Please welcome senior
writer at The Intercept, Murtaza Hussain, and staff
writer at The Atlantic, Yair Rosenberg. Please welcome them. [APPLAUSE] I told you guys it was
going to get [INDISTINCT].. Welcome to the show. [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome. The audience-- very rarely
do you get a standing ovation for the guests. But clearly, they
think, Muslim and Jew sitting next to each other? How can that be? But thank you both
for being here. You are both,
obviously-- you're American writers that write
a lot about the Middle East. The peace plan, the
Stewart Plan, as I call it, the Me Too plan-- [LAUGHTER] --and Murtaza, we'll
start with you-- how unrealistic is that? It's similar to a 2002
Arab League resolution. Why? Why can't this happen? Well, you know,
it's not a bad idea. And on paper-- JON STEWART: We're
going to cut there. Thank you so much, Murtaza. [LAUGHTER] So appreciate that. Well, you know, I
think the problem is-- I write about US
foreign policy, especially in the Middle East. And I feel that the
consistent theme here is that when we give blank
checks to countries which are our clients or partners, we
enable their worst tendencies or their worst behaviors. In this case, you know, you
mentioned the Arab Peace Plan. In 2002, the Arab
League offered Israel full political, economic,
diplomatic normalization in exchange for-- the main crux of it is
creating a Palestinian state in the 1967 borders, which is
in line with international law and so forth.
JON STEWART: Right. They have re-iterated-- JON STEWART: And the
Repatriation Plan, which-- Which can be negotiated--
the deal-- the details of it. But that was the crux of it. And you know, they've
reiterated this plan many, many times, including recently. And it's not just
the Arab world. The broader Muslim
world as well too. I interviewed the Pakistani
ambassador to the UN a few weeks ago. And he told me that
Pakistan, Indonesia, other large population
Muslim countries would be willing to
normalize with Israel but they do not want
the Palestinians to be thrown under the bus. There needs to be a two-state
solution in their view, creating a state
in those lines. Without that, they cannot be. But the Israeli government has
never responded to this deal. It's not even rejected. It's refused to engage. And I think the main
reason is because they have the US as a guarantor. Whatever they do, they'll
have a superpower backing. And many people in Israel
want the West Bank. And the Israeli government,
Benjamin Netanyahu has bragged that he's
stopped the Palestinian state from coming into existence. And because they
have this backing, they don't need to compromise
with their neighbors or engage with their
neighbors substantively. So you think the
US backing of that enables this reticence? I think the US putting
itself in this position-- not just this
position, many other situations where
it acts as a blank check writer for its clients. It enables these
situations to play out. JON STEWART: Well, we've
to make money somehow. And without selling
weapons, what are we going to fall back on, wheat?
Come on. Right. Yair, you probably
have a slightly different interpretation of
that peace plan and also what we
laid out here, so-- Yeah. Well, I think that the-- again,
the idea is actually a pretty good one, which is the idea
of put some third party in between these two parties-- JON STEWART: That's what
seems like has to happen. --that would then be
sort of like the referee. The problem is, is that while-- as you showed in
your monologue, the Arab states are
willing to talk a big game. The United States,
and sometimes depending on the
administration, will also talk a big game. But no one actually
wants to put their own troops down there. Can you imagine America under
Democratic presidents who are retrenching from
the Middle East, trying to get out
of the forever wars, or Donald Trump, who
wants to turn America into some sort of
isolationist country, get us out of-- you know,
stops helping Ukraine. Right? They're not going to stick
Americans there, right? The Arab countries,
no different. They'll, you know, give
a token amount of money and then try to
make it go away. And so that's, I think,
the fundamental flaw here. I will say that, if you
took away US backing and said, Israelis, we're
going to put some other people on your border-- particularly, say, Arab
states-- and they're going to be the guarantors
of your security, the Israelis wouldn't
say, well, guess we don't have the Americans.
We're just going to pack it up. JON STEWART: Right.
