The Tucker Carlson Show - October 7th Foresight, Netanyahu’s Funding of Hamas, and the Settlers Murdering Palestinians

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00:00:18.920 How long have you lived in Israel?

00:00:21.000 I've been there for about 10 years.

00:00:22.620 10 years.

00:00:24.700 So we were just talking off camera and I'm, first of all, thank you for doing this.

00:00:28.580 Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

00:00:30.000 it's impossible to really understand anything from the United States

00:00:34.400 because the filters and the propaganda are just so restrictive.

00:00:39.360 But it seems obvious that October 7th is the beginning of a global reshuffling,

00:00:46.740 certainly of the Middle East.

00:00:49.360 We haven't spent enough time thinking through what that was.

00:00:53.200 What was that?

00:00:53.960 i think to properly understand october the 7th you have to you have to put together kind of a

00:01:02.340 timeline i think what's been lacking here you know i talked to a lot of palestinians and they

00:01:06.760 tell me a lot about how they they portray the war as something that sort of began after october

00:01:12.100 the 7th which is another problem we can get to at some point the israelis chalk it up to

00:01:16.580 you know the act of a rabid anti-semite i've no doubt that he was he was quite possibly an 0.51

00:01:21.480 and a Semite. 0.99

00:01:23.220 You're speaking of? 1.00

00:01:24.140 Yeah, he is in water.

00:01:25.160 Yeah.

00:01:25.380 The leader of Hamas, who's now dead.

00:01:27.620 Yeah.

00:01:29.600 But it doesn't mean that there wasn't a logic.

00:01:31.660 It doesn't mean that this happened when it happened

00:01:34.340 and how it happened for a certain time.

00:01:35.540 So just to be clear about what you're saying,

00:01:36.640 so from the Palestinian perspective,

00:01:38.280 everything we're seeing now is a result of the events

00:01:41.980 after October 7th and from the Israeli perspective,

00:01:44.540 October 7th happened just because they're hated unreasonably.

00:01:47.080 Well, I guess what I often find is when I speak to Palestinians, 0.87

00:01:49.100 And they're not wrong to say that the backdrop of all this is that there has been an occupation for a very long time.

00:01:53.960 We've been occupied since 1948, which I understand.

00:01:56.740 But it still doesn't explain the specifics of October the 7th.

00:02:00.540 It explains why at some point something like that could or quite possibly should have happened.

00:02:06.320 And so that's been something I focused on a lot.

00:02:10.260 And I think if you want to put together a proper answer, you have to put together a timeline.

00:02:13.700 You have to go back.

00:02:14.900 You have to trace basically the existence and the trajectory of Hamas from the rise to power.

00:02:19.100 But the real breaking point, I'll say, is 2021.

00:02:24.700 What happened in 2021?

00:02:27.060 Three things happened in 2021.

00:02:30.620 2021, you have tensions at Al-Aqsa Mosque.

00:02:35.100 You have famously all the tensions that went on in Sheikh Jarrah,

00:02:38.300 where there were settlers taking Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem.

00:02:41.600 That caused a lot of tension.

00:02:44.040 What happened at the Al-Aqsa complex?

00:02:46.220 that year.

00:02:48.260 There were all kinds of clashes

00:02:49.040 between Israeli border police

00:02:51.060 and Muslim worshippers.

00:02:53.820 And this went on for some time.

00:02:56.140 It was also,

00:02:56.840 it was May.

00:02:58.460 It was May.

00:02:59.700 And what happened

00:03:01.220 was that

00:03:02.480 three things happened.

00:03:05.580 Hamas fired rockets into Israel,

00:03:07.400 killing about 14 Israelis.

00:03:10.180 Riots broke out

00:03:11.360 in the middle of Israel,

00:03:12.500 across the country actually,

00:03:13.640 internal riots

00:03:14.180 between Arab Israelis

00:03:15.140 and Israeli Jews, and suddenly the West Bank woke up from a very long slumber.

00:03:19.780 Suddenly you had, for the first time in a very long time, militants who were firing

00:03:22.760 at IDF troops.

00:03:24.180 I remember seeing videos of, I think it must have been hundreds of Palestinian men marching

00:03:29.180 towards the border.

00:03:30.000 Did I think they were going to enter?

00:03:31.440 No.

00:03:32.500 But I remember calling my father, I remember calling him and saying, this video I'm seeing,

00:03:37.460 this doesn't look good.

00:03:39.900 This is an indication of something.

00:03:42.720 And in the Israeli media,

00:03:44.780 if you look back at the reports,

00:03:47.200 the Israelis perceived this to be an indication

00:03:49.440 that we have a big threat from within.

00:03:51.420 This contributed also to the rise of the right

00:03:53.100 in the years that followed.

00:03:54.960 So the first order of business was, 1.00

00:03:56.320 we have Arab Israelis and they're a problem. 1.00

00:03:59.200 We have 2 million Palestinians within our borders. 1.00

00:04:01.760 And the next thing that happened,

00:04:02.860 and you saw the borders of Israel.

00:04:04.100 Yeah, within the 48 borders.

00:04:05.820 Yeah, yeah.

00:04:06.540 Between the sea and the green line.

00:04:07.560 Yeah.

00:04:08.780 And then you had over the next year or two,

00:04:10.620 You might remember increased operations by the IDF.

00:04:14.380 Suddenly in Nablus, which used to be called the terror capital of Palestine, suddenly there was a new militia that formed.

00:04:20.500 It's called Lion's Den.

00:04:21.700 Suddenly in Janine, the refugee camps in the north of the West Bank, there are armsmen doing military marches with M-16s and masks on.

00:04:30.600 And that was the second order of business.

00:04:31.900 And the last thing that the Israelis believed was that Hamas firing some sort of like water pipe rockets into Israel was an indication of something to come, something much bigger to come.

00:04:46.200 So what was this?

00:04:49.200 I mean, as you said, you could trace this all the way back to the British mandate or whatever.

00:04:54.980 I mean, you could trace it as far back as you wanted, but you think this really began with clashes between both Israeli citizens, Arabs and Jews within Israel, and in 2021.

00:05:10.640 So how did that lead to?

00:05:12.000 Not exactly.

00:05:12.520 What I think is that, and this is why you have to go a little further back.

00:05:16.340 Sorry, this is a bit of a, I think that the internal riots were absolutely meaningless.

00:05:22.480 I think what happened in the West Bank was somewhat meaningful.

00:05:25.760 And I can explain later why I don't think it had any end to it,

00:05:28.980 why it wasn't going to come to any significant end.

00:05:31.460 But what happened in 2021, why Hamas fired rockets?

00:05:35.140 No one bothered to ask, why are they suddenly firing rockets?

00:05:37.640 Hamas came to power in 2007.

00:05:40.280 I think it was 2007.

00:05:41.920 They come to power, and this is a group that overthrew the PA.

00:05:45.160 Right. 0.99

00:05:45.820 Palestinian Authority.

00:05:46.540 Palestinian Authority. 0.57

00:05:47.220 They tossed them off rooftops, took control of Gaza. 1.00

00:05:51.260 And they came, why would people have wanted them? 1.00

00:05:54.800 Or why do they think that the Palestinians deserve them rather than the PA?

00:05:58.400 They were saying, we're a resistance group.

00:06:00.980 We're Palestinians.

00:06:02.040 We were exiled in 1948.

00:06:03.920 And the whole purpose of our existence in one way or another is to get back. 0.97

00:06:09.300 And so unlike the PA, we're not going to sit and make peace with the Jews. 0.95

00:06:12.940 We're not going to sort of like coordinate with them. 0.88

00:06:15.580 We're not going to arrest people at their behest.

00:06:17.460 We're going to fight.

00:06:19.120 And that's what they did from 2007 to 2014.

00:06:23.120 I think you have three to four ground invasions, if I'm not mistaken.

00:06:27.760 And so they were fulfilling their promise.

00:06:31.220 They didn't win. 0.78

00:06:32.160 They didn't liberate Palestine.

00:06:33.720 But what did happen is that Hamas didn't have a lot of political tension

00:06:38.320 because they were either fighting, being bombed,

00:06:41.500 or people were cleaning up the rubble.

00:06:44.620 But in 2014, just bear with me a moment,

00:06:47.820 In 2014, suddenly silence falls upon Gaza.

00:06:53.460 I think this was a silence that, I don't know if Hamas even predicted that such a silence would ever come upon Gaza. 0.99

00:07:00.720 The Israelis certainly wanted it. 0.98

00:07:02.920 It's the last war. It's called Suketan in Hebrew. 0.99

00:07:05.220 It's the last war.

00:07:06.420 The Israelis, you know, bombed a bunch of tunnels.

00:07:08.940 There were some ground operations, lots of strikes.

00:07:11.740 And it was kind of this thing where they came and said, look, we sent them back.

00:07:14.840 I think the quote from the general at the time was, we sent them back 50 years or 100 years or to the Stone Age, whatever it was.

00:07:23.020 But that's a bit of a problem for Hamas.

00:07:26.800 You're a group of gritty, sort of nitty gritty resistance fighters. 0.82

00:07:31.700 You came to power.

00:07:33.560 You fought some wars.

00:07:34.880 Didn't win.

00:07:36.280 You didn't get totally beat.

00:07:38.460 And now you're just bureaucrats.

00:07:41.880 Now you have to go from grit to governance.

00:07:44.840 And that's fine, maybe for a year, maybe for two, because the next big battle is coming.

00:07:50.380 What happens three, four, five years later?

00:07:54.240 At some point, people are sitting there, they have a much lower quality of life than people in the West Bank. 0.98

00:08:00.920 Palestinians in the West Bank, at the very least, can come into Israel for years and years and years.

00:08:05.160 Half of them illegally in work, make an Israeli salary, go back home.

00:08:09.040 In Gaza, they didn't have a whole lot going for them. 0.95

00:08:13.380 And I think at some point in time, maybe around 2018, it became clear that I think people were kind of starting to ask the question is like, okay, if we picked you and you're supposed to fight and now we're just eating shit here, we might as well get the PA back. 0.94

00:08:27.820 And you say that you don't sit down with the Jews and you don't recognize the Jews and you're not going to make peace with them. 0.96

00:08:32.200 But like you talk to them on a weekly basis, you just have some Egyptian guy in the middle playing telephone tag. 0.84

00:08:36.300 And I think that the leader of Hamas, I think Yahya Sinwar, I think he understood that, I think around 2018, he began to understand that like, this is not a sustainable, this is not something sustainable.

00:08:54.880 Can't keep going like this.

00:08:59.240 When do you think the planning for October 7th began?

00:09:04.140 And what was the thinking?

00:09:06.300 look in terms of the planning if you're talking about the concrete steps look a non-intelligence

00:09:11.840 analyst um from what we know i think from what was released uh we understand that sometime in

00:09:16.960 october 2022 it might have the real planning could have been underway the conceptual planning

00:09:24.740 for something of this sort i think had been working within sinwar since he was probably a

00:09:32.100 teenager i mean there's a famous quote i think he did i think he did the interview in hebrew

00:09:37.060 which is like all the more it's eerie it's crazy interview and he's sitting on a plastic chair

00:09:42.340 outside and they asked him something about you know do you want to do you want to kill us do

00:09:46.960 you want war with us and he goes listen right now you're strong you've got nuclear bombs i can't i 0.98

00:09:55.180 can't touch you. But in 20, maybe 15 years, you're going to be weak inside. And that's

00:10:04.280 when I'm going to strike you. And in 2018, Yahya Sinwar gave an interview. It's crazy

00:10:11.600 because, you know, I think we were just talking about this before we started. Jeffrey Goldberg

00:10:15.020 of The Atlantic, he put out a piece called Sinwar's March of Folly. I think it came out

00:10:20.140 in the summer, August, September.

00:10:22.940 And he ventured an argument as to 1.00

00:10:25.340 why Sinhwad could have done something so stupid. 0.99

00:10:28.200 And I'm bracketing morals here. 1.00

00:10:29.340 I'm not talking about whether he was good or bad.

00:10:31.440 I'm just talking about, you know, conceptually speaking.

00:10:33.460 Like the pure analysis of it.

00:10:34.720 Yeah, exactly.

00:10:36.380 And he had this line.

00:10:37.760 I must have read this piece four to five times,

00:10:40.460 and unto this day I can understand what he meant.

00:10:42.060 He said something to the effect of 0.62

00:10:45.120 Yahya Sinhwad fell prey to Muslim brotherhood supremacy,

00:10:50.140 conspiracy, conspiracism, and he lacked reasoning capabilities. 1.00

00:10:58.220 Something out of like a first year philosophy paper.

00:11:00.840 He wrote a couple of books in prison, didn't he?

00:11:02.560 In the decades he spent in prison.

00:11:04.160 He wrote one book.

00:11:05.440 One book, a novel?

00:11:06.540 Yeah.

00:11:07.280 Something of the road.

00:11:08.100 I forget the name.

00:11:08.580 The Carnation and the Eagle or something.

00:11:10.060 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:11:11.280 And he was reading quite a bit.

00:11:13.000 He'd had people, he'd read a lot, sort of like old.

00:11:16.200 Right.

00:11:16.340 So he's not an illiterate savage, whatever you think.

00:11:19.280 I'm not endorsing that. 0.94

00:11:19.760 He could be a savage. 0.95

00:11:21.320 But he wasn't an illiterate savage. 0.60

00:11:22.960 He was definitely literate.

00:11:24.140 Yeah.

00:11:24.700 He definitely had reasoning capabilities.

00:11:27.000 Yeah.

00:11:27.540 You can use reasoning capabilities to do very, very bad things.

00:11:30.240 People do.

00:11:31.020 All the time.

00:11:31.700 He did.

00:11:32.600 He did.

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00:13:13.060 so goldberg's analysis which is to say again goldberg is not even like a real person he's

00:13:21.260 like a symbol of the american ruling class's conversations with itself but he's reporting

00:13:27.040 back to his masters there's no reason behind this he's just i don't know if he was reporting

00:13:32.460 back to his masters like i don't know jeffrey goldberg i don't know who he reports to if he

00:13:35.920 reports in the media ecosystem in the united states that's considered like the highest level

00:13:39.700 of think peace.

00:13:41.320 So I don't know if he was reporting to anyone,

00:13:42.880 but he certainly believes,

00:13:45.660 I would assume he believes,

00:13:46.460 he wrote a whole essay on it,

00:13:48.120 that this was all just

00:13:49.840 rabid anti-Semitism and a failed.

00:13:53.680 And the worst part about the piece

00:13:55.100 is that he already determines the success.

00:14:00.500 He claims it's his march of folly,

00:14:02.920 meaning he failed. 1.00

00:14:04.080 Not only was he stupid 1.00

00:14:05.400 and did he have no logic whatsoever, 1.00

00:14:08.120 but he failed.

00:14:09.700 and with him all of his buddies hezbollah 1.00

00:14:13.380 they all failed and it's over it sucks you had a good you tried but you failed 0.90

00:14:17.460 um in 2018 and this is a very important quote there was an italian journalist who's since 0.96

00:14:26.520 left journalism which is crazy to me but she went out with a bang francesca battery or something

00:14:32.040 she did an interview with uh in gaza 2018 the interview was later published by ynet

00:14:38.360 in a Hebrew paper.

00:14:40.340 And it's a fascinating bit.

00:14:42.360 This was, again, if we talk about the silence

00:14:44.260 that came upon Gaza in 2014,

00:14:46.240 this is at the height of the silence.

00:14:49.200 2018.

