The Bulwark Podcast - Amir Tibon: Terrible Choices for Israel

Episode Date: November 24, 2023

Hamas triggered the Gaza war—and signed the death warrants of thousands of Palestinians—when it purposefully targeted civilians on 10/7. Israeli journalist Amir Tibon joins guest host Mona Charen to discuss how his family survived the terror attack, Netanyahu's failures, Biden's support, and the bad options for post-war rule in Gaza.

This message comes from BetterHelp. Can you think of a time when you didn't feel like you could be yourself? Like you were hiding behind a mask, at work, in social settings, around your family? BetterHelp Online Therapy is convenient, flexible, and can help you learn to be your authentic self. So you can stop hiding. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10%

off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P, dot com. This is an ad by BetterHelp Online Therapy. October is the season for wearing masks and costumes, but some of us feel like we wear a mask and hide more often than we want to, at work, in social settings, around our family. Therapy can help you learn to accept all parts of yourself, so you can stop hiding and take off the mask. Because masks should be for Halloween fun, not for your emotions. Whether you're navigating workplace stresses, complex relationships, or family dynamics, therapy's a great tool for facing your fears and finding a way to overcome them.

If you're thinking of starting therapy but you're afraid of what you might uncover, give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Take off the mask with BetterHelp. Visit betterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P, dot com. Welcome to the Bulwark Podcast. I'm Mona Charan, host of a different Bulwark Podcast called Beg to Differ, and we're doing something a little different today. I'm filling in for Charlie Sykes to do a special broadcast with Amir Tibon, who is an Israeli journalist with Haaretz who had a harrowing experience on October 7th.

And so I'm thrilled that, Amir, you were able to join us. Welcome. Hi, Iwona. Thank you so much for inviting me. And it's good to see you. So Amir, you and I first met in Oxford, England, when we were both participating in a conference of Israeli and American journalists. It was lovely. We both wandered around Oxford the day we arrived, because I think we were on the same flight. You were, at the time, stationed in D.C. for Haaretz. Indeed. And so we got to know each other because our hotel rooms weren't ready.

I remember, yes. Yes, we wandered around. But you've been nice enough to join me on Beg to Differ a couple of times. So I want to just begin with what happened on 10-7. So you and your family were living in a kibbutz very close to the Gaza border. And tell us what your first indication was on that morning that something unusual was happening. So on the morning of October 7, the first thing that woke us up was the sound of a mortar that was about to land and explode right next to our house. It's important to give some background, Mona, before I really go into the events of that morning.

My wife and I had made our home in a beautiful community close to the Israeli border with Gaza called Kibbutz Nachal Oz. It's a small agricultural village, about 500 people, with a very interesting history. It's a kind of a symbol in Israel, Kibbutz Nachalot. It has existed since the 1950s, and it's officially the closest place in Israel to Gaza. It's located completely within the internationally recognized borders

of the state of Israel. It's not a settlement or a disputed place. It's really part of the borders of Israel as they are respected by international law and the entire world. But it was founded in the 1950s with a clear intention to create a border community right next to Gaza, because at the time, David Ben-Gurion, the founding leader of Israel, believed that in order to protect the borders of Israel, there has to be civilian life on the border, not just military outposts, but there have to be communities where people

live and work, and there has to be agriculture. And so that's why this small kibbutz exists next to Gaza. It's a place that has known a lot of war and some tragedies over the years but on the day day to day level it's a beautiful place with a very kind of green and relaxing environment you know if you've ever been to a kibbutz in israel so you can imagine it the small alleyways there are no streets with cars inside a kibbutz you park your car outside and inside people only walk or use their bicycle. A lot of trees, a lot of green lawns, a small kibbutz store where we would take our two daughters in the afternoon to buy popsicles after kindergarten.

And a kibbutz is a place with a very strong sense of community, of together. And so we made a choice to go and live in this community, Kibbutz Nachalot, about nine years ago, after a previous war between Israel and Hamas that ended in the summer of 2014. And at the time, this community and other communities along the Gaza border were eager for young couples, young families to go and live there. And so my wife and I made a choice to go there. There was a big ideological component to it. We wanted to go and support this border community. But over time, we just fell in love with the place.

