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- [00:00]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile with a message for everyone paying big wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint. You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying, no judgments. But that's weird. Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment
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Thomas Small
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Elizabeth Zerkov
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Thomas Small
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Elizabeth Zerkov
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Thomas Small
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Elizabeth Zerkov
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Thomas Small
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Elizabeth Zerkov
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Thomas Small
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- [01:19]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Are you one of those media strategy people scrolling through spreadsheets, searching for an audience that pays twice as much attention to your ads than they do on social? Let me introd you to fans, and they're here with me on Spotify. Trust me, I know fans. They don't skip. They stay for hours. They don't move on. They manifest. They're not a demographic group. They're fans. Spotify advertising.
- [01:46]
Thomas Small
You're among fans. What happens when a country's deepest fears are real, but the policies born from those fears make Peace impossible? Since October 7, Israel has moved from a doctrine of deterrence to something more radical permanent preemption, buffer zones and the destruction of enemy capabilities before they can be used. But when your enemies are not conventional armies but armed movements embedded among civilians, does security become another name for endless war? Elizabeth Zurkov has spent years studying the Middle east from the ground up. An expert on Syria, Iraq, Israel, Palestine, and Iran's proxy network, Elizabeth's own political journey began on the Israeli right, but experience of reality led her elsewhere. She explains how October 7th shattered Israel's old assumptions why deterrence without a political endgame was never enough, and why real threats met with the wrong answers may condemn the whole region to deeper suffering. I'm Thomas Small. This is my Conflicted conversation with Elizabeth Zherkoff. Hello Elizabeth. It's so great to see you again. Thanks for coming back onto Conflicted and so soon after your last appearance.
- [03:32]
Elizabeth Zerkov
My pleasure to be with you. I'm a longtime listener of the podcast, so very honored.
- [03:37]
Thomas Small
What I want to do in this conversation is to help listeners understand what is happening at the moment in terms of Israeli security policy, let's say most generally Israel's place in the region and in the world since the 7th of October, as it's evolved and continues to evolve. I want to do so in a way that draws out the human tragedy of this whole story and which, instead of adopting easy black and white moralistic narratives, instead of getting everyone angry about something or someone, draws out instead the basic and profound sadness that should really hover over this whole terrible, terrible tragedy.
- [04:27]
Elizabeth Zerkov
I think that discourse about Israel after October 7th and after the atrocities in Gaza has become incredibly polarized. And this is understandable and this is something that occurs every time political violence is used. It leads to polarization, but in my view it leads to really kind of black and white thinking. That is, I think first of all is incorrect because reality, even one where there is such brutality still there are complexities to it, especially considering the fact that there are brutalities that were perpetrated from both sides on October 7th, obviously the massacres, and then afterwards throughout the two year campaign on Gaza and its demolition. And I think that this type of discourse also doesn't lead to any solutions. So if there's really kind of a stark view of reality, there's no way to move forward. And there's also no way to truly understand the motivations of the different sides and therefore how to affect them.
- [05:35]
Thomas Small
It doesn't just stand in the way of a solution, it actually works to the benefit of those political actors who do not want a solution. It actually keeps the conflict going, which suits some people, people for whom a proper negotiated political solution that creates institutions leading to just and dignity on both sides does not suit their own aim. So I think that's really very important. I was talking to a lovely friend, a dear friend the other day who since the 7th of October it seems to me, has really been consuming social media content, media content, clearly through the algorithm, kind of cultivated to create in him a extremely anti Israeli position on these questions. I know, because it's likelier that the algorithm will feed me this material, that there's a similar right wing pro Israeli rabbit hole you can Go down. I'm not saying there's only a left wing one, but there is a left wing one. And he was with great naivete actually saying things about the campaign in Gaza, about Israeli policy over the decades that were factually inaccurate, grossly exaggerated. At one point he said that it is now proven that 700,000 Gazan civil have been killed. That's just a kind of outrageous fact, but also just a kind of unwillingness to see any sense at all over the decades to the Zionist or the Israeli position. They're just assuming the worst of that side. And as I say, it exists on the pro Israel camp as well. A kind of demonization of all Palestinians or Arabs. So I don't want this conversation to be like that at all. I want us to try to really do justice to the situation, but also to explain its current crystallization in this new kind of Israeli security policy. Before we do that, I do think it would be good because we're going to try to talk honestly here if you could give the listeners a little bit more information about your own political journey. I know you were hesitant to agree to that. You don't want this to be an autobiographical episode, I understand that. But still I do think it's important that people know where people are coming from. So as you told us last time, you grew up with Soviet dissident parents. So your parents were born in the Soviet Union. You were born in the Soviet Union and then they left and moved to Israel.
- [08:04]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah. So I don't think that I'm particularly interesting and therefore these types of conversations about myself are weird to me and a bit uncomfortable. But I think, yeah, explaining it is useful because also I don't claim to, to be like a fair arbiter, sitting and having the whole truth. Of course people who experienced life, had different trajector, were of different origin, would view things differently. And those points of view can be as long as they're based on facts, I can debate and I can change my mind and I could be wrong on certain things. It's just the problem oftentimes is really when the, when the discussion becomes just disconnected from hard facts. So yeah, so my parents were both dissidents in the ussr. They were opponents of the communist regiment. And I think partly because of this experience adopted kind of right wing positions because the oppression was coming from a leftist dictatorship. And when I was the age of seven, we moved to a settlement in the occupied west bank near Bethlehem. And this is where I grew up. I grew up in a community that is very Right wing. I would say that the dehumanization of Palestinians and Arabs, that is now the norm unfortunately in Israel since October 7th was the norm in the community where I grew up.
- [09:31]
Thomas Small
So the trajectory that much of Israeli society widely has been on since the 7th of October is not unfamiliar to you. You grew up in that environment of very right wing views.
- [09:44]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah, exactly. And I held those views as well because you hold your parents views. But when I, you know, in Israel, both men and women do obligatory military service, I served the Directorate of Intelligence, was an intelligence analyst, and during that time my views moderated. I held very right wing views.
- [10:05]
Thomas Small
Before you talk about how those views moderated though, Elizabeth, can you tell us a little bit more about those views that you had from your childhood? What were you actually learning about the nature of the world?
- [10:17]
Elizabeth Zerkov
So basically Arabs are not fully human, Jews are superior. And the solution to the ERA problem, because I was raised to deny Palestinian nationhood, basically Palestinians are believed to just be Arabs and the solution is to expel them from historic Palestine. So basically from, from the West Bank. And I don't recall anything specific about Gaza, about whether those need to be expelled as well. But I overall, the idea is you get rid of the Palestinian problem by expelling all Arabs because they're not Palestinian, to Arab countries, to Jordan and to Egypt.
- [10:56]
Thomas Small
And to extent, did religious ideas inform this viewpoint? Because did you grow up in a very religious family?
