Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
At 8:00 pm tonight in Israel, the siren will sound across Israel to mark the commencement of Israel’s Memorial Day, Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism). This is the day that Israelis, as a nation, honor the fallen from Israel’s military and those casualties from its wars and victims of terror attacks.
Since last Memorial Day, 1594 Israelis have been killed. Out of those, 834 are civilians murdered in terror attacks, 822 of them since 10/07 (this is out of a total 4,070 who have been killed from terrorism since the Jewish State was founded). We will have more to say about Israel’s Memorial Day and its Independence Day in the days ahead.
As it relates to the war Israel is fighting today, this morning I spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about a number of issues, including the coming operation in Rafah, the necessity for continued IDF operations in other parts of Gaza that the IDF had previously cleared, what makes this war so different, whether the Prime Minister is thinking seriously about the ‘day after‘ in Gaza and the contours of a Day After Plan for Gaza, how the Prime Minister is approaching the hostage negotiations, and whether exile for Hamas’s leaders (including Sinwar) could be part of a final deal to get the hostages home.
In this episode, passage read from “The Genius of Israel”:
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
DS: There have been reports that you have considered letting Hamas's leadership go into exile in the context of a full on hostage deal, assuming, obviously, that includes removing the threat of Hamas from Gaza. What should we make of those reports?
BN: Dan, this war could be over tomorrow. If Hamas lays down its arms, and surrenders, uh, returns the hostages, the war is over. It's up to them. The idea of exile is there. We have, we can always discuss it, but I think the most important thing is surrender if they lay down their arms, if they surrender, the war is over.
DS: It's 7:00 AM on Sunday, May 12th in New York City. It's 2:00 PM in Israel. At 8:00 PM tonight in Israel, a siren will sound across Israel to mark the commencement of Israel's Memorial Day, Yom HaZikaron in Hebrew, which is Memorial Day for the fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. This is the day that Israelis, as a nation, honor the fallen from Israel's military and those casualties from its wars and victims of terror attacks. Before we move on to today's episode, I would like to read, briefly, our description of Yom HaZikaron from our most recent book, The Genius of Israel. Because the way Israelis honor their fallen is really like nowhere else in the world. And this passage refers to the siren that will sound tomorrow on May 13th in the morning. “At exactly 11:00 AM, Israel's National Air Raid Siren system would fill the air with a loud plaintiff note. A blaring, high pitched sound that could be heard everywhere, as if it were coming out of the air itself. For two minutes, the world would stop, as in a sci fi movie. Cars would stop on the highways, their drivers standing like sentries next to them. In restaurants and hotels, schools and offices, stadiums and homes, everyone would stand in silence. Diners, waiters, and kitchen staff would all stand. Students and teachers in school would stand. Foreign news outlets would post videos of street scenes frozen in time, while the jarring, inescapable wail filled the air. Two minutes was a long time to be still and silent. It wasn't just that Israelis were doing the same thing. They were tuned to the same channel. The channel was at once collective and personal. As Israelis focused on someone they lost, a brother, a son, a girlfriend, a parent, a childhood friend, a teacher, a student, a nearby shopkeeper, a soldier from their unit.” Again, that was just a description that Saul and I wrote in The Genius of Israel, but this specific Memorial Day will be like none other for Israel. Since Israel's last Memorial Day, 1,594 Israelis have been killed. Out of those, 834 were civilians murdered in terror attacks. 822 of that 834 number are Israelis killed on, and since, October 7th, including 531 men, 291 women and 40 children. This number of 834 is out of a total of 4,070 who have been killed from terrorism since the Jewish state was founded. We will have more to say about Israel's Memorial Day and its Independence Day and this moment in general in Israel's history and future in the days ahead. But as it relates to the war Israel is fighting today, well, that is the focus of today's episode. And this morning I spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about a number of issues, including the coming operation in Rafah, the necessity for continued operations in other parts of Gaza that the IDF had previously cleared, what makes this war so different, namely the reality of hostages, and the existence of a vast tunnel system, whether the Prime Minister is thinking seriously about the day after in Gaza, and what the contours of a Day After plan for Gaza could look like, and how the Prime Minister is approaching the hostage negotiations. We even discuss whether exile for Hamas's leaders, including Yahya Sinwar, could be part of a final deal to get the hostages home. Our conversation with Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. This is Call Me Back.
