The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with David Horovitz: is it possible to defeat Hamas?

Episode Date: January 30, 2024

Despite international pressure and the threat of a wider regional conflict, Israel has made clear their intention to keep fighting until Hamas has been eradicated and no longer poses a security threat on their southern border. So how does the government’s military aim square up against growing civilian pressure to free the hostages? And what does this all mean for the future of Gaza? On this Munk Dialogue, we’re joined by David Horovitz, the founding editor of The Times of Israel, which since October 7th has become the fastest-growing English-language news website in the world. David shares his thoughts on the unfolding conflict and provides unique insights into what Israel wants - and doesn’t want - at this critical moment. 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 [e-mail].   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 15+ 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.

You don't help the poor by making everybody poorer. The media has a frame, and the frame is Israel is the oppressor, and the Palestinians are the oppressed. I shouldn't be forced to acknowledge my privilege unless I desire for that to be part of my interaction with somebody else. What I know to be true and what all of my fellow Gen Z know to be true is that this is the most talented generation yet. With respect to every indicia of disadvantage, there is still a racial hierarchy. And though I am, of course, in Anglo, I'm certainly not a fucking Saxon. Hi, Monk listeners. Rudyard Griffith here, your host and moderator.

Welcome to this, our continuing conversations called the Monk Dialogues. These are in-depth questions and answers with some of the world's sharpest minds and brightest thinkers. On each monk dialogue, we go deep into the big issues and ideas that are driving the public conversation. On this Monk Dialogue, we're joined by David Horowitz, the founding editor of the Times of Israel. which in the past few months since October 7 has become the fastest growing English language news site in the world. We're going to talk with David about a range of issues from ongoing hostage negotiations. What's happening there to the future of the war in Gaza? Is it possible to defeat Hamas?

What does David think about the risks on Israel's northern border with Hezbollah? You're not going to want to miss this interview. David's got far-ranging thoughts, ideas, knowledge and information about this fast evolving conflict. Let's get them on to the monk dialogues now. David Horowitz, welcome to the program. Thank you. Well, a pleasure to have you on the program.

Like many non-Jews living in the West, following closely this war in Gaza, one of the few bright lights, one of the few pleasures I've taken out of of covering this deeply, deeply troubling conflict has been to discover the Times of Israel as an amazing English language resource for in-depth, really balanced and sophisticated coverage of the conflict of Israeli politics. Let's just begin with the times of Israel, David.

What's the backstory here? How long have you been at this? What is your value proposition to readers? Well, first of all, thank you for all those nice words. Yeah, I'm glad if we were at some kind of comfort or benefit during this awful time, at least that's something. The Times of Israel's been going for about 12 years. I'm a late, middle-aged person who's been doing journalism all my life

and journalism in Israel since, basically, since I was 20, so two-thirds of my life. And we founded the Times of Israel in 2012 to 20, try to do what it sounds like you think it does, which is to be fair-minded and give people a sensible sense of what's going on here. It's a very toxic environment. There's so much extremist view, many misconceptions, an incredibly fast-changing news agenda. I mean, things that we were agonizing about two days ago. We've almost forgotten by yesterday, and then today there's just a whole new set of very difficult developments, certainly in the last few months. And we believe that there's room, and it's obviously the case, there's great resonance for the site.

For a site that tries to enable people to understand what's going on. We also have a very rich blogs platform with an incredibly diverse range of opinions that are marked as opinions and don't look the same as our news pages. And we have a terrific team here. We work 24-7. Some of us really actually do. Our military correspondent works something close to 24-7. But it's a small team, and it's been incredibly resonant, especially in the last few months.

