Pod Save the World - U.S. policy towards Israel

Episode Date: December 12, 2018

Tommy and Ben Rhodes talk with former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro about his time in Israel, why the Middle East Peace process failed, Trump's approach to Israel, the BDS movement, whether support for Israel is getting politicized, Netanyahu's legal jeopardy, and Jared Kushner managing our relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. This is a very special day for me, a very special episode, because I have in studio, Ben Rhodes, who you all know and love, and Dan Shapiro, who this feels like a situation room reunion for us because Dan was senior director for the Middle East and North Africa at the White House. Then he was dispatched to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel. Now he still lives in Tel Aviv where he's a distinguished visiting fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Avivian University. Dan, welcome to Los Angeles.

Welcome to the show. It's great to see you. It's great to be here. Congratulations on everything you guys have done here in Cricket Media. Yeah, you know, as I told him, this was our shot at a resolute desk, and he was, you know, he's like, look, good first cut. You can do better. Yeah, you can do better. Dan looks the same that he did in 2008.

Yeah, you're agedless. A little gray in the beard, but it's distinguished gray. It's salt and pepper, yes, it's a visiting distinguished gray. So it's great to be back with you guys. and not being asked to manage some, like, crisis. Your time with Obama had such a wild trajectory. You did policy and outreach on the OA campaign. Then you ran the Middle East account from the NSC and the White House.

Then you went over to Israel to be our U.S. ambassador. And, like, we're a celebrity. You were beloved. You spoke the language. People, you know, wanted to hear from you. What was the transition like for you leaving the sad cocoon of the NSC and going to the embassy? Well, when we knew we were going to have

new ambassador in the summer of 2011. And we had a very good career ambassador there. It was during a period when President Obama was encountering some of his disagreements with Prime Minister Netanyahu over Israeli settlements and maybe partly by our own doing. We didn't do a lot of outreach to the Israeli public so they could hear from Obama in his own voice and really understand what he was trying to do and what his commitments were. And the idea arose within the White House. Eventually, the president agreed with it that having somebody who, had a good relationship with him and really knew his policies from the inside, had already worked with and had a good relationship with Netanyahu, but as importantly, had the familiarity

with Israeli society and culture and the people, and of course, Hebrew knowledge, which I speak, to really be his voice in Israel was a big part of why he asked me to take on that role. So the biggest change for me was stepping out from the sort of behind-the-scenes role that an NSC staffer makes, a place to being a public figure. Did you miss pushing paper up to the suite, which is where the national security advisor sat, and then getting it marked up and sent back to you? I didn't. I like being my own boss.

Yeah, you know, like a staff. They tell you when you're in the ambassador training course at the State Department that, you know, this is a platform and you will have staff and you will have an institution and you will have a budget, and you can decide how to spend your time and where to put your focus. So I put a lot of my focus into speaking with the Israeli public, traveling around the country, meeting with Israelis who are very diverse in all their different communities. all over the country, getting to know them, listening to them, speaking to them in Hebrew, doing media, social media, which of course was still sort of new for ambassadors at that time.

And so, yeah, that was a big change, having been a congressional staffer and then an NSC staff for that behind the scenes role. But it didn't take too long to feel pretty comfortable that I was the voice that he wanted me to be to the Israeli public. It was cool to watch you and Mike McVall leave the NSC and take these huge public roles and do such a great job. In very easy relationships. Yeah, really challenging situations.

So this is a question for both of these. you. I mean, you alluded to some of this work, Dan, a minute ago. I mean, Obama spent a lot of time pushing to jumpstart the Middle East peace process. And, you know, incentives were offered to the Israelis, to the Palestinians. The pressure was put on the Israelis and Palestinians. In 2010, he hosted this huge summit at the White House with the leaders of the PA, the Israelis, Jordanians, Egyptians, and the process failed. Do you think it was a mistake to invest all that time? And why do either of you think that ultimately those efforts just didn't work out? Well, I don't think it was a mistake, and it was something that President Obama committed to when he was running for president,

and for all the right reasons. He argued we as the United States have a strong, close connection with Israel. We have our own interests in Israel's security. We have moral commitments to Israel as the fulfillment of the Jewish homeland or the Jewish state in the Jewish homeland. And those are all things we should advance and promote and protect. And part of that, not in any way inconsistent with that is helping Israel end its conflict with the Palestinians, which also can achieve legitimate Palestinian aspirations for statehood in a two-state solution. And so it was the right thing to do. He did it really on the second day he was president. He appointed George Mitchell as a special envoy. And then what you just described sort of unfolded.

