Gideon Levy believes Israel’s rampant militarism has infected the minds of its
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Why Israel Wants a War with Iran (w/ Gideon Levy) | Chris Hedges Report
Gideon Levy believes Israel’s rampant militarism has infected the minds of its
entire population. Without an impossible reversal, the Jewish state's
destructive warpath will rage on.
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| Chris Hedges |
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| Mar 26 |
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This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.
As the war between the United States, Israel, and Iran intensifies, the
justifications for its outbreak grow increasingly murky, shifting between
nuclear fears, regime change, and regional security concerns. In this
interview, Israeli journalist Gideon Levy joins Chris Hedges to cut through the
official narratives and examine the deeper ideological forces driving Israel’s
long-standing push toward confrontation with Iran under Benjamin Netanyahu.
Levy argues that the war cannot be understood purely through strategy or
geopolitics, but instead through a deeply embedded national mindset. “War is
always the first option, not the last one in Israel,” he explains, pointing to
a political culture that consistently defaults to military solutions while
sidelining diplomacy. This helps explain why lessons from past conflicts—from
Gaza to Lebanon—have failed to meaningfully alter Israeli policy, even when
those campaigns produced questionable results.
At the same time, the human consequences have been dire. As the region
destabilizes further, Levy emphasizes the sheer scale of displacement caused by
Israeli military actions, noting that “six million human beings…were expelled,
uprooted, displaced from their homes.” In other words, the war’s impact extends
far beyond its stated objectives, raising urgent moral and strategic questions.
Levy goes on to discuss Israeli society itself. He delivers a scathing critique
of the country’s media landscape, arguing that self-censorship have infected
Israeli “open” society. Levy says the press voluntarily “made Israel totally
ignorant about what’s going on on our behalf in Gaza,” insulating the public
from the realities of its own military actions.
As the conflict with Iran threatens to spiral into a wider regional war, Levy
remains deeply pessimistic. Without a fundamental shift away from militarism,
he suggests, Israel risks entrenching itself in an endless cycle of
violence—one whose consequences will ultimately extend far beyond the Middle
East.
Chris
For four decades, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been lobbying
the United States to go to war with Iran. Previous administrations, Republican
and Democrat, have refused, in no small part because of fierce opposition
within the Pentagon, which did not view Iran as an existential threat and did
not project a positive outcome for the United States or its regional allies.
Donald Trump, encouraged by his inept negotiating team of his son-in-law, Jared
Kushner and fellow real estate developer and golfing partner Steve Witkoff,
each fervent Zionists, however, took Israel’s bait. Britain’s national security
adviser, Jonathan Powell, who attended the final talks between the United
States and Iran, dismissed Kushner and Witkoff as Israeli assets. Joseph Kent,
who resigned from his position as the director of the National Counterterrorism
Center to protest the war, wrote, in his resignation letter that, quote, Iran
posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this
war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. The public
rationale for the war on Iran since it began on February 28th has been protean.
Is it to shut down Iran’s nuclear program? Is it to thwart Iran’s ballistic
missile program? Is it because the United States carried out preemptive attacks
on Iran, as Marco Rubio said, to ensure the safety of U.S. assets once Israel
decided to strike? Is it because the Iranian government carried out lethal
repression, killing hundreds of anti-government protesters during the massive
street protests? Is it regime change? Is it an attempt to shut down Iran’s
so-called state-sponsored terrorism? Or are these subterfuges for something
else? Certainly Israel and the U.S. seek regime change, but here it appears the
United States and Israel may diverge.
Israel also apparently seeks, as in Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Lebanon, the
disintegration of Iran, the breaking apart of the country into warring ethnic
and religious enclaves, the transformation of Iran into a failed state.
Persians in Iran constitute roughly 61% of the population, with various
minority groups who often suffer state repression making up the remaining 39%.
