Video: Hamas and Gaza | A Liberal Israeli's View

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welcome to the rest's politics I'm here in London and alist and I are about to interview Yuval Noah Harari it's a very different type of episode to what we normally do because

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often we're going for analysts we're stepping back from situations in this case we're talking to a friend of mine within a week of the events that unfolded with hamas's terrorist attacks

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across the border from Gaza he is right in the middle of this and you will feel in the interview yuval's own personal emotions his connection to his own family in Israel I'm not apologizing for that at

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all I think if you would like our attempt to get a more objective picture of the Israeli Palestinian conflict please listen to our last episode that we put out a few days ago which tries to look at the bigger history but I think

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it's vital in these things to actually hear from people who are fully engaged who are connected emotionally because only by doing so I think do we ever get a sense of how these problems feel why

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they're so difficult to resolve and I think Yuval is a fascinating example of somebody who has been deeply emotionally traumatized who feels deep attachment to Israel but is also finding his way

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towards talking about peace and empathy and I think that emotional Journey makes this episode even more powerful than some of our other episodes I hope you enjoy

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it welcome to the Restless politics with me Rory Stewart and me alist Campbell and today I mean it's a very very difficult sad day for recording and uh my friend

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Yuval who we've interviewed a couple of times in the last month has um come back to join us after the horrifying uh terrorist attack of Hamas in in Israel

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and and now very very disturbing um ideas around how the Israel Army might respond in Gaza and yal is right in the middle of this as as people remember who listened to the leading podcasts he has

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been a very outspoken critic of the populism of the Israeli government and particularly their judicial reforms uh but he's also found himself caught up as an Israeli and as a family

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member in the consequences of this attack so um thank you very much for joining us thank you for having me again you maybe if we can start

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with just G giving listeners a sense of of how this attack felt um how it touched on your own family how it felt personally how Israelis understand it

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before we go on to to try to talk about other structures but just the IM immediate emotional impact um yeah I mean it goes back to the deepest fears and the darkest

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moments of Jewish history at first people compared it to the yipu war when the armies of Egypt and Syria surprised Israel but very quickly the The Narrative changed and everybody's now

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comparing it uh to scenes from The Holocaust or from pograms that the the state of Israel for a couple of hours just disappeared there was no State there Jewish communities slaughtered um

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the comparisons are with the Ein grouin mobile killing units of the na that in 1941 1942 would in places that of today Ukraine Belarus Lithuania would

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just come surround a Jewish village and just either burn people in their houses or just shoot them all to death and also comparisons with pograms even earlier

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like the famous kishinev pogram of 19903 um and we hear just stories that we couldn't imagine like we are used to Wars but the idea that there will be massive pgrs in Jews in Israel in 2023

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it's just incomprehensible um I have family in one and friends in in several of of these kibuts of these Villages that bore the branch of the attack my aunt and uncle

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live in kibuts Berry uh all contact with them was cut on the morning of the of the attack uh we just got news that they somehow survived they hid in their house

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as Hamas terrorists just went from house to house in the in the kibuts and just slaughtered um everybody and we hear terrible stories about families hiding

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in in safe rooms and then the kamama setting fire to the house to burn them alive or suffocate them in the safe room and if they try to jump or come out they just shoot them um I've heard also one

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really I think it encapsulates because these communities the kibuts Sim on the border with Gaza they were one of the last Bas of the leftwing in Israel people who

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still clang to the belief in peace through all those years of of of terrorism and attacks so one really terrible story I've heard from karaza a kibuts where I have many friends a

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family that for couple of years organized this Kite Festival of flying kites on the fence border with Gaza with messages of peace to show the civilians

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in Gaza that despite all the violence and you know the impossibility of the government of Israel and Hamas having any kind of dialogue the civilians still want peace at least our civilians in

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Israel still want peace and the Festival this year was planned for this Saturday day and a couple of hours before it happened the Kamas terrorists came in and they found when the Israeli Army

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finally liberated karaza they found the entire family murdered two parents three kids three children together in bed holding hands shot and this is I think the symbol of

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because Hamas is trying not just to kill civilians to kill any chance of their ever being peace one last thing from broader

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perspective the background to all that is that there was a breakthrough for peace recently of sorts um after Israel made peace treaties with the Gulf State some of

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them and now there was on the table the offer for a Saudi peace treaty which would have normalized relations between Israel and much of the Arab world and also hopefully could have reignited the

