September 6, 2025 • 37 mins
Newt talks with Yaakov Katz about his new book, " While Israel Slept” which delves into the surprise attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7, 2023. Katz examines the intelligence and strategic failures that allowed this attack, highlighting years of complacency and mistaken policies. Their conversation also covers the geopolitical implications of several countries recognizing Palestine, Israel's diplomatic isolation, and the ongoing war in Gaza. Katz emphasizes the need for Israel to learn from these events to ensure future security. Their discussion touches on the complexities of the conflict, including the role of hostages, the challenges of deradicalization, and the necessity of military vigilance. Katz remains optimistic about Israel's future, citing the country's military strength and potential diplomatic opportunities in the region. Katz concludes with a call for strong political leadership to navigate these challenges.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
While on this episode of Newsworld. In his new book
While Israel Slept, Yakov Katz tells the gripping inside story
of how Hamas, Israel's weakest enemy, succeeded in launching a
surprise attack on one of the world's most powerful militaries.
Through a detailed examination of the events leading up to
October seventh, twenty twenty three, Katz exposes the intelligence and
(00:29):
strategic failures that enabled this devastating invasion. He explains how
years of complacency, mistaken intelligence analysis, and a misguided policy
of containment enabled Hamas to prepare for an assault that
Israel did not believe was possible and they would change
them at least. Katz unveils the dramatic events the night
(00:50):
before the attack, highlighting the cracks in Israel's military and
political leadership, and provides unprecedented details on how key warnings
were missed. While Israel Slap offers a sobering account of
how overconfidence and complacency paved the way for disaster, while
underscoring the critical lessons Israel must embrace to safeguard his future.
(01:13):
Here to discuss his new book, I'm really Pleased to
welcome back my guest Jakov katz. He is the former
editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post. He writes for
Newsweek and the Jewish Chronicle. Host the JPPI Weekly podcast
has appeared on CNN and BBC. Jakoff, welcome and thank
(01:46):
you for joining me again on news World.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Thank you so much, mister speaker. It's great always to
be with you.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
If you start with some current events, several countries including Belgium, France,
the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia are preparing a formal recognize
Palestine at the eightieth UN's General Assembly. From your standpoint,
what does this mean for Israel?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Look, this is a very complicated and dangerous period to
some extent politically and diplomatically for Israel. As the war
in Gaza drags on, almost nearing the two year anniversary,
which will be coming up in just about a month
on October seventh, Israel finds itself today increasingly isolated on
(02:28):
the global stage. The go all of Western Europe pretty
much has walked away from Israel and has said that
they no longer support Israel's war, that they want the
war to come to an end, and Israel's only real
ally today in the world that it can rely on
as the United States, and is the administration of President
Donald Trump that continues to stand with Israel despite what
(02:51):
can only really be described as a diplomatic tsunami with
all these countries like France, the UK, Spain, Belgia and
others Canada, Australia. We're all threatening and saying that they
plan to unilaterally declare their support for an independent Palestinian state.
And while there's definitely a legitimacy to some extent in
(03:14):
their vision of what they would like to see happen
one day in this land and in that battle that
has gone on for I think for everybody too long
between Israel and the Palestinians. To do this now, mister speaker,
to give recognition today to the Palestinians of their state
is to reward terrorism. Think of Jamas for a moment.
(03:36):
Hamas is still holding forty eight hostages, twenty believed to
hopefully still be alive. They are still holding on to
the Gaza strip and trying to survive and remain the
governing entity. And Hamas says, one second, the world is
with us and against Israel. We still have the hostages.
Why would they end the war. What incentive do they have?
(04:00):
Israel is isolated, we might as well continue what we're doing.
I think it's not just dangerous, it's very stupid policy.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
This whole thing exploded on October seventh, and I was
really surprised, given the scale of the training and the preparation,
that it hadn't been picked up. You're pretty tough. You're right.
The Israeli government and military failed the people of Israel
on October seventh, twenty twenty three. And you're you what
(04:32):
was the core of this? What was the most consequential failure.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I went into this because just as you were surprised,
and I think so many people around the world were surprised. I,
someone who has been writing about the Israeli military for
the last quarter of a century, has written multiple books
on the military, has had probably, you know, the greatest
access that a journalist can have into the corridors of
(05:00):
decision making in the defense establishment and in the political echelon.
And I was just shocked. How did this happen? To
even magnify the question or amplify it, we look at
what Israel did with Iran recently in June, when it
took out its uranium Richmond facilities created aerial superiority, eliminated
(05:20):
a large batch of their ballistic missile capability. We look
at what Israel did against his Bellah with the pager
attacks and how that decimated that terrorist organization. Israel has
amazing capabilities. So what happened here against the weakest of enemies, comeus,
the one that was just supposed to be a nuisance,
(05:41):
the one that we believed we could contain in Gaza.
How did we not see what was happening. I've come
to call it the fairytale that Israel started to believe
in a fairytale that you could live alongside a genocidal
terrorist organization on your border that calls for your destruction,
that says it's coming to abroduct people, It's coming to
(06:01):
commit the worst to atrocities. We know, and we, the
people of Israel, the government, the military, say no, you
don't mean what you're saying. You actually you want money,
So we'll arrange and organize for the Qataris to bring
in suitcases of cash. No, you don't mean what you're saying.
You just want people from gods that to come into
Israel and work. We thought we knew better than what
they were openly saying. What they declared is what they
(06:23):
ended up doing. We were looking for so many different
pieces of intelligence. It was all out there. They were
telling it to us, but we weren't willing to listen.
So when I look at the failure, to me, it's institutional,
it's systematic, it's collective, it's everything. It's the politicians who
set the policies, who believed that you could pay off
(06:46):
a terrorist organization. If I told you today that we
will end the war, and the way we will end
it is by giving comas every month thirty million dollars,
you would think I'm insane. But that's what Israel did
for years. Why did that make sense now? Then people
thought it was the right thing. Today we now know
that was crazy. Then people thought, we'll just build up
(07:09):
a bigger fence. We'll create the Iron Dome missile defense system, brilliant,
all amazing technology can swat away rockets like a mosquito.
But it only created a false solution of security. It
just kept the threat contained in a specific area until
it exploded on our border. So that's what we went
on to pursue and to try to understand how did
(07:31):
a country like Israel, which is so vigilant when it
comes to national security, how did it fall asleep at
the wheel?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Were there indicators that were pretty clear that were just ignored,
or oh did they not pick up the indicators.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
We go into great detail the first chapters of the book.
What happened exactly between October sixth and October seventh, What
was going on through the night. It seemed in the
beginning of the immediate aftermath of the attack that Israel
was completely taken by surprise, knew nothing, that nothing was amiss,
nothing was happening, nothing was being planned. What we discovered
(08:12):
through reporting and meeting with all the different officials, there
was a flurry of activity in pretty much the twenty
four hours proceeding Already on Friday, there were indicators that
something was off. There was the Hamas fighters in Gaza
who took out their Palestinian cellular sim cards and replace
(08:33):
them with Israeli cellular sim cards. This was all because
if they're crossing into is well, they need to be
able to remain in touch and contact and have communications.
