ep 27 audio

In this podcast, Bill Kelly interviews Bill Gersky, the president and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting. They discuss the dangers of companies like TikTok and Meta collecting data on North Americans, compared to North American corporations collecting data. Gersky explains that while he doesn't lose sleep over it, all kinds of information are being bought, sold, and passed around, which can affect the emails and spam received. He emphasizes that TikTok, being of Chinese origin, serves the Chinese government and collects data extensively. He advises Canadians to be aware that their information is being collected by a non-ally nation, which could be used against them. They also discuss China's aggression in various areas and its disregard for international law. Gersky mentions that as individuals become vocal about certain issues, the Chinese government pays attention and may disseminate disinformation to change opinions. Overall, the main takeaway is to not be naive about the co welcome to the bill kelly podcast critical discussions in critical times here's your host bill kelly this is the bill kelly podcast glad you're with us today i'm your host bill kelly critical discussions for critical times uh... but there's a lot happening globally and uh... which is why i'm so happy that our next guest could join us and and talk about some of these issues and uh... they may seem interrelated but they're all part of a bigger picture that i think we're dealing with here in this country he is of course bill gersky the president and ceo of borealis threat and risk consulting uh... phil of course has worked as a senior strategic analyst for CSIS uh... for some time too uh... the author of a number of great books i was uh... i was reading uh... a couple of actually i was going to put them up here on the screen but i left them at our place up north so we'll do that next time uh... good to have you with us again phil always a pleasure to talk to you bill it's always fun to have deep deep conversations that are of interest to both of us i gotta ask you uh... i always look forward to these conversations as well a couple of days ago we put some stuff up uh... on the uh... that you were going to be on the show and ask people uh... with some questions and we've got a few of those that we're going to get into uh... there'll be no attribution here we just want to read those and kind of weave these in and out of the conversation uh... that we're having right now uh... the first one is actually being torn from the news pages of the last couple of days uh... it's about tiktok and you and i have talked about that before uh... how dangerous is it for tiktok to have such data about north americans uh... accumulation of data really uh... what can they do with it compared to what north american corporations like meta are doing because they're all harvesting data from us it's a great question and i'm certainly not a technical specialist but what i will say is that companies like tiktok, like meta, like instagram like linkedin uh... you know they collect massive amounts of data on it and i don't you know i don't lay awake at night worried about it but there's no question that all kinds of information is being bought is being sold is being passed around uh... it affects the emails you get, the spam that you get in the worst case scenario i think uh... an application like tiktok which of course is chinese in origin uh... that basically are going to serve the chinese government, the chinese government's desires and the way that we used to describe china bill when i worked in intelligence with the chinese intelligence would apply what we call the vacuum cleaner approach to the collection which all that means is that they would suck everything up in the atmosphere and basically you know winnow through it later down the road to see if they want to use so i think as canadians using an application like tiktok you have to be aware that your information is being uh... collected and kept by a nation that shall i stress is not an ally of canada has engaged in election interference in at least two occasions has harassed chinese canadians on positions like what's happened with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang or what's happening in Tibet etc etc and so again i wouldn't you know press the panic alarm just yet but people have to realize that whatever you post online a is there in perpetuity and b if it's being collected by a foreign power like china could in fact be used against you so if you're a chinese canadian for example and you post things about you know the Uyghurs in Xinjiang uh... you better believe you're going to get on the chinese radar and if you if they see you as a threat or as an inconvenience they can make your life a living hell uh... and you know it's not as if they're going to bang on your door in the middle of the night uh... but they do and we've seen that michael chong the mp of course was victimized by that he still has family over there uh... he was very vocal of course about the chinese government and uh... uh... and they were after him not physically but i mean in so many different ways and we've seen so many other examples of that uh... so i i get it it's buyer beware when you're going into a situation exactly but for people that are involved and i'm glad people get involved in some of these issues including what's going on in the middle east and we'll