TRIGGERnometry - Asking Benjamin Netanyahu The Tough Questions

00:00:00.000 When you were asked whether Israel is winning the PR war, you said, we're definitely not.

00:00:07.680 We Jews have been fighting and losing the propaganda war for about 2,500 years.

00:00:13.040 This is the fraud. It's not merely the starvation fraud. It's a genocide fraud.

00:00:19.700 If we wanted to commit genocide, we would have done it in one afternoon.

00:00:22.920 When you have ministers like Smotrich making incendiary or inflammatory comments, and there doesn't seem to be any particular pushback from your government to this, they go, well, what does what does the prime minister really believe?

00:00:39.000 Prime Minister, forgive me, but these aren't parliamentarians. These are people who are part of your government.

00:00:43.380 He said that the UK would recognize a Palestinian state. What is your response to that?

00:00:50.700 It's just downright dangerous because you're really rewarding these monstrous terrorists with the greatest prize, and that's because of weakness.

00:00:59.560 You should ask your starmer. Here's a suggestion. Ask him, OK?

00:01:02.580 What do these protesters say about Britain? I know what they say about Israel. Israel has to be destroyed from the river to the sea.

00:01:09.500 Well, Britain should go down. What do they say about the UK? And the same for the protesters in the US. 0.91

00:01:14.260 They burn Israeli flags. They burn American flags. We have nowhere to flee. We're in our ancestral homeland.

00:01:20.700 And we're not going anywhere. So we fight them. But we're not fighting them only on our behalf. We're fighting them on your behalf, too.

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00:02:32.100 Prime Minister Netanyahu, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:02:35.100 Glad to be with you.

00:02:36.440 It's great to have you on the show.

00:02:37.680 As you know, what we do on the show is try to speak the truth, find out what the truth is, push back when it's appropriate, and have an honest conversation.

00:02:45.780 That's why you're here, and we really appreciate you taking the time to do that.

00:02:49.220 We have obviously lots of questions for you, including many of the things that are being said about Israel here in the West that you probably don't agree with.

00:02:56.200 Before we get to that, though, what I really want to ask you about is October the 7th, and you had a very strange and unique experience that very few human beings have ever had, which is being in charge of a country of 10 million people when it's attacked in this horrific way.

00:03:11.420 Where were you?

00:03:13.000 How did you find out what was going on, and what was your immediate reaction?

00:03:16.640 What did you think?

00:03:17.480 What did you feel?

00:03:18.320 How did you act in those moments?

00:03:20.120 Well, it was 6.29 on Shabbat, Saturday morning.

00:03:23.860 I got a phone call from my military secretary informing me that we've just been invaded by Hamas.

00:03:31.500 The first thing that I asked was, is it a full-scale invasion?

00:03:35.460 He said, looks like it.

00:03:36.960 And I said, can we get the Hamas leaders?

00:03:39.740 But subsequently, I made my way to the military headquarters of Israel in Tel Aviv, called for a general call-up of our reserves, hundreds of thousands, and declared war.

00:03:51.400 And then proceeded to focus on the mission of winning that war.

00:03:56.020 And I can tell you that in these moments, you're really concerned with action.

00:04:03.820 You're concerned with decisions.

00:04:06.040 You're not, you don't wallow in the mires, they say.

00:04:09.500 You really think about what needs to be done now.

00:04:12.740 And have you and the people of Israel had time to grieve what happened, to process what happened to thousands of your people?

00:04:23.360 To grieve, yes.

00:04:25.460 To fully absorb this savagery, I think, is more difficult because you seldom encounter such bestial behavior.

00:04:37.880 In fact, I don't think you encounter it among beasts.

00:04:40.880 I mean, the deliberate raping and murder of women, the beheading of men, the burning of babies in front of their children, the kidnapping of innocent people, grandmothers, Holocaust survivors, their grandchildren.

00:04:59.200 It is savagery on a scale that we haven't seen since the Holocaust. 0.89

00:05:03.600 And I think that it affirmed to me that we're fighting a battle against barbarism, the battle of civilization against barbarism.

00:05:13.820 And there isn't a symmetry between the two.

00:05:17.100 Today, in this world of relativism, yes, of course, everybody is the same.

00:05:20.600 No, we're not.

00:05:21.440 We're not the same.

00:05:22.520 We don't prosecute wars that way.

00:05:24.640 We don't engage in such horrors.

00:05:26.480 We don't deliberately mutilate human beings.

00:05:29.680 This is not what distinguishes our actions, but it distinguishes theirs.

00:05:34.420 And they do it with a fiendish glee.

00:05:36.880 They come with GoPro cameras.

00:05:39.080 This is a savagery on a scale that is hard to absorb.

00:05:43.580 But I'll tell you what it taught me.

00:05:45.060 It said to me that we're not merely fighting the battle for our survival.

00:05:49.880 We're fighting the battle for civilization against barbarism.

00:05:53.620 And that was true in the beginning of the war.

00:05:56.900 And it's still true today, even though some in the West refuse to acknowledge it.

00:06:02.980 And it's a strange question, perhaps.

00:06:05.520 But does every man or woman who sits in your chair expect to get that phone call at some point?

00:06:11.280 Well, they should be ready for it.

00:06:15.940 And it comes, what we call the red phone rings constantly.

00:06:20.900 It rings at 3 o'clock in the morning.

