Benjamin Netanyahu is the longest serving Prime Minister of Israel and one of the most influential men in the history of the country. He s served as Prime Minister through three U.S. presidents, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and now he will continue his lineage as Israel s longest-serving prime minister.
00:06:34.660But if we, if he is serious, won't we regret not taking him seriously?
00:06:40.440Well, evidently, but for us, you know, it's not, it's not exactly an impossible thing to imagine,
00:06:51.060given that they, Iran, for example, is trying to build atomic bombs with the means to deliver them to Israel.
00:06:57.960And they say openly, we're going to destroy you.
00:07:00.000By the way, they chant death to Israel and then simultaneously death to America,
00:07:05.160because we're the little Satan and you, America, are the great Satan.
00:07:09.560So I devote a good part of my book to my battle, my diplomatic and political battle,
00:07:16.720and some description, not much, but whatever I can officially say about the other operations that we did to roll back Iran's nuclear program.
00:08:00.240And this material enabled me to show the world that Iran was lying through its teeth when it said it wasn't seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
00:08:42.040Well, it had some common strands, but Iran has now been taken over by a gang, basically a thuggery.
00:08:52.800You know, these Ayatollah thugs who repress their people.
00:08:58.000And you can see, I think the nature of this regime has now been unmasked for the entire world to see with the incredibly brave men and incredibly brave women of Iran.
00:09:09.900And who are taking to the streets to protest against the horrible suppression of rights.
00:09:16.160So this is the regime that people were going to give a nuclear deal that would effectively give them pave their way with gold, with hundreds of billions of dollars of gold by lifting sanctions to establish this nuclear arsenal and to to propel their aggression far and wide.
00:09:35.540And I describe also in my book how I decided, because it was a threat to my country, to go to a joint session of Congress and challenge this deal, which was advanced by an American president.
00:10:39.400Did it was it was it something about because I remember you were kept you were kept waiting for him for a long time, which I thought was extraordinarily disrespectful.
00:10:50.760I think you were referring to something into another meeting, but no, this was an exchange where, you know, Obama, by the way, I respected.
00:10:59.920I thought he was actually a strong president.
00:11:02.220He just had we and I had different convictions on two important matters.
00:11:07.860One was the Palestinians and the second was Iran.
00:11:10.980And I think there was a larger philosophical difference between us.
00:11:54.220I also had a terrible this was the most important speech of my life, Glenn.
00:11:59.000And in the evening, as I'm about to prepare for the speech, I land in Washington and I go to the Willard Hotel.
00:12:06.260And I'm going to, you know, shape, you know, write the speech or rather edit it, give it a final edit and practice it because you have to practice the speech.
00:12:16.180You know, often I don't often extemporane, extemporized.
00:12:51.120Well, my wife, Sarah, said to me, you know, we'll just go to sleep and then you'll wake up in the morning and go away.
00:12:57.580Well, it didn't go away and I didn't sleep awake.
00:13:00.760I get up in the morning, I shave, I'm completely stuffed and I'm going, we're driving to the Capitol building where I'm going to give the speech.
00:13:09.000And I'm just sniffing away, sniffing away.
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00:15:27.480Of Auschwitz and the ovens of the death camps, the Nazi death camps.
00:15:31.500And we were, you know, like a wind tossed leaf over the ages, having lost our the land of Israel and scattered among the nations, massacred repeatedly, exiled, pogromed and finally subjected to the Holocaust.
00:15:48.060And so it wasn't clear that the Jewish people would survive.
00:15:51.260Yet we had a few years later, this fledgling state of Israel, tiny state.
00:15:57.460You can fit it into the width fits into the Washington Beltway.
00:16:01.400And yet we had risen from the death, from the ashes, and we formed this incredibly potent and vibrant state.
00:16:10.200And here I was now able to stand before the most important political forum in the world, which is the U.S. Congress, and speak to the American people, speak to the world.
00:16:20.760And as the leader of a proud nation that seeks to defend itself by itself against those who once again wish to annihilate us.
