Lex Fridman Podcast: #389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

The following is a conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu,

Prime Minister of Israel, currently serving his sixth term in office.

He's one of the most influential, powerful, and controversial men in the world,

leading a right-wing coalition government at the center of one of the most intense

and long-lasting conflicts and crises in human history.

As we spoke, and as I speak now, large-scale protests are breaking out all over Israel

over this government's proposed judicial reform that seeks to weaken the Supreme Court

in a bold accumulation of power. Given the current intense political battles in Israel,

our previous intention to speak for three hours was adjusted to one hour, for the time being,

but we agreed to speak again for much longer in the future.

I will also interview people who harshly disagree with the words spoken in this conversation.

I will speak with other world leaders, with religious leaders, with historians and activists,

and with people who have lived and have suffered through the pain of war, destruction, and loss

that stoke the fires of anger and hate in their heart.

For this, I will travel anywhere, no matter how dangerous.

If there's any chance, it may help add to understanding and love in the world.

I believe in the power of conversation, to do just this, to remind us of our common humanity.

I know I'm underqualified and underskilled for these conversations, so I will often fall short

and I will certainly get attacked, derided, and slandered. But I will always turn the other cheek

and use these attacks to learn, to improve, and no matter what, never give into cynicism.

This life, this world of ours, is too beautiful not to keep trying, trying to do some good,

in whatever way each of us know how. I love you all.

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the description and now dear friends here's Benjamin Netanyahu.

You're loved by many people here in Israel and in the world but you're also hated by many.

In fact, I think you may be one of the most hated men in the world. So if there's a young man or

a young woman listening to this right now who have such hate in their heart what can you say to them

to one day turn that hate into love? I disagree with the premise of your question.

I think I have enjoyed a very broad support around the world. There are certain corners in which we

have this animosity that you describe and it sort of permeates in some of the newspapers and news

organs and so on in the United States but it certainly doesn't reflect the broad support that

I have. I just gave an interview on an Iranian channel. 16 million viewers. I gave another one.

I just did a little video a few years ago 25 million viewers from Iran.

Certainly no hate there. I have to tell you. Not from the regime. Okay and when I go around the

world and I've been around the world people want to hear what we have to say. What I have to say

is the leader of Israel whom they respect increasingly is a rising power in the world.

So I disagree with that and the most important thing that goes against what you said is the

respect that we receive from the Arab world and the fact that we've made four historic peace

agreements with Arab countries. They made it with me. They didn't make it with anyone else

and I respect them and they respect me and probably more to come. So I think the premise

is wrong. That's all. Well there's a lot of love. Yes a lot of leaders are collaborating.

Respect I said. Okay all right well it's a spectrum but there is people who

don't have good things to say about Israel who do have hate in their heart for Israel.

And what can you say to those people? Well I think they don't know very much. I think they're

guided by a lot of ignorance. They don't know about Israel. They don't know that Israel is a

stellar democracy that it happens to be one of the most advanced societies on the planet that

what Israel develops helps humanity in every field and medicine and agriculture and the environment

and telecoms and talk about AI in a minute but changing the world for the better and spreading

this among six continents. We've sent rescue teams more than any other country in the world

and we're one tenth of one percent of the world's population. But when there's an earthquake or a

devastation in Haiti or in the Philippines Israel is there. When there's an earthquake

devastating earthquake in Turkey, Turkey Israel was there. When there's something in Nepal Israel

is there and it's a second country. It's the second country after in one case India or after

in other case the United States Israel is there tiny Israel is a benefactor to all of humanity.

So your student of history if I can just linger on that philosophical notion of hate

that part of human nature if you look at World War II what do you learn from

human nature from the rise of the Third Reich and the rise of somebody like Hitler

and the hate that permeates that. Well what I've learned is that you have to nip

bad things in the bud. You have to there's a Latin term that says

upstop pinkie stop bad things when they're small and the deliberate hatred the

the incitement of hatred against one community. It's demonization deligitization that goes with it

is a very dangerous thing and that happened in the case of the Jews. What started with the Jews

soon spread to all of humanity. So what we've learned is that's what we should we should never

and I never sit aside and say oh they're just threatening to destroy us they won't do it.

If somebody threatens to eliminate you as Iran is doing today and as Hitler did then and people

discounted it well if somebody threatens to annihilate us take them seriously and act to

prevent it early on don't let them have the means to do so because that may be too late.

So in those threats underlying that hatred how much of it is anti Zionism and how much of it

is anti-Semitism. I don't distinguish between the two. You can't say well I'm okay with Jews

but I just don't think there should be a Jewish state. It's like saying I'm not anti-American

I just don't think there should be an America that's basically what people are saying these

of the anti anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. When you say anti-Zionism you're saying the

Jewish people don't have a right to have a state of their own and that that is a denial of

of a basic principle that I think completely unmasks what is involved here. Today anti-Semitism

is anti-Zionism. Those who oppose the Jewish people oppose the Jewish state.

If we jump from human history to the current particular moment there's protests in Israel now

about the proposed judicial reform that gives power to your government to override the Supreme

Court. So the critics say that this gives too much power to you virtually making you a dictator.

Well that's ridiculous the mere fact that you have so many demonstrations and protests

some some dictatorship. There's a lot of democracy here more more

unbunctious and more robust than just anywhere on the planet.

Can you still man the case that this gives this may give too much power to the coalition

government to the prime minister not just to you but to those who follow?

