Welcome back. I'm Ian Masters, and this is Background Briefing, available 24-7 at

Background Briefing.org. And join us now is Jonathan Geyer, program director at the Institute

for Global Affairs at the Eurasia Group, a reporter and editor focused on foreign policy,

national security and the Middle East. He is an Arabic and Hebrew speaker and spent five years

as a correspondent in Egypt. He is a regular contributor at

the New Republic, the New York Magazine, and The Guardian, among others. And his latest article at

the New Republic is America's Gaza policy is a bipartisan catastrophe. Welcome to background

briefing, Jonathan Geyer. Thank you for having me. Well, thanks to joining briefing, Jonathan Gaya. Thank you for having me.

Well, thanks to joining us, Jonathan. And as you know, a number of allied countries who have

been allies of Israel have turned against Israel because of what's happening in Gaza and a call

for the establishment of a Palestinian state.

And that will be at issue in the upcoming United Nations General Assembly meeting where Francis President Macron will attend along with Canada, Australia, the UK, and Germany,

all of whom have been critical of what Netanyahu is doing.

But rather than join in, the United States is actually doubling down

and preventing the Palestinian delegation led by Abbas.

They've taken away their visas, so they can't even show up.

So that's a pretty nasty signal, isn't it?

Absolutely.

I guess the case I wanted to make in this article is that what's happening in Gaza, what's

happening to Palestinians, is obviously a tragedy and has been called a genocide by many leading

human rights groups, but I think it's also a major

strategic failure for the United States and is going to have really major damaging impact

...