Lex Fridman Podcast - #389 – Benjamin Netanyahu: Israel, Palestine, Power, Corruption, Hate, and Peace

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

Benjamin Netanyahu is the Prime Minister of Israel. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Numerai: https://numer.ai/lex - BetterHelp: https://betterhelp.com/lex to get 10% off - NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour - Shopify: https://shopify.com/lex to get $1 per month trial Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/benjamin-netanyahu-transcript EPISODE LINKS: Netanyahu's Twitter: https://twitter.com/netanyahu Netanyahu's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/b.netanyahu Netanyahu's Website: https://www.netanyahu.org.il Bibi: My Story (book): https://amzn.to/3XJd6UR A Durable Peace (book): https://amzn.to/3pIofbX Fighting Terrorism (book): https://amzn.to/3XNp6on PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (08:22) - Hate (14:02) - Judicial reform and protests (22:38) - AI (32:40) - Competition (39:21) - Power and corruption (46:32) - Peace (1:01:05) - War in Ukraine (1:05:01) - Abraham Accords (1:09:02) - History (1:13:48) - Survival

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 in Christ's human history. As we spoke, and as I speak now, large large scale protests are breaking out all over Israel over this government's proposed judicial reform that seeks to weaken the Supreme Court in a bold accumulation of power. Given the current intense political battles in Israel, our previous intention to speak for three hours was adjusted to one hour for the time being, but we agreed to speak again

for much longer in the future. I will also interview people who harshly disagree with the words spoken in this conversation. I will speak with other world leaders, with religious leaders, with historians and activists, and with people who have lived and have suffered through the pain of war, destruction and loss that stoke the fires of anger and hate in their heart. For this I will travel anywhere, no matter how dangerous, if there is any chance it may help add to understanding and love in the world.

I believe in the power of conversation, to do just this, to remind us of our common humanity. I know I'm underqualified and underskilled for these conversations, so I will often fall short and I will certainly get attacked, derided, and slandered. But I will always turn the other cheek and use these attacks to learn, to improve, and no matter what, never give into cynicism. This life, this world of ours, is too beautiful not to keep trying, trying to do some good, and whatever way each of us know. How?

I love you all. And now a quick few second mention of the sponsor. Check them out in the description, it's the best way to support this podcast. We got a new Mariah for the world's hardest data science tournament, better help for mental health, net suite for business management software and Shopify for e-commerce. She was wise in my friends. Also, if you want to work with our amazing team or always hiring, go to electsfreedman.com slash hiring. And now onto the full ad reads as always no ads in the middle.

I try to make this interesting, but if you must skip them please still check out the sponsors I enjoyed their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by Numerai, a hedge fund that uses machine learning to make investment decisions. It's basically a really difficult data set, a really difficult competitions with real world testing, with a test set, with a highest of stakes. As I talk about in this conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu, he's a big believer in the power and the efficiency of the market. That's the cleanest signal you can get in the interaction of a very large number

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I dreamed of becoming a psychotherapist, a psychiatrist, because I thought that as a way to explore the human mind. In some funny kind of way, the journey I took through computer science and the development of robots and machine learning systems, artificial intelligence systems. All of that took me to a podcast called Artificial Intelligence that was then renamed to just my name. And now I am finally doing psychotherapy on microphones with other people. But if you want to do the same kind of process and you don't want to start your own podcast, then maybe you want to sign up for better health because it's super easy to get started. It's affordable. It's accessible, discrete, all of that available worldwide, super easy.

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Go to Shopify.com slash Lex to take your business to the next level today. This is the Lex Fuban podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Benjamin Netanyahu. 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 have 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 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, 16 million viewers. I gave another one, I just did a little video, a few years ago, 25 million viewers from Iran. Certainly no hate there, I have to tell, not from the regime.

Okay? And when I go around the world, and I've been around the world, people want to hear what we have to say, what I have to say is a leader of Israel whom they respect increasingly as a rising power in the world. So I disagree with that. And the most important thing that goes against what you said is the respect that we received from the Arab world and the fact that we've made four historic peace agreements with Arab countries.

They made it with me. They didn't make it with anyone else. And I respect them and they respect me. And probably it with me. They didn't make it with anyone else. And I respect them and they respect me. And probably more to come. So I think the premise is wrong. That's all. Well, there's a lot of love. Yes. The a lot of leaders are collaborating are respect. I said. No, no. Okay. All right. Well, it's it's a spectrum. But there is people who don't have good things to say about Israel who do have hate in their heart and for Israel. Yeah. And what can you say to those people?

Well, I think they don't know very much. I think they're guided by a lot of ignorance. They don't know about Israel. They don't know that Israel is a stellar democracy that it happens to be one of the most advanced societies on the planet that what Israel develops helps humanity and every field and medicine and agriculture and and the environment and telecoms and talk about AI in a minute, but changing the world for the better and spreading this among six continents. We've sent rescue teams more than any other country in the world and we're one tenth of one percent of the world's population. But when there's an earthquake or a devastation in Haiti or in the Philippines, Israel is there. When there's an earthquake and a devastating earthquake in Turkey. Turkey, Israel was there when there's something in Nepal, Israel is there and it's a second country. It's the second country after in one case India or after another case the United States, Israel is there, tiny Israel is a benefactor to all of humanity. So your student of history,

benefactor to all of humanity. So you're a student of history. If I can just linger on that philosophical notion of hate, that part of human nature, if you look at World War II, what do you learn from human nature, from the rise of the Third Reich and the rise of somebody like Hitler and the hate the permeates that well What I've learned is that you have to nip bad things in the bud. You have to There's a light in term that says up stuff. Prinkipy stop bad things when they're small and the deliberate hatred the

