The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Is Israel's Strategy Making Hamas Stronger with Terrorism Expert Robert Pape

Episode Date: July 12, 2024

Robert Pape is a professor of political science and founding director of the Chicago project on security and threats at the University of Chicago. He is an author and leading scholar of political violence and has been studying terrorism both internationally and domestically for over 20 years. His most recent publication is “Hamas is Winning,” in Foreign Affairs (June 2024). Support the show and get 20% off your 1 st Sheath order at https://www.sheathunderwear.com/CELLAR or use promo code CELLAR Noam made a mistake - At Ma'alot 105 children were taken hostage, 22 were killed. He carelessly read the page in front of him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27alot_massacre#:~:text=The%20Ma'alot%20massacre%20was,hostages%20and%20six%20other%20civilians. Apoliges to professor Pape. YouTube Version: https://youtu.be/xoCgk-w0wHQ?si=LT-MiBCsV7S733wc

Hi, this is Noam. I want to point out that I made a mistake in this interview. I said that 105 children were killed in the massacre at Ma'alot. However, it was 105 hostages. 22 of the children were killed. I read it hastily and I got it wrong. The Comedy Cellar, live from the table, is brought to you by Sheath Underwear. Support the show and your balls at sheathunderwear.com slash seller and get 20% off your first order.

Welcome to Live from the Table, the official podcast for the world-famous comedy seller on Sirius Radio. And I'm here with Noam Dwarman, the owner of the world famous comedy center dan is a seller go ahead what did i say center continue no i didn't go ahead continue comedy seller dan natterman is gallivanting somewhere in alaska or paris i think so unfortunately will not be joining us we have a very special guest today ro Robert Pape is a professor of political science and director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago. He is a leading scholar of political violence and has been studying terrorism both internationally

and domestically for over 20 years. Welcome to the show, Professor Pape. And the article that he wrote that we invited him to talk about? Hamas is winning, in boldface. Why Israel's failing strategy makes its enemy stronger. It's in Foreign Affairs Magazine, June 21st, 2024. So welcome, Mr. Pape. You know, we already hung out a little bit before the show,

and I can see that you're a very, very nice man. And so much nicer than I would have thought the person who wrote this article would have been. Well, I'm sure my students will appreciate you. Yeah, yeah. They may not quite agree with you. Closer to the mic if you can. I mean, you're clearly, just in case you're listening, this is a man with a warm smile and a pleasant vibe and

good vibes. My father always believed that vibes were real. It was the only flaky kind of concept that he felt he had to acknowledge. There's just something about it. So you have good vibes.

So I have things about the article. Well, let me start over so the the notion that the war in gaza will backfire on israel is one i'm very open to i mean it's happened so many times in history on october 8th i remember, look, if Israel does nothing, nothing in response, I won't judge them because it's just that complicated, right? So the article and the point that you're trying to make, I'm very open to, and I'm talking too much, but I've said at times that even the decisions that people have made over time that were clearly right, clearly right, nobody even could find an argument that turned out to be wrong.

Like this happens all the time. So this could be another one. So having said that, I want to go through the article. But just before we started, I began to really read it again since the first time I read it and doing some research on it. And it bothered me. Some of the case bothered me. So I can go through it with you. And then by the way, I found out also that you have so much else interesting in your career and in your past to talk about. Maybe we'll get through this and talk about some of the other stuff. And also, Norm, just to make sure you and the audience know,

I'm not saying Israel should have done nothing. I think absolutely this was not just a horrendous terrorist attack October 7, but it was clearly the most spectacularly damaging terrorist attack in Israel's history. If you look at the 1,200 Israelis who died on October 7 and compare that to, say, the second in Afada. More people died in that 24-hour period of October 7th than in the entire four years of the second in Afada. So this was really, truly a horrendous, not just bad day, but really a devastating attack. And so I'm not saying for a moment that Israel should not have responded. The big thing we have to, though, come to grips with is whether the strategy, the specific way that Israel is responding, is solving a problem, making it better, hardly mattering, or actually making it worse. And what I'm showing you in this article is that there are really strong reasons,

nine months out, so this isn't a quick judgment, to conclude that, in fact, Hamas is stronger and poised to become stronger still today than after than before October 7 and that's really a devastating problem for Israel but it's one that it's important we have some clarity about because for this problem to keep getting worse and worse and worse this is not good all right Israel so so so let's go through the article. I took some notes. And then we can jump off from whatever we're talking about. So at the beginning, you do something which I notice a lot of writers do, which I kind of think is, I think it was like just kind of softening the mental ground to accept what's going to come later

uh tanahasi coates does this quite often in an article about race he'll he'll describe kind of like the horrors of the the the middle passage and it's not really to bear on his eventual point but it just kind of gets you in this mindset to accept, to download what he's going to say. So at the beginning, for instance, you say that dropped at least 70,000 tons of bombs on the territory, surpassing the combined weight of bombs dropped on London, Dresden, and Hamburg. So I was like, I'm not going to get through this, but just so like where my head was at. So I began to look it up, you know, with 7 million pounds dropped in Vietnam, 630 tons, I'm talking 635,000 tons dropped in Korea. But more importantly, you know, when you're fighting an enemy that has 400 or 300 miles of tunnels underground,

I don't know if any comparison is even meaningful because the exigencies of fighting a war against tunnels may require 10 times the poundage, right? So the reason I opened that way, Norm, is because... Noam. I don't get that. N-O-A-M. No Norm, is because... Noam. I get... Noam? N-O-A-M. Noam. Oh, Noam.

Like a real Israeli name. Now you know what you walked into. Thank you, Noam. Don't worry about it. So the reason I opened that way... My mother calls me Norm, too. ...is even longer than I've been studying terrorism. I'm one of the world's experts in air power. Yeah.

So my first work was called Bombing to Win, published in the mid-'90s, studying every air campaign in history. I spent three years in the 1990s working, teaching for the U.S. Air Force, teaching conventional targeting strategy. So for many decades, I have— But this is unprecedented, right, these tunnels. Well, and also then back in December in Foreign Affairs, I published the leading piece that first explained that this was the one of the

most horrific and discriminant bombing campaigns in history. And given my background in having studied the history of strategic bombing, I was able to then locate it as... No, but indiscriminate is different. What I'm saying is that if the objective was to destroy the tunnels, then it's going to take a lot of tons, just as a physics equation. Well, that probably is not the best way to destroy the tunnels tactically. The best way to destroy the tunnels tactically would not be to do... You would do some through the air but

most of what's happening to uh uh with that tonnage of bombs is you're going after people they're going after individuals they're going after command centers yes some of those are located in tunnels um but the best way almost 80 percent of the tunnels are still intact the um the tunnels themselves um are buried so deep that they're not really going to be um best attacked that way they can be attacked that way but most likely this is what you would do on the ground you would go through uh very dangerous operations yeah but like one of the worst things that happened is with uh jabalia uh refugee bombing. I'm just from memory now. But there was a bomb dropped, and then the tunnel gave way, and the building fell over,

and that was one of the largest casualty counts. That's true. You would go after some. But if you look at, so if you go to the Economist website, the best way to look at the damage in Gaza for your audience, what I use and what I use when I give presentations, are the satellite maps on the Economist website, which are really excellent. So we now have, in the civilian, non-classified world, far better understanding of what's happening from the air than we've really ever had in history that anybody can just have access to. And because the economist has been doing a fantastic job,

the Financial Times of London also doing a very, very good job. And if you go, you will see that you can actually map out the damage to buildings, almost building by building by building. I've seen that. And you will see that in large swaths of northern Gaza, 70 percent of the buildings have been destroyed. In central Gaza, it's 60 percent. In large swaths, I won't say 100 percent of the central Gaza, but large swaths, it's 60 percent of the buildings being destroyed. Now, most of that is happening because there is information about a high-value target. Usually, that means a person, and then there's shelling. It's not all from the air, by the way. There's shelling. There's bombs

that are being attacked, and then it's the reverberation from those bombs that's bringing down those buildings, much the way when the planes hit the towers on 9-11, the reverberation brought down the buildings there. So the damage that is occurring there... I didn't know that, by the way. I thought it was the temperature melted the steel. No, no, there's a great piece.

