Angry Planet - Yaakov Katz on Israel's Invasion Of Lebanon

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com/Israel is at war-again. Adversaries include Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.But behind all three is one enemy at the center of this web of violence: Iran.Is this war the one where Israel and Iran finally confront each other directly? The missiles launched by the ayatollahs say yes, but what will the Jewish state do in return.This week we look at a fight that could bring a whole world into war, with Yaakov Katz as our guide. He’s a former editor of the Jerusalem Post, and chronicler of modern combat in the Middle East.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. All right, Jason, take it away. Okay. Hello and welcome to another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. And the planet is a little angrier than normal today. And joining us to help us understand what the hell is happening in the Middle East is Yacca. of Katz. He has been a writer and analyst on this stuff for a long, long time, former editor of the Jerusalem Post. And actually, hopefully he'll tell us a little bit about his books later on. But could I just start by saying, what the hell? What's going on? It's a great question, Jason. It's a pleasure to be with you guys. I mean, what's going on is unfortunately, we are seeing. the basic realization or manifestation to some extent of what we had long understood Iran's strategy to be. Iran has created throughout this region in particular a group of proxies that are their terrorists. Now, I want to back up for a moment and explain why Iran would do this, right? Iran, after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, what Iran wanted to do was to spread its regional

it's hegemony throughout the region, spread the Islamic revolution, export it to other parts of the world, especially in the immediate vicinity of Iran and the Middle East. And the way to do that was by having these proxies. So it had his blonde Lebanon. It had the hoodies in Yemen. It has some militias in Iraq and Syria. And of course, Islamic Shihad and Hamas and Gaza. And these groups, which it would fund, equip with weapons and support, were all doing the big, to some extent of Iran, right? Some of them were built up to take over Lebanon, like Hezbollah has effectively done. Some of them were built up to be able to threaten Israel, like Hamas and successfully attacked Israel last October 7, the hoodies, which have

embroiled Yemen in a never-ending conflict and also have the capability. I mean, what terrorist group in Yemen would have missiles that can fly over 2,000 kilometers, right? That's not normal, but this has all been done by Iran. Now, Israel fell into this trap to a large extent. Because what did Israel do for the last 25, 30 years? It played a game of whackamol. It would get attacked by Hamas and Gaza. It would hit Hamas.

It would get attacked by Hezbollah. It would attack his bala. It would get attacked by some other group. It would hit that group. And it was this game of whackamol over and over again. With this war has shown us. And what happened on Tuesday evening, when Iran again directly attacked Israel, this time with 180 missiles that flew towards Israel, some of them landing inside air force bases,

inside population centers. The second time they did this, the first time was in April, so just a few months ago. This is because the Iranians believe that they can do whatever they want, that there's no price to pay, because again, the world is focused on the proxies and is not focused on the root and the foundation of what is happening. So when you say what the hell's going on, What sadly is going on is that Iran is thinking they can do whatever the hell they want. What do they actually want? And actually, the main thing I really want to understand. What does Iran?

Oh, sorry, Iran. The main question I've had forever is, why do they hate Israel? What do they care about Jews? What's the big deal? You know what the irony is, Jason, is that the largest Jewish community in the Middle East outside of Israel is in Iran. right there's about 25,000 Jews who live in Iran. There are synagogues in Iran. They are yeshivas like schools of study of the Talmud and the Old Testament of the Torah.

They have pretty much religious freedom there, you know, obviously under fear and duress, but there are Jews and they're living a Jewish life. So why would Iran, and we all know there used to be a massive Jewish community in Iran, one of the most ancient in the world, the, the, one of the, most ancient in the world. The Iranian revolution in 1979 when Khomeini came back to Iran after being in exile in France and took Iran on this journey towards Islamic radical and extremism. Israel was perceived to be this great Satan. Now, there's always the greater Satan, which is, of course, the United States, right? Bigger one. But they want to achieve a couple of goals.

One is, like I said before, spread the revolution in other places in the region. Two is fight against the West. They believe that the West is corrupt. They believe that Western culture is wrong. And three is that for them, and we hear this from Khamanai, we hear this from the Supreme Leader. The existence of Israel in this region is viewed as a cancerous tumor. Those are his word.

