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In this editorial episode, Mr. Sujit Nair conducts a conversation with Yoni Leviatan, a Jewish writer and musician, focusing on the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. On October 7, militants from Gaza launched numerous rockets at Israeli towns, breached the heavily fortified border fence with Israel, and sent militants deep into Israeli territory. In this incursion, Hamas gunmen killed over 1,400 individuals, including civilians and soldiers, while also taking more than 200 hostages, as reported by Israeli authorities. This event has been described as the most significant Jewish massacre since the Holocaust.
The tactics and scale of these attacks were unprecedented, marking the first time Israel had encountered such a street battle on its own soil since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It was also the first time the nation faced a terror attack of this magnitude, claiming numerous civilian lives. Although Hamas had kidnapped Israelis in the past, they had never taken dozens of hostages at once, including children and the elderly. Hamas referred to this operation as the ""Al-Aqsa Storm,"" citing it as a response to what they perceived as Israeli attacks on women, the desecration of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, and the ongoing Gaza siege.
In response to the attack, Israel declared war and initiated ""Operation Swords of Iron,"" targeting what it identified as Hamas and Islamic Jihad facilities in Gaza. Additionally, Israel blocked supply lines for basic necessities, including fuel and water, to the Gaza population. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) advised Gaza civilians to leave their residential areas immediately for their safety, although some residents argued that there were no safe places to go. Gaza's border crossings were sealed.
Complicating Israel's response is the issue of the hostages held by Hamas. Hamas claimed that some hostages were killed due to Israeli airstrikes in the enclave, though Israel has neither confirmed nor denied this claim. Recently, Hamas released a video featuring one of the hostages, Schem, a 21-year-old French-Israeli woman, who stated that she was injured and taken to Gaza, pleading to be reunited with her family.
Hamas has called on Gazans not to abandon their homes, accusing Israel of using ""psychological warfare"" by urging Palestinians to evacuate to the south, asserting that displacement and exile are not options for them.
#Israel #Palestine #Hamas #Jews #Muslims #arab #india #middleeast #foreignpolicy #gaza #westbank #benjaminnetanyahu #Jerusalem #HWNews #SujitNair
https://linktr.ee/sujitnair
In this editorial episode, Mr. Sujit Nair conducts a conversation with Yoni Leviatan, a Jewish writer and musician, focusing on the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. On October 7, militants from Gaza launched numerous rockets at Israeli towns, breached the heavily fortified border fence with Israel, and sent militants deep into Israeli territory. In this incursion, Hamas gunmen killed over 1,400 individuals, including civilians and soldiers, while also taking more than 200 hostages, as reported by Israeli authorities. This event has been described as the most significant Jewish massacre since the Holocaust.
The tactics and scale of these attacks were unprecedented, marking the first time Israel had encountered such a street battle on its own soil since the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. It was also the first time the nation faced a terror attack of this magnitude, claiming numerous civilian lives. Although Hamas had kidnapped Israelis in the past, they had never taken dozens of hostages at once, including children and the elderly. Hamas referred to this operation as the ""Al-Aqsa Storm,"" citing it as a response to what they perceived as Israeli attacks on women, the desecration of the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, and the ongoing Gaza siege.
In response to the attack, Israel declared war and initiated ""Operation Swords of Iron,"" targeting what it identified as Hamas and Islamic Jihad facilities in Gaza. Additionally, Israel blocked supply lines for basic necessities, including fuel and water, to the Gaza population. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) advised Gaza civilians to leave their residential areas immediately for their safety, although some residents argued that there were no safe places to go. Gaza's border crossings were sealed.
Complicating Israel's response is the issue of the hostages held by Hamas. Hamas claimed that some hostages were killed due to Israeli airstrikes in the enclave, though Israel has neither confirmed nor denied this claim. Recently, Hamas released a video featuring one of the hostages, Schem, a 21-year-old French-Israeli woman, who stated that she was injured and taken to Gaza, pleading to be reunited with her family.
Hamas has called on Gazans not to abandon their homes, accusing Israel of using ""psychological warfare"" by urging Palestinians to evacuate to the south, asserting that displacement and exile are not options for them.
