YouSaid · the spoken record

Jared Kushner

lines on the record: 249
first: 2023-10-11
most recent: 2023-10-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“The attacks were so heinous and so disgusting that I've seen the international community rally around Israel more so than I ever have. And I hope that Israel continues to keep the moral high ground and continue to communicate what they're fighting for, why they're fighting. And I do hope that the international community supports the objective and they can work together to achieve it.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In retaliation so far has been somewhat measured and they've taken their time to try to assess what's achievable. Again, I don't have access to the intelligence. And we're talking at a very early stage in this conflict. So a lot could happen even by the time this is published. But my hope is that they'll just stay very focused on what the objective is and try to make sure that they're acting appropriately in order to do that. And I will say this too, that this has been different than what I've”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I think as a leader, you can't change yesterday, but you have the ability to change tomorrow. And that's a very important fundamental. I mean, that's true for all of us, not just leaders. But, you know, we saw with 9-11 how America was caught off guard by terrorist attack. We acted somewhat rationally, somewhat emotionally, which led to a 20-year war with trillions of dollars lost. I think almost a million lives lost, not just American, but all lives. And it was a total tragedy what occurred. I think right now the temptation is to be strong. I think that that's a necessity. I do think eliminating risk is the right objective. I think the goal should be to stay very clear about what the objective is, but also this attack was very well planned, not to walk into another trap. I think you have to be very smart, very cautious. I've been happy to see that what they've been doing”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hamas and their Iranian backers to stop hostilities, to stop saber rattling, to stop misrepresenting the history in order to justify their violent behavior. And if they say instead, we want to hold you accountable, no more money, and they all say that they're going to stand behind Israel's efforts to eliminate their national security threats. And then we will all come together and only fund again into a framework that we believe can be a long-term solution where the Palestinian people really have a chance to live a better life. That's really the best way to get there. There's tons of complicated factors, but that's the end state that the global community should be looking to come together. And it's very achievable. It's very, very achievable.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mentioned this earlier, but whenever I would get a problem set in government, I'd always think through from a first principles perspective, what's the logical outcome? And forget about all the reasons why it can't happen. That's what everyone in governments always rush to talk about. But I do think here, number one, Israel has to have a secure environment where they don't feel threatened from Gaza. And number two is the people in Gaza need to have an environment where they feel like they can live a better life and have opportunities. So that's the end state. And so I think that the international community should come together. I do think that the people who are usually putting blame on Israel should now realize that maybe they've been a little bit harsh here and that Hamas has been as big a threat, if not an even bigger threat than Israel has been saying. And I do think that if the international community comes together and unites behind Israel and really forces”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there'll definitely be communication, but words on phone calls is only worth so much. It's really trust between people and power. And obviously when you're in a position of power, you represent your country and your country's interests, but the ability to have trusting relationships where people feel like they're okay taking more risks to help each other, that's actually what's most important. So communication I hope for, but deepening and trusting relationships, that's what I believe makes progress and keeps people safe.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were working on something. We were making progress. It'd get blown up. And I'd speak to him and say, you know what, look, they're not moving America. They're not moving Mexico. Let's just, you know, let's stop for today. Let's pick up tomorrow and let's find a new way to bring this forward. So I would just encourage everyone working on that not to give up, to keep working hard at it and to find a way. But like I said, I would take a little bit of a pause for the time being. Let's let the current situation play out. And then hopefully there'll be a way for it to move forward.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Held yesterday, and I think it will hold again tomorrow. So I always expect countries to act in their interests. I think that the deal that's on the table right now between Saudi, Israel, and America is in Saudi's interests. It's in America's interests, and it's in Israel's interest. What's going to happen now, though, is the political dynamics are going to shift. And I think that, as we've seen with political dynamics, they come and go. I think let's get through this moment. And then I hope at the right time that those talks will be able to resume and conclude in an appropriate way. And it's funny, Lex, when I was working on the U.S.