Israel Must Fight a Hybrid War (YouTube Content)

Israel must fight a hybrid war was a discussion with Eric Weinstein hosted by David Keyes.

Israel must fight a hybrid war
Information
Host(s)	David Keyes
Guest(s)	Eric Weinstein
Length	00:41:42
Release Date	21 April 2025
Links
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Portal Blog	Read
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Transcript

00:00:01
David Keyes: Eric Weinstein, how are you?

00:00:02
Eric Weinstein: Great to be here. Thanks for having me.

00:00:04
David Keyes: Congratulations on moving to Israel.

00:00:07
Eric Weinstein: I didn't know.

00:00:08
David Keyes: [laughs]

00:00:08
Eric Weinstein: Who knew?

00:00:09
David Keyes: 30 years you haven't been here, is that correct?

00:00:11
Eric Weinstein: Uh, technically 28 for a wedding, but it was 32 since I stopped living here, so, uh, it averages out.

00:00:19
David Keyes: Well, what took you so long?

00:00:21
Eric Weinstein: No one called. [laughs] That's what I said. It's really true. I was always expecting that I was gonna have one foot here and one foot there, and it just didn't happen.

00:00:27
David Keyes: Mm. Um, I am curious about your view about Israel's communications. Uh, you've been very critical of how Israel communicates to the world. I think a lot of that criticism is extremely warranted and justified. I was in charge of Israel's communications as the prime minister's spokesman. I would love to hear your view fully fleshed out on what Israel should be doing that it's not doing.

00:00:46
Eric Weinstein: We don't have enough time for that.

00:00:48
David Keyes: [laughs]

00:00:48
Eric Weinstein: But I do think that, um, the key issue is, is that i- if you... Israel certainly gave the impression that it, uh, over-prioritized kinetic warfare and not understanding the full context of hybrid warfare. And instead of telling people exactly what was going to happen before it happened and why it was about to happen, it simply went in. Uh, as a result of that, it walked into a preexisting memetic complex, probably funded by Qatar, uh, in which, um, Israel would be robbed of legitimacy by, uh, her enemies, who correctly understood that anti-Jewish resentment was so high that arguments would not need to make sense. And so I was forced, uh, in particular, uh, as were a tiny number of other people, to leave some posts, tweets that said, "Look, here's what is about to happen, and it's gonna be horrific. Here's why it's happening." And the bill for this is not being sent, uh, to Jerusalem. It's being sent to Gaza. And the reason for this is that the desired outcome was pulling innocent Arab children out of rubble. That's what they wanted, and that's why I, I made this tweet about IDF-assisted suicide being in zugzwang, and most importantly, Munchausen by proxy. So in Munchausen by proxy, it's very hard for most of us to consider the idea that a mother would harm her own charges in order to garner sympathy and attention. But such is the human condition. And when Sinwar in particular, um, orchestrated this, uh, he innovated well beyond human shields, in my opinion. So when you say human shield, what you're saying is, is that somebody attempts to protect a military establishment, um, by putting something unthinkable in its path. And that could be an orphanage, a school, a mosque, an old age home. Doesn't matter. I don't see it that way. I see that these tunnels were basically crosshairs to help guide Israeli munitions into structures that house the most vulnerable. And as a result, um, when Israel boasted that it was a global production company capable of pulling off the pager and walkie-talkie attacks, uh, it said, "We're, we are the authors, the screenwriters, we are the principal actors. This is a theater production." Interesting, because it feels to me that Sinwar from the grave is still the director of a horrific snuff film, um, being credited to Israel.

00:03:53
David Keyes: So on the most practical level, um, if you got that call that I got a few years ago saying, "You're now in charge of Israel's communications," uh, what would you want to see be done, um, you know, one, two, and three? What should Israel be doing today, uh, that it's not doing?

00:04:07
Eric Weinstein: First thing is we got outplayed. That's what I would be saying. And it's very difficult and very painful for a society that pr- prides itself on being the most, uh, intelligent, the most creative, the most strategic, uh, to be beaten. And if you do not take your lumps, you are going to do irreparable harm not only to Israel at home, but to the diaspora. Now, there's this historically a tension between the diaspora and Israel, uh, which everyone is aware of, I would like to think, w- in which, um, many people take a very simplified message, which is that we are at home here in Israel. We do not do things to please others. We simply conduct ourselves knowing that this is our land and that what our rights are, and we answer to no one. Good luck with that going forward in time. It's too simplistic. It's not that I don't understand that it has a giant component of truth, but it is also the case that, uh, Israel has effectively failed to help her friends who believe that Israel is best served by a version of the truth. I, i-t gives the appearance of thinking that Israel cannot survive the truth, to talk about the fact that in all wars, uh, individual wrong things happen. There's no question that, uh, you, you can't pull something off at this scale without, uh, collateral damage or somebody sadistically taking out, um, re- revenge against, uh, a life that would be better spared. I, I think that it's also the case that Israel would have to say, "Look, the rest of you have been at a very long peace for a very long time. You don't send video home from Uh, Afghanistan or Iraq when you send your boys over there. And, um, quite honestly, we're in an existential crisis. It's also the case that Israel did not push back on ideas that serve to salve the American consciousness. Like-

00:06:22
David Keyes: Like what?

