Miri Eisin
Israel Update
Miri Eisin - Israel Update
- Good evening, good afternoon, good morning, everybody. It was really with such a heavy heart that we are doing this presentation tonight. It is with shock, horror and disbelief that we’re in this situation. We are very fortunate to have Miri Eisin who’s going to talk to us tonight. Miri, a huge, huge thanks for making the time to come onto Lockdown University. Carly, thank you for organising this I know that you are back to back with presentations and people calling on you so, much, much appreciated. So, before I hand over to Carly, I just want to tell our audience a little bit about you. Retired Colonel Miri Eisin serves on the faculty of the Reichman University IDC in Herzliya Israel, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate students and is the new director of the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism ICT on campus. Miri has a deep insight in the intelligence, security, and diplomacy world and is Arena International public speaker. During her 20 years in the Israel Defence Forces, she served as an intelligence officer of a regional board of brigade, as intelligence officer of the Israeli Airborne Division, and as the assistant to the director of Military Intelligence. As a full colonel she served as the deputy head of the Combat Intelligence Corps. After retiring from the military, Eisin served as the Israeli government spokesperson during the second Lebanon war in 2006. And as an international press secretary to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. After retiring from official duties, Miri continues to serve on numerous boards. Miri is married to Gilad and is the proud mother of three children. Today, Miri will give us an Israel update.
Miri, we’re going to have this conversation, but I will say that I know how hard this is and if at any point I think you’re in Jerusalem, but if at any point there are sirens or anything else, we will go with the flow. So please make sure you are safe during this. So thank you for joining us. For me, it was really key that the person who joined us today was able to, however it may be possible, help our audience understand where we are, both from a security and IDF point of view, but also from a kind of bigger picture point of view. So I want to start, you know, a lot has gone on since 6:30 AM Israel time on Saturday morning. And you know, hour by hour, seemingly we are hit by harder news. But perhaps you can give us just a couple of minutes on where we are now at sort of five days in even to the point of, you know, what we are seeing in terms of Hamas operatives, perhaps still inside Israel. I’ll come to some of the other borders later on, but let’s start with where we are in the South.
Okay. So thank you. And first of all, good evening everybody, even though I’m not so good about the good anymore, I kind of say evening or morning. October 7th, 6:30 AM 2023 is a watershed moment for Israel. I’m going to also say for the world in the sense of a terror hybrid organisation called Hamas, doing a combined air, land, sea attack. They didn’t come into attack to conquer. They came in to attack, to massacre and kill. And the Hamas massacre war that started at 6:30 AM on Saturday. And here we are on the fifth day and everybody’s going, “What in the world is going on?” Terrorism is out there to terrorise. It wants to terrorise you, it wants to terrorise me. So then they’re pre-planning what they want to do is to create the havoc and the chaos and the terrorising meaning it’s live streaming, both the different photos so that we see it and we’re scared and we’re paralysed and we don’t know what to do. They’re out there to terrorise. They came in cross border. This was done both a bit from the air and with motorcycles and with tractors. And they literally pushed down the wall and the fence, came across. How about we’ll do this in a year’s time and I’ll talk about the failure of how we didn’t have the early warning. I don’t think that I’m putting it aside for the moment, not because it’s not important, but because in the context right now it’s irrelevant. It happened. And I want to go to the fifth day because we’re in control. Being in control does not mean it’s over. Being in control means that we’re past the stage of that complete chaos that the terrorists want to do. The massacre terrorists of Hamas came in, attacked simultaneously, approximately 30 different sites in the Gaza perimeter area. Anywhere you’ve ever been there was attacked. They did not go in to conquer it. They went in to massacre, torture, mutilate, decapitate, burn in any way you can think of and kidnap and take hostages.
And all of this was done on Saturday and on Sunday. To add into it, they took uniforms from Israeli soldiers that they had killed. And this is part of the pre-planning, so that they were in uniforms. So that when you’re wondering what happened to the Israeli defence forces when they came and they came on Saturday. Part of that chaos and part of what they were doing is that they dressed up in the Israeli soldiers uniforms and they were the ones that when the soldiers came, they just killed them and decapitated them and tortured and mutilated and took hostages. Five days into it, it takes the time because that was done on purpose and because of all of the havoc is that there was a magnificent piece music festival going on there. So that on the one hand you have all of these communities and they were destroyed and destructed and nobody knows who’s alive or dead and the houses were burned down. And this isn’t something that you can resolve in a moment. We’re all wondering, “How come nobody’s in control?” We’re in that sense that the stage where we understand, but we’re still not, you can’t know how to do that when you have, oh God, the numbers, 1200 Israelis from three month baby to 85 year old Holocaust survivors, some taken hostage and the bulk of them murdered in a brutal, horrific way and burned and mutilated on purpose to create the terrorising havoc that we’re living. Because it takes time to identify the bodies and the people themselves.
