The Dispatch Podcast - Will Israel Become a Rogue State? | Interview: Nadav Eyal, Einat Wilf, & David French

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Are Israel and Iran rolling towards a regional war? Can Israel still rely on the United States as an ally? Is the war in Gaza over and did Hamas already win? Adaam is joined by senior Yedioth Ahronoth reporter Nadav Eyal, political commentator and author of The War of Return Einat Wilf, and Advisory Opinions special guest (and New York Times columnist) David French to discuss the balance of power in the Middle East. Show Notes: —Kevin D. Williamson's piece on Israel not 'risking' a regional war —Charlotte Lawson's reporting from Israel —Einat's appearance on The Remnant The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Conditions apply, visit your local Volvo retailer or go to explorevolvo.com. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. This is Adam sitting in for Jamie. It's been a while since we talked about Israel, and a lot has happened. So we thought we'll do a quick recap. We have Nadaviyal, senior political reporter for Yadiotta Havunot, David French, special guest of advisory opinion, and Aynette Wilf, former Israeli parliamentarian and author of the War of Return. So we want to make sure that we go through a variety of topics from the current rising tensions in the region and the possibility of a regional war and the mood in Israel and get to also talk about the

I don't know what to call it. You'll have to give it a word, but the state of relationship between the United States and Israel. But let's start with how are things looking right now for Israel, vis-a-vis Iran? Israel, as I'm sure all our listeners are aware,

has completed a set of assassinations in recent weeks, which has culminated with the killing of Hamas's political leader, Ismailenea, on Iranian soil. And we are now basically in bated breath waiting for the Iranian response. What's the situation on that, Nadav? So Israel is racing for an Iranian response that should come in the next 24 to 72 hours. This is the last assessment by both Western intelligence services, I think the U.S. intelligence, but also the Israelis.

This kind of a response is going to be probably coordinated between Hezbollah and Iran. And I should remind the people who are listening that Israel assassinated number two in Hezbollah, the chief of staff of Hezbollah. In July, it also assassinated Ismail Haniyah, although it never claimed. responsibility for that in Tehran. Ismaila Nia is the political bureau chief of Hamas and former prime minister for Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and he was in Tehran for the swearing in of the new Iranian president, and Israel assassinated him too. And at the beginning of July, Israel assassinated Muhammad Def, who's the chief of staff and

the head of the Hamas military in Gaza. And we have never seen such a streak of a series of assassinations made by Israel, even after the Munich Olympic Games and the famous promise by Golda Meijer and the Mossad to avenge the deaths of these Israeli sportsmen and women that were killed by terrorists at the time in 1970s. those of us who remember that. And now we are seeing this so-called axis of resistance, this axis of terror, preparing to strike Israel. Israel might go for a preemptive strike. This is something that Israeli decision makers are not taking off the table right now. But it is preparing for some sort of an attack by the Iranians and Hisbalah. The United States has promised to assist Israel together with a sort of an alliance that we have seen rising in the region during April, during that attack by Iran, which was also a response for an assassination made by Israel in Damascus of a man who was part of the Al-Quds Force.

The Al-Quds Force is the force that Iran is, it's an Iranian force that is dedicated to exporting the revolution. to the struggle of the Shia across the region and basically to the struggle against the United States and Israel, Israel at the time in March, in late March, hit that general, the Iranian general. Then the Iranians swear that there's going to be a response. And then they short hundreds of projectiles, you know, missiles, rockets, cruise missiles at Israel.

And we saw that alliance defending Israel in a very impressive way together with Israeli Air Force, of course. And now we're in what looks like at the beginning, like a similar scenario, but it's not really a similar scenario. It's very much different this time, both because the response is going to be much harsher. That's the assessment, at least in Israel.

And also the Israelis are saying this. I should say that assassinating Ismail Haniyah in the center of Tehran in a building that is the revolutionary guards building, while he was invited to Tehran by the Islamic Republic, that's something that the Iranians see, you know, and I can only quote them, as jeopardizing their honor, you know, their sovereignty. And of course, Israel, again, never claimed responsibility for that. And also, so there's a sort of a discussion of how it was made. the Iranians are trying to make the point that this assassination was made by a rocket shot into

this Tehran building. And the reason they want to give this impression is because they want to say that this was an action of a military of the Israeli air force. And therefore, they are entitled to have some kind of a response as self-defense or retaliatory self-defense. Israel, off the record, is saying, sources I'm speaking with are making sure that people around the world know that Israel did not use its military in this operation. And this was actually a, you know, a typical Mossad operation, although again, Israel is not claiming responsibility. So the response by the Iranians and Hezbollah is, first of all, going to be coordinated. And that's something we didn't see back in April. Secondly, it's going to be harsher. Thirdly, I'm not sure they're going

to choose the same operation mode that they chose the past. I'm not sure we're going to going to see, you know, kind of drones and missiles and rockets shot at Israel at a certain time at night. Then we in Israel waiting for them to reach Israel and seeing the rest. They'll try to surprise Israel. And on the other hand, I'm not sure at all that Israel is going to just sit down and wait and see what happens. And on the other hand, if it doesn't wait, and I guess this is always the pressure. This was always the pressure by that, by the way, all back to 1973 and Yom Kippur War, if Israel knows that something's going to happen, will the U.S. administration give it the backing it needs for a preemptive strike? And my guess is that with this administration,

the answer is no. The answer is we're going to help and defend you. The president, President Biden has made that clear. We're going to do our best to defend you again. But are you going to get a, you know, a green light from us to, to, to, to, to, attack first, I'm not sure about that. And my sources are saying that they're very skeptical. The Israeli sources are very skeptical as to getting a green light from Americans, from this American administration to a preemptive strike. So basically, a lot of pressure. I want to, I want to also note there's another, there's another way in which this could go very differently. Even if Iran duplicates the same attack as in April, nothing guarantees that

it will be rebuffed to the way it was with the same degree of success, which means that if, you know, just a tiny percentage of the assault actually comes through and takes its stall on the Israeli population, that would be enough to change the calculation of a response. That would justify regional warfare, wouldn't it? Yeah, well, Israel doesn't want a regional war. And the Israeli assessment, the Israeli intelligence assessment, not that it was always right, and we saw the huge failure of the Israeli intelligence assessment on October 7, and we saw again the failure of the intelligence assessment when hitting that Iranian general in Damascus at the time. And it was a story I published at the time that

