The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Bret Stephens: Israel under attack

Episode Date: October 11, 2023

On Saturday morning, Israelis woke up to their world forever changed. The numbers are staggering: over 1000 civilians killed by Hamas and 150 taken hostage, including children and the elderly. The bru...tality of these crimes are even more shocking - dead bodies desecrated and paraded down the streets of Gaza to the applause of onlookers. This was Israel’s 9/11, and its response will be severe. So, what comes next? How many more countries could be pulled into this war? And how should the US and the West respond? To answer these questions and more, we’re joined by Bret Stephens. He’s a New York Times columnist, the former Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Post, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a past Munk Debater.   The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to podcast@munkdebates.com.   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran LynchBecome 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.

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Starting point is 00:00:01 When you're a journalist and people don't trust you, it's always your fault. These people need to be represented. They are Canadian. They deserve to have a voice and a seat at the table. It is time to go back to the office, and the time is now. Russia had reasons to be concerned. They had reasons to be fearful. We're at an absolute turning point in reproduction. This is the problem with realism. They just treat all countries the same. They don't distinguish between dictatorships and democracies. Hello, monk listeners. Rudyard Griffith here, your host and moderator.
Starting point is 00:00:32 Welcome to this, our continuing conversations called the monk dialogues. These are in-depth questions and answers of some of the world's sharpest minds and brightest thinkers. On each monk dialogue, we go deep into the big issues that are transforming our world and shaping our future. On Saturday morning, Israelis woke up to their world changed forever. The numbers are staggering. over 1,000 Israelis massacred by Hamas, possibly 150 or more taken hostage, including children and the elderly. The brutality of these crimes, war crimes, crimes against humanity are even more shocking, desecrated bodies, paraded down the streets of Gaza to the rapturous applause of onlookers. This was Israel's 9-11, and the response,
Starting point is 00:01:26 will be severe and wide-reaching. So what comes next? How many more countries could be pulled into this fast-developing war? How should the U.S. and the West respond? To answer these questions and more, we're joined by Brett Stevens. He's in York Times opinion columnist, former editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his journalism and a past monk debater. Brett Stevens, welcome to the Monk Dialogues.
Starting point is 00:01:57 I'm happy, I guess, to be here. Yeah, difficult times for everyone to reflect on the horrific events, the last 72 hours. I really appreciate you finding some time for us today on the afternoon of the 10th of October. We'll be releasing this tomorrow on the 11th. I want to begin, Brett, by just reflecting on the magnitude of what has. happened. This is now the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Let's explain to our listeners the scale of this, the reverberations of this, not just in Israel, but what this means for Jews internationally, as we reflect on, again, just an unfathomable, but all too real terror.
Starting point is 00:02:53 was perpetrated over the last weekend and into today? Well, one way to think about it, and maybe this works a little bit better with American audiences than Canadian ones, but I'm sure they'll get the point. There are roughly a little more than 9 million Israelis, 9.3 million Israelis as of 2021. there are 330 million Americans. That means that, proportionally, there are 35 Americans for every one Israeli.
Starting point is 00:03:33 So when 900 Israelis are massacred, murdered in cold blood, you can do the math that comes to north of 30,000 Americans. That's 10-9-11. 9-11 was about 2,900 Americans. And that was a national trauma that has haunted us here in the United States for two decades. This is 10 times that number. Second way of thinking about it, Rodyard, is, you know, Judaism is a religion, but it's also a family. And in many cases, that's literally true. I have family in Israel. Every Jewish friends.
Starting point is 00:04:19 in I have at the United States or Canada does as well. And everyone I have in Israel, at least know someone who was murdered on Saturday because it's that small of a country. You know, when 9-11 happened, of course, I remember that vividly. But my guess is that relatively few Americans actually knew someone at first hand who was in the towers or in the Pentagon or on Flight 93. And even then, it horrified us beyond anything we had experienced for generations. Everyone in Israel, everyone in Israel has a brother, a sister, a cousin, who is gone. And that might help explain the rawness of the emotion that I think every Jew in Israel or in the diaspora is feeling right now, literally members of our family, close friends,
Starting point is 00:05:22 or at the most close friends of friends have been torn from us in the cruelest and most despicable and cowardly way imaginable. Well put, Brett. Very well put. Let's turn to immediate events. it now looks like the opening stages are set for a significant ground offensive into Gaza to neutralize this heinous terrorist threat. Your thoughts on that as the consequential result of this weekend's massacres, what's at stake? Well, look, we need to look at this through multiple layers. One is the question of the immediate ground offensive, how that's conducted, what its aims are. Can it perhaps rescue some of the more than 100 Israelis and foreigners, by the way, they're Americans right now who are hostages in Gaza. I think they're German citizens.
