ISRAEL AT WAR: The multi-front probability - with Bret Stephens
Bret Stephens, Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for The New York Times, returns for a conversation immediately on Day III of this war.
Bret came to The New York Times after a long career with The Wall Street Journal, where he was most recently deputy editorial page editor and, for 11 years, a foreign affairs columnist. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. And prior to working in Israel, he was based in Brussels for The Wall Street Journal. Today, Bret is also the editor-in-chief of Sapir Journal.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] I'm sorry, I'm usually, uh, more eloquent, but You know, to be perfectly candid, uh, and I think this is true of probably a lot of the people who listen to your podcast, uh, my sense of, uh, fury as well as helplessness, um, has kind of, you know, overwhelmed my circuits in, um, in the last 48 hours.
And now I welcome back to this podcast Bret Stephens, New York Times columnist, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, former international global affairs columnist for the Wall Street Journal, and former editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post, who lived in Israel in the early 2000s, running the [00:01:00] Jerusalem Post there.
Bret, thanks for coming on. Sorry about the circumstances in which we're speaking. So, Yeah, um, so let's start with what we know now. There's some reporting coming out which sort of confirms what we thought, which is that Iran was involved behind this, this invasion of Israel. What, what do we know? And what's your sense of what we know?
The, the news from Hamas, the admission that they had coordinated this, uh, and in fact, gotten the permission, the green light from Iran, uh, didn't surprise me at all. We've known for a very long time that Hamas has been, I mean, more than 20 years, uh, that Hamas has been getting, uh, arms and aid from, uh, Iran.
It may be a Sunni terrorist group, uh, but, uh, Iran's interests, uh, uh, [00:02:00] go beyond their, um, uh, parochial religious differences and in destroying, uh, wanting to and seeking to destroy, uh, Israel. The admission, however, is, uh, significant in that it's essentially an invitation to war and, uh, that's how I think we should, uh, look at this.
What has transpired so far, uh, as we speak, as horrific as it is, is I think going to be. Um, I'm sorry to say, one front in a multi front battle that is going to unfold, not over days or weeks, but potentially over months. And Iran, one would think, they've publicly admitted that they were involved? Yes, they have publicly admitted that.
And would they not have anticipated? They're boasting of it. They're boasting. Boasting. Would they not have anticipated? that this could lead to a multi front war involving them by boasting of it? I mean, it, it, it takes away any kind of veneer of, you know, speculation. No, there's no question it's an [00:03:00] invitation.
Um, I, I mean, uh, first of all, they're boasting of it because they're proud of, uh, the carnage and the murder and mayhem they inflicted. Um, uh, but they're boasting of it because I think that it is a way of signaling to Israel, Um, which means that they have probably. Very carefully prepared a northern option in Lebanon, potentially in Syria, and maybe in other theatres.
So, the Iranians clearly see this as a kind of a decisive confrontation with Israel. You know, there have been occasions in the past where there have been Um, conflagrations, particularly in the north between Israel and Hezbollah, and when the sides did not have an interest in escalating, they very quickly, uh, uh, brought down the, uh, the, the level of violence.
Uh, there was a kind of a deliberate, uh, almost an understanding between the two sides. [00:04:00] This is a, you know, a kind of come try to get me if, if you're, if you're brave enough to, uh, to do so. And. Uh, Israel needs to be very thoughtful about how it seeks to, uh, confront Iran and how far it wishes to, um, escalate what already is going to be a, um, a, as large a war as you and I have seen, uh, in our sentient lifetimes.
So Brett, let me just pick up on that particular point. Does Israel have The option on whether it fights a multi front war and what I mean by that is all the focus right now seems to be on Israel taking on Hamas in Gaza and doing what it needs to do in Gaza and then there's the question as you've stated earlier and others have pointed to that Iran may want a multi front war and and that what I'm hearing from you is Israel can choose whether or not Has that multi front war?
Does it [00:05:00] have a choice? Can it say, look, we're just going to focus on Gaza and we'll deal with Iran later or we'll deal with Hezbollah later? Or is all of this going to start boiling up really quickly outside of Israel's control and the timing? Well, you know, there's the adage that, um, in every war, the enemy gets a vote.