These ethnic groups include Azerbaijanis, Kurds, Balochs, Arabs, and Turkomans,
along with religious minorities such as Sunnis, Christians, Baha’i,
Zoroastrians, and Jews. The shattering of Iran into antagonistic, ethnic, and
religious enclaves would leave Israel as the dominant power in the region,
giving it the ability to, if not occupy its neighbors, directly control and
subjugate them through proxies, part of a long-held desire for a greater
Israel. It would also make it possible for foreign states to control Iranian
gas reserves, the second largest in the world, and its oil reserves, 12% of the
global total. Now that Israel has the war Netanyahu has dreamed of, what are
Israel’s ultimate objectives? How will those objectives be achieved? Is the
dream of a greater Israel possible or even realistic? And are the objectives of
Israel inimical to the interests and security of the United States? Will the
war, rather than see the Iranian regime crushed, spawn something far more
deadly, a prolonged regional and perhaps even international conflict, one that
will create havoc in the global economy and potentially draw in China and
Russia?
Joining me to discuss why the Israeli government has long sought a war with
Iran and what it hopes to achieve is the Israeli journalist Gideon Levi. Gideon
writes a column for the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, that often focuses on the
Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories, his latest book is The
Killing of Gaza: Reports on a Catastrophe. And you can see an interview I did
with Gideon in September 2024 about his book on my YouTube channel entitled
“The Looming Catastrophe in the Middle East,” which I guess Gideon turns out to
be pretty prescient. But let me, you know far more than I do. Let’s go back,
you know Netanyahu, this has been a four decade long project. Why has Netanyahu
been so intent upon it? What do you think he hopes to achieve by having drawn
the United States and Israel into this war?
Gideon Levy
So first, thank you, Chris, for having me again. It is very hard to find one
answer to all the very good questions you raised, because we can’t get into
politicians and statesmen’s’ minds. What motivates him? I think that it’s a
combination. First of all, we have to look at the mindset, the mindset of
Israelis and the mindset of Netanyahu, which in many ways reflects the Israeli
mindset, namely always to look for an enemy, always to feel persecuted, always
to victimize, always to feel we are the David and there is some Goliath who is
going to exterminate us and to push us to the ocean. Iran paid its share
because Iran, ever since this regime is in power, didn’t stop threatening
Israel, only in words, but in very tough words. I mean, there is the big Satan
and the small Satan. They kept on saying it day and night. And that’s a good
excuse or justification, if you want, to perceive Iran as a danger. The
question is, was it or is it a real existential danger? Even if nuclear Iran is
an existential danger. That’s an open question. Now, why did he go to this war?
It’s a combination. You many look for the answer in his personal ambitions and
personal world, namely he’s facing charges in court, he’s facing elections, he
wants to leave his heritage in history and failed until now, this was for him a
claim to fame. But I would give him more credit than this. And I think that he
really believed Iran is an existential danger to Israel. And the only problem
is that in his world and in most of the Israelis world, the only answer for
danger is the military answer. There is no other answer. It’s beyond the scope.
It’s beyond any place even to take it into account. War is always the first
option, not the last one in Israel. And you saw it in Gaza and you see it now.
And last sentence, two and a half years we conducted one of the ugliest wars in
Gaza. What did Israel achieve there? The goals were very similar: regime
change, the fighting against the demon (?). Is Israel more secure now? Did
Israel achieve its goals in Gaza? As I think that we didn’t, why not to draw a
lesson for this? Isn’t it enough? I mean, Gaza is not Iran. Hamas is not the
regime in Iran. This is a total different scale. We failed with Hamas. So why
do we think we will succeed there? But for Netanyahu, it’s a different mindset.
Chris
And I mean, you’re right that this is, and of course we’re watching this
massive assault on Southern Lebanon at the same time, 1 million Lebanese
displaced. It appears from a distance that what they’re doing to Southern
Lebanon is attempting to replicate the complete obliteration of communities and
dwellings as they did in Gaza. And Iran, unlike Hezbollah, unlike Hamas, has
been able to inflict damage on Israel. Can we begin to use the word overreach?
Is Israel just going too far?
Gideon Levy
I think Israel went too far with Gaza already. It doesn’t start now, it starts
in Gaza. It was an overreaction out of proportion on any criteria, legal,
moral, and practical. And now it’s just a continuous, again, it’s the same
mindset. Right now when we are talking, Chris, there are six million human
beings in the Middle East, who were expelled, uprooted, displaced from their
homes by Israel. Six million. One million in Lebanon, two million in Gaza,
three million in Iran. I want to stop for a moment and ask, does it make sense?