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peace process with the Palestinians and uh uh improved the situation of millions of Palestinians under Israeli occupation and most of the experts I'm I'm talking with they say this is the at

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least the immediate cause of the attack nothing frightens Hamas more than the possibility of peace and the way the attack was conducted like the atrocities

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they want to implant seeds of hatred in the minds of Millions to make sure there will never be peace IAL thanks very much for giving us more of your time and I want to pick up on something you you

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said there about how Hamas don't want peace and they this is in a sense deliberately provoked and this is something Rory and I talked about on the podcast last week that this may well have been sort of

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more strategically what lay behind all this is there not therefore a need for Israel in its response whilst I absolutely understand the impact upon

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the national psyche the demand for security and the demand possibly also for Revenge that there's a danger that they now actually to some extent give Hamas

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what they want which is to wipe out any possibility of ever getting back to a process that might lead to two-state solution which right now feels so far off it would be a miracle if it ever

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happened yes I mean what's happening now is basically what we see unfortunately many of these conflicts around the world a competition of suffering that not only

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each I mean a competition also you know in in public opinion around the world that each side wants to draw more and more attention to its immense pain and

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suffering and there is no winner in this competition of suffering except Kamas because the terrorists of Hamas they don't care about human suffering at least they don't care about anything

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that happens in this world they this is something that I know for many westerners is just difficult to grasp that the level of religious fanaticism that you have in my region of

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the world is in many ways incomprehensible to people who live in a place like London to most of them but we need to Grapple with this these are people the Hamas terrorists they don't

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care at all about what is happening in this world they don't care about human suffering even on their side they are fixated on the joys of paradise which is

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why they are in love with with death and they are willing to just burn this world but you there are many there are many Palestinians there are many Palestinians who live in Gaza who live in the West

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Bank who live in different parts of the world who don't feel like that absolutely this is ham terrorist right so let me let me just let me just finish finish the point so so Hamas do that is there not also

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the case because the last time we spoke you and Rory and I very very critical of Benjamin Netanyahu and who he is and what he represents but is it not also the case that perhaps the reason they

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felt able to do this awful thing is because they're surrounded by a sense of hopelessness amongst the amongst the peaceful Palestinian people that Israel under Netanyahu and the right-wing

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government he put together have absolutely no interest whatsoever in recognizing their pain even before this yeah again

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um the the netania government has abandoned for many years the peace process with the Palestinians but this doesn't explain hamas's actions because actually Kamas is never interested in

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any kind of peace treaty and has done everything it in its power to undermine previous pre peace processes like the oso process and what ignited this attack is probably that there was suddenly a

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step from the Israeli side with the Saudi initiative of perhaps reigniting some kind of of of peace process now um when I hear the voices now coming from

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Israel it's it's clear to me that the level of pain is there is so high there isn't a single millimeter left to uh um

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recognize or deal with any other pain in the world it's it's just a psychological fact and even you even even you I don't want to make it personal about about myself but that's who we're

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talking to I just wonder how you I I I think this is a war on the on the mind a war on the soul and again this is deliberate the way that Hamas

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orchestrated this attack again not just attacking civilians but torturing and executing people in the most horrendous ways they could think about taking examples from Isis and not hiding it but

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making sure this will be publicized this was intentional this is again it's it's a war on the mind um psychologically what is what is happening is they are not just inciting fear and

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hatred but to destroy any trust in this is a in a sense a crime against humanity in the deepest sense of the word that to destroy trust in humanity when you witness or hear or see you know

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decapitation of babies things like that you lose all trust in humanity and you thereby also lose your own humanity and there is a struggle now

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to in this sense at least save our souls and Minds from from this destruction I try to wage this struggle in in my own mind I think we shouldn't allow Kamas to

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win the war on our souls um it's impossible at this moment to expect psychologically Israelis to again be with anything except their pain

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but I think it is and this is one of the reasons I'm speaking both here and in Israel to avoid falling into hamas's Trum and doing things that will ruin any

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chance for for peace uh for generations to come this is we shouldn't allow this to happen so and talking about hamas's trap um the the there's a a a Brazilian

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theorist of terrorism a terrorist called Carlos marela who effectively says that um I read a quote he says it's necessary to turn political crisis into armed conflict by performing

