CEASEFIRE - with David Horovitz
On October 8th, 2023, Hezbollah joined the war against Israel. Now, nearly fifteen months later, a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon may be imminent.
As of this evening in Israel, the Israeli security cabinet has officially approved a ceasefire deal with Lebanon. Under the proposal, Israeli forces would withdraw from Lebanon within 60 days, while Hezbollah forces would relocate farther north, effectively establishing a buffer zone. The Lebanese Army would be stationed in southern Lebanon, to ensure that Hezbollah remains north of the Litani River.
To analyze the key terms of the agreement, and help us unpack its military, political, and social implications, our guest is David Horowitz.
David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He was previously the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post, and editor and publisher of The Jerusalem Report.
David on X: https://x.com/davidhorovitz
The Times of Israel: https://www.timesofisrael.com/
Full Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
DH: We've been down this road many times before, including in, I suppose, the most significant 2006. You know, there was a war in 2006. There was a resolution, 1701, which was meant to ensure that there would be no Hezbollah deployment south of the Litani. That resolution is supposedly back in play now. Why? With all due respect for the efforts to bring one front to calm, what compelling reason is there to believe that things will be different this time?
DS: It's 11:30 AM on Tuesday, November 26th in New York City. It's 6:30 PM on Tuesday, November 26th in Jerusalem, Israel, where I am today with my guest, David Horovitz. I'm actually a guest in his home, so to speak, at the Times of Israel. We are here to discuss the developments that flow from the fact that one year and two months after Hezbollah joined the war against Israel, a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon is on the verge of being finalized. This evening, Prime Minister Netanyahu convened the security cabinet in Tel Aviv to approve the ceasefire with Hezbollah. Under this proposal, Israeli forces would withdraw from Lebanon within 60 days, while Hezbollah forces would relocate farther north. Effectively establishing a buffer zone between Hezbollah and the Israeli border. The Lebanese army, Lebanese National Army, would be stationed in southern Lebanon, ensuring, or the hope is that it would ensure that Hezbollah will remain north of the Litani River. I'm just going to go over a few terms of the agreement that we know so far, before I jump into my conversation with David. There will be a mutual ceasefire. Hezbollah or any other armed group will not act against Israel. Israel will not act in Lebanon against targets on its territory. Israel will be able to remain in Lebanon for up to 60 days following the declaration of a ceasefire, the U.S. has agreed to provide Israel with a letter supporting military action against imminent threats from Lebanon and efforts by Hezbollah to rebuild and rearm. The Lebanese army will be deployed at all crossings in the country, gradually replacing the IDF's presence. The residents of Southern Lebanon will be allowed to return to their homes. Any sale of weapons to Lebanon or production within its territory will be supervised by the Lebanese government. The deal includes a U.S. led oversight committee to monitor implementation and address violations. The committee will also include the government of France. And as I mentioned today, I'm with David Horovitz, who is based here in Jerusalem. He's the founding editor of the Times of Israel, which he founded in 2012. It is the most important English language news site covering Israel and the Middle East and the broader diaspora. Prior to this, when I first got to know David, he was at the Jerusalem Post where he was editor in chief from 2004 to 2011. David, a long overdue welcome to the Call Me Back podcast.
DH: Thanks, Dan. Pleasure.
DS: Good to be with you. So I want to jump right into this and then we'll talk about some other issues. But there are wide ranging implications to this agreement politically, militarily, socially, and I want to get into all of them. But there's one aspect that seems paradoxical. In one document in this agreement, as far as we understand, Israel guarantees that it will not act in Lebanon against targets on its territory. In a separate document, which is a letter from the United States, as we understand it, the U.S. would support military action by Israel in Lebanon against threats. So how do you reconcile these two documents?
DH: I think maybe even take another step back and recognize that this is an agreement being signed between Israel and Lebanon that really relates to a terrorist organization, a terrorist army that is very dominant in Lebanon called Hezbollah. I don't think they're signing the agreement. So under the terms of this agreement, a Lebanese government that doesn't really have the capability to bind Hezbollah to its will, is ostensibly doing that, and therefore you have an internal contradiction and the side letter which kind of resolves it to some extent. As far as Lebanon is concerned, you know, certain things are being said, but the United States, which brokered this, recognizes that Israel may well have to tackle Hezbollah, and therefore you have this accompanying letter. And if all that sounds confusing or bizarre, yeah, that's what it is.
DS: So based on what we know so far, do you think this is a good deal for Israel?
