Latest / In These Times with Rabbi Ammi Hirsch / Barak Ravid

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Barak Ravid · In These Times with Rabbi Ammi Hirsch

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I am Rabbi Ammi Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York, and
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you're listening to In These Times,
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Shmoneh matayim.
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Unit 8200 is Israel's elite signals intelligence and cyber warfare unit.
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Comparable to America's NSA eight two hundred's young recruits are
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chosen for their aptitude, for rapid learning and quick analysis.
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Many go on to top roles in technology or launch companies of their own
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Palo Alto Networks, CyberArk, Viber, Wix, Wiz, to name a few.
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It should come as no surprise.
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My guest today, the brilliant and influential political and global
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affairs analyst, Barak Ravid is an 8200 alumnus Barak's reporting for
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the digital news outlet, Axios, as well as CNN and Israel's channel 12.
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Shed light on the diplomacy behind the headlines from the Trump administration's
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Abraham Accords to the Biden Administration's handling of Iran's
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nuclear program and the war between Israel and Hamas now based in Washington, DC.
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He continues to cover foreign policy, including the war in Ukraine and the
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ever-shifting dynamics of the Middle East
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Barak,
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thank you for joining me and welcome to WIN these times.
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Hi Ammi.
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I'm
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very eager to talk to you about all of the amazing historic events
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that, uh, are unfolding daily.
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Beforehand, though you're such a prominent journalist, I thought I'd ask
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you, what's it like to be a journalist?
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You, you're in DC right?
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Yes,
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yes.
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What's it like to be a journalist in dc?
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How do you get so many people to talk to you
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first?
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It's a great job.
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Uh, I don't know if I recommend, it's not for everybody.
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I like it very much.
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Uh, I've been doing this for 20 years.
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If I didn't like it.
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I wouldn't continue.
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It's the only job that you get paid in order to just gossip with people.
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I don't know any other job that, that you, you actually get paid for doing that.
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You know, you travel around the world, you meet interesting people, you talk
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to them, then you write something about it seems like a pretty good deal to me.
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But again, it's not for everybody.
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Because there's also a lot of competition, a lot of pressure, and especially if
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you want to succeed and you want to break news, it's sort of, um, addicting.
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And if you don't get a story for a day or two, you can
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really start to feel the heat.
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You look at other people who get stories and you say, why not me?
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Exactly.
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And so obviously, uh, what you need to do is to work harder, but you know,
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it creates all kinds of pressures.
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And when you get a story, you know, you get your fix and it feels great,
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but after 15 minutes you realize that this is a marathon, it's not
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a sprint, and you need to do this for a very long time and to keep up.
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Uh, doing it for a very long time, and it's not easy.
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There's a lot of burnout, but it's still, again, if I didn't have fun,
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I wouldn't continue on doing it.
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How, how do you get so many people to talk to you?
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You're,
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you're constantly breaking stories.
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Is it a relationship built over many years.
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People have their own incentives to want to be in the newspapers.
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It's a lot of experience.
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It's a lot of relationship that you build over time.
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Many of the people I talk to are people that I've known for, some of
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them for 10 years, some of them for 15 years, some of them for 20 years.
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I have a lot of, uh, interlocutors that I met for the first time when I
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was 25 and they were 25 and they were.
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Very junior people, either in the White House or in the State Department or at
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some embassy of another country or in the Israeli, uh, military, and 20 years
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later, they are either ambassadors or generals or assistance to the president.
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And I don't think there's anything that can replace this, you know,
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long-term relationships and trust.
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That you build with people for a long, long time.
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You can't do instant journalism.
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I don't buy that.
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The real stories come from.
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People who know you, who trust you, who respect you, some of them are
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even friends, you know, you become friends with them along the way.
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Uh, if right now somebody who's like 21 years old out of college wants to
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be a journalist and thinks that, you know, he'll just come in he'll, he'll
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have the greatest story of his life.
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I'm not saying it's not possible because many stories just happen
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by chance, but if someone who's thinking of going into journalism ask
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Will ask me this, I will tell him.
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You need to work long term, start building relationships.
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And if you do that, then in 5, 10, 15 years you'll have a lot of success.
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And do you find that people always tell you the truth or what they tell you
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is what they believe to be the truth?
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It depends.
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You develop an instinct over time.
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Yeah.
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You de it's, it's part of.
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Getting this experience to know who you can trust, who tells you the truth,
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who tells you his version of the story?
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Who's spinning you?
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Who's lying to you?
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It's part of the business to try and differentiate between, uh, all
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of those and to take outta this haystack, just the things that you
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figure out that are most accurate.
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And describe the real story, uh, in the best way.
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Do you feel that the Western media has a thing against Israel or
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the Jews or the Jewish community?
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It's a big deal in, in Jewish communal life here, and we
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constantly feel that the western media has something against Israel.
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Do, do you find that to be the case?