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violent actions that will force those in power to transform the political situation of the country into a military situation this will alienate the masses who from then on will revolt against the Army and the police and blame them for

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the state of things and to what extent do you feel that along with the religious agenda this is a deliberate strategy of how much they actually want did to bring down a huge IDF response hoping by doing so to bring the masses

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over onto their side and further alienate them u i I can't get into their their minds and plans but they knew for for sure that there will be massive Israeli

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retaliation um and they either don't care about it or they actually hope for it you see that right now Israel is calling on civil Palestinian civilians in the north part part of the Gaza Strip

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to leave their houses and move to the central and southern parts of the Gaza Strip uh because obviously going to be major military action in the North and the Hamas is telling the CI Palestinian

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civilians don't go you have to stay um whether it's because the Hamas wants to use the civilians as as shields uh against uh the the Israeli military or because it's just it it's

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interested in massive casualties on the Palestinian side I also think that um there's a terrible military logic to what they're doing I mean they would I think from a military point of view they would fear that if they Evacuate the

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northern part allow Israel to clear and occupy that Israel will then tell the people in the South to move to the north while they move to the South so uh hamus um I imagine um sees this like the fight

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with Isis and mosul urban Warfare that would go on for a very long time and they have no intention of facilitating making it easier for the Israeli military to conduct Urban Warfare operations through the exactly through

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the strip yeah yeah that's exactly the point um again there is terrible suffering now in Gaza and it it it only gets worse and

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worse um I don't know how to how this terrible terrible situation I don't know how to solve it and ideally we would see movements to deescalate

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to return some kind of trust in humanity the most immediate step that could be taken uh is immediately release all the hostages that Kamas took again hostages including babies old people um and this

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could you know a tiny tiny gesture of of humanity that brings back some santies to the situation but obviously Kamas is is not not interested in that no they're

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interest in prisoner swaps yeah and also I mean there is a very clear message coming from the Israeli public to the Israeli government that's it uh we cannot go on living here with Kamas we

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tried it for many years uh it's impossible you choose either Kamas or Israel if you if Kamas is not completely disarmed then we can just no longer live here but does that does that not mean

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you Val that the logic of that is that the IDF virtually wipes the place out just literally goes in and first destroys the North and if people don't leave well

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that's their problem that'll be the thinking and then maybe tells the people from the South to move back North which has been destroyed and then they just destroy the whole place um and this is I

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think part of the responsibility of the International Community to find some better solution to the situation but based on the understanding that a return

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to the status quo before the war is simply totally unacceptable for the Israeli public that however it is done the war must end with Kamas disarmed and

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the Gaza Strip demilitarized um and how to do it I don't know but it the from the Israeli Public's perspective there is they

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cannot settle for for anything less than that and you know I hear many comparisons now is 911 uh in United States and also

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warnings that Israel should not repeat the American mistake of invading Iraq and Afghanistan and look what's happening now in Afghanistan um there is a a fundamental Flow In the comparison which is it's

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like 9911 but with the Taliban and Isis controlling New Jersey not Afghanistan I mean like my family in kibuts b kibuts b is about a kilometer from the border

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fence with with Gaza um they cannot go living whoever survived cannot go on living there after what happened with again Kamas bases a kilometer from their

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houses what happened youal with the you know we have this vaunted image of Israeli security systems and the security services what Hamas did is I mean his

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military historians are going to be writing about this forever how on Earth did this vaunted intelligence and security service not have any sense this was happening or

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be prepared for it I don't know the answer but it is clear already now that um this is a price Israel has been is paying for

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allowing a populist strongman to rule it and to divide it against itself not just for the last nine months but but for years that many Israelis are saying we

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took our eyes off the ball that for months and actually for for years now we focused on on the wrong issues and this came from the top that when you have a leader a

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government that bases its political um career on dividing intentionally dividing the nation against itself on on on giving no

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importance whatever to telling or hearing the truth spreading conspiracy theories about the central institutions of the state turning the people against these

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institutions um telling people that uh the State institutions they are full of uh uh deep State traitors and attacking the serving Elites of the country you know the

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elites became a dirty word not just in in in the US in UK also in Israel nobody wants to be Elites but the for years vicious attacks on the serving Elites of of the

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country no system can survive such an attack for years the the Israeli Army is calling this operation this war iron swords iron

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swords and I remember my teacher at University like 25 years ago telling me a military historian if you put an iron sword in salt water it