They don't want to see the Israeli state have its own independence. So this is about achieving all of that on a very high level. But then there's the very practical level. And what is the practical level? When you are a regime that is holding your people hostage, and how do I know they're holding their people hostage? Because until 1979, by the way, Israel had an embassy in Tehran. We had relations with the Iranian people.

We were close allies with the Shah. We are both ancient people that have respect for culture and arts and history, educated. I mean, there's so much in. comment. There's a huge Persian community here in the state of Israel in great neck New York and in Los Angeles. You got places all over the world. But they want to be in a conflict because we see this often with tyrants is by being in a conflict, you are able to explain to your people why you a regime is needed. And this adversary that they have created for themselves of Israel, we have no beef with them. We don't share a border with them. There's no territorial dispute with them.

So again, what is it about? It's about all the other things. What do you make of their new president? I mean, listen, it's an interesting question, right? What is, who is this guy, right? And I always have difficulty pronouncing his name, Pazhi Jan or something like that. But he came as a reformist. And the idea being that he could put on a more moderate face for the Iranians.

Now, we got to understand what the Iranians' real strategy is right now. They understand, and it was a tragedy when their president, to them at least, when the president was killed, where you see in the helicopter crash, whether it was engineered by someone in the regime or someone else, I have no knowledge and no way of knowing, but that was their tragedies. They had to have a new election and elect a new president a few months ago. And the idea being that they understand they're in a delicate moment right now, right? President Biden, his term is coming to an end.

Kamala Harris might be elected president, but also Donald Trump might be elected president. And the last thing that they want is to be engaging in a wider conflict now with the United States. They are scared and cognizant of that. It's just that their calculation right now is that America's weak and America won't do anything. So that's their gamble at the moment. But I think they're trying to put on a reformist face, a moderate face, at least to the West. And you also kind of hear the music. You hear the new president who talks about we would want to engage in new nuclear talks.

You're Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, the guy who's actually the Ayatollah, who's really calling the shots that we don't rule out a new, you know, new diplomacy when it comes to our nuclear program. So why are they saying this now? Because they want to buy time. It's long been the Iranian strategy, especially when it comes to their nuclear program, buy as much time as possible. And eventually you'll get there. And you see, by the way, how they have inched closer and closer and closer, full. the West until the point where they are right now, where I don't know if we could call them a nuclear power, but they definitely are what we could call a nuclear threshold state. They're there.

They're just the decision away from actually building the bomb. And that actually puts two nuclear armed powers in competition, you know, in conflict with each other, too, right? I mean, Israel never acknowledged that they, that Israel might have the bomb, but let's just assume. I think we can confidently say that they do. I will say it if no one else on the call will. I'll tell you how I put it. Israel doesn't deny that it has it.

It doesn't confirm that it has it, but it doesn't deny that it has it. And everyone can assume that they have it. Exactly. Okay. So I just wonder how that affects the conflict. Usually when you get two powers that have nuclear weapons, people are pretty careful, but this is an actual shooting war right now. Well, I mean, no one seems to be being very careful.

Yeah, but it's a shooting war between one side and the other side's proxies so far, right? No, Iran launched missiles yesterday. Fair enough. But other than an explosion in Tehran, Israel has not attacked Iran directly, right? And I think that will have to change, right? And I think we are on the precipice of that changing. I think that if we look back to April when Iran attacked Israel for the first time directly in 45 years, for 45 years, we have been attacked by Iran by proxy. April 13th was that night, Saturday night.

I was actually supposed to leave for the airport to fly to Washington, D.C. for a conference, had a cab waiting downstairs. And then some alert comes out that schools are canceled the next day. Now, we knew that something might be happening with Iran. So I placed a few phone calls, understood that the barrage was already on its way. The drones, because they're much slower moving, they had already taken off and missiles were quickly to follow. I went downstairs, gave the cab about 100 check out, 35 bucks and said, sorry, I'm not going to the airport tonight. But Israel held itself back back in April. It retaliated very covertly, very quietly.

