Alright, well good morning everyone! Out
of respect to all of you, but also out of respect to all of those who've joined us online,
I want to welcome you to this special session of our Israel studies program here at
the Freeman Spogli Institute on the 1973 Yom Kippur War lessons to remember. I'm Larry
Diamond. I'm coordinating the Israel studies program. We've got both of our wonderful
visiting Israeli professors: Amichai Magan and Ori Rabinowitz with us. I'll introduce all four
of our speakers in a moment. Let me begin by just saying the obvious. First, our hearts go
out to the people of Israel and the struggle they have now in the wake of one of the most horrific terrorist attacks, I think, in in anyone's living memory, maybe, the most horrific and to all of the people in Israel, Gaza who are innocent people who've lost their lives. If
you haven't read Brett Stephens column in the New York Times, a couple days ago on how Hamas
is manipulating information and propaganda, this is a little bit orthogonal to what we're talking
about today but I highly recommend it. We need to remind ourselves that the people of Gaza
are victims of their own political tyranny as well. Now back to the theme of our day, I
think you are all well aware that on October 6th 1973, a coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and
Syria launched a surprise attack on the state of Israel, on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, which
had also fell that year on the 10th day of the Muslim holy day day of Ramadan. The attack came
as a shock and an existential challenge to Israel , which was ultimately able I think as we'll
probably hear, to repel the Invasion and drive deep into Egyptian and Syrian territory before
a ceasefire halted the war, 19 days later. Just by way of kind of comparative reflection,
we're now past 19 days since the start of this horrible conflict, 50 years
later, almost to the day Israel was attacked by surprise again. This time, with the brutal
terrorist assault I've just referred to causing the worst single day loss of life since Israel's
creation as an independent state little more than 75 years ago. This attack too was a shock and
like the 1973 War, it found the US and USSR, of course now it's Russia, Iran, China, who knows, supporting opposite sides in the conflict and carrying the risk of a wider war. I do want
to note when we planned this event, it was quite some time ago. We had no idea we would be talking
about a new deadly conflict in the region, 50 years later. Today, four prominent scholars will
reflect on the 1973 Yom Kippur War: its historic importance for Israel's statehood and security, and
the strategic and operational lessons of the war for Israel, and the region which are more timely
now than we even imagined when we asked for their help in organizing and publicizing this
seminar today. I want to thank the Helen Diller Institute for Jewish law and Israel studies
at our beloved partner institution across the bay, UC Berkeley and the Consulate General of the
state of Israel to the Pacific Northwest. We're also very grateful for the promotional
support of the Stanford Jewish Alumni network and of Hillel at Stanford and finally, I can't
thank her enough, Kate Tyminska thank you for all of your work in organizing this as our program
manager of the Israel studies program. Let me now introduce our speakers Professor medini.
thank you very much for joining us from Israel Meron Medzini is Professor Meritus at Hebrew
University of Jerusalem in Israel in 1962. He was appointed director of the Israel government
press office in Jerusalem and in that capacity he served as a spokesman at various times for
three prime ministers: Levi Eshkol, Golda Mei Who was of course prime minister during this
conflict and the one that we're going to be talking about today and Yitzhak Rabin. Professor
Medzini was sent on many speaking missions for the Jewish agency United Jewish appeal and served
as a scholar and residence for the world Zionist organization multiple times for 34 years. Until
2017, he taught courses on Israel Zionism, Israeli politics and foreign policy at the
Rothberg International School of the Hebrew University. His book: Golda Meir, political biography,
won the Israeli Prime Minister's award for books on Israeli leaders for the year 2010. Ron Hassner, thank you for making the very long trip from Berkeley to Stanford, is
the Chancellor's professor of political science and the Helen Diller family chair in Israel
studies at the UC Berkeley so it's our great pleasure to have this among many events we hope
Ron, where we'll be collaborating with the Helen Diller family Center. He teaches courses
on International conflict and religion his research explores the role of ideas practices and
symbols in International Security with particular attention to the interaction between religion
and violence. I think you'll see his work obviously echoing in his remarks today. Ori Rabinowitz
is an associate professor in the international relations department in the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem during the last Academic Year and through this quarter we are extremely proud that
she is a visiting Professor here at the center for International Security and cooperation
her course and Amichai's have been very popular among our Stanford students. Her research interests focus
on nuclear proliferation, intelligence studies and Israel-US relations. Finally, Gil-li Vardi, who is
fortunately, permanently with us as a core lecturer in the history department, here at Stanford,
examines in her research the interplay between organizational culture doctrine and operational
patterns in military organizations. She has deep expertise in all of this and focuses on the
incentives and dynamics of change in both military thought and practice. So, I've just introduced
the speakers in the reverse order in which they'll speak. We're going to hear from Gil-li first and
then Ori and then Ron and then Professor Medzini. We will invite you to reflect on these
presentations. Gil-li, the floor is yours. Thank you very much Larry, hello everyone. It's
wonderful to be here. I can imagine that it's not so much October 1973 war that is
on your mind and therefore I will offer a few topics that we can later discuss in
our Q&A time, but I would like to take you back to 1973. I'll start my words with- Ori please time me.
I'll start my words with an acknowledgement of the very real, mental and physical scars that
the Yom Kippur War left Israelis with and I would like to dedicate my portion of the panel to my
beloved father-in-law who fought in the southern front and is still carrying these scars with
him. Israel lost roughly 2,650 dead and over 9,000 wounded and despite the fact that
we know today that there are you know bigger traumas, it doesn't erase this
one so the the Yom Kippur War is a very deep national trauma but surprisingly it's not the deepest
military trauma. The IDF eventually, when you think about it, after the initial shock, the the Israeli Defense Forces delivered. They delivered exactly what they were supposed to
be delivering according to plan. They repelled. First, they stopped a combined
enemy, a coordinated enemy attack and then they counterattacked. They repelled the attack and
then they launched a counterattack and they brought military victory and this is something
we should remember for later discussion. Now, I'm going to focus on the operational lessons
of the Yom Kippur war, operational, tactical lessons because as we all know, Israel is all tactics,
no strategy, so and that is true and this is one of the things that I'll ask you to keep in
mind because I think this is changing as we speak. The strategic lesson-making actually took
of the Yom Kippur war actually took place somewhere else. It took place here in the US and it gave us
right, it gave a huge incentive for the Americans to change their own doctrine and some of their
technology and eventually it gave us what we call the AirLand Battle Doctrine so first I'd
like to start with the Six Day War, and the War of Attrition. The wars that preceded Yom Kippur and their impact. The six day war I don't need to introduce it to you. It was a huge success for Israel and of course made the IDF quite proud of its achievement, but
it also taught the military leadership in Israel that their instincts are the right ones:
that they should always be on the offensive if if war is coming, that they should always be very
active about it, active to the point of aggression and the other War: The War of Attrition taught
them that the Egyptian- that their enemies right, the Egyptians are unwilling to risk
an all-out war with Israel until something else happens, until they're stronger, until the Russians
with the Soviets will deliver them new weapons until something else happens okay and it
sort of made them, you know, a bit too comfortable. This is exactly the moment, right.
