Welcome back to The Voices of War. My guest today is Professor Ilan Pappé, one of the most prominent and provocative historians of the modern Middle East. He is the director of the European Centre for Palestinian Studies at the University of Exeter and is best known for his groundbreaking work on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including his books, The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine and Lobbying for Zionism. His latest book, Israel on the Brink, offers a sobering diagnosis of what he sees as seven internal cracks threatening the future of the Israeli state, while also tracing the deeper historical, ideological, and geopolitical forces that have shaped its path.

In this conversation, we’ll explore some of those cracks and ask what they reveal not only about Israel trajectory, but about the global order that has enabled its exceptionalism.

Ilan, thank you very much for joining me on The Voices of War.

It’s a great pleasure to be on the Voices of War. Thank you very much for having me. 

It’s been a long time coming, so I’m very grateful that we finally be able to lock it in. I do know our time is quite limited, but before we get to the, I guess, intricate details of Israel-Palestine, I’d like to ask what motivated you to commit much of your professional career to this particular problem set?

Yeah, well, the fact that I was born there is an important factor. the second one is my love for history from very early stage in my life. So this combination of being interested in history and being interested in the history of the place you were born  led me to this trajectory that eventually when I became more of a professional historian,  kind of confronted me with facts and evidence  that stood in stark contrast to everything that I was  told and educated about  as a child, as a teenager. And therefore, it became really a struggle for me vis-a-vis everything that happened around me and it becomes a life mission in a way when the confrontation is so powerful and the challenge is so formidable. It swallows almost everything else and it becomes really an integral part of your life.

Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I’m a child of Sarajevo, so refugee from that war. And I can see echoes of my own life in your description. In many ways, it changes you and sets you one’s trajectory.  OK, maybe we can start straight away with your most recent book, Israel on the Brink. You open up by saying Israel demise is inevitable, not because you’re a determinist but because the process is already in motion. So what signs of this internal unravelling do you see most clearly?

Yeah, I think each process that I identify in the book by itself is not powerful enough either to bring a regime change or disintegration or a fall. mean, I’m not a prophet, so I don’t know exactly what will happen. But I do feel that the structure that is a state and ideological project is collapsing.  One very important one is the internal implosion from the implosion from within the Israeli Jewish society. And this goes to the basic, one of the two basic challenges Zionism had. One, and we’ll talk about it a bit later, is the challenge of imposing a European state on the Arab world at the expense of a local indigenous Palestinian people.

But the other challenge, that is really part of the internal implosion is all about in Israel, is the challenge of defining a religion as nationalism, defining Judaism as nationalism and not as religion. And it took time. And now it’s very clear that this is not an intellectual debate. What does it mean to be a Jew state? What does it mean to be a Jew in Israel? It became a really a struggle for life and death between those who thought that Judaism can be equated with pluralism, liberal practices, democracy, and so on. Be that as it may only for the Jews, not for the Palestinians. Or those who say, no, if it’s a Jewish state, then it’s a theocracy. Then it is a messianic state. Then it is loyal to everything that they read in the Bible, everything that they read in the sacred writings or books that were published after the Bible, a kind of what we call the halacha in Jewish, halacha is like the Sharia, it’s the kind of the Jewish law state. And as I said, this is not academic.

That means that it defines the public space, it defines the laws of the land. It also defines the attitude towards the Palestinians and not only the Palestinians, but also to the neighbouring Arab state, because this particular version that has been developed and now is tearing the Jewish society apart from within, is also Messianic. So, they believe that they have an historical opportunity to rebuild probably a kingdom that never existed, because it’s all a fable, the kingdom of Solomon and David. But they want to recreate it, and it extends even beyond Palestine. So that’s one very powerful process. As I say, not by itself leading to collapse, but with the other is very powerful. And there is a dynamic here because this is the trajectory, because this is the orientation of the Israeli-Jewish society, it increases the isolation of Israel in the world. Israel is losing its traditional allies. And now it’s very clear that the civil society regards Israel as a pariah state, but it will, I believe, eventually affect governments and political elites, and even economic elites, not for moral reasons, but because it would not be a very good place to invest money.

So you have the isolation from the outside. You also have a Palestinian society that, yes, right now is led by a very fragmented, disunited, and not very capable political elite, but it’s a very young society, as I show in the book, the younger generations far more united, assertive, knowledgeable. And I do believe it will have its say in the future. It would not use the same kind of diplomacy and tactics as the present political elite. It would be much more devoted, I think, to liberation and decolonization and would ask the world to support that kind of Palestinian position. So, with the other two processes I described, this may be more possible.

