Is Israel's war with Lebanon going to end differently from past attempts to secure Israel's northern border? Journalist Matti Friedman, who recounted his experience as a soldier in Lebanon in his book Pumpkinflowers, reflects on that experience in light of current events and looks to the future in this conversation with EconTalk's Russ Roberts.
Watch this podcast episode on YouTube:
This week's guest:
This week's focus:
Additional ideas and people mentioned in this podcast episode:
Terrorism, Israel, and Dreams of Peace (with Haviv Rettig Gur). EconTalk.A few more readings and background resources:
A few more EconTalk podcast episodes:
Reading, Writing, and Fighting (with Mark Helprin) [Discussion of soldiers' stories]. EconTalk. Chuck Klosterman on But What If We're Wrong. EconTalk. Carmen Reinhart on Financial Crises. [Discussion of her book: This Time Is Different]. EconTalk.More related EconTalk podcast episodes, by Category:
* As an Amazon Associate, Econlib earns from qualifying purchases.
| Time | Podcast Episode Highlights |
|---|---|
| 0:37 | Intro. [Recording date: November 13, 2024.] Russ Roberts: Today is November 13th, 2024. My guest is journalist and author, Matti Friedman. This is Matti's third appearance on EconTalk. He was last here in January 2024, talking about the way the press covers Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Our topic for today is war, and in particular, Matti's personal experience in Lebanon and how that informs how he thinks about what is happening there today. I'm sure we'll get into a number of other issues along the way. Matti, welcome back to EconTalk. Matti Friedman: Great to be here. |
| 1:11 | Russ Roberts: I want to start by talking about your book, Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story, which was published in 2016. It's now out in audio. It's an amazing book. It's a heartbreaking portrait of what it's like to be a soldier--the fear, the pain, the boredom, the waste, the opportunity. It's all in there. And it's a very short book. I recommend it highly. The writing is superb. Let's start with the title, and we'll use your experience that you highlight in this book as the foundation of what we'll talk about today. Why did you call the book Pumpkinflowers? One word, Pumpkinflowers. A funny title. Matti Friedman: One of the first things I learned upon becoming a soldier in the Israeli Army in the summer of 1997 is that the Army speaks a very different language than the language of ordinary people. And that's true of any army. So, if you go into the U.S. Army, you're going to find yourself speaking of a highly technical language, which has a lot of acronyms like KIA [killed in action] and uses a lot of numbers and letters and a language that's basically impenetrable to civilians. And, in the Israeli Army, I had the additional challenge of everything being in Hebrew, which was a relatively new language to me at the time. I'd been in Israel for about two years by that time. And I became a radio man, which meant that I had to speak the language of the Israeli military radio frequencies--which isn't exactly a code language because it's not a secret, but it uses a completely different set of words to mean ordinary things. For example, 'casualties' on the Israeli military frequencies--the code word for casualties is 'flowers'. So, in Hebrew, the word for casualties or wounded people is [foreign language 00:02:58]. And, in the Army on the radio you would say [foreign language 00:03:02]--flowers. So, if you're in a sticky situation in the Army and you have to report that you have casualties, you would say, 'I have flowers.' And, you would request urgently the arrival of a 'thistle', [foreign language 00:03:14], which means helicopter. And a civilian listening to any of this would be completely baffled by it. And, I thought a lot about why the Army uses a language that makes things incomprehensible; and particularly when it isn't secret. So, my first assumption was that this was a secret code that the enemy wasn't supposed to understand. But then I realized it wasn't actually secret. It was just a different language for soldiers to speak. I realized that it was meant to put some distance between the soldiers and what they had to describe. And, the example I just gave is a good one. It's very hard to say, 'Listen, I'm standing here next to my friend, Yitzhak, who lost a leg.' It's much easier to say, 'I have flowers. I need a thistle.' It distances you from the events you're describing. In the American military the same thing is done, but the language is very technical. So, it sounds like income tax forms or something: 'Have a KIA.' I need some kind of acronym involving letters and numbers. And, it's doing the same thing. You're not actually saying what you're seeing or what you're doing. And, that's why I chose the title. The title is meant to access that strange language that we spoke in Lebanon. Because if a civilian had listened to the military frequencies in South Lebanon in the 1990s--which is when I was there--you would have thought we were describing some kind of garden. And, the outposts in Lebanon were for these pretty grim fire bases, which were earthen embankments around a central courtyard with machine guns ringing the base and mortars and every nasty weapon known to men. They all had names that sound like bed-and-breakfast names. So, the outpost where I served was called Outpost Pumpkin. In Hebrew [foreign language 00:04:52]. And, in our sector you had Outpost Red Pepper, and Outpost Citrus, and outpost cypress, and outpost basil, which--these very pretty agricultural or floral names that concealed this very ugly military reality. So, that was a big part of my experience in Lebanon, the gap between this beautiful language that we used to describe what we were doing and what we were actually doing. And, I tried to access that with the name of the book, which is Pumpkinflowers, which, if you understand the radio code, means people who are wounded at Outpost Pumpkin, but which on first glance sounds like it could be a gardening guide of some kind. |
| 5:30 | Russ Roberts: And, what were you doing there? What was Israel doing there in 1997? I don't want to focus at great length on the military history of the Israeli Defense Force [IDF] with respect to Lebanon because it would take the rest of our time and then some. But, give us a two-minute summary of what came before your arrival there and what the Army was doing there, in 1997. You were in Lebanon: you were not in Northern Israel, you were inside the Lebanese border. Matti Friedman: Sure. I think a description of what we were doing in Lebanon in the late 1990s actually is very helpful in understanding what's going on now, because in Lebanon there's this cyclical reality which repeats itself. And, the reality is that Lebanon is a state that cannot control its own territory.  So, the power vacuum in Lebanon, particularly in South Lebanon close to Israel, is exploited by other groups who have different plans, not necessarily in the interest of the State of Lebanon, which has always been really too weak to control itself. It's a very chaotic place. So, in the late 1970s, the group that took over the border area was the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization], and they started launching attacks against Israeli territory that eventually pull Israel into this invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It's meant to be a relatively short operation to push the PLO back from the border. And, as we know, it gets incredibly complicated, and Israel gets stuck in Lebanon for 18 years and only withdraws in 2000, at the very end of my own military service. And, if that sounds a lot like Iraq or Afghanistan to American ears where you have a specific threat, you have a mission that seems simple, it seems limited in time; and then you go in and it becomes something incredibly complicated. And, within a few years you're fighting enemies that you weren't even aware of when you first went in: this is a very similar situation. In fact, I think in many ways it was the prototype of the wars of the 21st century. But, that's what happens: Israel goes in to fight the PLO. The PLO is essentially defeated, fades away; and then is replaced by a different enemy, which ends up being a more potent enemy, which is Hezbollah. Which is this Shia militia, at first quite small and raggedy, eventually one of the most formidable military forces in the Middle East. It's an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards using the Shia minority in Lebanon to fight against Israel. And, Hezbollah gains in power as the years of the Israeli occupation continue, until the year 2000 when Israel basically says, 'We're losing more soldiers than this is worth.' The idea was to be in South Lebanon to create a buffer to protect the Israeli border. And, we had a strip of land in South Lebanon with these outposts--Outpost Pumpkin being one of them. And, we were losing a lot of soldiers in the outposts. In the convoys going to the outposts we're getting hit with this hit-and-run warfare, which now seems very familiar, which at the time was quite new. Roadside bombs, rocket attacks. Suicide bombing is pioneered in the Middle East by Hezbollah. So, South Lebanon really turns out to be a laboratory for the warfare of the 21st century. Of course, we didn't understand that at the time. And, in 2000, Israel blows up all of the outposts in Lebanon and pulls out, hoping that that will bring quiet to the border. And that hope, as we know, turns out to be unrealistic. |
