Ibish and Miller: The Middle East crisis

0:00:00.0 Jenna: I am so glad to see you all and welcome to what I'm really... An event I've been looking forward to for a while. So, this afternoon's talk is one result of ongoing work and discussion that we've been having across the school, [laughter] exchanging photos with students, faculty and staff. I wanna thank everyone who has been willing to share their interests, frustrations, feelings, hopes and deep concern about the ongoing horrific violence in Israel and Palestine. And I see a number of faces in the room that I've had some really, really good conversations with as, has the rest of our team. So, as we've navigated our way through this hard year, we will continue to strive to make sure that each, despite our differences that we can communicate in a way that lives up to our values and to our strong sense of the Ford School community.

0:01:07.9 Jenna: We are pleased to be joined by two very highly regarded scholars who will give us a perspective on the causes, current, state, and possible outcomes of the crisis. Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. He's a weekly columnist for the national newspaper in the United Arab Emirates and is a regular contributor to the New York Times, the Daily Beast, and many other US and Middle Eastern publications. Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, focusing on US Foreign Policy, a most important credential. He received his PhD in Middle East and US Diploma Diplomatic history from the University of Michigan in 1977. It's always great to have a fellow Wolverine in the house. Between 1978 and 2003, Miller served at the State Department as an historian, negotiator and advisor to Republican and Democratic secretaries of State, where he helped to formulate US policy on the Middle East and the Arab-Israel Peace Process.

0:02:20.4 Jenna: So we welcome you both. And a note just about the structure of our discussion. So, each of our guests is going to give some opening remarks and then we're gonna have a conversation. We'll turn then to the group that helped us to shape the format and questions for today's event. So, the faculty experts Java Lee and Ann Lynn sitting up here in the front. BA student Zainab Al Shammy, and MPP student Ben Grossman. My thanks to BA Evan Rocker and MPP Alhan Focker for helping out as well. For those of you in the auditorium, you can ask further questions using the QR code, which I think has been distributed. So gentlemen, welcome to both of you.

0:03:09.7 Hussein Ibish: Thank you.

0:03:10.2 Aaron David Miller: Thank you. Thank you. Hussein.

0:03:12.6 HI: Alright, I will start. I want to make just a few points to try to put the tragic events that are ongoing into the context in which I view them. The first thing is that those of us, and there are quite a few, but I was allowed one among them in, at least in the United States, who've been warning over the past, I don't know, 15 years or more, that a violent explosion in the occupied Palestinian Territories was inevitable. Not likely, not probable, not possible, inevitable. We're not kidding, and we were not making it up. We knew something was going to happen. I couldn't have told you that it was going to take the form it did on October 7th. And I greatly regret that that is what happened. And I could not have predicted it necessarily would've come out of Gaza, though that's no surprise necessarily.

0:04:12.2 HI: And I could not have predicted it necessarily would've been led by Hamas rather than say an unaffiliated armed youth group like the Lions Den in the old city of Nablus or something. But that it would happen. I would have guaranteed you. And that's my first point, it was inevitable. It should, leaves me in my second point, which is that the 150 years, or 100 years, or 85 years, or however long you want to call, you know, count this conflict. It does not really go back further than the 1880s or 1870s, it really doesn't have any antecedent before that. But, you know, you can draw the line anywhere. Throughout that process, the biggest characteristic of the conflict, and the biggest tragedy and irony of the conflict is that it is fundamentally boils down to collectivities of human beings, bunches of people doing human things, doing people stuff.

0:05:14.6 HI: Their be... Israelis and Palestinians love to pathologize each other. And their partisans on each side, love to point the finger and say, you have this thing and that thing, and blame and stigma and pathology, and it's wrong. Fundamentally, these are groups of people behaving exactly like human beings do. And there's nothing that either side is doing or has done to the other that was not only predictable, but that the other side wouldn't have done if the roles were reversed, in my view. And that has major antecedents in other analogous points of human history. I would rather avoid analogies. I don't like analogies because they take our attention away from the specific, but my point is this, all of this, which looks so ghastly and other worldly, is actually typical. For example, the rage, the fury, the blood lust of October 7th looks other otherworldly to us.

0:06:17.0 HI: But if you put that in the context of the era of great colonization between say 1857 in India and 1962 in Algeria, you get constant eruptions of this kind of frenzy again and again and again and again. And it's just, we haven't seen this situation, a similar kind of situation in a long time. Because the situation in the occupied Palestinian Territories is anachronistic, but it is not atypical of human beings, alright. So, and the Israeli response similarly is absolutely predictable and it's Carthaginian response anyway. The third point I wanna make is that...

0:07:00.3 HI: The core problem here, in my view, is not just that you have about 7 million Israeli Jews with a national collective identity, and about 7 million Palestinian Muslims and Christians with a collective national identity in the same small area between the river and the sea, contesting for land and power. That's bad enough. The bigger problem is that there is a, an almost unprecedented degree of asymmetry and power between them. That is to say, all the Jewish Israelis are full first class citizens of Israel with all the defense, and very few of the Palestinians are citizens of anything at all. Israel has one of the most powerful small armies in the world with nuclear weapons and whatnot. There has never been a Palestinian tank in the history of the Palestinian people, not one. So, you know, the asymmetry is a dysfunctionally grotesque one.

0:07:58.0 HI: And what that has meant is that practically speaking, there isn't any real leverage that Palestinians have over Israelis other than things desperation acts of frenzy like October 7, or a constant protesting to no aim or things like that, the power of the weak, which exists. But, compared to a bullet, it doesn't do much. Honestly, we can rhapsodize about Gandhi. King was fighting for equal rights within a society, for existing citizens. It was not a colonial situation. We fantasize about the power of non-violence between peoples within politics. It can be strong. We have many instances of that, but between peoples, I'm afraid it's a fantasy and that's where we are. So, the asymmetry makes it virtually impossible for Israelis, not only to make concessions where they don't feel any particular pressure to do so, but also for them not to go forward with annexation and, towards expulsion in the West Bank.

0:09:03.2 HI: We have been more... Right now as the world sort of coalesces around the idea of, resurrecting the idea of a Palestinian state as a necessary response to October 7th. Israel is further from that than at any time since 1993, before 1993. And this is highly significant because what we're seeing is a slow walk beginning after the failure of the Camp David Summit in 2000 where Aaron was an important member and I salute you for trying. And then now increasingly a fast train towards the station in the West Bank, which is called annexation and probable expulsion. And this is now the policy of the Israeli government. It is now virtually, a plurality in Israel. At least half of Israelis want to do this. And it's where we're going. And the reason we're going there, back to the fact that these are human beings.

0:09:53.3 HI: People in collective groups, tribal groups, national groups don't act with self-restraint and enlightened self-interest, they act like toddlers. And when toddlers really want something and they can get it, you know what they do? They take it. And that's the situation Jewish Israelis find themselves, they really, really desperately want big chunks of the West Bank, more than the Galilee, more than they give in some religious cases, more than they want Tel Aviv for religious people. A place like Hebrew is much more resonant. Well, if they can take it and no one can stop them, and that is a situation, that is what is going to happen, I believe. Now, I don't say it's inevitable, but I say, that's where we're going fast. And so, I'm very, very worried about that. And I think October 7th accelerates the path towards that and not decreases it, because it gives Jewish Israelis all the more reason to want to separate from Palestinians and to claim to be the grownups.