It took out a component of an S-300 that's a Russian-made surface-to-air missile system that Iran had near, one of its nuclear facilities in a city called Ishfahan, basically kind of said, hey, guys, you know, we were here, right? You didn't even know we were here, which just goes to show you what we can potentially do. That was the message Israel was trying to signal. Clearly, it didn't work because Iran now, last night, attacked us with 180 missiles. So the question now that Israel's grappling with is, okay, what is the right target? What is the right timing to do that? And how big would it have to be? I think in an ideal world, this wouldn't be an Israeli problem. This would be an American problem as well, because let's remember, Matthew,

that Biden and Kamala Harris, and I'm not singing them out because of partisan politics, I'm mentioning them because they are the administration right now. Both said to the Iranians, don't. And what did the Iranians say back? No, we do. And then they did. Right. So it was a big FU to America. It, of course, was an attack on Israel. And, And the reason they do that is because they really do feel genuinely that they have immunity, that they are untouchable. And again, it has to do with the whack-a-mole game that I spoke about earlier, that we keep on going back to the proxies. It's time to make the Ayatollah this pay.

Now, this is a global problem. And you all both are right that if Iran is not stopped and it eventually does get its hands on nuclear weapons, that will change and alter the balance. of power, not just in the Middle East, but in the entire world. Because it will do three immediate things. The first is it will set off a nuclear arms race in this already terribly volatile region. Because the Saudis, whose arch nemesis are the Iranians, they won't stand by and let the

Iranians have a nuclear weapon. They'll go get one. And the Egyptians who viewed themselves as regional superpower, they'll go get one. And Mr. Erdogan in Turkey, who sees himself as the strong man of this region and inching into Europe, he's going to go get one. Now, let's all think about that for a moment. Is that good for the world peace? Of course not. The second thing that it will do is it will give the Iranians the ability to spread terror wherever they want. Because again, now they will have immunity. Look at Russia, Ukraine. It's the perfect example. Why until now

two plus almost three years since that war began has NATO-American? Europe not imposed a no-fly zone over Ukraine, right? And the reason is because America is afraid to shoot down a Russian airplane. Why? Because of the nuclear weapons that Russia has. So now imagine what Iran would be able to do. And then the third thing it will do, and this is what you guys were talking about when you said, you know, both countries would have nuclear weapons, but Israel gets attacked again, like October 7th style attack, Hamas invades our country, kidnaps our people. We want to go. We want to go. back into Gaza. And Iran says, no, no, no, no. We got nuclear weapons, guys. You cross one

soldier into Gaza. We are going to nuke Tel Aviv that will bind Israel's hands. We will, we will lose our operational freedom. So it's, it's the, the nuclear arms is such an existential issue for Israel. But I would argue for the entire world, which is why we really need to get, get our act together here. Not just Israel, the world, in dealing with, this problem. Do you think then that the next part of this is Netanyahu pushes Israel into some kind of ground invasion of Iran or some sort of attack? How do you do that? Yeah, and how would you even do that? Right. So, so ground invasion, I don't think is anything that's in the cards. Remember, we don't have a, we don't have a shared border. We're not going to see Israeli tanks.

For Israeli tanks to have to get to Iran, they'd have to go through Jordan and Iraq until they get to Iran. That's not something that's going to happen. I just want to say that I mentioned that specifically because short of that, I don't know how you do anything but delay a nuclear program. Right. No. So I do want to touch on what I think you are right about, though, is that if you want to take out their nuclear program, and it's not simple. I mean, my last book, which is called Jason said I could plug my book. So my last book.

That's why anyone goes on any podcast. Please. Exactly. So my last book, Shadow Strike, which is about how Israel destroyed Syria's nuclear reactor in 2007. Israel's the one country in the world that has done this twice, 1981 against the O.C. rack reactor that Saddam Hussein was building outside Baghdad, 2007 against Syria.

But see, the striking thing is that in both of those cases, they were one facility above ground. So once you took out that one facility above ground, you pretty much were done. They put all the eggs in one. basket. The Iranian smart, they learned the lesson. They scattered and they fortified underground. Very difficult to do all of that from the air. By the way, we saw an example. Not a lot of people are talking about this, but when Israel took out Hassan Nasrallah last this past Friday night and killed him in the Dachia neighborhood that Hizbalah stronghold in Beirut,

they dropped 83 tons of ordinance over these two buildings. buildings inside Beirut to be able to get to this underground bunker. But it wasn't just the way, it wasn't just dropping the missiles themselves. It was the way they were dropped one after the other on a perfect angle so they can penetrate one after the other into the underground bunker. These are very, very complicated strikes. It's not your classic, drop a bomb and fly away, right? And in Iran, they have learned all these lessons. So the question even comes down to, can you do everything by the air. And by the way, there was another operation that recently saw of Israeli commandos that went into an underground facility in Syria on the Syrian-Lebanese border,

