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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Hope you had an excellent Thanksgiving weekend. As of right now, we're still awaiting word on today's fourth and perhaps final hostage and prisoner release and delivery of humanitarian aid in conjunction with the current pause in the Israel-Hamas war and whether that deal will be extended. Both Israel and Hamas seem to say they do want more days with more exchanges, though the terms last I saw have not been agreed upon.

We will talk later in the show about the decisions that various parties in the region will now be faced with. We'll talk now about President Biden's ongoing role in the new Mideast situation and the domestic politics in this country around that, and also some other Monday morning national politics. This could even be the week that George Santos is expelled from Congress and the scramble to replace him in a special election officially begins in Queens and Nassau County, and with such a slim majority for the Republicans in Congress at the moment that seat might matter a lot to what gets passed in 2024.

What's up with that new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson? As some of his more radical past positions continue to come to light, but he just made that short-term budget deal with the Democrats that has already alienated some of the same members on his own side of the aisle who brought down Kevin McCarthy's speakership. Remember that? With us now, Molly Ball, senior political correspondent for the Wall Street Journal and author of the recent biography of that other Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, the book simply called Pelosi. Molly, always good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

Molly Ball: Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Here's just four seconds of President Biden speaking yesterday in support of extending the pause.

President Biden: We will not stop working until every hostage is returned to their loved ones.

Brian Lehrer: The president focusing there on the hostages, I know he had other things to say. What's the latest that you're seeing about the president's role in trying to keep this period going?

Molly Ball: Well, the administration has been very involved in these very delicate negotiations between Israel and Hamas and other parties, including the government of Qatar, to try to get more hostages released. As you mentioned in your introduction, both the Israeli government and Hamas have said that they do favor finding a way to continue the current pause in the fighting, but the terms, of course, the devil is always in the details, and it will be in this case.

So far with the exception of a couple of hiccups, this has been a remarkably successful prisoner exchange, aid is getting into Gaza, the pause in the fighting has held. The president, I'm sure, would like to take some credit for it. Also, as he said, outside of that clip, is working to try to extend the pause and get more hostages released, and make this a longer-term arrangement.

Brian Lehrer: As you say, the devil is in the details, one thing I had seen over the weekend was that no Americans were released in day one or day two of the pause and exchange of people, partly because it's presumed Hamas was trying to keep pressure on Biden, to keep pressure on the Israelis, to keep it up. I had seen, in terms of devil in the details going forward to more days of a pause that Israel and Hamas were not yet there specifically on--

Well, these four days are supposed to be 50 hostages taken by Hamas in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel, and that seems to be on track, but reportedly from what I saw, Hamas wants a bigger prisoner release per hostage in the days going forward. I'm curious if you have anything from your US sources on the state of those negotiations or if Biden is pushing on either side in any way.

Molly Ball: I don't know exactly where the negotiations stand. As you say, they are on track, we have seen 39 of the potential 50 hostages released so far, but terms have not been agreed to for a potential extension going forward, and both sides could seek changes in the terms that potentially could put the negotiations off kilter and lead to them not succeeding. We did see the one American prisoner released, a little four-year-old girl named Abigail.

president Biden yesterday spoke about the trauma that she's been through and how happy that he was to see her be freed. The other, I believe, nine American hostages are still being held, as well as about 200 others. This is a very delicate, high-pressure situation, and I don't think we know where it's going to go from here.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a clip of Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut on CNN State of the Union yesterday, suggesting that the billions of dollars of new aid money for Israel that President Biden wants should perhaps have strings attached based on how the Israeli government prosecutes the war. Listen.

Senator Chris Murphy: We regularly condition our aid to allies based upon compliance with US law and international law. I think it's very consistent with the ways in which we have dispensed aid, especially during wartime, to allies for us to talk about making sure that the aid we give Ukraine or the aid we give Israel is used in accordance with human rights laws. That'll be a conversation we'll all be engaged in when we get back to Washington on Monday.

