Yuval Noah Harari is a world-famous public intellectual and historian. He is the author of Sapiens and Homo Deus, as well as other books such as Homo Deus and Sapiens: A User's Guide to the World, Homo Deus. In this episode, Yuval talks about the current crisis in the Middle East, and his perspective on recent events, including the Israeli disengagement from the West Bank, the ground war in Gaza, the rise of global anti-Semitism, and the glimmers of hope to be seen there. He also talks about how to deal with a world in which we live in constant fear of the unknown, and what it means to be a human being in a world that is constantly on the edge of collapse. He talks about what it's like in Israel now, how people are making sense of the failure of the IDF on October 7th, and how we might avoid World War III while shoring up the failing global order. As always, the way to support the podcast is to subscribe at Samharris.org/making-sense and become a supporter of the podcast by becoming a supporter. You'll get access to the podcast's newest episode, "The Bright Line Between Good and Evil," wherever you get your podcasts, plus access to more episodes of The Making Sense Podcast, and access to all the latest news and updates on the podcast. The podcast is made possible because of the support of our listeners. We don't run ads, and therefore, we're made possible entirely through the support we're doing this podcast by you, the listeners. Please consider becoming one of our supporters! . Thank you, Sam Harris and I hope that you enjoy what we're listening to this podcast, and that you'll find the podcast helpful, because it's made possible by your support is making me a better person, not less important than you'll be able to understand the world, and help us all be better at making sense, better at listening to the things we care about the world. . . . and I'm grateful that you're listening, and I really appreciate what we can do, not only of the things I care about, not just listening, more of that, and learning, and more of what we know, and better listening, so we can make sense, and we can help you better understand, and learn more of the world more of it, and so much more of our world, better of it.
00:09:55.580There is a mixture of so many different feelings and it depends on who you talk to.
00:10:00.400But it's obvious that there is immense grief and pain.
00:10:04.100There is also immense rage at Netanyahu and at his coalition.
00:10:09.340It's clear to a lot of people that, yes, there were immediate failures of the military, but this
00:10:17.460was the result really of 14 years of being ruled by a populist strongman who divided the
00:10:26.180nation against itself and put his personal interests before the national interest, you know, appointing people to
00:10:34.880key positions on the basis of personal and political loyalties and not on the basis of
00:10:41.900competence, accusing the serving elites of the country of being these deep state
00:10:48.440traitors, you know, to the degree that the very word elite, which is supposed to be positive, you know, people who are
00:10:54.400foremost in giving service to their country, in the military, in the universities, in judicial system or wherever, it became a
00:11:02.440pejorative term as if there is something wrong with it.
00:11:05.480And especially over the last year, you know, trying to undermine Israeli democracy, and it was warned again and again and again by people in the army, in the
00:11:19.480intelligence, that this is weakening Israel at a very, very dangerous moment and distracting all the country and the security forces from the main threats.
00:11:29.820And it simply ignored all these warnings. And now we are paying the price for it. And I think this is a lesson that people all over the world should take to heart, that if you vote for a populist strongman like that, then eventually there comes a day when the entire nations pay a very, very high price for it.
00:11:55.700Yeah, I think I could be forgiven for hearing a pretty spot on description of Trump in your description of Netanyahu. I wasn't aware of how, what a Trumpian figure Netanyahu was not having followed Israeli politics as closely as I might have.
00:12:13.100I mean, there is one big difference, that Israel is, you know, much weaker and more exposed than the United States. There are the kinds of, I don't know, political experiments that people in other countries may have the luxury to try, that Israel just doesn't have this kind of buffer. And it was extremely reckless. And as I said, we are now paying the price for it.
00:12:41.540Just so that I'm clear about the causality here, is it that Netanyahu drew so much attention to his own political needs and the divisiveness of that whole project, just shoring up his government, that it was such a distraction from the very real concerns of security?
00:13:00.840Or was it, it sounds like you're saying it was that, but in addition, it was also putting people in power who are actually not competent because they were just loyalists to his regime, essentially.
00:13:14.040It's much broader than just the destruction. I mean, what we've seen since October 7th is that even more than a month after the horrible attack, still many government departments are not functioning well.
00:13:27.040Civil society had to fill in for a lot of dysfunctioning state agencies and government departments because of the policies that undermined these state institutions for years.
00:13:42.780Another thing that we see is that Netanyahu based his career for years on the idea that you cannot have any kind of peace process with the Palestinians.
00:13:54.440And he actually, and he said it openly that he saw Hamas as a better partner of sorts than the Palestinian authority because with Hamas, there was no danger that there is going to be any kind of peace process.