-Mexico agreement for the trade, we would have every day there'd be a tweet that would go out or there would be an issue. I mean, people forget how intense it was between America and Mexico. And I would speak to my counterpart of Mexico after a rough day.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fully regain security in the country. And then number two is to figure out how you can, like I said, eliminate or degrade the Hamas capability or other Iranian threats to make sure that you have your security apparatus. I think that the Israeli leadership right now should proceed with that. And I don't think that they should be thinking about normalization with Saudi at this moment. My instinct, and I've been watching this, Israeli Saudi normalization play out, obviously just speaking with people and seeing what I've been reading and watching with great excitement. I think it would be a game changer for the region. I think it's one of Iran's worst nightmares to have Israel and Saudi interlinked together. I think it'd be great for the Saudi people from a security perspective what they're discussing with America would be very strong, the ability to get different elements across would be incredible. So what I would say with it is that the industrial lot”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think right now it's probably not the best to think about that. I think that we want to think about that after whatever is going to happen is going to happen now. I think right now the number one priority for Israel has to be”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Severe consequences if they make this a multi party fight. And I think sending a strong message to Iran, I think that they have to see some consequences from this and know that they're not going to be allowed to have a free reign to cause instability and that Iran doesn't usually fight face to face. They usually do it through proxies. But let's just all be honest about where this is coming from and let them know that there will be a consequence if they instigate these actions. Again, at least with the Biden administration, they've had contact with Iran. They've been talking with Iran, but they've allowed Iran. I mean, again, the number I saw last year, I think under Trump, the number was maybe like $4 or $5 billion of oil revenue in total, I think, last year was something like $45 billion in revenue. This year, I think it'll be even more. That's a combination of them driving up oil prices, but also allowing much more sales. You would think that they would find a way to get them to behave and allow them to have”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How I would play the ball where it lies right now. Keep in mind we transferred the ball, it was on the green, now it's almost like it's gone back 150 yards and it's in a sand trap. I think the way that I would play the ball right now is number one is you have to show strength. I actually think President Biden's words were the right words. I see that they're moving aircraft carriers to the region. Again, the purpose of having a strong military, I believe obviously, you know, if you get into a war, you want to win the war, but the purpose of a very strong military primarily is to avoid a war. I don't know what kind of credibility the Biden administration has to show the strength, but right now you have to support Israel completely. You have to really let people in the region know that there'll be consequences if they try to escalate. Again, we saw a little bit of rocket skirmish from Lebanon, from Hezbollah. But again, this is the type of that they have to know they'll be.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I want to say one thing, Lex. I have a lot of friends who are fans of Trump, who are not fans of Trump, but one thing I want to say with absolute certainty is that if President Trump was in office, this never would have happened. And when President Trump was in office, anyone who supports Israel or who wants to see Jewish people not be innocently slaughtered, he would never have allowed that to happen. It did not happen when he was in power. And I hope people recognize that as something that's very, very true.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Underestimated the way that Iran would approach the region to undermine. I think they gave way too much rope to Iran, and I think that they didn't seize when they had an opportunity of strength with the Palestinians to try to drive to a conclusion that I believe could have prevented us being where we are today. Not to mention that even just three weeks ago, I mean, it's a bad look that they just basically gave $6 billion to Iran in exchange for hostages. And then Iran's basically funding these terror attacks are killing American citizens in Israel, and it's just a heartbreaking situation. Again, totally avoidable and one that I think has been very badly mismanaged to date.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But one of the reasons with the Abraham Accords we kept it so quiet during the whole time was because we always felt like the troublemakers in the region, particularly Iran, who we thought would be disadvantaged by having UAE, Saudi, Israel altogether. Israel's nuclear power, you have other strong economies. Iran seeks instability. They seek looking to create division in the region. And if you can create that economic sphere where you have security from Haifa to Muscat, from Israel to Oman, all the way through with Saudi, Jordan, UAE, Qatar, Egypt, that's an incredibly powerful block if you can make it secure and then get economic integration. That really could be a Middle East that thrives. So Iran obviously wanted nothing to do with that. And that's why they've been working to disrupt. So I think the administration has, they took an incredibly stable situation with momentum. I think they...”