0:10:52.1 HI: We need a divorce. We are going to be the ones to take the bitter step. We cried, we didn't want to do it. It was the last thing we wanted to do after working for so many decades to do it. It's the last thing we ever would've wanted. And we did it and we cried. And that you can hear the script come. It's coming. I don't know what's gonna stop it. I would love to talk to you about Hamas' motivations in detail. I invite you to ask me, because it was not primarily an attack against Israel. This is my fifth point, Hamas, the founding directive of Hamas, which was formed in 1987 during the crucible of the first uprising by Palestinians against Israeli rule that began in '67, was to take power away from the secular nationalists of Fatah and turn the Palestinian cause into an Islamist one.

0:11:38.6 HI: Israel comes after that. Right now, Israel and attacking Israel is a means to that end. It is not the end, the end is power. Internal domestic power. The goal they're fighting for is the crown jewel of the Palestinian National Movement, which is the international standing and presence of the PLO. 130 embassies and missions around the world, and non-member observer state status at the general assembly and membership in countless multinational organizations. Whoever speaks for the Palestinians on the world stage is the PLO. Whoever controls the PLO speaks for the Palestinians. Right now, that's Fatah and not Hamas. Until they get control over that voice, they are going to be marginal, and they're fighting for that. I can tell you how they think this is going to do it, but I'm not... I invite you to ask me. That brings me to my final observation, which is a corollary, which is if anybody's interested in defeating Hamas, thwarting them, and pushing back successfully, the only way to do it is first to recognize what they want and deny it to them.

0:12:47.2 HI: Alright? What they want is not to avoid a war with Israel or win a war with Israel or anything silly like that. What they want is to marginalize Fatah and take over the movement. The only way to deny them that is to stop playing footsie with both sides. And this divide and rule policy that Netanyahu put in place where it worked hard to keep Hamas in power in Gaza and, Fatah in power, but weakened and humiliated in the West Bank, divide and conquer to prevent Palestinian statehood from coming about this produced October 7th. This is exactly what produced October 7th, as inevitably as the sun rises. And if anyone is interested in countering the game, the aims of October 7th, better work on strengthening the other side of the Palestinians, the ones who want to talk to Israel and do a deal, not shoot Israelis and have a war. I'll stop with that.

0:13:42.0 AM: Hussein, thanks. I always learn from you. I thought my remarks are gonna be depressing. Let me start with a few acknowledgements. First to Jenna. Thank you for the introductions. I don't think the dean is here, but maybe she is. Dean Celeste Watkins Hayes, thank you. To the faculty and staff for grappling with these contentious and difficult issues all these months, thank you. It's hard, but then again, faring out beyond your comfort zone is always hard. And that's critically important to talk about this conflict. And I'd also like to thank the University of Michigan. Lindsay Miller and I spent seven extraordinary years here. I would say things were different. Walking down State Street, there was borders, the arcade still here. In 1969, this campus was something different than it is now. I mean, there were pros and there were cons. But the essence of what Michigan is, I think, really remains. And I was here the last time in '06 where I addressed the Ford School.

0:15:03.8 AM: I didn't listen to that presentation, I probably should have. But I wanna make one additional point. Being here in those years changed the trajectory of my life. Now, I don't know whether it's still possible that students get profoundly influenced by their professors, but I had two professors, Gerald Lieberman, historian of American Wars and Richard Mitchell foremost authority on the Juan on the Muslim Brotherhood. They both came to Michigan after government careers. And the stories they told and the adventures that they had, fundamentally altered my trajectory. I didn't want to be a history professor, which is what I wanted to be since I was five anymore. Being in Jerusalem in 1973 during the October War also sort of validated my notion that I wanted to try to do whatever I could to help. But if I was to teach, I didn't want to teach out of the library.

0:16:12.1 AM: I wanted to teach out of these experiences. So I have no regrets. I told my kids they're in their 40s, and I'll offer the same advice to you. The happiest people I know professionally, personally, as another matter, and I wouldn't even presume to give you advice on that matter. But the happiest people I know professionally are the ones whose careers combine passion. They love what they do and expertise. They know what they're talking about. Because, passion without expertise can be boring. And expertise without passion could be extremely dangerous. And I would wish that for all of you.

0:16:56.1 AM: I have no regrets on the professional side. I wanna make four or five observations. They're all with the exception of the last one. I'm not here to make you happier or to make you sad. When I left the State Department in January of 2003, shortly before the second Bush administration invaded Iraq, Colin Powell, who was the last secretary of state I worked for, gave me two pieces of advice. The first piece of advice was, don't ever try to come back. I had my 27 years, I took him to heart. My family paid a big price for my absences. But the second piece of advice he gave me, I rejected. And that was don't try to look back. And I spent the last 23 years in the public conversation looking back about what I believe we got right and what we got wrong.

0:17:42.8 AM: And above all, the one lesson that I learned is that every time we failed, and it's beyond America's Middle East policy, every time America fails abroad, it is almost always because we persist in seeing the world the way we want it to be, not the way the world really is. And the lesson of October 7th, in my judgment, means first and foremost, you want to change the world? Well, then you first understand it. And if you want to, if you only see the world the way you want, the way it is, nothing changes. But if you only see it the way you want it to be, you will fail. I guarantee you, as we did in the last serious bid to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem at Camp David, 14 days an empowered Palestinian leader, which you do not have and you have not had since Yasser Arafat's demise.

0:18:40.0 AM: However, problematic and unpredictable leader he was. Ehud Barack, a man who was in a hurry, put some interesting proposals on the tables, not enough to end the conflict. And Bill Clinton, who cared enormously about this, we went to this summit, persuaded somehow that we could break open the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by addressing the core issues, borders, security, Jerusalem, refugees, and end of all conflict and claims. Those are the core issues of the conflict. And when we finished 14 days on the gaps between the parties were this big, I can't get my arms out any further, not this big, as the urban mythologies of what actually transpired at that summit would suggest. That was the last serious bid, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has not yet recovered from the trauma of ascending to the mountaintop, and then descending in September of 2000 into the valley of despair, transcended only, Hussein, I think you'd agree by what we are now in.

0:19:55.6 HI: I agree.

0:19:57.1 AM: What we are now in. Two more observations. And I say this based on 27 years of watching and participating in American policy, of all of its successes and its transgressions. The Middle East is literally littered for centuries with the remains of great powers, who wrongly believe they can impose their schemes, their dreams, their aspirations, their peace plans, their war plans on smaller ones. In an existential conflict in which both parties presume the stakes are existential in nature, the influence of external parties is limited. Why I even need to state the obvious, I don't know. I know why, because the question I get more than any other question is why can't you, meaning the Biden administration, stop this?

