FS: But how about the reports of Hamas deliberately putting centres of operations in civilian areas, under hospitals, and so on? How do you respond to that? Does that not complicate the idea that the Israelis could have done a surgical strike that avoided any civilian casualties?
JM: Well, there’s no question that Hamas is integrated in all sorts of ways into the civilian population in Gaza. How could it be otherwise? Hamas is not going to build military bases far away from the civilian population so that they present the Israelis with a big fat target. What they have done is they have built tunnels underneath the ground all over Gaza, which is a way of protecting themselves from Israeli bombing campaigns. It makes perfect sense from their point of view. But in doing that, there’s no way they’re not going to be bound up with the local population.
FS: Are you saying you think it’s just an accident of the small geographical area, and you don’t think Hamas is deliberately putting centres of strategic importance in the middle of civilian areas?
JM: I don’t see much evidence of that. The Israelis made the case that this one hospital was a site of a major command and a control post for Hamas and that underneath was the centre of a huge network of tunnels. But once they got into the hospital and checked around, they did not find any significant evidence that supported that thesis.
FS: I thought they found tunnels directly from the floor of the hospital?
JM: There’s so many stories on what they found in this hospital or that hospital or in the surrounding area near the hospital that it’s hard to keep track of it. But there’s no evidence that Hamas had a major headquarters and the centre of a major series of tunnels underneath any one hospital.
FS: What I’m really keen to hear is what the correct application of your principles of international relations would be to this situation — if you accept Israel as a state, and as an actor that will act in its own self interests, and then you also observe the situation in the countries around it and in Gaza and the West Bank. Is it now the case that one side needs to win and the other side needs to lose? Or do you believe that a two-state solution is a realistic possibility?
JM: I don’t believe a two-state solution is a realistic possibility. Certainly after what happened on October 7, and what has subsequently happened, there’s not going to be a two-state solution. What the Israelis are determined to do is create a Greater Israel, and that Greater Israel includes Gaza, the West Bank, and what we used to call Green Line Israel — Israel as it existed before the 1967 War. And the problem that the Israelis face is that there are approximately 7.3 million Israeli Jews in Greater Israel. And there are approximately 7.3 million Palestinians inside of Greater Israel. And that creates huge problems, because they can’t have a meaningful democracy when there are probably slightly more Palestinians than Israeli Jews. The Israeli government was unwilling to move towards a two-state solution regardless of what happened on October 7, but certainly after October 7, that’s not going to happen.
FS: But if you’re Israel, you wouldn’t advise pursuing a two-state solution because you don’t think it’s feasible because of the antipathy that people in Gaza in the West Bank feel towards Israelis? Isn’t that your position?
JM: I have long been a proponent of a two-state solution. But I have long argued that it was no longer a viable alternative because I thought the Israelis were not interested, after Camp David in 2000, in a two-state solution. But now, after what’s happened, it’s almost impossible to conceive of Israel creating a Palestinian state that is right next door to Israel.
FS: Would you also say that it’s impossible to conceive, having witnessed the events of October 7, of a Palestinian state sitting peacefully side-by-side with an Israeli state?
JM: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think given what’s happened on October 7, relations between the Palestinians and the Israelis have been poisoned to the point where a two-state solution is no longer viable.
FS: So what should our goal be, Professor? We’re here to try to work out what the world should be doing in that region. If you no longer think the two-state solution you’ve supported for so long is realistic or viable, what’s the plan? What should we be trying to do there?
JM: I have no solution. I think what you’re going to end up with is more of the same, which is a Greater Israel that is an apartheid state.
FS: So actually, rather than simply accusing Israel of overreacting, yours is more of a sense that there is no solution here — that what we’re witnessing is simply going to carry on?
JM: These are two separate issues here. The article that you started with focuses just on Israel’s policy in Gaza, and is a critique of its behaviour on moral grounds; the question of what happens with regard to relations between Israeli Jews and Palestinians is another matter. On that front, I don’t see any viable solution because, in theory, there is only one viable solution, which is to give the Palestinians a state of their own. This conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians can only be solved politically, it can’t be solved with military force. And the only political solution that works, theoretically, is a two-state solution. But as you and I discussed a few minutes ago, that train has left the station.
So we’re going to continue the status quo, which is a Greater Israel that is an apartheid state. And I know it’s controversial to refer to Israel as an apartheid state. But Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem, which is the leading human rights organisation inside of Israel, all three of these organisations have produced major reports that make it clear that Israel is an apartheid state. And they use that language. And by the way, I follow the Israeli press very closely. And it’s commonplace for Israeli elites to refer to Israel as an apartheid state. So this is the future that we’re dealing with, and it’s not going to be pretty.
FS: I’m just surprised to hear you use phrases like “apartheid state” which are so specific to the South African experience. In other scenarios, I could see you being critical of people sloppily applying phrases to areas that don’t really apply to them. And some of those organisations you just listed you would have been very critical of in other scenarios. I confess that I’m surprised to hear how enthusiastically you embrace the rhetoric of Israel’s critics.
JM: I don’t like words like enthusiastically. I think you’re setting me up for the kill here. There’s no reason that someone who is a realist like me can’t also view the world in moral terms. One can argue, as most realists do when there is a clash between realist logic and moral logic, realist logic dominates; but there are all sorts of cases where realist logic and moral logic are lined up and they point in the same direction. And there are other cases where realist logic is not at play and you can make a moral case for doing something.
And I want to emphasise that in the early Nineties, when the genocide took place in Rwanda, I fully supported American intervention for moral reasons. There was no realist logic at play in that case, but I thought, from a moral point of view, the right thing to do was to intervene. So I think it’s important to emphasise that realists can think about the world in moral terms.
FS: Let’s apply these ideas to the US-Israeli relationship, then, because that’s something you’ve written a whole book about. What’s your sense of America’s vital interest in Israel? Is there one? Or do you feel like they are spending too much capital and reputation in defending Israel, and you’d like to see that reduce?
JM: The United States has a special relationship with Israel that has no parallel in modern history. The United States supports Israel, almost no matter what it does. It’s unconditional support. It’s truly remarkable. And all sorts of people have said that there is no equivalent relationship between any two countries in recorded history.
So the question is: what is driving this special relationship? What caused it? As Steve Walt and I argue in our book, you cannot make the argument that supporting Israel unconditionally is in our strategic or in our moral interest. In fact, what’s going on here is that the Israel lobby, which is an extremely powerful interest group in the United States, works over time to push American foreign policy in ways that support Israel at every turn. And as we emphasise in the book, there’s nothing immoral or unethical or illegal about this. Interest groups hold enormous amounts of power in the United States. And the Israel lobby is an interest group that has an enormous amount of influence on our policy in the Middle East.
FS: Looking at the last few weeks since October 7, could you not make the case that actually the US has been a restraining influence on Israel? They call it the bear hug: because Israel is so reliant on US support, ever since the first few days after October 7, it is the only country that Israel will listen to pull back. It feels like the initial delay, for example, before going into Gaza, as well as such humanitarian pauses as there have been, are the result of US pressure.
JM: I don’t believe you can make that argument. In minor ways, the Americans have pushed the Israelis to allow some aid to flow into Gaza, but not very much at all. There are all sorts of reports that, basically, a huge chunk of the population in Gaza is starving. And the idea that we have created a situation where the civilian population is getting anywhere near a sufficient amount of food and water and fuel and medicine is not a serious argument. The Israelis are doing pretty much what they want, and there’s no evidence that we’ve put meaningful limits on what they can do.
FS: So how would you like to see the US treat Israel?
JM: I would like us to treat Israel like a normal country. And when Israel does things that are in our interest, we should back them. And when they don’t, we should not back them. In fact, we should go to great lengths to get them to change their behaviour. I don’t think it’s in our interest for the Israelis to maintain the occupation. I hope you understand that, since at least President Carter’s time in office, the United States has pushed forcefully for a two-state solution. But the Israelis have not played ball with us. And the principle reason they’ve been able to get away with largely ignoring our pressure is because of the Israel lobby here in the United States. No President is willing to really coerce Israel in a meaningful way, or has been able to coerce Israel to accept a two-state solution, because the political costs would be too great. And that’s because the Israel lobby is so powerful.
FS: But you’ve said in this conversation that you don’t think the two-state solution is realistic or viable, in part because of the antipathy that people in Palestine now feel towards Israel. So we can’t really blame them, then, by that logic?
JM: You’re mixing up timeframes, Freddie. We’re talking about from President Carter up until October 7. The fact is that’s a very different situation than the situation that exists after October 7. We were discussing the fact that it’s hard to imagine moving toward a two-state solution after October 7, given the antipathy if not outright hatred on both sides; but before October 7, and certainly in the Eighties and the Nineties and in much of the early 2000s, one could argue that you could get a two-state solution.
FS: Didn’t Clinton offer a two-state solution to Yasser Arafat and he turned it down at the last minute?
JM: No, that’s not what happened. In fact, after the breakup of the Camp David discussions in 2000, Arafat and the Palestinians continued to negotiate with the Israelis. The negotiations on a two state-solution with the Barak government didn’t end with the end of the Camp David negotiations. They went on after Barak left office and Ariel Sharon came into power. What happened at Camp David, in the latter stages of the Bill Clinton administration, was the closest we ever came to making it work.
FS: Once again: let’s apply your realist lens to this situation. Israel is reliant on US support. Without that it would functionally not survive. Would you agree with that statement?
JM: You seem to think that Hamas is a state and that Israel is a state, and this is a classic case of interstate politics, where realism applies. But that’s not what’s going on here. This is a case where you have a Greater Israel, and Hamas is a group that operates inside of Greater Israel. And this is a resistance movement. That’s what’s going on here. This is not interstate relations. Realism doesn’t have a lot to say about relations between Hamas and Israel. You could argue that creating a Palestinian state and thinking about relations between a Palestinian state and Israel would bring realpolitik onto the table, because then you’d have interstate relations. But this is not a case of interstate relations. Hamas is not a state. You said before that one could argue that Israel is facing an existential threat. This is not a serious argument. Do you really believe that Hamas is an existential threat to Israel?
FS: It might face an existential threat if the US dialled down their support to the level you’re suggesting.
JM: I’m sorry, Israel is a remarkably powerful state. In my opinion, it is militarily the most powerful state in the region. It is the only state that has nuclear weapons. Hamas doesn’t even have a state, right? It occupies Gaza, which is part of Greater Israel — it’s remarkably weak. This is the kind of threat inflation that you get in the West, in places like Britain, where you operate, and in places like the United States, where I operate, that are all designed to justify what Israel is doing. If they’re facing an existential threat, if this is the second coming of the Third Reich, if Hamas fighters are the new Nazis, then you can make an argument that what you’re doing here is killing large numbers of Palestinians to avoid another Holocaust. That’s not what’s going on here. Hamas is not the Third Reich, they are not an existential threat to Israel.