The Egyptian plan was so effective because the Egyptians realized the Israeli state
of mind and they designed their plan accordingly. The Egyptian plan just to sort of as a quick
introduction, the Egyptian plan has two phases right: one phase is surprisingly
right, crossing the canal, establishing a strip and it's not a huge strip. The depth is up to
10 kilometers, which is four miles, I want to say right, some miles. It's not a huge
strip and this strip is very well defended by anti-tank and anti-air capabilities that Israel wasn't aware of it but never planned on fighting or facing this right, and so that's the first portion of it. The plan is limited. It
was never meant to, I said that, never meant to take all Sinai. He said "I don't
need it. I just need one speck. One speck of sand of Sinai, and so establish this
strip and then wait for the Israelis because they knew that the Israelis were coming. The
Israeli Instinct might do aggressive, take the initiative, and attack right, so the Israelis will
will hurl themselves against this imagine, I want you to imagine, right, big umbrellas defending the
Egyptian forces: unseen but very powerful right. And the Israelis will simply destroy themselves
right trying to break into Egyptian lines in the north. The plan is less impressive
it's mostly the Syrians, trust in numbers more than anything, and it's a highly imbalanced
sort of front. It's up to sometimes it's 1 to 60: this kind of imbalance right. And they trust
their forces to simply break through move forward, take back the Golan Heights and take it all
back right, Not a part of it, and then negotiate, no, take all back and then be done so
that's the goal. These are the goals in the North and goals in the South are very different goals. That's a plan and this is exactly how it worked because the knee-jerk tactical reactions on
the Israeli-side right: what's in their operational DNA made them move forward immediately, naturally.
The emphasis is in the North, where they're moving right. The entire idea is to repel what
happens in the North, is that the front itself will break into two pieces, into two big chunks in the
North-Israeli sort of miniature repel in the South. There are forces, there are Syrian forces moving
forward and they're moving forward all the way and then they stop and I'm not at all sure why they
stopped where they stopped, on that bridge. and in the South, right the
Egyptians achieved that speck of sand that strip and then they wait, according to their plan they
wait for seven days. Now Egypt never planned for the second phase in which
they are moving forward and trying to capture the passes of Sinai, but they never practiced
it. So you can doubt whether they really thought they'll get there, but Sadad made the mistake and
he allowed his troops to move forward at which point, right, the Israelis were free to attack them
in the open, which is what they do best. That was on the 12 of
October, which is a pivotal moment because up to the 12 of October right, Israeli security
Doctrine right rested on three legs: deterrence intelligence and decision. That is decision by
battle. Up to October 12, all three legs, all three pillars failed. The turns failed. The intelligence
failed and decision by battle could not have been achieved. They couldn't achieve it. This is the
moment where I want you to think about right because we are in a very similar moment. The
turns failed. Intelligence failed. Defense which is the fourth leg failed. Let's talk about let's
talk about decision in battle Other changes that followed: the Army grew, the Israeli IDF almost
doubled its size, and Israel couldn't sustain it. It caused a lot of economic issues and therefore
Israel moved on to relying on technology. It was a bigger Air Force. More tanks, better tanks.
It changed its intelligence apparatus as and we can talk about you know the Strategic change of
Air Battle during Q&A time if you want but do note that at that moment of October 12
that conceptual void that Israeli leadership was facing right was a moment that didn't bring
change because Israel was allowed to eventually bring decision or given an opportunity to decide
the war by battle, in a decisive battle, in the Sinai right, it didn't have to change anything
about its military, about its security doctrine. And I'm afraid that we're facing a moment in
which we do need to rethink Israeli security doctrine. I suggest we pay attention because there
is a similar sense today that something immense about the doctrine and our assumptions is broken
or even lost, was lost on October 7th perhaps irrevocably, but maybe not. Israeli security
perception will need to change again thank you. Thank you for your Lucidity and also your
discipline. I can't believe you got all that in and I spent too many years here so what looks
like 10 minutes. She set a very high standard anyway- which I will not meet, neither am I planning to.
The mic is on. We have some seats over here, people from the back, yeah.
Anyone is welcome to the four seats over here, 10 minutes maybe 12, if we're lucky. So
thank you, everyone for coming. I'm going to talk a little bit about the nuclear dimension of the Yom
Kippur War. I'll try to explain what some of the new sources, which have recently come up, tell
us and the kind of light that they shed into what we understand and at the end and maybe I'll do
some more in the Q&A. 'll ask if there are any implications we need to consider about the current
Hamas-Israel war if we'll get to it, I may push it to the Q&A. Kate, so let's start. How am I
even able to discuss the nuclear dimension of the Yokm Kippur War? Let's start with this great quote by
President Richard Nixon from Jan 8th 1992, "the Israelis have nuclear weapons. I'm not going to tell you how
I know but I know that..." So just to kick us off, it's important to understand that even though Israel
never officially and publicly acknowledged its own nuclear weapons possession and capabilities, there's a very deep and wide scope of literature, secondary literature, some interviews with former
officials who interview Israeli officials, American officials, documents being declassified
in archives, around the world and this enables us to put together a picture. You should know that I
should make a caveat very clear: it's a partial picture. We won't have the complete picture in
the coming years. Maybe, one way, down the road, we will have a deeper picture, but the picture
I'm going to paint for you now is partial. It's incomplete and I'm going to maybe mostly point
to some questions and not necessarily definite answers, but it's important to understand what
we're working with specifically just before the 7 October attack happened. There were a few
very interesting publications inside Israel mentioning the 50 years to Yom Kippur War
with some new interviews, some new notes, some new documents and we're going to try to use them.
So just as a background, Israel developed its nuclear capabilities, during the 1960s. In
1965, it promised the US it would not use American jets to deliver nuclear weapons. In 1969,
Nixon and Golda Meir reached the famous Israeli US understanding: the Nixon Meir understanding
on Israel's ambiguous nuclear posture. In 1969, Israel had three jets that the Americans assumed
could in theory be used to deploy nuclear weapons, but if you take into account the first point
then it was clear, that they're not likely to use the two US Jets and the suspicion or
the understanding or the assumption in the US was that if Israel would go ahead, it may use its
Mirage planes for nuclear delivery and another consequent understanding reached between Israel
and the US, and this is all based on documents, which have been declassified and
it's not me divulging any secrets. One of the subsequent memos reached with Rabin who was then
The Ambassador in Israel in October 1969 mentions that as a part of the understanding, Israel also
guarantees not to deploy its Jericho missiles until 1972. Jericho missiles are ballistic
missiles which Israel bought and developed throughout the 1960s where from the Marcel Dessault
French company and the assumption was that they would also be a part of a future deployable arsenal play. One of the big mysteries about... [SOUND CUTS OUT] For example,
Bill Quandt was a Middle East NSC staffer in the first days of the war, throughout the
war but specifically he recalls that in the first day of the war, he saw an alert h a
note saying that Israel had put its nuclear forces on alert, and he talked about it and he
mentioned it, and this was a source of a lot of debate in the literature.
Did he get it right? Was he accurate with the dates? You know it's very difficult to prove and
this is what he said "I saw a piece of paper in the intelligence that suggested that the Jericho
missiles had been put on a higher state of alert". Another thing that the scholarly Community was
dealing with was evidence by Professor Yuval Ne'eman, he was a physicist involved in the Israeli
Atomic effort in in the Yom Kippur War... [SOUND CUTS OUT] basically signal this is what they did the chief
of staff ordered not to hide the battery, the Jericho needs the battery, assuming Soviet Satellites will
receive the message and this will be forwarded basically to the Egyptians. What we know now
is the that the Jericho missiles were probably not relevant
to any Israeli nuclear posture. We'll talk in a second about what we think we know about the
Mirage standoff. But new sources that have recently come up indicates that the jerich Comm missiles
were actually not mature not ready were not able to be deployed with nuclear warheads. There are
some sources. They're anonymous but they went on the record. They're quoted in Ronen Bergman's report.
