Benjamin Netanyahu was recently re-elected as Prime Minister of Israel. In his new book, Bibi: My Story, he tells the story of his family, his people, his path to leadership, and his unceasing commitment to defending his country and securing its future. In this interview, he explains why he believes that the Jewish people have lived in the land of Israel for over 3,500 years, and why they deserve the right to exist as a nation. He also explains why there is a moral justification for the state of Israel, and what it means to be a Jew in the context of the Torah. Dr. Jordan B. Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety. With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way, and offers a roadmap towards healing, in his new series, Daily Wire Plus. If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better. Go to Dailywire.plus now and start watching Dr. B.P. Peterson's new series on Depression and Anxiety. Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve. Let's all of us take a step towards a brighter future we deserve. - Dr. P.B. Peterson - Let's Talk About Depression and Anxiousness by Jordan Peterson by P.S. by clicking here to become a supporter of Dailywire Plus by clicking HERE to get immediate access to all of the latest episodes of DailyWire Plus. Today's episode will be available on the Daily Wire PLUS! Subscribe to Daily Wire + by clicking Here to receive a FREE e-mail updates on Dailywire plus and access to the latest posts, and access all of our most up-to-date episodes, including the latest news and posts, including our social media feeds, tips, tips and tricks! and much more! by becoming a supporter! . Thank you so much for listening and sharing this podcast! Subscribe and sharing it! in the comments! , and in your thoughts and reviews so you can help spread the word to the word out to the world about this podcast by ! to your fellow podcaster, on social media by Dr. and other people like this podcast?
00:00:00.960Hey everyone, real quick before you skip, I want to talk to you about something serious and important.
00:00:06.480Dr. Jordan Peterson has created a new series that could be a lifeline for those battling depression and anxiety.
00:00:12.740We know how isolating and overwhelming these conditions can be, and we wanted to take a moment to reach out to those listening who may be struggling.
00:00:20.100With decades of experience helping patients, Dr. Peterson offers a unique understanding of why you might be feeling this way in his new series.
00:00:27.420He provides a roadmap towards healing, showing that while the journey isn't easy, it's absolutely possible to find your way forward.
00:00:35.360If you're suffering, please know you are not alone. There's hope, and there's a path to feeling better.
00:00:41.780Go to Daily Wire Plus now and start watching Dr. Jordan B. Peterson on depression and anxiety.
00:00:47.460Let this be the first step towards the brighter future you deserve.
00:00:57.420Hello everybody watching and listening.
00:01:11.400I have, I'm always excited to talk to the guests that I'm talking to, which is why I bring them on the podcast to begin with.
00:01:19.360But today, we have something that I think is unique.
00:01:23.100I'm going to be speaking with Benjamin Netanyahu, who was recently re-elected as Prime Minister of Israel.
00:01:30.660This is a very interesting development as far as I'm concerned.
00:01:34.040It's the first time I've had the opportunity to speak with someone who is a sitting head of state, or soon will be.
00:01:39.600And I think the reason that that's relevant and worthy of note is because it's one of the markers for the development of a new kind of political dialogue.
00:01:51.240We're in a situation now where it's possible to sit with a political leader and have a genuine conversation for a long period of time, we'll go at least 90 minutes, unscripted, so that there's no soundbite quality or editing to it.
00:02:10.240You just get the unvarnished words of someone who's in a position to make decisions that affect all of us.
00:08:50.180And the families, the progeny of the people you kicked out, came back, rebuilt the house.
00:08:59.040You cannot come back and tell them, you don't belong here.
00:09:01.900We're going to kick you out, especially since you're latecomers who've come to live in part of the house, which is what the so-called Palestinians are, okay?
00:09:15.720And the reason this conflict continues is because the Palestinians, who represent the colonial powers, the Arab conquest of the Middle East and beyond, they're saying, you have no right for a Jewish state.
00:09:31.200If any people has any right to a state, if any people never gave up their dreams of returning to their ancestral home, if any people rebuilt their home from nothing, from barren, wasted land, it's the Jewish people.
00:09:44.360To tell them, you have suffered more than anyone else.
00:09:48.320You have never lost your dream of coming back and rebuilding your national life in your ancestral homeland.