00:16:31.660And yet we are so much stronger, so vibrant, and so determined, and so resolute that I was thinking about both the Jewish people, but also my grandfather, who was a rabbi, who went to what is now the land of Israel, you know, 100 years ago.
00:16:50.760And after he had been beaten as a Jew, and he vowed that this cannot happen, this cannot be the tragic fate of the descendants of the brave Maccabees.
00:17:03.800And he vowed that he would take his family, his young family, to the land of Israel.
00:17:09.580My father will work to establish the Jewish state and to agitate with American leaders such as General Eisenhower.
00:17:17.260I mean, they argued that Israel should, they should recognize Israel because it would be the strongest ally of America in the Middle East and prevent Soviet domination.
00:18:08.560And I thought of my brother who fell while leading perhaps the most spectacular rescue operation in modern times, rescuing 103 Jewish hostages who were taken there by German and Palestinian terrorists into the heart of Africa in Entebbe, Uganda.
00:18:27.720I thought this was a vindication of the hopes of our people and, frankly, the hopes of my own family and the labor of my own family.
00:18:38.820Because it's not that the attacks on the Jews disappeared with the rise of Israel.
00:18:45.060It's that Israel could now defend itself against those who wish to exterminate it.
00:18:50.780You were mentioning the birth of Israel.
00:18:55.560And in my study of the birth of Israel, the State Department, the U.S. State Department, wanted nothing to do with it.
00:20:28.420And if I said the same thing to the French about Paris, they'd scoff at me.
00:20:33.340And yet Jerusalem is a much older capital.
00:20:36.300It was established as our capital by King David, for God's sake, three, three thousand years ago, three thousand years ago, three thousand twenty two years ago.
00:20:45.600He decided that it's our capital and it's been our eternal capital ever since.
00:20:50.800And yet, because of the air pressure over the years, over the decades, governments refuse to admit this inalienable historic fact.
00:21:03.680That's where the our parliament is, our Knesset.
00:21:06.220That's where the prime minister's office is, the government offices are, the Supreme Court and so on.
00:21:11.200So President Trump decided to put an end to that.
00:21:14.240But before he did that, he was warned by the experts, the so-called experts, that this would entail terrible violence.
00:21:20.840And, you know, American embassies would be burned throughout the Middle East.
00:21:25.060So I knew that, you know, the American defense bureaucracy was asked to talk to their counterparts here, you know, in Israel and to see whether there is such a danger.
00:21:40.560Well, I was heading over to over to a trip to Africa and I asked my national security advisor when I learned that these calls would take place.
00:21:50.620I said, I know you prepared this trip.
00:21:52.740I described this in my book, by the way.
00:21:54.580I said, I know you worked hard for this African tour.
00:21:58.680But I asked you now to get off the plane, go to the prime minister's office in Jerusalem and talk to every one of the heads of our security services so that they tell their American counterparts exactly what they told me.
00:22:17.020And what they told me was that there's no real danger inside.
00:22:23.300Well, the president asked to talk to me directly, President Trump.
00:22:26.520And he asked, well, what do you think?
00:24:00.760Well, I think that it's because of his irreverence.
00:24:04.700It's because he was willing to break away from accepted norms, although it took a while to persuade him as well.
00:24:12.420And I'll tell you why it was difficult, because over the years, there's been this myth developed that you can't make peace with the Arab world unless you make peace with the Palestinians.
00:24:22.400The problem with that is that the Palestinians don't want peace.
00:24:26.320They don't even want a piece of Israel.
00:24:35.020So if you keep waiting for them, we waited for a quarter of a century from the last two peace treaties, the first two peace treaties we had, one with Egypt and one with Jordan.
00:24:44.920And for a quarter of a century, people said you can't make peace with the other Arab states because you have to get finished with the Palestinians first.
00:24:53.200And if we went down that route, we'd wait another half century, you know.
00:24:57.560I went directly to the Arab states, and the reason I could get to them well before the Abraham Accords or even the Trump presidency was because of, and I'll tell you how it unfolded, which, again, I described in detail in the book.
00:25:14.660It unfolded because of the rise of two powers.
00:25:17.580The first power that rose was Iran, which was threatening the Arab countries as much as it was threatening Israel, perhaps not with annihilation in their case, but just the conquest.
