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Mac :
A Solution for the Israeli Hamas Conflict with Hesha Abrams, that is our topic for today.
 
Intro :
Welcome to the Lawyers and Mediators International Show and Podcast, where we discuss law and conflict resolution topics to educate both professionals and everyday people. Catch regular episodes on YouTube and anywhere you get your podcasts. Just remember, nothing in these episodes constitutes legal advice, so be sure to talk to a lawyer as cases are fact dependent.

Mac :
Hey everyone, this is attorney Mac Pierre-Louis. I’m a lawyer, mediator and arbitrator working throughout Florida and Texas. And today I have a special guest, Hesha Abrams, and she is going to talk to us about a big big topic that’s in the news today. And that is the conflict that’s going on over in Israel between Israel and Hamas. So Hesha welcome.

Hesha :
Hello.

Mac :
Hesha. Look, a lot of people know you, so you have a big following. And for the people who don’t know you, let me just quickly explain that Hesha is the speaker on this topic because she is world famous for being an individual who can address conflict and the roots of it and offer solutions that can actually fix problems. So Hesha, I first, I guess, met you, I didn’t meet you personally, but I got a chance to see you talk live last April at the Texas Association of Mediators Annual conference in San Antonio, Texas. And so you’re one of the speakers there and we got a standing ovation when you finish talking; that was about your book Holding the Calm. And I want to screenshare a little bit, that’s the book Holding the Calm where you address, and you give a toolbox for how to deal with conflict and getting to the root of tension and how to defuse them. So of course you are international speaker, I believe I heard you have given at least 10,000 speeches, which in my life I think I’ve given 5. And so I want to get there one day. So of course you’re a lawyer. I know a little bit about your bio from your own mouth, you know, in the in your audiobook because I was listening to your audiobook and you’ve been doing this as a mediator for, what, almost 3 decades, so therefore, you’ve done it all alright and you’re one of those people that I want to be like one day when I grow up. And so I appreciate, you know, the work that you’ve produced in this industry of conflict resolution. And so we’ll get to the book later, but wanted to just give you a quick opportunity to share a little bit, you know, about yourself, maybe something that people out there might not know about you.

Hesha:
Well, I’m a Star Trek fan. For all my all my Star Trek geeks out there, we want warp drive and replicators and transporters. And the thing I love about Star Trek is they’re always mediating intergalactic disputes among different kinds of people, and good always wins in the end.

Mac :
Yes awesome, actually I did catch the quote you attributed to Jean Luc Picard in your audiobook. And so, yes, I think that was maybe Chapter 7, Part 2. So yeah, I was listening. Yeah, i love sci-fi as well not so much of a Star Trek fan, but awesome.

Mac :
So kind of turning over to the serious topic. As everyone knows, the events of last Saturday took the Ukraine-Russia conflict off the radar so quickly. And now we’re talking about a second international conflict that has the attention of all world powers and everyone’s attention has been glued to the TV screens and to the news to find out what’s going on, is this going to escalate?

Mac :
How it impacted me. Just personally, I don’t want to don’t talk too much about my thoughts, I want to get to your thoughts. But what I witnessed last Saturday, which I think most people on the planet witness, sometimes in real time, was people flying into a concert, the Supernova concert in Israel, massacring crowds of civilians. Now that was one part of it, there were so many more atrocities that occurred, but that one part stuck in my mind because those were young people going to a concert to have a good time, but they were being shot to death point blank in many instances. And then when they’re trying to escape, they were being mowed down. And so I got to call this for what it is–it’s evil and it’s wrong. Ok, it doesn’t matter what else has happened. Something like that cannot be tolerated, it has to be dealt with. Ok, and so in the aftermath of dealing with this, you know what we saw, the declaration of war by Israel, and we then saw politicians chime in, and the news media chime in, and people were having their opinions. What I started noticing was this moral equivalency that was starting to be permeating throughout.

Hesha :
It is neither moral nor equivalent.

