My 'Come to Jesus' Moment with Haviv
As Ramadan begins, many analysts are speculating on what this means for Israel’s coming military operation in Rafah. There is a threat from Hamas to deter a Rafah operation. There is a threat from the Biden administration seemingly designed to encourage Israeli’s War Cabinet to re-think the operation. Are these real threats? How does Israel evaluate these threats? This is what we unpack in our weekly check-in with Haviv Rettig Gur.
Then we discuss whether President Biden is beginning a turn against Israel. Is it real or is it performative? Is there a difference? What are the implications?
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] President Biden knows that one of the low points of his administration was how badly the Afghanistan withdrawal went. You know, I have been bullish on Biden from the beginning and some people are telling me now that maybe you need to reconsider that. I don't think Biden thinks that it's a serious thing to say to the Israelis, have your own Taliban retaking Afghanistan moment.
That is not something I think that Biden seriously is asking Israelis to do.
It is 12 o'clock PM. On Monday, March 11th, here in Washington, D. C., where I am, it is 6 p. m. in Israel. Ramadan is here. The question is, what does this mean for Israel's coming military operation in Rafah? There is a threat from Hamas to deter such an operation. There's also a threat from the Biden administration to [00:01:00] discourage, or at least get Israel to rethink the operation.
Are these real threats or just bluffs? How does Israel evaluate these threats? These are some of the topics and questions I unpack in my weekly check in with Haviv Ratigour. Then Haviv and I actually wound up getting into a heated conversation about whether President Biden is beginning his turn against Israel.
Is it a real turn? Or is it just performative for purposes of domestic U. S. politics? And is there actually a difference as it relates to the impact on Israel and also on the American Jewish community? What are the implications of all of this? Well, It's time I had my own come to Jesus moment with Haviv.
This is Call Me Back.
And I am pleased to welcome back to this podcast for our weekly check in, Haviv Rettigour, who [00:02:00] typically joins me from Jerusalem, but today we're actually together in Washington, DC. We just wrapped up a live event we did. We're at a conference together and And now we're recording an episode a day late, so we apologize to our listeners for getting this out 24 hours later than usual.
But here we are, Haviv. It is good to be with you. Dan, it's great to be here. It's funny to talk after we talked, but I think our topics are going to be, uh, fresh and different and it's going to be fun. I don't know about fun, but hopefully therapeutic, because I need to have a come to Jesus moment with you about President Biden and the U.
S. Israel relationship and where things go from here, which we'll get into in a little bit. But before we do, one thing I am struck by, Haviv, is there seems to be a debate going on in capitals around the world, including here in Washington, D. C., about whether or not Israel can go into Rafah. And whether or not Israel should go into Rafah, as though it's a choice.
And I say [00:03:00] everywhere around the world except for one place, Israel. And when I talk to you and I talk to other Israelis over the last few days, there's no discussion about whether or not Israel is going into Rafah. It's a matter of when, it's a matter of how, but it's not a matter of If, but when President Biden talks about there's a red line, you know, Israel will be crossing a red line if it goes into Rafah as though it's like there's an active discussion about whether it will happen.
Can you address your view? I think that's absolutely right. There is no real debate in Israel over whether Rafah is necessary. There is an important debate, a huge debate, a life or death debate, certainly for Palestinian civilians, for Israeli soldiers. And for the future of Gaza and for the future of Israelis and Palestinians over how to do Rafah, which is not a simple task.
There are over a million internally displaced people from different parts of Gaza who fled there during the war. It's the southernmost city. And to go in to get the last battalions of Hamas is something that has to be [00:04:00] done from under Gaza. This incredibly dense concentration of civilians. So there's an enormous humanitarian question.
I have to say that that's obvious. That's a, that's what everybody's worried about. But here's the thing about Rafah, we think there are probably four standing battalions of Hamas in Rafah. There are between four and maybe six battalions worth of manpower of fighters that fled battlefields farther North over the last five months and are now in Rafah and may well be integrated into the standing battalions at this point.
And so you actually have. A manpower that pessimistically, pessimistically from the Israeli view, could amount to 40 percent of Hamas fighting forces, sitting in Rafah with commanders, with infrastructure. The point is that if you remove Hamas from all of Gaza, put in place some other government, A government that's local, a government that's an Arab World Coalition, a government that's massively invested in development of Gaza, a government that sees the Israelis pull out and, and everything go right.
In other words, a best case scenario government for the rest of Gaza. The day [00:05:00] Israel leaves, we have a Taliban retaking of Afghanistan moment. 40 percent of Hamas's fighting forces, which will still be by far the most elite forces, the forces that have, literally run the schools of Gaza for 17 years, and half of Gaza's population is under 18.
Forces of a ideological organization that has taught the Gazans their story, their history for a generation will sweep back in and take Gaza over. In other words, if Rafah remains standing, if Hamas remains standing as a bastion and an outpost, In Gaza, in the city of Rafah, then the entire war will have been for nothing.
The entire war will have been for nothing is a Hamas victory. That's Hamas's victory condition. That's its hope. And so, among Israelis, if the Israeli government does what some American officials seem to have said, which is, you can't go into Rafah, That Israeli government will be removed by the Israeli people quite quickly and the Israeli government will be replaced by a government that would go into Rafah.
And a far left government among the [00:06:00] Israelis would go into Rafah. So yes, there is no debate. Hamas won't be handed Gaza back after all that the Gazans have suffered through and the Israelis have suffered through. And that means Rafah must fall. Hamas is outpost and Rafah must fall. And that doesn't mean we have an answer to the humanitarian question.
I can tell you that the debate over the humanitarian question, the discussion is at the top level in Israel. It's something that tremendously worries defense minister Gallant and prime minister Netanyahu and minister Gantz and the war cabinet generally. But Rafah has to happen. I just want to add to that.
Also, president Biden knows that one of the low points of his administration was how badly the Afghanistan withdrawal went. You know, I have been bullish on Biden from the beginning and some people are telling me now that maybe you need to reconsider that. I don't think Biden thinks that it's a serious thing to say to the Israelis, have your own Taliban retaking Afghanistan moment.
That is not something I think that Biden seriously is asking Israelis to do. Haviv, [00:07:00] I take your point that Israel cannot win the war and meet its objectives without going into Rafah, but can you also describe the implications regionally? for Israel's role in the Middle East, if at the end of this, some remnant of Hamas and the Hamas leadership is still intact, and Sinoir is able to say, we massacred Jews on October 7th at a scale never seen before in a single day, certainly since the Holocaust, and we're still standing.
