America This Week, October 13th, 2023: "Tragedy in the Middle East"

Unique situation this show. Walter and I talked a lot across the week about how we were going to do the show because it's a kind of a quandary for both of us.

As opposed to looking at something in a glib way, reviewing how a thing is being talked about. The events of the last week call for more urgent questions to be talked, discussed and addressed. And it's not, it's not my usual territory, so I'd like to sort of turn it over. Walter to you, I think you have a better idea about how to, how to lead into the topic of what happened in Gaza last week.

And only a couple of days later, something terrible had happened. A real world historical event, which is unique in my lifetime in some ways.

When Israel was attacked.

I at first, and it reminds me of 9-11, was a little confused as to what was happening.

It's the impossible seemed to have occurred. There was a major incursion into Israel, what I had thought to be a fairly impregnable nation fortress, and it was on a large scale. It wasn't, you know, a few terrorists getting in. It was a concerted, orchestrated, wide scale and incredibly deadly and barbaric attack that didn't leave room for detachment. And still doesn't, in some ways, as much as I want to revert completely to my journalist self and step back and look at this thing from 40,000 feet, it's not truly possible.

At the moment, I'm still the captive of my original and quite human and organic responses to things. And very simply, those were of horror.

I, as much as anyone, am skeptical and analytic when it comes to propaganda and the way things are talked about and the way they're presented. But that mood hasn't been possible so far for me. I can only speak as a person and a father and a friend to a lot of people who in some way were affected by this. My Jewish friends and continue to be, and I can't help but feel that. What's called for first, before any further discussion, is an expression of distinct revulsion over an attack on civilians that was meant to terrorize, meant to horrify, meant to demoralize.

As it happens, it has had some reflections in America in terms of, you know, protests and a lot of rhetoric going across social media. I've stepped back a little from social media, to be frank, because I don't want to get caught in this whirlpool. And also because I recognize that what we're looking forward to is war at a scale that we don't yet know. It could be a limited war in which Israel goes and removes Hamas, whatever that means, from Gaza. And we stand by, and, you know, try to keep it from spreading or whatever we are trying to do. The foreign policy agenda of our government is not completely clear to me.

I don't know, you know, if this was 30 years ago, it would be a kind of wholehearted backing of Israel. A very simple problem for our government because we now have a rapprochement of some kind with Iran. It's not black and white like it used to be. So I can't predict what we'll do, and I don't have real insight into what something like the State Department is thinking. But anyway, to just narrate my responses. That horror has really not abated because we're now subject to continuing imagery out of Israel of a kind that I hoped I'd never see.

I certainly hope my children would never see. And even though I know, because of the laws of, you know, narrative news making that. Two weeks from now, maybe some of what we've seen will be proved to be-.

Conception that this was coming, you know? We found out after 9-11 that, you know, there were a number of people within the American enforcement community who were actually following those hijackers. Remember Colleen Rowley, the whistleblower at the FBI? She became one of the She Was On Time magazine as a Person of the year after she came forward and talked about how the FBI was. Actually. You know, they had these guys under surveillance, they could easily have detected this thing before it happened.

So human error happens. I mean, I once interviewed one of the former Soviet military people, or air force people, who was involved with the episode. When Matthias Rust landed in Red Square.

So errors happen, but this is there is a question that we're going to have to find out somewhere. I think eventually the story is going to come out that somebody actually saw something and didn't act on it or misread something. Or, anyway, sorry, that's a diversion. But I think that's a question that does need to be answered.

Acceptable to many minds.

But, as I say, having just watched this bomb go off as it were and just seeing the images of its victims and believing. Without really any doubt, those images to reflect the actual state of things. I'm still in shock and I want to put my journalist hat on. And I want to look at this thing, and I believe it's my responsibility to look at it with a little bit of cold-bloodedness as it were. Because in any rush to war, those voices which are committed to an overview of the situation are very valuable. If we're all going to run around simply acting out of passionate, nervous energy to our initial feelings about something, we could end up in a very terrible place.

So I don't think it's wrong to step back even this early and sort of look at things in that bird's eye way. But what I wanted to say first was that, in a narrative of my own responses, and in a sort of human way, I'm still reeling. I have two children who are young adults, both of whom came to me. Thank goodness, God bless them for some guidance and perspective on what was going on.

And I don't know that I was able to provide it in any satisfying way.

I can only tell them that I've been, you know, I'm 60 years old and my entire life. In some ways, I've been watching this conflict as a child. And then a teenager and a college student and a young adult watching the wars in the Middle East, specifically the wars that Israel has fought. And it has been my, and I'm going to do this on the basis of sort of, you know, laying my cards on the table. It has been my position through the years, probably formed almost unconsciously as a child, that I have sympathized with the Israeli predicament.