So this is, again, back to my work on air power there's a great um there's great journalists by the name of rathbone who has done this uh basically i've worked with him for weeks to understand this and his pieces in the financial times really lay this out in great detail where he'll go through what a 2 000 pound bomb can do what the radius of damage is. So your listeners can just go to the Financial Times. Most of this was published in November and December. And you will be able to see in detail the exact geometry of the bombing, the exact radius of destruction, the exact pulses of the waves. And you will be able to marry that with what you see on the economist website and that will give you a far better and this is by the way back

to what my book mud I was doing for all 40 of the strategic air campaigns in the 20th century so I'm studying in detail what are the consequences of the bombing so the reason I'm mentioning Hamburg Dres, and so forth is because I'm one of the authorities on that. And then that did really have some influence in the discourse and understanding. So that piece in early December, a week later, that's when President Biden starts to call the bombing campaign an indiscriminate bombing campaign. And the reason is it's because it really is not just uh uh some damage some collateral damage um that bombing campaign is in the top 20 percent now probably the top 10 percent of all the counters of all the punishing campaigns against civilians in history do you consider since 1900

do you consider yourself in opposition to the work of John Spencer from West Point and all his, because he has a completely different opinion than you do on the indiscriminate nature of this, on the overkill of the bombing, basically on everything you said he disagrees with. Yeah, but it's, so a lot of- So much so that I've been fantasizing about getting you both on the same podcast. Oh, I'd be glad to do that.

Oh, I'd be glad to do that. I've done many sort of debates, if you want to call it that, or joint discussions here. And usually the issues here are not going to be about the technical. It is helpful to know, by the way, all the details of the technical nature because you can see that it is clearly knowable in advance the level of civilian damage that's going to happen. So this is why in the American context, and I'm sure this was true before the war in the Israeli context, there are clear civilian damage estimates that are done before bombing

campaigns occur. And it's well discussed in advance. That's why often, for example, killing Soleimani, other attacks that have been very famous and prominent attacks, are often done at night. They're often done in ways to minimize the civilian damage. In this particular case, it is so voluminous and happening so around the clock because of the uh

the nature of the uh of the time sensitive nature of the target so once they get a target they're wanting to hit it like instantly not willing to wait until they can get an opportunity to kill the same target to hit the same target under uh circumstances that will produce less casualties. So the American context, we're often waiting, waiting a day, waiting a week, having a window of 36 hours, 46 hours. Sometimes that means that target gets away, but often it also means that the civilian casualties are far lower. So I would suspect that's the level of the conversation that we would have. I'm going to try to arrange that. I met him. I liked him very much as well. So just one of these

kind of softening the ground things. I noticed you write, Israeli leaders have consistently claimed that the goal of defeating Hamas and weakening its ability to launch new attacks against Israeli civilians must take precedence over any concerns about Palestinian lives. The punishment of the population of Gaza must be accepted as necessary to destroy the power of Hamas. Now, maybe I'm being picky on here. To me, the word punishment means it's retribution. You get punished when you deserve it,

as if you are saying here that israel is purposely punishing the gaza and civilians rather than being collateral damage yeah to be i don't mean to be glib uh no you're not being glib um but let me also be clear nowhere in this piece nowhere in the other work am i attributing motive okay because usually to me the word pun if i'm punishing you that means there was a motive you deserved it that's if i'm punishing you that means there was a motive you deserved it that's why i'm punishing you so if if they're going to get punishment i i i mean you could look up the word but i'm pretty sure that's the definition of the word punishment so always the attackers in these situations the people the the country the actor doing the bombing

they want to use euphemisms the rest of the world won't understand. That's why I said I want to be clear. Let me just be clear. When we dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we did not say, that is the Truman administration, did not say we are going to punish, we are trying to kill civilians.

This is not a counter-civilian. What they said was, we are attacking a military target. That is, they used the same words as if they were attacking a ship out in the ocean with only 300 Japanese sailors, as when they killed a grand total of well over 100,000 Japanese civilians in these two attacks. So the use of euphemisms here is extremely common and it's really preferred by the attackers. I'm using the terms that will go down in history and be understood by the world as what

happened. But in Hiroshima we targeted the civilians. No, no, no, to be really clear there you I know this in Sonoma I'm not speaking in generalities. I've read the Strategic Bombing Survey reports. I know what we targeted. I've read the— What was the target? The exact target that we are claiming that we are— No, I'm not talking about the claim. I'm saying in reality, we were going to destroy Hiroshima. We knew that. In reality, we are not naming this as intended to produce civilian deaths. And this is, I am sure. That's my question.

I am sure. And what I'm trying to tell you is I'm not trying to indict Israeli leaders for intentionally causing civilian deaths. But you would for Hiroshima, wouldn't you? Well, what I say in my book about this is exactly what I'm saying here, is that the attackers rely on euphemisms and often through omission do not explain what the casualty counts are likely to be in clear ways. And that's what's happening, I suspect, here. So it would be different. So for example, if it turned out that we actually had internal decisions, internal discussions by the Israeli government that they wanted to produce a certain number of dead Palestinians. We may discover that. And by the way, in some past civilian, counter-civilian campaigns, we have just that. So when the

British bombed the 56 towns in Germany, some of the names you just mentioned, there are documents in the public record office that exist to this day that Churchill signed off on where the goal was to kill 900,000 German civilian workers. Not to hit just a military target, not using euphemisms, but specifically to do that task. Did they drop leaflets? Did they call people to leave? All the time. All the time. Four days of leaflets all the time. What you hear as the sort of tactics that Israel is using, these are the tactics that really get started in World War I, by the way.

So they actually go back even before World War II. But they are used routinely by the British bombers, by the American bombers. So why don't they work? Because people, just as you're seeing here, where are you going to go? Where are you going to go to get food? How are you going to live? So you how are you going to live so you were told hold on gaza is a tiny place you can walk the entire distance of gaza in a day you can go anywhere basically you want in gaza by foot it's not so you go but if you know that you get a

leaflet or a text message or a knock on that your building is targeted you walk a half a mile away well yes and no or you go to the beach i mean you know it is the case so if you look at um like rafa so if we just pick a more recent instance here where israel is giving warning to about a million little over a million people to move out of rafa uh you will see that in the next 10 days after that warning, something like 300,000, 400,000 people. I think they moved a million people. I read about it. Well, by now, they may have moved quite a bit.

