Forecasting the war’s path ahead - with Michael Oren
This episode will be the first of a few conversations in which we touch on the range of directions this October 7th war could go (especially when considering comparisons to Israel's previous wars, including those with Hamas and also the 1973 Yom Kippur War). Michael Oren is the author of numerous books, including: “Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East” and “Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present”.
Micahel also served in the paratroopers in the IDF after moving to Israel. Later on, he served as Israel ambassador to the United States, and as a Member of Knesset and Deputy Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office. He is a graduate of Princeton and Columbia, and was a visiting professor at Harvard, Yale, and Georgetown.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] You don't send two carrier groups. And I've, I've been to these carrier groups. You're talking about massive military power armadas. You don't move them there unless you intend to use them in some way. Because if you don't use them, it's even worse. And it's like taking out the pistol. You're not willing to shoot it.
Don't take out the pistol. And remember, America is a superpower. It has a global perspective. And the message there is not just to Iran and Hezbollah. The message there is to Russia, to China. It's about Ukraine. It's about Taiwan. It's about the South China Sea. It's about many things. This is Joe Biden taking on.
The one issue in Washington, which achieves a bipartisan support, which is isolationism. He's basically saying to the world, America is back. If Hezbollah opens up with 150, 000 rockets at us, and maybe they're accurate, they can take out our, our, our essential facilities, our utilities, our, our airfields, our, our oil refineries, our Damona reactor, okay?
Those aircraft carriers are going to, are going to launch. And it's not just planes, it's tomahawk missiles, it's Aegis systems, it's, it's, they're, they're, they're an [00:01:00] arsenal in themselves, they're armies. So you ask me, is there a chance? Yeah, there's a chance. I can't assign a probability to it, but I would actually say hi.
We have woken up to a different world. We are in a very different world right now. We don't know, we know how the war started, we have no idea how it ends. It is October
21st at 8 a. m. here in New York City. It's 5 p. m. in Israel as Shabbat. winds down there in a couple of hours. Here are the latest developments from Israel. The New York Times reports this morning that Israel's defense minister, Yoav Galant, supported a preemptive strike on Hezbollah in the North. President Biden and his aides advised Israel to avoid.
A widening war with the Hezbollah strike. This follows on a lot of reporting that occurred in the Hebrew language Israeli press earlier in the week about war cabinet [00:02:00] deliberations. And this news comes 24 hours after the largest city in Israel's north, Kiryat Shmoneh, has been ordered to evacuate. The United Nations says that beginning this morning in Israel, a 20 truck convoy carrying, quote, life saving supplies has entered Gaza from Egypt.
Yesterday, two Israeli American hostages were released after negotiations between the government of Qatar and Hamas. Defense Minister Yoav Galant said on Friday that Israel has set out three phases of war and that it will seek a new, quote, security regime. Once Hamas is vanquished. Gallant emphasized that Israel is still engaging in phase one of this plan, which relies largely on airstrikes, and the second phase will include lower intensity ground attacks, as troops work to eliminate pockets of resistance.
Pressures to restrain Israel's offensive into Gaza are building up, both from the international community, and even to some degree from within Israel, by [00:03:00] families of the hostages who are getting increasingly organized and making their voices heard. We will discuss the latest developments and take a broader look at the October 7th war, including a historical look with our guest today, historian and former diplomat and member of Knesset, Michael Oren.
But first, some observations. Since October 7th, I've been bouncing an idea around with some smart Israeli friends and some military historians over there. In short, we've been discussing the October 7th war. Has been comparable to Israel's Yom Kippur War of 1973 in which Israel was surprised by conventional armies from surrounding Arab countries.
This comparison has been all over in the press. Obviously, it seems that the October 7th war was actually timed to the 50 year anniversary of the humiliation of the Yom Kippur War. Israel had a disastrous first couple of weeks in that war. But then Israel not only recovered quickly militarily, but demonstrated that it could have reached Cairo [00:04:00] and Damascus if it wanted to.
The military defeat of Egypt and Egypt's restoration of its honor by attacking Israel in the first place allowed Anwar Sadat to make peace with Israel. Indeed, Itamar Rabinovich, an historian who's written extensively about Syria and also about the 1973 Yom Kippur war, who was later an Israeli ambassador to Washington under the Premiership of Yitzhak Rabin has made this point that for all that went wrong with the 1973 war, it did lay the groundwork for Israel's Camp David Accords with Egypt.
It is also noteworthy that as awful as those first couple weeks were in the Yom Kippur War, few Israeli civilians were killed. So this October 7th war of 2023 feels Very different in this 2023 war Israel was attacked by the much weaker of the Iranian proxies on its borders It wasn't like big conventional armies of [00:05:00] Egypt and Syria came in for Israel.
There are basically two Iranian proxies on Israel's borders there's Hamas in the south and Hezbollah in the north and It was Hamas, as I said, the weaker of the two, rather than Hezbollah from the north, or even both simultaneously, that attacked Israel on October 7th. And while the Hamas terrorists seemed to be well trained and armed, they invaded Israel on motorcycles and pickup trucks, using small drones, explosives, and a bulldozer.
And yet, they were able to slaughter and torture. and burn alive and rape over a thousand Israeli civilians. They were able to overrun military bases. They were able to occupy a lot of territory with the Israeli military, nowhere in sight for a long time. They were even able to travel back and forth to Gaza more than once, taking almost 250 hostages with them this time in 2023, the perception, at least [00:06:00] over the course of that.
