Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett joins us to discuss his views on the latest developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the Palestinian Authority's recognition of a Palestinian state, and the growing international condemnation of Israel for its actions in Gaza.
00:01:36.780In the meantime, though, I have to, as you're a former prime minister of Israel, military combat veteran as well,
00:01:42.840I have to get you to address some things that have happened over the weekend as we record this,
00:01:48.600which is a number of European countries now have recognized the Palestinian stay,
00:01:54.600and also the number of organizations now that have called what Israel is doing genocide in Gaza seems growing.
00:02:03.300What is your immediate response to those two developments?
00:02:06.340Well, obviously, it's not good developments for Israel.
00:02:10.200I mean, we see that in many parts of the world we are being condemned,
00:02:16.900and there's a degree of more isolation.
00:02:20.680It's not a positive development, but I need to say and be clear.
00:02:25.000First of all, the recognition of a Palestinian state, I believe that to a great degree it has to do with domestic politics
00:02:35.620in the states that actually made this decision, a growing portion of Islamistic minorities that are influencing domestic politics.
00:02:48.500I also believe that it has little implication on ground.
00:02:52.960Nothing's going to change tomorrow after this declaration.
00:02:58.080On ground, we are still fighting Hamas.
00:03:02.560We're still trying to build a good country here in Israel to defend ourselves,
00:03:07.960to allow the Palestinians to lead their own lives as much as possible in Judea and Samaria.
00:03:13.860So it doesn't have an actual influence on ground because there isn't a Palestinian state.
00:03:19.480A state is defined by clear borders, which don't exist, effective control, which doesn't exist, security responsibility, which doesn't exist.
00:03:31.680So the declarations don't create a state.
00:03:56.480Bring the hostages home and open a new page for Israel.
00:04:00.000Well, I mentioned you're a former prime minister.
00:04:03.860Many people also believe you're a potential future prime minister of Israel.
00:04:07.520I'm sure you'd be keen on that eventuality.
00:04:10.360And you've been quite critical of the Netanyahu government, the way it's prosecuted this war.
00:04:14.580Lots of questions in what you've just talked about there.
00:04:17.460When you say this should have been won in six months, I think lots of people would agree with it.
00:04:21.740But how would that even have been possible?
00:04:24.000Well, I think for many reasons, primarily a degree of incompetence, this has been dragged on way too long and perhaps other considerations.
00:05:58.480But when people, ministers in the government come up with preposterous statements, and then we all have to go on CNN and BBC to clean up, and then the world becomes much more suspicious of Israel because of ministers in the cabinet.
00:06:27.140Well, you're talking about the comments from people like Ben Gavir and Smotrich.
00:06:31.000But what you also seem to suggest, and look, I'm not here trying to get you to criticize your government more than you particularly want to.
00:06:37.320I just think we're interested in getting to the truth of this.
00:06:40.120So when you say this war could have been persecuted quicker and more effectively,
00:06:44.140it's a lot of people in the West have alluded to the idea that Prime Minister Netanyahu wants the war to keep going in order to delay various, you know, investigative activities against him, finding out what the failings of October the 7th were to prolong his time in power.
00:07:12.980I want to hope that that is not the case.
00:07:15.460And, you know, we all support the two objectives of the war.
00:07:20.020Let's talk very, very quickly about the Smotrich comments, which you have alluded to.
00:07:26.440You know, those are very, very serious because, as you have said to yourself, it damages Israel's reputation abroad.
00:07:34.480But also it makes it far more challenging for the IDF, because if you have someone like Smotrich saying that they things that, you know, they could be interpreted as genocidal, then people are less going to they're less likely to want to leave Gaza City.
00:07:57.300There is no genocidal policy of the government or of the people in Israel.
00:08:04.960The vast majority of Israelis, you know, don't want war, but understand that war is necessary.
00:08:11.360So we don't have another such horrific attack as we had on October 7th.