00:10:41.260Every time you connect to an unsecured network in a cafe, hotel, or airport,
00:10:45.500you're essentially broadcasting your personal information to anyone with a technical know-how to intercept it.
00:10:50.580And let's be clear, it doesn't take a genius hacker to do this.
00:10:53.780With some off-the-shelf hardware, even a tech-savvy teenager could potentially access your passwords, bank logins, and credit card details.
00:11:01.160Now, you might think, what's the big deal?
00:11:58.080So you, so why do you think the claim that the Palestinians were somehow there in Israel first and have been displaced in a colonial occupation, let's say, by the Jews,
00:12:19.560why do you think that idea has gained such cachet, not least in the West?
00:12:25.140Because of ignorance? I mean, what do you mean they were here first?
00:12:28.960You know, you're familiar with the story of Jesus, right?
00:12:32.680Jesus was a Jewish rabbi living here 2,000 years ago.
00:12:36.940He was a rabbi from the Galilee, okay?
00:12:50.140King David made it our capital 3,000 years ago.
00:12:52.920So the Jews are here to try to, to say that they weren't here and that the Palestinians were here thousands of years ago is ridiculous.
00:13:01.140Anybody, you know, anybody who can, you can actually Google this and, and find out how absurd this thing is.
00:13:07.560So as far as reinventing ancient history, that is, that is unpardonable because anybody can find out and understand that the Jews were here for thousands of years,
00:13:18.780As far as modern times are concerned, what the Palestinians have said is, oh, and I write this in my book and I show it because it's so comical.
00:13:29.180What, what they say is we were here, Palestine was a verdant land in the 19th century, teaming with, you know, with the Palestinians until the Jews came in, took it over and threw it out.
00:13:42.260Okay, well, that's what Arafat effectively said in his infamous speech in the United Nations, blaming Zionism, equating Zionism with racism.
00:13:53.500Well, there's only one problem with that.
00:13:54.980He said that the Jewish invasion of this verdant Palestinian homeland happened in 1881.
00:14:01.720Okay, the problem with that is that 12 years before, a famous visitor, among hundreds of visitors, named Mark Twain, visited the Holy Land.
00:14:12.280And he describes a totally different picture.
00:14:15.840He describes Palestine, I'm quoting him, is a vast wasteland.
00:14:20.100He said, only imagination can grace this barren land with the pomp of circumstance and life.
00:14:26.680It's just, he said, we travel for a whole day, we didn't see, in the Galilee, we didn't see a human being, one single human being.
00:14:34.840He said, Jerusalem sits in sackcloth and ashes.
00:14:38.220And as he was saying that, it's the Jewish return that began, the Jewish return that began building the land.
00:14:44.100Well, perhaps one could argue, it's obvious that Mark Twain was not in the service of the Jewish state because it didn't exist.
00:14:52.580He wasn't in the service of the Jewish lobby because there wasn't any Jewish lobby.
00:14:58.480Could there possibly have been a tremendous influx of Palestinians between 1869 and 1881, the year that Arafat says the Jewish invasion began and destroyed the Palestinian paradise?
00:15:55.580We came back, brought it back to life.
00:15:57.920There were Arabs living here, but it was, as I say, a barren wasteland.
00:16:01.880But Arabs began to immigrate naturally because we created a rise in the standard of living that attracted Arabs from neighboring states.
00:16:10.600Those Arabs are now those, the descendants of those Arabs who migrated as a result of the Jewish return.
00:16:17.360Many of them now are considered Palestinians.
00:16:20.540So what I'm saying, and I'm saying this to you, Jordan, and to your audience, there has been a complete fabrication of history.
00:16:28.160It's the biggest lie of the big lies that have permeated the 20th century and the 21st century,
00:16:34.700is to say that the Arabs were here before.
00:16:37.040That is, the Palestinians were here before the Jews when we were here for thousands of years.
00:16:41.100That we are the colonials when, in fact, it was the Arabs who were the colonials who dispossessed the original natives, and that is the Jews.
00:16:48.540That we came back to this land that was laid barren by the Arab conquest, brought it back to life,
00:16:55.320and allowed Arab immigration, what we call now Palestinian immigration, to come back in.
00:16:59.860And now they say to us, in unimaginable chutzpah, you know, they say, you don't belong here.