Is it acceptable? Six million people. Let’s put aside all the circumstances.
But does anything justify replacing the uprooting six million people at a time
who have no alternative? In Gaza, for sure not. In Gaza, they lost everything.
In Lebanon, part of them lost everything. In Iran, I guess they’ll be able to
get back to their homes, but what is it? And for Israel, everything justified
the goal.
And there are even no questions, neither in the Israeli society. Not only there
are no questions or doubts, it’s illegitimate. I guess you paid attention to
this North Korean figure that 93% of the Israelis support, the Jewish Israelis
support this war in Iran, 93%. Give me one example of one subject, one topic
that you’ll get, you’ll reach such an majority in a democracy. 93%, that’s
North Korea or maybe Belarus. This cannot be in a democracy that 93% of people
will think the same. But in Israel, when it comes to war, it’s always reaching
a majority. And when it comes to diplomacy, to compromises, to peace
negotiations, to peace treaties, it’s so much harder to gain a majority.
Chris
You wrote a column, I think it was titled, Everyone Here or Everyone in Israel
Has Gone Insane, but you’ve also written quite scathingly about the Israeli
media as just a propaganda machine for war.
Gideon Levy
Even worse than this. I think the big shame was in the Gaza war. Then it
reached really the bottom of its last remains of dignity and professionalism.
Gaza, as you know, was not presented in Israeli media for two and a half years.
Nothing. Except for a few small outlets. You had no idea anyone in Kansas saw
more of Gaza than anyone in Tel Aviv. Now, they did so, and this is the
criminal side, they did so voluntarily. It’s not because of political pressure
by the government, not by the secret services, not by the military. Israel has
still a free media. But this free media has decided that for commercial
reasons, we are not going to bother our readers or viewers and we are not going
to let them know anything which might bother them. And 1,000 babies killed in
Gaza is something that most of Israelis don’t want to know. So we will not tell
them. And 70,000 victims in Gaza is something that our viewers don’t want to
see, so we will not show it to them. And this is the big betrayal of Israeli
media. Now it repeats itself, now in Iran, but in a different scale because in
the war in Iran we know very little and I think you Americans know also very
little. Nobody really knows what’s going on there. We hear all kinds of
official announcements but what is really taking place on the ground we don’t
know. So now we are also in darkness but the real moral darkness was the
behavior of Israeli media throughout the war in Gaza. This is unforgettable.
They made Israel totally ignorant about what’s going on on our behalf in Gaza,
and they made Israel live in peace with everything that happened there.
Chris
Ilan Pappé wrote a piece several years ago where he also blamed the Israeli
education system. He actually called it a form of indoctrination. It wasn’t
just the media in his eyes.
Gideon Levy
He is right, but I think that for the good and for the bad, the media has much
more influence than the education system. Look, I am a graduate of Israeli
education system in different times, obviously. But when I look forward, you
know that until the age of 20, I never heard the word Nakba. I had no idea what
it is. I saw the ruins in Tel Aviv all over Israel. I never asked, what are
those ruins? Who are their owners, where are they? What happened to them? Why
aren’t they with their properties? Nobody told us. We were told all kinds of
things by the education system. At this stage, it’s really the education
system. We’re told all kinds of things which basically conducted or concluded
few basic values that every Israeli gets with the milk of his mother, namely
that we are the biggest victims in the world, that we are the David against the
Goliath, that we are the chosen people. Yes, we are the chosen people and
therefore we have the right to do whatever we want. And that the Palestinians
were born to kill and that’s the only thing in their mind is how to kill us and
to push us away from here. And when you are brought up in such an atmosphere
with all those values, add to the fact that in my childhood, it was a few years
after the Holocaust, so all those things were even more intensified. You get a
very special Israeli, namely an Israeli who is totally convinced in anything
that his army and his state is doing, who is not ready to get any criticism and
immediately labels any criticism as anti-Semitism, who thinks that
international law does not apply to Israel because Israel is a special case,
who believes that Israel is a victim and there is no other victim like Israel
in the world. And that’s a very dangerous—and obviously that we are the chosen
people.
