Episode Transcript
[00:00:25] Speaker A: Welcome.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: Hello. It's good to be here. I feel right at home on this side.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Because for a few days, you are in the Nethergans. What is the real. What's the reason for your visit?
[00:00:32] Speaker B: I am here as a guest of the Tzohar Rabbinical Organization to speak with the Jewish community, to speak with Christian supporters. But I am darting all around the world, speaking. What's especially exciting for me to come to the Netherlands is that I have Dutch roots.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: You do?
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Yes.
A lot of Jews are into family history and genealogy, as you can probably imagine. And it turns out that my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was the first chief cantor of the Ashkenazi community here in the Netherlands.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: So it's good for you to be back home here.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Absolutely. Because I have done so much research about my family history. He was a refugee from the Thirty Years War back in the 1630s, helped to build the Ashkenazi community. It was extremely moving for me to find his grave at the Meydeburg cemetery, to visit the Jewish museum today, and to see the community that they built and stayed here for 200 years, because the Netherlands offered a rare safe haven, an island of tolerance in a very violent Europe. And so growing up and learning about my family history, that connection to the Netherlands was always very special.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Of course. Yeah. So welcome home. I would say. Well, a lot of people would say that you, as a spokesperson, first for the government, now for the people, as you yourself call it, you are like. Like a propaganda channel for what Israel is doing. So how can you tell me, is that the case? Are you bringing propaganda to us?
[00:02:09] Speaker B: No. Our job is to try to expose the truth about what is happening in Israel at a time that there is a vicious campaign of misinformation that will make any accusation, spread any lie, in order to isolate Israel from its allies. And the reason they do that is that Israel's enemies want to destroy Israel, not reform, not change the borders, destroy.
[00:02:32] Speaker A: So what is your message?
[00:02:33] Speaker B: And they think it will be much easier to destroy Israel if the world is convinced that Israel deserves to be destroyed. So I'm going around helping explain to people, firstly, the lens through which they should understand this conflict. It's not a war between Israel and Hamas. It is a war in which Israel is under attack by the Iranian regime and its proxy armies on seven fronts. This is not a war Israel started. It's not a war it wanted. It's not a war that Israel expected. It's a war in which Israel has three clear goals to Bring down the Hamas terror regime that perpetrated October 7th, to bring back the hostages and to push Hezbollah away from our borders so that people can return safely to their homes. And to present a narrative and a story and facts that people are not aware of, because the level of violence and intimidation on the other side is so overwhelming that sometimes.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: That's what we also see here in Amsterdam happening in the past few weeks.
[00:03:26] Speaker B: Happening at the Christians for Israel center, which was spray painted recently with genocide and Free Palestine and Zionists. It is intimidating people from speaking their minds. And so it's important for us to share that narrative so people understand there are two sides. And I happen to think I want it right.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: Yeah. In the beginning of the war, you were a spokesperson for the Israeli government. Can you describe those first few days as your viewpoint points? What happened to you in those.
[00:03:55] Speaker B: First of all, let me correct you. When the war started, I wasn't a spokesman. When the war started, I was an ordinary citizen.
[00:04:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:03] Speaker B: I wasn't a spokesman for the government. In fact, I was one of the many Israelis who was protesting against the government before the war.
But then October 7 happened, the unthinkable, and we found ourselves at war. And Israeli society did something amazing. And I don't think it gets enough credit for it. Everyone dropped everything and asked, how did JFK put it? Ask not what you can do for your country, but what. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. People just volunteered to do anything they could. I started giving interviews from my living room as a private citizen. And in a week, I found myself getting roped into the prime minister's office, shoved in front of a camera and said, okay, you defend Israel on TV now. But that was a week into the war. Not at the beginning.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: Not at the beginning.
[00:04:48] Speaker B: Not right at the beginning. Israeli society mobilized because everyone understood we are in a fight for our lives. We are in a fight for survival. We need to get the hostages home. We have to push back Hamas and make sure that it can never do this again. And I'm really proud of the way that Israeli Society After October 7, everyone suddenly put their Jewish wars to one side, looked at the big picture of what actually mattered, and said, how can I help?
[00:05:11] Speaker A: And now we are even more than a year later, and the war is still going on. How are you doing right now?
[00:05:17] Speaker B: How am I doing emotionally?
It's been a difficult time. We have been on a rollercoaster for the last year. Let me explain what is happening in Israel. First of all the hostage crisis affected everyone very personally because it shook their sense of personal security. We're talking about people who were abducted from their beds, children who were abducted from their beds, young people who were abducted from a music festival, who went to Glastonbury, I don't know what the Dutch equivalent would be, and woke up in Afghanistan. We need to get the hostages home, because until we do that, Israelis are going to feel unsafe because they know that they can.