That what this did was it would have enabled them
to do that. Why did suddenly one hundred Israeli sim
cards go live on the grid in Gaza during the night.
There were indications and alarm bells went off of rocket
(08:56):
launchers underground being uncovered. There were reports of bunkers being
prepared for the top Rahmas commanders like Muhammadef the elusive
mysterious military commander. There were many different indications. There were
reports that had been collected in the weeks running up
to October seventh by those female surveillance soldiers who sat
(09:19):
along the border watching what was happening in the area
of operations, and they saw that things were off, things
were different. More people were coming to the border, different
people that weren't usually there, and it was all there,
but it wasn't digested the right way, It wasn't analyzed
the right way. What happened. The chief of staff of
the IDF was speaking with his generals, the head of
(09:42):
the Shinbet, the intelligence agency, was talking with his division commanders,
and they were all trying to process what was happening.
And the real dilemma was is this a drill or
is this an attack? And if it is an attack,
what is the scale and scope of the attack. But
in the end they didn't make the right decision, and
(10:03):
they fell on the side of this potentially being just
a drill.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
There's a pattern you see in some campaigns where one
side engages in a behavior over and over until it
becomes normal and nobody takes it seriously. But in fact
what they're doing is they're preparing for the attack. It
says that they looked like they're well, we've seen them
(10:29):
do that before. To what he sent was Hamas actually
modeling what it was going to do in a way
that was seen over time. We just discounted.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
By the way, you're one hundred percent right, because when
we look back now and we can do the autopsy
so called, we see the Kamas was doing activity along
the border. Those were those protests. They were flying kites
across the border, they were sending projectiles across the border.
They were sending hundreds, if not thousands of people to
burn towires next to the border. What they were doing,
(11:02):
we now know, is normalizing being alongside the border, and
that got Israelis to think these really security forces, it's
not out of the ordinary. If they're getting too close
to an area that in the past they would never
get too close to. That was one the second thing
that they did was they built these mock bases inside
(11:22):
the Gaza Strip, which they created and used to drill
and to train for raiding military bases and what that
would look like and how they would abduct soldiers. And
it seemed more sometimes like it was just a theater,
like it wasn't real, because the idea that Kamas would
be able to cross in such a way was seen
as so far fetched as never being possible. You know,
(11:45):
you talk about the tunnels inside Gaza as an example.
Israel's whole focus, and we tell this in the book
was about the cross border tunnels, the tunnels that were
potentially could cross into Israel and be used to then infiltrate,
carry out terrorist attacks, potentially kidnap soldiers and bring them
back to Gaza. But inside the tunnels inside Gaza, Israel
(12:07):
never focused on. It focused all its efforts on stopping
those cross border tunnels, but not the hundreds of miles
of tunnels that were literally dug all throughout crisscrossing the
Gaza Strip. Why was that because it wasn't seen as
a threat. What would ever happen? Why would Israel ever
need to deal with that? No one ever imagined that
you'd have two hundred and fifty people who would be
held by Hamas inside those very tunnels. So when the
(12:30):
war began and Israel launches its offensive towards the end
of October of twenty twenty three, it knew that there
were tunnels everywhere. It knew that Holmes had hatches. But
just because you know where the hatches doesn't mean you
know what the route of that tunnel is. Now you've
got to go map it all out. And still today,
almost two years into this war, Israel is continuing to
discover tunnels that did not know of their existence Instaid Gaza.
(12:51):
And I know that sounds crazy when you think about
how much time Israel has operated there, how long it's
been there, what it's done there, and it's still be surprised,
shows just how extensive this was by Hamas.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Are you a little surprised that after two solid years
of war we have not had greater success.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
I'm not overly surprised, because I think what we have
seen is the way that Hamas created its infrastructure, the
way it embedded itself in civilian infrastructure, Just how protected
it created for itself to have its bases and its
main command post, under hospital, schools, inside homes, under homes.
(13:48):
This is super complicated.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Now.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I also think that had there not been hostages, the
war could have ended much earlier. The hostages added a
whole other dimension of complexity, because you and I could
have had this conversation in October eighth and you could
have said to me, you know what, Yakov, the war
will end in a victory. Israel will get back the hostages,
but Kamas will unfortunately remain in control of Gaza. And
(14:13):
I would say to you, speaker Gingrich, that's crazy. And
I could have said to you, mister speaker, we're going
to win the war because we're going to bring down Hamas.
They're no longer going to control Gaza. We will destroy them,
but the hostages will be lost forever. And you could
have said to me, Yakov, that's crazy. The hostages added
a complexity that there's no possibility for an end to
(14:36):
the war and a victory for Israel without retrieving them
and bringing them home. So even if Israel says, look,
I've done enough militarily, I have degraded Hamas to the
greatest extent possible, and now is the time to insert
the political resolution, because, as we know, military is just
a way towards the political resolution. We can't do that
(14:59):
as long as hostages are still there. Israelis cannot move
on from this as long as hostages are still there.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
So why do you think Hamas has been so desperately
sustaining hostages in ways that if the world was even
a tiny bit fairer, the brutality and the horror of
the hostage treatment by Hamas would condemn them permanently. And
yet they do things that have to be totally alienating
(15:28):
from an Israeli standpoint.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Hamas is very much focused on how it can survive
this war. That is its ultimate objective. I think tragically
what we've seen happen is that Hamas does not care
about the people of Gaza. It does not care about
the infrastructure in Gaza, and from its perspective, the more
(15:50):
people who die and are killed, the better it is.
Because this leads to the isolation of Israel, to the
condemnation of Israel, to Israel being dragged before or the
ICC and the ICJ and the criminal courts all over
the world. This is what Hamas wanted, and Hamas continues
to hold on to a belief that potentially it can
(16:12):
outlive this and it can't survive this campaign by Israel
against the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza. The hostages are something
of an insurance card, and they are held by Hamas,
which believes that as long as it has had these
hostages in its hands, Israel's hands will be tied and
(16:35):
what Israel is able to do will be severely limited.
The issue, though, I think that we have to keep
in mind, and this leads us to actually where we
are right now in this war is that Israel which
is on the verge potentially of an offensive now in
Gaza City, which is highly criticized by different people, especially
(16:56):
the families of the hostages, who say, why are you
expanding the war when you should be making a deal
and bringing our loved ones home. They're right, But at
the same time, the Prime Minister is right when he
says we need military pressure to even get Kamas to
agree to a potential deal. So it's not a zero
sum game. It's very complex.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
In your mind. Here's it for all practical purposes, impossible
to destroy Hamas.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I think it's possible. You can never destroy every fighter,
you can never collect every collection CUV ak forty seven.
You can't kill the ideology out of people. But what
you can do, I believe, is achieve potentially two objectives. One,
(17:47):
you can degrade them to the level at which they
will no longer have the desire to fight and they
understand that it is no longer in their interests and
they no longer have the capability to really do anything.