And, of course, I wish that that wasn't the case. I wish that we were able to be incredibly resonant when the news was better. And please God, the day will come. Yeah, definitely, listeners, check out Emmanuel Fabian's byline in the Times of Israel. Just a fantastic, in-depth analysis going into Gaza as a reporter with the, idea for reporting on the ground just to talk a little bit more about the times of israel because it i really do you know i'm a i'm a news junkie and it's i'm fascinated david with how you've grounded the paper editorially you know you're you're kind of resolutely fair and balanced in a way that you know is

not a fox news slogan and you use language often about grounding the times of israel in kind of democratic principles. I'd love to hear just a bit more about your kind of editorial philosophy. Well, first of all, again, thank you. And you should know that people on the political right, and I'm talking about in Israeli terms, not talking about socioeconomic issues, but the more right-wing you are, the more supportive of the settlement enterprise, orthodox living in Jerusalem, unwilling to relinquish territory and mistrustful of the Arab world to generalize terribly. and the more left-wing, you know, secular, more living in Tel Aviv, more optimistic about relations in the region. I mean, those are gross generalizations. But wherever you are, if you're firmly on

one side or the other, you'll think the times of Israel is in the opposition camp. So, you know, we get criticism from the right and we get criticism from the left. And that's okay. I don't think that proves that we're fair, but if we didn't get it from both sides, I'd be worried. and I mean my philosophy personally which I suppose has some impact and I write a lot of op-eds I do believe in you know that we are a Zionist website it's called the Times of Israel for goodness sake and we believe in an Israel with its foundational values which broadly speaking I think you could sum up as saying a Jewish and democratic state and I don't think that that is taken for granted and it has real you know real life real world decisions that are

required as a consequence. A larger Israel might be safer, but it would include potentially millions of people who are hostile to Israel. Our reality is complicated and it became much more than complicated after October the 7th. It became much more complicated because we were invaded by the terrorist army of the government of the next door quasi-state. You know, calling Hamas a terrorist organization in a way underestimates their their hold and their sway. It's also the organization that governs Gaza, and they had a 24 battalion strong army. And they invaded, and Israel was unconscionably and I would say unfathomably vulnerable. And people were slaughtered in their homes. Civilians paid the price of Hamas's

campaign to kill Jews, and Israel's military and to some extent political leadership's failure to realize that this was about to unfold. But when you come to sort of my worldview, it makes even more unlikely the possibility that we can have some kind of, you know, relationship with the Palestinians that would involve territorial compromise. You know, we see in the West Bank incredibly high levels of support for what happened on October the 7th. So long term, I believe Israel needs to be Jewish and democratic. That does require not being responsible for. for millions of people who are, in many cases, murderously hostile to us.

And our reality here just got all the more complicated because of that. So many different things I want to talk with you about. So hopefully you'll play along. Let me kind of bounce around a little bit. We've just recently had the ruling of the International Court of Justice. And I think many of us just struck at, frankly,

the seeming perversity of the state of Israel, founded in the aftermath of the worst genocide in human history, being charged with the act of genocide when, as you just pointed out, Hamas perpetrated an act of genocide on Israel on October 7. How is the ICJ findings playing out right now? in the country between these different camps that you've described are kind of equal opportunity audiences and constituents of the times of Israel. Look, it's an emblematic, I think, for almost all Israelis of what we see as global horror.

We look at the world, by that I mean, we look at the world and we don't understand, really, how what happened on October the 7th seems to have been largely airbrushed out of people's mindset. And therefore I stress again at the risk of saying what should be obvious. Israel withdrew all its forces from Gaza in 2005. It uprooted about 8,000 Jews who lived in 21 settlements. It pulled back to the pre-1967 lines. Hamas seized power two years later from the Fatah faction of the Palestinian Authority in a violent coup. and then relentlessly subverted all international aid and all materials,

everything it could use to build an army, a large army, and parts of it, about 3,000 people invaded Israel, burst through the border fence in multiple places and massacre 1,200 people. Most of them are civilians amid the most horrific, unspeakable acts of barbarism, including rapes and the burnings of people in their home, and executions, et cetera. And then they fled back, and some were stopped,

some were tackled inside Israel, took Israel in some areas to three days to get them back out. And then the Israeli army went to war against Hamas in Gaza. Now, that context for everything that's happening in Gaza seems to not terribly resonate anywhere, including in the most esteemed international court, right? the world caught in the Hague. Israel didn't want this war.

