Knesset election

Thank you for having me.

So obviously a huge geostrategic dimension to the Israeli election.

We don't know who it might be.

If it's not Netanyahu, there might be a new prime minister who is tougher on Iran, tougher on Palestinian terrorism than he was, because there are people in Israel that think he wasn't tough enough.

Netanyahu is obviously looking to complete the job when it comes to Iran.

There is still the question of the highly enriched uranium and the proxies.

And I do think that we will see something between, you know, post midterms, post the Israeli elections.

We will see some more military actions going to the region.

I think people are going to like it.

There's going to be a lot of talk about the Israeli election.

If you don't understand what's going on, they're going to help untangle it.

But

Gordon Corera, who presents The Rest Is Classified along with David McCloskey, he has asked us this question: How do you think the perception of October 7 as an intelligence failure on the part of Netanyahu and his government will impact the upcoming elections in Israel? And I have another question from somebody called Alistair, um, as Alastair Campbell is his name, is, "Have you, Michael Gove, ever, ever, ever said anything critical of Israel?"

Uh, so on the first, I think that there, there are three big issues in the Israeli election.

Um, one of them, the, the dominant one, is what went wrong on October 7th, to what extent, um, was the Netanyahu government, uh, culpable for security errors both, uh, before and after? Um, there are all sorts of wild conspiracy theories out there.

I'm not endorsing those, but it is the case that there is a very live debate about that.

Is it the case that there are some voices in Ben-Gvir and Smotrich's parties that have a sneaking regard for them? Absolutely.

But Israel overall deals with people who break its laws and behave outrageously in a far more, uh, effective and proportionate way than, uh, any of its neighbors.

We should hold Israel to high standards, but of course, we're speaking in the run-up to an Israeli election, um, uh, in which you've got fierce contestation in which the prime minister could lose, and which if he loses, he might actually find himself for, for separate reasons in court.

Mm-hmm.