My guest today is Professor Greg Barton, who is a prominent Australian academic specialising in global Islamic politics with a particular focus on countering violent extremism. Greg’s academic career spans roles at Deakin University, where he is currently based, the Asia-Pacific Centre for Security Studies and Monash University. Greg’s expertise, particularly in the context of Islamic thought, positions him as a leading voice on issues of terrorism and extremism, as well as the development of interventions to counter them.

As a prolific author, Greg has contributed significantly to academic journals and books, offering deep insights into the convergence of religion, politics, and societal challenges. This is Greg’s second appearance on the show. Last time he joined me was on episode 81, where we discussed the process of radicalization generally. On that occasion, we used the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the COVID pandemic, as well as far-right extremism as the vehicle for our discussion. Today, Greg joins me for a follow-up with a particular focus on the events unfolding in the Middle East and their impact globally. Greg, welcome back to The Voice of War.

Great to be back. Thanks very much, Mez.

Now, I’ll create a link to our previous episode in the show notes. So for anybody who hasn’t come across your work, they can go and listen to that and get a much deeper sense and background of your career and how you’ve come to do what you do. But perhaps it might be useful for those listening now to just give us a kind of quick wave tops of your career to date and what you’ve been working on.

Sure, I mean, long story short, I began a PhD in 1988 looking at progressive Islamic thought in Indonesia and it was a movement of thought that contributed to not just change in religious thinking but to democratic reform. One of the figures I looked at, Abdurrahman Wahid became president, I wrote his biography when he was president. And I’d come to that, I think, because I tried…

studying aeronautical engineering. I enjoyed the engineering. I wasn’t very good with the math. I spent a year abroad as an exchange student with Rotary in India. And I think that drew me back to Asia. And so once I came to Monash, did an undergraduate degree looking at Southeast Asian studies and was offered a scholarship, I had no intention of a career in academia, but I sort of fell into it. I’ve been very lucky. I think the choice of the PhD topic has served me well. I’ve been very fortunate.

It’s drawn me into close lasting relations in Indonesia. And for a long time, I was really happy focusing on progressive Islamic thought, democratic reform, civil society. But the 9-11 attacks made me realize I needed to also look at something I paid attention to, but not focused on, which was extremist thought in Muslim communities. So I then wrote a book about Jama’at Islamia. Of course, there was that major attack October 12th, 2002 in Bali, which

saw 88 Australians killed, but 202 lives lost. Really tragic turn, but it’s all good cooperation between Australia and Indonesia, first of all, through the police on counter-terrorism and then through civil society on countering violent extremism. And that’s a space I’ve been active in ever since. It’s a space I enjoy, not because I necessarily like looking at extremism, but because the people working to counter extremism are generally really…

very principle driven by a down to earth idealism that they want to prevent bad things happening to the community, help people who’ve gotten to trouble with rehabilitation, and just try and build a better society. And of course in Indonesia and Southeast Asia, most of these civil society groups are inspired by Islam. Some of them are coming from other backgrounds, but in a sense that squares the circle for me in going back to looking at progressive Islamic thought and civil society activism. But I…

do at times wish that we could all leave behind this decades of focus on violent extremism, but we can’t of course, because it’s not going away. It’s in a bit of a lull at the moment, at least from a Western perspective, not from an African perspective where Al-Qaeda and Islamic State are very active, but things are coming around and sad to say the tragedy of that terrorist attack on October 7th.

You know, deliberate provocation by Hamas not only is reaping a terrible, bitter harvest in Gaza, but is likely to reverberate around the world and likely to be used by extremist groups to try and generate support.

And that’s a absolutely key feature of today’s discussion that I hope to touch on, because you’re absolutely right. That’s what we’ve already seen, the kind of the flames being fanned across the world. And we’re forced to take one side over the next. But perhaps we can focus in on that 7th of October. What did you see on that day? And how do you, I don’t know, explain?

is the right word because it’s so difficult to explain something like that. But what are your thoughts on it? What, what, how do you see it and you, what we saw on October 7th?

Well, you know, most of my comments, I think, are fairly obvious. It was utter horror and revulsion. This was not just a terrorist attack and not just an action by a militant group. It was a deliberately outrageous series of terrorist attacks, as outrageous as you can imagine. And when you see a terrorist group doing that, you know, generally, I think it’s fair to assume that it’s they’re being outrageous because they want outrage. It’s provocation. And that also makes your heart sink, because not only was this terrible tragedy

On October 7, at least 1,200 lives lost directly in Israel, 240 odd people taken hostage, but sort of reverberating tragedy in Israel. But you could see what was coming for the people of Gaza who didn’t deserve it, who don’t deserve it. Hamas was bringing the war home to an area where they feel they’ve got an upper hand. And in their calculation, not only do they control the physical domain, they’re in a mine space where

high levels of deaths, whether it’s from their own members or from civilians who don’t support them, not just to be accepted, but almost welcomed because that makes their message more powerful. It helps drive a wedge in a way that they calculate will eventually support them. We saw this happen with 9-11 and Al-Qaeda. It takes a long way to play out, but eventually when we…

reacts with excessive force, particularly when we think that military means are going to solve problems, it generally actually ends up with a series of unintended consequences that serve the interests of the extremists and generate other, you know, splintering, cascading rounds of extremism and recruitment. So you could sort of see all of that happening as the news came in. You thought this is terrible what’s happening on that awful Saturday, but then it’s going to be

weeks and months and perhaps years of tragedy ahead and indeed the last five weeks have borne it out.

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, it’s a, the way you worded that I, I wholeheartedly agree. And I’ve put out a kind of thought bubble on that about Hamas having set a trap for Israel and Israel now walking into that or has been walking into that trap, um, you know, completely, uh, and therefore the, uh, information war that’s obviously being fought as well, uh, is very much contested if not, uh, Israel losing.

Certainly in some parts of the world and perhaps not yet in the West as much as in other parts of the world, but I suspect that only has so much runway until that also starts changing. How are you seeing that? Do you see that the support for Israel from your perspective is starting to wane?

Yeah, it’s a really tricky question, isn’t it? And very important, we’re talking today, it’s Friday, 17th of November. And as of today, I think you’d say that if you could somehow score this in terms of who’s getting the advantage, I think Amasa’s got the, you know, provoked the response that it wants. And although it’s obviously suffered losses, it probably feels itself ahead. I feel sorry for the IDF personnel who are going into a terrible operation.

