Podcast: The war between Israel and Hamas and its unfathomable human toll

Transcript

Listen: Israel is at war, caught in the worst surprise attack in half a century. Hamas’ shock terrorist attacks cut deep into Israeli territory. That psychological trauma compounds the shock for millions of Israelis that their world-class intelligence and security forces completely missed this. That’s why comparisons with the 9/11 attacks on the US are the right analogy – Israel’s weakness was, in part, a failure of imagination.

Hamas has launched a suicidal war, and Palestinians will pay dearly for it. But why did Hamas move now? In part because of their deteriorating position: blockaded by Israel and Egypt, the economy in Gaza was terrible and getting worse. Meanwhile, the geopolitics were leaving the Palestinians behind. Israel is in its strongest geopolitical position in decades and was on the verge of signing a historic peace deal with Saudi Arabia. The severity of Israel’s expected response – a ground invasion that will result in thousands of Palestinian deaths – makes that politically untenable for the Saudis now.

Avi Mayer, editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, joins Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World podcast from Israel to talk about how his life, not to mention those of his fellow Israelis, has been forever changed in the past few days. He also provides a pained but unflinching take on how Israel should respond and what that response might mean for the Palestinians caught in the crosshairs.

Ian also speaks with Middle East scholar Shibley Telhami, based in the Washington DC area, about the broader geopolitical context of this latest conflict. Why did Hamas choose this moment to launch its attack and how did a burgeoning diplomatic deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia play into that decision? Also, what will happen to the 2.3 million Gazans with nowhere to go?

TRANSCRIPT: The war between Israel and Hamas and its unfathomable human toll

Avi Mayer:

What we saw on display on Saturday was ISIS-like behavior. This is not an organization that can be reasoned with. It's an organization that is dead set on murdering as many Jews as they possibly can.

Ian Bremmer:

Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and today Israel is once again at war as fighting rages to a level Israel has not seen in half a century. As of this taping, Israel's death toll from October 7th Hamas terrorist attacks has risen to 1300 with an estimated 150 people believed to be held hostage in Gaza. And so far, according to health officials there, at least 1400 Palestinians have been killed and at least 5,000 more injured. Among the Israeli and international dead from Saturday's attack are women, children, and the elderly. Many butchered by rampaging Hamas fighters. Israeli airstrikes have targeted normally safe structures like schools, hospitals, and mosques, killing women, children, and the elderly as well. As the world holds its breath for an all-out Israeli ground assault of Gaza, one thing is clear, the worst is yet to come.

Today on the show I'm talking with Jerusalem Post editor-in-chief Avi Mayer for an on-the-ground account of his country at war. And later I'll be joined by the University of Maryland's Shibley Telhami, who has been advisor to the State Department and the US Mission to the United Nations to get a sense of where things go from here. Let's get to it.

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Ian Bremmer:

Avi Mayer, thanks so much for joining us today.

Avi Mayer:

Thank you for having me.

Ian Bremmer:

Obviously, our thoughts with you and all of Israel following the horrifying terrorist attacks over the weekend. Talk to me just for a second about how your life has changed over the last few days.

Avi Mayer:

Well, day and night have lost meaning. I've been operating on a 24-hour cycle fairly constantly since Saturday morning. And we had no indication this was coming, I think that's one of the most striking elements of this whole situation. It came completely out of left field, so there was no preparation. No one could have known that this was coming down the pike. But we've mobilized quickly, and we've been really, I think, rising to the occasion in a remarkable way under almost impossible circumstances, including a diminished newsroom or several of our staff members either out on reserve duty or whose children are doing so.

Several younger staff members who have loved ones, family members, people they know who are missing, who are off in the field and reserve duty. It's a very difficult situation in that respect. Coupled of course with the constant rocket barrages having to go down to bomb shelters every so often. I'm in Jerusalem, which has not been targeted nearly as much as Southern Israel, but Tel Aviv has also seen quite a lot of rocket fire and many of our staff members are there, and they've been in and out of bomb shelters over the past few days. Those are the circumstances where we're operating under at the moment.

Ian Bremmer:

So top priority right now, have to assume, is the status of 150-plus people, a lot of civilians, some not Israeli, some international that are being held hostage on the ground in Gaza. What do you think the right response is to get them back safely?

