One Year Since October 7th - with Douglas Murray
Since October 7th, on this podcast we have tried to present Israel’s dilemmas and challenges as Israel responded to a genocidal attack from Gaza and what is now a multi-front war. We have tried to do this by talking to Israelis – Israeli journalists, political figures, historians and other thought leaders, and different people from Israel’s civil society. We have tried to provide historical context and perspectives from various actors in the U.S.-Israel relationship from both sides of that relationship.
We did not think we would still be recording these episodes – with this focus – for one year. And yet, here we are — approaching the one-year anniversary of October 7, which will be regarded as one of the darkest days in Jewish history (and one of the darkest days in the history of Western Civilization).
Most of our episodes have been shaped by weekly and daily news developments. But as we approach the one-year anniversary, we wanted to take a step back, and spend extended time with a few of our previous guests and thought leaders who are not our go-to analysts.
We asked each one of them to take a longer horizon perspective, to look back at this past year and the year ahead. In each conversation, we will try to understand the larger lessons these guests have learned as we approach this grim milestone. If you are listening to this episode on a podcast app, please note that this series was filmed in a studio and is also available in video form on our YouTube channel. You can find a link here: https://youtu.be/O7F7Pq-XI40.
We begin this series with a conversation with Douglas Murray – war journalist, columnist, and bestselling author. We will be dropping one of these long-form conversations with a different guest each week between now and the first couple weeks after 10/07.
LINKS:
On Sunday, September 8, Douglas Murray will kick off his first ever US Tour with Live Nation. Long before Oct 7, Douglas was a widely read journalist, bestselling author, and one of the most prescient intellectuals in the world. Since Oct 7, he has also become one of the strongest voices for Israel and the Jewish people. Douglas will be sharing experiences from his time in Israel post October 7, including never before seen footage from his time in Israel. On September 8, he will be at the Parker Playhouse in Fort Lauderdale. On September 10, he’ll be at the Fillmore Miami Beach. On September 11, the Warner Theatre in Washington DC. On September 23, The Wiltern in Los Angeles. On September 29, the Beacon Theatre in New York City. And on October 13, Paramount Theatre in Denver. The evening will be filled with great pride for am yisrael and hope for the future. Some shows are sold out or very near sold out. Tickets can be purchased through Live Nation’s website: https://shorturl.at/yilaw
NEW YORK CITY — September 24 — Join us for the first major live recording of Call Me Back, held at the Streicker Center, co-sponsored by UJA Federation of NY, and featuring Amir Tibon on the official launch date of his book The Gates of Gaza: A Story of Betrayal, Survival, and Hope in Israel's Borderlands. In his new book, Amir tells the gripping story of the Tibon family’s ordeal at Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7 and the heroic rescue by Amir’s father, retired General Noam Tibon. Woven throughout the book is Amir’s own expertise as a longtime journalist in Israel and in Washington, the history of Kibbutz Nahal Oz, and the conflict between Israel and Gaza. We are excited to bring this program – with our partners at The Streicker Center and UJA Federation of NY – to the Call Me Back audience. To register, please go to: streicker.nyc/events/tibon-senor
PHILADELPHIA-AREA — September 9 — Join us this Monday night in Lower Merion, just outside of Philadelphia, for a discussion about Israel, the Middle East and the U.S.-Israel relationship with combat veteran and national security expert Dave McCormick, who is running for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania. Dave grew up in Bloomsburg, PA, attended West Point, fought in the Gulf War with the 82nd Airborne, then ran a tech software business in Pittsburgh before becoming CEO of Bridgewater Associates. Dave has emerged as one of the strongest pro-Israel voices and allies of the Jewish community this election cycle; his wife Dina was a deputy national security advisor in the White House and one of the architects of the Abraham Accords. We are going to have a fascinating conversation about his trip to Israel in January, what he's seen on the campaign trail and how his experience as a combat veteran informs his perspective on the war in Israel and America's role in the region. To register, please go to: Dan-and-Dave.eventbrite.com
Full Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
DM: The case in question was, it was two boys, they went with their father into the, into the shelter and the, uh, Hamas terrorists threw a grenade into the shelter and the father threw himself on the grenade… and, uh, his two sons, one of them lost his hearing and the other lost his eyesight in one eye and they're in such distress and confusion. And one of them says to the other, he's dead, he's dead. And the other says, and he's not. And he said, I saw it. I saw it. And then the terrorist comes in and helps himself to food in the fridge. One of the boys, 11 and 13, I think, the younger one said to the terrorist, that's my mother's food. And the terrorist said, where's your mother? I want her too. So yes, this is, this is a profound form of evil.
DS: Since October 7th, on this podcast, we've tried to present Israel's dilemmas and challenges as Israel responded to a genocidal attack from Gaza in what is now a multi front war. We've tried to do this by talking to Israelis, Israeli journalists, political figures, historians, and other thought leaders, and different people doing extraordinary things from Israel Civil Society. We've tried to provide historical context and perspectives from various actors in the U.S. Israel relationship from both sides of that relationship. To be honest, Ilan and I did not think we would still be doing these episodes with this focus for one year. And yet, here we are, approaching the one year anniversary of October 7th, which will be regarded as one of the darkest days in Jewish history, and I believe one of the darkest days in the history of Western civilization. Most of our episodes have been shaped by weekly and sometimes daily news developments. But as we approach the one year anniversary, we wanted to take a step back and spend extended time with a few of our previous guests and thought leaders who are not necessarily our go-to analysts. I asked each one of them to take a longer horizon perspective to look back at this past year and the year ahead. In each conversation, I will try to understand the larger lessons these guests have learned as we approach this grim milestone. If you are listening to this episode on a podcast app, please note that this series was filmed in a studio and is also available in video on our YouTube channel. You can find the link in the show notes, where you can also find details on our live recording at the Streicker Center in New York City on the evening of September 24th with Haaretz journalist Amir Tibon, and an event I will be doing in the Philadelphia area at the Lower Merion Synagogue with combat veteran and national security expert Dave McCormick on the evening of Monday, September 9th. We begin this series with a conversation with Douglas Murray, war journalist, columnist, best selling author. We'll be dropping one of these long form conversations with a different guest each week between now and the first couple of weeks following October 7th. But now, here is Douglas Murray on One Year Since October 7th. This is Call Me Back. I'm pleased to welcome you, Douglas Murray, scholar, thought leader, journalist, best selling author, and very vocal defender of Israel and the Jewish people, to this conversation that we are releasing in the lead up and around the one year anniversary of October 7th. It's hard to believe it's been a year and we are having these conversations with thinkers and observers and in your case a real actor, a real protagonist in the story of Israel and the Jewish people since October 7th, who have really struck a nerve with our listeners in our community, our Call me Back community. So thank you for doing this.