It’s not possible now to enlist the let’s say the world’s support for the idea of a one state or the decolonized Palestine. But if the two other processes that I’m describing would indeed develop, then it is possible. This also goes along with a very deep economic crisis. Israel is now preparing itself for decades of war economy. War economies can survive three, four, five years, they cannot survive a decade. So, I foresee a very deep economic crisis as well that would depend very much on the American taxpayer. And I don’t think either Republicans or Democrats in the distant future would continue to be so generous with the money of the American taxpayer.  And to that, would add, and with this I would finish, and just to give a bit of a display here.

The disassociation of Jews, especially young Jews, from the idea of Zionism in Israel, Israel is losing the younger Jewish generation, especially in the United States. And without that kind of support, you remain depending on material interests and not moral interests. And I don’t know how long can a regime rely only on material economic and military interests to sustain a state for a very long time. Not only, it’s not a matter that the state disappears, states don’t disappear, but to keep the people that you need to maintain a state in a war economy, isolation, a pariah state, where the Jews in the world do not support you, would be very, very difficult in the future.

Yeah, absolutely. I just want to pivot back to that first point, and that’s the internal fractures that you’ve described inside Israel itself. I mean, what we see in the West, and you know this far better than I do, is that we get the impression that the society is cohesive as a whole and it’s, you know, popular support for the Gaza war in particular and also for what’s happening in the West Bank. And you also draw the distinction in the book between the state of Judea and the state of Israel. So can you just give us a little more insight into what you mean by this internal fracture and how much that actually has, how much of a chance that actually have, you know, to bring about some change in the Israeli government.

Yeah, we have to look at it the other way around in a way.  The idea in Israel was that whatever are the internal dissents or disagreements, there is a common enemy. And in the time that you face the common enemy, all the disagreements are forgotten and we’re all united. Now, this may be true for the short wars that Israel had, know, six days war, three weeks war in 1973.

This cannot, when we see it’s happening, unfolding in front of our eyes, this kind of unity cannot be held for two years. So, to begin with, yes, there was a total support for everyone in the Jewish society, for the Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip as a reaction to the 7th of October, 2023 Hamas attack. But then all the dissent and conflict, the internal conflict that preceded the 7th of October, by which you had two entities, and I will describe them in a minute, fighting for the whole, everything that the state can offer in terms of institutions and powers. That internal conflict reappeared about six or seven months into the war. So, for half a year, you had the sense of of a cohesion. And it affected, the dissent affected every aspect. I maybe this is not reported enough in the world, but even on the issue of the hostages, a certain camp, which I call the state of Judea, and I’ll explain in a minute what I mean by that, the state of Judea was not that concerned about the fate of the hostages because they belong to the other camp, to the liberal, secular camp. So they showed no much compassion for them. And that told…

These are people from the Kibbutzim, right?

Yeah, exactly. People also got it to be the left of Israel. They’re the ones who mostly were either killed or abducted.  And they were attacked. The families were attacked as traitors and as undermining the military effort.  So the cohesion isn’t there anymore. It wasn’t there. The war or the genocide or the operation, it what you want, cannot gloss over the kind of division that occurred, I would say, at beginning of this century between what I call the state of Judea. That is a group, an ideological movement that grew in the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and gained more and more support among the less well-off  sections of the Israeli society, mainly people from  originally from North African  Jewish origin and from Orthodox and  traditional  Jewish people,  creating this vision of a state that is run by  religious law that does not need democracy nor does it have any inhibitions in dealing with the Palestinians and even with the Arab neighbours, recreating this ancient kingdom that everybody would respect and fear, not only in Palestine but all over the Arab world. And luckily, there are these populist allies like Trump, populist fascist leaders in Europe, Modi in India and so on.

So they didn’t even feel that they were isolated internationally, not to mention that some of the Arab rulers were very willing to go along with this kind of a vision, of a future. The state of Israel is the old state, the one that tried, unsuccessfully, one should say, but least tried to reconcile universal values as democracy, socialism, liberalism, with the idea of a racist ethnic state. They didn’t succeed, but at least they attempted.