DH: It's too complicated to give a yes, no answer, right? There are a few things that are worth bearing in mind when you try and make that assessment. One is that the degree to which Hezbollah is so much a part of the fabric of so much of Lebanon, including physically with its military deployments. Uh, you know, in the last few weeks, especially, the Israeli army has had a ground operation in southern Lebanon. There've been some fairly staggering Israeli achievements, including blowing up thousands of Hezbollah's pagers on their owners in an operation that was planned for years. But you also know that Hezbollah has kept up the fire even in the last few days. On Sunday, there were something like 250 rockets that were fired at Israel, including to central Israel.
DS: By the way, that's the day I landed here and I was being told it was the most rocketed day against Israel since October 7th in a single day.
DH: Maybe it's only one of the most. And, you know, we're told that Hezbollah has been degraded by something like 70 or 80%. Well, if that's the case, that still makes it three times stronger than Hamas ever was. And its military is deployed far, far North in Lebanon. I mean, the only way that Israel could, in some kind of semi hermetic way, take out Hezbollah would be to take over all of Lebanon. Israel doesn't want to do that. It does want to stem the threat that Hezbollah poses. And this is, you know, unsatisfactory, but deemed necessary in terms of, you know, this deal, as far as Netanyahu is concerned, on the other hand, you've got 60,000 residents in Northern Israel who, if you listen to what's been going on here in the last day or so, are, I mean, the evacuees are wary, to put it mildly, and the local council chiefs are, you know, furious.
DS: So the local council chiefs are like, basically like the municipal governments of these towns and villages in the north.
DH: Right. The local leaders of northern, you know, people are responsible at the most direct level for their citizens who've seen, I mean, you know, 400 plus days of relentless rocket fire, you know, deadly, right? You know, anti tank weaponry that is, you know, focused on houses that, you know, there are certain areas where three quarters of houses in communities are uninhabitable anymore. And Hezbollah is not going to be destroyed, right? At the end of this process, you know, this, this two months negotiation, if it plays out, Hezbollah will still exist. Hezbollah will still have capabilities. They, you know, the critics are saying this is a missed opportunity. There's so much legitimacy. There's so much support in Israel. We need to do more. The army has said from before the ground operation, one way or another, this is going to end with an agreement. So wouldn't it have been better if we could have reached an agreement? Israel, the political level would say, yeah, but we couldn't, Hezbollah wasn't prepared to do it. They're only prepared for it because they've suffered so much damage, but they've not been destroyed. So by definition, it's an unsatisfactory agreement. How unsatisfactory? There's a range of views. It's certainly not the solution to Hezbollah.
DS: Okay. I want to come back to the solution to Hezbollah, but let's just, I just want to take these different factions. So you have the Northern Israeli residents, the residents in those villages and towns up north, most of whom 60 plus thousand have not been home in over a year. Israel, in the last few months, added as a war aim, as one of its objectives, returning the residents home, which means basically muting the threat from Hezbollah. So those residents are now going to be told, go home?
DH: I mean, the full, you know, language of that war aim was safely, you know, securely to their homes. And that's a big question. Is this going to be safe? What we're hearing is there won't be like, uh, tomorrow, some kind of Israeli government statement that says, okay, folks, you know, safe to go back home now, rather, you know, they'll have to be some proof. And in fact, as of this moment, the way that Netanyahu and people around him have depicted this is, you know, this is a ceasefire. This is not by any means a permanent arrangement, and we're not sure that it's going to play out. We're not sure how it's going to play out. And I don't think there's going to be a call tomorrow or the day after by the Israeli government to those 60,000 residents of the north saying, yeah, you can go home now. It's safe to do so. First of all, they wouldn't go home. They're going to need some kind of tangible sense that things have changed. At the very least, the core component of that will be time. If nothing bad happens in Northern Israel for a few weeks or for that couple of months, then just maybe there'll be, you know, more confidence to go back. And in the last few days, really, you'd say the opposite has been the case, that there's been an escalation, as you mentioned, of Hezbollah fire. And by the way. deeper into Israel. It's not only the homes where those 60,000 people live that are being targeted. It's way deep in Israel. And we know Hezbollah still has thousands of drones and probably tens of thousands of rockets and precision guided missiles that can reach anywhere in Israel. So nobody should think that any of this, even the people who welcomed the accord, that this marks, you know, a conclusive end to anything.
DS: Another group, I just want to hit a few of these constituencies, Miluim reservists who are stretched. As you have reported repeatedly on Times of Israel, I've talked about different guests. Some of these people have served well over 200 days. I was with a family member the other night who has a friend, close friend, who's up there now, who's in and out of Lebanon, goes in for a few days at a time, comes back, goes in for a few days. You know, when they go in, their cell phones are taken away. They have no, you know, family has no idea how long they'll be in for. They have no communication. It's a huge deployment up there. We all think Gaza, Gaza, Gaza. It's like the concentration of forces are up there. Tremendous uncertainty, high number of casualties, especially over the last few weeks. Is this being welcomed, generally speaking, by the reservists that sort of, they get a breather or do you think the sentiment will be, yeah, sure, we get a breather, but let's be realistic, we're just going to have to be back.