I mean I have so many friends down there and I’m trying to put that aside for the moment. It’s impossible. Israel’s response is, A to stabilise, as I said, this isn’t about creating order, it’s stabilising and we’re stabilising. But those communities were destroyed, we need to understand that. They’ve destroyed 30 communities down south. When I say communities, Kibbutz, Moshavim, Sderot wasn’t destroyed but hurt. Ofakim, I mean just all these different communities, cities and towns. And Israel started to attack the Hamas infrastructure in the Gaza Strip, which is where they came out of. And that we’re continuing to do. Different from the past, we are going to destroy the Hamas infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. We’ve always asked why we haven’t done so, because it means that we’re telling all of the people in the Shatila refugee camp to leave ‘cause we’re going to flatten it. 'Cause that’s how you can destroy, not flat, I don’t want to kill a single person. If they leave, they’ve gone. This isn’t about the people who are there, but the Hamas terror infrastructure is inside, not just Shatila as an example. And I would give the other names, but that’s what we’re doing now, both from the air and most likely at the next stage in a ground incursion. We still don’t know, not inside Israel, it isn’t that we know around the world, the hostages, what they have or have not done. It’s a terror organisation. They are going to terrorise us with the hostages. When I look at the next few days, it’s going to get harder, which you think is impossible, I think is impossible. But it’s going to get harder because they’re going to torture, mutilate and kill them and show it to the world. And they’re going to kill them, murder them.
And they’re going to do it in a way that we’re just, our hearts are going to be broken and they’re going to terrorise us and we’re not going to succumb to the terror. Hand in hand with Hamas, who was hoodwinking us most likely, very much in cooperation and collaboration with Hezbollah. The big question right now is, when or if Hezbollah will join the fight. The Hamas said that their aim is to free Jerusalem and to kill everybody. That’s the Hamas. They’re there to annihilate the Israeli Jewish people. Hand on hand with all of that, they fired the rockets. The Hamas killed 10 Israeli citizens who are Muslim Bedouin in the Negev. They are killing, you’re Israeli, you should be killed. You are for them in that sense, as I say, a terror organisation. So where we are right now is that we’ve stabilised and we are heavily attacking. Hamas has been building this up for years, we were hood winked. They most definitely in the last few years were quiet and acted as if they wanted to be more cooperative. And we, you know what, we wanted to believe it and horribly because we really do want a better future. We wanted to believe it. Hamas on October 7th showed us they’re ISIS and that’s where we are and we’re not going to allow that to continue to be.
So in terms of the current security situation down south, you know, for those of us who have the IDF command, you know, WhatsApp groups on our phones, you know, we are seeing that there is still a closed military zone and a considerable amount of activity. What are you hearing in terms of the current situation and you know, how the IDF is navigating that?
So there’s no question in that sense. That’s part of the stabilising that the pre-planning itself and what they did means that they sent in many, many terrorist operatives, some of that… I mean we’ve already killed I think 1500, but we’ve always said Hamas has 30,000. And certainly in the first day and a half because they’re dressing up as Israeli soldiers and that additional aspect that happened, the borderline was open for a very long time. So we’ve controlled the borderline. They can’t go back and forth the way that they were doing on Saturday and a lot of Sunday. But we do not know how many infiltrated in and for example are now waiting in sleeping cells to do another attack. Or if they try to continue to infiltrate 'cause they feel right now that they still have the capability. And that’s ongoing right now. So we are much more in the stabilising and control, but everybody needs to understand that being in control doesn’t mean that it’s every single one is gone. This is not a military that attacked a military and that there are engagements now in the battlefield. These are terrorist operatives who came into 30 Israeli communities, hid within them, hid in the fields, hid cachets of weapons, took the clothes so that they could hide themselves and they’re continuing to do so and we’re systematically trying to root them out. So I still think that that’s going to continue to happen. That’s why it’s a closed military zone and it’s very difficult to weed it out. And so it’s not going to end in that sense. It’s going to take time. All of the communities in that area there have been evacuated. You don’t have anybody left inside that closed military zone. They’ve evacuated all of those communities.
And in terms of, without getting deep into sort of military strategy or assessment, you know, what we’ve seen in images is a fairly, I guess you would call low tech, you know, push from Hamas, motorbikes, bulldozers, et cetera. Is your understanding that this involved a fairly low tech approach? There was rumours early on at the beginning that perhaps there was some form of cyber attack. Has anything more become clear in that space?
The initial assessment in that sense, there probably was not a cyber attack at the beginning. I call it terror innovation. How’s that for a term? Terrorist look at what you put up against them and they innovate. And their innovation worked on Saturday morning. It’s a combined way of overcoming all sorts of different type of capabilities. And the low tech, and this actually was, so it’s not cyber high tech, it’s actually low tech because if you fire a gun into cameras, you can’t use the camera. And if you do it also, I mean, again, there’s a whole lulling that goes into it. Sorry, in the last few hours in Israel, there was definitely a cyber attack. I don’t like saying definitely. It seems that there was a cyber attack because a few hours ago, all of the early warning systems throughout the northern command went off and it looked as if there was a massive infiltration of air vehicles into the north. And now they’re saying that it was one of those pro-Palestinian cyber groups. So that is going on. But that was not the heart of the attack on Saturday.