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rusts uh the netan government has taken Israel's iron swords and put them in salt water for 14 years and they rusted just following this through I

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mean what about southern Lebanon so obviously hisb is based in southern Lebanon if the policy becomes that the only way to defend Israel's Security is to try to occupy and control and prevent

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any terrorist groups emerging in Gaza does the same logic not begin to extend into Southern Lebanon uh there is a again there is a very big danger there of uh escalating

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the conflict also to Lebanon also to the West Bank um and again it's uh it I think one very good thing about the very

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firm and the way that the Biden Administration intervened is that Biden is now President Biden is by far the most popular politician in

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Israel after you know most Israelis were very Keen Trump supporters and now President Biden is I don't know 99% uh uh supporting Israel REM mindlessness why that is what is it that

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he did that has now made him so popular um he gave the speech that we expected our prime minister to give but he couldn't Nan couldn't and Biden gave us

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the the speech we needed and sent two aircraft carriers with uh and and massive support and making it very very clear there he's not hedging his bats he's not

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seeing this the complexity no he's very clearly on Israel's side and this gives him and his administration a lot of of credibility in Israel and

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enables him and his his administration I hope to prevent Israel from making huge mistakes is is there not a risk that in some ways this attack will strengthen

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the hand of the extreme nationalist Israeli right that they will say this is what we always told you this is why we can't coexist with these people and it gives strength to people like smartr because it feeds into their

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narrative um I don't know this is this is the battle now being waged in the souls and the minds of of Israelis because on the one hand there is these

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uh voices being heard on the other hand there is immense rage in Israel against this right-wing coalition government that in the name of its Messianic

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fantasies brought Israel to to to this catastrophic situation um I I don't know which which way it it it will go um I think the

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country has has been given a chance to to to save itself and if we stay if Israel is stay l loyal to the ideals of democracy at

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home and peace abroad and again Israelis are incapable of of hearing this right now and the mind is completely filled with pain but just to

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avoid um magnifying the pain in the region unnecessarily and keeping a space open so that there will be a possibility of

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healing uh later on this is the best that that I can hope for for for the present moment um and again this is something

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that we need help from from people in in the rest of the of the of the world um you anybody yes please I'm I'm glad you pointed out the the sort of leadership

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that Joe Biden has showed and particularly watching Donald Trump yesterday today with this sort of absolute nonsense he was coming out with it would be terrifying if he were in charge of the western world right now

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but and and also I completely understand why not just Joe Biden but other leaders around the world have been emphasizing absolute solid solidarity with Israel but is there not a danger that as this

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goes on and as people become more and more conscious of the the the the kind of horror that's going to be inflicted upon people in Gaza who are not just Hamas

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that that that we also need world leaders who will speak if you like to a more nuanced message that we'll we'll try to use this to get back to and that does mean somebody like

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Netanyahu who you know you have rightly condemned in all pretty clear terms you long before this that there's a danger that he he takes this as kind of

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permission to do things that frankly are going to take us to places we've never imagined this is the big danger and and this is why I was also glad to hear both President Joe Biden and foreign minister

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blinkin and others with all the support they give Israel again and again emphasize democracies fight Wars by a different standard than Hamas terrorists if we go down to their standard what's

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the point yeah if we become like Hamas what's the point and emphasizing the need to keep International laws um

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and again I I think it's very important this combination of very clear support to Israel and a clear emphasis on the need to keep international law and

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humanitarian standards even in in the in the darkest hours otherwise there there is no point yeah you well presumably that the only end point to this will

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have to be uh an Israeli occupation of Gaza in the long term because I can't see how else Israel can guarantee that Hamas will not reemerge yeah and hopefully there will be and

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nobody will fight Kamas for Israel I think this is quite clear but I hope there will be forces who will take it upon themselves not just to rebuild Gaza

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uh in a way which gives a future to the pal Ians there but also simultaneously takes it upon itself to disarm Hamas and to make sure that it doesn't

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remilitarize the Gaza Strip and who will be these forces that will take upon themselves this immense task I don't know but we ma we must find such forces because the the alternatives are really

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too difficult to even imagine so essentially you're saying that if Israel is not acting as the occupying Force demilitarizing the hope would be that some other group of people the United

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Nations or Arab countries or somebody else would take security responsibility for Gaza and responsibility for its economic development in order to ensure that Hamas doesn't reemerge yeah again you have the Palestinian Authority which

