Power, Profits, and Protest: Trump, Russia, and the Middle

This September marks eight years since Donald Trump cozied up to pariah dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt on the sidelines of the United Nations—a secret meeting that reportedly triggered a highly secretive Mueller investigation into whether Trump accepted a $10 million bribe from el-Sisi when his 2016 campaign was desperate for cash. Last summer, Gaslit Nation ran a special episode unpacking this sweeping corruption scandal; you can read a summary here and listen to the episode here.

Fast forward to Trump’s Middle East tour this past spring, where he once again explicitly told the world that American foreign policy under his influence isn’t about democracy or the rule of law: it’s about making deals that just so happen to enrich him and his family. 

Joining Gaslit Nation to explain what Trump’s fire sale of influence to the highest bidder means for the Middle East and us here at home is Ahmed Gatnash, co-founder and Executive Director of the Kawaakibi Foundation, a powerhouse MENA human rights organization, and co-author of The Middle East Crisis Factory. Gatnash brings a razor-sharp analysis of Russia’s expanding grip on the Middle East, the unbreakable spirit of the Syrian people fighting for freedom, and the surprising ways bitcoin is being used as a lifeline for human rights activists who know how to navigate its pitfalls. He also tears into the so-called “two-state solution”—overwhelmingly voted on by the United Nations last week—as nothing more than political theater, and shares his vision of what Palestinians and Israelis truly need to secure real, lasting peace.

This week’s bonus show dives into MAGA’s latest wave of threats against the opposition and what a full-scale crackdown could look like–what’s likely, what’s unlikely, and what’s already happening that we need to pay attention to. Catch the full discussion this Friday morning by joining our Patreon community. Thank you to everyone who makes Gaslit Nation possible–we could not make our show without you! 

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EVENTS AT GASLIT NATION:

Show Notes:

Qatar, Russia sign agreement to jointly invest 2 billion euros into sovereign wealth funds https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20250423-qatar-russia-sign-agreement-to-jointly-invest-2-billion-euros-into-sovereign-wealth-funds/

Michael Flynn, Russia and a Grand Scheme to Build Nuclear Power Plants in Saudi Arabia and the Arab World https://www.newsweek.com/2017/06/23/flynn-russia-nuclear-energy-middle-east-iran-saudi-arabia-qatar-israel-donald-623396.html

Why Qatar is Bribing Trump https://open.substack.com/pub/popularinformation/p/why-qatar-is-bribing-trump?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2mrjsl

House Democrats ask Trump for proof he did not take $10 million 'cash bribe' from Egypt https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/03/trump-egypt-democrats-letter.html

Trump touts Saudi relationship as "bedrock of security and prosperity" amid $600 billion investment deal https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/trump-speaking-us-saudi-investment-summit-riyadh/

2 Trump-aligned GOP operatives face foreign agent charges for helping Qatar https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/02/trump-gop-qatar-00133567

Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/politics/trump-jr-saudi-uae-nader-prince-zamel.html?unlocked_article_code=1.G08.dUBd.YVKXSVfgqo8i&smid=url-share

The Qatar bribery allegations featuring Trump, Michael Cohen, Michael Flynn, and the Steele dossier, explained https://theweek.com/speedreads/773479/qatar-bribery-allegations-featuring-trump-michael-cohen-michael-flynn-steele-dossier-explained

Qatar pursues US-Iranian nuclear steps after detainee swap https://www.reuters.com/world/qatar-pursues-us-iranian-nuclear-steps-after-detainee-swap-2023-09-20/

Exclusive: Qatar held separate talks with US, Iran touching on nuclear, drones https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/qatar-held-separate-talks-with-us-iran-touching-nuclear-drones-2023-09-20/

Iran seeks Russia’s support for its nuclear talks with US https://apnews.com/article/iran-russia-us-nuclear-negotiations-2bae3b073bcac464ad9b44a8d5a4c581



Andrea Chalupa (00:20):

Welcome to Gaslit Nation. I am your host, Andrea Chalupa, a journalist and filmmaker and the writer and producer of the Welsh Superhero, Gareth Jonesville, Mr. Jones, about Stalin's genocide famine in Ukraine, the film the Kremlin doesn't want you to see. They shut down a screening in Moscow and liquidated the organization that dared to show it, so be sure to watch it.

(00:41):

Well on Gaslit Nation, since the very start of our show, we've been hyper-focused on Trump and Russia. We've had investigative journalists on the show like Craig Unger, who wrote House of Trump, House of Putin, looking at the decades long connections between the Trump family and their businesses and dirty Russian money, including oligarch money. We've talked about how Russian oligarchs paid in cash for Trump Tower apartments on Fifth Avenue in New York. How the FBI broke up a Russian mafia gambling ring right next to Trump's apartment in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue.

(01:17):

We talked about how Paul Manafort, longtime Kremlin operative who got a Ukrainian Trump, Viktor Yanukovych, who came to power, talking a good game. And then once he got in, tried to turn Ukraine into a Russian aligned dictatorship, enriching himself and his family and breaking all sorts of laws and norms. And then Paul Manafort, who was on the hook for a lot of money to Oleg Deripaska, a ruthless oligarch close to Putin, who was persona non grata, not allowed in the US. He was on the hook for money in debt to Deripaska, and then suddenly Manafort resurfaces running Trump's campaign for free in 2016. That was the smoking gun. And on and on, we've talked about the Mueller report, what it did get right, we talked about the Steele dossier written by Christopher Steele, who ran the Russia desk for British intelligence, who called Paul Manafort the smoking gun of the Russia Trump operation to bring Trump to power illegally with the Kremlin's help in 2016.

