October 7th Foresight, Netanyahu’s Funding of Hamas, and the Settlers Murdering Palestinians

Summary

The Tucker Carlson Show – Episode Summary

Episode Title: October 7th Foresight, Netanyahu’s Funding of Hamas, and the Settlers Murdering Palestinians
Date: April 13, 2026

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Main Theme and Purpose

This in-depth dialogue between Tucker Carlson (A) and an experienced journalist/Israel resident (B, identified later as Arye Chaim Flanzareich) explores how the October 7th attacks marked both a calculated turning point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a broader reshuffling of the Middle East. Central topics include the long-term build-up to October 7th, failures of Israeli intelligence, Netanyahu’s alleged strategy of chaos, the enigmatic future for both Israelis and Palestinians, and the state of Israeli society amid ongoing wars and internal transformation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Understanding October 7th: Origins and Motives

• Contextualizing the Attack

  • U.S. media filters hinder true understanding of Middle Eastern events; October 7th seen as a global reshuffling, initiating an irreversible change ([00:15]).
  • Differing narratives: Palestinians frame it as a reaction to ongoing occupation; Israelis as an act of pure antisemitism ([01:20], [01:31]).
  • "To properly understand October 7th, you have to put together kind of a timeline" – B ([00:42]).

• The Pre-October 7th Timeline

  • 2021 marked by:
    • Tensions at Al Aqsa mosque and Sheikh Jarrah ([02:11])
    • Hamas rocket fire into Israel ([02:33])
    • Widespread riots between Israeli Jews and Arabs
    • Emergence of new militant groups ("Lion's Den") in the West Bank ([03:16])
  • 2014 war led to an unsustainable "silence" in Gaza; Hamas faced declining legitimacy as resistance waned ([05:26], [07:11]).
  • Yahya Sinwar perceived that without renewed violence, Hamas would lose relevance. "The status quo... was poison for the Palestinian cause." – B ([18:22])

• Timeline of Planning

  • Concrete planning for October 7th likely began a year before the event (October 2022); conceptual motives had deep roots, as in Sinwar's historical rhetoric ([08:44], [08:53]).

• Quotes on Motivation:

  • "The next war... cannot end like the third, which ended like the second and the first...They should take over Gaza." (Sinwar via B, [14:30]–[15:26])
  • "I see... a regional religious war that will burn... the green and the dry." (Sinwar, approximately a year before Oct. 7, [17:44])

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2. Israeli Intelligence and Government Response

• Early Warnings & Stand Down

  • Prior warnings went unheeded in Israeli intelligence ("Jericho Wall" document); indicators dismissed as "inadmissible trash" ([23:39]).
  • On October 7, there was knowledge at high levels hours before the attack, but no adequate mobilization ([25:09]).
    • “The real question… is why? If there was some kind of indication around 3am why the air force wasn’t involved, why helicopters, drones… weren’t involved?” – B ([30:13])

• Assessment of Failures

  • Israeli military and security forces are not always competent; gaps often exist outside of prioritized theaters ([30:13], [30:26]).

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3. The Logic & Limits of Israeli Strategy

• On Foresight and Chaos

  • The myth of Israeli or Netanyahu's grand strategy is overstated ([34:14]).
    • “What matters to Israel, what’s useful for Bibi Netanyahu specifically, is simply chaos.” – B ([34:58])

• The "Art of Indecision"

  • Netanyahu’s operational tactic: “You don’t occupy it, but you leave it unoccupiable.” – B ([97:30])
  • Short-term tactical moves, no clear long-term vision, especially regarding Gaza or broader borders ([36:14], [96:42], [97:06]).

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4. Funding Hamas: The Status Quo Policy

• Suitcases of Cash
  • Confirmed that large amounts of cash (some originating from Qatar and the U.S.) flowed into Gaza to "keep Hamas happy and fat and they don’t bother us" ([46:08]–[46:53]).
  • This policy was intended to manage Hamas and contain aggression rather than resolve the underlying issues.

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5. Settlements, Identity, and the Future of the West Bank

• Settler Radicalization & Violence

  • A vivid, firsthand account of Israeli settler attacks on Palestinian villages, including arson and livestock killings ([61:37]).
  • “The third mutation of the settlers…they now wear Palestinian kofis…They're wearing those things, black ones...and you have the settlers running around, throwing stones, wearing the very thing that once frightened them as children.” – B ([61:37])
  • Expanding outposts, "hilltop youth," and increasing normalization of violence ([59:52]–[64:57]).

• Psychological Dimension

  • “It’s beyond ideology.” – settler to B, on the meaning of the movement ([66:40])
  • Deepening self-other mirror: Israelis and Palestinians as “mirror images of each other.” – B ([56:25], [57:51])

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6. The Internal State of Israel

• National Psyche and Demographics

  • The core vulnerability is internal: "If anything brings Israel to its knees… it’ll be internal." – B ([53:04])
  • Religious/secular divide persists but not yet at crisis level ([54:48]–[55:29])
  • Many Israelis insulate themselves from reality; “It’s an isolated and solipsistic society.” – B ([87:01])

• Death of the Left & Political Stagnation

  • “The Israeli left is dead…The right continues to churn out active propositions... A left winger in Israel will tell you how they feel.” – B ([76:21])
  • Rise of extreme rhetoric, including mainstream discussion of population transfer ([74:52]–[75:41])

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7. Regional and International Relations

• On Allies & Enemies

  • Reliance on nuclear deterrence, hopes for regional realignment, and the fragility vis-à-vis the Arab and Muslim world ([49:46]).
  • Complex relationships with the U.S., Gulf States, and American Jewry; little familiarity with American pro-Israel media figures ([99:16]–[103:41]).
    • “They want…America to acknowledge that we’re, in a way, doing your bidding.” – B ([100:28])

• Views on Trump and U.S. Politics

  • Strong preference for Trump over Biden; perceived as more decisive and supportive ([100:18]–[101:43]).

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8. Long-Term Outlook and the Next Five Years

• Prospects for Peace and War

  • Bibi Netanyahu expected to remain in power; conflict may recede to a “manageable” level but with no true resolution ([107:03]).
  • “There could be a situation...in which Israel…is still striking…that they operate in the skies of Tehran…” – B ([109:00])

• Ongoing Conflict as “War Between the Wars”

  • Distinction between formal wars and continual low-level conflict ([108:55]–[109:00]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Status Quo and Its Collapse

"The one thing of which you can be certain is that the flakes won't fall in the same place...It's the 9/11 of this conflict, that whatever was before won't be after." – B ([18:22])

On Israeli Foresight

"There's a myth that...there's a whole lot more strategy, that there's a whole lot more foresight in Israel." – B ([34:14])

On Internal Cohesion

"If anything brings Israel to its knees...it’ll be internal." – B ([53:04])

On the Israeli Left

"The Israeli left is dead...A left winger in Israel will tell you how they feel." – B ([76:21])

On the Future

"The best spies in the Arab world all work for the Mossad." – B ([110:37])

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Important Timestamps

• Timeline leading to October 7th: [00:42]–[04:56]
• Hamas and Gaza post-2014: [05:26]–[08:44]
• On Sinwar and planning: [08:44]–[10:18]
• Israeli security & intelligence failures: [23:39]–[32:59]
• Funding of Hamas: [46:02]–[46:54]
• Settler violence and identity: [59:52]–[63:52]
• Internal Israeli dynamics: [53:03]–[55:16], [76:21]
• On American and Gulf relations: [99:16]–[102:44]
• Predictions for the future: [107:03]–[110:14]

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Tone and Language

The discussion is candid, often philosophical, with sharp critique, insider anecdotes, and a sense of weariness at cyclical violence and short-sightedness. Both Carlson and Flanzareich avoid simplistic moralizing, instead probing the complexity and psychological undertones of the conflict and Israeli society.

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Concluding Thoughts

This episode stands out for its unvarnished, granular analysis of October 7th and its aftermath, challenging both mainstream Israeli and Western assumptions. It underscores the enduring volatility of the region, the rise of radical settler movements, the collapse of left-wing Israeli politics, and the deep existential questions haunting both Jews and Palestinians. The conversation closes in uncertainty, with no obvious resolution in sight—only a region, and a state, bound to history yet struggling to escape it.

Transcript

[A]

How long have you lived in Israel?

[B]

Been there for about 10 years.

[A]

10 years. So we were just talking off camera, and I'm. First of all, thank you for doing this.

[B]

Pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[A]

It's impossible to really understand anything from the United States because the filters and the propaganda are just so restrictive. But it seems obvious that October 7th is the beginning of a global reshuffling, certainly of the Middle East. We haven't spent enough time thinking through what that was. What was that?

[B]

I think to properly understand October 7th, you have to put together kind of a timeline, I think what's been lacking here. I talk to a lot of Palestinians, and they tell me a lot about how they. They portray the war as something that sort of began after October 7, which is another problem we can get to at some point. The Israelis chalk it up to, you know, the act of a rabid, anti Semite. I have no doubt that he was quite possibly an anti Semite.

[A]

You're speaking of Yahya Sinwar, the leader

[B]

of Hamas, now dead.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

But it doesn't mean that there wasn't a logic. It doesn't mean that this happened when it happened and how it happens for a certain.

[A]

So just to be clear about what you're saying, so from the Palestinian perspective, everything we're seeing now is a result of the events after October 7th. And from the Israeli perspective, October 7th happened just because they're hated unreasonably.

[B]

Well, I guess what I often find is when I speak to Palestinians, and they're not wrong to say that the backdrop of all this is that there's been an occupation for a very long time. We've been occupied since 48, which I understand, but it still doesn't explain the specifics of October 7th. It explains why at some point, something like that could or quite possibly should have happened. And so that's been something I focused on a lot. And I think if you want to put together a proper answer, you have to put together a timeline. You have to go back. You have to trace basically the existence and the trajectory of Hamas from the rise to power. But the real breaking point, I'll say, is 2021.

[A]

What happened in 2021?

[B]

Three things happened in 2021. 2021. You have tensions at Al Aqsa mosque. You have famously, all the tensions that went on in Sheikh Jarrah, where there were settlers taking Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem. That caused a lot of tension.

[A]

What happened at the Al Aqsa complex that year?

[B]

There were all kinds of clashes between Israeli border police and Muslim worshipers. And this went on for some time. It was May. It was May. And what happened was that three things happened. Hamas fired rockets into Israel, killing about 14 Israelis. Riots broke out in the middle of Israel, across the country, actually, internal riots between Arab Israelis and Israeli Jews. And suddenly the west bank woke up from a very long slumber. Suddenly you had, for the first time in a very long time, militants who were firing at IDF troops. I remember seeing videos of, I think it must have been hundreds of Palestinian men marching towards the border. Did I think they were going to enter?

[A]

No.

[B]

But I remember calling my father. I remember calling him and saying, this video I'm seeing, this doesn't look good. This is an indication of something. And in the Israeli media, if you look back at the reports, the Israelis perceived this to be an indication that we have a big threat from within. This contributed also to the rise of the right in the years that followed. So the first order of business was, we have Arab Israelis and they're a problem. We have 2 million Palestinians within our borders. And the next thing that happened.

[A]

And you saw borders of Israel, probably.

[B]

Yeah. Within the 48 borders. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Between the sea and the Green line. Yep. And then you had, over the next year or two, you might remember, increased operations by the idf. Suddenly, in Nablus, which is used to be called the terror capital of Palestine, suddenly there was a new militia that formed. It's called Lion's Den. Suddenly, in Jenin, the refugee camps in the north of the west bank, there are arms men doing military marches with M16s and masks on. And that was the second order of business. And the last thing that the Israelis believed was that Hamas firing some sort of like, water pipe rockets into Israel was an indication of something to come, something much bigger to come.