the deliberate hatred, the incitement of hatred against one community, the demonization, the legitimization that goes with it is a very dangerous thing. And that happened in the case of the Jews, what started with the Jews soon spread to all of humanity. So what we've learned is, that should, we should never, and I've never set 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. So in those threats underlying that hatred, how much of it is anti-zionism and how much of it is anti-semitism? I don't distinguish between the two. You can't say, well I'm okay with Jews but I just don't think there should be a Jewish state. It's like saying, I'm not anti-American, I just don't think there should be an America. That's basically what people are saying vis-a-vis anti-Semitism and anti-zionism. When you're saying anti-zionism, you're saying that Jewish people don't have a right to have a state of their own, and that is a denial of a basic principle that I think completely

unmasks what is involved here. Today, anti-Semitism is anti-Zionism. Those who oppose the Jewish people oppose the Jewish state. 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 or is surely making you a dictator. Now, well, that's ridiculous. The mere fact that you have you, or is she really making you a dictator? Well, that's ridiculous. The mere fact that you have so many demonstrations in protest, some dictatorship, a lot of democracy here, more, more embunctious and more robust than just anywhere on the planet.

Can you still man the case that this gives, this may give too much power to the coalition government to the prime minister, not just to you, but to those who follow. No, I think that's complete hogwash, because I think there's a very few people who are demonstrating against this. Quite a few, quite many. Don't have an idea what is being discussed. They're basically being sloganized you can sloganize you know something about not mass media right now but the social network you can basically feed deliberately with big data and

big money you can just feed slogans and get into people's minds I'm sure you don't think I exaggerate because you can tell me more about that. And you can create mass mobilization based on these absurd slogans. So here's where I come from and what we're doing, what we're trying to do, and what we've changed in what we're trying to do. I'm a 19th century Democrat in my small deal, yes, in my views that is I view I asked the question what is democracy? Okay, so democracy is is the will of the majority and the protection of the rights of they call it the rights of the minority But I say the rights of the individual, okay, so how do you balance the two? Okay, how do you get the how do you avoid?

How do you avoid mabokersi? And how do you avoid dictatorship, the opposite side? The way you avoided is something that was built essentially by British philosophers and French philosophers, but was encapsulated by the founding fathers of the United States. You create a balance between the three branches of government. The legislative, executive, and the judiciary. And this balance is what assures the balance between majority rights and individual rights. And you have to balance all of them.

Okay. That balance was maintained in Israel in its first 50 years and was gradually overtaken and basically broken by the most activist judicial court on the planet. That's what happened here. Gradually over the last two, three decades, the court aggregated for itself the powers of the parliament and the executive. So we're trying to bring it back into line. Bring it back into line into what is common

in all parliamentary democracies and in the United States. Doesn't mean taking the pendulum from one side and bringing it to the other side. We want checks and balances, not unrivaled power. Just as we said, we want an independent judiciary, but not in all powerful judiciary. That balance does not mean bringing it back into line, doesn't mean that you can have the parliament archness that override any decision that the Supreme Court does.

So I pretty much early on said after the judicial reform was introduced, get rid of the idea of sweeping override clause that would have with 61 votes, that's majority of one, you can just nullify any Supreme Court decision. So let's move it back into the center. So that's gone. And most of the criticism on the judiciary form was based on an unlimited override clause, which I've said is simply not going to happen. People are discussing something that already for six months does not exist. The second point that we received criticism

on was the structure of how do you choose Supreme Court judges? How do you choose them? And the critics of the reform are saying that the idea that elected officials choose Supreme Court judges is the end of democracy. If that's the case, the United States is not a democracy. Now, there is France and now there are just about every democracy on the planet. So there is a view here that you can't have the sorted hands of elected officials involved in the choosing of judges, and in the Israeli system, the judicial activism went so far that effectively the sitting judges have an

effective veto on choosing judges, which means that this is a self-selecting court that just perpetrates itself. And we want to correct that. Again, we want to correct it in a balanced way. And that's basically what we're trying to do. So I think there's a lot of misinformation about that. We're trying to bring Israeli democracy to where it was in its first 50 years. And it was a stellar democracy.

It still is. Israel is a democracy. We'll remain a democracy, a vibrant democracy. And believe me, the fact that people are arguing and demonstrating in the streets and protesting is just, is the best proof of that. And that's how it will remain. We spoke about tech companies offline. There's a lot of tech companies nervous about this judicial reform. Can you speak to why large and small companies have a future in Israel?

Because Israel is a free market economy, I had something to do with that. I introduced dozens and dozens of free market reforms that made Israel move from $17,000 per capita income to within a very short time, to $54,000. That's nominal GDP per capital, according to the IMF. And we've overtaken in that, Japan, France, Britain, Germany. How did that happen? Because we unleashed the genius that we have in the initiative and the entrepreneurship that is latent in our population. And to do that, we had to create free markets, so we created that.

So Israel has one of the most vibrant free market economies in the world. And the second thing we have is a permanent investment in conceptual products, because we have a permanent investment in the military and our security services, creating basically knowledge workers who then become knowledge entrepreneurs. And so we create this structure.

