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Chuck Freilich: ‘Netanyahu needs to step down or be voted out’

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SUMMARY

Hamas is already beginning to rebuild, Chuck Freilich says, because Israel lacks a post-war vision for Gaza.

 

An Israeli national security expert, Chuck is a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies and has taught at elite American universities like Harvard, NYU, and Columbia. He has spent extensive time in Israel’s national security establishment.

 

The author of three books on Israel—Zion’s Dilemmas: How Israel Makes National Security Policy, Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for an Era of Change, and Israel and the Cyber Threat: How the Startup Nation Became a Global Cyber Power—Chuck specializes in Mideast policymaking, US-Israel relations, and national security.

 

Now, he joins us to answer 18 questions on Israel, including the ceasefire deal, hostage negotiations, and Hamas’ rule in Gaza.

 

This interview was held on Jan. 27.

 

Here are our 18 questions:

 

  1. As an Israeli, and as a Jew, how are you feeling at this moment in Israeli history?
  2. What has been Israel’s greatest success and greatest mistake in its war against Hamas?
  3. How do you think Hamas views the outcome and aftermath of October 7—was it a success, in their eyes?
  4.  What do you look for in deciding which Knesset party to vote for?
  5. Which is more important for Israel: Judaism or democracy?
  6. Should Israel treat its Jewish and non-Jewish citizens the same?
  7. What role should the Israeli government have in religious matters?
  8. Now that Israel already exists, what is the purpose of Zionism?
  9. Is opposing Zionism inherently antisemitic?
  10. Is the IDF the world’s most moral army?
  11. If you were making the case for Israel, where would you begin?
  12. Can questioning the actions of Israel’s government and army — even in the context of this war — be a valid form of love and patriotism?
  13. What do you think is the most legitimate criticism leveled against Israel today?
  14. Do you think peace between Israelis and Palestinians will happen within your lifetime?
  15. What should happen with Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict after the war?
  16. Is Israel properly handling the Iranian threat?
  17. Where do you identify on Israel’s political and religious spectrum, and do you have friends on the “other side”?
  18. Do you have more hope or fear for Israel and the Jewish People?

Transcripts are lightly edited—please excuse any imperfections.

Chuck Freilich: So were lots and lots and lots of Palestinian civilians killed in this war? Yes. Is it extraordinarily regrettable? Yes. Do I think we have a great deal to apologize for? No. Will it turn out when the war is over and the IDF really has time to look into things that some of the charges were correct? Quite likely.

And certain people may have to be punished for this. Remember that for the most part these were civilians who all of a sudden called up for war, found themselves in a horrific kind of war, being fired at all day long. Again, this isn’t in a laboratory. People are being fired at from every direction.

And some of them are 18-year-old kids who were just inducted. So it all has to be put in perspective. I am Chuck Freilich. I’m an expert in Israeli national security affairs.

And this is 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers, from 18Forty.

Sruli Fruchter: From 18Forty, this is 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers, and I’m your host, Sruli Fruchter. 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers is a podcast that interviews Israel’s leading voices to explore those critical questions people are having today on Zionism, the Israel-Hamas war, democracy, morality, Judaism, peace, Israel’s future, and so much more. Every week we introduce you to fresh perspectives and challenging ideas about Israel from across the political spectrum that you won’t find anywhere else.

So if you’re the kind of person who wants to learn, understand, and dive deeper into Israel, then join us on our journey as we pose 18 pressing questions to the 40 Israeli journalists, scholars, and religious thinkers you need to hear from today. Today’s guest is a really exciting and interesting person, not just for his actual credentials, but because he was my professor when I was at YU. Professor Chuck Freilich, who happens to share the last name as my mother’s family name, taught me Middle East security when I was at Yeshiva University studying Middle East security. It was a difficult class, and I have the essays to prove it and the feedback to prove it, but what was especially cool about that class is that he was a visiting professor who does not just teach about Middle East security and about Israeli national security, but is really an expert in that field and has been so for over 20 years.

Chuck Freilich is a senior fellow at the Institute for National Security Strategies in Israel, an independent think tank in Israel that focuses on long-term national security policy, and he has served for over 20 years in Israel’s national security establishment as a senior analyst and as a deputy national security advisor, much of which was actually spent in Israel’s defense establishment. He was a longtime senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School and has taught political science at Harvard, Columbia, NYU, and Tel Aviv Universities, as well as now Georgetown and, once upon a time, Yeshiva University. Freilich specializes in Israel’s national security and policymaking processes and Middle East policy and U.S.-Israel relations. And one of the things that was really fascinating about the interview was that there was so much that was discussed about the ceasefire deal, about possible peace negotiations, about the future of Gaza and a potential Palestinian state, that Chuck was able to bring not just his academic expertise and knowledge of the field, but his firsthand professional exposure to the realities and the difficult considerations of planning and incorporating national security.

He is the senior editor of the The Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs and is the author of Zion’s Dilemmas: How Israel Makes National Security Policy, Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for an Era of Change, and most recently, Israel and the Cyber Threat: How the Startup Nation Became a Global Cyber Power. You can find a host of his multitude of academic articles and hundreds of op-eds in Israeli and international media. There is so much to learn from him and so much that we discussed in the interview that I really hope is the starting point for further investigation and exploration, whether you agree or disagree, because there is so much to learn. And so before we head into this week’s episode, Chuck is our 27th Israeli thinker, and we are always looking for new suggestions.

If you have questions that you want us to be asking or guests that you want us to feature, please shoot us an email, info@18Forty.org. All the time, we get general recommendations. We want more Haredi thinkers, more leftist thinkers, more right-wing thinkers, more religious thinkers. We have our list.

We have people that we are interested in, but if we want to hear from you, if there are people that we may not be considering or maybe put on the back burner, please email us. And on a different note, if you are a fan of 18 Questions, 40 Israeli Thinkers or 18Forty, or you’re a hater, you are please encouraged and invited to fill out our survey, our annual end-of-year survey, linked in the description below, for a chance to win cash or books, both equally valuable. We really need the feedback. We love the feedback, and we really do grow from the feedback.

So please take some time, check it out, five to ten minutes, very quick. And without further ado, here is 18 Questions with Chuck Freilich. So we’ll begin where we always do. As an Israeli and as a Jew, how are you feeling at this moment in Israeli history?

Chuck Freilich: Well, I think that we went from the absolutely worst day in our history, a largely self-inflicted catastrophe, to a result at the moment, which in many ways looks very good.