(02:17):

We talked about the bipartisan Russian Senate report, which my sister Alexander Chalupa testified for an entire day in a skiff in the Senate because she as an independent contractor for the DNC, believed her eyes and ears and being Ukrainian-American saw that if Paul Manafort was managing Trump's campaign in 2016, that meant the Kremlin was managing Trump's campaign in 2016. And so we've been so focused on all of this, even going back to Fred Trump, Trump's KKK Klansman father who got arrested at a clan rally in New York City, building up Brighton Beach in New York City, making a family fortune there with Russian linked money. And then Trump did the same building up what's known as little Moscow in Sunny Isles, Florida, which has lots of Russian money, the FBI's raided apartments there and on and on it goes. And then Trump's own lawyer, Giuliani, was picking up work from Kremlin-linked Ukrainians in Ukraine when Manafort was in prison and trying to get, put the squeeze on Zelenskyy's government to create scandals against Biden, including my sister, who's caught on tape attacking my sister.

(03:25):

But against the backdrop of all that was the Middle East last August. The Washington Post reported that in addition to Robert Mueller investigating Trump and Russia all that time, which we were all focused on, Rachel Maddow made a lot of ratings based on that investigation. God bless her. But Mueller and his team quietly were looking into how Trump broke serious norms and possibly laws by meeting with LCC September, 2016 at the United Nations General Assembly. And LCC was under US foreign policy under Obama at that time. He was a pariah who had used a military coup to overthrow Egypt's democratically elected government. And here was Trump, a candidate for president 2016 September on the sidelines of the UN meeting with him, Trump's campaign needed cash, suddenly cash started pouring into the campaign and then lo and behold, $10 million in cash from a bank linked to LCCs regime makes it to Trump.

(04:29):

And one of the first things that Trump does as president of the United States is he gives LCC the coveted Oval Office visit by the fire, by the mantle place. And there's LCC going from pariah to in the heart of American democracy, our Oval Office. And next thing you know, under Trump, the US is unlocking over a billion dollars in weapons to Egypt. And so the Middle East has always been there with Trump and Trump's family. I'm going to list just some of the items here on how deeply connected Trump is to the Middle East. The Trump organization led by idiot sons, Eric and Don Jr. actively pursue real estate projects across the region. The company has global holdings and also invests in crypto and financial ventures tied to the region. In Saudi Arabia, Trump and Jared forged close ties with Crown Prince MBS during their first term, despite CIA conclusions linking MBS [to] Jamal Khashoggi's killing, Trump still, and Jared, still maintain close support.

(05:31):

The Trump organization partners with DAR Global on luxury projects, including a $530 million Jetta tower and new projects in Riyadh. Jared Kushner receives $2 billion from a Saudi fund after leaving office and the UAE Trump Golf Club in Dubai. A new billion dollar tower announced accepting Bitcoin Trump crypto startup USD one linked to a $2 billion UAE-backed investment into Binance. And in Oman, Trump Tower is under construction. It's expected to be completed in 2028 and in Qatar $5.5 billion Trump golf course planned near Doha. And then of course, Qatar is giving Trump a luxury jet described as a palace in the sky, which he's accepting, which is totally unconstitutional. And then in Turkey, Trump Towers in Istanbul continue operating under license.

(06:19):

That's just what we know of for the most part. I'm sure there's more. So helping us sort through all this to get to know our new Middle East overlords we have on the show this week Ahmed Gatnash, a co-founder and executive director of the Kawaakibi Foundation, a bold voice for human rights across the Middle East region, author of the Middle East Crisis Factory. Ahmed is reshaping the global conversation on dignity, freedom, and justice through visionary activism and creative long-term solutions for a better future for the people of the Middle East. So welcome so much to Gaslit Nation, Ahmed.

Ahmed Gatnash (06:59):

Thank you so much.

Andrea Chalupa (07:00):

So what is in store for us as Americans with this very strong Middle East connection through our deeply corrupt and proudly lawless White House?

Ahmed Gatnash (07:11):

It's really interesting. I was reflecting as you were talking about all the continuities there are between the second Trump term and the first one, but also the fact that there's been quite a bit of change. I think we generally have a much better idea of what we're getting this time. And the regional dictators also have a very clear idea of what they're getting, and that's clear in how rapidly they jumped into action and how rapidly they were able to close these deals. Basically offering Trump exactly what he wants in the way he wants it. Like coming out with that offer of a luxury private jet and all of these massive investment deals. They know that Trump wants to have the self-image of a businessman and a closer of deals. It also seems clear that there is a lot less interest in big international projects this time around.

(07:59):

Most of Trump's agenda for the coming four years, it seems to me is domestic. And it's around entrenching his project, dismantling any institution which could probably offer some resistance and quelling, domestic dissent. A lot of what he's been doing is basically self enrichment on the side, but I'd argue it's not really core to what he's trying to do in this second presidency. The Trump presidency was always a coalition, and that was really clear last time around with all the infighting. But it seems clearer this time that the hawks have been quite disempowered and that he's decided, you know what? I don't actually care about war in the Middle East. I don't care about promoting one side over the other or fighting these endless wars. I just want to solidify my hold over the US, make sure my political opponents are dead, and if I can get really rich the side, then that's awesome.

(08:57):

And nowhere has that been clearer than in his dealings with Israel where there seems to be a lot less ideology this time around. Netanyahu got a pretty frosty welcome at the White House as his welcomes tend to go. He didn't get the big things that he was really asking for, which were a massive war on Iran first and foremost. And secondly, no pushback at all on what's happening in Gaza -- the genocide. From the perspective of regional civil society, not a massive amount has changed since the Biden presidency. And that just goes to show how awful the Biden presidency was for the Middle East region. It was really continuity with the first Trump presidency. There was no break in the type of atrocities being carried out by regional dictatorships against their people.

