Naftali Bennett, (former) Prime Minister
Today we sit down with one of the most interesting figures in Israeli public life, former prime minister Naftali Bennett, who served as Israel’s 13th Prime Minister (2021-22), and previously, in a Netanyahu-led government as Defense Minister (2019-20), and earlier on as Economy Minister.
When he himself was prime minister, Naftali Bennett's government was comprised of 8 political parties from across the ideological spectrum - from his own Yamina Party and the New Hope party on the Right, through Yair Lapid’s party in the center, to the Labor and Meretz parties on the Left. And then – for the first time in an Israeli Government – there was the Arab Muslim party, Ra’am. In his business career, Prime Minister Bennett was a successful start-up entrepreneur. And he served in Israel’s elite Sayeret Matkal special forces.
In this long-form interview, we try to better understand Naftali Bennett's worldview on a range of issues in Israel’s post-10/07 reality – its strategic situation as it faces multiple war fronts or possible war fronts, and we wanted to better understand his vision for addressing the growing internal Israeli tensions – within the Israeli public.
Full Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
NB: The Iranian regime is profoundly vulnerable. You have a leadership that is despised by the people of Iran. The Iranian nation is a good nation, an ancient nation, which by the way, had very positive ties with the Jews. And so the strategy I believe we need to adopt is to weaken the epicenter of all the problems, which is the Iranian regime, and ultimately topple it.
DS: It's 11:45 PM on Thursday, July 11th here in New York City, it's 6:45 AM on Friday, July 12th in Israel as Israelis get ready to start their day. Before we dive into today's conversation, I just have a few immediate reactions to President Biden's highly anticipated press conference, which wrapped up this evening not long ago. I'll leave it to others to analyze the implications of the press conference for the president's re-election campaign. I mean, it wasn't a debacle on the scale of his debate a couple weeks ago, but it was bumpy. So, I don't think it'll fend off calls from down ballot Democratic office holders and candidates, from Democratic donors and party activists to stand down from the nomination. So, after tonight's press conference, we are probably where we were before the press conference. Not much has changed. But what I want to spend a moment on before moving on to our conversation is looking at exactly what President Biden said about Israel, which was quite odd. First off, President Biden said this about Israel's wartime leadership. ‘I know Israel well and I support Israel, but this war cabinet is one of the most conservative war cabinets in the history of, of Israel. And there's no ultimate answer other than a two state solution here.’ Okay, well, Israel's war cabinet was dissolved, almost a month ago, after Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot withdrew from the coalition government. But what was striking about this war cabinet, which was formed within days, of October 7th and was quite durable. This war cabinet voted on over 90 various decisions and all the votes were unanimous on every one of those actions. And that was especially striking because this war cabinet was comprised of a diverse trio of Israeli political parties, Benny Gantz's National Unity party, Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party and the Shas party. It was a true team of rivals. I mean, just look at Gantz, Netanyahu and defense minister Gallant and what they think of one another personally, and how they compete against one another politically. And what was even more interesting was that the controversial hardliners, like Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, were deliberately kept out of the war cabinet by Netanyahu, despite their repeated demands to join it. Even more jarring was when President Biden said this. And if you notice, you know better than most, there is a growing dissatisfaction in, on the West Bank from the Palestinians about Hamas. Hamas is not popular now. And so there's a lot of moving parts. I just have to keep moving to make sure that we get as much done as we can toward a ceasefire. Now, I'm not sure what public opinion surveys President Biden is referring to here. Just a few weeks ago, Palestinian pollster Khalil Shkaki, who's the most prominent pollster in the West Bank, released a survey of Palestinian attitudes towards Hamas. It was his third such survey since October 7th, and this most recent poll showed that 61% of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza would prefer to see Hamas in control of the Gaza Strip. So, majorities of Palestinians in the West Bank want Hamas to still be in power in Gaza. And Shkaki's poll found that satisfaction, the approval rating for Hamas and for Yahya Sinwar was on the rise. Some 76% of all Palestinians in the West Bank said they approved, that they were satisfied with Sinwar’s performance during this war. This entire discussion about whether Israel can actually rely on a two state solution Israel living side by side with a sovereign Palestinian state, especially against the backdrop of these public sentiments among Palestinians, including Palestinians in the West Bank towards Hamas, raises questions about the degree to which Israel can rely on a two state solution for its own security, especially after October 7th. At least, whether or not it can rely on such an approach in the near to medium term future. And that is one of the topics that I discussed with former Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, in our conversation. Naftali Bennett served as Israel's 13th prime minister. He was in office from 2021 into 2022 and previously he served in several Netanyahu led governments as defense minister from 2019 to 2020 and earlier on as economy minister. He also had served in a number of other ministries. When he himself was prime minister Naftali Bennett's government was comprised of eight political parties from across the ideological spectrum from Bennett's Yamina party and the New Hope party on the right through Yair Lapid's party in the center to the Labor and Merits parties on the left. And then for the first time in the history of any Israeli government, there was the Arab Muslim party, Ra’am, which was a key party in this government. So much for Israel being a quote unquote, apartheid state. In his business career, Prime Minister Bennett was a successful startup entrepreneur. He has lived the startup nation story, and he has served in Israel's elite Sayeret Matkal special forces, almost the equivalent of America's Delta force. These days, it seems that a week doesn't go by that doesn't feature interesting political dynamics in Israel. Most recently, one person has been performing extraordinarily well in public polls, and that's Naftali Bennett. But I didn't want to talk to former Prime Minister Bennett about Israeli politics. I wanted to have a long form interview with him to better understand his worldview. On a range of issues in Israel's post October 7th reality, its strategic situation as it faces multiple war fronts or possible war fronts. And I wanted to better understand his vision for addressing the growing internal of Israeli tensions within the Israeli public. So let's leave the horse race of Israeli politics aside. Naftali Bennett is a serious thinker and leader. Naftali Bennett, former Prime Minister. This is Call Me Back. And I am pleased to welcome back to this podcast Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who joins us from Israel. Prime Minister Bennett, good to be with you.
