901 - VI-Day feat. Mohammad Alsaafin (1/20/25)
Journalist Mohammad Alsaafin returns to the show to discuss the temporary ceasefire & hostage exchange deal reached in Gaza. We discuss why and how this came about during the Biden-Trump transition, what the actual terms of the deal are, how it leaves the political situation in Israel, Palestine and the rest of the region, and the total effects of 15 months of war. Plus, what was actually in the gift bags given by Hamas to the freed Israeli hostages.
If you’re looking for ways to help, this is from Mohammad: More importantly, this is a good place people can donate to. This started out as a small soup kitchen set up by the family of a friend after their home was destroyed and his brother killed. Over the past year they've expanded to several soup kitchens, water trucks, small clinics and a couple of classrooms. The other brother who was running it was killed on his way to deliver supplies to Kamal Adwan hospital last month. They've done so much good work in helping people stay especially in northern Gaza:
Comments (99)
Hey this aged super well
More dead in Gaza two months later. No justice or reason to be found at this time.
But I was told that Trump did what Biden couldn't, I'm so confused....
Quite a few radlibs lurking in the comment section on this one. Anyone who’s convinced themselves that Dems staying in power would have been ‘harm reduction’ has managed to convince themself that you can have harm reduction when it’s genocide v genocide. That’s a breathtakingly stupid position. Especially when you acknowledge that liberalism is directly responsible for MAGA becoming what it has become today.
is there a source for what Mohammad says at ~40 mins about the US and Israel being worried that foreign media would be shocked at the extent of what Israel had done back in November 2023? i’m not doubting him, would just love to read more on that
Absolutely embarrassing and braindead take to think this fake ceasefire would hold up. You clowns tripped over yourselves to say I told you so. Only a complete imbecile would think Trump isnt going to escalate the genocide
Without the full-time reasoned influence of Matt and Amber, these guys have gone completely delusional
Guys, y’all coulda dropped a, I dunno, “don’t give Trump too much credit yet” now he wants to “clean out Gaza.” Beautiful real estate! And once the hostages are back, cmon guys. I know y’all excited for the ceasefire, but cmon, be a little more forward thinking.
I’m sure dick riding Donald Trump for this long lasting for ever peace will not backfire and I won’t be listening to you morons bitching again
All their bullshit is aging so well already: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/26/trump-resumes-sending-2000-pound-bombs-to-israel-undoing-biden-pause
This one soured already
Tbh the historical homeland of Christianity stretches from Palestine all the way across the Mediterranean
Y'all should check this out. Surprised this didn't get more attention ny times reporter sympathetic to west bank settlers hoping Trump lets them clear out Palestinians because all they want is peace. It's laying groundwork: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/06/world/middleeast/west-bank-settlers-trump.html
I didn’t get the triumph vibe in this episode. I mean, yeah the prisoner exchange is good for the Palestinians but only against the backdrop of losing almost everything. And if the war starts in another few days or weeks you know it’s just back to square one.
Literally no different from Biden. Which is the general sentiment.
One of the worst israeli depravity fantasies I saw was people repeatedly throughout, and especially on the day of ceasefire announcement, talking almost excitedly about how they expected all the women hostages to come back pregnant. That's some deviantart level fetish stuff built into their politics.
Honestly this was so heartbreaking I don’t know what to be anymore
shout out to Seamus fr bc only the “reopen the Hebrew schools” line loosened the knot in my stomach for a sec
why does will have a lozenge in his mouth? this seemed like a professional podcast.
I think he has a speech impediment. That's how he always sounds.
This is what I pay the money for
I think it's pretty irrefutable that Netanyahu and Trump conspired to delay a hostage deal until after the election in a Kissinger-style move. Netanyahu initially refusing to meet or attempting to further delay a deal doesnt immediately conflict with that, if anything I think maybe Netanyahu just got so used to being able to completely dog walk Biden and assert his own terms that he forgot he was a vassal state. It's like he thought "oh we've been able to do whatever we want for four years why should I just follow exactly what a rube like Trump tells me to now? I'll just try to delay this slightly on principle to remind the Americans we do whatever we want" then got immediately slapped down for it. Now, liberals have been avoiding even mentioning this possibility because it would require recognizing that Israel was purposefully stalling a ceasefire to extend a genocide and for Trump's political gain. But even if they did and attempted to justify Biden's completely failure and inaction by saying "See! See! Biden TRIED to reach a ceasefire and Trump was sabotaging him!" that's completely undone by Brandon IMMEDIATELY trying to paint this as a joint project between the Biden administration and Trump. Much less the fact that if Trump was able to slap down Netanyahu further delaying things so easily, and they knew Netanyahu was delaying things so Trump could win the election, what does that say about Biden? That he knew Netanyahu was undermining his authority to influence our election, and he just *let* Netanyahu shit in his face without asserting any authority? Whether it's that or Biden just earnestly hoping to indefinitely extend the war, there's just no situation where the Democrats come out of this without looking like absolute cravens with zero moral high ground.