00:06:23
Eric Weinstein: The two-state solution. You cannot have a two-state solution when you have neighbors who openly call for your eradication as an unconditional element of negotiation. And by engaging in, um, various practice, one of which is, is called constructive ambiguity, uh, the concept of Palestinian as a people was advanced as an ins- uh, inducement to have a cold peace modeled on the Israel-Egypt, um, agreement, which is a cold and bitter peace, but peace nonetheless. You cannot have such an agreement with people who are implacable. You did not address the fact that the concept of ethnic cleansing is entirely new in origin. It's not an ancient concept. Uh, absolutely the Sudeten Germans were removed from what would be called the Sudetenland because it was used as pretext, uh, for invasion, uh, uh, of the Nazi regime. So, you know, you haven't done the preparatory work for the conflict that you're in, and you haven't taken account of just how soft the outside world is, nor have you taken into account how soft Israel became, um, acting as if it was Europe, uh, in an in- an infinite squabble, uh, all the way up to October 6th.

00:07:54
David Keyes: So, so you've mentioned, um, uh, acknowledging that we were outplayed.

00:07:59
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm.

00:07:59
David Keyes: Um, not sending, you know, photographs home of what's happening in the battlefield, reframing the, the Palestinian issue, and the issue of two states. Um-

00:08:07
Eric Weinstein: Well, so let's just talk about the Palestinian, for example. This is now being called Israel-Palestine, which is presupposes that there is a two-state solution. I can assure you that Turkey would not allow people to be called Kurdistanis rather than Kurds. In fact, they used to call them Mountain Turks, which I found offensive. But-

00:08:26
David Keyes: I'm sure, I'm sure-

00:08:27
Eric Weinstein: But wait, wait one second. When you say Kurdistani for Kurds or when you say Khalistani for Sikhs, you're effectively saying that there is an implied land that m- must be ceded. You cannot live with people who cannot live with you. There are plenty of Arabs, I think, who could live side by side in a cold and bitter peace with Israel.

00:08:48
David Keyes: Yeah.

00:08:48
Eric Weinstein: But not all of them. And if you do not address the fact that the Arab states, uh, around you, Iran, the US, are partial, uh, co-conspirators in this absolute disaster, in this humanitarian, um, calamity that has befallen the Strip, you cannot effectively get yourself out of the situation. When people say that Gaza is an open-air prison, why should it fall to Douglas Murray to point out that, uh, Gaza shares a border with Egypt? If no one knows that the United Arab Republic ever existed and that Gaza was a part of it, um, and that the failure of Pan-Arabism is what created the concept of the Palestinian people, which can be proven to occur in 1964 through Google Ngrams because it triggers, uh, ambiguous language in the founding charter of the UN for self-determination, you are more or less linguistically doing the work of people who will murder, rape, and kill your people, and I cannot understand why you would be participating in such a thing.

00:09:59
David Keyes: Yeah. I, I understand the criticism, agree with much of it. Um, in addition to the framing issues of how you speak about this, I'm curious about your view of the landscape of those fighting these hybrid wars against Israel, America, and the West. Um, you know, particularly it seems like we are outgunned and outmanned and outspent on some very core issues when it comes to fighting this narrative war.

00:10:20
Eric Weinstein: Mm-hmm.

00:10:21
David Keyes: It seems to be, you know, a constant attack against Israel. So yes, we sometimes undermine ourselves from within, uh, with bad framing, but, you know, we have, you know, billions of dollars being poured into, uh, American universities by Qatar. We have Iran funding protests in America. We have subterfuge and hacking by the Iranian regime. We have full-scale narrative war by China against the West. Do you think there is even a remote awareness of the resources and attention that needs to be marshaled to defend and, and win that war?

00:10:51
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, and I don't mean to be rude about this, but given that, uh, I repeatedly asked, "Will none of you reach out to any of your friends abroad?" And I don't even mean just your Jewish friends abroad. Um, the abject failure to even avail yourself of things that are free, willing, and trying to help you is unforgivable in this situation.

00:11:12
David Keyes: You mean Israel's lack of outreach to friends and allies around the world who could help it, uh, win the narrative war?

00:11:17
Eric Weinstein: [scoffs] Yeah.

