Intro. [Recording date: January 24, 2024.]
Russ Roberts: Today is January 24th, 2024. My guest is journalist and author Robert Wright. He’s the founder and chief correspondent of the Nonzero Newsletter and Nonzero Podcast, available on Substack.
He was last here on EconTalk in October 2017, discussing meditation and Buddhism, but we have a very different topic today and an unusual setup. Bob had invited me to his podcast to discuss the Gaza War and the Arab-Israeli conflict more generally. And, he invited me because he knows that we do not agree on these topics, and he thought, and I agreed, it would be wonderful to have a thoughtful conversation on a controversial topic. And in particular to try to understand ideally why two thoughtful–we think–smart–maybe–people could have different perspectives.
This conversation will air on both of our platforms.
Bob, welcome back to EconTalk.
Robert Wright: Thanks. Good to be here.
Robert Wright: So, Russ, I’m really looking forward to this conversation because we do have, I think, different perspectives on the subject. For starters, you’re Jewish, you’re Israeli, you’re in Israel. I’m none of the above. I think we also have ideological differences that may become apparent in the course of this. I should say you’re also an American citizen. In fact, you spent most of your life in America, but you’ve been in Israel a few years now.
And, we’ve agreed that this is going to be a departure from both our formats in the sense that we’ll be kind of interviewing each other. That’s also known as a conversation, I guess.
You suggested I ask the first question, so I’m going to do that. And, it has to do with a question some Americans are asking about what’s going on in the mind of Israelis. I actually heard an extreme version of this last night in talking to a young Progressive, and I do think this is a question that’s more on the mind of people Left of center in America. What he said was, ‘I think the Israelis have lost their minds.’
Let me put that–before I ask you to respond, let me put it in slightly less confrontational terms and also set the context with some numbers.
So, as a lot of people know by now, on October 7th, Hamas attacked Israel; killed, I guess, more than 1100 people, nearly 800 of those civilians.
President Biden early on, putting that in context, noted Israel is a smaller country than America, and if you correct for population–which of course, it’s a crude exercise, but a kind of useful one–that would be like more than 40,000 Americans being killed. The civilians alone, I guess would be like 30,000. So, again, to put it in crude terms, like ten 9/11s or something–leaving aside the qualitative difference in the nature of the attack.
So, since then, of course, Israel has launched an attack or counter-attack on Gaza. And the numbers we have–I’ve heard you express some doubt about these numbers–I’ve heard that American intelligence in the State Department thinks they’re solid. I haven’t heard Israeli intelligence–reports of Israeli intelligence–disputing them, but if you want to talk about this later, we can. But, anyway, the official numbers are: 25,000 Gazans dead. Israel says 9,000 of those are militants. Now, historically, militaries have always erred on the high side in assessing enemy casualties. But, even if we accept those, that leaves 16,000 dead civilians in Gaza.
If you do the same crude-but-useful kind of conversion correcting for population, you get the equivalent of 3.6 million Americans dying, 2.3 million civilians.
So, if you look at civilians alone in Gaza, you would say that that’s like 770 9/11s or something–eight 9/11s every day since October 7th, or nine, or whatever the number turns out to be.
So, again, in both cases, I think you can only go so far with this kind of comparison. I would say in both cases, if you look at the qualitative dimension, it is worse than 9/11. So, people should add that to that.
But anyway, so the question that a lot of people on the Left are asking–there’s actually two questions, I would say, about the way Israelis are processing this. There’s surprise expressed by some people that we’re not hearing more Israelis saying, ‘Wait a second, my moral qualms about what we’re doing to civilians in Gaza have gotten to a point where I just think we should stop.’ My sense is that there’s still overwhelming support for the military operation in Gaza.
And then, there’s a different version of the question–it’s actually more like the one I asked–which is about the wisdom of it. Like: You’re creating a situation where, if you do the math, hundreds of thousands of Gazans will now be able to say, ‘A member of my immediate family–or my best friend, or something–was either killed or maimed as a result of this.’ And, that’s–out of a population of 2 million people, that’s a lot of intense hatred. And, I’m certainly not saying there wasn’t hatred already, but the question I ask is, even if you somehow magically eliminated Hamas, killed everyone in Hamas, wouldn’t you expect that with that much hatred, that many people, I would say in many cases, willing to die to kill an Israeli in retaliation? Given that kind of trauma. Don’t you think you’re just planting the seeds for the next Hamas, even if you somehow kind of extinguish the Hamas brand, so to speak?
So, there’s a lot there. Take your time. There’s a lot of context for you to establish, as well.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. So, the two things that at the heart of your opening question are the moral issue and the strategic issue. And, I’m sure in answering this, I’ll get lost and I’ll forget one of the two and you’ll bring me back. It’s 4:30 in the afternoon here. It’s 9:30 in the morning where you are. It’s been a long day for me. I’m old, Bob–
Robert Wright: We’re both old, Russ–
Russ Roberts: I lose my train of thought more than I used to. I’ll do the best–
Robert Wright: I’m sorry. I’m not going to let you have that one. But yes, it is later there.