#Israel #Palestine #Hamas #Jews #Muslims #arab #india #middleeast #foreignpolicy #gaza #westbank #benjaminnetanyahu #Jerusalem #HWNews #SujitNair
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Namaskar. Welcome to another episode of Editorial.
00:04 The Hamas attacked Israel, killed children, killed women, men, took 200 hostages.
00:16 Israel retaliated, killed a lot of innocent civilians, asked people from Gaza to evacuate,
00:29 and the question is, for the last 7, 8, 10 days we have been talking about who is right,
00:35 who is wrong, what is right, what is wrong, so on and so forth. I have got Yoni Levitan.
00:40 Yoni is a song composer, he is a musician, he is also a political commentator, and he writes
00:50 in various newspapers and magazines. So, somebody who is aware, somebody who has been following the
00:58 situation and somebody who has been writing about it. So, let us know from Yoni, the Israeli
01:04 perspective and what he feels about what is going on. That is my show tonight. Let us get right to
01:12 the show. Yoni, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us. Yoni, before I start this
01:26 interview, let me be very categorical about this, that we condemn what happened in Israel. We
01:32 condemn the Hamas action, the cowardly action that Hamas, what Hamas did with those young children,
01:41 women in Israel, we condemn it. So, let us put that straight first and that is the first thing
01:46 I want to say. What is your opinion about what is happening currently? People being evacuated from
01:55 Gaza, people being asked to evacuate from Gaza. Do you think it is right?
02:00 Well, first of all, thank you for your strong and clear condemnation. I think it is important
02:05 to always begin these conversations with that condemnation because we have to remember that
02:10 that is how all of this started. War was forced upon us and unfortunately war is hell, war is
02:17 hell for both sides. The whole world saw the hell that Israelis suffered on October 7th
02:23 and there is no denying that the Palestinian people are suffering. The displacement that you
02:29 mentioned is going on on both sides. Palestinians have been displaced from their homes in the
02:34 northern Gaza Strip. They have been asked to move to the south where it is safer. It is not 100%
02:40 safe. It is safer than the north where we know the heavy fighting will be because that is where
02:44 Hamas has embedded themselves. And on the Israeli side, we have 300,000 Israelis that have had to
02:51 evacuate their homes from the north and the south. My family is among those. My family lives,
02:56 I have cousins on the Lebanese border. They have left their homes. They left their homes
03:00 on October 8th. They have not been able to go back, but at least they will have homes to go
03:05 back to. There are many families in the south that don't have homes to go back to. Tens of
03:10 thousands of Israelis have nowhere else to go now. They are being hosted by the many wonderful people
03:16 of Israel. The people have come together. There is a lot of solidarity. The mood in the country
03:23 is a mix of pain, rage, but also a lot of love. And that love extends not, you know, people think
03:32 that this is, of course, Israel is the world's only Jewish state. I say this over and over again.
03:37 It is not only a state of Jews. The Jewish people are 75% of the population. The other 25% consists
03:44 of Arabs, Muslims, Christian, Druze, Bedouins, others, immigrants. There are many people
03:51 suffering on both sides. And that is the reality of war. When is this going to stop? How is this
03:57 going to end? Because according to the United Nations, for the last nine days, not a drop of
04:03 fuel, not a grain of food has come into Gaza. Yes, it is. And that is why we have been working
04:12 with the United States and Egypt to ensure that humanitarian aid does get into Gaza. There are
04:17 20 trucks full of humanitarian aid waiting to cross the border at Rafa in Egypt. This is a
04:23 border crossing that we do not control. But we have worked to ensure that that aid will go in.
