0:06

Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This

0:09

is Sam Harris. Just

0:11

a note to say that if you're hearing this, you are not currently

0:14

on our subscriber feed and will only be

0:16

hearing the first part of this conversation. In

0:18

order to access full episodes of the Making Sense

0:20

podcast, you'll need to subscribe at SamHarris.org.

0:24

There you'll find our private RSS feed to add

0:26

to your favorite podcatcher, along with other subscriber-only

0:29

content. We don't run ads on the

0:31

podcast, and therefore it's made possible

0:33

entirely through the support of our subscribers. So

0:36

if you enjoy what we're

0:36

doing here, please consider becoming one.

0:41

Okay.

0:47

Well, this is the first of two podcasts

0:50

I'm going to be releasing in

0:52

the coming days on the topic of jihad.

0:56

And then next week I'll release a solo podcast

0:59

on all that we've seen in recent

1:02

weeks in response to the

1:05

unfolding war in Gaza, the

1:07

global eruption of antisemitism

1:10

and support for Hamas, and

1:12

all the moral confusion suggested

1:15

by that response. But

1:17

first I want to bring you a conversation I had with the

1:19

Atlantic writer Graham Wood. Graham

1:21

has been in Israel since a few days

1:24

after the October 7th attacks. He

1:26

is a staff writer for The Atlantic and

1:29

the author of The Way of the Strangers, Encounters

1:32

with the Islamic State, which

1:34

is well worth reading. He joined

1:36

The Atlantic in 2006 and has

1:39

since reported from every continent except

1:41

Antarctica and on a very wide

1:44

variety of topics. He's also a

1:46

member of the Council on Foreign Relations and

1:48

he teaches at Yale University. Graham

1:51

has been on the podcast several times before. He

1:54

really has been my go-to resource

1:56

on the topic of jihad and the way

1:58

these ancient ideas martyrdom

2:01

and holy war have been playing out

2:03

in the modern world. So we speak in some

2:05

detail about what happened on October

2:08

7th and these details are fairly gruesome

2:12

so be aware of that. This is definitely

2:14

not an episode of the podcast you want to be

2:16

listening to with your kids in the car. But

2:19

I think it's necessary to talk about the details

2:21

because so much of the reaction

2:24

to what happened on October 7th

2:27

and in particular the reaction to Israel's

2:29

response to it is not making contact

2:32

with the specific differences in

2:35

the acts of violence perpetrated

2:37

by the two sides. The moral

2:39

logic of what happened on October

2:42

7th and the logic of its

2:44

support in the Muslim world

2:47

to the degree that it is supported is

2:49

quite a bit different than the logic

2:52

of Israel's response. So

2:54

Graham and I discussed that as well

2:57

as a wide variety of geopolitical

2:59

concerns that

3:01

follow

3:02

from the current conflict. Once

3:04

again a reminder subscribers to

3:06

the podcast can share links to full

3:08

episodes now. You can share them

3:10

one-to-one or post them on social media. Needless

3:13

to say the way to support the podcast is to subscribe

3:16

at SamHarris.org and

3:18

if you can't afford a subscription you need

3:20

only send an email to support at

3:22

SamHarris.org and you will

3:24

be given one. And now I bring

3:26

you Graham Wood. I

3:34

am here with Graham Wood. Graham thanks

3:36

for joining me. Sam it's good to be

3:38

back.

3:39

So when

3:42

October 7th happened

3:45

you and I I think you you and I have

3:47

had a shared response on many

3:50

points but one stark difference

3:52

is that given your job description you

3:54

were quickly booking an airline

3:56

flight to Israel. So

3:58

I should just... say that there's a some

4:01

amazement on the part of a bystander

4:04

like myself that you can do that with such

4:06

alacrity. Remind people

4:09

the kinds of topics you have focused on as a journalist

4:12

that would make sense of this behavior.

4:14

Yes. I was booking tickets

4:16

to Israel and I'll say a bit more about the complications

4:19

of that in a second. But yeah,

4:21

I've been reporting on this region for a long time,

4:24

reporting on the Iraq war when that was

4:26

going on, the

4:27

Afghanistan war as well.

4:29

And then for years I was reporting on ISIS,

4:32

which

4:33

has become sadly relevant with this conflict.

4:35

There's just been a lot of discussion,

4:37

especially from the Israeli

4:39

side, saying Hamas is ISIS.

4:43

And that's a really complicated thing for me, given

4:46

that if you look at ISIS for as long

4:48

as I did, you can start to see

4:50

some salient, interesting differences

4:53

there. But yeah, it as soon as

4:55

the 7th of October happened, it

4:57

was like hearing

5:01

an old song that you heard all

5:03

the time at some point and you just couldn't

5:05

get it out of your head. For me, it was like

5:08

hearing the old ISIS

5:10

rhythms coming back.

5:12

And

5:14

first thing I did was try to get a ticket, which

5:16

was difficult because airlines were canceling flights

5:19

left and right. So it took two or three tries

5:21

before I finally got into Israel a few days

5:23

after the attack.

5:25

Yes, I want to get into the point you

5:27

just indicated about

5:30

jihadism not being a unified front

5:32

and there are interesting differences there. And

5:34

I just want to talk about jihadism in general

5:37

and how I think that's the appropriate

5:39

lens to throw over current

5:42

events, unlike terrorism

5:45

and other terms that we tend to use.

5:47

But let's just start with just what your

5:50

experience has been in

5:51

Israel. I

5:54

think you were there not that

5:56

long ago. What is it like? I mean,

5:58

I got to imagine that the... The analogy

6:00

that we've heard used so often

6:03

that this is there September 11th

6:06

immediately struck me as wrong in

6:09

several respects. I think

6:11

this is quite a bit worse than what

6:14

September 11th was for American society.

6:17

What is it like in Israel and what has

6:19

your experience been so far?