You will still need an entity, whether it is you, Israel,
it's a new governing entity, whatever that entity is. You
(18:09):
need someone on the ground who is going to prevent
them from rebuilding and reconstituting. But there's another thing that
is just as important that that is the deradicalization that
has to take place in Gaza. You have to deradicalize it.
That requires changes to the education system, to the culture institutions,
to the political establishment. It's almost a generational shift. Deradicalization
(18:35):
has to come with this war because if they won't
make the decision on their own to deradicalize, it will
have to be forced on them, and that's very difficult
to do. So you have to hope that through the
military victory, that they've been beaten so badly, they will
willingly or maybe be more complicit to undergo that deradicalization
(18:57):
that is needed. We need a generation that is not
raised to want to kill me and my kids right now.
That's how people are taught in the schools of the
Gaza Strip. That has to change. We need a generation
of Palestinians who aren't celebrating the life of what who
they call martyrs and you and I would call murderers.
That has to change. And until that changes, I don't
(19:20):
know how we have the stability that we all want.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Seems to me, any negotiation should include the radicalization and
you're done that. The diplomats focus on that at all.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
The diplomats don't focus on it, and I think the
tragically people today's world want quick wins. They want quick
results and solutions, because what you and I are talking about,
we're talking about something that will take years till it
actually changes. Could take fifteen years, could take twenty years.
(19:56):
But if you really want everlasting peace here and chance
for that to life last and to exist, you have
to insist on it because otherwise, if the culture continues,
we'll find ourselves back here in five years tens. If
they're determined to rebuild, they'll get weapons somehow, it might
take longer, they might not be able to rebuild to
the same force that they had on October six, twenty
(20:17):
twenty three, but they'll get close to what they had,
and then what and then we'll be in another war,
another conflict. Isn't this the time to potentially end it
once and for all? But that has to come with
strong leadership on the Israeli side, on the Palestinian side,
and around the world. And right now, unfortunately, what we're seeing,
and we started with this, what we're seeing out of Europe,
(20:39):
that is not the leadership that's going to lead to that.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Well, I mean, the Europeans are busy appeasing their own
Muslim populations. But it seems to me that any long
term solution, it isn't just a truce between wars, has
to involve very profound changes. And since Hamas was founded
explicitly on the destruction of Israel, in a very real sense,
(21:06):
you're asking them to give up who they are as
a matter of identity.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Well, I think what we need to see happen here
is for the people of Gaza to recognize that Hamas
has only brought upon them disaster. You look at the
tragedy that has fallen on Gaza, and it's a tragedy.
I have no problem saying that it's tragic what's happened,
the destruction, the number of people killed. I don't accept
(21:36):
the number that is put out by the Hamas Health Ministry,
although the way they call it in the mainstream media,
the Palestinian Health Ministry, of the Gaza Health Minstry, No,
this is Hamas people. No one would believe the Isis
Health Ministry or the al Qaeda Health Ministry. For some reason,
we accept as if it's gospel, the Hamas Health Ministry.
But even if I go with that number, or even
(22:00):
if I don't accept it, there are people who have
been killed in the crossfire, men, women and children. War
is terrible. This is why Israel tried to avoid it
for so long. It's why Israel fell asleep, fell into
a state of complacency, and believed that it might be
possible to actually kick the can down the road and
not to have to deal with it. But I think
(22:22):
that ultimately, I want to hope that the people of Gaza,
which who had voted for Hamas in multiple elections, who
when polling showed, continued to support Kamas even after October seventh,
maybe they can wake up and change. We could talk
about deradicalization, but deradicalization is only possible with decisive victory.
(22:42):
It won't happen on its own. You have to beat
it out of them.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
That will require a continuing level of violence and repression
for a pretty long time.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
That's the tragedy, or the sad part, at least from
the Israeli perspective. If I think about it, is that
what it means for the long term are two stark conclusions. One,
the war will not just end. This will be a
battle that will continue. It will be a battle that
will continue, because if we look at Israel's National Defense
(23:17):
Doctor in over decades, Israel never really used preemptive military action.
It only did so when dealing with nuclear threats, so
the bombing of O c Raq in nineteen eighty one,
the Racki reactor, the bombing of l k Bar in
two thousand and seven, the Syrian reactor, But it never
did it for the conventional threats. It never preempted against
(23:37):
the Syrian army or preempted against his Billah, which was
amassing one hundred and fifty thousand rockets and missiles or
come outs for that matter. But the lesson of October
seventh is you can't live like that. You can't say, oh,
I see a rocket, I'll write down where it is,
I'll add it to my bank target or target bank,
and I'll deal with it one day. You have to
deal with it now, because one becomes one hundred, becomes
(24:00):
a thousand, becomes ten thousand, becomes one hundred thousand. It
has to be dealt with now for the time being.
Isroe's holding by this new policy. That is the dramatic
change that we're seeing now in the region. We're continuing
to see strikes in Lebanon even after the ceasefire went
into effect in September. This is part of that dramatic
shift in Israel's understanding that it can't sit by and
(24:22):
let them rearm and reconstitute themselves. But what that means
is that my kids are going to have to continue
to fight for many years to come, as well many
other millions of Israelis. And that's hard to come to
terms with, mister speaker, because what it means is that
(24:44):
we the people of Israel, who want to see ourselves
as part of the Western world, who see ourselves our
cultural ties, our trade ties. It's with the US, it's
with Europe. We don't consume Indian or Chinese movies and media.
We look at ourselves as part of the Western world.
But it means that we won't be able to live
(25:04):
like that because we are going to have to fight someone.
I once heard a good line. Israelis want to think
they live in Luxembourg, but they refuse to recognize is
that their neighbors are not France and Belgium, it's Hamas
his Blah, Syria and Iran. These are the countries they
(25:25):
have to deal with in their surroundings. You're not going
to be Luxembourg when you have those neighbors on your borders.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
From your perspective, the next generation or two will still
require a level of militancy could be sustained inside a
democratic crime work in a way which will be sort
of a constant strain on the population.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
It will continue to be a strain, and it will
be a strain because what we're already seeing is the
way the reservists are called up. The Israeli army is small,
the standing army. It relies on the reserves, and the
reserves have been called up and called on in a
way that we have never seen before. I have friends
family that have been serving hundreds and hundreds of days
(26:28):
since October seventh? What about their jobs? What about their families?
And this is not over.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
How does that affect the economy? Israel said, an astonishing economy.
Can you sustain that low also mobilizing.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
You can't sustain that over time? The Israeli economy is
for the time being stable, but it won't last. We're
seeing a downturn in investments in Israel, of course because
of the war. Who's coming now to Israel to an
invest There are pockets of excellence and stories of amazing
(27:05):
startup and high tech exits. There was just two in
the last year and the twenty five billion dollar mark,
which were remarkable. One bought by Google, another company bought
another one, Palo Alto bought one. But these are huge.