It means nothing to be a regional superpower if that power can't protect its citizens. In the Yom Kippur War, Israel was surprised, but not weak. This time, does Israel look weak to its enemies in the region? To its friends in the region? To countries it has been warming relations with? In a sense, the October 7th massacre tried to stab at the heart of Zionism.
When I speak to friends in Israel, and I even speak to Jewish friends in the Diaspora, around the world, there's this sense that October 7th returned all of us to fears of vulnerability. From earlier eras in Jewish history, from Kishinev, pogroms, and the Shoah, to a time when Jews could be slaughtered with impunity because Israel didn't exist.
But today, Israel does exist, and that is why this October 7th war is so [00:07:00] crucial. To remind the Jewish people, to remind Israel's friends and allies, to remind Israel's future friends and allies, and to remind Israel's enemies. That Israel does exist. To put these events in historical context, I wanted to talk to my friend Ambassador Michael Oren, who has written one of the best military histories I've ever read.
It's called, Six Days of War, June 1967, and the Making of the Modern Middle East. Another one of my favorites. Power, faith, and fantasy. America in the Middle East, 1776 to the present. But Michael is not just an academic about military and political power. Having served in the paratroopers in the IDF, he served in various roles over the course of a number of Israeli wars, after making Aliyah, after moving to Israel.
Later on, he served as Israel's ambassador to the United States and is a member of Knesset and deputy minister in the prime minister's office He's a graduate [00:08:00] of Princeton and Columbia and was a visiting professor at Harvard Yale in Georgetown Now this conversation we have with Michael touches on The directions this war could go in the near future, including his bold prediction that the U.
S. will get involved, or at least more involved than I expect, and this will be part of a series of conversations we'll be having in the coming days, including one tomorrow we're having with Matthew Levitt about the potential for a northern front opening up one way or the other. Michael Oren, forecasting the war's path ahead.
This is Call Me Back.
And I'm pleased to welcome to this podcast, for the first time, my long time friend, uh, Ambassador Michael Oren, who joins us from his bomb shelter, actually, in South Tel Aviv, in Jaffa. Uh, Michael is, uh, playing a number of roles right now in this, um, [00:09:00] Horrific time in Israel, but one of which is helping people like me stay informed.
Uh, so Michael, thanks for being here. Dan, always an honor. Thank you. I'd like to say it was a pleasure, but you really can't talk about pleasure in the same breath with what's going on here. I know, I know. It's uh, right. That's exactly, that's exactly how I feel. So, Michael, we're, we're, uh, speaking right now just after news of, uh, release or expected release of two American hostages by Hamas.
A, what can you tell us about it? And B, what does it mean? Well, I have a personal angle on it. I, um, and during my day job and the couple hours I have free in the day, I go try to visit families of the, uh, of the hostages and, and the, the 203, uh, families, uh, hostages are, are basically kept in the dark. Um, the security services and, uh, other volunteers working with AI have gotten some information, but it really is dependent on, [00:10:00] uh, films that were made by various angles that they can dissect and find out who they, who was alive, who was not alive.
Um, I visited a family, uh, yesterday, uh, the Eshel family. Uh, a young family of a young soldier, um, and they have no evidence to date whether their daughter Rony is alive or not or whether she was taken hostage. Um, so it's not everybody who has that. I visited another family a couple of days ago, the Shem family, um, their daughter Mia was a, is a, is a joint, uh, French Israel citizen.
And sort of miraculously, the next morning, Hamas released a video of, of her daughter. This was the video where she's talking. She has the bandage, bandages on her arm. Yeah, that's family. And yesterday, I hope that we were able to, um, facilitate the mother to travel to France, uh, to meet with the, with French President Macron about this.
But Hamas, the bottom line is Hamas is very clever. Hamas is, is releasing footage about a [00:11:00] French Israeli, uh, citizen. Uh, in, uh, in a way to, is a way to impact French public opinion. It's the way the Hamas says to the French, listen, all those reports about, you heard about beheading and raping and murder and maim and, uh, and dissecting human beings.
That's not really us. This is the real us. We are compassionate. We take care of this young woman. We stitch up her arm. We're feeding her and, uh, and release this video. By the way, the video was old. It wasn't made on the same day. So we actually don't know the actual status. And then, uh, this morning, I, I spend my nights interviewing, as you know, on various, um, international, mostly American, uh, stations.
I'll be on, uh, I'll be on tonight, almost till morning. Um, this morning, around 5. 30 in the morning, I was on MSNBC. And, uh, I, as again, as you know, the, uh, the narrative has changed, and it's changing very rapidly. Um, to put it in the most pedestrian way I can, you know, certain numbers of dead Jews buy you [00:12:00] certain number of days.
Or even minutes of, of grace. And we are rapidly expanding, you know, getting to the end of our grace. Um, It's like Dara, Dara Horne's book, you know, everybody loves dead Jews. Yeah. But even dead Jews only buy you so much grace, as we know in, say, Europe's relationship with Israel after the Holocaust. It bought us about 25 years.
So, um, we are, we are getting to the end of that grace period and, um, it begins in Europe. It actually begins with the BBC and the London Times, um, though you already saw early intimations of it with the New York Times already a week ago. Where it stops being about the dead Jews and starts being about Palestinian suffering.
