181. Israel, invasion, and the trap laid by Hamas

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0:21Welcome to The Restless Politics. I'm here in London and Alex Rani are about to infuse Yuval Noah Harari. It's a very different type of episode to what we normally do because often we're going for analysts, we're stepping back from situations. In this case, we're talking to a friend of mine within a week of the events that unfolded with Hamas as terrorist attacks across the border from Gaza. He is right in the middle of this and you will feel in the interview Yuval's own personal emotions, his connection to his own family in Israel. I'm not apologizing for that at all. I think if you would like our attempt to get a more objective picture of the Israeli -Palestinian conflict, please listen to our last episode that we put out a few days ago which tries to look at the bigger history.

1:08But I think it's vital in these things to actually hear from people who are fully engaged, who are connected emotionally because only by doing so, I think, do we ever get a sense of how these problems feel, why they're so difficult to resolve. I think Yuval is a fascinating example of somebody who has been deeply emotionally traumatized, who feels deep attachment to Israel, but is also finding his way towards talking about peace and empathy. I think that emotional journey makes this episode even more powerful than some of our other episodes. I hope you enjoyed.

1:45Today, I mean, it's a very, very difficult day for recording. My friend Yuval, who we've interviewed a couple of times in the last month, has come back to join us after the horrifying terrorist attack of Hamas in Israel and now very, very disturbing ideas around how the Israeli Army might respond in Gaza. Yuval is right in the middle of this, as people remember who listened to the leading podcasts. He has been a very outspoken critic of the populism of the Israeli government, and particularly their judicial reforms. But he's also found himself caught up as an Israeli and as a family member in the consequences of this attack.

2:27Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for having me again. Maybe if we can start with just giving listeners a sense of how this attack felt, how it touched on your own family, how it felt personally, how Israelis understand it before we go on to try to talk about other structures, but just the immediate emotional impact. Yeah, I mean, it goes back to the deepest fears and the darkest moments of Jewish history. At first, people compared it to the Omkipu War when the armies of Egypt and Syria surprised Israel, but very quickly the narrative changed and everybody's now comparing it to scenes from the Holocaust or from pogroms.

3:12The state of Israel for a couple of hours just disappeared. There was no state. There were Jewish communities slaughtered. The comparisons are with the Inzans group and mobile killing units of the Nazis that in 1941, 1942 would in places that were today Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania would just come around a Jewish village and just either burn people in their houses or just shoot them all to death. And also comparisons with pogroms even earlier, like the famous Kishenev pogrom of 1903. And we hear just stories that we couldn't imagine. We are used wars, but the idea that there will be massive pogroms in Jews, in Israel, in 2023, it's just incomprehensible.

4:01I have family in one and friends in several of these Kibbutzim, of these villages that bore the brunt of the attack. My aunt and uncle living Kibbutzbury, all contact with them was cut on the morning of the attack. We just got news that they somehow survived. They hid in their house as Hamas terrorists just went from house to house in the Kibbutz and just slaughtered everybody. And we hear terrible stories about families hiding in safe rooms and then the Hamas setting fire to the house to burn them alive or suffocate them in the safe room. And if they try to jump, they just shoot them. I've heard also one really, I think it encapsulates, because these communities, the Kibbutzim on the border with Gaza, they were one of the last bastions of the left wing in Israel, people who still clang to the belief in peace through all those years of terrorism and attacks.

5:09So one really terrible story I've heard from Farazah, a Kibbutz where I have many friends, a family that for a couple of years organized this kite festival or flying kites on the fence border with Gaza with messages of peace to show the civilians in Gaza that despite all the violence and the impossibility of the government of Israel and Hamas having any kind of dialogue, the civilians still want peace, at least the civilians in Israel still want peace. And the festival this year was planned for this Saturday and a couple of hours before it happened, the Hamas terrorists came in and they found when the Israeli army finally liberated, for Gaza, they found the entire family murdered.