00:26:22.260It's become, we just passed the GDP per capita, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, Germany.
00:26:31.340But that, you know, that was a free market revolution that required dozens and dozens of reforms.
00:26:38.580But because Israel became more, Iran became more powerful, Israel became more powerful, more powerful economically, technologically, militarily, powerful with military and anti-terror intelligence, which we share first with the United States before any other country, but with many others.
00:26:56.580So these Arab states said, you know, they began to look at Israel not as their enemy, but as their indispensable ally, both as a bulwark against Iran, but also as a fountainhead of technology that could serve, civilian technology that could serve their people.
00:27:18.180So I went there, but when did the click happen?
00:27:22.220It happened when I went to the U.S. Congress, to the Joint Session of Congress, to challenge President Obama's policy.
00:27:28.840And mind you, President Obama also assisted us with military support, which I, it happened later, and I was very grateful to that.
00:27:37.580But on this, I had no choice but to challenge it.
00:27:39.900While I was giving that speech, there were calls from Arab leaders in the Gulf who said to my people, we cannot believe that your prime minister is doing what he's doing now, that he's actually standing up to the president.
00:27:55.520And that led to secret meetings in 2015, subsequently to overflights over Saudi Arabia for Israelis.
00:28:09.020Now hundreds of thousands have gone to Dubai and so on, and this happens daily.
00:28:13.340You can't add enough flights to deal with the demand, and it's both ways.
00:28:18.160But when President Trump came in, I said, I suggested to him that we have four peace treaties, I said, ready to, for the taking.
00:28:27.700I suggested that he come with an aircraft carrier to the Red Sea in the Middle East, invite me and the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and others.
00:28:41.260And I said there are four peace treaties to be had.
00:31:19.340Look, I think there is a there's a disagreement with successive administrations beginning, obviously, with the Obama administration that worked hard to achieve this deal, believing that it would somehow.
00:31:32.840You know, domesticate this wild animal, Iran, this wild tiger.
00:31:39.840And I argued in my speech before Congress that the opposite would happen.
00:31:43.400You just pad them with billions of dollars.
00:31:45.840And they just propagated more terror, more aggression.
00:31:48.280And of course, it turned out exactly that way.
00:31:50.540And yet there is a school of thought that says, well, you know, if we do this deal and we we can get a delay of a few years or a commitment from Iran, which will violate anyway and give them money in the process, somehow they'll be lured into joining the family of nations.
00:32:06.720And they weren't lured into joining the family of nations.
00:32:09.800They just broke out of the cage and began to devour one nation after the other.
00:32:14.460So it's hard for me to understand how people fall into that trap.
00:32:18.860But I think there is a change now because of what has happened inside Iran.
00:32:23.780I think that really put a break on the idea of making a deal.
00:32:29.360Well, for the moment, I think it does.
00:32:30.960And I certainly am going to pick that up with my meetings.
00:32:59.320Well, I think I hope people come around to understand that Iran is the enemy, not only of Israel and the adjoining Arab states, but the principal enemy, a principal enemy of the United States.
00:33:11.600For God's sake, they chant death to Israel, death to America.
00:33:40.320And I think this is an abiding American interest as much as an Israeli interest.
00:33:44.460Again, I think that this has been pushed aside for now and it should be pushed aside permanently.
00:33:50.280The only way you can stop Iran from becoming nuclear is through crippling economic sanctions coupled with a credible military threat.
00:34:00.120If you don't have that, no deal that you sign, which they'll violate promptly, will make any difference.
00:34:07.600Can we talk about Ukraine while we're here talking about war?
00:34:12.040There seems to be an appetite for war among some, and especially in Ukraine.
00:34:19.460And while I think most Americans feel for the Ukrainian people and know that Russia, what they did was horrendous, came in, most likely committed some really bad war crimes.
00:34:45.740What should Americans know about it that we might not see in our press?
00:34:49.620Well, I think everybody sees that something could unravel, and if it unravels, it could go to a place that could jeopardize the peace of the world in an unprecedented way, really.
00:35:03.680Especially the slippery slope of tactical nuclear weapons and so on.