NB: Thank you, Dan. Good to be here.
DS: I have a lot I want to cover with you, and I have spoken to you offline, on and off, since October 7th, but I've actually never asked you this question, which is, in every visit I have made to Israel since October 7th, I feel that the country is still in this state. But I would call it an October 8th mindset that in a sense, much of the world has moved on from the trauma, the shattering that Israel faced on October 7th, but Israel hasn't moved on and there's some combination of the lasting effects of a society being shattered of sort of PTSD, if you will. So I guess my question is for you, what's your sense of where the country is at now in terms of still being in this October 8th shock? And then also, where are you personally at?
NB: Well, you're right. The people in Israel are in trauma. It's not only the events of October 7th. Right now, as we speak, still Israelis are dying. Whether it's soldiers that fall in war in Gaza or in the North. Yesterday, a couple that lives in Northern Israel was driving in their car. They have three kids. They were driving only the two of them and they got a direct hit of a rocket from Hezbollah and they were killed. And now there's three new orphans. So usually if you think of traumatic events like 9/11, so it happened. It went on for a couple of hours, and then there was the aftermath. So the trauma, and then there's a period of, um, healing it, but we can't begin healing the trauma until the actual event finishes. And right now we're in the midst of a war with Hamas, with Hezbollah, who opened war on us and with Iran, Houthis, Syria, Iraq. And yeah, the nation is gloomy. I've been to 200 families who lost boys and girls at Shiva visits. I go, I sit down with them. I don't talk much. I listen, mainly listen to the stories of their sons and daughters. But I will also add that this gloom, which I wish I could say it's not there, but it is there under that gloom is immense strength, especially of the younger generation. Something dramatic has happened. The younger generation, thirties and down are turning out to be incredibly tough. And I meet them all the time. These are young men and women, incredibly smart and talented and innovative and everything we know about the startup nation. But there's another dimension that we didn't know, and that they are resilient, idealistic, and willing to sacrifice for the future of their country. And that feeds into your second question, how am I? I'm mostly listening. Most of my days, what I do is I visit bereaved families. I visit soldiers who have been hurt. I go to the north and south and meet the citizens and I listen and also strengthen them. I'm confident that Israel will pull out of this. We're in for what I call 50 years of the strength, security and growth, but it's going to be bumpy over the next few years before we enter this amazing next phase.
DS: Prime Minister Bennett, the overall strategic situation Israel is facing, we are all fixated on the Gaza war and where that goes. And increasingly the war in the north with Hezbollah. But those are really just two fronts of a multi front threat scenario that Israel faced between the West Bank and Syria and Iran and various proxies in the region. And it does feel to me that Israel is in some kind of sort of aversion of a pre 1967 or pre 1973 scenario where It's facing a series of threats that are much more complex, much more integrated, region wide, not just a threat on its border. And there needs to be a bigger vision and a bigger strategy for how Israel thinks about the threats that are in front of it. And I'm just curious where your head and thinking are on that.