But for the long term, when you have tourism non existent,
(27:25):
when you have airlines that are not flying to Israel
still because of the war, when you have investment dropping,
it's going to hit the country and it's going to
hurt the economy. And when you have people who have
lost their jobs because of the reserve service or small
businesses that have collapsed because the owners are not able
to work, they're only in reserves. This is going to
(27:46):
create a new class in Israel, and the economists are
very concerned.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
One other things was I think intensified by the pressures
of the war, which is you did have a faction
of Israelites who basically argued that they were exempt from everything,
mayn't have to serve in the military, than net to
pay taxes. My impression is that under the pressure cooker
of this continuing intense struggle, that the society has reached
(28:14):
a decision that they have to be integrated into the
society at large, whatever it does to their religious beliefs.
It isn't that a very profound moment in Israeli history.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
It's a very profound moment. You're touching out. A very
difficult moment too. There is a segment of Israeli society
what are known as the ultra Orthodox, the strictly observant
men and women from the community. There's about now one
point three million. They make up just over about thirteen
percent of Israel's population. Let them live how they want.
(28:48):
I think you and I can both appreciate religion and
religious observance, but that doesn't mean that you don't have
to serve your country, and especially a country like Israel well,
which is so beaten down and surrounded by so many threats.
The historical beginnings were in the founding of the state,
(29:09):
when then it was just a few hundred and a
few thousand. David Ben Gurion, the founding Prime Minister of Israel,
agreed to a request by one of the leading rabbis
let them stay in their academies and what are known
as the Yeshivas, and Israel agreed and the Prime minister, sorry, agreed,
but that community because of high birth rate, which is great, right,
that's good for the numbers, but it blew up and
(29:32):
with that the exemption increased. If you look at, for example,
my home in Jerusalem, the largest city in the country,
about a million people, half of the kids who started
first grade on September first were ultra Orthodox kids. What
that means is that half of the kids in the
schools are not going to be serving in the Israeli
(29:55):
military right now, as the laws are and as the
current system is, that's not sustainable. The country can't sustain it.
The reservists are being called on in the way that
they're being called on because of people who are not serving.
That has to change. And I think that what we
learned in October seven is that the military is not
(30:17):
big enough. The military needs more soldiers and there is
a sector in society that could step up and could
lend its hand. And this is so important today now.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
As I understand that the legislation is moving forward.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
The legislation is moving forward, it's rocking a very strong way.
Prime Minister in Natanio's coalition. Right now, the Israeli Parliament,
the Canesset, is on recess similar to Congress, and it
will really shake things that are happening. The question of
what happens when they return from that recess just after
(30:51):
the Jewish high holidays in October will test whether this
coalition can last, and if it can't, we'll go to
an earlier election. Elections are supposed to be held in
October of twenty six, but I would predict that they
will be held earlier because of this exact issue, because
it will be very hard for n Atenno to keep
these people in his coalition, these ultra orthodox, and give
(31:14):
them a bill that will satisfy them.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Well, the opposition parties unite with the other elements of
Netnyahu's coalition to pass this kind of legislation.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
That I'm not sure that's a good question. Not many
people are like you who know how to rally the votes,
swip the votes together. It's not going to be simple.
On the one hand, there's an opportunity and some people
in the opposition, Israel's leader of Opposition has actually extended
an olive branch of sorts to the Prime Minister and said, listen,
(31:45):
forget about the extremist senior coalition, those on the right
and the ultra Orthodox. We will give you the support
from the outside. Make the deal to bring the hostages
home and pass the IDF draft bill, and we'll help
you pass it, and we will agree together on a
agreed upon date for elections. Natanio does not trust him,
(32:06):
of course, and that makes sense in politics. But I
think what we're talking about is that this war, what
October seventh did was not just shake Israel at its
core and create trauma and fear of what is to come.
And the trauma is still real as the hostages languish
(32:27):
in Hamas captivity, but It also highlighted and showcased the
real social divisions that we have that have to be
dealt with, like this one. We can't neglect and ignore
it anymore until October seventh. Had you asked me, mister Speaker,
I would have said, you know, it's an issue. We
got to deal with it. It's not the end of
the world. We'll survive without them. Today, I think it's
(32:49):
one of the most important issues for the future of
the State of Israel, and if it's not dealt with now,
this country will not be sustainable in just a few decades.
It just won't be.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Even all the things as we've discussed and all the problems,
all the challenges. Are you an optimist or a pessimist
of an Israel's future?
Speaker 2 (33:06):
I am a total optimist and I'll tell you why.
And my book, While Israel Slept, does focus on the
failures and what led to that horrific day and to
the war that continues to drag on today. But it's
only one side of the coin. The other side of
the coin is the re engineering of the Middle East
(33:29):
that has taken place. Heran's nuclear and Richmond facilities have
been destroyed asad in Syria has been toppled, his Belah
has been beaten back, Hamas has been degraded. The state
of Israel is today more safe and more secure than
it was on October sixth. From a military perspective, yes,
(33:52):
today we are facing a diplomatic isolation from places, definitely
in Europe. But I predict that will change, hopefully, please God,
when this war is actually over and we bring back
the hostages. But I think that this reality on the
ground creates amazing opportunities. Can we reach an agreement with
the new regime in Syria, as President Trump is trying
(34:15):
to brok her? Can we reach an agreement potentially with
the government in Lebanon, which, for the first time ever
is trying to rein in his bla and collect the
illicit arms that his Belah has. Is it possible in
the aftermath of the Israelian American attacks on Iran that
a new, better, more robust nuclear deal is possible with
(34:37):
the Iranians? And when I look at the region and
I see Israel's deterrence restored its military strength intact, I
think that people know that this is a strong country.
Yes it fell, yes it was surprised, but in the
big picture in the scheme of things, Israel's winning, so
it gives me hope. We need to remain vigilant, but
(34:58):
we also have to take advantage of these opportunities, and
that requires something that you know a lot about political leadership.
We need politicians who are willing to take those risks
and take the decisions. Hold the sword in one hand,
but keep an outstretched hand that's looking for opportunities with
the other. And right now I don't see it the
(35:21):
way it should be. I want to hope that we
get there.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
That's very encouraging, a largely how I feel, Yakava. I
want to thank you for joining me. Your new book,
While Israel Sleap Halhamas Surprised, the Most Powerful Military and
Middle East is available now on Amazon and in books
showers everywhere, and when our listeners know, they can find
out more about your work, which goes on every day.
You do an amazing job. I read your material all
(35:46):
the time, and all of our listeners can go to
your website at yakovcats dot com and stay up with
all the things because I'm certain as things evolve, you're
going to write and analyze and briefests and informosts so
I'm delighted you would take this time. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
It was always great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Thank you to my guest Yakov Kutz. You can get
a link to buy his new book, Well Israel Slap
on our show page at neutorld dot com. Newtorld is
produced by Gengish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer
is Guernsey Sloan. Our researchers Rachel Peterson. You artwork for
the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to
(36:27):
the team at Gingish three sixty. If you've been enjoying
news World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and
both greate us with five stars and give us a
review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now,
listeners a neut World consign. Up for my three free
weekly columns at gingrishree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm
net Gingrich. This is neutral s
While on this episode of Newsworld. In his new book
While Israel Slept, Yakov Katz tells the gripping inside story
of how Hamas, Israel's weakest enemy, succeeded in launching a
surprise attack on one of the world's most powerful militaries.
