Angry Planet - A Calm Conversation About Israeli Settlements and Blame vs Responsibility

Episode Date: November 4, 2024

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.comWARNING: This episode contains nuance in the discussion of subjects usually left to screaming and violence!This week we get into a bunch of stuff around Israel that we normally avoid. Settlements. Blame versus responsibility. The definition of colonialism. The social media posts of IDF soldiers. It’s a calm, nuanced conversation with Shaiel Ben-Ephraim. No, really.Netanyahu as an obstacle to peaceWhy no one talks about what comes nextIsrael loses MatthewAmerica and Israel’s “special relationship”When Bush (senior) stood up to IsraelGoing down the colonialism rabbit holeThe social media output of IDF soldiers on the ground in Gaza and Lebanon“There’s terrible things they’re not taping.”Explaining Ben-Gvir and SmotrichHow right wingers paralyze the Israeli governmentIsrael is eyeing settlements in the West Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon which is, in fact, colonialismThe difference between blame and responsibilityThe episode is not anti-Israel, so save your letters and phone calls.Shaiel Ben-Ephraim Explains Israel The History Of The Land Of Israel PodcastSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Hello and welcome to another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. And it just keeps getting angrier actually. So today we have a guest to talk more about Israel because, you know, what could be more more fun than talking about Israel in its various wars.

We love doing it. Our listeners love it. Right. They love it so much. They do. Everyone's always happy after an Israel episode. Yep. So, guest, introduce yourself.

Hi, everyone. I'm Shaalban Afriam, host of the History of the Land of Israel podcast and the Israel Explained podcast. And I'm just happy to be here. Thank you so much for coming on for this looser and more bizarre episodes we've done in a while. And I am glad that we're talking to you today because there was a lot of Israel news yesterday. Is it appropriate to tentatively say maybe these things are going to be, the current iteration of these conflicts is going to be winding down? maybe? That seems a little bit optimistic.

Okay. Matthew's always been a little optimistic. Always. But there are signs that something is moving much more in the north than in Daza. So there's talks in both.

But in the north, there's definitely a feeling that it might be winding down. Then that would leave the conflict continuing in Gaza, possibly escalating in the West Bank, possibly continuing with Iran, although Iran and Lebanon are closely linked. So, yeah, maybe we're close to the beginning of the end,

especially in Lebanon. But that could collapse too. Many such cases of collapse lately. So one of the things that has been said many, many times, I read Ha'Arts, at least parts of Ha'Arts every day, which is people should know sort of a liberal Israeli newspaper or maybe a very liberal Israeli newspaper. But, you know, they have squarely put all of the blame for the endless war on Netanyahu. They've decided that he's the only thing standing in between peace and war, and it's because he wants to stay in power internally. What do you think of that, Chai? I mean, does that sound right to you?

There's a lot of truth to that, but it's very simplistic. They're Sinwar and Netanyahu both have proved to be pretty serious obstacles to a ceasefire. If I had to choose who was a bigger obstacle to a ceasefire, I would. of Sinwar, of course. Netanyahu was very conniving and once stayed in power. Sinwar was pure evil and there's really

no comparison between the two. The whole conflict started because of Sinwar and Hamas. So what I take exception to is the attempt to blame Netanyahu as the primary culprit and without him everything would be fine and dandy. And even though

I'm a very well-known Netanyahu critic, That doesn't strike me as a good faith interpretation. Having said that, Netanyahu is definitely, at least partially to blame for there being no ceasefire. We know that Sinwar was willing to have a ceasefire at least one point. There was a ceasefire, after all. And that also means that Netanyahu was willing, right? So it works both ways. But then there was also a period in July where I think it's fair to say that Netanyahu was the one who stopped potential ceasefire.

I think he was more the problem at that point. When he brought in that whole Philadelphia corridor thing, not that the Philadelphia corridor isn't a real Israeli interest, but there's a lot of evidence to show that he very cynically used that at a specific moment in order to sabotage the ceasefire. And I believe if he hadn't done that or hadn't wanted to sabotage it, there would be one. So I think there's a lot of truth to it. But you have to remember that Hamas is the ultimate culprit.

And I guess now that Sinwar is not there, we'll see. There's definitely weakening on the Hamas side. They're definitely willing to accept things that they weren't willing to accept before. But the real problem with Netanyahu isn't so much that he's saying yes or no on a ceasefire deal. The real problem with Netanyahu in Gaza is that he's not willing to take steps that he knows are necessary to end the war. such as a day after plan where you would start to replace Hamas as the government. You know, I think everyone who knows military strategy, anyone who knows Hamas at all, knows that you can continue to play the game of hunting down individual Hamas members and killing them

for another five years if you wanted to. They'll still be there. It's not like you're giving people and guys anything better to do than fight for Hamas. and, you know, avenge their family members, etc. So that can go on forever. And you're feeding the fact that there'll always be people doing that.

Until you start to replace them with something else, then there's no end to it. Netanyahu has refused to replace them with someone else. And that also has a bearing on the ceasefire because it gives Hamas hope that they can survive this war. What they're hoping is that at some point, Netanyahu will be stopped from international pressure or whatever, and Israel will withdraw, and they'll still be in power.

