The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Live from the Table: Former Spokesman for the State of Israel Eylon Levy

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Noam Dworman and Periel Aschenbrand are joined by former spokesman for the State of Israel, Eylon Levy. They discuss anti Zionism, anti Semitism, what Hamas really wants and Levy's hope for the future of Israel and Gaza.

Okay, cameras on, Periel. We're rolling. Welcome to Vibe from the table, the official podcast for the world famous comedy seller. I am here with Noam Dwarman, the owner of the comedy seller. I'm, of course, Periel. And we have a very special guest tonight. Elon Levy, former spokesman for the state of Israel. Israel, welcome to the show.

Hello, I am delighted to be here as long as Israelis are still free to visit this great city. You cannot be as delighted as we are. So, sir, I'm so happy to have you on the show. Before we get into any conversations, I want to play for you. The first time I ever saw you and many millions ever saw you, because I cannot get enough for this clip. Go ahead, play it, Stephen. I know you probably know what it is. Go ahead, Stephen.

I don't know. I'm in suspense. Okay. This is just a little bit of it. I was speaking to a hostage negotiator this morning. He made the comparison between the 50 hostages that Hamas has promised to release, as opposed to the 150 prisoners that are Palestinians that Israel has said that it will release. And he made the comparison between the numbers and the fact that does Israel not think

that Palestinian lies? are valued as highly as a dream. That is an astonishing accusation. Are you not bored of that moment already? If we could release one prisoner for every one hostage, we would obviously do that. We're operating in horrific circumstances. We're not choosing to release these prisoners

who have blood on their hands. We are talking about people who have been convicted of stabbing and shooting attacks. Not just the question of proportionality doesn't interest Palestinian supporters when they are able to get more of their prisoners out. But really, it is outrageous. to suggest that the fact that we are willing to release prisoners who are convicted of terrorism

offenses, more of them than we are getting our own innocent children back somehow suggest that we don't care about Palestinian lives. Really, that's a disgusting accusation. All right. Will and President Netanyahu's political career survive this? In addition to that fantastic face, this was actually, it was an important moment because really I think this was the first time it was clear to me, uh-oh, this is not going to go well. If the BBC is asking such an outlandishly unfair question, what are we in for? And sure enough, we were in for a lot. So what's your recollection of that? What was your thoughts about it? Yeah, that my life's goal now is to do something that will help me live down that Sky News interview.

And it won't be, you know, I still get stopped for selfies in Tel Aviv. They say, you're the guy with the eyebrows, right? That's my trademark now. Look, it was a ridiculous question. It was ridiculous, not because of the accusation that Israel cared about its children who are trapped in tunnels under Gaza, more than it cared about terrorists who were in jail who were there because they tried to kill Israelis. It was outrageous because the deal was so obviously lopsided and to Israel's disadvantage. It's an outrageous question because what was happening is that Israel was being extorted for a ransom by people who kidnapped little children from their beds and were holding a gun to their heads.

And you could see that the anchor Kay Burley began in her mind saying, okay, the Israelis are clearly morally defective here somehow. And now I just need to work out how. And I think that's why this moment resonated because it set a pattern for the media coverage in the rest of the war, that there is just an implicit assumption that the Israelis are doing something wrong. And then people will twist the facts, words out of meaning

to try to fit that narrative that clearly the Israelis are doing something. something wrong here. Yeah, this is a perfect example of something that's always puzzled me because she can't be an unintelligent person, nor could the people who helped her construct the question be unintelligent. And yet, my 10-year-old could have understood, well, no, if Israel is offering one person ready to release 150 of them for one or there, that's not Israel valuing their own lives more. It's an insane thing. Yeah, it's meant to look. I don't know how intelligent her producers are and the people who wrote her questions, but what we're not. noticing now with the current anti-Zionist craze, okay?

And it's really a psychosis when it's not about criticism of Israel. It is a frothing at the mouth, obsessive hatred that links Israel as being the core of everything that is wrong with the world. One of the things that this anti-Zionist moment has in common with classic anti-Semitism is both of them were elite movements. Both of them began in the universities. They have their own ideologies that help to rationalize that hatred. And so intelligent, unintelligent, educated, uneducated,

the fact is we are dealing now with a wave of hostility to Israelis and by extension Jews that has its own pseudo-academic ideology and rationalization behind it. And that's what's so scary about this moment. All right, looking at the back on the war now, for instance, I had a conversation with somebody recently, a pro-Israel person. I say, oh, if only Netanyahu had done, done a better job with PR and explaining things and, you know, the kind of things in the Charlie Kirk letter, that somehow this would have made a difference and the world wouldn't be so anti-Israel.

And, you know, and I said, well, Charlie Kirk's letter certainly was where he criticized the various lack of interest, it seems, in that the Israeli government had an explaining his position. I couldn't fault his letter because his letter echoed things that I had felt. but in my heart of hearts I don't think it would have mattered do you think it would have mattered look Israel is not just losing the information war we're being slaughtered

and I'll explain why first of all official Israel has done a terrible job of telling its story during this war the reason that I became a spokesman in the first place in the first week of the war is that it was literally nothing in the prime minister's office and they had to rope in not only volunteers

from outside I was in the anti-government protests before the war and they took a protester off the streets put him behind a lectern that said prime minister's office because that's how empty that's how empty the institution was I don't think it's good enough when Netanyahu says on trigonometry the Jewish people have been fighting and losing the propaganda war for 3,000 years it's not good enough no there are no excuses for the extremist ministers making crazy statements and it's only when Smotrich says something really racist and absurd about Saudi Arabia that Netanyahu shouts at him and pulls him in order Israel has done a bad job of telling its story, of responding to the crazy libels and accusations against it, sticking to message discipline. But let's put that to one side. I'll bring you an example of what was dominating my Twitter feed yesterday. The new conspiracy theory is that Twitter

has blocked automatic translations of Hebrew because it detected excessive hate speech. It is a hoax. beginning to end. Twitter hasn't disabled the translation button on Hebrew tweets. I think it began because there was one tweet that did very well and it had mixed Hebrew and English words and therefore the translation button didn't work because there were

two languages. Someone jumped on it said isn't it strange that you can't translate this tweet in Hebrew? And now all the anti-Israeli crazies are now saying Israelis are so genocidal and racist that even Twitter is having to censor their tweets so you don't see what they're saying. This isn't a