00:08:18.040We didn't choose October 7th to happen.
00:08:21.600And we all woke up on that horrendous morning with 1,200 Israelis.
00:08:28.320Gradually, the news coming through and trickling through that are being massacred in our own country, which is something that was beyond imagination.
00:09:09.380Why do they believe that they need new leadership?
00:09:12.360Well, it's more complex than just the October 7th attack.
00:09:17.600I believe that many Israelis feel that the current leadership is divisive and polarizing and uses polarization as a political vehicle to cement the political base.
00:09:36.980Politically, it's an astute move because it works, but it's detrimental to the country.
00:09:43.760The Jewish nation, the current state of Israel is the third instance that we have a sovereign and independent, united Commonwealth of Jews in the land of Israel.
00:13:39.960We all want our Jewish identity, but we don't want laws that force us to do anything.
00:13:44.800Even on the judicial issue, most Israelis would agree, we want a strong judicial system,
00:13:51.620but one that allows the government to, you know, affect its policy, implement its policy.
00:13:58.860And even on the Palestinian issue, there's a lot of agreement now that even those who believe that one day there ought to be a Palestinian state,
00:14:08.280and most Israelis today believe that certainly in the near future, it's not in the cards.
00:14:16.780So the interesting part is there's no real debate on the issues, and it's very artificial, and it's about identity politics.
00:14:26.740It's a lot about identity politics, and the irony is that identity politics, for example, in the United States,
00:14:34.700belongs to the ultra-woke left portion, whereas here, in some cases, it's actually part of the so-called right-wing portion using identity politics.
00:14:48.220I think it's nonsense. I believe that we should be fighting this identity politics.
00:18:56.220The idea of having another state between the river and the sea would mean the end of Israel.
00:19:05.380However, there are Arabs that live in this piece of land, and they are called Palestinians, and we don't want to govern them.
00:19:14.920So, I am not suggesting a one-state solution either, where we would integrate them into Israel for the simple reason they don't want to be integrated into Israel,
00:19:26.920and that would spell the end of a Jewish state.
00:19:29.680So, we have a different model, and it's a work in progress, and it's called an autonomy.
00:20:51.460Why can't we have them control their own borders?
00:20:55.980Because outside of the River to the Sea, the land of Israel, there are roughly 7 to 9 million descendants of Palestinian refugees from 77 years ago.
00:21:10.440And the moment we would allow them to control the borders, they would open up the gates and allow millions of those great-grandchildren of 1948 refugees to influx.
00:21:23.960And that would totally change the demography between the river and the sea and ultimately spell an end to Israel.
00:21:33.380So everything but those two elements, we don't want to govern them.
00:21:37.160I'm not talking, I'm talking about mainstream Israel.
00:21:39.340I'm talking about 70, 80% of Israelis want that separation.
00:21:44.340They govern themselves, we govern ourselves, they live in their areas, we live in our areas.
00:21:50.860But they can't have an army and they can't flood us with grandchildren of 1948 refugees.
00:21:57.920Second question, again, if I'm a working person 9 to 5, I get on the bus, I see yet another organization has said Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
00:22:08.100And even Naftali Bennett, who doesn't support the quote-unquote extremist right-wing Benjamin Netanyahu government, moderate Naftali Bennett, even he's saying it's not a genocide.
00:22:18.900Yet all these international organizations are condemning Israel.
00:22:22.700How are you sitting here and denying genocide?
00:22:25.040Well, when you actually unpack those organizations, one of them, the main one that talked about genocide, turned out to be a scam.
00:22:36.180It had an open registration for anyone.
00:22:40.360You could register, I believe, for $200.
00:22:43.140So you had people, one guy would call themselves Hitler and registered and had a right to vote.
00:22:48.580So, you know, you could register as Popeye and it turned out that most of the registrars were from Iraq, something really weird.
00:22:59.840And then they come out with this report and the whole world quotes it.
