Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Biden’s two-pronged Israel strategy — with Bret Stephens

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

Since October 7, the United States has vetoed three resolutions put before the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire. But suddenly, this past Monday, in a jarring change of course, the U.S. abstained, which -- for all practical purposes -- means the Biden administration chose to allow the 15-member Security Council to pass a similar resolution by a 14-0 vote.

Biden's political problem is not Israel or the Palestinians. His political problem is inflation and immigration and the perception that he's feeble. I think I'm not the first to mention this joke that the administration's new two-state solution is about Michigan and Nevada, but that's not what is going to tilt the election one way or the other. So to the extent that this is a matter of politics, this isn't going to help Biden. It's proverbially like worse than a crime. It's a mistake. It is 6 p.m. on Thursday, March 28th here in New York City. It is midnight in Israel, March 29th. Since October 7th, the United States has vetoed three resolutions put before the UN Security Council calling for a ceasefire in the October 7th war. But suddenly,

this past Monday, in a jarring change of course, the U.S. abstained on a vote calling for a ceasefire at the UN.N. Security Council, which for all practical purposes means the Biden administration chose to allow the 15-member Security Council to pass a similar resolution to the ones they had vetoed in the past by a vote of 14 to 0. The Biden administration knew it was greenlighting the passage of this resolution. And this resolution demanded a ceasefire in Gaza during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends April 9th. The resolution also demanded the release of all hostages taken captive the weekend of October 7th. But what makes this resolution different is it did not condition a ceasefire on release of the hostages, which had been one red line for the Biden administration when these previous resolutions had come up for a vote.

Among the many other glaring problems with this resolution is that it made zero mention of how the war began. Zero mention of Hamas. Zero mention of the fact that Israel is fighting a defensive war against a terrorist organization which, oh by the way, is not even a member of the UN. In short, the resolution does not properly lay blame on Hamas. Reading it, one would think the October 7th war just kind of happened. Both sides are to blame, and both sides should just end it. Israel should implement a ceasefire, and Hamas should return hostages, according to this resolution. But those two tracks, a ceasefire and a return of the hostages, are now, for the first time, on parallel tracks, according to the international community, not linked. Immediately after the vote, the UN Security Council general secretary said,

and I quote here, the resolution must be implemented. Failure would be unforgivable. Does this resolution signal that pressure is now mounting on Israel at a whole other level? Is this an about face in President Biden's overall strategy and support for Israel? Is it a momentum enhancer for Hamas, for Hezbollah, for Iran? Hamas did in fact issue a statement praising the resolution's passage. And what do other allies of the U.S., like Saudi Arabia, think of these developments? To help us unpack these questions with a specific focus on his reporting as to the thinking inside the Biden administration, we welcome back Brett Stevens of the New York Times. Brett is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Times. He came

to the New York Times after a long career with the Wall Street Journal, where he was most recently deputy editorial page editor and for 11 years, a foreign affairs columnist. Before that, Brett was editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post when he was based in Israel. And prior to working in Israel, he was based in Brussels for the Wall Street Journal. Today, Brett is also the editor-in-chief of Sapir Journal, a link to which we will put in the show notes. It is a journal to which I'm a subscriber and I highly recommend. Before we move to our conversation with Brett, I did want to say a word about Senator Joseph Lieberman, who suddenly and tragically passed away on Wednesday evening. Senator Lieberman was a role model, or at least should have been a role model, for anyone considering a career in politics or public policy or the public

square. I had gotten to know him reasonably well over the years. He was a centrist Democrat in the best sense of that term. He ran and served as Attorney General in Connecticut and served in the United States Senate. In his race for Attorney General and in his race for the United States Senate, he ran to the right of the Republicans on some issues, especially the Republican Senator he ran against, Lowell Weicker. And I got to know him because of his work on foreign policy. He was an early supporter of the first Iraq war, began with Operation Desert Shield and then Operation Desert Storm and demonstrated an ability to cross party lines and at that time work with President George H.W. Bush and his administration and helped pass a resolution authorizing the use of force, which was a very close vote in the Senate. And then he was a supporter of the George W. Bush