And, uh, and the M-S-N-B-C uh, segment was about Palestinian si uh, suffering a very long segment about what's going on with the children of the refugees in southern Gaza. And I, I turned to my, my partner Tammy, and I said off, off camera, I said, this is gonna be rough. Just watch this. And, uh, and then I came on with the panel [00:13:00] discussion, and then the panel was Martin Fletcher.
Now, Martin Fletcher is very celebrated, uh, Middle Eastern journalist, uh, has five Emmys, and he has so many different awards, um, and, uh, very acute observer, and often a very critical observer as well. Um, so I've known him and I've, you know, sometimes locked horns with him, but I think we have a mutually respectful relationship.
But I fully expected this whole segment of MSNBC to be about, you know, Palestinian suffering and Israel's responsibility for it. And then Martin, in the middle of his remarks, mentioned that his relatives, this, uh, uh, Judith and, uh, Nathalie Ra'anon. We're taking hostage. And in the middle of the broadcast, and he broke down and cried and actually couldn't, couldn't stop crying.
And I, I, many, my many years in the media, I've never had an experience like this. And we all stopped and it was, you know, we're all teary. Um, and then we learn, you know, 20 hours later that Hamas has released Judith and Natalie. [00:14:00] Now, if you ask me, their release was directly related to this broadcast. It's high profile.
Um, and that broadcast was, you know, repeated when it sort of viral. And, uh, Hama saw an opportunity, Hama saw an opportunity to make a finer and wider point than they had made with the release of the footage about Mia Kamb, the, the French woman. Um, and now this is all over. Which is what? Which is, which is, quote unquote, a, a kindler, gentler Hamas, or at least kindler, gentler relative to its portrayal over the last 10 days, because as some analysts have pointed out, Hamas was taken aback by the global reaction to not only its barbarism, but the hostages and that they've kind of gotten themselves in a jam now with these hostages.
That's the characterization. So they're looking for ways to show that they can be compassionate. It's only because they're not, uh, they're not on your alma mater's campus. Right. They'd be very happy to see what's [00:15:00] happening. Um, no, their actual statement said this. I don't have to spell it out. They said, this, this shows the, this, this, um, exposed the lies of the fascist Biden.
That was their response tonight of their spokesman, Lubaida. Um, so they're explaining to you what they're doing, but it's, it's cleverer than that, Dan. It's this. Um, Martin Fletcher, I was on again with him tonight, about an hour ago. And Martin Fletcher, just for our listeners, Michael, just for people who, he, he's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.
He was an NBC Middle East correspondent, Israel based Middle East correspondent for years. I mean, he was really a fixture for, for decades, really. I have, I have, I have the highest regards to him. We don't agree on everything, but the highest regards to him. And tonight. He, he first of all, you know, was very excited, as much as an Englishman can be excited on TV.
And he, uh, and he openly called on Israel not to invade. This is the opportunity to engage in negotiations that will, uh, result in the release of hostages. And, uh, you know, calling for a ceasefire. [00:16:00] And guess what? Hamas is Gambit paid off, it hit bullseye, bullseye, you can't get any better than that, on a national TV station.
Uh, a very prominent journalist calling for a, a ceasefire, and um, and now it, it complicates Israel's decision making. I don't think it's going to change Israel's decision making. But why? Why does it complicate Israel's decision making? Because now when we invade, and I assume we're going to invade, we are now going to, uh, purposely undermine chances for rescuing the hostages, including the American hostages.
And on the flip side, if there are more American hostages, we understand there are something like 15 American hostages. Something like that. We don't know for certain. If, if they were to release all, there was talk that there was a negotiation. Again, this is all speculative, but there was talk. With the Qataris, yeah.
Yeah. The Qataris were going to get the U. S. passports out and the UK passports out. If they were successful in that, it sounds like that's unlikely, but if they were successful in that. [00:17:00] What kind of message does that send about the Israeli passports that are still being held? It's almost, you know, there are different gradations of value of human life, and, and those holding Israeli passports, Israeli Jews, are, their lives are more expendable?
Well, it's in Tebbe Redux. Uh, poor Hamas, they probably found out that all these people who have foreign, uh, citizenship are probably also Jewish as well. Right. Right. Poor, poor Hamas. Otherwise they would have made the same selection, uh, and released. So can you describe just for our listeners what happened in Entebbe for, for people who don't know the reference you're making about how they divided people up?
Well, in July 1976, when a combination of German and Palestinian terrorists hijacked an Air France airliner to Entebbe in Uganda, they immediately separated the hostages on the basis of who was Jewish and who was non Jewish. These German terrorists basically did a selection, and, um, you know, the IDF was sent to rescue them.
It was Benjamin Netanyahu's brother, [00:18:00] Yoni, was the commander of that operation, and he fell in the operation. He was the only out. Israeli soldier killed. Um, So he would became legendary. But that notion of separating the hostages, uh, between Jews and non Jews, uh, is emblazoned in our collective memory here.
And it's not so dissimilar what happened here. I mean, Judith and Natalia are Jewish, they're very Jewish. From what I understand reading about them, they're actually Uh, observant Jews. So, um, it's, it's saying that it's trying to drive a wedge between Israel and its allies. It is trying to point the finger at Israel, put the onus of the responsibility for the fate and survival of these hostages squarely in Israel's lap, in our lap.
