The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 163 | The UNTOLD Story of Israel's Peace in the Middle East | PM Netanyahu | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Date: November 12, 2022

Everyone loves a good comeback story. But Benjamin Netanyahu’s story revolves around something the world thought was impossible: peace in the Middle East. On this episode of "The Glenn Beck Podcast," future Prime Minister Netanyahu reveals the inside story of how he busted that myth — from secret meetings to his heavy-handed approach to Iran. And he says that “more will be coming” as he prepares to start his third term as prime minister. He takes Glenn behind the scenes of clandestine meetings with former and current presidents and onto the battlefield as he recalls his time as a soldier in the elite Israeli special forces — including the heroic death of his brother Yoni, detailed in his new autobiography, “BiBi: My Story.” Netanyahu also weighs in on a range of topics, including the Iranian nuclear deal, the war in Ukraine, and — in light of the recent controversies surrounding Kanye West and Kyrie Irving — the truth about anti-Semitism.      SPONSORS: Better Spectacles, a conservative, American company, is now exclusively offering Rodenstock eyewear for the first time in the U.S. Go to https://BetterSpectacles.com/BECK now to schedule a tele-optical appointment.       Covenant Eyes wants to help equip parents and grandparents with resources that will help them protect their families, including a free parenting e-book called "Connected." It explores how a strong family connection can protect children and teens from the dangers of hidden pornography use. You can get your free copy of "Connected" by texting “Glenn” to 66866.       My Patriot Supply is the nation’s largest preparedness company with millions of customers. Right now — when you go to https://MYPATRIOTSUPPLY.COM — you can save $250 off a three-month emergency food kit!  If you're one of the millions of Americans who suffer every day from pain, there is hope, and it comes in the form of Relief Factor. If you want a drug-free and natural way to get your life back, go to https://relieffactor.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The news broke at dawn as the sun rose over Jerusalem. Flags and banners shook in the air as crowds chanted about the return of the king. This isn't a scene from the Bible. It's a snapshot from last Wednesday when today's guest once again rose to power. Israel has existed for 74 years, and he has ruled 15 of them. He served as prime minister through three U.S. presidents, Bill Clinton, Obama, Trump. And now he will continue his lineage as Israel's longest serving prime minister beginning in 1996 when he was 46 years old. He was the youngest prime minister ever born in the state of

Israel. That's just one part of his incredible story, which he tells now in his autobiography, Bibi, my story, which the economist called a fascinating study of power. That is accurate. The stories that are in the book and that you will hopefully hear today will show you much, much more. The man took breaks from his master program at MIT in order to conduct top secret intelligence missions somehow survived. His story is nothing short of a political thriller. It's a story of tragedy, faith, wisdom, and devotion, devotion most of all, to his people and his home Israel. There are only about 9 million people in Israel. It's a patch of land roughly the size of New Jersey.

Globally, there are only about 15 million Jews. That 0.2% of the global population has changed the world. It is hard to imagine a more embattled people. Today's guess is devoted to protecting them. His life's goal is to secure the life of the Jewish state and the future. Please welcome one of my heroes and my friend Benjamin Netanyahu. Over two decades ago, the founder of Covenant Eyes faced the same questions many people face

today. How can I teach my children to use the Internet with integrity? How do I guard my own heart and remain pure online? How do I serve as an example to my family and my church? With this mission in mind, Covenant Eyes created their own world. class software and educational resources, which are now used by over a million people. Covenant Eyes wants to help equip parents and grandparents, you, with the resources that will help protect you and your family.

They want to give you a free parenting ebook called Connected. This book explores how strong family connection can protect children and teens from the dangers of hidden pornography use. It contains real life stories and practical tips for maintaining and reestablishing. connection in your family. This book is going to help strengthen your relationship with your God, your spouse, and your children so your family can live a life free of the evils that surround pornography use. Get your free copy right now of Connected.

Just text Glenn at 666866. That's 666866 text Glenn. Prime Minister, how good to see you again. Well, Glenn. Good to see you, Glenn. After all these years. Yeah, I know. And here you are on America's biggest anti-Semites podcast, as they usually call me.

Congratulations on becoming the prime minister. And it is your career from start to finish, not just as prime minister. Your whole life has been remarkably lived. Well, it's a life of purpose. My purpose was to help secure the security, prosperity, and permanence of the one and only Jewish state. Yeah. It's a hard gift, precious gift. It's the realization of the dream of ages, the end gathering of the exiles. But it's not guaranteed unless we guarantee it. So I've devoted my life to doing just that. Somebody asked you in 2011 how you hope to be remembered.

And you said that I helped secure the life of the Jewish state and its future. You're going to be remembered for much more than that. But can you really secure Israel without securing it as a Jewish state? No, that's precisely the point. You have to secure it as a Jewish state. We didn't come. Israel is many ways like the United States. it's a country based on an idea, an ideal.

It's the return of the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel. It's the dream of ages, as I call it, because after we were exiled and left our land thousands of years ago, actually 1500 years ago, if you want to be precise, when it ceased to be a majority in our land, after the Arab conquest in the 7th century, we sought to return to our land and reestablish our independent life there. And so for centuries, Jews could be anywhere. They could be in a ghetto in Poland or a ghetto in Yemen or anywhere in the far-flung corners of the earth. And they prayed next year in Jerusalem, next year in Jerusalem. And it took us almost two millennia to make our way back and re-establish our state, our United Capitol Jerusalem and the rebirth of the Jewish people,

the end gathering of the tribes and the wondrous country that we built. But it is someone that is continuously challenged by those who want to extinguish the flame and want to annihilate us. So, you know, we've learned through our tortured history that if somebody says, I'm going to annihilate you, you should believe them. Is that a pretty good rule of thumb? I mean, I remember in 1989 pointing out Osama bin Laden to people and saying, he's threatening to kill people in the streets of New York. I think we should just take him seriously. If we're wrong, then great.