And that's not going to go away. There's been a decline in investments in high tech globally. I think that's driven by many factors. But the most important one is the interest rate, which I think will fluctuate up and down, but Israel will remain a very attractive country, because it produces so many, so many knowledge workers in a knowledge-based economy, and it's changing so rapidly. The world is changing. You're looking for the places that have is changing, you're looking for the places that have innovation. The future belongs to those who innovate. Israel is the preeminent innovation nation. It has few competitors. And if we would

say, all right, where do you have this close cross disciplinary fermentation of various skills and areas? I would say it's in Israel. I'll tell you why. We used to be just telecoms because people went out of the military intelligence, RNSA, but that's been now broad base. You find it in medicine, you find it in biology, you find it in agritac, you find it everywhere. Everything is becoming technologized. In Israel, everybody is dealing in everything.

And that's a potent reservoir of talent that the world is not going to pass up. And in fact, it's coming to us. We just had Nvidia coming here, and they decided to build a supercomputer in Israel. Wonder why? We have had until coming here and deciding down to invest 25 billion dollars just now. In a new plan in Israel, I wonder why? I don't wonder why. They know why, because the talent is here and the freedom is here, then it'll remain so. So you had a conversation about AI with Sam Altman, of OpenAI and with Elon Musk.

Yeah. What was the content of that conversation? What's your vision for this very highest of tech, which is artificial intelligence? Well, first of all, I have a high regard for the people I talk to. And I understand that they understand things. I don't understand, and I don't pretend to understand everything, but I do understand one thing. I understand that AI is developing at a geometric rate, and mostly in political life and in life in general people don't have an intuitive grasp of geometric growth.

You understand things basically in linear increments. And the idea that you're coming up a ski slope is very far into people that aren't in standard and they're naturally also sort of taken a back by it because what do you do? So I think there's several conclusions from my conversations with them and from my other observations that I've been talking about for many years. I'm talking about the need to do this. Well, the first thing is this, there is no possibility of not entering AI with

full force. Secondly, there is a need for regulation. Third, it's not clear, there'll be global regulation. Fourth, it's not clear where it ends up. I certainly cannot say that. Now, you might say, does it come to control us? OK, that's a question. Does it come to control us? I don't know the answer to that. I think that is, as one observation that I had from these conversations is if it does come

to control us, that's probably the only chance of having a universal regulation because I don't see anyone deciding to avoid the race and incorporate cooperate unless you have that threat. It doesn't mean you can't regulate AI within countries, even without that understanding. But it does mean that there's a limit to regulation because every country will want to make sure that it's not, does give up competitive advantage if there is no universal regulation. I think that right now, just as you know, 10 years ago, I read a novel. I don't read novels, but I was forced to read one by a scientific advisor. I read history, I read about economics, I read about technology, I just don't read novels. Okay. And this time, follow Churchill.

You know, we said, fact is better than fiction. Well, this fiction would become fact. And it was a book. It was a novel about a Chinese American future cyber war. And I read the book, one sitting, called in theme of experts. And I said, all right, let's let's join Israel into one of the world's five cyber powers. And let's do it very quickly. And we did actually, we did, we did exactly that. I think AI is bigger than that and related to that because it will affect, well, cyber effects everything, but AI will affect it even more fundamentally.

And the joining of the two could be very powerful. So I think in Israel, we have to do it anyway for security reasons, and we're doing it. But I think what about our databases that are already very robust on the medical records of 98% of our population. Why don't we stick a genetic database on that? Why don't we do other things that could bring magical, what seeming magical cures and drugs, and medical instruments for that, that's one possibility.

We have it in, as I said, in every single field. The conclusion is this, we have to move on AI. We are moving on AI just as we've removed on cyber and I think Israel will be one of the leading AI powers in the world. The questions I don't have an answer to is, what is it go? How much does it eat chew up up on, on jobs? There's an assumption that I'm not sure it's true, that all previous, the two big, previous revolutions in the human condition, namely the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution,

definitely produce more jobs than they consumed. Okay. That is not obvious to me at all. I mean, I could see new jobs creating and yes, I have that, you know, that comforting statement, but it's not quite true because I think on balance, they'll probably consume more jobs, many more jobs than they'll create. At least in a short term. And we don't know about the long term. No, I don't know about the long term, but I used to have the comfort being a free market guy.

We're going to produce more jobs by limiting certain government jobs. We're actually putting out in the market, we'll create more jobs, which obviously happened. We had one telecom company, a government company when I said we're going to create competition, they said you're going to run us out, we're not going to have more workers. Yeah, they had 13,000 workers, they went down to seven, but we created another 40,000 in the other companies. So that was a comforting thought. I always knew that was true.

Not only that, I also knew that wealth would spread by opening up the markets, completely opposite to the socialist and semi-socialist greed that they had here. They said, you're going to make the rich richer and the poor poor know and made everyone richer. And actually the people who entered the job market because of the reforms we did actually became a lot richer. because of the reforms we did actually became a lot richer. On the lower, the lower ladders of the socio-economic measure. But here's the point. I don't know. I don't know that we will not have what Elon Musk calls the end of scarcity.

So you'll have the end of scarcity. You'll have enormous productivity. You know, very few people are producing enormous added value. You're going to have to tax that to pass it to the others, okay? You're going to have to do that. That's a political question. I'm not sure how we answer that. What if you tax and somebody else doesn't tax, you're going to get everybody to go there. That's an issue, an international issue that we constantly have to deal with. And the second question you have is suppose you solve that problem and you deliver money, okay, to those who are not involved in the AI economy. What do they do? The first question you ask

somebody when you just met after the polite, you know, the polite exchanges is, what do you do? Right? Well, people define themselves by their profession and it's going to be difficult if you don't have a profession. And, you know, people will spend more time self-searching, they'll more time in the arts, more time in leisure, and understand that. If I have to bet, it will annihilate many more jobs, then it will create an entire structural change in our economics, in our economic models, and in our politics. And I'm not sure where it's going to go.