administration's response to 9-11, including supporting the U.S. invasion in Iraq in the Second Iraq War. And then later on, when it was much more politically risky, supported the surge in Iraq, the surge strategy. I traveled with Senator Lieberman as part of a congressional delegation in 2012 to the Munich Security Conference. That was Senator Lieberman's last year in the Senate. And I remember him just watching him being celebrated by all these leaders of Europe and leaders of countries in the former Soviet Union who were attending the Munich Security Conference. And they saw Senator Lieberman as one of the last bipartisan figures who represented a centrist, bipartisan consensus about the importance of America's role in the world. Senator Lieberman

was also a champion for a robust American defense budget and the importance of America having a strong and well-resourced military, lest vacuums get filled by bad actors around the world when America does not look large and in charge. On other issues, domestic issues, some of which I agreed with Senator Lieberman, some of which I didn't. He was a leader on education reform and vouchers and took a lot of political risk in terms of pressure from constituencies in his own party. He was also just about the nicest, warmest, most Hamish person you could ever imagine in any walk of life. And he just took every person he interacted with, their arguments on a particular issue,

even if he didn't agree with them, as though they were coming at those issues in good faith. And he would analyze them, examine them, debate them on the merits of the issues. And he really did depersonalize political debates. There will be more to say about Senator Lieberman later on with Brett Stevens and also in future conversations. But until then, may Senator Lieberman's memory be a blessing. And now on to our conversation with Brett Stevens. And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast, a regular to the Call Me Back podcast, my friend Brett Stevens, who actually was on this podcast. You may not remember this, Brett. You came over to our apartment on October 8th.

Yes. Well, no, I do remember it, but I remember it for all the wrong reasons. Right. Well, I remember the crazy dog food you serve your dogs, but... You know, I interviewed Ron Dermer last week in Jerusalem and he reminded me that the last time I had him on the podcast, we were in person and I gave him COVID, which I completely forgot. I had given him COVID. He was traveling from New York city to Mexico city. And I had to call him that night and tell him that I had just taken a test and, or maybe

it was the next day and had COVID and I'd given him COVID. So that's a whole new spin on Call Me Back. I know, but that's... Well, because we were in person. We recorded in person like you and I were, and I, of course, didn't remember the dog food. But I do remember you were coming from a rally in Times Square. This is October 8th, so Israel had not even responded to October 7th. And you were at a rally where people were already accusing Israel of genocide since then. Yeah. And you and I were marveling

that this couldn't be the new normal. Instead of the outrage being directed at those who were slaughtering Jews, it seemed that in some corners, the outrage was being directed at Jews for objecting to being slaughtered. And we thought that was maybe just a little narrow thing. It didn't deserve that much coverage. And then over the next few months, we've seen that that actually is much a sense of moral clarity about the struggle that Israel was facing and the war that Israel was in. And the military assets deployed to the region, the military aid being supplied to Israel was extremely important for Israel in this war. And it seems now that potentially things are shifting in the sense that the administration seems to have kind of like a two-pronged strategy, where on the one hand, they're sustained military aid to Israel. I think they will sustain the military aid. I don't see any signs yet, despite some comments from different

administration officials that the administration would pull back on that. But now they're sort of masking the military aid with open political warfare against Israel. Yeah, well, against the prime minister, certainly. Maybe that's where we start, because they have this thesis that they can separate the prime minister from the country, and that that won't have implications for the country. And obviously, I've been feeling this the last few weeks, or my impression, this is where they're heading direction over the last few weeks, based on different statements coming out of the administration, the Chuck Schumer speech, obviously, but then there are things that Vice President Harris said,

what President Biden said that were increasingly alarming. And then after the administration had been consistently vetoing all these problematic UN Security Council resolutions over the last six months, they finally abstained on one. And that seemed like concrete evidence that things were changing. So I guess my first question is before trying to read between the lines as to what the administration is actually up to read between the lines as to what the administration is actually up to, can you just explain what was significant about this UN Security Council resolution and why it was problematic that it wasn't vetoed? Well, it's significant because any ceasefire is helping Hamas and abstaining from the resolution, which is to say, allowing it to pass, I mean, however symbolic it might be,

the United States is putting its moral and diplomatic weight behind the idea that there ought to be a ceasefire that may or may not help the Palestinian people in Gaza, I can get to that in a moment, but definitely helps Hamas, isolates Israel, and winds up extending the fighting. So I think that the administration, which I have gone out of my way to praise for its stand on Israel, really screwed up here. And I think their intention was essentially to tell Netanyahu, you know, this is a yellow light, be cautious with how you proceed because our support has conditions, particularly with respect to an operation in Rafah. But I think what they ended up doing was sending a signal that the United States, or at least this administration, is pliable and