[A]

So what was this? I mean, as you said, you could trace this all the way back to the British Mandate era or whatever. You could trace as far back as you wanted. But you think this really began with clashes between both Israeli citizens, Arabs and Jews, within Israel and in 2021. So how did that lead to.

[B]

Not exactly. What I think is that. And this is why you have to go a little further back. Sorry, this is a bit of a. I think that the internal riots were absolutely meaningless. I think what happened in the west bank was somewhat meaningful. And I can explain later why I don't think it had any end to it, why it wasn't going to come to any significant end. But what happened in 2021, why Hamas fired rockets? No one bothered to Ask, why are they suddenly firing rockets? Hamas came to power in 2007. I think it was 2007.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They come to power, and this is a group that overthrew the pa, right, Palestinian Authority. They tossed them off rooftops, took control of Gaza, and they came. Why would people. Why would people have wanted them? Or why did they think that the Palestinians deserve them rather than the pa? They were saying, we're a resistance group. We're Palestinians. We were exiled in 48, and the whole purpose of our existence in one way or another, is to get back. And so, unlike the pa, we're not going to sit and make peace with the Jews. We're not going to sort of like, coordinate with them. We're not going to arrest people at their behest. We're going to fight. And that's what they did from 2007 to 2014. I think you have three to four ground invasions, if I'm not mistaken. And so they were doing kind of. They were fulfilling their promise. They didn't win. They didn't liberate Palestine. But what did happen is that Hamas didn't have a lot of political tension because they were either fighting, being bombed, or people were cleaning up the rubble. But in 2014. Just bear with me a moment. In 2014, suddenly, silence falls upon Gaza. I think this was a silence that. I don't know if Hamas even predicted that such a silence would ever come upon Gaza. The Israelis certainly wanted it. It's the last war. It's called tsukeitan in Hebrew. It's the last war. The Israelis bombed a bunch of tunnels. There were some ground operations, lots of strikes. And it was kind of this thing where they came and said, look, we sent them back. I think the quote from the general at the time was, we sent them back 50 years or a hundred years, or to the Stone Age, whatever it was. But that's a bit of a problem for Hamas. You're a group of gritty, sort of nitty gritty resistance fighters. You came to power, you fought some wars, didn't win, you didn't get totally beat, and now you're just bureaucrats. Now you have to go from grit to governance. And that's fine maybe for a year, maybe for two, because the next big battle is coming. What happens three, four, five years later? some point, people are sitting there, they have a much lower quality of life than people in the West Bank. Palestinians in the west bank, at the very least, can come into Israel for years and years and years, half of them illegally and work make an Israeli salary, go back home in Gaza, It's. They didn't have a whole lot going for them. And I think at some point in time, maybe around 2018, it became clear that. I think people were kind of starting to ask the question. It's like, okay, if we picked you and you're supposed to fight, and now we're just eating shit here, we might as well get the PA back. And you say that you don't sit down with the Jews and you don't recognize the Jews, and you're not going to make peace with them, but you talk to them on a weekly basis. You just have some Egyptian guy in the middle playing telephone tag. And I think that the leader of Hamas, I think Yahya Sinwar, I think he understood that. I think around 2018, he began to understand that, like, this is not a sustainable. This is not something sustainable. Can't keep going like this.

[A]

When do you think the planning for October 7th began? And what was the thinking?

[B]

Look, in terms of the planning, if you're talking about the concrete steps. Look, I'm not an intelligence analyst. From what we know, I think from what was released, we understand that sometime in October 2022, it might have. The real planning could have been underway. The conceptual planning for something of this sort, I think, had been working within Sinwar since he was probably a teenager. I mean, there's a famous quote. I think he did the interview in Hebrew, which is like, all the more. It's eerie. It's a crazy interview. And he's sitting on a plastic chair outside, and they asked him something about, you know, do you want to. Do you want to kill us? Do you want war with us? And he goes, listen, right now you're strong. You've got nuclear bombs. I can't. I can't. I can't touch you. But in 20, maybe 15 years, you're gonna be weak inside, and that's when I'm gonna strike you. And in 2018, Yahya Sinwar gave an interview. It's crazy because, you know, I think we were just talking about this before we started. Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, he put out a piece called Sinwar's March of Folly. I think it came out in the summer. August, September. And he ventured an argument as to why Sinwad could have done something so stupid. And I'm bracketing morals here. I'm not talking about whether he was good or bad. I'm just talking about conceptually speaking, like,

[A]

the pure analysis of it.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And he had this line, I read This. I must have read this piece four to five times. And unto this day, I can't understand what he meant. He said something to the effect of Yahya Sinwar fell prey to Muslim Brotherhood supremacy, conspiracism, and he lacked reasoning capabilities. Something out of like a first year philosophy paper.

[A]

He wrote a couple books in prison, didn't he? In the decades he spent in prison,

[B]

he wrote one book.

[A]

One book. A novel.

[B]

Yeah. He had something of the road. I forget the name.

[A]

Incarnation and the eagle or something.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he was reading quite a bit. He'd have people. He'd read a lot. Sort of like old.

[A]

Right. So he's not an illiterate savage. Whatever you think. I'm not endorsing.

[B]

He could be a savage, but he wasn't an illiterate. He was definitely literate.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

He definitely had reasoning capabilities.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You can use reasoning capabilities to do very, very bad things. People do all the time.

[A]

He did.

[B]

He did. But again, that's not the point.

[A]

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[B]

I don't know if he was reporting back to his masters. Like, I don't know Jeffrey Goldberg. I don't know who he reports to.

[A]

If he reports in the media ecosystem in the United States, that's considered like the highest level of think peace.

[B]

So I don't know if he was reporting to anyone, but he certainly believes, I would assume he believes he wrote a whole essay on it, that this was all just rabid anti Semitism and a failed. And the worst part about the piece is that he already determines the success. He claims it's his march of folly, meaning he failed. Not only was he stupid and did he have no logic whatsoever, but he failed. And with him, all of his buddies, Hezbollah, Iran, they all failed. And it's over. It sucks. You had a good. You tried, but you failed in 2018. And this is a very important quote. There is an Italian journalist who's since left journalism, which is crazy to me, but she went out with a bang. Francesca Bardi or something. She did an interview with Yahya sinwar in Gaza 2018. The interview was later published by Wynet in a Hebrew paper. And it's a fascinating bit. This was again, if we talk about the silence that came upon Gaza in 2014, this is at the height of the silence, 2018. Not a lot of people remember the wars that happened four years ago. And people are starting to feel a little antsy, a little jittery. Israel's super happy because they're like, if we just keep feeding them, this will be great. We can ride this wave forever. And she asked him this question about the next war. And it's crazy that Jeffrey Goldberg didn't quote Sinwad once in his entire piece.

[A]

Seriously.

[B]

I might be wrong, but I believe that he didn't quote Sinuad once in his whole piece. And there's a plethora of quotes, and they're all very, very useful in trying to understand what the hell happened. And he says, he says something to the effect of, and I quote, the next war. We're in the next war. Victory for Netanyahu, for Netanyahu will be worse than defeat. This is a guy who apparently already knew that Netanyahu would still be in power. Why, you might ask? Because the next war is the fourth war, which cannot be and cannot end like the third, which ended like the second and which ended like the first. And his closing line is, they should take over Gaza. That's a quote.

[A]

Who?

[B]

That's Yahya.

[A]

Who should take over Gaza.

[B]

The Israelis. The next War is the four that can't end like the third, which ended like the second and the first.

[A]

So for those who aren't steeped in this, why would the head of Hamas want the Israelis to take over Gaza?

[B]

I don't know at that point if he wanted the Israelis to take over Gaza, but I think he was pointing something. I think he was pointing to something that's quite like, theoretically, elaborate, like a. A very, very high level understanding of how history functions.

[A]

Sounds that way.

[B]

He didn't want them to take over Gaza, but I think he understood that if there were to be another war, that it would be a disastrous war and that it would force Israel into a corner where they would have two options. Either we destroy this entire place and. Or we occupy Gaza. But the problem is that the Israelis already occupied Gaza. They already tried it and they left. And they left for very good reasons. It was economically taxing, it was unsustainable. Israeli soldiers could die. There were RPG attacks on settlements. And I think he understood that he would, in the next war, if there were to be a next war, put the Israelis in a position where they would be forced to grope around in the gray for a very, very long time, even if it would appear otherwise from inside, even if it could be sold to the population otherwise. And along these lines, there is another quote, if you don't mind, about a year before October 7th. Don't quote me on this, but I think a year before October 7, Sinwada did a speech and he convened the leaders of his factions in various imams in Gaza. And it's like, it's a pretty boring speech and he has no rhythm and he's screaming way too loud. But there's one point that tons of people have cropped and isolated on Instagram. And he has this line and he says, walla, Araha, Rayla. He goes, by God. I see it with the side of my eyes. A regional religious war that will burn with it. The green and the dry.

[A]

You mean the one we're in right now?

[B]

Yeah, the one that will go on for a very, very long time, even it. Even if it appears to have ended.

[A]

Yeah. So it sounds like you think that in planning the attacks of October 7, he saw the long game and understood that it'd be hard for Israel to. To deal with those consequences over time.

[B]

I think, to put it a little more specifically, I think Sinwat understood that the status quo that fell into place after 2014, this long silence, that it was poison for the Palestinian cause. The notion of Palestinian resistance But if your cause is that Palestinians should just live, go to work, bring their bread home, then it's certainly antithetical to that. I think he understood that this was poison and that if he continued on this way, what will the next generation say when they didn't grow up with any wars? How long can you go on putting on marches for martyr children with cardboard tanks and fake RPGs? How long can you go on convening your imams to talk about the day after, who's going to be the next imam of Al Aqsa after we liberate Palestine? How long can you go on with the foaming platitudes? It can't go on. And the longer you let it go on, the weaker you get. And I think he understood that one thing was certain. You know, when you shake a snow globe, you can shake a shake a shake. The flakes fly everywhere. And the one thing of which you can be certain is that the flakes won't fall in the same place. That's the one thing you can know. And I think he understood that an attack like this, it's the 911 of this conflict, that whatever was before won't be after. And that's why you call it a bloodbath. You rinse the slate clean and it's

[A]

having, or likely to have similar effects to the effects of 911 on the US it draws the country into all kinds of unanticipated conflicts that weaken the country and cause internal division within the country. Yeah, that'd be my guess. So to that extent, it's successful, it is strategic, and it's effective.

[B]

In the short term, it's been successful, certainly. And I think in the long term, I think everyone, especially Israelis, have to wait. You know, there's a status quo that dies. And there's this notion in Israel now that the status quo died. And we. And we immediately established a new one, meaning they broke the last status quo, where we had peace and we had these little boxing rounds every two years with Hamas or whatever, but now we're strong. Now we do whatever we want. We bombed them. We bombed them. We bombed in Lebanon, we bombed Iran. We're in control. But you don't decide when a new status quo comes into birth. No, that's history. There are millions of variables that come into that decision. Gaza has not even been rebuilt. Currently Hamas has control of, I think, 46, 48% of Gaza. So Israelis are groping around, I think they're entering into probably what will be, in retrospect, the darkest and most fraught period since the establishment of the state, they're groping around in the gray.

[A]

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[B]

Yeah, sure.

[A]

So that was. Well, you said you thought it was probably in the planning phases for at least a year. It would have had to have been just given its scale, I would think.