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Is there some grounding on that or is that just our oversensitivity
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look, I don't know.
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I, it's a very, uh, you know, personal thing and each person
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feels differently about that.
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I think that.
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Overall, at least my, from my experience in covering the war over the last
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two years, I don't think that the media in the US was biased against,
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uh, Israel, that that's not my sense from a professional point of view.
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I think there was criticism and I think some of the criticism might have been
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very harsh, but a lot of it was, I think.
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Legitimate.
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So I, at least from my point of view, I think that overall English
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speaking media covered the war in a reasonably professional
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way.
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So getting to the war, uh, it looks like we're in a new phase now.
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It looks like hopefully, uh, the 20 point, uh, Trump peace plan
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will with fits and starts actually reach some kind of fruition.
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Where do we stand on that now?
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So I think we only started, you know, sometimes something good happens
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and then we take it for granted and after two days we say, okay,
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what have you done for me lately?
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But 20 live hostages came out of Gaza.
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11 bodies of, uh, dead hostages came out of Gaza.
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There are still more than a dozen bodies of deceased hostages in Gaza.
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So the work is not done yet.
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There's a ceasefire that, you know, there were several violations on both sides, but
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overall the number of people killed over the last two weeks decreased dramatically.
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Humanitarian aid started going in in higher quantities and numbers, and.
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It seems that at the moment, both sides overall and in general want
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to maintain the ceasefire and want to talk about the next phase.
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So I think that it has been quite successful so far.
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That's at least my take, but there are huge challenges ahead right now from
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20 points that were in the Trump plan.
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I think we implemented four.
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So there's a lot of more work to do, but this is not something that will
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happen within days or even weeks.
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This is a process that will take months, even years to demilitarize.
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Gaza is not something you do in two days.
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That's a multi-year process.
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So how is that going to work?
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Um, I guess the heart of the matter from the Israeli perspective is
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disarming Hamas and Demilitarizing Gaza, and in the longer term.
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I trying to create some kind of, uh, educational system that, uh,
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is more sympathetic to coexistence, I guess you can call it.
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So just in a shorter term, is Hamas gonna voluntarily disarm?
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And how is the demilitarization gonna happen in Gaza?
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I don't know.
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Uh, you know, I don't know what's gonna happen in the future, but Kamas
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did not voluntarily agree to the deal.
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That that we know because it happened.
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They didn't just wake up one morning and say, all right, take those 20 hostages.
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No problem.
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So they were coerced by force.
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I mean, it was a combination of force diplomacy.
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The fact that they understood that it's in their interest to give up the hostages.
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Uh, it's not.
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One thing, it's so, it's something that accumulated over two years.
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So I think at the end of the day, it's about a combination between
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diplomacy and military pressure that gets you the result that you want.
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The question is, if people have the attention span and the bandwidth to
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engage in the diplomacy that is needed right now in order to do that, because
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it's gonna be a prolonged process.
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It's not magic.
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It's not gonna happen overnight and.
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You never get a hundred percent of what you want.
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So the question is, do we only aim at Hamas giving up until the
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last bullet or the last AK 47?
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Or do we say, you know what?
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If they don't have rockets, if they don't have tunnels, if they don't have anti-tank
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me cells, that's not a bad result.
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So I think this is the tension between Maximalist approach and a
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more pragmatic one and everything in that's that's in the middle.
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And I think that's the question which approach the parties are going to take.
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Same with Hamas.
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You know, they can take a maximalist approach that says
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we're not giving up on anything.
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Or they can say, you know what?
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If we don't want this war to resume, if you don't want to be eradicated, if
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we don't want more Palestinians to be killed, we're willing to give up on.
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X, Y, Z, but you know, we'll keep some other stuff.
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So I think this is what we're going to see over the next few months,
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this negotiation that at the end of it, neither side is going to get a
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hundred percent O of what it wants.
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But I think the bigger question is what the policy going forward is going to be
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the Israeli government policy because.
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The reason we got to where we are right now is because the policy was to
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strengthen Hamas for the last 15 years.
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This was the Israeli government policy under Netanya to
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strengthen Hamas and weaken the Palestinian authority because he
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felt that that distanced the two state solution.
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That's one reason there.
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There are other reasons, so that's a big part of the policy
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that got us to where we are.
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And now the question is, if.
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There'll be a, a change in this policy because at the moment, the Israeli
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government policy is yes, we don't want Hamas in Gaza, but we also don't
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want the Palestinian authority in Gaza.
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So we want something else and we don't know what it is.
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And if that's gonna continue, then we might end up with Hama Gaza.
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Who's gonna do the disarming?
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The president periodically, over the last several days, has threatened
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Hamas that if they don't disarm, we're gonna have to disarm them.
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Who, who is he referring to?
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Who's actually gonna do the disarming?
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The International Coalition, the IDF, the Americans.