PR. It is about a vicious propaganda machine. I don't know how much of it is state-run and bot farms and malicious and we can talk about the countries like Russia that are training these large language models on misinformation so that when you go to GROC and you ask, you know, what's the truth here? It's only as good as what it's been trained on. But there is a vicious information war that is being waged against Israel and Jews to try to paint us as the ultimate symbol of irredeemable evil. And that is not something that classic PR, that getting more spokespeople on TV, which is something I care about desperately. That is not something that better PR is going to fix. And we have to understand what this campaign is and what it is trying

to achieve. If you had to give the devil, it's due on anything in the way Israel conducted the war, excessive fatalities, lack of care and targeting, whatever. whatever it is it might be, do you have any criticisms of the way Israel conducted the war? Look, to sit here and say every single decision by every commander

in every impossible situation was justified, I don't know, you don't have the information in order to explain every micro-decision that is stated. It can't be, right? You can't. No, look, it's war. War is horrific. War is messy. No, and there are mistakes.

And there were cases as well, whereas a spokesman, I went on TV, And I said, that strike was a mistake. We regret it. That should not have happened, that we should not have to use that munition. But the fact remain that Israel was fighting a war in Gaza. And I assume we're talking about Gaza, right?

Yeah, yeah. Okay, because this was a war being fought on seven fronts. And when people say the war, they're referring to Gaza, which was just one. I was talking about Gaza, but you could expand it to anything that you think is relevant. Well, I think it is important to zoom out and say that Gaza was not a war. Gaza was a front in a regional war that the Iraq.

Iranian axis waged against Israel. And you can only understand what happened if you understand that October 7th was the opening shot of a regional war by the Iranian regime's terrorist armies that were meant to be activated in synchronicity in order to destroy Israel. Do you believe Iran knew about it before it happened? I don't think Iran knew about the timing because it looks like Sinwa jumped the gun. Iran hoped that this network of proxy armies could be activated at a time of its choosing. And just imagine what would have happened if Hamas and Hezbollah had invaded at the same time,

together with hundreds of Iranian ballistic missiles at Israeli strategic sites. It could have meant the end of the country. This was the doomsday option that they were preparing. So I'll backtrack and say, I think it's a mistake when we say the war to let people frame Gaza as the war when it was one front. of a regional war that was waged against Israel. But look, in this Gaza front, Israel was having to fight in a battlefield that no other country had ever experienced.

The closest thing you can compare it to is Mosul, okay? The fight against Islamic State, where Gaza now looks like Mosul after the United States was done with it. The U.S. and a coalition of other 17 nations, it took them 10 months to dislodge 3,000 ISIS fighters from the city. They killed 10,000 civilians along the way, and those ISIS fighters did not have a New York subway's worth of tunnels underneath homes and schools and mosques and hospitals. They weren't firing rockets at America, and they weren't holding 255 American hostages. So Israel was dealing with the reality where not only were the rules of law not intended to

deal with this circumstance, and not only was the enemy deliberately manipulating the rules of war by fighting out of ambulances and schools and mosques and hospitals and other protected facilities. You have a situation in which those civilians are trapped in areas where the United Nations was resisting Israel's efforts to get them out of harm's way. If I think the war could have been done differently, I think there could have been a greater effort

at the beginning to set up. Separate the civilian population from Hamas and then ensure that areas were cleansed, held, and then a way to allow civilians back. Now, that's, that's not easy. That's the classic clear hold. It's not easy because you have to be able to rebuild and put in some alternative governing entity to stop Hamas going back in. But if the strategy had somehow managed to get international organizations to cooperate with efforts to get civilians out of harm's way, then you wouldn't have ended up playing this game of whackamol and cat and mouse where you clear an area Hamas keeps popping back in because you never really cleansed it because there were still civilians there. But again, this criticism of how the war was done, I also have to deal with the reality that at no point was the international community willing to work with, Israel to say, you are going to have to burn that block to the ground in order to clear

Hamas. And therefore, we're going to help you get civilians out. They didn't. They said it would be a war crime to try to evacuate civilians to get to safety. I think they have blood on their hands. And this is the, made the messy battlefield even messier. Look, your arguments, and I try to be, I know people accuse me of not being skeptical enough and have a guest who I disposed to agree with. But I think, I think I actually do try to question the people that I agree with, but of course, because I agree with them, it means I've dealt with a lot of these questions in my head. But what you're saying seems to be so compelling to me, particularly in light of the fact, and this is a very

important point, it doesn't get made enough, that there was, like Israel dodged the ultimate bullet here. If Iran and Hezbollah and everybody had decided to act at the same time, I don't if Israel would have not existed anymore, but it would have been a tragedy beyond October 7th by 10x, 20x, something we unimaginable, as Netanyahu famous, had Tel Aviv might have burned, right? And Israel, I imagine, has decided, well, we got out of that one alive. We are never going to allow ourselves to be in that particular position again. We are never going to leave it up to fate and luck that they will not destroy us. And that is the most rational thing any head of state could ever, most rational policy any head of state could ever have.

Given what I consider to be such a compelling argument, how is it that such a large percentage of the Israeli left wing doesn't see it that way? Not the anti-Semites, not the Tucker Carlson's, not the Mamdani progressives. Why is Haarets filled with English language Israeli? who don't find this a compelling argument? First of all, this is a minority position. The largest protest that we saw against the war were protests to pay a ransom, strike a deal, get the hostages out, and then deal with Hamas later.