What the implications are for Israel's geopolitics and for Israel's security in the region. Yeah, I think that if Sinuar can say we're still standing in Gaza, you know, we know there's still going to be Hamas out there, and we know there's still going to be a years long counterinsurgency inside Gaza. We know the cells are going underground and popping out to disrupt and attack, by the way, not just Israel, but anything that replaces Hamas going forward.
So Hamas is still going to try and destroy Gaza in the name of its great holy war. Bye. Toppling the Hamas regime is something that is the war goal and [00:08:00] has to actually be the achievement of the war. Or Sinuai will be able to say the Israelis can't even destroy Hamas. Hamas is probably the weakest of Israel's enemies.
And so the ramifications for Israeli deterrence are frankly catastrophic. The entire story of October 7 will become the story of if Muslims, this is how it's framed by groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, it's framed as an Islamic thing. If Muslims can tolerate the Israeli bombardments that follow, Muslims can bleed Israel to death patiently, and they will leave as surely as the crusaders left.
It will put wind in the sails, it will weaken every force in the Muslim world, in the near Muslim world, in the Arab Sunni world, in the Shia world, around Israel and throughout the region that says that the Jews are contingent thing, they can be destroyed and therefore they must be destroyed. And therefore any compromise with them is treason to the great holy cause.
All of that is a function of Hamas surviving in Gaza. And that's very, very clear to the Israelis and it's very clear to the [00:09:00] Iranians and to Hezbollah and to Hamas. And so again, Rafah has to happen. There are, by the way, deeper, longer ramifications. There's basically a kind of intellectual civil war within the Arab Islam right now, between the sort of Muslim Brotherhood radical axes of the Middle East and the conservative axes led by governments and countries like the Saudis, Emiratis, Jordanians, Moroccans, It gives wind to the sails of the evil side of that internal Islamic civil war.
And this is a side that is destroying, literally demolishing Arab nations one at a time. It's a disaster. It's a disaster for the Arab world. It sounds odd and it sounds a little bit silly and sometimes history is full of ironies that are silly and odd, but. If Israel loses to Hamas in Gaza, Yemen is worse for it.
Lebanon is demolished more quickly by Iranian proxy forces. Syria suffers. The entire Arab Middle East suffers. For some odd, weird quirk of history, a internal Muslim civil war is [00:10:00] being fought by Jewish soldiers in Gaza right now. And so the ramifications are vast, long term. They profoundly affect our security, but they affect the character of the Arab world going forward.
So, to your earlier point, Haviv, it's really just a matter of when and how, not, not if. There have been two main threats made, either explicitly or implicitly, against Israel over the last couple of weeks. Should it choose to invade Rafah during Ramadan, Ramadan just began in the last 24 hours or so. One of those threats was made by Hamas, that it would effectively light up the entire West Bank.
Because there are Hamas cells embedded deep into the West Bank, and we know that popular opinion in the West Bank is very supportive, overwhelmingly supportive of Hamas, or at least Hamas's war against Israel, and that Hamas would fulfill its original plan to activate the West Bank and activate Hezbollah in the north, And a plan that seems to have [00:11:00] originally failed and it was never actually activated.
But if you invade, if you go into Rafah in Ramadan, that changes. Israel's been talking and fearing about a multi front war during Ramadan. They're going to get that multi front war. That was one threat. And the second threat was by the U. S., implicit, that there were questions. We all read the David Ignatius column in the Washington Post that was clearly briefed to Ignatius by the administration on background.
We've seen statements coming out of the administration recently, including the president talking about a red line. I mean, there's, there's enough out there. And the threat is that somehow there'd be a threat to supplies. We'll loosely call them to supplies to Israel if it goes into Rafa during Ramadan or perhaps if it goes into Rafa at all.
There are also real questions about how reliable the U. S. will be at the U. N. giving Israel diplomatic air cover as it has quite impressively up until now vetoing U. N. Security Council resolutions. These were the two main threats, one by Hamas and one by the U. S. Both telling Israel no Rafa and especially no Rafa [00:12:00] during Ramadan.
Were these threats just bluffs? Just talk a little bit about what Israel's risking here in facing these two threats. There's so much to say, Dan. It's hard to know where to start. I'll start on with Hamas. If Hamas could light up the Middle East, it would have done so, and if it could do so in ten minutes, it'll do so in ten minutes.
Ramadan is a sensitive time only because a lot of Muslim families, I mean, probably most Muslim families, certainly in the Sunni Arab world, are watching TV, they're resting during the day as they fast, so there is a larger sense of In the Muslim world, just culturally of a kind of connectedness of everybody watching the same show as the same news.
There's more attention to just the general news reports, news cycle, what's happening in the region, in countries to Muslims across the world. Ramadan is a time of focus and that makes it a kind of time that could see more mobilization. In other words, it's probably easier to get out large crowds in Arab capitals during Ramadan.
than at other [00:13:00] times when everybody has work and everybody has things to do and everybody's, yknow, right, busy. So it's not that Hamas's threat is empty. It's also generally a truism of guerrilla warfare that you never throw everything you can in one operation, you always save something back. Because the opponent in a guerrilla war is usually, almost always, stronger than the guerilla force.
And The guerrilla force doesn't win by knockouts. The guerrilla force wins by the death of a thousand cuts. And so you always, always hold things in reserve. So if Hamas has assets in the West Bank, and it definitely has assets in the West Bank, it's holding them in reserve and on its way out of history, right before his death, Seymour will still order some operations in the West Bank, even as it falls.
That's the way that strategy functions. And so can it light up the West Bank to some degree? Absolutely. Can it light up the Arab world to some degree? Absolutely. But Not enough. Not enough to make it survive. Not enough to throw the Israelis out of Gaza. Not enough to make it the path of necessity for the [00:14:00] Israelis to let Hamas have Gaza back.
Which is what we're talking about. The question of Raphah to the Israelis is the question of, should Hamas be handed Gaza back after everything? After October 7, after the war, after the sacrifices of so many Israelis, should Hamas be handed Gaza back? Whenever people talk about Raphah, and you want to understand the Israeli mind on this, you need to ask the question, should, just take the word Raphah out, and ask, and insert in, should Hamas be handed Gaza back?
There's nothing Hamas can do, can turn on, can light up, can set on fire, that makes Israel willing to give it back Gaza. And so none of it really ultimately means anything. That's the easy one. Now the question is, what the heck is happening in America? The Biden administration has been saying so many different things from so many different angles.
This is frankly, you know more than me about this. I could just say, so I want to throw the question back at you, but I'm an Israeli, so I'm still going to opine about it, even though I just said, I don't know much. Um, why should that stop you? Yeah, it's against my culture. [00:15:00] I just want to say that I don't know what to make of what Biden is saying.