The axis of resistance, Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and various Shiite militias, have been largely defeated. Now, it’s not a total knockout. They haven’t been eliminated. But Hezbollah is a fraction of what it was, and it was the biggest threat to Israel before the war.

And that’s something that happened just in the last few months since October. Hamas has been hit very, very hard. It hasn’t been eradicated militarily. It’s been defeated militarily, but will regroup over time.

There’s no doubt about that. It’s already begun it. Iran was hit very hard in October, and we essentially opened their airspace for any future attack and greatly downgraded their ballistic missile capability. And of course, Syria collapsed, at least partly as a result of the other things that Israel had done.

So, the strategic environment looks much better today than it did just a few months ago, certainly on October 7th. And at the same time, I’m very concerned that if we don’t take the initiative, a lot of these gains will be frittered away. And we’re already seeing, for example, Hamas begin to reconstitute in Gaza.

Sruli Fruchter: Yeah.

So, I was going to ask, the U.S. intelligence report said that Hamas already recruited 15,000 fighters, which even by Israeli estimates of the casualty count and how many were actual combatants from Hamas, it seems like it almost reverses a lot of the gains that were militarily gained. Does that change how you view Hamas’s military defeat?

Chuck Freilich: Well, of course, any reconstitution is a negative thing, but it doesn’t really change the picture. You’re talking 15,000 new untrained people, and you’re talking 15,000 people who will be entering a defeated military system. A very high percentage of the underground, the tunnels have been destroyed.

Of the really important ones, most, if not all, have been destroyed. They lost pretty much all of their other military capabilities. So, is it a welcome development? Absolutely not. And it’s the beginning of the process of reconstitution that we don’t want to see.

But it will take, at a minimum, a few years before Hamas can become a threat of significance to us again. They have very few rockets.

Sruli Fruchter: What do you think has been Israel’s greatest success and greatest mistake in the war against Hamas?

Chuck Freilich: Well, the successes, there’s no one. Defeating Hamas militarily was a major success.

Defeating Hezbollah militarily maybe was an even bigger success. And opening up the Iranian airspace was also very big. So, it’s been militarily successful. The biggest downside is that we haven’t set out any vision for the post-war order or situation in Gaza.

And in the absence of any Israeli proposals, whether it’s to bring the PA back, which I think is the only realistic one, but whatever proposal one prefers, in the absence of Israeli action, there is no vacuum. So, Hamas is reconstituting. And one of the things that we did not succeed in doing is in destroying their military control of Gaza. Excuse me, their political control of Gaza.

So, if we don’t do something to change the situation, within a few years, it will turn out that this entire war, this really long and very painful war, was no more than just another slightly better round than the earlier ones, better in terms of the outcome.

Sruli Fruchter: What’s holding Israel back?

Chuck Freilich: Israeli politics. The prime minister has refused from day one to set out a post-war vision. He was pressed by the Biden administration time and time again to do so.

And this wasn’t just American pressure out of some sort of, I don’t know, certainly not animosity on the part of the Biden administration. It was, guys, what do you want to do afterwards? You’re fighting a war. Wars are fought for political reasons. First of all, military.

But in the end, it’s for political reasons. What do you want to do afterwards? I think that’s been the biggest failure. And after that, the failure to address the hostage situation much earlier. It looks like it could have been done months ago.

Sruli Fruchter: Why do you say that?

Chuck Freilich: Because it didn’t suit the prime minister’s political considerations.

Sruli Fruchter: So, I’ve seen some people describing that the ceasefire deal that was reached about two weeks ago is effectively the same deal that was submitted in May, and that others have pushed back and said, no, it’s A, a different landscape regionally. There is different opportunities that Trump would provide for, or securities Trump would provide for Israel and Netanyahu if the deal were to go awry. There must be different concessions.

Do you agree with those assessments, or do you see that those aren’t as significant as people are making them out to be?

Chuck Freilich: Well, it’s certainly true that there’s a different landscape, and that contributed to the ability to reach the deal now. There’s no doubt about that. But the deal itself, the components are very, very similar, if not almost identical to what was agreed in May, what was initially an Israeli proposal and then was adopted by the Biden administration. Sinwar was killed in the meantime.

That changed Hamas’s situation. It’s not just the overall strategic situation, which also contributed to the fact that we reached a deal now. Trump may have added some inducement or motivation to the Palestinians, to Hamas, to reach a deal now. But most of the pressure that he exerted, they’ll be held to pay, most of that pressure was on Israel, not on Hamas.

Sruli Fruchter: So it seems that there’s an interesting duality where on the one hand, there’s significant military defeats and accomplishments that Israel has done. And yet on the same front, it seems like you’re describing a lot of failures and continued lost opportunities by Israel. Where do you situate in terms of giving Bibi or the Israeli government credit for what’s been done versus giving them pretty harsh criticism?

Chuck Freilich: Well, I think the prime minister bears responsibility for the failure of October 7th. But if one wants to hold him responsible for that, then it’s just fair to give him credit for the achievements of recent months.

So I think those two things do partly balance each other. But in the end, the colossal failure of the magnitude of October 7th, the failure to set out a post-war vision of any sort, I think the prime minister has to step down or more likelihood be voted out.

Sruli Fruchter: Do you think that’ll happen?

Chuck Freilich: Yeah, I think.

Sruli Fruchter: Don’t the polls show that Bibi’s leading with pretty significant support relative to the other parties?

Chuck Freilich: Well, he’s gone up by a couple of few seats in the polls in the last half year, and that’s not surprising given the change in the strategic situation.

But if Bennett enters the race, which I think is almost a foregone conclusion, it would be very hard if not impossible for him to form a coalition after the next election.

Sruli Fruchter: How do you think Hamas views the outcome and aftermath of October 7th? Was it a success in their eyes?

Chuck Freilich: It’s interesting. One of the things that I’ve learned over the years is how different things can look depending on where you’re looking from. I think any objective military analyst would look at what’s happened in Gaza and say this has been an all-out strategic defeat for Hamas.

Gaza is in ruins. They will look at it. They’re portraying it partly for propaganda purposes, but partly they mean it as a success. And to a certain extent, they’re right.

One of their minimum objective when the war started was to survive this as an organization. They’ve done that. And it’s more than that. They’ve remained partly, as I was saying, because of decisions we made, they’ve remained the de facto political power in Gaza and will regroup militarily.

This was, if we don’t do something soon, this was just another one of the rounds. And that would be a very bad outcome from our point of view. It would be something that they can consider a success.