00:23:03.640And then quietly, after the damage has been done, oh, yeah, it's a sham.
00:23:09.960This is actually a truth and just, you know, search it on X and you'll find it.
00:23:26.840And when you actually look at the details, so there's roughly 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza.
00:23:34.920We're waging a war and it's a tough war because at its fundamental, it's the first time in world history, to the best of my knowledge, that a terror organization has totally integrated itself within the population.
00:23:53.920By the way, willingly, most of the population supports Hamas, wildly supports the October 7th massacre.
00:24:02.300Yet, you know, that doesn't give us or anyone the right to deliberately kill civilians, which we don't do.
00:26:33.400As I said, I believe we should have done it all more quickly, but that's an issue of competence.
00:26:40.460But I definitely stand behind the idea of there's no genocide here.
00:26:45.980If we wanted genocide, we could do it much more efficiently.
00:26:50.940I would say that we would be considered very incompetent at that.
00:26:56.540Having said all of this, every child and every civilian that dies is a tragedy.
00:27:02.800And that tragedy is the responsibility of Hamas, who turned all of Gaza into a terror base.
00:27:10.800And this is what I was going to ask you, because for a lot of people who are living here in Britain, in America, elsewhere, in the Anglosphere particularly, who are most of our audience,
00:27:21.940like if you said to me, Constantine, you know, that you believe in fighting a particular cause,
00:27:26.620why don't we put some rockets in your spare bedroom, I probably say no to that, I'm going to guess, right?
00:27:33.660And I'm wondering, to what extent are people doing that in Gaza because they actually, they care about this and they support Hamas to that extent?
00:27:43.320And to what extent these are actually probably somewhat innocent people who have no choice because if they say no, they're going to get killed by Hamas?
00:27:49.840Well, first of all, that's the reason that even in the event that we find a home or we know a home has turned into a terror base,
00:27:58.620we still notify and evacuate them, which means we're killing less terrorists that we could have.
00:28:09.620You're asking, is the population voluntarily part of this or is it being forced on them?
00:28:15.780I can give you a couple of data points, though, that indicate, unfortunately, that it's more on the side of knowing and willing participation.
00:28:27.740The first is the fact that October 7th, what actually happened, there were three waves of terrorists.
00:28:35.840The first was really the commando terrorists, terrorists of Hamas called Nuchbot.
00:28:40.480But then the second and third waves that happened within hours were just regular civilians of Gaza who saw an opportunity to go in, loot, murder, and they did it.
00:28:59.440I'm talking about thousands and thousands of these people.
00:29:02.620Secondly, unlike the Holocaust, for example, where there were non-Jews who saved the lives, righteous Gentiles, we call them,
00:29:15.440in every country, in Germany, in Poland, even whilst the majority of Germans and Polish people were anti-Semitic
00:29:24.700and participated in the Shoah and the Holocaust, there was always, in every country, a fairly small minority that protected the Jews and saved lives and hid them within their homes.
00:29:38.480In Gaza, there's not one case during October 7th or subsequently of one righteous Gentile, one Palestinian who said,
00:29:54.160The polls that we saw, every poll I've seen, certainly in the early days after October 7th, showed widespread support of the October 7th massacre.
00:30:06.180And finally, the most important poll of them all is the elections themselves.
00:30:10.500Though this happened about 15 years ago, in the open elections, as I've suggested, the vast majority of the Palestinians voted for Hamas.
00:30:23.840Actually, now I recall the number, out of 132 seats, 76 are Hamas.
00:30:32.780So why do they hate you so much, Naftali?
00:30:35.180Because a lot of people, again, if I'm just watching TV, going to work, I'm thinking, well, if these people hate you this much, what have you done?
00:30:42.780And that's where the conversation about occupation and displacement and all this other, why do they hate you so much?
00:31:50.760Who pulled out all the soldiers and went to the 1949 line border, meaning we gave them every single centimeter of Gaza.
