The Rest Is Politics: 181. Israel, invasion, and the trap laid by Hamas

I'm Dr. John Watson.

For the first time ever.

I'm a consulting detective.

Every single Sherlock Holmes story

God help me.

will be retold.

We believe there is a bomb on a tube train heading to Clapham Cromby.

I know this.

Yeah, sorry, I was speaking to the listeners.

For goodness sake.

Hold this.

Oh my God.

Just don't pull the pin.

Why on earth would I pull the pin?

The game is afoot, Watson.

A new weekly podcast from Goalhunter.

Sherlock and Co.

Out now, wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to the Restless Politics.

I'm here in London and Alistair and I are about to interview Yuval Noah Harari.

It's a very different type of episode to what we normally do

because 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' terrorist attacks

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 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 it's vital in these things to actually hear from people

who are fully engaged, who are connected emotionally

because only by doing so do we ever get a sense

of how these problems feel, why they're so difficult to resolve.

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

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 enjoyed it.

Today, I mean, it's a very, very difficult, sad day for recording.

And my friend Yuval, who we've interviewed a couple of times

in the last month, has come back to join us

after the horrifying terrorist attack of Hamas in Israel

and now very, very disturbing ideas

around how the Israeli army might respond in Gaza.

And Yuval is right in the middle of this.

As people remember who listened to the leading podcasts,

he has been a very outspoken critic of the populism of the Israeli government

and particularly their judicial reforms.

But he's also found himself caught up as an Israeli

and as a family member in the consequences of this attack.

So thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you for having me again.

Maybe if we can start with just giving listeners a sense

of how this attack felt, how it touched on your own family,

how it felt personally, how Israelis understand it

before we go on to try to talk about other structures,

but just the immediate emotional impact.

Yeah, I mean, it goes back to the deepest fears

and the darkest moments of Jewish history.

At first, people compared it to the Om Kippur war

when the armies of Egypt and Syria surprised Israel.

But very quickly, the narrative changed

and everybody's now comparing it to scenes from the Holocaust

or from pogroms.

The state of Israel for a couple of hours just disappeared.

There was no state.

There were Jewish communities slaughtered.

The comparisons are with the Einsatzgruppen mobile

killing units of the Nazis that in 1941-1942

would in places that are today Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania,

would 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 pogroms even earlier

like the famous Kishinev pogrom of 1903.

And we hear just stories that we couldn't imagine.

Like we are used to wars,

but the idea that there will be massive pogroms

in Jews in Israel in 2023 is just incomprehensible.

I have family in one and friends in several

of these kibbutzim of these villages

that bore the brunt of the attack.

My aunt and uncle live in Kibbutzbury.

All contact with them was cut on the morning of the attack.

We just got news that they somehow survived.

They hid in their house as Hamas terrorists

just went from house to house in the kibbutz

and just slaughtered everybody.

And we hear terrible stories about families hiding

in safe rooms and then the Hamas 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.

I've heard also one really, I think it encapsulates

because these communities, the kibbutzim on the border with Gaza,

they were one of the last bastions of the left wing in Israel.

People who still clang to the belief in peace

through all those years of terrorism and attacks.

So one really terrible story I've heard from Kfar Gaza,

a kibbutz where I have many friends,

a family that for a couple of years

organized this kite festival or flying kites

on the fence border with Gaza with messages of peace

to show the civilians in Gaza

that despite all the violence and the impossibility

of the government of Israel and Hamas having any kind of dialogue

the civilians still want peace.

At least now civilians in Israel still want peace.

And the festival this year was planned for this Saturday

and a couple of hours before it happened

the Hamas tourists came in and they found

when the Israeli army finally liberated Kfar Gaza

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 because Hamas is trying

not just to kill civilians

to kill any chance of their ever being peace.

One last thing from a broader perspective

the background to all that is that

there was a breakthrough for peace recently of sorts.

After Israel made peace treaties with the Gulf states, some of 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 peace process with the Palestinians

and improved the situation of millions of Palestinians

under Israeli occupation.