- [11:03]
Elizabeth Zerkov
No, not at all. So this was a kind of a right wing view that was not based on belief in scripture, that this is a land that belongs to the Jews due to biblical reasons. It is the belief that essentially we came, we took it, it is now ours, we defeated the Arabs and they need to be removed from this area.
- [11:26]
Thomas Small
Okay, so right wing in the sense of that kind of more Nietzschean almost or certainly secular ethno, chauvinistic, ethno nationalist kind of sentiment. Just one group considering itself to be superior, dominating, destroying another group. Were you aware when you were young that your family were in a kind of minority stream within Israeli society? And then if that's the case, how did families like yours, how did they regard the broad stream of Israeli society, which in the 90s was still, I would say, on balance, more center left liberal kind of inclining and I think generally hoping for a two state solution and everything like that?
- [12:06]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah, so there was definitely a sense that we are a minority. This became very apparent after the assassination of Rabin, the Israeli prime minister, who was from the left, and Yitzhak RABIN
- [12:18]
Thomas Small
in, in 1994, is that right?
- [12:20]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Exactly. And in my school in the settlement nearby in Toccoa, we celebrated, we danced together with our teachers after he was assassinated.
- [12:28]
Thomas Small
Wow. Goodness.
- [12:29]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah. And we also celebrated his. His assassination within the community. But then there was this kind of backlash against right wingers.
- [12:39]
Thomas Small
I can't imagine why, Elizabeth.
- [12:43]
Elizabeth Zerkov
And there was a sense that we are basically kind of a persecuted minority. And also there was, at the time, because of the negotiations with Palestinians, there was a kind of constant sense of threat that we will be removed from our homes and the settlement. Right. So there was definitely a great deal of animosity towards the mainstream of Israeli politics. And I think there were also elements here of class. I grew up in quite extreme poverty, and then the community around me was also quite poor. So I think there were other elements to this kind of opposition to the kind of ruling class, which was perceived as leftist and Ashkenazi.
- [13:22]
Thomas Small
It's interesting hearing this because I grew up in the suburbs of Southern California to a very normal lower middle class American family. And we went to church. We were evangelical, so there was a religious sense to our family, of course. And though my own parents weren't particularly political, really, although we were Republican voting and everything, like most evangelicals in the 80s, certainly culturally, I was aware and in general kind of absorbed passively a right wing kind of paranoid view of the majority, which was seen as corrupt and left leaning in some way. And, you know, a sense often it overlapped with racist kind of stereotyping of Mexicans and black. So it's, it's similar. And I, I actually assume, and I want to kind of do justice to Israelis and to kind of Jews, let's say, because I don't want anyone to think that your family were remarkable in the fact that they had this kind of congeries of right wing views. It's probably true of a lot of people everywhere that there's always a minority within every community group that have these more paranoid, more in group out group kind of right wing views. And you had those. And then you went to the military to do your obligatory service and you joined the intelligence corps. And then you began to learn that the world was more complicated than your parents had told you.
- [14:44]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah, exactly. So basically I came to support the two state solution for the Palestinian issue because I just. First of all, it became quite clear to me that the Palestinians do see themselves as a people, regardless of how settlers define them or right wingers define them. And that also ethnic cleansing, which is what it was called in Israeli parlance, transfer. Transfer, basically. But it is ethnic cleansing. That this is not something that a democracy could perpetrate in the 21st century, and therefore, that this is just not the solution that I was raised on is not realistic. And therefore I pragmatically adopt what I saw as the most realistic solution, because I believe that it needs to be solved.
- [15:37]
Thomas Small
It wasn't that, like, morally you'd shifted that much. It's just that pragmatically you thought, well, this whole getting rid of them entirely thing will never work, so we have to do something else.
- [15:45]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah, yeah, exactly. The moral shift became. Came later.
- [15:49]
Thomas Small
And how would you characterize that shift? How did you begin to see Arabs as human beings, if I may put it that way?
- [15:56]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah, I mean, it sounds bad, obviously, but. But so after. After I completed my military service. During my military service, I became very interested in the Middle east, much more so than before. Even as a teenager, I was interested, but I was reading mostly Orientalist books. But then in the military service, I gained a more nuanced understanding of reality and started reading other things, including. Including material about Palestinian history and that I found, by the way, in, like, bookshelves in my military service. And I joined Twitter 2008, and because I was so interested in the Middle East, I started following activists in the Middle east who were writing at the time. I didn't know Arabic, so I just follow people who wrote in English and then through Facebook later on, kind of, you know, started following and friending more people and reading more and became friends with people I got to know online. Some of them became very, very close friends. And I started having debates with them about politics and learned a great deal from them. And also just through these friendships. It was impossible to dehumanize Arabs when I see them as fully human, as brilliant individuals, much smarter than I am, who taught me a great deal. And this is where that was kind of the most significant influence that pushed me towards changing my views. But also in 2008, I began volunteering for a labor rights rights organization in Israel because I was aware and interested in labor rights in the Arab Gulf, particularly where migrant rights are very significantly abused. So I became a volunteer for a human rights organization in Israel, labor rights organization, and then started volunteering with other human rights organizations that work on refugee rights and came to see, really, the immense harm of Israeli policies in this regard, and also just in general, the unfairness of borders and how you, by virtue of being born in American, your trajectory in life is going to be significantly better than someone much, much more brilliant and talented than you are born in Syria, for example, or born in Somalia, simply because the passport is kind of a new feudal global system where if you're born a lord, your life will be great. If you're born a laborer.
- [18:28]
Thomas Small
It's that age old question of cosmic injustice, seeming cosmic injustice that young people often kind of are confronted with at some point. And it can completely change the way they see everything you changed. And what I find amazing about you, really, Elizabeth, is how similar you are to another friend of the show who has been on a few times. His name is Hussein Mansoor, who he now lives in D.C. but he's Egyptian. He comes from Egypt. He's roughly your age, I imagine, maybe slightly younger. But he was raised in a kind of lower middle class family, raised to hate Jews. Everything about the Egyptian society that he lived in and the kind of education he was receiving, both formal and informal, told him that Jews were evil, Israel was evil, he just hated them. And yet at some point as he came of age, a switch went off in his mind and he encountered actual Jews for the first time and thought, wait, they're not monsters at all. He taught himself Hebrew. He started going to the, I think Israel Cultural center or something in Cairo, began reading Hebrew, meeting more and more, and it just kind of shifted. And then in his mind, he completely turned against the prevailing cultural norms or ideological norms of Egypt and Arab society more generally, and now is a very, very outspoken pro Israeli Arab living in the West. So it's like in a way, it's a similar story where you start from an extreme and then through exposure and education, you change. So just to sort of shout out to the dear listeners there, here on Conflicted, we're trying to tell all of the nuanced stories involved in this Middle Eastern jamboree that we try to understand here on the show. So in your kind of, of mirroring Hussein's journey from the other side and when the Arab Spring broke out and that whole enthusiasm for Arab human rights and dignity that seemed to be on the rise and then that turned into ISIS and civil war and an increase in jihadism stuff. So you lived through that. And I mean, tell us that story.
