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Ross Douthat: Since the attacks of Oct. 7, Israel has dealt serious blows to its enemies — to Hamas, to Hezbollah, and to Iran. It has pursued a war in Gaza, a war with a civilian death toll in the tens of thousands that has no certain end game. And Israel has also lost a lot of public support in the United States — in the Democratic Party especially, but also on the political right.
All these unfinished stories matter, not just for Israel’s future, but for American politics and culture. But which one matters most? Are Israel’s strategic successes clearing the way for Middle Eastern peace? Is the Gaza war locking in anti-Israel sentiment, carrying antisemitism in its train?
To argue through these questions, I’m joined by my colleague Bret Stephens, who writes eloquently about the Middle East and the threat of antisemitism.
Bret Stephens, welcome to “Interesting Times.”
Bret Stephens: It’s good to be here, Ross.
Douthat: It’s really great to have you. Thanks so much for doing this.
So we’re having this conversation on the afternoon of the day when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is scheduled to be at the White House, meeting with President Donald Trump, presumably talking about Iran, talking about the prospects for a cease-fire in Gaza.
And ultimately, I want this to be a conversation, not just about the Middle East, but about America and the effect of wars in the Middle East on American culture and politics. But let’s start with the war in Gaza.
I think it’s been hard for a while, for me at least, to see what the actual end game is in Gaza. It’s been hard in certain ways since the first days of the war. And I want to talk about that end game, but first, I just want your overall assessment of whether the Gaza war at this moment seems to have been worth it to Israel, in terms of how it’s been conducted — not just at a security level, but at a long-term political level and at a moral level. I assume you think it has been worth it.
Stephens: I do.
Douthat: OK.
Stephens: I don’t think any Israeli government of virtually any plausible political stripe could have responded in a significantly different way than the way this government did.
You can argue about tactics. But you have to appreciate that Israel is such a small country that the death of — “death” is the wrong word — the wanton murder of 1,200 Israelis affects Israel in the same way that, say, 12 or 15 9/11s would have affected the United States.
This is what I mean: There isn’t an Israeli who does not know — either at one remove, one degree of separation, or at most two — someone who was murdered, kidnapped, barely survived the attack. Most Americans, as shocking as 9/11 was, never met even a relative of someone who died in the towers or a relative of someone who died on Flight 93 or the Pentagon. So the scale of Oct. 7 in Israel was massive.
And it is absolutely reasonable for Israel to say, after four or five previous wars against Hamas, that they needed to put an end to Hamas’ reign in Gaza once and for all.
Douthat: OK. So I agree with that, but I think part of the argument that you made is about necessity, which is different from, in the end, wisdom and morality to some degree. Maybe they’re not completely separable. But it was absolutely necessary for the United States to respond to 9/11 on an aggressive and substantial scale — I think that’s true. I also think it’s true that the way we ended up responding led us into various debacles and disasters and moral calamities. So it could be the case that everything Israel has done is completely understandable and still fails certain tests.
I want to ask about that test. The pursuit of the removal of Hamas from power, I also agree, is completely legitimate — absolutely, morally legitimate. But Israel has killed a lot of people in the course of this war. Tens of thousands of people are dead. Some substantial number of women and children are dead. Entire urban areas have been leveled and razed. And I guess I’m curious, as a supporter of the effort, how do you assess the point at which that kind of response becomes disproportionate?
Stephens: Two issues here. One is the question of moral culpability. Let’s agree, obviously, that the death of a single innocent child is a death too many. All of the civilians who have been killed and displaced in Gaza, the misery that they’ve endured over the last nearly two years, is horrific and heartbreaking.
The question then is: who actually bears moral responsibility for that death and displacement? And my argument is: It’s clearly Hamas.
Hamas, first of all, broke a cease-fire on Oct. 6, 2023, and broke it in the cruelest way. Hamas hides behind, between and beneath their own civilian population — the very opposite of the way other countries fight wars, where they protect civilians and put their armed soldiers forward. And Hamas could end this at any moment of its choosing. They could easily release the remaining hostages and agree to relinquish political power to some other Palestinian group. Hamas refuses to do all of that.