| 8:50 | Russ Roberts: But, I want to talk a little bit more about your own personal time in service in the Army; but first, give us a little flavor of how this 18-year period, 1982 to 2000, how public opinion here in Israel rose and fell. How expectations and realities reared their head, and reality reared its head and changed things. Matti Friedman: I think this is also a question that really answers some American questions through an Israeli lens. My favorite review of Pumpkinflowers when it came out was written by an American military officer who said it was the best book he ever read about Iraq. And, what he meant is that the Israeli experience in Lebanon really foreshadows everything that happens to the United States in the Middle East after 9/11. So, Israel goes in with this great confidence in the ability of its military to solve this problem. The PLO, which is the enemy in 1982, is a far less significant force than the Israeli military. And Israel says, 'Okay, we're going to go in and we're going to solve this problem militarily.' And then, it turns out that being stronger militarily doesn't necessarily mean you're going to win, because the enemy won't fight in the way you want them to fight. They're going to use every tactic that will work in their own interests, of course. And, the fact that you have nuclear weapons and fighter planes and warships--it doesn't matter if the battle is being fought in the alleyways of refugee camps or in the bushes of South Lebanon using hit-and-run tactics and psychological warfare and suicide bombers. So, Israel learns that. Israel is much stronger than Hezbollah, but eventually Israel gives up after 18 years and says, 'This is not worth it,' and leaves. And, the Arab world and the broader Islamic world sees this happen in 2000 and interprets it--I think rightly to some extent--as a victory. Proof that you might not be able to beat Israel directly on the battlefield; but if you wear down a western society with casualties and if you psych them out with propaganda warfare with the use of video, which Hezbollah pioneers--they start filming their attacks and broadcasting them. That seems completely obvious to us now in 2024, but they were among the first to do it. They realized that if you can get your own propaganda videos shown on the enemy's TV stations, you will erode the morale of the enemy. And, that actually happens in Israel. And, we can talk about a specific incident where I think it really starts happening, which happens at our outpost, at Outpost Pumpkin, in 1994. But, this package of tactics--the ones I mentioned: side bombs, suicide attacks, rockets, psychological warfare--it really defeats Israel. Or, it brings Israel to the point where the maintenance of the war is no longer in Israel's interest. And Israel pulls out in 2000. And then a year later, 9/11 [Sep. 11, 2001] happens and the United States is drawn into this series of wars in the Middle East, and the same tactics and the same kind of strategies are applied against the Americans. The time span is eerily similar. The 18-year time span in Lebanon is echoed in many ways--not to the minute--but it's very similar to the time span that we see in Iraq and Afghanistan, where of course the Americans are much stronger than anything that can be fielded in Iraq or Afghanistan. But, ultimately America is worn down and leaves. And, that makes Lebanon in the 1990s, which is the subject of this book, and my own very small experiences in one corner of this war, which is in itself a little war--it makes them interesting as the first war of the 21st century. I think that we thought Lebanon was actually the last war of the 20th century. That's how we interpreted it because the peace process was happening and Clinton was the President and things seemed to really be going in the right direction. And, we thought there were some little details that needed to be wrapped up, and we would soon be living lives of peace and liberty across the Middle East. And, we thought Lebanon was just kind of the end of something. But it wasn't. It was the beginning of something. It was the new way of war. And, the only people who were there to see it were these very young Israeli kids like me. I was 19 when I went into the Army, and of course we didn't know what we were seeing. And, all this is apparent, but only in retrospect. |
| 13:13 | Russ Roberts: I want to talk about that event in 1994. Before that, I want you to just describe the terrain where you were and that the Israeli Army was fighting in, and where they're fighting now. As a newcomer to the Middle East, I see videos of Gaza and they're very easily described. They're cities with bombed-out buildings, cleared roadways, sometimes repaved by the Israeli Army for various reasons. We see strings of refugees who have been told to move away from certain areas. They're walking with their families, with carts and donkeys. It's--as an outsider, not in the Army right now, I don't know how widespread that is. It looks pretty widespread. It's pretty devastating, what Israel has done in Gaza to recover the hostages and eliminate Hamas. We'll talk at the end, I hope, about whether that's a viable strategy. But, when I see the Lebanon videos from here--watching typically on social media--all I see are really bad tunnels. Not as nice or as big as the ones in Gaza. Clearly had better engineers, more money. I see them getting blown up, though, on social media; and I go, 'Well, I think that's good.' We find lots of stored weapons and preparations for an invasion that thank God hasn't happened so far. But, there's a fundamental difference between a Western army operating or an advanced army operating in Gaza--which is an urban environment--versus what Southern Lebanon is like, which is the northern border of Israel. What's that like there? What's the terrain like? And, when you were sitting in that Outpost Pumpkin, what were you doing when you were sitting there? What were you seeing? And then what were you experiencing when you had to leave it for various patrols and adventures? Matti Friedman: I arrived in South Lebanon at the very beginning of 1998 on an Israeli military convoy. Pumpkin was north of the Israeli border. We had to drive for about half an hour--40 minutes or so--in this very heavy convoy. And then we arrived on this hilltop. And, I remember jumping out. When I arrived there for the first time I had this heavy radio on my back, and I jumped out of the truck and landed in a puddle. Because it was winter, which here is the rainy season, and everything was muddy. I raised my head and looked out at this landscape, which was one of the most beautiful places I'd ever seen. I mean, it was green, because in the winter everything here is green. And, there were different shades of green, because you had the green of the slopes and the green of the olive orchards. And there was a river running near the outpost. We saw the white peak of Mount Hermon, which was visible from the outpost. One of the highest--we call it a mountain. I don't know if it would really qualify for people living in the American West or in the Alps or anything, but we call it Mount Hermon, and it has a snowy peak. So, it was this incredible, dramatic landscape. And, the drama of the landscape was heightened by the danger because we were told immediately upon landing that every stone there could be a concealed bomb, and there could be a Hezbollah fighter hiding behind every bush. And that, of course, made it more exciting. And, our vision was sharpened by the chance that anything could happen at any given moment. So, I still remember more than anything else the beauty of the landscape. And, there were these picturesque villages nestled on the slopes. And, as you were describing, it's not an urban landscape. It's very much a rural landscape with villages. Outpost Pumpkins sat on this hill opposite a fairly sizable Shia town. The Shia, I guess I should say for listeners who might not be familiar, the Shia are a big part of the Islamic world, but a smaller part than the majority of Muslims who are Sunni. And, there's an old rivalry between the Shia and the Sunni. In Lebanon, the Shia are the biggest religious group. There are many different religious groups in Lebanon. The Shia are the biggest of those groups, but they're not a majority of the Lebanese. They're the biggest minority in Lebanon. And, they're the group that produces Hezbollah. So, they're the group with which Israel is concerned in the years of the security zone in South Lebanon. And, the outpost looked out over this Shia town, which was basically a Hezbollah stronghold; and they would come out of the town at night and fire rockets at the outpost, or they would shoot mortars sometimes from inside the town or from the outskirts of the town at the outpost.And they would come up the wadis--up the dry riverbeds--from the town, and they would plant bombs for our convoys and for the different military vehicles that were moving around near the outpost. So, I still remember the landscape in part because I spent so much time staring at it. Most of what we did at the outpost was guard duty, which involved standing in these fortified positions just looking out at South Lebanon. Which is really not something you do very often. Often, usually you're going somewhere or working on something in some way. And, we were just standing there. And, we had no cell phones: there were no smartphones at the time. To the best of my memory, there was no computer at Outpost Pumpkin. It was almost like a World War I level military outpost. It was guys with machine guns standing in a trench, looking out, waiting for the enemy. And I can close my eyes and I can still see the landscape because I spent so much time just looking at it, waiting for something to happen. |