But if we, if he is serious, won't we regret not taking him seriously? Well, evidently. But for us, you know, it's not exactly an impossible thing to imagine, given that Iran, for example, is trying to build atomic bombs. where the means to deliver them to Israel, and they say openly, we're going to destroy you. By the way, they chant death to Israel and then simultaneously death to America, because we're the little Satan and you, America, are the great Satan. So I devote a good part of my book to my battle, my diplomatic and political battle,

and some description, not much, but whatever I can officially say about the other operations that we did to roll back Iran's nuclear program. Right. I described one such operation, which was made public by me because I thought it was important. I sent the Mossad agents to the heart of Tehran to break into the secret atomic archive that Tehran had, and they brought back half a tonne's worth of material. They were given chase by Iran's secret police and thousands of Iranian policemen. And if you saw the movie Argo, this is Argo on steroids, super steroids.

They made it out. And this material enabled me to show the world that Iran was lying through its teeth when it said it wasn't seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Of course it is. And we have to do everything in our power to prevent it from getting them. It seems as though there is a new evil. You come from a family of Holocaust survivors. And there is a new evil. It's not new.

But it seems to be rearing its head again. And people are always surprised that, you know, or saying, how could you possibly say this about Iran? Iran was named Iran, translation Aryan, as kind of a gift to Hitler. Was it not? Well, it had some common strands. But Iran has now been taken over by a gang, basically a thuggery. You know, these Ayatollah thugs who repress their people. And you can see, I think the nature of this regime has now been en masse for the entire world to see with the incredibly brave men and incredibly brave women of Iran who are taking to the streets to protest against the horrible suppression of rights.

So this is the regime that people were going to give a nuclear deal. would effectively give them, pave their way with gold, with hundreds of billions of dollars of gold by lifting sanction to establish this nuclear arsenal and to propel their aggression far and wide. That was a bad deal. And I described also in my book how I decided, because it was a threat to my country, to go to a joint session of Congress and challenge this deal, which was advanced by an American president. I had no choice. My country's survival would align. You, let me, let me get into the presidential section then, since you kind of brought us there. You have served with Bill Clinton in office.

Barack Obama was in office, Donald Trump. You've known Joe Biden for a long time. You wrote when you first met with President Obama and you came, was maybe not the first time you met him, but when you came here, you said, Obama said something out of character that. shocked you deeply. You write, the prime minister of Israel was being treated as a minor thug in the neighborhood. You don't say what he said, but what did he say to you that made you feel mistreated and disrespected? Well, save that for the sequel. Was it something about, because I remember you were kept waiting for him for a long time,

which I thought was extraordinarily disrespectful. I think you were referred to something into another meeting, but, no, this was an exchange where, you know, Obama, by the way, I respected, I thought he was actually a strong president. He just had, he and I had different convictions on two important matters. One was the Palestinians, and the second was Iran. And I think there was a larger philosophical difference between us. He believed that peace brings power. And I thought that power brings peace. And in our area, I don't know it brings peace, it maintains it, because if you're not powerful, you'll be devoured soon enough. So Obama sought to make a deal with Iran that I thought would endanger Israel, and therefore, I had no choice but to go to the joint session of Congress at the time when he was president and speak out against the deal that I thought could jeopardize the existence of Israel. I thought it was also in danger in the United States.

But nevertheless, it wasn't an easy decision. I described how I took it. I also had a terrible, this was the most important speech of my life, Glenn. And in the evening, as I'm about to prepare for the speech, I land in Washington, and I go to the Willard Hotel, and I'm going to, you know, shape, you know, write the speech, or rather edit it, give it a final edit, and practice it. You have to practice a speech, you know. Often I don't.

Often I extemporaneous, extemporized, but this wasn't the case. Well, I couldn't do it because my nose was stuffed. My sinuses were stuffed. And I was using these nose drops, this nose spray, and it just got worse. And I said, forgive me, God damn it. You know, the most important speech in my life. and I can't. I was choking in mid-sentence, every sentence.

Oh, man. Every sentence. So I said, that's it. I'm gone. Well, my wife, Sarah, said to me, you know, just go to sleep and then you'll wake up in the morning and it'll go away. Well, it didn't go away. And I didn't sleep awake.

I get up in the morning. I'm completely stuffed. And I'm going, we're driving to the Capitol building where I'm going to give the speech. And I'm just sniffing away, sniffing away. And lo and behold, a mirror. My sinuses cleared. I go smiling into Speaker Boehner's office. I give the speech. It stayed clear for until the evening. Then got stopped again. So let's say that Providence was with me because it's very hard to give a speech if you can't breathe. Yeah. And it was a it was a very good speech. Soon we're going to get into some of his military service and what really motivated him. And it is a life where you just cannot assume that everything is going to go according to. to plan as much as I wish it were that way. The simple truth is that life absolutely loves to throw you curveballs from time to time. And sometimes those curveballs can be really scary.