And um, and I saw how it worked. It worked like, it worked like clockwork, what did I say? Do you think the conundrum of how to deal with the hostages is what has been the source of the delay for the IDF moving in? Not entirely. I think there are efforts to locate them. The big problem with the Hamas is finding where they are.
And [00:19:00] assuming they're still in Gaza. Most of them are in the hands of Hamas, but not all. And isn't that part of the problem, that they're not all in the hands of Hamas? So Hamas itself doesn't even know where they all are. Hamas doesn't know where they are. So 30 at least are in the hands of Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
And then we have families who took hostages, families who crossed the border, took hostages and bring them back. If you remember Gilad Shalit, you know, over a decade ago, um, he was not taken by Hamas. He was taken by a family and sold to Hamas. Um, those of you who maybe remember, I don't know, the English patient, right?
He gets taken, he gets, you know, captured by a Bedouin family and sold. And sold to the British, um, so we have, you know, stranger than fiction, so these families have their, you know, their family hostage, and they want to make money out of it, um. So, we don't know, Hamas doesn't know entirely. So, the big, uh, the big obstacle for us, the big obstacle is locating.
We couldn't locate Gilad Jalit for five years. Uh, the Lord, we tried. Um, so, they, they're underground maybe in these, these [00:20:00] infinite warrens, these labyrinths that they, that Hamas has dug underneath Gaza. Uh, it'd be difficult. They serve first and foremost as a human shield. They are the next shield, actually a stronger shield than the outer shield of the, of the Palestinian civilians, because the world is going to care, uh, deeply about, uh, the safety of Palestinian civilians, but it's going to care profoundly, and I would, from Israel's perspective, they're going to care prohibitively about hostages, uh, if they are foreign nationals.
Uh, it won't be easy for Israel's internal, uh, dynamics either. There's already, uh, protests of the families, uh, demanding that the hostages be released now. Well, how else can you reach now without, you know, reaching some type of ceasefire with Hamas and letting them get away with mass murder? I just, if I may, um, take a bit of a detour here and just say a word about why Israel has to invade Gaza.
And it's not, it's not clear to everybody. And this is what I, if I have to ask the most frequently asked question I'm getting in the international media. [00:21:00] Why do we have to do it? Why don't you just, uh, you've already killed more than twice as many Palestinians as you lost in, in October 7th and 8th. Uh, you've bloodied them terribly, you've displaced a million people.
Isn't that enough? Why do you have to go in there? By the way, you're going to lose a lot of people too. And the hostages are liable not to survive. There's many, you know, compelling reasons. Um, you read the columns in the New York Times and elsewhere, that, that is basically the narrative. And, uh, what they are overlooking, because they're not Israeli.
Uh, are the three key reasons why we have to invade Oslo. One has to do with simply the security, is restoring security to the South. The South, as we say, is 62 percent of Israel. Going back to status quo ante will mean that nobody will live there anymore. It'll become virtually uninhabitable. Would you move your family down to Nassau's now in Bari?
Right. If you went back to status quo ante? Even farther north than that. Okay. And so ultimately the entire country becomes uninhabitable. All that happens. So that, that's [00:22:00] A. B, restoring our deterrence power. Our deterrence power right now is zero, zero. You asked me before when we were off screen, is Israel less, is more vulnerable now than it was?
And the answer categorically is yes, all right? Is that we are and that we, we, the, the world that we woke up to on October 7th was fundamentally different than the world we woke up to on October 6th. October 6th was a world in which Israel could defend itself by itself against any Middle East enemy or any combination of Middle East adversaries.
It was a, we felt secure and we felt, you know, there's threatens from Hamas and threatens from, from Hezbollah, but nothing, nothing remotely like this. Very different. And we're dependent on the United States in the way that, you know, who would have imagined we'd be dependent like that? Many, there are people in Israel who are, are disturbed by it, are threatened by it.
Um, but that is reality. I don't see anybody in the Israel telling these two aircraft carriers, the, the Ford and the Eisenhower, Hey, we don't need you, go home. [00:23:00] Nobody's saying that there. That's the second reason. And the third, and I think that is the paramount reason, is that Israel needs to fix the covenant between the state and the people.
And what was the covenant? This country was founded three years almost to the date to the end of the Holocaust, May 1948. It was based on a promise. And that promise was this state was going to protect the Jewish people from a recurrence of the Holocaust. Never again. It wasn't just a vow. It was a promise.
And the state violated the promise. The state was not there to protect the state of the people of Israel. Not only did it not detect. the invasion of Hamas. It, it took hours and hours and hours to respond to it. A breakdown of intelligence or anything. So, so there's a, there is a crisis in the relationship between the people and the state and that has to be corrected and we cannot begin to restore that covenant.[00:24:00]
Uh, under the shadow of, uh, of Hamas warheads. Can't do that. It'll always be there to remind us of the failure of the state. Michael, you, on the hostage issue, and then I want to go back to a little bit of history here because you are a historian. Do you think Hamas intended on, by the end of October 7th, to have 200 plus Israelis as hostages on the other side of its border?
I don't think. In their wildest dreams. I thought they wanted a, they probably wanted a significant military victory. They didn't necessarily want this. What happened? I mean, so, so, so they, you're saying that they, they were more successful than they anticipated and suddenly they get to the other side of the border and they're like, Oh my gosh, we have all these people.