In retrospect, and I'm evaluating it and writing about it now, didn't get my book published as Ben did. You got to get first out of the gate. In retrospect, we were dealing with two. leaders who completely mistrusted each other. Obama and Netanyahu and Abbas. Ah, okay. Got it. Who were sort of playing for the failure and the blame game that would follow the failure, who both faced, in fairness to them, very, very difficult domestic politics of publics who had sort of oriented toward despair that this isn't possible. There isn't a partner on the other side. Israeli saying, you know, we gave away land in Gaza and we got Hamas with rockets and we

get bus bombs and Palestinians feeling like this was an occupation without end and settlements expanding. And so it didn't work. We can all say that. It didn't work in the first term with Mitchell. It didn't work in the second term with Kerry. Do I regret the retried? No, I don't regret the retried. Dan, you know, when I had to reflect on this in my book, you know, to give the shorthand summary, right? 2011, we tried direct talks, that collapses. Sorry, 2010. We tried direct talks. That collapses. 2011, we tried to put out some U.S. principles on territory and security that's rejected. 2012, we basically took the Israeli position trying to block action at the U.N. Then 13-14 Kerry tries his effort that fails.

I can look back and say that at key junctures, the Palestinians made decisions to not move forward. So in 2010, they were holding out for another settlement freeze to keep talks going. 2011, they did not embrace our principles. In 2012, they're trying to go to the UN to get recognition. And then in 2013-14, they did not embrace Kerry's terms of reference. That said, with the very important caveat that, you know, the Palestinians didn't take the leap. You know, Israel, in many ways, is the stronger party in the negotiation. And one of the things that I took away is, in my view, Netanyahu is not interested in a two-state solution. And he said he was after he became prime minister in 2009. But at every juncture in 2010, 2011, 12, 13, 14, when it got to a pivotal

moment, he would always pull back. And now, you know, we've seen him make statements that seem to suggest that he's publicly now no longer for two-state solution. So, I mean, is there any way around the fact that whatever we were going to do, if you don't have an Israeli prime minister who supports the outcome of a two-state solution, which I do think Abbas does, even though he hasn't had the leadership, the will, perhaps the political skill and the courage to take a leap for peace. Do you think we ever had a partner in Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu for peace? You know, I think he went through a bit of an intellectual transformation. He had said, you know, for years as part of his political era, he published books against the creation of a Palestinian state.

And then he did give the speech in 2009 where he said for the first time and the first Le Kood Prime Minister had ever say he was for a two-state solution. He said a Jewish state that demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state, which are in my mind legitimate caveats to that. And that was the basis on which we operated. And I say that I think there was intellectual transformation. They're not only based on the speech, but based on some of the private conversations we were having with him at that time. his seemingly new understanding of the imperative for Israel, for its future, as a Jewish and democratic state, and even for its security of eventual separation from the Palestinians. So, you know, I give the credit for what I think was an effort to explore it.

Of course, it wasn't a perfect laboratory to test it either because of some of the weakness of the Palestinian leadership that you alluded to. It was unclear they were ever going to tell the hard truth to their people that would be necessary. and he also always tried to search for the golden political path to sort of not have to make the ultimate concessions until near the very end so that he could survive the political blowback he would face from his own political supporters. And that's probably almost impossible. You know, one of his predecessors, Ariel Sharon, blew up the Likud Party in order to do the withdrawal from Gaza and created a centrist party. And Netanyahu was just sort of not that character. He wanted to try to do it from within his own political base. you know, I don't think, I think what President Obama said when the Kerry talks collapsed in 2014 is still relevant and I think describes it accurately.

We found that both leaders couldn't take certain key decisions that they needed to in order to advance from talks into an agreement for different reasons, for mistrust, for domestic constraints, for, you know, maybe ideological reasons as well. And of course, now he leads, Nanyahu leads a much more right-wing government than he did at the time. And I think with the collapse of the talks and it's clear Abbas is now at the end of his career, he's not going to be the partner. Any Israeli leader would work with. He's sort of fallen back into the embrace of his old views and his old political leanings, which you say is how he kind of articulates it now. There's not going to be a Palestinian state on my watch.

He says that openly now. So, I mean, we're all waiting with bated breath to see what Jared Kushner's secret Middle East peace plan cooks up. I'm sure it will be brilliant and well thought through and well executed. But allow me to ask an even more cynical question, which was, I think for a long time, like, there's a reason on the merits to get to a two-state solution, which is to help the Palestinian people, got a homeland and a state to solve sort of intra-Israel issues. But there was also a sense that regionally, the failure to resolve the Middle East peace process was this major irritant with a whole bunch of other Gulf states as well, like the Saudis and others, Egyptians. I wonder if that's true anymore, right? I mean, Trump moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and there was not really a huge uprising or no one seemed to care. Trump cut off a whole bunch of AIDS to Palestinian refugees.

There hasn't been some uproar in the Arab world. I mean, do you think that it's still this critical piece of diplomacy that we should prioritize over all these other things we could be doing? Look, I'm not even sure in our time it was the key to solving all kinds of regional crises. and, of course, many other crises erupted. Yemen and Libya and Syria that really had nothing to do with the Israeli-Palestinian issue, and even if we'd had a two-state solution, we would still be dealing with all of those crises. I do think it is true, as you alluded to, that most of these Arab states, particularly the moderate Gulf states, don't really care that much about the Palestinian issue,

and they prioritize the security alignment they have with Israel over threats, common threats they face from Iran and from the Sunni extremists of the region. And so they're not that exercise about things like the move of the embassy to Jerusalem or the Palestinian aid situation. And it's very clear there's a strategic partnership and it's mostly under the table, but increasingly out in the open that Israel and the Gulf states see each other as partners. There's still a pretty low ceiling on what can be achieved in the way of normalization. If you're going to talk about open relations, embassies, trade, tourism, the kinds of things that would really reshape the region and show that Israel is fully integrated into the region.