But everyone understood that this was a war that Israel was going to have to fight against Hamas. and the voices like Beteleim accusing Israel of genocide these are really fringe positions these are really really really fringe positions in Israel

every country has a radical left Israel is no exception some of them like Haarets have a very successful business model some of these columns in Haarets to my ear are they may be leftists but they're bright people They're not like, they're not like crazies like I read in the nation sometimes, like Amos R.L.

And people like this, they're, they're smart people. Is there a particular commentary or something you're pushing back on? Because I don't want to, like, I don't want to just dunk on. No, I just, I guess I should have prepared ready to do we're going to go this way. I just am always astounded that, what I take to be patriotic Israelis, so many bright ones, seem unconvinced that it's essential that Israel never find itself in this vulnerable position again. I think, in fairness, okay, there were legitimate concerns about mission creep, for example. When you have government ministers talking about a desire to resettle Gaza,

when they really were just beside themselves with Trump's plan for a Riviera and thought that the war was going to end with Israel reestablishing settlements inside Gaza. It was absolutely, I mean, ultimately, those were not the official goals, those are not the orders that are handed down to the army, but absolutely legitimate to turn around and say, hang on, what are we actually fighting for? What are we sending soldiers for? What is the reason that we haven't struck a deal yet to get the hostages out? Because where are we actually going with this? But I think within Israel at large, the new security doctrine,

is one that says, we can't deter, appease, contain threats anymore. We can't buy our enemies off and think, they're evil scumbags, but evil scumbags enjoy being in power. They don't really mean it. The Houthis are chanting death to Israel, curses on the Jews. Okay, but they're a joke. We're moving from deterring threats to removing them. We cannot tolerate those threats on our borders

because we have very little room for error. And this is part of the shifting discourse in Israel regarding a two-state solution. And I hate the phrase two-state solution because it assumes that it's going to solve the conflict. And the reason Israelis object, not as because they object to that solution, but because they don't think it's a solution. That's right. The war has shifted Israelis, I don't like to say to the right, because then it comes with all sorts of other baggage with unrelated issues. It's made them more hawkish about security. It means that if before the war, people said we need to make bold risks for peace, we need to make painful concessions, there are just fewer people who will say that now because they say, well, we didn't know that bold risks and concessions meant the risk of October 7th, except if we did that from Judea and Samaria, it would be 20 times larger.

I was just going to say that I think that all of the people who are Israeli who I know pre-October 7th by and large where I lived is most people would be considered like quite far left I don't know anybody who didn't think and all of them are very sympathetic to the Palestinian civilians etc I don't know any of them who didn't think that they needed to get the hostages back and somehow get rid of Hamas. So I think what Ewan is saying is true that from a security perspective, they did become more hawkish because they understood that they had no choice.

I do have a question also for you. How come or how can the people who need to hear it the most? hear like what you're saying, these messages of explaining like what actually October 7th was front of Iran and Lebanon and Gaza. Like nobody knows any of this. Look, I was going to save the follow me on Instagram and Twitter plug for the end. No, no, in the middle it's better. I think people think that Israel lost the plot.

if they think that October 7th was just a terror attack. October 7th was just a terror attack. It was Israel's 9-11. It was really, really, really bad. It was much bigger than 9-11 on a per capita basis. But it was a terror attack, and that's why you have Dunderheads like Dave Smith going on trigonometry and saying Israel should have done police action.

Or last year when I was in New York City debating Mechdi Hassan also. I said, no, if you think October 7th does not justify this, what does October 7th justify? What was Israel entitled to do? And he sort of said, like, go in and arrest Sinwa. I like the word Dunderhead, by the way. Go continue. You can't have police action against 40,000 jihadists

armed with RPGs in a bunker underneath a hospital. Okay? So the framing of this as a terror attack is wrong. It was an act of war. by a trained terrorist army that was the government of Gaza. Hamas was the governing regime in Gaza since 2007, and they had basically their own little terror state, and they used that as a launch pad for an invasion,

an invasion in which they held territory for half a day in Israel. So it was an act of war. It was an invasion that triggered a regional war against Israel because Hezbollah and the Houthis and the Iraqi militias, the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, eventually the Iranian regime all joined in. There were days when there were sirens. You literally don't know if the rockets are coming from the north, the south, the east, the west, because there were drones coming in from the sea. We were under attack 360 degrees. It was the opening shot of a regional war against Israel and the opening shot of a global war against Jews.

The eighth front of this war is real, physical, violent attacks against Jews and Israelis around the world and attempts to drive Jews out of society to purge them and to turn them into persona non grata in their own societies. Now, you know, many, many people who, I mean, I told the story about a year ago, one of my closest friend's daughter was, you know, I don't support an ethno state, and I know these are not anti-Semitic people. She'd just been fed this line. Many, many people who feel this way

would be shocked to hear you say that they are part of a war against Jews. They really don't see it that way. Do you believe that some people are unwittingly involved in that? It's a complex psychological question, We want to be fair to people, right? I think the anti-Zionist movement,

the movement that reframes Israeli history as white settler colonial state is placing incredible social pressure on many American Jews who believed that their avenue to, survival and success in America was to back progressive causes and show that you're on the forefront of equality. And October 7th happened and their friends turned on them and they had to decide. Are my loyalties more with the progressive movement? Or are they with my people who are just been slaughtered and people are cheering? And some people went one way and some people went another. But the fact is that I think for Jews who are trying to find comfort in the arms of

anti-Zionism. And by the way, this is what the movement is doing. It's telling Jews the only way you can buy your acceptance in these social circles. It's not just to be neutral about Israel. It's to be actively hostile to it. It's to turn your bags on your friends and your family. They're never going to be extreme enough. Like I saw on Twitter this week, Nadina Kiswami, what's her name in our lifetime, turning on Peter Bynard? Like, come on. He's not tough enough. No, no one. Peter Bynard, I saw in Britain the vile anti-Semitic doctor turning on the equally vile journalist Rivka Brown. And she's begging, but I'm an anti-Zionist. Like, you don't have to, you don't have to pickle me.