So, we have to take it into account that this was probably a political signaling which wasn't
backed by an actual ability to put a nuclear warhead on the ballistic missile but we just
don't know and here are other things we think we know. We think and this is based on also the
some of the US material that's been declassified, that Israel probably was capable to use its
Mirage-5 Nesher Jet for nuclear missions. We think it was most likely put on alert during the
war. It's unclear whether this was the authority of the minister of defense. And these
are questions we're still grappling with. Who's authority would it have been to order a nuclear
alert? And what kind of an alert was it? One of the famous stories which in the past few months
has received a lot of attention is the story of Lieutenant colonal Avi Lanir. You see him pictured
above. He was the commander of the 101 Squadron. We think or it's been widely alluded to in the press
with a lot of very interesting quotes that he was basically very prominent in the Mirage
nuclear force. He was shot down over Syria in October 13 exactly the day that Gil-li mentioned.
The 12th and the 13th were dramatic days in the war. We can talk about it later. He was tortured to
death. The Israeli leadership we now know was very fearful that he would divulge secrets. We think
that Golda Meir's willingness or her signaling to the Americans that she would like to reach a
deal where Israel would relinquish control of the topmost part of the Mount Hermon to secure
the release of 28 Pilots which fell hostage wasn't because she was a softed heart and a nice
Jewish grandmother, which is how it was initially perceived at the time. The Israelis were actually very concerned about the kind of information that Lanir would be able to divulge. The fact
that nothing came out meant that he didn't say anything. He was given the Medal of Honor postly.
Had he divulged anything to the Syrians, you would have seen them targeting the exact places that he
would have pointed. It's very clear to understand why. And here are some of the new notes and
new evidence that has come up. So this is a note which historian and my colleague and friend
and historian Adam Raz received from an anonymous source. We think it details the handwriting of
Minister Israel Galilee during the war but it's important to say we can't authenticate it because
it did not come from an official archive. Someone gave Adam an envelope with notes that being said
all all all other details are actually lined up it was featured in Ronan Bergman's story: the one I
mentioned just when we noted the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War. It's interesting because it
means that it was published with the Israeli Military Censor's approval inside Israel. This isn't
me uncovering a new piece or document. I'm basically telling you what was in the paper and it's just
interesting to see the kind of discourse that's now being allowed. What the note tells us fits
in with other pieces of information that we've had regarding the 1973 assumed-Israeli
nuclear alert. We think that Minister of Defense Moshe Arens, who was in a very difficult mental
state, posed some sort of a nuclear alert. Some people understood his suggestion to to maybe offer
a nuclear demonstration. He didn't say this. This is how some people who heard him understood what
he was saying and the notes that appear in the paper and I'm translating it: he basically
proposed to put something as being ready for deployment. And another quote is we may have
to be ready with Dostrovsky's things. Dostrovsky was the former head of the Israeli atomic energy commission
so these are very open-ended remarks. What did he mean? Did he want to bomb Damascus? We
don't no one thinks he wanted to bomb Damascus. Was he may be thinking about some sort of
a nuclear demonstration? Most Scholars agree that this is probably the most likely assumption.
We just don't know. There's not enough evidence. We do know that he was basically immediately
shed away or brushed away. We do know that it was repeated a few times. This was probably not
a proposal that only happened once because the notes refer to three different dates: October
8th and 9th and different meetings but from what we can ascertain from the notes and people who
were sitting in the corridor listening in, Golda Meir told him, "don't do anything without my approval.
Forget about it. Clear out the party". So there wasn't even a willingness to discuss
it. That being said, the question is what exactly was put on alert and was it on Dayan's Authority?
Did he actually have to ask Golda Meir's permission? Did he not need Golda's permission? Did it happen
with or without authority? We don't know because we don't know exactly what happened and hopefully
down the road we'd be able to know more. I wanted to to tie everything I've just said to the
current War, which how much time do I have longer ? Maybe two minutes. Okay, so two things and maybe
I leave some of the insight to the Q&A: Would Israel have practiced self-restraint
regardless of the previous 1969 nuclear understanding with the US? I think from reading
and also we can discuss this with Professor Medzini and his terrific book about Golda, I am
convinced that Golda would have shown nuclear restraints even if a bilateral understanding had
not been in effect with the US because it made sense, because there were moral qualms, because
Israeli objective was to align itself with the US and guarantee further collaboration
and it would have just backfired. So I don't think that it necessarily happened because
of the existence of the bilateral Nixon-Meir deal. That's number one, but it's anyone's
guess and if you want to, you know, discuss it we can. A second thing is and Gil-li hinted at it.
What can we say and what can we know about Israel's nuclear deterrence and posture and its
effect on Egyptian and Syrian military planning? There is a debate here because some scholars say: listen the IDF was so strong that the conventional deterrence was enough to convince
the Egyptians to plan war plans in a limited fashion right. Grab 10 kilometers inside Sinair. And the
similar argument goes for Syria and we don't have
this smoking gun that tells us "oh no they only did so because of Israel's nuclear program and
posture". That being said, there's a very big debate here because with the Egyptian Corpus of
literature, there are many many quotes going back to Sadat, going back to General Gamasy and others
who clearly told Israel interlocutors during the negotiations of the Camp David Peace Accords, and
later, we knew what you have. I mean I'm paraphrasing, we're not idiots of course. We would
never have planned for more an unlimited War. In the Syrian case, we don't have the sources so the
question still remains. I'm going to leave it at here and we can develop more questions down the
road. Really fascinating, thank you so [Applause] much. [Music] Uh dear friends I can't hear you. Cann you hear me now? Yeah now it's okay. My
fault entirely I apologize. I said nothing of significance nor will I. Tere's
a prevalent paradigm now that certain types of religion fundamentalist Islam for example can
motivate conflict. Clearly, the Yom Kippur War was not one of those cases and nonetheless I'd like to
suggest and I've shown in some of my research that religion played interesting, motivating
and constraining roles during this war. The most obvious being that the date of a Jewish High
holiday was chosen as the date for assault. I was a year and a half old at the time. I
delude myself that I remember it as being a moment of tremendous concern. My mother
was pregnant. I was a a little child. My father had been sent off to the front. Legend says with
a toothbrush in his hand and nothing else. And since then, more or less I've been asking
myself this question: did it matter that the Yom Kippur War happened? On Yom Kippur, did it matter that
the attack two and a half weeks ago happened on Simchat Torah? And the answer is as far as the Egyptians were
concerned, it definitely mattered. They did not choose the date because it was a religious holiday.
The primary constraints were you know had to do with the Egyptian level of preparedness.
Assumptions that the Egyptians and the syrians made about Israeli level of preparedness. The moon had to
be in a particular constellation. They were worried about the tides for crossing this
Suez Canal. That left them with multiple available dates, and one of those happened to be Yom Kippur
and at this point, the very same Egyptian sources that you refer to start debating what would the
what could this possibly mean? The Jews will be hungry. The Jews will be distracted by prayer.