Also I keep going back to the idea that while Biden is an ideological Zionist, Trump is just a pragmatic piece of shit. I think a real sign of the Biden imperium versus the Trump Reich is that Bidens unconditional support for Israel is a deeply ideological one while Trump's is-- at the end of the day-- about free beachfront real estate in Gaza. He says as much, constantly talking about how Gaza has "beautiful beachs" that would need to be rebuilt. Both sides will fundamentally support Israel's eventual annexation of Gaza, and Trump is shackled to genocidal conservative Zionists. But if we're looking at the two as individuals, Biden thinks Israel has the historical right to exterminate Palestinians on some warped sense of principle. Trump wants to do it so Jared Kushner can build shitty condos in Rimal for American Jewish retirees. I don't know which is worse, so draw your own conclusions there.
That bit about the academic historians association is insane.
Wildly optimistic appraisal of Trump’s relationship with the Israel-Hamas war given that he has been in his current term for TWO DAYS. This episode will not age well. UPDATE 1/24/25: Indeed, the episode that aired three days ago has already aged like raw milk left on the radiator. The Trump ceasefire lauded as the Art of the Deal on this ep was broken less than 48 hours after it was confirmed. UPDATE 1/26/2024: Trump, the guy the Chapo boys and Mohammad Alsaafin thought represented a solid choice for the besieged, starving people of Gaza over Harris, told reporters on Air Force One, “You’re talking about probably a million and a half people [in Gaza] and we just clean out that whole thing…. Something has to happen, but it’s literally a demolition site right now.” Whatcha got, Dearborn?
About that: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/1/21/trumps-un-ambassador-pick-says-israel-has-biblical-right-to-west-bank
Goddamn your comments section is full of the same shitlibs you guys are always making fun of
Israel is the most depraved country in the world. What kind of country would want a whole population of people to languish and die in a concentration camp right next to it. https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/07TELAVIV1733_a.html
Yeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh, no.
Compare Hitler's Obersalzberg speech in 1939 with the rhetoric coming from some of the Israeli leadership over the past year. The Hitler Obersalzberg speech is where he made the infamous comment about the Armenian genocide "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" e.g. relevant context here is that German military officers, including some of Hitler's advisors were active witnesses to the Armenian genocide in WWI and applied "lessons learned" to their enactment of the Holocaust. This is something that I have thought about over the past year with respect to the Biden administration's active support for Israel's mass murder campaign. So much of the Israeli wager of a "successful outcome" is predicated on the idea of the world forgetting and just moving on and the idea that there is no such thing as Palestine or the Palestinians. It doesn't take a genius to see what the consequences of this kind of forgetting mean for future generations. This acceptance of war of annhilation as somehow normal or acceptable in any instance transforms the "lessons of the Holocaust" into a complete absurdity. This is one of the reasons that international law and legal accountability for perpetrators -- including Biden administration officials -- is absolutely critical.
Has anybody got a link to the story of Trump’s real estate negotiator guy?
Seems flimsy as an explanation at best, but wtf do I know
Disappointing episode. As it turns out, you don't have to hand it to Trump. You'd be a fucking idiot if you thought he was geniune or that even the first phase of the cease fire was going to actually last.
The whole episode they just pretend like Israel has not got basically everything they could ever have wanted. Iran is most likely on the chopping block in the next year or two. Syria is under American control. You got alot riding on the houthis, trump, and some college kids on the east coast. Because that is now the axis of resistance. They will just build a bigger wall around gaza.
mohamed sounds like a great guy! can we draw this one without getting our heads chopped off?
No.
A ceasefire back into slow genocide.
Status quo is brutal.
Guy is overoptimistic about ceasefire. Israelis want a final solution.
So did Biden and Harris. That's not overoptimism. It's pragmatism (and about things we are only hypothesizing about and haven't happened yet) as every day there is a major decrease in killing and a major increase in aid and a pause from the nonstop onslaught is a win.
Alsaafin not Alsalafin
Great episode. Love when you guys have Mohammed on ❤️🇵🇸
“This Gaza stuff makes for bad television.” Donald Trump’s likely thought process.
They never show it.