DH: I'm sure the emotions are mixed. You're right. People are exhausted. And you know, 200 days in many cases, much more than 200 days of the 400 since October the 7th. There has been an awful lot of military activity in Gaza, but you're right to say that the focus for quite some time now has been much more on Lebanon. You know, one of the political factors, which we didn't even get to yet is, you know, I suspect the ultra Orthodox parties are, you know, somewhat supportive of this. In part because of self interest, you know, the, the sense they may feel that this will reduce the pressure on the government to draft more of their young males.
DS: It takes the pressure off.
DH: I'm not sure how much it really will turn out to do that.
DS: You mean you take the pressure off? I agree with you.
DH: I'm not sure because, you know, the, the strain is overwhelming and the sense of inequality and an unfair-
DS: The dye’s been cast. There's a sense. Yeah.
DH: Yeah. So I don't think so, but a huge range of emotions, certainly exhausted people need a break. We've been down this road many times before, including in, I suppose, the most significant 2006. You know, there was a war in 2006. There was a resolution, 1701, which was meant to ensure that there would be no Hezbollah deployment south of the Litani. That resolution is supposedly back in play now. Why, with all due you respect for the efforts to bring one front to calm one front, what compelling reason is there to believe that things will be different this time? The fact that there's perhaps more American involvement, American oversight of the implementation? Maybe, but if ultimately it's the Lebanese army and UNIFIL that are supposed to be policing Hezbollah, Israel knows That's not going to happen.
DS: And UNIFIL being the peacekeeping force.
DH: Yeah, yeah. Peace observing is probably, you know, a fairer description to even empathize with them a little. They're not supposed to be intervening militarily to a profound extent. I suppose the Lebanese army is meant to do that. You know, even the way we're talking about this, I think highlights the necessary skepticism.
DS: You covered the 2006 Lebanon war. It was 34 days. At the end of it, UN resolution, Security Council Resolution 1701, which you're just referring to, which Hezbollah was supposed to move to north of the Litani River. Sound familiar? And the Lebanese army was supposed to disarm Hezbollah and the Lebanese army and UNIFIL was supposed to prevent Hezbollah from filling this vacuum again, right there on Israel's northern border. Many on the right in Israel, on the political right, so that was 2006, let's call it over the last 15, 18 years, have been very critical of Hezbollah. That resolution and the legacy of it and how badly it failed, and they were celebrating Israel finally confronting Hezbollah again. Are you surprised more on the right have not been openly critical of what appears to be a resolution that's eerily similar to 1701?
DH: First of all, they're, you know, they are critical. The relative muted nature of the criticism is a function of loyalty to Netanyahu ultimately, and with whom, you know, they feel their political futures are more stable and dependable than with anybody else. But there is criticism. So I mentioned, you know, wary residents and municipal chiefs who are, you know, really furious. There are, you know, the two far right ministers who are in the security cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir are pretty critical. And then there are people within Likud, Avi Dichter, who's also in that forum, has been critical. There's a recognition that this is, you know, a good way short of perfect. And there's also lots of questions which I'm guessing you'd want to ask about anyway. You know, Netanyahu said I can't do a deal in Gaza that involves the army leaving, even to get the hostages out, because we won't have international legitimacy to go back. And therefore it kind of begs the question, if international legitimacy is sufficient for this Lebanon deal, why isn't it for Gaza when there are lives that can be saved? And how credible is the argument in either of those contexts?
DS: So, first of all, why do you think Netanyahu did this deal?
DH: Among the arguments cited are the notion that he could not dare defy the Biden administration because it would have implications for arms supplies and UN resolutions and, and so on. I'm not necessarily persuaded by that. I think there is this realization, again, it comes back to what I said at the beginning, we should take out the politics of this. This is not the same context. This is a whole country in which a terrorist army is deployed, a whole vast sovereign country. Uh, that's not the case with Gaza. You know, there's the very, very troubling idea that is around in some circles that maybe this is some kind of quid pro quo on the far right of his coalition, there's a great desire to maintain Israel's control of Gaza and even resume settlement in Gaza. And, you know, is the price of allowing that at least he's reducing the pressure on the Lebanese front. You know, there are lots of arguments. I do think, I mean, in terms of just a fair one step back position, it's really important to bear in mind that you're not going to be able to rout Hezbollah from Lebanon without taking over all of Lebanon. And in that case, in that respect, it's not the same as Gaza. And there was a realization from the start, I think, that it would end with an agreement. I think some of the criticism is more nuanced, you know, why rushing to do a ceasefire? Isn't there more that can yet be done to Hezbollah? Why are there not arrangements in this agreement that would help with international support to begin to transform Lebanon, where lots of people don't want to be enthralled to Hezbollah? You know, what, what about allocation of even policy, nevermind resources? What's the focus on? How do we prevent Lebanon from being vulnerable to Hezbollah, and by extension, of course, Israel being vulnerable to Hezbollah. There doesn't seem to have been any focus on that. Any kind of genuine long term, this would change the region a little bit. And remember, it wasn't all that long ago that people looked at Lebanon and thought, well, just maybe it could be headed in a different direction. Just maybe it could be one of those moderating countries in the region. I mean, that's long forgotten, but that was a thought not all that long ago.
