Plain English with Derek Thompson - Israel at War: Why Did Hamas Attack?

Episode Date: October 10, 2023

What motivated the Hamas terrorist attack? How did Israel fail to stop it? What role is Iran playing in this conflict? What should Americans know about the state of Israel's chaotic internal politics? And what comes next? Today's show has two guests. Dan Raviv is the author of several bestselling books on Israel, Israeli-American relations, and Israeli intelligence. He was a CBS News national and international correspondent for over 40 years. He’s here to provide context on Hamas and Israeli politics. To help us understand some of the regional political dynamics, we have Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, who has been an adviser for several accords and peace talks in the Middle East in the past decade. He is also the president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute. If you have questions, observations, or ideas for future episodes, email us at [e-mail].  Host: Derek Thompson Guests: Dan Raviv & Jeffrey Sonnenfeld  Producer: Devon Manze Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Bill Simmons. Did you know I've had my podcast for 15 years? Do you know that it is the most downloaded sports podcast of all time? Did you know I have guests from the sports world, from the culture world, people who work for the ringer, people outside the ringer, celebrities, experts, you name it. It's on my podcast three times a week. Late Sunday night, late Tuesday night, late Thursday night, the Bill Simmons podcast. Check it out on Spotify. Today's episode is about the horrifying Hamas attack in Israel and the prospect of a new major war in the Middle East.

This past weekend, Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip launched a surprise invasion of southern Israel. They swarmed into Israeli towns, they broke into houses, killed hundreds in broad daylight. They grabbed hostages that they shoved into vans or pinned on getaway four-wheelers and bikes. This is the worst terrorist attack in many decades in Israel, and it is already being likened to that country's 9-11, not only because of the immense sudden loss of life, but also because of the shock. Gaza is a tiny strip of land, approximately 25 miles long, seven miles wide. In the last 75 years, it swung from Egyptian control to Israeli control to partial, then full Palestinian control, with several wars and uprights. markings the turn of each chapter. In the last few years, Israel has been shifting its military focus away from Gaza in the south

to the other major Palestinian territory that is the West Bank, which is controlled by another rival Palestinian party, Fata. This southern border with Gaza was supposed to be impenetrable. But as reported by Reuters, Hamas has been planning for years to penetrate it and invade the neighboring towns. They even built a mock Israeli settlement in Gaza where they reportedly practiced this awful terrorist attack. This weekend, the group staged a four-part operation

as reported by Reuters and Axios. First, Hamas launched thousands of rockets out of Gaza into Israel, overwhelming Israel's famous Iron Dome system, which they can use to shoot down-and-coming rockets, at the same time that fighters flew hang gliders across the border. In the second phase, a commando unit, or several, many commando units, stormed the wall that divides Gaza from the settlements, used explosives to destroy the barriers, and then sped through those cracks in the wall and motorbikes. After the barriers were broken, bulldozers were used to widen the gap so that more fighters could enter Israel in four-wheelers and bikes. Third, militants targeted the Israeli army's southern Gaza headquarters, jammed its communications,

preventing personnel from calling commanders or each other. And finally, the attack itself, which killed hundreds of people, in which Hamas grabbed hostages and drove them back across the punctured border back into Gaza. As it stands, nearly 2,000 people have died, more than 900 Israelis plus hundreds of Palestinians. Thousands more have been wounded. Thousands more will be wounded. And there are now reports that with Israel returning fire back into Gaza,

more than 100,000 Palestinians have been displaced. That is out of the two million that call the Gaza Strip their home. At the time of this recording, 11 American citizens have been confirmed, killed in the attacks, and the U.S. believe several more were kidnapped and taken back to Gaza. The news on its own is dreadful, and the cost in human life is only going to go up. As I just said, Israel has returned fire back into the Gaza Strip, sending over a barrage of rockets that have destroyed several military buildings, but also brought down and turned to rubble, apartments and mosques.

A ground invasion is coming. Israel has now called for a full siege of the Gaza Strip, which is very dense and very, very poor. According to the Washington Post, Israel announced they will be shutting off electricity plus inflows of food and fuel, as Israel squeezes Hamas to destroy their ability to wage further war. It could get worse. A broader war between Israel and its enemies is not out of the question, especially given escalating reports that the attack was strongly supported by Iran, a longtime enemy of Israel that also bankrolls the militant group Hezbollah. out of Lebanon. A multi-front war between Hamas in the south, Hezbollah to the north, and terrorist cells to the east would be shattering. And while live war between major powers in the Middle East is bad enough in its face,