00:35:09.220So when the war began, which I thought was a tragedy, I thought that the risk of such a development was small.
00:35:21.820That is, that it would not necessarily, it would take on global consequences because of the constriction of the supply of wheat, the hunger that that would call protein shortages, because animals eat wheat, you know, in one form or another.
00:35:35.540And all that has happened, the economic consequences.
00:35:39.500But I didn't think it would, that this risk was realistic.
00:35:45.620But, you know, as the war progresses with all its horrors, that horror is not completely out of the question.
00:35:55.660And I think that one of the things that I will look at once I get into office, which will be in a few weeks.
00:36:32.400I wrote it in the most crazy places, like endless budget deliberations in the Knesset.
00:36:39.000And I'm writing this book, missing some votes in the process because I'm trying to edit what I wrote.
00:36:44.000But, you know, once I get in, I will look into this issue very closely, not only on Israel's specific policy, but whether there is anything that can be done or that I could do to bring an end to this horror.
00:37:05.280Russia has not been a friend to Israel, to say the least.
00:37:12.960How concerned are you with the relationship of Russia and Turkey and now Iran?
00:37:20.940It's not good that they band together.
00:37:22.780But Russia, you'd be surprised to hear, actually changed its relationship with us and in many ways for the better, because I remember still as a young soldier along the banks of the Suez Canal.
00:37:35.280Our pilots, when we had, we were in a war of attrition with Egypt at the time before the historic peace that Prime Minister Begin made with President Sadat of Egypt.
00:38:05.280But with the breakout of the Syrian civil war, which is right next to our border, our northern border, Russia sent its military forces there to buttress the regime of Assad.
00:38:20.160Iran decided that they would use this opportunity to turn Syria into a second front like Lebanon, which is controlled by their proxy Hezbollah.
00:38:31.580They wanted to create another Lebanon in Syria and to replace their 80,000 Shiite militia commanded by Iranian generals with lethal weapons right next to our door.
00:38:42.200So I ordered the army to prevent that in every way.
00:38:47.400And the way they prevented it was bombing Iranian military installations and Iranian forces and Iranian proxies.
00:38:55.800And this required hundreds and hundreds of sorties, air sorties over the skies of Syria.
00:39:01.840Well, the problem was that our pilots were flying literally within spitting distance.
00:39:07.600I mean that, spitting distance of Russian pilots.
00:39:11.720And so we could have a repeat of what had happened, you know, 50 years earlier along the Suez Canal.
00:39:17.800And so I made it a point of securing an understanding between Israel and Russia, you know, that would enable us to continue these sorties because Iran, because in Syria, effectively, Russia and Iran were competitors.
00:39:37.900So I got that freedom of action and maintained it, and it's still important for us.
00:39:43.640So we have a complex relationship, a nuanced relationship with Russia.
00:39:48.000Yet what I said before, this question of the possible unraveling of Ukraine into a global catastrophe is something that should occupy every leader and anybody who can contribute to preventing this or somehow ending this tragedy should do so.
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00:50:40.620And, and, and, and, you know, it felt like a sledgehammer hit me.
00:50:44.640And I was taken off the plane, took all of two minutes to kill the two, uh, male terrorists and, uh, and, uh, uh, subdue the two women terrorists.
00:50:57.960One woman passenger right where I broke into the plane was shot, uh, in the forehead and died by one of the terrorists.
00:51:06.100And now I'm lying on the tarmac, uh, uh, medic gave me some, uh, morphine to ease the pain.
00:51:15.400And I see Yoni running towards me with a terrible look of distress on his face.
00:51:19.900You know, he's just worried, terrible anxiety.
00:51:22.600And as he gets closer, he looks, he harbors above me and he sees this red splatter of blood on my shirt sleeve, the white overalls of the mechanics.
00:51:32.460He sees this red splatter of blood, this broad grin spreads on his face.
00:51:36.800And he said, CBB, I told you, you shouldn't go.
00:51:40.760Your brother played a, uh, he's a driving force in your life.
00:51:51.880Um, and you're, you're a much of your determination.