04:29 We are also working to ensure that that aid does not reach Hamas. This is the reason that we have
04:34 prevented it since October 7, because unfortunately, Hamas takes advantage of the international good
04:40 will. They steal this humanitarian aid, and they use it for nefarious purposes. And if I could just
04:45 give you a few examples, the UN has admitted that a few days ago, Hamas stole food, fuel and medicine
04:53 from UNRWA, which is the UN organization that provides aid within Gaza. We know for years,
04:59 that aid that has gone into Gaza, such as cement, right, the cement that has gone in, in order to
05:06 help the reconstruction of Gaza after previous rounds of fighting has been stolen and used to
05:11 build tunnels through which Hamas fighters have a whole underground network of genocidal terrorists
05:18 that plan and carry out attacks like we saw on October 7. We know that Hamas stole water pipes
05:25 that were meant for the people of Gaza. So they have clean water, and they use them to create
05:30 missiles and rockets that are now fired at Israel day and night for years. So your original question,
05:38 I believe, was when will this all end? And I can say categorically, it will end with the elimination
05:44 of Hamas, because we've had ceasefires before. I understand very well the good intentions of
05:50 everyone around the world who is calling for a ceasefire. Nobody wants to see more bloodshed.
05:55 But the problem that we have is, for decades, we've had ceasefires. Every round of fighting
06:01 ends with a ceasefire. And it begins again, within a few years time, and then more lives
06:07 are lost on both sides. It is time to put an end to this once and for all. I don't believe there
06:12 will be a ceasefire until Hamas is eliminated, and Gaza is put back into the hands of a responsible
06:18 entity. Is it that difficult for Israel to pinpoint Hamas and take down Hamas? Because
06:27 the reason I ask this is because according to the UN Relief Work Agency, the food and fuel
06:36 is just not reaching the Gaza Strip. That's the reason I ask you this question.
06:41 Again, it's not reaching it because Hamas is stealing it. So we have to ensure that the aid
06:48 that goes in does not help Hamas in their brutal attacks against Israelis. You say that we can,
06:56 we do have capabilities to pinpoint Hamas. We have had, since October 7th, I don't know if the
07:03 number has crossed into double digits, but we've taken out a number of senior Hamas commanders.
07:07 And we've taken them out with minimal civilian casualties. So when we can do that, we do. We
07:13 do have incredible intelligence capabilities. Although yes, there was a failure of, you know,
07:20 there's no way to describe the enormous intelligence failure that allowed October 7th to happen.
07:26 However, we do still have some of the best intelligence capabilities in the world. And
07:31 when we can, we eliminate these Hamas leaders with minimal civilian casualties. However,
07:36 it's important to remember that Hamas embeds itself within the civilian population.
07:41 And unfortunately, when they launched a war against us, they launched a war within these
07:47 urban areas. So they're firing rockets at us within urban areas. They have weapons depots
07:53 stored underneath homes, command and control centers underneath hospitals. It is very,
07:58 very difficult to get rid of this threat without harming civilians. And we are taking every measure
08:04 possible. But you know, nobody is perfect. There are going to be civilian casualties. And that is
08:09 something that the world must accept. Because that is an unfortunate reality of war. And there
08:15 are civilian casualties on both sides. We've already paid a very dear price and we will continue
08:20 to pay a price. We are going to pay a price with our soldiers who are risking their lives, not just
08:24 to save Israeli lives. Our soldiers take risks that most other soldiers in the world do not take
08:31 in order to minimize Palestinian civilian casualty. Where we draw the line is we are not going to
08:37 sacrifice our children for theirs. We don't want to hurt Palestinian innocent civilians and certainly
08:42 not children. But Hamas has put a formula up that has basically said it's either your children or
08:48 ours, because they don't want a war for land. They don't want a war for territory. A war for
08:54 territory ends up like what you see in the West Bank when five Arab armies attacked Israel in 1967.
09:00 And there is a military occupation, illegal military occupation there until today.
09:06 That is not what Hamas wants. Hamas wants to come into Israel and they want to slaughter everyone,
09:12 including me and my family, in the exact same manner as they slaughtered those on October 7th.
09:17 They don't want to occupy us. They want to behead our babies. They want to torture children in front
09:22 of parents. They want to torture parents in front of children. And then they want to tie them all
09:26 together and burn them alive. I'm sorry. This is not something that we can accept. This is why there
09:31 will be no ceasefire until every single element of Hamas is eliminated. And this is something that
09:37 will benefit not only Israelis, it will benefit the Palestinian people because they too have
09:42 suffered greatly under Hamas. Attacking a hospital which had large casualties, wasn't it uncalled for?