[B]

I think if you Also look in October 2022, this is what the Israelis said. I think they found some kind of binder on the border that had October 2022 on it. But that year in which Hamas repaired their relations with the Shia axis. Yeah, that's the year in which suddenly you had, I think, Hana going to Moscow. They repaired relations with Syria and that was kind of, I think, the key into getting them back into the fold with people like Nasrallah.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Suddenly you have Islamic Jihad and Hamas are meeting with Nasrallah on a regular basis. I think they were invited to Iran also at a certain point. And I think. So those are some pretty serious indications

[A]

that somehow, I mean, Israeli intelligence, being as effective as it is, clearly must have picked up signals this was going

[B]

on that's already been released.

[A]

Yeah, so explain if you would.

[B]

I mean there are people who probably know this better than I, but there was a document that circulated within Israeli intelligence called I think Jericho Wall. There was an intelligence analyst, I believe she was a female, who sort of saw what was happening in Gaza, that there were certain military drills, certain speeches and there was an indication that they were planning something really serious. And the story goes that her higher ups, I think Rodan Bergman reported on this, if I'm not mistaken. The story goes that her higher ups basically said like, yeah, yeah, that's cute, but no, we don't. It's like inadmissible trash. You had also soldiers at the observation posts along the border who, I don't know when exactly, I don't know if this was in the weeks or the months leading up to October 7th, but that were reporting to their higher ups that like there are some strange little movements.

[A]

It commences and much has been written about and even more speculated about a so called stand down order or the Israeli government response to it. What, what's your belief about what happened?

[B]

Are you asking whether or not I think the Israeli higher ups wanted this to get out of control?

[A]

No, I'm asking what did happen? What do you think actually happened? Why, from an outsider perspective, it seems like the response was inadequate.

[B]

It was certainly inadequate.

[A]

Right. Why?

[B]

Look, I don't know, but what's strange to me is that I think it was in the week or two after Tzakia Negbi, who was like the equivalent to the head of Homeland Security, I guess, or the National Security Council, something like that in Israel. He came out and admitted that I think three to four hours before the attack there, you know, certain intelligence officials and I think the general, like they convened, there was a discussion. It's not like they woke up at 6:30am so there was certainly something that happened among the highest echelons. One question I've had is why wait?

[A]

Do we know what they talked about?

[B]

No, but there's a quote that circulated in Israeli media that apparently the general at the time got out of bed and his wife was sort of like, what? What's going on? And he just apparently turned around and said Gaza is going to be destroyed. That's a quote that circulated around Israeli media. I don't know at what time this happens. Could have been at, you know, 6:29. I doubt it though, because apparently the people were convened before I Don't know. I know what I saw on October 7. I know where I was.

[A]

So what did you see and what's your conclusion?

[B]

One thing I'll say is that three weeks before October 7th, I met with a journalist. He's a British journalist. And he'd come, like, a year and a half before, and he was starting out fresh. I don't think he knew Israel, Palestine super well. And I wanted to become a mainstream journalist at the time, so I thought he could help me scratch each other's backs. And we would talk a lot about what was going on. And for about a year and a half, I was telling him that something's gonna happen, like there's something weird that's going on. And he'd listened to me and he'd help me out. And about Three weeks before October 7, we met for a beer in Jerusalem. And that was the same day in which the Palestinians, I believe it was three weeks before, were doing these marches of return. You know, when they flood the borders, they throw incendiary balloons, burn some fields, and wait for the Israelis to come back and be like, okay, what? What will it take you? What's your price? What will it take you to shut the fuck up? And he asked me. He's like, why do you think this is happening? And I remember distinctly looking at him and saying, I don't know. Because after 2021 or 2022, I believe Bennett, Naftali Bennett lifted the permit. What do you call it, the permit ceiling, as it were, like the quota. It's like some 20, 22,000 Gazans receives permits to come to Israel after years of them not having any. And so usually they would do these sorts of antics to get something. We want construction materials, we want work permits. We want something. But there was nothing really to ask for. And so he. When we said goodbye that day, I remember. I'll never forget this. He looked at me and he said, you know, Ari, I think you're a really smart guy, and I appreciate he's taught me a lot, but I just think you've misunderstood this place. I think you're a bit apocalyptic. I looked at him and I said, tom, I think you've spent a little too much time with the Israelis. And so if I could have come to those conclusions with the limited amount of information I had, I'm sure there are many people within the intelligence establishment that had some idea. Do I think that Bibi allowed 3,000 or 2,000 Hamas militants to enter the country and kill people? I'm a little doubtful But I don't

[A]

know from an American perspective or the perspective of anyone who's visited that border, which I have pretty secure border, looks like the southern border. So like, how did that happen? Does anyone. Let me rephrase. Has there been what you consider an honest and reliable accounting of how it happened? Like how did these guys get in here?

[B]

I think it's known. What do you mean by how? I think physically speaking, people know how they got in. I mean, the border was largely, I mean, you know, people were in their bunks, sleeping. It was also a Jewish holiday.

[A]

Right.

[B]

There was no increased level of alertness as far as I've heard. You certainly didn't have drones or anything in the air which could have solved this entire problem, like 15 minutes. So you have enough guys with enough RPGs, enough explosives, you break through concrete.

[A]

Oh, I know that. But you just imagine that the border with Gaza when there are credible intelligence reports something weird's going on, maybe we don't know what it is, but they would be on sufficient alert to have stopped this at the line.

[B]

Why something didn't happen between that meeting, which I've heard was between certain members of intelligence at maybe three in the morning, why there weren't drones that were put in the air or a helicopter or heightened alertness, like significantly heightened alertness, I don't know. But what I have learned over many, many years in Israel is that you would be surprised by what people can get away with. I know people in the west bank who have fake Israeli IDs, who slip in illegally in stolen Israeli cars to smoke hash with their friends on the other side and then go back. You'd be surprised.

[A]

So the myth of Israeli government efficiency is a myth.

[B]

Yeah, I don't. Yeah,

[A]

so it's not, it's. The security's not as competent as people imagine it is.

[B]

When it wants to be competent, it's very competent. I mean, if you ask yourself, for example, in Lebanon and Iran right now, how is it that they have thousands upon thousands of targets that are readily available?

[A]

That's exactly right.

[B]

It's because they wanted to have them. They set their sights on Iran and Lebanon and they neglected Gaza.

[A]

Yeah. And that's the central question is why? And so once it's in progress, there is a stand down order. What was that like? Why did they do that?

[B]

Well, you can't flood the area with IDF because look, you're talking about a lot of troops, especially for the holidays or maybe in the north, it might be two, three hours away. So I think It's a bit unreasonable to expect that they would have flooded the whole place with troops. It's harder. People have to get their guns and get equipment. It's logistical mayhem. There were soldiers in the first two weeks of the war that didn't even have helmets. You had Jewish communities that were sending basic equipment because there were massive shortages. The real question, in my opinion, is why? If there was some kind of indication around 3am why the air Force wasn't involved, why helicopters, drones or fighter jets weren't involved, because that doesn't take a whole lot of time as far as I'm concerned.

[A]

And we don't know the answer.

[B]

No. I mean, no, I don't expect to know the answer, at least for a very, very long time.

[A]

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[B]

if that operation, if that attack were to be successful, and I think if we follow Sinwar's thread, I think it's fair to assume that he knew, well, what do you mean by that? This war will take with it or burn with it. All the green and all the dry. It's called scorched earth. Yeah, I think there was an assumption that something of this nature would happen. The exact extent no one can predict, right?

[A]

Of course not, no. But that there would be massive change, potentially even of borders, long term.

[B]

Potentially in Gaza, certainly. I think the talk of border changes, for example, in Syria and Lebanon, I think it's a bit overblown. I think it's a bit overblown, yeah.

[A]

I have no idea. We'll see. But, you know, things change. I just have to pause and ask at this stage, years later, what is the plan for Gaza, do you think the Netanyahu government's plan for Gaza, you got all these people living there, he said on television this morning, we're going to go with the Trump plan to move them all out of Gaza.

[B]

Highly doubt that that's going to happen.

[A]

Well, I kind of doubt that, too.

[B]

I think there's this myth that certainly circulates in the Arab world, but definitely here in America, too, that there's a whole lot more strategy, that there's a whole lot more foresight in Israel.

[A]

Yes, people definitely believe that this is part of a plan. Greater Israel, this is a strategy.

[B]

I think you're overestimating the foresight.

[A]

I wouldn't be surprised if I am.

[B]

Not you specifically, but I don't think there's a massive plan in Gaza. There are certainly plans that have been thrown around, but right now, as far as you can see, and this is precisely what's in water.

[A]

So I know that the Israelis had zero. This is a fact. They had zero plan, at least communicated to the United States for what would happen after the Ayatollah was killed in Iran. They didn't have, like a government in waiting or any kind of.

[B]

Because it doesn't matter to them. Well, clearly what matters to Israel, what's useful for Bibi Netanyahu specifically is simply chaos. And the more definition that is given to the chaos, the more he has to account for the shape that it's taken.

[A]

Right. Smart. That's right. The difference between Iran and Gaza, though, is Gaza's like on your border. So would he want chaos in Gaza?

[B]

Well, if you look at the border right now, I mean, you have a ton of buffer. It's not really bordering Israel anymore.

[A]

True.

[B]

So in that sense, I think. And there's not a ton of chaos, meaning Hamas is. I don't know if they're in shambles. I think there are a lot of tunnels that are still left. For example, they have light weapons, they have AK47s, they have, like, tiny rockets they can sometimes send in. They're collecting taxes, apparently. So they're functioning. Are they a threat to Israel? At this moment in time? No, in that since Bibi did the minimum he would have to do and still stopping short of actually determining a reality because then he would have to explain to the Israelis why did I do X and not.

[A]

Yes. So you don't think that anybody has a clear picture of where Gaz is in 10 years?

[B]

In 10 years, no. But I do think that Bibi and the administration and the IDF alongside probably have an idea what they will do in Gaza. If X happens with Iran, if Y happens with Lebanon. Bibi's playing sort of musical wars. Why does he have a work. Why? Why did they time Lebanon right now? It's a fail safe for Iran. If Trump decides to pull out of Iran, if Iran doesn't go the way Bibi needs, then he always has Lebanon. And if all of that doesn't go the way he needs, he could go back into Gaza.

[A]

So you're suggesting that he has to have a war

[B]

at least until he gets elected next? I think so.

[A]

You really think that's the motive?

[B]

I think there are many motives. I think this is certainly the timing of a lot of things. The strange thing about Bibi is that, look, on the one hand there's a national interest that lines up with a personal interest. It's not just that Bibi is doing something that wouldn't in any way benefit the national security of the country. I believe that as far as Israel is concerned, striking it on is is quite possibly a great idea. You have one of the largest proxy networks in the history of the Middle east that's bent on doing something to Israel, destroying them forever. I don't know if that was exactly the case. You have a massive paramilitary group on your border with Lebanon. Those are valid, relatively objective strategic goals. But if you could tinker with them, if you can time them and modulate them to serve your personal motives, well, it's a win win. So

[A]

have you heard anybody articulate plans for, just to be totally clear on this, for moving the more than 1, probably fewer than 2 million people in Gaza anywhere?

