Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: Welcome to the Call It Like I See it podcast. I'm James Keys, I'm here with Tunde Ogunlana. And for our call out this week we wanted to discuss Tunde's recent trip which resulted in him being in a war zone with missiles literally flying over his head.
So specifically Tunde recently went to Israel and I wanted to tell you about the trip. And he was there from around June 9, June 10 through June 17, when he was able to finally leave the country. And during that time conflict kicked off between Israel and Iran where they were exchanging missiles and drone attacks and so forth. And Tunde's there, man, and you know, I was able to keep in touch with him over text a little bit, but I mean it was a real deal. So I mean, Tunde, tell us, you know, tell us about the trip and what was it like to be in a place where that type of stuff is happening because that's very far removed from, you know, kind of the, the day to day life here in the United States.
[00:01:00] Speaker A: Yeah, definitely far removed from my life in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
So it was, it was an interesting experience still kind of decompressing and processing it in certain ways. But it's, I'll say this maybe to start. So I arrived there on Tuesday or Monday, the 9th of June, and so the war started on Friday of that week.
And when I got to my hotel and I was in Jerusalem first before going to Tel Aviv then, and I was there for meetings and I had some stuff going on with the Hebrew University. So it wasn't a vacation. I was there with an itinerary and a busy schedule. And so the first day I'm taking a walk 30 minutes after getting to my hotel and putting my bags up, you know, and just kind of enjoying this beautiful weather and clear skies and over my head a missile gets intercepted. And that was days before the actual war started. Now that was like, wow, you know, okay, this thing is real. And meaning just the idea of whether rockets, missiles, you know, that Israel is regular being targeted by somebody, whether it be, know, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Iranians, whoever it is.
So that was just interesting, right? And every day before Friday when the war started, there was some sort of missile coming from either Yemen, the Houthis or the Iran. I think before Friday it was coming from Yemen and the Houthis. I don't think it was coming from Iran proper.
And then of course after Israel struck Iran, which at in Israeli time when I was there it was at three in the morning. So I didn't know what was going on because I was sleeping, but I woke up and actually the day before we had arrived, we had gone from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv on that Thursday. So I woke up Friday morning in Tel Aviv to the news that Israel had attacked Iran and basically this war had started.
So luckily we went back, we decided that it would probably be safer in Jerusalem because of just the holy sites and all the stuff going on there, that they'd be less of a target.
And fortunately for us, we were right. Unfortunately for the people of Tel Aviv, they got hit. The night we left Tel Aviv is when Iran started counter striking against Israel and sending the cruise missiles into Israel.
[00:03:24] Speaker B: So, so the holy sites, you're saying, just real quick, you're saying that because Jerusalem is considered a holy city for all three of the Abrahamic religions, and so there are sites there that Iran would not want to hit, you know, accidentally or whatever, they wouldn't want to be anywhere near hitting because they would be. They are sacred sites in the Islamic religion.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Correct. So I was, you know, the hotel was called the Inbound hotel, probably a 10 minute walk from the Old City.
And I was. So I think the Al Aqsa Mosque, you know, the Dome of the Rock was on the other side of that. So I'm probably a 20 minute walk from the third holiest site in Islam. And then of course you have Bethlehem, you know, in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, you've got the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. So you've got a lot of, like you said, religious sites that if you're sending unguided missiles to a country, you probably want to avoid the potential of those missiles dropping on, you know, some of the holiest sites of your own religion or the religion of others that could decide that they don't like that you did that. Yeah. So that's why we felt that Jerusalem was going to be probably one of the safer areas until we could figure out what's going on and when we're leaving. So, so, so, yeah, so that was definitely an interesting and intense moments. But that to me was the interesting part to share that I was watching missiles getting intercepted over my head before the war started. And this, this is stuff we didn't see in the United, I mean, I didn't know of in the United States, the constant barrage that Israel was under, I guess just in this recent period of time.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Yeah. Generally speaking, you know, from groups aligned with Iran, you know, like, so, you know, a lot of times we, we would feel from this angle like, oh, Israel just kind of initiated Something out of nowhere when it's like actually, you know, proxies of Iran are volleying, you know, attacks from time to time on them just as part of the day to day walking around as you.
