TRIGGERnometry - Ex-Israeli Prime Minister on Gaza 'Genocide', Netanyahu and The Future of Israel - Naftali Bennett

Episode Date: September 24, 2025

Naftali Bennett is an Israeli politician, entrepreneur, and former Prime Minister (2021–2022), known for his strong security stance and role in forming Israel’s unity government. Triggernometry is proudly independent. Thanks to the sponsors below for making that possible: - GiveSendGo - the free speech crowdfunding platform http://givesendgo.com/triggerpod. - Augusta Precious Metals: Protect Your Retirement with Physical Gold. Rated #1. Click to learn more: https://bit.ly/triggergold - Cape - America's privacy-first mobile carrier. Click https://cape.co/trigger - Promo Code: TRIGGER33 for 33% off Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Substack! https://triggernometry.substack.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Shop Merch here - https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media: https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry: Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. 00:00 - Introduction 01:43 - Addressing Recent Events 04:16 - This War Should Have Been Over In Six Months 12:15 - How Much Of This Is To Do With Politics And How Much Is Religion? 16:22 - Explaining Why Palestine Shouldn't Be Its Own State 27:10 - Do The People In Gaza Support Hamas Or Are They Innocent? 37:09 - Radicalisation And Increased Anti-Semitism Worldwide The Longer The War Goes On 46:03 - Why Is Israel So Important To America, The UK And The West In General? 55:33 - When This War Ends Is There A Possibility Of Lasting Peace? 01:03:53 - How Likely Is It Now That Israel Will Get The Hostages Back? 01:07:44 - What's The One Thing We're Not Talking About That We Really Should Be? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Many Israelis feel that the current leadership is divisive and polarizing. Politically, it's an astute move because it works, but it's detrimental to the country. Why do they hate you so much? When you read the Hamas Charter, it says very explicitly. It's not about the nation of Palestinians versus Israel. It's about Islam versus the West. When you say you don't believe in a Palestinian state, it's a lot of people. people, that will sound really, really awful and worrying.

They had a shot. They had a Palestinian state in every way possible. And they chose to turn it into October 7th. So it's going to be a lot of people in the U.S. and the UK all over the world who were going, why is more and more of my tax dollars being spent to support Israel? We are the ones who are blocking this huge flood of radical Islam. Relax, relax. This is not an ad. If you're not a fan of ads but love Trigonometry, join the thousands of Trigonometry members who get extended interviews,

no ads, early access, and the ability to submit their own questions for upcoming guests. Sign up now at Triggerpod.com.com.com. Or click the link in the description of this episode. Nostale-Bennett, welcome to Trigonometry. Great to be here. I like you guys. We appreciate that. Thank you very much. It's great to have you on. We wanted to have a very long and substantive conversation, which we will.

We booked this interview a while ago. In the meantime, though, I have to, as you're a former Prime Minister of Israel, military combat veteran as well. I have to get you to address some things that have happened over the weekend as we record this, which is a number of European countries now have recognized the Palestinian stay. And also the number of organizations now that have called what Israel is doing genocide. in Gaza is keeps it seems growing. What is your immediate response to those two developments? Well, obviously, it's not good developments for Israel. I mean, we we see that in many parts of the world, we are being condemned and there's a degree of more isolation. It's not a positive

development, but I need to say and be clear. First of all, the recognition of a Palestinian state I believe that to a great degree it has to do with domestic politics in the states that actually made this decision, a growing portion of Islamistic minorities that are influencing domestic politics. I also believe that it has little implication on ground. Nothing's going to change tomorrow after this declaration. On ground, we are still fighting Hamas. We're still trying to build a good country here in Israel to defend ourselves, to allow the Palestinians to lead their own lives as much as possible in Judean Samaria. So it doesn't have an actual influence on ground because there isn't a Palestinian state.

A state is defined by clear borders which don't exist, effective control, which doesn't exist, security responsibility which doesn't exist. So the declarations don't create a state, neither do they by international law. But clearly, Israel is in a very big uphill battle. I believe that the best thing we can do is bring a rapid end to the war. I think we should have won this war within half a year.

It shouldn't be dragging on so long. bring the hostages home and open a new page for Israel. Well, you are, I mentioned your former prime minister. Many people also believe you're a potential future prime minister of Israel. I'm sure you would be keen on that eventuality. And you've been quite critical of the Netanyahu government, the way it's prosecuted this war. Lots of questions and what you've just talked about there. When you say this should have been one in six months, I mean, I think lots of people would

agree, but how would that even have been possible? Well, I think for many reasons, primarily a degree of incompetence, this has been dragged on way too long and perhaps other considerations. At the end of the day... Sorry, sorry, what do you mean other considerations? Yeah, look, because I have a habit on international media, I don't criticize my own government too much. and I don't want to open everything up. But yeah, it's no secret. I'm very critical of this government.