But they will never be extreme enough because here's what the anti-Zionist movement is about. It doesn't just oppose a state for the Jewish people. It opposes the idea of a Jewish people. 100%. And the revolution. We'll devour them first. Well, okay. Does it oppose a...

Listen, you know, I'm on your side, but do they oppose the Jewish people or do they have this naive view, which my people, my own family seem to have sometimes, there'll just be a one-state solution with equal rights for all, and Jews will be perfectly safe there. Sorry. In this one state, which has a majority, you know, where a Hamas and Fataharan coalition in the government, Does the Tel Aviv Pride Parade still happen every year? Of course not. Is this a state of equal rights?

Well, maybe equal oppression for all. No, look, they are telling the anti-Zionist movement. Look, but utter naivete, which is what you're described. No, but we need to talk about, but we need to know about the naivety. Because the anti-Zionist movement, when it says Israelis are settler colonialists who have no right to be there, and they're fake Jews because they're descended from the Khazars, and actually, they're not even related to the Middle East, and they stole their land. What do you think is going to happen to them?

If this becomes one state with an Arab-Palestinian government, do you think everyone's going to sit down and play sing kumbaya? You know, then there are people who come and say, well, I don't believe in nation states. I don't think they should exist. Fine. Abolish yours first. You want to wind back the clocks of history?

Make Greece and Turkey exchange populations again. Merge India and Pakistan into a single state again before you try to impose your own utopian visions on a country when literally nobody wants this. And how many of these anti-Zionist Jews have ever set foot in the Middle East. That's what I want to know because all

of the people who I hear from these people who are sitting in their cushy places in America who have so much to say have never set foot even in Israel. People like Dave Smith who purported we know so much he's ever been there. If I can just

amplify that, you say cushy. Anti-Zionism within the Jewish world is a luxury privileged position. Thank you. Your grandparents took left off the boat. Our grandparents took right off the boat. It's a position that says, we've made it in America.

Why can't everyone have this? Well, not everyone had the option of coming to America and building a life here even if they wanted it. The diaspora experience outside America. In the Arab world, my grandparents came from Iraq, in Ethiopia, behind the iron curtain. even in what was left of the Jewish community in Europe was nothing like that vision of what America is and how the Jews have fit in. And now we're finding out they really haven't fit in

as seamlessly as we thought because they're suffering a pincer movement from the extreme left and the extreme right who agree on one thing that they hate Israel. You know, people like Nick Fuentes talking now about trying to bring together, people from the left, people from the right around hatred of Israel about ending American support for Israel.

And you know who doesn't have these anti-Zionist positions? The Jews from Lebanon and from Iraq and from Morocco and from Yemen. All of the people who have escaped or been cleansed from the Middle East, all of those Jews. And from Russia as well. When you look within American society. That's right. At which Jews are taking an anti-Zionist position, they're the ones whose families have been here for, three generations already, if not more, the second generation in Tehranjali's of, you know, the Jews

who escaped from Iran, those who came after the fall of the Soviet Union, they do not come with this anti-Zionist baggage because they understand what happens in countries that make anti-Zionism an official state policy. They always turn on their Jews, always. It's so difficult to apprehend it. You know, everywhere I look, it's just, there's fucked up psychology and Peter Beinart, which I regard is mental illness and self-hating. But I mean, if they were a one state, and by the way, no other nation in the world has to relitigate the fact that it exists 80 years after it's crazy. So it's an absurd thing. But if there were a one state, doesn't everybody, forget about violence between Arab and Jews.

The Arab violence would immediately, between Hamas and the PA, there would be a civil war just among the Arabs. They'd be killing each other. Then it would spread. And of course, Israel is already densely populated and settled, that's the Jewish part, then you have the Arab part, it's already geographically segregated. What would be anybody's reason for wanting to put all these people under one government? It's insanity. You know, I'm not even going to engage with the question because it's absurd as suggesting that perhaps the United States should be brought back under the British craft. Why was somebody smart like Peter Beinart actually put so much mental energy into advocating

for this? Doesn't he see reality like we do? Like, I see a color you see the same color, no. I see red, he sees gray. Maybe. Yeah. And I'm thinking out loud here. It's because they're still trying to cling on to a modicum of dignity. Because

when you have people from the other side saying ethnic, white, settler, colonial, apartheid, fascists, they need to be driven out, they need to be expelled, they need to be killed, which is a big position on the anti-Zionists left, okay? To come and say, actually, maybe we can all live in peace and kumbaya together is, I don't know, maybe it's a way in his head to avoid getting sucked in the direction of the really violent, virulent anti-Zionism and thinking,

and by the way, that's why people will turn on, from the more anti-Zionist extremes, will turn on Peter Beinart and say, you're just a liberal Zionist in disguise. Because you haven't completely accepted, you haven't completely drunk the Kool-Aid that says, that nothing about Jews moving back to the land of Israel is legitimate and they deserve to be killed or expelled. I don't know. Maybe it seems like a way to deal with cognitive dissonance in his own mind and I think it's deeply, deeply mistaken. I think you're right. That's why I said there's these ugly, weird psychological explanations for so much and desire to be liked and peer pressure and be invited to parties and like Omar Bartov is the Brown University's Zionist scholar

I mean, he was the most anti-Hamas guy ever. And now, I don't know if you saw our interview with him. I'm going to send it to you. And now he's, you know, double-talking. By the way, his arguments, by the way, his arguments like everyone else making the absurd libel of genocide are based on misquoting Israeli leaders. Yes. Making up quotes.

And I hope you confronted him with him. You'll be happy to see my interview with him where I call him on it. And him and this other guy, Philippe Sands, is that? I went to school with his son. They both got cornered once, bars up by me and Sands by Ezra Klein of all people. With this basically the same question, well, okay, but if Hamas would release the hostages and take safe passage, that would be the end of the war. So how could that be a genocide? Because the Jews in Germany didn't end the Tutsis didn't have the option of just agreeing to reasonable demands.

