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Hi, everybody. We're continuing our series on questions being sent in from the Internet. The next question is a really good one. Who benefits from the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians? Continuing. Who benefits from the continuation of the conflict? I want to tackle this question in a couple of complicated ways. One, this conflict is an arena for a great many powers to play all sorts of important power games. Iran uses the Palestinian question as a power play in the Arab world to make a case that the Shia are a vanguard of justice and truth and ultimately power, where the Sunni have failed to make the case that Iran needs to lead the Muslim Arab world. Turkey is deeply involved. It is ideologically close to Hamas. It is exactly that Sunni Muslim Brotherhood ideology. And it funds a great many of the activist networks in places like East Jerusalem and certainly is a big supporter of Hamas over the years, including hosting Hamas leadership in Ankara and Istanbul. Turkey is also using the Palestinian question to make a bid for primacy in the Muslim societies of the Middle East. And you have China involved in Iran because Iran is anti American and China wants to build out networks and alliances that push back against American power. And you have the interventions of all kinds of powers and all kinds of movements. And one of the big ones is Western progressive, anti imperial, third Worldist, anti colonialist ideology. And that really describes a surprisingly large swath of Western elites who look at this place as a kind of stage on which the great morality play in which they believe their own societies are engaged, in which they themselves are embedded, in which their political identity is invested, is playing out. And all of these different groups all intervene, support, send money, train. In the case of Iran Fund, Iran literally sent Hamas money for October 7 itself, never mind other kinds of support over the years. All of these different forces from outside have a deep interest in what happens and where it goes and benefit not from the conflict ending, but from the conflict continuing, being at the top of the agenda and being something they themselves can mobilize themselves and allies and gain attention and gain political primacy over. I think it's worth noting that when it comes to foreign actors and the power of foreign actors in the conflict, there's a gap between Israelis and Palestinians. Palestinians are much more susceptible, much more influenced by whether it's a progressive Westerner or it's the Muslim Brotherhood axis or the Iranians. So, for example, among Palestinians in Palestinian politics, you have the gap, the deep gap, unbridgeable gap between Fatah and Hamas that is a gap of internal Palestinian culture, politics, religion. But it's also very profoundly a gap between the Great axes of supporters in the Middle East. The Hamas side of Palestinian politics is supported by the entire Muslim Brotherhood axis, Turkey and Qatar, and the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, from which Hamas actually grew. And when it comes to Fatah on the other side, they're very much supported by and dependent on to some significant extent, the conservative Sunni axis in the Middle east that opposes the more radical Muslim Brotherhood axis, which is to say the Saudis supported them over the years, the Emiratis, the Egyptian military side of the Egyptian sort of internal political civil war. And so Palestinians are deeply divided exactly along the fracture lines in which the Arab Middle east generally is divided. And that's a sign of the enormous influence that foreign actors can have. Certainly on the Palestinian side there is some influence. On the Israeli side, it's less because Israel is a more cohesive and simply wealthy and powerful polity in its own right. And so what happens internally in Israeli politics is a more significant factor, has more influence than what happens internally in Palestinian politics, because it's harder to influence Israeli politics. There are actors on both sides of the conflict and I'm not going to make comparisons and I'm not going to make moral judgments. I'm literally going to try to lay out what these people themselves think is happening. Actors like Hamas, actors like Itamar Ben GVIR and his Utzma Yehudit party in Israeli politics, the extreme right of Israeli politics. I want to be very clear here. There's an enormous gap between Bezales, Motrichenita, Ber Benvir and the Israeli side. However much I might be opposed to some of their ideas and some of their prescriptions and some of their vocabulary and rhetoric and things they actually espouse and have written printed plans about. They are not Hamas and they are not remotely Hamas. But what they share fundamentally in their understanding of the conflict is comparable and important. They share the idea that it's a zero sum conflict, that there can be no compromise for various reasons, either that there shouldn't be a compromise because it's an affront to God and history, or that no compromise could possibly work. And so you can't, you know, either you acknowledge it now and do what needs to be done, or you wait for later and have to do it in a more painful way. When you think that this is a zero sum conflict between two peoples who lay claim to the same land, you're talking about removing one of the peoples. But there are profound differences. And it's not just external differences. It's not just that Benkvir and Smotrich are embedded in a larger democratic system. That is, maybe even if they have these, you know, very bad impulses, these impulses can be restrained by broader Knesset politics, by Israel's interests on the world stage in a way that nobody can really prevent Hamas from acting out every evil impulse it has. So it's not just those external factors, it's the internal ones. Smartich and Benvir are far less capable of atrocity than Hamas. War is bad, War is terrible. Being able to sustain a great deal of suffering on the other side in a war is something you can criticize. And Smatuch and Ben GVIR publicly say that they have a much larger willingness to see suffering on the other side than maybe some other parts of Israeli politics. That is not Hamas. Hamas fantasizes about the mass destruction of the other side in blood and gore and fire, and does so publicly and celebrates it and has summer camps in which it talks in that language to the children of Gaza. And that is not Smoterch And Ben, morally, there's a chasm here. And another thing that demonstrates the chasm, Hamas is willing to oversee the demolition of their own society as a sacrifice on the altar of the destruction of the other side. Smote would never imagine, can't even contemplate overseeing the destruction of their people because it is so