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You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first.
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Broadcast on 20th October 2025 on Monocle Radio.
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Has President Donald Trump switched sides again between Ukraine and Russia? How much of a giant stride forward would Japan's first female Prime Minister represent? And why? Taxing the rich isn't as easy as taxing the rich. I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts. Hello, and welcome to the Monocle Daily. Coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Miller. My guests Nick Gowing and Rainbow Murray will discuss today's big stories. And we'll hear from Daily regular Julie Norman about the new book she has co written, attempting to shed some light on the past, present and possible future of Gaza. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Nick Gowing, analyst and founder of the risk management consultancy Thinking the Unthinkable, and by Rainbow Murray, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. Hello to you both. Hello, Nick. You are just back from where I'm sort of from. You were in Sydney. It's a nut, actually. It's usually a nice time of year to visit Sydney, but this is actually an especially good one as it's coming out of winter and into spring.
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D
Beautiful.
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C
Yeah.
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D
Glorious place. Wonderful temperatures. I was there, though, for a conference about food and the real stresses on food and how food is going to be provided in future, how even your country, Australia, is suffering significantly from drought and floods and isn't sure where the guarantees of food will come from in the future.
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C
Rainbow, on the subject of food, you see how seamlessly I've done this. You have undertaken something of a culinary odyssey tied to a very specific biscuit. Do please explain.
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B
That's right. You stole my segue. I was going to say, Nick has been on a long journey to talk about food and I'm going to talk about completing a long food journey.
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C
Apologies for treading all over that, but please explain nevertheless.
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B
Yes, there is a biscuit called Biscoff or Speculos or lotus, depending on where in the world you are. And it comes with a spread known as Biscoff spread or cookie butter. And you can make a variety of desserts with it. And my Biscoff obsessed child has asked me to make a variety of desserts. So I've done the Biscoff doughnuts, the Biscoff cheesecake, the Biscoff studded cookies with a Biscoff filling. Biscoff balls, which are sort of chocolate, small chocolates with Biscoff spread in the middle. And I've finally made it to the Biscoff cake.
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C
This isn't sponsored content, is it? We have. We haven't arrived to the point at which daily guests are doing backroom deals with various commercial entities and saying, I'm going on prestigious current affairs forum, the Monocle Daily. I will mention your product several times at the top of the show.
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B
If I were, I'd probably get into a lot of trouble for saying that other brands of the same recipe are available and that I may possibly have used one of those other brands in my cake.
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C
If anybody from Biscoff is tuning in, you can make your own arrangements with Rainbow.
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D
Just say it could be the Witkow.
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C
Well, indeed so. Which again, on the subject of seamless links, does move us to Ukraine and to the always diverting question of whose side the president of the United States is on in a conflict between a European democracy which sees itself very much as a partner and ally of the west rather, and a revanchis, tyrannical Russia. Reports which have emerged of President Donald Trump's meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, late last week suggest that it was what nervous press office types usually describe as a full and frank exchange of views, diplomatic code for having to send in someone to sweep up the crockery afterwards. Nick, is it clear whose side Donald Trump is on? I think we should specify as of this recording.
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D
That's not clear. But I think what happened in the White House on Friday when Zelenskyy went there to see Trump with Trump, and there was no official readout on this afterwards. But now it has emerged, particularly through the Financial Times, which everyone else is quoting, about the vile language which was being used by President Trump against Zelenskyy, about the map which was thrown all over the place, this is not the way to resolve wars. It's the sign of a, dare I say, an autocrat at work wanting everything done to his own tune. Having had two and a half hours on the phone with Putin, I think it's tragic. I've been a diplomatic editor and I've been involved in foreign affairs for sort of three decades now, and I find it extraordinary that this is happening. It's demeaning, it's deceiving. And when you think of what happened after the Anchorage summit when Putin and Trump met, and then three days later you had seven European leaders ending up in the White House being convinced that Trump was on the right path. It is just unbelievable what is happening.