Russ Roberts: I’ll do the best I can.
Robert Wright: Later in the day, not later in your life necessarily. But go ahead.
Russ Roberts: What?
Robert Wright: I said, ‘Later in the day, not so much later in your life,’ I think.
Russ Roberts: Yeah. Fair enough.
Russ Roberts: So, it’s interesting. One of the things that has fascinated me since October 7th–it has fascinated me for a long time, and my listeners will be familiar with it, and we did a recent episode with Hillel Cohen on the historical events of 1929 which has not aired yet; you haven’t heard it. But, that conversation focused a great deal on the fact that, inevitably, we all have our narratives; and in having our narratives, we build them from evidence. And, that requires pretty much accepting some things as true and some things as not true. And a thoughtful person should be aware that some of the things that I think are true, for example, are not. And, some of the things I think are not true might be. So, I think that’s an important background to this conversation.
One of the reasons that we might differ in our viewpoints is simply because we have different facts. Literally, you’ve chosen a set to think about. I’ve chosen a set to think about. And of course, some of my facts aren’t facts, and vice versa, probably. And so, I hope in this conversation we’ll explore some of the things that we believe that you and I might disagree on whether they’re true or not, even. Forget about how we weight them or value them.
So, it’s interesting, just from your opening remarks: when I talk about October 7th, I say 1200 people were killed.
I don’t make the distinction between civilians and soldiers–which I should. I usually just say 1200 people were killed. I think it’s important to make that distinction. The soldiers who were killed on that day were mainly Israeli soldiers who, in a very disorganized, chaotic way, responded to what they realized was happening in the southern part of the country near the Gazan border and fought back. And many of them got killed. And that was more like a war. And so, those casualties are different compared to, say, people who were in their house and Hamas broke in and murdered them.
Two other things you did not mention–very interesting–were the sexual violence. A lot of women, it appears, pretty conclusively, were raped on October 7th. And of course, 250 or so Israelis, 240, were taken hostage; 136 of those are still unaccounted for in Gaza. We don’t know if they’re alive or dead. Some of them are alive, we think. Maybe most of them or all of them, but we don’t know.
No international agency has visited those folks. The ones who aren’t there anymore were released. Those were mostly women and children, but there are still women and children in Gaza at least who were abducted.
Russ Roberts: And so, the first question is the moral question. And proceeding it, I should say, is your question about the mood of Israel, which I think is very accurate. Most Israelis that I know–and I swim of course in my particular circles–most Israelis I know are not happy. We are unhappy that civilians are being killed, but we still are resolved to press forward. There is some, I think, underlying anxiety here in Israel that the two goals that the Unity Coalition has set for itself–eliminating Hamas and rescuing the hostages–are not just not compatible, but actually at odds with one another.
And, many of us also worry–as you do, and I’ll come back to this–the strategic question: You can’t really eliminate Hamas. It’s an idea. You could eliminate people who currently espouse the values of Hamas; certainly they are likely to be replaced by other people, and so on.
As a backdrop for all of this discussion, I want to add one more thing, and then I’ll turn to the explicit question. One of the most jarring things about moving to Israel, which I did two and a half years ago, as you say, after six decades plus in the United States, is that the Middle East is not like the Beltway outside Washington, D.C. where I lived most recently. Nor is it like Silicon Valley and the Palo Alto area where I’ve summered and lived for a couple of years of my life. Nothing like the Midwest where I lived for over a decade in St. Louis, Missouri.
It’s a very different set of expectations here as a resident in terms of what the culture is. Even though I’ve known a lot of Jews in my life, Israel’s culture is distinctive. And, the military culture here in the Middle East is also very different. The rules of the game–the so-called expectations and what’s fair play–are really different, and I think that’s very hard for people to accept.
A lot of the people I do talk to are either one-time former Americans, what we call Anglos here–people who speak in English because they grew up in the United States or England.
But, I know a number of native-born folks, and you’re absolutely right. I have met a couple of people who think that the military response to October 7th is both a immoral response and a strategic failure, but that’s a very, very small view. It’s a minority view. I’d say the biggest variation is how relatively horrified they are about the civilian casualties; and I’ll turn to those.
I would just say one more thing before I continue, which is: I tried to write the case for the military action in an essay. You can find that on my substack, which is Listening to the Sirens. And that essay is called, I think, “Can a Nation Turn the Other Cheek,” or “Should a Nation Turn the Other Cheek?” Because some people said–not many–but some people said because they think this is immoral and because they think it’s a tactical or strategic mistake, Israel should have simply in response to October 7th sealed off its border more effectively than it had, used different kinds of technology more effectively than it had, and so on.
Russ Roberts: So, now let’s turn to the issue of casualties, and I’ll try to both talk about what I think the general attitude is here and my own personal attitude, which are not always the same, but often are.