Brian Lehrer: Senator Chris Murphy yesterday on CNN. Well, now it is Monday, and they are getting back. Molly, do you see a faction of Democrats who might tie that aid package to Biden pushing Israel more publicly on anything? Maybe how they're waging the war against Hamas in terms of civilian casualties or the Jewish settler violence in the West Bank which is a big thing or anything else.

Molly Ball: Yes, we've had this now from several Democrats and Liberals in the Senate, Bernie Sanders also saying that the US should not be giving Israel a blank check. As you say, this is now all about to hit Congress as they come back this week, and it's going to be a very contentious debate over this entire aid package which has ballooned to include not only aid to Israel but also the aid to Ukraine, which the administration wants to package together with the Israel aid to secure its passage.

Republicans now are saying that they want some kind of solution for the border to be included, immigration. A notably contentious issue that Congress has been trying and failing to solve for decades, so adding that to the mix doesn't necessarily help. This is all what the Senate is going to be tackling as they come back to Washington this week. As the House comes back to Washington this week, they managed to push the government funding deadlines out to January and February, but they still have this very important and very contentious foreign aid package to negotiate.

The pressure from the left to put conditions on aid to Israel is going to be one component of it, but of course, we also have substantial Republican disagreement about Ukraine, and substantial disagreement across the spectrum on how to deal with immigration, so it's going to be quite a fight.

Brian Lehrer: Were you surprised to hear Chris Murphy say what he said or the way he said it on CNN yesterday? He's not a member of the squad. He's not Bernie Sanders. We've had many members of Congress on this show since October 7th, Democrats who tend to not want to say anything publicly against Israel as President Biden has not wanted to. I thought maybe that Chris Murphy moment, being relatively mainstream and very foreign policy involved, as he is, signaled a new phase beginning now, but I don't know if that's overstating it.

Molly Ball: I don't either. I think it's an interesting theory and it'll be interesting to see where the heart of the Senate caucus is as they come back. You're certainly right that Senator Murphy is not someone who's regarded as a wild-eyed leftist, but he is certainly in the progressive flank of the party, and he is very thoughtful about these things. He is a major voice on foreign policy in the Democratic Party.

I think that the sentiments that he's expressing represent increasingly where Democrats stand on this, especially under pressure from their base, under pressure from so many young activists. The party is increasingly, I think, while still supportive of Israel, increasingly skeptical of the Israeli government and its actions and wanting to see the US play a role in trying to create more accountability there.

Brian Lehrer: You wrote an article back on October 31st called The Left Is Tearing Itself Apart Over Israel. I'm curious if in the week since then you've seen those rifts starting to affect members of Congress. Maybe when they go home to their districts, like over Thanksgiving break, it might be too soon to have that reporting done, or any other ways that aren't just pushing on Biden, as obviously a lot of young Democrats who are out on the streets protesting are, but that it's starting to influence individual members depending on the makeup of their districts.

Molly Ball: Yes. I think that's something we're all going to be watching for as Congress comes back, but it's something that was already playing out at the time that I wrote that article almost a month ago, and it's only intensified. We've seen Democratic members of Congress at odds with one another. We saw the scene that unfolded when Palestinian-American Democrat, Rashida Tlaib from Michigan, was censured with the votes of several of her colleagues and was in tears on the floor of the House.

We've seen this behind closed doors within the White House staff, within the congressional offices, and all of the protests that members have been seeing at home in their districts. They've been getting a lot of phone calls. It's certainly the case that these rifts have only intensified and deepened, and the activism has only increased. I think the members can't help but be sensitive to that, and so it remains to be seen if that is going to cause more divisions in the Halls of Congress as well.

Brian Lehrer: Are you seeing that Democrats, or for that matter Republicans, but your article focused on Democrats, are having political blowback even by trying to sort of show sympathy toward both sides? I was struck by the part of your article that referred to Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who voted present on a resolution to condemn Hamas. She didn't vote yes, she only voted present on the resolution to condemn Hamas.

