Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 181. Israel, invasion, and the trap laid by Hamas About this episode Does Hamas actually want Israel to invade Gaza? Is there a danger that this tragic situation will strengthen the hand of the ultra-nationalist Israeli right? How should the international community respond to the war between Israel and Hamas?
On today’s episode, Alastair and Rory are joined by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari to answer all these questions and more, a week after Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Rory Stewart? This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
0:06 Alastair Campbell? And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.
0:19 Rory Stewart? I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Crete. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.
0:42 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?
0:49 Rory Stewart? I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/rustaspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustaspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
1:43 Rory Stewart? Welcome to the Rest is Politics. I'm here in London and Alistair and I are about to interview 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's 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 apologising 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
2:26 Rory Stewart? last episode that we put out a few days ago, which tries to look at the bigger history. But 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. And I think Yuval is a fascinating example of somebody who has been deeply emotionally traumatised, who feels deep attachment to Israel, but is also finding his way towards talking about peace and empathy. And I think that emotional journey makes this episode even more powerful than some of our other episodes. I hope you enjoy it.
3:08 Rory Stewart? Today, I mean, it's a very, very difficult, sad day for recording. And 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. And Yuval is right in the middle of this. As people remember who listen 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. So thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for having me again.
3:52 Rory Stewart? 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.
4:11 Speaker 02 Yeah, I mean, it goes back to the deepest fears and the darkest moments of Jewish history. At first, people compared it to the Omikpuro War, when the armies of Egypt and Syria surprised Israel. But very quickly, the narrative changed, and everybody is now comparing it to scenes from the Holocaust or from pogroms. The state of Israel for a couple of hours just disappeared. There was no state. There were Jewish communities slaughtered. The comparisons are with the Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing units of the Nazis, that in 1941, 1942, would in places that are today, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania,
4:54 Speaker 02 would just come, surround 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 Kishnev pogrom of 1903. And we hear just stories that we couldn't imagine. Like, we are used to wars, but the idea that there will be massive pogroms in Jews in Israel in 2023 is just incomprehensible. I have family and friends in several of these kibbutzim, of these villages, that bore the brunt of the attack. My aunt and uncle live in Kibbutz Berry.
5:36 Speaker 02 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 tried to jump or come out, 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...
6:21 Speaker 02 Left wing in Israel, people who still cling to the belief in peace through all those years of terrorism and attacks. So, one really terrible story I've heard from Kfar Azza, a kibbutz where I have many friends, a family that for a couple of years organized this kite festival of flying kites on the fence border with Gaza with messages of peace to show the civilians in Gaza that despite all the violence and, you know, the impossibility of the government of Israel and Hamas having any kind of dialogue, the civilians still want peace. At least there are civilians in Israel who still want peace.
7:04 Speaker 02 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 Kfar Azza, they found the entire family murdered. Two parents, three kids, three children, together in bed, holding hands short. 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.
7:48 Speaker 02 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. And 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, the, you know, killing babies and not hiding it, but actually...
8:33 Speaker 02 Filming and publishing, they want to implant seeds of hatred in the minds of millions to make sure there will never be peace.
8:42 Alastair Campbell? Yuval, 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 they, this is in a sense deliberately provoked. And 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.
9:25 Speaker 02 Yes.
9:25 Alastair Campbell? Which is to wipe out any possibility of ever getting back to a process that might lead to two-state solution, which right now feels so far off, it would be a miracle if it ever happened.
9:38 Speaker 02 Yes, I mean, what's happening now is basically what we see unfortunately in many of these conflicts around the world, a competition of suffering, a competition also, you know, 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
10:18 Speaker 02 ways incomprehensible to people who live in a place like London, to most of them. We 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.
10:46 Alastair Campbell? But Yuval, 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. But 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, that Israel, under Netanyahu and the right-wing government he put together, have absolutely no interest whatsoever in recognizing their pain even before this?
11:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, again, the Netanyahu government has abandoned for many years the peace process with the Palestinians. But this doesn't explain Hamas's 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. And 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,
12:04 Speaker 02 it's clear to me that the level of pain 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.
12:20 Alastair Campbell? Even you?
12:21 Speaker 02 I don't want to make it personal about myself.
12:24 Alastair Campbell? But that's who we're talking to. I just wondered how you...