00:14:10.520So he openly talked about it for years that his policy is to weaken the moderate forces among the Palestinians and strengthen Hamas.
00:14:23.080And this all blew up in our face on the 7th of October.
00:14:26.680And similarly, because of pressures from within his coalition, if you look, for instance, at the way the Israeli defense forces distributed the military units, there were just about two battalions guarding the entire border with Gaza.
00:14:43.800Whereas something like 32 battalions were guarding settlements, including illegal outposts in the occupied territories, which explains why on the morning of the 7th of October, there just weren't enough soldiers to protect the civilians in Kibbutzim, like the one of my aunt and uncle.
00:15:08.340I mean, all the soldiers or most of the soldiers were in the occupied territories.
00:15:12.460Does it explain why it took so long for people to get to the south once the crisis began to unfold?
00:15:20.340I mean, how long does it take to drive from the West Bank to Gaza?
00:15:24.180I mean, you know, if you drive fast, you can get there in two hours or three hours.
00:15:27.940But, you know, to move a military unit is a bit more complicated than that.
00:15:32.780The army got there, but just not in time.
00:15:35.300The Hamas terrorists just needed a few hours in control of these villages to simply go from house to house and torture and murder and kidnap everybody they found.
00:15:47.580Right. But wasn't it a story of more like eight hours or 12 hours or 20 hours in some cases?
00:15:52.980I'm not sure. I mean, again, within 20 hours, definitely the army was there.
00:15:57.580But once Hamas was in control of the villages, then you had to conduct a military operation and you had thousands of Hamas terrorists.
00:16:07.380It wasn't just, you know, a few or 10 or 20.
00:16:10.300You have hundreds in some of the villages.
00:16:12.380So you had to conduct very difficult urban warfare, house to house warfare by the army when you also have Israeli civilians and hostages there.
00:16:23.420So the army had to be extremely careful.
00:16:27.360Can you tell me more about this fairly cynical game that Netanyahu played with the Palestinians with respect to encouraging Hamas, the far more extreme ruling party?
00:16:39.740And also just the support of the settlements as well.
00:16:42.440I mean, that's also been provocative and decidedly unhelpful if your goal were a two-state solution.
00:16:50.060I mean, Netanyahu's recent, certainly this government and also some of his previous governments are based on an alliance, a political alliance with extremists who want indefinite Israeli control of the West Bank.
00:17:06.960So they saw any chance of a peace process with the Palestinians as a threat to their ambitions, which basically are, you know, coming from religious fanaticism.
00:17:20.220We also have our own messianic zealots, and they wanted full control of the territory far more than they wanted peace.
00:17:28.020And because of that, they saw the moderate forces among Palestinians as a potential danger, whereas Hamas, that you can count on Hamas not to initiate and not to agree to any kind of peace process.
00:17:42.840So for them, Hamas looked like an almost ideal partner that they thought, you can let Hamas rule Gaza.
00:17:51.160Okay, you have some occasional attacks, and every year or two, you have a bigger military operation.
00:17:58.540But on the whole, for 15 years, they just let Hamas control Gaza, turn it into a terror base and an Islamic dictatorship, and no chance of any kind of peace process while they deepen their control of the West Bank.
00:18:17.140And this was all based on a completely mistaken view that the situation can be contained, that Hamas will continue to play by their rules.
00:18:27.860So what's the sense among Netanyahu's critics that he should step down now, and to what degree do people think that it's more important to have the continuity of government now and to just wait until the immediate needs of the war are in the past before dealing with the political fallout for his failure?
00:18:48.560And because he's an extremely divisive figure, and the thing you need most in the country right now is unity, the ideal thing would have been for him to take responsibility for the catastrophe and step down.
00:19:03.180And you can do that in the middle of the war.
00:19:05.460You know, Chamberlain stepped down and let Churchill replace him in the middle of the war, one of the worst moments of crisis in the Second World War.
00:19:14.020If he thinks this is impossible, that he can't do it, he could still have said, I take responsibility for the catastrophe, I will step down once the situation permits it, I'm declaring elections in six months, and I will not be running to these elections.
00:19:33.820So you can trust me now, that no matter what I did in the past, now I'm fully committed only to the interests of the Israeli nation.
00:19:43.860And when this is over, I'm stepping down, this is the end of my political career, so you can trust me.
00:19:49.880And he is not doing it, just the opposite.
00:19:53.040He tries constantly to shift the blame to other people, especially in the military, and even in the protest movement.
00:20:00.020And there is no indication that he is going to step down or to call an election or to take responsibility on himself.