And they created at least a democracy for the Jews in Israel, if not for the Palestinians in it. And they were already losing the battle before the 7th of October, 2023, and the events of the 7th of October and after that do not help the chances of success. In fact, it led to a huge immigration. We don’t know the numbers, but hundreds of thousands of what I call the State of Israel residents, if you want, left with their money because they have dual nationality, because they have jobs that they can ignite elsewhere. So all of it creates not only a kind of a cold civil war, it creates a vacuum in the elite. in fact, the only bastion remaining that the state of Judea hasn’t taken over is the judicial system. But they are doing their best now to complete the mission there as well.

Which is why we saw protests over the past several, certainly even before October 7^th?

Absolutely. I mean, the kind of secular state of Israel, so to speak, realized that this is the last battle. I mean, if they took over the judicial system, not much is left for the others.

How did Israel get to this point? We often hear it described as the most far right government. Of course, Netanyahu has been around for three decades in one form or another. How did Israel get to this point?

Well, I think the problem was that what the old Israel offered was impossible. You cannot square the circle. cannot really create a state that is both Jewish and democratic, because the only definition that they had of Judaism was an ethnic definition, which meant that the ethnicity of the state did not respect or did not represent

First of all, 20 % of the people who were not Jewish. Secondly, did not represent the millions of people that Israel kicked out of Palestine in 1948 and did not resolve the issue that was at the very heart of Zionism, namely the imposition of a European Jewish state on the heart of the Arab world at the expense of the Palestinians. So, all these attempts eventually by the Israeli Jewish electorate was seen as not leading to any kind of resolution.  Israel needed to continue and police by force millions of Palestinians. A situation that not so dramatically as it happened in the last two years, but incrementally eroded the legitimacy of the state, eroded the support among Jews and others to the idea of Israel. The international community began to, you know, to pay attention in the 1990s and ever since then to the constant violation of human rights and civil rights by Israel. And so there was no dividends from this game. I think there was an exhaustion in the Jewish society. You cheat yourself, you cheat the world and eventually it doesn’t really work. So, I think that’s one major reason for that.

The second reason is, of course, the cycle of violence, because once you violently invade a country and there is a reaction, the reaction is not always nonviolent, it’s violent as well. And this cycle that once the resistance to your wish to dispossess the people is an armed struggle or a guerrilla warfare, the reaction of the state is even more severe and violent.

And in turn that creates another more vicious, if you want, cycle of bloodshed and violence. So it was, it’s easy to convince the population that this is life. There’s no other option. The only option is to kill, to want, to fight, to genocide and so on. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the right people who would show the courage and lead a different kind of a movement and say, well, the conclusion from that reality is that the idea of a Jewish state is the problem here. And there are alternatives which are more humane, that most people in the world cherish in their own countries, which is a democratic, a purely democratic country, and not an ethnic racist country. But when that choice had to be made between, are you willing to be a real democracy or you want to be actually an apartheid racist state. Unfortunately, most of the Jews voted in one way or another for the latter option. Because the first option means giving up all the privileges, the land, the resources, everything you robbed from the indigenous people, and you don’t want to give it back unless you are forced to do so.

Yeah, and forcing it has been a big challenge, which I think brings me to the next point. And you rightly identified that, of course, the global opinion of Israel is rapidly shifting.  And you dedicate in the Israel lobby several chapters to explaining how the pro-Israel advocacy networks or AIPAC, in short, especially in the US and UK, have shaped public discourse and foreign policy. So can you tell us about those networks and what impact they’ve actually had on US in particular, but of course UK as well as foreign policy.

Yes, first of we have to appreciate the longevity of this effort. It starts very early on in around 1900, becomes already quite impressive. So, it’s more than a century of advocacy and one should not underestimate the importance of experience. If you exist for such a long time, of course, as the year pass by, you are much more experienced and you already have an aura of a very powerful organization that you better not deal with, that you do what they want, even if they don’t approach you directly or threaten you directly.

So I think it’s important to understand that from the very beginning, think, Zionist ideologues and leaders understood that there was a moral issue. There was a moral problem with the idea that the only solution for the European racism towards Jews was to impose a Jewish state on the Arab world at the expense of the Palestinians. They understood that this was something that in a world that began to talk about decolonization, a world especially after the Second World War, and talked about human rights, had the Human Rights Declaration of 1948 created the United Nations and wanted to protect people from further oppression. A world that wanted to prevent a third world war given the horrific consequences of the first and second world war. In that world, however you presented the Zionist project, it was a project of dispossession and elimination of the native people even when good intentions were part of it, as long as you were loyal to the idea that this has to be a Jewish state, there was no way of respecting the new universal code, moral code that the world, especially the West, pretended to adopt. It adopted it in a very exceptional and hypocritical way, but that’s another story.