I have been very bullish on Biden. I have been saying, watch the missile shipments. If the missile shipments continue, that's the message to the Israelis, not the rhetoric. And I have been saying, Biden does not have The options that the left wing of the Democratic Party claims he has, they claim that he can stop the war.
They claim that he can pull the Israelis out of Gaza in some magical way. He can't. If the missile shipments stop, I hate to say this to everybody. I hate to even imagine it, but Israel goes into Rafah. It just goes into Rafah with slightly less precise weaponry. That's more dead Palestinians, not less, to continue the missile shipments.
They have to use the missile shipments as leverage. They have to continue. The day they stop, they're no longer leverage. And I don't think the Israelis need the leverage. I think the costs to Israel of the images around the spreading around the world of humanitarian, of civilian harm in Gaza are obvious to the Israeli leadership.
I say that having talked to Israeli leaders. I [00:16:00] don't know if people who just get their news from, you know, whatever outlets, CNN or whatever, Grasp that because CNN doesn't speak Hebrew and people aren't generally into, we're a small people speaking an obscure language. So everything that happens inside us is translated.
And the translators have a lot of control over how the world sees us. But I'm telling you that the Israelis know that there's a tremendous cost to Israel, not just to Palestinian civilians of Palestinian civilian harm. Here's my positive spin on Biden. And I think this fits all the facts, my positive spin on Biden.
And I say this to have you knock it down. is the Israelis need between two weeks and a month to figure out what to do, how to move a million civilians so that the Rafah operation can be effective, not just so that it can have low civilian costs. Biden knows they need that time. And Biden wants credit for the delay, even though the delay is a necessity of the war.
By the way, the fighting continues. The fighting on the ground, the Han Yunis, there have been dead Israeli soldiers, there have been a lot more dead Hamas fighters, there have been tunnels blown up, even in a week where we're [00:17:00] discussing negotiations over ceasefires, for hostage exchanges, things like that.
So the Israelis have a delay now. It's not a terrible idea not to go into Rafah during Ramadan when the focus of the Arab and Muslim world is more intense. We'll still do it if we have to, but if there's no difference, why not wait militarily on the ground if there's no difference? So if the Israelis are going to delay a month anyway, why wouldn't Biden take credit for it by telling them, don't go into Rathach?
And then the Israelis have the plan in place, which they're already preparing. These are, by the way, news reports. Israeli officials have been saying this to the American press. It's going to take us two weeks or a month to figure out the actual plan on the ground to move a million civilians out of Rathach.
The delay is there anyway. Biden wants credit for it. Maybe that's what he's saying when he's saying, don't go into Rafah. He wants to show the progressive wing of the party that doesn't want a ceasefire now, a permanent ceasefire, whatever that means, because Hamas won't do a permanent ceasefire. That's not what they are.
He wants to show them that he is squeezing the Israelis as much as possible, and he has a window to do it. So he's [00:18:00] getting the free credit available to him. But in fact, Rafah must go on. It'll happen right after Ramadan when it's convenient for the Israelis and much, much safer for civilians, because there'll be a credible plan in place to move them.
Maybe that's what's happening. Haviv, I don't buy it. It's a nice spin. It's a nice positive take on what the Biden administration is up to. And I, like you, have been very impressed and appreciative. Of what the Biden administration has done since October 7th. And we've talked about a lot on this podcast that the president United States gave a moving address on October 7th and framed exactly what was going on, exactly what had just been unleashed on Israel.
And the president United States went to a war zone. He flew to Israel, have the commander in chief of the most powerful military in the world, fly to Israel. On Air Force One, be with the Israelis, meet with victims of the massacre, meet as part of the war cabinet, join a war cabinet meeting. It was [00:19:00] extraordinary.
And then obviously, the military assets deployed to the Eastern Med, and the munitions, the extraordinary. consistent supply of munitions within days of October 7th to Israel so Israel can fight this war. Even though there's dysfunction in Congress and there's issues of military assistance holdups going through the conventional route of Congress, President Biden has figured out workarounds to make sure these special deliveries of munitions and sales are getting to Israel and the diplomatic cover at the UN Security Council.
It's one thing after the other. He deserves enormous credit for it. But, I do not believe he is simply playing for a narrative right now. Well, your basic thing is he wants a narrative. Your argument is he's got a problem with his progressive base, and he wants to show his progressive base that he can pressure Israel and get something for it.
The problem with that Is that all you're saying is it's just a delay instead of getting Rafa now, he's going to get Rafa in two months. And I don't think the issue of when [00:20:00] Rafa happens is going to matter to Biden's progressive base. I think those people storming the streets, tearing up college campuses, city councils across the country, voting, calling for a ceasefire are going to be as heated.
Rafa happens two months from now, as they would be if it happened two days from now. The images of Israel and Rafa, which no matter how you slice it and dice it, Aviv, those images are going to be ugly. And if they're not actually as ugly as we expect them to be, and God willing they're not, the enemies of Israel and the critics of Israel will find ways to over extrapolate the bad images, and even manipulate images.
If Israel goes into Rafa, it will be a bad story for Israel, in terms of what happens on the ground in Israel. In Rafa and the critics of Israel will seize on it. And not a single one of them will give Joe Biden credit for delaying that by two months. Arguably, actually, Haviv, it could be worse for Biden, because if I'm Biden, I want to get this over with.
If you tell me it's going to happen, then get it over with quickly, because the longer it takes for it to [00:21:00] happen, it means that the hangover effects of it will bleed deeper and deeper into the summer. And the summers when the Democratic National Convention is. The Democrats are, I hear them more and more talking about they don't want a Chicago 1968 situation where the left wing of the party blows up at the convention against the incumbent president.
So if you're saying, Oh, Biden's buying a couple months and he's going to get credit for it. Well, a couple of months, we're going to blink at spring. And then the convention is in the summer and there's still all this fallout all over television, all over Al Jazeera, all over the Tik TOK screens of Biden's progressive base.
He's still got a problem. That all strengthens my sense that this is politics. And I'll tell you why. First of all, the Democrats are a spectrum. There's not, you know, centrist Democrat who thinks Israel should kill Hamas and progressive Democrat who thinks Hamas should win or survive or no amount of civilian casualties is legitimate in a war.
I apologize if that's a little bit of a cartoonish version of what they're saying. They're saying more complex things, but I think the bottom line boils down to that effectively, [00:22:00] pragmatically on the ground. And so that's what I think they're ultimately campaigning for. Point is. There is a huge middle ground between them.
