The Team House - Gaza, And The Path of Zionism w/ Dr. Einat Wilf | EYES ON PODCAST

Episode Date: November 14, 2024

Subscribe to the new EYES ON  YouTube channel.⬇️https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJytcQbSOEKLGyhNwkqpd3AToday we're speaking top Dr. Einat Wilf, a self described Feminist, Zionist, & Atheist. We speak about the situation in Gaza, Lebanon and the broader middle east.Support the show on Patreon:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseFind Dr. Einat Wilf here:⬇️https://www.wilf.org/English/https://x.com/einatwilf?lang=enFind Andy Milburn here:⬇️https://twitter.com/i/flow/login?redirect_after_login=%2Fandymilburn8https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmilburn2023https://amilburn.substack.com/https://www.amazon.com/When-Tempest-Gathers-Mogadishu-Operations#zionism#israel #hamas #gazaBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Hey everyone, Andy here. I just want to put in a quick plug for the new channel, Eyes On. Previously, we fell under Team House and we shared subscribers. And what we're doing here is branching off, still within the Team House franchise. But it is important that we build up Steam with our own subscription base. So please, cost you nothing. Click on the subscribe button. Thank you. Hello, everyone.

Welcome to another episode of Eyes On. and I'm going to jump right into it today because we have probably just one hour, much to the relief that much of our audience. But we have a guest that is, to use that dreadful cliche here by popular demand, Dr. Annette Wolfe, and I'm going to introduce her in a moment, but I just want to say that, you know, we did an episode or I did an episode. I'm laughing because I messed it up technically, but it came out okay in the end. with Jasmine El Gamal a couple of weeks ago and presented, you know, quite a strong argument on the

Palestinian side. And of course, many of my Israeli friends. And some of you in the audience said, hey, we'd really like to hear an Israeli present, you know, the view for their viewpoint, in a perhaps more coherent manner than we have tried to do before. And, and Dr. Annette Wilf, name came up. I had met her in February and so we knew that she would be a tremendous guest and we're overjoyed to have her on the show. So just very quickly, and that was a member. She's a prominent, she's known as a prominent thinker when it comes to Israel and foreign policy, but she's much more than a thinker. She's a practitioner. She was a member of the Israeli parliament from 2010 to 2013, chair of the Education Committee, but perhaps more relevant for us

a member of the influential foreign affairs and defense committee. She was born and raised in Israel. And when I say practitioner, I'm not kidding, she served as an intelligence officer with the famed unit 8200, which we have discussed on their show several times. And she was foreign policy advisor to Vice President Shimon Perez. And after that, a strategic consultant with McKinsey. She's got a BA from Harvard, an MBA from Enceed in France, which is a, it's known as the Business School of the World and a PhD from the University of Cambridge. And she was a Goldman visiting professor at Georgetown University. She's also a prominent author. She's written seven books that explore key issues in Israeli society.

One in published, most recently, she published a book called, we should all be Zionists, which brings together her essays from the past four years on Israel, Zionism and the path to peace. And sadly, Zionism has, you know, it's kind of, it has now this, I suppose, almost negative inference in the West. But I just want to remind our listeners that, you know, Zionism, for the purposes of what we're talking about here, simply means, you know, this is the Jewish people's right to our homeland in, in what is currently Israel. And she co-authored a book that I haven't read it all the way through.

I've sort of read excerpts from it. And it's an impressive book, The War of Return, how Western indulgence to the Palestinian dream has obstructed the path to peace, which has a really good discussion in particular of the Oslo Peace Accords from a different perspective than perhaps you have seen it before. And that was actually published. what I think several, it was four years ago, was Annette, back in 2020. So anyway, welcome, Annette.

And I would love to just begin by diving in on the firing of defense minister of Gallant on our election day. And, you know, this was more than just a disagreement between Galant and Netanyahu, I'm explaining this for our listeners. There had been differences in opinion between these two for a long period of time from Galant pushing for an immediate invasion of Lebanon right after the 7 October massacres, all the way through to Galant's opinion of what the end state was in Gaza. But I think there are wider implications. I don't know if you agree, but I'd love to hear your thoughts about this.

So thank you. I will say that my view on that has little to do with the military management of the war. Whatever criticism I have from October 7th on, not on the role of the military before or on that day, is that much of the failure of Israel is in the diplomatic level. in the messaging on issues that are not really so specifically military. But what I think is that defiring has to do with things that are not related to what you described. You describe things that are supposedly normal, you know, differences of view on the management of the war. But what we have are two things that unfortunately are petty. The first is that Netanyahu is trying to pass a draft dodging law for Israel's ultra-Orthodox population.

But the problem is that the vast majority of Israelis will have none of it. But his coalition partners, who are essential to his ability to remain in power, demand it. because they know, the ultra-to-Orthodox parties know that if they go to elections, and right now elections are slated for October 2026, but they know that if they go to elections and there is no draft-dodging bill that was passed, they will never get a draft-dodging bill because the people of Israel are in a different place. They understand that Israel has very, very different military needs. things that people were willing to let slide in the past. They're not willing to let slide now.

