The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Yossi Klein Halevi: Israel's next move

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

Israelis are reeling from a massive Iranian ballistic missile attack which forced over 10 million people to take cover in bomb shelters and threatened to pull both countries into an open war. How will Israel respond to this attack? Can they restore deterrence in the region? And will they have the support of the US and other western nations? To make sense of the events of the last few days, and its impact on the collective Israeli psyche, we’re joined again on the program by Yossi Klein Halevi. Yossi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and the author of the New York Times bestseller, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor.  The host of this Munk Dialogue is Rudyard Griffiths 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, ticketing privileges to our live events, and a charitable tax receipt (Canadian residents). This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/   Executive 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.

We tried socialism all through the 20th century, and it failed every time. We should restore dignity to the working class and stop saying you need a credential in order to achieve the most basic, modest version of the American dream. Netanyahu is the worst leader the Jewish people ever had. He should be impeached. Genocide is the latest modern blood libel that anti-Semites use to justify their anti-Zionism. We should prioritize making sure that no more Ukrainian stuff, that this war is brought to an end.

All parents want to help children with their feelings, but I argue that not every feeling is worth paying attention to. Why are these students covering their faces? I think it says something about their movement, about their ideology, and also simply the fact that they're also cowards. Hello, Monk listeners. Roger Griffiths 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. We're recording this monk dialogue on the morning of Wednesday, October 2nd, less than 24 hours after 180 or more Iranian ballistic missiles rain down on Israel, sending 10 million people into bomb shelters and putting the entire country and the world on edge.

How will Israel respond to these attacks? can they reassert deterrence in the region, especially with Iran? And will they have the support of the United States and other Western nations as this conflict unfolds and possibly escalates? To make sense of all of this, we are joined once again on the program by Yossi Klein-Halevi. Yossi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and the author of the New York Times bestseller, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor. Yossi Klein-Halevi, welcome to the Monk Dialogues. It's great to be back with you.

Well, we've been so fortunate to have you throughout this last year, jumping onto our podcast to illuminate and explain events as they're happening in the Middle East and Israel. And again, we hope that there will come a time, Yose, when we can speak to you about something other than today's topic, which is this unprecedented, well, unfortunately not unprecedented, second major attack by Iran on Israel. Let's begin, Yose, by you just giving us a feel for the mood in Israel there right now

amongst your friends, family, less than 24 hours after this ballistic missile attack. So I'm speaking to about an hour before the beginning of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which was really one of the seminal holidays of the Jewish year. And there's a sense of quiet celebration. It's a very look, we're coming at the culmination of the worst year in Israel's history. And everyone is traumatized. everyone has lost someone, either someone who was killed on October 7th, the day of the Chamas massacre or a soldier who fell in Gaza.

And, you know, we've all been to funerals of soldiers of friends, friends' children or grandchildren. And so there's, on the one hand, there's this very heavy atmosphere. But what we feel in the last two weeks, and really in some ways, culminate, you know, with the successful Israeli deterrence of the Iranian missile attack. You know, this was the largest assault of ballistic missiles in history. And we managed to minimize the damage. There was a little bit of damage.

But given the enormity of the assault, we've come out really on top. And after the last two weeks of one stunning Israeli success after another, which in some ways is compensated for the tremendous Israeli failure of October 7th, the failure of intelligence, the failure of the army to effectively deal with the Hamas assault. So there's a sense of we're back. Israel's back. We're on top of our game now in a way that we have. haven't been for years. And so there isn't this sense of jubilation at all. There's too much mourning and

also to very deep awareness of what's coming. We know that the war is, in some ways, it's just begun, that this is really the Israeli-Iranian war. It's not, it was never just the Israeli Hamas war or even Chisbalah. And so there's this very strange mixture of grief that we're all carrying a heaviness and at the same time of tremendous relief that we're able to defend ourselves. And we can believe in our capacity to project a credible military deterrence in the Middle East. And that's, so that's, that's, that's the mood here. I'm glad you mentioned deterrence because it's one of the things I think you've helped me understand that the lens may be to to better perceive the events of the last year and

especially the events of the last couple of weeks is the lens of deterrence. So maybe you can explain to us kind of Israel's journey from a collapse in deterrence after October 7th last year to where Israel finds it now and why deterrence is just so important to the state of Israel at this moment. The blow of October 7th to Israel's deterrence was so profound precisely because Hamas is our weakest enemy. And it was our weakest enemy that delivered the most devastating blow in Israel's history. And that combination. And that combination. nation created this disastrous perception in the region that Israel no longer had what it takes that were on the run.

