The world unites against Hamas... for now - with Yaakov Katz
For analysis of the Israeli Government's formation of a (Netanyahu/Gantz) unity government and war cabinet, preparations for the invasion of Gaza, and anticipating the Hezbollah threat from the northern border, we are joined by Yaakov Katz. Yaakov is a columnist for the Jerusalem Post and senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute.
Previously, Yaakov served as editor-in-chief at the Jerusalem Post, before which he was the paper's military reporter and defense analyst. He is the author of "Shadow Strike: Inside Israel's Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power" and co-author of two books: "Weapon Wizards - How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower" and "Israel vs. Iran - The Shadow War". He is currently working on a new book.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] This is what we call in Hebrew, it is a war over our home. That is what they did because what these Hamas murderers did, they went into people's homes and they murdered families. They butchered children. They cut open the womb of pregnant women and left the fetus hanging from the umbilical cord. They burnt people in cars.
Jews are not supposed to be burnt anymore. But I thought when I heard president Herzog speak. And talk about how, on Saturday, the most Jews died in a single day since the Holocaust. It's unimaginable. And, and the blood is boiling. And Israel has this opportunity today to reset the equation here, to create a safer and more secure country.
As the fog [00:01:00] of war continues to slowly dissipate over Saturday's massacre, A shocking picture is, uh, beginning to be revealed. 1, 200 Israelis murdered, including children, babies, women. and the elderly. 2, 500 injured, many of them in serious and critical condition. At least 150 Israelis are estimated to have been kidnapped and are in Gaza.
The IDF now estimates that approximately 1, 500 terrorists from Hamas special forces crossed the fence between Israel and Gaza on the southwest border of Israel, followed by a mob. They came to loot and hunt for Jews. The removal of the bodies from Kibbutz Kfar Azza exposed the massive dimensions of the massacre.
More than a hundred people there were butchered. Something like 10 percent of the population of the kibbutz. Among them, 40 babies. [00:02:00] Families were burned alive in their homes. Similar scenes took place in other kibbutzim. Kibbutz near Oz, Be'eri, and Kibbutz Nativ Asarah, where massacres continued up to 10 hours from when they began.
On another site near Kibbutz Re'im, where this music festival that's been much in the news was held, terrorists piled up 260 bodies of young men and women into a tractor wagon, and they tried to set these 260 bodies on fire. As a result, it is very difficult to identify some of the civilians who were killed.
At a nearby IDF base that was attacked, dozens of defenseless female soldiers from the observation unit were murdered. In several cases, fathers, who were experienced reserve officers, who had lost contact with their sons and daughters, heard that there was something happening, there was some kind of action, arrived on the [00:03:00] scene to fight, only to find their bodies.
All this is, of course, maddening, shocking. And there's not a single Israeli I know of who doesn't know someone who has been harmed in the South in recent days. In fact, I would say the same thing for most Jews in the Diaspora who don't live in Israel but have personal connections to people in Israel.
They all seem to know someone, or know someone who knows someone. These harrowing stories will continue to unfold over the next months and years, each of them. Heartbreaking. Gut wrenching, as we say in Hebrew, ein milim, no words. Amongst the grief that has struck the tens of thousands who've lost their loved ones, the shock and paralysis from Hamas's massacre are starting to wear off.
The IDF is mobilizing reserve forces on a particularly large scale while attacking Gaza from the air and preparing the possibility of a ground invasion of the Gaza Strip at an order of [00:04:00] magnitude that has never been seen. On the northern front, Israel's border with Lebanon, Hezbollah is testing Israel, but so far all we've seen are small scale attacks.
Bear's watching to see if that changes. At this point in time, the objectives of the war, from Israel's perspective, have not been explicitly articulated. Will it be limited to the denial of Hamas's military capabilities, or will it ultimately end with the overthrow and removal of Hamas as the governing regime in Gaza?
Will the ground operation be broad and prolonged? These are the questions being debated. In Israel and also by Israel's newly formed war cabinet that is populated by leading members of its new national unity government. Around the world, 82 governments from 82 countries have expressed an unwavering support for Israel so far.
We've seen the images, the Empire State Building, the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and in Washington, D. C. The White House have all been lit with the white and [00:05:00] blue colors of the Israeli flag. In an historic speech, President Biden offered extremely strong. and emphatic support for Israel.
He made it clear that, quote, Hamas's bloodthirst is reminiscent of ISIS's most horrific murderous campaigns. Hamas does not defend the Palestinians right to self determination, President Biden said. Its only goal is the destruction of the state of Israel and the murder. The Biden administration has ordered the aircraft carrier Gerald Ford to the region, alongside armed shipments that have already begun landing at Ben Gurion Airport.