FS: What about the surrounding territories? It sounds like you’re completely unpersuaded by concerns that there could be incursions from the North, that Iran’s influence could grow, that there could be a wider strategic threat to Israel. Does that not worry you?
JM: That’s not a problem. What country is going to invade Israel and threaten its survival? There’s no country. Jordan? I don’t think so. Egypt? I don’t think so. Syria, or Iraq? I don’t think so. Lebanon? No. Is there a problem with Hezbollah? No. Hezbollah has lots of rockets and missiles, and it could do huge amounts of damage inside Israel if it launched those approximately 150,000 rockets and missiles. There’s no question about that. But Hezbollah does not have the capability to invade Israel and conquer any territory and hold on to it. It’s not a serious argument — and nor does Hamas have that capability.
To the extent that Israel might face an existential threat in the future, that would be true if Iran were to get nuclear weapons, because Iran and Israel obviously have hostile relations, and one could tell a story about how a conflict between the two of them could escalate to the nuclear level. Of course, again, this assumes that Iran has nuclear weapons. But Iran is not about to invade or conquer Israel. And again, you don’t want to forget that Israel has nuclear weapons. They are the ultimate deterrent. I’ve yet to see a country that has nuclear weapons disappear from the face of the earth. And I don’t think that Israel is going to be the first country that fills the bill, that score. It’s just not going to happen.
* * *
Freddie and Professor Mearsheimer go on to discuss his predictions for Ukraine, the effects of a second Trump victory and the future of Europe. Watch the video HERE or subscribe to the podcast HERE.
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Subscribe“I think what you’re going to end up with is more of the same, which is a Greater Israel that is an apartheid state.”
The only definition of apartheid is the state that was the apartheid state, namely South Africa. Any other definition is fatuous.
So how does Israel compare to South Africa? It doesn’t. Every single permanent resident of Israel has exactly the same legal rights. The economic differences between the “races” within Israel is narrower than most Western states.
At best, it is imprecise, emotive language to attempt to describe Israel as an apartheid state. At worst, it is a racist dismissive snub of the very real hardships and discrimination faced by many South Africans in the actual apartheid state. You don’t need to be an academic to see the differences, but quite clearly it takes an academic to be blind to the obvious.
I wondered if he was an overrated idiot after his comments on Ukraine. Now I know.
…and a committed anti-Semite, as he has been for a very long time.
I never heard him criticise Jews as a people so why is he anti semitic?
Because he suddenly discovers his ‘moral’ critique when it comes to Israel. It was notably absent with Russia’s barbarous invasion of Ukraine. Freddie covers this in the early part of the interview – judging by the transcript only, Freddie sounds (understandably) incredulous.
You should read his 2007 book about the Israel Lobby!
So being critical of Israel means you’re automatically antisemitic?
In this case yes…. Israel has no other viable solution but to try and stop the activities of Hamas. Unless you have a solution?
I’ve no problem with them trying to stop Hamas. My criticism is their method of doing so. A rather indiscriminate bombing campaign that has killed nearly 10,000 children means any sympathy I had for the original attack has unfortunately long since evaporated. Their reaction is just as evil as the original crime in my eyes, even the terrorists only killed 30 children and a third of their victims were security forces
Getting statistics from Hamas is not a good look
Then please provide us with more accurate ones. If they were that far out the IDF (when they’re not busy shooting people waving white flags) or the Americans would be trotting out their own ones
Would you believe Israel has killed a few terrorists? How many do your stats say were killed? How about 8,000, as Israel claims. Does that give you any reason for less pearl-clutching? Probably not, because numbers are not your real concern.
What would you have Israel do? Surrender? Flee the Middle East? Or, most unrealistically, fight a “nice” war with no civilian casualties?
Apart from the fact you’re getting your numbers from Hamas, have you considered why so many civilians are dying compared to Hamas fighters? Because Hamas uses them as human shields whilst hiding in their well ventilated tunnels (think of the power such ventilation requires!).
The question should be, “how many more Palestinian civilians have do die before Hamas surrenders?”
He seemed to toggle between his moral realism and his ‘realism’ realism modes without any real justification.
On the one hand the Hamas attacks are called horrible and terrible but on the other he basically seems to accept Israel has a right to react and then systematically dismantles every meaningful action they could possibly have taken.
What does he think they should have done? A stiffly worded letter to the Hamas leader saying how disappointed they are at their actions?
I watched an interview with these so called “children” and realized how poisoned they have become due to their Islamic education in Gaza (thanks UNRWA, you evil piece of shit). They all said they would kill Jewish children, no problem, because they would grow up to be soldiers of Israel. They did stop at killing “babies”, that made them think twice. So you have an irresponsible Gaza population that breeds over 5 children per female, and then trains these “children” to be Jew haters.
Oh yes! And if you are critical of Zionists!
Being especially critical of Israel or singling out Israel for criticism is being antisemitic. If you make no attempt to criticise Russia and then criticise Israel then you are an antisemite.
Mearsheimer cannot even come up with an alternative approach. It’s pathetic.
No, But it doesn’t mean you aren’t, either.
And an idiot.
How many wars we had between countries not involving Israel?
But without Isreal we would have peaceful world.
You should be as careful about throwing about libellous anti-Semitic accusations toward Prof. Mearsheimer as you say he should be about his phrase. Anyone who disagrees with you, even if Jewish, is now anti-Semitic? Wow. Impressive. What about all those Jews who were anti-Zionist in debates before 1948, or Orthodox Jews who remain so? Anti-Semitic too?
Oh a disciple of ‘realism’. That charlatan Mearsheimer is completely removed from reality. If he had the faintest grasp of reality he would understand why Israel is retaliating in the way it is. Just another US academic who is divorced from reality.
Of course Israel is retaliating, as he said, and he is in no way questions going after the murderers and rapists. Who but a psychopath would feel otherwise? As for me, Old Testament justice is applicable. “I’m not criticising the Israelis for responding to what Hamas did on October 7 — of course the Israelis were going to respond — what I’m criticising is how they responded.”
He never bothers to explain how they should respond.
There is something grotesque about people living thousands of miles away, in safety and comfort, loftily second-guessing and trying to micro-manage what the Israelis are doing in a matter of life and death.
I agree…. he says they have the right to respond but locks off every possible response.
Which to me just looks like another smug academic wanting to look cleverer-than-thou,to frame the argument his way, and have his empathetic, moral, cake but still eat it.
“Anyone who disagrees with you, even if Jewish, is now anti-Semitic?”
This is exactly the trite crap anti-semites use for cover. What a tip-off !
Yes, what a tip-off! They’re all the same! Why not read my well-published essays on anti-Semitism and liberal fascism? Originating well before the book. Try Google. Now you’re accusing me of being an anti-Semite? Wow. Neat. And a little tragic. If it turns out to be tangibly true that I’m not anti-Semitic, but anti-anti-Semitic, what can I call your form of reflexive bias?
I’m very comfortable calling him an antisemite and he can sue me if he likes. My defence is right there in the article. He singles out Israel for criticism but can’t bring himself to criticise Russia for much worse. Sayers lays a trap for him and he falls right into it. Sayers shows him to be an antisemite without even needing to say it. Easy.
Absolutely! After being made to read his rants about the Israel Lobby in my master’s programme, i wondered the same, especially because everyone else seemed to think he was brilliant.
The Israel Lobby is, in fact, rather weak if one actually bothers to look at the numbers. Watch Davidwoo Unbound on Youtube on this subject (a short).
See above .
Entirely agree. Well put and to the point.
Ditto!
Mearsheimer’s comments on Ukraine, have, and continue to be, prescient. The fools who predicted a Ukrainian victory have been exposed as exceptionally naive, and that’s putting it mildly.
As you were…
And for all his “insight” he proffers no solution.
You may disagree with the man, but he is hardly an “idiot.”
He just seemed to completely knock down flat every sensible idea put to him, and bull up his own, which were all anti Israel.
Like so many academics he’s terrified of adopting an unfashionable stance.
Possibly the Only Real Solution for Israel/Hamas Is Radically Idealistic
The situation in Israel with Hamas is a wakeup call. Everything needs to be changed and rectified. It is based on a lie.:That Israel is the homeland for Jews, Zionism. This what the Bible said 2000 years ago, but sorry, it is not an authority today. Israel is not the homeland for Jews. Planet Earth is the homeland for Jews and all humans. Is N. America the homeland for all native americans?
The young Zionists came to Israel to escape Nazi persecution. The land was “given” to them by rabid anti-semites (Lord Balfour, etc.). A desert region surrounded by Arabs. The Zionists might have considered themselves “guests” of those who inhabited the area, but instead, treated them as colonists would treat the indigenous, resulting now after 75 years of oppression, in the desire for ethnocide.
These Zionists are an abomination for all Jews, creating a real excuse to hate Jews world-wide They need to be removed and incarcerated (their leaders) though all Israelis are implicit in allowing them to reign.
The one or two state solutions are untenable and problematic.
The “homeland” needs to be a home for anyone to live in peace and harmony, an example for the world. To be governed in a horizontal fashion (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wywMhg604W8) to eliminate the possibility of subversion, corruption, and control. All people with equal rights and ethnic differences are honored and permitted. The Jews were “chosen” not because they were in any way special, they were chosen to help lead the way to an ethical, just, and peaceful world.
And whatever happened to the 10 Commandments? Thou shalt not kill. And do unto others…. These Zionists are Jews in name only, they are blasphemers.
The challenge now is to get this solution into the heads of humanity and especially Israelis and Palestinians.
*******************************************************
What is your opinion?
“The “homeland” needs to be a home for anyone to live in peace and harmony, an example for the world”.
And so it is, in Israel. Have you been? It is a shining light in the darkness. A beacon of civilisation in the midst of medieval barbarism.
He stresses “Greater Israel”, by which I understand him to mean The State of Israel as it is today plus the West Bank and Gaza. Describing that as an Apartheid state may be correct, but it is the Arab leaders who have made it so. The State of Israel itself is anything but an Apartheid State with 20% of the population Arab Israeli, who sit on the supreme court, who are represented in the Knesset, who vote, and live entirely as they choose and can even join the army. To call the State of Israel an apartheid state is a joke.
Further more his description of the Palestinians wishing to continue negotiation while Israel stopped in 1993 and 2000, is risible. He also neglects to mention the offer made to Abbas by Olmert in 2008 which Condoleeza rice called amazing.
Being highly intelligent as he clearly is, does not mean that he understands, and he clearly does not, this viscerally deep religious problem.
When will these people admit it is NOT about land.
we would have said ‘clever’ rather than ‘intelligent’
Exactly!
I stand corrected. Clever not Intelligent.
And certainly uncontaminated by wisdom!
