Reading your book, you know, once I stopped hearing, uh, you know, the, the Benny Hill theme music, that da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, like, that really kind of funny, incompetent, you know, circus sound, uh, I started thinking seriously about this notion as like, yes, look, uh, things worked out very well, but w- what are we looking at? Are we looking at a sort of team of rivals situation in which all these scuffles actually bring better decisions and more kind of accountability, or are we looking at a freaking miracle that these guys got anything done while constantly also having, you know, one eye out on who leaked what to the media, and who said what because of the election that might come up, and the Americans, and the pressure, and all these kind of, you know, considerations that are not unimportant, but are not life or death matters?

I'd incline more to the latter.

We got lucky.

Because if you look at these three guys who lead the war room at the start, Netanyahu, Gallant, and opposition leader Benny Gantz, who joins the unity government at the start, all three, it's not that they're rivals, okay? Uh, they despise each other in every possible permutation of that relationship, and they all have very good reasons.

And so you would get into situations where Gallant, say, would arrange a deal with the Americans at the Pentagon to resume certain weapons shipments to Israel, but he would not have let Netanyahu in on that information that he was making this deal.

So that once he finally surprises Netanyahu with this, the prime minister doesn't like it, doesn't like the idea that, you know, Gallant might get the credit for this sort of thing.

But at the same time, Gallant also hadn't told Benny Gantz, who would've been his ally in this fight, and they could've won this argument two on one because Gallant still hated Gantz from when Gantz, in this sort of complicated, murky process, elbowed out Gallant for the title of IDF chief of staff years earlier.

Uh, is it just- Some kind of, you know, a, I don't know what to call it, a relic of the Oslo mindset that, oh, these are "partners in peace." Why, by now, don't we have a very concrete kind of blueprint to what to do next time some Palestinian terror organization launches a major assault?

Mm-hmm

... uh, Iran's terrorist group in Lebanon, rather than fighting Hamas in Gaza, even though it was Hamas that had just attacked Israel.

The reason was very simple.

Hezbollah had 150,000 missiles looming over Israel, which could do even more damage than Hamas ever did.

But four days after that October 7th invasion and massacre, Prime Minister Netanyahu felt, could he trust Israel's military on an entirely new gamble? Could he go against the United States? President Biden was dead set opposed opening up another front at that point.

Uh, he was dead set opposed to just about every kind of Israeli-

As the response from Israel unfolded and proceeded, what surprised Israeli leaders, if anything, about the response, uh, not just from their enemies nearby, but also, I guess, from their enemies around the globe?

Well, one thing that surprised them was just how quickly the international media, uh, American media, and many others were able to switch from feeling bad for Israel after that October 7th attack to immediately resuming the nin- the, you know, preexisting narrative which they had had for other Gaza wars of just blaming Israel for fighting back.

What is the latest happening on the ground and what prompted this latest round of fighting in Gaza?

Let me start with the second part of that first.

What prompted it? What prompted it is that for two and a half weeks, Hamas had a free ceasefire in exchange for nothing, not giving up any hostages, merely sitting down at U.S.-led talks, but saying no to U.S.

offers, Israeli offers, dragging out talks, and that, I think, was simply untenable.

Israel was not going to be able to sit back and let Hamas talk in peace and quiet without using its leverage, which is military force.

And the ceasefire deal that Israel had signed previously allowed it to more or less break off the deal at the end of phase one rather than move into a more permanent phase two, so long as it and Hamas couldn't agree on larger questions.

And, of course, they can't agree on larger questions.

What do you think?