- [20:37]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah. So the Arab uprising so began in late 2010 in Tunisia and spread all across the region. That was absolutely exhilarating because just the bravery of people witnessing in lectures that I sometimes would give in Israel would often feature a clip showing Egyptians on one of the bridges in Cairo over the Nile where they are facing riot police and water cannons and they stop and they start praying. And they're getting sprayed with water and are just steadfast and standing there. And I always look at the faces of Israelis when I air it, because you just see for the first time in the lives of all of these people that they're in awe of an Arab, that they're in awe of this courage and of this bravery. So I followed all the uprisings and then in Syria, the uprising just kept going and going because I just kept following events there. Many Syrians started following me. I started following them on Twitter and on Facebook. Facebook and became friends with thousands of Syrians on Facebook. Then I also traveled to, initially to Jordan and to Turkey. And later in 2018, I also traveled to Syria, to areas outside of Assad regime control in the northeast, and also to Iraqi Kurdistan and made Syrian friends there and did my best to conduct research on this country, mostly from afar to try and reflect what people are going through. And I would publish this both with an Israeli Palestinian think tank in Israel called the Forum for Regional Thinking and for international publications and think tanks based in dc. I'm now affiliated with Newlands Institute, writing research for them, but also for other think tanks about trying as much as possible to highlight how Syrians are experiencing the war as opposed to kind of geopolitical games.
- [22:34]
Thomas Small
I think this is kind of where in our previous episode together you told us the story. So by the time, let's say by the time you were kidnapped by Iraqi Hezbollah in Iraq, where you were doing research for your PhD and working still with NGOs including Amnesty International, helping them in some way there, by the time that happened to you, you were firmly, I think you told me in your own kind of ideological self identity, you were a woman of the left. And in Israel, to the extent you were known, you were known as a woman of the left. And then you're kidnapped. My Iraqi Hezbollah held for two years, tortured. Terrible experience.
- [23:12]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Two and a half years.
- [23:13]
Thomas Small
Two and a half years, terrible experience. During which time the 7th of October attacks happen. You don't know about that. Eventually you find out you're released about
- [23:22]
Elizabeth Zerkov
the 7th of October. I didn't know about it when it happened because the guards next to my room had a TV and they were listening to it the first day. I thought that the, the tv, because they would listen to pro, pro Hamas channels, that I thought that they're exaggerating widely what happened. But then I learned that it was the truth, essentially that, oh, interesting. Yeah. That there were 1,200 dead. I didn't know that overwhelming majority of the Dead and hostages were civilians because this is not how it was covered. On their pro Hamas channels like Al Mayadeen, Al Jazeera, they constantly spoke about soldiers, Junud and Asra prisoners. So prisoners is not a hostage. Prisoner of war is a combatant. But only later on did I learn like while still in captivity did I learn that overwhelming majority that they attacked civilian communities. I initially thought that they're attacking military bases surrounding Gaza, but later I learned that it was really a massacre of civilians. Overwhelmingly.
- [24:25]
Thomas Small
Well, when you then got out of captivity and came back to Israel, a lot of people would assume that maybe what you personally experienced at the hands of these jihadists or whatever you want to call them, Islamists, radical Iran affiliated extremists, and then the 7 October attacks, that maybe your views would have swung back to the right. Maybe you would have thought, oh man, I really was naive. And now I've been mugged by reality. As conservatives often say. Every left winger is mugged by reality at some point and then becomes conservative. Is that what happened to you?
- [25:00]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Well, no, I would say that yes, my worldview changed in some regards. But overall I still support Palestinian human rights. I still see Palestinians and Arabs as human beings, even though now it's really quite an extreme position to take inside Israel. Just, just dehumanization, the humanization itself, that is, itself is, is something that has become quite unacceptable, particularly with regards to Gazans in Israel. At the same time, I mean, I think that many people globally became radicalized by the event. And again, this is what political violence does. It polarizes people. It pulls them into their kind of original group identities. And so the result was very, very predictable. I would say that I knew that Hamas is capable of this atrocious violence, this that People witnessed on October 7th I witnessed much later because I didn't have a TV at the time or any media outlet at my disposal. What I was to some extent surprised by is that, I mean, first of all, I too believe that Hamas is interested in calming the situation, that it is interested in improving the economic situation of Gaza. Hamas would negotiate over issues of exporting strawberries out of Gaza because it is a highly profitable product. It would negotiate over issues like how many laborers are allowed to leave per day to go to work in Israel. So that made the Israeli system, but also me as an outsider to it, but as an analyst who observes and reads the news until my kidnapping in March of 23, believe that they're not interested in carrying out such an attack. And also in part because they care to some extent about the welfare of the population in Gaza. Why are they negotiating over strawberries otherwise, if they don't care? Throughout the war, they've proven that at least the group that was in control of Hamas inside Gaza, people who were overwhelmingly sitting in tunnels and hiding among civilians when they come out. For example, Muhammad was, was assassinated in Al Mawasi. It's an area that is supposed to be a humanitarian safe zone, yet he entered it. Israel dropped humongous bombs on him, killing him, but also many Hamas members who were in the meeting with him in Rafa Salameh, the head of, I think, the Rafah division, but also a lot of civilians. So the fact that they continued this completely pointless war, they could barely cause any harm to the Israeli military forces that were based inside Gaza, yet they would not accept to stop this war, hand over their useless weapons while the population of Gaza is begging them, please, please, please stop this, please stop this. We're suffering. And they would also come out with these statements that would make Gazans go crazy. Like, say, for example, Khaled Mashal said that, that the losses of the enemy are strategic and our losses are tactical. This is at a time when there were 50,000 people killed in Gaza. Others said, we don't have white flags to wave, but we do have white shrouds to wrap our children and bury them. Just complete disregard for the lives of Gazans. And so that was the extents of how much they don't care about their population. That was surprising to me. Maybe I was too lulled into this, this belief that they do care about Gazans and not just about the survival of themselves and their group and their useless weapons that are not really affecting the battlefield in any way, but are just inviting more Israeli aggression and continued war.
- [29:02]
Thomas Small
What about the different responses to the 7 October attacks and the Gaza war from different parties? I mean, I suppose mainstream Israeli policies in Gaza, which was very, very brutal in many respects, that would have confirmed for you things you'd already decided about Israel's policy as regards to the Palestinian file. Like you would have this. That wouldn't have surprised you. I think you probably would have felt you already had Benjamin Netanyahu's number, you knew what the Israeli right could do if provoked or whatever. But what about the left's response to the 7 October attacks and the Gaza war, globally speaking? I mean, now, because maybe that complicated your own identity a little bit, because it can't be denied that in the polarization that that outburst of political violence occurred, that globally, the left and the right are totally polarized on this issue. And some people on the left have kind of sided ideologically or at least sympathetically with Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran and all these other actors whom you know are malicious. You were tortured by them. So how have you negotiated your relationship with the left now?