At a certain level I would want pundits to be not just clever, not just intelligent, but wise. I’m not sure he manages even one out of three.
The usual tropes employed by a certain group. They also throw terms such as ‘Nazis’ and ‘fascists’ at people with whom they disagree. Language is a weapon for them, and it’s designed to silence the other side. The diminishment of the word’s original meaning and context is also intentional. What remains is a vague association with something terrible, unspeakable even, that amplifies the division and marks opponents as the incarnation of evil.
Don’t forget ‘authoritarian’, ‘bigot’ and the ever popular ‘racist’.
YOU are totally blind! Because you don’t take in account the Palestinians living in Greater Israel. If the Arab Israeli citizens have some rights (though not all the same as Jewish citizens, eg regarding property) the Palestinians under occupation have absolutely NO RIGHT. Exactly the definition of APARTHEID.
But for Academics like you, those people don’t even exist.
After that, just accuse your detractor of antisemitism.
This “Israel is an apartheid state” is a calumny thrown around with too much ease, especially by academics. If Mearsheimer speaks about inside the current borders of Israel, WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE OF APARTHEID? There is none. He just repeats the accusations of the NGO’s operating in Israel that, without fail, lie about Israel.
But he said within greater Israel. Whether he is right or wrong, I have not seen him claim that Israel is an apartheid state within the green line. You could by the same metric claim that Britain was a racist state 50 years ago if you counted the British empire as one state, but not if you only counted the borders of present Britain.
Let us clarify what it would be in terms of surface the “Greater Israel”, ie about 30.000 sqkm which is a bit more than Wales, or about 12,3% of UK. Better call it Huge Israel. Oh man…
The evidence is of course inside the occupied territories. As a matter of fact, inside Greater Israel, of which the government is in charge.
Any comment on his views on the Israel lobby?
If we are going to single parts of the interview I’d think this is an area to look at.
I see apartheid as a Sth African word but language evolves and when the situation appears in a new location there’s no need to create a new word
It’s hilarious you try to claim Mearsheimer is being offensive to South Africans when the majority of South Africans would agree with his characterization of Israel. It’s one of the most pro-Palestine countries in the world, and everyone from Desmond Tutu to Cyril Ramaphosa have accused Israel of apartheid.
Shouldn’t we be listening to the people who actually experienced apartheid on this?
Gosh why do all these experts use the word ‘I’ so much.
Are they that self deluded about themselves ?
I have previously had the highest opinion of Mearsheimer, but I cannot tolerate his entire tone towards Israel in this piece. You are correct that it is simply factually incorrect to call Israel an a apartheid state and I is one of the hallmarks of the left to do so.
But why did you have highest opinion of him?
Was it because when he was just denying other states right to exist, like Ukraine, it didn’t bother you?
I’d say I’m left but increasingly there are awful things attributed to “the left” that I don’t ascribe to or support, and apartheid in Israel is one of them. There are many more. I have friends who are as confused about this as I am, and we have begun to think we should start to self-label as centrist.
Yes, I used to be centrist and now I am far-centrist.
Eccentrist, perhaps?
Brilliant post.
But let’s remember that most academic are lefty vermin.
Till, so called, right government like Tories take action against lefty infestation of the media, academia and civil service (including police), nothing will change.
Well said. It’s very confusing to hear the word apartheid being used concerning Israel. I keep having to do a double-take.
I’ve noticed you getting a lot of upvotes. So I’ve started to read your posts closely. I’ve realised that your comments are easily digestible. That makes people comfortable. People like to be comfortable. They vote accordingly.
Gosh as a liberal New Zealander and an enthusiastic follower of Unherd, in general, I’m shocked at the rather bigoted comments going on here and on the Israeli issue especially – seems the average UK reader hasn’t advanced much from the views of Lord Balfour – perhaps you should try listening to Lord Sumption to get up to date.
Is that liberal in the old sense of the word liberal? Or is it progressive and actually illiberal?
If you read/listened to Lord Sumption you’d know it was the “old sense”. I suspect you are just trying on an ad-hominem on me…
There’s no such thing.
Who is blind? take in account the Palestinians living in Greater Israel. If the Arab Israeli citizens have some rights (though not all the same as Jewish citizens) the Palestinians under occupation have absolutely NO right. Exactly the definition of Apartheid, even worse.
But for many readers, those people simply don’t exist.
I am a Zionist and fully support Israel’s current operation in Gaza. But I can see one respect in which Israeli policy is redolent of Apartheid. Under Netanyahu, Israel is committed to depriving the Palestinian population of citizenship in any sovereign state in perpetuity.
Would you like to talk to any Palestinian living within the state of Israel and find out how they view your assertion that “every single permanent resident of Israel has exactly the same legal rights”? Is that word “permanent” perhaps a key one? All I know that is through conversations with a Palestinian friend this phenomenal equality you write of does not translate into reality.
It seems to me that Palestinian voices are very difficult to hear on Unherd. “Racist snubs” unfortunately do not just apply to Jews and South Africans. We assume that only those most famously targeted historically as being inferior to others are real victims and not those being targeted in real time at our peril. Comparisons can of course and should be made. It’s so easy for those who were the victims to switch the drama triangle and become the persecutors, and hide their behaviour behind their victim status. But if you can’t see it, you can’t see it. We all want to be on Team Good, paint things black and white, and therefore portray the others as Team Bad, to keep our own image of ourselves pure. Mostly we’re just being played.
Another expert slating Israel but providing no actual opinion on what should be done. Not wanting Palestinian civilians harmed but acknowledging they use civilian buildings as strongholds. Barely worth an interview, nothing came from it other than someone trying to take a moral high ground without actually offering any resemblance of an opinion on what should be done.
I think his moral sense is for one state solution which will surely end up with massacres of Jews so it’s slightly embarrassing to bring it up
It’s worth the interview, simply to provide us with a stark example of the kind of thinking that’s actually ‘the problem rather than the solution’.
The beginning of the end of the conflict can only come about when Israel’s right to exist is no longer threatened as a matter of ‘world view’. A mountain to climb, of course.
Is there a civilian population? ‘We are all Hamas’?
Exactly.
Children
totally indoctrinated
Judging by the images of the world wide overwhelmingly enthusiastic support of Hamas by civilians ? Yes
If the Muslim community was just slightly less jubilant about killing and raping Jews we could at least imagine some sort of peaceful solution
The FACT is, there is overwhelming civilian support for Hamas! In the West Bank as well! Civilians followed the terrorists in the wake of their barbarous rampage through the kibbutzim on October 7th. They committed atrocities as well.
Exactly. Sayes was unable to pin him down on what should be done about anything.
What a complete and utter slime ball. And he’s not even a realist, every time he is confronted by reality – underground tunnels that start below hospitals, or two state solutions that are rejected by Palestine leaders – he just baldly says reality isn’t true.
Cognitive dissonance avoidance at its finest. What cannot be, simply does not exist.
That stood out for me, too: Oh tunnels under hospitals. Who knows? I mean, there are so many stories . . .
Cowardly d•ck says what?
Stories? Evidence in HEAPS
show me
Better call him an unrealist.
Mearsheimer’s famous realist approach seems unnecessarily dogmatic in this interview. His dialling down of the viciousness of Hamas as ” resistance” is deeply troubling too.
Trying to use moralistic labels and casting tropes of ” good versus evil” is really startling from someone who’s known for clinical analysis.
What’s happened?
This is a complex conflict and the Professor is frankly ludicrous in reducing it to simplistic labels.
He’s an American academic. That’s what they do.
Largely true. But you’re flirting with simplistic labels too.
Fair point.
Very well stated. Although I am not sure how analytical his approach really is—or has been in the last 15 or so years.
Perhaps he is just catering to the current zeitgeist where the old juxtaposition of good versus evil is gaining ground again, and where words like Apartheid, Nazi, fascist, etc. are lobbed like hand grenades to silence and harm opponents and their viewpoints? I wrote earlier that these terms are deliberately separated from their historical context to convey some vague sense of ultimate evil. When confronted with ultimate evil, you are supposedly allowed, perhaps even obliged, to use every weapon in your arsenal to defeat it.
I amnot familiar with his earlier views on Israel, but on bloc politics in Europe he hasn’t been as dogmatic imo.
One fact which a lot of pro Hamas opinion deliberately skewers is that before 2005 Gaza had a very high per capita income. Some of the agricultural communes were doing excellent work. They also employed many Palestinians.
As soon as Hamas came in all that was dismantled by them.
This deliberate immiseration shows that Hamas always intended to destroy Israel. Loosely throwing words like” apartheid” and ” genocide” against Israel is a reductionism of the most a-historical kind.
When Sharon forced, and in my view justifiably, the 9000 Jewish settlers out of Gaza in 2005, they destroyed the 47 Schuls, and schools and kindergartens etc to avoid them being desecrated. However they left Gaza with a very flourishing Flower industry which was subsequently deliberately destroyed by Gazans/Hamas.
Yes, also I believe there was micro- irrigation based drip agriculture, which Hamas obliterated.
This interview is an excellent illustration of the fact that even highly credentialed ‘experts’ at elite institutions… are just as analytically and morally susceptible as anyone else. He’s just embarrassingly incoherent.
Replace even with especially for the root of the problem.
Some surprising opinions from a man who I’d previously considered rational.
If Palestinians are starving, who has the power to fix that? Egypt has a border with Gaza every bit as militarised as Israel’s border with Gaza.
Is Israel bombing Egyptian aid trucks?
Does Israel alone have a responsibility to feed Palestinians?
And what percentage of Israelis seek a Greater Israel? If Israelis could vote for peace with current borders, I’m confident they’d take it, but peace isn’t on offer.
I won’t accuse Professor Mearsheimer of antisemitism, but he’s certainly absorbed some distorted views, and he doesn’t appear to be thinking clearly.
Again, where is the evidence the Palestinians are starving? Hamas operatives and terrorists steal from the aid trucks. So it’s Israel’s fault? The lies and contortions of Mearsheimer are remarkable.
Stay strong Margalit, good job.
So you won’t accuse him of it but you drop it in there anyway.
I don’t think he is.
He also angrily avoids to answer Freddie’s question, what he thinks Israel should have done after 7.10. His response was, that Israel purposefully bombed Gaza to kill civilians. How can that be avoided when Hamas lives in and under Gaza’s main infrastructures. I would have pressed him more on that. He was calling the entrances to tunnels under hospitals and weapons’ depots in mosques “stories”?
Also as you said: why doesn’t Egypt open the border for at least women and children and provide them with tents/temporary accommodations.Turkey took in over a million Syrian refugees, mostly women and children.
I can see a lot of people on here, who were not that bothered about prof Meishaimer views about Ukraine, but suddenly have a problem with his views about Israel.
I am sorry, but either you support both countries right to exist or you are hypocrite.