And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who joins us from the Prime Minister's office in Jerusalem. Good morning. Good afternoon, Prime Minister.
BN: Well, it's good to be with you. This is the eve of our Remembrance Day for our fallen soldiers and the eve of our Independence Day. One precedes the other. We wouldn't be independent without our fallen heroes who guaranteed our independence, our survival and our future.
DS: Saul Singer and I wrote about that specifically in our, in our most recent book, where we talk about, unlike in the United States… in the United States, there's basically a separation of a couple of months between America's Memorial Day and America's Independence Day. In Israel, the two days are back to back. So you are about to memorialize, remember, and honor the fallen with your Memorial Day, and then you go right into Independence Day, back to back. For those who've never visited Israel, it's, it's quite a, it's quite a unique experience to go through that transition. Maybe just spend a moment on why that's so important, the two days being back to back.
BN: Well, if you look at the history of the Jewish people, we, uh, uh, the Jewish people date back three, 3,500 years. Uh, that's three and a half thousand years that we are attached to our homeland. But after, uh, about 2,000 years, uh, that covers the biblical period and the period that followed that. We lost our independence, and we lost our state, and we were scattered to the far corners of the, the world. Yet we never, uh, forgot Jerusalem. Uh, we always, we never forgot the land of Israel. We wanted to come back and restore independence, but we couldn't. And in this long diaspora, we face the horrors that no other people face. We were, we were massacred, butchered, exiled, century after century, leading to the greatest massacre of all, the Holocaust in the 20th century. The establishment of the State of Israel after the Holocaust changed everything. It really marked a change in the destiny of the Jewish people because we were able to restore our capacity to defend ourselves. This is the first and most important meaning of the State of Israel. The Jews are no longer defenseless. They're no longer at the whim of the waves of anti-Semitism that sweep the world as they do now. We can fight back. The establishment of the State of Israel involved the sacrifice of our brave soldiers in 1948. That's 76 years ago. We were few against many, a handful of people, 600,000, facing five Arab armies, and we won with a secret weapon. That secret weapon was the spirit of our people, the courage of our fighters, but also, the knowledge that this is our last chance. You can come back from the dead so many times, but this is it. So we established our independence and built ourselves into a much more powerful nation, but that independence, that survival, was purchased at the cost of our, our fallen heroes. We never forget that. We understand that they are the, this is what separates that part of Jewish history to the current part, where they, we’re still being attacked. We're still being attacked by those who want to openly declare their desire to destroy us. Uh, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, but there's a difference. Now we can defend ourselves. And this is the meaning of this Remembrance Day. And this is the meaning of our Independence Day that follows it. It was purchased with their sacrifice, with their blood.
DS: There's a lot of territory I want to cover here that really begins with October 7th, but I want to talk about you as the son of a historian, you as someone who has studied extensively, leaders throughout history, decision makers, and, and just sort of ask you with that perspective what you were thinking on October 7th.
BN: For me, from my historical perspective, I see this. I think that the intention of these murders was the same as the Nazis. They, and they openly say it, they would destroy any one of us. In fact, the Hamas charter says, ‘Seek out the Jews, if they hide behind a bush, kill them, kill every Jew in the world.’ That's their official charter, their constitution. That's what they would have done if they could do it. The difference wasn't in intent. The difference was in capability. And after this first horrible setback, we, which was held back by the courage, not only of soldiers, policemen, policewomen, civilians. Immediately we got into fighting them back, and we're in the process of destroying Hamas. So we don't face that threat from Gaza anymore, but this is part of the larger Iranian access that threatens our survival, and Iran attacked us, as you know, a few weeks ago - and to me, the historical implication of that was that we have to be able to defend ourselves, by ourselves. We appreciate deeply the support given to us by our great ally, the United States. Uh, we have common cause with it, although we can have our differences, we do. And yet, the most important thing is that we must not ever lose the capacity and the will to defend ourselves, by ourselves. We don't ask for American soldiers. We don't ask for others to do that. We have to be able to do that all the time. This is ultimately the guarantor of our survival and our security. I will say this about the United States, which I think is very important. I think the fate of the world depends on where America goes. I mean, in the first half of the 20th century, America was not the world leader, and humanity and the Jewish people paid a horrible price for that in World War II and the Holocaust. After the second half of the 20th century, we saw America becoming the world leader, we saw the rise of Israel, we saw the alliance between us, and that changed everything. In the first half of the 21st century, there is a challenge to American supremacy, a challenge from without, and a challenge from within. I think for the sake of humanity, for the sake of our common future, our common values, our civilization, it is very important that America retains its dominant position as the supreme global power. Uh, and I think that is, uh, something that is being tested alongside this attack on Israel. It's being tested and it's not, I don't think it's accidental at all that the Hamas and Iran, they chant ‘death to Israel, but death to America’, because they see the attack on Israel as the first step on the attack on America. These crowds, mobs in American universities. They burn the Israeli flag and they burn the American flag. They chant: ‘Death to Israel, death to America.’ So we're fighting a common battle, a battle between civilization and barbarism. And that's why we have to win. And that's why we will win.
