay? And we sometimes have a little chat beforehand, but quite often we don't, because we don't have time and we haven't read them and the producer please loads and we beat them.

13:11And you said to me last week, what's your instinctive reaction to these just stop oil protesters being sent down for five years and four years? And I said my instinctive reaction was that I thought it sounded very, very harsh and particularly at the time when we rightly are thinking that our prisons are a complete state and overcrowding, et cetera. And then a couple of baristas posted something, well, I think they were trying to be helpful. They said, look, you might want to read the judgment. So I went to often read the judgment and I have to say it did change my mind. What did you think reading the judgment?

13:40What I felt from reading the judgment is I hadn't quite realized just how big the operations were that they were engaged in and planning. I hadn't realized the record of some of them. I hadn't realized their behavior in court, where the judge was clearly not having loved at all. And I guess I hadn't realized the extent to which they basically thought that it didn't kind of matter, you know, they've gone from being, what the judge, but how the judge put it, they've gone from being legitimate protesters to absolute fanatics who could not accept that any BLs might have a reasonable opinion. When he listed all of the different people who had been affected, people get into hospital or people visiting their elderly parents and tying all this sort of stuff that, you know, you just don't necessarily think about.

14:24Now then I thought, well, hold on a minute, am I being sort of, am I being played here? Should I now go off and read every judgment that those judges ever made to see whether he kind of doesn't like the planet? But he did make a point of saying that he believed in man -made climate change and that he was a genuine crisis. But anyway, I can't remember the name of the barista who sent it to me, but I'm grateful that he did. And it was fascinating how exercised a group of people got. The very interesting example of, and I'm always reminded this on Twitter because it happens to politicians all the time and what happened to me in nine years in politics all the time.

14:57Suddenly, there is a flurry of, I guess, there were maybe half a dozen people attacking what we'd said about the judgment. I instantly still think it was too harsh. I still think that, but I think it was right there went to jail. Just to put it in context, right? Four -year sentences is being given to people, conducting some pretty horrible nasty robberies that involve trapping in people's houses, threatening them. And the judge has more latitude. And the baristas were running, he had no choice under the law. That's simply not true. Judges still, in almost every case, have much more latitude. However, that said, I suspect if we were to do a poll of our listeners, most of our listeners would still think that a four -year sentence for threatening to disrupt a motorway is too long.

15:42I still think on balance, the sentence was too harsh, but I definitely was moved from a place of this is over the top two. I completely get why they went to jail. Now, Rory Patrick wants to know this. I've asked this question a few times now. Please can you discuss the further legalisation of cannabis in the UK? I've been a medical cannabis patient since 2023 as I have an acquired brain injury and it is a fantastic life -changing service. Medical cannabis is currently leading the UK just, but the system is flawed and unreliable. There are many legal loopholes which cause stock issues, medication delays, other issues.

16:16On top of this, patients have to pay high prices when in some cases no other medication works. Now, again, at the risk of being completely ignorant, I am broadly in favour of Patrick having access to cannabis for medical treatment. Well, my sense is he's expressed the situation very well, which is something we see again and again in politics, which is it's all very well changing the law, but the problem is the devil's in the detail and how it's implemented. Those things he's talking about, stock issues, pricing issues, quality issues, supply issues, become very, very relevant. This is true with so many of the things.

16:54It's a perpetual world and I think the Labour government will find this again and again. They will be lobbied to change the law. They'll bring in a new law. They'll hope that they fix the problem and then not very long afterwards. People will come back and say, well, you think you fix the problem, but there's all these other things which aren't anything to do with the law, which are beginning to get in the way of us, actually getting in this case, our medicine. So, it was reclassified in 2018. Doctors are allowed to prescribe it under certain controls, but it's actually not being prescribed very widely at all.

17:26Clinical trials not been funded. So, it's still not with narcotic and it has to be regulated as a medicine. So, I think you're right. I think it's one of those issues where you think, yeah, that seems pretty sensible, but there are all sorts of tricky issues that flow from it. So, Patrick, I'm with you and I think from the sound of it, we're always half with you. The other thing he's got me going on is this question of what people choose to research and what they don't and where the focus is. I'm really interested because I hadn't realised, for example, that children's medicine is often not a big priority for pharmaceutical firms and the manufacturers of medical equipment.