[00:05:23] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and that's a great point, James, because one of the things, there's a couple of things that were to me really stood out about my experience there. Number one, I think all of us, as many Americans that can, should try and get to Jerusalem at least once in their life. I'm not religious at all, but as a, even as a non religious person is just something to appreciate, you know, for Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Jerusalem is, you know, where a lot of things are based and are happening historically. And then the other thing, James, just to share, I mean, separate from the war, but just an experience in Jerusalem is it's, it's a good reminder for us Americans that history, you know, is written by the winner. So we get the history of the British. So a lot of the, the West European, the, the, all that kind of stuff. You go to Jerusalem and you're reminded that there was a whole Eastern Orthodox Church when the Roman Empire kind of split east and West.
The, the amount of things that are represented by the Ottomans and the Turks, the. So there's a lot of cultural nuances that are very interesting in the region. And you get the feeling, and you understand that these cultural beefs, like what's going on now between Iran and Israel and like you said, some of the other neighbors and the proxies, and whether it's Hezbollah in the north or the Houthis in Yemen and then their relations with Saudi Arabia and the other neighbors because of this Shia and Sunni issue between the Muslims themselves, if you just remove the Jews from Israel, the Muslims may still be fighting each other over Shia and Sunni stuff. So they, there's a lot going on there. And as an American, you kind of realize, like, wow, this is just a totally different cultural reality than what we deal with in the United States of just kind of black and white stuff. And the fact that we're such a young country compared to, you know, you got families there that can trace their lineage to the region 8, 900 years and there's 10,000 of them now.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Yeah. One of the things you were talking about that really interested me also was, and even in the context you were just talking about, like Western Europe is very young, even like the United States is super young, but even Western Europe, like there was nothing really of note happening in Western Europe, you know, go back a thousand years, you Know, like, so. But where you're talking about in Jerusalem, it's been stuff going on there, you know, significant things around the world, you know, the Mediterranean area, you know, and for, you know, 4,000 years, you know, or more, you know, really, you know, so the. So there's all that history that's built in there as well, you know, like, so talk about, oh, yeah, the old city. And it's like, oh, yeah, that's something that, you know, there wasn't anything going on in United Kingdom when that stuff was really.
When there was a lot of stuff going on there. So just. And that obviously lends itself also, as you kind of alluded to these beefs, that you have a historical context that may stretch back thousands of years. You know, they involve religion. We were very acutely aware of that.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: But.
[00:08:16] Speaker B: But they also involve, you know, like, there's tribal issues. There's a lot of issues that. That have never been resolved over thousands of years, which is kind of crazy to think about, you know, in that sense. And the technology's improved, though, you know, like, it's okay now. People can just volley missiles over or something like that. But it's still something that, like, this is. There's a lot of history involved in this one thing. Before I go to the next thing, I wanted to ask you about.
How did it feel when you were there and this happens? And then it's like, okay, hey, everybody, the airport's closed. Like, nobody's. Nobody's leaving, you know, or at least, you know, nobody's leaving in the way that you came in. You know, like, what kind of. Is there, like, a claustrophobia or like, what kind of feeling does that? Because that's just. Again, like, that's like, oh, oh, okay. So we just stay here. We stay on the ground. Like that kind of analysis.
[00:09:04] Speaker A: Yeah, so that's a good question, man. I'll say this one thing. I also realized being there as this played out, and I started trying to look at the Internet and all that, and then I quickly regretted that.
It's kind of like Covid. It's like, why did I look online for this?
[00:09:21] Speaker B: Everybody's so sure, man. Everybody's so sure.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: Everybody's definitely sure about this one, right? So it's.
So one of the things I want to say is, like, misinformation was rampant, at least at the beginning. I don't think as much now. I was reading stuff that the Israelis were trapping Americans, that they weren't letting us leave, which is totally false.