vulnerable to the political pressure, domestic political pressure from the pro-Hamas demonstrators. I refuse to call them pro-Palestinian demonstrators because that's not what they are. And that this administration could do to Israel what the Obama administration did in 2014, or quite frankly, the Reagan administration did going back to the time of the first Lebanon war. I think it was a big mistake by the Biden team. They're not going to get the policy they want from Israel by that kind of open pressure. They look weak. And as a political matter, I think they've just handed the GOP a gift. All right. So I want to hit each one of these. So A, you say it doesn't really help the Palestinians.

B, they've handed the GOP a gift. Can you unpack each of those? Well, there's 85% support in Israel for an operation in Rafah. An operation in Rafah is going to happen no matter what the Biden administration does. I mean, ultimately, this only ends up hurting the United States because we are repeating a pattern that Biden mistakenly pursued with Saudi Arabia, which is distance yourself from an ally. And then when you realize that that ally has other strategic options, kind of go back, you know, hat in hand to try to patch up the relationship. So I think as a matter of like, what's going to happen on the ground, what the administration did is not going to make any

difference. If anything, it's probably going to help Benjamin Netanyahu out of some of his political problems, because he looks like he's standing up squarely to the pressure of the big and not so reliable brothers. So I think that's one point that is worth considering. Another is this, which is that just as there are Arab voters in places like Michigan, who may not vote for President Biden on account of his support so far for Israel, there are plenty of Jewish voters who, if they won't vote for Trump in the fall, might just not vote at all out of disgust with Biden if he continues down that course. And I would suspect there are probably more Jewish voters in places like, you know, mainline suburbs of Pennsylvania, of Philadelphia that Biden desperately needs than there are

Arab voters in, say, places like Dearborn. Yeah, I would add on that last point, I've been thinking a lot about this because you look at, say, Pennsylvania or Michigan. Michigan does have a large Jewish community in places like Oakland County, Michigan. Yeah, Bloomfield. Yeah, exactly. And one of the reasons I think this strategy of trying to signal to the anti-Israel left within President Biden's coalition that he's being really

tough on Israel, is I don't think he can go far enough to mollify them. That's exactly it, which is the only thing that would satisfy them is an arms embargo on Israel, you know, and a huge diplomatic pressure, which Biden is not inclined to do, I think, as a matter of personal conviction and conscience, and would be, you know, disastrous foreign policy., I think, as a matter of personal conviction and conscience, and would be, you know, disastrous foreign policy. So I think that's a constituency that's un-molifiable. I think what Biden is doing now with American Jews is kind of repeating the same mistake that he seems to be making with American Hispanics, which is taking votes for granted. And if you then think about your point that some of these voters, these Jewish

voters in places like the suburbs of Philadelphia or Metro Detroit area will maybe vote for Trump, maybe not. They sit and says, well, I can't vote for Trump. I'm still going to vote for Biden, but I need to register my opposition to the direction, the drift that the Democrats are. Yeah, there's a pro-Israel candidate known as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Well, I was going to say they could vote down ballot Republicans. I think you can see real ticket splitting. So you could see Biden, Jewish Democrats

in these suburbs, in places outside of Philadelphia and Detroit, voting for Biden at the top of the ticket and then voting for Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania for the Senate or voting for Mike Rogers in Michigan. And the Senate is already likely to go Republican. Biden's political problem is not Israel or the Palestinians. His political problem

is inflation and immigration and the perception that he's feeble. I think I'm not the first to mention this joke that the administration's new two-state solution is about Michigan and Nevada, but that's not what is going to tilt the election one way or the other. So to the extent that this is a matter of politics, this isn't going to help Biden. It's proverbially like worse than a crime. It's a mistake. So as it relates to this approach, I just want to add one other very substantive and very, I don't want to read too much into it, but symbolically, I think it's important. A substantive mistake and an extremely symbolic setback is that I think the president from the beginning has talked and the people around him have talked convincingly, authentically about the plight of the hostages in Gaza,

the Israeli hostages, the Israeli American hostages that are in dungeons in Gaza right now. And they had always conditioned a ceasefire on return of all the hostages in terms of their support for a ceasefire. And obviously Hamas, you know, giving up its arms and surrendering itself, but return of all the hostages as just a basic condition. The conversation about a ceasefire is a non-starter without returning hostages. And for the first time, we have a resolution that passed in the UN Security Council that de-linked those two issues. In other words, articulated those two issues in parallel, so they're parallel tracks. There was, we should pursue a ceasefire