Many military personnel will be off duty. It will be difficult to mobilize them. It will be hard for
them to get to the front. So first of all, I'll say that's just interesting. Right that religion plays
this kind of role. We see this in other moments in history. The Tet offensive for example is is
another interesting case of this. Pearl Harbor is another interesting case of this. The
decision to launch an attack on Sunday with very pragmatic planning as to levels
of preparedness: which crews would be on boats and onshore Etc. So that's one reason I think it's
interesting. Second reason I think it's interesting is because the Egyptians got everything wrong.
Completely. Hunger of course was not an issue. Within minutes of the first bombs falling.
Everybody understood that it was time to eat and the order went out and a rabbinical sanction was
issued that said of course there's no there's no reason to not eat at a moment like this.
I have no evidence to think that people were in any way sort of distracted by
religious observance. It is true that units were in a holiday mood and many were not on the front. It
is also true at least initially that mobilizing them proved difficult and we know this from
conversation that Dayan had with some of his staff. Radios and televisions are
off on Yom Kippur. That's true to this day. There was a deliberation as War seemed to loom
about instructing the population to keep its radios on even though no attack had happened
yet, but there was a very real worry that just that announcement would cause tremendous panic.
And Dayan says what would they be listening to all day on the radio if we have nothing to say:
Are we going to play music on Yom Kippur ,you know. People
will know that something's up but nonetheless mobilization turned out to be very easy because
everybody was in the same place. Everybody was in the synagogues and so unit commanders just went to
the nearest synagogue and hauled all the young men out. The roads were empty, which the Egyptians
seem to be unaware of. Mobilization to the front may have happened at twice the speed at which the
Israeli military had planned to mobilize because nobody else was on the road. All things that the
Egyptians were blissfully unaware of and I have the hypothesis about why. I'll get to that in a
minute. Factor number three: this isn't just Yom Kippur for the Israelis. This is also Ramadan for
the Egyptians. This is a factor that Golda Meir takes into account as she's trying to figure out
whether the intelligence coming in is a concrete warning for attack. There's a brief moment where
someone in the room says attack on Ramadan they wouldn't do that. But it's not just Ramadan it's
also the anniversary of the Battle of Badr. Now for those of you who don't know their early Muslim
history inside out, the Battle of Badr is one of the Prophet Muhammad's most glorious victories
and it has several interesting characteristics. It is a victory. It is a battle
against all odds Muhammad's troops are vastly outnumbered. It's a battle to retake land that was
initially land of Muhammad and his followers right. So there's real parallelism here to the Sinai. And
fourth point, it's a battle won thanks to Divine Guidance: the prophet Gabriel is literally at
Muhammad's ear sort of whispering advice as the battle commences. So the fact that it was the
anniversary of the Battle of Badr. The fact that the Egyptian operation is called operation Badr sends a
strong and in my mind sort of multivocal symbol to Egyptian soldiers participating: here's what
you're doing and here's what it means. That is something the Israelis did not take into account.
I suspect in fact though I cannot show that the Israelis thought of Ramadan as sort of a Jewish
Yom Kippur. How could they possibly attack us during Ramadan? But Ramadan is not a Jewish Yom Kippur.
Ramadan is during the day: a day of fasting but in the early mornings before Sunrise and after sunset a sort of a very festive active time. That
in my mind also explains why the Egyptians got Yom Kippur wrong. They thought that it perhaps
like Ramadan would clog up the street, that it would preoccupy everybody,
that would make it very very difficult to mobilize when in fact one of the significant ways in which
Yom Kippur is very different from Ramadan is that it's it's rather easy to mobilize. Factor number four
so far I've talked about the religious date as a constraint on the Israelis and as an immobilizer
on the Egyptians and the Syrians. There's a backlash effect. If you are going to exploit your
opponent's religious holiday, you are going to have a certain amount of religiously motivated
anger that can in turn then act as a mobilizer. For example in American synagogues many of whom
heard about the Yom Kippur War because of the time difference in the midst of Yom Kippur Services
when people burst into synagogues on the East Coast, on the West Cost mostly, and announced
that something terrible had just happened and then prayer service has stopped and that Community: the
American Jewish Community mobilized and exerted significant pressure on the White House to support Israel. I can't quite see a parallel to this happening in the last two and a
half weeks except that many sources that report on the events of Saturday, what 19 days ago, mention
the religious significance, the clash of values, the moments at which they were sort of
caught unawares in the middle of celebration. And so I think it has symbolic significance
again. It sort of doesn't compete with your accounts. We're talking nuclear weapons
here after all whereas I'm dealing with with emotions, social interpretation of events
and I'd like to say something about the last possible interpretation of this event. Does anybody
know what the significant of St Crispin's day is? The Battle of Agincourt. That's right, so I refer to
this as the St Crispin's effect. It used to be before 1415, when the Battle of Agincourt happened. THat St
Crispin's day was a day of significance to to Christians in the West. It was the
celebration of the death of two Martyrs: Crispen and Crispian. But then the Battle
of Agincourt happens and Shakespeare famously links the Battle of Agincourt to St Cripsin's day in Henry
the V's famous speech and now in England anybody who thinks about St Crispin's day members only one
thing, which is the Battle of Agincourt. In other words, the timing of the religious event
in the battle have sort of switched places. I've also sometimes referred to this as the
Ashura effect in the sense that for many people. In the Shia World, Ashura is not just a reference
to the Muslim holiday and the historical events associated with it, but it brings up memories of Prior
Ashura's and the violent events that accompanied those Ashuras. The same is true of
Yom Kippur. It is imposs possible today certainly for an Israeli I think also for many American Jews to
think of Yom Kippur without thinking of the War of 1973. And that brings up a whole series of
connotations about atonement, which I think brings us all the way back to your your talk. So, it's a war of atonement happening on the day of atonement. What exactly are we atoning for is
no longer just a religious question but it is now also a military question and political
question. Thank you so much. Professor Medzini, it's now our pleasure to
welcome reflections from you. Good morning to all of you. Well from Jerusalem. How long do I have? I'll need about 15 minutes. I'll reply to some
of the things that were said and then I'll weigh in. I will not hide from you the fact that over
three weeks ago Israel was dealt its worst blow since 1948: totally unprepared, wrong intelligence,
the Army in disarray, poor leadership, very poor response. Parts of proper Israel were occupied
by Palestinians. Huge number of casualties: 1,400 to date , probably more 220 something captives
hostages in Gaza. The entire country was stunned. How could this happen to us? And many tried to
to compare this to Yom Kippur. I think it's wrong. Yom Kippur situation was totally different. Somebody
said why Yom Kippur? If the Egyptians and Syrians decided Yom Kippur, they made a huge mistake because
they should have attacked us on Rosh Hashanah. 60,000 Israelis were in Sharm El Sheikh and Sinai. Yom Kippur you're either at
home or you're in the synagogue and therefore what we did was at 2:00, a few minutes after the attack
started, we put on the sirens and Israelis hear a siren that turned on the radio and the radio had
an IDF announcement that we were attacked by the Egyptians and by the Syrians and then came the
code words for the various units and you right. It's easy to mobilize people. The
Egyptians had as the speaker probably correctly pointed out they had limited purposes in
the war: it was essentially to strike a blow to force the Americans to start making political
moves, mainly to start pushing the Israelis in order to think about some sort of negotiations
and withraw. This was the strategy of Egypt by the way it succeeded. The other one who had a
strategy was Kissinger, the step-by-step approach: How do we use this war in order to start a
political process? and therefore if the Yom Kippur War produced one positive thing: It was the beginning
of a peace process. I witnessed the arrival of Kissinger at Golda Meir's home, January 1974. He
brought a letter from Sadat. Imagine a letter written by Hirohito to President Truman four
months after the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Unbelievable. Unheard of. Now
nuclear weapons. The Golda-Nixon understanding took place on 28 or 27th of September in the
White House, two people present Golda and Nixon. She later dictated the contents of the
understanding to one of her assistants. You're right about
the missiles but the key thing, the two key things were Israel will not test and Israel will
not talk and this is the origin of the Israeli nuclear ambiguity. The United States for its part
will get off Israel's back and not force it to sign the Non-nuclear
Proliferation treaty and the United States will cease the visits to Dimona. Prior to that ,there
were regular visits by American inspectors who came to visit the site. regarding Moshe Dayan and nuclear
weapons: the story is Monday after the failure of the Counterattack of Israel, he was in a bleak mood,
he was hinting gloomily about the destruction of the Third Temple. He felt that there was nothing
to stop the Egyptians from marching almost all the way to Tel Aviv. As the meeting broke up, he
leaned on the door and he looked at Golda and he said maybe we should consider special measures.