12:26 Speaker 02 Yes. I think this is a war on the mind, a war on the soul. And again, this is deliberate. The 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
13:03 Speaker 02 of the word, 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. I try to wage 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, and this is one of the reasons I'm speaking both here and in Israel, to avoid falling into
13:46 Speaker 02 Hamas's trap and doing things that will ruin any chance for peace for generations to come. We shouldn't allow this to happen.
13:59 Rory Stewart? Talking about Hamas's trap, there's a Brazilian theorist of terrorism, a terrorist, called Carlos Maragela, who effectively says that, I can 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. This 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 wanted to bring down a huge IDF response, hoping by doing so to bring the masses over onto their side and further alienate them?
14:40 Speaker 02 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, Israel 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. Whether it's because Hamas wants to use the civilians as shields against the Israeli
15:22 Speaker 02 military, or because it's interested in massive casualties on the Palestinian side.
15:27 Rory Stewart? And I also think that there's a 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 while they move to 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.
15:59 Speaker 02 Exactly. Yeah, 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. And ideally, we would see movements to deescalate, 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.
16:40 Rory Stewart? No, their interest in prisoner swaps.
16:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, and also, I mean, there is a very clear message coming from the Israeli public to the Israeli government, that'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 leave here.
17:02 Alastair Campbell? But does that not mean, Yuval, that the logic of that is that the IDF virtually wipes the place out, just literally goes in and first destroys the north and if people don't leave, well, that's their problem, that'll be the thinking, and then maybe tells the people from the south to move back north, which has been destroyed, and then they just destroy the whole place?
17:25 Speaker 02 This is, I think, part of the responsibility of the international community to find some better solution to the situation, but 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. And how to do it, I don't know. From the Israeli public's perspective, they cannot settle for anything less than that.
18:06 Speaker 02 And, you know, I hear many comparisons now with nine eleven in the United States, and also warnings that Israel should not repeat the American mistake of invading Iraq and Afghanistan and look what's happening now in Afghanistan. There is a fundamental flaw in the comparison, which is it's like nine eleven, but with the Taliban and ISIS controlling New Jersey, not Afghanistan. I mean, like my family in Kibbutz Be'eri, Kibbutz Be'eri is about a kilometer from the border fence with Gaza. They cannot go living, whoever survived, cannot go on living there after what happened
18:48 Speaker 02 with, again, Hamas bases a kilometer from their houses.
18:52 Alastair Campbell? What happened, Yuval, with the, you know, we have this vaunted image of Israeli security systems and the security services. What 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?
19:16 Speaker 02 I 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 but for years, that many Israelis are saying, we took our eyes off the ball, that for months and actually for for years now, we focused on 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
20:00 Speaker 02 against itself, on 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, you know, the elites became a dirty word, not just in 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
20:40 Speaker 02 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.
21:06 Rory Stewart? Okay, so Yuval, Alistair, let's take a quick break.
21:10 Speaker 03 Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.
21:21 Speaker 04 Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.
21:27 Speaker 05 What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.
21:32 Speaker 04 With great power comes great deniability.
21:35 Speaker 05 I'm not the first nanny.
21:36 Speaker 04 Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17 and under 17 without parent.
21:47 Rory Stewart? Just following this through, I mean, what about southern Lebanon? So obviously Hezbollah is based in 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?
22:04 Speaker 02 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 firm way that the Biden administration intervened is that President Biden is by far the most popular politician in Israel. After, you know, most Israelis were very keen Trump supporters, and now President Biden is, I don't know, 99% supporting Israel.
22:36 Rory Stewart? Remindlessness, why that is? What is it that he did that has now made him so popular?
22:39 Speaker 02 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 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.
23:17 Rory Stewart? Is 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 their narrative?
23:34 Speaker 02 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...
23:54 Speaker 02 In the name of its messianic fantasies, brought Israel to this catastrophic situation. I don't know which which way it will go. I think the country has has been given a chance to save itself. And if if Israelis stay loyal to the ideals of democracy at home and peace abroad. And again, Israelis are incapable of of hearing this right now. And the the mind is completely filled with 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.
24:38 Speaker 02 This is the best that I can hope for the present moment. And this is something that we need help from people in in the rest of the of the world.