DS: I want to talk specifically about Hamas. There are many despicable things one could say about Yahya Sinwar, but he's not stupid. And one could think that he did not realistically believe that he could defeat Israel militarily. So, in realpolitik terms, how do you interpret Sinwar's practical objectives? Like, what was he practically trying to achieve when he architected this massacre?
BN: I understand the way you think, but that's not necessarily the way he thinks. Uh, he's a true believer in the worst sense of the word. He leads a cult of death, and the impulses of death and murder are so deeply ingrained, that in many ways he jumped the gun, because he's part of the Iranian axis. This was premature. Iran would like to have us enveloped from every side. They'd like to control all our borders, have these, uh, terrorist, uh, invasion armies ready to pounce in a single moment on multiple fronts. And in many ways, Sinwar jumped the gun. That's what happened. Uh, we are now facing seven fronts. You know, we have the Hamas, that's the most, the immediate and most obvious front and we will win there. But there is also Hezbollah in the north. Uh, there is Houthis in the south, in Yemen. We have militias, Shiite militias, radical Shiite militias in Iraq and in Syria. And there is Iran itself. So, I think he was just, uh, you know, he just did, uh, something that wasn't in cahoots with a larger plan, uh, that is in terms of timing. That's what I think, uh, did it. And the reason he did it is because the impulse to murder Jews is so deep that he just couldn't control himself.
DS: Hamas has two strategic assets that have been stubbornly effective. I hate to use the word ‘effective’, but they have been effective in shaping this war. And those two are tunnels and hostages. I don't think any modern military, western military, has had to fight a war with these two obstacles. How can Israel win this war as long as Hamas has hostages and this tunnel system - where their leaders and their, and their military command can hide underground?
BN: Well, we have several goals. One is to destroy Hamas. We can, and we will. The second is to release our hostages. And we're doing them in parallel. We've already, uh, achieved the secu- the, uh, release of half of our hostages. And we're committed to get the other half as well. That's by applying military pressure, and he's sort of, when he senses that the pressure is too heavy, he releases hostages. Uh, how do we achieve that? We achieve that by, in fact, as you say, facing, uh, overcoming a challenge that no modern army has faced. Uh, John Spencer is, uh, in charge of, uh, uh, urban warfare in West Point, and he said, at West Point, he said, “I can't find any parallel to that. In Mosul, uh, there were 3,000 to 5,000 terrorists. We're facing 35,000 Hamas terrorists. Uh, we've, we've killed already about 14,000, wounded many others. And we're progressing towards that goal. In Fallujah, you didn't see it.” And in many ways, the only parallel that, uh, John Spencer could give, uh, he says there is somewhat of a parallel, which is the battle for Manila in World War II. Why is that parallel? First of all, understand that what Israel, Israel has done is, uh, give, is take the effort to minimize civilian casualties as no other army has done. We use, uh, leaflets, we use thousands, millions of, uh, of text messages, phone calls. We actually call the people, give up the benefit of surprise, tell them, “get out of the way. So, get out of the war zone so that we can, uh, accomplish our military objectives while you're in a safe place.” Hamas is doing everything it can to keep them in the war zone. We do everything to get them out of harm's way. They do everything to keep them in harm's way, including using gunfire. They actually shoot their own civilians trying to keep them there. Because for them - you know, for us, every civilian casualty is a tragedy. For them, every civilian casualty is a strategy, so they don't give a hoot about their civilians, and they're responsible for those deaths. But nevertheless, even though we're faced with such a cynical enemy, we've been able to keep the ratio of civilians to combatants killed… uh, again, everyone is a tragedy, but it's a ratio of about one to one now. 14,000 have been, uh, have been killed, uh, uh, combatants, and, uh, probably around 16,000 civilians have been killed. Uh, that's not the ratio that you had in Fallujah, or in Mosul, where the, uh, the difficulties you faced were far smaller. And yet in the Battle of Manila, in 1944, in World War II, you have something approaching a parallel. Okay, what happened there? There you had 17,000, Manila was a city of 1.1 million, Gaza and its environs is 2.2 million. Manila had 17,000 Japanese soldiers. Hamas has 35,000 terrorists. Uh, and they also had, the Japanese also had, two other things. They had 1,000 hostages. That is, uh, American, uh, POWs. And they also had a tunnel system. And the tunnel system was the sewage system of Manila, which they, uh, uh, extended with their own military tunnels. So it's a pretty safe, pretty close approximation, okay, of what we have now. The result was that America won the war. They defeated the 17,000. They killed quite a few of the 17,000. Some of them committed harakiri and others gave themselves up. So you had about, I think, I can't say 17,000 deaths, but assume that. I think it's fewer. Okay - how many civilian deaths were incurred in the battle for Manila? You want to guess, Dan?