00:06:24.060 My wife says, can't you let us sleep one night? 0.99

00:06:27.560 And the answer is, not many.

00:06:30.200 There are these interruptions because Israel is a country unlike any other.

00:06:33.880 It is still surrounded by enemies committed openly and sworn openly to its destruction.

00:06:41.160 And therefore, it has to be vigilant and protecting itself constantly.

00:06:45.020 And that's the first role of the Prime Minister of Israel.

00:06:47.900 And since October the 7th, your forces have obviously taken control of significant swathes of Gaza.

00:06:54.000 Your intelligence operatives have secured caches of documents and information, phone calls, intercepts, etc.

00:06:59.700 What do you now know about how this happened, why it was able to happen, including, you know, what happened on the Israeli side to make this possible?

00:07:11.220 What do we now know about October the 7th that we did not know on October the 8th?

00:07:15.540 Well, what happened on the Israeli side needs to be investigated by an impartial commission because it should be investigated top down, 0.87

00:07:23.700 Prime Minister down to the last pertinent official or military person.

00:07:29.700 That has to be done.

00:07:31.140 But right now, what we do know and what we learned is that this was part of the Iranian terror axis.

00:07:37.420 Iran had built this network of proxies with the goal of annihilating Israel by a simultaneous invasion from the south with Hamas,

00:07:48.260 from the north with Hezbollah in Lebanon, with simultaneous pelleting of Israel massively,

00:07:53.980 with ballistic missiles, with rockets from their various proxies, not only Lebanon and Gaza, but also from the Houthis in Yemen,

00:08:03.760 from militias, Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, and from Iran itself.

00:08:09.040 So this was meant to be a simultaneous surprise attack that would hobble Israel and destroy it. 0.86

00:08:17.000 I think what happened was that they discovered that, basically, Hezbollah Hamas fired too soon.

00:08:26.040 He didn't coordinate.

00:08:27.820 You know, the plan was there.

00:08:29.760 Everybody knew that the plan was there.

00:08:31.360 But for some reason, he went out and fired the first shot too early.

00:08:37.560 And in many ways, I mean, it cost us a horrendous cost of 1,200 innocent people murdered savagely.

00:08:43.420 But it also gave us the time to block a potential invasion from Hezbollah 1.00

00:08:48.360 and to organize the counterattack, which we proceeded to do from day one.

00:08:52.980 Prime Minister, can you – I know this might feel like a strange question, but I do think it's important.

00:08:59.500 And it's a question many people are asking is, you clearly have incredible penetration of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard in Iran.

00:09:06.360 You have incredible penetration of Hezbollah. 0.59

00:09:08.620 I don't know how embedded your operatives were within Gaza and Hamas.

00:09:12.520 How did your intelligence services not see this coming?

00:09:16.680 I mean, you've talked often about the fact that the London Underground is smaller than the tunnel network in Gaza.

00:09:23.680 How come you didn't know?

00:09:25.320 And if you did, how come it was not a red flag that all of this was about to happen?

00:09:29.240 Well, all of that, I think, will be answered by this impartial investigation.

00:09:32.680 But I think part of it was a mindset that said that Hamas is deterred and Hamas is not going to do it.

00:09:38.160 And that's a very big part of it.

00:09:39.880 But on day two of the war, I said – when Hezbollah joined after day one, they joined day two. 0.90

00:09:49.120 And I said, we will change the face of the Middle East. 1.00

00:09:54.180 Because for me, it was very clear that we were not only fighting Hamas, but we were fighting Iran with its various proxies, this noose of death that they wanted to strangle us with. 0.96

00:10:07.800 And I think that that's the larger understanding that everybody has today.

00:10:12.580 I don't think many people believed me at the time, but it was obvious to me that it's not enough to hit very hard, hit Hamas and hobble Hezbollah.

00:10:27.480 But that we'd have to deal also with their sponsors and the larger axis that made this possible.

00:10:34.440 So, I think those lessons have been learned, certainly by Israel, and by acting against Iran's terror axis, which is meant to – ultimately to conquer the West. 0.88

00:10:46.400 That's what these people think.

00:10:47.960 That's what they believe in.

00:10:49.280 It's irrational.

00:10:50.280 You say, how could – do you believe that?

00:10:51.640 Can you believe that people would actually think we'd deliver death to America and we'd destroy Europe?

00:10:57.400 No, they couldn't possibly mean that.

00:10:59.100 Well, what do you think?

00:10:59.700 Do you think they mean it or not?

00:11:01.380 Well, they keep chanting it, so I'm tempted to believe them, yes. 1.00

00:11:04.100 So, when you believe them, when you believe them, exactly the point, when you believe them, then, since I believed it, I think that what we had to do was take on – ultimately take on Iran itself. 0.96

00:11:17.460 And, of course, on day two, after you suffered the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, it may seem, you know, a ridiculous goal, an imaginary goal.

00:11:27.660 No, it wasn't. 0.72

00:11:28.300 It was very clear.

00:11:29.800 We'll turn back.

00:11:30.600 Israel will recover very quickly, very quickly, and fight back and demolish Hamas and then demolish Hezbollah and then demolish the Assad regime and then hit very strongly, hit Iran in ways that surprised the world. 0.91

00:11:48.400 And I'm very proud of the people of Israel who stood fast, and I'm very proud of the soldiers of Israel.