No I think that's complete hogwash because I think there's a very few people who are

demonstrating against this quite a few quite many don't have an idea what is being discussed

basically being sloganized you can sloganize you know something about not mass media right now but

the social network you can basically feed deliberately with big data and big money you

can just feed slogans and get into people's minds. I'm sure you don't think I exaggerate because you

can tell me more about that and you can create mass mobilization based on these absurd slogans.

Here's where I come from and what we're doing what we're trying to do and what we've changed

in what we're trying to do. I'm a 19th century Democrat in my small ds in my views that is I

view I ask the question what is democracy okay so democracy is is the will of the majority

and the protection of the rights of they call it the rights of the minority but I say the rights

of the individual okay so how do you balance the two okay how do you get the how do you avoid

mobocracy okay and how do you avoid dictatorship the opposite side the way you avoided is something

that was built essentially by British philosophers and French philosophers but was encapsulated by

the founding fathers of the United States you create a balance between the three branches of

government okay the legislative executive and the judiciary and this balance is what

assures the balance between majority rights and individual rights and you have to balance all

of them okay that balance was maintained in Israel in its first 50 years and was gradually

overtaken and basically broken by the most activist judicial court on the planet that's

what happened here and gradually over the last uh two three decades the the court

aggregated for itself the powers of the parliament and the executive so we're trying to bring it back

into line bring it back into line into what is common in all parliamentary democracies and in

the united states doesn't mean taking the pendulum from one side and bringing it to the other side

we want checks and balances not unrivaled power just as we said we want an independent judiciary

but not in all powerful judiciary that balance does not mean bringing it back into line doesn't

mean that you can have the the parliament arcness that override any decision that the

supreme court does so i've pretty much early on said after the judicial reform was introduced

get rid of the idea of a sweeping override clause that would have with 61 votes that's

majority of one you can just nullify any supreme court decision so let's move it back into the

center so that's gone and most of the criticism on the judicial reform was based on a an unlimited

override clause which i've said is simply not going to happen people are discussing something

that already for six months does not exist the second point that we receive criticism on was the

the structure of how do you choose supreme court judges okay how do you how do you choose them

and the critics of the reform are saying that the idea that elected officials to choose supreme

court judges is the end of democracy if that's the case the united states is not a democracy

neither is france and other are just i don't know just about every uh every democracy on the planet

so there is a view here that uh you can't have the sorted hands of elected officials uh involved in

the choosing of judges and in the israeli system the judicial activism went so far that effectively

the sitting judges have an effective veto on the on the uh on choosing uh judges which means

that this is a self-selecting court that just perpetrates itself and we want to correct that

again want to correct it in a balanced way and that's basically what we're trying to do so i think

there's a lot of misinformation about that we're trying to bring israeli democracy to where it was

in its first 50 years and it was a stellar democracy it still is israel is a democracy will

remain a democracy uh a vibrant democracy and believe me the fact that people are arguing

and demonstrating uh in the streets and protesting is just uh is the best uh proof of that and that's

how it'll remain we spoke about uh tech companies offline there's a lot of tech companies nervous

about this judicial reform can you speak to why a large and small companies have a future in israel

because israel is a free market economy i had something to do with that i introduced dozens

and dozens of free market reforms that made israel move from 17 000 per capita income

to within a very short time to 54 000 that's nominal GDP per capita according to the IMF

and we've uh overtaken in that uh japan france britain germany and how did that happen because we

unleashed the the genius that we have in the initiative and the entrepreneurship that is

latent in our population and to do that we had to create free markets so we created that

so israel has one of the most vibrant free market economies in the world and the second thing we have

is a permanent investment in uh conceptual products because we have a permanent investment in

in the military in our security services creating uh basically knowledge workers who then become

knowledge entrepreneurs and so we create this this structure and that's not going to go away

there's been a decline in investments in the high tech globally i think that's driven by many factors

but the most important one is the interest rate which which i think will it'll fluctuate up and down

but israel will remain a very attractive country because it produces so many so many

knowledge workers in a knowledge-based economy and it's changing so rapidly the world is changing

you're looking for the places that have uh innovation the future belongs to this to those

innovate israel is the uh pre-eminent innovation nation it has few competitors and if we would

say all right where do you have this close cross-disciplinary uh fermentation of various

skills and areas i would say it's in israel i'll tell you why we used to be just telecoms

because people went out of the you know military intelligence our NSA but that's been now broad

base so you find it in medicine you find it in biology you find it in agri tech you find it

everywhere everything is becoming technologizing in israel everybody is dealing in everything

and that's that that's a potent reservoir of talent that the the world is not going to pass up

and in fact it's coming to us we just had Nvidia coming here and they decided to build a super

computer in israel wonder why we've had intel coming here and deciding now to invest 25 billion

dollars just now uh in a new plant in israel i wonder why i don't wonder why they know why

because the talent is here and the freedom is here then it'll remain so so you had a conversation

about ai with sam altman of open ai and with ilan musk yeah what was the content of that

conversation what's your vision for sort of this very highest of tech uh which is artificial

intelligence well first of all i have a high regard for the people i talk to okay and i

understand that they understand things i don't understand and i don't pretend to understand

everything but i do understand one thing i understand that ai is developing at a geometric rate

and mostly in in political life and in life in general people don't have an intuitive grasp of

geometric growth you understand things basically in linear increments and the idea that you're coming

up a ski slope is very foreign to people so they don't understand it and they're naturally also

um sort of taking a back about it because what do you do okay so i i think the there's several

conclusions from my conversations with with them and from my other observations that i've been