And that's something we have to respond to at the nation level and just as a human civilization, both the threat of AI to just us as a human species and then the effect on the jobs, and like you said, cybersecurity. And what do you think? You think it's going to lose control? No. First of all, I do believe maybe naively that it will create more jobs than it takes.

Write that down and we'll check it. It's on record. And you know, we don't have, we don't say, we'll check it after our lifetime. No, we'll see it in a few years. We'll see it in a few years. I'm really concerned about cybersecurity and the nature of how that changes with the

power of AI. And in terms of existential threats, I think there would be so much threats that aren't existential along the way that that's the thing I'm mostly concerned about versus AI taking complete control and becoming sort of superseding the human species. Although that is something you should consider seriously, because of the exponential growth of its capability. It's exactly the exponential growth, which we understand is before us, but we don't really, it's very hard to project forward to really understand. That's right, exactly right. So I deal with what I can and where I can

affect something. I tend not to worry about things I don't control because at a certain point, you know, there's no point. I mean, you have to decide what you're spending your time on. So I think in practical terms, I think we'll make, we'll make Israel a formable AI power. We understand the limitation of scale, computing power and other things. But I think within those limits, I think we can make here this miracle that we did in many other things. We do more or less. I don't care if it's water, the production of water or the production of energy or the

production of knowledge or the production of energy or the production of knowledge or the production of cyber capabilities defense and other We just do more Well less than I think in AI we're going to do a lot more With relatively small but highly gifted population very gifted So taking a small tangent as we talked about offline are you have a So taking a small tangent, as we talked about offline, you have a background in Taekwondo. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we mentioned Elon Musk. I've trained with both.

This is a quick question, who you have, who are you betting on in a fight? Well, I refuse to answer that. I will say this. Such a politician, you are. Yeah, of course. Here I'm a politician. I'm openly telling you then I'm dodging the question. Okay. But I'll say this, you know, I actually, I spent five years in our special forces in the military and we barely spent a minute

on martial arts. I actually learned Taekwondo later when I came to... It wasn't even at MIT at MIT, I think I did karate, but when I came to the U.N., I had a martial arts expert and taught me Taekwondo, which was kind of interesting. Now, the question you really have to ask is, why did we learn martial arts in this special elite unit? And the answer is, there's no point if you sign the antigenes, you know,

there's no point. You just, you know, pull the trigger. That's simple. Now, I don't expect anyone to pull the trigger on this combat and I'm sure you'll make sure that doesn't happen. Yeah, I mean martial arts is kind of, it's bigger than just combat. It's this kind of journey of humility and it has, it's an art form, it truly is an art, but it's fascinating that these two figures in tech are facing each other. And I won't ask a question of who you would face and how you would do, but... Well, I'm facing opponents all the time. All the time. Yeah, that's part of life. But not part of life. Part of life is not. Yeah. I'm not sure about that. Are you announcing you wait? No, no. Part of life is competition. You know, the only time competition ends is

death, but you know, political life, economic life, cultural life, is engaged continuously in creativity and competition. And the problem I have with that, as I mentioned earlier, just before we began the podcast, is that, at a certain point, you want to put barriers to monopoly. And if you're in a really able competitor, you're going to create a monopoly. That's what Peter Till says is a natural course of things. It's what I learned. And basically in the Boston Consulting Group, if you're a very able competitor, you'll

create scale advantages that give you the ability to lock out your competition. And as a Prime Minister, I want to assure that there is competition in the markets, you have to limit this competitive power at a certain point. And that becomes increasingly hard in the world where everything is intermiss. Where do you define market segments? Where do you define monopoly? How do you do that? That is very, that, that actually conceptually I find very challenging because of all the dozens of political, of economic reforms that I've made. The most difficult part is the conceptual part. Once you have, you've ironed it out, you say, here's what I want to do, here's the right thing to do. That you have a practical

problem of overcoming union resistance, political resistance, press calumny, you know, opponents from this or that corner, that's a practical matter. But if you have it conceptually defined, you can move ahead to reform economies or reform education or reform transportation. Fine. In the question of the growing power of large companies, big tech companies to monopolize the markets because they're better at it. They provide a service.

They provided lower cost. Rapidly the client cost. Where do you stop? Where do you stop monopoly power? Is a crucial question because it also becomes now a political question. If you are mass and or misamount of the economic power, which is information power, that also monopolizes the political process, which creates these are real questions that are not obvious. I don't have an obvious answer. Because as I said, as a 19th century Democrat, these are questions of the 21st century, which people should begin to think.

Do you have a solution to that? The solution of monopolies growing arbitrarily, unstoppable in power. An economic power and therefore, an political power. I mean, some of that is regulation. Some of that is competition. You know where to put, to draw the line. Stop breaking up AT&T, you know, it's not that simple. Well, I believe in the power of competition that there will always be somebody

that challenges the big guys, especially in the space of AI. The more open source movements are taking hold, the more the little guy can become the big guys, especially in the space of AI, the more open source movements are taking hold, the more the little guy can become the big guy. So you're saying basically the regulatory instrument is the market. In large part, in most part, that's the hope, maybe I'm a dreamer. That's been in many ways by policy up to now. Okay? The best regulator is the market. The best regulator in economic activity is the market. And the best regulator in political matters is a political market.

That's called elections. That's what regulates. You have a lousy government and people make lousy decisions. Well, you don't need the wise men raised above the masses to decide what is good and what is bad. Let the masses decide. Let them vote every four years or whatever. They throw you up.