And in that sense, Gallant was much more responsive, even he was not enough, but he was much more responsive to the needs to begin to recruit ultra-Orthodox men and to prevent a draft dodging bill. So first, Netanyahu needs to pass the bill for the success of his coalition. I doubt he will be able to do it, but he's going to give it his all. And the second is Netanyahu is not known to keep people around him who are not fiercely loyal and who are more popular than him. And unfortunately, Gallant was enjoying greater popularity, and he was not fiercely loyal. And Netanyahu for quite some time now has been building a way of governing that is very much built on loyalty by people of low quality rather than, you know, the kind of the ideal of a team of rivals.

And now I would push back on one aspect of that, that the difference is, no, I mean, certainly that, yes, the domestic. issue of the ultra-orthodox population having exemption from the draft, I know is hugely emotional and important issue in Israel. But also the end state in Gaza or lack of end state was something that Galant referred to repeatedly, whether or not that was the reason for his firing, you know, even in his final comments, both to hostage families and in public were about Gaza. And so that kind of moves this on to, you know, what do you see the next? What are the options available to Israel? I know there are rumblings in the more liberal press in Israel about, you know,

moves, apparent moves for some kind of occupation force to be left behind, if nowhere else, you know, at least along the Philadelphia and the Netsirim, and then forgive me of mispronouncing the Netserim corridors. But what do you think does lie head and what do you think is the right option at this stage? So maybe here I'll go to what I think has been really the deepest mismanagement of the war, and that is not so much military. Israel, in my view, and this government have caved in, on four issues that have been essential to our core interest,

and they have essentially caved in. The first is, and this has to do with thinking about what to do in Gaza, the first is we agree to participate in the lie that Hamas does not represent the Palestinians. Unfortunately, it does. Hamas does not only represent the Palestinians, kind of more broadly, but it represents the Palestinians in the sense of the deepest ethos. The deepest ethos of what have come to call Palestinianism, the ideology and identity of the Palestinians, is the complete negation of Jewish sovereignty anywhere in the land, what they call

from the river to the sea. Unfortunately, to that worldview, there are no exceptions. And there's no difference between Hamas, between Fatah, the PA, there might be a difference of tactics, but there's no difference in goals. And you are not going to find, even when today you hear voices who are critical of Hamas in Gaza, they are critical because Hamas is now failed, but they're not critical of the goal. You might hear people in Gaza say that they hate Hamas, but they don't criticize the goal by which Hamas did October 7th, which is to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea in their view. So when President Biden was here after October 7th, we were deeply grateful. We thought we would be slaughtered from every direction. And he went on to talk about the great evils that were unleashed that day.

But then he said, but Hamas doesn't represent the Palestinians. Now, this would have been the moment for a better leader to say, thank you, President Biden for everything you're doing for us. But Unfortunately, Hamas does represent the Palestinians. And we'd love to know otherwise, but all evidence points to the fact that October 7th enjoyed huge popularity among Palestinians and their collaborators around the world. And if Hamas doesn't represent the Palestinians, then the burden of proof is on the Palestinians to show it. It's not an Israel to conduct a war based on a lie. Now, as soon as we agreed to that lie and to collaborate with it, everything that you build on a lie is going to be a mess. So I compare it to Roosevelt declaring in December 7, 1941, that he has no problem with the Japanese ideology of racial supremacist empire.

But America is going to war against the pilots and later the kamikazis. But that's it, that America basically is going to now go hunt after Japanese pilots. So this is what Israel agreed to do. We sent our soldiers to fight a war based on the law. And every soldier knows that law. Every soldier has gone to homes in Gaza. And it's clear that Gaza is one integrated, weaponized landscape where every home, every kindergarten, every mosque is part of the war. where weapons were stashed ahead of time.

It's all one thing. So once we agreed to that lie, we agreed to do something that is unprecedented and unparalleled, which is to supply and resupply our enemy while our enemy continues to fight us, while our enemy refuses to surrender, and while our enemy holds the hostages. This is something we should not have agreed to,

You know, some people say, oh, but there was pressure and America would have supplied us with weapons. I say, better to have received fewer bombs and to stand firm and to say, we will not resupply our enemy while it still fights us. You're talking about providing about the shipment of aid into Gaza itself when you say supplying the enemy, right? So I refuse to call it aid because it's not. we know that it is the resupply of our enemy. Well, it's aid to someone. That's what I meant. It is resupplying the enemy.

And we know that this is why Hamas remains in power. Hamas remains in power, despite Israel's military successes, because we have created this non-existent separation between Hamas and the population. We've declared war only on Hamas rather than on Gaza or on Palestinianism, like Nazism, like the ideology of no Jewish state. And to say that we are going to treat them as an enemy in war until they surrender. We're not going to make some bizarre differentiation between the Nazis and the Germans, between Hamas and the Palestinians. you don't make those differentiations when you are at war. And then the other two things where we surrendered is to agree to pretend that Qatar is a helpful

element in here rather than the very sinister player than they are. Qatar has been working 24-7 at preserving Hamas's rule over Gaza so far with great success. And Egypt, we agree to pretend that Egypt is not a double-faced player. in this region. For months, we pretended as if Gaza doesn't even have a border with Egypt. Egypt supplied Gaza with weapons. It was more than welcome to continue to supply them. It's certainly not incumbent on us from our border that was breached so brutally to resupply the enemy. This is something that no other country which was invaded has ever been demanded to do. So once we did those things, all the discussions about the day after make no sense because we need to step back from the law.