00:11:55.520 I call this incredible 12-day war with Iran, I call it the rising lion operation. 1.00

00:12:03.600 And I did that because in the Bible it says that the people of Israel will rise like lions.

00:12:09.120 And that's exactly what our soldiers did, and I'm very proud of them.

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00:14:10.180 Before Francis takes off, I have one more question.

00:14:14.500 I think even your worst critics wouldn't deny the incredible success you have had in taking down the Iranian proxies and Iran capabilities itself. 1.00

00:14:23.080 But one of the things that we have heard here in the West, and I wanted to get your perspective on it, is that in the run-up to what happened on October 7, for many, many years, Israel was allowing, the Israeli government was allowing Qatar to pump money into Hamas.

00:14:38.840 And using that, in effect, to strengthen Hamas against the Palestinian Authority to prevent a united Palestinian state.

00:14:47.360 What do you say to those claims?

00:14:49.380 Well, I think it's hogwash.

00:14:50.820 I mean, we're stuck with Hamas. 0.97

00:14:52.480 I was actually against leaving Gaza and resigned from the government when it did so, when it decided to tear out the settlements.

00:14:58.380 Because I said, this will be overtaken by Hamas, and Hamas will use it as a platform, will use Gaza, a de facto Palestinian state in Gaza, to pellet us with missiles and rockets, the surrounding cities. 0.87

00:15:13.380 And this was poo-pooed by the government at the time.

00:15:15.440 I thought that was insane.

00:15:17.300 But once they gave up Gaza, that's exactly what happened. 0.92

00:15:21.260 Hamas took it over and turned it into a terror bastion. 0.78

00:15:24.180 And the question was, what do you do with it?

00:15:26.280 Well, there were various theories.

00:15:28.560 One of it was that you have to aid the civilian population in such a way that you don't have diseases.

00:15:34.220 So you've got to take care of the sewage.

00:15:35.540 You've got to take care of electricity.

00:15:37.040 You've got to make sure there's no famine there.

00:15:38.960 And that was the policy that advocated giving money, which was partial money, by the way.

00:15:43.600 Of all the money, the billions that went into Gaza, this was a fraction.

00:15:48.540 And it was monitored.

00:15:49.620 So it didn't really make the difference.

00:15:51.120 And it also, you know, what did they do with the billions that they got?

00:15:55.340 Not from Qatar.

00:15:56.840 The billions that they got, they built a terror city underneath, terror tunnels.

00:16:01.600 Have you been to Gaza?

00:16:02.500 Have you seen it?

00:16:03.840 No, no.

00:16:04.360 You're both welcome to come, and I'll make sure that you have a chance to see it.

00:16:08.260 But you've got to see the unseen underground city that they did.

00:16:11.920 So they built tunnels with the vast aid that they got from elsewhere.

00:16:15.940 I didn't believe that Hamas was going to make peace with us.

00:16:19.980 I thought Hamas had to be constantly cut back.

00:16:24.280 I, myself, of the four military operations that we had since the rise of Hamas, since its takeover of Gaza, I led three operations to cut them down, not to accommodate them, killed some of their senior leaders. 0.72

00:16:37.760 But there was a question whether we had the consensus, both national and international, to go into Gaza and wipe them out.

00:16:46.960 And the answer was, we didn't have it.

00:16:49.040 After October 7th, that changed.

00:16:51.400 We had that consensus, at least for a while, until the Western leaders buckled.

00:16:57.060 But that doesn't change our understanding that we have to get rid of Hamas. 0.95

00:17:01.560 Did you know about the terror tunnels before October 7th?

00:17:05.260 Were you aware that they were building them?

00:17:06.780 Yes, of course.

00:17:07.460 We knew.

00:17:07.960 We didn't know the full extent because it's underground and there are limited ways.

00:17:11.900 I think Israel has very good intelligence, but intelligence is collection.

00:17:18.800 And that is always limited.

00:17:20.740 And then you have to have your assessments.

00:17:22.340 That is also limited.

00:17:23.680 Yes.

00:17:24.000 Did we know about underground tunnels?

00:17:25.500 Of course.

00:17:25.920 Yeah, we know it.

00:17:26.520 Prime Minister, you've just used the words, the Western leaders buckled.

00:17:32.060 And I'm assuming what you're referring to is Keir Starmer's statement on the 25th of July,

00:17:37.820 where he said that the UK would recognize a Palestinian state.

00:17:44.000 What is your response to that?

00:17:45.700 And do you think that was just going to essentially encourage Hamas to continue their assistance?

00:17:53.400 Yeah, of course it does.

00:17:54.300 I mean, look, they commit the greatest savagery against Jews since the Holocaust. 0.86

00:18:00.140 And the Prime Minister of Britain says, we'll reward you with a de facto state, which is what?

00:18:06.540 Which is committed openly to repeating the October 7th massacre over and over and over again.

00:18:13.140 And they say, well, no, look, we recognize Israel's right to defend itself.

00:18:18.720 You know, they always add that.

00:18:20.080 You hear that, right?

00:18:21.340 Yeah, of course.

00:18:21.820 Well, they recognize Israel's right to defend itself as long as Israel doesn't exercise that right. 0.97

00:18:28.540 So now let's imagine what would be the response of Britain if, well, in your case, about 15,000 people or 10,000 people would be butchered in one day.