00:11:20
David Keyes: And to what do you ascribe the absence of that?

00:11:26
Eric Weinstein: I, I fear that Israel forgot who she, who she is and where she, and where she lies. I just, I, I don't have a, a model of it. I, I was saying in the previous podcast that, uh, I was seated next to somebody at a table in a cafe in Tel Aviv who refused to take a picture for, um, a meeting with friends, uh, and then got up and left a bag at the table next to us. And the person we were meeting, in fact, was the daughter of, uh, my dearest friend serving in the IDF in the north. And we imme-- my wife and I immediately had the reaction, "Somebody is abandoning a bag at a table next to us." This is a, you know, immediately our, our, our, our backs were up and our, our ears were, um- Engage for what this was. We started to engage the woman, and the young woman in the army had no idea that this constitutes a serious situation. I am as- astounded that I see very few assault rifles, uh, being carried by civilians. Uh, I see very few sidearms. I d- I don't understand where I am.

00:12:40
David Keyes: Well, you pointed to the fault of the government to do things, and hav- having spent many years in government, more than a few, uh, I saw the inefficiencies and the bureaucracy and the slowness and the old-school thinking of the system which prevented really any great innovation. And across the pond in America, I see the best companies are all happening outside of government that are truly advancing humanity, the, the Palantirs, the SpaceXs, the Andurils. In this hybrid war, what do you see as the role of private industry to reach out to friends more, to create better framing, to distribute these things?

00:13:11
Eric Weinstein: The idea that this requires a market incentive is repugnant.

00:13:15
David Keyes: How do you mean?

00:13:16
Eric Weinstein: This is a question of survival, not a question of Q3.

00:13:20
David Keyes: Mm.

00:13:21
Eric Weinstein: I- it's just you, you can't afford to drain all of the smarts out of government. Uh, and n- nor can you afford to not engage people who are trying to find a number that they can call. You also, just to be blunt, uh, don't realize just how good the anti-Israel network is at undermining the credibility of everyone who attempts to stand up for you. If somebody presents me with video that I can't corroborate, if I don't know that something actually occurred and has to be dealt with, or it was faked, or it has been robbed of its proper context, then what you're asking me to do is to stand up for you, uh, only to be undermined and have my legs cut out from under me, uh, for the privilege of making a, a small gesture on your behalf.

00:14:20
David Keyes: I don't mean to say that it's, uh, for lack of desire that the government doesn't do well at this. I mean to say that inherently and systematically, it seems ill-equipped to, to, to be innovative in this field.

00:14:34
Eric Weinstein: Y- why would you make-

00:14:34
David Keyes: You don't buy that?

00:14:35
Eric Weinstein: The-- I know individuals who work out of, uh, their basement who are more effective than the government on a budget of nothing.

00:14:44
David Keyes: Because it's not budget dep- it doesn't have to do with budget.

00:14:46
Eric Weinstein: I'll give you the same advice that Joe Rogan gave me. Joe Rogan once said, when I was thinking about starting a podcast, he says, "Go back to my first shows." He sa- he said, "You will see a guy with terrible lighting with a webcam making fart jokes directly into his laptop computer." To complain that you don't have the resources to accomplish this, when in particular you have ex- executed brilliantly in kinetic warfare, means that you need your portfolio rebalanced. And again, under normal circumstances, the idea of getting off of a plane and within a week, uh, telling Israel what it needs to do, um, without having been here for this long is not something I would ever engage in. But I'm also livid.

00:15:31
David Keyes: Yeah.

00:15:32
Eric Weinstein: Livid that you have eng-

00:15:34
David Keyes: Well, I, I agree with you that

00:15:34
Eric Weinstein: Wait, wait. Again, you know, it's not you personally.

00:15:37
David Keyes: Yeah.

00:15:37
Eric Weinstein: But I'm l- I'm, I'm using you to stand in. Israel has endangered the diaspora. You, you-

00:15:47
David Keyes: How so?

00:15:47
Eric Weinstein: You have allowed us not to know enough about what it is that you're doing so that we can make intelligent decisions as to how to support you when we choose to put ourselves at risk.

00:15:58
David Keyes: Well, give me a concrete example of that.

00:16:02
Eric Weinstein: Let's imagine that I wish to say something in support of Israel, and then it turns out that that thing is wrong. I can't get, uh, a government line so I can say, "Look, I'm thinking about doing the following thing. Is there anything I need to know before I do that?" We can comment, we can't comment.

00:16:20
David Keyes: Yeah.