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C
I mean, it's not so long ago, Rainbow, that he was actually talking about a total victory for Ukraine, even recovering all its territory, restoring its 1991 borders, to the point that even some Ukrainians were going, all right, steady on. Do we have any idea what has brought about this? I don't even know which reverse we've arrived at now. Is this 180 or 3? No, 180 degrees is going back the other way.
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B
There are various possible explanations. I'm going to offer four, none of which may be the correct one, but we'll try. One possible explanation is he's just calculated the cost of victory and realized it's a price he's not willing to pay. Why he didn't calculate that cost before offering victory, one has to ask. The second is that something changed in the conversation that he had with Putin. It has been speculated many times that Putin may have something over Trump. Who knows what happened in that conversation? But clearly Trump's stance towards Putin has shifted. A third possibility is that Trump is on a high, having achieved what he would call a huge victory in the Middle east, having got at least some form of ceasefire working, and now he's just bored of war and wants to move on. And so he's just saying, right, everybody, let's just go with what we've got now. Everyone go home, stop fighting, end of. And then he thinks, great, next Nobel Prize is in the bag, or he's just mad, or some combination of the.
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D
Above, if I may say. I think the tragedy is we don't know what was said between Trump and Putin. We don't know. We can only speculate about what Putin may have said to Trump, which made him essentially change his position and go through our 180 degrees. Nick.
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C
Trump has said, I mean, again, as of this broadcast, that he now appears to favor the idea that basically, much as Rainbow was suggesting with, I think, hypothesis three, that everybody just stop where they are and let's call it a draw. This would involve Ukraine ceding at least most of the Donbas, if not all of it, to Russia. But is that necessarily a completely unworkable idea? This has been suggested by other people. This is the West East Germany analogue. The idea is that most of Ukraine is left alone. It can join the EU and NATO in due course in anticipation that they will get the rest of Ukraine back eventually when everybody in Eastern Ukraine get sick of living under Russian domination, which is literally what always happens.
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D
Andrew. But I think the issue is consistency in Diplomacy in the messages you're sending, and the fact that this can change so quickly within almost hours, not even days, is really deeply, deeply disconcerting. You had seven leaders of Europe a couple of months ago after the Anchorage summit, making very clear that they were with Trump, they supported Trump, and they had clarity from Trump. Now they do not have clarity from Trump. European leaders are being asked to submit and agree to the giving up of a lot of Ukrainian land. I think it makes it very difficult for Zelenskyy, who, after leaks from the White House the suggestion that the cruise missiles, the Tomahawks, were going to be offered as a way of hitting deeper into Russia beyond the current systems, and then this turns around as a complete sort of gang fest within the White House, within the Oval Office, where Zelensky's beaten up again, but not on camera.
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C
Rainbow. This is going to be discombobulating all over again for European leaders. As Nick suggests, there is a proposed summit between President Trump and President Putin coming up in Budapest. If it turns out that it is, in fact possible for Putin to fly there, he may have to take the somewhat scenic route. But again, this is dizzying for European leaders, isn't it? Because we have gone from, say, Vice President Vance's speech in Munich in February. Everyone was just, oh, my God, America's going to desert us. Then over the last few months, it's been, actually, I think it might be all right. America's with us, after all, and now everybody's going, nope.
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B
I don't want to give too much credit to Trump here. I don't want to suggest that he's being strategic. I think he's. I mean, I support everything that Nick's just said, but perhaps he wanted to reinstill a sense of urgency in European leaders. There's nothing like the fear that you don't have your most valuable ally on your side to motivate you to take care of yourself. I don't think that's necessarily his prime goal. But I think the coalition of the willing is going to feel obliged now to double up their efforts yet again as they see Russia as an ongoing threat with no clear, reliable support from the US Forthcoming.
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D
I think what's disconcerting is the bullying and yelling which clearly went on in the Oval Office last Friday, and that Trump sees that as the way to convince somebody of the wisdom of what you are wanting to get done based, as it happens, on this occasion, based on what Putin had said to him a few days earlier.
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C
We should also mention, Nick, I think what appears to be trolling as well, on the part of US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, wearing a tie which was red, white and blue, which are, of course, the colors of the American flag, but red, white and blue on his tie was definitely.
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D
That's his explanation.
