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- [00:05]
A
Hi everybody. Welcome to Ask Aviv Anything. This is a special episode I have on somebody who has been a frequent request of the Patreon community and just randomly, people who occasionally stop me in the street. Dr. Ainat Wilf is a leading thinker on, on Israel, on Zionism, on foreign policy, on education. I actually have been reading a not since I was education reporter at the Jerusalem Post. Very junior on, off on the English language margins of Israeli media. The best people are there, by the way, and some of the smartest reporting is over in the English language because they're not doing so many of the culture wars all day long as the Hebrew press. You heard it here first to all my colleagues in the English Ainat was a member of Parliament, a nat, served on the Education Committee, the Foreign affairs and Defense Committee. I am not going to ask her, but I am going to guess that she was more excited in the Education Committee than on all the highfalutin talk of war and peace of the Foreign affairs and Defense Committee. But I'm not going to put her on the spot on that way. Education is more important is what I'm saying. And Anat is the author of seven books. She is currently a senior fellow at the Z3 Institute in Palo Alto, California and she has a PhD in political science from Cambridge, which I have to think based on that resume, she got out of sheer boredom because she wasn't doing anything else. So let me just tell you before we dive in, we're going to ask, we're going to ask the hardest questions because a knot has a sort of meta vision of this conflict which actually suggests some very specific and clear policy solutions and also many, many, many, many more specific ideas and solutions that flow from that larger vision. We're going to dive into it, I'm going to challenge it. I have been accused of agreeing with a not a great deal. And one of the themes of this conversation is going to be attempts to find disagreement. And look, we're going to try, no promises, but we are also going to deal with the hard stuff. And the hard stuff is the future of Gaza, the future of the conflict. Something has changed in the Israeli Palestinian conflict. For a second century, it was one of the least bloody conflicts in this region. And it has now experienced two years that were on par with two years of Middle Eastern wars for the very first time in terms of death toll, in terms of scale of destruction, in terms of scale of, I think, anger and bitterness and sense that the other side is definitely coming to murder us all. How do you navigate out of this and how do you find a path forward? And how do you begin to even see it properly? Not through the lenses of the morality plays of foreigners, which is how most of the English language discourse is kind of overwhelmed by, but really understanding Palestinians on their own terms, Israelis on their own terms, and talking about a future that isn't more of this. So we're going to get into it on society. With Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah degraded, what technologies will Israel need to defend itself in a new Middle East? Every day, groundbreaking research from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology is transformed into real world defense tech that protects Israel and saves lives. From Iron Dome to Iron Beam drones to satellites, cybersecurity, supercomputers, Fundamental science, born in Technion Labs, is brought to life by visionary Technion alumni serving in the IDF and defense industries who give Israel its qualitative edge. If you love Israel, if you want to keep it safe, if you want to boost its economy, if you want to strengthen its people, invest in the great minds, discoveries and inventions that come from the Technion. It's a fundamental way to make a bigger impact on Israel's future and ensure its safety. I'm somebody who talks a lot, but I have family members in Israeli tech. It's actually an extraordinary world. And if I was better at math, I would take pride in maybe understanding what it is they do there. They do it best. The best imaginable is at the front on earth of all of these technological vanguards. And it's an amazing thing. I also want to invite you all to join our Patreon. We have this wonderful community on the Patreon website. If you want to ask the questions that guide the topics we choose to talk about, join the Patreon. There's a great discussion forum there. I and Rachel and who, if you're a regular listener, you know, that's my wife who also does a lot of the work on this podcast and the thinking through of what we're doing and the interactions on Patreon and listeners. We all discuss the episodes, general news and thoughts of the day. We share resources on there and once a month we do a live stream where I answer your questions in real time. So please join us@patreon.com AskHavenything the link is in the show notes. Anat, how are you?
- [05:06]
B
Okay. A confusing time.
- [05:09]
A
Yeah. Thank you so much for joining me. It really was a request of many of our listeners and I'll just, I'll dive right into it. We are, we are recording. I Have to look at the watch because I'm a dad, so I'm just don't sleep much. We are recording on October 26th. The Trump peace plan is now, what, two, three weeks old? Who knows? Time flows strangely in the Middle East. And the hostages, the living hostages are home. There's still 13 bodies held by Hamas. But what my friend Mati Friedman calls the psychological knot of knowing our people are there in their hands, that is released. Nobody is. I mean, it's, it's, it's a relief. It's like you don't know your muscle is clenched until suddenly it's relieved. And then all the pain and all the, that's, that's, that's done and the war's over. And I truly think the war is over because a, the Americans really, really want it to be over. And they have said so. And when the President and the Vice president and the Secretary of State and ambassadors are flowing through the country, they're making a point. And also Israeli society. There's a lot of talk out there about by anti Israel people about how the release of the living hostages held by Hamas was going to be a tremendous problem for Gaza because were the leverage Hamas had over Israel to prevent the war from getting worse, dragging on Netanyahu from rampaging through Gaza, as one person put it. I think it's the opposite. I think that now that the hostages are out, Israeli families will have an awfully hard time agreeing to any government that says now we still have to go back into Gaza and have 500 more soldiers die in two more years of war. I don't think Israeli families are willing to continue to sacrifice now that our people are back. For what? To remove Hamas from Gaza. To what? Save Gaza from Hamas? Gaza doesn't want to be saved from Hamas. So what would the purpose of that war be of an infinite guerrilla war in Gaza? So I don't think domestic politics. 70% of Israelis, three, four weeks ago we have this poll from, I believe it was the Israel Democracy Institute, wanted the war to end immediately. And that means that that statistic has to include deep into Netanyahu's base. Israelis want the war to end. The Trump administration wants the war to end. I think Netanyahu is okay with this ending. I think this ending of the war is fine for him. But even if it's not, you know, even if his detractors are right and it's the worst possible kind of person you can imagine, he wants the war for fun or because of Bengvir or whatever, he can't he can't domestically, he can't internationally. The war's over. First question, how do you assess the last two years, and how do you assess this end of the war? Do you believe that this war ended? It's not the total victory Netanyahu talked about, but that was always propaganda and posturing and silliness. Every. Every Likudmik I know rolled their eyes when Netanyahu said total victory. Nevertheless, do you think it ended well for Israel?