talking about for many years i'm talking about the need to do this well the first thing is this

there is no possibility of not entering ai with full force secondly there is a need for regulation

third it's not clear though be global regulation fourth it's not clear where it ends up i i certainly

cannot say that now you might say does it come to control us okay that's a question does it come to

control us i don't know the answer to that i think that is as one observation that i had from these

conversations is if it does come to control us that's probably the only chance of having

universal regulation because i don't see anyone anyone deciding to you know to

avoid the race and cooperate unless you have that threat doesn't mean you can't regulate ai

within countries even without that understanding but it does mean that there's a limit to regulation

because every country will want to make sure that it's not uh doesn't give up competitive

advantage if there is no universal regulation i think that right now just as you know 10 years

ago i read um i read a novel i don't read novels but i was forced to read one by a scientific advisor

i read history i read about economics i read about technology i just don't read novels okay

on this i'm a fellow Churchill you know he said fact is better than fiction well this fiction would

become fact and it was a book it was a novel about a chinese americans a future cyber war

and i read the book one sitting called in a team of experts and i said all right let's

let's turn Israel into one of the world's five cyber powers and let's do it very quickly and

we did actually we did we did exactly that uh i think ai is bigger than that and related to that

because it'll affect well cyber affects everything but ai will affect it even more fundamentally

and the joining of the two could be very powerful so i think in in israel we have to

we have to do it anyway for security reasons and we're doing it but i think what about

what about our databases that are already very robust on on the medical records of 98 percent

of our population why don't we stick a genetic database on that why don't we do other things

that could bring magical what seem are seemingly magical cures and drugs and medical instruments

for that that's one possibility we have it in as i said in every single field the conclusion is this

we have to move on ai we are moving on ai just as we moved on cyber and i think israel will be one

of the leading one of the leading ai powers in the world the questions i don't have an answer to is

what is it go how much does it eat chew up on on jobs there's an assumption that i'm not sure

is true that all previous the two big uh previous revolutions in the human condition namely the

agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution definitely produce more jobs than they

than they consumed okay that is not obvious to me at all i mean i could see new jobs creating

and yes i have that you know that comforting statement but it's not quite true because i

think on balance they'll probably consume more jobs many more jobs than they'll create at least in

the short term and we don't know about the long term no i don't know about the long term but i

used to have the comfort being a free market guy always said you know we're going to produce more

jobs and you know by uh i don't know limiting certain government jobs we're actually putting

out in the market will create more jobs which obviously happened you know we had one telecom

company a government company when i said we're going to you know we're going to create competition

they said you're going to run us out we're not going to have more workers yeah they had 13 000

workers they went down to seven but we created another 40 000 in the other companies so that

was a comforting thought i always knew that was true okay not only that i also knew that wealth

would spread by opening up the markets completely opposite to the socialist and semi-socialist

creed that they had here they said you're you're going to make the rich richer and the poor poor

no and made everyone richer and actually the people who entered the job market because of the

reforms we did actually became a lot richer on the the lowest the lower ladders of the socio-economic

measure but here's the point i don't know i don't know that we will not have

what Elon Musk calls the end of scarcity so you'll have the end of scarcity you'll have

enormous productivity you know very few people are producing enormous added value you're going to

have to tax that to pass it to the others okay you're going to have to do that that's a political

question i'm not sure how we answer that what if you tax and somebody else doesn't tax you're

going to get everybody to go there that's an issue an international issue that we constantly have to

deal with and the second question you have is suppose you solve that problem and you deliver

money okay to those who are not involved in the ai economy what do they do

the first question you ask somebody whom you just met after the polite you know the polite

exchanges what do you do right well people define themselves by their profession and

it's going to be difficult if you don't have a profession and you know people will spend more

time self-searching they'll more time in the in the arts more time in leisure understand that

if i have to bet it will annihilate many more jobs then it will create and enforce a structural

change in our economics in our economic models and in our politics and i'm not sure where it's

going to go and that's something we have to respond to at the nation level and just as a human

civilization both the threat of ai to just us as a human species and then the effect on the jobs

and like you said cyber security and what do you think you think you think it's gonna

we're gonna lose control no i first of all i do believe maybe naively that it will create more

jobs than it takes write that down we'll check it it's on record and you know we don't have we

don't say we'll check it after our lifetime no we'll see it in a few years we'll see it in a

few years i'm really concerned about cyber security and the nature of how that changes

with the power of ai and in terms of existential threats i think there will be so much

threats that aren't existential along the way that that's the thing i'm mostly concerned about

versus ai taking complete control and becoming sort of superseding the human species

although that is something you should consider seriously because of the exponential growth

of its capability it's exactly the exponential growth which we understand

is before us but we don't really it's very hard to project forward to really understand that's

right exactly right so you know i'm so i deal with what i can and where i can affect something i

tend not to worry about things i don't control uh because at a certain point you know there's no

point i mean you have to decide what you're spending your time on so i think in practical terms i think

we'll make we'll make israeli a formidable ai power we understand the limitation of scale computing

power and other things but i think within those limits i think we can make here this

miracle that we we did in many other things you know we do more with less i don't care if it's water

the production of water or the production of energy or the production of knowledge or the

production of cyber capabilities defense and other uh we just do more well with less and i

think in ai we're going to do a lot more uh with a relatively small but highly gifted population

very gifted so taking a small tangent as we talked about offline uh you have a uh a background in

taekwondo oh yeah yeah we mentioned you on musk i've uh trained with both this is a quick question