And they have reason to believe that, because at some point, you know, Netanyahu's going to run out of rope. So he's also not allowing there to be a ceasefire in that way. But having said that, you always say Hamas is the number one obstacle, but Nathaniel is a pretty significant number two. why this reluctance, this refusal to talk about in plan for what happens after? Well, I mean, the real reason is that any resolution or any plan would be very, very controversial. And Netanyahu doesn't like to make tough decisions. He likes to postpone, we all do, by the way. We all like to postpone tough decisions, but he's a lot worse than it.

than even I am, you know, I will eventually make that tough decision. He will not. You have, what would a plan be? What would a plan be? We have to be either. Israel creates a military government, which would be Israel saying to the world, we're occupying Gaza, at least for a while. And at a time when Israel has a serious deficit,

we're going to spend a ton of money we don't have governing the Palestinians. and, you know, giving them food and, et cetera, very unpopular, very problematic on international level and domestic level. And Israeli soldiers will be standing there in the middle of Gaza, and they'll be, you know, sitting ducks. They'll be very hard to defend their lives. Second and much better, in my opinion, option, would be to form a government with the Palestinian Authority.

But the Palestinian Authority has been played up in Israel, I would say unfairly, as a bunch of terrorists who do pay for slay and are just as bad as Hamas and et cetera, et cetera, mostly because so many people in Israel don't want, especially people who support the government, by the way, don't want a two-state solution. And if Israel moves, it brings the PA and that's a step towards a two-state solution, the Palestinian Authority is not going to come in unless they're told that there's going to be a two-state solution. The international community is not going to back it unless they're told that there's a two-state solution.

That would cause his coalition to collapse. also on Nathaniel is not a great ideologue, to put him mildly, but he has been very consistent since the 90s that he does not believe in the Palestinian state by Israel. There isn't an ideological component here. His father would roll over in his grave if Netanyahu was behind creating a Palestinian state. So that's another reason, probably not the primary. He's very craven, but that's in there too. So he doesn't want to choose between these two options that just seem impossible to him. to do.

And also, third thing, and this is more recent, he's realized that when he escalates and kills a ton of people, he gets more popular. So he's hoping that eventually that will revive his political fortune, which still are not very good. So it's all those things. And in the end, it's a big mistake on his part. In the end, he's going to have the worst of all possible worlds. He's probably going to have to either he's going to have to face sanctions that he'll

never be forgiven for that will change Israel as a country or he will be forced to withdraw from Gaza without having replaced Hamas in what would be a spectacular defeat. So, yeah, when we've postponed very difficult decisions, we tend to pay for them later

and that's what's going to happen here, Jim. Can I ask about what you view as what Israel's place in the international community is going to be like when this wraps up. From my perspective,

I know this is not always a popular one on this podcast. They've lost me a bit. It seems like there's been a pretty wild escalation on all fronts of the conflict. The scales of justice do not seem, are not balancing at all here. I understand that when someone comes into your country and kidnaps a bunch of your people,

that you go in and get them back and that people are going to die and that Sinwar was, as you said, evil, and that the people that are in Hezbollah are bad, and I don't feel bad about their pageers exploding. I don't.

But they have, Israel has destroyed civilian infrastructure and, like, altered people's lives forever. Tens of thousands of them. And I, I, it feels like,

like the international community is not going to turn away this time and that the, it feels very overwhelming and escalatory. And you talked about sanctions. What else do you think is going to happen? How do you think this is going to change Israel itself as a society? Yeah, this is a really tough one. I've, the Israeli military doctrine traditionally has always been that you finish wars quickly because

the international community won't give Israel the possibility to fight for a long time. That was the Ben-Gurian doctrine, very smart stuff that they came up with way back in the late 40s, early 50s. When this continued on for so long, I was sure that the reaction for the international community would actually be sharper than it has been. The truth is that considering how long this conflict has gone on and the unbelievable footage that we're seeing in the news every day, the fact that, that there hasn't been much real backlash.

There's been a lot of talk, but in terms of actual sanctions, some countries have said, we're going to stop new exports, we're going to consider, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. I've talked to people in the IDF and the Defense Department.

We're concerned about that, but they're saying that basically at the end of the day they get what they need. Right now, it takes time. But right now, the full weight of that has not been felt. That's a little surprising to me. It shows that support for Israel runs a lot deeper than people think, among governments at least.

Is it support? Is it support or is it pushing off a hard decision, kicking a can down the road? Is it not wanting to get involved in what is a complicated and horrifying conflict? I think it's support, but maybe not in terms of the Palestinians. I think that what did people are missing here, maybe I miss too, is that there is a proxy war going on between Israel and Iran, you know, the U.S. and Iran, EU, Iran, Russia, Ukraine, all this stuff. There is a sense that Israel's fight against Iran, much more than against Hamas, although they're very much linked, is it's in the interest of the Western. countries that Israel will win. And that comes out when they talk about Iran very clearly, very, very clearly, less clearly when they talk about the Palestinians. But basically the fear that

Western countries have, and I think it's a justified fear, I think they're correct, is that if they stop selling Israel arms while they're fighting Iran, they're sending a very bad message in the middle of a difficult proxy war, that they're not going to support their allies. And that's working very much in favor of Israel avoiding these sanctions. How long that will last? I don't know. I think we're talking about a struggle here between geopolitical purposes and public opinion. And at some point, public opinion is probably going to win out.