- [08:14]
B
It's really tough for me. Again, putting the whole, the release of hostages aside, it begins with a question of what is the war? When you say the war is over, the war that is over is merely an eruption of, you're right, bloody and difficult fighting in one arena in Gaza. But from my perspective, this was never the war. The war was only ever won, and it was the Arab war, and especially the Palestine Arab war against Zionism, against the existence of a Jewish state in any borders and anywhere between the river and the sea. And that war, not only is that war not over, that war in many ways, is entering a new and perhaps even dangerous phase. Even the war in Gaza. One of my main criticisms of the government before and certainly after, after October 7, is that they completely didn't understand where the war was taking place. If I had to put numbers on it, I would say maybe 30% of the war was taking place in Gaza and 70% of the war was taking place in the field of propaganda, on screens, in universities, in the streets, in policy. And I believe that Israel waged the war in Gaza. Okay. But ultimately, that's not where the war was, in my view, even if we just talk about the last two years. So for me, I feel that in many ways, we need to dig ourselves out of a hole because we actually didn't wage the correct war. And as a result, we need to dig ourselves out of a hole on a whole host of things, things from the fact that we legitimized Qatar to the point that a serious news person on 60 Minutes, Lazzi Stahl, will call them the peacemakers. And I'm thinking, oh, my God, how far we've fallen. So, to the point that we helped legitimize Qatar as some kind of mediator. We agreed to look at hostages as a matter of assets that is negotiable. We agreed to pretend that this is a war only against Hamas rather than what I've come to call Palestinianism. And as a result, we didn't pursue policies that would now help us wage the war that actually matters. The War that I call to defeat Palestinianism as an ideology. So the reason that I fear is that I don't think we made headway in the last two years, in many ways perhaps went back in the war that actually matters.
- [11:24]
A
So there's a shallow response to what you just said on information war, and then there's the deeper response, which is your sort of metathesis. I want to just set aside the information war question, specifically this government. And in fairness to this government, all previous Israeli governments, maybe the exception of David Ben Gurion, have been catastrophically incompetent with PR and refused to in any meaningful serious way understand that there is a global discourse. And that global discourse has now overwhelmed all the old institutions. I mean it no longer all the old sense making elites don't drive discourse anymore. And the libels of Israel and the mass campaign to hack the human brainstem of hundreds of millions of people, by the way, good decent people, the vast majority of people who marched in all these mass marches in European capitals is totally unprecedented phenomenon that didn't. It is way beyond what there was for Vietnam, way beyond what there was for the anti apartheid South Africa movement. And we've talked about this in its regularity and its duration, in its scale, in the fact that in Holland they were speaking in English, just like in, you know, New York, a unity of vocabulary. There is a movement out there that is massive, coordinated, built out by professionals to hack the human brainstem of Western civilization on Israel. These marches happened for this war. And the claim of the people organizing and marching is that that's because they were radicalized against Israel by seeing images of dead children from this war. Now there were these images and tremendously decent people make up the majority of the marchers. But there's a reason they will never again see those images from any other war, have never seen those images from wars currently happening at a much larger scale of suffering of children. It is nevertheless you can both be manipulated and also you can be anti war and it can be a terrible war. And so the Israeli unwillingness to deal with information war is just literally missing the fact that at a purely military level, that's the fundamental thing and that's how Hamas gets its willingness to keep fighting and hunkering down and ensure that it's hurting the Israelis, even as the Israelis are hurting Hamas, or even leveling cities in Gaza to get at the tunnel system. So there's this information war problem. Literally Israel, 10 days into the war, shut down its public diplomacy ministry. Netanyahu went for months at a Time without speaking to the world. I mean, it's just unbelievable. They were playing, as we say in Hebrew, against an open goal on the other side. But you mean something much, much deeper. There is a story at the foundation of Palestinian national identity at the very beginning. And we find that story alive and kicking today. And the story is about refugees. And if you understand what a Palestinian nationalist ideologue means when they say the word refugee, you understand why the war will never end until we see what it actually is about and actually act to end it. So what does a Palestinian ideologue mean when they say the word refugee? What do you mean when you say there's a larger war? This was one explosion, by the way. Presumably you mean also that there'll be more Gaza wars. It's never going to end until we talk about what this war is actually about.
- [14:43]
B
Precisely. So, yes, we will be stuck in this loop unless we touch what I call the molten lava of the conflict. And this ideology that I've come to call Palestinianism, which is centered around the issue of perpetual refugee hood and what is called the right of return, is, is the tragedy. It's actually a terrible, terrible tragedy all around that essentially an entire collective, an entire identity of people have been formulated not around a constructive vision, but rather around the destructive vision. And when I give my talk, and you know that, about what the conflict really is about, and I tell my own personal story about that, I thought that like many Israelis from the peace camp in the 80s and the 90s, that basically what was standing between us and peace was the establishment of one more Arab state, a Palestinian Arab state in the west bank in Gaza, or Palestinian Arab control of territories. And I supported every Israeli prime minister who wanted to pursue that kind of peace via this, whether it was Rabin or Paris or Olmert or Barack. And I supported, of course, the disengagement from Gaza, only to realize that when the Palestinians face clear, concrete opportunities to have their own state in the west bank and Gaza, thereby ending the occupation of settlements, capital in East Jerusalem, including holy sites, again and again they walk away, different leaders, they follow it up with murderous violence. And the most important aspect is that there are no dissenting voices. And I want to say something about the dissenting voices because I once decided to do research. Do you have any example in history of a movement that claims to be a movement for liberation, self determination, statehood, sovereignty repeatedly gets opportunities to realize sovereignty, statehood, self determination walks away every single time, goes to war. And there is no internal dispute about the choice to reject that Opportunity. And actually you don't have such examples. It's only the Palestinians. And I'll explain the reason is because they're not a movement for self determination, liberation, statehood. I recently watched on Netflix House of Guinness. I looked more deeply into the Irish example. There you go. Fought for a long time for self determination, liberation. They were given an opportunity, rejected, and then they had a civil war because they were split over the fact that they didn't take the British proposal to be a kind of Canada or Australia and stay under the Commonwealth. You do not have a case of repeated opportunities, repeated rejections, and no internal dissent. And I always tell the story of how I began to realize, mostly by speaking to Palestinians, listening to them, and finally giving them the respect of taking them at their word, that this is not that what I thought the conflict was about. Two movements of self determinations, Jewish and Arab, wanting the same piece of land. Therefore, let's just share. They're basically telling me, what are you doing here? Get out. And I know you speak a lot about this kind of fundamental misunderstanding, but at this point, if it's still a misunderstanding, it's a bit odd, the notion that we're foreigners and we need to get out. So I always bring this quote in. My talk is as I do the research into what the Palestinians really want. I find a quote by Ernst Bevin before there's a single Arab refugee where the British foreign minister after World War II, where he basically explains that the reason that Britain failed to fulfill the mandate to help the Jews achieve sovereignty in the land is because the conflict is irreconcilable. And it's irreconcilable because in the land the Jews want to achieve a sovereign Jewish state and the Arabs as their top priority. And these are the Palestine Arabs, their top priority is to ensure, to resist to the last establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of the land. Irreconcilable. Because essentially you don't have two national movements each seeking their own self determination. You have one movement, the Jewish movement that wants self determination, Zionism. And you have the Palestinian Arab movement that wants as its top priority to ensure that the Jews have a state.
