Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

We should never, and I never sit aside and say, oh, they're just threatening to destroy us. They won't do it. If somebody threatens to eliminate you as Iran is doing today, and as Hitler did then and people discounted it, well, if somebody threatens to annihilate us, take them seriously and act to prevent it early on. Don't let them have the means to do so because that may be too late. The following is a conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu, prime Minister of Israel, currently serving his sixth term in office. He's one of the most influential, powerful, and controversial men in the world, leading a right-wing coalition government at the center of one of the most intense and long-lasting conflicts and crises in human history.

You're loved by many people here in Israel and in the world, but you're also hated by many. In fact, I think you may be one of the most hated men in the world. So if there's a young man or a young woman listening to this right now who have such hate in their heart, what can you say to them to one day turn that hate into love? I disagree with the premise of your question. I think I've enjoyed a very broad support around the world. There are certain corners in which we have this animosity that you describe, and it sort of permeates in some of the newspapers and the news organs and so on in the United States, but it certainly doesn't reflect the broad support that I have. I just gave an interview on an Iranian channel, 60 million viewers. I gave another one, just did a little video a few years ago, 25 million viewers from Iran. Certainly no hate there I have to tell you, not from the regime.

If we jump from human history to the current particular moment, there's protests in Israel now about the proposed judicial reform that gives power to your government to override the Supreme Court. So the critics say that this gives too much power to you, virtually making you a dictator. Yeah. Well, that's ridiculous. The mere fact that you have so many demonstrations and protests, some dictatorship, huh? There's a lot of democracy here, more rambunctious and more robust than just anywhere on the planet.

You had a conversation about AI with Sam Altman of Open AI and with Elon Musk. Yeah.

So taking a small tangent, as we talked about offline, you have a background in TaeKwonDo? Oh, yeah.

Well, let me ask you about this market of politics. So you have served six terms as prime minister over 15 years in power. Let me ask you again, human nature. Do you worry about the corrupting nature of power on you as a leader, on you as a man? Not at all. Because I think that, again, the thing that drives me is nothing but the mission that I took to assure the survival and thriving of the Jewish state. That is, its economic prosperity, but its security and its ability to achieve peace with our neighbors. And I'm committed to it. I think there are many things that have been done. There are a few big things that I can still do, but it doesn't only depend on my sense of mission. It depends on the market, as we say. It depends really on the will of the Israeli voters. And the Israeli voters have decided to vote for me again and again, even though I wield no power in the press, no power in many quarters here and so on, nothing. I mean, probably, I'm going to be very soon the longest serving prime minister in the last half century in the Western democracies. But that's not because I amassed great political power in any of the institutions.

What is the top obstacle to peaceful coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians? Let's talk about the big question of peace in this part of the world. Well, I think the reason you have the persistence of the Palestinian Israeli conflict, which goes back about a century, is the persistent Palestinian refusal to recognize a Jewish state, a nation state for the Jewish people in any boundary. That's why they opposed the establishment of the state of Israel before we had a state. Now that's why they've opposed it after we had a state. They opposed it when we didn't have Judea and Samaria, the West Bank in our hands and Gaza, and they oppose it after we have it. It doesn't make a difference. It's basically their persistent refusal to recognize a Jewish state in any boundaries. And I think that their tragedy is that they've been commandeered for a century by leadership that refused to compromise with the idea of Zionism, namely that the Jews deserve a state in this part of the world.

Theoretically. Okay. Well, let me ask you another theoretical question on this circle of peace. As a student of history, looking at the ideas of war and peace, what do you think can achieve peace in the war in Ukraine looking at another part of the world? If you consider the fight for peace in this part of the world, how can you apply that to that other part of the world between Russia and Ukraine now? I think it's one of the savage horrors of history and one of the great tragedies that is occurring. Let me say in advance that if I have any opportunity to use my contacts to help bring about an end to this tragedy, I'll do so. I know both leaders, but I don't just jump in and assume if there's be a desire at a certain point because the conditions have created the possibility of helping stop this carnage, then I'll do it. And that's why I choose my words carefully, because I think that may be the best thing that I could do. Look, I think what you see in Ukraine is what happens if you have territorial designs on a territory by a country that has nuclear weapons. And that, to me, you see the change in the equation. Now, I think that people are loathed to use nuclear weapons, and I'm not sure that I would think that the Russian side would use them with happy abandon.

It's an interesting question. How did the peace, the Abraham Accords, how did that begin? We had decades. We had 70 years or 65 years where these people would not meet openly or even secretly with an Israeli leader. Yeah, we had the Mossad making contacts with him all the time, and so on, but how do we break the ice to the top level of leadership? Well, we broke the ice because I took a very strong stance against Iran, and the Gulf states understood that Iran is a formidable danger to them, so we had a common interest. And the second thing is that because of the economic reforms that we had produced in Israel, Israel became a technological powerhouse. And that could help their nations, not only... in terms of anything, of just bettering the life of their peoples. And the combination of the desire to have some kind of protection against Iran or some kind of cooperation against Iran and civilian economic cooperation came to a head when I gave a speech in the American Congress, which I didn't do lightheartedly, I had to decide to challenge a sitting American president and on the so-called Iranian deal, which I thought would pave Iran's path with gold to be an effective nuclear power. That's what would happen. So I went there. And in the course of giving that speech before the joint session of Congress, our delegation received calls from Gulf states who said, "We can't believe what your prime minister is doing. He's challenging the President of the United States." Well, I had no choice because I thought my country's own existence was imperiled. And remember, we always understand through changing administrations that America under... no matter what leadership is always the irreplaceable and indispensable ally of Israel and will always remain that we can have arguments as we have, but in the family, as we say in [foreign language 01:01:32], it's the family.

As you write about in your book, what have you learned about life from your father? My father was a great historian and well, he taught me several things. He said that the first condition for a living organism is to identify danger in time, because if you don't, you could be devoured. You could be destroyed very quickly. And that's the nature of human conflict. In fact, for the Jewish people, we lost the capacity to identify danger in time, and we were almost devoured and destroyed by the Nazi threat. So when I see somebody parroting the Nazi goal of destroying the Jewish state, I try to mobilize the country and the world in time because I think Iran is a global threat, not only a threat to Israel. That's the first thing.

Last question. You've talked about a survival of a nation. You, yourself, are a mortal being. Do you contemplate your mortality? Do you contemplate your death? Are you afraid of death? Aren't you?