Pod Save the World - Hospitals Under Siege In Gaza

Episode Date: November 15, 2023

Tommy and Ben discuss the latest news out of Israel and Gaza, including the legality of targeting hospitals, French President Emmanuel Macron’s call for a ceasefire, the growing divide between the US and Israel on long-term governance of Gaza, efforts to rescue the 240 hostages held by Hamas and militant groups, and first-hand accounts from two innocent people caught in the middle of this war. They also discuss the UK’s cabinet shakeup and the return of David Cameron, the nightmare facing Afghans expelled from Pakistan, and the APEC Summit in California where Biden and Xi Jinping will meet. Then Tommy speaks with historian, professor and author Yuval Noah Harari about what it would take for Israel and Palestinians to reach a peace agreement, and there’s a special surprise for Ben at the end. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.  To support people in Afghanistan go to Uplift Afghanistan: https://www.upliftafghanistan.org/ To support Oxfam's humanitarian efforts go to https://www.oxfamamerica.org

Welcome to Pots Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. And why is everyone fighting on Capitol Hill today? It really is kind of a banner day up there. I mean, like, Kevin McCarthy shoved a guy on the kidney. That meathead Oklahoma senator that I've never heard about or seen before. Yeah, with a really strange name. Fought a teamster from Boston at a committee hearing. Which was not a good idea. Never fight the teamsters. A Boston teamster. It was like a long list.

A Boston teamster named O'Brien is not someone you went to. Sean O'Brien is not the committee. The list of people I don't want to fight are Boston Teamsters, anyone with the cauliflower ear. And then James Comer told Congressman Jared Moskowitz that he looks like a smurf at a committee hearing. This is a good reminder that it is not just Donald Trump that is setting a less than stellar example for our children and tummy. Yeah, our government's a clown show. Society is breaking down. Not great, but we have a very, we have a good show for you guys today. We're going to talk about the latest from Gaza, including Israel's targeting hospitals that they claim Hamas is using to conceal military installation.

We're going to talk about disagreements between the U.S. and Israel, about long-term planning and governance in Gaza. The ways this conflict is escalating for the United States in particular. And we're also going to talk about the effort to get back the estimated 240 hostages in Gaza. And we're going to hear from an Israeli woman who has family members being held hostage by Hamas and from a woman sheltering with her family in Gaza and just hearing about what a day in her life is like. And then we're going to talk about speaking of government dysfunction, the major shakeup in the British government. That'll be a fun one. Refugees being forced out of Pakistan, President Biden's upcoming meeting with Chinese president

Xi Jinping. And then you will hear my interview with historian, philosopher, and author Yuval Harari. I think I heard Obama promoting his books back in the day. Sapiens was one of those books that tore through the Obama White House in 2016 because Barack Obama was taken to quoting at meetings. Interesting. Well, we talk about whether Hamas or Israel is doing a better job achieving their political goals. We'll talk about the state of free speech in Israel and a lot more.

Very smart, very thoughtful guy. Like a nice step back conversation. No, and he was quite active in the opposition to BB's efforts to dismantle Israeli democracy. Yeah, he was a real leader in speaking out about that, which is important and feels like a million years ago. So let's turn to Gaza Bend because it's been more than five weeks since Hamas launched the terrorist attack on Israel. They killed more than 1,200 people. The Israeli response, which started with airstrikes and now includes this full ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, is showing no signs of slowing down.

The Gaza Health Ministry says more than 11,200 Palestinians have been killed since October 7th. UNICEF says 700,000 children in Gaza have been internally displaced and forced to leave their homes, often with nothing but the clothes on their back. Hospitals throughout Gaza have been forced to shut down due to lack of fuel to run their generators. The reports from these hospitals are just a nightmare. The New York Times, The Daily did an episode earlier this week that we all listened to, and I think all wept by ourselves in our homes. There's surgeries without anesthesia, babies being removed from incubators that are run out of power,

bodies decomposing and a huge risk of illness. The Israeli military is surrounded the Al-Shifa Hospital, where it says Hamas is built a military command complex below that facility. Doctors who work at the hospital deny that there's Hamas infrastructure at that site. But on Tuesday, White House spokesman John Kirby said that based on U.S. intelligence, the White House has determined that Hamas is in fact operating out of several hospitals in Gaza, including al-Shifa. President Biden was asked if he had expressed specific concerns about Israel's targeting of hospitals

and his conversations with the Bibi Nanyahu. Here's a clip. Have you expressed any specific concerns to Israel on that, sir? Well, you know, I have not been reluctant in expressing my concerns what's going on. And is my hope and expectation that there will be less intrusive action relative to the hospital. We're in contact and with the Israelis. Also, there is an effort to take this pause to deal with release of prisoners. And that's being negotiated as well with the Qatari's engaged.

and so I remain somewhat hopeful, but the hospital must be protected. Not the strongest language there from Biden, Ben? Yeah, there's a couple of things going on here. I mean, first of all, with respect to hospitals, you know, obviously, if Hamas is using hospitals to stage equipment or to hide in tunnels underneath, that tells you a lot about Hamas, it tells you that they don't value civilian life on any side. at the same time, that doesn't mean it's okay to treat hospitals as military targets.

And we've talked on this podcast about war crimes. And you don't say that, you know, you can't bomb hospitals, but there are exceptions when you can. If you don't like something that's happening underneath that hospital, around that hospital, it's a hospital, full stop. The Geneva Convention say that you can't attack hospitals. You can. And again, the doctors and the patients don't become combatants. if Hamas is hiding underneath.

So if, you know, you can't say, you know, I see people saying, well, see, you know, Hamas is underneath this hospital according to U.S. intelligence, so therefore Israel can do whatever they want to do. Like, no, that's not how it works. I mean, the reason we talked about this before, the reason you have laws of war, the reason you define certain targets as off limits is to protect innocent civilians. And there are innocent civilians there. Their children, they're wounded people.

They're innocent civilians there. This should not be a military target, full stop. I mean, you have to find other ways of addressing. the threats, you know, there is a place for diplomacy in the world. And otherwise, all you get is the kind of carnage that we're seeing in Gaza. With respect to Biden, I mean, I think part of what you can hear is this kind of growing effort to recalibrate the messaging around expressing concern about aspects of the Israeli military operation, trying to urge some restraint from the Israeli government and emphasizing the need to negotiate the release of hostages because that's a much better

way of getting them out. The one thing I will say here, you know, I wish President Biden could do a couple of additional things here. The first is he's shown tremendous empathy when he talks about the Israeli loss of life on October 7th. And we've talked about how he did that with Israeli families too when he went to Israel. He just doesn't talk the same way. when when he's addressing the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. And so I really wish that you could speak more to what is upsetting people, obviously principally in Gaza, but also around the world, which is just seeing children suffering like this

and seeing innocent people suffering like this. And the other thing is, you know, there is a, but then what, to when he says things like, I expect Israel to do this, I'm telling Israel to do this. And day by day, you don't see Israel. And we should be very clear. don't see Bibin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, basically taking any of this on board. And so it kind of begins to beg the question. The rest of the world is looking at this.