Wars, natural disasters, economic downturn. Any of these things sound crazy? Yeah, it's best not to get caught without a plan, especially right now where there's my Patriot supply. They can help you and your family. They're the nation's largest preparedness company and they have millions of customers, I'm one of them. And right now, when you go to my patriot supply.com, you can save $250 off the three-month emergency food kit. The kit's going to provide you and your family delicious and easy to make meals, breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks.

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Mypatriotsupply.com. You said in your book, I felt like a boxer after a bruising fight, but then thinking about your father and grandfather, it revived you. What was that revelation or feeling that revived you? Well, I thought of the distance that the great odyssey that our people made, because remember that a mere 75 years ago, the Jewish people were slaughtered. I mean, a third of our people, six million Jews were slaughtered, burnt at the steak in the oven, so to speak. Not in the oven, so to speak, in the ovens, of Oswald, in the ovens of the death camps, the Nazi death camps. And we were,

you know, like a wind-tossed leaf over the ages, having lost our, the land of Israel, and scattered among the nations, massacred repeatedly, exiled, pogrant, and finally subjected to the Holocaust. And so it wasn't clear that the Jewish people would survive. Yet we had a few years later this fledgling state of Israel, tiny state. You could fit it into, the width fits into the Washington Beltway. And yet we had risen from the death from the ashes. and we formed this incredibly potent and vibrant state. And here I was now able to stand before the most important political forum in the world,

which is the U.S. Congress, and speak to the American people, speak to the world as a leader of a proud nation that seeks to defend itself by itself against those who once again wish to annihilate us. And yet we are so much stronger, so vibrant. and so determined and so resolute that I was thinking about both the Jewish people, but also my grandfather, who was a rabbi, who went to what is now the land of Israel, you know, a hundred years ago, after he had been beaten as a Hasidic, as a Jew, and he vowed that this cannot happen. This cannot be the tragic fate of the descendants of the brave Maccabees. And he vowed that he would take his family, his young family to the land of Israel.

My father will work to establish the Jewish state and to agitate with American leaders such as General Eisenhower. I mean, they argued that Israel should, they should recognize Israel because it would be the strongest ally of America and the Middle East and prevent Soviet domination. This was unheard of. Eisenhower asked him, you're only, my father was a young man at the time. It was in his 30s. And when he met Eisenhower, it was the head of the army right after the war, the Second World War, he said, well, you're only 600,000, you know, and your enemies outnumber you, you know, by such a huge multiple.

How would you defend yourself? How could you become the most powerful army and state in the Middle East? And my father said to him, general, you've just seen in World War I and in World War II how we Jews fight for others. Imagine how strong when we fight for ourselves. And he was right, of course. I thought about him. And I thought of my brother, who fell while leading perhaps the most spectacular rescue

operation in modern times, rescuing 103 Jewish hostages who were taken there by German and Palestinian terrorists into the heart of Africa and then Thibbe, Uganda. I thought this was a vindication of the hopes of our people and, frankly, the hopes of my own family and the labor of my own family. Because it's not that the attacks on the Jews disappeared with the rise of Israel, is that Israel could now defend itself against those who wish to exterminate it. You were mentioning the birth of Israel. And in my study of the birth of Israel, the State Department, the U.S. State Department wanted nothing to do with it. And in fact, they threatened Truman. I'm trying to remember Chaim, his last name, that...

What was it? Weitzman. Yes. Weitzman. Yes. And... And Truman was convinced it was the right thing to do. And the State Department threatened him.

We'll take you down if you do it. And he just did it anyway. State Department was wrong then. I think they've been wrong ever since. But the same thing, very similar, happened with Donald Trump, the State Department and you. I mean, everyone said, no. you can't do it. It'll be global war. No, you didn't.

Me? No, you didn't. I'm saying the State Department. You're kind of playing the fine Wiseman role here as a. Yeah. I'll tell you what happened. The president, first of all, it's an absurdity. I mean, the president decided to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Now, if I told you that Washington is not the capital of America, it's crazy, or if I said, to the British, that London is not the capital of Britain, they'd scoffered me. And if I said the same thing to the French about Paris, they'd scoffered me. And yet, Jerusalem is a much older capital.

It was established as our capital by King David, for God's sake, 3,000 years ago, 3,000 years ago, 3,022 years ago. he decided that it's our capital and it's been our eternal capital ever since. And yet because of Arab pressure over the years, over the decades, governments refuse to admit this inalienable historic facts. It's also a modern fact. That's where our parliament is, our Knesset. That's where the prime minister's offices, the government offices are, the Supreme Court, and so on. So, President Trump decided to put an end to that. But before he did, that he was warned by the experts, the so-called experts, that this would entail terrible violence and, you know, American embassies would be burned throughout the Middle East. So I knew that,

you know, the American defense bureaucracy was asked to talk to their counterparts here, you know, in Israel, and to see whether there is such a danger. Well, I was heading over to a trip to Africa. And I asked my national security advisor, when I learned that these calls would take place, I said, I know you prepared this trip. I described this in my book, by the book. I said, I know you worked hard for this African tour, very important one. But I asked you now to get off the plane, go to the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem, and talk to every one of the heads of our security services so that they tell their American counterparts exactly what they told me. And what they told me was that there's no real danger inside. Well, the president asked to talk to me directly,

President Trump. And he asked, well, what do you think? And I said, look, I don't see it. And my intel guys tell me the same thing. But I'll tell you, if there is a danger, it'll be directed first against us. and we're willing to, you know, take the brunt of any attack. But frankly, I just don't see it because I was giving him an honest answer. Anyway, he decided luckily or gratefully that he would declare Jerusalem as Israel's capital. And of course, nothing of the kind that was described happened. Right. And then moved the embassy there.