of course, in the broader context, it is coinciding with another major war between Russia and Ukraine, and saber-rattling in China as it eyes Taiwan, and an ethnic cleansing in the Central Asian state of Azerbaijan. And meanwhile, Serbia is building up troops along its border with Kosovov, and, and meanwhile, Serbia, this is clearly a moment of tremendous global instability. In the last few days, as I've obsessively read and watched reports about this murderous attack at a rave and families hiding in their panic rooms as they hear fighters shooting at their neighbors, I felt a lot of anger, a lot of sadness that this part of the world seems so trapped by

this cycle of recrimination and hate, but also quite bewildered. How did this happen? Why is it? happening now, is Hamas attacking randomly or is there a specific strategy? How could an invasion of this magnitude been kept a secret from an Israeli defense and intelligence community that is supposedly obsessive about tracking threats along its own borders? How could it remain a secret to our defense and intelligence communities? Overall, what I've been really hungry for is context. So today's conversation will, I hope, provide a great deal.

context. We have two guests today. Dan Raviv is the author of several best-selling books on Israel, Israeli-American relations and Israeli intelligence. He was a CBS News national and international correspondent for more than 40 years, and he's here to help provide context on Hamas, Gaza, and Israeli politics. And then to help us understand some of the regional political dynamics, we have Jeffrey Sondfeld, who has been an advisor to several accords and peace talks in the Middle East in the last decade, He is president of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute. I'm Derek Thompson. This is plain English.

Dan Raviv, welcome to the show. Real pleasure to be here. Thank you. Jeff Sondfeld, welcome. Thanks. I'm delighted to be here as well. So I don't always do an explicit table of contents for these podcasts, but there's so much for us to talk about here that I want to keep myself and listeners focused on the goals of this conversation. There are three pieces of context that I most want to understand better from the next 45 minutes to one hour of our talks.

Number one, I want to know a little bit more about history, Gaza and Hamas and their relationship to Israel. Number two, I want to understand a little bit more about the political context, Israel's relationship to its neighbors and the internal politics of Israel and how they might be relevant for our discussion of this war. And finally, number three, I want us to talk about the future, the implications of the invasion of Israel, implications for the Middle East, implications for regional war and peace and even global markets, international relations. Does that table of contents make sense to both of you? That was good to me. Good. Dan, let's start with you. In the open, I've already outlined the horror of this past weekend. Before we go forward, I'd like to go backward and to level set on a few times.

for our audience. Hamas and the Gaza Strip, how would you characterize the relationship between Hamas in Gaza and Israel just before this weekend's invasion? Well, just to be clear, no direct communication at all. Hamas is a radical Islamic faction in Palestinian society. It's been ruling the Gaza Strip since 2007, the result of a civil war in which Hamas fighters were killing Palestinian authority al-Fata fighters. That's the late Yasser Arafat's long-time movement. They're still pretty much in charge of most of the West Bank. But the Gaza Strip became Hamas territory, very radical group, absolutely committed publicly to never accepting a Jewish state of Israel, saying that historic Palestine, all of it's been occupied by the Jews, not since the

Six-day War, not since a few years ago, but since the creation of Israel in 1948, Hamas doesn't accept Israel. Therefore, Israel won't talk to Hamas. So is there constant fighting? No, skirmishes from time to time. Israel spent a lot of money, reported to be a billion dollars, building a wall and security fence around Gaza. Gaza residents and their supporters around the world say it's a prison, biggest prison camp ever. And by the way, on the other side, a smaller border with Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula. There's also a wall. The Egyptians also block Gazans from leaving without special permission. So Gazans are locked up. They're misfortune because of the way the Hamas government has been since 2007. Now, these occasional skirmishes, they make it in the news.

Hamas, sometimes another radical group in Gaza, Palestinian Islamic jihad, fires rockets across the border, over the border fence, especially at nearby Israeli town. there's an area in which tens of thousands of Israelis live. Some of them, by the way, used to be settlers. There were Jewish settlers and the Israeli army in Gaza, occupying Gaza until Israel left in the year 2005. So a lot of Israelis still live close to Gaza. Do they feel safe? Yeah, on the whole, till this past Saturday, sometimes there'd be rocket fire,

but especially since Israel invented the Iron Dome Missile Defense System, Iron Dome shoots down more than 90% of the rockets overhead. It's an incredible thing. And maybe Israelis near the border feel safer until this past Saturday. So again, until this past weekend, things were bad as usual. But the border gates usually had a little official opening. You'd be absolutely checked. UN aid workers could go in.

Some Gaza residents had medical permits and could go out for treatment in Israel or in the West Bank. And aid was coming in in the sense of food trucks, cash aid from the country of Qatar. You know, things were normal tense. But again, this past Saturday changed everything. You said the people in Gaza are locked up. And Gaza has been characterized by some as the largest open-air prison in the world. And their movement is clearly constricted on both sides, on the Egyptian side and on the Israeli side. Can you tell me a little bit more about their movement?