the Israeli intelligence thought that the Iranians are not going to respond, and they did. So I'm quoting them, but I'm being extremely careful in taking their word for it. What they're saying is that both Iran and Hezbollah don't want to reach a rule. And I think this is also the assessment of the American intelligence and other intelligence bureaus are across the west. They don't want a regional war. Your assessment is everybody is just being dragged reluctantly to

the possibility of people. I wouldn't say reluctantly. You know, let's not go that far. This is the Middle East. You know, there's a response after a response and they're all and no, everything is about strategy. Nothing is about owner, domestic politics,

you know, societal pressures. I want to ask you, David, about this, the logic of escalation, from a standpoint of broader military strategy, because one of the issue that we've been dealing with in trying to understand what Israel should do and what America should license is within the scope of what constitute as escalation versus what is necessary in order to achieve deterrence. And it seems that nothing that Israel does, even if it's the most highly sophisticated

You know, Mossad deep state conspiracies of targeted killing, of precision killing, even that gets condemned as unwarranted escalation. And if that is the logic, when you have an enemy like Sizbalah that is, and Iran more broadly as a strategy, that is that tries to defeat you through attrition. What is Israel to do? Well, I think we have to distinguish between public response and private response. It is not always the case that when Israel responds, that those two things are in alignment with each other. You will often see situations where there's widespread condemnation, but actually

quiet acquiescence, that especially from some of the states in the region that are themselves, they're Arab states, they're Muslim states, but they're also very, very worried about Iran. So these things get very, very complicated quickly. So I don't think that anyone who has real influence would say that Israel has to tie its hands consistently, completely, in response to all of these provocations. And as a nation state, at some point, you have to say, look, even if the whole world is against us, we have to defend our people, we have to defend our territory. And so those realities are looking in the background that, one, the diplomacy is more complicated than often the front page of the newspaper will indicate. And second, at the end of the day, Israel still has a responsibility to its citizens, that it has to be able to defend its citizens. No matter what the UN says, they still have a fundamental responsibility to their citizens.

So here's the interesting thing that I'm very concerned about in the coming days. if you go back to that first Iranian attack, the success of the defense has made us, I fear, in hindsight, minimize the magnitude of that attack. That was an extraordinary attack. It was comparable to the worst that Russia unleashed on Ukraine in the opening days of the war. It was more than what you see even on big days when Russia tries to overwhelm. Ukrainian air defenses right now. So this was a big attack that initially occurred. And it was, the defense was remarkably successful.

I would even say surprisingly successful. Because one of the things you have to understand is we're watching in real time. In real time, we're seeing whether theory becomes fact. So the theory of American missile defense, the theory of Israeli missile defense, all of these things had been not, they had not been tested in the face of such large-scale attacks before. So you saw something that was remarkably successful and humiliating to Iran. Iran has this vaunted ballistic missile system. It has this drone system. It has all of this, and virtually none of it got through, nothing significant. So what does that mean? I think that

means that if Iran wants to actually retaliate and he actually wants to hit Israel, as Nadav was saying, it has to go either sort of a surprise route or a different route or bigger. Go bigger. And this is where Hezbollah comes in. It has just an enormous number of munitions that it can send across the border. Sufficient number of munitions

to overwhelm potential air defenses if it's able to prepare and launch in a coordinated way, big if. So it can potentially overwhelm Israeli defenses. And if it does in a way that create substantial casualties, then in that circumstance, military reality,

often geopolitics flows for military reality. And if you do, in fact, overwhelm Israeli defenses and you do, in fact, inflict serious casualties on Israeli soldiers and civilians, then whether you want it or not, whether everyone wants a regional war or not, you're knocking on the door right there. Because what nation state can possibly abide

that level of attack, especially if it succeeds. And so there is a very, very good reason why you look right now at the map of Navy deployments, U.S. Navy deployments, and there is this ring running from the Mediterranean through the Red Sea and into the Persian Gulf that is obviously designed to assist Israeli air defenses here. Because if you don't want a regional war, if you don't want a regional war, your first imperative, in my view, is the military imperative of blunting the effectiveness of any Iranian or Hezbollah retaliation. Blunting the effectiveness of retaliation gives geopolitical actors options. If Hezbollah and Iran are able to penetrate Israeli defenses in a substantial way, options narrow dramatically. And that's why I think you're seeing wisely, as much as I sometimes

have objections to some of the Biden administrations, the way it's constraining Israel in some ways, I have some objections. I'm very pleased to see that ring of American naval assets and military assets moving in that direction to potentially assist Israel in its defense, because this defense in many ways is going to set the course. The success of this defense is going to set the course

of the next several months and could conceivably set the course of world history to be very clear. So that's, from a purely military standpoint, I'm very focused on what assets can Israel bring to bear and the United States and its allies to blunt the effectiveness of Iranian and Hezbollah attacks because that will dictate the future. So, Enut, there is something that David said

that makes me start believing Sarah, our colleague Sarah's argument that David is basically Clause, Pollyanna, that despite the talk and the fact that the language around Israel might be very restrictive in action, the Biden administration is as consistently backed Israel for the most part where it needed

and currently is providing the cover to try to blunt any attack. However, as I think is, you don't even necessarily agree with that, but I think there is something that every Israeli understands and I think is not clear to many Americans. And that is that Israel right now is afraid of Chisbala,

or Israelis are actually afraid of the Chisbala response. If there is one, I would say one actor that has clearly achieved deterrence, it's Chizbala. Israel had a chance to launch an attack on Lebanon early in the war and in October 8th and decided not to, in part because it understood that the harm that it could inflict on civilian population is enormous, or at least those are the assessment, which means that in the logic of deterrence, the combination of the perception that the actors have about who gets to push the line, it doesn't matter if the Biden administration

