Angry Planet - An Insider's Critique of Israel

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

The war between Israel and Hamas, which began on Oct. 7 when terrorists overran the Gaza frontier and killed more than 1,200 Israelis, is now more than six months old. More than 100 Israeli hostages are still being held in Gaza.Israel, in return, has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, with two thirds of that number likely to be civilians, including women and children. There are negotiations for a ceasefire going on—at least sporadically—but Dan Perry, former Associated Press bureau chief in the region, says that Hamas isn't playing by the same rules as Israel, or anyone else.Hamas, according to Perry, welcomes the deaths of Palestinian civilians. Anyone and everyone can be a martyr for Hamas's cause, which is not peace, but a complete destruction of Israel. Whoever must be sacrificed in the process, well, other people's live are a price Hamas is willing to pay.Angry Planet has a Substack! Join to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.Support 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. Let's begin at the beginning. Hello, Dan Perry, joining us from the Middle East. Live from Israel, it's Dan Perry. How are you? All right. As well as can be expected, one of the circumstances. So what are the circumstances? Tell us about it. I'm always reminded of, uh, that wonderful film, this is Spinal Tap where one of them, David St. Hubbins or something, has asked how he is, you know, holding up so well. And he says, I probably would be more upset if I wasn't under such heavy sedation. I think applies to most people he talked to in Israel and probably Palestine. So, can you tell everybody, Dan, a little bit about who you are and why it is that we might be talking with you today? Well, you're talking today because of the global, obsession with everything that happens in Israel. I was a long time foreign correspondent. I worked for the Associated Press for over a quarter of century.

And in the context of that career, that took me to Israel more than one time. I was a reporter here in the mid-90s. I was a bureau chief for Israel and the Palestinian territories during the second in the early 2000s. then I was the AP Regional Editor for Europe and Africa based out of London, but then back in the Middle East based out of Cairo

running the entire Middle East during the Arab Spring, so-called Arab Spring and the insanities that followed. And when I left AP, four or five years ago, I pitched up in Israel, which is a place that I have strong family ties to

and spent some years here as a child as well. So here I am. and all hell sort of broke loose to a degree that was previously unknown even here in October 7. Is this different, this Israel-Humas war, this particular iteration of what's going on? It certainly feels different to me, and I don't know if that's just the way that media is reacting and people are talking about it. is it different from, you know, on the ground in Israel? Well, you know, so much about the world is different now because of technology. Obviously, nothing stands still.

Some things about the Middle East are quite consistent. Like the fact that Jews and Arabs have their own separate narratives and they don't agree on basic facts. And it seems one can despair of getting them to just sort of meet halfway along a line that is the same line. that's why you meet halfway when you're both on the same line when you're on parallel lines there's nowhere to meet and that's sort of that's been the case for over a century basically um look it's different for long reasons first of all it's Israel's longest war since war of independence uh secondly it's complete and total asymmetric warfare uh it's not armies clashing or even a major militia like hisbola uh fighting israel Lebanon this is just this truly bizarre thing that comes out of some science fiction where Hamas is built more tunnels under Gaza than there are in the London underground. It's like 300 miles of tunnels. To do this,

they stole about a billion dollars worth of age from their people. And they're barring their own people from entering these tunnels and that's where they're hiding out. And Israel has, one way of looking at what happened is that Israel walked into this traffic. that was set for them. By going in there, under circumstances that made it very difficult to achieve their stated aims, even though the world

sort of, by large, the world supported the aims. That was never going to, sort of, that credit line was never infinite. The world supported the aims of removing Hamas, sure, and returning the hostages, but not at all cost. If the cost is killing

a billion people, then no, you don't support it. So, basically, The cost emerged as being too high for Israel to retain its support. And so you have here this oddly dissonant situation psychologically for the Israelis where they can't believe that they're the bad guy after what happened to them on October 7th. On the other hand, they have their own version of myopia. If you just caused because of Hamas's fault and the war that Hamas started and all of that, nonetheless, if you pulled a trigger on bombs that killed tens of thousands of people,

then no matter what preceded in this day and age, you're not going to come out smelling like a rose. And that is doubly so when you're a prime minister as a global miscreant of the highest order that is not trusted by anyone that, including the population of Israel, where three quarters of the people want him gone. And he's regularly accused of just jackhammering, gaslighting and no end

to scheming and just graspingly clinging to power at almost all cost to a point where there is not a shimmer of a shred of a glimmer of dignity involved it's just horrific

so when you're prosecuting a war like Israel is prosecuting you want a government that has some global and local legitimacy and it doesn't that either. So I don't think any one of these points necessarily is itself unique

in world history except the tunnels maybe. But the combination of it all makes it a rare thing for Israel. Certainly in the global media and political context, where

everything you do is under a microscope, everything is visible. It's a very small, physically small territory, so it's easy to get to everywhere. it's it's just packed with cameras and with uh with uh satellite photos and it just seems that the whole world has nothing else to do other than put all this under a magnifying lens and and so it's quite disorient for the Israelis meanwhile for the Palestinian i mean what can you say about what's going on in Gaza they got what they deserved was for supporting Hamas could you say

that really does anyone deserve this consider the down Damage in Gaza. It's Hamas's numbers, but Israel doesn't deny it. Not really. That somewhere in a neighborhood of 20,000 non-combatants were killed. Hundreds of thousands, maybe over a million were displaced. Most of them, many of them probably most. They lost their homes for all times in purpose.