Andrea Chalupa (09:48):

Well, yeah, I mean, Jake Sullivan famously said before October 7th, 2023, when Hamas carried out its most sophisticated attack ever on Israel. Jake Sullivan famously said, the Middle East has been quiet. It's more of a reflection of Jake Sullivan.

Ahmed Gatnash (10:06):

It's a reflection on their competence and the fact that these people seem to keep failing upwards, but also the ideology at play. Jake Sullivan wanted deals with dictators to keep stability. Basically, he didn't care about human rights, he didn't care about people living in dignity. He wanted strong men in place who wouldn't do anything to surprise the US even if the people under them suffered horrifically. And from that perspective, there was some kind of ideological veneer, whereas Trump was and is very open that he just doesn't give a shit.

Andrea Chalupa (10:39):

You're right, Jake Sullivan is a sleazy operator, gaslighting people in the thinking that the US stands for democracy, where Trump just comes out first speech in the Middle East and his trip most recently. We don't care about democracy, we don't care about any of this. We're not going to tell you how to live your lives. Let's just do deals together and make money. He was very transparent.

Ahmed Gatnash (10:59):

So from the perspective of the Middle East, there's really not that much difference between the Trump agenda and the Biden agenda, apart from some intellectual justifications that people like Jake Sullivan or Brett McGirk would offer otherwise, regional civil society remains in a very dire position. The really big thing that has changed is the cutting off of funding to global civil society over the last few months. And tha...t

Andrea Chalupa (11:23):

Was that USAID, was that Elon Musk?

Ahmed Gatnash (11:25):

It was all of the stuff that happened alongside USAID. So they also cut funding to a bunch of other institutions like National Endowment for Democracy and organizations...

Andrea Chalupa (11:35):

Right? It shows the DOGE illegal blood bath.

Ahmed Gatnash (11:38):

And I haven't actually found accurate statistics, but what I've been told is 30 or 40% of all global human rights funding originates whether directly or indirectly from the US government. So that was just cataclysmic for the field. Organizations all around are either shuttering or going into emergency measures, having to lay off staff, having to reduce their programs. And that's obviously great to see from the perspective of regional dictators, very reassuring.

Andrea Chalupa (12:11):

Wow, what a mess, what a mess we find ourselves in. And in terms of the dictators, could you talk about where the dynamic fits with Putin and the dictators that Trump is cozying up to?

Ahmed Gatnash (12:26):

So Putin's project seems to have been failing very hard over the last few years. He obviously overextended himself massively in Ukraine. He by all accounts, expected it to be a really quick invasion and a few days, and he'd be visiting Kiev.

Andrea Chalupa (12:43):

He believed his own propaganda.

Ahmed Gatnash (12:45):

Exactly. And that's a really common, that was the case in Libya when Heftar launched his attack on Tripoli a few years ago. That was the case, I think, in Sudan when the Civil War started. That's always what these dictators think. They never really believed that there's actually going to be resistance against them. So Putin had to redirect a lot of resources away from the Middle East to Ukraine. That's one of the factors that led to the rapid and spectacular collapse of the Assad government in Syria last December. It's left his other allies in the region with less support than they were counting on, whether that's in Sudan or Egypt or Libya. And these are basically all people who have kind of been left in the cold while the Gulf monarchies have been really enjoying their time in the sun with Trump trying to consolidate their regional alliance, push out Iranian and Russian interests from the region and entrench this axis of the UAE-Saudi Arabia. Hopefully, I think their hope is to include Syria in that, which is why they've been lavishing so much attention on the transitional government.

Andrea Chalupa (13:56):

Wow. So new power dynamics are rising, but MBS being a murderous millennial and he has had some photo ops with Putin where they look like two dictator frat boys at a party. They seem very cozy and Saudi Arabia is the number one purchaser of American weapons and they seem like they're pretty happy Saudi Arabia and Russia living above the law and having Trump in their mutual pocket. Is that so?

Ahmed Gatnash (14:27):

I'm not sure what the link between the three of them is, whether there's some kind of chat group with Trump and Putin and MBS all together in it.

Andrea Chalupa (14:35):

Probably.

Ahmed Gatnash (14:37):

I mean, they might be trying to play each other off against each other. That's also a possibility. I think the Gulf monarchies around 2020 really seem to be trying to hedge their bets and have alternatives available in case the US did do what it sounding like it wanted to do and pull out of the region entirely. They were thinking, hang on, who's going to continue to guarantee our rain? Who's going to continue to provide us with weapons and intelligence and tools for digital warfare? And that was a lot of the impetus behind the Abraham Accords that if the US left, Israel would still be able to play that role. It was the impetus behind cozying up to China behind relationships with Russia. It looks like now they're less afraid of that scenario, but it's probably still in the calculations in the long term.

Andrea Chalupa (15:28):

And in terms of the money being made out there by the Trump clan, what do these dictators expect in return?

Ahmed Gatnash (15:38):

I think the big win that they seem to have been trying to get over the last couple of months is this sanction removal on Syria. And it looks like everyone wants to be the person who can tell Syria, I did this for you. I got the sanctions removed for you, whether that's Qatar, whether that's the UAE or Saudi Arabia, everyone's sensing an opportunity that there's this new government emerging, a new nation and its path hasn't really been entrenched yet. It's kind of there for the taking. I think the Syrians have been pretty smart so far in that they haven't committed to a side. They've been trying to keep their promises vague, be friendly to everyone, and just secure the help they need in order to emerge out of the humanitarian catastrophe they've had after 15 years of brutal war by Assad against his people.