- [30:20]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah, I think that my understanding of the left in the west and I think it is quite different from the left in Israel, but the left and the west is very much driven by kind of anti colonial sentiment and the belief that Israel is essentially a colonial outpost and therefore there is this hostility towards Israel. So it has to do a lot more with Israel itself and their own sense of guilt or because of complicity of their governments with Israel, you know, possibly selling weapons or maintaining diplomatic relations, etc. And it has a lot less to do with actually Palestinians. And that, that to me became quite clear before October 7th. It became clear when the Assad regime and militias allied with it, including Hezbollah, Lebanese, Hezbollah, which invaded Syria to prop up the Assad regime and fought alongside the Assad regime against the armed opposition. When they besieged the Yermou camp on the southern outskirts of Damascus and people were starving to death. They were eating dead animals that would die of hunger. They would eat them even though it's prohibited in Islam. They would eat leaves.
- [31:36]
Thomas Small
Yeah, we actually did a two part interview with a young Syrian man who lived through that entire period, the entire siege of Yarmouk, as a Arab Spring activist. I mean, dear listeners, if you haven't listened to those two episodes which broadcast about a year ago, go back, listen to them. They are really, really powerful and they show that black and white narratives just don't work when it comes, certainly when it comes to the Syrian civil war. So you saw this happening in Yarmouk and the global left just didn't care.
- [32:07]
Elizabeth Zerkov
The protests that emerged that took place during this time in Europe were tiny. In the us, as far as I know, nothing happened in the west, they were tiny. And it was overwhelmingly Syrians who protested in them. All the people who came out and protested against Israeli war, CRU crimes against Palestinians were just absent. So they don't seem to care about Palestinians, they care about the aggressor. And when the aggressor is the Assad regime, which is an Arab regime, but is also part of this so called resistance axis, they're just silent. And worse yet, some in the left who are a minority, but a very loud one, but they are a minority, are straight across Assad. So there's a whole strain of truthers about Assad regime crimes, denying that he perpetrated chemical weapons attacks. Seymour Hersh, for example, became infamous for it and many others. The entire kind of blogosphere who are people who are supposedly pro Palestine are in fact they don't care about Palestinians. So that was quite clear to me even from that point. However, after, after October 7th, I was not really aware of the discourse that was happening at the time because I was in captivity. After I came out of captivity, I learned more and saw what people are writing and what people wrote. And it's quite clear that, I mean, at least to me it seems that most of the left in the west is not humanistic. So it's concern about Palestinian human rights does not stem from seeing all humans as deserving of human rights. It stems from kind of a particular particularistic attachment to this cause when Israel is the one doing the harm due to, in my view, this kind of anti colonial perception and belief. And basically the prevailing perception, it seems to be that compassion is limited in its amount. And if we offer any compassion to Israelis slaughtered on that day or the hostages in Gaza, we are somehow there's less compassion or it somehow harms the ability to be compassionate towards the people of Gaza who face unimaginable horrors at the hands of the Israeli war machine.
- [34:37]
Thomas Small
I love the way you put that, Elizabeth. I often say when I'm wearing my other hat in my other life, which is a kind of religious hat, I often say that some people make the profoundly catastrophic metaphysical error of forgetting that spiritual realities and compassion is a spiritual reality, love is a spiritual reality, all of those things. Spiritual realities are not finite. People make this tremendous error and they think that they need to like, hoard the amount of compassion they have to give. Because if they give compassion or if they show love or whatever, they'll lose the spirit that informs it. As if, if it's a finite thing, a finite good, but it's not, it's infinite. That's the truth. You could have compassion on absolutely every soul that ever existed and you'd still have just as much compassion as you started with. So that's a little theology. Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt the conversation with that. The point of this, and we went on for much longer than you wanted, but the point of really talking about your story so that everyone would understand where you are personally coming from, is that now we can talk about Israeli security doctrine in a way where the listener knows who you are. I mean, often you see these talking heads and they're analysts and they're Kind of rehearsing and performing these extremely watertight analyses for everyone. But we don't often know who they are. And so now people know who you are and where you're coming from. So Israel at the moment is very controversial. And even people who are predisposed to see its point of view sometimes wonder exactly what they're doing, whether it's a valuable contribution to the general cause of peace and justice, even for Israelis and for Israel. So if you could just help us understand what Israeli security doctrine is now, and possibly in order to do that, you'll have to first tell us what it was like before the 7th of October, so that then we can trace the development.
- [36:49]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah, so I think the doctrine before October 7th was highly reliant on deterrence. And the belief was that, and this is something that was became really highly entrenched during the era of Netanyahu, is that there is no way to solve the conflicts that Israel is in. We should not be striving, for example, to end the occupation of the Palestinian territories and establish a Palestinian state. This would not solve the conflict with the Palestinians or with our region. Therefore, all we could offer are kind of temporary solutions and with a heavy reliance on deterrence. So basically, wars are inevitable. We will wage them every few years. Those wars are. Wars need to be quick, they need to be highly destructive and deadly for the opposing side to then create this deterrence, to basically prolong the period between wars. And in the meantime, Israel prepares for these future wars through increasing its military power and also through intelligence work. And the main challenge that was perceived to be the kind of more existential to Israeli security is the Iranian one. And therefore overwhelmingly intelligence capabilities were invested in that arena. Iran, Hezbollah and to a much lesser extent, Palestinians and Gaza. And the idea was also that, and this particularly came to pass after the Abraham Accords, is that basically through this demonstration of immense strength, we will be able to reach normalization deals with many Arab countries without having to solve the Palestinian issue. Because previously, for example, the 2002, 2003 Saudi peace proposal, Israel was offered normalization in exchange for the establishment of a Palestinian state with all Arab countries and some Muslim countries as well. Israel did not even bother responding to it. And the Abraham Accords proved to the Israeli voter that essentially you could reach, and obviously to Israeli policymakers you could reach these normalization deals without solving the Palestinian issue.
- [39:09]
Thomas Small
It's interest. Saudi peace plan back in 2002, 2003 evolved under the shadow of the second intifada, a kind of situation similar to the situation that the Israel, Palestine conflict is in now, where the Palestinians were easily regarded by mainstream Israeli political opinion as basically not able to be negotiated with because they'd risen up in the context of what was seen to be, through the Oslo process, an offer for a state. So, so in a way, Israel wasn't in the mood, just like now. It's definitely not in the mood. Two state solution, whatever that's not on the table now. It kind of wasn't then at specifically that time. Especially not coming from Arabs.