My guess is most of those Arab regimes, even if they don't care so much about the Palestinians, aren't going to take the political risk of the blowback from their own populations or the propaganda value it would give to Iran, who could say they're the holders of the Palestinian flame when the Arabs have thrown them under the bus, to go as far as to really normalize and open public relations with Israel. Well, so, I mean, back of the U.S., I think traditionally support for Israel has been, pretty bipartisan. I'm wondering if you think that that might change because, you know, Netanyahu was very vocal about his criticisms of Obama, both on settlement policy and then, you know, much more vocally on the Iran deal. He spoke for a joint session of Congress without checking with the White

House, which is not the coolest thing to do. And then he has since fully embraced the Trump agenda that, you know, most of the Trump policies. Is there any concern in Israel about fully embracing the Republican Party and potentially decreasing support for Israel, among Democrats? There is some. I get that question a lot when I give speeches in Israel. A lot of Israelis will ask me, are we losing the support of Democrats? Are we losing the support of young progressives?

Are we losing the support of younger American Jews? I get some version of that question all the time. And you know, I remember when President Obama was reacting to the Prime Minister's decision to give that speech in Congress, one of the main concerns he raised was this really cuts into the heart of the bipartisan nature of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and it creates a partisan divide. It did on the Iran issue, maybe even to the president's benefit

in terms of being able to get the Congress to sustain it. And then, of course, Trump becomes an accelerant of all of those trends and the extreme Israeli embrace of Trump probably as well. My argument to them is, look, you can see some, or maybe erosion, and there are new voices in the party and new voices among young progressives, who may not.

have the same historical associations with Israel and maybe less sympathetic. And I frankly take on my shoulders and people like me the need to educate our own camp that you can have disagreements with Israeli policy, but we should sort of separate that from do we support Israel's security, do we support its legitimacy? And I think it's possible to do both. What I ask from the Israelis is, you know, try not to make it harder for me. And so if there's apparently no commitment toward a two-state solution, even trying to keep it alive for some later negotiation when there's different leaders, if there's expansion of settlements in ways that would make two states impossible, or if there's an embrace of Trump that seems to be insensitive to the vulnerabilities that so

many Americans feel about his presidency, you know, and you can always expect them to understand that they're going to try to have the best possible relationship with the president of the United States. But if you treat him as kind of a messianic figure, even if just because you agree with some of the things he's done, that's going to alienate the, what, 50% of the country that thinks he's uniquely dangerous in American history. So there's a balance there that I'm not sure is proper order than this. Is this where you been? Yeah.

We talked to a lot of progressive groups and potential 20-20 candidates. Yeah, I think there's a lot of dimensions to this. One is, you know, Dan, you're right. I mean, I remember I used to have as part of my job for a year and a half meeting with House Democrats, including the entire community of Jewish Democrats in the House, to try to educate them out of the Iran deal and hopefully secure their support. And when Netanyahu gave his speech to Congress, it was a single best thing for that effort. Because people said to me, you know what, now this just looks partisan.

You know, I was uncomfortable being in a different position than the Israeli prime minister. A lot of Democrats had kind of come up in their political careers and just kind of took it as a given that whoever the Israeli prime minister was, they were generally comfortable siding with that Israeli prime minister on matters related to Israel's security, whether it's Palestinians or Iran. But that was such a partisan effort by Netanyahu that they could say and believe, you know, it wasn't a cover for them. they actually believed it, that this is just someone who's basically acting as an extension of the Republican Party or vice versa. And I do think that's dangerous for Israel security in the long run. And it takes a few dimensions. You know, one is right now Netanyahu is getting kind of his wish list, right? The embassy moves to Jerusalem. There's no heat on settlement expansion.

Iran deal was canceled. Iran deal was canceled. But, I mean, what happens two, three, four years from now when, you know, the situation with the Palestinians is even more dire, and that probably invites more international attention on it. Or there's a new, you know, democratic administration that is not going to be fully in line with these views. Or the Iranian nuclear program has restarted because we've lost the constraints of the deal. I think right now it looks like two parties that are in kind of a sugar high together, the Republican Party and the Lekud Party. But what the long-term consequences are of not resolving these problems,

of the Iranian nuclear program or the Palestinian issue, I think can still blow back on them. I think in the United States, there's a couple of risks. You know, one, I just want to ask you about, before we get to the kind of younger progressive movement in BDS, which I think it's important for us to talk about, you know, Dan, I myself, I wouldn't take the opportunity of having you here to say how strange it is to me that, you know, I've taken certain positions, certainly on the Iran deal, but I had to be the public voice of the abstention on the UN Security Council resolution. For those who don't know, at the end of the Obama administration, we abstained on a resolution that essentially condemned Israeli expansion of