[00:05:58] Speaker A: It could happen to anyone.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Exactly. It can happen to anyone. But more than that, every day we have dozens, if not hundreds of rocket sirens.
Every day we have rockets that can be coming from four or five different directions from Gaza, from Hezbollah in Lebanon, from the Houthis in Yemen, even from Iranian militias in Iraq and Syria. And we've had attacks from the Iranian regime itself. And that means that people know that they're trying to get on with their ordinary lives, but at any point, they have to drop everything and in a few seconds run for shelter.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: And this is a situation you're in for over a year now.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: For over a year. And it's worse than that. It's young people who have had to leave their husbands and wives behind and pause their academic degrees and stop their jobs because they getting called into reserves. It's displaced families in the north and the south who cannot go back to their homes and have been living in guest houses for the last month. So Israelis are on the one hand on edge, but on the other hand trying to find ways to live as normal a life as they can. But I emphasize this because there's a perception sometimes around the world that Israelis want war. No, we don't want war. No, we're the first ones suffering because of this war. We need the war to end.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: Let's continue about that later. I want to go to the news because. Because recently the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Your Prime Minister, Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu, and also for Yoav Galat, former Minister of Defense. Netanyahu reacted and he said that this is an antisemitic decision. Do you agree with his. What he's saying?
[00:07:36] Speaker B: I think when you look at how every single line in the request for arrest warrants was based on total falsehoods, that these falsehoods were brought to the attention of the prosecutor who decided to ignore them. It's difficult to understand these warrants as motivated by anything other than an intense hostility to Israel. Every single line. I mean, Israel is accused of closing the Rafah border crossing on October 8th. It's a crossing between Egypt and Gaza. It's accused of shutting the Erez Crossing. It's a pedestrian crossing that hamas destroyed on October 7th.
And what's especially disturbing is that in the arrest warrant that was made for a dead Hamas terrorist, they said it was because of the crime of extermination. That's what hamas did on October 7. They understand that that is the threat that Israel is fighting against.
[00:08:26] Speaker A: So it's something completely different.
[00:08:28] Speaker B: You say it's completely detached from reality. The only way they were able to issue these arrest warrants was by distorting the law and making up the facts.
[00:08:35] Speaker A: So you say it's a complete farce.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: It's a kangaroo court from beginning to end. The prosecutor told said that he wouldn't make a request or make a decision until he had visited and studied all the facts. He then surprised Israel's leaders by canceling a planned visit to Israel and going on CNN to announce that he was requesting arrest warrants. Israel's leaders found out from CNN that the prosecutor had canceled a trip to Israel and was seeking arrest warrants. That's not the behavior of a professional prosecution. That's a kangaroo call.
[00:09:07] Speaker A: Yeah, but still, people say it's criminal court. We have to respect international law. And even it needs to be investigated because Israel is killing a lot of people in Gaza. So these arrest warrants, they are genuine. They should be investigated.
[00:09:23] Speaker B: From Israel's position, we're not even a member of the International Criminal Court. Israel's position is the court lacks jurisdiction. The judges are three random people off the street as far as we're concerned, because they don't have jurisdiction over Israel.
And the fact that they would create this false equivalence between the terror organization that started this war and the democratic country that is fighting a war that was declared against it. And to do it based on total falsehoods and lies is truly outrageous. And that's why in Israel, even the Prime Minister's biggest critics on the left, who think he has mucked up his handling of the war and spare no criticism, see this as an attack. Not on Netanyahu, on all of us as a country, as we fight on seven fronts with hostages still trapped in Gaza.
[00:10:12] Speaker A: But don't you think it's important that the Criminal Court or the Court of Justice is investigating what's going on in Gaza or Lebanon or wherever the war is with Israel?
[00:10:22] Speaker B: The court did not consult a single military expert. And the reason they didn't consult a single military expert is that any general who has experience of counterterrorism wars in Iraq in Afghanistan against isis, knows that the IDF has gone to further lengths than any army in the history of the world to try to keep civilians safe from their own leaders, attempts to use them as human sacrifices. So I don't think there is anything to investigate in terms of the crazy accusations that are being made against Israel, because it's clear how patently absurd they are. On October 7th, Israel was attacked. Israel then launched a campaign to bring down Hamas and kept asking civilians to get out of harm's way for their own safety as Hamas tried to keep them there. I think that we need to investigate Hamas's leaders, the leaders of the other terrorist organizations surrounding Israel's borders. And not just that. I think Philippe Lazarini, the head of unrwa, needs to be investigated. I think the head of a UN agency that allows Hamas to fight out of its institutions, that employs terrorists on a massive scale, that allows it to hijack aid, that launders information and money for it, that indoctrinates a whole generation of terrorists, they should be investigated for providing material support to a terrorist organization. Absolutely.