00:14:51.180 Not a lot of people remember the wars

00:14:52.660 that happened four years ago.

00:14:54.600 And people are starting to feel a little antsy,

00:14:56.360 a little jittery.

00:14:57.660 Israel's super happy because they're like,

00:14:59.420 if we just keep feeding them, this will be great.

00:15:02.460 We can ride this wave forever.

00:15:06.340 And she asked him this question

00:15:07.820 about the next war and it's crazy that you know jeffrey goldberg didn't quote sinwad once in his

00:15:14.040 entire piece seriously as far as i might be wrong but i believe that he didn't quote sinwad once in

00:15:19.540 his whole piece and there's a plethora of quotes and they're all very very useful in trying to

00:15:23.020 understand what the hell happened and he says um he says something to the effect of and i quote

00:15:30.800 the next war or in the next war victory for Netanyahu for Netanyahu will be worse than defeat

00:15:41.560 this is a guy who apparently already knew that Netanyahu would still be in power

00:15:45.600 why you might ask because the next war is the fourth war

00:15:52.060 which cannot be and cannot end like the third which ended like the second and which ended like

00:16:01.000 the first and his closing line is they should take over gaza that's a quote who that's the

00:16:09.860 who should take over gaza israelis

00:16:12.840 the next war is the fourth it can't end like the third which ended like the second and the first

00:16:19.840 So for those who aren't steeped in this, why would the head of Hamas want the Israelis to take over Gaza? 0.78

00:16:27.100 I don't know at that point if he wanted the Israelis to take over Gaza, but I think he was pointing something.

00:16:35.840 I think he was pointing to something that's quite like theoretically elaborate, like a very, very high level understanding of how history functions.

00:16:43.620 Sounds that way.

00:16:44.540 Which is, he didn't want them to take over Gaza, but I think he understood that if there were to be another war, that it would be a disastrous war.

00:16:59.660 And that it would force Israel into a corner where they would have two options. 0.64

00:17:05.560 Either we destroy this entire place and or we occupy Gaza. 0.75

00:17:10.640 But the problem is that the Israelis already occupied Gaza. 0.93

00:17:13.280 They already tried it, and they left, and they left for very good reasons. 0.80

00:17:16.540 It was economically taxing.

00:17:18.300 It was unsustainable.

00:17:20.640 Israeli soldiers could die.

00:17:21.840 There were RPG attacks on settlements.

00:17:24.360 And I think he understood that he would, in the next war, if there were to be a next war,

00:17:30.220 put the Israelis in a position where they would be forced to grope around in the gray

00:17:34.840 for a very, very long time, even if it would appear otherwise from inside, 0.79

00:17:39.060 even if it could be sold to the population otherwise.

00:17:44.180 And along these lines, there is another quote, if you don't mind.

00:17:49.680 About a year before October the 7th, don't quote me on this,

00:17:54.020 but I think a year before October the 7th, Sinwara did a speech.

00:17:58.500 And he convened the leaders of his factions and various imams in Gaza.

00:18:03.120 And it's a pretty boring speech and he has no rhythm and he's screaming way too loud.

00:18:07.700 But there's one point that tons of people have cropped and isolated on Instagram.

00:18:11.800 and he has this line

00:18:14.700 and he says

00:18:17.060 he goes

00:18:20.980 by God

00:18:22.080 I see it with the sight of my eyes

00:18:24.860 a regional

00:18:32.400 religious war

00:18:33.980 that will burn with it 0.84

00:18:35.720 the green and the dry

00:18:41.800 You mean the one we're in right now?

00:18:43.660 Yeah.

00:18:44.380 The one that will go on for a very, very long time,

00:18:46.680 even if it appears to have ended.

00:18:48.820 Yeah.

00:18:51.260 So it sounds like you think that in planning

00:18:56.380 the attacks of October 7th, he saw the long game

00:18:59.720 and understood that it'd be hard for Israel

00:19:02.740 to deal with those consequences over time.

00:19:07.460 I think, to put it a little more specifically,

00:19:10.800 I think Sinwad understood that the status quo that fell into place after 2014, this long silence, that it was poison for the Palestinian cause.

00:19:22.980 The notion of Palestinian resistance.

00:19:24.960 If your cause is that Palestinians should just live, go to work, bring their bread home, then it's certainly antithetical to that.

00:19:31.600 I think he understood that this was poison.

00:19:34.140 And that if he continued on this way, what will the next generation say when they didn't grow up with any wars?

00:19:40.800 how long can you go on putting on marches for martyr children with cardboard tanks and fake

00:19:46.820 rpgs how long can you go on convening your imams to talk about the day after who's going to be the 0.76

00:19:53.640 next imam of al-Aqsa after we liberate palestin how long can you go on with the with the foaming

00:19:57.480 platitudes it can't go on and the longer you let it go on the weaker you get and i think he understood

00:20:04.120 that one thing was certain you know when you shake a snow globe you can shake it shake it

00:20:10.320 shake it the flakes fly everywhere and the one thing of which you can be certain is that the

00:20:15.320 flakes won't fall in the same place that's the one thing you can know and i think he understood

00:20:23.400 that in that that an attack like this it's like it's the 9-11 of the of this conflict yeah

00:20:28.860 that whatever was before won't be after and that's why you call it a bloodbath you rinse the slate

00:20:36.140 And it's having or likely to have similar effects to the effects of 9-11 on the U.S.

00:20:42.140 It draws the country into all kinds of unanticipated conflicts that weaken the country and cause internal division within the country.

00:20:50.380 Yeah.

00:20:51.000 That'd be my guess.

00:20:52.500 So to that extent, it's successful.

00:20:54.280 It is strategic and it's effective.

00:20:56.640 In the short term, it's been successful, certainly. 0.99

00:20:58.660 And I think in the long term, I think everyone, especially Israelis, have to wait.

00:21:02.600 you know there's a status quo that dies and there's this notion in israel now that

00:21:07.600 status quo died and we and we immediately established a new one meaning they broke the

00:21:13.180 last status quo where we had peace and they had we had these little boxing rounds every two years 0.87

00:21:16.860 with hamas or whatever but now we're strong now we do whatever we want we bombed them we bombed

00:21:23.540 them we bombed in lebanon we bombed it on we're in control but this but you don't decide when a 0.70

00:21:29.500 status quo comes into birth. That's history. There are millions of variables that come

00:21:34.860 into that decision. Gaza has not even been rebuilt. Currently, Hamas has control of,

00:21:39.920 I think, 46, 48 percent of Gaza. So Israelis are groping around. I think they're entering 0.99

00:21:45.900 into probably what will be, in retrospect, the darkest and most fraught period since

00:21:52.000 the establishment of the state. They're groping around in the gray.

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00:23:13.360 So I want to hear where you think that's going and why it is as dark as it's been in almost 80 years.

00:23:19.640 But back to October 7th itself.

00:23:24.460 Yeah, sure.

00:23:25.460 So that was, you said you thought it was probably in the planning phases for at least a year.

00:23:32.060 It would have had to have been, just given its scale, I would think.

00:23:35.820 I think if you also look in October 2022, this is what the Israelis say.

00:23:39.220 I think they found some kind of binder on the border, October 2022 on it. 0.89

00:23:43.380 But that was the year in which Hamas repaired their relations with the Shia Axis. 0.91

00:23:48.260 Yeah. 0.91

00:23:48.480 That's the year in which suddenly you had, I think, Haniyah going to Moscow.

00:23:51.100 Right.

00:23:51.460 They repaired relations with Syria.

00:23:53.280 And that was kind of, I think, the key into getting them back into the fold with people like Nasrallah. 0.51

00:23:58.520 Right. 0.96

00:23:58.680 Suddenly you have Islamic jihad and Hamas are meeting with Nasrallah on a regular basis.

00:24:02.580 I think they were invited to Iran also at a certain point.

00:24:05.940 And I think so those are some pretty serious indications.

00:24:08.360 But I mean, Israeli intelligence being, you know, as effective as it is, clearly must have picked up signals this was going on.

00:24:18.980 That's already been released.

00:24:20.280 Yeah. So explain, if you would.

00:24:24.100 I mean, there are people who probably know this better than I, but there was a document that circulated within Israeli intelligence called, I think, the Jericho Wall.

00:24:31.460 there was an intelligence analyst i believe she was a female who sort of saw what was happening

00:24:38.420 in gaza that there were certain military drills certain speeches and there was an indication that

00:24:43.520 they were planning something really serious and uh the story goes that her higher-ups i think

00:24:48.200 bergman reported on this if i'm not mistaken story goes that her higher-ups basically said like yeah

00:24:53.140 yeah um that's cute but no we don't it's like inadmissible trash um you had also soldiers at

00:25:01.680 the observation posts along the border who uh i don't know when exactly i don't know if this was

00:25:07.820 in the weeks or the months leading up to october the 7th but that were reporting to their higher

00:25:11.780 ups that like there were some strange little movements it commences and much has been written

00:25:20.640 about and even more speculated about a so-called stand-down order or the israeli government

00:25:25.100 response to it what what's your belief about what happened are you asking whether or not i think

00:25:31.720 the israeli higher-ups wanted this to get out of control no i'm asking like what did happen

00:25:40.920 what do you think actually happened like why why from an outsider perspective it seems like the

00:25:47.460 response was inadequate it was certainly inadequate right why look i don't know but

00:25:55.180 what's strange to me is that um i think it was in the week or two after tzachiyan negbi who was like

00:26:00.500 the equivalent to the head of homeland security i guess or the national security council something

00:26:04.520 like that um in israel he came out and admitted that i think three to four hours before the attack

00:26:10.480 there you know certain intelligence officials and i think the general like they convened there was a

00:26:14.760 discussion. It's not like they woke up at 6.30 a.m. So there was certainly something that happened

00:26:21.920 among the highest echelons. One question I've had is why... Wait, do we know what they talked about?

00:26:28.060 No, but there's a quote that circulated in Israeli media that apparently the general

00:26:31.600 at the time got out of bed and his wife was sort of like, what's going on? And he just

00:26:37.840 apparently turned around and said, Gaza's going to be destroyed. That's a quote that circulated

00:26:42.960 around uh israeli media i don't know at what time this happens could have been at you know 6 29 i

00:26:49.340 doubt it though because apparently the people were convened before i don't know i know what i saw

00:26:54.960 on october the 7th i know where i was so what did you see and what's your conclusion

00:27:00.960 one thing i'll say is that three weeks before october the 7th i met with a journalist he's a

00:27:12.940 And he'd come like a year and a half before, and he was starting out fresh.

00:27:18.260 I don't think he knew Israel-Palestine super well.

00:27:21.020 And I wanted to become a mainstream journalist at the time, 0.97

00:27:23.100 so I thought he could help me scratch each other's backs.

00:27:26.160 And we would talk a lot about what was going on.

00:27:27.840 And for about a year and a half, I was telling him that something's going to happen,

00:27:30.660 like there's something weird that's going on.

00:27:35.000 And he'd listen to me, and he'd help me out.

00:27:36.940 And about three weeks before October the 7th, we met for a beer in Jerusalem,

00:27:40.440 And that was the same day in which the Palestinians, I believe it was three weeks before, were doing these marches of return. 0.78

00:27:46.480 You know, when they flood the borders, they throw incendiary balloons, burn some fields, and wait for the Israelis to come back and be like, okay, what will it take you? 0.93

00:27:52.840 What's your price? 1.00

00:27:53.660 What will it take you to shut the fuck up? 0.99

00:27:57.340 And he asked me, he's like, why do you think this is happening? 0.99

00:27:59.660 And I remember distinctly looking at him and saying, I don't know.

00:28:02.600 because after 2021 or 2022 i believe um bennett naftali bennett um lifted the permit uh what do

00:28:14.340 you call the permit ceiling as it were like the quota it's like some 20 22 000 gazans received

00:28:19.200 permits to come to israel um after years of them not having any um and so usually they would do

00:28:27.780 these sorts of antics to get something we want construction materials we want work permits we

00:28:31.920 want something but there was nothing really to ask for and so he when we said goodbye that day

00:28:38.460 I remember I'll never forget this he looked at me and he said you know all right I think you're a

00:28:42.360 really smart guy um and I appreciate you've taught me a lot but I just think you've misunderstood

00:28:49.580 this place I think you're a bit apocalyptic I looked at him and I said Tom I think you've spent 0.98

00:28:56.020 a little too much time with the Israelis. 1.00

00:28:59.800 And so if I could have come to those conclusions

00:29:02.040 with the limited amounts of information I had,

00:29:04.980 I'm sure there were many people

00:29:07.260 within the intelligence establishment

00:29:08.840 that had some idea.

00:29:10.640 Do I think that Bibi allowed 3,000 or 2,000 Hamas militants

00:29:16.040 to enter the country and kill people?

00:29:18.680 I'm a little doubtful, but I don't know.

00:29:22.460 From an American perspective

00:29:23.760 or the perspective of anyone who's visited that border,

00:29:25.800 which I have, pretty secure border looks like the Southern border. So like how, how did that

00:29:33.420 happen? Does anyone, let me rephrase. Has there been what you consider an honest and reliable

00:29:40.460 accounting of how it happened? Like how did these guys get in here?

00:29:46.240 I think it's known. What do you mean by how? I think physically speaking, people know how they

00:29:50.560 got in. I mean, the border was largely, I mean, you know, people were in their bunks sleeping.

00:29:54.920 It was also a Jewish holiday.

00:29:56.800 There was no increased level of alertness as far as I've heard.

00:30:00.960 You certainly didn't have drones or anything in the air,

00:30:02.880 which could have solved this entire problem within about 15 minutes. 0.90

00:30:06.400 So you have enough Gaza, enough RPGs, enough explosives.

00:30:09.060 You break through concrete.

00:30:11.120 Oh, I know that.

00:30:12.320 But you just imagine that the border with Gaza,

00:30:16.040 when there are credible intelligence reports,

00:30:18.440 it's something weird that's going on.

00:30:19.260 Maybe we don't know what it is,

00:30:20.120 but they would be on sufficient alert to have stopped this at the line.

00:30:24.840 Why something didn't happen between that meeting,

00:30:29.320 which I've heard was between certain members of intelligence

00:30:31.540 at maybe three in the morning,

00:30:32.720 why there weren't drones that were put in the air

00:30:34.740 or a helicopter or heightened alertness,

00:30:38.060 like significantly heightened alertness, I don't know.

00:30:40.520 But what I have learned over many, many years in Israel 0.91

00:30:42.560 is that you would be surprised by what people can get away with.

00:30:46.760 I know people in the West Bank who have fake Israeli IDs

00:30:49.320 who slip in illegally and stolen Israeli cars 0.72

00:30:51.800 to smoke hash with their friends on the other side

00:30:53.900 and then go back.

00:30:56.120 You'd be surprised.

00:30:57.840 So the myth of Israeli government efficiency is a myth?

00:31:02.380 Yeah, I don't...

00:31:03.240 Yeah.

00:31:05.400 So it's not...

00:31:07.180 Security's not as competent as people imagine it is.

00:31:11.040 When it wants to be competent, it's very competent.

00:31:13.940 I mean, if you ask yourself, for example,

00:31:15.380 in Lebanon and Iran right now,

00:31:17.120 how is it that they have thousands upon thousands

00:31:19.500 of targets that are readily available?

00:31:21.280 That's exactly right.

00:31:22.500 It's because they wanted to have them. 0.95

00:31:25.500 They set their sights on Iran and Lebanon and they neglected Gaza. 0.91

00:31:30.340 Yeah, and that's the central question is why. 0.62

00:31:33.240 And so once it's in progress, there is a stand-down order.