By the way, it happened to me. There's life after political death. There's actually political life. I was reelected five or six times and this is my sixth term. So, you know, I believe in that. I'm not sure. I'm not sure that in economic matters, in the geometric growth of tech companies, that you'll always have the little guy, the nimble mammal that will come out and slay the dinosaurs or overcome the dinosaurs, which is essentially what you said. Yeah, I wouldn't count the little guy. You wouldn't count out the little one.

Well, I hope you're right. Let me ask you about this market of politics. So you have a service, 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 the, again, the thing that drives me is not, The thing that drives me is nothing but the mission that I took to assure the survival and thriving of the state, 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, again, even though I will, no power in the press, no power in many quarters here and so on. Nothing. I mean, I am probably, I'm going to be very soon, the longest serving Prime Minister in the last half century and the Western democracies. But that's not because I am mass great political power in any of the institutions. I remember I had a conversation with Silvio Berlusconi,

who recently died and he said to me about, I don't know, 15 years ago, something like that, he said. So, baby, how many of Israel's television stations do you have? And I said, none. He said, you have none. I have two. You have. I said, none.

I have two. He said, no, no. But what you mean, you don't have any that you control. I said, not only do I have none that I control, they're all against me. So I said, so how do you win elections? And you know, with both hands tied behind you back and I said, the hard way. That's why, you know, I have the largest party, but I don't have many more seats that I would have

if I had a sympathetic voice in the media. And Israel is, until recently, was dominated completely by one side of the political spectrum that, you know, often, vilified me, recently was dominated completely by one side of the political spectrum that often vilified me, not me because viewed me as representing basically the conservative voices in Israel that are majority. So the idea that I'm an omnipotent authoritarian dictator is ridiculous. I am, I would say I'm not merely a champion of democracy and democratization, I believe ultimately the decision is with the voters and the voters, even though they've had, you know, they have constant, constant press attacks. They have

chosen to put me back in. So I don't believe in this thing of amassing the corrupting power of, if you don't have elections, if you don't have, if you control the means of influencing the voters, I understand what you're saying. But in my case, it's exact opposite. I have to constantly go in elections, constantly, you know, with a disadvantage that the major media outlets are very, violently sometimes against me, but it's fine. And I keep on winning. So I don't know what you're talking.

I would say the concentration of power lies elsewhere, not here. Well, you have been involved in several corruption cases. How much corruption is there in Israel? And how do you fight it in your own party and in Israel? Well, you should ask a different question. What's happened to these cases? These cases have basically are collapsing. And before our eyes, the, you know, there were, there was recently an event in which the judges, the three judges and in my case called in the prosecution and said, you know, your flagship, the bribery charts, so-called bribery charts, you know, it's gone, doesn't exist. Before a single, a single defense witness was called and it sort of tells you that this thing is evaporating. It's quite

astounded. Even that I have to say was covered even by the mainstream press in Israel because it's such an earthquake. So, you know, a lot of these charges are not a lot. These charges will prove to be nothing. I always said, let, I stand before the legal process. I don't claim that them exempt from it in any way, on the contrary. I think the truth will come out and it's coming out. We see that not only that, but with other things. So I think it's kind of instructive that, you know, no politician has been more vilified, no none has been put to such, you know, what is it about a quarter of a billion Shackles were used to scrutinize me scour my bank accounts sending people to the Philippines into Mexico and to Europe and to America And looking at everybody using spyware the most advanced spyware on the planet against it. My associates, blackmailing witnesses, telling them, you know, think about your family,

think about your wife, you know, you better tell us what you want. All that is coming out in the trial. So I would say that most people now are not asking,'m no longer asking, including my opponents, sort of trickling me in, as the stuff comes out, people are not saying, what did Netanyahu do because he apparently did nothing? What was done to him? Is something the people ask? What was done to our democracy? What was done in the attempt to put down somebody who keeps winning elections

despite the handicaps that I described, maybe we can nail them by framing them. And the one thing I can say about this court trial is that things are coming out, and that's very good. Just objective things are coming out, changing the picture. So I would say the attempt to brand me as corrupt is falling on its face, but the thing that is being uncovered in the trial, such as the use of spyware on a politician, a politician's surroundings to try to shake them down and investigations, put them in flea-ridden cells for 21 days and invite their 84-year-old mother to investigations without cause bringing in their mistresses in the corridor, shaking them down. That's what people are asking.

That corruption is what they want corrected. 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. And that's why they've opposed it after we had a state. They opposed it when we were.

We didn't have Judeans, Samaritan, the West Bank in our heads and Gaza. And they opposed it after we have it. Doesn't make a difference. It's basically the persistent refusal to recognize a Jewish state in any boundaries. And I think their tragedy is that they've been commandeered for a century by leadership that refused to compromise with the idea of, obscenism, namely that the Jews deserve a state

in this part of the world, the territorial dispute is something else. You have a territorial dispute if you say, okay, you're living on this side, we're living on that side, let's decide where the border is and so on. That's not what the argument is. The Palestinian society, which is itself,

fragmented, but all the factions agree, there shouldn't be a Jewish state, anywhere. Okay? They just disagree between Hamas, it says, oh well, you should have it. You know, we should get rid of it with terror. And the others will say, we know we should also use political means to dissolve it. So that is the problem. So even as part of a two-state solution, there's still against the idea. Well, they don't want a state next to Israel. They want a state instead of Israel. And they say, if we get a state next to Israel. They want a state instead of Israel. And they say if we get a state, we'll use it as a springboard

to destroy the smaller Israeli state, which is what happened when Israel unilaterally walked out of Gaza and effectively established a Hamas state there. They didn't say, oh, good, now we have, you know, our own territory, our own state, Israel is no longer there. Let's build peace, let's build, you know, economic projects. Let's enfranchise our people. No, they turned it into a, basically, into a terror bastion