You also talked about losing your support for Israel. And, you know, I'm in Israeli. I served in the army. I love my country. And I'm starting to feel a lot of the same thing. And it's not so much because civilians are getting killed in large numbers. That's very distressing. But a lot of it is because people don't myself, because don't trust this government.

They don't feel like people are not dying for the right reason. This links to our previous question. Is Netanyahu just continuing this for no reason? Is he escalating just this day power? Is he escalating just to keep some very extreme right-wingers satisfied, Itamar, Ben-Gavir, Smother specifically? It's very difficult to go rah, rah, ra, Israel win this war. You are concerned that civilians are dying for political purposes.

So you really have this balance between the geopolitical needs of the West and the public opinion. I'm assuming public opinion will win, but that's given it, Danielle, a lot of leeway, and maybe he has more leeway. I was surprised how much he has. I actually would just say that,

I mean, well, there are a couple things. One is, I think that it goes a little bit further than not wanting to abandon Israel in the middle of a fight, but actually,

you know, I've seen this from Israelis on Twitter, you know, once again, Israel is, you know, of taking out the world's trash, the concept of, you know, Sinwar and Hezbollah, who, I mean, the only people who like Hezbollah, it's not apparently the Lebanese, it's Iran.

You know, so going out and killing everyone in sight who's a member of Hezbollah, I'm not sure that anyone particularly objects, especially the U.S. government. So I think that, you know, put that together with the fact that the people who actually give a shit about what Israel is doing in this country, either are on the side of Israel because of the ridiculous evangelical crap, or because they are Jewish and essentially believe that Israel is a good thing, whether or not they agree with Israel's policies, right? So, I mean, there's just, and then you got a bunch of kids running around going, I hate Israel, you know, talk about river.

to see and all this kind of shit that they know nothing about. Lovely to have them on board. Do you know what I'm saying? I mean, that's kind of, I think it just goes further than, there's a lot of confluence of interest. Well, you're talking, you're talking about the United States. Yeah. That's a very specific constellation of things. You know, the United States has the whole concept of the special relationship.

which Israel doesn't have with any other country based on a shared identity almost of, you know, being a democracy based on biblical values and, you know, fighting against natives that are, you know, there's a lot of shared elements there. an American obsession with the Holocaust, all these sorts of things. There's a bunch of books written about this. There's like planks of the special relationship, et cetera, et cetera. So that continues today. It's been eroded a lot.

And that's sort of a different conversation. But it's not gone. It's not gone. I mean, the mainstream median American still sees Israel that way to some extent. And certainly the median politician. does as well. So that really matters. It's much more complicated in Europe.

I was thinking a lot more about Europe because what you expect is for Europe to give first. And that hasn't really been happening to the extent that I thought. But yeah, in the United States, at the end of the day, the median voter is still crows railing. And that has massive weight. And anyone who tries to embargo Israel and all. arms in the United States will pay a massive, massive political price. It will consume your entire administration for months, and you probably would end up losing the battle with Congress

or whatever. You know, Bush tried that, Bush senior, tried that in a very minor way, with loan guarantees about settlements. And that led to such a battle that he ended up losing that no one has ever really tried it since. And I don't think anyone will try it since. So that's why I was thinking about other countries. I should have clarified. The U.S. doing that is politically insane. People always say, oh, why doesn't the U.S. just embargo is real and forced them do this?

A president can't do that. That would be an entire year of their presidency gone on a losing battle. No one wants that, from which they would never recover in the polls. no. If I was American president, I would never do that, even if I thought it was the right idea. It's not the right idea because Israel like I said is also fighting a proxy war

in America's favor and abandoning them has costs. That's not happening in the U.S. But if you understand the Israeli military's needs, if Europe decided to embargo just weapons,

Israel would be in a lot of trouble. There's several important parts ammunition, etc. that they get from certain suppliers in Europe, without which they would have tremendous trouble. And that's much more realistic than the United States embargoing them.

But yeah, yeah, everything said about the U.S. I agree with. Can I pursue a bizarre rabbit hole? Jason, you're going to be unhappy. Of course I'm going to be unhappy. I'm just warning you now. Go for it. It's all right. I've been unhappy all day. So in that,

you said that, you said that, there is an identity, there's an identity, or a kinship between the United States and Israel because of this idea of people coming to a new land and then battling the, like, the people that are already there, right? That, Jason, I know you don't like this framing of this at all. It sounds a lot like colonialism to me, which you, you've kind of pushed back on, on other people that have come on the show and kind of described what's going on in Israel's colonialism. And I also agree that that's a fraught and weird, not a weird, it's a fraught, it's not exactly what's happening. But can you kind of talk about, can you talk about that link and that kinship and that like why that story is important between these two countries?

and also can you respond to why people might find that gross do you understand like it doesn't feel good colonial element right yeah yeah okay so

the reason that this is such a fraud question is because it's very complex and it's very emotional there's a lot of things going on when you talk about colonialism and and Zionism So let's break them down.