And we really felt this was our home. Can I interrupt, Amir, and just ask you to elaborate a little bit on the ideological component? What do you mean? We believe it's important to protect the borders of the state of Israel. And we believe that communities on the border are the first line of defense for our country. And that if a place like Nachal Oz is losing population and does not have young families and does not have a future, then other parts of Israel will be more exposed to the kind of troubles and threats

that communities like Nachal Oz have faced over the years. And I'll get to that in a second. But just to wrap up on the personal story, we made it our home. We lived there for a few years. Then I got the offer from Haaretz, from my newspaper, to go to Washington for three years and cover the Trump administration. And that's when we met, Mona, when we were in D.C. But I think I told you at the time that my home in Israel is in this kibbutz on the border with Gaza.

And that once we finish our stint in Washington, D.C., we're going back to this kibbutz, to this small community. And that's what happened at the end of 2020. We came back to Nachal Oz. By now, we were parents, and we were raising our two young daughters on this beautiful kibbutz, which for them is the only home they know in the world. And they are crazy about Nachal Oz.

They love the place. And over the years, we have dealt with security situations and threats. When you live in Nahal Oz there is no Iron Dome to protect you. It is so close to Gaza that Iron Dome is just not relevant. Iron Dome cannot offer protection because it does not have enough time to calculate the route of a rocket and intercept it like it can do for Tel Aviv and other parts of the country. And we always knew we were very close to Gaza. It's less than a mile from our home to the easternmost neighborhood of Gaza City.

And there were other threats that we took into consideration. But what happened on October 7th was something that we never imagined could happen. And honestly, it's something that had we taken into consideration, we wouldn't have lived in this community because it was a complete failure and breakdown of all of Israel's defense systems. And so we woke up that morning from the sound of a mortar that landed in our neighborhood. It's like this long whistle and then an explosion. And we ran from our bedroom to our daughter's bedroom,

which is what we call the safe room. In every home in border communities like Nachal Oz, there is a home that is built of strong concrete and it's supposed to withstand a direct hit by a rocket. And most families, Mona, that's where you put the children to bed at night so that if there's a siren, you know, indicating a mortar at six in the morning, the parents have to run to the children and not the other way around. We ran to our daughter's bedroom, we closed the door and we weren't so excited, I have to say. We were kind of relaxed even because when you live in a border

community, these kinds of things will happen every few months. You get used to it. And usually we have a procedure for it. We pack a suitcase or two. And once there is a pause in the fire exchanges, we just shove the girls in the car and we drive away from the border. That's what most families do. And we were preparing for that. You know, our two daughters, they are three and a half years old and one and a half years old.

They were sleeping. We began to pack suitcases. And we thought this is going to be one of those days, one of those days of war that happened, unfortunately, once, twice, three times a year. But then around 7 a.m., we began to hear something different. We began to hear automatic gunfire. A bit in the distance, but getting closer and closer and closer. And that's when we realized this is a very different kind of event. And, you know, I'm not going to go into the entire story,

but what happened eventually is we had five Hamas terrorists standing right outside our door, shooting bullets into our home, trying to break into our home. They failed to get in. The home was locked, and it's a new home built of good standards, and so they couldn't get in,

but they shot more than 30 bullets at our home. We heard them shouting in Arabic, and I understand Arabic, so I understood there was a commander standing outside our window shouting tactical orders at his crew. And we ended up barricading in this situation for 11 hours until eventually we got out. 11 hours in a dark room, no electricity, because the electricity fell down, no food, with two

girls three and a half years old, one and a half years old. They were total heroes. My wife Miri, you've met her Mona, she was amazing. She managed to keep the girls calm and we got out alive. And I have to say we're the lucky ones, Mona. 14 people in our community were murdered five were kidnapped into Gaza we're still it's been 46 days but we're still dealing with that day it's going to be with us for a long time I can imagine have the girls gotten over it do they

show any signs of trauma or are they excessively fearful or anything? At first we thought, well, they're young, they're small, they're not going to remember much. We were very wrong. They're very smart. They understood more than we thought they will. And they still speak about it. I mean, they're in a good condition overall. They're very strong. We've been evacuated, all of our community, everybody who survived. You know, again, out of 500 people, we lost 14 and five others are in Gaza right now. But everybody else, we've been evacuated to a kibbutz in the Haifa area, kind of like north-central Israel. And we're together here now.