NB: You're right, Dan. Israel's at a, in a very complex strategic situation. I would say the most challenging since the inception of Israel. Because all the terror players in the Middle East that are mostly funded and guided and aided by Iran are ganging up and simultaneously attacking Israel. I also have to admit that our posture, our deterrence has taken a big hit and we're going to need to repair it through actions and not words. The key to understanding everything is something I said about seven years ago. I coined a term that Iran is an octopus of terror. whose head is in Tehran, but its tentacles are all across the middle east. When I was prime minister, I set a goal of trying not to enter skirmishes, tactical skirmishes, with the tentacles in Lebanon and Syria and Gaza, and rather divert our national security resources to weakening and ultimately toppling the Iranian regime because they spend several billion dollars a year enhancing and arming Hezbollah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Houthis, Syrian militias, and they do it with remote control because they don't pay the price. They're sitting in Tehran. Uh, lay back supine and seemingly immune. The strategy I, uh, believe we need to adopt and I, in fact, affected as I was a prime minister. My, uh, term was 13 months, but we started doing it. The strategy is to weaken the epicenter of all the problems, which is the Iranian regime and ultimately topple it. The Iranian regime is, uh, profoundly vulnerable. Similar to the Soviet Union of the 80s, you have a leadership that is disconnected from the people, despised by the people of Iran. The Iranian nation is a good nation, an ancient nation, which by the way had very positive ties with the Jews. The people despise it. It's a corrupt regime, immensely corrupt, and that's always a very negative sign. Incompetent, they, uh, cannot succeed in bringing water to large swaths of, uh, Iran. And very archaic and it's reminiscent, as I said, of the Soviet union. We're sort of in a cold war with Iran, and I just don't know if the year is 1985 or 1955, Iran's regime will fall, but Israel and America and the nations of the world can dramatically accelerate the fall of the regime and the release of the people from the yoke of this radical corrupt regime by applying economic pressure and other elements. So my strategy would be to set that goal of toppling the Iranian regime through many actions, I'm talking about covert, overt, empowering opposition. You know, every time there's riots, huge riots in Iran, the Iranian regime turns off the internet. Why does America let that happen? Today, there's technologies where you can turn it back on, like Starlink and others. Why shouldn't those oppositions be better equipped to deal with the horrible revolutionary guards who, who kill them.? So there's a lot we can do. At the same time, we need to postpone as much as we can the progress of Iran towards a nuclear weapon. And basically we need to topple the regime before they acquire a full blown nuclear weapon. I admit they're at a very advanced point, uh, right now, unfortunately.
DS: On the comparison to the Soviet Union, I agree with you that the Reagan doctrine, the Reagan administration's policy of full commitment to not learning to contain or live with the Soviet threat, but actually removing the Soviet threat, and as dangerous a threat as the Soviets were, they were committed to survival. They were committed to self preservation, and in a sense, they were less likely to do something extremely dangerous. And what concerns me with the comparison with Iran is it's not clear to me that the key decision makers in Iran are that practical as it relates to self preservation, and that there is this messianic element to the revolution, to the whole revolutionary regime that exists in Iran and trying to actually bring down the regime could force the regime to do things that are pretty dangerous for Israel in a world in which they may not be committed to their own self-preservation. So do you worry about the strategy of pressuring and pressuring, pressuring Iran to the point that we can bring them down could mean that while Israel is, and the US are bringing Iran down, or bringing the regime down, the regime can decide to go down in a blaze of quote unquote Islamist Glory. Which Israel could be the collateral damage, if not the direct victim of.
NB: I think that dimension exists. And I think that we have to be cognizant of the messianic dimension, which may bring people to, you know, kamikaze type strategies. I would say, however, that self preservation is by far the main goal of Iran. And I believe in the methodology that I talked about, it's the best way to move forward, especially while Iran doesn't have yet nuclear weapons. At the end of the day, Iran is a thousand kilometers to the east of Israel. Its main tool to damage Israel is in fact, it's proxies. If you gradually dry up those proxies from funds, they cannot sustain themselves. As you weaken them, the arms of the octopus get weaker and weaker. You sort of apply pressure on the neck and there's no bloodstream, especially of funds. Hezbollah cannot operate without the billion dollars a year it gets and imagine it gets instead of a billion dollars, it gets 10 million. No organization can continue to exist with that sort of budgetary cut.
DS: And to be clear, this strategy cannot be implemented, at least not effectively without deep cooperation with the United States.
NB: That's correct. We need the United States. And I think this strategy, which has not been adopted yet, is one that can suit even a United States that is reluctant of going into kinetic action into bombing into full war. America does not want to get into full wars, etc. We don't have an identical strategic view of the area because we don't have identical strategic alignment. America's biggest problems are different from Israel's biggest problem. But the soft approach, which requires a tremendous amount of energy and effort and resources and primarily focus, is one that can suit what America is willing to do. We are not asking America to fight our wars. We do it. We never asked America to send soldiers to defend us. We can do it. But in terms of the mass pressure, diplomatic, economic, social, cultural, industrial, yeah, we definitely need America and need to understand that. Iran now is a fundamental part of this axis of North Korea, Russia, Iran, China, to some extent, and it's part of a broader campaign.
DS: And with that, Prime Minister Bennett, how would you assess the current state of the U.S. Israel relationship? You've worked intimately on this relationship through various positions you've held in government over the years, including as prime minister. Working with the U.S. to take on a threat like Iran is a massive, massive undertaking, and it requires a pretty well coordinated and deep and trusted relationship. How would you assess the quote unquote alliance today?