Sruli Fruchter: Was it ever a possibility to actually destroy Hamas? I feel like there’s always been this active conversation between you can’t destroy an ideology, you needed to give them the replacement in order to vote them out, we’re going to eradicate every Hamas fighter left.

And that’s happening within and outside of Israel. From your view, was that ever a real possibility?

Chuck Freilich: Destroying an ideology, of course, is something you can’t do unless there’s a better alternative in place. Nazi Germany and Japan were defeated militarily. But what allowed them to become functioning democracies is that there was a different alternative there.

Now, it’s not as if Gaza’s going to become a functioning democracy, but there has to be some other alternative, because otherwise, they survive. Now, when you say destroy them, could we have wiped out every last Gaza fighter, Hamas fighter? Of course not. That was never the objective. The objective was to defeat them as a coherent military organization.

Maybe that’s not the way it was portrayed, but that was the real objective and that was achieved. The problem was that there wasn’t the political arm to this and it was just a military operation.

Sruli Fruchter: I want to shift gears a little bit and talk more specifically about Israeli society in general. What do you look for when you’re deciding which Knesset party to vote for? Not which party you vote for, unless you want to say, but you know, the considerations that you have, the things that you’re looking at.

Chuck Freilich: Look, I look for responsible governance. And I think we’ve had irresponsible governance for years. It’s become a free-for-all where every minister, every member of Knesset fights for his own or her own personal interests. The interests of the state of Israel have been subjugated to these growing individual demands.

This didn’t start under this government, but it’s…

Sruli Fruchter: When did it start?

Chuck Freilich: Well, maybe to a certain extent, it’s even a couple of few decades already, but it has gotten so much worse under Likud leadership. And post-October 7th, it has become just outrageous, unacceptable. It’s not as if in the old days, the governments weren’t motivated by self-interest.

Of course, that’s human nature. It’s politics. It’s always about that. But there were things that you just didn’t do.

There’s the, in Britain, the concept it’s not acceptable. To a certain extent, that never existed in Israel, but to a certain extent, it also did. And there was a statist view.

Sruli Fruchter: What’s an example you’re thinking of?

Chuck Freilich: Well, even with the hostages now, the fact that Bibi could maybe even…

Let’s say that the criticism of his, which is pretty widespread, seems to be very well-based. Let’s say it’s overstated that he didn’t play with them politically as much as he’s accused of. He did somewhat. I think you have to…

It’s very hard to make a case that he didn’t use them at least somewhat.

Sruli Fruchter: Why do you say that?

Chuck Freilich: I think all the evidence is against him. That’s all. And the fact that he has not been willing to present a post-war vision of any sort is, again, politics.

The fact that now the IDF needs additional personnel desperately. What’s the IDF? The state of Israel needs it. And now we’re going to put through an exemption for orthodox military service, an outrage which has been ongoing for decades. But now, after this, there’s the whole judicial reform process, which has been renewed again.

The fact that our so-called Minister of Justice is the archenemy of the Supreme Court, fighting them day and night, leading a well, of course, what I’m saying now I can’t prove, but it’s pretty self-evident. Anybody knows what’s going on leading a vile campaign to undermine the stature, the legitimacy of the incoming head of the Supreme Court. The list just goes on and on and on. If we had a few hours, I could give you the whole list.

Sruli Fruchter: Why do you think Bibi and his government is doing this? Meaning, I think on one level, there’s, you know, more of the caricatures that people will paint. It’s an ultra-nationalist vision. There is some sort of motivation. But as someone who’s worked in the government and has worked closely with the government and is involved with the happenings of Israel day to day, what do you think is the motivation that is driving these things that’s maybe more complex than people are used to?

Chuck Freilich: I think the prime minister, who in the past had some significant achievements to his name, and some of the things that he said over time, let’s say on the Palestinian issue, were proven correct.

A lot of them were proven wrong. But what’s happened is that in the last few years, certainly since the war, I believe that it is incontrovertible that he’s putting his own personal legal interests, the danger that he will be found guilty and will have to do prison time, putting that above any other consideration. Now, I imagine when he goes to sleep at night, he doesn’t acknowledge that to himself. But he has become such a cynical politician that the state of Israel is no longer really of concern.

It’s all about him, his personal political survival. I think he is also pushed to take this extreme kind of behavior by his wife and his younger son, by Yair. There’s lots of cynical politics going on in the world, not only in Israel. And this isn’t the best time for democracy in the US and in Europe as well.

But I don’t know of cases that have been really this extreme.

Sruli Fruchter: Which is more important for Israel, Judaism or democracy?

Chuck Freilich: That’s like asking, who do you like more, your mother or your father? And I won’t answer it in a yes or no way. To my way of thinking, those are the two pillars of Israel’s national security. And I won’t compromise on either.

There’s, of course, a question of how do you define Jewish? How do you define democratic? But I think we all have a broad understanding. Maybe we don’t all. We at least used to have a broad understanding of what democratic means. And on Jewish, what makes Israel a Jewish state? Is it the religion per se? Or is it the fact that the vast majority of the population is Jewish? To me, the second is the more important factor.

We actually don’t have a legal state religion. And I think correctly so, and that’s the way it should be.

Sruli Fruchter: What does that mean for the non-Jew citizens in Israel, or for Israel’s democratic elements? Where would you see potential conflicts coming up? That the question itself is still an active one that people are grappling with in Israel in different ways. Many people have seen judicial reform as the culmination of the Jewish and democratic values or pillars of Israel coming to head.

Chuck Freilich: No, I don’t think judicial reform is about that. It’s not about the Jewish versus the democratic character. It’s about simply undermining democracy so that the government has almost unchallenged control of everything. It’s not becoming quite an authoritarian state, but not too far from it, or a semi-democracy.

That’s what it’s about. I think we have to maintain the long-standing arrangement that we have had in Israel, which is yes, we are a state with a very strong Jewish flavor. We were established to be the nation-state of the Jewish people, but not to become a Jewish version of Iran, which is what some people are leading us to.

Sruli Fruchter: Should Israel treat its Jewish and non-Jew citizens the same?

Chuck Freilich: Well, look, here’s where there will always be some minor clash between the purely democratic or the purely Jewish character.

When you say that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, and I don’t think that there’s anyone in the Jewish public who would oppose to that, then you are creating some problem for the Arab population, which is 20 percent of the country. Now, we can really emphasize the Jewish side, and we can have the nation law, which was just a totally unnecessary, provocative statement. We can try and alienate the non-Jewish population. We’ve done a pretty good job of doing that over the decades.