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I don't think that at the moment there is anybody else other than the IDF that
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has the willingness and the capability to the Hamas, but I also know that.
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The way that the Trump administration wants to work on disarming Hamas at
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the moment is not through a military action, but through getting a diplomatic
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deal that will reach some sort of a, an arrangement about Hamas' weapons.
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It's not gonna happen overnight, it's gonna take time.
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What do you think is the likeliest scenario?
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Say if we were to have a conversation a year from now?
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If, if there's one thing I learned on my job is that predictions
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on what's gonna happen a year from now are worth very little.
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I'm not sure we can predict what's gonna happen tomorrow.
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So I think we need to look at what's going on right now.
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And right now there is an effort to first maintain the ceasefire.
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Stabilize it, stabilize situation in Gaza and start building on
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it to get to the next phases.
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You know, it's good to have an end game in our heads and a vision and I think
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there is this vision, it it exists.
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At least the Trump administration has it.
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But it doesn't mean that a year from now, this is where we are going to get.
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It's a very dynamic situation.
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I think there could be still be a lot of turns in the road.
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Well, let me ask, in uh, this way, if you were to project the optimum progress over,
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say the period of the next year, what do you think reasonably is the optimum
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that the international community and Israelis and Palestinians can hope for?
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I think the, the optimum obviously is for some sort of
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new realignment in the region.
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Of Israel and Arab and Muslim countries were willing, and the
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Palestinian authority working together to build something new in Gaza.
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That's, at least in my opinion, the optimal scenario.
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But for that to happen, everybody must be willing to work on.
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I'm, I'm not sure that we're there at the moment, so I think more realistically, we
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will be still in some sort of a transition period from the war to some new governance
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and security arrangements in Gaza.
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I think this transition period will be pretty long.
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What I gather is that the American longer term strategy is some kind of
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grand bargain under 21st century Pax Americana, where you have the moderate
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Arab states, Persian Gulf states reaching some kind of peace accord
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or some kind of accord with Israel.
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All under the American, uh, rubric with some kind of gesture on the part
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of the Israeli government towards Palestinian self-determination.
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First of all, is that the long-term American goal?
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And secondly, is it achievable in your view?
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I
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mean, first it is the goal because that's what the Trump plan says.
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You know, article 19, article 20, that's what they talk about.
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But I, I think that at the moment I find it hard to see that as long as
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the current government in Israel is in power, you'll be able to really,
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you know, do something about it.
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Because the Israeli government policy at the moment is still to object,
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oppose, and choke any steps towards Palestinian stated and self-determination.
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And a lot of people focus on what's going on in Gaza.
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The situation in the West Bank over the last two years has worsened dramatically.
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And if there's no change in dynamic, uh, in the West Bank, then I don't see
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any regional peace deal taking place.
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Mm-hmm.
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In the initial days and frankly throughout the last two years, how quickly.
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The opposition to Israel centered around the Prime Minister himself
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and the government that this, you know, very quickly it became Bebe's
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war and the criticism focused on him personally as well, of course, by
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extension to the government itself.
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What is Prime Minister Netanyahu's reputation now in Washington and
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in the halls of power in America?
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So I
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think a. It's not only in the us I think that's, you have a, a big constituency
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in Israel that, you know, after the country was united in the first few
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months of the war, at certain point, more and more people thought that the
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way Netanyahu is handling the war only prolongs it and for the wrong reasons.
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And you saw it in many public opinion polls in Israel.
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The majority of Israelis thought that Netanyahu took a lot of
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decisions about the war according to political survival considerations.
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That's not me saying that's what people said in the polls.
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I think both the Biden administration and the Trump administration sort
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of thought the same, and I think the Trump administration the first few
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months gave Netanyahu a lot of credit.
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To do basically whatever he wants, uh, in Gaza.
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But as time passed, they realized that if they're gonna continue
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letting Netanyahu do whatever he wants, then they're gonna get stuck
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in this war for the next four years.
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And I think that's something that's changed over the last two or three months
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in, in the thinking in the White House.
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And I think that the Israeli strike in Qatar in September.
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Really proved to a lot of people that Netanya is taking the wrong
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decisions for the wrong reasons.
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And uh, I think that's when President Trump basically decided to restart,
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pressing on Netanyahu to end the war.
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Looking back now two years.
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I suppose you could say that Israel had many of its war aims achieved, but overall
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at a huge price of, uh, international diplomacy and, uh, Israel standing and
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reputation, especially in the West.
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Can you evaluate who won this war, or at the very least, what did
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Israel accomplish and what did Hamas and the Palestinians accomplish?
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Uh, well, I don't think anybody won this war.
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I think iir, the leader of Hamas, managed to give Israel a huge blow that maybe
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no other Arab leader ever managed to do.
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Not even.
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Egypt during the Yo Keeper War,
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a huge blow, meaning just the numbers of people killed and taken hostage
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and the trauma, it, it's, it's more
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than that.