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Severely degraded the trust that we had to rebuild with our allies. I think they've been working now to get it back. After two years started working with Saudi and Israel, which I think was good. I think that they realized after a stint that maybe the process that President Trump had created in the region was the right policy. And keep in mind, President Trump's policy that I was working on was very strongly criticized during the first three years before we were able to achieve the results because it was departure from the failed policies of the past. And so first there was return to those policies, appease Iran. Let's criticize Saudi Arabia. Then they started embracing and working on the Israel-Saudi deal, which I was really exciting. I think we're all very excited about it. But they did it in public. And I think that that also was something, and I didn't have access to their intelligence, so I assumed that by doing it so publicly, they thought that they'd either had a deal with Iran because they were letting them get all this revenue or Iran wouldn't be a problem.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they just went right away. So they were funding the Palestinians, not enforcing the sanctions. And then overall, just projecting a lot of weakness in the region. So one of the most embarrassing examples is what happened in the United Arab Emirates, again, an amazing, probably one of America's best allies over the last 20, 30 years. They fall with us in Afghanistan. They were the first Muslim country to stand up and do that after 9-11 because they didn't want it to be a war of the West against the Muslim religion. So they joined the fight because they saw it as a fight between right and wrong. They have rockets shot into their country from the Houthis. And they basically don't get a call from the US for 17 days. They need their equipment that they buy from the US, which creates job in the U.S. They need it restocked. We don't call. So they've survived.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To UNRWA, the UN agency, which is totally corrupt. We've put $10 billion in there over time. I did a poll in the Middle East in Gaza to say, okay, we've invested $10 billion here as a country. Are we popular, right? The U.S. had a 7% approval rating. U.S. AID had a 70% approval rating. But it just felt like a waste of our taxpayer dollars. And again, we wanted to make it conditions-based. The Biden administration came in. Number one, they started insulting Saudi and Russia. Oil prices went up. At the same time, what they did was they stopped domestic production of oil. They made it, they disincentivized a lot of oil and shale production with regulations. They stopped.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So all I can talk about are where we left them, right? We left them a place where they had tremendous momentum in the Middle East. I met with them during the transition and said, you know, look, we even got the Qatar Saudi conflict done, which was a big no peace between Israel and Saudi would have been possible without that. So we even got that done in our lame duck period. And they came in and they said, look, we want to focus on the three C's, which is COVID, climate change, and China. And I said, that's great. But the Middle East, we have an amazing place right now. It's stable. There's momentum. Iran is basically broke. We put such crippling sanctions on Iran that they went from about, I think it was 2.6 million barrels a day of oil they were selling to about 100,000 under Trump. So their foreign currency reserves were basically depleted and they were broke. Same with the Palestinians. We stopped the funding to”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A much better life, but Hamas is not shown a desire for that or a capability for that, and I don't think there's enough trust to allow them to do that, which is why under the current circumstances, if you do want to have peace there, Hamas has to be either eliminated or severely degraded in terms of their military capabilities.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, Hamas has been running it now for 16 years, and they don't have a lot to show for it. And, you know, our posture with them was basically a very simple deal. If you think about what's the end state in Gaza, it's actually not that complicated. There's no territorial disputes, right? The border is the border. There's no religious issues there as well. You know, you're not dealing with Jerusalem. You're basically just dealing with the fact that Israel wants to make sure that there's no threat from Gaza. So it's a demilitarization or some kind of security guarantee from a credible source where Israel doesn't feel like Gaza can be used to stage attacks into Israel or to fire rockets into Israel. And by the way, these are things I was saying three, four years ago, that that was the objective and that was really the fear. Now that's been proven. Unfortunately, the fear has manifested. And in exchange, you can rebuild the place and you can give the people.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Problem that's held the Palestinian people back and that's made their lives terrible in Gaza has not been Israel. It's really been Hamas's leadership or lack of leadership and their desire to focus on trying to kill Israelis and start war with Israel over improving the lives of the Palestinian people.