In any case, so the advocacy had to take into account, I think very, very early on, and I show it in the book, that they have very little chance of winning the moral debate.  if you want, the facts were on the side of the Palestinians.  The truth was on the side of the Palestinians. So what do you do? You needed advocacy that is much more a structure of coercion, maybe temptation, sometimes pressure in order to make sure that the people with power would see it in their interest to support you. Maybe some of them would be convinced morally, ideologically that what you do is fine. And I think at the beginning it was a bit easier for the lobby because you could convince American white settlers that white Jews settlers have the right to settle someone else’s, colonized someone else’s homeland, also Australian, could be easily convinced by that. All three settler colonial projects definitely supported each other morally, despite the injustice that was an integral part of their project. You could convince Christian Zionists that this is a project that would lead to the resurrection of the dead, the return of Jesus and so on. And then also convince the West that this is a Western democracy in a sea of Arab and Islamic barbarism. The problem was for the lobby that as we move from 1948 and we reach 1967 and the occupation is far more transparent and exposed to everyone to see and understand, it’s much more difficult to build a moral justification for the daily oppression of the Palestinians. And that’s when the lobby begins to use the tactics of, as I said, inducement and coercion. And it’s very effective. It knows how to do it. It accompanies politicians in Britain and in the United States from very early stages in their careers so that they would be committed to the cause when they begin their political career. And then you can ask for the dividends or for the payback later on if they reach a more powerful position.

You destroy politicians if they dare to challenge the lobby.  And you use money, power, political clout. And of course, as I said before, the cycle of violence, the way the Palestinian resistance developed objectively here and there helped the lobby to say, you see how see who we’re dealing with…

We’re dealing with terrorists.

Terrorists, exactly. In 9-11 was the point that everybody thought this would be the most successful moment of the lobby, that they would associate 9-11 with Palestine. They didn’t take into account that already in 2001, 9-11, the civil society, even in the United States, were far more knowledgeable, far more sophisticated, and understood very well that you cannot compare the Palestinian resistance and anti-colonialist struggle for freedom and liberation with the acts of terrorism committed by Al-Qaeda on American soil. And that is something the lobby doesn’t know how to deal with ever since.

As in the civil society piece?

Yeah, yeah, the civil society, the fact that the internet allows far more information and knowledge. Generation Z and even the one before it, are curious people, are alert to fake news, to fabrication. We call them naive, but they do understand who is a victim and who is a victimizer. We saw it in the demonstration in the US and elsewhere, in Italy in for instance, they are not mesmerized by the main shield of immunity Israel provides, which is to say it’s very complicated and only we, a complicated issue and we are the only ones who understand it and you have to listen to our, yeah, and they don’t buy it anymore and the lobby doesn’t know what to do with it, you know?

Yeah, and I really want to get to that point because especially right now in the US, we’re seeing perhaps the consequences of that. But I just want to pivot back on, you said since 2001, their sway and influence started waning. But then you as well as other prominent thinkers like Professor Mearsheimer have drawn very strong links between AIPAC, the Zionist Lobby, writ large, Israeli politicians, along with the US neocons to push the agenda of initially, obviously the Iraq war, but then subsequent wars as well. And many big thinkers actually attribute most of the wars in the Middle East over the past 25 or so years to this kind of same tension or the same push from the blending of the neocons with the Zionists. Can you just elaborate on that a little bit more?

Yeah, I take a bit somewhat different view on this in a way. And I think there’s a difference between American imperialist impulses that the lobby is not responsible. I mean, that’s the American, certain American way of thinking of what should be America’s role in the world. And I don’t think you can pin it on the lobby. This is, and with this I agree with Noam Chomsky, who says that this is the main push for America. After all, Israeli lobby is not responsible for what the Americans did in the Philippines, in Southeast Asia, in Central America, South America. I mean, there is an American imperialist impulse, very strong one. It has nothing to do with the lobby. However, when it comes to Israel itself and the area around Israel, that’s when the lobby is effective in convincing the American imperialists that American imperialist interests are best served through Israel.  You know, the Israelis are really panicking for what they saw yesterday on the White House. When President Trump says Saudi Arabia is as important to us as Israel, which is exactly what he said.