I would say this.
I was Impressed by the Israelis ability to just quickly and mentally and emotionally just focus on what they needed to do. To answer your question directly, how did it feel when the airports were shut? I actually didn't. It's interesting, man, thinking back about it, because, you know, we're talking this was a week ago for me, so now I got to process it. And yet there was a lot of adrenaline. So I wasn't thinking like that, like, oh man, I can't go home now. And just I wasn't sure. I thought maybe okay if I get stuck here another week or so. Not the end of the world type of thing. I mean, Israel is a beautiful country. It's first world. I had a nice hotel, so I wasn't going to complain.
But, but, but I do think that one of the things that I think contrasted for me was how would we as Americans react in this situation. So maybe that's a different way for me to answer the question because I think part of the reason why I wasn't freaking out like crazy when I mean, I saw a cruise missile intercepts a lot, the sirens going off, you're in the shelters. It's pretty intense compared to what we're used to in America.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: And so, but like life is death intense too. Like, not like, like we seem to need to manufacture controversy so that Americans can feel alive. Like they make up stuff to be mad about. But this is real deal.
[00:11:03] Speaker A: Yeah, let's save that for later in this discussion because I do want to address that. I can, I can definitely speak to those kind of feelings. But just to finish this, this point, because you're right, as you say that, say this is gonna sound like a joke, but it's true. Seeing cruise missiles go over your head has a certain way of focus in your mind.
And a lot of other things begin to seem very trivial.
So after a couple days of being there under these conditions, you know, if I pop into CNN in the hotel or I'm on my iPad and I look at some American news and I'm seeing that, you know, somebody's talking about some, about trans people or woke this. That seem, it's amazing how trivial all that seem when you're hearing about a city that's 40 minutes from you just got a whole neighborhood bombed and 10 people were dead. I mean, it's just interesting. And I'll say this because Israel has in recent years a lot going on. Right? We had the October 7th attacks in 2023.
You've got the issues since then with Gaza, you've got the west bank and the settlements. So there's a lot going on with Israel. And in this conversation, I know we're just focusing on Iran, but even when I got there, understanding that, like, when I went to Tel Aviv, I was about 30 minutes north of Gaza. Right. Like, you just. There's this feeling that you have at all times in Israel that there's just some serious stuff going on.
And as an American, this stuff that, like you said, well, we. We create many. We manufacture crises in America. That's what I. That's what I'm coming back to my own country with, that. We manufacture crises to make ourselves feel alive because we are actually the system. And the things that the greatest generation from World War II and all other generations build actually work. And our country has. Has issues. But generally things are functioning pretty well in general. Right. Maybe not.
[00:12:57] Speaker B: And we're also isolated in the world and very large. You know, like. Like, yeah, there's. There were. There were things happening in Los Angeles, you know, but that's like, to your point, like, you. If you're in Tel Aviv, you're 40 minutes away of a drive from where there's a lot of stuff going on that is, you know, like, rough stuff, you know, like. And versus, you know, we're. We're. It would take us more than a day to drive to Los Angeles, you know, from Great Point as well, because it's very exp.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: Yeah. The drive from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is close to an hour, and that's about 3/4 the width of the entire nation of Israel. Yeah, and you're right. I was telling people it takes me longer to drive through South Florida if I went from Palm beach down to the bottom of Dade County.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
[00:13:38] Speaker A: With no traffic's an hour and a half. And which traffic? You're talking three hours.
[00:13:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
Well, tell me this. I wanted. There are a couple of things I want to touch on. One is what did you note about how the locals reacted? You know, because you. You had sent pictures, like, from. From bomb. Like being in a bomb shelter. You'd mentioned that there was a wedding that happened that people continued in. Like, so how did the locals. You know, what stood out?
[00:13:59] Speaker A: So, you know, again, that's an interesting experience. Right?