DS: It was like a hundred thousand. It was tens of thousands.
BN: No, you're right. A hundred thousand. A hundred thousand civilian deaths. That's - we're at one to one and here we're talking about six to one or even seven to one. Okay. There's an enormous difference because Israel is, is doing what no other army has done in modern times. It is going to extraordinary lengths to evacuate, to enable the people to leave the combat areas, to apply humanitarian aid, to give them, uh, the, the food, the medicine, the water that they need, the shelter that they need to, uh, have. Because we're not going after the Palestinian population. We're going after the Hamas terrorists that embed themselves amid these civilians and use them as human shields. And so far, Israel has achieved this gold standard of uh, uh, of minimizing civilian casualties, but it is held to a double standard, a triple standard, a quadruple standard, that no other army is expected to do. And basically what people are trying to do is rob us, the Jewish state, that has been the victim of these genocidal terrorists, the ability to defend ourselves. You cannot say that you support the right of Israel to defend itself and then condemn it when it seeks to exercise that right.
DS: I think it's admirable that, what Israel has done, in trying to minimize civilian casualties. It's been quite frustrating to me that not enough attention is paid to that. But in terms of Israel winning the war, it has to have some ways, in addition to minimizing civilian casualties, that's not part of winning the war, that's just the way Israel chooses to fight its wars. But in terms of those tunnels, how do you win a war against an enemy that can hide in this massive labyrinth of tunnels that exists in Gaza?
BN: We go into the tunnels. Look, there are about 500 kilometers of tunnels, so you don't have to blast every tunnel corridor, but you have to go after the safe, uh, safe rooms that they have there, the command and control centers that they have there, communication centers that are there, missile production sites that are there, a whole lot of them. Money that is stored there, and that's what we're doing systematically. So we don't have to blow up all 500 kilometers, but we blow up these crucial centers underground, and that's why the war is taking a little longer than we would like. It's something, indeed, that no other army, as I know it, has done, but we're doing it.
DS: Okay, so let's, let's talk about Rafah, which is obviously in the news. A lot of attention, both in Israel and around the world, zeroed in on Rafah. The IDF has been extremely successful in fighting in all over Gaza, but has also seen Hamas return to areas previously cleared by the IDF, like Jabalia and Gaza City. So coming back to these, these dastardly tunnels. How can the IDF defeat Hamas and Rafah as long as these fighters - I take your point that you go, the IDF goes into the tunnels where, where it can, and where it has to, but these fighters can also move underground all over the place. And it seems to me, based on public reports, that's how these Hamas fighters have been able to reappear in areas that the IDF had previously cleared.