So it’s a little bit frustrating for those of us who are supporters of Israel to hear people who simply discount the idea that Hamas bears the lion’s share of responsibility for the suffering that they have inflicted on their own people by starting a war they should never have started and by pursuing that war in the cruelest way possible.
A second point worth mentioning: You just talked about death and destruction of civilian life — that, even in pursuit of a righteous cause, at some point, it causes people to wonder whether it’s worth the price.
What you described is June 6, 1944. People think about D-Day as probably the most heroic and most righteous — with no irony intended in that word — moment in American history, when our boys stormed the beaches in the attack. But we killed thousands of French civilians in Normandy through indiscriminate bombing of targets, because that was the price that we thought was worth paying in the service of the reconquest of France and the liberation of the rest of Europe.
And I wonder what we would say if we applied a kind of retroactive moral judgment to the position of the United States on June 5, 1944. I’m sure someone could say: Well, look, the United States is no longer in danger — we won the Battle of the Atlantic. The Nazi regime terrorizes Europe, but that’s not really a major concern of ours. And if we destroy the Nazi regime, the level of death and destruction that we’re going to inflict on European civilian life is just not worth the cost.
That’s exactly the analysis that I hear when it comes to Gaza. So we should at least ask ourselves: When we were pursuing our own existential struggle against an enemy we thought was the apotheosis of evil, what was the moral calculus that we pursued?
Douthat: Do you think that the U.S. was right to firebomb Dresden? I mean, is it possible to look back on World War II and say: The U.S. pursued a righteous cause and we were right to do it, but in hindsight, we made some strategic choices that were immoral?
Stephens: Yeah, I think that’s an argument worth having. I was very persuaded by a book that appeared close to 30 years ago — Richard Overy, “Why the Allies Won” — about the merits and demerits of what’s called the strategic bombing of Germany. And I’m personally torn on this subject because my in-laws are German. My late father-in-law was a 9 or 10-year-old child in Hamburg when Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill authorized the firebombing of Hamburg, which inflicted devastation on a similar scale.
It’s an open moral question, but I don’t think it is entirely clear-cut to me that the devastation that we inflicted on Germany wasn’t necessary to finally end the devastating effects of German militarism on global security. Remember, that was not the first war the Allies were fighting against Germany — they had just fought a previous war against Germany, in which they’d been much more sparing of German lives by agreeing to an earlier armistice.
I think it’s fair to ask: Was every single Israeli military action in this war necessary? Did they have to use 2,000-pound bombs as opposed to 500-pound bombs? And there’s no doubt in my mind that, at many junctures, Israel used excessive force. I would just ask that when we think about our judgment of Israeli military action, we think about it in comparison to instances where the Allies used military force in pursuit of a goal they thought was essential to their security and survival.
Douthat: I guess I’m trying to come at this from the point of view, again, of someone who agrees that some kind of campaign like this is morally defensible and that accepting some level of civilian casualties in a war like this is just necessary.
But still, as we try to assess not just the campaign itself, but also — and I want to talk more about this — the reaction to the campaign, its cultural impact on the United States, on American politics, I feel like it would be helpful to have a moral baseline, the point at which a campaign that yields civilian casualties crosses a moral line. And I know we can’t assess that definitively.
Stephens: You know, I don’t know. Let’s take another example.
I was rereading last year Ron Chernow’s great biography of Ulysses Grant. I’m sure we’re in complete agreement here that the cause of the North — the cause of the Union — was a righteous cause. And at Vicksburg — which was the pivotal campaign, next to Gettysburg, in the summer of 1863 — Grant starved the Confederate garrison at Vicksburg.
So let’s just ask ourselves, how do we draw the line here? Should we go back and say: As righteous as the North was in wanting to eradicate slavery and save the Union, starving the Confederates at Vicksburg so that they were eating rats at the end of that campaign — or Sherman’s March to the Sea, or other instances of what the Union Cavalry did throughout the South — was such a moral abomination that we really have to rethink how that war was fought? It’s a form of Monday morning quarterbacking ——
Douthat: Well, it’s a little different ——
Stephens: That’s very easy for us to indulge in, but very difficult for people who are actually waging the war to measure at the time in which decisions are being made. And I wish there were a method by which you could do it more carefully and more judiciously.