6:21

So I've been here almost continuously

6:23

since a few days after the attack

6:26

and I have seen things change. On

6:29

arrival there was an atmosphere of mourning

6:31

but more than anything else people were just stunned. It

6:35

had been a while since the second intifada

6:38

when the last time it really felt like in one's

6:41

daily life in this country that

6:44

you'd wonder whether when you

6:47

left the house you come back to the house, whether

6:49

the bus you were on was going to explode, that kind

6:51

of thing. This really did

6:53

reach into the daily life of Israelis

6:56

and you could just feel it. I mean there's an atmosphere

6:58

of mourning, also

7:00

an atmosphere of fury that

7:03

I don't think really pertained

7:05

in the time immediately after

7:07

September 11 in the United States. There

7:10

was this sense I think that of a lot of

7:12

Israelis that they were betrayed, like

7:14

deeply betrayed by... By their own government

7:17

and by the idea of that. Exactly. They

7:19

expected that Hamas would do this if it could. What

7:22

they didn't expect was that their own government

7:24

would allow it to happen. Especially

7:27

a government like the government

7:29

led by the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,

7:33

who the reason he was in power was

7:35

because he said, I have

7:38

taken a hard line against terrorism,

7:41

against Palestinians, and

7:43

I have delivered security. And

7:46

that's going to allow us to consolidate gains.

7:50

To come back to Israel after watching

7:52

the internecine political

7:55

squabbles in Israel earlier

7:58

this year, and then to see even the people... who

8:00

loved Netanyahu saying,

8:03

you are

8:04

scum of the earth, you're just horrible. But the

8:06

idea that you would leave us defenseless like this

8:09

is the deepest betrayal

8:11

of a leader of this country.

8:13

What do we make of the fact that

8:15

they were

8:17

murdered in the south so

8:20

defenseless? Have

8:22

you interviewed anyone who's in a position to

8:25

actually describe what broke

8:27

down there as far as intelligence failures

8:29

or just, I mean, there have been

8:32

reports or rumors that there was hacking

8:34

of the actual monitoring system. And

8:36

what actually happened that

8:39

explains not only the fact that Hamas

8:41

was able to get

8:43

across the border in that

8:46

way, but that it took so long

8:48

for the IDF to respond.

8:51

Yeah, the actual tactics

8:53

that they used, we don't know the full story.

8:56

And I guarantee there's going to be a commission

8:58

that the Israelis have to discover exactly

9:00

what happened. But on other parts

9:04

of the border, I've had people tell me that

9:06

a bird cannot fly across that border

9:08

without the Israelis knowing. So

9:11

for them to be so blind that there can

9:13

be upwards of a thousand armed men who

9:16

go across the border and then have

9:18

the run of the place in several

9:20

different Israeli communities for hours

9:23

and hours and hours afterward, was

9:26

just an incredible failure. And it's

9:28

not just a failure

9:31

in the sort

9:34

of everyday sense of, wow, that was a security

9:36

breach. It reaches, as you

9:39

may know, really deep into

9:41

the Israeli psyche because

9:43

what happened

9:45

resembles pogroms that

9:47

people might have heard about from 100, 130 years

9:49

ago. It really taps an ancestral horror of stories of great, great

10:00

grandma being raped by Cossacks

10:02

or massacres in Kishnev

10:04

in 1903. This is just utterly horrifying in

10:10

precisely the way that Israelis

10:13

thought they were immune to because they were in Israel.

10:16

How it happened, it's still unclear,

10:18

but the fact that it happened in this

10:21

way at this scale has

10:24

horrified the country. I think

10:27

one of the other aspects of

10:29

the surprise on October 7th probably

10:31

had something to do with the attention that the

10:34

IDF was paying to the West Bank. The

10:36

West Bank, of course, is separate from the Gaza

10:38

Strip. And the reason they weren't paying

10:41

as much attention as they might otherwise have

10:43

been paying to the Gaza Strip was because over

10:46

the last year, settlers have been pushing

10:49

Palestinians off of land in the West Bank.

10:51

And they've had to do that with

10:54

the help of the IDF. So you

10:57

find that there's a growing

10:59

number of resources that were devoted

11:02

to the settler project. That is, Israelis

11:05

who have tried to create outposts

11:08

on the West Bank and grab land

11:10

there, usually at the expense of Palestinian

11:12

communities. And to do that without

11:15

violence breaking out, you have to have a military that oversees

11:17

the whole thing and is

11:20

often present at the very moment of the dispossession.

11:23

So if that happens more and more, there's

11:26

only finite resources. And those resources

11:28

were probably taken away from Gaza. And that

11:31

probably meant that the communities

11:33

on the edge of Gaza were more

11:37

vulnerable than they otherwise might have been.

11:39

Yeah, I saw the article you wrote about your

11:41

encounter with settlers. There's

11:43

not a neuron in my brain that is supportive

11:46

of Jewish religious extremism,

11:48

much less his claims upon real estate. Is

11:51

it your understanding that Netanyahu has

11:53

covertly encouraged that? Or what

11:56

culpability is there for the current government

11:59

for that behavior?

12:00

enormous culpability. Many Israelis,

12:02

when they look at the failure of their

12:04

government to protect them on October 7th, they

12:07

notice that these resources were diverted

12:10

to the West Bank by Netanyahu's government.

12:13

They also notice that members of his government have

12:16

been explicit about all this, that they

12:19

want to take that land, they want to

12:21

seize it by force if necessary, and

12:24

they're going to, for ideological

12:26

purposes, expand onto that land.

12:28

So, yeah, it's

12:31

been a major part of his coalition

12:33

to take a very, very strong

12:36

pro-settler stance.

12:37

I think many people expect there to be a massive

12:40

political reckoning at some point

12:42

based on this failure to keep Israelis

12:45

safe. Do you think that reckoning is going

12:48

to come before the unfolding

12:51

war in Gaza is over? I mean, is

12:53

it going to come faster than anyone wants,

12:56

or is it going to be safely shelved

12:58

until the more immediate existential

13:01

concerns are dealt with?