You know, I'm sitting there in a shelter. I'm a black American dude that doesn't speak Hebrew, and I'm the only guy that looks like me in a shelter, which is fine. I mean, the one thing I'll say, too, is Israel is much more diverse than I anticipated and just different diversity. Not necessarily black and white like we're used to here, but a lot of.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: Diverse here means something very specific. You're talking about worldly diversity.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Yeah, correct. Worldly diverse, yes, and just different mean all kind of dudes with all kind of colors with yarmulkes on, you know, you know, in terms of, you know, looking like they're Arab or Ethiopian and stuff like that. So it's just interesting. Right? And so, and so, you know, that to me was, was, I guess just getting my mind that thoughts together for answering your question here about the locals.
Again, like I said earlier, I think the way the locals handled themselves allowed me as an outsider coming in and being in this situation to be a little bit more calm and focused about it. I felt like when I was in those shelters is again, contrasting how would we behave in America. And my most, you know, recent experience would be maybe Covid or something like where we had a shared trauma like that. And you know, I was disappointed to think, wow, I think Americans would be hysterical. I think we'd be making up conspiracy theories and, and our leadership would be going all over the place with different angles as to what this on that means. And I think that there, I might have seen some fist fights in the shelters if it was America. Right. When I didn't see any of that in Israel, I saw people, you know, singing and trying to motivate each other and this, this real feelings of solidarity. And I kept thinking, I hate to say it because I'm not religious, but the biblical story of Masada, you know, the, the, the, the Jews that committed suicide on the top of a mountain, I believe it was the Romans they were fighting instead of being taken by the Romans and, and all that. And I just thought when I'm in this bomb shelter, I thought, yeah, these people are going to die here. You know, my thought was Iran probably should figure out a different strategy because it reminded me of the stories you hear about London during the bombings in World War II, when the Nazis thought, okay, we're going to demoralize all these people in Britain. And every bomb that came down, it just made the British get more resolve and stronger. And so, and so I kind of felt the same way.
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Like the analogy to that story, that seems to be a cause and effect here, you know, like, I don't know. I mean, I think your analogy to the United States and people here, I mean, people are still people. And so, yeah, you know, like if you look at 9, 11, and the immediate reaction to that, the people here did come together and did have. Now if you play it out over a few years and people were more, you know, like some people got more opportunistic about it. You had conspiracy theories going around, but the initial reaction. So there may be something to the fact that this threat exists and this threat has. You see this happen from time to time, even like you missiles overhead, like you said, you said it earlier. Like it gives you a certain amount of perspective that maybe people walk around with over there every day and we just don't have it, you know, and it's not that we couldn't have it if we had stuff happening on a regular basis. Then people may harden and be getting more perspective here. I don't think it's a saying that the quality of human is different, just more so our experience may not harden us or may not have us in a way that we have that level of seriousness and because I think it is a good way to put it, like we create, not everybody, but a lot of people create and, or gravitate towards manufactured controversies just to have that feeling just so that they can be in a bunker with somebody else and feel like they're being attacked and you know, great replacement theories and stuff like that. Like, oh, they make up stuff just to feel the solidarity and the connection that they're under attack and they got to persevere through that. And so if you have that in real life, real life and death stuff, you know, it may again, it may actually make you be able to have that perspective and to have that resolve versus if you don't have that, you're kind of searching for it, you know, and looking for it under every, you know, conspiracy theory, you might be able to find it.
[00:18:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I think one thing that just my experience there was the solidarity also comes. It's historic.
Because if you think, I mean, I was getting nerdy with it when I was there, just out of curiosity, looking online for certain statistics about Israel, like I was curious about what's the population and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, it's all fresh in my head from just a week ago. So Israel has a population of just over 10 million.
75% of the population identifies as Jewish.
And you know, being there, I learned that in the world right now we have 8.2 billion humans roughly. And, and it's estimated about 15 million Jews in the world, 90% of which live in the United States and Israel. So the United states has about 6 million Jews and the Israel, Israel has a seven and a half. If you know, 75% of 10 million.
