Transcription
Well, the point is, let's just take uh US Israeli relations. Uh Israel is a strategic albatross around our neck. The policies that Israel pursues in the Middle East are not in our interest. Uh and therefore for the Biden administration or for the Trump administration to support the policies of Israel to the extent that we do is not rational in my opinion. And here I'm talking only about Israel being a strategic albatross around our neck. It's also a moral albatross. It's a double whammy from a strategic point of view and from a moral point of view. Our relationship with Israel is not rational. Uh and that was true under Joe Biden and it's true under Donald Trump. And of course the reason that we pursue this particular policy towards Israel uh is because of the lobby. Uh the Israel lobby puts enormous pressure on policymakers to support Israel uh unconditionally and that of course is what we're doing.
You know, it's very interesting to listen to you talk to the previous guest and the conversation really revolves around what Israel is doing in Gaza. But the truth is it's not just Israel. It's Israel and the United States. And Israel would not be able to pursue the u policies that it's pursuing in Gaza, with regard to Iran, with regard to Lebanon, and with regard to Syria without complete support from the United States. Uh the reason that Israel is able to behave so aggressively is the United States supports it at every turn. We give the Israelis huge amounts of money, huge amounts of weaponry and diplomatic support. And that frees the Israelis up to pursue these policies that I would argue are not in America's interests, as I just said, but I would also argue are not in Israel's interest. I think what's going on in the Middle East today is a disaster for Israel. And over time, I think more and more people will recognize that.
>> And how is that? How can you expand on what makes it a disaster for Israel?
>> Well, I think from a moral point of view, uh the genocide is a stain uh on Israel's reputation. It's going to be everlasting. Uh it's going to be there uh forever. I mean, this is a genocide. And it's not just any genocide. It's a genocide that's basically being filmed. Uh we can see it happening before our eyes with regard to the Holocaust. Hardly anybody saw any evidence of what was happening. The word got out of Europe that a holocaust was taking place or a genocide against the Jews was taking place, but we couldn't see pictures of that. We didn't really know exactly what was going on at the time. And it took really a long time to sort of unpack uh what happened uh between 1941 and 1945 in Europe. Uh but in the case of what's going on in Gaza, it's manifestly apparent what's going on. And this makes it all the more shocking by the way that it's been allowed to go on. The fact that people haven't revolted and forced their governments to shut this down is uh truly shocking. But anyway, my first point would be that this is a disaster for Israel. Second, the idea that Israel is going to have um perfect security by uh beating up on every state in the region and breaking countries apart like Syria and Iran and Egypt and maybe Turkey uh is a pipe dream. That's not going to happen. And Israel in the process is going to do enorm enormous damage to itself. Uh it's going to end up fighting wars forever and ever. And this is not in Israel's interest, especially since those adversaries uh are eventually going to get the military capability to threaten Israel in serious ways. And the best example of this is the case of Iran. Uh the Israelis are running around and of course Donald Trump is as well and many hawks in the United States saying that we have just delivered this hammer blow to Iran. We have obliterated their nuclear program. They're never going to get nuclear weapons. Uh and if they make any steps in that direction, we'll just go back in and slam them again. Uh I I wouldn't bet a lot of money on that. Uh, I think that the Iranian nuclear program is alive. Uh, the Iranians remain committed to at least enriching uranium and I would be willing to bet that behind closed doors they're committed to developing a bomb. Uh, they're not going to advertise that. Certainly not at this point in time, but uh, I would not be surprised for one second. In fact, I think it's likely that they will develop a bomb. So, Israel hasn't solved this problem. In fact, they've made the situation worse. And the idea that they've won this great victory against Iran or that we won this great victory against Iran is simply not true. Uh if anything, the key question is why the Iranians agreed to a ceasefire. If I had been playing the Iranians hand, I would not have agreed to a ceasefire. I would have let the war go on for a couple more weeks. The Israelis were in real trouble because huge amounts of damage were being done to Israeli territory. And furthermore, the Israelis were running out of defensive missiles and there was no shortage of ballistic missiles and drones and cruise missiles on the Iranian side. So, one could make good argument that the Iranians should have continued the war. All of this is to say that if the Israelis and the Americans start the war up again, I wouldn't bet that Israel and the United States are going to win that war.
Just to take this one step further, and this is where the Americans come into play. It's quite clear that one of the reasons that Trump wanted to shut the war down um after the July, excuse me, the June 22 attacks was because there was evidence that the Iranians were going to mine the Persian Gulf, the straits of Hormuz. And that really spooked Trump as it should have. All of this is to say that if we have another conflict, there's a possibility that the Iranians will mine the straits. And if they mine the straits and we have a huge economic crisis, uh this will not be good for anyone on the planet and certainly for the Trump administration. So the point is that even absent nuclear weapons, the Iranians have cards to play, but the Israelis act like they can just slap the Iranians around. It has no real consequences and to the extent that it might have consequences, Iran's going to fall apart much the way Syria did. Uh I wouldn't bet a lot of money on that. Uh and I could go on and on uh with regard to this and we could talk about the you know the centrifugal forces that are at play inside of Israel itself. This is not a happy society. This is this is a society that has wicked fault lines and the animosity across those fault lines is not to be underestimated and when you fight wars all the time like this it invariably exacerbates uh those antagonisms. So I think if you look at the body politic and you look at uh Israel's situation in the broader region, I think the idea that they're in great shape and they just need to apply a little bit more force and get a little bit more support from the United States uh is not uh the way you want to look at this.