00:52:02.360Well, what happened was this was 1972, the Sabino airline rescue in Tel Aviv airport.
00:52:08.660Uh, I left the army right afterwards and went to study it, uh, in, uh, in Boston, in Cambridge, Massachusetts at MIT.
00:52:17.040And he only stayed on and became the commander of this special force unit.
00:52:21.660And four years later in, uh, 1976, July 4th, 1976, the American bicentennial, he led his soldiers into Entebbe airport in the heart of, uh, Africa and Uganda.
00:52:34.140And rescued, uh, uh, uh, another plane, uh, another hostages of a hijacked plane.
00:52:40.100This time the terrorists thought, well, you know, we're safe.
00:52:43.060We won't take you to Tel Aviv where, uh, Israel storm us.
00:52:46.760We take it into, you know, thousands of miles away.
00:52:49.400Israel can't do a damn thing about that.
00:52:52.660So Yoni landed with his forces, uh, his force in the dark of night, uh, killed the terrorists, uh, killed the, uh, Ugandan, um, soldiers who were supporting them, who were helping them, destroyed the MiGs that could give chase to our aircraft going back to big fighter planes, uh, that could give chase to the, um, planes where the, um, where they were released hostages.
00:53:20.940But, uh, unfortunately, in storming the terrorists, uh, he was shot and killed.
00:53:26.700Um, and I thought at that point that, um, you know, my life ended.
00:53:31.160I went into, I don't know if I describe it in the book, but I, I went into kind of shock because I lost a sense of taste, uh, for a week.
00:53:41.340Uh, this is the week of mourning that we have in Jewish traditions.
00:53:47.000I didn't know if, uh, how I could live or whether I could, I would live at all.
00:53:50.940Um, and yet, um, uh, I describe in the book how I emerged from this, uh, inconsolable grief with my parents who were incredibly courageous, uh, and my younger brother.
00:54:06.560And how we summoned our spiritual forces, our, uh, uh, uh, the inner core of our beings to, uh, to continue, not merely to live, but to continue Yoni's battle against terrorism, um, which, uh, I believe was not purely military.
00:54:25.520I thought it was above all else, uh, civilizational.
00:54:29.140That's how he saw it to the forces of light against the forces of darkness, the people, these wild animals, you know, prowling our airways, our waterways, our cities, blowing up children, blowing up anything in sight, erasing the basic distinction between combatants.
00:54:45.520And non-combatants, which is, uh, at the heart of the laws of war, basically committing war crimes left and right.
00:54:52.240Uh, and I thought that the way to fight that is to mobilize the free world to the battle, not merely against the terrorists, but against the forces that stand behind them, which are sovereign, uh, dictatorial and totalitarian states.
00:55:08.520And so I was swept into that public policy battle.
00:55:13.160And from there into politics, into diplomacy, I was asked to serve in Israel's embassy in Washington and then into politics itself.
00:55:22.020And that, I suppose Yoni's sacrifice and heroism has always been before my mind, before my, uh, before my eyes and will continue to be so until my very last moment.
00:55:36.140Well, I tell you, um, you have gone on to inspire a great deal of, of people, including me.
00:55:44.060I have, uh, uh, I have lots of friends that have, uh, you know, dual citizenships in many countries and, uh, you know, things get tough.
00:55:54.500And, uh, I've said, and I can't get one to Israel, but I, I've often said, if I was going to have a dual citizenship,
00:56:02.620I would only be a citizen of United States and Israel because only, I think I I've tried, I think a few years ago.
00:56:14.400Um, but, uh, why do you, why do you say that?
00:56:20.640Uh, I say that because the people of Israel will stand, you know, you, you, you know, who you are,
00:56:29.820you know, who you face, what you face, and you will stand.
00:56:34.040And I, I don't want to, you know, in, in difficult times, I don't want to go out, uh, sitting on my hands.
00:56:42.800I want to go with people who are standing and whether that's literally fighting or fighting with words.
00:56:48.960I, I just have so admired you and the people of Israel, um, for the courage that you have always shown.
00:56:57.180Um, I'm, I'm, uh, I'm a very big fan of yours, as you know.