get to that in a couple of minutes uh... if they want to be vocal and if they want to go on social media i mean you know it's about the good and the bad and the ugly of internet and social media now i'm i'm really pissed off about how the chinese government is acting uh... you know fifty years ago i'd write a letter to the editor of the local newspaper and hopefully they'd print it well and anybody who might read it but they usually edit those too now i have a platform and that's great and it's good that we have that availability for them uh... but everybody's reading that and if you become so vocal about this and other people start to gravitate to your message uh... you better believe the chinese government's going to pay attention to that and they're not going to send you a note and say hey stop doing that uh... they have more that's problematic i guess ways of approaching this as we've seen it because they've already been characterized in chronicle haven't they absolutely and in fact i must express i'm rather surprised i've written a number of pieces uh... in newspapers critical of chinese policy against muslims, against tibet, against hong kong i'm sure that i'm on a chinese this summer i'm not planning a vacation to beijing anytime soon getting off the plane because i'm pretty sure i'd be arrested uh... we stopped with the two michaels a couple years ago uh... so i i i think that bottom line is that people have to realize that china's not our friend and that to me is as far as you need to go you know yes they have the technology yes you and i remember bill as kids right made in china was a joke if you had it on a piece of paper it was a cheap toy it was poorly made now most of what we get is made in china so we can't ignore them completely but you have to be very careful with acknowledging that if you adopt a position and china gets very sensitive about these things just think of taiwan anything that smacks of being in favor of taiwanese independence is going to get you on china's shit list and go in with eyes wide open and that's a possibility if you assume those positions we just saw that two weeks ago i guess uh... you know canadians who are patrolling in the south china sea as part of the exercise that's going on there and they got scraped twice by chinese jets very very close very dangerous uh... you know because it back again in wasn't too many years ago people say that nobody's listening to canada chinese that they don't care much about canada yeah they do uh... now they do especially because of the things that are going on and and we're on their radar excuse the bad pun but the of the airplane situation but but that's that's provocation and and you know they probably i don't know anybody watched the movie top gun knows that that stuff probably goes on a thousand times that we don't hear about uh... but now now we're it involved that were potential target of the chinese government does not like the canadian government exactly and trying to try to becoming more and more aggressive on many different levels you probably heard of the so-called nine dash line which i think it basically claims the entire south china sea right up to the border of nations like the philippines and vietnam uh... they say that's our internal water which is a complete bunch of bullshit as far as i'm concerned under international law but china china doesn't obey international law they basically say you know we're a growing power we're the world's largest nation although india is going to surpass it very soon in terms of population and we're going to do what we want to do and we you know if we if we think your boats are in our internal waters despite the fact that under international you and law of the sea it's international waters we're going to oppose you and we're going to you know the philippines they get their boats i just read a story this morning that the chinese use water cannons against fishing vessels off the coast of the philippines because they say that's their water so yeah we have a very uh... growingly uh... growing aggressive nature of china and it's not going to end anytime soon and you're right canada as a part of a nation that you know obeys international law and tries to establish certain rights is going to become a target and just to the viewers question here again you know so i'm on tiktok what's the big deal there are government people i think you were one of them at one point that monitor social media oh come on now you're just blowing my secret damn i thought that was my inside voice but you know not that they're going to say hey did you see what gersky wrote today but they do raise red flags and i guess one of the ways as you've described it uh... is is the dissemination of disinformation and i can say this not necessarily you're going to make up lies about phil gersky but they say okay he's on our mailing list now for some of the stuff that we want to shove out there to try to change people's opinions so uh... i guess we don't we just don't don't be naive i guess is the takeaway here isn't it i think that's the bottom line so yeah i worked in signals intelligence before i joined CSIS so that was basically that was our vacuum cleaner approach you know in those days there was no tiktok it was telex remember telex still a long time ago i remember when fax machines came along and said oh there's new technology uh... yeah there are intelligence services that deal with that and they