The addition of a second aircraft carrier, the Dwight Eisenhower, is also being considered. The American message and show of force seems to be primarily directed at Iran to restrain Hezbollah, but we will have to wait to see if the message is received in Tehran and will be backed up by the United States.
While Israeli political leadership has been questioned in the Israeli press, Israel's civil society is proving to be nothing short [00:06:00] of astonishing. Very inspiring. Hundreds of thousands of reservists showed up in unprecedented numbers. A similar mobilization exists among many civilians and organizations taking on tasks such as removing bodies.
Rescuing besieged civilians, providing food and shelter for displaced families, collecting equipment for soldiers and raising funds. They did not wait for the government, they organized themselves. To discuss the latest from Israel on the security front. on the newly created war cabinet and the state of Israeli society, civil society, as it responds to this war.
We welcome back to the podcast, Yaakov Katz, longtime journalist who joins us from Jerusalem. The world unites against Hamas for now. This is Call Me Back.
And I welcome to today's podcast, live from [00:07:00] Jerusalem. My friend Yaakov Katz, who has been on this podcast many times before, former editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post and currently a columnist for the Jerusalem Post and a senior fellow at the Jewish People's Policy Institute, he, um, has been on this podcast during what I guess one could call more, uh, during happier times, uh, but his voice is, uh, always important and I, I wanted to touch base with him now.
Yaakov. Cats, thank you for being here. Thanks, Stan. Uh, so Yakov, before we get into the substance or the macro, if you will, uh, let's start with the micro. Um, you have family, very close family, uh, that is, um, that is on the front lines, both, you know, kind of metaphorically and literally, uh, of this crisis. Can you talk about.
What's going on with your daughter [00:08:00] and other members of the family. So my daughter is currently in what's known as Badahad, right? The officer's training school down South based in Mitzpah Ramon in the Negev desert. She had finished up one year in the army and she was about to, uh, she's in officer's training to sign on for a third year as opposed to just two years.
And of course, on Saturday morning, we woke up to the news of what was happening. She was called back to base. Um, to take your daughter, I didn't drive her all the way down to Mitzpe Ramon, they had a shuttle coming from Jerusalem, but I can tell you that to take your daughter, and she's not frontline combat, but they up their combat training during officers training, and now she's in one of the cities somewhere in the, in the south, one of the cities where there was the fighting, uh, not sure what they're doing, I think some sort of security and, and, and things like that, but, yeah, When you take your daughter to a bus and you know, they're leaving for a [00:09:00] war and they, she walks away with her gun and, and, and the backpack, that does something to you.
Uh, when I, my brother calls me, my younger brother, about 10 years younger than I am, lives out in Herzliya, married with a, a two, a two year old baby at home, a young, not a baby, a two year old kid, and calls me in the middle of the day and says, uh, I've been called up and he's going up to the Lebanese border and he's been there and he texts me, you know, we talk throughout the day.
He can't really be with his phone, but he's spending a lot of the time in the bunker because of all the Hezbollah rockets and mortar shells and anti tank missiles. And then we have three nephews who are, uh, each one, these are triplet boys. Um, each one is in a more elite combat unit than the next one.
And the three of them are down there, deployed along the border with those frontline units. They're the ones who are going to go in first when this, uh, when this offensive begins. And, [00:10:00] and, we're, you know, obviously we're not sleeping. I know my, you know, my parents, my wife's parents, they're not sleeping, our siblings, everybody, but we're no different, Dan, it's a story that all Israelis have, I mean, you, you have family here in Jerusalem, uh, you know, you have family who, who, you have probably nephews and nieces that are also, have also been called up.
Yeah, I've got, I've got, I've got two nephews, I've got two nephews who've been, uh, called up to reserves, for reserves, one of whom, He and his wife have both been called up, and they have kids, so, you know, it's just, so, one of my sisters is just figuring out how to, you know, deal with making sure she can cover what both parents are, are gonna be gone, and, and, uh, in the reserves, and then, uh, I have other family, more distant, uh, close personally, but, but not, not nephews or nieces who are, um, What, you know, one family of, I think, one family of five kids, three of whom have been called up, one of which is in a commando unit.
And like your nephews is, it's pretty clear [00:11:00] he'll be on the, he'll likely be on the first wave, uh, in. And, um, yeah, it's, it's, uh, you know, one thing I've been trying to explain over here in the U. S. is, you know, Israel is such a small country, uh, you know, numerically, geographically, so everyone really does know Everyone has a connection to everyone.