What she said at the time, as you quoted her, "While I still condemn Hamas's attacks, and the pain and suffering of the Jewish people everywhere, I also condemn the violations of international humanitarian law by Israel, and the pain and suffering of Palestinian people everywhere that are not recognized anywhere in this resolution." Could you put that in context for us, and how members, especially on the Democratic side, are trying to show sympathy in one way or another for both sides, and whether that's acceptable to one side or the other? There are one-siders on both sides of this, the pro-Israel side and the pro-Palestinian side.

Molly Ball: That's right. I think you've really hit on the heart of this, that for many people it is unacceptable to try to take both sides in this conflict. They see it as a All-Lives-Matter statement. I think that has changed a little bit as the war has gone on, and as we have seen just the tremendous amount of civilian and other casualties in Gaza, I think that has changed the equation for some people and made it more important to recognize the humanitarian conditions on both sides.

Certainly, especially in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks, I think there was a desire on the part of a lot of Jewish-American activist groups and the traditional Israel hawks to take Israel's side in the conflict and really express sympathy only for that side. Now that the conflict has gone on, there has been more of a recognition of the humanitarian crisis that is ongoing in Gaza. This all, I think, goes toward what and how should America's role be and how should that be articulated. What is the president doing? Is it enough? What does he need to articulate publicly?

I think what gets lost in all of this on some level is that this is not an American war fundamentally, that while Israel has been a longtime American ally and we supply them with a lot of weapons, we are not combatants in this conflict. The questions are about whether and how to condition aid or what the president should be saying and what public expressions of sympathy are being made. It's all very, very personal to people. I think for a lot of young activists, young Liberals, certainly Jewish Americans and Arab Americans, there's an intensely personal feeling around this conflict that has led to a lot of very deep divisions.

Brian Lehrer: What about on the other side, from what you were just describing, the pressure on US government officials to be unequivocally pro-Israel after the horrors of the October 7th attack, when we saw some groups come out right away, some protesters getting together on even the very day after October 7th in New York City and saying things like, "This is what decolonization looks like," and not apparently expressing any real outrage over the taking of hostages or the killing of 1,200 civilians targeted as civilians. That put people, including Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a difficult position and getting it from both sides. How has that evolved in the last month?

Molly Ball: It certainly has had a lot of ramifications for the Democratic Socialists of America organization which had in recent years seen its numbers really burgeon thanks to figures like AOC who had affiliated with DSA. DSA has also had an anti-Israel stance for many years and was one of the backers of that October 8th protest that you mentioned that featured many antisemitic expressions and was denounced by a lot of New York politicians. Congressman Richie Torres also from the Bronx has been warning about the anti-Israel sentiment specifically within DSA for many years.

We've heard him be, I think, one of the loudest voices taking a staunchly pro-Israel side in all of this and denouncing DSA and pointing to his previous warnings to say, "This organization has always been like this, and people shouldn't legitimize them." I think it's a real blow to that part of the far left and to a lot of the academic left that, as you mentioned, has incubated a lot of this latent antisemitism in the name of sentiments like decolonization, and to which I think a lot of more mainstream Liberals have turned a blind eye or not wanted to recognize for many years.

Now that that's all come to the fore in sometimes ugly ways, I think it has forced a bit of a reckoning, particularly on a lot of college campuses, at a lot of elite universities where these rifts are still playing out, where we've seen student groups at odds with each other and administrations having to try to take sides or triangulate and not necessarily succeeding in a lot of cases. I think for the far left and the academic left, this is a live fight that may be playing out for years to come.

Brian Lehrer: Maybe, and as you point out in your article, raising very complicated and fraught questions, even to debate in the supposedly open, intellectual environments of universities, as well as in political discourse by elected officials and things like that around when is violence acceptable as a form of resistance? Then beyond that, when is violence against civilians acceptable as a form of resistance? If the answer to that seems obvious to many people, it's not obvious to some other people, and that's part of the division on the left that you reported, right?