What is colonialism? Ultimately, colonialism is when one country, sort of a motherland, sends functionaries or army, citizens, et cetera, to take over another area, or at least recognizes them later, et cetera. Sometimes it's a little bit less direct than that. And then there's a sort of a structure there where there's a hub and spoke where you have the mainland kind of controlling the outland areas, so on and so forth. That very basic political structure is lacking in the Israeli case. There was no polonial power that sent, you know, Zionist settlers to Palestine. Then there's another element that goes against that, and that of course is the link that Jews have to the land of Israel, historically, biblically, etc.

Those two things undermine a lot of the colonial model. But it's not so easy to get rid of the colonial comparison. Because you have several things that are a play that are very similar. You have people coming from somewhere else that think that they're more enlightened, that think that they're more advanced, brushing aside the local population that was there.

First is a different question, but they were there, they were there physically in terms of the exact people who were there at the time. And you also have to keep in mind that at that time, colonialism wasn't a bad word.

And therefore, you have a lot of texts where they refer to themselves as colonialists. We're colonizing the land. They say that. Though for them, that wasn't a bad thing. Colonialism at the time still had, for a lot of people, there was already backlash to this.

For a lot of people that meant, you know, bringing civilization to people in place that didn't have it. And that was a good thing because Western civilization was advanced and people didn't really argue about that. So they called it. colonization. There's also another difference, a massive difference, which is that the Jewish settlers, especially at first, didn't disenfranchise the people from the land in the traditional sense. They bought land from local owners.

No one gave them that land. No one helped them. And they didn't have the military power or the control over the mechanisms of government. to throw anyone off the land. So they bought it, which is not typical colonialism. They were often buying very bad land, which is the opposite of what happens in colonialism where we take all the good land. They didn't try to missionize the locals to their religion.

So what happens is you have some elements of colonialism in there, but you're missing some very crucial elements. So I'm not sure it's very enlightening, but the people who support that thesis have enough to hang their hat on. to convince some people. I don't find that it's a very useful framework.

I would honestly say that Zionism is really its own universe. Like so many other things with Jews, it's unique. Anti-Semitism is its own weird thing. Zionism is its own weird thing. The way Israel is treated in the world is its own weird thing. There really are no parallels

for a lot of these elements and yeah comparisons when it comes to Jews are often obscure more than they reveal that's my opinion but I also wouldn't say that it's completely made up bullshit or something like that you will find texts of Jews saying that they're colonizing the land and a lot of what it looked like in practice was very similar but the differences are are important yeah actually that's the best explanation I've ever heard no I mean it seriously thank you it's helpful It's really helpful. And, you know, I mean, I know that a lot of the people who came to Israel, especially at the turn of the 19th century, and, you know, the first Europeans to sort of turn their eyes towards it, Hurtzels, you know, followers and whatever were, they had all sorts of different ideologies and ideals that they wanted a place to establish, right?

I mean, the kibbutzum and stuff like that came from socialist ideals. for example. So, I mean, these were people coming in and setting up what the, you know, even a new way of life. But the question is, you know, yeah, it's interesting when you're talking about like how much was purchased, how much it wasn't, who got the good land, who got the bad land, you know. And then, of course, you have the 48 war and everything gets much more complex, right? I mean, because people are driven from their land, but a lot of other people fled. and then the question is, do you let the people who fled back just because, you know, they want to come back? You know, anyway, but anyway, I guess what I'm just saying is I really do appreciate what you were saying and that there's, I appreciate the nuance.

Yeah, it's hard to get into it. That's why these kind of podcasts are very nice because on social media, it's hard to get any, yeah. No, I mean, social media is a nightmare. Right. You can't have a real conversation on there about, especially about this, about anything, but especially about this. Yeah. Can we go into another unpleasant talk?

Oh, yeah. I want to talk about the IDF. And I would say that like a big part of why Israel has lost me is the social media output of IDF on the ground. Is there a discipline problem in this force? It sure seems like it to me, the one that really struck me recently that I saw. I mean, obviously, IDF soldiers have been posting all sorts of horrifying shit for the past year. But the one that really struck me, and this is a small thing, was during the ground invasion of northern or of Lebanon, going through one of the houses, filming themselves, talking about how nice the house is.

It's like, I know all the houses in Gaza were shitholes. This place is much nicer. And they're rooting through their drawers and finding things and smashing them. I mean, I know this isn't exactly a hearts and minds campaign, but, but why would you, why would that be posted? Why are they doing this? Who is this for? Yeah, this is a really, this is a really tough, tough discussion. The IDF is very near and dear to my heart.

And what I'm seeing is disgusting. And, you know, on the one hand, I'd like to say, oh, back in my day, this wouldn't happen. But maybe some of it's just that it wasn't recorded. But it's definitely happening on a much wider scale now than ever before. and there is no strategy behind it. You're asking who it's for. It's not designed to achieve any particular goal except for maybe likes, clicks. It's just soldiers posting.