I think there's a lot of domestic politics that takes presidents sometimes on decision-making. And that's not a good thing. I think there's way too many statements and words that should not have been said by ministers in this government. and in the world, people take those words seriously. We in Israel know that it's just politicking, but all of this then closes on us and ties our hands in fighting a very just war because all Israelis agree on the justification

and the need to bring about the removal of Hamas. There's no debate within Israel and all Israelis agree that we need to bring the hostages home long ago. And those are the two objectives of the war. So no one in Israel debates that. But when people, ministers and the government come up with preposterous statements, and then we all, I have to go on CNN and BBC to clean up, and then the world becomes much more suspicious of Israel

because of ministers in the cabinet, this is a bad thing. And this extremism rhetoric is not serving Israel well at all. It's not what Israel is about. Well, you're talking about the comments from people like Ben Gavir and Smotridge, but what you also seem to suggest, and look, I'm not here trying to get you to criticize your government more than you particularly want to. I just think we're interested in getting to the truth of this. So when you say this war could have been persecuted quicker and more effectively,

it's a lot of people in the West have alluded to the idea that Prime Minister Netanyahu wants the war to keep going in order to delay various, you know, investigative activities against him, finding out what the failings of October the 7th were to prolong his time and power. Is that what you're saying? I don't want to get into that. I, you know, we have a very good military. We have people fighting on ground. I want to hope that that is not the case. And, you know, we all support the two objectives of the war. Let's talk very, very quickly about the Smotrick comments, which you have alluded to. You know, those are very, very serious, because as you have said to yourself, it damages

Israel's reputation abroad, but also it makes it far more challenging for the IDF. Because if you have someone like Smotricks saying that they things that, you know, they could be interpreted as genocidal, then people are less likely to want to leave Gaza city. You know, I agree. I think the words matter. And I think I want to be very clear.

There is no genocidal policy of the government or of the people in Israel. The vast majority of Israelis don't want war, but, you know, don't want war, but understand that war is necessary, so we don't have another such a horrific attack as we had on October 7th. We didn't choose October 7th to happen,

and we all woke up on that horrendous morning with 1,200 Israelis gradually, the news coming through and trickling through that are being massacred in our own country, which is something that was beyond imagination. We were all surprised in such a profound way that we couldn't even grasp that it's happening as it was happening. Even I thought it's a much smaller thing. And as the news trickled through, we understood what we're going through. All Israelis agree that we need to remove Hamas. And, you know, there's no secret that in Israel there's heated debate.

And there is a majority of Israelis that believe that we need new leadership. And so why is that? Why do they believe that they need new leadership? Well, it's more complex than just the October 7th attack. I believe that many Israelis feel that the current leadership is divisive and polarizing and uses polarization as a political vehicle to cement the political base. Politically, it's an astute move because it works, but it's detrimental to the country. The Jewish nation, the current state of Israel is the third instance that we have a sovereign and independent united commonwealth of Jews in the land of Israel. We had one roughly 3,000 years ago. It went on for 80 years before it divided into two kingdoms.

then about 500 years later, we had another Jewish state, what's called the Second Temple, and it went on for 75, 76 years, as a sovereign and united state. We had ministries, we had taxes, man, we had taxes, we always have taxes. But it also split and divided because of a domestic civil war. And now it's our third instance. The Jewish state right now is in its 77th year. The Jewish people have never passed the eighth decade threshold in our state, and man, we're determined this time to keep our country for good. So Israel has two challenges, the external one versus our enemies,

and, you know, get it, they want to annihilate us, but we also need to keep Israel united. And I think much of the reason that people are unhappy with the current leadership is they feel that on the second one, well, clearly the leadership failed on the first one with the October 7th attack. This should not have happened, the worst attack in Israel's history and Jewish history since the Shoa, since the Holocaust. But also the second one is very vivid. and we in Israel have no luxury for civil strife. To a great degree, the year preceding the October 7th attack, year 2023 was a horrible year for Israel. Even forget about the attack.

I'm talking about the judicial reform. We were on the brink of civil war. Our immune system got weakened and weakened, our national immune system. our enemies saw that we are weakened, and bam, they attacked. I believe, to a great degree, that this would not have happened, or the likelihood is much lower if we were strong, cohesive, united from within. Naftali, how much of this is political, how much of this is religious? How much of this is different factions within Judaism,

simply not having different interpretations of the Holy Text, not seeing eye to eye, and how much of this is to do with left versus right in the traditional sense? That's a wonderful question. I would say that much of it, most of it, is actually artificial polarization politically, because I've coined a term in Israel called the 70-70 rule. And when I became prime minister, I said that 70% of Israelis agree, on 70% of the issues. And we disagree mainly on religion and state,

the Palestinian conflict and the judicial issue. But most of life is composed by living, by taking your kids to kindergarten in the morning and having a good job and economy and transportation and security, et cetera, et cetera. And the actual, what's unique in Israel compared to other countries is that the polarization is not about issues so much, because most Israelis would agree that we want a Jewish state, but we're against coercive religious laws. Almost all Israelis agree. We all want our Jewish identity, but we don't want laws that force us to do anything. Even on the judicial issue, most Israelis would agree. We want a strong judicial system, but one that allows the government to, you know, affect its policy.

implement its policy. And even on the Palestinian issue, there's a lot of agreement now that even those who believe that one day there ought to be a Palestinian state, most Israelis today believe that certainly in the near future, it's not in the cards. I'm against the Palestinian state. So the interesting part is there's no real debate on the issues. And it's very artificial and it's about identity politics. It's a lot about identity politics, and the irony is that identity politics, for example, in the United States, belongs to the ultra-woke-left portion, whereas here, in some cases, it's actually part of the so-called right-wing portion using identity politics. I think it's nonsense. I believe that we should be fighting this identity politics. It's not real. It's superficial. But it's tough because polarization is a potent weapon. It works.

You can stir people's feelings up very quickly. Well, we wouldn't know anything about that here in the rest of the West. You, the trigonometry audience, understand how vital free speech is. That's why we're proud to reintroduce you to our long-standing partners, give, send, go. a crowdfunding platform built on principle. We met up with their founders earlier this year, and what stood out is that they've built GiveSengo from the ground up. No big tech backers, no corporate pressure,

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visit giv-sendgo.com and use the code trigger for a special 2.5% processing rate. That's give-sendgo.com, the platform that doesn't just talk about free speech, it protects it. How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. But I wanted to you, you said a couple of things that I'd love for you to address for our audience, many of whom here in the West have never actually heard an answer to these questions. The first one, let's start with just one at a time. You said, you don't believe in the Palestinian state.