0:20:55.6 AM: Why can't you stop Sudan? Why can't you fix Syria? Why can't you repair Yemen? Why can't you find a way to negotiate a solution between Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy? Why can't you do it? You need to think through that. I lived a lot of that. It's not that America is a potted plant without influence, but the Middle East, more often than not, is a place where American ideas on warmaking and peacemaking go to die. Two more points, we are now in what I would describe to you as a strategic cul-de-sac. I see no way out of this right now, if in fact, negotiations in Cairo have, which have ebb and flowed in Doha and Cairo, led by my former friend, always friend but former colleague Bill Burns, who's director of CIA, David Barnea, who's head of Mossad, the Qataris, the Egyptians, at some point they may actually succeed in a limited prisoner for hostage exchange.

0:22:09.4 AM: 45 days of quiet. Maybe it can be extended, maybe it can't be. 45 hostages, women, the elderly, the sick in exchange more likely than not for a asymmetrical number. The working number was anywhere from 700 to a thousand Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Either those still at held in administrative detention or tried and convicted. And Hamas has got a list of special prisoners, including Marwan Barghouti who's serving five lifetime sentences. And aspirationally is viewed as perhaps the Palestinian leader with more credibility than any other, they want him released as well. That might not end things, however, because 50 hostages will remain, that Hamas will not trade except for the ultimate bargain, which is a comprehensive ceasefire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces and some sort of insurance policy on the lives of Yahya Sinwar and his brother Mohammed Dave, and another one or two of the Hamas architects of what occurred on October 7th.

0:23:25.8 AM: That won't end it though, because the Israelis are determined and it'll be Munich in 1972. No matter how long it takes, 11 Israeli athletes killed in Munich. The Israelis will try to kill the senior leaders who are responsible for October 7th. So, I see no way out right now. And I need to be as clear about that as possible. And let me come close with this observation. It is not that I have given up hope. It is not that I have abandoned my outlook on life to the forces of hopelessness and despair but we're gonna be left with two traumatized communities. You can pick which trauma you think is the one you think is the worst one. You can have your own monopoly on suffering. I find it very, very hard to understand why, and forgive me, it's an editorial comment, why thousands of miles away from a conflict that is taking place.

0:24:36.0 AM: And if you're a 15-year-old Palestinian, if you're a 15-year-old Israeli, we're down in those Gaza envelope communities. Or if you're suffering as a consequence of Israeli airstrikes and you've lost whole families and you've watched your brothers and sisters undergo amputation without proper anesthetic, you'll be scarred for a generation. And you are more than likely than not to come out of this by saying, "It's not that we don't understand you, Israelis and/or Palestinians. It's, we understand each other only too well." I understand why they would feel that way. I do not understand why thousands of miles away from the center of this conflict, why Americans, American Jews, American Arabs, American Muslims, Christians, why it is so hard to sit together and talk. And I'm not just talking about civility, meaning politeness.

0:25:34.7 AM: It's easy to be polite. That's not what civility is. Civility is, in my judgment, the capacity to actually listen to what somebody else is saying. Somebody with whom you may have profound disagreements and while they're talking, not thinking about your talking points that you are gonna use to rebut their arguments. I don't understand it. Maybe you can help me and if it can't happen at the University of Michigan on college campuses, which to some degree is a suspension of worldly interests for a number of years. Where is it gonna happen? Out there in the, so-called Real World? I don't understand it. And it frustrates me enormously. I'll end on a hopeful note.

0:26:30.1 AM: In October 6th, 1973, Lindsay and I were in Jerusalem. I had gone there to do Arabic and Hebrew, which in 1973 was the only place in the world you could study Arabic and Hebrew as living languages. And I needed them to convince my doctoral committee to change from civil war history to modern Middle East. And three weeks, the war was over the greatest trauma, greatest intelligence failure. 2,800 Israelis killed, countless numbers of Egyptians and Syrians. And yet, within six years of that war, I watched on the White House lawn, Sadat, Carter and Begin signed an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. 20 years later, I'm sitting on the White House lawn again, September 13th, 1993, watching Arafat Clinton and Rabin signed the Oslo Accords. So in the first instance, trauma turns to hope. And in the second instance, hope 'cause I was absolutely persuaded there was no going back for the Israeli Palestinian issue. It was one of the most foolish prejudgments I think I've ever made. It would be irreversible, but in that instance, hope turns to trauma. So what do I take away from all this? How is that possible? I don't know. What I do know is that the forces of history bend very often in ways that none of us, not you, not Hussein, not me, nobody knows. And it's up to all of us, in my view, in our own way, to do whatever we can to try to bend the forces of history in the right direction the way Hussein wants them bend, not normal human behavior, but well adjusted human behavior.

0:28:40.7 Speaker 4: Thank you. Thank you both for opening us up and sort of sharing all your thoughts. I think to start with the next question, I'm adjusting based off of all you've been telling us, but can you sort of jump back to October 6th and describe for us the state of relations and the policies taking place in Gaza, in Israel, in the West Bank, leading up to October 7th, right? And then sort of how you see those, how you see them have, how they've changed sort of through these last six months?

0:29:16.6 AM: Hussein?

0:29:17.8 HI: I would love to.

0:29:19.1 AM: I mean, I don't play, I don't play an Israeli or a Palestinian, on TV or anywhere else, but I'll analyze for you where I think the Israelis were. If you want to...

0:29:30.8 HI: Yeah, go ahead.

0:29:32.3 AM: Yeah.

0:29:33.2 HI: You first. Tell us everything you know about this war.

0:29:35.1 AM: So October 6th, December 2022, the election of the most extremist right wing government in the history of the state of Israel, led by a man, Benjamin Netanyahu the longest governing prime minister in the history of the state of Israel, surpassing even Israel's greatest prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, on trial for bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in the Jerusalem district Court. Trial is three years running, it may conclude next year, it may not. There is a precedent however, ask former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. He was convicted for breach of trust. He served Israeli Prime Minister indicted, not while he was prime minister, but indicted nonetheless.

0:30:11.2 AM: He served 16 months in an Israeli prison. Netanyahu did not like this government, but it didn't matter because his objective is to stay out of jail and to avoid a plea agreement, which would probably end his political career. The only way to do that was stay in power, maybe appoint an attorney, new Attorney General, maybe find a way to undermine his indictment. Five elections, Israelis I think had five elections, four or five elections in six years, precisely because Netanyahu Likud and the Likud have no history of devouring its own. It's the most cohesive, coherent political party in Israel today. And it's led, frankly, by the most brilliant power hungry Prime Minister Netanyahu wants to be prime minister more than any other politician, and he'll do anything he can to remain prime minister, even conflate his own legal and political travails with the best interest of his country, worst possible leader at the worst possible time.

0:31:18.0 AM: His government with two ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, large budgets and ideologies determined to pursue policies on the West Bank to an exit in everything but name. And that process of informal defacto annexation continues while Gaza, while Israel-Hamas war continues. That's the situation that existed. One additional point, not just Netanyahu, but previous Israeli prime ministers in some respects, preferred what I would describe to you as the three state solution, not the two state, state of Israel, the Palestinian authority, weak, feckless, nepotistic, autocratic, corrupt, led by Mahmoud Abbas an 88-year-old politician in the 19th year of four year term, presiding over 40% of the West Bank. That's one state, "Hamasastan" since 2007, Gaza, that's the second state. As long as the Palestinian national movement remained fundamentally divided, and I think successive Israeli governments clearly pursued this policy.