It's like, what's the point of this recalibration if it doesn't lead to any changes in either Israeli policy or, frankly, in terms of U.S. support because it's basically like, well, I've asked not to do this, but I'm also really going to try to get this $15 billion to them out of Congress, and I unwaveringly support their right to defend themselves. I mean, at a certain point, what happens if you're not getting through to the Israeli leadership? that is undertaking this. Yeah, I got a frustrated text from a friend over the weekend who saw something I tweeted criticizing Netanyahu.

And his point was basically, you know what happened on October 7th. Israel can't go on with, you know, a well-armed, fully constituted Hamas in perpetuity. They're going to have to take out their leadership and take out their military infrastructure. What do you think he should do differently? What should the IDF do differently? I said, look, I'm not a military expert. I have no intelligence. But one thing I would do differently is, you know, you know, you think, you should.

you just, you can't attack hospitals. Like, these are full of patients. They're also full of, uh, civilians just camped out in these courtyards, like trying to find any place safe to avoid airstrikes. And the IDF just can't target these places. Like, I, and they also can't say, well, you should all evacuate. I think Netanyai was saying we offer to evacuate everyone because the, the health officials are saying, look, we have 700 people at one hospital that are too sick to be moved.

They'll all die. Like, if you, maybe if you want to somehow facilitate. the transfer of people to another location, if you take them there somehow, or if you find them alternate medical infrastructure that can actually care for them, maybe that's a conversation you can have. But that's a longer-term thing. And in the meantime, you just have to show restraint because you have to, because it's a law of war.

Well, and because where is it going to lead? What's it going to accomplish? You know, there's the different dimensions to this include the fact that, first of all, you know, the U.S. clearly in the course of 20 years after 9-11, we talked about the overreach of 9-11, you know, there were all manner of things that the U.S. did that should be criticized, it should be scrutinized, some of which happened in the Obama years. But it just wasn't the case, you know, that, I mean, the bin Laden operation comes to my mind. You know, one of the reasons why President Obama ordered a special forces raid deep into Pakistan to get Osama bin Laden.

And part of it was he wanted to make sure that it was bin Laden. But another consideration was he was living in a compound with his very large family. And a drone strike on that compound would have killed, you know, bin Laden's family. A hospital, you know, if there was an Al-Qaeda leader plotting an attack against New York under a hospital. I actually don't believe the U.S. would have, like, bombed hospital. And certainly there have been horrific mistakes made by the U.S. government, U.S. military, targeting of weddings. You're right.

You are correct. You're correct. We're talking about the deliberate targeting of the hospital. And by the way we're saying is, yeah, it's wrong when the U.S. does it. It's wrong when Israel does. It's wrong when anybody does it. And this is why you have laws of war. And in terms of the alternatives, if part of what you're trying to do is get hostages released, I just continue to believe that bombing is a less effective way of getting hostages released than negotiating deals, which Joe Biden clearly believes too because he keeps pivoting to this process with Qatar. And I also think like a more targeted effort against Hamas that is accompanied by political strategy to have a different Palestinian leadership

actually make peace is a much more sustainable way of trying to secure Israel than essentially destroying all of Gaza, displacing all these people, and maybe killing a lot of Hamas terrorists, but in the process, you know, hardening attitudes and radicalizing new generations of Palestinians, you know, I don't think this does work. No, I don't either. So the U.S. is obviously fully backed Israel in this conflict so far. Much of the international community has been in a different place than us or quickly moving to a different place. Here's a clip from a recent interview with French President Emmanuel Macron.

We clearly condemn the terrorist attack and terrorist group and recognize the right of Israel to protect itself and react. But day one, we say that this reaction and the fight against terrorism, because it is led by a democracy, should be compliant with international rules, all of war and humanitarian international law. And Day after day what we saw is a permanent bombing of civilians in Gaza. And I think it's very important to say the whole story. But I think this is the only solution we have. This is fire.

Because it's impossible to explain we want to fight against terrorism by killing innocent people. I think that's worth pointing out that while, you know, Macron is calling for a ceasefire, the war is actually escalating for the United States because on Sunday, the U.S. conducted more air strikes in Syria on facilities linked to Iran and Iranian proxy forces. This is the third set of military strikes by the U.S. directly since October 26th in response to these dozens of attacks against U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq. At least 56 U.S. service members have been injured in these attacks in recent weeks, which, you know, that to me is a huge deal, and I feel like it's barely getting covered.

Yeah, I mean, the McCrone piece is really interesting because out of the gate, you know, I think the French, the Germans, the British generally took the same position as the U.S. in supporting Israel. Yeah. And what this demonstrates is the beginning of that cracking. I think in response to international public opinion, and I think in response to you hear Macron, like genuine questions about whether this approach is the right one, is morally right and strategically right. And I think that's going to continue to be the case. And it does point up that the U.S. is pretty isolated, you know, in the position it's taken at this point. And look, the regional piece of this is, you know, this is more than a low boil. I mean, this is, you know, back and forth with Iranian proxies.

And I think the thing that is probably concerning the people in the White House and as well as people like Presma Krohn is that there's an open-ended nature to this Israeli military operation where it could last, you know, there's a scenario where it just lost, I don't know, two or three weeks more. and somehow there's a ceasefire. But I think it seems like the more likely scenario is a kind of open-ended military operation in Gaza. And the longer this goes, if this is going for months and months and months, the more those kinds of exchanges of fire of the Iranian proxies,

the more Israel is exchanging fire with Hezbollah on the northern border and we've seen people killed on both sides of that border. I mean, this is, it's not escalating to the worst-case scenario, but it's still very much a present threat. And the longer this goes on, the more you're just kind of better

that something doesn't really ignite one of those theaters, you know, to be much more on fire. And when BB gets pressed on timing, he's like, well, I think it'll take less time than the U.S. effort against ISIS, which took a long time. It took years. The other big disconnect that's emerging between the U.S. and Israel is about long-term governance in Gaza. This is a clip of Israeli Prime Minister, Bibi Denti Yahoo, on Meet the Press this past weekend. As far as a civilian management of Gaza, we need to see the following, two things. Gaza has to be demilitarized and Gaza has to be de-radicalized.