He said they’re as important as Israel. Israel is not more important than Saudi Arabia. This is a moment you never know with Trump. I mean, you don’t know any substance behind his statement. But let’s say it is a substantial statement. Let’s say it’s not even a whimsical kind of utterance, that it’s part of a possible strategic idea of how America’s world would look like, America’s involvement in Middle East will look like in the next decade or two.

That means that the imperialist impulse is not based necessarily on a strong alliance with Israel. It’s maybe based on a strong alliance with Arab states that are pro-Americans. It creates much less problem if you think about it. The Saudis, of course, nobody cares about civil rights and human rights records, but it’s easier to overlook the violation of human rights, civil rights in Saudi Arabia, it’s not easy to overlook the violations of the Palestinian rights by Israel. And that could be another challenge.

Well, it’s one journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, that really draws some heat, you know, between MBS and Trump in the recent press conference.

Yeah, absolutely. In America, they always say dictators are fine as long as they are our dictators. But the point is that the lobby, if the lobby would face an America that says, yes, we still want to be a dominant power in the world and in your neighbourhood in the Middle East, but you know what? We don’t need you. Then the lobby would find it very difficult to be effective, I think. So, it’s a cynical way of looking at the future by which you understand, and I always say it in the book, my last book, as a historian, the ability to relieve people from oppression and occupation is not always achieved by a pure, just moral struggle. Sometimes it is being achieved by more cynical developments on which you have very little influence but have an impact on your life whether you are enthusiastic about these changes or not it doesn’t matter in the end of the day. It can create a different reality similar to the end the impact of the end of the cold war on the chances of toppling the apartheid regime in South Africa. It was a very important development without which the apartheid would have lingered on for a while if the Cold War would have not ended and the Soviet Union would have not collapsed.

So how do you see then the current situation in the US? I mean, obviously with Trump, we don’t really know what’s going to happen next. But it’s without a shadow of a doubt, I think the civil society, in fact, his base is hugely split. And the single issue that’s splitting his base is Israel. Not least because of Gaza, but also the amount of money that US sends to Israel. Many openly say that the US is run by Israel because of these kind of blind loyalty to Netanyahu and his government, but also things like the assassination of Charlie Kirk, there’s competing narratives, all of which somehow centre around US support for Israel or Mossad’s influence in the US. And of course, probably the biggest one is Epstein, which of course there are issues and questions of who is guilty on both sides of the aisle in the US. But there’s an overarching narrative there, especially now that we’re hearing as of today, that most likely we won’t see the files released despite it passing House and Senate, and Trump will most likely sign it, because of national security implications. And many are drawing, some better than others, conclusions that the national security risk really is the expose of a foreign intelligence service, i.e. Mossad, having played a key part in the propping up of Epstein. How do you view that from your perspective?

Well, I think it’s important to remember that the source of power for AIPAC is the Capitol Hill, not the White House. There were presidents that AIPAC didn’t like Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, George Bush senior, to mention the three most  kind of, let’s say more courageous presidents, yeah, courageous president at least facing some of AIPAC’s pressure. Even Reagan had a clash with AIPAC. So the source of power is not the White House. The source of power is Capitol Hill.  Until we don’t hear different voices from there, Presidents come and go. The lobby in Capitol Hill stays. you have to pay attention to Capitol Hill. That’s where the source of power for AIPAC and the other sections of the lobby exists. So, all these developments that you rightly described, we need to see if they are reflected in the change of attitude in Capitol Hill. Not in the White House.