Avi Mayer:

Well, I think that is certainly a top priority, and I think that many Israelis whose loved ones have gone missing and are presumed being held hostage in Gaza want nothing more than to get their brothers and sisters and parents and children back home, grandparents in some cases. But we have to remember the task of even identifying the bodies in Israel is still ongoing. The sheer number of casualties is unfathomable, and that's something that is really authorities are now grappling with. I can tell you, I was at a funeral earlier today for a young man who was killed in the attacks at the military cemetery here in Jerusalem. They have electronic displays at the entrance to the cemetery because there are just so many funerals going on. They need to direct people to the right part of the cemetery for the funeral that they want to be going to.

And so that's the situation on the ground. Not all the bodies have yet been identified. There are many people about whom it's unknown, whether they're dead or somewhere in Gaza, because of course Hamas will not disclose who they're holding or how many they have. As for what the proper response is, I think there is a pretty broad consensus in Israel that the response needs to be extremely forceful, that Israel needs to do whatever it must to deal Hamas a devastating blow, one that it cannot recover from. And think in the past there were many Israelis who viewed Hamas as the devil you knew, right? We know Hamas, they're not great. They're terrorist organization. They have a genocidal charter that wants to murder all Jews. We get that they've killed many, many Jews over the years, but they're the sovereign and perhaps they'd moderate with governance and so on and so forth.

What we saw on display on Saturday was ISIS-like behavior. This is not an organization that can be reasoned with. It's an organization that is dead set on murdering as many Jews as they possibly can. And so there are many Israelis who are now of the feeling that it's no longer a question of the devil you know. It's a question of, how do we get them the hell out of there as quickly as we possibly can? And so many Israelis are now calling to topple Hamas to bring about some new reality. And Gaza, we don't know what that's going to be. And it's certainly possible that in different Islamist organization will arise in its place, but for many Israelis, that is a risk that they're willing to take just to take down this horrific organization that carried out such unspeakable atrocities on Saturday.

Ian Bremmer:

No, and I want to get to what that looks like, but I'm first thinking just about the tension. I mean, we've got over 300,000 additional Israeli reservists that have been called up. We have over a hundred thousand that are amassing on the border of Gaza. It is very clear there is going to be a ground defensive. Everybody gets that. But there's also the tension of when you do that, when you have 150-plus people that are being held as hostage in Gaza, like a trade-off there. So I'm just wondering from your perspective, if you were advising the Prime Minister or the new unity war cabinet on that, what would you say?

Avi Mayer:

There's no good option at the moment. I think the notion that if Israel holds off, maybe Hamas will treat these hostages more kindly. This is not an organization that can be reasoned with. And so the notion that Israel should hold off on military action in order to spare the lives of its hostages, I think, just doesn't hold water for many Israelis. And I think there is a consensus in Israel that strong military action must be undertaken. That's why there's now a unity government in Israel, which is headed by several prominent military figures who have experience in warfare in Gaza. I think that that's an indication that Israel is taking this very seriously.

And I think it's important to note that Israel has not been this unified in a very long time. In fact, Israel has been very disunified in recent months over the judicial reform that the government has been trying to advance. It seems as though the country was coming apart at the seams. And yet once there is a crisis, certainly one as devastating as this one, the country bands together. And that's what we see happening today.

Ian Bremmer:

And of course, the Palestinians have not exactly been a big issue of conversation over the last six months inside Israel. It's been, as you say, judicial reform, potential constitutional crisis despite the fact you don't have a constitution, all of those things. There has been a very longstanding resistance to be involved in a long-term ground operation in Gaza precisely because we know what the conditions will be like. Gaza city looks worse than Fallujah, frankly, in terms of operational environment for military. Now, we know Israel has the capacity to secure Gaza if they wish to over the matter of weeks, maybe a couple of months max, but that doesn't say anything about what you do with it once you've occupied it. What is the possible outcome or outcome set for a post military occupation of Gaza, 2.3 million Palestinians living there?

Avi Mayer:

Yeah. Look, I think that there was a reality before the Palestinian authority, there could be a reality after Hamas, which of course deposed the Palestinian authority in a violent coup in 2007. Is that necessarily a reality that is or wants to return to? I'm not sure that it does. Directly administering the lives of 2 million Palestinians is not a prospect that many Israelis relish, and yet what we saw on display on Saturday changed everything. I think that many Israelis are looking at this through a totally new calculus that they hadn't even considered before.