do mine the atmosphere for signals and they process them and they gather intelligence so yeah i think the bottom line is buyer beware caveat emptor i used to say in our old latin class in grade 10 and uh... don't be naive you're absolutely right there's a chance you take i mean we recognize these freedoms and you're absolutely right as you said earlier this ability to express ourselves is wonderful this is unique in human history centuries ago if you said things like that the king would have your head locked off so you know thank god we have that freedom but freedom comes with i think a need to be aware of your surroundings and be aware that there are some nefarious parties that are going to use it for nefarious purposes well in a related question from another viewer uh... should prime minister trudeau be penalized for ignoring china's election interference which he did for the longest time uh... the mantra from the government for months on that bill was nothing to see here we still have a relationship and i i get sort of where they're coming from that no matter how much you distrust what's going on there there's the economics and the trade deals etc and i get all that but for the government to try to just gloss over this and pretend it's not happening uh... i'd like to have a political leader who actually has the backbone to stand up and and say this is what's going on we're aware of it uh... you know you know when when i shake hands with that guy at conferences i'm watching you know he doesn't have his other hand in my wallet but to simply say it's not a problem i thought was really disingenuous insulting to you and to me as canadians who say we're not stupid we see what's happening why can't you acknowledge it but do you take it to the point of saying okay uh... ethically it might have been the wrong thing but now that some people consider maybe maybe what he was doing might have actually been illegal i guess you know should there be an investigation into this you mentioned backbone i think a little lower in the anatomy uh... bill maybe the primaries of future or repair uh... you know uh... myself and my colleagues talk about this a lot who worked in intelligence out of a CSE or CSIS you know we did the best job we could to provide intelligence on a variety of threats throughout our careers and we went to work but you know with one thing in one thing in mind it has to do with the best intelligence possible when you read that the prime minister not only didn't read the intelligence but you know he does a few things he rejects that there's anything there if you'd like to see here he accuses those of leaking the intelligence of being racist against asians and this is not this is an anti-asian racism this is intelligence on the activities of a government trying to influence our elections and at the same time the prime minister turns around and leaks you know intelligence on alleged indian involvement in the assassination of a Sikh activist in British Columbia what this does to me is it shows it reaffirms what I've known for decades and that Canada has a shitty intelligence culture and what I mean by that is that governments of both sides of the aisle simply don't understand intelligence they don't know the value of it they dismiss it they think it's dirty they don't bother to give us the time so we've got people like Bill Blair a former you know chief of police in Toronto who says he didn't bother looking at his inbox to see what CSIS was telling him about interference and this was when Bill Blair was the minister of public safety so it you know I hate going here Bill but my fear now is Canada is becoming a laughing stock amongst our allies especially we're not we're not pointing up to the table our military is a joke because it's been underfunded since the second world war our intelligence services aren't being believed and we have a prime minister that would rather I don't know pose for a photo op with something rather than hold the Chinese accountable and you're right there are other considerations here our economic ties to China are incredibly important number of jobs in Canada but you know at the end of the day you've got to look your enemy in the eye and say we know what you're doing and you better stop it or if you don't stop it there are going to be consequences the problem is that there don't appear to be any consequences for this and you talked about staffing in situations like this with the military and with our intelligence which is going to swing us over to the Middle East for just a second here one last question because it kind of dovetails into this sets the stage for it I love Phil Biersky's insightful comments when he's on the podcast but in the last interview I find it hard to believe that Netanyahu simply didn't know about the planned attack on Israel by Hamas do you Phil believe it was accidentally overlooked or a human error or is that just possible or is there something more sinister going on what a great question I'm not a conspiracy theorist guy Bill but I read a fascinating piece in the New York Times about two weeks ago in actual fact Israeli intelligence did try to brief the Prime Minister and his cabinet on exactly that they noted Hamas movements they were concerned that Hamas was up to something and according to the New York Times reporter Netanyahu refused to meet with the intelligence officers either from the Mossad which is their external service or Shin