In an exclusive interview with Oneindia’s Pankaj Mishra, Dave Fefferman, the Former National Security Analyst of IDF breaks down strategy of IDF. He also talks about Hamas’ dominance in Gaza Strip and the further challenges IDF and Netanyahu may face in defeating resistance and Iran altogether. Do watch this special interview for insights.
#HezbollahAttack #IsraelHamaswar #Hezbollah #IsraeliAttack #Worldnews #EtayAzulay #IDFWar #Worldnews #Oneindia #Oneindianews
~PR.320~ED.103~HT.334~
#HezbollahAttack #IsraelHamaswar #Hezbollah #IsraeliAttack #Worldnews #EtayAzulay #IDFWar #Worldnews #Oneindia #Oneindianews
~PR.320~ED.103~HT.334~
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Hello and welcome to this special broadcast on the first anniversary of the dastardly
00:11attack on Israel. Gaza and Hamas fighters came, entered into Israel and started spraying
00:19bullets on people as early as 6.30 or 7 in the morning. To discuss what has changed since,
00:27it's my pleasure to be joined by Major Dan Pfefferman, former National Security Analyst
00:32and Advisor, IDF General Staff, as a special assistant to the Deputy Chief of the General
00:37Staff and a commander in an elite intelligence unit and also an author and researcher on
00:43Israel, Judaism, Middle East politics and foreign affairs. Major Pfefferman, thank you
00:49so much for speaking to One India. Thanks for having me on the show. First things first,
00:55this morning of October 7, 2024, 365 days later, what remains to be done?
01:02Yeah, we're one year into this war now on multiple fronts that we never asked for,
01:09that we never wanted. And the hardest part of all of it is that 100 of our hostages are still
01:18being held in Gaza. Not clear how many of them are alive. Certainly the ones who are have been
01:23suffering an immense deal. We know from those who have been released, rescued or unfortunately
01:31found dead. And it's been an incredibly trying period to be an Israeli. We're going to have
01:38commemoration ceremonies we had starting last night and we're going to have over the next few
01:43days, commemoration ceremonies. We essentially have not really been allowed to grieve this
01:52absolute atrocity due to the fact that our hostages are not home, due to the fact that we're
01:58still fighting in Gaza. The Lebanese arena has opened up with Hezbollah incessantly firing
02:05rockets since October 8. Iran has entered the fray. The Houthis in Yemen have entered the fray.
02:14Nobody in Israel knew who they were prior to this war. And the world, many, many in the world,
02:21it pains us so deeply to see, not calling for peace, not calling for ceasefires, but chanting
02:27death to Israel, attacking Jewish communities. And I think it should surprise no one, burning
02:35flags of the nations in which they have migrated to, most ironically. And so we find ourselves at
02:42a very, very trying time in history. Absolutely. I mean, this is something, you know, even taking
02:47it further than just backstabbing. And this particular attack, obviously reminiscent of
02:54one of the most deadliest attacks in human history, I would say. Major Feferman,
02:59talking about the IDF, I distinctly remember from October 7 or October 8, I spoke to a former IDF
03:07spokesperson to now having spoken to you and to several other spokespersons and active members
03:12there. How has it evolved? How has this war evolved the Israeli Defense Forces?
03:19Sure. And to be clear, I am not representing the government or the military in any capacity. I'm a
03:25private citizen now. On a purely military level, you know, one of the, I hate to say bright sides
03:34when talking about war, because nothing about war is bright or positive. But if we're doing
03:40an analysis of the threats of the military challenges and how the Israeli Defense Forces
03:46have answered them, it's really quite astounding. Hamas took over Gaza in 2006, after Israel.
03:56Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 unilaterally, ironically, in the hopes of promoting peace.
04:02And since 2006, Hamas has invested upwards of $10 billion. That number should really
04:10be stressed again, upwards of $10 billion in turning Gaza into the most sophisticated base
04:17of terror in the world. With an array of tens of thousands of missiles, rockets,
04:24mortars, we came to discover over 500 kilometers of underground tunnels. When I say underground
04:31tunnels, I'm talking 40 to 50 meters deep, that crisscross the entire Gaza Strip and allow
04:38certainly the smuggling of goods, but a lifelong, they allow them to fight a protracted and
04:45sophisticated guerrilla warfare. And then of course, their abilities and their really sophisticated
04:51plan to attack our heavily guarded border on that day, which I guess was not heavily guarded enough.
04:59And so the common thinking was that Israel did not go into Gaza all these years. There
05:05were seven rounds of fighting. This was the most brutal, the only one where really
05:13terrorists in such numbers crossed the border. But Israel had been holding off on going to Gaza
05:20for the last 20 years because the assumption was Gaza would be, so to speak, Israel's
05:27Vietnam, Israel's Afghanistan in that sense. We would get bogged down in the Gaza mud, so to speak.