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is discredited but it's still and it's politics you have to work with whatever forces are are there and um you have more moderate Arab countries you have

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International Community a coalition of the Willing whoever is willing to take it upon upon themselves um it's not going to be easy it's going to be very expensive but if if if you really care

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about the suffering of people in the area um this is the thing to do but unfortunately as we've discussed before the the the context is not very favorable I mean we're in a context of isolationism people are very bruised the

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liberal World Order seem to collapse people are overextended towards Ukraine um it's very very improbable sadly that anybody is going to have the appetite for getting involved with what will seem

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from the distance the most painful horrifying political situation on Earth I mean I don't think M the International Community is likely to be volunteering at all for that y

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um you there's the situation of the of the hostages um so Netanyahu in a previous Incarnation one of his previous premis ship periods

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and he did this extraordinary exchange over the IDF Soldier gillad Shalit and exchanged more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners including

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some very very senior Hamas figures so you've got that and then you've got the fact of the security and intelligence failures and if we think back to the previous when Israel Israeli security has failed there's been real anger that

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has really turned against political leaders over the security failures what is the putting to one side if you can I know how hard this is your personal view that n Yahoo is a very bad

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man and a very bad prime minister what's your sense of how Israeli opinion is rallying to him as a leader and and do you think that the one of the reasons

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that the that hamus have have taken so many hostages is because of what they took from that previous exchange 17 years ago oh Hamas obviously knows that Israel

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is extremely sensitive to to hostages and they plan to get to play this card um for maximum effect which means again for maximum teror and

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hatred um creating more and more of that and and Israelis now have very little confidence in the leadership of of Netanyahu he can still in a way I

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mean it it it's beyond him to to resign I mean he can't do what CH Chamberlain did in 1940 and just move aside and give somebody better uh uh to I mean this is

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what he should have done he can't I think he can't but maybe maybe he can still do something very simple but very difficult um just give a speech to the Israeli

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public and say I'm responsible I ran this country for 14 years I divided the nation against itself I'm responsible for this

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catastrophe I will pay the full price uh I don't think this is the moment for me to step down I still need to I you there is nobody else so I'll I'll I'll do this one job but know that I take full

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responsibility and I will pay the price and based on that now let me do my best with this extremely difficult situation if he would just utter these like five six sentences he can still in

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a way unite the people are extremely angry against him but I I'm not sure if he's capable of of doing such a gesture and youel to to to now bring in the um

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Palestinian voice I mean I mean I don't don't presume to be able to speak on their behalf but my sense is that Main Palestinian opinion sees this in terms of Gaza being a extended prison camp is

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the way that they think about it that Gaza is supposed to be the beginning of a two-state solution an independent country not not so much New Jersey as Mexico and its relationship to the

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United States and so I think Palestinians hearing this would be completely horrified at the idea that this would then lead to

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and Israeli occupation of Gaza um well I I I I I can say this that just as Israelis have so much pain that they

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don't have any space to even acknowledge the pain of others I I think this is the same is true of Palestinians who have been living under hor horrible conditions for for decades uh millions

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of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the west of bank and also the conditions in in Gaza and again I I don't expect them I I think that that psychologically most people in this

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situation they don't have any space left for even acknowledging the the pain of others and you can condemn this you can say I think it's a psychological fact it's it's impossible and uh also people have this

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you know we need simple stories and um it's very even though this is the case fa in most conflicts in the world it's hard to people to understand that you can be victim and perpetrator at the

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same time it's a very simple fact impossible to accept for most people either you're a victim or you're perpetrator there is no other but no usually we are both you know from the level of individuals how we behave in

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our family to the level of entire nations we are usually both and and and of course perhaps one issue is that we don't feel like that as individuals we don't feel that we have the full responsibility for our state so there's

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a sort of strange problem here too which is that you feel as an individual that you're a victim and you feel distance from your state or your you know fellow Palestinians or fellow Israelis as perpetrators so you you don't feel a

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direct responsibility in that way exactly and um and the most we can hope for the I me outside intervention is a different matter that I I I think what I

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would expect people say in London or in New York or uh in sa Paulo in Beijing you don't have because you're not in the in in in in in this immense pain you can

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try and see both sides instead of kind of making your life easier by just dividing the world into only victims and only perpetrators the Israelis and Palestinians at this moment can't but I

