Loading summary
Transcript35 lines
- [00:05]
A
Hi, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Ask Khabib. Anything. We are very happy to have Dan Shiftan back with the podcast. This is a pivot, a moment that is very dramatic. We don't quite know what it means. Trump announced that there might be a deal of some kind to end the war. Netanyahu then said, we are recording on March 24. Netanyahu then said that this potential deal would protect Israeli interests. It's not clear if this is some kind of a maneuver by Trump. We've seen complex maneuvers of this sort. It might also be a way to actually end the war and to pull back. And Trump may have concluded that the regime is too entrenched. We have multiple episodes explaining why they're so entrenched, how they work, how they function, what their ideological system is that enables them to. To, as they see it, martyr a great many of the leadership and still be standing and capable of controlling the country and leading a war. This would not be a war that ends just with airstrikes. This was something that we discussed days before the war began. That might be what Trump's conclusion is now, and he's looking to end the war, but he claims there's going to be a great deal that the Iranians are going to agree to that makes it possible. Netanyahu appears to be agreeing with him on Netanyahu side. Does that mean that Netanyahu is agreeing with him? Because he actually thinks this is going to be okay? Because Trump is going to get out of the Iranians who are desperate to end the war, the kinds of things that we needed from them in order to make any deal actually palatable. In other words, not a JCPOA with sunset provisions that would by now have allowed them to build ballistic missiles and enrich uranium freely under the JCPOA rules. But in fact, something much, much more significant with the missiles, with enrichment, etc. With the Strait of Hormuz. We don't know is the short answer. We don't know who's playing what game. We don't know if the war is going to resume. We're hearing out of the Gulf leaks to American press, from Emirati and Saudi officials talking about how they are inching toward joining the war. I don't know what that means. My Israeli instinct is to be a little bit sarcastic. Where have you been? What's going on? You know, if you, if you believe it, that this fight has to happen, you probably should be fighting it. If you don't, don't pretend I don't know what these things all mean and where it's all going. We're going to talk about these details. We're going to ask about these details. But long before we talk about the details, we're going to try and take a step back from this sort of shadow boxing. This could all be a prelude to a doubling down on the war by both Trump and Netanyahu and the Gulf states. This could also be a prelude to actually ending the war. We have again seen both kinds of maneuvers, and so we're going to try and tackle this and figure out some of what's going on. But with Dan, I'm going to be asking him today to take a step back and to tell us what happens if the war ends now, what is actually at stake in this war. Before I get into it, I want to tell you that this episode is sponsored by a friend of the show who wants to dedicate the episode to the Jews who first came to Trenton, New Jersey, and built a lasting community there. Our sponsor was born in Trenton and he wants to thank the four families, his four families, who at the turn of the 20th century abandoned their homes in Europe and bravely crossed an ocean. They came to Trenton with just their faith and with an unshakable belief that a better life was something worth building. They raised synagogues, built businesses, married and had children. And those children had children, including our sponsor. Today, this podcast is his way after October 7th of honoring that legacy and affirming that the Jewish story, our story, is one worth telling, worth celebrating and worth protecting. Thank you very much to our sponsor. I would also like to invite everybody to join our Patreon community. It's how we keep the lights on. You get to ask the questions that guide the topics we choose to talk about. And there's a wonderful discussion forum there. People share resources. People sometimes have civil debates, which is also excellent and wonderful to see. And you get to join our monthly live streams where I answer your questions live. You can join us at www.patreon.com AskHaviv.
- [04:16]
B
Anything.
- [04:16]
A
The link is in the show notes. Don, how are you?
- [04:20]
B
I'm fine, thank you.
- [04:22]
A
Let me start by just asking the big question. We are now seeing a state that does not build, does not provide for its people, has gutted the Iranian economy for 47 years, has essentially produced nothing but the internal tyranny and the external wars and the external proxies, the destabilization of entire nations for 47 years, that is, that is all this state has delivered to the world, has given to the world. And it can build incredibly cheap systems. These drones, for a couple hundred dollars, a few hundred dollars a piece of. And with one of these drones fired once a day, it can shut down 20% of the global oil supply. And there is nothing that a trillion dollar military can do against it. Is that the state of the world today? And if that is the state of the world, if the Iranians can close Hormuz, and President Trump keeps saying he's going to open it, but apparently we're going to negotiations instead, is that the world we have to live in now where these barbarians, not talking about Persians, I'm talking about this regime, for almost nothing, can shut down the global oil supply?
