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Eli Lake: Gaza & Israel · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Get a humans welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas and why there are a lot of dangerous
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  ideas floating around and also some very hackneyed and predictable and not particularly dangerous
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  and convenient ideas floating around since most of us tend to talk to each other inside little
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  sound bites at the moment there's a lot of oh yes well we have to be very measured and we have
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  to be cautious about about the things that whether we say so I'm getting a little weary
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  the inability to just talk bluntly about things that they're going on especially
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  when tempers are running as high as they are given what's happening in Israel and garrows up
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  Eli like is a great person to chat to about this you may have heard if you're a loyal
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  listener and if you're not a loyal listener hey what the hell are you doing?
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  Recently Antony Lowenstein was on the show who is a Jewish Australian journalist
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  extremely critical of Israel and this was well before Gaza the Gaza tragedy happened
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  and Antony and I had a really interesting conversation where I felt like I was the more
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  pro-Israel more pro-Zionist one then the atrocities in the Middle East just happened
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  with with Humus's attack on Israel and now the the ongoing fallout from that and some people
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  on Twitter were saying well it wasn't great timing that you had that conversation just a few weeks
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  beforehand which was so critical of Israel how bad a little bit of balance this episode is that
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  balance in which I find myself on the opposite side being the more anti-Israel or critical
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  voice here because Eli like knows basically a lot more about it than I do and then most people
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  do since he spent his life as a national security journalist specializing in the Middle East he's
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  contributing editor to commentary magazine he was a syndicated columnist for Bloomberg for almost
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  10 years from 2014 to 2022 he was a reporter of the New York Sun the Daily Beast the Washington Times
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  and his specialty as I say his national security Israel it's almost terrorism knows everything
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  there is to know about that region and about the insides and outsides he breaks big stories he has
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  contacts on the ground and he's broadly as the Jewish-American guy sympathetic to Israel's
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  plight and so here I try to push back here against that point of view and get a more balanced
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  perspective then perhaps you're getting in the rest of the media especially if you live outside
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  the United States Eli has a podcast called the re-education with Eli Lake check it out and enjoy
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  this conversation with the one and only Eli Lake
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  I think we have to look at this as something beyond Israel set a attack on Jews
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  why is it useful to think of it that way I think there are a couple of reasons the first is that
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  the Hamas the organization that orchestrated this pogrom is motivated first and foremost by a
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  desire to kill Jews and ultimately conquer what is the land of Israel and impose Islamic law so
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  that I think it's important in that respect to distinguish this from nationalist violence or
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  something you know of that kind even though I if any any group for whatever reason that conducted
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  such an atrocity should obviously be condemned I think the second reason is because we have seen in
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  the West a kind of response to this murder spree that is very much like a celebration of a lust for
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  Jewish blood so if you notice I mean the first demonstrations began before Israel really did
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  anything and it was celebrated by certain groups as an active resistance you know a prison break out
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  of some kind and when you're talking about the kind of horrific violence the kind of horrific
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  atrocity that we saw on October 7th well I mean I just think that we have to look at that in the
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  context of this is this is this is this is more than just objection to the Jewish state it's objection
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  to the Jewish people I'm wary of conflating Israel with Jewishness and resent the fact that liquid
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  and bibi Netanyahu have worked over time to try to seem to make that case I was talking to David
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  Badeel who's an English prominent Jew and successful comedy writer who has an attitude of like
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  why do people keep asking me as a British Jew about the misdeeds of Israel like that that doesn't
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  have anything to do with me we don't ask we don't ask Chinese Australians or Chinese Americans
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  to account for the crimes of the Communist Party we don't say that China shouldn't get a state
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  because of its treatment of the Uighurs in Western China we don't ask Persian Americans to account
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  for the mullahs in Tehran you know only when it comes to Jews do we expect Jews globally to be
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  to sort of answer for this country that claims to speak on behalf of them but doesn't really
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  and that actually it only serves the the sort of anti-Jewish narrative to conflate Israel with Jews
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  we have to be able to criticize Israel as a country and then there are the world's Jews as a separate
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  pot and it's in the interest of both islamists and also hyposynist anti-pesnic liquid settlers to
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  conflate Jews with Israel do you think there's anything there no first of all there's a very
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  special circumstance for the Jewish people and the Jewish state and that is that Israel was created
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  as a safe haven for Jews because of a long history of persecution of Jews when they were stateless
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  so even if you and there are plenty of Jews in Israel and in in diaspora who disagree with
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  policies of Israel there are anti-Zionist Jews I am not here as a kind of Talmudic authority
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  to claim who is and who is not a Jew rather I'm saying that in a situation like this the group
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  that perpetrated the massacre was motivated by a desire to kill Jews full stop so I think it's
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  different than this kind of question of Jews and diaspora feeling uncomfortable when asked
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  to defend this or that Israeli policy and you know anybody who who is kind of mildly informed
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  about you know the history or the conflict and understands that there are multitude of there
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  many opinions that Jews and diaspora in Israel have about how to proceed and so I'm certainly not
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  saying that if you criticize Israel's policy of settlements then you know you're not a good
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  Jew or something like that but I do think that there are groups or I should be more specific there