during Ramadan, and we should pursue hostages. But not, hey Hamas, you get a ceasefire if you return all the hostages. There are two goals, and I just think delinking them. I've been very concerned in recent weeks that the focus of the hostages internationally has been on the decline. Even at Biden's State of the Union address, it was members of Congress who brought the families of hostages to the State of the Union. It was not the president. It was not the president's team that brought them. It was individual members of Congress from both parties. And obviously, the White House knew those families would be there. And he did say something. I wonder if he would have said something had they not been in the chamber and he did not

invite them. And I just even sense it in the press coverage. Generally, there's just less and less focus on the hostages. Someone was pointing out to me some analysis of social media engagement from policymakers, where policymakers are and elected officials are engaging in social media as it relates to the war in Gaza. And it's decreasingly about the hostages, that social media engagement and attention about the plight of the hostages just gets less and less focus. And if you contrast that with the Wall Street Journal reporter who's in Russia, Brittany

Griner. Yeah, sure. Evan. Evan, right. And the Brittany Griner, the WNBA star who when she was a household name and everyone was talking about her and pop culture leaders were talking about her and political leaders. And here, six months in, we're drifting. And then, I don't know, this UN Security Council resolution that basically said, yeah, we should get the hostages back and there should be a ceasefire. But one is not necessarily dependent on the other. Yeah. The other thing that is neglected in too much of the media reportage about this is that the party that has actually most adamantly rejected a ceasefire is Hamas. Israelis have gone out of their way to make fairly generous ceasefire offers in exchange

for the release of hostages. And Hamas has said no. And one of the reasons Hamas has said no is is they feel that the wind is at their back, and the world is turning decisively in their direction. So all of these efforts at a ceasefire, essentially feckless diplomatic efforts of a ceasefire, to the extent that they have any effect at all, have the effect of getting Hamas to become more unwilling to compromise and more adamant about digging in its heels because they think that they are winning a propaganda victory for the ages. So again, it's not just feckless

diplomacy in an election year. It is actively betting Hamas's war aims. For our listeners, Israel is a member of the United Nations. Hamas is not. Well, actually, Hamas has at least dozens of representatives, including several European governments. Yeah. You mentioned, Brett, that it's sending the wrong signals to Hamas, something like this UN Security Council resolution, and obviously just the messaging coming out of the administration recently. The administration has said immediately after, when Netanyahu canceled the trip of Ron Dermer and Honegby to Washington, now that trip's back on. And then the administration said, oh, he's overreacting.

They don't understand. Our policy hasn't changed. They went out of their way to say our policy hasn't changed just because we abstained on this U.N. Security Council resolution. Our policy hasn't changed. That's a very nuanced take as I try to, like, disentangle what they meant by their policy hasn't changed for two reasons. One, they keep saying their policy is changing. I mean, they keep saying it may not be changing, but they keep saying there's a red line. There's going to be consequences.

There's going to I mean, it sounds like direction. It's all towards a policy change. And then for the first time, you get the U.S. abstaining on a vote, which is effectively the U.S. saying we're greenlighting this resolution. And even if you take them at their word that the policy hasn't changed, the way they're handling it sends very confusing signals, not only to Israel and Israelis, but it sends confusing signals to Hamas, as you said, because they say the wind is at their back. Look at this. Pressure's mounting on Israel. Even the U.S. is now complicit in the pressure mounting on Israel. And other actors in the

region could interpret confusing signals, like Iran. Well, no, but also Saudi Arabia. Look, it is telling that Sadat became an American ally after the administration had backed Israel to the hilt in the 1973 war. He'd evicted Soviet advisors before the 73 war, but he hadn't tilted towards the United States. But I think what Sadat saw after 73 was that the United States was a reliable ally. He knew that the Americans were on the side of Israel in 73, and they came through in a big way. And I think the lesson that Sadat drew from that is the Americans are reliable. That's until at least the Obama administration foolishly got behind, you know, the so-called Arab Spring in 2011. This perception in Egypt was at the end of the day, the Americans will stand by us. If you're