>> So why did Iran not do what you were suggesting they could have and should have done? Do you think
>> It's very hard to say uh exactly what was going on? Uh I mean it seems to me that the Americans were probably talking to the Russians and to the Chinese and the Russians and the Chinese were talking to the Iranians and they were probably putting pressure on the Iranians to shut this one down. You want to remember that the Chinese get a lot of oil uh out of the Gulf and uh they did not the Chinese did not want to see the straits or Hormuz shut down. So they had an incentive to put an end to this war. Uh I think the Russians worry about the war as well. They don't want to get dragged in. They don't have any real deep-seated interest. So I wouldn't be surprised if the Iranians were getting pressure uh from the Russians and the Chinese. The other thing is that almost all of the reporting on Iran tells us that there is a pretty profound split inside Iran between hardliners and softliners. And there are actually a lot of people inside of Iran who want to have good relations uh with the West. Uh and in fact I think these people would be willing to work out some sort of motus for vendai with the Israelis if the Israelis would shut down the genocide but there is you know a moderate wing inside of Iran and I wouldn't be surprised if they made the case as well that we should shut this down now uh and if need be we can go back to fighting the war we have the missiles to do that so that'd be my best guess as to what happened here.
>> So this may be a kind of basic question, but I'm I'm genuinely confused about how um rational acting works in the real world. Is it that states act rationally but for certain things like ideology or like extenduating circumstances or the lobby? Because you just gave a bunch of examples of like for the United States and Israel that they're what they're doing is is it's not rational. Correct. So, how how how does this work?
>> Well, just focusing on the American case, which is what I was talking about. The first point you want to remember is that states don't always act rationally. Uh Sebastian Rosado and I wrote this book that argues states uh act rationally most of the time, but there are exceptions for sure. Uh if you were to look at the Bay of Pigs operation which President Kennedy uh executed shortly after he took office, he came into office on January 1961 and then he launched the Bay of Pigs operation uh in April of 1961. It was a total fiasco and it is very easy to prove that that was a nonrational or irrational decision. So the point I'm making to you Katie is that there are examples out there. Now, I think as I said before that if you look at American policy toward Israel, whether it's under Joe Biden or it's under Donald Trump, it does not make strategic sense. It's not rational. And in almost all cases, the reason states pursue nonrational strategies or irrational strategies is because of domestic politics. Domestic politics overwhelms strategic calculations. Uh and in this case it's the lobby. Uh the lobby as you know is enormously influential in the United States. It's much less influential these days at controlling the discourse as is evidenced by the fact that you and I are having this conversation which tens of thousands of people will watch. So in terms of controlling the discourse, the lobby is in deep trouble. But in terms of influencing policy makers, they basically have every policy maker or almost every policy maker in their back pocket. Uh and it doesn't matter whether you have Joe Biden in the White House, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, you name it. Uh the lobby gets its way uh with policy makers. And that's domestic politics at play. And in those cases you will find instances of irrationality and this is certainly a case of irrationality.
>> So what drives Israel? I know these are like very kind of existential questions but what what motivates Israel right? So if in if the United to be irrational, right? Because if in the United States it's the lobby, right? So, what makes Israel do things that are so not only morally reprehensible, but um as you're arguing, let's uh not good for Israel in the long run.
>> Well, I'm not sure I would argue that Israel is irrational. Uh I think that their uh policies are wrongheaded, but uh you want to remember that whether a policy is moral or not, and I abhore what the Israelis are doing. I I've been arguing for a long long time that this is a genocide and I am super critical of the Israelis. But whether a policy is moral or not is very different from whether it's rational or not. The question you have to ask yourself is what are the Israeli goals here? Is what are they trying to do? And if you go back, you know, to the early 1900s, you know, when the first, second, third alias came from Europe to Israel or what was then Palestine, and you ask yourself, what did they intend to do? What they wanted to do was create a Jewish state. And they wanted to create a Jewish state that controlled a lot of territory. Uh some wanted to control more territory than others, but they had grand ambitions. They were not talking about creating a tiny state, but they understood that they couldn't do this all at once. And the end result is that over time the size of Israel has grown incrementally. Um they in 1948 got a rather small state uh which was then significantly expanded in 1967 when they got uh what are called the occupied territories which is Gaza and the West Bank. And as we all know those are only temporarily occupied territories. The Israelis have every intention of making the occupied territories part of greater Israel. And now if you look at what the Israelis are doing in um Lebanon, southern Lebanon that is, and in Syria, southern Syria that is. You can see that they're interested in Laban's route. They want more living room. They want that greater Israel to be even bigger than just Green Line Israel uh and uh the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They want to go beyond that. And I wouldn't be surprised if at some time at some point they try to take uh uh territory in the Sinai and maybe territory in what's now Jordan. You do not want to underestimate their appetite. And the Israelis have never said these are our borders. We have fixed borders and that's the end of the game. Uh the Israelis are interested in creating a much larger state than they now have. So that's point one. Point two is at the very most they want the population to be comprised of 20% Palestinians. This was the number that David Bengurian used to use. He said the state had to be 80% Jewish, 20% non-Jewish.
>> And one of the leftest leaders of Israel.
>> Worth noting. Yeah.