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Entire place. We felt we could reduce the poverty rate in half. We can create over a million jobs there. The only thing that people said was holding it back wasn't Israel. What was holding it back was governance. And people wouldn't have confidence investing there with the rule that Hamas was perpetuating. So I encourage people actually to look at the plan. It was very thoughtful. It was 181 pages. We went project by project. H project has cost it out. It's a real plan that could be implemented, but you need the right governance. And all of the different Arabic countries were willing to fund it, the international community is willing to fund it because they've just been throwing so much money at the Palestinians for years that's never been outcomes-based or conditions-based. It's just been entitlement money. And unfortunately, it hasn't really achieved any outset that have been successful. So it's a great business plan. It just shows to rebuilding Gaza could be easy. But like I said, you know, the”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Strong industrial planning. We looked at Japan. We looked at Singapore. We looked at Poland, why it was successful. We spent a lot of time on the Ukraine plan for the country and why it wasn't successful. And that was mostly because of governance and corruption, which actually resembles a lot of what's gone wrong with the Palestinians, where there's no property rights, there's no rule of law. And what we did is we built a plan to show, you know, it's not that hard, right, in the sense that between the West Bank and Gaza, you had five million people and we put together a plan, I think it was about $27 billion. We got together a conference. I had the head of AT&T. We had Steve Schwartzmann from Blackstone came, which was very gracious of them. We had all the leading Arabic businessmen, the leading builders, leading developers. And the general consensus of that conference was that this is very doable. We think that for Gaz in particular, it would cost maybe seven to eight billion dollars to rebuild the...”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I would get into a hard problem and say, How do I understand all the different escape patches? How do I try to eliminate them? And then build a golden bridge that becomes really the only but also the most desirable pathway for the decision makers to walk through. And it wasn't always hard. And sometimes you have to go and hold their hand or you try to pick them up and walk them across. But a lot of these leaders are very reluctant to change. And the dynamics of the Palestinians also were such that I think they were fairly stuck where they were. So we developed a business plan for Gaza, the West Bank. We threw in some improvements for Jordan and Egypt as well. I spaced it off of the Vision 2030 that they did in Saudi Arabia, which I thought was a visionary document. I went back through this process and I studied basically every economic project in the post-World War II period. So we looked at what they did in South Korea, why it was successful.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this was something I took on. I was working on the political framework between the Israelis and the Trying to understand what were the issues and the issues were not very many. It basically was you had a land dispute. So you had to figure out where do you put borders ultimately. You had a security paradigm, which I was much more favorable to Israel's perspective on. And obviously the events of the past 48 hours have fully justified that bias. And then in addition to that, you had to deal with the religious sites. But I felt operationally that wasn't actually as complicated as people made it because you wanted to just leave it open for everybody. Then I went through and I felt that the Palestinian leadership was fairly disincentivized to make a deal because there was just this paradigm where for they had billions of dollars coming in from the international community. And I think that they feared that if they made a deal, they would lose their relevancy internationally and the money would stop flowing into the country. So what I tried to do is to say, you know, my approach.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where they were able to do it. And we did that in the backdrop. The way we're able to be successful was we severely limited the resources of Iran and they were focused more internally and they couldn't cause the trouble that they were causing everywhere else. Since we've left obviously the dynamics of change. But the way you get to peace is obviously number one through strength. And number two by finding a way for people to be better off tomorrow than they are today. And what I found was that most of the voices looking for violence or trouble were people who were just focused on what happened two years ago, 20 years ago, 70 years ago, 1,000 years ago, people who are trying to solve those problems in that context often were looking more to use those past grievances as a justification for their power and for the bad behavior that they were looking to perpetuate.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He moved the embassy to Jerusalem. He recognized the Golan Heights. He got out of the Iran deal. We did an economic conference in Bahrain where we brought Israelis to meet with Saudi and Emirati and Qatari businessmen. And everyone came together. And each one of these instances were unthinkable previously. And everyone said that if you did it, the world was going to end. And every time President Trump did one, the next morning the sun rose, the next evening the sun set, and things moved on. And so by doing that, what President Trump did was he slaughtered a lot of the sacred cows of these false barriers that people had erected and showed people that the vast majority of the people in the Middle East, whether they're Jewish, Muslim, Christian, whatever religion they are, they just want to live better lives. And so what we basically did was create a paradigm where the voices for peace, the voices for together now finally had a forum.