13:03

I think Netanyahu personally is toast.

13:06

His political future is sealed.

13:08

So is the political future of most of the people in his

13:10

government. But not yet.

13:13

There's a belief that the

13:15

heads of the IDF and

13:18

the political leadership, they

13:21

stay until the moment is right

13:23

for them to move. But the

13:26

main proposition that Netanyahu

13:28

offered Israelis was, I will keep

13:31

you safe. We, the right, built

13:33

a wall. We have kept there from

13:35

being another intifada. We've had the

13:38

Iron Dome intercepting rockets

13:40

coming in. And now they've presided

13:42

over the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,

13:46

which is queer evidence

13:48

that whatever they offered before, they've

13:50

utterly failed at. Which is why you see Jews

13:54

in Israel saying things like,

13:57

I came to Israel because the

13:59

whole point of Israel is to avoid having

14:01

massacres of Jews, which could

14:04

have happened in anywhere else where you find Jews except

14:06

for possibly the United States. And

14:09

you can't do that. If that's the

14:11

case, I'm just going to go back to Morocco. I'm

14:13

just going to go back to the lands

14:15

of my grandparents or parents, because

14:18

if you can't provide that, then

14:19

what good

14:20

are you? So

14:23

Netanyahu and his government will bear the full brunt

14:26

of that anger from across the

14:28

spectrum. And it's impossible for me to imagine

14:30

that they could survive politically after

14:32

that.

14:34

So let's talk about what actually happened.

14:36

I mean, there's been obviously a lot

14:38

of reporting on this. One

14:41

thing that has changed recently, and you

14:43

wrote a piece in The Atlantic about this, is

14:45

that the IDF felt the need to

14:48

actually bring journalists

14:50

and perhaps others into an

14:53

auditorium and show them some

14:56

of the body cam footage and the nanny

14:58

cam footage and the dash cam footage that they

15:00

had acquired of what actually

15:02

happened. First, before we talk

15:05

about the details, this was not only

15:07

Hamas. I think you saw footage from

15:10

the GoPro footage that Hamas themselves

15:12

shot to document their atrocities.

15:15

But

15:16

there were other ordinary Gazans who came

15:18

across the border and participated.

15:21

Was that captured in the footage you saw or

15:23

is that just something that we know of based

15:26

on other reporting?

15:28

It's not captured in the footage that I saw

15:31

in the IDF's screening. So

15:33

the IDF's screening was

15:35

truly raw footage. I mean, it was

15:38

just images that were captured, as you say,

15:40

by nanny cams, by security cams, by GoPros.

15:43

But there was no indication of

15:46

which faction from Gaza was

15:48

doing what. But there's lots of other footage

15:50

too. I've seen lots of

15:52

footage of people stealing TVs,

15:55

solar panels, and ordinary Gazans

15:57

crossing over the border simply to

15:59

So that's a big part

16:02

of what people have seen.

16:04

And also they also participated in

16:06

taking of hostages. It seemed that it wasn't

16:08

just Hamas

16:10

that was

16:11

gathering people to be brought back to Gaza, but

16:13

there were other just Gazans doing

16:16

it.

16:16

Yeah, I mean, there's every indication

16:19

that people were just streaming across the

16:21

border and taking what and whom they

16:23

could. And I

16:26

believe Hamas has even suggested

16:28

as much that some of the time

16:31

since then has been spent just figuring out

16:34

who they got. They

16:36

don't know what they have to bargain

16:38

with because different groups have taken

16:40

different people to different places.

16:43

Right. So this was disorganized

16:45

in a way. It's almost that they succeeded,

16:48

it seems at least, that they may have succeeded

16:50

beyond their wildest imaginings and

16:53

they encountered much less resistance than

16:55

they were imagining. So they just had this

16:58

kind of embarrassment of sadistic

17:00

riches where they had all the time in the world

17:02

to kill people and torture people and desecrate

17:05

their bodies and then decide what

17:08

they wanted to do next, whether that was bringing

17:10

hostages back to Gaza or standing

17:12

and fighting a final battle

17:15

that would end in their martyrdom. But

17:18

that was so slow in coming that it seems

17:20

like

17:21

they were surprised by their own success.

17:24

Yeah, I think that's

17:26

a really important point that explains

17:29

a lot of why we're at where we're at,

17:31

that they did not know how

17:34

successful they were going to be. They did

17:36

some things that are just standard

17:39

military practice. You

17:41

attack an outpost,

17:44

you succeed, and then you...

17:47

create a perimeter around it, you sort of expand

17:49

that perimeter so it's as defensible as possible.

17:51

And that perimeter in

17:54

the different places where they attacked expanded and

17:56

expanded and expanded to include

17:58

holes.

17:59

civilian areas where I

18:02

think they were, I'm certain that they were expecting

18:05

to attack civilians to take

18:07

them hostage. But the idea that they would

18:09

take 200 plus civilians

18:12

hostage, that they would not

18:14

encounter significant resistance for several hours,

18:17

that doesn't seem to be even in their plans.

18:20

So you often hear

18:22

people asking, hey, well,

18:25

what did Hamas think was going to happen? Did they

18:28

think that the Israelis weren't going to go into Gaza

18:30

and destroy Gaza as a result of this? How

18:33

crazy must they have been? I

18:35

think they actually didn't think that this would happen because

18:37

they didn't think they'd kill and kidnap

18:39

so many Israelis. And that's what

18:42

actually happened. So we're in a state where neither

18:44

Israel nor Hamas thought

18:46

they would be in at the beginning of

18:49

October.

18:50

There's this misconception that Israel is a heavily

18:52

armed society because everyone does

18:54

their stint in the army. But

18:57

if I'm not mistaken, people return their

18:59

guns to the army when they leave the army.