- [19:45]
A
Now let's, let's dig into that. Let's dig into that. Because my argument to Palestinians is everything you do to get rid of us is failing because you don't. You, you are using a strategy born in an assumption about us, colonialist, imperialist, all these different words that they've used over the decades that doesn't actually fit our historical experience. Doesn't fit who we think we are and therefore we don't respond the way other people, colonialism, period, etc. Respond to the kinds of strategies you employ, for example terrorism. And you're going to keep doing it until you realize that we are different. And then maybe you'll have a better strategy that will actually work on us. I don't know, maybe I'm giving them advice on how to get rid of us. Maybe this is a bad thing. But, but my point is that deeply structural, in other words, we're not going to fit. We don't fit. Your story of us comes to serve your sense of who you are and what your historical experience means. It's not actually us. And when you start to actually see us, you'll realize just how utterly self destructive these visions are. Hamas genuinely thought October 7th was the beginning of the destruction of Israel. And it did not expect Iran to be shattered and Hezbollah to be broken and Gaza to be half leveled. It probably more expected the Gaza side of that than any other front. It doesn't understand our strength. It all is filtered through this lens of this religious vision. So when you say we know that there has been, over the course of Palestinian history, opposition, Khajamena Husseini in 1937, in the middle of the Arab uprising against the British and against Zionism, has to kill some of the Nashashibi family because the Nashashibis want to accept the partition plan because the Jews are not removable. And we gotta, you know, what are we gonna do? And in that kind of pragmatism, there's always a Palestinian leadership that comes in and kills any opposition and puts the Palestinian cause back on that absolute, total rejectionist track. Mahmoud Abbas, now there's people who say he is a pragmatist. And two episodes ago, three episodes ago, a guy who speaks Arabic, who worked with me in journalism, who's a wonderful, sweet guy, Miller, who's still now says Abbas would have signed a peace agreement with Israel, but maybe the very fact that he would have signed a peace agreement with Israel is why, when you poll Palestinians about support for Abbas, he gets 7%. And so he can't enforce a peace deal. He can't enforce anything. The PA collapses in as much as it is seen as something that's not out to exterminate and destroy Israel totally. Why? Why is Palestinian society so unified around the idea that absolutely no compromise can be made? By the way, no compromise from the 1940s, no compromise of 50, 50, no where a large part of the Jewish 50 is desert in the Negev, not like, you know, landed arable land that you can grow and build cities in. Ben Gurion thought you could build cities in the Negev too. But the point is, what is it in the Palestinian national cause that prevents any kind of serious internal debate, self criticism, noticing that something is catastrophically failing for generations and, and pivoting and making other dis. India didn't want to divide. 100 million refugees in the 20th century all built new lives, including every single Israeli's great grandparent, practically 90% of them. Why doesn't that happen in Palestinian society?
- [23:17]
B
So it's a combination. First of all, that is the Palestinian cause. The Palestinian cause is the cause of resist to the last establishment Jewish sovereignty in any part of the land. It also explains why whenever Palestinians are faced with a choice and ultimately people, collectives as individuals are judged based on what they do when they face choices. And whenever they face choices, choices, they always choose not to settle for an Arab state in part of the land and to keep fighting until the Jews have nothing. So that's the Palestinian cause. And because that's the Palestinian cause, the entire identity has been shaped around it.
- [24:11]
A
Why not? I mean, why? You're going to burn generations to the ground trying to remove people who have nowhere else to go, whose entire story is that they are refugees kicked out of multiple continents. Mahmoud Abbas himself, Abu Mazen himself has written bitterly against the Arab world for kicking out all its Jews on anti Semitism. And he writes, if the Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews had never joined Zionism because the Arabs forced them to, Zionism wouldn't have been viable. What did you do to it? Now those refugees who know they can't go back to Baghdad any more than they could go back to, I don't know, get a third of Warsaw back, they're not going to get. Why can't they wake up from this? Why? As a political culture, individual Palestinians, by the way, can acknowledge everything, have a conversation that is rational and thoughtful and deep. And then as a political collective, you cannot find, as soon as somebody says that Israel might, he stuck here. Mohammed Dajani. Professor Mohammed Dajani from Al Quds University. He is a Palestinian nationalist who demands a Palestinian state. He took his class to Auschwitz because if we don't understand the Jews, we're not going to be able to interact with the Jews. We're not going to be able to even win from the Jews our independence. For taking his class to Auschwitz, he was kicked out of Al Quds University, his car was firebombed. He basically had to flee for a while until things died down. Why is the slightest Palestinian acknowledgment that the Jews might be stuck here totally intolerable to. I agree with you that that's true. What drives it so?