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It's obviously also the fact that, you know, they invaded Israel and murdered
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and kidnapped and burned and all of that.
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But you know, I'm talking about the broader sense of managing to deliver
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such a blow to Israel's image as.
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A regional superpower.
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This is something that I think no Arab leader managed to do.
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Uh, what Sair did, this was even a bigger blow than the Yom Ki were.
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When you think about it, the cost was that by conducting the biggest
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massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
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If Yasir inflicted.
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The most massive killing and displacement of Palestinians since the knock by 1948.
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That's what's so insane in what he did because he knew that
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this is what's gonna happen.
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I has noir, knows, knew Israel very well.
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He was one of the biggest Israel experts in the Palestinian society.
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He knew
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that the, or e estimated, that the damage that the IDF eventually
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did to Gaza would materialize.
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I
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have no doubt that he knew exactly what's going to be the, the reaction.
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So what did he want to accomplish and what did he accomplish?
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I think that in his mind, he wanted to deliver this blow and create in the
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entire region the image that Israel.
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Can be defeated and destroyed, and then this would push Hezbollah in
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Lebanon, the Iranians, other pro Iranian militias in Syria, in other places
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that will push all of them to now gang up on Israel in that way, destroyed.
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I think that was his vision, and he failed in that, right?
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He failed in that because A, he did not coordinate the attack well enough with
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his allies and B. I think that even his allies, the Iranians, the Hezbollah,
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they were also shocked by how quote unquote successful the invasion was.
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And they did it.
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It took them time to get their act together and decide what they want to do.
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And until they did that, Israel managed to send enough forces to
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the north, for example, to the border with Lebanon and the border
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with Syria, so that they saw that.
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Trying to just like join the, the invasion now with their forces
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would be less successful because they can't catch Israel off guard.
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But again, in IN'S head, this was the scenario he was looking for, to conduct
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this invasion, create in the Arab media and in social media, in the region.
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This image of Israel is crumbling and therefore let's all join.
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It was not successful enough luckily, and therefore it took time for
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Hezbollah and for the Iranians to actually figure out what to do, and
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Israel had enough time to defend itself against further invasions and attacks.
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And also I think what Singa wanted to do is to radicalize
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the conflict in such a way that.
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The possibility of a peace settlement would be much harder to do afterwards.
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And I think he succeeded.
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I think in that he succeeded because, uh, October 7th changed the thinking
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of Israelis in a profound way.
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The trauma will last for a long time, and the trust in Israeli society
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that pieces possible has diminished.
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Dramatically.
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And in that sense, I think this was a huge success for sin war.
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You know, you mentioned that's one of the things that, uh, constantly struck
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me in my many visits to Israel since October 7th, 23, with all of the damage
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and with all of the catastrophic, uh, harm that was done, what could have been.
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Had this been coordinated between Hamas, Hezbollah, Hamas in the West Bank, maybe
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the Houthis, whatever, but with the Iranian, uh, ballistic uh, potential,
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it really might have spelled the end of Israel, or at least damage in the amounts
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of, tens of thousands of people killed.
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Many more hundreds of people taking hostage to, uh, Lebanon.
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Do, do you agree with that from a certain perspective?
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The silver lining was he didn't manage to stimulate Israel's other
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very radical enemies to invade at the same time in a coordinated way.
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Uh, yeah, I think that was, if that was more successful, I
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think situation would've been.
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Much worse.
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Uh, I, I don't know if I would go as far as saying that it would've been a
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existential threat for, for Israel, but it would definitely make what happened
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along the Gaza border look pretty small to what could have happened.
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Mm-hmm.
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In the Lebanon border.
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And obviously if Iran would launch hundreds of missiles at the same time.
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But I think historians would have to ask themselves why.
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Didn't sin noir coordinated better with his allies in the region?
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I think maybe because he thought that this way Israel would find out about
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it, but I think that's one of the main questions I asked myself of like, how
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did he go for such an attack without.
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Enough coordination with his allies.
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So just elaborate that on a little bit.
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'cause there's a, this, uh, phrase that, uh, journalism is
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the first draft of history, right?
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And you, you're very plugged in and you've analyzed this for many years now.
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And we know that Israeli intelligence penetrated Hezbollah and Iran.
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To the maximum degree.
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Do you think that was the reason why they didn't coordinate it?
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Because, uh, sin Wire suspected that if it were better coordinated,
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Israel would've revealed what was
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going on?
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I think that definitely, this was one of the reasons, but I don't
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know the whole story behind it.
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I, I think there were discussions between Sair and the Iranians and Hezbollah
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in the months leading to the war.
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He spoke to them on what he called the big project, that this was the
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attack, but I think Israeli intelligence misread it because when Israeli
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intelligence looked at Iran, looked at certain things, when looked at
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Hezbollah, it looked at certain things.
