The Duran Podcast
Protests in Israel grow as war drags on
All right, Alexander, let's talk about the protests that are taking place and have been taking place over quite a long period of time in Israel, in Tel Aviv, protests against the Netanyahu government, protests which are growing, I believe the last protest the reports are 100,000 people in Tel Aviv came out to protest Netanyahu, the Netanyahu government, protest the situation with hostages, to call for negotiations to get those hostages released. I imagine protests as well about the economy in Israel, which is not doing well and has been a type of war economy over the past year. It's been feeling the effects of the war over the past year. So what are your thoughts as to what is happening in Israel with these protests? Well, I think the first thing to say is that these protests are very large and will probably get bigger, but I don't think they actually threaten Netanyahu's political positions at the moment, which looks actually stronger, in my opinion, than it has been at any point since the events of last October. We've discussed this many times. The kind of people who are protesting, other people who didn't like Netanyahu anyway, who in Israeli political terms are on the left liberal secular side of Israeli politics. They are very upset by what has been happening. And of course, what's happened with the Gaza war has crystallized many of their concerns, because of course, as you rightly say, the economy is in decline and rapid decline. I think this is something which discussion about the situation in Israel has been tending to ignore, but the pressure of the war has put enormous pressure on what was, until recently, a very, very buoyant economy. It's going into reverse, there's been state GDP decline, apparently industrial production is down, and of course, large parts of the Israeli workforce have been conscripted at various times into the army, which is, of course, greater confusion where it's created problems with the workforce, its disrupted supply chains, its done, all sorts of things. And of course, the continuation of the war has had the effect of preventing the tourism industry and those kinds of things from developing, in fact, that's all going down as well. So what you are starting to see in Israel is a sharpening, a further sharpening of the division which already existed within Israel before the war began, between the sort of more secular left wing or liberal oriented section of Israeli society, which is concerned about the economy, about living standards, which would be interested in achieving some kind of a ceasefire in Gaza in order to get the economy moving again to stabilise the situation. The trade unions in Israel, for example, are now backing demands for a big protest strike. You can see those sort of people, how they feel. On the other side, there are the more religious, the more hard line, the more nationalist side of Israeli society, the people who support the settlements, who want to expand the project of greater Israel, they are not so concerned about the economy because they have an entirely different conception of what politics in Israel should be about. Some of them want to go further still, they want to restore the temple to build Israel in the land of Israel, all of those sort of things. They, of course, continue to support Netanyahu and the two sides are moving apart, further and further apart. And what's galvanised this is what's just happened in Gaza. Now to the best that I can understand of this, the Israeli intelligence found where some of these hostages were being kept by Hamas, they tried to conduct a hostage rescue operation. The hostage rescue operation failed before the hostages could be freed, the Hamas captors killed the hostages, a brutal and cruel murder, but of course one which, through it being done in the way that it was, has brought out for people in Israel. It's emphasised that it's divisions because for those people who are uneasy about the war, who want the war to be ended as soon as possible, they're able to say, "Look, you're failing, Hamas is still there, they're still a force, they're able to retain control of their hostages." And part of the entire purpose of this operation was to get the hostages free and instead the hostages are being killed. And prolonging the war, rejecting proposals for ceasefire, which is what Netanyahu is doing, ceasefire which might have got the hostages released, is in fact, dooming the hostages to death, to death and of course they don't want to say it's also dooming the Israeli economy, our livelihoods, our futures, but undoubtedly that current is there. And on the Netanyahu side and on the side of the people who support him, there is the opposite narrative that Hamas is ruthless, relentless, the fact that they murder the hostages in the way that they have done shows how ruthless and relentless they are. It means that any concessions, any negotiation with them is impossible, we must continue the war until victory and of course Netanyahu has significant backing doing that as well. So what this event shows, what it highlights is this deepening division within Israeli society and when we say division, it's now becoming so strong that I understand in fact reading some sections of the Israeli media, such as Haritz, I get the impression that some parts of, well, there are people on each side of this divide who are starting to hate the people on the other. It's a very bleak situation and you could see the prolonging the war and escalating the war as Netanyahu wants to do is not only widening the divide, but it is feeding these emotions and the antagonism and even hatred that already exists. And I imagine this divide is widening, divide makes it even more impossible, improbable that Netanyahu is going to go back on his position, right, he's going to take an even harder line seeing this divide play out and seeing this divide become more clear, he's going to take an even harder line towards the conflict and eventually a conflict with Iran might be his way out of this, maybe he sees a conflict with Iran as something that could provide an exit out of this situation that he's facing in Israel. Blinken in the United States, they made 13 trips or 12 trips to Israel to try and free the hostages. They got nothing accomplished. I mean, this is not going to help the situation, the domestic state of things in Israel is not going to help the situation with regards to the hostages, Hamas, Gaza, it's just going to force Netanyahu to take a harder approach, at least that's that's my