Gideon Levy: Israeli Journalist says the conflict will reach "unbearable" levels

The death toll continues to grow as the conflict between Israel and Iran escalates.

Israel's initial attack on Friday has triggered a response from Iran as the two countries exchange air strikes.

According to The Associated Press, at least 406 Iranians have been killed with 654 wounded compared to the Israeli death toll of 13.

Israeli Journalist, Gideon Levy told Mike Hosking this is bearable for the short term, but what is unbearable is if it goes on for months. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The air strikes continue as is well in Iran Exchange
find it Yah who says the attack so far and
nothing compared with what is coming. Gideon Levy as the
journalist analysts with us from Tel Abev. Gideon, morning to you,
Good morning to you. From all I've been able to
read over the weekend, the sense is this is a
fourteen day campaign with regime change in mind. Is that
fair or not?

Speaker 2 (00:21):
It is fair except of the limit of fourteen days.
It might be forty, it might be four hundreds. You
know how it starts, You don't know how it will end.
Iran can take it for a long time Israel less,
but it might take I don't see right now, how

(00:42):
do we end it?

Speaker 1 (00:44):
No, well, I was going to ask about that. In
general terms, the Iron Dome seems to have worked to
a degree, the parts that haven't. How difficult has it
been over the weekend?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
It was, including today, including yesterday. It is tough. It's
maybe the toughest to take over Israel of a civilian
Israel ever. But for the short term it is bearable.
What is unbearable if it will go on like this

(01:15):
for months?

Speaker 1 (01:16):
Does anybody know?

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Though everybody knows it First of all, I can't not
to mention the fact that whatever we are going through
now is nothing compared to what the people of Gaza
went through in the last twenty months. Let's just put
it in our mind that what we are doing now

(01:39):
it's really a summer camp relatively to what they are
going through. But in any case, it is tough. It's
very tough, and I'm not sure that it's very societic
and handle it over a long period of time.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah, how stretched is Israel by the time you deal
with Gaza and I ran and on the Gaza front,
the international community, the patients was worrying pretty thin. How
strich does Israel at the moment.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
It is? It's the question is if you mean it
militarily military oka. I think is Work can handle it
because in Iran it's mainly almost only the air force,
so troops are not on the ground, and the main
force of Israel is still in Gaza and continues to

(02:29):
be and continue to kill and continue to destruct on
a daily basis without any purpose. The problem is the society,
the civil society. We are now quite paralyzed. I mean
nothing is working, schools are not working. People at home,
this is very nice for a short period of time.

(02:50):
It will not be accepted here for a very long time.
The airports are closed, there's no way to get out
of Israel right now, no way to get into Israel.
Are not normal realities and they cannot last for long.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Gidean, appreciate your time. Will stay in touch. Give and
Gideon Levy, who was an Israeli journalist, they had the
bot the confidence I told you about last week. He
needed sixty one to get there and he got the
sixty one just I'm also reading over the weekend. Interestingly enough,
Hamas have got some major leadership vacuum. Basically all the
Sinewars have been killed, and so there's war council that

(03:25):
runs the place very secret, generally don't meet physically, a
lot of it's done over walkie talkie, so it can't
be tracked or traced. But they've had been so effective
the Israelis and getting the leadership Hamasa stretched at the
moment themselves that the whole place, of course, is a
complete anapomiss.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
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