00:18:39.480 And you'd have, I don't know, 2,500 hostages taken.

00:18:44.380 You know, would you say, oh, well, we should give our attackers a state right next to London?

00:18:49.140 Of course not.

00:18:50.100 What would the Americans say if you had 50,000 Americans butchered, okay, and thousands and thousands of Americans taken hostage?

00:18:59.580 Obviously, they'd say, no, we're not going to give them a state sort of not in New Jersey but right in Manhattan. 0.94

00:19:06.800 You know, that's ridiculous.

00:19:08.640 So what the standard that is being applied is not merely wrong. 0.98

00:19:12.640 It's just downright dangerous because you're really rewarding these monstrous terrorists with the greatest prize.

00:19:19.400 And that's because of weakness.

00:19:21.520 It's weakness.

00:19:22.460 It's weakness in the face of distorted media, of packed social networks, packed with bot bots.

00:19:32.160 Bot bots.

00:19:33.680 B-O-U-G-H-T. 1.00

00:19:35.560 B-O-T-S. 1.00

00:19:36.680 Bot bots.

00:19:37.260 But it's also just these radical minorities which are protesting there.

00:19:44.460 And, by the way, you should ask your statement.

00:19:45.960 Here's a suggestion.

00:19:46.760 Ask him, okay.

00:19:47.840 What do these protesters say about Britain?

00:19:50.820 I know what they say about Israel. 0.97

00:19:52.140 Israel has to be destroyed from the river to the sea, you know. 0.94

00:19:54.960 You'd think this is a massive continent. 0.95

00:19:57.200 It's all of 30, 40 miles, okay.

00:19:59.120 But what do they say about Britain?

00:20:02.200 Well, Britain should go down.

00:20:03.300 What do they say about the U.K.?

00:20:04.920 And the same for the protesters in the U.S.

00:20:06.980 They burn Israeli flags, they burn American flags, and they burn the U.K. flag.

00:20:13.240 So they're basically a hostile minority supporting monstrosities. 0.99

00:20:19.980 And I think that it's shameful the way that the Western leaders in Britain, in France, in Canada, in New Zealand, the way they buckle under.

00:20:30.460 They don't have, you know, Europe has gone through the destruction of the Jews.

00:20:38.420 Eighty years later, that's what they have to say?

00:20:40.980 They attack the Jewish state, and they give a prize for those who would destroy the one and only Jewish state? 0.83

00:20:48.220 Shameful.

00:20:48.740 But, Prime Minister, they would say that the amount of casualties that are now being inflicted upon the Palestinian people,

00:20:58.580 the suffering that the Palestinian civilians are going through,

00:21:01.880 that Israel has achieved practically all of its aims.

00:21:06.060 And if Israel continues to perpetuate this war, what it's going to do is it's going to radicalize the population even more so. 0.69

00:21:14.940 The more population gets radicalized, the more that joins Hamas. 0.53

00:21:19.100 So, essentially, what Israel will be trapped in is a forever war.

00:21:22.580 What do you say to that argument?

00:21:23.920 I think the forever war is the opposite.

00:21:26.860 I think if we leave them there, and they're committed to our destruction, then you'll have a forever war. 0.85

00:21:31.860 But what is happening on the ground is actually the opposite.

00:21:34.680 What is happening on the ground is we now have Gazans who are fighting Hamas,

00:21:38.700 because they see now in the closing phase of this war,

00:21:42.160 after we had to go through these seven fronts against all the proxies and Iran itself,

00:21:46.280 and now we're circling back to finish off Hamas and demolish its last stronghold in Gaza.

00:21:52.340 They see hope.

00:21:54.960 They say, don't let up. 0.99

00:21:56.580 Gazans, they kill Hamas. 0.94

00:21:58.620 They fight Hamas. 0.99

00:21:59.640 They die fighting them.

00:22:01.640 And they're saying, this is our final hope, to free ourselves from this tyranny.

00:22:05.920 You know, this tyranny that has caused them endless suffering

00:22:09.180 and has not invested a penny of the billions that they received for the people of Gaza.

00:22:17.360 So, quite the opposite.

00:22:19.360 It's free.

00:22:19.960 You know, we're fighting.

00:22:20.960 You hear the slogan, free Gaza.

00:22:22.880 I agree.

00:22:23.660 Free Gaza from Hamas tyranny. 0.72

00:22:27.400 Now, as far as Israel's performance on the battlefield, this is, you know, this is the fraud. 0.94

00:22:33.100 It's not merely the starvation fraud.

00:22:36.220 It's a genocide fraud.

00:22:37.700 If we wanted to commit genocide, we would have done it in one afternoon.

00:22:41.700 We have the capacity.

00:22:43.080 But we don't do that.

00:22:44.040 You know, look at the way you, the allied forces fought in Fallujah.

00:22:49.660 You know, look at the way they fought in Mosul.

00:22:52.600 Took them nine months against 3,000 terrorists.

00:22:56.060 Nine months.

00:22:57.700 3,000 terrorists.

00:22:58.540 We face 10 times the number of terrorists.

00:23:00.700 And what do we do?

00:23:01.940 We call up the Palestinian civilians and we say, leave the area. 1.00

00:23:06.820 No, millions.

00:23:08.980 Millions of text messages.

00:23:10.400 Millions of individual phone calls.