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It did not look enough at this angle of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran.
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Triangle and their cooperation.
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It didn't put it as a priority and therefore it misread the
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discussions that did happen between them in the months before.
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The discussions were not about the exact date and time, but strategically.
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Sair did speak to the Iranians and to Hezbollah about the big
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project that means this invasion.
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So one of the consequences of the war, and you said this was one of the
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central war aims, uh, of, uh, smar, was to create this sense of vulnerability.
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Both domestically in Israel, but also in terms of the surrounding enemies.
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Now, looking back over the last two years and the outcome of the fighting,
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do you think that both internally, domestically in Israel as well as
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from the perspective of those who seek Israel's harm in the neighborhood, do
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you think Israel restored all of its deterrence, a modicum of its deterrence?
28:55
Where do you think we stand now?
28:57
I
28:57
think militarily Israel had huge successes.
29:00
It's clear Hamas today is not able to conduct another October 7th attack.
29:06
Its ability to launch missiles at Israel has, it's not zero, but
29:11
it's not a lot more than zero.
29:14
Hezbollah has been degraded significantly, is super deterred
29:20
these days, and Israel has been.
29:25
Over the last year continued conducting strikes against Hezbollah
29:29
in Lebanon on a daily basis without Hezbollah responding at all.
29:34
And this is, so the, the process of degrading Hezbollah
29:36
continues all the time.
29:38
The Iranian nuclear program has been rolled back years.
29:44
The Iranian ability to produce missiles has been, uh, diminished the pro
29:50
Iranian access in the region overall.
29:54
Has been weakened.
29:55
So militarily, there've been a lot of successes.
30:01
The question is, has anything changed strategically and how do you create
30:07
a strategic change that will be more long lasting and not just, okay, we
30:13
bought ourselves a few years until they all regroup and re-arm and rebuild.
30:19
And this is something you cannot do with airstrikes.
30:23
This is something you need to do with diplomacy and political decisions.
30:28
And at the moment, I think that while on the military side, big things were
30:34
done on the side of diplomacy and strategy, I think we see that there's
30:41
a lot more that needs to be done.
30:44
And domestically, um, the Israeli sense of security was fundamentally
30:50
shaken, not only of course on October 7th and in the weeks and months,
30:54
but I think possibly, uh, lasting to today and many years going forward.
31:01
And that was one of the promises of Zionism, that yes, of course
31:05
people would continue to hate Jews.
31:06
There would be, uh, assaults against Jews.
31:09
We would have to defend ourselves.
31:11
But the kind of mass pogrom and slaughter and savagery that we
31:17
saw in the past of Jewish history was not going to happen again.
31:22
And that was what Zionism guaranteed to Israeli citizens.
31:27
And that was fundamentally shaken that assumption, that bargain between
31:31
Israeli citizens and the state.
31:34
Do you agree with that?
31:35
And where, where do we stand on that?
31:37
So I
31:37
think.
31:39
This would stay with Israelis for a long time.
31:43
It's not something that's gonna go away.
31:45
But at the same time, I think there's a lot of sense with many Israelis
31:51
that they manage to, again, to restore deterrence, and that the enemy today is
31:59
far weaker than it was on October 6th.
32:02
The enemy writ large in, in the entire region.
32:05
So it's, it's a bit complex because people know that the security situation or that
32:13
the threats today have been diminished because of the war of the last two years.
32:18
But I think the, the overall feeling of security when people wake up in
32:25
the morning and go to sleep at night, whether they feel that they are.
32:30
A secure place I think that is still shaken.
32:35
Mm-hmm.
32:36
And that of course affects, uh, the world Jewish community and
32:39
American Jewish community as well.
32:41
'cause on some level, the American Jewish community related to Israel
32:45
as if the era of existential threats against Israel was behind us.
32:51
So it completely reoriented the instinct and the emotions of
32:56
the American Jewish community.
32:57
That part that's supportive of Israel.
33:00
Yeah.
33:00
But again, I think to me, I don't think Israel was under existential threat.
33:07
Okay.
33:07
It went through something terrible.
33:11
Okay?
33:12
But on October 8th, Israel was still the strongest military power
33:18
in the radius of 1500 kilometers.
33:20
It was a military power that got a huge blow.
33:24
It was a military power that was exposed as being not ready enough
33:30
and not prepared for an attack.
33:33
That's all true, but it was still a military power that fought back
33:39
pretty quickly and, you know, turned the tables on all of its
33:43
enemies in quite a significant way.
33:46
So this is why I'm saying it's a, it's a very complex thing because people ask
33:51
themselves, how is this the same IDF?
33:54
That got caught off guard on October 7th and, and allowed
34:02
this massacre to take place.
34:03
How is this the same IDF that took out the Iranian military program in 12 days?
34:09
That took out Hezbollah, that took that.
