The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: Bibi's Gaza plan prioritizes his political survival over his country's interests and Putin dreams of a new Russian Empire

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. Rudyard and Janice start the show talking about developments in the Middle East, where Netanyahu ordered his war cabinet to take over Gaza City temporarily and hand it over to Arab security forces. This would involve evacuation orders for residents of Gaza city, who have already been displaced multiple times over the course of this war. This is an unpopular plan, opposed by both governments abroad and the majority of Israeli citizens, including the chief of defense staff. How does the rescue and recovery of Israel's hostages factor into this plan? Rudyard and Janice agree that this is one of the most egregious examples of a politician putting his own political survival over the long term strategic interests of his country. In the second half of the show Rudyard and Janice turn to the war in Ukraine and Trump's changing attitudes towards Russia. A Trump and Putin deal that excludes Zelensky would infuriate not only Ukraine but all of Europe. The West must understand that Russians have historically viewed the world through a different lens that does not align with Western liberal attitudes. Ultimately, Russia wants the West to recognize its sphere of influence in the region, a view Trump is sympathetic to. In the final moments of the show Rudyard and Janice reflect on the 80th anniversary of the Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima. The dropping of two Atomic bombs in Japan at the end of World War Two has left a moral stain on all those involved, and should remain a subject of deep reflection. How should this horrible chapter in our history inform our attitudes towards the major geopolitical conflicts unfolding today? To support the Friday Focus podcast consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The following is a complimentary excerpt of this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast by The Monk Debates. To access full-length editions of each and every episode, along with all kinds of great additional benefits and perks, become a donor to the Monk debates. You can do that for as little as $25 a year, and you'll receive each and every year 50 Friday Focus episodes at full length. It's all available right now on our website. in just a few simple clicks. Triple W. The Monk Debates.com. Look for the Friday Focus option in our navigation bar, the top right of the website. Make your donation, and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the

full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast for the 8th of August 2025. I'm Rudyard Griffiths, Chair of the Monk Debates. I'm joined in studio by Janice Rowe Stein. Janice, how's your summer going? Too fast, Rudyard. You're too fast.

It's very alarming. It is. We're into the final stretch. Do you at this point start to think to the start of the academic year? Can you push that off a little bit longer? No way. We're already two weeks into the academic year. That's why I feel the summer is escaping me.

When did the students come in at the monk school? Right after Labor Day. Okay. Right after Labor Day. And you've got some new interesting professors who've joined the school this year. Tell us a little bit about that. We do. We have Timothy Snyder, whom I think many of our listeners will know, who is actually teaching a course,

which I think many listeners would find interesting. It's called Hitler, Stalin, and us. And he's going to be teaching in a large, lecture hall. So if there's somebody who thinks, oh, I would love to audit this, we can probably make arrangements. Oh, oh, I think you're going to get some emails. We'll stick maybe some information on that in today's show notes. That'd be fantastic to hear Timothy Snyder on that important topic. You know, Roger, just to move beyond Tim and Jason Stanley and Brian Rathburn and others who we've recruited. I am stunned by how little history college-age students know.

You know, the war in Iraq is ancient history for these students. And I think we have to do better in the educational system, both in high school and in university, in filling in the narrative blanks for young people whose memory may go back, maybe 20 years and everything else is just part of the darkness. I don't know how we do it, but we have to do better. Well, it's on the first half of the show, complimentary to our free listeners and viewers, go to the land of history, the Middle East, to talk about what's happened there this week. We now have confirmation as of this morning that Benjamin Nenia, who, has ordered the IDF with the support of his cabinet to begin a, call it as more than an

incursion, an occupation of Gaza City, which is the primary population center, pre-conflict, and now in the conflict itself, which the IDF has not fully conquered to this point in the war. he seemed to come up short of a commitment on the part of his cabinet for a complete and total occupation of the entire Gaza Strip. Does that nuance matter? It does, Roger, in the sense of bad and really bad, a complete occupation is clearly worse. Because there are still some parts of Gaza, although very few, where Palestinians can yet again relocate. Because just to understand to conquer Gaza City and then to,