- [25:45]
B
First, just as a parentheses, the ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Arab and Islamic world is the greatest self own ever, right? Not only did it undermine their claim that they have nothing against Jews, only against Zionists. And of course they sent all of these people to Israel at the moment that Israel needed the most, thereby strengthening Israel. So truly one of the most remarkable cell phones. And of course they threw out some of their most loyal, productive members. But beyond that, if you look historically for the century, what feeds and fuels Palestinianism to the point that really you can't have anything else is because the Palestinian identity was forged around negation, not around a positive desire. It also found itself fueled from a very early stage by every anti Semitic and anti Zionist power for the last century. So you know as well as anyone, people try to pretend now that the Mufti just had lunch with Hitler, but it was a full on collaboration. I sometimes argue that we're actually paying the price that the Arab world was not denazified at the end of World War II. Al Husseini was able to run away from trial in Nuremberg. So the continuing impact of Nazi propaganda, you know, everyone says Hamas is an Islamist organization. You read the Hamas charter, it's 50, 50, 50% Nazism, 50% Islamism. And then when the Nazis were defeated, then it was the pan Arabist that really turned Palestinianism into this secular theology. And you've spoken a lot about it. And the Soviets have literally taken Palestinianism and anti Zionism global and Iran has used it and now Turkey and Qatar and the global left. So they've been too useful. And we're seeing it now happen in real time when Gazans are trying to speak up. You mentioned Mohamed El Dijani, who's wonderful. Now there's Ahmed Fudel Khatib who are trying to say we don't need the global left to use Palestine as it's like abstract marker of utopia. It doesn't help us. They are the ones that are shoved aside and silenced. We're saying that when Hamas is killing, killing basically anyone who will undermine its ability to rule Gaza, no one speaks out. And the tragedy ultimately of the Palestinians is that they have been too useful to too many outside powers that basically wanted them to keep fighting. So whether it is internally that this is how they became a collective and a distinct people, or whether it is outside fueling and support. There is basically no room for dissent. And I would argue that where I think Israel is also at fault is that we have turned a blind eye. You know when I say harsh things that sound harsh, like they are not refugees. No one in Gaza is a refugee. No one in the west bank is a refugee. Enough with that charade. There is no such thing as a right of return. It doesn't exist, never existed. They're not special, they do not possess it. When I say these things that sound harsh, my argument is that these are the things that will finally, perhaps create an opening for other voices. But when we are turning a blind eye and when we are not trying to dry the fuel that fuels Palestinianism, then we also are collaborating in not enabling any dissenting voices to emerge.
- [29:49]
A
There was just a Nobel Prize in chemistry given to a Palestinian who is defined in the press releases, including of the PA of the official Palestinian government recognized in 2012 as an observer state at the UN as a refugee. But he has like three citizenships. Two citizenships. He's a Saudi citizen, he's an American citizen, He did his amazing, astonishing science in the United States, he was born in Jordan. In what sense? If he's a refugee, isn't every single Jew alive a refugee? I don't know your family story. I'm definitely a refugee. If he counts as a refugee. Why do they think this is good for Palestinians? It was such a great line. Those who use it as an abstract marker of utopia hold Palestinians in this trap and they can't see it. We have an entire Western academia looking for invisible power structures and they can't see this. What is that? Why is this not obvious to everybody?
- [30:47]
B
So this is a great opportunity to really discuss the two aspects of it. First of all, really to put to the side the Jewish issue, what the Jews with Zionism basically asked for pursued was the rights to self determination in their ancestral homeland. I know you always speak of them as refugees, having nowhere else to go. I like to put it more on the positive side. Ultimately, Zionism is born from the understanding that the Jews are a nation. At a time when the idea of nations is rising to replace the receding empires. And once you embrace the idea that the people of Israel are an a nation, they have the right to self determination. The only land that makes sense is the land of Israel, because collectively the people of Israel are only connected to one land and one land only. They can live in other places Sometimes very well, they can individually, individually decide to opt out of that, to say, we don't care about that, that's fine, that will not change that. Collectively, the people of Israel are connected to one land and one land only. And if we live in an era beginning in the 19th century of transitioning from empires to states, ideally nation states, then the Jews are a people. And their nation state can exist in one place and one place only, which is the land of Israel. So what the Jews asked for was the right to self determination. If the Arabs of the land had pursued the Jewish vision of wanting self determination, we would have no conflict or the conflict would have been over in the 20s or the 30s, border settled and that would be it. But that's not what they demanded. I mentioned the quote from Bevin, which is, before there are refugees, the Arabs want the Jews to not have a state, resisted the last establishment of Jewish sovereignty. This is why in response to partition, the idea that, yeah, you know, we'll throw away the mandate, you can have one more Arab state on the lands of the Ottoman Empire. But they say not good enough. Even though the Jewish state was a rump state and like malaria tracked lands in the Negev desert, they were like, not good enough. Because our top priority is that the Jews have nothing. They fail to achieve it. They become refugees. Up until now, basically becoming refugees. I mean, this was especially stupid war because it was waged for the purpose of making sure the others have nothing but becoming refugees in war. Certainly at that time, not special. Like you mentioned, tens of millions of people become refugees in this very bloody process of empires receding and new states being established, new borders. Millions flee across the newly created borders to decide that is more ethnically, religiously, nationally similar to them. And they all get one message, including the Jews. It's tough, it's tragic, it's over, move on, that's it, end of story. Everyone gets settled, builds new life. The Arabs, because they remain committed to their top priority of no Jewish state, essentially hijack the temporary mechanism that was going to settle them unrwa. And they take it over as the mechanism of saying the fact that the Jews just declared independence, that's a blip, basically. I remember the moment that it dawned on me that the Jews and Arabs live in two separate timelines. The Jews celebrate Israel's Independence day every year. And we actually think that something happened 10 years, 50 years, 75 years of independence. We really think something has accumulated here. The Arabs are like, this is an aberration. So you declared independence, but it changes nothing. You still need to get out and you don't belong here. So their way of saying the war is not over. And again the war is the Arab war against Jewish self determination. Their way of saying the war is not over is to essentially create a loophole that allows them against all international standards to perpetuate the idea that people who are not refugees by any international standards are refugees into the fifth generation. You mentioned the Nobel Prize. 40% of the people who are registered as refugees by UNRWA live in the west bank and Gaza. By their telling, in Palestine, they're not Palestine refugees. The other 40% are Jordanian citizens. Nowhere in the world are you a citizen of a country, born in that country and somehow a refugee from a country of which you were never a citizen. Many who were in Syria and Lebanon got new citizenships. The idea of perpetual refugee hood is central to the Palestinian identity because it is a synonym to no Jewish state. The right of return, which again there is no such right. This is why I've kind of specified my language. I used to say they need to give up the right of return until I realized there is no such right. There is no right for a people to settle in another sovereign state against its sovereign will. There's no such right. So now I don't even say they have to give up the right of return. I just say they need to recognize that they don't have it and that they've never had it. And there's no such right. So the Jews don't have a right of return. The Jews have the right to self determination in their ancestral homeland. And once they established a state, they did what every state does, which have an immigration and naturalization law. Now you can call it whatever ours is called, the Law of return. But there's no right which exists against Israeli sovereign will. All countries have laws that determine who immigrates, who becomes naturalized. Many countries have what's called blood naturalization based on family, ethnicity, language, background. Even in that Israel is not unique. That's not what the Palestinians are demanding. As I said, 40% of those who are Palestine refugees live in the west bank and Gaza. But that's not what they want. They want Israel. They use dual use language. You know, everyone talked about dual use material going into Gaza. This is dual use language. Like occupation. We think it means west bank and Gaza. They mean from the river to the sea. Justice. They say justice. People thinks, oh, they should have a state. They mean correct the injustice of the very existence of a Jewish state. The same thing Return. Right of return. Most people think, oh, they need a state where they can immigrate to. Most people think sensible, indeed sensible. They were given that chance multiple times to have their own states with an immigration law that would prioritize Palestine. Arabs, they rejected it because again, that's not what they want. What they want, right of return is essentially synonymous to resist to the last establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of the land.