And that was a very moving day because he punctured this myth. and frankly, you know, finally punctured this lie. Just did the simple thing. It was a great moment. I would have never, I mean, Reagan promised he was going to do that. Every Republican president has promised they were going to do that. I really didn't see Trump as the guy to do it, nor to make peace in the Middle East so much more of a reality.

How did this guy? come about this and what role did did you play in in putting these things to to to rest they I mean honestly it is like every common sense America American has said we just let's just do these things and it doesn't seem to be that hard but the state department and every president has made it so difficult why Trump well I think I think that it's because it was irreverence It's because he was willing to break away from accepted norms, although it took a while to persuade him as well. And I'll tell you why it was difficult.

Because over the years, there's been this myth developed that you can't make peace with the Arab world unless you make peace with the Palestinians. The problem is that is that the Palestinians don't want peace. They don't even want a peace of Israel. They want all of Israel. They don't want to make peace. They don't want to state next to Israel.

they want a state instead of Israel. So if you keep waiting for them, we waited for a quarter of a century from the last two peace treaties, the first two peace treaties we had, one with Egypt or one with Jordan. And for a quarter of a century, people said you can't make peace with the other Arab states because you'd have to finish with the Palestinians for us. And if we went down that route, we'd wait another half century, you know. So I didn't. I went directly to the Arab states.

And the reason I could get to them well before the Abraham Accords or even the Trump presidency was because of, and I'll tell you how it unfolded, which again I described in detail in the book. It unfolded because of the rise of two powers. The first power that rose was Iran, which was threatening the Arab countries as much as it was threatening Israel, perhaps not with annihilation in their case, but just the conquest. In our case, it's. annihilation. But that's, I would say, a good enough meeting of interest. Okay. So they needed somebody to stand up to Iran. The second thing is also wanted to, this was also coincided with the rise of Israeli powers. Israel became a powerful country because I had led a free market revolution in Israel, made it jump. Yeah, most people don't. I don't think. I don't think most people know that you are the guy that really kind of brought the free market to Israel. You changed the economy.

You changed everything in Israel, really. Change the landscape. I'm sitting in my office in Tel Aviv. When I took over as the head of the Likud and his prime minister shortly after, there were two high-rise buildings in Tel Aviv. Now there is a forest. Yeah. It's become, we just passed in GDP per capita, Japan, Britain, France,

Germany. Germany. But that, you know, that was a free market revolution. Right. With dozens and dozens of reforms. But because Israel became more, Iran became more powerful, Israel became more powerful, more powerful economically, technologically, militarily, powerful with military and anti-terror intelligence, which we share, first with the United States before any other country, but with many others.

So these Arab states said, you know, they began to look at Israel not as their enemy, but as their indispensable ally, both as a bulwark against Iran, but also as a fountainhead of technology that could serve, civilian technology that could serve their people. So I went there, but when did the click happen? It happened when I went to the U.S. Congress, to the joint session of Congress, to challenge. to challenge President Obama's policy. And mind you, President Obama also assisted us with military support, which it happened later,

and I was very grateful to that. But on this, I had no choice but to challenge it. While I was giving that speech, there were calls from Arab leaders in the Gulf who said to my people, we cannot believe that your prime minister is doing what he's doing that, that he's actually standing up to the president.

And that led to secret meetings in 2015, subsequently to overflights over Saudi Arabia. Wow. Or Israelis. Yeah. Yeah. And now hundreds of thousands have gone to Dubai and so on. And this happens daily. You can't, you can't add enough flights to deal with the demand. And it's both ways.

But when President Trump came in, I said, I suggested to him that we have four peace treaties. I said, ready to for the taking. I suggested that he come with an aircraft carrier to the Red Sea in the Middle East, invite me and the leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and Morocco and others. And I said there were four peace treaties to be had. He wasn't convinced initially. It took me a few years to convince him. But once I did, we completed these peace deals, which we were working on secretly.

And then we had four peace treaties in four months. And the American contribution was essential. The base, the foundation was made by, as I said, the rise of Israeli power and the secret diplomacy that preceded it for years. But the American contribution was stellar and important to finish, seal the deal, if you will. By the way, more will be coming. I will tell you that this is, you know, as I'm reading this in BB, I'm thinking that's not the story that America got. Well, it's the story. I mean, I don't describe every clandest meeting that I had.

Right. But what I'm telling you is that I think it shows that when an American president and an Israeli prime minister, or see eye to eye. It can happen. Then the sky's the limit. If you're one of the millions of Americans who suffer every day from pain, I want you to listen up, there is hope. And it comes in the form of relief factor.

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I know you are friends with, I mean, you never speak ill of, or try not to, I've never heard you do it, of Republicans or Democrats, you know, you stay out of American politics, et cetera, et cetera. But you've known Joe Biden for a long time. And one of the first things he did was cancel the Iranian deal, which seems like total and complete madness. What does he say about that? You mean the abrogation of the deal? Yes, yes. Look, I think there's a disagreement with successive administrations, beginning, obviously, with the Obama administration that worked hard to achieve this deal, believing that it would somehow domesticate this wild animal, Iran, this wild tiger. And I argued in my speech before Congress that the opposite would happen. You just pad them with billions of dollars. And they just profit more terror, more aggression. And, of course, it turned out exactly that way.