- Because this is a country-- JON STEWART: Nobody's
going anywhere. Yeah, and also this
is a country that's full of people who
fled other countries, including those Arab countries
because they were persecuted-- JON STEWART: Right. --killed, dispossessed. Right? There's like-- you
know, half of Israelis are now Middle Eastern origin. But two diasporas
don't make a right. - Of course not.
- It's the-- But they won't--
they won't trust it. But let me-- let me--
let me push back on both of these for just one second. [APPLAUSE] So-- and this just
pushes back on both. You know, we get into
this litigation of, well, the Palestinians
and the Arab state, they proposed something very
reasonable to the Israelis but the Israelis
wouldn't do it. And the Israelis say, well, we
don't have a partner for peace and we propose something very
reasonable, but they never do. Doesn't it appear that
no party is incentivized to fix this at the
peril and detriment to the Palestinian people? And here's what I mean by that. Egypt has its border
closed to the Palestinians. These are autocratic
states in the Arab world. They all view the creation
of Israel as a humiliation. If that's where
they start from, it's a very easy kind of
issue to deflect attention from your own dictatorships to
own the so-called Arab Street with anger towards Israel. But the Saudis, UA, they
all do business together. Aren't they disincentivized
to fix this? Netanyahu, whenever he
gets in political trouble, suddenly, there's a war. So who is incentivized
to actually fix this? And isn't the people
who really suffer from all of it just
the Palestinians, who get no regard from any group? No real support. You know, I think that
was the case for some time, but I think that things
have changed in the sense that the Arab countries
are very eager to get this off their plate actually. That's why they had this
Arab Peace Initiative and keep reiterating it. Because they no longer want to
have a conflict with Israel. It's not in their interests. They'd like to move
past it, but they cannot do so in a way which
ignores the Palestinians. And I think that the idea
of the Abraham Accords, for instance, was let's
sidestep this issue and make deals with the
Emiratis and the Saudis and so forth. I was in Saudi Arabia
recently and I was talking to a broad range of people. I think the idea that
the Saudis will make a deal with Israel without
a two-state solution or a meaningful pathway to
one or significant concessions on that subject, it's
very unrealistic. Because-- JON STEWART: No,
that's my point-- Yes. JON STEWART: --is the
two-state solution. But if nobody is
there to just-- everybody has preconditions
for everything. You know, Netanyahu,
I need a partner. If you don't meet these certain
conditions of no violence, I won't negotiate with you. Well, America occupied
Iraq and there was violence there the entire time. I mean, imagine if we had
set a precondition that there would be no Iraqi government
unless this violence would end. Nothing would ever--
it seems like nobody's actually being honest
or genuine in the region about their aims. I would put it a
little differently, which is to say that the people
who are running the show-- That's why you're a
scholar and I'm a comedian. We'll see.
We'll see when it's done. The people who are running
the show for some time-- which is how we arrive at this
disastrous destination-- are these absolutist actors,
who they might say that we'll negotiate and
here's a condition and here's, you know, whatever. They might say that
to some people, but in practice, we see
from, you know, many years of Netanyahu governance, every
single document and statement as you showed of your
people from Hamas, these are people who
want everything, right? They see half of the people
in the land as the problem. And the question is,
how you negotiate-- JON STEWART: The absolutists?