which was a weapons production facility. Why didn't they bomb that from the air? And the answer was, because they couldn't. So they had to put boots on the ground, special forces to go into the facility to destroy it from within. So I think you are right to some extent, Matthew, that we would have to send special forces also to Iran to go into some of these. facilities, to blow them up from within, we would also have to strike from the air. This is a huge, huge undertaking. And while we look today at Israel, where we're fighting still in Gaza, where we've yet to finish that war and achieve the victory we need there, we're fighting now in Lebanon to restore

security to the northern border, to take on a whole other massive undertaking. I don't think we have that ability at the moment. I think what we can do, though, is hit them somewhere hard. that they will understand that there is no immunity. Now, that could be taking out oil refineries. That could be taking out maybe one nuclear facility. That could be taking out some of their military installations. There's a huge spectrum of what Israel could potentially do.

But I don't know yet that this is something that we can do on our own against the nuclear facilities right now. I'm really trying to imagine the United States being willing at this point to help out very much. I mean, especially if you're talking about any kind of boots going anywhere, it's just, as you've read and as you've heard and as the people you've talked to, boy, are people tired of the Middle East in the U.S. And boy, are people tired of going into other countries and trying to fix them or fix them as far as we're concerned. how badly does Israel need the United States? And are there other allies that you might be able to count on? Because I don't usually think of Israel and allies at the same time. Yeah, what's the international coalition here?

Well, it's a really important question and point. And, you know, it's super existential, essentially. I mean, you know, so in my office back here, if you guys can see, I have model airplanes that I've gotten over the years from different, you know, defense companies and, and the assorted, and, you know, the F-35 and the F-15 and the Apache longbow, everything that the Israeli Air Force flies, except for one aircraft, it's trainer aircraft, which is made in Italy, everything is made in the United States. The F-15 I's that bombed in Yemen and in Lebanon this week, American. The F-35 that attacked in Iran back in April? America. America.

our refueling tankers, American, our intelligence planes, Gulfstream, American. I mean, everything. So when you are so dependent on one specific country, in this case, the United States, it's not just weapons. It's not, you know, everyone got bent out of shape a few months ago when President Biden upheld or withheld the delivery of this one shipment of one-ton bombs, right? Everything else was going. By the way, more than 500 planes of equipment have landed in Israel since October 7th, and we should really say thank you to the Biden administration for giving Israel those tools and those, that material assistance. But all you're going to do is stop spare parts, right?

When you're in combat, you need spare parts all the time, right? Think of your car. If you drive once a day, eh, but if you're driving all day every day, you're going to have some, you know, things are going to get bent out of shape. You need spare parts, especially with aircraft in combat. If they just close the faucet a bit on those spare parts, we can't fly. If we can't fly, we can't fight. So there's a lot of leverage and a lot of dependency here.

And I actually think that in this war, I'll even, I'll reinforce your question, Jason. What we've seen in the last year, after October 7 when we were attacked, President Biden giving his don't speech, sending aircraft carriers to the region. after in April, when Israel was attacked by Iran, helping us intercept those missiles with the Aegis and destroyers and aircraft and aircraft carriers once again. After in July, after Israel killed Fuat Shukar, the Hezbollah military commander and Ismail Haniyah, the Hamas chief in Tehran, one in Beir, one in Tehran, again, aircraft carriers to the region. I think what we're seeing here is that we are really dependent on the United States. And as a result, everything that is happening, you always, if you are an Israeli leader, you always have to ask yourself, okay, what's the mission? What do I have to do? Do I have the tools to do it? And what are the Americans going to say? And is there anyone else who can replace America? No, because who are those alternatives? What, China, Russia? God forbid, right? We are tied to the United States because of shared values, because of. of a shared commitment to democracy and freedom, but also, very practically speaking, because of our military dependence on the United States military. And therefore, you cannot throw that

away. Now, can you build dependence one day? Maybe. But we're talking 50 years ahead. So we got a first. Let's get through the next six months. All right, angry planet listeners, we're going to pause there for a break. We'll be right back. All right. Welcome back, Angry Planet listeners. Does that mean that the U.S. do you think the U.S. do ahead of time about the assassination of Nessrallah? Was that? Because that's sort of something that's up in the air as far as, you know, as far as I know,

whether the U.S. actually knew. They've said repeatedly that they didn't, right? Right. But did they know? I'm sorry. You know, the Americans are government administration, definitely within the defense establishment. So, you know, the sent com, which is Central Command, which is all part of.

