BACK STORY With DANA LEWIS
Israel and the Int Criminal Court, And how does the Gaza war end?
This week on Back Story with Dana Lewis - Is the International Criminal Court a protector of global justice or an overreaching institution threatening national sovereignty? Join us for an eye-opening conversation with Ambassador John Bolton as he critically examines the ICC's legitimacy and its impact on countries like the U.S. and Israel. Bolton argues that the court's actions undermine the democratic processes of sovereign nations.
And Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas predicts Netanyahu could be finished as Prime Minister in a matter of months. We analyze Netanyahu's maneuvers to shift the narrative in his favour amidst growing political turmoil and potential resignations from key figures like Benny Gantz. Tune in for a thorough analysis of these critical issues and their broader geopolitical implications.
This week on Back Story with Dana Lewis - Is the International Criminal Court a protector of global justice or an overreaching institution threatening national sovereignty? Join us for an eye-opening conversation with Ambassador John Bolton as he critically examines the ICC's legitimacy and its impact on countries like the U.S. and Israel. Bolton argues that the court's actions undermine the democratic processes of sovereign nations.
And Israeli diplomat Alon Pinkas predicts Netanyahu could be finished as Prime Minister in a matter of months. We analyze Netanyahu's maneuvers to shift the narrative in his favour amidst growing political turmoil and potential resignations from key figures like Benny Gantz. Tune in for a thorough analysis of these critical issues and their broader geopolitical implications.
Well, the ICC is fundamentally illegitimate. It's an infringement on national sovereignty, particularly for countries that haven't adopted it. It doesn't have any real ability to affect the real world, accountable, unelected, unbeholden to any democratic authority, just kind of out there. No executive branch, no judicial branch. It's a pretend court.
Alon Pinkas:There's this myth in Israeli politics that many in the world, and the world media indeed, have bought into, and that is that Mr Netanyahu is a victim here and he is being held hostage by an impossible coalition that is extorting him, that is making his life difficult, that is constricting his womb of maneuvering Nonsense. This is entirely his making.
Dana Lewis:Hi everyone and welcome to another edition of Backstory. I'm Dana Lewis, this week's smart, insightful Alon Pincus, who has advised Israeli leaders in the past, now on the present and where Israel goes in its war with Gaza. But first, ambassador John Bolton, on the International Criminal Court, which he says has no authority, and on foreign affairs, from China and Taiwan to Ukraine and Russia, taiwan to Ukraine and Russia. Ambassador John Bolton is a former national security advisor under the Trump administration. He was also the US ambassador to the UN serving under George W Bush. Welcome, mr Ambassador, good to see you again, glad to be with you as we speak. I like to start with the news. I mean there are reports that Israeli tanks now are in the center of Rafah and, as you know, the ICC, the International Criminal Court, is pursuing arrest warrants not only against Hamas but against a number of Israelis, including Prime Minister Netanyahu. Why shouldn't they, in your view, be doing that? Why?
John Bolton:shouldn't they, in your view, be doing that? Well, the ICC is fundamentally illegitimate. It's an infringement on national sovereignty, particularly for countries that haven't adopted it. It doesn't have any real ability to affect the real world. It's like a piece of government, unaccountable, unelected, unbeholden to any democratic authority, just kind of out there. No executive branch, no judicial branch.
John Bolton:It's a pretend court. It's a pretend court, like the International Court of Justice, usually called the World Court, and it issues pretend rulings based on a pretend jurisdiction. Here the pretense is that the ICC has jurisdiction because of the state of Palestine, which doesn't exist, and so they are purporting to go after Israeli officials based on that tenuous hook, even though Israel, like the United States, like China, russia and India, have never agreed to the statute the Rome Statute that creates the International Criminal Court. So this is a kind of fantasy that the world has indulged in for a long time, that courts will resolve international political questions, and legal institutions are no good at resolving political questions. That's why our courts in this country don't touch them, and it's why the very notion of an international criminal court is so inherently political and so unaccountable, as it's been created, that I think Israel can just safely ignore what they say.