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  are there are sort of Jewish organizations we have something in the United States called Jewish
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  Voice for Peace which I have dubbed Jewish Voice for for a program and they are explicitly
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  anti-Zionist and they they have you know along with other voices on the left tried in many ways to
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  describe what is the you know worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust as some kind of act of
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  resistance which in addition to being in my view almost a kind of a very kind of sly anti-Semitism
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  because it's like you you people deserve this it's also bad for Palestinians I don't understand
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  how you can claim to be in solidarity with Palestinians by rationalizing or celebrating or explaining
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  away an atrocity committed by theocratic fascists full stop and so you know this will set back
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  the quest for a Palestinian state this will set back the prospect for a two-state solution
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  this will set back the living conditions in Gaza this started a war I mean but what were the
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  prospects for a two-state solution or for a peace settlement you know up until this let me
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  to let's let's just drill into this act of resistance idea okay okay because and let's park
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  whether or not conflating Israel's interests with Jewish interests hands Benjamin Netanyahu the
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  the ability to either enrich or destroy global jury which is unwise like I don't want to be hostage
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  to the policies of Israel and therefore I'd like nobody nobody is saying you are there's a
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  difference though between no when when we say that that every time someone criticizes Israel
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  there's implicitly criticizing Jews or that it's well I'm not saying that anti-Semitic to be
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  anti-Zionist that I'm not saying that either I think I'm not saying that either I'm saying that if
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  you you said they're in favor of pogroms because they are explicitly anti-Zionist no I'm saying
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  that they represent they they they pass themselves off as a part of them of the sort of I think that
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  they're providing a kind of fig Lee for people who would celebrate this terror if you just say I'm
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  an anti-Zionist Jew but then you full-throatedly condemn Hamas with no ifsans or buts like
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  Judith Butler in the London Review of Books where which is evidence of her evolution in many ways
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  because she was the person who said that Hamas and Hezbollah were part of a progressive coalition
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  which is nonsense in 2006 if you if you if you if you you know conduct if you have demonstrations
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  that you help organized with groups that are openly celebrating this massacre well then you
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  are celebrating a horrific atrocity against Jews and hiding behind this idea that we just don't
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  like Israel or what do you expect with you know people you know I mean who are you know caught in
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  an open air prison or something like that you are deliberately kind of you're deliberately
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  camouflaging you're confusing what Hamas is and what they are trying to do this is in their chart
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  let's get let's get to that let's get to Hamas and resistance and let's just let's just set aside
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  for the moment although we can get back to it if you want people who celebrate the massacre
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  of Jews who celebrated what happened a couple of weeks ago let's set aside the entrenched
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  anti-Semitism across much of the Arab world and let's set aside the deluded purple head want to be
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  social justice warriors periding around in the streets in the west who don't understand the history
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  of the region and let's let's just look at what I think is probably the strongest case of
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  your opponents which would be what I think is the center of gravity of public opinion in Australia
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  and probably the UK and Europe I'm not sure about America which says Hamas is terrible they didn't
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  come from nowhere they weren't conjured out of the ether without any historical context of what had
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  happened to the people who were so frustrated that they turned to them as a savior much to their
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  detriment liquid the Israeli right the settler movement has done nothing for about a quarter of a
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  century on peace not since the 1990s has there been any opportunity for Palestinians to have a future
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  in many ways Netanyahu has explicitly emboldened Hamas because he doesn't want to have a partner
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  for peace in the Palestinian Authority it suits him to have garrisons rotting in this quote-unquote
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  open air prison I mean whether you call it that or not whether that's inflammatory it's one of
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  the shittiest places to live in the world and that blame can be shared by Hamas and also Israeli
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  intransigence on doing anything about resolving what to do with this couple of million people who
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  are sitting there so is it Jew hate and Jew slaughter yes is there also a historical context in
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  which it's taking place as an active resistance against an unsustainable status quo also yes and
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  do we not want Israel to excuse me to do what we know what we knew that it would do three seconds
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  after the slaughter which is end up killing lots more Palestinians who don't like Hamas didn't
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  have anything to do with Hamas maybe they kind of like Hamas now but then what other option do they
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  have but they weren't born wanting to slaughter Jews they were made okay well I mean that's a lot
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  to unpack yeah so the first thing I would say is that I don't agree with that with your statement
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  that nothing was done for 25 years because in 2005 Ariel Shorone dismantled and removed the
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  IDF and a few settlements basically from Gaza making it free of any Jews and also some settlements
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  in the West Bank unilaterally in a deal with the George W Bush administration there were efforts
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  under Ahud Omar his successor to reach a kind of you know revive the Oslo peace process it didn't
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  go very well or didn't go very far so that's the first point I would make which is that yeah I would
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  agree that the Nanyahu government has not made a peace process a priority but I think you have to
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  credit Nanyahu and here's where I think there's been a lot of I guess you could say convenient
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  sort of argument from people who make this point about bolstering Hamas or something like that
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  I mean the actions that you when you talk about in the abstract it sounds sinister but what
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  what what what we're talking about in reality is that Nanyahu ended up issuing more work permits
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  for people from Gaza and Nanyahu ended up in some ways loosening some of the restrictions
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  or border controls on Gaza so you know in that respect he was he was going not as far probably