>> Yes. For sure. Uh or at least the centrist. Uh
>> Right. Yeah. But nominally, right? Part of labor. I mean, it's just it's just funny that this is in in Israel that you still get to be called like the left and say that you want 20% maximum Palestinians. If we could just get off on a sidetrack here. When I first started studying Israel and how it worked, uh I I tended to think that people like Bengurian were moderates and people like Monolam Bean who was one might say a mortal foe of Bengurians were they were the bad guys. Uh Bengurian and people of his ilk were basically liberal Zionists. They were the good guys. And it was people like Vegan who were the bad guys. And I came to believe with the passage of time that there really wasn't much difference in what their goals were. It's just that Bengurian was very good at uh covering up uh with soft language uh the harsh realities of what Israel was doing and wanted to do. And Bean was more of what I call a Texas chainsaw massacre kind of guy. He he'd tell you exactly what he was doing. And uh the more time went on, the more I came to appreciate Bean, his basic honesty.
>> And and this revolves around the 1967 war. Uh the argument that people like Michael Orurin and and so-called liberal Zionists like to make is that in 1967 uh the Arab countries were about to attack Israel and destroy it and by some miracle the Israelis beat them to the punch. It was a preemptive strike and they won this stunning and unexpected victory. That's the conventional wisdom. It bears little resemblance to the truth. And I remember when Manak and Bean said, "Let's be honest about this. It was a war of choice. We didn't have to fight this war." Began understood full well that Israel was Godzilla going up against Bambi or a series of Bambi. And that's why, of course, the Israelis won this great victory, great set of victories in 1967. Uh, but Bean was a straight shooter. You don't have to like what he said, but he told it like it is.
>> It can be helpful.
>> It can be very helpful.
>> Yeah. It can be very clarifying and and that was not true of of people like David Bengurian, I believe. One could argue that Bengurian was what Israel needed. Uh he was more sophisticated. He understood the importance of soft power and so forth and so on. But anyway, first point I want to make to you is that Israel was interested in creating lots of Laban's realm. Second point is they did not want many if any Palestinians inside of greater Israel. I think 80% was the number that number of Jews that Benurian uh aimed for but in an ideal world it would be an all Jewish state. Uh third point you want to keep in mind is that even if you create a greater Israel that occupies a lot of territory and has a lot of military might, you want to make sure that your neighbors are especially weak. So from the beginning, the Israelis have had a deep-seated interest in breaking apart their neighbors. And you see this today in Syria. And by the way, if you go back to the famous or infamous clean break study of the mid 1990s that was done by Richard Pearl, Paul Wolawitz and others uh for government. Yes. By the neocons, right? Syria was the first target of that strategy. Uh and of course they're trying now to do the same thing with Iran. They want to break these states apart. Uh they want to create uh uh dysfunctional rump states on on their border. And then the fourth strand of the strategy is they want to have a great power that backs them to the hilt. Uh and of course today that is the United States. So the lobby works overtime here in the United States and the Israelis themselves work overtime. Uh to keep the United States uh on Israel's side. And you want to understand, getting back to my first three sets of points, that if you have that kind of ambitious agenda, you're creating Laban's realm, you're wrecking your neighbors, you're trying to push all the Palestinians out, you really need a great power to help you. And this is why the United States is so important to Israel today. And of course, Israel's supporters understand that, if not explicitly, intuitively, they understand that Israel needs the United States not simply to survive, but it needs the United States to pursue this ambitious agenda.
So you're I mean what what you're saying basically is or I will say this because I don't want people to to take anything out of context but a a policy can be rational and genocidal right because morality has nothing to do with rationality with reason. So if the goal is is ethnic cleansing and genocide then being genocidal is not irrational.
>> That's correct. But you're also
>> I think just very quickly I think people find that very hard to accept.
>> Yeah.
>> When you say that genocidal policy can be rational, people recoil at that argument. But for analytical purposes, what is going on here is that you separate separate rationality from morality, right? Because rationality here is basically instrumental rationality. It's how you go about achieving your goals. It's not the goal itself. So if your goal is uh to uh in effect drive all the Palestinians out of Gaza and the West Bank and you have to pursue a genocidal policy uh to do that, one could argue, as I certainly would that that is morally bankrupt in the extreme. Uh it violates international law. It violates basic human precepts and so forth and so on. But you can make the argument that it is rational given what the goal is and what the Israelis are doing. Uh again, that's not to justify it, just to say that it's not irrational.
>> And by the way, the I think the classic case here is Hitler.
>> I was just going to ask you about that. Yeah, please. Yeah.
>> I I I teach a lot about World War II, the 1930s, and I I talked a lot about Hitler. I've written a lot about Hitler. One of the reasons that Hitler was so dangerous and so difficult to deal with was that he was in many ways a first class strategic thinker. He was no dunk. He was very clever and therefore he was very dangerous. Now am I defending Adolf Hitler and saying that he was a good guy and what he was doing made sense and so forth and so on? Of course not. But I'm just saying it's important to understand that even though he was immoral to the in the extreme, right? We're talking about Hitler here. The fact is that as a strategist, as someone who was making calculations about how to achieve his goals, he was very, very good. And that's what made him so difficult to deal with. If you look at what he did between 1933 and really 1941 when he invaded the Soviet Union, that was his fatal mistake. On June 22nd, 1941, he invaded the Soviet Union. And thank God that's what led uh to his demise. But up until June 22nd, 1941, uh he had one success after another. Uh he looked like a remarkably skillful uh strategist and many people have said that if he had you know been hit by a car uh on June 21st 1941 he would be celebrated as one of the great strategists one of the great military and diplomatic strategists of all time. I don't know if I'd go that far but you get what I'm saying here.
