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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Israel and Gaza After Sinwar; The Brutality of the Israeli- Palestinian Conflict. Interview With U.S. Ambassador To Japan Rahm Emanuel. Aired 10-11a ET

Aired October 20, 2024 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:49]

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria coming to you from New York.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA (voice-over): Today on the program, and then there were none. With the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, Israel has eliminated the top leaders of both Hamas and Hezbollah. So what is next for Israel and its adversaries? I'll ask the experts.

Also, the American ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, on China versus Taiwan, Trump versus Harris, and much more.

Finally, I'll give you a preview of my new special, "AMERICA FIRST," premiering tonight at 8:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: But first, here's "My Take."

From the start of his entry into political life, Donald Trump has had one enduring advantage. He's a rich businessman and he played a super successful one on television.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: You're fired.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAKARIA: So the feeling is he must know how to grow the economy. In fact, almost everything Trump proposes would have the opposite effect. Think of his most important proposals, ones that he talked about at length at the Chicago Economic Club this past week, sweeping tariffs on all imported goods.

It's rare to find a topic on which economists agree as strongly as they do that this would be bad for growth and cause inflation to spike. Take a look at what happened when Trump placed tariffs on imported washing machines in 2018. That tax paid by companies like Best Buy was passed on to consumers, leading to sharply higher prices for imported machines. Soon domestically made ones raised prices, too.

Local manufacturing of washers did increase by about 2,000 jobs in the year or so after the tariffs were implemented. Ironically, mostly at Samsung and LG factories in the U.S. An important study found that in that time, American consumers paid around $1.5 billion in higher costs to gain those jobs or a staggering $815,000 per job.

The tariffs finally expired in 2023 and imports spiked, suggesting their effects were temporary. And that doesn't take into account the cost to American jobs when foreign nations retaliate and place tariffs on American goods. When China retaliated against Trump's tariffs by raising its own taxes on American agricultural exports, Trump paid tens of billions of dollars in subsidies to American farming companies to compensate them for their lost business in China. Most of these subsidies, by the way, went to large American agrobusinesses.

The effects of tariff policies are inherently regressive. The average American consumer pays for them, and the benefits go to a small number of favored industries and companies. They're also inherently political, favoring lobbyists and well-connected companies.

The government always issues some exemptions from tariffs and an academic study found that the Trump administration was significantly more likely to grant exemptions to companies that donated money to Republicans. The study's co-authors concluded that the tariff exemption grant process function as a very effective spoil system, allowing the administration of the day to reward its political friends and punish its enemies.

Tariffs also tend to be immortal. They often stay on far longer than the problem they are trying to solve remains relevant, especially when the beneficiary companies lobby hard to keep them in place. The United States has a 25 percent tariff on imported light trucks. It was put in place as a retaliation for France and West Germany's tariffs on American chicken in 1964. The chicken tariffs are long gone, but 60 years later, the truck tariff remains.

[10:05:03]

These examples all small-bore specific tariffs on one or two goods. Trump's proposal of sweeping taxes on all imported goods would have much broader implications. The Peterson Institute concluded that depending on how fully Trump would carry out his policies the American economy would be 2.8 percent to 9.7 percent smaller than otherwise by 2028, and inflation would be between 4.1 percentage points and 7.4 percentage points higher than otherwise by 2026.

The Center for American Progress Action Fund calculated that the typical American family would pay up to $3,900 more for goods and services each year. Add to this Trump's plan for mass deportation of undocumented workers at a time when unemployment is at a close to 50 year low and you will almost certainly have a shortage of workers, which will lead to higher wages. Now, this may sound good, but it would certainly contribute to inflation.

The deportation proposal also cannot fully capture the loss of innovation to the economy, given that immigrants are disproportionately more likely than native born citizens to start businesses.

The damage these proposals would wreck on the American economy is much greater than any supposedly anti-business proposals a Democrat might offer, say, an increase in corporate taxes. But the Biden-Harris administration has also too readily jumped onto the tariff bandwagon.