And in terms of looking geopolitically for a moment, the Wall Street Journal, within 24 hours of the attacks printed a pretty robust story that is now, you know, kind of being disputed back and forth about the role of Iran, about whether Iran was supplying as they usually do weapons or whether they had more of a strategic input. There’s also been comments made by key Hamas leaders that has, you know, thanked them in certain ways. In other ways it’s said, you know, we haven’t had to lean on them yet, but we may do soon. What is your assessment so far on Iran and their role here?
Supreme Leader Khamenei, spoke yesterday. And he was joyous because Hamas are just doing such an amazing job. And he said it in a very clear cut way. This is one of those aspects where we’re going to talk afterwards about the colossal failure. 'Cause to be clear to everybody listening to us right now, if I haven’t said so clearly, there was a colossal Israeli strategic failure on Saturday and we have the most amazing civil society on earth. And the IDF I’m not saying in general is like did immense response, but to the type of plan that was executed, it was very hard to be able to do anything in those first 48 hours. So to your question itself, I don’t think that Iran planned a coordinated and executed the attack, but I absolutely think that there is direct and involved Iranian cooperation and collaboration in it. Hamas is a Palestinian Sunni Islamist, terror, butcher organisation. They are not Shiat, they were not invented by Iran, but they are more than happy to get guidance, to get weapons, to get capabilities. They are more than happy, just like in the Hamas charter, just like Mohammed Deif, the Hamas chief of staff who was the one who instigated this whole terror attack on Saturday, said on Saturday and he said, “Go recapture Jerusalem "and kill everybody you see.” Khamenei in Iran has said the same thing. And Hezbollah in Lebanon has said the same thing. So they all call for the annihilation of Israel. And there’s most definitely, you know, I’m looking here and I can see the Lockdown University. And I say that because I have a very cynical, nasty sense of humour. All of our listeners please, I apologise. But I’m like, “We’re just not members of their university.” The terror annihilate Israel University. But the fact that you’re in, you have cooperation and you have allies and you believe in the same goals of annihilating the state of Israel doesn’t automatically mean that Iran is pulling the strings. Iran does state sponsor terrorism. Hezbollah is much more closely aligned with Iran. Hamas absolutely in this sense is more than willing, but I don’t think that this was an Iranian planned event. It just happens to be that for them, they’re all in the same club at the moment. And the timing was right. And I think that in any case, Hamas attacking, if Hezbollah was going to attack, if Hezbollah had attacked, Hamas would’ve attacked. They all want to attack, they all want to annihilate us. But I really, I think there are a lot of different opinions about that and I’m not sure about that one there. I absolutely think, as I said, there’s involvement. I don’t think that they’re pulling all of the strings.
So you’ve touched on Hezbollah who have obviously been agitating in the last 72 hours, depending on the moment, with different levels of severity. You know, the Americans have been incredibly robust in making it clear that nobody else in the region should be considering joining. You know, Hezbollah hasn’t always, you know, hasn’t always gone in. But at the same time this feels like too good an opportunity for them to give up. Where do you see the assessment for Hezbollah over the next few days?
I’m not going to make this easy for any of us. Hezbollah has 10 times the capabilities of Hamas. Hezbollah has been planning, training, showing they the… You want to go see video clips, go into the El Manar website of Hezbollah and see the Redwan force training for what we saw on Saturday happening in the Gaza perimeter in the way that they’ve been describing what they’re going to do to the north of Israel. Now the question is, so why didn’t they start? So here I can get into a strategic assessment and say that Hezbollah want to join, but they want to join when it’s good for them. So element number one, for them they want us to preempt because they want us to attack so that they can respond so that everybody will blame us. So should we preempt? If we don’t preempt, will they attack? Do we want to bring them in by preempting? Maybe we shouldn’t attack. Now I’ll give you the third element. So if we don’t preempt and they don’t attack, how comfortable are any of you or me who lives in Israel going to feel knowing that 10 times the strength of what Hamas has, Hezbollah has on our northern border? I’m giving you all of these context because there’s no easy answer right now, that’s exactly what everybody’s waiting for. Israel, the IDF, all of Israel is much more prepared for the northern front. Now when I say prepared, that doesn’t mean it won’t be horrible, but we’re much more prepared. They’ve evacuated most of the communities that are right on the border itself. Okay, that’s one step. We already saw that they can go in further. But we’ve been thinking of this scenario for enough years though, when it comes to Hezbollah, I don’t want to do the negative. I think that we can withstand it. And again, it’s going to be at a very heavy price. We’re in a horrific war and that’s going to be part of that. But I really do think that there is no easy answer right now to do you preempt and bring them in. And if you don’t preempt and they don’t join, then you have that on the other side of the border. And if you don’t preempt and they start, then they get the advantage of being the ones who have started. Was that too complex? Did I go all over the place in my military terms?
No, we got it, it’s not good and Hezbollah are either going to come in willingly or we’re going to have to bring-
Yeah, it’s not good. Okay, we could just summarise that one there. Have a sense of-
It what we call a British understatement.
[Miri] Horrible times. Yes. Okay.