And we are the only non-Arab, non-Muslim country for thousands of kilometers around. You know, if you focus the conflict on Israel versus the Palestinians, then we're Goliath and the Palestinians are David. But if you widen the lens and you look at the region, and then there's this sliver of a Jewish state, and thousands of kilometers around us are hostile countries. And then the balance of power starts to look differently. The only way that we can maintain ourselves in the long term, in this volatile region, is by maintaining a credible, posture of military deterrence. And that was completely broken on October 7th. The perception among Israel's enemies was that we were a spider web. And I'm using that image because it was

the image that was invoked by Chisbalah leader Hassan Nasrallah, the late Chisbala leader Nasrallah. And in a famous speech, I think it was 2015, he compared Israel to a spider web. And he said that just as a spider web seems to be impenetrable from without, but with a single swipe, the spider web disintegrates, that's the Jewish state. It seems to be indestructible from without, but as soon as you deliver a blow, you'll see it's going to crumble. October 7th was the swipe of the spider web. And that's how it was perceived in the Muslim world. And that's how we ourselves in Israel perceived it. And what we've succeeded in doing in the last couple of weeks is, first of all,

restoring our own self-confidence. And if Israelis lack self-confidence in our ability to protect ourselves, then we're on our way to becoming a failed state. And so the most important strategic gain of the last couple of weeks is psychological. It restored our faith in ourselves. And the second most important goal was also psychological. It restored our enemy's fear of Israel's capabilities. And that's where we are today.

Let's continue on this frame of deterrence because I think it could help us maybe understand what might happen next. So Iran has its own fixation on deterrence, what it perceives as its interests, which it wants to protect, and it wants to try to influence and shape Israel's behavior through a new doctrine, Yossi, that they announced before the April attacks, which was effectively that Iran would engage in the type of ballistic missile assaults that we saw repeated again this week in the phase. of perceived and real attacks by Israel, not on Iran proper, which I think is very important for people to understand. Israel is not attacking Iran proper in the same way that Iran is attacking Israel proper, but attacks on, for instance, senior military, Iranian military commanders in Lebanon. Attacks on proxy leaders, like the leader of the political leaders.

leader of Hamas in Tehran or Nasrallah, the political leader of the Iranian proxy group, Hezbollah. So, Yossi, when you think about these competing theories of deterrence, what happens next? Well, first of all, in terms of Iranian interests and Iran's need to protect itself, The moment that Iran declares that its goal is no longer the destruction of Israel, it doesn't need deterrence from Israel. We're not interested in Iran. Iran is thousands of kilometers away. It's a – if it wasn't a declared existential threat against us, we wouldn't treat it that way. So that's the first problem here. You know, in Tehran, in Palestine Square in downtown Tehran, there is what the Iranians call a doomsday clock.

In 2015, the Supreme Leader Khomeini predicted that by 2040, Israel will be destroyed. And there's now, there's been a clock since then that, keeps time, how many days left till 2040? And so ditch the doomsday clock, Iran. You know, just just, and stop, stop painting death to Israel on your missiles. That also sends a really negative message to those of us who happen to be Israeli, you know? And if you, if you, if you're, if you're, if you're worried about your deterrence, just stop being an existential threat to me. And so that's, you know, on the most basic level, I have no space for considering Iran's strategic fears because those are entirely self-created. That's a great point. Let's talk about Israel, though, and how it needs to respond to this

week's attack because as you said unprecedented over 180 ballistic missiles launched this time on much shorter notice thankfully casualties and injuries were kept to a minimum but it could and as it always does with these types of attacks it could have ended up in a very different scenario and result and I guess what I'm trying to understand Yosi is just it just seems instinctually so utterly unacceptable that a country like Israel should be subjected, not once now, but twice to attack like this. And I think what people need to understand is even if there wasn't damage, which thankfully there wasn't, and there was seemingly one fatality and some injuries, there is mass terror. There is forcing 10 million people into bomb shelters.

that is an act of utter terrorism against civilian populations. I mean, this surely can't stand, Yossi. Yeah, and it's also a threat to our deterrence. And unlike Iran, we have a genuine need for deterrence. Now, we have a terrific anti-missile system called the Iron Dome, which Israel developed together with the U.S. And it's been tremendously effective. 90 plus percent of the missiles that were fired last night were shot down by our anti-missile system.