sends its entire fleet to the Middle East if the assumption is for the play the actors is that Israel is not allowed to cross a certain line or is constantly it will constantly be restricted and that the entire military effort is just to blunt attack. So you can throw as many rockets on Israel as you want as long as nothing passes through. And that in the logic that is being created by the Biden administration is a stable equilibrium, which means that a stable equilibrium for America is that Israel just lives under an endless barrage of fire from its neighbors. That, I think, is part of why Israel is basically seated large parts of the north that is now depopulated. And that is part of why I think the Israeli public is generally anxious,

more anxious about the north than it is about Gaza. And I'm taking this to you because how does this tie into, like the fact that Israel has had its north depopulated, the fact that Israel seems to have been restraining itself or, by some arguments, failing to respond to what's happening in Lebanon or coming from Lebanon, how does that fit into your narrative that Israel has no choice but to be excellent? That to be anything short of excellent means doom. So I think we are now witnessing the failure of years and decades of a policy of hunkering down. A short history, until February, March, 1948, the Jewish, the Jews that are preparing to be a state, is losing.

Somehow people always think that in 1948, the Jews were clearly winning from the beginning. They were actually losing. They were losing so bad. they were hunkering down, they were removing many of the places where they were settled, and they were losing so bad that the U.S. and U.K. were beginning discussions as to renew the mandate and forego the idea of a Jewish state. So, Ben-Gurion understands that it's now or never, and he essentially transforms Israel's entire position from one of hunkering down and defense

to one of attack. And within a month, Israel essentially secures their, area that it then defends against invading Arab armies. From that moment on, until the 70s, Israeli defense policy is one of attacking in order to defend, having the initiative in order to defend, and that was actually the smart policy, was always to take, the idea was you take the war into the enemy's territory. Beginning in the 70s, two things combined. America and the fact that we control territories to begin to create a long-term process

by which Israel is increasingly a hunkering down country. The U.S. is part of it. After 67, people think that America always supported Israel, which it didn't. There was an arms of bargo. After 67, Israel, America understands that there's a rogue country here

that can win wars decisively and perhaps endanger American interests in the Cold War because it's humiliating the Arab militaries, it's winning with Mirage airplanes, not American airplanes. It's winning wars decisively in a way that endangers American interests. And from that moment, beginning in the 70s, we already see it in the Yonquipur War

where America actually prevents Israel from taking a preventive step like he did in 67. America basically begins to give what is called in Israel a bear hug, like you basically hug Israel, so you supply it and you support it, but you also prevent it from being the rogue state that it was in 48, 56, and 67. And that is also the reason that so much was invested in air defense, because air defense becomes, gives you the illusion that you are safe. And I think a lot of Israelis now recognize that we put so much into air defense that without it, we would have struck Gaza much sooner and more effectively.

But now like... Air defense like Iron Dome, exactly. And we became so addicted to the illusory defense, that is the Iron Dome, that we didn't, we warrant the Israel that we were in the 40s, 50s, and the 60s that actually realized a threat early on and took preventive actions in order to not allow that threat to get to the point where, we are today. So we are now at a point where Israel is painfully having to move away from an entire policy that became that of our government. I mean, our prime minister and government

is hunkering down number one. I mean, he is the hunkering down maestro. And then an army that was really built over years as a hunkering down army and no longer has that ethos. And also beginning to look in America in a way that is, okay, you're an ally, but we need to wriggle free a little bit from that bear hug because we can't, like you said, we can't be that people who allow the threats to build on our borders. And the thing about the threats are our borders is that they are total threats. The goal of the Palestinians, of Lebanon, of the Iranians, of Yemen is no Jewish state at all. So no sovereignty and ideally also be debt.

So their goals are not negotiable goals. And in that sense, we cannot have the American policy. America can, you know, was on a big continent, separated from the world by two oceans. America can be fine. We can't afford to have that defense policy. And we are literally now living through that moment. where I think more and more in Israel, understand that we are in March 1948, and we need to move from hunkering down to being the country that we were in April 1948.

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as we await the Iranian response, and then we dwell on whether or not Israel is going to respond to the Iranian respond, or this is going to spiral to regional war, right? But this is not exactly how the defense apparatus in Israel sees it. As far as the defense apparatus is concerned, a hostage deal right now is needed, not because of the hostages,

but because of the deal, because it will mean opposed in the war, both in the north and in the south. And this is something that the defense apparatus in Israel, whether it's the IDF, the Shabakh, the Mossad, they all agree that this is something that Israel needs, needs in terms of, you know, physical need. It has a lot to do with weapons, with arms, with the number of troops

that the IDF had to deduct from its current standing as a result of the war in Gaza. I should say that in terms of casualties, the war in Gaza has been extremely successful compared to what the IDF was preparing itself to. But on the other hand, we're seeing a high rate of people

who were injured during this war. And we are seeing the army brigades being deflated to an extent, and this is something that was published in Israel. Israel never prepared for a long war in terms of the Ben-Gurion approach that Einat was referring to. The Ben-Gurion approach of the defense doctrine was always of short wars to be fought on the enemy's territory by an aggressive maneuver. always addressing international concerns. So Ben-Gurin might have said,

Um-shmoum, but he never actually implemented that in 1956, which Enoch just mentioned, when the United States said to Israel, after David Ben-Gurion went to the Knesset and said, this is the third kingdom of David. Okay, so he saw this as almost a Masonic moment in which Israel occupied in 1956,

the Sinai Desert, defeated the Egyptian army in a few days. So, and then the U.S., and together with the USSR, of course, they basically picked up the phone to the UK and to France and to Israel that were part of that joint experiments after, or at the beginning of the Cold War and said, oh, no, you know, that's not going to happen. And you withdraw immediately from the Sinai Desert, and that's exactly what Israel did. In 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank, and of course, immediately you would have thought that the Israelis would annex it. And the answer was immediately, you know, they convened the government meeting saying all the territories that were occupied during the Six Days War are a guarantor for a peace agreement with the Arab world.