Through a detailed examination of the events leading up to
October seventh, twenty twenty three, Katz exposes the intelligence and
(00:29):
strategic failures that enabled this devastating invasion. He explains how
years of complacency, mistaken intelligence analysis, and a misguided policy
of containment enabled Hamas to prepare for an assault that
Israel did not believe was possible and they would change
them at least. Katz unveils the dramatic events the night
(00:50):
before the attack, highlighting the cracks in Israel's military and
political leadership, and provides unprecedented details on how key warnings
were missed. While Israel Slap offers a sobering account of
how overconfidence and complacency paved the way for disaster, while
underscoring the critical lessons Israel must embrace to safeguard his future.
(01:13):
Here to discuss his new book, I'm really Pleased to
welcome back my guest Jakov katz. He is the former
editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post. He writes for
Newsweek and the Jewish Chronicle. Host the JPPI Weekly podcast
has appeared on CNN and BBC. Jakoff, welcome and thank
(01:46):
you for joining me again on news World.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
Thank you so much, mister speaker. It's great always to
be with you.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
If you start with some current events, several countries including Belgium, France,
the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia are preparing a formal recognize
Palestine at the eightieth UN's General Assembly. From your standpoint,
what does this mean for Israel?
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Look, this is a very complicated and dangerous period to
some extent politically and diplomatically for Israel. As the war
in Gaza drags on, almost nearing the two year anniversary,
which will be coming up in just about a month
on October seventh, Israel finds itself today increasingly isolated on
(02:28):
the global stage. The go all of Western Europe pretty
much has walked away from Israel and has said that
they no longer support Israel's war, that they want the
war to come to an end, and Israel's only real
ally today in the world that it can rely on
as the United States, and is the administration of President
Donald Trump that continues to stand with Israel despite what
(02:51):
can only really be described as a diplomatic tsunami with
all these countries like France, the UK, Spain, Belgia and
others Canada, Australia. We're all threatening and saying that they
plan to unilaterally declare their support for an independent Palestinian state.
And while there's definitely a legitimacy to some extent in
(03:14):
their vision of what they would like to see happen
one day in this land and in that battle that
has gone on for I think for everybody too long
between Israel and the Palestinians. To do this now, mister speaker,
to give recognition today to the Palestinians of their state
is to reward terrorism. Think of Jamas for a moment.
(03:36):
Hamas is still holding forty eight hostages, twenty believed to
hopefully still be alive. They are still holding on to
the Gaza strip and trying to survive and remain the
governing entity. And Hamas says, one second, the world is
with us and against Israel. We still have the hostages.
Why would they end the war. What incentive do they have?
(04:00):
Israel is isolated, we might as well continue what we're doing.
I think it's not just dangerous, it's very stupid policy.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
This whole thing exploded on October seventh, and I was
really surprised, given the scale of the training and the preparation,
that it hadn't been picked up. You're pretty tough. You're right.
The Israeli government and military failed the people of Israel
on October seventh, twenty twenty three. And you're you what
(04:32):
was the core of this? What was the most consequential failure.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
I went into this because just as you were surprised,
and I think so many people around the world were surprised. I,
someone who has been writing about the Israeli military for
the last quarter of a century, has written multiple books
on the military, has had probably, you know, the greatest
access that a journalist can have into the corridors of
(05:00):
decision making in the defense establishment and in the political echelon.
And I was just shocked. How did this happen? To
even magnify the question or amplify it, we look at
what Israel did with Iran recently in June, when it
took out its uranium Richmond facilities created aerial superiority, eliminated
(05:20):
a large batch of their ballistic missile capability. We look
at what Israel did against his Bellah with the pager
attacks and how that decimated that terrorist organization. Israel has
amazing capabilities. So what happened here against the weakest of enemies, comeus,
the one that was just supposed to be a nuisance,
(05:41):
the one that we believed we could contain in Gaza.
How did we not see what was happening. I've come
to call it the fairytale that Israel started to believe
in a fairytale that you could live alongside a genocidal
terrorist organization on your border that calls for your destruction,
that says it's coming to abroduct people, It's coming to
(06:01):
commit the worst to atrocities. We know, and we, the
people of Israel, the government, the military, say no, you
don't mean what you're saying. You actually you want money,
So we'll arrange and organize for the Qataris to bring
in suitcases of cash. No, you don't mean what you're saying.
You just want people from gods that to come into
Israel and work. We thought we knew better than what
they were openly saying. What they declared is what they
(06:23):
ended up doing. We were looking for so many different
pieces of intelligence. It was all out there. They were
telling it to us, but we weren't willing to listen.
So when I look at the failure, to me, it's institutional,
it's systematic, it's collective, it's everything. It's the politicians who
set the policies, who believed that you could pay off
(06:46):
a terrorist organization. If I told you today that we
will end the war, and the way we will end
it is by giving comas every month thirty million dollars,
you would think I'm insane. But that's what Israel did
for years. Why did that make sense now? Then people
thought it was the right thing. Today we now know
that was crazy. Then people thought, we'll just build up
(07:09):
a bigger fence. We'll create the Iron Dome missile defense system, brilliant,
all amazing technology can swat away rockets like a mosquito.
But it only created a false solution of security. It
just kept the threat contained in a specific area until
it exploded on our border. So that's what we went
on to pursue and to try to understand how did
(07:31):
a country like Israel, which is so vigilant when it
comes to national security, how did it fall asleep at
the wheel?
Speaker 1 (07:40):
Were there indicators that were pretty clear that were just ignored,
or oh did they not pick up the indicators.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
We go into great detail the first chapters of the book.
What happened exactly between October sixth and October seventh, What
was going on through the night. It seemed in the
beginning of the immediate aftermath of the attack that Israel
was completely taken by surprise, knew nothing, that nothing was amiss,
nothing was happening, nothing was being planned. What we discovered
(08:12):
through reporting and meeting with all the different officials, there
was a flurry of activity in pretty much the twenty
four hours proceeding Already on Friday, there were indicators that
something was off. There was the Hamas fighters in Gaza
who took out their Palestinian cellular sim cards and replace
(08:33):
them with Israeli cellular sim cards. This was all because
if they're crossing into is well, they need to be
able to remain in touch and contact and have communications.
That what this did was it would have enabled them
to do that. Why did suddenly one hundred Israeli sim
cards go live on the grid in Gaza during the night.