So I think for some of our listeners, you know, you and I spend a lot of time overly obsessing on some of these things. And I think it’s important to kind of make some kind of straightforward facts. So in terms of, for people who may think Gaza is, you know, under a, to use a loaded term, under a blockade, they shouldn’t have been getting weapons, rockets, et cetera. Where and how are Hamas getting the military equipment from? And similarly for Hezbollah?
Hezbollah is easy. They border Syria for the last decade they have been Syria’s playmate, Bashar al-Assad’s playmate. The truck can leave Tehran and arrive in Beirut. And every once in a while you read about Israel preempting, or according to the international media, Israel preempting and attacking all sorts of different convoys. So that one is very clear cut. Nobody has ever stopped that. Israel may have called it out. And we’ve been doing an enormous campaign to try to stop those weapons. Whatever you do is good, it’s never enough. When it comes to Hamas and the Gaza Strip, very challenging. Is it from the main conduit over the years was via the Sinai Peninsula via the Sinai Desert, the Sinai Desert Egypt, which is the area that Israel had conquered in 56 and in 67 and had given back as part of the Peace treaty, it’s Egyptian territory. In portions of it, it’s a demilitarised territory. And over the years, in a very clear cut way, it was the smuggling path where it would come to the shores of Sinai and smuggled into the Gaza Strip. We’ve had cross-border attacks into Israel from the Sinai Peninsula, including in all the years of Islamists and ISIS type. There was, there’s a whole chapter, the Sinai Province of the Islamic State that was sitting inside there. So they share a 15 kilometre border. So that’s a challenge. By sea, I find it… I’m sure that they try, you cannot hermetically close a sea. And I say that in that sense, certainly Israel has never gone in, now we are. But we always, you let out, you know, there’s the international waters, there’s five, six miles away from it. I mean, as I said, terrorism is innovative. So there’s a variety of ways to do so. We’ve always tried to stop it, but Sinai has always been a really big sticking point because at the end it’s Egyptian sovereign territory. And the question is what you do.
So without becoming political, you know, over the last-
Now, now, now everything’s political. Okay.
Yeah. Well it was, again, I’m British. I was giving myself coverage. So over the last year, there’s obviously been a lot going on in Israeli society. And you know, there has been commentary from Israel’s enemies about their enjoyment of the disagreement between the Israeli tribes as President Rivlin would’ve called them. How much assessment is there going on and how surprised or how important do you feel the new Unity government is with the war cabinet as a way to kind of move forwards and come together and put aside all of that? Or do you think that happened at 6:30 AM Saturday morning and you know, it’s not so important who’s in the war cabinet?
I’m going to split it into two. Israeli civil society is unbelievable. The last five days, what keeps us semi-sane is Israeli civil society. The bulk of the 350,000 reservists who ran, I mean, my house emptied, okay. My husband’s been called up, all of my kids are serving, my house was empty by 8:00 AM on Saturday. And I say that just as an example in that sense, where the bulk of the reservists are people who were at protests a week ago. There’s A, there’s B and there’s big difference between them. The civil society had built all sorts of different structures over the last nine months on all sides. Okay? Everybody had, there’s a lot of things that have been going on in Israel and that’s, you know, that’s a whole social structure which is built also in the different media capabilities, the social media capabilities. And that’s been part of our strength over the last five days. I’m going to be very Israeli upfront and candid and say, “Did I have a functioning government "until this evening when it’s now a unity government?” I don’t know, 'cause I haven’t heard them. I heard President Biden yesterday. I’ve heard the president of the State of Israel talk. I’ve heard-
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett.
I’ve heard Naftali Bennett who’s gone all over. And let me tell you, talk about, you know, just the changing of the way it is. And those are things that we are going to have to deal with afterwards. I personally am very happy that there is a security cabinet and it’s an emergency one. And I want those voices in the room. I need them there to feel more safe. Not because I necessarily voted for these ones or that ones, but I, Miri was appalled by the former security cabinet because that one was one that in its own way, when you are at war, you have to have the broad voice of the capabilities and society in the room. And that was just not representative. And I’m still upset, I find it horrific that in Israel in 2023, you can have Lieutenant Colonel Battalion women commanders who have done amazing things over the last five days and there are no women in the security cabinet. And that is a point that I would like to say to our whole audience. 'Cause I am beyond critical about that. This is about decision making. This isn’t about having all of the generals in the room, that’s not decision making. Okay? It isn’t about what the generals say, you have to have additional ideas. You have to have diversity of voices, you have to have all of your society. And it is so wrong right now that there are no women there.
So, you know, we’ve had readouts from President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s calls in the last 72 hours. Obviously they’re very clearly preparing for a ground invasion. You know, there’s been very robust support from the Americans, both in terms of rhetoric but also in terms of, you know, warships and deliveries of supplies. Again, not asking you to predict the future, but what do you think the next couple of days look like in terms of shifting from stability as you called it, into the next steps?