Dana Lewis:But why shouldn't that court be empowered, john? I mean, why shouldn't countries like the US and many countries do support the ICC? Why shouldn't countries like the US sign on to to serving their arrest warrants and helping them prosecute war criminals, in effect, if that's what, indeed, they prove to be?
John Bolton:Well, if other countries want to do it, that's up to them, but I regard it as a fundamentally anti-democratic institution. We are a democratic rule of law constitutional society and we hold our leaders accountable when they don't live up to our legal standards. We don't need a bunch of international nannies or platonic guardians who think they have some higher vision of what's right, telling us what to do. That's just not even contemplated in the Constitution. We judge ourselves. We make mistakes. We're human. By the way, so are the judges on the International Criminal Court. Nobody sprinkled angel dust on their heads when they put those robes on to make them completely perfect. And that's the sort of fantasy that says well, I can get rid of my responsibility to protect myself and to behave responsibly in the international system by expecting some court's going to take care of everything for me.
Dana Lewis:So it may be that you get an enemy country or a hostile country that has undue influence over that next panel of judges prosecuting America or Canada, or Britain for that matter.
John Bolton:Yeah, look, nobody has ever shown that the world court or the ICC has ever deterred a bad guy from doing anything, and that's why the Biden administration rejection of the effort to get arrest warrants for Israeli officials is an unsatisfactory answer. And, by the way, the only American politician of any note who supports this decision is Bernie Sanders, which tells you a lot. You can't say we're in favor of a court that goes after bad guys but doesn't go after good guys, and in fact, vladimir Putin, xi Jinping, the Ayatollah Khamenei, kim Jong-un in North Korea they couldn't care less what this court does.
Dana Lewis:What do you think? In one of the op-eds that you wrote that disruling the issuing of potential warrants against people like Netanyahu could spell an end to the court.
John Bolton:Well, you know, I've been writing about what's wrong with the ICC for over 25 years and at a debate in Harvard in the late 1990s I said the US will not join the ICC within the lifetime. Of anybody in this room Now, that was almost 25 years ago. The court has not lived up to anybody's expectations. And now, by going after Israel, a democratic rule of law society fighting against the existential threat of Iranian-backed terrorism is being second-guessed by a group of people with no responsibility, no accountability If they turn out to be wrong on this, having exercised this enormous threat of arrest warrants, where does Israel go to get satisfaction for having been unfairly treated In the middle of this kind of conflict?
John Bolton:To say that there's any warrant for thinking that the ICC is going to make a positive contribution. The argument just doesn't fly. Why do you think it could be the end of the court? Because I think so many people in this country now see what the court is like in operation and by going after Israel it's often said Israel is the canary in the coal mine for the United States that people go after them first when the real objective is attacking us. So when you have 535 members of the House and the Senate and a big one has spoken up in support of what the court has done. I think that's pretty significant.
Dana Lewis:Switch gears. Your old boss is before the court this week. Former President Trump. Regardless of what the court rules do you still believe that he's unfit to be president? And why don't a lot of Americans agree with you? Because he's still riding pretty high in the polls.
John Bolton:Well, I do think he's unfit to be president, and it's too bad that people who agree with me haven't been able to explain clearly enough why that is.
John Bolton:I think this prosecution, which is based on an unfounded and, I think, erroneous legal theory about what constitutes a violation of federal election law Remember, this is a New York state court, a New York state prosecutor. We're talking about that. An acquittal or a hung jury here will actually help Trump, because it will show that his argument that he's being picked on by the deep state and by the Biden administration may turn out to be true and, if he's convicted, it may help him as well, because it will further prove that he's being picked on by the deep state. I just think if your objective is to make sure that Trump's not elected, you have to bear in mind what his supporters think, and that's why what I've been trying to do is argue why he's unfit. Going after him through what some people call lawfare, I think could turn out to boomerang. It's like you're forgetting the objective. Some people are just so eager to see Trump prosecuted that they're not thinking through that the consequences of the prosecution might actually help Trump politically, whatever the verdict Russia and Ukraine.