09:49 Yes, totally. And all the evidence shows that we did not attack a hospital.
09:54 There is mountains of evidence that has been put out and been independently gone through.
10:03 And it's come to the conclusion that this was a failed rocket launch by Islamic Jihad.
10:08 And we know this from numerous sources. There are videos from Al Jazeera live in real time,
10:14 as well as Israel's Channel 12. But we don't ask you to trust everything Israel is saying.
10:18 I understand there's a healthy amount of skepticism, as there should be for anyone.
10:22 But we know that this was a failed rocket launch from Hamas, sorry, from Islamic Jihad.
10:28 They launched this rocket from a cemetery close to the hospital. The reason that there was a fire
10:34 is because the propellant fuel, which is meant for me and my people, it is meant to cause
10:41 tremendous damage by the time it lands. It didn't have time to go off. So when it actually fell
10:47 short and landed on the hospital, that is why we saw this big fire. And by the way,
10:51 the hospital is still standing. It landed in a parking lot. And the initial numbers of 500
10:56 dead were preposterous. It's impossible that they could have known how many casualties they were
11:01 within minutes when here we are two weeks later, we still don't know exactly how many casualties
11:06 we have. What we do know about that hospital strike is there are dozens of casualties.
11:14 I believe the European Union or there were some European organization that put the number at 50.
11:20 So clearly what Hamas is putting out, and it's important to remember that the health ministry
11:25 of Gaza is run by Hamas. So with all the scrutiny given to Israel and the IDF, and it's legitimate,
11:31 we're a sovereign democratic country, we should be held up to the highest standards. But my God,
11:38 that the media around the world, and of course, I'm not speaking about you guys, but
11:43 particularly in the West, many outlets, specifically the New York Times and the BBC,
11:48 MSNBC and others, they ran with headlines that were given to them by a genocidal terrorist
11:54 organization. And they didn't do even a modicum of fact checking. They contributed to the situation.
12:02 The situation was already on fire. They lit fuel on it. And they exploded the Arab street. I said
12:08 this in an earlier interview on another outlet, there was supposed to be a summit. When President
12:14 Biden was here, he was supposed to come to Israel and then go to Jordan and meet with King Abdullah,
12:20 the president of Egypt, President el-Sisi, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian
12:26 Authority. And that could have had a positive outcome. That summit was cancelled because of
12:31 the irresponsible headlines that the media ran without doing any fact checking. And they took
12:36 Hamas at their word. So I think it's very important going forward that all media outlets take a
12:43 breath, wait, don't publish headlines until you've confirmed the facts. And if you're going to
12:48 publish a story, don't assign blame without evidence. And if you do assign blame without
12:53 evidence, and it turns out that you're wrong, a correction must be issued that is 10 times
12:58 louder than the original headline, because lives are at stake on both sides.
13:03 - But then I want to ask you a question. Why do you think that most of the statements that
13:08 United Nations, the United Nations relief work agencies have been issuing are things like,
13:15 for instance, at least 4 lakh people displaced are now in UNRWA schools, buildings, most of
13:23 them are not equipped with emergency. All these statements are issued by United Nations. Why are
13:28 United Nations issuing statements like this? - It's important to understand that UNRWA,
13:33 the organization that is responsible for Palestinian refugees,
13:37 and if I could just include a side note, no other refugees in the world have their own
13:43 organization dedicated simply to them. All the other refugees throughout the world are part of
13:48 the UN Human Rights Commission of Refugees, I forget the exact acronym. Palestinians have had
13:54 their own organization since I think 1949. I just wanted to point out that they are staffed by
14:01 Palestinians. It's not independent international people from throughout the world coming into Gaza.
14:07 Most of UNRWA is staffed by Palestinians who are obviously sympathetic to Hamas and to their own
14:14 situation. And that's understandable, I'm not criticizing them for that, but I think it's
14:18 important to take these statements with a grain of salt and understand that there is a sympathy
14:24 there that is understandable. And the suffering that they are going through and the lack of
14:30 humanitarian aid is a result of years and years of Hamas abusing the international community's
14:37 goodwill, stealing this aid and appropriating it for their own terroristic, genocidal intentions.