The day after discussions only make sense if you really think that the only problem was ever the 40,000 trained butchers of Hamas. But they're not. You know, we might kill all 40,000 trained butchers, but it's not going to matter. if we allow the entire structure of Gaza and Palestinianism and that ideology to remain. So I think the demand should be quite clear, pull and complete surrender, which means that certainly Hamas is a group. They can do it through Qatar, through the people in Doha, surrenders. The people of Gaza, on behalf of that.

surrender, make it clear that they understand that the ideology of Palestinianism, like that of Nazism, like that of Imperial Japan, is dead, that they can now pursue a constructive vision of living next to a Jewish state rather than from the river to the sea, that they understand that they are not refugees when they live in Gaza, and that they possess no such thing as a right of return into the sovereign state of Israel. This is the ideology that created October 7th. And I think this should be Israel's demand for a day after. Basically, unless this is done, unless there is a surrender, unless the ideology is declared dead, we cannot move forward. Yeah, I want to talk in a moment about, you know, how best to do that. But I do want to,

you know, I want to go back on, you know, no way. argument from me that Hamas is deeply, deeply entrenched, Hamas is ideology deeply entrenched in the Palestinian people. But I would argue, what else did Israel expect? You know, Israel controls the borders of Gaza, right? They right under their noses, Hamas, by the way, an elected government, and by right under their noses from 2007 when they came in, you know, they were elected. They made no secret, Well, they did from arguably from 2017 and onwards, but this has been going on for a while. And there was no attempt, no attempt to counter that ideology. No, you know, once the Palestinian Authority was thrown out, and of course the Palestinian Authority, I agree, has no credibility among the Palestinians.

Hamas was all they had. You know, and say what you like, Hamas was providing things for them. Administration, health care, some kind of social net. which the Israelis were not, even though, again, the Israelis controlled their border. From a, you know, I'm not, I'm not talking from an academic liberal standpoint. I'm talking as a professional soldier. That is the way to nurture a fierce counterinsurgency, and that is what Israel has done. So I, you know, yes, it's fine to say, hey, this is a lie and we need to do this now.

But if you don't accept the mistakes made in the past, how can you plan constructively for the future? And to get inside and change that ideology, I agree, is going to be extraordinary, an extraordinarily difficult task because Israel has let this run, just run its course. But what are the options? You know, you can't annihilate the whole people. I know there may be some who say that it is uni. example, but at some point in the future, Israel is going to have to deal with this problem. And that's a pragmatic point of view. I'm not arguing with you on a standpoint of ethics. I'm just, you know, if I say anything that's incorrect, let me know.

So Hamas represents the deepest Palestinian ideology that has been in existence for at least a century. To start from 2007, to start from 2017 makes no sense. The only difference was actually that Israel didn't control its borders. So this time they had greater ability to act on this ideology. But the ideology did not change. When I give my longer talk, and people are welcome to see,

it's both in the War of Return and on many videos, I go through how I believed that the Palestinians were a people who wanted nothing more than to have freedom and sovereignty in their own state, to realize again and again that when faced with clear and concrete opportunities to have their own state,

they always walked away from them and followed it up with violence. And this is before Hamas. This is with Arafat and Abu Mazen, supposedly the moderate ones. And then I go about my research and I give the quote. And it's great because it's the entire conflict in a sentence. The quote is from February, 1946. by Ernst Bevin, the British Foreign Minister after World War II. You know he was not a friend to the Jewish people, certainly not to those who wanted sovereignty.

And he needs to explain to the people of Britain why Britain failed to fulfill the terms of the mandate that it received unanimously from the League of Nations to help the Jews achieve sovereignty. It did not fail the Arabs. It created Transjordan. It created Iraqs. So the terms of those mandates were fulfilled. But the mandate for the Jews was not. not fulfilled. Britain failed and it needs to explain why. And he says the following. His Majesty's government is thus faced with an irreconcilable conflict. Now this is February 47. There's no occupation. There's no Gaza. There's no Hamas. There's no Arab refugees. There's no Nakhba. There's no state of Israel. There's no Bibi. So basically all the things that all the things that

presented as the causes of Palestinian grievances or violence, like you try to explain the causes, they don't exist yet. So there's no excuses. And already- No, I wasn't saying those of the root causes. I just want to make this clear. I'm just saying that you can't, in my opinion, you can't just ignore what's happened the last 20 years that arguably led- The only difference. So let me go with the quote, but the only difference is that in the last years, the Palestinians had territory, which they fully controlled. Israel did not control it. That was in many ways perhaps the problem, precisely because Israel did not have effective control on the territory, and they had billions of dollars flowing, releasing them from any responsibility.

That's what made it possible for them to carry out their ideology. But the ideology, as described by Bevan in February 47, was the following. He says the conflict is irreconcilable because in the land, there are Jews and Arabs. No one has yet called a Palestinian. He says because the Jews want to achieve sovereignty, the Jews want to state. And he says, for the Arabs, the top priority is to resist to the last establishment of Jewish sovereignty in any part of the land. He's basically saying, and these are the Arabs that will one day hijack the name Palestine and will be known as Palestinians. So he says those Arabs, the Palestinians, are more committed to the Jews not having a state in any part of the land than to having a state of themselves.