NB: Well, certainly we're not at our peak. It's far from optimal. Unfortunately, on our side right now, sometimes the leadership plays political, domestic moves, uh, while paying a price in our relationship with the United States. By no means does Israel have to always do what the U.S. wants us to do, but the relationship needs to be one of, uh, respect. I'll give you an example. When I was prime minister, I met Sullivan and Blinken and president Biden. We agreed on many things, but we disagreed on some things. There was a tremendous pressure on me to open up a American consulate for the Palestinians in Jerusalem. And I, uh, did not agree. And I was very clear with the president and honest with him. But I kept it fairly quiet. I didn't celebrate domestically the fact that I showed Biden that, you know, we're not going to do what he wants because that's not how friends should act with each other. I think for political reasons today, there is misuse of the relationship in order to buy some political domestic support. And that's a mistake on our side. I think the, the notion of conditioning arms support for Israel fighting the world's war, we're not fighting only our war. We're fighting everyone's war against radical Islam. I think that was a mistake vis a vis saying, you know, we won't, won't supply these arms if you do Rafah. It's not a good message from America's standpoint. First of all, it shows daylight between the two countries. It's not a message of strength in the Middle East. I can tell you that all reasonable leaders of Arab states and the Middle East are totally committed against a radical Islam. And when they see that sort of mixed message, it doesn't strengthen their confidence in America.
DS: So speaking of the relationship, there is a deal that seems on the table or being ironed out, some version of a partial hostage release deal and some kind of temporary ceasefire deal, all connected, that the President of the United States has put his name on. He held a press conference, he issued a statement in May, basically saying, yes it's the Israeli plan, but it's his plan. And the U.S. put it before the U.N. Security Council, and it has had a lot of false starts, but for the first time it seems that it doesn't have a false start. That things are actually moving, and, rhere's posturing by various parties, but it still seems to be moving, and I guess my first question for you on this particular topic is, what's your reaction to this deal?
NB: Well, I would go about it differently. I think this lukewarm approach to conducting the war in general, and I'm talking about ourselves. Where there's not a full war going on, we're, we're fighting at 5% power and that's not how you win wars. We need to fight. We need to defeat Hamas and bring home the hostages, the kidnapped people. And right now, the way we're going about it, unfortunately, I say this domestically also, is sort of muddling through this instead of going all in and defeating Hamas, which is doable. Uh, the IDF did much tougher things than defeat Hamas.
DS: You mean the IDF in history and the kinds of wars it's fought, it's done much more difficult, much more challenging things than fighting this kind of war.
NB: Absolutely. But the grand strategy here is the wrong one. What I would do from the very beginning, I would use a tool that we, we didn't use, which is called siege. It could be a discriminant siege, which allows the citizens out, but doesn't allow the terrorists out. And then you basically smoke them out. But I'm setting aside the tactical vehicle. What I would do is I would tell Hamas, there's only one deal. Here's the deal. Either you raise a white flag, release the hostages, and then we won't kill you. And then we get, say, 5,000 or 10,000 of the leading terrorists on boats and get them out of Gaza, or we're coming to kill you. And then I would turn to the army, the IDF commander and say, go, go defeat him. And you stop only when he raises the white flag and releases the hostages. Until then don't waver. And instead it's this vacillation is not a good strategy. I've been vocal about this time and again. It would also affect the deal because when you're in a boxing match and let's say you hit your opponent and your opponent is wobbling now, what do you do? You go in for the hit. What you don't do is you don't tell your opponent, you know what, take a month off. I just hit you. I know you're in pain. Take a month home. Go take a good shower, fix yourself, come back in a month and we'll continue the fight. But that's what we're doing right now. And the IDF is operating very impressively on an operational basis, but the government strategy is simply wrong.
DS: Why is that? I’ve been struck by this, particularly that period before Rafah, where there was that, it felt like Israel had taken its foot off the gas pedal for about two or three months before going into Rafah. Now understandably there was enormous pressure from the Biden administration for Israel not to go into Rafah. There were serious questions from the Biden administration about how it's going to, how to remove Palestinian civilians from the areas where the hardest fighting would be in Rafah, Israel. Oh, by the way, to your point, it has capabilities, it moved almost a million people in 10 days, even though the administration said they wouldn't be able to do it. And if they were able to do it, it would take three or four months, nowhere near 10 days. But that said, there was a sense that there was this pause, that things just sort of stopped, maybe too strong a word, but really just were put in a low gear rather than a high gear for a long period of time. What was going on? What was that about?
NB: Poor leadership. That's the problem today in Israel. So we have an amazing nation. But we simply don't have a good enough leadership, which by the way, is not uncommon in the annals of a war history. And I think the combination of our political and military leadership needs to be different and much better and much stronger and much more dedicated and professional. You know, Lincoln had to go through four commanders of his military in the Civil War until he finally got General Grant and won the war. It's not uncommon, but the combination today is simply not a good enough leadership. So, back to the deal, the deal at least as we understand it. I have heard from officials in the Israeli security apparatus, we've hotly debated this deal on the last episode, two episodes ago of this podcast between Haviv Rettig Gur and Nadav Eyal. And one point that Nadav and others have made is that there's a sense in the security leadership in Israel that this war is winding down, this war is winding down in Gaza one way or the other for a variety of reasons. Israel's running out of targets in Gaza. There's only so much more war fighting it can do in Gaza. It's just a matter of time before Israel is going to have to fight a war in the north against Hezbollah and needs to prepare for it. So one way or the other, this war in Gaza is in some form of wind down mode. And so the question is, Does Israel just let it wind down organically, or does it put a formal structure around that wind down? And in the context of that structure, it gets something for the end of the war, namely the hostages. I mean, that is the rationale that at least some in the IDF and the security leadership have been articulating in the case they've been making to Israel's political leadership. There is a rationale to it. We, again, we had a hot debate on it on our podcast. What's your reaction to that?
