Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is Stay Tuned. In brief I’m Preet Bharara. All eyes are on the Middle East as Israel faces one of its most tragic and harrowing crises since its founding. On October 7th, the terrorist group, Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, executed an unprecedented multifaceted attack, slaughtering more than 1200 Israeli civilians and soldiers. Hamas also took an estimated 150 people hostage, including children, elderly women, Holocaust survivors, and US citizens, and is now threatening to kill them. Israel has responded with airstrikes, a complete siege of Gaza, and vowed retaliation that will echo for generations. Latest reports indicate over 1400 Palestinians have also been killed. In a White House address on Tuesday, President Biden unequivocally condemned Hamas and expressed unwavering support for Israel.

Joe Biden:

In this moment we must be crystal clear, we stand with Israel. We stand with Israel. We will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, and respond to this attack. There’s no justification for terrorism. There’s no excuse. Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination. Its stated purpose is annihilation of the state of Israel on the murder of Jewish people.

Preet Bharara:

On Thursday, Israel’s military said it was gearing up for the next stage of the war, hinting that a ground invasion may be coming. Joining me to discuss the developing situation is Aaron David Miller. He’s a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. For decades, he has advised the US government on Middle East policy and the Arab-Israeli peace process. Aaron, welcome to the show.

Aaron David Miller:

Preet, it’s a pleasure to be here.

Preet Bharara:

I want to timestamp this because things are developing and changing so rapidly. You and I are recording this podcast, having this conversation on Thursday, October 12th in the noon hour. With that, can we take a step back and could you explain for people as an initial matter what is Hamas? How did Hamas come into being and what it is?

Aaron David Miller:

The Palestinian national movement encompasses a broad range of groups, ideological. Hamas emerged in the late ’80s as the Islamist representation of Palestinian views. It’s an offshoot initially of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Mujama al-Islamiya, with origins in Cairo. During the ’80s, it operated in Gaza and throughout the West Bank. Its ideology, extreme, basically looks at Palestine, historic Palestine as an Islamic Waqf provided by God and not considered susceptible to negotiation. So their ideology, even though some have argued that Hamas has moderated over the years, clearly in terms of both its tactics and operations, that isn’t the case, for our purposes for it.

In 2007, Hamas launched an operation in Gaza and essentially displaced the Palestinian authority under the leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, who is now in the 18th year of a four year term. As a consequence, the Palestinian national movement is more divided than it’s ever been. It looks, without trivializing the matter, like Noah’s Ark. There are two of everything, two constitutions, two sets of security services, two sets of patrons, two statelets, one that Hamas controls in Gaza, 363 square kilometers, 2.3 million people, half of whom are under the age of 15, and Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian authority represented largely by the Fatah, the largest group within the PLO, controlling roughly 40% of the West Bank with varying degrees of political and security control.

And Hamas’ vision of Palestine, where it is and what it should be is fundamentally different than Abbas’. That’s essentially the backstory. And the Israelis have launched with Hamas four or five major confrontations since the turn of the century representing a wash, rinse, and repeat cycle, where Hamas attacks, there’s exchange of high trajectory weapons, there’s a ceasefire, Hamas regroups, re-arms, and we go at it once again. What distinguishes, we’re on the cusp of a moment, sadly and unfortunately for the millions of innocents who live in Gaza, of a major Israeli ground operation, determined in the words of Israeli security and military officials and politicians to “change the reality in Gaza.” What that means is unclear.

Preet Bharara:

So this may be an odd question, but is Hamas rational? I ask that because people are saying, and it seems credible to me, that Hamas, by engaging in this kind of action, brutality, the apparent murder, beheading of babies, kidnapping of old people, has Hamas signed its own death warrant?

Aaron David Miller:

That’s a very dramatic explanation, but could very well be the case. I think the Israelis are committed to dismantling the organization and destroying its leadership, eradicating its leadership. Some even argue that the Israeli objective is to make it impossible for Hamas to govern, literally to govern in Gaza. It would be replaced by something that neither you nor I nor Pythia the oracle at Delphi could identify right now.