I don’t think you should conflate the situation in Ukraine anmd Israel. It is not an apples to apples comparison. Wrt to Ukraine, nobody disputes that Ukraine has a right to sovereignty. What Western Ukraine doesn’t have is a right to launch rockets into Eastearn Ukraine for 10+ years! But more to the point, but for US meddling there wouldn’t have been a conflict in Ukraine.
Well the realist has decided to go moralist here, and so exposes his hypocrisy. He’s right, Hamas is not a state, it’s a (fill in the blank) organization.
The point he’s making though is that if the Palestinians don’t have a state of their own then all the territory is technically Israeli. However Israel denies basic rights to large numbers of people born in that territory that are available to others, such as voting in the Knesset and freedom of movement throughout the country, even when they’ve committed no crimes.
This in effect creates two classes of citizens within that country, a situation not too dissimilar to that of apartheid South Africa
Have you been to Israel and South Africa?
I have, worked with plenty as well
Then you would know there is a significant difference between the South Africa of old and Israel today.
You would not want to go to South Africa now
I live here and live well!
I have been to Israel three times on business. Perhaps the main difference between Israel and South Africa is that there is no clear difference in Israel between black and white. At railway stations soldiers searched everybody. Tel Aviv was free and easy except for odd searches. Young people did as they wanted. Everybody was suspect but life continued normally.
I visited twice a kibbutz and you could see a high wall; on the other side of this wall was Gaza. Palestinians did menial work in the kibbutz but they had to leave at night. Every man and most women were army trained and often carried guns.
I never visited South Africa but (obviously) apartheid would be easier to control because of colour. Black people did menial tasks for white people but mostly lived apart in the townships. I suspect that most white South Africans carried, and still carry, guns.
Black or dusky people were not allowed to sit on benches or visit most beaches in SA. Blacks were not allowed to fraternize with whites It was wholly different. Even back in 1980 when I visited Israel my friend and I stayed with a Palestinian man at his establishment. It was very free and easy. Palestinians frequently had relationships with travellers – especially Northern Europeans.
There is no doubt that Israel has to be super cautious around the movement of people – more so now than ever before.
I do not know why the Gazan people have done so little with the huge amount of money that has poured in in aid.
Khaled Mashal has a net worth of $8 billion. That’s where it went – they bought beachfront property in the Gulf. They don’t apologise for this. Their peculiar morality says it’s fine to make money from the misfortunes of others. Arafat died a very wealthy man too. The real culprits in this war are the EU, UN and NGOs who provide all this wealth without bothering to ask how it is being spent.
My wife and I visited Atlanta about 10 years ago. While I was working my wife sat in a park in the city centre. She was watching black children play in a pool and the father, very politely, told her that the other side of the park was for white people. She stayed and started playing with the children and when I came to collect her the father came up again smiling and said, “Thank you ma’am.”
The Gazan people have been living for decades in an open air prison, transformed into a concentration camp as a result of blockade.
concentration camp? where in history does a concentration camp look like Gaza? blockade of what exactly? if you had a territory who’s population repeatedly showed no interest in anything other than your destruction, poisoning their own children with violent/homicidal hatred for you and firing thousands of rockets (even 10 rockets) into your country repeatedly and you had left that territory years ago….what would you do? think very slowly before answering.
“Not too dissimilar”. Arguably so. But from a different place of emphasis that wording could also be: “not very similar” or “insufficiently similar to warrant such a loaded parallel”.
People born in the same country are born with different rights of citizenship based on their ethnicity or place of birth. To me that sounds very similar to apartheid
I agree that they are not fully equal citizens in a complete sense. But Palestinians and other Arab-Israelis can vote or hold any job under the law–and sometimes do. A handful are even members of the Knesset. That constitutes an important, label-disqualifying difference, in my opinion.
I also think that Apartheid and Holocaust are on a short list of terms should be reserved for their infamous contexts-of-origin, or at least used with more clarification and restraint.
Not those in Gaza or the West Bank though. Until the Palestinians have their own state then those two territories are Israeli, yet those living there have much fewer rights than people born elsewhere in the country
But with regard to Israel that is incorrect. The Arabs who live in Israel proper and are citizens of Israel are treated no differently rom Jews. They serve in the Knesset, on the Supreme Court, in the Universities, etc.. They are not discriminated against. And recall, close to half the Jewish population of Israel, and especially the Ashkenazi are generally very liberal and progressive (as indeed they are in the US).
That’s only correct re apartheid SA. All people of any religion and ethnicity have the same rights in Israel. There have been Arab Israeli supreme court judges (one sent a former President to jail); Arab Israeli diplomats; Arab Israeli doctors and surgeons who treat Jewish Israelis. There are mixed hospital wards (I know of this personally). All citizens whatever their ethnicity have the vote. The West Bank is not ‘the same country’ as Israel. The area ruled by the Palestinian Authority has its own politicians and hospitals. The WB outside the PA remains disputed.
Born in the same country? It’s very
thoughtful of you to suggest in that way that the West Bank is part of Israel, but forgive me, I heard that the boundaries of what is called Israel are still the subject of some debate!
And as for Gaza, that is a separate Palestinian state. And not a very encouraging one as regards a two state solution!
This only carries moral weight if you go along with Mershemer’s fiction that it is Israel that has stood between the Palestinians and statehood.
There are almost 2 million Arab Israeli citizens who do have the right to vote. Those living on the West Bank or in Gaza are not Israeli citizens. Which other country permits non citizens to vote?
The United States, if Democrats get their way.
If that is the case, it is a fair point
All that territory is not technically Israeli without a Palestinian state. It remains ‘disputed’. That’s one reason why Palestinian residents of the disputed areas are not made Israeli citizens, because it would open Israel up to accusation of annexation. (Of course another reason is that Israel would cease to be a Jewish state.)
That is a totally false analogy. Gaza is effectively it’s own state. The israelies left Gaza unilaterally in 2005. Hamas took over in 2007 with the ousted the PLA. Since then there have been no elections of course. The Israelis don’t control anything that goes on in Gaza.
Now have the Israelis put up strict border controls. Sure. But wouldn’t anybody do that when the avowed goals of Hamas, not simply clearly stated but backed up but continual terrorist incursions and lobbing of rockets into civilian areas within Israel. That’s just common sense and frankly something that the US should do on it southern border. But guess what? The Egyptians have also closed their border with Gaza. Perhaps worth wondering why since the Egyptians are also Arabs. Perhaps it might just be that Hamas and their other brethren are simply very very bad news.
ousted is a very polite term for what they did
It is a kind of state. A terrorist state. Pure and simple. The only aim of its existence.
Exactly. Hamas has no interest in creation only destruction. They have no interest in building a prosperous Palestine for the Palestinian people. They exist only to destroy Israel and then what?
Hamas is a “Resistance movement”? Mearsheimer lost me right there. He is supposed to be a realist?
Every year for the last 30 years, more Palestinians have been killed by Israelis than the other way round. Also every year for the last 30 years Jewish settlers have taken land off the Palestinians.
I’ve no time for Hamas but at what point does resistance become terrorism?
Unfortunately, everybody visits this site to agree with everybody else. There is no discussion, are no proposed solutions – only an agreement about who is right. I have a membership until March 5th and will then disappear because the uniformity of views is depressing.
Your question is apt and very important but you will be ignored. Clearly, 50 years of resistance is not the same as 50 years of terrorism. I make the point that the Europeans have tried to impose their way of life on everybody else and if they don’t agree, then it becomes terrorism. Since 1909 when the Caliphate collapsed, we have been trying to impose our ‘democratic’ way on every Arab country and this has been rejected. So, they are terrorists. QED.
All message boards end up going the same way in the end. You start with discussion between differing viewpoints, however over time the noisy ideologues start to take over, shouting down everybody who disagrees with them until everybody else leaves. Eventually you’re then left with an echo chamber and a couple of contrarian wind up merchants
Hamas may be a resistance movement as it’s resisting the Israeli state. The problem or difference is as you say Hamas is not just resistance but a whole reactionary world view that has little space for anyone who opposes them.
I am quite appalled to see Unherd publishing such an interview of a “realist” who has no real understanding about the trauma Israel is facing. This guy is completely detached from the human aspects of what happenned on October 7. I repeat , I am appalled.
Well in a way it’s good. We’ve heard a lot about this supposedly shrewd analyst over the past two years so I welcomed the chance to hear him in his own words. And like you I am appalled. What an utterly shallow thinker.
I think it’s good that UnHerd published this interview. It’s always better to know what someone thinks and Mr Sayers, as usual, asks very insighful questions.
To cite Hercule Poirot, “It is a profound belief of mine that if you can induce a person to talk to you for long enough, on any subject whatever, sooner or later they will give themselves away”
@UnHerd
I would like to know why the other comment of mine was taken down.
It didn’t contain anything that would warrant this – it just contained an addition to another comment, largely agreeing with it.
This arbitrary deletion of your subscribers’ posts is extremely disappointing, to say the least.
Exactly.
I think its important to hear extremist views like these, and Freddie deals with him brilliantly – even if his incredulity is obvious at some of the wilder statements made by Mr Mearsheimer.
Personally, I’d rather hear the ravings of a so-called expert in a well-conducted interview, than the ravings of a bar-room bore like Billy Bob in the comments section.
I enjoy both.
May I ask why you describe me as a bar room bore? Is it because I have a different view on Israel’s conduct to yourself?
I’m guessing you don’t like different opinions, you’d much rather the message board was an echo chamber
I’m relieved Unherd attempted, despite Freddy’s best efforts to consider the Palestine public and not fixate on exterminating them all as they are all Hamas.
Good to get one view of the other side here amongst 20 pro Israeli being fine to wipe out Gaza and rattle a few readers cages
I know, right? Remarkable. Didn’t know so many crazies read UnHerd.
At last count there were 18608 killed, 50,600 injured. Nearly all civilians. I’m guessing a third children. Also guessing that ‘injured’ is serious enough for hospital, for it to be reported. That includes amputations resulting from blast and crush injuries. Israel could have used its ground forces, going tunnel to tunnel, hideout to hideout, but this might have cost more soldiers. So we have a clear metric: one Israeli soldier’s life is worth, currently, the lives of about 180 Palestinian men, women and children. But it’s not an apartheid state.
We can be thankful, I guess, that no-one yet has sunk to the level of arguing about numbers. Then again, I haven’t read all the comments ….
Take my advice, the conflict between Arab and Jewish palestinians is very complicated. You need a lifetime to study it properly. You read well, they are both palestinians. The propaganda uses the term palestinians improperly. Unfortunately the space here is very limited and I cannot go into detail.
The amount of people on here who seem to promote ideas of ethnic cleansing (only in 1 direction of course) is slightly concerning
They’ve been brainwashed for decades. They just can’t see it
I disagree here.
We should have views like him published.
Otherwise we would never understand why there is so much hatred against Israel.
