The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

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00:00:57.420 Hello everyone. I'm very privileged, I would say, and happy today to be speaking with Ambassador Ronald Dermer.

00:01:18.380 I've been investigating the background and the significance of the Abraham Accords, which are a peace initiative signed a few years ago, aimed at stabilizing and bringing prosperity and security and opportunity to the Middle East.

00:01:35.660 And I became aware of these accords somewhat late in some sense, given what appears to be their significance, and they look to me like the most noteworthy move towards something approximating peace in the Middle East that might have occurred in the last, certainly since the Second World War, perhaps since the First World War.

00:01:56.960 And that's really saying something in such a fractious world where so much of the conflict has been centered in that area as it has been for so many thousands of years.

00:02:06.120 So I'm doing some background investigation into the accords, trying to find out their strengths and weaknesses, trying to separate the wheat from the chaff and give credit where credit is due.

00:02:16.340 And I talked to the American ambassador to Israel a while back, who was signally important in bringing these about, and now I'm reversing that by speaking to Ronald Dermer.

00:02:28.460 And I'm going to share that with you so you can make up your own mind insofar as that's possible.

00:02:34.060 I'll start with a brief bio of Ambassador Dermer, and then we'll move to a discussion of the Abraham Accords in their details and in their context and some of the associated moves on the political and strategic front that were undertaken in Ambassador Dermer's term.

00:02:53.660 So that's the plan for this conversation, and so welcome aboard.

00:02:56.560 Ronald Dermer, an American-born Israeli political consultant slash diplomat, served as the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. from 2013 to 2021.

00:03:09.340 In 2004, Dermer and Natan Sharansky co-authored the best-selling The Case for Democracy, The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, which has been translated into 10 languages.

00:03:22.780 He served as Israel's economic envoy to the U.S. from 2005 to 2008, and then for four years as senior advisor to former Israeli PM's Benjamin Netanyahu for four years.

00:03:38.140 From 2013 to 2021, Mr. Dermer was Israeli ambassador to the U.S.

00:03:44.740 As Netanyahu's top advisor, he worked closely with his U.S. counterparts on securing long-term military assistance and missile defense funding for Israel, moved the American embassy to Jerusalem, attaining U.S. recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, implementing the maximum pressure campaign against Iran,

00:04:06.080 and achieving, as I mentioned, the breakthrough Abraham Accords, which normalized Israel's relation with several Arab nations.

00:04:14.700 Mr. Dermer is currently a non-resident distinguished fellow at JINSA, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.

00:04:23.440 He's co-host of the podcast, Diplomatically Incorrect, and has assured me that he is, in fact, Diplomatically Incorrect.

00:04:29.940 A partner at Exigent Capital, a boutique investment firm in Jerusalem, and serves on the board of NetSpark, a leading Israeli internet filtering technology company.

00:04:41.260 So, welcome to my YouTube channel and podcast, Ambassador Dermer, and I'm pleased that you're here and willing to talk to me.

00:04:48.280 And I'd like you to take over the conversation here and introduce the audience who is watching and listening to the Abraham Accords and your understanding of their nature and significance and the process by which they came to be.

00:05:01.540 So, it's a pleasure to be with you, Jordan, and I'm also thrilled to be here because there is a slight chance that my children will actually watch this, so they can be my audience as well,

00:05:12.800 because they won't listen to me around the dinner table, but they are big fans of yours, so I'm looking forward to them actually listening to their father for a change.

00:05:21.740 So, the Abraham Accords.

00:05:23.620 If we're trying to understand the Abraham Accords, which happened in the summer of 2020, it's very interesting because Israel had its first peace agreement with Egypt in 1979, so we waited for 30 years.

00:05:38.440 As Israel was established in 1948, it was three decades before we had our first peace agreement with Egypt, which was definitely a breakthrough, and I think changed Israel's, not only the military equation regarding Israel and its neighbors, but had a huge impact on Israel's strategic position in the region.

00:05:57.340 Then we had to wait another 15 years in 1994 when we had a peace agreement between Israel and Jordan, and between the second and the third, we had to wait over a quarter century, 26 years, until 2020.

00:06:12.700 On August 13, 2020, there was a phone call between Prime Minister Netanyahu, President Trump, and Mohammed bin Zayed, who then was the Crown Prince of the Emirates, the United Arab Emirates, and today is the ruler of the United Arab Emirates, and that was a breakthrough.

00:06:28.360 Well, we only had to wait about 25 days for the next breakthrough to happen, which happened in early September with a call with the King of Bahrain, the Prime Minister and the President, and then you had the Abraham Accords, which were formally signed on September 15, 2020.

00:06:46.880 So we had two. Immediately after those accords were signed, two more countries, Sudan and Morocco, increased the number to four countries, four Arab countries, that had done peace or normalization agreements with Israel.

00:07:01.360 And what is striking is how little attention is paid to the fact that in the first 72 years of Israel's history, we have two peace agreements with Arab countries, and in a four or five month period in 2020, you had four agreements.

00:07:17.120 Now, how did that happen? Now, there's a lot of reasons why this has been dismissed by a lot of people around the world, because it actually, I think, breaks a paradigm that it existed for many, many decades.

00:07:28.520 It also maybe will give political credit to people that they don't want to give political credit to, but in understanding what changed in the region and what enabled, ultimately, the Abraham Accords.

00:07:39.920 And by here, the Abraham Accords is specifically the surfacing of Israel's relations with our Arab partners, particularly in the Gulf.

00:07:49.160 If you want to understand, in my view, the Abraham Accords, you really have to go back about 20 years.

00:07:54.580 I'll take you back to 2002.

00:07:58.760 You may remember, I don't know if you were following the Middle East in those days, but in May 2002, the Saudis put forward what was called the Arab Peace Initiative in May 2002.

00:08:10.840 Now, a lot of people thought that was a breakthrough for the region.

00:08:13.800 I didn't. I actually thought that that was a con job in the sense that a few months earlier, about eight or nine months earlier, on September 11th, 2001, 19 hijackers had flown planes into a building.

00:08:31.940 The World Trade Center had downed the plane in Pennsylvania, and 15 of those 19 hijackers were Saudis, and they were responsible for the murder of nearly 3,000 Americans.

00:08:42.520 So they faced enormous pressure on them to do something.

00:08:47.080 And if you know a little bit about the history of Saudi Arabia, there was a bond that the ruling family in Saudi Arabia, the Saud family, made with the Wahhab family, which are the Wahhabis.

00:08:57.960 And part of that deal that they made enabled the Wahhabis not only to control the education system within Saudi Arabia, but also to promote a particularly violent brand of Islam all over the world through the mosque that they had funded.

00:09:14.860 That was the deal that the Saudis made.

00:09:16.440 And 9-11 was a product of that, not because the Saudis directly were involved in it or directly ordered it, because the Saudi regime had actually enabled this infrastructure of radical Islam to develop, and ultimately it blew up on September 11th, 2001.

00:09:35.620 Now think about the situation, if you're Saudi Arabia, how much pressure you have on you to do something.

00:09:43.840 So about eight months after those September 11th attacks, they called in the reporter from the New York Times, a columnist, Tom Friedman, I believe, who went to Riyadh, and he met with one of the senior Saudi leaders, and he opened a desk drawer and pulled out a peace plan.

00:10:00.780 And all of a sudden, the Saudis, in the public imagination, went from being terror masters to peacemakers.

00:10:07.220 But the real question, Jordan, is this.

00:10:09.440 If you would have asked the leaders of Saudi Arabia in 2002, if you would have asked them, if you could wave a magic wand and end the Arab-Israeli conflict, or end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which are not the same conflict which we'll get into, but if you could wave a magic wand and end those conflicts, would you?

00:10:27.700 And the answer in 2002, in my view, was no.

00:10:31.960 I think they had no desire to do it.

00:10:33.480 I think the conflict served their purposes.

00:10:36.280 It helped divert from a lot of bad things that were happening in the kingdom.

00:10:41.520 And I think a lot of the British and the French and the American diplomats fell for the nonsense that the center of all the problems and maladies of the Middle East is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

00:10:52.360 So they had no strategic interest in solving the conflict, period, full stop.

00:10:58.120 Now let's fast forward 10 years, not to 2020.

00:11:02.020 Let's talk about 2012, maybe even a little bit beforehand.

00:11:05.720 But around 2012, if you would have asked the leaders of Saudi Arabia if they could wave their magic wand, would they end the Israeli-Arab conflict?

00:11:17.220 Would they end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

00:11:19.780 The answer then was yes.

00:11:21.920 Now what changed in that decade?

00:11:24.980 I'll tell you what didn't change.

00:11:26.880 They didn't translate Herzl, who was the visionary of modern Zionism.

00:11:31.700 They didn't translate his Jewish state, his famous book, into Arabic.

00:11:36.320 And you didn't see a wave of Zionism spread across the sands of Arabia.

00:11:39.960 What changed was a fundamental shift in their understanding, not only in Saudi Arabia but throughout the Gulf, of what their interests are.

00:11:51.420 And this was a result of several factors that came together to, I think, change their approach to Israel and to many other issues, even internal issues we can get to, but certainly to Israel.

00:12:04.100 One of the changes that happened was the Arab Spring.

00:12:06.600 One, you remember that in 2010, you had Tunisia underwent this revolution.

00:12:16.120 You saw it in Egypt.

00:12:17.560 You saw Libya.

00:12:19.000 You saw Syria.

00:12:20.080 Some of them were violent.

00:12:21.220 Some of them were not violent.

00:12:22.500 In Yemen, in Iraq, all across the region, things were starting to get unstable.

00:12:28.080 And so regimes that were certain of their hold on power for decades to come were less certain.

00:12:36.700 That's the first thing.

00:12:37.600 Second thing is you had the rise of Iran as a very dangerous power in the region.

00:12:42.980 And that was happening before 2012, but it sort of shifted into overdrive in those years as Obama, the Obama administration, pursued a policy of appeasement with Iran rather than confrontation with Iran.

00:12:58.540 And Iran is a Shia radical power.

00:13:01.120 They not only threatened the state of Israel, which everyone knows, with destruction, but they also threatened their Sunni Arab neighbors.

00:13:09.940 And as I would sometimes tell my Arab friends, they want Riyadh for breakfast.

00:13:16.140 They want Jerusalem for lunch.

00:13:17.820 And frankly, they want New York for dinner.

00:13:19.620 I don't know if Toronto may be a midnight snack.

00:13:21.660 But the Shia radical power of Iran threatens them.

00:13:25.740 And you see Iran getting stronger and stronger as they feel less certain.

00:13:31.040 Now you had another factor, which is the rise of Sunni radicalism.

00:13:35.520 And that would be in the form of ISIS.

00:13:38.540 Now, Iran, as I said, is a Shia radical power.

00:13:40.740 There are also Sunni radical forces.

00:13:42.600 Al-Qaeda, who perpetrated 9-11, that's Sunni radicalism 1.0.

00:13:47.740 ISIS is 2.0.

00:13:49.200 And there'll be a 3.0.

00:13:50.420 And these regimes in the Gulf are also frightened of them.

00:13:54.860 So you've got this Iranian tiger whose claws are getting longer and teeth are getting sharper.

00:13:59.620 You've got this ISIS leopard that is roaming throughout that region, chopping off heads, decimating populations, and instilling fear in a very wide swath of territory.

00:14:10.760 And here is another factor that is critical to understand the change in the Middle East.

00:14:15.380 When that Iranian tiger and ISIS leopard is rising and becoming stronger, the 800-pound American gorilla is leaving the building.

00:14:25.140 So the withdrawal from the Middle East of the United States, at least the reduction of the military footprint of the United States in the Middle East, I think that helps seize the minds of plenty of people in the Gulf.

00:14:39.220 Because if there is one thing, Jordan, that connects Obama, Trump, and Biden, and they don't want to be in the same sentence with one another on nearly anything, none of them are looking to send more American troops to the Middle East.

00:14:52.560 So when you see these threats, that tiger and that leopard getting stronger, and the 800-pound gorilla has left, so they say there's a 200-pound gorilla with a kippah on called Israel, let's work in closer cooperation with them.

00:15:07.400 So the fundamental thing to appreciate is they had a different understanding of their most vital security interests.

00:15:15.380 And working closely with Israel helps them advance the interests.

00:15:19.140 Second issue now is the rise of Israel as a global technological power.

00:15:25.580 Israel is the second great source of innovation outside of Silicon Valley.

00:15:31.800 Silicon Valley is one.

00:15:33.440 Israel, that ecosystem that we have for innovation, is remarkable.

00:15:37.480 And we're not just a great innovator when it comes to technologies in traditional fields like agriculture or water.

00:15:43.580 There are also, let's take an area like cyber, which has both civilian or military applications.

00:15:49.420 So Israel is one-tenth of one percent of the world's population with all of nine million people.

00:15:54.680 But we account for about 20 percent of private investment in cyber.

00:16:01.480 So Israel is punching 200 times above its weight in cyber.

00:16:05.220 So we're not a country the size of New Jersey with all of nine million people, as I say.

00:16:09.840 In cyber, Israel is bigger than a China.

00:16:11.540 But there are other areas, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, all of these technologies of the future.

00:16:18.480 And maybe we'll get a chance to talk about it, why Israel has that ecosystem, how we developed it.

00:16:23.060 But we have it.

00:16:24.060 Now, if you think about the Arab world's traditional boycott of Israel, it's about as intelligent as Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and half of California boycotting Silicon Valley.

00:16:38.760 It makes no sense. And to the extent that you have leaders in the region who care about the future of their regimes, which they all do, but who are smart enough to understand that the world still needs oil today.

00:16:53.600 But who knows what's going to happen in 20, 30, 40, 50 years?

00:16:57.100 They have to prepare their countries for a different future.

00:17:00.380 And Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of the Emirates, is certainly one of those leaders.

00:17:06.000 And I think Mohammed bin Salman.

00:17:07.880 And we could talk about Khashoggi and all of that.

00:17:09.900 But I think he's also one of those leaders.

00:17:11.860 And they're looking around the region.

00:17:13.740 And the bottom line is this.

00:17:14.960 They see that their security interests and their economic interests are tied to a partnership with Israel.

00:17:22.780 They want to actually move into an alliance with Israel.

00:17:25.660 But they do have a big problem.

00:17:28.600 These regimes have been poisoning their populations against Israel for six, seven decades.

00:17:35.800 So it's very hard for them to turn on a dime and say all of a sudden, hey, you know, we need to do this for the good of our countries.

00:17:42.600 It is very difficult.

00:17:43.940 Look, they don't have democracies.

00:17:46.220 They're authoritarian systems.

00:17:48.440 Some people say it's, you know, more benevolent or less benevolent.

00:17:51.360 But they're all authoritarian systems.

00:17:53.860 But public opinion in these systems matter.

00:17:56.420 And they have to navigate, particularly when you've seen in other countries,

00:18:00.660 whole regimes go down because they didn't respond to public opinion.

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00:19:44.100 So let me summarize, just so that I make sure I've got this.

00:19:48.240 So you made a couple of points at the beginning, one of which was that these peace agreements, multiple peace agreements, four of them, emerged in a very short period of time after a very slow process of similar peace agreements extending over about a 70-year period.

00:20:05.700 And that there was some movement towards this in 2002 by the Saudis, but that was mostly reaction to the negative publicity associated with 9-11.

00:20:16.260 You said that the Saudis, however, by 2014, because of all sorts of changes on the international scene, including the American withdrawal and the rise of the Arab Spring,

00:20:27.780 and the dawning realization of Israel's value as a tech and innovative hub had convinced many Arab leaders in the region, including the Saudis, that it was more intelligent to pay attention to the threat that was posed to their regimes

00:20:43.460 and to the stability of the area by internal dissidents, both on the Shiite and the Sunni side, than to be concerned with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to ignore the potential benefit that partnership with Israel might bring about.