That has always been the ideology. And every Palestinian terrorist group for the last 70 years has operated on behalf of that ideology. Hamas is merely the most recent and most effective. And the reason that they've been the most effective has nothing to do with Israel and counterinsurgency. It has everything to do with the fact that contrary to these memes about the disappearing maps, this is the first time in the history of the Arabs of the land that they actually control territory. And rather than say wonderful, Gaza is sitting on a beautiful strip of beach. It's at the crossroads of two intersecting ancient train routes.

We're going to turn this into the pearl of the Mediterranean, the Singapore of the Middle East. What they do when they finally control territory, after Israel vacated it completely, after Israel is not in control of it, it's barely in control of its own borders. After Israel gets out, what the Palestinians proceed to do is to turn it very methodically and systematically into one of the most weaponized landscapes in human history where everything is connected from mosques to schools to kindergartens through a network of tunnels where weapons are stashed everywhere for the purpose of, in their view, liberating Palestine from the river to the sea. They never ever had a vision of turning Gaza into a sovereign place to live next to a Jewish state, because true to their ideology, it was more important for them, for the Jews not to have a state, than for them to have a state. So there hasn't been any radicalization here. It's the same ideology. The only thing here is that they had more capability. And here I agree with you. Israel allowed this in the sense to be built on our borders. We militarily relied on Iron Dome, essentially doing this, rather than being the military that we used to be in the 60s, which we knew that the only way to really defend Israel is to constantly go on the offensive.

That's the only difference that allowed Hamas to build the monstrosity of a weaponized land. When I talk about counter insurgency, obviously that's the last solution. Look, you know, I mean, my point is simply this. And I get it. Yes, anyone can reach back and find a politician, especially in British Parliament and someone is controversial with Bevin. And you can find voices from the other side. And you can quote them and say, well, this is, you know, what led to that.

Look, I'm not, I'm not. And there's certainly not a pro-Hamas argument by any means. I'm just saying, I'm just saying you bottle up the people when you control the borders. They are bottled up. No one can leave. All right. You take some responsibility, but you take some responsibility for what happens. No, they were not bottled up.

But none of that is true. They were not bottled up. When? They could come. Wait, so they can travel freely? They traveled to Egypt quite freely, even through Israel. They were not bottled up. They very much had every option to build Gaza.

and the reason they were so enthusiastic on October 7th is not because they broke free. Otherwise, they would have gone to the border with Egypt. No, what they did on October 7th is realize their vision that they have been building for for 76 years, a vision that they called return. And in that vision, you go to text from the 50s, the 60s, And by the way, you might not like Bevin, but every Palestinian supports what he says. You will actually, I challenge you to find Palestinians, I know three, who say clearly that they accept that the Jewish people as a people have the equal right. I'm not greedy, not exclusive, not superior, have the equal right to self-determination,

their ancestral homeland, that their goal is merely to build a Palestinian state next to a Jewish state, and that they understand that it means that when living in Gaza and the West Bank, they are not Palestine refugees, and that they possess no such thing as a right of return into the state of Israel. You are more than welcome to disprove me, but unfortunately, and I've been looking for other voices for two decades. I have found three, three Palestinians who are willing to say that they want to live next to a Jewish state with all the implications of no return, no perpetual refugeehood. In Gaza, they were able to go through Egypt. We protected our borders, clearly not enough. We also allowed Palestinians to come and work. They were not bottled up. There were many, many options. even to tell them, finally just stop throwing rockets on us.

They launched rockets before anything, before Israel left Gaza, after Israel left Gaza. At one point, one has to acknowledge the consistency of Palestinian ideology. And the only difference is that in Gaza, they had the territory, the time, the billions of flowing dollars, and the Israeli kind of doing this. that allowed them to build this weaponized integrated landscape to liberate Palestine. But they did it in the name of their vision of return, not in the name of getting out of Gaza, that they could do. And they always, always had the choice to just decide to live next to a Jewish state. Unfortunately, it was never their vision.

I wouldn't push back on you at all about the ideology. My point is simply this. Who was trying to change that ideology? Okay. So, no, let me finish. So, yes, I get it. You know, every time rockets were fired into Israel, there were reprisals, there were raids, but there was no attempt at any time by Israelis to combine, who knows,

maybe humanitarian support with a different ideology. Again, I'm not talking from ignorance. I'm a professional soldier. I'm not an academic. But when we went after the Islamic State, we went after al-Qaeda in Iraq, in Iraq, all right? And those were, they weren't, you know, for the most part, not foreigners that we were fighting. A lot of them were the locals, despite what people may think. And it was deeply ingrained in them to hate us, all right?

We didn't just go around killing them. We didn't just resort to military means. You know, there were many other things that we did, too. And that seems to have just not been on, you know, in the Israel. male's playbooks. So yes, of course, the ideology is firmly embedded because you've had them taught the same thing in the schools, right, from birth. And what do they see of Israelis? All they see are soldiers, right? There is nothing. There's nothing to suggest that they can live side by side with Israelis because no one has projected that to them. I mean, I've heard these, I've heard

your arguments. Yes, they're powerful arguments. I understand that. And I'm not, I'm not saying this, you know, a lot of this is we counter, you know, what our guests are saying. But I do absolutely believe that there is much more that the Israelis should take responsibility for in creating what has happened. Yes, you've got a dreadful problem on your doorstep right now. You do have Palestine. And I think it's going to just be infinitely worse. Now there are 40-something thousand dead of them. It doesn't matter how many of them with civilians or Hamas, I know in Israeli eyes.