10 days. Yeah. By now, they moved. Because once the bombing started- Well, prior to the bombing, they moved everybody who would go. They moved everybody out. I'm just trying to explain that moving people happens in these wars as well, in the past as well. So the leaflet campaign is part of it.

That's usually why you have four days of warning, and it usually takes a few days for people to start to move. Then as the bombings start or as other shelling starts, more people start to move. Professor, let me, because I want to make sure, for my sake and for the listeners' sake, because I want to make sure I'm comparing apples to apples. I'm imagining, you correct me if I'm wrong, that in the 30s and in the 40s, when they were going to bomb a location,

there was nothing pinpoint about it. So it's not like the British could drop a leaflet and tell you that building is targeted or this square, this grid. Actually, Israel now, I think, even locates the actual grid that they're going to target. So if you're living in a town in Germany, you're not going to leave because it could go anywhere. That, to me, is a completely different universe than 280 Riverside Drive has to be. 280 Riverside Drive is targeted. There's a leaflet, a text message, and a knock-on.

You get out. I mean, that is a warning that ought to work, except in those instances where they end up not bombing what they warned or bombs what they didn't. What I'm telling you is that— Am I making a mistake about the comparison? Well, no, but what I'm telling you is that, as in the past, those warnings are encouraging some parts of the population to move. The difference here is what you're assuming

is that the hyper-precision nature of the bombing would mean that, yes, it is true that we have precision bombs that can target this table but if that bomb were to hit this table um it wouldn't just harm the three of us in this room it wouldn't just harm the people uh outside of this room it would harm everybody on this block. So this would be thousands of people in the area of the comedy cellar, and it would only be a block or two from where this bomb goes off on this table that would be harmed. And that's the nature of the power of the bomb. So it's the, yes, it is true.

Don't they warn the whole block? Well, yes, it is true. There is whole block well yes it is true there is precision yes it is true that there is warning uh no it is not true that only um so let's say for instance that it's one of the three of us who's being targeted and it turns out one of the three of us happens to leave well the attackers are not going to say, well, we only told them four days ago, we're only hitting this table. And now that we know that one of the targets is two blocks away, we're not going to target that person? No, that's not what happens here. So and also, you're seeing that there's many ambulances that are being attacked. You're seeing many, many additional targets are

being attacked. And so no, it's not true that this is only happening in hyper-scripted ways. It is a lot scripted. I don't mean to minimize that at all, but I'm trying to explain to you that the approximately 40,000 Palestinians who are dead, which is roughly 2% of the Palestinian population in Gaza. So that's a significant fraction. That's one in 50 Palestinians are now dead. And many more injured. And many more injured. That is a tremendous amount of death and destruction in that population. And I'm not telling you that it couldn't be worse. Do you agree? But it is already in the top. Come closer to the mic.

Oh, sorry. Do you agree that that high casualty number, and then I want to get to that, that high casualty number is in large part due to the fact that this is a war aim of Hamas. I mean, we have multiple interviews now and communications from Sinwar where he's talked about his bloody arithmetic, that the more people die. He even said, so many people are dying, we have Israel right where we want them. Well, I don't think that the number is due to the fact it's a war aim of Hamas, but I do think Hamas has baited... You don't think Hamas number is due to the fact it's a war aim of Hamas, but I do think Hamas has baited—

You don't think Hamas is looking to maximize civilian casualties? Well, no, I think a standard strategy that terrorist groups use and Hamas is using is to bait Israel into killing the civilian population in order to grow the power of the group. Right, but they also embed themselves in the civilian population. Well, they're— They have no shelters in the civilian population. Well, they're— They have no shelters for the civilian population. But it's the nature of any terrorist group. So this is not— I mean, human shields, yay or nay?

Well, human shields are a crude way to put it, which are, yes, true. But these are—what's happening in the embedding of the population is far deeper bonding between Hamas and a human shield. So, for example, if you have a bank robber and he grabs one of us as he's in the bank to use as a human shield, we are likely to run away from that bank robber because we will see this as they are using our bodies in a really crude way only to help them rob a bank that's not the situation here the situation is hamas is bonding itself with the local population for whatever reason no for specific reasons to grow the power of the group. They're building loyalty with the local population.

They're providing... But you're not answering my question. I'm saying if Hamas wanted to reduce the number of its civilians that were getting killed, we could off the top of our heads come up with six different obvious strategies, none of which they do. Well, yes, I agree with that, but the reason they don't do it is because they want to defeat Israel. Their goal is to defeat Israel. And they know that the best, since they're not a military threat to Israel, their best way of bringing Israel to its knees is to have the world bring Israel to its knees, and the best way to have the world bring Israel to its knees is horribly for a lot of poor, innocent people to die. That's their only... What other strategy do they have?

Well, I'm not disagreeing with you, Norm. What I'm explaining is this is just the flip side of when Israel says it must kill the Palestinian civilians in order to defeat Hamas. What Hamas is saying, it must encourage Israel to kill the Palestinians in order to defeat Hamas what Hamas is saying it must encourage Israel to kill the Palestinians in order to defeat Israel what you are getting is two sides coming at this in similar ways and it is really of course producing incredible harm on the Palestinians but it is working against one side dramatically and that is it's working against Israel dramatically.

This is strengthening the power of Hamas. Calling it that Hamas is using human shields gives the idea, again, of the bank robber grabbing the civilian where the civilian should just want to get away. The fact of the matter is there are growing bonds, not weakening bonds between Hamas and the local population. It's not the same as the bank robber. The bank robber is completely different because when the bank robber takes a human shield, the bank robber's intention is to get away

because no one will actually ever kill that human shield. The bank robber actually doesn't want that poor innocent person to die because if that innocent person dies, then the bank robber is next. Hamas- That's not all the movies I've seen. No, if I take you, if I take her,

I'm counting on the fact that you won't shoot because I have her. If you shoot and kill her, then I'm alone. So my strategy is not to get her killed. My strategy is that she won't get killed and that's how I'm going to get out of there. What I'm saying is that Hamas's strategy is to get them killed. Yes.

They're completely different than the bank robbery analogy. Well, no, I'm agreeing with you that what they are counting on baiting Israel into killing Palestinians. That's right. That's not the bank robber strategy. The bank robber strategy is the opposite. Yes, but I was trying to point out what a human shield would be. I wasn't trying to literally say they were adopting. I was doing the opposite. I was trying to explain that unlike the bank robber who grabs the shield,

Hamas is doing, in both cases, you could think it's a shield. What the difference is here, and I think we're actually agreeing, not disagreeing, is that what Hamas is doing is called a provocation strategy, which is a standard tactic of terrorist groups. And Israel is falling for it, hook, line, and sinker. And it's in fact strengthening the group. That's why the leaders of Hamas have given interviews in the Wall Street Journal recently and so forth saying that they in fact see this as a necessary evil in order to- But they didn't say the word evil. It's righteous, yeah. Well, yes, but it is, in their mind,

a strategic move, and... And no number is too high. And I'm trying to explain that it is actually working to Hamas's advantage. Yes, I agree with you. And to try to defeat this through calling it human shields and explaining that Israel has moral right to do this. I'm not trying to defeat this through calling it human shields and explaining that Israel has moral

right to do this. I'm not trying to defeat it. I'm just trying to describe it. I want to point out that misses the big point, which is Israel's security is lower today, weaker today as a result of this strategy, not stronger. Okay, so let's go. So a couple of things in the article, you were unlucky because, for instance, you wrote that Gaza was on the brink of famine.