But Iran and its allies have a combined arsenal of well over 100,000 missiles and rockets. If they were to fire at our civilian population from all directions, And, you know, we're facing a multi-front war. It's a war that extends from Yemen to Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and of course, Iran. And we would be a little bit of an anti-missile system would not be able to cope. And so my preferred response would be for Israel to go directly to the nuclear facilities in Iraq. and Iran is now on the nuclear threshold, and we know that there is no country in the world except for Israel, that will militarily stop Iran from crossing the threshold.

And that includes the United States, you know, for all of the rhetoric that we've heard from success of American administrations about all options being on the table. President Obama used to say that. All options are on the table if Iran tries to go nuclear. We know that no country is going to militarily stop Iran, except for us. And so this is the moment when I hope that Israeli decision makers will take a deep breath and say we can't live with a nuclear Iran. We cannot live. We cannot live with a nuclear weapon in the hands of a regime that, first of all, denies that the Holocaust ever happened, and secondly, continues to promise that it will deliver another Holocaust. That is simply, Israel exists for exactly this moment to make sure that the Jewish people

never lives under the threat of existential danger. And so this is the moment when I believe we must attack Iran's nuclear facilities. I think that there are forces within both the political and security echelons that believe that and are likely pushing for that outcome. And the Israeli Air Force has been training for years for this. moment. I don't know what its capabilities are. And dealing with a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities, which are embedded deep underground, is a whole other level of expertise than what we've, even from the successes we've managed in these last days. So I don't know. I don't know what we're

capable of doing but i know that we can't allow iran to remain on the nuclear threshold yeah you bring up um such a good point people should be reminded that uh iran has proceeded with its uh enrichment of its nuclear uh stockpiles of of uranium to levels that now would allow it uh according to american intelligence which has been discussed openly now by american officials to you know, weaponize this into fissile, a bomb within a matter of weeks. And one could surmise, Yossi, that, you know, they've spent a fair amount of time working on their missile systems. Obviously, we saw that this week. And presumably, they've been doing parallel engineering around, you know, warhead design and taking that fissile material and putting it into a warhead so that it's really

just about assembling, you know, the components into a potential functioning, a ballistic nuclear weapons capability. And I just think everyone has to think on that for a moment of just how utterly unacceptable that would be not just to Israel, but to other states in the region and potentially beyond, as Russia unfortunately aids Iran right now in developing potentially intercontinental ballistic missile technology. So Yose, isn't it, isn't it just in a sense inevitable that Iran's nuclear program will have to be dealt with, that this can has been kicked down the road now for the better part of 10, 15 years? And it's either dealt with now or we will have an Iran that will break out as a nuclear power in response to what it will see is its perceived threats now

that it faces in the region, having lost, in a sense, Hezbollah as a defensive shield. I don't know, Yossi, it's hard to see something other than a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, but equally possible, maybe that doesn't happen. I would imagine that there's a lot of pressure being applied on the Israeli government not to take that step. I hope the government is steadfast. And this is something that Israel must do for its own survival, but it's also something that Israel will do for the benefit of the West, whether or not the West acknowledges that. And that's a position that we obviously didn't want to be in, but we've been forced to be on the front line against radical Islamism. And that is simply, that's Israel's fate. And I don't think we have a

choice. October 7th has pointed us in that direction. October 7th was a window into what Israel's enemies intend to do to us if they ever got the upper hand. I have no doubt that if Iran went nuclear, it would at least consider a nuclear strike against Israel as an option. And no country can live with that kind of threat. And you see that the other problem that people need to be aware of is that it would extend a nuclear umbrella de facto over its proxies and therefore significantly constrain events like we've seen in the last 10 days, for instance, the elimination of Nasrallah and the entire leadership cadre of Hezbollah. Would that be possible in a moment when Iran had a functioning ballistic nuclear missile because Israel would have to make second and third

order calculations about removing a threat like the one we saw terminated these past weeks. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, there are gradations of nuclear threat. There's also the possibility of Iran giving Chisbalah a dirty bomb. You know, it doesn't have to be the ultimate, you know, Armageddon. And so there are so many ways in which Iran could existentially threaten Israel. And again, that's untenable. But you mentioned in passing something that I think is really worth pausing on. And that is that Arab countries in the region are hoping that Israel deals with a nuclear threat.