Israel had actually, you know, was turning it, like I said before, an unfathomable blind eye to the fact that it was looming. But once our people had been murdered in their homes and at a music festival, I mean, gunned down, 360 people were gunned down at a music festival, right? Once that had happened, we have an existential imperative to prevent it happening again. First, we have to stop Hamas being in. able to do it again because, as you said, Hamas is avowedly genocidal. It says we want to wipe out Israel. It wants to kill Jews anywhere and everywhere. It would have killed everybody if it could on October

the 7th. We have to deter our other enemies. And we have to, first of all, there's in excess of 100,000 Israelis near Gaza and on the northern border who cannot live in their homes at the moment, because it's still too dangerous. And there's several tens of thousands more who have evacuated without being ordered to. And just to stress something that's really important if you're not familiar with Israel, this is a tiny country. So I'm in Jerusalem now, which is ostensibly fairly safe.

I'm an hour and 15 minutes from the border with Gaza, three hours from the northern border with Lebanon and Hizabala. This country is nine miles wide at its narrowest point. So when I say people have moved away from the border area, there's nowhere that's a long way away from the border area. And therefore, Israelis do not feel secure in their country. We have to defeat Hamas.

We have to deter other enemies. Hezbollah is ten times as powerful as Hamas, and we have to make this country livable again. And then we're fighting in the most complicated circumstances. As I sort of said briefly before, we're fighting against Hamas, which is also the government of Gaza, which has spent 15, 16 years,

building underground cities in Gaza, and is fighting, you know, these things, you've said them so many times, but people don't seem to internalize them. They fight from inside and underneath hospitals, schools and mosques, and they find tunnel entrances under children's bedrooms. You know, every other building in Gaza, in northern Gaza, certainly I heard this from people who know.

Israel, the troops have found to be booby-trapped. Every single step that a soldier takes in Gaza potentially could be his last. And therefore, it's really complicated to try and defeat a terrorist army that is also the government, that abuses its own people, some of whom are supportive of Hamas. I can't quantify the proportions, but the Hamas killer who exalted on the phone to his parents, that he just killed 12 Jews, I think he said.

Who was he talking to? He wasn't talking to a Hamas gunman. He was talking to his parents back in Gaza. He phoned them up on October 7th, to tell them the monstrosities that he had just carried out. So, boy, is this situation complicated. Israel is actually doing its utmost for every reason, including its own sense of morality, to minimize the harm to Gaza non-competence, whereas the government of Gaza is trying to maximize.

It's so unintuitive. It's so non-instinctive, but it is the case. Israel trying to defeat Hamas is attempting to do so without harming the people, some of whom support Hamas who are surrounding Hamas, and Hamas is placing these people in harm's way. It says it wants to wipe out all the Jews. Israel says we are not trying to wipe out Gaza, if we could. We have absolute air supremacy. And Israel, in the World Court, coming back to the beginning to your question, right, by majorities of 15 to 2, it is deemed, I know it's a low bar and plausibility and an interim

ruling, and if you follow this, you know exactly what I mean. But the World Court decided, yes, even, you know, that low bar has been cleared. It is plausible that Israel could be, violating the genocide convention. Hamas is nowhere in those proceedings. Hamas, again, as you said, the genocidal party is barely mentioned. It's a case of the wrong culprit. And there was some relief in Israel that this court did not order an immediate ceasefire. But it has ordered Israel to take steps to ensure that civilians are not harmed. Again, it's the wrong culprit. It's the wrong address. If you want to ensure that no civilians are harmed in Gaza, tell Hamas to put down its

arms and stop. It's a terrorist organization. What more does it have to do to prove that it is intolerable among, should be intolerable to life-affirming people? And that the world court didn't see that and didn't see it by 15 to 2. How do Israelis feel about that? Horrified? shocked, even when we're not easily shocked anymore by international hypocrisy and misconception. Pretty shocking. If you're enjoying the Monk Debates podcast, come over to our website at triple-w monkdebates.com. That's MUNK DebateswithanS.com and check out our free monk membership. As a complimentary monk member, you get all kinds of great perks and benefits, access to our weekly email,