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  as some of these critics would like but certainly in the direction that they would like in trying to
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  loosen the border controls that Israel places on Gaza now second of all I would say that
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  the massacre of October 7th is all the evidence one would need for why there must be some border
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  control of Gaza full stop because this is what the people who rule Gaza have been planning I don't
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  think that Hamas speaks for all Palestinians or all people in Gaza they won a single election in
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  2006 and they have not stood for elections since and there have been sporadic demonstrations at
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  great personal risk to the Palestinians who have protested I'm not saying that those protesters
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  spoke for the majority of Palestinians in the Gaza either I think we have to accept that we just
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  don't know the answer to that because they have not been asked Palestinians have not been asked for
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  their opinion on what they think of Hamas's misrule Hamas has used its power to you know they take
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  money from the international development aid they seize resources they keep their populations
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  they have some they have some role in the kind of misery and poverty of Palestinians in two
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  respects one is that they they are autocrats little autocrats for the strips so they rule through
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  corruption and the second is that they have created the security problems that affect
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  Gazans with these skirmishes that we have seen up to this point with Gaza so they they have started
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  all of these sort of little mini wars and then they've just started a big one and so in that
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  respect I just think that trying to put this about Netanyahu's you know government or you know
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  Palestinians are hopeless and they turned to violence or something like that well that doesn't
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  really follow there's been a single political party in charge of this strip of land that has
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  decided to basically prepare for war in every possible way and make war in every possible way whether
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  that is through their education program where they are you know have you know they tell kindergarteners
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  to revere the Shaheeds or the martyrs you know of you know these former suicide bombers or whether
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  it's the actual stockpiling of rockets and missiles and other fairly advanced like you know military
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  weaponry that they used in this massacre so in that respect you you know if you want to try to
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  have a complex analysis sure there's more that the Israeli governments could have done to negotiate
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  maybe with the you know a boss leadership we can get to that or and or taken a harder line
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  on some of the settlement activities although that is often exaggerated there there are there is
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  an IDF presence in part in the West Bank in order to tamp down some of the vigilante activity
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  from the settlers although it's not perfect but I think we have to take a step back and like sort
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  of plainly understand what this political party political terrorist group Hamas is all about
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  what their goals are how they seek to achieve them and how you know you can't you can't be at a
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  position where you're making war all the time and then your position as well oh my god is real can't
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  can't respond because it's the more powerful party it's it's like I don't get it I mean there
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  are a couple of things about that but you know one strikes me that the claim that what happened
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  on October 7th proves why you needed to have a blockade on Gaza in the first place is not a blockade
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  by the way because blockade implies that there's nothing that comes in or out and that's not true
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  well I mean if if a country imposed on Australia or America the kinds of restrictions on goods
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  coming in and out that the Israel imposed on Gaza we'd call it a blockade I don't know if we
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  would it's I mean I'm just seeing a blockade massive restrictions on all kinds of medicines massive
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  restrictions on you know it goes international humanitarian groups have demonstrated that it goes
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  well beyond what you could use to launch an invasion okay but nonetheless for some reason it seems
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  that Hamas had fairly advanced weaponry not to mention power gliders and all kinds of other things
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  so yeah I mean well inside of the blockade there's a working very well I'm just saying what
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  when I say that it sort of is it demonstrates the need for border control I think it's obvious
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  I mean there's a reason why you can't have people coming in and out of Gaza without getting
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  you know having having an IDF officer check their papers and you know find out who they are
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  and so forth it's because yeah but it's not just that I mean it's the shipping into Gaza is
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  curtailed and intercepted by Israel to make sure that you know only a certain amount of
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  very specific types of things are coming in and out everything everything it goes in and out of
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  that enclave is controlled by Israel except for what is not legal there's what was brought in
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  illegally well yeah I mean that's it but they've still managed to you know develop a rocket
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  arsenal that it's capable of hitting Tel Aviv and beyond so that I'm just saying it's just
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  doing with whether there's you know well that's why that's why there are
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  mine that's why you well that's why you check every shipment that comes into Gaza that's why
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  because you the group that's in control of Gaza uses as much of its uses its resources to again
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  build a war machine to commit atrocities like it just did I mean it part it on one level I understand
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  that and on another level it sounds a bit like the the old joke that the beatings will stop when
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  morale improves and yeah but but but wait a second when was there a period when Hamas was not
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  trying to make war with Israel since it took for it's actually I think it's a bit cheeky to
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  keep focusing on Hamas because the the generous interpretation of the center of gravity of
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  Australian heartland opinion or opinion around other Western liberal democracies is not that Hamas
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  are great it's that Hamas is a perverted eruption that comes out of underlying conditions that
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  Israel is complicit in creating well I would agree with that if there was any evidence that we had
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  other than the 2006 election which Hamas won barely won a majority of the legislature but we have
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  no way of knowing they don't they're not a legitimate democratic government in that respect I don't