Preet Bharara:

But the people in Hamas who organize this because it took a lot of organization and it took a lot of skill, I think that’s undisputed. What were they thinking if there’s a reasonable possibility that it causes and prompts their own demise?

Aaron David Miller:

I think it’s a question that’s impossible to answer. Their tactics at this time around clearly resembled both the Islamic state and Al-Qaeda and their brutality and savagery, and the reckless and indiscriminate killing of civilians. They clearly had objectives to reestablish the Palestinian issue with central, the Middle East peacemaking, to reestablish themselves as the center of that effort, to inflict so much pain on the Israelis that those Israeli citizens’ confidence in their own government’s capacity to protect them would be shaken. And to some degree, they align with Iran’s objectives, although they’re not by any means a wholly owned subsidiary of Tehran. Do they believe that their lives will now be forfeit? I’m not sure it’s a calculation that they actually believe will happen. It’s possible they think they can survive this Israeli operation. We’re going to find out.

Preet Bharara:

Look terrorists exist by definition to terrorize and if that is the goal that succeeded in a big way, did it not?

Aaron David Miller:

It did. I think that Israeli confidence in this particular government, which has now been broadened to become a national unity emergency government, I think that’s probably one of the only piece of good news in this terrible horrid five days. Whether the Israelis have the capacity to do what they want to do, that it states, to extinguish Hamas as a governing force, to me is very unclear. But there’s no question that what you’re going to see is an unprecedented and disproportionate reaction. Proportionality according to the laws of war is a fine concept.

Preet Bharara:

It’s not an eye for an eye.

Aaron David Miller:

No. In this case, the Israelis will probably argue that what proportionality did these Hamas terrorists show during their rampage over the last three or four days? I mean more Jews were killed in a single day, October 7/8 than at any point since the Nazi Holocaust. That’s a shattering sort of figure, but again, you have 1,200 Palestinians killed, 5,500 wounded. Gaza is a tough place to operate. It’s Fallujah on steroids. I think we’re about to enter even a darker tunnel.

Preet Bharara:

How much loss of life do you think we can expect?

Aaron David Miller:

I hate even thinking in those terms. We’ve already exceeded- 330 on the Israeli side, 330 soldiers have been killed, 289 in combat. I think that the others presumably have been held hostage by Hamas. You have to think one of the extraordinary things about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the two sides seem to be able to inflict and inflict on one another a certain degree of pain, but they’ve never pushed the envelope to the point where the situation fundamentally is altered. It may well be in your line of questioning is pression. It may well be that Hamas has pushed the envelope to the degree that they’ve set themselves up for their own destruction.

Preet Bharara:

I’ve seen competing reports about the involvement of Iran. I’ve seen a report that said Iran gave the green light for the attack and another that said Iran was surprised by the attack. What’s the best information we have about Iran’s participation?

Aaron David Miller:

I think the US intelligence community is not yet determined. As a former state department INR intelligence analyst, I think on this one, they’re being exceedingly careful and weighing the fragments. Do they have a smoking gun that would basically say the following? This was Iran’s idea. Many of Hamas’ objectives align with Tehran’s. The Iranians support Hamas every year to the tune of about a hundred million dollars. The Iranians directed this, they orchestrated, they trained Hamas operatives and they put a special premium on the need to indiscriminately kill civilians. I’m not sure that’s the way the story unfolded. If I were Hamas, I would want to keep the circle of those who knew about this operation few and far between. Hamas knows that the agency as well as Israeli intelligence monitor Iranian communications, I’m sure. Nonetheless, there’s enough fragmentary reports already to paint a picture, a more nuanced picture that Iran was aware of this and essentially supported it.

I do not believe that Hamas is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Islamic Republic, but it would seem to me that given the risks that Hamas was undertaking, that they would want some measure of comfort and assurance that the Iranians to some degree would support them. And we haven’t… Remember, we’re early days into this crisis. There are several fronts that could still potentially conceivably heat up. One is on the West Bank. The other which concerns the Israelis even more is the Israeli-Lebanese border and out there somewhere shimmering in the desert is the possibility that Iran would become involved in this.