00:21:00.880 And that shifted hard enough by 2014 so that even the Saudis, who might have been regarded as particularly intractable because of their partnership with the Wahhabis,

00:21:10.180 were willing to contemplate the idea that the proper pathway forward for them was, in fact, a normalization of relations with Israel

00:21:20.560 and the development of the kind of economic stability and military security that might ensure the longevity of their regimes.

00:21:29.100 So just a couple of fine points on what you said. First of all, it's before 2014. By 2012, it was already there.

00:21:36.800 I would say we went into the prime minister's office. I joined Prime Minister Netanyahu there as a senior advisor in 2009.

00:21:45.380 Very quickly, we could see a situation where we were assessing the region in the same way as the Saudis,

00:21:51.460 because you'd have officials, presidents, prime ministers, senators who would come through the region,

00:21:56.580 and a lot of them would be coming from Riyadh or coming from Abu Dhabi.

00:22:01.160 And they would say to Prime Minister Netanyahu, you know what? Your analysis of the problems of the region are the exact same as the analysis that we're hearing in the Gulf.

00:22:10.440 And so there was clearly a marriage of interest at that point.

00:22:14.880 The other thing I would say, just to clarify, it's not about the dissidents that happened, because my view, I wrote a book with Natan Sharansky about the case for democracy.

00:22:24.120 When I think of dissidents, I think about, you know, people who were fighting for freedom and for political and civil rights and human rights, obviously.

00:22:32.920 These are about terrorists.

00:22:34.660 I mean, they're worried.

00:22:35.360 Yeah, I was thinking more about the Iranians and ISIS, actually.

00:22:37.760 Right, right. No, so Iranian and ISIS, I agree with you.

00:22:40.740 I would say it's terrorists who want to not only destroy their regimes, but they want to actually take the whole world back to the 8th century.

00:22:47.940 And, you know, there's Sunni terrorists that want to take us to the 8th century.

00:22:51.120 There's Shia terrorists that want to take us to the 10th century.

00:22:53.920 Maybe they'll get together and they'll make a compromise and try to take us all back to the 9th century.

00:22:58.100 But they're all bad and they're a huge problem for any regime that is actually focused on the future and don't want to go back to the dark ages.

00:23:06.100 OK, OK. Now, how are the – now, you laid a fair bit of stress on the positive Saudi contribution to this peace process.

00:23:14.580 But the Saudis aren't signatories yet, and maybe they will be.

00:23:19.180 But I have heard from many informed sources that they were powerful players behind the scene and were fundamentally not only on board with this,

00:23:26.260 but in some sense enabling it, I'm wondering, given their bet with the devil in some sense that they made with the Wahhabis,

00:23:35.420 and I'm saying that metaphorically to some degree, how are the Saudis managing to move towards normalization of relations with Israel,

00:23:43.900 given their partnership with a particularly fundamentalist brand of – well, the fundamentalist brand of the Wahhabis?

00:23:52.880 How are they managing that? And what's the remaining threat there to the further distribution and maintenance of this peace process?

00:24:01.620 Well, to me, the Saudis are the invisible hand behind the whole Abraham Accords.

00:24:07.140 It's hard for me to imagine they would have gotten off the ground without at least their tacit support.

00:24:11.940 So Bahrain, if you've been there, you know, it's a bridge, literally a bridge from Saudi Arabia.

00:24:18.720 You could, in American terms, see it as sort of the 51st state of Saudi Arabia.

00:24:23.580 So the idea that the Bahrainis would have made a peace with Israel, with the Saudis giving a red light,

00:24:28.280 I just don't believe that that would be the case.

00:24:31.160 And I think even the Emirates, despite the real leadership of Mohammed bin Zayed, MBZ,

00:24:36.440 said, I think if the Saudis had a complete red light against doing this and were fighting it actively,

00:24:43.000 I think it's very hard to imagine that he would have agreed to move forward.

00:24:46.540 Also remember that in order to get from Israel to the Emirates, you've got to fly over Saudi Arabia,

00:24:52.220 unless you want to go around and fly over Iraq and Iran, which I don't think anybody wants to do.

00:24:56.620 So the Saudis made their airspace available for planes flying over.

00:25:02.540 So there's no question that they were behind it.

00:25:04.820 And I think they probably saw Bahrain and the Emirates as a trial balloon to see how that goes,

00:25:11.940 to see how the public, their own publics, because, you know,

00:25:14.920 you never know exactly about public opinion in these societies that are more closed societies.

00:25:19.900 In a democracy, you can tell where people are because they say it openly and freely

00:25:23.780 on all the television stations and everybody's criticizing everybody.

00:25:27.240 In these countries, when you do a big event like that, a big move for peace,

00:25:31.980 you know, you maybe think your assessment is right about where the public is,

00:25:36.940 but you don't know for sure.

00:25:39.080 And I think that was part of that process.

00:25:41.260 Unfortunately, and maybe we'll have a chance to get into this.

00:25:44.500 Unfortunately, the Trump administration began the Abraham Accords

00:25:48.060 in the final months of the presidency, rather than in the first months of the presidency.

00:25:52.940 And I think that was a missed opportunity, certainly better late than never when it comes

00:25:57.280 to a breakthrough peace.

00:25:59.140 But this was something that was possible to do years before, because, as I said,

00:26:05.220 already in 2012, 2013, they were ready.

00:26:11.140 The answer to that question, and when you're thinking about peace,

00:26:14.780 the first question is, do these people actually want peace?

00:26:17.280 Forget about them doing the dance internationally to try to get on the right side

00:26:23.120 of what popular elite opinion is, to be seen as peacemakers.

00:26:28.440 That they always wanted.

00:26:29.600 But would they actually want to make peace?

00:26:32.320 I think that they were already there about a decade ago.

00:26:35.980 And we tried, I must confess, we tried with the Obama administration, Israel did,

00:26:41.100 in its second term, to convince them to move along this track,

00:26:45.880 and to try to focus their efforts on achieving an Israeli Arab peace.

00:26:50.420 And then Kerry was Secretary of State, and I spoke to him countless times

00:26:55.780 about pursuing it and explaining that the Arabs were ready.

00:26:59.320 And he was insistent, and this had been conventional wisdom for two decades.

00:27:04.940 He said, the only way that you're going to get these Arabs to make peace with you

00:27:08.100 is if you make peace with the Palestinians.

00:27:11.040 And I would have people, not just Democrats, but also Republicans,

00:27:14.080 for two decades saying, you know, if you make peace with the Palestinians,

00:27:17.300 you'll have peace with some two dozen Arab states.

00:27:20.360 And I would say, well, that may be tautological.

00:27:22.980 You may be right.

00:27:24.060 They'll have no other big excuse that they can put forward.

00:27:26.960 But what if the Palestinians don't want to make peace?

00:27:28.960 Does that mean that we have to just wait

00:27:30.720 when these countries' interests are to move forward?

00:27:34.100 So we tried with Secretary Kerry so many times to convince him to take this approach.

00:27:40.180 He instead, before he did the Iran deal, which is also connected to this,

00:27:45.200 but he tried to again use the same formula and a failed approach to peacemaking

00:27:50.800 and went down this Israeli-Palestinian rabbit hole, which was a road to nowhere.

00:27:55.100 Why was there so much insistence?

00:27:57.100 I've heard this from other people that I've talked to here,

00:27:59.780 and you see this playing out on the media landscape.

00:28:02.520 There's, it's as if there's an insistence, and maybe it's psychologically rooted to some degree,

00:28:08.960 to reduce the entire intractable complexity of the Middle East to a single point of conflict.

00:28:15.260 And you can imagine the psychological advantage of that.

00:28:17.780 It's because you reduce an irreducible set of problems to something hypothetically comprehensible.

00:28:23.720 So you focus it on Israel versus Palestine,

00:28:26.040 and then that becomes an intractable moral issue to some degree,

00:28:30.320 because then it depends on which side of the argument that you take.

00:28:33.320 And that seems to have completely stymied any attempts to, well, do the sorts of things,

00:28:38.140 to go around in some sense or to find alternative routes in the manner that you described.

00:28:42.340 But why do you think that the Israel versus Palestine conflict has become such an unbelievable sticking point for this kind of movement?

00:28:54.380 What are the sociological and economic reasons, I suppose, and geopolitical reasons why that might be the case?

00:29:00.700 I mean, Kerry's, Kerry's attitude seems, in some sense, incomprehensible,

00:29:06.800 given that you were providing evidence that there was at least some possibility that there was an alternative route.

00:29:13.660 Yeah, listen, I think that you, that's a deeper question that you're asking now,

00:29:17.760 is why people have the view of Israel that they do.

00:29:21.280 I mean, let's take a step back.

00:29:23.120 The idea that there's a Middle East conflict, singular, is ridiculous.

00:29:27.220 I mean, you could solve the Israeli-Palestinian issue tomorrow,

00:29:31.940 and it's not going to impact what's happening in Yemen or in Libya or in Iraq

00:29:37.180 and 10 other places, countries around the region.

00:29:41.520 But everybody focused on this being a Middle East peace process.

00:29:45.460 It's not a Middle East peace process.

00:29:46.920 It may be an Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

00:29:49.420 If you solve that conflict, maybe it'll have some positive impact beyond that conflict.

00:29:55.360 But in the Middle East, you have a battle that is going on between the forces of modernity and medievalism.

00:30:01.600 That's what the conflict is.

00:30:02.860 And there are Sunni forces on the modern side, and Shia forces on the modern side,

00:30:07.540 and there are Sunni forces on the medieval side, and Shia forces on the medieval side.

00:30:12.520 Israel is clearly on the force for modernity.

00:30:15.160 As a country, as a society, as the one real democracy, if you came to Israel,

00:30:19.560 we should have all the rights, free speech, freedom of the press, independent courts,

00:30:24.780 the things that we take for granted in democratic societies.

00:30:27.540 You don't have that anywhere else.

00:30:29.320 And these societies are trying to overcome centuries of this tyranny

00:30:34.760 to see if they can chart a path for a different future.

00:30:37.580 But the focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, why everybody believes that this conflict is the root of everything,

00:30:45.620 I think a lot of it has to do with the demonization of Israel for many, many decades.

00:30:49.600 Because if you can cast Israel as the villain in that theater,

00:30:53.900 and we're the powerful force against the Palestinians who are the weak party,

00:30:58.940 and so therefore if it can all be cast to Israel and Israel can be blamed,

00:31:02.600 I think that's sitting on thousands of years of history.

00:31:05.860 I'll tell you a story about how absurd the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is

00:31:12.040 as the source of all the region's problems, let alone the world's problems.

00:31:15.800 And by way of background, I remember there was Obama's former national security advisor,

00:31:21.080 I think it was General Jones, once gave an interview and he said something very bizarre.

00:31:25.600 He said, you know, if I were God and I came to Obama and I told him to resolve one issue in the world,

00:31:33.600 I would tell him to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

00:31:37.100 You know, it was bizarre, a bizarre statement, but it shows the centrality that this conflict has held.

00:31:43.400 And even we'll get to it with Trump, where Trump was also at the beginning,

00:31:46.860 like the holy grail of peacemaking is you're going to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

00:31:51.580 Yeah, it makes me wonder to some degree too, to how it's tied to a very deep underlying dynamic,

00:31:57.620 which is something like, it's being played out over thousands of years in many different places,

00:32:03.520 that makes the Jews, in some sense, the eternal scapegoat.

00:32:08.980 You know, and it's so convenient that you can point,

00:32:11.880 imagine you're a leader that's beset by all sorts of ethical troubles in the Middle East,

00:32:16.840 and you can point to the outsiders who are the Jews, let's say,

00:32:19.940 who also happen to be successful, which is extremely annoying.

00:32:22.740 And you can say, like the Germans did in Nazi Germany,

00:32:26.420 well, look at those successful outsiders, they must be oppressive thieves,

00:32:31.820 and then all the attention that might be paid to the distributed evil

00:32:35.580 is localized to that particularized and externalized evil,

00:32:39.100 and that's just hyper-convenient for everyone involved.

00:32:42.360 And so it seems to me that there's something like that going on,

00:32:45.260 in addition to many other things.

00:32:47.020 I agree with you. It's a potent cocktail.

00:32:49.680 I think part of that cocktail for decades was essentially oil,

00:32:54.480 because you have oil-producing states, and Israel is seen as being on the other side.

00:32:58.580 You've got 22 Arab states, you've got 57 Muslim states.

00:33:02.340 So you're going to stand with the one Jewish state in the region,

00:33:06.560 and you see how oil affects the politics of Russia and Ukraine and everything around there.

00:33:12.220 So oil played a big role, but I think it's also sitting on this powder keg

00:33:16.360 that goes back a couple thousand years with this attempt not just to make the Jews,

00:33:22.420 let's say, a scapegoat, but also to cast them as some sort of source of evil in the world,

00:33:28.920 in the problem of the world.

00:33:30.200 Well, you do have this weird situation that you described.

00:33:34.000 So you said, if I've got my figures right,

00:33:36.640 that Israel is one-tenth of one percent of the world's population,

00:33:40.300 but responsible for something like 20 percent of a major element of technological development.

00:33:45.640 And so you have this, not only do you have this status on the Jewish side as an extreme minority,

00:33:51.040 very tiny population considered by global standards, and generally within any country,

00:33:56.400 but you also have the additional problem of a tiny minority

00:33:59.060 who are disproportionately successful and at an exponential scale.

00:34:04.240 And so you can also imagine that people looking at that have a moral problem to solve,

00:34:10.380 which is something like, well, there's hardly any of these people,

00:34:13.180 and they're really, really successful.

00:34:14.940 And so either they're doing something right in some fundamental way,

00:34:19.060 which implies that we're doing something wrong, or they're thieves and villains.

00:34:23.220 And there's a fair bit of moral hazard in a calculation like that,

00:34:26.580 because obviously the easier pathway to take,

00:34:28.860 rather than the radical self-examination that might be required to determine what you're doing wrong,

00:34:34.940 is to point the finger and say, well,

00:34:36.780 they're obviously just thieves and parasites and should be scourged.

00:34:40.500 And, I mean, it's not like that's only happened once.

00:34:42.860 It's happening continually, and it's pretty much happened forever.

00:34:47.360 No, it gets—first of all, I think it's a deeper discussion.

00:34:50.680 I know we're going to do a deep dive.

00:34:51.940 We'll have to do an even deeper dive on sort of the mission of the Jews

00:34:54.600 and the nature of anti-Semitism, how it developed, why it developed,

00:34:59.300 why you see its re-emergence today.

00:35:01.400 I think that's true.

00:35:02.680 But the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you know, to cast Israel as the world's Jew,

00:35:07.420 that's a kind of new form of anti-Semitism,

00:35:09.540 to single out Israel for special treatment,

00:35:12.520 to treat it by a standard that you treat no other country in the world.

00:35:16.060 And that when Israel does something wrong,

00:35:17.740 because, you know, we're not a perfect country,

00:35:19.340 no country is perfect, and somebody could make a mistake,

00:35:22.240 somebody could do something in the society that's wrong,

00:35:26.460 we're the only country that when something is done that is wrong,

00:35:29.700 we supposedly have no right to exist,

00:35:32.000 which I think is a much deeper question of the role that Jews have played in the world.

00:35:35.980 You know, Abu Ghraib, I remember, happening about 20 years ago in Iraq,

00:35:39.500 and people were rightly appalled by that,

00:35:41.760 and people called for heads to roll and all sorts of things to happen.

00:35:45.200 Nobody says America doesn't have a right to exist because of Abu Ghraib.