summarizing our best debates, dance ticketing privileges. at our main stage debates, special news information, and offers all courtesy of the Monk Debates. You can grab your complimentary monk membership again right now at triple w monkdebates.com. Simply look to the top navigation on the website and follow the links. Thanks in advance for joining our community. Let's jump from the International Court of Justice to these ongoing talks, which the U.S. government is pushing between your intelligence services, the government of Qatar, Egyptian intelligence to try to come up with a large-scale hostage deal, which would really be a means to an end, the end being an extended ceasefire that could last months and that might during that time transform itself,

again under U.S. and other pressure into a cessation of hostilities. What many of us, David, are trying to grapple with is the goals of that process and Israel's stated war aims, which are the destruction of Hamas as a political and military force. And as you say, the reestablishment of deterrence, credible deterrence on the part of the part of the Jewish state in the region vis-a-vis all of the other enemies that are aligned against you in this so-called arc of resistance. So can you help us try to understand, are these two thrusts of this current conflict, the war aims versus the U.S.-backed process to negotiate some kind of ceasefire that may turn.

into a permanent cessation of hostilities. How are we to understand these? Are they reconcilable? Where is public opinion at in Israel on these two seemingly very divergent paths? Again, it's a really good question, and it's complicated. The stated goals of the war, there's two or three depending on how you explain them, but the first one is indeed to dismantle Hamas as a military force and its capacity to govern Gaza. But the second, Second stated, undisputed goal of the war is to get the hostages back. There's a third goal that Netanyahu, Prime Minister Netanyo, mentions often, which is to ensure that in the future, Hamas cannot threaten Israel.

But the two prime, undisputed, which is a very crucial imperative, and we don't quite know exactly what Netanyahu has in mind. But goals one and two are deemed by the government, broadly speaking, not to be at odds. In other words, heavy military pressure, you're trying to dismantle Hamas, And you're trying to get the hostages back, and it is argued by certainly by the prime minister and some at the very top of the government that the one serves the other, that the weaker Hamas is, the greater the military pressure, the less it is intact, the more likely that it will either cut a deal

or it will be possible for the army to somehow rescue hostages. I think, I mean, the fact is, 115 days into this conflict, Israel has not had success in rescuing hostages, There was one hostage who Israel was able to get back. There were three in a tragedy who had managed to escape their captors and who the army shot, thinking that they were terrorists. But beyond that, no success. But Hamas is getting weaker. Now, there are other people who think, no,

the aims are now opposite. And in seeking to pursue the war, Israel is potentially missing opportunities for a deal on the hostages. That's an argument advanced by many. of the families of hostages, but not all of them. But it's not as though what's taking place and there were talks in Paris yesterday and there's a bit of optimism in some quarters that something is moving forward. It's not as though that is happening at odds with the Israeli government. The Israeli government says, no, that's right up there. That's one of our top aims. And some in government say it's actually

our most urgent aim because we can come back to fight Hamas afterwards and keep going. And so, you know, you're asked a complicated question. I'm trying to give you a new answer. So then you get to the situation where we kind of seem to be in now. It's changing all the time, but Hamas is basically conditioning. There was a deal. There was a week-long truce at the end of November. More than 100 hostages were released, but there are still 132 people of those who were abducted on October the 7th, including a one-year-old baby and his four-year-old brother, elderly people, people whose lives were in danger in terms of health from the very beginning. They're still there, more than 130, 132, who we believe to be still held,

and many of whom we know are dead, maybe more than 20, I think we have confirmed are dead. They have to be brought home, and there's an urgency there. And the question is, can the circle be squared? Again, it comes back to your question. If you're doing a deal, and you mentioned there, the idea that perhaps there would need to be a two-month halt in the fighting, that was apparently a condition that's in the framework of a deal that might be moving forward, what then becomes of the war effort against Hamas? Because for Israel, and I think this is widely felt in Israel, stopping the war for good, even if all the hostages are brought home, means that Hamas remains. functional, it has not been defeated, it will live to try and massacre again. It will discredit by the way moderation in the Arab world because here is a death-celt Islamic