BN: This is a stage conflict. Uh, it takes stages. The first stage is to destroy the terrorist army. Hamas is not merely a terror organization. It has a terrorist army of 24 battalions. We've destroyed now about 19, 19 of the 24, 4 are in Rafah, and we'll destroy them too. But the important thing to understand is that once you destroy these battalions, you haven't eliminated all the Hamas fighters. You know, they're still there, but they have a harder time having, uh, uh, an organized structure to get a thousand, uh, an attack by a thousand, uh, uh, Hamas terrorists against us. You can get, uh, a few, uh, a small number. You can get six here, twelve there. But it's very hard to organize these battalions. Now sometimes they congregate, as they did in the Shifa Hospital. They all congregated because they don't have a place, uh, the previous organization that they had is gone. So they congregate in the Shifa Hospital, which is not a hospital really. It's become a Hamas command center, with patients. We, uh, gave warning to the, uh, uh, hospital manager. Not a single patient, in this second round on the Shifa Hospital compound, not a single patient was killed. In fact, no civilians were killed, but we killed several hundred terrorists, captured another 500, and we did this with a far smaller force. And with much less intense fighting because we've already destroyed those, uh, those battalions. So stage one, destroy the battalions. Stage two, mop up. Stage three, be able to go in and deal with any terrorist, uh, resurgence. And that's going to be a while. It doesn't, that really follows the end of the war. You're not going to finish it without having the ability after the war is finished to prevent the resurgence of terrorism. If you look at what you need to do after this war is won, you'll have to have a sustained demilitarization by Israel. I don't see any other power that is willing to do it, but I'll be happy to see it.
DS: But wait a minute, Prime Minister, on that first point, is that for the foreseeable future? Is that years from now, there will be military presence in Gaza?
BN: Not necessarily.
DS: - IDF military presence?
BN: It could be presence, but it could be actions inside Gaza. That is, you have to be able to -
DS: Meaning, going in and out.
BN: As you need, or if you have to be inside, you'll be inside. You do what you have to do to prevent the remilitarization of Gaza. In fact, we've discovered that any place that we left, whether it's Lebanon, we got Hezbollah. That is, Iran walked in with Hezbollah. We left Gaza. Iran walked in with Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Uh, we pulled out of a few cities in Judea, Samaria in the, uh, about 20 years ago. And we immediately -
DS: So, after Operation Defensive Shield -
BN: And then immediately the radicals took over. So we had to go in back there, and we go in periodically and we -
DS: But, but, but let's draw a line here. That's distinctive from this idea of, there's no other solution than Israel reoccupying Gaza.
BN: You don't have to reoccupy it. You just have to demilitarize it actively. And you know, the distances are so small. So you go in, you go out. Or you remain where you have to be.
DS: About seven miles, seven miles wide and about 20, 28, 27 miles length. Just for our American listeners.
BN: So we do, we do what we have to do, but demilitarization, sustained demilitarization, is number one, right? After, after the war ends, you're still going to have to, uh, prevent any terrorist resurgence from emerging. The second thing is you need civilian administration, which we hope to do with local Gazans who are not part of Hamas and are not committed to our destruction, possibly, and I would hope with the aid of Arab states and other states internationally. I think that's important. And the third thing would be, uh, reconstruction that does not allow the rebuilding of these terrorist infrastructures, which, uh, including underground tunnels, which Hamas has done. That's the realistic plan right now. People say, “what are you going to do on the day after? Where's your plan?” Well, the first thing is, make sure it's the day after. I mean, people ask, “what are you going to do the day after the Nazis” in, uh, in, uh, in Germany. Well, first get rid of the Nazis. Then you organize what you have to do. By the way, you stay there for a pretty long time, uh, with an active military presence. But, uh, I think that's the first thing. Uh, and if you, you can't get, we tried to get Gazans, local Gazans to come in and help us distribute the food, which Hamas was looting. Israel was putting in hundreds of trucks a day and Hamas and others were looting it. And we said, well, maybe we can get some Gazans to distribute it, okay? Well, they were shot in the back of the head. Until no one's going to come in, until they know that you either destroyed Hamas, or you're about to destroy Hamas. And that's a certainty. Because, because if they think Hamas is going to emerge from the rubble, uh, and retake Gaza, uh, they're not going to commit suicide.
DS: You, you mentioned the Arab states. In the last 24 hours, the leadership of the UAE, one of the Emirati officials issued a statement saying, they are not planning to participate in any post Gaza security or civilian administration with Israel. So A, what's that about, and how do you respond to that?