Molly Ball: I think that's right. I think that this is also not necessarily a new debate. There was a version of this in 2020 around the George Floyd protests where, again, you had some Liberals and some Liberal academics justifying rioting, justifying violence, saying it was the price of resisting oppression. It goes back to the radical chic in the '70s that sometimes took the sides of insurgent movements in the third world and said that that was part of rising up against oppression as well. I think there's a long intellectual heritage to some of these fights, and they remain unresolved because they are continuing intellectual strains of debates that have been going on for a long time.

Brian Lehrer: Getting back to Biden, is there a Biden policy behind the scenes that you know of pushing Israel to be more careful which might mean slower in its military campaign against Hamas once it resumes, presumably it will resume, to give more weight to saving civilian lives?

Molly Ball: Yes, that is what we have seen, that is what we have reported, that the president and the administration have been pushing hard on the Netanyahu government primarily in private. We know that the president had a phone call with Israeli president Netanyahu yesterday, and what we have been told is that he has been bringing that pressure privately. This is not satisfying to a lot of activists who would like to see the president take more of a public stance, particularly condemning some of the human rights violations on the part of the Israeli military.

The administration's explanation has been that by siding with the Israeli government in public that gives the president room to put pressure on in private. I think when you see something like the deal that's been playing out, and that so far has been pretty successful, the administration would like to claim that that is proof that this approach actually can work.

Brian Lehrer: Molly Ball is with us, senior political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. As we talk various Monday morning politics here, so far, primarily on Biden, and the pause, and prisoner and hostage release exchange, and humanitarian aid delivery, which is still in effect here on day four, and we'll see if it gets extended in Israel and Gaza. 212-433-WNYC is our phone number, 212-433-9692.

Listeners, your calls are welcome on national politics, certainly, including Biden, and his role in the Mideast pause and Mideast war, also Congress's role as they come back to work right now. You heard the Chris Murphy clip that we played a few minutes ago, if you've been with us for a few minutes, and other national politics from the US standpoint, not so much the Middle East situation itself, we'll talk about that later, but on US national politics as they relate to the war, or other things, George Santos, anyone, that we will get into. 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692 call or text for Molly Ball.

Before we turn to some other things, staying on Biden and the Mideast, he talks about a two-state solution. Many Israelis and Palestinians alike, though for different reasons, say that's outdated thinking or it's not time for that yet, as they each are dealing with this crisis of hostage holding and military action. Any indication that Biden is getting ready to release a Biden roadmap for the underlying issues after this immediate period as some people want him to do?

Molly Ball: That's an interesting question. We have not seen that. In fact, the longer-term trend on the part of this administration has been to try to disengage a little bit from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in part in recognition of the fact that previous attempts to have America be the broker of some kind of Mideast peace were not successful. As you say, certainly in Israel itself, there is a view that the two-state solution is not a future that anyone can see anytime soon.

Once the current fighting comes to an end, I think that's going to be a big conversation is not only is there any viability for a two-state solution in the near or distant future, but what is America's role in that, and is America still the trusted broker for both sides. We saw the Trump administration previously try to change the equation by more forthrightly taking Israel's side and trying to marginalize the Palestinians rather than treating them as equal forces in a potential negotiation.

Does this administration try to get more involved going forward, given what has happened? Do they try to disengage a little bit more? To your immediate question, I have not seen any indication that this administration is chomping at the bit to put out a roadmap for peace in part because it's just so tricky to do so.

Brian Lehrer: Well, where does Biden's reelection campaign figure into his Mideast policy, if you see any impact at all? We know younger Democrats are more sympathetic to the Palestinians and more skeptical of the Israeli government than older Democrats are. Those Gen Z and Millennial voters are sorely needed by Biden next year, and so are the older Democrats.