All this mindset is a very unhealthy mindset and you see the outcome now when
Israelis live in peace with Gaza and they will live in peace now with Lebanon.
Chris
Let me ask about Iran. The reports, certainly in the American press, is that
there is a divergence between the Trump administration and Netanyahu. You know,
Trump is mercurial and changes his mind by the minute, of course, but that it
appears that he would like a way, an exit, he’d like a way out. This is not
going well for the global economy or for the U.S., frankly, or probably even
for Israel, but that the assumption is that the Netanyahu government would like
to—they can’t do to Iran what they’ve done to Gaza or what they’re doing to
Southern Lebanon because it’s too big. It’s the size of Western Europe, but
they can obliterate its infrastructure and much of its urban areas to create a
kind of failed state, as I mentioned in the introduction. Is that the goal? Do
you think that is the Israeli goal?
Gideon Levy
I think the Israeli goal is about Iran is quite irrelevant now because whatever
Donald Trump will decide, Israel will have to follow. Israel in this stage,
Israel has no other choice and no other capability. Even from the military
narrow perspective, Israel does not have the capability to conduct a war over
Iran without the American Air Force and the American army. It’s just impossible
even when it comes to something simple like, or not simple like fueling the
jets. We need America. We need America for political support, diplomatic
support, economic support, military support, supply, army, everything. Israel
cannot go on with this war in Iran. And I don’t think that even Netanyahu will
even try. Once Donald Trump, you see already when Trump say what he say, one
day ago about the possibility of ending the war very soon, Netanyahu kept
silent. He didn’t say a word. And if he said something, it was almost
supportive. He knows he has no other choice. What is more problematic is
continuing the war in Lebanon because I guess that Donald Trump couldn’t care
less about Lebanon and he might let Israel continue in Lebanon. And that’s why
but as about the war in Iran, it all depends on Donald Trump.
Chris
Hezbollah doesn’t have the ability to inflict the damage on Israel that Iran
has.
Gideon Levy
This is true, but they can continue with the war of attrition and Israel can
again and started already to occupy more and more pieces of Lebanon and to dest
oy parts of Beirut. We have been in this scenario so many times, never did
Israel gain anything out of it. Here it really repeats itself, detail after
detail, identical again, again and again and never learn and never, and always
think that now it’s the time and this time it will be once and for all. And the
only once and for all is, I wrote once, sorry for quoting myself, the only once
and for all is the Israeli occupation. That’s the only thing which is once and
for all.
Chris
We should be clear that Israel occupied Lebanon from 1982 to 2000.
Gideon Levy
18 years, sure, 18 years since we went out and nothing was solved, not only for
once and for all, even not for few years.
Chris
Well, was even worse Gideon because it created Hezbollah. That’s how Hezbollah
was created.
Gideon Levy
Exactly, exactly. And Hamas was also partly created by Israel. It’s always this
idea that we can change regimes and it always ends up with a worse regime. It’s
always about the assassinations when we are sure that if we’ll just assassinate
12 leaders or 20 leaders, the problem will be solved. And it’s always leaders
to worse successors.
Chris
Yeah. When I first got to Israel in 1988, there was a war against Faisal
Husseini. I mean, imagine this Palestinian aristocrat. And then, course, Fatah
and Arafat. And then taking out, I knew Abd al-Aziz Rantisi, you may have known
him as well. Taking out these scholars, Rantisi was brilliant, whatever you
think of his ideology and Sheikh Yassin, these were the co-founders of Hammas,
and you end up with Yahya Al-Sinwar. So I think this is the point that the
history has shown that these targeted assassinations, I knew Nizah Rayyan as
well, they don’t result in more moderation. They spawn people who are more more
fanatical.
Gideon Levy
I don’t get into the moral and legal question of the assassinations, even
though it’s very hard to ignore it. Because by the end of the day, those are
murders. And though this is a behavior of a crime family, and the media
collaborates with it, obviously, but let’s put it aside. What is the utility of
it? What does come out of it? And the amazing thing is that it repeats itself
systematically, and no lesson is due. Again and again. No, this time it will
succeed. And it fails and will try again. Like a gambler in a casino who is
sure the next time it will go better. And it doesn’t.
