The following is an abridged transcript of a segment from System Update’s most recent episode, lightly edited for clarity and readability. You can watch the full episode on Rumble or listen to it in podcast form on Apple, Spotify, or any other major podcast provider.
System Update is an independent show that is free to all viewers and listeners, but that wouldn’t be possible without our loyal supporters. To keep the show free for everyone, please consider joining our Locals, where we host our members-only aftershow, publish exclusive articles, release these transcripts, and so much more!
After 15 continuous months of truly heinous and incomprehensible carnage in Gaza at the hands of Israel and their patrons in Washington, a cease-fire deal has finally been announced that, at least nominally, is intended to end all hostilities between the two sides. The deal is to take formal effect on January 19 — one day before Trump will be inaugurated, which is exactly the date by which he demanded that Israel agree to a deal — and while much is clear in terms of what the future entails, what remains is in doubt, much of it, including whether the violence will, in fact, end. Whatever else is true about any of this, this is an inarguably and comprehensively positive event.
The people who have been most brutalized since October 2023 — namely the people of Gaza — are out in the streets celebrating it as such for understandable reasons. Anything that puts an end to the constant bombardment, famine, arbitrary detention, torture and constant loss of innocent lives that they have endured for 15 months must be seen as an event to celebrate, whatever else is true about it and whatever the future might entail.
For days now, anyone with any basis for knowing about what this process has entailed has said that the only reason this deal is finally happening is because Donald Trump not only insisted on it but applied exactly the kind of pressure on Israel and Netanyahu that Joe Biden simply was unwilling and/or unable to apply. This is the consensus of anyone with knowledge of the negotiations, including many of the Israelis on Netanyahu's right, who are enraged that this deal is being done and are blaming Trump for doing it, a betrayal of Israel. Nonetheless, Joe Biden – the very same person with the melting brain who has unconditionally funded and armed the Israeli destruction of Gaza for the last 15 months, incapable of imposing even a single limitation or having his word honored at all – had the audacity to stand in Qatar today and aggressively take credit for this deal as his own diplomatic success. That's nothing short of laughable.
But it does raise two important questions that we want to examine. The first is: what does all of this signal about a Trump presidency and his foreign policy? And also raises the question of what this deal will actually lead to: will it really finally restrain Israeli aggression against Palestinians, or were the Israelis promised things like the right to annex both the West Bank and Gaza in return for agreeing to a deal right before Trump assumes the presidency? We will examine, question and cover all of that.
And then: two of Trump's key national security cabinet choices – Defense Secretary nominee, Pete Hegseth, and Secretary of State nominee, Marco Rubio –testified at their confirmation hearings. Both of them made some notable statements about wars and foreign policy – in the case of Rubio, ones that are clear deviations from what he has long maintained, particularly about the war in Ukraine – and those also provide some substantive insights into what a second Trump presidency may look like.
For reasons I think ought to be obvious, there are few topics, if there are any, that we have covered more frequently and more extensively over the last 15 months than the Israeli destruction of all civilian infrastructure and much of civilian life in Gaza as a response to the October 7 attack inside Israel.