| 18:49 | Russ Roberts: So, what happened in 1994 before your arrival at Pumpkin? Matti Friedman: At the very end of October 1994, there's an incident at Pumpkin, which we were told about when we arrived because it was a way of scaring us. Our commanders wanted to make sure that we wouldn't fall asleep because of the routine--because we're exhausted, because most of the time nothing happened. And they told us this story about something that happened at the end of October 1994, which was a sleepy Saturday morning at the outpost. Very little had happened at the outpost up until that point. And there was an attack by Hezbollah against the outpost. And, fighters came up the hill, reached the outpost. The garrison was quite small and was in complete disarray. And, the Hezbollah guys get up on the embankments of the outpost and they kill a soldier and they throw grenades into the outpost. But, that actually wasn't what was important about the attack. What was important is that they came with a video camera. And, this is 1994, so this is before anyone really realizes what a media war looks like. The movie Wag the Dog, if you remember, which has some really interesting points about the Gulf War and the dawn of video as a weapon of war. And, this is all happening in the early 1990s, so it's right around that time. And, people hadn't quite figured out exactly what it meant. So, the Hezbollah guys understood much better than the Israeli Army did, that it doesn't matter if you capture the outpost or not. It's not Iwo Jima. You don't actually have to capture the island in order to take that famous picture of the Marines with the flag. You can just take the picture, and release it, and use it to kind of get your supporters excited and to wear down the morale of the enemy. And, that's exactly what happens. They come up with a video camera. One of the Hezbollah guys gets up on top of the outpost and plants the flag. He plants the Hezbollah flag in this very dramatic moment--very reminiscent of Iwo Jima--and then they run away. So, they don't capture the outpost. They don't even try to capture the outpost. Very little happens in military terms other than the death of a soldier. And that's tragic, but not a major strategic change for the Israeli Army and South Lebanon. But, the same day they broadcast the video. And, in the video it looks like an incredible victory. It's really dramatic. You see the Hezbollah fighters advancing toward the outpost, and you see the explosions, and there's martial music, and then it culminates in the planting of the flag. It's worth saying in 2024: This is before reality TV. It's hard to even imagine. This is before social media. So, the whole idea of using video in this way--this is before the ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] videos and this is before everything, basically. And, this is one of the first examples of a terror organization using video in order to cause morale damage to the enemy and in order to agenda more support for itself. And it works beautifully. It's a huge event. We called it the 'Flag Incident at Outpost Pumpkin.' In late October 1994, I wrote an article about it a few years ago for Tablet, which is called "The Birth of the Terror Selfie." And it's about the understanding by Hezbollah--again, light years ahead of Israel and America--that if you have images and if you have video, that it can be used to balance the gap in power between a small and scrappy enemy and a seemingly powerful enemy. And, of course, the same tactics were employed against Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan and in many other conflicts. But, one of the first times that it really worked was at our outpost on that Saturday morning in 1994. |
| 22:28 | Russ Roberts: And how does your time there--you leave--when did you leave? Matti Friedman: So, my last tour at the Pumpkin ended--must have been at the very end of 1999, if I'm remembering correctly. And then, a few months later in the spring of 2000, it's my company--I wasn't there at the time--but, it was my company that blows up Outpost Pumpkin on the night of the Israeli withdrawal. So, Ehud Barak, who is a left-leaning army general, is elected Prime Minister in 1999. And one of his campaign promises is that within a year he will pull the Army out of Lebanon, because the security zone in Lebanon has become very unpopular for the Israeli public. There are high casualties. There was a big helicopter crash in 1997 that killed 73 soldiers on the way two outposts in Lebanon. One of them was Outpost Pumpkin. And, there are ambushes. And, the Israeli public is very sensitive to casualties. And I guess that's also worth saying because this is a very small country and it's mandatory military service. So, the deaths of soldiers here are felt very acutely, as they are now. And the numbers then were much smaller--smaller than they are now. But, in a way it doesn't matter because the psychological impact of the death of a single soldier can be equivalent to the death of many soldiers if you have a photograph of the soldier on the front page of the newspaper. So, every few days or weeks, there would be the photograph of a soldier killed in Lebanon. And, because it's just one or two soldiers each time, you can absorb the human tragedy in a way that it's much harder to do with a hundred soldiers or 200 soldiers. So, the casualties in Lebanon were felt very acutely and people basically wanted to finish it up. And in the 1990s, Israelis had the idea that we could withdraw our way to a peaceful resolution to the conflict. A lot of Israelis supported different territorial withdrawals. Of course, we were withdrawing from cities in the West Bank throughout the 1990s. Ultimately we withdraw from Gaza. And, that was supported by a majority of Israelis. And, the Lebanon withdrawal was part of that idea: that, if our enemies want land--and we interpreted Hezbollah's demand as being a demand for South Lebanon, which was legitimately being occupied by Israel--that demand was interpreted as legitimate, even though of course Israelis saw Hezbollah as an enemy. But, there was no question that the Army was occupying South Lebanon. And, the interpretation of their demand was that if we give them South Lebanon, then they won't have any more demands, and the border will be quiet. And, that's a misunderstanding of Hezbollah. And, it's a misunderstanding of the Middle East. But it was a prevalent one in Israel at the time. And, that's how we get the withdrawal in the spring of 2000, which Israelis interpret as being a good move. To this day, I think most people would say it was a good move. Although the events of the past year have once again raised the question of whether or not it was a wise decision, based on everything we've seen in South Lebanon since the spring of 2000. Russ Roberts: Just so listeners know: How many people are in that outpost, roughly? I think you might think, listening, that there were a few hundred. It's small. Matti Friedman: I remember, writing the book--it's small-- Russ Roberts: It was very small-- Matti Friedman: I remember writing the book and trying to figure out how many of us there had been. I think there were probably, say, 60 soldiers, all told. A small platoon or two of infantry, two tank crews, some cooks, some logistics guys, a mortar crew. It probably worked out to about 60 soldiers in my estimation. I mean, in the whole security zone at any given time there were probably a thousand Israeli soldiers. We had an allied force that served alongside us--that was also part of the very complicated picture in South Lebanon--which was that we were working with a local force called the South Lebanon Army, which was allied with Israel. In practice it was a proxy militia, more or less working for Israel. And, it was made up of Christians from South Lebanon, Druze from South Lebanon, and even Shia from South Lebanon, even though our enemies were Shia. But, there were Shia fighters fighting alongside Israel. And that was part of it. So, some of the outposts in South Lebanon were actually manned by Lebanese fighters. And just as a parenthetical aside, I had a reminder of this wrinkle in the story called the SLA--the South Lebanon Army--yesterday, because a rocket hit the town of Nahariya yesterday, which is the northernmost town on the Israeli Mediterranean coast that hasn't been evacuated. And, it happens to be where my parents live. So, I follow events in Nahariya very closely. Nahariya is getting hammered by rockets every day--rockets and these small drones that Hezbollah has been firing. And yesterday too, civilians were killed in Nahariya, and one of them was a member of the South Lebanon Army. He was a Lebanese guy who had fought alongside the Israelis and who escaped Israel after the withdrawal in 2000, which is true of several thousand SLA fighters. And, he'd been living in Israel ever since. But, his whole life has been defined by this war against Hezbollah. And yesterday a Hezbollah rocket killed him. So, I was reminded of that part of the story which I address in Pumpkinflowers, but really deserves more attention, I think, than I gave it. |