0:32:29.8 HI: That's right.

0:32:32.1 AM: The notion that a Palestinian interlocutor could present itself to the government in Israel as credible remained a distant dream. And I'll only conclude one point. There is a lesson here. A monopoly over the forces of violence in your society, I don't care if it's Ann Arbor, Michigan, or Chevy Chase, Maryland, or Washington DC, unless you have a monopoly over the forces of violence in your society, that means one gun, one authority, one negotiating position. It's almost impossible to make a credible, you can get the UN to recognize or basically evolve the Palestinian PLO as an observer state. You can make Palestine a state, but to make it a state with credibility and power, you need one gun, one authority, and one negotiating position. And it was in Israel's interest, at least in Netanyahu's interest, to ensure that that did not happen. That's where we were, I think, on October 6th.

0:33:35.9 HI: Excellent summary. On the Palestinian side, here's how I think things were on October 6th. I think you had and I'm just gonna talk about it from Hamas's point of view because, for the sake of brevity and because they took action on October 7th, and so it's more relevant. I think there was a generalized perception outside of Gaza that Hamas was fundamentally content with ruling Gaza and trying to figure out a way forward based on their control of Gaza. That Gaza was still the launching pad for them to take their political project, the first phase of which is ongoing and not yet complete, which must perforce be the takeover of the Palestinian national movement. And why do I say that? Why do people create political parties or movements? It's to gain power, obviously.

0:34:36.2 HI: And you must, as a first step, gain power internally, domestically, whatever you do with others until you speak for the in-group and dominate the politics of the in-group, phase one is not complete. This is a universal fact of political life stemming from the observation that people form parties to get power. Okay. Hamas, in fact, was not content with using Gaza as a launching pad. Hamas had come to the conclusion, I think it was understood to some extent by elements in Iran, elements of Hezbollah, how unhappy they were becoming and that they were gonna do something about it. I knew how unhappy they were becoming. I didn't know they were gonna do something about it. The evidence was this. First of all, they started to feel more and more like Gaza was a trap for them, that there was no entree back into the West Bank, that they were simply stuck there and they were slowly asphyxiating and gaining nothing. That's number one. Number two, the gaps between the Gaza-based leadership and the old politburo, which had been driven into Syria and then out of Syria into Qatar, was getting greater and greater.

0:36:00.9 HI: And the movement was starting to really fracture in ideological ways, which was not good. The third problem is that they started to feel that they were losing support. They saw Turkey's support ebbing away. Some of their people were being shown the door in Turkey. And they started hearing stuff from Qatar that they'd never heard before, like, you know, you can't rely on this suitcase of money every month for the indefinite future. You guys have to start coming up with something to augment our resources, it's not all on us. Both their two main backers, Ankara and Doha, are starting to say, you need to do more for yourself. More for ourselves under these circumstances? What are you talking about? So there's that. And then also, I think very strongly, they began to feel, and this is where real kind of desperation starts to kick in, that they're losing their brand.

0:37:03.0 HI: The competitive advantage they had in domestic Palestinian politics vis-a-vis the Fatah led groups and the PLO and the PA was always armed struggle. The Fatah and the PLO and the PA went all in on achieving a negotiated peace agreement with Israel, whereas Hamas retained the rhetoric and at times the practice of armed struggle. But they were not actively confronting the occupiers, whereas a third force was emerging in the West Bank unaffiliated armed youth groups with some kinds of connections, in some cases to Islamic jihad, in some cases no connection to anybody, cropping up in the old city of Nablus, in Jenin refugee camp, elsewhere, that were starting to engage with the occupation forces in the West Bank and armed settlers, and Hamas was losing its brand. So they're strangled in Gaza, they're losing the support of their friends, they're losing their brand, and it's all going nowhere. The worst part was what was coming diplomatically, which was a triangular negotiation between the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, where for a potential Saudi-Israeli normalization that would consolidate the pro-American forces at last into a more coherent group, combining Israel's military might with Saudi Arabia's financial and cultural and religious clout under the banner of the USA, and make a much stronger force against Iran and its network.

0:38:32.9 HI: Key to that was the US-Israeli track, which was a, what they call the significant Palestinian component, TM to the agreement, which was a bunch of goodies for Palestinians, mostly money from Saudi Arabia, but also some changes that would strengthen the PA on the ground and maybe even strengthen the PLO at the negotiation, maybe some resumption of dialogue with Israel, something, something that would satisfy the Saudis and that would mollify Abbas enough that this could all go through without a complete freakout. And the problem from Hamas' point of view is you had this very finely balanced national equilibrium that Netanyahu spent decades nurturing and control, and promoting with them in power in Gaza, but contained and periodically literally cut down the size with these wars that were referred to as mowing the grass, cutting them down to size, literally and figuratively.

0:39:33.2 HI: And the PAS Aaron described, ruling in the West Bank, in the cities and towns looking ridiculous and basically serving as the John Damari of the occupation while the PLO sits at the negotiating table waiting for his Israelis who never come and nothing good ever happens when they do. So you have this very finely balanced situation, but you have a Saudi American finger that's about to go down on the scale on the other side. So not only are they suffocating losing their brand, losing their friends, starting to lose their friends, not really, but a bit, they're going to take a huge hit. All this money is coming to the other side, these little benefits, however limited they are, are going to accrue to the side that says diplomacy is the way, not the side that says arms struggle until victory, their enemies are gonna get a big boost, and it had to be stopped and it was stopped.

0:40:30.1 Jenna: Aaron, Hussein, thank you so much for that. Sorry, whoops. So our next question, and I think you both have kind of touched on this briefly. But is it a realistic expectation for Israel to militarily eliminate Hamas without creating profound anti-Israel sentiment in Gaza that makes the country less safe for Israel and occupied Palestinian Territories for decades to come? What are the political implications for Fatah-Hamas, the Palestinian Authority and other Palestinian political entities.

0:41:00.8 HI: In this case, I would like to answer first because I have many thoughts. Do you mind?

0:41:04.7 AM: No, of course not.

0:41:05.6 HI: Okay, alright. So look, Hamas wants Israel to reoccupy Gaza, not just to attack Gaza, it's a trap. It's come into the briar, it's the briar patch if you know Uncle Remus, it's the briar patch, come on in. And the reason they want it is that they need something dramatic to take their bid to marginalize and unseat Fatah, gain control of the national movement, and ultimately gain control of the PLOs diplomatic standing that I was talking about as the crown jewel of whatever they have accomplished, that Israel cannot take away from the Palestinian movement since 1967 is and is, a long-term insurgency against Israel, this is what they want, and it's what they're getting.

0:42:00.6 HI: They didn't expect to win this first battle in this first war, they didn't expect to have their brigades survive intact, I don't think they're surprised at all by the vehement of Israel's Carthaginian response, a savage war of vengeance, which is exactly what it is. However, they know, I think Hamas is aware that Israel is flailing around in my last piece about this, I said that, the giant is flailing with a mighty club destroying everything and wreaking vengeance, the giant is blind. The giant is blind because Israel doesn't have a political goal, it lacks the [0:42:42.2] ____ about policy, war being an extension of policy by other means, it's not there. If you ask them, what are you fighting for? Destroy Hamas, Hamas cannot be destroyed, it is a brand, it is not a list of individuals who can be killed, although it is that and a bunch of equipment that can be blown up.