And most of the experts I'm talking with they say

this is at 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, the killing babies and not hiding it

but actually filming and publishing

they want to implant seeds of hatred in the minds of millions

to make sure there will never be peace.

Ival, thanks very much for giving us more of your time

and I want to pick up on something you said there

about how Hamas don't want peace

and this is in a sense deliberately provoked

and this is something Roy and I talked about in the podcast last week

that this may well have been sort of 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 the national psyche,

the demand for security and the demand possibly also for revenge

there's a danger that they now actually to some extent

give Hamas what they want

which is to wipe out any possibility of ever getting back

to a process that might lead to a state solution

which right now feels so far off it would be a miracle if it ever happened.

Yes, I mean what's happening now is basically

what we see unfortunately in many of these conflicts

around the world, a competition of suffering,

a competition also in public opinion around the world

that each side wants to draw more and more attention

to its immense pain and suffering

and there is no winner in this competition of suffering except Hamas

because the terrorists of Hamas

they don't care about human suffering at least

they don't care about anything that happens in this world.

This is something that I know for many Westerners

it's just difficult to grasp

the level of religious fanaticism

that you have in my region of the world

is in many ways incomprehensible

to people who live in a place like London to most of them

we need to grapple with this

these are people, the Hamas terrorists

they don't 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 why they are in love with death

and they are willing to just burn this world

There are many Palestinians who live in Gaza

who live in the West Bank

who live in different parts of the world

who don't feel like that

so Hamas do that

is there not also 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 felt able to do this awful thing

is because they are surrounded by a sense of hopelessness

amongst the peaceful Palestinian people

that Israel under Netanyahu

and the right-wing government you put together

have absolutely no interest whatsoever

in recognizing their pain

even before this

again, the Netanyahu government has abandoned

for many years the peace process with the Palestinians

but this doesn't explain Hamas' actions

because actually Hamas is never interested

in any kind of peace treaty

and has done everything in its power

to undermine previous peace processes

like the Oslo process

and what ignited this attack

is probably that there was suddenly a step

from the Israeli side with the Saudi initiative

of perhaps reigniting some kind of peace process

now when I hear the voices now coming from Israel

it's clear to me that the level of pain

there is so high

there isn't a single millimeter left

to recognize or deal with any other pain in the world

it's just a psychological fact

Even you?

I don't want to make it personal about myself

No, but that's who we're talking to

I just wondered how you...

Yes, I think this is a war on the mind

a war on the soul

and again, this is deliberate

the way that Hamas 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 making sure this will be publicized

this was intentional

psychologically what is happening is

they are not just inciting fear and hatred

this is in a sense a crime against humanity

in the deepest sense of the world

you lose all trust in humanity

and you thereby also lose your own humanity

and there is a struggle now

to in this sense at least save our souls and minds

from this destruction

I try to wage this struggle in my own mind

I think we shouldn't allow Hamas to win

the war on our souls

it's impossible at this moment

to expect psychologically Israelis

to again, with anything except their pain

but I think it is vital

and this is one of the reasons I'm speaking both here and in Israel

to avoid falling into Hamas's trap

and doing things that will ruin any chance

for peace, for generations to come

we shouldn't allow this to happen

Talking about Hamas's trap

there's a Brazilian theorist of terrorism

a terrorist called Carlos Mariela

who effectively says that

he says it's necessary to turn political crisis

into armed conflict

by performing 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

will revolt against the army and the police

and blame them for the status things

to what extent do you feel that

along with the religious agenda

this is a deliberate strategy of Hamas

they actually wanted to bring down a huge IDF response

hoping by doing so

to bring the masses over onto their side

and further alienate them

I can't get into their minds and plans

but they knew for sure

that there will be massive Israeli retaliation

they either don't care about it

or they actually hope for it

you see that right now Israel is calling

on Palestinian civilians

in the north part of the Gaza Strip

to leave their houses

and move to the central and southern parts

of the Gaza Strip

because obviously there's going to be

major military action in the north

and the Hamas is telling the Palestinian civilians

don't go, you have to stay

whether it's because the Hamas

wants to use the civilians as shields

against the Israeli military

or because it's just interested

in massive casualties on the Palestinian side

I also think that there's a terrible military logic

to what they're doing

I think from a military point of view

they would fear that if they evacuate the 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 Hamas, I imagine