Starting point is 00:06:36 I wouldn't be surprised if they're Canadians as well. And my hope is that the Israelis not only think hard about the tactical objective of punishing Hamas and degrading its war machine, but the strategic question of whether Israel can accept Hamas as the de facto sovereign in the Gaza Strip for more than a decade, for 16 years since Hamas took power in Gaza in Gaza in a very bloody coup by throwing their political opponents out of windows. The Israeli calculation, and I have to say not a great one, in some ways a cynical one, was that bad as Hamas is. It's a containable threat, and it presented certain advantages for Israel. It divided the Palestinian polity between the West Bank, controlled by Fatah and Mahmoud Abbas, the president, nominally the president, and Gaza and the West Bank. It was an advertisement to Israel and the wider world why Israel couldn't contemplate further territorial concessions to the Palestinians, given the possibility of Hamas taking over.
Starting point is 00:07:57 There was a sense that even though Hamas was a threat, technologies like Iron Dome and the technology to stop the tunnel. that had been a problem for a number of years, made it more of a nuisance than a strategic threat. And so there was what in Hebrew parlance is called a concept, a concept, that this was an arrangement that for all of its flaws basically suited Israel's strategic interests. It allowed Israel to sort of cauterize the Gaza threat while it dealt with larger problems,
Starting point is 00:08:33 as far as Israel was concerned, namely the threat from, from Iran. Well, that concept turns out to have been fatally flawed because Hamas was more willful, had greater capacity, and more, I hate to say this, I don't say this in a positive sense, more strategic imagination than Israel gave it credit for. So the Israelis, first of all, are going to have to think about a new status quo for Gaza. I wrote a column a few days ago imagining what that might be and how it actually could end up being productive for the region, for all parties concerned. The second risk, however, is that as this theater of war unfolds in Gaza, other theaters will open, possibly in the West Bank, with an effort at a new Intifada,
Starting point is 00:09:25 possibly among Israeli Arabs, possibly with vulnerable Israeli populations abroad, at any given time, there are lots of Israelis wandering around India, Nepal, wherever, South America, a year after military service. And then, of course, most worrying is in Lebanon with Hezbollah and then against Iran itself. So that's a long answer, but it's important to realize that we may be not sort of looking at the horror in the rearview mirror, at least in the midst of it, but looking toward a very, long, very protracted, very bloody war on multiple fronts against multiple adversaries. If we think about the risks of escalation here, you've just elucidated a couple of them, the risk from southern Lebanon, the risk of Iran and its self-avowed policy of the destruction of the state of Israel. do you see the potential here for it sounds like it brett like that this could be a tripwire for a larger response because surely brett if we imagine a ground offensive in the coming days lasting potentially for weeks
Starting point is 00:10:44 who knows how long to neutralize the hamas terrorist threat this will elicit a response a reaction from the Arab street in the Arab world. Is escalation inevitable? No, it's not inevitable. I mean, I was modestly heartened by what appeared to be the Iranians and Hamas and Hezbollah walking back a claim that Iran had greenlighted and masterminded the attack. It seemed to suggest to, me that they were saying, we don't want to scream in your face, we did this, come get us,
Starting point is 00:11:32 that they were worried about the prospect of escalation as well. So the Arab world, leaving aside the Arab street, whatever that means, a kind of a term of art of some emptiness, the Arab world, whatever it says publicly, people like MBS, Muhammad bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mbiz, Mohammed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates, they're actually no friends of Hamas. They see Hamas as a cat's paw for Iranian power. And they wouldn't mind seeing Hamas defenestrated,
Starting point is 00:12:12 or at least not literally, but thrown out of power in Gaza, because it's a threat to them. It's a way of it, even though Hamas, of course, is a Sunni organization, they've essentially become an arm of Shiite power, which they fear. Egypt, just across the border from Gaza, also fears Hamas, because Hamas is an arm of the Muslim brotherhood or a cousin of the Muslim brotherhood. Lots of parties are interested in getting rid of Hamas.
