The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Israel’s Gloomy Future? Occupation, Isolation, and Survival - Daniel Sobelman

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

A conversation about the future of Israel and world Jewry. Can Israel protect itself without becoming a global pariah? Did Hamas gamble that even losing the war could pull Israel into isolation? Noam and Sobelman discuss occupation, unilateral withdrawal, the settler movement, Jewish vulnerability abroad, and the difficult tradeoffs now shaping Israel’s future. 00:00 Intro: Daniel Sobelman returns 03:47 Israel after October 7: a new era for Jews and Israel 08:58 Sobelman: October 7 as a nuclear-level shock 11:48 Why Israel was blamed before it responded 15:50 Hamas’s strategy: provoke a war and isolate Israel 22:35 Occupation, moral corrosion, and the West Bank dilemma 32:23 Could Israeli initiative restore its global standing? 34:03 Settlers, politics, and the failed path of unilateral withdrawal 41:29 Israel as both Jewish safety net and source of Jewish vulnerability 52:02 Resistance vs normalization: the future of the Middle East Daniel Sobelman is a professor of international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative. Read his book, "Axis of Resistance" https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D9L7QQNN?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Live from the Table, the official podcast of New York's Comedy Seller. My name is Noam Dwarman. I'm here without my co-host today, and this hot, balmy, sunny, hot, but I say hot already. Hot, balmy, sunny afternoon in New York City. I almost wanted to cancel the podcast entirely because it's too nice, but we have such a great guest. I'm going to go through with it. Today's guest, I think this is the quickest we've got to.

ever had anybody return. Daniel Sobelman is a professor of international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Israel and a research fellow with the Harvard Kennedy School Middle East Initiative. His area of expertise is the conflict and deterrence dynamics between Israel and Hamas and Hezbollah. His current research focuses on strategic foundations of Hamas' October 7th attack. Have you heard of that, Stephen? His recent book is entitled, Axis of Resistance, Asymmetric Conflicts and Rules of the Game.

I mean contemporary Middle East conflicts. Welcome, Professor Sobelman. Thanks for having me again. It's a pleasure. So I just have a few things that say, you know, there's been so much, yeah, you can turn me down, Stephen, because I got to make him louder. So much happened this week, and I don't have Dan or Peryl to talk about. I went to the Mark Twain Awards. I saw Bill Maher, all kinds of, like, comedy-related stuff.

And I had a lot to comment about it, but I guess it's going to have to wait. I've been wanting to talk to you or any smart Israeli about the subject I'm going to broach with you today. And honestly, for those of you who saw our last interview, I'm so impressed with you and your article. Next to maybe Khabiv Returur, who, now that I know him, I always feel reluctant to ask him to come on the show because I don't ask people I have relationships with like that. Do me favors. you're the new guy in my mind of who I want to look to for guidance on this stuff. Well, fantastic. Thank you so much.

That's a huge compliment. By the way, before I get to it, you had said in the last episode that your paywalled article, your academic paper that I paid like $75 to read, and it was worth every penny. Don't get me wrong, was now released somewhere. How was it released? No, it's just free access. If you Google the name of the article, which is the strategic origins of Hamas's October 7th attack, you can just access the article. It's open access. The university, the Hebrew University paid thousands of dollars to the publisher to render it free and not behind a paywall. That's how that's unfortunately how the academic publishing business works. I would implore everybody in the sound of this voice to Google that and find that article and download it. I actually, I don't know if he guided.

I sent it via one degree of separation to Joe Scarborough after he went on. You know who Joe Scarborough is? Your English accent is so American accent is so good. I figure you know all the American media personalities, but you might not know who he is. I don't. The reason I have a good English accent is because my parents made Alia before I was born. Before him from York. Yeah.

So, anyway, he's a big. He's a big, important former Republican morning political. He was also a congressman. And he went on a rant about Israel Netanyahu the other day that if he had only read your article, he would have not said certain things that he said about Hamas being propped up and stuff like that. Anyway, so this is what I want to talk to you about. Right after October 7th, I had this horrible feeling, and I expressed it that, although Israel probably had to do what it was going to do and did do, that this was going to

usher in a new period in history, both for Israel and the Jewish people in the world. I remember saying this is a war. It's going to be a war on the Jewish people. It's going to be daily George Floyd videos and a worldwide defund the police reaction. I remember saying that even if Israel did nothing, I remember. I wouldn't doubt them, not because I wanted Israel to do nothing, but because I realized, or I thought I realized,

but even though I realized it, now that it's happened, I can't claim that I actually saw it with clarity. Sometimes you have a feeling about something, but then when it actually comes to be, you say, oh my God, this is sort of what I was saying, but when I said it, I really had no idea of the texture and the reality of it. It was just an idea and a bubble,

a very vague idea. I didn't really put any meat on it, that the cost of it was going to be a new reality, maybe forever. And now, and I talked about the risk of a free-fallen American support. Anyway, so, you know, I can't resist a little told you so. So what I want to ask you about is, where does Israel go from here? if I spin out, and I'll ask you to do, if I spend out 20 years from now, Israel's still occupying the West Bank,

a global pariah to the extent that even we Jews will either have to break our souls in terms of becoming ignored to realities that we, that seems so unjewish to us, just ruling over another people forever. Like, who could have to be?

imagine we'd be in this situation. I don't see the world accepting any of the arguments for the continued occupation, even if some of them may be quite persuasive to you and me. American demographics, right now, the only core support of Israel and the Jews is aging mostly white people. The exact demographic that is not going to exist

20 years from now in America. I mean, I'm going to age out probably in 20 years. And I'm going to let you say, I'm going on long enough. It's one other thing. And just add to that, my gut feeling is that the most influential of Palestinians, not the rank in file, not the everyday people, I don't know how they feel. They actually want the occupation to continue.