- Yeah, the absolutist. OK. And then there
are lots of people who are also pragmatists. And that's how we had a
peace process that failed. But there were
genuine majorities in the polls at the time, among
Israelis and Palestinians, behind negotiations
for two states. And so there always
are those people. They might be a minority,
they might be a majority at a given point in time. During a war-- right
now, they're a minority. But there's always
those people who say, this is not going to
be solved with weapons. We need to find a
way to live together. But we're not
supporting those people. JON STEWART: How could it
ever be solved if the United States and Israel, the two-- let's face it-- most hated
entities in that part of the world are
the ones responsible for the peacekeeping effort? It doesn't make any sense. No, you have to
have Arab states. If the Arabs don't step in,
if the Arab nations there-- and couldn't you say that
this was a great bulwark against the strength of Iran? Couldn't you convince
UAE and Saudis that the only way
to temper Tehran is by forming this alliance
and recognizing them? Well, you know,
it's interesting. You mentioned that the
US stance in the region is very unpopular. I think it's related
to this issue. This is the core issue
of why the US has not had normal relations with the
Arab world and Muslim world generally. It's a very bitter and symbolic
issue for a lot of people. JON STEWART: We do
have normal relations. We sell more weapons
to the Saudis than we do to the Israelis. On a public level,
or like, you know, only with dictators, for instance. The reason this
democracy is very skeptical in the
Arab world, we're afraid that regimes which are
mad at us will come to power. But I think the main issue,
I think from a US perspective primarily, is that
we're involved in this very bitter conflict. We're not taking it
seriously in solving it. We take a very one-sided
approach, I think. And we do that supposedly
in Israel's interest. But I think what
it does in reality is prolong the
conflict indefinitely, to everyone's detriment. I come to the position
that we should either be fair in this conflict and
adjudicate it in a way which is fair and results in a just
solution both sides accept or we should leave. We should leave
because it impacting us in very, very negative
ways, militarily, economically, strategically. We have other
problems in the world to deal with as well too. And I believe that if the
US were to pull what I'd say is a blank
check from Israel, it would incentivize
Israel to compromise more. Because ultimately, Israel has
to live in the Middle East. That's where the country is. That's where the
people are going to be. Their neighbors who are
willing to compromise with us-- JON STEWART: We could
move them to Maine. Maine is wide open. [LAUGHTER] They could they
could play tennis. - Right, right.
- But I hear your point. But to that, I do
think that the idea that this is all about
the United States, that we are the actor
that drives all the-- I think plays into a myth
of United States control. And I think if we've learned
anything in these last 20 to 30 years of
the United States is, we've got big influence,
but we sure as hell don't have control. And I'm not so
sure that by the US changing its policy in certain
ways that that solves this. What's your thought on that? Yeah, well, I mean, Jon,
that's a very controversial thing to say that
the United States is not the main character
of the entire planet. JON STEWART: And I'm
going to say, you said it and I didn't say it.
That was him. OK. You know, because-- you
know, this is not live, so maybe we'll cut that. JON STEWART: Yes, exactly. [LAUGHTER] But you know, that
is clearly the case. There is this sort of
sense that a lot of people have that the United States
and the president of the United States, in particular,
have the ability to sort of wave a magic
wand and solve these things. If they could, there are
multiple American presidents who would have done so. And they would have
changed the policies and they would have tried. And there were always
people in different factions in the state department. And they tried
different things. You go back to
Eisenhower and Nixon, they all had plans, right? And you know, they pressured
Israel in ways that, you know, presidents today don't. But there's a reason why we
moved in different directions because they thought maybe
if we are more involved. And one thing I
want to say to this, though, is that a
lot of people want to see a solution
in the Middle East, but they also want to see the
US get out of the Middle East. And those two things
are in contradiction. And people are
ultimately going to have to make choices about what
the US does and doesn't do. And-- JON STEWART: Buy
can have influence-- I don't necessarily
have the answer to that. --and not be so
involved in the region. I do think, if there
is-- to your point-- if the Arab states form a more
broader alliance with Israel in a genuine way and that the
United States wouldn't feel maybe that it had to be on
the line there-- listen, I'm no fan of any of it. I think this cycle of
violence over 75 years is destroying the
dreams of two peoples. Not just the Palestinians. I think it's destroying the
dream of the Israeli people as well. And so I think that what
we're doing now, clearly, and what we've been
doing is a cycle that we have to pull out of. And I imagine, you
know, that's the thing that ultimately has to happen. So thank you both
for talking about it. Murtaza Hussain
and Yair Rosenberg. We're going to
take a quick break. I want to come back and talk
to them about one other thing. We'll put that offline. We'll be right back after this. We're back and we're
talking to Murtaza Hussain and Yair Rosenberg. And we talked a little bit
about some of the things that could help break
the cycle of violence in the Middle East. You know, the act of the two
of you sitting here, having this conversation is almost
rebellious or revolutionary in the current moment. How do you counsel
Americans in this moment to be able to,
you know, not lose so many Facebook friends-- [LAUGHTER] --when it comes to all this. Is there any advice
that you guys have? You take that first. Well, the backstory
of the two of us is that we've been having
these conversations for something like 10 years. And the further back story
is that we reached out to each other on Twitter
because we both realized that we shared a lot in
common about how we approach the world, but we
had very different opinions on issues like these. And that's how
we became friends some 10 years ago is it? Yeah, something like that.