who do you have uh who are you betting on in a fight well uh i refuse to answer that uh i will

say this such a politician you are yeah of course here i'm a politician i'm openly telling you then

i'm dodging the question okay but i'll say this uh you know i i actually i spent five years in our

special forces in the military and we barely spent a minute uh on martial arts i actually

learned taekwondo later when i came to uh it wasn't even at MIT at MIT i think i did karate but

when i came to the UN i had a martial arts expert and taught me taekwondo which was kind

of interesting now the question you really have to ask is why didn't we learn martial arts in this

special elite unit and the answer is there's no point if you saw indiana jones you know

there's no point you just you know pull the trigger that's simple now i don't expect anyone to

pull the trigger on this combat and i'm i'm sure you'll you'll make sure that doesn't happen

yeah i mean martial arts is it's kind of it's bigger than just combat it's this kind of journey

of humility and it has uh it's an art form it truly is an art but it's fascinating that these two

figures in taekw are facing each other and uh i won't ask a question of who you would face and

how you would do but um well i'm i'm facing opponents all the time all the time yeah that's

part of life but not a part of life part of life is not yet i'm not sure about that you're announcing

in whites okay part of life is competition you know you know the only time competition ends is

death but you know political life economic life uh cultural life is engaged continuously in

creativity in competition and uh the the problem i have with that as as i mentioned earlier just

before we began the podcast is that uh at a certain point you want to put barriers to monopoly

barriers to monopoly and if you're in a really able competitor you're going to create a monopoly

that's what peter teal says is a natural course of things it's what i learned and uh basically in the

boston consulting group if you're a very able competitor you'll create scale advantages that

give you the ability to lock out your competition and as a prime minister i want to assure that

there is competition in the markets you have to limit limit this competitive power at a certain

point and that becomes increasingly hard uh in the in a world where everything is intermiss where do

you define market segments where do you define monopoly how do you do that that is very that

that actually conceptually i find very challenging because of all the dozens of political of economic

reforms that i've made the most difficult part is the conceptual part once you have you've ironed it

out you say here's what i want to do here's the right thing to do then you have a practical problem

of overcoming union resistance political resistance press calamity you know opponents

from this or that corner that's a practical matter but if you have it conceptually defined

you can move ahead to reform economies or reform education or reform transportation fine

in the question of the growing power of large companies big tech companies to monopolize

the markets because they're better at it they provide a service they provided lower cost

rapidly declining cost where do you stop where do you uh where do you stop in a monopoly power

is a crucial question because it also becomes now a political question if you amass enormous

amount of economic power which is information power you know that also monopolizes the political

process which creates these are real questions that are not obvious i don't have an obvious answer

because as i said as a 19th century democrat these are questions of the 21st century which

people should uh should begin to think do you have a solution to that the solution of monopolies

growing arbitrarily yeah unstoppable in power economic power and therefore in political power

means some of that is regulation some of that is competition you know where to put to draw the line

it's not breaking up at and to you know it's not that simple well i believe in the power of

competition that there will always be somebody that challenges the big guys especially in the space

of ai the more open source movements are taking hold the more the little guy can become the big

guy so you're saying basically the regulatory the the regulatory uh instrument is the market

in large part in most part that's the hope maybe i'm a dreamer that's been in many ways

by policy up to now okay the best regulator uh is the market the best regulator in economic

uh in economic activity is the market and the best regulator in political matters

is the political market that's called elections that's what that's what regulates you know you

have a lousy government uh and people make lousy decisions well you don't need uh you know the wise

men raised above the you know the the masses to decide what is good what is bad let the masses

decide let them vote every four years or whatever and they throw you up by the way it happened to

me there's life after political death there's actually political life i was reelected five or

six times and this is my sixth term so you know that i believe in that i'm not sure i'm not sure

that in economic matters in the geometric growth of uh tech companies that you'll always have

the little guy the nimble mammal that will come out and slay the dinosaurs or overcome

the dinosaurs uh which is essentially what you said yeah i wouldn't count out the little guy

you wouldn't count out the little i hope you're right uh well let me ask you about this uh

market of politics so you have uh served six terms as prime minister over 15 years in power

let me ask you again human nature uh do you worry about the corrupting nature of power

on you as a leader on you as a man not at all um because i i think that the again the the thing

that drives me is not uh is nothing but the mission that i took to assure the uh the survival and

thriving of the state the jewish state that is its economic prosperity uh but its security and its

ability to achieve peace with our neighbors and i'm committed to it i think there's still

there are many things that have been done there are a few big things that i can still do but it

doesn't only depend on my sense of mission it depends on the market as we say it depends really on

the will of the israeli voters and the israeli voters have decided to vote for me again again

even though i wield no power in the press no power in in many quarters here uh and so on nothing i

mean i am probably i'm going to be very soon the longest-serving uh prime minister in the

last half century in the western democracies but that's not because i uh i am mass great

political power in any of the institutions i remember uh i had a conversation with uh

uh silvio berlusconi who recently died and he said to me about uh i don't know 15 years ago

something like that he said so bb uh how many uh how many of israel's uh television stations

do you have uh and i said none he said do you have none i have do you have i said none i have

two he said no no but what you mean you don't have any that you control i said not only do i have

none that i control they're all against me so i said so how do you win elections

and you know with both hands tied behind your back and i said the hard way and that's why you

know i have the largest party but i don't have many more seats that i would have if i had a

sympathetic voice in the media and israel is until recently was dominated completely by