And they made sure that decisions in UN Security Council like 242 and others would have the Israeli interpretation. So Ben Gurin said, umshmum, meaning he doesn't care about the UN in Hebrew. But this was never the approach by Israel and Abba even and all of these, you know, senior and founding fathers of Israel. Israel always tried to maneuver within the framework of the international community, always, always arguing that it has the legitimacy of the international community for whatever it did. And it's true that in 1967, to an extent, it broke ranks with that. And of course, many countries cut off the relations with Israel following 1967. I think that to an extent what the Israeli defense apparatus is trying to do is to walk through this kind of tradition of Israel, being aggressive in the battlefield, on the one hand, but also knowing when to stop. And one of the first things in the Israeli defense doctrine is, when are we going to be told to stop? And that's what ended the young people war after three weeks. Israel could have advanced to Cairo.

in Damascus. And it could have had a greater victory from in 1967. But no, because the UN Security Council convened and said, stop. The Israelis never thought that they have more than an hour or two after the deadline set by the international

community to stop because it was always, always the resolve of the Israeli leadership in the founding fathers, that Israel will never be a rogue state. And Israel is, to be frank, advancing to a condition in which it is a somewhat of a rogue state.

You know, it still has the defense of the United States. It's not, you know, it doesn't have a UN Security Council saying you need to immediately leave Gaza and Israel is saying, no, we're going to stay in Gaza. That's not going to happen because the U.S. is not going to allow this to happen. And the U.S. is funding or at least arming Israel during this war. But to an extent, we are, you know, walking out of that path or the traditional Israeli path, which was both very much aggressive, militarily speaking, retaliation, operation in the 1950s, what was labeled the Poulotagmul, you know, Ariel Sharon as a young

officer and all the rest. But on the other hand, keeping the idea that Israel is part of the family of nations and it's operating according to international law. And this government, the far-right government, to an extent, is very much forsaking this idea. And the defense apparatus in Israel is saying use the deal. Use the deal because we need it, you know, in terms of just our defense needs in this country, but also use the deal because we don't want this to spiral out of control. We never wanted a regional war. A regional war is never an interest of a small country of 10 million people in the middle of what Eud Barak once labeled the jungle of the Middle East. Okay, so actually I think that this is a point and David, I see you want to jump in. So

you'll take over it in a second, but I want to stay on this point of the possibility of turning into a rogue state because part of it is that it's not like Israel was just being pushed into rogue state status

by its Ben-Virs Motrich coalition. It's also the fact that after the greatest atrocity perpetrated on the Jewish people since the Holocaust, dominant voices in the world decided to paint Israel as

an enemy. It wasn't that the delegitimization of the Israeli response to October 7th started on October 8th. And the language of genocide about the Israeli action started regardless of death count. And the UN claim, sorry, the case in the Hague in the International Court of Justice against Israel is not guided strictly because of the right wing ministers that it quotes, but by a broader attempt to paint Israel as a rogue state. So I completely, I want to jump in and say that I completely agree with you and I write extensively about these various attacks that are so much contaminated with anti-Semitism.

But this is why this is a nuanced situation. And it's very, very difficult to make that point, believe me, because I'm making it. You know, you have here a far-right government wants Israel to become a sort of pro-robed state and wants to forsake the ideas of Israel as part of a nation amongst nations, which was the very basic idea of the political Zionism

to begin with. But on the other hand, you also have an anti-Semitic, anti-Israel kind of very much infused with hatred against anything Israeli, delegitimizing the very existence of the state. And the two things operate together, And unfortunately for Israelis, mainstream Israelis like myself, you know, they're caught in the middle. So I want to make clear as to my position here.

No, it's not only the fault of Ben-Gir and Smokic, of course, you're absolutely right. So a couple of things here, going back to the military situation. And I'm glad Nadav raised this. Israel has been in almost 10 full months as of today of continual combat with a relatively small army, certainly by comparison to ours, that relies a great deal on reserves, on reservists in a way that we don't. And reservists mobilization is very difficult for a small country. I mean, this was one factor that was interesting in the run-up to the Ukraine war was that Ukraine was reluctant to mobilize because of the damage that mobilization

does to an economy when you're engaged in full mobilization. So here you have a situation. There's in 10 months of consecutive combat, you have immense expenditures of munitions in the middle of a global munitions shortage, certainly in the Western democracies. You have a need to rest to rearm, to refit if you're going to engage in a full-scale war on the northern front. And so that is also something hovering in the background. And I think part of the theory of the case for a ceasefire is that the ceasefire does create the pause. which allows for the rest, which allows to the refit,

allows for the re-arming, so that if and when it comes time to confront Hezbollah in the north, you're doing it from a posture of strength and on your timing. And so this is, you know, a flat out, just a purely military question that has to play into the diplomacy side of this.

It has to play into how you manage this conflict. Like, are you really ready right now for the ball to drop against Hezbollah? And I think that's, I don't know the answer to that question. I'm so far removed from IDF planning. I don't know the answer to that question, but I think it's a question that is worth asking. And then that, of course, places even more of a premium on an effective defense, because if the defense doesn't hold ready or not, you kind of have to go at that point. But I did have a question, and that is, looking at this history, which I think is very useful and very helpful in describing this difference between the active defense of, say, 67, and then what happened in Yom Kippur War in 73, but then there was another active defense in 82.

So this is the Lebanon War, the invasion of Lebanon. How is that memory and sort of the overhang, and this is, you know, a question I'm really interested in knowing the answer to, how is the overhang of the 82 Lebanon War, the occupation of southern Lebanon that continued for several years after the Lebanon war? How is that overhang influencing Israeli policy and thinking now, if at all? So first on the overhang, by now the 1982 war in Lebanon has been. eclipsed by the 2000 retreat from Lebanon. And that is much more in Israeli's minds. The combination of the retreat from Lebanon, the complete disengagement and retreat from Gaza, the combination of those two and the fact that those are the areas from which Israel

is facing an existential threat is the one that is shaping Israeli mindset. much more, the idea that the sinking of the understanding that there's no territorial question here, there's no territorial dispute with Lebanon. The fact that Lebanon decided to attack us, and in parentheses, the reason I'm saying Lebanon is that it seems that only in the Israeli case are countries exempt from any responsibility for attacking us from their borders. Lebanon is somehow allowed to be, you know, a side, like someone who's watching this from the side. They are a country that attacked another country with no provocation. That is entirely ideological.