DM: Thank you.
DS: This is a series as I mentioned that we'll be having leading up to October 7th, but you are about to embark on a series of your own which is a series of live lectures that you will be doing sponsored by Live Nation, beginning on September 8th in Fort Lauderdale and then you go to Miami beach at the Fillmore right after that, and then a series of shows I think culminating in New York City here at the Beacon Theater and in, we're going to post in the show notes, the details on how to register and buy tickets for these events. But you're showing, for the first time in those shows, footage that you had captured during your entire time in Israel. Is that right?
DM: Yes, that's right. It's a six city tour with Live Nation, uh, starting 8th of September, Fort Lauderdale, 10th of September in Miami Beach. And going on to L.A., D.C., New York, Denver. I, um, haven't done a tour like this in the US before, and there's just so much to talk about so much to address. And yes, uh, from my many months in Israel, since the 7th, uh, I've captured a lot of footage of where I've been, uh, from the sites of the, the massacres on the 7th to inside Gaza and much more. And I'll be sharing that for the first time, as well as being joined on stage for Q and a with, uh, my uh, Monk Debate, uh, debating partner, Natasha Hausdorff, who's going to join me on stage.
DS: Who's a force of nature in her own right.
DM: She's terrific.
DS: So to get details on these concerts, if you want to purchase tickets, go to Douglas Murray Live Nation. You can search Douglas Murray Live Nation.
DM: Do Live Nation, search for Douglas Murray, and make sure you put my name in and not Taylor Swift or something.
DS: Right.
DM: I'd like to think there's some overlap, but I don't know. Yeah, yeah,
DS: Yeah. No, it's a, it's a, the Venn diagram is, is quite narrow. Uh, and we'll again, we'll post all the information. Douglas, I mentioned that you've been one of the most vocal defenders of Israel and the Jewish people. Before October 7th and before your decision to not walk but to run to Israel in the days after October 7th. You had this connection to Israel and the Jewish people. Where does that come from?
DM: Um, I've had it for many years. I've been to Israel many times over the years. Uh, the first war I saw there was in 2006, the second, uh, Lebanon war. It's a country and the people in the subject that gets under my skin. I mean, it's, uh, it's always been to me, um, an intellectual, um, issue. I don't like the intellectual dishonesty, which in my view has always wrapped itself around Israel. The double standards and triple standards are applied to Israel. Um, the lies that are spread about the country during wartime again, I saw that in 2006 with my own eyes, and I've seen it plenty more in the years since, uh, and I suppose also emotional issue in many ways as well, at least has become so because, uh, I feel very deeply this among other things that the extraordinary lack of empathy, which so much of the world has towards Israel and towards the Israeli people. The world seems so callous about it. Not all the world, thank goodness, but much of the world from the 7th of October onwards much of the media was obsessing about not about the atrocities, which I knew were going to be covered over far too fast, but all move on to this question of Israeli retaliation or actually just the day we're speaking the day before the New York Times front page proposed the issue of a potential ceasefire deal at the moment as being between people who wanted peace and people who want vengeance inside Israel.
DS: Right.
DM: That's absolutely typical in my view, I don't think that if an equivalent number of Americans were killed on one day as were killed in Israel on the 7th or an equivalent number of Americans, uh, were kidnapped as were kidnapped in Israel on October 7th. I, I don't think Americans will like it very much if the world said these people trying to get back their American children, they're so vengeful.
DS: Right. Growing up, where in the UK did you grow up?
DM: I grew up in London.
DS: Did you know many Jews growing up?
DM: Some, yes. It was never a particular issue. I mean, I never was particularly aware of, um, you know, I, we had family, had Jewish friends, have Jewish friends still. And, um, but I, I never, until I was sort of, I suppose coming to political awareness at university at Oxford, and it never occurred to me that the things that we had heard about in history might still be going on. And then yes, I saw it and I realized that many of the things that I thought had been confined to history books were not. And that's probably also something that galvanizes me. But, but yes, I mean, it, it was not, by any means, I'm not from a political family or a, you know, anything like that. I had the great pleasure of taking my parents to Israel some years ago and being their tour guide and also driver, which is pretty scary if you, if you know Israeli driving. Um, but we know it was not a, it was not a central part of upbringing, but I think the one thing that was a central part. Part of my upbringing was, um, knowing the difference between, um, truth and lies, and knowing the difference between good and evil.
DS: This, this may seem like too personal a question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Are you a religious person or have you become more religious?
DM: I was very religious growing up. I was brought up as an Anglican Christian. I suppose I have always been pretty religious until roughly my mid twenties. I had a uh, extended atheist period, which I swiftly realized was, um-
DS: It's a rite of passage.
DM: It's probably a rite of passage. As somebody quipped, I, I, I tried atheism, but I kept on having doubts.
DS: The false prophets of atheism.
DM: Yes, I, I, I, I, I, I think I might describe myself as a Christian agnostic these days, you know, maybe one of the many things that, that, that deeply matters to me in the case of Israel is that of course Israel is a country for anyone who has been brought up Christian, has any connection still to the Christian faith, it's a place that absolutely jangles with resonance and meaning.
DS: Since October 7th, I have watched you all throughout the media, especially on British media, which is its own blood sport. And you're almost like a bodyguard. That's how I feel. You're almost like a bodyguard on behalf of the Jewish people. Taking these bullets, firing back, rhetorically. And these are people that are not your people and it can be exhausting. I mean, I tried to do a fraction of what you do and it's exhausting. Has it taken a toll on you?