from which they fired 10,000 rockets into Israel. When Israel left Lebanon, you know, because we had terrorist attacks from there, then we had Lebanon taken over by Hizbala terrorist organization that seeks to destroy Israel. And therefore, every time we just walked out, what we got was not peace. We didn't give, you know, territory for peace, we got territory for terror. That's what we had. And that's what would happen as long as the reigning ideology says, we don't want Israel in any border. So the idea of two states assumes that you'd have, on the other side, a state that wants to live in peace, and not one that will be overtaken by Iran, and its proxies in two

seconds, and become a base to destroy Israel. And therefore, I think that most Israelis today, if you ask them, they say it's not going to work in that concept. So what do you do with the Palestinians? Okay, they're still there. And unlike them, I don't want to throw them out. They're going to be living here. And we're going to be living here in an area which is by the way to understand the area, the entire area of so-called West Bank and Israel is the width of the Washington Beltway more or less, just a little more, not much more. You can't really divide it up. You can't say, well, you're going to fly in, who controls the airspace? Well, it takes you about two and a half minutes to cross it with a regular, you know, 7 to

4, 7, okay, with a fighter plane, it takes you a minute and a half, okay. So you're not, how are you going to divide the airspace? Well, you're not going to divide it. This one is going to control that airspace and the electromagnetic space and so on. So security has to be in the hands of Israel. My view of how you solve this problem is that it is a simple principle. The Palestinian should have all the powers to govern themselves and none of the powers to threaten Israel, which basically means that the responsibility for overall security remains with Israel. And from a practical point of view, we've seen that every time that Israel leaves a territory and takes its security forces out of an area, it immediately is overtaken by Hamas or Hizbala or Gideas who basically are committed to the destruction of Israel and also bring

misery to the Palestinians or Arab subjects. So I think that that principle is less than perfect sovereignty because you're taking a certain amount of power, sovereign powers, especially security away, but I think it's the only practical solution. So people say, ah, but it's not a perfect state. I said, okay, call it what you will call it. You know, I don't know.

Limited sovereignty, call it autonomy, plus call it whatever you want to call it. But that's the reality. And right now, if you ask Israelis across the political spectrum, except the very hard left, most Israelis agree with that. They don't really debate it. So a two-state solution,

where is your control of security of the entire region? We don't call it quite that. I mean, there are different names, but the idea is, yes, Israel controls security is the entire area. It's a tiny area between the Jordan River and the sea. I mean, it's like, you know, you can walk it, and not one afternoon, if you really fit, you can do it in a day. Less than a day, I did. So the expansion of settlements in the West Bank has been a top priority for this new government. So people many harshly criticize this as contributing to escalating the Israel post.

I intend to. What do you can you can you understand that perspective that this expansion of settlements is not good for this two-state solution? Yeah, I can understand I can understand what they're saying and they don't understand why they're wrong first most most Israelis who live in Judea, Samaria, live in In urban blocks and that accounts for about 90% of the of the population Okay, and everybody recognizes that those urban blocks are going to be part of Israel in any future arrangement. So they're really arguing about something that has already been decided and agreed upon really by Americans, by even by Arabs, many Arabs. They don't think that Israel is going to dismantle these blocks. You know, you look outside the window here and within about a kilometer

mile from here, as you have Jerusalem, half of Jerusalem grew naturally beyond the old 1967 border. So you're not going to dismantle half of Jerusalem, that's not going to happen. And most people don't expect that. Then you have the other 10% scattered in tiny, you know, small communities. And people say, well, you got to have to take them out. Why? Why? Remember that in pre-1967 Israel, we have over a million and a half Arabs here. We don't say, oh, Israel has to be ethically clans from Arabs in order to have, from its Arab citizens in order to have peace. Of course not. Jews can live among Arabs and Arabs can live among Jews. And what is, what is being advanced by those people who say that we can't live in our ancestral

homeland in these disputed areas? Nobody says that this is Palestinian areas. And nobody says that these are Israeli areas. We claim them, they claim them, we've only been attached to this land for old, 35 hundred years, but you know, but it's a dispute, I agree, but I don't agree that we should throw out the Arabs and I don't think that they should throw out the Jews. And if somebody said to you, the only way we're gonna have peace with Israel

is to have an ethnically cleansed Palestinian entity, you know, that's outrageous. If you said the only way, you know, you shouldn't have Jews living in, I don't know, in suburbs of London or New York and so on, I don't think that would play too well. The world is actually advancing a solution that says that Jews cannot live among Arabs and Arabs cannot live among Jews. I don't think that's the right way to do it. And I think there's a solution out there, but I don't think we're going to get to it, which is less than perfect sovereignty, which involves Israeli security, maintained for the entire territory by Israel, which involves not rooting out anybody, not

kicking out, uprooting, irons or Palestinians, they're going to live in enclaves in sovereign Israel, and we're going to live in probably in enclaves there, probably through transportation continuity as opposed to territorial continuity. That is, you know, for example, you can have tunnels and overpasses and so on that connect the various communities. And we're doing that right now. We're doing that right now. And it actually works. I think there is a solution to this.