I’m hesitating not because I’m usually a hesitant person, but because it’s really one of those things that has to do with the decision making that’s taking place as we speak for the first time. When you have a security cabinet that has two distinct, very different voices from what have been in there for the last 10 months. And that’s going to impact the dialogue inside the room, both in the relationship to the United States in what we do and don’t do. How do you deal with hostages? Do you say, “Stop everything, got to deal with the hostages,” it’s an approach, I’m giving you different ideas. And in that sense, I think that what we can look at both with the United States and within this new cabinet is that the focus is going to be, remember I said about terrorising and that the focus is going to be the introduction of Hamas terrorising us on the hostage issue and that the United States in that sense, is going to be part of that, because first of all also US citizens there. But here it’s also that, yes Israel has said, “Leave the neighbourhood because we are going to mow it.” Not everybody left the neighbourhood. Hamas is going to make people stay there and Hamas is going to put the hostages there. So these are all the complicated issues in that sense of where you go forward. The question in that sense is, so what’s the game plan? And I think that the game plan at this stage along the way is do you contain what’s happening in the Gaza Strip because of the hostages? And do something there. I mean, again, we’re not going to stop right now, but there’s different levels of how you continue and do you or don’t you involve Hezbollah into it. And these are things that the US carrier itself, Secretary of State Blinken, arriving here tomorrow. It’s going to be about does Israel continue to attack in the Gaza Strip as it is right now? Because for me, as an Israeli and I’ve been in this for a really long time, we are attacking in a way that we have not done in the past because it’s always the challenge of an urban population and Hamas hiding behind them. And barbaric Hamas that showed its true colours in its true mutilating, torturous, horrific way, We are going to destroy. we’re not going to be able to eliminate and eradicate, but we can destroy that infrastructure and everybody’s going to be very challenged by it. Certainly the United States and the world, it’s going to be hard to hold us back. So I don’t think it’s going to be easy discussions.
So in your role that you’re just, I think you took on earlier than scheduled at-
On Saturday. Yes.
On Saturday. You thought, “Feels like we need a head "of the centre for counterterrorism.” Which is definitely a good call. You know, terrorism has changed. I’m dialling in from New York, you know, in the first day or two, people were referring to this as Israel’s 911, I’ve heard it referred to as Israel’s Pearl Harbour, you know, whatever your comparison is, the message is clear that things will never be the same. In terms of of counter-terrorism and you know, your assessment of what may have changed over the last 10 years and perhaps what the future may look like, you know, once the destruction has gone on, you know, terrorism is as old as time. So no matter what happens in Gaza, I’m afraid the threats are not going to stop. What do you see as on the horizon?
Terrorism is, I’m going to say something that everybody’s going to hate right now, but terrorism is very innovative, okay? It needs to be able to make its goals which are in that sense to terrorise to achieve a goal. The Hamas goal is to annihilate Israel and other terrorists organisations have other goals. I love that, goals of the terrorist organisation. So in the innovation of terrorism is going to, first of all, when I say innovation, they do a lot of copycat and they like to good old fashioned things that work in terrorism, like terrorising us by taking photographs of decapitating babies. They’ll continue to do that. They want to make the impact. What has changed is the virility, I’m not sure if that, what turns viral, things that turn viral on online is their capacity to terrorise way more people in the world quickly. Once upon a time, you know, like you could do that and you’d put out a statement from a cave in Afghanistan and that scared people. And you had to have the photographs of aeroplanes bashing into the twin towers. Nowadays, do you know what they did on Saturday? They live streamed these attacks. Now we could talk on a variety of different things of what that means. And they film them all and have been posting them all. And you can take them off on some of the platforms, but there are platforms where it’s very difficult to remove them and that they’re not removed like in telegram. And so that’s what’s changed is that you have a visual. And the visual has always been a strong part because terrorism and its innovation is all about perception. So looking into the future, you always have to be a step ahead and we will be. I mean it’s funny because some of the researchers and some of our fellows at the institute here I am, five days into the institute, five days into the war. And we’ve been talking over the last two days about, okay, now we have to start talking about the innovation. 'Cause what you said, I mean I’m already talking about it for next week and for the next month because there still will be terrorism and we have to be able to face it and we have to learn not to fight the last war, not to fight the one that took place on October 7th. Okay. That’s that innovation.
By the way, it worked, so it’ll be copycat that one will know how to handle. But already to think about the new way that they’re going to be thinking. And I think the strongest point in that sense is to always be humble. I want to share with our audience something. On Thursday night, I was doing a TV show in Israel that was a half hour show in English on, God Thursday seems a really long time ago, on 50 years to the Yom Kippur War. And it’s one of those shows, you know, everybody has their gimmick and their shows. And in this show, the gimmick that this lovely presenter does was that she always, at the beginning of the show, she has a question that she asks and each of the panellists have 60 seconds where it’s ticking down to be able to answer. And then you go into the show itself. Okay. I gave you the setting, this is Thursday night, it was about 50 years to the Yom Kippur War. And Ali said, and now he’s asking me first 'cause I’m always the only woman. So Ali says, “All right, my question is, "50 years to the Yom Kippur War, "could the colossal failure surprise "that happened in Yom Kippur happen again?” That’s the question we were online, it’s an I24 news. And then she goes, “Miri, what do you have to say?” And I said, “I’m not going to use up my 60 seconds. "This absolutely could happen again "and it could happen tomorrow morning.” That’s what I said Thursday night. And I wasn’t yet the director of the institute. There are human failures 'cause we’re human because sometimes we want to believe things. I mean, in this case, the biggest failure is that we actually thought that Hamas was not the heinous terror organisation that it is.