And all of us us we talk about what happened and we began under you know sharing between us the parents of the young children how much they understand how much they share between them and talk about it and i can tell you the next morning uh galia my older daughter she's um three and a half so you know what happened is um we eventually after a very very long day and with a lot of dramas we spent that night the night of you know between october 7 and october 8 at my parents home in tel aviv um we got there around three in the morning and galia went to sleep you know next to her grandmother and when she woke up in the morning, the first thing she asked my mom, her grandma,

can we get out of the room? Because the previous day, for 11 hours, she could not get out of her room. And you had no bathroom and you had no food? Nothing, no bathroom, no food, nothing. Just stuck in the dark for 11 hours with gunshots heard all around all the time. I can tell you that the story of our family became famous.

My father is a retired military general, and he came down to the area, and he participated in the fighting against Hamas, and he helped kill terrorists and save wounded soldiers and a lot of other things. And eventually he also made it to our home. And I'm telling you that because when he made it to our home in the afternoon, together with a group of soldiers that, you know, he went with them from house to house in our community, killing terrorists, clearing the community,

and eventually getting to us as well. That's when, you know, the first thing my girls saw that day was their grandfather with a few soldiers in uniform. And after that, my father was called to reserve duty for a week or two to help Israel's southern command. And one day he came to visit us in the kibbutz to which we've been evacuated, and he was in uniform. The girls are not used to see him because he's been retired of the military before they were born. So Galia, my older daughter, you know, she sees him in uniform. She runs to him and she says, it was dangerous outside.

There were bad people, but grandfather came. Like, you know, seeing him in uniform reminded her. And even my younger daughter, you know, Car carmel she's only a year and a half for the first two weeks after this she refused to go to sleep in a room with the door shut she wanted the door to be open she would ask all the time can i go outside this has had an impact on them and and again you know compared to some of our friends some of our neighbors you know we have young children in our community who lost their parents, who lost parents on that day. My next door neighbor, Ilan,

who was the security coordinator of our community, he died fighting the terrorists and he left behind a wife and three young daughters. So it's a tough situation for us as a community, for us as a family, for Israel as a nation. These are difficult days. We've been dealing with a lot of pain. Can you help people to understand why it is that Israelis and frankly Jews worldwide have responded to this attack with a sense of existential threat, that this is something completely

different from the usual skirmishes that have taken place between Hamas and Israel in the past? It's a really good question, Mona. I think there are several answers behind it. First of all, I think the scenes of October 7, the helplessness of people who were slaughtered in their homes, or the people who were slaughtered at a music festival that was taking place that weekend in our area,

a bit further away from the border, but still not that far. Young people who came to dance and just, you know, have a good time with friends and more than 300 people were murdered there. Those scenes, I think, for Jewish people brought back memories. Some people said of the Holocaust. Maybe I don't want to go there, but certainly of the pogroms,

of the events in our history where armed thugs would enter a Jewish neighborhood or a Jewish village and just slaughter innocent people, women and children. The Hamas people who came into Israel that day from Gaza broke through the border. They could have easily focused only on military targets. There are many military targets along the Israel-Gaza border. Military bases and command centers and guarding posts. They could have killed 200-300 Israeli soldiers

and kidnapped some soldiers and go back into Gaza as the winners of the day. And while we would have been heartbroken and angry, I wouldn't have said, you know, what they did is pogrom or Holocaust-like behavior. But they chose deliberately not to suffice with military targets. They chose deliberately to go into civilian communities like mine and murder citizens. And, you know, Mona, when they came to our home and they tried to break in,

and they shot through the windows, they saw a baby stroller outside the door. There was a baby stroller right next to our door. They shot all these bullets into a home where they knew there was a baby inside. And that tells you something about what they were trying to do that day. Now, I think a second reason for this is the failure of our military and our government on that day. We, as citizens of Israel, and also as Jews who were raised on these stories, you know, I'm a grandson of Holocaust survivors. Miri, my wife, is the granddaughter of survivors.

Her grandmother was in the siege of St. Petersburg, of Leningrad, when the Nazis, you know, the German military was putting a siege on the city. And so we were raised with the notion that that's history. And today we have a strong country and a strong military, and they will protect us. And I'll tell you that in the first 20 minutes of the event on October 7, we were convinced that our life was in danger, but that we were likelier to get out of it alive than not, because our thinking was okay.