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you know, I always believed in foreign policy. I learned very quickly that the difference between a political deal and a business deal is that in a business deal, you have a problem set. You come to a conclusion. And then if you buy or sell something, you either have, you know, more cash or you have a company, so more to do, less to do. Political problem set is very different where the conclusion of a problem set is essentially the beginning of a new paradigm. So when I would think about how do you move pieces around the board, you couldn't say, let me just solve the problem. You have to think about what happens the day after the signing and how do you create a paradigm that has positivity to it. So the biggest piece of what President Trump did during his four years in office was he really strengthened the relationship with Israel, number one. And he did things like recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which really is more of a perversion of the religion than I think the true essence of what Islam is. I think Islam at its core is a peaceful religion. And I think that's where a lot of the great leaders in Islam want to take it. But the people who use Islam or the mosque as a justification for violence, those are people who I think are really, they are disrespecting the Islam religion.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They can then post and combat the misinformation that's been out there. But this misinformation is not something that's new. One of the characters who played a very big role in spreading the anti-Semitism and the violence in Israel in the 1920s was a guy named Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He was very close with Hitler and Mussolini, and he was working with them to try to get some claims to the Middle East once the Jewish people were annihilated. And what he did for a very long time was he did the same shtick, only it was before he had smartphones in YouTube, where he would say the mosque is under intact, these imperialist Zionists are coming in to try to destroy the mosque. And he would use that to raise money from Indonesia, from Pakistan, from all over the world, and then use that threat to justify recruiting groups of young vulnerable Muslim men and then getting them in the name of religious rights to go and kill people, which is not.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Israel's good at a lot of things. They're not very good traditionally with public relations. After the Abraham Accords, we made the first Abraham Accords deal in August 2020. And then we made five other deals. We first did United Arab Emirates, then we did a deal with Bahrain. Then we did a deal with Kosovo. Then we did a deal with Sudan. Then we did a deal with Morocco. And then we got the GCC deal done as well, the tension between Qatar, Saudi, UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain. And that was allowing us to create a pathway to then pursue the Israeli-Saudi normalization. So we had so much momentum then that the goal was just keep getting more countries to normalize relations with Israel once you create the connection between people and create the ability for people to do business together, the ability for flights to fly between, then you would just start naturally having people coming and everyone has a smartphone today.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And celebrate together, but you have a lot of actors that look to find ways to use these religious tensions in order to sow division and justify violent behavior”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they've worked to allow everyone access to the mosque. So today, any Muslim who wants to come can come and pray at the mosque. The mosque is Israel's acknowledged that King Abdullah, the king of Jordan, is the custodian of the mosque. And as long as people want to come to the country and pray peacefully, they're able to do that. But if you look at a lot of the propaganda that's been used by ISIS or Iran to recruit terrorists or to justify their incursions, they often say they're doing it in the name of liberating the Al-Aqsa Mosque, but from an operational and pragmatic perspective today, any Muslim who wants to go to the mosque, you can book a flight to Israel now through Dubai because there's flights between Israel and Dubai. And as long as your country has relations with Israel, they'll accept your passport in there. You can come and pray, and that's what Israel wants. Israel wants Jerusalem to be a place where all religions can come.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What is the Israeli Palestinian conflict about? And time and time again, the most popular thing that they said was that Israel was not allowing access to the mosque for Muslims to pray. And what was interesting was that Israel's policy is to allow anyone who wants to come and pray peacefully at the sites to come and pray. Sometimes they have security issues when there's provocations. But by and large, since 1967, when Israel was able to take back Jerusalem in a defensive war, just to be very clear, they were attacked in the south and they were attacked from the east, and they basically were able to beat back the Jordanians and the Egyptians and then reconquer the old city of Jerusalem. And during that time, immediately after Israel then passed the protection of holy places law, which was they basically took resources they didn't have and they said, we're going to restore the Christian sites, the Muslim sites, the Jewish sites.