Having campaigned against Trump's China tariffs, Biden largely kept them on. One of Trumps strongest lines in his debate with Harris was to point out that if she opposed his tariff proposals, how come she and Biden have kept most of them. Recently, the Biden administration completed an exhaustive review of Trump's tariffs. And it showed that the tariffs have been fairly ineffective in changing China's behavior and also in revitalizing American manufacturing.

And yet, the administration concluded that the tariffs should be kept on or even increase because maybe at some point they would work.

In an age when government intervention is in vogue, let us not forget the main lesson from decades of economic policy around the world. Countries that embraced markets and trade have been the ones that grew fast and raised the incomes of their people. Countries that use taxes, tariffs, and regulations to give the government a major role in steering the economy generally got low growth and lots of corruption.

That Trump can embrace the latter model is a reminder that this celebrity businessman doesn't really understand business.

For more, go to CNN.com/Fareed to read my recent "Washington Post" column on the subject and let's get started.

The man at the top of Israel's kill list, Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, is dead. He was a mastermind of the October 7th attacks, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. In the aftermath, Israel declared him a, quote, "dead man walking," unquote.

So what does Sinwar's death mean for Israel and its broader strategy?

Joining me from Tel Aviv is Miri Eisin. She is a retired colonel in the Israeli Defense Forces and a fellow at the International Institute for Counterterrorism.

Thanks for joining us, Miri. My first question is, does this achievement of a long-held goal that Israel really put front and center allow Prime Minister Netanyahu to declare victory and start negotiating in earnest for a ceasefire? Does it allow him to pivot?

MIRI EISIN, RETIRED COLONEL, ISRAEL DEFENSE FORCES: It doesn't contradict, Fareed, meaning this isn't about declaring victory. For Israelis, until the 101 hostages are home there is no victory. Having said that, it does enable the opportunity to really get back to a negotiation which will bring back those 101. As long as Yahya Sinwar was that military terror leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, there was no way to go. He was not willing in any way to negotiate over the 101. Now there is that opportunity. ZAKARIA: So what we had heard from many reports from the Qatari

government was that Hamas had broadly agreed to some terms for a ceasefire and a release of hostages. Are you saying that from what you can tell that was not true and Sinwar was the obstacle?

EISIN: I think that President Biden himself has said that also. Hamas is not just Yahya Sinwar. So let's be clear. He's dead and there will be somebody else in his stead.

[10:10:01]

But he most definitely led a very hardline idea both in planning and executing the horrific attack as you mentioned before. But from then on, having very hard stance when it came to the negotiation, Hamas had said in Qatar, Hamas had said outside have slightly different opinions. This isn't Hamas suddenly recognizing the state of Israel, but it's about a willingness to arrive at some kind of resolution that could work for both sides.

ZAKARIA: And what is then the continuing strategy because it seems to me that if this is such a landmark achievement and if the decimation or the decapitation of Hamas and Hezbollah are the key metrics, then is it fair to ask, was it necessary to destroy 75 percent of all the buildings in Gaza and have all these civilian casualties if what was really being -- what the real strategy was to get these people, most of them, all, but Sinwar I think what gotten through very careful intelligence and strategic, very limited strikes?

You know, did you need to do -- did you need to destroy three-quarters of Gaza's buildings to achieve this?

EISIN: Fareed, I'm going to push back a bit at the question itself because at the end of the day, Hamas is the one under Yahya Sinwar, as they're calling him the executer and the mastermind of the Toofan flood, the Al-Aqsa Toofan flood on October 7th, and they are the ones who planned and executed to take out the immense amount of hostages that were taken. They're the ones who built over years a subterranean, underground system, not for the people of the Gaza Strip to protect those Hamas terror fighters, and in that sense, what they built was defenses just for Hamas.

And I don't know of another way because you asked, did we need? Why did Hamas do this attack? Why are they holding the hostages? Why have they not let them go? Why have they allowed it to continue? I would ask Hamas, not Yahya Sinwar, who is dead, and in that sense, I will not miss him, and whoever comes in his stead, I'm going to ask them, why are they using all of the Gaza Strip as their protection? Why are they not letting the hostages out? Why are they acting as if all of this is not their own fault?