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C
Was definitely. It is. His explanation was definitely arranged in the pattern of the Russian flag.
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D
And that was noted by Moscow.
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C
I'm sure it was noted by the Ukrainians as well.
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D
Deeply disconcerting.
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C
Yeah. Is there a good reason why you would do that? Was he trying to be funny?
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D
I can't tell you. I mean, I can't get into Pete Hesketh's mind. Maybe someone advised him it would be a good idea. Maybe someone advised him it would be a joke. Maybe he put it on as a joke. But when you're dealing with a war which is going on where ultimately the use of nuclear weapons is a major issue, and vast numbers of large, largely men are being killed on both sides, it is disgusting, frankly, to think that it's come down to the color of a tie.
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B
Well, sorry, I don't think sartorial choices at that level are made by mistake. There's a lot of emphasis on what diplomats and world leaders wear. I mean, we saw how much criticism Zelensky got for not wearing the appropriate suit and that infamous bullying in the White House in February, and he changed his sartorial choices to be more considerate.
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D
Of his hosts and was credited for it.
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B
I was credited for it. We've also, you know, if you think about Trump's recent state visit to the uk, every outfit that every person wore was carefully chosen because of the subtle political messaging going on underneath. So I don't think this could have been an honest mistake.
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C
Well, to Japan now, which appears poised to appoint its first ever female prime minister, she will nigh certainly be Sanae Takaichi, who became leader of the Liberal Democratic Party upon the resignation of previous Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who resigned following a run of lousy election results and in anticipation of the party holding another lousy election result in his honour. The Liberal Democrats, who have governed postwar Japan far more often than not, no longer command a majority in the House of Representatives. Takaichi has made a deal with Nippon Isshin, or Japan Innovation Party, a newish conservative populist outfit. Nick, you were in also Japan reasonably recently. Was there, at this point, great excitement about the prospect of a female prime minister?
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D
There was great excitement, but it is breaking a mold. I mean, you cannot overstate the fact that if you look into The Diet, which is the Japanese parliament. Everyone, almost everyone in that chamber is in a dark suit with a dark black tie, and therefore, and particularly from the Liberal Party, and therefore this is a big break of the mold. But she is a very conservative politician with conservative ideas which are very supportive of Japanese nationalism. So it is a move to the right.
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C
A couple of things that I'll come back to. But she is, I think, not what people are tending to expect necessarily of the mold breaking female leader. Rainbow, possibly. I mean, the comparison with Margaret Thatcher has been made on the one hand a great pioneering female figure, but one whose interest in the actual advancement of women as a thing seemed fairly limited.
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B
You may be surprised to learn that there's actually more of the Margaret Thatcher type of women world leader than there is of the Jacinda Ardern type. It's sometimes easier for a woman who happily upholds the status quo to be accepted by that status quo than a woman who is trying to break the mould. I used to ask my students, what, if anything, has Margaret Thatcher done for women? And a lot of them would answer nothing. And I would come back to them and say, well, maybe on a policy perspective that's true. And I think that's what we're seeing in Japan as well. We're seeing someone who is very much on board with patriarchal policies and rejecting things that are trying to improve women's position. But I don't think you should undermine the symbolic value of having a woman leader.
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C
Demonstrates that this can actually be done.
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B
It absolutely demonstrates that it can be done. That there is no justification for excluding women from power.
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D
It is a remarkable change in Japanese politics of a woman. I mean, this is a very, very important step. But the most interesting thing really is less that she's a woman, more that the Liberal Party have elected someone who is from the right, who is very militaristic, who believes in going to the Yasakun Shrine, who believes in supporting Japanese militarism at a time of increasing tension with North Korea and also with Russia and the Kurile Island.
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C
On that thought, Nick, is this another possible step towards, and I know opinion about this is very much divided in Japan, but Japan becoming, in terms of its own defense, a more, for want of a better word, more normal country. Because it is circumscribed by its post World War II constitution, it's obliged to maintain the polite fiction that its formidable military is the Japanese Self Defense Forces. It was a great dream of Shinzo Abe that Japan should be a more normal country like this, are we approaching that, do you think?