So everyone knows someone who's like your family, typical, right? All these family members serving in different units. And then everyone knows someone who knows someone who's has a child or a sibling who's been taken hostage or, or has been killed or, I mean, everyone, so it's not, it's numerically. It's small and it's geographically small, but it's also, um, um, nationally sort of communally small.
It's a family, the country's. And I just think people in you and you and I have talked a couple of times on this podcast about the, the domestic tumult over the last nine months, which we don't need to revisit now. But, but I do think people forget that Israel is a family. And it's a [00:12:00] family that fights with each other a lot.
You know, it's, there's a lot of, of, of intensity and, and, and, and noise and, um, and contentiousness in this family. If you poke that family from outside, if you threaten that family from outside, uh, Don't don't bet on the division within that family that you saw previously to as an asset in your battle and your attack on that family, because it's a family that comes together.
And I, I just think people are are finding it jarring what they saw in Israel over the last nine months and what they're seeing now. Um, Saul, who, you know, Saul Singer, uh, who, uh, My brother in law, my sister's husband, and my, uh, co author of our last book and our next book, he told me last night that the numbers he's seeing, I don't know if you've seen similar numbers, they did the reserve call ups, and they always overshoot on the reserve call ups, because they assume they'll get most people, but some people are traveling, they don't get, [00:13:00] there was some talk of some reservists stopping to perform their reserve training during Because of their protests of the judicial reform proposals.
They didn't know if that was. So they, they overshot. He told me the latest numbers he had seen in terms of reserve number turnout, 150%, meaning they have way more people showing up than they need. And that's, those are the reservists that have actually been called up. Then there's a lot of people who are just showing up saying, look, I know I wasn't called up, but put me to work.
This is, this is what we call in Hebrew. It is a war over our home. That is what they did because what these Hamas murderers did with their murderous rampage on Saturday, October 7th, is they, they went into people's homes and they murdered families, they butchered children, they cut open the womb of pregnant women and left the fetus hanging from the umbilical cord.
They burnt people in cars. Jews are not supposed to be burnt anymore. [00:14:00] I thought when I heard President Herzog speak And talk about how on Saturday, the most Jews died in a single day since the Holocaust. It's unimaginable. And the blood is boiling and Israel has this opportunity today. Uh, to reset the equation here, to create a safer and more secure country.
That is what this is all about. So let's talk about that. One of the developments, uh, since we, we last were on air, so to speak, in the last 24 hours has been some modicum of a national unity government formed. Not exactly a national unity government because the, the, the formal opposition is, is Yair Lapid's Yesh Atid party, which it sounds like it's not part of the national unity government, but Benny Gantz's, uh, party, uh, who.
Was not in the government until now has, has joined the government. So what, what role will Benny Gantz play? Can you tell us a little bit about Benny Gantz and, um, and what the [00:15:00] significance, the implications are of him joining Netanyahu's government who Netanyahu is someone he in the other context despises.
Natanya, uh, Benny. Ari is a former IDF Chief of staff, former general, spent 40 years in uniform, left in about, uh, 2013 14, and then spent a couple years outside and then decides to jump into politics in the end of 2018. He, in 2020. If we all remember when COVID broke out, he decided to join Netanyahu's government.
And we all remember Netanyahu at the time said, No schtick, no tricks. I'm gonna, I'm gonna hold to this rotation. I'm gonna let Benny Gantz become prime minister. Well, that never happened. So there's bad blood between these two men. But what Benny Gantz has said is that if I was willing to join the government over a flu, how could I not join the government now when our future is on the line?
And you have to commend the guy [00:16:00] for it. He was up in the polls up until now because of the judicial reform. But so he could have said, I'm not going to join the government. Let, let this, let the failures, whatever happens, stick only to Netanyahu. But he salutes the flag first and you have to give him credit for that.
I just want to stay on this point that Yoko's making is that during the judicial reform debates, fights, protests over the last nine months, uh, Netanyahu's party's popularity plummeted and, uh, Likud party, the right block basically, and, and the non right block had gone up at the. The biggest beneficiary was Benny Gantz's party, and I think it's partly because you had a lot of center right voters who had traditionally voted Likud, moving to Benny Gantz, so you're right.
Benny Gantz could have bided his time and said, I'll be prime minister. What do I need to save you, BB? But, but you're right. It's, uh, it's country first. And what role will he be playing in the government? So, so for now, it's, it's a government just for this, uh, just for the war. There's a precedent to this, Dan.
You remember back prior to the 67 war. [00:17:00] Yeah. There was, there was. Menachem Begin joined Levi Eshkol's government. Exactly. So, so we, we have, we have this precedent at a time of emergency. I think by the way, one of the reasons that the ground offensive had not yet happened until the, the merger or the establishment of this national unity government is because Netanyahu wanted first for there to be unity before sending troops into Gaza.