The end of the occupation would be the end of their narrative. They probably believe, since clearly their intent on winning this, winning this means ending Israel, they want to destroy Israel. And being occupied is helpful to them. It would be pulling the rug out from under them in some way for them to have to take the measures that they want to take, justify it to the world while they were not occupied, which led me to this flirtation with the idea, which I know is not. a good idea of, well, maybe they should revisit unilateral withdrawal, staged unilateral

withdrawal, some way to get out from under this, even with all the risks, because perhaps the risks of inaction, 20 years from now, when we wake up, we'll say, well, this was much worse than facing down the security threats, which we certainly would have had to if we had just pulled out. So anyway, you see where I'm coming from. answer, and you must have given thought to this as an Israeli. Speak about it. Yes, yes, I've given thought to this. You've obviously laid a lot of things that we can unpack here,

and I think we're going to be dealing with exactly these questions for the foreseeable future, and maybe even till the rest of our lives. Where to start? Look, everything you said strongly resonates with me. as an Israeli, as a Jew, and someone who also does international relations and political science and thinks about how the world works and about how some things are constant in this world, and some things we do have the ability to shape. Now, this is, you know, I'm going to lay out a few things, and not necessarily by order of importance. But I think that the first thing to talk,

understand is that on October 7th, what Hamas did was a dropped a nuclear bomb on Israel, which failed to detonate, or the October 7th massacre occurred. It's as if a tactical nuclear weapon had been dropped on those communities. What would anybody do? What are even people who are against Israel? What would they do in such a situation, right?

If this happened to any other country, any other country, if Cuba ever did that the morning after Christmas to the United States because it has legitimate grievances, right? And I'm not belittling at all the Palestinian grievances. You're dealing. with two parties, the Israeli Zionism, the Zionism and the Israeli national movement,

the Palestinian national movement, who are effectively Siamese twins, and they both come to the table with very valid arguments. When people say that the Jewish people or the Israelis, the Jewish people have nothing to do or no business in this part of the world, then that's historically and archeologically,

not true. Anywhere you just shove a spade in the land of Israel in Israel, and you are going to come up with Hebrew letters in Jewish history. Does that preclude the fact that the Palestinians befell a catastrophe in 1948? No. Both parties come to the table with very valid arguments. And really, the question is now what to do. Right now, we are in a situation. were exactly as you describe. Israel is potentially on the way to becoming a pariah state for the foreseeable future. Because of the end of the day, the pictures coming out of the Gaza Strip are things that, you know, I, it's hard to live with this. And again, I think I mentioned this in the other podcast that,

you need to be able to look yourself in the mirror and live with what you're saying. But you also need to be able to look yourself in the mirror and see a reflection, because that means that you're alive and you exist. And Israelis, Jews cannot take their existence for granted. This is just something that is inherent to this world. And Israel was denounced it by, by, by student organizations, et cetera, already on October 7th, on October 8th. Israel was denounced before Israel even did anything.

Before Israel, you know, you had Qiboutini, you had localities in Israel that were still occupied by Hamas. And Israel was already accused of being responsible for what had happened. And on that morning, which was a very, among other things, as it was a very weird day because as an Israeli, I received a lot of text messages and emails from colleagues around the world expressing sympathy with me. And that was a very weird feeling,

because typically as an Israeli, you get blamed for everything. For anything that happens in this world, you're going to be blamed for it by definition. 9-11 happens, Israel's going to get the blame. And all of the sudden you find yourself in the position of a victim. Mamdani blames Israel for police brutality in New York City, just as a example. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Exactly.

The thing is, you know, you're in the business of comedy. There's the famous Jewish philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, who once said, you know, this is, it sounds funny, but it's true. He said, you know, what is an anti-Semitic person? anti-Semitism is hating Jews more than is absolutely necessary. And I think that since October 7th, that, you know, that line, that joke kind of more resonates with a lot of us. Because the weird feeling of being denounced immediately after the massacre occurred was just very weird. It was in a lot of you know weird things have happened since now on that morning I also realized that many of those people who reached out to me Give it a week and they're going to see me and this country as a bunch of Nazis

Yeah And really this is at the end of the day this the way I see it it's a lose-lose situation for both Israelis and Palestinians But, A, Israel exists, which cannot be taken for granted. Israel exists. Israel is a strategic factor. It's a powerful strategic factor in the region. And a lot of countries are now seeking Israel's technological support, et cetera, even countries that don't like Israel.

And secondly, you cannot lose sight of the fact. fact that already on October 7th, Israel was denounced by these, by a lot of people, by the Mamdani's of the world, but not only. And all of this doesn't preclude the fact that we cannot just rely on our military power. And Israel has to be a successful country. It has to be a powerful country. It has to be a force to be reckoned with, a strategic factor to be reckoned with in the world otherwise, all Jews anywhere, including in New York or Boston or London, will be perceived as vulnerable, as fair game. Again, Israel also has to be a just country. It has to be smart about understanding that we are vulnerable in the sense that we are going to be unpopular and we are going to be

unpopular and we are going to be blamed. And I think that Hamas was backing on this. On August, this is an interview I keep on thinking about because I watched in real time. This is an interview that was aired on August 25th, 2023, just a few weeks before October 7th. Interview with Salah La Jollaoui, who was a top Hamas official.