That to a lot of people who don't know much about the conflict, which is most of us here, right? We're just, what people know, this is what I think Israelis don't understand very often, is what people know about Israel and what's happening is the headlines they see on a bus on their way to work. So when you say you don't believe in a Palestinian state, to a lot of people, that will sound really, really, like, awful and worrying.

Like, why are these extremists like Naftali Bennett saying, they don't want these people to have their own country. You're absolutely right, that the degree of knowledge obviously is low. So what I would do is like, you know, the Google Earth zoom out. Let's zoom out

to the region. In the region, there's roughly 22 Arab states, a vast majority of Muslims. We're talking about a billion Muslims. And one tiny democratic, small Jewish state,

called Israel with 10 million people. So we're a small island in the sense of a geopolitical island in a huge area of many, many Arab and Muslim states. The whole depth of Israel, if you, you know, people talk about the river to the sea, if you get, you're on the sea, the actual sea we're talking about is the Mediterranean. You get on a car and you drive east,

word, Israel is like a long sausage, if you will. Okay, it's long and narrow. So if we were to drive from the Mediterranean eastward towards the border of the so-called potential Palestinian state, you know how long it would take? 15 minutes. 15 minutes. That's when people suggest the Palestinian state, they're talking about a 15-minute ride east to west for the state. of Israel. And that clearly is untenable. The same exercise, if you did it in America, you know, my mom and dad grew up in America. They did a coast-to-coast ride. It took them a few weeks. Okay? So in Israel, it's 15 minutes. The idea of having another state between the river and the sea would mean the end of Israel. However, there are Arabs.

that live in this piece of land, and they are called Palestinians, and we don't want to govern them. So I am not suggesting a one-state solution either, where we would integrate them into Israel, for the simple reason they don't want to be integrated into Israel, and that would spill the end of a Jewish state. So we have a different model, and it's work in progress, and it's called an autonomy. Autonomy means self-governance. They elect their own parliament, which they actually did, and they elected Hamas, by the way. Out of 148 seats, 76 are Hamas, okay, and the only free elections. So we have a problem.

Houston, we have a problem. But they have their own elections. They pay their own taxes. They have their own territory. We don't, it's called A and B. I'm not going to get into it. It's called the Palestinian Authority. They run all their own services.

We don't govern them. We don't run them. However, why is it less than a state in two aspects? One, they cannot have an army because when they had an army, they turned that army against us in what's called the second intifada that erupted in the year 2000 and killed 1,600 Israelis on the streets. The second thing that differs between a full-blown state and autonomy, and the only difference is the military and full sovereignty, which means control of the borders. Why can't we have them

control their own borders? Because outside of the river to the sea, the land of Israel, there are roughly 7 to 9 million descendants of Palestinian refugees from 77 years ago. And the moment we would allow them to control the borders, they would open up the gates and allow millions of those great-grandchildren of 1948 refugees to influx. and that would that would totally change the demography between the river and the sea and ultimately spell and

to Israel. So everything but those two elements we don't want to govern them. I'm not talking I'm talking about mainstream Israel. I'm talking about 70, 80% of Israelis want that separation. They govern themselves. We govern ourselves. They live in their areas. We live in our areas.

But they can't have an army and they can flood us with grandchildren of 1948 refugees. Second question, again, if I'm a working person, 9 to 5, I get on the bus, I see yet another organization that said Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. Even Naftali Bennett, who doesn't support the quote-unquote extremist right-wing Benjamin Netanyahu government, moderate Naftali Bennett, even he's saying it's not a genocide, yet all these international organizations are condemning Israel.

How are you sitting here and denying genocide? Well, when you actually unpack those organizations, one of them, the main one that talked about genocide, turned out to be a scam. It had an open registration for anyone. You could register, I believe, for $200. So you had people, one guy would call themselves Hitler and registered and had a right to vote.

You know, you could register as Popeye and it turned out that most of the registrars were from Iraq, something really weird. And then they come out with this report, and the whole world quotes it. And then quietly, after the damage has been done, oh, yeah, it's a sham. This is actually a truth, and just, you know, search it on X and you'll find it. What I just said is true. It's verifiable. that this genocide report was total nonsense. Then you move on, and when you actually look at the details,

so there's roughly 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza. We're waging a war, and it's a tough war, because at its fundamental, it's the first time in world history, to the best of my knowledge, that a terror organization has totally integrated itself within the population. By the way, willingly, most of the population supports Hamas, wildly supports the October 7th massacre. Yet, you know, that doesn't give us or anyone the right to deliberately kill civilians, which we don't do.

We never deliberately kill civilians. So here's the deal. They turned Gaza. Hamas turned Gaza. almost every home into a weapon depot or a military base and you know

I served in many years as a company commander in a commando unit where we did the search and destroy missions I'll tell you what a home like this looks like you come in you've got a kitchen living room parents room children's room and a rocket room

literally a rocket room where you see you have a rocket launcher with a movable ceiling. So if you have a rocket room in your home, your home is no longer a home. It's a terror base. Now multiply that by 300,000, 400,000 homes. That's what Gaza is. That's what we're facing. So what do we do? Do we just go bomb all those homes? Probably we should have, but we actually take further steps, even though the people who host those things in their homes did it, no. knowingly. So according to international law, we don't have to protect them. Yet we do. We send pamphlets. We send millions, tens of millions of text messages. And I'm not, I don't believe

there's a precedent for what we do in the annals of military history. And we tell them, evacuate this building, which has become a terror base, because in two hours, we're going to bomb it. That's how we operate. Now, that's the reason that to this moment, the ratio between terrorists who have been killed and civilians is roughly 1 to 1.5. There's, I believe, roughly 63,000 people who have died in Gaza, of which 10,000 are natural, 23,000 are terrorists. So 53 minus 23 is 23 to 30. It's a very low ratio of terrorists to civilians and that is exactly opposite of genocide. Genocide is a deliberate intent to kill, to murder a population or part of a population based on its ethnicity. There's none of this.

