WAR AND STRIFE - with Seth Frantzman
Israel’s pre-October 7th and post-October 7th worlds are colliding, as the war in Gaza resumes, along with the internal strife that preceded it.
Today we discuss Israel’s new and expanding military campaign in Gaza, its objectives, the difference in war-fighting strategy between the IDF’s former chief-of-staff and new chief-of-staff, and the kind of enemy the IDF is facing now in Gaza compared to what the IDF was facing before the ceasefire. All of this is against the backdrop of domestic political tensions reaching a boiling point over the Government’s efforts to remove the head of the Shin Bet and the Attorney General.
Our guest is Seth Frantzman, who joins us from Jerusalem. Seth is the senior Middle East correspondent and analyst at The Jerusalem Post. He is also an adjunct fellow at the Foundation For Defense of Democracies, and the author of three books. He received his PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Seth has served as a research associate at the IDC in Herzliya and a lecturer at Al-Quds University. His latest book is The October 7 War: Israel’s Battle for Security in Gaza
Full Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
SF: The people that are protesting the government, many of them view themselves as fighting for Israeli democracy to preserve Israel. Those same people, sons and daughters and fathers and uncles, all go to the army at the highest levels and they view that as fighting to preserve the state of Israel. So for them, it's all linked. You have to save the state internally to fight externally as well. I understand the other side critiques it and say, yeah, but this weakens us from within. I don't think that's the case at all. That's how democracies win, countries that are authoritarian and anti-democratic generally don't do so well in the long run.
DS: It's 10:00 AM on Sunday, March 23rd in New York City. It is 4:00 PM on Sunday, March 23rd in Israel as war fighting intensifies in Gaza and infighting, Israeli infighting, intensifies in Jerusalem, and as 59 hostages are still being held by Hamas, 24 of which are believed to be alive. Before we get into today's conversation, just one housekeeping note. On Tuesday, May 13th, I will be delivering the State of World Jewry address at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, hosted by the 92nd Street Y and Rabbi David Ingber. We will post a link in the show notes if you would like to attend the event. Again, it's Tuesday, May 13th, 7:30 PM at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. Now on to today's conversation. Following the firing of the head of the Shin Bet Ronen Bar just last week, the government has convened in Jerusalem today to begin the process of firing the attorney general, Gali Baharav Miara, through a no confidence vote. The attorney general had previously warned the prime minister that the government could not fire the head of the Shin Bet before her office reviewed his motives for doing so, with the speculation that the firing occurred against the backdrop of an investigation into aides of the prime minister and their alleged ties to Qatar. Also on Saturday night with all this going on and rallies much larger than those rallies in recent weeks, it is estimated something like a hundred thousand Israelis protested nationwide against the firing of the head of the Shin Bet and the attorney general, and leaders of the Israeli opposition have vowed to challenge these decisions in court. And there are high court petitions against the ousting of the head of the Shin Bet. Unions and business forums have threatened to strike if the government does not abide by court rulings. I'm just going to describe here all the moving pieces that are occurring as this domestic debate heats up. The Israeli business forum, which represents most private sector workers from 200 of the country's largest companies, warn that if the government does not respect the High Court of Justice's temporary injunction against the Shin Bet chiefs dismissal quote “we will call on the entire Israeli public to stop respecting the government's decisions and we will shut down the Israeli economy.” That's a quote. All this by the way in the middle of war. This really is at least unprecedented in recent times for all these business groups and these unions calling for quote-unquote not respecting the government's decisions, presumably the non-war aspects of the government's decisions. The chief of the Hishtadrut, which is Israel's largest labor union, Arnon Bar-David, warned over the weekend that he won't sit by if the government doesn't abide by the High Court rulings, implying that he will launch a labor strike if the government ignores the High Court. And then opposition leader Yair Lapid said, quote, “If that happens, if the firings go forward, the entire country must stop. The only system that is not allowed to stop is the security system.” That's Yair Lapid, presumably the warfighting specifically on the Gaza front. And Yair Golan, who's the head of the Democrats party, further to the left of Lapid, called on Lapid and the National Unity Party Chair Benny Gantz to establish a single democratic front, that's a quote, against the government that would be able to serve as the backbone of the new Israel. While this intense divide takes place inside of Israel, the IDF, led by its new chief of staff, Eyal Zamir, has invaded Gaza again and resumed the war. IDF troops began operating in the Beit Hanoun area of northern Gaza on Saturday to target Hamas' terror infrastructure sites in order to expand the security zone in northern Gaza. To understand these extraordinary external pressure points and also some of what is going on internally, we are joined by Seth Frantzman, who's with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he's an adjunct fellow and a senior Middle East analyst at the Jerusalem Post. He also wrote a book about October 7th titled The October 7th War, which we will post the link to in the show notes. I haven't read the entire book, but I've dipped in and out of it, and it is an extremely important resource for anyone who wants to understand what went on in the lead up and during the war. Seth, thanks for being here.