And he said that we now Hamas, so this is a few weeks before October 7th, we, it is in our vital, strategic, existential interest to have a massive racial war in the Middle East. Otherwise, the Palestinian cause is going to be over. The most extreme right-wing fanatic Israeli government in the history of Israel was just elected. and you're dealing with serious ideologues who are going to flood the West Bank with two or three million Jewish settlers, meaning that we have two or maximum two or three years to exist, and we have to do something about and blow up the situation. And one of the reasons I've been thinking about this interview,

not only because, you know, what was I thinking and why didn't I understand what he was saying, what he was telegraphing to us and signaling, but also because he had an interesting line where he said, after the next war, the entire world is going to look differently on Israel. The way in which they perceive themselves and the way in which the world perceived Israel will completely change. Now, obviously, the dust hasn't settled on the entire Middle Eastern conflict. and clearly when the dust finally settles, which is going to take many years, by the way,

we are going to find ourselves in a different Middle East for better or worse. Israel is a strategic factor. Israel, in terms of its strategic environment, Israel is now in a much better position than it was on the eve of October 7th, when Israel was deterred by Hamas, was deterred by Hezbollah. Now all this ring of fire that Iran had established and surrounded Israel with has been dramatically, dramatically weakened. However, as you point out, Hamas, I think we're bringing into account the possibility that even if they lose this war, by losing, they take Israel down with them. And this is what we should be focusing on. I am not under the illusion that I'm ever going to convince

those who justified or excused October 7th or even those who denounced just denounced Israel on October 7th or protested against Israel on Times Square on October 8th or held a vigil for the Iranian Supreme Leader Khomeini in Washington Square Park three months ago, right? I'm not under the illusion that I'm going to convince these people. However, I think that Israel's top priority should now be retaining, first of all, retaining the people who do sympathize, empathize with Israel, people who are essentially on our side, not people who are the mom dainties of the world.

world. There's no chance. He's a Hamas supporter. But people who need to understand that Israel is a just country. And this is, I think, what our focus should, you know, there are a lot of priorities, but that's a top priority for me. I want to get into specific, so let's make a few observations. Stephen, can we turn off that AC? You have the remote for that? Oh, thank you. You know, so much of so much of everything is is psychological um and uh i think it was abe greenwald on the commentary podcast quoted some cormac McCarthy is a very important very very brilliant he died recently american writer and i don't remember the quote at all but the point of the quote was that when somebody does something horrendous in atrocity one way people rationalize it is that whoever they

it to must have been doing something awful to them, to elicit that kind of response, kind of like battered wife syndrome. If that wife chopped her husband up into little pieces, can you imagine how awful that husband must have been? And this happens to us without our free will. This is just, we take certain things in psychologically, and we have a mechanism that tries to make sense of things. That's subconscious. In the same way, we're seeing kind of a Pavlovian disgust reaction

spreading through the world about anything that's Jewish. And we're helpless to fight against it. Epstein and Weinstein and the JFK and the U.S. Liberty and Hamas and dead babies and killing journalists, even after we hear that the journalists actually were fighting, and it goes on a, and and the mind can only take so much of it. And before you know it, you see a star of David and you have a little, as I say, Pavlovian

reaction to it. Even a supporter has it, you know, and we're fighting all of this at the same time. I was in D.C. I'm really often a tangent, but, you know, I was in D.C. And there was this beautiful young girl checking me in at the hotel. She looked just like, I don't know if you ever saw the movie, on the roof. Sounds so Jewish.

This is this redhead, the redheaded daughter looked just like her. And she had a tiniest little star of David on her necklace. This is at the Four Seasons's hotel in Washington, D.C., this tiniest little star.

And I looked at it right, and I gave her like a thumbs up and she looked at me like, because obviously this was brave of her. This was an act of defiance. In America, in 2006, this sweet young girl working in a hotel to where the tiniest little emblem of her of her heritage, I'm sure,

was a decision that she made and waited and says, no, I have to do this, you know? So all these psychological currents, and I'm going to add something to it because I think you'll like this. This goes back to what I said before about how the toll it takes on Israelis and Jews themselves. I read this once about a year ago. This is a quote from Thomas Jefferson. Now, in this quote, the analogy is going to be the Palestinians are the slaves and the Israelis are the slave masters.

That is not my intention, but you'll still, I think, understand my meaning here. He says, the whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this and learn to imitate it, for man is an imitative animal.

The parent storms, the child looks on, catches the liniments of wrath, puts on the same airs in the circle of smaller slaves, gives alluse to his worst passions. And thus nursed, and daily exercised in tyranny cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy who can retain his manners and morals undepraved by such circumstances. To me, this means that he's saying that to grow up in the system of slavery

takes a terrible toll on the white people's ability to maintain the morality, to maintain their empathy, maintain their humanity. And this is what I'm afraid of for the Israelis, the cognitive dissonance of having to live with the worse and worse abuses of the Palestinians. Again, you know, I'm just speaking Jew to Jew here. We know and we are just assuming that we understand each other on why this has come about. But I think we also agree that after 50 years of one people ruling over another, it just gets worse and worse and worse. And the things that are acceptable become more and more daily and, you know, quotidian, if that's the word, just become, you just get used to everything. And the cognitive dissonance as Jews, and that may sound superior, but I can only

speak as a Jew, that we say, well, they must really deserve this. We couldn't be doing this unless they deserve it, right? So then you begin to look for, to start heaping on things on them, as to why they deserve it. And then it just gets worse. And the resent me, because it's a terrible, terrible, terrible situation, which I know you agree. So that's on one side.