And yet there is a school of thought that says, well, you know, if we do this deal and we can get a delay of a few years or a commitment from Iran, which will violate anyway, and give them money in the process, somehow they'll be lured into joining the family of nations. And they weren't lured into joining the family of nations. they just broke out of the cage and began to devour one nation after the other. So it's hard for me to understand how people fall into that trap. But I think there's a change now because of what has happened inside Iran. I think that really put a break on the idea of making a deal. Well, for the moment, I think it does. And I certainly am going to take that up with my meetings.

Right. Well, you know, we've never had, I don't think we've ever been weaker around the world than we are right now. Our relationship with Saudi Arabia went south. I think for the same, well, there's several reasons, but one of them is because there is great interest at keeping Iran on a leash, not just Israel. Yeah, well, I think, I hope people come around to understand that Iran is the enemy, not only the, of Israel and the adjoining Arab states, but the principal enemy, a principal enemy of the United States, for God's sake, they chant death to Israel, death to America. Right.

We're the small Satan. You're the great Satan. Do you want these Ayatollahs who are radically opposed to everything that our civilization stands for? Do you want them to have nuclear-tipped missiles that could reach any city of the United States? No. Why? Because they have diplomats who fake it. That's crazy. I wouldn't do that. And I think this is an abiding American interest as much as an Israeli interest. Again, I think that this has been pushed aside for now, and it should be pushed aside permanently. The only way you could stop Iran from becoming nuclear is through crippling economic sanctions coupled with a credible military threat. If you don't have that, no deal. that you sign, which they'll violate promptly, will make any difference. Can we talk about Ukraine while we're here talking about war? There seems to be an appetite for war among some, and especially in Ukraine.

And while I think most Americans feel for the Ukrainian people and know that Russia, what they did was horrendous, came in, most likely committed some really bad war. war crimes, and none of that should stand. But this could become a very frightening war quickly. What are your thoughts on this? What should Americans know about it that we might not see in our press? Well, I think everybody sees that something could unravel, and if it unravels, it could go to a place that could jeopardize the peace of the world in an unprecedented way, really, especially.

the slippery slope of tactical nuclear weapons and so on. So when the war began, which I thought it was a tragedy, I thought that the risk of such a development was small. That is, that it would not necessarily, it would take on global consequences because of the constriction of the supply of wheat, the hunger that that would call protein shortages, because animals eat wheat, you know, in one form or another.

And all that has happened in the economic consequences. But I didn't think it would, that this risk was realistic. But, you know, as the war progresses with all its horrors, that horror is not completely out of the question. And I think that one of the things that I will look at once I get into office, which will be in a few weeks. So this is one of my last interviews. I know.

You have a law in Israel that as prime minister, you can't write a book or sell a book, right? Correct. Yes. Well, that was the advantage of the opposition. Don't knock it. I mean, I was giving me a three year to write my book. That's right.

Very great political adversary. It's given me this opportunity. It also works less, you know. Yeah. I worked hard to write the book while toppling this government. I wrote it in the most crazy places like endless budget deliberations in the Knesset, and I'm writing this book, missing some votes in the process because I'm trying to edit what I wrote. But it happened.

But, you know, once I get in, I will look into this issue very closely, not only on Israel's specific policy, but whether there is anything that can be done or that I could do to bring it end to this horror. Russia has not been a friend to Israel to say the least. How concerned are you with the relationship of Russia and Turkey and now Iran? It's not a good alliance. It's not good that they band together, but Russia, you'd be surprised to hear, actually changed its relationship with. us and in many ways for the better because I remember still as a young soldier along the banks

of the Suez Canal. Our pilots, when we were in a war of attrition with Egypt at the time before the historic piece that Prime Minister Began made with President Sadat of Egypt. So we were fighting it out and our pilots shot Russian pilots out of the sky, their anti-aircraft batteries in Egypt shot Israeli pilots out of the sky. And we were actually confronting military to military. Now our relationships changed, but with the breakout of the Syrian civil war, which is right next to our border, our northern border, Russia sent its military forces there to buttress the regime of Assad. So did Iran. Iran decided that they would use this opportunity to turn Syria into a second front.

Like Lebanon, which is controlled by their proxy, Hezbollah, they wanted to create another Lebanon in Syria and to emplace their 80,000 Shiite militia commanded by Iranian generals with lethal weapons right next to our door. So I ordered the army to prevent that in every way. And the way they prevented it was bombing Iranian military installations and Iranian forces and Iranian proxies. And this required hundreds and hundreds of sordies, air sorties, over the skies of Syria. Well, the problem was that our pilots were flying literally within spitting distance. I mean that, spitting distance of Russian pilots. And so we could have a repeat of what had happened 50 years earlier along the Suez Canal. And so I made it a point of securing an understanding between Israel and Russia

that would enable us to continue these sorties because Iran, because in Syria, effectively, Russia and Iran were competitors. They weren't necessary collaboration. So I got that freedom of action and maintained it and it's still important for us. So we have a complex relationship, a nuanced relationship with Russia.

Yet what I said before, this question of the possible unraveling of Ukraine into a global catastrophe is something that should occupy every leader and anybody who can contribute to preventing this or somehow ending this tragedy should do so. Are you unhappy with your progressive glasses? Have you ever been told to go home and just get used to it because it's going to be, wait, what? I use rodent stock glasses from Better Spectacles now.