The fact that Lebanon decided to attack Israel on October 8th is its own choice. Israel had no territorial dispute, did nothing against Lebanon, and Lebanon attacked Israel, and somehow no one's holding Lebanon to account of that. So I think Israelis are keenly aware that our enemies are not engaged in any territorial dispute with us. They're not engaged in any war with limited means or limited goals where they think, okay, we're just angry about this territory, this event. They want the sovereign state of the Jewish people to not exist. and ideally for the Jews to also be dead, but at the minimum for the state to not exist.

That's their goal. It's a total goal. And this is what is very clear on Israeli's minds. Now, if the military really wants a ceasefire to regroup, that's one thing. I have to tell you, that's not the sense I'm getting. The sense I'm getting still is there are elites, both political and military

live in the world of October 6th where this is manageable where we can always go back to this I actually think it's not there is no scenario by which we'll be in a better position against Lebanon in the future will be in a better position

against the Palestinians we need to we understand that we've been living we've been accumulating debt. We've lived for about a decade, which again, the hunkering maestro sold us a story that this is a decade of peace

and prosperity and security for the state of Israel. In retrospect, what he did was accumulate debt. He Netanyahu. He, Netanyahu, calling him the hunkering maestro. So he was accumulating debt. And this is the debt that we've been paying

since October 7th. And I don't think we can really stop at this point. Again, the military heads also didn't want to go into Gaza with scenarios of doom and gloom, and it was more mid-level officers. Sometimes officers who were out of the military who said, we got to end this, we got to go in. So I think in many ways, and you were right,

you said, we are deterred in our mindset, much more than I think is necessary. and we we need to finally pay the debt for our own defense. We can't keep hunkering down. And what's your comment on the question of Israel turning into a rogue state? Okay. So first I want to separate. There's rogue state. And then Nadav has a pushback. Okay. So there's rogue state, which I actually use in the more positive sense.

It's a country that I agree with Nadav. We always. we're keenly aware of the global situation and the limitations, but within that, we were much more aggressive and we were much more able to kind of, let's say that the Americans would tell us no, and then Abba even would come back and would say, it's a yellow light. You know, we kind of took the interpretations, we pushed the envelope. In that sense, I mean that we were a road straight. We had great victories, even though we had to give the Sinai Peninsula back, we had as a result a relatively very quiet decade because of the aggressive and preemptive action that we took. So I use a rogue state in a more positive sense. There's the pariah state,

which is more what you pointed to, which is, to me, this is the most dangerous element. For years now, I've been following this something called the Placrit Strategy. I think we discussed when on anti-Israel demonstrations, the placards include equations. On one side is Israel, Zionism, the Star of David. On the other side, after an equation sign, is a litany of words, which do not describe reality, but they're all selected with their association with evil. Racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing. Now, I have, Nazism, it escalates genocide.

Now, I have talks on record where I say genocide. Now, how did I know this was years ago? Because the word genocide was always going to be used against the Jewish state. That was always the purpose. So someone recently asked me, okay, if you've been following the words, what's the next word that is kind of building up? And my answer was that we've actually reached the final station. Genocide was always going to be the ultimate word

because it's considered the ultimate evil and also there's a particular need to claim the Jews are committing genocide in order to retroactively justify what was done to them. But the reason that I know that we've reached the final station ideologically is that after October 7th

a new placard appeared, which didn't, wasn't there before, which says keep the world clean. And it has the star of David and the dustbin in a trash can. And this is one of the things. the most ancient and most dangerous ideas. It basically says that there's a clean world, a beautiful world that awaits us, a utopian world, and that the only thing separating

this messy, dirty world between us and the clean world is the collective Jew. And the idea that the only thing separating this world and utopia is the collective Jew is one of the most ancient and dangerous ideas there are. And this is what's being built right now. So that is something that is not about Israeli actions. It is actually the preparation of the global ideological mindset that would allow the elimination of Israel by any means necessary, right? We see that in the demonstrations too, because it is the epitome of evil. And in order to have a clean world, a beautiful world, we need to get rid of the collective Jew. Nadav, you have some

pushback. No, I only wanted to remark that it's the Israeli General's wanted to go into Gaza and Netanyahu was very hesitant as to going into Gaza but it was very clear in the idea of all ranks, all different ranks, that going into

Gaza to an extensive ground operation is the way to go. But as all of the rest of what I just said, I guess I totally agree. I just think that Israel has been using force extensively and very much aggressively in the region, basically since 1982.

And I want to answer David's question as to 1982. In 1982, to an extent, is seen today in retrospect in Israel as a success, because the PLO was pushed out of Lebanon, those of our listeners who don't remember that. There was an agreement that arranged for Yasser Afat and the rest of the heads of these Palestinian organizations, these terror organizations, to leave Beirut, harbor, and they went into Tunisia and other places. And then Israel had to remain in Lebanon in that area, that security zone. it had local allies there. If Israel could have made this happen in Gaza,

it would have been, you know, a tremendous victory. And I've published since the beginning of the war that the Israeli cabinet is continuously saying to the Americans and to the region that it's ready to give the Hamas leaders immunity to leave the Gaza Strip for the return of the hostages and an end of the war. That's something.

You know, I don't think that the United States would have given Osama bin Laden and his fellow, you know, any sort of immunity in any sort of deed. And Israel is ready to do so. Not a chance. Not a chance. Israel is ready to do so because this is the Lebanese experience and because Israel really didn't start this war,

has no interest with this war. Having said that, Israel is using extensively and increasingly power and military power in the region in recent years. Even if we'd look at these assassinations, look, you know, I don't know of any country that has used assassinations the way that Israel has used as part of its defense strategy or its, you know, war strategy to the region. First of all, I'm not sure it's effective and not, I'm not the only one. You know, maybe you need to win in the battlefield and not only kill the commanders of the enemy. in order to really restore deterrence. And that's a question that I think we should be asking both as Israelis, but also as spectators at this situation, is it really helpful?