Probably a Hamas cell was able to get through the border and now they're outside our window, they're in our neighborhood, but it's a matter of minutes until the mighty military of Israel will get here. There are so many bases around us and it's just a matter of minutes until a brave group of soldiers will come here kill these terrorists and set us free. We never imagined it would

take 11 hours and I think that experience has also led to this existential threat feeling that the institutions that we were raised to trust, to protect us, didn't deliver on that day. And the third reason, I think, is the international response, which actually I think some people are exaggerating how bad it is because we're all right now, we're really being impacted by our own fears.

I mean, for me, you know, I'm a diplomatic correspondent. I cover Israel's relations with other countries. I mean, for me, you know, I'm a diplomatic correspondent. I cover Israel's relations with other countries. I've been a Washington correspondent. The most important thing right now is the support of President Biden. And President Biden has been with Israel, not 100%, 200%. I mean, he's, you know, the most important Zionist leader in the world today. Sometimes I feel like he's more committed to Israel's security than some of our own leaders. I know this is a hard thing to say, but I really feel it sometimes.

You know, he came here in the midst of the war under fire, the first ever American president to visit Israel during an active war. He met survivors of that day. I was lucky to be among them, a small group of 12 people that he chose to meet. He's given us everything we could ask for. He sent a nuclear submarine here. I mean, you know, so I don't feel like we are alone on the world stage. I feel like actually we have a very important, you know, friend. But the reaction that we saw in terms of what was happening in academic circles, what was happening on college campuses, demonstrations in the streets, the reactions of

the more vocal, more angry elements of the progressive left in America, that really rattled people. And it reminded them of the threat of anti-Semitism that never went away. So I think those are the three reasons. And I do want to say that we're not helpless. We do have still a strong military. And right now, despite the terrible failures of October 7, that military has been winning in its war against Hamas inside Gaza. Very clearly. I have a brother there who is doing his part.

He's an officer. He's a military doctor. And I hear from friends, and I know the military is doing a very successful campaign right now against Hamas. We have the backing of Joe Biden, Israel's best friend in the world, and coincidentally, the president of the United States. It's important to have his support. And we have each other, you know, Israelis. Israeli society has really been impressive at this moment in the level of support and how people are really going out of their ways to help and support one another,

and especially for communities like ours that were hit so hard on that day. People all over the country just want to help us. There is a little problem, which is that our government is a complete failure and just dysfunctional at this moment and not doing the right things. We can talk about that later if you want. But all the other factors are still working in our favor, and it's important to remember that. Yeah, let's do talk about that.

So Netanyahu, who, in my humble opinion, did make some contributions, great contributions to Israel earlier on in his career, has become corrupt and unreliable. And he sold himself to the Israeli public as Mr. Security. Of course, yeah. And he has failed so badly. Now, my question to you is, is it perceived within Israel that that is the case? And do you think that people do hold him accountable? I mean, he has not apologized,

he has not acknowledged his responsibility. Do you think Israeli people will hold him accountable eventually when the war is over? There's a lot of questions to unpack here. I was in the U.S. when the Tree of Life synagogue massacre happened. I was covering it as a reporter. Can you imagine something like that happening in America, an attack on a synagogue, and the president for more than three weeks would not say the word synagogue when he spoke about it, would not address the fact that this happened to the Jewish community? You can't imagine that, right? after this attack, to say the word kibbutz, to say the word kibbutzim, because most of the people who live in the kibbutzim along the Gaza border don't vote for Benjamin Netanyahu and don't vote for Likud. It's not 100%.

In our community, most of the people vote for other parties, not his. And there is a small group that does support him. On that day, there was no difference between us. We were all together in this. We were all affected by this. And we're all together now as a community. We're not letting political opinions divide us. But for three weeks, he didn't even acknowledge the fact that, you know, this happened in Kibbutz Nachal Oz, 14 of my neighbors in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, next to us, more than 50 people were murdered. And in Kibbutz Be'eri, more than 100.