19:02

So this is not like Texas

19:04

where most homes have guns

19:06

in them. Am I correct in thinking that?

19:09

Yeah, that's right. So it's very

19:11

common to see people with handguns

19:14

in Israel. It's very

19:16

uncommon to see people who are...or

19:19

it was uncommon a month ago to see people who

19:21

were out of uniform carrying

19:23

around assault rifles.

19:25

So

19:26

I think if Hamas

19:31

fighters came into Kibbutz

19:33

and encountered resistance, they were likely to

19:35

be encountering a few

19:38

people with handguns against their

19:40

Kalashnikovs, their RPGs. So

19:43

yeah, it's an armed society,

19:46

but it's not like trying to take over

19:48

a town in Texas.

19:49

So what happened? Much detail you want to go

19:51

into based on the footage you saw,

19:53

but I think it's worth discussing

19:58

something in detail. just because

20:00

I think, I mean, obviously, there's, we're

20:02

in such a strange moment now where we have what

20:04

we're literally witnessing demonstrations

20:08

on the campuses of Ivy League universities,

20:11

really in explicit support of what happened

20:13

on October 7th, seemingly

20:15

knowing the details of what happened. And, you know,

20:17

there are photos of hostages that

20:20

get ripped off of walls as

20:23

though that were some intelligible

20:25

way of supporting the Palestinian people

20:27

and making some sense of

20:29

their immiseration in Gaza under

20:32

Hamas's rule as they,

20:34

you know, are used on

20:36

an hourly basis as human shields

20:38

in this conflict. It feels like it's worth

20:41

describing what actually

20:44

happened because I would argue

20:46

it makes no sense in political

20:48

terms and it makes a lot of

20:50

sense in jihadist ones, which

20:53

is to say it's unsurprising. We'll

20:55

get into a discussion of jihad proper

20:58

and differences between Hamas

21:00

and other groups. But what happened was

21:02

so, it really seemed like a

21:05

kind of violence you would not expect

21:07

in the modern world, certainly not

21:09

in a normal, modern

21:12

military context. And yet,

21:14

when you think of it in terms of

21:16

jihad, it's not actually fundamentally

21:20

surprising. So I think it is worth describing

21:22

anything you are comfortable describing

21:24

from what you've seen. Yeah.

21:27

So here's what happened. On the morning

21:29

of October 7th,

21:31

there were

21:32

multiple breaches of this

21:35

wall between Gaza and

21:37

Israeli communities on the other side of the wall. And

21:40

these communities, they tended to be kibbutzas.

21:42

So basically, like there was

21:45

agricultural co-ops and

21:48

these intentional communities filled

21:50

with people who kind of lived

21:52

together, in some cases, ate together.

21:54

And

21:55

in the morning... I would

21:57

actually just add here that one very...

22:00

painful irony here if anyone

22:02

on the other side could be susceptible to

22:04

this irony is that the people in

22:06

these kibbutz were not right-wing

22:09

settlers. These were not fans

22:12

of Netanyahu, I would imagine. Many

22:14

of these people, most of these people have been described

22:16

as left-wing idealists

22:19

of one form or another and precisely the kinds

22:21

of people who would volunteer

22:23

to drive Gazans across

22:25

the border to get medical treatment in Israel.

22:28

Yeah, totally. I mean, these were

22:30

peacenaks, these were 60s throwbacks,

22:32

these were labor Zionists, the

22:34

kibbutz movement goes back before

22:37

I was born into

22:39

a period when

22:41

people were,

22:42

they had a kind of utopian

22:45

peace-oriented view of the world. And a

22:47

lot of these people who were like 85 years

22:49

old who were taken hostage, they

22:51

came from that. So what

22:54

happened first was Hamas

22:56

and others breached the border wall,

22:59

attacked a number of military outposts,

23:02

and were just wildly

23:04

successful in taking over these outposts.

23:07

I remember seeing the footage the day that it happened,

23:09

it came out that quick. They came

23:11

into those outposts seemingly unopposed,

23:14

there wasn't really any preparation whatsoever,

23:18

and they just massacred a

23:21

large number of the soldiers,

23:24

many of them conscripts who were there. So that's

23:27

roughly what happened at the military outposts.

23:30

In the communities, they would

23:32

encounter not much more resistance

23:35

than that. You can see in the videos,

23:37

they show up at the gates of

23:40

the communities, these gates, they're

23:43

closed. You have to have

23:45

a code to open them up, not

23:47

much more complicated than a garage door

23:49

opener. And so in some of the videos, you

23:51

see them just waiting there, hiding almost

23:54

in the bushes next to the gates, waiting

23:57

for someone to drive up.

23:59

them, killing them. And then over

24:02

and over in the security cameras footage,

24:05

you can see there will be some

24:07

sedan that rolls up and

24:11

you can just imagine what's

24:13

going through the heads of these Israelis who

24:15

notice that something's weird and then

24:17

notice that what's weird is that there's

24:19

a guy with a gun who's

24:21

there and

24:23

then next thing they know they're being shot.

24:25

And there's no

24:27

shortage of really disturbing

24:29

footage but the weight of the life

24:31

of these Israelis went

24:33

from extremely normal to

24:36

a little off to over. This

24:39

is just horrifying. These

24:41

are people who like they

24:44

weren't even resisting in the slightest

24:46

and they're simply massacred and

24:49

then their bodies pulled out of the cars, the cars

24:51

looted a bit, sometimes destroyed

24:53

further. And then once

24:56

they could finally get into the gates

24:58

of the communities, then things

25:01

got quite grisly. I've

25:03

been to a few of them since and they're totally

25:06

evacuated. It's unclear whether they'll

25:08

ever be repopulated, the

25:11

former residents are in other cities in Israel now.