And she looked at him and said in Hebrew: "Forget it." And that was the end of it. American sources
later on reported that Israel armed some of its weapons. I'm not sure about any demonstration.
If we talk about demonstration, Peres proposed a demonstration on the eve of the Six Day War. One
of the reasons for the Six Day War apparently had to do with the fact that the Egyptians were
convinced that Israel had obtained nuclear capability. But I don't think at any point
Israel considered possibility of using nuclear weapons. I would add something else. At no time
in the Yom Kippur War was the existence of Israel endangered. At no time the only time
our existence was endangered was in the war of Independence, during the first month. Now I'm old
enough to remember the end of World War II: I was 13 when it ended, and I was in the youth brigades
in 1948. I didn't fight but I was in the youth brigades. In May 1948, we stood the possibility of
annihilation. The Jordanians were in the heart of Jerusalem, the Iraqis were 14 miles from Tel Aviv.
The Egyptians were 37 kilometers which is I think 30 miles or less from Tel Aviv. That was the only
time after that at no point since from then until now did Israel face a existential threat. I'll
add another one thing which was not mentioned the American airlift did not save Israel. By the
time the airlift arrived, we completed the pushing back the Syrians on the Golan Heights,
we occupied additional territory and we were about to launch the cross canal operation.
It was due to take place I think the October 13th or 14th but news came that the Egyptians
were planning to send 250 tanks. We thought we would lay a trap, which we did and we succeeded. And
therefore the cross canal operation took place I think on the 15th of October. I want to come back to
what happened now and the similarities with 1973. Totally wrong concept. We thought in terms
of Western thinking or Arab thinking. We did not take into account Hamas is a religious
organization. If you read their covenant, if you look at their logo, it's not only destroy the Jews
of Israel, it's destroy the Jews period. Wherever they are and therefore, here you had a religious
connotation, which I'm not sure the Yom Kippur War had. Syrians certainly didn't speak
about the religious aspect. This time they were able to seize Israeli territory which means
they fought on Israel property and the doctrine that was coined by Ben Gurion and mentioned correctly, I
think, by Professor Vardy, collapsed. Ben-Gurion's doctrine goes back to 1949: Israel must have intelligence
deterrent fight. The war on enemy territory never fight the war at home, and you fight a very short
war because you your economy will not survive if you fight a long war. And regretably we did
not deter and we were very much surprised. It took the Army a bit longer to rally and Yom Kippur,
it was faster, but it did rally and we put ourselves togethe. Two other similarities: on the eve of the Yom Kippur
war, we were about to have national elections, and labor party slogan at the
time was you never had it so good, and therefore anyone who talked about the possibility of a war: it was counter to the slogan in which the ruling party decided to run the elections. Secondly, this time, for the last year since January 4th, Israel has been bred in
a massive argument about the insistence of the ruling coalition headed by Netanyahu to reform the
judicial system but much more than that, it's not only Judicial System it's basically to reshape
the soul of Israel, which way is Israel going to do? This was not the case in the Yom Kippur War furthermore
in the Yom Kippur War, you had a totally different leadership. wWithout insulting anyone, Netanyahu, it
took him five days to expand the cabinet and bring in two former Chiefs of Staff: those who ran the
cabinet during the way. The only one who had any serious military experience was the defense minister. All
the others had virtually no one. Some of them never served in the Army and therefore now we have a
totally different situation. Golda conducted the war in the way she knew how to conduct the war. In
her cabinet of five ministers, they made the decisions and you watched her virtually every day as I was her press secretary at the time, she did this in a cool, calm, collected manner and one of the
most important things right after the war she said: "it happened on my watch. I am responsible for
better or for worse." The Chief of Staff said I'm responsible. Director of Military Intelligence, head
of the Security Services, head of the Air Force, the four of them said we are responsible. Netanyahu so far
has failed to say in so many words it happened on my watch, I am responsible. We will somehow emerge
out of this, but it'll take us much much longer and we are at the moment bruised and scarred and
I'm sure I suspect that we have many more days, probably weeks before this thing is over. This
is basically my contribution at this stage of the game, thank you. Professor I'm going to ask the three of you
to reflect on Professor Medzini's reflctions and I'll pose one question that bridges the
past and present. We'll go in the same order to maybe simulate whatever response
you might have. Gil-li, it was you that said I'm virtually quoting now Israel had grown
"a bit too comfortable after The Six Day War", and when you win a great victory and
there's calm, it's human nature to think that calm will extend indefinitely into the future and
I'll just be honest at least within my circles including the planning of this program we all
made that mistake, so can you reflect on that vacuum of vigilance, if I can put it that way and you know what kind of enduringly seeped into Israeli military strategic consciousness
from the Yom Kippur War, what was maybe learned and forgotten? What was never completely internalized
and anything else you want to respond to? Why don't you each take two or three minutes, we'll come
back to professor Medzini, and then we'll open it up to all of you right. Yes, thank you
Victory is a curse and Dayan also had a saying similar to this one. The IDF in Israel largely
learned a lot from the Yom Kippur War, as I said, the structure of the army, the
center of gravity, if you so wish changed or improved, intelligence improved considerably.
It's just that you know, the enemy changes too. I think in this case right I want to make
it clear I study history and so I want to be very careful about we don't know anything and
we don't know enough about this current conflict but I will say that as
as we've heard right, there's a concept mostly that is really we speak about a concept, some sort of
a conception, some sort of a basic idea that organized reality, and that will sort
of channel us to see things in certain ways. The basic concept based on
the entire Israeli security universe acted on was the one that and Prime Minister Netanyahu led. This one saying in order to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian State,
we will support Hamas rather than the Palestinian Authority, and I think this is the concept that as
long as you allow Hamas to thrive, as long as you feed them, as long as you allow money from
Qatar to reach the Gaza Strip then Hamas will see the benefits of it, will not attack Israel and or its attacks very limited and then Israel will be able to
prevent right, will be able to prevent a Palestinian state from happening. We
are now stuck with the result of this concept of this idea, all right and there's a
particular person right who came up with this, despite the fact that he's trying to
hide it now. That the Army followed, this is also a mistake right, for which they will need
to, they will need to you know give us many different explanations. I would say
the Chief of Staff already took responsibility, the Director of Intelligence already took
responsibility, the director of Shin Bet already took responsibility. We're still waiting for one person
to take responsibility. These are my comments, but I would like to add, I would like to
to strengthen right, and we've heard the only time Israel's existence was under a threat but was in
1948 and this is absolutely correct. In 1973 as well, the sheer existence of the state wasn't
under attack, it isn't yet under attack, in danger now, it can evolve into something else but
right now right as much as Israelis right, we're bruised and we're aching right, but this is
a very strong powerful country that can and will defend itself all right. So, you know hopefully
maybe with different leadership, just saying thank you, so I will continue with what Professor
Vardy said and what Professor Medzini said and I'll try to keep myself calm, cool and collected.