5:59Two parents, three kids, three children together in bed holding hands shot. And this is, I think, the symbol of, because Hamas is trying not just to kill civilians, to kill any chance of there ever being peace. One last thing from broader perspective, the background to all that is that there was a breakthrough for peace recently of sorts. After Israel made peace treaties with the Gulf States, some of them, and now there was on the table the offer for a Saudi peace treaty which would have normalized relations between Israel and much of the Arab world. And also hopefully could have reignited the peace process with the Palestinians and improved the situation of millions of Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

6:50And most of the experts I'm talking with, they say this is the, at least the immediate cause of the attack, nothing frightens Hamas more than the possibility of peace. And the way the attack was conducted, like the atrocities, they're killing babies and not hiding it. But actually filming and publishing, they want to implant seeds of hatred in the minds of millions to make sure that we'll never be peace. You've all thanks very much for giving us more of your time. And I want to pick up on something you you said there about how Hamas don't want peace. And this is in a sense deliberately provoked.

7:33And this is something Roy and I talked about on the podcast last week that this may well have been sort of more strategically what lay behind all this. Is there not therefore a need for Israel in its response whilst I absolutely understand the impact upon the national psyche, the demand for security, and the demand possibly also for revenge, there's a danger that they now actually to some extent give Hamas what they want, which is to wipe out any possibility of ever getting back to a process that might lead to state solution, which right now feels so far off it would be a miracle if it ever happened.

8:16Yes, I mean, what's happening now is basically what we see, unfortunately, many of these conflicts around the world, a competition of suffering, a competition also in public opinion around the world that each side wants to draw more and more attention to its immense pain and suffering. And there is no winner in this competition of suffering except Hamas because the terrorists of Hamas, they don't care about human suffering at least, they don't care about anything that happens in this world. This is something that I know for many Westerners is just difficult to grasp. The level of religious fanaticism that you have in my region of the world is in many ways incomprehensible to people who live in a place like London to most of them.

9:01We need to grapple with this. These are people, the Hamas terrorists, they don't care at all about what is happening in this world. They don't care about human suffering even on their side, they are fixated on the joys of paradise, which is why they are in love with death and they are willing to just burn this world. But you've all though, there are many Palestinians who live in Gaza, who live in the West Bank, who live in different parts of the world, who don't feel like that. So Hamas do that. Is there not also the case because the last time we spoke, you and Rory and I, very, very critical of Benjamin Netanyahu and who he is and what he represents.

9:41But is it not also the case that perhaps the reason they felt able to do this awful thing is because they're surrounded by a sense of hopelessness amongst the peaceful Palestinian people, the Israel under Netanyahu and the right -wing government he put together have absolutely no interest whatsoever in recognizing their pain even before this. Yeah, again, the Netanyahu government has abandoned for many years, the peace process with the Palestinians, but this doesn't explain Hamas' actions because actually Hamas is never interested in any kind of peace treaty and has done everything in its power to undermine previous peace processes like the Oslo process.

10:25And what ignited this attack is probably that there was suddenly a step from the Israeli side with the Saudi initiative of perhaps reigniting some kind of peace process. Now, when I hear the voices now coming from Israel, it's clear to me that the level of pain is there is so high there isn't a single millimeter left to recognize or deal with any other pain in the world. It's just a psychological fact. Even you. I don't want to make it personal about myself. But as you were talking to you, I just wondered how you used to. Yes, I think this is a war on the mind, a war on the soul. And again, this is deliberate.

11:11The way that Hamas orchestrated this attack, again, not just attacking civilians, but torturing and executing people in the most horrendous ways they could think about taking examples from ISIS and not hiding it, but making sure this will be publicized. This was intentional. Psychologically, what is happening is they are not just inciting fear and hatred. This is in a sense a crime against humanity. In the deepest sense of the world, you lose all trust in humanity. And you thereby also lose your own humanity. And there is a struggle now to in this sense at least save our souls and minds from this destruction.