00:31:39.400 What was that?

00:31:42.240 Why did they do that?

00:31:44.140 Well, you can't flood the area with IDF because, look, you're talking about a lot of troops, especially for the holidays.

00:31:48.600 Or maybe in the north, it might be two, three hours away.

00:31:51.140 So I think it's a bit unreasonable to expect

00:31:53.540 that they would have flooded the whole place with troops.

00:31:56.840 It's harder.

00:31:57.400 People have to get their guns and get equipment.

00:31:59.120 It's logistical mayhem.

00:32:01.500 There were soldiers in the first two weeks of the war

00:32:02.920 that didn't even have helmets.

00:32:04.080 You had Jewish communities that were sending basic equipment

00:32:06.740 because there were massive shortages.

00:32:09.380 The real question, in my opinion, is why,

00:32:11.700 if there was some kind of indication around 3 a.m.,

00:32:14.440 why the Air Force wasn't involved,

00:32:17.300 why helicopters, drones, or fighter jets

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00:34:05.180 Once that happened, once those attacks happened, was it always inevitable, the response? Was Gaza always going to get leveled once that happened? 0.97

00:34:14.760 If that operation, if that attack were to be successful, 0.54

00:34:18.280 and I think if we follow Sinwar's thread, 0.69

00:34:21.500 I think it's fair to assume that he knew. 0.50

00:34:23.500 What do you mean by that this war will take with it

00:34:26.020 or burn with it all the green and all the dry?

00:34:29.640 It's called scorched earth.

00:34:31.300 Yeah.

00:34:32.180 I think, yeah, I think there was an assumption

00:34:33.720 that something of this nature would happen.

00:34:36.460 The exact extent, no one can predict.

00:34:39.240 Right, of course not.

00:34:40.260 No.

00:34:41.220 But that there would be massive change,

00:34:43.460 potentially even of borders long-term?

00:34:47.260 Potentially. 0.96

00:34:48.420 In Gaza, certainly.

00:34:50.000 I think the talk of border changes,

00:34:52.100 for example, in Syria and Lebanon,

00:34:53.600 I think it's a bit overblown.

00:34:55.860 I think it's a bit overblown.

00:34:57.560 Yeah, I have no idea.

00:34:58.860 We'll see.

00:35:00.040 But, you know, things change.

00:35:02.980 I just have to pause and ask,

00:35:05.140 at this stage, you know, years later,

00:35:09.360 what is the plan for Gaza, do you think?

00:35:13.460 the Netanyahu government's plan for Gaza. 0.98

00:35:15.820 You've got all these people living there. 0.60

00:35:17.440 He said on television this morning,

00:35:19.320 we're going to go with the Trump plan 0.96

00:35:21.320 to move them all out of Gaza.

00:35:23.620 Highly doubt that that's going to happen. 1.00

00:35:25.320 Well, I kind of doubt that too.

00:35:28.060 I think there's this myth

00:35:31.160 that certainly circulates in the Arab world,

00:35:34.000 but definitely here in America too,

00:35:35.940 that there's a whole lot more strategy,

00:35:38.860 that there's a whole lot more foresight in Israel.

00:35:40.920 Yes, but people definitely believe that 0.57

00:35:42.900 this is part of a plan, greater Israel, this is a strategy. 0.91

00:35:46.480 I think you're overestimating the foresight. 0.99

00:35:50.780 I wouldn't be surprised if I am.

00:35:52.200 Not you specifically, but I don't think there's a massive plan in Gaza.

00:35:56.380 There are certainly plans that have been thrown around.

00:35:58.260 But right now, as far as you can see, and this is precisely what's in water. 0.89

00:36:02.020 So I know that the Israelis had zero, this is a fact, 0.69

00:36:05.060 they had zero plan, at least communicated to the United States,

00:36:07.800 for what would happen after the Ayatollah was killed in Iran.

00:36:11.140 They didn't have a good government in waiting.

00:36:12.900 or any kind of...

00:36:13.580 Because it doesn't matter to them.

00:36:15.100 Well, clearly. 0.87

00:36:16.000 What matters to Israel,

00:36:17.220 what's useful for Bibi Netanyahu specifically

00:36:19.840 is simply chaos.

00:36:21.740 And the more definition that is given to the chaos,

00:36:24.000 the more he has to account for the shape that it's taken.

00:36:26.620 Right, smart.

00:36:27.500 That's right.

00:36:29.620 The difference between Iran and Gaza, though,

00:36:32.160 is Gaza's like on your border. 0.90

00:36:34.520 So would they want...

00:36:35.640 Would he want chaos in Gaza?

00:36:37.900 Well, if you look at the border right now,

00:36:39.740 I mean, you have a ton of buffer.

00:36:42.900 it's not really bordering Israel anymore.

00:36:47.220 And so in that sense, I think,

00:36:48.600 and there's not a ton of chaos, 0.88

00:36:49.840 meaning Hamas is,

00:36:50.720 I don't know if they're in shambles.

00:36:52.340 I think there are a lot of tunnels

00:36:53.300 that are still left, for example.

00:36:55.080 They have light weapons.

00:36:57.460 They have AK-47s.

00:36:58.680 They have like tiny rockets

00:36:59.720 they can sometimes send in.

00:37:00.960 They're collecting taxes, apparently.

00:37:03.840 So they're functioning. 0.55

00:37:06.120 Are they a threat to Israel

00:37:07.980 at this moment in time?

00:37:09.700 No. 1.00

00:37:10.040 And that's since Bibi did the minimum 0.69

00:37:12.460 he would have to do and still stopping short of actually determining a reality because then he

00:37:19.260 would have to explain to the israelis why did i do x and not y so you don't think that there

00:37:25.960 anybody has a clear picture of where gaza is in 10 years in 10 years no but i do think that bb

00:37:33.800 and the administration and the idf alongside probably have an idea where gaza what they will

00:37:42.000 doing Gaza if

00:37:43.500 X happens with Iran, if Y happens

00:37:46.080 with Lebanon.

00:37:47.740 BB's playing sort of musical wars.

00:37:51.220 Why does he have

00:37:51.960 a war? Why did they time Lebanon 1.00

00:37:53.860 right now? It's a failsafe for Iran. 1.00

00:37:56.540 If Trump decides to pull out of Iran, 0.98

00:37:57.960 if Iran doesn't go the way BB needs, 0.91

00:38:00.840 then he always has Lebanon. 0.98

00:38:02.980 And if all of that 0.61

00:38:04.140 doesn't go the way he needs, 0.93

00:38:05.800 he could go back into Gaza. 0.96

00:38:08.540 You're suggesting that he has to have 0.60

00:38:10.040 a war.

00:38:12.000 at least until he gets elected next?

00:38:15.040 I think so.

00:38:15.740 You really think that's the motive?

00:38:19.760 I think there are many motives.

00:38:21.360 I think this is certainly...

00:38:23.000 The timing of a lot of things...

00:38:25.600 The strange thing about Bibi is that,

00:38:27.740 look, on the one hand,

00:38:29.440 there's a national interest

00:38:30.800 that lines up with a personal interest.

00:38:33.240 It's not just that Bibi is doing something

00:38:35.460 that wouldn't in any way benefit

00:38:39.280 the national security of the country. 0.99

00:38:40.480 I believe that as far as Israel is concerned, striking it on is quite possibly a great idea. 1.00

00:38:46.340 You have one of the largest proxy networks in the history of the Middle East 1.00

00:38:49.540 that's bent on doing something to Israel, destroying them forever. 0.62

00:38:53.620 I don't know if that was exactly the case.

00:38:55.480 You have a massive paramilitary group on your border with Lebanon.

00:38:58.640 Those are valid, relatively objective strategic goals.

00:39:03.260 But if you can tinker with them,

00:39:05.160 If you can time them and modulate them to serve your personal motives, well, it's a win-win.

00:39:15.540 So, have you heard anybody articulate plans for, just to be totally clear on this, for moving the more than one, probably fewer than two million people in Gaza anywhere?

00:39:29.100 No, but I have something else that I don't think has ever been released, actually.

00:39:32.960 I was working with the Washington Post

00:39:35.900 until they fired their whole foreign desk

00:39:37.900 as you saw

00:39:38.460 and we were doing a lot of interviews

00:39:41.360 on the day after

00:39:43.260 specifically reconstruction

00:39:44.900 and trying to follow the money

00:39:46.620 because that's what Gaza is about right now

00:39:49.380 it's all about money

00:39:50.160 and it's not just American money or Israeli money 0.56

00:39:52.220 it's the Gulf countries, it's Egypt

00:39:53.800 the PA wants to get their finger in there as well

00:39:56.360 and I confirmed this with two

00:39:59.900 actually quite possibly three sources

00:40:01.680 if I'm not mistaken

00:40:02.680 and this might not end up being the case

00:40:06.220 but I understood that the center that was put together

00:40:10.240 by the American army in Kiryat Gat

00:40:12.020 to map out or sort of strategize about Gaza

00:40:15.620 and assist the Israelis

00:40:16.680 that they were making calls

00:40:19.260 that their lawyers were making calls

00:40:20.500 to certain organizations

00:40:21.480 to look into the status of private property in Gaza

00:40:24.420 basically among many things

00:40:28.940 I heard that the plan was

00:40:31.080 Have you ever seen the flyers that the Israelis drop in Gaza

00:40:33.580 or the evacuation notices?

00:40:34.940 Yeah.

00:40:35.400 And they usually divide it into sort of blocks.

00:40:37.940 You have numbered blocks and those are private properties, right?

00:40:41.640 Now, if you have an entire swath of territory,

00:40:44.180 entire neighborhoods that are upside down or backwards

00:40:46.780 that no longer follow the logic of a grid,

00:40:50.580 you can't expect that some Qatari or Saudi or whatever company

00:40:54.420 is going to come in and rebuild Gaza identically to the way it was before.

00:40:58.600 No. 0.54

00:40:59.040 So I heard that the plan was to have, to sort of like rotate, take a population from an area, move them away, build a massive complex, as it were, could be condominiums, could be apartments, I don't know what, and then move them back and continue doing this rotation for however long it takes.

00:41:15.900 What does that mean? 0.66

00:41:16.640 It means that you are fundamentally altering the urban planning with the demography and private property of Gaza. 0.73

00:41:27.960 If you have a building on a swath of land, on a plot of land that used to have five to seven bits of private property, you have to reconfigure and you have to suspend that private property and create a new precedent.

00:41:42.120 I was told by someone very, very high up in the PA that this was intended, that there was going to be a suspension of private property for a period of maybe seven years.

00:41:53.800 Now, what does that mean?

00:41:55.640 it quite possibly and this is the most cynical possible conclusion you could draw it could mean

00:42:02.460 that it could mean basically that is look in the west bank it's it's sometimes israel struggles to

00:42:10.340 take certain parts of swaths of land or to build actual settlements sometimes they'll have caravans

00:42:15.640 in certain areas but not houses and the reason is that to some degree israel still beholden to

00:42:20.040 Ottoman and Jordanian legal precedent.

00:42:22.880 And they can wiggle around, 0.53

00:42:24.660 you can maneuver,

00:42:25.900 but it can't be nullified.

00:42:28.020 It's very hard.

00:42:28.380 You see this in East Jerusalem, exactly.

00:42:29.960 All the time.

00:42:31.700 So what happens,

00:42:32.880 I'll pose you the question, I guess.

00:42:34.240 What happens in Gaza

00:42:35.440 if you suspend all of private property

00:42:37.800 and you're going to say,

00:42:38.820 in seven years, we're going to revisit it

00:42:40.220 or it will be reconfigured by legal experts

00:42:42.020 who by then will have disappeared.

00:42:44.140 You break a massive precedent.

00:42:46.320 It's just a reset, exactly.

00:42:48.680 It's a golden opportunity

00:42:50.140 Will that happen?

00:42:51.000 I don't know.

00:42:52.800 But based on everything I've heard,

00:42:54.540 it is within the realm of possibility.

00:42:57.760 And it makes logical sense as well.

00:43:00.520 So it's a, yeah.

00:43:02.640 Did people in Israel take the Trump administration's plan

00:43:06.580 for redevelopment with casinos and beachfront condos?

00:43:09.940 They take that seriously?

00:43:12.180 Like citizens in Israel, people?

00:43:13.980 You think the government did?

00:43:15.500 I don't know.

00:43:16.800 Did you?

00:43:18.000 No.

00:43:18.900 Yeah.

00:43:19.460 No.

00:43:19.920 like that's not going to happen i highly doubt it yeah it's still run by by a militant group

00:43:28.320 there's still some there's hundreds of kilometers of tunnels that have been dealt with by the idf

00:43:32.500 which they also lied about i spoke to a general his name is itchak break have you heard of him

00:43:38.120 no um it's strange because he's not i think his english is a little bad and so we don't hear from

00:43:43.340 him a lot in the west but he was a guy who went on three months before october the 7th and said

00:43:47.920 quote there will be a massacre here this is a guy who was a general reserve general who also

00:43:54.560 audited he was tasked with i think for many many years auditing um uh troops he worked for the idf

00:44:00.720 audit meaning he would go between fronts between units and assess troop readiness routines

00:44:06.100 equipment he knew the idf inside and out and he worked under several generals leading up to

00:44:11.320 october the 7th and for years he was screaming that we are we're not really ready for anything

00:44:16.980 and we're cutting our ground troops

00:44:19.060 because we want to be a compact,

00:44:20.880 technologically adept army.

00:44:24.080 But we're basically rendering ourselves naked on the ground.

00:44:28.220 And he went down to the Gaza border

00:44:29.520 and he sees that basically the soldiers

00:44:31.420 treat it like summer camp.

00:44:32.740 You have girls doing TikTok videos. 0.75

00:44:37.780 It's like summer camp.

00:44:39.320 It reached a point again, back to the status quo, 1.00

00:44:41.660 where Israelis genuinely believed

00:44:43.380 that the conflict was kind of over. 0.98

00:44:46.660 This is just, it's going to be this way.

00:44:48.280 There's going to be a big wall.

00:44:49.340 They're going to be there.

00:44:49.960 We're going to be here.

00:44:52.780 And Iitzhak Brik, I sat with him a lot about a year ago.

00:44:58.200 And he was telling me that he was getting calls from a lot of soldiers who work in the tunnel units.

00:45:02.680 And I spoke to several soldiers who either worked in the tunnels or were guarding, tasked with guarding them, supervising the work.

00:45:09.560 That there was tons left.

00:45:11.980 Tons left.

00:45:12.580 He said, this general said 75%.

00:45:14.580 75%. I don't know if that's definitely true. But I heard from a lot of soldiers that the

00:45:19.560 material used to totally destroy tunnels is very expensive and perhaps in short supply.

00:45:26.660 And so a lot of what was happening was sort of sealing the tunnels. You pour concrete inside

00:45:31.500 and it just takes probably some dudes, however many days later, to come

00:45:36.260 and undo the concrete, break the concrete. And I also heard from soldiers that Hamas was repairing

00:45:42.400 tunnels during the war. In the midst of fighting, there were tunnels that were being or shafts that

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00:46:57.080 There was a big debate in this country about whether or not the Israeli government

00:47:02.040 sent money, not its own money,

00:47:05.460 but the money of the United States and Qatar to Hamas,

00:47:09.340 whether Netanyahu did that,

00:47:10.820 and then it seemed to have been confirmed.