Yeah. And so-- [APPLAUSE] We've had-- we've
been doing this over, you know, at kosher--
in kosher restaurants because for Sunni Muslims, many
of them, kosher meat is halal. And so I will take Murtaza
to a kosher restaurant, introduce him to
it, and then we'll have conversations like these. And Jon is just, you
know, interloping. You know, just
sort of-- you know, we decided to let him come. - I'm picking up the check.
- Exactly. There we go. And so and what
it is, we refuse to allow ourselves
or our communities to be held hostage to a ruinous
conflict thousands of miles away that we may never be
able to fully resolve or fix. JON STEWART: Right. But we can have
an impact about how we treat each other here. And the other thing I
would say is that we both are both journalists. And one of the things
that motivates us is our pursuit of
truth and what is true. And we share that,
even when we disagree. It's because we came to
different conceptions and we really believe
the other is honest. Yeah, that's well said. Well, you know, ultimately,
as Yair mentioned, we're journalists. And you know, we
seek out people's perspectives who are
different from you, who see a different world-- see the world from
a different view. And then that's how you learn
about the world a little bit. And I think I have to say
that it's easier for us too, though, because we're not
Israeli and not Palestinian, ultimately.
We're American. JON STEWART: You're
American journalists. And we view it that way. You know, both of us
know people who've family members have been
killed recently-- many dozens, in some cases-- in Gaza recently. And you know, that
emotional component, you can compartmentalize
it when you're not so directly involved. So we're looking at it to
an American perspective. Two different sides of
this issue, in some sense. But we're able to have
that conversation, which is constructive. And what I would
say, you know, I can accept any Palestinian's
view or any Israeli's view when they're so
intimately involved in it. But I can never respect
the bloodthirsty American. That's the only person
I cannot respect. [APPLAUSE] So, you know-- That's kind of the issue. And it is-- you know, I have said
this for many years. One of the biggest
issues I have with American foreign
policy is how cavalier it is about the destruction
that so many of our policies have had internationally. Even something as
simple as, you know, we had a big issue
here with burn pits with Iraqi war veterans
and Afghan war veterans. And we talked a
lot about getting them the help they need here. But the thing nobody
ever talked about was what those did
to the environment in Iraq and Afghanistan. We left. And I think our
policies oftentimes are cavalier to the
destruction that occurs. A report from Iraq-- and
I met so many people whose family members were
killed by the US military or by the violence
that took place in that time. Also it really elevated
rates of cancer and-- JON STEWART: Sure. --other indirect
causes of the war. JON STEWART: I'm sure. And it's kind of not-- it's
kind of forgotten, actually. Those people, their lives
go on, but you know, the impact that we had in
a very cavalier moment-- and to us, we kind of--
the news cycle moves on. So but you know,
those memories stay. And it impacts our
ability to operate there or how we're viewed
there in the future. So it's something
which, you know, it's made me very pessimistic
about US foreign policy in the sense that I know many,
at the end of the Cold War, there was an
optimistic view we can make the world a better place. I think that's
true in some cases. But I'm a lot more hesitant
to get the US deeply involved because there's a very
negative track record. JON STEWART: I think there's
a mythology around sort of the Marshall plan. And it's, you know, after
World War II we said. we were in war with
Germany and Japan and we threw a bunch
of money at it. And now we're the best of
friends and they buy our cars and we buy their cars. And it's all lovely. And all it takes
is a little bit of money and some
American know-how and we can turn the
world into allies. I think we might have
learned the wrong message from all that. I'd also say, from reporting
around the world myself, when you talk to people, this
can have the wrong impact. If you have a great
mythology about yourself and how you fix all
the world's problems, then some people will
say, how can the Americans not fix this problem? And they'll notice-- JON STEWART: And
they believe us? People believe us. Son of a-- And I will say
to them, actually, there are a tremendous
number of incredibly well-meaning people
serving our country, trying to do this stuff. It's just really hard.