11:58I try to wait this struggle in my own mind. I think we shouldn't allow Hamas to win the war on our souls. It's impossible at this moment to expect psychologically Israelis to again be with anything except their pain. But I think it is vital. This is one of the reasons I'm speaking both here and in Israel to avoid falling into Hamas's trap and doing things that will ruin any chance for peace, for generations to come. We shouldn't allow this to happen. Talking about Hamas's trap, there's a Brazilian theorist of terrorism, a terrorist called Carlos Marigella, who effectively says that, like I read a quote, he says it's necessary to turn political crisis into armed conflict by performing violent actions that will force those in power to transform the political situation of the country into a military situation.

12:59This will alienate the masses who from then on will revolt against the army and the police and blame them for the state of things. To what extent do you feel that along with the religious agenda, this is a deliberate strategy of Hamas they actually want to bring down a huge IDF response, hoping by doing so, to bring the masses over onto their side and further alienate them? I can't get into their minds and plans, but they knew for sure that there will be massive Israeli retaliation. They either don't care about it or they actually hope for it. You see that right now, Israeli is calling on Palestinian civilians in the north part of the Gaza Strip to leave their houses and move to the central and southern parts of the Gaza Strip because obviously it's going to be major military action in the north and the Hamas is telling the Palestinian civilians don't go, you have to stay.

13:52Whether it's because the Hamas wants to use the civilians as shields against the Israeli military or because it's just it's in interested in massive casualties on the Palestinian side. I also think that there's the terrible military logic to what they're doing. I mean they would, I think from a military point of view, they would fear that if they evacuate the northern part, allow Israel to clear and occupy that. Israel will then tell the people in the south to move to the north, whether it's the south. So Hamas, I imagine, sees this like the fight with ISIS and Mosul, urban warfare that would go on for a very long time and they have no intention of facilitating making it easier for the Israeli military to conduct urban warfare operations through the strip.

14:36Yeah, that's exactly the point. There is terrible suffering now in Gaza and it only gets worse and worse. This terrible situation, I don't know how to solve it. Ideally, we would see movements to de -escalate, to return some kind of trust in humanity. The most immediate step that could be taken is immediately release all the hostages that Hamas took. Again, hostages including babies, old people and this could, you know, a tiny, tiny gesture of humanity that brings back some sanities to the situation. But obviously, Hamas is not interested in that. They're interested in prisoners' swaps. Yeah, and also, there is a very clear message coming from the Israeli public to the Israeli government.

15:26That's it. We cannot go on living here with Hamas. We tried it for many years. It's impossible. You choose, either Hamas or Israel. If Hamas is not completely disarmed, then we can just no longer live here. But does that not mean you, Val? The logic of that is that the IDF virtually wipes the place out. This literally goes in and first destroys the North. If people don't leave, well, that's their problem. That'll be the thinking. Then, maybe it tells the people to sound to move back North, which has been destroyed, and then they just destroy the whole place. This is, I think, part of the responsibility of the international community, to find some better solution to the situation.

16:12But based on the understanding that a return to the status quo before the war is simply totally unacceptable for the Israeli public. That however it is done, the war must end with Hamas disarmed and the Gaza Strip demilitarized. How to do it? I don't know. From the Israeli public's perspective, they cannot settle for anything less than that. I hear many comparisons now with 9 -11 in the United States. Also warnings that Israel should not repeat the American mistake of invading Iraq and Afghanistan. Look, what's happening now in Afghanistan? There is a fundamental flow in the comparison, which is, it's like 9 -11, but with the Taliban and ISIS controlling New Jersey.

17:08Not of Afghanistan. I mean, like my family in Kibbutz -Berry, Kibbutz -Berry is about a kilometer from the border fence with Gaza. They cannot go living, whoever survived, cannot go on living there after what happened with, again, Hamas bases a kilometer from their houses. What happened, Yvonne, with the, we have this vaunted image of Israeli security systems and the security services. Hamas did is, I mean, his military historians are going to be writing about this forever. How on earth did this vaunted intelligence and security service not have any sense this was happening or be prepared for it?