Bet which is kind of their thesis or the Israeli Defense Forces intelligence he basically ignored them now if I were a conspiracy theorist I would say and I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Wag the Dog Bill oh yeah yeah okay if I were that kind of guy I'd say Netanyahu is in a shitload of trouble at home he's very unpopular he's on corruption charges by the Israeli court he's the head of the most right-wing government in Israeli history he's got a bunch of Jewish extremists in his cabinet I would say if I were a conspiracy theorist which I'm not what a better way for me to divert attention from my troubles than to turn a blind eye to my intelligence agency's warranty of a possible attack by Hamas the attack happened now I've got all the sympathy vote you probably saw the Israeli now has a coalition government where the opposition is joining forces because they have to get back against Hamas so again is that what happened? I sincerely hope not if it did it's unacceptable it's very cynical on the part of Netanyahu government and I'm not a fan of Netanyahu but it seems to me that was intelligence missed? probably you're never perfect but what I'm reading seems to indicate that intelligence was in fact there and it was ignored by the Israeli prime minister and his cabinet yeah I'm not a conspiracy theorist either but I am a cynic when it comes to politics especially and you know because I saw that story in the Times and I mean my first reaction was he didn't want to meet with intelligence because he didn't want to hear it that way he can plead ignorance you know to the people well gee this caught us off guard no it didn't sorry BB you could have been told and should have been told you didn't want to hear it and now he can be well I'm the hero of the people I'm going to go back after this the point's well taken Netanyahu is not a nice guy no he was you know he's been under well first of all he just got the job back because he was basically run out of office because of corruption that was going on and all the other stuff I wouldn't believe him if he said today was Friday I mean you know but he's the guy there now and I find it I guess troubling which I think is why we're getting so many people that are coming up with mixed reactions about what's going on you know we've seen the demonstrations and the clashes that are going on even here at university campuses and in downtown cores because they don't know what to believe you know Netanyahu actually encouraged Hamas to organize years ago I mean he was an advocate for them because of the Palestinian liberation army and what was going on and it's the old idea is Net you create something and then all of a sudden it turns on you and you're shocked you know it's very complicated it's not just good guy bad guy there's a lot going on on either side here and I think that's what's causing an awful lot of the angst if you say I think Netanyahu's a crook I wouldn't go to that far yet he has to be convicted and stuff but all of a sudden you're being accused of being anti-semitic and you know and if you say well Hamas has to be destroyed you say well that means you're for the destruction of the Palestinian people neither are true although you can't get it in somebody's head but it's not a black and white issue here and I think that's what people are trying to make it into I think so there's a couple of things there Bill so there are interesting parallels with the intelligence you know Trudeau government ignores Caesar's intelligence on China Netanyahu government ignores intelligence on Hamas one would not have thought that I mean Israeli intelligence is very very good they're amongst the best in the world I've met with them when I was very awed by their capabilities you wouldn't expect an Israeli government living in the area of the world that they live in and the threat that they've been facing since 1948 to ignore intelligence so that's a bit of a surprise to me on the whole issue of black and white I'll just say a couple things there's no question that Israeli policy in the West Bank especially has been atrocious for years they're encouraging what are called settlers which essentially are largely Jewish extremists although some people just go there because the houses are cheaper to go and take Palestinian land so the idea of a Palestinian state is if you ever see a map of the West Bank built it's so riddled with settlements there's no possibility of a Palestinian homeland and that's been a disastrous policy it doesn't make Israel more safe to allow settlers to take up camp there you can be very critical of Israeli policy in the West Bank and rightfully so but what bugs me is that you know with what's happening in Gaza and it's terrible there's two things first of all Israel would not be strafing Gaza with missiles today had Hamas not killed 1,400 people on October the 2nd okay so first of all a massive terrorist attack and Israelis compare this to their 9-11 okay 1,400 people including women and children were slaughtered by Hamas that's why Israel is in Gaza right now so let's first of all acknowledge why they're there secondly where does Hamas set up their operations in Gaza? in schools, in hospitals and in civilian areas so in a sense and I'm not excusing civilian casualties I'm sure that the Israeli Air Force and IDF do whatever they can to avoid civilian casualties but when the bad guys you're going against to try to prevent another