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don't settle on your eyesight. Make sure you go there now. It's better spectacles.com slash Beck. Do you think that how important is the most people don't know your background? You were in the SAS or not the SAS. What do you call your special forces? Well, it's a unit called Sayyert Muttkal. It's basically a combination. How can I describe it?

It's a combination of, I suppose, the Seals, Delta Force, and the very small. Yeah, but very, very elite, one of the best in the world. And you were a member of that. And I don't think most people, you talk about it in the book, you talk about your brother. Can you take us, there's one point that you're at the airport, you're about ready to go on to a plane to rescue hostages. Can you just take us through that part of the book where so people can understand your background militarily? Well, I joined the special forces unit, which it's a very tough unit. I mean, I think they value brains over brawn, but they take a lot of effort on brawn.

So, you know, people get winnowed away because it's very tough, very, very tough, but very smart, very smart. And I joined this unit and my brother had been, my older brother had been a lieutenant in the paratroops in the six-day war. He was already actually a veteran. He was all of 21. And he was, he went into the war. I was still in high school then. and he was wounded in the last three hours of the war. And his elbow was shattered. And when I visited him in the hospital, I was very, very glad because I had always had a premonition that he would die in battle.

He was a very brave, inordinately brave, just indescribably brave and smart commander. And here he was. He was out of it. His elbow was smashed. He was, you know, a war invalid. And he would never face the death again on the battlefield. So I was very happy. And he went to Harvard to study and came back a year later, even though he made the dean's list, he was an exceptionally able student.

And he decided I have to be in Israel because the war of terror, including these battles along the Suez Canal, which I described, were taking place. And he said, I have to be in Israel. While my friends who were not disabled veterans were fighting in the reserves, the Israeli Reserves, have to be in it. Okay, he was. In the meantime, I joined the special unit, and I am asked by the commander of this unit, who was to die in another rescue attempt of hostages in a Tel Aviv beach years later. but he asked me to go to officer school.

And I said, I'm not going to officer school. He said, why not? He said, well, because Yale University, after I finished an American high school, Yale University accepted me three years in advance, something they never did. Nobody ever did all these high schools, even though I had very good grades, to put it mildly. But they wouldn't accept me. They said, come back when you're free from the Army. And I said, well, I'm going three years into the Army.

please accept me. No. Yale did. So I said to the commander of the unit, I'm going to Yale University. That's what, that's what, you know, this is whatever, 50 years ago, more. And he said, look, I'm telling you this. You can go to a weekend pass. But if you don't come back at the beginning of the week and tell me that you're going to officer school, I'm going to throw you out of the unit. Well, that was a fate worse than death, you know. And so I went the weekend to Jerusalem and decided to consult with my older brother, you know, my disabled veteran brother, who was studying in the Hebrew University at the time, mathematics and philosophy. So I said to him, what should I do? What do I do? It's going to throw me out of the unit. Any thought for a moment. He said, tell him, I'll go in your place. And I said, you, you're old. By the way, it was all of 23 at the time. You're married. And above all, you're a disabled veteran.

You're your elbow. You can't use your elbow fully. And he said, just tell him to pull my file from, you know, from Army Archives. Well, I go back the beginning of Sunday. That's the beginning of our workday. Go into the commander's office. And he says to me, so have you decided? And I said, well, I'm not going.

but my brother can come in my place. Who's your brother? I said his name is Yoni, Jonathan. Full of his father, take a look. He did. You saw that Yoni was the outstanding cadet in his office in school. He had unbelievable recommendations from his commanders. And he said, okay, bring him over.

And he brought him over. And now the problem they had was how do they get this disabled veteran through the medical examination in the induction date? Well, somehow, they found this immigrant doctor from France, but didn't know Hebrew that well, and he thought that word elbow and the word joint is very similar in Hebrew. And he looked at Yoni's right knee for some reason. So it was good, no problem. He said, okay, you're in. And that's how he became, he took the team that I was good to command in the unit, and he became a commander there. And he was senior to me now.

a few, about half a year later, I did decide to go to officer school and sent an apology to Yale University. I ultimately went to MIT, but I don't want to, you know, I couldn't go to New Haven for years because of that. But they were very kind to me, and I really appreciate it. But now we're both officers in the unit. Yoni's a senior commander, is responsible for several teams. and I'm the senior team commander. And a Belgian airline en route to Tel Aviv is hijacked. The hijackers land in Tel Aviv airport and in Ben-Gurion Airport.

And they're going to blow up the plane unless Israel releases 300 terrorists to be flown to a country, an Arab country of their choice. Hang on, this, this, this 172, isn't that the same year of the Munich? No, that happened a year later. Year later. That happened a year later. Okay. So nobody ever stormed a hijack aircraft before. As a senior team commander, I was allotted with two soldiers of mine to break through the wing. We would be dressed along with altogether 16 unit soldiers dressed as mechanics.

Moshe Dayaan was the defense minister, negotiated a fake negotiation with the terrorists. we would prepare the plane for takeoff and come and fix the plane, fake fix, but fix the plane. And we had to practice on a similar aircraft in a hangar in the airport. We were given pistols. We never used pistols. We used Kalashnikov assault rifles. There were Uzi submachine guns, but we couldn't hide them in our boots.

And anyway, they would kill the passengers with their firepower. So we stuck these brother-of-pistols in our boots. We're all ready to go on this baggage train, mechanics approaching the plane. And just before we leave, and my older brother Yoni comes to me and he said, well, I'm going to. And I said, well, you can't go. He said, why not? He said, because I'm going there with my soldiers. And they're not your soldiers.