NB: Well, I would say we have to choose either or. And right now we're getting the worst of both worlds. And what do I mean? I dispute the fact that it has to wind down and we can't defeat Hamas. We can, but not the way we're doing it. And the government strategy is one of muddling and a very, very slow, uh, low intensity, uh, fighting and assuming that we have, uh, infinite time. And that's never been the case. Time is not good for Israel economically, socially, international pressure, uh, the reserves, uh, fatigue, et cetera, et cetera. So either I would, uh, surge and defeat Hamas, or if you're going to wind down anyway, you're better off at least cutting the deal and releasing all the hostages. But, right now we're getting the worst of both worlds because in effect, we're winding down, but not getting the hostages out. So we're giving Hamas for free what we could get for the release of the hostages. And I think that's a mistake. I think good leadership would choose one of the two. Both decisions are legit, but make a decision for heaven's sake. Be a leader. Say we're going to surge and defeat Hamas or we're going to cut a deal. Talk to the people and talk to your base. It might be unpopular, but if you have a rationale that we need the time to ramp up, strengthen, recoup, and get ready for Hezbollah, that's legitimate, even if it's unpopular. But what you can't do is this muddling middle, which is the worst of all worlds.
DS: Just one more question on what to do in Gaza. It seems to me the country that has gotten the least attention in all of this is Egypt. And Egypt is the second largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. Egypt has this long standing peace treaty with Israel. And yet, my understanding is, most of the arms and other materials that have come into Gaza, into Hamas’s hands, over the last 15 years or so, have come in from Egypt. Not blessed by Egypt, but Egypt either kind of turned a blind eye, or there's corruption in the Egyptian security services and the government that allow all this smuggling to occur. There are all these tunnels there, the Philadelphi Corridor, which was basically not secured by Israel for much of the last number of years before October 7th. Again, you were prime minister, you worked closely, you had to work closely with any Israeli prime minister has to work closely with the Egyptian government. How do you assess the Israeli relationship with Egypt and Egypt's role? Complicity, again, may be too harsh, but Egypt's been in the middle of all this in concrete ways, in the middle of what led to October 7th and how do you deal with that?
DS: You're absolutely right. I think Egypt has a major role in the helping solve this problem moving forward. Need to understand, I don't think it's deliberate. I think President Sisi has 105 million mouths he needs to feed. The Egyptian economy is very feeble. Uh, that's his biggest problem. He's got other problems with, uh, Ethiopia, with, uh, his neighbors, et cetera, et cetera. But he also vehemently opposes a radical Islam, which threatens his very survival. So we have, uh, a common interest in thwarting Muslim Brotherhood, which Hamas is the Gaza branch of Muslim Brotherhood. And therefore, I think we could build a structure which would be way, way more effective in blocking the smuggling and the imports of arms into Gaza through Egypt.
But there's much more that can be done. At the same time, I would say, that at the end of the day, Israel needs to retain for the foreseeable future, the Philadelphi corridor, which is the buffer between Egypt and Gaza. Uh, what we've learned is that we cannot outsource to anyone key defense priorities of Israel. At the end of the day, there's no substitute for a presence. Therefore, for the foreseeable future, Israel will need to retain a few key assets in Gaza, primarily the Philadelphi Corridor and a buffer zone between Gaza and Israel. We have no territorial desire or claim for Gaza. We basically have two guideline interests for the future of Gaza. One is Israeli security, and the second is we don't want to govern these guys. So using those two as a guiding star, the solution almost writes itself.
DS: In terms of the Palestinians, just taking a step back, any Israeli leader has to have a vision for how Israel will live one way or the other with the Palestinians. Certainly one would hope Palestinian leaders would have that vision too, for how Palestinians are going to live. But that remains to be seen. But as an Israeli leader, how do you think about what the Palestinians actually want? Let's leave aside what their leaders want or their self imposed leaders want. The Palestinian people that, you know, live mere kilometers, in the case of the Gaza envelope, in the case of southern Israel, mere kilometers from, a few kilometers from Israel. A big population, and of course there's the population in the West Bank. What do you think the Palestinians vision is for their own future, for their own sense of self determination?