00:16:20
Eric Weinstein: Look, there is something that's, uh, very negative. Here's how it was handled. Uh, y- you have friends with extremely large followings who've built credibility with their courage, people who stood up against the idea that, uh, it was racism to claim that COVID had to have come from the wet market. And you, you think nothing about incinerating their credibility, hoping that they'll take initiative, uh, because the government of Isra- Israel is too busy fighting a war. You need to be fighting a hybrid war, and the idea that, you know, that Qatar a- and company are 40 years ahead, uh, I've never heard Jews talk like this in my life.

00:17:04
David Keyes: Mm.

00:17:06
Eric Weinstein: Okay? 40 years ahead. Is that all?

00:17:09
David Keyes: Mm.

00:17:10
Eric Weinstein: Somebody brew the coffee. We're staying up. I mean, w- w- we're talking about -- Uh, I just walked past -- I, I don't read Hebrew very well. I come from a completely secular tradition. Nobody's had a bar mitzvah in my family since my, um, since my great-grandfather on my mother's side. And to walk down, I think it was King George Street, and see the name, uh, Weinstein on one of the hostage posters, and I know exactly who this woman is, and she's the sweetest, most loving, most wonderful person. I think she wrote children's books for the children who were mentally retarded or something like that. It breaks my heart that you're in the right in this instance, and you've squandered so much of the goodwill towards the Jewish people. You have, you have no right to do that.

00:18:11
David Keyes: I think, um, I, I totally agree that it's not a question of resources. You could quadruple the budget for any of these bodies tomorrow and-

00:18:17
Eric Weinstein: Okay, so we're talking about tunnels and things under the pyramids. Are you telling me that- Like I have a PhD from Harvard. Nobody says, "Well, how do we get the smart people to figure out how to figure out what's under the ground?" I don't know what you're doing.

00:18:32
David Keyes: Mm.

00:18:33
Eric Weinstein: Yeah, this is coming out a lot angrier.

00:18:35
David Keyes: No, no, that, that's fine. You're in Israel, you should be a little angry.

00:18:38
Eric Weinstein: No, but I'm still a guest. I'm an American.

00:18:40
David Keyes: [laughs]

00:18:40
Eric Weinstein: I'm not an Israeli.

00:18:41
David Keyes: It's okay. Um, who are the sort of people you think that need to be called upon and at the table? What are the skill sets that they need to have in order to do a much better job at this?

00:18:52
Eric Weinstein: I don't know. Maybe they should know partial differential equations. They built a company. They've got a large following. They're rhetorically gifted. You know, I, one of my comments, this has nothing to do with Israel, but before, uh, Douglas Murray became your friend, I was, uh, in awe of him. And one of my comments about Douglas Murray is that the entire fate of Western civilization cannot rest on the figures of one man. We've gotten to a point where you're just not calling in people. You have the resources. You have rooms. You can put people up in hotels. You can find seats on airplanes. You can allow them to sleep business class. Y- you're, you're crying poor, you're pretending that you're busier than you are, and you're not thinking ahead. And, you know, the, the... Everywhere I walk in this country, it says, "Bring them home now" in English. And the reason it says it that way, in my opinion, is, is that you guys are very divided. Does that mean a ceasefire? Does that mean military occupation, uh, at a level of brutality that has not been seen in order to play in the, in the language of the region, which is violence? I don't know. Everybody agrees that the hostages need to be brought home. Um, but I know that the people that I respect and I find to be the most creative in general, when I ask them, "What did you do when Israel called?" They say, "What do you mean?" And by the way, not everything can be about Bibi Netanyahu, just the way not everything can be about Donald Trump. You know, y- you have a situation here in which you have a very singular human being, love him or hate him. But this country does not rise and fall with this one man, and you've got to be... You've got to get out of this trap where everything is about Bibi up or down. It's just a, it's not a healthy situation. You can't afford it.

00:20:54
David Keyes: Yeah. I, look, I think we would be in agreement in a lot of the, the criticisms and inefficiencies and what should be done, but I still haven't gotten a good enough answer, uh, about what, in addition to Israel, the other societies that are facing similar onslaughts-

00:21:09
Eric Weinstein: Who?

00:21:10
David Keyes: ... from ruthless dictators like America, that is being undermined left, right, and center.

00:21:15
Eric Weinstein: By?

00:21:15
David Keyes: By China, by Russia, by Qatar, by Iran.

00:21:19
Eric Weinstein: So I think we had a, an election that, um, brought us an authoritarian who was supposed to deal with that, and my concern is, is that he also does not reach out. You don't have to love Donald Trump to want your country to survive and thrive. I don't need to love Bibi Netanyahu to want to help Israel.

00:21:42
David Keyes: But you're looking at who they reach out to.

00:21:44
Eric Weinstein: Yes.

00:21:44
David Keyes: I'm, I'm asking the question, if you were in charge of fighting the narrative war, and you could reach out to anyone you want, what would it look like to marshal-

00:21:49
Eric Weinstein: You're asking me on a podcast?

