In the wake of the devastating Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7th, which saw the tragic loss of over 1,200 Israeli lives, mostly civilians, as well as the kidnapping of another 240 people by Hamas, we re joined by a figure central to Israeli politics and international diplomacy, Naftali Bennett. Bennett, born in 1972 in Haifa to American immigrant parents, has been a dynamic figure in Israeli politics. His journey is marked by a transition from a high-achieving soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces' elite Sayeret Matkal and Maglan units, to a successful tech entrepreneur. As the 13th Prime Minister of Israel and later the alternate Prime Minister, Bennett has navigated through tumultuous times, marking his tenure with significant decisions on domestic and international fronts. His approach to leadership, technology, and defense has been influential, making him a key figure in understanding the complexities of the Israel-Hamas conflict and Middle Eastern politics at large. In this episode, we ll dissect the events of that day, and the ongoing war, in an attempt to understand their implications on the future of Israel in the Middle East and the region at large, and we ll be shedding light on the intricate dynamics of Mideast politics and the path forward in these tumultuous times. This is more than just an interview, it s an essential dialogue in a time of crisis. It s a conversation that needs to be heard. in order to understand what s going on in the region, and what s happening in the world, and how we need to do to change the trajectory of peace. and how we can change the situation and live up to the times we re living in the 21st century, not only in Israel, but how we should live in it in a world that s going to live in the here and now as a better, better, more connected and more connected more like a better place a more connected, more resilient, more peaceful, more informed, more caring, more compassionate, and more peaceful and more informed we can all live in a better world to live a better and more compassionate and more just, and a more just and more beautiful, kinder, more prosperous, more beautiful world. Thank you for listening to the Sunday Special, and for supporting the podcast, Ben Bergman. Ben - The Sunday Special. - Thank you to Ben for being a friend of the show.
00:00:52.000This is the highest degree of courage that I've seen.
00:00:55.000But like Ben, I've seen about a hundred different cases of courage that even I, Prime Minister of Israel, and, you know, I fought, I was a commander in special forces.
00:01:08.000I've never seen this degree of courage.
00:01:10.000In the wake of the devastating Hamas attacks of October 7, which saw the tragic loss of over 1,200 Israeli lives, mostly civilians, as well as the kidnapping of another 240 people by Hamas, We're joined by a figure central to Israeli politics and international diplomacy, Naftali Bennett.
00:01:26.000Bennett, born in 1972 in Haifa to American immigrant parents, has been a dynamic figure in Israeli politics.
00:01:33.000His journey is marked by a transition from a high-achieving soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces' elite Sayeret Matkal and Maglan units to a successful tech entrepreneur.
00:01:43.000Bennett's political ascendancy began as Chief of Staff for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, followed by his leadership of the Jewish Home Party, and then the New Right Party, reflecting his evolving political philosophy.
00:01:54.000He served in various ministerial roles, including Minister of Economy, Religious Services and Education, showcasing his versatility and commitment to Israel's development.
00:02:03.000As the 13th Prime Minister of Israel and later the alternate Prime Minister, Bennett has navigated through tumultuous times, marking his tenure with significant decisions on domestic and international fronts.
00:02:14.000His approach to leadership, technology, and defense has been influential, making him a key figure in understanding the complexities of the Israel-Hamas conflict and Middle Eastern politics at large.
00:02:25.000During his time in office, Bennett faced a myriad of challenges and opportunities.
00:02:29.000He famously formed a unique coalition government, bringing together a diverse array of eight political parties, combining right and left, Jewish and Arab, religious and secular factions.
00:02:37.000In this episode, we'll dissect the events of October 7th and the ongoing war, in an attempt to understand their implications on the future of Israel and the Middle East.
00:02:46.000We'll discuss ongoing strategies to navigate the conflict, and we'll be shedding light on the intricate dynamics of Middle Eastern politics and the path forward in these tumultuous times.
00:03:24.000Well, I make it my business to go down every two, three days to meet the soldiers, soldiers that just came out of Gaza and are on their way back.