So that means that only a couple million Jews are spread out in the entire world. And you have the history of, you know, persecution of the Jewish people for a long time. And recently. Right. You've got things like October 7th, which loom very heavy in the country. Like I said, it's a very small country. It's hard to appreciate that as an American because like you said, we could take seven hours from me to fly from Fort Lauderdale to Seattle and it would take me a week to do that drive. So it's hard as an American to imagine a whole country that's so small that you can drive across it in less than 90 minutes. But you know that that does exist. So that I think all of that and the fact that up until now, I mean, Iran seems to be one of the last holdouts, the other neighbors, since the Abraham Accords, and certain things seem to be accepting that Israel is going to continue to exist in its modern form, at least for the time being. And they are now no longer trying to attack it the same way. But up until this recent period, all its neighbors were hostile, basically saying death to Israel, death to the Jews. So I don't know what that feels like, but I'm going to assume that if, if you've got a country like that is going to create some solidarity over time.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: I think you actually, there is a parallel that we can see in the United States and that would be if you go to civil rights era and pre United States, you know, and just kind of the Jim Crow south, that seemed to be a solidarity. It seemed like that type of solidarity was able to birth the civil rights movement, you know, and, and a lot of that seemed to dissipate once the, the, the, the grave threat that may have existed receded some. You know, I be, it may not, it may not have receded completely, but the grave threat that existed to African Americans, you know, that if you go to the 1950s or 40s or 60s where you'd be pulled out of your house and killed summarily by anyone.
[00:21:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:02] Speaker B: You know, like that when that threat existed there was a certain level of, of close knitness. And then when that threat dissipated some, you know, and to, to where it was an overwhelming part of your life anymore, then the, the cohesiveness may have changed, you know, in that type of sense. So I mean, I think you're on to something with that. And I mean the purpose of this conversation though really is, you know, to look at this like we're not here to, to weigh in and make Value judgments on, you know, what everybody should be doing and villains here and villains there. I mean, it really is about, you know, just this human experience that you went through. Some. You're not the first person to go through an experience like this.
This isn't the first place something like this happened. But it's not. It's something that in the United States, we're very removed from. Like, we just don't like this. This could be like, you could have been on Mars compared to what the. Even your own life experience traditionally was and had been. You know, for something like this to happen.
Just one last thing before we get to. I wanted to. Or before we get to the end, I wanted to ask you something real quick.
[00:22:07] Speaker A: I just wanted to, you know, something important there, because these conversations came up a little bit when I was there. So I just want to speak because while we're on this section about the locals, number one, as a black American, I can definitely appreciate how some people feel that Israel has a relationship with the Palestinians like America had with black Americans during the Jim Crow time.
So I want to say it. It's very delicate. And like you said, this is a human issue. This isn't about Jews and Arabs or blacks and whites and all that stuff.
What I'm saying is, like, for example, all the hotels I was at, the big ones, all the employees spoke Arabic.
They were Arabs, Muslim.
I don't know the religion, but I'm assuming, and I don't know if they were ethnically Palestinian or other type of Arabs from neighboring countries that immigrated to Israel. I don't know, but I got that kind of feeling that I was like, this is very interesting because this must have been what it was like in the Jim Crow South a little bit, where you actually do have this proximity and intimacy between the different groups, but yet they don't really know each other.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: And you can expand that out beyond just the Jim Crow south in terms of where you have a lot of, like, you go to a hotel and a lot of the workers may be black, but then a lot of the guests aren't, you know, so to speak, if you correct.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Yeah, that could be New York.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: That could be, you know, like, anywhere. Yeah.
[00:23:33] Speaker A: Well, and today, maybe in America, they're not black. They're. They're from Central America.
[00:23:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:37] Speaker A: But the point is, is that, yes, we are. And then guys like me and you go to those hotels in New York or wherever, Miami, and we interact with them and we're friendly and polite, but we don't really know what's going on in their life. We don't really associate with them culturally, and they don't know what's going on in life. And I felt the same thing in Israel, where everyone's in proximity and they're very close and they. And they all say hello and nod and they're all polite and cordial in general. I mean, in front of where I was. I mean, I'm sure there's areas where they're not, but.