None of this exists. We're in a tough war. As I said, I believe we should have done it all more quickly, but that's an issue of competence. But I definitely stand behind the idea if there's no genocide here. If we want a genocide, we could do it much more efficiently. I would say that we would be considered very incompetent at that. Having said all of this, every child and every civilian that dies is a tragedy. And that tragedy is the responsibility of Hamas, who turned all of Gaza into terrorists. And this is what I was going to ask you, because for a lot of people who are living here

in Britain, in America, elsewhere, in the Anglosphere, particularly, who are most of our audience, like if you said to me, Constantine, you know, that you believe in fighting a particular cause, why don't we put some rockets in your spare bedroom? I probably say no to that, I'm going to guess, right? And I'm wondering, to what extent are people

doing that in Gaza because they actually, they care about this and they support Hamas to that extent. And to what extent these are actually probably somewhat innocent people who have no choice because if they say, no, they're going to get killed by Hamas? Well, first of all, that's the reason that even in the event that we find a home or we know a home has turned into a terror base, we still notify and evacuate them, which means we're killing less terrorists that we could have. but that's a wonderful question. I don't have a perfect answer. You're asking, is the population voluntarily part of this, or is it being forced on them?

I can give you a couple of data points, though, that indicate, unfortunately, that it's more on the side of knowing and willing participation. The first is the fact that October 7th, what actually happened, there were three waves of terrorists. The first was really the commando terrorist terrorists of Hamas called Nukhbott. But then the second and third waves that happened within hours were just regular civilians of Gaza who saw an opportunity to go in, loot, murder, and they did it. And this was fairly widespread. I'm talking about thousands and thousands of these people. Secondly, unlike the Holocaust, for example,

where there were non-Jews who saved the lives, righteous Gentiles, we call them, in every country, in Germany, in Poland, even whilst the majority of Germans and Polish people were anti-Semitic and participated in the Shoa and the Holocaust, there was always in every country a fairly small minority that protected the Jews and saved lives and hit them within their homes. In Gaza, there's not one case during October 7th or subsequently of one righteous Gentile, one Palestinian who said, you know what, stop, don't rape the Jews, don't murder them. The third is polls.

The polls that we saw, every poll I've seen, certainly in the early days after October 7th, showed widespread support of the October 7th massacre. And finally, the most important poll of them all is the elections themselves, though this happened about 15 years ago, in the open elections, as I've suggested, the vast majority of the Palestinians voted for Hamas.

Actually, now I recall the number out of 132 seats, 76 are Hamas. So that's an absolute majority. So why do they hate you so much, Naftali? Because a lot of people, again, if I'm just watching TV going to work, I'm thinking, well, if these people hate you this much, what have you done? And that's where the conversation about occupation and displacement and all this other. Why do they hate you so much? That's a fair point, fair question.

There's the broad Arab-Israeli conflict, which if you want, we'll dive into it briefly. But I'll start with this specific Gaza situation. In Gaza, I believe most of your viewers don't realize this. Israel had been in Gaza since 1967, and in year 2005, by year 2005, there were roughly 8,000 Israelis living there, IDF was roaming around. And there was a decision of the Likud government of Sharon, Netanyahu is his finance minister, and also supported this in the Knesset votes of what we call disengagement, which means Israel fully pulled out of all of Gaza in its entirety, forcefully expelled those 8,000 Israelis. It was not pleasant days, who pulled out.

all the soldiers and went to the 1949 line border, meaning we gave them every single centimeter of Gaza. And at that point, there was no blockade or any restriction because there was a thesis that this is your chance. And we handed over the place to Mahmoud Abbas, the same Mahmoud Abbas that governs the Palestinian Authority today. And many hoped that Gaza would to turn itself into Singapore of the Middle East. It had all the conditions for it, a beautiful beach line, and everything it needs,

open borders, etc. Unfortunately, within days of this disengagement, they began shooting rockets at us and conducting terror attacks at us. And then from 2005, all the way through 23, once in a while we had to go in, fight back. We had to start controlling what goes into Gaza,

which clearly we didn't do a good job of because they built the massive terror tunnels in a whole army. And the friction grew. But basically what I'm saying in very simple English, they had a shot. They had a Palestinian state in every way possible. And they chose to turn it into October 7th.

and into 20 years, 18 years of hell for the Israelis that lived along the borders. In fact, the Kibbutz members that were massacred on October 7th, many of them were big supporters of that disengagement because they hoped that it would create peaceful neighbors. Now, you're asking why. I think radical Islam has the Islamistic ideology. is one that is broader than a national ideology, and it's one of Sharia law of having a Muslim empire again, like they had roughly 1,400 years ago, 1,300 years ago.