Andrea Chalupa (16:33):

Yeah, it was Assad family sadism for 50 years. The gulags that were uncovered, I believe some were engineered with the help of a former Nazi who assisted Assad's father on sadistic torture practices to build a terror regime and just the way bodies were full on pressed, like in a juice presser, just horrific, horrific, outdid the evil I've researched in chapters of Soviet history, and I just want to say also Syria being propped up by Russia. Russia finally got a massive military base on the Mediterranean from which it was able to wage war deeper across the African continent. And then it got booted out. They got booted out by the Syrian liberation. And so the Russians are now out as a massive blow to them, like you pointed out. And then Iran too. Iran lost its network across Syria, and that also impacted their stronghold on Lebanon and Iran and Russia, they are united. So Russia needs Iran's help to wage war on Ukrainian civilians. Those are Iran made Shahed drones that are terrorizing people across Ukraine, not letting them sleep. And Terrell Starr, who's been on this podcast quite a bit, he's talked about how scary they sound, so fuck Russia and Iran. So tell us about where Iran falls into this, how these Arab dictators that Trump is cozy with and doing business with, how they want to put the squeeze on Iran and why.

Ahmed Gatnash (18:10):

So MBS backed off from where he was a few years ago, which was having a really belligerent stance towards Iran, openly encouraging US militarism. And he seems to have now reconciled himself with some kind of uneasy coexistence and the idea that that doesn't have to be war. That's probably down to his just seeing the range of their missiles and realizing they might be destroyed, but our oil industry would go up in flames with them and therefore maybe best not to encourage a war right on our border. But I think you summarized it really well. Iran don't have very much going for them at the moment. They've been cut off from their proxies in Lebanon. There's very little of lost for them across most of the Middle East. They squandered all of their previous goodwill, basically slaughtering Syrian civilians. And now all of the rhetoric about defending Palestine liberating Palestine just doesn't wash anymore because when it came to it, they prioritized killing Syrian civilians over defending Palestinians.

Andrea Chalupa (19:12):

So they're a pariah state among their neighbors?

Ahmed Gatnash (19:16):

Yeah, effectively.

Andrea Chalupa (19:17):

And that brings their neighbors in closer alignment with the United States under Trump or Biden under Trump or Democrat?

Ahmed Gatnash (19:24):

Yeah, alignment. But I'd say the alignment is accidental. It's no longer the case that these guys are just doing what the US tells them, like they used to. They have now realized that they need to forge their own path because the US isn't going to be there for them forever, and they are happy to collaborate when it's in their mutual interests and when it's not, they won't do that. An example of that is the attempt to get Gazan civilians, 2 million Gazans resettled in regional countries, and everybody basically shut down the conversation immediately when the US State Department was going around asking people if they'd accept Gazan civilians. They will go a certain distance for the US, but they're not going to completely destabilize themselves and outrage their own populations. Basically do something that would be self-destruction.

Andrea Chalupa (20:19):

Accepting all those Gazan civilians?

Ahmed Gatnash (20:22):

Yeah, they would basically. So for example, Egypt has very young, very pro-Palestinian population who have had a lot of the will to resist beaten out of them, but you'd be accepting Palestinians who are, their existence is politicized. They can't be apolitical who have that history of political organizing and the idea of resistance embedded into them and importing that would be incredibly dangerous.

Andrea Chalupa (20:55):

Yeah, absolutely. But they have to go somewhere though. But at the same time, let's talk about Palestine. So in terms of the crisis in Gaza, so Netanyahu, indicted, corrupt, deeply corrupt, we had Alexis Bloom and Alex Gibney, the filmmakers behind The BB Files, which was made by leaked prosecutor footage out of Israel of these damning interviews with Netanyahu and his wife Sarah. What monsters they are, all the corruption that they built up around themselves to enrich themselves in their own political survival. Netanyahu needs a forever war to stay in power. And as a result, you had the largest protests growing across Israel, and he's just clinging to this forever war and surrounding himself with known terrorists to stay in power. So what is the strategy do you see across these power brokers in the Middle East to try to force the US under Trump? Because the ceasefires are just ignored. Netanyahu, shameless like Trump, he's and Putin, he's just going to ignore these cease fires. He doesn't care. So what is the strategy then to get Netanyahu out? Do you see any sort of power broken or chances for that?

Ahmed Gatnash (22:09):

I actually think it's really dangerous to personalize the war to Netanyahu. It is true that he is personally pursued this and needs a forever war in order to stay in power, but he has many coalition partners who have all been as extreme as him, if not more. They've all been explicit about the strategy, which is yes, we're doing ethnic cleansing, yes, we need to get rid of all the Gazans and make Gaza rubble, make it empty, and then we can move on to the West Bank and do the same thing. And I think, well, no, I think the opinion polling is pretty clear. The idea of ethnic cleansing is not fringe or unpopular in Israeli society today. It's a very radicalized society. That's the only way you can elect these right-wing populist parties en mass. And I think if Netanyahu did go away tomorrow, maybe there would be a pause, maybe there would be some kind of deescalation, but it wouldn't be a permanent end to the genocide.

(23:05):

Part of that is down to the demographics of Israel, that it is becoming more right wing, it is becoming more religious nationalist, and it's drifting away from many of those commonalities that it used to share with Western Europe and the US. I think a lot of Western European governments haven't realized that yet. But this isn't the same Israel, which is basically led by the descendants of emigres from the west. It's now something totally new and it doesn't really care what the rest of the world thinks of it so much anymore, and it doesn't really have the patience, to have these liberal values niceties. It's just going to get on with what it wants to do, which is ethnic cleansing.

Andrea Chalupa (23:53):

I'm going to say something, feel free to correct me. An analyst that worked in the Pentagon told me in 2016, I want to say it was that he's like, Israel's fucked, Israel fucked itself because the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which allowed under religious persecution reasons for a lot of Jews to leave the Soviet Union, the Kremlin being the Kremlin, made sure that a lot of their own agents came out in order to entrench themselves in countries like Israel, New York City, Brighton Beach area, Ottman, a Russian mafia. Experts been on the show talking about this. Her family came over on this amendment. And so Israel as a result, has become increasingly entrenched with Russian mafia interests. Netanyahu when he was running for office, had a giant billboard across the entire side of a building of him just shaking hands with Putin. One American developer who's Jewish American and has family ties to Poland, made a ton of money in Russia in the 1990s because money was just coming out of the faucets.