BN: Well, I, I leave it to, uh, to them to make their, their own, uh, decisions. But I think that as soon as we eliminate Hamas, new opportunities will rise. And by the way, I think they will rise also to expand the Abraham Accords that we, that we forged, to include other countries as well. And you know very well that, uh, this has been my goal for a long time, and it will continue to be. But the post Hamas scene will happen when Hamas is gone. That is not when, uh, uh, when every last Hamas fighter disappears, but when we vanquish them, destroy their organized battalions, and mop up the remaining places, and that's going to take some time, but we can do it. We're actually quite close to achieving that. We're very close to achieving the destruction of the remaining Hamas battalions. That's a precondition for victory. You still have to do other things. You still have to have the post war arrangement with those countries who want to do it, uh, uh, and are prepared to do it. Uh, I'm committed to that. But first victory, there is no substitute for victory. And people try to walk around it. You can't. You have to be prepared. You have to complete the job. Victory is a necessity, and it's possible.
DS: So in terms of completing the job, there's what to do with Hamas's leadership. And obviously that has to be weighed against a various, a range of, of considerations, not the least of which is, future hostage deals. There have been reports that you have considered letting Hamas's leadership go into exile in the context of a full on hostage deal, assuming obviously that includes eliminating the fighting force of Hamas, and removing the threat of Hamas from Gaza. What should we make of those reports?
BN: Dan, this war could be over tomorrow. If Hamas lays down its arms and surrenders. Uh, returns the hostages, the war is over. That's our goal. I mean, these are our goals that I described. It's up to them. The idea of exile is there. We have, we can always discuss it. But I think the most important thing is surrender. You surrender, you give up those hostages that are, that these monsters have taken. You know, among them, young girls that they're raping, continuously. I mean, this is, uh, this is abominable, but this can be over tomorrow. If they lay down their arms, if they surrender, the war is over.
DS: Previous hostage deal. I want to spend a moment on this. One of the criticisms I hear from some listeners to this podcast, from some people in circles, my circles here in the US, and some people, a number of folks in Israel, that you have not prioritized hostage negotiations in terms of the near term objectives of what you are working on. And I just want to give you an opportunity to respond to that. You, you, we, we, we hear it. I hear it anecdotally. It shows up in some polling that there's this perception.
BN: That's patent nonsense. You know, I've, uh, uh, I lost a brother, uh, my older brother, uh, Jonathan, Yoni, uh, who led the, uh, rescue team in Entebbe, to release 103, uh, Israeli and Jewish hostages, uh, in, uh, in 1976. I myself was wounded in the, uh, rescue of, uh, uh, passengers in a hijacked Sabena airplane that, uh, was brought to Tel Aviv by, uh, Palestinian terrorists. I spent a good part of my adult life fighting terrorists and fighting hostage taking, and I'm committed to it. I've been able to, with the help of the IDF, thrust, militarily, to release now over half of the hostages. Half of the hostages, and we brought them back, and I'm committed to return the rest. When people are saying that, they're saying that I refuse to accept the Hamas extremist positions. I've offered after the first half, the release of the first half, I said, “okay, we're willing to be quite flexible to get a deal,” which, uh, even the, the, the Americans said was extremely generous and that Hamas refuses to make a deal. Why, what is it, why does Hamas refuse to make a deal? Well, because it says, “Oh, we'll release these hostages.” It's a question mark whether they will, “but we'll release them. If you get out of Gaza, stop the war, end the war, leave Hamas intact,” so they can retake the Gaza Strip. And they vowed that once they re-take the Gaza Strip, they will do the October 7th massacre over and over and over again. It's not my words, it's theirs. So Hamas is saying, “if you want the next hostage deal, you have to basically lose the war and let Hamas win the war.” Hamas will emerge from those terror tunnels, declare victory. It'll be a tremendous victory for them, a tremendous defeat for us. It'll be a tremendous victory for Iran and the Iran terror axis. Which is against you, against the United States, just as it's against us. They just see us as standing in their way of conquering the middle east, developing the ICBMs, the intercontinental ballistic missiles, tipped with nuclear warheads to threaten America. So this will be a victory against, a victory of the Iran terror axis, against Israel, against the United States, against, against us both that I can't accept. That's why we haven't had a deal. My priority in every way is to get those hostages out. Uh, fortunately, we also got a few through very daring military rescues that were successful, but it's very difficult. So anyway, the charge is, uh, is malicious. It's false. And I am doing everything in my power. I meet the hostage families. I see their terrible, uh, anguish. Uh, I think of those, uh, those men and women and those young girls in those tunnels in these dungeons of, uh, of torture. Uh, and I want to, I'll do everything in my power to get the rest, uh, every one of them, those that are alive and those, unfortunately, that are dead, back in Israel. That's my commitment. Uh, and, uh, I'm doing everything I can to do it. Just false.