utterly important to them religiously to destroy the other side. So I am not only not comparing for profound, serious analytical reasons, the comparison is ridiculous. The one thing they share, which is the significant thing for us to understand, to answer this question, is a zero sum understanding of the conflict, which leads them to view the continuation of the conflict up to a resolution favorably, because a resolution will go their way, because that is their faith and their understanding of how history works. What we're looking at when we look at people who talk in zero sum ways about the conflict, about the removal of the other side, is a response on both sides to the perception that that's what the other side wants. And this is really important. There are polls that tell us one big poll from last year, for example, by the Tommy Steinmett center of Tel Aviv University and the pollster Khalil Shikaki in Ramallah, polls that polled Palestinians and Israelis. And one of the questions they asked is, what do you think the other side wants of me? And the overwhelming answer of both sides as they asked, what does the other side want? Was that the other side wants to eliminate me. That is something like 90%, 89%, I think, of Israelis, 90% of Palestinians. The other side wants to Eliminate me in that situation. When you think that about the other side, you're already in the zero sum situation. And eliminating the other side is the only way to get out of that situation. And why wait around to see if they can succeed? Anyone who frames the conflict as zero sum, whether it's ideological and purposeful and with philosophical intent, or whether it's ordinary people responding to their frankly understanding of what the other side wants, wants the conflict to continue. When people say to Hamas, and there are interviews of Hamas officials on Al Jazeera where this question is asked, what do you think is going to happen? Do you think you can actually remove the Israelis? What if you can't remove the Israelis? Have you just destroyed Gaza? This was a question asked multiple times of Hamas officials back in the 2014 war. What Yikya Sinwar thought he was doing when he launched this war in a way that was guaranteed to bring the Israeli invasion, in a way that was guaranteed to decimate Gaza, because Hamas knew it was going to hunker down with Israeli hostages. It was going to. In that unprecedented tunnel network for the entirety of the war. What he thought he was doing was forcing the zero sum fight. One wins, one loses. Because when it comes down to it, when you're at bottom, when there's nowhere to go, God will make sure the correct side wins. So if God's on your side, if history arcs toward your justice, then zero sum makes sense, then forcing the point is an excellent way to force the victory that you believe is guaranteed. You get a lot of that similar kind of discourse on the right edge of religious Zionism in Israel. People like Ben gvir, people like Smotrich. And so who benefits from the conflict continuing? Anyone who thinks total victory is at hand, coupled with the thought that the other side wants to exterminate me so I don't have to take their feelings into consideration. They benefit. And there's a third group that benefits from the conflict continuing. And this group, up until now, I've talked about groups that I am very critical of. I think they're wrong. I think they do terrible harm for other interests. I don't think Palestinians are going to disappear. I don't think Israeli Jews are going to disappear. And everyone who plans for that is destroying everything. But there's a third group that isn't foreigners and it isn't extremists. It's ordinary Israelis and Palestinians who, because they believe the other side is coming for them, they view a continued capacity to fight, a continued willingness to fight as essentially their most important Defense, if it's true, these polls that suggest that most Israelis think most Palestinians want them dead and gone, I'm not saying Israelis are right. You could judge whether they're right or wrong yourself. I'm just saying they're not stupid. There are good reasons for an Israeli to think that Palestinian politics are incapable of making peace, that it's all about permanent war. And if it's about permanent war, you're either advancing or retreating. And so you better be advancing. And there are a million data points on the Palestinian side, from settlement expansion to the rhetoric of the Israeli right wing ministers in this government, in this war, to tell them that the Israelis will not stop, that this is about, as the Israeli far right puts it, liberating the entirety of the land, rather than any possibility of peace in Israeli politics. And when you talk to Palestinians, serious, calm, thoughtful Palestinians, not diaspora elite activists at universities screaming catchphrases, but serious Palestinians on the ground who live with Israelis, who know Hebrew, who understand what's happening to them, and you talk to them and you say, do you think the Israelis are capable? They will tell you, look, there are peacemaking, peace loving Israelis. They don't run the place. And when you talk to Israelis about Palestinians in the other direction, again, normal Israelis, normative, good people, decent people trying to live their lives and make their living for their families. And you say to them, what do you think? And they will tell you, look, there are decent, good Palestinians. I have one who works with me in my office. I have my doctor, I have my this, I have my that. We interact in a city like Jerusalem, Jews and Palestinians can't avoid each other. Ditto Jaffa, ditto Haifa. But ultimately, the only thing their politics can produce is Hamas. Now that's what ordinary, decent, liberal, even sometimes quite progressive people on both sides will tell you. I don't want to call it a benefit. They feel the conflict is a tragedy, but they feel that to be strong and armed and willing and ready to fight is the least tragic outcome available to them. So who benefits from continuing the Israeli Palestinian conflict? Everybody who thinks God's going to win it for them and so push it to the brink. They don't even think they're being selfish. If the Palestinians don't win this, Hamas ideologues say Islam itself is set back. The redemption of the world is set back. The honor and dignity of 2 billion Muslims is at stake. And if you talk to the small, to each edge of the religious Zionist movement, you will learn that an Israeli taking of the entirety of the land promised by God is the beginning of the redemption of the world. And you have the foreign powers, which is easier to see and more obvious because we're all trained to see them. And then you have the ordinary people, the ordinary people who just don't see a way out. And if you don't see a way out, you fight.