ZAKARIA: No, I get that. And of course, getting the hostages out through the ceasefire is clearly a central goal. But what I'm trying to get at is, what then is the broader goal? Because there are people in Israel who, as you know, who say, well, what we need is a kind of de-Nazification of the entire Gaza Strip, of the overall Palestinians. I'm trying to get -- you know, how would that be achieved and all this

bombing going to achieve that? Where does this go if this is not the point at which to stop?

EISIN: So, first of all, I'm with you. I would like to stop. I did not want this war. I want it to be over. I want the 101 hostages to be home. And my heart goes out to what has happened to any innocent civilian, any uninvolved civilian anywhere within this war as it's going on.

What I want to approach in that sense are two different aspects. There's the military aspect, Hamas built under this Yahya Sinwar, and this is something that was done over many years, not in the last year, not in the year that Netanyahu came into power. Over many years, they built an enormous, and I'm using this term not lightly, terror army.

What do you do with the terror army? I don't have a good answer for that and I don't think that anybody right now knows what to do with it. What Israel has done is trying systematically to destroy the terror army capability to prevent an October 7th attack. People are like, what, they did October 7th, you need to prevent they're doing it again.

I want a different education so that it doesn't seem OK for anybody to support what Hamas says, the destruction of Israel that they write into their charter, that Jews are pigs. That's the good part. They write worse things. I'd like them not to support Hezbollah. Not to see those flags flying on U.S. campuses, let alone anywhere else in the world. I want a better future for the Palestinians. But what do you do against the terror army?

You can't allow them to define what's going to be the next step. That would be a horrible message, not just for Israel, but for the entire world.

ZAKARIA: Miri Eisin, thank you so much for joining us on the program.

EISIN: Fareed, thank you for inviting me.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, what is next for Hamas? I'll ask a top expert on the group.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:19:21]

ZAKARIA: To some Palestinians, Sinwar was the symbol of their resistance. To Israelis he was known as the butcher of Khan Younis and a mastermind behind the October 7th attacks. Sinwar's death this week is surely a big blow to the group, but a senior Hamas official said Friday that each time a leader is killed, the group gets stronger and more encouraged to achieve a free Palestinian state.

Joining me now is Tareq Baconi, one of the world's top experts on Hamas. Tareq, welcome. Let me ask you this. The question, first of all, is

this assassination a big deal for Hamas or is the organization as we often hear are very decentralized and they will simply find somebody else.

[10:20:05]

What does it mean that he no longer runs Hamas in Gaza?

TAREQ BACONI, BOARD PRESIDENT, AL-SHABEKA, THE PALESTINIAN POLICY NETWORK: Well, of course the taking out of the top leadership in this way is something that's organizationally challenging for the movement. That's not debatable. However, I think this focus on a singular person is overrated. I think that Hamas will survive this. I keep thinking about 2000 -- about the early 2000s during the second Intifada, when Hamas's top leadership, first Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and then al-Rantisi were taken out one after the next, and the movement evolved in a way that allowed it to both grow as an organization, but also to protect its top leadership from these kinds of execution by Israel in the future.

And fast-forward from the early 2000s, we get obviously Sinwar at the top of his position in Hamas, in Hamas, and then as someone who was key in the October 7th attacks. So this idea that removing the top leadership in this way weakens or decimates Hamas, I think there's not -- is not in accordance with reality and the fact is that because of the way that he was killed, and we can talk about that, and because of the way that Israel has been waging a genocide over the past year, there will be an increasing commitment to Hamas and a growing membership base.

And we'll have to wait to see who they elect as a new leader. But I don't -- I think Hamas, we can say, is weakened but certainly not decimated.

ZAKARIA: Do you think that his having been eliminated means there is more likely there will be some kind of a ceasefire deal and a return of hostages? Was he the obstacle to that deal?