But you’d have to say that this program is not going well for Israel. And of course, it’s really going tragically, awfully bad for the people of Gaza. We’re getting towards 12,000 lives lost and 5,000 of them being children, most of the others being women and young people. And it goes without saying that, you know, there’s a relatively small number of Hamas militants involved. But these are mostly people who, for…

The last 16 years have been trapped in the Gaza Strip with a government that they didn’t choose. I mean, yes, there was an election, but most of the population is young, they never voted. Even when Hamas won that, yeah, that’s right, even when Hamas won that 2006 election, it didn’t have majority support. So it’s just a terrible state we’re at the moment. I think perhaps because international opinion is turning against not so much Israel, I think we need to, you know,

Yeah.

And there was no subsequent election after that. It was the, yeah.

sort of basics, but we don’t need to say this is not a case of do you support Palestine, do you support Israel? It’s can we be critical of this government of Bibi Netanyahu? I think we have to be. I’ve been critical because it’s the most right-wing government in Israeli history and it’s made lots of bad decisions which weakened Israel and made it easy for us to launch that October 7th attack. But also I think that the response and I don’t blame the IDF for

having to follow orders that they’re given, but the orders that are given ultimately come from the government of the day. And I think it’s gonna take a while before we figure out forensically everything that’s going on. People talk about war crimes, genocide. I don’t think that’s very helpful language to speak of genocide, although I understand why people turn to it. But we do seem to see a callous disregard for the loss of civilian life, including the loss of children. And we do seem to see lack of precision and discretion in targeting.

You know, we can break it down and talk about the way Israel justifies what it’s doing. But as of today, Friday, 17th of November, this is not a successful military operation in military terms. And we haven’t even talked about what the end game is. And I think in terms of the end game, surely involves a political solution. Surely can only be justified in terms of peace for the people of Israel and Palestine. It’s not going in the right direction there.

Yeah.

So, you know, I think there is a tide turning against the government in the international community against the government of Bibi Netanyahu. I think there’s also a tide turning against Western leaders who haven’t been very skillful in the way they’ve communicated their position. I would like to believe that the Biden administration is working very hard to constrain what the Netanyahu administration does and to try and turn this thing in a better direction.

But the perception for many Americans and for others looking at the Biden White House is that they’re just one sided. They’re siding with Israel, they’re not being sufficiently critical. Same thing has been said on Australia, of the Australian government, the UK government, etc. You have some governments taking a stronger, more clear-cut position. Belgium, for example, has come out very clearly. France, for once, is actually ahead of the curve and is saying more nuanced and thoughtful things.

But I do think there is a desire to try and stop this human tragedy that’s occurring. There’s been this debate over, do we talk about ceasefire or humanitarian pause? I can understand the argument for saying that the military threat posed by Hamas has to be, well, first of all, the hostages have to be rescued, released, the military threat has to be dealt with so that Hamas no longer poses an immediate military threat, can’t eliminate it, but you can sort of deal with the threat. And then…

Yeah.

You need to set up the conditions for a different administration in the Gaza Strip. You finally need a political solution that has justice and is durable. Otherwise, you’ve got nothing. At the moment, everything is going in the wrong direction. And so I think Hamas is winning in this sort of short account and Israel is losing. And I’m sad for that. I’m, you know, grieved for the people of Gaza, of Palestine, but also…

Yeah.

My position, which is a vision that many people who look at this take, is that we’ve got roughly seven million Jewish Israelis, roughly seven million Palestinians in Israel, in the West Bank, in the Gaza Strip. Neither of those two large communities are going anywhere. They’re staying there, and they’re going to have to live with each other. Of course, I’ve said two communities, it’s more complicated. You’ve got Christians and Jews and Muslims and Druze and…

lots of people who aren’t particularly religious in their personal life, lots of different perspectives, backgrounds. But basically, these two communities, each of roughly similar size, are not going to leave, they’ve got nowhere to go. They’ve both got a claim on the homeland. They’ve both got past injustices. The Jews are dealing with this collective memory of the Holocaust, which haunts down through the generations. The Palestinians,

a sense that there’s been waves of Nakba, of disaster since, including what some people foolishly are calling the Gaza Nakba, sort of welcoming it. And they fear being driven out of homes that they’ll never return to. Of course, most people in Gaza come from a background of being refugees. They came to Gaza because they came from somewhere else and they lost their home somewhere else. So that’s just horrible.

It’s an understandable fear in that sense. I mean, that’s absolutely.

It’s horrible to watch and I think if we’re trying to be decent human beings, one Yiddish word that always resonates with me, because I think it’s so deep in terms of practical meaning for how we live, is we should try and be mensch, try and be decent human beings. And that means filling equal compassion for everyone and thinking through what does it take to get something where people have the justice and the peace that they need.

to get on with their lives. And you could see a future, you have to see a future in which, Gaza could become a thriving region, part of a Palestinian state living peacefully with Israel, but lots has gotta change before that’s possible. It seems naive to talk about this where we are right now, but what other way is there out of this human tragedy? So yeah, I do think we need a humanitarian pause, or a series of humanitarian pauses, to allow food and medicine and water and

other vital supplies into Gaza and to help people get to safer places. But I can see that the military operation in some form will need to go on. It can’t go on as it’s currently been going on. That’s just not acceptable. I’ll leave it for future studies to look at whether there have been war crimes or not, but there’s certainly not been military success in any way that can be justified in military terms. And it’s certainly not something that can be justified in terms of international law and

humanitarian outcomes and it actually is not justifiable in terms of where Israel needs to get to for its own peace and security.

Yeah, I mean, wonderful summary. And there’s so many threads that we could pick out from there. But the first thing I want to touch on is you made the point that Israel justifies this somehow. And then perhaps more crucially, it is countries like the US, Australia, UK, who then also justified somehow. How are we able to justify this? And especially when it’s not even, I mean, it is still happening in Ukraine that Russia is decimating.

of civilian areas that we are condemning writ large as a global community, maybe not global, but certainly as a Western community. But in this instance, when we’re watching perhaps even greater attrition of infrastructure and human life in proportion to the size of Gaza versus Ukraine, but we’re somehow letting it slide. So firstly, how is Israel justified what it’s doing?

But then more pressingly to the Western audience, at least, how does the West do it?

I think we’ve got to break down what’s actually happening. I mean, we are trapped by binary thinking in this regard. You know, do you support Palestine? Do you support Israel? Does Israel have a right to defend itself, etc.? Is this the fault of Hamas? It’s not binary. I mean, yes, Hamas provoked this current round on October 7th with a deliberately outrageous series of terror attacks. Of course, Hamas hasn’t come out of a vacuum.