First, I want to make say one thing very clearly. There’s not a lot of bloodlust here that I sense either from the soldiers or their parents. And, I speak to a lot of parents of soldiers. They’re my colleagues. There’s a lot of resolve to do something about what happened on October 7th. There’s a lot of misgiving about whether we’re being effective, and we will talk about that in the strategic part because there are different components to that.
But, there’s not a lot of vengeance, literally. It’s more like, ‘This cannot stand. We cannot live in a country that was designed to be a haven for Jews from Jew-hatred in the aftermath of the Holocaust, and allow our citizens to be slaughtered as Jews and our daughters and sisters to be raped and our children to be abducted from a Jewish state.’ So, the strongest impulse–there are two impulses that people have here. The first is to get the hostages back. We’ve had some success–not much–some.
And, the second is to remove the threat of a second or a future October 7th. In doing that, we have leveled much of Gaza, maybe half of the buildings. And, in Northern Gaza it’s much more than half. It’s rubble. It has been flattened to a large extent. Many of the people who lived in those buildings are not in them–weren’t in them when the bombing occurred–but some of them were. And, those are the civilian casualties. I have expressed some uncertainty about their number, but it kind of doesn’t matter in a way, right? The idea that, ‘It’s not 16,000 civilians, it’s only 10.’ Is that okay? Is that proportionate? I mean, the whole idea of ‘proportion,’ I think is a very strange concept in this context.
So, the first thought that I have in answer to the moral question is simply: This cannot stand. And so, when people ask me–and I’ll ask you, Bob, when I’m done with this long monologue; I apologize. When people say to me it’s disproportionate or it’s immoral, or Israel is committing genocide in Gaza or mass murder–which I disagree with both those claims, but we are killing a lot of civilians, and it’s horrifying, and I hate it. The Israeli response overwhelmingly is twofold: We didn’t start this. We were attacked first. We are defending ourselves. And, second: We are acting in a way either because of our own moral code or pressure from the outside world–could be both–to minimize civilian casualties consistent with making progress in our goals.
So, yesterday, 21 Israelis died because two buildings collapsed that we had not flattened. There’s a lot of anger here about that and a feeling that we are protecting civilians in Gaza with our own children’s lives–and I call them children–some of them are 18 to 20, our soldiers–but a lot of them are grownups. They’re people with kids. They’re in the Reserves. Many, many of the people who’ve died are not conscripts of 18 to 20. They’re people in the ages of 25 to 40 who have wives and children. Most of the dead are men, almost all I think, in the war part.
So, the moral case for most Israelis–and I’m keeping it short, we will talk more about it–is: We didn’t start this. Hamas could end this anytime they want. They could lay down their arms, surrender. The leadership could surrender and evacuate or leave and release the 136 people or whatever number is still alive, and we would stop. We don’t like it. We have no desire to kill civilians or innocents in Gaza, and we have even less desire to see our own people killed.
So, on the moral case, that’s the standard argument you hear; and I’ll let you respond to it.
On the strategic case, I think the idea is that, while it’s true that many people will hate us who are currently there, who will lose loved ones, and I understand that. Don’t blame them. They’re also very mad at Hamas, by the way. Today for the first time that I have seen anywhere in the world, there were pro-Palestinian people, who–this was within Gaza–rallying–not a big group, looked like about a hundred–saying, ‘Hamas, this is your fault. You need to give up and release the hostages.’ As opposed to what the rest of the world is demanding, which is a ceasefire on Israel’s part because of the horrific losses of Gazan civilians.
So, my view on the strategic side is that you might be right: people here have skin in the game, and it’s true that in after times of violence, you might overreact and in a moment of emotion or passion, do something that could make things worse in the future.
We waited three weeks to invade Gaza. I don’t think it was such a hotheaded response. We may have been unrealistic. We may have been overly optimistic about what might be achieved and what it would take. But, I think strategically, the idea here is to force the people who perpetrated October 7th to pay a horrific price.
Not the civilians. I don’t believe that they are to blame. I don’t like this argument that says they voted for Hamas in 2006. I hate that argument. I think that’s grotesque. I don’t think you deserve a death sentence because of a vote you cast that may not have–you had no idea what was coming. It would be absurd to hold[?call?] those people morally culpable. Yes, when bodies of probably dead, semi-naked women were taken into the streets of Gaza City, large groups of people cheered and enjoyed it. But so what? That’s a few hundred people. It’s not 25,000. I don’t find that morally compelling at all, that argument that says they’ve lost the right to life because they were celebrating it. It wasn’t The People. Some people. I hate that, that argument.
So, that’s a rough idea of what I would say in response. There’s a lot more to say on both pieces of it; but, why don’t you respond to what I’ve said so far?
Robert Wright: Okay. Starting with just relatively small-scale characterizations of the situation you made that some people might contest.