They're my direct soldiers under my direct command. And he said, so we'll both go. And I said, Yoni, think of mother and father. I mean, what would happen if one of us, both of us got killed? And he said, he said something I'll never forget. He said, maybe my life is my own and my death is my own. And face with this iron determination, we went in sharp disagreement to the unit commander. He sided with me, Yoni was left out.

because you wouldn't send two brothers into such close. Right. Anyway, I got wounded in this operation. I described it. Some of it is actually quite funny. But it wasn't funny when I was shot. Right. And it felt like a sledgehammer.

And I was taken off the plane. It took all of two minutes to kill the two male terrorists and subdue the two women terrorists. And the plane wasn't blown up. We succeeded. One woman passenger right where I broke into the plane was shot in the forehead and died by one of the terrorists. And now I'm lying on the tarmac. Medi gave me some morphem to ease the pain. And I see Yoni running towards me with a terrible look of distress on his face.

You know, he's just worried, terrible anxiety. And as he gets closer, he looks, he hovers above me. and he sees this red splatter of blood on my shirt sleeve, the white overalls of the mechanics. He sees this red splatter of blood. This broad grin spreads on his face and he said, CBB, I told you, you shouldn't go. Your brother played a, he's a driving force in your life. Oh, very much. And much of your determination.

Can you talk a little bit about that? Well, what happened was this was 1972, the Sabino Airline Rescue in Tel Aviv Airport. I left the Army right afterwards and went to study in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at MIT. And he only stayed on and became the commander of this special force unit. And four years later in in 1976, July 4th, 1976,

the American Bicentennial, he led his soldiers into Antebi Airport in the heart of Africa and Uganda and rescued another plane and other hostages of a hijacked plane. This time the terrorists thought well,

you know, we're safe. We won't take it to Tel Aviv where Israel storm us. We take it into, you know, thousands of miles away. Israel can't do a damn thing about that. Well, they were wrong. So he only landed with his forces, his force in the dark of night, killed the terrorists, killed the Ugandan soldiers who were supporting them, who were helping them, destroyed the migs that could give chase to our aircraft going back to big fighter planes,

that could give chase to the planes where they were released hostages. But unfortunately, in storming the terrorists, he was shot and killed. And I thought at that point that, you know, my life ended. I went into, I don't know if I describe it in the book, but I went into kind of shock because I lost a sense of taste for a week. This is the week of mourning that we have in Jewish traditions. I didn't know if I could live. I didn't know how I could live or whether I would live at all.

And yet, I described in the book how I emerged from this inconsolable grief with my parents who were incredibly courageous and my younger brother, and how we summoned our spiritual forces, the inner core of our beings to continue, not merely to live, but to continue Yoni's battle against terrorism, which I believe was not purely military. I thought it was above all else civilizational. That's how he saw it too. The forces of light against the forces of darkness, the people of these wild animals,

prowling our airways, our waterways, our cities, blowing up children, blowing up anything in sight, erasing the basic distinction between combatants and non-combatants, which is at the heart of the laws of war, basically committing more crimes left and right. And I thought that the way to fight that is to mobilize the free world

to the battle not merely against the terrorists, but against the forces that stand behind them, which are sovereign, dictatorial and totalitarian states. And so I was swept into that public policy battle and from there into politics and into diplomacy. Right. I was asked to serve in Israel's embassy in Washington, and then into politics itself.

And that, I suppose, Yoni's sacrifice and heroism has always been before my mind, before my, before my eyes, and will continue to be so until my very last moment. Well, I tell you, you have gone on to inspire a great deal of people, including me. I have I have lots of friends that have dual citizenship in many countries and, you know, things get tough. And I've said, and I can't get one to Israel, but I've often said if I was going to have a dual citizenship, I would only be a citizen of United States and Israel because only Israel. I think I've tried. I think a few years ago. But why do you say that?

I say that because the people of Israel will stand. You know, you know who you are. You know who you face, what you face, and you will stand. And I don't want to, you know, in difficult times, I don't want to go out sitting on my hands. I want to go with people who are standing, and whether that's literally fighting or fighting with words. I just have so admired you and the people of Israel for the courage that you have always shown.

I'm a very big fan of yours, as you know. Well, I'm very kind to hear that, and I'm generally moved by that. I have to say that I was also deeply moved by the support of millions of people around the world. world, including Christian Zionists, evangelicals, people, but also secular people who see, as you do, in Israel, a parable for all humanity, you know, this, because if we could overcome the, the horrible tragedies, catastrophes that the Jewish people have to afford from, you know, from virtual annihilation to salvation before that raging river and create this vibrant, successful, modern, powerful state, then maybe that says to all people everywhere that you can overcome the most dreadful odds,

however threatening, however seemingly overwhelming, if you have enough resolution and enough courage and conviction. You, and just with that being said, you are a great friend. to Christians and hopefully someday the story will be allowed to be told, but I know some things that you have been directly involved with and with Christians who are in need and in trouble around the world. And thank you for that. Thank you. Can I take you back to America here for just a second in our last couple of minutes? People don't seem to know what an anti-Semite is. And we are having this discussion now here in America

where it's just being thrown around everywhere. And I think I know what an anti-Semite is. We have Kyrie Irving. We have Kanye West that has just been banned from absolutely everything. can you describe what an anti-Semite really is and how you define it? Well, I think it's the opposition to Jews period, regardless, as a collective body and desire to do away with the Jewish people. That's, you know, the culmination of that is obviously Hitler, but there have been smaller

Hitler's in history who, they don't care about individual Jews. they don't differentiate. I always say, you know, for the capitalists, the Jews were communists, for the communists. In Soviet Russia, the Jews were capitalists. So you have a problem. You blame the Jews categorically, which is absurd. You wouldn't do that with any group. Anti-Semites are just anti-Jews, but you can be anti-Chinese or you can be anti-an other group. Right. And you'd give it, it just happens to be a definition of the complete negation of the Jewish people per se. That's it. Or whatever they are. But I would say that anti-Semitism today has taken on a pernicious new form because, you know, it's not fashionable to say, you're an anti-Semites.