- [05:32]
B
Well, they can for a short period of time. But the question is, if you look at the broader balance of power, what is at stake here is indeed what you said. Can barbarians dictate our way of life? Can they dictate the future? Can they take over first the Middle east and then far beyond the Middle east by building enough ballistic missiles and shorter range missiles so that everybody is afraid to touch their nuclear program? Then they have the ultimate immunity of a nuclear bomb. And under these immunities, they can take over as they've already done before. October 7, countries in the Middle east, they took over Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and they could have gone much, much further. And finally, they control all the resources of the Middle east, oil, gas, and also something that is not exactly of economic significance, but is of enormous cultural significance to control Mecca and Medina and thereby have an effect on more than a billion Muslims. So they can have an enormous effect first on the Middle East. Through the resources of the Middle east and the dependency on the resources of the Middle east, they can have a global effect with missiles that already reach Europe and can go far beyond it. There shouldn't be any major impediment, except if we impose it on them for them also to gain intercontinental ballistic missiles over time so they can determine the world that we will be living in now. Combine it with the threat of China, to our way of life, to freedom all over the world, and you have a very catastrophic projection for our children and our grandchildren. Okay, so what is at stake is can barbarians do it now? We can break them. It may be difficult. We may have to adjust ourselves to the fact that today you can build cheap weapons that can have an effect. But the question is, who can escalate more? And certainly the United States can, beyond any doubt and any comparison, escalate much more than Iran and should escalate because Iran needs to be broken and humiliated. If this regime is not broken and humiliated, then the world order as we know it will change in a very, very fundamental and negative way, not only for Israel, not only for the Middle east, but, but certainly and very easily for Europe and finally for everybody. And if you combine this with the challenge of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran, you have the kind of world that is the extreme opposite of what we want to see. Let me put it this way. If you can say that since the Renaissance, with a lot of ups and downs, Western civilization provided people with a better life than ever in human history, a larger part of the human race with a better life than ever in human history. This will end if these barbarians can have their way. So they need to be broken and humiliated. Now, in every battle, you sometimes have to retreat and regroup and consider what the immediate consequences are. But, but if you can't see the broader picture, and this is the problem we are having today, people, for instance, in Europe not being able to see the broader picture, not because they're not intelligent, not because they don't know the facts, but because they cheat themselves, because they are not willing to meet reality, because they've constructed a la la land world after the collapse of the Soviet Union and became so weak, so impotent that they now only ask themselves. I think it would be the French approach, should we collaborate or capitulate? Or should we start with collaboration and end with capitulation? The French way of meeting these challenges? Or will you take the immediate consequences that are difficult to deal with and break your radical enemies? And here I think we can learn a lot about what the world can do from what Israel has done for 100 years. Because if you look at the picture and you can say to yourselves, a hundred years ago, come on, a few hundreds of thousands of Jews can meet so many millions of Arabs, or today, 7 million Jews can confront 450 million Arabs and so many more Muslims in this region and radical Muslim local powers like Iran and Turkey. If we would have accepted this approach, we would have said, okay, let's commit suicide, which is basically what would have happened if we would have listened to, to the Europeans. Think about it. If we would have listened to the Europeans, Saddam Hussein would have had nuclear weapons, Assad would have had nuclear weapons. We would not have responded to the terrorism of the second intifada, and it would be impossible to live in Israel. But basically what Israel did was to say, okay, we have a problem, we have a very serious problem, but we will escalate we will be so strong that we can permanently escalate. And the only way you can get peace is to escalate. We got peace with Egypt because we escalated and escalated and escalated and escalated until we've broken them and we have broken the Arab attempt to bring together all the potential of the Arab world under the leadership of the charismatic President of Egypt, Gamal Abdel Nasser, that made war against Israel. And every time we did something and it didn't have immediate effect, you had all these wise guys telling us, you see, it doesn't work because it didn't work immediately. And then we escalated again and again and again and again until we've broken them. We got 50 years of peace because we have broken the Arab states that wanted to work together against Israel and made war with Israel in 48 and 56 and 67 and 69, 70 and 73. And in every individual war, we didn't solve the problem. And even today, we didn't solve the problem because this problem doesn't have a solution. But in the last 50 years, there was no war, no regional war, where the Arab states come together under a common leadership and attack Israel. Because we have broken this challenge and we've broken it by an attitude saying we may have serious problems, and yes, it hurts, but the consequences of not escalating are so catastrophic that we don't have a choice but to escalate. And we succeeded. Now, could it be over after 50 years? Yes. But then again, Israel is today much stronger in relative terms to its opponents in the region. So that the gap between Israel and the foes of Israel is much bigger than it was ever in the past. Israel is by far stronger than ever before. And the gap between Israel and Egypt, Remember they spoke in 1973 about emerging powers like Egypt and Syria. Look at Egypt today. It is on the verge of hunger. Look at Syria today, dismantled. Look at Israel today, by far the strongest power in the Middle east, by far. There isn't even a competition to the strengths of Israel in this region. And the only question is, will you use your power? You can be the mighty American, but have a catastrophic president like Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama, and then you capitulate. Or you can have a president like Richard Nixon to give an example that is related to directly to what we've done in the 1970s, who can support Israel and with the help of Israel, dictate an order in the Middle east that is against the radicals. Now, since October 7th, we're only facing the radical remnants of the Arab world. Palestinians, Hezbollah, Syria, Houthis, but backed by a very strong regional power. And as you mentioned before, with a very impressive society. And again, the challenge that we had in the 1930s, a very impressive society in Germany with a barbaric leadership that needed to be broken so that you can cooperate with the impressive society after you break the regime. But you do it by burning Berlin and burning Hamburg and burning Dresden. And there is no nice way of doing it. And to bring Japan back into the family of nations, you had to burn Tokyo even before Nagasaki and Hiroshima. And more people died in Tokyo than in Nagasaki or in Hiroshima. So everything that you presented here is correct. The challenge is very difficult. The question is, since we can meet the challenge, are we willing to meet the challenge? It's a question of determination, not of instruments.