My understanding, when you read the Hamas Charter, it says very explicitly, it's not about the nation of Palestinians versus Israel. It's about Islam versus the West. And Israel is just stuck there from their perspective. So I believe there's a lot of religious factor here. And, you know, many believed. And I also tried to proceed down the let's make their economy better and their lives better. And Gaza was actually on a very positive trajectory. I had been letting more Gaza work. into Israel, Netanyahu subsequently allowed even more Gaza workers to enter Israel to get good jobs. And I guess we all hope that this would decrease the motivation, but religious motivation

turns out to be divorced from religious ideology. You know, bin Laden was a multimillionaire. So the notion that if you improve the livelihood of people, by definition, it'll decrease terror, it's not 100% correct in some cases. All right, people, it's trivia time. Financial trivia, to be exact. Do you know what retirement asset grew the most in the first six months of President Trump's second term? Many of you probably guessed the stock market was the best since what's backing the most retirement accounts in American today is that. But from January the 21st through July 21st, the Dow Jones grew less than 1%. What about Bitcoin? President Trump loves Bitcoin, so it must have performed well, right? Well, it did. It grew nearly 15%, an impressive six-month investment.

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That's Verizon. Best Network based on root metrics, best to overall mobile network from the U.S. second half, 2025. All rights reserved. It must provide a recent consumer mobile bill in the name of the person reging me the deal. Additional terms, conditions and restrictions apply. Now, Tartali, you must be incredibly concerned that the longer this war drags on, we're talking about radicalization, the more radicalized the population of Gaza become, but also as well, the more anti-Semitism spreads across the world. That is a very real concern for Jews living

in the UK, for living in America, and all over the globe, quite frankly. It is. I'll unpack. You mentioned two things. The radicalization in Gaza, I'd actually say October 7th, as I said, happened actually when the conditions in Gaza were getting much much better. You know, they had shopping malls there. They had the theaters, they had the hotels. Gaza was in a fairly good trajectory economically. So I divorced the radicalization from this, but I am cognizant that when, you know, you see buildings blow up, you don't become a big friend to Israel. To deal with that, and if you want to talk about the future of Gaza, ultimately, I don't want to govern Gaza, I don't want to occupy Gaza, we just need our security,

but we do need to ensure something we didn't do in the past, which is to stop the brain poisoning of the younger generation, both in Judean, Samaria, the PA and in Gaza, when you are taught from age zero that the Jews are the Satan and need to be killed, lo and behold, when you're 20 years old or 17 years old, you'll go in at a kibbutz and sever heads of people. So that's in terms of Gaza. Your broader question of anti-Semitism, yeah, I'll tell you something. I spent a part of my life in the United States as a child a few years and later on running my high-tech company. and whenever, you know, the anti-antisemitism organizations like ADL would always talk about anti-Semitism,

I have to admit I thought it was a bit inflated because I hadn't, myself or my friends had not incurred. You don't walk around New Jersey or Houston or Omaha, Nebraska and feel anti-Semitism. So, you know, as a thing and here and there on the fringes, it's changed. It's changed. And I cannot believe what I'm seeing day in, day out. And obviously we can attribute the spread, the rapid spread to social networks, which is simply a tool that didn't exist. though there were other tools of disseminating false information before the internet. For example, roughly, I believe 150 years ago or so, there was a pamphlet called The Protocols of Zion,

which suggested that the Jews are sitting in some dark room and conniving how to control the world, and it spread fairly well even without Facebook. But now with the social media, the latest things that every day it hits you, like mainstream people in America will suggest that Israel stands behind the murder of Charlie Kirk. Mainstream people will suggest that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent. In fact, when I saw this happening, you know, the Mossad reported to me. In Israel, the Mossad and Shindbet report directly to the Prime Minister. whereas the IDF reports to the entire government. So I said, you know, I know this is not true.

I actually called up two former Mossad chiefs, just to be sure, and one former prime minister, they all said, this is nonsense. So I posted, I believe it was it Tucker Carlson or someone who was beginning to spread that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossade agent? And I said that simply not. He wasn't. By the way, Israel doesn't conduct espionage on American soil since 1985, where we messed up with the Polar affair.

So every day you're faced with it, and it's so crazy that you lose your breath, but we can't stand silent. This is a huge worry. I believe that the state of Israel, to some degree, has responsibility for the Jewish people, even if they are not our own citizens, we need to look out for them. And yeah, this is a huge, new, scary phenomenon. Just last night, I saw Tucker Carlson at the Charlie Kirk funeral, and he was peddling and insinuating.

He talked about basically the folks who killed Jesus 2,000 years ago and created some sort of analogy. So he plays a very thin line. So you said, I didn't talk about the Israelis. I didn't talk about the Jews. But you did. You actually did. And you meant exactly what I understood you meant is you were sending the dog whistle.

This is really bad stuff. And we have to call it out for what it is. And it actually reminds me of my favorite story ever. So it was about 2,000 years ago in Jerusalem. and Jesus shows up and he starts talking about the people in power and he starts doing the worst thing that you can do, which is telling the truth about people, and they hate it, and they just go bonkers, they hate it,

and they become obsessed with making him stop. This guy's got to stop talking. We've got to shut this guy up. And I can just sort of picture the scene in a lamplit room with a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus, thinking about what do we do about this guy telling the truth about us, we must make him stop talking. And there's always one guy with the bright idea

and I can just hear him say, I've got an idea, why don't we just kill him? That'll shut him up. That'll fix the problem. And I believe Israel, domestically, we need to tell a new story. We need a new page for Israel. That's what I hope to do if I return to lead the country is turn a page, bring the hostages home, end the war, go out, seek peace with new partners in the Middle East, and come back to what Israel's story should be, which is a remarkable, decent nation in very hard circumstances, trying to do good.