It's not the perfect world that people think of because that model, I think, doesn't apply here. If it applies elsewhere, it's a question. I don't think so. But I think there's one other thing. And that's the main thing that I've been involved in. You know, people said, if you don't solve the Palestinian problem, you're not going to get to the Arab world. You're not going to have peace with the Arab world. Remember, the Palestinians are about 2% of the Arab world. And the other, you know, the other 98% you're not going to make peace

with them. And that's our goal. And for a long time, people accepted that. After the initial peace treaties with Egypt, with Prime Minister Began of the Likud and President set out of Egypt, and then with Jordan, between Prime Minister Rabi and Kinc Hussain. For quarter of a century, we didn't have any more peace treaties, because people said, you got to go through the Palestinians and the Palestinians, they don't want a solution of the kind that I described or any kind except the one that involved the dissolution of the state of Israel. So we could wait another half century. And I said no, I mean, I don't think that we should accept

the premise that we have to wait for the Palestinians because we'll have to wait forever. So I decided to do it differently. I decided to go directly to the Arab capitals and to make the historic Abraham Accords and essentially reversing the equation, not a peace process that goes inside out, but outside in. And we went directly to these countries and forged these breakthrough peace accords with the United Arab Emirates, with Bahrain, with Morocco and with Sudan, and we're now trying to expand that in a quadripleap with Saudi Arabia. What does it take to do that with Saudi Arabia, with the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bissalman?

You know, I'm a student of history and I read a lot of history and I read that, you know, in the very side, discussions after World War One, President Woodrow Wilson said, I believe in open covenants openly arrived at. I have my correction. I believed in open covenants openly arrived at. I have my correction. I believed in open covenant secretly arrived at. So we're not going to advance a Saudi Israeli piece by having it publicly discussed. And in any case, it's a decision of the Saudis, if they want to do it. But there's obviously a mutual interest. So here's my view. If we try to wait for the 2% in order to get to the 98%,

we're gonna fail and we have fail. If we go to the 98%, we have a much greater chance of persuading the 2%, you know why? Because the 2%, the Palestinian hope to vanquish the state of Israel and not make peace with it, is based among other things on the assumption that eventually the 98% the rest of the Arab world will kick in and destroy the Jewish state help them dissolve or destroy the Jewish state when that hope is

taken away then you begin to have a turn to the realistic solutions of coexistence. By the way, they'll require compromise on the Israeli side too. And I'm perfectly cognizant of that and willing to do that. But I think a realistic compromise will be struck much more readily when the conflict between Israel and the Arab states, the Arab world is effectively solved. And I think we're on that path. It was a conceptual change, just like, you know, conflict between Israel and the Arab states, the Arab world's effect of resolve. And I think we're on that path. It was a conceptual change, just like I've been involved in a few.

I told you, the conceptual battle is always the most difficult one. And I had to fight this battle to convert a semi-socialist state into a free market capital estate. And I have to say that most people today recognize the power of competition and the benefits of free markets. So we also had to fight this battle that said you have to go through the, you know, the Palestinian straight SDR AIT to get to the other places. There's no way to avoid this.

You know, you have to go through this, this impassable pass. And I think that now people are recognizing that we'll go around it and probably circle back. And that, I think, actually gives hope not only to have an Arab Israeli piece but circling back in Israeli-Palestinian piece. And obviously, this is not something to find in the soundbites and so on, but in the popular discussion of the press, but that idea is permeating.

And I think it's the right idea, because I think it's the only one that will work. So expanding the circle piece, just to linger on that, requires what secretly talking man to man, human to human, to leaders of other nations. Theoretically, you're right. Theoretically. Okay. Well, let me ask you another theoretical question on the 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, blinking 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, though.

I think it's one of the, uh, the savage horrors of history and one of the great tragedies that is occurring. Um, and let me say in advance that, uh, that if I have any opportunity to, uh, use my, uh, contacts to help bring about it into to the tragedy I'll do so. I've had, I know both leaders, but I don't just jump in and assume, you know, 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 low to use nuclear weapons, and I'm not sure that I would Think that the the Russian side would use them With happy abandon. I don't think that's the question, but you see how the whole configuration changes when that happens. So you have to be very careful on how you resolve this conflict. So it doesn't go off the rails, so to speak. That's, by the way, the carl area is here. We don't want Iran, which is an aggressive force with an un- just aggressive ideology of dominating first the Muslim world and then eliminating Israel and then becoming a global

force. Having nuclear weapons, it's totally different when they don't have it and when they do have it. And that's why one of my main goals has been to prevent Iran from having the means to having nuclear weapons, it's totally different when they don't have it and when they do have it. And that's why one of my main goals has been to prevent Iran from having the means to the means of mass destruction which will be used atomic bombs, which they openly say will be used against us and you can understand that. How to bring about an end to your crime? I have my ideas. I don't think I don't think it's worthwhile discussing them now because they might be required later on. Do you believe in the power of conversation since you have contacts

with the Lanamazalansky and Llanar Putin just leaders sitting in a room and discussing how the end of war can be barred about? I think it's a combination of that but I and discussing how the end of war can be brought about. I think it's a combination of that, but I think it's the question of interest and where there, you have to get both sides to a point where they think that that conversation would lead to something useful. I don't think they're there right now. What part of this is just basic human ego, stubbornness, all of this between leaders, which is why I bring up the power of conversation, of sitting in a room realizing we're human beings, and then there's a history that connects Ukraine and Russia.

Yeah, I don't think they're in a position to enter a room right now, realistically. I mean, you can posit that it would be good if that could happen, but entering the room is sometimes more complicated than what happens in the room. And there's a lot of pre-negotiations on the negotiation, then you negotiate endlessly on the negotiation. They're not even there. It took a lot of work for you to get a handshake in the past. It's an interesting question. How did the piece, the Abraham Accords, how did that begin? You know, I mean, we had decades, 70 years, or 65 years, where these people would not meet openly, or even secretly with an Israeli leader.