October 7th are launching missiles from the parking lot of a hospital what do you want Israel to do? I mean that's where Hamas is that's where they have to go to take them out it's not Israel's fault that the Palestinians are there it's Hamas' fault for setting up their operations in civilian areas and that's what's being lost in this conversation Bill in Canada and abroad it's all Israel, Israel, Israel well no it's not yet Israel's been at fault and mistakes have been made in the war beyond that let's get back to the basic question as to why there's now a war in Gaza no attack on October 7th by Hamas no murder of 1,400 Israelis no Israeli presence in Gaza that's black and white the rest is the multiple stage as they say 50 stage of crisis and the other element I mean there have been past prime ministers in Israel that well have reached out I don't know how effective it's been but you know the discussion the debate about a two-state solution and whether or not that's even feasible and others at least sat down at the table I'm getting the sense although there's never an admission of this that the extreme part of the Israeli government the ones that are saying I don't want a two-state solution I want to wipe these people off the map they're calling some of the shots now if not all of the shots and Netanyahu being included in that number which is really polarizing I think and you know if you want to hate Israel for what they're doing there forget about as you said what happened October 7th then you're not being fair to either side in situations like this one of the things that I because I'm totally sympathetic I don't think anybody with any conscience can see some of the pictures the television shots of the decimation women, children, body parts laying on the street after missile attacks it's god-awful but as they condemn that I don't hear anybody condemning the attack on October 7th the problem here is now we're getting into an old thing here you know everybody who's in Hamas is Palestinian but not everybody who's Palestinian is in Hamas how do you tell the difference how do you make that difference between the two of them it's a great question and I'm really glad you raised it that way you know Hamas was elected governor of Gaza by Palestinians at the time because they were sick and tired of the PLO and because it was as corrupt as all hell Muhammad Abbas has been president since what 84 or some god damn thing I don't know it's been a long time since he's been president of the West Bank so they were sick and tired of the PLO and they basically go to the Palestinian Authority and they elected Hamas okay fine you have that right under democracy to do that the problem is Hamas is a terrorist group they're not a resistance group Bill and this is what gets me people say Hamas is just resisting Israel how in heaven's name is a bunch of guys that cross the border attack a music festival slaughter 500 people including babies how is that resistance to something and so that you know yes it's complicated it's not black and white but there are some simple facts here and you raised the point really well that people are ignoring they're setting it aside first and foremost we 100% without reservation condemned the terrorist attack by Hamas we recognize that Hamas is a terrorist group unlike the CBC which refuses to call it that even though they were a listed terrorist entity in Canada it happens that pretty well since the list was created back in 2002 you start with that then you can go on to okay what is a legitimate Israeli response to that well yes they shouldn't take civilian casualties but you know as well as I do Bill in any war civilian casualties it's not a war civilian outcome it's just the way that war is it's not like Top Gun where you see these laser guided that only take out the bad guys and the bad guys and no one else war doesn't work that way so yeah Israel has to be a lot more careful and I think they are trying to do the best they can and yes there should be a long lasting solution to the Palestinian problem 100% agree and part of that solution is getting the settlers to get the hell out of the West Bank because that's Palestinian territory someone once said about Israel it may have been the evening gold in my ear a pox on both their houses I mean both sides have a plan for this you've probably heard the phrase from the river to the sea that's Palestine guess what that phrase actually refers to that's with Zionists Israel is from the river to the sea from the Jordan to the Mediterranean so you've got two sides that basically acknowledge as their primary position all this land is Israel or all this land is Palestine if you figure that one out Bill you get the Nobel Peace Prize next year well and again as you say you can't look at what's going on today without acknowledging the history and it's not just 1948 when the state of Israel was conceived it's the result to it and Netanyahu is blood on his hands here too he hated Yasser Arafat he hated the PLO and he actually encouraged and some say financially supported the rise of Hamas not unlike what the United States did in Cuba in 1956 Batista was a jerk, he was an asshole he was killing his people hey this guy Castro he'll help that'll get rid of Batista and then we'll have an ally in Cuba how'd that work out? every time you try to mess with the order of things governments get involved they screw it up Netanyahu will not acknowledge what