We also don't know if the Mideast will really be a voting issue for anyone as compared with domestic issues, which are, of course, always top of mind in presidential elections, and so pressing, except on rare occasions, they really outweigh foreign policy of any kind. How do you see the Biden campaign taking Biden policy into account, or is he really genuinely trying to just look past that?

Molly Ball: Well, look, I'm sure the president would claim that this is not about politics, and it's just about doing the right thing and trying to make the world a more peaceful place, but it certainly is something that we have already seen political consequences for Biden, for his approval rating, for his standing, specifically on the left, and specifically in some of the demographics that he was already having the hardest time with. Prior to any of this breaking out in the Middle East, we already saw the now 81-year-old president having trouble arousing the enthusiasm of young voters, and of voters of color, and voters on the far left.

Those are all of the groups that have most strongly objected to what's been happening in the Middle East. We've even seen some Democrats worrying that Biden could lose Michigan where there's a large Arab American population. We've seen some of the top Arab American supporters and donors to the Democrats say that they will no longer support the president and may even campaign against him. Now, what the president and his reelection campaign would say to all this is, as you said, number one, the election is a year away and foreign policy doesn't tend to be a top voting issue.

People tend to be more focused on their pocketbooks, and who knows where events will take us over the next 11 months? Also, they say, look, those demographics you talk about, the young voters, voters of color, and particularly Muslim voters are not going to vote for Donald Trump, the architect of the so-called Muslim ban. I think, on the part of the president's political operation, they are certainly not complacent about this, but they are feeling like this is probably less of a worry than it has been made out to be.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with Molly Ball and your calls. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with our usual Monday morning politics segment to start the week, this week with Molly Ball, senior political correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, and author of the recent biography of Nancy Pelosi. The book is simply called Pelosi. Valerie in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Valerie.

Valerie: Hi. Thanks. Longtime listener, first-time caller. I am a journalist and reporter. I live in Brooklyn. I was just calling to add some context to some of the earlier statements about Ritchie Torres. As a New Yorker and a DSA member, I just wanted to add the context that Ritchie Torres takes a ton of money from AIPAC. I'm sure we've all heard the stories of AIPAC giving millions of dollars to run against progressive candidates specifically Rashida Tlaib in Michigan. I think it's dangerous to conflate being anti-Israel with being antisemitic. I don't think it's valuable for New Yorkers to equate the DSA with antisemitism simply because they're anti-Israel.

I also wanted to add that this is a very American war. Americans are fighting on the ground in Gaza. I'm sure we've all seen the videos of soldiers who speak English and have American accents. Palestinian journalists on the ground have also confirmed that soldiers with American flags and American soldiers are there fighting with the IDF. I just wanted to add context to those two points as a journalist.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, I'll ask Molly about American soldiers in Gaza, but for you as a DSA member, what would you say to those who criticize the DSA, particularly on October 8th, with their involvement in the demonstration in New York that was chanting things like, "This is what decolonization looks like," and seeming to, whether it's seen as antisemitism or just total one-sideism without any empathy for Israeli civilian life, seen that as way over the line?

Valerie: I have a lot of empathy and sympathy for people who feel that that is over the line. I personally don't. That's not my personal point of view, but I understand that people, especially American Jews, feel unsafe at this time. I would never discredit that, but I do think context matters. It is important as allies and as people who are not immediately affected, I'm not Jewish or Arab, I think it's important to take context in mind when we have feelings about these things.

I think we would say it's totally normal for a white American to have complicated feelings about chattel slavery, so I think it's totally normal for American Jews and Israelis to have complicated feelings about October 7th and before and after. I do think including context and having the full experience of all parties involved does make our feelings of empathy possibly sway more towards people who are suffering more in the immediate moment.