Again, if Hamas was viewed as a distasteful terrorist organization, but one that governed the territory at least somewhat responsibly, now we see that it is an ISIS-like organization that cannot be reasoned with and must be taken down for many Israelis. And so I don't know that a lot of thought is being given to what happens next, and that's certainly something that should be done. And I certainly hope that Israel's governments and political and diplomatic and military leadership are engaging in those questions right now. But there are many Israelis who feel that doesn't even really matter what happens next, that Hamas just needs to be taken down, and that's the bottom line.

Ian Bremmer:

The anger and the idea that you are in a completely new environment as someone who went through 9/11 in New York, which is frankly only a fraction of what Israel is presently experiencing, I completely understand that. At the same time, I have noted that Israel has announced a siege against Gaza as a whole, that will include all basic resources, gas, food, and the rest. And that doesn't just focus on Hamas, that of course focuses on all of the Palestinians that are living there. Clearly, that's the former, everyone in the West is going to support Israel. The latter is a very different story. How do you respond to that?

Avi Mayer:

Well, look, I too was in the States during 9/11. I remember that state of chaos and confusion. I was a high school senior in the DC area, and I remember having a very real feel as to whether there were going to be nuclear weapons or chemical weapons, and who knew what these terrorists were going do if they were able to take down the Twin Towers. And we, as you said, are in a reality today that is again, taking Israel's size into account, 12 times worse, right? Imagine 12 9/11 on a single day and the devastating effect that would have on an entire society. And that's what Israel is encountering right now in a very small country of under 10 million people. And so I think the sense of anguish is very real. The sense of national mourning, the sense of shock and trauma is something that I think hasn't even really been internalized very many people.

I can't say that I've fully internalized it, even though I've been to funerals, and I've seen the photos and I know what carnage has taken place. In terms of how the government responds and what steps are taken vis-a-vis the people in Gaza. I know that the Prime Minister has called on those people who live in areas that are going to be affected to vacate, to go to UN protected areas. Admittedly, there aren't many of those. And obviously, Gaza is a very small territory that is very densely populated. Obviously, the residents of Gaza are not all responsible for the actions of Hamas. I think that goes without saying, and it would be absolutely tragic if the human toll on the Palestinian side kept mounting as a result of Hamas' murderous actions.

But at the end of the day, Israel needs to do what it must to keep its own people safe. That is its number one priority. It has to be. It's a sovereign state that is, if it has any reason to be, if has any raison d'etre, that is it, to keep its own civilians safe. And so if that comes at the cost of bringing down Hamas' leadership and targeting Hamas' military infrastructure, which is intentionally placed in civilian areas, if that is what will afford Israel's people the security that they sow deeply need, especially at this moment in time, I don't think there many Israelis are going to oppose that.

Ian Bremmer:

Yeah. What's the phrase? When you're fighting a monster, don't become a monster. I mean, clearly it is in Hamas' interests for Israel to be seen, certainly in the region and potentially more broadly, as extreme as murderous as possible. So Hamas is not just holding 150 hostages. They're also to a degree holding their population hostage, and they want Israel to take steps that will destroy civilians, right? They want Israel to be seen. So the question is if you're Israel, knowing that you are responsible for the security of your people, but also knowing that you are in a sense playing into a trap of Hamas' is making, how do you think about that?

Avi Mayer:

I think if I'm the Prime Minister of Israel, I think my priority would be to keep my people safe and to ensure that nothing like this could ever, ever happen again. And so certainly Israel will not carpet-bomb Gaza, although it certainly has that capacity. It won't nuke Gaza, although there are those who say it has that capacity as well. That is not the way Israel operates. Israel will engage in surgical strikes in order to target Hamas infrastructure, Hamas command and control posts, perhaps Hamas leadership. But as you say, Hamas has embedded itself in the civilian population with the intent of drawing as many civilian casualties as possible when this happens. And that would be a terrible, terrible outcome of Hamas' double war crime of murdering Israeli civilians while endangering their own.

Ian Bremmer:

I want to close by going back a little bit to what you said at the opening, which is that you were shocked. Israel is surrounded by enemies. There is, unlike 9/11 in the United States, Israel has had incredible readiness for many, many years for these sort of attacks, and yet it came with absolutely no warning under Prime Minister Netanyahu. Intelligence, border security, defense forces, you name it, not ready for what happened. Do you think, not today, not during war fighting and a unity cabinet, but do you think that there will be a political price for the Prime Minister to pay at the end of this?