(24:58):

You had this new age of oligarchs and they were just building, building, building. And so this American developer that went over and was grabbing all this easy cash like Trump did with building those relationships, the Russians that were buying apartments abroad and New York and Florida, so this developer that worked in Russia in the nineties, he was like, yeah, when I'd work on all these big oligarch projects, they'd tell me to wire the money to Israel. So I wonder in your view, do you think this Pentagon analyst is right? The reason why contributing to why Israel has taken such a far right sharp turn is because it has this criminal element that is aligned with very much so Russia, and you have Russians and Ukrainians who are fighting in this war committing war crimes for Israel. And I'm not saying that's the only reason, because also Netanyahu is a certain personality. If you listen to our interview on the BB files, they talk about his very unique personality and history is driven by personality. But I wonder if it's true if Israel really fucked itself by accepting these Russian Soviet Trojan horses that were full of criminals from the Kremlin.

Ahmed Gatnash (26:06):

That's really fascinating, but I'm afraid I don't know that much about it. What I do know is that the Israeli economy has also been fucked by this 18 months of genocide. A lot of the people who have been driving the economy, the highly educated, the entrepreneurial, et cetera, have left the country either because they don't want to be part of it or because it's just bad for business and gone over to the US. So the Israeli economy is a lot less dynamic than it used to be, and obviously a lot less prosperous. And that opens up all kinds of opportunities for organized crime to become more deeply entrenched. And you also have a vicious where when the economy gets bad, the state is basically more empowered. You have more of the economy driven by the state and the people who control the institutions of the state because at the same time, you have as part of what Netanyahu has been doing over the last decade, eroding the independence of the Supreme Court and other institutions so that the Israeli state can be more subject to individual control. And that's probably a dynamic that's going to continue to develop. It's really ironic that they successive Israeli governments have wanted nothing more than to just be accepted in the region, and now they are integrating really well into the regional ordership of dictatorship and kleptocracy.

Andrea Chalupa (27:28):

Oh my gosh, the irony. There's so much to break down just in that statement alone. So do you see any chance, I know the two state solutions sounds like so Pollyanna-ish at this point in time, but what is the hope to end these cycles of violence and trauma for Palestinians and Israelis too? They just want to live their lives and do you see any chance, any snowflake in hell chance for a two state solution to be established at all?

Ahmed Gatnash (27:57):

This is definitely a question for my friend and colleague [?] I who I know you've had on the show before, but I do really think that it's time for us, it's time for any person with any kind of conscience or shame to stop pretending that there is any such thing as a two-state solution or there ever has been. It's completely dead and buried. There was not only never any intent for it on the Israeli side, but now it's physically not possible anymore, and you also create the solutions that you advocate even if they aren't ultimately implemented. It's the assumptions behind them that often normalize their embedded values. So the idea behind a two-state solution was always that people don't integrate in this region. Every community, every ethnicity needs its own state, which is going to be a fortress. The forever going to be on guard against each other, and that's the Israeli vision, which ultimately came from the colonial era when the French and British mandates started carving up the region to give every minority its own state when they tried to create a Christian state as Lebanon splitting off from Syria, when they actually tried to create further statelets out of Syria in order to give them to other ethnic and religious minorities in order to have a region of disintegrated minorities with their knives at each other's throats, constantly living in fear and distrust, and it's not going to be doing that better that gets us to progress. It's going to be challenging the very assumption that we can't live together as equals in democratic nations where everyone's rights are protected.

(29:36):

So I'd say the two state solution is dead. If it's not delusion, then it's actually malicious because it's trying to persuade people of something that can never be. And we need to openly advocate for what we believe in, which is that we have equality, religious, ethnic, all forms of equality in the region, one person, one vote reparations for the tragic crimes that have happened for 75 years and more, and a new political order.

Andrea Chalupa (30:06):

What would that new political order be?

Ahmed Gatnash (30:09):

I think it's too early to tell, but we'd have to start working on the implementation of these values. We'd have to start working on implementing equal rights of all forms for Palestinians, political rights, economic rights, social rights, the right of return for refugees, dismantling the infrastructure of apartheid that forces them to live lives as second class citizens in Israel and third class citizens in the Palestinian Territories, and see what kind of new political structures can emerge from that, because we're not going to get any positive structures emerging from assumptions which are deeply racist.

Andrea Chalupa (30:49):

I know we're dealing with these very cynical self-serving dictatorships across the region, but is there any power broker there that comes across as having the best sort of advocacy for getting us onto a path of something then the status quo for Israel and Palestinians?

Ahmed Gatnash (31:09):

I hear a lot of great stuff from the grassroots, grassroots Israelis and Palestinians. There are people who believe in coexistence, who are carrying out projects on the ground in collaboration with each other. Sadly, I only heard about a lot of the stories after October 7th because some of the victims were Israelis who had dedicated their lives to helping Palestinians to overcome the apartheid system, helping smuggle people across the checkpoints in order to get medical treatment, for example, things like that. I don't see any of this energy in the political system on either side unfortunately, but I do see it on the ground and I think all we can do is empower civil society to the greatest extent possible, and also press our own government to empower civil society and be less pathetically apologetic about it because they really tiptoe around upsetting the Israeli government when democratic governments actually have a massive amount of leverage that they can apply but are too afraid to.

Andrea Chalupa (32:14):

Why do you think they're too afraid?