- [38:24]
A
Gaza, we have a Trump peace plan. It has 20 points. We got our hostages back. It's hard to really deeply care for ordinary Israelis to deeply care about the rest of it. But we're pundits so you know, we have to obsess about all of it. Disarmament. Hamas must be disarmed. It's an article in Trump's 20 point peace plan. It is a condition that Israel for Israel agreeing to the the peace, the tunnels have to be destroyed. I think that's point 13 that's in the Trump peace plan. It's a condition. Hamas has already rejected those two specific conditions and a Hamas official even said a couple weeks back Trump was negotiating with himself. Never did we agree to anything. It's a plan written essentially to make it hard for Israel to reject it. The the release of the hostages is front loaded. Qatari pressure on Hamas made it happen. All the living hostages all out at once. How can Netanyahu leave that on? You don't leave that on the table. And it has all the other stuff Netanyahu needs to sell it to all his constituencies. Disarmament, tunnels destroyed, etc but nobody believes it's implementable. Nobody, nobody in Gaza, nobody in Israel believes you can actually remove Hamas from Gaza. I actually thought Hamas would lie low for a couple years to allow $100 billion and a ton of a million tons of concrete to move in to start the rebuilding. I did not think Hamas would rush out of the tunnels and start massacring people and taking control of the ground immediately and make that very hard to achieve. What has surprised me is they did that. And that to me says they were not sure they would survive as the most important power in Gaza over those two years. They actually were quite on their back feet. That might be why they finally agreed to might validate the entire Israeli war effort. Certainly the beginning of the invasion in Gaza City that possibly push them to this deal. But nobody in the end of the day believes you can save Gaza from Hamas. Can you save Gaza from Hamas? Can we move forward now? Sorry, just to frame it more in line with your ideas. Is it possible now that just because of the destruction, Gazans actually want a new day, maybe a new story? Or is Hamas the only game in town in the Palestinian mind? Never mind the Palestinian street.
- [40:47]
B
So, first, Hamas, by the way, are totally saying the truth. Because if you recall, the American president issued an ultimatum for the plan. Hamas said yes to something completely else. And they're right in what they said yes to. They made it very clear that they will not disarm. The American president decided to pretend that they said yes to his plan, and then he basically demanded that Israel also pretend that Hamas said yes to his plan. And from all that house of cards, we got the hostages back. So, like you said, everyone was willing to, like, play along. But Hamas are right. They never said yes. And it's the American president who decided that they said yes to all those other elements. But it's there. And I think, again, this is where Israel has to do what it should have done on November 7th and 8th. But even before that, I always tell the story. When President Biden comes here a few days after October 7, clearly rattled, deeply moved, he talks about the evil that was unleashed on that day. And then he goes on to say, but Hamas doesn't represent the Palestinians. And this is where I would have wanted a prime minister who understands how important it is to fight the actual war to say, I'm sorry, President Biden, thank you so much for everything that you were doing for us. You literally saved us with your Don't. But unfortunately, all the evidence shows that Hamas very much represents the Palestinians. We saw the eruption of euphoria and ecstasy on October 7th, and after that, we'd love to see evidence to the contrary, but I, as Prime Minister of Israel, am not going to send soldiers to a war based on a lie. So our working assumption is that Hamas is simply the executive military arm of Gaza. And just like America in December 1941 did not declare war on Japanese pilots, it declared war on Japan. Then we are going to war against Gaza until Gaza surrenders. And we're going to treat Hamas as its military wing, but not as individuals that we need to hunt down. We didn't do that. In many ways, we're paying the price. Once you wage a war based on a lie, then you can't win this war. My argument was not that total victory is not impossible. I do believe it is impossible if you correctly define the enemy. But as soon as you don't correctly define the enemy, then victory becomes impossible. So, okay, we've dug ourselves into that hole. How do we dig ourselves out of it. We need to take the words in the Trump plan, which by the way, you say nobody thinks it can be implemented. I think he actually does. So take the words in the plan. The matter de radicalization. Gaza will never be a threat. The Palestinian Authority has to be reformed. Like you said, this has wording that appeals to Israel. And now we need to say what that means. You know, in the years that I worked with Shimon Peres, he used to say that in peacemaking, as in lovemaking, you need to do it with your eyes a bit closed. I'm going to make no commentary on lovemaking. I will say that in peacemaking, it was a disaster. Now, it had a fancy diplomatic title, Constructive ambiguity. Right? Remember, let's just get the sides to to sign something. This will build trust and then we can deal with the difficult issues. It was a disaster. So I've developed a new concept. I call it constructive specificity. Now, America can do constructive ambiguity. In general, America can do whatever it wants. It's separated from the world by two oceans. It sits on the wealthiest continent in the world. Canada is its northern neighbors. Mexico, whatever it is, is not a real threat. America can go into Afghanistan, out of Afghanistan, into Iraq, out of Iraq. It could let the world burn twice in two world wars come in midway or towards the end. Take the trophy. America can do that and it will be fine. Israel cannot. So we need, because this is at our doorstep and this is us, this is our life, we need to basically take those words and say, look, Gaza being de radicalized is very simple. No one in Gaza is a Palestine refugee. They do not possess any kind of right of return. UNRWA has no rule. A reformed Palestinian Authority means no one in the west bank is a refugee. There's no right of return. No return refugee. Key lapel things that Abu Mazen gives speeches with. And UNWRA has no rules. Jordan. Jordan wants a piece of the multi billion reconstruction. How about finally recognizing that 2 point nearly 5 million Jordanian citizens are not Palestine refugees? So basically Israel, this is where I'm incredibly critical of our leadership. Israel has to say what it wants. Israel has to have a vision. And like I said, this is not about being vindictive or mean. This actually cuts to the core of the issue. And by the way, it's logical Israel needs to go to countries. This is what my co writer Adish words and I said before October 7. Why are you pumping billions into an ideology shared by all people of the Strip that wants Israel destroyed? The money will go towards Israel destruction. A DNI would sometimes be in tears, meeting with European diplomats, telling them, the billions you're pumping into Gaza, you will not pay a price. Our people will pay a price for it in blood. So there's no saving Gaza from Hamas. They're saving Gaza from Palestinianism now. The option does exist. What you alluded to, the destruction, the