and he doesn't use the word, he was very careful in that interview that he gave. He said, no, no, we're not going to occupy it. It's temporary. We're going to hand it over. And the push from the interviewer was immediately to. whom because he's resisted this. And he said Arab security forces, but there are no commitments yet from any Arab governments. But to do that, there are going to be evacuation orders for the population of Gaza City. Yet again, for populations, some of whom have been displaced

multiple times, and they will have to move to southern Gaza, which is already overcrowded. And there's virtually no space. That will take place before any use of force. If it were all of Gaza, there will be literally no place to go. There's already no place to go. But there is that difference. I think this is a ill-conceived strategically damaging option, which Netanyahu forced on the chief of the defense staff, who opposed it vigorously along with the the whole of the IDF command. It tells you everything you need to know. What if people don't move?

There are not good options for people to move. Gaza City was there was an incursion into Gaza City by Israeli troops at the very outset of the war, but for the better part of the last, what is it now, 672 days, large portions of Gaza City are intact and have not been occupying. occupied by the Israeli military. How do you require a population to move? Because if one starts to think through what might be required to actually do that, you start to engage in practices that are not only illegal under international law,

for instance, denying food or denying medical services to force people to relocate, they are illegal for Israeli soldiers to facilitate. And I think to the credit of the IDF, there are reports that the senior command has communicated to its officers on the ground in Gaza that they will not follow illegal orders and they will not engage in illegal activities, such as the forced displacement of populations under the threat of death. Yeah, that's only one of the very big problems. And you're right that those orders have been issued to IDF soldiers.

Beyond that, Roger, when you have a chief of the defense staff, the English translation here, who was appointed by Netanyahu after we forced out the previous chief because he was too liberal. And this chief, A.L. Zamir, was sympathetic to Netanyel and his right-wing colleagues. And this chief comes out in full public opposition to this. And for the reasons you just mentioned that you're going to be dealing with large numbers of Palestinians, civilians. Secondly, what does it mean to hold a city like that? You become, your soldiers on patrol become targets and you lose a large number of reservists who will have to be called up.

Thirdly, all the intelligences is that the hostages, the remaining 20 hostages who are still alive, are in or around Gaza City, and it's clear from past practice, and must have made this clear, that as the IDF approaches, they will kill the hostages. I don't think that Netanyahu, he is so pressed by extreme right-wing colleagues, and he is so determined to have his government survive, that I think he's just minimizing the huge domestic damage because domestic public opinion polls already predict that we're an election to be held now. His coalition would lose and it will only get worse and the international damage that will come from this. The Knesset is also not sitting. So he made this

decision at a moment where he couldn't have been overthrown by his right-wing cabinet ministers like Ben-Gavir and Smoltrich. What does that say, Janice? It seems to suggest that he wants to continue to govern when the Knesset reconvenes, I believe, in October with the support of these same ministers. And I'd heard a quote from Yossi Klein-Halevi, which is someone we've relied here at the Monk debates over the course of this conflict, have some really thoughtful. interviews with. And Yossi, I think it was on his own podcast, for heaven's sake. I don't know if you've listened to that podcast. It's definitely worth your time with Danielle Hartman of the Hartman Institute. He said, you know, it was it was unforgivable to go to war with Ben Gavir and Smokritch

in your cabinet. The first time, it is, um, it was, um, it was. It's something worse than unforgivable. It's malpractice to go to war a second time in Gaza with these men who are spouting off ideas that are, as you say, are damaging Israel internationally. They are calling for the forced expulsion of Palestinians and the resettlement of Gaza by Israelis. What's going on here? What do you think is motivating Netanyahu to make a series of decisions which seem blatantly not to be in Israel's immediate or long-term interest? And would seem to be backing him into a place where the final entry in the history book about who he was and his role as a political leader in Israel could be besmirched at best by this ill-fated act. You know, look, I completely agree with the living.