Can they get out? How do they get out? And this is obviously a question that's really important, given that Israel is now not having been invaded, now potentially marching their own soldiers into the Gaza's trip. It's a small area considering there are two million Palestinians living in Gaza, and some of it's very crowded, the city of Gaza and the Han Yunus refugee camp, which has real concrete buildings, by the way. But then there's a lot of open space, kind of heading down the post toward the Egyptian Sinai Peninsula. There's open space, but can they go into Egypt? Like I say, Egypt considers Gaza Palestinians to be a security problem, so Egypt's not easygoing about it. But if you buy a ticket, if you were a Gaza Palestinian and you

got a ticket to Cairo for medical treatment or to catch a flight to the outside world, you'd probably get a permit from the Egyptians in normal times. And on the Israeli side, as I said, in more quiet times also. You can get a permit for medical treatment or even perhaps to see your family in the West Bank. And by the way, Israel also granted on a typical day as many as 20,000 work permits. Palestinians in Gaza do construction work in Israel. Yes, it's known they're paid relatively little. They're not members of the labor union.

But again, in normal times, there was this kind of modus vivendi where the Hamas government or faction hates Israel. Israel totally distrust Hamas and generally would rather work with the more moderate Al-Fata faction that runs the West Bank. But there was kind of a balance. But again, from the Israeli point of view, who knew what Hamas was planning for October 7? Jeffrey, let's bring you in. One of the biggest unanswered questions about these attacks is why now? And this weekend, you and Dan wrote an essay in time that put forward a pretty interesting hypothesis, which is at the timing of these attacks suggests that Hamas, possibly with the backing of Iran,

is trying to derail talks between Israel and some of her Arabic neighbors, including Saudi Arabia. You write, quote, by all accounts, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United States were inching closer toward a transformative three-way deal, which would have seen Israel and Saudi formally recognize each other within a security, defense, and economic partnership with the U.S. Just a week ago, Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman said that every day we get closer to a deal, while Netanyahu similarly stated, he was confident of forging a historic peace between his country and Saudi Arabia. Saturday's invasion of Israel by Hamas seems to derail that in the short term. End quote.

Jeffrey the Saudi deal would have followed the Abraham Accords, which were bilateral agreements between Israel and Bahrain and the UAE. You were an active advisor in those talks. Help us place this attack in the context of this diplomatic momentum that had been building since 2019. Yes. Excellent question, Derek. This didn't just happen because the weather was right or because it was somebody's birthday or they wanted to celebrate the end of Simchast Torah.

That isn't why it happened. What I catalyzed this was the fact that genuine people, was becoming increasingly tangible. As you referred to it, the agreement that formally signed started extraordinary momentum three years ago with the UAE and Bahrain, Morocco has joined as well, and other nations. In fact, the conference where this all began was in 2019, and I was there, I helped organize it. So just to be clear, you think this attack is a response to ongoing talks between Israel and Arabic neighbors. Well, you know the old George Santayana admonition that those who forget the lessons of history

are bound to repeat them. But the problem with that quote is that it doesn't tell us that the echoes of history are sometimes larger and more devastating when they rebound. And they're motivated. There's a purpose. What do we learn? Say, the last time this happened was the Israeli-Palestinian peace plan in 2000, right on the heels of the Camp David Summit. there was a devastating second intifada that ruined any dreams of normalization resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians needlessly. What provoked that? It was that they were coming to terms quite successfully.

And of all things, Yasser Arafat was going to make this happen. Somebody who, of course, said a long career once as a terrorist himself, now had shown incredible statesmanship, and there was a good deal of excitement that this was going to come to past. So by all accounts, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and U.S. were building up on the earlier Bahrain issued Abraham Accords, and we're joining with Bahrain and UAE and Morocco for regional progress, regional solutions that were focusing heavily on improving the conditions of life for Palestinians. So what you're saying is like we've seen this movie before, large attacks against Israel, like previous Intifada, spurred by the prospect of regional progress between

Israel and her Arabic neighbors. I know that you and Dan potentially have a strongly helped theory that these attacks were narrowly designed to scuttle talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia. I want to hold on this point because I think it's really important and I also think it's really complicated. The Wall Street Journal has reported that indeed they have people on record saying this attack was encouraged by and partly planned by Iran, which supports Hamas. Before I complicate their reporting, Dan, can you talk a little bit about the relationship between Iran and Hamas?