The only democracy between Europe and India.
Ok I respect your opinion. See your point.
Why are you appalled? This a forum that is open to discussion from all points of view. It can’t always be preaching to the converted, that would be boring.
To be frank I made my comment when there were few of them. The very interesting part of this article was the reaction of the readers, many opinions were heartening. You “converted” me. Thanks.
Though I think there was a second “Huh?” moment when he cited Amnesty International’s opinion about Israel as an argument.
Hah hah. Maybe he should quote the Red Cross too. Or the UN. Both verifiably anti-semitic institutions.
or the Gaza Health Authority.
Are they?
Well done Freddie Sayers. Another excellent interview. You have clearly exposed this self proclaimed “ realist” for what he really is. Keep up the good work please.
I thought he handled Freddie well and didn’t let him push Freddie’s view too much
I thought Freddie handled him well, exposed him as an irrational idiot
Quite. I already knew that Mearsheimer is a visceral antisemite. But I was very surprised to see how shallow he is intellectually.
Agreed totally re Freddie. Well done.
The “Huh?” moment of the interview is “Hamas is not going to build military bases far away from the civilian population so that they present the Israelis with a big fat target.”
But he didn’t really mean it, because by that logic there is nothing wrong with building tunnels under hospitals either, but he can’t admit that these tunnels exist. They are just “stories” not “evidence.” His “unsentimentally” is just a way of dressing up his Jew-hatred with some kind of respectability.
By the way, building military bases away from civilian population is exactly what you are supposed to do under the Geneva convention, if you don’t the civilian casualties are on you, not on the other side.
So a terrorist group with no air defences and no Air Force that’s confined to an area the size of the Isle of Wight with 2 million people is supposed to run military establishments away from civilian areas?
According to the GC, yes. I agree with you though, it’s stupid.
Equally it’s then stupid to complain about the civilian casualties caused. It’s an inevitable consequence of the terrorists rational decision.
For heaven’s sake: Hamas started the war!
“Rational decision?!”
Perhaps if they focused their energies into building up a stable and functional society rather than in channeling humanitarian and other aid into the construction of terror tunnels, which are part, also, of the cause of the estrangement with Egypt. Hamas are operating as a paramilitary and criminal mafia.
If they want to start a war, then yes they do. If they don’t, I suggest that they concentrate on building their bit of prime real estate on the Med into a functioning economy instead of a metro system without trains.
In 2005 it was a fiunctioning economy. Thats all gone under Hamas. Why work when you have billions of dollars in aid for the military (sorry food etc).
Exactly.
They actually have/did. They had a military training site in the south of Gaza which they used to train for the invasion. But generally you are right. The point though would be, why on earth would Hamas, or anyone sane, think that military, violent, resistance to Israel could produce anything good. It didn’t. They should have spent all the vast sums of money they got from the Gulf on water treatement and sustainable energy.
The main problem is that peaceful coexistence with Israel doesn’t work either. The PA in the West Bank are much more moderate than Hamas, going as far as assisting the IDF, and their reward for this appeasement is an ever increasing number of Palestinians violently evicted from their land to make way for Jewish settlements.
If the Palestinians see this happening when they behave (for want of a better word) then it’s no surprise when violence appears to be a much better prospect to protect their territory
Absolutely, the settlements are abhorrent and have increased under Netanahu’s government. He has to go, he’s a thorn in the side of any chance of peace. Only religious and conservative Jews have supported him.
And making Palestine, in all aspects, a thriving country instead of a third-world one.
It’s not a sport.
They should should avoid using land under public places of sanctuary like libraries, schools, hospitals, mosques, etc as military infrastructure. Shelters for their people would be good there. Keep the military stuff elsewhere…
It’s only bad if Ukrainian soldiers are in their cities protecting them, then he calls it “using human shields”, of course.
He contradicted his position with that one because he’s saying that Hamas then has to be mixed in with the Palestinian population, making it impossible for Israel not to kill civilizations if it is to retaliate! He never had any viable solutions to Sayers asking “What can be done?”
Mearsheimer’s part-time realism is laid bare with this petulant response: “I don’t have to provide a consistency of approach!”. He certainly doesn’t. And his combative tone doesn’t help his own case, a self defense that employs the genocidal example of Rwanda. That’s an unserious, even suspect precedent for his one-sided indignation.
He holds no hope of a meaningful resolution and offers no practical recommendations. The public expression of that kind of outrage is self-indulgent at a minimum, and closer to fatalism or “nihilism with occasional exceptions” than it is to realism.
I was cringing when I read it.
This man is embarrassingly illogical… and completely void of any viable solution.
Come on Lesley, he is very logical.
If Jews just surrender, like Ukraine, all would be well.
I have to say though that Natanyahu government so called “friendship” with Russia didn’t survive first real test.
There are a great many Israelis of Russian extraction or descendants of same, so I would not be surprised if there was considerable BTScenes communication.
This guy dresses his prejudices up very inconsistently. I think the interview exposes him quite well.
Mearsheimer’s book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” was published in 2007/08 during my time as a uni student pursuing a master’s degree in international relations, and it quickly became required reading material. I remember being rather appalled at the blatant antisemitism and quite annoyed with the uncritical, fawning admiration bestowed upon the writer and his mediocre work by professors and fellow students alike. I even briefly wondered if I should give the book another chance as I pondered why my reaction was so different, and why I did not treat Mearsheimer’s diatribe against Jews and Israel (that’s what the book is) as Gospel truth.
I maintain that my moral compass and my intellectual capabilities are not deficient or lacking, but functioning quite well—albeit without the ideological lenses that are so prevalent in Western academia. JM’s callous disregard for Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the lives of her citizens has confirmed my stance that he is vastly overrated.
The thesis of that book was that the USA only backs Israel as it does, because sneaky Jews had infiltrated and lobbied etc to bring that about. [Paraphrase, obv, but that’s the gist].
And to an extent I’ve no doubt there is some truth in there — I’m sure Israel do indeed lobby and try to influence the US govt in their favour (as do others)…
But there is are also other extremely logical, even self-interested, reasons why the US and other western nations back Israel to the hilt:
They’re the only democracy in the region, and they they’re a crucial intelligence partner, with extraordinary capabilities (that they share with us, cooperatively, through partnerships with NATO and the 5 Eyes, etc). They are our only eyes and ears on an entire region of the globe that is simmering with threats to us.
It makes perfect sense to me that we would take extra care to protect and support little Israel, even if only for purely selfish NatSec reasons.
Again, I’ve no doubt at all that they lobby and push the US govt (and others) for support. But even if they didn’t, I think we would probably support them for purely rational reasons anyhow?
I agree. But then who doesn’t lobby the US? This whole US lobby thing would make sense only by comparing it to other lobbies..
I don’t think lobbying should exist because it’s another case of the most powerful and corrupt always winning.
I don’t think you’ll ever get rid of it. What you can do is make the process more transparent and visible so people can see it at work and what effects it has. Just as you prefer UnHerd to interview Mearsheimer rather than trying to censor or exclude such views so we know what we’re dealing with.
Mearsheimer needs to update his book with a chapter about Jeffery Epstein and his blackmail scheme
Callous is well said as is vastly wrt Mearsheimer.
Well done, it’s not easy to go against the tide but rewarding to find your instincts were correct.
Well said.
Wow, where to begin with Mearsheimer’s views on Israel? Let’s examine his assertion that America has -since Carter – simply allowed Israel to reject a two-state solution and that Israel has never had an interest in a two state solution. while I agree that such a solution now seems highly unlikely, it was not always so (whether for good or ill).
How about using Clinton’s own words? From Newsweek (June 26, 2021):
“Nearly a year after he failed to achieve a deal at Camp David, former president Bill Clinton gave vent to his frustrations this week over the collapse of peace in the Mideast. And Clinton directed his ire at one man: Yasir Arafat. On Tuesday night, Clinton told guests at a party at the Manhattan apartment of former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke and his wife, writer Kati Marton, that Arafat called to bid him farewell three days before he left office. “You are a great man,” Arafat said. “The hell I am,” Clinton said he responded. “I’m a colossal failure, and you made me one.”
Clinton said he told Arafat that by turning down the best peace deal he was ever going to get-the one proffered by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and brokered by Clinton last July-the Palestinian leader was only guaranteeing the election of the hawkish Ariel Sharon, the current Israeli leader. But Arafat didn’t listen. Sharon was elected in a landslide Feb. 6 and has gradually escalated his crackdown on the Palestinians despite a shaky ceasefire negotiated two weeks ago by CIA chief George Tenet….
Clinton said, somewhat surprisingly, that he never expected to close the deal at Camp David. But he made it clear that the breakdown of the peace process and the nine months of deadly intifada since then were very much on his mind. He described Arafat as an aging leader who relishes his own sense of victimhood and seems incapable of making a final peace deal. “He could only get to step five, and he needed to get to step 10,” the former president said. But Clinton expressed hope in the younger generation of Palestinian officials, suggesting that a post-Arafat Palestinian leader might be able to make peace, perhaps in as little as several years. “I’m just sorry I blew this Middle East” thing, Clinton said shortly before leaving. “But I don’t know what else I could have done.”
Clinton also revealed that, contrary to most conventional wisdom after Camp David ended on July 25, 2000, the key issue that torpedoed the talks in their final stages was not the division of East Jerusalem between Palestinians and Israelis, but the Palestinian demand for a “right of return” of refugees to Israel. On Jerusalem, he said, the two sides were down to dickering over final language on who would get sovereignty over which part of the Western Wall. But Arafat continued to demand that large numbers of Palestinian refugees, mainly from the 1967 and 1948 wars, be allowed to return-numbers that Clinton said both of them knew were unacceptable to the Israelis.
Clinton said he bluntly contradicted Arafat when, in one of their final conversations, the Palestinian leader expressed doubts that the ancient Jewish temple actually lay beneath the Islamic-run compound in Jerusalem containing the holy Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. This was a critical point of dispute, since the Western Wall, a remnant of the temple’s retaining wall, is the holiest site in Judaism and one the Israelis were intent on maintaining sovereignty over. “I know it’s there,” Clinton said he told Arafat. The so-called Al Aqsa intifada began after Ariel Sharon made a controversial visit to the disputed compound on Sept. 28, 2000.
Next time you meet him, Freddy, ask him what he would advise Hamas to do should they phone him up and ask him for help?
Yes good idea, Hamas should call him, as he legitimises them as a Resistance Movement. Maybe the Israeli ambassador to the UN could hold up his telephone number too..…
I was glad to see that the subhead of this article declares this willfully-blind prof a “scholar” and not an “expert”. He’s clearly studied much on the Palestinian conflict, but refuses to accept the most basic outlines of it:
The Palestinians elected Hamas, who therefore “occupy” the land in the same sense that the Conservative Party occupies the UK.
