Ask Haviv Anything - Episode 87: How can you support a better Palestinian future?

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Welcome to our new short-form episodes interspersed with the regular interviews that dive into an often-asked question about Israel, Jews and the Middle East. Our current question: How can you support a better Palestinian future?If you like what we do here, please join our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything. There you can ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join in our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live. If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [e-mail]⁠. Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

The next question in our continuing series, answering questions from the internet, sometimes angry ones, mostly serious and thoughtful ones by people who genuinely don't know and want to know. And so I really appreciate it. The next question is, what's the best way to support the Palestinians if you want them to have a better future? I love this question because this is a person who comes to an Israeli speaker and challenges the Israeli speaker, maybe to test.

whether I care about a better Palestinian future and can articulate a better Palestinian future. It's a wonderful, important, very clever thing to demand of the Israeli. And therefore I do want to tackle it. What is the best way for someone who supports the Palestinians? Not supports Hamas, doesn't support the wars, angry at Israel for existing, or none of the ideological stuff of the political camps. Let's just say you want Palestinians, millions of ordinary people, to have a better future.

And so I want to say one thing that I know as an Israeli that I really bring to the table. I know Israelis. I read every poll that comes out about them in 20 years. I talk to them. I live among them. I get yelled at by them at every red light for not starting the cart quickly enough. I know my people. And that insight is extraordinarily useful because I see something that is profoundly and totally missing

from all the vast efforts to help Palestinians. And what is missing is any understanding, any theory of mind, any attempt to engage in strategic ways, the Israelis. There is a belief among the pro-Palestinian activist world and campaign and ordinary people swept up in it just out of care and concern for the suffering of Palestinians, that somehow this can all happen without the Israeli mind, without the Israeli psyche, without Israeli politics, without Israeli culture. it's really important, they tell us, to understand the psychology of Palestinians facing Israel when you ask yourself moral questions of Hamas. You can't divorce it from what do Palestinians see, what do Palestinians think is happening to them. That's an absolutely correct point.

You have to understand how the world looks to Palestinians. Not to Palestinian activists working on their clever vocabulary somewhere in New York, but to ordinary people on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank. Why isn't that also true of Israelis? Don't Israelis have a psychology? Don't Israelis have a history? Don't Israelis have a thousand data points that confirm for them that they're right and where they stand on these issues?

Are they dumb? I'm not saying they're right. You can believe they're wrong. You can believe they're deeply wrong. But what do they actually think? Because the pro-Palestinian movement made the argument over the years and stuck to it like a religious catechism that the only proper relationship with the Israelis is totally ignoring and erasing them. There is nothing to know, there's nothing to say, there's nothing to

understand, you don't learn Israeli history, there is only erasure and ostracizing and removing from the discourse any possible Israeli voices. And then we are morally pure and actually centering, I think, is the term they like to use, the only voice that matters, which is the Palestinian one. The problem with this perspective is there's still really, life, the real world has not been erased by your refusal to acknowledge it. And the Israelis still exist, and they still think what they think and see what they see. And your refusal to engage with them means you have no capacity to even understand what it is that they see. And so you have no capacity to explain to them they're wrong. You don't even have good answers. I have

debates on panels of various places with pro-Palestinian activists or people who bring the pro-Palestinian voice into the debates. I don't mean to toop my own horn, but I keep winning. I don't keep winning because the other side are dumber than me, or even because they know less history than me. I keep winning because they've never seriously engaged with the Israeli arguments. Many Palestinian scholars know a great deal about Israelis. I've talked to them. I've sat with them. They've given me a lot of time. I've learned a lot about Palestinian discourse and history and perception from them. But they're not the activists. They're the serious scholars. the activist ones, the ones who are famous, the ones whose books you've read,

they don't know the Israelis, they can't articulate what it is the Israelis actually think is happening to them. And so they don't have the toolkit to actually change Israeli perception. Let me be blunt. What Israelis think, Israeli politics, Israeli psychology, will have greater influence over the Palestinian future than literally every other arena on this earth. This is true whether Israel is good or bad, whether you love us or hate us, whether you're pro-Palestinian or anti-Palestinian, whether you're a Martian. It doesn't matter who you are.