DS: Okay. Gaza. So a deal like this, it's a little bit of apples and oranges, that said, versions of a deal like this, as you alluded to, have been proposed, discussed, considered for Gaza. Why no Gaza and yes here?
DH: Look, I don't have a good enough argument that's acceptable to me. I mean, there are lots of, troubling arguments, uh, one of which I've raised the notion that this, this coalition depends on two far right factions and, and the Likud itself, you know, and by the way, there's a goodly proportion of the Israeli electorate, maybe 30% at Quintesson polls who want to resettle Gaza. The idea that Netanyahu you know, forewent a potential deal in recent months under which in principle he would have agreed to end the war, maybe could have got, I don't want to quote numbers, but you know, we've, we've had talk of 20 or 30 hostages in the early stages of a deal with the assumption that it would break down. Why would you not have done that deal? I don't have a good enough answer for that. That's acceptable to me because it seems to me, of course, that that should have been a priority. And, and if you're saying that the international community or the United States has got a side letter here that says Israel can, you know, go back and attack, why couldn't that have been achieved in Gaza? And more than that, the argument, the key argument that Natanya, who raised at the height of what was deemed to be the moment when, when a deal was possible. Remember Biden had unveiled an Israeli proposal at the end of May, and it was then discussed was all of a sudden he came up with this thing about the Philadelphi corridor and was gonna escape into Egypt with hostages and from then to Iran or who knows where, and this by the break interconnects with this evolving scandal about leaked intelligence documents that that served Netanyahu's cause one of which turned up in build and so on. The arguments don't hang together. It's not a strong enough argument to say I couldn't do a deal to get some of these hostages out because we have to remain on the Philadelphi corridor between Gaza and Egypt. It's just not a powerful argument. By the way, you know, you're speaking to me. This isn't something that lots of other people have said, but I've written about it. The way the Gaza deal, the Hamas, Israel Hamas deal was being set up, there were really worrying elements to that deal, including very early a release of some terrible people, large numbers of them to the West Bank, right? In other words, Hamas was clearly hoping that if that deal went through, it would be able to stir up all kinds of hell in the West Bank.
DS: So I just want to stay on that for a moment because it's important and it's gotten lost, I think, in a lot of the debate and heat. But I heard, even heard this from a Biden administration official who was involved with the negotiations that the understanding was some of the most hardened Palestinian terrorists serving multiple life sentences in Israeli prisons, Israel was open to releasing some of them at the end, far deeper into these phases in a potential deal. And suddenly, in these negotiations at some point, I guess it was in the early summer, Hamas said, no, those hardened terrorists we want released right away, right at the front end. And there was a theory that as the Biden official put it to me, that maybe some of those terrorists would be released in return for male Israeli soldiers, which were considered to be the most valuable hostages that Hamas had. And Hamas wanted to get really valuable terrorists out of Israeli prisons. I'm not trying to engage here in any kind of equivalence, but I'm just articulating it the way the Biden folks interpreted what Hamas was requesting, and by frontloading the release of those terrorists, A, at the very beginning of the process, those terrorists would have been released. And to your point, they would have been released into the West Bank, and that that was actually Sinwar's part of his scheme. Part of his master plan was to unleash these monsters into the West Bank to really light up that front. So, I mean, it was complicated.
DH: Yeah, I just want to take that one step further. So, first of all, when we saw what we understand to have been the terms of the deal that was being discussed, in May and in June. There it was. I mean, it's in there in the material that's been published, and it's indeed, as you say, front loaded, lots of really bad people into the West Bank in return for the, for the Israeli women, including the surveillance soldiers and so on. If Netanyahu had come out, by the way, Netanyahu released, more than a thousand security prisoners for Gilad Shalit, including Sinwar, right? If Netanyahu had come and said, I can't do this. This will open another front. It will be terrible. I think there would have been more empathy for the argument. Instead, he advanced this Philadelphi corridor argument, which just doesn't hold together. And that's really troubling in the context now, where you're doing a deal in Lebanon, where you ostensibly have international support to go back as needed. And yet you've said, I couldn't do a deal in Gaza to free hostages because we'd never get international support to go back. I just can't reconcile that.