Israeli settlements. It also addressed Palestinian incitement, but the blowback on this was extreme. And, you know, I was called everything in the book. And chiefly, I was called an anti-Semite. And I felt, you know, it was almost like, you know, being a target of cyberbullying. You know, I felt like I had a parade of kind of pro Netanyahu pro-Trump people just trying to grind my reputation down and turn me into some anti-Israel anti-Semite figure. And I wonder what do you think, is there a risk of that? I mean, this kind of scorched earth approach to people with different views, doesn't that risk over time creating these fissures, you know, where you have people in the Democratic Party who

just support a two-state solution? And if you're going to tar someone as anti-Israel anti-Semite, just because you occasionally take positions that differ from the Israeli government, what does that do over time to the bonds that have to exist in both parties? So again, this is really where President Obama was coming from at the time of the speech in the Iran deal. He said, look, this relationship has to be able to be sustained through changes of government and changes of administration and party in both countries. and that's historically been the case, and there have historically been strong Democratic and Republican administrations and majorities in Congress, and Likud and labor-led governments in Israel that kept the foundations of the relationship moving forward. If you get a kind of single-party identification

from one country to the other, when the pendulum inevitably swings, and we know it does in American politics, Israel politics is a different story maybe, but it started to swing just this past November. I mean, people will come in and, you know, they may remember that they were treated as if their views, which are not anti-Israel. They may disagree with certain Israeli policies, but we're not welcomed. So I think it's wise to maintain that sense of proportion. I think it's wise for the Israeli government to sustain close ties with Democrats out of power, of course now with the new majority coming into the House. And to understand there's such a thing as being a supportive critic or a critical supporter. And that's, you know, the views of people who criticize Israeli settlement

expansion. And of course, that shouldn't be done in isolation. You've got to take account for Palestinian responsibility as well. But those are views shared by many, many Israelis. The Iran deal may not have been popular with Israel, but there were in Israel, but there were a lot of Israelis, including a lot of Israeli security experts who understood the value of it or at least didn't want to see it canceled once it was in place. So these are not views that should be treated as, classified anyway as unfriendly or anti-Israel, but they are views that should be given the legitimacy of being part of a camp of supporters of Israel's security, its legitimacy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, and the effort to try to end the conflict with the Palestinians.

Yesterday I interviewed Congresswoman elect Ilhan Omar from Minnesota, who she supports the boycott divestment and sanctions, or BDS movement. Also, interestingly, her incoming colleague, Rashida-Shalib, has announced that she's going to lead a delegation of new members to the West Bank and not go on the traditional APEC-sponsored trip to Israel during the August recess, which is actually a big deal in part because that trip is seen as influential, but it's often, as you know, led by leadership like Steny Hoyer or Kevin McCarthy. And so it's good politics for you inside your caucus to go on this. And some feel maybe pressured to go or think it's important to go.

So I was hoping you could explain what the BDS movement is and why you think it's a bad strategy or bad movement. And I also wonder if you think that there's the potential for a major shift in sentiment in terms of U.S. Israeli policy in Congress specifically. Yeah. I don't see a major shift. I mean, there are some new voices and there are at least a couple people who have articulated some support for BDS. I think there'll be in a tiny minority of members of the new majority who will take that view. I do oppose boycotts and divestment of sanctions against Israel. I think those are the wrong strategies. I think they're unfair. In many cases, not everybody, but there are people who adhere to those. tactics who I think fall into anti-Semitic attitudes and sort of delegitimization, not just of Israeli policy, but actually fully Israeli existence. And I think those are things that we as a

party and me personally as an American, I think we should oppose. So that's, again, falls on the shoulders of people in the party like me to make that argument to younger American voters, younger Democrats who don't know all of the history, don't know all of the reasons for Israel's existence, its legitimacy, the tragedies of Jewish history when there was statelessness for many centuries and the return to a homeland, which, by the way, President Obama spoke so movingly about, including in the speech that, you know, Ben and I worked on together that he made when he visited Israel in 2013, that those are important principles that we shouldn't lose sight of. And you can maintain fully those principles and also be fully committed to the very legitimate

aspirations Palestinians hold for statehood for self-determination and when necessary to be critical of the Israeli contribution to the stalemate that's prevented that from happening, while I think also being realistic about Palestinian contributions to that stalemate. Now, you know, the question of who goes on what trip, I think, is sort of not that important. I think congressional travel is really important. You would host all these people. I must have hosted several hundred members of Congress while I was ambassador. Some on APEC trips, some on J Street trips, some on trips just under the congressional authority, some on their own.