[B]

No, but I have something else that I don't think has ever been released. Actually, I was working with the Washington Post as of until they fired their whole foreign desk, as you saw. And we were doing a lot of interviews on the day after specifically reconstruction and trying to follow the money, because that's what Gaza is about right now. It's all about money. And it's not just American money or Israeli money. It's the Gulf countries, it's Egypt. The PA wants to get their finger in there as well. And I confirmed this with two, actually, quite possibly three sources, if I'm not mistaken. But. And this might not end up being the case, but I understood that the center that was put together by the American army in Kiryat Ghat to map out or sort of strategize about Gaza and assist the Israelis, that they were making calls or that their lawyers were making calls to certain organizations to look into the status of private property in Gaza. Basically, the thing, among many things, I heard that the plan was, have you ever seen the flyers that the Israelis drop in Gaza or the evacuation notices? And they're usually divided into sort of blocks. You have numbered blocks, and those are private properties. Right. Now, if you have an entire swath of territory, entire neighborhoods that are upside down or backwards, that no longer follow the logic of a grid, you can't expect that some Qatari or Saudi or whatever company is going to come in and rebuild Gaza identically to the way it was before.

[A]

No.

[B]

So I heard that the plan was to have to sort of like rotate, take a population from an area, move them away, build a massive complex, as it were, could be condominiums, could be apartments, I don't know what. And then move them back and continue doing this rotation for however long it takes. What does that mean? It means that you are fundamentally altering the urban planning and with it, the demography of and private property of Gaza. If you have a building on a swath of land, on a plot of land that used to have five to seven bits of private property, you have to reconfigure and you have to suspend that private property and create a new precedent. I was told by someone very, very high up in the PA that this was intended, that there was going to be a suspension of private property for a period of maybe seven years. Now, what does that mean? It quite possibly, and this is the most cynical possible conclusion you could draw, it could mean that. It could mean basically that Israel. Look, in the west bank, sometimes Israel struggles to take certain parts of swaths of land or to build actual settlements. Sometimes they'll have caravans in certain areas, but not houses. And the reason is that to some degree, Israel is still beholden to Ottoman and Jordanian legal precedent. And they can wiggle around, you can maneuver, but it can't be nullified. It's very hard.

[A]

You see this in East Jerusalem. Exactly all the time.

[B]

So what happens? I'll pose you the question. I guess what happens in Gaza if you suspend all of private property and you're going to say, in seven years we're going to revisit it, or it will be reconfigured by legal experts who by then will have disappeared. You break a massive precedent, it's just a reset.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

It's a golden opportunity. Will that happen? I don't know. But based on everything I've heard, it is within the realm of possibility, and it makes logical sense as well.

[A]

So it's a yeah. Did people in Israel take the Trump administration's plan for redevelopment with casinos and beachfront condos?

[B]

They take that seriously, like citizens and Israel people.

[A]

You think the government did?

[B]

I don't know.

[A]

Did you? No. Yeah. No, that's not gonna happen.

[B]

I highly doubt it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

It's still run by a militant group. There's still some. There's hundreds of kilometers of tunnels that have been dealt with by the idf, which they also lied about. I spoke to a general. His name is Yitzhak Brick. Have you heard of him?

[A]

No.

[B]

It's strange because he's not. I think his English is a little bad, and so we don't hear from him a lot in the West. But he was a guy who went on three months before October the Sevent and said, there will be a massacre here. This is a guy who was a general, reserve general, who also audited. He was tasked with, I think, for many, many years, auditing troops. He worked for the idf. Audit, meaning he would go between fronts, between units, and assess troop readiness routines, equipment. He knew the IDF inside and out, and he worked under several generals leading up to October 7th. And for years, he was screaming that we are. We're not really ready for anything, and we're cutting our ground troops because we want to be a compact, technologically adept army, but we're basically rendering ourselves naked on the ground. And he went down to the Gaza border, and he sees that basically the soldiers treat it like summer camp. You have girls doing TikTok videos, it's like summer camp. It reached a point again, back to the status quo, where Israelis genuinely believed that the conflict was kind of over. This is just. It's going to be this way. There's going to be a big wall. They're going to be there, we're going to be here. And Itzhaka Britik, I sat with him a lot about a year ago, and he was telling me that he was getting calls from a lot of soldiers who work in the tunnel unit. And I spoke to several soldiers who either worked in the tunnels or were tasked with guarding them, supervising the work, that there was Tons left. Tons left. He said. This general said 75%. I don't know if that's definitely true, but I heard from a lot of soldiers that the material used to totally destroy tunnels is very expensive and perhaps in short supply. And so a lot of what was happening was sort of sealing the tunnels. You pour concrete inside, and it just takes probably some dudes, however many days later to come and undo the concrete, break the concrete. And I also heard from soldiers that the Hamas was repairing tunnels during the war in the midst of fighting. There were tunnels that were being or shafts that were being repaired for decades.

[A]

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[B]

Are we talking about the money that came in before October 7th?

[A]

Before October.

[B]

Oh, the suitcases of cash.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

Yeah. Well, yeah, I know that there was tons of cash. I don't actually have the numbers. I forget what was the thinking.

[A]

I think it's confirmed now. That was considered very controversial.

[B]

There are pictures of the suitcases and of the money going into gas. Yeah, it's definitely confirmed. The thinking was we keep them happy and fat and they don't bother us. Which is, again, the logic of the marches of return. We're going to Come, we're going to make some noise until these raiders come and say, what's your price? What will it take to get you to shut up? More money, more work permits, more construction materials. It was part of maintaining a status quo. And someone probably soon want to realize that this. If I get too fat. If we get too fat, we won't be able to move anymore.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I think it's that simple.

[A]

So from thousands of miles away, it seems like Israel seems like a pretty tough project to keep going over generations because of the numbers. Just tiny country surrounded by people who don't like it or recognize its legitimacy, some of whom are motivated to do harm. So that's not a good ratio over time. It's hard to maintain that. It's like from the Israeli perspective, do people think, ever think of that?

[B]

No, but I think there's about. There's maybe two or three ways of looking at this. On the one hand, there's a demographic perspective where.

[A]

Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, the numbers.

[B]

That's one perspective. And if you look at the numbers. So like, how many Jews are there in Israel? I think there's seven. Seven, seven million, something like that. You have two million Palestinians who have citizenship. But I think the proper calculation is within the area under control, under Israeli control. What's the population divide? And at that point you have 50, 50 if you take the west bank, where there are also Jews living, but also Gaza, because these are all areas that impinge upon Israel and which are under Israeli control tacitly. Or actually, you have 7 million Palestinians, 2 in Israel, 3 in the West Bank, 2 in Gaza. So 7. You have 7 million Jews. It's halved right now. It's split. Half. Half. Demographically speaking, that is a problem. Do I think that will be what brings Israel to its knees, if it is ever brought to its knees?

[A]

No, I was thinking more the macro demographic problem of the Arab world, the Muslim world, almost 2 billion. So when I hear Netanyahu say we're fighting a seven front war, whatever number of fronts it was, seven fronts recently, I think you don't have the economy, you don't have the manpower, and you no longer have the goodwill to sustain that for very long at all. Ultimately, if you have enough enemies and there's too few of you and enough of them, you're gonna lose.

[B]

People have been saying that for a long time.

[A]

Well, it hasn't even been there 80 years.

[B]

So I think they bet on a few things. They have nuclear weapons, they have a great intelligence agency and they bid on the incompetence of the Muslim countries around them.

[A]

For sure. For sure. But there's also a sense in which you can't fight everybody. And so I don't see. When I talk to Israelis and just when I watch, I don't see any long term strategy that rests on real alliances like you have to have. This is true not just for Israel, but for each one of us as a person in this world. You have to have more powerful friends than you do enemies, or else ultimately you get destroyed. And I don't see that realization at all. It seems almost deranged.

[B]

I guess we have nuclear.

[A]

Who cares if you have nuclear weapons? So does everyone else. Like, so what?

[B]

Everyone else doesn't have nuclear weapons. But I mean, a lot of people have nuclear weapons.

[A]

A lot of people, including in your region.

[B]

That's true. But I think right now you have this logic being pushed around by Bibi, which is peace through strength. I think the Israelis have this sense that if we push long enough, let's say we do manage to change the regime in Iran, not topple it, but change it. We could have an arrangement, the Gulf countries, because they've felt very exposed right now, maybe there'll be tension, there'll be tension with the United States. Maybe this will also bring other Gulf countries closer to us. There are already tacit relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. They exchange intelligence, among other things. But maybe this will bring them closer.

[A]

I think they have pretty. Yeah, well, the Saudis have been pushing for this war. Exactly. And in Lebanon, same side as Israel, basically, on this question.

[B]

And in Lebanon, what was the aim when Israel went into Lebanon in the 80s? The aim was, we want to change the demography, we're gonna change the government, we're gonna put the Christians in power and make peace.

[A]

The opposite happened.

[B]

The opposite happened. And what are they doing now? I believe that in some dim recess, it might not actually be an active strategy, but I do believe that in some dim recess, Israel would like civil war in Lebanon. Because between you and me, if I'm being totally honest, the only way to deal with Hezbollah is not just a paramilitary group. They are demographically entrenched in the country. They are south Lebanon, and they are the Shiite population that was also oppressed for a very long time.

[A]

There are a lot of Shiites in Beirut now. It's not just the south. Yeah, yeah.

[B]

And so I think there is a desire for potentially civil war in Lebanon, for sure.

[A]

And that. I mean, you've seen this. Well, you saw it in Syria, you've seen it in a lot. The same strategy. I'm just saying. And I'm not attaching values to any of this, like what's right or wrong or even what's good for the United States or any of. I just think as a general principle, that's day trading, that's like a short term strategy that doesn't work long term, but maybe people think it does work long term. You can do that forever. I don't think you can.

[B]

No, probably not. I think they're hoping that either this all turns out exactly the way they want it, which is highly unlikely, or that you have enough chaos. There's a desire for chaos.

[A]

Right.

[B]

That all of these places should be at least uncertain. If we can't determine what the best, the best possible reality for us, at the very least the reality should be indeterminate. It should be in flux.

[A]

Right. No, I get it. I totally get it. And again, I'm not even judging this or that's wrong. This is not a lecture. I just mean like as a kind of almost a physics principle. In the end or over time, chaos is bad for you. It's bad for everybody. It's bad to have chaos nearby you. It's bad to have your neighbor get divorced. That actually increases the chances you get divorced. There's a way in which chaos is a virus and it hurts you in the end, even though you think you can control it, you can't. I think that's a pretty stable principle of history.

[B]

I think the big weak point of Israel, I think sometimes when you look strategically or at the surrounding countries, there's another point here which is Israel on the interior. Israel psychologically, the Israeli psyche.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

I think that that is the actual weak point. If anything brings Israel to its knees, which doesn't mean it will be exterminated or extinguished, that it will die as a state. But the thing that will fundamentally shatter the foundation either to end the country or to start a fresh status quo for the country. It'll be internal.

[A]

I believe that.

[B]

And if you want to understand that dynamic, I think you have to look to the West Bank.

[A]

Well, can I just say this is so often overlooked. One of the only real genocides in history was the Romans in 70 AD in Jerusalem. And one of the reasons that they were able, that siege was successful is because of the almost unbelievably barbaric fighting between Jewish factions within Jerusalem. Like the Romans got through because the defenders were fighting each other. I just think that's also another principle. It's like if you don't have a unified country, you're much weaker than you think you are. I guess.

[B]

I mean, yes and no. Sometimes I do think about that. On the other hand, Israelis do, at least until now. They've shown a pretty serious ability to just put all of their problems aside. Right. I mean, if you look at Bibi's opposition, Yair Lapid, he was asked, I think, two weeks ago about Greater Israel, and he couldn't even reject that as a political position. Yeah. He talked about scraping away at Lebanon, which is fine if you're Bibi or if you want to be with Bibi. That's the doctrine. But you have this thing within the Israeli opposition that Bibi has put them in a corner, that over the course of the war they had no choice but to parrot his speech, to use his language, and he buried them in so doing.