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the big thing everyone was saying is what do you do with this land where you have a mosque built over a very big Jewish site? And I was hearing all of the experts. And I always say experts with quotes because only in Washington can you work on something for a decade and continue to fail. And then you basically leave and are considered an expert. But that's one of the problems with Washington, which maybe we could talk about later. But the notion here was I went and I said, let me try to understand what the issue is with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the people, right? I always felt the politicians were a little disconnected, so I commissioned several focus groups, one in Amman, one in Cairo, one in Dubai, and one in Ramallah. And I asked people, Muslims.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In actuality, I don't think any of it is, but the Al-Aqsa Mosque is something that all of the Shia jihadists have used for years in order to justify their actions that are aggressive towards Israel. So this is something I'll maybe even take a step back and go through when I was working initially in my first year on the peace plan. I was doing a lot of listening. And quite frankly, a lot of what people were saying to me didn't make sense. And the reason why I was trying to figure out they were talking about sovereignty over locks of mosque, the Lakshma Mosque is a mosque that's built in the holy of holies, the Haram al-Sharif in Israel, where the Jewish Beitan Megdash, the holy temple was built in a very religious place about after the temple was destroyed. Then there was a big mosque built there. And it's one of the more holy places in Islam now.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Funding Hezbollah, Hamas. They were funding the Houthis. Now there's a little bit of a detente between Saudi and Iran, which has led to that going down, which only further proves that Iran was behind the Houthis, which is what the Saudis had been saying for years and Iran was denying. So there's a very strong relationship between the two. And we always knew that the way that Iran fights wars or fights conflicts is never directly. It's usually through its proxies. In this case, Hamas has been a proxy for Iran who wanted to obviously see the destruction of Israel, but also does not want to see the Israelis and the Saudis come together for a peace agreement.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the correlation, I mean, there's reports that Iran is behind the attack. Hamas has thanked Iran for their support. And it's been very well known that Iran supports the destruction of state of Israel. And I won't say Iran as a country. I'll talk about Iran in the leadership. There's actually a beautiful thing I saw on the internet where one of the soccer games in Iran, they were trying to rally support for the Hamas terror attacks. And a lot of people in the crowds were chanting FU to the regime because I think the Iranian people, the Persian people generally are peace-loving people who don't want to see this focus on destruction and annihilation. But you saw this in 2015, 2016, when the Iranian government had resources. The region was less safe. And since now there's been more resources allowed to go to the Iranian regime by lack of enforcement of sanctions. And as a result, Iran is”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Criticism from the international community from keeping the border tight, but unfortunately every time you'd allow construction materials to go into Gaza, they'd use them to build tunnels, not homes. You would have equipment that would come in to build pipes. They'd turn it into bombs. So it was very, very hard to figure out how do you get the resources into Gaza to help people live a better life while at the same time the leadership in Gaza was taking all those resources and turning it into military equipment to attack Israel.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that the Palestinian people in Gaza are essentially hostages. In Gaza, you have basically two million people that are being held hostage by 30,000 Hamas terrorists. And that's really the problem. And I would just encourage people to push their attention and energy in this moment and their anger towards Hamas. Those are the people who are killing innocent civilians who are murdering indiscriminately. And those are the people who have held back the Palestinians from having a better life. And just finally, what I would say is, you know, what we saw with Hamas was that if you go back to 2007, they basically had just one plan that they did over and over. And we were very careful to try to monitor very closely and stop the Iranian money and the resources from coming in. And again, we took a little bit of...”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you did an excellent job, Lex, of really giving the summary. Just a couple things, maybe I'll add to it is that Hamas was originally founded from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which is a group that's caused a lot of issues in the region. They've attacked Israel many times in the past. There's a lot of discussion about how Israel is an occupying power. Well, in Gaza in 2005, they withdrew from all the land. And then they say Israel's an apartheid state. Well, Israel then gave governance of the region to the Palestinians. And then what's happened is the Palestinian people's lives have now gone down, not up since then. I will say that under Hamas' leadership in Gaza, the people have suffered the most are the Palestinian people. And I see, I've watched cries throughout my time in government from people saying we want to see the Palestinian people live a better life. I agree with those people.