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D
Japan feels very vulnerable not just to tsunamis, but also to military attack from North Korea and to a certain extent Russia in its current thinking, from Moscow, because there are up in the northeast, the Kurile Islands, half of which are Japanese, half of which are Russian, and the Russians want the whole lot back, therefore asserting itself. They've had what they call self defense forces for many decades now. They are moving far more towards defense forces with far more assertive weapons systems and a doctrine which is far more go on the attack as opposed to just defend yourself.
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C
I want to come back to the point you were making there, Rainbow, about the significance of somebody being the first to do something, but in terms of her actual policies beyond what she would represent, and this is not an entirely done deal yet. Do we see part of the backlash against advancement or against progress? Because it is often held, and I think it's fairly plausibly so, that President Donald Trump could only have got elected following President Barack Obama. The pendulum swings back the other way. Is she part of when we look at her attitude or her more or less indifference to the advancement of women, she's not keen on things like same sex marriage, for example. Do we see another iteration of the global conservative backlash?
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B
Yes, potentially. But I think you also need to sort of situate this within the specific context in which she's come to power. She got nominated as her party leader after they'd sort of lost an election. They were struggling. So I'd say in that respect, she's more of a sort of an example of the glass cliff phenomenon that you bring a woman in. Once the men have made a mess of everything and they need someone else to clean up the mess, and then once things are better again, they want to take power back. But once you have had a trailblazer, even if they were in a position of struggle, it doesn't. You can't take that away. But I think in that respect, she reminds me of Kim Campbell, who was leader of for a relatively short period.
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D
Of time, as not a great success.
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B
Not a great success. And we haven't had another woman lead Canada since, and that was back in the 1990s. So it will be very interesting to see whether she manages to change the image of women in positions of power or whether all she does is reinforce both patriarchal policies and prejudices about women's capacity to govern.
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D
My suspicion is that being deferential to a woman leader is going to be difficult for a lot of the men. They'll still conspire and they'll still sort of create instability at a time when Japan really needs stability at the moment.
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C
Well, to France. Now, on the subject of countries needing stability, which is apparently not a decision being made by the extremely wealthy, reports have it that many of France's better off have begun relocating their finances to such jurisdictions as Luxembourg and Switzerland, which don't change Prime Minister every other week. Or if they do, nobody notices and have less of a history of brandishing pitchforks at the well to do. This illustrates the difficulty facing France's government and others. On the one hand, it seems logical to ask the broader shouldered to bear the heaviest burden and so on. On the other, the rich and their riches have never been so mobile. Rainbow There has been talk these last desperate months of trying to fill France's abysmal public finances by reinstituting a wealth tax, which is obviously an attractive idea because people are always attracted to taxes, they're probably not going to have to pay. A wealth tax would target very small number of people. But does this illustrate why wealth taxes don't actually work terribly well? Because the wealthy can just move their.
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B
Wealth in a lot of ways it does. And France has grappled with this, as many other countries have, for a long period of time. From the perspective of the electorate, when the public purse needs more money, it's fair and appropriate for that money to come primarily from those with the deepest pockets. But the problem is that any time the government has tried to place heavier taxes on the rich, they have taken their money and moved it elsewhere. And so the noble goals of such taxation are not satisfied by the actual outcomes, which tend to just be a huge spike in tax evasion and also sometimes in wealthy people leaving the country, which takes investment away as well.
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C
Are they largely cosmetic though? Anyway, Nick, things such as wealth taxes, aren't they a way for governments to say, look, we're taxing loads of people who've got more money than you have.
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D
But I think there is a much bigger issue here, which is that basically most governments are broke, debt is far beyond what countries can now support, and people have got to accept that. Actually, the good times are over. Now, if you're rich, if you're wealthy, depending on which adjective you want to use, you're going to try and move wherever you want to and wherever you can, and wherever your advisor tells you you're going to get a better deal. But there's a far more fundamental problem. You can't dilute wealth in the way that is now mooted And I've got the economist in front of me. The coming debt emergency being very blunt about rich world public debt is already worth 110% of GDP. Now, why do I say that? Because it's all very well talking about rich people moving to Luxembourg for a short time, but it ain't going to be easy for Luxembourg and Switzerland. Switzerland has got its own financial problems as well. We shouldn't delude ourselves that there are somehow havens where people can hide their money or have their money. And in Switzerland, you can't hide your money at all these days that actually you're going to get a better deal. Unless you're talking about mini percentages.