And that's where, I mean, history can turn on a dime. You never know what's going to happen. A Palestinian Sadat can be born tomorrow. And I think you and I agree. They could turn this thing around very, very quickly, if they took a different line. But they may not. It doesn't look like they're going to.

And so let's just go through a little bit. Like, when I was a kid, it's that they have the high ground and they can cut us off and the Arab armies can sweep through. We can never give up the Jordan Valley. That has to be our security buffer. A lot of these arguments have become obsolete. We're not really worried about Arab armies invading from the West Bank. the high ground is still real, but technology is kind of superseded that whole, and certainly in 20 years, the drones and surveillance and everything, everything becomes the high ground.

But on the other hand, the proximity, I guess the reaction time to drones, two certain things, that becomes more important than ever to threats that didn't even exist when these articles, when these arguments first started being made. What? Have you given thought to it? Like, how awful would it be to start withdrawing from the West Bank and taking those risks

vis-a-vis what might be gained in getting out from under this longer-term problem, which may be more serious than X number of lives which what I'm suggesting would be jeopardized, but it's the whole future of the Jewish people, not just in Israel, in the entire world. Jewish flourishing en masse is somehow implicated here. Maybe I'm overstating it.

He's frozen. I don't think you're overstating it. Okay, go ahead. You were frozen. And I think that first of all, I don't, can you hear me? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Look, I don't disagree with you about anything, about anything you just said,

except for the fact that one of the unfortunate ramifications of October 7th was that it was a brutal reminder to Israelis that actually geography does matter and strategic depth does matter and doesn't matter how sophisticated how you know all these sensors all the you know the drones and the footage and the satellites etc still nothing nothing is going to change the fact that Israel has zero strategic depth. Nothing is ever going to change the fact that the distance between the Gaza Strip and those Kibbutzim that they slaughtered is a matter of like literally three minutes by bicycle. And nothing is going to change the fact that Israel's eastern frontier is its most vulnerable. And anyone invading Israel from its eastern frontier could literally cut the country in half because the distance between the Mediterranean and the West Bank is, I mean, you could like jog that distance. You won't even break a sweat. It's what is it, like eight miles. That's nothing.

So in terms of strategic depth that I, what October 7th did was it, and that this is the trauma. that is now going to shape Israel's psychology for the foreseeable future, because now both Israel and its enemies know that an invasion, but October 7th was the first time that Israel, like Israel proper was like invaded by thousands of Hamas activists, that this is this is a scenario that way that Israel has to bring into consideration. And then now it's like you've, you've, you've, It's, you know, people's imagination is now working overtime on all these fronts, whether it's Lebanon or Syria or Jordan. We had a drone, that, you know, basically an unmanned boat, speedboat that the other day tried to, I know, approach the coast city of Eilat. right in southern israel and this is really the future where drones etc are really going to bridge um geography and rendered geography almost obsolete in that respect especially swarms of drones again that does not negate anything that you said otherwise about his Israel how it should take it this is what zionism was all about from the get-go right you need to

Right? You need to, even if you don't have a partner on the other side, that still doesn't preclude the fact that you must take active measures, decisions, and initiatives in order to improve your own situation, right? Maybe there's never going to be a Palestinian sadat, right? Because at the end of the day, this is, this still hasn't been disproved. And I'm not exonerating Israel, but I'm definitely not exonerating the Palestinians for missing every opportunity over the past 80 years, even more than 80 years. Because at the end of the day, again, you have two parties that are, especially if you're dealing with Israel and Hamas. Hamas, what it tried to do on October 7th was destroy Israel. that we have this in so many words, them saying this, that morning we have the documents, etc. But again, does that mean that Israel can just continue the occupation, which is, again, it's that dissonance and that tension between your need to be able to look yourself in the mirror

and live with what you're saying and balancing out that with your need to secure your own existence. Now, nothing in this world, definitely not an international relations, comes risk-free. And that's why I think Israel is going to face in the next few years, it's going to face the need assert itself on Israel to do something about the situation, to show some initiative. Right? And this, again, this could very much improve Israel's global standing. Exactly what happened in 2005, even though now the situation is worse than after the second intifada. But in 2005, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided to disengage from the Gaza Strip,

Israel's image kind of changed almost overnight. And the year after that, even Roger Waters came here and gave probably the biggest concert of the history of Israel. And the things changed because the world started to see strategic sense in what Israel was doing. And right now, a lot of Israelis do see strategic sense in what Israel is doing because they want, after October 7th, they want those buffer zones. They want buffer zones in Lebanon. They want buffer zones in Syria, et cetera. And this is, again, it goes back to a, you know, again, it's all psychological. But I don't think that this is, that Israel can maintain this maximalistic approach forever.

How much is the settler movement? By the way, when I was a kid, I remember my father thinking that, you know, kind of like, well, if these settlers continue, this will bring the Palestinians to the table because they'll see the writing on the wall. We need to react now because Israel's going to gobble up the land. And I think that was kind of a line of thought at the time. Like, we don't really want, we don't support the settlers. But maybe this will put pressure on the Palestinians to make peace. but obviously that didn't work and now the settler movement is so powerful and extensive.