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  think that Hamas's behavior is in the interest of Palestinians and I've been to Gaza the last time
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  I was there I should say is 10 years ago but I've been to Gaza and when I've talked to people
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  privately and not to be quoted what they will say is that they understand perfectly well that
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  Hamas's behavior is one of the main reasons for all of these restrictions on their daily life I'm
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  not denying that it's not it's it's it's it's not there's not a hardship although sometimes I do
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  think some of these groups exaggerated as I said we're saying earlier Netanyahu is loosened some
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  of those restrictions of which you will I think pay the fatal political price but the key point
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  here is that I don't deal you know Hamas planned this two years ago they came up with three
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  different explanations they are the actors in this respect so I I I really push back on this idea
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  that the desperation of living in Gaza led Hamas to do something that had been pledging to do
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  ever since it was founded in 1987 which has to kill lots of Jews I mean if the claim is that
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  there would it there are other is the claim that there are other ways that dozens should have
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  tried to aspire towards self actualization and free free a richer lives for themselves because
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  if there are the Palestinians on the West Bank also haven't made any headway and they haven't
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  elected a death cult to run them and they're not doing things like October 7th and they still don't
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  have the ability to move freely around without being harassed without fear of new settlements being
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  built on their land with any aspiration for having a state someday and not living under the
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  conditions that they do well I mean in that so to answer your question I think it's it's it's
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  too simplistic to say there's more that the Gazans could do to oust Hamas or something like that
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  some Israelis had said that I think there were things that Israel could have done I think there's
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  things that the United States could have done I think that there should have been a priority and
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  I'm not trying to be a modest here but I have written many columns in the last 16 years saying that
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  there should be more elections in Gaza and there should be a plan to get rid of Hamas from
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  ruling it but I'm just you can't you're gonna have this restrictive these restrictive conditions
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  on Gaza so long as Hamas is in control the argument that nothing else has seemed to work for us
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  I think is a little bit disingenuous yes the Fata spend force that is in control of the Palestinian
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  authority in the West Bank is not they're not they're not as fanatic as as Hamas and they they
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  have not done this horrendous atrocity of October 7th but they still have a program in the Palestinian
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  authority to have you know stipends for the families of what they call martyrs and people who
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  have committed to risk of atrocities if you look at the rhetoric of Mahmoud Abbas it's disgusting in
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  recent years and so on the idea that you know one corrupt kind of spend force in the West Bank
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  you know they haven't gotten anywhere either I think it that that yeah they haven't gotten
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  there because they're corrupt and that they they still have you know these stipends as I said
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  for the families of suicide bombers and they're so called their their Shaheeds and they're I think
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  it goes back to something that it's very very difficult for Westerners to really understand
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  but with maybe the exception of a few years in the 1990s under Arafat and we now know that Arafat
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  probably didn't mean it when he you know was you know negotiating pieces at least most of the
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  histories of the final camp David negotiations in 2000 and tell us
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  um that you know part of Palestinian political liberation like how they understand it has been
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  that their method is going to be if you create enough of atrocities against Jewish people that they
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  will find it intolerable to live there and they will leave that was the that was the kind of animating
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  idea behind the Arab revolt of the 1930s it's led them to the Munich you know the the thinking
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  behind you know the masquerade the Munich Olympics and on and on it goes I mean if you look at what
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  the second intifada supposed to the first intifada the second the uprising that comes after the
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  Oslo process in 2000 um it's absolutely like vicious and there are there they're there we I have to
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  go back as I wrote about it at the time but there are there's you know we they're documentation
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  documentation from Arafat that part of the strategy was we're going to make life intolerable
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  in Israel and if you remember in that period there were you know pizza parlors and hotels that were
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  blown up by um Palestinians yeah usually very young who were probably brainwashed to give their
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  lives to kill more Jews now that to me uh is a kind of pathology um I don't mean to say that it
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  applies to all Palestinians there are plenty of Palestinians who have disagreed with it including
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  at one point even Abu Mazin that's not the point the point is is that it's it is something that
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  has been a kind of animating idea in the notion of like how Palestinians will achieve their
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  statehood it goes back to uh Franz Fanon who I talk about my latest podcast um this idea that
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  decolonization and you know the emancipation of one's colonial mind comes you know through violence
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  against their oppressors and you know there are a million reasons why it doesn't work for Jews
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  in Israel because there is no mother country there but let's leave that aside
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  so again I don't I don't buy this argument that like the Palestinians have tried all of this
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  nonviolent means to do stuff and you know what it just you know now they have to turn to massacres
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  that's that's that's uh I think it's also in some ways the soft bigotry of low expectations for
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  Palestinians hmm let's go through that that history like because a lot of people have a vague sort of
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  idea and like I had someone say of Mahmoud Abbas that he only seems to do three things he sleeps he
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  smokes and he says something stupid uh but we've gotten to that point uh after many decades I think
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  I think there's a latent assumption from people who don't know the details of the history to think
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  well what do you expect when you when you grind people into the ground for decades you know
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  when 70 years ago you drive them off their land you come in as a colonial power and I'm speaking as