I don’t judge that to be likely right now. I think that neither the Israelis nor Iran won a major confrontation. And when I talk about a major confrontation, I’m not talking about proxies. The Israelis and Iranians have been waging proxy wars with one another on land, sea and air over the last decade or more. I’m talking about a direct confrontation in which the Israeli strike Iran directly in an effort to destroy their conventional military and perhaps even to the degree that is feasible with the weapon systems and equipment they have to attack Iran’s nuclear sites as well. And that of course introduces the question of what Iran would do in response attacking Israel, American positions in the Gulf. It almost inexorably leads to US involvement. And then I think you would have a major regional confrontation, which I’m persuaded neither the Biden administration or the Israelis want.

Preet Bharara:

You mentioned that the Israeli people are upset and angry, understandably. Are they right to be believing as many of them do that the Israeli government was utterly unprepared, there was a catastrophic failure of intelligence or is that unfair?

Aaron David Miller:

No, I think when I hear Israeli veterans, former head of the director of military intelligence, which is the Israeli defense forces intelligence, talk about a galactic colossal, not just intelligence failure, but operational failure. No, this is the worst, clearly, strategic intelligence and tactical failure since the 1973 war. I was in Jerusalem 50 years ago last week when I heard the sirens wail. There’s an eerie reminiscence of that war, but unlike ’73, the war was fought at the borders. This war is fought in and amongst civilians, and add to that social media, the internet, the transparency, and you have a degree of clarity and access that has provided just ghastly reports of what happened to these Israelis in these southern kibbutzim and rural communities. Look, if a government’s legitimy rests in its capacity to provide and secure the protection of its citizenry, if that is in fact one of the key aspects of the contract between the governed and those who govern…

Preet Bharara:

It’s the primary responsibility of that.

Aaron David Miller:

Right. And as a consequence of that, that is now for the moment gone. I think the Israeli public will rally. The blood is up. I have tremendous faith and resilience of the Israeli people, but their will, there must be an accounting. And this government has presided over the worst intelligence failure probably in the history of the state and the worst terror attack.

Preet Bharara:

Is there any explanation that is emerging about why there was such a failure of intel and anticipation?

Aaron David Miller:

Perfect storm, but like ’73… I guess the perfect storm Preet would be Hamas went dark. They learned from their mistakes. Instead of being vulnerable to Israeli monitoring, they probably relied on a much cruder form of messaging. That’s factor number one. Two, they did their homework. They did a fair amount of reconnaissance of the Israeli border defense. They immobilized the automatic machine guns with drones. They immobilized the cameras and within an hour a thousand and later almost 1,500 Hamas fighters, let’s call them based on their actions, terrorists, penetrated that border up to 30 kilometers and confronted a poorly defended set of Israeli deployments. I think if you strip it all away, this was in fact a failure of imagination. Just like in ’73, they could not conceive that Hamas had the capacity to pull this off, had the risk readiness to pull it off, and there will be a national commission. It will likely hold the security and intelligence elites responsible, but it will produce changes in the future clearly of one, the longest governing Prime Minister in the history of state of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. A reckoning is due.

Preet Bharara:

It seems that there’s two things going on here as we’ve alluded to. One certainly was a failure to appreciate Hamas’ capacity to invade and inflict damage. But then was there also a failure to anticipate the level of brutality and savagery that would go into such an attack?

Aaron David Miller:

Well, the Israelis, I think would… I’ve made this point and you made it now, the Israelis will look at us and say, where have you been? This organization has its profound mission, the eradication of Israel and of a Jewish state. Now you and I know that that’s not possible, but the tactics that they demonstrated were clearly designed to not just to create fear, but to combine fear with helplessness. They wanted to demonstrate that they had the capacity to inflict a degree of pain and suffering on Israeli civilians who are basically beyond the protection of their government.

Preet Bharara:

I’m careful not to draw analogies and lots of people have been comparing this to and say it exceeds in blood and savagery based on population comparisons, what the US faced on 9/11. What do you see as the parallels between those two horrible events for Israel and the United States?