That was a big failure. One of the other failures we’re hearing talked about was troop deployment. Troop-
But that was part of the way that that was done. Okay. Those ones we’ll talk about afterwards, 'cause that always, not now afterwards as in after the war. Okay? 'Cause there are most definitely aspects, but that to me, that’s not the failure. That’s part of the hoodwinking.
Yeah.
Okay. 'Cause there was something going on in that sense where we were focused in other places. But you need to understand that the failure, your willingness to not have troops deployed on the Gaza border is not necessarily because of what was happening in the West Bank, it’s because you thought that this was not going to happen on the Gaza border. So it’s both. Okay. We can’t just blame the war, it has to do with the way that we were looking at the other.
So you touched on civil society and how they’ve responded, the unbelievable number of reservists flying home. I have several non-Jewish colleagues, one of whom remarked to me today that, you know, she’s never seen people rush towards danger in the way that Israelis have rushed home and will continue to. And the huge lines of blood donations and the cooking and the Koshering of kitchens so that everybody can eat every five minutes to match the horrors. There is a reassuring story of the strengths of Israeli society. However, we are also from here seeing need for military equipment and other things like that that wouldn’t have normally been expected. Can you comment at all on whether there’s been some logistical challenges or whether you hear there are real needs on the ground?
First of all, there’s that sense that nothing’s working, but civil society is backing that up and there’s no question. When you’re caught by surprise and the whole way that that plan was done, I mean, we didn’t have the contingency plan on how you do this for the communities in the south. I need to remind ourselves for a moment, not only were 1200 people slaughtered, but those 30 communities have been removed. So the people who lost, in front of their eyes murdered their parents, their children, their grandparents, there’s nobody to go to. There aren’t funerals to be happening. They haven’t yet identified the bodies. They are evacuated and they’re in a different place. So that’s already going to do a lot of logistic problems. Kibbutz Kfar Aza does not exist. Kibbutz Nahal Oz does not exist. Kibbutz Be'eri does not exist. Those people are in different communities right now. And I want to say those people, the ones who survived the let’s not even the trauma that they’re going through. And they came out, I have so many friends there with one of them who I, every once in a while, you know, she’ll call I’ll cry. I can’t imagine her parents were murdered, her grandfather was murdered. I just, the whole… Okay. And she’s from Kfar Aza. She called and she said, you know, she doesn’t have anything. Okay. Now, there’s a tonne of stuff going out. There’s clothes going on and everything. But you understand they left, their houses were burned down, they were butchered and you can’t rebuild that. Okay? There are tonnes of needs and everything going on. When it comes to military equipment, got to tell you, every single war this comes out. Okay. We don’t have the ceramic vests. So I love it. Okay. Anything you want to help with, you want to help with at the end, it’s always going to be about priorities and it’s always going to be a challenge. The United States of America has so stepped up.
There are aeroplanes of equipment that are coming in. The most important equipment in that sense coming in is way, way, way more amounts of Iron Dome and the different type of interceptors, 'cause there’s still a lot of rockets out there. But everything helps. I mean, as I said, it’s that civil spirit. I live in a suburb of Tel Aviv and most people here, you know, those who are called up are called up. I’m working full-time, but most people don’t have anything to do. So I have friends who know how to cook. So what they’re doing is they cook tonnes of meals and they bring it, they bring it to the survivors, they bring it to the soldiers, they bring it to the, everybody’s out there. But you always need more. And there are specific things, but I think that there are specific organisations in Israel that are way more qualified than me. 'Cause probably what we need the most right now, A is a hug. 'Cause those who survived, really we just need the. And B, we need an awful lot of psychologists because you and I and everybody here, we’re all in trauma. We each handle trauma in a different way. Every single person here is with an open wound that in time may only become a scar. And some of us are just walking zombies. And every once in a while that happens to me too. So these are all things that it’s just in time I don’t even know how we’re going to handle that but that’s for, you know, two weeks time, three weeks time.
So you’ve commented on the support of the Americans watching President Biden yesterday for me and from Israelis I’ve spoken to on the ground, felt incredibly reassuring. And as you say, like somebody has your back. The British Foreign Secretary landed into Israel this morning, straight down to Southern Israel. You know, the British Prime Minister was in synagogue with the chief rabbi. The European and the American leadership seems to be for the moment, clear-eyed on the threat and the way forwards. There are many on this call who feel like they want to do something. I would suspect a lot of that is what they can do as well in their own communities and audiences. So in terms of the discussions and the education ahead to help people understand why Israel is going to have to do what it’s going to have to do, what are the key points you would share?