And then like two days later, this more recent report came out that said it wasn't on the brink of famine. You're the integrated food security. I F S you know, the I F S P C, the U.N. report on famine came out. This is going to ebb and flow, Noam. I'm not, this article didn't stand or fall. No, no. One word out of 5,000 words about the word famine. And I'm not saying it is, the famine is about to happen instantly. So I am not giving a.

Brink means, but anyway, I'm actually just saying, I'm just saying that, you know. Okay. Some things have changed i will i will i will take that as a as as an as a caution to not use the word brink but um you know sort of growing trend but more importantly than that you made the case that um hamas was actually turning i'm sorry that the palestinians were turning towards hamas here that this was actually turning, I'm sorry, that the Palestinians were turning towards Hamas here, that this was actually increasing Hamas's currency within the Palestinian community. Yeah, that's exactly what the heart of the article is about. And then since then, again, this is not really, I can't fault you in the article because this stuff has come out in July.

I've seen a lot of articles here. NBC News. Hamas is losing the backing of ordinary people. I'm sorry. Hamas is losing the backing of ordinary people in Gaza who are paying the human price of its war. It's becoming tragically familiar seen in the Gaza Strip. After seeing her

son's slain corpse, a Palestinian woman screams in agony, yet she points her finger, her anger, not at the Israelis whose weapons killed him, but at Hamas. I hope that God will destroy you, Hamas, like you destroyed our children, she yells in a video captured by NBC. Another article is in the BBC. Hamas faces growing public dissent as Gaza war erodes support. The man in video is beside himself, a mask of anguish radiating through his bloodied face. I am an academic doctor, he says.

I had a good life. I have literally, but we have a filthy Hamas leadership. They got used to our bloodshed. May God curse them. They are scum. Open criticism of Hamas has been growing in Gaza, both on the streets and online. Could I respond? One more thing, Maria.

Okay. Well, later on here, there's actually one senior Hamas government employee told the BBC that Hamas attacks were a crazy, uncalculated leap. He asked his identity to be concealed. I know from my work with the Hamas government that it prepared well for the attack militarily, but it neglected the home front.

I mean, just a lot of stuff has all of a sudden come out now. Well, three interviews, six interviews is not real systematic evidence. No. And it's very easy in the journalistic world to get those interviews. But the BBC and NBC are

not. I'm not doubting the interview, the person they talked to. But what's your data then? It's opinion polls. It's the actually best data that we have in the world on this issue. So since the mid-'90s with Oslo, there has been an organization in Ramallah that started and was established with the Oslo Accords. PSR? Yes, it's the Palestinian Policy Center for Survey Research. And they have been doing the most systematic surveys of Palestinian attitudes going back many decades.

They do multiple surveys a year. They've done four just in the last 12 months. And they go to great lengths to try to deal with the problem of surveying people in war zones and so forth. They have lots of experience with this so this is not a somebody who's just kind of come into this in some haphazard way they work with lots of Israeli institutions lots of Israeli scholars this is the best data we have and it's systematic data and it's data that we have in September of last year. That is before the October 7 attacks. It's data that we have just a few months afterwards in December, a few months after that in March, and then a few months after that in June.

So this is truly systematic data. And am I telling you this is absolutely perfect? No. Am I telling you that it shows every single person in Gaza or the West Bank? I looked up that data. And am I telling you this is absolutely perfect? No. Am I telling you that it shows every single person in Gaza or the West Bank? I looked up that data. Go ahead. Well, first I'll read what you wrote, just so I fairly represent your side here.

Five PSR surveys from the No, I'm having trouble seeing. Five PSR surveys from June 2023 to the most recent completed in June 2024 present a striking finding. On virtually every measure, Hamas has more support among Palestinians today than before October 7th. Political support for Hamas has grown, especially compared with its competitors.

For instance, although Hamas and its main rival Fatah enjoy roughly equivalent levels of support in June 2023. By June 2024, twice as many Palestinians supported Hamas, 40% compared with 20% for Fatah. But when I looked up the, and you can put up that graphic, Max. This is what I was doing right before you came. When I looked at it, I don't know if you can make it big enough that he could read. Yeah, that's good so in june of 2023 it says vote for hamas so the the questions are not identical at first it was in in contemplation of maybe an election and then you'll see later on but it's the same answer i think june of 2023 vote for hamas in the Gaza Strip stands today at 44 percent for Hamas compared

with compared to 45 percent three months ago that was June okay then in December in the Gaza Strip support for Hamas today stands at 42 percent compared with 38 percent three months ago which I guess was September so in other words it's going up so in other words that's December then well you got 44 40 well okay but it's changing. Okay, but it's also within the margin of error. So the real truth is that it's steady. The margin of error is plus or minus four, which means that any number could be four points lower or four points higher. So for instance, in the first one, 44 to 45, it could actually be 40 to 49, or it could have actually gone the other way. It could have gone 40 to 49. That's right. Or it could have actually gone the other way.

It could have gone 48 to 40. That's right. So you can't even know whether it's gone up or down. That's right. And then the last one, in the Gaza Strip, support for Hamas today stands at 38%, this is June,

38% in June compared to 34% three months ago. So this is, first of all, it's astounding to me that with all these people dying hamas support didn't go into like 88 percent like it was for george hw bush or 92 percent like it was for george bush in in wartime you're you're seeing a basically steady without much of a rallying effect that you would normally expect. Except you're weaving. Number one. Number two, just so I say. And you can bring up that video, Max.

I saw this the other day, and then I'm done with any of my... There's this video I saw which horrified me. Put it back to not full screen so I can read the tweet. The tweet was, Hamas tied up civilians inside the Gaza Strip, tortured them because they tried to steal food. Show it. I show this only because... Go ahead. You can play it, Max. What could you...

If you have to assume whether these polls over-represent or under-represent Hamas's support, the 44%. I'm going to say in a society, that's good, Matt, I'm going to say in a society that tortures people to death, and we know this Human Rights Watch has written about this as well, that people who are going to tell a pollster that they don't support Hamas, some of them are going to be cowed into it. And maybe they've modeled this very well by the polling company.