00:32:02.120And at that point, there was no blockade or any restriction because there was a thesis that this is your chance.
00:32:10.820And we handed over the place to Mahmoud Abbas, the same Mahmoud Abbas that governs the Palestinian Authority today.
00:32:18.960And many hoped that Gaza would choose to turn itself into Singapore of the Middle East.
00:32:25.020It had all the conditions for it, a beautiful beach line and everything it needs, open borders, etc.
00:32:33.460Unfortunately, within days of this disengagement, they began shooting rockets at us and conducting terror attacks at us.
00:32:44.020And then from 2005 all the way through 23, once in a while, we had to go in, fight back.
00:32:53.540We had to start controlling what goes into Gaza, which clearly we didn't do a good job of because they built massive terror tunnels in a whole army.
00:33:06.600But basically what I'm saying in very simple English, they had a shot.
00:33:12.200They had a Palestinian state in every way possible.
00:33:16.240And they chose to turn it into October 7th and into 20 years and 18 years of hell for the Israelis that lived along the borders.
00:33:26.860In fact, the kibbutz members that were massacred on October 7th, many of them were big supporters of that disengagement because they hoped that it would create peaceful neighbors.
00:33:43.780I think radical Islam has a—the Islamistic ideology is one that is broader than a national ideology, and it's one of Sharia law, of having a Muslim empire again, like they had roughly, what, 1,400 years ago, 1,300 years ago.
00:34:10.900My understanding, when you read the Hamas charter, it says very explicitly, it's not about the nation of Palestinians versus Israel.
00:34:22.060It's about Islam versus the West, and Israel is just stuck there from their perspective.
00:34:28.260So I believe there's a lot of religious factor here.
00:34:32.040And, you know, many believed, and I also tried to proceed down the let's make their economy better and their lives better.
00:34:43.080And Gaza was actually on a very positive trajectory.
00:34:46.340I had been letting more Gaza workers into Israel.
00:34:52.980Netanyahu subsequently allowed even more Gaza workers to enter Israel to get good jobs.
00:35:00.020And I guess we all hope that this would decrease the motivation, but religious motivation turns out to be divorced from religious ideology.
00:35:13.080You know, bin Laden was a multimillionaire.
00:35:16.180So the notion that if you improve the livelihood of people, by definition, it'll decrease terror, it's not 100% correct in some cases.
00:36:22.120Our partners, Augusta Precious Metals, specializes in helping Americans move wealth and retirement into self-directed IRAs, backed by physical precious metals like gold and silver.
00:36:32.720They are consistently scored as the most trusted gold IRA company by major financial publications.
00:36:38.060And they enjoy an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau.
00:36:42.040In a world where governments print money and rack up debt like it's going out of fashion, I like assets you can hold in your hand.
00:36:49.400That's why I've always taken steps to secure my family's future with gold.
00:36:53.300If you have over $100,000 in your current IRA, 401k or other retirement account, visit triggergold.com.
00:37:01.440That's triggergold.com to learn how Augusta Precious Metals can become your lifelong self-directed IRA partner.
00:37:08.060Now, Tali, you must be incredibly concerned that the longer this war drags on, we're talking about radicalization, the more radicalized the population of Gaza become, but also as well, the more anti-Semitism spreads across the world.
00:37:22.060That is a very real concern for Jews living in the UK, for living in America and all over the globe, quite frankly.
00:37:29.420It is. I'll unpack. You mentioned two things. The radicalization in Gaza, I'd actually say October 7th, as I said, happened actually when conditions in Gaza were getting much, much better.
00:37:44.320You know, they had shopping malls there, they had theaters, they had the hotels.
00:37:49.600Gaza was in a fairly good trajectory economically.
00:37:52.660So I divorced the radicalization from this, but I am cognizant that when, you know, you see buildings blow up, you don't become a big friend to Israel.
00:38:05.320To deal with that, and if you want to talk about the future of Gaza, ultimately, we don't want to go, I don't want to govern Gaza.