Starting point is 00:12:40 They're just not going to say it publicly. And I would add, if I were an Israeli policymaker, the reason Israel was able to make inroads, diplomatic inroads recently in the Arab world with openings to UAE and Bahrain and Morocco and even Sudan was the perception that Israel was the strong horse in the region, that Israel had capacity, military capacity, will and initiative. If they are now perceived as a weak horse as immobilized by the heart that's befallen them, then the Arab world is going to swiftly turn away from the rapprochmant with Israel. Because the ties aren't based on love. They're not based on kinship.
Starting point is 00:13:30 They're based on a strategic perception. And Israel now has an interest in showing that that perception is astute. Brett, do you have a sense here that Hamas has dangerously overreached? that possibly this horrible attack exceeded beyond their wildness expectations. And as a result, they're vulnerable right now. They're on their back foot in terms of international approbation and condemnation. They're on the back foot in terms of some of their traditional sponsors like Qatar and, you know, other players in the region. Is this in fact an opportunity now, Brett, to, to.
Starting point is 00:14:18 to push on Hamas, not just on the military front, but a full-spectrum renunciation of this terrorist organization? I don't think Hamas is behaving as if it has overreached. They are gloating. They are celebrating. They are basking in the approval of Arab streets and, in fact, Western streets around the world. Secondly, part of the cynical calculation of Hamas is they win when they kill Jews. and they win when the Israelis kill Palestinians because they use those dead Palestinians for propaganda purposes to advertise the fact that Israel is a depressive, colonial occupier state. Third, their experience of past Israeli policy is that while Israel will take wax at them in response to provocations, Israel's not yet prepared to remove them as the governing power in Gaza for the reasons I mentioned earlier. So it's not at all clear to them,
Starting point is 00:15:26 and it's not entirely clear to me, that they're going to come out of this the losers. The rhetoric I've heard coming out of Jerusalem is we're going to hit them really even harder this time. But again, according to the calculus of Hamas, those losses are themselves a form of victory. So I think until Israel decides to change the concept, until Israel agrees with other regional powers, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and of course, the United States, that Hamas has to go. And Hamas is going to be, is going to remain in power or certainly going to have major influence among Palestinians. They don't, it's, we should be careful not to apply kind of Western standards of advantage and disadvantage to a, movement whose aims are so fundamentally different for what we think are the aims of most political organizations or regimes. Rudyard Griffiths here, the executive director of the Monk Debates. Well, this November 3rd, we will be convening in downtown Toronto at Roy Thompson Hall for
Starting point is 00:16:38 our 2023 Autumn Monk debate. The topic before the House, the crisis of liberalism, We're exceptional debaters coming from the United Kingdom and the U.S. to debate this all-important topic. Visit our website, triple-w monkdebates.com, for information on how you can get tickets and information on live streaming the debate on November 3rd. We've got you covered all that information right now at triple-w monk debates with an s.com. Let's talk a little bit about the Western response president Biden today on tuesday the 10th of october gave a strong speech um from the white house a unilateral unconditional uh renunciation and condemnation of uh these terrorist attacks these
Starting point is 00:17:34 massacres that have been perpetrated by hamas on Israelis and on jews do you sense brett there's something may be different this time in terms of the international reaction and possibly international support continuing after we know what will be a difficult phase in the weeks and possibly months to come as the conflict goes to the ground in Gaza. We'll see. In the past, when Israel's been hit like this, the pattern of American administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have been rhetorical statements of support for Israel. followed by cold feet after a week or so. And you can go back to the George W. Bush administration, the Reagan administration, the Obama administration, the Clinton administration, see this pattern.
Starting point is 00:18:29 I think Joe Biden is pro-Israel in his bones. He is a president who knew Golda Mayer 50 years ago when she was prime minister and he was a sitting U.S. Senator. That's how long Joe Biden has been a leading figure in American politics. he feels it very strongly. And he's an emotional politician. And here, I don't mean that in the least bit in a disparaging way. I think it's good to have a president who can look at those images and break down in tears as I'm, as I freely admit, I have many times these past a few days. If you, if if there's someone listening to this who, can look at what happened to children in that kibbutz, to the teenagers of that music festival, to the grandparents and little babies abducted to Gaza, to the women being spat on, the corpses being spat on, and not say to themselves, that is pure evil, pure evil. Leaving aside all other political considerations, that is pure evil, I would submit there is something to matter with you. You should really take a good hard look at your moral compass and say, how can you not, from the bottom of your heart, say, all politics aside, this can never happen in a civilized world?