and definitely the Pentagon, very close military to military ties, they would have to assume, right, that as when Israel is launching these very fast-paced attacks against Hisbalah, remember just a couple of weeks ago, it only started a few weeks ago. Until then, Hisbalah pretty much had free reign, was shooting every day into Israel. We had to evacuate about 70,000 of our people from the border. they were, and we did this because we didn't want to have to fight two fronts at the same time. We wanted to stay focused on Gaza. But once we were pretty much done with the high intensity stage in Gaza, we were able to re-divert and refocus and started going after Hisbalah. The first move was the Pager attack, right? Which was, wow, you know, James Bond, Mission Impossible all put together. Then you started to see very quickly Israel starts taking, picking off single, his, his Bala, top operatives.

then we take out their long-range cruise missiles that are stored in different homes and other key assets. So even if the Americans didn't know, Nassaral has always been a target and will always be a target. So did Israel say, hey, guys, I'm just giving you 20 minutes heads up. Planes just took off. That might not have happened. But you'd have to be living in an alternate reality to be surprised by the fact that Israel was trying to get him. I think the surprise with that it succeeded in getting him, because this is a man who has successfully evaded this for such a long time.

But I will just say one thing. And Matthew said this. What do I mean? They said that they didn't know. There's something also interesting that's happening. And again, I want to preface this just by saying how grateful I am is an American or American, American, American, or the support and assistance we have received, Israel has received from the Biden administration.

Really, without that, I think his situation would be a million times bad and worse. but there's something weird that every time that Israel is killing a Hizbla operative, right away the State Department puts out a message, hey, we didn't know. We had no, we weren't told about it. You saw that with Nassrallah, you saw that with some of the other guys. You got to ask yourself why. Why are they putting out these messages, these statements so quickly? And, I mean, on the one hand, you would say to yourself one second, it makes you guys

look like you're not involved. You're not in control. You're out of touch. Like, why would you want to reveal to the world that you have no clue what's going on? I think there's something deeper here. I think it is this attempt by the State Department to say, no, no, we're neutral here. We're not taking a side. And that we have to realize emboldens the bad guys, right?

It's like when you saw after last night when Iran attacks Israel, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Gutierrez, puts out a tweet and a statement and says, I'm concerned about the broadening of this conflict. We have to go to a ceasefire now. Not a word about Iran. Not a word about the missile assault. Nothing. See, this is the strategy, guys. This is what they want.

They want to attack. And then they want the world to say, don't do anything, Israel. And you know what's sad? Is that it actually works for them, right? I mean, it just happens time and again. I think it's interesting that when you take out someone like Nasrallah, who was at least involved in the killing of all of the Marines years and decades ago now, the 261, I think, Marines. And you have the regime in Iran, which is also responsible for stopping up shipping, which, I mean, if you just didn't care about Israel, it's actually affected our financial situation here in the United States.

the equivocation just sort of blows my mind. You know, I mean, it does seem like they're, and Matthew, you can make fun of me if you want or disagree. But, I mean, there do seem to be good guys and bad guys. Can I tell you just something on that point? Because I was on a BBC radio interview this morning. And the presenter says, you know, she wanted to ask some question. And she says, it might have been right or it might have been wrong to kill Nasrallah. But, you know, go on. And then she went on with her question. And it was about something else. And I said to her, you know, before I answer, I have to say, it will always be the right thing to eliminate someone who is as bad as Hassan Nasrallah. He is, or he was, the Osama bin Laden of the modern Middle East. This is a man who had the blood of thousands of people on his hands.