He hasn't met with these communities. It's been almost 50 days. I can tell you my community, we're sitting here, you know, in Kibbutz next to Haifa that is hosting us. A community that lost 14 people in one day, a community that has five members kidnapped in Gaza right now, including two young girls, 15 and nine-year-old, a community that for years suffered from these rockets and mortars of Hamas. And I have, you know, I'm not going to, you know, kind of pat my own shoulder,

but speaking of my wider community, I feel good enough to say that we were very brave. We did this for years, raising our children there, marking the border of Israel with our own feet, despite the threats that most of the population in Israel would not agree to live with. The idea that any day a mortar can fall outside your home and you have seven seconds to reach shelter. Nobody from his government has come to visit us. Almost 50 days. We've had here the previous

prime minister, Naftali Bennett, came to visit us, although nobody in our community ever voted for him. You know, he's a more right-wing religious politician. We are a secular left-leaning kibbutz. We're not his base. He came to visit us. The opposition leader, Yair Lapid, came to visit us. Other members of Knesset from the opposition were here. Nobody from Netanyahu's government has stepped foot here to speak with our community for almost 50 days.

Just on that basis, I think they are unworthy of holding power. But now if we go into the questions of responsibility for what happened, I don't put it solely on him. I believe a lot of the blame is also with the top military commanders and the top intelligence officials who didn't see the flashing red lights who didn't understand what was happening and some of the blame is also on the prime minister you know if there's a company that has to fire five of its most senior executives because they badly, badly miscalculated and caused huge damage. The CEO is going to stay. You know, we're going to get rid of the chief of the military after this war. I believe he's just going to resign, the chief of the military, the chief of internal security. The head of the Southern Command and the head of the military intelligence

have all already said, we are responsible. It's our fault. We let you down, citizens of the Gaza border area. And they basically hinted that after they finish Hamas, they are all going to resign. So a company is going to lose four of its top managers. Oh, but the CEO, he had nothing to do with it. In what world would that? And then, of course, when we look at the actions of Netanyahu, for 15 years almost as prime minister, he had a very clear policy of strengthening Hamas and weakening the Palestinian Authority,

which controls parts of the Judea and Samaria, West Bank area. You can call it however you want. He had a clear strategy and he admitted it. He said it in the open that he would rather cooperate with Hamas. He sent emissaries to Qatar, the rich country in the Gulf, begging the Qatari government to give suitcases full of millions of dollars to Hamas. Think about that situation. The prime minister of Israel sends his top advisors to another country and asks that country to send money to the hands of Hamas, a terror organization that used that money, we know

today, to prepare this vicious attack against our communities. So there are people on this side of the ocean who say, look, Netanyahu is a failure and he's corrupt, and therefore why should we in the United States, they say we're not going to back Bibi. He's terrible. Yeah, those are two different things though, right? I understand where you want to go with the question. Yeah.

Today in public opinion polls, we see support for Netanyahu collapsing and we see most of the Israeli public wants him to resign and sees him as responsible for the failure. And I believe this will eventually manifest. It's very important for the United States though, to support Israel in this war. It's not to support Netanyahu.

This is not a war for Benjamin Netanyahu. This is a war for the people of Israel. We are fighting an organization, a terror organization that on that day, October 7, murdered and kidnapped families, women, children. We're beginning to understand that there were also cases of rape and torture on that day of civilians. And this is a barbaric organization that if it remains standing at the end of the war, will do the same thing five years from now,

the next time they have an opportunity. Hamas, they knew the kind of damage that they would inflict on Gaza by doing this, and they did an opportunity. Hamas, they knew the kind of damage that they would inflict on Gaza by doing this, and they did it anyway. And we have to win this war, we have to eradicate Hamas, they should never ever again have the possibility to do something like this again. And it's our job as Israelis, and it's the, I believe it's also the job of supporters and friends of Israel abroad to fight the fight we will have to fight later politically against Netanyahu. Okay, and I think anybody who wants Israel to have a future as a democratic, Jewish,

strong country needs to be committed to ending his rule in Israel after what happened. But for the United States, strategically, Israel has to win this war because the ramifications of Israel losing this war to Hamas, first of all, for Israel, there will be a disaster. But I think on the global level, there will be a message that terrorism works and pays off. so it's a very difficult situation bono we have you know the war effort that we have to win and we have the political battle that we also have to win because we don't want this to ever happen again and we don't trust the people who led the country into this disaster to continue leading it i know know it's a lot of nuance to take into consideration, but this is the reality.