one side of the political spectrum that you know often vilified me not not me because they viewed

me as representing basically the conservative voices in israel that are majority and so the

idea that i'm an omnipotent authoritarian uh uh dictator is ridiculous i am uh i would say i'm a

not merely a champion of uh of democracy and democratization i'm uh i believe ultimately

the decision is with the voters and the voters even though they've had you know they have constant

constant press attacks they've chosen to put me back in so i don't believe in this thing of amassing

the corrupting power if you don't have elections if you don't have if you control uh the the

means of influencing the voters i'd understand what you're saying but in my case it's exact

opposite i have to constantly go in elections constantly uh uh you know with a disadvantage

that the major media outlets are very violently sometimes against me but it's fine and i keep

on winning so i i don't know what you're talking i would say the concentration of power lies elsewhere

not here well you have been involved in several corruption cases how much corruption is there in

israel and how do you fight it in your own party and in israel well you should ask a different

question what's happened to these cases these cases have uh uh basically are collapsing and before our

eyes the uh the um you know there were uh there was recently an event in which the judges the three

judges are in in my case called in the prosecution and said you know your flagship the bribery

charge so-called bribery charge you know is gone doesn't exist before a single a single defense

witness was called uh and um uh it sort of tells you that this thing is evaporating it's

quite astounding even that i have to say was covered even by the mainstream press uh in israel

because it's such an earthquake so uh you know a lot of these charges are not a lot these charges

will prove to be nothing i always say listen i stand before the legal process i don't claim that i'm

exempt from it in any way on the contrary i think the truth will come out and it's coming out

we see that not only that but with other things so i think it's kind of instructive that you know

no no politician has been more vilified no none has been put to such uh uh you know what is it about

a quarter of a billion uh shekels were used to scrutinize me and scour my bank accounts sending

people to the philippines into mexico into europe into america and looking at everybody using spyware

the most advanced spyware on the planet against the my associates blackmailing witnesses uh

uh uh telling them you know think about your family think about your wife you know you better

tell us what you want all that is coming out in the trial uh so i would say that most people now

are not asking are no longer asking including my opponents sort of trickling in as the as the

stuff comes out people are not saying what did uh netanyahu do because he apparently did nothing

what was done to him is something that people ask what was done to him what was done to our democracy

what was done in the attempt to put down somebody who keeps winning elections despite the handicaps

that i described maybe we can maybe we can nail him by framing him and the one thing i can say about

the the the score trial is that um things are coming out and that's that's very good just objective

things are coming out changing the picture so i would say the the attempt to brand me

as corrupt is falling on its face but the thing that isn't being uncovered in the trial

such as the use the use of spyware on a politician a politician's surroundings to try to shake them

down in investigations put them in flea-ridden cells for 21 days invite their 84-year-old mother

to investigations without cause bringing in their mistresses in the corridor shaking them down

that's what people are asking that corruption is what they want corrected

what is the top obstacle to peaceful coexistence of israelis and palestinians let's talk about

the big question of peace in this part of the world well i think the reason you have uh the

persistence of the uh palestinian-israeli conflict which goes back about a century is the persistent

palestinian refusal to recognize a jewish state a nation state for the jewish people in any

boundary and that's why they opposed the establishment of the state of israel before we had a state

and that's why they've opposed it after we had a state they opposed it when we were we didn't have

judy and samaria the west bank in our heads and gaza and they oppose it after we have it

doesn't make a difference it's basically the persistent refusal to recognize a jewish state

in any boundaries and i think their tragedy is that they've been commandeered for a century by

leadership that refuse to compromise with the idea of of zionism namely that the jews deserve

a state in this part of the world the territorial dispute is something else you have a territorial

dispute if you say okay you're living on this side we're living on that side let's decide where the

border is and so on that's not what the argument is the palestinian society which is itself

fragmented but all the factions agree there shouldn't be a jewish state anywhere okay

they just disagree between khamas that says oh well you should have it you know we should get rid

of it with terror and the others who say we know we should also use political means to dissolve it

so that is that is the problem so even that's part of a two-state solution they're still against the

idea well they don't want a state next to Israel they want a state instead of Israel

and they say if we get a state we'll use it as a springboard to destroy the the smaller Israeli

state which is what happened when israel unilaterally walked out of Gaza and effectively established a

khamas state there they didn't say oh good now we have you know our own territory our own state

israel is no longer there let's build peace let's build you know economic projects let's

enfranchise our people no they turned it into a basically into a terror bastion from which they

fired 10 000 rockets into Israel when Israel left Lebanon you know because we had terrorist attacks

from there then we had Lebanon taken over by Hezbollah terrorist organization that seeks

to destroy Israel and and therefore every time we just walked out what we got was not peace we

didn't give you know territory for peace we got territory for terror that's what we had and that's

what would happen as long as the the reigning ideology says we don't want Israel in any border

so the the idea of two states assumes that you'd have on the other side a state that wants to

live in peace and not one that will be overtaken by Iran and its proxies in two seconds and become a

base to destroy Israel and therefore I think that most Israelis today if you ask them they're

they'd say that's not going to work in that concept so what do you do what do you do with

the Palestinians okay they're still there and I don't unlike them I don't want to throw them out

they're going to be living here and we're going to be living here in an area which is by the way

just to understand the area the entire area of so-called West Bank and in Israel is the width

of the Washington Beltway more or less just a little more not much more you can't really divide

it up you can't say well you're going to fly in who controls the airspace well it takes you about

two and a half minutes to cross it with a with a regular you know 747 okay with the fighter plane