The important thing is to get out of Washington is to go to the places where you are going to need to cast votes or you're going to cast votes on policy issues that affect those questions. Talk to the people on all sides. Talk to the Israeli military commanders. Talk to the full diversity of Israeli political opinion. Talk to Palestinians. This is something that we did and President Obama always did.

and he would get out there. And, you know, I have to say, you know, APAC has really made a commitment to try to do this in a bipartisan way. They do that trip with a Republican version and a Democratic version. And, you know, their brand is, you know, it's a big tent. And you can be in that tent of supporters of the relationship, but also supporters of two states and even a critic of certain policies. But, you know, J Street takes a somewhat different approach. But I think it's all valid and it's all worthwhile to go. I hope that those members who say they're not going to go on those trips and they want to go and talk to Palis

scenes of the West Bank, which is a great thing to do, will also take the time to talk to Israelis and hear their experiences and try to understand how it looks from their perspective. You know, a couple of things I want to prove on the tactics of opposition to BDS, because, you know, I think we would all believe that going the full route of BDS against Israel does bleed into delegitimization, as you say. I think tactically, a couple of recent developments, I think raise interesting questions, though. One is Airbnb just to decided to not list any more Israeli settlements. So basically, if you're going to the West Bank, Airbnb will no longer say, we're going to list properties in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

It's a way of registering concern about Israeli settlements. And the reaction to that was largely negative, I think, from people who opposed BDS and essentially treated that as BDS. I think there's another argument, and J Street has made this argument that by essentially saying that some effort to delist properties in Israeli settlements, by saying that's the same thing that's tantamount to BDS, you're actually painting too broad a brush because people should be able to express some form of opposition to continue to Israeli settlement construction. I'm curious what you think about, you know, two angles of this. One is what do you think about the Airbnb decision? But secondly, do you have concerns that by equating Airbnb's decision

with the broader BDS movement that suddenly you're creating too big a tent over BDS. You know, in other words, if you're not allowing people the outlet to express some opposition to settlements, you might normalize essentially somebody affiliating with BDS, if you see what I mean. Yeah. You know, I'm not sure I understood the logic of a company like Airbnb wading into these political waters. So I'm not sure that was the, you know, the smartest thing for them to do. obviously anybody who doesn't feel comfortable going to those properties and renting them, you know, doesn't need to and can express their opposition to Israeli settlement expansion in that way.

On the flip side, the criticism of the company as somehow anti-Semitic, I thought was rather overheated. I mean, this is a company that, of course, has 20,000 rentals all over the state of Israel and many Israelis who are very, you know, proud participants in that enterprise. So, again, I'm not sure about it as a corporate. strategy is right thing to do I look I I think it's more than legitimate to be critical of Israeli settlement construction and then you know for those who feel they need to express that and how they engage there I think that's not the same as delegitimizing Israel through the core of the BDS movement which really has a series of principles that when you walk through them

ultimately lead to having no no Israel whatsoever but I also think you know in the same way President Obama always preached engagement with people you disagree with learn from them, to try to convince them, to have that dialogue, I think, you know, sometimes people who live in settlements or their advocates are sort of treated as some sort of untouchable outcasts. And they shouldn't be. When I was ambassador, I didn't travel to those parts of the West Bank because it wasn't part of my portfolio. But I made time to spend in conversation with settlement leaders, their advocates, their representatives in the Knesset, because I felt was critically important that they hear directly from us why we had concerns and for us to hear

from them. And by the way, there's settlements and settlements. There are some settlements, which even in President Obama's articulation of his principles, which were the of the territorial outcome, of 67 lines, and mutually agreed swaps. The swaps were about taking in large Israeli communities near the border and compensating the Palestinians with land elsewhere. So, you know, knowing those nuances and getting down into those weeds, I think is important and prevent you from these broad brush statements that delegitimize entire populations. And I guess the last question in this set of issues is, what do you say to the person who says, look, we keep saying we're against settlements,

we keep saying we're for two-state solution, and nothing changes. In fact, all that's changing is they're building more settlements, they're taking more Palestinian land, more Palestinians are being displaced, the possibility of a two-state solution is getting out of reach. The Israeli government is now publicly saying that it's not going to happen on their watch. at what point do you shift from just engagement to some form of pressure, right? And there's lots of different kinds of pressure. There's BDS is the extreme version.

Again, I think we're uncomfortable with that. But then you had the UN Security Council Resolutions kind of thing we passed. There's various types of U.S. assistance that could be withheld. How do you defend, I guess, a situation where the Israeli government is not responding to the United States expressions of concern about settlement growth and the viability of two-state solutions. and yet, you know, it's very difficult in our politics to apply pressure on Israel. At what point do you have to consider applying some pressure? Do you think that that's just kind of not on the table when it relates to the U.S.-Israel relationship?

Look, multiple administrations have imposed some forms of pressure. George H.W. Bush, who just patched away, had a big fight with Prime Minister Shamir over providing loan guarantees to help finance the housing of new immigrants because of Israeli settling construction. But the Clinton and Bush Jr. Administrations had different approaches, but often found themselves criticizing. And even in places like the U.N., Israeli settlement construction, of course, the Obama administration, we have had our well-known arguments over it. It's legitimate for the United States, separate country, our interests, which are very much overlapping, but not identical to Israel, to articulate when we have a disagreement. I think we need to be realistic about what moves opinion in Israeli policy.

politics. Sometimes that pressure is easy to jujitsu against, and it was against Obama in a way that only hardened attitudes. We also, as I said earlier, have to be fully aware that there's a Palestinian actor here. And when you have a Palestinian leadership that seems able and willing to tell hard truth to their people and take risks that I don't think we've seen so far from President Abbas, that that might be a much more effective way of getting Israeli public to tell their own leaders, we should show new flexibility. So there are a lot of different elements here. But the United States can be a close and strong ally to Israel and also express our disagreements. And sometimes that will even take some forms of pressure. Yeah. Dan, I know you just recently flew from