Israel in the last two weeks has killed more people on the FBI's most wanted list than America has captured in the last 20 years. Each just yesterday, there was a guy who, I forget his name at the moment, who was killed in a strike in Beirut, who there's a $10 million American reward on his head. I mean, is the FBI now sending this money to the state of Israel? I say that jokingly. But it's always the right thing to do is to bring justice and to kill. and to eliminate the bad guy. When we even say to ourselves, it might have been right,

it might have been wrong, we are wrong. So I think that there's something that is, you know, you could talk about timing, you could talk about the strategy, you could talk about, okay, you're doing that

and what comes next. That's always going to be legitimate questions that have to be asked. But on a very principled level, of course he should be killed. He's a mass murderer. I mean, he's killed Americans.

He's killed his race. He's stoked terror all across the globe. He is a terrible human being. And the fact that there are some people who have some absurd moral diversion here without the ability to understand exactly how this plays out, I'm sorry, that's how I see it. Then we're setting ourselves up again for just more of this type of terror. The method, though, I guess, with that's, I mean, rest in piss. to be clear, fuck that guy. But I do want to talk about methods because you said was it 83 tons of munitions?

There's a lot of people that didn't deserve to die that died so that he could die, right? There were, that was a, you know, they were underneath civilians. You know, I know Israel has called them human shields, right? how does that weigh into the calculus of all this stuff? It does sound like a lot of innocent people are going to die in Lebanon. And there's no question that a lot of innocent people have died also in Gaza in the last year of war. Right. Now, Hamas, for example, says that 40,000 people have been killed.

They make up numbers of how many of them are women and children. Israel says that half of them are combatants. we can talk about whose version is right, whose version is wrong, but even if you go with the Israeli version, which I would still argue is probably the best combatant to civilian death ratio in the history of warfare, but put that aside for a moment, you still have 20,000 civilians who were unfortunately killed, and that's a tragedy. But I can tell you, Matthew, that as an Israeli here, while it pains me and the suffering of the people of Gaza pains me, and the killing and the deaths of those innocent civilians also in Lebanon pains me,

I feel no responsibility. So that's the difference. I feel the tragedy, but I don't feel the responsibility because the responsibility lies on the shoulders of the people who are running Hamas, who are deciding to put their tunnels under children's bedrooms and to store their rockets in the kitchen. it lies on the leaders of Hisbalah who are in a bunker underneath a civilian apartment building. This is what they do on purpose intentionally, right?

They want to, they want Israel to kill their civilians because they want the world to then say to Israel, stop. It's all part of a larger strategy. Now, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't do everything we can to minimize that. And by the way, for the most part, Israel does. you know, besides for that one strike, which was that big one against Nasrallah, all the other ones that have taken out specific targets have been against a floor or an apartment. But there have also been when they've gone after full buildings, they give notification. They say leave the building. We do that in Gaza. We do that in Lebanon now. No other military in the world gives away the element of surprise before taking on a target. You're letting the bad guys run away. Why would Israel do that? Because of exactly what you're talking about. Now, are there still problems? Of course.

Can we still talk more about how this war is prosecuted? Always we should. Right. And we should always demand the highest level of accuracy and precision. But, you know, I'll even tell you something that someone said to me today in another interview with some Indian academic was about the pager attack. Right. Now, I mean, wow. right you know that his ball as buying pagers you somehow are become the middleman you get your hands on all

the pagers you manage to install and and hide explosives inside each pager you manage to get them to his bala they bad guys are walking around with them now is there is it and then you you can activate activate some message that will detonate all of them at once i mean science fiction science fiction. But is it possible? And did we know that, yeah, somebody, it's probably some his blog guy that put his beeper on the kitchen table. And then when the message went off, his kid went over to look at it. And did the kid then get hurt or killed? Tragedy. But and my, and I feel for that child who's caught here in the middle. But again, I mean, this is the most accurate military operation ever, ever. Just bad guys have pagers. Right. Unfortunately, we're all. always going to have civilian casualties in war. This is why war is terrible. It's why Israel has avoided it for so long and held by this failed policy of containment when it came to Gaza and Lebanon. Unfortunately, though, once coerced and forced into this war, this is going to be the price of what's going to have to happen. Do you think that there's symbolism or intentional symbolism

in blowing the balls off so many of the Hezbollah operatives? I mean, it is hard to not when you see those photos of the Hisbalah operatives who are basically their whole midsection of their body has been, you know, severely wounded. I don't know if that was the symbolism of it, but let's put it this way. If bad guys cannot procreate, I think maybe the world can be a better place one day. But again, I don't know if that was the thinking behind it. I think Matthews looking at me with utter disgust. Goals. Goals.