But the point is, that isn't going to solve the problem. When are we going to see a more soft power side of Israel? Because soft power is, it's all part of this to prevent having to fight a counter insurgency. And we haven't seen that at all in the last, well, I mean, since the birth of Israel. Yes, we can go back and quote people from 1947 on both sides. We can blame the British because that is, after all, what everyone does, right? No, it's not going to get you anywhere now. What I'm saying, I'm not using a quote from February 47.

I'm saying that that analysis has been the best explainer of how the sides have behaved to the present. You actually will not find evidence to the contrary. So I'm not talking about quoting. You will not actually find a quote on the other side. you will not find Arab Palestinian leaders saying we accept the equal right of the Jewish people to self-determination in their land. But I agree with you that what Israel should have done much, much sooner is to make it clear that the entire Palestinian ideology is the problem, that within the ideology there's no difference between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. There's merely a difference of means, but not of goals. I would like to have a prime minister who wakes up every morning and says,

Good morning. I'd like to mention to the world that the day that the Palestinians end their century-long war against the Zionism, the day that they develop a constructive vision of wanting to live next to a Jewish state, rather than the destructive vision that they've had for the last century, of ensuring that there's no Jewish state, the day that they have a constructive vision of living next to us, the day that they understand that this means that they're not multiple generation refugees and that they are not, possess no such thing as a right of return,

they will find that we were never the problems. We are always willing to live side by side. I said it, Israel, and you will go back, Israel always agreed to a two-state solution provided one of the two is for the Jewish people. And the Arabs have always rejected every two-state solution if one of the two is for the Jewish people. That's the problem we face. And I agree with you, the fact that I'm even arguing and that what I'm saying is not the most obvious thing, because, again, you will not find Palestinians to disprove it.

I think that our government has been, and governments for years, have been criminally delinquent in not pointing it out. Because on this issue, the Palestinians are our best allies because to their credit, on this issue, they never lie. They lie in everything else, Gaza open air prison, apartheid, they line everything else. Once one lie is shown, then they replace it with another line. But on this issue, that their very identity and ideology is about the negation of Jewish sovereignty in any part of the land, they will not lie. You sometimes need to ask the question specifically. You need to ensure that they understand that they're not refugees, that they not possess a right of return. Those are great litmus tests to know that.

But they do not lie. And I think if we had leaders who constantly called them out. And why do I say every day? Because the international community has the memory of a goldfish. Israel offered again and again and again, statehood to Palestinians for them to walk away and follow it up with violence. This has been erased from memory. It's as if Israel never tried.

So this is why, knowing that the international community has the memory of a goldfish, the fact that people forget that Hamas was constantly offered parameters that told them, they didn't even ask them to let go of the ideology of no Jewish state. They had to agree to no longer use weapons and all that against Israel across its borders, and even that they refuse to do. So people forget all that. Everything that Israel tries to do to get to peace is erasing. for memory. Palestinians are constantly justified. So I agree with you. In order to fight that,

we needed to call it out every day. And then we needed to start campaigning to remove the fuel that fuels this ideology. You're talking about soft power. But with all due respect, before soft power, you need to defeat the enemy. Before America used soft power in Japan and Germany, there was clear surrender, it was clear who the victor was, and it was clear who lost. One of the reasons we're in this mess

is that every time that Palestinians lose and every time their destructive ideology leads one more time to destruction, every time that they actually could have had a reckoning with how destructive their ideology was. And finally, to use a book about Japan post-World War II, embrace defeat, every time they were saved by the West to tell them, no, you don't need to accept that you were defeated. So before we can use any soft power, we need to first ensure that the Palestinians, understand, deeply understand, that insofar that their goal in the last century has been first to

undo and then to prevent and then to undo the existence of a Jewish state, they have been defeated. They need to accept that. You know, we've just marked armistice days, November 11th. Because it was an armistice, we were in a mess. and what did the Allies learn as a result of the armistice, when they went to World War II after Germany claimed that it wasn't clear that they really lost, their lesson for World War II is that there should be complete clarity this time about who won and who lost. And from that clarity, from that unconditional surrender, then you can use soft power to turn Germany and Japan into pillars of world peace.

The same. the Palestinians finally need to accept their defeat in 1948, which means, for example, UNRWA shouldn't exist. They're not refugees. There are no such thing as a right of return. And I agree, Israel should have been much more forceful on exposing their ideology, on going on a global campaign so that billions do not fuel that ideology, and then hopefully get Arabs and Muslims. who are no longer obsessed with destroying the Jewish state to help Palestinians also finally recover from this obsession with no Jewish state. Well, first, and I want to move on in a moment to talk about the future, but you mistake

me when I, no, I think you are a mistake when you talk about soft power, first used hard power, then soft power in that. And the example of the Second World War, it's neat, but it's totally irrelevant. You know, we've been waging, you call it where you will, counter insurgency. I mean, 31 years in my career, and we always use soft power in conjunction with hard power in that, because that was the most effective.