DS: When you did the hostage deal in November, I identified three forces that I believe, from afar, worked in getting that deal done. Intense IDF military pressure, a clear message to Hamas leadership that the United States stood shoulder to shoulder with Israel and completely had Israel's back. And three, the international blowback against Israel, while it existed, it was nowhere near what we are seeing today on college campuses, at the UN.
BN: I think there's a latent affiliation with Israel you don't see on the main news channels and the chattering classes. I think that's definitely true of America. You know, consistently in the Harvard Harris poll, 80 percent of Americans, when they're asked, “Who do you side with in this conflict, Israel or Hamas?” 80 percent say with Israel, 20 percent say Hamas. It hasn't moved even 1 percent in these 7 months. But, 20 percent identify with Hamas? Who are you identifying with? With these murderers, with these rapists, with these baby burners, with these people who chant “death to Israel, destroy and annihilate the Jewish state.”
DS: It's a sad statement.
BN: I think that's a, you know, that's the rot and corruption of the American, in some of the American higher education institutions, including the one I went to, MIT. It's unrecognizable. But that's a matter that America has to deal with. Now you say, well, what happens when governments are swayed by these, these mobs?
DS: Yeah.
BN: All right. That's what you're saying.
DS: Well, what I'm, what I'm trying to, what I'm trying to understand is, when the hostage deal took place in November, you had IDF military pressure, you had America shoulder to shoulder with Israel, and you didn't have all these crazy protests that we're seeing today. And I'm wondering now, given events of the last week, tensions growing, growing tensions between the U.S. administration and, and the, and Israel. We'll see where, how it plays out. But the, but the quote unquote embargo on some military aid, how that's perceived, if you are Yahya Sinwar, if you're looking and you're negotiating with Israel and you're saying, well, wait a minute, unlike November, the Israeli military pressure, at least now is not what it was in November. The international blowback against Israel is, is insane. I mean, at record levels, and there's questions about how much America is standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel. And I say this, Mr., uh, Prime Minister, there are American citizens in those dungeons in Gaza right now. So, and there's only, so I feel quite strongly about this because there's only one military right now that's fighting to get those Americans out of those, those tunnels in Gaza. So I worry about this perception about a breach between the United States and Israel.
BN: Well, that perception certainly doesn't help the hostage situation, certainly doesn't help stabilize the Middle East. It gives succor to Iran and its henchmen. But it means that we have to apply the pressure even more. If the equation has, uh, several, uh, uh, you know, several elements to it, then, increase the military pressure. But ultimately, you need the, you need the victory. It's not going to, uh, uh, you know, you're not going to evade the need for victory. Uh, and you ask, well, what do you do when you have, you’re faced with such international pressure? I can say that in Israel's history, uh, when faced with, uh, uh, with this kind of pressure, then, uh, leaders did what they had to do. I mean, in 1948, our first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, uh, announced, uh, declared, the independence of Israel, even though there was very strong American opposition at the time. Um, uh, Secretary of State Marshall, uh, was opposed, adamantly opposed to it, uh, as was the State Department. Uh, in 1967, uh, Levi Eshkol, who was Prime Minister at the time, before the Six Day War, was told by President Johnson - by the way, he was a great friend of Israel, he said, “Don't do it. Don't attack. Don't preempt. Because if you will, you'll be alone.” Well, he did. We won the war. In 1981, uh, Menachem Begin, uh, bombed the, Saddam Hussein's, uh, Osirak, uh, atomic reactor, atomic plant that was made, going to produce nuclear bombs against Israel. And Ronald Reagan, a great friend of Israel, slapped sanctions on us. He stopped the provision of fighter jets for a while. You have to do it. I, myself, I went to Congress against the impending Iran deal, which I thought was a disaster. I still think it's a disastrous deal, paved Iran's path to a nuclear arsenal with gold. Uh, I thought that was a mistake. I had to do it. And at the same time, you know, you ask, what do you do in the face of, uh, international pressure, uh, and even, uh, disagreements with our great ally, the United States? You do what you have to do. Because, you know, ultimately people understand it when you take these actions to, uh, to defend yourself, to assure your future. People understand it, but we have no other choice. We're not going to collapse, uh, and have a good obituary in the, uh, in those newspapers, uh, in the