00:47:13.800 Will you tell us what you know about that

00:47:15.360 and what the motive was?

00:47:17.540 Are we talking about the money that came in

00:47:18.860 before October the 7th?

00:47:20.720 Of course, before October the 7th.

00:47:22.080 Oh, the suitcases of cash.

00:47:23.260 Exactly, yeah.

00:47:24.860 Well, yeah, I know that there was tons of cash.

00:47:27.300 I don't actually have the numbers.

00:47:28.340 I forget.

00:47:29.040 What was the thinking?

00:47:30.420 I mean, I think it's confirmed now.

00:47:31.480 That was considered very controversial.

00:47:32.680 There are pictures of the suitcases and of the money going into Gaza. 0.65

00:47:36.800 Yeah, it's definitely confirmed.

00:47:39.320 The thinking was, we keep them happy and fat, and they don't bother us.

00:47:46.020 Which is, again, the logic of the marches of return. 0.93

00:47:48.140 We're going to come, we're going to make some noise until the Israelis come and say, 0.83

00:47:50.860 what's your price? 0.92

00:47:51.840 What will it take to get you to shut up?

00:47:53.700 More money, more work permits, construction materials.

00:47:57.400 It was part of maintaining a status quo.

00:47:59.360 and someone probably didn't want to realize that this if i get too fat if we get too fat we won't

00:48:05.780 be able to move anymore right i think i think it's that simple so from thousands of miles away

00:48:13.980 it seems like israel seems like a pretty tough project to keep going over generations because

00:48:22.960 of the numbers just tiny countries surrounded by people who don't like it or recognize its

00:48:29.920 legitimacy some of whom are motivated to do harm so that's like that's not a good ratio over time 0.51

00:48:36.180 it's hard to maintain that it's like from the Israeli perspective do people think ever think

00:48:42.560 of that no but I think there's about there's maybe two or three ways of looking at this on

00:48:46.640 the one hand there's a demographic perspective where yeah that's what I mean yeah the numbers

00:48:51.160 That's one perspective.

00:48:52.600 And if you look at the numbers,

00:48:53.620 so like how many Jews are there in Israel?

00:48:55.960 I think there's seven.

00:48:57.080 Seven, something like that.

00:48:59.500 You have two million Palestinians

00:49:00.960 who have citizenship.

00:49:03.640 But I think the proper calculation is

00:49:06.260 within the area under control,

00:49:09.080 under Israeli control,

00:49:10.740 what's the population divide?

00:49:12.500 And at that point you have 50-50.

00:49:14.520 If you take the West Bank, 0.98

00:49:15.900 where there are also Jews living,

00:49:17.140 but also Gaza,

00:49:18.040 because these are all areas 0.98

00:49:19.060 that impinge upon Israel

00:49:21.280 and which are under Israeli control tacitly

00:49:23.980 or actually you have 7 million Palestinians,

00:49:27.920 two in Israel, three in the West Bank,

00:49:29.280 two in Gaza, so seven.

00:49:32.360 You have 7 million Jews.

00:49:34.720 It's halved right now.

00:49:35.860 It's split, half-half.

00:49:37.900 Demographically speaking, that is a problem. 0.95

00:49:41.040 Do I think that will be what brings Israel to its knees

00:49:43.480 if it is ever brought to its knees?

00:49:45.380 No.

00:49:46.320 I was thinking more of the macro demographic problem.

00:49:49.460 Of the Arab world? 1.00

00:49:50.780 The Muslim world.

00:49:52.120 Almost two billion.

00:49:54.040 So when I hear Netanyahu say we're fighting a seven front war,

00:49:59.060 whatever number of fronts it was, seven fronts recently,

00:50:01.640 I think you don't have the economy, you don't have the manpower,

00:50:05.760 and you no longer have the goodwill to sustain that for very long at all.

00:50:10.660 Like, ultimately, if you have enough enemies,

00:50:13.680 and there's too few of you and enough of them,

00:50:15.760 you're going to lose.

00:50:16.640 People have been saying that for a long time.

00:50:18.860 Well, it hasn't even been there 80 years, so.

00:50:22.080 I think they bet on a few things.

00:50:24.020 They have nuclear weapons.

00:50:25.080 They have a great intelligence agency

00:50:27.740 and they bet on the incompetence 1.00

00:50:29.660 of the Muslim countries around them. 1.00

00:50:30.840 For sure, for sure.

00:50:33.540 But there's also a sense in which you can't fight everybody. 0.87

00:50:37.700 And so I don't see, when I talk to Israelis 0.99

00:50:40.360 and just when I watch,

00:50:41.300 i don't see any long-term strategy that rests on real alliances like you have to have

00:50:48.500 this is true not just for israel but for each one of us as a person in this world you have to have

00:50:53.420 more powerful friends than you do enemies or else ultimately you get destroyed and i don't see that

00:50:58.240 realization at all it seems almost arranged i guess we have who cares if you have nuclear

00:51:02.960 weapons so does everyone else like so what everyone else doesn't have nuclear weapons but

00:51:07.140 But I mean, a lot of people, including in your region.

00:51:09.880 That's true.

00:51:10.760 But I think right now you have this logic being pushed around by Bibi, which is, you know, peace through strength. 0.56

00:51:16.640 I think the Israelis have this sense that if we push long enough, let's say we do manage to change the regime in Iran, not topple it, but change it.

00:51:24.580 We can have an arrangement.

00:51:25.380 The Gulf countries, because they've felt very exposed right now, maybe there'll be tension.

00:51:30.360 There'll be tension with the United States.

00:51:31.940 Maybe this will also bring other Gulf countries closer to us.

00:51:35.500 There are already tacit relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

00:51:38.520 They exchange intelligence, among other things.

00:51:40.480 But maybe this will bring them closer.

00:51:42.180 I think they have pretty... 1.00

00:51:43.040 Yeah, well, the Saudis have been pushing for this war. 1.00

00:51:47.780 Exactly. 0.96

00:51:48.820 And in Lebanon...

00:51:49.480 They're on the same side as Israel, basically, on this question.

00:51:51.960 And in Lebanon, what was the aim when Israel went into Lebanon in the 80s? 0.82

00:51:55.880 The aim was, we want to change the demography.

00:51:58.460 We're going to change the government. 0.99

00:51:59.920 We're going to put the Christians in power and make peace. 1.00

00:52:02.720 The opposite happened. 1.00

00:52:04.040 The opposite happened.

00:52:04.760 And what are they doing now? 0.81

00:52:07.000 I believe that in some dim recess, it might not actually be an active strategy, but I do believe that in some dim recess, Israel would like civil war in Lebanon.

00:52:16.860 Because between you and me, if I'm being totally honest, the only way to deal with Hezbollah, Hezbollah is not just a paramilitary group. 0.67

00:52:24.640 They are demographically entrenched in the country.

00:52:27.380 They are South Lebanon and they are the Shiite population that was also oppressed for a very long time.

00:52:31.680 And there are a lot of Shiites in Beirut now.

00:52:33.440 It's not just the South. 0.98

00:52:34.760 Yeah, and so I think there is a desire for potentially civil war in Lebanon.

00:52:40.680 For sure, and that, I mean, you've seen this, well, you saw it in Syria, you know, you've seen it in a lot of the same strategy.

00:52:47.080 I'm just saying, and I'm not attaching values to any of this, like what's right or wrong, or even what's good for the United States, or any of that.

00:52:52.900 I just think, as a general principle, that's day trading, that's like a short-term strategy that doesn't work long-term, but maybe people think it does work long-term, like you can do that forever, I don't think you can.

00:53:04.480 No, probably not. I think they're hoping that either this all turns out exactly the way they want it, which is highly unlikely, or that you have enough chaos. There's a desire for chaos that all of these places should be at least uncertain. If we can't determine what the best possible reality for us, then the very least, the reality should be indeterminate. It should be in flux.

00:53:28.580 Right. No, I get it. I totally get it. And again, I'm not even judging this or that's wrong. This is not a lecture. I just mean like as a kind of almost a physics principle, over time, chaos is bad for you. It's bad for everybody. It's bad to have chaos nearby you. It's bad to have your neighbor get divorced. That actually increases the chances you get divorced.

00:53:51.020 There's a way in which chaos is a virus and it hurts you in the end, even though you think you can control it, you can't.

00:53:58.680 I think that's a pretty stable principle of history. 0.94

00:54:02.460 I think the big weak point of Israel, I think sometimes when you look strategically at the surrounding countries, there's another point here, which is Israel on the interior. 0.73

00:54:15.640 Israel psychologically. 0.55

00:54:17.060 Right. 0.90

00:54:17.420 The Israeli psyche. 0.65

00:54:18.400 Exactly. 1.00

00:54:18.800 I think that is the actual weak point.

00:54:23.520 If anything brings Israel to its knees,

00:54:27.340 which doesn't mean it will be exterminated or extinguished,

00:54:30.300 that it will die as a state,

00:54:31.740 but the thing that will fundamentally shatter the foundation,

00:54:35.880 either to end the country or to start a fresh status quo for the country,

00:54:40.020 it will be internal.

00:54:41.980 I believe that.

00:54:42.880 And if you want to understand that dynamic,

00:54:45.960 I think you have to look to the West Bank.

00:54:47.920 Well, can I just say, this is so often overlooked.

00:54:50.900 Yeah.

00:54:51.920 One of the only real genocides in history was the Romans in 70 AD in Jerusalem. 0.86

00:54:57.140 And one of the reasons that they were able, that siege was successful is because of the almost unbelievably barbaric fighting between Jewish factions within Jerusalem. 0.89

00:55:08.160 Like the Romans got through because the defenders were fighting each other. 0.96

00:55:12.120 I just think that's also another principle.

00:55:13.660 It's like if you destroy, if you don't have a unified country, you're much weaker than you think you are, I guess.

00:55:18.740 I mean, yes and no.

00:55:19.820 Sometimes I do think about that. 1.00

00:55:21.000 On the other hand, Israelis do at least, until now, they've shown a pretty serious ability to just put all of their problems aside. 1.00

00:55:27.380 Right. 0.62

00:55:27.680 I mean, if you look at Bibi's opposition, Yair Lapid, he was asked, I think, two weeks ago about greater Israel.

00:55:33.420 And he couldn't even reject that as a political position.

00:55:38.240 Yeah. 0.90

00:55:39.140 He talked about scraping away at Lebanon, which is fine if you're Bibi or if you want to be with Bibi, that's the doctrine.

00:55:46.940 But you have this thing within the Israeli opposition that Bibi has put them in a corner that over the course of the war, they have had no choice but to parrot his speech.

00:55:56.900 Yes.

00:55:57.320 To use his language.

00:56:00.160 And he buried them in so doing.

00:56:03.160 No, that's certainly what it seems like looking from the outside.

00:56:06.180 Can I ask about the, I mean, again, this is an outsider's perspective, non-Hebrew speaking perspective, but it seems like the core division is religious, non-religious, or it has been.

00:56:16.900 Is that still true?

00:56:18.100 Where is that? 0.99

00:56:19.200 The idea that, you know, a certain percentage of the country doesn't serve, doesn't participate meaningfully in the economy, and there's deep resentment toward them by people who do, that has been true for a while.

00:56:28.680 Is that still true?

00:56:29.480 Is it more true, less true?

00:56:31.240 I think it's where it was a year ago, probably where it was two years ago.

00:56:34.800 Tensions, they rise and they fall.

00:56:36.840 I'm also not the greatest expert on that.

00:56:39.720 But you live there.

00:56:40.980 Does that seem like a crisis in the country?

00:56:44.540 I don't think it's reached the point of a crisis.

00:56:46.140 It could.

00:56:47.560 It could.

00:56:49.040 But again, I don't think if you'd permit me to go back to something else.

00:56:51.980 I think you were mentioning the Romans.

00:56:55.760 And it reminds of exile.

00:56:58.140 And I think what you see in the West Bank,

00:57:01.200 if you're talking about long term, 0.96

00:57:02.660 in the darkest depths of the israeli psyche what is going to affect the longevity of the country 0.93

00:57:08.200 it's the the interplay the psychological interplay between the israelis and the palestinians 0.85

00:57:14.360 in the west bank it manifests itself most in the west bank because in tel aviv you know you have 0.53

00:57:19.580 like a bunch of schmucky lifestyle yuppies in tel aviv who just want to forget tel aviv is the 0.70

00:57:24.860 subconscious of the subconscious of israel right but the west bank is where the the complexes 0.78

00:57:31.020 at the bottom of the Israeli psyche 0.69

00:57:33.960 it's where they play out 0.99

00:57:35.040 and so

00:57:36.640 at the end of the day

00:57:38.180 you have a strange problem 1.00

00:57:39.540 which is that the Israelis come back 1.00

00:57:40.980 the Jews come back 0.65

00:57:42.020 after 2,000 to 3,000 years

00:57:43.300 they were exiles

00:57:44.680 we don't have to debate

00:57:46.240 when exactly how many years

00:57:47.720 but what happens is

00:57:49.740 you have people who have a kind of

00:57:51.620 not a native right

00:57:53.280 but a kind of native claim

00:57:54.360 who come back in colonial costume

00:57:57.240 there's a reason why the relationship 1.00

00:57:59.980 between the Palestinians and the Jews

00:58:01.300 is different than that

00:58:02.000 between the Palestinians and the British

00:58:03.520 and the Ottomans.

00:58:04.560 Because the Ottomans never came and said,

00:58:05.860 like, this is our homeland. 0.93

00:58:06.620 We're coming back now.

00:58:07.500 It's all ours. 1.00

00:58:08.940 Nor did the British. 1.00

00:58:10.760 That's what the Israelis did. 1.00

00:58:12.340 That's what the Jews did. 0.96

00:58:14.780 And again, I don't want to debate 1.00

00:58:16.300 sort of like what is right

00:58:18.000 or what is claim.

00:58:18.700 I think by and large,

00:58:20.200 it's fair to say that the Jews

00:58:21.960 have some kind of relationship with the land.

00:58:23.740 Meaning there are many Palestinian villages

00:58:25.040 that you could trace their names back

00:58:27.700 to Jewish ancient settlements.

00:58:29.280 This doesn't mean that an Israeli or a Jew can come and take it.

00:58:32.100 No.

00:58:33.080 But what it does mean is that you can't understand the conflict between the Israelis or the Jews and the Palestinians without realizing that this is a struggle for nativity.

00:58:45.680 And that in some way they are the mirror images of each other. 0.82

00:58:48.980 And in many ways the Palestinians are the new Jews. 0.96

00:58:52.760 And neither one really wants to admit it, especially the Israelis. 0.92

00:58:56.440 And so in the West Bank, 1.00

00:58:57.620 I've been in the West Bank a lot the last few months. 1.00

00:58:59.340 The new Jews in what sense? 1.00

00:59:00.620 The people who have the moral authority of victimhood? 1.00

00:59:03.680 Like the world looks at them and says,

00:59:04.900 we feel sorry for you, you've been mistreated?

00:59:06.640 Not about that.

00:59:07.300 It's a tale of exile and nostalgia.

00:59:09.780 Right. 1.00

00:59:10.120 The difference is that the Palestinians 0.64

00:59:11.320 are exiled on their own land,

00:59:13.260 which also makes it very hard for the Israelis

00:59:15.180 to deal with this problem.

00:59:17.020 For them, it's a problem.