Yes. Yeah.

situation, there’s a whole long back story there that we need to unpack. It’s not binary. In terms of Israel’s right to self-defense, yes, every nation, every sovereign nation has a right to self-defense. And more than that, Israel has an obligation to defend itself, to look after its people. I think the problem is what it’s doing is not good for its self-defense and is not working towards medium and longer term good.

And in the short term, I think there’s a serious question of whether there is war crimes or excessive indiscriminate military force. I know that has to be resolved technically. We need to have all the evidence. We are in the middle of an information war, not just fog of war, but deliberate exchanges of disinformation from all the sides. But you can’t say that when you’ve got near on 12,000 people dead.

and 5000 of them are children, that that is somehow proportionate to the threat posed and somehow is a price that needs to be accepted. It’s a very different story. Yes, for military objectives. Yeah.

For a military objective. And that’s the debate is so confused about proportionality in my view, because people are talking about eye for an eye. Well, no, that’s not proportionality is to achieve a military end state. So is the cost you’re paying for the lives of civilians worth the military success and ultimately achieving a just peace worth it, not.

Is it, you know, does it meet the eye for an eye? We started to interrupt you, but it’s just a point that I feel like I need to pick up on because there’s so much confusion, confusion about that.

No, absolutely. And of course, there’s a lot of discussion at the moment. And I’ve listened to international lawyers speak about this, and I find that they’re line convincing. The line is that for many international law experts, that although when you are faced with a situation that Israel is faced with, and you have to go into a territory like Gaza, and you have to go to a group like Hamas,

Yes, they are using human shields. Yes, they are hiding behind infrastructure like hospitals, although as we know with the Shifa, it’s not really clear exactly what’s what. I think Israel faced a massive intelligence failure with the October 7th attack, partly because they misunderstood Hamas, and Hamas was able to use that sort of great magic sleight of hand trick of distraction and deflection.

Yeah.

I think perhaps that’s happened with the idea of operational intelligence. They think that Hamas is operating one where, you know, they say Hamas has got a headquarters at Ashifa Hospital. It’s likely that Hamas is deliberately playing with them to make them look foolish and undermine their credibility. But that aside, even if, you know, you find a location, Hamas is there, civilians are there, international law, as it’s being explained, requires some really compelling cases before you.

you start to use force in that setting. And it’s not, you know, there’s no sort of binary, yes, you can do it, no, you can’t do it. It’s a constant sort of assessing of when, you know, when can you use this weapon in this way? The, you know, Western coalition involvement in the global war on terrorism saw lots of mistakes made, and I think lots of war crimes. But having said that, there was a lot of work going into, okay,

We’ve got a drone in place. Do we launch a Hellfire missile or not? And then who is in the convoy? What civilian loss of life? Well, there has been a lot of work going into that, and yet mistakes were still made. I think that under pressure, the idea is not exercising enough restraint when it comes to considering the impact on civilian lives. And of course, that’s the focus of intense

Yeah.

pressure in war, but the instruments of war are means to an end. The means to an end, it’s a political end. That’s not just because politics is nice to talk about, not just because we hear about justice, but Israel will not have peace and security without a just political solution, nor will the people of Palestine both equally deserve it. Yes, there’s a time when you use military instruments, but when it comes to terrorist provocations,

Generally, this is when the terrorists win and we lose. And that’s what appears to be happening at the moment in Gaza. So I think we’ll learn more and it’ll be in a better position to make judgments of the exact nature of mistakes, but clearly mistakes are being made.

Yeah. I particularly like the fact that you keep reinforcing the point that it’s about, you know, it has to be a political solution. And again, you know, our beloved Klauswitz will tell us that. And I sort of want to say Klauswitz in air quotes because his quotes are thrown everywhere and we keep talking about it, but it doesn’t seem to register when it matters that it is about politics, you know, that war is an extension of politics and therefore we need to come back to politics.

because as you rightly point out, there’s seven million roughly on both sides and neither side will expel the other completely to have a homogenous society, whatever that might look like. So therefore, there has to be a political solution, lest we keep this cycle of killing going to indefinitely. If I can, I’d really like to focus on Hamas and particularly with your expertise on Islamic thought. Can you try to explain?

at least to me and to our audience, what is jihadism in its concepts and how does that differ to Islamism? Because we keep hearing these words almost interchangeably, but if my understanding is correct, there are differences and we should be very careful when we talk about one versus the other. So perhaps you can just take a moment to hone us in on that and where does Hamas really fit in?

Yeah, I think it’s a really critical point, Maz, because as I said, there was a series of intelligence failure clearly on October 7th that meant the Israelis were caught by surprise. One of the key elements of the intelligence failure was not just that they weren’t paying attention, that they were discounting reports that Hamas was mobilizing, and not just that they relied too much on…

AI controlled automatic machine guns that were knocked out as it turned out by Hamas drones, that they had taken force strength away from the Gaza Strip and focused on the West Bank. All of those were mistakes. But a big mistake was they said, and this is the danger of groupthink when it comes to intelligence analysis, that Hamas has neither the capacity nor the intention, critically not the intention to attack. Hamas is focused on the business of running the Gaza Strip.

and it has political power and that’s what it wants. And the reasoning of course is that Hamas had come out of, it’s a movement linked to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which is the source of much of contemporary modern political Islamist thought and social movements. And that it, you know, Hamas is not an Al-Qaeda or Islamic State type of group that’s come from that base of originally thinking in terms of Islamist politics.

derived from Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, but then moving on to an obsessive focus on provoking a war in the name of jihad so that the whole system can be toppled and you can put in place a new system. With the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups around the world, including ones that are operating in Asia and including ones in South Asia that draw heavily on the

Diobandi madrasa and Diobandi itself in India and Diobandi madrasa in Pakistan and Afghanistan. There are strong parallels that there is this focus in political Islamist thought of saying we need to be in charge of politics because we need to control law because we believe that the right kind of law, which is our understanding of Islamic Sharia law, if we apply that, that solves problems. That’s how you deal with crime. That’s how you deal with poverty.

That’s how you get the utopia that we all want. I mean, it is utopian, romantic thinking. But for those who follow that path, it’s about political means. So I’m not saying that they’re ardent Democrats. I mean, very often they’re happy to, in the words of the very tricky Prime Minister, previously President Erdogan, they’re happy to ride that trolley car, that tram,

called democracy and get off when they get to their destination. You know, they’re not wedded to democracy. Having said that though, they are generally playing by the rules of the system, trying to build up their base. They do lots of work which is done for political reasons, but also done for reasons of conviction, in terms of social welfare, of looking after communities. There’s much about what Islamist groups do that needs to be recognised as having social support because it’s meeting social needs. And…

Yeah.