And I think so far we haven't seen any Palestinian force, including the Palestinian Authority, that is able to do it. They teach their children to hate Israel. They're not fighting terrorists. They're paying for slay. That is, the more terrorist-Palestinian terrorist murder Jews, the more they get paid. And to this day, 36 days after the worst savagery perpetrated on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, the Palestinian, authority president has yet refuses to condemn this savagery. So, you know, we need a different authority. We need a different administration. Who would that be? Who would that be, a military

army minister? Who would that be? I think it's too early to say. Kirsten, I think it's too early to say, but I can say one thing. The first task we have to achieve is defeat Hamas. So Netanyahu's line there is very different from what Secretary of State Tony Blinken was saying last week. Tony stressed that Palestinians can't be forcibly displaced from Gaza. He said that Israel can't reoccupy Gaza or put a blockade back on Gaza. He also said, quote, we must also work on the affirmative elements to get to a sustained peace. This must include the Palestinian people's voices and aspirations at the center of a post-crisis governance in Gaza. It must include Palestinian-led governance in Gaza, unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority. And it must include

a sustained mechanism for reconstruction in Gaza and a pathway to Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in space of their own with equal measures of security, freedom, opportunity, and dignity, end quote. Then I don't see any way to square the circle between what Tony was saying and what Nanya was saying. No, I think this is the main chasm now that's emerged between the U.S. and Israel, and that Biden himself said early in this process, he did want to see a reoccupation of Gaza. Tony has really emphasized his point about the Palestinian Authority taking over governance of Gaza

when the fighting stops. That was kind of reaffirmed by the G7, too. so that's kind of the default position of the world's most advanced and richest democracies. And what Netanyahu is saying is no, that we don't agree with that. Number one, he's indicated that Israel should have some kind of indefinite security responsibility over Gaza. And now he's also indicated that there's really not any Palestinian leadership that he would trust to govern Gaza. So that that's just, you know, never mind the fact actually that this Israeli government is not even recognized that a two-state solution is an objective. So there's a huge gap, you know, kind of on the back end of where we're headed that I'm not sure how you, you know, how do you address that unless the U.S. is willing to say, you know, we're going to condition some of the things we're doing for you on whether or not you accept Palestinian authority governance of Gaza, whether or not you allow for the reconstruction of Gaza, whether or not you allow for the pursuit of a Palestinian state. That's ultimately going to be a question that has to be answered. In terms of what happens in Gaza, you know,

first of all, and Yao made this point about demilitarizing and then de-radicalizing, what they are doing is, I think, likely to have the opposite effect of de-radicalization. The latter is not possible right now. I just don't understand how you can, you know, think that because the other thing that's going to happen is there's going to be the people that are dead, but then the extraordinary number of people that are internally displaced, like almost everybody near Zygentel and Gaza and how many buildings are going to be destroyed. you're going to have hundreds of thousands of people that are homeless in Gaza and stuck there

because they can't get into Egypt nor do they want to get in Egypt. And so this is going to be a massive endeavor to provide for these people. And look, there's different ways you could do this. The preferred U.S. ways to build up the Palestinian Authority in both places and have that be the future government of Palestinian state. B.B. said a lot, you know, B.B. pointed out that there are elements of the Palestinian Authority, you know, things that they are taught in Palestinian schools are absolutely reprehensible. it's also the case that the Palestinian Authority is a leadership that recognizes Israel's

right to exist that is not an Islamist organization like Hamas that has cooperated with Israel, including on security for a long time, to the point that they're kind of seen as a subcontractor for Israel on the West Bank. And so I think he's painting the worst light an organization that the Israeli government itself and the IDF has worked with a lot. The other alternative is to have a kind of multinational Arab peacekeeping force in Gaza. And this is something that, you know, he's getting more traction and talk now. Which Arab government might be willing to do that is a question. But, I mean, that's an alternative, is that there's some interim period where you have an Arab peacekeeping force providing security in Gaza. I don't know if Israel would accept that either.

But this question is the one that has been the most unanswered. And BB has repeatedly seemed to suggest a very long-term and kind of open-ended Israeli control over Gaza, which runs counter to all this effort from the U.S. to put an emphasis on what comes next. Yeah. And complicated. all of this are the estimated 240 hostages still being held throughout the Gaza Strip, mostly by Bahamas, but I've seen reports that at least dozens of them are being held by other militant groups like Palestinian Islamic jihad, which obviously complicates any negotiations over their release if you have to go to multiple parties. The hostages include the elderly children. There is a three-year-old American toddler whose parents were killed by Hamas being held

right now. There have been lots of reports recently about potential hostage deals over the weekend. The New York Times reported that there was nearly a deal to release 50 hostages in exchange for a ceasefire, but those negotiations broke down over communications challenges and then the Israeli ground invasion. On Tuesday, CNN reported that Israel and Hamas are close to a hostage release deal in exchange for what CNN described as a sustained days-long pause in fighting. Hamas spokesman said that the talks were focused on the release of 70 women and children in exchange for a five-day pause. These talks are being negotiated by Qatar, the CIA, the Mossad, which is Israel's version of the CIA. President Biden was asked about a potential hostage deal at a White House event on Tuesday.

He said, quote, I've been talking to people involved every single day. I believe it's going to happen, but I don't want to get into details. And Biden later said his message to the families was, hang in there, we are coming. Earlier this week, we spoke with Efrat Machikawa. Five members of her family are being held hostage in Gaza right now. Her aunt, her uncle, her uncle's son, Duran, and Duran's two daughters, age three and five. Here's Efrot talking about what this past five weeks has been like for her and her family and her experience at a rally this past weekend for the hostages.

This over a month's time feels like a one long, long, long, long. tiring day. It is just incredible to think that so many people are down there probably in tunnels. We don't know what are they eating, if they're eating, are they well, are they still alive? What about the little babies that were taken? What about the elderly, like my uncle and my aunt and have absolutely no clue. Where are they? Are they alive? Are they being fed? Do they have the medicine? It's so painful that when you try to breathe and talk at the same time, you feel you have not enough oxygen in your lungs to actually express how worried we are, how much evil we are surrounded with. I think people outside cannot understand that the

size of this catastrophe is national in Israel. There is a lot of. isn't anyone in Israel that I know who does not know someone that was either in the peace party or in those kibbutzim in those places. We all know somebody, so we're there to support each other, but we're also there to shout out. Nothing can go back to normal, not in Israel and not in the world, in our view, unless everybody, everybody comes back home. It's just an important reminder that it's been five weeks since this Hamas attack,

but for these hostages, for their families, every day is just as excruciating as that day was. And, you know, also a reminder that many of the people who were attacked that day and killed or taken were living on these kibbutzs because they were some of the most people committed to peace in the entire country. Yeah, it's such a, I mean, any loss of life and hostage shaking is absolutely, tragic. The fact that generally those were the communities that were targeted is just this additional tragedy. I mean, again, I think this issue of the hostages to me underscores, you know, because some people might get frustrated listening to us urging this kind of restraint in terms of the Israeli military operation and think, well, what about these hostages? And we can't emphasize enough. Like, I truly believe that you are going to be much more effective in getting more

hostages out faster through this kind of negotiating channel. I do too. I mean, a five-day pause in order to release 70 hostages, who wouldn't take that deal? It's reportedly been on the table since last month. And look, to return to the 9-11 analogy, Israel is understandably traumatized, but the Israeli leadership, these very big questions, like the one we were just talking about at the end game of this military reparation. Like, it's so unclear that a pause, I think, is in their interest, too, to consider what they're doing. And how far they want to go with this, because the way it's going now, I think ends very poorly for everybody. It's, you know, whether it's hostages, whether it's Israel and its own security, and obviously first and foremost for Palestinian civilians who are dying

by the thousands. You know, I've heard the White House and echo the line that, like, Hamas would benefit from a ceasefire. Like, we should emphasize again, like, actually, that's, that's, that's not true, Palestinian civilians would benefit a lot from a ceasefire, you know, and it's not like Gaza's not being heavily monitored right now. And there's going to be some massive Hamas breakout here. So I just hope that there's a more diplomatic push. That'd be a great thing if they can achieve that agreement to get 70 people out. It would be an enormous, enormous lift for, I think, everyone in Israel. Ben, I did see that the Israeli spyware company, the NSO group, is using the hostage situation to do PR for themselves.