I know people regard this polling outfit as reliable. Israelis do too. But having said all that, this doesn't show to me any big jump in support for Hamas. And I was actually surprised. It shows a pretty constant amount. And I'm sure it jumped on October 8th anyway. Well, okay. Do I get a chance? Yes, of course. Well, I just want to present the data. No, I'm glad to let you have a rant about the article. I wasn't ranting. Well, I'm glad to let you have a rant, but I would like to have a chance

to explain what you're missing. Oh, please, yeah. Okay, so the article is talking about overall Palestinian support. And you'll recall that there's two pools of Palestinians. There's Gaza and there's the West Bank. The West Bank is not being bombed. Pardon me? The West Bank is not the issue here. Well, again, we're talking about Palestinian support for Hamas. And Hamas is going to be very happy to have not just support in Gaza,

but to have massively growing support in the West Bank. There are actually more Palestinians in the West Bank. The second in Afada was heavily in the West Bank. The ability to attack Israeli civilian centers grows if you can do it from the West Bank, not just from Gaza. So the idea here that we should just ignore the growing power of Hamas overall among the five million Palestinians here, this is just a gross distortion, Noam, of the vulnerability of Israel's society. So to say, and I agree with you, I, in fact, I had a whole section in the article that I wanted to put in about showing exactly where the growth was. But the problem with foreign affairs,

yes, it's a 3,500 word article, and that's long form in our business, but they wouldn't do a 6,000 word article. I had to take that out. It was actually the editors who took that part out. I just had to accept that here. So for you to- Let me back you up. Let me give you the data to back you up. Your data to back you up. Well, that's a little different than just, I'm just trying to point out that what you just did was ignore the actual way that the data was, and you didn't ask me about why did I not include X, you're trying to attack me in that way. And I think that there's really a very good reason that number one, I did want to include both what was happening in Gaza and the West Bank. And number two, what's happening in both of the pools together is what matters to Israel's security, because it's not like the only

threat to Israel is coming from Gaza. So is it really the case, Norm, that you think we should just ignore the possibility that Hamas could organize attacks among Palestinians in the West Bank against Israel? We're just going to ignore that. I wouldn't ignore it. So I have a pair. I wore my sheath underwear yesterday. Yeah, how was it? I've never seen it.

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and support your balls. So let me give you the data because you're right. It says that in June of 2023, the support for Hamas was 25 percent. And in June of 2024, the support for Hamas is 41%. So that's outside the margin of error, right? So, yes, it's still not through the roof, but... And the support for the rival to Hamas, the PA, is falling also outside of the margin of error. The big change that the article explains

is that since October 7, Hamas and the PA have gone from neck and neck, each about having 25% of support from Palestinian population, to now Hamas having 40 and the PA 20. That has gone from even to a two-to-one advantage for Hamas. And this is particularly happening. It's basically flat, as you're right, in Gaza, but it's particularly happening in the West Bank, which means a whole new front against Israel could open up. This matters because if Israel takes its military and decides it wants to fight a several-month war against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, while it's also trying to have a front here in Gaza. Again, this is all stuff that had to just disappear

from this shortened version of the article. What this means is there is a tremendously vulnerability here in the West Bank. And keep in mind that what happened on October 7th is we already had a situation where the IDF took way too long, hours and hours and hours to respond, and possibly because they downgraded the threat from Gaza because they thought other fronts were more important. I'm looking at a holistic picture of Israel's vulnerability. Israel is more vulnerable today than it was before October 7, and that's the picture that I think you're missing. I think there's some of each here, and I'm happy we're teasing it out because it wasn't teased out in the article as we're teasing it now. And I don't know the answer to the issues I'm going to present now.

So on the West Bank, there's an occupation. Israel is not threatened. They're threatened with an intifada. They're not threatened militarily. No rockets are going to be coming out of the West Bank, at least nothing to speak of. So as there's sympathy for Hamas, and let's not forget Abbas.

We already knew that Abbas kind of backed out of that last election because he was worried Hamas might have won even then. So there's a rallying effect as we saw George H.W. Bush go from 88% to losing an election. As people seeing their brothers die, some discounting of the poll has to be just out of common sense that what they're going to think. But that's that. And it's it's important. You're right. I didn't mean to to to pretend it wasn't important. But it's perhaps more noteworthy

to the question of whether this is backfiring on Israel, in my mind, that the people who were suffering the attack, not their people who are sympathetic to them, the people who were suffering the attack are not actually increasing their support for Hamas. And we're seeing more and more articles now and videos coming out where people are openly angry at Hamas. Well, let me, can I just add another piece that you've left out? Yeah. So in the polling data, we see number one, overall support for Hamas is growing in, it's flat in Gaza, but growing overall.

Number two, support for civilian attacks, attacks against Israeli civilians is up 50 percent. And it's also up in the West, in Gaza, in the West Bank. But it's up in Gaza. So this is the. What's up in Gaza? The support for Palestine. Like suicide bombs and things like that. Any attacks against uh israeli civilians

so um that is now up um 50 including in gaza and number three um in gaza not just in because this is where the war is happening yeah uh 60 percent um of the of gazans report a family member has been killed 75 report a family member has been killed. 75% report a family member has been killed or injured. Well, it's not just an issue of horrible and immoral. This is the ripe recruiting ground for Hamas and Hamas fighters. So if you marry all three of these together, it's not one individual statistic.

Why hasn't every conflict? Just one second. It's all three of these together, which mean there is growing support for Hamas. There is growing anger in the Palestinian population to do more October 7th. This isn't going down. It's not that Israel's operations is having a deterrent effect. It's not that it's

lowering the eagerness of Palestinians to do future October 7th. It's increasing the eagerness and anger among the Palestinians to do that again and again and again. Here's my problem with that yeah two problems with it I don't know which to put the one for the first problem is that there's been many many horrible things horrible Wars as you said Hiroshima bombing of Dresden which didn't actually lead to that number one and it's countless examples. Number two, even more emotionally important for me as a Jew, is that the last time, and you started with it, the last time we saw a comparable bloodthirsty attack on innocent Israelis

was in response to the peace negotiations, was in response to Clinton and Barack and Arafat trying to make peace and coming very close to doing it. So it's hard for me to fully download the risk that you're talking about when I know and experience that the opposite policies can also bring about these kinds of attacks on Israeli children

and candy in the street and exalted and rapturous cries of Allah Akbar like I saw on those videos. I went to see the thing. So maybe there's no choice sometimes. Maybe any policy that correlates to a certain goal that can't be achieved or can't be fully achieved will then open itself up to you.

You see you did the wrong thing because you did that and look what happened as a matter of fact this is what we see in israel now the reason the israeli left hasn't won an election in 20 years is because people say look what happened the last time you tried this so let me make the two points norm and then if you want to talk about the history of going back with other cases i'm glad to do that too but sure yeah yeah if you want to talk about the history of going back with other cases, I'm glad to do that, too. Sure. Yeah. If you have some wisdom on that. Yes. So two points about exactly what you said was your second concern. No matter what Israel does, the number one thing is that defense is the critical element of security for the civilian population, and defense is what failed on October 7th. I was in Israel on December 2019 for a week. I was part of a group that was touring

all the security areas of Israel for a week. I was in Gaza. I saw the wall. I was just there very recently. That was just before the pandemic. And there's absolutely no doubt, not just from history books and not just from the New York Times, that the number one issue with even building a wall, which cost a billion dollars, as I'm sure you know, was defense. Well, what that means is all of that electronic surveillance needed to be manned and needed to be responded to within minutes. Now, I was on helicopters traveling all over Israel within 45 minutes. So it is completely possible that in the whole idea of having a wall is to respond to breaches not within eight hours not

within 10 hours immediately but within 10 minutes that is that's the only point of having the the set of so the failure here first and foremost was defense that now that is true going forward no so no matter where the lines are ultimately going to be you need defense is the number one thing that failed in this case and that's what has to be um a resurrected can i ask a question about that can i ask a question but isn't the defense that you describe considered to be the cause of October 7th? The open-air prison, the concentration camp, nobody can leave, nothing goes in, nothing goes out. This was the provocation. Well, number two is that occupation makes occupied populations more eager to attack.