34:12
How is this, how is this the same military and it is the same military?
34:15
It's the same people.
34:17
We did not on October 8th, we did not take out a new military
34:21
and, and brought it to fight.
34:22
No, it's the same people.
34:23
But I think this is why October 7th in many ways was a failure that was both
34:31
an operational military failure and intelligence failure and a policy failure.
34:36
And the, the culmination of those three got us to this very, very bad place.
34:41
If, if only one of them.
34:43
Maybe things would've looked differently.
34:45
Mm-hmm.
34:45
It was the combination between those three failures.
34:50
One of the consequences of, uh, this two year war is a substantial
34:55
deterioration of Israel standing in the West and in the United States.
35:00
Are you worried about that?
35:01
I'm, I'm very worried about that because I don't think that the
35:05
current Israeli government is able to take the decisions needed in order
35:10
to change the current situation.
35:13
I mean, the, the, the policy in Gaza over the last two years, a lot of the
35:18
decisions that were made directly led to Israel's isolation in the world.
35:25
A decision in March by the government to stop.
35:29
All humanitarian aid to Gaza for almost 11 weeks.
35:34
It is clear today that this decision A, brought Gaza to the brink of famine and
35:42
B, led to a total diplomatic collapse for Israel and to the wave of recognition of
35:49
Palestine by more than dozen countries and to the president of the United States.
35:56
Saying that people in Gaza are starving and, you know, putting much more
36:00
pressure on the Israeli government.
36:02
And this was a decision that was clear to everybody.
36:07
When the Israeli cabinet took this decision, they knew what they were doing.
36:10
It, it wasn't that they said, oh, we can't believe that.
36:14
When we decided to stop age from going in that few weeks
36:18
later, people won't have food.
36:21
It's, uh, they knew what they were doing.
36:24
The same way with the decision to flatten Gaza.
36:29
It was a decision, it was a political decision.
36:31
It was an order to the IDF.
36:33
The Minister of Defense himself said it on the record.
36:36
And when you look at the systematic devastation and the systematic
36:42
displacement, and you add to it serious discussions in the Israeli
36:47
government for months about forcing Palestinians out of Gaza.
36:52
About trying to displace all the Palestinians to a very narrow place
36:57
near the border with Egypt until they'll agree to voluntarily immigrate.
37:03
And when you saw ministers in the government saying, on the
37:07
record, let's nuke Gaza, you know, I'm not cherry picking here.
37:11
When you look at the overall policy over the last two years, it, you know, it was
37:17
a policy that led us to where we are now.
37:19
This is, this did not happen.
37:21
By accident.
37:24
So do I understand you might be implying this, that Israel's reputation in the West
37:30
can't be salvaged with this constellation of political forces in government.
37:37
Elections have to happen in 2026.
37:39
Now the current thinking is sometime in June.
37:42
Is it your position that unless Israel's government changes, it
37:46
is going to continue to have its reputation deteriorate in the west?
37:51
Look, this government is in power for three years now.
37:55
There's a record that shows that since this government came to
38:01
power situation only got worse.
38:04
I mean, the economy is worse.
38:06
Israel's international standing is worse.
38:07
Israel's security situation is worse.
38:09
It's not an opinion, it's facts, and at least two parties in the current
38:15
coalition want to resume the war.
38:17
They want to occupy Gaza.
38:19
They want to build settlements.
38:21
They want to force the Palestinians out.
38:24
They would like to do the same thing in the West Bank.
38:27
And those two parties are very dominant within this coalition.
38:32
And a lot of the lawmakers from the Likud, from the ruling party
38:38
actually think the same way.
38:40
So in you're in this situation where Netanyahu is the most.
38:46
A moderate element within this coalition, and he's the prime minister and he
38:50
is calling the shots, but he's also, and we saw that for two years getting
38:55
dragged again and again and again and again to do what his Ultranationalist
39:01
and Jewish Supremacist coalition partners tell him to do because of
39:06
political survivor considerations.
39:08
Is there a difference in your mind between.
39:10
Fundamental difference between the Biden administration's approach to the war
39:15
and the Trump administration's approach?
39:18
Yeah.
39:18
Well, there are a lot of differences, obviously, but there are also a lot
39:21
of similarities.
39:23
Do you think, for example, that Biden or Harris would have bombed
39:27
the Iranian nuclear facilities?
39:29
First.
39:29
Biden considered it during the transition in December of 2024.
39:35
A lot of his people were in favor.
39:38
Of doing it.
39:39
He decided against it, I think, and I know that a lot of his people think
39:44
it was a mistake, you know, whether Harris would've done it or not.
39:49
I really don't know.
39:51
I mean, it's, it's really a hypothetical.
39:55
Donald Trump did it only after he saw that a, the Israeli attack was successful
40:05
and only after Israel cleaned out.