Brian Lehrer: Valerie, thank you for the call. Obviously, people will disagree with that, and we could have whole segments on responding to some of the things that Valerie said in that response, but that's her response. To the other implication that she made there, Molly, that the US is deploying troops to the war in Gaza and maybe in some covert way and not saying that we're deploying troops, but these are American troops with American accents carrying American flags. I haven't seen any reporting to that effect. Have you even heard that allegation before?

Molly Ball: No, I don't know about that, but she is correct about the role of AIPAC and this is something that we're going to see play out over the next year that AIPAC and other Jewish activist groups have been on the forefront of funding campaigns against left-wing Democrats. This has been the case for the last couple of election cycles, and we now see several of the members of the so-called squad facing primary challengers or facing negative advertising campaigns because of their votes against the resolution condemning Hamas or their stance on Israel more generally.

The DSA as an organization, as Valerie said, has long been opposed to Israel. I think it's a matter of judgment whether that constitutes antisemitism, different people feel differently. For many years going back, the organization had asked those that endorsed to sign a pledge never to travel to Israel and to support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement. That was a plank in the organization's platform for many years before the current war.

Brian Lehrer: My producer, Mary, who is always on it, when something comes up that we can't answer right away, she has looked up today's Washington Post and found this article on Americans fighting in Gaza. This is a quote from the Washington Post today. It says, "About 10,000 people living in the United States have reported for Israeli military duty after receiving draft notices, part of a larger mobilization of 360,000 troops. Israeli officials told the Washington Post, at least eight US citizens have been killed while serving in Israeli security forces since the war began according to the State Department." If they receive draft notices, Molly, I assume that refers to joint US-Israeli citizens-

Molly Ball: Right.

Brian Lehrer: -who have some obligations over there. There are Americans fighting in the war, but that's different than the administration or the Pentagon deploying American troops.

Molly Ball: Exactly. We've seen there have been Americans fighting in Ukraine as well as volunteers with the Ukrainian army. They have not been deployed there as a part of an American boots-on-the-ground military presence. Similarly, yes, there are Americans who are also citizens of Israel, and who, therefore, are subject to that universal draft that Israel has imposed. They're not there, at least in this, context as part of any American troop deployment.

Brian Lehrer: That article makes a comparison to Americans who've gone to Ukraine to fight there as well, without the US doing a deployment of US forces. The headline of that article in the Washington Post today is Thousands Leave Behind American Lives to Join Israel's War in Gaza, just to be clear on what that is and what that isn't. Bob in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Bob.

Bob: Hi. Thanks so much for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: Sure.

Bob: Just two things with regard to Valerie's comment about there's a such thing as being anti-Zionist without being antisemitic, that is a very large red flag for being antisemitic. We hear that so often these days, there's a difference between being antisemitic and anti-Zionist. That is a, I'm not a Zionist myself, I'm an American Jewish person, but still. Anytime you hear someone say that, proceed with caution.

I did want to say that there was the discussion earlier about the Democratic, or as a Liberal myself as the Liberal idea that whether or not violence is acceptable in response to grievances. There was a suggestion that BLM was in a similar spirit. I did want to say that BLM even, whatever the response was, there was no killing. BLM protestors did not invade any neighborhoods and kill 900 people or anything like that. I think it's important to make sure that those are distinct unless that wasn't what was being said right there, the-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Molly, I don't know if you meant to imply that much of a parallel. Clearly, there was no post-George Floyd Black Lives Matter terrorism. There were some riots that were violent mostly with property damage, and there certainly was some violence that was inflicted, and some of that went in one direction or another during those riots, but there's no equivalence, right?

Molly Ball: Oh, no, no. It was a comparison, not an equivalence. I didn't mention the BLM organization at all. Don't want to get into a parsing of exactly what was said and by whom, but certainly it was the case that there was violence that happened in the summer of 2020 associated with protests that may have begun peacefully and then turned violent. There were people who died including police officers. I'm certainly not comparing any organizations to each other, but simply trying to say that there is this intellectual argument that has been going on for many years about whether violence can be justified. We did hear that from some people, if not organizations in the summer of 2020.