BACONI: I heard what your previous speaker said and I think it's ludicrous that we're still in a conversation about Sinwar having been the obstacle when everyone, including the Americans, have admitted that Netanyahu has been the key obstacle in every certain -- in every negotiation that has happened. Netanyahu has changed their rules of the came all the way up to executing the top negotiators Ismail Haniyeh a few weeks ago in order to make sure that no ceasefire negotiation would be achieved.

I think we have to be very clear. This is not about a ceasefire for Netanyahu. This is not about the return of the captives. We know it. The American administration knows it. The families of the Israeli hostages know it. This is about Israel specifically the Netanyahu government completing its genocide in the Gaza Strip and expanding that war regionally in order to reshape the Middle East. They say it openly and I think it's about time we start listening to what the Israeli leaders are saying. Even today after Sinwar is executed, we have Netanyahu saying this

will be -- this is a blow, but this is not the end of the game. We will keep going. For the Israeli government there is no stopping them until they have completely eliminated the question of Palestine, weather in this round or the next, and this is the only motive that's driving Netanyahu at the moment.

ZAKARIA: Let me ask you about Yahya and his strategy or his tactics. I mean, it seems to me that October 7th was even by the standards of violent national liberation movements, I'm thinking of movements in Africa, African National Congress, it went far beyond in its brutality and most of those movements were generally, you know, had rules about no, you know, attacks on civilians, no attacks on women, no attacks on children, no rape.

It was, you know, not all of them, but many of them. This seemed particularly brutal and I'm wondering is there within the Palestinian movement, even the armed resistance, were feeling that this was -- this went too far and it didn't work. I mean, look at the destruction to poor Palestinians it has unleashed.

BACONI: Well, I mean the fact that it worked or didn't work, this is -- we're living in a moment of historic rupture. We're going to be studying and thinking about this moment for many years to come. I mean, if you think about Algeria since you brought other anti-colonial struggles, Algeria or Vietnam or South Africa, the death toll on civilians has been horrifying. You know, you would go to Algeria now and say, was it worth it to have more than a million Algerians killed to fight British -- to fight French colonialism?

Or if you go to the Vietnamese and say, was it worth it, having hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese killed to fight American imperialism? The question isn't that whether it worked or didn't work, the question is, why do so many Palestinians have to die before the American administration understands the cost of maintaining Israeli apartheid, and sustaining a Jewish supremacists regime in Palestine.

I'm the first person to argue that there needs to be a firm investigation to understand what happened on the day.

[10:25:04]

But this is certainly not something that can, regardless of what happened on the day, we must not think of the genocide of the past year as being linked in any way or being a retaliation to that day. What's happening today is the actualization of Israeli policies of genocidal intent, which they've been talking about for years before October 7th.

ZAKARIA: All right. We will have to leave it at that.

Tareq, I appreciate your coming on the show.

BACONI: Thank you, Fareed.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, I talked to Rahm Emanuel, the U.S. ambassador to Japan, about his new plan to counter China and about the 2024 presidential race.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:30:11]

ZAKARIA: China sent, what it called, a stern warning to independence forces in Taiwan on Monday, in circling the island with a record number of warplanes, plus battleships and drones. Beijing's show of strength were surely meant as a warning to Taiwan and its allies, most conspicuous among them, the United States of America.

Taiwan's new president had just given a speech days prior to the Chinese war game, asserting that Taiwan is not subordinate to China. In an op-ed in the "Wall Street Journal," the American ambassador to Japan, offers a solution to Chinese belligerents, a coalition around both trade and defense among the West and its allies in Asia. Joining me now is that ambassador, Rahm Emanuel.

RAHM EMANUEL, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO JAPAN: How are you?

ZAKARIA: Very good to see you, sir. So, let me ask you straight away the kind of fundamental question about Taiwan that people wonder about which is, do you think that China can be deterred? Or as many people believe, does Xi Jinping have as a core goal of his, you know, kind of achievement of greatness and his legacy that he is going to reunify China with Taiwan which, of course, would have to be done by force?