And so whether it has a choice will depend to a large extent on whether, uh, Hamas or other Palestinians in the West Bank try to start an intifada. It will depend on whether Arab Israelis will riot as they did, uh, two and a half years ago during the last, uh, conflagration over Gaza. We're seeing skirmishes on the northern border that were started by Hezbollah.
So Israel may have no choice but to engage a multi front uh, war. It has to be thoughtful, [00:06:00] if it doesn't have to escalate, about the extent to which, uh, it chooses to do so. Ultimately, this is going to lead to a major, uh, confrontation with Iran, but whether it happens, uh, this month, uh, next month, next year, or in, in five years, that's, that's a harder question, uh, uh, to answer.
Um, You know, I, I have been thinking about what Israel needs, um, and, and it doesn't need, it cannot gain an unconditional victory because that suggests unconditional surrender on the part of its enemies. But it needs in this conflict to gain an unequivocal victory, if you understand what I'm getting at.
Uh, Israel surrounding the 3rd Army in the Sinai, the Egyptian 3rd Army in the Sinai in 1973, and Israeli [00:07:00] tanks 20 miles from Damascus, uh, was an unequivocal victory, which, um, uh, even the score, more than even the score for Israel in 1973 and strengthened its hand as it went ultimately from that debacle to a lasting peace with Egypt.
Um, Israel will need an unequivocal victory now, uh, if it's going to, uh, emerge from, from this disaster, from this crisis and tragedy, uh, Uh, in a state that isn't significantly weaker than it had been in, uh, just a few days ago. In terms of other fronts, so obviously Hezbollah is a proxy of Iran, and Iran could light up Hezbollah at any moment.
When I had Haviv Retikour from the Times of Israel on my podcast the other day, on the weekend, he said, that he's not so sure Hezbollah is eager to strike, that their situation, even though they have ten times the capability that Hamas [00:08:00] does, ten times the rockets, they have, but their situation in Lebanon is precarious.
Lebanon itself is a mess, and there is enormous risk for Hezbollah getting embroiled in this. So is, is it, despite the rhetoric, and despite a few symbolic artillery, uh, shells, you know, fired over the weekend from the north. Is it your sense that Hezbollah is, is Trigger happy to get in the fight, or is not so sure?
Look, Haviv is a very bright, uh, guy, a very good analyst, um, and I hope he's right. Um, but the equation in Lebanon, I think, is significantly different from where it had been, uh, 17 Uh, was it 17 years ago, 16 years ago, during, 17, I guess, during the 2006 war, yeah, uh, war. In that, uh, I mean, Hezbollah is now Lebanon.
Um, there aren't other, I think, significant factions within Lebanon that can stand up [00:09:00] to, uh, Hezbollah. So, how they assess their political position in Lebanon today, which is a completely failed state, uh, is just different from where, from where it had been in 2006, when Their position was somewhat more precarious, and there were at least, uh, viable countervailing forces within, within the Lebanese, uh, state.
Uh, look, at the end of the day, what Hezbollah thinks doesn't matter. What matters is what their masters in Tehran think. Uh, and, and so that, that's a calculation that is, you know, lives within a black, uh, a black box, and we'll just have to see, uh, how it turns out. And in terms of other fronts, so there's Hezbollah, there's Iran.
Yeah, Hezbollah in the north, Iran obviously is Iran. And then there are other fronts that are almost potentially more scary. So a third front could be Palestinians in the West Bank, and a fourth front could be Israeli [00:10:00] Arabs living inside the Green Line, inside. You know, within Israel's sixty seven. Yeah, and there's an additional front I should point out, which is, um, uh, areas, uh, around the world where Israelis tend to congregate, vacation.
Um, so think of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires in, uh, what was it, 1994. Yeah. Um, they're vulnerable Israelis, uh, all over, uh, the world who are almost surely uh, at risk or at heightened risk, uh, today, um, so the, the possibility of, uh, a, a spiral of, um, of anti Israel, anti Semitic violence is, uh, is as vast as, as it's ever been.