Avi Mayer:

I think that's inevitable. There are already public opinion polls that suggest that over 90% of the Israeli public holds the government responsible for what happened. There will inevitably be a political price to be paid. There will, I'm sure, be a commission of inquiry just as there was in the aftermath of the Yom Kippur war in 1973. It goes without saying that there is going to be a reckoning, and the reckoning is going to be devastating. This was a military and intelligence failure of without parallel in Israel's history. I think probably worse than 1973 in many respects because of the civilian toll. And so, as you said, it's not going to happen now. This is a moment of unity, a moment of determination to do whatever we can to bring those hostages home and to deal Hamas a devastating blow. But once the dust settles and some sense of normalcy is returned, I think it is inevitable that there will be a serious commission of inquiry, a serious reckoning, and that there will be a political price to be paid for the atrocities that we saw this past weekend.

Ian Bremmer:

Avi Mayer, thanks so much for joining.

Avi Mayer:

Thank you for having me.

Ian Bremmer:

And now for some broader geopolitical context, I'm joined by University of Maryland professor, Shibley Telhami. Shibley Telhami, thanks so much for joining us today.

Shibley Telhami:

Pleasure.

Ian Bremmer:

I want to start with the "why now" question. I know you were just in the West Bank a couple of weeks ago. You obviously saw both deep anger and despair. Nothing is going to justify in any way the atrocities committed by Hamas, but I'd really appreciate it if you could give us a little bit of the context from what you've seen.

Shibley Telhami:

Yeah. First of all, I was in both Israel and the West Bank, so I visited both and got a little bit of sense of the sentiment in both places. The surprise, of course, about Hamas, let's put it in perspective, it's not that they did it or did it now, it's that they had the capability to do it, and the Israelis didn't have the ability to stop them. That's really the big surprise in large part because of course, if we knew what we now know, their ability to do it, they probably could have done it earlier. But nonetheless, I think what they're capturing is a sentiment, despair. They're doing for their own reasons of political reasons. There are other reasons that they may have that are tactical, strategic, but nonetheless to capture the public sentiment, which we knew is pervasive in much of the West Bank and Gaza.

People have been under occupation for 56 years. And as you said earlier, this is not to justify in any shape or form attacking civilians. In my opinion, there is no cause that justifies attacking or recklessly jeopardizing civilians whether that goes for Israel or goes for the Palestinians, no cause justifies that. But nonetheless, in terms of the sentiment in the West Bank and Gaza, there's despair. I mean, they've been under occupation 56 years, no end in sight. Now you have a far-right Israeli government that makes no secret of its intent to claim the entire West Bank for Israel and the Palestinians not be granted full rights. Settler violence is expanded. People feel helpless encroachment of settlements around the Palestinian towns, the humiliation of everyday life in terms of the passage from one place to another, and obviously they were placing hope on initially the Biden administration after Trump, which obviously from the Palestinian point-of-view was seen to be heavily pro-Israel.

They were hoping that Biden is going to do something while the Biden administration has not done anything to advance Israeli Palestinian peace or end of occupation in any shape or form. They were hoping that the Arab states would weigh in. They've historically claimed that they'll offer Israel full peace if Israel withdraws from occupied territories. Well, it seemed like after the Abraham Accords that Trump helped negotiate, now the Biden administration were trying to bring in Saudi Arabian without a peace with them. So yeah, the despair is always ripe for somebody to exploit it in a violent way.

Ian Bremmer:

What do you think the response of the Palestinian people will be to all of these events? Is it unifying, is it in any way constructive, in opposition to Hamas? Is it divisive? Is there going to be a greater difference between Palestinians in the West Bank and those in Gaza? Talk a little bit about what your expectations there.

Shibley Telhami:

No, I don't think it's going to be divisive. Obviously, politically, it's always divisive because you have the Palestinian authority, which is always undermined by any strength of Hamas, and Hamas is intended to take advantage of that right now, the fact that they're ineffective, the Palestinian authority. So there is that intense bickering.

But at the public level, let's look at it realistically, Ian. We know what happens in war. We know what happens when people suffer so dramatically every day of their life. And we saw what's happened in Israel just after the horrific attack, how people's hearts hardened so much that many in Israel are calling for leveling Gaza. And look at the results now with thousands of Palestinian civilian being killed and wounded and up to 300,000 as of today have been rendered homeless. People's hearts get hardened.