There were indications and alarm bells went off of rocket
(08:56):
launchers underground being uncovered. There were reports of bunkers being
prepared for the top Rahmas commanders like Muhammadef the elusive
mysterious military commander. There were many different indications. There were
reports that had been collected in the weeks running up
to October seventh by those female surveillance soldiers who sat
(09:19):
along the border watching what was happening in the area
of operations, and they saw that things were off, things
were different. More people were coming to the border, different
people that weren't usually there, and it was all there,
but it wasn't digested the right way, It wasn't analyzed
the right way. What happened. The chief of staff of
the IDF was speaking with his generals, the head of
(09:42):
the Shinbet, the intelligence agency, was talking with his division commanders,
and they were all trying to process what was happening.
And the real dilemma was is this a drill or
is this an attack? And if it is an attack,
what is the scale and scope of the attack. But
in the end they didn't make the right decision, and
(10:03):
they fell on the side of this potentially being just
a drill.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
There's a pattern you see in some campaigns where one
side engages in a behavior over and over until it
becomes normal and nobody takes it seriously. But in fact
what they're doing is they're preparing for the attack. It
says that they looked like they're well, we've seen them
(10:29):
do that before. To what he sent was Hamas actually
modeling what it was going to do in a way
that was seen over time. We just discounted.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
By the way, you're one hundred percent right, because when
we look back now and we can do the autopsy
so called, we see the Kamas was doing activity along
the border. Those were those protests. They were flying kites
across the border, they were sending projectiles across the border.
They were sending hundreds, if not thousands of people to
burn towires next to the border. What they were doing,
(11:02):
we now know, is normalizing being alongside the border, and
that got Israelis to think these really security forces, it's
not out of the ordinary. If they're getting too close
to an area that in the past they would never
get too close to. That was one the second thing
that they did was they built these mock bases inside
(11:22):
the Gaza Strip, which they created and used to drill
and to train for raiding military bases and what that
would look like and how they would abduct soldiers. And
it seemed more sometimes like it was just a theater,
like it wasn't real, because the idea that Kamas would
be able to cross in such a way was seen
as so far fetched as never being possible. You know,
(11:45):
you talk about the tunnels inside Gaza as an example.
Israel's whole focus, and we tell this in the book
was about the cross border tunnels, the tunnels that were
potentially could cross into Israel and be used to then infiltrate,
carry out terrorist attacks, potentially kidnap soldiers and bring them
back to Gaza. But inside the tunnels inside Gaza, Israel
(12:07):
never focused on. It focused all its efforts on stopping
those cross border tunnels, but not the hundreds of miles
of tunnels that were literally dug all throughout crisscrossing the
Gaza Strip. Why was that because it wasn't seen as
a threat. What would ever happen? Why would Israel ever
need to deal with that? No one ever imagined that
you'd have two hundred and fifty people who would be
held by Hamas inside those very tunnels. So when the
(12:30):
war began and Israel launches its offensive towards the end
of October of twenty twenty three, it knew that there
were tunnels everywhere. It knew that Holmes had hatches. But
just because you know where the hatches doesn't mean you
know what the route of that tunnel is. Now you've
got to go map it all out. And still today,
almost two years into this war, Israel is continuing to
discover tunnels that did not know of their existence Instaid Gaza.
(12:51):
And I know that sounds crazy when you think about
how much time Israel has operated there, how long it's
been there, what it's done there, and it's still be surprised,
shows just how extensive this was by Hamas.
Speaker 1 (13:18):
Are you a little surprised that after two solid years
of war we have not had greater success.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
I'm not overly surprised, because I think what we have
seen is the way that Hamas created its infrastructure, the
way it embedded itself in civilian infrastructure, Just how protected
it created for itself to have its bases and its
main command post, under hospital, schools, inside homes, under homes.
(13:48):
This is super complicated.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
Now.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
I also think that had there not been hostages, the
war could have ended much earlier. The hostages added a
whole other dimension of complexity, because you and I could
have had this conversation in October eighth and you could
have said to me, you know what, Yakov, the war
will end in a victory. Israel will get back the hostages,
but Kamas will unfortunately remain in control of Gaza. And
(14:13):
I would say to you, speaker Gingrich, that's crazy. And
I could have said to you, mister speaker, we're going
to win the war because we're going to bring down Hamas.
They're no longer going to control Gaza. We will destroy them,
but the hostages will be lost forever. And you could
have said to me, Yakov, that's crazy. The hostages added
a complexity that there's no possibility for an end to
(14:36):
the war and a victory for Israel without retrieving them
and bringing them home. So even if Israel says, look,
I've done enough militarily, I have degraded Hamas to the
greatest extent possible, and now is the time to insert
the political resolution, because, as we know, military is just
a way towards the political resolution. We can't do that
(14:59):
as long as hostages are still there. Israelis cannot move
on from this as long as hostages are still there.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
So why do you think Hamas has been so desperately
sustaining hostages in ways that if the world was even
a tiny bit fairer, the brutality and the horror of
the hostage treatment by Hamas would condemn them permanently. And
yet they do things that have to be totally alienating
(15:28):
from an Israeli standpoint.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Hamas is very much focused on how it can survive
this war. That is its ultimate objective. I think tragically
what we've seen happen is that Hamas does not care
about the people of Gaza. It does not care about
the infrastructure in Gaza, and from its perspective, the more
(15:50):
people who die and are killed, the better it is.
Because this leads to the isolation of Israel, to the
condemnation of Israel, to Israel being dragged before or the
ICC and the ICJ and the criminal courts all over
the world. This is what Hamas wanted, and Hamas continues
to hold on to a belief that potentially it can
(16:12):
outlive this and it can't survive this campaign by Israel
against the terrorist infrastructure in Gaza. The hostages are something
of an insurance card, and they are held by Hamas,
which believes that as long as it has had these
hostages in its hands, Israel's hands will be tied and
(16:35):
what Israel is able to do will be severely limited.
The issue, though, I think that we have to keep
in mind, and this leads us to actually where we
are right now in this war is that Israel which
is on the verge potentially of an offensive now in
Gaza City, which is highly criticized by different people, especially
(16:56):
the families of the hostages, who say, why are you
expanding the war when you should be making a deal
and bringing our loved ones home. They're right, But at
the same time, the Prime Minister is right when he
says we need military pressure to even get Kamas to
agree to a potential deal. So it's not a zero
sum game. It's very complex.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
In your mind. Here's it for all practical purposes, impossible
to destroy Hamas.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
I think it's possible. You can never destroy every fighter,
you can never collect every collection CUV ak forty seven.
You can't kill the ideology out of people. But what
you can do, I believe, is achieve potentially two objectives. One,
(17:47):
you can degrade them to the level at which they
will no longer have the desire to fight and they
understand that it is no longer in their interests and
they no longer have the capability to really do anything.
You will still need an entity, whether it is you, Israel,
it's a new governing entity, whatever that entity is. You
(18:09):
need someone on the ground who is going to prevent
them from rebuilding and reconstituting. But there's another thing that
is just as important that that is the deradicalization that
has to take place in Gaza. You have to deradicalize it.