| 27:46 | Russ Roberts: So, when you left and when the IDF [Israeli Defense Force] left shortly after that, what were your emotions as someone who had suffered--spent an immense amount of your youth, percentage-wise compared to other things that people do at that age who were in college and doing things that are much more carefree? What thoughts did you have and how did you feel when that final withdrawal happened? Matti Friedman: When we were in the Army, when the public pressure for withdrawal started to build, there was a protest movement that is calling for the Army to pull out of Lebanon. And it's run by mothers--which is also a very Israeli phenomenon. I think it was called The Four Mothers. That was the name of the protest movement. And, it was run by the mothers of combat soldiers. And, they were calling on the Army to pull out and the government to pull out the Army, saying we're losing people for no reason. If we pull out of South Lebanon, then the war in South Lebanon will be over, which is the way a lot of people were thinking in the 1990s. And, I thought that was true. So--or--I should back up. I thought that was true after I got out of the Army. When I was in the Army, I thought as most of the other soldiers did: that mothers should not be making military decisions. And of course, when we were in these outposts, we had to believe that our presence meant something. That we were defending the country. When you're a soldier, you can't really have the kind of political complexity you can allow yourself when you're a civilian. Things have to be quite clear. So, we would stand in this outpost; we would look into Lebanon. We were the northernmost Israelis. We were the last Israelis before the enemy. And, we would look behind us--we would look down toward Israel and far away across the hills of South Lebanon; we would see the lights of Metula, which is the northernmost town in Israel. And, we would be reminded that we were defending the country with our bodies. And that was very clear to us at the time. And, the thought of withdrawing sounded crazy to us because if we weren't in Lebanon, then the terrorists will be on the fence. They'll be attacking Metula from a few yards away. We have to be a buffer between the Israeli towns and Hezbollah. As time went on and I got out of the Army and I started thinking about things differently, I thought that the mothers were right. That the protesters were right. That, the presence in South Lebanon was the problem, not the solution. And that if we weren't in South Lebanon, then the war would be solved. And, I think that's a very Western way of thinking, which was reflected in the way many of us were thinking about the West Bank as well: which is the Palestinians want a State alongside Israel. I think that's a legitimate desire on their part. If we give them territory, they will build something great on that territory, and we'll all be able to move on to a more equitable and prosperous future. And that makes a lot of sense, if you come from a place like Canada, which is where I'm from. And you look at subsequent events in the Middle East, and you really have to wonder. I mean, we pull out of South Lebanon and that's not interpreted as a move toward peace. It's not interpreted as a magnanimous move. It's interpreted as weakness. And the enemy sees it as an opportunity to hit you harder. And, within months of the withdrawal in the spring of 2000, Hezbollah attacks over the border, kills a bunch of soldiers, kidnaps two of them. They ultimately turn out to be dead. But, that happens in the fall of 2000. And then, there's another war in 2006 that's also precipitated by a Hezbollah attack along the border--attacks that would not have been possible had the Army been in the security zone. And of course, Israel pulls out of Gaza, thinking that this will be an opportunity for the Palestinians to build something great in Gaza without the Israeli occupation. And instead Hamas takes over Gaza and attacks us harder from Gaza. Rocket-fire from Gaza goes way up after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. So none of this follows the plan that Western or liberal people had in their head throughout the 1990s. So, my own thinking on this--as a Western person who is basically, you know, left-leaning or somewhat of liberal sympathies--my own thinking on this has changed quite dramatically over the past 20 years and even over the past 13 months of the current war. Russ Roberts: We recently spoke to Haviv Rettig Gur about this period of history going back a little past this time and coming up to 2006. And, your experience mirrors what he was talking about. |
| 31:59 | Russ Roberts: One of the most extraordinary parts of the book, and one of the really finest military reads that I've had the opportunity to read is: You go back to Lebanon after Israel withdraws. It's an insane passage. I called it 'military'--there's nothing military about it actually, except that it happens to be a part of the world that you had been a soldier in. And, that makes it all the more powerful and poignant. Tell us what happened. Matti Friedman: I recently had an opportunity to rethink all of this--both my military service and my return to Lebanon. Because, as you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, there's a new audiobook of this out, which I read a month or two ago. So, I actually sat with the book for the first time in many years and read it out loud for this new audiobook. And, I was thinking about my younger self--the much younger version of myself who was in uniform and ends up in this very complicated war that seemed simple to me at first and got increasingly complicated the longer I spent in it. And then, my return to Lebanon in 2002. So, about two and a half years after the Israeli withdrawal, after my own company blew up Outpost Pumpkin, and we thought this was all over. I found myself still preoccupied with what had happened and I was having a really hard time just understanding why we had been there and what Lebanon was and why no one seemed to remember it. And then, I decided that the way to kind of complete the circle or come full circle would be to go back to Lebanon as a tourist. In fact, when we'd been soldiers in Lebanon, we used to joke about coming back as tourists because it was so beautiful. So, we would say, 'We're going to come back here one day when there's peace,' and 'We're going to hike in the mountains of South Lebanon,' and 'We're going to float on inner tubes down the Litani River.' These were just jokes. I don't think anyone really took it seriously--except me, because I'm Canadian. I have a Canadian passport and I can go to Lebanon. As a Canadian you can visit Lebanon--which is impossible for Israelis. For Israelis viewing Lebanon, it might as well be the moon. There's no way to visit Lebanon. Just as Israelis look at most of the Middle East, and it's completely off limits. So, the idea of crossing that border was not realistic for anyone in my platoon except for me. And, the idea wouldn't leave me alone. So, I went to Hebrew University the fall after the withdrawal, which is also the fall after my own discharge. And, I went to study Middle Eastern Studies, and I took every Lebanon course that I could take, and I studied Arabic. In the fall of 2002 I took my Canadian passport, flew back to Canada, and then from Canada, flew to Lebanon. And, spent about two weeks in Lebanon as a tourist--as a Canadian tourist. And, I was in Beirut and I was in northern Lebanon in the area of Tripoli. I was in the Christian stronghold in Mount Lebanon. I was in the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek, which is currently in the news. It's where a lot of the Hezbollah headquarters and camps are located, and also many other things like a beautiful Roman ruin of an incredible temple. And, lastly, and most importantly, I went back to South Lebanon. But this time I came from the North. I wasn't traveling on an Israeli military convoy from the South: I was coming in a minivan taxi from the North. And I explored South Lebanon for a few days and actually managed to