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Episode 98: What Israel’s founding fathers knew about terrorism, with Dr. Bruce Hoffman
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Welcome to an exciting new episode of Ask Khabiv Anything. Today we're going to discuss an intriguing chapter in Jewish and Israeli history. We're going to talk about terrorism during the British Mandate. The British Mandate period begins with General Allenby's triumphant conquest of Jerusalem in 1917. It ends on May 14, 1948. That's the day of the Israeli declaration of independence. It's the day, of course, of the expiration of the British Mandate when the last British governor departs from Haifa while the sound of gunfire being exchanged by Israeli and Jordanian snipers is already ringing out in the Jerusalem hills. Here to take us on a deep dive is Dr. Bruce R. Hoffman, a professor at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. The Shelby column and Katherine W. Davis, senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security on the Council on Foreign Relations. He's worked in think tanks, he's worked in academia. He has a doctorate from Oxford. He's, he's one of America's premier analysts of terrorism, counterterrorism, insurgency, counterinsurgency. And the specific book we're going to dive into is his 2014 book, Anonymous Soldiers, which I highly recommend. It's wonderfully written. It opened up for me new ways of thinking about the Etzel, the Irgun, sometimes it's called, and the Lehi, two Jewish militias in pre stayed Israel who, who raised some really fundamental and fascinating questions today about the nature of warfare, the nature of terrorism. The book won two great awards, the National Jewish Book Award in 2015 and the Washington Institute's Gold Medal. Before we get into it, I want to tell you that we have a beautiful sponsorship for this episode. This episode is sponsored by Carmela and Uzi Levine of San Francisco, who asked to dedicate the episode to the memory of Niv Raviv and Yirael Zini, a young couple who were brutally murdered by Hamas near their home in kfar Aza on October 7, 2023. Sadly, they never met Nev or Nirhail, but they heard of the tragic story from Tamir Aviv, Niamh's mom. Niamh and Nirhal met during their army service and moved to Kfar aza in early 2023. On October 10, 2015, while serving in the IDF, Niriel was severely wounded during an operation and from then on, every 10th of October became a special day for the family of celebrating and marking Nehel's survival and rehabilitation. On October 10, 2023, Mirel was planning to celebrate that day by proposing to Niamh. He never got the Chance, Nev. Was pursuing a master's degree in psychology and hoped to become a therapist in their memory. Niamh's mother, Tami, founded the Nev Nir El center in Bethyanai, a town just north of Netanya on the Mediterranean coast, in collaboration with Dr. Kfir Pfeffer. The center is a tranquil sanctuary on the Mediterranean Sea which offers world class post trauma treatment to combatants and survivors who desperately need it. The Niral center is the only place in Israel that operates an intensive daycare program as well as a research unit that hopes to create a protocol that will allow the center's successes and in post trauma rehabilitation to be replicated. It's truly moving and inspiring to see how Tammy has been able to channel this bottomless sadness into a project of care, hope and love. A ray of light for a nation that is still in search of healing. Friends, I also would like to invite everyone to join our Patreon community. It helps us keep the lights on. Uh, if you're interested in asking the questions that guide the topics we choose to talk about, that's where it happens. And you get to be part of our monthly live streams where I answer your questions live. You can join us at patreon.com askhavivanything the link is in the show notes. Bruce, how are you?
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B
Very well. How about you Aviv?
- [04:05]
A
Good, good. So glad you're here. Really happy to have come across this book which, which went under my radar at the time. Let's put on the historian hat and ask set the scene for us. The British take Palestine from the Ottomans in 1917. They're on opposite sides of World War I. Walk us through quickly to May 1948 when the British flag is lowered and you depict it beautifully in the opening of the book where mournful bagpipe is played and the last British governor goes home. Walk us through that history really quickly so people know where we are. Sure.
- [04:42]
B
Well, like many episodes of contemporary affairs in history, Britain's rule of Palestine began on an extraordinarily optimistic and happy note. I mean, you have to go back to World War I where there had been several thrusts by the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, which was the British led force attempting to liberate the holy land since 1914 that had failed. And then General Sir Edmund Allenby, a failed commander on the battlefields of the Western Front in Europe, is reassigned to what he thinks is a demotion or a career stopper to take over to take the reins of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force. Because obviously the British were based In Egypt then, so very forlornly and reluctantly he goes to the Middle east thinking his career is over and he finds his metier, he finds his that his skills in, he was a cavalryman and in the static trench warfare of the Western Front In World War I, of course he was stymied. But in the vast open deserts and plains of the Sinai, of Gaza, of the Negev, he really finds his calling and engineers a series of successful battles that conquer Gaza that had resisted conquest by the British on several occasions during World War I, then executes a brilliant Coup d' Amain in Beersheva, attacks the Turkish forces using the Australian Light Horse from the rear and then marches on Jerusalem. Now, not only did he see his assignment as a demotion, but he was given an impossible task because the Prime Minister, British Prime Minister Lloyd George tells him, you have to conquer Jerusalem by Christmas. Because of course it's 1917, World War I has been dragging on for three years. British forces have suffered terribly, not just in the Western Front but in Gallipoli, for example. And Allenby is told, you've got to give the British people this, Philip, this boost in morale by seizing Jerusalem by Christmas. And he delivers, he conquers Jerusalem at the beginning of December 1917. He's welcomed as a liberator. Of course, the previous month Britain had issued the Balfour Declaration, which was the statement of policy sent by the Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Edmund Rothschild, the head of the Zionist Organization in Britain, that commits the United Kingdom to facilitating the establishment in Palestine of a Jewish national home on the condition that it does not prejudice the rights of the existing inhabitants. That's more or less a, you know, a verbatim description of the Balfour Declaration because he is enormously elastic. So of course Palestine had suffered terribly under World War, During World War I, under the Turks, I mean, the forests had been stripped bare, farmland had been eroded and crops, you know, grabbed without any sort of view to sustaining them by the Ottoman Empire. So Palestine was in a very bad shape and here come the British and there's this open mindedness that they're going to restore for the first time in four centuries Christian rule to the Holy Land, to Jerusalem, the city contested by all the Abrahamic faiths. So it begins very optimistically and with his tremendous success and within basically three years things begin to unravel that once the first Jewish immigrants under this particular aliyah arrive in Palestine, a very modest number, it immediately triggers Arab fears that Palestine will be taken over by the Jews. And we have the, the Nebi Musa Riots in Jerusalem in 1920, that was basically an, you know, a religious march descends into mass rioting directed against Jews. And the Arab police force, mutinies, joins the rioters. There's no protection. And this sets in motion the idea that the Yishuv, the Jewish settlement in Palestine, or the Jewish community in Palestine as it was known at the time, requires a self defense force. And the leading exponent of that was someone named Vladimir Jabotinsky. And Jabotinsky organizes what becomes the embryo or the nucleus of the Haganah, which of course was what produced the idf, the Israel Defense Forces. However, Jabotinsky, as well as the instigator of the