There are a lot of Democrats who say, kill Hamas, but, you know, God almighty, show us that you're trying not to kill civilians. There are a lot of progressives that say, there is a better day for the Palestinians, the day after Hamas. I want this to war to end. I want to find a way out of, there has to be a diplomatic way, just because the suffering is so terrible.
In the war path, so to speak, of getting rid of Hama. There are a lot of middle ground people whose feelings are with the progressives, whose brain is with a centrist, who Biden needs to hold to the centrist camp. And here's the thing about the schedule. You can't do it quickly. You just can't. There's no way to get a million people out of Rafah quickly.
There's no way to do it this week, have them fight next week, finish it in three weeks. By the time Ramadan is over, whatever, you know, terrible storm in the Muslim world of public opinion happens, happens. And [00:23:00] then it's clear sailing for six months to the election. There isn't a schedule like that. If you want to avoid massive civilian casualties, it's gonna be two months before the Israelis can seriously operate in Rafah.
Best case scenario, five weeks. So, if you can't do it quickly, if you can't make the schedule convenient, and it's going into an election year, make it a fight. Make it a fight with the Israelis. Lay down some serious demands. If the Israelis, by the way, take you seriously, I have to tell you, first of all, one of the reasons I've been bullish on Biden is that I'm an Israeli.
I don't have the right to come to an American president that has done everything you've described. That has done so much for us and say to him, how dare you now have another view? How dare you now make a demand that you weren't making a week ago? What, where do you come off? I don't have that right. You do have that right, Dan, because you're an American and he's your president.
And if he's doing something you disagree with, you can scream at him and shout at him and protest him. But I'm an Israeli. Where do I come? He has done more for me. He has done five times more for me than I [00:24:00] have a right to expect from an American president as if I deserve it or it's coming to me. I don't have the right to come to an American president who has done so much and say to him, you know, don't you dare now have a different opinion or turn away from us?
Or frankly, we said this in late October. You and I had this conversation, he had sent the aircraft carrier battle groups, he had, he had told the Iranians back off, he had given the Israelis an opportunity to fight Hamas in as clean a way as possible and not have to fight on five fronts all at once. And we said, if he then, as we get closer to the election, because we were talking then about six to nine months of war, that's what you and I were talking about.
I think Galant said that schedule and that's what we knew was going to happen. If he throws us under the bus to not lose an election six months down the road, that's fine. I will be grateful and I will, I will have that gratitude. I don't expect him to lose an election for me. So maybe that's what's happening now.
But the weird thing is, he's still not stopping Rafah. He's not stopping the missile shipments. He's not even stopping the missile shipments Israel needs to arm and arsenal for [00:25:00] the northern war that might be inevitable. Hezbollah is not moving back to the Litani. It's not fulfilling Resolution 1701. 86, 000 Israelis are not going home.
So how is that war going to be avoided? Long story short, Everything you're saying about his schedule and his political needs, he doesn't have a perfect solution, but maybe the best path forward for him is to manufacture a fight with the Israelis. There's also an Israeli domestic political dimension.
Netanyahu wants to manufacture a fight with the Americans. It fits both of their domestic politics. And go into this Rafah period of great danger for him politically. The president of the Afghanistan withdrawal knows that Hamas can't be allowed to survive. And I haven't talked to him, but surely. Why is that political calculation not strengthening the argument?
Haviv, I have so much to react to here. There's so much you're saying that I want to react to. I agree that he has been extraordinary from day one. And I know you have been saying at some point, as you say, we can expect him [00:26:00] to be with us, we can hope he can be with us, as Israelis you've been saying that.
But we can't expect him to lose Michigan for us has been your line. And the moment he has to start dealing with Michigan and stop worrying about us, we respect that. You speaking, you know, unofficially on behalf of Israelis. I have been sympathetic to that argument to a point. And I think maybe, Haviv, my breaking point was watching him at the State of the Union and some of the interviews he and Vice President Harris have given since the State of the Union.
Because at an abstract level, you're right. If he's really going to be by Israel in a way that no president has ever been during his presidency, a war that Israel's fighting that is like no other that Israel has ever fought, then we need to cut him some slack when he needs to pull back a little bit, at least rhetorically.
The problem is pulling back rhetorically is sometimes pulling back rhetorically or change in rhetoric has dramatic and cascading implications. that both undermine the Israeli war effort and [00:27:00] actually brings more threats and more harm to American Jews, to citizens of his country. And I watched that State of the Union Address and I got really, really concerned on both fronts.
Two reasons. First of all, I watched what he did at the beginning of the State of the Union, which I was very sympathetic to, where he laid out the stakes for the United States and Ukraine, and he drew parallels to World War II and, and what it means for the future of Europe and the transatlantic relationship if Russia is left to keep marching, you know, into Ukraine and beyond, and our obligations to NATO.
By the way, I had been hoping he would have been giving speeches like that sooner, since Into when the Russia Ukraine war began. I feel that part of the problem we have as it relates to public opinion on the Russia Ukraine war in the United States is that, you know, we need the president in this country to be an explainer, explainer in chief, to be explaining to the American public why we're doing what we're doing, especially on global affairs, what the stakes are, what America's interests are in these wars, why we need to be doing what we're doing.
[00:28:00] He has not been doing much explaining. I thought the first part of the State of the Union was interesting in that regard because he did some explaining. And I thought, wow, maybe he'll do the same thing when he talks about the Middle East. He basically did no explaining. He didn't really explain. Yes, he said that Hamas attacked Israel, and he talked about how awful October 7th was, but he didn't raise the lens and talk about what this kind of threat means, that this is a civilizational struggle, and it's not just about Israel and Hamas in Gaza, but has much broader implications, as you and I both know.
So I think that was a real missed opportunity and very disappointing. Secondly, the criticisms he unleashed on Israel. are criticisms that are used by the international community. To further pile on to Israel. So it's not just like, Oh, he's got to take a couple of shots at Israel right now, and we're okay with it because we're getting munitions and vetoes at the UN in return.
The language he used is the kind of language that now the world can use to further pile on. In effect, as much as the world has been piling on, on Israel, the fact that the [00:29:00] Biden administration has not joined in, in the pile on. And has actually moved in the opposite direction, has kept the impact of that piling on at bay, but now Biden is using their language.
He's using the language of the fiercest critics around the world. So now they can say, well, there here's Biden, your closest ally. He's even agreeing with us. And again, I don't think we have thought through. Or the administration thought through the cascading effects that can result from him using that language.
And I want to play one piece of audio from the State of the Union that really got me. This is President Biden at the State of the Union. For the leadership of Israel, I say this. Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip. Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.