You said–well, there’s a little thing where you–in terms of this, the death of these 20 or so Israeli soldiers yesterday. This is a minor thing, but I think you said it’s because we hadn’t flattened the buildings, that the buildings collapsed. Well, no, but they were preparing to flatten the buildings with explosives because they want to create a buffer zone inside of Gaza. Now, some people have suggested that’s a war crime. Gaza is not a big place. So, you create a half-a-mile buffer zone the whole way around, you’ve cut into 10% of Gaza.
You said that you waited three weeks to invade. That’s true. But, the bombing began earlier. And, I know it was before that–
Russ Roberts: Fair enough–
Robert Wright: that I looked at the numbers, and I saw that in the last week, they had dropped 6,000 bombs on a place that’s slightly larger than Queens, New York. And, that’s when I–that was probably the first time I tweeted critically about the assault itself.
And, I think–you know, you mentioned the Rules of Engagement. I have read, even in the Israeli Press, that the Rules of Engagement are actually looser this time around than in past incursions. Certainly looser than Americans use. If you look at the way Americans have gone through cities, number of airstrikes, number of civilians lost–all those indicators suggest that when Americans went through cities in Iraq, they were more willing to take casualties themselves to avoid civilian casualties than seems to be the case here.
Now, these are all things–we probably shouldn’t–let’s stipulate that you probably don’t agree with any of that, and if you want to get back to it, you can. These are relatively–relatively–minor things.
To get back to–well, I want to say one more thing.
I think one thing you could say in defense of the Israeli people in the context of the question I ask, but which also can be deployed on behalf of the Gazans, is: Everyone is operating in a different information environment. These days everyone is operating in a different information environment. And I don’t think that Israelis have seen as much in mainstream media of the carnage in Gaza as Americans have in at least many mainstream media. It varies in America, but that’s my suspicion.
By the same token, you can rest assured that people in Gaza were not hearing, ‘Hey, our guys are beheading babies. Our guys are putting babies into ovens.’
Now of course, those things turned out not to be true, even though Bibi Netanyahu assured President Biden personally that some of them were. And, I think, not–perhaps consequentially–those unfounded claims were still in play during the formative phase of Israel’s psychological reaction.
And, but in any event, even the atrocities that did happen, those were not–I don’t think those were being spread far and wide in Gaza by Hamas’ communications media. So, people are operating in very different information environments. You know, in terms of, you said, ‘Well, they started it.’ Well, of course, that’s not the view in Gaza, right?–
Russ Roberts: Correct. Fair enough–
Robert Wright: And if you–and they will say they can cite horrible things that have been done to them by Israelis.
Now, Israelis can reply, ‘Okay, but let’s go back another year in history. And let’s go back another year.’ As you know, you eventually get to the late 19th century–literally, right?–with these claims and counterclaims. And, this is probably easier for me to see because I don’t have a strong tribal affiliation with either side by virtue of my heritage.
But, I’m constantly struck by the fact that on both sides, people are convinced that they have the original grievance. And, I’ll just say that, as an observation: I would encourage both sides to try to, you know, transcend their perspective.
But it’s, of course, very hard, if you’re in either position. Via–I would say–you said something like, ‘Well, yes, they’re going to hate us.’ I guess, maybe in closing, I’d say: I’m not just saying they’re going to hate you. I’m saying they’re going to hate you way more than before. And there’s going to be a lot of people who are literally willing to die. Like, those Hamas soldiers who went into Israel, a lot of them probably knew there was a real chance they weren’t coming back. And, whatever you want to say about the religion and martyrdom: You know, I have been, I was brought up Southern Baptist. I have been in a religion where people think they’re going to heaven when they die. Believe me, they still don’t want to die. Okay? And they–of course–they have the sense of that they’re serving their people and everything, and that drives them as well.
But, if you want to mobilize a lot of people to join a movement like Hamas and become militants, it really helps if, like, their sister is growing up without legs because of an Israeli bomb. That is a huge recruiting asset for Hamas, or the next Hamas, or whatever.
And I think one difference between the way I view this, and the way a lot of people in Israel view it, is, like, I view the hatred, in general, in extremist movements, as being closer to the prime mover than things like the infrastructure that the leaders of the movement set up to channel the hatred into violence.
I saw a really good documentary that was made in 2003 called “Death in Gaza.” What’s good about it is that–this is during the occupation phase of Gaza–and what’s good about it is it actually sustained, in a way, both of the theories of the case. In other words, it showed the infrastructure. There are these young Hamas militants.
And one of the creepiest scenes I’ve ever seen anywhere was when they had a 14-year-old boy–who looked like he was 12–and they were kind of encouraging him, you know, their, to–not to go out and get killed right now, but to embrace the idea that someday he might be a martyr. It was really creepy, and the interviewer challenged them on it.
And so there is that infrastructure for channeling hatred into violence.
But, the other thing you saw in that was these people were under occupation, which they were no longer literally–after, whenever, 2005, under occupation–but which some people in West Bank still are.