00:59:18.580 We have people, 0.97

00:59:19.520 and I always say to Jews, to Israelis in Israel,

00:59:23.720 I'm like, look, if you guys,

00:59:25.040 If the Jews came back after 2,000 to 3,000 years and didn't forget, though there were periods of forgetting, why do you think that the Palestinians won't do the same?

00:59:36.300 And they're right on the borders.

00:59:37.300 They can see it. 0.90

00:59:38.420 Couldn't see Israel from Europe. 0.89

00:59:40.480 But you can see it from Gaza.

00:59:41.600 You can see it from the West Bank.

00:59:44.660 What do they say when you say that?

00:59:48.440 Should they just go silent?

00:59:49.900 They don't want to understand.

00:59:50.960 there's a point the problem in israel is that you know i used to have a lot of i used to have some

00:59:55.860 israeli sort of religious friends who would come to my dorm when i'd have my arab friends with me

00:59:59.640 and we'd have some really nice conversations they even befriended each other but at some

01:00:04.460 point my israeli friends stopped speaking to them because there's a point in any israeli dialogue

01:00:12.580 there's a point at which an israeli has to make a decision left to right am i going if i go down

01:00:20.380 this path and really try to understand the other side i risk exposing certain things with the

01:00:26.980 grounds of my own identity here about the foundations of the country that that risk my

01:00:31.280 identity and the other option is i'm just going to stop it here turn around and forget this happened

01:00:36.900 and so in the west bank right now there's some very very weird trends um you have you know the

01:00:46.240 The number of outposts in the West Bank has increased, I don't know by how many, hundreds of outposts.

01:00:51.500 Almost every other hill in the West Bank has a shack on it.

01:00:57.620 The scale is insane.

01:01:00.080 And I visit some of these outposts, and what you see is a little bit of a strange thing.

01:01:05.120 You have something called the Hilltop Youth. Have you heard of this?

01:01:07.160 Of course.

01:01:08.180 So this is like the third mutation of settlers. 0.89

01:01:11.460 The first settlers were kind of like kibbutznik people, right? 0.98

01:01:14.280 Right. 1.00

01:01:14.720 What's their goal? 0.99

01:01:15.380 the goal of the kibbutznik is

01:01:16.960 I need to revive some kind of

01:01:19.220 relationship with the land. The first

01:01:21.180 generation settlers were not going down the hill

01:01:23.340 and like pogroming people.

01:01:25.640 They had their hill, they had their barbed wire, 0.96

01:01:27.180 they had their shacks. Self-improvement

01:01:29.100 seemed like one of the main goals 0.70

01:01:30.520 of the first, of the kibbutz

01:01:33.060 generation. Yeah, we're gonna like 1.00

01:01:35.120 improve ourselves by

01:01:36.200 making it green and growing things. I think a lot

01:01:39.220 of it also had to deal with the exile thing

01:01:41.100 that we haven't been here. It's like a prisoner

01:01:43.140 who comes home after 30 years,

01:01:44.600 walks into the kitchen

01:01:46.740 sees his wife and kid

01:01:47.660 and says like

01:01:48.040 hey honey how you doing

01:01:48.900 sits down as if nothing happened

01:01:50.600 that was the design

01:01:52.240 you know

01:01:52.460 but there's 30 years

01:01:53.700 to make up for

01:01:54.200 in this case

01:01:54.580 you have 2,000 to 3,000 years

01:01:55.640 to make up for 0.80

01:01:56.280 so part of the kibbutz

01:01:57.860 ideologically was

01:01:58.960 like we have to revive

01:01:59.940 some sort of connection

01:02:00.520 with the land

01:02:00.920 but my point

01:02:01.580 is that the third mutation

01:02:03.260 of the settlers

01:02:03.820 which is now the hilltop youth

01:02:05.280 they're strange

01:02:08.160 I mean

01:02:08.520 they now wear

01:02:09.660 Palestinian kofiyas

01:02:11.040 the Palestinian headdress 0.97

01:02:13.680 that Arifat used to wear 0.91

01:02:14.600 they're wearing those things black ones the white and black with the palestinian ones yeah which is

01:02:20.000 kind of strange because if you even dressed up for halloween like that in tel aviv people would 0.88

01:02:23.900 say things people are very sensitive it's a symbol of terrorism in israel and you have the settlers

01:02:27.920 running around throwing stones wearing the very thing that once frightened them as children and

01:02:33.640 you have another trend which is now they want donkeys or there's a lot of shepherding but with

01:02:38.420 machine guns or you have you know settler chic which are like young outpost women who are what

01:02:45.400 they call um israelite fashion do you see where i'm going you see where i'm going be more specific

01:02:52.780 for those of us who live in the united states what's israelite fashion you know it's kind of

01:02:57.300 like in hebrew they use words like sort of um villagey israelite or pastoral yeah which is

01:03:04.020 also the word in hebrew used to describe the vibe you get in areas that used to have palestinian

01:03:10.120 villages that are now either forests or or towns lots of wild natural shrubbery and foliage the

01:03:17.800 point being is that what you see in the west bank now is an attempt to double down on nativity

01:03:25.620 and so i was in a palestinian village it's called it gets attacked quite a bit i don't know if you

01:03:31.960 saw there was a report maybe six months ago if i'm not mistaken of like three to four thousand

01:03:37.240 olive trees that were cut down those yes so it was a big story and i was there when this happened

01:03:42.840 that weekend by chance and i remember sitting with one of these palestinian guys and we were

01:03:49.000 attacked by settlers once and they went back they burned about four houses down right in front of

01:03:52.480 me um i saw it they stabbed a bunch of sheep um it's the first time i ever saw this with my eyes

01:03:57.820 I saw videos all the time, but I actually saw the smoke billowing out of the houses.

01:04:02.580 And the guy said something pretty interesting.

01:04:05.740 He looked at me and he was very calm.

01:04:07.460 And he said, you know, they want it all at once.

01:04:12.560 I said, what do you mean?

01:04:13.960 He goes, you know, they kind of want to be like us.

01:04:18.720 You know, they want to shepherd, but they also have to have machine guns.

01:04:22.720 And they want the olive trees, but they don't see that we pave our roads around the olive trees.

01:04:28.620 They want it all at once.

01:04:29.520 They want to slice the mountain, get the barbed wire on,

01:04:32.160 you put your houses there.

01:04:33.060 They want to compensate for 3,000 years.

01:04:36.200 They want to get back to some point where they were 3,000 years.

01:04:40.180 They want it all at once.

01:04:41.220 They want it now.

01:04:41.840 And they don't want anyone to be there to disturb them.

01:04:46.220 And so it puts the settlement movement into a strangely,

01:04:49.840 I'd call it an autoimmune position, sort of autoimmune.

01:04:53.840 because these people are simply

01:04:56.360 taking hill after hill after hill

01:04:58.100 hoping that there will come a day

01:04:59.580 one fine morning when they wake up

01:05:00.940 and it's empty and they have quiet

01:05:02.300 but even when that happens

01:05:04.280 they don't have enough people to populate

01:05:05.460 people don't want to live in the West Bank

01:05:06.920 why? 1.00

01:05:09.060 the average Israeli does not want to be 1.00

01:05:11.060 sitting on a hilltop surrounded by Palestinians 1.00

01:05:13.020 the average Israeli wants to 0.84

01:05:15.820 you know 0.98

01:05:16.220 sit in Tel Aviv 0.99

01:05:17.640 blacks maybe smoke a joint 0.96

01:05:19.500 make money buy a house in Greece 1.00

01:05:21.440 the keffiyeh is very confusing to me settlers dressing as palestinians so is the message

01:05:31.220 were the real palestinians i think what's going on is subconscious i don't think they're actually

01:05:36.380 conscious of it because i went to a settlement i went to a fresh outpost a few weeks ago

01:05:41.300 um i'm surprised they let me in someone pulled a gun on me when i went in and then they realized i

01:05:45.800 you know my name is ari haim flanzreich and they're like oh you're you're all right come in

01:05:49.580 we got to talking and this guy's wife is one of these settler chic influencers and i wanted to

01:05:55.680 talk to her about the fashion i wanted to hear like how do you explain this so that i could then

01:05:59.320 put it into a piece and her husband is also sort of this lumberjack guy he's got blue eyes dirty

01:06:04.980 blonde hair he's like towing the the fields which i'm pretty sure belong to people just down the

01:06:10.300 hill and where are they from originally one of them is actually from the west bank was born in

01:06:16.200 other settlements in the West Bank. And I believe she is from somewhere inside Israel,

01:06:20.340 maybe Jerusalem, but I might be wrong. Times of Israel did a piece on her actually like a week

01:06:25.100 before I was there. And they got real weird with me, real weird. They asked like, what do you want?

01:06:31.180 I was like, I'm just here to talk about fashion. And then her husband gave her a look. She walked

01:06:34.700 off, went completely silent. And he sat down with me alongside the guy who pulled his gun on me.

01:06:40.460 And the guy's kind of looking at me like, who are you? What do you want? I was like, I'm a

01:06:43.900 journalist. He said, can I see your work? I said, yeah. I write about security matters. This is for

01:06:48.340 a magazine piece. Long story short, they kicked me out. They said, you should probably get out of

01:06:54.680 here. And when I went outside to smoke a cigarette before leaving, the guy who pulled his gun on me

01:06:59.960 is just sitting there and I said, can I ask you a question? He goes, yeah. I said, why can't we

01:07:04.180 have a conversation? Jew to Jew. Because I told them, I'm wondering about this nativity thing and 1.00

01:07:11.220 And the guy looked at me and he knew something was off because he's like, it's not that many people who do that.

01:07:16.000 And I was like, the fact that you know it, that you're aware of it, probably means that I triggered him a little bit.

01:07:21.800 And when we're outside smoking a cigarette, I asked him, why can't we talk?

01:07:25.220 He goes, you know, it could have gone a lot worse for you today.

01:07:28.900 I was like, what do you mean?

01:07:30.180 He goes, you know what I mean?

01:07:31.560 I said, are you threatening me?

01:07:33.640 He said, no, but there are people who would do a serious number on you.

01:07:37.360 and i said even even to a fellow jew and he said it's beyond ideology he said this is beyond

01:07:44.640 ideology and i spent the whole car ride home thinking about what he could have possibly

01:07:50.060 meant by that what is it about then when he said this is beyond ideology and i already laid out

01:07:57.980 sort of like the nativity dynamics but within the settlement movement what can he possibly mean by

01:08:03.560 This is beyond ideology.

01:08:05.260 I haven't, are these religious people?

01:08:08.140 That's another question about the settlers in the West Bank.

01:08:11.480 They're not entirely religious.

01:08:13.780 You know, you have a lot of religious, there are religious people.

01:08:16.900 There's also a lot of people who aren't that devout or pious that religious,

01:08:21.960 the religion in certain cases becomes a kind of aesthetic thing or a vehicle for sort of nationalistic ends.

01:08:26.720 Right.

01:08:26.900 I mean, the settlement that I was in with this sort of the settler fashionista, a week after she had a DJ at the outpost.

01:08:36.800 It's an outpost.

01:08:37.360 There's two people living there.

01:08:38.260 It's a shack.

01:08:39.460 A DJ and a bunch of women dressed in Israelite clothing doing a meditative and like trans disco kind of like party. 0.98

01:08:50.660 What? 0.99

01:08:51.580 Yeah, it was kind of strange.

01:08:52.940 So I'm having trouble fitting this into a category.

01:08:54.800 So the two motives that you always hear here in the U.S. or when I've been in Israel are either these are, you know, religious people who are sort of acting out some kind of millennialist vision, or there are people who want cheaper housing and housing in Israel. 0.59

01:09:09.460 Those are two separate categories of settler. 0.82

01:09:11.720 Right.

01:09:12.400 But you're describing a third category that's kind of like cosplay, kind of like, what are you describing?

01:09:19.660 Why are they doing this?

01:09:20.800 What I'm describing is a part of the broader category of settlers who are there to, at the forefront, who are forwarding, who are pushing the settlement forward, as opposed to the people who want cheap housing who just literally go into Tel Aviv, you know.

01:09:35.300 Yeah, yeah, no, I got it, I've seen that, yeah.

01:09:38.080 Where it all comes from, I don't know, but I think that it's a big commitment to move to a hilltop surrounded by concertina wire, like, you don't do that by accident.

01:09:48.040 But if you're 14, 15, 16, 17 years old,

01:09:50.720 if you're in your early 20s,

01:09:51.700 you want to be king of the hill?

01:09:53.800 Want to play cowboy?

01:09:55.300 Yeah.

01:09:55.740 So is that what you think it is?

01:09:57.540 I think in many cases, again,

01:09:59.080 like the hilltop youth,

01:10:00.980 I found them once, you know,

01:10:02.300 these snot-nosed, beady eyes,

01:10:03.740 like kids with their heads shaved, 0.90

01:10:05.000 driving a stolen Palestinian car on the Sabbath, 1.00

01:10:07.900 telling me to get the fuck out 1.00

01:10:09.280 or I'm going to get beat. 1.00

01:10:10.820 Like, it's fucking weird. 0.99

01:10:13.760 It's weird. 0.97

01:10:14.500 Where are the Israeli authorities?

01:10:19.800 Sometimes absent, sometimes present.

01:10:22.780 And even when they're present, they can be quite absent. 0.99

01:10:26.300 If I'm running Israel, I'm paying close attention to these people because they could be a threat to me.

01:10:33.660 You know, armed people who are increasingly radical and nobody's kind of controlling their behavior,

01:10:41.280 they could form a militia and overthrow my government.

01:10:43.040 That would be my thought if I were Netanyahu. 0.80

01:10:45.820 I'd be worried about them.

01:10:47.900 I've thought about that quite a few times.

01:10:49.560 I mean, there's a few things going on here, right?

01:10:52.380 In the security establishment in Israel, there are a lot of voices who are very concerned.

01:10:57.460 And this is just what you hear publicly.

01:10:58.660 You can imagine that behind closed doors, there's a lot more talk.

01:11:02.780 They are concerned.

01:11:04.980 Bibi, in order for his coalition, also has to keep serving them whatever they want.