[A]

No, that's certainly what it seems like looking from the outside. Can I ask, though, about the. I mean, again, this is an outsider's perspective, non Hebrew speaking perspective, but it seems like the core division is religious, non religious, or it has been. Is that still true? Where is that? The idea that a certain percentage of the country doesn't serve, doesn't participate meaningfully in the economy and there's deep resentment toward them by people who do that has been true for a while. Is that still true? Is it more true, less true?

[B]

I think it's where it was a year ago, probably where it was two years ago. Tensions, they rise and they fall. I'm also not the greatest expert on that, but I think.

[A]

But you live there. Does that seem like a crisis in the country?

[B]

I don't think it's reached the point of a crisis. It could, it could. But again, I don't think. If you'd permit me to go back to something else, I think you were mentioning the Romans and it reminds of exile. And I think what you see in the west bank, if you're talking about long term, in the darkest depths of the Israeli psyche, what is going to affect the longevity of the country? It's the interplay, the psychological interplay between the Israelis and the Palestinians in the West Bank. It manifests itself most in the west bank because in Tel Aviv you have a bunch of schmucky lifestyle yuppies in Tel Aviv who just want to forget. Tel Aviv is the subconscious of the subconscious of Israel.

[A]

Right.

[B]

But the west bank is where the complex is at the bottom of the Israeli psyche. It's where they play out. And so at the end of the Day you have a strange problem, which is that the Israelis come back, the Jews come back after 2 to 3,000 years. As you know, they were exiles. We don't have to debate when exactly how many years. But what happens is you have people who have a kind of. Not a native, right, but a kind of native claim, who come back in colonial costume. There's a reason why the relationship between the Palestinians and the Jews is different than that between the Palestinians and the British and the Ottomans. Because the Ottomans never came and said, this is our homeland, we're coming back now, it's all ours. Nor did the British. That's what the Israelis did. That's what the Jews did. And again, I don't want to debate sort of like what is right or what is claim. I think by and large it's fair to say that the Jews have some kind of relationship with the land. Meaning there are many Palestinian villages that have that. You could trace their names back to Jewish ancient settlements. Does it mean that an Israeli or a Jew can come and take it? No, but what it does mean is that you can't understand the conflict between the Israelis or the Jews and the Palestinians without realizing that this is a struggle for nativity and that in some way they are the mirror images of each other. And in many ways the Palestinians are the new Jews. And neither one really wants to admit it, especially the Israelis. And so in the West Bank. I've been in the West Bank a lot the last few years.

[A]

The new Jews, in what sense? The people who have the moral authority of victimhood, like the world looks at them and says, we feel sorry for you. You've been mistreated.

[B]

Not about that. It's a tale of exile and nostalgia, right? The difference is that the Palestinians are exiled on their own land, which also makes it very hard for the Israelis to deal with this problem. For them, it's a problem. We have people. I always say to Jews, to Israelis in Israel, I'm like, look, if you guys. If the Jews came back after two to 3,000 years and didn't forget that there were periods of forgetting, why do you think that the Palestinians won't do the same? And they're right on the borders. They can see it. Couldn't see Israel from Europe, but you can see it from Gaza, you can see it from the West Bank.

[A]

What do they say when you say that?

[B]

Usually just go silent. They don't want to understand. There's a point. The problem in Israel is that, you know, I used to have a lot of. I used to have some Israeli sort of religious friends who would come to my dorm when I'd have my Arab friends with me and we'd have some really nice conversations. They even befriended each other. But at some point, my Israeli friends stopped speaking to them. Because there's a point in any Israeli dialogue, there's a point at which an Israeli has to make a decision left to right. Am I going. If I go down this path and really try to understand the other side, I risk exposing certain things with the grounds of my own identity here, but the foundations of the country that risk my identity. And the other option is I'm just going to stop it here, turn around and forget this happened. And so in the west bank right now, there's some very, very weird trends. You have the number of outposts in the west bank has increased, I don't know, by half the hundreds of outposts. Almost every other hill in the west bank has a shack on it. The scale is insane. And I visit some of these outposts and what you see is a little bit of a strange thing. You have something called the Hilltop Youth. Have you heard of this?

[A]

Of course.

[B]

So this is like the third mutation of settlers. The first settlers were kind of like kibbutznik people. Right, Right. What's their goal? The goal of the kibbutznik is I need to revive some kind of relationship with the land. The first generation settlers were not going down the hill and like pug roaming people. They had their hill, they had their barbed wire, they have your shacks and

[A]

your self improvement seemed like one of the main goals of the first of the kibbutz generation. Yeah, we're gonna like improve ourselves by making it green and growing things.

[B]

I think a lot of it also had to deal with the exile thing that we haven't been here. It's like a prisoner who comes home after 30 years, walks into the kitchen, sees his wife and kid and says, like, hey, honey, how you doing? Sits down as if nothing happened. That was the, you know, but there's 30 years to make up for. In this case, you have two to 3,000 years to make up for. And so part of the kibbutznik ideologically was like, we have to revive some sort of connection with the land. But my point is that the third mutation of the settlers, which is now the hilltop youth, they're strange. I mean, they now wear Palestinian kofis, the Palestinian headdress that Arafat used to wear. They're wearing those things, black ones. The white and black are the Palestinian ones, which is kind of strange, because if you even dressed up for Halloween like that in Tel Aviv, people would say things. People are very sensitive. It's a symbol of terrorism in Israel. And you have the settlers running around, throwing stones, wearing the very thing that once frightened them as children. And you have another trend, which is now they want donkeys, or there's a lot of shepherding, but with machine guns. Or you have, you know, settler chic, which are like young outpost women who are what they call Israelite fashion. Do you see where I'm going? You see where I'm going?

[A]

Be more specific for those of us who live in the United States. What's Israelite fashion?

[B]

You know, it's kind of like in Hebrew, they use words like sort of village, Israelite or pastoral.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Which is also the word in Hebrew used to describe the vibe you get in areas that used to have Palestinian villages that are now either forests or towns. Lots of wild, natural shrubbery and foliage. The point being is that what you see in the west bank now is an attempt to double down on nativity. And so I was in a Palestinian village, it's called Tormos Aya. It gets attacked quite a bit. I don't know if you saw. There was a report maybe six months ago, if I'm not mistaken, of like, three to 4,000 olive trees that were cut down. It was a big story. And I was there when this happened that weekend by chance. And I remember sitting with one of these Palestinian guys, and we were attacked by settlers once. And they went back, they burned about four houses down right in front of me. They stabbed a bunch of sheep. It's the first time I ever saw this with my eyes. Saw videos all the time, but I actually saw the smoke billowing out of the houses. And the guy said something pretty interesting. He looked at me and he was very calm, and he said, you know, they want it all at once. I said, what do you mean? He goes, you know, they kind of want to be like us. They want to shepherd, but they also have to have machine guns. And they want the olive trees, but they don't see that we pave our roads around the olive trees. They want it all at once. They want to slice the mountain. You get the barbed wire on, you put your houses there. They want to compensate for 3,000 years. They want to get back to somebody point where they were 3,000 years. They want it all at once. They want it now, and they don't want anyone to be there to disturb them. And so it puts the settlement movement into a strangely I'd call it an autoimmune position, sort of autoimmune. Because these people are simply taking hill after hill after hill, hoping that there will come a day, one fine morning when they wake up and it's empty and they have quiet. But even when that happens, they don't have enough people to populate it. People don't want to live in the West Bank.

[A]

Why?

[B]

The average Israeli does not want to be sitting on a hilltop surrounded by Palestinians. The average Israeli wants to, you know, sit in Tel Aviv blacks, maybe smoke a joint, make money, buy a house in Greece.

[A]

The keffiyeh is very confusing to me. Settlers dressing as Palestinians. So is the message were the real Palestinians.

[B]

I think what's going on is subconscious. I don't think they're actually conscious of it. Because I went to a settlement. I went to a fresh outpost a few weeks ago. I'm surprised they let me in. Someone pulled a gun on me when I went in. And then they realized my name's Arye Chaim Flanzareich. And they're like, oh, you're all right. Come in. We got to talking. This guy's wife is one of these settler chic influencers. And I wanted to talk to her about the fashion. I wanted to hear, how do you explain this? So that I could then put it into a piece? And her husband is also sort of this lumberjack guy. He's got blue eyes, dirty blonde hair. He's, like, towing the fields, which I'm pretty sure belong to people just down the hill.

[A]

Where are they from originally?

[B]

One of them is actually from the West Bank. Was born in another settlement in the West Bank. And I believe she is from somewhere inside Israel, maybe Jerusalem, but I might be wrong. Times of Israel did a piece on her, actually, like, a week before I was there. And they got real weird with me. Real weird. They asked, like, what do you want? I was like, I'm just here to talk about fashion. And then her husband gave her a look. She walked off, went completely silent. And he sat down with me alongside the guy who pulled his gun on me. And the guy's kind of looking at me like, who are you? What do you want? I was like, I'm a journalist. He's like, can I see your work? I said, yeah, I write about, like, security matters. This is for a magazine piece. Long story short, they kicked me out. They said, you should probably get out of here. And when I went outside to smoke a cigarette before leaving, the guy who pulled his gun on me is just sitting there. And I said, can I ask you a question? He goes, yeah. I said, why can't we have a conversation Jew to Jew? Because I told them, like, I'm wondering about this nativity thing and this. The cuffee is. And the guy looked at me, and he was kind of. He knew something was off because he's like, it's not that many people who do that. And I was like, the fact that you know it, that you're aware of it probably means that I struck a. I triggered him a little bit. And when we're outside smoking a cigarette, I asked him, why can't we talk? He goes, you know, it could have gone a lot worse for you today. I said, what do you mean? He goes, you know what I mean. I said, are you threatening me? He said, no, but there are people who would do a serious number on you. And I said, even. Even to a fellow Jew? And he said, it's beyond ideology. He said, this is beyond ideology. I spent the whole car ride home thinking about what he could have possibly meant by that.

[A]

What is it about then,

[B]

when he said, this is beyond ideology? And I already laid out sort of like the nativity dynamics, but within the settlement movement. What could he possibly mean by this is beyond ideology?

[A]

I haven't the fan. Are these religious people?

[B]

That's another question about the settlers in the West Bank. They're not entirely religious. You know, you have a lot of religious. There are religious people. There's also a lot of people who aren't that devout or pious, that religious. The religion, in certain cases, becomes a kind of aesthetic thing or a vehicle for sort of nationalistic ends.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I mean, the settlement that I was in with this sort of the settler fashionista, a week after she had a DJ at the outpost. It's an outpost. There's two people living there. There's a shack, a dj and a bunch of women dressed in Israelite clothing doing a meditative and, like, trans disco kind of like, party.

[A]

What?

[B]

Yeah, it was kind of strange.

[A]

So I'm having trouble fitting this into a category. So the two motives that you always hear here in the US or when I've been in Israel are either these are religious people who are sort of acting out some kind of millennialist vision, or. Or there are people who want cheaper housing and housing in Israel.

[B]

Those are two separate categories of settler.

[A]

Right, but you're describing a third category that's kind of like cosplay, kind of like, what are you describing? Why are they doing this?

[B]

What I'm describing is a part of the broader category of settlers who are there to. At the forefront, who are forwarding the. Who are pushing the settlement forward as opposed to the people on cheap housing who just literally go into Tel Aviv, you know?

[A]

Yeah. Oh, my God. I've seen that.

[B]

Yeah. Where it all comes from, I don't know. But I think that's a big commitment

[A]

to move to a hilltop surrounded by concertina wire. Like, you don't do that by accident.

[B]

But if you're 14, 15, 16, 17 years old, if you're in your early 20s, you want to be king of the hill. Want to play cowboy.