00:17:14.900Well, some of it also seems to be, I would say, technically speaking, something like a time frame problem.
00:17:23.520I mean, you said the Arabs came in in the 7th century, and that's a long time ago.
00:17:28.620And so from the 7th century to now, you might think of that as being a time frame long enough to allow for a valid claim of sovereignty ownership.
00:17:39.620But the Jews rejoinder is, well, we have a much older claim than that, one that spans 3,500 years.
00:17:46.940And the problem I have with that conceptually, and then I'll get to some other issues that are relevant to this,
00:17:51.720is that it's not exactly obvious what time frame of analysis should be primary.
00:18:54.240The Mamluks, the Ottomans, ultimately the British, a series of conquerors.
00:18:59.980In other words, they took over the land, lost the land, and did nothing with the land.
00:19:05.000So if they had done what you say, if they had created, if that house that we were expelled from was taken over by another people, another family,
00:19:14.160they built a family there, they had children, grandchildren, they extended the porch, they built a parking garage and so on, it's gone.
00:19:33.100Once the Jews were conquered by the Arabs, the Arabs did nothing with it, lost the land to others.
00:19:38.020Now we come back and bring it back to life, 13 centuries later, and perform this miracle, and they fabricate a history where we were there all the time.
00:19:55.460Now, it's not merely Mark Twain and Arthur Penran Stanley who say that.
00:19:59.620Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of travelogues over the centuries of famous French poets, of Swiss travelers, of German theologians, everybody, of poets, writers, travelers, who describe exactly the same thing.
00:20:28.780There was nothing to form the consciousness about.
00:20:31.060In the 20th century, the Arab world and the Palestinians and their supporters in the West, among the intellectual elites, basically erased history and recreated a fake history, a fake history that deracinates the Jewish roots that are unparalleled.
00:20:48.780There is no other story in the history of nations where people fought for so long for their land, for thousands of years, 2,000 years, were dispossessed from it, came back to it, did not kick out an existing population with a national consciousness, rebuilt the land, and now are being told you have no connections to it.
00:21:10.180You were, you know, you're the colonials.
00:21:13.100Now, we're not, we're not just to, just to, just to give this, yeah, just to give us a fine point, because this is so crucial, what we're discussing.
00:21:22.760And I discuss it at considerable length in my book, because people are so ignorant of history.
00:21:53.180Now we come back to our land, build it up, enable immigration from, of Arabs, who are now called Palestinians, from neighboring lands, and they tell us, oh, you don't belong here.
00:22:05.760This is essentially what Arab propaganda and Palestinian propaganda has done, and what I labored not only in the present book, my own history, maybe my story, but in a previous book, A Place Among the Nations, to debunk.
00:22:33.740Usually, you know, when people, A Place Among the Nations, my previous book, answering much of the questions that you ask, usually polemical books are challenged.
00:22:46.200You know, the critics, and in my case, critics from the left, they'd find, you know, some straggler, some factoid that is wrong, some formulation that is unfortunate, and so on.
00:23:16.040People can argue about my opinions, but they don't argue about my facts.
00:23:19.140I'm very, try to be very rigorous about the facts.
00:23:22.340This whole attack on the Jewish people's right to live in their, in the Jewish homeland, the attempt to erase the Bible and to erase the history after the Bible and to recreate, create a modern fantasy that doesn't exist, based on the Palestinians who want to destroy us, who support terrorism, who are anti-democratic, who are anti, or basically neo-colonials, because they're really the colonials.
00:23:49.820That is, that is something that I think has, it's not merely folly.
00:23:57.380It has something fundamentally wrong morally because it is both untrue and unjust.
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00:25:14.800Okay, so the claim so far, if I'm going to, say, lean in the direction of your argument,
00:25:23.500without leaning too far and too obviously, I would say something like this and tell me if I've got it right.
00:25:30.600Like, there's a host of competing claims to the territory that now constitutes Israel.
00:25:38.380And you could have some debate about, perhaps technically, about which of those claims should reign supreme.
00:25:45.060The additional case that you make, however, is that the Israelis, the Jews, have done a tremendous amount of work in improving this territory.
00:25:56.800And I know there's a principle of ownership in Western common law, in English common law.