00:23:12.380 Please get out. 1.00

00:23:13.920 And Hamas stands there and tries to prevent them by shooting them, killing them. 0.98

00:23:19.080 So what do you think? 0.98

00:23:20.120 Is that genocide?

00:23:21.460 No, it isn't.

00:23:22.340 You know it isn't.

00:23:23.740 And yet Israel is being blamed.

00:23:26.100 And of course, the ratio of combatants to non-combatants killed is about one and a half

00:23:30.560 to one, which is probably a few.

00:23:32.700 I mean, I think every civilian death is a tragedy.

00:23:35.560 We do everything we can.

00:23:37.000 As no army has done in history in such dense urban warfare to prevent it.

00:23:41.860 But Israel can't be, it's not merely that it can't be held to a higher standard.

00:23:47.300 It's held to an impossible standard.

00:23:49.760 I mean, look at the allies in World War II.

00:23:51.440 You know what they did when they went into Congress?

00:23:53.380 Do you know?

00:23:54.680 Of course.

00:23:55.500 What did they do?

00:23:56.480 Tell me.

00:23:56.940 What did they do?

00:23:57.580 Did they call civilians to leave?

00:23:59.700 Did they give them, you know, caravans of food?

00:24:02.800 Did anything like that happen?

00:24:04.840 No.

00:24:05.180 Well, let's be honest.

00:24:06.020 And this is an argument I've made myself.

00:24:07.620 At the end of World War II, we flattened Germany because they made us. 1.00

00:24:11.520 Because we had to destroy the military infrastructure, the transportation infrastructure to actually

00:24:17.740 be able to win the war.

00:24:19.880 But we live in a very different age now, don't we, Prime Minister, where all the atrocities

00:24:24.500 of war are instantly available to everybody around the world on social media.

00:24:28.680 And that is something you said in your own press conference last week when you said, when

00:24:32.620 you were asked whether Israel is winning the PR war, you said, you said, we're definitely 0.98

00:24:37.460 not.

00:24:37.860 And that's putting it very mildly.

00:24:40.300 So that's the challenge you face now, isn't it?

00:24:42.880 Yes.

00:24:43.200 But, you know, I never thought of Winston Churchill as a war criminal, but I guess he would be

00:24:46.920 held as such today.

00:24:48.200 But of course, it's not really towards the end of the war that you flattened Germany.

00:24:52.440 When you cross the, you know, when you cross the channel in Normandy and you went into the

00:24:59.320 cities, just bombed these cities, tank fire, artillery fire, air fire, without giving notice

00:25:04.680 or anything like that, and you did it because you had to destroy the enemy.

00:25:09.560 So you're right.

00:25:10.340 It's a different era.

00:25:11.120 That's why we are acting differently.

00:25:13.900 And we are acting, we're holding ourselves to the higher standard, and yet we're being

00:25:18.680 condemned by those who know better, who know better and even saw their own troops in Afghanistan

00:25:24.000 or in Iraq, be that as it may.

00:25:27.960 You know, it's very hard to fight the, you know, the deception, the lies, the starved

00:25:36.000 children.

00:25:36.500 The pictures of starved children are turned out to have cerebral palsy or other congenital

00:25:41.100 diseases that leave them emaciated.

00:25:43.840 And Israel is, of course, accused of starving children, pretty much the way that in the

00:25:48.460 Middle Ages, Jews were accused of killing Christian children for their blood.

00:25:53.880 So, you know, what do you do against the lie that circles the earth 10 times before the

00:25:58.920 truth has a chance to emerge?

00:26:00.480 You have to shorten the war as speedily as possible. 0.56

00:26:03.860 And frankly, we also have to do something about the algorithms and the social networks.

00:26:09.560 This is a big challenge.

00:26:11.780 I don't want to dismiss it.

00:26:14.580 But look, we Jews have been fighting and losing the propaganda war for about 2,500 years.

00:26:20.920 What's different now is that we're winning the ground war.

00:26:24.720 We're forcing, you know, what comes after the propaganda vilification is massacres, you

00:26:29.680 know, and what we're doing now, massacres that we were completely defenseless with.

00:26:35.160 Right now, after the vilifications come the attacks, but we're winning those attacks.

00:26:39.980 That's the change.

00:26:40.980 And the faster we win, I think the faster the propaganda war will dissipate.

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00:27:58.420 And now, back to the show.

00:28:00.900 There are critics of yours, Prime Minister, who will say, well, part of the reason that Israel 0.96

00:28:07.940 is losing the propaganda war is when you have ministers like Smotryk making incendiary or

00:28:14.260 inflammatory comments, and there doesn't seem to be any particular pushback from your

00:28:19.340 government to this.

00:28:20.640 They go, well, what does a prime minister really believe?

00:28:25.760 Well, what I believe I say, in a parliamentary system, people are free to say.

00:28:30.000 Sometimes they say things they don't quite mean.

00:28:32.180 It happens all the time.

00:28:33.720 It happens in any parliamentary system, as you know.

00:28:35.980 And it happens in Britain, too.

00:28:38.360 But I think that, on the whole, the people, the government is united.

00:28:42.600 Most of the people are united, not all.

00:28:45.160 You have a very active fringe.

00:28:47.680 Prime Minister, forgive me, but these aren't parliamentarians.