Ahmed Gatnash (32:15):

I think they've just partially accepted certain ideas that either doing something is antisemitic or that the risk of being called antisemitic by bad actors is just too scary and too damaging. And from what I see in my everyday life is that people aren't buying these lines anymore. People are very outraged and upset and frustrated and disgusted by the genocide that's taking place. And there's a gaping chasm between public opinion and the political ofOvertonan Window where you see even nominally left wing governments like in the UK, the labor government who are just completely complicit with genocide and aparthied instead of taking anything beyond the most trivial of symbolic actions to not even condemn Israel, just to kind of nominally say we don't like it. We don't like what's happening.

Andrea Chalupa (33:16):

That just seems like low hanging fruit.

Ahmed Gatnash (33:18):

Yeah, the trade deals between the EU and European states and Israel are massive for the Israeli economy. It's a very one-sided power balance, and there could be really easy concessions extracted, but the reason it's been able to get this far is because Netanyahu and the rest of his government very correctly calculated that they would not sustain any kind of loss from proceeding down the path of genocide -- and they haven't.

Andrea Chalupa (33:49):

I want to ask about any, I know that things are very grim right now for the world. Much of your work involves creative approaches to human rights. What are some examples of unconventional methods that you've seen have real impact?

Ahmed Gatnash (34:04):

One of the projects we've been working on for the last couple of years is training civil society in the region to use Bitcoin.

Andrea Chalupa (34:11):

Really?

Ahmed Gatnash (34:12):

Yeah. So one of the biggest barriers which we've discovered ourselves, activists even outside the region who work in the region inevitably come across is the amount of financial censorship that happens. Like a few years ago, the common knowledge was if you even try to send humanitarian aid to Syria, if you put Syria in a note field of a financial transaction, the transaction will bounce. Your account will probably be frozen, and you'll be drawn in anti-terrorism paperwork to verify that you're not supporting ISIS with your $10 donation to a registered charity working in Syria. So there's Western financial sanctions, there's also dysfunctional banking systems inside the region, and then there's also the fact that regional banks are directly controlled by governments who have an open window into what's happening in the financial system, who's funding who. So as a Saudi individual, for example, if you try to donate money to a civil society organization, the government sees that directly and immediately, if you're stupid enough to try that, you can expect a knock on a door in the middle of the night or maybe you won't even get a knock on the door.

(35:24):

They just break it down. I've been told by people in the Gulf that even trying to fund western NGOs, the transactions bounce immediately. So there's basically an infrastructure of financial control. You operate in cash. Most of the region has laws against accepting foreign funding, so you can't receive grants if you're doing civil society work at scale, and this is such a massive limiter on the capacity of people doing good work to actually do that good work. And we realize Bitcoin advocates claim that this is censorship resistant, anonymous privacy-preserving technology. Why aren't we using that? It sounds like exactly what we need to empower human rights. So we started to experiment with it. It worked great for us, and we started to work with other organizations in the region, and yeah, we've had success. We've been able to help people receive grants from European funders and bring them into the region privately and anonymously and be able to pay their staff be able to do their work well, that's investigative journalism or supporting political prisoners, funding court cases, et cetera.

Andrea Chalupa (36:33):

Wow, okay. So Bitcoin, there's still a debate in the US because we're told in our media it's a war against the US dollar. It's a war on financial regulations. It empowers a lot of criminals and plus Trump and Musk and their entire clown car of fascists or all on the Bitcoin meme coin bandwagon. So it's just seen as corruption, cesspool central, but it's true. It makes perfect sense that for all the reasons you just listed, why activists can get in on the action in order to circumvent all of those headaches that you listed, including protection. The other concern is that, and there's a famous story in Wales of a guy who lost his Bitcoin on a hard drive that's now at the bottom of some trash heap, and he's begging the county to let him go in there because it's appreciated to over a million dollars. And county's like, no.

Ahmed Gatnash (37:29):

Oh, it's something like $800 million now I think.

Andrea Chalupa (37:32):

Oh my gosh, are you serious? I don't know why he just doesn't put on a scuba suit and just go down there. But there's also this big story in New York City where some guy was held up and tortured for a long time, weeks, maybe days, but in the West Village by these partners of his trying to get his Bitcoin password. So there's a lot of things that freak me out about Bitcoin and just the responsibility one has to carry it physically on you. I lose my keys and sunglasses. Bitcoin is absolutely not for me. So what are your thoughts on that?

Ahmed Gatnash (38:10):

I mean, I'm not going to deny that the cryptocurrency world is a cesspool of corruption and fraud because it absolutely is where just like tools are generally value neutral, a knife can be used to cook a really delicious meal or it can be used to attack someone. And we're trying to put this really fascinating and incredible tool to good use. There's also been a spate of kidnappings and attempted kidnappings in Europe recently trying to torture well-known either cryptocurrency influencers or executives of crypto companies to get their private keys to access their wallets. So although this tool enables new capabilities, it also opens up new risk vectors, and what I tell people is that you have to really know what you're doing. If you are in this to make a difference, there really isn't that much scope to do that whilst being amateur. And I don't mean amateur as in not funded or part-time.

(39:10):

What I mean is not taking your work seriously. And if you're going to use Bitcoin in an amateurish way, it's actually not that private. It can be very easily tracked because the blockchain is public, the ledger is completely transparent for you to be able to track transactions and de-anonymize them. And if you try and use it in that way, you might even make yourself even more unsafe because governments can see that entirely publicly, internationally. If you take the time to really do your diligence and understand what you're doing and figure out the right tools to use and how to use them, then you can make yourself really safe and enable yourself to do things that you wouldn't otherwise be able to do. You can bring money into really oppressive societies, completely undetected. You can pay your colleagues safely. You can accept funding, you can send money internationally. You can even just save on the massive burden that banking paperwork imposes on us these days, and that is really a force multiplier for civil society.

Andrea Chalupa (40:14):

Your book, the Middle East Crisis Factory lays out a bleak cycle tyranny, terrorism for an intervention. What do you believe is the most understood element of this cycle?