We can also recognize that they want to be a part of Israel. They have a problem being part of Israel, especially to the extent that the Palestinian problem keeps bubbling, fermenting, as it has over the decades. I would imagine if you’re an Israeli-Palestinian while the Gaza war is going on. Now, the war starts with a significant number of Arab Israelis killed, and strong support in the Arab population for Israel.

And throughout the war, there was fairly strong support. But they’ve got mixed emotions, not surprisingly. We have to find a way to minimize whatever sense of clash that they feel. We have to find a way to integrate them into Israeli society as much as is possible, make them feel welcome in Israel, even though it is the nation state of the Jewish people.

We have to fight anyone on the Arab side who won’t accept that definition. And there are people who won’t. There are people who want Israel just to become, what’s it called?

Sruli Fruchter: Binational.

Chuck Freilich: No, certainly not binational, but a state for all its people.

Well, a state for all its people, yes, but not if that means losing the Jewish character of Israel. If we lose our Jewish character, there’s no reason for our existence.

Sruli Fruchter: So doesn’t that vision fundamentally challenge a liberal democracy that Israel would want to be?

Chuck Freilich: I don’t think so.

Sruli Fruchter: That it has a condition on whether or not it can be for all its citizens.

I could see many academics, many activists saying precisely that, that Jewish vision, meeting a Jewish majority, meeting the Jewish character, compromises the fact that in the back of Israel’s mind, or in the government’s mind, there will always be a concession or a condition that it can’t really be for all its citizens because the Jews need to be first. Why do you see that as not necessarily the conflict of Judaism and democracy?

Chuck Freilich: Look, first of all, the question is how do you define a Jew? Is it just a religion, or is it a nationality? Is it some combination of the two? For me, I think for most of the secular population in Israel, it’s first and foremost a national identity, and the religious identity is secondary. It’s a part of it. You can’t separate Israelism from Judaism, but it’s first and foremost a national identity.

Democracy isn’t perfect. I mean, too many people, academics, and I think too many people in the U.S. and in the Jewish community, debate everything as an all or nothing. And this, by the way, what I’ll say now also has to do with the resolution of the West Bank issue, Palestinian issue. There are three million Americans, they happen to be Puerto Ricans, who are discriminated against.

They cannot vote for the president or for Congress. This is a totally non-democratic situation. Does anybody say that the United States isn’t a democracy because of that? And is the U.S. a perfect democracy in other ways? No. In the real world, is there a little problem here? The answer is yes.

Sruli Fruchter: Meaning democracies are allowed complexity. It’s not you either. It’s not a box you check yes on. It’s a spectrum, so to speak.

Chuck Freilich: That’s right. It is a spectrum, and I don’t know exactly where you say that the spectrum starts becoming undemocratic. I think Israel is a vibrant democracy. It’s not a perfect one.

The situation with the Arab population is improving constantly. They are increasingly integrated in a way that they weren’t. Wherever you go today, if you go to a movie, you go to restaurants, you see Israeli Arabs you didn’t in the past. You pick up the phone to call centers.

You go to hospitals. Maybe I’m overstating it. A significant percentage, and when I say significant, I don’t mean ten percent. Tens of percent of the nurses and the doctors that you will meet are Israeli Arabs.

So we have to manage this. We have to make this work and not let the room for clash overwhelm the fact that the overall situation is not bad.

Sruli Fruchter: What role should the Israeli government have in religious matters?

Chuck Freilich: I don’t think the government per se should have very much role in religious life at all. There should be a rabbinate.

It should not be part of a government ministry or related to a government ministry. I don’t even have a problem with the government providing money for Jewish religious life. We do want this to be the nation state of the Jewish people. What I very, very, very much do not want is the government or any official body to be able to intervene in my personal life.

So if I want to get married in the rabbinate, which I did, that’s my right. If I want a civil marriage, I should have civil marriage. And today there’s a version of it in Israel that didn’t exist in the past.

Sruli Fruchter: Which version is that?

Chuck Freilich: It’s called an agreement for joint life, which I have with my current wife, who actually legally isn’t my wife.

You go to the court and the court approves an agreement.

Sruli Fruchter: How new is this?

Chuck Freilich: I don’t know, 20 years. It’s been around for a long time. And it’s sort of a marital contract, so to speak.

It’s mostly to resolve the potential economic battles in the future. So you resolve in advance how joint assets will be divided. But it’s close to a civil marriage. I think we should have public transportation on Shabbat now, not in religious neighborhoods.

They have the right in an overwhelmingly religious neighborhood to set the nature of their daily life. But again, we have to find a way to make things work. And the religious and especially the Haredi population is growing very rapidly. If things do not change, then by 2065, which is about as far out as the demographic prognoses go, Israel will be about a third Haredi.

Now, to my way of thinking, that is absolute ruin for the country, because it undermines us economically, unless they start participating fully in economic life. If they do not join in military service, it weakens us militarily. And if you look at the kind of positions that the Haredi population has been taking, it undermines us democratically. There are some good changes happening in the Haredi population, but far too few and far too slowly.

Sruli Fruchter: Now that Israel already exists, what’s the purpose of Zionism?

Chuck Freilich: Zionism is having a Jewish state. So for me, that’s the definition. Beyond that, people want to get into all sorts of ideological debates about it. Zionism was a phenomenally successful national movement.

We achieved independence in 50 years. And despite all odds, we’re still here almost 80 years later, and we’re not going anywhere. To me, Zionism is making Israel a successful, vibrant Jewish and democratic state.

Sruli Fruchter: Is opposing Zionism inherently antisemitic?

Chuck Freilich: I think opposing Zionism, yes.

Opposing certain Israeli policies, no. That every one of us is free to do, Israeli citizens and people around the world. I disagree with a whole range of our policies, and I’m a fiercely patriotic Israeli and Zionist.

Sruli Fruchter: Why is opposing Zionism outside the pale? I mean, I know that you mentioned, we were speaking before the interview, that you teach frequently in the States at New York University, and upcoming, I don’t know if I can say, at Georgetown.

Given that you were on the ground in many of the hotspots where media attention has been, specifically around the war in Gaza and about Israel and Zionism and Hamas, how does that inform your perspective? And I guess just to double onto that, why is opposing Zionism beyond the pale in your view?