Mohammed bin Salman, and you're looking at the Biden administration sort of quaver in the face of these obnoxious and pathetic domestic protests in the United States and changing at least or beginning to change its diplomatic policy, you're going to come to the conclusion that America is never going to be a reliable ally, that they don't understand just how stringent the exigencies are of Middle Eastern politics, particularly when you're dealing with terrorist adversaries. So, you know, be wary of being friends with the United States. That's essentially the message that's being sent. So it's not simply problematic in terms of America's relationship with Israel. It's going to be problematic in terms of our relations

throughout the region. Yeah. So there was a Saudi journalist, I mentioned this on a podcast episode recently, a Saudi journalist who had observed that from the perspective of the monarchy in Riyadh, it's not just the sense that the U.S. can throw an ally under the bus. It's the whiplash. In other words, it goes from a few months of we stand by Israel, we have Israel's back, we'll defend Israel to the hilt. You know, Israel must win this war, Israel must wipe out Hamas, you know, it was just all about standing with Israel and the Israeli people. Even if the leader of Israel, Netanyahu, was distasteful in the eyes of some in the administration, they were still willing to stand by Israel. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, what actually changed, right? So the U.S. said, the U.S. government policy from October 7th was, Israel's got to wipe out Hamas. We will help Israel wipe out Hamas by

supplying munitions and other capabilities. We will deploy military assets in the region to put a check on potentially others trying to pile into this war. And total victory. Israel must achieve a decisive victory over Hamas. And Israel's pursuing that, eliminating the military infrastructure of Gaza, eliminating or capturing the Hamas fighters, killing or capturing Hamas leaders. The administration backed them. In fact, things have been getting better on the ground in a sense. I mean, yes, there's these challenges of delivering the humanitarian assistance, but the military campaign is advancing just as they get close to Rafah. And

it's at that point that the US, the Biden administration decides to get into this very public fight with Netanyahu. And if you're MBS, to your point, you're looking at this and you're like, so one minute they have your back, one minute they hug you and then boom. Well, that's the thing. And I think the conclusion that any country thinking about whether to be an ally, say, to a China or to the United States, I mean, alliances with China also come with big downsides like shoddy construction projects and huge debts. But, you know, one of the challenges of being an ally of the United States is that you know that in your moment of need, eventually the United States loses its interest and it loses its nerve. And that signal may be sent again. Now, I want to say, Dan, you know, when you look at this historically, President Biden has stood by Israel better than many of his predecessors. You'll remember that after 34 days of war in Lebanon in 2006, the Bush administration lost its nerve and engineered that disastrous Resolution 1701, which incidentally nobody's enforcing.

And that was Resolution 1701 was basically to... Yeah, well, supposedly it was supposed to disarm Hezbollah. In fact, what it did was save Hezbollah. That's Condoleezza Rice's doing. The Reagan administration turned very sharply against Israel during the siege of Beirut in 1982, Eisenhower also in 1956. So by those standards, the Biden administration has a good record. It seems they just refuse to be proud of that record. They really should take a page from Senator John Fetterman, who's just completely gone for it unapologetically, and has turned out to be the most pleasant

political surprise of this entire year, because he has, you know, shown that he has principles, and he has guts, and he's willing to stand by his position, you know, in the face of political mutiny of his zone. And that's unfortunately what the Biden administration, that's a lesson they don't seem to have understood sufficiently that people admire a consistent principled position. People admire those who double down on their commitments and their friendships, especially when the going gets tough. I think, by the way, Biden made another huge mistake in the State of the Union when he repeated, without any qualification, the figure of 30,000 Gazan deaths, which is something that I think needs to be challenged much more aggressively than it has, simply because any data coming from Hamas is wildly suspect and because it makes no distinction between civilian and Hamas deaths, you know, which is really important for understanding what it means to conduct urban warfare when your enemy uses civilians as human shields. So a couple of things. First of all,