riot, someone named Haj Amin Al Husseini, who would subsequently be appointed the Mufti of Jerusalem, or as he styled himself, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, are both arrested and tried for violence for offenses against civil order, and both given prison terms. And in 1921, there's an additional set of riding, this time not in Jerusalem, in the Old City, but in Tel Aviv, exactly on the seam zone between Tel Aviv and Jaffa. And this results in the end of the British occupation government and the creation of the British Mandatory Authority. And one of the architects of the Balfour Declaration, Sir Herbert Samuel, a leading Liberal Party member of the British Cabinet, perhaps next to Rothschild, the most prominent Jew in Britain, is named the first High Commissioner. And in retrospect, this may have been a mistake, because as a Jewish person, as an architect of the Balfour Declaration, the new the first High Commissioner is intent on proving his equanimity and equality to all peoples. So he pardons Jabotinsky as well as Hajimeen Al Husseini, and then appoints Hajimeen Al Husseini the Mufti, or the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, as he called himself. And thereafter, you see a period of uncommon quiet settle over Palestine during the 1920s. But during that period, a younger generation of Arab Palestinians start to reject the counsel of their elders and start to gravitate around the new leadership offered by a more radical and extremist individual, which was Haj Amin, who believed that Arabs must actively resist the Zionist enterprise in Palestine. And over those eight years, Haj Amin consolidates his influence. And we have the 1929 riots, which are a game changer for Palestine. Firstly, rather than being confined to just the old City of Jerusalem or the border between Jaffa and Tel Aviv, this becomes a countrywide uprising. And it doesn't target the new communities established by Jewish immigrants that are fairly well defended, but the old ancient communities in hebron and Sifat of very devout Jews who. Helpless, defenseless Jews who were targeted. Now the one thing about my book and the perspective is that I relied very heavily on British documents. I also did research, of course, in the Israeli archives and in the US archives. But basically the story it tells is how political violence, what we might call terrorism from both sides, influenced British policy. And when you read the British reports of the 1929 riots, I mean, they really read as something akin to what we saw of a social media in the 43 minute clip that the Ministry of Foreign affairs prepared about October 7th. I mean, wanton, cruel, absolutely heinous acts of violence, the murder, execution, rape, all those kinds of things that we saw in October, October 7th occur in 1929. And this triggers Jabotinsky to think differently, that it's not enough just to have a reactive self defense force. And of course, Haganah is the Hebrew word for defense. And he argues that when the next clash comes, which he believed was inevitable. And don't forget Jabotinsky was the author of the famous 1923 article that an iron wall had to be built between the Jews and the Arabs in order for the Zionist enterpr to survive. He argues that an offensive capability will be necessary. And from the 1929 riots and from dissidents in the Haganah that believe a more aggressive force is needed, the Irgunsvail, the national military organization emerges. The 1930s are another period, the early 1930s, that is of relative quiet in Palestine. In fact, economically, Palestine prospers enormously. You just have to walk around Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Jerusalem, the YMCA building, the King David Hotel, what's now the Waldorf Astoria was the Palace Hotel, the Rockefeller Museum. You see all these beautiful architectural gems that fortunately still exist. And you see in Tel Aviv the Bauhaus movement and some of the beautiful architecture around Tel Aviv. So lots of money is actually flowing into Palestine and investment. But also with the rise of Hitler to power In Germany in 1933, Jewish immigration increases significantly and then over the succeeding two years increases dramatically. And that sparks the 1936 Arab rebellion, which lasts until 1939, in which Oren Kessler, of course, has written a brilliant book that also won the Jewish Jewish Book award, a Palestine 1936, which is a great companion to my book. And the Arab rebellion is significant for two principal reasons in our discussion. Firstly, it's not just attacks against Jews and not just organized opposition to Zionism. This is a major revolt against British rule precisely at a time when the British government is very Concerned that war is going to break out in Europe with Nazi Germany, but also in the Far east against Imperial Japan. And Britain does not want to be caught with internal security having its troops. There were tens of thousands. I think roughly it was 30,000 British troops on duty in Palace Palestine trying to suppress the Arab rebellion. When these two wars are going likely to be fought very soon, both in the European continent and in the Far East. The second element that's important to us to understand is this is when in 1937, the Irgun commences offensive operations and begins to, in essence, implement the biblical invocation of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It engages in very similar acts of violence that the Arabs had engaged in, particularly bab bombs placed in crowded suks or marketplaces, attacks on trains, attacks on vehicles. To kind of sum up that period and move on to conclude with the 1940s, Britain decides that it militarily defeats and brutally suppresses the Arab rebellion. But it decides it's got to put in place political measures to ensure the rebellion will not arise again. And we have the 1939 white paper, which essentially vitiates the Balfour Declaration. Soft Jewish immigration to Palestine, says that for the next five years, a grand total of only 75,000 Jews will be able to emigrate to Palestine. This is in 1939, at the direst moment in the history of the Jewish peoples. And World War II breaks out. Jabotinsky immediately calls on the Irgun, which they abide by, to declare a truce to cease active operations against the British. And in fact, the Irgun's commander at the time, David Raziel, perishes on a secret mission for the British army in Iraq to blow up these strategic oil fields, but also to attempt to kidnap the Mufti of Jerusalem who had fled Palestine during the Arab rebellion. And for the next five years, basically the focus is on winning the war. Now, in late 1943, a corporal attached to General Vladislav Anders, Polish army in exile, coincidentally arrives in Palestine, and his name is Menachem Begin. And one of the remarkable stories, I think, is how you have a corporal with absolutely no military experience. I mean, Begin had been trained as a lawyer, had worked at what was then less pejoratively known as a propagandist. We would call them someone now who's a strategic communications director for Bayt Har, which was in essence, the youth group of the new Zionist Organization, which was Jabotinsky's rival group to the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency. So Begin is very skilled at communications Information operations, as you might call it today. But he's a lowly corporal in an army that has never fought. He arrives in Palestine, he finds the Irgun in disarray because Raziel had been killed in 1941 and takes the helm and decides that the war now at the beginning of 1944 is very clearly in the Allies favor and it's just a matter of time for victory. And resolves to prise open the gates to Palestine that have been closed off to Jewish immigration. And the Irgun resumes its revolt in February 1944 with the bombing of the immigration offices in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Very symbolic as they're enforcing this ban, the land registry offices. Because of course, in 1940, as part of the 1939 White Paper, very severe restrictions had been placed on Jewish land purchase, which let me say, people always claim that the Jews stole the land in Palestine. All that land was purchased. And there were great restrictions even in normal times on the amount of land Jews could purchase. And the land registry offices. So very symbolic attacks and begin resolves that this uprising will be different from all other ones, that it will not target human life. It will only target inanimate symbols of British rule over Palestine. In parallel to that, we have the Lehi, the Lohemi, here at Yisrael, Freedom fighters