he did plays a big part of what's going on now to the polarization and the hatred that's there in the 1940s in Iran because I was an Iranian Parsi specialist for years there was a nationalist government elected in Iran which is anti-Shah and the Americans saw the Shah as an ally they basically arranged a coup which overthrew the then president Mossadegh that was in 1941 or 1942 I believe fast forward 35 years and the IAEA takes over Iran so be careful what you put in place he was a nasty son of a bitch and when the Ayatollahs and their allies overthrew them the Ayatollahs eventually took control and Iran has been the problem it has for the past 40 years in the county be careful where you dip your fingers you end up causing more problems than that we could talk for days about this bill on a number of occasions which has happened but again for me the whole Palestinian issue I know it's emotional I know the pictures are causing a lot of grief but let's get our basic facts straight and at a time of disinformation that initial hit on the Gaza hospital is still being debated was it an Israeli airstrike or was it a Palestinian missile that exploded in a parking lot I've seen allegations on both sides so it is hard to separate truth from fiction these days but I think as consumers of information you just do the best just like a brain of work intelligence it's the reliability of your sources and if your source is Hamas I've got a small piece of advice for you you might not want to take it at face value well I mean the bombing of the hospital was a classic example of that every network CNN all of them we want to be first with this the press release as it was was from Hamas and the first one that counteracted that was from Al Jazeera it was not the Israeli press that said that it was Al Jazeera who I'd like to think are maybe a little more balanced in their approach to what's going on but maybe not so much balanced but when the same guys on the other side are saying no that's not what happened at all I'm sure you saw the video too it looks like that rocket came from behind not from the Israeli side at all and I don't know if we'll ever get the answer to that I've got to ask you one other thing as we get involved with this this is actually an email I got right after you did the show and I don't have it here in front of me but it was asking about, as you say, technique and they referenced the assassination the murder of Osama Bin Laden they didn't bomb the shit out of well they went to war there but when they finally found out where he was they sent a Navy SEAL team in there basically to kill him and they were successful, we all know that why the approach that the Israeli government is taking right now is just to bomb the shit out of them and hopefully when those craters will blow up some of the tunnel systems why not a more strategic attack and the Israelis did that at Entebbe with the hijacking that went on there I think they lost one soldier but no casualties other than that I understand it's an apples and oranges comparison and I also understand that there are Zionists within the Israeli government that would say bomb the shit out of them as if they didn't think this through as well as they might have or did they just decide this was a more practical approach I'm not a military strategist of course, and that's not your wheelhouse but I know you know a lot about these things what's your read on this? I think it's a matter of scale you know the Bin Laden operation was brilliant, just like the operation to take care of Baghdadi IS guy a couple years ago when you're dealing with one individual and you use intelligence to find out where the individual is it's much easier so US intelligence obviously wanted to find Bin Laden after 9-11, it took them a decade by the way, it was only 2011 that Bin Laden was killed in Pakistan they had to gather the intelligence to verify, when they were 99.9% sure he was there they launched the operation they got him, they killed him no muffs, no fuss, he got out of dodge kind of thing same with all Baghdadi, the problem with Gazaville is you're talking about thousands of Hamas terrorists not just, you know, the leader of Hamas, and they've been there for 20 years, and you all heard about the tunnels, and like I said they use civilian facilities to launch their attacks that's the problem is that there simply aren't enough special forces teams to go in and kill thousands of people, so you know what the Israeli intelligence military is trying to do is to identify the most important concentrations of Hamas take them out, but a large part of the civilian casualties are occurring because, as I've said, Hamas deliberately chooses to place their terrorists, slash soldiers, slash whatever you want to call them, in areas where civilians live, work, and play that's what's causing the deaths of women and children and men who have nothing to do with the conflict the Irish-Palestinians if we were talking about a dozen Hamas terrorists, yeah, Israel is very good at this, you mentioned Entebbe, a great example they could do that, but not on the scale of what Hamas has, it's simply it's beyond the capability of any military force, up to and including the Americans, to try to use that technique to get rid of the terrorists again, because I'll circle back to what we said about the casualties, and it's horrific to see the destruction that's going on some are calling it genocide and maybe