Now, I do believe that you’re right, that a younger generation of Republicans would be much more isolationist in terms, in the context of Israel, namely, there would be a limit to how much money they think the United States should invest in sustaining Israeli policies and adventures. I think we should pay attention to the younger democratic generation, they already have shown in the municipal elections last week, their ability to even win in places which traditionally were kind of blue colour people, blue collar workers were voting even for Trump.  So, I think, yes, there is a trend in the society that would distance the United States from Israel. But I haven’t seen yet its impact on Capitol Hill, on the decision taken by the either the House of Representatives or the Senate. But I do believe it will happen. I do believe that these are very slow processes. We have to remember that the lobby is still connected to the arms lobby, to the multinational corporation that still see Israel as a good investment for high tech, pharmaceutical technologies and of course security and military industries. We should not underestimate the importance of these powerful lobbies to join forces with the lobby of Israel. But again, the question is, do these lobbies need Israel if indeed the Arab world is going to provide a much better and easier market or collaboration?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, these I think are the bottom line of what we are talking about is, A, not to take a determinist view on American policy. Also, historically, I can show that it was not always, as people think, totally anti-Palestinian and pro-Israeli. So, let’s not take a determinist view on it. Secondly, there are all kinds of possible scenarios, one, through a more progressive democratic success, one through maybe less attractive to me, but a more isolationist Republican success. Either way, it’s part of the same, you know, metrics of processes that lead us to think that the position of Israel becomes much more vulnerable and precarious as we look into a more distant future.

So, do you place the recent purchase of things like TikTok and the installation of prominent Zionists in CBS News in the US? Do you see that as part of that tactic to try and reassert itself amongst the younger audiences? Because I think that’s where they’ve really lost the support.

Yeah, and it won’t work. They will fail.  Because TikTok in the end of the day is a means to a goal. It’s not the goal itself.  It’s just a vehicle. And the passengers determine the direction of the trip, not the manufacturer of the car, so to speak. So, I don’t think it will work.

Mm-mm.

I think this is like the tough legislation against BDS. All that is a fight back. Of course, they’re fighting back for their power. I don’t think they even fight back anymore for Israel. I think that’s what I write in the book. I said that the lobby became a powerful organization that seeks power for the sake of power. I don’t think they’re even working for Israel anymore. They enjoy decades and decades of being so powerful they don’t want to lose it. That’s why, by the way, as I show in the book, a more conscientious members of AIPAC in the early 1990s began to leave the organization because they felt that this is not working for Israel, that this was working for the lobby itself. So, I know it’s really difficult to convince people because they seem so powerful, they buy this and they buy that and they dominate this organization, the other. Yes, this is the last battle and it’s a fierce battle.  But I do believe it’s doomed to fail.  Like so many acts in history where things that campaigns based on populism, coercion, power for a while are very successful because they intimidate, they terrify people and they destroy. So, it’s easier to destroy than to build. But in the long run, they are not sustainable. And we have to believe that they are not sustainable, otherwise the whole human society, the whole globe is in danger if these things are sustainable for life.

Yeah, and I think that speaks to the point from your recent interview with Mehdi Hassan that history is cyclical rather than linear. And I think as a historian, I think we should heed that. But can you just unpack that a little bit more? What do you mean by history cyclical rather than linear?

Yeah, I mean that we were there before, not in the same way, but we were there before in ages and in age where populism, cynical politics, expansionist empires, political and economic elite that disregarded the main concerns of their societies, we were there before and they fell. They fell when eventually people had enough and created a different kind of politics.

And this will return and you can already see it. You know, when millions of people demonstrate for Palestine in the last two years, they don’t only demonstrate for Palestine. They demonstrate for different kinds of politics in their own country because there is a connection in their eyes for the immoral position on Palestine and the immoral position on ecological justice, poverty, immigration, you know, all the things that they realize and you can see it. From the discourse and the impulse that brings them to the centre of the city, if you want to demonstrate.

One is that not one country can solve the real issues that face the world, whether it’s global warming, poverty, wars, and so on. This is not something one state or even an empire can take upon itself. You need global cooperation. And for global cooperation, you need the global justice system, which we don’t have. And hopefully we will have. And Gaza proved that we don’t have a universal international justice. So that’s the first thing. The second thing that they see the connection between the lack of interest of their politicians in the issues that I just mentioned, the other injustices, and their immoral position on Palestine. And I think that creates in me the hope that because I do believe that the issues are much bigger than Palestine and concern everyone on the globe. I have to believe that humanity has the power to go back again as it did again and again in history and try at least to open a different chapter in the relation between what we do and the fate of our globe, our ecology, our societies, and not only base our politics on self-interest with very little care for other people.