SF: Yeah well thank you for having me.
DS: Seth, I just described what seems like an incomprehensible moment in Israel right now. Now, if you look at history way back, Israel being in very tense regional, external security situations and having incredible domestic political tension is actually not that unprecedented. But it's something I think Israelis and those of us who are observers of Israel have not seen in recent history, in the last couple decades. This heat is cranking up while Israel is at war. So can you just tell us how you see all this playing out?
SF: I think that, you know, unfortunately the prime minister and his coalition government are quite divisive in the sense that the country is very divided and he's been prime minister for a very long time and there's lots of plenty of people that oppose him and they feel that even during the war, you know, that he's played politics and continued to do so. I mean, you have to remember that he's also on trial. So I think, you know, all that is kind of the worst case scenario in terms of what you'd want to go into a war with. As you note, Israel has had this, you know, political differences before, certainly during the Second Intifada, I think Israel had to go through political changes as well. But when Israel was more successful at war fighting, for instance, in ‘67, I think, you see that generally those days, the parties all came together and there was unity. Of course, it's hard to keep unity for 17 months in one of Israel's worst wars in history. So I think that's the problem. The Six-Day War was...was six days and this is 17 months so far.
DS: And in an upcoming episode, we're going to dedicate a conversation to all the various issues and the legal issues and the constitutional issues, which is always interesting, constitutional issues in a country that doesn't have a constitution that are at play here. And I know that's not your focus, Seth, but I just think there's one point to really just underline double, triple underline what is different now, among other things, in terms of the internal domestic debates versus what occurred before the war. So 2023 during judicial reform, back then there was all this talk about big swaths of the security system of military units of Air Force pilots, quote-unquote going on strike, refusing to do their training that for instance pilots do there are all these reservists that say they wouldn't serve, that aspect of these protests is not happening now.
SF: No, because in those days, I think people didn't imagine that Israel would run into October 7th and this existential genocidal attack that day in which 1,200 people were killed and 250 kidnapped. So, you know, look, at the end of the day, Israel is an extremely resilient society. It's also very unified, I think, in the kind of more bottom levels than you'd see at the political level. I read today, for instance, that the Nova Site Festival Massacre site, is one of the most visited places in Israel today, which just shows that when it comes to regular things, most of the people are actually on the same page. But when it comes to the high level stuff, they're not. And therefore, the army represents in many ways the middle Israel. And therefore, support for the armed forces is something that's 100% at very high levels. And so, yeah, they wouldn't want to call into doubt that support in the midst of a war. But nevertheless, yes, the protests, I think, are very, very unhappy with how the government is handling certain things. And it's definitely, they understand instinctually that it's just a totally different set of scenarios now than prior to October 7th when people could have the leisure or take for granted the fact that Israel is secure. And whereas after October 7th, everyone understands this country is facing unprecedented threats on multiple fronts.
DS: Okay, so let's talk about one of those fronts, which is Gaza. Can you describe what the IDF is doing in Gaza? And this all began, the new front began after the ceasefire ended or broke down. And so how you would compare this front to the pre-ceasefire war front, or war fighting, because I'm getting a lot of questions. People know Israel's back at war, ceasefire's over in Gaza, but they can't quite understand what they're actually doing there. Is it distinctive from what they did before the ceasefire? Like, what's going on?