movement that has faced down the mighty Israeli army and marshalled the international context and because of the hostages extracted the leverage to survive. So it's an incredible dilemma and it's exacerbated, I'll just give you two more complicating factors. One is what I said earlier, but it's really relevant. This is not a case, you know, when you go to war, we've had 200 Israeli soldiers, 220 Israeli soldiers who've been killed fighting in Gaza, including, by the way, soldiers killed in efforts to rescue hostages and even to rescue the bodies, to bring home the bodies of hostages. You know, there is a minister at the very top of the Israeli government, his name is Gaddi Eisencott. He's a former chief of staff at the

army, his son was killed fighting in Gaza in one such mission. And he is not saying, we should not be doing this. He was saying, no, it's appropriate that the army does these kinds of things. The fact that they were civilians, the fact that they were failed by Israel raises the sense of imperative here that Israel must do everything that it can to save the hostages and the fact being that the terrible losses of October 7, those people, it's a terrible thing to say. They're dead, but there are some people in Gaza who could yet be saved. And then there is the fact that there's a philosophy in Israel about not leaving people behind. And just, you know, there was an Israeli soldier, his name was Gilad Shalit. He was abducted by Hamas from inside Israel in an army

base and held hostage in Gaza for five years. Israel released more than a thousand Palestinian security prisoners to bring him home. Now, that was an agreement that is, immensely controversial in Israel. What an astonishingly high price to pay. And some of those people, unsurprisingly, returned to terrorism and killed again, as Israel knew that they would. The situation now, I mean, the truce in November, 100 hostages were brought home. There was, nothing like that number of security prisoners released. And they were relatively, there were women and underage offenders from Israeli jails. The next deal, if you know, the next deal, if there is to be one, the price will be far higher. But again, this is an Israel that released

a thousand Palestinian security prisoners for one abducted soldier almost 20 years ago. I mean, the deal was more than a decade ago, but you get the idea. So what you're going to abandon 130 people on terms that do not compare to what you've already paid? It's so complicated, which of course Hamas knew it would be, and that's why they abducted so many people, so callously. Again, the baby, Kfir Bibas, was abducted with his brother Ariel and his mother, Shiri, and his father, who was, I think he was taken, we think he was taken to Gaza separately, but they were all abducted from a kibbutz, and the psychological terror that has played out since then with allegations made by Hamas.

And, I mean, it's awful, and it's playing on Israeli's emotions, and it complicates the reality of this conflict. immensely. Celebrating, I think, is one year birthday in captivity. Yeah, just a big day ago. Pauling to think about. Let's try to think a little bit now about the future, David. There is a big push, again, led in large part by the Biden government to revive the concept of a two-state solution as a way to solve, if that's possible. possible, this conflict between various factions within the Palestinian people and Palestinian independence movement and the Israeli government. We've had various commentators on our program,

including Yossi Klein-Halevi, who have expressed a lot of skepticism about the current mood in Israel towards something like a two-state solution on the basis of the horrific attacks of October 7th, the extent to which Iran remains completely intact and committed also to the destruction of the state of Israel and potentially interested in further weaponizing territory and land for the benefit of its resistance movement. So the external perception, David, is that there is momentum in the moment. the region and amongst different Gulf state leaders on the part of the United States government, within the broader international community, the European community, to push forward with

the steps that I guess would be prerequisites for a two-state solution. Is Israel, the politics of Israel, the people of Israel in any way ready for that conversation? Look, the short answer is no. and the longer answer is never less ready than now, partly because we saw what the Palestinian leadership in Gaza wanted to do and began to do and did on October 7th and also because the other part of the Palestinian entity in the West Bank, the biblical Judean Samaria, led by the ostensibly prepared to coexist with Israel,