West, including in America, that excoriate us. I'm sure they'll be, they'll be, uh, very, um, uh, sympathetic to the Jews as victims, but we have been victims long enough and we will not be victims here. We've already paid with the precious blood of 1,200 of our people who were mowed down by these murderers. We'll do what we need to do. What would America do? Imagine that you had, uh, 30 9/11s in one day. Imagine that you had 40, 50,000 Americans killed, murdered, and 10,000 held, uh, captive. Just imagine, what would the United States do? Well, it would do probably a hell of a lot more than what we're doing. Now, admittedly, we're not the United States, but we saw what you did after, uh, the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And you know how many people were killed in the onslaught against Japan and Germany. You know what happened then. You know what you did after 9/11 and what happened in Afghanistan. Uh, and you know, I said, “if Israel has to stand alone,” I said this on Holocaust Memorial Day here. I said “70, 80 years ago, we were absolutely defenseless. Nobody came to our aid. Everybody sympathized, but nobody came to our aid.” And I said, “if Israel has to stand alone, uh, it will stand alone.” And mind you, I deeply appreciate the support we received from the United States, uh, and from President Biden to date. But if we have to stand alone, we will do so because I'm the Prime Minister of Israel, the one and only Jewish state, and we will not go down. We will fight, if necessary, with our fingernails, but we have a lot more than our fingernails to fight with. And the first thing we have is the spirit of our people.
DS: So I want to just end there. Okay. There's a, there's a poll out and just within one minute remaining, there's a poll out, this JPPI poll that, uh, says that 33 percent of Jews in Israels say they are not sure whether their children should build a future in Israel. 40 percent of evacuees from the North are considering not returning to their homes. I guess, A, why are they wrong? And B, what is your vision? We talked about the day after for Gaza. What is your vision for the day after this war in Israel as it relates to this conflict?
BN: Well, all the more reason to win the war. What happens later? Uh, I think that the important thing that we've - we, we understand is that, uh, the weak don't survive here. They just don't survive. You also don't make peace with the weak. You make peace with the strong. You don't make peace with the defeated. You make peace with those who are victorious. Uh, and that's our goal. Israel will have to be a lot stronger. We'll have to spend a lot more money on it. And defense spending, uh, even though we spend quite a bit, uh, we'll have to, uh, continue to make these incredible weapon systems that we have, both defensive and offensive. Uh, these bullets that shoot out, uh, intercept missiles in, in, in the sky, a bullet hitting a bullet. I mean, amazing Israeli technologies and other things that surprise our neighbors. Uh, our enemies, including Iran recently, they're always surprised by our capabilities. Uh, we'll have to continue to build that. And cement the alliances within the region. And outside the region. I hope that we have the support. Continue to have the support of the broad base of America, of the American people. As we do now. Contrary to the, what you see on the, uh, on the news reports. But I think there's another question. It's not where Israel goes. It's, where does America go? Where does America go in this world? Because if you say, “oh, it doesn't matter. We can, you know, we can disregard this. We can go against Israel,” which is crazy. It's like going after, against yourself. And I was deeply moved the other day when I saw American students understand that. There was in North Carolina, in one of the universities, uh, this, uh, typical mob protests, they burnt Israeli flags, American flags, they tore down, they took down an American flag and hoisted a Palestinian flag.
DS: I was very moved by it.
BN: And then you saw this amazing thing. You saw these American students who hoisted the American flag again, and then stood around and protected the flagpole. And I was so deeply moved because I said, “you're our brothers, we're fighting the same war.” So the question is, where does America go? Where does America go? Does it succumb to this madness, to this mobocracy, uh, in those campuses, to this flagrant anti-Semitism that is sweeping the globe? And you know, it never ends with the Jews. It starts with the Jews, but it never ends with the Jews, this mass hatred. America stands for something else. I believe in Israel. I believe in our future. I believe in our capacity to shape it and to protect it. But I also have not given up on America. I think it has great powers within it. And I hope, uh, I hope to be proven right because that will serve not only the purposes of Israel, but all free societies on earth.
DS: Prime Minister, thank you for your time today.
BN: Thank you.
DS: That's our show for today. 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 Senor.