I mean, it was a miscalculation? I think they overestimated our abilities to defend ourselves. All right. They, they were guilty of the same conception we, the preconception that we were. [00:25:00] I, I have a couple of hats. Okay. So, um, one of the hats, the historian's hat, and I've, uh, I've also fought in, in Gaza, so I have the, the soldier's hat, but, uh, for about a year, year and a half when I was in government, um, one day the prime minister called me and said, I got bad news for you.
You're in charge of Gaza. And, um, I learned more in that year and a half about the Middle East than I did in many, many years in university. And, uh When was this? What years? This was in 2000, um, 18, 19. And, um, what I learned was the following. A, everything you know about human dis decency, everything you know about normal quote unquote behavior about civilization when it comes to Hamas in Gaza, Throw it out the window, it's irrelevant.
This is an organization that takes hundreds of Palestinian kids every year, sends them down tunnels to dig tunnels, and hundreds are killed. The tunnels collapse. They don't care. We, I was in charge of the, um, ke shalom crossing, which is, uh, [00:26:00] translates ironically as the grape Grape, what's it called? The, the, the Vineyard of Peace.
Yeah. Right. El Shalom. And, uh, we had a capacity there of, of 1200 huge flatbed trucks. That could bring in everything, food, medicine, the blockade, a lot of misinformation about the blockade. The blockade was only about arms and dual use items, like irrigation pipes that could be used in projectiles, and they all were, that's why there's no water in Gaza.
Um, Hamas took all the, all the pipes to make them into rockets. Hamas would only let 400 trucks in, because Hamas liked maintaining a humanitarian crisis that would keep the people dependent on Hamas. And, um, and keep them angry at us. I learned that, um, Iran was willing to fight Israel to the last Palestinian and Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah was willing to fight Hamas to the last Israeli.
Really, if everything you know about reality is thrown out the window. And so that these [00:27:00] terrorists could act in a way, I don't think it's rivaled by any act in history. I can't think of it. Um, because. Uh, you know, our defense minister, Yoav Galant, my, a friend, uh, compared them to animals and was, uh, lambasted in the world, you're de legitimizing, you're dehumanizing Palestinians.
No, we're not dehumanizing, we're actually giving them credit. Animals will never do this, right? There's no animal on earth that would do what these people did to another human being. This is what I've learned about, about, about, about Hamas in Gaza, and that there is really no other response than to try our best to uproot them and to extirpate them in every possible way.
So I want to compare this, Michael, again, just, you're a historian, you wrote, you've written a number of books, one of the most important was your, your book on the Six Day War, but I want to, You and I were talking previously, before we were on, uh, the podcast about the Yom Kippur War, because the Yom Kippur [00:28:00] War was the closest, up until now, I think, that Israel felt a real existential threat, and, and it's, it's true that in the Yom Kippur War, Israel was surprised by, by Arab armies, which together were, at least on paper, uh, a match for Israel, if not stronger, but Israel Recovered, and not only recovered, it quickly demonstrated that it could have reached Cairo and Damascus if it wanted to, and including surrounding the entire Egyptian Third Army.
And, and Egypt and Syria essentially had to beg Israel for peace. So it was, it was like Egypt and Syria that ultimately looked like the paper tiger. And during that war, it was brutal for Israel's army, but Israel's, Israeli civilians were never really And this seems like the opposite. It feels to me like Israel now looks like the paper tiger and Israeli civilians were really under threat.
[00:29:00] And, and the equivalent of, you know, proportionately like 40, 000, it'd be the equivalent of 40, 000 Americans being killed in a single weekend. I've heard 52 is the exact number. 52, 000. So the numbers keep, numbers keep changing. Yeah. And, uh, And it, you know, begs the question to your point, like, who was the IDF, who's the Israeli defense forces defending if this could happen?
So, I'm just curious, comparing this moment to the Yom Kippur War in terms of Israel's vulnerability. Well, I think you've basically said it. Um, the Yom Kippur War was fought between armies, planes, tanks, people in uniform. For the most part, it was far, far from any population center. Um, only on the first day of the war did Syrians come close to, you know, Safed and, and Tiberias, but they never actually got there.
Um, they never descended from the Golan Heights. And so, and the, the civilian losses in that war were, were minimal. I'm getting hard pressed to think of any. [00:30:00] Um, and, and yes, the war ended in a conventional way with the Egyptian third army completely surrounded and then with Israeli artillery within range of Damascus.
You said, uh, so militarily, by the way, in American military academies, they don't study the six day war. They, they studied the 1973 Yom Kippur War, uh, as a much more interesting military victory. Um, Americans are used to And why is that? Well, Americans are used to coming from behind, whether it be Fort Sumter or Pearl Harbor, we're used to it.
You know, okay, we lost the first one, but look how it ended up. I mean, who thinks of the Civil War, World War II, being a loss? Okay. Only in Israel, we think of the Yom Kippur War being a loss because we started off at a loss. It's our, it's our shtick. Okay. It's our shtick. And it's not just a shtick. We lost 2, 000, almost 2, 700 soldiers in three weeks, which was prohibitive.
It was a much smaller, uh, country back then. Um, but having said that, we maintained our, Our deterrence power to such a degree that the Egyptians internalized that even with the maximum amount of surprise and, and [00:31:00] advantages in man and material, they still could not defeat us. Um, and the Syria in sort of way, uh, internalized that well.