And we, you know, you name it from a bad example, right, with initial landings and Mogad issue, we'll be certainly messed up. And don't get me wrong, I've been witnessed to many, many, many dreadful mistakes that we've made. But one thing that we've done very well is understanding that. And I, listen, it's a theta compi. We are where we are. And we're talking about, you know, we have a, absolutely a Palestinian population, whether you call them radicalized, whether you call them

entrenched in its viewpoint. But I would argue they had no option than Hamas. But looking ahead now, what other option did they have? What other option was to choose. What practical option? practical option has always been to say we want to live next to a Jewish state. How do they do that? Who represents them to say that? That is my point. Anyone. I mean, the Palestinian Authority. No, but the Palestinian authorities doesn't say that either because the Palestinian ideology is to negate Jewish sovereignty. And who nurtured that ideology? They have never been a different people.

You can never have any other leader, but you're saying what choice they have. Yes, they had the choice not to be obsessed with not having Jews live as a sovereign people next to them. What other information were they getting? That's my point. What other information? What other information was seeping through their education system or what they saw day to day in their interactions with the Israelis? Oh, I agree with you. For the last century and even before that, they have a view that the role of the Jew is to be subservient, that the role of the Jews to be inferior. No, no, no, that's not what I'm saying. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not talking about anything about.

That's at the source of their opposition to Jewish sovereignty. And where are they getting that? And who's giving them a counter argument? That's my point. Oh, every day there's a counter argument. From where? From Israel? You want to see the choice? from themselves. But the counter argument comes only when you are defeated, only when you finally have a chance for reckoning. But I want to show you something with this constant. So you're saying,

okay, so this had to happen. We had to let this happen and idealism build in their schools for two decades. No, no. I'm only saying that in order to defeat them. And now we roll in. soft power. No, no. I'm saying part of defeating what does the honor of schools are at the original sin of basically telling the Arabs that they did not lose the war of 1948. And basically the entire education system for decades, not just in Gaza, everywhere, has been built around this idea that they were not defeated, that they were. will one day win and there will be no Jewish state. And that's what they hear every day in the schools.

Now, they could have decided that that's not who they are. It is actually a choice. How do they decide? I mean, that's my point. And I think, look, I think, you know, we've reached kind of an infarce here. They wouldn't agree to disagree, but push ahead to what happens now. and I'm going to do some west planning for our audience. You know, possibly four options, right?

None of them palatable. Hamas has been decapitated. Does Israel pull the IDF out completely? Okay, probably the worst way for it, some would argue. Return of the Palestinian Authority. Again, impractical. You know, no one, I think someone said, no one's going to want to ride in on the back of an Israeli tank.

and aside from the fact that Palestinian authorities already been discredited, they're regarded as corrupt. There's another option that looks like Israel might be preparing for, and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, is a prolonged occupation of Gaza

like the one that took place from 1967 to 2005. But that comes with its own burden, of course, one of which is in continuous problems. problems. And the answer, you know, the solution, it doesn't just lie in security. This has been my whole point from the start. You've got 40,000 people, Hamas people, right? Now they've been

high for their ideological loyalty to Mars, but they are running, they have been running, the enclave. Who replaces them? All right, we'd learned some hard lessons on this about debuffification. I don't see any plan for that. And I suppose the first, fourth option is perhaps the most palatable, which would be to cobble together some sort of alternate administration composed of local notables, working closely with, you know, with Israel and Egypt. But you see what I'm saying, that exactly for the reasons that you just outlined, the problem is it seems almost insoluble. So I'd be interested to hear what your way ahead with reference to Gaza, what your recommendation would be.

So again, I think the whole discussion of who is unimportant compared to what, which means the following. Again, we could kill all 40,000 trained Hamas butchers, and they will be immediately replaced because they merely operated on behalf of Palestinianism. So Israel needs to first of all say that as far as Israel is concerned, the war ends, and the war is not the war in Gaza. Gaza is merely the current arena in the century-long war that the Arabs have been waging against Jewish sovereignty in any part of the land. So Israel needs to say, we should have said it on October 7th, this ends here. the war, the Arab-Palestinian war against Jewish sovereignty is the war that has to come to an end. Until then, the options are we will protect our borders and the borders will be closed completely.

We will not supply, not fuel, not electricity, not water. All of Gaza is enemy territory. we will go in and go out to ensure they can never rebuild. But until they surrender, then it is a state of war. We might go in, we might go out. But we are in a constant state of war until they surrender and they surrender the ideology. That I think is what needs to be done. Are you talking from Hamas leadership in Qatar?

surrender? Who can surrender on behalf of the Palestinians? As far as I'm concerned, anyone, Abu Mazen, the leadership in Qatar, Sinwar's brother, anyone can surrender on behalf of the Palestinians, as long as they say clearly, we're surrendering, we are letting go of the ideology of from the river to the sea. We understand that we're not refugees and that we possess no right of return. until then it is a state of war and Israel needs to be more on the offensive in how it conducted security. We go in, we go out, we certainly do not supply Gaza.

There is no day after. There is no reconstruction until the ideology dies. When the ideology dies, then you can talk about sending billions again, but we are certainly not responsible. Now, I know there is the other option of a military occupation of Gaza. If we do that, the problem with Israel over the decades is that it tried to do occupation on the cheap. Here, I will share your criticism. We did not use our presence, our military presence in the West Bank and Gaza to kill the Palestinianist ideology. We just let it continue faster.