Someone connected with the NSO group, leaked to Axios, that the Pegasus spyware software that has been used to track journalists and dissidents and activists is now also being used to track Hamas members and potentially hostages. So great job flacking that one, I guess. Pretty dystopian time for L.P.R. And the reality is it's not like there aren't other ways to geolocate phones on this one. You don't need. Yeah.

I mean, so like maybe wait a little while for the advertisement guys. Fucking gross. Finally, we talked with... We should add the NSA groups been blacklisted by the United States government. So part of the reason they're doing this is to lobby Congress. To an American outlet.

Yeah, that's very deeply cynical. Finally, we talked with Fida al-Rejee. She works in Gaza for the nonprofit organization Oxfam. She's sheltering with her family, her family of eight at her friend's two-bedroom home in southern Gaza. Her friend is a family of five. So it's two-bedroom house, one bathroom,

all these people. We asked her to describe just a day her life since the October 7th attacks. We start very early the journey of securing everyday life things, water, drinking water, bread, food for the day and it takes so many hours. I still can't believe how easy our life used to be like you used to open a tap and have water or go to the bakery and get some bread and that's it. Nowadays we wake up we start thinking who's going to go to fetch water then what's the transport that you're going to use of course forget about cars we do have a car but it's useless now

with lack of a fuel so either you secure a donkey-pold cart or something like this or you just decide to walk all throughout the day we try to to reach our families and our friends through phones. It's very, very, very, very difficult to get through to someone over the phone. So you keep trying regardless of the hour, day and night, any time, every, all the time, just to try to catch someone for me, personally, some nights were very unbearable. You know, all of the scenarios keep playing in my mind. Am I going to lose one of my kids?

Are they going to lose me? Is this next strike going to hit us? All of this all night through. And then you wait for the break of dawn. I don't know what's the difference because we are killed day and night. But I don't know, just maybe to make sure that the word still exists in the daylight. And repeat all over again and again. Two examples there of the just unbearable suffering.

from innocent people, both Israeli and Palestinian because of this war. Yeah, and I don't know how you can listen to that, both of those clips, and not essentially, if you believe that the lives of those two people are not disposable, that they matter and that they matter equally, I don't know how you couldn't think that like a ceasefire in some effort to actually achieve a peace here, isn't better for those people. I mean, this is a mom. This is not some Hamas member, you know.

And, and, and, and what she's pointing to is, again, the reality, there is no fuel left in Gaza, water is hard to come by. Bay Greece have been bombed, well documented. And life was hard in Gaza before this war started. It's chilling to hear us say, like, oh, we used to have it so good. Right. I mean, so good that we're living in Gaza, you know, like, I mean, it just, again, it just underscores that if we can just see the humanity in every,

everybody, like the solutions become a bit more obvious than the rationalizations that people make for either Hamas's horrific attack or for this kind of pretty indiscriminate response. And it's not an equivalency, like, don't, like, you know, obviously Hamas, like, proceeded with absolutely zero regard for human life, period. But, you know, proceeding with relatively little regard for the circumstances of two million people in Gaza, that doesn't make that the right solution to dealing with Hamas. Yeah, no, I mean, what Hamas did, Hamas launched this terrorist attack with the goal of killing as many civilians as possible, in the hopes of getting an overwhelming Israeli military response

so that it would become this global story and it would reignite people behind the Palestinian cause. Right now, they're getting what they want. Yes. You know, and I talked about with this, Yuval, and as much as I understand the need to take out Moss's military capability as much as I understand the desire for revenge, you just have to listen to the voices of the people caught in the middle who are suffering and realize that what's happening right now is fucking madness. And it's benefiting no one.

Yeah, and I'd say this is an American because this is how I felt after 9-11, we had our overreach with torture and Gitmo and the Iraq war. Like, what is this doing to us? You know, if Israel destroys Gaza, what does that do to the nature of Israeli society in the same way that 9-11, I think, did some bad things to the nature of American society and politics. And I'm really glad, you know, you made this point precisely because Hamas doesn't value human life, precisely because Hamas, in addition to wanting to eradicate Jewish-Israeli life, doesn't value Palestinian life, they, to your point, they won an overreaction. Like, that's what

they didn't like, I think, that they didn't like the Abraham Accords. They didn't like that the Palestinians were cut out of things. They didn't like they weren't at the center of attention. And they didn't do this thinking that there would be no Israeli reaction. They did this because they thought there might be an Israeli overreaction, which would put them in an even stronger position. And so we have to understand that if you're fighting arsonists, you don't fight arsonists with more fire. You fight them with water, you know, like it's so, so that's just such an important point that is missed here. If you're doing what you're being kind of baited into doing, that's not, that's likely not the right reaction, though. going to take a quick break. We come back. We're going to talk about the massive shakeup in the

British government. So stick around for that. Let's turn to the United Kingdom, Ben, where British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has done a major reshuffle of this cabinet that has left a lot of people scratching their heads, I think, is the best way to maybe phrase it. Here's the headline for what happened. Home Secretary Suella Braverman is out. She was sacked, as they say. She will be replaced by James Cleverly, who had been serving as the Foreign Secretary. And then, And former British Prime Minister, David Cameron, is back into government as the foreign secretary. Yes, that David Cameron, the man responsible for Brexit. If you haven't heard of Suella Braverman, consider yourself lucky.

She represents the far right of the Tory party. She was behind some of the worst anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric. She called the pro-Palestinian protests hate marches. She said that homelessness was a lifestyle choice, terrible person. By the end of her time as home secretary, it seemed. clear that she wanted to get fired. She wanted to be martyed on some right wing cause so she can run again in a future Tory party leadership election. So she's gone, but she's not forgotten, sadly. David Cameron, you might recall, served as the prime minister from 2010 to 2016. Then he brilliantly

put forward the Brexit referendum, lost the vote, resigned from parliament, and has watched the smoldering wreckage of Brexit from the sidelines ever since where he's been making tons of money as sort of a pseudo creepy lobbyist. Because Cameron is no longer a member of parliament, he had to be named to the House of Lords to become eligible to serve as foreign secretary. So this whole thing must be just an enormous insult to every other member of the Tory party

who got passed over for the job by a guy who wasn't even eligible. And then frankly, like a foreign secretary from the House of Lords has a real like Victorian England. Now it gets to be a Lord, Lord David. Lord David, yeah, let them be cake vibes. So Ben, I was trying to think of an equivalent in US politics.