But the, the, uh, what Pentagon's will be is basically there's going to be a war cabinet. The war cabinet where the big decisions will be made will consist of Netanyahu. Benny Gantz and Yoav Galant, who is the defense minister. As observers to this war cabinet, you'll have Ron Dermer, former ambassador to the Union of Israel, the U.
S. and current strategic affairs minister, as well as Gadi Eisenkot, another former IDF chief of staff who is in Benny Gantz's party. So if you look at this makeup of the, of the war forum or this war cabinet, you got five men, two of them, former chiefs of staff, Yoav Galant, a former IDF general, was they had a Southern command.
And then Ron Dermer and Bibi [00:18:00] Netanyahu, Head of Southern Command, which is where the Gaza war, everything is going on, exactly, I mean, Gallant is exactly perfectly positioned, so, so, and he was the, he was the Head of Southern Command, by the way, during the 2008 9, uh, Operation Cast Lead, when Israel went deep into Gaza, so he has vast experience down there, uh, this is a very serious war cabinet, and it's meant to reassure us that decisions will be made the right way, and it's, as notable, and It's as notable for who's not in it as who is in it because some of the more polarizing figures in Netanyahu's government who were in the security cabinet, I think up to now are not part of this war cabinet.
I think that's an important statement to, uh, got the Netanyahu and, and, uh, Gantz held a press conference today announcing the unity government. Gantz said, and I quote Hamas needs to go extinct. He also said, we'll do everything we can to bring back the hostages. What does he mean by Hamas needs to go extinct?
Extinct [00:19:00] like that's a pretty powerful statement. Yeah, you know, there's a lot of slogans being thrown around right now We need to topple Hamas. We need to collapse Hamas. We need to destroy Hamas or make Hamas go extinct What does that mean in practice? That's very complicated. I think that what Israel's goal here is to completely degrade Hamas's military capabilities.
Only so much can be done from the air. This is sending the troops on the ground, going house to house, door to door, killing Hamas members, capturing Hamas members, and destroying as much Hamas terrorist infrastructure. Hamas will not be standing after this. We can't have a situation where Hamas at the end can fire rockets into Israel.
We can't have a situation where they can threaten us on the border. But what happens after? Do we, we're not going to put our own puppet in charge of Gaza, right? That won't work. The Palestinian Authority can't just come back to the Gaza Strip. They were kicked out back in 2007. So what's really going to happen in Gaza that will be [00:20:00] different the day after, besides for having just a weakened Hamas?
I think that is the big challenge here. And it's about getting the Palestinians to change their own reality. Can they do that? We don't know. But can Israel create a more safer Gaza? And a more secure reality for itself that, that it can do. Gantz also said in the press conference, this is not a political partnership.
Meaning he and Netanyahu are not in a political partnership. He said it is a partnership based on a shared Destiny. I mean, I honestly, Yakov, I, I, I obviously follow Israeli politics very closely, but I also follow the politics of other countries. One closest, one closest to me is, is the United States, which I've worked in.
I follow the politics of the UK. Uh, I follow Israel. You know, I, from afar, I follow Canadian politics. I follow politics in many countries. I can't imagine two political leaders as fiercely oppositional to one another. I gotta tell you, even in a time of crisis, using language [00:21:00] like, it's a partnership of shared destiny.
But, but, but Dan, it really is. Because when, what Hamas is after, this wasn't, you know, people compared this to the Yom Kippur War. This wasn't the Yom Kippur War. Because the Yom Kippur War was the Egyptian military attacking the Israeli military and the Syrian military attacking the Israeli military. The captives of the Yom Kippur War were prisoners of war.
They were soldiers. What Hamas has done is they killed civilians. They butchered and massacred Jews. They could have been Orthodox, leftists, right wing, secular, centrists, wearing a kippah. Not wearing a kippah. It made no difference. They want to kill us all. And we have to stand together to defeat this enemy that wants our annihilation.
So, I commend Benny Gantz, but, but, but it's obvious, I think, to all Israelis. And by the way, I think the world now finally recognizes what we've been trying [00:22:00] to explain to them for decades. What we're really up against. Sadly, we had to do it this, this is how they had to learn this lesson. But today, there's no doubt in the world what Israel is facing as an enemy.
Uh, you are an astute observer of Israeli military affairs. You've, you've written a couple of, uh, important books, one of which I reviewed for the Wall Street Journal a number of years ago. And, uh, I think you're working on another book, uh, and, uh, and you're very dialed in with, um, with. Israeli military thinking and senior officials in the Israeli military and intelligence community.