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C
I mean, are governments also worried though, Rainbow, that if you do do this thing and a certain number of extremely rich people go, well, right then I'm off to somewhere where I'll get taxed less? On the one hand, yes, I think there would be the populist temptation to say buy. See you, Good riddance. But that just makes the problem worse. In the United Kingdom, for example, you can read variations on these figures, but the absolute top echelon of taxpay is 0.1% thereof. I mean, these are properly, properly rich people, but they are paying more income tax than the bottom 50%.
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B
It's about proportionality, I think, in absolute terms, yes. In percentage terms, definitely not. Definitely not. And I think when everybody is struggling, people naturally point to those who are struggling the least and feel that they should be taking part in a greater share of the struggle. But wheeling back to France, it's not just about tax evasion. It's also perhaps primarily about trying to avoid instability because there is so much political instability at the moment that the economy is struggling as a result of that. Investors don't want to invest when they don't know what's coming next. There's a perpetual fear that the next government might be composed of the far right. People are concerned about the fact that France struggles to pass a budget that's a challenge that toppled two prime ministers last year and has already toppled one in the past couple of months and a second who fell and then had to get called back. So I think, and this also, I think relates back to what we were just talking about in Japan, you know, this political instability. So I think there's a need to accept economic reality on the part of the electorate and there is a need to favor political stability over partisan rivalry on the part of politicians. And until both groups are willing to do that, I think we're going to See this as an ongoing problem.
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D
I think it's all very easy to go on a protest and hammer the rich, the wealthy, whatever you want to call them, rich, wealthy, or use another adjective. And I said this already once before, but what is remarkable is that many more people are getting richer, including the working class. And I think there's a danger that we're going to create a division in people's minds where somehow the rich are a special group and the wealthy are a special group, but they're somehow more special than others. There are plenty of people now who are rich as working people. And we're talking in the United Kingdom where many people are going to be hit by extra taxes here because of what's happening, because of the debt and so on. And that is going to make it much more difficult to define what a wealthy person is. Is a. Working people are working people, as Rachel Reeves, the British Chancellor, likes to talk about them. Are working people really any different to working people who've got a bit of money?
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C
Well, and now this that it says here is an excerpt of the deliberations of Scream Club. Apparently a thing in which groups annoying idiots gather in public and shriek performatively in public spaces with a view to putting the footage on social media where people will watch this for some reason, as opposed to the pinnacles of literature and cinema they could be accessing at no charge on a machine in their pocket. Participants in Scream clubs, which have been reported in Chicago, London, Minneapolis and elsewhere, extol its benefits as a release of stress and builder of community. Though obviously they should all have a fire hose turned on them. We will not be trying this in the studio. These microphones were expensive. Rainbow, do you fancy a go at this? Would you participate in Scream Club personally?
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B
No.
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C
Correct answer.
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B
But I understand the appeal in the sense, first of all, that screaming can be cathartic when life is beating you down. But also one of the points that these clubs make is that it is a way for people to come together in a form of community and alleviate stress without having to spend money or drink alcohol.
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C
And.
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B
And there aren't actually that many other.
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C
They play board games.
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B
They could play board games, but board games are not necessarily cathartic. They might be relaxing, but they don't necessarily allow you to let out some of that pent up aggression in a sort of 10 second and it's gone.
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C
Leading question, Nick, Is this actually about catharsis or is this the seeking of attention?
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D
Wow, I don't know, but I don't feel the need to Go out and scream in public. Whether I want to scream in public by myself or with a hundred or a thousand people around me, if it makes me feel better with a thousand people. But do I want to travel to Hyde park to scream? I don't think I do.
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C
This is performance, though, isn't it? Rainbow. They could go to a completely empty field. They could chip in a few quid each, it's not expensive. And book a rehearsal studio. No one else would have to know they were doing it. They did not have to film it and put it on social media. Media.