00:03:34.000To meet the communities down in the south because I want to have a touch of what's going on.
00:03:40.000By and large, IDF is operating very well.
00:06:39.000They were using the kids as human shields.
00:06:41.000From their understanding, the higher the Gazan death toll, the closer we will be to a ceasefire.
00:06:49.000They're wrong, but that's their assessment of, you know, Western media and Western pressure.
00:06:56.000So they're actually trying to pump up the Gazan death toll.
00:07:00.000I mean, this is such a major issue, and you've been spending an enormous amount of time talking to media that are largely oriented against Israel, whether you're talking about the United States, whether you're talking about the BBC.
00:07:09.000And the real reason, as you've argued, I've argued the same, that the Hamasniks are attempting to get as many Gazan civilians killed is because they understand the math.
00:07:18.000They understand that if they can make Israel out to be a military that's committing war crimes or that's targeting civilians, then they can actually defend Hamas.
00:07:26.000Hamas knows that, and they're playing directly into the teeth of the media and then providing them with propaganda that
00:07:32.000suggests that Israel is doing just that.
00:07:34.000What's amazing is how either gullible or nefarious the media are to believe these claims.
00:07:48.000And, you know, not only are we fighting an asymmetric war, where one side, being Israel, abides to international law, and the other side, Hamas, is a terror group who explicitly goes out to murder civilians.
00:08:05.000And then we're told again and again, well, Okay, but you guys are not like them, so we expect you to save the lives of Gazans.
00:08:15.000Our goal is to defend our own lives first and foremost, and yes, we want to reduce the amount of collateral damage, but there will be collateral damage.
00:09:36.000You know, that point has a lot of relevance for all the questions that are being asked prematurely about what happens the day after, because Israel obviously is trying to distinguish between civilians and Hamas.
00:09:46.000Again, that's a very difficult proposition, given the fact that Hamas explicitly does not engage in the rules of war.
00:09:51.000They're not wearing military uniforms.
00:09:53.000They're embedding directly among civilians.
00:09:56.000People slide in and out of membership of Hamas pretty easily.
00:10:00.000And you saw that even on October 7th, when civilians were literally crossing the border from the Gaza Strip into these towns in the Gaza envelope.
00:10:06.000By the way, Ben, that's a very good point that I want to elaborate on.
00:10:09.000in the in the slaughter in the in the looting and then going right back into
00:10:13.000the gaza strip and that makes it very difficult for israel to even tell sometimes
00:10:16.000who is the civilian and who is not the civilian and that that's a nearly impossible task but
00:10:21.000by the way ben uh... that's a very good point that i i want to elaborate on
00:10:25.000uh... some of the worst atrocities were actually conducted by uh... civilians
00:10:32.000that came in gaza civilians that came in in the third wave The first wave was a wave of what's called nukhba, the Hamas commando.
00:10:41.000Second wave was a wave of what we call simple soldiers.
00:10:45.000And the third wave was just an all out pogrom.
00:10:48.000Some of the worst atrocities were actually done by these Gaza civilians.
00:10:55.000Now, you know, The general opinion in Israel has shifted dramatically since October 7th, because now, left and right, everyone in Israel now realizes something that not everyone realized beforehand, that we're dealing with a degree of hatred
00:11:17.000Of just poisonous hatred against Jews and against Israelis that is so deeply entrenched in the psyche of the masses in Gaza and of our enemy.
00:11:32.000We in Israel again saying that this very royal we but many in Israel have been under the impression that if the lives of the Gazans will be good enough and they have a good enough economic future, etc, etc.
00:11:47.000Gradually this will go away and it simply is not the case.
00:11:53.000Again, that has implications for the day after.
00:11:55.000There is a poll, there's only one poll that's actually been done in the Gaza Strip and the so-called West Bank of the Palestinian Arabs who are living there.