>> Right? So my my bottom line here is because I'm saying some state or some states person is rational, that's not to say that that person is moral,
>> Right? Yeah. And I think you did I mean that that example that you just provided with Hitler, I think lays it out very well, right? There's no question of Hitler's moral uh immorality uh evil. But that but if your goal is right if your goal is to uh do certain things that are immoral then you have certain strategies and you have that can be seen as rational but I guess what I'm curious about is that you you said that um you thought that what um Israel was doing was actually some of what they were doing was not strategic right you said that that will exacerbate the fault line so what is it in your opinion that you think that Israel is doing that is um I guess shooting itself in the foot versus just pursuing genocide as usual.
>> Well, one could argue that Netanyahu is rational, right? Again, we got to separate rational,
>> Right?
>> Well, that's why I'm glad that with the I think the Hitler thing probably put everything to bed, right? With any if anyone had any doubts about the relationship between morality and rationality, you're you're invoking Hitler, I think, makes it very clear. Yes. Um,
>> Yeah. But, uh, just to go to Netanyahu,
>> Yeah.
>> Netanyahu is, and I'm choosing my words carefully here, he's an extremely clever politician. Uh, you know, a lot of people tend to think that he's a fool, he's an idiot, and, uh, it's it's just a result of serendipity that he's managed to stay in power for as long as he has. Uh I I think that's a misreading. Uh this is a remarkably skilled politician. He's a very smart man uh in lots of ways. And he has a set of goals uh which I just described to you in the context of describing what I think Israel's four goals are. Uh, I think that Netanyahu shares those four goals uh to a tea. There's just no question about that. And you can make a case that that's a smart strategy. I disagree with that. The fact is, Katie, on many policy issues, people can fundamentally disagree on what the smart strategy is for dealing with a particular problem. And let me give you a really good example that highlights this. Jeff Sachs and I are very good friends and we have basically the same views, same exact views on Ukraine and on Palestine/Israel issues and Iran as well. But on China, we have a fundamentally different view. Uh we just think about that situation very differently. Now, I would not want to be in the situation where I said Jeff is irrational because I don't think he's irrational at all. He just has a different way of thinking about how to deal with China. Now, I believe that his way is wrongheaded and if we pursued Jeff's uh policies for dealing with China, we'd get ourselves into trouble. Jeff believes the reverse about me. He thinks that John has wrongheaded views about China and we're going to get into trouble if we pursue John's views. So what I'm saying to you is you can have a situation where two people think about how to deal with a problem in very different ways where both of them are behaving rationally now but at the same time both sides think the other side is foolish. If that makes sense. I'm sure many viewers are having difficulty absorbing that argument, but the example of me and Jeff, I think, gets at it. But anyway, with regard to how to deal with Israel's present situation, there are lots of very smart people who think that Netanyahu is doing the right thing, that it makes good sense to create a greater Israel. And if Israel could get rid of all the Palestinians and create an all Jewish state, that would be in Israel's interest. That's what they actually think. And you could tell a story where that makes strategic sense. I believe it doesn't make strategic sense for the reasons I laid out to you. I think ultimately Israel is going to get into one heck of a lot of trouble pursuing these policies. But what I'm saying is that different people have different views on what is the best way forward for Israel. And both of those sets of views can be rational.
>> Yeah. I mean, I think that you you recently said something that really resonated with me um about how uh with more and more time or over as more time goes on, sorry, let me I just had the the quote here. Um um as time goes on, sorry, one second. Where is that quote? Um, okay. The more time goes by, and I'm reluctant to say this, but I believe it is true. The Israelis look like the Nazis. Their rhetoric, their behavior, it's truly appalling. A Jewish state is behaving like the Nazis did. So, can you talk about this evolution? Um, why why you say that? What the parallels are that stand out to you? Um, and when you when you started thinking this way.
>> Well, I think that uh when the war first broke out uh on October 7th, uh for about the first two months, uh I did not think it was a genocide. Uh I thought there was no question that the Israelis were creating were committing war crimes, but I didn't think it was a genocide. Uh but I think by mid December of 2023 it was becoming clear to me that it was a genocide. And of course as you remember I think it was December 31st of 2023. Uh I think that's when South Africa filed its brief uh with the International Court of Justice. Uh, and I read that brief and then I watched what was going on and I was convinced that it was a genocide and I've thought so since. But as time has gone by and I've watched this genocide evolve, uh, the more I am reminded of what the Nazis did in uh, World War II. Uh, this is the period 1941 to 1945. And I I actually teach on the Holocaust. Uh I give lectures on it and I've done an enormous amount of research. At one point I thought about writing a book on it. So I I know quite a bit about it. Um I haven't done a lot of research in recent years, but I know the case uh quite well. And uh when you sort of look at the Israelis, uh the parallels are quite striking. Uh first of all, just the rhetoric uh and this was evident uh on October 7th and shortly after October 7th. Uh and one could argue there was evidence of this kind of rhetoric even before October 7th. But it seems to me that if you listen to Israeli leaders talking uh after October 7th, uh they sound hardly different from the Nazis at all. Uh the things that they say are just reprehensible, shocking. Uh it is hard to believe that the Jews and of course Israelis are Jews would say such a thing given what the Germans said back in the day. Um and the second thing is you know uh before the Holocaust got started really uh the planning was uh set in place in the spring late winter early spring of 1941. Uh the Germans were not sure what exactly they were going to do with the Jews and they had this plan uh called the Madagascar plan which was to move the Jews to Africa. Uh and you have Jews today, Israelis today talking about moving the Palestinians to Africa. Uh uh and you just sort of scratch your head and say, "Boy, I've heard that one before." Right? Uh, and then if you look at the pictures, uh, especially the starving children, uh, if that doesn't remind you of Oshwitz, uh, not only the death camps, but the concentration camps that were inside Germany, it just, I mean, the pictures look so similar to the pictures that have survived uh, from the Holocaust that uh, I think you can't help but think uh that you know this is a very uh similar situation. And then this is not exactly on the genocide but you know I was talking about layman's realm before and a number of people have now begun to talk about layman's realm. I mean, you want to remember with regard to >> with regard to the Germans in World War II when they invaded the Soviet Union, they were not only talking about murdering huge numbers of people. And it's very important to emphasize here that they murdered uh more non-Jews than they murdered Jews. I mean, this was a murderous regime like we've never seen before in my opinion. Uh and uh you want to remember that the official number that the Soviets give for uh Soviet citizens who died uh in World War II is 27 million. 