that's too strong a term, but I mean it has to stop and I know they talk about cease-fires, etc. but here's a question I have and I want to go back onto your experience here too it's the Israelis that are doing the attacks and they're the ones that are firing the missiles and the casualties, I think it's over 10,000 the numbers that we're getting from Palestine have been killed, those are citizens not necessarily Hamas and that's awful, it's horrific it's a tragic situation but when you're apportioning blame and saying well screw you guys for doing this I don't hear too many people saying what about Hamas themselves? they want more casualties because it makes Israelis look worse on the global scene they don't care if there's 10,000 people they don't care if it's 110,000 people that are killed that encourages their cause and it furthers their cause and makes the Israelis look like the bad guys and I think they can wear that hat to a certain extent Hamas could have opened the doors and said okay, go, go away get out of the city, get out of Gaza go where it's safe they didn't, they want them there it's not just figuratively literally, Phil holding the citizens up in front of them and saying shoot them you can't get to me until you kill this one and an awful situation but that's their mindset and you've seen some of the stuff, the videos that have been released now from Hamas leaders, generals, saying what happened October 7th is only the beginning we're going to do that again whether they are or they're not all they have to do is say it and that encourages Netanyahu to do what he's doing it just seems as if this thing is not de-escalating I know that Blinken's been over there a couple of times and other leaders are talking about this I think finally the Prime Minister here got off the fence and said yeah, there's got to be some sort of a ceasefire or something but there isn't even an attempt here to try to find some solution here or even a pause in this both sides are escalating at this stage yeah, you raise a lot of good points there Bill so Hamas as an organization as a terrorist group it comes from an Arabic phrase and I haven't used my Arabic in an awful long time Hamas means the Islamic resistance movement Hamas does not represent the Palestinians and in fact Hamas really doesn't give a rat's hindquarters about the average Palestinian and you raise the point they're going to do this again and again and again and they don't care about Palestinian lives they're not resisting on behalf of Palestine they are carrying out acts of terrorism against Israelis and others because that's what terrorist groups do and you're right they actually benefit from pictures of dead babies and dead women in the streets because people then sympathize with them so you're getting people here in Canada who celebrated the attack on October the 7th because this is finally the Palestinian resistance against Israeli colonizers and what's the other terms used colonizers and terrorist aid and blah blah blah blah and this is what bothers me is that Hamas is not Palestine and Hamas does not have Palestinian interests at heart you have to accept that fact and people don't want to do that so yeah, they're going to continue to launch missiles from hospital parking lots and school backyards and things like that, inviting retribution and attacks by Israel so they can parade those bodies in the streets and get support and the vast majority of attacks right now you hear a lot of headlines we're worried about Islamophobia in Canada how many god damn synagogues and Jewish schools have been threatened in the past month Bill how many bomb threats how many graffiti on the walls of these places this is not about Islamophobia this is about people who want to punish Israel or anti-Semitic, anti-Jewish in the first place and that's what's being lost in the conversation here and again, I go back to what I said earlier this all stems from the fact that Hamas carried out a horrific act of terrorism on October the 7th and Israel, I mean, what do you want Israel to do? say, oh okay, well we can absorb 1,400 casualties we're not going to bother retaliating of course you have to retaliate I don't know, I'm not a military strategist and innocent people definitely are dying but the conversation has just been twisted so badly in the last little while you've probably heard the stories that I've heard people are heading major unions in Canada you know engaging in public anti-Semitic remarks I mean how do we get there? why can't we just say we condemn 100% the acts of Hamas and we'll do our best to try to see that Israel is protected from future terrorist attacks that's what our position should be and okay, I'm not an Israeli fan, I'm not a Netanyahu fan and I've been very critical of the far right in Israel and the Jewish set-up of the West Bank but as an old, you know, counter-terrorism guy that's the beginning of the conversation and that's what's being missed, I think, in the dialogue here in Canada exactly, because there doesn't seem to be any middle ground any grey areas here and you brought this to my attention before and I got some response to it when we talked about it on one of my radio shows not too many months ago I think, the Canadian population I think is 2.2% or something are Jewish yet they account for 65% of the hate crimes so there's a disconnect here, in other words you know, this god-awful thing that's going on now did not start