Aaron David Miller:

Well, clearly an intelligence failure. I hope that the parallels do not exceed or do not extend to how the United States responded in the wake of that war. And that’s going to be a clear challenge for the Israelis setting realistic, clear goals for what it is they want to achieve. 9/11 and the Bush administration in the first several months of that war should be credited with an extremely efficient response in Afghanistan. But we ended up in the two longest wars in American history where the standard of victory was never could we win, but when and how would we extricate ourselves from Iraq and Afghanistan? We paid a terrible price in lives, in credibility and we inflicted unnecessary violence and destruction on the populations of those two countries.

So this is a transformation. It’s an inflection point. The real question is I think how will the Israelis adjust their tactics to the end state that they want to achieve? And that’s going to be critical going forward. One last point, because of the intelligence failure, because of the tactical and operational failure, which is now exposed and for all the Israelis to see and for the world to see, and for the region to see, the Israelis have a real stake in reasserting their deterrence, their competency, their professionalism, their skill in marrying the means at their disposal to achieve the ends that will hopefully prevent Hamas from exercising the kind of terror projecting that it has shown in the last week.

Preet Bharara:

You mentioned it’s important obviously for Israel to have intelligent goals here, but I want to ask the question in a sort of different way. Could you describe what you think are the outer boundaries of what the Israeli response can look like before internationally there’s a concern that there was overreach? It’s hard to imagine in this moment, given the brutality of the invasion, in some ways that anything could be an overreach. You talked about proportionality at the start of the conversation, but what do you think are the red lines, if there are any, for Israel and its response?

Aaron David Miller:

It’s an interesting question. If you look at the administration’s response, it’s clear that they intend to give the Israelis the time, the space and the support to do what it is they need to do. But as the conflict evolves, if the conflict turns into literally an effort to root out Hamas fighters by destroying buildings where Palestinians are living, if you end up in a situation where you’ve got massive casualties, hundreds if not thousands of Palestinians civilians killed and injured, I think the international legitimacy that they now have is going to erode. I think they’re aware of that, but I also believe that the realities of operating within Gaza are going to confront them with the greatest dilemma that they faced. And we haven’t even mentioned perhaps the other incredibly idiosyncratic feature of this. You have 150 hostages, estimated a hundred plus held by Hamas and reportedly 30, 40 held by Palestine Islamic Jihad.

How does Israel or any government reconcile their commitment to avenging and seeking retribution in a way that would prevent Hamas from reemerging to threaten Israel? For the 1,200 Israelis who have died and the couple of thousand who have been wounded, how do they balance that with the redemption of the living, the hundred plus hostages, men, women, children, Holocaust survivors, the infirm? How do they seek the balance between those two realities? Because the redemption of the living has been a prime focus of Israeli political and security strategy over the years.

In 2011, they traded 1,079 Palestinians from Israeli jails for one Israeli soldier in an asymmetrical trade. And in one of the cruelest ironies, one of the Palestinians traded is Yahya Sinwar, the key military leader that is in a bunker somewhere directing… Will direct the Hamas response to the Israeli ground attack. So that is a… I cannot get my mind and or arms around that effort to reconcile those two things. If every human is a universe, represents a universe of possibility, what do you do? No Hollywood rescue operation, no negotiation to bargain for their return, the ground attack days away, what happens to those individuals?

Preet Bharara:

What happens in particular if Hamas makes good on its threat to start executing hostages one by one and film those executions? How do the Israeli people begin to think about the conflict?

Aaron David Miller:

Preet, I asked this question and I made it an American story. If in fact Americans are executed, what is the response of the United States? I don’t get an answer.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah, and are you not getting an answer because people don’t want to contemplate that horrible scenario, or they don’t want to tip their hand or they don’t know, or some combination of those things?

Aaron David Miller:

I think it’s the first and the fact that they really have no good response. What do you do? We have a carrier strike force in the med. You can start, running sorties, US aircraft bomb Gaza. But the fact is those hostages are dispersed. It’s something that’s so tragic and so profoundly cruel that when it comes to developing practical alternatives to try to redeem those people, I have no answer.

Preet Bharara:

What do you make of the, at least initial strategy by Israel of among other things cutting off electricity and the criticisms that some people have made about “collective punishment?”