18:01It's apparently particularly in the US, it's not where you make your money. So, there haven't been as many advances in pediatric stuff as you would have thought. And pediatric doctors in the US continue to be strangely underpaid. You would have thought people would be absolutely desperate when their children were ill. Actually, it's one of the only cases where US doctors were almost earning the same as British doctors. Then there were two other things I've come across. One of them, I'm a migraine sufferer and I'm now getting very, very regular, very unpleasant migraines. And although there's been a breakthrough with a class of drugs called triptans and there's a lot of people with migraines in the UK, probably one and a half million people.

18:36Again, for some reason, the pharmaceutical companies have never quite decided, nor is the NHS, that this is a number one priority. Some people say that this is a gendered, that traditionally it's quite chauvinistic, traditionally migraines are seen as something that women suffer from because it's a headache and it doesn't kill you. The doctors who are like, it's not that serious and you don't worry about it. So my life is pretty blighted by this and other people much worse. They can be knocked out for, you know, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten days a month with blinding headaches and orders and unable to function dark room.

19:09Final one, just in case some billionaires this seems to show and wants to do something to really change the world. My father was very deaf and the advances in hearing aids are nothing like what she would expect in a world of technological revolution. What you'll find if you begin losing your hearing is that there are hearing aid companies selling these things for six, seven thousand pounds and they're always claiming that this is the latest generation. It's much better. My father spent a fortune getting these things and now my father and Laura is being made spend thousands of dollars getting these things and they're always told that they're smarter than they've ever been and you go into labs.

19:43But the reality is we still have not fixed how to deal with it and consequently older people end up in a very, very lonely situation where they don't hear what people say, they ask people to repeat themselves, people get angry with them, they go to cocktail parties, they've got no idea what's happening, they're with their families, they've got no, it's very isolating. So something in error is listening, put the money behind technology for hearing aids because it'll make a difference to, you know, literally billions of people around the world but it's just not, it's not sexy. I'd love to know how many billionaires listen, I suspect Elon Musk isn't one of them after I said last week that he was a much bigger dick than Nick Clay but he's showing that several times again since some of his reposting of his own stuff on X's absurd, they must be horrible, I've had headaches, I've seen you when you've had a nightmare, but I find it quite useful because whenever you lose your rag with our guests on leading, I always say afterwards, oh, we had a bit of a week ready, it's fine.

20:34I find the JB Rubin, Jonathan Powell, David Davis upcoming, people can look forward to that one, very enjoyable, very enjoyable. And beginning to notice a pattern, they're usually friends of yours who are winding me up as far as I can see. Generally, I think you're old mates, I'm now beginning to wonder whether the thing isn't because they're friends of yours, you're letting me do the aggressive challenging which you're not doing. No, let's have a quick break.

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22:44Here we are, Jettendercance. In the light of seven labour MPs being suspended for voting against the two -char benefit cap, what does this mean in practice? Does that mean their constituents and no longer represent it? Do the weekly surgeries still go ahead? If a constituents' issue needs to be brought up in Parliament, is that recourse not available for the durations suspension? So quickly on that, none of that's true. You still remain a member of Parliament. You can't be thrown out of Parliament, but if the party takes the whip away and there's an election, you can't run as the candidate. So this happened to me.

23:16I was suspended by Boris Johnson for voting to try to block a hard Brexit along with 20 other colleagues, and he then triggered an election in which, unless we were prepared to apologise, change our position, appear publicly endorsing Boris Johnson, we weren't allowed to run in the election. And this is, effectively, what happened to Jeremy Corbyn. So he was a lost the whip because of the controversies around antisemitism of the Labour Party, a real antisemitism of Labour Party, but I think questions about the extent to which Jeremy Corbyn himself was antisemitic or whether there was just antisemitism out in the Labour Party.

23:50He was presiding over and somehow had created an environment full. So he was suspended, and he then ran, of course, as an independent and has been elected in Parliament, along with some very interesting other independence that we should talk about at some point. But now that group is now up to nearly 14 people. And as Jeremy Corbyn says, by the time you're 14 people in the House of Commons, you can begin creating quite a lot of trouble. That said, he's three times as many as there are reform party MPs. What was your take on the suspension? So this was an SNP amendment to the King's speech and Labour made clear in advance that if people voted with the SNP on this amendment, they would lose the whip.