Brian Lehrer: Bob, let me ask you a follow-up question just as I asked Valerie, the previous caller, a follow-up question. When you say that it's a red flag for you as a Jewish American to hear people like that caller say anti-Zionism is not antisemitism, that becomes a red flag for you to think, "Uh-oh, an antisemite might lurk behind those words." That does have to be literally true, right? That anti-Zionism as a political position about a Jewish national home with what that has meant for the Palestinians and all of those complexities, that's not the same as hating Jews, right?

Bob: Yes. I think one of the reasons that American Jews had found the anti have found the response in being pro-Palestine so disconcerting is that it's a complicated place, Israel. The West Bank is different from Gaza, is different from Israel proper, it's even different from East Jerusalem. I just named four areas where Palestinians are subjected to four different sets of laws. One of the groups that we haven't heard from a lot are Palestinian citizens of Israel, of which there are 1.6 million right now. One of the reasons we haven't heard their thoughts on the war quite as much is because there's a big crackdown on public dissent of any kind in Israel.

It's not a monolithic issue. Israel is not a monolithic state. Fundamentally, when it's a state that's supposed to be a safe home for Jewish people that it's very-- I guess the red flag would be that I can tell that someone who says that, one, is probably not Jewish, has probably not been to Israel, and does not have a very good understanding of the dynamics there of the difference between the Israeli state, Israel proper, which is what we mean, which is 18% or 15% Muslim, ethnically Palestinian.

It's a complicated region. Whenever someone says Palestine needs to be free, there's so many different aspects of that. There are four different sets of laws, and there's an open question as to the percentage of Palestinian citizens of Israel that would want to live in an all-Palestinian state because they are considered traitors by Hamas.

Brian Lehrer: Bob, I'm going to leave it there as you raise a whole other set of complications regarding a whole other population in the region, the Israeli Arabs. We will come back to that another time. Listeners, obviously we're not going to solve the Middle East situation here. As we hear Bob's call, very different from Valerie's call before that, and each one of those could lead us to hours of conversation, but it's exemplifying what Molly Ball, you wrote in your article as this caller too, is identifying himself as an American Liberal. The premise of your article being The Left Is Tearing Itself Apart Over Israel.

Molly Ball: Yes, I think we have shown that to be the case today on the show. Thank you for not asking me to solve the Middle East today on the show, I don't think I can do that either, but it is tremendously complicated. It is tremendously complicated for everyone regardless of where they're coming from. I think as we've seen play out just with the last two callers, everybody has very complicated feelings about it.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Just give me one quick take on one other national politics thing that we may see from Congress this week. Do you think, from what you know, that the House of Representatives will actually vote to expel George Santos this week starting an immediate scramble for a special election among many Democrats and many Republicans who would try to take that seat?

Molly Ball: I do. There's already a motion by the chairman of the Ethics Committee, a Republican congressman from Mississippi. This was something that Congress considered before the Ethics Committee released its report. That failed in large part because people said, "Well, he needs due process. We need to let the ethics process play out before we render a verdict on this."

The ethics report came out, was quite damning, quite unequivocal, accused him of committing a lot of crimes. He is also under multiple indictments. He had a defiant online press conference on Friday, casting aspersions on a lot of his colleagues, which I don't think won him any friends and allies. Now, there does need to be an additional motion made to bring this to the floor, and then it has to be voted on by two-thirds of the Congress. It looks like, unlike many things in Congress, there is broad agreement that they want to do this, even though, it will reduce the Republican's narrow majority.

Brian Lehrer: That motion, as I understand it, requires a vote within 48 hours, so if somebody does bring it up today or tomorrow, we will know by the end of this week if George Santos is expelled from Congress. Molly Ball, senior political correspondent for the Wall Street Journal. Thank you so much.

Molly Ball: Thanks, Brian. Great to be with you.

 

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