01:11:09.540 the real problem in the West Bank 0.57

01:11:12.100 is that you have these guys who are armed

01:11:13.820 and that you had Avraham on the other day

01:11:16.220 and he said that I believe that

01:11:17.960 at some point or another the settlements will be

01:11:20.040 collapsed

01:11:20.460 I would agree with him

01:11:23.200 but the question is not whether

01:11:25.960 or not they'll be collapsed, the question is

01:11:27.260 what is going to have to happen

01:11:28.920 for that to happen, what will happen

01:11:32.020 on the way before you reach

01:11:33.920 that point where the settlements are collapsed

01:11:35.780 will it be some sort of civil chaos, will it be

01:11:37.880 a third intifada there's a lot of talk in israel about a third intifada but my sense is that what

01:11:42.320 happens next is not something that follows the sequence of intifada but you know kind of like

01:11:47.460 what happened in gaza this shattering of the status quo i think there will come a point where

01:11:51.620 something analogous in law like logically speaking happens in the west bank will it look like gaza

01:11:57.680 not at all but will it be equally as cataclysmic maybe quite possibly that's my sense

01:12:05.340 but i mean there's it's a different dynamic in the west bank i mean isn't it i mean it's first

01:12:12.340 of all it's richer than gaza ever was i mean it's more kind of established series of towns

01:12:18.900 which is why oh in terms of the settlements you mean no no no the the palestinian population

01:12:24.980 in the west bank i mean it's not i don't know it's just harder to imagine something like that

01:12:30.000 happening there because i don't think as i said i don't think what happens there is going to look

01:12:34.160 like or be like what happened in gaza but i think if you permit me a few minutes you know the there's

01:12:41.320 a reason why october the 7th came from gaza and not from yeah the west bank i spent um i spent last

01:12:48.060 summer i was in the janine refugee camp if you've heard of it of course um and i sat with the who

01:12:54.020 was then the leader of islamic jihad he was the emir the prince of islamic jihad and i sat with

01:12:59.100 a few other guys from the various other factions and what i understood was that the resistance in

01:13:07.480 the west bank basically there's a thread going all the way back to 48 you're exiled and you want to

01:13:12.400 get back and you want to fight and then there is serious amounts of terrorist attacks and then

01:13:18.440 eventually there's a political process and you'd assume that any resistance movements or any kind

01:13:23.180 of you know terrorist operator whatever you want to call it that they would eventually want to

01:13:27.720 yield some kind of political outcome but oslo eventually fails you have the first intifada

01:13:32.760 you have the second the second intifada is basically a lashing out meaning the thread

01:13:37.700 has reached its end and the west bank at that point was faced with the factions in the west

01:13:44.800 bank were faced with sort of two options either we pause and take a breath and figure out what 0.96

01:13:48.620 the fuck we're doing here or we're just going to keep shooting aimlessly just like shooting 0.98

01:13:53.480 to make it look to make it look like we're doing something we're going to do military marches we're 1.00

01:13:57.520 going to act really cool but the guys are just like hood boys they're just putting on headbands

01:14:03.460 and like with a marlboro red in their mouths and just shooting usually not even to hit the aim is

01:14:08.540 usually just to die the logic of the camps the logic of the resistance in the west bank is

01:14:13.400 completely backwards which means i don't think there's going to be like an october 7th in the

01:14:17.060 west bank but when i was in these villages that were getting attacked by the settlers

01:14:22.440 there's one line that kept coming up.

01:14:25.180 And I'm talking about a line I was hearing 0.87

01:14:26.640 from your average Palestinian farmer or peasant, 0.99

01:14:31.140 which was, there will come a day.

01:14:34.900 There will come a day when we are pushed a little too far.

01:14:40.080 And at that point, the question is,

01:14:41.720 how many minutes does it take for a bunch of people

01:14:43.380 to run up to a hill and maybe overwhelm the settlement? 0.72

01:14:47.360 An old man told me that we're going to chew them like dogs.

01:14:49.400 i would think that's coming i mean based on the behavior you're describing

01:14:53.980 it's quite possible i wouldn't discount it

01:14:56.780 um what do you make that the two most in the u.s the two most famous

01:15:03.520 cabinet ministers in the naiyahu government are smotrish and ben gavir

01:15:08.200 are they powerful figures in israel how are they regarded what's what's their motive strategy plan

01:15:19.400 I don't think that they're close to as popular as they were.

01:15:24.700 I think Bibi's popularity has increased actually over the course of the war 1.00

01:15:28.160 because Israelis have a very short memory, 0.99

01:15:30.660 especially when it comes to warfare. 1.00

01:15:35.300 But I don't really know what to tell you about Smotrich and Bengvir. 0.63

01:15:38.060 It's not really my specialty. 1.00

01:15:39.020 I guess it just seems unimaginably radical from an American... 0.56

01:15:44.800 If you think of Israel, the post-67 Israel that most Americans learned about, visited, all of a sudden you have these guys, these two Ashkenazi guys sound really, really radical.

01:16:01.540 Or it seems like a departure from anything Americans have ever heard an Israeli government official say.

01:16:07.400 I think what you're hearing is what you often hear behind closed doors all over Israel, what you can hear at a cafe in Tel Aviv.

01:16:12.900 meaning that the notion of yeah maybe they could go somewhere the palestinians maybe they just like

01:16:21.220 they could be gone the question of uh those are questions that come up you hear it regularly these

01:16:27.280 aren't like completely insane conversations to hear you can hear it from like a hippie at a cafe

01:16:32.260 in tel aviv smoking a joint that's what changes that suddenly you are hearing it more and more

01:16:37.380 on tv i remember i heard one news commentator news anchor ask about transfer and i was like

01:16:46.140 this is a bit insane like imagine if someone on cnn came on and sort of talking about transferring

01:16:51.400 another an entire other population who aren't illegal right people who are born there have been

01:16:58.520 there for thousands of years maybe hundreds maybe thousands i don't know but it doesn't matter they

01:17:03.100 were there when when when the israelis came yeah doesn't matter how long they've been there for

01:17:07.620 um so yeah what about i mean it used to be in my living memory there was a significant population

01:17:18.120 of israelis who who had totally different views they're like no that's wrong human rights or a

01:17:23.940 thing you can't do that how big is that and oven berg i think is the kind of israeli i remember

01:17:32.260 from 25 years ago?

01:17:33.680 There were a bunch of people like that.

01:17:34.900 How many are left?

01:17:36.760 I mean, the left is dead.

01:17:38.520 The left is dead. 0.78

01:17:39.660 The Israeli left is dead.

01:17:41.580 And the question as to why they died, 0.99

01:17:44.480 it's because they spent, I think,

01:17:46.140 a bit too much time beating the horse of Oslo dead.

01:17:49.380 Oslo obviously failed.

01:17:51.520 And the left was unwilling to concede that fact,

01:17:54.460 which meant that for many, many years,

01:17:56.620 I think unto this day,

01:17:58.040 the left never reevaluated.

01:18:00.120 They never came with another proposal

01:18:01.580 or another plan or another way of thinking about the conflict.

01:18:05.660 They kept beating the horse of Oslo dead.

01:18:08.340 Meanwhile, the Israeli right continues to churn out active propositions.

01:18:13.520 We're going to reform the judiciary. 0.91

01:18:15.540 We want to take the West Bank. 0.99

01:18:17.180 Very concrete things.

01:18:18.360 A right winger in Israel will tell you what they want.

01:18:22.560 A left winger in Israel will tell you how they feel.

01:18:25.780 Yeah.

01:18:26.680 And yeah, I think that's the long and short of it.

01:18:32.580 That's a good explanation.

01:18:34.260 Do Israelis have a sense of what the rest of the world thinks of Israel?

01:18:40.960 Yeah, I think they have a sense.

01:18:42.720 The question is how deeply do they think about the sense

01:18:45.340 and how much merit are they willing to give?

01:18:47.520 Do they care?

01:18:49.160 I think deep down they care.

01:18:51.540 No one likes to be hated.

01:18:54.040 I don't think anyone likes to be hated.

01:18:56.220 but I think the more you feel like you're hated,

01:18:59.340 the more you want to hate everyone else

01:19:01.060 or just completely discount them.

01:19:02.560 The more you want to dig your heels in and double down.

01:19:06.760 Huh, that's interesting.

01:19:08.960 Yeah, I mean, I feel like I'm often attacked

01:19:11.180 for hating Israel.

01:19:11.920 I don't hate Israel at all.

01:19:14.640 I feel sorry for Israel.

01:19:16.040 I think they're in trouble.

01:19:17.120 They don't seem to agree, but I think they are.

01:19:19.300 But whatever my views,

01:19:21.420 I mean, a lot of people hate Israel,

01:19:24.460 like around the world.

01:19:25.220 I hear it a lot when I travel.

01:19:27.040 I feel like the moderate one.

01:19:29.000 And I think that's a big change. 0.99

01:19:30.600 And I always wonder, do the Israelis know that? 1.00

01:19:32.440 Do they care? 1.00

01:19:34.600 I think the Israelis are probably the most hated people in the world right now. 1.00

01:19:38.580 That's my impression. 1.00

01:19:39.460 Full stop.

01:19:40.280 Yes. 0.95

01:19:41.940 One of the greatest things I ever did was not get an Israeli passport. 1.00

01:19:45.980 And I feel bad for friends who have them. 1.00

01:19:47.960 I would be scared.

01:19:48.760 I'm going to be totally honest.

01:19:50.000 I would be scared right now.

01:19:51.120 I'm sometimes scared to even say I'm Jewish.

01:19:52.740 I'm lucky enough that I have Arabic.

01:19:53.980 And if I'm in Europe, I just tell people I'm Palestinian, which some people might not like, but I think I put in the time to warrant it.

01:20:02.300 Sometimes I'm scared to say that I'm Jewish and I'm, I would definitely be scared to have an Israeli passport. 0.99

01:20:07.800 I think that's totally fair. 1.00

01:20:09.660 That's fair.

01:20:10.500 And I'm not, I'm the last person to whine about antisemitism, but I think Israel is literally hated. 1.00

01:20:14.940 So I agree with you completely. 0.98

01:20:16.620 I just, I just, oh, again, just once more, I just want to be clear.

01:20:21.120 you don't think Israelis have the sense that that's a bad thing and we should be worried about

01:20:26.920 it or that we played any role in that at all? I think the Israelis, there are Israelis who,

01:20:33.920 you have a small liberal population of Israelis, many of whom I hear talking about

01:20:38.220 the fact that they don't see a future for themselves in the country anymore.

01:20:41.720 Right. A lot. This is about two to three years in the making, even from the judicial reform. I had

01:20:47.200 a lot of people telling me left-leaning decent Israelis who are like, I don't know if I can 0.98

01:20:53.580 have more kids here, or I don't want my kids to be in the army, or I don't want my kids

01:20:57.900 to have to deal with whatever the consequences of the judicial reform and now this entire

01:21:02.320 war. 0.99

01:21:04.920 The rest of the Israeli population, I think by and large are bent on, they've all doubled 0.97

01:21:10.960 down. 1.00

01:21:12.060 Really?

01:21:13.200 I think a lot of people. 0.79

01:21:14.160 So Bibi reflects the population he represents, you think?

01:21:18.960 I don't think a lot of people have problems with anything that Bibi represents.

01:21:24.160 I think people have problems with the fact that he might have a corruption case, which I think is negligible.

01:21:30.980 But you're never at dinner and people say, man, I can't believe all those kids who were killed in Gaza.

01:21:34.940 That's bad. I'm sorry we did that.

01:21:37.780 I don't hear it a lot, but what you can say, no, you might hear it sort of, it might be a symbolic gesture,

01:21:43.780 like a virtue signal um but it's immediately followed with you know that's what you got to

01:21:48.740 do i mean they came to kill us or they're anti-semites um yeah where do israelis think

01:21:56.760 anti-semitism comes from i often hear an invoked so-and-so's anti-semit you're anti-semit what

01:22:04.640 how do they define it and what do they think its root is i think the root is is age old as far as

01:22:12.340 Israelis are concerned. People hate us because people have always hated Jews. You hear this a

01:22:16.280 lot in synagogues also across North America. You have a message being pushed constantly that people

01:22:20.860 just hate us. And I think there are a lot of people who just hate Jews. And there's a lot

01:22:25.320 of people who are waiting for an excuse to hate Jews. But specifically, why do they hate Jews?

01:22:31.560 But the question is, is there a distinction between those people and Palestinians? Are the

01:22:37.440 Palestinians fundamentally anti-Semitic. 0.95

01:22:40.960 And you can spare me quotes 1.00

01:22:41.840 from like an imam here or an imam there

01:22:43.720 or the fact that they conflate Jew and Israeli.

01:22:46.280 By and large,

01:22:47.200 is this a people who has premised its existence 0.99

01:22:50.660 on killing Jews as Jews? 0.94

01:22:54.280 And I do not think that that's the case. 0.86

01:22:58.760 Yeah, I wouldn't know.

01:23:00.460 I mean, I wouldn't know.

01:23:03.440 But I just think there are a lot of anti-Semitic people 0.83

01:23:06.080 and they hate Jews.

01:23:06.740 I agree with that and I think it's wrong 0.77

01:23:08.700 that's what I think

01:23:09.880 but I also think it's worth

01:23:12.640 like what is that is it a spiritual thing

01:23:14.620 I mean we say well it's always

01:23:16.760 existed

01:23:18.240 I believe that but what's

01:23:21.000 it's I mean what's it's cause

01:23:22.540 and I've never heard one

01:23:24.860 person ask that question and I think

01:23:26.900 I believe in asking

01:23:28.340 or trying to understand

01:23:30.660 the cause of everything

01:23:32.580 you can't often but it's

01:23:34.480 it's always worth doing i wanted to know why al-qaeda attacked the u.s on 9-11 i thought it

01:23:41.140 was horrible i had a friend killed but i still want to know why and i never heard anybody ask

01:23:45.740 that question you ever heard anyone ask about the the sort of like the the bottom root of

01:23:50.480 anti-semitism never not one time other than to say and by the way i'd be willing to believe

01:23:57.160 i'd be willing to believe that it's spiritual in nature what does spiritual mean that there's

01:24:04.100 you know, a belief among Jews and some Christians that Jews are distinct among peoples because God

01:24:14.760 made them distinct and that there is a spiritual reaction. That is a religious belief that some

01:24:19.560 people have, many people have. And I'd be willing to believe, I don't know if it's true, that this

01:24:24.940 is like a reaction against that from evil. So that's one explanation, but I never even hear

01:24:30.660 anybody ask the question like words what i hear instead is people say it's just it's always been

01:24:37.200 there it always will be there what does that mean i guess that's what i'm asking

01:24:41.600 i mean within the european context and look i'm not an expert on anti-semitism

01:24:49.480 i'm not um within a european context you have a people who are also forced into the margins of

01:24:54.420 society they're easily scapegoated they are they also maintain a certain level of distinction

01:24:58.640 from the rest of society.

01:25:00.460 And those are people that are very easy to hate.

01:25:03.680 But I can't give you an historiography

01:25:05.620 of anti-Semitism. 0.96

01:25:08.860 I can tell you why I think it's on the rise right now.

01:25:11.820 Why is it on the rise right now?

01:25:13.980 We have a bit of an issue, right? 0.98

01:25:15.420 I mean, you have Israel doing what Israel does.

01:25:17.680 It's getting record amounts of attention.

01:25:19.760 There's record amounts of sympathy

01:25:20.780 with the Palestinian cause.

01:25:22.320 I mean, there are many people,

01:25:23.120 if you would have asked them 20, 30, 40 years ago,

01:25:25.600 if they understood what actually was the fate

01:25:27.540 of the Palestinian people. 0.99

01:25:29.180 They wouldn't have understood.

01:25:30.160 They wouldn't have known.

01:25:31.520 You know, there's a famous quote by Ben-Gurion

01:25:32.980 who following 48, you know,

01:25:36.320 there were 600, some 600 villages that were destroyed.

01:25:40.120 Yes, I knew that.

01:25:41.820 And I remember there's a,

01:25:43.980 somewhere in the archives,

01:25:45.460 there's a quote which says, you know,

01:25:47.020 people are soon going to come visit this country

01:25:49.840 and we don't want them to see,

01:25:53.700 have superfluous thoughts.

01:25:56.180 Use the word superfluous,

01:25:57.300 Meaning you got to clean up the mess, either like destroy them or plant trees, put parks in their place, which is why you have many parks all over Israel. 0.88

01:26:07.360 And people didn't really understand. 0.75

01:26:09.300 I didn't know that.

01:26:10.540 How did I not know that?

01:26:12.740 So parks you see in Israel are often on the physical spot of a former Palestinian village?

01:26:18.660 In many cases, yes.

01:26:20.220 In many cases, yes.

01:26:22.020 Which is also bound up with the JNF, the Jewish National Fund.

01:26:25.260 Yes.