Dana Lewis:you no doubt are watching the situation and you're an expert on a lot of this. They're going after Kharkiv. I mean. I think it's heartbreaking to see some of these missiles hitting residential areas and malls and a factory that was binding books. The Russians are increasingly invading from the north, saying that there are restrictions on the weapons that America have given to Ukraine not to use them in Russia. Can you assess all of that for me? Is it a mistake in foreign policy right now to keep the handcuffs?
John Bolton:on Ukraine. Well, I think it's absolutely a mistake to keep the handcuffs on Ukraine. In fact, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is now saying the time has come to lift these limits. Really, the time came on February the 24th 2022, when the Russians invaded.
John Bolton:You can't respond to an unprovoked act of aggression like that by saying I think we'll just fight this war on the territory of the country that's attacked and not go after the territory of the aggressor. I mean, I just think this is a matter of common sense that the Biden administration has badly mishandled under the misbegotten fear that somehow Putin has the capability to make a wider war. If he had the troops and the capability to do that, he would have done it already, or he would have sent these troops into Ukraine, where his army has behaved incredibly poorly. So I think we've put these restraints on ourselves in Ukraine from the beginning of the conflict after the Russian invasion. It was a mistake, like the mistake of doling out different kinds of weapon systems to Ukraine after long, painful debate, not strategically, not thinking how can we help Ukraine achieve victory over Russia. Because we've deterred ourselves, we have hampered our own effort for this illusory fear of a wider war.
Dana Lewis:You don't believe that Putin? Well, actually you're not saying that, so let's clarify Do you believe that Putin wants a wider war, whether he can mount?
John Bolton:one or not, this war when it began and the notion that they would try and spread the war invites what's left of the Russian army from being chewed up as well. And I will say that Putin's nuclear threats, which he has made from time to time, have never shown any redeployment of any Russian nuclear forces. And I think if the administration has done anything, it's tried to convince Putin that it would be disastrous if he did use nuclear weapons. I think you always take the threat seriously, but I think throughout the past two-plus years here from Moscow, it's been nothing but bluff. So what?
Dana Lewis:does the West do to give Ukraine a victory?
John Bolton:Ambassador Bolton, Well, I think, live up to what the stated position of every NATO member is, which is a restoration of full sovereignty and territorial integrity to Ukraine, and by saying, ok, well, if that's the objective, what do we need to do to give Ukraine the wherewithal to do it? I mean, there have been some calls. French President Macron said recently we should consider putting NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine. I don't particularly care if France does that I don't think he actually means it but I don't think NATO troops on the ground are required. I think the Ukrainians are prepared to continue to do the fighting. We just have to aid them in a strategic way, which we have not done.
Dana Lewis:Last question on China. I'm making you work hard here on so many things internationally today and I appreciate your time. China, of course, by the way, has helped Russia a lot with the use of some of the microchips that are in missiles and tanks and other things. But China has now encircled the island of Taiwan after a very pro-democracy president was elected in the latest election. How should America handle this? Would America come to Taiwan's aid, do you think, and what should be done? I mean because Taiwan is really being pressured by mainland China.
John Bolton:Well, I think we should be prepared to come to Taiwan's aid, but I think the way to make sure it never happens is to do a lot of things we could do but are not doing to deter China.
John Bolton:There's the threat of a Chinese invasion around Taiwan and, in effect, defy the United States, japan and others to come to Taiwan's aid and break the blockade.