Palestinian Authority, there, according to fairly correct, Palestinian polling, more than 80% support what happened on October the 7th. Now, things are so complicated. I suspect that, I mean, we had a story on this, which quoted the pollster who argued that many Palestinians don't actually believe that what happened on October the 7th happened on October 7th. But if they don't believe it, it's because they are refusing to look at the evidence. Of course, it happened in all its horror. So Israelis, look at this. We see what happened from Gaza, and we see what

what they think about it in the West Bank. And then we hear the Biden administration, which, by the way, has been crucially supportive, although, you know, there are caveats and nuances there that we can elaborate on, but has backed Israel's stated goal of destroying Hamas as a military force and has given Israel the military and diplomatic wherewithal to do so, although it is increasingly sounding troubled and critical and even maybe more than that. But we hear the Biden administration talking about an eventual two-state solution, a pathway to a two-state solution, and a reformed Palestinian Authority governing in the West Bank and Gaza. And I'll quote for you, the president of Israel. It's a more ceremonial position, but it's a resonant position.

His name is Isaac Herzog. He's a former leader of the Labor Party, that as a center-left political party. It's the party of Yitzhakrabian and David Ben-Gurion and the party that led Israel for its first 30 years. So Herzog is a man, I'm sure he would say somewhere in the political center. And he said in Davos at the World Economic Forum just a few days ago, no Israeli in their right mind is thinking about a peace process right now. Do Israelis want peace?

We desperately want peace. Do we think that it is possible in the foreseeable few? future with the Palestinians in Gaza and even in the West Bank to my sorrow, reality leaves Israelis saying, no, how can we do this? We would be asked to relinquish. We left, we left Gaza already. And by the way, if Gaza had been calm for a few years, Israel would have pulled out, you know, it maintains security control on the West Bank, but it has a so-called security barrier, which takes in only about 7% of the West Bank. If Gaza had been calm and tranquility had prevailed, there would have been huge pressure within Israel.

Well, this is great. We're not responsible for the two million Palestinians of Gaza. They're building a state. Investment is coming in. There's a beautiful beach. This is fantastic. We should have the confidence to do something similar in the West Bank, although it's the heartland of biblical Jewish history.

There was no Tel Aviv in the Bible, but there's a Hebron and a Bethlehem and a Shiloh. But there would have been pressure within Israel to pull back perhaps the line of the security barrier. because we can see, we can separate from the Palestinians and keep a Jewish and the Democratic Israel. Instead, everything that has happened and culminating in the horror of October the 7th has told the middle ground in Israel that we have to be incredibly wary, if not more than that. And like the president said, no Israeli in their right mind is really thinking about peace processes now.

And the Biden administration is, and that's becoming increasingly a source of friction. would say. And again, just, I know these things aren't reconcilable, David, but it helps us all think through them to have you comment on it. How, how would, does one reconcile the Biden administration's push for a two-state solution with, it's also seeming inclination or willingness to consider, you know, an extended pause in the hostilities, probably internally, if we want to be honest about it, there would be a lot of support in the Biden administration for a cessation of hostilities that would leave Hamas militarily intact. How can one imagine a demilitarized non-Hamas future for the people of Gaza and or whatever international force comes together to try to bring about

a different future from Gaza. If there are thousands of armed militants, Sinwar is still alive, presumably in Gaza, with access to hundreds of kilometers of intact tunnel network. I mean, how does one put these different things together into some rational, coherent theory of the case?

Okay, I hear the bafflement in your question and don't think that we're grappling with exactly the same apparently near-impossible contradictions, right? So Israel wants to get its hostages back. It's not being pushed by the United States, as far as I can tell. I don't think it would take positions that it doesn't feel that it can live with. Netanyahu's very wary of Qatar, which is a supporter of Hamas, and so he says very critical things about Qatar,

but they have the leverage over Hamas, apparently. Israel is a major participant in these talks, in these contacts to try and get a deal. And as we've said, potentially we're told that a deal, if Hamas would agree to it, we don't know all the facts, would it certainly involve a two-month pause in the fighting. Can the Israeli army pick up where it left off after a two-month pause, or would Hamas essentially have by then taken back all the areas that the Israeli army has established control in, which is more than half of Gaza, as far as we can tell. I don't know the answer to that.

