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What I've Learnt - Jacob Klein · WHAT I'VE LEARNT

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I love this quote from my next guest, Jacob Klein, because it seems to go to the character of the man, and I'm very interested to hear about his perspective on the crazy world that we're in right now, but the importance for peace, mediation, negotiation, and finding resolution.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this is what Jacob specializes in.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: So, Jacob, welcome to the What I've Learned podcast.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me and hosting me, and I'm happy to be here.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a torrid time right now, and I think, as we all would agree on all sides, people are floundering and there's a sense of vulnerability and people feeling that they're not sure where to turn next.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: As a mediator and someone who has navigated the psyche of complex conflicting parties before, what are some of your thoughts around what you're seeing globally?
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then we'll talk about specifically Australia in in more detail, but but obviously you're really at the coal face seeing this, and you've seen it before, or have you?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: Is this something that you have grave concerns for, or you can see that there may be some hope for resolution?
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um I start with the end.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's a very, very bad is even an understatement situation, but I do have hope, and I will try to explain why.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: But first of all, let me tell you, I was in this mediation or conflict resolution, both as a professional and as a person.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: I see myself, I belonged to what in Israel is called a peace camp.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I see myself as a liberal, as a humanist, as someone who believes in civil rights and in personal rights.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was establishing and then later on participating in many dialogue groups with Palestinians.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: And everywhere we could, I did it.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: And uh there was hope.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I worked with the consultant of the general chief of staff, which means basically the commander of the Israeli army, and that was on the Oslo covenant that was more or less in 1995, 96, 97.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: There was hope.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: And having said that, I belong really to this camp that fights for a solution that is both guaranteeing Israel's security but also guaranteeing the rights of the Palestinians.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: But the events of October 7th shattered, they they cracked and challenged many of my beliefs and of my actually my hopes.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Because this the massacre committed was not something that that was that was terrorist, that had nothing to do with liberation or with freedom camp, or because they are poor.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: That was an orgy of murder and rape and mutilation of bodies, and uh a lot of things which I can't repeat, I don't want to repeat.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you did a wonderful job in talking to people who survived or that they have the relatives in Gaza.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm uh the the the whole thing is something that uh even now, they yesterday the Americans, American intelligence said they don't want to return the women because they are afraid that they will tell what they went through.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I saw that actually, yes.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is this is only the tip of the iceberg of many things.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: We know, we know uh unfortunately a little bit more information.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean our our intelligence, not I personally, but I had that.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the confession of the Hamas people, the ones that were captive here, they say terrible things.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: They were really happy to kill Jews.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: One of them called.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: We have the film.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: He called his father and said, I killed Jews, Papa, be so proud of me.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't say soldiers, he didn't say people, he didn't say Israelis.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: We killed Jews, I killed 10 Jews, be proud of me, and so on.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like a badge of honor.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's so so shattering, and so the value of death over life.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: He took the telephone, the cellular phone of the girl he murdered, her phone, and he said very proudly, we heard it because the Israeli intelligence uh uh concepted it.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: We he says, I hey, I have here the cell phone, and here I'm talking, I did kill her, and so on.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: But this is only one of many, many, many examples.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and that I guess you were exposed in the the whole realm.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: There was one of my relatives, the cousin of my son-in-law.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yes, a child, I I knew him, the Yanae Zikim, uh, one of these heroes.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: He protected uh 90 kids, 18-year kids.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: He they were recruited, but they hadn't even uh they were not armed.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: And he he he but they were not trained, they were nothing.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: That was a basic training.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: And he and two other officers went there and they sacrificed their lives, protected and saved them.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm so sorry for your loss.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: His funeral, of all the funerals, his funeral devastated me.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Symbolically, in the middle of the funeral, as the father, a broken father, uh, whom uh he was in Australia also.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, um, he started to speak once the alarm of rockets, and we all lay down on the on the on the ground, on the hard ground, because it was in the area of Jerusalem.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: I was even hurt.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: So that was so symbolic, I say.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: What I want to say is it's very, very hard to believe in dialogue and peace and peaceful solutions when you see these things.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because these have nothing to do with rights, human rights, with fighting for freedom.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: They have nothing to do with it.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: So the challenge, yeah, the challenge is what you're saying is the trauma is great.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: You've seen it before.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I know that you worked also with the Rabin government and at that time, and you know, it was a long time ago, but you, you know, there is a strong, complex, overwhelming history of these sort of atrocities.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, remember when there was that whole phase where all the buses were being bombed with innocent people, there was that whole horrible terrorist thing going on um back in the 90s.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And this is sort of like, I think why everyone's so shocked, as you're correctly outlining, is there is something so sinister here that is next level.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's not war, it's like there's something going on on both sides.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: There seems this incredible um uh unrelenting hate and and disregard.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so for someone like you who works in the peace negotiator media space, where does the anger go and how do you find a way?