Chris
Well, eventually gamblers go bankrupt, usually. At what point does Israel pay
an existential price for this kind of behavior?
Gideon Levy
I think the real danger right now and any friend of Israel or anyone who cares
about Israel should concentrate now on what’s going on in your country, in the
United States. Because in very few years time, we will face a different United
States when it comes to Israel. And it will be dramatic. And I think all kinds
of voices who were not legitimate in the United States until recently, are
becoming louder and louder. And all kinds of questions are being raised about
the taxpayers’ money, about the reason for all this, about the fact that not
always is it clear who is the superpower, Israel or the United States. All
kinds of questions come up now in both parties. This is so interesting. It’s
not only one party, in both parties.
And as I saw that Biden was the last Zionist president, I think in many ways,
Trump will be the last president who will take into account Israel. think the
next ones, whoever it will be, for them Israel will be in a much lower
priority. And then Israel really faces a challenge which it never did. Because
Europe is boiling against Israel, but they don’t dare to do anything because of
the fear of the American administration and the rest of the world, obviously,
and the rest of the world, Israel is already a perished state. And without the
United States, Israel will face a situation which it never faced before, which
might be an existential threat in my view, more than the Iranian nuclear bomb.
Chris
I think one of the things that’s so disturbing, of course, they shut down the
student encampments which protested the genocide. I was in the encampment in
Columbia and Princeton, you know, on a rough estimate, 20 or 30% of those
students were Jewish. So they shut down that protest of the genocide, but you
see rising up on the far right a very raw anti-Semitism, a real anti-Semitism.
It’s not it’s of Israel. It’s criticism of Jews.
Gideon Levy
Absolutely and you know about it much more than I do. just know that those
students in those campuses are the next Secretary of State, the next Secretary
of Defense, the next President, the next diplomats of the United States, the
decision makers of the United States. And imagine yourself that this will be
their mindset. And Israel will face them and it can happen within very few
years. We are not talking about long processes because I think the process is
already happening now. Once Donald Trump will not be in the White House, I
think Israel will really be in problem.
Chris
Talk about the censorship in your long career as a journalist. There’s very
heavy censorship over Iranian strikes. You’re not allowed to film. It’s
completely criminalized. Have you ever seen censorship like this within Israel?
Gideon Levy
So first of all, censorship in Israel in the 50s and the 60s was 100 times
worse. Yes, because the scope of issues that we had to send to the censors was
nothing to compare with today. Today it’s really more or less only military
issues. In those years, the energy policy of Israel we had to send to the
censors. The immigration policy of Israel, I mean… Nothing to compare those who
many times long to the good beautiful Israel forget that Israel in the first
two or three decades was very problematic in terms of democracy. You know the
teachers Arab Israeli teachers had to be approved by the Shabbat by the Israeli
Secret Service teachers in the Arab schools, so let’s not think that now it’s
the worst. The worst was many years ago. Secondly, I would like to argue with
you that the censorship, as disturbing as it is, is not the main problem of
Israeli freedom of speech. The problem is the self-censorship, which is much
worse because to self-censorship there is no resistance. Look, let me be
personal for a moment. I used to be often on Israeli TV, at least once, twice a
week, as a panelist. Ever since the war in Gaza started, was twice. In two and
a half years, I was twice on Israeli TV. This is not censorship, neither by the
government nor by the army. Nobody told them not to bring me to the studio.
They chose to do so because they know that this might make some viewers annoyed
or whatever. This is the real censorship. When you do it by yourself for all
kinds of commercial or because you are a coward and you censor yourself, I see
the main danger. What they censoring now is mainly now the location of the
rockets, of the missiles. I can live with it. I mean, first of all, Israel is
the only democracy in the world with censorship at all. But I wouldn’t, and I
wouldn’t overestimate this. Pay attention also to the ridiculous role that the
journalists are playing. You know that in every, almost every report on TV,
they are proud to say it was approved by the censorship. What are you so proud
about? Nobody asked them to say so, you don’t need to say this was approved. It
doesn’t exist. But the journalists are so eager to show that they are so
patriotic and faithful to the system and don’t raise questions and don’t create
any kind of doubts that they feel they need to say: ook how nice we behave.