But I got that feeling that, yeah, there's not a lot of commingling. There's not people inviting each other to each other's houses and all that.
[00:24:15] Speaker B: So that to me, was mixed company and all that.
[00:24:18] Speaker A: And so that's not. And that's not a knock on the Israelis or anything. It's just, like I said, that's a human thing.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: It's an observation. I mean, the point of this, again, and if anybody's watching or listening to this, wanting us to try to paint a bunch of villains, that's just not what we're doing here. This is really about, like, you were there and something very different relative to most Americans life experience happened. And so, I mean, it's worth talking about that and kind of exploring, you know, even just kind of while we're recording, kind of you exploring your thoughts on it.
[00:24:48] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Well, the last thing I want to say just on this part before we finish up is so I had these conversations with some of the Israelis that I was with and some of the people that were there to show me around town and stuff. And I talked about the similarity between European, especially Eastern European Jews in the late 1800s and early 1900s and black Americans in the south of the United States in the same period after Reconstruction? And I said, what's the difference between a pogrom in Russia where they go to the Jewish town and burn it down and rape the women and, you know, hang the guys? And what happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1921, it's the same thing I said, but the difference was, in America, you had something called the Great Migration. Blacks actually migrated out of the south en masse, and they were met with racism and bigotry in the northern cities like Detroit and Chicago. But it was still better than it was in the South. They did it to escape the violence and terrorism they were experiencing itself. And I said, so really, what was the Jews in Europe, they didn't have a place to go to because there was not one big country like America where you could just kind of get up and move.
There were all These different factions and countries that had their own laws about how Jews can move around.
So the idea of Zionism, and this is interesting, an Israeli guy put this in my head at a dinner we were having. He goes, tunde, what's the difference between Marcus Garvey and a Zionist?
And I was like, well, then you stump me. Because what he said was, Marcus Garvey was doing the same thing in the 1920s with black Americans. He was trying to tell them, hey, this country doesn't want you. It doesn't respect you, doesn't see you as equal, human. We actually should go back to Africa where black people were brought from, because we'll be. We'll have a better situation there. And he said, that's no different than in the 1920s, Jews in Europe being persecuted, saying, hey, we're not safe here. You know, we need to go back to our holy land or the homeland, which is, you know, where Israel is, where the Bible said that the Jews are from. So I.
[00:26:55] Speaker B: Whether or not, I mean, there's a pretty big difference in. And, like, because it's not the leaving of a place that created the friction that we're. We're seeing right now. It's the. It's where you showed up and the pe. That the people were already there.
So, I mean, I think there is a difference. Marcus Garvey, if. If he would have played out the way that Marcus Garvey wanted and black Americans went somewhere and took it over completely, and the native Africans that were there were upset about it and they might resist it, then it would be the same kind of thing. But the fact that it actually happened in Israel, like, as an idea, you know, in the abstract, that you see similarities. But, you know, that's what he said, clearly. Yeah. The way it played out, it was.
[00:27:37] Speaker A: A theoretical similarity, not a practical one.
[00:27:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, practical.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: But that's why I say this is a human thing, because it's a great example. As I thought about it, what if black Americans, you know, 30 million black Americans did move to Liberia back then?
The Africans that were currently there would have not liked that. And we would have been bringing the American culture with us. We wouldn't have no longer been Africans. Right. So there would have been the same kind of friction and tension that you see between Palestinians and Israelis might have been a bit different because you don't have the religious component necessarily. Or you might have.
[00:28:10] Speaker B: You might have the religious component.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:11] Speaker B: Some of the Western might have been over there.
Kill everybody and make them Christian, you know, for all we know.
[00:28:16] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, that's why I say it's a bit of a human trap and that's why there's no answers and probably this stuff will continue.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: But I didn't. Yeah, I want to, like, I think we'd have this conversation without going down that road.