But I’m always mindful of Sherman’s line: War is cruelty. And that’s an important reality that we have to accept when we’re talking about war under any circumstances.
Douthat: Right, but we aren’t just playing Monday morning quarterbacking with a war that is far in the past, whose outcome we know. The war isn’t finished. So to me, without being consequentialist, part of the morality of war is figuring out what your endgame is. If you’re going to ask a lot of people to die and you have a clear endgame in mind, it’s more justifiable than if you don’t.
Stephens: Well, there are two endgames that I think are important to specify. And I have no doubt that President Biden made absolutely the right call in October of 2023, and then for the rest of his presidency, in fundamentally putting the United States behind Israel’s efforts to defeat Hamas, for two principal reasons.
Number one, the endgame for Israel and the Palestinians should be two states — a Jewish Israeli state and a Palestinian state — living peacefully side-by-side, like neighbors anywhere else in the world. But that endgame is absolutely impossible to conceive if Hamas remains an undefeated power in Gaza.
But I also think that there’s an American interest here, which is that we not only want to support our allies throughout the world — small allies endangered by totalitarian enemies — but Hamas was one finger among many fingers of an Iranian power, and Iran was one arm of what is increasingly coalescing into a united, revanchist, revisionist, anti-Western, anti-American front, which is Russia — or Moscow — Tehran, Beijing, and I think you could add Pyongyang to that list.
So a strategic defeat for Hamas, for Iran and its proxies is in fact a victory for American interests globally.
Douthat: So let’s talk about America.
Stephens: Uh-oh.
Douthat: Well, no, because there is ——
Stephens: Now you want to become really depressing. [Chuckles]
Douthat: No, I think that we’re accustomed to debates about U.S. Middle Eastern policy and Israeli policy, but I would say — I’m curious if you agree — that I haven’t seen anything that’s happened in the Holy Land change American politics as much as the Israel-Gaza conflict has changed U.S. politics in the last few years.
The Democratic Party was trending in a less Zionist direction, less supportive of Israel, but it seems like that trend has just been absolutely turbocharged. The Republican Party is still very pro-Israel, but you can see that also shifting in some polling, especially among younger Republicans. And you don’t have to look very far on the internet to find right-wing factions that are, frankly, anti-Zionist.
Stephens: Yeah. The Tucker wing of the party.
Douthat: Right. And again, there’s been a Pat Buchanan wing of the Republican Party for a long time, but it just seems like the current environment has shifted things on both right and left.
Do you agree? How big do you think that change is?
Stephens: These were trends that you can date back over a decade. Even at the beginning of the second Intifada at the turn of this century, you started to see the left — at least the hard left — in America take an increasingly anti-Israel turn. That left has expanded on the wings of the Bernie Sanders campaign and other left-wing populists. So I see it more as an evolution rather than a sudden shift on account of the last 20 or so months of war.
It’s the same thing with the Republican Party. Before there was Tucker, there was Pat Buchanan.
Whether the anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party becomes the dominant wing? I think that’s quite possible. I’m more skeptical that it would happen on the Republican side.
Douthat: I think on the Republican side you have a core constituency in evangelical Christians that is supportive of Israel for not just one specific theological reason, but a whole host of reasons, going back culturally, arguably, to the 18th century. There’s a lot of interesting threads in terms of American attitudes toward Israel that long predate the actual refounding of the state of Israel.
At the same time, I feel like I am fairly well aware of trends among young right-leaning voters. I was around for Pat Buchanan — it feels more substantial than the Buchananite moment. It feels like there’s a skepticism of the American relationship to Israel that has taken root on the right, in a stronger way than I can remember in my lifetime.
Stephens: Although, I think — and I’m speculating — that this is simply a function of the Republican turn to a broader skepticism about foreign alliances of any stripe. The same people who I think would tell you that they’re opposed to American military supplies to Ukraine aren’t very happy about our alliance with Israel. The same people who are trade protectionists would also be, if not hostile, at least skeptical of our support for the Israelis.
By the way, it’s a good argument at some point soon for the Israelis to simply wean themselves completely from American military aid. Israel’s a half-trillion-dollar economy with an incredibly robust set of domestic military industries. The Israelis do not need to be getting $3 billion of American taxpayer money, even though most of that money goes to Boeing and Lockheed Martin and a few other defense contracts.