Chuck Freilich: Zionism means the right of the Jewish people to have a state of their own. Now, most liberal critics in the world today recognize everybody else’s right to self-determination, including the Palestinians. Where’s the recognition of Israel’s or the Jewish people’s right to self-determination? Actually, we saw the League of Nations recognize it and the United Nations in 1947 recognize it, the U.S. government and most Western democratic governments recognize it. So, if you say no, if you’re denying the right to self-determination just of the Jewish people, that’s a discriminatory approach.

For a lot of people, I think it’s based on what is, to me, a totally misguided understanding of what the Jewish people are about, is that we are both a people, a nation, and a religion. Now, we happen to be unique or just about unique in that way. I don’t know of other groups, certainly in the West, I’m not an expert on these, in which we have people, we have groups that are both a nation and a religion, but we are. And to deny us that fundamental right is, I think, couldn’t be more discriminatory.

Sruli Fruchter: But isn’t there argument that historically Zionism, one may define Zionism as the national movement for liberation for the Jewish people and self-determination, but historically it comes with a lot of other assertions and indications about what that means for Palestinians, for the region in general. Where does that complexity fit into this, that people may not describe or identify Zionism as limited as you might?

Chuck Freilich: There have been different streams in Zionism over the decades, as there have been in all national movements. Some of them I like more, some I like less. That’s the nature of national movements, of any national movements.

For decades, I think, Israel did a really good job of presenting a reasonable approach to our national life here and to all the problems that we faced. I don’t think we’ve been doing that in the last few decades. And by the way, I don’t want viewers to misunderstand, I’m not one of those people on the center or the left who are agog at the prospects of a Palestinian state. I think if there is one, and I tend to think that they’ve probably missed their historic opportunity to have one, but if there is a Palestinian state, it’ll be another corrupt, radical, not terribly successful Arab state.

And at this point, I don’t think we can even talk about the two-state solution. We have to look at other ways of separating. But too many people have been saying unacceptable things in recent decades, and especially in recent years. If you look at the statements by this government, by the Minister of Finance, not some third-level minister, the Minister of Finance.

If you look at, especially at the statements by the, until recently, the Minister of…

Sruli Fruchter: Smotrich and Ben-Gvir.

Chuck Freilich: Yeah, of domestic security. Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and their ilk.

These are absolutely racist, fascist statements. And to see it coming from Jews is totally reprehensible. I think most of the Zionist movement has been a pragmatic movement. And by the way, that’s what’s differentiated us from the Palestinian national movement and made the Zionist movement so much more successful.

So we were pragmatic. Okay, in ’48, in ’47, did we want the partition agreement as presented? Absolutely not. In ’37, did we want the Peel Commission, which was far worse, from our point of view? Absolutely not. In both cases, we said, yes, we’ll take it.

It’s a horror. These aren’t viable statements. Let’s get that, and we’ll see. Maybe God will be good, and we’ll be able to have something better in the future, which we did.

The Palestinians have taken a totally different approach, which was always an all or nothing one, okay? Complete return of the refugees. Until 88, at least, a refusal to even talk about two states. And a significant part of the Palestinian body politic is still unwilling to accept two states. So I think we have to go back to a pragmatic, rational approach.

Ideology has always been there, but not the radical, the theocratic ideology that we’ve seen in the last couple of decades.

Sruli Fruchter: Is the IDF the world’s most moral army?

Chuck Freilich: Yes. The short answer is yes. I think we have gone to extraordinary lengths, including in this fighting, to minimize civilian casualties.

Now, people say, oh, well, yeah, but you killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. And of course, the Palestinian numbers, well, they’re talking today about 45,000 killed. Let’s say 25,000 of those are civilians. That’s a tragedy.

That’s a horror. But there is a cost to war. There’s a cost to starting wars of annihilation, which is what Hamas intended this to be. There is a cost to placing your weapons among your civilian population, and in the most sensitive spots, hospitals, schools, community centers, to use them as human shields.

So what choice do we have? Now, for the people who criticize the way that the IDF has prosecuted the war, I have yet to hear one of them come up with a way of doing so that would not have caused far greater Israeli casualties. Could have minimized or reduced somewhat Palestinian casualties, but far greater Israeli casualties. Sorry, not willing to do that.

Sruli Fruchter: Reporting in Haaretz and New York Times, I mean, other publications as well, but those are the those are the ones that I’m most familiar with, has reported on issues or alleged war crimes by the IDF.

How do you respond to those types of allegations of those stories? Do you think they’re misguided? They’re missing information?

Chuck Freilich: Were some war crimes committed in the course of this war almost a year and a half? The answer may be yes. Things happen in wars, in every war. Wars aren’t some sort of sterile computer game. People die in wars.

As a matter of fact, the objective of wars is to kill people. Wars are the most heinous human activity. So we try to minimize casualties. We are fighting a horrible enemy, one which is committed to our destruction and which has repeatedly said, by the way, that they’re preparing for the next round, right? So we had to take extreme measures.

In some cases, may they be questionable? Maybe. Most of the people who are questioning it are sitting in nice comfortable homes or offices outside of Israel. Many of them have very little understanding of military conflict, have very little understanding, by the way, of international law. Military law, there’s all this talk about, well, Israel’s response hasn’t been proportionate.

International law doesn’t say if they killed one person, then you can kill 10 or you can kill 20. It doesn’t say something. The proportional element, it can’t be indiscriminate, but proportional relates to what the military commander on the ground thought that he had to do in order to achieve the military objective that he was assigned. So were lots and lots and lots of Palestinian civilians killed in this war? Yes.

Is it extraordinarily regrettable? Yes. Do I think we have a great deal to apologize for? No. Will it turn out when the war is over and the IDF really has time to look into things that some of the charges were correct? Quite likely. And certain people may have to be punished for this.

Remember that for the most part, these were civilians who all of a sudden called up for war, found themselves in a horrific kind of war, being fired at all day long. Again, this isn’t in a laboratory. People are being fired at from every direction. And some of them are 18-year-old kids who were just inducted.

So it all has to be put in perspective.

Sruli Fruchter: Meaning it sounds like your answer is similar to when you’re speaking about democracy, that usually people have a very black and white vision that either this war is, if a war crime was committed or something wrong was done, the entire war is then tainted, or the entire war is perfect and blissful and done in a laboratory, as you were describing. But there really is, not to keep going back to that spectrum analogy, which is way overdone in general with everything, but there is a lot of nuance in terms of, A, things in war happen. It’s almost inevitable no matter who’s fighting the war.