Starting point is 00:19:59 And I'm glad the president of the United States is giving voice to that emotion, that outrage, that moral impulse that I think every decent person at a moment like this ought to share. Yeah, here, here. We are seeing, though, Brett, these voices that we knew would. be there, often for whatever set of circumstances on the left, who've traditionally been supporters of the Palestinian independence movement, I've been shocked personally. I wonder what your reaction is to there's seeming inability to differentiate Hamas from possibly more legitimate expressions of Palestinian defiance. And here in Toronto, we've had protests on the street where people in large numbers are gathering together to wave, not just Palestinian, but
Starting point is 00:20:51 Hamas imagery and symbols. Brett, this is shocking to me. It suggests that anti-Semitism is a far bigger problem than I certainly realized as a non-Jew. And I've been thinking a bit to myself, you know, I've got to spend some time on this because this has brought home to me, the extent of anti-Semitism in our society. I watched from the sidelines a rally in New York City, and I gather there was another one in Toronto and around the world, a pro-Palestinian rally. And I was wondering, would there be even a perfunctory statement of condemnation,
Starting point is 00:21:31 even a kind of a nod towards the goal of nonviolence? Nothing. This was euphoria. It was euphoria. It was cheering. And the organizations that had put this together were the usual hodgepodge of far-left-wing organizations. The Democratic Socialists of America had been urging people to attend the rally. This is the left-wing party that now has members of Congress, the so-called squad, although at least two of the squad members did condemn the rally in mealy-mouthed way, but they did condemn it.
Starting point is 00:22:07 And this is a left which those of us who follow anti-Semitism closely, we've known for a long time, whatever else they're saying, their version of opposition to Israeli policies indistinguishable from anti-Semitism. They don't want Israel to get out of the West Bank or ease restrictions on Gaza. They want Israel to no longer exist. And more than that, when they watch hundreds of institutions, Israelis being massacred, they are cheering. They are justified. They're saying resistance against occupation is not terrorism. You know, when you're thinking is that Zionism equals genocide, when that's your equation, then any means are justified in stopping Zionism because it's genocide,
Starting point is 00:22:57 according to that, according to that perverted logic. And too much of the left has been caught up in that thinking. You know, look, I at least until three days ago, always considered myself a supporter of at least conceptually a Palestinian state. If a Palestinian state is a neighbor to Israel, the way Canada is a neighbor to the United States, what's the problem? I don't think Zionism came into being in order to exercise control over people who didn't want to be controlled by the state of Israel. I get that. What you have is horribly tangled situation that emerged from a succession of wars that were started to wipe Israel off the map, to kill Israel in its crib. And this is a complex tragedy that has unfolded over multiple generations. There is no simple answer, I hate even to use the word solution to it.
Starting point is 00:23:58 And there are perfectly decent arguments to be made that Israel should change its policies. But the objection of this side of the left, of the far left to Israel is not about the policy. It is about the state of Israel and it's right to exist in any borders. And people who sincerely care about Palestinian interests have a real interest right now, this moment in dissociating themselves in the strongest possible way from what Hamas just did. Because a Palestinian movement that is captured effectively by Hamas, ideologically by Hamas, is one that will never give birth to a Palestinian state because no rational government in Israel will ever allow that to happen after what just happened on Saturday. Well, said, and I only just hope, Brett, that, you know, some deserve discrediting will now go on and that some people will now.
Starting point is 00:25:02 have the common sense to walk back these statements, which have been issued, both not simply by individuals, but often by institutions. Our labor movement here in Canada, bizarrely, seems to have taken a kind of a one-hand-this, on an other hand, that kind of view of this massacre, these terrorist acts. I think it's important, Brett, for listeners to hear from you because you're so good at explaining this to people, just why it is important. that the West, the United States in particular, support Israel, that this is more than just supporting an ally, that there are causes and principles and ideals here
Starting point is 00:25:46 that are greater than just our national interest, however narrowly or expansively one defines that. Can you give us that case, that rationale? Because I think it's one we need to be reminded of. Let me give you two cases for it. If you're listening to this show and you consider yourself a liberal or progressive, and your values are for feminism, your values are for LGBTQ rights, your values are for a free and vigorous press holding people in power to account, your values are for an open society. then the state in the Middle East that most closely aligns with your values is Israel. Now, you can absolutely and emphatically oppose Israeli policy vis-a-vis the Palestinians. There are millions of Israelis who feel as you do, right?