NB: Well, unfortunately, right now, the evidence shows that their big driver is a deep religious desire to destroy the Jewish state. And they, uh, view that superior to their own desires for their welfare. Now, this is very hard to accept as a Western mind. I mean, people who live in Israel and had normal lives, we assumed that our neighbors also pursue happiness and pursue the good of their children. Unfortunately, both the polls, even the most recent polls, show that, uh, overwhelming majority of Palestinians, roughly 75% support Hamas and support the massacres of October 7th and the consequences. And whoever perpetrated October 7th, which was thousands of Hamasnics, but also thousands of random civilians who went in and joined the party, the pogrom, it shows that this is a massive, popular sentiment that is a result of decades and decades of brain poisoning by their own leadership, by their media, by their mosques, by the schools. So, I don't think a baby is born bad. I think babies are born neutral and it's what you feed their minds and hearts for decades that shapes them. But imagine if you're born and from day one, you're poisoned that the Jews are pigs and the Jews are the Satan and we need to kill them. And even though your economic situation is improving and you know, you see a degree of future the goal of killing the Jews supersedes all of that. So without solving that, nothing else will work. The regular incentives of prosperity And the future for your children are only second to the main goal. So the future of the Palestinian Israeli conflict depends on, let's call it a decade, a decade and a half of stopping that brain poisoning, it'll take time, but it's, it's highly doable, but we need to insist on it. And I think Israel and America paid lip service to this issue of incitement and we sort of said, all right, incitement, it is what it is, but no, it's at the core of everything. There's one more thing that is a cornerstone to the solution. We have to defeat Hamas. I want to explain this. We're not going to persuade anyone to abandon Hamas's ideology. It's not going to work. It's an impossible feat. What we can persuade through action, not through words, is that Hamas is gone. Not that it's bad, but it's gone. Think about post Nazi end of 1945, early 1946 Germany. No one was in the business, say, in 1944, to persuade the Germans that the Nazis are a bad regime. Even in the very latest stages of World War II, still, the Nazis enjoyed massive support of the Germans, even when they saw their nation being destroyed in Dresden and all around. So what persuaded them? Well, nothing. Only the fact that the Nazis were gone. It's a fact. And only when they comprehended that Nazi is history, it's gone, then their minds opened to understanding the evil of, uh, the Nazis and generally to change. So the sequence is defeat Hamas. Stop the brain poisoning, build a new Gaza after we clean up Gaza from Hamas and allow them to govern themselves as much as they can, provided that Israel retains its security responsibility.
DS: So, all this talk about the day after, about administrations constantly saying Israel needs a day after plan. Why hasn't it spent more time on its day after plan? We actually had one academic, Netta Barak-Corren, who, there were four academics who issued this paper on a possible day after plan that has been circulating in the Israeli government. So there's more planning and discussion about day after planning than I think they get credit for. That said, how would you approach thinking about the day after in Gaza?
NB: So very straightforward. Defeat Hamas. Define a portion of Gaza first as a pilot. Let's call it Northern Gaza first, ensure there's no Hamas left there. There's a method to do it. You, you can apply a military siege and allow the citizens out for a while. Uh, dry up the Hamas, smoke him out, destroy them or deport them, and then bring back the civilians and focus on Northern Gaza first, bring in Egypt as the main partner and the Saudis, the Emirates, identify a competent local technocratic leadership and create a self governance while Israel still retains the overall security responsibility. Once you do the north, then you do the same thing in the middle and in the south. So it's a gradual part, but you show a vision and then the sky is the limit provided those two, um, elements Israel security. And we don't want to govern the Gazans. It's not as complicated as one would think. I just think we need to outline it in very clear terms as I just did.
DS: Okay, but just coming back to defeat Hamas, which you've said a couple times, can you just define what that means? Because we're constantly being told Hamas cannot be defeated. You cannot defeat an idea. I agree we cannot defeat an idea.
NB: I disagree. I think that's nonsense. I think Nazism was defeated. So yes, there are some weirdos, uh, neo Nazis on the fringes, but it's gone. We defeated terror in the Judea and Samaria, aka the West Bank. I fought in that war in Defensive Shield in 2002, 2003, we defeated terror totally. Of course you can defeat this enemy. And what it means? It means they raise a white flag, release the hostages. And thousands of them, including their leadership, are either dead or deported from Gaza.
DS: And their infrastructure's gone.
NB: Yeah.
DS: And their military capabilities are gone. And they don't have a base of operations.
NB: And, and what I'm saying is not a matter of years if we get our act together finally. And, and I'm, I'm talking about Israel. And America, ironically, the administration's pressure to slow Israel down, to temper Israel, was self defeating because it prolonged this whole thing. We should have been over with this in January, February, March at most. This is just dragging on because, again, I'm not aware of any war that's been conducted with such low intensity. This is my main criticism of ourselves. And again, I think it's due to poor leadership. And I would say tremendous pressures. I'm not diminishing or trying to say that we're not under pressure, but good leadership should withstand the pressure, show a positive vision for Gaza, as I described, a future for the Gazans, but then go do it. And we've not done any of that.
DS: Okay. So one idea though, that is constantly floated, I haven't seen specifics on it, is this idea that there will be some third party force in Gaza to help with securing and administering Gaza, third party Arab force, whether it's the Saudis, whether it's the Emiratis, whether it's whoever, what is your reaction to that? This would be the first time Israel would have that kind of force literally so close to its border, a third party Arab, I don't know, peacekeeping force, administrative force in Gaza. I mean, this would be a new world for Israel.