for Israel, led by Avraham Stern, who had been one of Raziel's lieutenants. Stern was very steeped in the history of the Irish rebellion against British rule, the 1916 Easter uprising, which occurs in the midst of World War I. And Stern's philosophy is that with Britain consumed with fighting World War II, now is the time to rise up against the British government not to abide by the truce that Jabotinsky and the Irgun have declared. And he creates this splinter group that was known to the British as the Stern Gang. I mean, they're dismissed as a bunch of bank robbers and crooks. But this is a particularly interesting organization because it had its own moral code as well. Its code was firstly to engage in individual assassination of the British policemen or statesmen or government officials that are responsible for administering the mandate. And also its belief is not entirely realistic is in creating an anti imperialist new Middle east that would unite Jews and Arabs so that there would be sort of this joint anti imperial imperial body also. The other thing is that the Lehi may have been one of the few groups. I've been studying terrorism now for 50, literally for 50 years. And I think the Lechi is one of the very few groups that Actually admitted at the time that it used terrorist tactics and was completely open about that and said, we're trying to terrorize the British into leaving. And of course, one of the lehi's most infamous or most important operations was the assassination of Lord Moyne, the British minister resident responsible for all British policy in the Middle east, close friend of Winston Churchill. He was assassinated on November 1944. And what the book discusses controversially, I think, is that Winston Churchill had been prepared. He was the Prime Minister, of course, during World War II. Winston Churchill was a lifelong friend of the Jews. In fact, his first election in Manchester during the Boer War in the early 1900s was for a constituency that had a large Jewish population. He was always a Zionist, always supported Zionist. And in 1943, Churchill had put together a special cabinet committee to investigate how to resolve the conflict over the Holy Land and arrive at some political resolution. And ironically, Moyn was assassinated on a Tuesday, the first Tuesday in November 1944, to coincide with the US elections, where it was expected that Franklin Roosevelt would be elected to a fourth term, which he was. And part of Lechi's strategy was to knock the US election off the front pages with the Moyne assassination. But as I said, Moyn was a very close personal friend and political ally of Churchill. Churchill was a longtime friend of Zionism, Told Chaim Weizmann, first President of Israel and one of the fathers of Israel and of Zionism, that he had stacked this special committee with all of the Jews friends in the British government. And basically he. On the Sunday before. So basically, two days before Moyn was assassinated, he told Weizmann at Checkers at the Prime Minister's retreat that the Cabinet was about to be presented with a plan that would result in the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. And in Churchill's vision, the next Big Three meeting, he would raise this issue and would get the buy in of both Stalin and the Soviet Union and Roosevelt in the United States to jointly all three countries would impose this settlement on Palestine. So history could have been completely different had Lord Moy not been assassinated. The loss of Churchill's dear friend meant that Churchill never really spoke out in favor of Zionism again. I mean, of course, after 1945, he was in the opposition. He wasn't Prime Minister anymore. But the Jews lost a great friend from that incident. Then, just to wrap up with the end of World War II in 1945, the Haganah Etzel and the Lechi join in a united resistance movement, the Teno Ata Hameri, and coordinate operations and there was always tension in that relationship. And I'm sure we'll explore this later, the bombing of the King David Hotel in July 1946 was carried out as part of that relationship. And then the book basically argues that the activities of the Irgud in particular, of Etzel in particular, I mean, Lehi was really not as consequential, except in a negative sense with the Moyn assassination. But that, in my view, Etzel, under the leadership of Begin, who proved himself to be a very effective strategist, certainly sped up the clock, deprived Britain of the time to arrange its withdrawal from Palestine in such a way as it would have preferred, which is to say that Palestine become an Arab state very similar to the Emirate of Jordan, or Transjordan as it was known then. Very closely tied to Britain through treaties, through relationships. Of course, the commander of the Arab Legion then was John Pasha Gloves, a British officer. So Begin sped up the clock, deprived the British of that opportunity. And I also think had a huge impact on Britain's strategic calculus in the Middle East.
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A
Okay, that was a lot. I had like three or four prompts to get you to get to this point. But it was, it was perfect. You focus in on three events. The big three events, right, the bombing of the King David Hotel, the assassination of Lord Moyne, which, you know, just to double down on, on the tension and the sense that, you know, Weizmann understood the. The deep crisis that the Lord Moyne assassination meant for the Zionist movement in British, among British Imperial leadership. That opens the Cezon, the so called hunting season in which the Haganah goes out and sometimes rather brutally suppresses the Etzel and the Lechi, because they had no, just the Etzel, sorry, just the Ezel.
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B
I'll explain why. That's a very important point you make. Yeah.
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A
So please.
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B
Oh, well, I mean, this is the interesting thing. Lechi was responsible for the assassination of Lord Moyne. And you're absolutely right to focus on Weizmann's reaction. In fact, Weizmann told Churchill that the murder of Lord Moyne had seared him as much as the loss of Weizmann's own son, who was serving with the Royal Air Force Force during World War II and perished in a bombing mission. So the Jewish Agency, which in essence was the representative of the Jewish community in Palestine at the time, is pressured now to take action against the terrorists, particularly, one would expect, against Lehi. But no, they see Etzel and the new Zionist organization that had been founded by the revisionists, as they're called. By Jabotinsky, who himself had died in 1940 or 1941. They decide to go after their main rival to use the Moyne assassination as an excuse. And I mean, they kidnapped, in many instances, tortured for information, members of the Etzel. And this is a dark chapter in Jewish and Zionist history.
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A
But why did they not go after the Lehi? Didn't they also. I'm sorry, I'm revealing here a little lacuna. Why did they literally not go after the lechi? They left them completely out. It was just a power struggle between the two larger groups.
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B
Well, and it was rationalized that they'll take out the bigger terrorist threat as it were posed by Etzel, which was more numerous. I mean, we're talking about the Etzel had. I mean, these numbers are very hard to have.
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A
2000, 1500, something like that.
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B
And Lechi was a few hundred. And then they argued they would turn on the lechi, but the lechi were always peripheral. They just weren't large enough to have the impact that the Etzel did. And I would argue too that they didn't have a leader like beginning who as I said, was a true strategist and understood, as we know today, the nexus between communications and political violence. I mean, terrorism.
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A
So let's get into it. So these three moments, specifically the bombing of the King David Hotel, assassination of Lord Moyne and the hanging of the two British sergeants, these were events that, if you could just tell us really quickly about them, we heard about Lord Moyne, the King David Hotel and the hanging of the sergeants that were the front pages of British newspapers. Very dramatic on British public opinion and engineered to drive British public opinion. Tell us about that.