Starting point is 00:26:51 Just as there are millions of Americans who vehemently opposed the Trump administration, even when he was the president. but try finding LGBTQ rights in Gaza, try finding women's rights in most of the Arab world, they're non-existent. So if you care to see those values defended, even if imperfectly, and they are imperfectly defended around the world, then your instinctive sympathies should be with Israel. That doesn't mean you refrain from criticism. criticism can be a form of love in my family. It's the most common form of love, at least as far as my
Starting point is 00:27:38 mom is concerned, right? But they should be with their zero. Now, if you're conservative and you want to be sure that other countries are fighting for themselves, are developing strategies and methods to stand up for democratic life, for free markets, for the idea of the West, again, a conservative Judeo-Christian values, then you have a conservative case to be made for an alliance with Israel. You know, back in 1973, 50 years ago during the Yom Kippur War, Israel had to depend on American hawk missiles for air defense. Right now at the American air base in Guam, Anderson Air Base, which is at risk from a possible Chinese attack. Out in Guam, they're relying on the Iron Dome system, which was developed in Israel. American tanks, and I think this is true throughout
Starting point is 00:28:45 NATO, are turning towards Israeli technology to defeat, to better. protect themselves against RPGs and other kinds of threats. So Israel is generating value, economic value, strategic value, tactical value for Western states. And I think you should look at it in those two lights, whether as a liberal, your values more closely aligned with Israel than certainly they do with Hamas or the Palestinian Authority. And the same is true. in as a conservative. And it's also a, I make one final point, Richard, which is that we no longer live in a world where our oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific, are our moats. We can't afford to simply turn our back on the world and imagine that it will turn its back on us. We can try to do that,
Starting point is 00:29:48 but eventually it comes back to haunt us. So we have an interest in supporting our own, allies at the periphery on the front lines between open societies and closed ones, whether it's Taiwan, South Korea, Ukraine, or Israel, right, who are willing to fight and defend the way of life that we hold dear. And if we can support them in that effort, then it spares us the risk of having to do it for ourselves. So one of the arguments that I make, thank goodness, look at the Ukrainians fighting for themselves. All we are doing is supplying them with the tools. They are supplying the lives and the risk, and the same is true in Israel.
Starting point is 00:30:35 So that to me is the set of values that should undergird broad Western support for an embattled, imperfect, but democratic state like Israel. Great insights, Brett. As always, let's conclude just by having. you do what's always dangerous for thinkers who think big thoughts. And that's projecting forward. What, again, I'm not going to hold anyone to any predictions, but war, what are you looking for to try to understand where this war will go next?
Starting point is 00:31:13 Do you see any potentials for things that you would identify or see and say to yourself, okay, it's clearly going in this direction or it's clearly going in that direction. I'm trying to get a sense from you bred of like markers and then on ramps and off ramps as we try to imagine what might happen over the weeks and months to come. I hate those questions. I mean, ask me about what's going to happen 100 years and we'll all be dead when the predictions are noted. Look, we have to look very carefully at a few things. Will Palestinians in the West Bank try to start a third intifada to complicate the task for the Israeli military
Starting point is 00:32:05 and will Israeli Arabs join them as they did in 2021 briefly in some rioting that really shook the inner security of the state of Israel. Secondly, more importantly, we've seen some skirmishing up in the north. Is that going to escalate or is that going to end? And things can turn on a dime in this scenario, but that's a matter of looking very carefully at signals. The fact that the Iranians seem to step back from acknowledging participation in the massacres was a good sign that things won't escalate.
Starting point is 00:32:44 But again, that could change very, very quickly. And the third thing is whether the Israelis will try to solve their near problem by dealing with their far problem. If Israel concludes that Iran had a major hand in the attack, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least. and if the Israelis have good intelligence to that effect, they might want to essentially adopt the Russian model of escalate to de-escalate. They might want to go very big and shock the Iranians so as to do two things. Number one, strike the central enemy as opposed to the peripheral, peripheral enemy. And number two, change the psychological equation here. You know, Israel cannot obtain an
Starting point is 00:33:42 unconditional victory because they're never going to get an unconditional surrender. It's never going to be a surrender ceremony on the battleship, Missouri in Tokyo Bay. But what they can do is achieve an unequivocal victory. That is to say, one that leaves no doubt in anyone's mind, whether it's in in Riyadh or in Gaza or in Tehran who the victor of this battle was. And that's important because if Israel can achieve an unequivocal victory, it restores deterrence, it restores a sense of self-respect. It gives wavering allies like the Saudis and the Emirates are reasons to think, okay, the Israelis got surprised, but this is still a capable adversary. And it might give the Palestinians room to think, we never want to.