SF: So what's basically happened is there was a ceasefire that began in mid-January and it lasted until the first phase of it lasted until March 1st. Now there was supposed to be a second phase. Israel had always said it didn't want to go to the second phase, which Hamas has always wanted to end the war. And so there was an impasse and there was no agreement. And so basically the ceasefire kind of expired and Hamas assumed, okay, well we'll just have a ceasefire now and not have to turn over any hostages. And Israel said, listen, if you don't agree to the, you know, the Trump administration's proposals to bridge this, then we're going to have to go back to war. So on March 18th, Israel began airstrikes targeting Hamas senior level officials, including political officials of the Hamas movement in Gaza. And then the next day, Israel began a whole series of ground operations. Now, it's important to remember when the war started on October 7th, Hamas had something like 30,000 fighters and they estimated 24 battalions of them and you know, thousands of rockets and things. Hamas is a different movement today. It has 20,000 fighters, many of are new recruits and they don't have the same ordinance they had. They have, you know, guys with AK-47s or whatever that like to dress up when it, but they don't actually like to fight, it seems very much. So Israel has not had to go in now with the five divisions of tens of thousands of men that it had to go in in the beginning. What Israel is doing is a three-pronged offensive around, kind of around the cities in Gaza. So there's a prong in the north next to Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya. There's a prong in the middle in this place called Netzarim Corridor that separates Gaza City from central Gaza. And there's a third prong of soldiers that are fighting in Rafah in southern Gaza. And it looks like in most places, the Gazans have basically evacuated where the IDF told them to leave. And it seems that the Hamas guys have just run away and disappeared. So far, there have not been casualties. So it's unclear when and where Hamas will stand up and fight because it seems to be, Hamas assumes, if they just hide long enough, Israel will apparently get bored with this. And Israel is certainly saying that's not the case this time.
DS: So the quality of the fighter that Hamas was able to deploy post October 7th up until this most recent ceasefire or sometime before this most recent ceasefire were fighters that had been being trained for years, right? They were properly equipped. They had some cases more than just an AK-47 in terms of the sophistication of their weaponry. And they were like a light infantry force, a light infantry army of a sovereign army. They had real command and control, they had real, you know, they were organized brigades and battalions, I guess battalions. It was a much more sophisticated operation. And now that operation, sounds like has been pretty beaten down and flattened. And the new recruits, I've heard this from others as well, these new recruits that are fighting for Hamas are like kids, right? They're basically like kids who they hand a gun, have them put on a uniform and be cannon fodder.
SF: Yeah, it seems like that's the case. I remember that the population of Gaza is very young. I think half of the population is under the age of 18. So every day there's a whole bunch of people that turn 18 or whatever and are part of the pool of recruits. Hamas doesn't have to recruit that many of them. It only has to recruit one or two percent and you end up with thousands of guys ready to do something. But it does seem that what Hamas had transitioned to last year, it's important to remember by March of 2024, a year ago, the IDF estimated that 20 out of 24 Hamas battalions were already dismantled and destroyed. Now, it could be that the IDF was wrong, but let's say they were mostly right. It means that Hamas had already basically gone to ground and the guys were hiding out in small terrorist cells the way Hamas would have been back in the Second Intifada. So, those guys were already kind of scampering around. They were relying on IEDs or improvised explosives to target the IDF and basically then just running away. So what we've seen now is that they seem to not even be doing that, although one assumes at some point they will. But they don't seem to have the access to RPGs and explosives and anti-tank missiles and some of the stuff they used to have. That doesn't mean that there's not a point that comes where they will begin to stand up. Because it's important to remember, there are areas of Gaza that the IDF never took control of in 17 months of fighting, like especially in the central camps area. So let's assume that Hamas has units there that are perfectly willing to fight.
DS: Was the reason they didn't do that is because of fear of civilian casualties or the geographic location of hostages of Israeli hostages or both?