So, Haviv. That's really now the new message from the Commander in Chief of the most powerful country in the world that Israel is using humanitarian assistance as a bargaining chip? We can [00:30:00] debate whether or not Israel has been as effective as it could be in delivering humanitarian assistance. And there's been two issues.
One is actually the accessing of the humanitarian assistance into Gaza. And then the distribution is the secondary, more challenging part, the distribution of humanitarian assistance to the Gazans without it being run over by Hamas or by criminal gang networks or by looters. And who does that safely and how you do that without lives being lost, not only by those providing the force protection during the distribution phase and Making sure innocent Palestinian civilian lives aren't lost.
It's really complicated. And maybe Israel hasn't gotten it, but point to me a country who can. I wait to see how this whole port. Set up this causeway being built is going to handle that issue, the distribution inside Gaza differently. I'm highly skeptical, but maybe that's a conversation for another day.
The framing now is that Israel's playing games with humanitarian assistance as a bargaining chip is just not true. And he is now put in front of an audience of hundreds of millions of people in the [00:31:00] United States and around the world that the President of the United States thinks Israel is deliberately playing games with humanitarian assistance when the reality is Israel should be doing whatever it can to address humanitarian assistance but the goal is eliminating Hamas.
That is the war aim. I agree with a great deal of that. There's also something you said to me in our conversation earlier today, he didn't talk about anti Semitism. I was going to get to that. Every American Jew I know, really, every single one, and I'm speaking in front of a lot of American Jewish audiences these days, Haviv, they are scared.
You yourself told me this. You were on American campuses the last couple of weeks. You've been speaking to American Jewish students. They are scared. I have never in my lifetime, really. American Jews going through their lives feeling like it's a menacing environment out there. The climate is menacing. And it is a combination of actual fear for physical violence, fear for the [00:32:00] Jewish institutions.
that they have been involved with, whether it's their Jewish day schools or their synagogues or their community centers or whatever, fear for being a Jew who may not be that involved with Israel, but in some way you're publicly known as a Jew. You have like Kristallnacht like situations of violence and protests at your business.
And this notion that you and I talked about the sense that Jews are being driven underground, that they're being made to feel like it is a hassle. It is an inconvenience. It is controversial to be Jewish. In America today, that that's where this is going. And the president United States chose to pile on on Israel and his state of the union and not address this.
I think that's right. I think there's a lot there. First of all, I want to get out of the way just the simple question of process. You've written speeches for presidents. Maybe it was just a badly made speech. In other words, why would President Biden not talk about anti Semitism and millions of Jews who feel terribly nervous right now and who, by a large majority, will vote for him?
He can't. Lose [00:33:00] them while trying to make sure to hold on to some 20, 000 voters who are threatened in Michigan. And Jews also live in Florida. Jews also live in Ohio. Jews also live in Wisconsin. There is a swing Jewish vote, just like there is a swing Muslim vote in a swing, progressive vote, et cetera, that he can't lose.
So that strikes me as incompetence. And also it's very easy. I think he generally likes Jews and worries about anti Semitism and is generally a decent guy and so I think he believes it. But what an easy political thing to do to just give a sop to anti Semitism and then smack Israel harder, right?
Because you've said something about anti Semitism who are his own people, his own American citizens, right? Why would he not do that? And that tells me that a lot of that speech was, there's things in that speech that he knows aren't true. There was an interview with him in MSNBC yesterday, on Sunday, March 10th.
So this was an interview that President Biden gave that was broadcast over the weekend. So it was a follow up interview. Vice President Harris has been doing a number of interviews, media engagements, since the State of the Union to reinforce the [00:34:00] messages from the State of the Union. So this was an interview he gave with Jonathan Capehart from MSNBC.
So let's just play the exchange. Haviv and I were going crazy about it on WhatsApp. For those who haven't seen it, I'm going to just play it right now. Do you think Hamas actually wants a ceasefire? Well, I think Hamas would like a total ceasefire across the board because then they would see they have a better chance to survive and maybe rebuild.
But that's not what I think the vast majority of people think. You have to look,
after what happened in World War II, And the carpet bombing that took place, what happened was we ended up in a situation where we changed the rules of the game, our constitutional legitimate rules of war, and they should be abided by. He knows that Hamas wants a ceasefire so it can rebuild. He knows that Hamas wants Israel not to go into Rafah so it can retake Gaza.
He knows it. So what [00:35:00] is he doing? If he didn't know it, I would say here's an American president who's got a lot on his plate, wars all around the world. His chief nemesis on this earth is China. He's got to manage an American economy and a world economy. Maybe he just doesn't know. Okay, but he tells us he knows.
So I have to now string together a man who understands that Israel A is going into Rafah with or without American missiles, and he also knows that Hamas recovering could be the result. By the way, there was a huge effort at achieving a ceasefire. The CIA director was in the region. He met with the Mossad director.
He met with the Qataris. To get a ceasefire and hostage exchange. But all of the pressure building on Israel made Hamas think, Hey, time's on our side. Let the pressure build. Let's wait till after Ramadan. Maybe we can spark this Ramadan offensive, this Ramadan unifying, mobilizing of the Muslim world.
Maybe we can set the West Bank on fire. Maybe the Americans will be. angry and have more pressure on the Israel, maybe we [00:36:00] can stop the missile shipments. Maybe delaying is a good thing. So the every American pressure on Israel while they're trying to get Hamas to come to the table, made sure Hamas didn't come to the table.
There is no ceasefire right now because Hamas calculated that Israel have more international pressure on them down the road. In other words, Biden's record on foreign policy. He is an impressive Foreign Policy Operator. I have to think he knows. I have to think, maybe he doesn't, but I have to think that he understands that at that moment, to be pressuring Israel while the ceasefire was still something that they were trying to pull people in to do meant that that's why the Hamas wouldn't come to the ceasefire.
And that means that Palestinians are dying because of this attempt to square a circle. Because of this attempt to both pressure the Israelis, and pressure the Israelis is preventing them from actually being able to pressure Hamas. So the first thing I want to say is we have real evidence that President Biden understands what's at stake, what the fundamental Israeli strategy not just is, but has to be.
There is no other Israeli strategy [00:37:00] and understands the consequences of him talking as if he belongs to the progressive wing of his party, that if he had followed their urgings over the last five months would have had more Palestinians killed because it would have been a more difficult Israeli war effort and therefore a less.
Careful one. The initial battle in Gaza city that created enormous destruction was fundamentally not a function of Biden, not caring. It was a function of the Israeli army for two generations, not really ever fighting a serious ground war. It's an army that has solved every problem with its air force.