25:13

But you see some houses that are

25:16

completely intact and then others

25:18

that are piles of rubble

25:21

and cinders and then others that

25:23

are just completely bullet

25:25

riddled. And over the course of hours,

25:29

we're talking between 12 and 24 hours, these houses were raided, the

25:31

occupants were hunted

25:35

down, shot, tortured.

25:38

Israeli houses now, in order to be

25:41

up to code, they have to, if you build a new

25:43

house, it has to have a safe room that's

25:45

meant to withstand missile attacks or rocket

25:47

attacks rather. And so

25:50

of course, a lot of families went into these safe

25:52

rooms. The safe rooms are not meant to

25:54

withstand 24 hours

25:57

of diabolical terrorists

25:59

surrounding you. and deciding

26:01

to do whatever they want, such as

26:03

just like your house on fire and

26:06

having you burned to death within it. So

26:10

a lot of people died that way. There are

26:12

from the GoPro videos, lots of

26:14

images of old people who

26:16

were presumably just confused about

26:18

the noise outside and through a screen

26:20

door, you can see them just get shot. And

26:23

then some of the other images or

26:26

some of the other videos are just

26:28

deeply disturbing. I mean, I've seen

26:30

a lot of horrible stuff from

26:32

covering ISIS. And this is horrible

26:35

in a kind of different way. ISIS

26:37

would have much higher

26:39

production values, and they would describe

26:42

why they're doing this crucifixion

26:45

or this beheading and then pronounce the

26:47

sentence and you'd see from

26:49

four different camera angles what they're doing. In

26:52

this, it's more like we're

26:55

entering everyday scenes of

26:58

normal life and someone's

27:00

kitchen, someone's living room, walking

27:03

into their front porch and

27:05

then interrupting it as

27:08

violently as possible. You see

27:11

early in the morning, so you see people who are

27:13

in their pajamas, half dressed, who

27:16

are scrambling trying to figure out

27:18

what's going on and how to stay safe. And

27:22

within seconds, their family

27:24

is destroyed. There was one in particular

27:27

captured in a nanny cam where

27:29

there's a father with two young

27:31

sons who are clearly woken

27:34

up, surprised, but

27:36

aware that they're being attacked and

27:39

they

27:40

tentatively leave their house and then go

27:42

to a little area in their backyard.

27:44

I think they might be able

27:47

to hide there. And pretty

27:49

quickly, the terrorists toss

27:52

a grenade in and there's

27:55

an explosion. You see the dad killed

27:58

probably instantly and he's fallen. and over

28:00

and at

28:02

least unconscious and certainly never

28:04

gets up again. And then the kids covered

28:07

in blood, one of them's lost an eye and

28:09

then you hear them as they run

28:12

back into their house, sit in their kitchen

28:14

and you hear

28:16

them talk about the fact that their lives

28:18

are about to end, call for their mom, talk

28:21

about daddy, daddy. And then one

28:23

of the children says to the other, I think we're

28:26

about to die. And all of this happens

28:29

while the terrorists are still there. The Hamas

28:32

guy, presumably the same one who threw the grenade,

28:34

walks into the scene and like

28:37

opens up their fridge. He says, water,

28:39

water. I think he's trying to give them water.

28:42

But there

28:44

are other stories of Hamas

28:47

fighters who go into people's houses and then eat

28:50

the breakfast that the family had prepared. So

28:53

it's the interruption of life that is

28:55

for me just haunting.

28:57

So there have been reports of

29:01

decapitated babies and a

29:03

baby put in an oven and then there have

29:07

been people who have doubted those reports.

29:09

What do you know about the veracity

29:12

of the most extreme imagery

29:15

we've been told about?

29:17

So what I have seen

29:20

myself is rubble.

29:23

And when you go to the actual places at the

29:25

time when I was able to go there, which was days,

29:28

not weeks after the events, already

29:31

the scene had been tidied up a bit.

29:34

But it was clear that there's a horrible cataclysm

29:36

that happened. There were though, on

29:38

the very day that it happened, there were videos that were

29:40

coming out showing the most

29:43

awful gruesome stuff. So there

29:45

is no doubt that what happened on October

29:48

7th was an

29:50

atrocity, that there was sadism,

29:53

that there is an attempt to kill

29:55

whoever could be killed and

29:57

to do it in a way that would be as

29:59

people.

29:59

painful for the victims as possible. So that

30:03

much is a certainty. And then the videos,

30:07

the things that the videos show, even on

30:09

those early days, was there decapitation?

30:12

Yes, I know there was decapitation because the

30:14

video showed a Thai worker

30:17

who was clearly already dying. He

30:20

had been gut shot, I think, and

30:23

was lying on the floor. And you can

30:25

hear the terrorists around him yelling,

30:29

give me a knife, give me a knife, presumably

30:31

to decapitate him because that's what they eventually tried to do.

30:34

And not having a knife, they used a garden

30:36

hoe.

30:36

So

30:37

I had seen part of this video

30:40

where they hack it at his neck

30:43

with a garden hoe. And

30:46

in the screening that the IDF did,

30:48

I saw the rest of the video where they keep

30:51

at it. It's not one swipe that it takes

30:53

to do that.

30:54

So

30:55

there's no doubt that the atrocities that

30:58

were done were

31:00

maximal. They were as

31:02

bad as you can

31:05

get.

31:05

Now,

31:06

there are some specific claims that have been made

31:08

that I myself as a reporter can't

31:10

confirm. I haven't seen the evidence for them.

31:13

I've heard

31:14

testimony and I've certainly heard secondhand

31:16

testimony where someone's

31:17

sister's friend

31:20

was a first responder and observed

31:23

this or that.

31:24

What did Anthony Blinken say that he had observed?