Since Brexit is, you know, arguably the biggest foreign policy disaster in modern British history, do you think this would be fair to compare it to, like, a future Republican naming George W. Bush, Secretary of State, if Iraq is our Brexit? That's a pretty good one. Do you watch The Crown, Tommy? You know, I got to. So if you like The Crown, I think Peter Jackson, the guy made The Crown, his next series should be like a seven-part Netflix series. It starts with Brexit and goes through all these Tory governments.

You know, you could have like the Liz Trust season. And, you know, now we're up to like season seven. Really short seasons, though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A few things about this. You're right about Swel Braverman is a uniquely odious political figure. I mean, she's talked about, you know, targeting boats of refugees coming across the channel. She wants to scrap the entire UN convention on refugees.

She's, you know, she actively tried to get fired by calling all these, you know, peaceful demonstrations around the Palestinians, you know, marches and attack the police for she exactly the cops won easy on black lives matter protesters which has not been most people's experience with the police I don't think yeah it was kind of any you're right though it was just kind of like a big fire me sign that she was holding up so that after richie soonac loses if he loses she can make a play to kind of run for toy party leader as like the most far right hard line anti-immigrant and remember the tories the way they choose their leaders is about 150,000 actual dues paying members of the tory party choose so You can just appeal to the rightest right wing sliver of the country.

Yeah. So I can see why Rishi Sinek is like, all right, I got to get rid of this person. And in truth, he's, I think, trying to attack to the center. Definitely. What's funny is that Kier Starmor and Rishi Sunak are, like, really elbowing each other out for the center. Because Kier, Starmor is getting all this shit for, like, pivoting to the center on a whole bunch of stuff, including not calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. And Rishi Sunak is like, well, David Cameron is seen as a centrist.

And we should note, by the way, like, just like Chris Christie was on Potsy of America, We did have David Cameron on Ponce of the World. He was our center-right guest way back in the day. But the reality of this is, I just got to say, like, David Cameron becoming Foreign Secretary does kind of prove the theory that, like, if you went to Eden or like a white guy, like, you can, like, call a Brexit referendum and lose it and still could be Foreign Secretary. Like, there's nothing that you can do that could get you voted off the island.

And you get to be a lord, you know, to boot and everything. I don't quite guess. So maybe we she's doing that things, like this is a signal that he's like a more moderate guy. But the whole thing is just kind of weird to me because like is, you know, there's going to be an election within a year. Is David Cameron in this for like the long haul? Or she just like the stopgap foreign secretary for a few months? Like I don't, this poor James Cleverly guy, like, you know, just now I guess he's home secretary. But I just don't get what David Cameron brings into it other than reminding people of.

I mean, there's a nice book. It kind of reminds people of the chaos that started this whole era of Tory rule, which was Cameron deciding to have the referendum in the first place. Maybe that's, like, a good way for it to end. Yeah, I mean, I think Cameron brings you, like, kind of a surprising move. Change the narrative. Yeah, it gets you away from all the talk of Swallow Browerman who was terrible. The crazy thing about the British system is James Cleverly, like, I don't know, sort of a boring, whatever, fine guy, right? Do the foreign secretary?

They're nothing about that guy. You just get plucked out of your job and you get dropped in as home. secretary, which is basically the equivalent of going from Secretary of State to Secretary of Homeland Security. There's no time for training. You have to be available for like questions in front of parliament like three days from now. The system is madness. Like none of these people are prepared for the job. That's a really good point. The Tories keep doing these cabinet reshuffles as if like, you know, these jobs are totally interchangeable. They're not at all. Yeah, you're like, who's actually minding the story? I've been reading Rory Stewart's book after he came on the pod. It's very good.

A couple of thoughts. One, he talks about this a lot about how like you literally show up at the job. and you spend weeks like learning where the bathrooms are. Like you've no idea what you're doing. You have no training for these jobs. Two, he, Rory and Cameron did not get along. They didn't like each other. I think Cameron really didn't want Rory to be a member of parliament or run in the first place.

But it's interesting the way, listen, we're dumb Americans. Okay, we see a guy with like floppy kind of Hugh Grant hair and we hear a British accent. We think you must be a goddamn genius. But David Cameron is just a guy who like grounded out as a special advisor to powerful people in a ministry and, you know, ran a bunch of local elections and worked his way up as an MP for, I think, 15 years before he finally got his shot. I don't know. These folks are a little more parochial than we might think.

Just to note that we're equal opportunity here, like Tony Blair responsible for the Iraq war and all these things, he's still hanging around too. Like, there's nine lines for these guys. And you're right about this, like, the Hugh Grant of it all. Like, I think there's a funny thing about British prime ministers where like, you know, if you kind of look a certain way, like a certain kind of white English guy with like, you know, like decent hair and like, you know, like a big grin, like, you know, then that's like half the way to being prime minister, you know? And then Americans looking from abroad and everybody sounds a little more articulate, you know, like Boris Johnson sounds like maybe he's like knows what he's talking about just because he has a British accent,

you know? Like there's some of that. There is a lot of that. Our friends over at Pod Save the UK did a fantastic mini episode on all of this. They also did a great one before that. on the king's speech where they just went through the process, how it gets written. Could you imagine you're a speechwriter for Barack Obama and then once a year or whatever, you have to write a speech for the king or the queen of England? What a bizarre process.

The government prepares the speech for the monarch and then they read it. Yeah, that's always the strangest one because like the, you know, anytime there's a politician reading and prepared speech, it feels a little, you know, like staged. But at least usually like the politician is participating, in the contents of the speech.

Like the King's speech is just like, just some guy being handed a document being like, perform this, you know? Yeah, and it's a guy like talking about the fix to the cost of living crisis wearing like a $16 million coat. From a palace, like from a literal palace, you know? Like a golden scepter. Living on like an allowance from the public and having a multi-billion dollar real estate empire, you know, like it's really attuned to the cost of living crisis. Weird system.

There's a long time where I was really jealous of the British system because they had snap elections every once in a while, but I don't know. I mean, our system's fucked up, too. Everybody's system's a little fucked up. There's just a little peculiarly eccentric. Grass is always greener. Switching gears hard here, Ben. So the past few weeks, we have talked about the Pakistani government's decision that they made last month to deport all undocumented Afghan refugees back to Afghanistan.

This decision could impact up to 1.7 million people. The Associated Press reported that nearly 300,000 Afghans have already left the country, have already left Pakistan and gone back to Afghanistan. To learn more about this decision and its impact, we reached out to Elaha Omar, the CEO and founder of an organization called Uplift Afghanistan. Because don't forget, we have had since the 70s and 80s, the Soviet Union invasion, civil war, and then 20 years of war led by the U.S., right? And so naturally comes out of this migration.

This 1.6 million that's facing these deportations and expulsions, some have been there for decades. Their children don't even speak daddy or Pashto. They speak Punjabi. They were born there. They have businesses there. You also have people who fled Taliban persecution, women, human rights defenders, prosecutors, allies that worked with U.S. military. And just people transit refugees who are there. who have a pathway forward and waiting for that to open up.