There should have been a government of national unity set up on October the 8th. But to do this again, Rudyard, so what's driving Netanyahu, it's overwhelmingly, I believe. And you never have solid evidence for this, because you can't get into somebody's head, right? I think it's his own political survival. He faces corruption trials, as long as he's primary. minister, judges have slowed these trials down. Above all, he wants to avoid going to jail. In order to do that, his government has to survive. This is one of the most egregious examples of where a politician puts its own personal and political interests ahead of the national

interest. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Yes, it does. We've seen it, and we know how bad and how Badly it works out, Roger. And what's so frustrating is that 75% of the Israeli public now in opinion polls does not want to go ahead with this, does not want this war to continue, once it finished, but there's 15 months until the election. You have to ask yourself, Roger, all this for 15 months longer of political survival. Let's talk about, just as we wrap up this section, about the perennial problem that seems to have stalked his government, which is an end game for the war and the ability to articulate. Not simply what victory looks like, but how to bring this conflict to an end that allows Israel the maximum strategic and tactical flexibility. Yes, he pulled up short yesterday of declaring a full occupation of Gaza, but the endgame that he articulated was one of a series of hypotheticals that there would be an Arab force

that would come in, that the Palestinian Authority could not play a role in governance, that they would stand up someone else. Who is that? I don't know. Maybe clans in Gaza would take over from. from Hamas and that Hamas itself would be destroyed. There would effectively be no organization. I'm not so sure how you separate military-aged men in a population of two million people

from Hamas fighters who can blend into a crowd, throw down their AK-47. And take their uniforms off. They don't even wear them. They don't even have uniforms. So are you going to lock up all military age men in detention camps to ensure that it just, I struggle here there for Janice to try to figure out what is the rationale here that his government is pursuing? Because, I mean, absent a rationale, then what is this? Well, there is no strategic rationale here that any strategist can figure out, okay? and that's why you got that wall-to-wall opposition from the IDF,

even though there's a broad spectrum of political opinion among the senior generals. So you really did get unprecedented opposition. What was interesting, and that's why I mentioned it right off the top record, this is the first time he has said anything about handing any part of this over. He said, we do not want to state, we do not want to govern. So it's going to go to an Arab force. Well, let's just understand that no Arab force is going to go in. An Arab force is an Egyptian force.

That's what it is funded by the Saudis or the Ameranis, but they don't have large numbers of soldiers. It's got to be an Egyptian force. And they have said repeatedly, we will not go in unless there's a political pathway. Hamas said already any peacekeeping, any peacekeeping, any enforcement force that comes in here we will regard as hostile and we will consider them targets. What do you think the likelihood is that we're going to get? And you need a 40,000 person really well-staffed and well-commanded Egyptian force, which you could have under the right political conditions.

This is fantasy, frankly. This is absolute fantasy. It's catastrophic and it is driven by his own. political self-interest. That's what it's driven by. And to think that any of these Arab nations would come in on the basis that there is no recognition of a Palestinian state. There is no recognition of the Palestinian Authority, which is the preference seemingly overwhelmingly of the Arab nations for who should govern a post-conflict Gaza. And there's a commitment, at least articulated by Netanyahu last night that Israel will maintain full security control forever

forever over the region so you have to wonder is Netanyahu setting up the very circumstances to ensure that there is no solution vis-a-vis either to state recognition obviously that's not in his or his coalition members favor. But even this kind of canard of, well, there will be an Arab-led force, it seems like everything that he's done in the last 24 hours is ensuring the opposite, that that force will never material. Absolutely right. I mean, I completely agree, frankly.

You know, the Palestinians, if you go back to our own prime minister for a moment and to last week when he said that if there's no political progress, if there's no break in the stalemate here, he would recognize a Palestinian state buried in the

race that this was greeted by some Canadians were a set of conditions, right? And one of them was that the Palestinian authority engaged in structural reform, which is

long overdue. There's no one who denies that the pressants, 89 years old, and no elections have been held for 20 years, and that there is a firm and unwavering commitment to hold elections. Netanyo is no interest in this. That's exactly right. Wants to stop any momentum of that kind, and it's prepared to sacrifice what is in my view, the long-term strategic interest and the security of Israel because he has an agenda, which is all about himself, right there. It's not, as you say, not unprecedented. Not unprecedented. There is one redeeming feature, maybe here, 15 months from now, there are scheduled elections,

and they have to be held. Just like in the United States, will there be elections? I said they have to be held, right? And we'll have to see. But the damage that is being done and the facts on the ground that can be changed, 15 months is an eternity, Roger To wait. Yeah. Well, Janice, for those who've been watching and listening for the first half, the complimentary half of Friday Focus, let's wave to them on the screen here. Hey, thanks for tuning.

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