We've never faced a serious conventional threat since then. Hamas operates. And according to an entirely different, it's not even cost benefit, it's entirely different logic or illogic. When I was preparing to go into that job as being in charge of Gaza, I was the guest of our internal security, the Shabak, in the south for a day.
And they began their talk to me by showing me a picture, uh, of Ismail Hainia, uh, one of the commanders, major commanders of, uh, of Hamas. And he was standing in a, a Jalabiya on a pile of rubble. And he was giving a victory sign, V sign. And the head of the Shabak says to me, Is that a feel, is that a picture of defeat or a picture of victory?
Being a good American background, I said, well, it's, it's, it's defeat. He's standing on a pile of rubble. He said, no, no, no, no, no, that's victory because Hummus doesn't care how much rubble there [00:32:00] is. If they're still standing on it and giving the V sign, they won. So you have to, again, you have to throw out everything you know and go into the world of Hamas.
We can devastate Gaza right now. If Hamas, if there's, if there's a single Hamas cell there still breathing, they've won. That's the way they're going to look at it. And by the way, it's going to happen because there are about 150, 000 members of Hamas. We can't kill them all. How do you respond to the critique that Israel going into Gaza, extirpating Hamas, most of Hamas will inevitably leave some kind of vacuum in this territory.
Uh, shouldn't Israel have a plan for what a post Hamas Gaza looks like before it goes in and eviscerates Hamas? Um, I damn well hope so. I really do. I've said this now for years because I've been involved in, you know, the Gaza diplomacy and the Gaza [00:33:00] battles. I participated in some of these operations. And that is, we don't seem to have an endgame.
Uh, and that the, the end gate could be that we're left holding the keys to Gaza. And we don't want to be holding those keys. I mean, there's some people on the, you know, sort of the far right that want to rebuild the Israeli settlements there, but they're not in any. And um, and then the whole process will come in again because people forget that before the disengagement, we were losing a number of soldiers and a number of civilians every week in Gaza.
Mm hmm. So pre 2005. Yeah, before 2005, you know. So um, that whole process would start again. Um, I hope so, and I hope that, that, we are engaged in an intimate discussion with our American allies, with our Arab friends, uh, maybe some type of intra Arab force. The big issue, and I saw that Netanyahu related to it tonight uh, was whether the PL, whether the PA, the Policy Authority from Judea and Samaria, from Ramallah will be involved in the, a, uh, The revival of Gaza.
Um, and, and, and pre 2007, the pa, the Palestinian Authority was [00:34:00] governing over Gaza before the got driven out by Hama with the disengagement. In 2005, we actually gave it to the pa. The PA was able to hold onto it for what, nine, for two years. And before they were ousted by a Hamas coup where, and an ousted in, in the literal sense because there were hundreds of PA, um, police officers who were, who were cast off the top of roofs in Gaza by Hamas, killed, um, hunted down and killed.
So, um, yes. And then if you put the PA in there, A, how do you keep the PA from, from the same thing happening again? But B, um, what does that mean in terms of the peace process? Are we back? You know, there's a certain school of thought. And I think that Netanyahu, um, Um, exceeds to the school of thought, he subscribes to it, is that, uh, you divide the Palestinians.
Keep them divided, keep them fighting one another, uh, and that lessens the chance of having to, of our having to get into a peace process which we're going to have to give up territory and maybe uproot citizens and, and endanger our state by creating a Palestinian state both in Gaza and the West Bank.
which could implode [00:35:00] just the way Gaza implode now. And then we'd have this type of war on both sides. By the way, I'm sitting in Jaffa, you're in my bomb shelter, but if I looked out the window to my left on a clear day, I see the hills of Hebron. And if there were a Palestinian state in those hills, I wouldn't be in rocket range, I'd be in rifle range.
And so it's not just an ideological argument there. Um, so, and I think a lot of Israelis are now, are of that, of that opinion. So that, that's a big question. The morning after. There's got to be a morning after. And, um, as the old song goes. But the plan for the morning after cannot, cannot hold up, it sounds like.
The, the need for momentum and going in. No, should not. I think there are other clocks. Israel has different clocks. All right. One of the clocks is getting the Palestinian civilians out of the war zone. And here's my, here's my army hat. Okay. Cause I, I fought there. You, you do not want to be a soldier in Gaza.
Um, it is a labyrinth of, of alleyways, cul de sacs, all of them heavily mined, booby [00:36:00] trapped, infilated with, you know, crisscrossing fire. And underneath it is the major battlefield. It's the tunnels and the bunkers. And we're talking about, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of miles of these bunkers. Um, bunkers that go under schools, under hospitals.
You got to fight in this environment. Think about this. It's a nightmare. And, um, so that, first of all, is gathering intelligence to the degree that we have intelligence. It's trusting our intelligence because our last round of intelligence didn't do so well. Uh, trying to find out where the, where the hostages are.
So that's one clock. The other clock is the clock I deal with is the changing of the international narrative, which is going to lead in the end to pressure. It's already starting. I saw it on MSNBC tonight. Um, our enemy does not have a military strategy. Our enemy has a military tactic that serves a media, a diplomatic, and legal strategy.