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  the as the the voice of a person who I disagree with here um this is not Josh speaking you come
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  in as a colonial power you parachute in uh in the long history of uh of colonialism and imperialism
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  you push people off their land and then you give them no viable way to achieve uh a state and
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  certainly since the 1990s uh you continue to build settlements on their land that criticism I do
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  I do agree with and then you turn around and go oh my goodness these people are dysfunctional they
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  just say silly things and they're full of hate and they launch attacks at us yet well what exactly
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  else did you expect to come of this do how did you expect this flourishing democracy to emerge in
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  the embers and the banter stands that you have raised and that you insist on uh you know and that
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  even when you withdraw from you impose blockades on now the the question the parallel history that
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  you're kind of hinting at which is a which is an alternative history in which Palestinian leaders
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  had the foresight to take a Gandhi approach or a Mandela approach uh is an interesting alternative
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  history to explore what would have happened if instead of blowing up bus bus falls of Israeli
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  citizens Palestinian leadership had had had had pursued a an aggressive peaceful resistance was
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  that ever on the card let's go so let's go back to before 67 and I mean you can go back to 48 if
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  you want and just give people applauded history of how well we are well I mean I think it's worthwhile
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  to start in 1948 but we should say even before that that there's always been a Jewish connection
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  to the land of Israel and Jews have always lived in Israel so that's the first point that we should
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  always sort of start with um the they're you know I guess I'm not an I'm not I don't want to get
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  this wrong but I'd say since the 1920s there have been um violence between the Zionist um
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  you know kind of people who have come to Israel you know pursuing a Jewish state and
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  various kinds of Palestinians and the wars have been vicious they were very vicious before 1948
• 31:08
  1948 was a war between a people that had just arrived the Holocaust and the entire Arab world
• 31:16
  all the Arab armies participated the Jewish forces won and if you remember there was an offer
• 31:24
  at the time from the UN to share the land and the Palestinians rejected it then and again we're
• 31:30
  going very quickly 1967 is the six day war that again is most of the Arab states attacking Israel
• 31:37
  Israel wins that war although we should say that Israel technically is the first strike but
• 31:44
  all these forces were sort of a raid on their border and there were threats to cut off Israel
• 31:49
  from the Suez Canal and then 1973 is another version of that war um and then the the Palestinians
• 31:57
  then kind of pursue in the 1970s um that's a strategy of terrorism um just to clarify an important
• 32:04
  wrinkle on 67 is that that's when Israel comes into possession yeah of course that was done
• 32:10
  basically over you know there was this whole area there was part of Jordan uh and then the
• 32:14
  Gaza Strip which was part of Egypt sign art and it's very uh go and sign as well yeah that's
• 32:20
  right and so all of a sudden Israel finds itself uh through what was initially a defensive war
• 32:25
  sitting on top of all this land and there's an amazing documentary film with a a a succession
• 32:31
  of Israeli military leaders up from that era who are all saying like we all thought this was
• 32:37
  temporary I mean we thought we you'd have we'd have a negotiation we'd figure out how to give
• 32:40
  the land back and then there'd be peace that they can't believe that half a century later
• 32:45
  Israel's still sitting on on this land but uh so some of that land I think that Israel shouldn't
• 32:50
  give back like the Go on Heights and East Jerusalem but that's a separate question um and then
• 32:57
  you know the Palestinians then kind of engage in uh the terrorism of that era um and the
• 33:08
  you know the Israeli uh have did uh does you know have invades Lebanon in I think 81
• 33:16
  and they're that's a very bloody war um lots of innocence are killed but it is a response to
• 33:22
  the fact that there are the that that Palestinian terror groups are committing atrocities you know
• 33:28
  in cross-border raids and things like that eventually the uh and does hezbollah exist at that point
• 33:34
  hezbollah is formed in the 1980s uh with help with their weapons yes during that war it's about
• 33:40
  at this time that the Palestinians and the Iranians and the hezbollah are beginning to create a
• 33:47
  coordinated well I mean it's it's it's probably much more coordinated uh after uh 2003 when the
• 33:55
  US invades Iraq or at least it begins in that decade the last decade and then much more in this
• 34:00
  decade and the two thousand teens were in the two thousand twenties now um eventually the the
• 34:06
  leadership of the PLO is uh kind of uprooted from Lebanon and they are briefly in Tunis
• 34:14
  then the Berlin wall comes down I again potted history this is super fast um the Berlin wall
• 34:21
  comes down Soviet Union collapses there's something called the Madrid peace conference where
• 34:26
  Arifat is uh I don't know you could say elected I don't know if he was elected he was
• 34:32
  he was chosen by various Palestinian leaders in the West Bank to represent the Palestinian
• 34:37
  negotiations the first time the Israeli sat down and negotiated with them then there's
• 34:41
  1993 under Bill Clinton where you start what's known as the Oslo peace process that's where you
• 34:46
  get the famous handshake with uh Rubin and Arifat at the White House lawn um and then oh that
• 34:55
  Peters out but there was a last ditch effort in 2000 um and well just uh I why I'd pated that
• 35:02
  uh right wing is Riley assassinated the prime minister well I would I would know there was still a
• 35:07
  lot of negotiation after that um I mean there was that was not I think the reason I think the
• 35:13
  reason was because in the camp David too was it's known um then prime minister after Rubin's
• 35:21
  after Rubin's assassinations in 2000 very end of yes the end of the Clinton well the Iraq
• 35:29
  is the PM in this in these negotiations and this is uh the end of Clinton's presidency and
• 35:36
  um you know a good Barack um offers Arifat probably the best offer you know that could have
• 35:44
  been conceivable from Israel including joint sovereignty of Jerusalem and Arifat cannot accept it
• 35:50
  and doesn't come up with a kind of counteroffer now there is a dissenting view on this from Robert
• 35:56
  Malley who was a mid-level staffer and is in the news again in Washington because uh his security
• 36:02
  clearance was recently suspended um that says you know that that sort of blames Israel and the
• 36:08
  United States more but this is what Bill Clinton Dennis Ross and all of uh the you know most
• 36:14
  of the people who were there when their memoirs after this these negotiations were basically like
• 36:19
  Arifat did not have a counter-proposal and just said no and then we get what's known as the
• 36:24
  second into Fata the second into Fata then um you know obviously prompts a military response
• 36:29
  from Israel eventually they deal with this problem with suicide bombers for a number of reasons we
• 36:33
  don't have to get into it and uh people who don't have a living memory of the Fata what is the so
• 36:39
  so i'm just going to slide down here because the 90s is critical i think to uh if we're going to
• 36:43
  portion blame anywhere then it is crucial that people understand that in the 1990s there was an
• 36:49
  offer there was an offer for something like 97% of Palestinian land yeah no more settlements
• 36:56
  an actual country sharing the holy capital of east Jerusalem uh you know all that there wasn't
• 37:03
  that the Palestinians really care about was a right to for all Palestinians to return to the
• 37:08
  original lands of Israel as i understand yeah and it's that that's a fantasy kind of anyway yeah
• 37:13
  obviously that's not gonna happen i mean no other no other country in the world that has attention
• 37:19
  between people who were here previously and uh and a new and new arrivals whether that's the
• 37:26
  First Nations Australians or Native Americans or whatever no one would accept that they get to come
• 37:32
  and take my house or live on you know the house that i that i that i bought that would never be on
• 37:37
  the cards yeah and so the Palestinians walk away from that offer and in clinton's biography he says
• 37:44
  that arafat said to him that he that clinton is a great man and clinton said no i'm a failure