Fetterman is absolutely the most pleasant surprise. I feel ashamed of my criticism before, to be honest. I think I'm going to have to write a public column. You should. That's a great idea. I was in touch yesterday with someone who was a former top advisor to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, you know, very active professional Democrat, and he has roots in Pennsylvania politics. I said, were you surprised by this? Am I like, how did I? He goes completely surprised. So I would make one other observation about John Fetterman. The three issues he is most active on today, the three he's most outspoken on are tough on immigration, tough on crime, obviously a huge issue these days in Philly. Philly's not far behind Chicago in terms of urban violence and weak prosecutors. And three, unapologetically

pro-Israel. Those are his three biggest issues today. And by the way, that makes him, you know, a progressive in the best sense of the word, because if progressives care about the working class, they care about making sure that jobs go to people who legally deserve them and citizens don't have their wages undercut by labor from illegal migrants. The working crime is a working class issue, not an upper class issue. It's not an issue for those of us who can afford to get away from crime ridden streets. And Israel ought to be also a progressive issue because Israel is the only country that embodies progressive values in the region of the world where they're most in danger. So it's a completely consistent position. And I see him and Richie Torres being points of hope when it comes to the future of the Democratic Party. And Fetterman is polling much higher in terms of popularity and approval

in Pennsylvania than Joe Biden is. And Pennsylvania is a must-win state for the Biden administration, so they should look at the Fetterman playbook. To your point about the present state of the union, yes, I am mildly obsessed with this issue of the normalization of the Hamas-run health ministry numbers on casualties. It's not to say there isn't a lot of suffering in Gaza, but the numbers seem to be created out of whole cloth. The Gaza health ministry is effectively a propaganda arm of Hamas. And the administration had been saying it from day one. The administration had put a line down that they were not going to credit the God's and Health Ministry for data. Warnsley couldn't source them. Whenever they would refer to the God's and Health Ministry,

they would qualify the sourcing to say that it is run by Hamas. And that was important for news organizations, because I spoke to a number of people making editorial decisions within media organizations who would say the fact that the Biden administration had put down such a clear marker on this issue meant that we in these news organizations had to always qualify the Hamas-run health ministry numbers. They've ceased to do that. And by the way, it's important to underscore, like, I don't for a second want to minimize the suffering that innocent Gazan civilians have been put through. My questioning of these numbers has to do with questions of basic journalistic veracity and integrity. But I do want to say that I don't want to just simply cite numbers that have their origins in an organization that has every interest in inflating the numbers. And I also don't want to cite numbers that refuse to

distinguish between military and civilian deaths. You know, urban warfare is a known thing, unfortunately, in the history of man. And I think that the ratios that Israel seems to have achieved in terms of the number of military casualties as opposed to civilian casualties looks pretty good when you compare it to other urban warfare scenarios, including the siege of Mosul and other operations in which the United States has taken part. And finally, you know, the thing that I think always needs to be put top of mind is that Hamas is responsible for every Palestinian

death in the war because it fights in contravention to the laws of war. It fights between beneath and behind its own civilian population. I mean, take note that when Russian missiles strike Kiev or other Ukrainian cities, the Ukrainians send their civilians into the tunnels, into the metros to protect them. But when Israeli missiles strike, you know, Gaza City or Rafah or elsewhere, it's Hamas that hides in the tunnels and the civilians who are left to fend for themselves above ground. And I just don't think that point can be stressed sufficiently. Yeah. The other point I'd make is in the State of the Union, President Biden said,

in lamenting the suffering of Palestinians and inciting the Gaza health ministry numbers, he said, more Palestinians have been killed in this Israel-Hamas war than in all the previous Israel-Hamas wars combined. Well, that is an incredibly misleading statement, because in all the previous Israel-Hamas wars, Israel was never trying to actually eliminate Hamas. They were effectively trying to restore the status quo. So they all had limited engagements. This is the first time Israel, obviously since it's withdrawn from Gaza and since Hamas has taken over, has had as its military objective, the elimination of Hamas as a military threat. That's a whole other war. Of course, it's going to be a much different war. He's acting like, in the past, Israel's done it this way, but now they've gone too far.

And this is an administration that says that it supports the Israeli goal of eliminating Hamas. And I have to say, my colleague, David Brooks, had a terrific column on this point last week. You know, if you claim that you're for the elimination of Hamas, but you're against Israeli tactics, well, what is your plan specifically? Don't just give me a, you know, vague, well, the Israelis should adopt a, you know, special forces approach or all this kind of high-flown armchair general crap that everyone knows is completely unrealistic on the ground, like really supply a plan. And I've never seen any of these journalists who at least clear their throats to say that Israel has a right to self defense. To be at all specific, if you look at before and after pictures of Mosul, between the

time the American-led or American-assisted operation to clear Mosul of ISIS began under President Obama and concluded under President Trump, you're going to look at a city that has been literally wiped off the map to a far greater degree than what you see today from the images in various cities in Gaza, because that's the nature of warfare. And by the way, ISIS was a much smaller force and much less deeply entrenched in Mosul than Hamas is in Gaza. Brett, in my last episode, I had a conversation debate with Aviv Retigur from the Times of Israel. Yeah, terrific guy.