What does it mean? You know, they get these horrible pictures coming out of Gaza, okay? That, they're, they, they shoot at us, they kill us, and then they get us [00:37:00] to kill them, their Palestinian things. That, that's what they want. That's why Hamas is trying to prevent, uh, civilians from leaving the battle area.
They want us to kill them. And, so that generates horrible pictures around the world. That in turn puts pressure on governments. That pressure then finds expression in the Security Council, which is gonna vote to impose a ceasefire. And, uh, and then the legal stage is to, you know, we end up in The Hague being accused of war crimes and boycotted and sanctioned.
That's what they want. I mean, Hamas knows they can't destroy us with even attacks like October 7th, they can't destroy us, but they can deny us the right to defend ourselves and deny us the right to exist. And that's what they're going for. They're very methodical about it. So, um, so we have that clock. We cannot wait forever while this pressure builds against us.
And it is ticking. I, I'm hearing it all the time. The last is the question of the 360, 000 reservists who have been called up. Now, this is, um, You know, you [00:38:00] get a sense of 360, 000 soldiers. It's, it's basically one out of every 10 Israelis in uniform tonight. And, um, it's a, it's a force that's more than twice as large as the British and French armies combined, but it's also, um, our most productive, most productive segment of our population.
These are young. Yeah. In the twenties and the thirties, this is the high tech sector. I was on the phone this morning with, I won't mention his name, but one of those prominent venture capitalists in the Israeli tech scene who someone, you know, who's walking me through his portfolio companies and just pointing out, you know, the senior leadership of, of these companies, these entrepreneurs, these founders are people who are.
Reserves, people who are in the reserves as pilots, 8200, the well known high tech unit. The, I mean, he just started going through unit after unit after unit. These, Syed Merkal, obviously. Uh, these are the people getting called up. So something like 10 plus percent of the senior ranks of most [00:39:00] of his portfolio companies are pilots.
Not working. Yeah. They're, I mean, they're defending the country, but they're not working building their companies. Some of these companies are in the middle of fundraising rounds. They're, they've got, you know, critical milestones to meet. Obviously, they, in the scheme of life, they pale in comparison to the work that these reservists are gonna be doing on the front lines.
However, the tech economy is the lifeblood of Israel's economy. And we're, and we're, and we're hemorrhaging. So um. And we don't want to bleed out, carry the metaphor, that's, uh, and so there's a limited amount of time we can keep, we can keep our soldiers mobilized at this level. There are other clocks, I don't know how much time we have, Gudrun, is what I call the Farkhana clock.
Farkhana is a village in southern Lebanon where twice, in 1996 and again in 2006, an Israeli shell hit civilians, killed many, many of them, and it generated immediate crisis and ended the war. And, you know, we, we, I don't want to sound in any way cavalier about it, but we dodged a missile this week. with [00:40:00] that hospital, because if it had been an Israeli bomb on that hospital, it might have changed a lot of our ability and our maneuverability, um, to mount this, this incursion.
Uh, it didn't happen, but it could happen, it could happen while we're having this, uh, this discussion. But if it happens, Michael, it'll happen because Hamas co locates its weapons capabilities and its military command, its military leaders in these places, in UN run schools, in hospitals, in other civilian areas.
So. Tell that, tell that to the French government. I know, I know. Tell it, tell it to the governments of the world. Tell that to the New York Times. Yeah, well the New York Times really stepped in it this week. Let me let me ask you a question Yeah, you said we don't have a day after picture of Gaza. Well, we may that's I said, oh, no, I'm saying, okay Okay, fine.
Let me ask you though a different question I want to you know, Saul and I have another book coming out in a couple weeks. Actually, it's about Israeli society Yeah, I know about it. Yeah, I know that it's called the genius of Israel The subtitle is the the surprising [00:41:00] resilience of a divided nation In a turbulent world, which is, yes, we argue, as we saw over the last nine months, Israel is very divided, but don't bet against the resilience of Israeli society.
Obviously, we didn't anticipate there being a war, but even before the war, we believed that Israeli society would build back, and, and there would be incredible solidarity, and some of the building blocks that we describe in the book, I think you're starting to see play out already, and I think you're going to see play out, uh, soon after the war.
You say no day after plan that you know of for Gaza. What about a day after, what does the day after look like for Israeli society? Well, let me say, if you have a chance, put a postscript in, because, uh, your thesis has been, uh, you know, exemplified, you know, a hundred times over. I mean, everybody's out in volunteerism.
I was on the, I heard a radio program today where they have so much food in the South donated to soldiers. They have no place to put the food anymore. Um, it is just this massive, uh, comprehensive outpouring of, of love for this country. And they, the posters From [00:42:00] all walks of life. All walks of life.
Everyone has put aside our differences and, and, you know, this crazy ironic silver lining to this war is that Hamas has reminded us who we are and Hamas has reminded us the very hard way that we are a nation. We are people. We're a family. And we're acting like a family. Israel has, um, it's been said that the United States has a weak society, but strong institutions.
And Israel has a very strong society and weak institution. And I think this has also been very much demonstrated during this period. The weakness of our institutions vis a vis, and contradistinction to the strength of our, of our society. And the big challenge is going to be whether the society can remain united.
And we're always seeing fissures here and there. And, um, and whether they, that strength in any way be instilled in the institutions. And many of the institutions are going to, as I said earlier, it's going to have to basically be rebuilt. The covenant is going to have to be rebuilt. And, um, it's going to be changes in the army.