27 million. And I would estimate that about 8 million of those casualties are military or those deaths. So 8 million of the 27 million uh that's telling you that probably 1981 17 million civilians were killed, right? Uh and my estimate is that roughly 1 million of those uh Soviet citizens who were murdered were Jews. Uh because most of the Jews were uh in Poland and in Romania/Hungary. Um, and uh, but anyway, I'm just telling you this was an incredibly murderous regime. And not only was it a murderous regime, it was interested in creating Laben's realm. I mean, they talked openly about that. And when you watch what the Israelis are doing, the wanted murder, right? Then, of course, they're murdering the Palestinians and this is a genocide. And I would not argue that what's happening in Lebanon is or Syria or with regard to Iran is a genocide. That's not a genocide. Period. End of story. But nevertheless, the wanting killing of civilians in those countries by the Israelis is shocking to me. And I'm a good old-fashioned realist. It's not like I'm some pussycat, right? I understand that international politics is a rough and tumble business. But when you watch what the Israelis are doing in terms of just killing civilians and carving out layman's realm in countries like Syria, countries like Lebanon, uh, and so forth and so on, and just all the horrible, absolutely horrible things that are happening in Gaza, and to some lesser extent, uh, in the West Bank, it certainly does look like the Germans.
>> Yeah. And less people think that you're uh taking this uh too far. This is a Times of Israel post that was deleted, but it this is from this uh it is from 2024 and it says uh Leen's RAM needed for Israel's exploding population. Israel's population is is projected to grow to 11.1 million by 2030, 13.2 million by 2040, and 15.2 million by 2048. That's why hanging on to the West Bank is such a contentious issue. Lebanon's realm. Uh, these people need places to live in a nation short of land mass. Compare Israel to its neighbor Jordan. And it goes on and on. Now, this was deleted, but it was also written. And deleting just shows that there's good damage control. Here's something from 2014, also from Times of Israel when genocide is permissible. So uh again this can be like we were talking before sometimes these things are useful they're they're clarifying um it's so that's why also they can be deleted but um you know the the idea that uh that the lesson of the Holocaust is is being uh perpetrated against Palestinians. I mean the idea that never again somehow means I mean well we know what it means. It means never again to a certain group of people and whatever it takes to another group of people. But what I think is so interesting about um this whole question of of what's rational is that it can really get to what the goal of a state or a government are. Right? So sometimes things don't look rational to us, but that's only because we think that the ultimate goal is something that it may not be. So if the goal of Israel is to keep Jews safe, let's say, I don't think that Israel is a rational project, uh, for many reasons. I mean, we've talked about the uh the Hannibal directive, the treatment of the hostages. Um the way that they are I would say Israel is creating I mean, what what can create more more anti-semitism than claiming that you are acting in the name of Jews as you live stream a genocide? But if so, it's not rational if that's the goal. But then if it is more of a if it is a much more aggressive ambitious project, then it is more rational, right? So you can almost like retro like you can almost work backwards and figure out what the real goals of a of a government are by looking at what they're doing that can it can it can like it can um you can see through the the the lie you you get to see the difference between what the claims are and what the realities are.
>> Yeah. I mean, I think you're basically saying what I was saying uh about, you know, what is rational and what is not rational. You can have an absolutely horrible goal and be very rational in your pursuit of that goal.
>> Right?
>> And that doesn't mean you're behaving morally. It just behaves means that you're behaving strategically. And again, as I said before, Adolf Hitler was a remarkably u he was a remarkably smart strategist. He made mistakes and thankfully he made the ultimate mistake of invading the Soviet Union, but he was not a fool and that's what again what made him so dangerous. Uh but you know I want to make another point uh based on what you were saying uh when you were reading from that I think it was the article about Laban's realm uh where Israel has this exploding population.
>> Right?
>> Uh first of all Israel in my opinion probably has about 7 this is inside greater Israel today you have probably about 7.3 million Palestinians and about 7.3 million Jews Uh, and if they expel all the Palestinians like they want to, you probably have 7.3 million Jews. But the other question you have to ask yourself is what's going to happen to all those Israeli Jews over time? How many are going to stay there? Uh, how many have already left? How many will leave when the shooting stops? I mean, what is the future of Israel? Uh, and I would argue it's not a very bright future. Uh, I talked about the fault lines inside the society before and what that means for the future. Um, I think all of this war, it really spooks people. And when you see that you have neighbors uh that have missiles that can hit you and you get into, you know, fights like the fight that the Israelis just got into with the Iranians, you want to ask yourself, what are the consequences of that for the population? Will people leave? Uh are people going to go to Israel? Uh I wouldn't bet a lot of money on that and I wouldn't be surprised if a good number of people leave because they just don't feel safe there. And by the way, we were talking about the possibility of Iran getting nuclear weapons. What if Iran gets nuclear weapons and at the same time Israel and Iran continue to have uh poisonous relations between the two countries? Uh would you want to live in Israel? I'm not sure about that. You know, it's the size of a postage stamp. Uh and you have this country Iran and we're hypothesizing that it might have a couple nuclear weapons. Uh this is not a good situation. Uh and uh anyway, I I think that if you look at this country, it does not have a bright future. Now, I think that Benjamin Netanyahu would disagree with that and he would tell people that if you follow my policies and the Americans support us hook, line, and sinker, uh, we're going to create a greater Israel and live happily ever after. But, uh, I don't think so.