They're trying to set a biometric so that they can get identity cards. And some of them who have no place to go continue to stay in this makeshift camp. A friend of mine who's on the ground told me that the queue in this refugee camp, the queue for food, he estimated he saw 6,000 people waiting to get some rats. of food. So that kind of paints the picture of what is happening. And this is only about 300,000 people who've returned. Imagine 1.6 million. Afghanistan's been in the middle of so much chaos. And the people who've paid the price are the most vulnerable, or are the disabled, are the children. As a humanitarian organization, you know, our response is that there is a harsh

winter coming up. Our immediate focus is addressing that winter and how to keep these families fed and keep them warm and give shelter to them. I mean, just a devastating decision. I mean, this is going to lead tens of not hundreds of thousand people that are going to die. Yeah. And, you know, there's, to build on that really powerful, you know, testimony, first of all, the Pakistani government is complicit in the fact that there are refugees in Pakistan because they prolonged that 20-year war by providing a safe haven for the Taliban. The Taliban was based in Quetta in Pakistan throughout the war. So it's not like Pakistan was only observing refugees. They were like a party in a way to this conflict. The second point that I've been thinking about Tommy too

is that there's this kind of crazy, you know, we've covered Imran Khan being ousted and there's this very weak civilian government. There's elections. are supposed to happen. So even how this decision got made is kind of murky. If you try to read about it, because the military really controls things and there's an intelligence arm and then there's this kind of weak civilian government and this kind of effort to just because people are probably pissed about a lot of things in Pakistan, demagogue like a migrant community, you know, community that is huge and basically is analogous our dreamers all being deported here, except they're in much worse circumstances. It's just a horrific and bizarre decision. And then if you read under the other people,

piece I'd add to her and looking at this is, you know, some of this is like people, Pakistanis are expropriating the homes and businesses of some of these Afghans that are being displaced. It's pretty gross, you know, but at the same time, they're also going to lose a workforce. I mean, it's just, Afghanistan can't absorb this. They're being sent back to the Taliban, you know, so if you're a woman, you're being sent back to like a third-class citizenship. It's horrible. And it's an uplift Afghanistan. Part of what they do that is interesting is they they do cash, you know, they try to get resources directly to people, like you was saying, which is a way to not have to go through the Taliban, you know. And so it does speak to this kind of

new form of development where like the best thing you can do for some people sometimes is just get them resources. Yeah, well check out uplift Afghanistan, give it a Google to see what they're up to. Maybe chip in some cash if you can. Ben, pour one out for commuters in San Francisco this week because the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation or APEC summit is coming to town. The big news out of the summit is that Biden and Chinese president Xi Jinping are set to meet face to face. These two last met on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali in November of 2022. Then there was that whole, you know, spy balloon thing. It's a probably a little bit of a mess.

Relations got rocky again, let's say. We were shooting down like, you know, science experiments in the sky. Yeah, we were just whacking weather balloons left and right. What a dumb six months that was. Biden and she were expected to talk about trade, potentially reestablishing military to military talks that China cut off after a name. Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in 2022. You're going to talk about AI. I'll probably talk about stopping the export of chemicals used to make fentanyl. A whole bunch of items on the to-do list there.

The entire 21-member summit is going to focus on trade and economic growth. The White House is expected to announce a trade deal with about a dozen other Asian countries while there, although there's some anxiety from the left and Democratic Party about this potential deal. Ben, what are you watching out for at this event? And what do you think, all smooth sailing with China from here and out? I mean, look, I think this is a meeting for the sake of having a meeting, which is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. I mean, I think they're trying to essentially, you know, Diplospeak would be put a floor under the relationship. But essentially, the U.S.-China relationship has been in some kind of free fall. The fact that the president of the United States and

the president of China have not met in like a year is very strange in the non-COVID times. Shee Jinping hasn't been to the United States since 2017, I think. And so just resuming this communication they will actually make everybody happy at that summit because other countries get pretty uncomfortable in the U.S. and China are that much at odds. Hopefully it opens up space for communication between the governments. To military ties would be a good thing

because it kind of allows for almost like a hotline so you don't have some incident in the South China Sea or the Taiwan straight blow up. I'm tired of seeing little clips on Twitter of like Chinese fighter jets within six feet of some U.S. aircraft or like, you know, a Chinese destroyer cutting off some American boat

or a Filipino fishing bow. Like, there's too many incidents like that are happening too often. Or a 30-minute segment led by Hugh Hewitt and a Republican debate about ships. And we'll put that aside. But look, and then the AI stuff is interesting, too, because what's been reported out is that the U.S. wants to discuss not having AI involved in the management of your nuclear weapons enterprise, which seems like it. It does indicate that we should probably be talking to the Chinese about these AI issues. But the big butt here is they're not even going to have like a joint stock. There's not, like, this is not going to be some breakthrough.

This is, this is just about preventing freefall. I mean, military to military is like your most baseline thing that you want to be doing. So this is not a huge breakthrough in a bunch of different areas. But hopefully it allows for some more engagement so that we're not just in the spiral into Cold War. How about the NBC debate and the Republican primary debate where they just pushed the five candidates who showed up to the right on every possible issue? Yeah. Cold War with China, retaliation against Iran. What else was it?

It was like Venezuela sanctions. It was like every issue they could think of, they just push them to the right. Yeah. It's so interesting that like it's still the default position in American politics. It's like problematic to not move further to the right on things, particularly because that's actually not where the American public is on most of this stuff too. Like the American public doesn't share all these views about, you know, getting to more wars or probably even like building. more ships, you know, like, no, like, sounds crazy. Yeah, to meet Hugh Hewitt's like, you know, game of risk approach to looking at, you know,

counting up Chinese boats and trying to match them with our boats, you know. Yeah, two quick things. If that conversation we just had about the Republican primary debate made you feel nauseous, we've got something better for you to do. Join the Votesave America community and find all the ways you can get involved, the selection cycle. Go to Votesaveamerica.com slash no-off years to get involved. will give you lots of opportunities near you. Also, if you are confused by reports that the Supreme Court has put in place a code of ethics,

we are too. Strict scrutiny zone, legal expert Leah Lippman joined the One Today podcast to try to explain it all to people like us. So listen wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and we come back. You will hear my interview with Yuval Harari. So stick around for that. Yuval Noah Harari is a historian. He's a philosopher and he is the bestselling author of Sapiens, which is a fantastic book.

He's also a lecturer at the Department of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Thank you so much for joining the show. Thank you for inviting me. First of all, I just want to say, I mean, to you and any Israeli listeners we have, that I am sorry. We are also sorry about the hell that you all went through on October 7th in the day since. I mean, I know that you have family members who lived at a kibbutz that was attacked by Hamas. Thank God they survived.