ruin. You know, when I spoke about it, people would say, oh, you cannot destroy an ideology. I was like, of course you can. We destroy ideologies every single day. We believe things we didn't believe 20 years ago. We look with smiles, condescension about things that people believed in 50 years ago. We take down statues for people who said things 100 years ago. We change ideologies all the time. So people told me, okay, fine, but can you kill an ideology by force, through war, through violence? I was like, of course. Because when your ideology leads you to ruin, to disaster, to defeat, then a crack opens that kind of says, maybe that wasn't such a great idea. And this is why I'm so worried about this moment. Because if we don't enter into this crack that opens with the disaster, that says, yes, Gaza is in ruins. Because you, the people of Gaza, and your collaborators in the west bank and around the world made the choice and it was an utter choice to take a beautiful strip of land, billions of Western aid, a gullible Israeli public that just wanted to believe that you really just wanted to build for yourselves rather than destroy for us. And you used all that to turn Gaza into a single weaponized, integrated landscape that military experts need to go to some island in the Philippines during World War II to find a comparison, or to go to some ancient fortress times. It was an ideological choice to use Gaza as a base to destroy Israel. And you're absolutely correct. Sinwar had a plan how this begins to turn the clock on Israel. It was a choice. And this is what the outcome of your ideological choice looks like. Utter ruin. Now, do you want to change that? And, you know, in May 8, the German Chancellor was visiting America. He was in the Oval Office. Someone turned the attention of the American President that this was the day of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany. So he looks at the German Chancellor and he's like, not a good day for you, huh? And the German Chancellor turns around and says, this was a great day for us because this was the day from which we began to build the Germany that you know today. And I remember listening to that and thinking, bingo. That's exactly what we need. We need one day a Palestinian leader to say, yes, Gaza was in ruins and it was a disaster, but that from those ruins we became a new people who wanted to build for ourselves rather than destroy what the indigenous Jews have built for themselves and their homeland. That's the vision that we need to push for. And part of even beginning the first step to realizing that vision is removing the fuel that sustains Palestinianism, the perpetual refugee hood, the right of return.
- [50:36]
A
So let me cut to the chase. I put it down to Islam. All my talks, all my explanations. I, by the way, I think they need to fundamentally change their fundamental assumptions in ways I can't change them. I can't do a, you know, like a MacArthur controlling Japan for five years and de. Radicalize Gazan society. But, but I put it down to a particular strain of Islam and I teach it and I try and talk to people about it and get them to read about it, look it up, up, even if they type it into chat GPT. That's a lot. That's a, that's okay. That's an encyclopedia article. Basically, they need to go and they need to learn it because then Palestinian society is no longer this empty shell, is no longer this either evil or pristine and perfect. It's. It's complicated. Human beings living in complicated stories. Is that true? Is that crazy? Do you also agree with me that that is fundamentally a particular strain of Islam that is the thing that has a problem with Israel and is willing to burn Palestinian society to the ground? Ismail Haniyeh lost three sons in this war and was proud of it. In other words, they are absolutely billionaires who stole their people's money and murdered their people and are willing to drive their people into worse wars. But they also were willing to do that with their own children. I think that that is a religious, A specific kind of redemptive religious ideology. Is that what it is or do you find it elsewhere?
- [51:57]
B
So maybe I don't know that this would be a place of disagreement between us, but perhaps of different emphasis. First of all, I agree with you. You're very careful in your words. And I noticed a particular strain of Islam because one of the things, you know, sometimes people say it's Islam. And my argument is that ultimately all religions, even when they claim revelation somewhere in the beginning, are ultimately matters of interpretation. They're interpreting works of human beings. And therefore I don't accept any notion.
- [52:31]
A
Obviously not my religion, but you're correct about Obviously not my religion, but you're correct about all other religions.
- [52:37]
B
And I often argue that the best religious leaders are the Ones that as they introduce radical new ideas, what makes them really good is that religious leaders is they say this is what our text really meant, this is what God really meant. And that's how they're able to introduce radical ideas while claiming to essentially conserve the religion. So this is my analysis of all religions. And I don't think Islam is different in that Islam in many ways is even less. You know, it's based on schools of thoughts, as you explained. It's not hierarchical in the sense that it's competing schools of thoughts and interpretations. And there is enough in Islamic texts for what I call a pro Zionist religious interpretation to emerge. So you're absolutely right that a certain strain of Islamic thought is at the core of Palestinianism. What I followed for the last century is what happened with this core is that it began to accumulate into it the Nazism and the Soviet anti Zionism. And now, you know, you saw the grotesque ceremonies of the hostage release, the previous ones, they used the language of the left, the Soviet language about colonialism and anti Zionism. So by now Palestinianism has become its own toxic brew that brings into it not just that particular strain of Islam, but all those other anti Jewish and anti Zionist ideologies. And this is why it has a kind of global appeal, which if you just had just that strain of Islam, it wouldn't have that kind of global appeal. So it's something. And of course where they all intersect is in their erasure of Jews and especially sovereign Jews. But yes, my vision is about as insane as it comes. My argument is that Palestinianism will ultimately have to be replaced by the ideology that have come to call Arab Zionism or Islamic Zionism, which I know sounds insane. And I say that one day it won't. And I believe that what the Gulf leaders and countries are trying to do is not just modernize their countries. And that's all nice and well, I actually think they're attempting nothing less than a reinterpretation and a certain reformation of Islam. And I argue that the Abraham Accords are merely collateral benefit. We're not the central story here. The central story is their desire to create a different vision of what it means to be a Muslim and an Arab. And just being obsessively anti Zionist is no longer necessary for that because they no longer need scapegoats for their failures because they're no longer failing. So yeah, I agree with you that it's a certain strain of Islam still unfortunately very popular and dominant. But I generally reject when people just tell me Islam blanket And I also specify that Palestinianism by now is a toxic roux of all the other ideologies that shape the it.