But to some extent, that’s kind of the nature of war.

Chuck Freilich: Absolutely. Look, I think part of the problem is that political discourse around the world, especially in the US and in Israel in recent years, has become too polarized. Everybody’s arguing their positions totally.

So if you’re pro-Likud or the right, then everybody in the left is wrong. If you’re pro-left, everybody in the right is wrong. No, that was never the case. Every side always had some right on their side.

I think now, speaking from an Israeli perspective, that October 7th proved that we were all wrong. The right was wrong in thinking that we could continue to ignore the Palestinian issue, that we could just brush it aside and go ahead with some other good things that were happening, such as the Abraham Accords. I think that they’ve always been totally wrong in thinking that we can annex the West Bank as part of it. And the left was wrong in thinking that there were prospects for peace with the Palestinians at any time in the future and a two-state solution.

It’s not going to happen. And in the US today, I think, I mean, if you like Trump, then you’re inherently an enemy of the people to Democrats. And if you’re a Republican, the Democrats are inherently wrong about everything they say. Life is much, much, much too complicated for that.

And it doesn’t help to reach workable solutions when you take that kind of approach.

Sruli Fruchter: Can questioning the actions of Israel’s government and army, even in the context of this war, can that be considered a valid form of love and patriotism?

Chuck Freilich: Yeah.

Sruli Fruchter: Do you think it’s happening enough, too much?

Chuck Freilich: I think that the critics gave the government a fair amount of time before they started the criticism. I’m talking about since October 7th.

The first half year, there was pretty much unquestioned support. Then people started suspecting that the prime minister was playing with the hostage lives and playing with the conduct of the war for his own personal benefit. When that happened, then it was absolutely right to begin criticizing. And for all of the major successes of the last few months, and they were major, are we losing guys today in Gaza for the last, certainly the last few weeks, for no real reason, for no military objective? I think pretty much any military expert would say that that may really be becoming the case.

Should we sit and ignore that and allow soldiers to be killed for no reason? God forbid. Now, then the question, of course, is how and when you criticize. The biggest case, and one which I will never resolve for myself fully, was during the height of the judicial overhaul in the summer of 23, when pilots, former commando soldiers, the cream of the cream, were saying, we will not support this government. We won’t serve this government.

I think my own initial position was, hey, no. What do you mean you’re not going to show up for reserve duty yet? Of course we’d show up for reserve duty. It’s our sworn duty. At some point, was there a higher good? We thought at that point that we weren’t in imminent military danger, so we have to preserve Israel’s democracy.

Now, when you allow one side to take the position that, well, there’s something else happening, there’s some other consideration that overrides the other consideration, the commitment to service, that’s a problem. Because if one side does it once, then the other side can do it in the future, right? I eventually came around to the position that there was no choice, that Israel’s fundamental character as a democracy was challenged at the time. I hated the decision. I do now also, because I see the other side, as I thought, trying to say similar things.

Again, there’s no easy answer. Life is too complex for there to be an absolute one.

Sruli Fruchter: What do you think is the most legitimate criticism leveled against Israel today?

Chuck Freilich: First of all, there were so many, it’s hard to think which is the most legitimate. I think the, yeah, I think the international community, which supported us when the international community thought that Israel was trying to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians.

We had-

Sruli Fruchter: When are you speaking of timeline-wise?

Chuck Freilich: Well, with the Arabs as a whole, certainly until the ’70s and ’80s. With the Palestinians, it starts changing in the ’90s. Not yet in the US, in Europe, yes. Maybe even in the ’80s in Europe.

In 2000, when we had the Camp David summit, and then the Clinton parameters, when it really looked, and again in 2008 under Oman, when it looked like Israel was presenting dramatic proposals for peace, well beyond what anyone even expected, we had strong international support. But after 2000, certainly after 2008, it started after Camp David in 2000, some people increasingly came to view Israel as the obstacle, not the Palestinians. The Intifada gave us some time, but certainly by around 2010, a large part of the international community was convinced that Israel was the primary obstacle. Now, I’m talking about the intelligent international community.

Nobody thought that the Palestinians were- that they got a clean bill of health, but that we became the primary obstacle. And that, I think, is the problem today. Even after the war, this, I don’t even know what to call it, outrageous attack, this genocidal attack by Hamas, but Israel isn’t willing to go forward. The government isn’t to say two states.

Well, what are you willing to say? In effect, nothing. That’s our biggest problem. And we can change it very quickly. Well, superficially very quickly for a really deep change.

It’ll take a few years if we change our policy. And we’re consistently willing to do something very significant to resolve the conflict, whether it’s two states. Again, I personally think that two states are- that paradigm is done. I’ve got another proposal, which has to do with a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation, which would include about 90% of the West Bank.

And we would add a second component to this, which is a multilateral land swap, where Egypt gives the Gaza some space, because Gaza in its current territory just isn’t viable. Population is too big. So the Egyptians give Gaza some territory. We give the Egyptians some similar territory on our side of the Egyptian-Israeli border.

And in the West Bank, now the Palestinians compensate us because we gave them territory for Gaza. And this idea, it’s not a new one. It was proposed by a professor from Hebrew U and then General Giora Eiland 20 years ago. No one loses net territory, but the Palestinians gain territory where they really, really need it, which is Gaza.

Not that they don’t need it in the West Bank, but especially Gaza. We get to keep, let’s say, about 10% of the West Bank, which is the critical part. That means that we can keep 80% of the settler community. We can set up this confederation.

And then Jordan is a responsible state. If they bear overall responsibility for national security, for maintaining the peace with us, that looks to me like maybe a route to go. The Jordanians will say absolutely no way today over our dead bodies. We have to do it in a way that they don’t feel threatened.

And I think that there are ways to do that. We don’t have time to go into it.

Sruli Fruchter: What are the drawbacks of this proposal and why hasn’t it been pushed forward?

Chuck Freilich: Well, the idea of a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation, or some people have said a Jordanian-Palestinian-Israeli confederation, and maybe even one that includes Egypt, these ideas have been bounded around for decades. The two-state solution became the accepted one in the world.

Now, to a certain extent, this is a good thing, because for decades, a lot of countries of the world, the Arab world, the third world, didn’t favor a two-state solution. They favored a one-state solution, Palestine, not Israel. So to a certain extent, that was welcome. And there were a number of Israeli governments over the years that were favorable towards a two-state solution also.