Mac :
Exactly, the moral equivalency, meaning, well, civilians were being massacred to death, and it’s almost the same kind of thing as civilians being killed in the crossfire because of how Israel is responding. And so there is a time where we have to address, we have a talk about the cycle of violence, we have to address, you know, the killing of people, innocent people around the world. But there’s also a time where we have to reflect about something that’s happened, and call it for what it is and that is, it’s evil. Something like that happened and it’s evil and it’s wrong. And people need to say that. And what I discovered is that there are people out there who won’t say that. Ok, they won’t take a stand against that because it’s, you know, maybe the fear of what people will think about them, or not want to take a side, and I get all that. It’s just that on a massacre of babies, on shooting people down at a concert, it needs to be called for what it is and I think only when we start to identify the truth and speak the truth first, then we can actually have dialogue that can potentially resolve and address this underlying root issue that’s blown up. Ok, this goes back decades i know I’m not trying to, you know, help resolve the whole thing totally but for my part, we have to talk about that and then say, Ok, what then do we do about the conflict? Ok, so wanted to give you the floor, I wanted to just open up with that and get your thoughts. And then the topic for the day, a Solution for the Israeli-Hamas conflict. What is the solution and what do you have to say about it?

Hesha :
Yes, we have a solution. Well, first of all, good for you, and for all the good people that have the courage to stand up against evil. And what people don’t realize is Hamas is a cancer that has infected not only Israel, but the Palestinian people. Good there are good Palestinians, my God, they have good jobs in Israel, they are treated well. There are Arabs in the Israeli Parliament. There are rights for women and people of all sexual persuasions in Israel. It doesn’t exist in Gaza. Hamas is a drug lord cartel that has taken over Gaza, that has harmed the Palestinian people and it literally is a virus, a cancer. And there’s no cure by let’s have win, win, problem solving, let’s talk about it. When that cancer is so bad, it needs to be eradicated. And that’s just the truth, you know, If something is that bad, the limb has to be amputated. But it’s a poison for the Palestinians, as well as the Israelis. So of course it’s going to escalate. There’s no choice as that cancer is running through the body. And when people don’t stand up for evil, then the evil will come for you. And that was the lesson of World War 2. The Nazis were vicious, evil. Hitler was vicious and evil, and it doesn’t matter the target, the initial target of evil. When evil erupts, it’s going to then come for you. And let me give everybody an analogy, has anyone ever heard of the Canary in the Coal Mine? Have you heard of that, Mac? Ok, so let me explain it to maybe some of our listeners that haven’t. It’s a true thing, and it’s pretty amazing. Miners have a lot of danger because a gas could escape and they can’t smell it and they can’t tell. And by the time they’re aware of it, either they’re passed out and they die and they can’t get out of the mine. So miners will bring a Canary in a cage deep into the mines with them, because the Canary is very susceptible to that gas. And if the Canary drops dead, they go– out of here, let’s go, let’s hightail it out of here. Well, when evil erupts, it doesn’t usually erupt in a huge way. It erupts in a target, and it goes for that target. And when the Canary starts to die, that evil is permeating over the whole world. And so if you look at even the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Russia took over the Crimea and the world didn’t do anything. So they got emboldened and then they took over Ukraine. And now I think they were very surprised that the world reacted like it reacted. But when you give evil a foothold, that’s what happens. And it’s just like in preventative medicine, if you’ve got a small little skin cancer, you cut it out. If it becomes big and all over the body, it’s much harder to be able to do it. And then just to be a little light, because this is such a heavy topic we’re talking about, I like to use that joking analogy of spaghetti sauce. Everybody has dropped spaghetti sauce on the counter, everybody. It’s wet you wipe it up with a sponge, it’s no big deal. You let it overnight, you’re scraping it off with a knife. You let it go three four months or three four years, and it’s old and mouldy and nasty. And that, my friends, is conflict. And so you have to nip things in the bud. And the problem that what happened here with Israel and Hamas is that Israel got complacent. Hamas was acting like nothing was wrong. And Israel wants peace so desperately, so badly. Half of the Israeli population would give the Palestinians a homeland. Half, literally that’s how important it is. All Israel said was we need some safety guarantees, that you’re not going to send suicide bombers in and send rockets in. And that’s all they were asking for. And Hamas in Gaza couldn’t do that. It was pledged for the annihilation and the massacre of Jews, not just Israelis, and the destruction. You can’t talk to people who choose to do something like that. That’s a cancer. And so, because it was quiet. And the desire for peace was so palatable and so strong, they allowed themselves to get complacent. And look what happened. Well, that complacency isn’t going to happen now. Now the cancer has to be eradicated, not just for Israel, but for the poor Palestinians as well. And the people that are doing this moral equivalency nonsense are blind. They don’t see that. And so getting rid of that. All of a sudden you can have a healing that can start to happen, but the cancers got to get eradicated. And I’m speaking firm and harsh, but anyone who’s had, God forbid, a cancer in their family, they know that that’s the case. And unfortunately, Hamas put themselves in that situation and by hiding missiles and, you know, armaments in schools and in hospitals and among civilians, they did that on purpose. They’re telling civilians, –Israel’s trying to get people to evacuate so they can go in and get rid of those tunnels. And Hamas is telling people to stay. Well, I feel badly for these people, but I feel badly for cancer victims. And it has to be done. It’s just time where we have to be grown up and mature and say you have to do what you have to do now what are we going to do 3 steps later? And how do we do that and that dovetails into a suggestion I have for a solution to this.