it takes you a minute and a half okay so you're not how are you going to divide the airspace well

you're not going to divide it Israel is going to control that airspace and the electromagnetic

space and and so on so security has to be in the hands of Israel my view of how you solve this problem

is that is a simple principle the Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves

and none of the powers to threaten Israel which basically means that the responsibility for

overall security remains with Israel and from a practical point of view we've seen that every

time that Israel leaves a territory and and takes its security forces out of an area it immediately

is overtaken by Hamas or Hezbollah or Jihadists who basically are committed to the destruction

of Israel and also bring misery to the the Palestinians or Arab subjects so I think that

that principle is less than perfect sovereignty because you're taking a certain amount of powers

sovereign powers especially security away but I think it's the only practical solution so people

say ah but it's not a perfect state okay call it what you will call it you know I don't know

limited sovereignty call it autonomy plus call it whatever you want to call it but that's the

reality and right now if you ask Israelis across the political spectrum except the very hard left

most Israelis agree with that they don't really debate it so a two-state solution where Israel

controls the security of the entire region we don't call it quite that I mean there are different

names but the idea is yes Israel controls security in the is the entire area it's this tiny area

between the Jordan River and the sea I mean it's like you know you can walk it in not one afternoon

if you really fit you can do it in a day less less than a day I did so the expansion of settlements

in the West Bank has been a top priority for this new government uh so people many harshly

criticized this as contributing to escalating the Israel Palestine tensions what do you can you

understand that perspective that this expansion of settlements is not good for this two-state

solution yeah I can understand I can understand what they're saying and they don't understand

why they're wrong first most most Israelis who live in Judea Samaria live in uh in urban blocks

and that accounts for about 90 percent of the of the population okay and everybody recognizes

that those urban blocks are going to be part of Israel in any future arrangement so they're really

arguing about something that has already been decided and agreed upon really by by Americans by

even by Arabs many Arabs they don't think that Israel is going to dismantle these these blocks

you know you look outside the window here and within about a kilometer a mile from here is you

have Jerusalem half of Jerusalem grew naturally beyond the old 1967 border so you're not going

to dismantle half of Jerusalem that's not going to happen and and most people don't expect that

then you have the other 10 scattered in tiny you know small communities and people say well you

gotta have to take them out why why remember that in pre uh 1967 Israel we have a over a million

and a half Arabs here we don't say oh Israel has to be uh ethnically cleansed from Arabs in order

to have from its Arab citizens in order to have peace of course not Jews can live among Arabs

and Arabs can live among uh Jews and what is what is being advanced by those people who say

that we can't live in our ancestral homeland in these disputed areas nobody says that this is

Palestinian areas and nobody says that these are Israeli areas we claim them they claim them we've

only been attached to this land for oh 3,500 years but uh you know uh but it's a dispute I agree

but I don't agree that we should throw out the Arabs and I don't think that they should

throw out the Jews and if somebody said to you the only way we're going to have peace with Israel

is to have an ethnically cleansed Palestinian entity you know that that's outrageous if you said

the only way you know you shouldn't have Jews living in uh I don't know in suburbs of London or

New York and so on I don't think that will play too well the world is actually advancing a solution

that says that uh that Jews cannot live among Arabs and Arabs cannot live among Jews I don't

think that's the right way to do it uh and I think there's a solution out there but I don't think

we're going to get to it which is less than perfect sovereignty which involves Israeli security uh

maintained for the entire territory by Israel which involves not rooting out anybody not kicking

up rooting Arabs or Palestinians they're going to live in enclaves in sovereign Israel and we're

going to live in probably in enclaves there probably through transportational continuity as

opposed to territorial continuity that is uh you know for example you can have tunnels and overpasses

and so on that connect the various communities we're doing that right now we're doing that right

now and it it actually works I think there is a solution to this uh it's not the perfect world

that people think of because that model I think doesn't apply here uh if it applies elsewhere

it's a question uh I don't think so but I think there's one other thing and that's the main thing

that I've been involved in you know people said if you don't solve the Palestinian problem

you're not going to get to the Arab world you're not going to have peace with the Arab world

remember the Palestinians are about two percent of the Arab world uh and the other you know the

other 98 percent you're not going to make peace with them and that's our goal and for a long time

people accepted that after the initial peace treaties with Egypt with uh prime minister

Beggin of the Likud and the president said out of Egypt and then uh with Jordan between prime

minister Rabin and uh and King Hussein for a quarter of a century we didn't have any more peace

treaties because people said you got to go through the Palestinians and the Palestinians they don't

want a solution of the kind that I described or any kind except the one that involved the

dissolution of the state of Israel so we could wait another half century and I said no I mean

I don't think that we should accept the premise that we have to wait for the Palestinians because

we'll have to wait forever so I decided to do it differently I decided to go directly to the Arab

capitals and to make the historic Abraham Accords uh and essentially uh reversing the equation not

a peace process that goes inside out but outside in and we went directly to the these countries

and forged these uh these breakthrough peace accords with the United Arab Emirates with Bahrain

with Morocco and with Sudan and we're now trying to expand that in a quantum leap with Saudi Arabia

what does it take to do that with Saudi Arabia with the Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman

you know I'm a student of history and I read a lot of history and I read that you know in the