The other thing I wanted to ask you about was just what you had commented to me on how, well, kind of the institutions that were in place provided support to during this, while this was going on, while every night there are bombs and missiles being shot at you and so forth.
So what role did you see for the institutions as far as keeping society safe and together to the extent possible?
And just kind of. Did you have kind of. Did it make you feel a certain way as far as how you see our institutions operating or just. You can keep it completely looking at theirs or you can draw a comparison if you want, but just kind of. What was your thought on that?
[00:29:06] Speaker A: I'll do both. I mean, looking at theirs, I mean, again, they, they, they.
I'll compare to this, James. And I know a lot of the listeners and viewers don't have the same experiences because not everyone lives in South Florida. But I would compare it to how we see South Florida move after a hurricane, compared to when you see those kind of disasters, let's say, in the Northeast, where they're not as used to dealing with them.
So I feel like part of the infrastructure response I saw in Israel and how organized it was and how everybody was from the government down, just on the same page as how we're going to act.
Part of it.
I don't want to. It's not fair to compare to America, in a sense, because Israel has been conditioned, unfortunately for them, to deal with this kind of stuff on a more regular basis. So in that sense, I'll give a little grace to our system. But I will say that I think leadership's important.
And again, I don't want to bash any leadership, but there was a contrast I could see between our leadership in the United States and how we discussed it and have been handling it up until stuff I saw this morning for getting up with you here and how the Israelis did, I mean, out of Israel, top down, whether people think the government does a good job there or not, the messaging was all the same, is exactly what we're doing, is what's happening.
Whereas the first night I saw the Secretary of State of the United States send a social media post saying we had absolutely nothing to do with this. And an hour later I see the President, United States on the news saying, hey, I was on the phone with the Prime Minister the whole time and da, da, da. So it's just, it's the mixed messaging. And that's the thing that I think I saw the most in terms of contrast, that the Israeli leadership was very focused. Ours to this day, like I said, still has mixed messages about who, who, who thinks what's happening and who's directing kind of traffic, in a sense. So that was, that was one thing. The second thing was, and I'll tell you this, this hit me actually personally, because, you know, again, remembering a few things, there was one of the evenings the missiles went over my hotel low enough that my room shook several times because the missiles go supersonic speed. And, you know, the, the air pocket that's created from its going, you know, shakes everything along the way.
So, you know, those kind of feelings, that's when I'm like, wow, this is real. You know, And I'm watching on the news in Israel how all these other Western countries, like France, the UK after, like day two, their governments are already announcing to the citizens in Israel, of those countries who happen to be in Israel, what their game plan is as a country. Like, okay, France is saying, we're gonna, you know, we got ships over at the port on the Mediterranean, take you to Cyprus, blah, blah, blah. England's got its own messaging about what to do, you know, their citizens should do. I was signed up for the State Department emails, and I kept getting emails up until the day I left that the State Department has no plans for U.S. citizens. And, you know, that was disappointing, honestly, as an American, because I know we're better than that.
And that's when I just thought about, man, this, this is so. I'm going to say this not to be partisan, but just to point out facts.
This president in his first term came into office giving a handbook about how to deal with infectious diseases and pandemics after the prior administration. Two of them dealt with the bird flu and certain things.
They didn't take it serious and just said, we don't care. And then we get a pandemic. By the fourth year of that term, I feel like I kept thinking about what I just saw in this new budget that's been proposed about how much they slash the State Department budget.
You know what I mean? And that's what I was thinking. Like, this is the example of leadership to me when it comes to the actual bureaucracy, when none of this stuff matters until it matters. But that's what I was thinking, like, the State Department probably is a mess right now.
It's been gutted through the Doge cuts between staff and money. And so now when we have a crisis and Americans are stuck somewhere else now my country, which I think is the top country in the world, is scrambling and is sending me emails as a citizen of my own country that they literally have no game plan for me.
That's what it said.
[00:33:50] Speaker B: Contrast other first world countries.
They all have this game. You know, the people sitting next to you from another country has the game.