31:27

Didn't he give some testimony

31:29

that he was shown imagery

31:31

that confirms whichever

31:33

report was then

31:36

current? And I've lost connection

31:38

to what those details were. Yeah, Anthony

31:41

Blinken, the Secretary of State of the United States,

31:43

he gave testimony that he had seen

31:45

a family that was bound

31:49

and then dismembered before

31:51

being killed. So kids

31:53

with fingers taken off,

31:56

feet taken off,

31:58

a father with his eyes closed. gouged

32:00

out and then killed. So

32:03

that's the standard here. At

32:05

the margins, there are particular atrocities

32:08

that have been described that I as a

32:10

reporter, I can't claim

32:12

to have seen the videos of this, so I

32:14

can't confirm them. But the

32:19

dozens of decapitated babies, the

32:22

fetuses ripped from the mother's wombs, these

32:27

have been... These are

32:29

on the list of things that have

32:31

been claimed. And from my perspective,

32:35

what I know has happened is

32:38

quite enough. And

32:40

the particular atrocities

32:43

beyond that don't really

32:45

change my opinion of the situation.

32:47

Yeah, I would agree. I mean, maximal

32:50

is maximal. And

32:52

the reason why I wanted you to go into some gruesome

32:55

detail is not for the sake of the

32:58

luxuriating in the horror

33:00

of it, but I just think there

33:02

are layers of moral confusion here

33:05

that I'm noticing get deposited

33:07

upon our public conversation about

33:10

what's happening and what

33:12

is right for Israel to do in light of what

33:14

has happened that I think we have

33:16

to cut through until one

33:19

species of confusion is to imagine that

33:23

really body count is all, right? So

33:26

if Israel, if

33:28

the IDF drops bombs on

33:30

Gaza and kills more than 1,400 innocent

33:33

Palestinians, well then at a

33:35

minimum, the balance is

33:38

even with respect to the

33:40

ethics of the situation. Their response

33:42

has been proportional. And

33:45

the moment they kill more than that, well then

33:48

the Israelis are the evil ones.

33:51

And that's really, it's just that's

33:53

how you do the moral arithmetic. And

33:57

that's just so obviously wrong.

33:59

I mean, there are many, many smart people who would

34:01

sign up for that kind of analysis. I imagine

34:03

someone like Noam Chomsky would think that's how

34:06

you have to think about it. And therefore,

34:09

on his account, therefore we are orders of

34:11

magnitude worse than our enemies have

34:13

been in quite a long time because of

34:15

all the people we and the Israelis

34:18

and Western powers generally have killed as

34:20

collateral damage in recent wars.

34:23

But it just seems to me quite obvious

34:25

that there is a difference between a group

34:28

of people that would

34:31

intend to murder

34:35

non-combatants up close

34:37

and personal in totally

34:39

inefficient and painful ways

34:42

and make a kind of sacrament

34:45

of that violence. I'll get to what

34:47

I mean by that later on. And

34:50

people who would take

34:52

fairly great pains to avoid killing

34:54

non-combatants, all the while knowing that

34:56

if they're going to wage any kind of war, non-combatants

35:00

will be killed. So they'll drop leaflets

35:02

telling people to get out of buildings they intend to destroy.

35:05

They'll call cell phones to try to get people

35:08

to leave those buildings. And as

35:11

I've said in previous podcasts, Hamas

35:13

is consciously using those non-combatants as

35:15

human shields in a way that would be completely

35:19

unthinkable and just ridiculous

35:22

if you reversed the logic. I mean, just

35:24

imagine these – imagine

35:26

IDF soldiers using those non-combatants

35:30

on those kibbutzas as human shields

35:32

against the on-rushing forces

35:35

of Hamas. Killing non-combatants was

35:37

the point, right? So there is no using Jewish

35:39

human shields to deter them. But

35:41

the reverse is not the case. And Israel –

35:43

if Israel wanted to kill non-combatants

35:46

by the tens and hundreds of thousands, they could

35:48

do that. The fact that they don't do

35:50

that reveals that all

35:53

the non-combatants they kill are at

35:55

worst inadvertent, right? This is not –

35:58

if they could

35:59

kill only –

35:59

members of Hamas and

36:02

not kill a single woman or child in

36:04

Gaza, that's what the IDF would

36:06

do. So there's a moral equivalence there

36:08

that I think is it really has

36:10

to be cut through and the difference has to

36:13

be reiterated and so that some of the details you

36:15

gave I think are necessary to do that.

36:17

The other piece which I think is going

36:20

to be very hard for most rational,

36:22

secular people to understand

36:24

is that the kinds of people who

36:27

would do what you just described

36:29

are

36:30

almost certainly, I mean it's not to say

36:32

it wasn't a psychopath or

36:34

two among them, almost certainly these

36:37

were psychologically normal people. It's not

36:39

like jihadism functions

36:42

as a pure bug light for the world psychopaths

36:45

and you know these are people who would do

36:47

horrible things anyway but

36:49

they're just doing these particular horrible things

36:52

under the aegis of jihad.

36:55

This is something I believe you and I have spoken about

36:57

when talking about the Islamic State in the past.

36:59

It's not like all the people

37:02

who were raping Yazidis and taking

37:04

them as sex slaves and killing their

37:06

husbands, even the people who had dropped out

37:08

of medical school in the UK for the pleasure of doing

37:11

that, it's not like they were all psychopaths

37:13

who were destined for a life

37:15

of rape and murder anyway and

37:18

they just decided to do it here. The deepest

37:21

problem here that I think we have to talk

37:23

about is that there are ideas that are so

37:25

powerful and destructive that they

37:28

create a kind of absolute

37:30

evil that to our horror

37:33

doesn't actually require the presence

37:36

of many evil people. I mean

37:38

normal people can be led to believe

37:41

the requisite things that could justify

37:44

precisely the kind of violence you described

37:46

and that I think is just for secular people,

37:49

people who have never met anyone who has

37:51

met anyone who has been certain of Paradise,

37:53

I think it's very hard to understand

37:56

and anyway, feel free to disagree

37:58

with anything that I just said there but... that

38:01

I think that is something that I'm

38:03

eager to disabuse our audience

38:06

of.