Hamas is ISIS. This is saying, Miri, who for many, many, many, many years has said, “Hamas is not ISIS.” October 7th, 2023. Hamas is ISIS. The goals are to annihilate Israel. They want to do so by the worst, horrific, barbaric type of attack against human beings. They are inhumane. And I say that because I fully support the idea of a two-state solution. I fully support rights of Palestinians and Hamas is ISIS. This is not about the Palestinian issue. This is about a terror organisation that came in to murder, mutilate and kill people because they are Israeli and Jews and that’s what they were doing, that is the main message. It’s to be done quietly and nicely. And for those people who say that Hamas stands for human rights, I’ll just send them to the photographs of what Hamas show themselves doing. What they’ve done in so many different ways and post it in so many different ways. I very quietly say, I stand with the people who wouldn’t think, I don’t even want to go into the type 'cause you know, we’re the war kinds. But that’s the main issue. The second thing that you all can do and it’s up to you is to have a voice. And when I say have a voice, I fully understand it. But the talk I was doing before I spoke with you is with young Israeli, how do you say the emissaries that are on campuses worldwide. And the campuses right now are a perception battlefield because this is about Israel’s oppression. This is about Israel’s occupation. And my answer to that is, until October 7th, we could talk about the occupation. Hamas is a terror organisation, this isn’t about the Palestinians. This is about Hamas, a Palestinian terror organisation. And its actions are ISIS.
In terms of social media that has become the new front for many. Over the last 24 hours, there were alerts issued of concern about what Hamas may post on TikTok, Facebook, et cetera. Obviously we heard the horror stories of kidnapped, people’s phones being taken and being used to live stream. In terms of how to advocate on social media, where you often get a 120 character soundbite, a 32 second video. And often for young people who may feel, you know, with many influencers doing the kind of, there is context on both sides issues. What do you think is the key messages they should focus on there?
I hate to be so repetitive, but A, Hamas is ISIS, people understand that. B, personal. Meaning in your little thing, give that personal note. The strongest aspect is when you talk about it from your personal point of view. And it doesn’t matter if it’s with a picture or a post and oh my God, not just to say why I’m so horrified and what this means. If you choose and it’s a choice to share the horrific footage, to be able to make the point of look at what they did, then do two things, blur it, because we’re not that inhumane and give warning of content because we’re not the ones who have to say, “Look how shocked you’re going to be.” And people look at it and then we turn into the horrible people who are sharing shocking content. You have to put it into a context. And that context is, blurring it and giving fair warning and writing there. “Oh my God, I know people, "I know people who live there. "Look at what they’ve done to my community, to my friends, "to my soldier, to whatever it is.” Personalising it, but making sure that you give fair warning. That’s the most important thing to do right now in the social media. 'Cause otherwise people are going to say, “Oh, those Israelis, look at what they’re, you know, "they’re sharing all of this horrific footage.” You have to give it the personal context.
So this may be very difficult to do at this moment, but if we step back from the last few days and try and look ahead past a ground invasion, what do you see changing for Israel in the way that it thinks about its neighbours and its close enemies. And there was discussions up until Friday of normalisation with Saudi Arabia of the new Abraham Accords country, some of whom have not been particularly a forthright in their condemnation. Do you feel Israel will assess differently it’s new agreements with Arab countries in light of this?
Not at all. I think that the Arab countries, the Emirates have actually been quite clear that they’re, first of all, I don’t know how to put in this thing. We are hitting Hamas hard, Hamas hide behind the Palestinians. And I’m trying to say that in a nice way we’re killing Palestinians. There’s no question. And we are doing, because we are attacking Hamas infrastructure. That means that right now, there are a lot of Palestinians who are being killed and the voices, which are the usual suspect voices, but those voices are going to come out and condemn that. They’re not going to stand up and say, “Israel has every right to do so.” Having said that, the Emiratis made very clear statements about the horrific Hamas attack. Now, the Saudis didn’t, we don’t have an agreement with the Saudis. The Saudis and the Emiratis and for that matter, Bahrain and those different moderate countries in that sense, they have enormous challenges with Islamist terrorism. So when I look into the future, they are terrified by terrorism as we are, but they’re terrified that attacks like these would happen in their countries. Okay? And so in that sense, there’s actually understanding to what’s going on.
The lip service, it’s not just lip service. Okay? My heart can go out to people who are killed, right now, I don’t have a heart, I have to admit, it was very hardened after the events of October 7th and 8th. But when I look forward in that sense to the different countries, the Abraham Accords, one of the things is that we haven’t had the viral anti level in these different countries all over. Khamenei and Iran I expected. Bashar al-Assad and Hezbollah, but it hasn’t been, I mean, the worst part for me hasn’t been the Arab countries. Aren’t we all appalled at Putin? Putin today came out and supported Hamas, Vladimir Putin. Then I’m like, “Are we surprised?” So really, okay, the butcher supports the butcher. But in that sense, I do think that the potential, and again, it’s very hard to look forward, but to me the potential is that after this ends, we’ll actually have full relations with Saudi Arabia. Not because we just showed that we know how to do everything, but because these kind of terror attacks can happen anywhere. And you know what? We’re all going, “Oh my God, it’s taking five days.” And I’m going, “It’s only five days.” And what we’re getting there and we’re responding and we’re understanding it’s the worst terror attack that’s ever been, ever anywhere. Okay? And we’re still in it. So I know that I’m being, you know, all over the place in that sense. But that’s my glimmer of hope is that when it comes to the threat of terrorism, when terrorism comes out with its real spots, with its real stripes and it shows itself for what it is, then at the end that A, scares and terrorises peoples and governments. But it also brings about new opportunities for cooperation in a variety of ways, certainly here in the Middle East.