00:21:51
David Keyes: Yeah.

00:21:54
Eric Weinstein: Who teaches, uh, discipline and, and, uh, intelligence these days? You don't do this on a podcast. You do this in private.

00:22:02
David Keyes: I see. So you think, you think, uh, it could be a danger to even reveal the approach of how to win this war?

00:22:09
Eric Weinstein: Yeah. Well, look, i- i- i- if sunlight is the best disinfectant, why didn't we hear about your pager and, uh, walkie-talkie program in advance?

00:22:18
David Keyes: Oh, I'm actually just getting a page right now, so I maybe had some advance warning. But no, I, like, of course there, there are sensitive intelligence issues that-

00:22:26
Eric Weinstein: I'm telling you that you do this in private.

00:22:28
David Keyes: Mm-hmm. Okay. So i- is that-

00:22:31
Eric Weinstein: Yeah

00:22:31
David Keyes: ... is that one of the reasons you f- you focus, uh, more on, uh, what the, the democracies are doing wrong than how to win against the authoritarians?

00:22:39
Eric Weinstein: You know, do you know who Casey Stengel is?

00:22:42
David Keyes: No.

00:22:43
Eric Weinstein: Casey Stengel, I think, was the manager who, uh, was responsible for the Miracle Mets. Without question, the greatest thing he ever said w- when he was handed one of the worst teams in baseball history was, "Can't anybody here play this game?"

00:23:00
David Keyes: Yeah. Well, look, I, I, I live here, I work here, started a company to win these narrative wars, so, so there's a lot of really talented people, mostly in the private sector, frankly, who are trying to move the ball forward, who are trying to improve things on a daily basis, who are reaching out to a lot of those folks. I don't think at the government level it's been fully internalized, and I think there are some very deep and serious reasons why that isn't so, and we need, we need DOGE, we need more efficiency, we need new thought, we need constant innovation. Um, and there's a lot of [phone ringing] sort of bureaucratic reasons why I think great ideas don't come to the top.

00:23:34
Eric Weinstein: If I may.

00:23:35
David Keyes: Please.

00:23:36
Eric Weinstein: I am so pleased that you've chosen to ask these questions. I'm very embarrassed that I am answering them as, as... I- it's just, this is not a good way to be a guest.

00:23:50
David Keyes: It's okay. [laughs]

00:23:50
Eric Weinstein: Um, so this has nothing to do with you. What I am trying to say is, stop the excuse-making first. Stop talking about the fact that you have no resources. Stop talking about the fact that the private sector, uh, is more effective than the government. Recognize that, you know, American kids dropped what they were doing to volunteer for your army. You're responsible for them. And again, it is just so unfair that you, the person who chose to ask for this interview-

00:24:25
David Keyes: Perfectly fair

00:24:26
Eric Weinstein: ... is having... No, I appreciate it. I just want the listeners to understand that- It's, um, we've got to do brilliant things to get out of the situation. And one of the things we need to do is that we need to figure out how free speech and multiculturalism result in something where if I say meeting my relatives in Tel Aviv, and then I want to look on social media as to what reactions, I'm not wading through, uh, a thousand replies from, you know, monkeyfarts12000 that somehow I'm supporting genocide because what that's going to-

00:25:08
David Keyes: It's a great account, by the way.

00:25:10
Eric Weinstein: Every time I mention one, somebody creates it, by the way. The point that I'm trying to make is that you can't ask an impressionable 18-year-old to stand up against that kind of onslaught, and suddenly they see a piece of video which looks absolutely horrific, and somebody says, "You support this? Wow. Unfollowed." Right? You're going to lose these people who are going to be leaders of business, government, what have you, 20 years from now when they're 40. Because effectively what you did is that you didn't show them people standing up. And, you know, let me just say something else which Israel needs to hear. I have no idea whether or not Israel's intelligence services were behind Jeffrey Epstein. I know that if they were, uh, it would have to be a joint CIA, uh, Israel project. I have been very outspoken that I don't care because I met this man, and he was not a disgraced financier. He was a construct. Somebody created Jeffrey Epstein. He's not a naturally existing object. One of the reasons that I have been doggedly saying I want to know who constructed this is that if it is traced to either the United States, Israel, or some other service, that they understand that no matter how great of an idea this is at the level of intelligence gathering or narrative control, you touch one nine-year-old kid, one nine-year-old kid sexually, you're dead to me forever. If, if, if Israel cannot figure out, or if the United States cannot figure out how to do its business without harming children sexually, then those countries don't deserve to exist, and I say that as somebody who is your staunchest friend.

00:27:01
David Keyes: Do you have the same criticism of the kinetic war that you do of the, the hybrid narrative war in Israel?