John Bolton:And if we don't, then I think Taiwan would fall into China's lap like a piece of ripe fruit, which is really what China wants. They don't want to do to Taiwan what Russia is currently doing to Ukraine. They want all of Taiwan's productive facilities, including particularly the chip fabricators, to come in basically unharmed. So I think we need a lot more thinking and, even more than that, a lot more action about how to put Taiwan in a place where Beijing is deterred both from thinking about an actual invasion but also deterred from even contemplating a blockade. And one way to do that, in my view, is to announce that we're going to home port a couple of American naval bases in Kaohsiung, the biggest port city in Taiwan, basically to show our presence there and to make it clear to China that if they did put a blockade around Taiwan, whatever we think of the Taiwanese we would have to come to provide security for our own assets there, and that would be something, I think, that would be a powerful deterrent to China from getting into this to begin with, ambassador.
Dana Lewis:John Bolton, always great to talk to you. Thank you so much, John Well, thanks again for having me. Alon Pincus is a diplomat and he also served as Israel's consul general to New York, and it was a foreign policy advisor to multiple foreign and prime ministers. As the advisor to multiple foreign and prime ministers, unofficially he was this wise sage walking the dark back halls and boardrooms of power, whispering into the ears of political leaders the recipes of what they needed to do that, hopefully, wasn't just to hold on to power alone, but also to do the right thing. Can I say that?
Alon Pinkas:thing is that. Can I say that, yeah, but you know, although to to be fair, um, I gotta, I gotta say you know, two, two, uh, um, two caveats here. One is they rarely listened and two is it wasn't about. You know, the power relates to the politics and I mostly I did foreign policy, relations with the us and so, um, combine the two and they basically did not heed any of those.
Dana Lewis:All right, you can imagine the next question, right? The scenario is I don't know if you want to get that close to the guy, but you are very within inches of the ear of Prime Minister Netanyahu. What would you be whispering into those ears right now?
Alon Pinkas:Well, okay, it's an improbbable, implausible scenario, because under under current political conditions, I would really not get close to him. Um, and and that that you know. That takes us back to the moment he formed the government. Um, I would have advised him then do not form a government with these extreme right-wing lunatics. I understand what you're trying to do. I understand that political survival is your utmost and ultimate concern. I understand that you're facing three indictments and an ongoing trial. I understand that you feel that you're being persecuted by a vast left-wing liberal cabal in each state. But, mr Prime Minister, you asked for my advice, so here I'm giving it to you. This is the recipe that's going to ultimately bring you down.
John Bolton:And it will.
Alon Pinkas:Go ahead. Sorry, I don't want to interrupt. Given that advice, which he obviously did not heed, I would tell him, throughout 2023, to back off from the constitutional coup that he instigated. And I would say look, I know what you think you're getting out of this. I understand where this anger, resentment and frustration with the judiciary comes from. You think it's an elite thing against you. You think it's a deep state conspiracy against you, but this is going to divide the people in a way that will ultimately bring you down and then we move further forward.
Alon Pinkas:Okay, so we did not heed that advice either. We are on September. I'm sorry, we are on October 7th. I would tell him to resign and if I see that he's unwilling to, I would say, okay, so do at least the following Stand up, say that this was a horrendous catastrophe, that this was a debacle, that, whatever the circumstances, whatever the causes, it was under your watch. You cannot, at this point, deal with politics, but you understand people's devastation and anger and you understand why people hold you responsible and accountable, which is why I, prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, am announcing here that this is not a time for resignation, because this needs to be managed, and I think I could do it, it, but I'm calling for an election 10 months from now. He did not heed that advice either, so I he took part of it.
Dana Lewis:He said that we'll try to form some kind of national unity or coalition cabinet.
Alon Pinkas:That's a fortune cookie slip of paper that he meant nothing by he meant nothing by.
Dana Lewis:He meant I'm staying no matter what it takes.
Alon Pinkas:And that's basically what he's saying. More importantly, that is fundamentally what he is doing. He is trying to distance himself from the debacle of October 7th. He's trying to formulate or craft some kind of an alternative narrative in which this really wasn't about October 7th. It was never about him strengthening Hamas in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority. This was always about the world trying to superimpose a Palestinian state on him. This is all about a civilizational conflict with Iran.