Well, over the weekend, two, two Egyptian, two Israelis in Egypt were attacked. That was, that was what I was about to, to mention next, and, and that's gonna be true, you [00:11:00] know, not just in, in, uh, Arab states. Uh, but throughout the world, okay. Um, in terms of Israel's and you wrote about this in your, in your column over the weekend in the New York times, which we'll post in the show notes, you, you talked about the, the, uh, Concepcja, the, the concept of Israeli security, the Concepcja, you know, around the Yom Kippur war.
Post Yom Kippur War, the change in thinking about the concept of Israeli security, the security paradigm, there was another security paradigm that existed basically sometime after Hamas, so Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, uh, unilaterally, and Hamas, uh, the Palestinian Authority, Uh, Abbas took over, was in charge of the West Bank and Gaza, then they were driven out by Hamas, 2006, 2007, they formally took over, Hamas took over in 2007.
Can you describe [00:12:00] what Israel's security posture was with regard to the Gaza border, once Hamas took over, basically beginning 2007 till this weekend? Well, you know, the, the, the, the basic concept was that, uh, Hamas control and Gaza was acceptable and in some ways advantageous so long as it was contained, um, and contained and containable and the, you know, Israeli policymakers seem to feel very sure that on the whole it was a containable threat that, uh.
Uh, was a bit, you know, obviously, uh, bad, but preferable to all the other, uh, alternatives for Gaza. There was no appetite in the Israeli security establishment to, uh, take Hamas out of power to much less to reoccupy the Gaza Strip after, uh, disengagement [00:13:00] back in, uh, Uh, back in two thousand and, uh, and five, and there was a belief that technical solutions could, uh, effectively solve most of Israel's problems, and for many years they did.
You had not just the technical solution of, uh, Iron Dome, which seemed to work, uh, almost magically until, uh, until it, it didn't. Um, but then the technical solution of the, uh, of, of the technology that stopped or, Appear to have stopped some of the the tunneling, uh, the tunneling efforts. You know, it's a, it's a bad thing when states substitute technical solutions for strategic thinking.
And I think that's largely what, uh, what happened here. Um, Having a terrorist statelet sworn to your destruction hard on your border is ultimately going to have serious consequences. And I remember interviewing Benjamin [00:14:00] Netanyahu in 2009, just after Operation Cast Lead, uh, uh, conducted mainly by the Olmert government.
And Bibi at the time was very critical of Olmert for allowing, uh, Hamas to remain in power, and for, uh, for not, uh, retaking the, the so called Philadelphia Corridor along the border with Egypt, which meant that the supply Just for our listeners, the, the term the Philadelphia Corridor has actually nothing to do withit's notit was, it was just a, you know, a code name for this particular area.
Yeah, and it's It's not a U. S. No, it's, it's Philadelphia. I, not Philadelphia. Right. Um, it's just, it's just the six miles or whatever, however many kilometers, uh, of the Egyptian Gazan, uh, border. And when Sharon withdrew from Gaza in 2005, he also withdrew from the corridor, which meant that, uh, there was a brisk trade in, in, in munitions and, uh, you know, supplies, [00:15:00] uh, taking place in underground tunnels that, that richly fed the, uh, the Hamas's war machine.
And, and so when I interviewed Bibi in 2009, a few years after disengagement, he was strikingly critical of that, but he allowed, uh, that to persist to the point that he was allowing the Qataris to fund Hamas to the tune of, of, uh, hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, uh, every, uh, every year, ensuring that Hamas could, you know, keep, keep its war machine going and, and maintain, you know, basic levels of, of, uh, you know, uh, standard of, basic standards of living in, in Gaza, perpetuating its rule.
And that was the concept of Israeli decision makers, that Gaza was uh, was, uh, containable, that having Hamas's control in Gaza, uh, effectively divided the, the Palestinians into two, uh, uh, hostile, if not warring, uh, political, uh, camps, that [00:16:00] Israel had no interest in retaking the Strip and being responsible for its two million odd people.
Uh, and so that was, that's how, what, what they were going to do. And the, the only thing It wasn't planned for and this otherwise brilliant concept of theirs were, you know, was a bulldozer through the gates and hundreds of Hamas terrorists streaming in and massacring people at will. So it's once again a reminder of how cleverness fails in the face of obviousness.