00:35:48.240 But every day, multiple times a day, the second anything that Israel does

00:35:53.120 is perceived to be wrong, we no longer have a right to exist.

00:35:57.240 But I wanted to tell you a story, just when you're looking about the scale

00:36:02.080 or the scope of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,

00:36:04.560 when you're thinking about global affairs,

00:36:06.940 a story that happened to me when I was ambassador.

00:36:09.140 So new ambassadors to Washington, you usually get,

00:36:12.240 you pay courtesy calls to other ambassadors.

00:36:14.160 And by way of tradition, you meet about 10 other ambassadors.

00:36:18.840 So when I came to Washington, the first ambassador I went to see

00:36:21.480 was the ambassador of Egypt to the United States,

00:36:23.400 then the ambassador of Jordan to the United States,

00:36:25.580 who are our peace partners.

00:36:26.900 I think I met the ambassador of England and Germany,

00:36:29.040 and a whole bunch of others.

00:36:31.540 I found myself in my seven and a half years,

00:36:33.820 I met a lot of ambassadors who they would come to town,

00:36:36.220 and we would find ourselves in their top 10 list

00:36:39.740 of ambassadors that they wanted to meet with.

00:36:41.940 And I would never turn down a meeting with another ambassador

00:36:45.500 for two reasons.

00:36:46.620 Number one is Israel's not in a position to turn down anybody,

00:36:49.820 any friends, potential friends.

00:36:52.060 And the second thing is if you meet a smart ambassador,

00:36:55.840 it usually saves you about five years of reading The Economist,

00:36:58.660 which I don't really like to read The Economist.

00:37:01.260 So one particular day, I come back,

00:37:05.000 and it's after a long day.

00:37:06.240 I had seven or eight meetings, White House, Congress,

00:37:08.680 and I come back, and in my waiting room there

00:37:11.240 is the ambassador of Burundi to the United States.

00:37:14.720 So I said, give me a moment.

00:37:16.520 I went into my office, and I have to admit on your podcast,

00:37:20.520 I had to look up and Google Burundi.

00:37:23.420 Like, I knew it was in Africa, but that's about it.

00:37:25.560 I didn't know what it bordered.

00:37:26.740 I didn't know anything about its history.

00:37:28.920 I did the Wikipedia thing in two minutes

00:37:31.220 to try to get as much information as I can,

00:37:33.240 and then I invited him into my office,

00:37:34.920 and we started speaking.

00:37:36.240 And this happened to me that day.

00:37:39.300 It's very rare for me.

00:37:40.700 It might be rare for you.

00:37:42.660 That day, it happens about twice a year,

00:37:44.620 I was actually tired of listening to myself speak.

00:37:47.740 I was so exhausted having talked for about eight hours.

00:37:51.060 I just didn't want to talk about Iran,

00:37:52.680 about the peace process,

00:37:53.880 about anything to deal with Israel.

00:37:55.560 And I know nothing about Burundi,

00:37:57.000 and I get this very smart guy.

00:37:58.360 I think he was Harvard educated in my office,

00:38:01.320 and I start peppering him with questions about Burundi.

00:38:03.720 What do you make in Burundi?

00:38:04.680 What do you export from Burundi?

00:38:06.240 What are you trying to achieve in the United States?

00:38:08.020 And then I asked him, do you have a security problem?

00:38:10.500 And he says, not since 2004.

00:38:12.860 I said, what happened in 2004?

00:38:14.800 He said, well, in 1994, you had the genocide of Rwanda.

00:38:18.640 That spilled over to Burundi.

00:38:22.220 And we had a terrible violence over the next decade,

00:38:24.960 and there was some sort of ceasefire peace agreement in 2004,

00:38:27.860 and since then, we haven't had a security problem.

00:38:29.640 And I asked him, how many people died in that decade,

00:38:32.260 between 94 and 2004?

00:38:34.980 And he says, 300,000.

00:38:37.180 I said, really, 300,000?

00:38:38.740 I said, how many people you think have died

00:38:41.300 in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

00:38:43.780 Now, this meeting is about 2015.

00:38:46.620 So we're talking about a century, almost a century,

00:38:49.440 in 1920, when you had an attack outside of the immigration office in Jaffa,

00:38:55.300 until 2015, where I'm sitting with this ambassador.

00:38:58.800 And he's a very intelligent person,

00:39:00.940 and he thinks about it for a while,

00:39:03.920 probably 30 seconds or so,

00:39:05.620 and then he said, 2 million.

00:39:06.880 And I said, well, you're pretty close.

00:39:09.960 You're only off by two zeros,

00:39:11.800 because it's about 20,000,

00:39:13.640 22,000 Israelis and Palestinians have died

00:39:16.880 in the century of conflict from 1920.

00:39:22.620 22,000.

00:39:23.800 Now, if you take the Israeli-Arab conflict,

00:39:27.040 where you take all the soldiers of Israel who have died,

00:39:30.300 all the victims of terror,

00:39:31.640 the wars that we have fought,

00:39:33.100 and you add Egypt, Egyptian casualties,

00:39:36.540 and Lebanese casualties,

00:39:37.940 and Syrian casualties,

00:39:39.140 and Jordanian casualties,

00:39:40.180 you take the entire conflict,

00:39:41.240 you get to 125,000.

00:39:43.080 Of that 125,000,

00:39:45.300 about a fifth are the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

00:39:48.460 Without getting into who's right, who's wrong,

00:39:50.960 just in terms of the number of people

00:39:52.640 who have died in this conflict,

00:39:54.280 this ambassador's jaw drops.

00:39:57.540 He cannot believe it.

00:39:59.200 He said, why is the whole world obsessed

00:40:02.340 with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

00:40:05.380 Yeah, well, there's a biblical phrase, right?

00:40:07.480 The biblical phrase is,

00:40:09.240 to those to whom much has been given,

00:40:12.140 much will be demanded.

00:40:13.580 And that seems to be the eternal position of the Jews

00:40:16.300 in some real sense, right?

00:40:17.840 So I don't know what to make of that exactly, but...

00:40:21.000 That's one way of looking at it.

00:40:22.240 But what I told him in that meeting,

00:40:23.720 just to finish the point,

00:40:25.500 is I said, you know,

00:40:28.880 it's a problem for us

00:40:30.420 that the world is obsessed with Israel

00:40:32.060 and demonizing Israel,

00:40:33.560 and that more resolutions are passed

00:40:35.380 at the UN against Israel

00:40:36.480 than all the rest of the world combined,

00:40:38.560 or in the so-called Human Rights Council.

00:40:40.880 I mean, seriously,

00:40:42.140 if you show the statistics to your viewers,

00:40:44.280 they won't even believe it.

00:40:45.320 It's a farce.

00:40:46.700 But I said, it's not just a problem for Israel,

00:40:49.100 this demonization and this piling on Israel.

00:40:51.760 It's a problem for you.

00:40:52.880 Nobody knows that 300,000 Burundis

00:40:55.960 were killed in a decade.

00:40:57.640 That is an enormous tragedy.

00:41:00.460 And barely anybody even knows about it

00:41:02.320 because the world is obsessed with Israel.

00:41:05.140 And he understood it.

00:41:05.820 So then what I did is,

00:41:07.160 I said to myself,

00:41:08.180 listen, I don't know anything about Burundi,

00:41:10.400 so I shouldn't begrudge him

00:41:11.720 for not knowing anything

00:41:12.660 about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

00:41:14.060 So I started asking other people.

00:41:16.480 And I would do this question,

00:41:17.580 and you know, you've got to set it up

00:41:18.680 so you're not trying to gain one answer.

00:41:20.780 And I would do it sort of straight,

00:41:22.880 I'd say how many people have been killed

00:41:24.580 in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

00:41:26.080 The lowest number that I got

00:41:28.880 was 500,000.

00:41:31.400 A factor of 20 times as big.

00:41:34.300 And when this person who was

00:41:35.960 headed his foreign ministry in Europe,

00:41:39.500 he was the head of the Middle East division

00:41:41.160 of the foreign ministry

00:41:42.000 of one of the European countries,

00:41:44.020 he said,

00:41:44.900 that's not true.

00:41:46.340 What you're saying is not true.

00:41:48.780 There hasn't been 22,000.

00:41:49.940 I said, well, you know,

00:41:51.160 it used to be in antiquity

00:41:52.440 if you wanted to be a scholar,

00:41:54.000 you'd have to sit in the library of Alexandria

00:41:55.900 and peruse scrolls for a few decades.

00:41:58.620 Now, all you need to do is Google it.

00:42:01.300 So go into the palm of your hand,

00:42:02.960 that ever-expanding library,

00:42:04.380 and go look it up.

00:42:05.400 And he was sort of stunned.

00:42:07.300 And so it is ridiculous,

00:42:09.180 the obsession with Israel.

00:42:10.680 Forget about the fact

00:42:11.740 that we have focused

00:42:12.720 only on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

00:42:14.600 and we have not opened the door.

00:42:16.540 Finally, we did,

00:42:17.380 to peace with the Arab states.

00:42:19.040 But the obsession

00:42:19.920 of the international community

00:42:21.380 with this conflict

00:42:22.720 and every single person who dies

00:42:24.660 is, of course,

00:42:25.280 a tragedy for that family.

00:42:27.140 If you're looking at it

00:42:28.060 from the point of view

00:42:29.020 of the international community

00:42:30.540 with that which threatens

00:42:31.700 peace and security,

00:42:34.120 it's a non-event.

00:42:35.840 And yet they've made

00:42:36.760 so much focus on this

00:42:38.420 for the last century

00:42:39.380 and they wasted a lot of time.

00:42:40.680 So with Kerry,

00:42:41.500 getting back to the point

00:42:42.780 that I wanted to make about Kerry,

00:42:44.600 is I tried

00:42:47.380 and Netanyahu tried

00:42:49.220 incessantly

00:42:50.380 to tell him,

00:42:51.860 John,

00:42:52.460 you know,

00:42:52.640 they've known each other

00:42:53.260 for three decades,

00:42:54.840 there's a real opportunity here.

00:42:56.620 You need to focus on it.

00:42:58.140 Netanyahu spoke about it

00:42:59.300 at the UN.

00:43:00.320 This is before Trump.

00:43:01.380 This is a couple years

00:43:02.180 before Trump

00:43:02.900 where he says,

00:43:04.000 never in my lifetime

00:43:05.360 has I seen the possibilities

00:43:07.400 that I see today.

00:43:08.620 The Arab world

00:43:09.300 is in a different place

00:43:10.480 for all the reasons

00:43:11.300 that we discussed.

00:43:12.200 But he would not listen.

00:43:14.100 He was focused

00:43:14.980 on the holy grail

00:43:15.980 of peacemaking

00:43:16.820 and this rabbit hole

00:43:18.380 to nowhere

00:43:18.960 because unfortunately

00:43:19.900 the Palestinians

00:43:20.640 have not abandoned

00:43:21.960 their desire

00:43:23.800 to destroy

00:43:24.540 the one and only

00:43:25.200 Jewish state,

00:43:25.920 which is a separate question

00:43:27.140 from the Abraham Accords.

00:43:28.300 They have not abandoned it.

00:43:29.860 And we tried

00:43:30.680 to convince Kerry

00:43:31.720 go and focus

00:43:33.980 on the Arabs.

00:43:34.920 And he refused to do it.

00:43:35.820 In fact,

00:43:36.060 there's a famous video,

00:43:37.540 I don't know

00:43:37.900 if you have links

00:43:38.520 that you put on your podcast,

00:43:39.660 where you can see Kerry

00:43:40.800 who says

00:43:42.220 there are those in Israel

00:43:43.760 or political leaders

00:43:45.280 in Israel,

00:43:45.720 I think he said,

00:43:47.220 who say that

00:43:48.540 you can have

00:43:48.940 a separate peace

00:43:50.100 between the Arab states

00:43:52.180 and Israel

00:43:52.640 without first having

00:43:53.580 peace with the Palestinians.

00:43:54.860 And he goes,

00:43:55.560 no,

00:43:56.140 no,

00:43:56.840 no,

00:43:57.660 no.

00:43:59.420 And I said after,

00:44:00.720 it's too bad

00:44:01.260 he didn't say no six times

00:44:02.680 because then we would have

00:44:03.340 had six peace agreements

00:44:04.560 and not four

00:44:05.340 because he said no four times.

00:44:06.800 But we tried very much

00:44:08.840 with Secretary Kerry

00:44:10.500 and we failed.

00:44:12.340 They weren't focused on it.

00:44:13.660 And one of the reasons

00:44:14.660 why they didn't do it

00:44:15.620 is you not only

00:44:17.060 had this paradigm

00:44:17.900 that goes back

00:44:18.740 from Oslo

00:44:19.640 that all roads to peace

00:44:20.800 must go through Ramallah.

00:44:21.940 So everybody's waiting

00:44:22.820 for the Palestinians

00:44:23.720 to deign

00:44:24.540 to make,

00:44:25.800 to even meet with Israel,

00:44:26.880 let alone make peace

00:44:27.820 with Israel.

00:44:28.760 But everybody's waiting

00:44:29.700 on the Palestinians

00:44:30.460 in solving this conflict.

00:44:31.780 And because the Palestinians

00:44:32.680 are holding the line,

00:44:33.700 inevitably more and more

00:44:34.560 pressure gets brought

00:44:35.420 to bear on Israel

00:44:36.400 because we're seen

00:44:37.380 as the powerful party.

00:44:39.260 And you know what happens

00:44:40.100 in a world

00:44:40.540 where power and justice

00:44:41.680 are seen as buckets

00:44:43.040 in the well,

00:44:44.160 which is the kind of world

00:44:45.320 that we're living in now.

00:44:46.360 So all the pressure

00:44:47.180 comes onto Israel.

00:44:50.160 And there were many

00:44:52.140 other reasons

00:44:52.860 why Kerry decided

00:44:54.680 to pursue it.

00:44:55.660 There was also skepticism

00:44:57.040 that when Netanyahu

00:44:58.200 was saying

00:44:58.780 to have peace

00:44:59.440 with the Arabs,

00:45:00.540 he was really just

00:45:01.620 trying to avoid

00:45:02.600 making hard concessions

00:45:03.900 to the Palestinians

00:45:04.700 because making peace

00:45:06.180 with the Arabs

00:45:06.720 could be peace for peace

00:45:07.920 and not land for peace.

00:45:09.500 So instead of having

00:45:10.580 the quote-unquote

00:45:11.720 courageous decisions

00:45:13.260 of sacrificing

00:45:14.840 the vital interests

00:45:16.640 of your country

00:45:17.280 to make peace

00:45:18.060 with the Palestinians,

00:45:20.780 he wants to move

00:45:22.320 to the Arabs

00:45:23.040 where it'll be

00:45:23.580 an easier path

00:45:24.800 for him to do it

00:45:25.600 without the political risk.

00:45:27.020 That's how they thought

00:45:27.800 about it,

00:45:28.160 not realizing,

00:45:28.980 hey,

00:45:29.540 the Middle East has changed.

00:45:30.620 There's a real opportunity here.

00:45:31.880 And here's something

00:45:32.620 that people do not know.

00:45:34.920 We also failed

00:45:36.100 with the Trump administration

00:45:37.040 at the beginning.

00:45:39.040 They were not prepared

00:45:40.360 to see that as well.

00:45:43.660 About a week after,

00:45:46.240 I don't think

00:45:46.920 I've said it publicly,

00:45:47.980 but a week after

00:45:48.940 I went to visit Trump

00:45:52.320 at Trump Tower.

00:45:54.040 This is a week after

00:45:55.300 he gets elected,

00:45:56.180 sorry,

00:45:56.500 November 2016.