And, you know, the Bob Dylan song neighborhood bully country surrounded and besieged. And attempting to consolidate the Jewish people who survived the Holocaust in a way that would allow them to defend themselves in the future. That was the basis of my understanding of what Israel was and of its rights to defend itself.

So here we find ourselves, you know, less than a week into what I think is an event as momentous as 9-11. And maybe more so in some ways. Because we have to understand that it wasn't the United States that was attacked, it was a much more vulnerable, much smaller and much more historically aggrieved population.

Not aggrieved, for no reason, properly aggrieved and properly frightened. And I will say, you know, as I end this kind of preamble, that the outbreaks of anti-semitic.

Rhetoric and passion that I've seen in the United States really do disturb me. It's been, you know, whoever we are, we're formed in youth by the morality of the moment. And I guess I came up after World War II had just sort of settled. And the reality of the Holocaust was in literature, in society and in people. I met who had relatives was.

Grim and vivid. And so I bring that to my experience of this in a way that perhaps my children don't.

And in some ways, not wanting to call myself an elder, you know, at 60, 61, but knowing that, in some sense, that role has been foisted on me. I want to attach what's going on to a longer story, but I don't pretend to be a history of Middle Eastern affairs. I listened last night to some Twitter spaces in which people were trying to adjudicate this conflict, and, frankly, I gave up. Because it all had descended into these rather arcane arguments about the history of Israel, its wars and the Palestinian situation. All of which are absolutely relevant, but none of which provide any real solutions for the person who is trying to live through this as a responsible, informed citizen at the moment.

You know, we all have a chance to go back and look at what we believe to be the fouls and the strikes on various sides in the past. But we're in a loaded moment now and I think to ignore that is to be a little unrealistic.

Well, I think before the show we were talking about this.

Were you thinking, what?

These two events are not like each other, exactly. But as Covid was rolling out, as the news about it was coming out, there was an apocalyptic sense of a disease of terrible import descending quickly. People having to act rather immediately, maybe to protect themselves. A sense of menace in the air. That I think caused a lot of people to go to rather extreme, to fall into rather extreme behavior and thought patterns before they had information. You know, the fact is, we're Americans, we're not in Israel. I'm not, you know. I have lots of friends who have relatives there and go back and forth and for whom it's an intimate reality, as it isn't for me.

But I do worry that everyone police their responses at this point. Do as much as they can to get good information and to use some wisdom about how these, how these events roll out. You know, in some ways, it's more than Covid, I guess. It's like 9-11..

But because what we do now, and what we think now could have massive implications for our well-being in the future. As much as I do have a deep and, you know, human and sort of irresistible response. I do see the virtue of some degree of detachment, if that's the word.

Because decisions are going to be, you know, I hope that we are in on these decisions. I hope that America has a to discuss, argue, get angry with itself, negotiate and so on. In response to this, that we aren't simply driven to one, you know, to one conclusion. I hope there's time for debate and thought, and so on. I don't know that what we did in response to 9-11. Ultimately, looking back was very helpful.

I don't know, I don't know that the Iraq war is very much the opposite. Yeah, yeah, in some ways, we have a chance, we always have a chance after a catastrophe, after an attack, to learn a little. And that, in retrospect, was used as the basis for a war that was unnecessary, especially here in Iraq. And I hope that that doesn't develop in the same way.

I hope we don't take the emotional charge from this thing, or I hope that the people who run things don't take the emotional charge from this thing. And use it for ends that really don't relate to it and will end with us in more trouble than.

Well, the reason I brought up the Covid example.

Which I thought was a good one that you mentioned is because, well, let me back up for a moment.

Especially this week, but really, for a long time, I'm constantly asked like, how come you never weigh in on Israel and Palestine, but especially this week?

Like you, I kind of backed off social media.

I haven't said a whole lot and.

Not to make this about me, but this is part of the way to talk about this issue.

So how do I view the job of being in the media? So for me, usually, typically it starts with an educational process a journalist's first job is to learn the thing, right? Like you get assigned to cover a topic. You have to learn as much as you can about it as quickly as you can, and typically you do this in stages.

So you take a little piece of it and you learn everything there is to know. It's like cramming for a test. You learn what happened in Incident X. Or what is a mortgage-backed security? How does that work? You learn that, you describe that, and then, over a very, very long process, you learn a whole bunch of things, but you never.

The job isn't to reveal to the audience what's going on in the incoherent, confused.

Emotional world that is your private self. That's why we don't talk about on the air, we don't talk about the confusing, difficult things that we go through with our families. We don't give away a lot of us.

Don't give away what we think about, you know whom to vote for, or what our ideologies are. A writing teacher once described this to me as having sufficient distance, like you have to.