It’s now been a while since that’s been the case. And I think on the I just don’t see how it works anymore. I think we’ve out-settled ourselves. The Palestinians have out-rejected themselves.

And after October 7th, even people like myself, who I was a lifelong supporter of two states, I don’t think we can get the security arrangements, security guarantees, without which no one in Israel will agree to a two-state solution. If what happened in Gaza happened on our side of the border, if the Palestinians are in security control on the West Bank border, just a few miles from Tel Aviv, it’s 12 miles to Tel Aviv, doesn’t work. So I think, as I’m saying, we have to find new ways of separating. For me, and this gets back to the issue of how do we remain or what is a Jewish and democratic state, the overarching objective is to separate from the Palestinians and let them go their way.

I don’t think it’ll be terribly successful, but I wish them well. And we go our national way, and we can have a very, very different and a much richer, I don’t necessarily mean economically, just a really successful future here. Not as long as we’re in control of the West Bank, I think it is destroying Israel internally.

Sruli Fruchter: Do you think peace between the Israelis and Palestinians will happen within your lifetime?

Chuck Freilich: Probably not.

Sruli Fruchter: But that is a joke where I should follow up with, would it be in my lifetime?

Chuck Freilich: In your lifetime, the chances are better. But in the Mideast, who knows? President Trump, and full disclosure, I’m not a fan, but Trump has one positive trait that I would say, which is a willingness to ignore, to put aside, to override longstanding axioms, longstanding accepted wisdoms. You saw it, for example, in his deal of the century, which was a two-state solution, but it was 70-30. Now Israel was supposed to keep 30% of the Palestinians, we’re going to get 70% of the West Bank.

It was a proposal which was totally unacceptable to both sides, but it was a dramatic break from previous accepted wisdom, which was that Israel couldn’t keep more than a few percent in exchange for land swaps. And just this morning, now he’s talking that he spoke to the king of Jordan yesterday and intends to speak to the president of Egypt today to get them to accept one and a half million people from Gaza. Now, I can hear, in my mind at least, if not in this room, the screams by the Palestinians, by the Jordanians. The king probably had a cardiac arrest during this conversation with the president and president Sisi will similarly have.

I don’t think it’s a viable proposal, but it says two things. One is he is willing to look at new and heretofore unacceptable ideas. Second of all, he recognizes that Gaza is simply unviable in its current borders and we have to find another solution. Two million people in an area, and the population is doubling every 15 years, in an area the size of Gaza isn’t a viable piece of territory.

So we’ve got to find something different. And here maybe Trump actually can be somebody who does some good things.

Sruli Fruchter: So you’re saying he might be the messiah that he claims to be?

Chuck Freilich: Well, I don’t know that I would go quite that far, but there’s of course a question when Moshiach is coming. We won’t get into that.

His willingness to countenance different ideas might be a basis for some progress. I don’t think with this government.

Sruli Fruchter: Do you think it’s better that he, for Israel’s sake, do you think it was better that he was elected or that you think that Kamala Harris would have been better?

Chuck Freilich: I think overall Harris would have been better. I think that first of all, she would have been better for the United States.

And what is better for the United States I think is ultimately better for the State of Israel. She would have given us grief on the Palestinian issue in a way that Trump probably will not. But that’s actually positive grief, if you believe as I do, that we do have to separate from the Palestinian. We probably have had a hard time convincing her that the two-state solution is no longer viable.

It’ll be easier to convince Trump. In the end, she was, I think, a far more serious policymaker. And we need serious policymakers both in Washington and Jerusalem.

Sruli Fruchter: What should happen with Gaza and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict after the war, which I guess as we’re speaking is now? I know we spoke before a little bit about the PA and different models of what should happen, but the ceasefire is now in the process, but what should happen when it’s finished? Or how do you hope it should turn out?

Chuck Freilich: We have to find something that we can live with and that the Arab world, international community can accept for the post-war status in Gaza.

And it’s been a year and a half. I have yet to hear a single viable option that doesn’t include the PA, the Palestinian Authority. Now, it’s not as if the Palestinian Authority can step in tomorrow, take over, make order on a civil level and take control militarily. They can’t.

They can’t do it in the West Bank, let alone in Gaza. But they have to be given a role because there’s no better alternative. No one in the world is going to come in without the PA because they need that for legitimacy. And we have to show the people of Gaza that there is some hope for a better future.

It’s going to be long term. It’s going to take years to rebuild Gaza. We have to show the Palestinians as a whole that there is some political horizon out there, some hope for peace in the future. Otherwise, why not keep fighting? And if you’re in Gaza, why not fight to the death? Because, I mean, life in Gaza is, before the war was horrible.

Today, it’s ruins. So there has to be a post-war vision.

Sruli Fruchter: Do you think that the ceasefire deal was the right way to go?

Chuck Freilich: I don’t think we had a choice. But life is about…

Sruli Fruchter: How early could it have been done? I know we spoke about May, but do you think that this is something… Because critics have been saying, you know, even specifically at the protests, going back to probably as early as January, it’s since November, actually, 2023, when there was the first hostage deal, a ceasefire deal, hostage prisoner swap. Do you think that as early as then, this could have been done? Or Israel really needed the military, the time for the military campaign to take off?

Chuck Freilich: Look, my heart goes out to the hostage families. They have been in pretty much the worst situation that is humanly imaginable.

And so their demands were understandable. I think they were precipitous. It couldn’t have been done in the first few months of the war. When all of the protocols come out years from now, maybe decades from now, we’ll have a better understanding when exactly the deal could have been reached.

I think it probably could have been reached by the summer. The critics were… It was too early, what they were saying. But it probably could have been reached by the summer.

And that means that we lost a half a year, a half a year in which people were in captivity, a half a year in which we lost a lot of guys in Gaza. Now, good things also happened in this half year. For example, Sinwar was killed and the Axis as a whole was defeated or severely undermined. So it’s not as if we didn’t achieve anything in this half year.

But in terms of the hostages, we lost a lot of time. The IDF has believed, at least they’ve said publicly, that they thought that if a deal was reached, and they were saying this from the beginning, then if and when we could always go back, we could restart the conflict to achieve our military goals. So maybe we could have achieved the same thing anyway. I always thought that that was a questionable position.

Under Biden, maybe it was right, because Biden put pressure on Israel. But I think the critics of Biden should remember, first of all, he was phenomenal in his overall response to us. And even in the end, when he started putting some pressure, it was very, very limited. And Biden is a true friend of Israel’s.