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is what I'm interested in.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: As you said, you're devastated, you're traumatized.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, as is all the community, as is Israel, as is the globe.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And then you have these people responding globally with hate and celebration.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: I I want to tell you something about hate, which is unfortunately exactly as you said, it's it's flourishing now in both sides.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: But before that, I want to relate to a very small thing.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: You said it actually unnoticed.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: You said hate of the both sides.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's true, but I'm very, very much concerned that the word makes such a clear cut, it's very, very almost self-understood that it's a symmetry.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: There is no symmetry.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very I'm I belong to those people who criticize the Israeli government very harshly.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: I was demonstrating week after week, week after week, more than a dozens of weeks.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: So no one can blame me that I'm a very blind, ardent, or someone who hangs on.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: But there is no symmetry.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: The speed with which the word shifted from seeing Israel as the victim on the Thursday, on Saturday, or Sunday, and immediately after that, or some in some places, even at the same day, we are the aggressive ones, we are the ones who does it.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: There is no symmetry.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: You even if we do mistakes, if such a murderous attack, if it happens, and Israel goes to defend its own people so that the the settlements can go back.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_01: I had a discussion with my uh daughter, she's also in the peace camp.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, I don't know what the solution is.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think war is the is the best solution.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: So she said, okay, but if I'm living there in one of these set uh one of these villages, so kibbutzim, how can I really come back if the Hamas is still there?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: And this is something understood.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: If it's it's I I always I compare it if someone comes to you, not to you, but to someone's house, comes and slaughters your family, and rapes your daughter, and kidnaps your wife, and kills your brothers and all the whole family, and then you go and and try to seek him and release your kidnap.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: But he and his whole band are hiding in a village, and in this village, there are part of them are his band and part of them innocent, but you're going after him, and once you are fighting because he's hiding himself, then the world calls him he is the aggressor.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: I I think it's very a known fact.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: We found it in the last 50 days.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: We found bombs and rockets and munition and the whole thing of the rocket infrastructure under under mosques, under schools, under uh under kindergarten, and under uh under the hospital.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: It was not only Shifa.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: We have now discovered another hospital where they have the tunnels with the munition under it because they were sure we will not touch it.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I I'm very, very sensitive to this symmetry to say, yes, they have hate and there.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: It is not.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And if we do miss uh do mistakes, and we do, it is still not a reason to say yes, it's on both sides, both sides are criminals.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a big debate.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're right.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: I promised you uh a word about hate.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think this uh the one of the one of the tragedies of the so-called collateral damages of this whole thing is it took away the hope of some of people like me who were really hoping for a dialogue, for a for a kind of a solution that will include both.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: I remember after 9-11, where there was a lot of agitation and anger, um, I called for some kind of thinking, of reflecting, and not only angel.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: And there was also a Zen Buddhist person, uh Tech Nathan, a Vietnamese one, and he said, embracing the anger.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: I think that what we have to do is on both sides, I can't take responsibility for the other side, but of our side, to say we do what we do to free our hostages and to be sure that there is no danger for the settlements and the villages at the kibbutzim that are on the border.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: But no rage out of uh revenge, no things that come out of just purely punishing.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not, I don't believe in punishing.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't believe in even if we are very uh bad or a band of murderers, not punishment is certainly not as a state, but but simply make sure that these people will not risk our our citizens again.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And without getting it.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: One is clearly there are people that say the settlements are part of the problem, and I mean we won't get into all the politics because there are so there's so many complexities around that.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: But clearly there are people that say the settlements are inflammatory and that's a separate issue, right?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: So putting that together.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: No, wait, wait, uh I want to make it clear.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, uh, settlements, you mean the ones in the Judea in Samaria or West Bank?