You know, we've seen Arab countries in the last few years moving closer to normalization with Israel. The Abraham Accords of 2020 created the first real dynamic of normalization between Israel and several Arab countries, Morocco and the Gulf states. And of course, Saudi Arabia has been sending very strong signals that it's interested in joining the peace process as well. And this conflict that the world calls the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has never just been about Palestinians and Israelis. It was always a regional conflict, as we talked about earlier. And it was a regional conflict in that it was a war between the Sunni world and the Jewish state. In the last years, that war is winding down. It's been replaced by a new regional conflict, which is the Shiite axis.

And the Sunni world is gradually aligning with the Jewish state. state. And you know, in Israel we joke that the Jewish state has become, you know, we've become a Sunni Jewish state. And we are part of this Sunni alliance against Iran. And what is driving the peace process between Israel and the Sunni world is shared fear of an imperial Iran. And so the Arab states know that if Israel weren't here, Iran would be overrunning one Sunni country after another. It already effectively controls at least four Arab countries, Syria, Lebanon, to some extent, Iraq, Libya, Yemen. And if you look at those countries, every one of them is a failed state. And whatever Iran touches, it destroys.

And the deep fear of Iran in the Arab world is that the strategic goal of Iran is to dominate the entire region, in which case the region would really become a basket case. And as strange as it is to say, the hope for the Sunni world or for those countries that are future-oriented, like the Gulf states, like the Saudis, and to, I would say, Egypt and Jordan as well. Israel and the military credibility of Israel against Iran is also their shield. And we've never been in a situation like this where the Arab world is turning to Israel for protection.

It creates tremendous opportunities for a realignment in the region. And I would also add that it creates an opportunity for eventually solving. the Palestinian tragedy. Because the Palestinian conflict is never going to be resolved bilaterally between Israel and the Palestinians alone, and it's never going to be solved in an international framework. The only way to solve this conflict is regionally, in the Middle East itself. And it has to be a peace initiative between Israel and Israel's Arab allies to try to figure out how do we end the occupation in a way that will not fatally endanger Israeli security.

And so I think that we have an opportunity here with this new Israeli Sunni relationship to rethink the context in which a Palestinian state can a new – a new – a – a demilitarized, neutralized Palestinian state could be created. Let's talk about another critical ally for Israel, the United States, that since October 7th, the Biden administration has pursued a seemingly a purposeful doctrine of, on one hand, supporting Israel and not unsubstantial ways in terms of missile defense, weapons to defend itself in Gaza and in Lebanon now. But they've also, up to this point this year, have had a kind of mantra of de-escalation

and I would say charitably kind of conflict avoidance, especially with Iran. And we saw that most clearly demonstrated after Iran's again, atrocious strike in in april a massive drone and ballistic missiles strike again repeated this week where israel seemingly was pressured directly by president biden to respond to that attack with a one could only describe as a kind of pinprick strike on a radar system near near netz i mean the the asymmetry uh was striking and some might argue that this second large-scale ballistic attack in a sense was the consequence of Israel not establishing a deterrent response to that first attack. So you'll see where do you think the Americans at?

Are you concerned that Israel could once again be kind of in the trap of the U.S. political election cycle and unable to assert credible deterrence probably when it's more needed than ever? So, yeah, look, I have my deep differences with the Biden administration, but at the same time, I'm enormously grateful to President Biden. And this administration for all of the ups and downs we've had over this last year has been an extraordinary ally for Israel. And if the Trudeau government was half the friend that the Biden administration has been, I would say, okay, I'm grateful for your friendship. And I'll leave it at that. So in terms of the administration's timidity in relation to Iran, you know, there's, you know, there's. there's a pattern here.

And it goes back to the Obama administration and the disastrous Iran deal, which really released hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions money to the regime. And we saw the regime invest that money in its terrorist proxies. But there's also another element here. And I do understand in the administration's concerns

in the sense that it's an election year in America. And the administration is trying to prevent the second Trump term. And so from their point of view, making sure that the Middle East doesn't blow up a month before the elections is a legitimate political goal. And the problem is that it's not, it can't be Israel's. We can't have that consideration. We need to prioritize our immediate strategic needs. And America is our closest friend, an ally, but even friends don't have identical agendas and interests. And sometimes our interests diver.