Well, first, the differences that keep them apart or keep their relationship not quite so intimate, and that would basically be this. Iran is the leader of Shia Islam, the Shiites, whereas the Palestinians of, well, all of the Palestine area, but certainly Hamas in Gaza, very, very religious group. are part of Sunni Islam, Sunni Shiites, they see the world for centuries now quite differently. They don't usually get along, but Iran has a huge goal, which is to weaken Israel. Think of Israel and Iran as rivals for Middle East domination. Israel claims it just wants to survive. Of course, Israel's critics and enemies say, no, Israel wants to expand all the time. Iran also claims it just wants to survive, but of course its critics, including most Western countries, including the United States government, consider that Iran is fueling terrorism and not only Hamas in the Gaza

strip, but Hezbollah in Lebanon, which is a Shiite Muslim faction. Hezbollah, Iran are very, very intimate. And together they saved Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad, after the civil war in Syria broke out in 2011. So with Russia's help, Iran and Hezbollah kind of saved him. So there's a lot going on, and it's around Israel, of course. And again, according to Western analysts, certainly the Israelis, Iran found that Hamas needs money. They're filling all caged in there. They can't export, well, frankly, anything except for, I guess, terrorist ideology.

And so Iran found ways of smuggling in money and goods, weapons. believe it or not, some trucks actually make it from ports in the Ethiopia area through Sudan, up through part of Egypt, through the Sinai Peninsula, and actually make it somehow through the Gaza Strip. It's incredible. It's Iranian smuggling, and some of it's done by ship in the Mediterranean and manages to get cash and weapons into Gaza. So Hamas is obviously very grateful to Iran. And just this past month, Gaza leaders got out. I guess through Egypt, almost for sure, and visited Tehran, and visited the Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic revolutionary state. And so it's widely suspected that Iran gave the go-ahead to this big operation, which is totally in Iran's favor, in part because of what Jeff Sanofel just spoke about, which is that Iran desperately does not want this Saudi-Arabian Israeli deal fostered by the United States. It could include Saudi Arabia getting nuclear energy legalized. It, of course, would strengthen Saudi Arabia. don't want Israel to seem like a success that's more accepted in the region. And so there you are.

I also feel Iran is using Hamas as an instrument, a proxy that the Iranians gave the green light to this very ambitious operation trying to penetrate Israel, which to everyone's surprise was a huge success for the terrorists. Now that I've given you all this time to explain this theory, I do want to emphasize that it is just a theory. We don't know for sure. You tell a compelling story. The Wall Street Journal has its own compelling reporting. It is a course possible that this invasion, this terrorist attack, is not directly or even remotely about talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia. There was one little detail in the reporting that I read that suggested it might be a little bit more, some combination of ad hoc and long-term strategy.

So, for example, Reuters reported in this really widely disseminated piece that Amos seems to have been planning this attack for years. They, years ago, seemed to have created this sort of Potemkin Israeli village that they could use to practice this attack. Do you see any tension, any discrepancy between the idea that Hamas has been quietly planning this for years, maybe even long before talks with Israel and Saudi Arabia began? And this idea that it was the escalation of talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia that triggered the timing of these attacks. Great. Dan will unravel any confusion that I create, but I would say, no, there's no inconsistency whatsoever.

As the die was cast, this was very clear. I was talking to you about the very explicit, widely publicized, quite tangible progress laid out in 2019. So you've had, you know, four years of time. That isn't four months. That's four years that we saw very exciting tangible progress. And Saudi had representatives there. The finance minister was there.

The very top of the Saudi government was there along with every Gulf Coast state, who was not there? Iran. Was that, you know, was that an accident? No. It's obvious that, you know, we don't, I can't know. The Wall Street Journal piece stands alone. I don't know we can definitely connect the dots. Israeli intelligence, I don't believe, has actually confirmed with the Wall Street Journal's reporting. But certainly, they're sending $100 million a year of weapons. There are more than 70% of the entire expenditure on weapons that Hamas has comes to from Iran. That's a pretty strong statement. The money tells you everything you need to know right there. No matter what whispered conversations or emails somebody has, just look at the money.

That says it all. And then there's four years of history of building up seeing that this threat is coming as Iran sees it. And yes, the Saudis want the nuclear assistance. In fact, Poland has just gotten that. I was just over in Poland two weeks ago. And they're very excited about a major deal they have with Westinghouse and Bechtel, with the U.S. support to help build nuclear reactors there. They want the same things in Saudi Arabia. There's a $100 billion defense deal that's been held up, that they want to get some more equipment in from major U.S. defense contractors they desperately need. And, of course, the U.S. needs oil. And the Saudis, sort of the public secret here, is the Saudis have cut back by over a third the oil that they were pumping under President Trump.