Look how faithful we are. For me, it’s shameful.
Chris
I have to say the US press is not far behind. Let me ask about the consequences
of the war on Iran, in particular the targeted assassinations carried out
against the Iranian leadership. What do you expect to come from this? You know,
one has to assume that there would be a pretty concerted effort on the part of
the Iranians at payback.
Gideon Levy
Yes, and they have many motivations to do so. The question is only their
capability. If this regime will continue, I have no doubt that they will make
many more efforts now to get nuclear weapons. Because once they will have the
bomb, this war and many other wars will not take place. Nobody dares to attack
North Korea. Nobody dares to attack Pakistan. Nobody will dare to attack Israel
— Iran, sorry. If Iran has a, that’s obvious. Yeah.
Chris
I just want to interject to say that in the Middle East it was the lesson of
Muammar Gaddafi who gave up his nuclear program to appease the West and look
what happened to him.
Gideon Levy
Absolutely. And Nelson Mandela also gave up some capabilities and rightly so,
but in Israel, nobody thinks about it, obviously. But you asked about the
assassinations and here I must tell you that it follows a long, long, long
policy of assassinating as a strategy, didn’t start in Iran. It starts with the
Palestinians in the seventies. We murdered any possible political leader, not
only military leaders, people like Ghassan Kanafani who was a poet. We murdered
him in Beirut in 72. What danger is from a poet not to speak about any
alternative leaderships, , I mean, you name them. We tried to kill anyone
Arafat got some kind of immunity, impurity, and he survived. And even about his
end, we don’t know everything. But this is a strategy of Israel. And Israel is
very proud about it. I remember, you are young, so you don’t remember it, but I
remember that Bulgaria used to send all kinds of secret agents in Europe who
would poison all kinds of regime resistance with the umbrellas, poisoned
umbrellas in the streets. It was the only thing. I guess Bulgaria never was
proud of it. Israel is so proud, for example, on the operation, the beeper
operation. Yeah, when...
Chris
This is what decapitated Hezbollah. Or I don’t know if it decapitated it, it
certainly, and they killed Nasrella h as well, but you’re referring to these
pagers that, I don’t know, what is it? It was hundreds of people, right, were
affected by these exploding pagers.
Gideon Levy
Hundreds of people lost their organs, not hundreds of people were killed, but
hundreds of people lost their hands, their legs, God knows. Hundreds. In
Israel, it’s a source of pride. And you know, as an Israeli who cares about
Israel, it makes me worry because this is not a healthy atmosphere to live in.
When you are so proud about assassinations or about this page, a cold page, how
do you call the papers? Page cold. The pages. Where does it lead us to? What
will be remembered from us? That we kill?
Chris
Well, didn’t Yeshayahu Leibowitz exactly paint where it leads to?
Gideon Levy
Yeah, but who listens? Who listens to him? You read today what he said, it’s
word by word what he had foreseen. And in many ways, it’s getting worse. And
Leibowitz was really, they demonized him, they dehumanized him, ridiculed him.
And look what a giant, he was a real biblical prophet. But you know—
Chris
We should just be clear for people who don’t know his work. He talked about the
poison of occupation and what it would do internally to Israel to its respect
for human rights, its democracy, by essentially training a population to be
prison guards and undercover agents and assassination squads. And of course, he
was stunningly prophetic.
Gideon Levy
And we are dealing with an Orthodox Jew, a great intellectual who paid the
price for those positions. But you know, we are so far away. Today you can
hardly, today, if there was a label, which nobody would even listen to him and
nobody will even cover what he says. At least then whenever he spoke, he was in
the media. There was some respect to what he says today. He will be totally is
dismissed.
Chris
How do you see—it’s very dangerous to predict anything given the mercurial
nature of the Trump administration—but where do you see the conflict going? The
Iranians have twice negotiated in the 12-day war last June. Their negotiating
teams have been assassinated. The moderates have been assassinated. I think the
message has been delivered clearly to the Iranians that there are no exits,
that they at this point must inflict as much pain as possible. Many people
argue that it doesn’t really matter what Trump or Netanyahu want. The Iranians
are going to make their adversaries pay, and of course, asymmetrically through
crippling the regional and the global economy. Where do you see it going?