- [39:51]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah. So the idea of deterrence is you want to affect the desire of your adversary to attack you. You want them to feel too scared to attack you. So the idea was we, in the case of Hamas, for example, Israel believed that it caused enough damage in previous wars and also in the case of Gaza, gave some financial economic incentives to Hamas in the form of Qatari cash that would be transferred on a monthly basis into Gaza in addition to labors coming into Israel and more freedom to import, export, et cetera. That this would result in Hamas not being interested in attacking Israel. And the same applies to other adversaries of Israel. So Hezbollah, Israel in 2006 utterly devastated all of Lebanon, not just Hezbollah. It caused severe damage to Hezbollah. And after that war, Nasrallah came out with a speech and said, if I had known that there would be this disastrous consequences, I wouldn't have launched the attack on Israel in 2006 that resulted in this devastating war. So the idea in that is a statement that to Israel says deterrence works because we created so much destruction. Israel destroyed the south, destroyed the D, destroyed a lot of Lebanese state infrastructure. But the idea was it worked and Hezbollah is not attacking us because they're deterred. Basically, they have all these capabilities. Israel knew that it is amassing huge numbers of missiles and rockets, et cetera, but it is not using them because it is too scared to use them because the consequences for it would be devastating would be a repeat of the previous war. And this, this mode of thinking collapsed on October 7th.
- [41:40]
Thomas Small
Israel was attacked on the 7th of October, worse in some ways than it really like had ever been attacked. It was just like the worst attack Israel had ever suffered after these 15 years of deterrence.
- [41:52]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Basically, you know, Netanyahu is not a good strategic planner in any way. Israel suffers from structural problems when it comes to policy planning due to multiple factors, including the dominance of the Israeli army in decision making. The Israeli army has a planning directorate that does a good job of planning military sequential military operations. So first, okay, we decided we're going to war with Lebanon, for example. So first we need to take away their kind of strategic missile capabilities. So we bomb all of those in one day. The next day we assassinate Nasrallah. We know that they will retaliate, but we will take away their missiles the day before. Then we pursue these actions in Iran, for example. First we hit the air defenses, then we do this, then we etc. Etc.
- [42:41]
Thomas Small
And they're very good at that. They're very, very good at that.
- [42:43]
Elizabeth Zerkov
They are, but they are not responsible for policy planning the way it is done in other countries in which the army is not as dominant. Israel has an nsc. It was one of the lessons learned from multiple policy failures, including the 2006 war in Lebanon.
- [43:01]
Thomas Small
An NSC, a national security council.
- [43:04]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Israel has an NSC, but it's just very weak. It never kind of gained enough prominence and power to actually shape policy. And at the end of the day, the body that is deciding overall policy is the Israeli cabinet, which is made up of politicians. Increasingly during the era of Netanyahu, particularly late Netanyahu era, they're basically ridiculous clowns, morons who are just jiving and jacking and putting up videos on TikTok and on social media to try and, and get likes and to try and get media attention and to try and get votes.
- [43:37]
Thomas Small
Elizabeth, as an American who lives in the uk, I have no idea what a political class that acts like that is like.
- [43:43]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Exactly. And the ministers are not judged by the quality of work they do at their ministry for their ability to get reelected. And they're definitely not judged on how smart they are in their understanding of foreign policy and advice they give inside the cabinet. The Cabinet is basically an opportunity to gather and leak to the Israeli media what is happening in the cabinet and give them fiery quotes. Sometimes those quotes are given even before they're actually uttered in the meeting. So it just, it's a clown show. And as a result, Israel doesn't have proper policy planning. It didn't have so before October 7th, and it definitely doesn't have it now, with the dominance of particular two idiots over policymaking, Ben GVIR and Smotrich, who are far right idiots who know nothing about foreign policy or defense policy and are just driven by their ideological messianic beliefs.
- [44:38]
Thomas Small
So in the run up then to the October 7th attacks, as you say, on the one hand, Israeli policy, which had been guided already for many years by Netanyahu and various cabinets under his leadership, what was a foregrounding deterrence, this idea that we just need to Ensure that we are not attacked by doing X and Y. An idea that we don't actually need to solve the Palestinian problem. It's a problem that can be managed and not solved and that slowly but surely we can, without solving the Palestinian problem, normalize our relations with our powerful neighbors, increasing our security and generally developing our economy. Because that was always part of the plan to the extent there was one. I mean, Eamon on our show always talks about the India, Middle East Europe Economic Corridor, imec, which had been developed and to which the Abraham Accords were related to some extent as an effort to. To knit the region together economically, kind of as an answer to the Belt and Road Initiative of China and all these things. And it was announced with great fanfare on 9 September 2023, less than a month before the 7 October attacks. So obviously Israel was participating in that. So there was a kind of regional geostrategic plan which the 7 October attacks completely derailed, failed. But even so you think there wasn't great strategic thinking?
- [46:06]
Elizabeth Zerkov
No. And from my understanding about imec, it wasn't a development in Israel. Israel doesn't even have the infrastructure in place to develop this plan. Israel, for example, has a Ministry of Foreign affairs that is historically very, very weak. Essentially the Minister of Foreign affairs manages Israeli embassies and consulates and does pr, basically Hasbara. So. So Israel doesn't have long term national security policy planning. And this is something that I've written about, but also many other experts have written about. For example, Professor Chuck Freilich, he previously worked on the Israeli NSC and he now teaches at US universities. He has written multiple articles about it. There's just a structural weakness in how this system operates. So basically, yeah, the ideas were deterrent. Netanyahu's goals were dealing with the Iranian threat and preventing the establishment of a Palestinian state. So not so much a vision of what I am for, but what I'm against. And deterrence, Deterrence, Deterrence. And we'll have these little rounds of wars every few years. That's a solution that was offered. So called solution.
- [47:16]
Thomas Small
What about since the 7th of October?
- [47:18]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah, so since October 7th the idea of deterrence has collapsed. However, it is very difficult to pursue a foreign policy or national security policy that does not involve elements of deterrence. Because if you live in the hostile region, and I think that's clear, that Israel does live in a hostile region, that essentially means that you no longer trust the intentions of the adversary. Because October 7th was a major failure in trying to predict what the adversary wants and you no longer believe that deterrence works. So in Gaza, there were several rounds of war, basically in 2014 and 16 and 21, I believe. But basically the idea was that right now Hamas is deterred. And also there was a poor understanding of its capability. So there was an intelligence failure in this regard as well. But the doctrine that you can impose such a cost on the adversary that they will not want to attack again, that idea could collapsed. So that means that if you cannot affect the desires of the adversary, and the adversary is seen as irrational, so is willing to incur an immense cost to achieve its goals, as happened on October 7, therefore, you need to be basically, you need to take away their capabilities to cause you harm. So everyone around Israel that wishes it harm needs to be essentially decided to disarmed. So that means, for example, also in the case of Syria, after Assad was toppled, going in and basically bombing the entire Syrian army and its military strategic capabilities, like the air force, like its chemical weapons, like its missiles, to basically destroy the ability of the new Syrian regime to cause any major harm to Israel. And therefore the only way to feel safe and the only way to be safe. Right. And the dominant Israeli perception right now, and definitely the perception of the Israeli military establishment and the Israeli government is essentially preventing the adversary from having any capabilities because you cannot count on affecting their intentions. So that means if in theory, Israel was dealing with a certain regime that is weak and it can then topple, let's say Jordan was an enemy, it's not, but let's say it was there, you have a clear national army, you have a king, you go, you kill them, you topple and you have a victory. In theory, the thing is that Israel is dealing with militia groups and is also dealing with the Iranian regime, which is not easily topplable. And as a result, you basically have a state of endless war, nonstop war since October 7, with promises to that the ultimate and final victory is near. In 2024, Netanyahu promised Israelis that we are a step away from complete victory in Gaza.