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_00: Near the border, yes.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: I'm speaking about the kibbutzim, and they they were in Israeli territory that was since the UN the resolution in 1940.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: They were should have been protected.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: They were Israeli, they had nothing to do with, they were not occupied, not conquered, they were never Arabs there, they are Israeli villages and kibbutzim who peacefully ride there.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: And and ironically ironically, many of them they were very supportive of that relationship.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly, the great majority of the kibbutzin.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they were actually there.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Many of them, I was reading about some of the victims, and many of them actually worked, you know, with Palestinians and other communities and Arab communities to try and have a relationship, and that's the tragedy, is that there's actually been a quite a reasonable amount of harmony prior to this, which, as we know, or we believe is maybe there was a lulling into a false sense of security in a sense that there was nothing looming, although there's talk that there were many rumors that there was something horrible coming.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And whether that was heeded by the government or whether there was a sort of a complacency, that's a separate issue.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: But I think, you know, to your point, one of the problems is it doesn't feel like not only does it not it doesn't feel like there's a lot of hopeful.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we had the ceasefire, and there was what, four or five days where there was a little bit of hope, but it just seems to have blown up again.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Number one.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: And number two, the world doesn't feel like it understands at all this position.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a a lot of hate and a lot of anger and a and very anti-Semitic, uh, the the rise in anti-Semitism is enormous because the perception, to your point, is that while you know the sides are not equal, as you say, right?
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_00: The perception is collective punishment is what's been dished out.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is not my position.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is just, I'm just putting forth, you know, the that are what I've heard everywhere.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And people are using it as an excuse, and many, many people, like institutions, unions, are seeing it as a reason to be hateful about our community.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: So the division has just risen up so extremely and so harshly.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: What is your perspective on that?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and how do you see like the influx in universities in America and Canada marching and this whole perception that Israel has inverted commas overreacted, you know?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Look, the I don't I don't have any solutions.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what to do.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm seemingly I'm I'm scared and overwhelmed by this huge wave, this tsunami of anti-Semitism.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it is as if it would be unleashed and used.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't want to say just an excuse.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: I do understand people.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Many, many of these uh persons are are are simply ignorant.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: There was one lady, it was a viral clip, uh lady demonstrating from the sea to Gaza, to uh from the sea to the rivers, yeah, and he asked uh the mountains too, and she said yes, what mountains?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't have the slightest idea of the horrible person, yeah.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um it is like the the these anti-Semitists are for me, some of them are more are are out of hate, especially with some of them are are from Muslim uh origins, not all of them, and all kinds.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you know, there was a a Christian reformist called Jan Hus, and he was burnt on the how do you say it?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um he was actually executed.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is when when was this?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh back this was in this, I think in the 16th century.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yes, so in Czechoslovakia, yeah.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And and one lady, she was so so religious that she wanted also to participate, and she put some little wood or something so that the fire will be more intense.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: And he looked at her from from above, burning, suffering, and he said, How simply how sanctus implicitas, holy um naivete or innocence.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: People are actually doing a lot of damage not only to Israel, but the conflict, the more the hate is spread, the less or the more time it will take to remake some kind of reconciliation.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: At the end, it must come because the the people in Gaza and some of the population in Israel also will have to understand that these two people will have to live one near the other.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: There is no choice.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they have to make some resolution.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: You worked on the Oslo Accord and with Rabinas, as we talked about, and his team, and you've seen some pretty over the last you know, 70 years plus, you would have seen some pretty um extraordinary uh challenges for you in the context of what you've seen in those peace camps and those attempts to, you know, right through the last few decades.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: How do you put this position now?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: How do you see this in the context of that?