DM: No. Um, I think it's not just a pleasure and an honor, but a duty to do what I try to do. I wouldn't want to live in a world in which lies were forever just able to be thrown around unaddressed. And it's not just lies, of course. A lot of it is just ignorance. And, um, you can always lament the ignorance of your age, and everybody in every age has done so. Um, but there is a presumption in our own time that people are meant to have views on absolutely everything. And, you know, as Twitter, X, can show you, people are also experts in absolutely everything. And, uh, their expertise changes from week to week, of course. But when they decide that they're experts in the Middle East and specifically on the Israel-Palestinian, uh, conflicts, you know, you just discover reservoirs of ignorance, so wide and deep. And so I tried lots since the 7th to simply unpick and unpack some of the, the misunderstandings that people have. And they are legion. I mean, immediately after the 7th, I did an interview on a British channel in which the interviewer asked me perfectly reasonably about the question of proportionality and conflict. And I said what I had to say about that pretty swiftly. But I don't think it takes a toll on me. I mean, I hope not. It's, uh, it's what I do. And I always encourage more people to do it too.
DS: In the days after October 7th, for so many of us, the reality of what happened, the horror, was a very visceral feeling. And like all crises, the moment passes. Or maybe it just begins to feel a little numb to us. So I want to just take people back to those early days and, and remind them what we were all seeing and hearing and you were, you were on the ground seeing and hearing so can you describe describe that?
DM: Yeah, I mean I went straight to the south to the communities there that had been most viciously attacked on the 7th places like community of Be’eri, Nir Oz, It's a community of 400 people that about one in four people in the community were either killed in their homes or kidnapped into Gaza. These beautiful communities in the, in the south where, you know, they're sort of idyllic, really. They're not always very rich communities by any means. In fact, some of them are really pretty poor, but it's a pretty blissful life. You know, families, you know, all know each other. The children can run around safely to go there after what had been done to them. And to see it with my own eyes. And they were still collecting body parts. And, you know, some people were killed in their safe rooms because the doors didn't lock, because they never expected this. Every house had a safe room, but it was a safe room from the pretty regular bombardment of missiles from Gaza. That you could shut the doors, but you couldn't lock them. So, as you know, I went house to house, you know, where the bodies had been found or where the, where the remains of a body had been found. I mean, there was one, uh, body identified only six weeks ago. I mean, ten months after the 7th, because there was so little of the body left. These are scenes of horror and of such magnitude. Uh, elderly man living alone, you know, is burned alive in his house, you know, two young boys, you know, who got stuck in the safe room, their house on their own and their grandfather, uh, walked me through the, the remains of the house where his grandsons had been on the phone to him that morning. And he was desperately trying to tell them how to hold the door closed with the terrorists on the other side. And they held out as long as they could, but they couldn't hold out for long. And then I, you know, I spent a lot of time with the hostage families. In the immediate aftermath as they were getting organized and heard their stories and heard firsthand from people like the first responders and, you know, people like the policemen in Sderot who held out for a long time, long, long battle. Again, I've been to Sderot many times over the years. I've sat in the bomb shelters there. Um, but I never expected to see, and they never expected to see, Hamas military vehicles coming down the main street in Sderot and, uh, firing rocket propelled grenades at people and buildings. And so, yes, I spent a lot of time in the morgues with the, uh, people who were trying to work out what had happened, and then was able to be embedded with the IDF and go into Gaza through one of the fences that the terrorists had come through on the day to see the Israeli response as they searched for the hostages, and as they tried to find them as terrorists.
DS: You describing these images, I just saw a news report about how Israel had just taken out, really just taken out, like the last couple of days, one of the senior Hamas military commanders who whose image, the IDF knew from footage because he was in a home with an Israeli family in a kibbutz on October 7th, he had just personally slaughtered a parent. And then he was sitting in the, in the kitchen area with his little kids going in the fridge and drinking a soda after he just murdered their father. And I was like, wait, he did what?
DM: That's one that's often on my mind. I saw the other terrorist who was involved in that, in a maximum security prison in Israel. The case in question was it was two boys. They went with their father into the, into the shelter and the, uh, Hamas terrorists threw a grenade into the shelter and the father threw himself on the grenade. And, uh, his two sons, one of them lost his hearing and the other lost his eyesight in one eye. And there's terrible footage of them in the, the, the, the home. And they're in such distress and confusion. And one of them says to the other, he's dead. He's dead. And the other says, he's not. And he says, I saw it. I saw it. And then the terrorist comes in and helps himself to food in the fridge. One of the boys, 11 and 13 I think, the younger one, said to the terrorist, that's my mother's food. And the terrorist said, where's your mother? I want her too. So yes, this is a profound form of evil. And there's one other thing I should say about that, by the way, and I've, I've tried to make this point a lot and have sometimes been misinterpreted for saying this, but it's just worth reiterating that one of the things about the 7th that is so disturbing is not just the scale of the barbarity, the viciousness of it, but the pride that the terrorists had in their acts, I had my late friend, George Weidenfeld, who has died some years ago, who was an emigre from Nazi Austria. He said he never thought this before, but he had come to realize there might be even worse forms of antisemitism than Nazi antisemitism. Hamas has not been able to achieve by scale what the Nazis were able to achieve. But that's not from want of trying, it's for want of the resources to do so and the opportunity to do so. One of the things that makes Hamas different is that they actually broadcast their crimes to the world. Himmler, in his famous speech to the SS and others, when the final solution is getting underway, says to him, we're writing a chapter of our history that we will not be able to talk about, but we need to get it done, and so on and so forth. At some level, they knew what they were doing had to be hidden from the world. That's why when Vasily Grossman goes into Treblinka, in ‘44, he has to piece together what has happened here. Hamas broadcasts on GoPro and on video cameras. They seized video phones from their victims and used it to record their murder and then sent it to their families of the murdered on WhatsApp, they broadcast what they did to the world. They were so happy about it. They were so proud about it. Anyone who doesn't think that we're dealing here with a would be genocidal organization just needs to go and look at the way in which Hamas and their fellow terrorists behaved on the 7th and question whether these are people who you could talk down.