sense of things. Yeah, you absolutely right, that is exactly what it's going to do because of course now making any kind of move towards peace and putting aside his own feelings and his own political judgements and I think Netanyahu does believe in what he's doing. I think this view that he's purely cynical, purely opportunistic, that he's taking the stance that he's doing because he knows that if the war ends he loses power and faces trials in Israel and all that. I think that he does believe in what he's doing and I think people underestimate this factor as well. But anyway, the fact is he knows that if he starts making any sort of concessions to the Americans, to Hamas ultimately, to try to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, what he's going to do is he's going to hand the initiative in Israeli politics to his own political enemies and to those people in Israel who are not supporters of Netanyahu's and his government's ultimate project, the project of establishing a greater Israel, perhaps rebuilding the temple, perhaps doing all of those things. So he's instinct is going to be to dig in, not just to dig in, but to escalate. He's going to do that in order to strengthen his support amongst his own, with the people on his side of Israeli politics because that's what they want him to do, they want him to take an even harder line so that he will take a harder line still over Gaza and he'll take a harder line over Iran. And at some level, and I've no doubt about this, he's probably calculating that if he can start a wider war, if Israel does enter into a wider confrontation with Iran, for example, or in the Middle East, that is the way ultimately to reunite Israeli society, to tell people in Israel, the whole state of Israel is now at risk, in danger, these enormous enemies, we were all close ranks and come together as we did in 1967 on the eve of the 1967 war, because if we remain divided, Israel will fail and the state will fail, and of course we will all lose everything. So I think that is what he's going to do, he's going to become more hard line, he's going to entrench himself even further depending on his own political base, and that is going to push him towards still wanting still more escalation, I think you're absolutely right. Is it me or does it feel like the Biden White House has essentially given up on trying to get a ceasefire, to move Netanyahu towards some sort of a resolution? It seems like the UN has also kind of given up, I don't know, that's the sense that six months ago there was a lot more activity from the Biden White House, even though the activity didn't lead to anything obviously, but even from the UN there seemed to be a lot more activity with regards to trying to find a solution in Israel and in Gaza, in the Middle East in general, now it seems like the Biden White House and the UN, if they're not doing much, I don't know, maybe they're doing something behind the scenes, maybe there's a lot of activity that we don't see, but what's your sense of this? I think there's probably lots of activity, but I don't think it amounts to anything, I do these any actual, any purposeful action, because they cannot be, because to all intents and purposes, you talk about the Biden White House, but the problem about the Biden White House is that according to media reports, most of the time now, Biden isn't there, he's been like, he's a lame duck, exactly, he's got no authority, I get the sense he's not even interested anymore, I mean, he spent apparently a lot of time at the residence of one of his friends, he's, you know, about grudging a man time off, but I mean, the point is, he's not engaged in policy any longer, and one gets increasingly the sense that the various figures who make up the administration, Blinken and Sullivan and all of those, they're all working now in isolation from each other, because there's no one bringing things together in any concerted way, so I don't think the Americans are really active any longer in trying to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza, Blinken goes through the motions, I don't think he believes in it very much himself anymore, but you know, he's got to do something or appear to be doing something, and the American foreign policy is in limbo, and in that vacuum, nothing much is happening, to the extent that this political energy any longer is playing out within Israeli politics, and ultimately, as we discussed, many programs, Netanyahu who sent it the weakness in Washington, we've discussed this before, he is in the driver's seat, he's the person who has the initiative, and decides when to press forward, and when to pull back, it's ultimately up to him, any update before I finish the video on what's going on with Iran? No, we're there, they're possible retaliation, they're keeping us waiting and they're keeping us guessing, their rhetoric is the same, by the way, they're still saying that there will be a retaliation eventually, but they're not telling us when it will be, I saw reports some weeks ago that they were planning to do something in October, so we'll just see, they're keeping us guessing, my own view, and I said this previously, I think that they're calculating that a war of some kind with Israel, or at least with Netanyahu's government is now inevitable, but probably, they're waiting for two things, firstly, they want to integrate and develop their air defense system, and apparently they've imported a lot of air defense systems from Russia, that was what the media reports were saying, the Russians haven't denied it, the Iranians haven't denied it, so it's likely true, and I think the other thing is that they're probably looking at American politics now, and they're saying to themselves, well, let's see how the ground shifts because obviously Biden is in no position to take any action with Israel, he's obviously got no credibility, but we now have two candidates, we've dealt with Trump before, he doesn't like us very much, but we discovered in the past that, yes, actually, we can conduct a discussion with him, and of course, Tamala, she doesn't seem to be quite as keen on supporting Israel as Biden was, even though she's saying all sorts of things at the moment, supportive of Israel, but maybe she's not quite as strong as Biden will be, so it may be that there was a waiting to see how the elections in the United States play out, I wouldn't surprise me, they're very sophisticated observers of the international scene, including the American political one. 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