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: Look, from a very systemic point of view or a global one, the Oslo combined, the whole agreements of Oslo brought a wave of violence for the very same reason.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: The Palestinian extreme parts, the segments that were very much against peace, were very scared by the fact that there can be a kind of a peace.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: And they started this, what you mentioned, the bus bombing and children in the way and horrible things.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: And that it was following the Oslo uh agreement.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: And this this dynamic comes very, very often when they see that there is some kind of the Americans say, I think the American president also says that they have some kind of information that the attack was because they were very much threatened by the possibility that there will be peace between Israel and Saudi uh Saudi Arabia and and more with the Gulf of Arabia.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, recently, you mean the Saudi, yeah.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like so recently Saudi Arabia were about to do a deal with Israel.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so they sabotaged.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: You're saying it's potentially that was I that was part of the sabotage because that the peace is something very, I don't know.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: But most people you say anti-Semitism.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: If someone would read no comment, no interpretation, simply read the the Hamas kind of charter, or or I think it's a covenant, it so explicitly says they don't hide anything, they don't they say it very, very explicitly.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want Jews in this Palestine.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Our purpose is that all of them will be Muslim.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: There is no peace, is danger.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: They say it in their own words.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: I think paragraph.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want to call it.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: People don't know it at all.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: They say this, this, these poor people, the Hamas is really a murderer.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: They terrorize their own people.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: People, exactly.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: From from the hospital, when we said we want to evacuate it because we wanted to check who are the people in the hospital who disguised and they were actually terrorists.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: Some innocent people tried to go, and we said, yes, you check, you can go.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: They were shut down by the Hamas inside the tunnel near the hospital.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I believe that's the.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: These are not people who want peace in any case.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: How do we how do we negotiate with people who don't value life and and want to sabotage peace?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because you it's not the first time you've seen this.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: You have seen this before.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Does this time feel like navigating the work you do and the role you've played in the past?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: How will you, when you talk to people in the arena in which you work, which is to mediate, negotiate, what's the feeling and the essence?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Clearly, there was some sort of negotiation for they got some of the hostages out and they clearly had a ceasefire.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: So somebody, they say Qatar was doing that, but then I hear Qatar's also.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: So what I'm trying to work out is is that dialogue still, in your opinion, still viable?
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Or what is some of your colleagues saying?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: How are you feeling on that front?
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think Israel is very much torn.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's polarized, but not this time, not only between the so-called right or or the more national uh fragments and the so-called left or peace camp.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: It is torn also inside.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: I myself am very torn because I don't think that war is a solution.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: Period.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, I want to see these hostages, these are not even hostages, they were simply taken brutally.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what they went through, I think you did hear a little bit.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: What they went through in this captivity, we want to see them back.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: We don't want to punish the ones, the ones who live in Gaza.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: They are and will be our neighbors, and they are going to live there.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: And there are some Israelis who are in the rage and in the hate.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: They say if they did this, they don't deserve to be there.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: They are a minority, a very vocal minority, like every minority, but a minority.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: I do believe that we will have to live with them.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: But right now, it is very, very hard to get out from the emotions and say, hey, these are our partners.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_01: They don't value life as we do, they don't share values of democracy or the Western values.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: But these are the people we are sitting with.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: We are not, it is very nice to hope and fantasize that we will make peace with Switzerland or with Norway or with Australia.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: But these are our neighbors, and these are the ones that we will struggle principally with ourselves, struggle to really come and force ourselves to be in a position of negotiating.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so, from that perspective, how do you trust and develop rapport?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: You've been involved in in negotiations before, you've been in that room.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: What how do you develop a rapport with an enemy like this?