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of their financial resources, which they were using to fund all these terror groups. And so we left the Middle East with six peace deals and a fairly peaceful world. So seeing what's happening, I think it was completely avoidable. I think it's horrible to see that it's occurring. And I pray that those in power will make the right decisions to restore safety, but also to potentially create a better paradigm for peace in the future.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Shooting in America. We had the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando. And there was real threat. And then you had Iran, which was given $150 billion in a glide path to a nuclear weapon. And they were using their newfound riches to fund Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, different rebels all over the region that were looking to destabilize further. Syria was in a civil war where 500,000 people were killed. Yemen was destabilized. Libya was destabilized. And it was just a mess. And all of America's allies had felt betrayed. President Trump came into power. We rebuilt the trust and the relationships with all of our traditional allies. We were able to eliminate ISIS, the territorial caliphate. And then we were able to project strength in the region, really go after Iran's wallet. We were able to stop through crushing sanctions.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is being funded by Iran that has allowed to plan operations that are going to aim to kill innocent civilians. And so as somebody who was formerly in this position, who was intimately involved with Israel, with the strategies to minimize attacks from Hamas and to try to turn the region around. And I think we did do a very substantial job under President Trump, the Middle East went from one of the most chaotic regions in the world. You had ISIS in 2016. ISIS had a caliphate the size of Ohio. They were beheading journalists. They were killing Christians. They controlled 8 million people. They were planning attacks all over the world from their caliphate. They were using the internet to radicalize people. We had the San Bernardino show.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I do think that it's very important at this moment in time for the entire world to stand behind Israel. I think that Hamas has shown the entire world who they really are. I think what their aim is, what they're willing to do. And, you know, all of the strong security that Israel's put in place over the last years, which in some instances was criticized, I think is now being validated that there was a real threat that they were looking to deter. So short answer is my heart is broken, praying for peace, praying for strength, praying for Israel to do what it needs to do to avoid being in this situation again, which is either eliminating or severely degrading Hamas's capabilities. There cannot be peace in Israel and in the Middle East while there is a terror group.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is a very beautiful thing to watch. I wish it wasn't something we had to watch, but it is with that being said though, the backdrop I've been speaking to friends over the last couple days. One friend I spoke with last night who was saying that a good friend messaged him saying I'm going in, we're going to do some operations to try to free some of the hostages held in one of the kibbutzes, messaged him the next morning. He was one of the first through the door to try to free these hostages and he was killed by Hamas militant. And sadly, we're going to be hearing many, many more stories of brave Israeli soldiers trying to get these terrorists out of Israel, trying to free innocent civilians who unfortunately are risking their lives to do it. And, you know, they're all heroes, but some will have a less good faith than others, sadly. So it's a very, very heartbreaking moment.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The scale of which we have not seen, and it's been incredibly hard for a lot of people to comprehend. My heart goes out obviously to all of the families of the victims, to the families of those who are held in captive now, and to all of Israel. Because one of the beautiful things about the state of Israel is that when one Israeli is hurting the entire nation comes together, It's a shame that it's taking an action like this to unify the nation, but I have seen incredibly beautiful signs over the last 48 hours of a country coming together. The Jewish people have been under oppression before. The Jewish people know what it's like. And seeing people rally together to fight for their homeland to try to reestablish safety is...”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think you did an excellent job of summarizing a lot of the context, but watching what's unfolded over the last 48 hours has been truly heartbreaking to see. We're still in the early stages of what's developing, but seeing the images on X of militants, terrorists going door to door with machine guns gunning down innocent civilians, seeing beheaded Israeli soldiers, seeing young 20-year-olds at a rave dance party to celebrate peace with militants flying in and then shooting machine guns to kill people indiscriminately seeing young children captive and held prisoner, seeing 80-year-old grandmothers, a Holocaust survivor, also being taken captive. These are just images and acts. That we have not seen in this world since 9 eleven this is a terror attack.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source