00:38:15.380We just need our security, but we do need to ensure something we didn't do in the past, which is to stop the brain poisoning of the younger generation, both in Judea and Samaria, the PA and in Gaza.
00:38:30.180When you are taught from age zero that the Jews are the Satan and need to be killed, lo and behold, when you're 20 years old or 17 years old, you'll go into a kibbutz and sever heads of people.
00:38:56.620I spent a part of my life in the United States as a child, a few years and later on running my high-tech company.
00:39:06.540And whenever, you know, the anti-Semitism organizations like ADL would always talk about anti-Semitism, I have to admit, I thought it was a bit inflated.
00:39:20.240Because I hadn't, myself or my friends had not incurred, you don't walk around New Jersey or Houston or Omaha, Nebraska and feel anti-Semitism.
00:39:32.140So, you know, it was a thing, and here and there on the fringes, it's changed.
00:39:39.180It's changed, and I cannot believe what I'm seeing day in, day out.
00:39:46.260And obviously, we can attribute the spread, the rapid spread to social networks, which is simply a tool that didn't exist.
00:39:57.040Though there were other tools of disseminating false information before the Internet.
00:40:03.680For example, roughly, I believe, 150 years ago or so, there was a pamphlet called The Protocols of Zion, which suggested that the Jews are sitting in some dark room and conniving how to control the world.
00:40:20.600And it's spread fairly well, even without Facebook.
00:40:24.380But now, with the social media, the latest things that every day it hits you, like mainstream people in America will suggest that Israel stands behind the murder of Charlie Kirk.
00:40:41.000Mainstream people will suggest that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent.
00:40:45.400In fact, when I saw this happening, you know, the Mossad reported to me.
00:40:50.220In Israel, the Mossad and Shin Bet report directly to the prime minister, whereas the IDF reports to the entire government.
00:40:57.700So I said, you know, I know this is not true.
00:41:00.500I actually called up two former Mossad chiefs, just to be sure, and one former prime minister.
00:43:09.840And I can just sort of picture the scene in a lamp-lit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus, thinking about what do we do about this guy telling the truth about us.
00:43:42.120That's what I hope to do if I return to lead the country, is turn a page, bring the hostages home, end the war, go out, seek peace with new partners in the Middle East,
00:43:56.360and come back to what Israel's story should be, which is a remarkable, decent nation in very hard circumstances trying to do good.
00:44:07.360That's what Israel's about, and that will help.
00:44:10.520But at the same time, I don't want to mislead anyone.
00:44:17.900The drivers of anti-Semitism are deep, sinister drives.
00:44:25.380It goes beyond the fact that Israel has no public diplomacy and our PR is the lousiest in the world.
00:45:15.060You know, I'm a big history buff, read gazillion history books.
00:45:19.260I can't fully understand the rationale of anti-Semitism, because when we succeed, we're blamed for being successful.
00:45:29.160When we're poor, we're blamed for being a burden on society.
00:45:33.520When Jews were separatists and lived in ghettos, we were accused of being different.
00:45:40.600And then in the 19th century, especially in Germany and Western Europe, when Jews assimilated, they were blamed for trying to corrupt society.
00:45:53.900All I can say is I'm happy I have my own Jewish state now, where even if lies happen, at least we can defend ourselves.
00:46:02.400Naftali, so that being the case, there is going to be a lot of people in the U.S., in the U.K., all over the world who are going, particularly the U.S., who are going, why is more and more of my tax dollars being spent to support Israel, to help Israel, to fund Israel?
00:46:22.000And the question is, why is Israel so important to America, to the U.K., and to the West in general?
00:46:50.380And Osama bin Laden will sit in some cave in Afghanistan, or the next Osama bin Laden, somewhere in Gaza, or in Ramallah, or in Nablus.
00:47:02.400And will come after the West, because it's a deep-rooted ideology that says that ultimately, Islam and Sharia law should control the world.