This remains a hard fact of reality. And the pro-Palestinian campaign is ideologically committed to refusing to engage with it, understand it, learn it, influence it. Engage Israeli politics aggressively, intelligently, thoughtfully, and forcefully. Don't be polite. But how could you possibly be working for the Palestinian future if the only people you talk to or in New York or Geneva. How would you engage Israeli politics? How would that even happen? What would that even look like? We have answers. People have done this. People have taught us these

things. One of the greatest who ever lived on this question of how we cross a painful, profound conflict, injustice. Let's imagine for the rest of this conversation that the Israelis are terribly wrong. But they don't see other options and they're not stupid for not seeing other options. But let's leave that aside. Let's just imagine that they're wrong. I'm wrong. And in fact, the Israelis have no excuses. How would you show it to them?

How would you force them to contend with it? How would you make the price of it intolerable? Sanctions and boycotts and ostracism isn't going to cut it. Why isn't it going to cut it? Because on the Palestinian side, you have a never-ending drumbeat of exterminationist rhetoric. This is extremely important. There is a vast pro-Palestinian. campaign out there that wants Israelis to understand that they will suffer if they don't withdraw.

They will suffer if they don't dismantle the Jewish state. They will suffer if they don't do what the activist demands. And within Palestinian politics, much closer to home and much more dangerous, if all you're worried about is the safety of your kids, there is a constant drumbeat that tells the Israelis the exact opposite thing. Lower your guard, withdraw from territory, we will take it over and murder your children from that place. That is Hamas' message to Israelis. Hamas officials have literally, over the last two years, told Israelis again and again and again,

and these statements by Hamas officials on the public, you know, satellite television interviews never made it into the international press. They have literally never been cited in the international press. So you're going to have to go online and do some digging. But they sure did make it to the prime time news in Israel. Israelis saw it where nobody else saw it, because nobody else cared. It didn't fit anybody else's narrative. It didn't fit anybody else's narrative. didn't look really important. But Israelis know that Hamas officials have told them that October 7 is just one in a hundred more, that it will go on forever and ever and ever until the Israelis give up. What does give up mean, fall down and die or leave? That even if Hamas accepts a two-state

solution, it's a temporary two-state solution. That is the explicit statements of Hamas officials. For decades, there's no reason not to trust them. And if you bring me one quote of some Hamas official saying, we're actually secretly moderate. It's not going to cut it because I have a thousand quotes embedded in my psyche of Hamas saying, this ends when you die. If I have to choose, if the ordinary Israeli hears from the world, pull out of the West Bank, or I will boycott you, and from Hamas, pull out of the West Bank and I will murder your children, Hamas wins that debate in my head. The international pro-Palestinian campaign, because it has no theory of mind of Israelis, because it refuses to see what Israelis see. Not a

Agree, understand. Doesn't understand that it and the very political forces inside Palestinian society that it supports are canceling each other out in the Israeli psyche. So the first part of the campaign is, don't tell Israelis they're going to die if they withdraw while trying to tell them that they will be boycotted if they don't withdraw. Those are opposite messages. So what can you do for Palestinians? You lower the sense of danger Israelis live in. This is a people that has been hearing from their neighbors for generations, and peace processes never changed it, that it is appropriate and important and moral and the demand of God on high to remove and destroy them. That's exhausting. Say to Israelis and get Palestinians to say to Israelis, because you foreigners saying it doesn't count. It's not interesting. Your feelings are not the story.

bring this understanding to Palestinians that this is useful for Palestinians to go to Israelis and say we do not want you dead we do not want you removed you deserve to be here you're a real people you deserve to breathe the air of this earth

you don't live anywhere else you can't live anywhere else it's been generations if you can't do that by the way then Israelis are right organize Palestinian politics or enough of Palestinian politics for it to be not a fringe view to tell Israelis that

And then you open up a window to do something really powerful. I was in high school in the United States. We were going to read and learn about Dr. King. And as a young man, I thought that was very annoying because he's this kind of saint. He's this saintly figure. He's this perfect embodiment, paragon, apotheosis of American morality and thought. But then we actually were forced to read Dr. King. And I was no longer annoyed.