Mac :
Yes, so just some takeaways from what you’re saying. Appeasement doesn’t work still, right nothing’s changed since Chamberlain.

Hesha :
It never works, It never works.

Mac :
And so you have to address the issue. There’s a issue of conflict, people are in conflict. People are tribal, and so they go into their camps. But if one side does something that the other side accuses them as being wrong, we got to get to the table and discuss it, try to discuss it through words, because once bullets start flying and then people then look the other way and justify it.

Hesha :
Right.

Mac :
Then where does it stop?

Hesha :
It doesn’t. That was a lesson of World War 2; Neville Chamberlain was a nice, kind man in England. And when Hitler took over Poland, they honestly went, well, you know, let him have Poland.

Mac :
It’s not going to stop.

Hesha :
You can’t do that with drug Lords. You can’t do that with criminals. Like, we call them terrorists, but they’re thugs. They’re criminals. And I will tell you something else, I had a friend who was a psychologist who worked on death row with vicious, horrible, horrible men. Like, really terrible. And I asked him once, do you think evil exists, like from childhood, like, or is it just people that have been so traumatized that they’re bent and torn and then they turn evil? And he looked at me hard and he said I have seen pure evil. It’s not remediable. It’s not fixable. Whether someone turned it or they just were born with it, it’s not remediable. It has to be eradicated. And it chilled me. And we’re seeing that in the world now.

Mac :
Just real quick before you move on to a solution. In my political science days, I had studied about Hannah Arendt, someone I mentioned to you a few minutes ago, and she was the one who wrote about Adolph Eichmann in Israel, after he was captured and brought for trial. But she wrote a book, [A Report on the Banality of Evil]. So this, that word, the banality of evil, that when evil becomes acceptable or tolerated, when evil becomes something that is no more routine in every day, that’s when you see as historians, we look back, you know, seventy years ago and we think, we imagine a Stalin able to just check off whole towns on a list and just say, you know, kill, kill, kill, kill. And the henchmen, the people who actually go and do the killing, they are going to one, say they were just following orders and they didn’t do anything wrong because that’s just the system. And then Stalin is removed from the actual crime and so he’s just going to see it as well, it’s something we have to do. Where people and human lives become expendable. So that is the problem that will eventually inevitably creep up and then destroy us all, that. If we don’t stand up and say, look, we got to draw a line and say this is wrong. So anyway, that’s the thing that bothers me the most this whole past week about the equivalency thing. And you can protest and you can, you know, support people not being butchered on all sides. However, you cannot justify what one side did just because you know of key of buzzwords like decolonization or, you know, past racism. You can’t justify moral wrongs now based on wrongs in the past, and I’ve seen a lot of that.