What do you do with this? Moreover, there is this psychological gap between Israelis. and a Palestinians, say what you will about the Israelis. They have maniacal transnationalists and religious fanatics and all kinds of unsympathetic characters floating around. But they do live, they do inhabit the same universe as most of the people fall in the story in West, which is why the government's not popular. Like, when you screw up this badly, you're going to be not popular. meanwhile the Palestinians

they just don't they don't they live in a whole different planet where martyrdom is somehow welcomed by enough people that Hamas has not become completely rejected it's not completely rejected

it hasn't even lost popularity they currently are way more popular than a Palestinian authority in the West Bank where they haven't suffered with the guises of suffering. But you look at polls that are credible, and they show that over 90% don't think October 7th happened.

So, something about the current political psychology among the Palestinians, and it probably applies to a certain degree in a wider Islamic world, a wider Arab world,

is really at a complete disconnect with how a westerner would look at this, which makes it difficult to to come up with a modus vivendi or even negotiate. What is Israel negotiating with in its efforts to bring back the hostages? Theoretically, they can threaten to do more damage still. But that doesn't move the needle with Hamas. They welcome the damage.

They truly don't care. I mean, I know I'll be accused of all kinds of horrible isms for saying this. But it's just obviously true that they don't care. And they continue to say that they'll do more and more October 7s. So, I mean, you can discuss what Israel's options. It's the reality I just described, which can probably be described more coherently on paper than the person, is extremely disorienting and they seem to not have good options and not know where to go. It's really amazing. First of all, I want to recommend to people to read your latest column, Dan, in Newsweek, which is about how the media has dealt with Hamas and some of the misunderstandings and the both sidesism that really there are not two equal sides.

But I also want to just talk briefly about, I mean, the Israelis, when they killed the workers for World Central Kitchen, I was wondering if Netanyahu was not. next going to take a bunch of puppies out and start executing them one by one in front of the cameras. I mean, haven't, it feels like Israel has gone out of its way to be unpopular with the rest of the world. Look, I mean, executing puppies would not be one step beyond what happened to the WCCK because they weren't executed. That was a mistake. Now, you could argue, you could argue that, you know, you make, like, you make your own luck, you make your own mistakes, and perhaps it shows a light trigger finger. Perhaps it shows carelessness.

Perhaps it shows a kind of, a kind of general indifference. And those would be great things to contemplate, because, yeah, you do get that impression, sure. Like when they, when I reacted to it by taking certain, by making certain improvements and how they coordinate with the aid workers going in and others of that ilk well you got to ask yourself why did they wait until this happened

to make the improvements if it didn't think like three years to like divine improvements it took about three minutes so why wait for this to happen similarly after Biden read the Ryan Act on humanitarian aid

well within minutes I was hearing on the radio all these people involved with security for the trucks you have to do security in the truck saying yeah we can triple the speed. Well,

Dufus, why didn't you triple the speed before? And the answer is because Israel's playing games in humanitarian aid, hoping to put pressure on Hamas. But again, putting aside

that that's immoral, it's also impractical because Hamas will not react to that pressure the way a Western player might. They're not going to be bummed. They're going to be happy that you are causing yourself such cataclysmic reputational damage.

Do they care about humanitarian crisis? They do not. And this is a test really for the listeners. They can hear me say, and say, oh, my God, damn, Perry. What a partisan, you know, what a racist. He thinks they don't care. Well, okay, anyone who reacts that way doesn't know. And this is what my article was about today.

Newsweek. The media hasn't really told the story, not really. The media has not said, guys, people, readers, Hamas doesn't care. They're happy for the crisis. They're happy for any famine. They're happy for disease. They're happy for the homelessness. They're happy for the displaced, the catastrophe displaced people, and they're happy for the deaths. What do you do when you're dealing with something so monstrous and vile? Is a really difficult question for the media to grapple on. Now, one of the leaders' sons

have been reported killed in the last day or so. And he has three sons, three of as many sons, and some grandkids as well. Do you think that registers in the same way for him? I mean, does the rules of martyrdom do they still apply when it's your own

blood? So look, that's a great question. I think the answer varies from from Hamas leader to Hamas leader Some of them really did have a death Which he didn't care Like Sheikh Khan Yassin, for sure

Who founded the movement Others seemed to care Others seem to care Like when Ismail Haneda This big hero Who reacted with equanimity To the deaths of his three sons Yeah, a chillingly indifference

To what happened It's not that indifferent That he's not hiding out in Doha in Qatar. And the same thing with Khaled Masha. All these big heroes are hiding out in Qatar, one of them in Lebanon, and a whole bunch of them in Turkey.

You know, consigning from a comfortable distance, murdered them upon their poor people. So some care, some don't care. With Hania, it's hard to say, because the way he reacted suggests he doesn't, but I betcha he doesn't. You can kind of tell it by the quality of their of their wristwashes and the cut of their suit.

If they're wearing enough tens of thousands of dollars on their person, then perhaps their vanity has reached a point where it equals the corruption, and they might want to continue enjoying the good line. But not all... Zeroing in on your article. Actually, first another question. You said that a large portion of Palestinians do not buy... believe that October 7th happened?