00:12:03.000And what it found is that 75% of all Palestinian Arabs supported the October 7th attack, 78% wish to see the complete destruction Of the state of Israel, Hamas has about a 76% approval
00:12:12.000rating in these areas after October 7th, much, much higher than the Palestinian Authority or
00:13:10.000I guess one good way to view Gaza and Hamas is an analogy to the Nazi regime in Germany.
00:13:20.000The Nazi regime enjoyed very widespread support of the German population, not everyone, But many and a sure majority.
00:13:31.000And then imagine after years of incitement and of brainwashing, they enjoyed very, very broad support.
00:13:40.000Therefore, the defeat of Nazi Germany had to be a full, you know, unconditional surrender.
00:13:49.000And then there was a process of several years of denazification in order to re-educate the people.
00:13:56.000To new values and and we're gonna have to go through a similar process and it can take quite a few years it could take easily four or five six seven years to denazify the education system the media and and and see that people begin to if you will detox themselves from thinking that Jews are pigs and And devils, because as long as they think that, they're going to continue wanting to kill us.
00:14:27.000Does Israel have any allies in that particular effort?
00:14:30.000Because it seems like you're seeing pressure from particular sources, including apparently the Biden administration, to push for a Palestinian authority-led negotiation in the West Bank or in the Gaza Strip, which is in many ways practically hilarious.
00:14:43.000I mean, they have effectively no presence in the Gaza Strip as it is, because Hamas literally killed everybody who was a member of Fatah back in 2006-2007.
00:14:49.0002006, 2007. So it's bringing in a foreign body and that foreign body also happens to
00:14:53.000govern a nearly ungovernable area that has similar levels of anti-Semitism in the West
00:14:57.000Bank. So it's substituting an entity that is not quite Hamas, but certainly is not a
00:15:02.000traditional civilian led government that is willing to make peace. If they hadn't been
00:15:05.000willing to make peace, then they would have in the past when Mahmoud Abbas was literally
00:15:08.000sitting across the negotiating table from former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who offered
00:15:11.000pretty much the entire thing and Abbas got up and walked away. Those are the people that
00:15:15.000the Americans are now apparently counting on, at least in some of their rhetoric, to
00:15:19.000come in and sort of handle the negotiations. And that raises the question of whether Israel
00:15:24.000is going to have to do this alone single-handedly or whether a coalition can be built maybe
00:15:28.000with the Abraham Accord countries, because the one thing that can't be done is to hand
00:15:56.000Look, we on critical issues, we're going to insist, because ultimately it's our defense, our security.
00:16:05.000Let's remind ourselves of the basic fact.
00:16:08.000In 2005, Israel unilaterally evacuated the entire Gaza Strip down back to the 1949 Green Line, to the very last centimeter.
00:16:21.000We pulled out our soldiers, we pulled out all the Israelis living in communities there, and we handed the entire Gaza Strip over to the Palestinian Authority.
00:16:37.000And keep in mind that back then, the Palestinian Authority was much stronger than it is now.
00:16:43.000What happened was in 2006, I believe, there were elections held in Judea and Samaria and Gaza, the entire Palestinian population, and Hamas enjoyed a full majority.
00:16:58.000Out of 132 seats in the Palestinian parliament, Hamas got 76.
00:17:07.000Also, the Gaza representatives had an absolute majority, I believe 10 out of 15 seats.
00:17:13.000And then about a year following that, Hamas took over in a coup, in a coup d'etat, and just killed a bunch of PA folks.
00:17:24.000The current Palestinian Authority, when I say PA, that's the Palestinian Authority, is much more feeble, much more corrupt, uh than it was back then so you know fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me we're not going to do the same thing again we're just not going to do it and you're right about UNRWA uh u-n-r-w-a that that's the for our listeners that's the united nation organ which is dedicated to uh
00:17:53.000Supposedly to helping the Palestinian refugees.
00:17:57.000In fact, what it's doing is eternalizing the Palestinian refugee problem.
00:18:04.000This United Nations organ is responsible for inciting antisemitism in the brains of a whole generation.
00:18:14.000So it's as if in 1945, 1946, during the Marshall Plan, we would have handed, the West would have handed the education system back to the Nazis to educate another generation of Nazis.
