Former Interim President of Israel Avraham Burg does a great job of explaining the mindset of Israel and possible solutions and discusses potential outcomes.
The whole video is worth a watch as I could’ve created 20 more clips from the full video if I had more time. This is the first 12 minutes:
Rumble-clip | Full video on YouTube
Tucker’s introduction:
The government of Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel and its many organized cheerleaders here in the United States have for some time now made the case that all criticism of their government is antisemitism, because their government somehow speaks for all Jews globally… and any criticism of that government is by definition an attack on every Jew/antisemitism.
It’s a position that doesn’t make any sense… it’s not only incorrect… it’s a kind of slander against Jews. It is itself a kind of antisemitism because no, not all Jews are represented by Benjamin Netanyahu and there are many who don’t want to be, and that’s true even within Israel.
Israel, as in all countries, most people don’t really know the details of what is happening or why, and that’s by design. Israel is a particularly censored place. It’s also a particularly small place, fewer than 10 million people, and so its citizens, by and large, live the same way we do in an information vacuum, where what they know is determined by somebody else for political reasons.
All of which makes it very important to do our best to break the spell of this, to hear from people who disagree and hear them explain why. People who have some credibility and knowledge, not just wackos with weird opinions, but thoughtful people who have a dissenting view, and one of those people is a man called Avraham Berg.
He is in his early 70s. He was born in Israel. He’s from a prominent Zionist family and he himself was a prominent political figure for many years. He was, remember, the Knesset. He was speaker of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, its lawmaking body, its Congress. He was even interim president of Israel at one point. So his opinions may represent the minority of Israeli opinion, but he himself is not a fringe figure. He was at the very center of Israeli politics. Once again, he was the interim president of the country.
And in the hours after this current war broke out, he wrote a very strong op-ed in the Israeli press explaining why it was a terrible idea, why it didn’t serve Israel’s interests, and why the people doing it had no idea why they were doing it. It’s a pretty brave thing to say in the middle of a country of war, but he said it because he’s a pretty brave guy, agree or disagree. So we thought it would be worthwhile to hear directly from him.
Key Quotes
Avraham Burg, former Speaker of the Knesset and interim president of Israel key quotes from the 12 minute clip above.
On Israeli Strategy (or Lack Thereof)
So the president of the United States issued a statement this morning saying that because of ongoing negotiations between the U.S, and Iran, the U.S. would not actually commence with hitting civilian infrastructure, as he promised, and that we’re going to try and work something out diplomatically this week. Almost immediately after issuing that statement, there were reports that the Israeli military was hitting civilian infrastructure in Iran. What, assuming that’s true, do you make of that? What strategy does that suggest?
The same strategy that Israel has for years: no strategy. In Israel, in many cases, the compilation of many tactics sometimes assemble into a de facto strategy. But otherwise, nothing.
The first and the most important one: hallelujah, they’re going to renew the flights so we can go for Passover vacation. That’s the immediate reaction of many Israelis. My daughter included. The second is, oh, Netanyahu knew all along. I mean, Netanyahu is behind the move, as if framing it as his own move, and then, oh, Trump, oh, he is so soft. He is so weak. He doesn’t have any resilience. The Iranians tricked him, etc, etc. Bottom line is nobody has a clue, and in this chaos, the military does what it does best: simply hammer the nail.
There’s no strategic goal in mind?
I listened to you very carefully in the last couple of weeks and the way you try to conceive the Israeli strategy from Netanyahu’s 40 years life mission to the greater land of Israel, biblically speaking, or messianic eschatological one, and I envy you that you really believe that we have something like that. It doesn’t work that way.
I mean, somebody once told me that what’s the difference between an Israeli and an American, among many differences, is that we Israelis, we see an aim, so we aim and we shoot. You Americans, you see an aim, so you take an aim and aim and aim and aim and aim. You are a lot about process, and we are a lot about, yalla, let’s shoot it.
On the Iranian “Monster” – Real and Created
I have no idea what’s the American strategy. I do not know what was the end game. I have no idea what is the final design the architects of the White House or the Washington really had in mind.
I can tell you one thing for sure.