- [16:21]
A
Let me suggest that this is different. The historical analogies are useful, but we have a larger challenge here. They are much weaker, our enemies, because the nature of their ideology is more self destructive, is more self weakening, but nevertheless it also gives them an immense advantage in the battlefield. We broke Pan Arabism, but Muqawama, the resistance ideology which we have a long chapter about, I believe it's episode, excuse me, I believe it's episode 93. What is this idea? Where does it come from, this Islamic idea of permanent, never ending resistance between the powerful and the weak or the humble? These are religious categories drawn from the Quran. And we give the entire ideological lineage from the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood through Ali, Shariati and Khomeini. What is this Muqallemah idea? Well, it's an idea that there are the powerful and they're the arrogant and the unclean and the impure. And then there are the weak, who by virtue of their weakness are also humble and also believers and God will intercede on their side. And the great weapon that closes the gap and gives victory to the humble is martyrdom. And so the Iranian regime is motivated by an ideology that sees mass death. Not just martyrdom of Soleimani, not just martyrdom of the fighter at the front lines, but martyrdom of their own entire society. You look at Gaza, if all you can see, dear listener, out there in the world is, is what the Israelis have done in Gaza. Look at any part of it that you want, criticize anything that you want. It's a terrible war with tremendous suffering. But if you can't notice that Hamas built the biggest bomb shelter system in the history of the world, the most comprehensive one, and didn't allow a single Gazan child into it in two and a half years, of war. You're missing something fundamental about Hamas's strategy of mass martyrdom as the closing of the gap in with which the humble believer defeats the great arrogant power. This is the official ideology of the Iranian regime. The Muqawama is therefore a fundamentally different challenge because it's a permanent war that lionizes, that celebrates self immolation, self destruction. And when you can destroy your own society, you cannot be defeated by simply being broken. There was a point, this is, I guess, a question, because I'm not sure this is true. The Nazis kept fighting right up until the end. The German army kept fighting right up until the end, when there was no question about who was going to win and who was going to lose. But nevertheless, there was a point where Germany broke, the Nazis broke, and Germany broke, the Nazis, and Germany built something different. Is there a point where Iran can, in other words, even if we take it to this extreme, that no one will follow us? And I don't know that Israelis, Israel, physically can't. Israel is too small to put ground troops in Iran, to dominate Iran in a way that could do denazification. That's not even remotely a question. But the Americans also are absolutely allergic to this because they have seen themselves commit mass folly in this region on this question too many times to now commit to it. And so there's no question that they won't either. And so all we really can do is from afar, using. When I was a soldier, we used to call in the idea of the envelope technologies, the air force, the commandos, not massed forces on the ground, but all the things around them. That's an infantryman's perspective of how an army works. There's the real army and then there's the envelope. We are facing an enemy willing to watch Iran burn, willing to burn Iran to the ground in order to win this ideological religious war. They have an immense advantage over us because all we want to do is excite that regime that is destroying Iran, never mind trying to destroy us.
- [20:16]
B
They have an immense advantage over us when it comes to the immediate challenge, but they have an enormous disadvantage when it comes to the longer perspective. Take the Palestinians. They have adopted martyrdom and they have adopted radicalism. And I don't think they're going to abandon it. But in the last 100 years, our life is getting better and better and better and better every decade, and their life is terrible. And the countries that have adopted a radical position, look at Syria, for instance, are disintegrating and millions of people are suffering. So in the final analysis, we are winning because our objective is not to find solutions to problems so that they never come again. In a perfect world, it would be very nice. But you know what? This is analogous to some extent to having an excellent medical system without having an answer to the fact that we will die eventually. Okay? So you can say, yes, you don't have a solution and we are still going to die. Don't you want to have 100 years of good health and enjoy your life and raise your children and grandchildren and build something and have an impressive culture and everything, and you don't have a solution to the problem? So first of all, we are winning because our life is constantly getting better. We have started the State of Israel with 6% of the Jews. After the Holocaust, after we lost one third of the Jewish people. Today we have 46% of the Jewish people and very soon we will have an absolute majority because Israelis have a lot of children and they're not assimilating with non Jews. So our life is constantly better, their life is constantly worse. And we complain. I mean, we're Jews. We must complain. If Israelis stop complaining, their Israeli citizenship is revoked. But this, not looking at the overall picture is something that makes it difficult for us to understand the trends now concerning this entire culture of radicalism and muqawama that you have mentioned. Where is it coming from? Unfortunately, the mainstream of the Arab world, and there are exceptions, but the mainstream of the Arab world, instead of trying to meet the challenges of the 20th century and the 21st century, has tried to go back to medieval structures that the Muslim Brotherhood represents in a very clear form. And the Arab world today is the worst failure of societies in the world. If you compare opportunities with how people live. And the problem is cultural. The problem is not colonialism or occupation. These are excuses that you can find in American universities. The problem is cultural. What is wrong with the Arab world is cultural. Now, can you adopt a different culture in the Arab world? Yes. First of all, already 100 years ago, we had fascinating attempts throughout the Middle east of people trying to adjust to the 20th century. We have today in the United Arab Emirates, a very impressive attempt to educate the elite to tolerance, to try to adjust to realities. It is possible. Arabs can do it, Muslims can do it. They have done it. In Turkey a hundred years ago, we with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. And then came the present barbarian about 25 years ago and took it again in the wrong direction. Muslims can do it, Arabs can do it, but most Arabs have not done it. And their way to deal with the fact that they failed in practically everything is to kill others. This is what gives them satisfaction, the idea that people are afraid of them because nobody respects most Arabs. Again, there are exceptions, but as a collective, the only thing that they can get