So there is an awful lot to worry about now, whether it’s the next couple of days. But Gaza, the picture that we painted for Hezbollah, we haven’t yet touched on the West Bank. Now you can call it a distraction. You can call it a plan. We’ve had a PA official doing the rounds on American television Barghouti in the last few days to the point where I have to leave the room when he comes on. But the PA are at least through their narrative, endorsing Hamas’ actions. What do you see the PA’s role in the West Bank over the next few days and more broadly?
So let’s call out in a very nice way, the European Union, the EU, the old EU that does nothing, stopped the funds to the Palestinian Authority because they endorsed Hamas. That is a big, huge issue. And if the Palestinian authority in that sense endorses… This has to do also with the domestic front because Hamas is showing that they’re active, that they act against the, because again, the terminology and the framing of the other side is that this is all about the occupation and to end the occupation. I’m like, “Yeah, come into Israel "and destroy Israeli communities.” That’s not about the occupation, that’s not the West Bank or the Gaza strip that we left in 2005. Nobody said it’s easy. The Palestinian authority is a very challenging entity, not just because Israel hasn’t helped it, we haven’t helped it. I’m more than absolutely taking part of that on us. But when you have an 86 year old man who’s in his 17th year of his five-year presidency, okay, they’re not a democracy that I don’t even care about. But it’s very similar to all of the other Arab countries in the sense that it’s nepotism, it’s who’s close to him. But there is no legacy there. If Mahmoud Abbas, who by the way, has openly condemned violence, and this week when, because I didn’t hear about Barghouti, but I read what Mahmoud Abbas said, that’s about his own survival. If he right now would condemn Hamas, he would be murdered by his own people tomorrow morning. So that doesn’t make me feel sorry for him. And oh my God. And he had to. There’s an enormous gap. And when you look towards the future, I think that there’s more possibilities for cooperation in the broader Middle East because of Islamic terrorism, which is horrible. What a horrible platform to run on. But the Palestinians are the big losers of everything that’s happening right now. Palestinian people, this Hamas murderous attack is the worst thing that’s happened to the Palestinian people ever.
So in the last couple of minutes, I know you have been on Zooms for hours, and I know it’s late in Israel.
Don’t worry, I still have MSNB, CNC.
Exactly. Exactly. So I do want to give you a moment to grab a cup of coffee and a water. But I wanted to ask if there’s anything else, you have a international audience here of people who wish they could be there with you, but as they can’t want to find other ways to look to help. We are going to be sending, just ‘cause I’m seeing a lot in the chat, a wide list of organisations that the Kosh Foundation has vetted or partners have. We’re going to send that round in an email through the mailing list because we’ve been getting a lot of questions. The recording will be up on the website with a transcript, but is there anything else you want to share with this audience now?
So I’m going to say two things. One, Israelis are amazing because we are at the lowest point you can ever be. And as I said, we’re going to be going lower, it’s going to get harder before it gets better. And what we’ve done is we’re helping each other. And our helping each other is something which is at the basic backbone of the state of Israel after so many months also of everything going on inside Israel, that side, we’re helping each other, that’s who we are. And that’s wonderful. And the second thing is that you’re with us. And when I say you’re with us, I think in the last five days, Carly, I have gotten an email, a message, a WhatsApp, whatever, from every single person that I’m in there that has ever met me. And here I am, you know, I’m working, I’m doing my, I’m like my social, everything is exploding. And I’m like, “All of these people, are you okay? "We’re thinking of you. Are you okay?” Do you know how much that makes us feel better? Because we do feel the isolation. We do feel we’re under attack. And we do realise that you’re hearing a lot of those voices that are saying it’s all about the occupation. And we’re like, “You have to separate that.” Remember what Miri said, “Hamas is ISIS.” Until October 7th, I would’ve said it otherwise. Something changed. We have to talk about it, this is different. This is unprecedented. It is different from anything that ever happened. And I hope that we will come out of this with strength. We’re not going to come out stronger, but we’re going to come out with our strength and then we’ll start to lick the wounds of post-trauma that we’re all going to have to deal with. But that’s in the future.
Miri, thank you. We really appreciate it. I’m going to hand back over to Wendy and we’ll be thinking of you and as best as all of you can, stay safe and we’ll be thinking of your family.
Thank you.
And thank you Miri. Thank you very, very much. Our hearts and our prayers always. Thank you.
Wendy, it makes us stronger knowing that. And as I said, if you know people in Israel reach out, they may not answer you, but they will feel the love. And it’s really making a difference right now. So thank all of you so much for taking the time to listening. I’m going to go battle the battlefields of the media and the framing that I’ve been trying to talk about before. Let’s see how we do there. So I’m going to say from Tel Aviv, everybody. And I’m going to sign off
Shalom.
[Miri] Shalom
[Carly] Shalom.