But it does, it does make me, I do have a question, though, because I didn't see anything about this. I didn't pay attention. I was so focused on, like, supply chain logistics and how it was done that I didn't, I didn't think to ask this question of anybody. How is the pager attack received domestically? uh in Israel like was it heartening what how did people react so you got to remember that Israel's morale has been in the pits right ever since October 7 when Hamas managed to reach our border in a way that we didn't imagine was possible fool our intelligence in a way that we didn't believe was possible and fight against and and basically

stave off the IDF from being able to come to the rescue of all these people who are now barricaded in their homes trying to survive. And unfortunately, many of them did not for such a long time. So it was, it was, our morale was so low. So, so low. And the fact that we still have hostages, we have to mention that there still are 101 people being held inside Gaza. You know, we're talking on the eve of Rocha Shannab, the new Jewish year. And as I think about the family that I'll be sitting with tonight at my Roche-Shana dinner, I can't escape the, the image of those 101 people who are in some Hamas terror dungeon somewhere in the Gaza strip.

It breaks my heart. So all of that together is Israel low morale. And then comes this. And it was as if the Israel we used to be able to say, wow, about had come back. So domestically, it has been received with incredible awe. What it also has done domestically is, according to polls, and again, every poll should be taken with a grain of salt. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was severely weakened politically as a result of the October 7th attacks, which happened under his watch. His policies had set up the Israeli strategy to manage Hamas until that point.

had tanked down to the below 20 at one point, 20 seats, because we're a parliamentary system, has now climbed back up inching towards the 30s. This is also has a lot to do with the success and the credit of this new change and some of the successful operations that Israel has carried out against is Belah. What is the rest of this war specifically in Lebanon? Do you think it's going to, or at least what, what is this is the next month of the conflict going to look like? And does Israel have the resources to fight it right now? Well, I would really ideally want to hope that it won't take a month. But realistically speaking, after a year of this war, every time we think it might be coming to an end, it doesn't.

You know, I still hold out on the hope that a hostage deal will somehow come back and that that will allow us to bring back our, people from Gaza to scale back everything that's happening, of course, in Gaza, and that that might radiate and project also to the north and lead to some sort of resolution there as well. But in absence of that, I think that the next few weeks are going to see intense operations in southern Lebanon. We have reports already today of fighting and several Israeli casualties in engagements and close combat with Hisbalah, guerrillas and cells that are still there. lots of weapons, lots of tunnels, lots of booby traps, lots of anti-tank missiles, mortar, fire, etc.

Israel is there because it wants to clear out that whole area. You know, a lot of people talk about what's called the Litani River, right, which is like, you know, people talk about the Lita River, it's like the Colorado River, this massive, no, it's a tiny little stream. But its significance is that it kind of separates Lebanon or central Lebanon from southern Lebanon. and it's also located almost about 10 kilometers from the Israeli border. So when Israel says we want to clear out the area from the Litani River south, the whole concept and idea behind it is that the anti-tank missiles that Hezbollah has have a range of about 10 kilometers.

So as long as they're within that area, their anti-tank missiles can continue to cause damage and attack Israeli homes, as they've been doing. And then people won't go back home. And even if they go back home, back home, they won't have security. So this is the idea behind the current mission and this ground offensive is, and Israel has been repeating consistently. It is focused.

It is isolated. It will be very minimal in its scope. We're not going to see tanks in Beirut, let's say, or tire even. But the idea is to clear out that area. And that will just take time. I mean, look at how long it took. it took Israel to deal with Gaza and Hamas, right? This is a very, it's a Zipfian effort.

It takes a long time. You got to go house to house. You got to go door to door. There are tunnels under kids' rooms. There's going to be a shaft somewhere in a forest. Also, let's remember one other point, which is also important. The terrain in Lebanon vastly different than the terrain in Gaza. Gaza desert, Gaza sand, not vegetation, no hills, very flat.

Lebanon mountains, rocky, a lot of green vegetation, lots of places to hide and to carry out ambushes. So extremely different, much more complicated. And we're also, you know, in the fall now, we're inching up on the winter. Once the rain season starts, that will make it even more difficult because then you got mud, difficult for your tanks to move through their armored personnel carriers. So that's why I hope to some extent. And by the way, also in the winter, when it's cloudy, your Air Force, close kind of protective cover that you can give to your ground forces, that also becomes more difficult to do.