Imagine if we could have ended the Holocaust by releasing German hostages. Just imagine. And both of them answered basically the same way. Essentially, that's just a hypothetical. Meaning that we don't know necessarily that Israel wouldn't stop killing the Palestinians. This is literally what Bartov said. I said, are you telling me you actually believe that even if Hamas released all the hostages and took safety passage, Israel would continue to kill the, and he basically said, yeah, it's possible. And Ezra Klein asked Philippe Sands the same question.

I believe San Francisco, I don't know what Israel would do in that situation. This is insane. It's insane. It's totally disingenuous. It's insane. It's entirely disingenuous. And it is really a shameful strategy of selling out your own people to save your own skin. And I don't know at what, you know, at some point, we all have survival strategies and we all end up

convincing ourselves of things we want or need to be true. I don't know to what extent they genuinely believe it, to what extent they're conscious that it's a response to peer pressure. But yes, there are entire social circles where if you identify as being pro-Israel, you will be purged. Purged, purged out of society. And if you want to be in, then you need to distance yourself actively from all of that. All right.

Let's fast forward. Everything's going to come down now to whether Hamas will actually disarm. I believe Hamas is not going to disarm. Where are you on that question? Hamas is not going to disarm. So what does that mean for the process? Look, the genius of the Trump plan was that it separated the question of the ransom for the hostages from the end of the conflict surrounding Gaza. He said you have to free the hostages now and the modalities about how we wind down the conflict. We'll debate that later. That was a big difference from previous deals that said, previous proposals for deals that said

Hamas gets to keep onto the bodies into the reconstruction phase in Gaza, because that would have allowed them to hold onto the bodies that have thankfully been returned for burial. There are still three in Gaza, but most of the bodies as insurance that they get to rebuild their tunnels and rebuild their meself factories. But no one should be under the illusion that Hamas has agreed to did. arm. In fact, it said at every opportunity it won't. It said at most it would be willing to surrender weapons to a unified Palestinian army that it intends to lead. Okay? Hamas is still extremely popular. It is the most popular Palestinian political party. Its support tripled

in the West Bank after October 2nd. Thomas Friedman assured us that as soon as Hamas came out of the tunnels, the Palestinian people would turn on them. Thomas Freeman has said a lot of nonsense. They came out of the tunnels and their popularity has surged. And the Wall Street Journal had a report just this week interviewing Khalil Shkaki, the Palestinian pollster, who's been monitoring Palestinian opinion throughout the war. And even he was shocked to see support for Hamas rising. Hamas is, Hamas's reason for existing is to be an armed jihadist group that will fight to the death. their death, not ours, to make sure that Israel is destroyed.

Hamas is not going to voluntarily relinquish its weapons. Its guns need to be taken off it. No Second Amendment for Hamas. Now, I'm skeptical that any international force is going to forcibly disarm Hamas. Why? Because Hamas has already said, we see any army that is going to enter Gaza to take our guns away as being a foreign occupation force. Now, there are negotiations happening now,

which countries will contribute to an international stabilization force. I just don't see countries being willing to lose men and get their own soldiers back in coffins to disarm Hamas, to free Gaza from Hamas, to keep Sderod safe from more rocket attacks,

to save Bari from the next invas death squads. I just don't see what country is going to do that politically. Maybe mercenaries might be able to do it. But, okay, so you're going to disarm Hamas. What's the plan? What's the plan? You're still fighting against a group

that is embedded in tunnels underneath civilian areas that doesn't want you to take the guns away from it. But here's what I think the genius of the Trump plan is and what the United States needs to insist on. Before the Trump plan, Hamas held onto hostages living and dead as insurance to force an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Now, Israel holds onto half of Gaza

as insurance that Hamas will disarm. The yellow line, which divides Hamas, which divides Gaza into, into Hamas Gaza and Free Gaza, or whatever you want to call it. The yellow line marks the maximum extent of Hamas Gaza. It is saying, if the Palestinians want the rest of this territory back, there needs to be a government that is not going to use it as a launch pad for war against Israel.

And I think Israel needs to be very insistent that it is not going to hand over any territory to an international force that I doubt will have teeth unless Hamas is disarmed. But Israel's position now is very clear. It supports the full implementation of the Trump peace plan. And any withdrawal, this is in the text of the plan, any withdrawal will be linked to the timetable of demilitarization. And now Israel is not expected, not expected to relinquish territory unless it has firm guarantees that that territory will not be used as a base. for enemy military action against its people. So are we going to see the same status quo 10 years from now?

There is definitely a possibility that the yellow line crystallizes into a de facto division inside Gaza like East Germany, West Germany. Now, what happens with the rest of Gaza is an alternative administration under President Trump's Board of Peace put in place where civilians are able to go and rebuild and you have Hamas governing a pile of rubble and then a Board of Peace governing New Gaza, maybe.

I don't know. These are details that are still going to have to be negotiated and discussed. But that is territory that Hamas is never going to get back. What's the name of the man who wrote My Promise Land? Ari Chavid. I heard him suggest this, that the smart people understood what you're saying all along

and that they kind of like the idea of these two laboratories, East Germany and West Germany, and one would become a prosperous, freer Gaza, and would bring into stark relief. Sure, but I think there is a massive challenge that we are overlooking. And we're overlooking because just now the United Nations renewed the mandate of the terrorism, organization known as UNRRA. UNRWA is an agency whose staff took hostages on October 7th.