Also involving people I think are often motivated by real idealism and trying to do what they understand to make things better. Of course when there was a great crackdown on the first generation of the Muslim Brotherhood when Saeed Qutb was executed by the Egyptian authorities in 1966, he could have gone into exile in Saudi Arabia followed his brother Muhammad, he didn’t, he stayed as a result, was hanged, became a martyr.

Mohammed Qutb and other Muslim Brotherhood members who’d gone to exile in Saudi Arabia went through a strange process in which elements of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Islamist thought were mixed with elements of extreme Wahhabi thought, but also other political concerns which gave the foundation of what became Al-Qaeda, of course, which wouldn’t have occurred the way it occurred were it not for an opportunity space in Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda had some action in Sudan and…

had searched around to try and find a place for itself inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the end found an opportunity to grow and develop in Afghanistan. That’s where we think of all of these modern Salafi jihadi movements coming from. Of course, Islamic State is a spin-off of al-Qaeda as we know, coming out of al-Qaeda in Iraq. One of the great intelligence mistakes behind October 7th is the assumption that Hamas was simply an Egyptian, Muslim brotherhood style.

I mean, austere to the point of, I mean, we do know that it has a long history of ruthlessly persecuting its enemies and those that it thought might represent a threat. So nothing nice and soft and cuddly about this group. Yeah, exactly. But what we thought of them as being differently focused than a group like Islamic State, because they already had their state, they sort of had their Islamic State in the Gaza Strip. They didn’t call it a color fate.

By throwing people of buildings, etc.

how it was set up. And they were getting some success getting support from across the Gulf region, from Qatar and beyond in terms of business deals. So the Israelis said to themselves, well, you know, our strategy works. We’ve got this strip locked up on the outside. They’re busy on the inside. We can sort of manage this. We can contain it. It was that awful expression of mowing the grass to speak about routine sort of crackdowns to…

regulate and control the threat of extremism. What they weren’t expecting was that Hamas would behave in just the same way that Islamic State behaved. It was expanding and laying the foundations for its caliphate when it went to Mosul, for example. Of course, a difference is I don’t think Hamas had any operational plans to take territory. It was trying to provoke a response.

because it wasn’t happy with the status quo that it had in the Gaza Strip. It wanted something more. It wanted the IDF to come into the Gaza Strip. It wanted there to be a great confrontation which would cause them to lose a lot of their own force strength, but would ultimately see a wedge driven that would see their movement gain support. What they hoped to gain beyond what they already had in the Gaza Strip is hard to understand rationally, but I think some of the people behind the attack were looking to go beyond Gaza.

to influence the West Bank. Some even were looking to influence the greater Middle East. Of course, Hamas has received financial sponsorship from Iran and military equipment. Of course, it was well equipped with that October 7th attack, much better equipped than we could have imagined. So it’s a large game at play. We still don’t know whether those Iranian handlers, the sponsors of Hamas, were written into the communications ahead of the attack.

Probably not. I say probably not because otherwise Israel would have by now attacked Iran but thought that Iran, you know, somewhat in, yeah. And of course there is this great concern about this conflict in the Gaza Strip spreading beyond. That’s why we have two US aircraft carrier flotillas in the East Mediterranean, pretty extraordinary situation. But there’s a great degree of anxiety about this spreading and going beyond. But there is this mystery that’s,

Was somehow behind it. Yeah.

led to this intelligence failure that we thought Hamas was one thing, it behaved in a very different way. So it behaved, it used the tactics of Islamic State. That’s why some people were saying Hamas, ISIS, same thing. Well, it’s not the same thing. It’s a very different beast, but it did use those awful tactics. But the reasons that al-Qaeda used the 9-11 terrorist attack method, because it wanted to provoke a response. And that wasn’t anticipated.

It doesn’t make sense that Hamas would do that because it stands to lose so much and put at risk. And of course, the people of Gaza stand to lose, but that perhaps wasn’t a consideration for them. They were prepared to pay that price on behalf of the people of Gaza. Yeah, exactly. So there’s something strange here. Yes, I think it’s still the case that Hamas, the political body, is basically an Egyptian brotherhood style Islamist outfit that was concerned with power and running stuff and having its own state.

No, well it’s part of the plan obviously yeah, yeah

But somewhere in the military leadership, there was an appetite for more and a lack of satisfaction with just that political status quo. That doesn’t mean that everything we thought we knew about Hamas is wrong. And that’s critically important because when the dust settles, there will have to be negotiation with people who have had some involvement in this. Not the militant leaders, but people who were signed up.

and on the Hamas payroll, which seems like a crazy thing to say, but you know, where I’m coming to is we need to be cautious of not making the mistake of de-bathification. In southern Hussein’s Iraq, any middle-class technocrat, engineer, professional, was a member of the bath party because they had to be. You didn’t get a choice, right? So you had to go along with the status quo. That’s just the way it is. That’s the way it is for most of the Middle East most of the time.

In the Gaza Strip, yes, the hospitals are run by the health ministry, which is Hamas. And there are people in the political system who went right into the attack plans for October 7th, who were then and perhaps in the future will be focused just on political and administrative matters. I don’t think we can ever go back to having Hamas left in charge of the Gaza Strip in any form. But I do think out of 2.3 million people.

for those who were making the place work and doing the best to make things work. And we see the literally heroic efforts of doctors and nurses in the hospitals under siege. Those people will be needed to play some role in future administration. You know, it won’t be under Hamas, but we need to be careful. We don’t make the mistake of, once again, thinking in binary terms that it’s these guys are all with this group and this group is all this. So I think

–

Yeah.

Yeah.

We now have to say that Hamas is a mixture of competing factions, some of whom were really focused on this literally, you know, Armageddon end of time confrontation, which they thought would serve their end, just like Islamic State was, just like Al-Qaeda was.

And they’re jihadists. They would be called, that’s what we would understand as jihadists, who are poops.

Absolutely. Not just because they describe jihad as a preemptive use of military force, as opposed to a peaceful struggle, but because they believe that they can never achieve their end state without a military, not just military means, but a acceleration towards an end of time confrontation that will change everything.

Yeah. And I think that’s a really an aspect that we in the broadly speaking secular West, that’s rather distant to us to actually appreciate the fact that some of the commitment is so, I mean, to us, it seems absurd, but they expect martyrdom or that this life is merely transient in order to achieve martyrdom to then live in eternity as a martyr, as a hero.

for your people. And I think for us, that’s something that’s a little bit distant because obviously we value this life because this is the only one we can say with any certainty that we have and that we can enjoy. Anything beyond that is a hypothetical guess at best. Whereas the kind of fundamental principles of Jihadism, and correct me if I’m wrong, or I’d like to hear your thoughts on this, is that it is such a deeply embedded philosophy, thought.

or way of thinking about the world that this is merely a transient path towards an eternity far greater than anything that can be right now. Is that how is that broadly accurate as to what Jihadism is?