Trump. What are they up to? Who knows? Do they want to help to help the return of President Trump? They want to help President Putin? Who knows what? But they were pumping 13 million barrels a day, and they voluntarily cut it down to $9 billion a day, and it is nothing to do with profit margins. They're already making 75 percent profit margin. Tiffany's doesn't make that. So let's reset the table here. We've touched on Hamas and its relationship to Fata in the West Bank. we've touched on a compelling hypothesis for the timing of this attack. It's possible relationship to Saudi Arabia, Hamas's relationship to Iran. I think we finally have to talk about Israel. Dan, how in the world did Israel miss this? The barrier between Gaza and Israel is supposedly

sealed not only by concrete and steel, but also by technology, drones and other tech. Israel spends so much money, devote so much talent and treasure on intelligence and military preparedness, how do you think Israel missed this attack? Overall, I'd have to say complacency. That's similar to the accepted reasons for the Yom Kippur war, Israel being taken by surprise 50 years ago, that Israel thought Egypt and Syria would never do this. Even as there were spies, especially a very well-placed man in Cairo, right there in the Egyptian government, who told Israel that week this Saturday, there's going to be an invasion crossing the Suez Canal, Egypt's going to do it, and Israel's,

now Israel's military intelligence couldn't possibly believe it. So even if there was a tip, I find it difficult to believe there was no tip and we don't know. So even if there were tips and indications and a few intercepted communications and text messages, then I'm afraid that the Israeli concept would have been so complacent is to think Hamas isn't going to do that way, which again I find weird because the Israelis cared about even the possibility that a small squad of Hamas fighters would cross. It's astounded. But Israel is taking a firm stand on the following since Saturday. Every political official, every officer in the

army. This is not the time to investigate or to ask those questions. There will be plenty of time. Right now we're at war and we have to win this war. We'll talk about the war aims later. So I'll say it's complacency above all. One other factor folks may not have thought of normally. it is well known that Benjamin Netanyahu's government since last November has right-wing ministers. Right-wing in Israel means they want to keep the territory forever. They want to keep the West Bank forever, largely because of the Jewish roots, you know, back in the Bible. And so they don't want to give up the West Bank ever. They don't want an independent Palestinian state.

Netanyahu has even, you know, he even shook Arafat's hand as part of negotiations, but not those right-wing ministers he brought into the coalition. And so they have stirred up a lot of things in the West Bank, the former Jordanian territory. And so there's a lot of trouble lately between Jewish settlers in the West Bank and local Palestinians, including some Fattah supporters, some Hamas supporters, some local heroes who have guns. There have been bombs on the side of the road. There have been clashes. And so because of what those right-wing ministers want, a focus on the West Bank and keeping it forever,

Israel and its army took their focus away from Gaza, and they were complacent about everything happening on that. I said I wanted to talk about the internal politics of Israel, and I think this is a good place to have that conversation. Dan, as you alluded to, in the last few years, Israel has, they've dissolved government after government. It's been one messy election after another. Right now, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been decried by Israeli moderates

for a number of reasons. his effort to undermine bribery charges, the fact that his party pushed through this judicial reform plan that inspired protests throughout the country that were widely seen on television, even in the U.S. As you mentioned, he's allowed settlers to expand their presence in the West Bank, diverted some IDF forces to guard their presence in the West Bank. It's important, I think, not to overdetermine blame here. It's not as if any one of these things caused or triggered the Hamas invasion.

but there are a lot of suggestions now in the media that even as Israel has been a party to these regional agreements and trying to make peace some of its Arabic neighbors, somewhat ironically, this internal turmoil might have distracted its leadership from the threat from Amas. Jeffrey first, then, Dan, back to you. What do you make of this hypothesis? This hypothesis is a very good one, and it's a very good one. old one, as Abraham Lincoln has declared, and we've heard it quoted so often in the Illinois State Capitol in 1858, a house divided against itself cannot stand, that you have the disunity

and the distraction. As Dan was explaining so well, the focus saw because they're trying to placate political right and key cabinet members on defense in the West Bank, took their eye off the ball, something which we didn't mention, and I believe nobody in Israel would talk to you about right now, and five days ago, half of Israel would have talked to you about it, which had to do with the judicial reforms, highly controversial, with all these reserves saying they weren't going to serve unless this effort to destabilize balance of powers and the democracy was resolved. This is a way of trying to, many thought, protect demagogic corrupt instincts of Netanyahu with corruption and greed and bribery. Nobody talks about that now. The country is, as you know,

as Ukraine right now, and, you know, good for them. But that was a huge distraction, and that was bait. And by the way, the disunity in the U.S., not having a House of Representatives was Kevin McCarthy's meltdown last week, also makes it less likely that Congress can respond nimbly. People notice that. So I think the distraction of the disunity is a huge point. And I'm glad you talk about. The internal politics here and the internal politics, especially in Israel, were highly relevant. It might surprise you that a group like Hamas is actually watching all that, including maybe American politics, but certainly Israeli politics. Israel is their big foe. They're monitoring everything in the Israeli media. You know, it's suspected or said that Hamas even has spies within the borders of Israel. Well, yeah, almost for sure. or the Palestinians who take their sides and send text messages with things they see. But yeah, they monitor Israel, and especially with Iran's upper-level advice as to what could be a good time, is the Israeli enemy weakened right now.