And we allowed the honor schools to continue operating. We allowed the billions to continue to flow. We allowed this sham that there's still refugees to continue to exist. If there is an occupation, again, like the occupation of Germany and Japan, it has to follow a surrender. Because once there's a surrender, then we're responsible. But if there's no surrender, then it's war. if they surrender, then we can talk about the options. If Israel does an occupation, sure, but let it be an active occupation, like the one MacArthur

had in Japan, the one where the books are rewritten, where the entire structure of society is redone, where there is complete re-education. Considerable reconstruction efforts and millions and millions of dollars poured into the Japanese economy. My point is that there was a soft side to this that Israel has shown no willingness to do. After they unconditionally surrendered, not a minute before. I know we're going back to the Second World War, but that's my point that there was, you know, it was the United States that did this, right? But after it was a country that dropped the atomic bomb that we constructed. I'm all in favor after surrender, not before. Yeah. And I, I, I, I,

I mean, I want to move on to Lebanon. I would challenge the practicality of asking an organization like Hamas to surrender. It's like us asking al-Qaeda to surrender. We know that it's never going to happen. So we work on killing the ideology in other ways, undermining it, oftening an alternative, while being absolutely ruthless with al-Qaeda itself. And that has worked pretty well for us. and it worked pretty well for the Islamic State.

That's all I'm saying is that there are recent examples, more recent examples than the Second World War to look at when you talk about dealing with ideology. But I want to move on to Lebanon, because I know we're running out of time. And look, militarily, Israel can absolutely, you know, has accomplished much, and especially in Lebanon, where Hezbollah is on the ropes,

probably not down and out forever. But there are concerns now, I mean, concerns probably from my friends within the IDF too about what comes now. You know, there is, it seems as though that Lebanon is on the cusp of opportunity, right? I mean, Hizbollah has been a bolsterer around the Lebanese government. The laugh is perhaps not as incompetent as people think, having, you know, work with them personally, but not yet in a position to take over. And, you know, Unifil, again, has been powerless to enforce 1701. So what will turn it?

What way ahead you see in Lebanon that will prevent because we're taking hold again? The same principle. We are at war with Lebanon, even if we decide to temporarily retreat. But we are in a state of war until Lebanon, signs a full and complete peace agreement. I think we should be done with any ceasefires, with any useless UN resolutions. For me, again, the tragedy of the last decades is a tragedy of ceasefires. We need to end the string of ceasefires. We need to end the string of useless UN resolutions. And we need to make it clear. Israel has no territorial dispute with Lebanon.

Lebanon can fully sign a peace agreement with Israel. That should be the declared goal. Nothing else. And until then, it's a state of war. We'll go in, we'll go out. Until we know that there is absolutely no risk, we will act militarily. But we're more than happy to sign a full and complete peace agreement. Absolutely no half measures anymore.

And would Israel, do you think, or should Israel, then back the Lebanese institutions and ensuring that Hezbollah does not come back? Not our job. Lebanon should be a sovereign country. One of the biggest problems is that only when it comes to Israel, people play this like sovereign, non-sovereign thing. Like Lebanon gets to basically avoid all responsibility for the fact that it unprovoked, attacked Israel in breach of every UN resolution that an unprovoked attack on Israel and everyone's like, oh, it's Hezbollah, but it's Lebanon. Can I just say something? When you say not our job, I think you're thinking that I'm saying this from an ethical, bleeding heart standpoint. I'm not. I'm saying, you can say it's not your

job all the time. Well, guess what? You're going to be facing the same problem, just like you did, have been from 1982, 20 years from now, 40 years from now. This is not our problem. Hasn't work for Israel because it is your problem and it will continue to be your problem and the United States gets broad down to try and help. How exactly is the sovereignty of Lebanon is the fact that Lebanon is not a sovereign state? Listen, we can talk about the sovereignty of Lebanon, but we all know Lebanese institutions are on the ropes. Who's going to enforce 1701? There's not going to be anymore 1701. We're done with that. Okay. Who is it's useless. Who's going to prevent Hezbollah coming back? Us because we're going to be in a state.

of war. You're relying on the United States to support. No, us, us, Israel, not us US, us Israel. By backing Lebanese institutions? No, but by going into Lebanon, no, by going and continuing to mow the grass over and over and over again, as you've done in 1982, because that's worked so well for Israel, right? No. You see what I'm saying? There's got to be something more than whack-a-mole, right, in Israel's future. Oh, we did. Okay, you think we did Wackamo. We didn't do Wackamol. We actually allowed all of this to be built on our borders while relying on completely useless UN resolutions. So there's a limit to what can be expected from us. We need to take care of our country, of our borders, of our people, of our sovereignty.