If there were to be a permanency spire as part of this deal, and indeed Hamas is intact, then there is no prospect. I don't think of a future of greater stability. Hamas would still be there. It would have won. Survival is victory. Those garsons who oppose it would have lost. Those garsons who support it would have been part of that victory.

So that's not a recipe for a better future. And therefore it's complicated because Israel wants those hostages back. And that's really where we are now, I think, by the way. The question of whether there is to be a deal for the hostages, if there is to be a deal, does it involve a two-month halt? Hamas has been conditioning any deal on a commitment by Israel to end the fighting altogether and pull the army out. I don't think Israel would agree to that. There would be a lot of internal argument about it, but I don't think Israel would. agree to that. And therefore, all the complications and the contradictions, and there's others. I mean, Israel is right now gradually moving south in Gaza and tackling these battalions, these 24 battalions that Hamas had. And it's taken out. It's rendered most of them non-functioning. That does not mean that the gunmen are not still, lots of them are not still around. But there's most of those 24 battalions no longer are functioning. But there's one city where there's very heavy fighting at the moment, Han Yunus, and Israel has not yet moved to the other last major area where Hamas has well-organized fighting forces. That's Rafah at the bottom of the strip,

right on the border with Egypt. And there too, we have incredibly complicated decisions to make. Is Egypt going to help Israel to try to seal that border and make sure that nobody can rearm across that border? Egypt has indicated it does not want Israel to retake that border. There's a thin strip of land. It runs about nine miles across the Gaza, Egypt border at the bottom of the strip. The army is kind of waiting for the political leadership to tell it what it needs to do there. So when you're asking these, how is that going to work out questions? We're all asking them. And there's more besides. Don't even, you know, don't get me started, I say, after how long have I been talking. You know, there's divisions in Israel, in the politics of Israel, in the goals for Gaza,

right there are people in the in the in the Israeli government on the far right of the government again the left and right in Israeli terms who want Jewish settlement revived in Gaza like you know as we said Israel pulled out there are the finance minister of Israel significant player and 10 other ministers we have a very large I would say bloated government there's more than 30 cabinet ministers 11 of them were at a conference just last night backing revived Jewish settlement in Gaza Netanyahu opposing that. The Biden administration certainly opposes that. The International Court of Justice in the Hague would take a very dim view of that process gathering steam, et cetera, et cetera. But yes, the deeper you go into this, the more complicated it all is. Very generous with your time. So final question, and I'm giving you the hard ones here. Let's go to the north. We know that Hezbollah, compared to Hamas, is a far more formidable terrorist force, reports of

upwards of 150,000 rockets at their disposal, hundreds of kilometers of tunnel network, this time hewn out of rock, not sand. Large-scale, highly trained, Iranian-trained

fighting brigades that have had extensive combat experience in Syria and throughout the region. region. What does Israel do about this threat? If one rightly assumes that after October 7, Israel's security situation has materially changed and that the lessons of Hamas's horrific attack suggests that the status quo as it existed before October 7, not only in the south, but in the north, no longer exists.

This is a hypothetical question, David, and I appreciate you just playing along with us because there are so many different variables. But what happens in the north? Is this the next front in this war? Is it inevitable that Israel has to take on and degrade the threat that Hezbollah and indirectly, therefore, Iran represents?

It's not a hypothetical question at all. It's an incredibly real issue, and Israel has grappled with it in this context from the day, from October the 7th. So the first thing to say, your question is completely right in terms of the threat that Hezbollah poses, in terms of Iran being behind it and orchestrating a lot more besides. And we didn't even mention Iran trying to close in on nuclear weapons, which is a whole different level of danger to Israel, since, as you said rightly, this regime. in Iran seeks Israel's elimination. So, you know, I don't think there are any crumbs of comfort, but if you want to take a step back, it's worth knowing, or we think we know, that Hamas didn't really tell Hezbollah and Iran exactly when it was going to do what it did on October 7th. And it's not clear whether Hezbollah would have joined from the start and what Iran would have

done. And it's possible that America's robust deployment of military forces to the region dissuaded Hisbalah and Iran from piling in full strength from southern Lebanon. But the threat that you described with these tunnels and there have been Hisbola tunnels, many that were found over the years coming into Israel, and they have a force of gunmen, terrorists, ready on the northern border to invade Israel. They've openly talked about wanting to do that and to conquer territory in northern Israel. So with greater potency and greater potential devastating consequences than what happened on October the 7th. So first of all, we could have been in a much worse situation that day.