0:43:03.9 HI: If it were, then it could be done, but it's not, it's a brand name. If I and a bunch of Palestinians say we are Hamas, then there's a Hamas and it can always be rebuilt unless you reoccupy the urban centers of Gaza and you suppress it on a daily basis. Now comes their real victory. If Israel were to to leave Gaza very soon, Hamas would gain a victory because they would've survived and they'll crawl out of the rubble and declare divine victory and all of that. But could be pyrrhic, because people might start to ask, what did you do? By the way, what have you done to us? Look at our... We can't live here anymore, thank you. I mean, that's a very good possibility, that's what happened to Hezbollah in 2006, where Nasrallah had to go on TV and say, "I'm so sorry.

0:43:49.9 HI: I didn't realize how the Israelis would respond to the attack on their soldiers," which any child would've known. And so, whenever a politician is reduced to pleading stupidity in order to get out of a charge of reckless mismanagement, you know he's in bad shape. "I'm sorry, I was so dumb, I didn't know what I was doing." Well, pretty bad, but I think Hamas is counting on the Israelis to stay, they wanna wave the bloody shirt, the bloody shirt is the best flag you can ever have. And what they wanna say to the other Palestinians and the world is we are the national movement because we fight the occupiers every day, we kill and die over control of Palestinian land here in Gaza. The other group is the John Damari on the ground and wasting their time in meetings and nothing. Okay, so we are the national movement, that is their big bet and the question becomes the last part about ramifications for everybody is what is the...

0:44:55.7 HI: Do Israel, the United States, and others understand that this is all about domestic Palestinian political power? Or are they going to treat this as a manifestation of a long-term war between Israel and the Palestinians? Because if they do the second, they're completely misreading the motivations and the political goals of the side that has authored this situation. And if they deal with it in the first way, then they're starting to get to the point where they could maybe make something constructive out of this because they're understanding what's at stake, actually at stake. If they do, they would have to, first of all, deny Hamas the insurgency they want and let them stew in the situation they've created.

0:45:36.9 HI: The other thing that they would have to do is strengthen all the Palestinian forces that are not with Hamas and that provide an alternative and cut out this business of balancing Palestinians to thwart a Palestinian state. But it's going to be very hard to do that because Israel is more anti-Palestinian statehood, as I said, Nissim since decades, I hope that begins to answer your question.

0:46:00.0 AM: I'll add just a couple points.

0:46:03.4 HI: You were patient.

0:46:03.5 AM: No, I think Hussein, the truth is, Hussein deserves enormous amount of credit. I mean, you go back and look at Hussein Ibish's pieces on, in the wake of October 7th, about the trap that Hamas had laid for Israel. And I think by and large Hussein has proved pretty prescient in that regard. If you could translate the political objectives that the Israelis laid out, there are two, whether they're achievable or not will depend, I think, very much on the proverbial day after. Number one is to prevent another October 7th. And let's be clear here, regardless of who you're rooting for. October 7th took the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to a new level in terms of the intimacy, the sadistic nature, the indiscriminate nature of the killing, the willful, and the taking of hostages. That created a situation where I would argue, and again, I hate to generalize, a sort of collective PTSD which is set in. Vengeance, which is not a word the Israelis use in their political articulation of their goals, is understandable.

0:47:24.9 HI: Netanyahu has used it, actually.

0:47:27.6 AM: Yeah, Netanyahu has. But the sort of architects of an actual strategy designed to do two things. Number one prevent another October 7th, which would mean essentially dismantling Hamas as an organized military structure. No one not even Prime Minister Netanyahu, believes that out of the 30,000 estimated Hamas fighters, there won't be a significantly large number of residual Hamas fighters that will survive this war. So Hamas will emerge as an insurgency of some kind.

0:48:04.6 HI: Sure.

0:48:05.4 AM: And to Hussein's point, if you believe Khalil Shikaki's polls on the West Bank, in which Hamas' support is tripled among West bankers. The other issue is Hamas will emerge as a political force able to influence Palestinian politics either through co-optation or through intimidation. The second Israeli goal is to determine whether or not it is conceivable to deny Hamas sovereignty in Gaza, deny Hamas sovereignty and let me be very clear. The capacity to shape the politics, the economy, the social structure, and the security of Gaza. Are those realistic goals? I think that if in fact you had an Israeli government, part of the Israeli government, Benny Gantz, I think, if he were prime minister, might think along these terms. But let's be clear, look at Iraq and Afghanistan, the two longest wars in American history, where we killed scores of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis. Now, that's 3,000 dead Americans.

0:49:19.0 AM: If you translate that into Israeli terms, it's 40,000 Israelis. And we never had a proximity problem with Al-Qaeda or the Islamic State or any of the other jihadi derivatives. The Israelis have a proximity problem and that gets to the question of can you hope to create a day after or a week after a year after? 'Cause let's be clear the Middle East has two speeds on these matters, slow and slower. 2024 is going to be the year of Gaza probably right up to, well, and through our presidential elections.

0:50:00.0 HI: I agree.

0:50:01.8 AM: Which, of course, is a whole other matter in terms of what our Middle East policy could look like if the presumptive Republican nominee regains the White House. But Hussein's point is right. Military power is an instrument to achieve realistic, viable political objectives, and if you had a strategy, you would beat an idea with an idea. Hamas is what? The organizational embodiment of an idea, and that is the destruction of Israel and its replacement by an Islamic state. Is there an idea, a competing idea, that could actually counter rival and animate Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. I think there is.

0:50:47.8 HI: Of course.

0:50:48.6 AM: But it requires the sun, the moon, and the stars all to align at the right moment with a far-seeing Israeli prime minister who understands Palestinian grievances and pain, a Palestinian leader who in fact can to some degree create a unified Palestinian national movement and an American administration. That was risk ready rather than risk averse, risk ready rather than risk averse. Now, that to me, I'm a Star Wars fan, that's sort of like a galaxy far, far away.

0:51:28.0 HI: Far, far long ago.

0:51:28.0 AM: It's not really tethered to the realities back here on planet Earth.

0:51:31.1 HI: Can I challenge you on that?

0:51:32.7 AM: But could it be, Hussein, I ask you, could it be? I think if anything good comes out of this and that actually could that happen and what would it take? Leadership?

0:51:47.0 HI: I mean, not in the immediate aftermath. Listen, I want to challenge you on a conceptual point. First, I just want to observe that your articulation of Israel's political goals is probably as close as one can get to making them coherent, the problem with it is they both are negative goals, neither of them actually constitute the achievement of anything, deny this and deny that. Well, and then what? I mean you deny in favour of what?

0:52:16.9 AM: Well, you know what the is.

0:52:18.1 HI: No, we don't. I don't.

0:52:21.7 AM: It's Palestinian independence.