Yeah, it seems very sensible to me that they would think that Israel is distracted and weakened, and it could be a good time to really knock Israel off balance. And I can't say it often enough. The terrorists succeeded this past Saturday. Let's talk a little bit about the Israeli response. the latest reports that I have read, Say Netanyahu has formally announced his intentions to send ground troops into Gaza. Jeff, let's start with you,

and then again, back to Dan. What is Israel's endgame now? Well, I think Dan has some very good thoughts in what an endgame would be, and I won't speak for him, but I think it has a lot to do with eradicating the control that Hamas has and getting rid of Hamas

as a viable governing faction of terrorists and looking to the Palestinian Authority where they do have a very effective. You know, it was Hamas that drove out the, what was it, Dan in 2005, drove out the Palestinian authority and a boss who leads it in his late 80s and don't know how much longer he'll be in control, but there's a belief that there is somebody you can work with there. The door-to-door fighting, the high-rise apartments, all the tunnels make it not only very hard, but just between us a lot harder than Afghanistan that we promised would just take a few weeks or a few months to clear the Taliban out of Afghanistan.

And lo and behold, 15 years later, we'd gotten nowhere and lost ground entirely. So we do have a harbinger of what, you know, nobody talks about what if the effort to eradicate Hamas fails. Dan, clearly regime change is at the top of the list for Israel. But regime change in the Middle East is messy, messy. work. Maybe this isn't exactly akin to America's wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but what historical parallel do you think we should be looking to here to understand the contours of Israel's forthcoming war in Gaza? Our parallel to study in brief is Lebanon 1982, when Menacham-Beghan's

government and General Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon to try to clear out the PLO, which did not dominate all of Lebanon, Israel's northern neighbor on the coast, but the PLO had kind of its own territory. And the Israelis were sick of all sorts of little terrorist attacks from the north and found an excuse of one incident to cross over in a massive way, determined not only to clear out the PLO and make Arifat leave, which he did, he was forced to move to Tunisia in North Africa. The PLO people left as mediated by Western countries. But Israel went on to want to change the Lebanese government and install a Christian Lebanese ally affairs, Bashir Jamil, and then he was blown up. We know now that that was Syria that assassinated him.

And so the much weaker brother, I mean, Jamil was installed. And Israel said, oh, at least sort of a friendly government. And then there was the massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila in Beirut by those Christian phalanjists, allied with President Jamile, the whole world turns against the whole thing. Ariel Sharon is blamed for not stopping the Christian Philanches from doing a horrible massacre. Israel's embarrassed, pulls out of Beirut, hangs out southern Lebanon until the year 2018 years more of a fairly fruitless occupation trying to block the Shiite Muslims of Hezbollah. So Lebanon became Israel's Vietnam, a quag.

Now, Lebanon's pretty big. It's a small country, but much bigger than the Gaza Strip. I think the Israelis are probably overconfident, but they are incredibly intent on going in on the ground into the Gaza Strip, something they have hesitated and didn't want to do for years because of what Jeff Sanofel told us it'll be so bloody and awful on both sides. In addition, more than 100 Israeli hostages being held, women, elderly people, all sorts of people, even U.S. passport holders. Israel doesn't want to kill them, but if you do an operation like that, you're accepting the notion that some will be killed. by your own attack or Hamas kills them. But Israel's that angry. This is a war out of anger after what happened this past Saturday and how many Israelis were killed and the humiliation of having Israel's border crossed by a terrorist gang that has no air force and doesn't seem to have high technology. It's humiliating for Israel. And that's why wall to wall in the Israeli political constellation, there is a desire to go into Gaza, to get revenge. But this time, a

accomplish something because there have been other little probes into Gaza. They are intent on overthrowing the Hamas government on finding their leaders. And in his piece at the Atlantic.com, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Lauren said, almost certainly the deaths of Hamas' leaders, as though Israel doesn't intend to quit until they're dead or gone. If I could add something to steal a point of something that Dan just wrote in an article we're drafting now, is that this myth of inventive. instability that's been shattered, has them furious, that this is the, not only the perhaps the most hardline government in Israel's history, but since the War of Independence. But it is amazingly,

the first time we've had such intrusions that even in the Six-Day War in 1967, as Dan has written, Israeli territory, there was no serious advancement into Israeli territory. The huge Sinai Sinai Pinsville that was captured. The Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Golan Heights were great victories then. And the Yon Kippur War, exactly 50 years ago, which Dan and I actually covered together for news radio,

the enemy armies only captured brief pieces of those territories, but not the original within the 1967 boundaries before that. So this is a huge change. It's a huge, you know, a shovel to the face. Well, obviously, the U.S. does not need a lesson

in how waging war out of humiliation and anger can lead to an expensive and costly quagmire. This has already been called Israel's 9-11, and it would clearly be beyond unfortunate if Israel had a similar 20-year experience as the U.S. had after our 9-11. Dan, you just read from an article in the Atlantic published by Michael Oren,

former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., deputy minister in a prime minister's office. I actually want to quote from the penultimate paragraph of that article and have both of you respond to it. This is Michael Oren writing, quote, the conclusion of this war could still be far off.