Exactly. And why are they posting? It's not a national interest thing. Everyone in the IDF knows, including these soldiers, I think, deep down, that this is not helping anyone. or Nathan. But there's two levels here. First, why are these soldiers posting this to begin with?

One is because there's hatred of the Palestinians, now also the Lebanese apparently. But that is incredibly deep. It was before October 7th and October 7th, it multiplied. Just to give you some idea of what we're talking about, I was here in L.A. when October 7th happened, and I was getting all the texts from my friends in Israel. And most of my friends are pretty same center, center left. I have one friend who's extreme left, more than one. I have like two or three friends who are extreme left.

This friend is the most extreme left friend that I have, the most like we need to stop Zionism and create a one state solution. He was saying that we need to go into Gaza and kill every single person who lives there that day. every single person, man, woman, child. I'm not even talking about my right wing, you know, like everyone was just saying that that day. Now, my extreme left friend calmed down, you know, he calmed down. He felt bad later, et cetera, et cetera. But a lot of people, it continued to feel that way.

People already felt that way and felt that way more deeply with more anger. And people who didn't feel that way before and now did. And that hasn't changed. And there's a lot of people who feel that way. and there are also some processes that are going on in Israeli society that are leading to lack of any restraint regarding human rights, liberalism, any of that, you know, the people who support Ben-Gvier Smotrich are, ultimately they have genocidal ethnic cleansing tendencies. tell me can you explain who he is because I only have like I know I'm aware of him but I don't really

I know that he's a political figure and that he's important but can you give me the can you can you can you can you can explain him in his whole deal which one oh both of them both of them okay let me finish the little speech I'm giving about the idea very briefly then I'll move on immediately to Ben Clear

then you also have the officers and and the command I talk to people in the IDF higher up all the time. I'm old. They don't have a lot of friends who are 20 years old. But I do have friends who are in the command, and I do have friends who are in the reserves.

And my friends are more sane and none of them like this. But they're not cracking down on this. And the reason they're not cracking down is has to do with what I'm going to answer with the next question. It has to do with people like Ben-Gvier and so on and so forth. They know that if they start disciplining soldier, there will be a big political price to pay. And people have exacted that price, for example, when they arrest.

people for torturing inmates. It's detainment. There's a deterrence gang going on. If you punish soldiers, people will turn the soldiers into heroes. And like I talked about how a president wouldn't want to spend a whole year of fighting in order to sanction Israel, then the IDF officers don't want to end up, you know, answering questions from the media, getting fired and et cetera, for disciplining a soldier over something that. ultimately they think is stupid, but it adds up to a terrible picture. And then, let's be honest,

what are they not taping? They're taping what they're doing in houses. What are they not taping? There's terrible things that they're not taping. And I'll leave that at that. I'm not going to speculate, but I think we don't know what I'm talking about. And regarding Ben-Givir, so who's Itemar bin Qibir. Itabar Ben-Givir is someone who first came to the attention of the Israeli public in the 1990s when he took the Mercedes-Benz, what do you call the symbol, off the car of the Israeli Prime Minister, Robin, and said, we're going to get you next time about the Prime Minister before he was assassinated. He became very famous after. of that for threatening to kill the prime minister.

And the prime minister was killed by someone with similar ideological proclivities. He then spent years raising trouble, trying to organize terrorist, settler terrorist groups against Palestinians and things like that ended up being indicted in court for racism and incitement to terrorism. during those years he had a reputation in Israel of being, this is funny in retrospect, an agent of the Shabak, that's like Israeli FBI. A lot of people thought that he was so extreme that he was like there to entrap people.

You know, because no person could be this insane was the idea. At some point he decided to become more respectable. He became a lawyer and he started representing obviously settlers and things like that. He wasn't a bad lawyer. He won a lot of cases. And then because he was such a, a hardcore, non-compromising racist. And he's also, you know, a disciple of Mayor Kahana, the rabbi who is the spiritual father of the extreme messianic right in Israel. And he's very charismatic. He's very smart. Every time you hear him talk, you're almost convinced if he talks for long enough. He's one of those guys.

And when Netanyahu wanted to make sure that he had a coalition that wouldn't fall after having so many elections where he wasn't able to get the decisive majority that he wanted, Netanyahu united him with what at the time was a bigger national religious party, or the more moderate national religious party. And he allowed Ben-Givir to swallow the entire national religious bloc, which is now shaped in his image. since then he swallowed that more moderate party. In fact, that moderate party is no longer moderate. They're also run by another nut job. Betzal Smotrich, but they used to be more moderate. And now Ben Gavir, who has this basically terrorist, mis-sionic, fascist worldview,

is the premier leader of the national religious bloc, which is a very important block in Israeli society, with big numbers, with above-average service. in the IDF, which links to the previous question as well. And now he has a veto over government policy. He doesn't necessarily determine it, but when he decides that Israel is not going to do something, they don't. Because he can bring the entire government down, and they know that.