We already have senior commanders saying [00:43:00] they're going to take responsibility, which is code for I'm going to resign when this is over. Uh, the defense minister today, Yoav Golan, said, I'm gonna, I'm taking responsibility. I was waiting to see what Netanyahu does, whether he's going to take responsibility.
Paul came out to say that today they said 80 percent of Israelis expect Netanyahu to take personal responsibility. And we know, go back to your comparison with the Yom Kippur War, um, the government of Golda Meir succeeded in sort of rolling the responsibility for that failure onto the army. Uh, and I'm pretty sure many politicians are going to try to do this again, saying, listen, the army told us everything was okay.
What do we know? You know? Um, but public opinion will, I think, react the same way they reacted to the golden Arab government in that they simply brought it down. Um, and if you think there were protests before the war, uh, wait to see what happens after. Before we let you go, Michael, you were Israel's ambassador to the United States.
You have been a keen observer of the U. S. Israel relationship going back decades. Uh, a core tenant undergirding [00:44:00] Israel Zionist national security philosophy strategy has been that. Israel expends its own blood for its own security and the wars it finds itself in, it will obviously receive and depend on American munitions and funding, but, but it will be Israeli lives that do the fighting.
Do you worry at all or can imagine a scenario where that doctrine is, uh, modified or evolves in this war, if suddenly Israel finds itself in a multi front situation? I don't have to imagine, it's already happened. Last night, the USS Carnegie destroyer in the Red Sea took down three Hooty Rebel Maiden Iran missiles that were, you know, cruising toward the state of Israel.
So the United States has already used its military power to defend us. And I mean, that has not happened to the best of my knowledge since the 1991 Gulf War, when we had Patriot missile crews here on the streets of Tel Aviv. And as I said, you know, No one's telling those, no [00:45:00] Israelis are telling those aircraft carriers, you know, it's okay, bye, we don't need you, bye, see you, we're good, we got this, we got this, right?
No one's saying that. Yeah, but you could argue those aircraft carriers are, I mean, yes, they, um, those aircraft carriers are more for deterrent effect, but, but it's a whole different ballgame if, if American military personnel are somehow directly in the fight with lives being lost. I think that is a very real scenario.
So, let's, let's play it out. Um, I had an article in the Hebrew Plus last week that suggested that maybe we should contain Hamas and focus on Hezbollah. Because Hamas is not going anywhere and Hamas and Hezbollah poses a threat that's 15 times as large as Hamas. Much bigger. Strategic threat, not a tactical threat.
And we're going to come to blows with Hamas, with Hezbollah anyway. And Hezbollah will probably intervene, uh, in this war once Israel is deeply, you know, bogged down in Gaza and exhausted, then Hezbollah will [00:46:00] act. You don't send two carrier groups. And I've, I've been to these character groups, you're talking about massive, you know, military power armadas.
You don't move them there unless you intend to use them in some way, because if you don't use them, it's even worse, right? And it's like taking out the pistol. You're not willing to shoot it. Don't take out the pistol. And remember, America is a super superpower, it has a global perspective, and the message there is not just to Iran and Hezbollah, the message there is to Russia, to China.
All right. It's about Ukraine. It's about Taiwan. It's about the South China Sea. It's about many things. This is, uh, this is Joe Biden taking on the one issue in Washington, which is chiefs, uh, bipartisan support, which is isolationism. It's amazing. He's chief, he's basically saying to the world, America is back.
If Hezbollah opens up with 150, 000 rockets at us, and maybe they're accurate, they can take out our, our, our essential facilities, our utilities, our, our airfields, our, our oil refineries, our Damona reactor, okay? [00:47:00] Those aircraft carriers are gonna, are gonna launch, and it's not just planes, it's Tomahawk missiles, it's Aegis systems, it's, it's, they're, they're, they're an arsenal in themselves, they're armies.
So you ask me, is there a chance? Yeah, there's a chance. I can't assign a probability to it, but I would actually say high. So, we are, we have woken up to a different world. We are in a very different world right now. We don't know, we know how the war started, we have no idea how it ends. We can only do our best to plan, to gird, to find strength within our society, uh, this is what we can do.
And, you know, I'm, whether as a person who's lived here for many years, but also as a historian, I'm optimistic. We will overcome this. We will win it, but it will not be easy and it will not be cost free. All right, Michael, thank you, uh, for that. There's like a lot of really important lessons. A range of topics in this conversation, [00:48:00] so, uh, in most of these conversations I've been having since October 7th, we've zeroed in on one topic, I feel like here we covered like 25.
Yeah, we can go on. The night is young here, it's only, it's only 11. It's only 11. Um, are there rockets still flying right now? No, we haven't had one tonight, um, so far, but we can, I've got a ring sized seat out this window, um, they're saving up for that rainy day. As we start going in, and on ground, they're gonna start really hitting us very hard.
Uh, okay. We will, um, we will keep in touch, obviously, and love to have you back on, um, as things develop. You're, you're a calm, important, and informative voice, so, uh, please stay safe, and thanks, as always. Always best. Thank you for your support. Be well, everyone. Bye.
That's our show for today. To keep up with Michael Oren, you can follow him on X. He's at Dr. Michael Oren. And remember that our next episode will be with [00:49:00] Matthew Levitt. Discussing the potential for a battlefield in the north. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.