get back to Outpost Pumpkin--which was the goal of the trip, to get back to the ruins of the outpost, which had been blown up two and a half years earlier by my friends. And, I did. And, it was quite an experience. To this day it was one of the defining experiences of my life. It didn't do what I expected it to do. So, my ideas about completing the circle and seeing Lebanon through civilian eyes and maybe coming away with some optimism--none of that materialized. But, I did learn a lot; and a lot of it is in Pumpkinflowers. Russ Roberts: It's hard not to cry, actually, listening to you now and remembering reading about what you felt and experienced in this moment, especially because there are actually people talking--with probably unrealistic expectations but you don't want to shoot them down completely--that: you know, why couldn't a person in Beirut come have dinner in Haifa? And, why couldn't a person in Haifa take a weekend in Beirut? There's no reason that Israelis should be at war with the Lebanese. None at all, in some abstract sense. And, the fact that human beings who live on the Mediterranean Sea in very similar terrains, slightly hilly--not quite mountainous, lots of olive trees. The border is not--I was going to say it's not visible from space. Actually I think it is, because the Israeli side, in many of these situations, is much greener. I'm going to be the economist here for a minute. There's more private property probably, and ownership and so it's taken care of and farmed in different ways. But fundamentally, it's the same landscape. It's not like all of a sudden you cross the Latani River and you're in a different world. It's the same world. It's the world that these peoples who are here have lived in for millennia. Millennia. And so, I just would just suggest that--I love the idea that someday it might be different. I don't know if it will be after this war, but I'd like to turn to that. But, before we do any comments you want to make? Matti Friedman: One of the most striking things about my visit to Lebanon was the realization that it was a version of Israel. So, I spent time in Beirut. And, this is 2002, so this is a while ago already; but the Beirut that I saw was very similar to Tel Aviv. So, you have the beach and you have mini-skirts and cell phones and sunglasses, and then you cross the street and then suddenly all the women are wearing long black robes and there are pictures of bearded clerics on the walls. And then you cross the street again and then you're back in some liberal part of town with bookstores, which is a lot like Tel Aviv. And, you know, the driving is terrible. The food is great. This combination between--it's a bit Western, it's a bit Middle Eastern. You've got the Islamic world pressing in on you, you've got your eyes looking west toward Greece and Cyprus. And, the people were very similar. It really, really felt very familiar. And, since then that's really stayed with me. When I was traveling in South Lebanon you can actually see the continuation of the rail line that we have in Northern Israel because the rail line used to run up the coast through Haifa--through my parents' town, Nahariya--all the way up to Beirut; and much of the rail line is still there. So, the tunnel that crosses the border has been blocked, but it wouldn't be too difficult, engineering-wise, to open the tunnel and have a rail line going to Beirut and that would make a lot of sense. As you say, these are two very similar countries, mercantile societies that could do a lot of business with each other both economically and culturally. It's really tragic that that has not happened. And, the last thing I'll say about that is that the idea that Lebanon is an alternate Israel has really stayed with me and really came to mind in the year of social unrest that we experienced before October 7th. Because, Lebanon for me isn't just a neighboring country, and it's not just a threat--although of course it is both of those things. Lebanon is an alternative future for Israel. Lebanon is what happens if you can't hold your country together. If you don't have a strong enough story to bind your citizens to each other. If you don't have a shared narrative. If you don't have people committed to the state. If you have people more committed to their ethnic groups or to their clans or to their families than they are to the state, then your state will collapse as Lebanon has functionally collapsed. Lebanon is essentially a failed state where the military force is not the Lebanese Army: It's Hezbollah, which is run by the Iranians. And there, but for fortune, for Israel, if we're not careful, that's what's going to happen. And, I had the chance to speak at the protests against the judicial reform before October 7th, and that's what I said. I said, 'The future that we have to be worried about is the one that we can see north of our border.' Because, if you understand that Lebanon is similar to Israel, that's not just a reason for hope. It's a reason for caution. [More to come, 40:45] |
| 40:45 | Russ Roberts: Actually, I was planning for us to talk about a shared narrative. I hope we get to that. So, I moved here three years ago and I'm watching the news, and I know we were in Lebanon in 1982. Israel was. I know something about the history of the country, the Middle East, back to 1948 and beyond. But, it's not in my bones the way it is, in the people who have lived here for a few generations or longer. It's not in my bones the way it is in yours. And, I'm going to give you my newcomers/Twitter minute and a half summary of what the last 13 have been like as a visitor. As a newcomer--not a visitor, but a new arrival. In Hebrew it's called an [foreign language 00:41:39]: a new person who is come up to the land. So, the October 7th is unimaginably horrible. And, for months and months after that, with the exception of a very brief moment of joy when we swap--very painfully but very voluntarily--prisoners for hostages, there's no good news here. And, the greeting that people say frequently now isn't Shalom when they depart apart from each other. But, [foreign language 00:42:16]: Good news. Meaning: May we hear good news. There's none. There's just the steady deaths of--there are fewer than we had feared in Gaza, but there's just death after death. And, in the North, where Hezbollah had started shooting rockets on October 7th and a half or whenever it was, tens of thousands of Israelis have had to evacuate. Your parents being a very, very unusual exception. But, tens of thousands of families with their children have left the North and are in hotels or houses or elsewhere in Jerusalem and spread out around the country. It is quite bleak. And, in the last two months or so--I lose track of time. And while there have been unbearable tragedies and death in that period, there's also been finally some good news: Israel pulls off one of the greatest military feats of all time. Eliminating an enormous number of Hezbollah commanders through this ridiculous, way too absurd for Hollywood, pager operation. And then, they systematically kill every single commander in the Hezbollah [?]. Including. to my shock, a Saturday night after the Shabbat ended, my wife says, 'Oh, we killed Nasrallah.' 'What?' Unimaginable. At the same time, Hamas leaders are killed in Tehran through an operation that is hard to fathom. We're not quite sure what really happened there. But, in a very--again, I'm sure it'll be a movie someday. And then, finally we kill Sinwar--the mastermind behind all the pain that we and his people have experienced. There are now videos of people in Gaza streaming out of wherever they've been--the refugee stream that I was referring to earlier--of them cursing him out for what he's brought. In the West, it's a debate about whose fault this is, whether Israel's response is too cruel, disproportionate. There's all kinds of horrible propaganda, I think. But, understandably, I'm biased about the viciousness and zeal of the Israeli Army. But, finally some good news! And, to the extent where Israeli military spokespeople say--well, a few days ago the Defense Minister said, 'We've won. Hezbollah is eliminated.' Earlier they had a fearsome arsenal of 150,000, I think. rockets that were thought to be much larger and more accurate than Hamas's, instilling an enormous amount of fear in my circle of friends that Tel Aviv and Jerusalem would both be struck. None of that happened. So, on the surface, Israel has won. We've knocked out their commanders. Not just their commanders. The entire management team is gone, including the leader. And then, you find out that, you know, this isn't the first time Israel has had this kind of victory and so-called victory. It doesn't seem to end things. And then, the fundamental question is: Is this time different? There's still rockets raining down on Israel every day from Hezbollah, even though they are in theory a headless snake. A headless Medusa. What do you think is next? Is this time different or is that just my foolish, naïve, Western, American optimism? Matti Friedman: No, it's not, Russ. It's not your naïve, Western optimism. I think that after such