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B
Yes, I mean, that's exactly right. I mean, the King David Hotel was the nerve center of British rule of Palestine beyond any doubt. Firstly, the Palestine government was there. Basically about 80% of the hotel had been taken over during the Arab rebellion for the Palestine government secretary as British army headquarters or British military headquarters, I should say, for both Palestine and Transjordan, and also of the headquarters of both MI6, Britain's Foreign Intelligence Service, and MI5's Britain's Security Service. So unlike a lot of depictions in contemporary history, the King David Hotel was not an ordinary hostelry. That was just a hotel that the Irgun decided to bomb. As I said, it was the nerve center of British power. It was defended by 400 British troops. If you look at the contemporary maps, there were checkpoints, roadblocks, pillboxes, machine gun emplacements, barbed wire all over it but the British always wanted to convey as part of their own narrative, for their own information operations, a sense of normality that the situation in Palestine was under control and that the revolts of the Etzel and Lehi were not as consequential as anyone may believe where it was being reported it. So the King David Hotel tragically still had some rooms, but it's wonderful lobby was still open to take tea, its bar was open, its restaurants were open. And beneath the southwestern wing of the King David was Larry Jean's nightclub, which was always in operation. And begin and the Etzel, at the orders of the Haganah, decided to strike at this nerve center. There's a more complicated story that the Hagadah, well, there had been Operation Agatha or Black Sabbath, where in June 1946, in an attempt to bring Palestine to heel and end the Jewish rebellion, the British army had arrested 250 representatives of the Jewish Agency and seized all the documents in the Sakhmut Building, you know, in Jerusalem, but also in the offices in Tel Aviv. Many of those documents the Jewish Agency at Haganah feared would reveal this alliance with Etzel and Lehi. So they wanted them destroyed. So that was what the main reason for the bombing. And it's often been controversial.
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A
Sorry. The documents were held in the military intelligence office in the hotel, which I believe or minus one or something like that, in the northern.
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B
No upper floors. They were, they were on the floors of the wing, believe it or not.
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A
And then Haganah also then came and said, you know, we're canceling the operation. But the ETSA decided to go forward with it anyway. Walk us through. I mean, this is so contested and this itself could be four episodes. But just very briefly, walk us through the whole bombing story.
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B
Well, for well over a year, Etzel had warned that they were going to attack the King David. So this has some residents in modern times. It was a warning that was ignored and the British were confident of those defenses. And in essence, there's always been a controversy. Warnings were issued. Begin did seek to avoid the loss of life because there were many civilians there. There were civilian, Arab and Jewish as well as British employees of the British government. And that gave the British a false sense of security that the Edsel would never attack a target that risked Jewish casualties. And of course, I think it was 17 Jews died as part of the 91 persons who were killed that day. Very few of them were actually military. Most of them were civil servants, in fact. So warnings were issued. The timeframe that the warnings were issued has always been controversial. In the book, I kind of walk us through that and show that even though the warnings were issued, they were not nearly with enough time to affect the evacuation. And even if the King David had been evacuated, ironically, the shards of glass and broken masonry may well have killed even more people. So that's one of the ironies of it. But in essence, the warnings were never conveyed. Warnings were issued. They went to the switchboard of the hotel. They were never conveyed to British officials. And this has been documented in a lawsuit that the then chief secretary of the British Mandate, Sir John Shaw, brought against Begin when his book the Revolt was published in the early 1950s and private detectives scoured Israel and could not find anyone who could verify one of the big myths. That Sir John Shaw pulled out a pistol and told his staff to remain in place and said, I'm not here to take orders from Jews, I give orders to Jews. That is patently false and as the book shows, has been serially repeated and become an inflated lie. So we can debate whether it was terrorism or not. Two points on that. Firstly, as an historian, you have to. You can't. That imposed contemporary values and perspectives on historical events. This was an era when there was no hesitation in using the word terrorism. Unlike today, where every major newspaper and news out outlet camouflages the word terrorism or terrorist with resistance, liberation, with militants, with guerrillas, with gunmen and so on. Whether it was the New York Times or the London Times. The King David Hotel was described as an act of terrorism. At the time, As I said earlier, it was not an ordinary hotel. It was a bona fide military and intelligence target. But then we caught up with the question is who should bear responsibility for the 91 persons that perished in the attack, Even if that was not the intention. And that I think remains controversial to this day. But this goes back to your point about the Cezann. As Jews and Israelis, we have this enormous capacity for self reflection, I would argue, to critically assess even the darkest parts of our history. And one of the things the book also brings out is that Avraham Stern was so dedicated to the idea of removing British imperial colonial rule from the Middle east that he made overtures to the Nazis, that he sent an emissary to Beirut to meet with the Nazi ambassador to kind of make common cause to expel the British from Palestine. And then Germany could achieve its solution of the Jewish problem by allowing the Jews to emigrate to Palestine. I mean, these are controversial dark periods, but the work of Benny Morris, the work of Orrin Kessler, the Work of many other historians has shed light on them. And as you pointed out at the beginning, my book does not present this necessarily. It presents the warts as well as the successes of the struggle for Israel. And it won two major Jewish awards. I mean, the capacity to refle on one's history is enormously important. Yeah, King David remains controversial.
- [35:39]
A
I just, you know, to me, it's not a terrorist attack. It is a legitimate military target. It's hard to imagine a more legitimate military target where the, the, the attacker didn't take the measures they could have taken to prevent civilian harm. That's a particular kind of problem, but it's not terror. Terrorism, to me, is a moral marker of the targeting of civilians. So what the Etzel did before big in, I think, is unquestionably terrorism.
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B
Yeah, but our, even people who worked in the British Office of Taxation, for example, the Postmaster General, for instance, was killed in that attack.
- [36:16]
A
I mean, there's a complexity around the civilian architecture of imperial power, but the British don't get to rule another land and pretend like nobody's allowed to fight them for it.
- [36:29]
B
It. But, but don't forget the original. It was with enormous Jewish enthusiasm and consent that Britain came to Palestine. I mean, the Balfour Declaration was, was tied up with Allenby's conquest.
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A
Right. And then, and then the British Empire helped shepherd corral the Jews into the gas chambers and maintained that policy in 1943 when it knew what was happening 44, 45 after the war, when they were DPs in the British control. Bergen Belsen Jews are still living in bergen Belsen in 1948, as listeners to this podcast know very, very well. And at that point, I don't. You know, you can, by the way, be working hand in hand with the powers that be as a small people. What, what are your options? So, for example, when Stern sends an emissary to meet with a Nazi representative, this is a desperate man who thinks the Jews are going to be slaughtered or are being slaughtered.
- [37:21]
B
Well, don't forget his parrots were trapped in Poland.
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A
And Jabotinsky gives a speech Europe is about in Warsaw. The famous Warsaw speech. Europe is going to die. Ben Gurion explains to Palestinian leaders in the 30s when he meets with two Palestinian journalists in Geneva. I need to prepare for millions of refugees to come. These are desperate, desperate people. The Zionist tragedy is that they saw something catastrophic coming and everything was in that, right? So to judge them, it's not just to judge them based on different morals. If we completely ignore the fact that millions of Jews were about to die or were being systematically exterminated at that moment. And they were desperate but totally unable to do anything about it. They sent, what, three dozen commandos into Europe. The British actually didn't want more help from the Yishuv because it didn't want military organizations established in Yishuv to go fight the Nazis. Systematically. They were preparing for Rommel's push through North Africa to create a new Masada stand among the Jews of Palestine, because the Nazis had already established a special Einsatzgruppen Igiptum, or however you pronounce that in German, to eradicate the Jews of Palestine. That's the world in which these people are making these choices. So I'm sounding very defensive. My point is not to be defensive at all. There were moments, I think it's unquestionable to my mind that this was simply terrorism. Not just technically, but morally in all these different ways. But if you decontextualize the big thing, it's like there's a big thing thing and then there's a hundred little things. And if you only ever see the hundred little things and don't see the gigantic thing, you won't understand these people. And I'm not accusing you of that. That's in the book. That context is very much there.