Tel Aviv to the U.S. and have not seen CNN on all day every day for the last two years, but you might have heard that President Trump is in a little bit of legal jeopardy. It has jumped upon. He might have made some mistakes. But he is not the only one. For the third time this year, the Israeli police have recommended that Prime Minister Netanyahu be charged with taking bribes, fraud, and breach of trust. Most recently, he was accused of performing favors for a media conglomerate in exchange for good coverage. President Trump, if you're listening, crooked media is open to that kind of deal. Dan, how big a threat are these charges for BB? And is it like all-consuming in Israel the way that the Mueller stuff is for us? It's not that all-consuming, but it's a significant story. It's also a very

long-running story. Their system moves very slowly. So these investigations have been going on for years. As you mentioned, this is the third in a series of recommendations from the police that he'd be indicted for bribery. And this one is the most serious, the one you referenced about the alleged exchanges with the media company. And the foregone conclusion among most observers in the legal end in the political world in Israel is that he will be indicted at some point in 2019. Wow. The Attorney General has to make that decision. The police recommendations don't determine that. the Attorney General who he appointed, but is considered a Matt Whitaker? No, he's considered a very serious, very thoughtful.

The parallels are weird. There are some weird parallels. But then if the Attorney General decides to indict him, he has to have a hearing, and then there's a long, long legal process that follows. It could last many months, even years. Meantime, 2019 is also an election year in Israel. The election has to be in November, but it could be earlier if the coalition dissolves or if the Prime Minister decides to move it up.

And so he could be running for re-election either under indictment or with this indictment bearing down on him. Sounds familiar to him. Yes. But most observers would tell you he's probably going to win regardless of whether he's indicted or not. He retains a certain aura, which he's cultivated very successfully, of indispensability, that there is nobody else who can manage all the different security challenges Israel faces from Syria and Iran and Kamaas and Hisbalah and Putin and Trump and all the crazy things that he has to. deal with. He's marginalized a lot of the competition within his own party, push people out or cut them down to size. And the opposition figures have not yet emerged seemingly strong enough

to displace him. So, you know, that's a real unknown. Could he be reelected and then have to go through some legal process and would the court allow him to stay in office or with the public or would his coalition partners allow him to stay in office as an indicted prime minister? Israeli law is sort of unclear on those points. So there are some parallels. there are also some very idiosyncratic aspects to the Israeli system. What a mess. It is quite a soap opera. I mean, the other parallels you hear about from some critics of Netanyahu

is that there have been democratic black backsliding, that there's intimidation of the media or there's kind of consolidation in the media around kind of, you know, Israeli versions of Fox News for Netanyahu. There's some risks to civil society. How real is that? As someone who lives there is on the ground. I mean, how much of that is. you know, there's different political perspectives in Israel, or how much is there been some

noticeable shift in terms of the media landscape, the civil society landscape, and then political landscape that has some of the same type of authoritarian tendencies we're seeing here, you know, that Trump would like to do if he had his way? You know, I mean, you can sometimes hear those voices, but I think the impact on it has been quite limited, you know, periodically a sort of extreme piece of legislation is proposed in the Knesset. And, you know, we've, if you look at our Congress, sometimes you see some really loony stuff that gets introduced there. And also in a similar way, if it ever passes, it's watered down to almost symbolic stuff and much of it never passes at all. And if you look at other democracies

that are under some kind of stress to their institutions, Hungary or Poland or some of the other Eastern European countries, I don't think Israel's in that category. It's very vibrant. The debate is freewheeling. Nobody holds back if they're a critic of Netanyahu or if they're a critic of his coalition. There may be people who would like to try to stifle debate around that, but they haven't really been successful. The courts are still very independent. And, you know, eventually over time, you know, elections have consequences. As, you know, Trump can appoint Kavanaugh, recoup prime ministers will avoid appoint judges. And so that may have that shift. But to say Israeli democracy is under some kind of real threat, I think

would be a very, very exaggerated statement. Let me ask you guys about an entirely different mess. The New York Times ran a piece about Jared Kushner and his bizarrely cozy relationship with the Saudi crown prince, Muhammad bin Salman. Apparently, they text. They're on a first name basis. They WhatsApp. Jared helps him cover up his international murders. So that's sort of how he got to know each other. It's a typical friend stuff.