Yeah, he is. He's a very deep thinker. And we bantered about whether or not Israel is increasingly alone. And this episode dropped at midnight, Sunday night, going into Monday morning. We drop at that time because we have a lot of Israeli listeners who complained that they wanted to be able to listen to the podcast on the way into work, so we now drop at that odd hour. But I did not believe Israel was alone. I think Israel's under a lot of pressure, but at the end of the day, of the 450 approximate multinationals that have set up shop in Israel, despite the fact that many of these companies have very woke employees, you know, particularly some in the Bay Area and elsewhere, not a single one of these companies has shut down operations in Israel since October 7th. That is the case because it is in their interest to be in Israel

and hiring Israelis and working with Israelis. And that if they were to pull out, they would give an advantage to their competitors, these companies. The Emiratis just sent back their ambassador to Tel Aviv. Their ambassador had been pulled back to UAE. They just sent him back despite the Gaza war. Saudi Arabia is full steam ahead on normalization. I've spoken to Saudi officials. October 7th complicates things but doesn't change things. In other words, they still on normalization. I've spoken to Saudi officials. October 7th complicates things, but doesn't change things. In other words,

they still want normalization. I'll tell you how normalization doesn't happen. Tell me. Israel fails to complete the job. Okay. So I wrote a column in April 2015 for the Wall Street Journal when I was then foreign affairs columnist there. And you want to know what the title of that column was? Tell me. Israel Alone. Oh. And I should really sue the economists for plagiarism.

So I point to that column. That was during a crisis of relations between Israel and the Obama administration. So that was at the peak of the JCPOA, the Iran deal, right? Exactly. Yeah. So I actually point to that column not to sort of suggest my prescience, but in fact, to suggest that I was wrong. These crises of relations between Israeli governments and American administrations

have happened all the time. You can go back to even the Truman administration, but definitely Eisenhower or the Ford administration or the Reagan administration, or at least periods under both Clinton and Obama, these things happen. Okay. Number two, the point of Israel being alone. I mean, if you're going to say, well, in terms of global popularity, Israel has always been alone. Israel was unpopular before 1967, before any of the, so-called occupation, except it had some popular roots on the left, which is why the left seems to think that Israel once had broad public support, but it didn't. It just had opposition in different corners. Israel will only be alone,

not when it loses a global popularity contest, because that contest was lost long ago. Israel will be alone when it loses the respect of its adversaries or of other countries. So the most important thing that Israel can do is demonstrate that almost Israel alone among Western nations is prepared to confront the challenge of Islamist terror, is prepared to defend its citizens at all costs, is resourceful and strong-willed and morally clear-sighted against its critics on the left. So long as Israel does those things, Israel won't be alone. If Israel fails to complete its mission now, then it's at risk. But it's not at risk if it does complete the mission, if it does completely depose Hamas as the ruling power in

Gaza. You mentioned you want to talk about Netanyahu. I would just say the administration trying to make this about Netanyahu, obviously Schumer's speech was all about Netanyahu, which I thought, regardless of what one thinks of Netanyahu, when Schumer listed the four obstacles to a peaceful outcome from the Israel-Gaza war, he listed the existence of Hamas and the existence of Benjamin Netanyahu as though they were on an equal plane. I mean, I thought that was offensive. But I think it's also problematic because the administration clearly wants to personalize this to Netanyahu.

And as much as Netanyahu is unpopular in Israel today and in Israeli politics, it's not clear to me that his actual policies on the war are unpopular. I was just in Israel a week ago, broad consensus. I was struck right to left, ago, broad consensus. I was struck right to left, everyone I spoke to. I mean, really, all the way to the hard left. Everyone hates Bibi and everyone agrees with his policies. Everyone hates Bibi and everyone wants to go into RAFA. They think they have to go into RAFA because they can't win the war without going into RAFA. And when Benny Gantz was in Washington and