- [50:19]
Thomas Small
And I suppose proponents of this strategy would say this makes sense. What's the problem with the new strategy, Elizabeth? From an Israeli security point of view,
- [50:29]
Elizabeth Zerkov
the problem is that you basically end up in a constant state of war because you are not able to. You cannot defeat Hamas, which is the smallest and weakest adversary that Israel is facing. It is a militia that now controls about 40% of a tiny stretch of land of the Gaza Strip, and yet it maintains controls. And Israel also, due to political reasons, does not want to bring in the Palestinian Authority and take over Gaza because it has political ramifications. It would increase pressure on Israel to negotiate an end to the occupation and create a Palestinian, Palestinian state at the end of the day. But in the case of Hezbollah, for example, in theory, to disarm Hezbollah completely, you need to essentially occupy the entire country of Lebanon. And you're not. And then invade every house, seal completely the borders, invade every house, take away all the weapons, find. I mean, this is not realistic. Israel is not going to do this.
- [51:28]
Thomas Small
So this is the Elizabeth back as a young whatever person in the. The military. This is pragmatic Elizabeth here saying, look, regardless of the morality of the situation, the current security doctrine is not pragmatic. It's not gonna work. We can't do it.
- [51:42]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah, I mean, it's not going to work. Obviously, there are also major moral problems with this policy because you're causing immense harm to the population inside which Hezbollah and Hamas are embedded. In the case of Syria, there's not even Israel invaded basically and occupied parts of the south Syria. There was no threat coming from Syria. There was no intelligence indications that Syria intended to invade Israel or carry out any actions. Israel is just occupying the population. Population that lives there is denied access to their fields. Israel arrests people all the time at checkpoints, brings them into detention facilities where all prisoners are horribly mistreated. Obviously most prisoners there are Palestinian, but there are also some Lebanese Hezbollah prisoners and also just Syrians were picked up. Israel is spraying herbicides in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria, is destroying the livelihood of people. So this is an immoral policy that has consequences for the lives of people, but it is also just not going to work.
- [52:47]
Thomas Small
But does that not suggest that it's not simply like Israel's in a state of permanent war without any strategic objective beyond the that or beyond just disarming their enemies? I mean, because if it's true what you say, that they're pouring herbicides on agricultural land and such like, then they are working towards a goal to further that. That goal that your parents nurtured in their hearts back when you were a child. They actually are trying to create conditions for the possibly, they say voluntary migration, but ultimately the expulsion of as many, many Palestinians as possible from these places. Is that right? I mean, I don't like just even saying that because it's so depressing. But also, I don't want to give any grist to the mill of those people who like, hate Israel and see nothing good about it. People who think of Israelis like They're hardly human. I don't want to give any grist to that mill either. But is it there? Is it true?
- [53:52]
Elizabeth Zerkov
So Israel would definitely like to see basically all Palestinians disappear if it could. Right now the situation in Gaza is so dire that there are different sources of data, but it's very clear that a big chunk of Gazans would like to leave if they could. I know this also from my experience because I still volunteer for an Israeli human rights organization, deals with refugees. Some Gazans just find the number online of the ngo, NGO and call. And because I speak Arabic, I speak to them. They're desperate to leave. The thing is, no country is willing to take them. People who are Gaza's elite have been able to find stipends at some universities and, you know, get admitted into some universities or were able to do family reunification. But for the overwhelming majority of Gazans, there is no place that will take them. So yes, Israel would very much like, and it is the official Israeli government policy ever since, since President Trump spoke about the Riviera, et cetera, to ethnically cleanse Gaza. But it's just, it's not going to happen. No country is willing to take Gazans. Even countries that are highly dependent on US military aid, like Jordan and Egypt, refuse to accept Palestinians. They perceive, I mean, obviously they oppose it because it is facilitating an ethnic cleansing. But also they, they perceive these Gazans to be a security threat to them. These are, it's a very young population, traumatized population that has grown up in Hamas influenced schools. So they are supporters oftentimes or in some cases of Muslim Brotherhood ideology, which are the most feared opposition group in both Jordan and in Egypt. So they're not interested in hosting them.
- [55:39]
Thomas Small
And banned. I mean, absolutely banned.
- [55:42]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah. And they're both banned. They're banned in both countries, countries. So it's just not going to happen. Now it's true that this is what Israel aspires to do and Israel would like also the Palestinians from the west bank to leave. But again, no country is willing to take Palestinians in large numbers. And therefore it is kind of a pipe dream that the Israeli far right and even mainstream right is now selling to its voters that this is the solution that we're going to implement. They have no ability to actually implement.
- [56:13]
Thomas Small
Elizabeth, what about this kind of, this idea of buffer zones that is often invoked by people when they're trying to make sense of the currently evolving Israeli security doctrine. So these are areas just opposite the Israeli border in Gaza, in Lebanon, in Syria, other places sort of these buffer Zones, what role do they play in Israeli strategy at the moment?
- [56:37]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Another thing that Israel is often accused of of is basically that it is trying to expand its territory and that it essentially created these buffer zones in Gaza. It is obviously building settlements in the west bank, but also in Lebanon and in Syria. And the aim is to essentially build settlements there and settle Jews in those areas. I think that there are definitely far, far right groups that are pushing for such moves and some is really far right. Ministry investors again seeking to get likes, have spoken about it like Smartwatch and bangvir. However, this is absolutely not a policy that is actually being pursued. The idea of buffer zones is a testament actually to the kind of failure in a way of Israeli policy in an effort to guarantee security for Israelis. Basically the idea is that these buffer zones impede the possibility of an invasion of Israel. Similar to October 7th, that basically you would need to have either long tunnels that are dug out or fighters that would emerge on the ground and Israel would. Soldiers that are surrounding these buffer zones and are inside these buffer zones would be able to then hold these offensives. In the case of Lebanon, the policy entails, and also in Gaza entails widespread destruction of property of people living there. The idea is, I think some of it is collective punishment, some of it stems from the need to keep forces that are occupying these areas safe. So when you have houses, that is easier to hide inside of them. When you have all sorts of markers inside the territory, for example, nice villa. It is easier now in case of Hezbollah to direct drones, FPV drones that are flying at forces there. So you want to remove those. And the idea is Israel may be forced to give up these territories as part of agreements that would be imposed on Israel by the US administration. And therefore the destruction is, is a form of guarantee for the non return of the population that includes hostile elements. So basically if we destroy all of the border towns and villages in Lebanon, the Shia towns, then the population will not be able to return and with them Hezbollah will not be able to return.