a terrible year and after, again, this--like you said--this stream of awful news starting on October 7th--to this day, we have to remember that we have a hundred hostages we've been unable to return. We don't know how many of them are alive, but quite a few of them are still alive. Another hostage video was released earlier today, and we have Israeli citizens who are located not more than a mile or two from our border who we've been unable to return. And their families are in agony. And Israel is getting hammered with rockets. And, I just know that from my parents because they spend much of their day these days in their safe room whenever there's a rocket siren. So, there's a strange dissonance between the incredible military success of the past few months, particularly against Hezbollah, in this sense that the war continues. And, Hamas has been largely defanged; and Hezbollah has been, as you said, decapitated, but they still have the capacity to fire rockets, even if it's far less than we--can be expected. And, I should be the first to admit my own--I think error would be too strong a word--but I was among those who warned that the war with Hezbollah was going to be much worse than the war with Hamas; and that's what I was hearing from inside the Army. And, I wrote a story about this for the Free Press maybe six or seven months ago, which said, citing people who follow such things from inside the military apparatus, that the war against Hezbollah would be like the war against Hamas and Gaza, but 10x. It would be 10 times the intensity of that war because of the size of the Hezbollah rocket arsenal and the fact that Hezbollah is a much more disciplined military force that's much closer to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. And, the series of absolutely brilliant Israeli actions against Hezbollah in recent months have changed that picture completely. So, we are getting hit by rockets from Lebanon, but the Israeli Army is operating in South Lebanon, blowing up all of the Hezbollah infrastructure along the border. Israel has clearly penetrated that organization to an extent that none of us imagined; and they've taken out the entire leadership. And, whatever the leadership is replaced, Israel takes out the replacements. And, it's been absolutely incredible to see. And, it's restored our faith, I think, in the military, which was shaken gravely by October 7th. And, we feel like we're back on the horse. And, at least we might not have ended the war, but at least the wind has shifted in our favor. But, I think that there is an understanding that we are playing whack-a-mole with Iranian proxies. That we're pretending that our enemies are Hezbollah or that our enemy is Hamas, or that our enemy is the Houthis in Yemen or the militias from Iraq who fire drones and rockets at us periodically, when in fact the alliance against Israel is being run out of Teheran. And, one of the main points of misunderstanding for Western news consumers about this conflict is the idea that it's an Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is the way it's framed in Western news outlets. And, I know that because I used to work for one. I was a reporter for the AP [Associated Press] for about six years, and that's the way we framed the story: as if it were in Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If you think it's an Israeli-Palestinian conflict, nothing here makes sense. Why is Israel fighting Iranian proxies in Yemen or in Iraq or in South Lebanon? And, I think that it's increasingly clear that there won't be a conclusive end to this without a very significant strategic change vis-a-vis the Iranians, whether that's toppling that regime or more likely whether it's striking them so hard that they're unable to extend their power and influence to our borders. Iran is a thousand miles away from Israel. It's nowhere near Israel. And, they have an aggressive military posture toward Israel. It's based on a religious interpretation of--their interpretation of their religion is that the existence of a non-Muslim state here is forbidden and is a terrible humiliation for them. And they are committed to destroying the State of Israel, and they're very open about it. And, they need to pay a price for that that changes their strategic calculus and renders them unable to operate their proxies, whether it's the proxy in Yemen or the proxy in Lebanon or the proxies in Gaza or the proxy in Iraq or the proxies in Syria. And, that can't be done by just striking the proxies. And, we're seeing that kind of heart of the war really become apparent in recent months with for, the first time, direct attacks by Iran against Israel and direct attacks by Israel against Iran. And, that cycle has not ended yet. And, we'll see what happens with the new American Administration. We'll see what happens in the next couple of months before the new administration takes power. But, that's the heart of the conflict, and that is both the scariest part of the conflict because we're talking about more major power than Hamas or Hezbollah. But it also holds the possibility for a real, strategic change that could bring quiet to the region or at least something close. |
| 51:20 | Russ Roberts: So, I'm going to challenge that--part of that--and see what your thoughts are. Haviv Rettig Gur was on the program--has talked about it in a couple episodes actually--that the fundamental misperception of the Palestinians is that we're, here in Israel, like Algeria--like the French and Algeria. That: They just make it costly enough for us to be here, we'll leave. Forgetting that there's no France for us to return to. Now, you could, in theory, go back to Canada. I could go back to the United States. Over half of the Israeli population has no place to go for sure. They're from Iraq and Iran and Yemen and elsewhere, and they can't go back. There's no 'back.' And, many of us don't want to go back. That's a separate issue. Or, if you're Dutch and you came here, suddenly the events of the last week don't make you want to go back to the Netherlands. So, that--Haviv's interpretation is: there's a fundamental strategic error on the part of our enemy that is hampering our ability to come to a understanding. I think he's right. Mostly. But we, too, have a misunderstanding. And, our misunderstanding is, 'Oh,' to quote you, you said, 'We just have to change the strategic calculation on the part of Iran.' Well, I'm not sure--the Palestinian miscalculation is, 'Oh, we make it costly enough they'll leave.' Our miscalculation is, 'If we make it costly enough for them, they'll leave us alone.' That's what we're doing in Gaza, right? Instead of--just a phrase I repeated and do with some distaste--but we used to just mow the lawn. When Hamas would shoot rockets or tunnel under a border well before October 7th and do horrible things: 'Okay, so we'll go back. We'll hit them. We'll punish them.' And, similarly in the West Bank. And, after October 7th, we realized--or somebody realized--that you can't just hit them: you've got to take them out. Then the next question is, will they just be replaced by something else? But, at least you're trying something different. So, it's a different kind of whack-a-mole. But, is that really a viable strategy when it's not a strategic issue for them? It's a religious issue. Is it really feasible to say to Iran and its proxies: 'Oh, we'll just make it unpleasant enough for you to be holding this religious belief.' It isn't generally--it's not usually a cost-benefit analysis. So, what's your thoughts on that? Matti Friedman: I think you're right. And, I think that that's often a tough part of the picture here for Westerners to grasp. Because, if you come from a secular society, then you tend to think people are motivated by economic factors. I remember at the AP having these discussions where I would quote Hamas leaders saying that the Quran says that the existence of a Jewish state is an abomination and Israelis have to be murdered until they submit or leave. And they would say, 'Well, what are they really saying? Do they really want some kind of equitable two-state solution on their own terms? Is this an economic complaint? Is it about water rights?' And, I would say, 'No. They mean that.' These are religious people. They read their scripture, they interpret it in a certain way. And, if you come from a religious background, whether it's Jewish or Christian, you kind of understand what they're talking about. And, those beliefs are not negotiable. It's not religious rhetoric that's hiding some other kind of claim that Westerners can understand. It's deeply felt. And I've seen it over the Middle East, I've been here for almost 30 years. And I've been here long enough, and I've been hit over the head by the Middle Eastern stick enough times, to understand that they mean what they say. Actors like Hamas mean what they say. And the same is true of the Iranians. But, that doesn't mean that they will always have the abilities that they have. And that doesn't mean that they don't respond to force. In fact, I think in the case of actors like this, they respond only to force. So, for example, the