Perfect. No, you're incredibly clear in your responses. Landlord telling you to just put on another sweater when your apartment is below 21 degrees? Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained.

If it isn't, and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash RentSafeTO. What do you say to the argument that, sure, everybody understands that Israel was gravely wounded by this attack and needed to retaliate, but it has gone on too long and it has caused too many innocent Palestinian civilians to suffer and we should have a ceasefire now? First of all, I think it's the one part of it that is true, is that too many innocent people in Gaza have also died. And I think that is mostly the blame of Hamas.

I'm sure there were cases where we could have been more cautious and done better, and we have to look into that and investigate and improve. But at the end of the day, this is a war that is being fought in a very difficult terrain. This is a war in an urban area, densely populated, and Hamas is using that terrain to wage a guerrilla campaign that is based on the civilian infrastructure.

Hospitals, clinics, schools, refugee centers, all of that is being utilized by Hamas to try to attack the soldiers, and to try to launch rockets into Israel and in some of these places to try to hide the hostages. And in a war like that, there are going to be civilian casualties, it's just unavoidable. We have also lost many, many soldiers in the fighting. You know, if we were looking at a scenario that we said, you know what, Israel doesn't have any casualties because it's just bombing in completely, you know, random ways. First of all, it wouldn't

be effective because we wouldn't be hitting the real targets. But I think there would also be a strong argument that we're just, you know, bombing it for revenge. Our soldiers right now are risking their lives, not for the purpose of revenge, but for the purpose of actually dismantling these terror infrastructures that and it requires them to go in, to go from home to home from door to door. And in the fighting, and you know, if if you look at what happened in some of these neighborhoods in Gaza, yes, people sadly are getting killed. It's a war. And Hamas triggered that war knowing what would be the response from Israel.

I have no doubt that when they came in to the civilian communities and murdered women and children, they knew. They were signing the death certificate of thousands and thousands of Palestinians. They just didn't care. Ceasefire right now, you know, there is, as we speak, an attempt for a temporary ceasefire to allow the release of hostages

and the entrance of humanitarian aid into Gaza. I support both purposes. I want the hostages released more than anything in the world, mostly my people, but everyone, not just from my community. And I support the entrance of humanitarian aid to the civilian population in Gaza. I don't want a humanitarian disaster there. I don't want something terrible to happen

that will cause a huge loss of lives. But I don't think we should have a permanent ceasefire. I think at the end of the day, we still need the military to clean some of the neighborhoods of Gaza from Hamas, to try to kill the leadership of this barbaric organization. And I think it is too early now for a ceasefire. I understand we're not going to be able to fight this war forever. Okay, I'm realistic. I understand there are other considerations here. The winter is about to start.

There's going to be an election in your country. President Biden has stood by our side. He's been paying a political price for it. I don't expect it to go on forever. You know, we have our economic realities. How long can a country run a war without collapsing its own economy? I understand all that. I don't expect it to go on forever.

But I think in the next two, three weeks at least, we still have work to do. Can we talk a little bit about the way things look post-war? I think it's fair to say that no Israeli government of any ideological complexion would be okay with Hamas remaining in power in Gaza. So there has to be something else. You wrote a biography of Mahmoud Abbas, who heads the PA. What do you think of the idea of the PA taking over? They are notably corrupt. They are not well-liked. Terrible, terrible. So what is your sense about what happens after?

Mona, one of the things we have to realize is that in this current situation, we only have terrible choices. It's not like there's some wonderful plan that can be implemented and all the other alternatives are junk. We are facing terrible choices on all fronts. Even the hostage agreement that was signed, and I supported it with all my heart and I spoke in its favor on television in Israel, it's a terrible deal. But we have terrible choices right now. It's a deal that gives Hamas four or five days to catch some breath and return to the fighting in a little better shape than it is today. We need it because we want to get 50 women and children out of there.