And when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And so it's an army that tried to get at the tunnels from the air. And over time, it learned pretty quickly, within two, three weeks, it learned that it doesn't work. It creates huge amounts of damage on top, and the tunnels aren't being destroyed. And the ground maneuver that began in Gaza City was by a very well trained, well armed, but nevertheless inexperienced ground maneuver army.
By the time that army [00:38:00] is in Khan Yunis, two months later, It's a much more experienced army. It knows how to blow up tunnels, how to approach booby trap tunnel entrances, how to walk through that city. And then we suddenly began to see a much lower rate of Palestinian civilian deaths, a much lower rate of physical damage above ground tunnels starting to be destroyed at industrial scales.
20%, 40 percent of the tunnel system is probably already destroyed. We know that and it's being destroyed all the time, and a much lower rate of Israeli soldiers dying. And by the way, much increased rate of Hamas fighters dying. So the Israeli army has learned to fight this war the way I wish it had fought it from day one, but it didn't know how.
Nobody has ever fought a war like this, with those kinds of tunnels, with its enemy dug in under a civilian population to this extent. There have been guerrilla wars before. Not this one, not to this extent. So the Israeli army is learning to do things that other armies are going to be learning from it over time.
And for the foreseeable future, my point in saying all of that is [00:39:00] Rafah is probably going to be a lot less damaging than Gaza city. And the Israelis now are delaying in order to solve the humanitarian problem ahead of time, which again is a lesson of the war. And now Biden is coming down with this enormous pressure.
Now Biden is screaming at the Israelis, something the Israelis already know, and he knows they have to go into Rafah, but it's pretending to be telling them not to, and he knows why and what's at stake. I don't buy it. Biden, I think also knows that the problem with humanitarian aid is distribution. And the reason the problem of humanitarian aid is distribution is Hamas, okay?
There are Israeli ministers, when he says that humanitarian aid is being used as a bargaining chip by the Israelis, or when he says it shouldn't be, which is the same as accusing them of doing it, he's talking about Israeli rhetoric from the far right. He's also, I think, talking about his own distrust of Netanyahu because Netanyahu depends on that far right.
And if the Biden administration is sitting and asking themselves if Netanyahu has the choice of doing the right thing but paying a political cost or doing the [00:40:00] wrong thing and not paying that political cost, he'll do the wrong thing. That's what the Biden administration believes about Netanyahu. That's why we heard Kamala Harris saying you have to distinguish between Netanyahu and the Israeli people.
Humanitarian aid on the ground. We have seen Egyptian truck drivers who volunteered to take aid into Gaza. be attacked, attacked sometimes by a desperate group of people trying to get at the supplies, but sometimes by gunmen and by Hamas. And they come out and they say to other Egyptian drivers, don't go in.
You're literally not safe. Hamas has stolen aid. UNRWA has said no, Hamas gunmen are protecting the aid, but huge amounts of the aid that Hamas are protecting disappears. There's a huge distribution problem. The Israeli army has a problem taking over the aid distribution and it's what we call friction in military parlance, meaning Soldiers will have to be very close to the civilians in order to distribute the aid.
Constant contact and very close contact. And here's the problem. Hamas is among those civilians. Soldiers will die. Soldiers will be kidnapped. If the [00:41:00] soldiers of the IDF distribute, Hamas will make sure of it so that they can't distribute so that Palestinians suffer because Palestinian suffering is Hamas's only strategy for survival.
And so distribution is a real problem. But I also have to tell you, Biden announced the pier in the state of the union. I reacted to that pier, I have to confess, with a little bit of laughter. I thought it was a very silly thing. And I thought it was a silly thing because it looks so spectacular. It's such a spectacle, but not actually The American troops aren't going to be on the ground in Gaza.
In other words, they're going to be protecting the boat side of the pier, but not the beach side of the pier. So Right, and there's going to be a thousand of them. We now know there's going to be a thousand U. S. troops. on a boat. So there's gonna be a thousand U. S. troops on the pier at Gaza, and they're not on the ground, quote unquote, and they're not going to be at risk.
Right. I learned after Biden's announcement of the pier, first of all, that there is such a pier. It's literally on a boat in Virginia. There's actually a pier that they can send over on a boat and build out. It's actually kind of an amazing engineering thing. But we learned another thing. And I think that learning that other thing also produced a [00:42:00] statement.
from defense minister gallant that surprised me and surprised a lot of people watching closely the war effort the israeli war which was that he welcomed the peer deeply profoundly openly i'm paraphrasing i'm trying to remember and translate from hebrew but he said israel will do everything and it's going to be a way that allows the aid to actually be distributed and that made a lot of us scratch our heads because gallant has earned a reputation as someone who's actually running the war effort and not I'm not playing politics.
What does he mean? It turns out that there are two ways Americans do things, okay? In the Middle East. This is the Israeli perspective. You'll know better how Americans do things. Americans sometimes do things halfheartedly, which is to say they kind of want to think of themselves as people who will have done a thing, and so they try to do it, but they don't invest what it takes to actually get it done or seriously understand, and they end up tripping over themselves.
That happens in the Middle East on a weekly basis. And then Americans do things with the absolute certainty that it has to be done and the commitment to get it done no matter what. And then they rebuild shattered worlds and make half of humanity live in democracy and change the [00:43:00] world for the better.
If the Americans are serious about building this port, If the Americans are willing to actually create a serious aid corridor through Cyprus over water, the American Navy still mostly runs the world's sea lanes. If America is using that advantage, you can't airdrop enough food to feed people. One of the things that Gallant, I think, is on the verge of committing to, and it's why he sees the pier as a real solution, it means we don't have to worry about the Egyptians.
It means we don't have to worry about Hamas. It means we can go into Gaza and we don't have to worry about Cutting off the Egypt Rafah smuggling tunnels, which is feeding people. It's also a Hamas black market. That's funding Hamas and allowing Hamas fighters to escape and come back. And it's a huge problem tactically on the ground as it's part of the war.
But it's also in terms of aid, allowing Hamas to control a lot of the aid spigot, which was maintaining Hamas's ability to actually fight and actually run its insurgency, bringing things through America. Over a boat, if the Israelis take over the pier, the beach has no buildings, has no civilians. [00:44:00] If someone attacks the aid center on the beach, you can just airstrike them from the air and you're not hitting any civilians.
So many of the immediate problems of aid distribution are solved. Then you have to actually distribute within Gaza, and the problem with distributing within Gaza, excuse me, I'm an Israeli, I blame the Israelis, okay? Because I think the Israelis have agency, I don't think it's their mistake, I think they're slow to understand that they have to now build out.