Ahmed Gatnash (40:27):

I think this cycle has been around enough times that we've seen all three points repeatedly, but what people continue to ignore is what's in the middle of the cycle, like getting crushed more and more every time the cycle tightens, which is civil society, and people continue to neglect what civil society is capable of doing if it's just given the oxygen to be able to operate. That was the case in Syria. It's really, really inspiring what Syrian activists and groups managed to do over the 14 years of brutal civil war. They set up entire infrastructures to be able to take care of their own societies, to provide aid, to dig people out of the rubble, to provide local services in the liberated areas. This is the case in Palestine where you see the kind of work being done by grassroots Palestinian activists. It's the case across the region and there's this bigotry of low expectations that these are our governing systems because this is what we've created and this is what we deserve, and any opportunity we get, we'll just end up doing the same thing again when actually most of these societies have never even been given an opportunity to have any other way.

(41:45):

So that's why we have such massive hope in what's happening in Syria at the moment. I know that the government has been born by HDS, which is a former militant group, but there are actually many different sectors of civil society involved from across Syria and the diaspora, and they're doing really incredible work to build the basis of a sustainable future for the country. We're actually just praying that they managed to make it through, and Israel doesn't declare war on them as well. It's looked like a few times.

Andrea Chalupa (42:18):

Why would Israel do that? I mean, I know we talked about the far right element. I know Syria's a long time enemy of Israel historically, admittedly they their wars, but what is in it for Israel to do that when Syria needs all of the help it can get to finally get on a track to healing?

Ahmed Gatnash (42:36):

I think at the root of it, dictatorships are predictable and democracies often are not. And as much Assad was a vocal opponent of Israel throughout his reign, it was entirely that -- vocal. There was never any action on the ground. It was entirely stable and predictable. They trusted him not to actually attack them or to harm their interests in any way. And they, I think, would like to keep it that way in the same way as the UAE and Saudi Arabia would prefer Arab dictatorships to Arab democracies. And they actually don't want a successful, vibrant, peaceful Arab democracy to emerge because that would give their own populations ideas of what's possible, what Syria could...

Andrea Chalupa (43:23):

There's so many different factions in Syrian society. So if Syria becomes a successful multicultural democracy, which is sort of the aspect,

Ahmed Gatnash (43:31):

It basically gets rid of that narrative that Arabs can't build successful multicultural democracy and that we're only at home having sectarian civil wars with each other. If Syrians can get the Sunni Muslims and the Alawites and the Jewish population and the Druze and the

Andrea Chalupa (43:48):

Christians

Ahmed Gatnash (43:49):

Exactly, just have a vibrant, multicultural democracy to be living in peace and to be conducting their own business without randomly declaring war on their neighbors every few years, then it shows that actually all of those narratives are bullshit. And the Palestinians would probably be the same like everyone's been telling you for the past 75 years, and actually the justification that Israel has been using that they wouldn't be safe and they can never take the boot off the neck of the Palestinians becomes transparently bullshit for the entire world to see.

Andrea Chalupa (44:21):

What would you say though about Hamas and Hamas' determination funded by Iran, funded by Qatar to empower that terrorism that does threaten Israel because Qatar has its own complications. Obviously there was a crisis that went on for many years where it was sanctioned by many of its neighbors and store shelves were emptying. So could you speak a little bit about the Hamas element, the influence that it has on the crisis with Israel and Palestine and also Qatar? That's a very big question, but if you could just speak to those dynamics,

Ahmed Gatnash (44:56):

I dunno if you've caught this, but in recent days there have been leaks that the proposals from the Hamas side for the end of this conflict with Israel have all included Hamas giving up authority over Gaza. And every single counter proposal from Israel has removed that. So it is very clear that they don't want that to go away because Haass being there provides them with the justification to continue in the same way that the continued presence of the hostages provides justification for the conflict to continue. But what people normally say is that Palestinians elected Hamas and therefore that's where their sympathies lie. There was a single election held so many years ago that most of the population of Gaza wasn't even alive at the time, wasn't even born yet, and they were never allowed to have another election. So they were never allowed to remove them as happens in a democracy. And the Palestinian political system has for decades been premised on keeping the same actors, entrenched corrupt kleptocrats, who are basically milking the Palestinian cause for all it's worth and enabling them to continue repressing civil society so that no alternative can emerge to continue ruthlessly eliminating dissent. And then people wonder, why are Palestinians not showing that they don't want this? Why are they not showing that they want to coexist, et cetera.

Andrea Chalupa (46:23):

So basically the ruling far right coalition of Israel needs to maintain an enemy because if there's any chance for peace and coexistent, that means Palestinians living among them equally with equal laws, equal rights, equal access.

Ahmed Gatnash (46:37):

They need to have a bad guy. If that bad guy's at risk of going away, they need to make sure the bad guy doesn't go away.

Andrea Chalupa (46:44):

It just seems like there's nothing in... It just feels very hopeless, doesn't it? I'm point out the obvious, but it just needs to be said. It just feels very hopeless under the current ruling coalition and the people that elect them.

Ahmed Gatnash (46:59):

And I think the Palestinian people have done so much. They've done massive amounts over the past decades. Right now they're focused on just being able to survive and it's on us in the rest of the world, especially in prosperous, powerful democratic governments to pressure our own governments because that's where all the leverage is at the moment.