40:07
All the air defenses and only after he made sure that this does not
40:13
escalate to a broader war in that sense, by the way, this is exactly
40:18
what a US president should do.
40:20
He used US military power to do what nobody else could.
40:26
Okay?
40:27
He didn't use US military power just to do something other people could.
40:32
He saw, okay, there are those targets.
40:34
I'm the only one who has the bombs.
40:37
I'm gonna come, I'm gonna do this, and then I'm gonna shut it down.
40:41
And that's what he did.
40:42
So then that's my last question.
40:45
What actually, in your view, and, and you talk to a lot of people who know
40:48
more than casual observers, what, what is the extent of the damage
40:53
to the Iranian nuclear facilities?
40:55
I think it's significant, and I think you should look at it
40:57
in a broader sense, not just.
41:00
About what happened to the four Door Underground enrichment
41:04
facility or what happened to the Naans underground facility?
41:07
It's much broader because, I mean, the damages to the Iranian
41:11
nuclear program are multifaceted.
41:13
First, Israel took out the tier one, tier two, and tier three
41:19
of Iran's nuclear experts.
41:21
So doesn't mean that Iran doesn't have other nuclear experts,
41:25
but the people who are the most knowledgeable, most experienced.
41:29
In the Iranian nuclear program are gone and that kind of knowledge
41:33
and experience, we talked about it, you know, experience in journalism.
41:37
It's the same thing when you're a nuclear scientist.
41:40
There's a difference if you've been doing this for 40 years or you've
41:43
been doing this for four years.
41:44
So you know, this base of knowledgeable people and experienced people is gone.
41:49
Second, the facilities themselves have been.
41:54
Significantly damaged.
41:56
It doesn't mean that the Iranians wouldn't be able to rebuild it,
41:59
but to do it, you need to A, take a political decision to do it.
42:03
B, you know, it's an investment of billions.
42:06
Of billions of dollars.
42:07
It's not that simple to just start rebuilding.
42:11
Okay?
42:11
People say, oh, if they start rebuilding, it'll take them a year to rebuild.
42:15
Yeah, but you need to actually get to the point that you decide to rebuild.
42:19
And as we see, the Iranians are not so fast to take this decision.
42:24
I also think that more broadly, the Israel strike also hit centrifuge building
42:31
facilities and r and d facilities.
42:33
And so it's not just the four door or naans or isan, it's,
42:40
I think you need to look at it holistically and see that overall.
42:45
The Iranians today don't have the capacity to enrich for the first time in, I don't
42:50
know how many years, the Iranians do not have the capacity to enrich uranium,
42:53
so they were substantially set back.
42:56
You know, Trump said obliterated, got a lot of criticism for it.
43:02
You can argue what obliterated means exactly, but in the macro, he's right.
43:10
Yeah.
43:11
And just final question, uh, can't Iran just simply buy nuclear weapons
43:16
from, say, Pakistan or North Korea?
43:20
First, I would be, I'm highly skeptical that Pakistan would sell a nuclear
43:26
weapon to Iran first, because Pakistan is a Sunni, uh, Muslim country,
43:31
very close to Saudi Arabia and very close to the us So I don't see that.
43:38
It's not that simple.
43:40
It's not that simple to just, you know, buy a nuclear bomb.
43:43
And for the Iranians, the nuclear program was not just about, okay, let's have
43:49
a nuclear bomb in a, in, in somewhere.
43:51
I think it had much broader strategic goal of.
43:57
Projecting power in the region, both military power and soft power of
44:02
being a nuclear power country with the technological knowledge to implement
44:11
the nuclear fuel cycle and have this.
44:15
Base of scientists, physicists, chemists, all the experts you need.
44:21
So I think for the Iranians was much bigger than just having a bomb.
44:25
And I know that because they did not have one.
44:29
Okay.
44:29
They had a huge nuclear program, but they still didn't have the bomb.
44:34
And this to me says that it was much broader than just, you know,
44:41
whether you have a bomb or not.
44:44
And finally, um, do you wanna say something to American Jews who, uh,
44:48
care about Israel and should we be optimistic and how should we participate
44:53
in this phase of Jewish history?
44:56
Look, you know, I'm not, it's not my place to give lectures to American
45:00
Jews, especially that I think, as you know, Israelis, and that's
45:05
something that, you know, I knew intellectually, but I figured out.
45:10
In a much more profound way.
45:11
In the last two years that I live in America, Israelis and American Jews
45:15
come from different points of view.
45:18
We're the same family, but we don't look at the world the same way
45:22
in many ways and on many things.
45:25
And as you know, inside the Jewish community in the US, there
45:29
are at least, what, 2 million opinions, maybe 5 million opinions.
45:36
So in Israel there are what also.
45:40
9 million opinions, but overall, at least to me, what's important
45:46
is that people will still feel that they can identify with Israel.
45:54
And that's, to me, that's the biggest threat.