00:28:49.960 These are people who are part of your government.

00:28:52.020 And they remain part of your government after they say these things, that to many people,

00:28:56.140 even your friends, sound a little bit like ethnic cleansing is being discussed.

00:29:00.460 Well, we're not discussing ethnic cleansing.

00:29:02.260 And to the extent that we have these conversations around the cabinet, the security cabinet, that

00:29:06.880 is actually not being discussed by these people.

00:29:09.500 But they have disagreements with me.

00:29:11.500 That's part of a parliamentary coalition.

00:29:14.460 And they can leave.

00:29:15.420 And in fact, some of them have left the government.

00:29:18.180 In the course of this war, they came back because they disagreed with my decisions on hostage

00:29:22.940 negotiations.

00:29:23.880 They left, or they voted against, or they did both.

00:29:28.000 And that's common.

00:29:29.600 And to say, to describe this as anything but unique, this is a democracy.

00:29:33.800 You know, I think there, too, come on, understand.

00:29:39.120 You know very well how that works in Britain and how it works elsewhere.

00:29:42.880 I don't condone the idea of the ethnic cleansing.

00:29:45.480 I don't seek to occupy Gaza and, you know, settle it. 0.93

00:29:51.460 I think that our goal there is to make sure that we have a security belt, which, a security

00:29:56.120 cordon, which we'll probably leave.

00:29:57.360 But Prime Minister, may I just interrupt?

00:29:59.040 When you have your finance minister making a speech and talking about occupying Gaza, and

00:30:04.640 there doesn't seem to be any pushback within the government, people quite rightly, in my

00:30:09.540 opinion, would say, well, surely aren't you condoning that type of rhetoric?

00:30:13.620 No.

00:30:13.840 And that is exacerbating Israel's PR problem.

00:30:17.280 I disagree completely.

00:30:18.500 When somebody says that, and I'm asked, is that your policy?

00:30:21.280 And I say, no, it's not my policy.

00:30:23.240 I don't intend to build settlements or communities in Gaza, and not Israeli ones. 0.99

00:30:27.700 I want a non-Israeli civilian governance after that is committed to living in peace with 0.99

00:30:33.660 us and doesn't condone terror, educate their children to terror, finance terror, or launch

00:30:37.880 terror, which is what Hamas does, and frankly, what the Palestinian Authority would do, 0.84

00:30:43.580 too.

00:30:43.900 So we're not going that route.

00:30:46.320 But I don't want to build Israeli communities there. 1.00

00:30:49.640 And I've said it openly.

00:30:50.620 And they asked me, you know, your minister of finance says this.

00:30:54.660 And what do you say?

00:30:55.420 Well, I say, I disagree with him.

00:30:57.460 And I say that.

00:30:58.720 You know, he's entitled to say his things.

00:31:00.620 That's not ethnic cleansing.

00:31:02.720 It's a view.

00:31:03.840 It's a legitimate view, which I happen to disagree with.

00:31:05.780 But I can tell you that I think there, too, the statements that nullify and challenge the

00:31:15.440 various lies that are leveled at us, you just can't keep up with it.

00:31:19.400 It's like a flood.

00:31:20.260 I'm too busy winning the war, sometimes winning the actual war, to debunk every single lie that

00:31:32.080 is put against us or against me.

00:31:35.220 You know, you're vilified. 0.99

00:31:36.140 You're a war criminal. 1.00

00:31:37.420 You're a demon. 1.00

00:31:38.060 You're demonized all the time. 1.00

00:31:39.260 And just say, noise.

00:31:41.940 Put that aside.

00:31:43.280 Win the war.

00:31:44.300 Win it judiciously.

00:31:45.840 Use just means and have a just war that you have to win if you're going to live and survive

00:31:52.600 in this very brutal area.

00:31:54.460 And let me tell you, we will win it.

00:31:56.520 And I think we'll win the peace with it, too.

00:31:58.720 Because I think in our area, that's what, in your area, too, people respect the strong.

00:32:06.020 And the strong have to win.

00:32:07.800 The strong can be evil or they can be good.

00:32:11.980 But you cannot lose.

00:32:14.080 If you lose, nobody will make alliances with you.

00:32:16.880 Nobody will make peace with you.

00:32:21.540 You make peace with the strong.

00:32:22.980 You make alliances with the strong.

00:32:24.840 The strong survive.

00:32:25.780 But the strong survive not only through their guts, but also through their wits and through

00:32:31.880 their commitment to their cause.

00:32:33.160 And my cause is the survival of the one and only Jewish state, often against incredible 0.99

00:32:39.580 vilification and lies.

00:32:40.980 But that's the way this cookie crumbles.

00:32:44.320 But the state of Israel will not.

00:32:45.500 Because what you're saying, and look, I have a sympathy with what you're saying.

00:32:51.600 Of course I do.

00:32:52.580 But when you say that this is just noise, I would strongly push back against that prime

00:32:57.220 minister.

00:32:57.500 Because if you look at particularly Gen Z and the younger generation's opinions of view

00:33:03.060 on Israel, they are, to put it mildly, prime minister, deeply unfavorable.

00:33:07.660 And those kids now, they are going to be the next ones to go into politics.

00:33:13.800 They're going to be the next decision makers.

00:33:15.940 That must present you with a very real worry that Israel will not enjoy the same level of

00:33:22.300 support, particularly from the U.S., that it has once done when those kids come to be

00:33:27.200 the decision makers.