17:54I don't know the answer, but it is clear already now that this is a price Israel has been is paying for allowing a populist strongman to rule it and to divide it against itself, not just for the last nine months, but for years. That many Israelis are saying we took our eyes off the ball, that for months and actually for years now, we focused on the wrong issues and this came from the top, that when you have a leader, a government, that bases its political career on dividing, intentionally dividing the nation against itself, on giving no importance whatever to telling or hearing the truth, spreading conspiracy theories about the central institutions of the state, turning the people against these institutions, telling people that the state institutions, they are full of deep state traitors and attacking the serving elites of the country.

19:05You know, the elites became a dirty word, not just in the US, in UK, also in Israel, nobody wants to be elites, no system can survive such an attack for years. The Israeli army is calling this operation, this war, iron swords, iron swords. And I remember my teacher at university, like 25 years ago, telling me a military historian, if you put an iron sword in salt water, it rusts. The Netanyahu government has taken Israel's iron swords and put them in salt water for 14 years and they rusted.

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21:00That's better just following this through. I mean, what about Southern Lebanon? So obviously, his well -ized based and Southern Lebanon. If the policy becomes that the only way to defend Israel's security is to try to occupy and control and prevent any terrorist groups emerging in Gaza does the same logic, not begin to extend into Southern Lebanon. Again, there is a very big danger there of escalating the conflict also to Lebanon, also to the West Bank. And again, I think one very good thing about the very theorem way that the Biden administration intervened is that President Biden is by far the most popular politician in Israel.

21:42After, you know, Moss Israel is a very keen Trump supporters. And now President Biden is, I don't know, 99 percent support in Israel. Remindlessness why that is. What is it that he did that has now made him so he gave the speech that we expected our prime minister to give, but he couldn't, Netanyahu couldn't and Biden gave us the speech we needed and sent two aircraft carriers and massive support and making it very, very clear that he's not hedging his bets. He's not seeing this as the complexity. No, he's very clearly on Israel's side. And this gives him and his administration a lot of credibility in Israel and enables him and his administration, I hope, to prevent Israel from making huge mistakes.

22:33Is there not a risk that in some ways this attack will strengthen the hand of the extreme nationalist Israeli right that they will say this is what we always told you. This is why we can't coexist with these people and it gives strength to people like Smotrich because it feeds into the narrative. I don't know. This is the battle now being waged in the souls and the minds of Israelis. Because on the one hand there is these voices being heard. On the other hand, there is immense rage in Israel against this right -wing coalition government that in the name of its messianic fantasies brought Israel to this catastrophic situation.

23:15I don't wish which way it will go. I think the country has been given a chance to save itself. And if Israelis stay loyal to the ideals of democracy at home and peace are brought, and again, Israelis are incapable of hearing this right now. And the mind is completely filled with his pain. But just to avoid magnifying the pain in the region unnecessarily and keeping a space open so that there will be a possibility of healing later on, this is the best that I can hope for the present moment. And again, this is something that we need help from people in the rest of the world. I'm glad you pointed out the leadership that Joe Biden has showed, and particularly watching Donald Trump yesterday with a sort of absolute nonsense he was coming out with.

24:16It would be terrifying if he were in charge of the Western world right now. And also, I completely understand why not just Joe Biden but other leaders around the world have been emphasizing absolute solidarity with Israel. But is there not a danger that as this goes on and as people become more and more conscious of the horror that's going to be inflicted upon people in Gaza who are not just Hamas, that we also need world leaders who will speak, if you like, to a more nuanced message that will try to use this to get back to it. And that does mean something like Netanyahu who you know, you have rightly condemned in all pretty clear terms, long before this, that there's a danger that he takes this as kind of a mission to do things that frankly are going to take us to places we've never imagined.

25:10This is the big danger and this is why I was also glad to hear both President Joe Biden and for Minister Blinken and others, with all the support they give Israel again and again emphasize democracy's fight wars by a different standard than Hamas terrorists. If we go down to their standard, what's the point? If we become like Hamas, what's the point? And emphasizing the need to keep international lows. And again, I think it's very important this combination of very clear support to Israel and a clear emphasis on the need to keep international low and humanitarian standards even in the darkest hours.