Palestine and its supporters do not want a two-state solution, and will only agree to it as a step toward Israel’s elimination.
“It’s just not going to happen” is not an argument; it sounds like someone folding their arms and refusing to think.
Kudos to Mr. Sayers for politely allowing this prof the opportunity to expose his emptiness.
“I don’t have to provide a consistency of approach.”
And I don’t have to take you seriously.
Mearsheimer, when presented with the evidence that there was a significant Hamas presence under the hospital, simply waves his hand and says ” “Yes, but, whatever”! He’s not even applying his own self proclaimed standards of ‘realism’.
Sayers is the interviewer, Mearsheimer the interviewee.
Names aside, that moment got my attention too. Many times during the exchange, he really leans in to his earlier jaw-dropper: “I don’t have to provide a consistency of approach”.
In other words, he’s allowed to contradict himself, which he does!
I would respect him (if not his assertions) more if he channeled Walt Whitman: “Do I contradict myself. Very well then, I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes)”.
Better line for a poet than a political scientist though.
Yesterday Putin admitted 360 thousand Russian losses, so according to Maerheimer’s calculation, over 700thousand Ukrainian soldiers already died ? I am not sure, when this interview was conducted, but I very much doubt Maersheimer’ “realistic” analysis…
I think he’s wrong on this issue, but he may well be right about Ukraine’s casualty numbers — they are now conscripting 45yr olds. One doesn’t conscript middle aged men, unless most of your younger and fitter men have been killed, sadly.
You should have a look at Ukrainian demographic tree: the biggest slice of men population in the country are around forties. Young men also have most mobilisations exclusions available to them such as studying or rearing young children. In the beginning there were lots of young volunteers, so that’s why the average soldier age was younger (in the thirties). Now that the conscription has fully kicked in, the composition of Ukrainian armed forces better reflects its general demographic. Purely anecdotally but travelling Ukraine regularly I see streets full of young men all across the country as well. I cannot believe this argument is seriously being made as if Ukraine is anywhere close running out of soldiers. BTW, the demographics of Russia is similar.. that’s why they have a lot of older soldiers too. Needless to say Russia too still has a huge pool of recruits available. Both countries struggle more with training and equipping the people than the manpower itself.
On a side note, I f*****g hate Mearsheimer and don’t believe anything he says because he is fervently lying about Ukraine — about things that are public domain and easily verifiable. As a professor he has double the responsibility and yet he is an emotional mess twisting facts to fit his political narrative that he clings to so dearly. The kind of person whose identity is so closely tied to his views, he should have never become an academic.
It is awfully sad. And how terrifying it must be for you and your family to be conscripted knowing you’ll just be cannon fodder.
Yeah, I was pondering that a lot after reading about them conscripting men age 45 this week. Men that age will largely be fathers, heads of households. How terrified they must be to be called up, to have to leave their families, and to know that this means many of the younger, fitter men are dead …and their lives are now to be thrown into the bonfire. Breaks my heart.
I also wonder what it means for the nation, after this war is over. They’ve lost a large number of their youth, of their men of prime age. What does that mean for rebuilding, and for societal stability going forward?
BTW, Ukraine didn’t conscript anyone below age of 27 (now it is proposed to lower this age limit to 25).. So your assumption is false.
The Professor is the personification of the rot that infects academia. Who cares what he thinks about anything.
The Jew hater speaks. Great interview…exposed him for what he is.
“I have no solution.”
The only statement by the interviwee with the ring of truth.
Great interview. Thanks Unherd
Perhaps the only real solution is a military solution – ie. that if Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, their enablers in Iran and (inevitably) their ‘innocent’ civilian supporters were to pay such a high price in blood that they would choose peace and the continued existence of Israel in preference to the futile alternative, however fanatical their self belief may be. Consider the defeat of Japan in WW2.
When have peace talks ever produced anything but a postponement of the inevitable?
Sadly true.
How do you consider Israel’s efforts toward peace? After Rabin’s assassination they have been rather weak…
Which Palestinian leader or movement should Israel have made peace with?
A terrific interview!
probably terrifying would be a better word.
“What they have done is they have built tunnels underneath the ground all over Gaza, which is a way of protecting themselves from Israeli bombing campaigns. It makes perfect sense from their point of view. But in doing that, there’s no way they’re not going to be bound up with the local population.”
Yes, to protect themselves and to hell with the people they are “bound up with.” Religiously fanatic terrorist organizations are simply incapable of caring about anything or anyone beyond their inhumane, horrendous objectives.
I have not seen any recent interviews with former President Bill Clinton. It would be interesting to hear his take today regarding past attempts at a peace agreement. Former presidents tend to be more forthcoming once out of office.
Those nurses, patients and babies sure put up a fierce firefight to protect the hospital the face of IDF troops. /s
What a waste of time. Real Politik based in unreality. These are incredibly manipulative and manipulated so-called debate points. Time frames matter, except when they don’t. Epithets like apartheid thrown out with no evidence. Total one sided positions while claiming to be simply realistic. This fails simple logic tests completely, let alone factual ones. And, oh by the way, personal moral considerations are okay, except when this guy says they aren’t. And people think he’s reasonable?
They call me MereSchemer! (Joke!)
Hamas, and their paymasters will never accept a single Jew or Christian living in Israel. U
ntil that changes there will be no peace.
It is the IDF whose snipers have just killed two women inside Holy Family Church in Gaza City. They are crack shots, I have to give them that.
Let’s not forget they’ve also shot three unarmed Israeli hostages who were carrying a white flag. The longer the conflict goes on the harder it is to maintain that they’re doing all they can to avoid civilian casualties
Well said! And to maintain they’re doing all they can to save the hostages.
Who can’t be rescued by force, only by negotiation.
Don’t know much about him, but watched your interview on youtube and his logic was flawed I thought and you were right to question him the way you did. I don’t think the Israel lobby is why Americans support Israel. It’s because it is an island if democracy in the middle east. He basically said he doesn’t have to be consistent, but he does if he wants to be taken seriously by reasonably smart people. Unfortunately, the commenters on youtube were not reasonably smart, but worshipped him for some reason
Not going to waste my time reading the article, but I thought Mearsheimer’s views were generally discredited?
Not really, at least by so called “realists” on this forum and others.
Basically, Ukraine should just surrender to Russia and Israel should just accept murder and rape of its citizens.
When it happens, world will be peaceful place.
“JM: I don’t have to provide a consistency of approach. ”
Well yes, he does, actually. If he wants to be taken seriously as a dispassionate analyst, anyway.
“JM: Well, there’s no question that Hamas is integrated in all sorts of ways into the civilian population in Gaza. How could it be otherwise? Hamas is not going to build military bases far away from the civilian population so that they present the Israelis with a big fat target.”
After this, he then goes on to try to argue that Hamas has not, in fact, melded itself strategically into the Palestinian population as a means of protecting itself from Israeli military attack. But this paragraph here describes and admits precisely the strategy in question is exactly that. What on earth is the man going on about?
Anyway, for the sake of fairness and accuracy, I read the Substack piece in full. If it is both factually accurate and balanced, then it does indeed appear as if Israel is going too far in its campign against Hamas – mainly because Israel’s targets are not in fact part of Hamas, but Palestinian civilians. The problem I have with the piece is that I would say it is not balanced: it makes no attempt whatsoever to describe an alternative strategy that Israel ought to adopt. The suggestions for ceasfire are muddle-headed nonsense that foolishly and naively imagine that Israel can be shamed into simply not responding at all, and can therefore be dismissed as a plausible alternative to Israel’s present course of action.
I am willing to accept that Israel is overreacting and that Palestinian civilians, including women and children, are presently paying a horrific price that may come to be seen as a historic atrocity in due course. But calling for any solution that simply forces Israel to stop short of destroying Hamas is counterproductive and cannot possibly work, So if we really care about innocent Palestinians – and I certainly do – the question is: how does the world help Israel destroy its enemy by another means? The answer isn’t a ceasefire: the Israelis won’t cease firing and anyone who keeps making a point of it is not a serious participant in the debate. The answer is something else, and the world has to find it very quickly indeed.
Accusations that the goal is a “greater Israel” ? What slander ! Israel traded the Sinai for peace and offered the Golan. Israel left Gaza in hopes for peace. What do you do with those REAL facts ? Mearsheimer is an ancient vestige of a German anti-semite.
Had to stop listening to this after he defended Hamas’ decision to build tunnels underneath civilian urban areas “to protect themselves”, as if they are innocent victims looking for refuge. In reality, they are terrorists who steal international aid to build not only the tunnels but weaponry and rockets, depriving their people of vital infrastructure and chances to thrive and waging war instead. Thoroughly unimpressed by Mearsheimer who, speaking from on high as if he will inevitably be on the right side of the history, displays deep moral confusion.
Israel is going after Hamas. The intelligent strategy for Israel to adopt is then to do what Hamas tried to prevent them from doing: make peace with Saudi Arabia.
“And my argument is that it made no sense militarily to launch a campaign where they’re basically massacring huge numbers of Palestinians and starving Palestinians” A “realist” like Mearsheimer should realize that when the enemy uses civilians as human shields, it make perfect military sense to kill civilians in order to kill the enemy. It fact it’s inevitable that civilians will die in huge numbers in such a situation. Did the Russians care about civilian deaths in the battle of Berlin? Hamas could end civilian deaths right now by surrendering.
What a nasty piece of sh*t this Mershaimer fellow is.
So Russia can invade Ukraine to persue their “national goals” when not facing any real threat.
But Isreal, facing genocidal Islomifascist should just surrender.
Interesting how Mearsheimer’s moral equivocation about Hamas is so similar to Jeremy Cobyn’s.
I’ve had Mearsheimier down as a fraud from day one. He bleats on about being a “realist”, but is anything but. The tell is how keen he is to talk about a “moral angle” when criticising others, but claiming that morality and any need for consistency do not apply to his “rational analysis”.
He clearly self-identifies as a realist. Most of us know better. Even more so after this interview.
It’s funny that I actually listened with fascination to Mearsheimer’s Russia-Ukraine analysis. I now realize that he’s a typical leftist. The West is wrong no matter what we do. Even striking back after a terrorist attack is wrong. This is very disappointing.
The “Israel lobby” that he is obsessed with (he wrote a book about it!), in REALITY, has a minuscule amount of sway in the US. Compare it with other lobbies like the gun lobby.
His talking about it as a kind of mighty, hypnotising force over America is PARANOID. This level of paranoia is no different from the way someone like David Duke, the ex KKK grand-wizard talks about “the Israel lobby”. Or how someone inspired by Hitler’s favourite book, “The protocols of the elders of Zion” talks.
This referring to Israel as an “apartheid” is a non-sensical slur that people have deconstructed many many times. He sites Amnesty and Human Rights Watch as his back up to his slur. Laughable.