respect by is if people are afraid of them because they can harm them. So the problem is cultural and we can't change it. It cannot be changed from the outside. Again, I see this very impressive attempt from the inside in the United Arab Emirates, but unfortunately, it is not representing the mainstream in the Arab world. So we are faced with a society that is broken, with a society that is profoundly flawed. And remember one very interesting thing. We cooperate with Arab elites and Arab regimes and Arab governments, but their own public opinion is very radical, is very twisted. This is true about Egypt, this is true about Jordan. I mean, look at the enormous difference between the Hashemite Kingdom that tries to do what is possible in Jordan under very difficult circumstances, and Jordanian public opinion that is catastrophic. Radical, again, because you have so many Palestinians there, and there is something profoundly wrong with Palestinian political culture and a lot of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. So we are facing a very difficult challenge because you can't tell people, make peace with us, otherwise your society will suffer from war, because they don't care if their society suffers from war, as you mentioned. But again, look at the broader picture. We have a very good life in Israel that is constantly improving. We as Jews are, in my judgment, safer today than Jews in America and Jews in Europe. We are in Israel with all the missiles and all the terrorists and all the hostile environment. We are safer than Jews in the Western world because we can defend ourselves, and we very successfully defend ourselves. And I think the ultimate yardstick for optimism, namely the love of children and wanting to have many children, even if you're educated and secular or traditional and you're well off economically, you still want three children, which is twice the number or more than twice the number of in Europe. So we have indeed, as you said, a very difficult challenge. But we found a good answer. Not a perfect solution, but a good response. And a good response. This will be my last statement here. I think I've already said it in one of our other conversations, is a combination of damage control and the use of opportunity. We had a very effective damage control. That is demonstrated by the fact that we are today stronger than ever before. And when it comes to the use of opportunity, look what we have done with 50 years of no major wars, making the Israeli society better, a stronger economy, a more diverse culture, a More sophisticated science, more ingenuity, more innovation. This was the use of opportunity. We didn't have a major war for 50 years and we used the time very well. Could we have used it better? Of course we are not perfect. Believe it or not, we're human. But we have managed to control our damages very well and to use our opportunities very well. And still I think we have many more opportunities now that every Arab regime understands that without a strong Israel, they cannot defend themselves against the worst enemies, which are Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. So we have new opportunities and I think we can do a lot with it.
- [29:25]
A
I have told people since Oct. 8 that the war isn't Gaza. Gaza is one front. This is a war that has to go to Hezbollah. This is a war that has to. The lesson we learned in Gaza, which wasn't just that this is what they would do to us the moment they could, that we knew we were lax, we were stupid, we let it happen. That's the great crime of October 7th. But that they would bring this on themselves on Gaza, that they are fundamentally self destructive on the altar of the great religious war. Well, that lesson applies to Hezbollah, meaning Hezbollah is not deterred, meaning they can never be deterred. By definition, they are a martyrdom cult. And that applies to the Iranian regime. And so this is also going to go to Iran. And somebody asked me on some podcast, really, the week after October 7th, well, what do you mean? We're going out to a regional war. And I wasn't saying it because I'm the great wise guy. This was the thing that Israeli strategists were thinking that day, literally the day after, they're looking at the map, they were, they was taking a step back from the specific and the traumatic. And they were saying, wait a second, what did we just understand about this place that we had not understood about the place we're living in? And I said, yeah, of course it's going to go to Iran and maybe it'll take five years. And I've placed this Iran war. In other words, when the June twelve day War ended, I said, okay, well, it's over and there'll be another one. What the Mukawa Ma don't understand, they think that they are the permanent steadfast resistance. They don't understand that actually we are the permanent steadfast resistance. We have more patience than they do. And their whole system, their whole system learned from Marxism that the powerful, arrogant west is also weak and artificial and unable to sustain itself. And they don't understand that in the Jews They've met something a little bit new, something that actually has no other option, something that will outlast them and all they have done is destroy themselves. And this is an argument I've made. So if the June war ended and this regime is still intact and still capable of causing damage, it just means there'll be another war. And if this current war ends, it just means there'll be another war. There are two sides, not nations, because this isn't about the Iranian people and not specific regimes, because the idea that is represented here is far larger than just the Revolutionary Guards. And the Iranian regime is the biggest representative. But these two sides, where the Jews are one side, but they're also, again, this is an idea of modernization, an idea of frankly competence. Everything the Muslim Brotherhood touches, everything the Iranian revolution touches, it destroys it guts from within. These two sides are at war and the one that can outlast the other wins. And so this end of this war, I position it as this multi year confrontation between these two ideas. You just suggested that it's actually much bigger than that. It's about civilizational strength, civilizational collapse. They are in a long term failure and they have to pull themselves out of it. Nobody can do it for them. And we are part of a long term success. We draw enough from the successes of the west that we actually have the strengths of the west, even if we have the solidarity, the tribal togetherness, the capacity to be steadfast and outlast them of a Middle Eastern society. So we somehow combine those things. So this is going to be what happens. If this war ends now, your prediction would be similar to mine, but an even longer scale. So there'll be another one. And between now and that other one, Israel's economy will improve, Israel's science will improve. Israel's missile defense capabilities will improve. Those lasers are going to get bigger and stronger and may be capable of tackling ballistic missiles, not just smaller local rockets. And they will be poorer, weaker, more radicalized, angrier. That is the nature of this battle. Until one side collapses, it's unlikely to be our side. Is that a fair assessment of how you think this is going to happen going forward in the sort of medium term or longer term?