00:33:28.100 Well, ask them in Britain and ask them in the U.S. what they think of Britain and the U.S.

00:33:33.440 What do they think?

00:33:34.940 And what are they saying?

00:33:36.340 There's a big campaign, and it's organized and systemic, and it's financed, to tear away

00:33:42.620 traditional elements of support from Israel.

00:33:45.380 It's not just happening by itself.

00:33:47.040 A lot of it is organized.

00:33:49.140 And if it's organized, you can counter it, too.

00:33:51.300 At the appropriate time, you just have to concentrate your attention to it.

00:33:54.840 And I agree with you that it's an important point.

00:33:57.320 And I'll tell you what they're saying.

00:33:59.900 They're saying, for example, those in America were saying,

00:34:01.980 we're pro-American.

00:34:03.900 You're pro-American? 0.51

00:34:05.680 And you attack Israel that is fighting the people who tried to assassinate President

00:34:09.640 Trump twice, not once, who bombed American embassies, who murdered 241 American Marines

00:34:16.360 in Beirut, who murdered and wounded thousands of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan with Iranian 1.00

00:34:25.680 IEDs. 0.99

00:34:27.160 Iran that chants, death to America, death to the traitors, to the heathen, and so on. 0.99

00:34:34.780 This is the people you support. 0.99

00:34:36.220 And in fact, that's where they support.

00:34:37.980 Not only that.

00:34:38.680 But, you know, you heard some other outlandish things that they do.

00:34:41.840 I mean, they're some of their most prominent spokesmen.

00:34:44.340 They say, well, Netanyahu is trying to drag Trump into a war.

00:34:49.320 Did you hear that?

00:34:50.080 You hear that one?

00:34:51.100 Yeah, well.

00:34:51.940 Okay.

00:34:52.160 And what do I want to do?

00:34:53.300 Because I want ground troops, American ground troops, boots on the ground, to conquer Iran 1.00

00:34:58.320 and bring about regime change and all that nonsense.

00:35:01.580 And thank God President Trump has proven an exceptional, exceptional friend of Israel, an

00:35:06.360 exceptional leader.

00:35:07.300 And he did exactly the right action, the precise action using American power and came in, I think,

00:35:15.020 in a very forceful but judicious way.

00:35:17.320 I think we've been very fortunate to have a leader in the United States who doesn't act

00:35:22.060 like the European leaders, who doesn't succumb to this stuff.

00:35:26.440 But if you're telling me that there's work to be done on Gen Z and across the West, yes.

00:35:31.660 And by the way, it's not only our job.

00:35:34.680 We are, as your colleague Douglas Mary has said, we're the litmus test for the survival of

00:35:42.680 the West, because these people are against the West.

00:35:48.360 They're not for the West. 0.67

00:35:49.700 They're against the West.

00:35:51.240 And there's the horseshoe effect of the woke left meeting the woke right and challenging

00:35:56.520 the basic precepts of Western civilization.

00:35:59.420 And I think that has to be challenged, not merely by Israel or by me, but by you.

00:36:04.740 And I know that you're doing it.

00:36:05.840 And I want to commend you for doing it.

00:36:07.420 Well, we've certainly been challenging the woke right.

00:36:09.360 And that's one of many critics, but we'll continue to do it, Prime Minister.

00:36:12.620 I know you're limited on time.

00:36:13.740 We'll just do a couple more questions.

00:36:15.540 And I want to ask you about the future.

00:36:17.480 And I know that if I say to you, well, what does the future of Gaza look like?

00:36:21.420 You're going to say, we've got to destroy Hamas. 0.61

00:36:23.840 We agree.

00:36:24.500 You're going to say, we want the hostages back.

00:36:26.420 We agree.

00:36:27.000 You're going to say, we've got to demilitarize Gaza so they can't do October the 7th again. 1.00

00:36:30.900 We agree.

00:36:31.800 And then you're going to say, and then we need a civilian government in Gaza that's not hostile

00:36:36.160 to Israel.

00:36:36.780 And that's where you lose me, Prime Minister, because I look at the opinion polls.

00:36:41.580 I look at the people celebrating October the 7th in Gaza.

00:36:45.260 I look at the fact that thousands of civilians crossed into Israel on October the 7th to commit

00:36:50.560 the atrocities that were committed.

00:36:53.120 And I go, these people hate you.

00:36:55.780 They hate you. 0.97

00:36:56.760 They hate Israel. 1.00

00:36:57.780 And they hate Jews. 0.94

00:36:59.160 How are you going to have a peaceful coexistence with those people, particularly given the fact

00:37:05.960 that, as Francis mentioned earlier, they have been very heavily radicalized, not only through

00:37:10.060 the education system, but through the fact that they've been on the receiving end on

00:37:13.780 Israel's war effort.

00:37:14.620 Well, I think what you're pointing out to is that you need also a program of de-radicalization.

00:37:21.720 Now, has that been done in societies that have been conditioned to hate their adversaries?

00:37:30.040 Yes, of course, it's been done in two places prominently, in Japan and in Germany.

00:37:36.300 But it's also been done in the Middle East.