- [59:18]
Thomas Small
Yeah, so if you don't have anyone living just on the other side of your border, then no one can invade across your border, rape your women, kill your children. I mean, it's like kind of basic equations there.
- [59:28]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Exactly. Now, Israel, for example, in the 2024 deal that ended the war in Lebanon, the deal was very lopsided in favor of Israel. It essentially threw a side letter that the US attached to. This deal that was known and reported on, allowed Israel to basically maintain freedom of action. So called freedom of action. Inside Lebanon to basically continue striking threats as they approach emerge. And it also obligated Hezbollah to withdraw south of the litany. And eventually it included reference to disarmament, complete disarmament. Still, there was a great deal of criticism inside Israel for this deal because it did not establish this buffer zone. It does not establish that basically Lebanese civilians, citizens who live, let's say, Naytashaab or Blida or any of these border tax towns should be barred from returning to them. This is something that the Israeli army wanted and something that of course, residents of border communities inside Israel and their mayors, and they're overwhelmingly voters of the Likud also wanted.
- [60:37]
Thomas Small
So these are right wing Israelis who live near the Lebanese border. They were very much in support of this idea of keeping a buffer zone.
- [60:44]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yes. I am not aware of any deal between two countries that allows the other country to establish a buffer zone in which no civilian are allowed to live. I think maybe in the deal between North Korea and South Korea, like a democratic.
- [60:58]
Thomas Small
Yeah, I was going to say, I think the demilitarized zone between North Korea and South Korea is possibly the only example.
- [61:04]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah. And that is essentially a civil war Right. Inside a country. In the case of, let's say, the United States and Mexico. Right. In theory, if you had no people living in Mexico on the border area, it may decrease drug smuggling or people smuggling, and yet no country establishes such deals. So the idea is, is Israel would like to have this buffer zone. It recognizes it probably would not be able to get that through a deal.
- [61:29]
Thomas Small
It's creating one on the ground.
- [61:30]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Exactly. So it's creating one on the ground. So it will try to prevent a bad deal, or a bad deal is one that does not include this quite ridiculous demand. But if it cannot get it through a deal, it will just create facts on the ground through this massive demolition. But this, this is the opposite of a strategy because it is just destruction. At the end of the day, people will be able to rebuild their homes, people will be able to return. So it is just kind of a temporary solution that gives peace of mind to Israelis who are all traumatized by October 7th, giving them a sense of security. Obviously, Israel policy in the west bank is expansionist. Without a doubt. Israel, this government in particular, is basically speed approving new settlements and is seeking essentially to drive Palestinians into these small cantons of Area A and basically grab as much territory as possible to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and also make just life unlivable for Palestinians there in the hope that they will somehow leave the west bank paving the
- [62:38]
Thomas Small
way for an outright annexation of Area C. That's spoken of about very openly by many different, sort of different factions in the Israeli right.
- [62:47]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah. And this is where Netanyahu differs from the Israeli far right. Not in their goal. They are catering to a much more radical and populist crowd or voters, and therefore the far right is pushing for this annexation and even many people inside the Likud Party. But Netanyahu is smarter in a way, in kind of an unfortunate way, obviously, for Palestinians, in that he is saying, we are working to actually annex Area C. Area C is now increasingly, basically Palestinians who live there have been driven out. But we just don't need to announce it because that will trigger international condemnation. It may trigger some steps, some sanctions. Why do that? Let's just do it de facto without announcing. But the far right wants to announce it because they want to excite people, to excite their base, etc.
- [63:40]
Thomas Small
Well, Elizabeth, when I go back seven, eight years ago to the beginning of conflicted, I told myself I never want to do episodes on Israel, Palestine, because at the end of each of those episodes I will want to throw myself off of a bridge because it's just so bleak. Can we talk a little bit about the Iran dimension of Israel's geostrategic strategic situation and its strategy, its policy there? I mean, Netanyahu from very early on in the 80s, was very clear in his mind that Iran is the threat, Iran is the real problem. He's been, I think, working closely with a lot of American policymakers over those decades to bring forward that narrative in Washington. And in the last 12 months, it all kind of finally seemed, I suppose, to him to be successful last year, the 12 Day War, America's intervention at the end in that very dramatic way. And then this year in late February, the resumption of the war, the Iran war. So what's your reading on that war and how it factors into Israel's evolving security doctrine?
- [64:46]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah. So I think that from the Israeli kind of mainstream point of view, the second war against the Iranian regime, regime, because it was much more ambitious in its goals of essentially toppling the regime, because it failed to do so, is seen as quite an unsuccessful war. Obviously, it is very much affected by political views. So supporters of Netanyahu see it as a successful war, even though they ought to be kind of more hawkish and be more demanding. But we see it all the time that partisanship has greater influence than rationality. Yeah, yeah. Or underlying political predispositions. So we now know from reporting that Israel intended to launch a war against the Iranian regime in June. So now, and because the protest that erupted spontaneously In January of 26, somehow the Trump administration got through tweeting by the President about coming to the assistance of the protesters, somehow it became possible to have, have a war together with the United States and therefore plans that were supposed to have matured in June and be prepared and all sorts of military preparations, I don't know, purchasing and production of anti missile defense system, the interceptors. All this had to basically get condensed.
- [66:12]
Thomas Small
From my understanding, Elizabeth, it's not that the eruption of the protests in Iran made it possible for the United States and Israel to work together in some planned war in Iran against Iran. It's that Donald Trump's tweets in response to those protests, which, from what I understand, Elizabeth, and it's very hard to believe that sometimes huge historical events can just turn on the whim of a man in power, but my understanding is he just tweeted those things without, without really getting kind of any sign off from anybody. And suddenly the President of the United States has just come out and said, we're on our way. We will protect you. And that forced the military industrial machine to sort of rev up months before it was actually ready to go.
- [67:03]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah, because it was supposed to be a lone war by Israel to deal with the fact that Iran was manufacturing missiles again at a high rate. And basically Israel perceives that a certain number of missiles at Iranian possession are a red line, that basically at some point they can gain so many missiles that they will pose a strategic existential threat to Israel. So Israel basically had to speed up plans for this war. And some of the basic assumptions undergirding the effort were clearly misconstrued. And, I mean, I feel that I still don't have enough information to understand why Israel has such a good intelligence on Iran. Clearly demonstrated in the two wars that it carried out and the multiple assassinations that it carried out. And at the same time, seemingly this poor understanding of the internal cohesion of this regime and its ability to take a lot of punches and still keep going. It could be that there's this gap which is known to exist in Israeli intelligence between kind of tactical intelligence and strategic. So you have a lot of tactical information about this is where this nuclear scientist who worked on this top secret nuclear weapons program that Israel managed to somehow infiltrate. This is where he sleeps on Thursday knights. And at the same time, a poor understanding of the sources of strength of this regime, which is deeply unpopular and yet was able to sustain these major blows.