That requires changes to the education system, to the culture institutions,
to the political establishment. It's almost a generational shift. Deradicalization
(18:35):
has to come with this war because if they won't
make the decision on their own to deradicalize, it will
have to be forced on them, and that's very difficult
to do. So you have to hope that through the
military victory, that they've been beaten so badly, they will
willingly or maybe be more complicit to undergo that deradicalization
(18:57):
that is needed. We need a generation that is not
raised to want to kill me and my kids right now.
That's how people are taught in the schools of the
Gaza Strip. That has to change. We need a generation
of Palestinians who aren't celebrating the life of what who
they call martyrs and you and I would call murderers.
That has to change. And until that changes, I don't
(19:20):
know how we have the stability that we all want.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Seems to me, any negotiation should include the radicalization and
you're done that. The diplomats focus on that at all.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
The diplomats don't focus on it, and I think the
tragically people today's world want quick wins. They want quick
results and solutions, because what you and I are talking about,
we're talking about something that will take years till it
actually changes. Could take fifteen years, could take twenty years.
(19:56):
But if you really want everlasting peace here and chance
for that to life last and to exist, you have
to insist on it because otherwise, if the culture continues,
we'll find ourselves back here in five years tens. If
they're determined to rebuild, they'll get weapons somehow, it might
take longer, they might not be able to rebuild to
the same force that they had on October six, twenty
(20:17):
twenty three, but they'll get close to what they had,
and then what and then we'll be in another war,
another conflict. Isn't this the time to potentially end it
once and for all? But that has to come with
strong leadership on the Israeli side, on the Palestinian side,
and around the world. And right now, unfortunately, what we're seeing,
and we started with this, what we're seeing out of Europe,
(20:39):
that is not the leadership that's going to lead to that.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
Well, I mean, the Europeans are busy appeasing their own
Muslim populations. But it seems to me that any long
term solution, it isn't just a truce between wars, has
to involve very profound changes. And since Hamas was founded
explicitly on the destruction of Israel, in a very real sense,
(21:06):
you're asking them to give up who they are as
a matter of identity.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Well, I think what we need to see happen here
is for the people of Gaza to recognize that Hamas
has only brought upon them disaster. You look at the
tragedy that has fallen on Gaza, and it's a tragedy.
I have no problem saying that it's tragic what's happened,
the destruction, the number of people killed. I don't accept
(21:36):
the number that is put out by the Hamas Health Ministry,
although the way they call it in the mainstream media,
the Palestinian Health Ministry, of the Gaza Health Minstry, No,
this is Hamas people. No one would believe the Isis
Health Ministry or the al Qaeda Health Ministry. For some reason,
we accept as if it's gospel, the Hamas Health Ministry.
But even if I go with that number, or even
(22:00):
if I don't accept it, there are people who have
been killed in the crossfire, men, women and children. War
is terrible. This is why Israel tried to avoid it
for so long. It's why Israel fell asleep, fell into
a state of complacency, and believed that it might be
possible to actually kick the can down the road and
not to have to deal with it. But I think
(22:22):
that ultimately, I want to hope that the people of Gaza,
which who had voted for Hamas in multiple elections, who
when polling showed, continued to support Kamas even after October seventh,
maybe they can wake up and change. We could talk
about deradicalization, but deradicalization is only possible with decisive victory.
(22:42):
It won't happen on its own. You have to beat
it out of them.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
That will require a continuing level of violence and repression
for a pretty long time.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
That's the tragedy, or the sad part, at least from
the Israeli perspective. If I think about it, is that
what it means for the long term are two stark conclusions. One,
the war will not just end. This will be a
battle that will continue. It will be a battle that
will continue, because if we look at Israel's National Defense
(23:17):
Doctor in over decades, Israel never really used preemptive military action.
It only did so when dealing with nuclear threats, so
the bombing of O c Raq in nineteen eighty one,
the Racki reactor, the bombing of l k Bar in
two thousand and seven, the Syrian reactor, But it never
did it for the conventional threats. It never preempted against
(23:37):
the Syrian army or preempted against his Billah, which was
amassing one hundred and fifty thousand rockets and missiles or
come outs for that matter. But the lesson of October
seventh is you can't live like that. You can't say, oh,
I see a rocket, I'll write down where it is,
I'll add it to my bank target or target bank,
and I'll deal with it one day. You have to
deal with it now, because one becomes one hundred, becomes
(24:00):
a thousand, becomes ten thousand, becomes one hundred thousand. It
has to be dealt with now for the time being.
Isroe's holding by this new policy. That is the dramatic
change that we're seeing now in the region. We're continuing
to see strikes in Lebanon even after the ceasefire went
into effect in September. This is part of that dramatic
shift in Israel's understanding that it can't sit by and
(24:22):
let them rearm and reconstitute themselves. But what that means
is that my kids are going to have to continue
to fight for many years to come, as well many
other millions of Israelis. And that's hard to come to
terms with, mister speaker, because what it means is that
(24:44):
we the people of Israel, who want to see ourselves
as part of the Western world, who see ourselves our
cultural ties, our trade ties. It's with the US, it's
with Europe. We don't consume Indian or Chinese movies and media.
We look at ourselves as part of the Western world.
But it means that we won't be able to live
(25:04):
like that because we are going to have to fight someone.
I once heard a good line. Israelis want to think
they live in Luxembourg, but they refuse to recognize is
that their neighbors are not France and Belgium, it's Hamas
his Blah, Syria and Iran. These are the countries they
(25:25):
have to deal with in their surroundings. You're not going
to be Luxembourg when you have those neighbors on your borders.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
From your perspective, the next generation or two will still
require a level of militancy could be sustained inside a
democratic crime work in a way which will be sort
of a constant strain on the population.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
It will continue to be a strain, and it will
be a strain because what we're already seeing is the
way the reservists are called up. The Israeli army is small,
the standing army. It relies on the reserves, and the
reserves have been called up and called on in a
way that we have never seen before. I have friends
family that have been serving hundreds and hundreds of days
(26:28):
since October seventh? What about their jobs? What about their families?
And this is not over.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
How does that affect the economy? Israel said, an astonishing economy.
Can you sustain that low also mobilizing.
Speaker 2 (26:44):
You can't sustain that over time? The Israeli economy is
for the time being stable, but it won't last. We're
seeing a downturn in investments in Israel, of course because
of the war. Who's coming now to Israel to an
invest There are pockets of excellence and stories of amazing
(27:05):
startup and high tech exits. There was just two in
the last year and the twenty five billion dollar mark,
which were remarkable. One bought by Google, another company bought
another one, Palo Alto bought one. But these are huge.
But for the long term, when you have tourism non existent,
(27:25):
when you have airlines that are not flying to Israel
still because of the war, when you have investment dropping,
it's going to hit the country and it's going to
hurt the economy. And when you have people who have
lost their jobs because of the reserve service or small
businesses that have collapsed because the owners are not able
to work, they're only in reserves. This is going to
(27:46):
create a new class in Israel, and the economists are
very concerned.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
One other things was I think intensified by the pressures
of the war, which is you did have a faction
of Israelites who basically argued that they were exempt from everything,
mayn't have to serve in the military, than net to
pay taxes. My impression is that under the pressure cooker
of this continuing intense struggle, that the society has reached
(28:14):
a decision that they have to be integrated into the
society at large, whatever it does to their religious beliefs.