So the number one reason people become terrorists, there are some who just become terrorists for religious reasons, that is true, but in my studies of terrorism, my books, I've done the largest studies of suicide bombers, the largest studies that have ever been done of suicide bombers, so not just another study. And you did the first database

on the planet Earth of suicide bombers. And yes, there are 5%, 10% who will be motivated strictly by religious reasons and so forth and so on. But this grows exponentially under an occupation where the numbers grow tenfold, 15-fold under an occupation. And some of it's because of the consequences where the deaths to the family members and so forth but isn't it tremendous terror but what i'm trying to but isn't there a tremendous suicide bombing all through the rest of the world that's not related to occupation i'm just i'm just trying to say there's a small amount okay but occupation makes it worse so what what what sometimes democracies in particular do is they respond to small amounts

of terrorism. I'm not saying October 7th was small, but they respond to small amounts of terrorism by making it worse and making the problem worse. So what I'm trying to explain is that defense was absolutely the biggest failure here. And responding to a failure of defense by growing support for the group is absolutely the most counterproductive thing to do so if you are trying to uh uh you know ensure the safety of israeli civilians into the future the last thing that you should be doing is ignoring the main problem and then growing the anger that will lead to even bigger problems in the future. But I'm not, I mean, what you're describing to me is a situation where there's nothing Israel can do. I mean, the defense upsets them.

I mean, we're getting away from the subject matter, but I mean, what if Sinwar, instead of preaching all this stuff, says, you know what? Allah Sadat, we want to sit down with Israel and we want peace. That's the problem. So let me just say,

there's another part of the piece that talks about the fallacy of the body count. By the way, just to say, in sub-Saharan Africa, between 2007 and 2022, had 11,435 terrorist attacks with no occupation. Well, so we do big stuff. South Asia, 17,854. So, Noam, I would love to come back. If you want to come back and talk about Africa, let's do that.

Because we do annual reports on this that are huge, and I'm glad to come and talk to you about that. I would like to come back and get to that. But let's not keep going into sort of side issues, which are not trivial by any stretch. Fair enough. sort of side issues, which are not trivial by any stretch, but the fact that they're serious means we should deal with them seriously here. So, and I take that you want to talk about this in a serious way. So let me just explain. I never said, and I'm not saying Israel should have done nothing. That is not the position. The key thing is to learn how we have defeated terrorist groups and the mistakes that we have made.

Israel, as I said, they have not defeated a terrorist group in 40 years, since Black September 1973. This is really stunning. Israel's biggest threat since 1973 has not been from an Arab army. It's been from terrorist groups. And rather than defeat any terrorist group since 1973, has not been from an Arab army. It's been from terrorist groups. And rather than defeat any terrorist groups since 1973, they have grown.

Hezbollah has grown as a direct consequence of Israel's invasion of southern Lebanon. It did not exist before that. Hamas took a page from... It's not a consequence of the Iranian revolution? This is the key thing we're still not quite getting out, okay, in the article that I think your audience should hear, is the power of a terrorist group comes not from how many fighters it has today, but its ability to recruit more tomorrow. A terrorist group is in the business of killing others and dying to do that.

Now, not necessarily always suicide attack to do it, but they understand many will be killed to kill others. So they are losing bodies, as it were, just by their normal operations. The power of a terrorist group, Noam, is in the ability to recruit new, to replenish the ranks, to grow the ranks. Now, when the United States invaded Iraq, we invaded Iraq. A terrorist movement emerged as a result of that. And what we did is we were able to then estimate the size of AQI in January 2004. It was 5,000. Then big things happened in Fallujah.

We emptied Fallujah, did all kinds of things in Fallujah. Well, do you know what happened six months later? Even though we killed tens of thousands, what happened is the size of the terrorist group went from 5,000 to 20,000. Then, even with more arrests, more imprisonment, more killing of terrorists, over the next year, it grew to 30,000. That's when Donald Rumsfeld, no softie, is asking the question, are we producing more terrorists than we're killing? Which was my position at the time at the very same time arguing we were making the mistake instead what we did after that is we switched to a strategy where we didn't stop trying to kill terrorists altogether that wasn't it what we did

is we still use some military force um limited by way. But what we did is we switched to a strategy to split the local support for the terrorist group. It was called the Anbar Awakening. We worked with political incentives, economic incentives. This was, at the time extremely controversial the idea that we were going to give money to sunnis who have malicious by the way and um but if the uh understanding that i and increasingly others had about terrorism was right that this should produce splits with the group not unify the group is happening now um and that's what happened. And actually, the Anbar awakening was critical. Now, it wasn't critical on its own. Yes,

we also needed to have some military force. I went to the 3rd Infantry Division just before they deployed to Baghdad. I briefed them for two hours on exactly what the red line should be. So I am not saying that military force should not be involved at all. But the idea that there's nothing to do except what this military strategy is that is completely backfiring and failing here is just simply wrong.

And this is what many folks would say. General Petraeus would agree with this. No, General Petraeus is on record saying that Israel needs to clean out Hamas. Clean out meaning, but that he... Destroy Hamas. Yes. I can bring it up. I'm also trying to defeat Hamas. I'm saying that you need political tools, wedge strategies to do that. General Petraeus is agreeing with almost all of that. Petraeus has been pretty hardline on Israel and Hamas. I would encourage your listeners to go to General Petraeus on Fareed Zakaria,

go back about, oh, geez, four months in Fareed shows, and you will see General Petraeus on talking exactly about the need for wedge strategies, for efforts to separate politically Hamas from the local population. So, Noam, I'm just trying to point out that what Israel has been doing is unifying the terrorist group with the local population. It's did that with Hezbollah and southern Lebanon. It's done that with Hamas. But the polls don't show it in Gaza. The polls don't show it in Gaza. Well, they show it as, again, one of the three points I'm making.

In Gaza, the support for Hamas is flat. It's growing in the West Bank. And then where it is also, these other points I'm making apply specifically to Gaza as well, is they are encouraging people in Gaza to want revenge and to want to kill more people. I have a question for you. So the problem is in my – not the problem. The thing that what you're – It's okay. We're having a good conversation.

But it's not the problem. It's the wrong way. I just want to let you know, Noam, I appreciate you bringing me on. I appreciate the fact. This is a good conversation. It's a good conversation, and it's a healthy conversation because the thing I don't like to do

is when I get invited on the shows and everybody just agrees with me. Now, it's true. If I want somebody to agree with me, I should go to my home with my wife. I was going to say, just so your audience knows, I'm not going to be a wuss here. And if you put up something that I think is cherry-picking and missing, I'm going to call that out.