05:33And the fact that one year in, Hamas was overwhelmingly demolished as a military
05:40organization. It's now really just guerrilla forces who are causing trouble, but there is
05:46no command structure. Almost all of the top leadership has been demolished. Their weapons
05:51manufacturing and launching abilities have been demolished, even if they fire rockets as they did
05:57this morning from time to time. And their ability to function as a comprehensive terrorist
06:02organization has all been but taken out. Israel took over Gaza in lightning fashion, and we've
06:09lost some 500 soldiers fighting in Gaza. That's a tremendous amount for us. Every one of those is,
06:15you know, the son, the husband, the brother of somebody you know in Israel. It's a small
06:20country here. This is not like India. We're a country of, you know, 10 million people, even less.
06:26And yet, the numbers predicted that there were going to be thousands of Israeli casualties. I
06:33have to say, there are some estimated 20,000 Palestinian civilian casualties in Gaza,
06:40which again is a large number. And we take no pride or pleasure in the fact that 20,000,
06:48roughly, civilians have been killed in Gaza. Another 20,000 are Hamas and Jihad militants.
06:54That is an extraordinarily low number of civilian casualties, especially given that
06:59Hamas's entire strategy is based on using its own civilians as shields. In the north,
07:07if we shift to the northern arena, Hezbollah, the Iranian, the flagship Iranian proxy in the region,
07:15was the vaunted military organization that people said was more powerful than most states'
07:22military, certainly more heavily armed, had a budget of close to $1 billion a year. That's
07:27tremendous. It's certainly more than the Lebanese army. And once again,
07:31you know, Hezbollah has been firing incessantly since October 8th,
07:37inserting itself into this war in order to weaken and distract and divide Israel,
07:43leaving close to 100,000 Israelis homeless, those who live on the northern border with Lebanon.
07:49And here the thinking was, if Israel were to escalate, if Israel were to go into Lebanon,
07:55if Israel were to conduct more serious airstrikes beyond limited targeted attacks,
08:01the entire, it's always, the number that's thrown out is 150,000 Hezbollah rockets and missiles,
08:08that force would come to bear on Israel. And what we saw in a masterful intelligence coup
08:16is the famous pager attack that's attributed to Israeli intelligence,
08:20which took out a good 15,000 Hezbollah operatives, broke their entire chain of
08:27communications and command, put many people in hospital. And then, of course, the assassination
08:35of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and quite literally the entire top leadership of the
08:41organization, while airstrikes over the course of the last week took out, it's estimated, well
08:48over half of their capability to fire mid and long-term rockets in Israel. It's quite astounding
08:55to see the sheer military and intelligence superiority of Israel. And I think even many
09:01in Israel were surprised at the successes of that. Right. Dan, also talking about, you're right,
09:07when you talk about the dismantling of the Hamas network, Yahya Sinwar, when he planned this attack,
09:15almost, you know, at a very personal level, very hush-hush manner, kept it secret, not even shared
09:20it with his own people there, not with Hezbollah at all. When he planned this attack, what must
09:27have been going through his mind, because he knew that he is taking on an IDF, a Mossad, a Benyamin
09:33Netanyahu, who would hit back like anything, and they'll be wiped from the face of the earth.
09:38Why Yahya Sinwar would do this? You know, we in Israel since, I know I personally as someone who
09:45frequently comments on these affairs, have been trying to get into the head of Yahya Sinwar and
09:51Hamas leadership since that day, and we're actually incapable of doing it, because to launch
10:00a terrorist attack, and you mentioned spraying bullets, if only spraying bullets was the
10:05the only form, the kind of brutalities we read about are so depraved, the kind of acts that
10:13were conducted on children, on elderly women, on pregnant women, is beyond comprehension,
10:21certainly of any of us in Israeli society. Certainly Yahya Sinwar, who
10:30was aware and probably is aware of Israel's military superiority, I think he estimated
10:39that Israel was far weaker and more divided internally than it was. He saw the protests
10:44that were taking place on the streets, of course the timing, it was a Jewish holiday,
10:50when many soldiers are home, when many families are away, when people are asleep,
10:57and also there was a sense that the coming peace and normalization agreement, the Abraham Accords,
11:03were going to expand quite soon to include Saudi Arabia, and in such a constellation,
11:09a geopolitical constellation, where Saudi Arabia signs a peace and normalization agreement with
11:14Israel, which would include of course the defense pact with the United States, it would include a
11:18Saudi demand to have either significant or total progress on solving the Palestinian issue,
11:26together with the Palestinian Authority. My sense is that Sinwar and probably his backers in Tehran
11:37understood that this is their last chance to tank, to torpedo the upcoming Saudi deal,
11:45and also possibly upend the Abraham Accords, cause such a regional conflict, drag of course
11:54Hezbollah and the Houthis in, as happened. I think they were hoping to inflame the West Bank,
11:59I think they were hoping to inflame the tensions of the 20 percent, the nearly two million Israeli
12:05Arab citizens, as happened in 2021, and not just prevent the upcoming Saudi deal, but even undo
12:13all of the progress made with the Abraham Accords over the last four years, and they view a long
12:20game. Their game is not a short one, and so for them it is apparent now that death is not an
12:29obstacle in achieving their goals, and they will continue to attack and instigate wars and chaos,
12:35and fight to every last civilian of theirs, because they have shown zero regard for civilian
12:44lives, obviously not on Israel's side, but especially not on their own side.