01:26:26.120 And so I remember hearing from someone in Toronto

01:26:28.080 that I think the government was going to start sanctioning the JNF,

01:26:32.960 and people were really up in arms about this.

01:26:34.840 And I said, sort of, at the end of the day,

01:26:38.440 you have to decide what your relationship with Israel is. 0.99

01:26:42.340 It's hard to have, it's hard to expect people from without

01:26:45.640 to understand why at a synagogue you also have an Israeli flag there

01:26:48.600 if you don't also want to bear the brunt of what's happening in Israel

01:26:52.360 and take some responsibility.

01:26:53.380 and i'm saying from without you can't expect people to understand that i think there's a

01:27:00.680 sense within the jewish american community specifically but also in israel people expect

01:27:04.640 everyone else to understand them from within it's why it should be very obvious why israelis

01:27:11.800 believe it should be obvious what we're doing all this should be obvious and the fact that you're

01:27:17.080 asking questions is itself potentially an indication that you are against us that you

01:27:22.180 just want our demise when i ask people questions in israel the first thing is like why are you why

01:27:27.480 are you asking if i want to interview someone as a journalist in israel i have to be very careful 0.74

01:27:32.340 with the language i use if i use the word west banks of the judea and samaria within a certain

01:27:38.980 demographic you're axed it's over seriously um i tend to say we and not you because if i say you

01:27:45.740 they're like what do you mean you i thought we're all in this together like no i'm not an israeli

01:27:50.000 citizen even that is a bit sensitive you're describing narcissism the belief that other

01:27:57.120 people should just understand what i'm feeling in a health a healthy person understands that

01:28:03.200 each one of us is sort of locked away in our own private traumas and that's why we communicate and

01:28:07.840 i need to understand you it's very important to understand you and i want you to understand me

01:28:11.960 but it's not natural right that's the basis of a relationship it's an isolated and solipsistic

01:28:17.800 society solipsistic is a better word that's exactly right in many ways yeah there's something

01:28:22.680 in many cases i find this thing a bit delusional about the mentality um

01:28:28.440 it's just the fact that for example arabic isn't spoken in the country

01:28:32.540 it used to be i mean those were because they were arab jews who came from arabic countries

01:28:38.280 but i think there were also ashkenazi jews who spoke arabic i think that was more common i'm

01:28:43.140 just, I think that was my impression. Not a whole lot. Maybe if they were there, for example,

01:28:48.000 before the establishment of the state, but as of the establishment of the state, you didn't have

01:28:51.680 people really learning Arabic. The changes that have taken place here, maybe it's just a change

01:28:56.300 in my perception, but I just remember a country that was much more open to the world, but a lot

01:29:02.340 has happened in that time. By the way, I should ask you, since you live there in Israel, how much

01:29:09.680 damage has been done during this war we get no sense of it at all or i don't trust anything i

01:29:13.760 see on the internet but do you get a sense it's a country at war there rubble you know rubble on

01:29:20.240 the street in tel aviv or no no in fact i think the last round during june for example you know

01:29:26.720 i'm based in jaffa at the moment yeah there are massive strikes in in a place called batiam just

01:29:31.280 south of jaffa where you saw i think there was a three block radius of damage look you do have

01:29:36.880 damage relative the stakes um minimal damage within israel right now does life seem

01:29:45.440 normal ish yeah ish really the jews like the ish yes it's true i'm pro-ish myself um

01:29:56.160 so you it doesn't feel like a country under siege under siege yeah no the war is being

01:30:01.880 fought about 2,000 kilometers away.

01:30:03.740 Correct.

01:30:04.300 Yeah.

01:30:05.540 Certainly not besieged.

01:30:07.840 Is there a sense

01:30:08.740 that there's a physical risk?

01:30:10.380 Do people you know

01:30:11.260 feel like,

01:30:11.880 wow,

01:30:12.060 we could get hammered

01:30:13.680 by missiles,

01:30:15.200 drones?

01:30:16.940 No,

01:30:17.420 I don't think

01:30:17.960 there's like an apocalyptic

01:30:19.400 sense.

01:30:19.800 Yeah,

01:30:20.000 that's what I'm asking.

01:30:21.460 But there is a sense,

01:30:22.580 like damage can be done.

01:30:23.780 These are ballistic missiles.

01:30:25.200 People can die.

01:30:26.380 But if you're smart,

01:30:27.080 if you take the necessary steps,

01:30:28.240 if you go down

01:30:28.820 to your shelter,

01:30:30.280 you're probably

01:30:30.940 going to be fine.

01:30:31.520 a 99% chance that you will be just fine. Do you talk to people who have a sense of how this will

01:30:39.480 be resolved? Do people expect it to end soon the war with Iran? I don't think so. I think people

01:30:47.920 want it to go on. I think people want the job done. But what's a bit strange to me,

01:30:51.880 what's a bit ironic here is that in America, it strikes me, the perception is more zero sum.

01:30:58.800 In America, I think there's the sense that if we went through all this

01:31:01.740 and the regime doesn't fall, then this was for naught.

01:31:05.260 We wasted our time.

01:31:07.100 We jeopardized our, for the GOP, we jeopardized our base or whatever else.

01:31:10.160 You're a better expert in this than I am.

01:31:12.820 Within Israel, though, it's not a zero-sum game.

01:31:16.220 If Israel, if this war ends because Trump decides it has to end

01:31:20.420 because of internal pressure, economic pressure,

01:31:22.820 and the regime hasn't fallen,

01:31:25.480 Bibi is none the worse for it.

01:31:27.480 it's not the ideal outcome it's not the best possible outcome but it's something he can work

01:31:32.760 with it's a good enough show it's what you call in hebrew an image of victory

01:31:37.820 it's the phrase that netanyahu has been using since the beginning of the war an

01:31:42.860 an image of victory part of our problem in the u.s may be that we take our own rhetoric more

01:31:48.600 seriously or perhaps too seriously and so in order to justify this and the the previous exchange in

01:31:56.200 june we had to endure like weeks of hearing that we were all about to be killed by iran by this

01:32:02.520 regime which you know some people didn't believe including me but some people did believe and we

01:32:09.040 have a whole tv channel devoted to telling americans their single biggest risk is iran so

01:32:13.620 if that regime is still there it's kind of hard to walk down from that if you see what i mean

01:32:18.340 i think i think in america there's the big problem is that americans are fundamentally

01:32:24.580 divorced from history. They forget

01:32:26.680 that they're actually inside of history.

01:32:28.540 That's for sure. 0.90

01:32:30.880 I think that's a, for a non-American, 0.90

01:32:32.900 that's a perceptive observation. 0.98

01:32:34.840 And the Jews think that history is over. 0.76

01:32:37.440 Is over?

01:32:38.320 Yeah, I think Israel believes that sort of, you know,

01:32:40.140 you got back to the land, we have our state,

01:32:42.020 and it's kind of done now.

01:32:44.500 History's over.

01:32:46.680 I think that's the distinction between Israel 0.58

01:32:48.220 and America. America forgets that they're at the

01:32:50.040 center of history, and the Israelis believe that 0.96

01:32:52.020 they're enjoying the aftermath of history.

01:32:53.860 as if there can't be another exile as if there can't be another catastrophe

01:32:58.300 and that's the short-sightedness interesting where does um i among

01:33:06.320 is there any discussion of like restoring the third temple

01:33:11.120 that would seem obvious at least from my reading of no the torah no that's not even no but i

01:33:18.460 personally think if you're gonna ask me i personally think it would be great to build

01:33:21.960 a third temple just on like another hill.

01:33:25.700 I don't think you can do it on another hill.

01:33:27.640 I bet you could get a rabbinical precedent.

01:33:29.840 You could definitely pay some guy off to let you. 0.89

01:33:32.280 If you're going to have a third temple,

01:33:33.400 I'm strongly in favor of putting on another hill

01:33:35.360 just because then you avoid global religious war.

01:33:38.920 Yeah, but it would also be a shame 1.00

01:33:40.160 to come back to the homeland after 3,000 years

01:33:42.360 and leave potentially without having built something,

01:33:45.220 you know, sweet.

01:33:46.780 But is there any effort to do that that you know of?

01:33:51.880 No.

01:33:52.760 No.

01:33:53.320 No, but there are a lot of people recently.

01:33:55.060 It's funny.

01:33:55.800 There's, you know, the Messiah patches that a lot of Israeli soldiers have? 0.91

01:33:58.720 I do, yes.

01:33:59.540 There's now on the back of cars, there are these stickers now that are sort of like the image.

01:34:04.140 It looks like a Greek or like a Roman temple, but it's a temple image.

01:34:07.060 Oh, I've seen it.

01:34:08.020 Oh, you've seen the sticker?

01:34:08.880 Yes, I have.

01:34:09.560 So that's blown up as of the last year or two.

01:34:11.980 Do I think it will actually happen?

01:34:14.420 No.

01:34:14.920 But before the last year or two, or let's just say before October 7th, there was none of that.

01:34:21.320 that you saw you had the guys trying to like secret in like red heifers every now and again

01:34:25.720 they're a serious minority in the country um and as avra mentioned you had people there were

01:34:31.400 attempts several times to five he said five i didn't know that yeah i knew i knew about one

01:34:35.620 i didn't know about five um but again i think this is not there's no state level or institutional

01:34:42.400 policy that's working towards the construction of a third temple i mean look at the buildings

01:34:47.240 in Tel Aviv. I don't think the Israelis 1.00

01:34:49.340 right now are in a position to build a big 0.99

01:34:51.120 beautiful temple. The best buildings in Tel Aviv

01:34:53.280 were built by Arabs in the Ottoman era. 0.94

01:34:55.440 I knew that. I knew that. There's been 0.94

01:34:57.340 a, I think Israel's

01:34:58.940 an amazing society in some ways.

01:35:01.520 They built a lot considering how

01:35:03.320 young it is. Architecture

01:35:05.140 has not been on the top of the

01:35:06.460 achievement list, I would say. That's why you put

01:35:09.220 the city beside the sea. Yeah.

01:35:11.200 But it's still not.

01:35:14.520 It's, yeah.

01:35:15.020 So, yeah, I share your view of the local architecture.

01:35:21.520 It's fascinating.

01:35:22.440 So how has the country, just big picture, how has it changed?

01:35:25.320 So in the seven and a half years you were there before, two and a half since.

01:35:30.500 Yeah.

01:35:31.440 October 7th, like what changes have you noticed in people's attitudes?

01:35:38.440 You know, there was, at the height of the war, I went to buy a new laptop from a kid.

01:35:44.380 He was like 18, 19 years old.

01:35:46.480 And it turns out that he's a soldier.

01:35:47.600 He works with the Navy.

01:35:48.960 So he's like young, thin.

01:35:50.540 He looks very, very young.

01:35:51.620 And I went and we started talking.

01:35:53.280 And I explained that I'm a journalist, that I do some work. 1.00

01:35:56.040 And he said, listen, after October the 7th, we can't trust the Arabs. 1.00

01:36:00.940 I said, really? 1.00

01:36:01.820 Like, none?

01:36:02.960 He was like, none.

01:36:04.480 I was like, I have a question.

01:36:05.340 Like, where do you travel within Israel?

01:36:07.560 And he goes, you know, back in the day, my father would go to a place called Kalkili,

01:36:10.460 which is on the other side of the Green Line.

01:36:12.520 And he goes, but we with the family would go to a place called Kafar Qasim,

01:36:16.620 which is on the Israeli side of the green line, but like right snug on the line.

01:36:20.960 And he said, but ever since the war, I stopped going to Kafar Qasim.

01:36:24.480 And I was like, do you go to another place called Tira, which is even closer to Tel Aviv?

01:36:27.800 And he's like, no, I won't risk it.

01:36:30.280 I don't even like going to Jaffa.

01:36:31.620 And I told him, I said, like, what's going to be left of you if you keep operating this way?

01:36:37.740 like you're

01:36:39.620 king of the hill as it were

01:36:41.860 you're the landlord but you're scared

01:36:43.400 it's like owning a house and being scared

01:36:45.660 to walk into four out of the five rooms

01:36:47.720 in the house

01:36:48.540 it's not a way to live it's not the way to be a

01:36:51.700 homeowner right

01:36:53.160 you had this thing Benigvier's big platform

01:36:55.960 when he was running for elections was

01:36:57.480 we're going to be the landlords now

01:36:59.400 in Hebrew

01:37:00.740 the landlords

01:37:02.280 actually? yeah

01:37:04.740 how loud he said that?

01:37:06.820 Yeah, that was a platform. There were signs in the West Bank about that. We're the landlords now. Yeah, we're going to be the landlords. And the problem in Israel is that, especially in the West Bank, is that there's a lot of focus on lording over the land and not really dwelling.

01:37:22.780 Ben Gavir's election slogan was, we're going to be the landlords. We're dealing with lack of self-awareness now, to say something like that out loud.

01:37:30.500 Quite the opposite. He was very, very aware. It was very strategic and very tactical.

01:37:36.080 Especially within the settlement population, of course. You're in a place where you don't feel 0.98

01:37:40.440 like you're really the Lord. You don't feel, except for the gun, you don't feel like I'm

01:37:45.340 really the king of the hill. There's a guy who's saying, I'm going to make you king. I'm going to

01:37:48.820 put the crown on your head. It's tempting, especially to naive, young, potentially troubled

01:37:53.520 youth who are you know running around the hilltops interesting yeah how long can israel go with all 1.00

01:38:02.260 this territory that's not part of their country but that they control like what with gaza and the 0.54

01:38:09.040 west bank and now southern lebanon and parts of syria like does that just go on forever do people

01:38:16.220 envision a time where the official borders of israel expand and like this is our country like 0.73

01:38:20.940 No, I mean, look, if Israel can't manage Gaza, I don't think they can manage South Lebanon. I don't think that what's happening in South Lebanon is going to be permanent. There might be a post or two on the border. You could potentially expect that. Are they going to take large swaths of Lebanese territory? No, but what they will do is render them uninhabitable, which is a kind of way of doing not this, but not that. 0.67

01:38:45.180 How do you do that? 0.99

01:38:45.940 It's the art of indecision, which is Bibi's art. 1.00

01:38:48.080 You don't occupy it, but you leave it unoccupiable. 1.00

01:38:52.060 Unoccupiable because there's nothing there. 0.81

01:38:54.140 Well, that's what the Lebanese border is right now.

01:38:55.440 In many cases, not across the border, but there are many spots on the border in which everything is completely raised. 0.98

01:39:00.080 Those were also houses used in many cases by Hezbollah, so I kind of get that.

01:39:05.940 In Syria as well, I don't think that's a permanent decision.

01:39:08.780 I think it's leverage that could potentially be used against Jolani to come to some sort of agreement, which I think will eventually come.

01:39:15.940 Not a peace deal, but something, an understanding.

01:39:18.580 Jolani being the new head of Syria.

01:39:20.360 Exactly.

01:39:21.060 Who a lot of people assumed was installed there with the agreement of Israel.

01:39:25.680 I assume that.

01:39:26.720 I still think it, but now they're against him?

01:39:28.760 What is the truth there?

01:39:30.540 Who said they're against him?

01:39:33.680 I don't know.

01:39:34.500 I've heard recently that the Israelis are troubled with Jolani.

01:39:37.360 I don't know if that's true or not.

01:39:40.780 I don't know if they're...

01:39:41.960 I mean, he's moved troops toward the Lebanese border.

01:39:44.960 and there are rumors that he would be willing to fight Hezbollah.

01:39:48.080 There's a common enemy.