[00:33:58] Speaker A: Plan being they got escape, not me. So, you know, luckily I was go ahead that we were able to get our way out and get through Jordan and do all that. So I got to see a lot more of the Middle east than.
[00:34:12] Speaker B: We'Ve talked about that in other shows though. I mean, I think that's like we can blame the leadership if we want, but it's clearly that there are just a lot of Americans that aren't selecting leadership for competence and for seriousness. They want a leader to make them feel a certain way, make them feel good about themselves, which is important for leadership, by the way. But that's the number one thing that people are looking for right now. It's not who's gonna, who's going to have things working right, you know, who's going to be competent, who's going to make sure that they got their eye on this and their eye on that. That's just not what many Americans are looking for in their leadership right now. You know, like it's, and that's so, I mean, these are the kind of things that are going to fall by the wayside. I mean, the, the, the idea would be that if enough things fall by the wayside, then maybe at that point people would start looking for more competence from leadership and less, you know, and less kind of rah, rah, tough guy stuff, you know, you don't know. But generally speaking, if there's no consequence to not having competent leadership or if people don't feel the consequence, then you just stop worrying about that altogether, you know, permanently. Or at least more people do. So that would be a concern, you know, like that being prepared for the, the unexpected is not something that our current leadership sells itself on and you know, they don't do, you know, So I mean, it just kind of, that's kind of what we. What. Because that's what some Americans aren't prioritizing. And that's what we kind of signed up for at this point, you know, unfortunately. So you got to see that the.
[00:35:34] Speaker A: Results, you got to make sure that Jackie Robinson isn't recognized as a veteran.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: They got that covered.
[00:35:40] Speaker A: Those are, yeah, those are very important.
Those are very important things.
[00:35:44] Speaker B: Yeah, they wiped him off of the recognition list. They got that covered, man. You know, so.
[00:35:52] Speaker A: But yeah, you got to read the email. I found it. The US Embassy is not in a position at this time to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing Israel. That's what I got multiple times from my own country. So they're prepared to take Jackie Robinson off the website, but they're not prepared to rescue me in a war. That's interesting. So, yes, that's priorities and I would.
[00:36:15] Speaker B: Say that they've been pretty transparent about that.
So unfortunately that's kind of a. But that's, that shows you the priorities.
[00:36:23] Speaker A: It's interesting how many people still don't recognize that transparency. But you're right, they've been.
[00:36:27] Speaker B: Well, I think it fits with priorities, you know, so that's just kind of what we're living with now. And a lot of times it is yet to see the consequences before more people can kind of see the error in that way. So we'll see. But, but no. Well, I appreciate you definitely for sharing that with us on, on our show.
You know, it's definitely, again, it, to me it's very significant because it's just so different from, I mean, this is, this is perspective, this is broadening horizons. Like it's so different from the experience of most Americans on a day to day basis or, you know, just what they've experienced in their life. And so, you know, just being in a place. And again, it's not the way in on, you know, we have shows to talk about that we've, where we've weighed in on our thoughts on the particular conflicts and who's doing wrong and you know, and who, you know, we should be worried about and stuff like that. This wasn't about that at all. This was really about, you know, wow, you know, the bombs, bombs overhead, you.
[00:37:16] Speaker A: Know, so, yeah, and that's a great point. I'll just say this for me is that, yeah, obviously my comments aren't to be taken, that I don't care about the people in Iran or the people in Gaza or anything like that. I'm talking about my experience visiting Israel and being there when a war started.
Had I visited Tehran and the worst started, then maybe I'd have a different, you know, I'd have their position.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: I mean, you'd still have something to talk about. This kind of the thing. Like, it's just, I think the point is to share the idea here. Hey, I was in a place where bombs started going off, you know, overnight, every night, you know, like, so that's kind of the point to share. So. But, yeah, we appreciate Rock for joining us on this. Call out, subscribe to the podcast, rate it, review it, tell us what you think, send it to a friend. Till next time. I'm James Keys.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: I'm Tunde Lana.
[00:37:57] Speaker B: All right, we'll talk soon.