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expect that people in other countries will have the capacity to do that instead of going for the easy solution of no there is just this two-sided story

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um what we can hope for uh uh is is to think how do we get out of this pit of despair again going back to the Hamas attack I mean what everyone thinks about

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the misery of Palestinians under Israeli occupation how does murdering parents in front of their children going to help this but do you think that by doing that

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uh you will solve the occupation you will incentivize Israelis to to make peace obviously not so uh the in in this competition of immense suffering it's there is no

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calculus of suffering that can calculate who is suffering more so leave focus on the question what is still possible to do that at some point in the future

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there might be reconciliation and peace because one last comment on that we do know from history that even though it seems utterly impossible at the moment over the longer term of Decades of

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generations uh the wounds do heal and if people make the right decision it is possible um you know we are not only I don't French and Germans or English and

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Scots um but also Ireland oh Ireland yeah um I've just read about you know looking at relations between Poland Ukraine and Lithuania and people don't really know

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this but we all know about the wars in the balans in the 1990s uh which were re fought over injuries done decades and centuries previously between serbs and croats and

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bosnians and and so forth though nobody remembers the wars that weren't fought between Poland Lithuania Ukraine and Belarus in the 1990s why because there were no war Wars

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even though there was a lot of historical injuries between these peoples there was a conscious decision at the end of the Cold War that we will not go back in history the massacres the

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hor horrible things done in the 1940s and earlier we don't forget them but we don't want to go back there and just very Qui possible very quickly I mean I think and I'm going to hand to Alisa to

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to finish but I mean I think you know this is a show which is about politics and at the core of these questions is the politicians I mean in a way the reason why Bosnia uh Croatia Serbia

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kosova went to war is actually because the politicians chose to whip up that nationalism yes and and as you say in the case of in the case of Poland Ukraine bellarus not to go in that

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direction which puts a an immense responsibility in the end on the Palestinian and Israeli leadership here because people in these moments of trauma can be led can be led in Positive Directions

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can be led in deeply deeply negative directions and and the notion that it's just a fundamental fact about people um I think underestimates the the politicians agency yeah and what I said

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earlier about the psychological uh limits of us as human beings this is not an excuse for for for the politicians uh the politicians are there this is the their job this is what is

00:39:57

the job of being a politician this is the job that you try to go you're not an ordinary citizen uh you have a higher responsibility you have a historical responsibility and that's we we now need

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need to see whether the leaders the politicians on all sides have have this kind of responsibility this is history has its eyes on them what they decide to

00:40:22

do in the next few days weeks will reverberate for Generations really for for generations and I hope they do the responsible thing and the responsible thing you know going back to to to to

00:40:35

hospital when there is an injury your responsibility is to heal it not to widen it not to use the injury as an excuse for more

00:40:47

injuries how do you translate that into policies in extremely difficult situations I I'm not I'm not a politician and one of the reasons I don't go into politics I don't know how to do that that demands very very tough

00:41:02

uh uh skills and you know like I think it was Truman who said if you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen right right so uh this is the moment of heat and if if you have politicians who

00:41:14

just have no idea what to do in this situation step aside and let somebody else you you you Val you're in you're in London uh with Rory I'm in in Paris uh

00:41:26

uh before you leave if you can take a look at Ro mentioned isand take a look at a BBC documentary series that's a recently called once upon a time in Northern Ireland H because I think you

00:41:40

made the point there that change can come when it feels absolutely impossible and I can't imagine what it's like for you for every Israeli for every person living in the West Bank and Gaza and

00:41:53

Jews and Palestinians around the world utterly utterly terrific but it is one of the most hopeful TV things I've ever watched but finally for me and thanks for giving us so much of your time but finally for me you mentioned there the

00:42:06

politicians there there's three politicians I want to sort of get your sense and maybe also Rory's sense of of how you think they're viewing this the first is H in Iran MH um and whether you

00:42:19

know how how I'm not asking you to get inside his head but how you think that might be going Putin in Moscow and also zalinski because I my other fear for this is that it's it's it's going to

00:42:31

take the world's attention away from another really difficult situation um in a way that could be very very damaging to to Ukraine so what's your take on those three and how they'll be looking at this I think Kam is like official

00:42:45

title is the spiritual leader of Iran right now what is spirituality I mean what is a spiritual leader what does a spiritual leader do in a situation of