00:26:02.040And I'm not a lawyer, so I may muck this up to some degree, but I understand the principle.
00:26:07.680If you own territory, a vast swath of land, and you're doing nothing to it, and someone comes and squats on it and spends a lot of time improving it,
00:26:16.700at some point they actually develop a valid legal claim to the property itself.
00:26:21.460And so there seems to be something intrinsic to our notion of valid ownership that if you're going to occupy a territory,
00:26:28.940you actually have to do something with it that's productive.
00:26:32.420And so that's at least part of the claim you're making at the moment,
00:26:35.980to buttress the notion that the Jewish people have a valid claim to the present territory.
00:26:41.300There were a lot of movement back and forth, but the Jews have actually taken the land and made something of it.
00:32:11.320They were quite successful wagging the dog.
00:32:13.400They, Palestinians, cling on to the fantasy of eliminating Israel, denying us our historical and present rights to live anywhere in this land,
00:32:22.620refusing to any kind of practical compromise, refusing to accept the declaration of Israel and the UN, the partition resolution.
00:33:54.520You can't do that if you're paying 75% marginal tax rate, right?
00:33:57.940So we cut tax rates, put in basically a capitalist economy, and Israel exploded.
00:34:03.160But it also became very powerful militarily because we could now afford to fund the combination of economic power through free markets and military and intelligence power that combined to give us diplomatic power.
00:34:18.280And with that, Arab leaders in the area began to see Israel not as their enemy, but as their indispensable ally against a force that was threatening both Israel and them.
00:34:33.160And secondly, they saw the innovation nation that is Israel as a fount of tremendous technology that could better the lives of their people.
00:34:42.600And therefore, we made these historic peace agreements in record time because now we were no longer bound by the Palestinian straitjacket that you're familiar with in Toronto and New Zealand and so on.
00:35:11.100But in reality, I took a different track.
00:35:14.480Instead of saying, first we'll solve the problem with the Palestinians, then we'll solve the problem with the Arab world, I actually reversed it.
00:35:21.040I said, let's go to the Arab world and let's get peace with the Arab world and then circle back to the Palestinians.
00:35:28.300If they're ready to come before, fine.
00:35:30.260But if not, let's get peace with 99% and then try to make peace with the 1% as opposed to let's try the implacable 1% and wait until we get to the other 99%.
00:35:41.560That's a complete reversal of concept.
00:35:45.660You'll see some of the old guard still say, no, no, we have to go to the Palestinians before we go to the Arab world and we'll never get peace.
00:35:53.480So I want to divide this into two tracks now.
00:35:58.500I want to, first of all, investigate some of the history behind the willingness of other states to support the Jewish claim to a homeland in the Middle East.
00:36:12.880Because I think that's quite interesting.
00:36:14.480And then I want to speak more about the Abraham Accords, which you discussed.
00:36:17.720So one of the things that fascinated me, well, historically, but also in your book, is your discussion of the Balfour Declaration.
00:36:27.460And so that's obviously before the utter catastrophe of the Holocaust and the catastrophes the Jewish people ran into in the middle of the 20th century.
00:36:37.380By already, by the time of the Balfour Declaration, there was some sense, at least in Great Britain, that the claim that Herzl had put forward, for example, that the Jews and the world would benefit from a Jewish homeland in the Middle East had some validity.
00:37:15.840And so could you walk us through how that support developed and why you think it developed?
00:37:21.480Yeah, it developed because certainly in the 19th century, in the early 20th century, there was the propaganda that I've described rewriting the history had not taken root.
00:37:34.960And most educated people knew the history of the Bible, the history of the Jewish people, their dispossession, what they thought were the horrors that the Jews suffered in their exile and dispersion, which was nothing compared to what was going to come later in the Holocaust.
00:37:51.920And they basically knew that the land was practically empty and that, I mean, there were people there, but it was practically empty.
00:37:58.660And it made sense that both from a biblical prognostication for those who had a religious orientation and also a humanist view, that this evil of history, this injustice of history would be corrected.
00:38:13.960That this long-suffering people, the Jews who contributed so much to civilization and to history and to morality, the idea of morality.
00:38:24.660It's the Ten Commandments, you know, that became the code, the moral code of the world and so many other things.