00:18:52.000So what we're going to need to do, and you alluded to this, Build a structure probably based on Abraham Accord partners and some form of alliance to find first stage a technocratic government that can run the show, take care of taxes, of energy, of water, of education, of sewage, of taking garbage, doing all the basic services any modern state needs.
00:19:23.000And we're going to have to do that for a few years until we, if you will, denazify Gaza Strip and then figure out a structure which may be a democratic structure, may not be a democratic structure.
00:19:38.000You know, there's some non-democratic structures in the Middle East that are more successful than the democratic ones.
00:19:45.000We're going to have to figure out, we don't have to make that decision right now.
00:19:48.000What I can tell you is that the PA is the worst candidate to do that.
00:19:54.000We'll get to more with Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in just one second.
00:19:56.000First, the world has witnessed heinous attacks by Hamas terrorists against innocent Israeli citizens.
00:20:01.000This most recent attack was massive and devastating, killing over 1,000 Israeli men, women, children, including babies.
00:20:07.000Thousands more have been injured, kidnapped, and held hostage.
00:20:10.000Hamas, a sworn enemy of Israel, will stop at nothing to slaughter every last Jew and claim Israel as their own, and then move on to the West.
00:20:18.000But there's a beacon of hope amidst the chaos.
00:20:19.000The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is on the ground right now, providing critical essentials like food, medicine, and other emergency supplies for vulnerable Jews who need immediate help.
00:20:51.000So I want to talk in order about some of the other threats that Israel is facing on its other borders, and then I sort of want to reverse course, talk about the beginning of the conflict, what led to this failure on the part of the Israeli security establishment, the failure of imagination here, and how Israel sort of internally has changed, what that means for the world.
00:21:09.000So to talk about the other threats on Israel's borders.
00:21:12.000Obviously, you have the threat that exists in the West Bank.
00:21:15.000That is not an insignificant threat and people are pretending that it is.
00:21:19.000The reality is that Israel is expending extraordinary resources actually in Judea and Samaria, the so-called West Bank, up to October 6th.
00:21:26.000In fact, one of the sort of things that led to October 7th was the fact that Israel was so focused
00:21:31.000on the roiling undercurrent of violence that was happening in Judea and Samaria,
00:21:35.000knife attacks and gun attacks and all of that was happening for months.
00:21:38.000I mean, I visited Israel obviously in the weeks immediately prior to October 7th.
00:21:42.000I got home the morning of October 6th.
00:21:45.000And the focus when I was there was on security in the West Bank.
00:21:50.000The West Bank is a very difficult area to govern.
00:22:34.000He is not as though he in his ravagingly charismatic person is holding things together.
00:22:41.000He's, you know, widely seen and correctly seen as an elderly corrupt oligarch.
00:22:46.000And it's not clear who's going to take over for him.
00:22:48.000It's not clear if open conflict breaks out in the West Bank between members of, for example, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, members of what's a smaller group called the Lion's Den.
00:22:58.000They're a bunch of terrorist groups that are operating in the region, and there is no organized non-terror group that's operating in terms of governance over there.
00:24:18.000Now we've learned that incitement actually brings people to dismember babies, to burn families, to rape women out of nationalistic or religious hatred.
00:24:32.000And the second thing is the PA currently pays terrorists post-fact.
00:24:39.000After they've murdered Jews, it pays them basically according to the number of years that you're in jail, which is Also, according to the number of Jews you've killed.
00:24:51.000So, if you kill more Jews, you get paid more.
00:24:54.000Now, this sounds really crazy, but it's a reality as we speak.
00:24:58.000Right now, every month, the terrorists get paid, or their families get paid, and that's crazy.
00:25:06.000That's simply crazy, because it incentivizes folks to go out and kill Jews.
00:25:12.000And it's also a measure that reflects on the nature and character of the Palestinian Authority.
00:25:20.000But Ben, if I may, I want to zoom out one moment because we sort of zoomed into Gaza Strip and to Judea and Samaria, but the big picture is indeed a bigger picture.