That is broadly accurate, Maz. I mean, of course, we’re talking about a product of the second half of the 20th century. So it’s a modern movement. You know, one of the mistakes that commentators make regularly is they talk in terms of centuries old battles, you know, of Sunni versus Shia, of Muslims against Jews. Those simplistic descriptions are never historically accurate. I mean, you know.

Right, okay, that’s interesting.

Yeah.

you don’t have to go back very far in the Middle East when you had cosmopolitan cities with very diverse populations, large Jewish and Christian communities. Exactly. And there is no reason why people can’t live happily side by side. I’m not saying that the ways it happens under, say, the Ottoman Empire are perfect. You wouldn’t want to go back to that kind of divided society. But it’s a reminder that it’s not given that people automatically have to, you know,

Yeah. Whether in Iran, Afghanistan, or elsewhere.

be at war with each other or even to hate each other. And this particular excessive focus on, cult of martyrdom and everything being about making it into the next life and achieving salvation, that doesn’t reflect mainstream understanding of Islam either. So that’s not the way that Islam has understood the last 15 centuries. That’s not the way most Muslim scholars today.

whether they’re conservative or progressive, understand things, whichever Mas’hab school of thought they come from, whether Sunni or Shia, it’s a handful of people, and the handful include cynical political operators, like, for example, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran, who most of them are probably driven more by political power and profit than they are by religious conviction, although some of them have deep religious convictions. And on the Sunni side,

yeah.

Yes, there are people who have deep convictions, who are drawn up in jihadist groups. The power of individual thinkers who have a vision is probably misunderstood because most people join for reasons of community, of social means. They join their older brother, their uncle, they avenge their father’s death, they respond because of pressure from economic circumstances.

You know, it varies, of course.

I don’t want to gloss over this. So, so, so before you go much further on that train of thought, which is absolutely what I was hoping to go next, because what we’re touching on now is the process of radicalization, which I want to hone in, especially through your a model that we discussed previously, but I think it’s also relevant now and it’s relevant for our new listeners who hadn’t heard our previous discussion to have that visual model in their mind. So the push, pull personal factors, the triple P model.

Hmm.

because I think that’s where you’re already starting to talk to that. So maybe if we can just go to that point as to what or how you explain radicalization, perhaps through this model.

That’s right, and as though, you know, we’re talking about radicalization into violent extremism. So, you know, we’re not talking about radicalization into an alternative lifestyle that may save the planet, or even just religious piety that may save me from, you know, substance abuse or something and make me a better father and a better husband. Exactly, I mean, yeah. That’s right, to be radical in a, you know, sort of literal sense.

Yeah. Or becoming vegetarian or any of these kinds of, they could be broadly termed as even good.

understood sociologically and philosophically is to go back to the roots of things, the radics, the basics, and change things completely. Root and branch change. That can be good, it can be bad. But when you justify that effort, when you say that the ends justify the means, I have to use violence to get there. That’s the problem. And violence doesn’t have to actually involve literally killing people. It can involve hate speech and inciting hate.

to divide society, to corrode relations. But that’s broadly under the rubric of people behaving badly because they say that they’re justified because the ends are so important that they have to use these means. But when people make that move, generally it’s a social process and whether it’s because of being pushed into it because of really…

grim and terrible circumstances. You know, you’re a poor farmer in a valley in Afghanistan. The Taliban are coming back every month looking for their money. The Americans turn up for a while and they go away, but the Taliban keep coming back. And then you have some personal tragedy. And you just feel like, I’ve got no choice but to join these people. What other choice can I do? This is, it’s not good, but I’ve got nothing better. That’s being pushed into something because of personal circumstances.

you know, for a kid in a comfortable suburban home in Australia or, you know, the UK or US, it’s often very different. It’s more, um, being pulled towards something because of the desire for adventure, for meaning primarily for acceptance, a group that will accept me and call me a brother or a sister and give me a sense of purpose. Um, you know, when you’re in your teens and early twenties, that’s really, really powerful stuff. Um,

But once again, it manifests in us in a social way. So you can be pushed by circumstance, pulled by the attraction of joining the group and this idea of being part of the freedom fighter rebels who are changing the world. And it plays out differently whether you’re stuck in an insurgent situation, say in Afghanistan or Sudan or other parts of the world where these guys are in charge, or whether you’re traveling across

would love to join a group. Going back to Gaza and thinking about what happens in the future for kids growing up with the trauma of what’s happening now, what’s gonna be playing? There’s gonna be a lot of sort of push towards joining certain groups or going along with certain groups or not pushing back against them at least. There’s gonna be a pool of the sense that this is the one way we can change things. So.

There’s a complex mix of things going on, but I suppose the big point I would make is that generally it plays out in a social network way, starting with, you know, I may be looking at a particular series of videos on YouTube, that won’t make me a radical. But when you call me on messaging apps and say, look, Greg, you’ve got some questions, let’s talk. And we talk. And I find that you mouse.

are being really nice to me and you respect me. The first time I’ve had this happening in months or maybe years, maybe I’ve lost somebody who previously did that for me, but you’re there. Then I start to form a relationship with you. You say, let’s take this conversation somewhere else that’s more secure. And then you introduce me to your group and your ideas. It starts with that friendship. Now you might be grooming me in a very cynical fashion or maybe it’s a genuine friendship. Either way, that friendship and for me, that sense of belonging to this new.

family, having this new friends, that’s what takes me in. And it sounds trite to talk about the battle for hearts and minds, but that’s what really, if battle for hearts and minds means anything, it’s playing out at this level. So we need to always think about what drives these groups, how do they replenish themselves? How do they recruit the next generation? It’s through this process.

–

And actually we could be talking about neo-Nazi groups as much as jihadi groups. It’s much the same dynamics. But of course we are speaking about jihadi groups. So we need to think about, you know, what will enable a group like Hamas or some other group in future that takes a different name, but it’s come from the same origins, what will enable it to recruit the next generation?

–

And given what we’re watching unfolding Gaza, I mean, as you’ve already alluded to, we’re seeing all three factors, push, pull, personal on, on a scale, perhaps unseen, certainly in that, uh, in that small strip. Uh, and as you’ve already pointed out with those, with the youth and it’s something I’ve spoken to with a couple of more recent guests, uh, you know, I think it was Chris Gunness who made the point that there are children now growing up in Gaza, firstly, who’ve never voted, uh, but they are now of a voting age, uh,

Yeah.

but who’ve lived through five wars or five iterations of this war, not to the extreme level as it is now. But how can we expect anything from those kids ultimately than being inclined to stand up and fight for their people? Now, it might not be through Hamas, might be through other means or other groups or other ways, but there’s undoubtedly going to be a, I would say a large percentage.