And, you just saw, from the perspective of this kid, ‘Well, how could you grow up not hating Israelis?’ There’s just no way. You never have a conversation. You only see them with guns. They’ve killed people you know.
So, this is–my theory of the case is that the hatred is fundamental; and of course it’s going to take patience. It’s a long-term gain to try to pursue policies that let the hatred subside, and try to build on the less unfavorable sentiment. That’s a very hard thing. But I personally think it’s maybe the only thing that works, unless you want to do actual ethnic cleansing. And I worry that that may be what happens here.
Russ Roberts: Oh, God forbid.
Robert Wright: Yeah, I know. I know, I know.
Robert Wright: I want to say one more thing, is–and then I’ll turn it over to you. I worry that I think the Israeli–it isn’t just that most Israelis don’t buy my theory of the case. It isn’t just that they say: ‘It’s this institution of Hamas that’s implanting the hatred: if we could just get rid of this institution of Hamas.’ I think a lot of them do think that, but I think it goes beyond that, which I think there’s this idea in Israel that, and has been for some time, ‘Look, they‘–and I think they almost mean the world, but a lot of people in the world–‘They are going to hate us no matter what we do.’ Right? Whether it’s anti-Israel sentiment, antisemitism, whatever. I think they think of it as like a universal constant, almost. And so: We might as well play hardball, because they’re going to hate us no matter what.
I will say–
Russ Roberts: Well, let me–
Robert Wright: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. I’ll–
Russ Roberts: There’s so, many–
Russ Roberts: so, many things I want to say, and I’d love to comment briefly so you could react, but it’s going to be hard, because there’s so many great things that you said that I feel differently about, so I want to be clear.
Let’s start with the point that–I’m going to try to go in reverse order. Yes, Jew-hatred goes back a long way. Yes, there is a feeling here that they’re going to hate us anyway, especially because part of their religion seems to believe that Jews should be killed. That’s not good. And we do feel it. And, certainly on October 7th we felt it. So that’s part of it.
It’s not quite true that the only thing they see are Israelis with guns. Many of the people, unfortunately, who were killed on October 7th were people on the left who were working to encourage cooperation interaction between Israelis and Gazans. Many of them had had Gazans working in their villages and towns; and they had had permits to cross the border. There is a belief–it could be true–that that helped them chart out where they attacked.
Many of these people drove Palestinians to hospitals in Israel for medical treatment that was not available in Gaza. There are a whole lot of hospitals at Gaza, we’ve discovered. Real hospitals, not just sham covering up of, say, terrorist command centers, but there are real hospitals there. They have real doctors–quite a few, actually. A lot of people are shocked how many there are, and how many doctors there are. But, a lot of people drove those folks when there was a treatment they needed that they couldn’t get in Gaza. There were[?] are people, and were people, and will be people, I hope, in Gaza, who don’t just see airplanes, bombs, and soldiers.
But, your basic point is correct. And I think a thoughtful person has to confront the reality that if I lived there, I might feel the same way as they do: hatred, desire to kill, [?], and so on.
We might come back–I think, I hope we do come back and talk about, ‘What do you do with that? How do you break that?’ The point you made a minute ago, which I’ll say something about it, about where you start.
I want to make a meta-point first, which is: it’s interesting how much we want the moral high ground. I talked about this recently in this episode that hasn’t aired yet, with Hillel Cohen and others, made the point before. See, I actually believe that Israel has been less destructive than the United States in its war against civilian populations, say, in Mosul and elsewhere in its war against the Islamic State.
But, here’s what’s weird. Why is that the moral exemplar? A lot of people would say what America did in there was horrible. In fact, Israel is a little bit better. It would be interesting–we’re not going to do it–but it would be interesting for you and I to sit down and just look at why I actually think Israel has done a better job in keeping civilian casualties down. But, in a way, again, it’s interesting that I want to believe that, and people who don’t like Israel’s reaction don’t want to believe it. I think it’s just interesting: as human beings, we want to believe that our cause is just.
But, the only point I would make is that if Israel could do whatever it wanted, and had no moral scruples, and didn’t care about an international opinion, it could have flattened Gaza without losing a single soldier. We have total control of the airspace. We have a lot more bombs. We didn’t have to warn people to leave town. We didn’t have to warn people to move to the south.
So: It is horrible, yes, those buildings that the 21 soldiers died in yesterday, were flattened anyway. We could have flattened them from the air though, and we didn’t because there’s collateral destruction.
So, again, I’m not sure how important that is, but I think it’s interesting that it feels important. And it feels important to you, too, I think, which is just a human response.
Let me try to say something about ending this so-called cycle. You made the point of, ‘What year do you start?’ I said they started it. They did start it on October 7th, but of course, you’re right. There was a mistreatment of Gazans before that. Israelis and defenders of Israel like to point out Israel withdrew in 2005. You could then debate whether they stayed. They did have some presence there. They did have still military response. They did have a blockade. I wasn’t here, but we had a blockade.