SF: It's not civilian casualties. The IDF is quite good, apparently, at just getting people to leave areas, and the civilians are willing to leave, and they go from A to B, and then to C. And each place, they're controlled by Hamas, and Hamas uses them as shields, and Hamas runs around with them like whack-a-mole. But in central Gaza, there are four urban areas, the central camps areas, that the IDF never really took control of. And I think the assumption is that in some of that, it's because of fear that the hostages were there. But you know, it can also just be the tactics that the IDF used. The IDF never went into parts of Gaza City. And it does seem that the previous chief of staff basically was fighting a certain type of tactical war, which they would go into areas, then leave, then go in, then leave, and then go back in. I mean, it looks like the IDF might be going back into Jabalia in northern Gaza, this would be, by my count, the fourth battle of that same place. So it's a tactical question, and I think the IDF will have to decide now under the new chief of staff, are they going to turn the tables on Hamas and do it differently?
DS: How much easier, and I'm using the word easier loosely because none of this is easy, but how much more flexibility and how much more of an advantage does the IDF have now that it's fighting Hamas or what's left of Hamas in Gaza without having to worry, more or less not have to worry about the Northern Front, meaning there's still action in the North, but Hezbollah has been largely degraded. There's nothing like the Hezbollah that existed when Israel was fighting Hamas in the first months of the post-October 7th war.
SF: It's a good question because in the beginning of the war on October 7th and 8th when Israel called up 300,000 soldiers, about half of them I think were probably sent to the north. I mean the IDF didn't say exactly, but I mean, think a lot of them went north and they say that a lot of the Air Force, more than half the Air Force was focused on the fear of Hezbollah jumping in. So, yeah, Israel had one hand to kind of tie behind its back or basically a two-front war. After Hezbollah was beaten down and forced into a ceasefire in November of ‘24, yeah, Israel has basically been able to regroup and retrain and send soldiers home. It's important to remember the reservists who made up the bulk of the fighting, they spent 10 months in the service of reserve duty, which is unprecedented in Israel's history. Usually Israel would call up reservists for a short period of time. So the IDF needed a break. I mean some of these units, like the 162nd Division, fought for like 400 days. I mean, it's never happened in Israel's history that some of these units were basically fighting like that. On the other side of the coin, they got a huge amount of experience in places like Gaza. You know, there's a positive and a negative to what happened in 2024. This is a new year, and the IDF is employing so far relatively light forces. And that shows how much Hamas has beaten. It shows how confident the IDF is. It shows that, as you noted, there's no two or three fronts that Israel has to worry about. So Israel can be much more flexible.
DS: Seth, you are in touch with military planners and commanders. You are an analyst of Israel's overall war fighting strategy. There seemed to be a more clear understanding among observers from abroad who want a better understand and support what Israel's doing, what Israel's strategy was and what its objective was in Gaza. It's not clear now what the strategy is and what the overall objective is. So I want to ask you that. Before I do, I do want to flag for those that are watching this. Seth is now in a different location. I don't want to say it's undisclosed, but we did have a technical glitch, so he had to move. I actually had to move as well. So don't be put off by the change in scenery. Everything is fine. He's not in a Mamad, he's not in a bomb shelter. He's just a technically more effective spot. Seth, please help us understand the war strategy now.
SF: Sure, of course. So basically, Israel has several publicly stated strategies for the war now and what it has been mostly since the beginning, which is to get the hostages back, also to defeat the military and governance capabilities of Hamas, and also to make sure that Hamas is no longer a threat, like on October 7th. Now, these are malleable goals and flexible because, and how do you define defeating the military capabilities of Hamas. Well, the IDF said back in March 2024 that Hamas was mostly defeated already. So, you could argue that it's kind of defeated. What about the political governance part of Hamas? Well, Israel has said, or Israel's prime minister has said, we don't want Hamas in Gaza or running Gaza, but we don't want the Palestinian Authority either. Well, that leaves a big question mark over who will fill that vacuum. In the absence of a clear goal as to who fills the vacuum, Hamas has shown over the last 30, 40 years that it will fill the vacuum. So that leaves a big question mark about what happens next. I think the issue of reducing Hamas's threats to Israel is important. Again, all these issues come into a red line in terms of trying to remove Hamas while Hamas controls the hostages, because Israel doesn't want to end up endangering the hostages. So what we've seen throughout the last year and half of fighting is that the IDF generally didn't go into certain areas because Hamas was holding hostages there. So I think the new campaign is aimed at pressuring Hamas and trying to get them to release hostages. The question is whether or not Hamas will just call Israel's bluff again and assume that if they just hide long enough that Israel will not be able to keep going forward. And I think that's what we have to see is going to happen in the next few weeks or months.