- [39:02]
B
No, you're getting to the heart of, I think, what makes the book in this period of history so interesting. I mean, I would just say that two things. Firstly, terrorism back then was different than it is today. Airliners weren't hijacked, Twin Towers weren't brought down, but it was called terrorism. And again, from the historian's point of view then, as it was recorded in the papers, and also the Jewish Agency, David Ben Gurion, called Ezalachi terrorists. I mean, this, you know, So I. So again, the responsibility of a historian, terrorism is completely. Today, it's much more heinous. It may be even less justified given the constellation of circumstances that you describe, in which, of course, I emphasize in the book that this was the moral cause that animated Begin and why he was such a great leader, because this was the most urgent, tragic time in the history of Jews. But it's also a reflection. Having studied terrorism as long as I do, I think I have a different attitude towards the word. To me, it's a term that describes something that's not necessarily pejorative.
- [40:17]
A
Okay.
- [40:17]
B
But of course, seen is an enormously negative word right now, and that's dive
- [40:22]
A
into that, because to me, it's not the unavoidable civilian death Toll. And then we can argue about what's avoidable and what's not in a legitimate military campaign to achieve legitimate military objectives. Self defense, even preemptive. You know, these are all gray areas and I accept that. But literally 911 to me is terrorism. A suicide bombing targeting Israeli children on a 7:30am city bus in Jerusalem in 2001, which is a school bus for all intents and purposes, because Jerusalem kids take the city bus to school at the height of the peace process in order to torpedo the peace process because Hamas hated the idea that there would be two states. That to me is terrorism. It is the targeting of civilians. It is something especially heinous. And when Palestine. I by the way, say that when Palestinians target the idf, that's not terrorism, it's war. War. It's guerrilla war or it's some kind of. But it's. It. There's another moral sort of. There's a moral hierarchy where it is a step way down when you're targeting civilians to put for political ends. I think that's the FBI definition. So where am I wrong? Where does it get complicated?
- [41:31]
B
Well, because you're applying a 21st century lens and 21st century terrorist incidents. I mean schoolchildren, Warren killed almost anywhere in terrorism back then, terrorism was a very different phenomena. But I think we have to be clear of terrorism as general definition is acts of violence undertaken by non state actors in the pursuit of political ends. Let's say in a very narrow definition. As I said, it was widely viewed as terrorism even by the leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine. And there was what Etzel and Lahi did. What I'm trying to point out in the book is exactly those ambiguities. And I don't think we can resolve them, but I think it's important to acknowledge that there was this moral imperative. But also at the time though these groups were seen as operating outside of the mainstream of Zionist diplomacy and policy. They were the only. I mean, what would you make.
- [42:38]
A
Sorry.
- [42:39]
B
No, please.
- [42:40]
A
What would you make of the argument that when the Etzel targeted the King David. My feeling, okay, based on dealing with this stuff over the years, but. But nevertheless it's. Let's leave it at just. My feeling is that that is 100% a legitimate operation. And now you can critique any detail about it. And the detail about it includes civilian dead. It's a very big detail. But. But the fundamental legitimacy of the operation is unquestionable to my mind. And when the Etzel bombed marketplaces, Arab marketplaces, that was fundamentally not legitimate. It wasn't the targeting of Arab forces, police, British imperial administration or forces. It was literally to kill Arab civilians. That was a moment that was illegitimate. There's a gulf there and I want a word to describe that gulf. Well, we got philosophical.
- [43:37]
B
What, you know, civilians died. And this was what differentiated the Haganah, which eventually became the IDF from Etzel and Lehi, is that it did avoid harming British taking any British life. I mean, blew up all the bridges, for instance, connecting Palestine with the outside world. Blew up Coast Guard stations, for example. You're right that the intention of the King David was not to kill people. But I would say that, you know, terrorism, like war, is easy to begin but difficult to control. And the result is often tragic, most tragic to civilians. So does that. Even if, if the Etzel and Begin did not intend to kill civilians, but civilians died, does that absolve them of that responsibility, especially when they had to
- [44:23]
A
have known that would be part of the result?
- [44:25]
B
Well, or that there was a high risk? I mean, again, there's imperfect solutions to these questions, which is what makes them fascinating. But for instance, if an Israeli diplomat is blown up overseas, is that terrorism or is that war?
- [44:41]
A
The killing of Ambassador Algov in London, which precipitated the second, the First Lebanon
- [44:46]
B
War by the Abu Dhab Organization. And Interesting, yeah, I mean, but that was seen as an act of terrorism.
- [44:53]
A
I think of that as terrorism, terrorist strategy.
- [44:56]
B
But how can we look at the assassination of Lord Moyne differently? And what the book makes even more complex is that even at the time, with both the assassination of Lord Moyne and the King David Hotel, I would argue that both groups had moral qualms about this as well. Because in the aftermath of the Moyne assassination, a mythology was constructed that Lord Moyne was an unrequited, a vicious anti Semite, which was not true. But to justify the assassination, by the same token, lots of stories were created about the King David, that Sir John Shaw won a libel case, that he did not pull out a pistol and wave it in front of people and tell them not to leave the King David. So there was even the self reflection then to me, what encapsulates this whole phenomena and actually, whether it's 21st century or 20th century, was something that another future prime minister of Israel, in addition to Begin, Itzhak Shamir, who was the operations chief of Lechi Said, when he had two 19 year olds, Eliyahu Betsuri and Eliyahu Hakim, who he sent to Cairo to murder Lord Mo and he Famously said, a man who goes forth to kill another must believe one thing only, that by his deed he will change the course of history. And this is why we have political violence, because it is designed to change the course of history exactly as you're describing.
- [46:27]
A
Okay, I want to. That's fascinating. And I'm a little upset that I don't have all the answers in their total finality. I want to. I want to get into something really fascinating that you raise in the book at length, which is, and we touched on it already, which is the way that, especially begging among these leaders what he called the Glass House strategy, where the goal was to generate friction with the British, to force. Force the British to oppress, to, you know, kill, to suppress, and to make those very visible on the world stage in a way that turns British oppression, British tactical wins on the ground, into basically strategic losses diplomatically in terms of public opinion in Britain and in the West. The Glass House strategy. Can you tell us about that? And then. And then I want to dive deeper into it because. Because this terrorism was primarily, before anything else, a propaganda war.