Whose staff took part in the atrocities that turned a blind eye to Hamas hijacking aid. It's an integral part of Hamas' business model. And worse than that, Unra educated most of the monsters who took

part in the October 7th massacre. Because if it provides an education to most children in Gaza, it provided an education to most of the terrorists who crossed the border on that day. Owner's reason for existing is to tell the Palestinians, you say that you are living in, you are Palestinians living in Palestine, but you're not, your refugees, you have a right to live in Israel, and we will continue to give you free health care at the expense of the European taxpayer until you are able to exercise your fictitious right to move to Israel.

you're not going to have permanent reconstruction in New Gaza if the people you are building houses for believe that it is temporary because soon they will move to Tel Aviv and Haifa. Enat Wilf, previous member of Knesset, in fact, she just launched a new political party. The Oz Party has made the suggestion that individuals should be able to surrender on an individual basis

to sign that they relinquish claims against Israel. They do not claim to have a right to move to its sovereign territory. They want to live in peace next to it. And they can move into this area, new Gaza, where they can rebuild peacefully. But if the international community, and I've tried making this point to diplomats, and they don't see it, if the international community is paying through one pocket to rebuild houses in Gaza, even not under Hamas, and through the other pocket telling them that this is just temporary accommodation, because they have a right to move to Israel,

they are guaranteeing the next war. They're guaranteeing it. And the path to peace, therefore goes through deradicalization and goes through dismantling the institutions that have fostered the Palestinian narrative that Israel is an illegitimate settler colonial state that one day will disappear

and one day will become part of a Palestinian state. By the way, why does they not, I know her Louis, I shouldn't call her not, why does Professor Wilf? Dr. Wilf. Dr. Wilf. Why does she think that a signature is such a profound commitment of honor to somebody? Look, you'd have to ask her about her policy proposals, but I think there is a... You get my question.

I sure I'll sign. Because they wouldn't, because the core of the Palestinian ethos is the belief that there is this sacred, non-negotiable, inalienable right to move and resettle in Israel. and therefore when people say but the Palestinian Authority already accepts the state of Israel okay the Palestinian Authority has recognized the state of Israel while at the same time insisting that there is a sacred

inalienable right for millions of people who are Palestinians living in Palestine under a Palestinian government to move and resettle in that country and shift its demographic balance until it becomes Palestine too so when Western diplomats say Oh, but this is just a negotiating tactic. In the negotiating room, you will make a permanent status peace accord, and they will relinquish this right, and they will exercise it in their own state.

No Palestinian has ever suggested that. You won't find any Palestinian who will say out loud that this right doesn't exist or that it's never going to be exercised. And so I think when she says, and no, I'll let her defend the proposal. But when she says that individuals should surrender that on an individual basis, it is saying that they should be able to free themselves from the dominant narrative and ethos and demand and say, we want to live in peace next to Israel. We're not going to allow ourselves to be held back by these demands. Is it realistic?

Well, that's a different question. She's a very, very smart woman, so I'm sure she's going through. And very brave, in my opinion. Okay. So now what happens when Mahmoud Abbas is 90 years old? How old is he? It's very old. 120 and a chain smoker.

He's going to die at some point and he's going to be replaced by somebody. Why is that also not going to be taken over by Hamas? You assume he's going to be taken over by someone. We don't know what is going to happen. I mean, he'd be succeeded by somebody. Not necessarily. Well, the death of Mahmoud Abbas would... possibly trigger

a Game of Thrones type battle for succession. It's not that he's going to have an air that everyone will accept. There will be multiple contenders for the throne and Hamas also wants it. Now Hamas has

two avenues. Hamas's vision, let's put this on the table, is not to govern a little micro-terror state in Gaza. Hamas wants to be the government of all Palestinians. And if elections were tomorrow? It would be.

It would be. Okay? So it has two options. One is force of arms. As long as the Israeli military is still in Judea and Samaria, as long as it can still go into the caspas and clamp down on terrorist groups, good luck to Hamas launching a violent coup that overthrows the government in Ramallah. Hamas's better option for taking over is through elections.

whether the party's called Hamas or whether it rebrands as something else. But the fact is Hamas is the most popular Palestinian political party. It is if a head-to-head election would happen between Abbas and whoever is leading between Abbas and Hamas, Hamas would win a landslide. Hamas's popularity has been boosted by the October 7th massacre because it's seen as having delivered the goods. Most Palestinians still think that October 7th was a good idea, and they think that, because they think that it increased their international standing.

Why? Because it was October 7th that led to unilateral, unconditional recognition of a Palestinian state. And world leaders who say that they are isolating Hamas because Hamas doesn't want two-state solution. But Hamas is feeling empowered because they were the ones who delivered the fruits. They're the ones who delivered the goods. Would you agree, not just the recognition, but the entire becoming the darling of the world? Yeah. It is the number one cause of the world.

And that's why Hamas has said October 7th recognition is one of the fruits of October 7th. And they've also said, look at the way we trashed Israel's image. Look at the protests. These are the fruits of October 7th as well. So I don't know what is going to happen the day after Abbas. We shouldn't expect that it would be necessarily a bloodless transition. It could be an opportunity for Hamas to try to flex muscles, certainly if there were elections to replace, certainly elections to replace.

And therefore, when world leaders, I find it especially patronizing, when world leaders come and say, well, Hamas can have no role in the future government of Palestine. Excuse me? Have you asked the people? They disagree with you. They quite want Hamas to be their government. So what happens when they have elections? Does Hamas get to participate again? Or do you block from elections the people who are the most popular candidates?

What happens? I don't know. This is such a dark, pessimistic picture you're painting. I wonder. And on that note, follow me on Twitter and Instagram. It's been a pleasure. I wonder, and I've wondered before, why, and this, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating it. I'm asking it's a sociological question here.

Why the movement to expel the Arabs doesn't gain more traction there? I mean, if you are, if it doesn't, it's like if you tell the people, listen, it's going to be this way forever. There is no other thing. Put them in Jordan, whatever. The world will complain for a while and they will be done with it. This is a kind of tempting Tucker Carlsonish Israeli position to sell. How much traction is that position getting? I don't have the polling data at hand.

There is definitely a section of the Israeli public that would like that because it is convinced that we're in a zero-sum battle. The tragedy is that for many years, Israelis kept voting for governments that promised peace with the Palestinians out of a belief that this wasn't zero-sum. There are two national movements fighting over the same land and we'll draw a line down the middle. You take that, we'll take that. Israelis in 2006 voted for Ehud Olmott,

who was promising to withdraw from Judea and Samaria, whether the Palestinians want it or not, okay? The tragedy of Hamas's response to the Gaza disengagement, using it as a launch pad for 20 years of rocket attacks against Israel, the invasion of October 7th, The response from Palestinian society, the celebrations of October 7th, the cult of martyrdom, is that it's convinced many people that maybe this is a zero-sum battle. Maybe it is us or them.