They had to hide to survive. And I know it can feel like the news cycle moves forward, the media focus. becomes about what's happening in Gaza, but that doesn't mean that the trauma of that day goes away, especially when there's so many hostages unaccounted for. So just first question is a basic one. Like, how are you doing? How are your aunt and uncle doing? I guess as well as can be expected, these are extremely difficult days. For many Israelis, the clock just stopped on the 7th of October. We are still there. People are constantly hearing the stories coming out of there, constantly thinking about the hostages being held in Gaza,

extremely worried about the potential for escalation. Any day, the war might expand in the north with Hezbollah. We have been attacked by the Houthis in Yemen, by various militias from Iraq and Syria. Iran is in the background, so there is a lot of also fear about the potential expansion of the conflict. And there is also some hope, you know,

that somehow the country will come out of this more united. And also that almost against all hope, it would be possible to restart a peace process with the Palestinians. Again, it sounds almost inconceivable at the present moment. But, you know, in four years after, Jom Kippoo War in 1973. There was the peace process with Egypt. So who knows?

Maybe there is some hope. Yeah. I hope there is a hope. And I, too, I'm worried about the escalation risks you talked about, especially when I see reports that the U.S. military is striking targets in Syria, linked to Iran over and over again. You had this great op-ed on October 19th in the Washington Post, where you wrote, quote,

as the bodies keep piling up, who will win this war? Not the side that kills more people, not the side that destroys more houses, and not even the side that gains more international support, but the side that achieves its political aims. I'm wondering if, you know, nearly a month later, you have a sense of which side is doing a better job achieving those political aims. Right. It's still too soon to tell.

I'm a historian, you know, of hundreds of years, of thousands of years, so a few weeks is not enough. Maybe we start by asking what are the political goals of the two sides. I think it's easier in the case of Hamas, that at least as far as I understand, the immediate background to the attack that Hamas launched on the 7th of October was the potential for an Israeli-Saudi peace treaty, that according to many credible sources, maybe we were just weeks from this kind of treaty between Israel and Saudi Arabia with American also, of course, helping to achieve it. This treaty was supposed not just to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, also to normalize relations between Israel and most of the Arab world,

to give some concessions to the Palestinians and hopefully even to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, And the background to that was this huge plan to build an infrastructure corridor leading from India and the Persian Gulf through Saudi Arabia and Jordan to Israel and from there to the Mediterranean Europe. Now, all that was a very big threat to Hamas and to its backers in Iran, who oppose any approachment between Israel and the Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and any chance for a peaceful settlement for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And this was the reason that Hamas struck on the 7th of October to derail this potential peace Treaty. So far it has been successful. I mean, the peace treaty is at the moment shelved, but we don't know. Maybe after some kind of ceasefire or some kind of end of hostilities

is reached, we will see the Israeli Saudi Treaty back on the table, maybe even expanded. And that's the big question. I mean, if this war ends with, without, normalization between Israel and the Arab world and without some kind of restarting the peace process, then Hamas has won. Now, the question with Israel is more complicated because it's not so clear whether Israel's political aims are the exact opposite of Hamas. I hope they are. I hope that Israel's war aims is to come out of this conflict. in a position to achieve peace with a normalization with the Arab world. Again, the logic of the war should be that because Hamas does everything in its power,

not just now, but for years, to foil any chance for peace. So if you want to have peace, you need first of all to disarm Hamas. If this is the logic of the war, it makes sense. But you do hear extremist voices in Israel, including in the, the Netanyahu coalition, who think in very different terms. And so far, the Israeli government has not made it clear enough what are its long-term goals. It's speaking about the need to disarm Hamas, okay, that's understandable, but what comes after that is foulest clear.

Yeah, I mean, I understand the desire to disarm Hamas. I mean, I certainly remember how America felt after 9-11. We wanted to feel safe again. And we wanted vengeance, frankly. And I can only imagine how those fears and feelings would be magnified if Al Qaeda had been living just over the border in Canada, for example. But I also, I mean, I worry that Israel is getting pulled into a similar trap that we did because it does seem like terrorist groups like Hamas and al-Qaeda want not just to foil the Saudi normalization talks, but a broader war to get back on the radar screen of the entire Arab world. And that Hamas did what they did with the goal of getting an outside. military response to, you know, sort of raise those images and create those narratives again.

I mean, knowing that, knowing that that is likely Hamas's goal, do you think there's space in Israel for voices trying to sort of make that case and urge restraint? There is space. The voices are there. What will be, again, the outcome on the ground? I don't know. I'm not part of these discussions in the military, in the government. And really, it's just too soon to tell. Unfortunately, this is likely to be in one way or the other quite a long conflict. I can only say that in the long term, I think that Israel's political aims should be normalization with the Arab world and peace with the Palestinians on the basis of the understanding that the Palestinians must be given the ability to, to live dignified lives in their homeland.

How to achieve that? That's a huge, huge problem. Again, it should be clear that disarming Hamas is necessary because Hamas opposes any such efforts. And from its very foundations more than 30 years ago, this was its entire logic. It's raison de etre. And it repeatedly, every time that there was a chance for peace,

it used its military force in order to fight. foil the peace process, and it's likely to do so again. So this is the rationale behind saying we need to disarm Hamas. Of course, just disarming it without giving the Palestinians a different potential future. Again, a future of dignified lives in their homeland will just get something similar or something even worse, a couple of years down the line. Well, yeah, let's talk about what future for Palestinians could be like, because in America, you still hear, and in the West, frankly, people defaulting to talking about the two-state solution in a Palestinian state. But that feels very challenging, given the current Palestinian leadership and given Netanyahu and

his coalition, do Israelis still think a two-state solution is viable? And if not, what other alternatives are being discussed in the sort of political space? You know, there are all kinds of alternatives. But what we need to understand about these kinds of. of ethnic conflicts and national conflicts. It's not like a problem in mathematics when the question is, does the problem have a solution, yes or no? And you can prove mathematically

that a certain problem has no solution or a certain problem has three different solutions, one, two, three. In history, it doesn't work like that. There are potential solutions. The only question always is motivation. If you have enough motivation on both sides, you can have a solution of different kinds, two states, some kind of confederation, all kinds of things. If you don't have motivation, there is no solution.

And even more importantly, the motivation has to be on both sides. To wage war, you need motivation only on one side. That's enough. But to have peace, you need motivation on both sides. And I'm not an expert on that, but my impression from living here for last 47 years is that in recent years and certainly at present, there is not enough motivation on either side to solve the conflict, to make peace. We need to gradually build up that motivation. That's the task. I mean, there won't be any solution to the conflict in the next few weeks or months.

But hopefully we can now sow seeds that down the line will make it possible for Israelis and Palestinians to live side by side. How long would it take? I don't know. But again, at the present moment, both sides are just, our minds are full to the brim with immense pain. And there is no ability to even acknowledge that the pain and the interests and the viewpoint, of the other side. There is no theory of mind. The ability to get into the mind of

an person and understand how reality looks from that perspective, there is no theory of mind on either side. But eventually we can get there. If 75 years or 80 years after the Holocaust, Germans

and Jews are now good friends, I think it's not impossible also for Israelis and Palestinians. Yeah, that's a good perspective. bring. And you're right, though, the maps for what a two-state solution could look like have existed for decades. What has not existed is the political will to get the deal done. There have been lots of reports of Israelis who have been, or Arab Israelis as well, who have been critical of the military response in Gaza, saying they've been censored, they've been visited by security forces.