And this is one of those moments. I hope it won't create a profound rupture with the administration. It could. And I have to tell you, I'm willing personally to take that risk. If it means stopping Iran's nuclear program, I'm ready to take almost any risk, including that. As we wrap up, let's just for a moment talk about Bibi Netanyahu, because he'll be the you know, a key player in all of this. And I think you'll see it's fair to say that, you know, Bibi in many ways has, uh, in many things he did, does he has two sides that he presents,

one of which is this kind of staunch, uh, defender of Israel, uh, sworn enemy of Iran, but simultaneously, uh, politician and a political figure that seems at times very, uh, susceptible to, um, wanting to be, uh, liked and, and supported and valorized, not simply by Israelis, but by Americans and American political administrations, whether Democrat or Republican. To what extent, like is BB, in a sense, conflicted here? On one hand, this could be an opportunity.

He said he's dedicated his political career to confronting the Iran threat. That's rhetoric, but nonetheless, rhetoric that he has repeated. Yet, you know, it was as recently as a week ago, he was seemingly contemplating a 21-day ceasefire in Lebanon, again, on the kind of insistence or pressure of the U.S. administration, which just seems a bizarre kind of U.S. U-turn from, you know, the moment that Israel is in, the threats that it faces, and any kind of incredible strategy to deal with him? Well, the nasty little secret about Netanyahu is that in the past,

he's been mostly bluster. And it was on his watch that the worst security disaster in Israel's history happened. And that's not a coincidence because he allowed Hamas to grow on his watch for years. I won't get into the long list of grievances that I and many Israelis have against this man. I will say I give him grudging credit for the last few weeks. He's not the sole person responsible for this success, even though he would like people to believe that it's all him. He's very ungracious in sharing credit. He didn't thank his defense minister, Yoav Ghalant, for the extraordinary ways in which the defense system worked in the last few weeks.

He tried to take all the credit for himself, and at the same time, to deflect all the blame for October 7th onto others. So when there's credit to be claimed, he's always present. He's the first in line. But the issue that you're raising is that Netanyahu always preferred to make eloquent speeches about Iran in Congress and at the UN to actually stopping Iran. And I think that he now realizes that if Iran goes nuclear on his watch, if he doesn't stop Iran now, then he will go down. in Jewish history as one of the worst leaders we've ever had. Look, I think he's a contender for that title now. And even if he does stop Iran, he is not going to be the great savior that he thinks he imagines himself to be. He thinks he is the Jewish church him.

He is not. I was in London a couple days ago, and I passed the statue of Churchill. I looked at that statue and I said, you know, I said to myself, we're never going to build statues like this to Netanyahu. And nevertheless, he does have an opportunity to at least partly redeem his destroyed image and salvage something of his legacy by ensuring that Iran does not go nuclear. And as you put it, he really built so much of his career on stopping Iran. And all I can say to my prime minister is, Bibi, it's now or never. So the next few days are going to be very interesting. And what's your bet? What does your gut tell you?

Does he blink? I think he's going to do it. And I think his cabinet is pushing him in that direction, even if his natural tendency would be to once again hesitate. And I think the Army is saying, well, maybe this is it. Maybe this is the moment. So, yeah, my intuition tells me that we have better than even chances. We don't know how much pressure the Biden administration will put up on the government in the coming days.

But I hope we'll stand up to whatever pressure comes. Well, Yossi, thank you so much for spending time with us today. I know you've got New Year's celebrations to begin momentarily in a special year it is. And we've just been so fortunate again to be able to catch up with you, benefit from your sage analysis and insight. It's always a pleasure to speak with you. Thank you, Yosey. We'll do this all again soon.

Bye bye. That wraps up today's dialogue. I want to thank our guest, Yose Klein-Halevi. He certainly gave us a lot to think about. If you have questions or feedback on what you've just heard on this or any of our podcast, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. That's MUNK DebateswithanS.com. Thank you for lending your time and attention to our efforts to bring back the art of public debate and dialogue,

one conversation at a time. I'm your host and moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. The Monk debates are a project of the Aurea and Peter and Melanie Monk 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.