00:25:33.000And if I may, this will take one minute to explain.
00:25:38.000We have an octopus of terror in the Middle East, and right now we're viewing each of its arms individually, but it's actually one octopus.
00:25:48.000So we need to set aside the microscope and just look at it with a full view.
00:25:54.000The head of this octopus is in Tehran.
00:25:57.000It funds, trains, arms, and instructs its arms to hit and shed blood for Israel.
00:26:06.000Now it's got its tentacles of this octopus are many fold. There's one tentacle, one arm of the octopus
00:26:15.000is his Bala that sits on Israel's northern border in Lebanon. It's got two more arms, Islamic
00:26:22.000Jihad and Hamas that sit in the Gaza strip. Just to make a point here, 100%
00:26:30.000100% of Hezbollah's military budget comes from Iran.
00:26:34.000100% of Palestinian Jihad, Islamic Jihad, comes from Iran.
00:26:44.000Then you have the Houthis in Yemen and you have militias in Iraq and in Syria.
00:26:51.000And they've built a very convenient methodology to hurt Israel as a representative of the free world in the Middle East.
00:27:02.000And so Iran, they sit quietly, enjoy life back in Tehran, the corrupt mullahs.
00:27:10.000And these arms hit us through Lebanon and through Gaza primarily, but also West Bank and others.
00:27:19.000I've been, since I was a soldier and a commander and later on in security cabinet, this has frustrated me because I felt that we're fighting the wrong war.
00:27:32.000They want us to fight the arms and shed blood.
00:27:37.000And that's what's happening right now.
00:27:38.000Now, right now, I don't think we have much of a choice, but when I was prime minister, I effected a new doctrine, I called it the Octopus Doctrine, which said, as far as I can, I want to not fight wars in Lebanon and Gaza.
00:27:53.000And I want to go to the, hit the head, go for the jugular.
00:27:58.000And according to foreign sources, during my tenure, Israel was hitting hard targets in Tehran not only related to the nuclear project
00:28:12.000for example when when they tried to hit us with UAVs or advanced drones
00:28:18.000Suddenly a few days after according to foreign sources a whole drone base was destroyed on
00:28:24.000Iranian soil When they tried to kill Israelis in Turkey and Cyprus, suddenly a commander of their terror unit was assassinated in the heart of Iran.
00:28:36.000Because I noticed something very interesting.
00:28:38.000Tehran and Iranians, the Iranian regime is much softer than its arms.
00:28:46.000A family in Iran, you know how many kids they have?
00:29:13.000I think all of the energy that we're expending in Gaza and in Lebanon, we'd be better off Focusing on the very head and strangling it, and then ultimately the arms would die away for lack of resources.
00:29:31.000So let's talk about that, because I was about to move to the north and talk about Hezbollah, but you're talking about going after Iran instead.
00:29:37.000What capacity would Israel have to have in order to actually take out the regime in Iran?
00:29:42.000Obviously, both the Trump administration and the Biden administration have been very reluctant
00:29:46.000to go directly up against Iran, despite the fact that America is a tremendously powerful
00:30:30.000And the answer is, I view it very similar to the Cold War of the Middle East, where Israel is, if you will, the America of the Middle East, the free nation, a democracy with a vibrant economy and growing economy.
00:30:46.000And then you have The Soviet Union, if you will, the uranium corrupt, old, out of contact with people regime, incompetent, not delivering services, not being able to deliver water to certain tracts of land.
00:31:05.000Iran and and ultimately if you use that analogy and I would There are ways to accelerate the demise of this very Very rotten regime beyond the fact that ideologically it's horrible And I'm talking about many dimensions.
00:31:23.000I'm talking about covert overt economic warfare diplomatic warfare and indeed also What we call, you know, actual physical warfare, but I'm not necessarily suggesting that tomorrow we physically attack Iran.
00:31:44.000There are many ways to enhance and accelerate internal unrest.