But that's not to say that I really want you to know that if we're really going to have better policy— Wait, let me get my thing out. Let me get my thing out. By the way, I didn't cherry-pick. I put all the data up there. I really didn't know. Well, but you're allowing me to explain yeah and i gave you i put the data that i didn't know that you were separating gaza from the west bank and when soon as well and there's a good reason why you didn't know because i had to take it out of the

piece yeah it was it wasn't in the piece that's right so but the thing is the the terrorist attacks first of all, two things. When an entity has the option for war, they go to war. When they can't go to war, they go to asymmetric warfare, to terrorism. One of the reasons terrorism is up now is because the major Arab armies have given up on it. But the violence we're seeing, the talk about the Al-Aqsa, these themes, these are over 100 years old. The 1929 Palestinian riots were about Al-Aqsa. The problem that immediately comes to my mind when you say what you're saying is that they view all of Israel as occupied territory. This is Hamas's fundamental view.

They call them the settlers, not meaning the settlers that we call the settlers. They mean people in Tel Aviv, people in Haifa. So that is causing the terrorism. You say the occupation causes terrorism? Fine. But I'm going to grant you that. But understand, it's not the occupation in the West Bank. They don't distinguish.

Hamas does not distinguish between the occupation in the West Bank and the quote-unquote occupation of Tel Aviv. So what does Israel do? So let's go back. So one more thing. And there's so much violence, so much violence, much more, much more than in Israel, in tribal violence throughout the Middle East. It's just very important not to ever imply that this kind of violence we're seeing is a result of Israeli occupation.

As a matter of fact, if you look at these similar people without the provocation of Israel, they live quite nicely with each other. They respect tribal differences. They never kill each other. They never blow each other up. They blow each other up all the time. So why do we think that Israel is the provocation here rather than they view Israel as an occupied country, and they are resorting to the violence which is endemic to their entire section of the planet?

So let me make two points. Yeah. Okay? One current, one more historical. Yeah. But not too deep in history, and all about Israel. So I'm glad to talk about other cases here, and if you want to do that, let's really focus on Israel. The first point I want to make is,

just going to the polls you just showed the public, just on Gaza, 34-35% of Gazans are supporting Hamas. That's not 100% of Palestinians in Gaza. So the idea, they hate us all anyway, so we should just kill them and treat them as if they hate us anyway, is just wrong. I didn't say that.

No, no, no. I'm not saying you said that, but I'm just pointing out it is not true that all the Palestinians now are supporting Hamas. More are, okay. But it is still the case that large fractions are not. And so the idea that we should just treat all of them as supporting Hamas is a fundamental mistake where you're growing the enemy. The second point I want to make is more of a historical point, which is, as a lot of your listeners will know, some who are young will not know, they all will know likely that Israel took possession of the West Bank and Gaza after the 1967 war.

That part they'll know. What they may not remember or even know is that for about 15 years after that, this was a honeymoon period with the Palestinians. So what happened from 1967 to 1982 on the, let's just focus on the West Bank, okay, is that there were hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that were going every single day to do day work in Israel and basically being happy about that. And this was the era, by the way, that the scholars are writing books saying, what's happening? There's no Palestinian nationalism here. There's no resistance and so forth. Then starting in 1982, something changed. And what changed exactly was the introduction every single year of thousands of Jewish settlers in the Palestinian territories.

This starts exactly in 1982. So there are curves. You can go to Google Scholar now or Google images. Your listeners can go to get exactly these maps out. They can go to my books to see this. But you will see that before 1982, it is teeny tiny numbers of israelis who are settling in the palestinian territories 1982 this this changes and every single year including during the oslo peace accords this is going up going up going up going up there's no going down and flattening out again it is just literally going up from 1982 on um and you'll see that although there's been a little bit of ebbing and flowing in the last 15 years not much and that continual taking of the land taking of the land taking of the land is fundamentally what is occurring here. So why when I say

occupation I don't mean technical occupation I don't just mean military presence although that is part of it and I do use that language in shorthand when I have to do this in three minutes on TV but what what the biggest thing that motivates people to become terrorists is when their homeland territory is taken from them. That's number one. And that's been going on since 1982 in a steady state way. And yes, it stopped in Gaza, but it has not stopped in the West Bank. And this is just simply creating an endless conflict.

You are touching on a period of Israeli history that I don't know well. I do remember as a boy going to Israel and going into, after the war, going to Jerusalem, eating in Arab restaurants with my father. And I'm not pro-settlement. But I will, just the first three terrorist attacks that came to my mind, I wanted to process the dates. The Entebbe raid with 1976. The Ma'alot massacre of the schoolchildren.

You know this. It was in 1974. The Munich Olympics were 1972. Yes. So, you know, it wasn't rosy before 1982. I am not saying there was zero terrorist threat. But these are some of the most important and most famous terrorist attacks. Yes, but it is a mistake, Noam, to ignore this chronic systemic growth in the terrorist threat that israel's faced since 1982 uh both in from

southern lebanon and um in the palestinian territories and to ignore the structural features that are feeding that growth and to accept i'm sorry except that the worst of it happened as Israel was trying to pull out. The worst of it happened when Barak at Taba, when they were, and then later with Abbas, but really right after at Taba, right after that, when everybody knew that the Israeli government was sincerely trying to make peace and the opposite of what you are saying is what happened the worst terrorist attacks ever so happened not in the occupation again but as a result of trying to end the occupation when when a population has been radicalized and radicalized they killed 105 children in 1970 whatever i understand i understand there are uh serious but nonetheless isolated events and the history and the actual trajectory of this grows tremendously again from 82 on um the um uh i'm I'm not saying there's zero terrorist threat before this, but what

I am saying is that it's unrealistic to expect that those radicalized portions of the population will simply stop being radicalized. Of course you're right that this is a provocation. And so that's why I said defense is going to be the number one issue for Israel going forward. And it was the number one failure on October 7th. So to... But I got to say one thing and then we're going to have to end. We should have another conversation. This is great.

Defense, as recently as 10 years ago, was, I think, a meaningful concept. Defense in the modern world may not cut it. Between drones and the high-tech missiles that Hezbollah has, and the fact that they can push a button and 150,000 can go at once, there is no defense anymore. All the marbles are on the table now, and the fallback positions that Israel could live with, 1975, 1985, even in 2010.

I don't know that they can live that way anymore. I don't know that the old strategies... And then if Iran gets a nuclear bomb, there's no defense anymore. So, first of all, there's defense to portions of it not all of it as i agree with you with i would also say though what you're really pointing out is how the seven million jews in israel are increasingly outnumbered by enemies that are getting stronger almost by the day that includes hamas that includes hezbollah. That includes Iran with

the nuclear, as you just said. It's really Iran. It really is Iran. Well, this is what I, again, going back to the manpower needs of a terrorist group, Iran can throw all the money. They can dump gold in Gaza if they want. But if none of those people want to use that gold to kill anybody and they don't want to use that gold for industry or entrepreneurship. Iran's just wasting their money. What makes a terrorist group powerful is not the money. In fact, most of their weapons are stolen from the state rival. What makes the terrorist group powerful is their ability to recruit new manpower, manpower that knows

there's a good chance they will die in the course of the operations that are going to come. That is what makes Hezbollah dangerous. That's what makes Hamas dangerous. And that's what's growing. And it is a problem because Israel is only seven million jews and it's surrounded now by a variety of growing enemies okay but let's make a show hezbollah is not hezbollah is not occupied they're not palestinians hold it iran iranians not even arabs well 20 years of occupation southern lebanon is a lot and but let me just come say for 50 years israel has had basically one policy they've tried some others more lightly but they have relied on heavy duty military power to defeat terrorism and what's happened in that 50 years is all the enemies of

israel growing they're all growing and they're all stronger now than they were in 1973 and so the what i am doing first and foremost is trying to run up a warning here to say there needs to be a major strategic reconsideration and the idea that we should just continue along and we're going to have tactical fights about 2 000 pound bombs which i'm glad to do now. And we did that in the first part. This is missing the bigger picture for Israel. Will Israel be here 10 years from now? That's an actual question where I wouldn't have thought that was a question five years ago. I would never have thought that was a question five years ago.