00:38:30.560The birth of Christianity, many of the ideas, many of the ideas, the moral ideas that we have originated on these hills where I'm sitting in right now, this tiny, you know, dusty edge of Asia, where this tribe, strange tribe, lived here and talked about, you know, man's, the fact that people should not remain slaves, that there should be a law that applies to all of them.
00:38:53.340That kings are not divine, that kings are subject to moral authority and censure and all sorts of other crazy ideas like that.
00:39:04.780And so the educated leaders that met in World War I after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, they had to decide, you know, who gets what.
00:39:17.820And they came upon the idea of self-determination, that is, that people should have, you know, the ability to govern their nations, obviously with civic rights for other peoples living in their midst.
00:39:28.860And they concluded, knowing the history that I just described, that is so unknown today on college campuses and among so-called intellectuals or anything but that, that the Jews deserved this right to rebuild their national life and their ancestral homeland.
00:39:47.000And, and, and, and that's how it developed.
00:39:51.080But the first one to actually bring it forward, you mentioned in the beginning of your comments, was Theodor Herzl.
00:40:02.520He was a Jewish journalist in the late 19th century.
00:40:06.920He was born in, in Hungary but worked for a very prestigious paper in Vienna.
00:40:13.080When he was dispatched to Paris as a correspondent, he saw the, the, the infamous Dreyfus trial where a Jewish officer in the French army was falsely accused, as it later turned out, of espionage and betrayal and was sentenced to Devil's Island and other horrible things.
00:40:33.440And he said this, if this can happen, if this can happen, if this can happen to the Jews in the apex of Western civilization, then it could happen anywhere.
00:40:46.260And he predicted that within a few decades, the fires of anti-Semitism would consume the Jews of Europe, that they would be slaughtered.
00:41:40.920The Jews should have a nation of their own, that is a country of their own.
00:41:44.320And he sought to persuade first the German Kaiser and after that the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul to give the Jews a state of their own, and he didn't succeed.
00:41:58.400He died after eight years, that's it, eight years.
00:42:01.420But in these eight years, he launched this movement that turned the dream of ages, you know, century after century, next year in Jerusalem.
00:42:09.400He turned it from a prayer, from a dream, into a practical plan.
00:42:13.520My grandfather, Nathan, Nathan Milakovsky Netanyahu, he was enthralled by Herzl.
00:42:22.040He became a tremendous speaker at the age of 20.
00:42:26.980Thousands of people crowded to hear him throughout Europe, Eastern Europe, Poland.
00:42:32.440There were records, press records, how people fought each other.
00:42:36.040They broke windows, they fought physically to hear this young man speak about the Jewish, about Herzl's vision, coming back to the Jewish homeland.
00:43:01.780In 1917, they succeed partly because the British Empire, which now, after the defeat of the Ottomans, controlled what is now the land of Israel, decided to give the Jews a homeland.
00:43:16.540They didn't say it's state yet, but they said a homeland.
00:43:19.280It was clear it was a corridor to a state.
00:43:22.000This was met by fervid Arab opposition, by many of the Arabs who had immigrated to Israel, to what is now the land of Israel.
00:43:30.560They said, stop, you can't come anymore.
00:43:32.800They decided we're just going to oppose any Jewish land.
00:59:08.620The third guy was a big guy, and he had a relatively small guy, and he shot off like a rocket and took the race.
00:59:13.960And I said to the Israeli public, all national economies are pairs of a private sector, of a public sector, sitting on the shoulders of a private sector.
00:59:24.960The private sector is the one that produces the wealth, or most of it, okay?
01:02:13.160Like, what was it about your reforms that made that price inevitable?
01:02:19.280Because part, first of all, the most important part is that in order to put the fat man, the public sector, on a diet, I had to cut back Israel's lavish welfare system, which encouraged people to live on the dole and not to go out and work.
01:02:38.840So when I cut child allowances, which in Israel were extraordinary, they'd go up with each successive child.
01:02:45.940So, you know, by the time you got to the sixth child, you know, and you had, like the Bedouins in the Negev, they had 60 children for multiple wives.
01:02:55.380They could drive the BMW Jeep as their second car in the sands of the Negev.
01:02:59.680I mean, and this was leading to demographic and economic collapse, okay?