How was President Biden's speech on Tuesday afternoon received in the Israeli security apparatus? I think these really, you know, officials who I've spoken to were blown away, were deeply moved by the way Biden spoke. About Israel, he could have said half of what he said about Israel, and they still would [00:23:00] have been deeply moved this speech that he gave said a new standard for what it means to be a pro Israel president, I think, in the United States, in terms of how you stand with the country at a time of need to openly threaten countries like Iran, organizations like Hezbollah to send the amount of firepower and forces that he's deployed to this region now, Right.
Reports that I'm hearing, I'm sure you're reading these as well about commandos and Navy SEALs who are now stationed or deployed in the country. Yeah, SEAL Team 6. Yeah. SEAL Team 6 is here. The, the, the deputy head of the State Department's negotiations team is already making his way here together with Blinken when, when, when Blinken's going to be here.
So, they are all full force on, but the, the, the talk and the rhetoric and the way to say there's no daylight, we stand, we understand what Israel's going through. Israel has to respond. Israel has to fight back. That moved people, and I think that what we're seeing right now is this understanding that we have [00:24:00] the support of the world's most powerful country.
And that gives Israeli military planners the feeling right now, now this will all change, Dan, and you and I both know that, that right now they can go gloves off. But someone's gonna tell them at some point that they gotta put those gloves back on, but for now that feeling is important. Uh, yeah, so I My understanding, and you know, like I said, you're closer to these things than I am, but my understanding of all, you know, when Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke with President Biden on Saturday, it sounds like everything Prime Minister Netanyahu asked for, uh, Biden agreed to give, the most important of which was time and space.
give me time and space. This is going to be a long war. And, you know, in so many words, these are my words. Now, no time soon will it be quote, it's time for diplomacy. The time for diplomacy has arrived. That's, that's normally in these skirmishes with Gaza, there's fighting the us administration, [00:25:00] whoever's in, whoever it is, has Israel's back for some period of time.
And then it gets ugly. And then it's quote, time for diplomacy. And it sounds like Prime Minister Netanyahu says, we really need you to stand with us, but back off and let us do what we're going to do. And it sounds like he, um, he received That commitment, which in a sense is we talk about Iron Dome and the miracle of Iron Dome all the time.
It sounds like what Netanyahu is looking for, what the Israeli government is looking for, is like a, is like a diplomatic Iron Dome. It's like we need you not only to, to get us the hardware we need to fight the fight, but we also need the, the software. We need the, we need the diplomatic Iron Dome. We need you to to basically tell the Western world to back off and give us space.
We need you to give us diplomatic cover at the UN because it's inevitable that something bad people, there'll be players who try to gang up on Israel at the UN. And um, it, it, it sounds like these, the government, Netanyahu at all, are, are, are getting, or at least it sounds to them like they're getting what they're asking for.
[00:26:00] Yeah. But I, but, but, but I, my fear is that's, that's going to run out and there are military officials who, who are talking about maybe, A week or two that they're actually going to have on the ground. And the reason is because once the, once the casualty numbers start to climb. On the, on both sides, but mostly for this purpose on the Palestinian side, the world's patience is going to run out and the distance as it grows from the massacre of October 7 to where we'll be in a couple of weeks, people have forgotten those images, and the B roll in all the interviews is going to be from Gaza as opposed to from Kfar Aza, one of the kibbutzes that was burnt down.
That will change the conversation and the sentiment. What Israel, which means that the clock is kind of ticking, and Israel, when it does go in, It's going to have to go in with grit aggressively with strength and force. I'm going to have to plow through. So it's going to be, have to be fast and very strong.
You're going to see a lot of military capabilities coming together. Artillery is down there. You [00:27:00] have armored personnel. You have the top infantry units. You have. Drones, and you have close Air Force support, a lot of changes in the way that they work also today. The brigades in Israel, if once upon a time you had an armored brigade, an infantry brigade, an engineering brigade, today they work as teams.
So they take a bit of infantry, a bit of armor, a bit of engineering, and they put it all together in these special teams that operate as one. to make them more effective, more firepower, and that they can get more done in a quicker way. That's what we're looking at. And what is it, what is the practical significance of the U.
S. sending, uh, aircraft carriers, uh, you know, reposition them nearby? Look, I think from Biden's perspective, and, and I, and I think that this was one of Netanyahu's requests when they spoke for the first time on Saturday. What Israel, what has Israel really concerned, Israel can deal with Gaza. Israel will deal with Gaza.