93% according to the poll by Khalilu Shikon. Is Hamas not using it as like a propaganda victory? Are they not touting that October 7th happened? Are they not saying, look what we did to Israel? So when I say October 7th didn't happen,

they don't mean nothing happened. They mean the atrocities didn't happen. That's what they mean. And Hamas indeed denies that they committed atrocity. They say, well, if there was any rape, if there was any massacring of entire families, if there was any torching of houses upon the babes as they slept in their bed,

well, that was the second wave of, you know, derelicts who followed. But the original wave of, you know, highly moral and completely military invaders, that was a different story. And that is almost universally believed. It's completely false. And look, I lived in the Arab world for some time. There's conspiracy theories have currency there. They just do.

And the reason is because the media in the Arab world for a long time was incredible. The leaders were incredible by design. And so people sought alternative sources of information. That's how I end up with conspiracy theory. A very popular conspiracy theories among Palestinians these days. that Israel wanted October 7th. And that one, I got to say, as conspiracy theories go, it's a little easier to see where it comes from than in most cases

because the failure of Israel on October 7th, on an intelligence level, on a tactical level, on a strategic level, on every conceivable level was so blood-curdling, was so mind-bending that it begs for, better explain. I mean, Israel's not that big. You know, you had helicopter bases within 40 miles of where it was happening

and families cowering, you know, in their safe rooms and their homes while terrorists roaming around outside, like, you know, with machetes and with machine guns and blow torches for 10 hours, for 13

hours. It was it defies comprehension. and by the way I mean he's he looked at to know I mean I have to say to think what would have happened what he

the protests he would have led against a different government that had failed this miserably it's almost comical I mean the streets would be on fire he would right he's saying you must resign

we can't prosecute a war with people who were proven to be this competent. He said similar things in the past. And of course now he's clinging to power with the argument that, well, it's a war. It's going to be a long war, and he can't do politics during a war.

And it really is kind of an IQ test. If you're under 100, you might buy this level of bullshit. Another thing you said that struck me is that there's been a failure in media to portray the real horror of Hamas.

Is there any part of that that is how horrible the primary sources are? And I mean, like, to watch, to see. So I know that they had all this footage from dead Hamas fighters after October 7th ride that was cut together. I believe it was like a two-hour movie that they had kind of put together and they took. and they did show to journalists, journalists then wrote about it. Is there any world where

that stuff has more of an impact if people are able to see it? Do you think that that could get the message across about how horrifying that day was? Look, a lot of this is on social media if people want to see it. That's part of the issue that not many people saw.

There's one particular film that the idea of spokesmen put together. It's harrowing and they tried to be all sensitive about who they show it to. But journalists were invited to see it. And yeah, it didn't have the impact that you would think. And you could say, well, it's because the footage is so harrowing that you can't be. It's not usable or something. I don't think that's really it, frankly. I think we're looking more at a cheapening of everything.

everything. It's the old thing where the defense of a liar is everyone lies. The defense of the corrupt is everyone's corrupt. The defender of his own

atrocities, the defense of one's own atrocities is, well, look, everyone commits atrocities. And no matter what you do with that footage, they're going to show you the horrible images from Gaza. And it's all overwhelming. and the numbers in Gaza are much bigger. And I think that ship is sail.

So you're left with, you don't have the numbers, because the numbers on the Palestinian victim side are bigger. You have some notion of which is more evil? Well, I would argue, yeah. It's more evil to have one-on-one fighting with machetes where you're hacking apart babies than, well, then what they call collateral damage and bombardments of urban warfare.

You could say that, but you know what? Most people don't feel that. If your babies are blown up by a bomb that was dropped on your house because the Hamasnik is 100 yards away, that doesn't feel to you less evil than what was done on October 7. It's just not an argument you can win.

And at the end of the day, this has exposed that there is a lot of opposition to Israel in principle. and there's a lot of anti-Semitism on principle. Now, I knew both existed. Just like I knew that the kind of people that, you know, you have an American and a MAGA crowd, I always knew they existed. I kind of figured it was 15%. Well, Trump is exposed that it's actually 33%.

And therefore, two-thirds of the Republicans and therefore MAGA will control the Republicans. That was a surprise, purely on a question of the scale. Same thing here. I knew there were people who hate Israel by definition, but I didn't know it was 50% of the use in America and probably 20% of people

in the West. I thought it was about half of that in both cases. So that genie is tough to put back in a bottle ring. And it doesn't help that Israel's government really does do indefensible things. If you ask me, not in Gaza, but in the West Bank.

The settlements, the unequal treatment of Palestinian, and Jews in the West Bank, I would never defend me. I can defend this war, but I can't defend them. I think we should get back to that in a sec. I just wanted to circle back to the point about who Hamas are. I was wondering if part of where we are now is we've been desensitized by Islamic State.

I mean, even Fowda, which is a fantastic Israeli, I mean, whether you enjoy watching Israelis win every time against Palestinians, that's up to you. But it's a fun show to watch, at least from my point of view. Long story short, even there, Hamas was treated a little bit lightly, especially compared to the new evil was Islamic State. even in that series. It was kind of interesting. I just wonder if, like, we, you know, Islamic State made everybody else look good? Look, yeah, they did, because Islamic State has no purpose that anyone who doesn't just hate the West could align themselves with. Whereas with Hamas, there's an element of ISIS for sure.