sees this like the fight 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 Strip

that's exactly the point

there is terrible suffering

now in Gaza

and it only gets worse and worse

this terrible situation

I don't know how to solve it

and ideally we would see

movements to de-escalate

to return some kind of trust in humanity

the most immediate step that could be taken

is immediately release all the hostages

that Hamas took

hostages including babies, old people

and this could, you know, a tiny, tiny gesture

of humanity that brings back

some sanities to the situation

but obviously Hamas is not interested in that

they're interested in prisoner swaps

also there is a very clear message

coming from the Israeli public

to the Israeli government

that's it

we cannot go on living here with Hamas

we tried it for many years

it's impossible, you choose either Hamas or Israel

if Hamas is not completely disarmed

then we can just no longer live here

but does that not mean 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 that's their problem

that'll be the thinking

and then maybe tells the people in the south

to move back north which has been destroyed

and then they just destroy the whole place

this is I 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

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 Hamas disarmed

and the Gaza Strip

demilitarized

and how to do it

I don't know

from the Israeli public's perspective

they cannot settle

for anything less than that

and you know I hear many comparisons

now with 9-11

in the United States

and also warnings

that Israel should not repeat

the American mistake of

invading Iraq and Afghanistan

and look what's happening now in Afghanistan

there is a fundamental flow

in the comparison

which is it's like 9-11

but with the Taliban and ISIS

controlling New Jersey

not Afghanistan

I mean like my family

Putsberri is about

a kilometer from the border

fence with Gaza

they cannot go living

whoever survived

cannot go on living there

after what happened

with again Hamas bases

a kilometer from their houses

what happened Ival with the

we have this vaunted image

of Israeli security systems

and the security services

what Hamas did

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 be prepared for it?

I don't know the answer

but it is clear already now

that this is a price

Israel has been is paying

for allowing

a populist strongman

to rule it

and to divide it against itself

not just for the last 9 months

but for years

that many Israelis are saying

we took our eyes off the ball

that for months and actually

for years now

we focused on the wrong issues

and this came from the top

that when you have

a leader, a government

that bases its political

career

on dividing, intentionally dividing

the nation against itself

on giving

no importance whatever

to telling or hearing the truth

spreading conspiracy theories

about the central institutions

of the state

turning the people against

these institutions

telling people that the state institutions

they are full of

deep state traitors

and attacking

the serving elites

of the country

not just in the US

in the UK also in Israel

nobody wants to be elites

no system

can survive such an attack

for years

the Israeli army is calling this operation

this war iron swords

iron 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

and it rusts

the Netanyahu government has taken

Israel's iron swords

and put them in salt water

for 14 years

and they rust it

OK so Yorval Alasdair let's take a quick break

just following this through

I mean what about southern Lebanon

so obviously Hezbollah is based in southern Lebanon

if the policy becomes

the only way to defend Israel's security

is to try to occupy and control

and prevent any terrorist groups

emerging in Gaza does the same logic

not begin to extend into southern Lebanon

again there is a very big danger there

of escalating the conflict

also to Lebanon also to the West Bank

and again it's

I think one very good thing

about the very

firm way

that the Biden administration intervened

is that President Biden

by far the most popular

politician in Israel

after you know most Israelis were very

keen Trump supporters

and now President Biden is

I don't know 99%

support in Israel

he gave the speech

that we expected

our Prime Minister to give

but he couldn't Netanyahu couldn't

and Biden gave us

the speech we needed

aircraft carriers

and massive support

and making it very very clear

that he's not hedging his bets

he's not seeing the complexity

no he's very clearly

on Israel's side

and this gives him and his administration

a lot of credibility

in Israel and enables

him and his administration

I hope to

prevent Israel from making

huge mistakes

in some ways this attack

will strengthen 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 Smotridge because it feeds