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you learn to how do you trust?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: Or do you just I don't, I'm trying to think how, you know, even the Oslo Accord was a massive achievement at the time.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how do we get from this position of such diabolical hate and broken communities?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: Have you seen this happen?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Do you feel that that leap is what you're saying is there is no alternative.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be sorted, there has to be some way forward.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: But but but this is this is part of it, is my professional opinion, and part of it is a little bit useful thinking.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I understand.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: I tell you uh, I I I want to tell you an example, and instead of going and speaking very abstractly, I told you about that soldier, Yanai, a twenty one-year-old angel.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: He did only Oh, I'm so sorry.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: I I feel we knew him, he was with only kindness and giving.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: His parents, his mother, Ilana, wrote the letter in Arabic.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: She doesn't speak it, she translates.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_01: To all her neighbors, they live in an area near Jerusalem.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: They are surrounded with Arab villages, Israeli villages.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: They are not Palestinians, no, there is in so-called in the in in the Israel before 67 with a message of conciliation and peace, and saying, We don't blame you, we don't generalize, we don't think that all Arabs are killers.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: That was a mother who lost her beloved son that was days after she did, and I saw her at the funeral.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: My heart is, I feel you, I feel this.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I have a 21-year-old myself, so I feel this very strongly, and I feel your your tears and your pain.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm I'm going to, this is important that people understand because, as you say, this is the professional and the personal.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, in this situation, it's very hard to separate the two.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not hard, it's impossible.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's against all my professional beliefs that you have to really separate and cut, but no.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: If I come back to the more rational kind of thing, if you can in these days talk rational, a negotiation in such a climate of so much hatred from now from both sides, and so much a gap between values and distrust, it must begin with some external third party negotiator, like they did.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: These negotiations went very dramatically.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: There were efforts of Qatar, of Egypt, of the US, many of them indirectly.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: US negotiated with Hamas, but they didn't have any direct contact.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: So they had it with the through the Qatars and through the Egyptians who were very instrumental.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: The Israeli, the one who is in charge, is the chief of the Mossad.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: He said with the Qatars, which we are not really connected diplomatically, but we found ways to have a joint kind of uh command.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Dialogue.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of doing things.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: There is no way of a direct dialogue between uh those two parties.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: At the beginning, it must be through some kind of mediation, some kind of in intermediate uh persons or states.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: And there is a lot, a lot of work to do to the so-called uh trust building.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: There is a lot, a lot to do because we have so much mistrust that it can take many years.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: And when I say many years, I'm trying to be optimistic.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: And did you, as you said, I mean, that's a very potent and powerful image of that mother who just lost her son writing that letter in Arabic to the community around her and saying, please let's conciliate, let's find a way forward so that we don't lose any more sons.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: And we grieve about the deaths of your sons because some of them were in other totally different.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we are also feeling an empathic to these losses.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that that was the message.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's so important though, because it's actually the humanists and the conciliators and the negotiators and the mediators, which is your space, and one that I know must be extremely difficult to function in right now, as you've just outlined.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: But they're really who we have to find a way to move forward with on both sides.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: As you said, you had Qatar, there's Egypt, there's all these different countries that you don't necessarily have an accord with, but you found a way or they found a way to at least get the some of the hostages out.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think there's 140 left still in in captivity.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're they're doing a very, very brutal psychological war warfare, even regarding the numbers and who was killed and who was not killed.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, I saw that with the the family with the young babies and yes, all horrific mind games and torture for these poor families.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: On a that's on a sort of, I suppose, the coalface of Israel dealing with what they have to deal with.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, you have this surge of global fear, and certainly we're feeling it in Australia.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: I think I mentioned to you, you know, we're very far away, but we have a very strong community here, not a huge community, but a very strong one.