How much and has political power, especially because Israel is so closely divided, they become swing boats without size influence. That happens in America too. But for the settler movement, how different do you think Israeli policy would be if it was being made purely on good faith, strategic grounds rather than with any eye towards the political power and votes of people

who were pro-settlement. So you know, let me just remind you that a year after, less than a year after the disengagement from the Gaza Strip, people forget that Israel disengaged from the Gaza Strip into the last centimeter. And the following year, what Chalon was planning, and he literally established a new political party, right, he resigned from the, broke up the Likud Party. established Kadima party, which then went ahead and won the elections big time. And what was that, what was their platform?

Do you remember this was exactly 20 years ago? I know, but you say, yeah. Their platform was to, they didn't call it the disengagement. But basically the platform that they ran on was that we are going to do another disengagement, unilateral disengagement. from the West Bank. And ultimately what happened was that in July of 2006, the second Lebanon war broke out. And all of a sudden, Israelis were faced with the ramifications of what happened.

What happens when you withdraw unilaterally from Arab land, which I'm not saying that Israel should not have withdrawn unilaterally, neither from Gaza nor from southern Lebanon. But both these cases, when you're asking about unilateral pullouts, both these cases are not the most optimistic cases in the sense that Israel pulled out of the Gaza Strip the following year in 2006, or it starts 2007, Hamas took over the entire Gaza Strip and threw the Palestinian Authority off the, you know, the balconies and kicked them out of the Gaza Strip. And in southern Lebanon, after Israel withdrew unilaterally from southern Lebanon, southern Lebanon essentially became an Iranian stronghold. Right.

So now the question is, how do you withdraw from all these territories that Israel has now taken as buffer zones against security guarantees? because I really don't think that it's in the interest of the state of Israel to remain in southern Lebanon or to remain in Syria. Obviously, nothing's going to happen between now and the elections because no one can really think or talk candidly in this country right now because of the election season. However, once the elections are behind us, I think that Israel is going to have to think about how do you really calculate your moves in all these frontiers? otherwise you're going to find yourself in a yeah you'll have buffer zones but you're also going to face a war of attrition a never-ending war of attrition with his baller or possibly with the syrians and others right so so but but to focus to refocus on the question so how much is

the settler influence here preventing rational decisions that people like netting nets and yahoo have come to on their own, but they can't say those things out loud because of the political consequences. I think it's very significant. I think it's very significant that the settlers said, you know, the settlements of gained critical mass a long time ago. You have hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers in the West Bank, right? And they're very powerful. It's a very powerful sector right now. I've read that some of them. I'm sorry, I keep going to drop to you, but I've read that, and I versus accurate, that some large number of them are there because the rent is cheaper and there's economic incentives and some other number are committed religious, for lack of a better word,

I don't want to say fanatics, but they're committed religious people who don't want to leave. Is that correct? Yeah, that's the, I would say that's the conventional wisdom. So it's the religious people we're talking about. What's their number, would you say? Well, obviously there's a debate and disagreements about. about this, but at least tens of thousands of people who are very, very committed, and they're also very politically influential.

I think one problem is, again, the fact that it's just a fact of life that after October 7th, Israelis are not, whether it's vis-a-vis the Palestinian Front or in Lebanon, et cetera, they really don't want to wake up in the morning and see Hezbollah from their balcony. So that's one factor. That's one barrier. And another barrier is political. I think it's like that because that's a genuine barrier. Because a lot of Israelis can now, you know, they can envision the idea of an October 7th,

and they can envision the idea of this repeating itself. In fact, Hamas is to say, even Hamas, even now with the God, mostly destroyed, Hamas is saying, we just introduced a model to the world showing that Palestine can be freed if we all join forces and act together. Right. So it's not that whatever happened in Gaza is now disabused them of that notion or that dream. Quite the contrary. Well, something that Israel has been facing since its establishment is that no war, has really led to a lasting peace, except for, you know, eventually the Yom Kippo War that paved the way for a lasting peace with the Egyptians. However, Israel obviously had to withdraw from the entire Sinai

Peninsula for that. And is there now the willingness to deal with the Palestinian situation, to deal with the West Bank, to deal with the settler movement? Right now, it doesn't, doesn't look at that promising. But again, I agree with you that the situation is awful. We're actually coming on the 60th year since 1967 next year. And the political realities that you outlined at the beginning of Israel and not just Israel, but Jews all over the world being feeling vulnerable because of what is having, happening here in the state of Israel that ironically was established in order to provide safety

and security to the Jewish people. So it's very ironic that because of things that are happening in Israel, right, the startup nation, the very successful, the very successful and powerful Israel because of the things that are happening here, Jews elsewhere in the world are going to feel vulnerable. I say this with a caveat that if you think that you're feeling vulnerable now, just imagine God forbid something actually happened to Israel, how vulnerable Jews will be like literally anywhere in the world. So these, you know, it's a complicated and complex situation that has to be managed. This is not a, you know, I'm not going to come up with any like clear cut black or white solutions here because it's something that has to be managed

in a smart, in a smart fashion that despite everything that I say about, you know, the Israeli occupation, I am never going to be apologetic about my existence. Of course. And I don't think that Israeli, you know, the Israel should, Israel, Israelis or Jews should ever be apologetic about their existence or about the existence of the state of Israel. Now, is this country perfect? Absolutely not. Is it like the Jewish people's like literally, you know, ultimately it's Jewish people's ultimate safety net and insurance policy. and that's again bringing into consideration all the things that are happening and the West Bank and the

you know the the I don't want to reuse too harsh in terms but you get you understand what I feel about a lot of the things that are happening there which I cannot identify with

and you mentioned earlier with that fabulous quotation that you quoted. At the end of the day, these things also controlling, occupying another people, it invariably is going to corrupt you. It is going to take away something from your humanity. And that is something that is completely anathema. It's really encompassed.