into their narrative

I don't know this is the battle

now being waged in the souls

and the minds of Israelis

because on the one hand there is

these 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 fantasies

brought Israel to this

catastrophic situation

I don't know which way it will go

I think the country has

has been given a chance

to save itself and if

if Israelis stay loyal

to the ideals

of democracy at home

and peace abroad

and again Israelis are incapable

of hearing this right now

and the mind is completely filled

with pain but

just to avoid

magnifying the pain in the region

unnecessarily

and keeping a space

open so that there will be

a possibility of healing

later on this is

the best that I can hope

for the present moment and again

something that we need help

from people

in the rest of the world

I'm glad you pointed out

the sort of leadership

that Joe Biden has showed

and particularly watching

Donald Trump yesterday with his

absolute nonsense he was coming out with

it would be terrifying if he were in charge

of the Western world right now

and also I completely understand

why not just Joe Biden but other

leaders around the world have been

emphasizing absolute solidarity

with Israel but is there not a danger

that as this

goes on and as people become

more and more conscious of the

kind of horror that's going

to be inflicted upon

people in Gaza who are not just Hamas

that we also need world leaders

who will speak if you like

to a more nuanced

message that will try to use

this to get back to and that does mean

something like Netanyahu

who you know you have rightly

condemned in all pretty

clear terms long before

this that there's a danger that

he takes this as kind of permission

to do things

that frankly are going to take us

to places we've never imagined

this is the big danger and this is why

I was also glad to hear

both President Joe Biden and Foreign

Minister Blinken 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 the point

if we become like Hamas

what's the point

and emphasizing the need

to keep international

laws

and

again 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 humanitarian

standards even in the darkest hours

otherwise there is no point

presumably the only

end point to this

will have to be an Israeli

occupation of Gaza in the long

term because I can't see how else

Israel can guarantee that Hamas

will not re-emerge

and hopefully there will be

and nobody will fight Hamas

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

in a way which gives

a future to the Palestinians

there but also

simultaneously takes it upon itself

to disarm Hamas

and to make sure that it doesn't

remilitarize the Gaza Strip

who will be these forces that will take

upon themselves this immense task

I don't know but

we must find such forces

because the alternatives are really

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 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 re-emerge

again you have the Palestinian Authority

which is discredited but it still

when it's politics you have to

work with whatever forces

are there and

you have more moderate Arab countries

you have the international community

a coalition of the willing

whoever is willing to take it upon themselves

it's not going to be easy

it's going to be very expensive

but if you really care about

the suffering of people in the area

this is the thing to do

but unfortunately as we've discussed before

the context is not very favorable

we're in a context of isolationism

people are very bruised, the liberal world order

seem to collapse

people are overextended towards Ukraine

it's very very

improbable sadly that anybody

is going to have the appetite for getting involved

with what will seem from the distance

the most painful, horrifying

political situation on earth

I mean I don't think the international community is likely

to be volunteering at all for that

Yvonne there's the situation with the hostages

so

Netanyahu in a previous incarnation

one of his previous premiership periods

and he did this extraordinary

exchange over

the IDF soldier

Gilad Shalit

and exchanged more than a thousand

Palestinian prisoners including

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 Israeli security has failed