00:47:18.720Any territory that Islam has conquered is called Holi, or Waqf in Arabic.
00:47:26.840So what would America then need to do, and what it actually did after September 11th?
00:47:34.220More or less competently, one may argue, it would understand that it can't just ignore and say, okay, they're on the other side of the ocean, because here they're not.
00:47:45.080And they come to London, and they come to Madrid, and they come to the Twin Towers and to the Pentagon.
00:47:52.300So what you would do is you would try and set up bases in the Middle East, and then those bases would have to be defended and protected.
00:48:03.280And then in order to protect them, you'd need sort of a host of bases all across the Middle East, talking about millions of soldiers.
00:48:10.860And then one would perhaps suggest, you know what, what if instead of all of this, we have one big base, we don't have to send our soldiers.
00:50:02.300But we've got to do this to defend ourselves.
00:50:04.580And the benefit, the spillover benefit, is that you guys don't have to be here.
00:50:10.500I mean, that is quite an argument because there are a lot of people, particularly when you look at what is happening in America with the deficit,
00:50:19.740who are quite resentful, shall we just say, about the money that is being funneled into Israel.
00:50:26.440And they would see this money would be better spent in America.
00:52:13.540And just imagine it is extremely easy if you allow the cancerous tumor of radical Islamist terrorism to grow and you don't handle it, it'll blow up on you.
00:52:32.440And that'll be way more costly than a few billion dollars.
00:52:36.0409-11 now in London and Madrid can totally paralyze a country.
00:52:43.540For years, it could destroy a country.
00:53:48.560I was risking my life and saving your lives quite literally, tangibly, not in theory, tangibly.
00:53:56.740Maybe, you know, maybe if I become prime minister again, every time we save lives, we'll make a big PR splash every three weeks and say we just save lives.
00:54:08.160And not leave it at the Mossad MI5 level.
01:01:57.200Oh, and by the way, you have 2 million Israeli Arabs that are citizens, and they—it's complicated because they belong to the broader Arab nation, yet there are citizens in your own country.
01:02:10.220And part of the Arab nation is your enemy.
01:03:53.740And speaking of the hostages, we haven't spoken about them.
01:03:57.040How likely is it that you're going to get them back now?
01:04:00.940Because, look, I'm not an expert, but I imagine the recognition of the Palestinian state by Western governments, you said it has no practical impact.
01:04:08.900But the one thing that I think it would have in terms of a practical impact is it would signal to Hamas that they're winning.
01:04:15.460Isn't that a sign that they're winning?
01:04:56.960I'm not going to pretend it's anything but.
01:05:00.060While, you know, so many people have been evacuated from their homes, terrible conditions, this applies some degree of pressure.
01:05:08.460But you're right, on the international stage, if they see that Israel, by the day, is losing the international war, they might feel that time is on their side.
01:05:21.720And that's why the latest move of the UK and France, etc., of recognizing the Palestinian state is not a good development because it would suggest to them, let's just wait it out.
01:05:36.560So, no, I cannot say whether a deal can be achieved.
01:06:23.140So, going harder, bombing them harder, killing more of their leaders, none of that seems to work.
01:06:28.540And the more people die in Gaza, the more Western nations seem to be going in a pro-Hamas direction, as we've seen in the last few days.
01:06:38.300Yeah, so we need to be more creative about it and use other tools and dimensions.
01:06:43.940I will say that at the start of the war, this is public, because I made it public.
01:06:49.360I had suggested to the government, first quietly and then publicly, that we take part of Gaza and announce that that part is a war zone and the rest is an open zone.
01:07:11.080And then apply a full siege on that particular part while screening the population that leaves.
01:07:18.980So, you basically can collect the terrorists and you can divide the terrorists from the full population.
01:07:30.060So, I would take a few other creative dimensions that are not happening right now.
01:07:36.140I fairly agree with your analysis here, that more of the same will only result in more of the same results.