Josef Olmert on Harbin, Madrid and the Story of Leaving

I'll tell you a story about that.

Just a few years ago, I see that there is a lecture going to be in, uh, University of South Carolina, and the lecturer is this and that, and I immediately recognized the name.

And I wrote to him.

He's Israeli, who now teaching at, I think, Stanford or Prince- Stanford, yeah.

Uh, and I told him, "I'm so happy to see you," and all that.

You see, he said, "You may not remember, but you once gave a talk that I listened to in Israel, and since then I followed you," and all that.

Okay, so he came to give the talk.

And it was very interesting what he told about the last years of the Soviet system, because he became an expert on the KGB.

And when I see what's happening now with Russia and Ukraine, I see a repetition of it.

It's just unbelievable how in that case, in that case, not always, history tends to, uh, repeat itself.

As much as people in the US look at this war in Ukraine, as we mentioned that, you know, as part of, you know, Russia, Ukraine, and, uh, Trump tries to do this, tries to do that, NATO and so on and so forth, you have to look at it from a deeper historical perspective and see that the same red lights that were there in the eighties and people did not understand Leading later on to the collapse are existing now in Russia, and I won't be surprised by a repetition of it.

And, and yeah, and let me tell you something, if I may.

It is connected, you will be surprised to hear that, to what's happening with Iran now.

Because what we in the West, and I would also include Israel in that, even though Israelis sometimes like to preach to others, "Ah, we understand the Middle East and you don't." People in the West, in that case, particularly the US now, but beyond, do not realize that when we deal with a system like Iran, we deal with something which is beyond just government and leaders.

We deal with culture, we deal with history, we deal with legacy, and therefore we have to bear in mind that put it all this under one umbrella to understand what's going on.

The same was not understood about the Soviet Union, that we dealt with something bigger than just one or another leader because it was like a nice sport.

Brezhnev died, Andropov came, he died immediately.

Chernenko came, he died immediately.

Came Gorbachev, everybody was, uh, joking, "How many days does he have to leave?" It was all about this leader, that leader, rather than the overall envelope.

Here is where I see some, you know, comparing-

No, and it, and it highlight-- It-- Look, it highlights, and I wanna get to your professional career here in a second, but it highlights, um... and, and, and people who follow the show know this, but my father grew up, uh, in, in Nazi Germany as a kid, and so I had a very-- He was much older, so I had a very different perspective on the world and just trying to understand information, history, and most importantly, context, so I would know what was propaganda or not.

So, uh, I absolutely hear what you're saying, and I would say that one of the challenges I think we have as a country here in the US is because we haven't had boots on the ground, our context is very shallow.

And so to your point, um, I underscore that and say I agree that, you know, w-we think we can just sort of go in on some measure and, and make some change, and you're saying, "No, no, no, there are thousands of years here." Uh, two hundred and fifty years is a blink of an eye compared to, um, centuries of history and tradition and fighting and...

And that all plays a role, you know? It's, it's like a, it's like when a younger kid comes and tells the parent that they know better, and it's like, "Well, you know, maybe we've been around the block.

It may be a little bit harder than you think." Uh, what's interesting about your professional path, Yosef, is that when I think about your grandfather and, and, and your, and your father and your mother, and then what your brother did in, in government, and the role that you played as a negotiator and as a voice and a representation of a country, I'm curious as to when you found your way, when you found that the power of words and understanding and being able to decipher context amidst all the political shenanigans and the [chuckles], and the theater of geopolitics w-was something that your radar could pick up, because I don't take that lightly as a skill, and, and I think it's something that is very, very specific to you and what you were able to do.