14:44 So we must take... - No, please, please, I'm sorry. - No, we have to take steps to ensure that this
14:52 aid is not used for nefarious purposes, and that's the reality. And by the way, I forget one more
14:58 thing. We also have over 200 hostages in Hamas hands. So not only are Palestinians suffering,
15:05 we understand also our people are hungry and thirsty, and they also need this humanitarian
15:10 aid. We want it to get in. We want to make sure that it doesn't go into the wrong hands. - In fact,
15:15 that was my next question. 200 of Israelis are kept hostage. That's bad. And I'm sure Israelis
15:22 are angry. There is no question about it. And one doesn't need to justify why you're angry.
15:26 But the point is, see, somewhere along the line, when you have leaflets distributed in Gaza Strip
15:33 asking people to evacuate, 1.2 million people to evacuate within 24 hours. Now, this has happened.
15:40 Now, things of this sort is what one questions. - Well, first of all, they weren't given 24 hours
15:44 notice. I believe it's almost a week later and we still haven't sent ground troops in.
15:49 So they've had plenty of notice, a lot more notice than our citizens had before they were
15:53 slaughtered. And if I could just touch on one other thing that you mentioned, our goal right
15:58 now in Gaza is not revenge. Of course, we have a lot of rage, a lot of passion and that is a
16:05 feeling that is shared among many Israelis. That is not the military's goal. The military's goal
16:10 is to make sure this doesn't happen again. So this is not a revenge war. This is a war of survival.
16:15 - So then Yoni, do we believe, does Israel believe that Palestinian equals Hamas?
16:22 - Yes. This is a complicated question because the Palestinian people in 2006 voted for Hamas
16:31 in democratic elections. In 2005, after 38 years of occupation from the same war in 1967 at the
16:39 West Bank, the reason that the West Bank is still occupied legally by the military, the IDF, the
16:45 Israeli government decided to pull out every last soldier, every last settlement in 2005. In 2006,
16:52 the Palestinian people held elections in both the West Bank and in Gaza and they elected Hamas.
16:58 Now, it wasn't an outright, they didn't win a total 100% of the vote. It was a democratic election
17:06 and that means that they won a majority, it was close, and the Palestinian Authority, represented
17:10 by their Fatah movement, came in second. But you have to, the conclusion is quite obvious that
17:16 not all Palestinian people support Hamas and I don't think we should equate the Palestinian
17:21 people 100% with Hamas. But what we must realize is that a large portion of them, a majority of them,
17:29 did vote for Hamas, they do support Hamas, and we see it in their actions to this day,
17:34 where every time there is a terrorist attack, even as brutal, as savage as the one on October 7th,
17:40 they take to the streets, they hand out candies, they have celebrations, and this is something
17:44 that you simply don't see on the other side. Every single Palestinian that has died,
17:49 you will never see Israelis out in the streets celebrating, giving out candies. That's not who
17:53 we are. We don't enjoy killing innocent Palestinians. For some reason, they enjoy
17:58 killing innocent Israelis. So, why do such things now? Why not restrain? Why not show that level of
18:06 sympathy you need? That's the point I'm saying. Why be what Hamas is? Right, well, first of all,
18:12 we're not, if we were what Hamas is, we would have flattened Gaza decades ago. We have enormous
18:18 firepower. We have shown tremendous sympathy and understanding for the Palestinian people for many
18:22 years, for decades. Again, this war could have ended a long time ago if we were anything like
18:28 Hamas, but we're not. However, this time it's different. They have forced a war upon us that
18:35 is not a war for land, it is a war for survival. If we don't eliminate Hamas, we will be next,
18:41 and we understand that. We know that from their plans. We have found their plans that were on
18:46 them. The Hamas terrorists that we did manage to kill on October 7th, we know what their plans were.