>> So, it's it's it's kind of his his mistake, his strategic mistake, you think, is relying on the goodwill or the the unwavering support of the West? Because part of me thinks maybe it is rational because no no no one is standing up to this starvation to this like genocidal behavior that invokes so many comparisons to the Holocaust. And I have to say that I'm working on this documentary about Holocaust survivors speaking out against the genocide. And I've interviewed people who are survivors, the children of survivors, but also people who are just involved in um uh the Middle East. And I interviewed Daniel Levy the other day, um, who used to be an Israeli negotiator. He's English, but he'd spent a lot of time in Israel. And he said that, you know, he used to always avoid, uh, comparisons between the Nazis and Israelis, uh, and that it's very forbidden, verboden, right? Israel, you're not allowed to do that. Only Israel can weaponize the the Holocaust. No one else can uh, use it. So, they they get to call other people Nazis. They get to call Hamas Nazis, but you can't make any parallels. But what Daniel Levy said was that it's almost like Israel is daring people to compare them to the Nazis with their actions.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I I think that's right. I think the key piece here, by the way, I mean, I've read a number of pieces by Daniel and I know him quite well and
>> Have great respect for him. But the key piece is the uh uh the writings or the key pieces are the writings of Omar Barav.
>> Yeah. Who was an Israeli by birth, served in the IDF uh and has been a historian of the Holocaust at Brown University for a long time. I actually have taught his uh books uh over time in my classes and he is highly regarded and he has said uh that he believes that what the Israelis are doing is a holocaust or is a genocide.
>> Yeah. And uh that really uh I think has had a big impact. And of course you know all sorts of individuals and organizations with real standing like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, various people uh in the United Nations have said that this is a holocaust uh or a genocide. And so I think that that uh that label is now beginning to stick in ways that leaves many Israelis and certainly the Israeli government very uncomfortable. Uh and they'll go to great lengths to cut against that. But uh the more this goes on, the more difficult that becomes. Uh and you want to remember here, we just want to think about this just when we're assessing the strategy. Uh what's the ending here?
>> Yeah.
>> You know, h how does this end? Uh I'm hoping every day I hope that Trump moves in and says enough is enough and the Israelis are forced to accept uh a ceasefire and uh supply trucks flow into Gaza. Let's assume that that happens. Uh that would be wonderful in a certain sense, but at the same time it hardly goes anyways towards solving the basic problem. These people have no homes. Gaza's been made unlivable. They really have no place to go. Uh unless the Madagascar option is realized and uh I don't think that's going to happen either. Uh, but what's the end result here? And you know, the Israelis don't like the idea of having 7.3 million Palestinians in their midst. Okay, but you can't get rid of them. Therefore, you have 7.3 million Palestinians inside your borders and those people are living in the most horrible of conditions. Uh, what does this mean? The world is going to mobilize against you. Maybe the US government will protect you and it will limit the leverage of the so-called international community, but nevertheless, the consequences for your country are going to be horrific, right? You're going to be uh the moral stain on your reputation is going to be huge. And what does that mean for people who live inside Israel? And furthermore, just to take this a step further because we want to think about where this train is headed, what about the lobby? You know, the lobby is already overexposed from its own point of view. It's out in the open. It's playing smashmouth politics. It's acting in ways that are fundamental fundamentally at odds with basic American values like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly. Is the lobby going to be forced to continue acting this way for year after year? This will be disastrous for the United States. This is a terrible situation inside the United States. The situation with the lobby is terribly unhealthy for liberal America. And I don't mean liberal in the sense of a liberal Democratic party. I mean liberal in the lockian sense of the term. Liberal in the sense that we're all part of a liberal society. Having the lobby, you know, act the way it's been acting in recent years for the foreseeable future would be disastrous. So, if you sort of think about where we are and how we get out of this, I don't see any solution at all. And I think pursuing Netanyahu's policies just make the situation worse. But again, if you go to the I think vast majority is probably too strong a word. But the clear majority of Israel's supporters in the United States and tell them that we're in a terrible situation, they would agree. And if you say, "How do we get out of it?" They would say, "More force, more force. Just, you know, pound the Palestinians, pound Israel's neighbors. That's the solution." And I've long ago come to the conclusion that there are real limits to what you can do in any situation like this with military force. But Israel and its supporters, they reject that line of argument. They think that you can solve political problems uh with the big stick, with the iron wall, with military force. But I don't think so.
>> Yeah. Yeah, the iron wall of course which is uh of course reminds one of uh Jabatinsky who's another Texas chainsaw massacre type of uh leader who again in a very refreshing clarifying way said the quiet part out loud. You know, Israel is a coloniz is a colonial project. I mean he talked about how natives always resist colonizers and he was referring to the Palestinians um and the Israelis, you know, he wasn't obviously being critical. He was embracing it. Um he and other revisionists were in some ways it's much easier to deal with because you know what what you are dealing with. But um so I mean if we look at at history though as a as a as an example like will will Israel be just fine as long as it doesn't uh try to invade Western Europe or Eastern Europe?