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: And there is, you know, countless examples every day of not only anti-Semitic behavior, but also on social media, um, you know, quite torrid and disturbing claims, and also with people with very large followings.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got this social, it's like a fire, it's like a wildfire on social media.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: The consequence of that is that, as you obviously we discussed briefly, you had some of the families of the hostages come to Australia and they ended up in a hotel after they had spoken at a public forum about their trauma, and they were threatened, and and there was a whole lot of protesters that it turned up there, and it was a horrific and shameful thing that happened.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: The consequence of that is that Israel has now put a sort of a warning up saying, you know, when you go to Australia, be aware there's a strong anti-Semitic strident element.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: So the reverberations for our community are just so massive globally.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we, you know, we are all trying to work towards writing letters, education, engagement with people, trying to say, you need to have the facts.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the fact.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this is sort of the grassroots approach, some of which has been quite effective, I must say, the one-on-one advocacy.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: What's your perspective as someone who's a professional in the area in terms of the diaspora and how we should be dealing with some, because you've obviously got the Israel internal crisis, but then you've got this reverberation.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: I I do I do know it because I work in in Europe regularly.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm twice a year doing their uh seminars and semesters in the universities and public in Austria, but it's also a little bit in Germany and then uh adjacent.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I was uh positioned in the United States four years.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was a kind of a uh two-year cultural attache or something, and I I did experience a lot of anti-Semitism.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: I did held a lot of speeches, even with very hostile audiences.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I begin with that that okay, I don't say you don't have right, but what exactly is it?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then we come to what do you say, the grassroots, if we do have an opportunity to keep a dialogue, because some of them don't want to listen.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: They are shouting, they are crowded, this is the whole masses and so on.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: But if you have a chance to have a debate, not out of trying to uh really to win, but to explain or to say how relative his position is.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Not that he doesn't have right, but how much, much more complicated it is than white black.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: And also this really, which is unperceptible the way that they turn the victim into the aggressor.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: In uh there is not only Australia, in Canada, there is a lot of anti-Semitism, a huge way, and it is led by the unions, by the workers.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: Same as same here, very similar.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: Now, uh, if it is, then I would ask one of these unions, what do you know about the Hamas?
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: The Hamas, in its covenant, they say Allah and Muslims only.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: They would be the first one, not only not to allow any organized work, they would be the first one to be thrown into jail in the best case, union.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: The word union, the word to organize or freedom or rights for laborers.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: The workers come from ASA who came to us and we said, uh, you can work, we arrange, you can work in Gaza.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: They said, No, you don't understand, we don't have any right there.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: So it is a lot of information, but not only information, because the wave is not rational.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't come from rational sources or or or origins, it comes from a deep-rooted anti-Semitism that comes, I don't want to analyze it, it has many, many aspects.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: There is the religious one, Muslim, and also the Christian.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: There are things that the xenophobia, the classical xenophobia, the fear and hate against everything that is different.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: And there is the scapegoat, which is very, very easy to tell he is the underdog, and we feel ourselves very good because we are with the right ones and we are for the underdogs.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: The underdogs are now the Palestinians.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas the real underdogs are the Israelis, even if we come and bake bombs and so on, and even if we do make mistakes, and we do make mistakes, there should be no confusion between, as I said, the victim and the perspirator.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, there was an article about that today.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: Ted Cruz did an interview.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you saw that, but it was about this very issue of the left and the radical left harnessing in all universities and also in the unions, and and basically carving the narrative.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I think this is a really important thing because what I'm seeing and what we're seeing, and you're referring to, is the narrative has been sort of hijacked.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, who would have thought there'd been this terrible massacre, this terrible, horrible atrocities, and somehow, as you say, the Jewish community is seen as the inverted commas, the colonizers, the supreme.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the words they're using are so sort of almost dystopian.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like you're in an alternate universe.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's been really confronting.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so, to your point, educate, engage, one-on-one advocacy, try and talk.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what you've been doing prior to this.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Are you continuing to do that?