But there's also an element of Palestinian of emancipation, of, of, emancipation, of, of fighting the good fight against the Zionists. There's something you can wrap your head around. You can say, okay, I kind of get it. Like, the Israelis took a lot of land, they want the land back, and it can lead to confusion, because that's not really what Hamas wants. But they're pure evil.

ISIS was 100% pure evil, and it's considered unintellectual and unsophisticated and journalistic. To use that word, I say the hell with that, ISIS was evil. Hamas is evil, is diluted by the reasonable aspect of what they're seeking to achieve or seeming to be seeking to achieve. But I say even here that there is a fundamental misunderstanding. I'm pretty sure if you ask most people in the West, well, does Hamas kind of want to force Israel into a two-state solution?

So the Palestinians can finally have a state? Pretty sure most people who know anything, like who know there's a Palestine. I'm sure they would mostly say yeah. Whereas in fact, Hamas has been trying for 30-some. to prevent a two-state solution. Every time there has been any kind of hope that negotiations would make progress, they would launch suicide bombings on Israeli buses and campaigns and waves of terrorist attacks on Israelis, not to get them to, not as a negotiating tactic to get a bit more, in order to make the Israelis

be angry at the Palestinians and pull out of peace talks and elect right-wing governments that would prevent the two-state solution. And that succeeded. and why does Hamas not want a two-state solution? Because they're maximalists. Under their maximalist version of Islam, the very idea of any non-Muslim presence in the Holy Land is a complete abomination, and they don't want to share it. They don't want a partition or divide it.

They consider the PLO's willingness to at least pretend they're willing to do all that, to be a complete betrayal in the sell-out, and they would rather have a war to the fin. In that regard, they're a little bit of mirror image of the Israeli far right, which doesn't go around blowing up busts. Now, you could say they do worse, but they're not like terrorists in the same way. But the Israeli far right also refuses to partition the land, and in both cases, they're thinking each side, the Israeli far right and Hamas jihadi terrorists are thinking that in this one state reality, that's currently half Jews have earned, if you don't partition it. they're going to somehow prevail.

Hamas thinks the Jews will magically go back to their former lands, which is nonsensical because there is no such thing. And, well, Jewish far right kind of believes that they can be forever subjugated and will ultimately be compelled to lead. And you also have the messianic crowd on the Jewish side, just like you do on the palace. I mean, there's extreme religious views. Yeah, yeah. On both sides, I think people don't really understand just how wacky some of the Israeli right wing is. They're very wacky. I don't know. Tell me how wacky they are.

Well, I mean, look, the notion that Palestinians might be compelled to leave is held both by the secular far, far, far right, but mainly by the religious far right. And they just are all in on a narrative that God promised the entire land to the Jews. some of the more radical ones want to destroy the mosque of Al-Axa and the dome of the rock on the Haramashirif in order to rebuild the ancient Jewish temple and when you submit to them

that this could bring about a holy war with a billion Muslims, they're literally like Hamas and they say bring it up you know, God's on our side and you ask you ask these imbeciles like you know where was God the Holocaust? You know, I mean are you sure? Are you sure? He's always going to

be there for you. And you know, you're never going to win that argument. This is who they are. And they're religious fanatics. Interestingly, Israel's main problem with religious fanaticism has to do with the Haridim, the ultra-Orthodox who are incredibly, fervently and stupendously devout. From dawn to dusk, they run around being devout. And they're part of the right-wing block.

But if you talk to them, you kind of sense that they're not really down with all this stuff we're talking about here. I mean, originally they didn't support Zionism because they thought that hastened the coming of the Messiah and that was an abomination, all this religious stuff. But basically, they don't like the conflict with the Arabs and I don't want to fight in the wars that they caused by being part of the right wing. So there's more than, there's a whole lot of shades of the Jewish religious fanaticists. And on the West Bank, one of the things that really has struck me, and I think is undercovered, maybe very much undercovered, are the right-wing settlers and some of the actions they've been taking unsanctioned, not part of the military, but against people who are living in the West Bank.

Yeah. I mean, that's really not very well reported at all, and it just seems like it's about, it should be as inflammatory as anything. It's hard to believe that you would do such a thing in this time. Look, I mean, when Hamas is October 7th and Israel, Israel's response kills 20,000 innocent people. I'm not sure that what the settlers in West Bank is equally as bad as all that. But, but it's bad.

I mean, they terrorize the Palestinians. There's an extreme element of these settlers that the Israeli justice system kind of doesn't look the other way, but they seem weirdly incompetent about stopping it. And, you know, they destroy their olive trees and they kill their sheep and the on on a relatively small number of occasions, they actually committed murder. And they, you know,

there was a famous incident in Hawara about a year ago, a radical village in West Bank, from where a terrorist act originated. So they, well, they, they rampaged around Hawara

with a military looking the other way and killed one man and destroyed all his property. And they're horrific. That is why Biden, I believe, named and shamed four of them as persona non grata, and that was a step to Israel that we're going to start distinguishing between the settlers and other Israelis. Look, on October 7th, one of the reasons for the otherwise inexplicable failure was that the military had had a bigger presence on the border with the Gossom,

and much of it decamped in days preceding to the West Bank. specifically to secure a bunch of radical settlers and parliamentarians in particular one miscreant named Svisu Kote who was planning to do a provocation and they feared

a conflagration of West Bank and so many, many soldiers relocated there for that and with the results being what we know it was. Is it undercovered? I guess it's undercovered. But then I can argue that all of Israel, Palestine, is overcome, frankly.