Calling Hamas a “resistance” force. What a nutter. Is he really a serious person? Hamas is like ISIS. They place no value on civilian life. Think Raqqa. So he’s a terror sympathiser too. Disgusting.
This man has a mental disorder, one that people are currently calling “Israelophobia”.
Conclusion – a warped, twisted “academic” (he’s in a crowded field), saying things that are deranged but using good vocabulary. A historically illiterate fantasist, his reasoning is NOT based in “reality”. Anti-Western. Corrupt. Polluted. He should become Middle-East expert for the BBC.
Mearsheimer has a rather defensive tone to his voice that never wavers. It’s disconcerting, and Sayers felt it because he was apologetic on a couple of occasions.
To style oneself as a “realist” is extremely arrogant, as reality of in the eye of the beholder. He’s a pompous know it all.
I was surprised by his moralizing about Israel’s tactics. With all his military experience he totally ignored the effect of the bombing of Tokyo, Berlin, Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki not to mention Vicksburg, Homs and Grozny on winning. He ignored the concept of winning.
In his argument about existentialism he ignored the constant raining down of missiles on Israeli territory as if Israel should just condone it.
Apartheid? He ignored the very successful Muslim professionals, entrepreneurs and workers making a decent living ignoring as well jihad. But now there will be apartheid. Who can trust these people who work in Jewish neighborhoods and make maps for attacks.
I was surprised because he couldn’t be so ignorant.
If this is American academia then God help America. Many on this thread seem to think this Professor ‘owned’ Freddie. He is as fas from reality as it is possible to be. Full of unsubstantiated assumptions and criticizing Israel for rejecting a two state solution but no realization that that is not and never has been a Hamas objective. He is not keeping up as he seems unaware of the three state solution proposed by some on the basis that Hamas and Palestine Authority will murder each other till one is ascendant. But the Professor of Delusion continues to impose American hyper liberal orthodoxy on any solution.
Disgusted with this prejudiced and unrealistic Professor. Freddie totally exposed him and he was completely unaware, a real Naked Emporer.
“What can realism teach us about Israel ?”
Nothing !
Islam and the West are not compatible, it is as simple as that. The question people are dancing around is what should be done about it. My belief is there should be a lid on further immigration and a plausible ideology developed to justify returning illegal immigrants to where they came from or some acceptable third country that can be persuaded or bribed to accept them.
This eminent person is coming over as yet another western dupe. If we’re talking about moral reality, what did Hamas think would happen to their people after their atrocities against Israel on 7 October? They struck first, they kept their people poor to pay for ammunition and they put their people right in the firing line. That’s morally abhorrent – and that’s the reality. Remember that Israel doesn’t attack first, it defends.
Why did Hamas attack at that point? Palestinians rejected a 2 state solution proposed by UN in 1947 and have done so ever since. If that was what they really wanted, why drive their citizens to destitution and death? They attacked at that point because that’s what their Iranian backers wanted – because more pragmatic Middle Eastern states were getting closer to Israel and the most powerful state, Saudi Arabia, was about to do so. So it’s Iran and Hamas who have all participants blood on their hands.
Why don’t Hamas and PLA press the UN to help them broker a 2 state solution – because 2 states is the only solution. I don’t agree with the Prof that it’s off the table now – because the Western world and much of rest of the world wants it to happen. If Iran and it’s fundamentalist allies concentrated on their people’s welfare and prosperity and renounced terrorism, everyone everywhere would
benefit.
He’s not a realist, because a two-state solution is about as far from reality as you can get.
Reality: Israel is secure so long as the Litani river to the north, the Golan, the West Bank and the Sinai are secure. That’s why Israel and the US will hit Hezbollah next, they occupy the area south of the Litani River.
We, the west, stupidly made up these countries after WW1, we mixed the Arabs and non-Arabs together and imposed our Western viewpoint on Nationality on them, it doesn’t work that way over there and never will. In the middle east the strongest prosper, if you can take it you can have it.
Palestinians are just another tribe of Arabs, their own Arab cousins don’t want them to have their own country, they actually don’t want them even to come and visit, they’re happy that the Israelis have to deal with them.
Palestine can be given a state but not one next to. Israel. Steal a chunk of Africa. and give it to them. Some African elites will sell part of their nations. Their ancestors sold their people as slaves. They’l sell. The Sahara needs only sea water and. GMO salt tolerant crops to become the world food basket. Its available.
If the Israelis claim to have succeeded in eliminating Hamas there will no longer be justification for continuing the blockade of Gaza. The vast majority of Gazans are not terrorists, and 70% are women and children, whom the present situation renders powerless. It should be up to them, as anywhere else, to establish a representative government capable of being internationally recognised.
However, if a ‘two-state solution’ is out of the question, it hardly matters what happens. A one-state is no solution either because, leaving out the Orthodox, the Israelis’ first world demographics would quickly be overwhelmed by the Palestinians’ third world demographics.
It is anyone’s guess whether the 20% of Gaza’s population who are males under 15, whose memories will be as vivid in 10, 15 or 20 years time as are their experiences today, will see Hamas as to blame for their ongoing tragedy, or provide a next generation of fighters even more implacable than Hamas.
The ‘historical’ solution would be for the entire Gaza population to migrate to somewhere more accommodating, as are millions trying to escape from failed states or failed economies around the world. There is understandable resistance to this, especially as Terra Nullius is in increasingly short supply.
However, the Palestinians are not part of a Muslim expansionist wave. It is the Jews who constantly seek Lebensraum. That may be the only positive aspect of the whole business. The ‘solution’ then is to withdraw support from Israel unless it dismantles its settlements, which are illegal even under its own law, and withdraws from occupied territories.
Irrespective of the two state solution, I find it hard to comprehend that there are supporters of Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis & Iran. Iran’s axis of evil, in conjunction with Qatar, the likes of ISiS, Boko Haram & Ah Shabab are all terror groups, intent on destroying western democratic values.
The world needs to wake up.
How come John Mearsheimer, a realist thinker, thinks about the danger to Israel would be invading it and maintaining invasion by Hamas or Syria or Hezbollah? Doesn’t he realize that throwing thousands of missiles on civilians, threatening it with barrage of missiles from north into some areas that Israel has its nuclear powers, etc. would totally destroy the 70 years of Israel status as a nation and would cause an uprising of all Palestinian supporters worldwide for pouring out in the streets, backed by Iran, Doha, and other Militant Islamic groups who are gaining more and more public sphere in Europe, etc. etc.? He is not naive, but wrong in not seeing the danger, even when PLO was going for the whole of Israel, and not with the 2 state solution! If Israel wanted more land, they would not have given back the Sinai desert (with oil) to Egypt for peace! Ahhhh, how does the western mind sometimes misses the greater plan of Militant Islam on Dar-al-Islam vs.Dar-al-harb in the background?!
What he repeatedly does is add the word Jews to Israel
This guy is an old academic buffoon. His theories and his entire approach to power and politics is just as outdated as his obvious thinly-veiled antisemitism is fashionable.
The Jews took the hint and left Europe and Russia. The Palestinians could do the same and go to Iran and Syria. Not welcome? The two seem to have a lot in common in the land of no room at the Inn.
Your comment shows you are ignorant of the almost a million Jews that were expelled from muslim countries when the arab armies waged war on the newly declared state of Israel. Those people were refugees but were quickly accepted as citizens of Israel and some also went to america. The displaced arabs of palestine have been kept as permanent (now 5th gen) refugees- as an albatross around israel’s neck. In Lebabon they are not allowed to work. They are victims of Islamic extremists that uses them as weapons to achieve their ultimate goal of a ’judenrein’ islamic caliphate centred in Jerusalem.
The least controversial assertion of Professor Mearsheimer is that there is not going to be a two-state solution. Whose fault this is, is irrelevant.
He then asserts that, therefore, the current situation will continue forever.
He also asserts that the current political situation in Israel’s Arab neighbors — governments who are far weaker than Israel militarily and who thus will not threaten her, and who are largely independent of the will of their populations — will continue forever.
And he asserts that in the case of the one deadly foe of Israel that will soon get nuclear weapons — Iran — rationality will keep them from using them, under any conditions.
But surely any study of history will show that the second and third assertions are untrue: societies change, even if this happens slowly. And this change is, overall, in the direction of increasing economic — and therefore military — capability, and in the direction of lessening the state’s ability to ignore popular opinion. And as the West Bank Zionist settlers continue their project of expansion, accompanied by the occasional murder, popular opinion in Arab counties will not move in the direction of wanting to appease Israel.
On a smaller scale, the iron grip of the AIPAC on American politics is weakening as we watch … the ranks of both Right and Left in the US have seen the growth of groupings which are hostile to America’s unconditional support for Israel. Their influence is likely to grow, given that, realistically, most Americans have no objective interest in this support. — just the opposite, in fact.
And leaders of countries, especially those animated by strong grievances (as they see it) do not always act rationally, although the existence of nuclear weapons may push them in this direction. (Hitler irrationally declared war on the United States. Would he have done this if both sides had possessed nuclear weapons? I wouldn’t be confident in saying ‘No’, but it would probably have made him hesitate.)
So surely the ‘realist’ advice to all inhabitants of the region must be: get out while you can, preferably to some country upwind of the area, before unforeseeable events lead the leaders there to implement the ‘No-state solution’.
Get out and go where, exactly?
Hitler wouldn’t have hesitated to used atomic weapons at the end of the war. He didn’t care anymore about the German “Race” in his last statements and called Germans losers to the Slavic Race. In his suicidal self destruction, he wouldn’t have hesitated to push the button, even if it also meant the end of the German population. In his madness he tried to get the military to follow his burnt earth command, which many of the generals secretly refused.
Totally irrational dictators or fanatical religious leaders will use atomic weapons and as terrifying as it sounds, there will be no way getting out while you can…
Exactly, because this life isn’t as important to them as the, supposed, next one that they believe in.
“JM: Yeah, I would agree with that. I think given what’s happened on October 7, relations between the Palestinians and the Israelis have been poisoned to the point where a two-state solution is no longer viable.”
It is precisely the opposite: what’s happened on October 7 makes the 2-state solution an urgent task and only viable political solution. The viability of a single democratic bi-national state “between the river and the sea” has been murdered by Hamas on October 7 and by the Israeli cruel and disproportionate response in the weeks that followed.
Mearsheimer claims the 2 states arrangement is not realistic, but his realism is anchored in conditions that prevailed between the end of Camp Davis and the present, conditions that have been completely disrupted on October 7. Mearsheimer is also right in explaining the political paralysis that has allowed Israel to keep occupying the West Bank and Gaza, though the power and influence of pro-Israel lobby in US policy has become more complex than it was when he and Walt published their book on this lobby: it was bipartisan and united then, but Natanyahu managed to turn pro-Israel lobbying a Republican cause, which has infuriated large sectors of the Democratic party.