25:57Otherwise, there is no point. You're well presumably the only end point to this will have to be an Israeli occupation of Gaza in the long term because I can't see how else Israel can guarantee that Hamas will not re -emage. And hopefully the will be and nobody will fight Hamas for Israel. I think this is quite clear. But I hope the will be forces who will take it upon themselves not just to rebuild Gaza in a way which gives a future to the Palestinians there, but also simultaneously takes it upon itself to this arm -hamas and to make sure that it doesn't remilitarize the Gaza strip. Who will be these forces that will take upon themselves this immense task?

26:43I don't know. But we must find such forces because the alternatives are really too difficult to even imagine. So essentially you're saying that if Israel is not acting as the occupying force demilitarizing, the hope would be that some other group of people, the United Nations or Arab countries or somebody else, would take security responsibility for Gaza and responsibility for its economic development in order to ensure that Hamas doesn't re -emage. Yeah, again, you have the Palestinian authority which is discredited but it's still, when it's politics, you have to work with whatever forces are there and you have more moderate Arab countries, you have the international community, a coalition of the willing, whoever is willing to take it upon themselves.

27:27It's not going to be easy, it's going to be very expensive, but if you really care about the suffering of people in the area, this is the thing to do. But unfortunately as we've discussed before, the context is not very favorable. I mean, we're in a context of isolationism. People are very bruised, the liberal world order seem to collapse. People are overextended towards Ukraine. It's very, very improbable, sadly, that anybody is going to have the appetite for getting involved with what will seem for the distance, the most painful, horrifying, political situation on earth. I mean, I don't think the international community is likely to be volunteering at all for that.

28:04You've got the situation of the hostages. So Netanyahu in a previous incarnation, one of his previous premiership periods, and he did this extraordinary exchange over the idea of soldier Gila Chalit and exchange more than 1 ,000 Palestinian prisoners, including some very, very senior Hamas figures. So you've got that. And then you've got the fact of the security and intelligence failures. And if we think back to the previous, when Israeli security has failed, there's been real anger that has really turned against political leaders over the security failures. What is the, putting to one side, if you can, and how hard this is, your personal view, that Netanyahu is a very bad man and a very bad prime minister, what's your sense of how Israeli opinion is rallying to him as a leader?

28:55And do you think that the, one of the reasons that the Hamas have taken so many hostages is because of what they took from that previous exchange 17 years ago? Well, Ahamas obviously knows that Israel is extremely sensitive to hostages, and they plan to play this card for maximum effect, which means again, for maximum terror and hatred, creating more and more of that. And Israelis now have very little confidence in the leadership of Netanyahu. He can still, in a way, I mean, it's beyond him to resign. I mean, he can't do what Chamberlain did in 1940 and just move aside and give somebody better.

29:38I mean, this is what he should have done. He can't, I think he can't, but maybe, maybe he can still do something very simple, but very difficult. Just give a speech to the Israeli public and say, I'm responsible. I ran the nation against itself. I'm responsible for this catastrophe. I will pay the full price. I don't think this is the moment for me to step down. There is nobody else. So I'll do this one job, but know that I take full responsibility and I will pay the price. And based on that, now let me do my best with this extremely difficult situation. If you will just, after these like five, six sentences, you can still, in a way, unite the people are extremely angry against him.

30:26But I'm not sure if he's capable of doing such a gesture. And you're well to now bring in the Palestinian voice. I mean, I don't presume to be able to speak on their behalf, but my sense is that mainstream Palestinian opinion sees this in terms of Gaza being a extended prison camp, is the way that they think about it, that Gaza is supposed to be the beginning of a two -state solution, an independent country, not so much New Jersey as Mexico in its relationship to the United States. And so I think Palestinians hearing this would be completely horrified at the idea that this would then lead to an Israeli occupation of Gaza.