[A]

Yeah. So is that what you think it is?

[B]

I think in many cases, again, like the hilltop youth, I found them once, these snot nosed, beady eyes, like kids with their heads shaved, driving a stolen Palestinian car on the Sabbath. Tell me to get the fuck out or I'm going to get beat. Like, it's fucking weird.

[A]

It's weird. Where are the Israeli authorities?

[B]

Sometimes absent, sometimes present. And even when they're present, they can be quite absent.

[A]

If I'm running Israel, I'm paying a very. I'm paying close attention to these people because they could be a threat to me. You know, armed people who are increasingly radical and nobody's kind of controlling their behavior. They could form a militia and overthrow my government. That would be my thought. If I were Netanyahu, I'd be worried about them.

[B]

I've thought about that quite a few times. I mean, there's a few things going on here in the security establishment in Israel. There are a lot of voices who are very concerned. And this is just what you hear publicly. You can imagine that behind closed doors there's a lot more talk. They are concerned. Bibi, in order for his coalition, also has to keep serving them whatever they want. The real problem in the west bank is that you have these guys who are armed and that you had Avraham on the other day and he said that I believe that at some point or another, the settlements will be collapsed. I would agree with him, but the question is not whether or not they'll be collapsed. The question is what is going to have to happen for that to happen. What will happen on the way before you reach that point where the settlements are collapsed? Will it be some sort of civil chaos? Will it be a third intifada? There's a lot of talk in Israel about a third intifada, but my sense is that what happens next is not something that follows the sequence of intifada, but kind of like what happened in Gaza, this shattering of the status quo. I think there will come a point where something analogous, logically speaking, happens in the West Bank. Will it look like Gaza? Not at all. But will it be equally as cataclysmic?

[A]

Maybe.

[B]

Quite possibly. That's my sense.

[A]

But I mean, it's a different dynamic in the West Bank. I mean, isn't it? I mean, first of all, it's richer than Gaza ever was. It's a more kind of established series

[B]

of towns, which is why. Oh, in terms of the settlements, you mean?

[A]

No, no, no, no. The. The Palestinian population in the West Bank. I mean, it's not. I don't know, it's just harder to imagine something like that happening there, because I don't think.

[B]

As I said, I don't think what happens there is going to look like or be like what happened in Gaza. But I think, if you permit me, a few minutes, you know, there's a reason why October 7 came from Gaza and not from the West Bank. I spent last summer, I was in the Jenin refugee camp, if you've heard of it, of course, And I sat with the. Who was then the leader of Islamic Jihad. He was the emir, the prince of Islamic Jihad. And I sat with a few other guys from the various other factions. And what I understood was that the resistance in the west bank, basically there's a thread going all the way back to 48. You're exiled and you want to get back and you want to fight. And then there is serious amounts of terrorist attacks. And then eventually there's a political process. And you'd assume that any resistance movements or any kind of, you know, terrorist operator, whatever you want to call it, that they would eventually want to yield some kind of political outcome. But Oslo eventually fails. You have the first Intifada, you have the second. And the second Intifada is basically a lashing out, meaning the thread has reached its end. And the west bank at that point was faced with. The factions in the west bank were faced with sort of two options. Either we pause and take a breath and figure out what the fuck we're doing here, or we're just going to keep shooting aimlessly, just like shooting to make it look like we're doing something. We're going to do military marches, we're going to act really cool. But the guys are just like hood boys. They're just putting on headbands and with a Marlboro Red in their mouths and just shooting. Usually not even to hit. The aim is usually just to die. The logic of the camps. The logic of the resistance in the west bank is completely backwards, which means I don't think there's going to be an October 7th in the West Bank. But when I was in these villages that were getting attacked by the settlers, there's one line that kept coming up, and I'm talking about a line I was hearing from your average Palestinian farmer or peasant, which was, there will come a day. There will come a day when we are pushed a little too far. And at that point, the question is, how many minutes does it take for a bunch of people to run up to a hill and maybe overwhelm the settlement? An old man told me that we're going to chew them like dogs.

[A]

I would think that's coming. I mean, based on the behavior you're

[B]

describing, it's quite possible. I wouldn't discount it.

[A]

What do you make that the two most in the us, the two most famous cabinet ministers in the Netanyahu government are Smotish and Ben gvir. Are they powerful figures in Israel? How are they regarded? What's their motive, strategy, plan?

[B]

I don't think that they're close to as popular as they were. I think Bibi's popularity has increased, actually, over the course of the war, because Israelis have a very short memory, especially when it comes to warfare. But I don't really know what to tell you about Smotrich and Benvir. It's not really my specialty.

[A]

I guess it just seems unimaginably radical from an American. If you think of Israel, the post 67 Israel that most Americans learned about, visited. All of a sudden you have these guys, these two Ashkenazi guys sound really, really radical, or it seems like a departure from anything Americans have ever heard an Israeli government official say.

[B]

I think what you're hearing is what you often hear behind closed doors all over Israel, what you can hear at a cafe in Tel Aviv, meaning the notion of, yeah, maybe they could go somewhere, the Palestinians, maybe they just, like, they could be gone. The question of those are questions that come up. You hear it regularly. These aren't like completely insane conversations to hear. You can hear it from like a hippie at a cafe instead of. Of smoking a joint. What changed is that suddenly you were hearing it more and more on tv. I remember I heard one news commentator, a news anchor, ask about transfer. And I was like, this is a bit insane. Like, imagine if someone on CNN came on and started talking about transferring another. An entire other population who aren't illegal, right?

[A]

People who are born there, who've been there for Thousands of years, maybe hundreds,

[B]

maybe thousands, I don't know. But it doesn't matter. They were there when, when, when the Israelis came.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Doesn't matter how long they've been there for. So, yeah,

[A]

what about. I mean, it used to be in my living memory there was a significant population of Israelis who, who had totally different views. They're like, no, that's wrong. Human rights are a thing. You can't do that. How big is that? Avrum Berg, I think, is the kind of Israeli I remember from 25 years ago. There were a bunch of people like that. How many are left?

[B]

I mean, the left is dead. The left is dead. The Israeli left is dead. And the question as to why they died, it's because they spent, I think, a bit too much time beating the horse of Oslo. Dead. Osto obviously failed and the left was unwilling to concede that fact. Which meant that for many, many years, I think unto this day, the left never re evaluated. They never came with another proposal or another plan or another way of thinking about the conflict. They kept beating the horse of Oslo dead. Meanwhile, the Israeli right continues to churn out active propositions. We're going to reform the judiciary. We want to take the West Bank. Very concrete things. A right winger in Israel will tell you what they want. A left winger in Israel will tell you how they feel. Yeah, and yeah, I think that's the long and short of it.

[A]

That's a good explanation. Do Israelis have a sense of what the rest of the world thinks of Israel?

[B]

Yeah, I think they have a sense. The question is how deeply do they think about the sense and how much merit are they willing to give?

[A]

Do they care?

[B]

I think they definitely care. No one likes to be hated. I don't think anyone likes to be hated. But I think the more you feel like you're hated, the more you want to hate everyone else or just completely discount them. You. The more you want to dig your heels in and double down.

[A]

Huh. That's interesting. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I'm often attacked for hating Israel. I don't hate Israel at all. I feel sorry for Israel. I think they're in trouble. They don't seem to agree, but I think they are. But whatever my views, I mean, a lot of people hate Israel, like around the world. I hear it a lot when I travel. I feel like the moderate one. And I think that's a big change. And I always wonder, do the Israelis know that? Do they care?

[B]

I think the Israelis are probably the most hated people in the world, right

[A]

now that's my impression.

[B]

Full stop.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

One of the greatest things I ever did was not get an Israeli passport. And I feel bad for friends who have them. I would be scared. I'm gonna be totally honest. I would be scared right now. I'm sometimes scared to even say I'm Jewish. I'm lucky enough that I have Arabic, and if I'm in Europe, I just tell people I'm Palestinian, which some people might not like. But I think I put in the time to warrant it. Sometimes I'm scared to say that I'm Jewish, and I would definitely be scared to have an Israeli passport.

[A]

I think that's totally fair. That's fair. And I'm the last person to whine about anti Semitism, but I think Israel is literally hated. So I agree with you completely. Again, once more, I just want to be clear. You don't think Israelis have the sense that that's a bad thing and we should be worried about it, or that we played any role in that at all?

[B]

I think the Israelis there are Israelis who. You have a small liberal population of Israelis, many of whom I hear talking about the fact that they don't see a future for themselves in the country anymore.

[A]

Right.

[B]

A lot. This is about two to three years in the making, even from the judicial reform. I had a lot of people telling me left leaning, decent Israelis who are like, I don't know if I can have more kids here, or I don't want my kids to be in the army, or I don't want my kids to have to deal with whatever the consequences of the judicial reform and now this entire war. The rest of the Israeli population, I think, by and large, are bent on. They've all doubled down, really. I think a lot of people have doubled down.

[A]

So Bibi reflects the population he represents, you think?

[B]

I don't think a lot of people have problems with anything that Bibi represents. I think people have problems with the fact that he might have a corruption case, which I think is negligible.

[A]

But you're never at dinner and people say, man, I can't believe all those kids who were killed in Gaza. That's bad. I'm sorry we did that.

[B]

I don't hear it a lot, but what you can say, no, you might hear it sort of. It might be a symbolic gesture, like a virtue signal. But it's immediately followed with, that's what you got to do. I mean, they came to kill us or they're anti Semites. Yeah.

[A]

Where do Israelis think anti Semitism comes from? I often hear it invoked so. And so is an anti Semite. You're an anti Semite. How do they define it and what do they think its root is?

[B]

I think the root is age old. As far as Israelis are concerned, people hate us because people have always hated Jews. You hear this a lot in synagogues also across North America. You have a message being pushed constantly that people just hate us. And I think there are a lot of people who just hate Jews and there's a lot of people who are waiting for an excuse to hate Jews. But specifically, why do they hate Jews? But the question is, is there a distinction between those people and Palestinians? Are the Palestinians fundamentally anti Semitic? You can spare me quotes from an imam here or an imam there, or the fact that they conflate Jew and Israeli. By and large, is this a people who has premised its existence on killing Jews as Jews? And I do not think that that's the case.

[A]

Yeah, I wouldn't know. I mean, I wouldn't know. But I just think that there are a lot of anti Semitic people and they hate Jews. I agree with that. And I think it's wrong. That's what I think. But I also think it's worth, like, what is that? Is it a spiritual thing? I mean, we say, well, it's always existed. I believe that. But what's its. I mean, what's its cause? And I've never heard one person ask that question. And I think I believe in asking or trying to understand the, the cause of everything. You can't often, but it's, it's always worth doing. I wanted to know why Al Qaeda attacked the US on 9 11. I thought it was horrible. I had a friend killed. But. But I still want to know why. And I never hear anybody ask that question.

[B]

You ever heard anyone ask about the sort of like the bottom root of anti Semitism?

[A]

Never, not one time other than to say, and by the way, I'd be willing to believe, I'd be willing to believe that it's spiritual in nature.

[B]

What does spiritual mean?

[A]

That there's a belief among Jews and some Christians that Jews are distinct among peoples because God made them distinct. And that there is a spiritual reaction that is a religious belief that some people have, many people have. And I'd be willing to believe, I don't know if it's true, that this is like a reaction against that from evil. So that's one explanation. But I never even hear anybody ask the question. Like what I hear instead is people say, it's just, it's always been there, it always will be there. What does that mean? I guess that's what I'm asking.