It wasn’t an open air prison. That is, I think, a propaganda line. There are many, many parts of Gaza, we have learned–I didn’t know this; I thought it was something like an open air prison–there are many parts of Gaza that, on October 6th, were beautiful parks, and villas, and beachfront, and restaurants, and car dealerships. I thought it was all a giant slum. It’s not. Much of it is, but I blame Hamas for that. We know now that they took enormous amounts of money and used it to build tunnels. An extraordinary achievement, by the way, engineering achievement. Did it somehow, without Israel knowing. Despite the so-called relentless surveillance, Israel did not do a good job. They didn’t do a good job blockading them, because Gazans got access to lots of weapons–either they built them, or they somehow smuggled them in. So, if Israel was preventing Gaza from flourishing, even after we withdrew, it certainly was overcome, at least for military purposes.
But, I think the deeper question is–and we could spend the whole rest of time just on this; I don’t know if we want to–but, how do you move forward? Israelis, there are some who hate Arabs, who would like to take vengeance; but the average Israeli just wants to live here. Now, I understand that that phrase, ‘just wants to live here,’ is a little bit misleading. In the course of doing so, we have a military presence in the West Bank. You called it occupation. It certainly–I think that’s the right term, militarily. Although, over the years, we have given increasing control to the Palestinian Authority, just as we have left Gaza–which was a real military occupation. We had, again, men in the streets–mostly men, probably some women, too–with military equipment. We tried pulling out. It didn’t help. Could argue it was too tough on the Gazans.
But, I think the problem is, is that they do seem to have a serious number of people who are hateful to the point of–as you say, and this is the key point–willing to sacrifice themselves to kill the enemy. And, why do they only feel that about Israel and the Jews? There are many, many people who are abused in the Arab world. Palestinians have been abused–and many, many times–by the Jordanians, by the Lebanese, by many others. But, they don’t harbor a deep, hateful feeling toward those folks. They don’t sacrifice their lives. They put that down and moved on. We’re different–‘we’ meaning Israel and the Jews.
Now, when you say, ‘How far back do you want to start?’ You said you could go back to the 19th century. I think we should at least go back to 1948. We should at least talk about that, as to how some of these entities populated and got created.
But, I think if we say, ‘What about going forward?’ The optimism I have–and it is limited–is I would say a couple of places to be optimistic. One is: I like to believe, perhaps not true, that most human beings simply want to have better lives for themselves and their children. I understand overlaying that sometimes is religious beliefs, including fanatical, extremist religious beliefs on all sides, in all religions, at various times in history. But, I like the idea that perhaps, if Gazans had more autonomy as citizens, they would be less hateful, or more willing to not sacrifice their life because they have something else to live for. It certainly seems to be the case for Arab-Israelis. Two million Arabs live with full rights here in Israel, not Palestinians; and they’re very supportive–I think the number is 70%–of the Jewish state and the right of Israel to defend itself. They don’t want to live under Hamas. Hamas is a tough, corrupt, hateful, dead end, unless you want to be a martyr. It’s really good at that.
So, my hope is that the people who do want a good life for their children and themselves would have the opportunity to voice that belief. They don’t now, particularly because they could be killed. It’s not a tolerant regime either; nor is it in the West Bank. So that’s one source of optimism.
I do like an idea that if we could talk about our different narratives, perhaps we could understand why we hate each other, and maybe if we respected each other’s narratives, we could understand that this problem is not easily resolved. And we’d[?] have to make some sacrifices.
Part of me just says–and this maybe is unattractive to hear–but, we live here. We’ve made our lives here. More than that: We have built a country that has a very nice standard of living. It could do a better job with some of its populations, but we can work on that. But, we built a good country that is a haven for Jews in a world that is often hostile to Jews, and we’re going to fight to preserve it. We understand that if our neighbors don’t like it, we’re in a bad neighborhood, but we’re going to fight to keep it. And, it doesn’t excuse immorality. It doesn’t justify immorality, but we will defend ourselves, and we see this in Gaza’s defense. Again, maybe it’s too harsh, and maybe it’s not proportionate enough, or it could be better. But we see a lot of the moral shortcomings on the Hamas side, so it’s hard for us to see the other narrative.
So, I invite you, as a non-tribalist–and it’s beautiful that we’re having this conversation–I invite you to make that case, and respond to anything else I said. Again, sorry I went so long: just you said so many interesting things.
Robert Wright: Okay. The case is–what case is it that you’re inviting me to make, just so I’m clear?
Russ Roberts: Well, I think on October 6th, most Gazans lived unpleasant lives. Some of that was due to Israel, but a lot of it was due to Hamas.
On October 8th, and after, or the 9th, 10th, whenever the bombing did start–and it’s a great point you made: the ground invasion was three weeks later; but we did start bombing long before that. That’s a great point, an example of my tribal bias. I think life in Gaza has gotten worse, and I blame Hamas, and so do some Gazans. It’s like, ‘Didn’t you think this was going to happen? Did you really think that Israel was going to just do a token response to having 1,100 people killed, dozens raped, and their people kidnapped?’ You think they were just going to say, ‘Well, that’s not good.’