Of course, all of these people, you know, need to be brought to justice and killing the people who planned the massacres of October 7 is completely justified both in terms of national self-defense, but also generally speaking. So there's no doubt about that. But the question is of effectiveness, you know, if you go to the Israeli Shabbat, the Israeli security service, and they say we can take down this and this guy, is it as important as into having new agents within the enemy ranks? And I would make the point that having agents in the senior command of Hamas is much more important than killing some people in the senior command of Hamas. Now, it's not always true.

Muhammad Def was, for instance, the chief of staff of Hamas, was a very important figure, and he was a mastermind. And Kasab Soleimani that was assassinated by the United States, the orders of President Trump was a mastermind. And these assassinations are strategically important. But generally speaking, Israel has been using a lot of force also in Gaza. You know, I remember in defensive shield, the fact that Israel used its air force within the West Bank.

And if you look even at small details, like the amounts of casualties on both sides, and you see what the IDF has been doing in the 1950s, and the times that Enoch says that we need to replicate, we need to return to. So if you look at the numbers then and today, and even if you measure the way that the population has grown on both sides, Israel has been very aggressive. And there was a book just published in Israel by Uri Bar Yosef, one of the leading historians

probably for the Yom Kippur War. And he says that the problem with Israeli defense strategy is not that it's not aggressive enough, but that it never takes into account the seriousness of agreements with the other side. And to that, many people will answer, you know, the problem with agreements with the other side like Yasser Arafat, is that they're trying to cheat.

You know, they don't really want to recognize Israel's right to exist, and they're just, you know, they're just playing for international recognition while they want to annihilate you and destroy you. It's not that Israel doesn't want these agreements, it's that it has no one to sign an agreement with. And that's an argument to be made. But all I'm saying is that the thought that if Israel would be more aggressive in the region, if that will help,

This has two main issues. The first one is that in order to be aggressive, of course, it needs the support of the United States, needs armed from the United States. This is not the 1950s or 60s. It doesn't produce its arms. It's impossible in the world of globalization today. Israel doesn't have the national resources to do so.

Israel is not Russia. It doesn't have the strategic depth that Russia has. It's not a manufacturer of oil. I can go on and on. It needs the United States. And let me quote, the head of the nuclear commission in Israel, who, according to foreign sources,

is also responsible for Israel's nuclear military arsenal. I interviewed him a very serious man. I interviewed him a few months before or during the judicial coup, the attempted judicial coup in Israel, or the judicial reform, whatever you want to call it. And he was extremely worried. And what he told me, and this is a quote, he said, we cannot survive without the United States.

We will not survive. This country will not survive without the United States. And I said, you know, you were responsible, according to foreign sources, for Israel's nuclear arsenal. So you are, you were responsible for our guarantor, our true guarantor for our survival. And that's our nuclear warheads. And he said, again, he would not answer this. He would not recognize it because this is a matter of. national interest and security.

But he did say, he said again, we will not survive without the assistance and the hope and the support of the United States. So the first point about being more aggressive is that you need the U.S. there. And judging from what I'm seeing in the U.S. playing field right now, I'm not saying that it shouldn't be changed,

but we simply don't have about 50% of the Americans right now. And that's a lot, you know, when you need the U.S. And the second point, of course, is that I'm not saying that we don't. We do not. No, we do not have 50%. About 50%. And the second point, of course.

Well, you know, if you have more college demonstrations, that'll keep going up because the college demonstrations have been backfire. I agree, but I also look at what, you know, I look at polls done within the Jewish community in the United States. So we're hearing the Jewish community that supports Israel, but there's a large chunk of the Jewish community in the United States that is very much supportive, for instance,

with President Biden having an arms embargo on Israel. So, you know, and then the other thing is, will this be effective? Is Israel, you know, being more aggressive, really effective in the long run? So the fact that Israel needs to defend itself against Hamas and destroy the army of Hamas, destroy the army of Hamas.

As a pathway for any agreement in the region is this is something I wrote extensively during the war. You know, destroying the army of Hamas and Hamas rule of Gaza Strip is essential to have peace and security in the Middle East. And this is something I hear from my Saudi friends, my Palestinian friends, all across the region, my Egyptian friends, all across the region. There's no doubt about this. But whether or not this is the path to go, you know, strategically speaking, in the long stretch, I don't know. You know, I don't think that you also have a strategy by the United States to tackle Iran in the region. And I don't think that unless we have such a strategy,

either from a Republican administration or from a Democrat administration, that Israel can win this. You know, you need to have Americans knowing what they want to achieve in this region, not only what they're fantasizing. So you're saying in terms of making strategic decisions for itself, Israel is stuck in the limbo created by American incompetent foreign policy? Yeah, my answer is, yes, we are stuck in the limbo. And I think that there is no strategy of the United States

for the Middle East to counter Iran. It's true for the Biden administration as it was true for the Trump administration and to an extent the Obama administration. And I think that this is the most important fact to recognize when you talk about the Middle East today more than what Israel has been doing and Hamas has been doing.

The U.S. doesn't have a strategy for the Middle East. Because the U.S., I said this a couple of times before, but I'm going to quote myself again, the U.S. has devolved from a Henry Kissinger rationalist, realist approach to the Middle East, accused in being, you know, too cynical, to something that looks like a Harry Potter movie. You know, I want, I'm willing, I want to have a deal. So I'm going to talk about the deal. I want to have normalization with Saudi Arabia. So I'm going constantly to say that normalization with Saudi Arabia is what I want. And then things will suddenly appear out of thin air. And, you know, in this region, my grandfather used to work in Iran. I made to take issue because Harry Potter has a much more sound game theory

than the United States. Granted, yeah. So anyway, in this region, let me quote an Iranian friend of my style. He once told us to my grandfather. He said, there are three things in this region. What you do, what you think, and what you say, and take care that all three will not be there at once. Now, this is how you achieve stuff in the Middle East.

You do not achieve them by, for instance, pressuring Israel for a deal because you think that Israel should go for a deal. This is not policy. right? This is, I don't know what it is. This is like public speeches or posturing or advocacy. I don't know what it is. But this is not how you get things done, you know, in international affairs. And this is something, you know, that needs much more attention than sometimes what Israel is doing, what the U.S. isn't doing in order to get its goals in this region. And by the way, probably not only in this region. Yeah, I'm just, I'm done. This episode is brought to you by Squarespace.