Aaron David Miller:

Well, look, the Israelis did not want to rush to mount a ground campaign. Maybe the [inaudible 00:24:29] are working out some sort of an arrangement. Those are the reports. Even that Secretary of State had referred to them some sort of exchange for the elderly women in the infirm, for any number of Palestinian women who were sitting in Israeli jails. I’m not sure how I would respond to that. I think that if we talk proportionality, the Israelis are not interested in proportionality right now. They didn’t want to move quickly to a ground campaign. They had to do something. And what they’ve done, not just in the blockade, but in the airstrikes, is to push to the limits of efficacy, and the price that they’re going to pay I think is a continued tragic consequence of killing a lot of innocent people. I can’t reconcile the two.

Preet Bharara:

How do you think so far the Biden administration is handling this crisis? And in particular, what did you think of the flavor and tone and substance of Biden’s speech?

Joe Biden:

Today Americans across the country are praying for all those families that have been ripped apart. A lot of us know how it feels. It leaves a black hole in your chest when you lose family. Feeling like you’re being sucked in, the anger, the pain, the sense of hopelessness.

Aaron David Miller:

If somebody had asked me what kind of speech the President would’ve given, should give or would give, I think that Biden, given who he is, it was eminently predictable. The presidential model here is not Barack Obama for whom Biden worked. The presidential model is Bill Clinton. They’re of a different generation, but they’re literally their love. And I use the words precisely because Clinton writes in his memoirs that I loved Rabin as I had loved no man. The love for Israel, for the idea of Israel, for the Israeli people and the high regard for Israeli security is deeply ingrained in Clinton and in Biden’s emotional and political DNA. Politics is never far behind, particularly given the administration’s to borrow a Star Trek trope. The prime directive of the Biden administration is to do everything possible to defeat the presumptive Republican nominee in 2024. The Republicans are already hammering the administration and that party has emerged as the Israel right or wrong party.

I think Biden, because of his personal regard and his emotional makeup, he referred to “the black hole” of personal loss in that speech, and he teared up at the end. Biden’s life has been characterized by personal loss. I think he related to the savagery and the stories that he had been briefed on, that combined with his own regard for Israeli security and the politics, created an opportunity for him to set the tone of what the administration’s reaction will be, at least as Israel enters this campaign, which is very simple. He’s prepared to give the Israelis the time, the space and the support to do what they think they need to do in Gaza.

Now, Tony Blinken was just in Israel meeting with Netanyahu. Did he explore with the Prime Minister, the contours of their operation? Did he express any reservations about disproportionality and the loss of civilian life? I can’t answer that question, but I tend to think that even if he did, it was expressed in a way that would’ve given any Israeli leader the clear indication that this administration understands the depth of the crisis and trauma that Israel has been in and is prepared, at least for now, to accommodate an Israeli response. The absence of reaction to the blockade of Gaza and the airstrikes, strongly suggest that to me.

Preet Bharara:

Two questions about Netanyahu. One is what is the sentiment about him now and the intelligence failure that we’ve been discussing, and how will that evolve over time? Not withstanding the solidarity with which everyone is viewing their fellow citizens in Israel naturally at this moment. And then second, how is a person like Netanyahu thinking? Is he thinking about this now as a mortally aggrieved Israeli citizen, or is he thinking about this as a politician who’s had his struggles and wants to remain in power or both of those things?

Aaron David Miller:

He’s a complicated guy, but what is driving him is not just his political future, but his freedom. He’s on trial, three years now under Jerusalem District Court, three Israeli judges for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. That trial has been ongoing for three years. He’s due to testify next year. I suspect that the trial will last for another year. His risk readiness to do anything he possibly could to maintain himself in power as Prime Minister and an effort to desperately struggle for some way, undermine the conviction, fire the attorney general, gain some sort of immunity, clearly is now at risk. So he’s capable of so much and he’s contributed particularly in the early years through his service to the country.