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B
They didn't. And the fact that they did is one of the many reasons why this is not for me. That's not my idea of. Of a good performance. I mean, are you sure this isn't just a reaction to Pegseth's tie?
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C
It may well be. I mean, there's. There's any number of things it could be a reaction to. But is this one of those things, Nick, just finally where we learn of yet another thing that cleaves humanity in two between those people who are screamers in one way or. Or who are sulkers, that is basically just prefer to chew a hole in their upper lip and probably that.
- [27:51]
D
But I don't think we're talking about a movement here which is going to rock the political class yet. It could happen. I mean, is this the beginning of a new kind of reform here in the UK where people want to scream and then divert it into a form of voting which we're not familiar with yet? I'm being a bit sarcastic, but on the other hand, it is not yet something which in my view, has got to a critical mass.
- [28:14]
C
Well, we'll know about it when it does. Nick Gowing and Rainbow Murray, thank you both for joining us. Finally, on today's show, for obvious and depressing reasons, no patch of Earth has consumed more of the world's attention these last couple of years than the Gaza Strip, a tiny stretch of earth which you could just about wedge sideways into London between Heathrow Airport and Dagenham. All of that coverage has promoted little understanding, however, partly because Israel has disbarred foreign media from working in Gaza, mostly because the ceaseless churn of horrifying headlines has left little time for historical context. New book by Julie Norman, associate professor in Politics and International Relations at University College London and a regular panelist on this program, and Maya Carter Hallward, professor of Middle East Politics at Kennesaw State University, aims to change all that. The book is called the Dream and the Nightmare. I Spoke to Julie at Midori House earlier and began by asking about the difficulties of writing about a place you can't visit.
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A
Yeah. So I should start by saying the book is. Certainly brings us up to the current day, but it's also trying to help readers understand the context. Context of what Gaza to this point, what was the story before October 7th? So a lot of our research was looking back either at newspaper clippings, at memoirs, at diaries, and really just talking with Gazans quite a lot and talking with people about their whole life history. Not just what's been happening in the last two years, though obviously people there. That's what we obviously got up to. It was a lot of backcasting and looking back as well for the current war. Like all journalists, like all researchers, yes, absolutely impossible to be there on the ground. I did spend a lot of time in the west bank and Israel talking to as many people as I could there. And really what I just did through that period is every day I would just write down whatever was happening in the news, I would write down links, and I just kept a running timeline that I am maintaining till this day with just kind of the day by day of what's happening with the war.
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C
Because it was interesting hearing the voices of the Gazans you speak to about the place they grew up in, the place they think of as home, because it is mostly discussed and framed as a battlefield and its people largely as either perpetrators or victims. And obviously there's always more going on to any place than that. But do Gazans think of themselves as, by this point, different from their fellow Palestinians on the West Bank? Do you get any sense that they have grown apart culturally, politically, spiritually?
- [30:47]
A
However, you know, I think it's inescapable to see that Gaza has become increasingly isolated geographically, economically, politically, and, of course, with what's happening right now. Just a obviously divergence of trajectories of people living in both of these parts of Palestine. And I would say it really varies by the individual. A lot of people do identify as Gazan as kind of a core identity as well as Palestinian. But I think for most people, it is still this sense of a Palestinian, Palestinian identity, especially remembering that, you know, over two thirds of Gazans were refugees or their families were refugees from 1948, so from other parts of Palestine or what's now Israel. So that Palestinian identity, I would still say, is extremely strong. But Gaza has assumed more of its own identity simply because I think of the way it's been isolated and the way that events have played out specifically in that part of Palestine.