[00:11:46] Speaker A: Now, in a lot of Dutch media, the question if Israel is committing genocide or not right now is mostly answered by yes, yes. We see the things happening in Gaza, we see the pictures from Gaza, the destroy, the total destruction of the area. So what would be your answer to that? Because it's more given as basics. Yes, Israel is committing genocide before it's even.
[00:12:12] Speaker B: It's really disturbing to hear that. This is a war. War is hell. Israel didn't want this war.
The war started when Hamas launched an act of genocide. That's what October 7th was. They sent in death squads with a mission to murder as many people as they could, as sadistically as they could. They burned whole families alive, they reduced them to human ash, they mutilated people, they tortured them before they were dead. After they were dead, they beheaded them, they committed acts of mass rape. They gunned people down at a music festival out of an ideology that is sworn to the violent destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of the Jews. It was an act of genocide. Even the ICC says it was an act of extermination. And in response, Israel launched a war to bring down the terrorist regime that was threatening to do it again and again because we say never again. Now, it's true that many people have been killed. Too many people have been killed, but they've been killed because Hamas strategy was to deliberately embed itself in civilian areas and fight from behind and underneath civilians. They built military bases into Hospitals into schools, into homes, into mosques. Do you remember recently, six Israeli hostages were executed in a tunnel. The entrance to the tunnel was inside a child's bedroom. Hamas's strategy was to sacrifice its own civilians in order to get this negative coverage in the Netherlands so that people would blame Israel and to poison world opinion against Israel.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: So that's the war strategy.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: It's working. Israel's strategy was to keep urging civilian to get out of harm's way for their own safety, because we don't want people to be killed. For Hamas, civilian deaths are a strategy.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: So what is the reason that so many world leaders, so many politicians, so many lawyers, so many NGOs, say the exact opposite of what you are saying?
[00:14:08] Speaker B: I don't think many world leaders are saying it. Definitely not within democratic countries. Just recently, we saw the Prime Minister of the UK from the Labour Party asked, is this a genocide? He said, no, that is not what Israel is doing.
[00:14:22] Speaker A: But still, the NGOs, the politicians, the lawyers, they see it because these organizations.
[00:14:27] Speaker B: Have been claiming the same thing for years. These are organizations that do not believe that the state of Israel should exist at all. And so it's not surprising that all they have to do to advance that war is to continue lying about it because they want to poison global public opinion against Israel.
[00:14:43] Speaker A: But still, some people say, okay, military operation could have been justified after, after October 7, 2023, but not the total destruction of Gaza. That is way too much.
[00:14:56] Speaker B: The destruction is immense. The destruction is immense because Hamas built a tunnel network underneath Gaza longer than the London Underground in order to destroy that complex underground. Legitimate military targets. You see damage over ground. You see damage in urban areas, because Hamas strategy is to fight an urban war. They walk around between buildings in civilian dress, having hidden machine guns and grenades in buildings. They then shoot at Israeli soldiers from inside an apartment building. An Israeli soldier shoots back, and that's why the building gets destroyed. Everyone who has been killed since October 7th would still be alive if Hamas's psychopath leaders had not launched this war and chosen to fight this war from inside civilian areas. And they have an option. Israel has told them from day one, surrender, release the hostages, and all of this is over. And I think that people who claim to care about the Palestinians should be telling Hamas, free the hostages immediately, unconditionally, lay down your arms. Israel is offering them $5 million for every hostage who's returned, and no one is taking them up on the offer. And if anyone thinks that if Israel is going to abandon the hostages as they're being Starved and tortured and raped and executed in the territory. No, it's not going to happen. They have another thing coming. And by the way, it is outrageous that the UN Security Council recently voted. The US vetoed it, but all the other countries voted in favor of an unconditional ceasefire. Unconditional means not conditional on a release of the hostages. It means that the world pressure right now is on Israel to abandon the hostages and to leave Hamas in power, free to regroup, rearm and plot the next October 7th. Thinking that all the NGOs are going to save them.
[00:16:46] Speaker A: Do you think Hamas can be destroyed?