I mean, 100,000 people died in warfare in 20, 23, not in Ukraine or an Israel now. Does anyone do any listeners, viewers, readers of Newsweek even know where? I mean, it's nuts. Someone has been covering conflict for a while. I know that if you put Africa in a headline, no one will read the article, unfortunately. No one, you mean no one in the West? No one in the West. that's fair. Yes.

The statistics that our bosses have always measured. Look, I used to be the regional chief of AP for Europe and Africa. And this was about 20 years ago. Just about around a time when AP was starting to have its

own, owned and operator properties, and we had our own data, and we could see who clicks on what, how long they stay on stories, how far down they read, et cetera. And it became very clear that it was a Tough sell. Stories in Africa.

Maybe because it's a little bit Dogbites Man, that horrible stuff happens in Africa. People aren't surprised. And surprise is one definition of news, that's the counterintuitive, the unexpected. Is it racism? Undoubtedly so, to a degree. But are you saying people are obsessed with

Israel because they're phylo-Semitic and they love the Jews? I think some people are. I mean, I don't think that's all of it. And I think they're also obsessed with it because they're anti-Semitic, right? It's both things. I mean, I would say that one of the things we try to do on the show and one of the things that I've appreciated about this conversation is that often more than one thing is happening

at the same time in parallel. All right, angry planet listeners, want to pause there for a break? We'll be right back after this. All right, Angry Planet listeners, welcome back. Can we back up just a little bit? Can you explain to me, again, just because I don't know, what is the drive of a West Bank settler? Like, what is the ideology there? Why are they, what is the push into this territory?

Well, there's a number of different kinds of settlements. You should know there's 500,000 settlers of which 80% are within a few miles of the old border. So you can incorporate them into Israel with minor border fixes. And it's, unless you believe the 1949 armistice lines, which were a little bit random, are somehow sacrosanct, which I don't and which I think they're not, then it's no big deal, those so. Southerst deep inside the terrorism are of a different order of problem, because they're located where they are in order to make a partition impossible. and what would cause them to risk their lives and risk their children's lives and nor do make partition impossible. Why are they so obsessed with having the West Banker part of Israel?

It comes down to two or three things. One, the religious ones, they really believe in the divine right of Jews to divine promise by God to Moses, that this land, Canaan, shall be for the Jews and God promised it and most of the place names from the Bible that are identifiable are in fact in West Bank

and not in nearby Israel problem that's just a fact like Hebron big big deal so there's a religious motivation the other is practical strategic West Bank cuts pretty deep into Israel

and it makes Israel at its narrowest point be 12 miles wide do you want to be 12 miles wide when on that hill right overlooking your cities could be ISIS I mean it's one thing if it's Denmark but if it's ISIS so that's not a small thing it's not crazy for Israel to fear pulling out of the West Bank but that justifies military occupation and all kinds of security considerations and methodologies it doesn't justify the colonization and I always put it this way.

Most people in Israel want three things. They want it to be a Jewish state somehow, which means the majority of some things Jewish. They want it to be the whole country, meaning including West Bank, plus Gaza, but including West Bank, because it's kind of too small without it. And they wanted to be a democracy,

but because of the demographics that are applying, where in Israel plus West Bank plus Gaza, it is 50-50. Of those three goals, only two can pose this. You can be democracy and a whole country, but not Jewish. You can be Jewish, but then not the whole country or not a democracy. And every single person who goes to vote in Israel, if they have any maturity in them,

needs to, before they vote for the right or the non-right, decide which they're willing to let go of of the three. And most people you're ever going to meet, in, you know, if you're like a non-Israeli and you meet high-tech people or whatever, most of them are willing to give up the integrity of the land, because while that sucks, it sucks less than giving up democracy or becoming a half-Arab country. That's not what the doctor ordered. So, therefore, they support the center left.

And what defines the right wing in Israel is that they basically give up on democracy. That's a story they're pretended on. but I mean an election carried out under the current reality in Israel where the settlers in West Bank can vote and the Arabs cannot is an election where a quarter of the effective population

couldn't vote and when the result is by a squeak a right-wing victory and they say well I got accepted because democracy it would be reasonable to counter that it's not exactly democracy because if the Arabs in West Bank could vote the right wing would

win an election in Israel. And it would be called Palestine soon enough. So, this is a, this is a bigger story really than Israel. It's by human nature. Because Israelis, when they,

when they confront this landscape I'm describing, have to choose the least bad option. There are no good options. You pull out of the West Bank, you're taking a massive security risk, but you're saving yourself demographic. And human beings aren't wired to embrace the less,

bad option. They're more wired to sit around complaining that it's bad. Yeah, it's bad. You got that right, but it's less bad. And we're, I don't know, I mean, I think the evolution we're at as homo sapiens, we haven't quite attained that level for the

average person. They're going to sit around complaining it's bad, and while they complain, like, you know, the tsunami will overtake them. It's pretty hard to imagine, though, a democracy where a limited democracy, let's say, because again, we're not counting people on the West Bank who were not Jewish, but voting itself to give up any of those

three officially. The default is to give up democracy. Right. Right. But they're going to say democracy for whom? They're going to say all kinds of nonsense things. They're going to say, well, you know what? The Palestinians, Jordan is Palestine because Jordan has a majority of Palestinian descended people. And some of the people in West Bank actually have a Dhanian citizenship. And I always say no, no, no, guys. No, no, no. You don't have to have citizenship in the country. You have to have citizenship in a country that governs you. If the people in the West Bank

had citizenship in Canada, that wouldn't make things okay because Israel's governing that. But again, I don't deny that for Israel. to pull out of the West Bank. It would be a strategic risk, a gamble, to be sure. And when Hamas took over Gaza by force of arms, and lazy journalists will tell you they were elected, they were not elected.