Alon Pinkas:So you know, if there was a failure on October 7th and there definitely was it was the IDF's fault. It was the intelligence services' fault. They did not alert him. They led him to think that Hamas is not interested in a war, that Hamas is busy trying to cover Gaza. He went along with that, so it's not his responsibility. That, of course, is bogus and disingenuous, but that is the narrative that he's trying to solve. In order to advance that narrative, you see his deliberate attempts to seek confrontation with President Biden, even though it seems counterintuitive and almost patently illogical to whomever is listening or watching us. But that's exactly what he's doing in order to prove and vindicate himself that this is about Biden stopping him from a major victory and trying to impose, superimpose a Palestinian state on him. He will stand up to, and he's the only one who can resist.
Dana Lewis:Well, that kind of takes me. I didn't want to go in this direction, but I will, because you mentioned that you would have advised him at the very beginning don't bring these crazy radical rights into your cabinet.
Alon Pinkas:I would have advised him. I would have advised him, you would have advised him. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dana Lewis:I know I don't advise him. You would have advised him.
Alon Pinkas:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I don't advise him. I'm not on speaking terms with him.
Dana Lewis:I assumed that, yeah, but I mean you're cutting him a little bit of distance there, You're cutting him a little bit of slack when it comes to. You know, there's the radical right and Netanyahu, who just formed a government with them because he wanted to be in power, because he wouldn't have had a coalition otherwise. I mean, he's pretty right himself is he not?
Alon Pinkas:Oh yeah, but you asked me very politely to pretend that I'm advising and I told you that that's improbable and implausible. Exactly because of what you said, I don't think there's any daylight between the extreme right wingers. The only noticeable difference, the only discernible political difference, is that they employ messianic religious language, while he uses nationalistic, semi-authoritarian life, and it's a big difference in political science. In real life, it is completely blurred. I don't think you know. There's this myth in Israeli politics that many in the world, and the world media indeed, have bought into, and that is that Mr Netanyahu is a victim here and he is being held hostage by an impassable coalition that is extorting him, that is making his life difficult, that is constricting his room of maneuvering Nonsense. This is entirely his making, and it's his making not because of a lack of political alternative. He had a political alternative.
Dana Lewis:Don't forget. Let me just pick up on that if you don't mind and I don't want to interrupt. No, you're not. You've just written a piece for Haaretz last week. I think it was where you wrote Netanyahu believing, or pretending to believe, and impart the impression that Israel cannot exist without him. He's instigated a constitutional coup to weaken the judiciary and degrade checks and balances, with one purpose in mind transitioning Israel into an authoritarian state that he believes is crucial to its survival, not just his survival. Sorry, I went out of the quotation there. Back to the quotes. He's perverted history repeatedly, talking about this being 1938 all over again, as the existential condition of Israel, a danger that only he can avert. Is that his way of holding on to power? Does he actually believe that's the?
Alon Pinkas:Both, both and I don't know which came first whether or not he developed this Louis XIV syndrome in which he identifies himself with the state.
Alon Pinkas:Let us say why. I am the state, therefore the state cannot exist without me, which is sort of a distortion of what Louis XIV actually said, but that's beside the point. Sort of a distortion of what Louis XIV actually said, but that's beside the point. So I don't know if he began that way and waited for the right time and opportunity to shape politics in that image or, conversely, because of his political travails, because of his political predicaments, he developed this as a defense mechanism against his political ouster. Listen, he failed to win the last five election campaigns.
Alon Pinkas:He failed in 2019, twice in 2020, and again in 2021, in which a more centrist, even though a centrist right-wing government was formed, but without. That was devastating for him, because that left him, in his mind, completely exposed to his trial, which is a trial for bribery and corruption and obstruction of justice and so on bribery and corruption and obstruction of justice, and so on. And then he vowed that if she gets even close to forming a government, he will not allow the centrist or the centrist left into that government, even though it makes sense in the state of Israel. But he needs to extricate himself from that trial and he needs to change the judiciary, weaken the guardrails, weaken the checks and balances, weaken the gatekeepers, to the point where his trial will mean nothing.