It's difficult. In this time, Professor Medzini noted that during the Yom Kippur War when people were home or
in the synagogue and they heard sirens they went home and immediately switched on the radio and
knew what was happening. For some people in Israel, October 7th, this wasn't the case and these are
people that sat in the government. So for example, Michal Woldiger, the deputy Minister of Finance who
comes from the radical right-wing rather fascist faction of the government. She was sitting
in her or maybe she was in synagogue or at home, in Givat Shmuel, and she told the news that she heard the
alarms but it was Sabbath, so she went home despite being a part of the actual government despite
bearing responsibility for the Israeli people, she heard the alarms and as opposed to the people that
Professor Medzini mentioned in 1973, she went home and I think this encapsulates the story of the
current Israeli government and its lack of functioning. I think that and I'm following up on
what was said here we need to remember that Netanyahu was repeatedly warned, throughout the
year that his judicial coup and his attempt to completely undermine Israel's Democratic pillars,
was a clear and present danger to Israel's fabric of society. The military Chiefs told
him that Israel is now perceived to be weaker, that the enemies would actually exploit
this window of opportunity, he chose to ignore it. He refused to meet with the IDF's chief of
staff just before the famous vote on basically decimating, putting together one of the central
planks of the judicial reform: a vote which took place in late July and that builds into the
much bigger right-wing concept. And here we have to go back to the fact that Netanyahu is
the prime minister that replaced prime minister Rabin following Rabin's assassination in an
elections that took place in the early spring of '96. In Israel, Rabin strategically thinking when
he went into office, his strategic vision was that Israel now has a window of opportunity to
strengthen itself and bolster itself in in face of the rising threat on the horizon. The
rising threat was a strong actor, regional actor. He thought of maybe Iran or Saddam Hussein's
Iraq because in '92, Iraq was still in play, possibly armed with a nuclear weapons or an
advanced nuclear weapon program, trying to align itself with other regional actors. Rabin's
strategic vision was to sort out the immediate circle and that's what led to the Oslo process.
He wante, he opened talks with the Syrians, the Palestinians successfully reached an agreement
with Jordan. When Netanyahu replaced him, this was largely abandoned, even though Netanyahu maintained
the Oslo peace process and signed two additional Accords and his henchmen are now criticizing the
Oslo process and Rabin, forgetting that he was a main part and parcel of that, and turned Israel into
a main beneficiary of the framework of the Oslo peace process. After the the disengagement program
was hatched and then put in place, and this goes back to Ariel Sharon as prime minister, and then
Olmert as prime minister, the understanding was and Dov Weissglass who was Sharon's Chief of
Staff in 2004 went on the record. He told Haaretz, he said that this engagement plan
is unilateral because it's meant to put the the vision of a Palestinian state in Formaldehyde, it's meant to put it to sleep. The idea was to push away any possibility of progress
towards the two-state solution in. Netanyahu took up the mantle before that. Also Olmert in June
2007, when Hamas by the force of arms took over the Gaza Strip and kicked and pushed away
Fatah people and we all remember how how the expulsion of Haniyeh and his men was treated
publicly in Israel in June 2007. Nothing was done and then and since and since Netanyahu took
office in 2009 forward, his main mission was to strengthen Hamas. He went on record saying
that his main mission is to strengthen Hamas. [PHONE RINGS] Sorry, I think Nethanyahu isn't
happy with me and maybe phoning in maybe or maybe... I'll leave it at that two and we have to figure out how we're going to revive the two State solution. It's the only way forward. I am not a Netanyahu scholar, so I'm not going comment on the
current government, so I'm gonna keep my comments to Hamas and something that Professor Medzini led me to think about. There's a big puzzle, has always been a big
puzzle in terrorism study. And that's the puzzle around the rationality of terrorism.
The behavior that we saw two and a half weeks ago cannot be reconciled with rationality
in anyway shape or form.It's self-defeating on a strategic level as residents of Gaza are now
finding out in the hardest way possible but it's also self-defeating at the
tactical level at the operational level. None of what happened there makes sense, so
I think there is sort of a couple of intuitive responses. One is for my colleagues who insist
on the rationality of terrorism and argue that there must have been a disconnect between
Hamas command and the terrorists were actually executed actions on the ground, but there's a
principal agent problem here. Whereas Hamas command situated in Iran and Qatar and Syria
and wherever they're vacationing had very specific goals in mind and an attack
that was designed certainly to provoke certainly to kidnap hostages, certainly to signal strength
on the part of Hamas and weakness on the part of Israel, the accompanying Carnival of death
that we witnessed, the sexual deviance, the acts of outrage, the decapitation dismemberment Etc.
were not part of the grand plan and this is not an unpersuasive argument
because all organizations have principal agent problems right. The head of the organization
often has a hard time motivating or constraining the people who actually have
to implement that plan. Terrorist organizations have principal agent problems through the
roof because they can't actually communicate. It's very, very hard to constrain and motivate
Hamas lunatic coming out of the Gaza Strip when you're sitting in Qatar and you can't actually use
public modes of communication because you know the Israelis will intercept them and it seems
they did not use public modes of communication. They were quite cautious so that's
the rational explanation. Professor Medzini, I think rightly pointed to an alternative. This
is fanaticism. This is motivated by religious extremism. Hamas Charter explains this
very, very clearly. The goal is not to liberate the Palestinian territories let alone the Gaza
Strip, the goal is to liberate the entire land and cleanse it not just of Israelis but cleanse
it of Jews because the charter continues Jews rule the world: they and the Freemasons caused World War
I. You really ought to read the Hamas Charter. To establish a Caliphate
and Sharia law and therefore beheadings, dismemberments, all sort
of fit into this and there's been recent evidence brought to bear that
this was part of the plan to begin with. I don't know how to reconcile
these two explanations. The answer one picks matters tremendously because it has a bearing
on whether one can negotiate for the release of hostages. It has a bearing on whether a Beirut
solution is possible in the case of Hamas. When I say Beirut solution, I mean some International Force
arriving, removing leadership from in this case the Gaza Strip into exile somewhere. Tunisia
or somewhere else where they can then be moderated and come back chastised and chastened.
If Hamas is as extremist an organization as its documents, its recent statements, its emblem
suggest, that is not a possibility and if that is the case then Hamas needs to be to quote
former president Obama dismantled. Before I come to Professor Medzini, I just have to say this,
I'll raise it as only a partially rhetorical question. There's a history in this region of the
Middle East of people thinking that they could marginalize their more quote serious or threatening
adversaries: the left in Egypt under Mubarak, in particular, the Shah in Iran, the fear
of the Communist, the left and so on. If I can be blunt, I agree with virtually everything you said
Ori, the strategists in Israel who thought they could work with Hamas you can deter, what
were they thinking? Did they not read the charter? Israel has you know some of the
best experts on Islamic Terror in the world. If your assumption is that you can't
have the PA and you need a very weakened PA then you have to have a strengthened Hamas, so you
build your conception around that. And yeah well and then what you get is a strengthened Hamas.