24:49 Alastair Campbell? I'm glad you pointed out the the sort of leadership that Joe Biden has showed. And particularly watching Donald Trump yesterday with his sort of absolute nonsense he was coming out with. It would be terrifying if he were in charge of the Western world right now.
25:04 Speaker 02 Yeah.
25:05 Alastair Campbell? 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 kind of 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. And that does mean somebody like Netanyahu, who, you know, you have rightly condemned in all pretty clear terms, you know, long before this, that there's a danger that he takes this as kind of permission.
25:50 Alastair Campbell? To do things that frankly are going to take us to places we've never imagined.
25:55 Speaker 02 This is the big danger and this is why I was also glad to hear both President Joe Biden and Foreign Minister Blinken and others, with all the support they give Israel, again and again emphasize democracies 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 laws. 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 law and humanitarian standards,
26:40 Speaker 02 even in the darkest hours. Otherwise, there is no point.
26:43 Rory Stewart? You know, 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 reemerge.
26:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, and hopefully there will be, and nobody will fight Hamas for Israel. I think this is quite clear. But I hope there 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 disarm 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? I don't know. But we must find such forces, because the alternatives are really too difficult to even imagine.
27:35 Rory Stewart? 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 reemerge.
27:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, again, you you have the Palestinian Authority, which is discredited, but it's still, then 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. It'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.
28:20 Rory Stewart? 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 seemed 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 from 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.
28:48 Alastair Campbell? Yuval, there's 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 IDF soldier Gilad Shalit, and exchanged more than a thousand 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 Israeli security has failed, there's been real anger that has really turned against political leaders over the security failures.
29:25 Alastair Campbell? What is the, putting to one side, if you can, I know 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? And do you think that the, one of the reasons that the Hamas have have taken so many hostages is because of what they took from that previous exchange seventeen years ago?
29:50 Speaker 02 Hamas obviously knows that Israel is extremely sensitive to hostages, and they plan to get to play this card for maximum effect, which means, again, for maximum terror and hatred, creating more and more of that.
30:05 Speaker 02 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. I 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 this country for 14 years. I divided 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.
30:49 Speaker 02 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 he would just utter these like five, six sentences, he can still, in a way, unite the people. They're extremely angry against him, but I'm not sure if he's capable of doing such a gesture.
31:15 Rory Stewart? And you're about to now bring in the Palestinian voice.
31:20 Speaker 02 Yes.
31:20 Rory Stewart? 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 and 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.
31:53 Speaker 02 I can say this, that just as Israelis have so much pain, that they don't have any space to even acknowledge the pain of others. I think this is the same is true of Palestinians. We've been living under horrible conditions for decades. Millions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank and also the Conditions in Gaza. And again, I don't expect them. I think that psychologically, most people in this situation, they don't have any space left for even acknowledging the pain of others. And you can condemn this, you can say, I think it's a psychological fact. It's impossible. And also, you know, we need simple stories. Even though this is the case in most conflicts in the world,
32:38 Speaker 02 it's hard to people to understand that you can be victim and perpetrator at the same time. It's a very simple fact, impossible to accept for most people. Either you're a victim or you're perpetrator. There is no, but no, usually we are both. You know, from the level of individuals, how we behave in our family, to the level of entire nations, we are usually both.
32:59 Rory Stewart? And of course, perhaps one issue is that we don't feel like that as individuals. We don't feel that we have the full responsibility for our state. So there's a sort of strange problem here too, which is that you feel as an individual that you're a victim and you feel distance from your state or your fellow Palestinians or fellow Israelis perpetrators. So you don't feel a direct responsibility in that way.
33:20 Speaker 02 Exactly. And the most we can hope for, again, outside intervention is a different matter. That I think what I would expect people, say in London or in New York or in Sao Paulo, in Beijing, because you're not in this immense pain, you can try and see both sides instead of kind of making your life easier by just dividing the world into only victims and only perpetrators. Israelis and Palestinians at this moment can't. But I expect that people in other countries will have the capacity to do that instead of going for the easy solution of no, there is just this two sided story. What we can hope is to think, how do we get out of this pit of despair?