contradiction to what I think you're describing something that I personally identify with is that my upbringing is that since childhood, there were things that, you know, whether it's my parents or the surrounding, we're saying, you know, there are certain things that we are never going to do because we are Jewish. because Jewish people were never going to do, you know, never going to engage in this in certain behaviors. Let's put it that way. And that we did have the moral high ground. I'm not going to apologize for Israel's existence, but Israel has to, you know, do a much better job in that respect. And we've got characters in the government currently who are really the, the most extreme elements that Israeli society has to offer. It's as if, now imagine that in the United States,

you've got the proud boys. Imagine brought the proud boys into the administration. Of course, you've got the proudest boy as president of the United States. So, you know, it's complicated. You know, and some countries look, you know, take the United States, for example, Yeah, the United States has done awful things in its history.

You know, think about Native Americans or slavery. However, I think that ultimately, in the grand scheme of things, the world is a much better place, thanks to the United States and probably the most important thing that happened in humankind, in human history, is the fact that the United States and no other power held the monopolies. over nuclear weapons for four years because you want to imagine any other country other than the United States reaching that status, any other country on Earth, right? So it's a mixed back. So ultimately, it's a, that's the, yeah, you know, this is a very interesting conversation because unspoken, I'm pretty sure we see eye to eye on the other side of the coin. We're just focusing on this side of the coin today. And like, I don't know if you saw Peter Bynart's interview with Coleman Hughes.

You should watch it. And, you know, talking about the right of return. Yeah, no, I did. And Peter Bynard says, well, you know, the Palestinians, they want to go back to their, to their towns and Coleman, I'm really condescending. And Coleman was like, well, yeah, but the towns don't exist anymore. There's shopping malls there. Why don't they want to go to live in their new,

country and be rid of the occupation. Like why would you want to turn down your own country forever simply because you, this quixotic notion of wanting to live in this town, which is no longer Arabic and like it was your great grandparents who live there. You actually have no actual connection to it. And Peter Bynard says, well, but you know, many of them want to see the sea. And Coleman kind of let that go by and I'm saying, how ridiculous. like what kind of solicitousness is there to this, I think, fake argument

that these Palestinians, these poor people are living generation after generation of emissuration and misery because they're fighting for their right to see the sea in Haifa or something like this. This is all bullshit as far as I'm concerned. This is a movement to destroy Israel. and it will never be anything otherwise, which is why I said, I don't think, I think if Israel were to withdraw, it would, Hamas would certainly be upset about it. And I just have this gut instinct, even though I'm not that informed about it, that Abbas and many people, this is their narrative,

this is their cause. Their cause is not actually a Palestinian state. Their cause is a destruction of Israel. If Israel world should withdraw from the West Bank and no longer occupy Palestinian lands, this would be a headwin for them in terms of trying to now persuade the world that they have a just cause, which is now to destroy Israel, which doesn't occupy them. They would much rather be fighting to destroy Israel from within the occupation. That's how I see that. Let me just say one of the things I took a note. So, but so in my mind, Israel is during a new era now where they kind of had their cake and ate at two for a long time where there are going to be real tradeoffs now.

I mean, real tradeoffs in terms of the price that they're going to have to pay. And this is a state which is created to protect and benefit Jews. And now there is a tradeoff that they are going to pay a price. Jews all over the world and Israel are going to pay a price now for certain justified actions again. But I just, I recall that at the height of apartheid, no South African anywhere on planet Earth would have worn an identifying piece of jewelry around their neck. Everybody knew that if you were a white Afrikaner, that was something you wanted to keep to yourself. And this is, this is where we're going. This is where we're going. This is, this is such,

and I guess that when you have problems, I hate to like be, you know, I don't know what the word is, but I don't, to minimize it to like to bring it to something like inconsequential, but in life, in business, in various things, you know, the first step of facing, in my, my experience, It's the first step of facing a problem that seems to have no solution. It's to at least stop being in denial about the full ramifications, the full consequence of the problem, the full difficulty of the problem, stop the denial. And Israel has, I mean, I'm speaking to a lot of Israelis,

many of the are still in denial about where the world is going, the fix that they're in, the fact that, yes, you're right. What about this, what about this, about this? yes, I agree with you about everything, but you know, you can't fight City Hall. There was also reality. And reality is not just right now, and it's not going to be. There's no reasonable expectation to think the world is going to come to its senses and start seeing this problem as we see it.

And we're going to have to live in their world. How are we going to do that? We rely on them. I'm saying, we are the Jews. Then Gory and all is said, keep a great power as close to you as possible. Israel without a special relationship with America, it's almost unthinkable. That's where it's going. That's the polymarket bet.