EMANUEL: To answer that question, you have to look at how the deterrence is working. And before you even get to Taiwan look at the South China Sea where we have the Philippines, which is a treaty ally for the United States. And there has been this kind of, I would call it, not kinetic but this kind of belligerence, and because of the United States, it hasn't gone farther.

So, do I think deterrence works? Absolutely. And we can put an economic system together that I actually think, again, flips the script on China and leaves them isolated because their tactics have a weakness inherent in it. And so, before you get to Taiwan it is working effectively as a deterrent. And when you integrate the political, the security, and the economic into a strategy of deterrence it will have its impact.

ZAKARIA: So, would that suggest, though, with regard to Taiwan is that China is still at the end of the day rational. In that if you push back and if it sees that kind of alliance, it will say to itself, this is a heavy price to pay. Because that's what happened. You point out so in your piece, Australia held firm and the Chinese eventually backed down.

EMANUEL: Australia, on the economic front, expanded their network, really exercised their trade alliances across the globe. And after three years of economic coercion, trying to isolate Australia, bend it to its will, it failed. So, it can work. You've got to make the most of it.

That means we have to build up our security pieces on the defense side. We have to continue to work to bring other countries closer to the United States from a political diplomatic side. And then we have to have an economic component where the three of them work interlocking all in the same strategy where China, once isolated, backs off.

As you saw, eight years ago, just take this as playbook, not only Australia on economic coercion, wolf warrior was seen as their diplomatic effort. It now cost them. They realize they've got isolated, so they've abandoned it as a strategy. Periodically it pops up, et cetera.

If you integrate the three components that makeup a foreign policy or national security, security meaning on the defense side, the diplomatic efforts and political efforts and the economic into a multilateral alliance building effort China then realizes the maneuverability in the room is limited. Their strategy is to take on Australia and put all the power in them. A Lithuania, a Philippine, a Japan agree if our strategy then is to make it multilateral, they then becomes --

(CROSSTALK)

EMANUAL: Right.

ZAKARIA: Let me ask you -- talk about something that's really perhaps one of the most unremarked on massive shifts in foreign policy, which is the revolution in Japan. Japan went from being a very passive player both in foreign policy and defense. And it has really become much more active. And it seems to be largely centered around the China threat. Explain that and why did it happen?

EMANUEL: Well, I think there's China. And I also think just the world changed. But also, they were ready to step up. They went from one percent of GDP to two percent of GDP on defense spending. They're going from the ninth to the third largest defense budget.

They have acquired counterstrike capability and real significant deterrent effect for us. They've normalized relationships through the trilateral with the United States, Japan, and Korea. They rewrote their national security document to reflect the kind of -- the new world that they're in. And they also lifted the exports on weapons to the countries that are not in conflict.

Those are five fundamental changes to 70-year-old policies, each and every one of them. In the same way, the United States went from literally a hub-and-spoke to this lattice work system. We've taken the command and control center and moved it -- are going to moving it now in real time into Japan.

[10:35:04]

And that's simultaneous to while Japan is building a joint operation center. So, this whole effort is really -- basically, Japan is stepping up as a bulwark to the security.

Now, one other thing that sometimes gets lost the most popular country in the Indo-Pacific, among all the people, is Japan. So, while we bring a lot of security, we bring a lot of other type of thing, Japan brings a huge diplomatic credibility --

ZAKARIA: Because --

(CROSSTALK)

EMANUEL: Huge diplomatic --

ZAKARIA: -- giving economic aid for the last 50 to 70 years.

EMANUEL: Seventy years. That's been the main part of their foreign policy. And they have a trusted value. So, when you put Japan's credibility and their diplomatic effort of years, and working it, and then you also put what we can do diplomatically and security-wise and economically, that's a powerful one-two punch.

And let me illustrate one point. In the March '22 vote, in the United Nations, to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, eight out of the 10 ASEAN countries voted with -- condemning it. Four of them co-sponsored it. That was, in many ways, the work of Japan.