00:45:58.700 It's at Trump Tower

00:45:59.880 and I walk into his office

00:46:02.240 and the first thing

00:46:03.620 he says to me is,

00:46:04.460 so you think

00:46:04.960 we can make peace?

00:46:06.960 And I said,

00:46:07.660 with whom?

00:46:09.680 And he said,

00:46:10.280 the Palestinians,

00:46:11.100 almost surprised

00:46:11.800 by my question.

00:46:13.540 And I said,

00:46:14.180 no,

00:46:14.400 but we can make peace

00:46:15.180 with several Arab states.

00:46:17.600 Right?

00:46:18.420 That's what we were telling

00:46:19.360 the previous administration.

00:46:20.560 We started telling him that.

00:46:21.840 Now,

00:46:22.360 fast forward three months.

00:46:24.420 Netanyahu visits Washington.

00:46:25.900 His first trip to Washington

00:46:27.240 as prime minister

00:46:28.140 with Trump in office.

00:46:29.880 It's February 2017.

00:46:32.740 What Netanyahu says to Trump,

00:46:34.540 and I can say it

00:46:35.200 because he mentioned it

00:46:36.180 recently publicly as well

00:46:37.960 for the first time,

00:46:39.900 what Netanyahu said to Trump

00:46:41.420 in that meeting,

00:46:42.060 he said 75 years ago

00:46:43.440 there's a picture of FDR

00:46:44.820 sitting with the leader

00:46:46.160 of Saudi Arabia

00:46:47.020 and that helped establish

00:46:48.980 a 75-year alliance

00:46:51.540 between the United States

00:46:52.580 and Saudi Arabia.

00:46:53.360 And he says to Trump,

00:46:56.160 he says,

00:46:56.500 get a boat,

00:46:58.020 you,

00:46:58.560 me,

00:46:59.080 MBS,

00:46:59.740 MBZ,

00:47:00.360 we change history.

00:47:01.840 That's what he said.

00:47:03.480 Now,

00:47:04.040 it took us about two years

00:47:05.740 to convince them

00:47:08.240 of the opportunity,

00:47:10.820 that it was real.

00:47:12.720 Because,

00:47:13.280 and this is really due

00:47:14.480 more to President Trump

00:47:16.080 who deserves a lot of credit

00:47:17.220 for a lot of decisions

00:47:18.140 that he made,

00:47:18.800 but at the beginning

00:47:19.640 he was really fixated,

00:47:20.960 even at the end

00:47:21.640 to a certain extent.

00:47:22.700 He was still fixated

00:47:23.780 on the Israeli-Palestinian

00:47:25.140 peace process.

00:47:26.240 That was the Holy Grail.

00:47:27.580 That was the ultimate test

00:47:28.740 of whether you've actually

00:47:29.480 done something

00:47:30.260 rather than trying

00:47:32.020 to do all of these

00:47:33.180 agreements that have

00:47:34.040 a huge impact

00:47:35.140 in the region

00:47:36.080 because a peace between

00:47:37.040 Israel and Saudi Arabia

00:47:38.260 is effectively the end

00:47:40.320 of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

00:47:41.720 It's not the end

00:47:42.320 of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

00:47:44.240 It's not the end

00:47:44.920 of the Israeli-Iran conflict.

00:47:46.680 But it's essentially

00:47:47.440 the end of a century-old

00:47:49.220 Israeli-Arab conflict.

00:47:50.640 And I think that that's

00:47:51.700 a goal

00:47:52.540 that is worth pursuing.

00:47:54.020 But it took two years

00:47:55.860 for them to see

00:47:57.840 the opportunity

00:47:58.620 that was there.

00:48:00.060 And then we wasted

00:48:01.540 another year

00:48:02.380 because of our insane

00:48:03.500 politics in Israel

00:48:04.540 where we were going

00:48:05.180 from one election

00:48:06.400 after the other.

00:48:07.560 So by the time

00:48:08.860 that President Trump

00:48:09.840 kind of put out

00:48:10.520 his peace plan,

00:48:11.300 which was sort of

00:48:12.540 an effort to

00:48:13.820 open a door

00:48:15.380 for the Palestinians

00:48:16.140 if they'd like to

00:48:17.060 go through that door,

00:48:18.020 but essentially

00:48:18.680 it would park

00:48:20.280 a real plan

00:48:21.280 on the table

00:48:22.120 while Israel

00:48:22.840 moves ahead

00:48:23.480 and normalizes

00:48:24.240 its relations

00:48:25.020 with the Arab world.

00:48:26.400 That process

00:48:27.420 only started

00:48:28.260 in the last year

00:48:29.140 of his administration

00:48:30.060 rather than

00:48:31.600 in the first year.

00:48:32.360 And I do believe

00:48:33.600 that had we done this

00:48:35.180 from the beginning

00:48:36.000 of the administration,

00:48:37.380 we would have

00:48:38.740 a peace between Israel

00:48:39.740 and Saudi Arabia today.

00:48:41.400 But because we waited

00:48:42.920 too long,

00:48:44.240 we only started

00:48:45.880 it very late

00:48:46.560 in the game.

00:48:47.040 Now,

00:48:47.200 the Trump administration,

00:48:48.280 they didn't waste

00:48:50.780 the time.

00:48:51.940 They may not have

00:48:52.720 recognized

00:48:53.340 the potential

00:48:54.520 for that breakthrough

00:48:55.480 in those two years

00:48:56.800 or three years,

00:48:58.360 but they didn't

00:48:59.580 waste the time

00:49:00.260 because they took steps

00:49:01.860 that actually facilitated

00:49:04.100 the emergence

00:49:05.180 of the Abraham Accords.

00:49:06.360 So what I described

00:49:07.140 to you before

00:49:08.000 is the fundamentals

00:49:09.500 underneath the surface.

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00:50:20.980 Okay, so let me

00:50:22.060 summarize some of this too

00:50:23.620 and then I'll ask you

00:50:24.680 some broader questions.

00:50:25.860 So you pointed out

00:50:28.080 and please correct me

00:50:29.480 where I get it wrong,

00:50:30.360 you pointed out that

00:50:31.280 it's straightforward

00:50:33.340 psychologically

00:50:34.180 to make the assumption

00:50:35.180 that all the conflict

00:50:36.940 in the world

00:50:37.720 but certainly all the

00:50:38.620 conflict in the

00:50:39.940 Middle East

00:50:40.720 is best conceptualized

00:50:43.140 in relationship

00:50:44.400 to the Israeli-Palestine

00:50:45.860 conflict

00:50:46.300 and that's morally

00:50:47.180 hazardous and inappropriate

00:50:48.420 and it also blinds people

00:50:49.940 whatever the flaws

00:50:52.720 of the Jewish state

00:50:53.560 might be.

00:50:54.080 It also blinds people

00:50:55.260 to the fact

00:50:55.820 that Israel

00:50:58.100 is a hyper-successful state

00:50:59.780 and that has much

00:51:00.860 to offer

00:51:01.500 its Arab partners

00:51:03.340 and the world

00:51:04.140 in terms of

00:51:04.800 technological development

00:51:05.880 and innovation

00:51:07.100 and governance

00:51:08.020 and I think

00:51:08.900 that's just

00:51:09.680 clearly true

00:51:10.620 as far as I can see

00:51:11.560 and then you pointed out

00:51:13.240 that there are

00:51:14.700 many conflicts

00:51:15.540 that are riveting

00:51:17.120 the Arab

00:51:18.720 and Middle Eastern world

00:51:19.880 but the most fundamental

00:51:21.220 of those likely

00:51:22.140 is something

00:51:22.800 conceptualized as

00:51:24.240 modernity

00:51:24.900 versus medievalism

00:51:26.140 and that's

00:51:27.540 raging

00:51:28.120 that war

00:51:28.920 both on the

00:51:30.180 Sunni side

00:51:30.960 and the Shiite side

00:51:32.080 then you

00:51:34.140 and so you

00:51:35.120 you complexified

00:51:36.060 in some sense

00:51:36.660 the Arab situation

00:51:37.560 then you pointed out

00:51:38.380 as well

00:51:38.740 that there were

00:51:39.660 pathways around

00:51:40.700 the Israeli-Palestine

00:51:41.860 conflict

00:51:42.240 that were very

00:51:42.820 productive

00:51:43.240 that you had

00:51:44.460 been developing

00:51:45.180 and that were

00:51:45.720 emerging of their

00:51:46.600 own accord

00:51:47.100 that the players

00:51:48.940 who were fixated

00:51:49.740 on Israel

00:51:50.340 versus Palestine

00:51:51.140 weren't willing

00:51:52.040 to consider

00:51:52.580 including the Trump

00:51:53.440 administration

00:51:53.900 until relatively

00:51:54.840 late in the game

00:51:55.760 and then

00:51:56.880 okay now

00:51:58.320 so I have some

00:51:59.120 questions that come

00:52:00.000 out of that

00:52:00.500 that would help me

00:52:01.360 and hopefully my

00:52:02.200 listeners understand

00:52:03.220 the broader

00:52:04.320 context within which

00:52:05.980 this is occurring

00:52:06.660 and so it's

00:52:08.320 not appropriate

00:52:08.960 to reduce

00:52:09.660 the complexities

00:52:10.380 of the problem

00:52:11.100 in the Middle

00:52:11.560 East to the

00:52:12.040 Israel-Palestine

00:52:12.960 conflict for a

00:52:13.720 variety of reasons

00:52:14.440 and you started

00:52:15.380 to detail out

00:52:16.340 the complexities

00:52:17.960 of the situation

00:52:19.540 with regards to

00:52:20.420 this modernity

00:52:21.420 versus medievalism

00:52:22.660 situation

00:52:23.400 and so if I

00:52:24.760 ask you

00:52:25.400 let maybe I

00:52:27.780 could get you

00:52:28.240 to flesh in

00:52:28.900 for me the

00:52:29.780 status of other

00:52:30.780 major players

00:52:31.700 in the region

00:52:32.520 in relationship

00:52:33.500 to a potential

00:52:34.900 pathway to peace

00:52:35.820 forward so I

00:52:36.940 would like to

00:52:37.440 start by picking

00:52:38.480 your brain to

00:52:39.100 some degree

00:52:39.560 about both

00:52:40.200 Iraq and Iran

00:52:41.100 and so I

00:52:42.800 would like to

00:52:43.300 know how you

00:52:44.920 see them in

00:52:45.820 relationship to

00:52:46.940 the world

00:52:48.100 geopolitical

00:52:48.740 situation but

00:52:50.120 to the Abraham

00:52:50.900 Accords and I

00:52:51.660 would also like

00:52:52.260 to know I've

00:52:52.960 always thought

00:52:53.700 that the

00:52:54.620 Palestine-Israel

00:52:55.480 conflict was

00:52:57.160 just a bit

00:52:58.000 too convenient

00:52:58.820 for many major

00:52:59.900 players in the

00:53:00.580 region partly

00:53:01.280 because it

00:53:01.760 could be used

00:53:02.300 as a scapegoat

00:53:03.180 and partly

00:53:04.040 because support

00:53:05.960 for the

00:53:06.300 Palestinians

00:53:06.800 caused a

00:53:07.700 certain amount

00:53:08.180 of intractable

00:53:09.380 and continual

00:53:10.280 trouble that

00:53:11.240 did this is

00:53:12.320 the moral hazard

00:53:12.880 argument that

00:53:13.740 did detract

00:53:14.980 people from

00:53:15.980 other sources

00:53:17.340 of unrest and

00:53:18.940 instability and

00:53:20.100 corruption

00:53:20.480 obviously the

00:53:22.860 Palestinians are

00:53:23.600 backed by

00:53:24.860 external players

00:53:26.220 who are I

00:53:27.860 think it's

00:53:28.200 obvious who

00:53:29.020 are capitalizing

00:53:31.160 on that

00:53:31.620 conflict for

00:53:32.520 their own

00:53:32.860 purposes and

00:53:33.880 so in whose

00:53:35.580 interest do you

00:53:36.760 think it is

00:53:37.420 primarily in

00:53:39.040 the Middle

00:53:39.920 East to

00:53:41.200 foster and

00:53:43.140 facilitate a

00:53:44.400 continuing

00:53:44.980 non-peaceful

00:53:46.140 standoff between

00:53:47.940 the Palestinians

00:53:48.620 and the

00:53:49.100 Israelis?