- [47:30]
B
Exactly. And it reflected Begin's background and experience in information operations. Well, his book the Revolt, I think, is one of the seminal treatises on uprisings, on rebellions, of the nexus between violence, political violence and communication as a form of violent communication. And. And what also I think, you know, I'm going to go against my. Well, what also I think is interesting is that what made the Etzel's campaign and leches to an extent, but especially Etzel, is that the violence was always choreographed for a purpose. It was designed to reach a wider audience. There had been many revolts against British rule in many of Britain's colonial possessions. The Sepoy rebellion in the 18, middle of the 19 19th century, uprisings in Cyprus, in Africa and so on. But this was the first one that went outside the locus of conflict and appealed to an audience beyond the footlights, especially at the end of World War II, to an audience in Moscow, in Paris, in London, in Washington, but also in New York. A lot is said about the United nations and its attitudes to terrorism today. Begin deliberately choreographed a lot of the Edsel's operations to have an impact on the fledgling United nations organization that was then meeting in New York. And one of his successes is that he was granted two audiences with the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine, which basically reached the same conclusion that the Royal Peel Commission had come to in 1937, and that is in contemporary times known as the two state solution. That only the Partition of the Holy Land into separate Jewish and Arab states could hold out any prospect for peace. But it's remarkable that Begin was as the leader of an underground movement, a small underground movement was granted two audiences with UNSCOP to put the Etzels case before them, which shows the effectiveness of his campaign to focus worldwide attention on Palestine. And that was the how did the
- [49:42]
A
one achieve the other? Begin was hated by the British. The Union still needed the British to coordinate with the British, collaborate with the British. The Americans wanted something different from the British. There was tension there, but nevertheless, you couldn't do things without the British in the room. How was the hated Menachem Begin invited into the UNSCOP surreptitious meetings between the
- [50:04]
B
chair of UNSCOP and Begin. He was not obviously invited to any of the formal sessions that were conducted in the YMCA building, in fact. So this had to be a surreptitious meeting. But the fact that the chair of UNSCOP felt he had to reach out to Begin was a. Was a tremendous success. And then to finish the answer to the Glass House. So it was partially to get the world looking into Palestine. But Begin understood that Britain as a liberal democracy could be pushed just so far that it would not resort to the heinous collective punishments and mass executions that the Nazis, for example, had resorted to in years Europe. And that was his goal is to push Britain to the breaking point where the population would say it's not worth staying there. Give it up. And that goes back to your earlier question about the significance of the hanging of the two sergeants in August 1947. All imperial powers believe they can break the will of a resistance by resorting to capital punishment. And interestingly, although I think it was 147 Arabs were hanged executed during the Arab rebel rebellion by the summer of 1947. So the final months before in September 1947, Britain announces to the United nations it's leaving by the following May, and that's the creation of Israel in May 1948. So in the final months before Britain makes that announcement and reaches that decision, the British military commander decides to get tough with the Etzel and Lachey and signs off on the execution of. At that stage it was three members of ETZ Metzl. Begin says that if you execute those three members again, eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, we will execute your soldiers. But there's an important precedent to this. In January 1947, a British military court had sentenced an underage, an adolescent member of the irgun who was 16. The defense emergency regulations that were used by the British to brutally suppress the Arab rebellion were also applied against the Etzel and Lachis. And one of them was the death penalty for carriage of arms. But this etzel fighter was 16 years old. So instead the British military court sentenced him to be flogged, which was something that was common during colonial times. And Begin said, for centuries you have been whipping natives in their own country. This will not happen in Eretz Israel. We will not stand for it. And if you whip this 16 year old, we will whip your office. And true to his word, after the 16 year old is whipped by the British authorities, Begin kidnaps four British army and RAF officers and flogs them. And in the book I show that this was the incident that really began to shift not just the. Well, British public's attitudes towards getting out of Palestine dramatically shifted after the King David Hotel. You have editorials in all the major British newspapers saying, enough, enough, this isn't worth staying here. But the British government is determined to hold on to Palestine because it wanted the deep water port of Haifa for the Royal Navy for two reasons. Firstly, the oil pipeline from Kirkuk in Iraq, the Iraqi Petroleum Company's pipeline went to Haifa. So this is where the British Navy stopped to get its oil, but also to protect the Suez Canal, which still in the late 1940s, the British were regarded as the lifeline to its empire. So the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Viscount Montgomery Montgomery of Alamein, and the Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevan, were determined that whatever happened in the future of Palestine, Britain would retain its military basing rights, such as it had in Jordan after the flogging. You could see this in the documents. In February 1947, all of a sudden, both Bevin and Montgomery begin to think, maybe it's worth staying in Palestine. And then it's the hangings of those two sergeants in August 1947 in retaliation for the execution of the Etzel members, that produces widespread anti Jewish riots in every major British city. And where the government of Clement Attlee just weeks later announces to the un, we're done with Palestine.
- [54:35]
A
So terrorism works?
- [54:40]
B
It does. Well, I think we have to admit it always does. I mean, look at Israel today. I mean Israel is, you know, more shunned, more isolated, exactly as hamas intended with October 7th. It may not work in a strategic level, thankfully. It's very rare that terrorists have come to power through their violent campaigns, but certainly in pressuring governments in undermining the resolve of the population to support government policies, often in the war of narratives, the war of ideas. Terrorism does succeed. It's not the failed strategy that many scholars. I mean this is why my book is so controversial. Scholars and policies, and probably why it didn't sell very well is in 2014 and 15 when ISIS was running rampant across the Levant, for example, and there was an Islamic State, one wanted to hear that historically terrorism is not the failed strategy that scholars, statesmen and others argue it is.
- [55:46]
A
It's a monumentally significant strategy. And look at what 9, 11 wrought in the world. It'll take historians 50 years to figure out the balance between the good and the bad. The upending of a lot of assumptions in the Middle east that may, maybe, maybe are going to Dr. You know, in the sense that suffering drives real reform, maybe will drive better outcomes in the future. But I mean it worked in the sense of the upheaval that it was meant to cause and it did indeed cause it. I don't know if Al Qaeda is happy with the net result in the Middle east, but it changed the world fundamentally. Terrorism is a tool that if you use it intelligently and you use it with a very, very clear headed, clear eyed propaganda, understanding, information, war understanding can deliver for you tremendous results. Right. So in Gaza for example, the Israelis very much won the ground war, especially if you expand it to the proxy system to the Iranians. Hamas is no longer a threat to Israel. It's only a threat to Gaza at this point because nobody knows how to rebuild a Gaza that Hamas controls. But Hamas won the war it fought, which was a terrorism spark terrorism driven information war. And so the, the, we need to pay a lot of attention to terrorism a lot more. We maybe dismiss it. We don't necessarily believe, believe that the west can do things about terrorism too. But in fact terrorism can drive massive policy and lead the British Empire to pull out of Palestine.