00:31:53.000For example, I don't want to give too many examples, but I'll just go back to open up the textbook of what America did to the USSR in the 80s.
00:32:06.000It empowered solidarity, which was in Poland, it was underground, and gave them tools to be much more effective.
00:32:17.000the free world and this cannot be an israeli project alone it needs to be done with in collaboration of course with our biggest ally america but what if we empowered uh... internet uh... communication tools uh... arms to to the various uh... groups and next time there's mass demonstrations they're much more effective uh... this time the iranian regime just turned off the internet and and internet connections and whatsapp and telegram all crashed but There are ways to solve all of this, and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
00:32:50.000So my point, Ben, is if we set this and we finally understand that the epicenter of evil and unrest and terror of this entire region and beyond that, the rest of the world is actually the Islamic Republic of Iran, I think we can work out a reasonable plan to make this happen within a reasonable timeframe.
00:33:58.000If you see a candidate who is a great match for your job, ZipRecruiter makes it easy to send them a personal invite so they are more likely to apply.
00:34:04.000Get your hiring wrapped up quickly with ZipRecruiter.
00:34:07.000Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within day one.
00:34:11.000Just go to this exclusive web address right now, try ZipRecruiter for free at ziprecruiter.com slash bengest.
00:34:21.000ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire.
00:34:24.000It's an interesting approach given the fact that it does look like there is a shot clock that's already going with regard to Hezbollah.
00:34:32.000What I mean by that is that if you're Iran and Hezbollah is effectively your forward operating arm, and for folks who don't understand, Hezbollah is effectively a terror group in control of the country.
00:34:41.000They're in control of Lebanon, they control the southern Lebanon border, which is right on Israel's northern border.
00:34:47.000About 200,000 rockets that are pointed into the interior of Israel.
00:34:50.000Tens of thousands of those, maybe up to 50,000, are sophisticated rockets that actually are capable of targeting, as opposed to the dumb rockets that were being fired from the Hamas-controlled territory in the Gaza Strip.
00:35:02.000They have significant military capabilities.
00:35:04.000They have a very large army of their own.
00:35:06.000They're effectively a military, but again, a much larger, more powerful military, actually, than Hamas was able to deploy in this or any other war.
00:35:15.000Let's say that Iran arrives at a nuclear weapon.
00:35:17.000It seems at that point, then the possibility of Hezbollah getting fully into a war with Israel rise pretty dramatically.
00:35:25.000Because then the idea would be that if Israel fights back too strongly, then Iran would threaten to either fire a nuke or hand off a nuke to one of its allied groups.
00:35:33.000So that means the clock is sort of going with regard to Hezbollah.
00:35:35.000And after what just happened with Hamas, how long does Israel have before it either has to Take out the Iranian regime if they can or take out Hezbollah because the fact is right now there are 30,000 Jews who have evacuated from the north of Israel and are not living in their homes.
00:35:54.000So I think the clock is ticking on the Iranian nuclear program, and I think that's the main point, that's the main lever, and you're absolutely right that we can't allow that to happen.
00:36:07.000They don't have yet nuclear arms, but they've made tremendous progress over the past five years, and And I have a sense that, I would put it this way, I think it's not enough to say we won't allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
00:36:29.000There's much more that can be done on the Israeli-Washington alliance to prevent this from happening.
00:36:42.000To some extent, sometimes it seems it's sort of lip service saying that we're not going to have Iran acquire this, but there's many, many actions that have to happen so we ensure that That Iran doesn't acquire a weapon, a nuclear weapon, before the demise of its regime.
00:37:02.000Sort of a race between what would happen first.
00:37:06.000I'm not talking about weeks or months, it could be years, but we have to ensure that they don't achieve that.
00:37:13.000It would be a disaster not only vis-a-vis Hezbollah and Israel, It would turn the entire Middle East into a nuclear nightmare, because everyone would go nuclear.
00:37:23.000And they would cite self-defense as a reason.
00:39:38.000Now the new startup, it's a new form of terror.