[00:16:48] Speaker B: I think it can be removed from power, just like ISIS was removed from power. And I think the Netherlands was part of the international coalition of over 70 countries that removed ISIS from power. You had a jihadi terror organization that took over territory and used it to plan attacks around the world. And the international community said, we're not going to allow this jihadi army to occupy territory.
[00:17:12] Speaker A: It's the same thing in Israel, except.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: It'S not thousands of miles away. It's our backyard. If they fire a rocket from there, seconds later it lands inside Israel. You know what the major difference is? When the world took on ISIS in Mosul, for example, you had one militant killed for every three civilians who are killed. The civilian to competent ratio in the war in Gaza is closer to one for one. One terrorist killed for every civilian. Now, too many civilians have been killed, but that shows the lengths to which Israel has gone to try to keep the civilians safe from their own leaders, strategy and people who don't call that out. And I'm speaking Now to the NGOs that claim to fight for human rights. People who blame Israel for trying to thwart Hamas human shield strategy, instead of the terrorists who are putting civilians in harm's way, are encouraging terrorists to keep using civilians as human sacrifices, to keep hiding weapons in mosques, to keep fighting out of hospitals. And they will have blood on their hands when terrorists copy Hamas's tactics around the world.
[00:18:18] Speaker A: Now, the point of the operation that Israel is doing is to ensure Israel's safety as well the northern border as in Gaza. But the war is now going on for more than 400 days. Did Israel achieve it in any way in Gaza?
[00:18:37] Speaker B: Israel has successfully destroyed Hamas's military. When the war started, it had missiles that it could fire at Tel Aviv. I Woke up at 6:30 in the morning on October 7th because they shot rockets at Tel Aviv. Hamas doesn't have that anymore. They don't have rockets. They can't build rockets. They can't smuggle rockets. What started as an organized terrorist army with 24 battalions has been reduced to a guerrilla force. What you're seeing now is an insurgency and a counterinsurgency.
[00:19:07] Speaker A: So what's the use for Israel to continue that?
[00:19:09] Speaker B: Well, what Israel has been less successful at is replacing Hamas as a government in Gaza. And that's where it gets tricky, because there's no one who wants to govern Gaza because they understand what the problems are. Now, there is disagreement in Israel about how we continue the war. The former defense minister, for example, who was fired by Netanyahu, said, we've achieved most of our goals.
Let's go for a hostage deal that gets at least some of the hostages out. And if we have to go back in future in order to smack Hamas back down, we'll move in in future. But we've achieved most of our goals, which is Hamas is no longer a terrorist army. As long as we keep it away from the border, as long as we stop it from importing more missiles, we can contain it. But there is a voice in Israel that says, no, we have to fight Hamas all the way to the end until it cannot regroup. And I think what's disappointing is that internationally, Israel hasn't had the support of countries saying, okay, we agree that after October 7, Hamas can't govern Gaza. Instead, let's think of some serious alternative plans. They've been pressuring Israel to end the war in a way that would allow Hamas to govern Gaza to regain their strength. And that's not an option, because the next October 7th would be a matter of time.
[00:20:25] Speaker A: Yeah. There are a lot of critics also inside Israel, by the way, who say that Netanyahu is only continuing the war so that he can remain in his position as a prime minister. Do you think that is true?
[00:20:38] Speaker B: I hear that criticism as we record this. There are reports that Israel is potentially on the brink of a ceasefire deal in Lebanon.
And I hope very much that the incoming Trump administration will allow us to get a deal on the hostage issue as well.
I'm in two minds about this argument. On the one hand, there are people who think that Netanyahu is trying to drag out the war because it shields him from accountability.
On the other hand, the longer the war goes on, the more people are displaced, the longer the there are no flights into the country and the economy is suffering, the more resentment there will be against the government.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: Against the government, yeah.
[00:21:21] Speaker B: The fact remains Hamas does not want to release the hostages, and anyone who wants this war to be over needs to ask, how do we pressure Hamas to release the hostages now? Do you know what the difference is between Hamas and isis?
ISIS was a global pariah.
No one had relations with isis. Hamas is treated as a legitimate actor, a resistance movement. By Qatar, by Turkey, by Iran. The Netherlands has leverage on Qatar, on Turkey, on Iran. How has it used that leverage to try to force them to get the hostages out? It hasn't. And I think that's a mark of shame for the international community that while Israel has been fighting and we have disagreements now about whether it can get a deal and how it should get a deal, but no one's been pushing from the other side in trying to put pressure on Hamas to release the hostages immediately and unconditionally.