Dana Lewis:That seems to be an international recipe right now for America, for Russia, for we can go on and on and in.
Alon Pinkas:Hungary and Brazil and many, many and, by the way, that is that is his reference team, that these are his soulmates Bolsonaro in Brazil and Orban in Hungary, and Putin and maybe Trump again in America and Lukashenko in Belarus and his buddy, trump in America.
Dana Lewis:So the polls say that. You know, most Israelis don't support Netanyahu. They think he should go, but they do support the ongoing military campaign in Gaza. What do you make of that, despite all of the problems there and the lack of victory?
Alon Pinkas:because the devastation of october 7th was, uh, life-changing for a lot of israelis, because it wasn't just a terror attack, uh, that would devastate anyone any day.
Alon Pinkas:It was. It was on a scale, um, that that few israelis could even fathom was possible. Not only was it devastating in the number of deaths and the barbarity and gory way in which it was done, but it was humiliating militarily. It was humiliating in terms that, you know, it wasn't a one-guy suicide bomber, it wasn't blowing up a building or a plane, or a cafe or a bus. This was an invasion. True, this is not the German Wehrmacht of World War II, it's a terror group, but nonetheless, there were over 2,000 Hamas fighters, terrorists, murderers, call them what you want who crossed the border and it took the IDF 48 hours to push them out Slightly less than 48, but in that vicinity, and the stories and the pictures and the descriptions of what went on on October 7th in those villages, towns, on Kibbutzim, along the Gaza-Israel border, were such that the anger, the resentment, the sense of revenge, the complete indifference to what will happen.
Dana Lewis:And I don't want to wallpaper over any of that because even now, more images are coming out and you know these young women doing their millouine, doing their army service, and you know, if people haven't seen it, it's the Hamas gunmen standing over them.
Alon Pinkas:I'm talking about how beautiful some of them are after they just murdered their and then went on, and then went on I don't want to be gory here but then went on to rape them Absolutely.
Dana Lewis:Now, this is what's driven Israelis to enter Gaza. So how does it For Israelis? Is there an end goal here? I mean no, no, no. They want to remove Hamas.
Alon Pinkas:I did not finish answering your previous question, so sorry. So you understand why the support for the war was so comprehensive, so broad and so deep. Now, as the months went by, people starting to sense that this is not going according to plan. So then they started. Then they started questioning, and now I'm moving to your current question. Then they started questioning whether there even was a plan because, because you know, at the outset the US warned Israel publicly obviously in private, but then publicly that the only way you're going to sort of eliminate Hamas which is a goal that is unattainable to begin with, but let's assume it is viable or feasible militarily the only way that can be achieved is if you reoccupy the Gaza Strip and stay there for months, if not years.
Alon Pinkas:And since the US urged Israel not to do so, and since Israel gave all the indications that it does not intend to, people started questioning what's going on with the war.
Alon Pinkas:You have to add to that a completely other dimension that you know the person on the street, the average Joe walking in Tel Aviv or Haifa or Jerusalem, doesn't perhaps pay attention to, but nonetheless it's permeating, and that is that Israel lacks a post-war plan, meaning that this you know, not everyone in the street has read von Clausewitz on war and diplomacy, but people do understand, even instinctively, that a war needs political objectives, that military means must be aligned with attainable political objectives. And what they saw were not military objectives that were unattainable, they saw no military objectives at all. And when the US came up with an idea of an international force with an inter-Arab component in it that includes the Palestinian Authority, israel for two months refused to even engage in that dialogue and finally said absolutely not. And the Americans said okay, fine, we understand your reservations. If not this, then what? To this day, eight months, almost eight months into the war, israel did not come up with a coherent plan for post-war.
Dana Lewis:Gaza. I bet you Elon Pincus has one, or he at least has a vision of how this is going to end, so I'll put you on the spot.