Okay? It's just not true. They took over Gaza in a military coup. Think of all the money they wasted building these tunnels. They could have done a lot with Gaza, and Israel would have helped them. Their strategy was to make sure that Israel never pulls out of the West Bank. And by due October 7th, they made it so that Israelis

saying, how we thought it was bank, because then the next invasion will be like really right on bordering, abetting Jerusalem and 20 miles away from Telvi. And then they're running amok amid millions of people, and the damage would have been exponentially greater. So, again, has the media made clear to readers that, Hamas does not want Israel pulling out of the West Bank? It clearly has. And that's, I think, that was the origin of my malaculpate. This is one of the things I always think about when I see people calling for a ceasefire. Ceasefire for who and who will agree to it. What does it actually

mean? I see two avenues here. One, there is clueless as, as the average person. They have no idea and they just they think it sounds peaceable of of the minority that really gets what's going on the ones that are calling right now for a ceasefire are basically saying let humas win let them stay in charge in gaza and live to do october 7th another another day um and i'm not sure that's the worst thing again it's it's bad for sure but it might be the least bad at this point i mean israel had they don't really have the rope to do six months, but you know what? They did six months. And they've been tired and feathered, and they're being examined for genocide,

which is fallacious. There was no genocide. But there was a lot of killing. And, you know, Israelis are, you know, feeling unwelcome in the world now. And there's been all this damage on all sides, economically in Israel as well. and if they couldn't do more in six months, then maybe it's time to call it a day. I can see one option

where they keep Hamas in southern Gaza. So you know what? Fine. Until you retire, we're keeping northern Gaza and we're going to let in people who we check. And we'll see what happens. Military occupation, maybe the PA,

if they finally get rid of Netanyahu, any other government will allow the PA to go back in there because that's what needs to happen. And leave the South under Hamas control and see if these people whose lives have been brutalized by Hamas, get it together to rip them limb from limb as they deserve. And if not, then not. All right. But what happens to, what happens to Netanyahu when this war is over?

Well, that's why I doesn't want the war to be over because I think it's very widely accepted that there has to be an new election when the war is. and that there has to be an accounting. So his transparent scheme is to make sure the war goes on for a long time. Combined with the argument that you can't do politics and know war, you can sort of do the math and see where that heads. If the war really ends, he's going to, in theory, have a difficult time surviving. And he, by his own accord, may have to call new elections and try to turn that election

into a Palestinian state thing and hope that the opposition blunders into agreeing to support Biden's calls for Palestinian state, for two-state process. Because right now, Israelis, I want to hear about that, because that means maybe Hamas in charge in West Bank attacking them from nearby. So that is Bibi's only card to plan.

And I can only hope the opposition knows enough to be quiet about it. and just insist that it's a referendum on the war and on what preceded the war and on the Taniao's incredibly unpopular Putinization effort of the earlier part of 2020, which again, readers don't really know. I mean, you tell people what these guys had planned and it's almost hard to blame. What did they have planned? Well, they were going to have the government appoint puppet judges and then they were going to enable the parliament by a simple majority to overrule. the puppets whenever the puppets

forgot that they were puppets, and there was going to be no end to the evisceration of any and all of the gatekeepers set up in Israel to enable it to be a liberal democracy without a constitution, up to and including that the parliament could ban the opposition for running in elections.

In short, a complete and total Putinization. Which Netanyahu in his excellent English tried to sell to, like, ABC, and NBC and George Stephanop course as a judicial reform. That really is very benign. I mean, in America, you know, the Supreme Court justice is chosen through a process

that is undeniably political. So what's the big deal? These are just hysterics by my opponents. And by the way, Netanyahu typically, he's given about during the war, about 25 interviews to the foreign press. To the local press, he's given four interviews. Three of them, well, all four basically, on. on stations that are niche stations that support him.

Think about it. Now, why does he do that? Because he cannot expose himself to an interviewer that knows anything. Because his entire strategy for his public diplomacy is gaslighting and lies. I think a lot of people don't know that Israel doesn't have a constitution. I think it's assumed that a country, the functioning democracy, must have one. But Parliament, Knesset, really has that kind of control. I mean, a very fine level of control over the country, right?

Well, yes, but the parliament at this point is kind of an extension of the executive, actually. The government controls the parliament. Somehow that's the system, the de facto, not the euro system that Antonio has managed to engineer. Israel does not have a constitution because early on the religious parties, opposed the Constitution because they felt the Bible is the Constitution, but even more than this, they kind of knew they could never agree between the secular and religious on anything. And so they thought it ought best to leave it alone. And they enacted a de facto constitution that they called the Basic Clause. There's a series of basic laws.