• 37:49
  and you made me one yeah that's that's all true but i mean even if you don't want to take clinton's
• 37:53
  word for it there's lots of other people who would test to basically that arafat said no and didn't
• 37:57
  have a counter offer so they so he goes away and launches an intifada which by the way there's evidence
• 38:04
  that he was planning at you know at the end of the summer of 2000 when there were still these
• 38:08
  camp david two talks so um there's a second intifada uh what does that mean intifada just means
• 38:15
  uprising but the uprising is there's two intifadas there's one in eighty eight where
• 38:21
  there there there is there are terrorist components of it but it's largely nonviolent and
• 38:28
  you see a generation of kind of Palestinian local leaders and it i think it was much more
• 38:33
  defensible in some ways but the second intifada is i mean we see the uh formation by the way of
• 38:40
  something that sounds very islamist called the al-oxamarders brigade but that was that was the
• 38:45
  the PLO doing that kind of riding on the wave of of this uh more current ideology of political Islam
• 38:53
  as opposed to the PLO's founding ideology which was like uh the socialist nationalism of
• 39:00
  nasser or aflak or others so what he's this uprising the second intifada is it coordinated and
• 39:07
  decreed from above or is it an organic thing that comes from the grassroots well there's a lot of
• 39:12
  evidence from uh what's called the the arifat compound that was seized by israel they got a lot
• 39:17
  of documents and yes there's a lot of evidence that it was coordinated from above i actually
• 39:22
  did an interview in the middle of the second intifada um with aminal hindi who was the uh kind of
• 39:29
  fahta aparat and charge of uh intelligence for the gaza strip and he he acknowledged that there were
• 39:35
  there were there was coordination and he said this is like a war and you know that kind of thing so
• 39:40
  the reason why that is such an uh an important point to make about the second intifada that it was
• 39:46
  indeed coordinated was because the very institutions that were brought in with israel during the
• 39:54
  peace process to maintain security then basically not only didn't stop the bad guys but participated
• 40:02
  in this um so this then led to this idea of um basically kind of a consolidation for israel where
• 40:14
  in 2005 are else maroon after bringing quiet and putting down this second intifada
• 40:20
  with straws from gaza it did it it was very very uh traumatic for israel at tour the country apart in
• 40:28
  a lot of ways but they did it um and you know and then then there were elections that were pushed
• 40:36
  by the bushing administration and hummus wins the legislature elections and the fahta party the
• 40:45
  PLO will not seat their representatives where they would have a majority so this creates a standoff
• 40:50
  and then in 2007 this so the elections in 2006 and 2007 hummus has had enough they feel that they're
• 40:56
  you know that they that the uh the pa the Palestinian Authority is not is welching on you know
• 41:03
  their guarantees of abiding by an election and so they then kick out the remnants of the security
• 41:12
  forces for the Palestinian Authority in gaza and take over um and hummus has been in control of
• 41:19
  gaza ever since and that has led to a situation where every few years there have been these rocket
• 41:27
  wars uh and each you know and over time hummus gets better and better at these rockets and then finally
• 41:34
  and i again i'm skipping over a lot but finally we see it the october 7 massacre which is
• 41:39
  representing a kind of new and grotesque strategy uh for hummus so that's that's the the potted history
• 41:48
  hmm thanks for that the so it was what were the off ramps let's be as generous as possible to
• 41:56
  Israel's critics because i think there's just a vague cloud of suspicion especially about
• 42:01
  the past 20 years i mean you keep saying that the Israel withdrew from gaza and it did uh but critics
• 42:08
  would say that it withdrew and then imposed an untenable blockade and then you can say well of course
• 42:13
  they had to blockade it because it wasn't a blockade when they withdrew okay there was a blockade
• 42:18
  after hummus took power that's a very important just i mean play again that's the reason there's blockade
• 42:24
  do you understand why now there might Israel might have a problem with things going in and out of
• 42:29
  gaza after october 7th as if you needed more information not you i'm saying Josh but i'm saying to
• 42:34
  the man like um okay uh so what were the off ramps well i mean this is going to sound maybe
• 42:41
  counterintuitive but Israel declined uh to go after the hummus military headquarters and i think
• 42:51
  it's 2011 but i'd have to remember what it was one of the wars where because they were under one
• 42:56
  of the largest hospitals and if they were to go after the hummus military headquarters and decapitate
• 43:02
  this you know regime in gaza they would there would be you know a pr nightmare not to mention
• 43:07
  lots of innocent people and kill you know destroying a hospital so um i would say that one off ramp
• 43:15
  was the failure of the IDF to understand that um you needed to you couldn't have any kind of
• 43:25
  you know real security if hummus was in charge of gaza they believed they could manage the conflict
• 43:31
  that for the most part you know hummus decided to fire lots of rockets they had iron dome
• 43:38
  and they could protect the country um and you know hummus would you know kind of stew in gaza and
• 43:44
  meanwhile you know it was very cruel in some ways uh to the Palestinian people that they had to live
• 43:50
  under these um you know fanatic autocrats who you know torture political dissidents you know torture
• 43:57
  gays and lesbians and uh we all know the list of horrors but we should remember them in the context
• 44:03
  of what the hummus does to their own population um so that's one off ramp another off ramp might
• 44:11
  have been although i don't know that it was necessarily ready but i mean i think that you know
• 44:16
  there there could have been more creative efforts to try to bolster um i'm gonna forget his name
• 44:24
  but there was one guy who was brought in to basically try to fight the corruption of the Palestinian
• 44:30
  authority he was an American Palestinian um i'm sorry i'm not remembering his name right now but
• 44:36
  you know this was on the west bank this was on the west bank and um he was somebody who did have a
• 44:42
  serious idea of trying to end corruption and eventually uh the us to sort of you know let him
• 44:48
  dangle in the wind so to speak and carry uh decided to pursue negotiations between
• 44:55
  Israel and Abu mauson uh and you know to sort of stop trying to create other power centers or to
• 45:03
  have government reform uh for the Palestinian authority so that was another area where maybe
• 45:08
  there could have been more attention paid to the quality of governance as opposed to just finding
• 45:15
  you know dealing with the same old corrupt people who spoke for the Palestinians who were
• 45:20
  not willing to deliver peace um you know i don't know uh whether i mean i think the Israelis could have
• 45:27
  done a better job of maybe leaving out the you know trying to um well i you know it depends on
• 45:36
  what you mean by settlements i i don't think it's realistic to ask um israel to prepare to you
• 45:43
  divide the city of Jerusalem or redeviate it but i do think of there there there could have been
• 45:50
  more consistency and you saw this under ulmer of going after um some of the uh sort of illegal
• 45:58
  settlements that were not approved and more importantly some of this this generation of
• 46:04
  you know youth gangs that were you know Jewish that harass the Palestinian population
• 46:09
  though we should not you know it's a two-way street there's a lot of you know they're Palestinians
• 46:15
  who do the same kind of thing and but you know those those kinds of Jews these kinds of fanatics
• 46:20
  people like Baruch Goldstein who was responsible in 1994 for a horrific massacre in a mosque
• 46:27
  you know he he was killed in that attack but you know groups like that should be
• 46:32
  um dealt with swiftly by the IDF and there have been times when they have been dealt with not
• 46:38
  as swiftly although that again i think is exaggerated by some of the critics of israel because
• 46:45
  you know they're there there there are arrests of of uh you know Judeo fascists on the west bank
• 46:52
  so it's not i don't think that's i mean the so there's the there's that whole thing of you know
• 46:58
  individual lone wolf people who are perpetrating violence and i think most reasonable people
• 47:04
  could agree that those people should be uh you know should be punished but then there's this i
• 47:10
  think the sense that i get from people who are just world weary of israeli in transgences as they
• 47:16
  see it is that uh after the failure of the peace process in the 1990s and the withdrawal from Gaza
• 47:25
  perhaps because of big demographic changes in israel where some of the more hippie-dippy kibbutzim
• 47:32
  style secular Jews who were dominant in the country in the past have been replaced by orthodox uh Jews
• 47:41
  from eastern europe and russia who are much more committed to a very robust vision of Zionism
• 47:49
  you've got this electorate that is now electing and re-electing governments that you know
• 47:55
  forget what forget about netanyahu he looks like a left-wing peacenick in comparison to some of the
• 48:00