Alon Pinkas:You know, it's not me, it's President Biden. He came up with a plan. It may sound pretentious to call it the Biden doctrine, as some called it, but it is, in a way, a doctrine is in a way a doctrine in that it ties a set of principles and policies into a not perfect and not fully articulated, but a coherent plan. And it goes like this a ceasefire and a hostage deal, an immediate entrance of an international force including an Arab component in it. Egypt, jordan, saudi Arabia, the Emirates and Qatar have all and Bahrain have all indicated that they will be willing to participate in such a force. That force has to include the Palestinian Authority. Participate in such a force. That force has to include the Palestinian Authority.
Alon Pinkas:Once that is done, israel commits to a peace process or a disengagement process that defines its desirable goal as a future Palestinian state. You need not commit to anything at that point. When that happens, you start rebuilding Gaza, because Gaza can't be rebuilt. I'm sorry, gaza can't be reconstructed, it needs to be rebuilt from the foundation. As long as they understand that there is a peace process here, that includes extending governance from the West Bank to Gaza, meaning that you have a peace process.
Alon Pinkas:If that begins. Then Saudi Arabia and Qatar normalize relations with Israel and Israel achieves something that it's been praying for for decades, and that is effectively peace with the entire Arab world. Because we have agreements with Egypt, we have a peace agreement with Jordan, we have sort of an agreement with the Palestinians, by force of which there's a Palestinian authority, we have diplomatic relations with the UAE, the United Arab Emirates. Now you'll have it with the biggest, most important and central country in the Arab world today, and that's Saudi Arabia, and the richest, which is Qatar. Once that happens, the Americans are saying OK, now let's sit down and talk about a loose not necessarily modeled on NATO, modeled on NATO a defense alliance that would counter or constitute a serious, a potent deterrence against Iran. You take this plan, you present it to an Israeli prime minister 15 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. Everyone would take it. How could you not? This is exactly what we wanted. And now you have a government of lunatics, of messianic religious freaks, who thinks well, no, you were going to say something.
Dana Lewis:No, no, I'm yeah. We understand the nature of that government.
Alon Pinkas:Some of them want to push Palestinians, intoinians, into the desert. In the sign I mean exactly so. Or mr netanyahu that just wants to prolong this?
Dana Lewis:uh, how does it go? Last question to you, because I know I'm over time how does it go forward?
Alon Pinkas:it doesn't. That's the tragic thing. It doesn't. As long as this government is in power and as long as the Americans are somewhat aloof and standoffish and they are it's not going to go anywhere. Now, what I do think happened two days ago in Rafa, with what Netanyahu called a tragic mistake Well, yeah, it's a tragic mistake, but what the hell were you thinking? I mean, how could it not happen?
Dana Lewis:Everybody's warned you have 800,000. About entering Rafa. Everybody's warned them about bombing Rafa. Everybody's warned them away from Rafa.
Alon Pinkas:Exactly, and so, until and after this government is done with, I don't think anything is going to move forward. When are they done? That depends, I still think, sooner rather than later. I think that it's a matter of time before the coalition begins to crack and then disintegrate. Parallel to two other things You're going to see Benny Gantz, the former chief of staff and head of one of the opposition parties, withdraw from the government.
Alon Pinkas:That will then give an impetus to widespread demonstrations, which in turn may rile the coalition, and at the same time, you will have the chief of the general staff, you will have the head of the Shabbat, the general security service, resign, and they will not walk. You know, they will not salute and walk away. They will say things about Mr Netanyahu. They will not have the only thing that they have left, and that is the reputation that they had before October 7th, be tarnished by Mr Netanyahu. And so what everyone is waiting for is the convergence of all these processes onto one point a long time. I think that is going to happen in the next two, three months, but I may be wrong.
Dana Lewis:Alon Pinkus, it is and I never say it lightly a privilege to talk to you.
Alon Pinkas:Thank, you Privilege to be on your show, Dana.
Dana Lewis:And that's our backstory this week. Share the podcast if you like it, and how couldn't you?
Alon Pinkas:no-transcript.