Because pilots can't see what's happening on the ground. So because of all that, I think the clock is ticking. And hopefully we'll be able to get this done sooner. One last question for me. And Matthew, you may have another, but we'll try to get you out for Russia Shana. Does Israel have a large enough stockpile of David's sling or Iron Dome interceptors? I mean, these things are expensive, and I'm going to guess it takes more than 10 minutes to build one. Is there any kind of concern around that at this point, considering that, I mean, Iran has lots of missiles?

So, look, there's definitely concern. Israel has three missile defense systems, essentially, within its architecture. The lowest is the lowest level one is Iron Dome, most famous though, but that is used to intercept the short-range rockets. David Sling is used for medium-range rockets as well as cruise missiles. And then there is the arrow, which is the long-range system. That was what we saw last night successfully intercept many of the Iranian-bladder. many of the Iranian ballistic missiles. So that is used mostly to intercept actually out of the atmosphere up in space in most cases. What you can do, though, in a lot of these times, is if your arrow

misses, you can try with David's sling. And you can even try again with Iron Dome, but going to be much more difficult if you don't get it before it's actually back in and on its way down to the target. And by the way, we saw last night that a couple dozen of these missiles did strike inside Israel. we will of course always have a limited number of interceptors. One of the brilliant inventions that went with these systems is the radar that is able to project the trajectory of these missiles as they're mid-flight and see where they're going to land. So if I know that a missile is going to land on my house, I would want to intercept it.

But if I know it's going to land in the field nearby, not worth spending a million dollars of an arrow missile intercept. a hundred thousand dollars or so for a iron dome and David's sling about half a million somewhere in the middle. This is extremely expensive. It takes a long time to manufacture. You're right. Definitely not 10 minutes. Take some time. Multiple companies. There's production in Israel. There's production even in America for a lot of these systems. A lot of them are joint projects between Israeli defense companies and American defense company. Arrow is an example, jointly developed by IAI, Israel aerospace industries in Israel, and Boeing. I've been to Huntsville, Alabama, to the Boeing production, you know, the facility there where they make some of the components

of the arrow missile. So this is a something that we always will have to consider. And it's also something you're always, you're right, Jason. Israel will have to consider this in however which way it decides to expand the conflict. Because if it cannot provide the same security for its people. And we start to see crazy devastation within the streets of the Israeli population centers. That's going to change a lot of the mood

and a lot of the morale inside the country. All right. Well, Yaakov, Katz, thank you so much for coming on to take us through all this. I can't believe we hadn't talked to you on the show before. And do you have books one more time? Oh, yeah, please.

So first book is called a very, very pertinent to everything going on. I've stayed in the same wheelhouse when it comes to books that I've written. But my first book is called Israel versus Iran, the Shadow War, which talks about kind of the history of this conflict between Israel and Iran, as well as the proxy war that has gone on, was came out in 2012. In 2017, my second book called Weapon Wizards, How Israel Became a High Tech Military Superpower came out, which tells the story a lot about the innovation. and we spoke about missile defense, for example, how was the arrow invented? How was Iron Dome invented? Where did that innovation come from? And where did this technological breakthrough come from within Israel, a country without the resources, but was able to pull this off? And then the last one was I mentioned, Shadow Strike. And I'll just plug my next book, which is now in production. It won't come out,

though, until mid-2020-5, called While Israel Slept, which looks at how the attack on October 7th took place, but kind of looking at not just the tactical level of what happened between October 6 and October 7th, but actually in the 25, 30 years proceeding all throughout that period, where did we go wrong as a country in trying to craft a strategy for how to deal with this terrorist organization along our border? So one could say interesting. One could say, you know, he might need to get out some more because he's writing too much about all this stuff. But that's the way it is. Well, again, thank you. And it's really nice to see you.

And Shenatova. Shenatova, a great year. Thank you guys very much. Okay. Bye. That's all for this week. Angry Planet listeners, as always Angry Planet is me. Matthew Gold, Jason Fields, Kevin O'Dell.

It's created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like us, Angry PlanetPod.com. $9 a month helps keep the show going. We will be back very soon with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe. Until then.