00:53:50.360 So the

00:53:51.380 first is the

00:53:52.060 Palestinians

00:53:52.460 themselves because

00:53:53.540 they've been

00:53:53.940 dining out on

00:53:54.640 this conflict

00:53:55.220 now for since

00:53:56.380 Oslo really

00:53:57.560 for 30 years

00:53:58.520 and becoming

00:53:59.300 the wards of

00:53:59.920 the international

00:54:00.400 community I'd

00:54:01.220 say the

00:54:01.500 Middle East is

00:54:02.080 incredibly

00:54:02.960 complicated the

00:54:04.480 Israeli-Palestinian

00:54:05.400 conflict much

00:54:06.160 less so in my

00:54:07.320 view the reason

00:54:08.500 why you have a

00:54:09.040 conflict today is

00:54:10.520 the same reason

00:54:11.160 why you had a

00:54:11.640 conflict for the

00:54:12.340 last century which

00:54:13.300 is the refusal of

00:54:14.260 the Palestinians to

00:54:15.160 recognize the

00:54:16.300 legitimacy of a

00:54:18.040 nation-state of the

00:54:18.960 Jewish people in

00:54:19.900 any boundary in our

00:54:21.300 ancestral homeland

00:54:22.080 they refuse to do

00:54:23.080 it it's very it's

00:54:23.720 very simple and

00:54:24.740 almost raw in

00:54:26.020 their minds we

00:54:27.000 stole their house

00:54:27.800 and that's how

00:54:29.360 they see it they

00:54:30.040 don't understand

00:54:30.660 that this is the

00:54:31.440 territory you know

00:54:32.180 where the

00:54:32.460 patriarchs of the

00:54:33.160 Jewish people

00:54:33.660 prayed or where

00:54:34.360 our prophets

00:54:34.880 preached and our

00:54:35.600 kings rule it's a

00:54:36.560 complete denial of

00:54:37.660 any historical

00:54:38.380 connection between

00:54:39.260 the Jews and the

00:54:40.020 land of Israel

00:54:40.700 their refusal to

00:54:42.380 accept some sort

00:54:43.260 of compromise

00:54:43.880 the fact that they

00:54:45.340 haven't paid such a

00:54:46.440 huge price for that

00:54:47.360 refusal because

00:54:48.060 they've been

00:54:48.420 supported by various

00:54:49.640 actors in the region

00:54:50.640 for a long time

00:54:51.660 and actually the

00:54:52.640 Abraham Accords is

00:54:53.540 like the beginning of

00:54:54.480 a shift away it's the

00:54:55.560 removal of the

00:54:56.320 Palestinians veto

00:54:57.400 over this process

00:54:59.600 and the Arab

00:55:00.560 leaders for their

00:55:01.240 own interests which

00:55:02.040 we discussed before

00:55:02.960 security and economic

00:55:04.020 interests understand

00:55:05.780 we're not going to

00:55:06.700 give the keys to the

00:55:07.920 Middle East to the

00:55:09.260 person who's

00:55:09.800 effectively the mayor

00:55:10.740 of Ramallah the

00:55:11.480 leader of the

00:55:12.080 Palestinian Authority

00:55:13.040 because Palestinian

00:55:14.140 politics are divided

00:55:15.200 you have Hamas

00:55:16.100 which is a terror

00:55:17.160 organization that

00:55:18.060 openly calls to

00:55:18.900 destroy Israel

00:55:19.560 leading Gaza which

00:55:20.960 is half of the

00:55:21.560 Palestinian polity

00:55:22.580 then on the other

00:55:23.200 half you have this

00:55:24.020 Palestinian Authority

00:55:24.940 which refuses to

00:55:26.460 confront the

00:55:27.400 terrorists and also

00:55:28.660 make sure that the

00:55:29.460 next generation is

00:55:30.480 fired by the same

00:55:31.520 hatred and denial of

00:55:33.360 any Israel's legitimate

00:55:34.800 presence in the land

00:55:36.080 because they do it

00:55:36.820 through their schools

00:55:37.480 and their media and

00:55:38.440 everything else and

00:55:39.340 they also pay people

00:55:40.280 actually they put them

00:55:41.180 on the payroll those

00:55:42.100 who are who are

00:55:43.140 terrorists so the

00:55:44.060 Israeli-Palestinian

00:55:45.060 conflict is a pretty

00:55:47.120 simple one

00:55:47.920 okay so let me let me

00:55:49.280 ask you a question

00:55:50.020 about that this is

00:55:50.920 something that's

00:55:51.480 bothered me for a very

00:55:52.400 long time and I

00:55:53.100 think it's key to this

00:55:54.060 in some sense so let

00:55:57.680 me set up an analogy

00:55:58.920 and it's a dangerous

00:55:59.940 analogy and it may be

00:56:00.960 inappropriate but I'm

00:56:01.860 going to use it

00:56:02.340 anyways and so

00:56:03.220 Constantinople is now

00:56:06.040 Istanbul but

00:56:06.920 historically it wasn't

00:56:08.320 and so you could say

00:56:09.680 in some sense that the

00:56:10.760 Christians have a claim

00:56:11.900 on Constantinople and

00:56:13.620 it's not like people

00:56:14.400 haven't made that claim

00:56:15.460 and so I'm not saying

00:56:17.080 they have a claim or

00:56:18.040 that they don't what I

00:56:19.440 am saying is that when

00:56:21.560 you look at a given

00:56:22.480 region you can look

00:56:24.040 at it through the

00:56:25.360 lens of different

00:56:26.480 temporal durations

00:56:29.080 and the ethical

00:56:31.020 conclusion that you

00:56:31.980 derive is in some

00:56:33.120 sense dependent on

00:56:34.780 the expanse of the

00:56:36.160 temporal horizon that

00:56:37.260 you're willing to

00:56:37.860 consider now the

00:56:38.940 argument you made for

00:56:40.280 the legitimacy of the

00:56:41.420 state of of Israel

00:56:43.000 is a it's an ancient

00:56:45.020 claim and then that

00:56:47.300 begs the question and

00:56:48.360 I think this really is

00:56:49.260 it's an extraordinarily

00:56:50.240 difficult question how

00:56:52.280 do you know which

00:56:53.220 temporal horizon should

00:56:54.700 be most appropriately

00:56:55.740 applied to a given

00:56:57.440 landscape especially

00:56:58.640 given that there are

00:56:59.500 different claims and

00:57:01.260 different temporal

00:57:02.180 frames of reference

00:57:05.380 that are applied to the

00:57:06.340 same territory of land

00:57:07.480 by other people and I

00:57:09.280 mean the same thing is

00:57:10.080 true say in North

00:57:11.080 America because the

00:57:11.960 Europeans came in and

00:57:13.080 obviously there were

00:57:14.260 people living here before

00:57:15.320 the Europeans came in and

00:57:16.480 so it's an endless

00:57:17.220 conflict in Canada let's

00:57:19.400 say in the US about to

00:57:21.240 what degree the people

00:57:22.380 who inhabited the

00:57:23.280 territory originally

00:57:24.220 have a valid moral

00:57:25.860 claim on the territory

00:57:27.080 and it's it's not like

00:57:28.200 that's being resolved I

00:57:29.340 don't think we know how

00:57:30.080 to resolve it and then

00:57:31.560 with the Jews you seem

00:57:32.940 to have this additional

00:57:34.540 insistence by the world

00:57:36.840 that they solve it better

00:57:39.120 than anyone else and

00:57:40.740 again that has something

00:57:42.260 to do with to those to

00:57:44.080 whom more has been

00:57:44.940 given more will be

00:57:45.760 demanded the Jews seem

00:57:47.420 to be held consistently to

00:57:48.900 a higher moral standard

00:57:49.920 but but it is a real

00:57:51.040 problem why do you

00:57:52.840 think the Palestinians

00:57:54.580 should both ethically

00:57:56.720 and practically accept

00:57:58.340 the claim of the Israel

00:58:00.820 state and the to exist

00:58:03.280 and the Jews to inhabit

00:58:04.380 it like because that

00:58:06.780 really is the central

00:58:07.740 issue the thing the thing

00:58:09.720 with your analogy in the

00:58:11.620 issue of sort of the new

00:58:13.040 world were the Indians who

00:58:14.220 came back in the case of

00:58:16.460 Constantinople you'd have

00:58:17.800 the Christians who would

00:58:18.800 come back and they would

00:58:20.120 have had to have lived

00:58:20.860 there continuously and

00:58:22.420 then establish the state

00:58:23.600 and then the Muslim

00:58:24.440 power says no you have

00:58:25.480 no right to be here like

00:58:27.120 no one would question if

00:58:28.320 the Native Americans

00:58:29.160 somehow and this is not

00:58:31.160 the case with Native

00:58:31.800 most peoples were lost to

00:58:33.140 history when they lost

00:58:33.960 their land now the Jews

00:58:35.300 lived continuously a small

00:58:36.800 Jewish community lived

00:58:37.680 continuously for over

00:58:39.620 3,000 years in the land

00:58:40.980 of Israel but Jews were

00:58:41.860 dispersed all over the

00:58:43.000 world and they came back

00:58:43.980 no one has ever dealt

00:58:45.580 with that where people

00:58:46.720 coming back but when

00:58:47.660 you're talking about

00:58:48.560 legitimacy there's a

00:58:50.060 historical legitimacy

00:58:51.240 here where we are in our

00:58:52.820 ancestral homeland that

00:58:54.380 doesn't exist anywhere

00:58:55.760 else it's not displacing

00:58:57.140 the natives the Jews

00:58:58.200 were the ones who were

00:58:59.100 displaced not just by the

00:59:00.780 Romans but also by the

00:59:01.780 Arab conquest where a lot

00:59:02.900 of Jews were people just

00:59:03.980 don't know history I mean

00:59:04.840 most people's sense of

00:59:05.720 history as you know goes

00:59:06.560 back to breakfast so why

00:59:08.260 should why should anybody

00:59:09.560 care about what happened

00:59:10.520 but if you if those

00:59:12.100 historical claims don't

00:59:13.320 work for you well you

00:59:14.100 could take the legal

00:59:15.000 claim and the legal

00:59:16.020 claim was that there

00:59:17.480 was an Ottoman Empire

00:59:18.560 here the Ottoman Empire

00:59:19.760 collapsed the British

00:59:21.020 were given a mandate to

00:59:22.800 control this territory

00:59:23.980 specifically by the League

00:59:25.520 of Nations in order to

00:59:27.000 enable the settlement of

00:59:28.420 the Jews who in the

00:59:30.060 19th century the late

00:59:31.320 19th century the spring of

00:59:32.700 nations were considered a

00:59:34.680 a people you know there

00:59:36.400 are people who don't

00:59:37.140 consider the Jews a

00:59:38.000 people but we have a

00:59:38.840 4,000 year history and

00:59:40.160 peoples have rights of

00:59:41.080 self-determination and so

00:59:42.420 the British were given

00:59:43.840 a mandate by then the

00:59:45.180 League of Nations which

00:59:46.040 folded into the United

00:59:47.280 Nations to actually affect

00:59:49.400 the settlement of that

00:59:51.040 territory to enable the

00:59:52.320 Jews to establish this

00:59:54.160 homeland there that's the

00:59:55.780 legal case is rock solid

00:59:57.500 the historical case is

00:59:59.920 rock solid and to me the

01:00:01.600 moral case is rock solid

01:00:03.100 because we're a people

01:00:04.720 that the entire world

01:00:06.020 turn their backs on the

01:00:07.480 Jews anytime we were

01:00:08.860 oppressed I mean Jews

01:00:10.300 would have a right to a

01:00:11.560 state anywhere but to

01:00:14.020 say that the Jews don't

01:00:15.000 have a right to a state

01:00:16.060 in their ancestral homeland

01:00:17.520 that seems to me lunacy

01:00:18.920 now there are people who

01:00:20.060 say no people have a right

01:00:21.720 to a state so those people

01:00:23.720 who deny Israel's right to

01:00:24.740 exist that they should be

01:00:25.680 no nation states well I

01:00:27.140 wouldn't call them being

01:00:28.060 anti I wouldn't say they're

01:00:29.280 anti-semitic one of the

01:00:30.980 raises one of the measures

01:00:32.500 of anti-semitism is are you

01:00:34.520 treating Jews to a

01:00:36.220 different standard than

01:00:37.340 you're treating other

01:00:38.140 people so if you believe

01:00:39.480 any people have a right

01:00:41.080 to a state that there is

01:00:42.380 such a thing as a people

01:00:43.420 and what makes a people

01:00:44.460 a people it can be

01:00:45.700 language it can be a

01:00:47.240 common culture it can be

01:00:48.360 a common history right

01:00:50.000 the one thing that the

01:00:50.960 Jews were missing

01:00:51.660 historically is they

01:00:52.580 didn't have the same

01:00:53.680 land but all the elements

01:00:54.880 of people who they had

01:00:56.080 so if you're going to

01:00:56.760 look around the world and

01:00:58.400 you're going to say

01:00:58.920 people's deserve states

01:01:01.120 but for some reason the

01:01:03.120 Jews who their

01:01:04.800 statelessness has caused

01:01:07.140 more oppression and

01:01:08.220 persecution than against

01:01:10.240 any other people in

01:01:11.860 history at least any other

01:01:13.140 people that currently

01:01:14.080 exist and you know you

01:01:16.760 have pogroms and you

01:01:18.180 culminate it because

01:01:19.500 everyone is focused on the

01:01:20.540 Holocaust which I think

01:01:21.660 the Holocaust has a

01:01:23.180 certain sense distorted

01:01:24.380 our view of anti-

01:01:25.380 semitism in Jewish

01:01:26.340 history because it is it

01:01:28.040 is such a blinding event

01:01:29.860 that happened 18 million

01:01:32.380 Jews 6 million are wiped

01:01:33.900 out it's a third of the

01:01:34.840 Jewish people the

01:01:35.620 equivalent of 100 million

01:01:36.900 Americans or over 10

01:01:38.260 million Canadians huge

01:01:40.000 numbers of people and I

01:01:41.120 used to when I was

01:01:42.180 ambassador to the United

01:01:43.200 States to explain what

01:01:44.640 the Holocaust did to the

01:01:45.640 Jews I would tell

01:01:46.220 Americans if you can't

01:01:47.300 wrap your mind a hundred

01:01:48.280 around 100 million people

01:01:50.060 imagine a 9-11 every day

01:01:51.460 for a century that's what

01:01:52.640 the Holocaust did to the

01:01:53.640 Jewish people so it is

01:01:55.000 such a seismic event that

01:01:56.900 people don't recognize all

01:01:59.080 the anti-semitism that came

01:02:00.840 before it all the centuries

01:02:03.080 of anti-semitism that came

01:02:04.800 before people who killed

01:02:05.780 200,000 Jews 400,000 Jews

01:02:07.740 the Jews are expelled from

01:02:09.280 England and then they're

01:02:09.900 expelled from France and

01:02:10.880 they're expelled from Spain

01:02:11.920 and they're expelled from

01:02:12.680 Portugal all the

01:02:13.980 persecutions all the

01:02:15.100 pogroms all the massacres

01:02:16.500 during the Crusades before

01:02:17.720 the Crusades in antiquity in

01:02:19.380 present day you're sitting I

01:02:21.840 understand in in England

01:02:23.700 well they just discovered up

01:02:26.040 in Norwich a well I don't

01:02:27.460 know if you had a chance to

01:02:28.220 read that story where they

01:02:29.340 have a bunch of skeletons that

01:02:30.700 they found at a bottom of a

01:02:31.820 well and they dated those

01:02:34.160 skeletons to the 12th

01:02:36.720 century to the end of the

01:02:37.840 12th century when there was

01:02:38.960 a pogrom against the local

01:02:40.240 Jewish community so

01:02:41.720 anti-semitism has existed

01:02:43.580 century after century to

01:02:45.420 century and it's a big

01:02:46.500 subject that we could maybe

01:02:47.580 tackle in the future but but

01:02:50.400 for me the bottom line is to

01:02:51.900 make a case where the Jewish

01:02:55.040 people do not are not by

01:02:57.060 right entitled to a state is

01:02:59.740 absurd and the fact that

01:03:01.260 somebody would deny it in our

01:03:02.660 own homeland is the height of

01:03:05.280 absurdity let me ask you one

01:03:07.460 more question on the

01:03:08.380 Palestinian front then so

01:03:09.560 you've made a case I would

01:03:11.560 say globally and abstractly

01:03:14.760 and that's this is not a

01:03:16.300 criticism of the case

01:03:17.200 precisely that nationhood

01:03:20.240 it's reasonable to associate

01:03:23.060 nationhood with the the

01:03:25.460 necessity of a state and then

01:03:27.280 you made a case that the Jews

01:03:28.440 have a legal right to the land

01:03:30.420 they occupy as a consequence

01:03:32.280 of what occurred after world

01:03:33.940 war one a strong legal case

01:03:35.720 and so then I would say let's

01:03:37.980 particularize that for a

01:03:39.120 minute and perhaps if I was

01:03:40.940 arguing the Palestinian case I

01:03:42.440 would say yes but it wasn't

01:03:44.960 reasonable for the world to

01:03:46.800 purchase what was just and

01:03:49.300 appropriate to deliver to the

01:03:51.200 Jews at disproportionate cost to

01:03:54.940 the Palestinians yeah but Jordan

01:03:56.920 the world didn't do that the

01:03:58.860 Jews did that the Jews came and

01:04:01.400 immigrated in larger numbers

01:04:03.200 there was a trickle of

01:04:04.220 immigration the Jews over the

01:04:05.640 centuries to be in the land of

01:04:07.140 Israel in the Holy Land but in

01:04:08.580 the late 19th century with the

01:04:10.180 birth of modern Zionism and

01:04:12.140 actually Christian Zionism came

01:04:13.640 about three or four decades even

01:04:15.320 before that and maybe even

01:04:16.660 further than that in the late

01:04:18.480 18th century in the 19th

01:04:19.820 century the Jews came back

01:04:21.540 settled the lands drained the

01:04:22.900 swamps purchased it a lot of

01:04:24.860 times from from Arab landowners

01:04:27.220 who weren't even present who

01:04:28.360 would sell it and the Ottoman

01:04:30.060 Empire collapses so now the

01:04:32.360 question is who does this land

01:04:33.940 that you have legal deed to who

01:04:35.560 does it belong to and instead of

01:04:38.180 actually having a Palestinian

01:04:39.640 national movement and this is

01:04:41.000 really their great tragedy they

01:04:42.520 didn't have a Palestinian