Anyway Professor Medzini, Sir, any light you can shed on this recent exchange or anything
else that's been said? please do so before we go to our audience. I'll say something about Hamas. Hamas was established I think 1987 around the time of the first Intifada. Israel welcomed
the establishment of Hamas, seeing in it a an organization counterveiling force to Fatah, which
was essentially a secular movement and we thought that they will devote their attention to religion
and welfare and education and therefore Israel was not alarmed. It did not read properly the Covenant
of the Hamas. We also thought that they would think in a rational way. Well this is not their
way of thinking. I want to add one more thing about what is happening now, and was not the case
in '73. We have evacuated, I think, 60,000 people from our Northern border. Something we did not do in '73
apart from evacuating women and children from the Golan. The entire 120 kilometer length border
between Israel-Lebanon 5 km deep: evacuated. We evacuated now 7 km from the Gaza border.
This is something we haven't done since 1948. Secondly in '73, Israel proper was not targeted, apart from
few rockets that hit an air base near Nazareth. No Rockets in '67. In '67, Jerusalem
was bombarded for a few hours and that was Tel Aviv I think was shelled 13/14 shells in other
words: Hinterland Israel was not affected this time. hinter and Israel very much affected in fact
I think two hours ago my son tells me that there was a AR siren in the village where he lives which
is halfway between Jerusalem and T something very important to remember and that is the Israeli
economy we have now mobilized 360,000 Reserve soldiers that's 10% of uh of the productive force
in Israel tourism is at a stand still and all most Airlines stopped flying here and therefore we
find ourselves asking very seriously how long can the economy last before something wrong will
happen and this probably will dictate the pace of this war meaning do you go into Gaza and if
so how how how deep with what force and then you've got to ask yourself a question where do
we go from here what's the end game bearing in mind that now we are dealing with America with
Russia with Iran with Hezbollah with a very restive population in the West Bank happily
so far nothing uh nothing wrong with Israeli Arabs in other words this is totally new and
unexpected in 73 you did not have that kind of a situation okay uh anyone want to POS
a uh question or issue first of all I want to thank all of you for I want
to thank all of you for truly truly outstanding presentations incredibly
Rich incredibly well informed and uh Professor medini my understanding is
that you're 92 years old it's only my1 91 until 120 like your 20s so just just really
really thank you um I want to put before you uh two uh themes that we haven't touched upon
which I think are really really interesting the first one really relates to uh geopolitics
and and and Military um Doctrine um and that is the transition uh from a state-based Warfare
which was what we had in 1973 Israel Egypt Egypt Israel Syria with all the implications of that
command and control borders un Etc to a reality in which the Warfare is primarily viav violent
non-state actors proxy Warfare clientalism Etc uh help us understand the implications just for
our American audience I I want to if I may just just put this into context what what has happened
here is the third time over the last uh 10 years where a violent non-state actor has achieved
a strategic impact that is of geopolitical uh importance Global importance the first time
was Isis taking over raka and mosul the second is the Taliban uh take over you know with the
sort of collapse of the Afghan um uh government uh in the aftermath of the American withdrawal
and now Hamas inflicting the Strategic damage on Israel with a potential to inflame the
entire region that is a paradigmatic shift it's no longer a terrorist organization killing
a certain number of civilians that has Regional and Global implications something that we need
to be uh to to think about and remember 911 came within months from the opening of the second in
father so this this also has huge implications for Global Jihad not not just for not just for the
region perhaps we can talk a little bit about that um U second area that we haven't touched upon
which is enormously important four years after the end of the Yom kipur War we have the mahak we
have a realignment of Israeli politics in a way a movement from Israel 1.0 which was dominated
by mapai and the um labor Zionist Elite to an Israel 2.0 uh dominated by mananan and leud and
in a way we've kind of lived in that reality ever ever since are we on the verge of a realignment
uh of Israeli politics okay uh two questions uh Professor medini will start with you this time
if you want to respond according according to the according to the recent polls uh if there
were elections to be held in the coming weeks leud will lose handedly and there'll be probably
a government center Center rights Center maybe a bit Center left not more than that but Nan
probably will have to go on the issue ofas this is something that we that so far we have
not succeeded in telling the rest of the world that when you are dealing with Hamas the rules
of war the the laws of war do not apply to them they for example we discovered long ago that they
built tunnels under hospitals and we expected not to touch hospitals because you according to laws
of war you you're not supposed to touch hospitals they use these as command posts as the ID of
spokesman has shown uh today and we are very much unhappy with the concept of proportionality
in other words for one Israeli two Palestinians or for half in Israeli one Palestinian this
doesn't work that way now there's always this attempt to equate Palestinians lost so far
they claim 6,000 something. We lost 1,400 all right. This is something that we
cannot accept. '73, we fought against the Armed Forces of
Arab countries. Prisoners were taken, prisoners were exchanged. The Syrians violated the laws by
torturing and killing prisoners. The Egyptians by the way did not go that for therefore it was
easier to get on with them when a peace process started. Yes, okay so two things: the idea
of his well aware right of this, of this sort of tectonic shift. I do want to remind everyone
that in 2006 Israel went to Lebanon right, and fought Hezbollah under conditions that are very
very similar. Even though, I would say Hezbollah bit more impressive than Hamas, in terms
of fighting capabilities and capacities. And, this went very badly for Israel, but I think
the IDF learned some lessons. So they are in a process of doctrinal change, but I will add to
this complexity because I'm sure you all know that American forces. It's not the only tectonic
shift right because very considerable American forces are currently in the Middle East.