But he now remains a figure of not just controversy, but a man who is now charged as Mr. Security with presiding over the worst terror attack in the history of the country. The worst intelligence failure since the 1973 war, and a man who increasingly, at least half of the country, has come to view as a self-interested, egotistical politician whose primary objective is to stay in power and to stay out of jail. There is going to be a reckoning. There has to be. And at the end of the day, his career in politics, perhaps through a plea deal will be over.

Preet Bharara:

How long will that reckoning take, you think?

Aaron David Miller:

Gaza is going to unfold in various phases and stages. You have a national unity government. I suspect that national unity government, even despite the fact that Netanyahu and Gantz can’t stand one another, will probably last for months. No decision can be taken according to the terms of their arrangement on any matter. No formal legislation on any matter that does not directly relate to the prosecution of the war, but I suspect judicial overhaul is dead. It’s permanently frozen. And I guess I would predict to you that the country will return in a sort of course correction to a different kind of government, a center right government, I would predict once Netanyahu leaves office. Drawn from the Likud and several of the other centrist and center right parties, a government that will have more respect for civil discourse, for democratic norms, for the independence of judiciary, but a government in the wake of what’s occurred, that will be extremely tough-minded when it comes to Israeli security, both with respect to the region, Iran in particular, and toward a resolution, a permanent resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Despite all of the flaws and imperfections and transgressions of this small country, it remains an extraordinary place. And I asked somebody the other day, can you imagine in America in this republic, 40 weeks in a row, massive protests among a cross section of Israelis, religious Israelis, middle class Israelis, private sector, ex officials of all political parties? Can you imagine 40 weeks of protests on one issue preserving what Israelis believe is the identity of their country and fighting to defend that identity as largely a… It’s a preferential democracy and it’s a flawed democracy, but Israelis have a conception.

Preet Bharara:

People care about it.

Aaron David Miller:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

Sometimes I worry in our country that not enough people care about it.

Aaron David Miller:

Yeah, and I think that’s what inspires me. There is a problem 75 years after the independence of the state of Israel near the borders of this country, nor the identity of this country are yet fixed, are yet determined. That’s not unusual for a young country, even with one that has a very old past. In 1851, 75 years after our independence, neither the borders of this republic nor the identity of this republic is fixed. I take some measure of hope Preet in that, and I hope that not only will Israeli democracy be strengthened and broadened to ensure that 2 million Palestinian citizens of Israel who suffer social and economic discrimination, that somehow that national minority will have full and equal rights. And I also hope, however distant it may seem that Israelis and Palestinians can somehow find a pathway forward so that some solution… My own view is separation through negotiations into two states is still the only way forward. It’s the only thing that addresses the political, demographic, psychological, and physical challenges of the proximity problem that Israelis and Palestinians confront. Their lives and futures are inextricably linked together.

They just have to figure out a way to separate in a way that guarantees their security and their prosperity. So even in this darkest tunnel, I’m very humble when it comes to the broad arc of history. I mentioned earlier that 50 years ago, October 6th, I was in Jerusalem. It was a trauma. Within six years it turned into hope of an Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty. 20 years later, I sat on the White House lawn, watched Arafat, Clinton and Rabin sign the Oslo Accords, convinced in a galactic misjudgment that the Israeli-Palestinian peace presses was now irreversible. That hope turned to trauma. So history bends in strange ways, and I’m still hopeful that at the end of this long, dark tunnel, there’ll be another pathway. One that’s more peaceful, one that’s more hopeful for Israelis and also for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

Preet Bharara:

Aaron David Miller, thanks so much for your insight and your time. I really appreciate it.

Aaron David Miller:

Preet, wonderful questions. Thanks so much.

Preet Bharara:

For more analysis of legal and political issues making the headlines, become a member of the CAFE Insider. Members get access to exclusive content, including the weekly podcast I host with former US attorney, Joyce Vance. Head to CAFE.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s CAFE.com/insider. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. Tweet them to me at Preet Bharara with the hashtag ask Preet. You can also now reach me on Threads, or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-249-PREET. Or you can send an email to letters@CAFE.com. Stay tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The editorial producer is Noa Azulai. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Jake Kaplan, Nat Weiner, Namita Shah, and Claudia Hernández. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. Stay tuned.