Houthis have been firing rockets in Israel and they've been interfering with international shipping in the shipping lanes in the Red Sea for the past 13 months. The weapons that they're using are Iranian weapons. The Houthis are this very kind of low-level group from Yemen. They're not manufacturing their own missiles and drones. They're getting them from someone. Hezbollah did not manufacture its own immense rocket arsenal, and they didn't train themselves. They didn't get their own weapons. Those were given to them by the Iranians. So, they might maintain the motivation. But if they don't have the weapons and if they don't have the organizational capabilities, then they won't be able to deliver the damage that they could a year ago. And, it doesn't mean that they'll go away or change their mind; but, say, if we buy ourselves 20 or 30 years of relative quiet, that will be pretty good. And, I think we're on the right track in that regard. And, I think we've been held back to some extent by the American Administration. I think that will change and we'll see if we use that change wisely. I'm not sure: I have very little faith in the current leadership of Israel, and I don't think we really have a clear strategic goal. I think that the strategy of the war has been run very poorly, even though the military side of the war has, certainly in the past couple of months, been run very well. So, we'll see. But, I think that without a real price paid by the brain of the anti-Israel alliance--which is Iran--we won't see a dramatic change. And, I think that if they do pay a price, we will see a change. And, that doesn't mean that all the problems will go away. It doesn't mean that the religious motivations will go away. And, it doesn't mean that the Palestinian beef with the state of Israel will go away. This is basically a zero-sum game between two sides that have legitimate claims. And, I'm on the Jewish side; but I don't necessarily think that the Palestinian claim here is illegitimate. I think we have to understand what it is. I think we have to not delude ourselves about what it is. And, I don't think that some military victory against the Iranians will make the Presidents of the West Bank into Zionists, and they're not going to be standing waving the Israeli flag. We're just going to have to live with that and deal with it in a way that is as smart and equitable as possible. That's a strange choice of words, but it's the best one that I could come up with. But, I think that can solve a large part of the problem with a more aggressive approach to the driver of the events and not just to their proxies. Russ Roberts: I would just add that, while that is some folks' interpretation of the Quran, there are more moderate approaches. There are more moderate strands of Islam. I hope to interview some people in the coming weeks or months about that. So, listeners, I hope I can deliver that. Matti Friedman: Certainly, by the way, Russ, that's a very important point. And, another reason to clip the wings of extreme forces in the region is to allow more moderate forces to speak out without the risk of being killed. What's been happening here for decades--you can look back to the assassination of Sadat in Egypt, and there are many other examples--is that voices that would like a more moderate outcome are literally murdered by the extremists. Not metaphorically silenced, but physically silenced. And we've seen it in Lebanon with critics of Hezbollah, and we've seen it in the Palestinian territories. And, if you weaken the extremists--and the voices that you're talking about, which exist, and we've heard them from the Gulf and we've even heard them in Saudi Arabia--we've heard them. They're there. They need to be given space to make their case. And I'd love to see that happen. |
| 58:57 | Russ Roberts: So I want--let's close with a discussion about the issue you mentioned earlier, the shared narrative and the need to create a--I would call it a trusting population. A population that believes that its neighbors are part of the same community. I would just say, before going any further, that if you come to Israel and if you live here--as opposed to being a tourist--and if you live here in a time of great trauma and stress as the one we're living in now, where there's a lot of funerals and a lot of condolence calls on families and a lot of grief that no one should have to endure and that no person should have to carry with them; but we have no choice. Those things are happening, and so we do the best we can. When you come here, especially as a Jew, you realize that Judaism is not so much religion or an ethnic group or a national cause here in Israel as it is a family. And so, much of what makes this country special is that family aspect. I just heard for the second time in my time here of someone being on a bus and a stranger handing them an infant without comment. It's--that kind of thing happens here and things like it happen here all the time. You would hand your baby to a stranger on the bus because you need to go pay your fare or do something with your other kids. And, no one says, 'Could you do me--could I just--could you just hold?' It just happens. No one says anything. And, it's not like, 'Wow, that happened once.' It happens fairly often here. But, more importantly, things like it happen here. And so, there is this unbelievable communal spirit that's saved lives on October 7th, and after October 7t,h and have supported people who have endured terrible tragedy. So, I don't want to minimize that. That's our strength. And, it's clearly missing in the United States in the absence of external threat. This election that just took place, there's 50.1 or 49.8--whatever number it turns out to be--the final number celebrating that Trump won. And, finally, all this 'fill-in-the-blank' is going to end. Fill-in-the-blank includes lots of things. And the other side, the other 49.9 or 47.8, that's a little bit lower--and it's quite close actually: the final numbers are going to be much closer because California votes are coming in late and it's going to close the gap between Trump and Harris's final totals. That other group is just--they're in mourning. And, both sides felt that this was an important election, but there were a lot of reasons why--I tried to write about this. Maybe we'll post a version of this on this episode on the website. But, these are not compromise issues. These are not things like the size of government. The size of government in America, some people think it should be bigger, some are smaller, things should be smaller, tax rates, how much regulation. Yeah, people fight over those things. But, there's certain things that you fight over there's no compromise: Either have it or you don't. In the case of America, I would say an example of that would be a illegal immigration. One side thinks it's really not so bad or even a good thing. The other side thinks it's an incredible threat to the future of the country. And you can't say, 'Well, I only want a portion. I want to reduce illegal immigrants by 10%.' Then you fight it out and eventually come to a compromise. Gender: Some people think there's two. Some people think there's 72. 36 is not a compromise. It doesn't work that way. And we have a similar challenge--now to come back to Israel--with a similar challenge. How Jewish is this country? How religiously Jewish, as opposed to ethnically Jewish? There's not a dial that, you know: One side wants it a hundred, one side wants it at zero, so it'll settle in. Now there are compromises that are possible on this issue. There's ways of having it be local versus national. And, Israel has done a pretty good job living with it. But, this war, when it ends--and in the aftermath of the social unrest that you talked about with respect to judicial reform--a lot of these issues are going to come back here, and there's going to be a debate. Is Israel like Denmark, but Hebrew-speaking? Or is it something closer to Iran, but our theological text isn't quite like theirs? Is there a narrative or is there a politician who could unite this country and whatever comes after--and there's no way of knowing what that landscape will look like politically or militarily with respect to our neighbors. But, internally, all our divisions, which have been relatively subdued--not all completely. Huge fight right now of whether what the ultra-Orthodox obligation should be to the military, to the country at large, which I think is a horrible, horrible failure of leadership on this country's part and our leaders' part. But: Do you have any optimism or thoughts on what comes next for this strange country? We've got very secular Jews, very religious Jews, people in between. We have religious Jews who are okay with the secular world. We have religious Jews who are against it or very uncomfortable in it. We have a native Arab-Israeli population that lives better on material grounds than any other place for Arabs in our neighborhood. But, it's not their country--it's our country, the Jews. It's a Jewish state. That is a dissonance that is relentless. They are 2 million of our 10 million population. What are