We spent five years–five years–with a single soldier in captivity, Gilad Shalit. That was a remarkably unforgotten, just relentlessly-remembered tragedy, until finally the government gave up Gilad Shalit for 1,000–one soldier who had been captured and kidnapped–a thousand Palestinian prisoners. Including Sinwar, whose life we saved from a brain tumor when he was a prisoner in Israel, in an Israeli hospital, and who is the architect and mastermind of the October 7th attack. So, we kind of lost a lot of our patience. Maybe we should be better, but we’d kind of had it. So, there is a resolve here that we have the right to defend ourselves.
Robert Wright: I actually think that Gilad Shalit may be one of the reasons that Hamas thought the response would not be this strong–
Russ Roberts: Correct–
Robert Wright: I think they thought, ‘Oh, you’ll give us 1,000 prisoners for one guy? Well, what if we have a couple of hundred people?’ I honestly think, I thought at the time, when I heard that they were trading 1,000 prisoners for one guy, I thought, ‘This is crazy.’ I mean, look at the precedent you’re setting. But whatever. Leave that aside–
Russ Roberts: It was insane. That was a bad strategic–
Robert Wright: Well, just game-theoretically, yeah.
So, okay. As for–I’m certainly not going to say, ‘Well, Hamas was justified in attacking.’ I want to emphasize, whenever I try to explain why something happened, I’m not excusing it. I try to understand, on both sides, why people have done things. This isn’t about justifying anything. But, with that said, let me start, again, with some relatively–
Russ Roberts: Can I interrupt for one sec?
Russ Roberts: You’re unusual. I agree with you. I’m certainly capable–I like to think I’m capable of understanding something without justifying it. But, you’re rare in the loud echo chambers of social media and on the streets. A lot of people have not just tried to understand October 7th, they’ve justified it. Right? So, that’s–I just want to say that. I think that’s important. For our conversation, I accept your point, but it’s not the common view. A lot of people think it was just, what was done. Part of it, by the way, is what you said.
Robert Wright: Right, but–
Russ Roberts: A lot of people don’t.
Robert Wright: It works both ways. I mean, I understand that it’s human nature for Israel, given what happened on October 7th, to do what they did. As I’ve often said, I’ve long been a critic of Israel’s behavior, for starters in the sense that I don’t think it’s wise; but I’ve always said they’re not reacting any more crazily than America reacted to 9/11. But, I was arguing against that, too. People could Google a piece I wrote in September of 2001, a week and a half after 9/11, about why it doesn’t make sense to obey your retributive impulse uncritically. The piece is called “Feels So Good,” in Slate.
I’ve tried to be consistent about this now. On the broader point of conflating, explaining with justifying–which again, I think applies to both sides–it’s human. It’s literally human nature do that. We all do that. It takes effort to try to listen to someone explain why your adversary did something without screaming at them, ‘Oh, so you’re justifying it?’ So you’re absolving them of blame. That takes–but I think if we want to understand why these things happen, we have to work to do that. I’ve already endured one round of this over Ukraine whenever I try to explain why I think Russia invaded, and how, in some respects, if American foreign policy had been better, it might not have happened.
Let me, again, take some of the, maybe not more critical points you made, but quickly, when you said, ‘Well, I had said all the Gazan kids see is Israelis with guns.’ You said, ‘Well, it isn’t Israelis with guns, and just Israelis with gun.’ It’s true. You can point to Israelis doing very laudable work, and you can point to kinds of interactions that happen. I’m just saying, for the average kid in Gaza, they didn’t see any of that. By the time you’re 15 or 16, your worldview is starting to crystallize.
Russ Roberts: Fair enough.
Robert Wright: All you’ve seen is that they’re enemies, and you can name a cousin that died or was maimed. And now, again: now it’s a brother or sister this time around.
You mentioned open air prison. I think one thing people mean by that, it’s not that there are no nice places in Gaza, or were, it’s that they can’t leave. Now, they can get special permission to go to a hospital, blah, blah, blah. But, it’s a very small area.
Russ Roberts: True.
Robert Wright: And it seems, to all of us, it’s pretty strange to grow up in a city–again, slightly larger than Queens, New York–you can’t leave for your whole life. Okay? If you don’t like it there, tough luck.
And again, the other part of the open air prison metaphor is that Israel does control the flow of materials in the Gaza. Israelis say, ‘Well, but it’s all about keeping weapons out.’ Yeah, but it’s not just weapons per se. It gets complicated. There are limits on how far the fishing boats can go. I don’t want to get in it, but open air prison doesn’t just mean they all live in cells and have concrete floors.