01:03:04.640And the same thing was happening in other sectors, the ultra-Orthodox community and so on.
01:04:47.260The late Yitzhak Rabin was another example.
01:04:49.600And you can find them in other places.
01:04:51.580Not that often, but you can find them.
01:04:53.900But the last time somebody came back twice to do a comeback twice was 75 years ago, three-quarters of a century ago.
01:05:02.500And the reason that's happened is because you're quite right.
01:05:06.040If you're able to survive political death, then people appreciate what it is you did for the country and for them.
01:05:15.940Even though, you know, you could be swept by tremendous hostile press, as is the case in Israel, but you can overcome that.
01:05:22.560And in Israel's case, in my case, in the story of my life as I describe it, it was to bring into effect this vision of Israel, of a powerful state that has this tremendously creative economy, along with a powerful military, opening the door to peace with its neighbors,
01:05:50.120and also fighting what is a global threat.
01:05:54.460Iran, with nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach Canada and the United States and anywhere, is a threat to all of humanity.
01:06:04.560And by protecting Israel, by fending them off, I, of course, protect Israel, but I think we protect the larger international community.
01:06:12.200That's why I'm sitting with you a few days before I expect to go back into office, because we can have this free-ranging conversation now.
01:06:21.040I can talk about my book, which I unabashedly am trying to plug in this conversation, and I urge you to read it for two reasons.
01:06:28.600One, as you say, to understand the better, the history of the Jewish state, the Jewish national movement, Zionism, that led it, the reality of the Middle East and how it's changing, by the way, for the better, the threat of Iran, all of these things.
01:06:44.860And my contacts with the success of American presidents were very different from one another, and I've had to deal with quite a few of them, and it's an interesting story.
01:06:53.620But I think beyond that, I think it's to live a life of purpose.
01:06:58.800Okay, well, you had to be guided by and have faith in principles that were outside of short-term advantage in order to do what you did, and that's the story that you lay out in your book, and that seems to be in accordance with the facts on the ground.
01:07:12.980When you, in your political experience, no doubt you've dealt with political leaders who have a vision and who are abiding by principles, and then you have dealt with political leaders who don't.
01:07:26.740And one of the questions I have for you as a consequence is, what is it that you think that the leaders who aren't guided by principle and vision, what is it that they're pursuing?
01:07:38.360And in your experience, is that more common on the political front than guidance by vision and principle?
01:07:46.540In general, yes, it's more common, and that's why people don't have high respect for politicians.
01:07:52.020They speak of principle, but they're usually interested in personal power.
01:07:56.460For me, power by itself is meaningless.
01:08:07.240I don't really understand, I don't understand the drive for power, so to speak, or authority or influence outside of the realm of guiding principle.
01:08:16.700Because if it's just a shallow hedonism, let's say, or a desire for a claim, I would think also there's easier and more productive ways of pursuing that.
01:08:44.740So unless you have an overriding purpose, there's no point.
01:08:50.160To come back twice from political death, to have been eulogized, usually unfavorably, you don't come back for the perks of power, which are absurd anyway.
01:09:02.520I mean, anybody who can learn a living will do better than what heads of state get in the Western world.
01:09:08.060You know, they're forced into a dracoat.
01:09:18.800For me, as I said, I've lived a life of purpose to revamp, to assure Israel's permanence.
01:09:25.980My father and my grandfather worked very hard, labored very hard, to assure that the Jewish people would come back, would have a state.
01:09:34.680And I worked very hard to assure that they'd keep a state and that that state would become a power among the nations.
01:09:41.160By the way, the University of Pennsylvania has this annual poll in which they asked 17,000 opinion leaders in, I think, 20 countries to rank the powers of the world.
01:09:51.780And in the decade that I led Israel, between 2010 to 2020, Israel was consistently ranked, consistently ranked, as the eighth power in the world.
01:10:03.200Now, you've got to understand, we're one-tenth of one percent of the population of the world.
01:10:09.500You know, we're going to reach 10 million soon.
01:10:11.580Ahead of us, our country is with a billion people, hundreds of millions of people, tens of millions of people.
01:10:41.720You have to constantly increase, increase the economic power, increase the innovation, increase the circle of peace, expand it, and block those who would trample us.
01:11:01.220History has been kind to the worst people.