Basic law on human rights, basic law, the government, basic law, the Knessa, which are quasi-constitution. Now the problem is that in recent years there has been this erosion of basic laws where you can pass a basic law by any majority and you can amend a basic law by any majority. So the only thing preventing that the only thing that makes a basic law have more power, more relevance or more sustainability, more resilience than a regular law is that it's called a basic law. Because you can pass a basic law by a one to nothing vote in parliament. and that's it, it's a basic law. Now, compare this to the difficulty of making any constitutional, taking any constitutional action in the U.S. We couldn't get it together to pass an equal rights amendment,

even though we clearly had two-thirds or three-quarter support. Because it could still be blocked. In Israel, one lawmaker and otherwise empty chamber can pass a so-called basic law. It's a farce. Well, I enjoy a good farce. Yeah, when you're not living it. And you've got to come visit. Actually, probably be there in a few months.

There's a lot of good material. So, Matthew, what are you thinking? What do you make of the news that we've had over the past 24 hours that there's going to be an attack from Iran? Well, Iran typically doesn't attack at a time of your convenience. Like, they don't attack on anniversaries, that on attack in immediate retaliation as something someone else has done

at a timing that they chose. They are famously proud of their Persian patience and the infinity of their timeline. They will do what they do when they see fit. And that clearly clashes with what we're hearing is intelligence that they have something planned in a very, very near future.

I know that Israel is on Hiler. They have made threats that an attack upon Israeli territory will result in a counterattack on Iranian territory. It's obviously tremendously dangerous with Iran being a rather large and powerful country, but also a nuclear threshold state. A status they enjoy because of the complete and total idiocy of Nathaniel and Trump on a nuclear issue. Consider this, this harkens back to what I said about the last one. that option. So what was Bibi's argument against the nuclear deal? It wasn't really that Iran

is violating the terms of the nuclear inspections and everything else. It was that it's a bad deal because it enables Iran to continue building rockets that could deliver nukes and to continue to do terrorist skullduggeries around the region. Both of those points were true.

But they did stop the nuclear proof, right? So is that not a better option than what we got today because of Trump? which is that they still built the rockets, they still do the terrorism more than ever. Now the Houthis are blocking the Suez Canal practically. And they're a nuclear threshold state.

How is this not worse than what we had before? How is this not anything other than criminal misconduct and just a total dereliction of duty on a part of anyone involved in U.S. policy to allow this to have? and Nathaniel, whose obsession was the Iranian nuclear program has hastened its success. That is the dofishness that we're dealing with. The dismantling of the JCPOA, I think, is probably one of the biggest, one of the biggest geopolitical fuckups in the history of geopolitical fuckups.

I think the consequences of- You can say fuck-ups on the show? Yeah, yeah. It was a fuck-up extra-ordinary. You know what? I have trouble thinking of something dumber. Right, because otherwise you'd go straight back to peace in our time.

I mean, I don't know that peace in our time. That was a good one, but it was a good thing to aspire to. You know, job done, Bush and Websterisk and Mass Destruction. That was a fuck up, but it wasn't, it wasn't so foreseeable that Saddam did not have, you know, Web's mass destruction. Whereas this one was, it was so foreseeable, guys,

that even I foresaw it, and I wrote like a madman in just before this decision, predicting correctly, what would happen? This was a sure path to Iran getting nuclear weapons. Yeah. Because the incentive structure for them to not have them is completely legal. Yes. And they said they would. They said they would.

They said if you walk out of the treaty, you know, that means we no longer feel obligated. They didn't say, we'll build a bomb because they deny their building. upon. But we'll resume our nuclear program for research purposes. It is incredible to me. This is just kind of something that I feel like happens all the time now. We don't listen to people when they talk and they tell us what they're going to do. We play psychological games and decide that they're talking around something and we interpret their actions. Classic example is Hamas tells you we want to destroy Israel.

That is the goal, right? They are very out loud about what they're trying to do, and people don't seem to hear it. Iran said it was going to, as you said, that it would no longer feel obligated not to. And here we are. I don't know why we do this, but it is kind of everywhere. We just ignore people when they tell us who they are. We ignore, yeah, we ignore people who admit to a coming, hostility. We ignore experts.

We think experts are somehow for the elites and it's all part of the scam and the plot and the conspiracy. We ignore logic because everyone has their lived experience and they just feel like like they should do something illogical

and go argue with their feelings. We're just living in this crazy time when the far right and far left, a period of collective we lost their minds, and the people in the middle are somehow ashamed into, you know, feeling, feeling, shamed into admitting to a superiority complex that is therefore shameful. We feel superior about being rational. And we live in a time where people are willing to destroy everything if they don't get entirely their way?

There's a lot of maximalism out there, that's for sure. Again, it comes from the tendency to extremes, which you could easily speculate. It comes to, you know, attached to social media and other scourges of our time. But people are more extreme. And when you're extreme, you tend to, you know, devalue, compromise.

certain versions of extremeness, religious extremness, actually result in, you know, the sanctification of inflexibility. I mean, Hamas is happily inflexible. Their position, you know, the one place where I think the Israeli government has been unfairly criticized is in the negotiations with Hamas on the hostages. Because in Israel, half the country is saying they're not Syria. our own government is not serious. They don't want to bring back the hostages.