What Israel is concerned about is what's happening in the north and Lebanon. And if Hezbollah will open up another front, [00:28:00] to have to fight a multi front war will be very complicated for the state of Israel. Therefore, Israel wants to be able to be in a position that it can, um, maintain this conflict and keep it contained just to Gaza.
By sending the USS Gerald R. Ford as well as these other vessels to the region, Biden is trying to send a message and signal to Hezbollah as well as to Iran, don't you dare get involved, because we're here. Now does that mean that he's going to send missiles into Beirut? If Hezbollah fires missiles at Israel, I don't know.
Personally, I would actually recommend, have recommended to Biden, don't send that, that strike group to the Eastern Med, send it to the Persian Gulf. And if you're going to make a threat, make it against the Ayatollahs in Tehran, that if in Lebanon, they launch missiles at Israel, you're striking in Tehran.
And if you do that, that's how you reset the region right now. In terms of Iran, were you surprised that Biden didn't mention Iran in [00:29:00] his speech on Tuesday? Look, it was, it was interesting and it was notable that Iran was not there. Hamas, we know, is a direct proxy of Iran. Hezbollah is definitely a direct proxy of Iran.
Iran is here behind, pulling the strings, funding these terrorist organizations. Biden could have mentioned them, but he didn't, you know, this talks maybe to what the U. S. policy has been with the Iranians where they're trying to keep Iran contained, right? I think that my argument would be the world now has a unique opportunity, dad.
Everything is different today after what happened on October 7th in Israel. The whole world can change now. Policies of containment will no longer work. Israel tried for 20 years to contain Hamas, and it blew up in our faces. Israel said, no, we'll, we'll hit them once in a while, they'll hit us. We'll give them economic incentives.
We'll just keep them in Gaza. It'll all be okay. We're, we're, we're good. No, we're not good. You can't contain this. [00:30:00] That's what blew up in our face. And there were failures along the way, intelligence and tactical and operational all over the place. But we have this opportunity today to flip the equation and to say what was will no longer be.
That's what we have to take advantage of. Because if we just hit Hamas and then go back and rebuild the fence and build it 50 meters in width now and another hundred meters in height. We didn't do anything different, right? We have to flip this whole thing on its head. What is happening on the northern border?
I saw today there was, there was some action. Uh, how serious is it? How worried should, should we be? Look, Hezbollah, it's unclear exactly what their strategy is. On the one hand, it seems that Hezbollah is testing Israel. Is every time that something big happens in Gaza, they want to try to provoke Israel, respond, be, show the Arab world and the Palestinians, they, they stand with their, with their Hamas brethren.
On [00:31:00] the other hand, Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, is, is pushing the limits a bit too much. Today, there was anti tank fire, they sent some drones across the border, uh, there were fears of infiltrations into different communities. People, at one point, everyone from Haifa North.
Was told to stay in their homes and then the home front command app I was sitting in my office and my daughter my 12 my 13 year old daughter walks in and says ah, but dad We got to go down to the bomb shelter. So what are you talking about? She said on my app It says that everybody in all of Israel needs to go into their bomb shelter in the whole country It felt like there was a like a like suddenly what the whole world has unleashed missiles from a lot all the way up to Kiryat Shmona There was, there was a, a glitch there, but, but that's, that's the anxiety that people are living with.
Hezbollah would be atrocious if that were to happen. It would be a devastating war for Israel. I hope that we can continue, you know, the truth is, Dan, I'll tell you something, I'm of [00:32:00] two minds here. On the one hand, I say, I hope that war doesn't happen because they can cause some serious destruction here.
On the other hand, there's a part of me that feels like what I said before. We have an opportunity to change this, to change everything today. And, and, you know, I even, I, I found out, I tweeted before, or I posted on X, that, um, with tensions rising in Lebanon. I hope that if there's going to be a war, it won't be called the Third Lebanon War, because the last one, right, was called the Second Lebanon War.
It will be called the Last Lebanon War. That's what this all needs to be. It needs to be the last war in Gaza, and if there's going to be a war in Lebanon, it needs to be the last war in Lebanon.
Are you worried that We have been all excited, uh, 2019 and then obviously in 2020, the warming of relations between the Gulf States and then 2020, the actual, uh, the actual Abraham Accords, and then there was all this talk and excitement, [00:33:00] and I think a lot of movement on the Saudi Israeli normalization track, uh, over the last, Uh, year or so, especially over the last few weeks with Mohammed bin Salman and, uh, and Prime Minister Netanyahu, both in New York, the week of the UN General Assembly, both speaking openly about how far things, uh, were, how fast things were moving on the normalization track.