- [33:34]
B
Even in the longer term, I don't see a solution. And I'm not exactly trying to deter Hezbollah. I'm trying to kill them and destroy them. And I want to destroy them to a point where the Lebanese government can take responsibility, become a sovereign country again, because we prevented terrorism from Egypt in the 53, 55 by persuading finally the Egyptian government to prevent it. Because we hit the Egyptians and we said, we will force you to prevent terrorism from your territory. Jordan is today preventing terrorism against Israel from the longest border of Israel. Not because Jordanian public opinion loves Israel, but because Jordan knows that the strong Israel is the only assurance that the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan will continue to exist. They need desperately the strong Israel. So I don't expect them to give up. I expect us to crush them and kill them. And we will have to adopt, unlike what we had until October 7, we have to adopt a security doctrine of violent maintenance. In other words, anytime any radical has anything that can be used against us, we will destroy it. Now, what was the reason we didn't want to do it? A we said to ourselves, why not enjoy another year of tranquility? Tranquility will be responded by tranquility on other side, our side. This was a major mistake because if we don't kill them, they become stronger to kill us, and they get up in the morning to kill us. They don't have any positive thing in their wretched life. This is the only thing they have in their life. This is the only satisfaction they have. So we must prevent them. The second thing was we said, oh, this is dangerous. It could deteriorate into a war. And our answer today must be okay, even if it escalates into a war that we don't want. Let's have a war when they're not ready. Because the only alternative is to have a war when they are ready. So hit them, kill them. Let me put it this way. If we want to know what to do, all we need to do is to look at the New York Times. If the New York Times is not outrage, we've done the wrong thing. If the New York Times and the BBC and CNN and the progressives and people in Harvard are not outraged, we must be doing the right thing. Because the whole approach of saying, oh, we have wronged them and what. What can we do in order to appease them and war is not good and civilians are being killed. The only way to prevent radicals from threatening our very existence with these new technologies that are so readily available to everybody. As you mentioned in the beginning of our discussion, the only way to do it is to destroy their ability, whatever they the cost, even if the cost is getting into a war we don't want to. The only choice is between a war we don't want to have, but will be relatively easy to deal with, or a war that we don't want to which will be between very difficult and impossible to deal with. So, for instance, prevent them from having nuclear weapons. And if it means a war, then it's a war. But if you have a war, when they have nuclear weapons, it's much worse than that. So not only in the Gaza Strip and in the west bank and in Lebanon and in Syria, but also in Iran, whenever they have something that puts us in danger, we must take action. And therefore, it's very important now that they are so weak that we break them. Because in Iran, unlike the Palestinians or Lebanon, in Iran, we have an alternative that is positive. Once we get rid of this, or let me put it this way, once they get rid of this regime, Iran will be a partner for Israel, and not just for Israel, for Saudi Arabia, for Europe, for the United States, for everybody. So in Iran, it would be a major mistake to stop now, and I hope very much that Trump is not
- [38:37]
A
stopping what needs to happen now. We've heard the Emiratis and the Saudis have made mention of how they are inching closer. This was reported in the US Press. From officials to Joining the war. Just when Trump is talking about ending the war, there's something a little bit ridiculous about them thinking seriously about inching toward possibly joining the war. What actually needs to happen now? Can you open the Straits of Hormuz militarily, or is this just the new age? Do you know?
- [39:06]
B
Yes, we can.
- [39:07]
A
Yeah.