NB: That's correct. This would only happen, they will only agree after we defeat Hamas. They're not going to defeat Hamas for us. I wish they would. I wish others would fight our wars. That would be great. I have no huge desire for Israeli boys to fall in battle. As for civil administration and the governance, I think that's a great idea. I'd love them to have skin in the game. Um, but ultimately we know that Israel will have to, for the foreseeable future, retain the, the security assets that I described before.
DS: Before I move on off of this, you do envision the IDF being in Gaza in some way. I'm not saying reoccupation is to your point earlier, Israel doesn't have to territorial ambitions for Gaza, but there's going to have to be some kind of Israeli security presence in Gaza for the foreseeable future if it wants to be sure to protect another October 7th from happening again.
NB: That's right. I'll explain what they do and what they don't do. What they don't do is roam around all day and, and make people's lives miserable. What, what do they do? What, what they do essentially is go get the terrorists in their beds at two in the morning, arrest them, interrogate them, get five more names of terrorists, arrest them the following night, interrogate them, get 25 names and so on and so forth. When you do this for enough months, ultimately you fully defeat terror. I mean, it gets near zero. Um, that's what we did in Judea and Samaria and it worked. I don't want to say it's specific because specific indicates that it doesn't work, but it's an ongoing um, maintenance, it's not that difficult. It only hurts the terrorists. It doesn't hurt the innocent people. And again, no one else is going to do it for us. So we'll have to do that until there's no Hamas left, and then we can think about other approaches.
DS: Prime Minister Bennett, we have talked a lot about Israel's regional challenges, its security challenges, I do want to wrap in just a few more minutes, a couple of questions. One about Israel's internal challenges that before October 7th, Israel was deeply divided. 2023 was a horrendous year. I don't need to rehash the whole debate about judicial reform and the impact it had on Israeli society and the tensions it unearthed. Then October 7th happened. And there was this incredible sense of solidarity. The people of Israel across religious, secular, right, left, from the urban hotspots of Tel Aviv to the periphery of the country, it seemed like Israelis from all walks of life were rallying to the cause. And now we're seeing cracks. Now, I don't overreact to the cracks. Saul Singer and I wrote a book about Israeli societal resilience, our most recent book, The Genius of Israel, where we say, we talk about how Israel throughout its history has had these cracks about every decade or decade and a half, and the country always bounces back. But this one seems pretty stressful, maybe because it's playing out in the context of a war. What is your view on the health of Israeli society?
NB: Well, I think you gave a fairly good presentation of what's going on. Um, Israel in year 2023 prior to October 7th was killing itself. We were killing ourselves. And if you think of it strategically, Hamas actually made a mistake because it would have been wiser to not attack Israel and let us continue killing ourselves. Let me tell you a story about 2000 years ago, the Roman leader Vespanius, uh, was standing on a hill outside of Jerusalem, uh, Jerusalem was under siege and his generals urged him, let's go kill the Jews, let's go defeat them. And he said in these words, this is, uh, from, uh, Josephus, uh, Plavius, he said to them, you know, usually you give me, you give me good advice this time, guys, you're wrong. Um, let them continue the civil war, let the fire eat them. I'm roughly translating his words. And if we wait a few months and come back in a few months, they will have defeated themselves. And that's what he did. He postponed the attack on Jerusalem. He went and conquered a bunch of other Israeli cities. And then by the time he came back to ancient Jerusalem, we had burnt each other's storehouses and basically we killed each other. And he came in and we lost the second incarnation of a sovereign state in the land of Israel. The same applies here. We were killing ourselves. October 7th, the horrendous attack of October 7th has given us a second chance to, decide, and we have two options. We can revert to the identity politics, tribalism, putting your sector above the good of Israel, radical, fanatic ideologies that are divorced from international reality. And then we'll destroy Israel. That's an option. It's a bad option. The alternative is to change, to replace leadership, to have leadership who puts the good of all of Israel ahead of any particular sector who stops this identity politics. We have identity politics like you guys have in America. There's, uh, people here who talk about themselves as a group that has been oppressed. I'm talking about Jews, Israelis, that have been oppressed by the white Israel. And speak very similar to, to progressive woke people. The irony here, it's the, the radical, uh, so called right. And I'm a right wing guy. Uh, but this, I don't think is real right wing. It's terrible identity politics. So if we have new leadership that, uh, talks about unity, uh, that sets a good vision for Israel, that puts the good of Israel ahead of its own and, uh, does not go into corruption. And you have ministers who work for the people and not for their own personal good, as some ministers do. I'm confident that Israel will unite, and we are looking at an amazing next 50 years for Israel. We're at a fork road, and we have to make the right decision.