I'm not that. I still hold on to hope and advocate for de-radicalization on the Palestinian side, for dismantling UNRWA, for forcing the Palestinians to come to terms with Israel's existence and be caring more about rebuilding a new Gaza than holding it as a refugee camp to invade Israel. Why? Because I don't want this to be a zero-sum game. I don't want to get to a world where people are drawing conclusions about how you solve a conflict if it really is us or them.

I think it can be us and them. But for it to be us and them, you have to address the root dynamics of the conflict and the root dynamics of the belief on the Palestinian side that it is us or them. Look, there's a movement out there that says Israel is this colonial settler movement. If the Palestinians truly believe

that Israel is an illegitimate colonial state, then they are absolutely right in the practical conclusions they draw and in the terrorism that they deduce from that. Why? Because colonial movements around the world end in one of two ways. Either you use enough barbaric violence

against the settlers that they pack up and leave. That's what happened in Algeria to the French. And Hamas still quotes the Algeria model. That's what they think they're fighting. They think they're fighting Jews who will one day pack up and leave. Either you use enough violence and force the settlers to leave, or the settlers wipe you out.

And that's what happened in Canada, in Australia, in America. Right. Okay. Don't talk about America. So I think the Palestinians are victims of their own delusion. They're victims of the narrative that they've told themselves that has become a mind virus on American campuses that Israel is a colonial state. Because if they think that it's a settler colonial state, then this ends in only one of two ways. And if the Palestinians can be weaned off that belief that is dominant in academia right now, if they see that the Jewish people are returning to their ancient homeland, that we have real historical roots in this country, that Israelis are not going anywhere.

and ask how can we live next to Israel rather than try to replace it, then we can move to a future of us and them, and that's what I want to see. And that's why I push back for de-radicalization. That's why I push for the dismantling of UNRWA. I don't want to get to a situation where we're analyzing this conflict

through the lens of us or them, because then it gets really ugly. Yeah, it's scary. And but they don't have to acknowledge the deep historic rules. They just have to acknowledge practical reality. You know, I'd say the moral obligation for the practical. The Native America has never acknowledged American's historic, you know,

Europeans' historic roots in America. And I don't believe the black South Africans ever acknowledge the Afrikaners' historic roots, but they acknowledge that this is the way it is. And to try to fight it, it's just going to bring misery. Well, they didn't. I mean, the South African, South Africa ended differently, but South Africa is a completely different case. It's just not announced.

They're not throwing them out. You know, they're made an accommodation. But, you know, I'm with you on all this, and I just got back from Dubai, and maybe this is naive, but I got some hope seeing that place, seeing this tolerant, diverse, mixed Arab country where people were dressed in different ways. I said earlier, like there was Lawrence of Arabia Arabs, and then there were modern Arabs, and there were Muslim women completely covered. There are Muslim women showing their cleavage and there was some Orthodox Jews there and there was some Israelis bickering. I said, oh, well, this is, this is. That's what gave you hope orthodox Jews surrounding Arab women exposing their cleavids? Yes, it did because at least it was possible. Like, okay, you know, like they are in some way related people and if these people,

not that far away, could live in this kind of somewhat open society, then maybe there's hope that eventually the Palestinians will agree to it. But other than that, well, look, the Abraham Accords are inspiring because here were countries that admittedly had never been in a hot war with Israel, saying we embrace a vision of coexistence and working together with it.

Understanding that Israel is part of the solution, not part of the problem. Israel, when I was a kid, used to run ads on TV telling people to switch the water off when they were brushing their teeth because Israel was running dry. Israel is now pumping water into the Sea of Galilee, into the Kinerit, desalinated water in order to refill a natural lake, okay? At the same time that Iran is saying it may have to evacuate the whole of Tehran because they're going to run out of water, okay? Israel is part of the solution in the Middle East.

Now, there's the tragedy then of Muhammad bin Salman in the White House saying he wants normalization with Israel, but first you need a Palestinian state. because what does that do? It tells the Palestinians that they don't have to sue for peace because time is on their side and that if they hold out long enough the Arab world has their backs

and eventually Israel will succumb and give them what they want. And it's feeding a delusion that just is never going to happen. We're more likely to get peace if the Arab world normalizes with Israel the Palestinians realize they've lost the Trump card.

They were furious against the Emirates for making peace. with Israel because they said, but you weren't meant to do that until they gave us what we wanted. Normalization with the Arab world is the key to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This is the iron wall. This is the point where they realize there's no other option. This is going way back to Jabotinsky in the 1920s saying peace will happen when we have sufficiently proven that we're here for good. They don't have to like us. They don't have to love us, they need to accept us. And I hope that they'll find some formulation,

some fudge for Saudi Arabia to normalize ties with Israel, because then it puts pressure on the Palestinians to drop their maximalist demands and move towards peace with Israel. But if they believe that the Arab world is going to hold out, well, then they're just never going to recognize reality. I have one more question for you before, but also I also have some hope only because I know so many Arabs, Palestinians in America, and they are reason, something, something happens when they arrive on these shores and they begin to become, they show that they're reasonable, you know, and they all assure me, I mean, I'm just falling for it, but they all assure me that behind closed doors, there's more reasonable,

then we would gather, who the hell knows? Anyway. I hope so. And by the way, one of the many tragedies of this war, it's really inflamed emotions and passions. And people have really hunkered down. And creating a dialogue that may lead to peace in the future, a dialogue that is outside the same.

same tired circles of the old vintage leftists is now more difficult it needs to happen I don't know how but I think that the

the conflict with the Palestinians is the hardest one to solve because there is a real conflict there are real things that we are arguing about what are we arguing about what nothing nothing Israel and Lebanon should have Israel and Lebanon should have peace.