DS: Was there ever any thinking that any deal with Hezbollah in the North would be tied to some movement in Gaza?
DH: Well, that's a claim. It's a claim being advanced by people around Netanyahu that by isolating Hamas, you've taken Hezbollah out of the equation, Hamas will feel under more pressure, therefore there'll be a better opportunity to do a hostage deal. That's an argument.
DS: By taking Hezbollah off the table, Right.
DH: You're isolating Hamas because Hezbollah is out of the equation and therefore there's, you know, a greater opportunity maybe for some kind of a hostage deal because Hamas will be under more pressure. We shall see.
DS: But until now, Hezbollah was never willing to do any kind of deal or engage in any kind of ceasefire unless there was some kind of resolution.
DH: That's been a change in the last few days or maybe the last few weeks behind the scenes that Hezbollah was ready to not to do the deal to, to not prevent Lebanon doing a deal deal. without a guaranteed end to the war in Gaza.
DS: And one other shift I've been sensing here, and I've been talking about on my podcast, is the idea that, I don't hate to generalize, but the consensus among Israelis is that the war they have is with Tehran, the war they have is with the Islamist regime in Iran, that the Palestinian issue is just, was already subordinated, and it's just becoming more and more and more subordinated. The recognition over the last few months that they're really at war with Iran. I guess, first, do you agree that that's the kind of general mood here in Israel? There's a real understanding that they've had this very localized sense of the conflict and there's just a growing reality that it's not really about the Palestinians, it's about Iran, A, and B, if that's the case, then where does a deal with Hezbollah fit into this focus on Iran?
DH: So, I don't think it's necessarily a contradiction. In other words, recognizing that ultimately this is a war against Iran is not to completely marginalize the fact that you have an ongoing conflict with the Palestinians. What we saw on October the 7th was Hamas with a great deal of support. Remember, Hamas's relationship with Iran was not particularly smooth all through the years. And at some points they were certainly not wanting to be seen as part of, you know, the same cause as Iran, if you like, they became identified with Iran much more closely. So I think Israelis recognize, I would put it differently. I think Israelis, I mean, there's never been a period in Israel, I don't think when there would be less willingness to partner the Palestinians to anything that involves relinquishing security, leverage or control over them because Hamas invaded from territory where Israel had no claim, had pulled all the settlements out, had pulled back to the border. They invaded, right? That wasn't what they wanted. They wanted to destroy Israel, not to control Gaza. Israel refused to believe that that was the case. And in the West Bank, did they all rise up in anger at Hamas? How dare you invade? You've compromised all of our efforts to have Israel withdraw from West Bank territory because you've told them that leaving territory brings disaster. Not at all. In fact, you've had Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction when Sinwar was finally killed by Israel, lording him as a great national leader, right? And therefore Israelis look, they look to Gaza. Hey, we left that territory, terrible things happened. They look to the West Bank and those people there who are meant to be the relative moderates were really happy about it. So, they don't think that this has marginalized the Palestinian issue, they see it, we see it as ultimately part of this incredible hostility in parts of the region to Israel, coordinated by an Iran that has now attacked Israel directly, that openly seeks Israel's demise, and that is arming and inspiring those people on our immediate borders.
DS: I don't want to, you know, go right to the darkness, but I will. If this deal proves to fail at some point in the near future, what could that look like? Like, how does it fail? Give me a scenario where, where it falls apart.
DH: You speak to me for long enough, we'll always be in the, in the dark side, you know, certainly in recent months and even years, right? But maybe we should ask the question differently or look differently. You know, we should ask ourselves, how will we see that it's succeeding, because I think there is so much skepticism and wariness for understandable reasons that we've talked about, you know, if there's genuine calm in the north for a couple of months, that would already, it would be a sign. I still wouldn't get carried away, right? If people in the north or people evacuated from the north, you know, these are people just like the rest of us with concerns and children and vulnerabilities, they're not going to go back unless or until they see and feel for themselves, not because the government is telling them anything that I mean, the credibility of this government at the sort of basic practical level is very, very low. It's a very dysfunctional government. It hasn't really been terribly helpful to the people. Uh, ministers, you know, you, you hear that again, the municipal leaders, when was the last time this or that minister ever came up north physically for the day? Very rare, often canceled, too dangerous, et cetera, et cetera. So the people and their local leaders will need to have a credible sense of safety. If that doesn't happen, then you're in failure territory as well. If that does happen, then. Well, how credible is it to think that this is going to be lasting? Has anything other than the not strong Lebanese army and the not capable UNIFIL done anything to make sure that Hezbollah is not rearming? You know, I, I think there are, there are so many obvious barometers of success. I think we, you know, assume the worst and then let's say, oh, actually something different is happening. I'd be unfortunately pretty surprised to see something credible happening. I think we're going to be concerned fairly quickly that, yeah, there's an agreement and there's a temporary halt. Is Israel going to be more active than it was? I mean, there's a lot of, you've probably heard people talking about the tent that Hezbollah put up in the border area. Israel didn't even dare because it didn't want to spark something wider, take down a, you know, a provocative in your face, hey, we're right on the fence.