So, the partnership between security and diplomatic, Japan is stepping up in a real way as a full partner with the United States in -- I wouldn't say in lockstep, but in very deep coordination.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, Donald Trump says that Jews who vote Democratic should have their heads examined. I'll ask Rahm Emanuel what he thinks of that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:41:17]

ZAKARIA: And we're back with the American ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel. So, a lot of what the attack of the Republican Party on the Democrats is, look at Democratic-run cities, look at Chicago, look at New York, look at San Francisco, crime, illegal immigrants, housing is crazy expensive. In a weird way, in a real sense, the Democratic Party is paying a price for what are seen as these ills of Democratic cities.

You were once a mayor of Chicago. Are they right?

EMANUEL: No, they're not right. I mean, first of all, there's challenges in urban area. There's challenges in rural area.

Now, we can sit here and talk about urban versus rural, and which one is what type. But I actually think there are serious challenges in rural area that we have to work together regardless of whether you represent a city because you need that part of America to grow and be healthy.

In the same way, there are challenges in urban area, but that it doesn't mean that they're not an economic contributor. They also have innovation and capabilities there. The characterization doesn't get you closer to a solution and it's not accurate characterization.

Any more than just saying that all of rural America is, you know, only -- the thing they care about is guns and keeping everybody out, and vigilante, and militia, that's not a fair characterization of rural America. That's not what's going on.

Do they have challenges? Yes. Is there serious problems with, you know, fentanyl and other type of drugs? Yes. That does mean it's a characterization of what happens all over America. There's a contribution there that communities have, tightness have that can actually contribute to helping solve a lot of problems in the United States.

And I don't think demonizing a place would get you any closer to a solution. There are things that have overshot the runway. And then as history showed in the 60s and 70s, get self-corrected.

ZAKARIA: One of the things that all the polling is showing is that Kamala Harris -- the Democrats are having difficulty -- more difficulty than anyone believed they would with Black and Hispanic voters, particularly the defection of Black men and Hispanic men.

Why do you think that's happening? James Carville says the Democratic Party has become too feminized. Do you agree?

EMANUEL: There's a very influential book, "Of Boys and Men," that I read this year. And the data when you look at college, you look jobs, you look at earnings, you look at kind of grades, et cetera, we have a problem. Not -- that's not a solution that should be left to the Republican Party.

We, as a country, have a problem which means we, as a party, that wants to compete nationally have to have a set of solutions. And it doesn't mean if you're emphasizing something that deals with fundamental problems, on education, economic opportunity, growth, maturity, sense of isolation, or alienation, that doesn't mean it comes at the expense of issues affecting women. It means that you're a party that's trying to be -- represent the whole country.

And we have to be honest about it, because when you look at the statistics we cannot, as a country, afford a lost generation here. And we're having that. It's very clear when you look at what has happened in 20 years, that what is happening to men of all ethnic or racial backgrounds that we have a lost generation. And we, as a country, not just a party, can't afford that. We don't -- we don't have a person to waste in this century.

ZAKARIA: Donald Trump says that if Jews would vote Democratic, they should have their heads examined. I think you've voted Democratic all your life and you're a proud Jew.

EMANUEL: I grew up in a home were being a Democrat was one of the 10 lost tribes.

ZAKARIA: So, what do you say to him? EMANUEL: Well, first of all, that's -- that's not -- look, I have a -- I think when you look at this, both at home here in America, the values that you grow up in a Jewish home, an emphasis on education, emphasis on respect and responsibility, emphasis on healing the world, what is called tzedakah, that is the values that brought me -- and I grew up in a Democratic home but brought me and made me confirm my own views of that.

[10:45:25]

That is who we are as Jews, but also what the Democratic Party represents. But it also relates to the state of Israel. I worked side- by-side -- during the 30th year anniversary of the peace agreement between Israel and Jordan, I was with President Clinton in Aqaba when that was signed. One of the most powerful sublime moments was watching the Israeli military leadership stand at attention as our Jordanian national anthem was played, and watching the Jordanian armed forces stand at attention when Hatikvah was played, the Israeli national anthem.