Trump’s considerations are different. I’m not saying that he’s not a friend of Israel’s, but in the end, he has his policy preferences, all of which have one consideration behind them. What is good for Donald Trump? Not even necessarily what’s good for the United States. It’s about Trump.

He could put very severe pressure on us. We saw some indication of it now with this deal, and then we’ll see the way it goes down the line.

Sruli Fruchter: You mentioned the axes of resistance. Turning to Iran for a brief moment, is Israel properly handling the Iranian threat?

Chuck Freilich: No.

I think it’s been many years since we’ve handled it properly. This is the issue that the prime minister has repeatedly, in his various terms, defined as the number one objective of his tenure. And for the last half dozen years, we’ve been in an ongoing political crisis. We had five rounds of elections in what was it, three years, something like that? Four years.

We had the judicial reform, we had the war, all of which are directly or largely related to the prime minister’s efforts to remain in office so that he doesn’t face legal jeopardy. And the Iranian issue has not received anything like the appropriate attention for the last half a dozen years. They are today a threshold nuclear state. The decision to withdraw from the deal, which the prime minister certainly encouraged President Trump to do in his first term, was a historic error.

I think you have to be blind not to recognize that, and to keep arguing this issue. It was a catastrophic error. Iran was still fairly far off from a nuclear capability at the time, and it’s fairly near a nuclear capability today. We have to see if we can find a way to reach a new and better deal, not going back to the old one.

That one’s passé at this point. Because only an agreement can provide for a long-term resolution or long-term postponement of the problem. A military operation, even if the U.S. does it with its greater capabilities than we have, it’s just going to give us a two, three-year gain in time. That’s all it is.

So may Trump with his hard-line position now, could he be entering negotiations from a stronger position, and could he reach a deal? Maybe. If not, is he willing to go the military route? I don’t think so. I think he may say to Israel, you guys want to do it? Go ahead. You’re on your own.

You won’t even have strong backing from us for this. Then we’ll find ourselves in the worst position, because that’s not a good situation. We don’t want to do this on our own, if we have a choice.

Sruli Fruchter: Where do you identify on Israel’s political and religious spectrum? Do you have any friends on the quote-unquote, other side?

Chuck Freilich: Where do I identify myself on this spectrum?

Sruli Fruchter: Yeah, political and religious.

Chuck Freilich: The radical center.

Sruli Fruchter: I was hoping for the radical left.

Chuck Freilich: Oh, absolutely not. I never thought that I was that.

I think some people would view some of my views as being left. I think some, and I’ve written, I think at this point, something like 250 op-eds since leaving government. Some people criticize me, or think that I’m on the left, and some think I’m on the right. That’s exactly where I want to be, where no one is quite sure.

Again, it’s what I was saying before about, I think October 7th proved how wrong all of us were, left and right. Life is much too complicated for that. There are no simple answers. Some of the left positions are right.

Some of the right positions are right. We have to see if we can form some sort of centrist road. Not because being in the center isn’t always the way to solve problems. As a matter of fact, very often, it may be the ways not to solve problems.

In this case, I think it is.

Sruli Fruchter: Do you have friends on the other side of the centrist, which is, I guess, the right and the left? Also religiously, where you identify, and then same question for that.

Chuck Freilich: Religiously, I said before, I have a very strong Jewish identity, but it’s mostly a cultural and national identity.

Sruli Fruchter: Do you have friends on the other side, religiously and politically?

Chuck Freilich: I have acquaintances on the moderate religious side.

I don’t know if at this point, if I have friends who… I think we’ve all moved to the right somewhat. I don’t know if I have people who would be considered right in the classic sense. I certainly don’t have Orthodox friends, ultra-Orthodox.

Sruli Fruchter: For our last question, do you have more hope or fear for Israel and the Jewish people?

Chuck Freilich: I have hope. What does fear mean? Yes, I’m afraid that we will undermine either our Jewish or democratic character if we don’t find a solution in the end to the West Bank issue, but I think too many people have presented it as black and white. Again, there are degrees of democracy, and it’s not as if we will cease to be a democracy overnight if we don’t give the Palestinians the right to vote, or we’ll cease to be… Well, maybe we’ll cease to be a majority Jewish state.

Again, these are things that are going to take decades. We have time to address them. One of the areas where I think we don’t have decades, and even there, we have to make the decision before the decades are out, the Haredi population is going to have to make some serious changes. They cannot continue to live at the expense of the secular population.

People won’t do it, and some of them will vote with their feet and simply leave the country. They have to serve in the military, and in some ways, I’m more concerned about the issue of the Haredim than I am even of the Palestinians, because the Palestinians are an external problem. They’re an external enemy. We can deal with them in the end, and we still can defend ourselves.

We’ve been defending ourselves against the Palestinians for 100 years. If we have to, we can do it for decades more. How do we find a workable solution to the conflict between the secular and the Haredi population in Israel, even the right or the more extreme wing of the national religious movement? We have to find some sort of modus vivendi that works for everybody. I mean, maybe it’s easy for me to say, but I think that at this point, most of the concessions have to come from the Haredi side, because the secular side has been making these concessions for the 76 years of Israel’s independence and is no longer willing to do so.

Or we’ll just lose too many people. As it is, there’s fairly high emigration at the moment of the best and the brightest. And if things don’t change after the next elections, it’s going to be really big. So overall, in the long term, I’m hopeful the state of Israel was established to normalize the Jewish existence, to ensure Jewish existence.

I’m not worried about that. We will do it. But we’ve got some very serious challenges on the way to that road.

Sruli Fruchter: All right.

Thank you so much for answering our 18 questions. How was this for you?

Chuck Freilich: Thank you. Most difficult questions of any question I’ve had.

Sruli Fruchter: We covered so much in this interview, and I was really glad that we were able to specifically talk about some of the more contemporary developments with the ceasefire deal, the hostage negotiations, potential Israeli elections, and Chuck’s own ideas about what peace can look like and what a potential Palestinian state or confederacy could look like, which he actually articulated in a Haaretz article just last week.

And as usual, thank you to our friends Gilad Brounstein and Josh Weinberg for editing the podcast and video, respectively. And as always, if you have questions that you want us to ask or guests that you want us to feature, please shoot us an email at info@18Forty.org. And be sure to subscribe and rate and share with friends so that we can reach new listeners. And before our final closing note, if you can please take a few minutes to fill out the survey, it would be greatly appreciated, linked down below.

So until next time, keep questioning and keep thinking.

This transcript was produced by Sofer.AI.