DS: This was a tent that was put up right over the border at the border area.
DH: It was up until not terribly long ago and it wasn't targeted. His bottle was deployed right up to the border, right up to the border. We haven't yet heard the full story of why they didn't pile in. Obviously on October the eighth, they started firing rockets, but they didn't mount the ground invasion for which they had been preparing. So again, you know, how credible is it? It has its ball actually come back to the, the villages of Southern Lebanon. Is it armed there? Did Israel find everything already there? You know, almost certainly not an awful lot, yes. But you know, there are so many areas of this reality where it will be all too easy to see failure and where credible success will be, you know, I think almost a welcome surprise.
DS: I want to read here from a post by Rich Goldberg, who was an official in the Trump administration, the first Trump administration, who worked on Iran counter proliferation issues for the National Security Council in the first Trump White House. And he's quite critical of the deal as the details were emerging. And, I won't read the entirety of what he wrote, but he wrote, “when you're analyzing a ceasefire deal that you know will be violated by Hezbollah and will not be enforced by either the Lebanese army or Lebanese military or UN, the only details that matter are whether there are built in future political constraints on Israeli freedom of action to confront the reality of an unverified and unenforced deal. The monitoring committee-” he writes, Rich Goldberg writes- “strikes me as something someone thinks is a good idea today but may not be down the road. The U.S. should not seak to be the arbitor of what Israel acceses is necessary for it’s self-defense. I'm not sure why Israel would trust far less friendly countries with that power either, meaning like France or any of these other countries that are involved. Members of any quote unquote, monitoring committee should run far away from any perception that membership or chairmanship comes with a power influence. Otherwise there will be an obvious pressure to constrain Israeli actions in the future.” And then finally he says, “the only credible monitoring committee that exists in Southern Lebanon is Israeli intelligence. The only credible enforcement committee that exists in Southern Lebanon is the IDF.” So, everything we've been taught about Jewish national sovereignty, the modern Jewish state, and a IDF, is that Israel is in control of its own security. And the idea that there's some committee that's telling Israel what it can and can't do, I mean, what he's arguing here is the only committee that should be monitoring is Israeli intelligence, the only one that's forcing is the IDF. Is that a shock? I know we hit this before, cause it has echoes of 1701, but just when you take a step back, this idea that Israel has to depend on these other bodies to help it decide when it acts is, you know, here we are a little over a year after October 7th. It's hard to believe that it's getting itself locked into something like that.
DH: You know, I think it's worse than that. Okay, and I think it's worse than that because his assumption is that if Israel had complete freedom of action, its intelligence and its army and its political echelons would do the right thing. You're in an Israel that doesn't have that confidence now, certainly not as a consensual public view, right? Israeli intelligence failed utterly before October the 7th in Gaza. I mean, utterly. You, me, or anybody we know would have done a better job because we would have seen, like, Hamas is, you know, drilling at the fence and we've got their plans to invade. We need to have more troops on that border, right? So intelligence has failed. The army failed to protect people. And in the Lebanon context, we've had years of public complaint, including from the people who live on the Northern border. And, you know, some way back from the Northern border, Hezbollah is looking down on us. They're laughing at us. They're getting ready to attack. They've got all these capabilities. You didn't even take down their positions at the border, much less prevent them from arming and so on. So, you know, there are concerns that Israel is now tying itself to some kind of international enforcement committee, albeit with, you know, certain side letter potential indulgence of responding. But I'm just adding into that, even if there was no ostensible constraint, the public here is not confident that the political echelon and the military leadership and the intelligence leadership are sufficiently on the ball and capable and ready to act and so on. It's worse, even than that concern would suggest.
DS: All right. I want to switch gears here briefly and talk to you about the Times of Israel. So founded in 2012, I want to talk about what you've been dealing with the times of Israel over this past year, but just briefly, the founding impulse of the Times of Israel was what? Because I do feel that this publication has always been indispensable, but it's been especially so this past year, but you didn't know that this year was coming when you founded it.
DH: Yeah, I'd have liked this year not to have come.
DS: Right.