Hesha :
Let’s just give people an example that’s more close to home. Let’s say that you have a teenager that’s a drug addict, and in order to continue the habit, they start stealing and doing all kinds of bad things. And eventually the family just says, like, we can’t deal with this and they do the tough love thing and they throw the kid out and the kid is angry and mad and upset. Is that kid allowed to go in and slaughter and kill the family? Rape and kill the children? Because he’s upset? That’s what’s happening in Israel right now. And so much of what’s going on with Hamas, it’s not happening in the West Bank. The West Bank has a decent government. They’re trying to actually govern. Hamas are thugs. And this is interesting, I just read yesterday that [Senator] Elizabeth Warren was able to trace a hundred and thirty seven million dollars of Cryptocurrency that was in Hamas accounts, because they were able to trace it over the last couple of months. They got a hundred and thirty seven million dollars. Did they build schools? Did they build hospitals? Did they try to improve their people’s lives? No, they chose to do this. And where did they buy all those weapons? They were going from Iran. And why did Iran do this? Because Israel and Saudi Arabia were very close to doing a peace deal, and Iran didn’t want that like anything. So what does a criminal do if they want to rob a bank? They set a fire at the house next door, so everybody is distracted and has to go over there. It’s classic criminal behavior. Everyone listening who has anyone in their family in law enforcement or in the military, this is classic criminal distraction behavior and that’s what they’ve done.

Hesha :
And that, my friends, can I segue into a potential in here?
 
Mac :
Absolutely and like this show is on conflict resolution so we’re always trying to offer suggestions and solutions, and most of the time we’re dealing with people in interpersonal conflict, maybe in a divorce or custody battle, but for now, we’re going to segue to a solution on a global scale, on an international level. So please, Hesha, what is the solution for this Israeli-Hamas conflict?

Hesha :
So the only–and the United States is trying, but the United States can’t do it alone–you know who’s the one person who could be the savior and the hero of this entire situation? The King of Saudi Arabia. The King has a close control over his government. So when you look a–the King of Jordan is a very good and honorable man, and he is trying to keep control over what’s happening in Jordan. He had some of his crazy young men try to go to the border and the King said go home. And people listened. But his situation’s a little more volatile. In Egypt, the situation’s a little bit more volatile. In some of the other Arab countries it’s more volatile. The King of Saudi Arabia has a stable country. That he is in charge of and he is a wise and progressive man, and he’s had a PR problem. He’s had some difficulty in the past, and he wants to be important and valued and a leader on the global stage. If the king of Saudi Arabia has the courage to say Hamas is a cancer, it must be eradicated. And I am going to make peace with Israel now. That would change the entire map of that area. He would immediately be catapulted onto the world stage and be embraced by all of the Western countries. The access for Saudi Arabia would be magnificent. Quite frankly, any past ills would be forgotten. And it would literally, the leadership that only he can provide would happen, and would happen with a stroke of a pen. That’s all he has to do and he is the one leader that can actually do this. That would make this conflict short and quick. It would frighten Hamas, it would frighten Iran, and it would take all the oxygen out of the room and it would just slowly die out. It would be magnificent show of leadership and I would be calling on the King to step into that role because only he can do it, and then the United States would support it. So with the rest of Western Europe, so would the rest of the Arab countries. He could unite not only the Arab world but the entire world around that. And Russia would shake in its boots a little bit, ’cause it would be a new world order that would come in if His Majesty would do this.

Mac :
Well, thank you so much for that. And I’ve just heard the suggestion within the last 40 minutes. So I was thinking about it as well as we were beginning the show about what could this mean? Something that came to my mind are well, would he do it? In your book, you talk about self-interest and how you have to look at things from people’s self-interest who are parties to a conflict. Now, he’s not necessarily a party to the conflict, but he’s at the table to have a voice. And so what is in it for him? Self interest, wise. And then what are his fears, why would he want to take that gamble? What do you think about that?

Hesha :
Well, the what’s in it for him is world stage leadership. He would catapult Saudi Arabia to the world stage, and him as leadership to the world stage, and erase all the sins of the past in one felt stroke. That’s pretty strong. So what’s the barrier is, well, he’s concerned about the same politics that people are concerned about now talking about this. But the Palestinians are small. It’s more of a small, aggravating voice. There’s no real power there. And they’ve been affected by cancer. And if he talks about cutting out that cancer and all of a sudden he starts supporting the government in the West Bank, he can start to bring civility and order into that situation. And who is the one barrier to him is Iran. Iran’s an enemy anyway, and Iran is a cancerous state anyway. Iran’s having its own revolts because their government is a cancer on their people as well. So interestingly, this might help form foment a revolt in Iran. How interesting would that be as a collateral benefit here? So this could be a magnificent opportunity for him. And all world leaders have to seize the stage. It’s not given to you. You have to be bold and courageous and have a vision to seize the stage. And the King is the only one who can really do it.