DS: My, you know, you often learn some of the most obvious, but somehow difficult to articulate things from young people. My 16 year old son, when we were in Israel over Passover, last April. We had gone down south with our kids, went to kibbutz Nir Oz, we went to the Nova musical festival site. In the previous summer, we had gone to Eastern Europe. My mother's a Holocaust survivor. We went to Kosice Slovakia, her hometown, where she was taken by the Nazis. We went to Auschwitz where her father was taken and murdered. My mother was hidden out by righteous Gentiles. And my, my, 16 year old son says to me the night after we had gone down to the Gaza envelope in Southern Israel, he said, you know, this may sound, come off insensitive or weird. He said, but I found today harder than going to Auschwitz with Safta, with his grandmother. And I said, why? And he said, because as horrific as what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust was. As a teenager, so far removed from that horror show. I just was able to believe that that was humanity in a time completely disconnected from my own.
DM: Humanity in the era of black and white.
DS: Yeah.
DM: Black and white footage. Seems so different. It's a different world.
DS: He said, I just assumed that people were, were different now. You know what he meant by different was like more enlightened or had learned the lessons of and therefore wouldn't repeat or whatever. He just assumed that was another generation's experience. And that would not be an experience that would ever occur in his generation. And then we go down to Southern Israel and we see a version of it again. And, and that was what was so chilling to him is wait, this, this could happen again?
DM: The people who broke into Israel on the 7th, you know, there were, it's now thought maybe up to 6,000, right? Those you know, the, whether it's the terrorists in the first waves or the third and fourth waves of people who were guards and civilians who came to loot or sometimes just to enjoy themselves with knives and whatever else they could get their hands on. It's the biggest difference in the world, living in the world of peace and the world of war. And there's nothing, nothing bigger than that divide, that gap. When people get back into the realm of war, of horror, never forget it. But it seems absolutely impossible. There was a survivor of the Nova Festival who, at one of the reunions, said to me, um, you know, what would you do if this happened in your country? And I didn't say to him, but I thought, well, it, it has not on this scale, but it has, you know, the, the Parisians who were in the Bataclan theater in November, 2015 were meant to be enjoying an evening of heavy metal music. And when the first Kalashnikov fire came from the ISIS terrorists, most people thought it was either a sound problem with the speakers, or that somebody had set off firecrackers. In the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, when the ISIS affiliate Omar Mateen went in and killed 49 gay people, most people thought at the beginning somebody was throwing around firecrackers. And when a suicide bomber went into the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in the arena in 2017 and detonated, nbody could believe it. I mean, uh, one of the guards who saw him standing around looking suspicious with his backpack filled as it turned out with a suicide bomb and nails and things packed into it. Didn't report the guy by the way, cause he thought they might be accused of Islamophobia. But anyway, it seemed impossible, I think, to the guards in Manchester arena that somebody would bring a bomb packed with nails into a concert predominantly being attended by teenage girls in the British city. All of this seems absolutely impossible until it happens. One of the many things that I've thought of a lot in the last year has just been that, again, that terrible lack of empathy. Because the world did have great sympathy with Paris. When the terrorists went through the Bataclan theater and hunted down Parisians and shot the Parisians in wheelchairs in the disabled section one by one, the world did have sympathy with them. The world did not blame, nor should they have blamed, the citizens of Manchester for having the audacity to attend a pop concert in their home city. And nobody would think of blaming or having anything but sympathy for the people in Orlando going out for night clubbing. Why should it be that the Nova survivors just be bewildered by the world's lack of empathy? That a couple of the survivors went to Britain a few months ago to, to speak to people there about what had happened. They were detained at a British airport and treated like war criminals by some officials who seemed to believe these victims were perpetrators of some kind and that's, that's, that's this unique thing about Israel and so much of the world's hostility to Israel is that it accuses the, the victims of being perpetrators always, so that the only explanation for why the world has not spent more time supporting Israel and getting its hostages back is that much of the world seems to think that those hostages are in some way guilty. I think there are times when a flare goes up and you see exactly where everyone is standing. We knew, for instance, the corruption of American academia. But, wow, has it exposed itself in the last year. If you want your child to be a good person, don't send them to an Ivy League. Pretty good rule now. And I, I, I hope people remember the, this is where people were found out. This is where they were seen that the flare went up and they were seen shrugging, eyeing up a death cult with, uh, something like glee and admiration. Why the city we're sitting in at the moment, just yesterday, the demonstration with people waving the flag of Hamas on the streets of New York.
DS: On the weekend that an American citizen was found dead in the dungeons of Gaza.
DM: Imagine what you have to be like, what pit of hell you have to be in as an individual that an American citizen has just been cold bloodedly murdered after being held hostage for almost a year by these people and you fly the flag of the murderers in New York City. How dare they? How dare they? And they always do the same thing, by the way, because these people, the ones in the West, they are such cowards. Oh, the only people in America, outside of maybe a bit of Williamsburg, who still deeply fear the coronavirus. Oh, of course, they're deeply in fear of getting COVID. Yeah, that's why they wear masks over their faces at every one of their disgusting demonstrations. The women, I presume, who were marching through New York yesterday with the Hamas flag so proudly waved, don't even have the guts to show their nose or their mouth. So maybe there is something to be gained from the thought that they know they're doing something despicable.
DS: In the days after October 7th, would you have predicted everything you're describing that we'd be here a year later? And what you're describing in terms of the world's reaction.
DM: Pretty much.
DS: So going in, you're getting ready, you're flying to Israel, and you know that Israel's in for a long war, but you know that we here were also in for a war?