That part of you, that feels a lot, but the feelings are sometimes incoherent. You have to keep that separate from the audience. But then, after a period of time, if you've done enough research and you've learned enough, eventually you will have strong, clear feelings about certain things. And that is when you step in and you do, and you have an editorial type, you know, article. You may having a fairly good sense of what the entire landscape of all the issues is. And say, this is definitely crazy, that this is worthy of ridicule, etc. etc. But you don't, you don't go to that step before.

You've learned an awful lot. And so, like, for instance, for Covid, it took a long time for me to understand a lot of the issues, I didn't know a lot of the science.

And I didn't realize that certain people were right and certain people were lying. And this is difficult to work out at first with this issue.

You know, there's no way around talking about, you know, in the immediate you have to. As you say you're first, you're in shock. There's some horror. And what I see everywhere is everybody rushing to take these very, very strong stances. And they do it with anger and and hatred for people who have not similarly come to a quick conclusion about things. Or it's people who have a lengthy background in these issues and they and they don't understand why you're not rushing to their side immediately. I the reason I hesitate is because I, I can never get to a place where I can justify.

The wanton killing of civilians. No matter what happens, no matter how aggrieved the people are I, I can't get behind that. So I've over the years I've had to do stories on.

Palestine had to do stories about the suppression of Palestinian speech. I've covered pro-Palestinian protests, I've had to spend a lot of time with people in the Palestinian community.

I've had to do a little bit of reporting about Gaza. I. From what I learned, the I completely understand a lot of the the anger and, you know, we can talk later about.

Israel's policies there. But I can never get to the place where paragliding into.

You know, a music festival and gunning down civilians where I'm okay with that. Similarly, I can't get to the place where I I understand bombing.

Civilian areas, which we did after 9-11.

I mean, I remember the Shock and Awe campaign, and I know Americans were really, really angry at that time, even though it was years later, after 9-11. But you know, the killing of civilians, I, I just can't understand that. So the it comes down to questions, larger questions like.

What's this? What's the strategic reason for what Hamas did? Are they trying to accomplish something? are they trying to end a policy that's so grotesque that it would that it could ever be justified? And I don't know the answers to those questions. It might take years to work through some of these things.

So we can. All we can do right now is just react to, you know, what we've been told, and and talk about what some of the information is. And I, I don't know. I guess we should, we should start with that, what, what? What are the main points of information so far that we've been given?

We know about the well, maybe you should.

The confinement of the Gazans, the Gaza Strip. I'm afraid they've failed miserably because I don't think things are going to get better there. I mean, if this was an emotional outburst of rage and violent anger. And that is a success in its own right, by some definitions. To some who are so angry, then fine. But I don't know that it's, I don't know that. This is a kind of normal play for in some sort of heightened negotiation. I think disaster looms, I think disaster looms for the people of Gaza.

I don't think they've been particularly well served by this in their fight, for whatever it might be.

What was your question? What, what? what are the facts? what's actually happened? how do we? what's the tick tock of things, you know?

It's possible, I mean, yeah, now I certainly think it might be.

Yeah, finish that thought, sorry.

I don't, I don't, I don't. I'm not the kind of person who will be rushed into, you know, signs of solidarity. As a journalist, I, it's, it's anathema to me. I don't know that I've ever told anyone who I've voted for publicly, I don't know that I've ever suggested that anybody else vote for someone.

I suppose some of it can be discerned between the lines. When people try to do that with me, they often get it wrong. So so successfully have I disguised my actual feelings? But but you know, I don't, I don't stand with people. I don't put black squares on my Twitter account, or Ukrainian flags or American flags for that matter.

And so when, when I feel pushed to.

Side take sides, have solidarity, declare a position. I fade back, that's me. It's a kind of modesty I'd like to think, not cowardice, as it's often interpreted, because, first of all.

And they stop thought and they block inquiry, and they don't allow people to change more than anything. You know, sorry, I changed my mind and I'm pulling that flag down. That doesn't happen.

Once people have been prodded into declaring themselves, what they tend to do is.

While at all costs, defend their initial declaration rather than go on learning. Um, so so, I'm shy about this, this orgy of identification as it were.

And so there's, there's an inherent. I'm always suspicious of people prodding you to to raise your hand and say, I'm over here.

Especially.

Instantly, which are then used to manipulate you further. The fact is, in the wilderness or the jungle that is social media. It may be that there's a lot of false identification which is used to get you to go along with certain people. Because, hey, you both have the same flag in your bio. These are, like I say, levers that are used to move humans around to stop thought rather than nourish it. And I resist the whole movement toward visible shows of.

Support. Maybe that's because I learned as a child about the Yellow Star in Germany, you know, maybe because the idea that Jews in Germany were forced to identify as such, almost against their will, pretty much against their will, struck me. A.s. And other categories, and Gypsies and homosexuals, and yeah, yeah.

I mean, I descended from Gypsies. I don't like the classification of human beings and thus the self-classification that's voluntary.