Versailles discussions after World War one President Woodrow Wilson said I believe in open

covenants openly arrived at I have my correction I believed in open covenants secretly arrived at

so there's we're not gonna advance a Saudi Israeli peace by having it publicly discussed and in any

case it's a decision of the of the Saudis if they want to do it but there's obviously a mutual

interest so here's my view if we try to wait for the 2 percent in order to get to the 98 percent

we're going to fail and we have failed if we go to the 98 percent we have a much greater chance of

persuading the 2 percent you know why because the 2 percent the Palestinian uh hope to vanquish the

state of Israel and not make peace with it is based among other things on the on the assumption

that eventually the 98 percent the rest of the Arab world will kick in and destroy the Jewish state

help them to dissolve or destroy the Jewish state when that hope is uh taken away then you begin to

have a turn to the realistic solutions of coexistence by the way they'll require compromise on the

Israeli side too and then you know I'm perfectly cognizant of that and willing to do that but I

think a realistic compromise will be struck much more readily when the conflict between Israel

and the Arab states the Arab world is effectively solved and I think we're on that path it was a

conceptual change just like you know I've been involved in a few I told you the conceptual

battle is always the most difficult one and you know I had to fight this battle to convert a

semi-socialist state into a free market capitalist state and I have to say that most people today

recognize the power of competition and the benefits of free markets so we also had to fight this

battle that said you have to go through the you know the the the the Palestinian

straight S-D-R-A-I-T to get to the other places there's no way to avoid this you know you have

to go through this this uh uh impassable pass uh and I think that now people are recognizing that

we'll go around it uh and probably circle back and that I think actually gives hope not only

to have an Arab Israeli piece but circling back an Israeli Palestinian piece and obviously this

is not something that you find in the you know in the sound bites and so on but but in the popular

discussion of the press but that idea is permeating and I think it's the right idea because I think

it's the only one that will work so expanding the circle piece just the linger on that requires

what secretly talking man to man human to human uh to leaders of other nations

theoretically you're right theoretically okay well let me ask you another theoretical question

on the circle of peace as a student of history looking at the ideas of war and peace what do you

think can achieve peace in the war in Ukraine looking at another part of the world if you

if you consider the fight for peace in this part of the world how can you apply that to that other

part of the world between Russia and Ukraine now I think it's one of the um the savage horrors of

history and one of the great tragedies that is occurring and let me say in advance that that if

I have any opportunity to use my contacts to help bring about an end to this tragedy I'll do so

I've had I know both leaders but I don't just jump in and assume you know there's be a desire at a

certain point because the conditions have created the possibility of helping stop this this carnage

then I'll do it and that's why I choose my words carefully because I think that may be the best

the best thing that I could do look I think what you see in Ukraine is what happens if you have

um territorial designs on a territory by a country that has nuclear weapons

and that to me you see the change in the equation now I think that people are low to use nuclear

weapons and I'm not sure that I would think that the the russian side would use them

with happy abandon I don't think that's the question but you see how the whole configuration

changes when that happens so you have to be very careful and how you resolve this conflict so it

doesn't uh well it doesn't go off the rails so to speak that's by the way the the the car

area is here we don't want Iran which is an aggressive force with an just aggressive ideology

of dominating first the muslim world and then eliminating israel and then becoming a you know

global force uh having nuclear weapons it's totally different when they don't have it and

when they do have it and that's why one of my main goals has been to prevent Iran from having

the means to the means of mass destruction which will be used atomic bombs which they

openly say will be used against us and you can understand that uh how to bring about an end to

Ukraine I have my ideas I don't think I don't think it's worthwhile uh discussing them now because

they might they might be required later on do you believe in the power of conversation

since you have contacts with Volodymyr Zelensky and Volodymyr Putin just leaders sitting in a room

and discussing how the end of war can be brought about I think it's a combination of that but

I think it's the question of interest and and whether you have to get both sides

to a point where they think that that conversation would lead to something useful I don't think

they're there right now what part is of this is just basic human ego stubbornness all of this

between leaders which is why I bring up the power of conversation of sitting in a room realizing

we're human beings and then there's a history that connects Ukraine and Russia yeah I don't

think they're in a position to enter a room right now realistically I mean you can posit that it

would be good if that could happen but entering the room is sometimes more complicated than what

happens in the room and there's a lot of you know pre-negotiation on the negotiation then you

negotiate endlessly on the negotiation they're not even there it took a lot of work for you to get

a handshake in the past it's an interesting question how did the peace the Abraham Accords

how did that begin you know I mean we had you know we had decades but 70 years where they

or 65 years where these people you know would not meet openly or even secretly with an Israeli

leader yeah we had the Mossad making contacts with them all the time and so on but how do we

break the ice to the top level of leadership well we broke the ice because I took a very strong

stance against Iran and the Gulf states understood that Iran is a formidable danger to them so we

had a common interest and the second thing is that because of the economic reforms that we had

produced in Israel Israel became a technological powerhouse and that could help their nations

not only in terms of anything just bettering the life of their peoples and the combination of the

of the desire to have some kind of protection against Iran or some kind of cooperation against

Iran and civilian economic cooperation came to a head when I gave a speech in the American Congress

which I didn't do lightheartedly I had to decide to challenge a sitting American president

and on the so-called Iranian deal which I thought would pave Iran's path with gold

to be an effective nuclear power that's what would happen so I went there and in the course of

giving that speech before the joint session of Congress our delegation received calls

from Gulf states who said we can't believe what your prime minister is doing he's challenging you

know the president of the United States well I had no choice I mean because I thought my country's

own existence was imperiled and remember we always understand through changing administrations that