DM: Yeah, of course, because our institutions in America and the West are so rotted. One of the things I expected, and I wrote about many years ago in a book, but which has come horribly true, is The sectarian nature of much of the response. It's very, very troubling. I expected it and i'm very fearful about it a lot of the attack On israel in the last year in the west has been driven by people who are driven by by sectarian ideological millenarian religious politics. And still the west is not strong enough to identify it and call it out for what it is. But there is a reason why certain politicians and public figures and others just a very happy playing footsie with Hamas.
DS: Okay. So I want to ask you about that because I'm asked a lot to comment on what Jews and those who are directly connected to Israel should learn from October 7th and what we should fear based on what we've learned from October 7th, what would you tell people who have no connection to Judaism? Or no connection to Israel. Just people who live in the United States, in the UK, in Europe, in the West. What does this mean for the West? What should those who care about the future of the West and Western civilization and Western ideals take away from the world's response to October 7th? And what, what should worry them?
DM: They should know this, that they could be next, and will be. It's happened here before. America is especially good at going back to sleep, because America has not had a, a war of, uh, of this kind in its history, really. Europe is tired of war. And believes that it's consigned it to the past. There are, a lot of people are angry at Israel for still living in this world in which people invade you and you have to defend yourself. And they blame Israel for, for being the cause of that. But people should simply know it will come to them as well. And the, the, the people who massacred their way through the south of Israel on the 7th are the same people whose labors I have seen in, for instance, northern Nigeria. Where it's the Christians who are hunted down, literally chased across the fields, running away from their churches, being chased by Islamists, terrorists, killed in the field, their bodies just left. You have suicide bombings on Easter Sunday in their church. The world does not pay much attention. To these conflicts, that conflict in particular in Northern Nigeria, but it's not a coincidence that the same behavior is manifested against the Jews and the Christians by these Islamists and time cultists. If you just like living in a secular, liberal, in maybe every sense of the term, society, you ought to be really careful. That you don't open the door up to a wolf to enter the chicken coop and To a great extent we've we've been blithe about that And, uh, so yeah, I say, think that it could happen to you, and also if it did happen to you, or when it happened to you, you would also know who your friends were in the immediate aftermath. The next day I heard that there was going to be a, an anti Israel protest in Times Square, and I went down to see that, and to record it. That was on October the 8th, when people were still fighting. In the communities in the south of Israel.
DS: Hamas was still in Israel.
DM: Hamas was still in Israel. And there were still Gazans looting the homes of murdered Israelis. When these people organized an anti Israel protest in Times Square. And that was one of the things that made me realize early on, ah. You know, this is, this is going to be bad. And some people say, have said to me in the last year, well, there was a moment at the beginning of the war where everyone was on Israel's side. Oh, no, they weren't. Oh, no, they weren't. And I will not have them rewrite that history. There has not been, there was not, one anti Hamas protest of any size, anywhere in America. Or in Britain or in Europe. So spare me the idea that at the beginning of this immediately after the massacre, everyone was sympathetic to the Israelis and it was only when Israel started to respond to the aggression, that it lost these friends. it’s an absolutely crock narrative. If people were honest about it, they would admit that this is the one conflict. In which when citizens get massacred, there is no outrage of any meaningful size, any institutions or public bodies against the people who did the massacres. No American campus had anti Hamas protests on October the 8th, 9th, 10th, onwards, and not to this date. I think there's something very peculiar about war that will always interest me, that it shows you people at their best and their very worst. When people don't know if they might live tomorrow, they know what matters to them more today. And the truth is, is the trauma that the Israeli public have been through from the seventh is also in its an ongoing trauma. And I, this is why I would say that the war will not be over until Israel's military and intelligence dominance is reasserted. And that's because what the seventh did, I think, at a very deep level for Israelis and Jews in the diaspora was To shake that core belief which is this at least is the place we're safe, not completely safe, but we have an army we have Intelligence infrastructure. How come it happened here? And you know, we don't know all of the explanations. We won't do until an inquiry like that after ‘73 takes place. But but I think that the deepest level that is that that is the real Israeli trauma, Is the parents I've spoken to in the hospitals and elsewhere who promised their children that the IDF would be there in minutes, whether it was people on their phones to their children trying to escape the Nova party. Or people in the safe rooms of the kibbutz communities in the south saying to their children always, you know, don't worry, the IDF will be here in minutes, and they weren't. And that's, that's a very, very challenging thing.
DS: I want to talk about the war. One year in, what is your assessment as to where the war is right now, where it's going?
DM: Well, it's gone on longer than anyone would like. Like everyone, I mean, I hope it finishes as soon as possible. Having seen the IDF in action in Gaza, I can tell you it is, I mean, these young men and women are extraordinary under conditions that I don't think any modern army has had to face. I mean, you know from Iraq, battles like Fallujah, similar, but not on this scale or for this duration.
DS: And not having to fight an enemy that's in tunnels.
DM: Yes, I mean, as all of the infrastructure of Hamas is dedicated to making it as, as possible as, as they can that civilians will be killed by the Israelis. Many terrible things were happening along the way. I mean, one that's always in my mind is the three hostages who walked out of a building and they were, they were shot by a soldier who, an IDF soldier who, and I remember speaking to somebody in Gaza after that and he said, look, Douglas, I mean, every day every day we have people coming out of buildings with white flags and the hands in the air, and then from the middle of them will come people firing Kalashnikovs dressed in exactly the same way so and i'm the reason why that's often in my mind is is is that that was one of the, quite a number of times in this war, where a terrible thing that happened was again used against the israelis Much of the media reported that terrible thing as look at the Israelis. They're so cruel. They even shoot their own people who have been held hostage. No, this is, um, again, that's just the treat of a society that has no knowledge of war anymore, but so yes, I think that the war has gone on longer than anyone hoped. Uh, I think that the situation with the hostages has remained what I thought it would be, which is that Sinwar would till the end be holding the best hostages as he would see it close to him as possible in order to eke out his own life. I do think that the situation is not over until the north is addressed.
DS: Israel's border with the north
DM: Yeah I lived for many months with citizens of a northern town who had been displaced and it has always been on my mind that you know, you cannot have tens of thousands of Israeli families unable to be in their own homes because of Hezbollah rocket fire into the north of Israel. I've been to their home cities more often than they have in the last year.