DS: You mentioned earlier that the previous IDF Chief of Staff, Halevi, maintained an approach of going in and out, in and out, going to areas, clearing Hamas and then withdrawing, and that is why Israel had to return to some of these areas three, four, and five times. There were many who were criticizing that approach. In fact, some of that I worked with briefly in during the Iraq war, General David Petraeus, as you have probably familiar, he was critical of this approach. That this is a never ending game of Israel having to go in and out and in and out in and out and out, unless Israel did what the US did in Iraq, and ultimately in Afghanistan before completely withdrawing from Afghanistan many years later, which was clear, hold, and build. And what Israel's just doing was clearing and leaving, not holding and certainly not building. Meaning allowing space for non-violent non-terrorist Palestinians to try to to build some kind of alternative to Hamas. It sounds to me like you share some of that criticism. I don't want to put words in your mouth. So, because I'm trying to understand what is actually different now. Is there a substantially different strategy now than the approach General Halevi was taking? A different strategy with this new IDF Chief of Staff? Is it about his approach? That's what I'm trying to understand. Is it about a difference in IDF Chief of Staff?
SF: Well, I think there is a sense that Halevi brought to the table, you know, a doctrine called momentum and a certain IDF tactic, which led to going in and trying to defeat pieces of Hamas and then leaving and the pieces just returned. So it didn't seem to work very well. You know, I think that probably some of the military echelon would have said, yeah, but the political echelon didn't give us a clear goal or tell us what to do. I mean, the end of the day, it's the Vietnam problem. Politicians have to decide. If you send a guy like West Moreland out there to Vietnam and you say, fight the Vietnamese, he can fight them forever. But someone has to decide where it's going to go. So I think, you know, there's always going to be a question of that, that issue of tactics. The new idea of Chief of Staff is supposed to be coming in, you know, with a new concept of how to win this war. Now, that's going to take time to see if he can actually do that. And also to see if the political echelon will come up with something different. Now, you mentioned that Petraeus and others, the idea of know, clear build and hold. The problem that Israel has always faced in Gaza is, Israel tells the civilian population, we want you to go from point A to point B to point C because we're sending troops into point A. And then the civilians run away to point C and point C is run by Hamas. So they are in a Hamas cage, used as human shields. And then Israel says, okay, we're going to go into point C. We want you to go back to point B. And so what happens is they just migrate with Hamas. Now, can the civilians be separated from Hamas? Of course they can, but that's how the ISIS war was fought against ISIS in Iraq. That's why it was successful. But Israel will have to decide, does Israel want to run the civilian affairs of Gaza? Or does it want to try this Trump plan concept of trying to get some of the people to leave? I mean, there's talk in Israel of doing that. So that's where we have to see if the strategic aspect changes.
DS: And apropos of that, there's this talk now about land for hostages that, and this does seem like a new approach that Israel's talking about maintaining control of or annexing, I want to make sure I get the language precise with the language, pieces of Gaza, if hostages don't return or if hostages are killed, can you explain this approach? Because this is new.