With an Israeli ground incursion into Gaza almost certain to be launched, it's difficult to imagine Hamas in the West Bank, Hezbollah and Lebanon, and even radicalized Israeli Arabs remaining passive. A regional war

in which terrorists fire tens of thousands of rockets at Israel and Israeli forces fight on multiple fronts is a very real possibility. Iran might also exploit the chaos to further enrich its uranium stockpile and rush to make nuclear bombs. This is a cavalcade of near worst-case scenarios, a single front war between Israel and Gaza, becoming a multi-front war between Israel and Gaza in the south, Israel and Hezbollah in the north, maybe Israel and terrorists out of the West Bank to the east. also Iran coming into the fray, and meanwhile, all this work that people have been doing on Israel normalizing relations with her Arabic neighbors being scuttled.

Dan, you first and then, Jeff, what worry here in this laundry list of deeply profound worries do you find most plausibly chilling? I'd say most plausible is that the Hezbollah, the Shiite radical party in Lebanon, which gets everything. from Iran will open fire. They have reportedly more than 100,000 rockets ready. And some of them are, you know, good Iranian rockets that, in other words, could be aimed at targets. And they'll go even farther than in that war between Israel and Lebanon in the summer of 2006. And so if Iran decides to stir up even more trouble, that's what I think is most likely. The Israeli's, citizens who are Arabs, and mind you, 24% of Israel's 9.8 million people, in other words, about 2.4 million people, are not Jewish. They are Israeli citizens. They are Arabs. Many of them

call themselves Palestinian Israelis, Israeli Palestinians. And yeah, this is one of those moments. They have to think about who they sympathize with more, but I have been reading blog posts by some who have huge followers saying that what Hamas did crossing the border into Israel and slaughtering people, like at that big outdoor music festival and on the streets, et cetera, and killed quite a few Arabs, dozens of Arab citizens of Israel. They're rejecting Hamas, like, razy. So I really don't think that the Israeli citizens who are Arab are going to rise up. Don't fear that one.

The West Bank, yeah, the thing is that we talked about the Al-FATA relative moderate faction running the Palestinians government, so to speak, which is, you know, rules part of the West Bank. Israel kind of keeps an eye on them and limits them. But in any event, those are the moderates. There's a rising number of Hamas fighters and agents in the West Bank. And so Ambassador Orrin was worrying about that could happen. So as I say, my biggest worry is northern Israel. By the way, that is a big reason that the United States move the sixth fleet.

That is that Gerald Ford, an aircraft carrier, and the destroyers and other ships that go with it. much closer to the shores of Lebanon, Israel, and Gaza. What's the U.S. therefore? Well, believe it or not, if some U.S. citizen hostages are released, then the U.S. military will get involved in shepherding them out of the country and getting them back to the U.S. sure, but it's to make a threat. And in my opinion, if Hezbollah does too much and really endangers Israel's security in Israel's north so that Israel can't cope with it,

I do expect the guns on those American destroyers and battleships to be aimed at the Hezbollah units in southern level. I think the U.S. would do that. Jeff, what do you think are the implications of war between Israel and Gaza are for Biden's relationships in this region? Biden's relationship with Netanyahu, Biden's ongoing talks, or the White House's ongoing talks, with the Saudis.

Well, I think that's a great transition point because an implication of what Dan's talking about has to do with something foundational in geopolitics and economics that Lebanon is very weak and very unstable right now. And with Hezbollah controlling the southern part of Lebanon, they're not in that strong shape. And I think they're aware that I think they're conscious of the genuine threat that Dan talks about, of being a target of U.S. military intervention, forcefully, should they make this unsurvivable, an existential threat for Israel from the north?