DS: They’re ghost towns.
DM: Ghost towns, many of these days. The ghost towns. And with a lot more, even until, even before recent events, with a lot more going on than either side admitted in terms of constant exchange of fire and so on. Again, the world pays no attention to it, always talks about Palestinian refugees, nobody talks about the Israeli refugees or the internally displaced people. Other things have gone slightly better than I expected. I was not displeased at events in Tehran the other week. Whoever it was who ensured that, uh, a certain Hamas leader attended the coronation in Tehran and didn't make the journey back. It's, it's an example of the necessary deterrence that Israel has to reestablish. So I think some of the deterrence has been reestablished. I'm concerned like everyone is about what happens in post war Gaza. How it's run. What it looks like and how everyone in the region and internationally can ensure that this isn't a war that has to happen again in another 15 years.
DS: You mentioned the hostages. This is unique. The tunnel system is unique, right? You talk to those who've worked on counterinsurgency. It's not, isn't really even a counterinsurgency, but fighting in war is the idea that there's something equivalent to the London underground in Gaza where Hamas can hide. And the IDF has to fight them and navigate these tunnels, many of which are like meat grinders and booby trapped. But the hostages, what a dilemma for Israel's leadership. Because they say that there's these twin goals, which are defeating Hamas and never letting Hamas be a force, at least in Gaza again, and returning the hostages. Not so easy to do both of those.
DM: No.
DS: On parallel tracks.
DM: No.
DS: What, what have you learned about Israel in terms of how it's wrestling with this hostage dilemma?
DM: Oh, it's terrible. I mean, it's terrible and it's what Hamas wanted. You know, I mean, um-
DS: But is there something unique to maybe the Israeli value system that they're-
DM: Well, yes. But I mean, of course, you know, the Israelis have always believed that, you know, you, you don't leave anyone behind. It's a key issue in the, in the army. It's a very important principle in the army. And at the same time, and there was a bit of divergence of opinion immediately after the 7th, even among some of the families who didn't join the hostage forum because they said, we will not have our loved one exchanged for a thousand Palestinian murderers out of Israeli prisons. I mean, one of the things that the world, again, always misreports is they always say it is Things like a prisoner swap as if a two year old baby stolen from the kibbutz in the south of Israel swapped for 500 Palestinian terrorists in Israeli prisons, is just a swap of prisoners, you know. And again another international media never reports what these people have done that they are bomb makers that they are suicide vests preparers that they are facilitators of attacks or have carried out knife attacks or gun attacks. Or any number of other things. They don't report that they just say prisoner swap. But of course, it's an incredibly difficult moral dilemma and has been for the israeli government from the beginning because you know hamas is is I mean its leadership is clever. It's it's evil and wicked, but it's clever. And Sinwar, what we know about him from his time in Israeli prisons was he, you know, he, he worked this out where he used his time in prison to study and to study Israeli methods of war and tried to understand his enemy. We'll obviously see what happened with the hostages, but he knew that. And they, he knew it from the handover of terrorists that he was included in that, that the best thing in the world, and he said this before, the best thing in the world for a Hamas person in prison in Israel is to hear that their fellow terrorists back home have kidnapped an Israeli soldier. So that's the best news you can get, because then, you know, you've got a chance of relief, even if you're in for life. That was how he got out as one of the thousand or more Palestinians. Who was swapped for the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit. So I think because as you know, and your listeners will know, because of that unbelievable deal, I mean, just, it was seen by many as crazy at the time. It seemed by many as crazy in hindsight, but that led to Sinwar getting out, which led to the seventh. I don't know what I'd do in that. This isn't to denigrate the leadership of Israel or anyone else who, who, who, it's an impossible, just an impossible situation. And that's why I mean, in recent days, I think the Israeli government has been put, the war camp has been put in an equally impossible situation. With this dispute over the, uh, uh, the corridor in the south of the Philadelphi corridor and the dispute over whether or not that should be the sticking point as opposed to the imminent release of the hostages. Now I've done some media in recent days, as I know you haven't, we try to explain this to people, but. I only hear one thing from the Western media, which is why is Benjamin Netanyahu being so belligerent.
DS: It's as though Hamas is a sideshow in all of this, regardless of what one thinks of Netanyahu. There's a sense that, that, that the prime minister of Israel is, has sole agency over whether there's going to be a hostage.
DM: And that, that, that is, that is a real problem in a democracy.
DS: But there's a trust deficit in Israel. So, so yes, it's absurd that that's how the conversation is being framed. On the one hand, on the other hand, the media here in the West points to, well, there are hundreds of thousands of Israelis are storming the streets to protest their government. So I think unique in, in war time, where you have a leadership that's fighting a war, a war that the overwhelming majority of Israelis from right to left support, at the same time as having serious questions about the prime minister,
DM: If you're grief stricken, as anyone would be, if you had family members who you knew were being held in dark tunnels and had been for almost a year, if you're that grief stricken, um, I mean, you'd do anything to get them back, but the leadership of Hamas does not care about the tears of Israeli mothers. It does not care. And there's nothing the families can do, frankly, to persuade Hamas to give back their loved ones. There is no leverage that an ordinary person can have over Hamas. And this, which is a very common problem in democracies, and it's one we just have to be aware of, it's that's a risk, always. There is always a possibility that if you cannot affect the person who's responsible, you will affect the next people in line who you think you can persuade. David Lammy in the UK-
DS: Foreign Secretary of the New Labour Government.
DM: Secretary Blinken. I don't think that Yahya Sinwar much cares for their advice and he doesn't have to pretend to and that's that that's the trick that people can make and I think a lot of people have it's it's a I mean I think everyone knows it's in some kind of domestic scenario where, you know, if there's some somebody who will not listen to you and somebody who may you might disproportionately exert your anger upon the person who might listen.
DS: Let me ask you about, you mentioned Lammy, the foreign secretary. Just today, as we're sitting here, he announced that he was limiting some defense exports or some licenses to UK defense contractors in their supply and sales to Israel. Literally days after we learned of these six Israelis slaughtered by Hamas while Israel is in the midst of fighting what is a defensive war. What on earth is he and his government thinking? What agenda do they think they're advancing in pursuing this? Do you think the timing was intentional?