And so what happened is, even if people don't like Hamas, and most people in the West Bank and maybe even in Gaza don't support Hamas' agenda, they're mostly secularists. They want a different kind of life. It's not that they embrace them, but they want somebody to do something. And unfortunately, their heart's heartened. And we lose empathy for the other. Everybody does. It's painful to watch. It's just the most heartbreaking thing for people like me who are watching this who don't differentiate between Israeli victims or Palestinian victims. They're all victims. Helpless civilians being killed. It's a very painful moment.

Ian Bremmer:

More broadly in the Middle East, we haven't been seeing, you talked about the Abraham Accords, there's not been much focus on the Palestinians either, whether you talk about the governments of these countries, or even if you talk about the Arab street. I mean, certainly I can see the Saudi-Israel deal being put at the very least, dead on arrival for the time being. But beyond that, do you think the Palestinian issue now becomes structurally much more important across the region? And if so, how will that manifest?

Shibley Telhami:

Yes, in two ways. First, you are right in pointing out that Arab governments may have different interests than the Palestinian issue, and that's what drove the Abraham Accords. It's what drove the Saudi calculus. But to make no mistake, the Arab public still caress about the Palestinian issue. And obviously it hasn't been a top priority for a lot of reasons. It's not on the agenda there. People have preoccupied rather things. Now, this is on the agenda. It's hard to ignore, it's impossible. The level of violence as of day six today, 12,000 people between Palestinians and Israelis wounded or killed, and obviously it's going to rise. This scale of destruction that is taken place is going to propel people to focus on it, and they are focused on it. You can see it in countries that have already made this Israel, like Morocco, where their demonstration saying, end of normalization in Egypt. So you have people who are doing it. That's going to obviously cause pause to those governments who want to move, doesn't change your strategic calculus. They're going to have to weigh in. That's one way.

The other way is that we can have huge expansion of violence here. If in fact there is a ground war that brings in more homeless and more deaths in Gaza, it's impossible to give Hezbollah out, even though Hezbollah doesn't want to get in. And if it's drawn in, it's a whole different size. And it could also bring Iran. It could also bring in the United States. So we are talking about possible regional expansion beyond Gaza.

Ian Bremmer:

Last question for you, Shibley. You look at a map. The reality is, Israel is going to be at war with Gaza going forward. There's only one way for Gaza Palestinians to get out. They're not going to swim. It's Egypt. What needs to happen to help ensure that the people of Gaza have some escape route, have the ability to achieve safety, because it was not going to be in Gaza?

Shibley Telhami:

This is just rhetorical. And nothing is going to happen in the meanwhile. The bombings are going on. People aren't even getting food. When I say it's rhetorical because logistically, even if ultimately some passages, it takes place under the bombing, it's impossible to consider. When Hamas raided the Israeli towns across the border, the Israeli government issued, evacuate the settlements. This is a developed country. These are small settlements. They couldn't evacuate. People didn't have cell phones. They didn't know how to go, where to go. They didn't have buses, and it took a while until the Israeli military went in. So imagine here you have... There are no logistics. I mean, when you're looking at the bombings, when you talk about 300,000 people already rendered homeless through destruction, the ambulances are not even able to get to save them right now.

So this is all rhetorical as if to say that it absolves people by saying, "Well, get out of the way you civilians." Well, it doesn't absolve people from recklessly endangering them. That is wrong by international law. In fact, it's considered war crimes when you do that. So I think we need to be really mindful here, not to give this illusion that there's something that they could be saved if only they can get out of the way. These are mostly refugees. 2.2 million people. The overwhelming majority were refugees, were descendants of refugees from 1948, mostly from what is now central Israel, and already 300,000 of them have rendered homeless again, and it's likely to rise.

Ian Bremmer:

Such a tragedy. Shibley Telhami, thank you for joining us today.

Shibley Telhami:

My pleasure.

Ian Bremmer:

That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course, you did. Why don't you check us out at gzeromedia.com and take a moment to sign up for our newsletter? It's called GZERO Daily.

Announcer:

The GZERO World Podcast is brought to you by our lead sponsor, Prologis. Prologis helps businesses across the globe scale their supply chains with an expansive portfolio of logistics real estate, and the only end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today. Learn more at prologis.com.