I know it's tone deaf given the content of the episode, but does anyone know what the music was that played midway through the episode? Sounded beautiful.
Came searching for the same answer 🙏
This was a major episode. Kudos for bringing on a brilliant guest. Lots of ground covered - very clarifying, sobering, etc.
Israeli military is attacking Palestinian city of Jenin in West Bank.
But… but… Will insisted that Trump would be better for Palestinians than Biden!
Let me guess: We’re going to hear more baseless chatter about Biden and Trump are exactly the same on Palestine literally on the day that Trump canceled sanctions on violent settlers, the IDF immediately starts a massive West Bank operation while settlers slaughter Palestinians, and the incoming US ambassador to the UN publicly says Israel has a "biblical right" to the West Bank. Biden aided a genocide that will absolutely continue when lsrael decides it’s a fun time to violate the ceasefire, but to pretend it isn't/won't be qualitatively even worse now with an even higher body count to come is willfully delusional.
The 2024 election results seem to have divided Sparky into about 4 or 5 new posters 🤔
It is difficult to comprehend how very weak and ineffective Biden was. Check out my Guernica = Gaza painting https://youtu.be/cuqnMCZCJoU?si=v5N6T2ntr_QEgFop
Felix begins speaking at 3 minutes and 45 seconds
That last bit was a difficult listen. I tried to imagine how I would manage if I was sent videos of my grandparents neighborhood completely destroyed and almost unrecognisable, and the only thing I could think was that I don't think I could ever forgive those who allowed it to happen.
I had the exact same series of thoughts and feelings. The mental image of the skeletons that will never be identified… and all that home, just gone. Ugh my heart breaks for them.
Mohammad is a godsend. thank you for connecting us to his brilliant work and analysis.
Regarding the condition of released Hamas hostages, the one that really struck me was the woman released during the November ceasefire *with her dog*. Not only were all the humans in fine condition, but Qassam kept an Israeli pet alive for almost two months while their own families were struggling to stay fed.
Meanwhile Israeli goon troops were shooting artillery at horses.
I cannot get over how 9/11-brained the authorities in this country became after October 7th, even moreso than 9/11 itself. No college sent cops to beat protesting students during the Iraq War. No media network used passive-voice copspeak whenever the U.S. bombed a wedding in Afghanistan. Nobody tried to ban MySpace because people were sharing the Abu Ghraib photos. But for Israel, this shitty little colony, everyone in positions of power in the United States are willing to do anything to us on their behalf. One of the worst parts of living through the W. Bush 9/11 era was feeling like a moral outsider in your own country. One day you were a baseline citizen and the next everyone was rabidly violent and calling you a traitor for being normal. Twenty years later and I feel it all over again. All those years of liberal democratic education, of being shown Holocaust footage and taught 'Never Again', only to be told now by our own leaders that it's okay, this genocide is a good one. I feel like a drug-sniffing dog being walked past a legal cannabis dispensary. You told me to bark at this shit, why are you now calling me an anti-Semite?! For Israel...I still can't understand it.
Very well put! I am austrian therfore our experiences on this might differ. But especially the last sentiment about democractic education and holocaust rememberance is exactly how I feel. It is like going crazy the same old intellctuals, in public discourse who would call bush a stupid warmonger, who destroyed precious int. law and int. institutions, now scream antisemite about anyone how dares say israel is committing genocide. Including all those same institutions.
Glory to Palestine. Victory to Palestine. Death to all nazism.
Donate to reconstruction. At least on the Egyptian side aid should get through.
WITKOFF ROLLS ON SHABBOS
also I doubt Felix reads this but I've seen Muslims say that yemen is the true "keeper of the faith" or whatever you said
Hail yemen! HAIL YEMEN!
"Nah, Fat - we don't do Hiroshima no more, Jack. But we'll do a Dresden errday the week, Bibi!"
It is a little insane that there's no mention of one obvious angle: Bibi wanted Trump to win and was eager to give him a early victory because he thinks he'll be more favorable to his longterm goals in Gaza, Westbank & the region Biden owns this bloodbath, tbc, but to pretend that it was big dicked negotiation by Trump's people that got it over the line is a bit ridiculous
because it doesn't matter. suspend arms shipments and Biden had it. the biden admin did not want it so Bibi didn't have to sabotage shit for trump.