SF: It does seem that Israel's base, it's not entirely new because let's remember that in the first campaign Israel held parts of Gaza like this Netzarim Corridor, which is a bunch of land between Gaza City and central Gaza. And part of the first deal in January of 2025 was that Israel withdraws and hostages come out. So it was already built into the deal a bit that there's a trade-off between Israel withdrawing and hostages getting released. Now, what Israel has threatened this time is that if hostages are harmed or hostages don't come out, Israel will kind of digest bits and pieces of Gaza like an anaconda. And that will start with the buffer zone that is ringing Gaza, it's like 40 miles long or something along the border. I don't see Israel really advancing. It would create legislation to annex it. I would be surprised if Israel does that because Israel's not annexing the West Bank. The idea that annexes a belt around Gaza would seem odd, but assume the idea that is to keep it in play so that Israel says, okay, you give us hostages, we start to leave this area. Again, it sets up a circle where Israel goes in, holds land, hostages come out, Israel leaves the land. Then more hostages don't come out. So Israel goes back and takes over the land. Then hostages come out and you go back and forth. It seems like diminishing returns, but Hamas also must think that because Hamas must assume, as it releases more more hostages, the last four or five that it has are 50, or now it has 59, but let's say it gets down to 20. Each hostage's value becomes more for Hamas, I would think. So you wonder if this kind of concept will work. I guess, again, you have to see in a month or two months, does it work or does it not work?
DS: Okay. In terms of how Hamas used this period, this ceasefire period, which was, you know, over 50 days, I think the longest period of ceasefire that Hamas has gotten since the war began, what did it actually do during this time to prepare, I guess, for what it probably thought was there would be a resumption of war at some point?
SF: Well, the first few days of the ceasefire, let's say the first weeks and the second two weeks of January, think Hamas was focused on coming up from the tunnels, giving out uniforms to all its troops, as well as the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups, and trying to hold these staged or choreographed hostage releases where Hamas claimed victory and pretended that it's a military organization after having been hiding in tunnels for a year and hiding in civilian garb. Suddenly pretending that it's now the military again. After that, let's say in February, what did it do? I think Hamas again focused on moving back into certain areas and recruiting men and then preparing for Ramadan because it thought it would get a Ramadan ceasefire, which it sort of did for two weeks.
DS: And which it got last year as well, right?
SF: Yes. Last year Hamas got what I would call a de facto Ramadan ceasefire, which means the Biden administration pressured Israel to reduce the, quote, intensity of strikes in Gaza. But I would say that this was a real ceasefire for two weeks. I mean, there were not really almost any strikes, whereas in March of 2024, you know, there was a reduction, but the IDF was still driving tanks around in parts of Gaza. So it was a bit different. But yeah, Hamas has a tremendous privilege. Remember, this is a group that attacked Israel on Simchat Torah on a Jewish holiday. And then it whines and complains and says, yeah, but on our holidays, we should get a month off from fighting. I mean, but anyway, so that group has probably spent time putting some explosive devices in houses and stuff. Although one has to remember Hamas is in a weird position at the moment. When there was fighting last year, there are not many civilians there like Jabalia. So Hamas basically was lacing buildings with explosives, hoping the IDF would wander into them. But now Hamas had a problem over the ceasefire period because all the civilians were trying to return to these areas. Well, you can't be putting IEDs in a house if a guy and his uncle are going in there to try to figure out what's in his house. So I assume actually Hamas has had a bit of a difficulty trying to put a bunch of explosives everywhere. So I think it will take time to see if they've been able to booby trap these areas. What we saw was the IDF went in very successfully back to parts of Netzarim, a few kilometers inland from the border and grabbed the Salahadin Road, which is a key access road between Gaza City and central Gaza. And as far as I know, there were no IEDs or booby traps there. And if there were, the IDF found them. So one could assume that the IDF uses drones and satellites and stuff to identify, you know, where the earth has been moved around.
DS: How was the US involved in this phase of the war?