October 7 has also shocked Israeli public beyond the dovish minority that supports the two state solution. It exposed the failure of the notion that hardliners and hard line repressive policies are a warranty of security, with the dismissal of a political process. This militaristic security obsession is not only held by settlers and right wing politicians and public, but also by “centrists” parties opposing them in elections (generals like Gantz and Galant) and by most of the Israeli public behind them. It is impossible to know if recent events will move Israeli society towards demanding the renewal efforts to reach a political agreement with Palestinians, bypassing and neutering the settler movement, or if the events could lead to a hardening of the militaristic option.
Finally, it seems that Palestinian society in the occupied territories is now supporting Hamas, seeing the organization as the only one fighting for their cause. However, the prominence of Hamas is tied to the conditions prevailing of political vacuum in Palestinian society since the second intifada, leaving only the choice between Hamas dictatorship or the Palestinian Authority riddled by corruption and cronyism. Palestinian politics has been dismissed and marginalized by Israeli governments bent on perpetuating the occupation and “administering the conflict”. Palestinian society (even in Gaza) is aware that Hamas as government is likely to become as corrupt as Fatah besides being a clerical dictatorship modeled in Iran. Once new leadership emerges support and prominence of Hamas might be countered within Palestinian politics.
Personally I have felt unable to fully accept John Mearsheimer’s argument on the Ukraine war, perhaps because I cannot accept that the complete absence of morality in Putin’s version of reality is a workable template for human relations, whether at the level of states or individuals. But JM’s view is one that has to be treated with respect given all the imponderables. And I applaud Freddie for inviting JM to explain his perspective on both wars, now and in the past.
In this case, JM’s thinking on what is happening in Israel and Palestine seems not only to be an even-handed assessment of the situation in moral terms but also completely realistic in the bigger geopolitical picture.
I was surprised and disappointed that Freddie strayed from his usual openly enquiring interviewer mode with this one. It seems pretty clear he arrived with some preconceived ideas – herd-like assumptions even – and was not ready to look at this extremely complex subject with eyes fully open to the reality.
As JM says, “this is not a case of interstate relations. Hamas is not a state. You said before that one could argue that Israel is facing an existential threat. This is not a serious argument. Do you really believe that Hamas is an existential threat to Israel?”
Further, “I’m not criticising the Israelis for responding to what Hamas did on October 7 — of course the Israelis were going to respond — what I’m criticising is how they responded. And my argument is that it made no sense militarily to launch a campaign where they’re basically massacring huge numbers of Palestinians and starving Palestinians. There’s no military utility to this. And from a moral point of view, that’s important.”
Unfortunately Freddie doesn’t seem to have even considered looking at the situation in this way, and was clearly unnerved by the possibility that the conversation was moving into a well-founded perspective that presumably had not occurred to him when preparing for this interview.
Was this why he came out with this – forgive me, Freddie – sloppily applied cliché?
“FS: I’m just surprised to hear you use phrases like “apartheid state” which are so specific to the South African experience. In other scenarios, I could see you being critical of people sloppily applying phrases to areas that don’t really apply to them. And some of those organisations you just listed you would have been very critical of in other scenarios. I confess that I’m surprised to hear how enthusiastically you embrace the rhetoric of Israel’s critics.”
Earlier in the interview Freddie talked about “looking for a consistency of approach.” Apartheid is a policy that is founded on the idea of separating people based on racial or ethnic criteria. Does that definition not stretch from Africa to the Middle East?
And where does this come from? “… some of those organisations you just listed you would have been very critical of in other scenarios..” Sounds like an uncharacteristically sloppy and herd-like assumption to me.
As JM says, it’s commonplace for Israeli elites to refer to Israel as an apartheid state. Is Freddie really blind to the reality that Netanyahu does not speak for all Israelis? And that the use of this term by organisations that have spent a great deal of resources researching what is happening on the ground in Israel and Palestine might be accurate?
So you wrote long post disputing various elements of Isreal state.
What we know is that Israel is the only democracy between Europe and India.
If you are for European civilisation do you stand with Israel or various savages trying to destroy it?
For those of cynical disposition, let’s look at it from West perspective.
How failure of Israel state and success of Hamas and Iran would benefit us?
Obviously not.
So supporting Isreal makes perfect sense, even if you see Isreal as as sort of aircraft carrier in Middle East.
Thanks – spot on comments. Sayers seems to revel in the ‘devil’s advocate’ school of interviewing. He seems to come to most interviews armed with only the most basic knowledge, which only serves to highlight the absence of any real understanding of the topic being discussed.
Would love to see Sayers ‘interview’ Max Blumenthal – now that would be interesting.
Whatever else he says, the part where he examines the idea of existential threat is extremely important. Israel cannot with a straight face, nuclear armed as it is, continue to justify its use of force on the basis of ‘survival’.
Hamas has stated clearly that Oct 7 was just a rehearsal and they want a permanent state of war. Their ultimate goal is an islamic caliphate based in Jerusalem, that will cleanse the world of Jews and infidels. The state of israel’s primary purpose is to protect Jews- what kind of action do you think it should it be taking to provide security for its people against an islamofascist death cult?
If the rest of the world wasn’t so against Israel they might help by putting extreme pressure on Qatar to get Hamas to surrender.
You are confusing desire with capability.
When I read his comments at the beginning of the Ukraine invasion I thought he was Putin’s useful idiot. With the passage of time my reaction reminds me of the famous Mark Twain quip: “When I was 18 I thought my parents were idiots; when I was 21 I was amazed how much they’d learned in three years.”
I thought this interview was excellent and that he called it like it is, ensuring of course that there was a pile on of negative rections here – something we see quite regularly in the Unherd comments section.
Brutality begets brutality and that isn’t going to change.
Obviously a poor interview by Mearscheimer. There iare a host of positions within Israel and not just that of the Jewish Power Zionist fanatics who now dominate Netanyahu’s cabinet and are as lunatic as Hamas.
But I would read his substack article before judging: https://mearsheimer.substack.com/p/death-and-destruction-in-gaza
There is an asymmetry re Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Gaza as he points out both in terms of the latter not having state status or the fact that Ukraine is not absolutely dominated by Russia. If he made those points clearer he could have highlighted how he is still realist on this issue. That is, how such a violation of balance of power real politik relations between Palestine and Israel can be understood in moral terms. The South African analogy has some plausibility when seen in these terms, but the “a” word is about as helpful as invoking the “h” word and a usually sign that there is more rhetorical heat than analytical light at play.
One wonders what Kissinger held on this. Clearly, he has skin in the game, but given a younger avatar is off beam here, one wonders.
20,000 Gazans massacred.
Says Hamas. I’d like to know how many dead are 1) Terrorists and 2) Human shields. Hamas is responsible for all of them.
If bank robbers take human shields, should the police just shoot the hostages in order to take out the criminals?
Only if their their humanity can be “explained away” or placed under a blanket of complicity. I wish more people here could step back from taking sides to the point of de-humanization by ethnic or regional association.
And that more Israelis and Palestinians would have the awareness and courage to step back from it too. Easy for me to say, from the comparative calm of Silicon Valley, but I have to continue hoping.
Nearly indiscriminate slaughter may defeat Hamas, but at a very bloody cost, with hideous echoes that will last for generations. And responding to escalation with further escalation could render the defeat of Hamas itself rather pointless in the long run. Remember that Isis emerged after the defeat of Al-Qaeda. What will rise from this rubble?
Well pray tell us what happened to German cities and civilians during WWII and how the aftermath turned out. Well I think it turned out rather well. Germany didn’t become even further nazified and radicalized did it. As for the Palestinians who are not members of Hamas, just recall how they cheared when hostages were broaght back and dragged in the streets, raped and butchered. They weren’t just innocent bystanders were they. Basically you reap what you sow.
Making them all into one giant They is a mistake for which we will all pay, in some downstream way, in the long run.
Even given what the Germans did, the carpet bombing of Dresden in now infamous. Nor can every johadist be neutralized. Many extra radicals can be created though.
Pray tell which part of this you dispute.
Nor did the Allies bomb civilians until all the N–i soldiers and multitudes of sympathizers were safely laid in their graves, did they?
Only a portion of the surviving active combatants for Geramny faced post war punishment. Perhaps that was TOO clement an approach. But even then, after such hideous wartime outrages, there was some sense of proportion and relenting mercy. Thank God.
Your analogy is somewhat compromised by the fact that Hamas has been running the Gazan government and been well-funded by international agencies since 2007 to build a civil society. Is Hamas the bank robbers or is it the bank? Your theoretical analogy does highlight the complex issue of “agency” of Gazan civilians and their support of the “bank robbers”. Reuters reported on Dec 13 that The Palestinian Center for Policy Survey and Research (” a respected Palestinian polling institute”) in new polling found “Seventy-two percent of respondents [Palestinians in West Bank and Gaza] said they believed the Hamas decision to launch [on October 7] the cross-border rampage in southern Israel was “correct” given its outcome so far, while 22% said it was “incorrect”. The remainder were undecided or gave no answer.”
“The PCPSR found that, compared to pre-war polling, support for Hamas had risen in Gaza and more than tripled in the West Bank, which has seen the highest levels in violence in years, with repeated deadly clashes between Israeli troops and settlers and Palestinians.
Fifty-two percent of Gazans and 85% of West Bank respondents – or 72% of Palestinian respondents overall – voiced satisfaction with the role of Hamas in the war. Only 11% of Palestinian voiced satisfaction with PA President Mahmoud Abbas.”
To stay with your analogy, are the human shields innocent victims or Patti Hearst (for those old enough to remember the SLA kidnapping)? Are Gazan cilivians doing what they can to get rid of Hamas or suffering from Stockholm syndrome? Are they cheering on their sons who slaughter innocent Jews as the recordings show some Gazan parents did? I don’t know for sure just how much Gazans are victims of or aiding and abetting this horrible situation.
War is Hell. The loss of life – on both sides of that border – is horrific and tragic. But unlike Mearsheimer, I don’t want simplistic disregard for or evasion of the facts to paint Israel as doing something no other nation in the world would legitimately do if they had the ability to do it.
Not as a rule by in the past hostages and human shields have died in these situations. What Israel has done is awful but you do know how their bombing could have stopped. By Hamas surrendering. But their Gulf millionaires want martyrs.
If the “hostages” are really part of the robbers’ group, then yes. People act like Hamas exists in a vacuum. The “innocent” “civilians” of Gaza are its members’ parents and wives and children. Where do you think they live, eat, sleep? In the houses of the “innocent” “civilians”. Hamas = Palestinians. Palestinians = Hamas.
3) Vehement and active Hamas supporters
You want this to stop? Return all the hostages.
and the 10,000 plus Israel are holding in prisons children women etc??? when will they be released??