Great episode! It was interesting that Mohammad cited the article by Owen Jones about bias in the BBC because just yesterday there was a BBC journalist talking about how UNICEF had referred to the conflict as a “war on children” and that for the last 15 months, an average of 10 children per day lost one or both legs and that Gaza has the highest concentration of child amputees in the world. It was quite jaw dropping because it’s rare to hear such raw journalism from the BBC
What do you want to bet that MBS told Trump he’d never see another LIV event at a Trump golf course if the U.S. was funding and supplying the IDF’s genocide in Gaza while he was President? He and Jerrod both do a lot of business in the Persian Gulf.
dont wear out your knee pads worshiping at the altar of trump you dipshits oh look settler sanctions lifted!
That's your takeaway?
Great ep, heart wrenching.
the Radio War Nerd ep on this was crazy, the detail about Hamas cleaning up and reclaiming unexplosed israeli ordnance and "returning to sender" is so metal
I like that they added in Arabic it's 'Your goods have been returned to you' 🤌
Trump took Bidens V-Day card.
Many Chapo listeners who closely follow the genocide in Gaza, may have encountered reactions to it from Germany or Austria might wonder: 'why are their media and politicians even more deranged about israel than anywhere else, and exceed the anglossphere by far in the craven bootlicking? Is it their nazi past? Well yes, it is but something deeper is going on. With an uprecidented campaign to intimidate regular poeple with no power, student artist etc. The zionists created an atmosphere of fear. But this is not! because people agree with zionists or love israel. One other very very important distinction is that zionist always, succesfully equate jew and zionist and israeli. They can do that bc there are just not that many jewish people in germany and austria and those who have a public voice nearly all support this narrative. I went to many uni lectures that bc of the topics could touch palestine and if one student would bring it up (and not by any means pro palestine just as tame as you could think) dozens of people would jump up and leave. Or at political events I was at a socdem district get together for the upcoming elections and when someone asked a rep for parlament if they think the ceasfire would hold, everyone down to the loweset officeholder excused themselfs and left. It was surreal. But the reaction when the topic comes up, in regular conversation, with anyone from the construction workers I work with, to people at uni (students and staff), or in the art history museum I also work at, people will say something along the lines of well: 'They have such good connections and lobbying the rules don't apply to them' People of course only say that after double checking that you are not jewish. It is an insane trend that again I personally experienced across all party lines, I heard that from greens, socdem, liberal conservatives all across the spectrum (well the right wing was always open on the 'jews' said something like it but use 'eastcoast, rothschild or soros and money grubbing' and they still do, but now the younger right wingers like Israel)
Typical weak European remnants that submitted to monarchy. Here in the US people only like Israel because they kill Muslims and will in certain cases outright tell you they want to bring about the End of Days/Biblical apocalypse. Do Europeans then treat the handful of Black people like god kings? Is the main fear that closing Israel will mean they have to take their Jews back? In America at least this behavior is mostly motivated by naked lust for violence.
As much as I hate Trump, if Kamala was president, the cease-fire would’ve never happened
It exists in name only because Bibi wanted to try to make things look good for the inauguration weekend headlines. They'll be back to carpet bombing soon with full US blessings just like they did in Lebanon after that "ceasefire."
at around 46 min about sexual violence and reporting. When the three israelis were released and just in a helicopter, the austrian state news correspondant in Tel aviv said live on air in the evening news: ' the mood of relif will change into anger, when those three will talk about how they were brutally raped in captivity.' A baseless speculation about sexual violence that would get you fired immediatly, but not here bc it is in service of something greater:Israel
We need so many Luigis.
Hearing Felix discuss the AHA vote is 95% toward confirming my theory that he and Gabe Winant are the same person
Hani, the guy behind the linked fundraiser, is a legit and awesome dude. Awesome to see chapo supporting him and his family/team and their essential work.
Gods bless those kids in the Ep Img... far braver and stronger than I'll ever be! 🫡🖖🥰🤲
Trump, Nobel Peace Prize..... incoming!?!?? 🤔🤯
No. Not even close.
I was expecting an episode about Inauguration Day and the insane shit already going down
Ok?
Lovely David Lynch sendoff on the last episode. The Lynch-less world feels cheaper already.
Movie Mindset needs an emergency podcast.
SAVE US MR. CHAPO! 🆘️
Wonder what those kids want to be when they grow up.
Probably a centipede because of all the limbs they get. I look forward to them arguing with a journo claiming to be an orphan at the age of 60 because their parents finally died of old age and scolding them about how they interpret their experience surviving the slaughter of their family.
we did it Felix….. we won !(kamala expression)
Remember to donate gang 😁
W 2:30 EST upload time. cant sleep so this is great
Did everyone like the wet Trump announcement during the NCAA championship
Can’t wait for Trump to say “Vivek and JD Vance couldn’t be on your team” when Ohio State gets their WH hamburger party.