When you read that piece, you know, wearing your hat as a former senior director for the Middle East and North Africa as a former Deputy National Security Elijah, did it make you cringe? to me, what did you think about just freelance boy secretary of state in the West Wing banging around with the Saudi account? It wasn't surprising to me. And Dan, I don't know if you heard these things, but back in 2017, when I just left government, I started to hear this. You know, what you would hear is that Jared had been giving these accounts and that the Saudis and Emirates in particular had made a full court press to essentially build these relationships

with Jared. Muhammad bin Salma in particular from Saudi Arabia, Maham bin Zayed from the UAE and his ambassador in Washington. They were socializing. They were kind of counseling him. Here's what you need to know about the Middle East. Oh, by the way, maybe we can discuss some real estate deals on the side. And it was clear that they took advantage of the fact that there was this guy, Jared,

who was kind of a blank slate, really naive in the ways of the world, no experience dealing in international diplomacy. and, you know, essentially, Jared went all in with them. And that shaped his perspective on all these things. And you saw that, I think, manifested in Trump's first visit to Saudi Arabia that Jared played a key role in. You saw that, as we've discussed on this pod, Tommy, in the U.S., completely deferring to the Saudi position in taking the prime minister of Lebanon hostage in Riyadh and locking up members of MBS's own family in the Ritz, in the war in Yemen, most tragically. and now manifest in the Khashoggi thing. And oftentimes in those disputes, Jared was out of step with the State Department.

So on the dispute with Qatar, where Saudi Arabia basically tried to expel Qatar from the Gulf Cooperative Council and isolate them. You know, Rex Tillerson was trying to negotiate some resolution. And Jared was saying, no, no, we're all in with the Saudis, right? So I think that that article sums up what has been evident for two years, which is the Saudis and the Emirates ran a very effective influence operation. on Jared Kushner from the first day he came into the White House. And I think the questions they need to be answered are, is there a financial component to that? Were they side dealing on real estate transactions or prospective transactions to get him on board?

Because it's very obvious to anybody who's paying attention that there's something very strange about the way in which this White House is continuing to act as a defense attorney for someone who just murdered a journalist. And you can understand why the Saudis would find this to be a very familiar and work. workable arrangement. The son-in-law down the hall. It looks sort of familiar. It's a family business.

It's a family, right? So a Crown Prince sees... That's how the UAE runs. It's how Saturday he runs. I see sort of a counterpart, you know, an individual with a unique access to the leader who can kind of make decisions that cut through the bureaucracy or bypass the bureaucracy completely. And so that's their system. That's not really our system.

It's not how it's supposed to work. So as an NSC alumnus, you know, it's kind of horrifying. The NSC exists to take in the different perspectives of all the different agencies of the U.S. government, which will include security and diplomacy and economics and other strategic questions. Pull those perspectives, give the president options, and the president, you know, isn't going to be governed just by the views of one family member when he makes those decisions. And so what the result was, of course, it did give the Saudis a blank slate. And they took advantage of it on all of these very impulsive moves with Lebanon, Qatar, Yemen, and so forth,

which of, and obviously culminating in Khashoggi's murder. So I think I said Lindsay Graham say that business as usual with the Saudis should be over until we pressure King Salman to name a new crown prince. Do you think that's a smart course of action, a feasible one? I don't think we should expect that we're going to be able to dictate who the ruler of Saudi Arabia is. We've never been very good at regime change. The public coup business? Yeah, it doesn't work. And so I think we should be realistic.

I'm in the camp of people who think we do need a reliable Saudi. partner. We need it for our own interests. We need it because we have a common threat that we're trying to deal with from Iran. And we need it because of the role they play in energy markets. And we need it because of the role they could play to facilitate greater progress on Israeli-Palestinian peace. So we need one. We don't have one. Right now we don't have a reliable Saudi partner because NBS is so headstrong and so impulsive and there seem to be no constraints on its behavior. So, you know, there are certainly opportunities now to use the leverage we have. And we have more leverage in this relationship than they do to set down some guidelines and say, you know,

these are expectations we have about how Saudi Arabia will behave in the region, about us not being surprised by various initiatives. And, you know, in the end, if they decide MBS is going to be their ruler but can operate within those guidelines, you know, he's not going to get the bloodstain out of his hand, but, you know, we may just have to, in the way we sometimes have to deal with unsavory people conduct that relationship. But if he can't respect that, those guidelines, then obviously this relationship is going to go into a bit of a tailspin. Yeah, I mean, I guess I thought we had a little more agency. We don't have to perpetrate a regime change or a coup. I think we do have to remember that MBS has been destabilizing,

right? It's not been the natural course of events that he would accede to this position. He was named deputy crown prince, not crown prince. He took advantage of the fact that, frankly, his father is not well. His health is very poor. And he's essentially been ousting his critics. He ousted the person Mohamed Nyev, who was in line ahead of him. He ousted a lot of other family members from Saudi positions of power. And he was, you know, already facing, I think, a royal family that was uncomfortable with this move to one-man-one rule. I think what Trump did is throw him a lifeline because essentially you have in Saudi Arabia a family that has generally governed on consensus. You know, there's always a king, but, you know, the family has to kind of get together and agree on things.

And I think MBS was very vulnerable after the Khashoggi murder to the family getting together and saying, you know what? Like this guy's gotten way too far ahead of his skis and we need to do something about this. And so I do think Trump threw him a lifeline. I think, you know, so it's not as simple as if, you know, we can say you must get another ruler. But I do think if we sanctioned MBS, right, and said we're going to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia and started to show that there's a cost to his brand of rule, I think that the likelihood that the family might have gotten together and said, you know what, we might need to kind of figure out how to pull the levers and put this back in a box. I think that was certainly possible. And Trump, you know, instead has reempowered him.