DS: Last question for you, and then we'll wrap. I was with you last spring, At the University of Michigan, we did a panel that I interviewed you for, and you'll recall, you came to the U.S. and were speaking at that campus, and you've spoken at other campuses I know, at what was like the peak of this unbelievable I don't even know what to call them. These, these encampments, these quasi pogroms on these U.S. campuses. And even that day when we were at the University of Michigan, there was a sense that the Jewish students were on the run. You and I were supposed to speak at this one hall that had a thousand people, but then the pro Hamasniks were going to shut down the event, so they had to move us to a smaller location, a tenth of the size. Where most students weren't allowed to come in. Just a handful of Jewish students, 75 Jewish students. It was live streamed. It was, it was almost like we were being driven underground to a non disclosed location. And the students, we had joined the panel at the end of our conversation, and one of them asked you, can you briefly describe what the biggest criticism this one student asked you, the biggest criticism we face, the biggest charge, the canard, that we face on campus from critics of Israel is the Israelis and the Jews are settler colonialists. They have just taken over this land from other people in what is today the modern state of Israel and they need to get out. And you in that response to that student, Prime Minister Bennett, I gave, I thought was one of the best two or three minute distillations of the history of the Jewish presence in the country that you are sitting in while we do this interview right now. And I want more and more people to hear it. I was very moved by it. And I, I want every student in America, Jewish student that's dealing with antisemitism on their campuses as they get ready to go back to school later this summer and this fall to hear it. So can you just give us a brief history of the Jewish presence in the land that you are sitting in right now?
NB: Absolutely. Our presence here begins roughly 3,800 years ago with the fathers, and later on entering Israel again, about 3,300 years ago, and, uh, we've been here ever since, you know, if there was a time machine, I would fly back, uh, 3,000 years ago to this very location. I would be able to speak with my own direct ancestors in the same language that they spoke Hebrew. Uh, we would understand each other after a few minutes of, uh, accent adjustment. We believe in the same God, in the same land, and genetically we're, you know, their descendants. What did happen throughout those 3,000 years, twice we had a Jewish state, a sovereign state here, and twice colonialists empires, uh, first time it was, uh, the Babylonians and the second time it was the Roman Empire. Conquered the Jewish state, destroyed it, and expelled many of the Jews. Not all of them, but most of them. And then we spent 2,000 years, uh, where the majority of Jews were dispersed all around the world. Uh, in Yemen, in Iran, in Europe, in Spain, and, uh, Morocco, et cetera. Basically being kicked out from one country to another. Pretty miserable years. But every day, uh, literally every day, uh, three times a day, every Jew prayed to return to Jerusalem, to the land of Israel. We never severed that connection and you know, in the 19th century, we took massive political action to gradually return to Israel. I want to emphasize that yes, there were Arabs living here. They did not have a Palestinian identity back then. We did not displace anyone, any Arab by force, the Zionism, until the War of Independence. Prior to the War of Independence, there were several attempts to allow the formation of a Jewish state and an Arab state in this territory. And every single time the Jews unhappily, reluctantly accepted because it meant dividing our tiny, tiny country. And, and mind you, the Arabs, already have 22 or 23 states. We don't. It's the only Jewish state. But we agreed. The Palestinians didn't. And they attacked us in the November 29th, 1947. The Palestinian Arabs or the Arabs living in Israel back then attacked the Jews and called in later on the foreign armies. And we were attacked all across and it was going to be a war of annihilation, destroying Palestine. The Jewish state. They lost. We won. During that war, the local Arabs, some of them stayed put. Others, uh, ran away during battles. Others were expelled. Others, We're called upon by the Arab leadership to get out of their houses for a couple of weeks, and then we'll kill the Jews and you can come back. And during the war, roughly 600,000 Arabs living here moved to Lebanon, to Syria, to Judea and Samaria, to Gaza. And after the war, uh, it's true. Israel did not agree for their return because there's a price to pay. They wanted to destroy us. Had we brought them back in, they would attack us again. And they bear responsibility and they were refugees. And, uh, there were also roughly 600,000 Jewish refugees from Arab states that were kicked out of Morocco, of Egypt, of, uh, Libya of Yemen, but we didn't go on whining for generations. We solved the problem and took in those refugees, whereas the Arabs did not take in their refugees, did not nationalize them and naturalize them and provide them citizenship. So basically we have today in Israel, roughly one and a half million Israeli Arabs, full equal citizens, they vote. There's, uh, members of, uh, Arab members of Knesset, Arab Supreme Court judges. Uh, and we live peacefully. It's complicated, but I'm darn proud to live in my home here. It's been our home for almost 4,000 years and I feel fairly comfortable here and I view a future for my great, great, great grandchildren forever.
DS: That is a perfect note on which to end this. Prime Minister Bennett, you're a, a soldier, a leader, and I think as our listeners will realize today as well, a teacher. These many tutorials, I think at least the Jews in the diaspora cannot get enough of these days. So grateful for your time as always, and for illuminating a whole range of issues in your analysis and your vision. Look forward to keeping in touch and hopefully having you back at some point.
NB: Thank you very much, Dan. It was a pleasure.
DS: That's our show for today. To keep up with Naftali Bennett, you can follow him on X @naftalibennett. That's two N's and two T's. Same for Instagram @naftalibennett. 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.