You look at Israel downtown Tel Aviv on a Thursday night, it looks exactly like Beirut on a weekend, okay? But they're held back by Hezbollah, by residual Iranian influence. I hope Lebanon is able to break free from that. Make peace with Israel. You know how Israelis are going to flock to Lebanon for weekends when we can go on vacation there? I would want to see countries investing in dialogue between Israelis and the countries with which there is no rational reason for them not to have peace with Israel.

And then maybe instead of trying to solve the thornyest conflict as the key to the rest, you solve the soft outer shell as a way to get to the core. I think you're right. Okay, last thing I want to ask you about, then we're going to run around the corner. we have, is the one thing that Israel does a bad job of explaining, let me rephrase it, the one thing that makes Israel look the worst, even to pro-Israel people, is whatever is going on with the settlers. How can you put that in perspective for us? Is there anything to be said on the behalf of what's going on on the Israeli side of this,

or is this just actually, are they really the bad guys in this story, the Jewish settlers terrorizing what seems to be terrorizing Palestinians. Look, that's a very sweeping claim against a population of half a million people. There is a very serious problem of extremist

settler violence. These are anarchists who are employing vigil anti-violence. That problem has to end. But couldn't the government stop it immediately if you wanted to? I think the government has been late to address this problem seriously,

and I'm glad that Netanyahu has now said that he is going to be put, that he's ordered the police to crack down, that he's going to be personally seized of the matter, that the president, the head of the army, the foreign minister, the defense minister, have all very firmly condemned this phenomenon. Do they have any personal sympathy for it, in your opinion? Personal sympathy?

Or is it just a political dilemma for them? Look, there are many questions about why they haven't been able or placed much priority on cracking down on this. Do they not see how it's going to spill into Israel itself? Is it just low on the priority list because they think that stopping Arab terror is a bigger challenge? I don't know. But I hope now that the very firm statements we've heard in the last week

will be a turning point. at which they take this seriously and clamp down and say, you just cannot have vigilante anarchists running around, committing wanton acts of violence. It has to stop. And I hope they clamp down on it, as they say they will. Because this issue is a real gateway drug to full-blown anti-Zionism.

I mean, I can't tell you how many people when you're discussing the October 7th War bring up the settlements. And, of course, I will dutifully explain to them, Hamas doesn't care about the settlements. Hamas doesn't distinguish between the settlements and Tel Aviv. Well, look, these are two different issues. There's the question of the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria,

mostly basically commuter suburbs. And the questions of, should they be built? Shouldn't they be built on what land? Okay, that's one question we'll put it to one side. And the rampant extremist settler violence, which is a minority. Okay, but as we know, even when we talk about Islamist violence, a small minority can still be a lot of people and it can still be very dangerous. But they're different issues.

Yeah, but it's what we spoke about earlier. It's not so much the violence. It's the fact that the government appears to turn a blind eye to it. This is what really enrages people. And that softens them psychologically and disposes them to see the Palestinian side of the larger issue. And after all, they don't spend their time on Wikipedia and Google, like, I might. Don't spend time on Wikipedia. That's been hijacked by editors who are part of the information. I use it for its references to jump into the, whatever it is. The point is that, you know,

people glean, like we always, we always assume that other people are as informed and have thought about it like we have. But actually, most people give this stuff very little thought. They kind of decide which side they're on and they download a few headlines and they say, you know, and by the way, and they're not wrong. This is going on. They're treating the Palestinians like shit. The government doesn't stop it. Why would I support them

or even believe them about the larger issue? That's a rational thing. So it seems like if there's any one, if it was one choke point, one pivot point that if Israel could only have looked better on this issue,

I think it would make it much easier for many people to support them on the broader issue. Maybe that's naive. I think we need to stop anarchist, vigilante violence, not just because it looks bad, No, no, of course, because it's wrong.

Because it's wrong. Because it's bad. But, yes. But if that's, obviously, that hasn't been enough of a reason. So if that's not enough for you, Netanyahu, do it because it's better for Israel's support in general. Do it for the cynical reason. All right. We are going to go see a show at the comedy seller. Okay. After all that doom and gloom, let's hear us up for some shits and giggle. It's an honor to have you on this show. I mean, I don't want to, you are such a strong and a reasonable advocate for Israel.

And I, you, you know, you, you left your job at one point. Yes. And as opposed to almost 999 people out of 1,000 who leave their job or, you did not change your tone, your support. You didn't, there was no like backhanded remarks about the people that we kind of knew you were having feuds with. This was. I didn't have feuds.

No? No. Who did I have feuds with? Then I miss it. May I shouldn't even bring this stuff up. No, no, no. You can bring it up. I'm clear about the backstory of what happened.

The backstory is that, as I said, before the war, I was in the protest against the judicial reforms. When the war started, we dropped politics and said everything has changed. I went in to this position during the war. It was reported a few months. in that the prime minister's wife had seen pictures that I'd been at the protests against the government before the war and was grumbling and had put a target on my back. Eventually I was forced to, eventually I was suspended and forced to resign because I understood the political background for why there was no way back in. Right. So this is exactly my point.

I wouldn't call it a feud because I've never met them or spoken to them. Feud is the wrong word. But despite the fact that this was reported, I never detected from you even one time any bitterness or unfairness in the way you defended Netanyahu in his positions. And I found that very impressive. It's unusual. There were attempts in the Israeli media to try to drag me into mudslinging. And I just prefer not to get into, not to get into the politics, not to get into those questions. There are much, much bigger questions now about the country's future that I'm going to put my emphasis where I think my voice

can make a difference. All right. Al and Levy thank you very much. Thank you very much. Let's hit the buff. Let's go get a few drinks. Do you drink? Yes. Oh good. Okay. Good night everybody. Let's hastily. Wait, I need to pee. Peet in the underground. Come on. No, I don't want to pee in the underground. Okay, go pee. Go pee. Okay, I need to choose. Okay, you go.