And we need to have clarity about what's going on. So I am recommending to, have more clarity by ending this notion of ceasefires, of useless UN resolutions, of UN forces. I think UNIFIL should go. And Israel will go in and out of Lebanon until they agree to sign a full and complete peace agreement. We have no territorial dispute with them. But we need to change our entire defense posture. From this, which is what we've been doing for the last few decades, and especially since Iron Dome, to what we were in the 50s and 60s, a country that took initiative to its defense by initiating things, by going on the offensive. And that's how we defended our country. And that's how we had our greatest victories. So, yes, we are surrounded by a ratio of 60 to 1, 100 to 1, by Arabs and Muslims.

this is not like in the other part of the world like for America. It's at our doorstep. They're all around us. Despite some wonderful developments in the Arab and Muslim world, by and large, they're still devoted very much to the non-existence of a Jewish state. So it is more incumbent on them to really decide that they're letting go of that ideology. We have no territorial dispute with Lebanon. We would be thrilled to some.

a peace agreement. And until then, it will be a state of war. And we will take whatever offensive actions are necessary to prevent a build-up on our border. And just very quick, I know we're coming to close. But what do you hope to see from the U.S. elections? I'm thinking, you know, feel free to pull Iran into this, too, as far as, you know, it seems now to me that the door is well. wide open. And I'm not for a to remove Iran's nuclear capability, I mean, which is frankly

something no one in the Western world. No one wants to see Iran having a nuclear capability. Do you see anything stopping Israel from doing that? I don't have enough. I don't have enough information on the specific capabilities and what Israel can do to Iran's nuclear capabilities. I'll say two things on, first one on Iran and one in the administration. On Iran, the prism that I use is the one of who supported Palestinianism for the last century. Because Palestinianism has always been devoted to no Jewish state, it enjoyed for the last century the support of every anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist power in history. In the 30s and 40s, it was the Nazis, and then in the 40s, 50s and 60s it

was the pan-Arabists and then it was the Soviets and after a short lull of the end of history, it became Iran. The good news in all of this is that I can say with a fairly high level of confidence that the Mala and Ayatollah regime will find itself in the same dustbin of history as the Nazis, the Pan-Arabists and the Soviets. And it's not some mystical argument. It's a simple sociological argument. Countries and societies that become obsessed with the Jews in one way or another always end up collapsing because rather than solve their own problems, they're always talking about conspiracies and who to blame. I think it would be great if the Mala and Ayatollah regime will be defeated like the Soviet Union in a cold rather than a

hot war. I'm sure there's a lot of ways to bring it about, but at the end of the day, I know everyone says, no, no, we don't want to talk about the regime. At the end of the day, the path to peace and a lot of other things in the Middle East will happen when that regime will fall, and it will fall. I just hope that the damage that they do to Israel and the Jewish people and the world, like the ones that the Nazis and Pan-Arabists and Soviets did, will be contained and limited before they fall. What I would love the new U.S. administration to do, is in many ways to continue on the path of what it did between 2016 and 2020. In many ways, its policies at the time were everything that needed to be done, because in a variety of ways, they essentially sent the message to the Palestinians and some Arabs

that they need to embrace the defeat of 48 and 67. How did they do that? Defunding UNRWA, closing the offices in the PLO, defunding various elements in the Palestinian. authority and generally telling them enough is enough. You no longer have a veto on U.S. foreign policy. They offer them a vision of statehood and sovereignty and prosperity to which, true to form, they said no, no and a thousand times no. But I think if the American administration would actually give a speech, they want to bring the war to an end. I think that's wonderful.

I think the quickest way to bring the war to an end is by using language of victory and defeat. I would love for the American president to give a speech that says, look, dear Palestinians, given that in the last century you pursued the destructive ideology of no Jewish state, you have lost. Accept it. Embrace it. You can have a constructive vision of living next to a Jewish state, but not instead of it. We are not only defunding UNRWA. We are going to ensure that all our allies no longer support it. We are going to do everything to ensure that you understand that you are not. Are you going to provide anything in its place, though?

There's no need to provide. The Palestinians are a perfectly capable people. They are currently the teachers themselves. The only question is who pays them. Once you understand that UNR is a purely Palestinian organization, defunding UNRWA only raises the question. It's not some Swedes and Norwegians who are currently teachers. It's the Gazans. It's the people in Ramallah.

They're all Palestinians. So the only question is who pays their salary. And I want to introduce the radical revolutionary and original idea of how to pay teacher salaries. They can run an economy, which we know they did. Hamas had a massive economy. They can collect taxes. We know, for example, that Hamas collected taxes. The Palestinian Authority collects taxes. And then they can use these taxes to pay teacher salaries. What replaces, it is time to hold the Palestinians responsible. There is a term in psychology called learned helplessness. The West has indulged, and so many has indulged them in this learned helplessness.

If we've learned anything on October 7th is that they are not some charity basket case. They are an incredibly capable people. October 7th required years of planning, massive investment in infrastructure, strategy, vision, a perverted vision, but vision. These are not incapable people. They are people with tremendous capabilities and awful, awful priorities. So the message they need to hear loud and clear is change your priorities from destroying the Jewish state to living next to it. And you will see sovereignty, prosperity. But as long as you pursue your destructive ideology, we are not your friends.

That's the only thing that can really work. It led to tremendous achievements between 2016 and 2020. And I sincerely hope that this is the path they'll pursue. And then I know we've come to an end. I want to thank you very much for, I think just a great, in a great discussion. I'm going to turn over to you then for closing comments. Yeah.

Any and all, thank you again. Yeah, thanks, Annette. We're going to throw all the links for Annette stuff, like her books and stuff like that. If you have a podcast or anything, send it over, and I'll put it all in the links below in the show description. Of course, Andy's. Look, when the tempest gathers, all his links are also in the description.

And don't forget to support the show. Patreon.com slash the team house. Yes, please do subscribe. Everyone, Annette, thank you. Thank you so much. And all the best. Take care. You too.