An alternative, an alternative government, an alternative administration within Gaza that can distribute aid, that can fend off Hamas disruption and Hamas terrorism against Gazans and try to make the next administration after Hamas fail. We need to now, already, it's already the day after, we've talked about this, we need to now start building out a governance infrastructure that can distribute the aid that we need.
Hand in hand with the Israeli army, the Israeli army is going to have to go into some of these dangerous places, have that friction with the civilian population that Hamas is going to abuse to try and kill and kidnap Israeli soldiers. The Americans will solve the tunnel problem for us, of aid coming in through [00:45:00] tunnels.
It'll solve the Egyptian problem for us, with this ocean pier. And it will allow the Israelis to take it forward from there. This is a problem Israel has to solve anyway in Gaza and it has to start getting on it now. And so we actually saw after president Biden talked about a peer, the Israeli defense minister, the man most responsible for the war effort on the ground in concrete ways, welcome it with open arms.
Now, is that a Biden that's turning on us? Or is that a Biden that's frustrated with the domestic politics of Israel that are holding Netanyahu to a far right government that's refusing to build out a day after situation and saying to the Israelis, guys, there's a limit to how much I can do for you. Get your act in order, actually have solutions to Gaza, wait out Ramadan.
You know, my political schedule, I might have to throw you under the bus. Sorry, you got more from me than you had a right to deserve. That's what's happening now. Rafah is still going to happen. A distribution is something that he's making easier for Israel to do in Gaza. This isn't even a pro Biden argument.
It's just an anti stupid [00:46:00] American policy argument, because if the American policy really is turning on the Israelis and don't go into Rafah, then the American policy is going to detach from the Israelis and the Israelis are going to go into Rafah anyway. So, first of all, you mentioned that Biden is an experienced foreign policy operator.
It is true that he has a lot of experience. He's been doing it for a long time. I'm skeptical that his track record is impeccable. He was former secretary, defense secretary Gates, who was defense secretary under Obama and George W. Bush and served in the Reagan and Bush administrations. And the CIA has said that no single political figure has been on the wrong side of more foreign policy issues than Joe Biden.
But be that as it may. On Israel, he was on the right side. So that's what matters for purposes of this conversation. The Israelis I speak to who are involved with war cabinet deliberations have left me with the impression that they're highly skeptical that this American port project will work, but no harm, no foul.
Like, it's fine. They view it more as a gimmick that the administration needs to demonstrate that it is doing [00:47:00] something about the humanitarian issue, rather than something that they actually imagine it's going to take, at best, two months to build. This thing isn't being built in two days. It's got, at best, two months.
As I said, it's going to take a thousand U. S. military personnel to build it. And then you and I can sit here and come up with a hundred reasons why. It's going to face hiccups. So the idea that they actually is this thing is seen through the way you're describing it. I've heard a lot of skepticism, but whatever, it's not harming Israel.
I also have skepticism. There are problems it solves, not the big problem, not the main problem, but it does solve so many problems on the way that it makes it easier to get to the main problems to distribution deep inside Gaza. You referenced Kamala Harris's interview the other day, and I want to wrap on that because I think it's important for folks listening to understand that there's this tendency in the U.
S. to personalize Israeli politics. This is Netanyahu's war. This is about what Netanyahu's political strategy is. And I think it misunderstands and misreads. The solidarity in Israel on what to [00:48:00] do Rafa, about Rafa during Ramadan, about Gaza, about the war aims, broad consensus. Even while many Israelis are very divided, if not down on Netanyahu, on the actual war strategy, there's, there's a consensus.
So let me, let me play the Harris interview. Let me just roll that tape. Hold on. Are the Israelis at risk of losing us aid? If this continues, the president said last night, there's a come to Jesus meeting coming. On this topic, I think it's really important, um, to distinguish, um, And how we are, and there are a lot of feelings I understand about all of this rightly based on the horror of what has happened.
October 7th, 1, 200 people slaughtered, um, many young people who were just attending a concert. Women were horribly, horribly abused and raped, rape being a tool of war. And then you look at what's been happening in terms of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which again, the horrific images that we [00:49:00] are seeing come out of there.
And. I think it's important for us to distinguish, or at least to not conflate, the Israeli government with the Israeli people. The Israeli people are entitled to security, as are the Palestinians. Okay. So, I want to focus on this point. It's important to distinguish between the Israeli government and the Israeli people.
If you look at current polling right now, Aviv, and you look at where the current coalition government in Israel, the right wing coalition government, is polling, And then you see that Benny Gantz is part of this government. Now, maybe short lived, but he's part of this government today. And he's defending their war strategy today.
And he got excoriated in meetings last week in Washington and in London by governments in both capitals for him making the case for Israel's war strategy. And him saying that Israel has to go into Rafah. The idea that Vice President Harris is saying there's a distinction between the government and the people as though she's talking like the way we talk about Iran, you know, it's important to distinguish between the mullahs in [00:50:00] Tehran and the Iranian people.
I just think there's this tendency to personalize Israeli politics in a way that, is completely disconnected with the sense in Israel, among the Israeli people, and how even though there is this deep frustration with Bibi personally, as a politician, that there is no distinction between the Israeli people right now, more or less, and the consensus within the war cabinet on the war aims.
I think like everything else in politics, it boils down to trust. Everything you just said is absolutely correct. On the fundamental war aim, Israelis, ordinary Israelis, from pretty deep in the left to very deep in the right, are fighting shoulder to shoulder in Gaza and are absolutely united and implacable.
And again, there's a difference between you and I on the question of Biden, and it's a difference, I think, rooted in you being an American and me being an Israeli. I try to put myself in Biden's shoes, and I say to myself, Biden [00:51:00] looks at the war in Gaza Biden looks at the Israeli political situation and he tries to game out, I'm imagining, this is me imagining, he tries to game out, what are the Israelis actually thinking?
If the Israelis carry out this war, and it's a terrible war, and it looks terrible, but it also actually is terrible, war is terrible, but if this war is being prosecuted by fundamentally decent political leaders who are going to produce out of it a better outcome for their people, they have to make their people safe.
Everybody had repeated that, including President Biden, including Vice President Harris. They're fundamentally decent Israeli leadership that is going to try to produce a better outcome for Israelis and for Palestinians the day after. Then backing this war and putting the president's political capital behind it and holding that window open for the Israelis internationally for as long as it takes becomes the right thing to do.
And if you don't trust the Israeli leadership, that after everything, after all the [00:52:00] sacrifices of the Israeli people, of the Israeli soldiers, after the terrible pain experienced by the Palestinians and after the political costs paid by the Biden administration, that the Israelis will then do the right thing, then everything retroactively will have become a mistake.