38:06

Yeah, I think we're

38:08

about to start talking, I think, about Hamas and ISIS.

38:11

And I'll introduce one difference

38:14

after what you just said, which is ISIS

38:16

worked very hard to make sure

38:19

that everybody was on the same page ideologically.

38:21

A lot of that project was

38:23

an educational project. It was, you

38:25

have to believe the following things. In fact,

38:28

that's how we know that you're with

38:30

us, is that you believe the following things and you

38:32

don't deviate at all. Because if you do

38:34

deviate, then we're coming after you, even

38:37

with that minor deviation. And

38:39

from what I've seen of the

38:42

guys who were coming in from Hamas, absolutely

38:46

most of them seemed to have jihad

38:49

on the brain. They go in

38:51

and they use particular

38:54

religious slogans that are familiar from

38:57

jihadism elsewhere that indicate

38:59

they're thinking about this and they're phrasing what they're

39:01

doing in those terms. There's

39:03

other people who are going in and, as

39:06

we've noted, stealing kids

39:08

bikes and bike helmets.

39:11

And I don't know how they're phrasing what

39:14

they're doing to themselves. Clearly,

39:16

they've dehumanized Israelis

39:19

in their own minds so that they think

39:21

it's a reasonable thing to loot a place

39:24

where people are literally burning alive within

39:26

a few dozen meters of them. So it's

39:29

at least a sense of inhumanity

39:34

and hatred

39:37

of their imagined enemy.

39:39

But it's unclear

39:41

what they all believe beyond that. And

39:43

there's a whole range of things

39:46

that people might have had going through their minds

39:49

from, hey, I'm striking a blow against

39:52

the ones who have dispossessed us,

39:55

to I'm doing something that God is

39:57

going to reward me for with the

40:00

highest rewards of heaven.

40:01

And then

40:02

to add to that, even in Gaza,

40:05

especially in Gaza, the

40:07

approval rate of Hamas is very, very low. Gazans

40:10

do not like Hamas in general. And

40:13

so, to see them doing these

40:15

horrible things in the name of an organization

40:19

that is known

40:21

to be corrupt and incompetent is

40:24

again, it's very strange

40:26

and different compared to ISIS where with

40:28

the fighters for ISIS, they thought that ISIS

40:31

for whatever faults it had represented

40:34

the will of God was preordained

40:36

and prophesied as the

40:39

standard bearer for Islam,

40:41

bringing about the end of the world just as

40:43

God desired.

40:45

So in a way, it's more

40:48

unsettling to see people doing these horrible

40:50

things for an entity that they

40:52

seem to know is defective, but

40:55

they're doing it anyway and with the same amount of cruelty.

40:58

Yeah, okay. Well, let me

41:00

just pass over some of that terrain

41:02

again, because I think there's a few more distinctions and caveats

41:04

to add. One is I've heard that while

41:07

Hamas is very unpopular in Gaza, probably

41:10

for their conscious immiseration

41:12

of the Gazans by stealing all

41:14

of the resources for the purpose of building terror

41:17

tunnels, etc., they're

41:19

actually still popular in the West Bank and they probably would

41:21

win an election today if held

41:23

in the West Bank. Have you heard that

41:26

discrepancy or not?

41:28

Yeah, I think this actually

41:30

illustrates things nicely. I mean, it's exactly

41:33

crisscross where

41:35

in the West Bank, which is governed by the Palestinian

41:37

Authority on the Palestinian side, Hamas

41:41

is relatively popular. And then

41:43

in Gaza, which is governed by Hamas, and

41:45

where the Palestinian Authority was kicked out,

41:47

the Palestinian Authority is more popular.

41:50

So in both cases, they're

41:53

misgoverned. I mean, these are terribly misgoverned

41:56

statelets. And the

41:58

one who's not misgoverning you... you is the

42:00

one who's more popular. Yeah,

42:02

the other caveat I would

42:05

introduce is that however unpopular

42:07

Hamas might be, there's

42:10

probably a distinction between you know

42:12

hating them as a form of government and

42:15

not supporting what they did on October

42:17

7th, right? It's conceptually

42:20

coherent to me to believe that there's some

42:22

people who thought October 7th

42:24

was a great victory and even knowing

42:26

the details they would fully support

42:29

it but they also think Hamas is a

42:31

terrible governing organization

42:33

and they've ruined Gaza. Yeah,

42:36

I agree.

42:38

I think that

42:40

the thing to remember about Hamas is that it's

42:42

had years in power and the

42:45

ideology that it stands for is

42:48

rather well laid out. It's in favor of an

42:51

eventual worldwide Muslim

42:53

government. It is in favor of the

42:55

Muslim Brotherhood's view of government

42:59

and of how Islamism should work. It

43:01

is not though ISIS

43:05

operated with crystalline clarity, extreme

43:09

simplicity where you could

43:11

describe the system of government

43:13

that ISIS wanted on the back

43:15

of a 3x5 card whereas

43:18

Hamas as an entity

43:21

that actually has to you know pick up trash

43:23

and do a lot of things

43:26

for years not just briefly

43:28

as ISIS did, is a pretty messy thing

43:31

and not nearly

43:34

as ideologically pure, clear

43:36

and simple as ISIS was. Yeah,

43:40

well let's talk about the fragmentation

43:42

of the jihadist landscape for a moment

43:44

because I think it's interesting. I don't think it's as consequential

43:47

as we would want it to be. I mean we would

43:49

want it to be totally internecine

43:52

and self-canceling, right? It'd be great if

43:54

the jihadists were just killing themselves and

43:57

focused on their hair-splitting

43:59

theological differences.