SF: Well, the United States and the Trump administration has been supportive of Israel. As I understand it, Steve Witkoff, Trump's envoy, who was very much a key player in getting the first deal done in January, he has said and backed up Israel's viewpoint, which is that Hamas on March 1st was basically unwilling to do a new extension of the deal. And he has said that Hamas made outrageous demands in those two weeks. You have to remember that in those two weeks in March. The US was also trying to get out the American hostages, Eden Alexander, who's apparently the only living American, and several other deceased Americans. So it seems that Hamas pretended they wanted to release them, but then made all these demands. As far as I understand, the United States is certainly supportive of Israel. But on the other side of the coin, the Trump administration seems to be very much focused on other deals now in Russia and Iran. So the Trump administration has bigger fish to fry. And one might assume that dealing with the Russians and Iranians at the same time, the Russians and Iranians may be offering us some sort of grand bargain linked to Gaza. You never know what's going on behind the scenes because Steve Witkoff is apparently involved in all three of the talks. So you never know that perhaps there's more going on behind the scenes than we can imagine in terms of trying to end all of these conflicts, which would be a huge win for the Trump administration in terms of saying, look, we got peace on all these fronts.
DS: You have been, Seth, I think a contrarian on judges generally throughout this war, just having followed your commentary and having been in touch with you in terms of how's the war going? What's the overall strategy? It's not that you say you're not hawkish or you're not for an aggressive approach to the war. It's just that you have been skeptical that what Israel was doing was going to work. Can you just, before we wrap up here, summarize overall what your critique has been is my first question, and then I want to get to my second question which is is that critique being softened now because of what Israel is doing now?
SF: I think my criticism has been from the beginning that look, Israel is a country, a high tech successful country. It benefits from having short wars. And I think Israel's leaders, if you go back to those successful wars that we all think about, like the 1967 war or the Entebbe raid to rescue hostages, Israel historically, instinctually understood, we want to win quick. So let's win the war and go back to business as usual. Let's get the hostages out and go back to business as usual. And Israel's leaders in the past understood it was willing to take massive risks to do that and sacrifice lives in order to get that done. Unfortunately, I think what we see in the last decades, you know, things have shifted a bit. Everything changes, of course, globally, but, you know, Israel doesn't fight wars with the same intensity and same priorities of speed. So I always thought from the beginning Israel needs to fight this war quickly and totally destroy Hamas and remove them, and it should be willing to sacrifice lives to get the hostages out. That means that yes, you might sacrifice hostages as well, but it's like a bank robbery situation. When people start killing hostages, you have to go in and look, the hostages, as we said in the show, it's assumed that half of them are dead. So you don't want them to slowly suffer and pass away. So that has always been my sense. Things should be done faster. And I've always said that even though when I read the IDF would say, well, we destroyed 20 Hamas battalions. And I always said, yeah, but what's a battalion? I mean, it's a thousand guys or 600 guys. All you have to do is recruit them again. The battalion will reappear. And I've always felt that that kind of, it reminds me a little bit of Vietnam and this body count story of, we killed a thousand Viet Cong. It's like, okay, fine, but the Viet Cong didn't disappear, did they? So I've always felt that it's important to be critical of these rosy assessments. I think now there is a different IDF chief of staff. There might be a willingness to do things differently. And it's important to just watch and hold and hold accountable the people in charge in a sense of if they say, well, we're going to win this war and get total victory very quickly. Well, okay, so let's see if it happens. I'm always willing to be optimistic, but I also think we just need to be clear on what's the goal. What do we want to get and accomplish here and how do we do it? And as I said in the show, if there's a vacuum of power in Gaza, we need to be honest. Hamas will fill the vacuum. If you want to replace them, you have to put something else there. And if you just say, well, we don't want Hamas and we don't want the PA, my view is a mathematical certainty is you will get Hamas. So you need to solve that equation. And that's where I generally say, okay, tell me how you solve it.
DS: But isn't part of the problem is if the answer to that question is we'll get the PA, but the history is the PA is very weak. Hamas is very popular in Gaza and in the West bank, by the way. And as we learned 2006, 2007, the moment Hamas had the opportunity, they just pushed the PA right out of there. Hamas has resources, it has energy, it has popular support. You put Hamas and the PA in some kind of shared governing structure, even if Hamas has the subordinate role, Hamas will probably ultimately prevail and take over and push the PA out. So that is my fundamental reticence about the PA playing a role.