Mm.

who will see Hamas as the only entity that’s actually standing up for them, because nobody else, well, at least that’s what you would feel if you were in Gaza, that nobody else is standing up for you. None of the big powers are intervening, and Israel, seemingly, at least from their perspective, is doing whatever it’s doing with absolute impunity. So push-pull personal factors, I mean, it’s at a grand scale. How do you view that? And do you…

how much is that a risk or how much does that contribute to the Hamas’s victory ultimately, as we talked about before.

Yeah, we’re back to thinking about strategy and end state, which brings us back to politics, but we need to understand this big picture, because otherwise everything else, not only is tragic, but is to no end, right? I mean, what’s the purpose of winning a military tactical victory at a battle level if you’re not gonna end up with what you want? And of course, the backdrop to this, the Americans are saying to the Israelis, don’t make the mistake we made after 9-11.

We were hurt, we were angry, we did things that we felt we had to do, and you do have to do those things, but we didn’t think through where we were going. We didn’t have an end planned in mind, particularly militarily, which of course is disastrous in military terms. And 20 years of global war and terror by military means didn’t produce the results that we imagined it would. In fact, mostly it’s produced lots of bad results that we should have anticipated. So that applies here. So two things I would say though.

Yeah, an unintended and unexpected result.

Gaza. One is that we need to be careful to recognise the risks and what’s at stake here and therefore what we need to be fighting for and trying to achieve. And so it’s not simply about, I mean the language of eliminating Hamas I think is silly, you can’t eliminate Hamas. In military terms you can’t eliminate it. In social movement terms, because it is a social movement it certainly can’t be eliminated. And as an idea, whether it’s called Hamas or something else, it can’t be eliminated.

reduce the power of the militant faction that caused this horrible terrorist attack, reduce their capacity to intimidate and rule by fear the Gaza Strip, take them out of power. Yes, that needs to be part of what’s the end state, but also address the conditions that would enable them or some other group to recruit and to tip the balance in their favour. And I think one thing we need to take in mind here is we need to be very conscious of this, but also not

not convinced that it’s hopeless and somehow deterministic because otherwise we succumb to the logic of saying, well, yeah, it’s not the fault of these kids, but nothing good will come to them and therefore we just have to be tough. And that is a kind of logic that has prevailed in Israel to a large extent. Yeah.

And you hear it here, you hear it here. I mean, it’s, and I cannot tell you how it frustrates me when I get people saying war is ugly. And 99.9% of time, I hear that from people who have never been at the receiving end of anything more than a shout or a curse. And that is just such a simple explanation to, as you rightly said, 12,000 dead, five plus thousand children.

Hmm.

Yeah.

I mean, it’s just incredible. And of course, again, it just restarts that cycle. I mean, it just restarts that cycle.

And it leads us into being so despondent and so sort of convinced by deterministic logic that we lose the chance to make a difference. You know, one thing I think we should hang on to from the video feed we’re seeing daily from Gaza, and this seems like a counterintuitive thing to say, but I think it’s really important for the future. We are seeing people who have grown up the whole lives in Gaza and who are now working in hospitals in terrible conditions, facing

can imagine the trauma they’re operating under as doctors and nurses and drivers and everyone else. And the Israelis say, why don’t you guys move south because we told you to move south. And they’re saying, well, we can’t leave the patients behind. Why don’t you move south because your life will be safer? I’m a doctor. I’m a nurse. I can’t neglect my duty. I’ve got to do what I can do. Many, many anecdotal stories that have come through in the last five weeks of people who have lost their life. You know, you’ve…

One day they’re interviewed on BBC, the next day you hear that unfortunately they’ve lost their life. These are good people, not just good people, these are heroes, you know, doing courageous things. And yet they’ve grown up with this five cycles of conflict in Gaza and terrible sort of police state run by Hamas. It’s not hopeless. If such good human behavior can come out of the most difficult situation, you’ve seen it yourself, Maaz, in Afghanistan. Heavens knows the Afghans have, you know, went through four or five decades of war, and yet you saw…

Yeah.

Yeah.

That’s really, yeah. Yeah, that’s wonderful.

people doing decent things, trying to help each other. We shouldn’t give up on the potential for human beings to do the right thing. And that’s the, I think the default setting, human beings want to do the right thing. One reason kids draw in the extremist strips is because they’re drawn to the idea of being with the good guys. Now that can be deceived, but we shouldn’t give up on this, the positive aspect of human nature. And it’s also, the second thing is, it’s not just limited to the Gaza Strip. What plays out here,

Yeah, yeah, yes.

It’s already reverberating in the West Bank across Israel. But it’s likely, not just likely, I think it’s almost certain to be used by groups in Africa, groups elsewhere in the Middle East, groups in Asia, to try and recruit the next generation of their fighters. This will, I think, unfortunately, at least we need to anticipate this, serve to boost global jihadi extremism.

And probably not just global jihadi extremism, but strangers that may seem, neo-Nazi and other far-right groups will also find this an energizing moment, unless we’re very careful. So on the one hand, I’m saying we need to pay attention, not just because of what happens to the guys at Drip, but around the world, but we shouldn’t just think that it’s hopeless, and therefore we just have to get tougher or smarter, or police things more closely. No, we actually need to understand that…

-Yeah.

People want to do the right thing if we give them a chance. We need to give them hope. Hope needs to have a foundation in justice. It needs to be something which can be lasting and durable, but it can be done. So I’m still hopeful that out of all this darkness will come a move towards a just two state solution style, political solution for Palestine, Israel, but also that if we can achieve that, that it will help.

maintain the balance elsewhere in the Muslim world and beyond when it comes to dealing with extremism. I think that’s what’s at stake here. It’s a big picture.

Yeah. I mean, it just reminds me, as you were talking about somebody who we could, in my view, at least I could define as Mensch. And that’s Yuval Noah Harari, who’s obviously an Israeli historian, but who keeps coming out and saying, you know, this will not be solved through some idealized notion of perfect justice. There is no such thing as perfect justice because there’s always going to be some.

indiscretion that remains undealt with. There’s always a crime that precedes this one, et cetera. So this kind of perpetual cycle of violence and that in negotiation or making peace, you need to compromise in some capacity. This is going to be from somebody who’s been personally touched by this through, I think his aunt and uncle who were in one of the kibbutzos. And in my view, that is this idea of mench, somebody who’s actually looking at the humanity on both sides.