44:00

and we just let them have

44:02

at it. But in their hatred

44:06

of secular pluralistic,

44:09

i.e. Western values, I think

44:11

they're united in their

44:13

aspiration to triumphantly

44:16

spread Islam, whatever form they favor

44:19

to the end of the earth. They're ultimately

44:22

united. Obviously, there's the split between

44:24

Shia and Sunni. There's the infighting

44:27

among Sunni jihadist groups. We've

44:30

got the Islamic State that would more or less

44:32

excommunicate everyone for their

44:34

lack of purity. It was certainly, as you

44:36

point out in a recent article in the Atlantic,

44:39

they would consider Hamas more or

44:41

less apostates because they're willing to play the

44:44

political game, the nationalistic game,

44:46

and above all, they're willing to collaborate

44:48

with Shia in being backed by

44:50

Iran and being allied with Hezbollah.

44:53

I think that detail is confusing to people. What

44:55

do you make of Hamas's Machiavellian

44:59

adaptability to collaborating

45:01

across the Shia-Sunni divide

45:03

in a way that the Islamic State would

45:05

never countenance?

45:07

Yeah, not just would never countenance, but

45:09

order number one of business for first

45:12

people would be whoever was doing

45:14

that killed them, killed the Shia as quickly

45:16

as possible. So they

45:18

think that anybody who would collaborate with Shia,

45:20

including Hamas, needs to be killed.

45:23

Now Hamas does not have a problem with that,

45:25

you mentioned Hezbollah, you mentioned Iran

45:28

which supplies Hamas most of its military

45:31

budget. There's also Syria. Syria

45:33

is run by an Alawite

45:36

Shia government and is

45:39

a huge supporter of Hamas.

45:41

Hamas has no problem with this. I

45:43

think that there's a lot of Sunni

45:47

jihadists who are

45:49

deferers. They say, in

45:52

the future we'll hash this out. In the meantime,

45:54

we've got a shared enemy in the

45:56

form of the Jewish State. So ISIS...

46:00

One of the reasons it sped to popularity

46:02

so fast was that it was uncompromising.

46:06

Anybody could see that it

46:09

was not going to take any shortcuts. And so

46:11

if you were in this for Islamic

46:13

purity, ISIS was

46:15

the one to go for because it

46:18

started off with absolute

46:21

theological certainty

46:23

and inflexibility that

46:26

appealed to a lot of people. And Hamas

46:28

seems to be totally flexible theologically

46:31

to

46:32

the point where it'll

46:33

accept people who are basically just

46:35

nationalists. If you're waving the Palestinian

46:38

flag and you're okay with Hamas

46:40

being in charge, then Hamas is okay with you. Whereas

46:43

ISIS would want to kill you because

46:45

you're a nationalist and God

46:47

does not split up humanity by nations only

46:49

by Islam

46:50

and not Islam. So

46:53

this is a huge difference.

46:55

The other view that ISIS has of

46:58

the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is

47:01

that in ISIS's timeline is way down

47:04

the road. Israel is not

47:06

going to be vanquished. The Jews are not going to be vanquished

47:09

until pretty late, like 11.59 p.m. on

47:11

the timeline of

47:15

humanity. So they say if you're trying

47:17

to do that right now, you've got things

47:19

out of order. What you want to do now is purify

47:23

your faith and then once

47:25

that's done, then Jesus will

47:27

come back. The fight with the Jews

47:29

will be won and so forth. And

47:32

so they say that Hamas's single-minded

47:34

focus on creating an estate

47:38

in Palestine is

47:39

borderline idolatrous because you

47:42

shouldn't be

47:43

thinking so intensely about that when

47:45

there's still a lot of theological matters

47:48

to be cleaned up.

47:49

So I

47:51

guess I have a further question about Hezbollah

47:54

and Iran. I don't know if this is

47:56

the angle your reporting has taken at all, but

47:59

looking at this... from the vast distance

48:01

of just being a consumer of news

48:04

here in America,

48:05

it's hard for me to see

48:07

how Israel doesn't

48:10

decide, and

48:12

probably in concert with American

48:15

support,

48:16

that Hezbollah

48:18

currently constitutes a kind of existential

48:20

threat and just needs to be

48:23

preemptively

48:24

destroyed.

48:25

I don't see how they just sit with Hezbollah

48:27

on their northern border with 150,000 rockets, as

48:30

has been reported, and a much larger

48:33

force than they just encountered

48:35

coming from Gaza. So while they

48:37

have to deal with Gaza and they

48:40

have to deal with Hamas, it sounds

48:42

like they would have to deal with Hezbollah

48:45

and maybe Iran too. What's

48:50

your sense of the looming specter

48:52

of a much wider conflict

48:54

being sort of inevitable at this

48:56

point, however things play out in Gaza?

49:00

Yeah, so in the early

49:02

days after this attack, one of the

49:04

things that I know was on lots of Israelis'

49:07

minds was, is there a next

49:09

step where Hezbollah steps in?

49:12

That changes everything. If there's a northern front

49:14

with, as you say, 150,000 rockets being aimed at Israel and an

49:18

extremely battle-hardened force

49:21

in Hezbollah. So that

49:24

would, as I say, change everything to have two fronts

49:27

open at the same time. I think

49:30

it's

49:31

simply a matter of priority and

49:34

capability, where Israel thinks

49:36

that it can obliterate

49:39

Hamas as an operational entity.

49:42

And Hezbollah, to do that, would

49:45

initiate a war that is not

49:49

nearly so obviously winnable.

49:51

So

49:52

they would much prefer to take care of what they

49:54

can now

49:55

and then figure out how to deal with Hezbollah

49:59

from there.

49:59

You're not hearing anyone

50:02

speculate that Israel

50:04

would actually preemptively attack Hezbollah

50:08

in the absence of that front opening

50:10

up from its base? The

50:30

Making Sense Podcast is ad-free and

50:32

relies entirely on listener support. And

50:34

you can subscribe now

50:35

at SamHarris.org.