01:11:02.720I mean, Genghis Khan ruled a good chunk of the world for over a century and created horrible, you know, terrible horrors.
01:11:11.980The Roman Empire, you could judge it this way or that way, but they ruled through the force of arms and subjugation for hundreds of centuries, okay?
01:11:19.640The history, you know, Martin Luther King said the arc of history bends towards justice.
01:11:33.820And right now, the darkest force in our immediate vicinity is this horrible regime in Tehran, in Iran, that everybody can see its horrors, what it's doing to those incredibly brave men, incredibly brave women who are dying on the streets there.
01:11:47.720And that, if I say that the arc of history will bend towards catastrophe, if these ayatollahs, these thugs, these theological thugs would have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to every part of the earth.
01:12:03.120So I've made it my life's mission, so far successful, to prevent them from having that.
01:12:13.720Well, part of the reason you were able to offer something attractive to the Arab countries with whom you signed a peace accord was because you had something to offer, as you mentioned before, in relationship to Iran.
01:12:24.460And so let's talk about the Abraham Accords a bit more.
01:12:26.800Now, you're going to be moving back into office in the upcoming weeks, in all likelihood, and you indicated your continuing interest, for obvious reasons, in expanding the Abraham Accords.
01:12:54.100I can't speak for them, but the Saudis are tremendously important.
01:12:58.520I think it should be understood it's not just another country that would be added to the roster of peace.
01:13:04.300This is by far the most significant and influential Arab country, although there are some remarkable examples of achievement in the United Arab Emirates and other places in the Arab world.
01:13:19.060But the Saudis undoubtedly are in a category of their own.
01:13:24.060And yes, I would like to have peace with them, certainly begin with normalization.
01:13:28.180But you have to, the answer is, will they be there?
01:13:33.880There's no way that we would have been able to achieve the peace accords, the normalization accords with the Emirates and Bahrain without tacit Saudi approval.
01:13:45.280There's also no way that we could fly above the skies of Saudi Arabia without Saudi approval.
01:13:53.880There's no way that I could speak the other day, as I did, when the election results were known, with my Saudi friend, Muhammad Saud.
01:14:03.640He's the, I call it the Likud branch manager.
01:14:24.860And that could be an indication of where we go from here.
01:14:27.620The quantum leap in our relations with the Gulf states took place in 2015 when President Obama, when the United, or rather a joint session of Congress invited me to speak before it on the impending nuclear deal that President Obama was going to sign with Iran.
01:14:54.640Now, even though I knew that I couldn't reverse it, I couldn't get two-thirds majority in the Congress to resist it, I thought I could get a majority to oppose it, and I did, consisting not only of Republicans, but quite a few Democrats.
01:16:19.260But it clashed, literally clashed, with the question of the Iran Accords, which I thought merely paved the way for Iran to become a military nuclear power which will threaten all of us.
01:16:30.000So I, not light-headedly, but after considerable deliberation, went to Washington.
01:16:37.780I arrived in Washington the evening before.
01:22:55.420That's the lingering thing among the foreign policy.
01:22:57.740And it's maybe changing because the Abraham Accords sort of started shaking people up to see that there are other opportunities, broader opportunities for peace than they ever imagined.
01:23:09.160The second reason is that for Saudi Arabia, I think, making that transition requires continually habituating Saudi public opinion, but also conforming to the broader Saudi interests.
01:23:28.100There are two interests that Saudi Arabia has.
01:23:31.940There's no question that the current leader, Mohammed bin Salman, wants to modernize Saudi Arabia, propel it to be an advanced country.
01:23:42.680It doesn't mean democratic country, not in the way that we think, but look at the United Arab Emirates, or look at Singapore, for that matter.
01:23:48.920They're not exactly European-style, Luxembourg-style democracies, okay?
01:23:54.080But they have degrees of freedom in the economy and the life of the people that is obviously very different from what you have in Iraq or Syria.
01:24:02.880It's a different thing altogether, okay?
01:24:05.600So I'm sure that they want to go there, that he would want to go there, but for the Saudi leadership to go there, they would have to, I think, be assured that their national interests, and especially their national security interests, are protected.
01:24:21.960And that requires a certain flexibility on the part of those who want them to take this move.