I was actually amazed. because Dr. King wasn't just a deep moral thinker, a deep political thinker. He was a strategist. He was a cold-blooded, ruthless, intelligent, sharp strategist. He looked at the problem of Jim Crow. He looked at the problem of the systemic inequalities that America allowed to continue. He understood that injustice usually isn't big and violent and brutal. That's not what most injustice is. Most injustice is a low flame that burns for a long time that everybody just gets used to. And it's never worth fixing because the fix will involve short-term pain. And the long-term pain is minimal.

It's a low flame. And if you want to fix the injustice, and you have to make it something people can't look away from. And then you have to offer the other side a path out of the injustice that they are inflicting that doesn't undermine them, doesn't hurt them, doesn't reverse the injustice, doesn't make them afraid. He started his marches in the South, targeted to places where he was fairly certain that the police response would be very violent. He was nonviolent, but he had this phrase coercive nonviolence. He believed in nonviolence, but he believed in violence too. He just believed in the other side's violence, in the usefulness of the other side, of making the other side,

forcing the other side to actually enforce their injustice with great violence, and therefore no longer be able to pretend the injustice wasn't there, and no longer be able to say the injustice was tolerable. So he brought his nonviolence, triggered that violence in the South, and forced white America to begin to deal seriously with the question of injustice to black Americans. And then he gave that, I have a dream speech, and writings and advocacy that, focused on this one idea. And the idea, folks, go watch that speech. Actually watch that speech. Don't just remember from high school, I have a dream that one little day, my four little children will be, live in a country where they will not be judged by the color of their skin,

but by the content of their character. It's an adorable line. Who doesn't love kids? I have four little kids. We all love kids. That's not the point of the speech. The point of the speech is not that we will all live together in harmony. The point of the speech was when he starts talking about the check, the permissory note. He says, and I'm going to butcher it, I'm going to paraphrase it, go to the original, because he says it beautifully. I refuse to believe that I received a promissory note from the founders of America, a promise, a check, and I have brought it to the Bank of Liberty, and the check returned to me marked insufficient funds. I refuse to believe that there isn't enough freedom in America for the black man as well. That's a lot of the black man as well.

That's what the speech is. He comes to white America and he says, the injustice can't continue. I'm going to set it on fire. Here's the injunction. You can no longer, it's no longer down here. You're beating and brutalizing people who are pacifists asking for things you claim you believe him.

So I'm going to set it on fire. I'm going to raise the cost. But I'm also going to pave your path out. I'm going to point out to you over here on this side that in fact, I'm not asking from you. to change i'm not asking from you to no longer be you i'm not asking for the demolition of america malcolm x by the way made the argument in those very years that america can't be equal can't be white america is just evil and king said no what i'm asking from you is for you to be you for you to be the you you claim you are because if you're the you of the promise of thomas jefferson and george washington not of the behavior they owned people but of the promise they made which was a turning point history. That was the new thing. A lot of people on earth in those days owned people. Nobody made

that offer of freedom and liberty, but you just didn't fulfill it. Be the you, you tell your kids you are, and we're done here. Translate that to the Palestinian situation. Imagine a Palestinian coercive, nonviolent campaign that instead of arguing that the Israelis don't exist, shouldn't exist, the Israelis are just erasible. Imagine a Palestinian coercive, nonviolent campaign muddled on King that says there is justice on the Israeli side. There is a reason the Israelis behave as they behave. There is a cost that they perceive to changing,

and it's not a stupid cost, it's a real cost. And if I lower that cost, and then I offer them a path back by framing my demand as a demand that validates their story rather than a demand that erases their story. I rejigger the entire cost-benefit analysis on their side instead of doing everything possible to convince Israelis that they are right to stick to their current plan.