[B]

I mean, within the European context. And look, I'm not an expert on anti Semitism. I'm not. Within a European context, you have a. People who are also forced into the margins of society. They're easily scapegoated. They also maintain a certain level of distinction from the rest of society. And those are people that are very easy to hate. But I can't give you an historiography of anti Semitism. I can tell you why I think it's on the rise right now.

[A]

Why is it on the rise right now?

[B]

We have a bit of an issue, right? You have Israel doing what Israel does. It's getting record amounts of attention. There's record amounts of sympathy with the Palestinian cause. I mean, there are many people, if you would ask them 20, 30, 40 years ago, if they understood what actually was the fate of the salad, the Palestinian people, they wouldn't have understood. They wouldn't have known. You know, there's a famous quote by Ben GURION who, following 48, you know, there were 600, some 600 villages that were destroyed.

[A]

Yes, I knew that.

[B]

And I remember there's a, there's a. Somewhere in the archives there's a quote which says, you know, people are soon going to come visit this country and we don't want them to see, have superfluous thoughts. To use the word superfluous meaning you gotta clean up the mess, either like destroy them or plant trees, put parks in their place, which is why you have many parks all over Israel. And people didn't really understand.

[A]

I didn't know that. How did I not know that? So parks, you see in Israel are often on the physical spot of a former Palestinian village.

[B]

In many cases, yes. In many cases, yes. Which is also bound up with the jnf, the Jewish National Fund.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

And so I remember hearing from someone in Toronto that I think the government was going to start sanctioning the JNF and people were really up in arms about this. And I said sort of at the end of the day, you have to decide what your relationship with Israel is. You can't. It's hard to have, it's hard to expect people from without to understand why at a synagogue you also have an Israeli flag there. If you don't also want to bear the brunt of. Of what's happening in Israel, takes some responsibility. And I'm saying from without, you can't expect people to understand that. I think There's a sense within the Jewish American community specifically, but also in Israel, people expect everyone else to understand them from within. It's why it should be very obvious why Israelis believe. It should be obvious what we're doing. All this should be obvious. And the fact that you're asking questions is itself potentially an indication that you are against us, that you just want our demise. When I ask people questions in Israel, the first thing is like, why are you asking if I want to interview someone as a journalist in Israel, I have to be very careful with the language I use. If I use the word west bank, city of Judea and Samaria, within a certain demographic, you're axed, it's over. Seriously, I tend to say we and not you. Because if I say you, they're like, what do you mean, you? I thought we're all in this together. No, I'm not an Israeli citizen. Even that is a bit sensitive.

[A]

You're describing narcissism, the belief that other people should just understand what I'm feeling. A healthy person understands that each one of us is sort of locked away in our own private traumas, and that's why we communicate. And I need to understand you. It's very important to understand you. And I want you to understand me. But it's not natural, right? That's the basis of a relationship.

[B]

It's an isolated and solipsistic society.

[A]

Solipsistic is a better word. That's exactly right.

[B]

In many ways, yeah. There's something. In many cases, I find there's something a bit delusional about the mentality. It's just the fact that, for example, Arabic isn't spoken in the country it used to be. I mean, those were. Because they were Arab Jews who came from Arabic countries. But the.

[A]

But I think there were also Ashkenazi Jews who spoke Arabic. I think that was more common. I think that was my impression.

[B]

Not a whole lot. Maybe if they were there, for example, before the establishment of the state, but as of the establishment of the state, you didn't have people really learning Arabic.

[A]

The changes that have taken place. Or maybe it's just a change in my perception, but I just remember a country that was much more open to the world, but a lot has happened in that time. By the way, I should ask you, since you live there in Israel, how much damage has been done during this war? We get no sense of it at all. Or I don't trust anything I see on the Internet. But do you get a sense it's a country at war? There rubble, you know, rubble on the street in Tel Aviv or.

[B]

No, no, in fact, I think the last round, during June, for example, you know, I'm based in Jaffa at the moment.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[B]

There were massive strikes in a place called Batyam, just south of Jaffa, where you saw, I think there was a three block radius of damage. Look, you do have damage relative the stakes. Minimal damage within Israel right now.

[A]

Does life seem normal? Ish.

[B]

Yeah. Ish.

[A]

Really?

[B]

The Jews like the ish?

[A]

Yes, it's true. I'm pro ish myself. So it doesn't feel like a country under siege.

[B]

Under siege?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

No. The war is being fought about 2,000 kilometers away, correct?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Certainly not besieged.

[A]

Is there a sense that there's a physical risk? Do people, you know, feel like, wow, we could get like, hammered by missiles, drones?

[B]

No, I don't think there's like an apocalyptic.

[A]

Yeah, that's what I'm sense.

[B]

But there is a sense like damage can be done. These are ballistic missiles. People can die. But if you're smart, if you take the necessary steps, if you go down to your shelter, you're probably going to be fine. Like a 99% chance that you will be just fine.

[A]

Do you talk to people who have a sense of how this will be resolved? Do people expect it to end soon, the war with Iran?

[B]

I don't think so. I think people want it to go on. I think people want the job done. But what's a bit strange to me, what's a bit ironic here, is that in America, it strikes me the perception is more zero sum. In America, I think there's the sense that if we went through all this and the regime doesn't fall, then this was for naught. We wasted our time, we jeopardized for the gop, we jeopardize our base or whatever else. You're better expert in that stuff than I am. Within Israel, though, it's not a zero sum game. If this war ends because Trump decides it has to end because of internal pressure, economic pressure, and the regime hasn't fallen, Bibi is none the worse for it. It's not the ideal outcome, it's not the best possible outcome, but it's something he can work with. It's a good enough show. It's what you call, in Hebrew, an image of victory. It's the phrase that Netanyahu has been using since the beginning of the war, an image of victory.

[A]

Part of our problem in the US May be that we take our own rhetoric more seriously, or perhaps too seriously, and so in order to justify this and the previous exchange in June, we had to endure weeks of hearing that we were all about to be killed by Iran, by this regime, which some people didn't believe, including me, but some people did believe. And we have a whole TV channel devoted to telling Americans their single biggest risk is Iran. So if that regime is still there, it's kind of hard to walk down from that, if you see what I mean.

[B]

I think in America, the big problem is that Americans are fundamentally divorced from history. They forget that they're actually inside of history.

[A]

That's for sure. I think that's a. For a non American, that's a perceptive observation.

[B]

And the Jews think that history is over.

[A]

Is it over?

[B]

Yeah, I think Israel believes that sort of, you know, we got back to the land, we have our state, and it's kind of done now. History's over. I think that's the distinction between Israel and America. America forgets that they're at the center of history, and the Israelis believe that they're enjoying the aftermath of history as if there can't be another exile, as if there can't be another catastrophe. And that's the shortsightedness.

[A]

Interesting. Where does. Among. Is there any discussion of restoring the Third Temple? That would seem obvious, at least from my reading of the Torah. No, that's not even a thing.

[B]

No. But I personally think. If you're gonna ask me, I personally think it would be great to build a third Temple just on another hill.

[A]

I don't think you can do it on another hill.

[B]

I bet you could get a rabbinical precedent. You could definitely pay some guy off to let you.

[A]

If you're gonna have a third Temple, I'm strongly in favor of putting on another hill, just because then you avoid global religious war.

[B]

Yeah. But it would also be a shame to come back to the homeland after 3,000 years and leave potentially without having built something, you know, Sweet.

[A]

But is there any effort to do that that you know of?

[B]

No, no, no. But there are a lot of people recently. It's funny, there's, you know, the Messiah patches that a lot of Israelis.

[A]

They do, yes.

[B]

There's now on the back of cars, there are these stickers now that are sort of like the image. It looks like a Greek or like a Roman temple, but it's a temple image.

[A]

Oh, I've seen it.

[B]

Have you seen the sticker?

[A]

Yes, I have.

[B]

So that's blown up as of the last year or two. Do I think it will actually happen?

[A]

No, but before the last year or two, or let's just say before October 7th, there was none of that that you saw.

[B]

You had the guys trying to secret in red heifers every now and again. They're a serious minority in the country. And as Avraham mentioned, you had people. There were attempts several times to five.

[A]

He said five. I didn't know that.

[B]

Yeah, I knew about one. I didn't know about five. But again, I think this is not. There's no state level or institutional policy that's working towards the construction of a third temple. I mean, look at the buildings in Tel Aviv. I don't think the Israelis right now are in a position to build a big beautiful temple. The best buildings in Tel Aviv were built by Arabs in the Ottoman era.

[A]

I knew that, I knew that. There's been a. I think Israel's, you know, is an amazing society in some ways. They built a lot. Considering how young it is, architecture has not been on the top of the, of the achievement list.

[B]

I would say that's why you put the city beside the sea.

[A]

Yeah, no, it's. But it's still not. It's. Yeah. So, yeah, I share your view of the local architecture. It's fascinating. So how has the country, just big picture, how has it changed? So in the seven and a half years you were there before two and a half since October 7th, what changes have you noticed to people's attitudes?

[B]

You know, there was, at the height of the war, I went to buy a new laptop from a kid. He was like 18, 19 years old. And it turns out that he's a soldier, he works at the navy. So he's like young, thin, he looks very, very young. And I went, and we started talking and I explained that I'm a journalist, that I do some work. And he said, Listen, after October 7th, we can't, we can't trust the Arabs. I said, really? Like, none. He was like, none. I was like, I have a question, like, where do you travel within Israel? And he goes, you know, back in the day, my father would go to a place called Kalkili, which is on the other side of the Green Line. And he goes, but we with the family would go to a place called Kafar Qasim, which is on the Israeli side of the Green Line, but like, right snug on the line. And he said, but ever since the war, I stopped going to Kafar Qasim. And I was like, do you go to another place called Tira, which is even closer to Tel Aviv? And he's like, no, I won't risk it. I don't even like going to Jaffa. And I told him, I said, what's going to be left to you if you keep operating this way? You're king of the hill, as it were. You're the landlord, but you're scared. It's like owning a house and being scared to walk into four out of the five rooms in the house. It's not a way to live. It's not the way to be a homeowner.

[A]

Right.

[B]

You have this thing. Ben Vere's big platform when he was running for elections was we're going to be the landlords now. In Hebrew, the landlords, actually. Yeah, that was how loud he said that. Yeah, that was a platform. There were signs in the west bank about that. We're the landlords now. Yeah, we're going to be the landlords. And the problem in Israel is that, especially in the west bank, is that there's a lot of focus on lording over the land and not really dwelling.

[A]

Ben Gvir's election slogan was, we're going to be the landlord. So we're dealing with lack of self awareness now. To say something like that out loud, quite the opposite.

[B]

He was very, very aware. It was very strategic, very tactical, especially within the settlement population. Of course, you're in a place where you don't feel like you're really the Lord. You don't feel, except for the gun. You don't feel like, I'm really the king of the hill. There's a guy who's saying, I'm going to make you king. I'm going to put the crown on your head. It's tempting especially to like, naive, young, potentially troubled youth who are, you know, running around the hilltops.

[A]

Interesting. Yeah. How long can Israel go with all this territory that's not part of their country but that they control? Like, what with Gaza and the west bank and now southern Lebanon and parts of Syria, like, does that just go on forever? Do people envision a time where the official borders of Israel expand and like, this is our country? Like, no.

[B]

I mean, look, if Israel can't manage Gaza, I don't think they can manage south Lebanon. I don't think that what's happening in south Lebanon is going to be permanent. There might be a post or two on the border. Like you could potentially expect that. Are they going to take a large swathes of Lebanese territory? No, but what they will do is render them uninhabitable, which is a kind of way of doing, not this, but not that.

[A]

How do you do that?

[B]

It's the art of indecision, which is Bibi's art. You don't occupy it, but you leave it unoccupiable.