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hub for managing your work and reaching your audience without having to piece together a bunch of different tools. All seamlessly integrated. Go to Squarespace.com slash dispatch for a free trial, And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dispatch to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You know, you raise something, I think, is really important. And that is, okay, so you talked about Biden, agreed. I don't think there's a comprehensive Iran strategy. Trump had something that was sort of along the lines of, we're just not going to be Obama. And that's not the same as a comprehensive strategy.

I mean, Iran made progress in its nuclear development. during the Trump administration. The Obama approach, I believe, was also a failed approach. But let me go to an era that I'm most familiar with. So I served in Iraq during the surge. And one of the things about the surge was we changed from a strategy of what you might call destruction and decapitation, which is you're pursuing killing Zoharay, you're pursuing killing leaders.

you're, so you've got your assassination strategy, you're going into cities like Fallujah and Najaf and Talafar and you're clearing out the enemy. But we did not have a, what do we do 10 minutes after that strategy? And the surge corrected that by saying, we're going to clear and then we're going to stay and we're not going to budge until we have confidence about the security situation and then we're going to go clear someone else,

somewhere else, and stay, and we're not going to be budged. And this was my whole deployment was just step by step. Our unit cleared. It held. It didn't move one inch until we were confident

we could continue that we held that ground and then we went somewhere else. And it works. It actually works. The problem, though, is political because what this requires is staying power.

And we in the United States have almost infinite staying power. from a theoretical military economic standpoint. So, for example, we could have kept troops and at volume in Iraq forever without doing material damage to our economy, without doing material damage to military readiness and other areas.

And we just chose not to. You know, we just chose to leave. The question I have is if, and I know and I know that there are distinctions between southern Lebanon and Gaza. But the question is, if we know that one thing that does work is staying power, because the mention was, well, does Israel think more about the 82 invasion

or the 2000 withdrawal from Lebanon? If we know that staying power and physical presence is actually been sort of more demonstrated to deal with an insurgency-style opponent, does that will exist, either in Gaza or southern Lebanon, Or are we just going to be ultimately talking about sort of a decapitation and destruction strategy at just a larger scale, one that can knock back the enemy for a longer period of time, but can't suppress it for an indefinite period? That's one of the key questions I have both about Gaza and about southern Lebanon.

And that do you have thoughts? Yes. So that definitely goes to the question also of what it means to be more aggressive and about American foreign policy. The thing about American foreign policy is America actually doesn't need to be good at it. America can afford to have terrible foreign policy and it will be fine. Again, Canada to its north, whatever problems it has from Mexico, they're not, you know, existential two oceans. America can afford for the world, and it has in the past, for the world to blow up and, you know, participate whenever it wants. And you were right. We cannot be

attached 100% to American foreign policy, because by definition, American foreign policy will never meet the interest of Israel. But the dove makes the point that we can also not not do that. And that is where the genius of Israel has gone. We used to be better at threading the needle between having allies, but keeping independence of a kind of action. And I think we've allowed ourselves to lose a lot of the independence of action and essentially undermine our own interests, not realizing that America structurally, geographically,

will always have different interests from Israel, It doesn't mean we're not good allies. It doesn't mean we're not good friends. It's geography, its structure, its size. We will have different interests, and we need to go back to having greater sophistication and more wiggling room, which we kind of, we let ourselves to just fall.

It was just very, very convenient. And there's a difference between saying, we need America, which is true. By the way, convenient because part of it, that's what facilitated Israel, gave Israel the bandwidth to focus on economic growth, that focus on things that are not just existential security. But now we know we were just accumulating debt,

that it was not real. That's the thing. It was actually not real. And when I say, for example, being aggressive, by the way, I agree completely with Nadap, this notion of decapitation is worth exactly zero because we're never addressing the core issue. It gives a momentary relief.

Everyone thinks it's justified. but where I would like to see Israel being more aggressive is on the core fuel of, let's say, Palestinian ideology. Obviously, we've talked a lot about the fact that we allow to supply the enemy, I don't call it humanitarian assistance. We are supplying our enemy at a time of war. We're allowing UNRWA to continue to operate Qatar. We're treating Qatar as if it's the reason, by the way,

that the assassination happened in Iran is because America protects Qatar. And everyone treats Qatar as some, I don't know, legitimate country, even though it's just a mob country. So you're saying on the war of ideas, we are towing the American Western line too closely. And as a result, we are buying into the assumptions that are actually euling the war. Precisely, the biggest lie of the war that Hamas doesn't represent the Palestinians. So our effort is to get rid of the Hamas army. What is the Hamas army?

It's the military, brutal arm of the Palestinian ideology of no Jewish state. And we're doing nothing against the ideology. We're actually allowing it to continue by feeding this lie. And I've created this word West Plaining where, you know, the Biden administration will say, Hamas doesn't represent the Palestinians, and the Palestinians will go, Yay, Hamas! And they'll be like, no, no, no, no, no. Hamas doesn't represent the Palestinians.

We are agreeing to tell so many lies. We have been too careful about calling out Egypt. I mean, again, we have a peace agreement. We have an agreement. But they have been supplying Hamas. They have been playing the same game that China does with North Korea, kind of a kind of deniability,

but they're actually happy for the Palestinians and Gaza. They're also scared. They're also scared, right? The Muslim Brotherhood is very strong. Very good, but okay, we need to call things out. So when I say about being more aggressive, very little of that is about killing and bombing. A lot of that is about ideas. It's about policy.

Like I said, hold Lebanon responsible. Again, we're falling into this trap. Chizbollah. What, Chisbalah is like out of thin air? They're Lebanon. This is a country that attacked another country and no one seems to think in those terms. So I just think that we need to be more, have more room to pursue our own policy, our own interest, which will never be the same as America.