an anti-Semitic move it was here, long before that happened and it's flourishing sadly these days even before the October 7th attack and the retaliation that's going on and again, I don't know that too many people are informed about what's happening here based on the question I was just asking a couple of minutes ago people are conflating and thinking, you know, Palestinians are Hamas so, you know, if a Palestinian dies if 45 people were killed in that latest missile attack, well, they were probably Hamas you don't know that and that's the frustration that's feeling there and you brought up the point that I'm not hearing very much from any other world leader right now is the fact that there's culpability here and Hamas is encouraging this it's like they're poking the bear knowing the bear is going to slash out at somebody who's there and they don't give a shit who it is they don't give a shit if people die it makes Hamas look good if their citizens are being killed because they can say, see, those guys are bastards and who's calling them out and we've had a discussion about that and I know that we've got a little bit of time here and we haven't even touched on here is let's not lose track of the fact that in Tehran right now they're pulling the strings I'm not suggesting they ordered the attack but they certainly financed it and they're watching this and saying, boy, did we pull one off this time they're loving this That's for our next conversation, Bill but, you know, one other point there are extremists on both sides there are now people in the Netanyahu cabinet which are basically calling for the nuking of Gaza so we're getting the extreme on both sides now if we nuke Gaza we eliminate Hamas, we eliminate the problem no more October 7th no more attacks on music festivals no more killings of women and babies and that kind of thing so this is ramping up big time and we've got to get to that dialogue where both sides acknowledge that mistakes have been made and people are held accountable but we're not there and you're right, even our own government as somebody who worked for 30 years in intelligence and tried to do what I could for my country I'm frankly embarrassed by my government's position on so many issues when it comes to national security and public safety it's becoming a running joke and I can share with your listeners our allies are noticing that Canada has fallen in terms of reputation as being a liberal secular democracy that supports the right causes I don't want to get all personal on who's responsible for that but the dialogue has shifted and we're going to pay the price for this in the long run unfortunately Just the other thing, I had a postscript on this too I was watching this, I guess it was Stephanie Rowland MSNBC did it, and she had a report around from Tel Aviv and he said do not come out of this conversation thinking that this country is behind Netanyahu an awful lot of the population he said I would hesitate to say but it's not 50-50 but it's pretty close think that he's an idiot, he should be in jail and while you've got some people saying yeah we should nuke Gaza, others are saying we should get rid of Netanyahu and maybe we can find some solution to this there is no unanimity there and a lot of them disagree with what they're doing over there now with the missile attacks so this is not just yeah, these guys are totally behind what's going on here and unfortunately the poor people that got murdered on October the 7th were victimized by some of the Israeli policies and the attitudes as they're happening in Gaza right now too, it's a god awful situation Getting back to, very briefly Bill, I know we're running late on the intel side, one thing that the Israeli intelligence told Netanyahu or tried to tell the Netanyahu government we're wasting our time looking at Jewish extremism in the West Bank because of your policies because you're taking resources away from looking at Hamas and Hezbollah so if the Israeli government hadn't had this insane idea of populating the West Bank with Israeli Jewish extremists you would have had more intelligence resources that would have looked at Hamas and Hezbollah and maybe October the 7th wouldn't have happened just putting it out there I know, well it's the same thing, I know we're full circle here there's an awful lot of people that feel that the reason the Prime Minister didn't read the briefings about Chinese interference is because he didn't want to hear them and he wanted to plead ignorance and I think Netanyahu is guilty of the same thing you're a busy guy and it's almost a weekend I always appreciate you taking some time for us it's always insightful and I enjoy our conversations thanks for doing this today I look forward to the next time Bill, thanks very much for having me on again I think we've got a few more things to talk about maybe a few take care, feel good and that's it for this edition of the Bill Kelly Podcast thanks for listening and thanks for signing up too and subscribing send us your comments, the good, the bad, the ugly what you liked about it, what you didn't like about it if you've got further questions, shoot those out to us too you can do that at this isbillkelly at gmail.com until next time, I'm Bill Kelly have a great day and we'll see you later this podcast was brought to you by Rebecca Wissons and her team at Wissons Law Rebecca Wissons is a 20 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