So Elon, does all warfare serve ruling class interests? Is warfare the violence necessary to keep the ruling class in power, just like you have the violence that is necessary to keep an apartheid state in power?

The general answer is yes.

I think one of the things that the scientific contribution that Joab brings to the book shows that the propensity for war is part of culture rather than nature in many respects.

a means of interaction between human beings that can be intensified, it can be tamed, it can be eliminated.

as a way of solving conflicts, dealing with threats, and so on.

Now, I would hesitate to generalize as probably pacifists who were facing Hitler in the Second World War would hesitate to say pacifism at any price.

So I think that a more nuanced view is in order here.

Elon, is any threat to colonialism, should that be perceived by capitalists as a threat to capitalism?

Why did that not happen? Why did we then get the Declaration of Independence, the United Nations recognizing Israel, the United States being one of the first countries to recognize, along with a host of others, including the Soviet Union?

Yeah, a few things happened.

First of all, in 1945, Britain elected a labor government.

that had an impulse to shrink the empire and not to expand it.

Secondly, the Jewish military forces until 1945 that were really fighting the Palestinians more than anything else began to direct their attention to the British, trying to force the British to evict through terrorist acts.

Some of them are quite famous.

The most famous one is the blowing up the King David Hotel.

When did that take over? Because initially it was more of a

Is that correct?

That's right.

I had a conventional Israeli Jewish, uh, childhood you can say, and boyhood.

Uh, and like most Israeli Jews, at the age of 18, I, I was conscripted, uh, to the army.

Uh, and then, um, I went to the university, which was, uh, you know, an ordinary trajectory.

Uh, um, and, uh, did my bachelor, uh, degree and my BA, uh, which still was very conventional in many ways.

Uh, things have began to change, uh, in the early 1980s, actually around 1980 or so, when I decided that I wanted to continue my academic studies as an historian outside of Israel.

Can you please explain Hamas to me?

I mean, if Ireland decided they weren't going to play these matches.

I understand what you say.

They would first, as you mentioned, they would say, all right, you know, one state has boycotted us.

It's not the end of the world.

And they would only, I think, panic more when it will be, if it will be, an accumulative process.

I also think that they would, of course, go to UEFA and ask for that organization to take action against Ireland.

And I don't know exactly how UEFA would react to this kind of action by Israel.

So why do the Israelis believe that rhetoric to be justified?

mean, if Ireland decided they weren't going to play these matches.

I understand what you say.

They would first, as you mentioned, they would say, all right, you know, one state has boycotted us.

It's not the end of the world.

And they would only, I think, panic more when it will be, if it will be, an accumulative process.

I also think that they would, of course, go to UEFA and ask for that organization to take action against Ireland.

And I don't know exactly how UEFA would react to this kind of action by Israel.

So why do the Israelis believe that rhetoric to be justified?

Yeah

... is, uh, uh, overseeing, uh, a group of unruly and wild, uh, uh, y- y- y you know, gang members, so to speak.

A- a- and he doesn't always control them.

A- a- this is true in, in, in two directions.

One is the one you mentioned.

I mean, the Messianic Zionist, uh, component of his alliance that are pushing for annexation of the Gaza Strip, annexation of South Lebanon, annexation of parts of, uh, South Syria, and of course, total Judaization of the West Bank.

Uh, the other direction or, or the other kind of gang members he doesn't always control are the Orthodox Jews and, and their insistence that their young, uh, uh, young members of their society would be con- continue to be exempted from military, uh, service, uh, which, uh, e- even among his own voters is not a very popular policy.

How do you draw that distinction, and what are the features of Neo-Zionism?

Exactly.

So I think that this needs a... a total transformation in the way we perceive the reality and we understand it.

I call it the peace orthodoxy.

For genuine reasons, people thought that, and they took it from the American business school, that you can divide things, you can partition things, because that's what you do in business, right? But it ignored justice.

It ignored history.

It ignored the Palestinian fragmentation and so on.

So I think it's just inertia.

They need to first, they need to stop the genocide, right?

It's a jingoistic society, and jingoistic societies, first of all, get excited by war.

war.Uh, it creates, uh, a false sense of unity in a society which is, uh, not very, uh, uh, united and diversified.

Uh, it creates, uh, a d- a detraction, a- a- and re- a deflection, uh, for politicians and sections of society from, from other problem.