0:52:23.3 HI: No, no. That is not...

0:52:24.0 AM: In a conceptual framework of two states.

0:52:25.6 HI: No, hold on, but that's not Israel's political goal in this war.

0:52:30.0 AM: I know, I'm saying that has to be if in fact...

0:52:31.4 HI: No, no but listen to me telling you, I'm raising an observation about your articulation of Israel's war aims here, which is they're both, and I don't even think that it rises to that level frankly, but let's say you're right. In neither case, do they really constitute achievable goals because both of them are deny them this and deny them that, but that is not an achievable goal necessarily, because it lacks content on the other side of that equation, it's like one plus X equals question mark. I mean, there's nothing there, it doesn't work, it doesn't compute because you'd need something to replace that thing that you're denying, that's the first thing. So, it's not actually coherent. I think Israel absolutely lacks a political goal and it's disastrous for them and for everybody. The second thing is you are right in your critique about the difficulty of creating the outcome of a realised two-state solution with a Palestinian state alongside Israel and end of claims and all of that.

0:53:40.9 HI: That's true. Everything you said about how difficult that will be and the moon and the stars and everything aligning, yes. But that's not what's required to provide an alternative to Hamas' hiccup of popularity. Now, as long, and I'll tell you, as long as Israel is killing Palestinians by the bushel full and smashing Gaza to pieces, Hamas is going to be popular by default, and the Palestinian amygdala collective and individual is going to be focused on the Israelis naturally, and no one is going to either want to or have the psychological or cultural or collective space to ask the question, what have you done? That comes afterwards. If the dust settle ever settles, that's when that question arises. My point is this, Hamas was afraid of the little things Fatah was going to get out of the Israeli, Palestinian, the Israeli sorry, the Israeli Syrian American triangular deal. They were really afraid because they couldn't afford another hit and they couldn't allow the people who said patient diplomacy is the way to accrue the first benefits to Palestinians no matter how minimal in decades when they had nothing to show for it.

0:54:58.1 HI: Now at this point, no one has anyone to show for it. My point is this, you can strengthen other Palestinians without realizing the state, you can move in the right direction, you don't have to go from zero to 100.

0:55:10.0 AM: Well you can't...

0:55:10.4 HI: Listening to you just now.

0:55:10.9 AM: We can't...

0:55:11.5 HI: It's like we have to realise everything all at once and...

0:55:13.4 AM: No, we can't...

0:55:14.1 HI: And we don't, thank God we don't.

0:55:15.9 AM: Obviously, slow and slow what you're saying there's no question about that.

0:55:18.5 HI: Well, so it can be done.

0:55:19.2 AM: But, no...

0:55:21.2 HI: Sure, it can.

0:55:22.8 AM: Well, you need to... If Gaza first is Gaza only.

0:55:24.1 HI: No, no.

0:55:24.5 AM: Which is what you seem to be suggesting.

0:55:25.9 HI: Absolutely not.

0:55:27.3 AM: It's not going to work.

0:55:28.0 HI: It's not what I'm suggesting at all what I'm suggesting... Let me be clear what I'm suggesting. I'm suggesting that first of all, even if Israel will not commit to the eventual creation of a Palestinian state, which it certainly should and will not enter into a process that has that as its end goal, at least it can cut out the crazy policy of a divide and conquer and having Islamists as powerful as nationalists and strengthen the Palestinians who want to do a deal, make the PA and the PLO look less ridiculous. Give them incentives to do the right thing. Reward them for being serious. Stop persecuting, crippling them, stop digging the hole deeper, etcetera. But the problem is we can't get there. Not because the moon and the sun and the stars need to align, but because Israelis have no practical incentive to stop charging towards annexation.

0:56:25.9 AM: Right, here I disagree with you. You need three, you need at least two leadership changes in order to even do what you want to do in Gaza. You need a different...

0:56:37.1 HI: I'm not talking about... I'm talking about the West Bank, not Gaza.

0:56:38.6 AM: You need a different Israeli government, number one.

0:56:44.0 HI: Well, no doubt.

0:56:44.1 AM: And you need, and you need a credible, not feckless Palestinian leadership without those two things we're stuck.

0:56:52.1 HI: Yes.

0:56:53.0 AM: You know it and I know it.

0:56:53.3 HI: I agree with you.

0:56:53.4 AM: Forget the vision of two states.

0:56:56.6 HI: No, no, no...

0:56:57.1 AM: That's a long way away.

0:57:01.6 HI: But listen, Aaron. The fecklessness of the Palestinian leadership is not accidental. A lot of it is baked into Oslo. The PA is a Frankenstein monster. It is a joke.

0:57:09.5 AM: I can concede Israel's role in undermining the Palestinian authority.

0:57:12.8 HI: You can concede Israel's role. I think it's structural.

0:57:14.0 AM: The question is at some point, however, Mahmoud Abbas, who has no credibility among Palestinians in the West Bank, and who is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic by appointing Mohamad Mustafa, a financial advisor. They already think that Mahmoud Abbas is corrupt. So I mean, again.

0:57:34.8 HI: You put your friend in. It's not good. Okay. I understand that.

0:57:37.3 AM: I don't want to play Israel here, and I certainly don't want to play Palestinians. But...

0:57:41.7 HI: Well, I'm not doing that either.

0:57:42.4 AM: But you can't pull the wagon and even in the direction that you want the wagon to go without new leadership.

0:57:49.4 HI: You can pull the wagon some way to where I want to go with different Israeli policies. You don't require a different PA to start pulling in the right direction. You don't.

0:58:01.9 AM: I'd settle for it.

0:58:02.4 HI: Stay here for all of his faults, you could do it. Muhammad Mustafa, is he the right person?

0:58:08.2 AM: Of course not he can't do it.

0:58:09.0 HI: I'll even concede that to you.

0:58:09.8 Jenna: I'm sorry.

0:58:10.1 AM: Another Israeli government well start with that.

0:58:12.1 Jenna: So I think, this is amazing and we are all just completely caught up in what you're doing and learning so much.

0:58:21.9 HI: Sorry.

0:58:22.2 Jenna: No, I think it's absolutely amazing. We have so many questions in the room though. And so, I just thought I would do the associate dean thing and grab the mic, [chuckle] but thank you. I am really loving this and I am looking around the room and knowing that everybody else is as well. We're so grateful. I think that one of our faculty panelists, we're gonna ask a question now.

0:58:44.9 Speaker 5: So, thank you for the conversation. But I wanted to pick up and sort of explore a different thread that we haven't yet covered in depth. So you both have done a great job sort of laying out these different competing dimensions and tensions within Palestinian politics and Israeli politics, but let's bring it closer to home. So, what do you see as the policy positions for the Biden administration as it heads into an election with most likely Donald Trump as the prospective Republican nominee. Do you think there's going to be symmetry there? As we get closer to the election, are they going to break further away and bring it even closer home to Michigan? When we had the primary results a couple of months ago, the population here voted in a really interesting way with about 100,000 people voting uncommitted for President Biden. And that's why the White House really took notice of that. And Michigan is such a key battleground state. So, I wanted to ask your perspectives, either at the national level, for US politics, or even how it applies here in Michigan.