00:27:06
Eric Weinstein: Not at all.

00:27:06
David Keyes: Like the failures of October 7th, the inability to stop thousands-

00:27:10
Eric Weinstein: Sorry

00:27:11
David Keyes: ... of terrorists from storming in.

00:27:13
Eric Weinstein: The issue is zugzwang. Israel is responsible for not getting into zugzwang at the hands of a single brilliant tactician. And without question, Sinwar's willingness to die and to murder his own people with your hand... Look up on Google Ngram, suicide by cop. It does not exist before the 1990s.

00:27:37
David Keyes: Mm.

00:27:37
Eric Weinstein: There was this mystery. All sorts of people were dying because they were pulling toy guns on policemen.

00:27:43
David Keyes: Mm.

00:27:44
Eric Weinstein: And people would say, "Why would you do that? You, you know you're gonna get killed." And then it finally dawned on people, "Oh, you're trying to get killed." So more or less, the correct answer is not, "Look, we're very careful in our surgical bombing. We have to do this," blah, blah, blah. The correct answer is, "You're looking at Sinwar's handiwork because we failed."

00:28:04
David Keyes: Mm-hmm.

00:28:05
Eric Weinstein: And that's what my, my tweet that people talk about is all about, saying, "I know what's about to happen. You haven't even done it yet."

00:28:14
David Keyes: How confident are you that those messages are the most effective at persuading? There's copious academic literature that talks about the importance of emotion and framing and all sorts of things, and there's an impulse in Israel to say, "Well, let's just get out the truth. Let's say this, this happened here, this didn't happen," et cetera, et cetera, and it will spread of its own volition.

00:28:30
Eric Weinstein: Sorry, who told you that the truth speaks for itself?

00:28:33
David Keyes: No, I'm saying that's wrong.

00:28:34
Eric Weinstein: No, I know that.

00:28:35
David Keyes: Yeah.

00:28:35
Eric Weinstein: But what I'm trying to say is that if you look at my article on Russell conjugation, is somebody a fink or a whistleblower? Those are actually technically synonyms in English-

00:28:44
David Keyes: Mm

00:28:44
Eric Weinstein: ... even though you can't use them interchangeably because of the emotional shadings. The truth does not speak for itself. You need to put the work into the best ref- rhetorical reformulation of any given point. In other words, the key question is, what do you believe about the situation? Do you believe that Israel is prosecuting this correctly? I do not. I believe that fundamentally, uh, Sinwar decided it was worth, um, trading the lives of, uh, the people under his charge for the soul of the State of Israel.

00:29:19
David Keyes: Mm.

00:29:20
Eric Weinstein: And why you're cooperating in this game, I, I have no idea why you don't claw back language that was extended through, for, uh, through constructive en- en- engagement and, uh, sorry, constructive ambiguity, um, as a courtesy when there was a cram down of a two-state solution. You cannot afford to deal with a people who hold hostages while claiming genocide, uh, chanting from the river to the sea, looking for a genocide of, uh, uh, of an actual people. This is the Palestinian Arab flavor of the Arab people. The Arab people are a very real thing. There is no trace of the phrase the Palestinian people in the entire corpus of the English language, uh, before the failure of Pan-Arabism. And i- if people don't understand that Gaza was part of the United Arab Republic, y- you haven't even gotten to square one.

00:30:21
David Keyes: H- how will we know when we've, we've won or made appreciable advancement in this, in this narrative war? Is it simply the removal of certain terminology, or is it a transference into policy?

00:30:30
Eric Weinstein: You've already lost certain things that are not going to be coming back. The k- the key question is not what do we do after, w- w- After October 7th, you had many more limited options. Um, after this point in time, you have even more limited options. My question is, at what point do you stop the bleed?

00:30:53
David Keyes: Mm.

00:30:56
Eric Weinstein: I, I, I just wanna know, have you called the smart people? You, you have, you have non-Jewish friends-

00:31:02
David Keyes: Yeah

00:31:02
Eric Weinstein: ... who love this place, who don't know how to stand up for you because they don't know where you're going to move next.

00:31:08
David Keyes: Yeah.

00:31:11
Eric Weinstein: Let, let me put it to you this way. There's a concept from Harry Markowitz in investment theory called the efficient frontier. There's two separate issues. One, are you on the efficient frontier? And the second one is where you wish to be on the efficient frontier. I'm not telling you that you need to be harder, uh, in your rhetoric or, um, more compassionate in your rhetoric. I'm saying that you can be more effective and kinder both by just not tying your shoelaces together on both shoes, uh, and tripping. I, I don't recognize the genius place that I left in 1993.

00:31:58
David Keyes: What's the main difference that you don't see now that you saw then?