In terms of the next phase, Israel has announced there will be a major operation in response to the attack, to the war, uh, that was waged, that was launched on Israel over the weekend, including, it sounds like a major ground invasion, something like over 100, 000 troops called up. What is, [00:17:00] assuming Israel does have the time and space, and I want to come back to whether or not it has the time and space to do what it needs to do, but let's pause it for a moment, let's just assume that it does.
You've, you've lived in Israel. You've, you've been a journalist in Israel. You've also been a journalist covering lots of wars, conventional wars, insurgency wars. You've, you obviously cover geopolitics. What is, and I know you don't have a crystal ball, but you know Israel, and, and you know that How shaken the Israeli population is, and shaken is different than being humiliated.
Shaken is, is a sense of feeling vulnerable, and you know when Israelis feel vulnerable, no matter how divided they may be at any given moment with their political debates or whatnot, uh, when the Israeli population is, feels vulnerable, they, they have a, a certain, um, determination. Um, what, what is that, assuming that determination, Persists, which I think it [00:18:00] will what what what are the next few weeks look like?
Well, I think that
You know I hate questions like this Dan because it's easy if you ask me what the next hundred years looks like and then nobody remembers the answer But there's accountability I'm Caveating this that you have you and I have no idea but just You've covered the skirmishes on the Israel Gaza border, which you talked about earlier, which is what populated most of the recent conflicts.
And what I'm just trying to explain to listeners and get people to understand is, this will be different. This will probably be different. Much different. Oh, well, this will be different in the sense that I think having sustained the kind of casualties they just have, Israelis will not, um, uh, Will not, uh, will accept that there will be, [00:19:00] um, serious military casualties that have to follow in pursuit of a, uh, a decisive, uh, military outcome that, that doesn't simply, uh, result in a, in a bunch of damaged or destroyed buildings in Gaza, but a fundamental, uh, change in, in, uh, Uh, the status quo there, the end of Hamas's regime, the capture and killing, uh, probably the latter of its entire leadership, um, uh, all the efforts that can be made to rescue the hostages.
But those efforts, I suspect are going to be very, uh, complex and heartbreaking, um, and a willingness to take the fight. Uh, wherever, uh, it presents itself. I mean, we're talking about the call up of 300, 000, uh, reserves. That is by this, by, by any standard, uh, uh, certainly Israel standard, a huge number of forces that are now [00:20:00] being mobilized and, and fielded.
Uh, and my sense is that they're going to be, uh, They're going to be employed. Um, uh, and I, I, I just judging from, uh, my conversations with, you know, my dear Israeli friends, and I think all my truly close friendships right now are in Israel, um, The mentality seems to be there will be judgment and accountability about our own failures in due time.
And right now, uh, we have, uh, a war to fight and win. And so there's a kind of a sense of very grim determination, uh, to, um, uh, to, um, change things very dramatically. Um, I'm sorry, I'm usually, uh, more eloquent, but [00:21:00] You know, to be perfectly candid, uh, and I think this is true of probably a lot of the people who listen to your podcast, uh, my sense of, uh, fury as well as helplessness, um, has kind of, you know, overwhelmed my circuits in, um, in the last 48 hours.
Before I let you go, two final questions. One, um, we have been told That is my understanding that when Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Biden spoke over the weekend, they spoke more than once, but on Saturday, at least, in the list of requests that the Prime Minister had for President Biden, one of them, and I guess the most important, was give us space and time.
Give us space and time to do what we need to do. This is not going to be a quick operation. And you know, when these things start, whether it was Lebanon in 2006, or when it was any number of wars with You know, or skirmishes with Gaza over the [00:22:00] last 20 years, the U. S. has Israel's back until it doesn't, right?
And not in 2006, it was like 32 days, and then Bush and Condi told Israel, enough, you got to stop. Uh, and in 2000, spring of 2021, skirmish military escalation with Gaza, Biden administration. Had Israel's back and then after I was you know X number of days. They said okay now time for diplomacy and you know the most dangerous words I think right now is are now is the time for diplomacy because Israel is is you know, you have explained is not This is the, this is not normal.
This is like, not just one 9 11, but many 9 11s happening in Israel. And no one after 9 11 was telling the U. S., Hey, before you do anything, it's the time for diplomacy. Yeah. Um, look, I, if I had been in the shoes [00:23:00] of, um, the prime minister, I would not have said, give us space and time. I would have said, we will take all the time we need to accomplish the ends.