So, yeah, so we have a very dangerous person who has a veto over Israeli. policy and some people are saying, I don't necessarily agree, that he might be prime minister one day because he's that kind of malignant, dangerous force. So as you can tell, I'm not a fan. And a lot of people aren't friends. Yeah. Yeah, thank you for explaining that too. He's, yeah, he's incredibly scary and what he looks friendly. I'm just talking about his physical appearance. He looks kind of nice. Yeah, cuddly teddy bear type. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. So how about how about our friend Smotrish? Because I tell you just a very short, funny anecdote of he was coming to the United States,

which maybe he shouldn't be allowed into the United States. But anyway, he was coming to the United States. And he was being offered a tour of a particular museum in Washington, D.C. And a person was asked to give such a tour. and I pointed out to such a person that do you really want to have a photograph with Smotrich to follow you around?

I wouldn't. I wouldn't. Poison. Anyway, but so that's my little anecdote. You gave your friend very good advice, let me just say. Betel L. Smotrich is much less of an important entity in Israeli society and politics. He's a populist.

he also has a background of terrorism he was about to be indicted for trying to bomb a bridge over an Israeli highway in protest but the information that the indictment was based on

was classified and the Shabak asked to withdraw the information therefore making the indictment collapse So that's why he didn't end up in prison. There's pictures of him in trial with his handcuffs on and so on and so forth. So we're talking about a very similar kind of guy. But he didn't have the same kind of importance. He is not as smart.

No question about it. He's much more sectorial than Ben-Givir. He's very focused on the national religious while Ben-Gvierer is trying to appeal to everyone. Like I just saw Smotritch give a speech. about all the national religious people who died in the war. He was crying or he was pretending to cry. I think he was actually crying, honestly. And he never seemed that way by anyone else.

It was so obvious that he doesn't care about anyone else in society. And it struck me that Ben Gavir would never do that. Ben Gavir is too smart. Ben Gavir would, frames it as Jews against Arabs. He doesn't seem, he's not framing as national religious against the rest of the country. And Smaltrich also makes really dumb mistakes like he decided he doesn't want to pay for F-16s that Israel needed in the middle of the war, which was an absolute disaster for him as far as PR is concerned. So he's not as good a political operator. But having said that, he's been doing a very good job from what I've been seeing of dismantling the IDF's traditional military rule in the West Bank and replacing it.

with his own rule, which is in the name of the settlers, he demanded that he be minister in the defense ministry, not the defense minister, but the minister in defense ministry in charge of civil construction and infrastructure. And that means that he's been tearing down Palestinian homes and building settlements and taking away military courts and so forth that, tried to provide some very partial justice to Palestinians. And he's also been working very hard to undermine the Palestinian Authority in terms of not giving them money and trying to decouple their banks from Israeli banks, which summer warning is going to lead to a collapse of the Palestinian authority, banks in the West Bank and a financial disaster, end of the PA. And it's very clear that

what he's trying to do is make it, again, a direct Israeli occupation of the West Bank. And he's been very successful in that. So while he's not going to PR, not good to politics, he's actually been quite effective in causing what might be a massive disaster for Israel, where Israel ends up with the PA collapsing and having to move in. So these are two very dangerous individuals in two very different ways. Smotich is probably a flash in the pan. His party is probably not going to make it into the Knesset. Ben-Girr is going to take all of his mandates, and he's probably going to disappear. how much damage will do to do in the country before then, I don't know.

Benvir is here to stay. You're not cheering me up. I'm not feeling very cheerful. Yeah, but that's not helping. We're not that kind of show, Jason. I know. Everything's going to be great. You live in America.

It's all right. There's no problems here. Of course, right? Well, can I just say everybody should read a new column out last night about how our good friend Donald Trump is bad for the Jews. Anyway, it's available on Newsweek.com for purchase. No purchase. Actually, it's for free.

I have another deeply ignorant question. Is there any reason to believe that Israel would do anything in Gaza that resembles what it's doing in the West Bank, are you resettling it? Yeah. There's a lot of reason to be concerned. That is not, so let's start with the caveat. That is not Netanyahu's policy. Netanyahu doesn't want that.

He's never been a settler fanatic when he was, my minister, the first time in 9699, they were very disappointed with how little settlement activity came under him. And he's much more interested in preventing a Palestinian state in a pragmatic way than he is in settlements. And he has the entire world on his back. He knows that that will needlessly antagonize without any gain for Israel whatsoever. But now he doesn't want him. Having said that, we know that there are elements in the government that have a veto over him. they haven't chosen to use that veto over settlements because they know that Nathaniel will actually fight back on it.

Would he win? Probably not. But Netanyl would actually fight back on it. So it would be a waste of resources and time for everyone. So that's the caveat. The other caveats, and most Israelis don't support it. Not that that stopped this government from doing a lot of things that most Israelis don't support, but most Israelis don't support it. Those are the caveats.

here's why I'm not I'm still worried one regarding Israeli public opinion the last poll I saw on Channel 12 which is considered to be the less wing channel or whatever 49% were against 39% were four that did not encourage me that's not the kind of majority I want to see

against settlements in Gaza second is the people who support that kind of thing their demographic imprint is expanding. They're having more children. And people who are against that, people like me,

I'm in L.A. and I'm not very special. You know, Ashkenazi people who are more left-leaning are leaving the country and having less children. So if Israel remains in Gaza for a very long time, how long before the settlement start? And Israel has a very bad record of this.