- [57:12]
B
Well, Havib, you've hit a couple of nails right on the head. I mean, firstly, let's think about the two seminal events of the 20th and 21st centuries. The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Habsburg throne in Sarajevo in June 1914 set in motion what at the time was the world First World War and a great conflagration that changed the world. September 11, 2001, a terrorist act sets in motion. Just as you've eloquently described the change in the world we have today. That's the first thing. Second thing is maybe where you really hit the nail on the head is think about it and you described it exactly right, Right. Nowadays terrorists are not for something, they're generally against something. They want to destroy peace processes, they want to pull down established orders. They want to create chaos, as you described. I mean, that in part was certainly Bin Laden's goal, and you could argue on October 7th that was also a goal of Hamas. Begin did not want to create chaos. He had a specific outcome, a very specific outcome in mind, as you described earlier. And the book also recounts a dire time in Jewish history where there was a true genocide unfolding in Europe. And so maybe one of. I have to think more about this. But one of the ways that we understand terrorism is what its purpose and what its outcome is for and whether it's towards creating something or towards destroying something. And that's a very important dichotomy that we're bringing out between 21st and 20th century forms of political violence.
- [58:51]
A
Violence. This, this goes to your point. I think you call it the ethics of efficacy. What do we do with the ethics of terrorism if it works? What do. What do we do with it if we ourselves. And I'm very proud that the Jews understood how to play the British Empire after the British Empire felt that it could play the Jews and the Arabs and run the world and have all the benighted provincials right doing their business bidding. And then the Jews, and not just the Jews, different groups, different places. I think the MAU MAU rebellion is a useful chapter in this whole saga. But nevertheless, the Jews showed that they could actually play the British Empire in response, and the British didn't. The civilians didn't deserve to die at any point, but the British Empire deserved to be played by this desperate little refugee people that they themselves were callously playing for imperial interests. And that's my feeling toward those events. So as just. I think that's a very mainstream Israeli perspective on those yields years. The moment my people were using terrorism, I think again not every moment, not every act, I think it was fundamentally justified, necessary and drove one of the great liberations of human history. So how do we understand the ethics of terrorism when it works?
- [60:11]
B
It may be one of those questions we can never understand because there's not one single variant of terrorism. It comes in a variety of shapes and sizes and was things that might conform to just war theory and then on the other hand violate serially just war theory. So we may never come to any kind of conclusion. What I always go back to is an article that was published in April 1975 in Foreign affairs by David Frumpkin, who wrote the great book A Peace to End all peace about how the modern Middle east was born. But he also had a lot to say about terrorism. And in this article, article which is over 50 years old, but his point is exactly right. He said the way we define terrorism depends upon whether we identify and sympathize with the perpetrator and that it's not terrorism, it's liberation, it's resistance, it's justified, or whether we sympathize and identify with the victim and then because of that targeting it becomes terrorism. So this has always been the problem is, you know, basically where you sit is how you stand on, on this issue. As an academician, as an historian, as an analyst of terrorism, I have tried not to view it pejoratively or positively, but as a phenomena of national security that is often ignored, is often dismissed and discounted and shouldn't have been. And in fact, that's the reason I got involved in this field in the first place. I was a freshman in College College in September 1972. And while everyone was at the freshman events, I was glued to a television that was in a wood box that had rabbit ears watching the Munich Olympic tragedy unfold. And of course, tactically that was a tremendous failure. The Black Septemberists, the members of the elite unit formed by Yasser Arafat, weren't able to free any of the prisoners held in Israel or to free German Bader Meinhof terrorists. But strategically it was an enormous success. It put the PLO on the map. I mean, the next year Yasser Arafat is invited to address the United Nations General Assembly. The following year, the PLO is granted observer status in the United Nations. And by the end of the 1970s, the PLO, a non state actor, has diplomatic relations with more countries than Israel, the establishment established nation state. So it's that effect of terrorism that has always interested me. And I try to look at it as a doctor looks at cancer, for example, and no one's comfortable with cancer as a term, but we have to call it what it is and that's how we can dissect and understand it.
- [63:04]
A
So let me suggest how I sort of navigate these waters when I have to talk about them, which is literally my profession. So I have to do it all the time. And then I want to get one last question and we'll finish. Finish. Thank you for your time. And, and this has been wonderful and fascinating. And I learned new things from this book which, you know, I'm an arrogant Israeli to learn new things in English about, you know, I want to suggest that what.
- [63:30]
B
That's great Praise. So thank you.
- [63:32]
A
I'm honored to pierce Israeli arrogance. That is great praise. So I would say that if I, if I'm approaching a terrorization event, a terrorism question, a movement, then my two questions are, is the goal legitimate? Right. That's a baseline. If the goal is the extermination of a people, you could even pursue the terrorism gently. It's still gentle. That's Hamas to me. I mean, they want my people dead and gone. And the second is, I have actually found that in my conversations with Palestinians, when I say things like, well, but don't use terrorists, then they say things like, well, we don't have the vote in the west bank, right. Our goal is legitimate. You're going to start parsing out what actual mechanisms we use to get there. And I found that that moral debate prevents us from getting to any serious political debate, policy debate, historical debate, narrative debate, where we start to penetrate these narratives and start to really understand who the hell's standing in front of us. And so, so I don't deal with those moral, I mean here with you, it's, you know, if I'm already with a premier expert, preeminent expert on it, I want to ask these questions, but, but I don't deal with it. When I, when I tell Palestinians Hamas is, is evil, I don't explain to them that they're evil because they want to murder my children. I think it, I'm going to hunt Hamas for all time. I'm going to vote for the person who says he's going to do that. That's, that's me. But what I tell them is Hamas is destroying palaces time, not Israel. Because what Hamas has done is massively radicalize over 30 years an Israeli public that could have gone a different way. And what Hamas has done is committed to a zero sum conflict where one nation succeeds and one nation collapses. Because Hamas is absolutely convinced God will make sure the right nation wins. And so it wants that end of days total war. Well, that's a terrible thing. I explained to do to Palestinians, not to Israelis, because the Jews don't know how to lose that war. The Jews are a refugee people. And if you knew our history, you would understand why we're immune to this strategy. And Hamas is selling you a bad strategy. So I actually comment. The immorality I try and sell Palestinians on isn't the immorality of some kind of theoretical, oh no, terrorism. It's the efficacy question that you raised. This isn't going to work. So when the Jews did this, terrorism against the British Empire. There was a good reason to think the British were giving up India. The Empire was teetering, they had massive financial problems after the war. There wasn't a bad reason to think this could be the thing, the tipping point that could push them out. That's not the case here. The case here is that Hamas, by forcing you into a zero sum conflict since its founding in 1987, has guaranteed that you cannot wake up and step out of this trap and get to any kind of better path. Efficacy becomes a more valuable moral language and political language than just the morality of terrorism. Terrorism.
- [66:26]
B
Well, let's complicate this more and say that is there a more totalitarian organization than Hamas that imposes its will on the Palestinians, that is intolerant, that rules ruthlessly, and let's compare it to begin, what did begin do in 1948, 1949? He created a political party that was in opposition for three decades, but nonetheless, he participated in democracy. He believed in building something. It may not have been his vision of Zionism, but he didn't revolt against the Jewish state Israel, he believed.