12:49Right. Dan, I'll take one final question from you. You mentioned about the Saudi Arabia,
12:57the deal, the proposal that was the United States' mediation, but all of them pointing
13:03towards giving possibly a statehood to Palestine, which Israel is not ready for. We heard Prime
13:09Minister Netanyahu yesterday giving a very impassioned speech when he directly addressed
13:15French President Macron. He said that with or without you, we are going to win this war,
13:20and your deeds would be remembered long after the war is over. For Prime Minister Netanyahu, Dan,
13:30how difficult has it been to maintain that tightrope walk between military
13:38maneuvering to diplomatic stances? Yeah, that's been the biggest challenge, and I do not envy
13:46any Israeli decision-maker here. How do you translate the military victories and successes,
13:51which have been quite clear, into strategic successes and restructuring the Middle East?
13:58What the Israeli military victories, first in Gaza, now what we're seeing in Lebanon, have done
14:03opened up a space for restructuring, for redrawing of the lines in the current Middle East. What we
14:10have seen over the last decade or so has been the reformation of the fault lines. If it was once the
14:18Arab nationalists versus the moderates or the pro-West governments, if it was then the Islamist
14:24governments against the moderates, now have the Sunni moderates together with Israel,
14:32backed by the United States and other allies around the region, versus the Shia radical axis.
14:40It's now imperative upon Israeli leaders, but also regional leaders, to cement these new fault
14:47lines with a weakened radical axis, because that's what we're really seeing. They can play a spoiler,
14:51but they can't achieve a whole lot. Prime Minister Netanyahu's statements to French
14:59President Macron and others is quite important. We here in Israel, we here in the Middle East,
15:06cannot capitulate to these extremes. They have no positive goals for the region.
15:11They seek only to push back the forces of moderation. They have no respect for
15:16national sovereignty. They don't have respect for borders. They don't have respect for
15:20governments. They seek war and destruction. Here, the regional powers, the Saudis and the
15:29others involved in the Abraham Accords, and I think other governments more quietly, needed to see
15:35a clear military victory by Israel, who is ironically fighting this fight against Hamas,
15:43against Hezbollah, against Iran now, on behalf of all of the moderate actors in this region.
15:51You know, World War II was 80 years ago, but it seems that the West has forgotten what it means
15:58to fight wars that are essential, that are moral, that have a clear good guy and bad guy, and it
16:09seems that in the West, they have forgotten what that means. Unfortunately, in Israel, we cannot
16:15forget what those kinds of wars are, because we're faced with them on a regular basis. So it's easy
16:20to call for a ceasefire. It's easy to instill arms embargoes, but we don't have that kind of luxury.
16:28What we're going to need to see here is how now does Israel's leadership, and here I have to be
16:33honest with you, I'm not entirely confident that Israel's current leadership knows how to do that.
16:39There's a lot of domestic political tensions that will surface to the fray once again,
16:45when the military action calms down, and the Saudis, the Emiratis, and the others are going
16:53to want to see, at this point, more than just movement or lip service towards a solution with
16:59the Palestinians. And here's the tricky part of your question. October 7th showed us, and I have
17:06to say, I was among the many Israelis who were surprised and shocked by this. With whom on the
17:13Palestinian side are we supposed to negotiate and discuss? Hamas, we had assumed quite wrongly,
17:19and we paid a heavy price for it, did not moderate, was not seeking stability and economic
17:26prosperity. They threw it all away to launch this unnecessary war that's left
17:3520,000, some 20,000 Palestinian civilians dead in Gaza in absolute ruins. The Palestinian
17:42authority, the supposed moderates, have not once condemned October 7th, have not once condemned
17:48Hamas. And not only that, but they completely parrot the Hamas talking points about Israeli
17:58genocide and occupation and ethnic cleansing. And so you're going to need to see some kind of
18:04a double effort for the Arabs in the region to step up, to build a new real Palestinian
18:13leadership that wants to live alongside Israel and says it quite clearly. We have not seen that yet.
18:19And at the same time, there will need to be a simultaneous encouragement of Israeli leadership
18:24to accept that. In the meantime, I don't see that happening. And until then, the region is going to
18:30be stuck in a bit of a stalemate in that regard. Absolutely, Dan. Thank you so much for actually
18:37sharing your insights. And trust me, from this part of the world, if we look at the developments
18:43and we gather information through several sources, you know, agencies on ground from
18:49colleagues and friends like you, it only appears to us that this one year has been the most
18:57gruesome year for Israel or for that matter, anyone. But one thing is for sure, your leadership
19:02has shown immense courage and has fought for every individual who was harmed, who has been
19:08taken hostage and the commitment that the last hostages, unless they are freed, this fight,
19:15this retaliation would continue. Dan Pfefferman, former national security analyst and advisor to
19:21IDF General Staff, thank you so much for speaking to One India.
19:26Thanks for having me on.