18:50 They weren't planning to just stop at the south. They were planning to get to the center of the
18:54 country and continue their massacre. So, it's very unfortunate that what is going on and that
19:00 Palestinian people are suffering, but it is a result of basically two things. The war that
19:05 Hamas started on October 7th, and the fact that they've embedded themselves within this civilian
19:10 population. Now, thankfully, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the northern strip have heeded
19:16 our calls and they've managed to get to the southern part. Even though Hamas made tremendous
19:21 efforts to block them, they managed to get there. Now, there's a limit to what we can do. We have to
19:27 eliminate Hamas. We have no other choice. And it's unfortunate, but lives on both sides are going to
19:32 be lost, but that is the price that you pay for freedom and security. One has seen from 1948,
19:38 Israel as a country acknowledged by United Nations, and to now, Palestinian has been shrinking.
19:45 No, it's absolutely not a fact. If anything, the Palestinian land has grown. I know that there's
19:52 this meme that has gone around that shows the green land and how it's shrunk. That's not true.
19:57 This was never an independent Palestinian state. It was ruled by the Ottoman Empire for hundreds
20:02 of years until the British took over in World War I. Palestinians have never had autonomy in this
20:07 land. The only time that they had autonomy is under Israeli rule. Beginning with the 1993
20:13 Oslo Accords, they slowly have been able to expand control and rule over themselves
20:18 in their territories. Now, of course, it's true. The IDF, Israel controls the outer borders because
20:25 we've been left with no choice. If we don't do that, if we don't stop the terrorists from
20:29 arming themselves in order to do the kind of things that they did on October 7th,
20:34 we have no other choice. But their autonomy has actually grown in this land. And they have more
20:39 autonomy now than they've ever had before. They have full autonomy in Gaza. Hamas has ruled Gaza
20:45 since 2006. They've been able to do whatever they want. They could have taken all this international
20:50 aid, all this cement, all this fuel, all this water, and they could have built more hospitals.
20:55 They could have built schools. They could have built institutions. They chose to build
20:59 terror tunnels. They chose to build rockets. They chose to do everything that is negative and
21:06 destructive for their people and for our people. Whereas when we were given the chance to build a
21:12 state, and my family has been here since as early as 1939, my grandparents fought in the 1948 war,
21:20 we built universities, we built hospitals, we built institutions. And this is why today we
21:26 are a strong functioning democracy. The Palestinians have had every opportunity to do this,
21:31 and some of them have, and some of them have not. And that is the situation that we are in today.
21:37 - But one can't deny the fact that 1948, when the Israel land and the Arab land was divided,
21:44 the map then and the map post 1973 and post 1978, Palestine has been shrinking, hasn't it?
21:51 - Yeah, of course it can be denied. There was no Palestinian land before there's a Palestinian
21:56 people. But the land that you're talking about, if you look at the map from 1947 from the United
22:02 Nations, when they voted Israel as a state, this land was supposed to be divided between Arabs and
22:09 Jews, Palestinians and Israelis. And they chose not to accept that plan, the partition plan. They
22:16 chose to launch a war with seven Arab armies at the time in 1948 that attacked us and we won that
22:22 war. And war has consequences now. Our land expanded in 1967, because again, we were attacked
22:30 by five Arab armies. And this was a war of self-defense. And sometimes you need to take land
22:36 from the people that are attacking you in order to create a buffer zone to create safety and
22:40 security for your citizens. We have not annexed the West Bank. We did not annex Gaza. We left
22:47 Gaza in 2005. The Palestinian people have had many opportunities, and I hope they will have
22:52 future opportunities to build their own institutions, to build their own land and to
22:57 have their own self right to self-determination. There's a lot of misconceptions about what things
23:03 were before and what they are now. I hope this helps to clear some of that up.
23:07 - How do you see all of this ending? How do you see peace happening in the region,
23:13 Yoni? It's so important for both the Palestinians and the Israeli and the Arab world
23:18 and the world at large. - Well, even in these horrible days that
23:22 we're experiencing, there are some glimmers of hope. First of all, within Israeli society,
23:28 we are seeing a level of solidarity between Arab and Jewish citizens that we didn't see before.