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C
The subtitle of your book is the Dream and the Nightmare. I think most people. People probably don't think the nightmare aspect of that requires any further explanation. But when you talk about the dream, what were or indeed are still people's aspirations about what Gaza could or should be. Because my own travels in Gaza, far from exhaustive, and they were quite a long time ago, a couple of weeks in 2005. And what I mostly found at the time was kind of a fatalism among people that, yeah, this is terrible and it's probably not going to improve. And that was 20 years ago.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You know, I would say even the public initially was a little worried about that title, because where is this dream coming from? What was the dream of Gaza? But actually, that was from a quote from one of the participants in the book, a young man who said living in Gaza was like a dream and a nightmare at the same time. So he said that to us. And it was striking how much that kind of wording came up in so many different conversations and interviews, people saying that living in Gaza was kind of an ideal in many ways, largely because of the social fabric, the sense of community, the sense of solidarity, largely because of the circumstances that were forced onto that place. But I think there's more to it than that also. And we really do try and tease this out again by telling the more historical story of Gaza, this idea that Gaza City was this very vibrant crossroads for centuries, if not millennia, you know, prior to when we started using words like Israel and Palestine to describe, Even through the 20th century, it still was such a core place for the sea, for a lot of agriculture, for a lot of Palestinian initial political resistance, for organizing, for a lot of things that, you know, became idealized, I would say. And for many, it was kind of the core of Palestine in many different ways. And there's still, I think, an idea that some faraway future could still recapture some of that.
- [33:35]
C
You mentioned October 7th, obviously, and that day and the subsequent events do get covered in the book. And it's a question I've asked many, many other people, and one to which I still haven't had what strikes me as an entirely satisfactory answer, which is, is it clear to you or indeed anybody you spoke to what Hamas thought they were doing on October 7, 2023? Because it cannot surely have occurred to them that this is going to go brilliantly for us and for the people of Gaza.
- [34:05]
A
Yeah, I think there were a couple of things, and it, again, we are still trying to piece Together, what the rationale was there and even how far the strategic thinking in Hamas as an organization went around this. From my thinking, it was kind of two ways that they thought it might go. One, I think they did believe that other groups in solidarity with them in the region, Hezbollah, Iran, some of the other so called proxy groups of Iran would kind of join in and this would become a, a full multi front war against Israel. Obviously those other groups did maintain and start up some kinds of activities, but certainly not the extent that Hamas thought they might. So that was one route that they.
- [34:48]
C
It does sounds like something you should be pretty sure of in advance.
- [34:51]
A
Yes, and part of our research showed that Hamas actually had planned, you know, planned the attack for a while and had actually kind of held off on it for some time because they were waiting to see if Iran in particular would get on board. And again, that was one finding anyway. But again, it wasn't certain, they weren't sure. And the other option was simply a sort of the finale of the fireworks. You throw everything that you have, you do this big, you know, spectacle, spectacular kind of attack, and at the very least you bring attention back to Palestine, you court what they knew would be a very massive response and you get Palestine back on the agenda. And if you go down swinging with it, then that is the sacrifice that you make. And so I think they thought either one of them, those routes would better position Palestine than where it was pre October 7th. But that's my understanding of the rationale from the people we were able to speak to and the analysts I was.
- [35:44]
B
Able to speak with, which does prompt.
- [35:46]
C
The inevitable concluding question, which is, having written this history of Gaza from more or less the dawn of time to the present day, how optimistic or otherwise are you that there are further chapters still to be written? If we think ahead five, ten years from now, is Gaza as it has been understood, still going to exist?
- [36:04]
A
I think absolutely. I mean, obviously this war is changing everything. It will never be the same. This is such a different kind of future that we're looking at than I think any of us even thought when the war first started, but the idea that Gaza would not be there I think is pretty unthinkable to almost everyone that I spoke with for this book. It may not look the way people want it to, it may not have the type of government that people want it to, but Gaza as a place and Gaza as a people are not going away. And I think this is one thing that people were very much wanting to emphasize, that they will keep going one way or another, if there is any opportunity to rebuild, they will rebuild. And that this people is not going anywhere. Even if there is a different kind of future than what they had hoped it would be.
- [36:51]
C
That was Julie Norman talking about her new book, the Dream and the Nightmare. It's out on Friday, October 24th. Very much recommended. And that is all for this edition of the Daily. Thanks to everybody. Our panelists today, Nick Gowing and Rainbow Murray. Today's show was produced by Hassan Anderson and researched by Joanna Moser. Our sound engineer was Elliot Greenfield. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.