SF: I agree with that, but let's just do the math on that. In the West Bank, where the PA is not that successful, but is sort of successful as a semi-failed state for the last 20 years, the fact is that Palestinians in the West Bank never created a terrorist army that overran Jewish communities and massacred a thousand people. They didn't even massacre more than a few dozen. They've certainly never carried out killings on one day that exceeded a few. From my point of view as someone who I would prefer security and not having people massacred and not having hostages taken, we've never had hostages taken in the West Bank for a very long time. There were the three teenagers kidnapped in 2014, tragically kidnapped and killed. But again, there aren't hostages held in Ramallah. There were hostages held in Gaza since 2014. There's two soldiers' bodies. There are not two soldiers' bodies held in Ramallah. So my point of view is the lesser of two evils, let's take the lesser one. If you put the PA in charge of part of Gaza and leave a Hamas-run state in the other part and they fight each other, okay, fine. But then that means the Hamas has to focus on dealing with the PA and not building tunnels and building rockets. And that's a win for Israel. Again, these are complicated things that thread that needle because I understand Israel's political leadership doesn't like the idea of unifying Gaza and the West Bank under one PA government because their view is, that will lead to two states. That's not great. So I get it, I see what the leadership is saying, but they gambled with having Hamas in Gaza for 10, 15 years and it obviously didn't work. So someone has to think up something else, I think.
DS: All right, Seth, just in wrapping, we talked briefly about the internal pressures in Israel at the beginning of this conversation, the domestic heat. And then obviously we spent most of the conversation discussing your expertise, which is actually the war. How do you see these two pressures corresponding with one another now going forward, interacting with one another? Or do they live in separate planes, I guess? Is there's like, you know, to paraphrase, Rabin, you know, we'll fight the Intifada as though there's no peace process and we'll pursue the peace processes so there's no Intifada, or as Ben-Gurion said, we'll fight the white paper, which were the limits on immigration of Jews to pre-state Palestine. We'll fight the British white papers though there's no war, meaning fight the British and we'll fight the war as though there's no white paper. So that was, guess Rabin was at play on Ben-Gurion, but you get the point. If you're an average Israeli frustrated with the political turmoil in Israel, is it practical to say we're going to fight the government, not literally fight kinetically, but we will protest the government. We'll try to stymie the government as though there was no war in Gaza. And yet many of these people have sons and daughters and brothers and parents and whatever who are being called up for reserves to fight in Gaza. And I will support their fight in Gaza as though I'm not protesting the government. Can these things exist separately or is that impossible?
SF: Yeah, I think not only do they exist separately, they ideally go together because the people that are protesting the government, many of them view themselves as fighting for Israeli democracy to preserve Israel. Those same people, sons and daughters and fathers and uncles, all go to the army at the highest levels and they view that as fighting to preserve the state of Israel. So for them, it's all linked. You have to save the state internally and the democracy internally to fight externally as well. I understand the other side critiques it and say, but this weakens us from within. I don't think that's the case at all. On October 7th, when the war began, I remember getting up and seeing everyone in my community, people going to the war, getting called up. In fact, most units got 120, 150% of their call up numbers. So in the end of the day, a strong internal democracy will survive a war. That's what being resilient is about. America during the Civil War, by the way, had an election, right? I mean, and it survived and thrived and won the Civil War. That's how democracies win. Countries that are authoritarian and anti-democratic generally don't do so well in the long run. So I think actually it's okay. It's true that sometimes the enemies are empowered by this, but the enemy should make no mistake. The Israeli society is incredibly strong and the Israeli society would fight this war the exact same strength with or without a government at all. I mean, it's just the Israeli society is just very strong in terms of national solidarity and it will continue to win based on that.
DS: All right, Seth, thank you. We will leave it there. The book is called The October 7th War. We will link to that again, as I mentioned in the show notes, highly recommend it. And obviously we will encourage our listeners to follow you, both at the J-post, at the Jerusalem Post, and at FDD. And look forward to having you back on.
SF: Thank you.
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