Starting point is 00:34:31 to do that again. We have to move down a different path. We have to think of a future Palestinian state, not as the tip of a spear aimed at the heart of the Jewish state, but as an independent, sovereign territory, and perhaps one day a state that wants to be progressive in the best sense, that wants to contribute to a better region, a better civilization, that wants the Palestinian nation. That wants the Palestinian to be connected to something better than what we saw on Saturday. Yeah, that is critical. I think the reestablishment of credible deterrence, this attack, this horrible massacre, has eroded Israeli deterrence.
Starting point is 00:35:18 There's just no other way to look at it. And I think reestablishing that is going to be one of the key objectives of what comes next. And we're all going to know what that looks like when, credible deterrence is restored. Final question, Brett, I know this is very personal to you. You have many friends, family in Israel. What are you hearing from people on the ground?
Starting point is 00:35:45 What is the mood in Israel right now? How are Israelis responding to the shock? Are they coming out of that shock? What is the, what do you think the national mood and attitude is going to be going forward now? I think anguish is competing with fury and very much the way it felt for Americans on 9-11 and the days after. I think there's a sense that first they're going to settle some scores with their enemies. They're going to bury their dead and mourn them. There's going to be a political reckoning real soon.
Starting point is 00:36:29 as soon as this war is over, I don't see how this failed leadership in Israel can possibly survive after a debacle of this magnitude. But the Israelis will sort themselves out. I'm sure of that. You know, Israel has a lot of problems, and I underscore it is very far from a perfect country. I don't know of a perfect country. and it's a country of human beings trying to make their way through history. But it is a country that has a great deal of social capital. That is to say, beyond the capacity of the state, people recognize one another as brothers and sisters. A colleague who I happen to know. So sort of with one degree of separation personally, a journalist for Israeli newspaper, Haritz, Amir Tibon, was lived in Kibbutz hard on the Gaza border and was stuck in the safe house of his house when he could hear the terrorists outside with his wife and his two young daughters. and he called his father, who was a retired general in his 60s.
Starting point is 00:37:56 And his father and mother got in a car and drove down from Tel Aviv to rescue their child, 35-year-old journalist stuck in a safe house. On the drive down, they encountered wounded soldiers. So then first they rescued the wounded soldiers. And then they continued to drive down, picking up soldiers along the way. This retired general effectively inserted himself in a unit as a 62, 63-year-old man and fought his way into his son's kibbutz to rescue his son and his grandchildren. Say what you will about Israel. In a society where that happens, that society in the long run is going to endure.
Starting point is 00:38:43 And we should be looking, and Israel will be looking for examples like that to remind itself that it is still a country worth fighting for, still a country worth loving, still a country worth having. Brett Stevens, thank you so much for coming on the Monk Dialogues on short notice today to talk about the issue that we've all got to wrap our minds. and as you remind us, our hearts around in the days and months to come. We look forward to reading your columns, your guiding light for many of us and understanding these and so many other contemporary issues. So thank you again on behalf of the monk community for your insights and your words of wisdom this afternoon. Thank you for having me, and I'm hoping that the next time I'm part of a monk debate or
Starting point is 00:39:38 conversation. It's under happier circumstances. You're here. Well, that wraps up our dialogue. Today, I want to thank our guest, Brett Stevens, for coming on the program at a difficult time for all of us, especially those within the Jewish community. The Monk debates, thinks about you and hopes that all of us are enriched by this programming, that we have a better understanding of what's at stake in this war to come. We'd love your feedback or reflections on what you've just heard about. this or any of our podcast, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. That's MUNK Debateswithan S.com.
Starting point is 00:40:20 Also, a friendly reminder that the monk debate on liberalism is fast approaching. Join us November 3rd at Toronto's Roy Thompson Hall as British MP, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and American commentator George F. Will take on British journalist and left-wing activist Ash Sarkar and American social conservative Sorab Amari to debate whether liberalism gets the big questions right. Tickets are on sale now. Go to triple w monk debates.com to find out more. Thank you for lending your time and attention to our efforts to bring back the art of civil and substantive public debate and dialogue one conversation at a time. I'm your host and moderator, Rudyard Griffith. The Monk debates are a project of the Aurea and Peter and Melanie Monk
Starting point is 00:41:10 charitable foundations. Rudyard Griffiths. and Ricky Gerwitz are the producers. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like us, feel free to give us a five-star rating. Thank you again for listening.

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