00:39:43.000I would call it mob terror that evolves into a pogrom, into unblocked slaughter.
00:39:51.000I would almost guarantee this will happen if we don't Or we're not allowed to eradicate Hamas.
00:40:03.000Because the way it works these days, certainly, is terror happens in a wave.
00:40:10.000You have the initial startup, then a bit of inspiration, and you have your first attack, then second, third, and fourth.
00:40:19.000After the fourth, you can get into dozens of attacks.
00:40:22.000So it's sort of like You know, this wave of accelerated pace of terror, if it succeeds.
00:40:30.000However, if you nip it in the bud very early, then it doesn't evolve into this wave.
00:40:36.000That's why anyone watching this that is sitting in Minnesota, or Belgium, or Florence for that matter, Has a big interest in truncating and severing this wave early on before it goes public in the West.
00:40:55.000Now, in that sense, Israel is doing your job.
00:41:01.000We're unfortunate to be the neighbors of these lunatic radical Islamist terrorists.
00:41:08.000But in many countries in the world, there's Considerable Islamic populations that also consist of portions that harbor radical Islamic ideas, not everyone by any stretch of imagination, but some of them.
00:41:26.000And if it succeeds here, you're going to see copycats.
00:41:30.000So what I would do if I was a leader of any Western country is help Israel win.
00:41:37.000Certainly not to condemn or try to bring upon a so-called ceasefire, which is really the dumbest thing in the world, because we had a ceasefire, they attacked, now we're attacking back, and we have to win.
00:41:53.000And you can't cease the fire before we eradicate Hamas.
00:41:57.000If the world tries to force us to that, and God forbid succeeds, It's coming soon.
00:42:04.000One of the things that I think this entire conflict has exposed is an extraordinary
00:42:08.000level of moral gap all over the world.
00:42:11.000I'm not sure I've ever seen as much moral clarity as you see in this moment when you
00:42:14.000see people marching hundreds of thousands strong through Western capitals in favor of
00:42:20.000And when people are chanting from the river to the sea, what they are chanting is in favor of Hamas.
00:42:23.000This attempt to sort of distinguish the quote-unquote Palestinian cause from Hamas.
00:42:27.000That's something the protesters themselves don't attempt to do.
00:42:29.000The protesters never say, Hamas needs to be replaced so we can have a two-state solution.
00:42:33.000That is not a thing that any protester I've ever seen has said.
00:42:36.000Instead, they're making the case that Israel needs to stop killing Hamas so that from the river to the sea can eventually be quote-unquote liberated.
00:42:43.000by liberated they mean completely dominated by a Toronto Islamic fascist regime. It's
00:42:48.000absolutely insane. When we talk about moral clarity I want to talk about it in a couple
00:42:52.000of different contexts. One, I want to talk about it in the context of Israel where there's
00:42:55.000a new sort of reawakening of moral clarity. And then I want to talk about it in the West
00:42:58.000and then I want to talk about the lack of it in the media.
00:43:14.000There was a lot of irresponsible and I think rather disgusting talk about civil war in Israel, which I thought was ridiculous on its face, considering that everybody who's Chiloni, everybody who's secular there has a cousin who is Dati Lumi.
00:43:24.000I mean, it's just, it's too small a country.
00:43:26.000There was certainly an enormous amount of dislike, an enormous amount of anger, but the reality is that, again, even people who are secular in Israel celebrate Shabbat, and even Dati Lumi, meaning people who are Orthodox, who are not Haredi, they're serving the military as well.
00:43:41.000But that was the nature of the debate.
00:43:43.000The debate was all about these internal fractures, and was the state going to survive these internal fractures, and all this kind of stuff.
00:43:50.000And the entire state comes together in a way that it really has not ever.
00:43:54.000I mean, the last predicate for this might be 48, the War of Independence.
00:43:58.000But even there, I think it would be hard to say that Israel has come together in the same way that it has right now.