In the 1970s, the labor government, which was very much against what they called wildcat settlements, tried to stop Israeli settlers from settling in Samaria. It was very important to them. It went against their policy, the Alon plan, which

they believed in very deeply. And eventually they caved. They caved because the settlers kept going over and over and over again. And they looked like they were just evacuating Jews in the middle of a war, in the middle of a crisis isn't popular. And so we're seeing the same thing now.

Settlers keep trying to go into Gaza, which is insane right now during the war. When the war ends and there's areas that are maybe held by the IDF that are more safe, it's going to happen more. And at some point, the will to resist of the government, which is already very low, is going to cease. And so you hadn't, the Israeli leaders are all pretty weak. And I include Netanyahu in that. They cave to pressures. Whether we're talking about Benny Gans, whether we're talking about Yeh or Lapid,

whether we're talking about Netanyahu, Naftali Bennett. I don't see anything as being like, I will never allow settlements in Gaza. If there's enough pressure, they will. So it almost feels like it's a matter of time. The one thing that would stop it is if Israel wasn't control in Gaza. which is what I hope that happens. But, yeah, Israel has a record of settling wherever it wants. There's people who want to settle in Lebanon now, too.

That probably won't happen, but yeah. I just, what I love about the Jewish people is if we are not being destroyed from without, we'll take care of it ourselves. Yeah, absolutely. Settlements in Lebanon. I believe you, I had not heard it before. I'm glad to hear it now. That's fantastic.

We had a government minister who said that we need to change the diaspora minister. He's very good at relations with diaspora. He said that we need to change the border with Lebanon and annex parts of it. And yeah, that's a government minister. He's not alone.

That'll work out. And he's, oh, one thing I need to mention, I didn't mention, he easily could. And they had a conference four settlements in Gaza and everyone was saying, oh, it's just Ben-Gir, it's just

fringe, whatever. It was, it was run by the Likud. The conference was run by the Likud. That's Netanyahu's party. Tanyao didn't like that. No one asked him. He didn't approve it. But it was run by the Likud and at least at least a third of the members of the Likud are willing to go on record and support. And hardly any are willing to go on record as a guest. Like I think Gallant Netanyahu may be a couple more. And that gives you some idea of what kind of resistance we'd have to that in the liquid. If you are Lebanese or a Ghazan or anyone else in the area and you see that kind of shit, I don't know how you don't, I don't know how you don't read it as intolerable.

You know, Israel has long had this, as long has a, long had a policy that makes sense, living next to a hostile neighbor is intolerable. And it will do whatever it needs to to make sure that it's not living next to a hostile neighbor. I don't see how if you're not, if you're Lebanese or Ghazan, you don't realize that you're living next to a hostile neighbor, right? If they're going to level your cities and then either come in or talk about coming in and resettling them.

I know it's not strictly colonialism because it doesn't come from the Champagne region of France, but come on. No, I mean, you could make a much better case. that settlements from Israel in Gaza or the West Bank are colonialism. It's a much better case of that than you could about the initial Zionist settlements in the late 19th, 20th. Because some of the differences I mentioned aren't there anymore, right? One, you do have a imperial homeland that's Israel proper that is taking over areas that are not part of the country, which is a pretty small empire,

but that doesn't mean it's not an empire. And then you also have the question of the land. You're no longer having land that's being bought fair and square from people. You have a system, a very sophisticated system, that decides that private land or land that is an ownership that's not completely official, all of a sudden belongs to the government. And now the government can do whatever it wants.

So the official policy of Israel is never to express, Appropriate lands from Palestinians, but it has sophisticated ways of doing that without doing that in the sense of this is not really your land. This is government land. And it's easy to do that because I won't go into the technicality, but because of Ottoman law and British mandate law, governments have a lot of authority to determine what's their property and what's not, and private citizens don't. And Israeli government never changed that for obvious reasons. It's great power to have as a government. And they've also interpreted it. it more widely nowadays than the Ottomans even did. So they will take your land if they can. And they often can. And that's why it's much easier to make the case of colonialism. So everything I said about early Zionism, it doesn't really apply to the West Bank or Gaza. I'm a big opponent of the West Bank and Gaza settlements because there's no defense for it, morally, legally, nothing.

And it's also one of the reasons that Israel is fighting now. There's no question that the growth of the settlements in the early 1980s is one of the main reasons we had the first Intifada. Growth of the settlements in the 1990s is one of the main reasons we had the second Intifada. And what's going on right now with the settlements in the West Bank is completely destabilizing the entire area. I think you have to take settlements into account. We're talking about this conflict, something that Israeli supporters absolutely hate talking about. It's like the Israeli supporters try to ignore or try to justify. But that's why Israel has a lot of blame in what's going on right now.

Not necessarily the most blame. You can always fall back on the fact that there was a conflict before 1967 and all that. but the fact that it's gotten so bad with the Palestinians so many times, that's definitely linked to the settlements. Jason, you got anything else? No, I'm exhausted.