01:04:43.580 national movement a hundred years

01:04:45.460 ago and they don't have it today

01:04:46.700 who says look guys you have a

01:04:49.220 right to be here but we have a

01:04:51.100 right to be here you know if

01:04:53.400 that's the case you're in a

01:04:54.560 negotiation when somebody says

01:04:56.320 you stole our house even if you

01:04:58.540 give ninety nine point nine

01:04:59.760 percent back there's no justice

01:05:01.380 to your claim when another side

01:05:03.660 says it's one percent yours by

01:05:05.140 right not just by Mike but by

01:05:06.900 right and it's ninety nine

01:05:08.800 percent ours you're actually in a

01:05:10.600 negotiation and the and the

01:05:12.700 reason why you have to ask

01:05:13.860 yourself why did the

01:05:15.520 Palestinians deny history so

01:05:18.680 Arafat went to Clinton at Camp

01:05:20.280 David Yasser Arafat the leader of

01:05:21.980 the Palestinians at the time 20

01:05:23.740 years ago goes to Camp David and

01:05:25.720 tells Clinton there was never a

01:05:28.580 temple on the Temple Mount like

01:05:30.160 why does he say that and why do

01:05:32.580 they deny any Jewish connection to

01:05:34.480 Jerusalem it's like you hear the

01:05:36.060 current Palestinian leader Abu

01:05:37.440 Mazen says the Jews are trying to

01:05:39.900 Judea fight Jerusalem you know

01:05:42.840 that's like saying the Chinese are

01:05:44.220 trying to sinify Beijing or the

01:05:46.660 Russians a russifying Moscow I mean

01:05:48.980 it's ridiculous but why do they do

01:05:50.580 that because the entire scaffolding

01:05:53.640 of their rejectionism collapses if

01:05:57.320 we have a legitimate claim to that

01:06:00.520 territory they don't have to deny

01:06:02.480 their claim but they can't make

01:06:04.820 themselves take that one step which

01:06:07.320 is by far that would be a very small

01:06:10.260 step for a leader but a giant leap

01:06:11.800 towards peace the second they say that

01:06:14.100 we the Jews have a right to be in the

01:06:17.040 land of the patriarchs the prophets and

01:06:18.880 the kings then we're in a negotiation

01:06:20.980 then we have to work out a settlement

01:06:22.720 but they refuse to cross the Rubicon in

01:06:25.340 the aftermath of the Abraham Accords

01:06:27.240 there's a couple of things we want to

01:06:28.460 get to which partly would be the

01:06:30.160 pathway forward for expanding the

01:06:31.920 Abraham Accords we don't want to

01:06:33.200 forget about that but we'll take a bit

01:06:35.540 of a side venture into the Palestinian

01:06:37.660 issue do you see any reasonable

01:06:41.300 pathway forward to movement towards

01:06:44.820 peace on the Palestinian side as a

01:06:47.340 consequence or an extension of what's

01:06:49.700 being achieved with the Abraham Accords

01:06:51.680 so yes I would say yes but my yes

01:06:56.560 answer is the right way to approach

01:06:58.600 this is you have in the Arab leaders

01:07:01.540 particularly in the Gulf the

01:07:03.560 recognition as we discussed that their

01:07:06.200 interests mean an alliance with Israel

01:07:08.000 what we should do is focus on

01:07:09.880 expanding that broadening it and

01:07:12.780 deepening it because you know we've had

01:07:14.800 peace with Egypt since 1979 Jordan with

01:07:17.340 1994 but it is a cold peace which is

01:07:20.620 certainly better than a hot war but you

01:07:22.280 didn't have any people to people or

01:07:23.860 business to business development they

01:07:25.700 could actually create the foundations

01:07:27.340 for something that would convince the

01:07:29.560 people in these societies that their

01:07:31.280 interests are served by having their

01:07:32.720 peace that peace the leaders get it but

01:07:35.480 the peoples don't yet there is goodwill

01:07:37.500 that's coming from the bottom in the

01:07:38.980 Emirates I think in Saudi Arabia in

01:07:41.400 Bahrain and other places in the region but

01:07:44.180 we should be trying to expand it now

01:07:45.760 what would happen if we expanded it if

01:07:47.460 we had not now six countries the Jordan

01:07:50.780 and Egypt and the other four but if we

01:07:52.740 can get it to 10 12 what you'd be left

01:07:54.780 with is Iran you mentioned Iraq before

01:07:56.880 Iran and its access that is opposed to

01:07:59.980 Israel because you have this sheer

01:08:01.760 radical power in Iran is a historical

01:08:04.680 aberration you know we talked about

01:08:07.580 anti-semitism you know Jews have been

01:08:08.900 kicked around in so many different

01:08:10.000 societies we have a pretty good sense of

01:08:11.820 what a tolerant society is so Western

01:08:14.320 democracies like the United States and

01:08:15.980 Canada are different in terms of

01:08:17.900 history in terms of acceptance and

01:08:19.480 openness of Jews and allowing them to

01:08:21.380 become full members of the society but if

01:08:23.480 I have to say like which ancient

01:08:25.260 civilization was relatively welcoming to

01:08:29.360 the Jews with all of its imperfections

01:08:31.240 and problems and pogroms occasionally and

01:08:33.380 things like that it's the Persian

01:08:34.800 Persian civilization Cyrus the great

01:08:37.680 Persian king allowed the Jews to rebuild

01:08:39.520 the temple in Jerusalem and throughout

01:08:41.860 history we had decent relations and even

01:08:43.980 when the Shah was there before the

01:08:46.400 revolution in 1979 Israel had good

01:08:49.160 relations with them and also the United

01:08:50.840 States did if this regime in Iran would

01:08:53.360 disappear tomorrow and you would have a

01:08:55.760 semblance of if you don't want to call

01:08:57.600 it a democracy but a more open society in

01:08:59.940 Iran with some representative government

01:09:01.780 there you would see good relations between

01:09:04.460 Israel in that country good relations

01:09:06.380 between Europe in that country I mean

01:09:08.800 right now Europe is doing appeasement

01:09:10.140 anyway but there would be no fire in

01:09:13.260 them to have a kind of global revolution

01:09:15.960 to export their particular brand of

01:09:18.580 Islam as Netanyahu said you know there's a

01:09:21.000 fight in Islam between the Sunni radicals

01:09:22.980 and the Shia radicals of who's going to be

01:09:24.560 the king of the militant Islamic hill but

01:09:26.800 there's no place in their world for

01:09:28.920 Christians for Jews certainly not for

01:09:30.820 atheists for anybody who disagrees with

01:09:32.660 them but if we're able to actually get to

01:09:35.800 a point where we've gotten the Israeli

01:09:37.660 Arab conflict as far as we can and all

01:09:40.140 we're left with is Iran and its proxies I

01:09:42.720 think then we're going to be left with

01:09:43.980 the Muslim Brotherhood and its effort to

01:09:45.940 push against it because that's another

01:09:47.320 force in the region that is against that

01:09:49.600 would be on the force of medievalism not

01:09:52.300 on the force of modernity then the hope

01:09:54.640 would be that there would be Palestinian

01:09:56.900 leaders who would say guys you know the

01:10:00.440 the Arab armies and the Muslim armies are

01:10:02.960 not waiting us to to conquer Jerusalem

01:10:05.720 they're already on the other side they're

01:10:07.980 in an alliance with the Jews and then

01:10:10.880 hopefully there'd be courageous leaders

01:10:12.600 within that society they could emerge and

01:10:16.060 at least start with something cold some

01:10:18.380 sort of accommodation but I really think

01:10:21.180 people don't take ideology seriously and

01:10:25.280 it's a it's a major flaw in international

01:10:27.420 diplomacy because we we I mean you're the

01:10:30.020 psychologist I don't want to touch on your

01:10:32.160 field but I think people project and if

01:10:36.260 they because they don't understand how

01:10:39.540 important their ideology which has gotten

01:10:41.540 wrapped up in a religious faith that they

01:10:43.280 have to sort of destroy the Jews who are

01:10:45.080 there if it were Christians they would

01:10:46.360 destroy that as well as well the the

01:10:48.740 radical Muslims they would try to destroy

01:10:51.200 like a crusader state that would be there

01:10:53.360 but the fact that it's Jews makes it worse

01:10:55.200 because historically the Jews were not seen

01:10:58.360 as a powerful actor when Muslims were

01:11:01.600 defeated by Christians okay they didn't

01:11:03.560 like it but they could understand it but

01:11:06.220 for the bully in the class who sees

01:11:08.420 himself as this warlike figure to be

01:11:12.060 defeated by the nerd in the class which

01:11:14.020 is supposed to be you know the George

01:11:15.720 Costanza of Seinfeld fame you know the

01:11:18.120 George Costanza Jews they can't make

01:11:20.420 sense of it in fact the greatest scholar of

01:11:22.380 Islam of the last century is is Bernard

01:11:25.820 Lewis and he said the birth of of European

01:11:29.380 style anti-semitism in the Arab world one

01:11:32.640 of the factors that gave rise to it was

01:11:35.040 their defeat at the hands of Israel in

01:11:38.440 1948 because they couldn't believe that a

01:11:42.360 Jewish army could defeat them there had to

01:11:44.760 be other forces at work so the traditional

01:11:47.260 protocols of the elders of Zion where Jews

01:11:50.640 are manipulating all these forces you don't

01:11:52.720 really have a history of that in the Muslim

01:11:56.220 world you had us having dimmy status like

01:11:58.480 Christians in the Muslim world but the

01:11:59.960 European style globalist Jew anti-semitism

01:12:03.120 that actually came in the wake Lewis argues

01:12:06.580 in the wake of Israel's defeat of making

01:12:08.840 sense of why this happened at the end of

01:12:12.600 the day getting back to the point if if we're

01:12:15.420 able to finalize as many peace agreements as

01:12:18.820 we can with the Arab world we will diminish

01:12:21.460 those forces on the medieval side their

01:12:24.360 power and then hopefully there would be

01:12:26.520 forces within Palestinian society I

01:12:28.580 personally believe many of them are in the

01:12:30.740 business sector that would seek a long-term

01:12:33.580 accommodation because peace with Israel would

01:12:35.400 be great for the Palestinians would be

01:12:37.600 terrific for them but it wouldn't be good for

01:12:40.000 leaders it wouldn't be good for their

01:12:41.620 leaders because they're more interested the

01:12:44.260 Palestinian leadership has been more

01:12:45.660 interested in the cause of the Palestinians

01:12:48.380 and the Palestinians themselves and the

01:12:50.060 cause would die when there's peace with

01:12:51.840 Israel but the Palestinian people would

01:12:54.740 actually their futures would be improved

01:12:56.960 but they have to cross this Rubicon they

01:12:59.320 haven't crossed it yet one thing I can tell

01:13:01.140 you just to put a period on that point the

01:13:04.140 only way it's going to happen is if Israel

01:13:06.520 stays extremely strong the stronger we are

01:13:09.700 a country militarily economically

01:13:11.980 technologically diplomatically which is

01:13:14.140 the Abraham Accords is part of it the more

01:13:16.100 there's a sense within Palestinian society

01:13:18.260 the time is not on their side that the

01:13:20.460 train is leaving or has left the station

01:13:22.700 the more likely you are to see people get

01:13:25.200 on board okay so I want to turn to the

01:13:28.540 issue of Iraq at some point but I before

01:13:30.440 that I want to go back to the notion of

01:13:32.260 modernity versus medievalism and I want to

01:13:35.060 speak briefly on behalf of the medievalists

01:13:38.240 and I'm going to try to do that from a

01:13:40.300 Jewish perspective let's say because one of

01:13:42.920 the things that's very interesting about

01:13:44.440 the Jewish state is that despite its

01:13:46.360 status as a modern democracy it's also

01:13:49.880 unbelievably deeply rooted in an ancient

01:13:52.340 tradition and also draws the ethical

01:13:55.360 wellspring of its right to exist from that

01:13:58.280 tradition and so the Jews are wrestling in

01:14:02.060 some real sense with the problem of not

01:14:05.700 precisely medievalism versus modernity but

01:14:08.280 definitely tradition versus modernity and I

01:14:10.640 do have some sympathy for the more

01:14:13.340 fundamentalist end of the religious

01:14:16.500 spectrum but let's say more specifically

01:14:18.580 the Islamic well and also the Jewish

01:14:21.040 Orthodox end of the spectrum and the

01:14:23.000 reason I say that is because one of the

01:14:25.940 problems with modernity is that it's

01:14:28.280 it's psychological it it frees you up

01:14:31.640 technologically and it produces a land of

01:14:34.760 abundance in some sense but the price

01:14:36.660 that's paid is ethical confusion and a kind

01:14:39.940 of corrosive and nihilistic cynicism that

01:14:42.860 emerges as a consequence of the

01:14:44.760 realization let's say that the world is

01:14:47.300 only objective in nature and that God is

01:14:49.320 dead and Western societies are paying a

01:14:52.260 very big price for this reflected for

01:14:54.720 example and places like South Korea and

01:14:56.680 Japan reflected not least in their

01:14:59.080 catastrophically low birth rates and their

01:15:01.800 dis what would you call their their their

01:15:04.660 their their lack of a belief to that it's

01:15:07.960 ethically appropriate to move forward

01:15:10.040 forthrightly into the future and so you

01:15:12.120 can imagine that on the medievalist side

01:15:14.060 and the Christian fundamentalist side in

01:15:16.260 the Jewish Orthodox side there's this

01:15:17.920 insistence that goes something like look

01:15:20.760 there's a lot of things in these more

01:15:22.820 traditional views that have to be their

01:15:26.240 appropriate bulwarks against the

01:15:28.120 dissolute tendencies of a overweeningly

01:15:31.760 intellectual modernism and I do believe

01:15:35.020 that's the case now I've had some

01:15:36.500 preliminary discussions with people who

01:15:38.320 are more on the fundamentalist side of

01:15:40.500 the Muslim argument and they took me to

01:15:42.560 task for a variety of things and but did

01:15:45.080 admit that from their perspective even

01:15:48.460 that there is in some fundamental sense

01:15:52.200 in the ideal to be no compulsion in

01:15:55.320 matters of religious belief which is a

01:15:57.660 doctrine that has some origin in the in the

01:16:00.160 Quran itself now of course it's always

01:16:02.060 subject to interpretation but at least

01:16:03.640 you can make that case and so I would

01:16:05.660 say do you see a pathway you said that

01:16:09.780 with regard to the Palestinians that the

01:16:11.540 proper approach in some sense is to

01:16:13.500 expand Israel's relationship with other

01:16:17.080 Arab states particularly on the diplomatic

01:16:18.920 and economic fronts and that also opens

01:16:21.840 up the rest of the Arab world in some

01:16:23.680 sense to be the beneficiaries of the

01:16:25.920 immense innovative capacity of the Israelis

01:16:28.420 on the technological and the governance

01:16:30.380 side what would you do to extend a hand

01:16:33.920 to the medievalists given that the Jews

01:16:36.660 are also rooted in an ancient tradition

01:16:38.820 and obviously value it immensely and

01:16:41.780 regarded as what the very ethical

01:16:44.460 foundation of their claim to a state

01:16:46.160 like what's the pathway forward and so one

01:16:48.820 of the things that really struck me after I

01:16:51.220 had this conversation with a more

01:16:53.420 traditional Muslim leader and I've talked

01:16:55.060 lots of different Muslim thinkers as some

01:16:57.460 of which are like I am Herzi Ali or quite

01:17:00.060 profoundly anti-Islam in some real sense

01:17:03.300 the the what was very heartening to me was

01:17:08.020 that despite the rather fractious nature of

01:17:10.380 the conversation it was watched by many

01:17:13.240 millions of people it got about two and a

01:17:15.420 half million views in the first two weeks

01:17:17.020 it was posted and most of them were Muslim

01:17:20.020 and most of them were traditionalist Muslims

01:17:22.760 and all of them said almost without

01:17:25.720 exception that they're absolutely thrilled

01:17:28.720 that a conversation like that could take

01:17:30.320 place where real issues were discussed

01:17:33.220 relatively peacefully but intensely and that

01:17:37.000 there was a sense that I got that they were

01:17:38.880 extremely pleased to be regarded as valid

01:17:43.600 participants at the table of discussion so a

01:17:47.720 lot a lot a lot to unpack there I will say

01:17:50.000 about the Jews first what's different is

01:17:53.900 we're not a missionizing a missionary faith

01:17:57.760 so there you know for radical Islam they

01:18:02.360 have to spread their particular brand of

01:18:06.340 Islam all over the world that is an article

01:18:08.740 of faith that they have certainly in all those

01:18:11.600 regions that the that Islam once held they

01:18:14.840 have to go back and sort of reconquer it and I

01:18:17.380 think if there is a radical Christian group

01:18:19.420 that would believe they have to missionize to

01:18:21.300 everybody around it would also make it harder