Exit question. Yes. By the way, you have a manner, a little bit of a minister. You've never been a minister, have you? No. Again, my students are not going to think that. They're going to be very surprised to listen to you. They think I was a nice guy.

Now you're telling me I'm a minister. You are a nice guy. You have a fight in the middle. You're absolutely a nice guy. No question about that. I've never had as good a fight, by the way, on a podcast. I don't mind that. I enjoy it. I actually think it was very healthy.

I mean, come on. This is the University of Chicago. This is what we do. I'm giving you full authoritarian power, the power that Donald Trump wishes he could have. No, I will not take it, even for a day. But you're benevolent. Thank you. And

your strategy is to, as soon as possible, melt the heart of the Palestinian world such that they want to lay down their arms and live in peace with the Jews so that defense is not necessary, because the defense is, I believe, just as provocative, almost as provocative as the offense. And the world didn't tolerate the defense. So, A, is it possible? What likelihood is it possible? You can't be sure it's possible.

And B, what would be the first three things you would do to melt that heart so number one i i have an idea um number two i can't guarantee it's gonna gonna absolutely work so i am enough of a realist to know any any change here is gonna be gonna be fraught but the specific thing that israel should do and it could be any, Netanyahu may not be one willing to do this, but it would be to promise, to say that Israel is going to not just say it wants a two-state solution, which is already a big concession, they would say. I would say, number one, that, but number two, they will promise to truly freeze the settlements between now and 2030. That is for the next five and a half years.

And they're going to give five and a half years to discover and find a real opportunity among that two-thirds of the Gazans and about 60% of the Palestinians overall who do not support Hamas to find another path that is not violence. After that, it's a different story. But I think that this would be to truly freeze the settlements. That's what I just explained to you was sort of this structural. So let me agree with you, but let me tell you why I'm pessimistic. I agree with you. I would go for that in a heartbeat. But I discussed this with Aaron David Miller. There's a concept of critical mass, which is that if 80% of the Palestinians go for your plan, the 20% who don't, especially if they're armed and funded by iran will take over that new palestinian state and start shooting rockets in but not from gaza now but from the hills of jerusalem well and i don't see any until until iran is out of the picture i don't see any hope

let me give you a little bit of hope. Not perfect hope. So again, I don't want to be painted as, you know, Paul Yanush and, you know, but at the same time, let me give you a little bit of hope, which is one of the big reasons to believe that Palestinians are behind Hamas is how little intel is coming to Israel to kill Hamas leaders. So the way you kill terrorist leaders, the number one way,

well, there's two. One is cell phones, which everybody knows is a bad idea, including Hamas leaders. But the real way you kill those leaders, how we got bin Laden, is through humans. It only took us 10 years. Well, I'm just, well, that was because, but I'm just focusing here, okay? Focus on what's the actual way to, you know, the population is supporting Hamas tactically, is that they're not giving up the leaders, okay? Now, maybe they don't know where every leader is every single day, but this is a very small territory.

There's lots of people and they're not giving the intelligence. Well, that 80-20 split, if you could get 80% on the side of this that I'm describing, that intel is going to come here. And that intel could go to the Israelis, it can go to the Americans, it can go to the other 80% to just kill people. How did we kill Zarqawi in June 2006? You may not even know. Zarqawi was the leader of AQI. Ben Laden warned him that he was about to be assassinated by his own people.

And he said, it's because you're a Jordanian and you're trying to run an Iraqi Sunni insurgency. And those Iraqis are going to kill you unless you put an Iraqi face on. Well, Zarqawi didn't listen. He never listened. And what happened is, in June of 2006, two American missiles killed Zarqawi. Why and how? Because the Iraqis dropped the dime on him. The Iraqis, who were the people around Zarqawi.

And guess what? Who was the next leader of AQI? An Iraqi. See what I mean? So what I'm trying to tell you, what I'm trying to point out is these are the more detailed ways in which to truly undermine the support here, which I'm not trying to say is so easy to do. It doesn't just paint a glory picture back to the 1970s. But it is, I think, Israel's best path forward because how else are 7 million

Jews going to survive in that state to survive for the next 10 years and 20 years when all of these threats are growing? What exactly is the grand strategy here? This is the real question. This is why Benny Morris wrote they should bomb Iran. And I'm just trying to point out, this is the real

question for supporters of Israel, for strategists like me, and I'm trying to give you real answers to this. I'm not trying to make them easy answers, but I'm trying to point out that this is now a critical question to the future of Israel. And it's even beyond October 7, because if you look at all the enemies, they're growing. And the idea that Israel is just going to keep lashing out at them one by one by one. God forbid there should ever be articles in Foreign Affairs or Foreign Policy magazine advising the Palestinian people, leadership, hey, what are you doing? The Israelis have a psychology, too. Why don't you just say you want to make peace?

Why do you walk out all the time? Why did you walk out on Obama? Why did you walk out on George W. Bush? Like, you know, they're holding all the leverage here. We've seen it. We saw Sadat do it here we've seen it we saw sadat do it we've seen other arab leaders who just make a speech you say israel should uh go on record for two states yair lapid in 2021 whenever he's prime minister he gave a speech at the un calling for a two-state solution see ultimately nobody cared ultimately know even though this all sounds so pessimistic

i'm ultimately an optimist because i do believe a more positive future is possible for both israel and the palestinians have you been to israel by the way uh december 2019 and that was and i saw all the the you know bickering that's going back and forth here about the you know the the ortho i mean all those issues here were front and center. And so I realize that it's an extremely complex situation. But the issue that is in front of us here is we really have the survival of the country, I think, now on the line. And that sometimes said, well, hey, survival's on the line. We can do it.

Well, no. It has to be intelligent strategy here and i am not seeing intelligent grand strategy coming out um of from any real source here and i think this is what is needed most of all because again seven million people up against a growing what 400 million people where the enemies are getting stronger and stronger is this really going to go on for 50 years here um no i think this is i think this is what needs to be front and center discussed all right sir it was it was a pleasure pleasure to meet you and i'm happy that you're going to go enjoy a show now. It's a very good lineup. We're going to wrap it up.

I have to do my commercial read. Thank you very much, sir. Oh, wait. Before we go, we want to thank Sheath Underwear for sponsoring today's episode. Don't forget to visit sheathunderwear.com slash seller today to get 20% off your first order. Put your balls in good hands with Sheath underwear.