- [68:45]
Thomas Small
Some American analysts think that one of the troubles in America is not so much the lack of intelligence, either tactical or strategic. And I think probably the Americans would have better strategic than tactical political intelligence compared to the Mossad, for sure, and Israeli military intelligence and things. But the problem there is that the President doesn't really care about what his intelligence reports are telling him. I think that's what many people allege, that Donald Trump is just not really interested in intelligence. Is there any suggestion in Israel that Benjamin Netanyahu is similarly disposed? That he has a kind of political ideology or just a general strategic ideology, and he wants to do what he wants to do kind of from his gut, that he. Because, I mean, we can talk about Netanyahu a bit to bring this great conversation to an end. I mean, because the personality of the man obviously has played a huge role in the last 25 years of Israeli history. I mean, this is a man that looms large over Israel in all of the developments that we've talked about. I think he probably a bit like the current occupant of the White House. He may have a grandiose self image, you know, a kind of a sense of his own value that might be way out of proportion to reality. You know, I don't want to. You can throw around psychological terms if you like, but, you know, I think there is some evidence that he has an almost messianic self belief that he is uniquely elected, somehow by providence, to defend Israel from Iran and things.
- [70:15]
Elizabeth Zerkov
No, he definitely believes that he is the only, only capable leader of the Jewish people. He constantly compares himself to Churchill, who was this heroic figure at the end of the day, who through times of immense trust and existential threat to the United Kingdom during the Second World War, led his people. He is, however, very, very different from Churchill. He's quite a hysterical person. He's known to be very weak and quite influenced by fears, driven, very paranoid. Definitely would have struggled to sustain the pressure under which Churchill was that Churchill was buried during the Second World War,
- [70:56]
Thomas Small
although Churchill suffered from terrible depression, which he medicated with drink and other things. You know, he wasn't a straightforward character either.
- [71:04]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah, of course, of course. So I think that we still don't know enough what went wrong here in.
- [71:10]
Thomas Small
Yeah, we know.
- [71:11]
Elizabeth Zerkov
It seems that definitely Netanyahu is leaking information that is intended to blame the Mossad for presenting him with the toppling of the regime as kind of a guarantee. Whereas at least since his briefing of journalists that wrote these negative stories and that blamed The Mossad. The Mossad has been leaking and saying, no, we didn't promise that we are going to topple this regime. It may take time. Much more apprehensive. Obviously, we don't know. It's all classified and hasn't been reported yet. But the end result was that several decisions were made that clearly indicate poor planning among them. It seems that from reporting by Ronan Bergman, for example, who has written for the New York Times and also for Yediota Khonot, it seems that Mossad operated this kind of public influence campaign in Iran, but it very much relied on the Internet. Internet. Then the regime just cut off the Internet. So someone didn't get enough Starlink terminals into Iran before all of this started. Could be because they intended the war to be in June. So that is still unclear. And also this whole plan of this Kurdish invasion, that is really just bizarre and very surprising to me that someone thought that this was a good idea. Obviously, we don't know enough. Maybe there's some redeeming quality to this idea. But from every Iranian with whom I spoke about this idea, who are all opponents of the regime, said that they don't want their country to be broken apart. They don't want Iranian Kurdistan to be established. And this is something that the regime very much played on. So, so. And of course, some of the targets that were hit were just a form of collective punishment for the entire population whom you're trying to get on your side. For example, Israel bombed the fuel tankers in Tehran, turning the sky black. Then it rained soot on the entire population.
- [73:18]
Thomas Small
I mean, it's just, I suppose maybe a military man would say, well, you can get the population on site a bit later. Now we have to hit the regime. Regime where it hurts, put maximum pressure. I think I have just enough of a kind of an asshole inside of me to kind of see the reasonableness of that idea.
- [73:40]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah, no, definitely for Israel. Even if this war, there was complete certainty that this war is not going to lead to regime change, it was still a good idea to go for it because it reduces Iranian missile capabilities. You have the US joining, so they're able to hit targets that Israel cannot hit because it doesn't have these deep bunker busters that were necessary for destroying some of these missile cities built into mountains in Iran. So from kind of the strategic calculus of the Israeli government and the Israeli military establishment, this is still a good idea. Now then, of course, again, one of the things that were not planned out was the Hormuz Strait. So the end result Is. Is quite a negative one. And I think it's too early to tell who really won out because we don't know what's the deal to end the war is going to look like.
- [74:29]
Thomas Small
Elizabeth, here on Conflicted. We call situations like this a shit show, and I'm afraid that's where the Middle east is right now. Thank you very much for coming back onto Conflicted and giving us your analysis of the Israeli dimension of the shit show. It's been sobering. It's been, as always on this show, depressing. But what wasn't depressing is getting to know you a bit better. Thank you for being so generous with us in the first place. Half sharing your own personal history, more your personal development. I know you don't like it. You say you're not an interesting person. I find that really remarkable since you are very interesting. But I think knowing who you are, how you got to where you are, and the kind of moral and political framing that you try to make sense of the world based on facts, as you made clear, but always with a kind of ultimately humanist goal of spreading compassion, dignity, rights, justice as far as you can. I just really appreciate it.
- [75:25]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Yeah. And I think that at the end of the day, it leaves you, indeed, very sad, because if you feel compassion towards everyone and everyone is getting harmed, Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese. I've been trying to kind of understand the volume of Hezbollah casualties in the war. And I've been looking at these different pages that are affiliated. Affiliated with Hezbollah. And then the Facebook algorithm just starts showing me constantly these notices by family members and by pages, and it just. Yeah, of course, some of these individuals went into Syria, committed war crimes there. But many of them are just very young kids, you know, who grew up in the system that indoctrinated them into doing this. And their families are just so heartbroken over them. And at the same time, because of how Hezbollah is trying to protect, present all of these deaths as these kind of glorious martyrdom. They're supposed to be happy and pretend to be happy, but it's just immensely tragic.
- [76:25]
Thomas Small
Well, if you can extend your interpretation of suffering beyond just the basic calculus of life and death, and just think of the soul suffering of all of the hatred everywhere, of the ignorance everywhere. These are forms of terrible suffering as well. And even those places in the Middle east that are mercifully, you know, spared the immediate impact of war, people aren't dropping bombs right on them. Nonetheless, under the surface, huge soul suffering is increasing. Anger, hate, ignorance. It's very sad, but all we can do I suppose at the end of the day is hope for the best, pray for the best, and make connections with like mind spirits there across the world. So thank you very much, Elizabeth. You've become a real friend of the show, a real friend of mine. I'm really grateful to you for coming back on Conflicted.
- [77:15]
Elizabeth Zerkov
Thank you so much. Have a lovely day.
- [77:20]
Thomas Small
That was Elizabeth Zerkov. Check the show notes for information on how to follow her work on social media and remember for deeper dives into the ideas we explore on this show, including extended conversations and Q&As with my CO host, Eamon Dean. The show notes will also give you details on how to join the conflicted community. I'm Thomas Small. Conflicted is a Message Heard Production Our executive producers are Jake Warren and Max Warren. This episode was produced and edited by Thomas Small.