Just on that point, in your book, Israel on the Brink, towards the end, you take up an issue with capitalism, which I just wanted to build on a little bit. I recently interviewed a prominent Balkan security analyst, Zlatko Hadzidedic who’s built his career on the link between capitalism and nationalism. He builds on the thinking of thinkers like Gelner and Anderson. He builds on their thinking that nationalism and capitalism must be very closely intertwined. And his prediction, at least given the current state of affairs is that in our hyper-capitalized world, we require authoritarianism. I wonder how that sits with you and whether you see some links between what you’re saying, especially given what you’ve talked about, about the economic troubles that Israel faces, but of course, much of the world, especially the West, faces anyway.

Yeah, do think that, well, capitalism has many versions. We should not lump them all together. But I think the kind of capitalism that is evolving…

Of course, yeah. Capitalism of today.

Yeah, exactly, recently, is very much based on this idea that economic interests of the few and not of the many are the compass that leads to decision taken, whether to support Israel, whether to invest in Gaza, whether to invest in global warming or in fossilized energy. All these decisions are driven by the question of profit, not by question of the welfare or even the survival and sustainability of the globe, which is incredible. So, now, because you can see the direct connection here, as I said before, to change that kind of attitude, you need global cooperation. Nationalism usually is one of the most important impediments for global cooperation. So, nationalism says, I don’t care about the situation of the water, the quality of the air in the neighbouring country. I don’t care about the violation of human rights, civil rights in Palestine, 3,000 kilometres far away from where I live.

All I care about, and I may even do something about these things in my own country, in the name of nationalism, but that would be ineffective. It would have no impact, even if there is a genuine wish among capitalists to solve some of these problems. They cannot do it because they are so tied in with nationalism. Absolutely. And I think the role of the left is to bring back the idea of universalism, but in a different form than they did in the past, because they need to be connected to indigenous people, to traditions, for people’s respect for religion and tradition and so on, all kinds of things that were cast away by the left, unfortunately, in the 60s and the 70s of the last century. So, there is a way of creating a different kind of, a different essence of politics that has to include a different version of economic and social justice compared to what capitalists are offering us.

Which is a huge challenge because it’s not just changing one country, two countries, it’s changing an entire ecosystem that’s been developed over the past decades.

Absolutely. Well, we need intersectionality. All these struggles need intersectionality. They need to be united. They cannot be localized. They have to be globalized. Because also the local balance of power is usually against the minority, the oppressed, and so on. So, the only way to empower it is by globalizing it.

Hmm. Yeah. I’m very conscious of our time, and I know we’ve only got a couple of minutes, but what I do really want to ask you is the fifth crack you identify is the Israeli army invincible. So, after decades of projecting this invincibility, how has the actually performed in Gaza, Lebanon, and of course with Iran. Is this a myth that’s now being challenged?

Well, a little bit it is. You have to remember the Israeli army was very successful on three accounts. When the war was short, when it was fought on the other side’s territory, and when Israel initiated the war. All these three elements were not there on the 7th of October. And it seemed that when you are engaged in a long war, that at first is being fought on your own soil and you are not the one who initiated it, that even vis-a-vis a small guerrilla army like Hamas, you find it very difficult to win. Imagine what would have happened if Hezbollah would have joined forces with Hamas on the 7th of October. We don’t know how it would have unfolded, and we definitely don’t know how this army would be able to deal with conventional armies should the attitude of Arab neighbours of Israel change. In other words, a message to the Israelis is that yes, you have huge air power, which works very well against the ghetto of Gaza, and maybe also against Iran with the help of the American Air Force. But eventually, you have to think about conventional wars that are not only won by Air Force and so on.

Most important with anything, and with this I would end because I think that’s the most important thing that I’m saying for me, that I want to say in the book. The message even of the opposition in Israel, not just the government, is that the next 50 years would be the same. You have to fight all the time, and you have to win all the time. This is a terrible message which explains why anyone in Israel who has the ability to leave is leaving because it’s, you know, in terms of statistics, it’s quite possible that you won’t win all the time. And they already got a taste for one day of not winning. I’m still hopeful about it, that maybe it’s a post-traumatic reaction that at least a more significant number of Israeli Jews would learn the right lesson from the 7th of October, which is you can’t do it through violence, you can’t win through wars. The army is not the vehicle for the survival of the society. And you’re lucky because I do believe that the basic impulse of the Palestinians is to share the land with you peacefully. Unfortunately, your basic impetus in ideological societies is to replace the Palestinians. until they don’t change this perspective, they are risking not only the lives of the Palestinians but also their own life in the future.

Absolutely. On that note, Ilan, I know our time’s out but thank you very much. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much. See you soon.