You also have an interesting challenge for the Biden administration, where we've seen almost every oil industry expert you'll read or talk about a year and a half ago got it completely wrong. They were talking about these soaring oil prices. They were going to J.P. Morgan saying $400 a barrel and things like that. We never got even very close to maybe $120 a barrel. And even with the crisis right now, we're still in the

high 80s today, which is stunning. And mainly it's really been between the 60s and the 80s, is that this is something that just motivates the Saudis enormously. They want a stable, global economy. They like a nicer slice of things. And in fact, they had militated for some anxiety with Israel's success after the Yom Kippur war, that's when they wound up getting control of Aramco. Is Nixon and Kissinger panicked and basically gave it to them nominally that was 100% controlled by U.S. companies is that they're looking at the economic outcomes here. But there's also another undercurrent that's very confusing on the Shia-Sunni divides here

are less simple than meet the eye, that as I'm sure all your listeners know, that, that Iran is Shia and Saudi Arabia as Sunni and a lot of the Gulf Coast states split out along with Saudi Arabia. But Hezbollah, of course, is strangely, they're Shia. So if you're going to try to figure out, you know, how the, and those are very deep religious divides. So Hamas and Hezbollah have very different histories, but they have also different religious philosophies as to Iran. And Iran has shown itself to be quite expansionist and interventionist, which threatens a lot of the Shias of the Gulf Coast states that has, again, economic and religious undertones to it. So I can't see that they're going to be passive either. So they've basically been saying to the Palestinians,

enough of this already. This is Gulf Coast states and Saudi Arabia. Let's move on and resolve this conflict, and it's being stirred up as we began this discussion with Iran. Let's move on to my final question, which is really more broadly about just like the state of global disorder. This is David Leonhardt writing in the New York Times, quote, Russia has started the largest war in Europe since World War II. China has become more bellicose toward Taiwan. India has embraced a virulent nationalism. Israel has formed the most extreme government in his history, and on Saturday morning, Hamas brazenly attacks Israel. end quote. That doesn't even mention the state of ethnic cleansing in Armenia.

You know, altogether, Dan, are you concerned that these are signs that the world is slipping into a new period of global disarray? I'm afraid I am. I'm older than New Derek. I've got grandchildren. They live in the United States of America. To be frank, I sometimes do. My wife and I are on the road all the time. foreign houses, foreign places. Still involved with, you know, keeping up with news and politics. Tut, tut, tut with the other expatriates we meet, Brits, Australians, Canadians, Americans. The world's horrible, thank heavens, we're here in some corner of Costa Rica or Italy or whatever.

Yeah, so we know that our choice of lifestyle has been because of that. So you ask whether I'm worried, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I'm generally an optimist about things, so if things swing too far over, to one way that pendulum will swing back. Order will follow disorder. True democracy, freedom, justice will follow a trend toward fascism and narcissism among leaders who spread fear, sometimes helped by some parts of the media. We will swing back to an era that, well, to me as a lifelong CBS broadcaster, to the Walter Cronkite era when it comes to the media. I fear not. So, of course, I'm worried. And so I look to good government.

and good people to do their best in every case. Solutions will be imperfect. You can't block some things that seem inevitable. Globalization. People will be moving around the world. You can direct it to get good outcomes, of course, on a personal level of your families, because maybe that's all you've got.

That's where I'm at there. Jeff, I'd love you to answer the question as well, and it seems to me that, you know, is someone involved in these treaties and peace accords and negotiations between countries in a period that is, at least in late Paxamericana or post-Pox Americana. The U.S. is not the power that we were

in the 1990s, early 2000s, potentially. Whether events like these, or how events like these, threaten your belief that the U.S. can impose a kind of world order over parts of the world that are in disorder? Well, this is the only point in discussion I disagree with my colleague and co-author and lifelong friend Dan Reveveve. He should go back to reading Voltaire's Candide and realize that the horrors of humanity have existed,

country by country, continent by continent, and his time in once fascist Italy or Latin America is not going to provide any safe escape. is that what we see and have seen before is that we're not for courageous individuals, because this is not a question of just economics, geopolitics, and mass massacres. We've always, sadly, we've always had them. What we haven't had before are two countries that each have around 6,000 thermonuclear weapons pointed at each other. That's what's different. Everything else we've talked about in this show is tragically more of the same of what we had through history.

to break it, had it not been for this more of the most right-wing isolationist in American history, I believe it's a senator from Illinois, a Republican, of course, Arthur Vandenberg, who had an epiphany in 1929. And he decided that to change his perspective, he went through a sharp break and wound up becoming in favor of NATO, but especially in favor of the Marshall Plan, is that we saw the leaders from DeGal to Churchill that took us through World War II, were all deposed after the war instead of being celebrated. And we saw Europe an incredible disarray. And there were strong right-wing elements. Franco lasted, and some people say you're still out running things. He lasted for a very long time in Spain.

What happened is we saw some people show leadership. And Arthur Vanderberg led the GOP to back General George Marshall and Truman to rebuild with the Marshall Plan was something about three times the cost of what we need to put into Ukraine. That was remarkable that that happened then, and we can see that will happen now. There will be strong leaders who recognize that America first doesn't mean America alone. Dan Raviv, Jeff Sondonfeld. Thank you both very, very much. Real pleasure, Derek. Plain English was hosted and reported by me, Derek Thompson, and produced by Devin Manzi.

We'll see you back here every Tuesday for a brand new episode. Have a great way.