And it tells you two things: one is that the US identified major American interests in this and it
is there to maintain these interests and protect them. The other is that now Israel is of course
there's this big hug right keeps Israel you know, certain place and Ori and
I discussed this earlier. I think Israel is going through a sort of hastened process of learning
right. As I said at the beginning, Israel is all tactics, no strategy and I think the Israelis are
not forced to think strategically, forced by their American friends which it's not a bad thing right, it's a positive development. I will add something else, as
a historian, this isn't the first, this is definitely the most horrifying time but it
isn't the first and as much as it pains me to quote, Ariel Sharon who in the 1970s says you know quiet coming out of Gaza, you want the Gazans to be quiet, are you willing to
do what it takes? Which is exactly what Professor Medzini is saying. This takes many things which are
undoubtedly war crimes, without dispute right but we're probably in at the very beginning of a
new era in which we need to redefine right our war crimes. So, I will pick up on a few of the
themes. First of all, I absolutely agree with you that we need to look into the transition from
Cold War era style, state armies conventional clashing armor tanks, clashing World War II style,
into the current strategic Arena where Israel is basically encircled by of non-state
actors that are armed by conventional forces, well trained and well equipped as as cutting edge
military forces. When we say terrorists, I'm 42, I grew up in the 80s and the 90s, I imagine something
someone running with a knife. We're not you know, we're not in that
political prism. I think we can chalk this off to a combined success, the double edge sort
of having successful conventional and nuclear strong deterrence in the 70s onwards. I think
it pushed the Israeli-Arab, Israeli-Muslim conflict. those who oppose Israel's existence into thinking
that while conventional armies or the vision of you know an armored tank division rolling through
the Sinai or rolling in Jordan or rolling in Syria can somehow change the Strategic calculation, the
new understanding, especially since the end of the Cold War was that the future of the
conflict lies between Israel's conflict with highly armed, highly trained non-state actors. And
the Iranian strategy and we've seen it played out so far, is to encircle Israel with entities which
could inflict what we call Death By A Thousand Cuts and would prevent Israel from launching
short-term wars carrying the warfare into the territory of the enemy, and everything that we've
discussed. As to the political domestic Arena and the 1977 Mahopac, the big political
change, which brought about the end of the labor government and the beginning of the Likud era. I think I hope we would see a dramatic political shift. The thing is and I talk about
with students and interlocutors all the time... because of how Israel's system political system
is made up, we just don't know when that election may happen. What people don't know you and I and
and the Israelis, you know Netanyahu is engaged in a bitter fight for his political survival. He
delayed the establishment of a Unity government for five days because he insisted on not pushing
out the most radical elements of his government and he was quoted in the media and saying as I need to have my 64 fingers the day after the war, and this is what motivates him
and we see him going after and leaking press briefings against the Army and its heads because
he wants the army to bear full responsibility and it's very dangerous because those political right-wing
political factions in government are now backing horrible massive settler violence. In the West Bank, we've had shootings it's like the they are eager to launch an
allout war in the West Bank, which would leak into the wider conflict. These radical elements need to
be pushed out of government and taken down in the sense of encountered and it's not going
to happen while they're still in government. I learned from mistake. I appreciate
especially Gil-li's comment on the issue of war crimes. There's a real puzzle here
right as as Professor Medzini also said. There's one party here that is held accountable to
international law, and the other party, it's not as if it doesn't know about international
law or accidentally whoops I didn't realize that this was not okay, it exploits international
law because it assumes that only one side is bound by it, and not the other. So perhaps, in the future decades from now, we will see a world where there is a new branch of laws of
war that is applied to what now seems to be a growing trend. The most dangerous
participants tend to be non-state actors who are not just released but sort of rewarded
for defying these laws. Amichai asked about geopolitics as an outcome. As is typical
of me, turn the question on its head and talk about geopolitics as a cause. I am not as persuaded as my
interlocutors that the cause of the Hamas attack is Netanyahu and nobody but Netanyahu. I
believe that the cause of the Hamas attack is is the Saudi Israeli rapprochement which puts two
unlikely partners in a real state of panic. And we should emphasize this, because
it goes against the argument that religious identity is key here. Iran is cooperating with
Hamas. In, scuttling a Saudi Israeli rapprochement, these two parties could not be more different. One
is Shia, the other is Sunni. Now everybody in the room knows that Shia and Sunnis are like cats
and mice in general, but just to drive that point home, the most violent war in the Middle
East by far was the Iran-Iraq war fought among other things. About this, you know because of
this religious divide in the last battle of that war, the Battle of Basra, which lasted about
two months. More people died in this one battle between Shia and Sunnis than in the entire Arab-Israeli conflict. '48, '56, '67, '73, the entire Israeli Palestine conflict piled on top of each other does
not produce the number of fatalities in the Sunni Shia rivalry in one battle. So this is a massive
Gulf and yet you are spanning this gulf in order to prevent a process that starts with Sadat
and Begin at Camp David moves onto Jordan, recently is accelerated through the Abraham
Accords with some agreements that may or may not be significant. I think they're
quite significant based on how the Israeli-left was upset by these accords. I
take them to be quite significant and now a step and I'll say one last
thing about about geopolitics and the Saudi - Israeli relation, to my surprise two weeks ago
the Saudis proclaimed in mock outrage that they are so upset at what the Israelis are doing in
Gaza that they are freezing negotiations with the Israelis. I did not see that coming I thought
cancelling, we're never talking to you again right. We are freezing and we
heard yesterday from the Saudis that they're already thinking about when those negotiations
will restart, confirming in my mind that geopolitics are the driver behind this.Be that
perhaps not all Saudis and all Israelis are insane, and somewhere and I'm not saying it's Netanyahu
but somewhere someone might actually be acting rationally because nothing will piss off Hamas and
the Iranians as much as a continuation of Saudi Israeli negotiations, and I hope the Americans
push for that hard. I think they're doing so. We're essentially out of time, so I'd like to give
each of you one minute but literally that's all I can do and Professor Medzini I'll begin with
you to think in the future, how historically we'll look back at this current conflict not 50
years from now because that's too far but 10 or 20 years from now, how do you think we'll be in
a session like this reflecting on this current conflict? Professor, people will think about this as
a major turning point in the history, not only of Israel, but of the entire region, because if we
do not deal a massive blow to Hamas, now, we've lost our deterent power and in the Middle East
if you're perceived to be weak, you're in serious trouble and that could have enormous implications
on our relations with the Emirates and Bahrain and Morocco and a few other countries that we're
talking to and therefore we should insist now not on partial semiartificial solutions but we have
to go in and do a major operation in Gaza to make sure that Hamas loses its military
and political capability. You can't kill an ideology, you can't kill a religion but you can
certainly destroy a military capability and capacity. Tthank you. Gil-li? I think it will reignite a peace
process and bring back the two State solution in a very actual way manner, I hope
so and domestically inside Israel I think this is an infliction moment as historical as '48
and it's a make or break moment in terms of how different political factions shape the the
new Israel, which I hope would emerge. I also want to be optimistic. There's a dark
corner of my mind where I'm worried that people are just going to try to muddle along. You know,
the more of those tactical strikes that we've seen in the last two days, now dragging over the
next three months and then Natanyahu will say look we've killed 95% of the Hamas command that's
enough and now let's pretend nothing happened and go back to business as usual. I hope with you
that that's not the case. I'll note what I think everybody in the room knows that if Hamas
is removed from Gaza something else needs to go and fill that Gap. That cannot be the International
Community because it cannot be trusted anybody who trusted it three weeks ago, no longer trusts
it. It's not going to be the US government because they're too smart. It's not going to be
the Egyptians or the Saudis because they're too smart. It has to be the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian Authority will not do that unless you give them an incentive and that incentive has
to be a move from Oslo stage one, which is a stage we've gotten stuck in to at least Oslo stage
two, perhaps even Oslo stage three. I don't know what that means. Maybe that means a seat at the
United Nations. Maybe that means the Palestinian flag flying over the White House for two weeks
but you got to give them something in order to convince them to take over the Gaza Strip and
I hope that that will ultimately lead to to a move ahead
in healthy Israeli Palestine relations but there are now scars and that's part of the point
of terrorism. There are now scars that are very hard to heal and so I want to refer some back
to something professor Medzini said one of the real obstacles to an Israeli Syrian peace
are scars from 1973 Israeli Syrian peace. What you did to our people, the
way you behaved when the whole thing was over, and I think it's become very hard
to say you know deep down inside there are Partners For Peace. That's the goal of
terrorism is to burn Bridges well. I apologize that we didn't get to more questions, but I
think you'll agree that this has really been an extraordinary session. Again, when we first
organized it, we imagined that it would be mainly historical and certainly not reflecting on a
current crisis, but we have wound up not only learning a lot about history, but very deeply about
the current moment of great crisis and potentially when the fighting ends, a hopeful opportunity. So
thank you all for joining us.