>> Well, it's not going to be just fine. Uh it's
>> Not stopped, I should say. It's at war with a handful of its neighbors. Uh it's a highly aggressive state uh prone to violence. Uh and uh there's no evidence that that's going to change. It has this huge looming problem with Iran. It has powerful centrifugal forces at play inside the body politic. And I believe the situation with the lobby here in the United States is um not sustainable over the long term. Uh I I think now that what the lobby does is out in the open and now that the lobby's pay playing smashmouth politics the can't go on forever. And uh so I I think again I think Israel is in real trouble.
>> Yeah. Uh well I mean I hope I hope so. I mean, I hope it it's it's to me it's just like whether it will be stopped. When will it be stopped? What would it what will it take for it to be stopped? Some kind of domestic pressure on the West that that makes the West finally cut off the pull
The plug on it. I don't know. I I don't. I I your question is a great question.
Requires clarification. You and I are on the same wavelength. So, I think about that question all the time. Lots of people ask me that question, and what I really wish is I had a happy, I wish that I had a a happy story to tell you. I wish I could say, "Katie, listen, I think these two things are going to happen over the course of the next year, and then this situation is uh going to come to an end." I mean, I I to be very honest, find it hard to believe that the genocide in Gaza continues. I just can't believe it. Especially now that we have all these pictures of starving children. You just sort of shake your head and say, "How can this be? How can people not shut this one down, right?"
Uh, and uh, I mean, it's not like Israel is that powerful vis-à-vis the West, and especially the United States. We have tremendous leverage here. You want to remember, as we talked about before, President Trump, the day before he became President Trump, sent Steve Witco to the Middle East, this is uh uh January 19th, uh to affect a ceasefire, right? Because Trump didn't want uh what was going on in Gaza to be going on January 20th. So, they shut it down. And it looked like there was a pretty good ceasefire agreement that might form the basis of a lasting agreement uh or an agreement that would last for maybe a couple of years. But that all went up in smoke uh quite quickly, and here we are. But anyway, I I I can't. I I'm sad to say I can't tell a happy story.
Well, Brad brought up this uh image, speaking of the greater Israel, you know, saying the quiet part out loud. Here's an image of Netanyahu. Oops. With uh the new Middle East. Uh, and um, Brad, what did you want to say about this?
Um, uh, uh, just about uh, it just reminded this image came to mind when Dr. Amir Shimemer was, you know, speaking about the Leban um, >> just the greater colonization. And it was just remarkable to me, at least, that uh, I believe this was September uh, 2023, that he, Netanyahu felt comfortable enough to present this in the to the United Nations. Um, and as a uh, little uh, less substantial aside, um, I'm actually not at home now. I'm visiting my dad, and he and I went to see the Superman movie uh yesterday evening. This literally is in the movie. Like the villain literally shows a map. I mean, they're they're fictitious places, but uh, >> it it was hard for me not to be like, "Oh my god, this is literally like what we talk about on the show all the time." >> Yeah. >> Um >> people are very angry about it, apparently. >> Oh. Oh, jeez. >> About Superman. >> Oh, wow. Okay.
Well, um, I just wanted to show one clip just to kind of remind people what we're talking about uh to to ground it in in the in reality. Um, so here is a clip uh of Cindy McCain um, who is talking about the uh, the the death and destruction that uh, is being experienced in Palestine right now. Um, and this is interesting because of course she's uh, you know, this is the the widow of of the late uh, John McCain. She's not someone who's particularly um, a bleeding heart liberal. Um, particular doesn't come from a particularly humanitarian uh, tradition. You know, her her husband uh, joked around saying, "Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran." But uh, it is interesting and significant uh, that uh, this in this CNN interview with Cindy McCain uh, where she talks about the recent massacre of of Palestinians. Uh, she, let's I think we should just watch this so people are reminded of what's at stake right now.
This is one of the worst tragedies we've seen so far in this in this particular war. Uh, what happened was is we were had clearance to go through the Zakim uh uh gate. It was we were through the gate. The Israelis had had, as you know, they clear everything and they and they uh, they they decide when and if you go in. And we began our our truck down the road, and what we saw were thousands of people running towards us, and they were hungry. They're starving. uh, and and all of a sudden, the Israeli tanks, Israeli guns, uh, Israeli weapons from all kinds started firing on the crowd, and it was just, it's it's something that I I hope never happens again. But more importantly, uh, our our our group WP, our people at Work for Us were there too, and they were put in grave danger as a result of that. No humanitarian aid worker should ever be a target of anything.
Well, this follows a trend over the last two months where over 800 Palestinians have been killed around aid distribution sites. The majority of those are at the controversial US-backed and Israel-supported Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Can you be very specific? Are you coordinating in any way or supporting in any way that operational model, and what is your view on the GHF?