there's been real anger that has really

turned against political leaders over the

security failures

what is the

putting to one side if you can

I don't know how hard this is

your personal view that Netanyahu is a very bad man

and a very bad prime minister

what's your sense of how

Israeli opinion is rallying

to him as a leader

and do you think that the

one of the reasons that the Hamas have taken

so many hostages

is because of what they took from that

previous exchange 17 years ago

which obviously knows that Israel is extremely sensitive

to hostages

and they plan to play this card

for maximum effect

which means again for maximum

terror and hatred

creating more and more of that

and

Israelis now have very little confidence

in the leadership of Netanyahu

he can still in a way

I mean it's beyond him to resign

I mean he can't do what

Chamberlain did in 1940

just move aside and give somebody

better

I mean this is 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

just give a speech to the Israeli public

and say

I'm responsible, I ran this country for 14 years

I divided the nation

against itself

I'm responsible for this catastrophe

I will pay the full price

I don't think this is the moment

for me to step down

there is nobody else so I'll do this

one job but know that I take

full 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 5-6 sentences

he can still in a way

unite the people are extremely

angry against him

but I'm not sure if he's capable

of doing such a gesture

and you have to

now bring in the

Palestinian voice

I mean I don't presume to be able to speak on their behalf

but my sense is that

mainstream Palestinian opinion

sees this in terms of Gaza

being a extended prison camp

is the way that they think about it

that Gaza is

supposed to be the beginning of a

two state solution an independent country

not so much New Jersey as Mexico

and its relationship to the United States

and so I think Palestinians

hearing this would be completely horrified

at the idea that

this would then lead to

an Israeli occupation of Gaza

I can say this that

just as Israelis have so much pain

that they don't have any space

to even acknowledge

the pain of others

I think this is the same is true of Palestinians

we've been living under

horrible conditions for decades

millions of Palestinians

living under Israeli occupation in the west bank

and also the conditions

in Gaza and again

I don't expect them I think that

psychologically most people

in this situation they don't have

any space left for even

acknowledging the pain of others

and you can condemn this you can say

I think it's a psychological fact

it's impossible and also

you know we need simple stories

even though this is the case in most conflicts in the world

it's hard for people to understand

that you can be victim

and perpetrator at the 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 our family to the level of entire nations

we are usually both

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 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 fellow Palestinians

or fellow Israelis as perpetrators

so you don't feel a direct responsibility

in that way exactly

and the most we can hope

for the outside

intervention is a different matter

that I think what I would expect

people say in London or in New York

or in Sao Paulo

in Beijing because you're not

in this immense pain

you can try and see both sides

instead of kind of making your life easier

by just dividing the world

into only victims and only perpetrators

Israelis and Palestinians

at this moment can't

but I 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 what we can hope

is to think

how do we get out of this

repeat of despair

going back to the Hamas attack

what everyone thinks

about 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

you will solve the occupation

you will incentivize Israelis to make peace

obviously not

so in this competition

of immense suffering

how do we calculate who is suffering more

so focus on the question

what is still possible to do

that at some point in the future

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 generations

the wounds do heal

and if people make the right decision

it is possible

especially French and Germans

or English and Scots

or Ireland

I have just read

about looking at relations between

Poland, Ukraine

and Lithuania

and people don't really know this

but we all know about the wars in the Balkans

in the 1990s

which were fought over

injuries done

decades and centuries previously

between Serbs and Croats

and so forth

nobody remembers the wars

that weren't fought between Poland

Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus

in the 1990s

why because there were no wars

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 horrible things done in the 1940s