America under no matter what leadership is always the irreplaceable and indispensable ally of Israel

and we'll always remain that we can have arguments as we have but in the family as we say in the

mishpoche you know it's the the family but nevertheless I was forced to take a stand that produced

calls from Gulf states that ultimately led to clandestine meetings that ultimately flowered

into the the Abraham Accords then and I think we're at a point where the idea of ending the Arab

Israeli conflict not the Palestinian Israeli conflict the Arab Israeli conflict can happen

I'm not sure it will it depends on quite a few things but it could happen and if it happens it

might open up the ending of the Israeli Islamic conflict remember the Arab world is a small part

it's an important part but it's there are large Islamic populations and it could bring about

an end to the an historic enmity between Islam and Judaism it could be a great thing

so I'm looking at this larger thing you know you can you can be hobbled by saying well well

you know you've had this you know this hiccup in Gaza or you know this

this or that thing happening in the Palestinians I don't I don't it's important for us because we

want security but I think the larger question is can we break out into a much wider peace

and ultimately come back and make the the peace between Israel and the Palestinians rather than

waiting to solve that and never getting to the to paint on the larger canvas I want to paint

on the larger canvas and come back to the Palestinian Israeli conflict as you write about

in your book what have you learned about life from your father my father was a great historian

and well he taught me several things he said that the the first condition for a living organism

is to identify danger in time because if you don't you could be devoured you could be destroyed

very quickly and that's the nature of human conflict in fact for the Jewish people we didn't

we lost the capacity to identify danger in time and we were almost devoured and destroyed by

the Nazi threat so when I see somebody parroting the Nazi

goal of destroying the Jewish state I try to mobilize the country and the world in time

because I think Iran is a global threat not only a threat to Israel that's the first thing

the second thing is I once asked him before I got elected I said well what do you think is the most

important quality for a prime minister of Israel and he came back with a question what do you think

and I said well you have to have vision and you have to have the you know the flexibility of

navigating and working towards that vision you know be flexible but understand where you're

heading and he said well you need that for anything you need it for you know if you're a

university president or if you're a leader of a corporation or anything anybody would have to

have that I said all right so so what do you need for to be the the leader of Israel he said

he came back to me with a word that stunned me he said education you need a broad and deep

education or you'll be at the mercy of your clerks or the press or whatever you have to

you have to be able to to do that now you know as I spend time in government

being reelected you know by the people of Israel

I recognize more and more how how right it was you you need to constantly ask yourself

where's the direction we want to take the country how do we achieve that goal but also understand

that new disciplines are being added you have to learn all the time you have to learn all the time

you have to add to your intellectual capital all the time Kissinger said that he wrote that once

you enter public life you begin to draw on your intellectual capital and you know it'll be depleted

very quickly if you stay a long time I disagree with that I think you have to constantly constantly

increase your understanding of things as they change because because my father was right you

need to broaden and deepen your education as you go along you can't just sit back and say well I

studied some things in university or in college or in Boston or at MIT and that's enough you know

I've done it no learn learn learn learn learn never stop and if I might suggest as part of the

education I would add in a little literature maybe Dostoevsky in the in in the plenty full of time

you have as a prime minister to read well I read him but I'll tell you what I think is bigger than

Dostoevsky oh no who's that not who's that but what's that I was Dan rather came to see me

with his grandson a few years ago and he asked me the grandson asked me he was a student in

an Ivy League college and he said he's 18 years old and he wants to study to enter politics

and he said what's what's the most important thing that I have to study to enter a political life

and I said you have three things you have to study okay history history and history

that's that's the fundamental discipline for political life but then you have to study other

things study economics study politics and and so on and study study the military if you have if you

I'm had an advantage because I spent some years there so I learned a lot of that

but I had to acquire the other disciplines and you never acquire enough so read read read and

by the way if I have to choose I read history history and history good works of history not

lousy books last question you've talked about a survival of a nation you yourself are a mortal

being do you contemplate your mortality do you contemplate your death are you afraid of death

aren't you yes who's not I mean if you're conscious if you're a being with conscious I mean one of

the unhappy things about the human brain is that it can contemplate its own its own demise

and so we have to we all make our compromises with this but I think the question is what lives on

what lives on beyond this and I think that you have to define how much

of posterity do you want to influence I cannot influence the course of humanity we are specs

you know little specs so that's not the issue but in my case I've devoted my life to a very

defined purpose and that is to assure the future and security and

I would say permanence but that is obviously a limited thing of the Jewish state and the Jewish

people I don't think one can exist without the other so I've devoted my life to that and I hope that

in my time on this earth and in my years in office I'd have contributed to that

well you had one heck of a life starting from MIT to six terms as prime minister

thank you for this stroll through human history and for this conversation it was an honor

thank you and I hope you come back to Israel many times it's remember it's the innovation nation

it's a robust democracy don't believe all the stuff that you're being told it'll remain that

uh it kind of be any other way and it's I'll tell you the other thing it's the best ally of the

United States and its importance is growing by the day because our capacities in the information

world are growing by the day we need a coalition of the like-minded smarts this is a smart nation

and we share the basic values of freedom and liberty with the United States so the coalition

of the smarts means Israel is the sixth eye and America has no better ally

all right now off mic I'm gonna force you to finally tell me who's gonna win Elon Musk or

Mark Zuckerberg but that's uh it's a good time man we ran out of time here I'll tell you outside

thanks for listening to this conversation with Benjamin and Tanya to support this podcast

please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with some words from

Ahatma Gandhi an eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind thank you for listening

and hope to see you next time

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.