“Israel wants to remove the Iranian monster because part of it is a real threat and part of it because we pumped it to the size of a monster. So we are fighting in a way a real demon and a demon which is our own creation.”
So what we want to do is we don’t like the war. We want it to end. We don’t like the missiles. We hate the sirens. We skip nights after nights of sleeping. But once we are into it, let’s make sure that it’s over.
On Israelis’ Self‑Perception as a Superpower
The problem is the relative size. Israel is a small country. Iran is a large country. How exactly do Israelis expect that’s going to happen?
Size-wise and number-wise, we are let’s say 10 million in a good day and they are 100 million in an average day. In a way, many Israelis do not really measure it this way. Many Israelis believe that we are a kind of a superpower.
A couple of weeks ago I was in a high school somewhere and I promoted my good old peace agenda, and one of the students stood up and said, ‘Avraham, can I ask you a question?’ I said, ‘Yes, please do.’ And he said, ‘Why won’t we do to them what we did to them in Afghanistan?’ And I said, ‘I know Gaza. I know Lebanon. I know Syria. I know Egypt. What did we do to whom in Afghanistan?’ I mean, we haven’t been there yet, and I asked him, “Where are you from originally?” And he said, “I was born in Moscow.” And I said to myself, “Ha-ha. He thinks like a Russian.” And I asked him, “Tell me, how many Jews are there in the world now” Tucker, with no hesitation he said, “54.3.” Ok, and how many Israelis are we? He said, “Something like 20 million.”
“In the eyes of many Israelis, we’re not just superpower technologically and superpower economically and a regional hegemon politically, we have the numbers, the numbers in economy, the numbers in support, the numbers in demography, without really calculating what are the real numbers.”
On the Israeli Mindset: Not Win‑Win
What will the end victory look like from an Israeli perspective? How will Israelis know they’ve won?
I don’t have a good answer for this question. In a sense that in many cases, the American or the Western way of thinking is usually a kind of a win-win. I mean, we end the war and we make sure that we have left somebody on the other side to talk with.
I mean, yes, it is ridiculous that the American president is saying, “I would like to talk with somebody, but there is nobody there because I killed them.” This is your own oxymoron. This is a paradox. […]
“From the Israeli point of view, in many cases, philosophically, no, psychologically, we do not live in a win‑win situation. We live in a zero‑sum game. If there is a competition, if there is a race, if there is a war, if there is a battle, if there is a conflict that ends up that the other guy in a room profits, something is wrong with me. I want to win alone. I want you to be dead. I want to humiliate you. I want to cancel you, whomever you are my enemy.”
And when you look at this philosophy, you understand where comes the political rhetoric that every adversary, never mind who he is, minor or major, by the end of the day, he is a Hitler, and every decade, we have a new adult Hitler, and since everybody is the arch enemy, there is only one solution to this one enemy: the removal, and therefore, when you ask me what is the Israeli political echelon, forget about the people in the street, the political echelon approach toward any kind of resolution, whatever it is, it’s not a dialogical one.
On the Political Rhetoric of Every Enemy as “Hitler”
“When you look at this philosophy, you understand where comes the political rhetoric that every adversary, never mind who he is, minor or major, by the end of the day, he is a Hitler. And every decade, we have a new adult Hitler. And since everybody is the arch enemy, there is only one solution to this one enemy: the removal.”
On the Israeli Opposition
“When you look at what is allegedly called opposition in Israel, they simply compete with the government who is more aggressive, who is more as if resilient, who has more so‑called creative solution to the enemy we have to demolish and obliterate.”
Watch the full video:
- 0:00 Introduction 3:16 What Is Israel’s Strategy?
- 9:21 What Does Victory Look Like for Israel?
- 13:15 Does Israel Actually Want Peace?
- 23:06 Was the US Forced Into This War?
- 29:15 Is Netanyahu Afraid of Trump?
- 33:09 What Will the US Gain From This War?
- 36:19 How Do Israelis View Gaza?
- 47:41 How Do Israelis View the US?
- 53:59 Is This a Religious War?
- 59:06 The Many Attempts to Rebuild the Third Temple
- 1:05:25 How Netanyahu Has Changed Politics Forever
- 1:13:11 How Real Is the Greater Israel Project?