But I find that, and I’m getting to a question here about radicalization, I find that it’s very difficult to be Mensch at the moment, because you’re purely by the narratives, you’re forced to take a side. And I think it’s something you alluded to before, now, especially kind of in the social media domain, the moment you say, poor children, you’re being, what’s being thrown in your face is, oh, so you support Hamas. So you think it’s a, hey, it’s okay for Hamas to continue doing what it’s doing.

Or if you go off a bit, say what Israel is doing is fully justified. On the other side, you’ll hear, but what about the children? You’re genocidal purely by intent and certainly by action. It feels like we’re radicalizing at a macro scale in our media, social media, and even our news channels. I mean, the polarization.

is just, I mean, Al Jazeera may as well be a Hamas spokesman. Whereas I watch every now and then I 24, the Israeli news channel, and it’s crazy. But of course then, you know, all of the mainstream media have their own bias and their own narratives that they’re selling, which then of course, fuels social media where people find the space to express their dissatisfaction and are therefore even more derogatory. I mean, X nowadays or formerly Twitter. It’s, it’s, it’s painful to read.

Mm.

some of the things that people put on there. So how do you view that from through your lens of radicalization as this kind of bigger macro problem, I would say.

Yeah, I think that’s a really good point to reflect on because when we talk about radicalization to violent extremism and particularly joining a jihadi group, we’re talking about young people, you know, making mistakes because of friendships, perhaps deliberately being groomed, taken into a group. And then there’s push-pull, personal factors of the horror of circumstances and the sense that they can make a difference. You know, at some point they internalize the ideas and those ideas include

a dehumanizing, a demonizing of the other. And that plays out in a horrible way. That is why somebody can be persuaded to become a suicide bomber or pick up an AK-47 and shoot a fellow human being. Horrible, horrible things. But that’s a small group of people. What we’re talking about here is a larger, global community where we’re all.

suffering from a little, at risk of going a little bit in that direction. We’re not going to become literal militants, but we are going to slip into a Manichaean view of the world of good versus evil in simple black and white terms and of us and them. That’s right. Yeah. And then we have, you know,

And it’s also wind in the sails of those who will. Right, so if they feel like they’re representing a larger body of people, then they’re more likely to act as well.

Yeah. And of course, we, you know, in democratic systems, we increasingly have the scourge, scourge of populism where, you know, figures come along like Donald Trump, who will try and get some mileage from this in a very cheap and cynical way. And unfortunately, a lot of people will, you know, take that at face value and give support projecting their hopes onto such figures. But, you know, one of the other themes that’s come through this horrible last five weeks is many, many stories of people who

are trying to be mensch or certainly were mensch. Sometimes the voices of the dead, people whose lives were lost, who had spent decades as peace activists. Many of the victims in the kibbutz, of course, living adjacent the Gaza Strip, had focused on trying to help people in Gaza and work with Palestinian communities generally and work for peace. So that’s the particular tragedy. Perhaps one of the reasons, in terms of Israeli politics, those communities were neglected is because they weren’t seen to support

far right side of politics. The focus was on settlers in the West Bank. But we hear so many stories, including from people who have lost family members as hostages or who were killed on October 7th on the Israeli side who have spent their lives fighting for peace. And I spoke about medical workers and others in the Gaza Strip who are decent, courageous, heroic people trying to do the right thing.

–

When we stop and hear these people, and some of them are very articulate and very powerful because of the circumstances, what we hear is don’t lose our humanity. Don’t make the mistake of accepting the argument that some group of people, because of their identity, because of whatever their background, they’re less than human, that we’re more human. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that our baby is more important than their baby, that our children are more precious than their children. That voice is coming through.

strong and clear, that voice of not giving up in the hope of trying to, as best we can, be mench. And that’s more important than ever. That is the way out of this, that lights the path that will lead out of this darkness if we were to find a way out. It seems naive and idealistic, but it’s the only way that we can get back to working for just political solutions and whether it’s with respect.

Yeah.

specifically to Gaza or Palestine and Israel more generally, or the greater Middle East, or communities that we are in. And so in Australia or in America or in Europe, we need to try and speak against these slides to simple us and them thinking. And there’s a lot of good people, to be fair, who are horrified by what’s happening and who join a rally. And in that rally, there can be placards and calls that are

dehumanizing another side. That’s not helpful. I have to say, given the millions of people who’ve taken to street marches and cities around the world, as far as we can tell, the vast majority are not doing that. There are some opportunistic outsiders who come along and say silly things. And yes, we do see silly things on social media where otherwise sensible people are demonizing the other side. But I don’t think we should give up and think that’s the way everyone is going.

There are forces in our media that do this, although I’ve had lots of conversations with journalists who are trying to get to the bottom of things and trying to present balance. I think most people, when they’re at their best selves, rising to the better angels of their nature, recognize they can’t slip into demonizing and dehumanizing that we need to see, need to hang on to our humanity and not harden our hearts and become cynical at the same time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And obviously, as you fully well know, that’s the point of this podcast. I mean, because unfortunately, there are people with far bigger platforms who are very quickly. Ready to call a million people marching, you know, pro Hamas because they’re pro Palestinian or they’re pro life in, in any sense, right? Whether it’s Israeli or Palestinian, but because there might be, uh, there might be a small minority there that is.

yelling profanities or is trying to incite violence or response or having scuffles with the police, they’re all tarnished with the same brush. And of course, that misses the point. But all it does is polarize the discussion. And of course, when our political leader, and again, this is just a very obvious point, when our political leaders are not as deliberate or as determined in calling things out as they are, as opposed to their playing politics, which is what they are.

ultimately need to do because they’re acting in the interest of the nation and not for the values. That then also polarizes people more because then they feel that they’re not being heard because the government is allowing, as some will call it, genocide, ethnic cleansing, et cetera, to occur in our name. And therefore people will, again, have the propensity to join protests and therefore have the propensity to be exposed to people of different views who might ever so slightly nudge them towards more extreme.

perspectives and it just increases the probability of all of this going, you know, from bad to worse. And it’s not again, like you said, it’s not deterministic in its nature, but it certainly increases the probability. And that, you know, at this scale, when the whole world is ultimately talking about this, that is a whole lot of opportunity for things to go wrong. And I think that’s, that’s where, that’s where I’m really worried about this kind of, and our herd mentality and our bandwagoning that we also know are

psychological, sociological factors that play a huge role in how this manifests out on the streets or whatever. And we’ve seen it in Australia. What do you think is the role of leaders of these social groups? You know, if they get Australia as an example, what is the role of Palestinian community leaders, as well as Israeli community leaders in your view in helping bring the temperature down? Because in a place like Australia, temperature is going up. We’re seeing violence erupt between these groups. Certainly did in Victoria the other day.