- [67:04]
A
And when Ben Gurion fired on his people in the Altalena incident, he went on national radio and said, there won't be a civil war.
- [67:11]
B
Precisely. That was exactly my point.
- [67:13]
A
Imagine if Fatah and Hamas could do that.
- [67:16]
B
Exactly my point.
- [67:19]
A
That's the difference between, I guess, builders and those who tear down. My last question is, I guess I want to get your advice. For Israelis, the last two years were an astonishing revelation of Israeli incompetence. Unbelievable competence in the intelligence sphere. Astonishing, unimaginable, miraculous competence in the air force and cyber and all these other spheres. Doing things with F35s that the Americans never designed the F35s to do. Destroying, firing drones from within Iran against Iranian targets to prevent those missiles from even things that are human intelligence capacities that no intelligence apparatus anywhere in the world has except Israel's. And yet in one arena, the arena at which Menachem begin himself most Excelsior, the arena which catalyzed, or at least sped up significantly, the founding of the country, the arena that you'd think Jews would know is critical, which is the information war arena, the use of terrorism, how terrorism is used, how that information war arena can influence the hard war, the kinetic war, the intelligence space, the diplomatic window. The Israelis didn't even show up. A minister of public diplomacy literally resigned a week after 10-2-7 because she didn't want to waste public funds on something that isn't real. The Israeli government never approached this at the cabinet level. There are some junior spokespeople who barely respond to the international media when, when each new wave of crisis comes out. There's, there's no. That's just the sort of banal institution. There's no strategy. There's no strategy. There's no framing. For a year and a half in this war, Netanyahu basically kept silent about the goals of the war, while Smotrich and Benvir were saying it's about ethnic cleansing, saying it openly and proudly. And so we didn't just lose. I've said this a hundred times. We didn't just lose our enemies, which we weren't going to not lose. We lost friends. Because Israel couldn't understand that the framing and the narration of this war. The Israeli soldiers who went to Gaza did not go to Gaza to commit ethnic cleansing. They didn't want to empty Gaza and begin to settle Gaza. But Netanyahu, because of his narrow political coalition recently reasons, stayed silent. And the world was supposed to believe the Chavivs who are saying, that's not what the Israeli people want. As soon as our hostages are back, the Israeli people suddenly want the war to end by huge, huge margins. It wasn't for them ever about any of that stuff that the campaign against Israel is about. But we never spoke. I mean, the Prime Minister literally never, never mind grand strategy, clever tactics, information war. We literally never spoke. So how does a country tree born in the understanding of the value of information and propaganda utterly lose the capacity to even navigate that space? Sam Harris asked me something like this on his podcast. And my answer was explaining the Zionist culture, which I firmly believe is a big part of it. It's explaining the Zionist culture of you don't stand and justify yourself to the world. You don't justify your existence, justify your actions. There's an allergy to Israeli culture, to Zionist writings from 140 years ago to that. But nevertheless, we're not idiots. We know this is a major arena of war. We know we lost it. Hamas won the war. It was actually fighting. I'm not sure if I want to ask you the. If you would analyze for me how the Israelis never got so lost on that. And also, what should they know about it? What should they understand? What should they get back? What should they learn from their own damn history, from their own founding stories, story about the value of these things and how not to have it used against them in the way that Hamas managed to.
- [71:04]
B
Well, it really reflects a lot. What we've been talking about is that Begin had a compelling narrative. And that's why we debate whether the bombing of the King David Hotel or not is terrorism. Because his narrative, as you very eloquently described, is very powerful. The gates were closed to Palestine even after World War II. There were hundreds of thousands of Jews years later languishing by the displaced burial persons camps or even in the former concentration camps where they were imprisoned. So he understood that it's not just Israel nowadays. I mean, the United States, arguably one of the criticisms of America's own war on terrorism is that it lost the narrative. But to me right now, the biggest damage that is being done is that Israel, by lacking this public diplomatic diplomacy as you described in Information Operations, has allowed the rest of the world to hijack the word Zionism or Zionist and turn them into epitaphs, to turn a narrative that, as we see in polling in the United States, both parties are turning against Israel and to discuss Zionism. That was almost impossible because that has become a loaded pejorative term in many circles. And people don't understand that it is the fundamental, fundamental right of all peoples, including the Jews, to self determination in a homeland that of course historically, spiritually, culturally, linguistically has always been their homeland for centuries. But that message has somehow been lost now and it has been turned into this settler colonial dynamic that there's been no effective pushback against that is resulting in an alienation from Israel that I think has to pain not just Israelis, but Jews in the Diaspora, because it's a completely new and different reality we have to deal with. And how we can counter that now, as you've just described, is enormously difficult.
- [73:13]
A
Maybe it just begins with the realization after the war started, our own history teaches this story. And so if we just paid attention to the founding of Israel, we would know its power, the power of this arena, the importance of it.
- [73:29]
B
And think too about Begin's humility. You can go to the Begin institutes in Jerusalem and in this museum, in this research institute, is basically a mock up of his apartment in Tel Aviv. He lived very modestly, he was very humble, but he also thought about how to accurately communicate to a wider audience beyond the Yishuv, beyond what was then Eretz Yisrael, before it became the state of Israel. And he succeeded. And when we look back, the architect of the Camp David Accords, which changed the Middle east and continue, I think, to hold out the prospect of peace. I mean, you have be being one of, you know, at the foundation of that, being amongst one of the few people who was able to achieve that. And that's significant. But again, he understood the dynamics of politics and communications and he was genuine. I mean, he lived his life. He led by example. That's why I described his apartment. We're not talking about. About political figures today that live in lavish estates or have multiple homes. He lived very humbly and he was a great statesman.
- [74:54]
A
There was a generation of Israeli leaders, Ben Gurion, too, on the left, finished his long career, founded Israel and finished in a little shack in the desert in a kibbutz. Now we are led, not just Netanyahu, but emphatically also Netanyahu, also Barak, also Ulmert, by people who are got wealthy in public service, which is never a good sign. And. And they're dogged by never ending questions of corruption and favoritism and manipulating the system. And it was a different generation back then. Maybe we need. Maybe we need a better generation. I don't know.
- [75:28]
B
Think of how Begin was catapulted into office. He appealed to the neglected, to the miserable neglected. Bart, even in a famous speech, he said, you know, on the choc. Choc base, basically.
- [75:37]
A
Right.
- [75:37]
B
Instead of one of you, I mean, he united rather than divided. And this is, you know, a problem of politics in the 21st century as well.
- [75:47]
A
Okay, a lot of lessons to learn. Thank you so much, Dr. Hoffman, Dr. Bruce Hoffman, for shedding tremendous amount of light. This is the book. It's called Anonymous Soldiers. Read It. It tells us a lot about the world we live in today. And it's a fascinating deep dive into that history. History back then in the founding of the state. Thank you for joining me.
- [76:07]
B
You're very welcome. It was a great pleasure.