We require, uh, so the, uh, the, it's, it's not a moment to ask for America's diplomatic permission or diplomatic blessing. Uh, the Biden administration, by the way, the president, uh, spoke well, at least in his initial response. Um, uh, so did, so did Secretary of State. Uh, uh, Blinken. But this is, this is an existential crisis right now for, uh, Israel.
And when you're in an existential crisis, you don't need anyone's permission to, uh, uh, to, to, to secure your, your, your life and sovereignty. Um, what, what Israel really should be asking for, uh, right now, um, is, Um, the kind of munitions they're [00:24:00] going to need, uh, particularly in the event of a wider war with, uh, Iran, uh, larger conventional bombs, uh, bunker busters, uh, the, the sort of stuff that the United States produces, you know, in such, uh, quality and abundance that, uh, can help the, the Israeli war machine accomplish, uh, accomplish, uh, you know, a decisive end.
Finally, Brett. Can you, I just want to end on this question. We're going to hear two things in addition to it's the time for diplomacy, which is inevitable. The other, the other. word we will use is proportional, that Israel's response should be proportional. People are a little more careful now about using that absurd term, but we will hear it.
Uh, we've always heard it in the past. Can you explain [00:25:00] what, what that means, proportional, and why it's so, why Israel's held to a standard in quote unquote proportionality that no Western government is ever held to when confronted? with a war like this? Um, look, uh, it's proportionality that has in effect brought Israel to its current crisis, which is to say that knowing that it faced a mortal threat, uh, to, uh, uh, Uh, in, in, in Gaza, it, it repeatedly restrained itself to limited military operations, um, that, that didn't achieve decisive, uh, results.
It's like fighting cancer and saying, we're gonna just get the cancer down to a, a, a more manageable size, and when it starts growing back again, uh, we'll, we'll will irradiate it, but only, you know, we won't actually remove, uh, the cancer, uh, uh, itself. The United States did not behave in a [00:26:00] proportionate fashion when it responded, uh, to Pearl, the attacks on, uh, uh, Pearl Harbor.
We didn't say, okay, we're gonna bomb, uh, the Japanese Navy in Yokohama and therefore, you know, uh, uh, have a, have a proportionate, uh, result. We endeavored to rid the world of Japanese militarism, fascism, and Nazism, and, and that's what we did. And that's why, uh, we look back at World War II, which, by the way, involved American military attacks, which, uh, were the essence of disproportion, uh, like the Tokyo fire raid or the bombing of Dresden, uh, or not to mention Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Um, and we look back on it as the good war, because we were fighting a, uh, evil enemy, and we were fighting for, uh, our, our safety and our existence. And I think Israel should look at it in, in the same way. Proportionality sounds like a morally and legally reasonable doctrine, but the result, [00:27:00] uh, is, is not just perverse.
The result, uh, is that it guarantees, um, Uh future conflict, uh, and uh, and future tragedies So I hope that that is a word that uh, the israelis and ideally americans, too um jettison, uh, uh, you know By that, by that standard, the United States should have, in 1944, stopped, uh, at the, uh, uh, at the edges of the old German borders, um, uh, once French and Belgian and Dutch sovereignty had been, uh, restored.
Uh, it's, it's, it's just absolutely, uh, uh, absurd to conduct, uh, war by, by, by those, by those terms. And it's, I think, one of the reasons why. Groups like Hamas and, uh, not to mention governments like those in Russia and Iran, [00:28:00] have, uh, have sort of seen, sort of, uh, been emboldened, uh, to do what they, what they've done, because they always feel that their adversaries and enemies, um, are going to abide by a set of rules and concepts of proportion, which ultimately serve their interests, but not ours.
Okay, Brett, we will, um, leave it there. Uh, thank you, as always, for your insights and your, and actually the, the rawness of, uh, some of your reactions, which, which I totally sympathize with and share. So, uh, hope to have you back on, uh, sadly, this is, this, at least this crisis is not going away anytime soon, and your voice is extremely important, so I'm grateful.
Okay, Dan, I'm sorry that, uh, we have to have a conversation on a subject like this, but here we are.[00:29:00]