E-mail a friendBenjamin Netanyahu
airdate August 9, 2006
Soldier, diplomat and the ninth Prime Minister of the State of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu helped shape American policy on terrorism in the '80s. He's again in the spotlight as chair of Israel's opposition Likud party. The Tel Aviv native spent his high school years in the U.S., returning to Israel during the Six-Day War. He completed his education at MIT and worked in the private sector. Netanyahu previously served as minister of foreign affairs and finance. He's also published several books on politics and terrorism.
Benjamin Netanyahu
Tavis: Benjamin Netanyahu served as prime minister of Israel from 1996 to 1999. Born in Tel Aviv, he grew up in Jerusalem, and went on to serve in an elite commando unit in the Israeli Defense Forces; later studying business and politics here in the U.S., in fact earning a master's degree from MIT. He is now, though, the leader of the opposition Likud party in the Israeli Knesset. He joins us tonight from Jerusalem. Mr. Prime Minister, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Benjamin Netanyahu: Good to be with you, Tavis.
Tavis: Let me start by getting your thoughts on this latest Hezbollah videotape, which in short urges Israeli-Arabs in Haifa, the third largest city in your country, to get out.
Netanyahu: Well, up till now, Hezbollah has been an equal opportunity murderer. They've killed Arabs and Jews alike, the Arab citizens and Jewish citizens of Israel alike. I think it's a propaganda ploy. They couldn't care less. They've been rocketing Arab villages, Jews, Muslim, Christian villages in the Galilee with happy abandon. So, I wouldn't take this seriously.
What I do take seriously is the fact that as they're firing these rockets, Nasrallah, the chief of Hezbollah, is echoing exactly what Iran, his paymaster and taskmaster, is telling them. The president of Iran, Ahmadinejad, says that the Holocaust didn't happen while he openly says he intends to create a new Holocaust, wipe away the six million Jews of Israel.
Nasrallah, following in his footsteps, says that he's rocketing occupied Palestine. Hello? Occupied Palestine is Tiberius, Haifa, Safid, all the Galilee, which is supposed to be out of combat. It's supposed to be Israel. It's not the West Bank. It's not Gaza that we vacated completely. And it's not Lebanon that we vacated completely. So obviously, what you have here is an uncompromising ideology wishing to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth.
No resolvable grievance that they have, except our disappearance, and using any weapon, weapon of mass death they can muster. We have to defeat them. It's one of those moments in history. We have to defeat them. For our sake, and also for the sake of peace in our region. Sake of Lebanon's future. The sake of all our future.
Tavis: You've drawn a line directly from Hezbollah to Iran. Others have drawn a line from Hezbollah to Syria. Two questions. One, why do you draw the line specifically to Iran, and number two, what's the point in drawing that line?
Netanyahu: Well, I think the point is to understand who you're up against. There ought to be a division of labor in the international community. Israel definitely has to cut this tentacle of the Iranian octopus, which has a way station in Syria. Clearly, Syria assists this Iranian effort. They're in a pact, really, an alliance. And they use Iran, or rather Hezbollah, as their proxy.
But it's important to have the international community place tremendous pressure on Syria and especially on Iran to cease and desist their aggressive build-up and re-build-up of Hezbollah. But at the same time, Israel will have to take out the main fighting capability of Hezbollah; otherwise we'll never have a chance for peace, with such a mad militancy gone mad; gone awry. They can do anything.
The other thing you asked me is why do we draw the line? Well, for a simple fact. These Hezbollah fighters that you see are basically an extension of the Iranian army. They were trained in Iran, supplied weapons by Iran, trained on Iranian soil by the Iranian army, using Iranian tactics. And apparently, some of their longer-range missiles actually have a direct control by Iranian officers, officers of the Iranian army.
So it's a wholly-owned subsidiary of Iran, with a way station supply point at Syria. But we shouldn't be confused. This is Iran's first salvo against a western country. If we don't win this one, it won't be the last.
Tavis: Mm. We've talked for a few minutes here now about what Hezbollah is doing. Let me come inside of Israel to talk about what Israel is doing at this hour. As you certainly know, Prime Minister Olmert has said very clearly that they want to push this ground offensive, this Israel ground offensive, deeper into Lebanon. I wonder, one, what your thoughts are on that, and then I got a follow-up I'd like to ask.
Netanyahu: I think the important thing in this war that has been forced on us is to win it. It's not something that we can sit by and just say all right, let's have a cease fire, and Hezbollah stays there with 10,000 rockets, more than just about any army in the world has. Having fired several thousand at our cities, roughly the same number that were fired by the Germans on London during the Blitz. It's about approaching the same number.
And that's it; let's just stop, because we know that they'll come back with a deadlier round in the future. So, the question is how to take them out. Clearly, the goal of taking them out has not been achieved with air power alone. Air power has its uses, but it also has its limits, as does any modern war. Wars don't go on forever, especially in the electronic age.
Especially when you can show dead civilians tragically killed by the tactic of Hezbollah, of not only attacking civilians, but hiding behind civilians. By the way, both are war crimes, according to the fourth Geneva Convention. So, obviously, this places a limit on the duration of wars. And the only way you can achieve your directive in the time you have available is to use more varied means to get at the Hezbollah fighters and emplacements themselves.
Tavis: Let me ask you if you, in fact, were prime minister today, as I mentioned earlier, we know that you're the head of the opposition party, Likud. But if you were prime minister today, making these decisions, would this be your decision? To go deeper into the country with ground forces on the front line?