DM: Um, it could have been intentional. It was rather difficult to read the mind of David Lammy because it suggests there is something to read. This is a man who, when he did a celebrity mastermind some years ago, was asked in the general knowledge, which English king succeeded Edward IV and he said Edward III. Uh, David Lammy is not our best, but, and he's not the worst either, but he's a weak man with not very much understanding of the situation in the Middle East. He's trying to appease a very virulent wing of his party, very virulent wing of the Labour party that includes people who are just pro Hamas. And, you know, the other thing is, I mean, I hate to say this, I sound like I'm being, I'm beating up my own country, I, I, I adore Britain, obviously, and I wish that it had not had this descent into second rate-ness that it, it seems to be suffering, but, uh, there is something pretty special about David Lammy, or indeed any British foreign secretary at the moment, telling other countries how, let alone allies, how to run a war. It's sort of audacious to do that, and also, of course, in the case of Israel, so bizarre because of the double triple standards again. Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister of Britain now, a man who nobody voted for with any excitement, probably not even Mrs. Starmer, uh, is, um, said just this week that we will continue to support Ukraine with whatever it takes. With whatever it takes, and at the same time the pretty minimal arms exports of UK should become should be rather Rather more humble about its arms export industry because it's not a roaring trade in any case. But yeah, they they've suspended some of the licenses in order to appease a small and virulent faction of extremists and racists in the labor party is ugly because It's it's it could set up a a sort of tumbling effect where country after country country after country does similar things. It requires a great deal of diplomacy from the Israelis not to say to the British how useless they are these days.
DS: Or how much the British depend on Israeli arms exports to their own country and cyber defense capabilities. I want to wrap this up on a, dare I say, more optimistic note, um, which is difficult to do as a Jew. You don't, you know, it doesn't come naturally, sort of like it's an out of body experience.
DM: Hahahahaha.
DS: Um, I'm trying to imagine how, what has to happen in the years ahead for us to look back at this period and say, yes, it was brutal. Yes, it was difficult. Yes, it was daunting. Yes, it seemed impossible. But Israel came out of it as difficult as it seemed at the time, stronger. The only analogy I can think and it's imperfect in the 1970s, if you look at the first half of the 1970s in Israel, 1972, you had the Munich Olympics, Israeli athletes slaughtered. 1973, Israel surprised by the Yom Kippur War, completely obliterating Israel's sense of triumphalism that was the legacy of the ‘67 Six Day War. 1974, you had the, uh, Ma'alot Massacre up in Israel's north, where Palestinian terror group came, infiltrated Israel from Lebanon and, And took hostage in May of, of 1974, over a hundred Israeli school children slaughtered many of them first time that had been done that kind of terror attack, slaughtering children, a precursor really to October 7th, 2023, the Soviet Union really clamping down on Soviet Jews that wanted to move to Israel and sending them to prisons and starving them and basically making it impossible for them to leave, 1975, the UN General Assembly passes a resolution comparing, they're not comparing, defining Zionism as racism. So that was the first half of the 1970s for Israel and the Jews. My father was very active on behalf of Jewish communal life in the United States, on behalf of Israel, on behalf of Soviet Refuseniks, that I mean, I was a little boy at the time, but in the peak of his activism, that was the that was the Jewish struggle at the time that I, the picture I just painted. And then you have 1976, you have the Entebbe terror attack, which on the one hand was also Jews being separated from others in the sense that Jews were going to, were taken hostage because they were Jews and are going to be slaughtered. And then this incredible rescue operation. And then there's a sense that things start to turn. And only a year after that, 1977, Anwar Sadat, the leader of Egypt, which was behind every, in one way or the other, behind every major war against Israel since its founding, flies to Israel, 1977, just a year after Entebbe and gives a speech before Israel's parliament, before it's Knesset and says, I want a peaceful resolution, a treaty with Israel. And then of course, two years later in 1979, you have the Camp David peace treaty between Israel and the largest country… People don't understand how significant that was. And it would be like today, Saudi Arabia would be like, like MBS, not only wanting to normalize with Israel, but flying to Israel and speaking before the Knesset. It was an astonishing thing given what Israel had been through. So on the one hand, you have those years of, of horror and one bad event after another, and then it like turns. And that peace treaty, by the way, with Israel and Egypt is as complicated as it is, it's held. Paint a picture for me of what you think has to happen for us to cut, you know, here Israel's in the middle of the seven front, effectively a seven front war, and its borders are shrinking, not expanding, because Israelis can't really live in the south, and as you said, they can't really live in the north. And so, what is already a tiny country is getting smaller, and is under siege from so many directions. Can you paint a picture of what it would look like and how we'd get there for Israel to look back this period and say yeah, it was bad and what?
DM: Well, what I've said from the beginning of this conflict is that Israel has to be allowed to win. And my belief is the reason why there have been endless rounds of conflict in the north and in the south is because Israel is prevented from winning. Winning is not the same thing as, uh, drawing. Somebody said to me last October, I remember in London said, you know, you shouldn't look at everything in such a binary light, Douglas. Not everything is binary. He was a very wise Jewish rabbi, as it happened, a relatively wise Jewish rabbi. Um, we were in disagreement about something, and I said, I disagree with you. Some things are totally binary. And he said, like what? I said, win, lose. Completely binary. Uh, and for winning, it's not just that the winning side needs to have won, the losing side needs to have known they've lost. My view is that this war can be over when Hamas and Hezbollah have lost, and when people in the region, as well as internationally, realize that there is no good future for anyone in the region in trying to wipe out the Jewish state. Now, obviously it all goes back to Iran. We, there's a lot we haven't touched on. I know most obviously that, you know, what's the problem in the region, Iran, Iran. And did I mention Iran? Um, if Iran is emboldened by all of this, of course, everything goes in the wrong direction and there's no good future for anyone in the region. But if Iran's power ambitions are pushed back, by which I mean the revolutionary Islamic government in Iran. Um, and that terrible government that's misgoverned Iran since 1979 is, is somehow pushed back. Then, you know, there is every reason to be hopeful about the future. One of the amazing things in the last year is, not just the, I mean, the accords you, you refer to the peace treaties have held, but that the Abraham Accords have held. And the Saudis joining it is not completely off the table, and indeed could be done quite fast after the war.