They could have done a deal. And Bibi is seen as such a liar that no one believes him when he denies it. But the fact is, I have yet to see Hamas at any point saying, yes, we agreed to a partial hostage release for a temporary ceasefire, which is the only doable deal, right? Because they're not going to release all the hostages in exchange for Israel not pulling out, because that's their life insurance policy. so I've never seen them say it will do that deal they keep saying if you want a deal you have to pull out of Gaza and restore the status quo ante and then the war and I mean you might still say yeah Israel should do that at this point yeah maybe maybe that's the less bad thing but but it's bad that means that Hamas will be able to say we are beaten but unbowed, undefeated. We are still on our feet and charging Gaza, and Allah is great. And that's not just frustrating for Israel. That will give succor to every jihadi across the planet and could easily result in terrorist attacks in Amsterdam.

I was going to ask a question about Israel's nuclear deterrent and Iran's building. or we imagine building a nuke or heading that direction. Because we've got unequal sides here in terms of militaries, or at least in terms of size. You have Iran with tens and tens of millions of people versus Israel, which has 10 million people. You have the Israeli military, which is known for its competence, but it's not going to be able to match an Iranian military for. size, or number of missiles even, I would imagine. How does this fight happen without it turning nuclear? How does Israel survive?

Look, I mean, how does, you know, why is France not overrun Switzerland? I mean, you're always going to have bigger. The mountains. It's the mountains. I suppose so That example At the end of the day I don't think Israel really thinks Iran is going to march across Jordan and try to attack it directly

If it did If it came down to that kind of a war The reason why Israel prevailed Over much larger Arab armies in the past Iran is of course not Arab But putting that aside Was Various versions of a qualitative difference

their their hardware was higher quality their training was higher quality their human capital was higher quality their motivation was higher quality their strategy was higher quality right they had dave and baguerre now they and moshad de young no arryl charon no they have ntonia so you might you you I mean, I would, yeah, you could suspect that that quality advantage has been eroded so significantly that you're left just with a nuclear advantage, which indeed is why it was so important for Israel to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear state. And I don't think they are quite yet, but the Earth threshold, which means they can build a bomb in weeks, certainly months. So look, I don't have like a great answer to that question. It's very, very bad.

I kind of think that the major priority, the West, should be to try to encourage regime change in Iran. The Iranian regime is unbelievably unpopular in Iran, and they are really vile. They're causing a lot of damage all over the place. They've destroyed Lebanon. they've destroyed Yemen. They were talking about whether or not they might try to invade Israel, which would mean marching across Jordan. They really, really want to talk about fuck-ups? They have fucked up Iraq, right?

Which is currently under the sway of Shiite militias that answer to Iran and not to the Iraqi constitution. So, yeah, I mean, I can think of a lot less defensible goals in the world than to free the Iran. many people of their criminal regime. Yeah, I mean, it really seems like their foreign policy strategies to keep everything along their borders in as much chaos as possible. Yeah. Yes. But again, that's a whole other show. Maybe we should do that,

actually. We should find somebody to talk about something we've ever really talked about, like IGRC and kind of, it's foreign influence and policy and like what it does in Iraq. And it's, you know, I've talked a little bit about its connections to Yemen, but I think it'd be a good show.

There is some debate about the degree to which Iran controls its proxies. That's the total goal. Is it a influence? Is it a give and take? You'll hear different things from different intelligence animals. We have a, we actually did a whole show on how kind of the word proxies is perhaps a bad rubriced with which to view things in that. it kind of puts in your eye, this idea in your head that, uh, you have control over this thing that you really don't, that you are in partnership with, there's a give and take,

and there are incentive structures at play that, uh, that you, like, that, that, that kind of are crushed down and less understood when you kind of view them as proxies, right? Um, so I think, yeah, I mean, that's another great point is, these are people that Iran has made deals with. they are not necessarily like their agents in a country. Yeah. It varies. I mean, I think they have control over Hezbollah. But even there, it isn't total.

And the irony is that even control over Hezbollah, Hezbollah is weirdly legitimate in Lebanon, where they run a political party that actually has some support. And they have taken over for Amal as the sort of dominant political player, um, for the Lebanon Shiites who are like 40% of Lebanon. So we can bemoan that Lebanese Shiites don't rebel. this, but

loop back to what I was saying about the political psychology in the Arab world. Dan Perry, thank you so much for coming on the show again. And, you know, actually, I think achieving some balance, can't wait to see if our audience agrees, but

everyone will be mad. Everyone's always mad. On this issue, I please no one. Journalistic cliche is that that's a sign of success, but it doesn't really always feel like success. All right, well, thank you. Thank you guys. My pleasure.

Thank you so much. Yeah. That's all for this week. Angry Planet listeners, as always, Angry Planet is me. Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin Adele. It's created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like us, if you really like us, please go to Angry Planetpod.com, where for a mere $9 a month, you get bonus episodes of the show,

early access and commercial free access to all the mainline episodes, some written work. Next bonus is going up very soon. Actually, if you're listening to this, on the main feed, it's already up. It's all about the video game Fallout, part of a two-parter that's requested by the audience.

So, you know, we thought with the TV show coming out, there's finally time to do it. This is more of the cultural critique episode. We're going to get more into the few politics of Fallout, and it's important to general nuclear wonkery at a little bit of a later date.

We've got a guest to find up for that, but they can't come until summer. It should be an interesting episode. We will be back again very soon with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe until then.