That's my polymarket bet. Yeah, I agree with you. Let me just go back to something you said about Abbas and the Palestinians never accepting Israel. I'm not sure that that actually applies to Mahmoud Abbas himself, but definitely it applies to Hamas. Now, what you have generally going on between Israel and the Palestinians, but generally, like the really the overarching, I would say, competition or conflict in the Middle East is really between two conflicting, competing paradigms. One is the one, you know, the paradigm that Hamas represents with the paradigm of the Mukalma, the resistance, which Iran, Hezbollah, the Hussis, they all identify with it. And essentially what it means is that we are never going to accept the state.

of Israel, the political compass of the Middle East points towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Palestine should be liberated. We do not recognize the United States as a world, legitimate world power. That's why the Iranians also referred to the United States as the Great Satan. The other paradigm, the competing paradigm, is the one that you're seeing between Israel and the Gulf states. you know the abraham accords the peace process normalization accepting israel as as part of the middle east and ultimately it's it's a competition over the regional the political regional or the

order of the middle east is it going to be oriented towards the united states and relate to the united states or is it going to be against the united states and the west and etc and seized the resistance camps, sees Israel as the arrowhead of, you know, Western imperialism and colonialism and the United States is representative in the region. That is the big, like, ideological battle going on. Now, you are not going to defeat. One of the reasons that, one of the reasons that Hamas became so powerful, Hezbollah and Iran became so powerful.

And I wrote this entire book about the axis of resistance is because the competing paradigm of the peace process and normalization, et cetera, that was really, you know, it had failed. Like peace between Israel and the Palestinians had really failed. And into that vacuum, like there's never going to be a vacuum in political affairs. So into that vacuum entered the, you know, the,

the ideology of resistance. So, and we need to keep that in mind, that without a positive model, a positive paradigm, we are never going to overcome the Iranians, no matter how powerful we are, because power enough is not going to be sufficient. And it's all things that you have to bring into consideration.

And in shaping, you know, taking, you know, further future steps in order to shape up the region and our security environment and tend to the various problems that you, you know, rightfully put your finger and right on it. By the way, on a boss, on a boss, I'm no expert on a boss, but would you agree with the following, whatever he might want or not want about Palestinian state, he's a much safer individual under the occupation than he would be on day one of a Palestinian state. I mean, his days are numbered, I think, the second that Israel's out of there. Absolutely. Yes. I think that one of the reasons the Hamat never took to control the West Bank was because Israel, the Israeli security apparatus is and the IDF operate there on a daily basis. I mean, Arafat, Arafat, that's the reason that the Hamas didn't.

Arafat, sorry, you know, there's a little bit of a time lack of synchronization, so I'm not really interrupting you as you think. Arafat famously kept saying to Bill Clinton, you're going to get me killed, you're going to get me killed, right? This was front and center in his mind that what happened to Sadat would likely happen to him. Go ahead, sorry. Exactly. But I just want to say one more thing is I think that, you know, I'm now speaking also as, I guess, a international relations dollar. And I think that I can, you know, I am willing to put myself in the shoes,

not sympathize, but empathize with Palestinians who feel that, that Israel stole, you know, historical Palestine, et cetera, that they're not going to compromise. I think in the grand scheme of things, what history teaches us. I think it teaches Jews probably more than others. If you are offered a state, you take it. You know, build upon that. If you are offered a state in this world, this is such a rarity.

And no state can be taken for granted. even if it's a tiny state. Imagine if the Jews had a tiny state during World War II, the Peel Commission of 1937, a tiny sovereign state. If you miss that train, you know, maybe that train will never arrive again. never be able to hop on that train, or maybe you'll have to wait a couple thousand years, two millennia. If you are offered a state, you take it. And just, you know, you know, again, if I'm to put myself in the shoes of Hamas, you know, gain power, bank on, you know,

just the natural trends and developments and processes of this world, maybe, you know, if, maybe Israel will weaken, but at least in the meantime, you will have your own state. And Hamas could have had their state. No, one of the reasons that they found themselves in that situation is that, because ultimately, again, going back to those two competing paradigms, they can never, ever accept Israel's right to exist. that is never going to happen. And if they are never going to accept Israel's right to exist,

and if they are always going to insist on 100% of Palestine, which means that Israel ceases to exist as we know it, and October 7th kind of, you know, was a display of what could or what would happen to the Jewish residents of Israel. Had Israel been, you know, if Israel was over, well, God forbid, destroyed or occupied or destroyed

again these are you know these are it's obviously a very difficult topic to discuss because you are dealing with it's almost with dealing with twins yeah right

both have the exact same aspirations and they have to somehow come to a find a middle ground. And if Israel can't find that partner, then that still does not absolve Israel from initiating measures

that will improve its international standing, improve many of our ability to look ourselves in the mirror and really promote our case. But if we don't do any, anything in that respect, then, you know, the trends that you are describing are, you know, they're not going to go away. Yeah. So I think that we are left with the, you know, to go back to the origins of really the origins of Zionism, you have to be on the initiative. Now, that initiative that I'm describing is going to come with risks, but not, you know, not taking those initiatives, probably carry.

potentially bigger risks. Yeah, that's where I feel. And before I was, you know, it's like, I'm taking a lot of shortcuts and I don't, and I could sound like I'm trivializing all sorts of huge problems by comparing them to everyday problems, by just, you know, just kind of like not, not giving them the full attention that they deserve. I don't mean to trivialize anything. I'm trying to get people to think about the huge tradeoffs.

that are emerging that people are kind of in denial about. You said, and I'll let you go, I have to go too, that you, both peoples, the Israelis and the Palestinians, have the same aspirations. I think that's actually not true. I think you probably don't think it's true either. Their aspirations are not the mirror image of the Israeli aspirations. Their aspirations are the destruction of Israel. and, you know, when they, I mean, these are cliches already.