Okay. I'm going to do a little, I'm going to do a little reader email. Okay. All right. Just a message I got that I wanted to read on the air about the last, it was after the last Israel episode. We had Yakov cats on.

Where is he from again, Jason? He lives in Jerusalem. No, no, what paper does it? Oh, oh, oh. Well, he actually is the former editor of the Jerusalem Post, but currently he's independent and writes books. Gotcha. We had him on right after the ground invasion of Lebanon started.

And I asked him if he felt or Israel should feel any responsibility for the deaths of Palestinian civilians. He said no. I don't remember if I said anything in response. But I got a message from a listener. I just wanted to read when they asked to remain. anonymous. When Yakov Katz said he feels no responsibility for the death of Palestinian civilians, I guess I'm left wondering who does have responsibility and when are they going to exercise it?

And who else does Israel expect that to be? And why should it be anyone else? I would say, you know, Hamas has its share of responsibility there as well. But so does Israel. I don't know if anyone wants to respond to that at all, but I just, I wanted to, I wanted to read that comment from a listener. Yeah, I, I do have something to say about that. Okay. I think we need to, to separate two concepts conceptually that are very important in this. One is blame and the other is responsibility. When it comes to blame, I mean, the primary blame has to go on Hamas because they started this conflict. they started this conflict in a way that not only had blatant disregard

for the civilians, but also place the civilian ends directly in danger intentionally. Therefore, the blame for this is on Hamas. What happened to civilians in Gaza is very predictable. If you know the Middle East and Sinwar knows the Middle East, knew the Middle East,

now he doesn't know much, you knew this was going to happen. But responsibility is a legal term. It's not a moral term. I mean, it can be a moral term, but it has important legal ramifications.

In war, these belligerents are responsible for protecting the civilians on the other side. International humanitarian law is an entire body of law dedicated to how you

you practice that responsibility while waging war. The state of Israel and the IDF recognize international humanitarian law. They have people in the IDF whose job it is to put it into practice, and they do that job every day. The people who do this are very busy. Whenever there's a strike or an operation, they weigh in. They tell you what to do. The IDF usually listens right away to what.

to what they do. So the fact that Israel is responsible for the lives of civilians in Gaza isn't even in question. The Israeli structure of the IDF takes that into account. They're fully aware of that. International law has no question about that. By the way, that works both ways. So someone comes in, oh, but what about Gaza? What about Hamas shooting at civilians? Yeah, Hamas is responsible for protecting Israeli civilians. They're belligerents. They are not allowed to shoot blindly at civilians. Hamas are without a doubt violating international law by targeting civilians, and they're

completely responsible for what they do. Israel, regardless of who started the conflict, regardless of whether they're in the right or not, have a duty to protect civilians. It's just not in doubt. You have two branches of international law. You have Yus Adbelum, and you have Yus Inbelo, and Yus Adbelum is who is to blame for starting a war, and Yus Inbelo is, who is to blame for starting a war, and Yus Inbelo is What are your responsibilities to protect civilians while in a war? The two branches of law are divorced intentionally so that no one can say, oh, they started the war, I can slaughter everyone. They're intentionally divorced so that no one could do that.

Because everyone would do that if you could do that, right? Everyone blames the other side for starting the war. No one's ever said, I'm in a war and it's my fault. No, that's not how it works. So that's why they're divorced. And so Israel has 100% legal responsibility for, the gauzen civilians, even when they're used as human shields. That doesn't absolve Israel of even one iota of its responsibility.

That's not how it works. It still has to calculate proportionality, and it still has to calculate the military function of the attack and distinction and all those international humanitarian law principles. So what Katz is saying is completely wrong on a factual and legal level. Well, there you go. Thank you again for that nuanced and eloquent answer. Really appreciate it. This has been an incredible episode.

Or even conversation. Yeah. Forget about that. A conversation about conflict on an angry planet? But no one's angry here. I'm disappointed. I saw angry planet. I was expecting a bunch of people yelling at each other.

Yeah. Actually, this is sort of interesting that we could actually have this whole conversation about what we just talked about. And nobody got angry. Yeah, no one yelled at anyone. We should solve this. We should be in charge of this. No. We could take it.

of this. This is great. We're not going to yell. I don't want that responsibility. We all seem to kind of agree. Yeah, I don't want the responsibility. I'll do it. I'd be best served as the power behind the throne, you know? And yeah, I'd be happy to be the power behind their throne. You seem very sensible. Do you have anything to plug?

Yeah, yeah. I have my podcast to plug. This is the Land of Israel podcast, where I'm doing the history of Israel from the formation of the planet Earth up until modern day, I hope. I'm somewhere in the middle of the Bible now. That's awesome. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think it's awesome. Yeah, it's been pretty popular, but take a listen. And I do my, just my YouTube explainers, kind of like what I was doing here today, Israel

explained on YouTube. I also have a book coming out next year called Can We Settle This? about U.S. policy towards Israeli settlements. And that's where some of the things that I was talking about here come from. It's going to be pretty controversial, I assume. That's coming out next year on political animal books. And yeah, that's all I have to plug right now. Well, thank you so much to coming on to Angry Planet and walking us through this.

Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, we'll talk again, I'm sure.