00:42:57

this immense suffering um let's let's see what is the quality of spirituality uh of the Iranian spiritual leadership um I don't know let's see W

00:43:13

with regard to Putin um I think you know he I I can't get into the mind of of such a person but given the horrors that he Unleashed on the Ukrainian people I

00:43:28

don't think this person can have any kind of Compassion maybe just rejoices as more and more of the world goes up in flame and uh also again diverting

00:43:40

attention from from his crimes and from the threat that he poses um zalinski again I think zalinski is besides being um as an inspiring

00:43:52

leader of Ukraine I think he the most inspiring uh Jewish leader of our time what is done in Ukraine is is absolutely amazing especially given

00:44:04

again the very very difficult history of Jews and ukrainians the fact that ukrainians have chosen a Jewish person to lead them at their greatest hour of

00:44:16

need and and the way he leads them this is absolutely anybody who you know all these kind of very nationalistic views that you can't be both a UK ianian and aan absolute nonsense I mean he is

00:44:29

showing the world what true patriotism is and also his reaction now you know Israel in many ways turned a cold shoulder to Ukraine in its hour of greatest need being very very careful

00:44:43

about how it phrases itself on the conflict so as not to anger the Russians because we have our own interest to take into account and being quite stingy in the way that uh uh the the help that we

00:44:56

um extend to to to Ukraine and a bit like President Biden zalinski didn't um equate no didn't use it to ah you

00:45:10

didn't do this for me so I I'll show no barain yeah like very very clear and offering to come to Israel you know his country is under this vicious attack and he's

00:45:23

offering he he says I know from my experience how important it is in your hour of of of desperation and pain that foreign leaders come and and be just be there

00:45:34

with you and I want to come and be there with you despite the fact that the war the tural war is still ongoing and you know Israel is not really under an existential threat in the way that Ukraine

00:45:46

is Hamas cannot conquer Israel uh Ukraine is still in danger of being con conquered and obliterated by by the Russian army and zinski says I

00:46:00

want to come and be with you so this is so inspiring I mean just just very quickly on your question there I mean I think the the um the the terrible logic here is stepping back from Israel

00:46:13

Palestine for a second is just the explosion of conflict since 2014 I mean almost every year yeah over the last 9 years we've had more civilian casualties more refugees more displaced people

00:46:25

people we've had nearly seven coups in in Africa in just over a year we have the horror of Ukraine we now have the unbelievable horror of what's happening in Israel and Palestine I mean there is

00:46:37

a sense that this populist age is also coinciding with the an age of increasing violence yeah and it's very simple you destroy the global order you get the disorder I mean how it can't be any

00:46:50

simpler than that we have had for ye several years now leaders including in the UK in the USA uh that openly say we don't want a Global Order anymore we

00:47:01

care only about our own country again you can say whatever you want about how these leaders take care of the interest of their country what is very clear is that none of them came with an offer of

00:47:14

how to arrange the global order they're against the very idea of a global order and what's the alternative to order chaos if you don't work and it's hard

00:47:25

work to build the global order what you get is these increasing waves of we had pandemic and famine and now war and there will be more and more of that if we do not reestablish order and I

00:47:39

haven't heard any suggestion from anywhere in the world uh for a better order than the besmed liberal order which is based again on the very basic

00:47:52

understanding that all humans share the the same basic experiences and therefore we all share some common interests that the pain of as it's

00:48:05

biological that pain and and and despair and sadness they are the same in Israelis and Palestinians in Russians in ukrainians and this simple realization is the basis for the liberal Glo Global

00:48:18

Order we are all humans we have SIM we have shared experiences we have shared interests and we haven't heard from all these putins and orans and trumps we

00:48:31

haven't heard any alternative idea so what would you base a global order on if not on these shared experiences and interests and values and if you don't

00:48:43

have any alternative suggestion then we need to go back and reestablish on better foundations the only offer on the table which is the liberal Global Order well

00:48:54

youal youve all honestly it's been yet again one great to talk to you thanks for your time thanks above all I think even in such a horrific time for you your people what you stand for what you

00:49:09

believe in still able to try to articulate some of the deeper things that are going on here and why these things are not always as simple as they seem from a from a quick headline a quick

00:49:21

snapshot uh I think your voice is really really important in this whole debate and and power to your elbow and keeping going thank you thank you thank you very much thank you