and earlier

we don't forget them

but we don't want to go back there

very quickly

this is a show

which is about politics

and at the core of these questions

is the politicians

in a way the reason why

Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia

Kosovo went to war

is actually because the politicians chose to whip up that nationalism

and as you say

in the case of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus

which puts an immense responsibility

in the end on the Palestinian

and Israeli leadership here

because people in these moments

of trauma can be led

in positive directions, can be led in deeply

deeply negative directions

and the notion that it's just a fundamental

fact about people

I think underestimates the politicians

agency

and what I said earlier about the psychological

limits

of us as human beings

this is not an excuse for the politicians

the politicians are there

this is their job

what is the job of being a politician

this is the job that you try to go

you're not an ordinary citizen

you have a higher responsibility

you have a historical responsibility

and we now need to see

whether the leaders, the politicians

on all sides have this kind of responsibility

history has its eyes on them

what they decide to do in the next few days

weeks will reverberate

really for generations

and I hope they do the responsible thing

and the responsible thing

going back to 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 injuries

how do you translate that

into policies

in extremely difficult situations

I'm not a politician

one of the reasons I don't go into politics

I don't know how to do that

that demands very, very tough

skills

and I think it was Truman who said

if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen

so this is

the moment of heat

and if you have politicians who just have

no idea what to do in this situation

step aside and let somebody else

you're in London

with Rory, I'm in Paris

before you leave

if you can

look at Rory mentioned Ireland

take a look at a BBC documentary series

that's aired recently called

Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland

because I think you 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 Jews

and Palestinians around the world

utterly, utterly horrific

but it is one of the most hopeful TV

things I've ever watched

but finally from me and thanks for giving us so much of your time

but finally from me

you mentioned there the politicians

there's three politicians I want to

get your sense and maybe also Rory's sense

of how you think they're viewing this

the first is Khamenei in Iran

and whether, I'm not asking you to get inside

his head but how you think that might be going

Putin in Moscow

and also Zelensky

because my other fear for this

is that it's going to take the world's attention

away from another really difficult situation

in a way that could be very, very damaging

to Ukraine so what's your take

on those three and how they'll be looking at this

I think Khamenei's like

official 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 this

immense suffering? Let's see

what is the quality

of spirituality of the Iranian

spiritual leadership?

I don't know, let's see

with regard to Putin I think

I can't get into the mind

of such a person but

given the horrors

that he unleashed

on the Ukrainian people

I don't think this person can have any kind of compassion

maybe he just rejoices

as more and more of the world

goes up in flame

and also

diverting attention from his crimes

and from the threat

that he poses. Zelensky again

I think Zelensky's

besides being

an inspiring leader of Ukraine

I think he's the most inspiring

Jewish leader of our time

what is done in Ukraine

is absolutely amazing

especially given 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 need 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 Ukrainian

and a Jew an absolute nonsense

I mean he is 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 about

how it raises itself on the conflict

so as not to anger the Russians

because we have our own interests to take into account

and being quite stingy

in the way that the help

that we extend to Ukraine

and a bit like

President Biden Zelensky

didn't

didn't use it to

you didn't do this for me so I'll now show

no, like

very, very clear

and offering to come to Israel

his country is under this vicious attack

and he says

I know from my experience how important it is

in your hour of

desperation and pain

that foreign leaders come

and just be there with you

and I want to come and be there with you

despite the fact that the war, the terrible war

is still ongoing and you know

Israel is not really under an existential

threat in the way that Ukraine is

Hamas cannot conquer Israel

Ukraine is still in danger

of being

conquered and obliterated by the Russian army

and Zelensky says

I want to come and be with you

so this is so inspiring

I mean just very quickly on your question there

and I think the terrible logic here

is stepping back from Israel Palestine

for a second is just

the explosion of conflict since 2014

I mean almost every year over the last nine years

we've had more civilian casualties

more refugees, more displaced people

we've had nearly seven coups

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 a sense that this populist age

is also coinciding with

an age of increasing violence

and it's very simple

you destroy the global order

you get the disorder

I mean how it can't be any simpler than that

we have had for several years now

leaders including in the UK

in the USA

we don't want a global order anymore

we care only about our own country

again you can say whatever you want

about how these leaders

take care of the interests of their country

what is very clear is that none of them

came with an offer

of how to arrange the global order

they are 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 work to build

a global order what you get

is these increasing waves

of we had the pandemic

and famine and now war

and there will be more and more of that

if we do not re-establish order

and I haven't heard any suggestion

from anywhere in the world

for a better order

than the besmirched liberal order

which is based

again on a very basic understanding

that all humans

share the same basic experiences

and therefore we all share

some common interests

it's biological

that pain

and despair

and sadness they are the same

in Israelis and Palestinians

in Russians and Ukrainians

and this simple realization

is the basis for the liberal global order

we are all humans and we have shared experiences

we have shared interests

and we haven't heard from all these

putins and orbans

and trumps

we 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 have any alternative suggestion

then

we need to go back

and re-establish on better foundations

the only offer on the table

which is the liberal global order

Well Yvonne, honestly it's been

yet again great to talk to you

thanks for your time

I think even in such a horrific time

for you

your people

what you stand for, what you 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 quick headline

a quick snapshot

I think your voice is really important in this whole debate

and power to your elbow in keeping going

thank you

you

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.