01:39:49.980 I think the Israelis fear Jolani long term.

01:39:55.560 And they also used to have a very good understanding with Assad.

01:39:58.240 The problem is that Assad was also embedded with Iran and Hezbollah.

01:40:00.860 So there's a bit of a problem.

01:40:01.720 I don't think the Israelis ever had a problem with Assad.

01:40:03.220 I think, as far as I know, before the civil war,

01:40:05.380 there were also secret talks going on.

01:40:06.660 The Israelis were also preparing to make some kind of agreement with Assad.

01:40:11.280 In the short term, I think Jolani and the Israelis can work together 0.97

01:40:14.800 relatively well because he

01:40:16.720 it'll take Jolani a very long time

01:40:19.000 until he will be able to build

01:40:21.360 or as it were cement

01:40:23.240 the ground beneath him. Yes.

01:40:25.300 He can't start problems with Israel right now.

01:40:28.480 But in 20-30 years 0.92

01:40:29.360 he might be able to.

01:40:31.800 What's the

01:40:33.060 typical Israeli view of the United States? 1.00

01:40:37.520 I think Avram got it right. 1.00

01:40:39.960 Like stupid Americans. 1.00

01:40:41.700 Stupid Americans. They sometimes want to 1.00

01:40:43.300 live like you.

01:40:44.800 You know, I think they want to speak English.

01:40:47.800 They want a certain kind of American lifestyle.

01:40:52.900 But they don't want to be, they think you're naive.

01:40:57.540 Is there affection or mostly contempt?

01:41:00.180 A lot of affection.

01:41:02.100 From what I hear, a lot of affection.

01:41:04.460 I mean, definitely over the last year or two, I think this has a lot to do with B.

01:41:08.520 There has been a kind of rhetoric of like, you know, who's the United States to tell us what to do?

01:41:14.800 They shouldn't be telling us what to do.

01:41:18.360 And Israelis get frustrated when there's talk of that, like,

01:41:20.940 Bibi's going to bend to Trump.

01:41:24.000 Or that America says, or like Biden says, you can't do this.

01:41:27.160 This is the red line.

01:41:29.360 I think there's a deep frustration inside of Israel 0.98

01:41:31.240 because they want to have their cake and eat it. 0.53

01:41:33.500 They want the money, but also total attitude.

01:41:35.120 They want support, but also I think they want America to acknowledge

01:41:37.820 that we're in a way doing your bidding.

01:41:39.560 I think a lot of Israelis believe that we're doing your bidding.

01:41:42.000 We're doing something good for you.

01:41:43.540 doing the hard work that you won't do yeah they they feel that way i can't speak for the whole

01:41:49.820 country but i mean you hear that i hear that yeah what about trump what's the view of trump

01:41:55.260 love him really yeah a lot of israelis love trump again i'm speaking from my experience

01:42:01.860 what do they like about him they like that he's willing to take the gloves off for once i think 1.00

01:42:06.360 they saw biden as a pussy yeah um as a feckless pussy who wasn't willing to to make a decision 1.00

01:42:12.660 wasn't able to do what, for example, Bibi is willing to do, 1.00

01:42:16.660 even though Bibi was also a pussy for a very long time. 0.99

01:42:21.100 And so, yeah, I think it's refreshing to them. 0.99

01:42:23.120 And I think they don't see, look, as Avram also said,

01:42:26.860 Israelis don't have a very good understanding of what happens 0.69

01:42:29.780 on the American interior of American culture. 1.00

01:42:32.740 Most Israelis do not speak English. 0.87

01:42:35.280 I think this is like a delusion people have 0.98

01:42:37.020 because they go to Tel Aviv and people speak English.

01:42:38.680 Outside of Tel Aviv, there's not a whole lot of English being spoken.

01:42:41.340 and so there is a sense in which all they see trump as is what he has done for us for the fact

01:42:49.800 that he would be more willing to help us and that's what matters if you're an israeli you

01:42:55.220 care about israel just like you are an american and care about america that's right that's always

01:42:59.360 been my favorite thing about israel is their nationalists yeah what's the view of the gulf

01:43:03.460 states you have to be more specific what do they think of dubai and abu dhabi uae

01:43:11.800 They love the UAE.

01:43:13.620 They love the UAE.

01:43:15.700 The UAE also loves them,

01:43:17.220 but I don't think the government is a big fan of Israel.

01:43:21.300 I've heard from people, for example,

01:43:22.940 that Emirati diplomats are a bit shocked when they come to Israel,

01:43:26.640 and they're also in some cases mistreated at the airports.

01:43:30.000 I think they find Israeli society a bit shocking in its rudeness at times.

01:43:36.620 I think they're not given the kind of respect

01:43:38.000 that they're accustomed to having within Gulf countries

01:43:40.260 that have pretty standard royal hierarchies

01:43:43.920 and different manners.

01:43:46.260 Those are elaborately polite societies

01:43:48.280 with all kinds of rituals around manners.

01:43:52.560 Yeah, no, I think they are shocked. 1.00

01:43:54.260 Yeah, so Israelis love the UAE

01:43:56.760 and there are very, very close relations

01:43:58.440 between the UAE and Israel.

01:43:59.700 What do they think of the Saudis?

01:44:01.480 I don't know.

01:44:02.420 Couldn't tell you.

01:44:03.220 Qatar?

01:44:06.940 I couldn't really tell you. 0.52

01:44:07.920 I think a lot of Israelis, I mean, they house Hamas as far as a lot of Israelis are concerned.

01:44:16.500 I don't hear people saying that Qatar as a country is our enemy.

01:44:21.080 I don't think Israelis think a whole lot about Qatar. 1.00

01:44:24.240 Yeah, I believe that.

01:44:25.360 I just don't think they think about them a lot.

01:44:26.500 What do they think?

01:44:27.300 So Israel has a lot of high profile defenders in the United States.

01:44:30.740 Are they well known in Israel?

01:44:32.400 Like who?

01:44:34.100 Well, I don't know.

01:44:34.820 Ben Shapiro?

01:44:36.220 No.

01:44:36.380 No.

01:44:37.580 No.

01:44:37.920 unknown. Mark Levin, no one's ever heard of him. I'm sure there's many people have heard of them.

01:44:46.060 Are there, do you have like the average Israeli listening to Mark Levin or Ben Shapiro? Absolutely

01:44:50.860 not. Because also Ben Shapiro is speaking in the name of, if anything, American Jewry. His

01:44:57.200 conversation is maybe about Israel, but it's between Western Jews or English speaking Jews.

01:45:01.940 It doesn't really impinge upon the Israelis.

01:45:05.160 To Israelis, what's their view of American Jews specifically?

01:45:10.740 I don't know if I could give you that in a sentence or two.

01:45:14.940 There's all kinds of different relationships.

01:45:17.760 I'm avoiding falling into certain kinds of banalities or stereotypes.

01:45:21.320 Totally, totally.

01:45:22.280 I just, of course, well, you can't generalize actually about most things.

01:45:25.080 You can't.

01:45:25.840 But I just think if there's like an overwhelming sense.

01:45:27.320 And there are also mixed feelings.

01:45:29.520 Yeah.

01:45:29.800 There are mixed feelings.

01:45:31.240 I have issues with American Jews, but they're also my people.

01:45:35.160 And this is, I think, the overarching sentiment.

01:45:37.340 At the end of the day, there are many disagreements between the two peoples, but they are also a single people.

01:45:42.760 It's just like you have disagreements with your family, I'm sure, but they're still your family.

01:45:46.760 And that's, by and large, if I had to sum it up, that's the dynamic.

01:45:51.940 But there is certainly a generational break right now. 0.50

01:45:54.860 I think the younger generation of liberal Jews, I think they're beginning to see, and this isn't the majority of Jews right now, the majority of younger generation Jews I think are still following in the footsteps of their parents, but there is a significant population of young Jews who I think are looking at Israel and saying, we don't like what you're doing and it doesn't necessarily matter that you're family.

01:46:19.620 What changed that view, do you think? Gaza?

01:46:22.780 Yeah.

01:46:23.660 And the fact that it's also unpopular. 0.82

01:46:25.480 If you're a liberal Jew in a liberal circle, 0.97

01:46:27.100 you don't want to be the guy who's liberal on every single point, 0.96

01:46:30.300 but stops at Gaza.

01:46:33.460 It's socially awkward.

01:46:36.300 In many cases, it's a social decision.

01:46:38.060 I don't think it's a major theoretical decision.

01:46:41.400 Right.

01:46:41.580 This is not a question of principle.

01:46:42.780 It's just like it's becoming unacceptable to be pro.

01:46:45.040 It could be both.

01:46:45.940 But also, you know, principles in America are a big part of sociality or social life.

01:46:50.240 They certainly are.

01:46:51.120 Right.

01:46:52.700 It's true for any society, I think.

01:46:55.700 Especially America.

01:46:56.880 You think so?

01:46:57.480 I think people like touting their morals quite a bit in America.

01:47:01.840 Yeah.

01:47:02.600 Really?

01:47:03.400 Yeah, I've never sat with an Arab and he tells me like, you know, I believe in this and I believe in that. 1.00

01:47:07.340 And I think this is really wrong.

01:47:09.240 I don't hear that.

01:47:12.160 But on like the subway in Toronto, you can hear people talking through each other about their various moral beliefs that they've never had to act upon in their lives.

01:47:20.820 That is a very wise observation. 1.00

01:47:24.480 I've never sat with an Arab and he's like, I think this is wrong. 1.00

01:47:28.680 Yeah, it's a bit. 1.00

01:47:29.780 Like, I'm sure the Arabs have moral opinions.

01:47:32.280 Of course they do.

01:47:32.860 Of course they do.

01:47:33.380 It's not that they don't have standards, but they're not throwing them at you at dinner.

01:47:36.160 They don't.

01:47:36.580 But they're just not the foundations of their identity.

01:47:40.220 Yeah.

01:47:41.520 Well, there is a certain self-righteousness in the West that's not necessarily the same as righteousness.

01:47:45.620 I mean, it's just.

01:47:46.280 Yeah, definitely.

01:47:47.520 There's a posturing that goes on.

01:47:50.300 Here's my last question.

01:47:51.540 How do you think, and it's impossible to know, but like in five years, what does the landscape look like in the Middle East?

01:47:59.780 Is the United States still as closely allied with Israel as it is today?

01:48:03.660 Is Lebanon territorially intact? 0.83

01:48:07.540 Is Israel safer?

01:48:09.080 Have we gotten the seven front war down to two fronts, say, or no fronts? 0.96

01:48:12.840 Is Bibi still in power? 0.71

01:48:14.260 Like what current trends continue?

01:48:16.460 What does it look like? 0.97

01:48:18.060 I think Bibi very well could be in power in five years. 0.60

01:48:20.400 I think he'll probably get elected in October.

01:48:23.480 Yeah, I think it's highly likely that he'll get re-elected.

01:48:27.300 And I think everything that's happening right now is in some way or another engineered for that to happen. 0.86

01:48:33.600 Again, as we said, the personal ambitions of Bibi happen to align with some of the strategic ambitions of the state. 0.85

01:48:39.580 And if you can just modulate that, then it's a perfect recipe to win elections. 0.76

01:48:47.480 In terms of Lebanon, do I think the Israelis will be highly active deep inside Lebanon? 0.65

01:48:51.440 No.

01:48:52.640 And I think a lot of these, Bibi doesn't want a ton of war.

01:48:57.720 I think after Bibi gets into, if he gets reelected, I think you'll see Lebanon sort of come to a close.

01:49:04.680 Even Iran could come to a close. 0.65

01:49:06.380 He'll want to just sort of like bring in a new status quo that will be useful to him. 0.99

01:49:11.640 And when he has to turn up the heat, he'll turn up the heat.

01:49:16.760 Yeah.

01:49:17.480 Do you think, again, purely speculative, but if Donald Trump went to Bibi tomorrow and said, we're shutting this down with Iran, it's terrible for markets, it's terrible for me, my political party, could he make Bibi stop?

01:49:34.540 i think he probably could but bb would probably want to find a kind of middle ground meaning

01:49:41.980 they had a ceasefire in lebanon but there were still israeli strikes in lebanon on

01:49:46.460 on an almost daily basis right yeah i think you could call that the israeli ceasefire

01:49:52.100 yeah in hebrew called the war between the wars um for but so funny when you know growing up here

01:49:58.860 we were taught that Israel had wars in 48, 56, 67, 73, 82,

01:50:05.200 and then the Intifadas.

01:50:06.560 Yeah.

01:50:07.600 That's the official history of it, right?

01:50:09.880 Yeah.

01:50:10.560 And then you get older and you realize,

01:50:11.900 nah, there's kind of a war continuously.

01:50:15.240 I don't know if I'd call it a war, but there is...

01:50:17.260 Fighting.

01:50:17.740 There's fighting or there are strikes.

01:50:19.520 There's activity.

01:50:20.840 I don't know if I'd call it a war.

01:50:23.240 But I do think you could potentially see a situation,

01:50:26.020 And it depends on the conditions of the end of the war.

01:50:30.500 If there's an agreement, what the stakes are and the stakeholders.

01:50:34.420 But there could be a situation.

01:50:35.720 I can envisage a situation in which Israel, for example, is still striking, not necessarily on a daily basis, 0.50

01:50:41.740 but that they operate in the skies of Tehran, that they strike as needed. 0.58

01:50:47.440 And there's still a lot to be seen.

01:50:49.140 I mean, I don't, I think there should be, there's probably going to be some attempt to activate people to try to get protests stirred up again.

01:50:59.320 I wouldn't be entirely surprised.

01:51:02.380 In Iran. 0.82

01:51:03.860 Yeah, I find it hard to believe that the Israelis put all this together without the hope or without some expectation that when things quiet down, things internally will begin to sort of move again.

01:51:19.140 I don't know if you can expect people to go and protest while there are strikes. 0.53

01:51:24.840 The strikes should, I think they would expect, lay the groundwork for something to happen.

01:51:29.700 Do you have any idea how the Israeli government winds up with so many agents of influence and just agents in all these hostile countries?

01:51:38.740 How many, there's so many people in Iran working for Israel, same in Syria, same in Lebanon.

01:51:43.960 Like, how do they do that?

01:51:45.280 People are easy to buy.

01:51:49.620 People are easy to buy.

01:51:51.140 Apparently they are. 1.00

01:51:52.080 I mean, I like to say that the best spies in the Arab world all work for the Mossad. 1.00

01:51:56.100 That's why they don't have good intelligence agencies. 1.00

01:52:00.900 How do they do that?

01:52:02.180 I mean, it's just remarkable.

01:52:03.440 I don't think the United States pulls that off.

01:52:05.680 They could if they wanted to.

01:52:06.840 I think the CIA is probably just lazy.

01:52:09.800 The stakes aren't as high in many cases.

01:52:13.700 Yeah.

01:52:14.060 You find someone's weakness. 1.00

01:52:16.720 If they're homosexual. 1.00

01:52:17.760 We only do that in the Senate here. 1.00

01:52:21.480 We haven't bothered to do it in Iran, I guess. 1.00

01:52:24.980 That day might come.

01:52:25.980 You never know.

01:52:28.120 All right.

01:52:28.580 Thank you very much.

01:52:29.240 That was interesting as hell.

01:52:30.780 Thanks for having me.

01:52:31.480 Appreciate it.

The Tucker Carlson Show - April 13, 2026

October 7th Foresight, Netanyahu’s Funding of Hamas, and the Settlers Murdering Palestinians

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