45:57
That's the biggest challenge because I know that there are a lot of American
46:05
Jews that felt that they cannot identify.
46:08
That's what people felt in the last year.
46:11
A lot of people felt it.
46:12
That's not a good situation there, by the way.
46:16
There are a lot of Israelis who felt that they cannot identify with a lot of
46:22
things that happened over the last year.
46:24
To me, that's the most important thing for any Israeli government to
46:29
understand that you cannot rule in a way.
46:36
That makes Jews around the world feel that they don't want
46:40
to be associated with this.
46:42
And I think many of the decisions that were taken over the last year made more
46:48
and more Jews in America feel that they don't want to be associated with this.
46:53
And that's, that's the biggest threat.
46:54
I hope that now with the war over this, the tide will turn.
47:00
But,
47:00
uh, we'll have to see.
47:03
First of all, thank you for, uh, taking the time.
47:06
Keep up the great work that you do.
47:08
We learn something from you practically every day and, uh, it's an honor to
47:13
be able to spend this hour with you.
47:15
Thank you so much.
47:16
It was my pleasure.
47:24
I wanna expand on a point that Barak made.
47:27
I remember those early hours of October 7th, 2023 vividly.
47:32
I caught the television news coverage before leaving home for
47:35
our synagogue sim Torah services, and assumed that as horrible as
47:39
it looked, Israel would soon repel these fiends and crush their leaders.
47:45
But as I toured Israel frequently over the past two years, my understanding
47:49
deepened and my mood darkened.
47:52
In addition to the enormous, unprecedented destruction of lives, livelihoods, and
47:57
property that I saw, and the searing, unrelenting soul crushing national
48:02
trauma, that still cracks my heart.
48:05
I now realize that with all this devastation and anguish, I cannot
48:09
shake the feeling that we lucked out, that as bad as it was, it
48:14
might have been calamitously worse.
48:17
Historians might look back and mark October 7th as the day that could
48:21
have been what would've happened at the entire Iranian ring of fire.
48:26
Meticulously and patiently constructed over 20 years, attacked all at
48:31
once and from every direction.
48:34
As Barak mentioned, for reasons still not fully understood.
48:37
Only Hamas attacked from Gaza that day.
48:40
But imagine what would've happened if it's 6 29 on Shabbat rah morning.
48:46
The full battle plans of Iran had been unleashed on the sleeping country.
48:50
Israel, the size of New Jersey would've been paralyzed and
48:55
might have been overwhelmed.
48:57
Tens of thousands would've been killed.
49:00
The genocidal fantasies harbored and nurtured for decades.
49:03
By the world's most vicious death cults might actually have materialized.
49:08
I've spoken with literally hundreds of Israelis who endured
49:11
such heart-rending tragedies.
49:14
Relatives of those murdered returned hostages, stolen from
49:18
their living rooms and bedrooms.
49:20
Citizens evacuated from their homes, and I have walked the blood soaked grounds of
49:25
the kibbutz and entered the incinerated homes of entire family's exterminated.
49:31
The stench of extinction penetrating every pore of my body, and I
49:35
pondered over and over again.
49:38
Why is it that so many people, non-Jews, but also Jews.
49:43
Diminished Israeli suffering to such an extent that within two weeks
49:46
of October 7th, it was as if the cause and precipitating event of
49:52
this tragic war had been completely forgotten, even while hundreds of
49:56
Israeli hostages were held captive.
49:59
If your existence is not at stake, if you do not feel threatened personally,
50:06
you see the world differently than those on the front lines.
50:09
Terror feels different reading about it in Brooklyn.
50:12
Experiencing it in bay.
50:16
To all those who truly care, who yearn for the day of coexistence.
50:21
Stay humble.
50:23
Remember that our lives are governed not only by a
50:26
macropolitics for so many Israelis.
50:29
At the end of the day, after all the debating points have been made, there's
50:33
just you, your family, your friends, your home, your village and terrorists who want
50:39
to kill you up on the ridge on the hill.
50:42
Jewish history has proven conclusively that it is far better for Jews to
50:47
have power and agonize over its moral use and to be powerless.
50:52
And at the mercy of the Dark Lords Jewish vulnerability is the impetus to widespread
50:57
Jewish hatred, not Jewish power.
51:00
I agree with Barak's last words that American Jews need in
51:05
Israel that is decent democratic.
51:07
Pursues peace with which to identify an Israel that constantly extends its
51:12
hand to the other side despite the ongoing rejection, now a century long.
51:17
And therefore, I urge fellow Jews to redouble their efforts supporting those
51:22
in Israel who reflect their values and double down in strengthening the
51:26
American Jewish community at home.
51:28
Whatever you do, do not disengage or heaven forbid, join our
51:33
anti-Zionist enemies who seek our elimination, but we also need to
51:38
learn to love ourselves again.
51:46
Until next time.
51:47
This is in these times.