34:04 Speaker 02 Again, going back to the Hamas attack. I mean, whatever one thinks about the misery of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, how does murdering parents in front of children going to help this? But do you think that by doing that, you will solve the occupation? You will incentivize Israelis to make peace? Obviously not. So in this competition of immense suffering, there is no calculus of suffering that can calculate who is suffering more. So focus on the question, what is still possible to do that at some point in the future, there might be reconciliation and peace, because one last comment on that, we do know from history
34:45 Speaker 02 that even though it seems utterly impossible at the moment, over the longer term of decades of generations, the wounds do heal, and if people make the right decision, it is possible. You know, we are not only French and Germans or English and Scots.
35:03 Rory Stewart? Or Ireland.
35:04 Speaker 02 Or Ireland.
35:05 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
35:06 Speaker 02 I've just read about, you know, looking at relations between Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania. And people don't really know this, but we all know about the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s, which were fought over injuries done decades and centuries previously between Serbs and Croats and Bosnians and so forth. Though, nobody remembers the wars that weren't fought between Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus in the 1990s. Why? Because there were no wars. Even though there was a lot of historical injuries between these peoples, there was a conscious decision at the end of the Cold War that we will not go back in history.
35:50 Speaker 02 The massacres, the horrible things done in the 1940s and earlier, we don't forget them, but we don't want to go back there.
35:59 Rory Stewart? Very quickly, I mean, I think, and I'm going to hand to Alistair to finish, but I mean, I think, you know, this is a show which is about politics and at the core of these questions is the politicians. I mean, in a way, the reason why Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Kosovo went to war is actually because the politicians chose to whip up that nationalism.
36:18 Speaker 02 Yes.
36:18 Rory Stewart? And, and as you say, in the case of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, not to go in that direction, which puts an immense responsibility in the end on the Palestinian and Israeli leadership here. Because people in these moments of trauma can be led, can be led in positive directions, can be led in deeply, deeply negative directions. And, and the notion that it's just a fundamental fact about people, I think, underestimates the politician's agency.
36:44 Speaker 02 Yeah. Again, what I said earlier about the psychological limits of us as human beings, this is not an excuse for the politicians. The politicians are there, this is their job. This is, what is the job of being a politician? This is the job. That you try to go, you're not an ordinary citizen. You have a higher responsibility, you have a historical responsibility. And we now need to see whether the leaders, the politicians on all sides, have this kind of responsibility. History has its eyes on them. What they decide to do in the next few days, weeks, will reverberate really for generations. And I hope they do the responsible thing. And the responsible thing, you know, going back to hospital.
37:27 Speaker 02 When there is an injury, your responsibility is to heal it, not to widen it, not to use the injury as an excuse for more injuries. How do you translate that into policies in extremely difficult situations? I'm not a politician. And one of the reasons I don't go into politics, I don't know how to do that. That demands very, very tough skills. And you know, like, I think it was Truman who said, if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Right, right. So this is the moment of heat. And if you have politicians who just have no idea what to do in this situation, step aside and let somebody else.
38:08 Alastair Campbell? Yuval, you're in London with Rory, I'm in Paris. Before you leave, if you can, take a look at, Rory mentioned Ireland, take a look at a BBC documentary series that's aired recently called Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland. Because I think you made the point there that change can come when it feels absolutely impossible. And I can't imagine what it's like for you, for every Israeli, for every person living in the West Bank and Gaza, and Jews and Palestinians around the world, utterly, utterly horrific.
38:41 Alastair Campbell? But it is one of the most hopeful TV things I've ever watched. But finally, for me, and thanks for giving us so much of your time, but finally, for me, you mentioned there the politicians, there's three politicians, I want to sort of get your sense and maybe also Rory's sense of how you think they're viewing this. The first is Khamenei in Iran and whether, I'm not asking you to get inside his head, but how you think that might be going, Putin in Moscow and also Zelensky. Because my other fear for this is that it's going to take the world's attention away from another really difficult situation in a way that could be very, very damaging to Ukraine. So what's your take on those three and how they'll be looking at this?
39:19 Speaker 02 I think Khamenei's official title is the spiritual leader of Iran, right? Now, what is spirituality? I mean, what is a spiritual leader? What does a spiritual leader do in a situation of this immense suffering? Let's see. What is the quality of spirituality of the Iranian spiritual leadership? I don't know, let's see. With regard to Putin, I think, you know, I can't get into the mind of such a person, but given the horrors that he unleashed on the Ukrainian people, I don't think this person can have any kind of compassion. Maybe he just rejoices as more and more of the world goes up in flame.