[A]

Unoccupiable because there's nothing there.

[B]

Well, that's what the Lebanese border is right now. In many cases, not across the border, but there are many spots on the border in which everything is completely razed. Those were also houses used in many cases by Hezbollah. So I kind of get that in Syria as well. Like, I don't think that's a permanent decision. I think it's leverage that could potentially be used against Jelani to come to some sort of agreement, which I think will eventually come. Not a peace deal, but something. An understanding.

[A]

Jelani being the new head of Syria.

[B]

Exactly.

[A]

Who a lot of people assumed was installed there with the agreement of Israel. I assume that. I still think it. But now they're against him. What is the truth there?

[B]

Who said they're against him?

[A]

I don't know. I've heard recently that the Israelis are troubled with Johnny. I don't know if that's true or not.

[B]

I don't know if they're. I mean, he's moved troops toward the Lebanese border, and there are rumors that he would be willing to fight Hezbollah. There's a common enemy I think the Israelis fear j long term. And they also used to have a very good understanding with Assad. The problem is that Assad was also embedded with Iran and Hezbollah. So there's a bit of a problem. I don't think the Israelis ever had a problem with Assad. I think as far as I know, before the civil war, there were also secret talks going on. The Israelis were also preparing to make some kind of agreement with Assad. In the short term, I think Giuliani and the Israelis can work together relatively well because he. It'll take Giuliani a very long time until he will be able to build, or, as it were, cement the ground beneath him. Yes, he can't start problems with Israel right Now, but in 20, 30 years, he might be able to.

[A]

What's the typical Israeli view of the United States?

[B]

I think Avram got it right. Like, stupid Americans.

[A]

Stupid Americans.

[B]

They sometimes want to live like you, you know, I think they want to. They want to speak English. They want certain. Certain kind of American lifestyle, but they don't want to be you. They think you're naive.

[A]

Is there affection or mostly contempt?

[B]

A lot of affection, from what I hear. A lot of affection. I mean, definitely over the last year or two I think this has a lot to do with Bibi. There has been a kind of Rhettic of like, who's the United States to tell us what to do? They shouldn't be telling us what to do. And Israelis get frustrated when there's talk of that, like, Bibi's gonna bend to Trump or that America says, like Biden says, you can't do this. This is the red line. I think there's a deep frustration inside of Israel because they wanna have their cake and eat it.

[A]

They want the money, but also total, lavish.

[B]

They want support, but also, I think they want America to acknowledge that we're, in a way, doing your bidding. I think a lot of Israelis believe that we're doing your bidding. We're doing something good for you, doing

[A]

the hard work that you won't do.

[B]

Yeah,

[A]

they feel that way.

[B]

I can't speak for the whole country,

[A]

but, I mean, you hear that.

[B]

I hear that, yeah.

[A]

What about Trump? What's the view of Trump?

[B]

Love him.

[A]

Really? Yeah.

[B]

A lot of Israelis love Trump. Again, I'm speaking from my experience.

[A]

What do they like about him?

[B]

They like that he's willing to take the gloves off for once. I think they saw Biden as a pussy.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

As a feckless pussy who wasn't willing to make a decision, wasn't able to do it. For example, Bibi is willing to do. Even though Bibi was also a pussy for a very long time. And so, yeah, I think it's refreshing to them. And I think they don't see. Look, as Avraham also said, Israelis don't have a very good understanding of what happens on the American interior, of American culture. Most Israelis do not speak English. I think this is a delusion people have because they go to Tel Aviv and people speak English outside of Tel Aviv. There's not a whole lot of English being spoken. And so there is a sense in which all they see Trump as is what he has done for us or the fact that he would be more willing to help us. And that's what matters. If you're an Israeli, you care about Israel just like you are an American and care about America.

[A]

That's right. That's always been my favorite thing about Israel, is they're nationalists. What's the view of the Gulf states?

[B]

You have to be more specific.

[A]

What do they think of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, uae?

[B]

They love the uae. They love the uae. The UAE also loves them. But I don't think the government is a big fan of Israel. I've heard from people for example, that like Emirati diplomats are a bit shocked when they come to Israel and they're also in some cases mistreated at the airport. I think they find Israeli society a bit shocking in its rudeness at times. I think they're not given the kind of respect that they're accustomed to having within Gulf countries that have pretty standard royal hierarchies and different manners.

[A]

Those are elaborately polite societies with all kinds of rituals around manners. Yeah, no, I think they are shocked.

[B]

Yeah. So Israelis love the UAE and there are very, very close relations between the UAE and Israel.

[A]

What do they think of the Saudis?

[B]

I don't know. Couldn't tell you.

[A]

Qatar?

[B]

I couldn't really tell you. I think, you know, a lot of Israelis, I mean, they house Hamas. As far as a lot of Israelis are concerned. I don't hear people saying that Qatar as a country is our enemy. I don't think Israelis think a whole lot about Qatar.

[A]

Yeah, I believe that.

[B]

I just don't think they think about them a lot.

[A]

What do they think? So Israel has a lot of high profile defenders in the United States. Are they well known in. In Israel?

[B]

Like who?

[A]

Oh, I don't know. Ben Shapiro or.

[B]

No, no, no.

[A]

Unknown Mark Levin? No, no one's ever heard of him.

[B]

I'm sure there's many people have heard of them. Are there? Do you have like the average rally, average Israeli listening to Mark Levin or Ben Shapiro? Absolutely not. Because also Ben Shapiro is speaking in the name of, if anything, American jewelry.

[A]

Right.

[B]

His conversation is maybe about Israel, but it's between Western Jews or English speaking Jews. It doesn't really impinge upon the Israelis.

[A]

To Israelis. What's their view of American Jews specifically?

[B]

I don't know if I could give you that in a sentence or two. There's all kinds of different relationships. I'm avoiding falling into certain kinds of banalities or stereotypes.

[A]

Totally. Totally. Well, you can't generalize actually about most, but I just think if there's like

[B]

an overwhelming sense and there are also mixed feelings. There are mixed feelings. I have issues with American Jews, but they're also my people. And this is, I think, the overarching sentiment. At the end of the day, there are many disagreements between the two peoples, but they are also a single people. It's just like you have disagreements with your family, I'm sure, but they're still your family. And that's by and large, if I had to sum it up, that's the dynamic. But there is certainly a generational break right now. I think the younger generation of liberal Jews, I think they're beginning to see. And this isn't the majority of Jews right now. The majority of younger generation Jews, I think are still following in the footsteps of their parents. But there is a significant population of young Jews who I think are looking at Israel and saying, we don't like what you're doing and it doesn't necessarily matter that you're family.

[A]

What changed that view, do you think? Gaza.

[B]

Yeah. And the fact that it's also unpopular. If you're a liberal Jew in a liberal circle, you don't want to be the guy who's liberal on every single point but stops at Gaza. It's socially awkward in many cases. It's a social decision. I don't think it's a major theoretical decision. Right.

[A]

This is not a question of principle. It's just like it's becoming unacceptable to be proud.

[B]

It could be both. But also, you know, principles in America are a big part of sociality or social life.

[A]

They certainly are.

[B]

Right.

[A]

That's true for any society, I think, especially America. You think so?

[B]

I think people like touting their morals quite a bit in America. Yeah. Really? Yeah. I've never sat with an Arab and he tells me like, you know, I believe in this and I believe in that. And I think like, this is really wrong. I don't hear that. But on like the subway in Toronto, you can hear people talking through each other about their various moral beliefs that they've never had to act upon in their lives.

[A]

That is a very wise observation. I've never sat with an Arab and he's like, I think this is wrong. Getting in your.

[B]

Yeah, it's a bit like, I'm sure the Arabs have moral opinions.

[A]

Of course they do. Of course they do. It's not to say they don't have standards, but they're not throwing them at you at dinner.

[B]

They don't, but they're just not the foundations of their identity.

[A]

Yeah, well, there is a certain self righteousness in the west that's not necessarily the same as righteousness. I mean, it's just.

[B]

Yeah, definitely.

[A]

There's a posturing that goes on. Here's my last question. How do you think. And it's impossible to know, but like in five years, what does the landscape look like in the Middle East? Is the United States still as closely allied with Israel as it is today? Is Lebanon territorially intact? Is Israel safer? Have we gotten the Seven Front war down to two fronts, say or no fronts? Is Bibi still in power like what current trends continue? What does it look like?

[B]

I think Bibi very well could be in power in five years. I think he'll probably get elected in October. Yeah. I think it's highly likely that he'll get reelected. And I think everything that's happening right now is, in some way or another engineered for that to happen again. As we said, the personal ambitions of Bibi happen to align with some of the strategic ambitions of the state. And if you can just modulate that, then it's a perfect recipe to win elections. In terms of Lebanon, do I think the Israelis will be highly active deep inside Lebanon? No. And I think a lot of these. Bibi doesn't want a ton of war. I think after Bibi gets into. If he gets reelected, I think you'll see Lebanon sort of come to a close. Even Iran could come to a close. He'll want to just sort of, like, bring in a new status quo that will be useful to him. And when he has to turn up the heat, he'll turn up the heat.

[A]

Yeah. Do you think, again, purely speculative, but if Donald Trump went to Bibi tomorrow and said, we're shutting this down with Iran, it's terrible for markets, it's terrible for me, my political party.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Could he make Bibi stop?

[B]

I think he probably could, but Bibi would probably want to find a kind of middle ground. Meaning they had a ceasefire in Lebanon, but there were still Israeli strikes in Lebanon on. On an almost daily basis.

[A]

Right? Yeah. I think you could call that the Israeli ceasefire.

[B]

Yeah. In Hebrew, called the war between the wars.

[A]

So funny when, you know, growing up here, we were taught that Israel had wars in 48, 56, 67, 73, 82, and then the intifadas. That's the official history of it, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then you get older and you realize, nah, there's kind of a war continuously.

[B]

I don't know if I'd call it a war, but there is fighting, there's fighting, or there are strikes, there's activity. I don't know if I'd call it a war, but I do think you could potentially see a situation, and it depends on the conditions of the end of the war, if there's an agreement, what the stakes are and the stakeholders. But there could be a situation. I can envisage a situation in which Israel, for example, is still striking, not necessarily on a daily basis, but that they operate in the skies of Tehran, that they strike as needed, and there's still a lot to be seen. I mean, I think there should be. There's probably gonna be some attempt to activate people to try to get protests stood up again. I wouldn't be entirely surprised

[A]

in Iran.

[B]

Yeah. I find it hard to believe that the Israelis put all this together without the hope or without some expectation that when things quiet down, things internally will begin to sort of move again.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I don't know if you can expect people to go and protest while there are strikes. The strikes should, I think they would expect, lay the groundwork for something to happen after.

[A]

Do you have any idea how the Israeli government winds up with so many agents of influence and just agents in all these hostile countries? How many? There's so many people in Iran working for Israel. Same in Syria. Same in Lebanon. Like, how do they do that?

[B]

People are easy to buy. People are easy to buy.

[A]

Apparently they are.

[B]

I mean, I like to say that the best spies in the Arab world all work for the Mossad. That's what they don't. That's why they don't have good intelligence agencies.

[A]

How do they do that? I mean, it's just remarkable. I don't think the United States pulls that off.

[B]

They could if they wanted to. I think the CIA is probably just lazy. The stakes aren't as high in many cases.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

You find someone's weakness, they're homosexual.

[A]

We only do that in the Senate here. We haven't bothered to do it in Iran.

[B]

I guess that day might come.

[A]

You never know. All right. Thank you very much. That was interesting as hell.

[B]

Thanks for having me.

[A]

Appreciate it.