DH: And you know, our traffic goes up and all those things, the more complicated and difficult and dire in some cases the reality is in Israel, I'd much rather that we had lower traffic, less resonance and things were basically better here, right? Safer here, normal, exactly. No, I said that because I thought it was important that there should be a journalistic outlet that is not linked to any partisan view in Israel. That is, you know, I called it the Tides of Israel because that, on the one hand, suggests sort of a certain gravitas, but also underlies. This is a, as the Iranians would say, a Zionist enterprise. This is a website that wants Israel to thrive as a majority Jewish democratic state. We want to be able to tell people what's going on. We certainly have analysis and a very vibrant debate. Blogs platform and so on, but our reporting is as fair as we can make it so that people can make their own minds up. I get castigated from left and right, which is I think a necessary, but not sufficient-
DS: Healthy sign.
DH: Right. It's not, it's good. If I wasn't, that would be terrible. And anyway, so I thought it was important and we have a fantastic team here and it's been, the last year has been as terrible for our Israeli citizen journalists, citizens who are journalists, I should say, as for any other Israelis. We've had people in, you know, on our team who've been in the army. We've got people with kids in the army. We've got people who have very close relationships with people who've lost loved ones, hostages, and so on. We're, you know, we're part of the fabric and we're trying to do our job at the same time as that.
DS: Part of what you do is explaining Israel to the diaspora and to the broader world. It's not the only thing you do. You obviously make editorial choices every day where there's, you are covering Israel, you're covering the Israeli government, you're sometimes fiercely critical of the Israeli government. In terms of the world's response to October 7th and to Israel's response, the world's coverage and response to Israel's response to October 7th; in this past year, when you try to interpret what's happening here for the broader world, what has surprised you the most? What has shocked you the most? I'm sure you have a long list, but in the interest of, and I know it's late and I know you've got a late night, but-
DH: I mean, there's two things, I suppose, that are high on the list. It's not everything. One is, as a journalist, I'm pretty dismayed by the not very good journalism done by very well-resourced outlets. I mean, it's very hard to cover a war when you don't have reporters in the war zone. The IDF takes our journalists in occasionally, sometimes it takes foreign journalists in, but there's no independent journalism permanently in Gaza. There's on the whole local hires, and it's dangerous to say, to write and say things that are, you know, It's problematic for Hamas, shall we say. And yet, after more than a year of Hamas lying about endless things that are going on in Gaza, I don't understand why journalistic outlets that take themselves very seriously and the people take very seriously, give credibility to Hamas claims and don't even always say that they are Hamas. I mean, they talk about the Gaza health ministry as though that's some kind of Western independent, trustworthy source. It happens all the time. You should look at the material that comes out of Gaza. Some of it might be true. Most of it, or much of it, is unverifiable. It's really hard to cover a war, but at least be more skeptical and try. Um, so I find that very troubling. And the other thing, I mean, and I could talk a lot more about that, but I'll spare us all. The anti Semitism thing, Dan, that you were shocked by. I mean, you know, we grew up in a generation where we thought after World War II, people had realized the terrible things that people can do to each other, and maybe had reached for their better selves and marginalized hatreds, including the oldest hatred. And so as an ex Brit, it's pretty shocking for me to see from the river to the sea projected onto Big Ben and as somebody with lots of relatives, my wife's American, so, you know, relatives in, in New York, having people march down Broadway with Hamas banners and so on. And you know, there's the, the sort of cliche about they don't even know what river and what sea it is that they're seeking Palestinian control over. I, I find that, apart from, I don't think it's laughable. I think it's insulting. You know, why would you campaign for a cause without even bothering to find out what it is you're campaigning for? That's just such a terrible reflection, I don't know, on, on the people who are out there campaigning. Now, some of them know exactly what they're campaigning for, but there are so many useful idiots. And, you know, that's it. campus, the leaders of the world's most prestigious universities appearing in and testifying on Capitol Hill as though they're, you know, lawyered up white collar criminals who don't dare say something that is obvious about the problems of inciting genocide. So it's pretty horrific, that rise of antisemitism, and that's not something I expected to see. When, when the obsession is with Israel, and when the effort is to deny Israel the tools, practically, diplomatic and military tools to defend itself, that's antisemitism. And that's, you know, pretty horrifying to me.
DS: As someone who is trying to explain, not, not in a propagandistic way, but just explaining the news of Israel to the world. There's often this criticism. I hear it all the time. Why doesn't Israel tell its story better? Israel's communications, its strategic communications, whatever, it's, the way it explains its case and tells its story is horrendous. And, I think there's some truth to that, on the one hand. On the other hand, I sometimes think, really? Is that really the issue? Because, is there a story Israel could tell that would just, completely drench all this hatred and like extinguish all the energy, the negative energy that's being toxic, negative energy that's being unleashed against Israel. Is that really what it's about? If Israel just kind of did a little bit better in TikTok messaging than its critics.