London three weeks ago, he said to them, telling us to not go into RAFA is to ask a fire department, you know, when they go to a house burning down, it's to only put out 80% of the fire and leave 20% intact and hope that you won't come back. In other words, Gantz and Bibi, where there is no love lost between those two men, was defending the policy. Yeah, I mean, look, a few thoughts. First of all, attempts to personalize differences with Bibi have done nothing but help his political fortunes. You know, the first thing that happened when Schumer gave his speech is Naftali Bennett, who feels zero love for Bibi. I mean, they're real rivals, stood up in defense of his country's prime minister, because that's what you do when foreign politicians try to meddle in your democratic processes. Now, I actually think what Schumer was trying to do has absolutely

nothing to do with Israel and has everything to do with the Democratic caucus in the United States Senate. What he wanted to say was, okay, the middle ground political position is we stand by Israel, but we're against that son of a bitch, Bibi Netanyahu. And if that's what he was ultimately after, then fine. I mean, his speech makes absolutely no difference in terms of domestic Israeli politics, but it might make some difference in terms of American politics. And in fact, in terms of Schumer's own position atop his Senate caucus. But I think the administration makes a big mistake when it effectively gets behind Schumer's speech. It makes a mistake because it helps Bibi and because it, again,

sends yet another signal that we're really not altogether behind Israel's cause at all. As we discussed earlier in this program, I think that's just foolish. Yeah. I do think when Senate majorities become Senate minorities, and Schumer's not dumb, he can do math. He knows that Democrats are defending many more seats than Republicans are. And there's at best a weak top of the ticket for the Democrats. And he could easily go to the minority. And that's when caucuses tend to rethink their leadership and whether or not they have the

right leaders in place. And so I think you're exactly right. He's trying to manage caucus politics. Before we go to final questions, one is, where do you think relations go between the U.S. and Israel from here in the near term? And I want to forecast out, because to your point, these things change throughout the history, the long history of the U.S.-Israel relationship. But the near to medium term, where does the U.S.-Israel relationship go? Look, they have to come to some sort of face-saving agreement that essentially provides wider humanitarian corridors for Palestinian civilians, which is, you know, as it should be.

We don't want to see Palestinians, civilians, noncombatants starve or suffer in exchange for a green light for an operation in Rafah to bring the war to an end. And I don't think that kind of agreement would be all that difficult. I mean, one of the things Bibi could do is just actually create a temporary zone in Israel itself to say, you know, Palestinians who are willing to go through metal detector tests can come in for a 60-day period while we conduct the operation in Rafah. And, you know, we're going to make sure they're unarmed. And once they come through, they get, you know, medical treatment and food and air conditioned tents and, you know, whatever else is needed. That strikes me as good compromise. In the longer term, I think a lot depends on what happens in November in our elections. But,

you know, the United States doesn't have a better option than in the Middle East than our alliance with Israel. And as we're seeing with the resurgence of Islamic State throughout the region, we need allies. And we don't have a better one than we do in Jerusalem. Before we wrap, Brett, in the last 24 hours, Senator Joseph Lieberman passed away. I had known him for a long time. I know you did too. I think you were in touch with him from time to time as you were writing about US foreign policy. Just general observations about his legacy? You know, John Podhoretz had a gorgeous remembrance for Joe in commentary, really, a first-rate piece of writing and eulogizing. Lieberman was a gentleman. Lieberman was a guy who understood

that there was something larger than the partisan interest. He was a guy who was willing to stand on his moral convictions, whether they were personal and political. And he was a man who did so much to give the Jewish people a good name in the United States and abroad. I think he was a major political figure who proved that thoughtful politicians could both win their elections while working across the aisle in the service of great causes and convictions. And he was that. He embodied that thoroughly. He was also just an extremely gracious, decent, lovely, funny, self-deprecating man. I once ran into him at a security line at LaGuardia Airport in the old LaGuardia, that crummy old terminal B there. And there he was. And I said, you know, Senator Lieberman, how are you doing?

He said, fine, I'm going to give a speech. I think it was in Cleveland somewhere. He said, you know, the grandchildren tuition duty calls. He went from the heights of power to being a loving grandfather who was willing to, you know, just be an ordinary citizen trying to make ends meet for the sake of his family. And my thoughts are with Adasa and his children and grandchildren in the coming days. May his memory be for a blessing. All right, Brett, we will leave it there. Thank you, as always, and I hope to see you soon. Same here. All the best. That's our show for today. To keep up with Brett Stevens, you can find him at the New York Times, nytimes.com. And again, I highly recommend you visit Sapir Journal, sapirjournal.org.

Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.