0:59:51.5 AM: I'll just make one cosmic comment here. I spent most of my life on foreign policy. My kids, they're not, their kids. They're still my children, in their 40s, remind me all the time that it's not President Xi, it's not Vladimir Putin. It's not a putative Iranian nuclear weapon, it's not Israel, it's not Hamas. The greatest threat to the American republic. We've seen the enemy.

1:00:21.3 HI: Yes.

1:00:21.5 AM: And the enemy is us. And I'll make an alarmist categoric statement. The last book I wrote was called, The End of Greatness, Why America Can't Have And Doesn't Want Another Great President. We don't need great presidents. We need good Presidents. Good in the sense that they are good at what they do, good in the sense that they have moral compass and good in the sense that they understand that they have to keep their own personal demons under control without that, I fear the worst for my kids and their kids. I did one more comment. In the US Constitution, the framers used a personal pronoun.

1:01:11.7 AM: Somebody asked me why, and I didn't know the answer until I read the document. They embedded the inaugural oath of the president in Article II of the document. And they did it for a reason to demonstrate that the office and the man, and one day, the woman who holds that job, the office of the presidency is subordinate to the principles and the visions contained in the document. And you have a presumptive nominee. And I voted for Republicans and Democrats. I worked for Republicans and Democrats. These are not Republicans that I worked for. They're not even Republicans that were Republicans throughout most of the America's story. But you cannot have a president who doesn't understand that you must turn the M in me upside down so that it represents and becomes a W in we, you cannot have a president who has no conception of foreign or domestic policy beyond what satisfies his personal needs, requirements and psychological peculiarities.

1:02:29.9 AM: And this is a huge problem, how it relates to this conflict. I've never, and I was here during Vietnam, university of Michigan, in Iraq and Afghanistan, where Americans were fighting and dying. The impact of that foreign policy issue is nowhere near what the Israel-Hamas War has done to the domestic constituents in so many ways. And for a president in a close election, it might be determined by three or four states under 100,000 votes. And I don't know why Americans will vote the way they do on November 5th. This issue...

1:03:13.7 HI: Are you saying this issue Vietnam didn't have as much impact as this war?

1:03:17.2 AM: No.

1:03:17.3 HI: Okay good.

1:03:17.3 AM: I'm saying, I was not in government in Vietnam.

1:03:20.2 HI: Are you... Okay?

1:03:20.9 AM: Right. I was here and it had its impact.

1:03:23.0 HI: I understand.

1:03:24.3 AM: And George Wills writes that when it comes to foreign policy, Americans wanted as little of it as possible. That may be true or not true. I don't know.

1:03:32.5 HI: It's true.

1:03:33.1 AM: But on this issue, it now matters for this administration in a big way. And yet, a final comment I'll make, and I'll turn it over to you, the President of the United States, I described the policy over the last six months as passive aggressive. He is angry in the extreme, he doesn't know what to do, but he is unwilling and unable until, what's the date today? The 3rd of April, to impose any serious cost or consequence for any of Israel's policies. Now I have an explanation as to why that's true, but it is an extraordinary demonstration so far of how domestic politics seems not to be influencing the President's actions. Hussein?

1:04:23.6 HI: Well, I totally disagree.

1:04:24.5 AM: Over to you.

1:04:25.1 HI: I completely disagree with the last point.

1:04:28.2 AM: Excellent. Let's Keep going.

1:04:28.4 HI: Because I think that, while there's a strategic motivation behind the policy of the administration towards this war in Gaza, which is primarily aimed at conflict containment. That is raison d'etat. It is amoral, and it is an analytical position that is quite logical. And what it holds is that the United States can cope with almost anything that happens inside Gaza. But If the war were to spell out, especially to involve Hezbollah in Lebanon, it could drag in the United States, it could drag in Iran, it could produce for the first time in the modern Middle Eastern history a regional conflagration involving the United States.

1:05:18.5 HI: It could lead to a direct Iranian-American confrontation. All these things the United States does not want. And his main ally in containing the war, actually, has been the Iranians, of all things. And it is Israel that is testing his will, to a very large extent, when it comes to the potential offensive in Lebanon. Are they bluffing, or is this brinksmanship? I haven't the faintest idea. But they're doing an awfully good job of pretending they're getting ready for a war in Lebanon, if they're not. And you can see why they might, because both the Israelis and the Iranians think the Iranian alliance is doing quite well out of this, and that the best thing for the Israelis would be to regionalize the war. There are some Israelis who agree with that, some who don't. The Biden administration certainly does not and has managed to contain this.

1:06:03.0 HI: Now, the politics of it. All right. I think the administration has been wise about the politics because even though there is this constituency left of centre, under 35s or under 40s who are very angry about the lack of restraints on Israel and the carte blanche, the remunition, resupplying of munitions, things like that. The older generations, and there are at least two of them, remain sort of you've got the elderly liberals like Biden and Schumer and Pelosi who have an emotional connection to Israel. And the middle-aged people like the Blinken and Sullivan and McGurk who Maybe they don't have the same emotional attachment, but they buy into the narrative of the special relationship as a strategic value for the United States. So, it's only there, the real anger at the administration is only there in a small part of the Democratic Party. It's loud. The majority of the party wants more or less the policies Biden has had, in my view. And that's his calculation.

1:07:16.1 HI: Whether he's right or wrong, that is what I think he thinks. I'm not saying he's right. I'm saying I think that's what he thinks. I also think he wanted to give the Republicans no avenue of attack to critique him for being insufficiently pro-Israel, given the way in which October 7 was and also was narrativized in the United States. And he did that. In fact, the first serious attack which drew any scratch was when The US abstained at the UN and the Wall Street Journal said he's siding with Hamas over Israel, which is silly. But it is, it shows you how quick the Republican establishment, the Journal of all things. I mean, it's Trumpified and a bunch of nonsense, but still, it's more cautious than say, I don't know, Nikki Haley who ran around calling him insufficiently pro-Israel, but she sounded like an idiot at the time, honestly. But when the abstention came, there was a Tiny, tiny little opening and wham, they went right in. So he's thinking very carefully about the electoral politics of this issue.

1:08:28.5 HI: And I believe Biden has concluded that on balance, the strong support for Israel is the most effective political stance he could take, even if it means risking the wrath and the ire of a bunch of progressives, because he's going to run on other issues as well, such as reproductive rights that are going to resonate with parts of that constituency as well. And the basic democratic freedoms, the primacy of the Constitution, the rule of law, things like that. And I don't know how people are going to come down. But I would be amazed if a big majority of the non-committed people who took the opportunity of the Michigan primary to raise their anger at President Biden were happy to stay home and watch Donald Trump bring an American fascism into the White House.

1:09:22.3 AM: I wouldn't want to test that, frankly.

1:09:25.0 HI: Well, I don't want to test it, but we are testing it.