00:32:04
Eric Weinstein: You know, this place is, this place is just crawling with creative energy. It's, it's one of the reasons that business works.

00:32:12
David Keyes: Yep.

00:32:13
Eric Weinstein: You cannot afford this level of income inequality between your army, your government, and your private sector. If you drain all the talent, uh, out of two sectors to feed the third, may Lord have mercy on your soul.

00:32:32
David Keyes: Mm.

00:32:33
Eric Weinstein: The army needs brilliant people, and your government needs brilliant people. You need brilliant writers, podcasters, filmmakers. And, and, and, and when you say, you know, "Okay, we're, we're, we're a startup nation. Our tech sector is the envy of the world," I don't know if you know the self-own that that actually is. Boy, am I negative.

00:32:58
David Keyes: Oh, no.

00:32:58
Eric Weinstein: But, you know, it's just like I, I've been, I've been waiting to be here. You know, one of the great things about coming into a war zone is that, uh, you can get great hotel rates 'cause there are no tourists here.

00:33:10
David Keyes: Yeah.

00:33:10
Eric Weinstein: Uh, I've been in shelters a couple of times already. People wanna come. They wanna help. And just getting out of their way.

00:33:23
David Keyes: Yeah.

00:33:24
Eric Weinstein: Because you're, you know, you were wronged. You've wronged, you've wronged people in Gaza. You've wronged people in the West Bank. In this instance, you were wronged, and those children in Gaza, I mean, I'm so sorry that they have a murderous parent.

00:33:42
David Keyes: Yeah.

00:33:42
Eric Weinstein: But let's call it what it is. Sinwar is hardly the first person to murder his own children.

00:33:48
David Keyes: It's been very hard to convey the messaging also internally, I think. Um, long before October 7th, my, you know, my clarion call was total victory against Hamas, and it was very hard to convince anyone in the system or even outside in the public that that was the right goal because people had other reasons not to do it. The cost was too high. We had other fights to fight. But after October 7th, it became finally underst- I would say understandable to the vast majority that anything short of total victory is unacceptable. So then the question became: how do you marshal the support globally and domestically for that goal?

00:34:21
Eric Weinstein: So you used my president to have to make the point that ethnic cleansing is a term that came from the former Yugoslavia, essentially, in the 1980s. Uh, and it took hold in people's mind that this was some s- somehow, um, the worst thing in the world to move people who cannot live in peace with their neighbors.

00:34:45
David Keyes: Mm.

00:34:46
Eric Weinstein: You, you have not ... I mean, the Palestinian Arabs were absorbed by Egypt. They were absorbed by Jordan. Jordan kicked them out, and they were, uh, found themselves in Lebanon. Lebanon didn't want them, and they ended up in Tunisia. You can't even figure out how to make that story work.

00:35:15
David Keyes: Yeah.

00:35:17
Eric Weinstein: It's like, is that ethnic cleansing, the ex- the expulsion?

00:35:22
David Keyes: Well, let, let me raise a, a, an additional topic which is related. My greatest fear is that we're not fighting the right war, that we're fighting perhaps an old school war, and if we are dependent upon old school mechanisms and means to propagate our messaging but other folks are using different means. The example of TikTok I think is a powerful one, where billions of people every day spend all day on TikTok, and that is controlled by the Communist Party of China.

00:35:54
Eric Weinstein: Okay. Who's been the most effective fighting ByteDance? Don't answer that question. Find those people.

00:36:00
David Keyes: Yep.

00:36:01
Eric Weinstein: I, I ... Again, I don't know what conversation I'm having. I, I, I can't even recognize why we're doing this at this level.

00:36:09
David Keyes: All right.

00:36:10
Eric Weinstein: I don't understand. You think you're the only ones up against China?

00:36:14
David Keyes: No, no. Of course not.

00:36:15
Eric Weinstein: Okay. You have friends.

00:36:17
David Keyes: Many people are.

00:36:18
Eric Weinstein: All right. So tell me what's going on.

00:36:22
David Keyes: Well, I think, I think in order to reset our ability to fight this war, which is what you're pointing to. You're saying there are high deficiencies, and you need to act in a better way in order to be on the plane building-

00:36:31
Eric Weinstein: Do, do you know what your high-water mark is? I don't think you do.

00:36:33
David Keyes: No.

00:36:37
Eric Weinstein: I saw Arab and Druze families passing out sweets when Nasrallah was removed from their lives That is the most powerful endorsement, it, because it, it breaks the narrative in the mind that the Jews are the problem.

00:36:54
David Keyes: Yeah.