your thoughts on this whole issue of where this country might head when things do settle down? Matti Friedman: I am optimistic, and that's because of, I guess, my interpretation of the first part of what you said, which is that there's an incredible glue that sticks people together here. And, there's an incredible energy in the country that you don't feel in other places. And, talking about Canada where I grew up or America where I spent a lot of time, this place has an electricity that you just don't feel in other Western societies. And, I think that the country has basically unlimited potential. Why do I think that? Not because I believe in miracles or anything, but because if you look back 75 years, you see that this country was a refugee camp in a war zone populated by post-traumatic refugees who have just been through some of the worst events in human history. And, look at it now. And there's no--if you were an observer, a rational observer standing in 1948, looking ahead--I don't think you could have rationally predicted the success of the State of Israel. And the success is less due, I think, to political leadership than it is to the sheer energy and ingenuity and commitment of Jewish people who were given a shot to have their own state and a home for a change and made it work in the most incredible way. And they did it by building like crazy. And they did it by ignoring lots of problems, and they did it by living with contradictions and not dwelling on them too much. And, sometimes those contradictions really come to the surface. And, there I think it is a matter of leadership because we can live with our contradictions if people believe that things are moving in the right direction. If efforts are being made to smooth the contradictions or to make the place better and bring people closer, then I think people can live with the creaking sound of certain parts of the machinery of the state. And, if you have a leadership that sees those divisions as an opportunity for political gain; if you have this divisive style of politics--which we're seeing here, which we've seen in the States, and we've seen elsewhere in the world--where you take a division and you don't try to solve it, you use it: then this place is going to break apart. And, that's why I think that the country can't really--it might be overstating it to say--it can't survive the current political leadership, but I think if this divisive style of leadership continues for too much longer than you'll see the society split into its constituent parts, which was already happening before October 7th. And in a strange way, the war, which has been maybe the worst thing that's happened in the history of the state, has really drawn us together. It's forced us to work together toward a common cause. It has kind of swept some of the problems under the rug. They haven't gone away, of course, and they're coming back. But, I think that the country, if granted a unifying, creative young leadership has incredible potential. And, if the country limps forward with the kind of leadership we have now, which exploits divisions, which employs this very dark, kind of threat-based political style--which is very much the Netanyahu style--then yes, I have real concerns about the long-term viability of the society. Israeli society is incredibly impressive and incredibly energetic, but it's also very fragile, and it's based on these very tenuous compromises. And something you mentioned, between Jews who see this place basically as a Hebrew-speaking Denmark, between Jews who see this place as the realization of prophecy between a fifth of our citizens who are Arab Muslims, between a lot of people who are just in the middle. And, there are a lot of people who are in the middle, and they're the great hope in my opinion, because a lot of people aren't necessarily secular or religious, or nationalistic or universalistic. They're Israelis. They're living their lives: They're going to work. They'd like some coherent and functional leadership. They're willing to send their kids to the Army, but would like everyone to serve in the Army and would like a responsible security leadership to make sure that no one dies unnecessarily. They understand that war might be necessary given the current state of the Middle East, but they don't want to see cruelty toward our Palestinian neighbors or toward anyone else. And, there are a lot of people like that, and there's a lot of potential there. But that potential is not being tapped because it doesn't serve the divisive style of Netanyahu and of other actors who are unfortunately currently dominating our political scenes. So, I think we really need to see a change there, and I hope it comes sooner rather than later. Russ Roberts: My guest today has been Matti Friedman. His book is Pumpkinflowers. Matti, thanks for being part of EconTalk. Matti Friedman: Thank you so much for having me on again. |
READER COMMENTS
Eric Z
Dec 16 2024 at 9:30pm
I appreciate the thoughtful manner that Russ’ guests bring to the topic of Israel and Palestine, but I don’t think I’ve heard any of them address a couple of issues about Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians that I find troubling: 1) incremental appropriation of Palestinians’ land by Israel and 2) restriction of Palestinians’ access to water. I’ve heard the conflict described as a slow, steady oppression of the Palestinians by Israel until the Palestinians boil over and react violently. Growing up in the Mennonite church, I sometimes heard stories from Mennonites who lived in Palestinian areas about homes being bulldozed to make way for Israeli settlements, boundary walls being moved, and Palestinians losing access to the water necessary for cultivation of lands that their families had held for generations. Are these truthful claims?
Luke J
Dec 18 2024 at 8:18pm
That’s interesting. Sometime back in 2006-2008 I went to a Mennonite church to listen to a group talk about their experience in Israel and mistreatment of Palestinians they observed. For a good decade after I would have been in the #Free Palestine camp. This last year of Econtalk episodes – especially in regards to this conflict – has show me how little I understand about what is going on.
Shalom Freedman
Dec 17 2024 at 12:23pm
After this interview there were historic changes in the situation of Israel and the Middle East. The ceasefire and most likely end of the war with Hezbollah with Israel having, unlike in 2006, the freedom to act immediately against violations of the ceasefire. And most dramatically the fall of the Assad regime and the end of the Iranian ‘ring of fire’ threatening Israel. The implications and uncertainties of all of this are great but if we are focusing on Lebanon then it appears the Hizbollah threat whose development so well described in this conversation is almost completely eliminated.
Dr G
Dec 17 2024 at 3:56pm
I’m a little baffled by Russ’s account of the US election. One, I think “it’s the economy stupid” is really most of the story. Admittedly, he did list this as the first reason. But two, I think a lot of the identify politics Russ is attributes to Trump has deep roots in the Republican party back to at least Ronald Reagan. So the rhetoric may be more extreme in some cases, but this doesn’t seem that new.
And of course there are compromise positions on these issues…
On gender, the obvious compromise isn’t that you need to average 2 and 72. It’s the libertarian solution – What’s going on in other people’s underpants is not really your business. To me this seems incredibly similar to where we were on gay rights years ago.
On illegal immigration, the actual policy is always a compromise. Biden/Harris would have LOVED to reduce illegal immigration, but it’s not that easy. How much money are you willing to spend and human suffering are you willing to inflict to reduce illegal immigration by an uncertain amount? How much damage are you willing to do to the overall economy in the process? Trump will take a more aggressive in reducing illegal immigration, but he’s not going to get it to zero.
Should we be proud or ashamed of American history? Well, probably both. What America has done for liberal democracy around the world has been wonderful. But you also can’t pretend slavery and the near total eradication of Native Americans are just footnotes in our history. This is the “Annie Hall compromise”. Woody Allen is both a revolting person and a great writer/director.
Cindy
Dec 30 2024 at 12:10am
What Russ calls “good news” is arguably terrorism.
In particular, just war theorist Michael Walzer has penned an op-ed, “Israel’s Pager Bombs Have No Place in a Just War”, arguing that Israel’s killing of children, civilian adults, and other non-engaged individuals via rigged communication devices in Lebanon is terrorism.
Similarly, Leon Panetta has said “I don’t think there’s any question that it’s a form of terrorism”.
Is Russ aware of these perspectives?
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/21/opinion/lebanon-pagers-israel-gaza-war-crimes.html
https://newrepublic.com/post/186244/leon-panetta-israel-lebanon-pagers-terrorism
Comments are closed.