40:03 Speaker 02 And also, again, diverting attention from his crimes and from the threat that he poses. Zelensky, again, I think Zelensky is, besides being an inspiring leader of Ukraine, I think is the most inspiring Jewish leader of our time. What he's done in Ukraine is absolutely amazing, especially given, again, the very, very difficult history of Jews and Ukrainians, the fact that Ukrainians have chosen a Jewish person to lead them at their greatest hour of need. And the way he leads them, this is absolutely, anybody who, you know, all these kind of very nationalistic views that you can't be both a Ukrainian and a Jew, absolute nonsense.
40:48 Speaker 02 I mean, he is showing the world. But true patriotism is and also his reaction now. You know, Israel in many ways turned a cold shoulder to Ukraine in its hour of greatest need. Being very, very careful about how it phrases itself on the conflict. So as not to anger the Russians, because we have our own interests to take into account. And being quite stingy in the way that the the help that we extend to Ukraine. And a bit like President Biden, Zelensky didn't um didn't use it to ah you didn't do this for me. So I'll now show no.
41:25 Rory Stewart? Bargain, yeah.
41:26 Speaker 02 Like very, very clear and offering to come to Israel. You know, his country is under this vicious attack. And he says, I know from my experience how important it is in your hour of desperation and pain. That foreign leaders come and and be just be there with you. And I want to come and be there with you. Despite the fact that the war, the terrible war is still ongoing. And you know, Israel is not really under an existential threat in the way that Ukraine is. Hamas cannot conquer Israel. Ukraine is still in danger of being conquered and obliterated by the Russian army. And you Zelensky says, I I want to come and be with you. So this is so inspiring.
42:07 Rory Stewart? I mean, just Alice, just very quickly on your question there. And I think the the terrible logic here is stepping back from Israel Palestine for a second. Is just the explosion of conflict since 2014. I mean, almost every year.
42:19 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:20 Rory Stewart? Over the last nine years, we've had more civilian casualties, more refugees, more displaced people. We've had nearly seven coups in in Africa in just over a year. We have the horror of Ukraine. We now have the unbelievable horror of what's happening in Israel and Palestine. I mean, there is a sense that this populist age is also coinciding with an age of increasing violence.
42:40 Speaker 02 Yeah. And it's very simple. You destroy the global order, you get disorder. I mean, how? It can't be any simpler than that. We have had for several years now leaders, including in the UK, in the USA, that openly say, "We don't want a global order anymore. We care only about our own country." Again, you can say whatever you want about how these leaders take care of the interests of their country. What is very clear is that none of them came with an offer of how to arrange the global order. They are against the very idea of a global order. And what's the alternative to order? Chaos. If you don't work, and it's
43:19 Speaker 02 hard work to build a global order, what you get is these increasing waves of, we had pandemic, and famine, and now war, and there will be more and more of that if we do not re-establish order. And I haven't heard any suggestion from anywhere in the world for a better order than the besmirched liberal order, which is based, again, on a very basic understanding that all humans share the same basic experiences, and therefore we all share some common interests. It's biological, that pain, and despair, and sadness, they are the same in Israelis,
44:02 Speaker 02 and Palestinians, in Russians, and Ukrainians. And this simple realization is the basis for the liberal global order. We are all humans, and we have shared experiences, we have shared interests. And we haven't heard from all these Putins, and Orban's, and Trumps. We haven't heard any alternative idea. So what would you base a global order on if not on these shared experiences, and interests, and values? And if you don't have any alternative suggestion... Then we need to go back and reestablish on better foundations. The only offer on the table, which is the liberal global order.
44:41 Alastair Campbell? Well, Yuval, honestly, it's been, yet again, great to talk to you. Thanks for your time. Thanks above all, I think, even in such a horrific time for you, your people, what you stand for, what you believe in, still able to try to articulate some of the deeper things that are going on here and why these things are not always as simple as they seem from a, from a quick headline, a quick snapshot. I think your voice is really, really important in this whole debate and power to your elbow in keeping going. Thank you.
45:11 Speaker 02 Thank you. Thank you very much.
45:17 Speaker 03 Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.
45:28 Speaker 04 Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.
45:34 Speaker 05 What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.
45:38 Speaker 04 With great power comes great deniability.
45:41 Speaker 05 I'm not the first then.
45:43 Speaker 04 Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.
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