That's what Israel's about, and that will help. But at the same time, I don't, you know, I don't want to mislead anyway. the drivers of anti-Semitism are deep sinister drives. It goes beyond the fact that Israel has no public diplomacy and our PR is the lausiest in the world. I get that. We need to fix it. It's indefensible the fact that our current government

doesn't do anything about it and quite the contrary. But even if we do that, and even if we don't have ministers who say stupid things, every other day. Let's assume still there is a deep millennia-old phenomenon. It started actually 3,300 years ago, the first instance of anti-Semitism when the Jews were leaving Egypt. So the Amalekites were the first instance of anti-Semitism on a national basis. And I can't explain it. I'm a big history. read gazillion history books. I can't fully understand the rationale of

anti-Semitism because when we succeed we're blamed for being successful, when we're poor, we're blamed for being a burden on society, when Jews were separatists and lived in the ghettos, we were accused of being different. And then in the 19th century, especially in Germany and Western Europe, when Jews assimilated they were blamed for trying to corrupt society. So it's basically whatever Jews do were blamed. All I can say is I'm happy I have my own Jewish state now, where even if lies happen, at least we can defend ourselves.

Naftali, so that being the case, there's going to be a lot of people in the U.S., in the U.K., all over the world, who are going, particularly the U.S., who are going, why is more and more of my tax dollars being spent to support Israel, to help Israel, to fund Israel. And the question is, why is Israel so important to America, to the UK, and to the West in general? That's a very important question.

The short answer is the Middle East is the most explosive and tumultuous region on Earth. And the notion, let's say there wasn't in Israel. No, Israel. It doesn't exist. September 11th would still happen. And Osama bin Laden will sit in some cave in Afghanistan or the next Osama bin Laden somewhere in Gaza or in Ramallah or in Nablis. And we'll come after the West because it's a deep-rooted ideology that says that ultimately Islam and Sharia law should control the world. It's the idea of Islam, state. It's well-rooted. Any territory that Islam has conquered is called holy or wakf in Arabic. So what would America then need to do? And what it actually did after September 11th,

more or less competently, one may argue, it would understand that it can't just ignore and say, okay, they're on the other side of the ocean because here they're not. And they can't. come to London, and they come to Madrid, and they come to the Twin Towers and to the Pentagon. So what you would do is you would set up, try and set up bases in the Middle East, and then those bases would have to be defended and protected. And then in order to protect them, you'd need sort of a host of bases all across the Middle East, talking about millions of soldiers. And then one would perhaps suggest, you know what, what if it's a lot?

what if instead of all of this, we have one big base, we don't have to send our soldiers. The base is called Israel. The Israelis have their own soldiers, their own military. They will fight the wars. They will gather the intelligence of what the terrorists are conniving and what's their next terror attack. They're out there. What an amazing deal. All we have to do is support them a bit financially.

that's the best ROI I could imagine. Now, this is not theoretical. As Prime Minister, I can recall at least 30 instances in 13 months where we called up a specific European intelligence agency and said, listen, right now, there are three terrorists on this building, 17th floor in London or in Belgium, go up, arrest them. Now, why do we have all this information? Because we are in friction with them. We are in constant touch with them.

So we are America and the West's aircraft carrier or base here, but we're not asking it to send soldiers. We're not asking to fight. I fought, I risked my life many times fighting radical Islam. I lost my best friend fighting radical Islam. My son, my oldest son right now is in the same unit I served and I hate it. It's horrible. We lose sleep at night.

It's scary. It's my son for heaven's sake. I want him alive. I want him to have a great life. But we got to do this to defend ourselves. and the benefit, the spillover benefit, is that you guys don't have to be here. I mean, that is quite an argument

because there are a lot of people, particularly when you look at what is happening in America, with the deficit, who are quite resentful, shall we just say, about the money that is being funneled into Israel. And they would see this money would be better spent in America. What would you say to that?

Look, I'm not going to tell, America how to spend its money. There could be an alternative where you don't support us. We don't get that support and, you know, we'll support ourselves. And maybe we can provide defense as a service and charge a country when I call up that prime minister and say, look, on 17th floor, but, you know, I want 50 million dollars for this piece of information. Would that make sense? That's not how friends act. We're doing the hard work of the world. It's a thankless job. We keep on being blamed for everything while we're the ones. We are the ones who are blocking this huge flood of radical Islam. And it happened before. Islam conquered

all the way to Spain, right? All of North Africa and all the way to Andalus. And that is still their dream. Today, there's much more advanced technologies. If we didn't stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, do you actually, and Israel didn't exist, do you think Iran would just keep it? And do you think what would happen with Saudi Arabia and Turkey and Egypt and the next bin Laden will have a nuclear bomb?

9-11 happened. It happened. I was in New York when it happened. I was in Manhattan when it happened. I saw the buildings on fire. It's a real thing. I'm like the forest gump of these crazy events. I'm always there.

And just imagine it is extremely easy. If you allow the cancerous tumor of radical Islamist terrorism to grow and you don't handle it, it'll blow up on you. And that'll be way more costly, than a few billion dollars. 9-11th, now

in London and Madrid, can totally paralyze a country for years. It could destroy a country. So we're fighting. We're stopping them. We stopped Saddam Hussein from acquiring a nuclear weapon in 1981. Israel

did the thankless job of destroying his nuclear reactor in Osirak and near Baghdad. Everyone condemned us. But Saddam Hussein turned out to not have nuclear weapons thanks to Israel. Later on, we did the same thing with Assad. We bombed his nuclear reactor in a place called DeraZur in 2007.

Did we get any thanks for it? No, but we saved the world from a crazy Assad with a bomb. Now we did the same in Iran. We're doing everyone's job. Do you think these nuclear weapons coupled with radical Islam is the worst formula you can have, the worst potion you can have, and it'll come after you, but we're doing the job. Instead of condemning us, how about saying thanks once in a while?