01:18:23.380 for them to develop tolerance for those who

01:18:26.480 disagree with them but Jews are I think in a

01:18:29.100 different category because we've been you'd

01:18:31.940 have to go back to the Bible and how we governed

01:18:34.360 in the Bible and it certainly wasn't perfection

01:18:36.600 there I mean I think one of the one of the

01:18:39.260 most remarkable things about Jewish scripture is

01:18:42.520 that all the blemishes are put there for everybody

01:18:44.920 you know if you see the Jews wandering through the

01:18:46.900 desert you know it's it's 40 years but the five

01:18:49.460 stories of them sinning or so whatever that number

01:18:52.340 is that all it's all there and all the warts and

01:18:55.260 everything and even King David you know when he sins

01:18:57.960 and the prophet is telling him you know you're the

01:18:59.900 sinner that's the foundation of the rule of law

01:19:02.660 frankly and that and that the Jewish leaders would

01:19:05.160 put a king being rebuked by anybody is I think

01:19:08.640 remarkable in itself so there was always there was

01:19:11.340 always there was always a check on power but a

01:19:13.580 people could argue the jury is still out because you

01:19:16.960 haven't had sovereignty for 2,000 years now you're

01:19:19.800 working your way through the modern world I think

01:19:21.840 Israel is actually an excellent example of

01:19:25.060 reconciling faith and freedom and I'm somebody who

01:19:27.940 was born and raised in the United States which you

01:19:29.700 may have mentioned at the top and I always thought

01:19:31.640 the greatness of America one of the things is

01:19:33.800 their ability to reconcile faith and freedom in a

01:19:37.100 way that Europe didn't because it's sort of

01:19:38.780 abandoned faith and in the Middle East they couldn't

01:19:42.140 accept freedom and that America could do it and

01:19:44.340 now a lot of those things are breaking down in the

01:19:46.280 United States but let's take a step back about five

01:19:49.000 centuries and here I want to go back to something I

01:19:52.040 read that fascinated me by Isaiah Berlin the great

01:19:54.520 British philosopher he said that sincerity is a

01:19:57.920 completely modern virtue it doesn't exist before I

01:20:03.240 think he said the 17th century maybe the 16th century

01:20:05.960 like this idea that we have today that we accept

01:20:09.500 other people who disagree with us fundamentally on

01:20:12.440 theological matters because we know that they are

01:20:16.100 true to their faith and they live by those principles

01:20:18.760 that did not exist before the 16th century so when

01:20:22.820 Protestants were killing Catholics and Catholics were

01:20:25.320 you know killing Protestants in Europe they weren't

01:20:27.580 saying you know about Thomas More or others well that guy

01:20:30.060 really believes what he believes and we have to have

01:20:32.800 appreciation for that no sincerity is a completely you

01:20:35.880 know modern virtue virtue and I think is very

01:20:39.200 interesting James Q Wilson the great sociologist I don't

01:20:42.320 know if you had ever had a chance to meet him but he wrote

01:20:45.500 an essay I think it was in City Journal about 20 years ago

01:20:48.540 called the Reform Islam Needs and in that essay he's

01:20:53.420 explaining how democracy rose in the West and it didn't rise

01:20:59.120 because philosophers got around a table and came up with ideas he

01:21:03.100 says it rose because the of the expedience of kings because you

01:21:08.100 had these religious wars of fanaticism in the 16th century and

01:21:11.760 the kings understood that they're not going to have young men to

01:21:15.040 collect crops or to gather taxes from if this continues for more

01:21:19.200 and more decades more and more centuries so what you had was a

01:21:21.820 freedom of conscience that emerged then the philosophers come and

01:21:24.900 codify then you expand the freedom a little bit and then they

01:21:27.700 codify of course it can be reversed you can have a Nazi power that

01:21:31.040 wants to take you back all sorts of things can happen like way but

01:21:34.380 what was interesting to me is he's saying that Islam now and this

01:21:39.660 is right after 9-11 where you have the Shia radicals and the

01:21:42.780 Sunni radicals you might be actually in that path where you have

01:21:46.460 these religious wars and in the wake of these religious wars you

01:21:50.440 have the ability to have a space for dissent to have freedom of

01:21:54.540 conscience and we only see it in hindsight and it might take many

01:21:58.020 decades but frankly it took hundreds of years for these democratic ideas to

01:22:03.280 develop in the West even the founders as you know there was slavery in the

01:22:06.680 United States for a century you didn't have women that had the right to vote for

01:22:09.580 150 years but the ideas the ideas that they put in place in 1776 and later when

01:22:16.740 they were developing the Constitution those are the ideas that still give the

01:22:20.920 sense that you can keep expanding it now could what you see happening in the

01:22:24.500 Middle East with the forces of modernity facing the forces of medievalism could

01:22:29.540 out of this tremendous violence and there's one difference as an aside between

01:22:33.980 today in the 16th century the ability of one person or a small group of people to

01:22:39.340 kill many thousands tens of thousands hundreds that's what's different it could

01:22:44.920 be that you're seeing the Middle East in the 21st century is sort of where

01:22:50.280 Europe was in the mid 16th century and you're moving hopefully to a different

01:22:54.620 future now we can speed that up because of communications because of ties

01:22:58.780 between people so what may have happened in a hundred excuse me in a hundred

01:23:02.280 years can happen in 10 years but the real danger and this gets to Iran the real

01:23:08.420 danger if you allow any of these fanatics to get their hands on nuclear

01:23:11.780 weapons because when you marry militant Islam to nuclear weapons now you're

01:23:16.320 talking about danger to millions or tens of millions of people so the

01:23:20.260 fires burnt themselves out in Europe in the 16th century and you could kill a

01:23:23.820 lot of people but this is a different order of magnitude and I think that's why

01:23:28.880 the most important thing and this is our view in Israel but it's not just a view it's

01:23:32.880 not just for Israel it's for all our Arab neighbors it's also for Europe it's also

01:23:37.740 for the United States because you know we're the little Satan as Netanyahu says

01:23:42.500 America's the great Satan Europe gets aggravated maybe they're a middle-sized

01:23:46.920 Satan but their designs are not just on Israel they're on you to reverse history to upend the

01:23:54.120 whole order you know the Chinese are trying to replace the United States but here you have in

01:24:00.020 militant Islam you have a fanaticism that is trying to upend the whole order and to think

01:24:04.720 that the traditional rules of deterrence will work with a nuclear armed power whether it's a Sunni or

01:24:12.980 Shia power that's radical that is armed with nuclear weapons to think that the traditional

01:24:17.920 cost benefits of deterrence and mutually assured destruction will work you're gambling with the

01:24:22.760 future of the world now if you're stuck in that situation because you couldn't stop it well you're

01:24:28.020 gonna have to make the best of it but to allow something like this to happen is completely insane

01:24:32.820 and that's what's happening as we speak where they're trying to negotiate a nuclear deal with

01:24:38.300 these ayatollahs in Iran that are trying to export this revolution around the world I mean it's insanity

01:24:45.020 to do something like this and this if this happens as you talked about who are the forces of modernity

01:24:51.660 who are the forces of medievalism on that medieval side the point the Shia point is certainly Iran

01:24:57.200 and all their proxies to the region the Shia militias in Iraq the the Shia terror proxy in

01:25:04.360 Lebanon which is Hezbollah their proxy in Yemen which is the Houthis they're controlling through

01:25:11.600 their proxies and terrorism a huge swath of these medievalists on the other side you have as I said

01:25:17.340 Al-Qaeda and that was replaced really by ISIS but Sunni fanaticism has not disappeared it will reappear

01:25:26.220 again and what you want to do is move those forces of modernity and here I would put those Gulf states

01:25:31.900 not because they're modern democracies because they're trying to advance their society so let's

01:25:37.880 look at women's rights in Saudi Arabia compared not to the United States or to Canada or to Europe

01:25:43.640 but compared to women's rights in Saudi Arabia 20 years ago look at what's happening in sort of the

01:25:50.020 opening of these societies now if you think about it in a 16th century context the progress is remarkable

01:25:56.020 yeah well that's why I want to draw positive attention to these developments because I think

01:26:01.460 I know psychologically you know there's a there's a there's a rule in terms of establishing peace and

01:26:08.600 prosperity and the possibility of negotiation that seems to work at every scale and so for example in

01:26:15.100 your marriage you might criticize your wife if she does something wrong and she might do the same to

01:26:20.280 you and there is some utility in that but BF Skinner who's a famous behaviorist he could train

01:26:26.320 animals to do virtually anything and he said reward works a lot better than threat and pain although

01:26:30.940 you can use threat and pain reward works better but you have to pay a price for it and so if Skinner

01:26:37.060 was training a rat to climb a ladder and do a little dance on top of it and then climb down the other

01:26:42.120 side of the ladder I mean he could train animals to do virtually anything what he would do is he'd sit

01:26:46.420 and he'd watch the rat in the cage for a very long time it was usually a hungry rat by the way and

01:26:51.280 when the rat was near the ladder he'd give it a food pellet and then it would just hang around near

01:26:55.920 the ladder and then now and then it would put its paw on the first rung and he'd give it a food pellet and

01:27:00.260 then soon it was putting its paw on the first rung a lot and then it would be the second rung and by

01:27:05.360 careful attention and reward for due progress he could get animals to do things as complex

01:27:12.880 Skinner taught pigeons to navigate guided missiles by pecking on photographs in reference to the

01:27:19.540 landscape below and so so the and I know that's kind of abstruse and it seems like a sideways move

01:27:26.460 but it's not because one of the things that's very much worth doing and I think you captured that very

01:27:32.260 well in the last thing that you said in one of my books I have an adage which is compare yourself to

01:27:37.200 who you were yesterday and not to who someone else is today and the idea is your best measure is your

01:27:45.320 previous self and you should try for incremental improvement at the rate you can manage and you

01:27:51.620 should recognize that incremental improvement in yourself and you should reward it and you shouldn't

01:27:56.000 denigrate it because it isn't a leap forward that's too big for you to manage and it's not getting you to

01:28:02.120 wear someone else who is hypothetically better off than you might be because all of that's

01:28:06.820 counterproductive and when I see these things happening in the Middle East let's say on the

01:28:10.640 Saudi front as you just pointed out from a western perspective we might say well you know you're a

01:28:15.980 little hard on your women and we also know that rights granted to women are a very good predictor of

01:28:23.540 economic progress as it turns out and also of educational status among children and so there are both

01:28:29.520 ethical and technical reasons why that might be a bad idea and we can shake our fingers at you because

01:28:34.980 you're not doing that and to some degree perhaps that's appropriate but more importantly if we do

01:28:41.700 see something like incremental progress in that direction and we want to facilitate it we should be

01:28:48.340 saying hey look man and this is what's happening on the Abraham Accord side is for all of your faults

01:28:54.940 and ours let's point out this looks like a nice move forward and it really is unfortunate as far

01:29:02.720 as I'm concerned that more positive light hasn't been shed on the Abraham Accords themselves and on

01:29:09.480 the contributions of the people who made them possible and I would say that's particularly although

01:29:14.480 you're not uniquely true of the Saudis and and it's it's very heartening to me given the complexities

01:29:21.800 of the last 30 years and 9-11 and the Wahhabis and all of that that the Saudis were behind this and

01:29:28.740 that they are willing to they appear willing to move forward I I I agree with you said it I want to

01:29:34.580 I want to explain why why I think it is because I think it also explains the event that surfaced

01:29:40.120 the Abraham Accords as well you know when I gave an exit interview when I was finishing my time as

01:29:44.960 ambassador and they said who's next you know who's next you've done four in the last six months who's

01:29:49.740 next and I said nobody but I want to explain why I said nobody and unfortunately I wanted to

01:29:55.960 continue I believe actually the current U.S. administration could continue it they just have

01:29:59.980 to completely change their policies and I'll explain why and this gets also to Saudi Arabia and the whole

01:30:05.500 view of Saudi Arabia vis-a-vis Iran in terms of who is your partner in the region what I said to you

01:30:12.280 before about the failure at the beginning to get the Trump administration to sort of see it I said

01:30:19.020 also they they didn't waste time because they shifted U.S. policy and this shift was critical

01:30:24.120 to help surface the Abraham Accords again I want to draw the distinction between the surfacing of the

01:30:30.920 relations between Israel and Arab states versus what happens underneath the surface because underneath

01:30:35.620 the surface since that change in 2012 11 10 that was all moving forward underneath the surface in

01:30:42.660 various different degrees and speeds but it was moving underneath the surface the Abraham Accords in 2020

01:30:47.900 was the surfacing event now what contributed what facilitated surfacing it the most important

01:30:53.740 policy was the U.S. confrontational posture vis-a-vis Iran and I'll explain it when the U.S. is confronting

01:31:01.060 Iran as a policy they're confronting the Saudi's worst enemy and the people in Saudi Arabia get that

01:31:07.220 because they're firing rockets into their airports they're the ones attacking their oil facilities the

01:31:12.700 same thing in the Emirates who's attacking their ships who's firing drones who's a threat to them

01:31:17.920 when the U.S. is confronting their worst enemy you open up the political space for these Arab leaders to

01:31:25.740 come into an open alliance with Israel okay that was critical and Trump changed from appeasing Iran

01:31:32.080 to confronting Iran now all of a sudden an MBS who doesn't say didn't say it publicly but behind the scenes

01:31:38.920 and MBZ the King Hamad of Bahrain and others can look at their people and say guys you know you see

01:31:46.140 on September 15 2020 you see you got Trump and you got Netanyahu standing there yeah we know we've said

01:31:51.760 all these things about the Israelis for many many decades but guess what that Trump guy he just took

01:31:56.640 out Qasem Soleimani in January 2nd 2020 he's confronting Iran he's starving them of the cash that they're using

01:32:03.020 to fuel their war machine in the region we need to stand with him and that Netanyahu is leading you know

01:32:08.780 is authorizing all of these operations for Israel to attack Iranian positions in Syria and do all

01:32:14.880 sorts of things in the region against Iran so you've now opened the political space for these leaders

01:32:20.580 to move into a public alliance with the United States now once the U.S. shifts its policy towards

01:32:25.600 appeasement why in the world are the leaders in the region why are they going to stand with the

01:32:30.660 president who is actually undermining their own interests and endangering their peoples you've

01:32:34.940 actually shrunk all the political space so the first important policy is you need to confront Iran

01:32:40.320 an administration that confronts Iran will move us closer to expanding the Abraham Accords and deepening

01:32:46.220 them the second thing that they did is they embraced Israel the Trump administration Jerusalem

01:32:52.280 the Golan Heights all these issues that were made where many people said it was going to prevent

01:32:57.120 peace from happening it will be a big blow to peace well it didn't create peace between Israelis and

01:33:01.160 Palestinians but that wasn't happening anyway for a century for the reasons we discussed but what

01:33:05.740 message did it send to the Arabs in the region in the Gulf it said that if they want to get closer to

01:33:11.160 Washington they should move closer to Jerusalem so you actually made them understand the importance of