There is a need for the American administration that wants to back the Israelis to trust the Israelis. I'm placing a lot of onus on the Israelis. I feel, as an Israeli, tremendous agency over my future. I know we can shape our future. And if we are behaving in ways for domestic politics that hurt the war aim, then that's on us.
Do I wish Biden grasped that better? I had a conversation with a friend who actually leads a very serious American organization and think tank and talked to me in WhatsApp. I didn't get permission to use his name, so I'm not going to use it. But he said that this is actually hurting Biden, all of this.
Because he loses more, uh, voters by appearing to kowtow on this stuff [00:53:00] to the progressives than he gains on the progressive side. And I think you've said that in the past and things like that. And so this is actually the good strategy for Biden is the Fetterman strategy. He said, Senator Fetterman, who just clarifies this is about Hamas and Hamas is terrible and Hamas is evil, but unlike Senator Fetterman, Biden is going to be left holding the hat or the can or whatever the phrase is.
Biden is going to be left with the legacy. And the problem for Biden being left with the legacy of Gaza is that the Israelis will decide what that legacy is. Obviously Hamas will decide. Hamas set the cost of its removal from Gaza. This is a greater atrocity than what it committed against us on October 7th, right?
This is, I say that having lost people on October 7th, the atrocity committed by building Gaza for 17 years into a battlefield and then forcing the war into that battlefield and making it look like this war. This was Hamas's fundamental strategy. It set the cost of its own removal and then forced its own removal and et cetera.
But basically the day after story is an Israeli decision. And if Biden doesn't trust the [00:54:00] Israelis. And Netanyahu has given him so many reasons not to trust him. And the rhetoric of this coalition has given us so many reasons not to trust him. And the fact is there is no Israeli political analyst who disagrees fundamentally with Biden's basic analysis that Netanyahu will not jettison the far right parties that in Biden's view are going to produce.
an evil outcome to the war, if they had a chance. They don't run the place. But Netanyahu won't let them go and has no coalition without them. And the question becomes, will Netanyahu sacrifice his own political situation for a better outcome for Gaza? That's also a better outcome for Israel. Or will he actually do what's good for him politically, even at the cost of Israel's own national interest and Palestinian civilian lives?
If you're sitting in the White House and you have to calculate how much would Netanyahu sacrifice of his own political interest for a better war outcome, you might not trust him enough. You might look at his record and a lot of Israelis don't trust him enough. We have polls in Israel that are basically [00:55:00] 70 30 distrust Netanyahu.
But you have said, Haviv, the most trusted politician in Israel today is Netanyahu. Galant, who's Netanyahu's defense minister. Benny Gantz is polling high. He's very popular in Israel right now. Gadi Eisenkot is very well thought of. These are members of Netanyahu's war council who agree with the core policy.
So I take your point. They are frustrated with Netanyahu as every, almost every U. S. president has been frustrated with Netanyahu. But we know from the clip that we just played two clips ago, that Biden agrees with that Israeli assessment of what needs to happen in the war. Yeah. This is about trust and politics, and it's about politics.
Biden is correcting for this is what I really think. And now my advisors are worried about November. So I've got to like correct. That's what you saw in that MSNBC clip. Yes, but also Biden's working backwards from the fear that Netanyahu will sour all of this. We'll turn all of it into something that ends badly.
And so the Israelis have a job right now. And this, I think, might have been what Gallant was saying [00:56:00] when he embraced in a short little statement, but a very positive one, embrace the idea of the peer. I think what he's trying to do is the anti Netanyahu move. Netanyahu wants a fight with Biden to shore up his position so he doesn't lose the next election because he hasn't won an election poll in 14 months.
And Gallant is saying, right now we hug the Americans and convince the Americans we're decent people who are looking for a decent outcome to a painful war that Hamas brought on us all. And so there is a duty to the Israelis. I'm Israeli. I don't believe that I depend on the rest of the world. I can do things that shape my environment and produce better outcomes.
This I think is on the Israeli government to show that and to say that. And there's a political cost to it domestically, but we pay that now. And that I think is what Biden is asking. Now, if Israel does that and Biden still throws us under the bus. We have to go into Ravach anyway. We have to fight the administration politically on this.
We also have to still be grateful for everything he's done so far. That's where I land. I think, Haviv, if I had to summarize where we're at, you believe that There's minimal [00:57:00] cost so far for Biden doing his performative throwing Israel under the bus now, and you're willing to give him that slack as an Israeli, as an American Jew.
I'm telling you, I think there's real cost to the way he's expressing himself now. I think there was missed opportunity and not talking about how American Jews feel today, not doing it in the State of the Union and not doing it since, but. President Biden, if you're listening to the Call Me Back podcast, there's still time.
You can listen to Aviv and me and take our counsel to speak to the chaos and the fear of life for American Jews today, post October 7th. My sense is this is the beginning of a process where Biden is throwing Israel under the bus in very meaningful and concrete ways. And I hope I'm wrong. And I do believe, Haviv, that the Biden we heard on October 7th and 8th, and the statements he made in those early weeks, and even that sort of error he made in that MSNBC interview where he didn't [00:58:00] mean to say what he really thought, but he said the quiet part out loud, is probably what he really thinks, and he's being told he can't say that, and I hope that overrides what he's being advised to do for political reasons, but I wouldn't be being true to myself if I didn't say that my sense is that it's, that I'm worried, but we'll see.
We'll see. We'll see and we'll know soon enough, fortunately, because we speak weekly, we will be able to monitor and hold him accountable and hold each other accountable in real time. If you're right, and what we said was quite likely to happen, throwing us under the bus, et cetera, five months ago is what's happening right now.
It's still going to be okay. We're going to do what has to be done in Gaza. Biden is going to run his campaign the way he wants to run his campaign. Our leadership, I have faith, and if they betray that faith, they betray me, which is Much worse than they betray, I don't know what, President Biden, that they will have a good outcome from this.
There's more chance of a better future for both our peoples when Hamas is off the chessboard than there is as long as Hamas survives as a political force in [00:59:00] Palestinian politics. And it's going to be okay, even if we have this fallout. And by the way, the very fact that they're pinning it on Netanyahu so publicly means that when Netanyahu cycles out in the natural order of Israeli politics, which every poll in 14 months says he's going to, We can have this renewed relationship based on a better future for everybody.
My prediction is the critics of Israel will not relent in a post Bibi Israel. But let's visit that another time. You and I both have to go to meetings. So we will leave it there. Okay.
That's our show for today. To keep up with Haviv Retagor, you can find him on X, at Haviv Retagor, or at The Times of Israel. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Until next time, I'm your host. Dan [01:00:00] Senor.