And as you say, you know, everything changed, right? So now Israel, you know, Hezbollah was right up against the border fence on October the 7th, and it's still very close to the border fence. And by the way, right now it's, you know, firing anti-tank missiles, which do not have a trajectory. They can fire from, you know, they run flat. And they're aiming into people's homes. not only targeting military bases. They are targeting them, but they're also targeting people's homes. There was an elderly woman who was killed in her home, blown up in her home a few days ago with her son.

They were eating a meal in an area where most people had evacuated. He was in the security squad. He was visiting his mom who didn't want to leave. So the Hezbollah threat is very potent. It could escalate at any moment, and Israel cannot allow Hezbollah on the border. So what is it going to do? The first thing is, you should know there was debate in the Israeli leadership on October the 7th or October the 8th, where to go first? Hamas has just slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and others in southern Israel, taken 250 hostages, and yet there was a debate in the Israeli leadership. Maybe we need to tackle the northern border first because the threat there is even more potent.

And the defense minister, as far as we know, which is quite far, was voted down. He wanted to go to his valet first because that was the harsher, the more challenging front and military doctrine is, if you have to fight on two fronts, do the more serious one first. He was outvoted. The way that this can end without a major escalation would be for Hezbollah to pull back. There was a war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. Resolution 1701 of the Security Council ended it with the requirement that Hezbollah deploy its forces no further south than the Littani River in Lebanon, they've abused that and they've broken that obligation. If Hezbollah were to withdraw and Israel felt that its security was sufficiently stable that people could go back to the homes

they've left on the northern border, then that's a way out of this without an escalation of conflict. Hisbalah is giving no indication that it will do that. And therefore, as things stand, you have to say, it is hard to see how the fighting ends without an escalation to bring from Israel's point of view, a capacity for people to move home in northern Israel.

Maybe I'll be proved wrong. But as things stand, there is no reason to think that things will get calmer before they get worse on the northern border. David, thank you so much. You played along with me.

Tough questions. We bounced around and I think landed on a lot of the key issues that are on top of people's minds. And I just really want to encourage listeners. If you've enjoyed this conversation,

David does make occasional appearances. I would like to see you on it more, David, as a regular listener, on the Times of Israel's daily podcast. And it's a great short 20-minute program that provides you with a quick update on the key news and information that's happened in the war. And it provides really important kind of insights into Israeli society and politics. So, David, just on behalf of the monk listenership are 150,000 strong, downloading this podcast every week.

I just want to recommend that people check out the Times of Israel online, your website, a great resource, and also to follow you and your podcast. Thank you so much for coming on the program today. Well, I want to thank you, and you did ask me difficult questions because there's no point in not asking them,

and I appreciate that you care and that your listeners care, and I hope that I brought some, you know, wisdom and information that will make it easier for people to understand what's going on here. And David, if people want to become subscribers to the Times of Israel, which I have become one since October 7, what's the best way to do that? Well, just go to the site and we have something called Times of Israel Community. And you can, if you think what we're doing is of value, you can join our community.

You get some additional benefits and content and so on. The site is open to everybody. But if you want to help fund it, that's the way to do it. Yeah, I really like how you're doing this. And again, there's no paywall here, people. You can get all the content at the Times of Israel free, but use that tip jar. We've got to support great journalism, and you can find that 24-7 at the Times of Israel. David, thank you so much for coming on the program.

Thank you. You take care. That wraps up today's dialogue. I want to thank our guest, David Horowitz. You've given us a lot to think about. If you have reflections or feedback on what you've just heard on this or any of our podcast, please send us email to podcast at Monk Debates. That's MUNK DebateswithanS.com. Also a friendly reminder that our weekly current affairs podcast Friday Focus that comes out, you got it.

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