- [39:08]
B
Yes, we can. But it will be costly and not very swift. But the alternative is that they will constantly have the deterrence. You can't touch us, whatever we do, because otherwise the price of oil will come up. If we don't pursue now a policy that will undermine this regime and break its capabilities, then we will be in very bad shape. We can get Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, particularly the Emiratis, actively on our side if we show determination. More specifically, if Trump shows determination. And if we don't show determination now, if, God forbid, we become like Europe, Europe basically opted out of being a significant part of the world order. They insist on becoming not only impotent, but irrelevant to the world order by giving up the idea of defending themselves. And you know what the problem is? It is, again, cultural, not economic. Even when Germany is willing to spend 100 billion euros on defense, where are the Germans who are willing to defend their country? So we need to deal with these issues. And by the way, I know that this is not at the forefront of Israel's interest at the moment, but this is very, very strongly linked to the unlimited immigration if we don't limit immigration in a very radical way into the civilized world by barbarians, then the barbarians will destroy the civilized world. Because if you let anybody who wants to come in, you can bring in immigrants, you can bring in civilized immigrants from different parts of the world, including Muslims. But if you allow anybody, if you lose control over immigration, two things will happen. Your societies will be destroyed by these barbaric immigrants and the fascists in your country will rise. Today we have here in Germany a quarter of the German population supporting the AfD. So fascism rises. So you destroy liberalism by bringing illiberals from the outside and growing your own illiberals inside. And this will destroy liberalism. And unfortunately, radical liberalism brought about the worst danger, the existential danger for liberalism was produced by, by the progressives, by opening up to unlimited immigration. So let's not forget that these two issues are combined. And if we are looking today in the world for countries who could potentially be allies of the United States, unfortunately they're not yet, but they can be allies of the United States. You need to go not to Britain, Canada and Australia, but to Germany, Italy and Japan. Now this may sound very strange for a Jew to be with the British, with the Germans, Germans, Italians and Japanese against the British. That's very strange. And we are not yet there even.
- [42:53]
A
What do you mean by those three Germany, those three governments? What about them?
- [42:59]
B
They are willing, first of all to control unlimited immigration. Okay. And second, they are closer to the Israeli and American approach than others. Today, again, look at who's against us. The French, of course, they're always against us. But the British government, the Canadian and the Australian, namely Labor governments. In all places we had here a reversal of what we had in the 1950s and 60s. In the 1950s and 60s, labor governments were the good thing. And also the supporters of Israel. Today they're trying to impose on Israel a Palestinian state that will reward Hamas for what it did in the Gaza Strip. Okay. That will basically say you must accept the Palestinian state regardless if they openly insist on the right of return, namely destroying the Jewish state. Okay? So we have today, you have to see the broader picture and the immigration issue is part of it.
- [44:16]
A
Just regarding a Palestinian state, you can't avoid, you can't get away from the question of mukawama. If the Israelis pull out of any major part of the west bank, we know for a fact that Hamas will take over. Every poll says so. Every Palestinian you talk to says that to you. And that means it'll be taken over by the self destructive Muqawama. And if that's true, then establishing a Palestinian state under these Palestinian political conditions, never mind the Jews, let's imagine that we all hate the Jews. We know Jews. Jews are terrible. Jews are really annoying. You have condemned the Palestinians to Gaza, more or less.
- [44:50]
B
Making a rational argument about it is irrelevant because they live in a la la land of their own. They're not even discussing it in rational terms of understanding, of trying to understand what is going on here. They simply feel they satisfy themselves by saying things they don't even understand. Okay? Because look, one of the reasons I'm against the Palestinian state at the moment is that if you will have a Palestinian state, this will inevitably produce a kind of war on a much larger scale where Israel will reoccupy the west bank. And then my ultimate nightmare is that we will stay there forever. Because I want to get out of the west bank eventually one day, if I can find a Palestinian partner. I don't want Palestinians and Israelis or Palestinians and Jews to cohabitate in the same state. Okay? I would love to see a Palestinian leadership that can take responsibility and coexist with Israel. This is the worst possible approach that you can take. What the Canadians, the Australians and the Brits and the French or are doing and who is.
- [46:15]
A
I'm. I'm very glad that you clarified this point and I've already asked you in the past, you say the word barbarian a lot because you don't like mealy mouth euphemisms that the west uses. But actually it's important to actually say things, say actual judgments, cultural judgments and other judgments. When we see a vast phenomenon, we have to be able to say it and not worry about what people are going to accuse us of. It's not Arabs who are barbarians, it's not Persians who are barbarians. It is self destructive ideologies are barbarians.
- [46:43]
B
And with the Palestinians, political cultures, yes, political cultures, culture can change and we've seen it change. Our problem is that we assume that if it can change, it must change and if it must change, it must change for the better. And if it didn't change, the white men are responsible. If God forbid, you're educated in Harvard, this is the twisted perception of reality you will come out with.
- [47:09]
A
So you have just clarified something that I want to ask about on this point. Why do they struggle so much with seeing and understanding what is actually happening in the intellectual world, in the political world, in the cultural world of the Arabs, of our Arab neighbors, of Palestinians, of Iraqis, of Algerians, of Lebanese? There is Just, just by the antisemitism measure, there is this rank. I wrote an essay, I think 10 years ago after the ADL did this global study using local pollsters of 102 countries and discovered that the least anti Semitic country in the world is Laos. I've never been to Laos. I plan to go there. Anti Semitic views are held by 2% of the population. I believe 98% said, what's a Jewish?