- 1:18:37 Will Israel Use Nuclear Weapons?
- 1:30:37 The Response to Burg’s Writings
There’s so many clips I could’ve taken from the full video. He really explains so much about why Israeli’s have a unique outlook on life (indoctrinated by fear), why they can’t negotiate or think win-win, how the government vs religious fanatics vs the everyday Israeli or Jew thinks. He gives a better explanation of why Israeli’s don’t really consider the suffering of the people of Gaza. He also says that he doesn’t like or even agree with Tucker Carlson – but they can still talk. It’s one of the most interesting videos you’ll watch and you’ll get more of a sense of why things play out the way they do.
Important timestamps:
Instead of making clips, I just want to paste the timestamp of my personal take on the important parts:
25:15
Netanyahu’s life mission has two drivers: one Jewish, one conservative.
The Jewish driver is a deep paranoia embedded in Jewish consciousness since exile – the belief that the world is divided 50/50: half Jews, half those who hate Jews. You cannot trust anyone but yourself. Netanyahu carries this classic Jewish distrust.
The conservative driver is neoconservative: he sees the world as children of light versus offspring of darkness. There is no compromise. There is no recognition that the other side might be divided or complex. They are all the enemy.
This worldview (paranoia paired with a civilizational war mentality) creates a leader who cannot trust, cannot negotiate, and sees conflict as the only option. That is where the war started: not from strategy, but from a frame of mind and an opportunity.
32:09
“Listen, I cannot stand you, but you’re a nice person”.
Despite the fact that Avraham doesn’t like Tucker and doesn’t agree with him on many things, that despite this, they are talking. Avraham uses this analogy/fact to describe the type of dynamic of Netanyahu’s and Trump’s relationship, saying it’s “chemistry between two charmers”, and that Netanyahu is a brilliant campaigner, someone so talented at persuasion that, “when you walk out of the room with Netanyahu, check whether you still have your hands in your sleeves – maybe he stole your hands out of your sleeves – that’s how talented he is.” Netanyahu and Trump, he says, use each other.
He also notes that Trump grew up with many Jewish associations around him, so he is familiar to and understands how many Jews think, and understands how many of them think Israel is under a permanent threat of extinction. He says it’s a state of mind – politics and history mixed, and that Netanyahu knows how to play this card.
When Tucker asks “So you believe it’s likely Netanyahu said to Trump,
“You will be recorded by history as the man who saved the Jews?”
He answers well that might be a positive spin, “but on the negative side is you do not want to be recorded as the one that under his guard, something so awful like the second Holocaust happened to the Jews.” Two sides to the moon, a dark and light, and that you speak about the light in public, but in dark rooms, you speak about the dark side. “We are under permanent threat. Save us!”
36:55
Whatever Israel has done to Palestinians – over a century of displacement, destruction, and catastrophe – does not justify what Hamas did on October 7. And whatever Hamas did on October 7 does not justify the moral crimes Israel has committed in Gaza since. You cannot cancel one crime with another. You must confront both.
Most Israelis have no idea what Gaza is like. Before October 7, they never saw Gazans as people. The media in Israel shows tunnels, rockets, Hamas fighters – never the human beings living there. After October 7, even the president of Israel said there are no innocent people in Gaza. That is not a blind spot. It is a moral abyss into which Israel has collapsed.
Tucker says but Israel is such an International country? Avraham says that many Israelis don’t have a sense of what’s happening because most of them only listen to Hebrew media, they don’t speak English, and if they read something about it, “they’re all anti-Semites” – there’s a filter that enables them to reject any legitimate criticism. They hardly hear any international opinions, they have the “moral army”, and that unlike what might of reached them in the past, most of them were born there. They no longer have that connection to Europe, and are in a stand-alone isolated island where they haven’t even connected to the region.
He also gives examples of how we also don’t understand our own reality in the west because we are also in our bubble.
Anyway, it’s after 5:30am… I could literally go on all night to pick out all the clips, but if you happen upon my blog, please go watch the entire video instead.. I’m going to bed :)