We had the Mossad making contacts with them 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, 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 the challenge of 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. And 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, you know, the president of the United States. Well, I had no choice. I mean, 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 we'll always remain that. We can have arguments as we have. But in the families, we say in the Mishbhaha, you know, it's the family. But nevertheless, I was forced to take a stand. That produced calls from Gulf states that ultimately led to a clandestine meetings that ultimately

floured into the Abraham Accords. Then I think we're at a point where the idea of ending the Arab Israeli conflict, not the Palestinian Israeli conflict. The Arab Israeli conflict can happen, I'm not sure, it will, it depends on quite a few things, but it could happen. And if it happens, it might open up the ending of the Israeli Islamic conflict. Remember the Arab world is a small part. It's an important part, but it's their large Islamic populations and it could bring about an end to the historic enmity between Islam and Judaism. It could be a great thing. So I'm looking at this larger

thing. You know, you can be hobbled by saying, well, you know, you've had this, you know, this hiccup in Gaza or, you know, this, this or that thing happening in the Palestinians. I don't, it's important for us because we want security. But I think the larger question is, can we break out into a much wider piece and ultimately come back and make the piece between Israel and the Palestinians rather than waiting to solve that and never getting to paint on the larger canvas. I want to paint on the larger canvas and come back to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. As you were right 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 living organism is to identify danger and time. Because if you don't, you could be devoured, you could be destroyed very quickly. That's the nature of human conflict. In fact, for the Jewish people, we lost the capacity to identify danger and time, and we were almost devoured and destroyed by the Nazi threat.

So when I see somebody parading 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. The second thing is I once asked him before I got elected, I said, well, what do you think is the most important quality for a prime minister of Israel? And he came back with a question, what do you think? And I said, well, you have to have vision and you have to have the flexibility of navigating

and working towards that vision, be flexible, but understand where you're heading. And he said, well, you need that for anything. You need it for, you know, if you're a university president or if you're a leader of a corporation or anything, anybody would have to have that. I said, all right, so what do you need for it to be the leader of Israel? He said, he came back to me with a word that stunned me. He said, education, you need a broad and deep education, or you'll be at the mercy of your clerks or the press or whatever. You have to be able to do that. And as I spend time in government, being reelected by the people of Israel,

I recognize more and more how right it was. You need to constantly ask yourself, where's the direction we want to take the country? How do we achieve that goal, but also understand that new disciplines are being added, you have to learn all the time, you have to learn all the time, you have to add to your intellectual capital all the time. Kissinger said that he wrote that once you enter public life, you begin to draw on your intellectual capital.

And you know, it'll be depleted very quickly if you stay a long time. I disagree with that. I think you have to constantly, constantly increase your understanding of things as they change because because my father was right, you need to broaden and deepen your education as you go along, you can't just sit back and say, well, I studied some things in university or in college or in Boston or in MIT and that's enough. I've done it. No, learn, learn, learn, learn, never stop.

And if I may suggest as part of the education, I would add in a little literature, maybe Dusty Eski in the plentiful of time you have as a prime minister to read. Well, I read him, but I'll tell you what I think is bigger than Dusty Eski. Oh, no. Who's that? Not who's that, but what's that? I was down rather, came to see me with his grandson a few years ago. And he asked me, uh, uh, the grandson asked me with his grandson a few years ago. And he asked me, the grandson

asked me who was a student in the Nibbler League College. And he said, he's 18 years old, and he wants to study to enter politics. And he said, what's the most important thing that I have to study to enter a political life. And I said, you have three things you have to study. History, history, and history. That's the fundamental discipline for political life. But then you have to study other things, study economics, study politics and so on, and study the military. If you have, if you had an advantage because I spent some years there, so I learned a lot of that, but I had to acquire the other disciplines and you never acquire enough. So read, read, read, and by the way, if I have to choose, I read history, history, and history.

Good works of history, not lousy books. 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 or your afraid of death? Aren't you? Yes.

Who's not? I mean, if you're conscious, if you're being with conscious, I mean, what are the unhappy things about the human brain? Is it can contemplate its own, its own demise? And so we have to, we all make our compromises with this. But I think the question is, what lives on? What lives on beyond us? And I think that you have to define how much of posterity do you want to influence?

I cannot influence the course of humanity. We all are aspects, you know, little specs. So that's not the issue, but in my case, I've devoted my life to a very defined purpose, and that is to assure the future and security and I would say permanence, but that is obviously a limited thing of the Jewish state and the Jewish people. I don't think one can exist without the other. So I've devoted my life to that and I hope that in my time on this earth and in my years in office, I'd have contributed to that. Well, you had one heck of a life starting from MIT to six terms as prime minister. Thank you for this stroll through human history and for this conversation, it was an honor.

Thank you, and I hope you come back to us all many times. It's, remember, it's the innovation nation. It's a robust democracy. Don't believe all the stuff that you're being told. It'll remain that it can't be any other way. And it's, I'll tell you the other thing, it's the best ally of the United States. And its importance is growing by the day because

our capacities and the information world are growing by the day, we need a coalition of the like-minded smarts. This is a smart nation and we share the basic values of freedom and liberty with the United States. So the coalition of the smarts means Israel is the sixth eye and America has no better ally. All right. Now off mic I'm going to force you to finally tell me who is going to win Neil and Oscar Mark Zuckerberg, but that's It's a good time, man. We ran out of time here. I'll tell you outside Thanks for listening to this conversation with Benjamin and Tanyao to support this podcast

Please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you some words from a hot magandi And I for an eye will only make the whole world blind Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time. you