DH: I don't think it would move the needle from one side to the other, but it would move it. It would nudge it. And I want you to understand how pathetic public diplomacy is in Israel to the point where you're the Times of Israel, Hamas is making a claim. What does Israel say? We need some words because what is Israel don't say anything. October the 17th last year, you know, Hamas claims that Israel has bombed Al Akhli hospital, hundreds of people dead. The Israeli army, whose spokesperson tries not to lie, which is a good thing and was not always the case in years past, right? Or mislead. We're checking into it. But at the civilian level, where was the official coming out and saying, of course, Israel does not deliberately target hospitals. We are looking into this, but we'll assume that this is not an Israeli strike. There were no words to write, right? Not being very good at public diplomacy? There is no, essentially there is no Israeli public diplomacy. And I do think it would make a difference. I'll give you another example. There was a human rights watch report and an NGO that's, um, I think fairly hostile to Israel. I think it's safe to say that, uh, they issued a report. I assume Israel knew the report was coming. There was no Israeli comment on that report for hours, for hours and hours and hours.
DS: This was when, which report?
DH: Last week it related, and there was no Israeli response to the allegations in that report for many, many hours. Now, I'm not saying, I mean, you can say, well, the whole world hates us and the international media would never. And it's not true. International media would give an Israeli response if there was an Israeli response, you know, give people who want to be fair minded, at least some of the basic tools to enable Israel's account of what is happening at the most real time as well as the deeper narrative, you know, make that available, you know so I don't think like I said, I don't think you're gonna win over the haters and I don't think you're gonna persuade people who set out to demonize and ultimately setting out to destroy Israel. But I think you would win over a goodly proportion of the I didn't know and I don't know and well what are the Israelis saying, you know, at least give them some material to understand how you see that things are playing out.
DS: Final question. Is there anything out of this past year that makes you hopeful? I know we can get pretty dark here and we do go dark and I do try to end a lot of these conversations not being, you know, too rosy eyed and not being, you know, I'm not trying to sugar coat at all. Really. I'm just curious when I talk to Israelis, cause they have been moments or there've been developments certainly over the last few weeks, actually, where they start to see, maybe there's a way out of this mess, the transformation of the region, changes that this past year will force on Israeli society. You can go local, you can go global.
DH: Look, the first thing is, and I wouldn't do justice to my view of Israel if I don't, you know, go darker a little bit first before I try to reach some light.
DS: I asked for some lightness, you go, no, no, no, I gotta give you some more darkness.
DH: I promise you I'll try to get there. But I'm, you know, I'm, I'm speaking honestly, I'm very concerned about the damage being done within Israel by this coalition, by this prime minister. He's very divisive. His coalition is, has incredibly extreme elements. I'm worried about the wellbeing of Israeli democracy. It just wouldn't be right for me to, to not mention that we don't need to go any deeper, but it's trouble that, you know, there's, there's a region in which there is a great deal of hostility and then there's a weakening of Israel from within. That's very troubling. To the light, look, this is an incredibly resilient country. And, uh, this is a country with a people's army. We talked about reservists. It's the people of Israel. It's, you know, everybody's sons and cousins and fathers. I mean, people in doing reserve duty in their thirties and forties and even in their fifties and so on, recognizing, you know, to a very large extent, this is a necessary war. Israel has been, was attacked on one front, them on another and behind the scenes. And overtly now Iran is trying to coordinate the goal of destroying Israel. People recognize that. In terms of resilience, Dan, I mean, think about it. We've had times where they've told you, hey, you know, Iran has fired some drones. They'll be here in 12 hours. We'll keep you posted. I'll actually send some cruise missiles. Now that'll be a little quicker. I'll actually ballistic missiles on the way. You know, you've got 12 minutes, right? And we had that, you know, with this is insane. We're very isolated at the most practical level, which are the airlines that are flying it to Israel at the moment, by the way, airlines from the Emirates as well as El-Al and not much else, right? So you're isolated. You see a world that is hostile to you, and by the way, where your reality is, is you feel misrepresented, which a great deal of, of Israelis feel, and yet such incredible resilience and a sense that we better hang in there together because this country is under threat. I don't think we can take it for granted. I don't think we can take that there is sufficient unity to defend ourselves, but that has been the case. And in terms of resilience, the terms of resilience, this country is astonishing. I mean, the second Intifada, you got up every day knowing people were going to try and kill you and people did not leave en masse. You know, it's, it's an incredible thing, but I don't think we should take it for granted. It has proved remarkable in terms of commitment to the country, hanging tough. It's astonishing. I want to leave on the up, but we shouldn't take that for granted either.
DS: All right. David Horovitz, we will leave it there. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. The belly of the beast. Uh, the nerve center. And I know you are going to have a late night, so I will let you go. Thanks for being here. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huergo. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.