23:35 We have also seen in recent years more Arab states that have joined and decided to make
23:41 peace and normalize their relations with Israel, such as the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco,
23:46 Sudan. And we know that Saudi Arabia was very close to normalizing relations, which of course
23:54 would be a huge positive thing for the entire region. And that is also the reason why Hamas
24:02 decided to launch their savage attack on October 7th, because they knew that this would disrupt
24:08 the normalization efforts being made by the United States to bring Israel and Saudi Arabia together.
24:15 So, I will never give up hope. I do believe there is hope for peace in the region, and I do believe
24:20 that there is hope for peace between us and the Palestinians. We do have people that we can talk
24:25 to within the Palestinian people. We don't always like them, but at least Mahmoud Abbas, the
24:30 Palestinian Authority, they have shown a certain level of commitment to non-violent means of
24:38 attaining their right to self-determination. Our security forces work hand in hand with the
24:44 Palestinian Preventive Security Forces in the West Bank in order to thwart terrorist attacks.
24:49 This has saved many lives, many Israeli lives, many Palestinian lives. Peace is possible between
24:55 Israelis and Palestinians, but in order for that to happen, you have to get rid of the bad actors.
25:00 You have to get rid of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, people like this who don't want peace. We see
25:06 how they treat their own people. They didn't even want their people to escape the Northern Strip
25:11 in order to get to safety in the Southern Strip. So, we have to get rid of people like this,
25:15 create a safer environment for everyone, including Palestinians. Now, I don't know
25:21 what the day after will look like. I'm not even sure our leaders have come to a final decision
25:27 because first we have to remove the threat. However, there have been proposals out there
25:31 that sound somewhat reasonable. For instance, if the Palestinian Authority took back control
25:36 in Gaza, there's a fair chance that Gaza will be run like the West Bank, and then we can have more
25:43 hope for peace. So, it is possible, but you have to get rid of the people who don't want peace,
25:50 the people who want death, the people who want to kill more than they want to live.
25:55 And when that happens, we will be on the road to peace.
25:58 You know, my last question, you see, as an ordinary citizen and at this part of the world,
26:03 by this part of the world, almost every part of the world, you know, as an ordinary citizen,
26:07 we believe that there is this huge animosity between the Arabs and the Israelis. And the
26:12 moment an Israeli sees an Arab or an Arab sees an Israeli, he goes for his gun and tries to shoot
26:18 him down. Is that how it is? Normally, I'm not talking about current situation, normally, is
26:23 that how it is? No, not at all. In fact, I live in Jaffa. I don't know how much you know about Jaffa,
26:29 it's a part of the Tel Aviv municipality. The full name is called Tel Aviv Jaffa. Jaffa is one of a
26:35 number of mixed cities within Israel where Jews and Arabs live together in peace, Arab Muslims,
26:40 Arab Christians. I rent my apartment from an Arab plastic surgeon who owns three apartments,
26:46 I rent one of them. We have very good relations within this mixed city, not in every mixed city,
26:54 sometimes when it's tense, things are tense. But of course, there's many misconceptions about
26:59 what daily life is like in Israel. As I said earlier, 25% of our population is not Jewish.
27:05 And we have thousands, thousands of Arab Israelis, both Muslims and Christians and
27:10 Jews and Bedouins, who are not only productive citizens, they actually serve in the IDF.
27:16 They serve in the Israeli Defense Forces and they will be part of the troops going into Gaza to
27:21 eliminate Hamas. So, if the Arab world, if the Muslim world is anyone out there listening to
27:27 this interview, please understand that that is not the reality in Israel. On a day-to-day basis,
27:33 we do get along. And that, for me, gives me hope that this situation in Israel where I would even
27:42 state that it's probably in the entire Middle East, if not the whole world, there is nowhere
27:48 that Arabs and Jews get along better than within the borders of the state of Israel.
27:53 What we need is for that to expand to the entire Middle East and the rest of the world.
27:57 Thank you so much. Youni, thank you so much for talking to us and thank you so much for being so
28:02 candid. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on and giving me a chance
28:06 to speak. I very much appreciate it.
28:13 (Music)