Yeah. On the West Bank, have they ceded more control of the Palestinian Authority? They did, as part of the Oslo process. Still, Israel has the right to go into any place in the West Bank, and they have on some occasions. Once they go in, they’re in charge. They can do what they want. Palestinians, the West Bank, do not have due process of law. They go to a military court, with an exceedingly high conviction rate. Whatever the soldier who brings them in says is taken as the decisive evidence, by and large, as I understand the way this courts work. Of course, they’re not allowed to vote.
Now I’m inching toward kind of big issues that it would take you a long time to respond to. I don’t mean to. Before I get back to something larger–you can write this down if you want–but it’s often said, ‘Well, Israel, it’s a beacon of democracy.’ And, I don’t know. I would just say, ‘Look, you are ruling the West Bank,’ and the rule in West Bank is, ‘If you’re Jewish, you get to vote. If you’re Palestinian, you don’t.’ Of course, the indignities inflicted on Palestinians by the occupation go well beyond that.
Russ Roberts: Absolutely. I agree with you, Bob.
Robert Wright: Again, I hate to do these kind of drive-by shootings, bringing up these, like, major issues that you should, in theory, have a Ph.D. dissertation to respond to. But, I do want to, just now, before throwing it back to you, get back to this–the whole thing about, ‘Well, we tried withdrawing from Gaza; we’ve seen withdrawal doesn’t work.’ Leaving aside the question, whether you call that a good faith withdrawal–in other words, was designed to work–you know, there was no–there’s a lot of things you could say about that, and about what the motivation was. Was the motivation–I think part of the motivation was just to change the demographic equation. To say, ‘Hey, we’re not responsible for these guys. So if worst comes to worst, and the world somehow forces us to let all Palestinians vote, or something, we still got a huge majority.’ I think it was partly about that.
Robert Wright: But the main thing I want to bring up is about the rarely-told in the media story about what happened after the election that brought Hamas to power. I listened to your podcast with Matti Friedman, who is at AP [Associated Press], and he was saying, on balance–well, I think his view is that on balance, Western media coverage is biased against Israel. I disagree.
As part of that, he was talking about his own experience within Associated Press. That I can’t speak to. Maybe AP is biased; I haven’t kept track. But he did say one thing that seems to me to illustrate actually a bias that you find in favor of Israel in U.S. media, and here’s what he said. I wrote it down. He said,
In 2006, the Palestinians have an election in Gaza and the West Bank, and that election is won by Hamas. In 2007, Hamas, in a kind of violent coup, gets rid of the remnants of the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and takes over Gaza. And in the following year, 2008, there’s a real war, which involves rockets fired…. [time mark 40:30–Econlib Ed.]
Now, one might ask, ‘If they won the election, why would they have to stage a coup?’ And that’s an excellent question, and I would encourage people to read a piece I wrote for the Nonzero Newsletter called ‘The truth about Hamas.’ Let me summarize what happened.
So, the Bush Administration insisted on letting Hamas run in the elections. I don’t think the Israeli government was so enthusiastic about that, but it happened. The Bush Administration said, ‘Sure, Hamas can run.’ Hamas won. They didn’t get a majority of the vote, but they did win control of the Legislative Council, which at that point, had control of finance and national security. So, it was quasi-parliamentary in its implications, if you will. If you control the legislature, you largely control the government for both Gaza and the West Bank. Bush Administration said, ‘That’s unacceptable,’ so they encouraged Fatah to stage a coup, even to the point of, apparently–and people can read the piece, some of this stuff is a little fuzzy, but–funneling weapons to Fatah through Egypt.
So, the Bush Administration basically started that civil war. I don’t think Fatah was chomping at the bit, honestly, but the Bush Administration wanted it to happen. It happened. So, there was a civil war. And, in the middle of it, Saudi Arabia said, ‘Wait a second. Can we work something out?’ They convened, officials from the Palestinian Authority, from Hamas, from everybody, and they worked out a deal that Hamas signed on to, Abbas signed on to; and the deal was going to be unified government for the West Bank and Gaza.
Let me quote Khalid Mishal [also spelled Khaled Mashaal, Mashal–Econlib Ed.], who was the leader of Hamas. First of all, they agreed–Hamas agreed, on paper–they would abide by the Oslo Accords and other existing treaties between the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] and Israel. They would support negotiations over a two-state solution. Meshaal said, quote: “Hamas is adopting a new political language. The Mecca agreement is a new political language… and honoring the agreements is a new language because there is a national need and we must speak a language appropriate to the time.”
The Bush Administration and Israel further demanded that they recognize the state of Israel.
Now, at that point, most of the Arab nations hadn’t done that. That was asking for, like, a 180-degree, exceedingly politically difficult thing for Hamas, let’s just say. And, I think it was designed to kill the deal. And, we will never know what would have happened if we had followed up on that. You don’t know.
And again, it gets back to the theories of the case about whether Hamas is this thing with essence of evil implanted in it and it can never be erased. Or you think, well, these are people. They like things like social status. And, suddenly, Khalid Mishal is a globally significant figure. Maybe you can steer him toward a particular channel to further elevate his status. Who knows? [More to come, 55:15]
