Background Briefing

Background Briefing: October 17, 2024

We begin with the killing of Yahya Sinwar the Hamas leader behind the October 7 attack on Israel in which 1,200 mostly civilians died that led to the current war on Gaza which has now expanded into Lebanon. Joining us to discuss whether this now removed obstacle to peace Sinwar, (along with Netanyahu), will lead to a ceasefire and the release of hostages as well as the burning alive of a promising young Palestinian seen on video around the world is Dov Waxman, Professor and The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Chair in Israel Studies at University of California Los Angeles, where he also directs the UCLA Y&S Nazarian Center for Israel Studies. He has also been a visiting fellow at Tel Aviv University, Bar-Ilan University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Oxford University, and is the author of The Pursuit of Peace and The Crisis of Israeli Identity: Defending / Defining the Nation, Israel’s Palestinians: The Conflict Within, Trouble in the Tribe: The American Jewish Conflict over Israel, and most recently, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know.

Then we examine the billionaire tech bros stalking horse for the presidency, JD Vance, and the blatant attempt underway by plutocrats to buy the next Trump presidency (however short it may be) is Jacob Silverman, a contributing writer for The New Republic and a contributing editor for The Baffler, covering tech and national security. He is the author of Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection, and most recently, Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud, an instant New York Times bestseller co-authored with Ben MacKenzie. His forthcoming book is Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley. He also blogs at jacobsilverman.com and we discuss his article at The New Republic, “Silicon Valley’s Selfish Embrace of Trump.”

Then finally we look into the Goebbels-like nature of the Trump/Vance campaign of lies, about which Hannah Arendt prophetically warned: “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer…..And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.” Joining us is Mike Lofgren, who has spent twenty-eight years working in Congress, the last sixteen as a senior analyst on the House and Senate Budget committees. He is the author of the New York Times Bestseller, The Party Is Over: How Republicans Went Crazy, Democrats Became Useless and the Middle Class Got Shafted and we discuss his article at Common Dreams, “If JD Vance is Wealthy, Why Did He Let His Own Mother Scrape by on Medicaid? A sordid tale of Republican political and religious hypocrisy.”