Instead of that path, I create a path that says to Israelis, you don't need any of this. You don't need the security regime in the West Bank. And I'm also going to raise the costs for it. Not the costs to Israeli civilian. I'm not going to go after Israeli kids, which is always, always, the Palestinian answer of Hamas, of Fatah Tanzim, blowing up buses in the hundreds, suicide

bombings and stabbing attacks and shooting attacks. Let's leave morality aside here for a moment. Let's just talk strategy. That doesn't work. That tells Israelis they're absolutely right to stick to their guns. There were more suicide bombings against the peace process in the 90s than there ever were before the peace process. What lesson do you think that taught ordinary Israelis?

what would a Palestinian coercive nonviolent campaign look like that tries to neutralize Israeli security threats and threat perception while at the same time paving a path out of the current Israeli behavior? It's not that hard to come up with. Force unjust enforcement, completely nonviolently. Nobody shoots, nobody throws a punch, and not just nonviolently. Organized Palestinian politics around the nonviolently. violence. I know this is almost impossible to imagine in the current context of Palestinian society and

politics and culture and the actual organizations that run Palestinian politics are deeply steeped in the anti-colonial violence they learned from the Algerian FLN, in that longstanding tradition that really drove the shaped and defined the PLO. And Hamas is far more than that. Hamas sees violence as redemptive. So how would a Palestinian cultural movement even turn to? nonviolent in the first place. It's a PR stunt whenever it happens. It's a tiny handful of people demanding to be treated like a great nonviolent movement when all the other political factions among the Palestinians are being violent at that very moment and they don't understand why their nonviolence doesn't have the effect on the Israelis. But what King managed to do and what Gandhi

managed to do was to organize their people around them to follow in that path. It was a broad movement of nonviolence. And so it wasn't a tiny little bit of nonviolence while everyone else was being violent. That would not have worked. That would not have had the psychological effect on the target of saying this injustice is unnecessary. A genuine, broad-based, non-violent Palestinian movement that comes to the Israelis and says, military rule over other people for decades and decades is totally unsustainable and immoral. It is an injustice and it cannot stand. And we will force you to enforce it in ways you yourself can't tolerate.

And the reason we're going to make it intolerable for you is that we're going to make it unnecessary for you. We're going to make you see that it's unnecessary. necessary. So we will offer you total and complete peace and pacifism and nonviolence, and only that. And when our side turns violent, we will crash down on that. We will break that. We will force you to contend with the idea that your threat perception is mistaken. And then we will also say to you, the reason you need to end this is your own logic of who you are. What is Zionism? What the word Zionist means to every Zionist, no matter what kind of Zionists they are, is that the only way to truly be safe on this earth is to have your own place under the sun. We Palestinians, we don't want

something special, something that you Israelis don't understand. We literally want our version of what you got, of what you have, of your argument about history. We want Palestinian Zionism. This will work. This will work. But it has to be the actual strategy. It can't just be a PR stunt while all other factions in Palestinian politics pursue the opposite of that, the thing that neutralizes it. There is a spoiler, and that spoiler is Hamas. And I wish the pro-Palestinian campaign understood this. You can't convince Israelis that this is a zero-sum conflict with everything on the line and then demand of them to endanger themselves. One of those things has to give.

I suggest convincing Israelis that Israel's existence, survival and safety, are not questionable, and that Palestinians can deliver the only thing Israelis actually need from them, and that therefore every Israeli action that prevents Palestinian independence is profoundly unjust. There are those who say Palestinians can't get there. then we're stuck.

I don't know a way out. You're not going to beat the Israelis into a withdrawal from the West Bank after the experience of Gaza. I believe Palestinian society can get there because culture can change. And if Palestinian society can get there, the Israelis will be eating out of the Palestinian hand.

Palestinians will have agency. Palestinians will decide their future. But they have to be able to play in the arena of Israeli psychology and perception. Dr. King gave us the map. It didn't end racial tensions. It didn't end all the problems that Black America faces or racism in America,

but it did fundamentally reshape everything. Everything was different after King because of the power of this move. This is the Palestinian building of a better Palestinian future. And everyone who says to the... Israelis, they're illegitimate, shouldn't exist, and can be destroyed, is destroying that Palestinian future. Thank you for joining me.