Oh, and it also gives three for one, right? Yeah, for me that's less of the problem, but we're releasing, you know, all these prisoners. Just the fact that they will have days to regroup and reposition themselves for the fight and maybe kill more of our soldiers is a disaster. But we are only facing disastrous choices. We were surprised on October 7. We did not prepare for it. The government spent 10 months igniting a civil war inside Israel over Netanyahu's judicial power grab, instead of preparing the country for war with the enemies. And we are now paying the price, okay? But we have terrible choices. And I think when it comes to the question of who will rule Gaza in the

future, look at the choices we have. Allowing Hamas to remain in power is not even an option. Not even an option. Bringing in the Egyptians is a fantasy. It would be great if Egypt agreed to take over Gaza. I don't think President Sisi wants that. So we can leave a power vacuum and see ISIS take over, which is a terrible option. We can try to bring some kind of an international force in there. Of course, the demands that would be presented to Israel from any country in the world that would send its soldiers to protect the Israel-Gaza border

may be a bit too much to stomach for this Israeli government, because, you know, there's then the question of the occupation in the West Bank and the settlements. And then there's the option of bringing in some kind of a different Palestinian government that is not Hamas. And the only other Palestinian government that exists today is the terribly corrupt government, and sometimes also anti-Semitic government of the Palestinian Authority. Now, I think there is a case to come and say, okay, we want the Palestinian Authority there,

but we want to see it reformed, revitalized, changed. This was the American line about 20 years ago when the Bush administration supported Mahmoud Abbas replacing Yasser Arafat. Basically, Arafat was considered persona non grata. You know, nobody was willing to work with him anymore because of his involvement in terrorism. And Bush said, we need a different Palestinian leadership.

Maybe today, with Mahmoud Abbas in his late 80s now, offering an anti-Semitic rant every few months, deeply disliked by his people, maybe this could be part of the arrangement, that you need a different Palestinian leadership, at least in Gaza. And again, there are no good options. And another option is to keep it under Israeli occupation, to go back to our military being inside there all the time. And I think that option, first of all, I personally don't think it's good for Israel, but I also don't see any chance that the United States administration would support it. And this would put us on a collision course with Biden, which is not something

we want right now. We rely on his support in so many other ways. So we're only facing bad choices. And I think that among those choices, creating some kind of a Palestinian entity that there would be an uprising of violence against Israel, not just from Hezbollah in Lebanon. There was a lot of fear about that. And I know there has been clashes along the northern border, but it's not a full-scale war there. So that did not happen. The Hamas probably wanted or imagined that this would lead to an uprising in the West Bank as well. And third, they may have hoped that Israel's Arab population, Arab Israelis who make up about 20% of the population, would also rise up against the Jews in Israel. So I'd be curious to hear you on this topic, that the worst, in some ways, obviously 10-7 was the most horrific attack, but the worst did not come to pass. And I wonder if you can talk a little bit about Israeli Arabs and about the West Bank and so forth. Yeah. So let's start with the West Bank. The West Bank, I think the story is far

from over. We have seen some terror attacks there. And I think there's a great sense of concern within the Biden administration that if there is a second front, it will actually be there and not in Lebanon. I reported on it last week. They believe that the Palestinian Authority is under great stress because of what's happening in Gaza. You know, the high number of civilian casualties, the damage they see all day long on their television. And of course, they don't hear as much the stories about what Hamas did. And There is great concern that the pressure on the Palestinian Authority could lead it into some kind of a breaking point. There is great concern about violence from extremist far-right settlers. When I say that, I don't mean all of the settler

population. Most of the Israelis who live in settlements in the occupied territories, while I have a political disagreement with them. They are law-abiding citizens and many of them are now fighting in the military and I respect them. But there is a group within that population, relatively small but unfortunately very impactful, that is using violence and terror against Palestinian citizens and that can lead to an eruption of violence you know and and acts of revenge on one another and there's the financial question of the Palestinian Authority being in a very difficult monetary situation and if it cannot pay salaries what you have then

is more than 20,000 armed Palestinian policemen who are not getting paid. All of that is very dangerous. So I think the West Bank, it's far from over. Right now, I do think that we see the Israeli military still mostly containing it and the Palestinian authorities still waking up in the morning and functioning to some degree, we need to make sure it stays that way. Inside Israel, this has been the most important aspect of the war so far, the most positive aspect. We've had nothing so far in terms of violence between Arab and Jewish citizens inside Israel.