[00:22:17] Speaker A: Yeah. What would happen to Gaza, according to you, after the war? Does Israel have a plan for the day after?
[00:22:25] Speaker B: It depends who governs it.
And whoever governs it will need to rebuild it in a way that makes sure that it is not rebuilt as a launchpad for attacks against Israel. You need to make sure that the concrete goes to people's houses and not to the tunnels under their houses.
It is impossible to have peaceful reconstruction in Gaza if Hamas is still running it, because it will divert the resources just as it diverts the aid towards its military machine. It will rebuild the fortifications that existed before October 7, built the tunnel network longer than the London Underground. Shows you its problem was never resources. Its problem was priorities. And they chose to prioritize. October 7th.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: But do you think there will be peace soon in Gaza?
[00:23:10] Speaker B: No, I don't think there will be peace. Because I think that what drove October 7th was an ideology among the Palestinians that wants the destruction of the State of Israel from the river to the sea by any means necessary. And I'm quoting protesters in the west right now that believes that the state of Israel is illegitimate, shouldn't exist. And if you wage jihad strongly enough, use enough violence against it, you will be able to roll back the country and it will collapse. That was Hamas's vision on October 7, and it's supported by many people in.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: The west still today.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: In order to have peace, in order to have a pathway towards peace, the Palestinians need to abandon the century long, forever war against the Jewish state and to say we're going to live next to Israel, not instead of it. But as long as they continue believing that eventually, if they use enough violence, kill enough people, rape enough women, abduct enough babies, you will have Palestine from the river to the sea, then we're doomed to a cycle of violence. By the way, here is where the international community has a big role to play. Okay.
Most children in Gaza are educated by unrwa, the Palestinians own refugee agency. Let's put to one side the question why the Palestinians have their own agency and all the world's refugees have their own. That means that most of the Terrorists who committed October 7th went to UN schools.
Most of the terrorists who did October 7th went to schools subsidized by the Dutch taxpayer. And world leaders need to ask really horrible questions. How is it possible that the terrorists who perpetrated the atrocities of October 7th were funded by our taxpayers? If we want peace, we need the children in Gaza to be brought up towards a future of peace and reconciliation and coexistence and not to be taught by the same terrorist organization.
That's what UNRWA is that produced the jihadists of October 7th.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Yeah. That's a question that we as Dutch taxpayers need to ask.
[00:25:10] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Because people often think that they are doing good and being humanitarian. But there's a difference between doing good and doing things that feel good. Giving money to an agency that says it is helping refugees feels good. It does tremendous damage in the Middle east and it has to stop.
[00:25:27] Speaker A: Many people who are watching this interview, do they try to stand up for Israel as you do? Also, do you have any advice for the people? What is a good way to defend Israel? Do you have any tips?
[00:25:40] Speaker B: I would zoom out and look at the stakes.
Look at the stakes for Israel and look at the stakes for the Netherlands. What do I mean? Israel is on the frontlines of humanity fighting for humanity.
We know that our enemies, the Iranian regime and the Palestinian terrorists, the Islamic terrorists, are not just against us. Us. They're against Europe as well. We are defending Europe just as the Ukrainians are defending Europe by standing up against Russians, just as the Taiwanese are defending the west by putting up opposition to China, just as South Korea is putting up opposition to North Korea. Look at it globally. Any of those countries gets wiped off the map by its enemies, and the world will be a less safe place for the West. So it's important to understand how Israel is important for the world's security. But it's more than that. I have been visiting several Western countries, horrified to see how the derangement about Israel is importing political violence. That means even people who agree with us are scared to speak their minds. A country in which members of Parliament, journalists, ordinary citizens feel afraid to express an opinion on foreign policy because people are going to come and pour red paint all over their door. It's not a free country.
And part of standing up to this hatred and this derangement means standing up for your country as well as a safe, tolerant and inclusive place, even though.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: You might feel afraid to do so.
[00:27:04] Speaker B: Yes. Because what happens if the movement that is marching through the streets chanting from the river to the sea, what happens if the pogromists who lynched Israeli football fans in Amsterdam think that the street is with them, that the authorities are overwhelmed, that the authorities can't deal with them? They will feel empowered and they will use more violence and more intimidation, and that will make the Netherlands less safe. Standing up for Israel means standing up for your right to speak about Israel means standing up for public discourse in the Netherlands as well.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Elon Levi, thank you very much for sticking out, and good luck also in your work and have a good stay here in the Netherlands.