Uh, uh, so part of it is, is even mass psychology, uh, that we have, uh, e- encountered in the past in, uh, societies such as, uh, in Prussia and later in Germany and Italy, and to a certain extent in Britain in, uh, cer- certain periods of Britain's history.

So, um, this is something that we are familiar with.

It's not unique to Israel.

What is, uh, uh, unique in a sense is that, uh, a- among the people who should provide a more profound analysis, whether it's a journalist, of course, Gideon is not the, uh, the example for that, whether it's journalists, uh, uh, academics, uh, people who should provide the more profound analysis, you hardly hear the connection between the ideology of the state, the, uh, history, the historical context, and the f- a- and the, uh, continued, uh, violence that Israelis find themselves again and again in one cycle after the other.

Does that show the kind of status and currency the Israeli military has in Israeli society?

In fact, we've seen it in the war in Iran, there are civilians dying each time, too.

Yeah, absolutely.

There is a long history of this policy of assassination going back to, uh, the 1940s.

The, the first, uh, time that officially, uh, the Zionist leadership, that is in the pre-state, uh, period, uh, was authorizing i-its, uh, agents, its, its troops to target Palestinian leadership, not just military leadership, uh, journalists, political leaders, was already then in 1946, believing then as they believe now, that if you target the elite, whether it's a political or cultural, social elite, you subjugate more easily the society as a whole to your plans of, uh, occupation, colonization, and so on.

What is, of course, incredible is that since 1946, again and again, this, uh, assassination policy proved to be a total failure.

Uh, it never achieved what it was declared to achieve.

Uh, and, uh, and yet there seems to be no process of learning in the Israeli policymakers, which makes you think that it's not anymore about really believing that it achieves anything in terms of, uh, defeating the enemy, so to speak.

How are you going to find an Iranian Delcy if you keep taking out all of the Iranian leadership one by one?

What is this division? What is the cause of it?

The division is mainly the result of a major contradiction that was inbuilt into the Zionist project from its very beginning.

And that is the idea that you can define Judaism, which is a religion, as nationalism.

If you would have tried the same to do for Christianity or Islam or Buddhism, you will run into similar problems.

So there are two camps that are now much more clearly defined than maybe before in Israel of how to define Judaism.

And this is not an intellectual debate.

This has huge implication on the public sphere on the content of the educational system, on the freedom of speech, of liberties, not to mention, probably more important than anything else, on the treatment of non-Jews, particularly the Palestinians.

Ilan, why has this state of Judea, as you call it, grown up? Why has it come to dominate the politics of Israel? These things don't happen by accident.

Your response overall, and now to the summit in Egypt?

Yes.

First of all, there is some joy in knowing that the bombing of the people in Gaza has stopped for a while.

And there is joy knowing that Palestinian political prisoners have been reunited with their families.

And similarly, that Israeli hostages were reunited with their families.

I But except from that, I don't think we are in such an historical moment as President Trump claimed in his speech in the Knesset and beforehand.

We are not at the end of the terrible chapter that we have been in it for the last two years.

Others are saying the possibility of his arrest, not on corruption charges, but on crimes against humanity, the whole case before the International Criminal

Your response overall, and now to the summit in Egypt.

Yes.

Uh, first of all, uh, there is, uh, some joy in knowing that, uh, the bombing, uh, of the people in Gaza has stopped, uh, for a while, and there is joy knowing that Palestinian political prisoners have been reunited with their families, and similarly that Israeli hostages were reunited, uh, with their families.

Uh, but ex- except from that, I don't think we are in such an historical moment as President Trump, uh, claimed in his speech in the Knesset and beforehand.

Uh, we are not at the end of the terrible chapter that we have been in it for the last two years, and that chapter is an Israeli attempt by a particularly fanatic, extreme y- uh, uh, right-wing Israeli government to try and use ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and genocide in Gaza to downsize the number of Palestinians in Palestine and impose Israel's will, uh, in a way that they hope would be at least endorsed by some Arab governments in the world, and so far they have an alliance of Trump and some extreme right-wing, uh, uh, parties in, in, in Europe.

And now, I hope that the world will not be misled that Israel is now ready to open a different kind of page in its relationship with the Palestinians.

And what you told us about the way that the celebration were dealt with in the West Bank and the incineration of the sanitation center shows you that nothing has changed in the dehumanization and the attitude of this particular Israeli government and its belief that it has the power to wipe out Palestine as a nation, as a people, and as a country.

Others are saying the possibility of his arrest, uh, not on corruption charges, but on crimes against humanity, the whole case before the International Criminal Court.