00:37:38.760 I mean, there have been very noteworthy programs, successful programs of de-radicalization in

00:37:46.080 some of the Gulf states, which are actually proving to be, to break the, you know, this

00:37:53.400 prototype of Arab societies that cannot seize the future. 0.98

00:37:56.400 I'm not saying they're model democracies, mind you.

00:37:58.780 They're not.

00:37:59.220 But they certainly want to seize modernity and not go back to the savage and early medievalism

00:38:07.580 that the Islamic fundamentalists want to drag us all to.

00:38:12.580 So I think that there's a need for de-radicalization.

00:38:18.080 It has to be part of the reconstruction of Gaza.

00:38:20.680 You not only reconstruct Gaza, you also de-radicalize Gaza. 0.61

00:38:24.700 It's going to be a heavy lift, but it's necessary and it can be done.

00:38:29.220 Prime Minister, the final question we ask all of our guests on the show is, what is the

00:38:33.000 one thing that we are not talking about as a society?

00:38:35.960 And in your case, as a civilization, I would say, what are we not talking about within Western

00:38:40.620 civilization that we should be talking about?

00:38:43.540 Well, three things.

00:38:45.860 History, history, and history.

00:38:48.340 This is an ahistorical generation that is being raised here. 1.00

00:38:53.880 And if its sense of history goes back to breakfast, you're lucky.

00:38:56.880 And unless you know how we got here, you don't know how to proceed from here.

00:39:02.180 And that is, I think, lacking.

00:39:03.980 Not lacking on your part, obviously, but would you agree?

00:39:08.120 I certainly would.

00:39:09.560 But can you flesh that out for us?

00:39:11.140 What are the lessons you would want people to take from history that you feel that they're not?

00:39:16.120 Well, I'll tell you the lessons that we, the Jewish people, took from history.

00:39:20.260 Number one is when somebody says they're going to annihilate you, take it seriously.

00:39:24.140 Don't wait for them to do it, but prevent them, as we did in the remarkable action that we took

00:39:29.820 against Iran, because they were developing nuclear weapons, and they were going to have 0.99

00:39:34.620 20,000 ballistic missiles, one-ton ballistic missiles, that in a country the size of Israel,

00:39:40.040 which is tiny, it's like the size of Wales or New Jersey, that would obliterate us.

00:39:45.840 So we had to take action, and we didn't wait for them to annihilate us first.

00:39:50.460 And I think that, I think in general, for the democracies, I would say, well, how about

00:39:58.700 remembering Churchill's warning?

00:40:01.020 He said that the democracies fall into the slumber of democracies.

00:40:05.800 And he said that it's only when the jarring gong of danger wakes them up that, you know,

00:40:13.160 they do something about it.

00:40:14.660 Well, they might sleep through the jarring gong of danger, because I think it's gonging

00:40:20.440 well enough right now. 0.96

00:40:21.500 You have these Islamic radicals, Islamist radicals that want to tear up Arab society. 1.00

00:40:28.660 They want to subjugate all the Muslims. 1.00

00:40:30.620 They want to destroy Israel. 1.00

00:40:32.220 They want to, they obliterate Christians one after the other. 1.00

00:40:35.400 And they say they're going after you. 0.94

00:40:38.120 They're developing intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach into Europe and soon

00:40:43.520 into the United States.

00:40:45.700 And, you know, Western leaders can go on blaming Israel for this, for fighting this common menace,

00:40:52.980 or they can do something about it.

00:40:55.200 And it remains to be seen whether they've drawn the lesson.

00:41:00.000 But we have.

00:41:00.960 We've learned the lessons of history. 0.99

00:41:02.780 Somebody says he's going to kill you. 0.93

00:41:04.660 Wake up in time. 0.75

00:41:05.480 And you know something?

00:41:06.600 That's from biology, too.

00:41:08.540 You know, for an organism to survive, it has to recognize danger in time.

00:41:15.140 And it has two options at that point.

00:41:17.420 To fight or flight.

00:41:19.640 You know, flight or fight.

00:41:21.000 And we have nowhere to flee.

00:41:23.380 We're in our ancestral homeland, and we're not going anywhere.

00:41:27.640 So we fight them.

00:41:29.000 But we're not fighting them only on our behalf.

00:41:31.480 We're fighting them on your behalf, too.

00:41:34.080 And I hope that you have the opportunity to carry this message far and wide.

00:41:41.160 So I thank you for this.

00:41:42.780 Thank you for your time, Prime Minister.

00:41:44.040 Thank you.

00:41:44.440 The mood music about history, which I agree, in the last, let's say, 15 years, has been intensely moralistic.

00:41:56.600 Is that wrong?

00:41:57.500 Like, should we not be trying to learn the moral lessons from the past?

00:42:01.220 The biggest killers were utopian idealists.

00:42:04.860 They were people who believed in a better world.

00:42:06.780 Hitler undoubtedly, you know, it sounds weird to say it, but he's an idealist. 0.81

00:42:09.860 Stalin is obviously an idealist.

00:42:11.400 Mao is an idealist.

00:42:12.620 They think they are going to make a better world.

00:42:16.220 We now have a slightly sanitized and a self-deluding idealistic view of human nature and of what we're capable of.

00:42:25.980 They've been completely insulated from the beast in other people and in themselves.

00:42:30.580 Knowledge of the beast is so important.

TRIGGERnometry - August 20, 2025

Asking Benjamin Netanyahu The Tough Questions

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