Netanyahu: I probably would have made some different decisions along the way. Not changing the goal. The goal is correct, but I have my own views on how I would have implemented it. But as I said to you, I think it's late, but not too late, and I think right now, you need a much greater force. People don't realize this, but Israel has used a fraction of its power up to now.
We've put about 10,000 fighters up against - 10,000 soldiers against 5,000 Hezbollah, hardly overwhelming force. I suppose that the consideration of casualties is paramount, but we've been accruing casualties in a piecemeal approach anyway, and I think that the important thing now is to win the war, win it quickly, and destroy the main fighting capability of Hezbollah, and the main rocketing capability that terrorizes a third of our population.
Tavis: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who I regard, Mr. Prime Minister, as the greatest American we've ever produced, indeed, one of the great leaders in the world, King said very simply, but very poignantly, it's either nonviolence, or nonexistence. One, I wonder your thoughts on what King had to say about nonviolence or nonexistence, and number two, if you don't agree with that, or take exception to it, make your best case to me for why you don't support a cease fire by any means necessary.
Netanyahu: Martin Luther King was fighting for the rights of Black Americans in a country that had its flaws, but certainly had its limits in the use of violence. He did not advocate this in the face of Hezbollah. Hezbollah says, and Iran says that they're out to destroy us. Wipe us off the face of the Earth. I don't think Martin Luther King would have preached nonviolence in the face of Hitler.
I'm sure he didn't. In fact, it is a tragedy in our world that we have mad people, mad ideologies, fantasy ideologies. And we have to understand that there are conflicts that can be resolved without the resort to arms, and the conflicts that can be resolved through diplomacy, in the end, by silencing arms. Silencing the fire. Extinguishing it. But there are moments when free societies have no choice.
If they want to protect the very rights that Martin Luther King was fighting for, the rights that Lincoln believed in, who I think also was a great American, as was Franklin Roosevelt, I think they understood that at certain junctures in history, men of pacific nature, men who want leaders, men and women who want to see a better, safer world, have to stand up and fight the original Nazis, and the radical Muslim fascists that are now threatening our entire civilization.
Tavis: Do you honestly believe that you can bomb any particular people into behaving the way you want them to behave?
Netanyahu: No, I didn't say bomb. I said defeat them. Could you have bombed and defeated Nazi Germany? Nazism, which took hold among 80 million people, and actually more, and inflamed their imaginations, and it was seen to be the creed of tomorrow? This was the march of tomorrow. Yes, you had to win. We had no choice. And yes, you'd better win.
It's not enough to win militarily. That I grant you. But it is indispensable to win militarily. The fact that something is a necessary condition doesn't make it sufficient. You also have to eventually have some kind of reformation, with a small R, some say with a capital R, in Islam. At least have the moderate forces come to the fore. They are threatened, many of the governments around us, even though they've changed their public tune, privately say win-win; otherwise, we have no future.
The president of Iran, Ahmadinejad, is a true believer. He is not a politician in the traditional sense. I wish he were. He's not. He really is a true believer of the creed of a sect of radical Shi'ism. They believe that there has to be an apocalyptic return of the Twelfth Imam, the Mahdi, who disappeared a thousand years ago. He is supposed to return with fire and blood in a grand apocalypse, claiming millions of lives on all sides.
Iran is developing nuclear weapons to that effect, and weapons, missiles that now overreach Israel, and can reach into every European capitol. And within eight or 10 years, they'll reach the eastern seaboard of the United States. They're stark, raving mad. But the important thing is don't dismiss them as people dismissed another lunatic in the 1930s.
They said he's mad, he's not serious. The point about these people is they are serious. And with this kind of lunacy, getting possession of a state a quarter of a century ago in the Islamic republic of Iran, building the nuclear stockpiles, having proxies like Hezbollah bombing people to smithereens and declaring a creed that says that the free western, what we call pluralistic they call hedonistic civilization, has to go for some pre-medieval conception of Islam, that has to be stopped.
Yes, I think you have to defeat them. I think you need also a reformation, or if you will, reform. Let the Iranian people understand what consequences to them this mad creed is going to bring.
Tavis: Mr. Prime Minister, I'm honored to have you on. Perhaps at another time, we'll get a chance to talk more about Dr. King and his views, and the power, the transformative power of love and dialogue at some other time. But I'm honored to have you on the program. I thank you for your time, and for your insight, sir.
Netanyahu: Thank you. I wish Hezbollah and (laugh) Ahmadinejad shared our common sentiments. I assure you, they don't.
Tavis: I'm glad to have you on the program. Thank you for your time, again.
Netanyahu: Thank you.
Tavis: Up next on this program, actor Samuel L. Jackson. Stay with us.
Tavis: We continue to look back this week at some of our favorite conversations of the year. Tonight, Samuel L. Jackson.
Samuel L. Jackson: I don't think every movie has to be something that makes you go out and have dinner with somebody and talk about the issues that you just saw. Sometimes, you gotta out and go, "Wow, that was great, wasn't it?" Whoo, boy, I feel like mm. Why else would I do a movie called "Snakes on a Plane"? As soon as I saw that title on that script, I wanted to do it.
Without even reading a word in it, I said if this is not a metaphor for something else, and it is what I think it is, I don't even need to read this script. I'll do it. I want to be on a plane full of poisonous snakes and see what happens.
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