00:36:55
Eric Weinstein: The point is that this region is always fluid, right? The, the enemy of my enemy is friend, you know, today, m- Wednesday, this, that, things go back and forth. It's like gut bacteria rising and falling, empires that you didn't even know existed. The fact is this region will embrace Israel and turn its back on Israel, not because of ancient hatreds, which is the narrative, based on whether you just solved somebody's problem. I did not know until recently that King Abdullah had a Jewish brother. Who knew?

00:37:31
David Keyes: You're saying that religion plays no dominant, uh, role in this conflict?

00:37:36
Eric Weinstein: No, we, we, we're fascinated with each other, we hate each other, we love each other, we're... People don't have enough understanding of how textured this place is, right? My claim is, is that there are all kinds of begrudging admirations. We, I was just t- uh, doing a podcast in which we were talking, uh, about the brilliance of the, of the Persians.

00:37:59
David Keyes: Yep.

00:38:01
Eric Weinstein: Americans just think that these are ancient hatreds that are implacable, and they're not.

00:38:05
David Keyes: I- in Israel, that's, that's undoubtedly true, and, you know, I, I remember being on a shift one night, you know, standing at a checkpoint, and the other soldiers around me, one was Bedouin, one was Druze, one was Ethiopian. We're all talking, joking, all sorts of languages are, um, you know, being thrown about. But the, the dominance of religion as a, as a prime mover for some of the hatreds, you, you don't buy that at all? Or, or may-

00:38:26
Eric Weinstein: [sighs]

00:38:26
David Keyes: ... do you have a different interpretation of it?

00:38:28
Eric Weinstein: Look, one of the stories against you is that you are a European colonial power on Arab land. I can't tell you how funny that is. Um, I just got chewed out by a Japanese lady who thinks that m- what little Hebrew remains from 30 years ago sucked, right?

00:38:47
David Keyes: [laughs]

00:38:48
Eric Weinstein: Uh, I, I'm watching Black kids with assault rifles, uh, you know, hand in hand. I've, I've used, on this trip, um, what little I know of Hindi, Spanish, Russian, and Turkish, along with E- English and Hebrew. This is one of the most diverse places on Earth.

00:39:06
David Keyes: No doubt.

00:39:09
Eric Weinstein: You have totally j- just pay for people to go through Carmel Market in Tel Aviv, you know? The Jewish world, we have mated with just about every people on Earth. Um, this place is a rainbow. It's completely insane. It's, it, it's extremely colorful, and there's no record of this in the mind of American, um, leftist revolutionaries who believe that this is all Ashkenazi Jews.

00:39:43
David Keyes: Right, and some on the right who increasingly are, uh-

00:39:48
Eric Weinstein: You, boy, do you have a disaster w- you know, uh, in the speech, or speech, the, uh, fireside talk I did in Jaffa the other day, I suggested make the Middle East Christian again. You have to do a better job with our Christian friends, um, letting them know that you've got their back. You've got things, you've got strength that you can afford to provide to people other, you know, it's, it's Hillel's question, "If I am only for myself, what am I?"

00:40:18
David Keyes: Yeah.

00:40:18
Eric Weinstein: Israel needs to stand in part for the re-Christianization of, uh, land throughout the Middle East because increasingly, you, you're coming up with this fiction that not only is the Middle East Arab-

00:40:32
David Keyes: Yep

00:40:32
Eric Weinstein: ... but that it is exclusively Islam, and it has never been, and it, it should never be.

00:40:38
David Keyes: Well, what you're saying definitely accords with my own experience, having, having sat in the meetings with, with Xi and, and Modi and Obama and, uh-

00:40:45
Eric Weinstein: Right

00:40:45
David Keyes: ... Egyptian leaders, and, uh, across the world, the admiration that people have for Israel, and the, their ability to see that Israel is helping solve one of their problems, uh, is massive. Uh, agriculture, water, intelligence.

00:40:57
Eric Weinstein: We are so proud-

00:40:58
David Keyes: It's incredible

00:40:59
Eric Weinstein: ... you're so proud of all the things that Israel does brilliantly well, you know? You know, the, the, the bitter pill that you're gonna have to swallow one way or the other is that you're going to have to pull off a series of miracles, and the good news is, if the, you are nothing if not a miracle-based people. So get to work, good luck, and the key question is, how can we help?

00:41:24
David Keyes: Well, uh, I, I would end it just by saying come back, uh, before 30 years goes by again. You're more than invited.

00:41:30
Eric Weinstein: I answered the first call-

00:41:31
David Keyes: We'll in- we'll invite you

00:41:31
Eric Weinstein: ... when somebody said, "We'd love to have you in Israel."

00:41:34
David Keyes: Yeah. Well, uh, I appreciate you coming, uh, this time, and hopefully there'll be many others, and we'll definitely reach out and invite you again.

00:41:40
Eric Weinstein: Thank you for your hospitality.

00:41:41
David Keyes: Thank you.