And so I think that was a bit of a missed opportunity to say, you know what, this guy is not leading you guys in the right place. And that's going to have consequences on our relationship with you. Yeah. I mean, imagine we said your yacht can't float off the south of France anymore. With Jared on it. Yeah. Jared on it. That might move.

You have this vision of like a wolf of Wall Street kind of scene with Jared and MBS, you know, with some like billion dollar painting on the yacht. That they're shooting fireworks at her. Yeah, kind of grotesque. I mean, there have been these, you know, rumors of these visits Jared has taken to be on MBS's yacht. And actually just that, that image is kind of revolting. These two guys who, you know, think that, you know, one of whom is, you know, was 29 when he's seated to this position a few years.

gum, yes, and the other of whom was, you know, kind of a, you know, a sky end of a New York real estate family, thinking that they alone should be able to make these decisions about, you know, whole fates of nations is kind of, that's part of the problem. Dilettant-prinseling bachelor party or something, yeah. Last question I have for you guys, I don't have been to you anymore. I mean, sort of like seven, eight years past the Arab Spring. Syria is in very tough shape. Egypt is a mess.

Libya is a mess. I'm wondering what, and I'm not saying that this was the result of U.S. policies. I'm sure there are things we could have done better for sure. But knowing what we know now, I mean, what role do you think the U.S. can or should play in trying to help these countries put themselves back together? So I, you know, we've talked about this a bit, Tommy. I mean, I, you know, I do think fundamentally we have to recognize that what began in the Arab Spring, you know, there is a generational sorting that's going to take place inside of these countries, that quick, relatively simple transitions to democracy were not possible in places that didn't have

institutions and civil society, places like Libya where that had been hollowed out, that have deep unresolved questions about the role of Islam and politics, that have sectarian differences in conflicts. So I do think it's going to take a long time for this to play out. And what we tried to do in the second Obama administration is try to minimize the humanitarian humanitarian harm that would come from these transitions to try to do what we could for our own interest and for the interests of these countries to take out the most extremist violent entities like ISIS and to try to continue to throw lifelines to people who are trying to move in the right direction either people in government trying to do the right thing or people in civil society so that the

U.S. is playing some role over time in minimizing the security and humanitarian fallout of these transitions and trying to find ways to empower more positive actors in these countries. I personally think that we have to have a tremendous amount of humility about it. I mean, one of our other former colleagues, Phil Gordon, had a pretty famous quote that I'm not going to get exactly right, but essentially we invaded and occupied Iraq and ended up being a disaster. Did regime change in Libya with a light footprint and it was a disaster? And we didn't go into Syria and it was a disaster. The point being that we sometimes think we have more agency than we do, you know, that if we moved, you know, the rook to a certain place on the chessboard, these countries would be different.

I personally think we have to have a tremendous amount of humility about our capacity to orchestrate events inside of these countries. We can affect their decision-making. We can affect, you know, our interest and, you know, whether Iran develops a nuclear weapon, but our capacity to shape what government emerges. I mean, this is what part of gets me about the current Iran strategy, the notion that some mix of sanctions and rhetoric is going to somehow lead to this new Iranian government. I mean, there's no way. In fact, I think if we somehow did squeeze Iran to a regime change point, the worst people would take over there. So, again, my main takeaway is having humility about what can be accomplished. That doesn't mean you don't

care and you don't try, but it means that, you know, you probably don't overreach and make mistakes of intervention and that you just find entry points to try to move things in a better direction. I shared the lesson of humility from our experiences with those changes in the Arab world at start in 2011. And you can definitely say there are things we could have done differently and could have done better, but you also have to balance that against the costs. And part of this is the residue or the long-term price we paid for Iraq, which went so poorly. There may have been a time when a certain kind of intervention in Syria would have been appropriate. And we might have been able to save lives, but we also might have been pulled into something. very long and very deep, and it was very clear that the American people and the Congress,

you know, we're not on board for that. So we maybe had some limited options because of that. But even then, it's not clear where that would have led. Our ability to shape the outcomes of these societal transformations, I agree with Ben, is quite limited. And then there are cases where we really have to balance different interests. Egypt is a great example where we're clearly dealing with now a very repressive CC government, more repressive in some ways, even than the Mubarak government was before the Arab Spring and the civil society is being pushed underground and any even peaceful voices of opposition are being stifled. Probably it's going to be a powder keg and it's sewing the seeds for the next explosion and next resolution. So we need to be a voice and a critic

and try to empower those elements of civil society. But all that said, at the same time, Egypt remains a security partner. It's a security partner for the United States against ISIS. It's a security partner of Israel against Hamas and maintaining the peace treaty with Israel. And so figuring out how to balance when we have an interest with working with a regime that is far from ideal, but trying to do what we can to give lifelines and give support to other elements of that society without empowering the radicals, that's a very tough challenge for any national security professional. Yeah, damn right. Dan, it is great to have you in L.A.

Love to be here. Yeah. We're hoping we're going to ask that you move here instead of. back to Washington and you decide to return the climate's a lot more like Israel so it's tempting there you go Ben, Dan thank you both for talking and see you next week. Great to be here.

Thanks.