It was, it was quite extraordinary. What is the implication of what's happening now for any hope of Saudi normalization soon? And the reason I say soon is because I think it has to happen soon if it's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, because. Uh, you know, it will, some of this will require a major role for Washington, uh, in terms of potentially a new defense pact between Saudi Arabia and the United States, which requires Senate approval.
Obviously, there's all sorts of technology and equipment and advanced arms that the Saudis will want potentially, uh, uh, key ingredients to its civilian nuclear program. A lot of that will have to go through Congress. And you know, we're, we're At some [00:34:00] point, Congress shuts down sometime before the end of the year, and then next year, we're in an election year, and the idea that you're going to get both parties working together on this will be very difficult during a very tense U.
S. election year. So, one of the reasons he needed the Saudi normalization Plan to take so much momentum is because you needed that momentum to get it done quickly because of the Washington calendar, not the Saudi calendar and not the Israeli calendar, but the Washington calendar. And I'm worried that the clock is running on the Washington calendar to mix metaphors.
And, uh, and this may have blown it up. It may have blown it up. I think there's two ways to look at it. You know, I think back to the second Lebanon war when we didn't have normalized relations with the UAE or with the Saudis or any of these countries and behind closed doors. And I remember hearing this from the prime minister at the time and the defense minister, but behind closed doors, the, the, the Gulf states were saying to Israel, hit them hard, give it to [00:35:00] those Hezbollah guys.
They wouldn't say it publicly, but they would say it behind closed doors. I think that they have that same feeling today. Now, the Saudis won't come out publicly and say, we, we support Israel's war and operation to take down Hamas. They also came out with a, with a, I would say, not such a good statement when, when, when everything began on October 7th on Saturday.
It was not a positive statement. It, it, it called for restraint right away. I think we do have to recognize that it's complicated for them. But we could, it could end it. And it could have been that that's what FAMAS's agenda always was, was to, was to kill this normalization. But it also, Dan, and you, you know this just as well as I do, this could be The, the, the, what the platform upon which the normalization is actually sealed and the deal is done because if we're really able to change the paradigm here, this could be something that could actually be positive and change the trajectory of this region to not only help right until all the Palestinians haven't come to the table.
Why [00:36:00] not? Maybe this will bring them even closer. So we really can't tell for the next few weeks until the dust settles from this war, and, and we're only getting started, right? This is gonna take some time. But if, if If, I mean, one of, one of, one of the, um, assets that Israel has, I mean, you, you look at, uh, the reports about the intelligence and, uh, in the Arab world and the, and the security assessments of, of Israel in the, in the Arab world, of Israel, and the four Uh, pillars that they typically point to are one world class military and intelligence capability, Israel's, this is why you shouldn't mess with Israel to Israel's closeness with the United States, the rock solid relationship that's sort of seemed, seems unbreakable three is Israel and economic and cyber and technology, superpower startup nation for.
the, the unity of the people, that, that there's the solidarity of the Israeli people. And, [00:37:00] and those are the four reasons why it's very difficult to attack Israel. On the first point, if Israel doesn't go in hard against Hamas in Gaza and doesn't work aggressively and, and competently, um, Even if it's messy, even if it gets really ugly, uh, I do, I do worry that the Saudis will look at, look at Israel in the first pillar and say, are we that attracted to, to Israel's military and intelligence, uh, juggernaut.
By the way, that's the big problem. One of the big problems that comes out of what happened here on, on October 7th, right? When, you know, you look at the three main failures and I actually, I wrote a piece for Barry Weiss's Free Press about this, of the, what went wrong that led to this war? Yeah. You have three main failures.
Failure number one was the intelligence failure. Think about this for a second. We have a special intelligence agency called the Shabak, which is supposed to be watching Hamas. [00:38:00] You had a thousand to two thousand Hamas fighters who crossed into Israel on Saturday. And we knew nothing about this? How did they pull that off?
Now, some stuff has come out. They've been planning it for years. They did amazing compartmentalization. Very few people knew the big picture. There was no use of electronics. So there was no SIGINT, no signal intelligence. It was very difficult to pick up. And you gotta remember, Dan, in 2005 when Israel pulled out of Gaza, we have no physical assets on the ground.
So it's very difficult to run human agents on the ground in Gaza. So we rely pretty much solely on what we can hear and what we can intercept in terms of emails, texts, etc. If you don't have that, it's very difficult to know what's going on. So we, we didn't get the intelligence. The second thing that should have stopped them was the defensive measures.
We spent billions of dollars on above ground barriers and even underground barriers. We have special set radars and cameras. We have a remote control gun that these tatspitaniot [00:39:00] are called. They're soldiers, women soldiers who sit in a room and look at cameras and screens and they are the surveyors of what happens in Gaza.