DS: And in fact, one of the reasons the Abraham Accords have held is because the Saudis give cover for it.
DM: Yep. And you can see, I can see, the possibility in the region of, uh, you know, some kind of unified rebuilding in Gaza. But all that, all of it is predicated on Iran not being allowed to continue to poison every well it can in the region. If other countries, I mean the Emiratis most obvious in a way, who've been remarkable through all this as well, if they can be on the rise and Qatar and Iran cannot be, then I think that'd be good for everyone, it'd be good for the region. But if various countries are allowed to continuously meddle and use the Palestinians as their pawns, In a regional power game, then not only Israelis will suffer, but the Palestinians will suffer. And there's no need for them to, there's no reason for them to. It all just depends on whether or not the men of violence, the death cultists can be pushed back or not. If they can be there's no reason that another 18 years from now the citizens of gaza And elsewhere in the region are able to build Instead of destroy. To my mind it all relies on one thing, realization that the jewish state is not going anywhere and that if you want to destroy it, you will destroy yourself and your own society and that's what's happened. That's the story of hamas. That was a story of the PLO. This war will almost certainly have produced a new generation of leaders inside Israel, which is one of them I mean, I think it already has just Amazing men and women of the young generation this time of trial has as often happens, but particularly so this past year, has thrown up and produced remarkable people who stepped up to the moment like the young men and women of Israel have. My hope would be that a new generation of Palestinian leaders and others will come along at some point. Maybe, I mean, I never thought that I would see in my lifetime things that MBS has managed to do in Saudi Arabia in a few years. You know, it just goes to show you can, you can surprise everyone.
DS: I tell young pro Israel activists today that when I was a young pro Israel activist, I like to still think of myself as young, when I was younger, a younger pro Israel activist, we used to talk about Saudi Arabia the way we today talk about Iran.
DM: Yep. And, uh, it was the same, like many years ago, I met that lovely man who was the former Israeli ambassador to Tehran in the 1970s under the Shah. And I just, think of that now, it seems impossible, but it was so then. These things can change, and it'll all depend on who the heroes are in the region. Crush and kill Sinwar and his terrorist friends, and make sure that the earth is salted over after the remains of Hamas are gone, and people may see that there is no future in that death cult.
DS: Is that your message to 5.5 million Palestinians that live within Gaza and the West Bank?
DM: It has to be. The Jews aren't going anywhere. And that they can have a homeland, the Palestinians, beside the Jewish homeland. And it's there as it has been since 1948. There are lots of things that are stopping it, but the main thing is whether your priority as Palestinians is the creation of a Palestinian state or the destruction of the Jewish state. If it's the first, they will get a Palestinian state. If it's the destruction of the Jewish state that they seek first and foremost, they won't get a Palestinian state.
DS: So you're not ruling out a Palestinian state?
DM: I mean, I think it's unlikely at the moment because of what has gone on. It's certainly not the, I mean, as one left wing Israeli leader said to me, uh, last year at the very least this isn't the time to talk about it. Palestinians who voted in Hamas and allowed them to take over the Gaza should not be rewarded with another state. I see Gaza as having already been given to them as a Palestinian state and it was one they got to vote on and everything else and we know what happened. I don't think you should give the Palestinians endless states. Certainly not after a terrorist attack, because it looks like a reward for the terror. But, uh, you know, the main, um, reason there isn't one is, is, as I say, goes back to that very, very first thing. Are you willing to live side by side with the Jewish state or not? And if you're not, you will not destroy the Jewish state, but you will destroy the opportunity to have a Palestinian state.
DS: 30, 40 years from now, you're reflecting on all these extraordinary experiences you've had covering wars and covering political events and covering revolutions and when you think of this past year, what do you think the one story or one image that will be etched in your memory when you reflect on this time? When I, when I think about extraordinary, for better or for worse, times I've lived through, 9/11 being in New York in the days after 9/11. I have certain images that I just my mind just goes right to when I think about my time in Iraq, I have someone says, what was your time like in Iraq? I have certain images that are certain stories that just my mind almost like a default naturally goes to.
DM: I don't think it's only one thing, I think it's two things simultaneously. I was once, some years ago in Israel, over Memorial Day and Independence Day, which as you know, one comes straight after the next. Memorial Day, the sirens go off, everybody gets out of their cars and It's a-
DS: It's a collective moment.
DM: A collective moment. And, uh, and people visit the cemeteries and, and so on and people, old comrades get back with their former battalions and remember their lost comrades and then independence day is celebrated. and suddenly the fireworks and people dancing. It's as crazy as a Jewish wedding.
DS: And for Israelis, it connects. We have the joy.
DM: Yes.
DS: We experienced the joy because we have independence and freedom. We have the independence of freedom because of the sacrifice is out.
DM: Exactly. And it feels like a very Jewish thing. You can never choose a bit of life and this, but it's always all together. The whole thing is always wrapped up together. So I think I will, I think, I hope, will have in my mind always that thing of the horror and at the same time the desire to preserve life, so that even even in the worst times in the worst places after the worst atrocities, this knowledge that you have to say yes to life. And you have to continue with life. And that you need to preserve and protect life. And, as I say, with the hope that out of all of the horror, good things will come and life will continue and people will continue to find a way to thrive and it'll be fine. It'll be fine.
DS: Well, when that metaphoric flame went up after October 7th that you articulated, and we, the sky was illuminated and we saw who was with us and who wasn't, you Douglas have been with us and um, I, I pray you stay healthy. So you keep doing what you're doing and um, from strength to strength really. And thank you for this conversation and for everything you're doing.
DM: Thank you. It's been a great pleasure.