Mac :
Now I don’t know too much about the internal politics of Saudi Arabia to, I guess at the level of the sentiments of the people. But you know the name that just came to my mind a second ago was Anwar Sadat in Egypt. He paid with his life when he made a deal with Israel. And so are things–you said that Saudi Arabia is relatively, you know, stable Ok, when it comes to the King and having authority in his country. But is there any possibility that things could flare up that way in a negative way within his country that might cause him to not want to ever take this kind of risk?

Hesha :
You know, there’s always that fear, but that fear can easily be minimized. The problem with Anwar Sadat was that Egypt was a kind of quasi democracy. They had a Muslim Brotherhood brotherhood there that was very large and it was very chaotic. So there was much more risk to him to do that. And yet, even though he paid with his life, look what he did for Egypt. Egypt has progressed leaps and bounds because of that. I don’t think the King suffers that same risk because it’s not a democracy. He’s got tighter control. And so the risk is, I mean, there’s always that risk that a crazy person can, I mean, someone tried to shoot Ronald Reagan here, right so there’s always that potential risk for any leader, but the risk for him is the most minimal of anybody’s. So for him to take the risk is minor compared to the magnificent gain that he would achieve.

Mac :
So Hesha, you have a pretty big following around the world actually; what would your call be then for someone to call you and get you on a plane to Riyadh.

Hesha :
You know, my whole view of this is I don’t have an ego about this. I’m really a servant that I just want to try to help. And as a healer of human conflict, how can I try to make things better. If there’s some way that there is traction on this and it goes viral through whatever lines of back channel communication is possible, I know that Jared Kushner did a magnificent job on trying to get this treaty going, so I’m imagining he’s already having those conversations. If I can just add my voice as a member of the team to be of help and support in any way that I can, I would drop everything I’m doing and do it. But I don’t. I don’t have an ego and you know, it doesn’t have to be my idea or what I’m doing, I don’t care. When you’re trying to heal something, we all need to do it and somebody will have access to the King, and I think the King would be receptive to this, if he can hear it and look at the opportunity that is being presented to him that is unique and won’t come again. And opportunities for world leaders have to be seized.

Mac :
And so let’s segue now to something closer to home in a way that you can actually help on the ground right now. So tell us a little bit about the Shaldag Unit, hopefully I’m pronouncing it correctly, I’ll share my screen again. There is a page I have here called called American Friends of Libby (LIBI), I may be pronouncing it incorrectly, but the stage is yours tell us a little bit about the calls for donations to help get bulletproof vests for Israeli soldiers, specifically Shaldag unit. And you can learn more about it on Wikipedia. And this is to me, bulletproof vests are defensive in nature and so I have no problem recommending and encouraging people to donate to this, but tell us more about LIBI. .

Hesha :
And why we’re having to do it. So Israel has called up all the reserve units, 300,000 thousand of them. That is equivalent to the United States calling up 40 million people to serve in their armed forces. So this is people that serve their time and now are, you know, doctors and lawyers and truck drivers and restauranteurs and janitors are having to go back in. Well, Israel doesn’t have enough bulletproof vests for the reserves. You have it for your soldiers. And so this particular unit, my son’s friend’s brother, is in this unit so that’s why we know all about it. They were the first on the scene at the music festival where these people were raped, women were raped and then killed as the massacre happened; it was just beyond disgusting. They were first on the scene and a number of the unit were killed because they just show up with guns and they don’t have any bulletproof vests. So what we’re trying to do is we had a source in Greece that the bulletproof vests are a thousand dollars each. And so we’re trying to buy as many of them as we can and get them to Israel immediately. We’ve already raised about thirty thousand dollars. We’re trying to raise about a hundred and fifty thousand so we can buy literally, you know, what are we talking about you know, bulletproof vests for these people so that they can try to return the peace, return sanity, get rid of criminals. And that’s what we should be thinking, don’t call them terrorists, they’re criminals. They’re just absolute criminals. So if anyone is interested in donating, it’s in the show notes and the information about the unit is in the show notes and you know, God bless you for doing that. And our soldiers are just trying to do what they can to try to literally return us to the state of peace that Israelis so desperately want. If the Palestinians want to stay, you’ve got half of Israel and half of American Jews supporting that. I would support that, we all support that. But you can’t do it if you’re a criminal state. Can’t do it. And coming in with suicide bombers and raping and pillaging and beheading babies and burning people alive, it it’s just a level of evil that has to be eradicated. And if the Palestinians can show they can do that with hopefully the support of the King of Saudi Arabia, then let’s create a Palestinian state. No problem. But you got to get rid of that cancer first.