Well, we are not coordinating and we do not work with GHF. As you know, we're a UN agency, and so we have our UN uh, the way the way the UN operates is different from what GHF is doing. I don't really have any information about them at all because we don't even talk. And that, of course, is the Gaza Humanitarian Fund, which isn't just a fake aid organization in that it doesn't provide aid, but it is so much more sinister than that. It is actually luring people to their deaths. I mean, that is that is one of the things that I I can't get out of my mind. I mean, the how diabolical this is. Uh, and it's with the help of, you know, US contractors. Uh, and they are luring people to their deaths with the promise of food. And as Gabbor Mate pointed out um in an interview he did uh in a forthcoming podcast um, this is something that we saw in the Holocaust. You know, Nazis would lure the Jews onto the out of the concentration camps uh onto the trains with promises of food. I'm sorry, out of the ghettos onto the trains towards concentration camps with promises of food. Yeah, it's a well Norman Finkelstein makes the point, and uh, I know enough that uh, about the Holocaust that I I believe he he's right, and he of course knows more than I do. But his point is that what is quite different between the Holocaust and what the Israelis are doing is that the Germans, by and large, did not um, do it gleefully. Uh, that they they were aware that they should hide what they were doing in a very important way. They knew they were doing something wrong.
>> Yeah. >> Um, those are my words, but uh, there was no real glee here. They felt like they just had a job to do. >> And I'm not justifying what they did. But in the case of the Israelis, they're just all sorts of videos that are shocking because you see that they're just killing Palestinians like it's a sport, like it's a game. They're having fun. >> Yeah. >> It's just hard to believe uh, what's going on. Uh, but just back to Cindy McCain. My question is, why aren't there more people like Cindy McCain? This is what I don't understand for the life of me. You know, this is the year 2025. uh, given where we are, you would not expect uh, that the body politic in the West or the various body politics in Western countries would allow this to go on. Uh, it's it's show it's so shocking. I I just I can't figure it out. Uh, what's going on here? H how could Joe Biden and uh, Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan allow this to go on? These are people who view themselves as liberal Democrats, right? Believe in human rights. H how could they do this? Uh, even Donald Trump, okay, Donald Trump's not a liberal Democrat, but doesn't his, you know, sense of decency just tell him that you can't do this? Uh, but anyway, the number of people who are speaking out um down below is very great, >> right? >> You and I are two examples of that. But the number of people in the upper echelons who are speaking out and doing something about this is remarkably small. And I honestly don't understand it uh, at all. Uh, I I just find it hard to believe that uh, people haven't shut this one down.
>> Yeah, it is. I mean, it is unbelievable. And it's painful to think about. Um, and I mean, just the starvation killing of children. I mean, cuz they're the ones who are most vulnerable to starvation. And it just is like, what was the point of "never again"? What was the point of all these lessons that we subject children to if it's just going to be applied again? Just in to a different population which coincidentally had nothing to do with the Holocaust. I mean, be one thing if this were being done to Germans. Not to not that not all Germans, John, of course, but it would be one thing if this were being done to Germans, which I would oppose, but it would be there would be a coherence to it, right? But doing it to Palestinians who have nothing to who had absolutely nothing to do with this is just it's it's absolutely it's stunning. And as you referred to um, and Norman Finkelstein has referred to this, it's the you know, it's the it's kind of like the opposite of the banality of evil that um Arendt talks about. Yeah. >> It's like the the um, the gleeful execution of evil. >> Yeah. Yeah. Exa. Exactly. That I like that language. It's not the banality of evil. And again, that's as you well know, not to justify anything. The >> No, not at all. Right. It's just a different sh It's just a different shade of it. I mean, it's like But it is the opposite. It's not the mechanization and the depersonalization of it and the distance from it. It's the glee and the um documentation. >> Yeah. >> So,
>> But you know, if you think about the creation of Israel, going back to what we were talking about before, uh, there were hardly any uh, Jews in what was Palestine around 1900. And those Jews who were in Palestine were not Zionists, >> right? And when the Zionists came, and this gets back to your comments about Jabotinsky, they understood full well they were going to have to do horrible things to the Palestinians. There's just no way you create a Jewish state in a sea of Palestinians without doing horrible things to the Palestinians. >> And this has gone on and on and on for many, many decades, for well over a century now. >> Right. And in the process, you've uh, you've dehumanized the Palestinians to the point where it's rather easy to get into a situation where murdering them is acceptable. >> By the way, to go back to the Germans, you had a similar situation with regard to how they talked about Jews. And not only Jews, it's how they talked about Poles, how they talked about Slavs, how they talked about uh, the Roma and so forth and so on. They dehumanized people. They were animals. >> Uh, they're grasshoppers. And and and when you dehumanize people, uh, and you do this for, you know, huge periods of time, it becomes easy to then go out and murder them because you don't think you're killing human beings, >> right? Uh, you're killing subhumans. >> And >> uh >> this is obviously what's going on here. >> Yeah. Uh, but then on top of that is that the pathological uh, they all want to kill us, you say, as you are literally wiping them out. So it's like almost it's it's such a sick um combination of dehumanization while also playing the victim at the same time, which is totally exonerating. You know, you can do whatever you want if you claim that you're in fear, living in fear, or this the the myth of self-defense, as if any of this is self-defense, like you just have to starve children to defend yourself. Um >> Yeah. >> Yeah.
Well, thank you so much. You've been, as always, so generous with your time. Um, and any any final thoughts that you want? We only we there's so much to talk about here, so we next time we'll have to do Russia, uh, China, but there's a lot here. So, any any final words you'd like to share? I would also point out that we hardly touched on Iran, >> right? >> Other than to point out that from an Israeli point of view, that is possibly the greatest threat they face. >> Yeah. >> A threat they have made worse, >> right? And I I mean I it if I'm I want nukes now much more than I did before. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's But there's plenty to talk about the next time we get together, I'm sad to say. And and the worst part of it, to be honest, is that the Gaza genocide will probably still be going on in one form or another. Man, so horrible.