1:09:28.6 AM: I'd offer just two other explanations as to why the administration, and it is extraordinary, even considering the pro-Israeli sensibilities of most administrations, Republican or Democrat, I'd offer two other explanations. One is Biden's, literally his emotional bond with Israel. He alone among modern presidents considers himself literally part of the American story, the Israeli story. I watched Clinton up close and personal when Rabin was murdered, grieve for Rabin, right? I mean, Clinton writes in his memoirs that he loved no man like, he had rarely loved another man as much as he had loved the former prime minister. For an American president, that's an extraordinary statement to make. I only raise that because Biden's commitment goes beyond that and stretches back decades. So, that's part of it. The other is the practical reality.

1:10:26.5 AM: We talked about this, that if Biden wants to change the pictures in Gaza, if Biden wants to de-escalate, Biden wants to surge humanitarian assistance. Biden wants to free the hostages. This isn't one-hand clapping. He's gonna have to, as hard as it may be for him to accept, work with not just the prime minister, because it's not the prime minister doing all of this. You've got the War Cabinet, you've got Benny Gantz, you've got the Israeli public.

1:10:58.4 HI: Everybody.

1:11:00.6 AM: Opinion pollsters in Israel do not even list on their questionnaires, do you support the war in Gaza? It is not even a question they pose. 90% of the Israeli electorate either thinks appropriate force is being used or they want more. And as far as humanitarian assistance is concerned, which is something that I think would be a relatively easy lift if the Israelis were to prioritize not giving their own assistance, there's no way, while Hamas holds hostages and abuses the women that Israelis are going to agree. But to facilitate.

1:11:36.7 HI: Out of the question.

1:11:39.0 AM: I mean, the Port of Ashdod is 20 miles north of Gaza. It has screening facilities to do everything. You could ship tons of material and and then truck it overland into Gaza.

1:11:50.3 HI: But that would be, that Would only happen if you weren't making war against an entire society. And they are.

1:11:55.1 AM: Fair enough. All I'm saying is that on this one, Biden, I think is Yeah. And, and that gives him some leverage to press should he want to.

1:12:07.0 Jenna: That was very helpful. No, and I... So, I am going to ask one last question. It's just to give you fair warning, a 30 second response. Is what I'm looking for.

1:12:19.6 AM: Okay. I apologize for...

1:12:20.7 Jenna: No, no, no, no. These have been... Well, and the question is really like you have modeled such, such respect for one another even.

1:12:33.2 HI: We really don't like each other by way.

[laughter]

1:12:35.6 Jenna: Even... Come on, I saw you exchanging like photos as we were starting.

1:12:41.1 HI: We Had dinner last night at the Gandy Dancer and we planned the entire thing.

1:12:44.5 Jenna: So here's the question.

1:12:45.6 AM: I was just bragging about the cigar I had last night. Nah, nah, nah.

1:12:50.4 Jenna: Here the question, can you see. What advice do you give us as we are wrestling with differences within our building, within our, on our campus friends who are finding themselves pulled apart by this? You, I know it got heated and that was really amazing, really to see. But it's still respectful. What advice do you give us as we move forward as a community?

1:13:23.7 HI: You first.

1:13:25.0 AM: Me first.

1:13:25.6 HI: Yeah. You're the wise one.

1:13:28.1 AM: I mean, you know, I made my plea decor, my creed decor initially, it's frustrating for me at 75 not to be able to understand why it's so hard. No common vocabulary, no common terms, no sense of respect. An insistence on monopolizing, rooting for one side or the other. The inability to understand that humans can suffer pain even with a, the asymmetry of power on the Israeli side that Hussein referred to. I think you need, I mean, I hate to say it. I think you, you to do these conversations, you need not just normal humans. You need well adjusted humans who are prepared to stretch and to reach and you need good facilitators. And good mediators. Just one other point. And that is you have at your disposal, all of you as do we, more information that at your fingertips readily accessible, than at any time in human history.

1:14:40.1 AM: And yet, I would argue, and I'll put myself at the top of the list, we are lazier and less well educated in my judgment than we should be. We contract out our views to our favorite, I don't know who newscasters, broadcasters, influencers, we don't stretch ourselves. And it's on this conflict, you should, every day it should be an unassembled jigsaw puzzle on your living room floor. And your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to try to take the pieces from all kinds of different sources and humans that you talk to, to assemble the jigsaw puzzle for yourself. Not to contract it out to an embassy or a website or your favorite politician. I'll tell this story just briefly. When Jack Kennedy addressed the nation on October 22nd, 1962, in the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was 12. I guarantee you. I didn't watch the speech.

1:15:49.8 AM: My parents watched it. He spoke for an hour after the president of the United States was done talking about the gravest crisis the United States has faced in the history of the Cold War. The networks all went back to normal programming. There were not two days of buildup with commentators, with laptops telling you what the president might say, what he should say, what he ought to say, and then afterwards, CNN Fox and MSNBC and telling you, analyzing the speech, my parents had to listen for an hour to the president and decide for themselves whether or not he made any sense. That's those two pieces of advice.

1:16:39.2 Jenna: Thank You.

1:16:39.2 HI: You want something from me?

1:16:41.1 Jenna: Yeah.

1:16:42.8 HI: Turn off the TV. Don't watch TV. Never watch TV. You can watch an act, if you wanna watch a speech or something. It's okay. But don't just never do. It's toxic, forget about it. That's number one. No, but seriously, every conversation that's going to be, constructive has to arrive at the same place, which is the common humanity of everybody involved. Both, in terms of conflict and in terms of the conversation. Now, it is much easier to begin there and move forward. So, insofar as you can make that the, sort of working prima facie assumption beforehand that everyone agrees that everybody else is a, a fundamentally a normal human being, having different kinds of extreme emotional reactions, different kinds of, you know, responses to challenging stimuli, then you can have, it's much easier to get to where you wanna go. And I think the key insight, which I mentioned in my opening remarks, is that ultimately, what this conflict and probably all conflicts is certainly this conflict is very much about peoples, both of whom have faced existential crises in very recent memory, behaving as human beings do in collective groups.

1:18:03.9 HI: Nothing surprising about any of it, no matter how awful it has been. And it's worse than ever, as Aaron was saying that the last few months have been the Israelis and the Palestinians doing their worst to each other, after more than 100 years of trying to get to this point and not succeeding, and now here they are. The next thing I would like to strongly suggest is, basically, I mean, it's very hard to get to this point, but insofar as you can, and this, I think I'm echoing what Aaron was saying about the jigsaw, distrust yourself. Now, if you have a strong positive reaction to something, ask yourself what it is that makes you have that response. And distrust it, test it. Ask your, you know, ask yourself, first of all, is this, is this a piece of genuine information or is it, misdirection?

1:18:52.9 HI: Is it something designed to make you think? Or is it designed to make you not think and react in a certain Pavlovian or programmed way? Are you thinking what you thought because you saw it in the movies or on TV? Or are you really thinking it through and thinking about it? Not as a, oh, I am a Jew, a Muslim an Arab, a Palestinian, a Christian. But I as a human being, just as a human being. Try to detach yourself a little bit from these smothering, robotic, hegemonic, discourses that want to tell you how to act and how to think and be independent. Think for yourself if possible, at least try. Step number one, turn off the damn TV.

1:19:39.8 Jenna: Wow. Thank you very much. Please join me in giving a very warm for the Wolverine. Thank you.

[applause]