Um, yeah, what, what should, what should be asking, what should we be demanding of community leaders, community elders, uh, in these types of situations.

It’s a question of asking and sometimes demanding, but also I think encouraging because in all the sort of sad news we’re getting, I still keep seeing signs of hope that we see people taking to the streets out of principle. I mean, they’re angry, they’re moved, they care. The fact that they care enough to do that is a good thing. Now they may use some banners or some slogans which…

for a minority are meant to be divisive, for others they perhaps misunderstand how those things are understood, so we need to recognize that. But thinking specifically, since my city is Melbourne in Australia and I’ve been watching what’s happening firsthand there, we had an incident a week ago in mid-November where a rally in support of the people of Palestine

occurred in the suburb of Caulfield, which is a suburb that has a lot of synagogues and therefore a lot of Orthodox and other Jewish community members.

We had a really ugly kind of situation on the streets. It’s complicated. I think the rally organizers didn’t intend it for it to happen that way. And they spoke about outsiders coming in and opportunistically taking hold of things. There was a burger store, a shop, part of a chain run by a entrepreneurial successful Palestinian businessman. There was an arson attack on his store.

At the time, he thought and others thought that it was a hate crime. Victoria Police says they have intelligence that it’s more complicated. They don’t think it’s simply a hate crime. But you know, that played into a very febrile environment. What I’m coming out with this is, yes, we had some ugly scenes on the street. But then we also, I heard the head of the Islamic Council of Victoria, which is a large umbrella group in Victoria, represents a majority of Sunni Muslims.

Hmm

(01:03:56.93)

come out and say, we’re concerned about being hijacked by a small number of outsiders coming in. We recognize that danger and we’re working with police to try and avoid that. And the organizers of the particular rally in Caulfield said, we regret the location. When Victoria Police was asked, can people protest in any, are there any no-goes, can they not protest in Caulfield?

Mm.

the head of Victoria Police said, no, they’re entitled to protest wherever they wish to, but some locations are unwise. I was struck by the fact that the organizer of this rally said, we regret holding it in Caulfield, that was unwise. We didn’t anticipate what happened and we recognize we shouldn’t have done that because of, you know, elements that will try and hijack this. And we see some, you know, principal comments from Jewish community leaders and others, but as well saying that. We know that people are feeling emotional. We know that Jews are experiencing this flashback memories of Holocaust, Palestinians are getting a flashback of Nakba and also a very real sense that another Nakba is taking place. It’s very emotional, but I’m hearing committed to say, we understand that and we don’t want violence. We don’t want hate. We don’t want this to be antisemitic. We don’t want to give up space for Islamophobia. The people who are not saying that are either

cynical political leaders, and there are a few of those, or other kinds of extremists, far-right and other extremists who are opportunistically trying to find a space to do some mischief and get some attention. So I’m not pessimistic. I’m worried. And the global media is grounds for worry. For decades, Al Jazeera has been a really useful place to go to in English, at least. I don’t access…

Yeah.

or is there an Arabic? But on this recent five weeks, they’ve not been as reliable. And that has to do with the role that Kaka plays and the fact that there are many members of the political wing of Hamas in Doha. It’s complicated, I understand. But that is what it is. Some of my favorite broadsheets and media outlets have stumbled and made mistakes. And then the better ones have apologized and said, we got it wrong.

Yeah.

Hmm. Yeah.

I don’t think the New York Times or the BBC are perfect, but generally when they have stumbled have recovered and recognized that. The ABC in Australia, you know, not just that. I have to say I’ve had many conversations with people in commercial media, radio and television who aren’t always paying attention to nuance and aren’t always concerned about principle, I mean as outlets, as platforms.

individual journalists really trying to do the right thing. So I think there is a desire to find a way out of this horrible situation we’re in to understand it with fairness and to not succumb to social pressures to demonize and dehumanize. I’m not saying that everything is fine. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t give up hope.

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I hear you. No, no, absolutely. And I think speaking to people like yourself is absolutely critical, who actually give us the nuance that we require in these circumstances, as opposed to the black and white narratives, which we so often hear. My last question to you, given the current context, what do you sleep over? What do you lose sleep over at night?

I worry about this going beyond the Gaza Strip and a deterioration situation in Israel and the West Bank. That’s already beginning to happen. I worry about worst-case scenarios of a regional war, Hezbollah, other groups being drawn in Iranian-backed militia in Syria and Iraq coming in, then a war that involves Iran.

just be, you know, that would be truly awful. I also worry, and it’s a separate thing, but related that this will fuel another round, another cycle of global terrorism, involving yes, jihadi groups, but also perhaps somehow energising far-right groups and other groups as well.

Both of those things are real possibilities and therefore you have to worry about them. But I also just worry about Western democracy and it’s not just actually Western democracy. Looking at elections in Indonesia next February, the ideals of Western democracy which now picked up all around the world, I worry that we’ll give up on that project and say it’s hopeless and that just, we’ll see the rise of populist figures and…

cheap political plays. That isn’t all, I mean, this is bigger than what’s happening in Gaza, but it feeds into it. So, you know, I worry that this will lead to lots of bad things happening, cascading on a larger scale. And I cling onto the hope that it will force us to find just political solutions and a way out so that we can live side by side. First of all, in Israel and Palestine, but beyond that, that people who are committed to trying to build open societies that are cosmopolitan, that are complex, where we respect different religious positions or non-religious positions that we don’t give up on that hope. So I guess I’m not falling asleep in despair, feeling that it’s hopeless, but I am worried.

Hmm. Yeah. A very sobering note there in the end, but I mean, I feel like I’m, I’m kind of in the same boat that I’m certainly worried. But I’m also hopeful that humanity, that the better nature of our, as you put it, angels will at some point take over and take us from the edge, which we’re ever so slightly seem to be creeping closer and closer to, which is just crazy. But given the state of the world, I have no doubt that,

I will be prompted to invite you again on the show. So once again, Greg, thank you very much for your time. And I sincerely look forward to chatting with you again in the future. Thanks a lot.

Thank you, Maz. It’s been a pleasure and an honour. And I think that shows like yours, one of my favourite podcasts, are important, not just because they keep people like us interested, but because it’s trying to find answers to these complex problems and trying to make a difference. And that’s really important. So it’s great to be part of this.

Thank you very much. That means a lot to me. Appreciate it. We’ll be in touch.