You spoke about it two and Jewish citizens inside Israel. We spoke about it two and a half years ago in our previous war with Hamas. There were terrible acts of violence between Arabs and Jews in Israel. I had a relative who was murdered in one of those events. Egal, he was married to my wife's aunt he was an electrician living in the mixed city of flood it's a city where both jews and arabs live and he was murdered on his way home from work left behind a wife and two sons so that was a very personal situation for our

family we've seen nothing like that so far in this war. And what we are seeing is a lot of stories that are actually heartwarming and give a sense of optimism of Arab citizens of Israel who saved people on that day, on October 7th. I'll give you two examples, Mona. There was one story in a gas station very close to my kibbutz about five minutes from my home. That morning an Arab Bedouin man was working in the gas station and people who were fleeing the massacre at the music festival

stopped their cars in his gas station and ran into the store. There was like a little store. He locked the doors of the store and he put several gas balloons, the kinds that you use, you know, for cooking. He put several of those on the door and he locked everyone in the safe room of the store, like, you know, the shelter. And then you can see in the security cameras, Hamas terrorists arriving to the gas station, trying to break in in realizing that if they fire their ammunition to to break through the doors they're going to blow up the place with the gas balloons and they will all die as well and they just turn around and leave and this man saved

14 lives and there was another smart also very smart and there was another story of um four men from the bedouin city of Rahat who heard from one of their relatives who was in the area that there was a massacre taking place in the music festival, took their car, came to the area, and just began to rescue people from the music festival and take them to safety. These stories give some hope that despite the terrible tragedy and I think the really, really narrowing of any window for a political compromise in the coming years between Israelis and Palestinians, there is still a very solid core of Jewish and Arab cooperation within the state of Israel that we need to build on and we need to expand.

And these stories are very, very important. They give us some hope in a very dark situation. Finally, last question, Amir. Do you think that when this is over, you will go back to your kibbutz? We hope to go back. We want to go back. We want to go back. It requires a few things.

We want a different security reality between Israel and Gaza. And, you know, I can go into technical aspects, but I'm not even sure I should. I'm not a military tactician. I'm a civilian. I have my own thoughts and ideas,

but there has to be a different security reality. We want our community to have more means to protect ourselves. You know, we had a security. I don't think everybody needs to have a gun like in the United States. That hasn't been so great for you guys. No, it hasn't. And we don't want to import that culture. But we do need to have our local security team, which includes 12 people.

We need them to be more highly trained. We need them to have easier access to their weapons. You know, the military made it harder for them over the years to keep their weapons in their homes and things like that. We need them to be better trained, better armed, more prepared. And we also need leadership that we can trust. We need someone up there that if they tell us, guys, it's been a few months now, we did the work in Gaza, here is what we're going to do to make you safe at home and you can go back, that we can trust them.

Right now, we don't trust these people. And that is very problematic. We need leaders that if they tell us it's safe to go back home, they look us in the eye, we will trust their word. And I will say, Mona, our situation is relatively better than people in northern Israel, because as you may know, just like us being refugees in our own country, there are tens of thousands of Israelis who have been evacuated from communities on the northern border with Lebanon, because they fear that what happened to us could happen to them with Hezbollah. And some of them are now neighbors of ours. You know, they've been evacuated to the same area that we're living in, and we meet them all the time. And I tell them, listen, I at least

see the military working on the other side of the border from my home and making it potentially possible for me to go back home in a few months. For you guys, I don't know how you go back because we don't want a war with Lebanon. We don't want a war with Hezbollah. It could be disastrous. I mean, it could cost many, many lives. But how do they go back home with Hezbollah on the other side of the border? That's a really tough dilemma.

And what I hope is that there could be some diplomatic momentum to put pressure on Hezbollah to withdraw its forces from the border with Israel, to pull back. And these new neighbors of mine could then go back to their homes. But for us, like I said, we want a new security reality. We want better means to also protect ourselves on top of the military presence. And we want a leadership that can tell us, okay, guys, it's safe now. You can send your children back to kindergarten in Achal Oz and drive off to work with peace of mind, and that we will trust their word. Amir, this has been really a fantastic discussion. Cannot thank you enough.

I'm sending best wishes to you and to Miri and to your daughters and to your whole community. And I thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us on the Bulwark podcast. Thank you, Mona, for inviting me and giving me the opportunity to share our story. I really appreciate it. Thank you.