- [48:04]
B
The BBC perhaps.
- [48:05]
A
And the top 20 most anti Semitic countries on earth are members of the Arab League. If I'm wrong, then it's not 20th. 18, I apologize. The anti Semitism is vast. It is comprehensive. It is upwards of 90%. And it isn't just in countries like Lebanon where it's, I wouldn't say like a good thing, but understandable, they've been bombed by Jews recently kind of a thing. Algeria hasn't seen a Jew since the 1960s and it is 15 points higher in Algeria, at least in that survey, 10, 12 years ago, than it is in Lebanon, who actually have a conflict with Jews. And so just anti Semitism is a measure of failure as a measure of a society that blames imagined things for all of its own internal failures. My question is why can't the Europeans, the Canadians, Ursula von der Leyen saying we must reach a negotiated end to this war, and why? Because of the oil problem. But here's the thing. Iran holds you by the throat with this thread on oil. And Iran also holds a third of the global hydrocarbon reserves. Imagine not just the danger of the war, imagine the oil supply after the regime. What if Iran's gas and oil enters the global market freely and happily and joyfully in a way that massively builds up the Persian people, the Iranian people, the Iranian nation, and suddenly the oil supply is cheaper and better and more guaranteed and more diversified, and you're slightly less reliant on the Russians. Why can't they see the positive, the unbelievable boon that lies on the other end of the destruction of the fall of these terrible barbarians who will destroy their own country on the altar of destroying everybody else, why is that so hard for them to see? Why can't they see the cataclysm that you are advocating for Palestinians? If you want the Hamas takeover of the west bank and you have no idea, you can't even articulate, you don't even know the vocabulary to start to talk seriously about how you build something in the west bank that isn't a Hamas state. So why are they so bad at this? What happened to the brains of policymakers in countries like Australia, like Canada, in the United States there's a lot of people I disagree with, a lot of people living in fantasies. But there's at least a rich debate. There's no debate in Canada, there's no serious debate in Australia. There's no debate in, in, in, in. In Paris or London. It's all meaningless drivel with no facts and no data points ever managing to enter the conversation. There's no vision of a better future. There's no building up of a military. Poland today has an army bigger than France, than, excuse me, not France, than Germany and Britain's put together. That's a new world order. Why are they so utterly committed to being weak and also utterly committed to being ignorant on questions that if you don't get them, you don't have to agree with my interpretation. But you certain, but you can't even engage in the conversation. You know so little. Why are they committed to such profound ignorance, such profound weakness as a matter of, of. Of cultural priority? They don't want to be capable of shaping the world, of seeing the bad things for what they are, of actually offering real answers, real. You don't like the word solutions but I mean in the short term sense of any kind of way through these things. The Arab world has this terrible cultural failure. It's the Arab dictatorships after decolonization they managed to gut and destroy everything. They need a whole new political culture. But the great successful stories of the west aren't doing much better on the world stage. What is that?
- [51:46]
B
Well, you are actually frustrated with human history because where people capable of understanding the situation and doing what is good for them, human history would look very, very different than it actually did. I mean people brought calamities on themselves. I mean look at what communism did to Russia. Look at what Nazism did to Germany. Look at throughout the history of Western civilization. We remember Europe since the second World War with no wars. But think of Europe until the 18th century. Think of the Thirty Year War. Think of the way the Europeans slaughtered each other. And you could ask yourself what is it that they're doing? Why are they doing it? And of course the historians will give you some good answers but nobody will assume that people actually understand reality and do what, what is good for them. So many people also on an individual level do what is terrible for them. Why do you have in large parts of the world situation where they're terrible diseases and they're given medication for free and they're even recruiting the witch doctors to persuade the, the People to take the yellow thing and then and the purple thing because some Satan will do this or that and so on. And even that doesn't work. Why do people deny reality? This is not a question that should be focused only on anti Semitism or Middle east or Palestinian issues. This is what is happening in human history very, very often. And ignorance never stopped people from having very strong views. You know, I persuaded in one American university, just for fun, I tried it and it worked. That the west bank is a financial institution and in Gaza you have a very lively nightlife because you have the Gaza Strippers there in the Gaza Strip, you have the Gaza Strippers. People who are completely ignorant, who know nothing about nothing, have very strong views and can chant it in the streets. And I don't expect things to be different and particularly not to have a decrease in antisemitism. I expected what is happening now is antisemitism. I expect it more than others. But even I, I was very pessimistic about antisemitism, but even I couldn't imagine how prolific antisemitism will become. And the people who you were expected from to be the least antisemitic became the most antisemitic. Okay, did you expect, did anybody expect antisemitism to be anchored primarily on the left, and not just the radical left, by people who are not even aware that they're antisemites, to be anti Semites? I mean, how can somebody like Gunther Grass write about Israel being a threat to world peace because it has nuclear weapons, but not saying anybody who has nuclear weapons is a threat to world peace? Not even to say it's okay with the Americans and the Russians, but not with the Pakistanis and the Israelis, it would be stupid, but at least it would make some sense. But basically to single out the Jews and say, here is the threat to peace. Being aware that Hitler made the Jews responsible for being a threat to peace, and he's not even aware that he's an anti Semite and he's an anti Semite, Okay? And you get it in American universities. Where do you get antisemitism? In the worst case, immediately being happy with the 7th of October, before even Israel even responded, I expected it, I didn't expect it, for it to be so enormously potent. But we have to learn to live with. It's a reality that we have to learn to live with. And I don't expect somebody else to take the responsibility for us, not in terms of not allowing the Palestinians to destroy us through a Palestinian state or Whatever. And not in terms of people who want to stay in the west bank forever, assuming that this will solve the problem, or assuming that since we have a historical right, it's okay to incorporate millions of Palestinians into the state of Israel. It is our responsibility to find the balance between our need to defend ourselves from external threats and to defend ourselves from domestic threats.