But-- JON STEWART: Hearts and minds --there's a certain
story that we've told. And sometimes people really
expect us to make good on it. And there are impossible
promises that we can't keep. JON STEWART: How do you guys
negotiate this pragmatic view within your own families? Because I know within-- you know, there is no-- I can't get five Jews to
agree on anything at dinner. [LAUGHTER] How do you negotiate that
within your own families? You know, I think there's
the personality type that tries to really hear where
people are coming from and speak to-- JON STEWART: How do you get
one of those in your family? [LAUGHTER] Sheer dumb luck or your
dad is a rabbi, in my case. Right. You know, and so that's what
you do, as the rabbi, right? And you're trying to understand
where everyone in the audience is coming from. Your synagogue can be diverse. And there are people
with different political and ideological perspectives. And how do you
tell them the truth and stay true to that,
while also saying-- you know, speaking
to each of them. JON STEWART: Right. And so it's a
type of personality. You see it in different--
there are different kinds of political leaders
and spiritual leaders who manage to do this. And there are others
who feel like, what's the hardest,
sharpest, best viral slogan I can use on
Twitter to own the other side. JON STEWART: Right. And by the way,
when we were younger-- I mean, I won't speak for
you-- we were like that. I was much more hotheaded
when I was younger. JON STEWART: Really?
- Yeah, when we first met-- JON STEWART: You guys seem
the opposite of hotheaded. Like it's--
- We aged a lot. JON STEWART: I honestly-- I feel like I want
this as my screensaver. [LAUGHTER] This is just so
calming to me that I-- [APPLAUSE] What about you? So let me ask you this
then, because that brings up an interesting point. What mitigated the rashness? Was it just youth? What got you guys
less visceral? Yeah, I think getting
older is one aspect of it. But then also, you know,
reading a lot of books, trying to see other
people's-- travel, that has a big impact on I think. Keeping open mind. Trying to treat
others consistently as you want to be treated. Keeping that Golden Rule
in mind as well too. I'll tell you, you know,
you mentioned family. It's interesting because I've
had conversations with family. I have family very spread
out over the world. And you know, certain
experiences can be very resonant with people. I had an uncle who
lives in Pakistan. And you know, he was very
critical of the US war in Afghanistan. He thought that it
was very, very bad. He said-- I think he visited
Kabul and that's kind of what put this in his mind. He said, look, there's
nothing is being built here. It's all falling apart. They're-- didn't
make anything good from their presence there. It's just very exploitative. And then he actually
visited New York one day and he visited the subway
system and he's like, oh, now I get it actually. [LAUGHTER] It's not the-- they're just-- it's not that they
do it on purpose, they just can't do it actually. So you know what I mean? There are moments like that. JON STEWART: That's hilarious.
[LAUGHTER] I mean, you look at-- I mean, this is where we're
getting to the jokes portion, which is hard In this topic. Very hard. And people ask me, like,
how do I conceptualize, like, Hamas has-- what is
it The New York Times says-- 350 to 450 miles of
tunnels underneath Gaza. And it's like, to
think of it this way, it would cost New York
City $648 quadrillion over 268 years to
build that much tunnel. You know, it's just
a really big number. JON STEWART: Well, they
would just raise the price to $1.50 a ride and then-- Problem solved. $2 a ride. I appreciate you both
so much for coming on and having the conversation. And really just
admire both of you, not just for having
this conversation, but your journalism as well. It's really fantastic stuff. So thank you both. Murtaza Hussain
and Yair Rosenberg. [APPLAUSE]