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: Going to universities and speak on Middle East, and it must be a very challenging space right now for you to navigate.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, I'm not doing it.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm uh I did it.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: I was in Austria at the time.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I went because I had uh some workshops and seminars.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: I did one or two, I did many interviews there.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: Also explain there is also there's a split in Austria, there are many anti-Semitics, anti-Semitic, and there are also uh very many supporters.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, yes, and in Germany, amazing supporters in Germany, which is really interesting because they know what can happen when the wildfire gets out of control.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's why.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but the the the hatred in the streets in Germany because of the Muslim population, and I'm really trying to make it more precise.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: Not all the Muslims, not all the Muslims was Turk origins are are uh radical fundamentalist Muslims, and not all of them are anti-Semitic or anti- So this is this has to be really, really said.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like, not all Israelis are only uh uh peace-loving people who want really some solution, and this overgeneralization doesn't help anyone, but I think the really the essence is what you said.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: I said it a couple of days ago in in a in a German uh radio interview, they really kidnapped or they they took hostage the narrative and and they simply reversed it.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the the this this this really it hurts.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: It hurts, and so on that note, how do we other than what we've talked about, the the one-on-one advocacy, the education, the engagement, what do you see up ahead?
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: Do you see because you have seen a lot in your time when I look at what you've done and where you've been and the way you've engaged with communities across the world?
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Look, before the massacre on the seventh, our biggest trauma was exactly or two days 50 years and two days before on the 73 war.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: They surprised us on our holiest day from both fronts.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: They went, they came almost to the Kineret, to the Sea of Galilee, they crossed the Suez Canal.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we lost 2,000 soldiers, 2,600 soldiers and civilians in that war, more or less.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't, I'm not sure about the exact, but that was more or less.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: And there was a lot of depression after that, a lot of hundreds and thousands.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_01: Today we know that there were thousands of people that were really suffering from PTSD, post-traumatic syndrome is all.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: Four years later came the peace process with Egypt, our biggest enemy, our more post-powerful enemy who really, really threatened us.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: The roots of this peace process of Sadat and Captain, yeah, he really made it the this change from a warrior, from a person who hated and everything to be a statement.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: Luckily enough, he had against him or vis aim Begin, who also became from a f freedom fighter in '84, in 48, to a statement.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: And these two Sadat realized that he cannot really win or wipe out Israel.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Israel suffered the humiliation, and that was the basis for a peace process.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying this is one-to-one the same thing, but I do hope maybe it is a wishful sinking, but I think it has also some time.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe not four years.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: I will be pleased if it will be 40 years.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe my children and my grandchildren will see that this will both sides realize that even the worst kind of such a massacre where they kill in one in a couple of hours, thousand three hundred or actually thousand four hundred or people, most of them civilians, women, killed children, all women, we suffered, they did um suffer, they do suffer now, then they do suffer.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that will be to some kind of uh disillusionment, and after the hate will a little, a little bit uh be milder, and people will realize.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: And if the radical parts of both sides will not interfere and sabotage it, which they do, and might and unfortunately successfully, if that will be, that is my hope that that somehow from this terrible, terrible, barbaric evil, there will be some kind of a seed of some hope.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that is, I think, what we're all hoping, and on that note, I'd like to thank you so much for your time, your energy, your insights, your intelligence, and your experience because this is a very complex and very troubling time.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: But as you've outlined, you only need just a few people to stand up and be statesmen and say enough.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's what you're saying.
• 42:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I pray and I hope, like you, that this happens sooner rather than later as we all pray for the return of the hostages.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, Jacob, thank you for your time.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: And let's speak again soon.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: And lots of thoughts and care from our family to yours.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very, very much.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: You really managed to move me.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, and yeah, I hope with such a dialogue can continue.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for listening.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm blessed to have so many wonderful guests coming on the show.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: So check out my What I've Learned Instagram for updates.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, stay tuned, kind, and curious.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: Love death.