00:44:04.000As I've been talking about in some of the speeches I've been giving, whether you're talking about secular Jews who are putting on tzitziot in order to show solidarity, or you're talking about charedim who are starting to join the army, the kind of solidarity that has snapped into place is amazing.
00:44:18.000I wonder if you want to talk about that solidarity on a social level, that social cohesion, and also the ideological recognition that I think a lot of Israelis were snapped back into, which is that Israel is surrounded by enemies that actually want to slaughter it, and that security is the order of concern that always has to come first.
00:44:39.000Well, I think you've hit the nail on the head.
00:44:41.000Those are the precise two Eureka moments, if you will, for the Israeli public.
00:44:48.000The first one, and here I differ a bit in the sense that I do think we were heading to a horrible, horrible place.
00:44:56.000I'm not saying people would shoot each other, but we were tearing ourselves apart, and wrongly so.
00:45:03.000And because of a lack of ability to compromise, and everyone's sure that he's the only one right, and here, You know, shame on us.
00:45:15.000And in a sense, I actually think that this year, leading up to October 7th, so divided us and so weakened our immune system, our defense systems, our enemies saw that and attacked.
00:45:32.000This is clear to me that our attention was diverted from what's important.
00:45:39.000We were not focused on the real things.
00:45:41.000We were just killing ourselves from within.
00:45:44.000And we know that our enemy was paying close attention, waited for the weakest moment and hit us.
00:45:55.000And I think it's vital that we don't revert back To the, you know, to the polarization we were undergoing before.
00:46:05.000And it's, I know right now it seems that we're never going to revert back because we took such a big blow.
00:46:13.000But when I look at historic precedents, things do tend to settle back into the good old or bad old You know, frames that we're used to, and that would be a disaster.
00:46:28.000Look, I myself harbor right-of-center opinions.
00:46:33.000If I were living in America, I would be considered a moderate Republican, okay?
00:46:39.000Those are my personal opinions regarding many things, economy, nation-state, etc.
00:46:46.000But having said that, it's going to be vital to put together a very broad unity government moving forward, setting aside the disagreements as long as we can, and focusing on restoring security, reviving our economy, and even leaping forward in many ways possible.
00:47:08.000The second point that you said is also clear.
00:47:11.000All of us, all of us, right and left, We sort of tended to forget that we're surrounded by people who want to dismember our bodies, that want to burn us alive.
00:47:39.000And by the way, shame on us for allowing this to happen.
00:47:44.000We have to admit the reality as it is.
00:47:46.000It's a massive failure of the state of Israel to have allowed this to happen.
00:47:52.000This is precisely what Israel was established to prevent, to prevent Jews being slaughtered without protection.
00:47:59.000But at the same time, and the reason I'm I'm optimistic, is that while it's our darkest hour, I have to say, and I didn't know this, it's also our finest hour.
00:48:12.000The people on ground that I've been meeting, including Earlier today, down in Kfar Aza and in other kibbutzim fighters, the degree of personal courage and generosity that I've seen is something that I didn't think exists in our generation.
00:48:31.000I tend to think that it was, you know, the War of Independence, they were the real heroes.
00:48:38.000Then the Six-Day War, they were the real heroes.
00:49:37.000This is the highest degree of courage that I've seen, but like Ben, I've seen about a hundred different cases of courage that even I, Prime Minister of Israel, and you know, I fought, I was a commander in special forces.
00:49:53.000I've never seen this degree of courage.
00:49:57.000Because it means that we have huge potential.
00:50:02.000In this nation, it's an amazing nation of goodwill, of generosity, of sacrifice, of toughness, of ingenuity, innovation.
00:50:14.000We can turn Israel into the most amazing country on earth, and we can.
00:50:20.000I know it looks crazy to be talking about this right now, but we can, and it's our choice.
00:50:26.000So that's why I'm very optimistic, because while we had a total failure of the institutionalized organs of the country, the government, etc., etc., the people have shown amazing I would say strength, and that's why I'm optimistic.
00:50:51.000We've got the material to move forward.
00:50:54.000Folks, our conversation continues for our Daily Wire Plus members right now.