01:33:18.320 having a solid relationship with Jerusalem and here you have to say that Trump by not abandoning MBS

01:33:25.500 after the Khashoggi incident which we can talk about by not abandoning him he showed that he was

01:33:31.960 actually a reliable friend usually the way the Arabs in the region see is if Israel is if the United

01:33:38.620 States is is is in friction with Israel which was the case for most of the Obama administration on

01:33:44.460 settlements on this and that that's a sign to them that the U.S. is not a reliable ally because they know

01:33:50.580 the Israel U.S. relationship is fundamentally different because we share interests we share values it's very

01:33:56.260 very very deep they get it so if the U.S. is now is bothering Israel and turning the building of Jewish

01:34:01.680 apartments in Jerusalem into a world crisis these are not going to be reliable people and they get it if they

01:34:07.480 confront Iran and they embrace Israel they move actually the Arabs closer and the third factor which was

01:34:13.040 critical take the veto away from the Palestinians stop chasing down that rabbit hole so the Trump

01:34:20.500 administration ultimately it stopped chasing them because he made the decision on Jerusalem

01:34:24.820 and the Palestinians effectively after that decision cut off ties with Trump and guess what

01:34:30.060 Jared Kushner and Trump's team they didn't rush after them they said guys we're here you know our

01:34:35.120 number in the meantime they put forward a plan eventually that said if you want to go through the

01:34:40.620 door for a realistic solution to this conflict where both sides will get something and both sides will

01:34:46.140 compromise we're there to support you if not we're moving ahead so the three legs of this stool in

01:34:51.920 terms of U.S. foreign policy are confront Iran embrace Israel and take away the veto from the

01:34:59.340 Palestinians now look at the Biden administration they're appeasing Iran which is the worst thing

01:35:04.880 they can do I can't they're not embracing Israel to the extent the Trump administration has but they

01:35:10.360 haven't fully reversed it and on the issue of the veto for the Palestinians they're slowly but

01:35:16.040 surely trying to move the Palestinian issue back into the center in the name of helping the

01:35:20.780 Palestinians it actually just hurts them because if we would actually move ahead with the Abraham

01:35:25.060 Accords then we could get those forces within Palestinian society who wanted to accommodate us now a few

01:35:30.860 weeks ago on my podcast diplomatically incorrect before Biden made a visit to Israel I said what Biden

01:35:37.660 can do to win the Nobel Prize because look Biden they'll give the Nobel Prize to they'll never give the

01:35:43.040 Nobel Prize to Trump no matter what he does they'll never give it to Netanyahu no matter what he does

01:35:47.360 but they gave it to Obama before he did anything they will certainly give it to Biden for actually doing

01:35:52.240 something I said here's how you win the Nobel Prize you go to Saudi Arabia and you tell the Saudis

01:35:59.680 here's how we're going to deal with a Khashoggi incident it was a horrible incident we're putting it

01:36:03.440 behind us ABC and D okay here's how we're going to deal with the problem of Yemen because the Saudis

01:36:09.220 have in Yemen what Israel has in Lebanon they've got a terror organization these Houthis that are

01:36:14.240 establishing essentially a beachhead for Iran to attack them from the south like the Iranians have

01:36:20.480 a beachhead against Israel from the north with Hezbollah to attack us from the north one of the

01:36:25.720 first acts the Biden administration did was to remove sanctions on the Houthis for no reason imagine

01:36:31.060 the message that sent to Saudi Arabia so you have to tell the Saudis here's how we're going to solve

01:36:35.280 Khashoggi here's how we're going to deal with the issue of Yemen now I'm going to change my policy

01:36:41.500 and this is what Biden needs to win the Nobel Prize I'm going to change my policy 180 degrees on Iran

01:36:47.460 I'm going to confront the Iranian regime with all elements of American power and if there was a

01:36:53.320 credible military threat against Iran's nuclear facilities they would not break out to the bomb

01:36:57.380 we would put crippling sanctions on them we'll reach out to the dissidents in Iran who hate this regime

01:37:02.020 as well meaning you have a clear strategy to confront Iran and he tells MBS he says I don't

01:37:07.360 want to go back to the American people and tell them I started a new war in the Middle East for you I

01:37:12.180 need one thing I need to go back to the American people and say I brought peace in the Middle East

01:37:16.460 between Israelis and Saudis and that's really the big prize now if I'm MBS and I want this relationship

01:37:23.700 with Israel I want it for my security and economic interests that's my opportunity to look at my own

01:37:30.180 people and say America has shifted we have now a bipartisan policy confronting Iran I'm standing

01:37:36.960 with a president who's confronting our worst enemies that will give him the political space

01:37:40.960 to make a peace and I think that by the way that what I just told you right now could be done in six

01:37:45.260 months it doesn't require rocket science it's a it I think the chances of it happening approach zero I

01:37:51.700 want to be optimistic so I'll give it 0.1 percent because they are wedded the Biden administration to a

01:37:57.300 policy of appeasing this regime in Tehran and that begins and ends their whole

01:38:03.480 problem with the Abraham Accords it's not that they don't support it it's that the policies that

01:38:10.080 they've put in place are not facilitating it are actually undermining it now the good news

01:38:15.400 is the fundamentals that I spoke about of the rise of Iran the rise of Sunni radicalism America's

01:38:24.300 not in the region what happened with the Arab Spring those fundamentals still exist and so

01:38:29.680 therefore the potential for the diplomatic breakthrough will survive this administration

01:38:33.660 the one thing that would undermine it if an American administration decided to send 500,000 troops to

01:38:39.000 the Middle East and establish military bases over they the bloom would be off the Israeli rose

01:38:45.060 okay or if Israel lost its technological edge and all of a sudden we had a brain drain because our

01:38:50.920 government decided to hike up taxes and not let people afford apartments in Israel and they all

01:38:55.540 left and went to Silicon Valley or someone else and you wouldn't have an innovation engine as long as we

01:39:00.120 have an innovation engine a powerful military and intel and weapons making capability and the US is not

01:39:06.560 there Israel is the best show in town for them and they understand that and I think what we need to do is

01:39:13.020 work as fast as we can with them to build the bridges the ones I'll tell you what will happen if if this deal is

01:39:20.760 done and by the time the podcast airs the deal could be done it could be done 10 days later two weeks later

01:39:25.420 you're going to see two things happen simultaneously that are going to be a little bit confusing for

01:39:31.020 people underneath the surface the Arabs will move closer to Israel out of fear of the rise of Iran

01:39:38.800 because the nuclear deal gives Iran a glide path to a nuclear arsenal that is paved with gold so they're

01:39:44.140 going to be frightened to death of Iran and its rising power and they're going to move underneath the table to

01:39:48.880 Israel but they will move above the table towards Iran because power in the region will shift in that

01:39:54.740 way and you're already seeing signs of it where the Emirates who didn't have an ambassador for many

01:39:59.920 years in Iran are now sending somebody back there's open meetings the reason all of this stuff is

01:40:05.720 happening is not that they change the view they know exactly what this regime in Tehran is they just

01:40:09.960 know that in Washington the policy is a capital a appeasement and it's not changing and you can shift the whole

01:40:16.520 region fairly quickly so I would hope the Biden administration that has over two years in its term

01:40:21.080 will do it if not a new administration that comes in will be able to pick up these peace accords much

01:40:28.120 faster than you think with a shift in policy much faster than people think because the strategic moment

01:40:33.940 is there and I think it's going to be there probably for 20 years or 30 years now if Iran I say one thing

01:40:40.020 if Iran goes down if that regime goes down and you have a different relationship it'll actually make

01:40:46.500 making peace with our Sunni Arab states harder but I'll take that as a problem let me let's work on

01:40:52.260 figuring out how to solve that problem if that regime in Tehran that openly calls and actively works to

01:40:56.900 destroy Israel let's let's deal with the problem of them going down and having the Iranian people

01:41:02.760 actually govern themselves and have a responsible government there that won't be hell-bent on conquering the

01:41:08.780 Middle East and half the world that's a very good place to end I think unless you have anything else

01:41:14.980 specifically wanted to say yes I want to say for the record because you what you said is you said if

01:41:20.620 sometimes you criticize your wife and she criticizes you I never criticized my wife for the record

01:41:25.960 yeah well you're probably a wiser man than me then so I appreciate you walking through that all for me and

01:41:33.960 for all my watchers and listeners and uh I found it extremely um almost unbearably educational in

01:41:40.540 some sense because it's an awful lot of well it's an awful lot of information to try to digest in the

01:41:45.000 90 minute period it's right there you just have to put that little crumb on the top where the paw can

01:41:49.780 reach we're very close right it's so heartening you know to see that this pathway forward beckons and

01:41:56.760 it's so useful I'm so happy that I can play a small role in shedding some light on it because it seems

01:42:02.160 to me so significant and important and so much worthy of reward and so I'll probably ask my people

01:42:08.440 who've been in contact with you to recommend other people maybe closer to the Arab world itself that I

01:42:15.240 could talk to if they would like to about the Abraham Accords maybe someone I suppose what would be

01:42:20.960 optimal would be someone on the Saudi side in some real sense and so we didn't get a chance to talk

01:42:26.620 about Iraq and I think we'll leave that because it's another rabbit hole and it would take a long

01:42:30.700 time to go down but well it's somebody it's it's whether Iran is effectively in control of Iraq

01:42:37.560 through the Shia militias that it has there I will tell you one thing that I would like to say in this

01:42:43.320 battle between medievalism and modernity is not a battle of tradition versus modernity I actually

01:42:50.360 believe that that part of the world will remain traditional for a very long time and not only do

01:42:56.140 I have no problem with it I actually think the path to peace will go with the traditional forces not

01:43:00.780 the fanatic forces the traditional forces in this society it is it is interesting that many of the people

01:43:08.820 involved in the Abraham Accords were traditional Jews or traditional on the Arab side or people on the

01:43:17.720 Israeli side which was actually there were only about three people in Israel who knew that the

01:43:21.280 Abraham Accords was about to happen but I don't necessarily think that it's a coincidence meaning

01:43:26.460 the ability to deal with traditional people on the other side and not working on the assumption that the

01:43:32.580 path to peace is really about these people abandoning their traditions and their ideals you know I

01:43:40.300 always thought that was a mistake when it comes to promoting democracy if you tell people choose

01:43:44.720 between a democracy in your tradition they'll choose tradition but there's no reason why they have to

01:43:50.220 choose and I think America for a good part of its history was a perfect example of that which it was a very

01:43:56.200 vibrant democracy and an extremely traditional society measured by church attendance and all these

01:44:02.500 different metrics that they have so I don't see any inherent disconnect between those two things and I

01:44:10.420 actually think the legitimate forces in these societies are the traditional forces we mentioned Saudi Arabia

01:44:16.520 like to me you want to know a sign of how close we are to hysteric breakthrough is when the head of the

01:44:22.800 Muslim World League I can't remember his name off the top of my leg a sheikh in Saudi Arabia he visited

01:44:29.200 Auschwitz as an act of solidarity now without MBS support that does not happen and he also gave they ensured that

01:44:38.020 he would be given the sermon in the mosque in the in the important mosque in Saudi Arabia before Biden's

01:44:45.260 visit this same sheikh now it's clear that MBS is trying to move his country into the 21st century it's

01:44:54.280 clear it's clear that the situation with Khashoggi was abhorrent and it's clear that you have to have some

01:45:00.020 show that this is that is unacceptable but to throw out as I said at the time in real time by the way

01:45:05.440 and because Netanyahu didn't throw them under the bus and Trump didn't throw them under the bus

01:45:09.800 that also helped I said in real time a few days after the incident Khashoggi thing is terrible

01:45:14.760 but don't throw out the prince with the bathwater that would be a huge mistake don't throw out a

01:45:19.720 prince that is confronting the Islamists in his country changing this whole Wahhabi fanaticism that

01:45:25.260 is spreading around the world and it's trying to propel his country forward decades if not centuries now if

01:45:31.460 you're 1550 it's very hard to go to 2020 in one day I mean if he could move to the 19th century and a

01:45:40.560 more open society that would be a great gift to the region and hopefully the region will all have free

01:45:46.400 societies around us but that can take some time in the meantime these forces in this region they're on

01:45:53.580 our side they are confronting these medievalists the ones who want to take us back and so therefore

01:45:58.660 they're the ones that should be supported and it just so happens that this completely overlaps with

01:46:04.880 the Abraham Accord so the important thing for me is for people to recognize what changed in the region

01:46:10.620 what enabled the potential breakthrough so that policymakers will continue it it wasn't luck

01:46:16.680 one of the reasons why they want to avoid it is probably because of the politics regarding Trump

01:46:23.080 because it happened on his watch the politics regarding you know Netanyahu it wasn't the players

01:46:29.000 that the Nobel Prize Committee wanted to be involved in it but guess what Trump was the one that

01:46:34.940 recognized Jerusalem Trump was the one that withdrew from the Iran deal Trump was the one that took

01:46:39.780 out Soleimani right and Netanyahu did all the things that he did these were the leaders who actually

01:46:45.540 enabled us to have this breakthrough and one last thing about Iran and Saudi Arabia you had Salman

01:46:52.360 Rushdie and I'm not I can't say that I read his books but growing up I always saw him as like a

01:46:59.020 great liberal intellectual who wanted to live in a free society and he always stood behind that so now

01:47:03.920 you have this man who's who was stabbed multiple times and the outcry for what happened with Rushdie

01:47:12.380 is nothing compared to what happened with Khashoggi and that has everything to do with politics meaning

01:47:18.280 Iran is trying to order hits on Americans on the former National Security Advisor John Bolton on a female

01:47:27.100 democracy activist that they tried to send somebody to kill her one thing after another on US soil no response

01:47:34.560 virtual silence against the regime that is glorifying this when Khashoggi happened how did the Saudi regime

01:47:41.280 respond they were embarrassed okay so people will say well he ordered it so they said okay these people

01:47:47.460 were responsible but nobody in the Saudi regime was saying this was a good thing they said this was a

01:47:52.380 terrible thing and the prince wasn't involved so people will believe what they want to believe

01:47:55.980 but they said this is bad the sense of shame was tremendous that this was a a terrible miss and they

01:48:02.620 understood that you can't just do this openly in the modern world I'm not saying that if it would have

01:48:08.220 happened that they would have expressed regrets but because of what happened they had a tremendous sense of

01:48:13.460 shame and and issued they issued statements condemning it one after the other look at the how the Iranians are

01:48:22.280 dealing with Rushdie you don't have any condemnation of this guy who killed Rushdie they glorify they think this

01:48:29.740 is a good thing and I think that tells you the difference of this regime one regime was embarrassed about it and

01:48:35.840 wants to move ahead and one regime was glorifying it and wants to take us all back and that's a real big

01:48:41.980 difference in the region and I think if we focus our efforts on expanding the peace which implicit in

01:48:48.340 is this confrontation of Iran we can actually receive pretty good outcomes much faster than people think not

01:48:54.680 perfect but pretty good outcomes and I think that the Middle East deserves it Israel does the Arabs do and

01:49:00.320 ultimately the Palestinians do because if we're able to do that then I think the chances of having

01:49:05.180 those accommodation as forced to submerge are going to be much higher well that's as optimistic ending as

01:49:11.420 we might hope for from such a deep dive into such a complex topic and it really is heartening to hear

01:49:16.380 it and that there's a pathway forward of that sort hello everyone I would encourage you to continue

01:49:21.420 listening to my conversation with my guest on dailywireplus.com in today's chaotic world many of us are

01:49:30.120 searching for a way to aim higher and find spiritual peace but here's the thing prayer the most common

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288. Arabs vs Jews？ Maybe Not ｜ Ambassador Ron Dermer

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