- [56:10]
A
It's so interesting that the reformist impulse that you're describing is the most conservative Muslim societies. In other words, the Muslim Brothers in their pism. And they're saying we have to reject the, the modern nation state and all this Westernism and modernity, and we have to go back to the early generations, the Salafism, right, which is the restoration of the early generations of Islam when Islam was this great conquering power because it was pious. They're revolutionary. They're about overturning all the structures of power in the Muslim world. And Islam really is this religion of order, of social hierarchy. And the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Moroccan king, the Jordanian king, the most conservative in the simplest sense of the word, parts of Arab and Muslim, at least of Arab Islam, are the ones pushing this reformist impulse to impulse, because it isn't really a reformist impulse, it's a counter revolution. It's an attempt to say you've destroyed everything you've touched, dear revolutionary Salafists. That I think is a fascinating point. So the Palestinian discord, the reason the Emiratis and Saudis and Bahrain nobody walked back their Abraham Accords alliance, nobody. And they kind of wish we had done a better job destroying Hamas, whatever that means. And they're still looking at an Abraham Accords going forward. And nothing Hamas has done and nothing that happened to Gaza. They blame what happened to Gaza on the crazy, revolutionary, topsy turvy kind of violence that the Muslim Brothers are trying to do to Muslim societies. I want to close looking forward on this question of the Abraham Accords you wrote on Twitter, if I may quote you. The U.S. president wants to expand the Abraham Accords and move as many Middle Eastern countries as possible into economic agreements. It's my translation. You wrote it in Hebrew. I hope I'm getting it right. That's a fine goal. And Israel will of course cooperate to do that. He needs the Palestinian issue to drop out of the news for a couple of years. The 20 point plan achieves this by making the details of its implementation, the interpretive disputes around it, much less interesting to global news channels. We can move forward into extremely boring diplomacy. That is the Trump goal. And what's fascinating, when I read that, I suddenly it recontextualized for me something that J.D. vance said when he was visiting. He was asked about moving forward on the Abraham Accords and forgive me, I'm going to butcher it if I can find the actual thing, the actual link, I'll put the video in the show. Notes Vance said in response to Abraham Accords and what he's doing in Israel. By the way, he did not seem to enjoy himself. The Knesset passed this idiotic sort of declaratory resolution on annexing the west bank and he said outright that was personally insulting. The vice president of the US is here. Then you pass this. He was unimpressed by the the Israelis did not impress him and they probably should have tried to impress him. This is a man with a double digit percentage of being the next U.S. president. He said we want to expand the Abraham Accords because we want a stabilizing Middle Eastern alliance that can take care of its own backyard. Backyard. It's time for the countries of the region, I am paraphrasing, but very close to the original, to take care of their own backyard. In other words, the Trump administration is profoundly uninterested in all the petty dramas of the peoples of this region. They want to do business and they want this region to be able to fix everything that's broken in this region, all the broken stuff the region keeps exporting and the terrorism, the Al Qaedas, etc. And so they want an Israeli Saudi alliance because they think an Israeli Saudi alliance is more stabilizing and pushes back against crazy revolutionary jihadis and therefore they want the Abraham, of course, to move forward. Why do they want the Abraham Accords to move forward? Not out of deep love for the alliance with Israel, but because they're sick and tired of hearing about the friggin Middle East. I, I think you and he are on the same page. I think they just want stability in this place and I think that they're trying to get there. And if the Israelis can play ball, that is manifestly the Israeli interest. If they can play ball. Well, two questions I guess I have and we'll end with this. One, Israel can't. How can Israel demand the things you, you want Israel to demand? Namely, you must remove the refugee title from Palestinian refugees. If you as a country, whether it's Syria or Saudi or anybody else want to take part in Gaza's rebuilding? Nobody can take part in Gaza's rebuilding. Who doesn't end that ideology of Israel's destruction manifested through the definition, the special Palestinian definition of refugee, that's sticking a wrench in the works of Trump's desire to everybody just move on and get over it. And two, ultimately, the very transactional, deeply unsentimental Trump presidency is exactly what the Middle east needed so much moralizing from America accomplished nothing at all in this place for generations, and now it's over. And I think that's a healthy and good thing. Transactional, simple, clear strategy of stability is what the Middle east needs. That's my view.