Mac :
So that website is Friendsoflibi.org. Libi is L-I-B-I, Friendsoflibi.org, people can go there and check it out. And So what do you say to the people out there who don’t want to see the onslaught of the human casualties that are going to rise, due to Israel’s response. The questions about justification, whether a military operation is justified. We’re going to be debating that all day. However, human life is sacred. Ok, I believe that, you believe that, and so we want to protect the innocent, people, children, Palestinian children who did nothing wrong in this, but who might get caught in the crossfire. So how do we address violence–some people will sometimes say the cycle of violence on both sides, and things like that, and this is where we start crossing some lines about the whole moral equivalency thing. Because I was very clear about what I said is wrong, is this, the massacre that happened last Saturday that people are seemingly just blowing off; that should not happen. But what is the message also for the other side of the equation on this conflict that’s been happening for many many decades?

Hesha :
So good Palestinians need to speak up. And the thing I’ve been distressed about is Palestinian Arab groups are not speaking out and saying this is wrong and this is bad. If they want to have credibility, to have their own state, they have to act decent, they have to act moral, they have to say this is wrong, this doesn’t represent us. And when you slide into that moral equivalency, all you do is decrediblelize yourself and your position. And look what Israel’s done. It told people we got to go in and get rid of those tunnels, move, we’re giving you warning, get out of there. And people have to choose to be smart and do that. And the secondary thing is what did Israel do; Israel gives power and water to Gaza. They give it. And so they cut it off and people go, oh my God, it’s humanitarian, you can’t cut it off. Return the hostages. That’s very simple. There are Palestinians that know where these hostages are. 150 people are not hidden privately and quietly without people knowing. And there’s UN workers all over there. You tell people where they are. Let Israel get a return of the hostages. The water and power go right back on. Not a problem. So the people who say, oh, stop, oh, ceasefire. What is Israel supposed to do? If I come in and I start burning your house down because I don’t like you and raping and killing people in your home? You just going to let me wander the streets and keep going? What is Israel supposed to do? That’s the problem, is you just have to say sometimes you start an action and it’s Newton’s law, I think it’s a third law of thermodynamics. To every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction, that’s just physics. This is just what happens. So the question for those of us that are good people, what happens next after the cancer has been eradicated? What’s the rehab? That’s what I want to focus on. What’s the rehab because there are good Palestinians; God bless. There were people that had visas that would go into Israel to work and had good jobs and had friends. There are wonderful Palestinians, and they are being held captive by criminals and thugs. So how do we free them? That should be the focus on what Palestinians and Muslims around the world are saying, not to support Hamas for God’s sakes. It’s just thinking in the wrong way for God’s sakes. And look at the government in Jordan, look at the government in United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, and Morocco and the West Bank, those are all Muslim governments. They’re all saying the right things and doing the right things. And the world’s got to look, this is cancer. It’s just got to get cut out. I’m sorry to say it so bluntly, but think about a cancer Doctor who has to go into a patient and say I got to amputate your arm or else the rest of you will die. That’s a situation the poor Palestinian people are in.

Mac :
Yes, absolutely thank you so much for these words and before things escalate even further, because now there’s talk of Hezbollah getting in and all that from Lebanon, before things get any further, your solution, your suggestion, your proposal, your recommendation is that the King of Saudi Arabia needs to step up. And try to give a voice of reason to calm things down, but address the root issue right?

Hesha :
To take mantle of leadership. I am urging him to see this as an opportunity because that’s what all crisis is. It’s an opportunity. And is he going to seize the reins or is he going to let someone else do it, and then that opportunity will be gone. I think he’s brave enough and wise enough and secure enough to do that.

Mac :
Thank you so much. Hesha Abrams, HoldingtheCalm.com is your website; people can check you out and learn more about you. And thank you so much for coming on the Lawyers Mediators International Show and Podcast. Appreciate your voice on this topic. Until next time, everyone.

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