Gideon Levy
So first of all, it depends much on the capabilities of the Iranians, not only
on their ambitions. Sure, Iran will want to take revenge and how, but the
question is if they will have the capability because still they are beaten now.
It’s not something that they will recover within a weeks or months to their
same power.
And the question is for the long run, first of all, they will have to make
their choice if they want to continue with the same regime, with the same
policy. I’m not sure this regime is so good for Iran. I’m not sure. And
therefore, it’s really about them to decide. Because between liberal democracy
and this fundamentalistic regime, there is a large scope.
They can change also, you know, gradually, not only in a revolution of one day
become Norway or Denmark. They can also go gradually. And it depends much on
them now. We are still facing a good chance that the war like we face now will
repeat itself in one, two years again. And as it seems now, this is the most
probable scenario. And this will not make people think, why do we those suppose
if it leads us to repeat them again and again, why not to try something else?
Why not to give diplomacy chance? But you know, you can whistle in the
darkness, not much more than that. Same with the Palestinians. I believe that
any of those conflicts could have been solved by diplomacy.
Finally, we are dealing with human beings. In our side, in the other side,
everything could have been solved in diplomacy. I don’t believe that war is
inevitable. I really don’t believe so. I know I sound maybe disconnected from
reality, but I know one thing, we never really tried.
Chris
Do you see that kind of a change? I mean, when Israel seems to become more
messianic by the minute, the settlers have seized control in a way that was not
true when I was in Israel, within the military, within, of course, the
government, within the secret services. The settlers were always pariahs. One
sees Israel not drifting towards a government that you know, would embrace
diplomacy but becoming more more fanatic.
Gideon Levy
Absolutely. And therefore I’m so skeptical and pessimistic. I can’t see any
scenario in which Israel changes its policy because the problem is that it’s
not about the leadership. It’s not now about the people. And the majority of
Israelis support wars, support apartheid, support occupation, and don’t want to
see any change and don’t believe in any change.
So it’s far beyond who is going to replace Netanyahu. We have a problem with a
people who reach the point in which it’s becoming more militaristic than ever,
more religious than ever, more messiah than ever. And those processes are very
hard to stop.
Chris
Are those processes suicidal for Israel?
Gideon Levy
I don’t want to sound too dramatic, I mean suicidal? I never thought that the
question of Israel will exist was ever a relevant question. The only question
is what kind of Israel? And Israel can turn into a place that neither you nor
me will want to have anything with it.
Israel really exists, it is strong and I guess that any American administration
will still not lose totally Israel even though I’m sure the support will be
decreasing dramatically as I said. But the question is what for? I mean if we
turn into, are still wonderful (?) in Israel Chris, wonderful people which
really I can just be amazed how they all still stay here, even though some are
living, but they are really wonderful (?). They are a minority and they
delegitimized, unfortunately. And the tendency is a very negative one,
demographically and politically and socially. You see how things are getting
worse and worse and worse. The settlers take over, the Orthodox take over.
The army that I was fighting against decades ago is much worse army now, with
all the settlers in all kinds of high positions. And the government is a real
fascist government. I can’t find any other way. But you see all the other
systems, the legal system, the education system. You see how system after
system, they change.
How do you stop it? I wish I knew. We don’t have the leadership for this and we
don’t have the people for this.
Chris
Well, your voice, I mean, you can’t discount, for those of us on the outside,
how important you are, Amira Hass and a few others.
I mean, that’s where hope is. And I just, you I lived in Israel. I was overseas
for 20 years. I’m fiercely critical of the genocide and the apartheid. And
however, and this reminds me when you talked about these islands, the closest
friends I made were actually Israeli, left-wing Israelis, but Israeli. And they
were literate and they had a conscience, as you do, and they had the courage to
speak out.
So yes, that’s, you know, whatever flickers of hope, that’s where they lie.
Thank you, Gideon.
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