- [61:12]
B
So first, about Israel kind of saying things about no one in Gaza can be a refugee or things of this sort. Again, I'm not making these arguments as kind of like spurious. Oh, I just want to stick it to the Palestinians. My argument is that this is the reason and we're in this situation to begin with, because I was someone who said it before and said, look, if you pump billions to an ideology committed to destruction, you're going to get destruction. Then I just, on the most logical basis, I'm like, why would anyone want to give billions to something that will be destroyed in a few years? Because you didn't make sure that the people who are getting the billions finally actually want to build something for themselves rather than to destroy what we've built. So what I'm saying is that this is logical. This is not vindictive. This is not sticking it. This is not a wrench. This is actually helping. Now, look, the difference between us and America is because if I look at the first Trump presidency, and this is also to your second comment, I remember at the time I would speak to all these delegations coming to Israel. You'll remember too, you were speaking to. Everyone was going crazy. And I remember saying, look, whatever you have in America, you have going on in America. But I don't know how to convey it to you. Whether it's by instinct, by design, the American president is doing everything right here. I was like defunding unrwa, closing the PLO offices, recognizing the Golan Heights, recognizing Jerusalem, offering the Palestinians a state prosperity Netanyahu doesn't like when it's mentioned. Netanyahu said yes to Palestinian state in the previous Trump plan. And Abu Mazen, true to the Palestinian ethos, said no, no, and a thousand times no. The accumulated effect of all these policies basically birthed the Abraham Accords because it basically told the Arabs, the Palestinians move on Israel 148, Israel 167, just move on. And that opened the door to the Abraham Accords, came in the Biden administration. I remember following it, horrified as they undid almost all of that, refunding UNRWA kind of again, oh, Trump was mean to the Palestinians. We'll be nice to them now. America didn't think much of it, but I remember Being horrified because I knew how Palestinians hear it. They hear it as, keep going, the Jewish state will be gone. And I don't think it's a coincidence that whereas the first Trump presidency ended with the Abraham Accords, the Biden presidency ended with October 7th. So now comes the American president tries to essentially pick up where he left off. But we, Israel, we cannot afford to fall into the same idea that, you know, the Netanyahu also pushed. Oh, we can ignore the Palestinians. A lot of people pushed it. Bennett said, you know, they're a shrapnel in the bud or something. The idea Abraham Accords are wonderful. That does not allow us to ignore the molten lava at the core of the conflict. We cannot ignore the Palestinians. I say that the left was right when they said, cannot use the Abraham Accords to ignore the Palestinians. And the right was right that when you stop ignoring the Palestinians, you realize that they are entire people organized around the idea of no Jewish state. So I'm saying, great, America will now push for more Abraham Accords. Israel will go along, of course. But we cannot just say, oh, this is great, the Palestinian issue is gone. We need to use it as an opportunity to say, let's all make sure that this time it sticks. And can we all understand that this ideology of Palestinianism, which is constantly fueled, will destroy all the beautiful ideas we all have? So how about. And again, Israel needs to present it as something helpful, which it is, by the way. And that also squares the circle which I never thought was a problem of Saudis wanting a path to Palestinian statehood. All Israel has to do was look, say, look, the only thing that ever prevented the Palestine Arabs from having their own state is that they were more determined to destroy the Jewish state than to have one for themselves. So, Saudi, can you help them no longer hold that ideology? That would be wonderful. Because at the end, once they become Arab Zionists, we can reach political solutions that are good for all. But that's actually a good thing. So when people say, oh, enough, can Israel make those demands? Those are not crazy demands. They're not spurious. They're not vindictive. They are the core of what will help us chart a different future.
- [66:28]
A
I'm going to read my English translation of your specific demands. There are no Palestine refugees in Gaza. So long as Gazans are registered with UNRWA as Palestine refugees. Israel will not allow reconstruction. Precisely so that reconstruction does not become enemy funding. One must begin to dismantle the foundations on which the ideology opposed to our existence stands. You want reconstruction of Gaza? The Whole refugee charade ends. 2. There's no return. The lying technocrats government, or maybe you meant the fake technocrats government must declare as a precondition for reconstruction that Gaza is the Gazans only home. It is not a temporary home for them to then have a different home, namely Israel. There is no from the river to the sea and there is no return into the Israeli state. No one can be a member of the government, the technocratic government that will rule Gaza under the Trump plan. If they are registered as a Palestine refugee, they have to deregister as a refugee. 3. UNRWA will not enter Gaza or the West Bank. The UNRWA days are over. A whole different UN agency. Why not unhcr? Somebody who doesn't deal with Palestinian refugees with a definition that is eternal can do that. 4. Reform of the Palestinian Authority counts as reform only after there's not a single Palestinian in the west bank registered as a Palestine refugee and the authority declares that there's no return and no from the river to the sea. Without that it is not a reformed authority. 5. Any agreement with Syria or Lebanon in the Abraham Accords context, etc. Or Jordanian involvement in Gaza will be conditioned on the Arabs living in those countries no longer being registered as Palestine refugees. I'm starting to see a theme here. Six Countries that recognize this all counts as a not talking, just to clarify, because this is all literally quoting you. Six Countries that recognize the State of Palestine and continue to fund UNRWA and nurture the refugee status and the right of return will not be allowed to take part in Gaza's rehabilitation. The same goes for countries that vote for the renewal of UNRWA's mandate in December. Countries that do not already have full diplomatic relations with Israel and normalization with Israel. Israel will not be allowed to take part in Gaza's rehabilitation or any military force in it. This is the Saudis. You want to rebuild Gaza, you do have to have normalization first. I think we're at 7 and I think this is the end. The State of Israel must make clear that after what Gazans did on October 7th and the support they received among the Palestinians and their helpers, including the international community, Israel insists on a root and branch treatment of the ideology of Palestinianism and on completely drying up its three fuel sources, refugee status, the right of return and unra, only then can words like coexistence, peace and Gaza will not be a threat which is in the Trump land have a real chance. Everything else is a smokescreen we will pay for with blood. The refugee idea, which is the idea that Israel is ultimately negotiable and destroyable is the thing that everything depends on. If it's not gone, we're all back to square one. There's going to be another Gaza war in 10 years time. And if it is gone, there is finally permanent, serious rehabilitation. Last question. Are you optimistic? Can any of this get done? That's a heck of a laundry list. I don't know that the Israelis will demand it. I don't know that the Trump administration has patience for it. I don't know the Palestinians will ever deliver. The Palestinians will. The Palestinian factions, the political movements, they will stand up before the world and say, never, never take away unra. We'll starve to death en masse to not do these things. Then what does Israel do? Are you optimistic any of this can get done? And ultimately, are you optimistic this conflict can actually be ended in any way?
- [69:59]
B
So my optimism actually comes from the fact that all human societies are capable of change. And that's it. That's the basis. Humans change, human societies change, ideas change, ideologies change. They do not change if we keep fueling, creating incentives for them not to change. And I agree that right now I'm a bit desperate that we're still stuck with a leadership that in my view, doesn't address the core issues. But the other part that makes me optimistic, other than the general all societies are capable of change, is that there's a life force in Israel. And you know that better than anyone. There's a life force here. And it doesn't matter what everyone says about us, it's not who we are. Like you said, we're not foreigners here. So ultimately, there's a life force that with enough time and determination and backbone, everything I'm trying, everything you just listed is merely, in my view, Israel having a bit of backbone. That's it. So with some backbone and good leadership, which hopefully these terrible times will bring us the strong leadership that terrible times apparently do create, there's a life force in this country that keeps me optimistic.
- [71:24]
A
Inadwell, thank you so much for joining me.
- [71:27]
B
Thank you.