It isn't that a very profound moment in Israeli history.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
It's a very profound moment. You're touching out. A very
difficult moment too. There is a segment of Israeli society
what are known as the ultra Orthodox, the strictly observant
men and women from the community. There's about now one
point three million. They make up just over about thirteen
percent of Israel's population. Let them live how they want.
(28:48):
I think you and I can both appreciate religion and
religious observance, but that doesn't mean that you don't have
to serve your country, and especially a country like Israel well,
which is so beaten down and surrounded by so many threats.
The historical beginnings were in the founding of the state,
(29:09):
when then it was just a few hundred and a
few thousand. David Ben Gurion, the founding Prime Minister of Israel,
agreed to a request by one of the leading rabbis
let them stay in their academies and what are known
as the Yeshivas, and Israel agreed and the Prime minister, sorry, agreed,
but that community because of high birth rate, which is great, right,
that's good for the numbers, but it blew up and
(29:32):
with that the exemption increased. If you look at, for example,
my home in Jerusalem, the largest city in the country,
about a million people, half of the kids who started
first grade on September first were ultra Orthodox kids. What
that means is that half of the kids in the
schools are not going to be serving in the Israeli
(29:55):
military right now, as the laws are and as the
current system is, that's not sustainable. The country can't sustain it.
The reservists are being called on in the way that
they're being called on because of people who are not serving.
That has to change. And I think that what we
learned in October seven is that the military is not
(30:17):
big enough. The military needs more soldiers and there is
a sector in society that could step up and could
lend its hand. And this is so important today now.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
As I understand that the legislation is moving forward.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
The legislation is moving forward, it's rocking a very strong way.
Prime Minister in Natanio's coalition. Right now, the Israeli Parliament,
the Canesset, is on recess similar to Congress, and it
will really shake things that are happening. The question of
what happens when they return from that recess just after
(30:51):
the Jewish high holidays in October will test whether this
coalition can last, and if it can't, we'll go to
an earlier election. Elections are supposed to be held in
October of twenty six, but I would predict that they
will be held earlier because of this exact issue, because
it will be very hard for n Atenno to keep
these people in his coalition, these ultra orthodox, and give
(31:14):
them a bill that will satisfy them.
Speaker 1 (31:16):
Well, the opposition parties unite with the other elements of
Netnyahu's coalition to pass this kind of legislation.
Speaker 2 (31:25):
That I'm not sure that's a good question. Not many
people are like you who know how to rally the votes,
swip the votes together. It's not going to be simple.
On the one hand, there's an opportunity and some people
in the opposition, Israel's leader of Opposition has actually extended
an olive branch of sorts to the Prime Minister and said, listen,
(31:45):
forget about the extremist senior coalition, those on the right
and the ultra Orthodox. We will give you the support
from the outside. Make the deal to bring the hostages
home and pass the IDF draft bill, and we'll help
you pass it, and we will agree together on a
agreed upon date for elections. Natanio does not trust him,
(32:06):
of course, and that makes sense in politics. But I
think what we're talking about is that this war, what
October seventh did was not just shake Israel at its
core and create trauma and fear of what is to come.
And the trauma is still real as the hostages languish
(32:27):
in Hamas captivity, but It also highlighted and showcased the
real social divisions that we have that have to be
dealt with, like this one. We can't neglect and ignore
it anymore until October seventh. Had you asked me, mister Speaker,
I would have said, you know, it's an issue. We
got to deal with it. It's not the end of
the world. We'll survive without them. Today, I think it's
(32:49):
one of the most important issues for the future of
the State of Israel, and if it's not dealt with now,
this country will not be sustainable in just a few decades.
It just won't be.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Even all the things as we've discussed and all the problems,
all the challenges. Are you an optimist or a pessimist
of an Israel's future?
Speaker 2 (33:06):
I am a total optimist and I'll tell you why.
And my book, While Israel Slept, does focus on the
failures and what led to that horrific day and to
the war that continues to drag on today. But it's
only one side of the coin. The other side of
the coin is the re engineering of the Middle East
(33:29):
that has taken place. Heran's nuclear and Richmond facilities have
been destroyed asad in Syria has been toppled, his Belah
has been beaten back, Hamas has been degraded. The state
of Israel is today more safe and more secure than
it was on October sixth. From a military perspective, yes,
(33:52):
today we are facing a diplomatic isolation from places, definitely
in Europe. But I predict that will change, hopefully, please God,
when this war is actually over and we bring back
the hostages. But I think that this reality on the
ground creates amazing opportunities. Can we reach an agreement with
the new regime in Syria, as President Trump is trying
(34:15):
to brok her? Can we reach an agreement potentially with
the government in Lebanon, which, for the first time ever
is trying to rein in his bla and collect the
illicit arms that his Belah has. Is it possible in
the aftermath of the Israelian American attacks on Iran that
a new, better, more robust nuclear deal is possible with
(34:37):
the Iranians? And when I look at the region and
I see Israel's deterrence restored its military strength intact, I
think that people know that this is a strong country.
Yes it fell, yes it was surprised, but in the
big picture in the scheme of things, Israel's winning, so
it gives me hope. We need to remain vigilant, but
(34:58):
we also have to take advantage of these opportunities, and
that requires something that you know a lot about political leadership.
We need politicians who are willing to take those risks
and take the decisions. Hold the sword in one hand,
but keep an outstretched hand that's looking for opportunities with
the other. And right now I don't see it the
(35:21):
way it should be. I want to hope that we
get there.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
That's very encouraging, a largely how I feel, Yakava. I
want to thank you for joining me. Your new book,
While Israel Sleap Halhamas Surprised, the Most Powerful Military and
Middle East is available now on Amazon and in books
showers everywhere, and when our listeners know, they can find
out more about your work, which goes on every day.
You do an amazing job. I read your material all
(35:46):
the time, and all of our listeners can go to
your website at yakovcats dot com and stay up with
all the things because I'm certain as things evolve, you're
going to write and analyze and briefests and informosts so
I'm delighted you would take this time. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
It was always great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (36:07):
Thank you to my guest Yakov Kutz. You can get
a link to buy his new book, Well Israel Slap
on our show page at neutorld dot com. Newtorld is
produced by Gengish three sixty and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer
is Guernsey Sloan. Our researchers Rachel Peterson. You artwork for
the show was created by Steve Penley. Special thanks to
(36:27):
the team at Gingish three sixty. If you've been enjoying
news World, I hope you'll go to Apple Podcast and
both greate us with five stars and give us a
review so others can learn what it's all about. Right now,
listeners a neut World consign. Up for my three free
weekly columns at gingrishree sixty dot com slash newsletter. I'm
net Gingrich. This is neutral s
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