We need America as an ally, but with the understanding that we cannot hitch our interest to America because they will always be different. Okay, I'm going to do a lightning round to conclude, but I just want your response to David's point. As somebody who thinks about the importance of Israeli self-sufficiency, do you think Israel has the political and social wherewithal to actually implement something like the strategy that David is describing, which is not exactly occupation,

but requires a lot of military patience. It means a lot of reservists staying in Gaza or in South Lebanon. It's bringing back the 90s of having military presence or military, some kind of proxy support in enemy territory for sustained periods. Do you think Israel today, politically and socially, can actually pull this up? So we need a new concept, which is one of active occupation. We have tried to do what I call occupation on the cheap. We've tried to, over the years, kind of manage but not manage.

And as a result, we would allow unrun a lot of things. kind of be there and not be there. And as a result, we actually paid dearly for that. So I think if we were more strategic about it, if we were to say, okay, we're going to hold this territory until the Palestinians end their century-long war with Israel, they need to renounce any claims from the river to the sea. We are willing to live side by side with them. I believe in the importance of a radical positive vision of peace that says the day that Palestinians end their century-long war with Zionism, they're willing to live next to us rather than instead of us. They understand they're not refugees.

There's no return. We will live next to them in peace, but not a minute before. And then we ensure that UNRWA does not operate there, that they are no longer refugees, that whatever assistance goes in, it is dependent on ideological transformation. So the problem is that we think of occupation as just this never-ending thing with no goal. We need to have a clear goal and a way to basically say,

we're going to stay there and change this society until we get there. But I agree with you, if it's just staying to no purpose, then Israelis don't want to do it. But if there was a leadership that would both be more aggressive but would also have a more radical positive vision,

I think we would be able to sustain, that kind of being in the land, but when no one knows where it's leading, then you're right. By the way, this time-limited and strategic definition of occupation is the original idea of international law of occupation. Okay, so lightning round to conclude,

where do you each think, or what conversations are we having about Israel by the end of August? Nadav. By the end of August, no, I'm not going to make any sort of assumption or prophecies as to the future of the Middle East, you know, even the next 24 hours.

You know, the end of August, no, no, I'm not going to do that. That would be extremely stupid of me. And no, I think that generally speaking, look, Israel did not begin this war, but this war, any way you look at it, is at least winding down in the south, simply because Israel doesn't have, a whole lots

of more targets there and it's doing its best to find those and as to the north it's obvious that Israel isn't ready to David's remarks, isn't ready right now to fight a long war with Hezbollah.

The whole Hezbollah issue, even if there would be now a regional war with Hezbollah, there isn't even a faint hope that it will end with Hezbollah disappearing or even you know, strategically reduced or deflated as a result of this war. And because of that reason, it is of Israel's interest, and this is not my take on this. This is the opinion of basically the entire chiefs of staff in Israel.

It's Israel's interest to wrap this up probably with a deal and to have as much as normalization as it can with Saudi Arabia. And strategically speaking, this is exactly what the Iranians and Hamas, we're trying to prevent when they began this self-labeled flood of Elaksa, this operation of massacres with Israeli civilians with Israel. And if Israel doesn't understand this, and this goes into some sort of a perpetual regional conflict of sorts, and we're very close to that, you know, after 10 months,

I think that to a large extent, this axis of resistance has managed to redefine the Middle East that was marching into some sort of path of recognizing in Israel and normalization with Saudi Arabia, which is probably the most important country in the Middle East in terms of its symbolic nature for Muslims. And if this is not going to happen,

to an extent the vision, Hamas has not won the war, Israel has managed to take over the Gaza Strip, to kill its commanders, to destroy its army, but the vision of Yichuil Sinwar lives if this is going to be a perpetual conflict. And I think we are very close to that.

Now, is everything dependent on Prime Minister Netanyahu? Absolutely not. Much is dependent on Hamas and on the pressure that the U.S. can leverage on Qatar and other actors in the Middle East. So it's a problem, and it's a very complex situation. But the Israelis need to do their best, and I'm in Israeli, so I'm an Israeli journalist, first and foremost, so I talk and criticize

my own folk, and Israel needs to do its best so that vision, that fundamentalist vision for the Middle East will not triumph at the end of this war. This is essential for Israel to advance and to be the power it is today in the Middle East and generally speaking, and this is basically what everyone who has some expertise to the region is saying to the Israeli cabinet and I hope they can make that choice. David, you don't need to actually prognosticate but just give me where you think

what the trajectory is as you see it or at least what the forks in the road are. I'm just going to end where I began. We've got a key fork in the road coming up in the next 24-72-96 hours and that is how successful will Israel be at defending and its allies be at defending against whatever retaliation measures Iran and Hezbollah take. Military reality always intrudes, always intrudes.

And the world is a very, very different place right now than it would have been if on October 7th, the IDF was fully alert to the attack and had been able to respond very, very effectively in the moment, the world would be very different right now. And so I think that it's almost impossible. It's almost useless to try to talk about what are the forks in the road when we don't know the result of the coming battle. And that's going to dictate so much. So I'll make a prediction without a date. Although I'm no expert on Iran, I'm an expert on who supported the Palestinianism over the last century. And no one would have cared about several hundreds of thousand Arabs living on the shores of the Mediterranean if they had not devoted themselves to a total and complete war against

Jewish sovereignty. And as a result, for the last century, they enjoyed the support and collaboration of every anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist power in history. So in the 30s and 40s, they enjoyed a very close collaboration with the Nazis. In the 40s, 50s and 60s, the Pan-Arabism, held them as in high position, 60s, 70s, and 80s, the Soviet Union took Palestinianism global and into the United Nations and campuses. And now it's Iran. So the good news in all of this, and this is my prediction, and that the Ayatollah regime will find itself in the same dustman of history as the Nazis, the Pan-Arabists, and the Soviets. And it's not a mythical issue. It's just that societies that become obsessed with Jews spiral out of control, essentially.

The less good news is that on the way to the dustbin of history, all of these regimes have created tremendous damage to the Jews and to the world at large. And the question is, is where are we in this process? So I can be fairly certain that the Ayatollah regime ends in the dustment of history, what feels me with dread and anxiety. is how much damage they will cause to Israel, the Jewish people, and the world at large until they get there. Well, Nadaviali, Inat Wilf, Mr. French, thank you for joining me today.

Thank you so much. Thanks so much, Tom. You know,