You say, well, I'm anti-Sinists. You don't even say I'm anti-Israel. You say I'm anti-Zionists. Well, I'm not against the Jews. I just don't think they should have a state of their own. It's like, I'm not anti-American. I just don't think that you'd be an American. If you know anything about Israel, the point of Israel is so, they can live. So you can just live. That's right. And that's actually very, very telling.

You're a very, it's a very perceptive observation because, because the real purpose of the Jewish state is, first of all, to defend the lives of Jews who were subjected to this unforgiving and discerning hate. I mean, people were, the Jews were, you know, kicked around and blamed for, I don't know, for any. Everything. Black cholera death, black death.

the black death in the Middle Ages, inflation Jews, war Jews, and so on. And so we paid a horrendous price of massacres and displacements and exiles and pogroms and murder and ultimately Holocaust. And, you know, if Israel wasn't strong, we'd have been destroyed, you know, many times over. Yeah. And so I think one of the things that Israel, that the Jewish people we discovered in Israel, was the ability to defend themselves. And effectively, what I described in the book

is my own quest and my own vision of how to give Israel the power, that power that turned it into, even though we're, you know, I mean, people are amazed by this, we're one-tenth of one percent of the world's population. But the University of Pennsylvania does an annual survey of 17,000 opinion leaders in 20 countries.

And Israel is consistently ranked as the world's eighth most powerful country. Now, ahead of us, our country is where the billion people, hundreds of millions of people, obviously, and behind us the same thing. And yet, how do we achieve that? Well, I'd give you the simple answer, and then the more complex one.

The simple answer is that we had to transform it into a powerful military country, but to do that, you have to transform it into a powerful economic country. Because F-35s and drones and tanks and intel cost a lot of money. Well, where are you going to get the money? We were a socialist state, semi-social estate. And I led a free market revolution, which I described in the book, to make Israel, you know, one of the wealthiest countries in the world today for capital.

We've just crossed, you know, cross, as I think I said, Japan, Britain, France, and Germany, just recently. because that's what capitalism and technology do when we wed them together. So that was... Here's the crazy part, though. You bring capitalism in, you bring finance in, and you become successful, and suddenly you're successful because you're Jews. It's this never-ending circle that you can't seem to get out of.

Well, the capitalism that I brought in, I very much learned during my high school years in America as I studied, and later in my years at MIT, as I could see the tremendous efflorescence, the tremendous rise of ITIC in America's free market system. So I actually imported, as I was accused by my social friends, I was importing American methods into Israel, and we did that. But having had now the economic base, we made the military much stronger in military intelligence, cyber much stronger, and that gave us diplomatic power. Economic and military power gave us tremendous diplomatic power, which ultimately gave us this ability to reach out to our Arab

neighbors and forge these historic breakthroughs for peace. But if you ask me, what is the explanation for this tiny country, one-tenth of one percent in the world rising to be a power among the nations, I would say that there has to be another component in that. And you touched on it, and I'll say it directly and not obliquely, it's the element of faith. You have to believe, because if you don't have a binding credo, you know, the strongest countries collapse. The Soviet Union collapsed when it stopped believing in communism. And I think that in the case of America and Israel, we were both founded on an ideal. Our ideal was to return to the promised land, your ideal was to create the new promised land of liberty.

Yeah. And as long as the ideals hold, you have the most important element. We are, I don't know. National strength. I don't know the last time you've been here, but we are on the ropes on that. It is, we are being beaten down. It's a challenge for all. It's a challenge for all of us.

I think America has been a gift to the world because I saw the 20th century in the first half, what happened to the world when America wasn't leading the world. And we had, and the world went through a terrible paroxysm, a terrible tragedy, two tragedies, but including the destruction of a third of my people. But in the second half of the 20th century, America did become the leading power, the superpower of the world. And I think this was a boon not only for Israel, but a boon for free society is everywhere for the hope of freedom. So I fervently hope that America will retain this leadership position. And believe me, there are many people around the world who hope that I wouldn't sell short America. I know you have your

internal conflicts. All democracies do. There's often polarization. But I think the question is, do you go less, not everything. You always have fringe groups. radical groups. We have them in Israel too. But do you coalesce as a society after the dust of battle, political battles, settles, do you coalesce around the basic values that guide your society? And I fervently hope that you do. Yeah, so do I. Sir, it is always a good, good time to talk to you. I'm thrilled that you're back as Prime Minister. You really truly give me, When you were gone and Trump was not there, I thought, where is Churchill? Because I've looked at you as today's Churchill oftentimes.

Thank you for your leadership and thanks for your time. You're very kind. I have to say, a lot of people are smiling in Israel and around the world, and they're smiling while I am the horse that has to push the plow. So I'll keep pushing. Thank you. I appreciate it very much. Just a reminder, I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.