Andrea Chalupa (47:19):

But if you do that in the US today, you lose your visa if you're a foreign student or you get interrogated at a checkpoint going in and out of country or they just after you for all sorts of things. And during the 2024 election, we were saying to voters we're like, we know Biden sucks. He sucks on Ukraine too. There's a reason why Ukraine's audacious operation Spiderweb began over 18 months ago under Biden, there's a, and Jake Sullivan is National Security Advisor. There's a reason why Ukraine had to do what it did during that time because their aid that they were promised paid off by Congress was being dragged out by the Biden administration. So we understood, we're like, we're not asking you to vote for Kamala Harris. She's the greatest thing ever. We're just saying we're going to have an easier time organizing to end the genocide to force accountability if we don't have a Trump government that's going to arrest everybody. And now you just don't have the same robust level of protest for Palestine under this administration. And there's a reason for that.

Ahmed Gatnash (48:24):

And why I tell people is that if you're only going to vote every time the national election comes around, then you may as well not bother because by then you are already picking between two completely awful choices. If you really want to make a change, you need to get involved at a much earlier level in the political process. You need to be involved in the primaries, you need to be involved in your local party. You need to, for example, if you care about the Middle East, you need to make sure that someone like Brett McGirk or Jake Sullivan can never have a career in this field ever again.

Andrea Chalupa (48:54):

I would say that goes for Ukraine too.

Ahmed Gatnash (48:58):

And it also goes for people who have domestic concerns. It's not just a foreign policy matter. It's making sure that the stale, corrupt, and completely failed consensus, which has governed the political system for decades is shown the door because the people who are in charge at the moment are so lacking in any ounce of creativity to be able to envision new solutions to the crises that we have in the 21st century. We can't just keep rehashing the same old half solutions again and again and again and fighting ourselves on TV talk shows with these stale talking points and one liners and then ultimately changing nothing.

Andrea Chalupa (49:38):

When you look around and you talk to civil society organizers on the ground and some of these brutal dictatorships, what if anything, is giving you hope right now?

Ahmed Gatnash (49:47):

Really it's the fact that they continue to exist against all odds against their own governments and a world system which hates them and would find it so convenient that they stopped existing. And yet they continue to exist and they continue to advocate for justice inequality, not just in their own societies but globally. And the conversation that we've just had I think reminds me that all of these struggles are interconnected. There's a reason that Trump was elected in the first place, his first term, and a lot of that was related to the Middle East. It was like, if I go back, it was about Obama refusing to hold the red line about the use of chemical weapons and these massive massacres creating waves of hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing to Europe, of course, part of Putin's plan, which is why he was providing the aircraft and the weaponry for that. These massive waves of refugees then led to a resurgent far right amid all of these fears about great replacement and stuff like that, which led to the far right being empowered and Trump being elected in the first place. And the solutions that we continue to try and implement are looking out of your window and realizing that your neighbor's apartment is on fire or the apartment below you is on fire and going, oh, he'll deal with it. It's fine. It's not my problem.

Andrea Chalupa (51:18):

Thank you so much for pointing all of that out because we've talked about that on Gaslit Nation for years. We launched the show with Obama focused a lot on domestic policy, but missed the fact that domestic policy is foreign policy and foreign policy is domestic policy, and he did create this vacuum of power that Putin filled, and there's this brilliant documentary, I don't know if you've had a chance to see it, it's called the Final Year. It's following around Obama's foreign policy team, Secretary of State John Kerry, Samantha Power and Ben Rhodes, and it's just so chilling to watch because you see these Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts just floating around the world stage talking a good game about democracy and values, and meanwhile you see this shadow of their own sort of sticking their heads in the sand and the shadow of their own naivete and on election night like a horror movie.

(52:20):

It's all summed up beautifully by Ben Rhodes, Obama speech writer, saying, damn, I guess we underestimated Russia. Yes, you did. And so many American Syrian activists and American Ukrainian activists were screaming this at you for years under great personal stress and putting a target on their own heads. I had Kremlin folks in the audience for my talks for years during this period because no one else was really saying this as stridently, and so the Kremlin had no one else to go after, but activists like me at this time, and now the Kremlin has, it is very busy with everybody, but yeah, thank you so much for saying that. I think it was Hayes Brown who wrote a brilliant piece. He's a black journalist that wrote a piece shortly when Trump comes to p1ower, and that article is something titled like Obama hacked his own legacy and making these exact same points, and it's just sort of, you can't turn your back on these massively bad faith actors. You have to show strength and you have to really live by your values and you have to always prioritize the people, not the power brokers, the people, the civil society, because if you invest in and strengthen the civil society, that's really where our security as a world lies.

Ahmed Gatnash (53:37):

Yeah, I don't really put it in such kind of hippie terms, but like you reap the energy that you put out into the world

Andrea Chalupa (53:45):

That's very hippie.

Ahmed Gatnash (53:45):

All of your…

Andrea Chalupa (53:46):

I'm from Northern California. I know it when I see it, but go ahead.

Ahmed Gatnash (53:49):

If you spend all of your time putting out or projecting values that only elites matter, that ordinary people don't matter, and everything of consequence is agreed between political leaders and civil society is at best in nuisance, then ultimately those are the kinds of values that are going to be normalized in your own society because of how interconnected the world is these days. That's ultimately exactly what's happened in the US.

Andrea Chalupa (54:16):

Our discussion continues, and you can get access to that by signing up at the Truth Teller level or higher on Patreon. Discounted annual memberships are available, and you can also give the gift of membership all summer long.

(54:29):

Gaslit Nation created with Love and Anger has been presenting a special series featuring leading experts on how to smash the patriarchy and the oligarchy to make the world safer for everyone. Trump didn't happen overnight. Let's plant Seeds of Hope together for the hottest of hot takes. Join the conversation at the Gaslit Nation salons every Monday at 4:00 PM Eastern. I'll be there with our global community of listeners, come for deep dives into the news. Learn from fellow listeners and share what's happening in your corner of the world. Can't make it live. Recordings of our Monday salons are available on Patreon, along with our monthly Gaslit Nation book Club.

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(55:33):

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(55:57):

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(56:31):

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Andrea Chalupa