What is the environment like in Israel right now in terms of free speech? You know, we've been fighting Israelis for nine months before the war erupted to preserve Israeli democracy, to preserve independent courts and free speech and independent media. And so far we have been successful. There is still considerable room in Israel for free speech. Of course, at the height of the, in many ways, the worst moment. in the history of the country, since its establishment, the limits of free speech are more narrow

than they were before the 7th of October, but there is still considerable room. I mean, people are not disappeared in the middle of the night or arrested or murdered for speaking their minds. There are dangerous signs of erosion in freedom of speech, whether it is warnings from police, whether it's people being fired from work, we need to be extremely careful about it.

If Israel wins the military struggle, but loses its democracy in the process, then it is a complete defeat for us. Yes, absolutely. In the U.S., the language about the conflict has become central to the debate, I think, mostly in unhelpful ways. We had a Palestinian member of Congress

censored for using the term from the river to the sea. Many on the left seem to focus their activism on demanding people call the Israeli military effort a genocide. You're a historian. Can you talk about how and why the language we use in these debates is important as we witness what's happening or push back on this war as it's unfolding? Well, I have two things to say. First of all, that words are important, but don't give them too much importance. In the end, what really matters is the experiences, the pain, the suffering, the events on the ground. And something that we see looking now from Israel looking at the United States is almost like the conflict has been hijacked and people are using it in their own

internal struggles in the United States about issues that really have nothing to do with us. and that it's like the real victims are now people in the United States who are not allowed or are allowed to say this or to say that and it's not about you. If you're really interested in the conflict, then all these questions of language and the limits of freedom of speech in the United States or in Europe, they should take a backseat. and we should try to focus on what are the facts

and not necessarily on how do we call them. Because we know it's endless these arguments, these semantic arguments. People can use words in almost any way they like. And related to that, the second point is that there is a tendency for words to suffer from inflation in the same way that money suffers from inflation. That words like genocide,

that has been originally reserved for some extreme historical cases and are now being used in all kinds of expanded or even metaphorical ways. You know, people have been talking about Israel committing genocide in Gaza, not just in the recent months, but for years and decades. And part of what happens, even if you have certain, I don't know, good intentions in using this language, over time, people just get used to it. It's like, again, I'll give an example also from within Israeli politics

that once upon a time in Israel to call somebody, let's say a politician or a member of some party a Nazi, was such a shocking thing that the entire country would stand still if somebody dared call, if a Jew dared call another Jew a Nazi. Today, this currency has been completely kind of lost all its value. So I would say words are important, but be careful not to give them too much importance and not to use them in a way that eventually causes them to lose all their meaning. Yeah, well said.

I think the thing about Nazi comparisons is that you should never make them. because it was a singular evil in our history. And let's leave it there. Yeah, it's just the worst. The final question for you, you wrote in Aretz, quote, we need an Israeli charter to explain how our lives will look after victory is achieved and the positive goals for which millions of soldiers and civilians are being required to risk and even sacrifice their lives. Do you think anyone is working on that charter? And do you think that charter can be written if Bibi Netanyahu and this coalition are still in power? Unfortunately not. I mean, the same way that the Israeli government as Salfa didn't state clearly what are the political aims of the war. It also didn't tell the Israeli public what kind of country we will have after the war. And, you know, we are now paying the price for being ruled for many years by a populist strongman. who based his political career on dividing the nation against itself, on vilifying his political rivals as traitors and as enemies, on appointing people to office just based on political loyalty to himself and not on competence,

on vilifying the elites of the country, the people who are foremost in serving the nation, in the military, in the judicial system, in other institutions, as dangerous, again, as a deep state traitorous elite. And we are now paying the price for that. And we need to bring the nation together. And for that, we need a clear statement about what we are fighting for beyond just disarming Hamas

and bringing back security for Israelis. And to give some concrete examples, on the 7th of October, it wasn't just Jewish Israelis who were murdered. There are also many cases of Muslim and Christian Israelis who were murdered or kidnapped by Hamas among the security forces who risked and sometimes sacrificed their lives to protect civilians. There were Muslims and Christians. And we need a clear statement that after the war, they and their families will be completely equal citizens of the Israeli state. Similarly, there have been a famous case of a captain in the army

who was killed on the 7th of October trying to save civilians a week before he was due to marry his boyfriend. And even though the army was quite quick to say that the widower will receive all the all the treatment and benefits like in heterosexual couples, we need to hear it clearly that the state will treat after the war, not just all its soldiers, but all its civilians equally. And like that, we need to hear a clear vision that Israel after the war will be a liberal democracy that will respect and guarantee the rights of all its citizens. And unfortunately, so far, we did not hear this, clearly enough.

Yeah. One final question, if I may. I mean, we're about five weeks into this conflict now. I know you've written that it's the job of those outside of the conflict to focus on peace. In America, there are growing calls for a ceasefire. Do you think it's the appropriate time for a ceasefire? Are those calls being heard? I don't know.

I mean, you know, that depends a lot on the negotiations with regard to the hostages. On the question of whether a ceasefire will liberate the hostages or make it more difficult to liberate them on the specificities of the military situation, I don't know. So I leave that to people who are better informed about the situation. And my focus is on the long term, not on whether we have a ceasefire for a few days. You know, we had a ceasefire on the 6th of October. It was then broken by Hamas. So the question is, how do we reach long-term peace, which enable both Israelis and Palestinians to live safe and dignified lives in their homelands side by side?

Well, listen, Yvall, thank you so much for your focus on that. big picture, long-term vision, because it's very easy to forget it in the midst of a horrific conflict like this. And thank you so much for doing the show. Thank you very much. Ben, one last thing before we go. Oh, wow. We got a special world birthday here. Oh, my God. Wait, wait, wait. What does this say? This is a soft power. That's a soft power. All right. I love it. That's what we stand for here, you know. And that biffets my 1990s identity. Does a cake say, soft power to or is it just the balloon? The cakes is happy birthday, Ben, which is very kind.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Amateur icer, though, because do you see how many you're better? I know, it's really bad. I opened it this morning and I was like, wait. It looks great. It looks delicious. Whenever the icing lacks the soft power balloons makes up for in spades.

Hey, happy 39th birthday, buddy. Yeah, thank you so much. All right, that's it. Happy birthday, Ben. That's all for us this week. We'll talk to you guys next week. Pod Save the World is a Crooked Media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Reed Cherlin.

Our producer is Alona Minkowski, and associate producer is Ashley Mizuo. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, audio support by Kyle Seiglin and Charlotte Landis. Our studio technician is David Tolls. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Phoebe Bradford, who upload our episodes and videos to YouTube.com slash Pod Save the World.