When Gaza was in Egypt and when the West Bank was part of Jordan, they did not have these aspirations, at least they weren't front and center. And surely if they actually did have the same aspirations as the Israelis had, when Arafat turned it down and when a boss turned it down, the Palestinian people would have screamed, bloody murder they would have risen up how dare you how dare you turn this down this is our aspiration we don't even know what what little detail was it that wasn't quite enough for you 1% a half a percent of land this is this is why you sold out our aspirations these are not really their aspirations in my opinion that and that is that's the tragedy what i meant what i meant by what i meant by that was

that we want to exist and they want to exist and we're all competing on the same piece of land or the same piece of land and in that respect we you know we're going to have to come up with some sort of accommodation. I read you loud and clear. I think I know exactly we're coming from. I point that out only because people who listen to this will take that and they'll say, oh, they have the same aspirations. You know, there's a there's a mistake that's made all the time that people imagine that the Arabs, the Arab world is a figure in the Jewish narrative in the same way that Jews are a figure in the Islamic or Arabic narrative. And it's not. The Arabs, like, I mean, I grew up around this. The Arabs were these people who wanted to

destroy Israel, but the second, they no longer wanted to destroy Israel, like Israelis were so disillusioned after the peace with Egypt, because like, we thought we were going to go to Cairo. We thought this is going to be all is forgotten. And actually, it was a cold peace. And that wasn't because the Israelis didn't want Egyptian tourists. It wasn't because the Israelis were holding a, had a beef. Israelis were ready to open up their arms to the Egyptians. But the Egyptian attitude about the Jews and about Israel wasn't going anywhere because we are a negative figure in their narratives.

And that will probably always be the case. I never read the Quran, but I've heard enough people talk about the Quran's attitude about Judaism. And I've spoken to many, many Arabic people I know about how they're culturally raised and taught about the Jews. And I shudder to think, and I know what's happening, that Jews and more and more Israelis are now raised with a certain attitude about the Arabs that, like my father certainly wasn't. But having said that, I'm quite confident that would disappear immediately in the Jewish world if, there was a warm and real peace. I don't ever know how it's hard for me to imagine the Islamic world giving up on that anyway. But they don't have to.

They just have to live with it, right? They don't have to love us. They just have to get ready to move on. Yeah, but I really think that it's really important just to point out that despite what you're saying is true regarding the cold peace with the Egyptians. However, we're coming up on the 50th anniversary soon. It holds. peace between Israel and Egypt. So, I mean, the most important thing is that you've got this, yeah, they don't love them.

And I don't think the, you know, the Israelis are crazy about the Egyptians. But the two countries, you know, we haven't gone to war since 1973. That's a big deal. That's a huge deal. They're completely reconfigure the entire geopolitical situation in the Middle East, right? completely changed the situation in the Middle East. And I think that that's one of Israel's biggest assets. And God forbid, we ever lost it.

Not that anyone's talking about it, but that, but irrespective of the fact that, yes, the cold, the peace is called and we don't see, you know, Egyptian tourists in Israel, et cetera. But nonetheless, what, you know, what most people care about is, that there's no war and it hasn't been a war. Well, that's, that's, almost half a century.

That's why this unilateral withdrawal thing keeps, you know, keeps occupying my mind because, yes, of course, Israel will be taking big risks. But on the other hand, there is certainly a, a, it's not ridiculous to think, okay, but they say they never want Israel to exist. But once Israel was truly out of there, maybe they're, you know, they lose their ardor in some way. Like, it's like, okay, it's done. Like, you know, how are you going to motivate everybody now to go, what, get an army together and try to invade Israel or try to take Israel out with drones?

Israel's going to flatten us now. But they're not, but what are we gaining? They're not occupying us. The world's not going to, I mean, the world may not like that Israel flattens us, but it's not going to bring the world around to the cause of getting rid of Israel. And, you know, it's not going to bring out the river to the sea people when the nation or the, you know, the West. West Bank, Gaza, whatever you call that, starts sending missiles into Israel, and Israel responds, you know, not proportionally. I don't think the world's going to fill up with protesters saying river to the sea. They'll still say Israel shouldn't do that.

They're going too far. But it'll be a different, quite a different dynamic. And I know there's risks. All right, this is really, really interesting stuff. I think we are going to, we are going to be early to this. can't imagine that these kind of conversations are not going to be happening with more and more frequency. How can they not? This is the whole ballgame. This is where it's going. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Professor Sobleman, you are a treasure. I hope that some of the guys

from commentary magazine or some, or a free press or somebody see this because I feel like somehow this should lead to more exposure for you, this in our last episode and that great article that you've written. And your book, the book is out or it's coming out? No, the book is out. Plug the book. I don't even own the book. I have to get it.

Axis of resistance. You're frozen again. Sorry for the... Yeah. You got to get Israel to get better internet. I don't know. Put it close in front of your face. Oh, because of the green screen.

But yeah, put it right in front of it. of your face because that's where the... And a little higher. A little higher. There it is. Axis and resist. Daniel Solomon. When did that book come out?

Oh. It came out last year. Last year. And it described, you know what? Yeah. Never mind. We'll wait for another episode. Okay.

All right. Sir. Thank you very, very much. But I didn't even get to talk to you about Iran. All right. Good night, sir.