I've seen President Obama agreed to the funding for the Iron Dome that has played an essential role to Israel's security. But also, what's essential, which is why we have commitment to Israel's security, isn't just the arms, it's Israel's recognition, the dreams of Ben-Gurion, the founding father, is to be accepted a nation among nations. And that means you have to be honest when Israel is wrong. And I have no problem saying that with my middle name being Israel.

And I've seen President Clinton, President Obama, President Biden. And that means the security comes with a two-state solution. Only one track has led to peace and security, the negotiated track. And so, when the Democratic presidents, President Clinton, President Obama, and I've not seen President Biden, although, I'm focused on the far- east, worked towards a two-state solution. It's exactly why the IDF leaderships for it because it's in Israel's security interest.

So, when you say as an American that you're for Israel's security, it's not just the weapons you do. It's also taking advantage of that military effort with a political solution. You're going to have to do that eventually on the West Bank, sooner than later. And you have to do it in the north and the south right now. Because the military can't do it, they create a space.

And so, when a president of United States says to Israel the truth, that's being a friend. And just doing something blindly is not a friend.

ZAKARIA: Rahm Emanuel, always straight talk with you. Thank you.

EMANUEL: Thank you.

ZAKARIA: Next on GPS, I'll bring you a clip from my special. It is about the historical roots of Donald Trump's views on foreign policy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:52:15]

ZAKARIA: The presidential election in November presents a choice between two very different approaches to foreign policy. For example, Kamala Harris wants to keep supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression. Donald Trump and J.D. Vance wants to end that war, indicating that they don't want to be entangled in a grinding far off conflict that has caused the United States tens of billions of dollars in aid.

Trump's views have revived one of the oldest debates in America. Isolationists movements have waxed and waned over the years. I dig into that history in my new special, "AMERICA FIRST," premiering tonight on CNN at 8:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific.

I want to show you a clip about where that phrase, America first, actually comes from. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA (voice-over): After piloting the first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic, Charles Lindbergh was an international sensation. For "Time" magazine's first ever man of the year in 1928 he was the natural choice.

He parlayed his fame into politics, becoming the spokesman for the largest anti-war organization in U.S. history, the America First Committee. It included people from all walks of life, from the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, to Walt Disney.

JON MEACHAM, AUTHOR, "FRANKLIN AND WINSTON": America first was the embodiment, the manifestation of this isolationist sentiment and it was hugely important and popular.

ZAKARIA (voice-over): It was 1941 and World War II was raging. The Nazis had taken over most of Europe. But Americans wanted desperately to stay out of the war, 93 percent of them, according to one poll. The America First Committee grew to 800,000 members. And Charles Lindbergh was its champion.

CHARLES LINDBERGH, SPOKESMAN, AMERICA FIRST COMMITTEE: We cannot win this war for England. That is why the America First Committee has been formed.

ZAKARIA (voice-over): His biggest opponent, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Who knew that if Germany took over Europe, America could be next. It would take his most masterful political performance to ready a nation for war, a war that almost no one in America wanted to get involved with.

[10:55:05]

But to pass his ambitious domestic agenda and save the country, Roosevelt needed the many isolationists in Congress on his side.

CHRISTOPHER MCKNIGHT NICHOLS, AUTHOR, "PROMISE AND PERIL": The challenge for him is keeping them on board on the domestic policy side and not moving too fast on the foreign policy side.

ZAKARIA: FDR followed Congress' lead on international matters, signing neutrality acts to prohibit arms sales to any warring country, friend or foe. Roosevelt sent a letter to Adolf Hitler asking him to respect the sovereignty of 31 countries. The Nazis' response, hysterical laughter.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAKARIA: Watch my special, "AMERICA FIRST," premiering tonight on CNN, 8:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific. And thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I'll see you here tonight and then back next week.

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