Because it's my son there. It was me there. I was fighting them. I was risking my life and saving your lives quite literally, tangibly, not in theory, tangibly. Maybe, you know, maybe if I become prime minister again, every time we save lives, we'll make a big piece. PR splash every three weeks and say we just save lives and not leave it at the Mossad

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for and your phone is carrier unlocked and ESIM compatible, give it a try. If you like your trial month, you can use our code trigger 33 to get 33% off your first six months with CAP. One thing that you keep repeating is you keep saying it's a thankless task, it's a thankless task. And one of the interesting developments in your region more broadly is actually, from what I'm hearing, quite a lot of the governments of the countries that are your neighbors or in your backyard, so to speak, they might not be thanking you publicly, but they certainly weren't against what you did in Iran, for example, or what Israel did in Iran. And there seems to be a broader consensus developing in the Middle East in many countries.

that actually radical Islam is bad for everybody, including the Islamic countries, that have to deal with its consequences. How hopeful are you that whenever this horrific war ends, and I think we all hope it ends soon, that there's the possibility of something that resembles a lasting peace and a permanent rearrangement of the region such that actually the Palestinian cause, whatever shape it takes, does not retain its potency as being a way of antagonizing the entire region against everybody, particularly, of course, against Israel.

I'm very optimistic, and your point is correct. I've met most of, in fact, I believe all of the, almost all of the leaders of the moderate Arab countries, they despise radical Islam, both types of radical Islam, the Shiite sort of Iran and the radical Sunni type. which is the Muslim Brotherhood and its more radical forms of ISIS, etc., they are terrified by it, and they very much want to fight it, and they view Israel as a central pillar of fighting it. And we're doing a lot of things together. There is a big problem with the street in those countries, which sometimes the popular, there is,

popular support for the more radical elements. And that's what causes the friction and also why they can't publicly talk about supporting Israel's fight against radical Islam. We need to win. We need to create a very strong crescent of moderacy and of growth from India through India through Emirates, Saudis, Iraq, Jordan, and to Israel, Egypt, etc. This is a huge potential. I'm a huge believer in this, and I believe that once we form a new government and open a new page for Israel, wrap up the war, we're in for a very good story of growth and peace in the region. So you must be concerned, Naftali, when you look at the polling and the opinions of the younger generation, particularly those 30 and under and their opinions of Israel in the United States.

Because, I mean, to put it mildly, they're not especially favorable, shall we just say. And you can just say, well, look, it's, you know, young people being young people, kids being kids, blah, blah, blah. But those kids are going to be the next political leaders. They're going to be the next people in charge. etc., etc., the next leaders of commerce. That must represent a very real concern to you and to the nation of Israel. Incredibly worried about this.

This is a profound change in the American younger generation opinion. During the past decade, a great degree, Israel, for many reasons, lost the democratic side, but we had the support of the Republican side. That in itself is not a good development. And now I am seeing a massive decrease of support in Israel of the younger Republicans and the more right-wing elements of the Republican Party. We have to reverse this.

We have to reverse it. And there are ways to reverse it. As I said, the main thing that we can do is bring the hostages home, win, wrap up this war, and tell anew. story, a new beautiful story of what I think Israel is really about. And Israel is really about, as I said, a nation that has crazy circumstances and thrown at it. Sometimes I feel like, you know, I'm a man of faith. So I feel like God is experimenting on the Jewish people. So it takes 10 million of us puts us here and says, okay, let's start. Okay, you've got all these Arab states

want to kill you. Let's see how you do. And then we win in the War of Independence, a six-day war, and says, you know, and let there not be water. No water here. So Israel has to force itself to become the world's number one producer of desalinated water. 80% of the water we drink in Israel is generated, is manufactured. We used to have a huge water problem. Now we don't. And in fact, we provide Jordan with water. Isn't that beautiful? Did you know that? No one knows that. We are feeding the region, and we can do even more. Then it says, okay, we see you did a fairly good job. Let's throw at you a new challenge, asymmetric terror and warfare. You're going to be the first ones who have to deal with a whole nation that has embedded terrorists into its homes.

Let's see how you deal with it. Then you're going to be the country with the biggest number of rockets targeted at you. About 200,000 rockets and missiles. Let's see, you have a go. And we keep on being... And at the same time, hey, stay a democracy, stay a thriving country of a... high-tech. Oh, and by the way, you have two million Israeli Arabs that are citizens, and they,

it's complicated because they belong to the broader Arab nation, yet there are citizens in your own country, and part of the Arab nation is your enemy. Let's see how you deal with that. How do you deal with that? Not a regular minority, a minority that has a complex issue of identity, and lo and behold, the Israeli Arabs are thriving. joining high work employment numbers, very good achievements in education. We have Supreme Court Justice who's Arab. We have members of Knesset to our Arab. So I'm very proud to be Israeli.

I'm very proud to sort of be this experiment of the toughest issues in the world. The next one, by the way, is the issue of polarization, which is hitting all of the democracies. Let's see how you deal with that. And how do you deal with that? We hear about protests currently happening in Israel pretty regularly against Prime Minister Netanyahu. And by the way, you've alluded to this conversation to the possibility of you or you becoming Prime Minister before the war ends. Is that even possible? Everything's possible.

So how would that come about? Look, Israel is governed by laws. There's four years between election and election. the elections are advanced in the Knesset. According to schedule, the next elections are a year from now. More likely there'll be about seven to eight months from now. And how would it come about is we'd run and win. Well, it's certainly going to be a very interesting time.