We, you, you, you, a cockroach can't walk by one without an alarm bell going off, right? And somehow they managed to get through. And then the third failure was after all of that. So if we didn't have the intelligence and our defensive measures didn't stop them, what's the third thing? The rapid deployment of the IDF.
They should have been there to meet these guys and get them and stop them. But we were still on Monday, almost 48 hours later. Still trying to, to fight, to get, get, get some of these guys out of the, the, the kibbutzes and the communities that they were in down south. So when the world looks at this, what do you think today of the IDF?
What do you think today of the Shabak and military intelligence? Do you think that we're as strong as we, as, as, as we thought we were? This is a huge blow to the reputation of the Israeli military. It's going to be hard. It's, there's definitely that's on [00:40:00] their minds now as they embark on this larger offensive.
Yeah, that's, that's, that's encouraging, I will say. And I will also say that I, on the fourth point of what the Arab world, specifically the Saudis look, look at is the, is this solidarity of the Israeli people, which I know was in question over the last nine, 10 months during this divisive debate inside Israel.
You know, we've talked to you about it. Saul and I. Uh, wrote this book about the surprising resilience, resilience, underline the word resilience, the surprising resilience of, uh, of, uh, a divided nation in a turbulent world. Uh, they're watching that resilience. They're watching that solidarity and they're watching that resilience.
And I, and I just want to like end on that. I want to end on that point and get your take, because it is true that it took Benny Gantz and. Netanyahu and the political leadership of Israel took them five days to unite, which is impressive, as you said, uh, as they talked about their shared destiny, but it took Israeli society about five seconds to unite.
When you just think about immediately [00:41:00] after what, what, what began on Saturday, which are Israelis just stepping up and volunteering to remove bodies, rescue families, provide food, provide shelter, you know, mobilization of, of, of, uh, Displaced families, funeral and shiva attendance. I saw the some something on on social media last night that I that I reposted of, um, a Brazilian, uh, immigrant to Israel who who made Aliyah and was serving in the army.
And there's this program called Lone Soldiers where the Israeli society looks after Israeli soldiers, Israelis who move and serve in the military who don't have family there. And this person heard that this This Brazilian immigrant to, to Israel was having a funeral and, and he wanted to show up at the funeral.
And he'd heard word about the funeral and he couldn't get in because there was thousands and thousands of cars lining up on the highways to get into the funeral of a stranger, of someone they didn't know. And this was all happening in real time. And you're seeing some of the content being created, the video content, um, all these things that [00:42:00] Israelis are doing on their own.
They didn't, they didn't wait for the government. Uh, they didn't, they just. They organize themselves in any other society, by the way, we saw some of this for what it's worth during COVID in Israel, is the society organizing itself. Um, I, the world is watching that. Dan, I couldn't have said it better. That's the beauty, that's the secret of Israel.
The secret of Israel is that we know in times, sadly, you only really see it in times of hardship, but it happens all the time. Where, where when someone gets back, falls down, there's, there's going to be someone to help them get back up. You see it in every place. Every little sphere today of society. In helping your per the other person.
In sending there's a great I'll share this with you after, but there's this great recording that's been making the rounds on Whatsapp today. Of a soldier saying, hey I'm serving in X a place. And I'm calling on Ami Israel, I'm calling on the Jewish people to help [00:43:00] me. Take back all the food you've been sending me.
Take back all the underwear and socks you've been sending us. We have too much. We don't have room for it anymore. Take it all away! Because, but, but it's no joke. I mean, you know how many Go, I'm sure you're getting, how many GoFundMe projects there are? And how many, should, should we buy this and buy that?
But you know what? It warms my heart. And that's why, ultimately Dan, you know this. That's why we'll prevail. That's why we will win. Because we will, we sanctify life, we believe in the preservation of life, and we believe in the beauty of each other. And that is what will, that keeping us together is what's gonna make us come out of this stronger, more secure.
And a better people. Yeah, the world thinks that the secret weapon in Israel is a purported nuclear program. But what you're saying is they're wrong. The secret weapon of Israel is the health of its society. Exactly. Exactly. Uh, yeah. Yaakov, uh, we will leave it there and we will post in the show [00:44:00] notes, uh, the piece you just wrote, uh, that you referenced.
And, uh, I know it's late there. We will, uh, we'll come. Knocking soon again, uh, to have you back on because, uh, like I said, even, even before this horror show, uh, of the last few days, you were, you're always a welcome voice, uh, for our listeners. And I think especially so now, so thanks for, thanks for being here.
Thank you, Dan.