- [57:12]
A
I want to. We spent a lot of time on almost philosophical questions. I want to drill down and end with the question specifically of this moment. We don't know exactly what Trump means. We don't. I don't. At least maybe you know more about what's in this potential deal, if there really is a potential deal. Iran, by the way, has already officially denied there is one, but who knows what that means? What I. What I want to know is
- [57:40]
B
how
- [57:40]
A
do you think this war will end? How do you think this war should end? And do you think there will be pushback that'll reopen Hormuz? Do you think the west will find its backbone? Or do you think this ends ignominiously and weakly? And Iran continues to terrorize. And the Saudi and Emirati declaration that they're also willing to join a fight that they don't actually join doesn't amount to much because Iran will continue to hold a veto over the global oil supply.
- [58:07]
B
It's very easy to answer how it should end, from my point of view. It's very difficult to know how it will end, how it should end. The Iranian regime broken. The failure of the Iranian regime being so clear that even the Iranian population will start in a process that will eventually lead to regime change. How it will end depends to a very, very large extent on Donald Trump. If he continues to put pressure on Iran to prove that we can deal with the worst that they can do and still make them pay a price that even for them is unacceptable, then we're in a very good place. If we reach a deal where they can just wait for the next president of the United States who will represent the Democratic Party the way it is today. Remember, the Democrats were not always as terrible in terms of foreign policy as they are as they are today. But to wait for an American president who will be progressive or will be under the influence of. Of progressiveness and therefore bring a catastrophe to Western civilization, this can be catastrophic to Western civilization if we get a progressive president in the United States. The damage that Obama has done is already enormous. And if somebody now comes with it, I think we're doomed. We will lose against the Chinese. It will not be immediately the Iranians. But the world will change in a very fundamental, negative and dangerous way. And the Iranians want to somehow bridge the gap until they can get some kind of president like that in the United States. I hope very much, and I would gamble that Trump will continue not capitulate. Now, I don't see that he can, even for domestic and political considerations, let alone strategic considerations. I am 70, 30 or 80, 20 on the side now predicting, not saying what needs to be done, but what I think will be done. The chances of Trump insisting on making Iran lose and willing to pay the short term price for the intermediate term and long term benefits, I think this is a stronger chance than an American capitulation.
- [61:24]
A
Do you really think we're doomed if America turns in the direction of the current Canadian, Australian, European policy?
- [61:34]
B
Not immediately, but because the Chinese are in a position to take over in many fields this could be the beginning of the end. Now these processes don't happen overnight. But if the United States is incapable of dealing with the Iranian challenge, the ability of the Chinese to change the world order will be much stronger than before. And it is already in a situation where because of mistakes done by liberals under the influence of progressives when it comes to immigration, weakened Europe to a very large extent is weakening the United States can undermine the ability to withstand Chinese pressures. And you can always say, I don't want to pay the costs of an immediate confrontation. And in the Chinese case, I mean primarily economic confrontation, not military confrontation at this stage, perhaps in Taiwan, but not in a worldwide context of a world war or something like that. But we have an economic world war. We have something that needs to be responded by a self confident America that can force Europe. And unfortunately the Europeans are not willing to do it willingly. The United States forced the Europeans to spend 3.5% on defense against the will of the Europeans. And again, they don't have the people to be in that army even if they can buy the tanks and the aircrafts, who will man them? When you had a culture that basically said that there is something wrong with self defense and this is what progressivism is all about, is feeling guilty, feeling that white people have ruined the world and now the best way to deal with it is to capitulate to barbarians.
- [63:58]
A
Dan Shifan, thank you for joining us. I'm pretty sure we're going to be okay.
- [64:04]
B
Add one thing. Yeah, Israel can play a very major role in this struggle. We are not of the caliber of the United States. But the very fact that Israel succeeds in spite of enormous challenges is an inspiration to people who want to withstand this kind of challenge.
- [64:32]
A
Dan, thank you for joining us. I am an optimist and I become more optimistic every time I take a deep dive into the challenges because we've been here before, we've been in a worse situation before. Our enemies were stronger, not weaker. And the mukalama is its own self destruction because it can build nothing and it has not built anything anywhere.
- [64:53]
B
I agree. I very strongly agree.
- [64:56]
A
Thank you for joining me and.