  right-wing parties that he's in coalition with who really do and i've interviewed some of these guys
• 48:06
  they basically do think that israel should be you know a single jewish state all throughout the
• 48:13
  entire region and they have been aggressive about allowing and authorizing these little settlements
• 48:20
  on land that everybody in the world knows would have to end up being palestine so you put yourself
• 48:27
  in the palestinians shoes and you go okay well this is the only space in the world that we're
• 48:33
  going to ever get a state you can forget about right-of-return or anything and they're constructing
• 48:37
  towns fortified towns on that land for us to move around we have to face constant road checks and
• 48:44
  you know the nightmare of being ensnared in kaffka esk bureaucracy and 22 year olds with machine
• 48:51
  guns in israeli military outfits we're policing how much flower you're bringing to your neighboring
• 48:59
  town to give to your mother-in-law because there happens to be a settlement now that's constructed
• 49:03
  between your two towns like what is the the off ramp at strikes me would have been stop building
• 49:12
  those fucking towns in a place that everybody knows would have to be palestine that is palestine
• 49:19
  and provide some indication that the the Palestinians who are not trying to execute
• 49:29
  and slaughter Jews have a path towards a state and that what has been happening on that front
• 49:35
  in the past 15 years well again I am not really that persuaded by that because there are things
• 49:45
  that the Palestinians could do such as again ending this like pay for slave stuff and you know I
• 49:54
  mean you're dealing with the population I mean the population would boot them up like with every
• 49:58
  passing year of misery the population is likely to become more radicalized and we see that in
• 50:03
  israel as well with every passing year of frustration I mean let's talk about Ben Gavir and
• 50:09
  and smother because I agree with you that these are Judeo fascist I criticized Netanyahu for kind
• 50:16
  of making a cynical alliance which really began in like 2018 with these parties and I think that
• 50:24
  they have no place in a kind of respectable Israeli politics but on the other hand I you know
• 50:32
  that they they are able to be part of a ruling coalition because most of the country has given up
• 50:38
  on a fantasy that the Palestinians if you if you just you know offer them the right incentives
• 50:45
  will you know live in peace with israel so I mean they you have to understand how I mean there's a
• 50:53
  reason why the labor party is now an afterthought in israel when that was you know it came from the
• 50:58
  original coalition of Ben Gorean and and and had a political monopoly until 1978 in the election
• 51:04
  of Monoccan Bacon and that is that the labor party promised a kind of approach of land for peace
• 51:13
  which when it was tried by a lecude prime minister arael chiron ended up being land for rocket wars
• 51:21
  and so there there is a sense here where I think Israelis feel that you know they they they're not
• 51:29
  going to go back to what they see as the kind of illusion that you know negotiations will somehow end
• 51:37
  the conflict because it seems that when they have given up land and they also by the way got out
• 51:43
  of southern Lebanon and 2000 that it only just adds to their security nightmare so every time that
• 51:53
  israel has you know sort of conceded territory it's been met with you know more war
• 52:01
  so again you have to ask the south the question has the Palestinians really made that strategic
• 52:06
  choice that we all thought they made in the 1990s that they're willing to accept less than their
• 52:11
  historical demands for a you know a Jew-free Palestine the entire territory
• 52:20
  um you know is that something that represents you know where Palestinian leadership is at this
• 52:27
  point my view is that the answer is in governance reform and finding better and better leaders
• 52:36
  and figuring out how to incentivize us now to out in Israel like I think the Israelis I think
• 52:43
  the Israelis if there was a every time you've seen a former foe um take risks for peace whether it's
• 52:51
  onwarsada or the recent Abraham Accords the Israelis have been eager to make peace it's it's you know
• 52:58
  if you had a palace I mean isn't it incumbent on isn't it the job of the people who hold all the
• 53:03
  tads to be more aggressive about trying to find a solution well I don't know that I would say
• 53:09
  that Israel Israel doesn't hold the cards if it did it would I mean I as I said I would have been
• 53:15
  in favor of Israel using one of these wars to just get to kick him us out of Gaza that would have
• 53:21
  been obviously a good thing in retrospect but they've they've always I mean especially in
• 53:27
  Nanyahu is always you know sort of load the idea of another reoccupation of that strip and then
• 53:33
  all of the problems that come along with it so right but the options are not either reoccupation
• 53:39
  or unilateral withdrawal and then the tight control over the area I mean what Palestinians want
• 53:47
  is an agreement an agreement to where they have independence and they can run their own
• 53:52
  if that's all they want it then like they could have had that in 1995 they could have had it
• 53:57
  in 2000 they could have maybe even added in 2010 during the over negotiations why I mean are
• 54:02
  you sure about that I'm not so sure about that well I mean I'm sort of channeling like I heard in
• 54:07
  all these rally generals saying it's not us against them it's some of us and some of them against
• 54:13
  some of them and some of us so there is there is some cohort of people in in the Palestinian territories
• 54:20
  one would assume who would be okay with a state maybe even an unarmed state that does not occupy
• 54:28
  the entirety well I okay if that if that's true and I hope it is then then it is in Israel's interest
• 54:35
  it's an America's interest it's in the Arab regions interest it's in the world's interest and it's
• 54:40
  in the interest of Palestinians to find those people and cultivate them as peace partners because
• 54:46
  clearly the leadership right now of the Palestinians is not interested in that yeah absolutely but I
• 54:52
  mean again yeah the beatings will stop when morale improves but that's not I don't think that's
• 54:56
  really the case because you cannot expect a state to I mean who is the negotiating partner they
• 55:06
  supposed to try to you know say well let's try another approach with Hamas and and talk about
• 55:11
  you know what a great future will be when we all live side-by-side we know that that's not going
• 55:15
  to work with them we know that I'm not talking the time I'm most confident okay fine but I mean
• 55:20
  Abumazan what what we first of all I don't even know that Abumazan has any legitimacy he also has
• 55:25
  not stood for an election since 2006 second of all I don't know that I mean based on his recent
• 55:35
  you know comments in the last five or six years that he wants either this is something that he
• 55:40
  necessarily wants I mean it whatever who knows what he wants but he is you know sensitive to the
• 55:46
  Arab street as we call it and he obviously if he was too conciliatory then the his people would
• 55:54
  would boot him out so there's there is there is that I mean in the same way I totally understand
• 55:59
  your your frustration about like who is the partner for peace here and well who exactly you
• 56:03
  supposed to be negotiating with and at the same time while there is this alternative history that
• 56:11
  I can imagine in which Palestinians instead of responding with bouts of terrorism had responded
• 56:19
  with a strategy of peaceful non-resistance I can also imagine a parallel history in which since say
• 56:27
  2005 Israel was ruled by you know imagine that Rabin had been in power instead of Netanyahu are
• 56:35
  we confident that he couldn't have found some in maybe but you know you have to you have to
• 56:44
  understand that when when Arifat launches the second into Fada it's it's devastating to the
• 56:52
  peace camp in Israel and then after a liquid prime minister goes against his own party and his own
• 56:59
  base and withdrawals from Gaza and five settlements in the West Bank never forget that and
• 57:08
  you know you know almost tears the country apart that is met in less in like less than a year and a
• 57:16
  half by rockets I mean I'm just telling you that like this is the political reality in Israel
• 57:21
  Israel's a democracy so it's it's hard for me to imagine how you can have a
• 57:29
  bleeder that would not you know take a different line after the experience of the 1990s and the
• 57:35
  2000s let's talk about the future rely okay there are now two things that Israel needs to do one is
• 57:46
  make sure that October 7 can never happen again and the other is in a longer term sense to turn
• 57:54
  down the heat on the conditions that you're talking about right I mean if the problem is that where
• 58:01
  we're skeptical about how much willingness there is amongst Palestinians to tolerate
• 58:06
  merely a state and how much of a desire among power among Palestinians on the street there is to
• 58:13
  actually wipe Jews off the face of the earth or at least out of the region then you've got to
• 58:19
  find a way to turn the dial towards yes we'll cop a state versus no we want to execute Jews or like
• 58:29
  can you do both those things at the same time because it strikes me that to really protect yourself
• 58:33
  against hummus you have to do some devastating shit in Gaza which then inflames the opinion which