I very much hope that the war ends way before that election, seven or eight months from now, I'm sure. Me too. And speaking of the hostages, we haven't spoken about them, how likely is it that you're going to get them back now? Because, look, I'm not an expert, but I imagine the recognition of the Palestinian state

by Western governments, you said it has no practical impact. But the one thing that I think it would have in terms of a practical impact is it would signal to Hamas that they're winning. Isn't that a sign that they're winning? That's a valid point. We're negotiating with Hamas. In negotiation, there's basically

two elements. There's leverage, meaning who has the upper hand, who can create more pressure on the other side. And then there's the deal, the terms of the deal. And so I would say Hamas's leverage can go up and then ebb. So it has ups and downs. At this point in time, the pressure point is that it's mighty difficult down in Gaza. I mean, Gaza is hell. I'm not going to pretend it's anything but. While, you know, so many people have been evacuated from their homes, terrible conditions, this applies some degree of pressure.

But you're right, on the international stage, if they see that Israel, by the day, is losing the international war, they might feel that time is on their side. And that's why the latest move of the UK, in France, et cetera, of recognizing the Palestinian state is not a good development because it would suggest to them, let's just wait it out. So no, I cannot say whether a deal can be achieved. I'm not in the negotiation room. I don't have the latest data. I think that there are ways to create leverage and then seal a deal. Which are what? I'm not going to get into it because I might become prime minister and I don't want to share how I would go about it. But basically,

apply pressure, create the conditions, and then take the deal when it's possible, the right deal, not any deal. What I don't understand is, and obviously I understand your reluctance to get into the details, is what pressure Israel can apply? Because Hamas is perfectly happy to have its civilians killed by Israel. In fact, it seems to be its strategy. So going harder, bombing, them harder, killing more of their leaders. None of that seems to work. And the more of more people die in Gaza, the more Western nations seem to be going in a pro-Hamas direction, as we've seen in the last few days. Yeah, so we need to be more creative about it and use other tools and dimensions. I will say that at the start of the war, this is public, because I made it public.

I had suggested to the government first quietly and then publicly that we take part of Gaza and say and announce that that part is a war zone and the rest is an open zone and then apply a full siege on that population that leaves. So you basically can collect the terrorists and you can divide the terrorists from the full population. So I would take a few other creative dimensions that are not happening right now. I fairly agree with your analysis here that more of the same will only result in more of the same results. That makes sense. It's great talking to you. We have a lot of questions from our supporters that we're going to ask you on our substack portion.

But of course, before we do, we always end with the same question. Before Naftali answers the final question, at the end of the interview, make sure to click the link in the description. Go to triggerpot.com.ukh, to hear him answer these questions. It is clear that Hamas cannot win this war, that is to eliminate the state of Israel, which of course is their objective. But how can they lose the war? How can they be forced to capitulate?

Omra in charge of Palestinians' education has radicalized generation of Palestinians. How can this be remedied? Can should Israel take over responsibility for educating Palestinians, or could we have the Saudis do it? Would it be better or feasible for Israel to publicly push for Arab states to take responsibility for Gaza, as opposed to continuously losing its soldiers with little possible gang? What's the one thing that we're not talking about that we really should be? my vision for Israel and what Israel can be within a fairly short time frame and and and this is the new page of Israel look my vision for Israel within a few years is to form a national unity government

which is a diverse government it's a bipartisan government that does not exist in America neither I believe in the UK, beyond World War II, where there was one, where I would bring left and right parties together, religious and secular parties together, and unite Israel, bring back a competent and decent government of hardworking people, and then rebuild our strength. We have to be very strong, no doubt about it, but not only work through that, send out our efforts of peace to the region, to the Saudis, to Indonesia, to other locations, bring back home and bring to Israel a massive magnet of brains. We have a very high proportion of Nobel Prize winners here in Israel because we have amazing

science and technology. So I would bring them all back from the valley or most of them, from the valley or from the United States. Some of them left over the past few years and make Israel sort of a capital of high tech, showing the world how a beautiful country can work while progressing all our populations. We have the ultra-Orthodox population in Israel called the Haredi population. For some work of history, they are exempt from serving the military and from working. So stop that. Bring them into the Israeli talent pool. And then begin, once we secure Israel and rebuild its economy, then we can approach what I think Israel's real mission is in this day and age to be a problem solver of some of the world's biggest problems.

Talking about quantum technology, I'm on a board of a company in the quantum space and AI, but not only the technological components of it, but also the ethical components, meaning what does the future spell for human beings in an era of AI? what is our meaning? You know, if they can do all the work for us, what do you need people for? How do you build a younger generation that is robust and strong

amid the influx of information? So we have some mix of ancient and advanced technologies. We have a startup in Israel, a Jewish startup that deals with the addiction to phones, it's called Shabbat. It's called the Sabbath. It was developed roughly 3,200 years ago. It's a very weird notion that at Friday at about 5 p.m., you turn it off, you put it aside, and you spend 25 hours with your family, you actually talk to your children, you listen to them. Very unique ideas. And so these, these.

These are the sort of things I would want to grapple with, but there's a Maslow pyramid. First, we need to win, need to bring home the hostages, secure Israel, replace the government, rebuild Israel, fix the international standing because it's a disaster now, and then retell the real story of what the Jewish state ought to be. It's great talking to you. We'll take you through to Substack with our audience who have a ton of questions. Thanks for being here. Follow us over where we ask Naftali Bennett your questions. Your party, Yamina, as well as you, had a very similar rhetoric to that of Smotridge. What are your views on Smotritch and Ben-Gavir's statements and are you in agreement with the views? She does a lot for your family. Mother's Day is your chance to show her you see it,

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