• 58:39
  prevents the long term settlement I mean at this point I think Israel has to focus on reading
• 58:45
  Gaza at the very least of hummus I would imagine that I mean I have no inside information but I
• 58:51
  would imagine that that you know hummus is leaders that live in luxury outside of Gaza and Doha and
• 58:57
  Istanbul and Ankara should probably could very well be targets I think we have to look very
• 59:04
  seriously at the prospect that the Iranians are more involved it's it's unclear at this point
• 59:10
  the US government says they don't have direct evidence there are other people in Congress who say
• 59:13
  they do there've been some journal some reports that have suggested the Iranians certainly had a
• 59:17
  role and if you look at the comments from Ayatollah Hamanay the supreme leader of that country
• 59:25
  and the history of Iran's support for these proxies then of course you know the Iranians
• 59:30
  have some culpability so I think we're already looking at a kind of regional war and a regional war
• 59:35
  started by what the Iranians will refer to themselves as the axis of resistance I would prefer to
• 59:41
  call them the axis of dirt bags but you know the listeners can be the judge of that so you know in
• 59:48
  in that respect I think that those are the kind of immediate questions that take priority into
• 59:54
  you know the take priority over you know what will public opinion be in Gaza and the West Bank
• 59:59
  after this war or something like that sadly I believe the Palestinians are caught up as pawns
• 1:00:06
  in this regional conflict that is you know really being fueled by Iran and so
• 1:00:14
  you know I would love it for there to be you know an opening for you know some Palestinian leaders
• 1:00:20
  to sort of say we are no longer going to be you know the the pawns of of Tehran they have nothing
• 1:00:27
  to do with us but I'm not holding my breath precisely because I think that it's going to be a
• 1:00:34
  bit of brutality that the IDF is going to unleash in Gaza it's always a kind of human tragedy
• 1:00:41
  they're going to be innocent we're going to be killed and I don't think that anyone should
• 1:00:44
  celebrate any of that certainly not me but the priority if you want to make sure that you prevent
• 1:00:50
  October 7th from ever happening again is that you just have to just destroy Hamas you have to
• 1:00:56
  you know you have to you have to destroy them you know some people would say well Hamas is a brand
• 1:01:00
  it's an idea okay but there are also leaders of Hamas and there are also you know they have resources
• 1:01:07
  and you have that's what you have to focus on and that was not the time for abstractions because
• 1:01:12
  they're a very real threat it is interesting to ask a question of what happens to the next I mean
• 1:01:19
  well you know so you kill all of Hamas do you think of Hamas as a discrete thing or do you think
• 1:01:25
  of Hamas and Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and ISIS as different forms of Islamist fascism
• 1:01:33
  that will find a way to infect people's minds and provide a convenient model a blame you know it
• 1:01:41
  makes you blameless it makes it makes other people the Americans the Jews the colonizers the bad
• 1:01:47
  guys it makes you feel righteous it gives you a simple worldview it offers you paradise after death
• 1:01:54
  it's a cute model it's nice it's a fundamentalism and you know is what do you do about that
• 1:02:00
  well I'm I think that you there's two different things going on as we talked about a little
• 1:02:06
  it earlier there is a very deep rooted sense in kind of Palestinian political expression that
• 1:02:18
  its strategy should be atrocities against Jews in Israel and forcing them to eventually leave
• 1:02:25
  so that you know Palestinians can take over and that as I said has been a strategy since before
• 1:02:31
  even there was a state of Israel and then it's it's kind of been taken over at least parts of it
• 1:02:37
  have been taken over by this imperialist revanchist version of political Islam which wants to conquer
• 1:02:49
  you know to recreate the caliphate so yes there is a connection between Hamas, ISIS, Al-Qaeda
• 1:02:57
  the Muslim Brotherhood it was originally kind of formed as out of the branch of the Palestinian
• 1:03:03
  Muslim Brotherhood and all of this kind of goes back to a lot of very bad ideas about
• 1:03:08
  you know imposing Islamic law and again recreating the caliphate
• 1:03:15
  but you know we've dealt with this I mean I don't you know you don't let the perfect be the enemy
• 1:03:20
  of the good ISIS looked really tough in 2015 and by 2020 they they're you know they
• 1:03:29
  there was no ISIS caliphate and they became less of a threat al-Qaeda looked very imposing in 2001
• 1:03:35
  and now you know nobody really cares what they do and they're sort of you know like I don't know
• 1:03:41
  they're like living in like you know the you know in in squalor in rural Afghanistan or wherever
• 1:03:47
  the hell they are and yes there are other regional affiliates of al-Qaeda but it's not the
• 1:03:52
  it's not the force that it once was so I think we've seen that you know the ideology is poison
• 1:04:00
  and it does offer something to a certain kind of you know I guess like a certain kind of Muslim
• 1:04:07
  a certain kind of person but it's possible to sort of you know there's nothing inevitable about
• 1:04:12
  you know them and there are there strategies for destroying their leadership just as
• 1:04:18
  you know there was a time when Abu Nidal was a was a major figure and you know eventually
• 1:04:23
  you know through counterterrorism and things he's really and probably the CIA did Abu Nidal
• 1:04:29
  became a spent force and you know his his lieutenants turned on him and he was living in exile
• 1:04:36
  in Iraq so I just mentioned all of this because I don't think it's an excuse for not
• 1:04:42
  necessarily doing anything as for the appeal of political Islam you know when you control
• 1:04:53
  all of the education in a little statelet like Hamas has done now since 2007 it's very easy
• 1:05:01
  that you will raise a generation of people who you know go along with this nonsense
• 1:05:09
  um so part of it part of the way that you deal with this ideological problem is to deal with
• 1:05:15
  the you know physical presence of these organizations and make sure that they're they don't have
• 1:05:21
  they don't control territory and they don't have the ability to um you know poison more minds and
• 1:05:27
  then I just want to say one other thing that history of particularly Islamist groups does not
• 1:05:34
  show that they get their recruits for their most you know kind of their their their next generation
• 1:05:39
  of leaders and most fervent operatives from you know the most dispossessed they usually come from
• 1:05:46
  you know educated middle-class families just look at the bin Laden's look at I'm an also
• 1:05:50
  watery he was a medical student at the University of Cairo um you see all kinds of examples of a lot
• 1:05:56
  of people who have embraced revolutionary violence you know whether in the Islamist version of it
• 1:06:02
  or you know earlier versions of kind of you know the inspired by Lenin and Marx like you know
• 1:06:09
  Carlos the Jackal um these were people that came from fairly comfortable you know bourgeois families
• 1:06:18
  so um so in that respect I would just say that there's a that we should be careful about how we
• 1:06:25
  think about um you know what to do but there's an immediate problem right now and that immediate
• 1:06:31
  problem is Hamas and you know I think it's fair to say that Israel had had the wrong strategy
• 1:06:38
  thinking that they could manage the conflict with them and now they think they understand that they
• 1:06:42
  they can't live in a world with Hamas and then in the longer term uh like how optimistic or pessimistic
• 1:06:50
  are you what becomes of Jews in that part of the world like I don't imagine you know Australia is
• 1:06:54
  122 years old it's pretty recent uh that the country formed into an actual nation in 122 years
• 1:07:03
  it doesn't strike me as likely that the status quo continues to persist where Israel is able to
• 1:07:09
  continue merely using the tools of security to protect itself so do you end up
• 1:07:16
  like is there a nightmare scenario in which uh you know Arab countries or Iran
• 1:07:26
  take advantage of this is there a better scenario in which there's a two-state solution
• 1:07:31
  is there an alternative scenario in which there's some kind of one-state solution what do you think
• 1:07:35
  ends up happening in a hundred years oh well um you know I mean I think that you you have to deal with
• 1:07:43
  the Iran problem and I think the ideal solution there is to support the millions of Iranians who
• 1:07:49
  despise their regime and I think that then things begin opening up a bit um you know it's uh if you
• 1:07:57
  think about it um you know Israel has managed to almost come very close to a piece with Saudi Arabia
• 1:08:10
  which nobody would have thought would have even remotely possible even a few years ago so I think
• 1:08:16
  that there's a lot of options out there I don't want to predict what will happen in a hundred years
• 1:08:19
  I certainly hope that Israel still exists and um but I think in the in the near term a part of
• 1:08:27
  the answer to that problem is you have to prevent this uh fanatic regime in Tehran from getting
• 1:08:33
  a nuclear weapon Eli thanks for your expertise uh hang in there you too it's thank you for
• 1:08:40
  having me no but that's it's great to talk to you thank you absolutely thank you