Douthat: So I guess that gets to one of my questions here: Is this a reality that Israeli policymakers should consider as a factor in their own decision making?
Stephens: If I were the defense minister or prime minister of Israel, I would set the goal that by, say, 2030, all of the munitions that Israel uses are produced in Israel — or at least mostly produced in Israel — and that Israel should be able to defend itself.
I mean, the Israelis like to say: We want to defend ourselves by ourselves. But the Israelis should have the confidence of knowing that they do not have to rely on the good will of any American president, whether it’s Lara Trump or Hunter Biden, when he becomes president.
That’s a joke. But you never know.
Douthat: He’s sticking with painting.
But no, not Hunter Biden. But let’s say, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or some figure associated with the current American left.
Stephens: Well, I do think that when we get out of the Democratic corridor of A.O.C.’s district or maybe the People’s Republic of Mamdani in a few months time, that you’ll find most Democrats that I meet take a much more levelheaded view of our relationship with Israel.
The potential front-runners for the next Democratic presidential candidate — I don’t see any of them coming from the anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party. What I do see is a Democratic Party that is elevating voices that have many views — among them, strident anti-Israeli views — that are going to harm the party’s chances in the next electoral cycle.
Douthat: I guess it depends on how you define anti-Israel. From what I can see from polling, when it comes specifically at least to the war in Gaza, but also support for bombing of Iran and so on, I would say a reflective hostility to Israeli policy is a dominant view in the Democratic coalition right now.
Stephens: Is that Josh Shapiro’s view? Andy Beshear’s view? Wes Moore’s view?
I think what you’re seeing is a Democratic Party that has a progressive insurgency within it. But rank-and-file Democrats are very ambivalent about that insurgency and its views on many subjects, of which Israel is one of them.
Now, who knows what the future will bring? I was so spectacularly wrong about the direction of the Republican Party, say, in 2014, 2015, so I need to be a little mindful of the mistakes that I’ve made in the past. But I don’t see a Democratic Party being effectively taken over by this progressive wing because it’s not progressive at some level; it’s hostile to the views of middle-class Americans.
Douthat: What about the part of this that isn’t about Israeli strategy and U.S. policy toward Israel, but about American culture? You and I would both agree there’s been a surge in anti-Israel sentiment.
Stephens: And antisemitic sentiment.
Douthat: Right. I assume that you think that anti-Zionism and critiques of Israel’s policy shade really easily into antisemitism.
Stephens: Yes. One is the entry drug into the other.
Douthat: Can you criticize Israel without becoming antisemitic?
Stephens: Of course you can. And this is one of the points that I tear my hair out.
Look, you want to see the most acerbic criticism of Israel? Go to the Haaretz website — the leading Israeli paper. Israelis criticize Israeli politics all the time when it comes to every issue imaginable. There are no sacred cows, there are no red lines. In fact, some of the most strident anti-Zionist voices will often refer to Israelis writing in Haaretz to wash themselves of accusations of antisemitism.
But let me just make this baseline point, because, again, criticism of Israeli policy can be mistaken, but it’s always legitimate. But anti-Zionism is not criticism solely of Israeli policy. Anti-Zionism is criticism of the existence of the state of Israel, as a state that has the right to exist.
So it’s a little bit different, but if people hate Donald Trump, by all means, hate Donald Trump. But that doesn’t make you anti-American. It doesn’t make you want to destroy the United States because you can’t stand the policies of the Trump administration. Anti-Zionism is the belief that a Jewish state does not have a right to exist.
Now, I would accept that that argument isn’t antisemitic if people said a Japanese state doesn’t have the right to exist, or an Icelandic state doesn’t have the right to exist.
Douthat: In fairness, in our own time, I would say that that argument has often come bundled with progressive views that, generally, ethno-states are illegitimate.
I do think that there’s kind of —
Stephens: I’ve yet to see a protest outside of the Icelandic mission to the U.N. saying, “Down with Iceland,” an absolutely ethnically homogenous state, or, “Down with Japan,” which tends to treat minorities in a discriminatory way, or, “Down with Denmark,” because the Danish Lutheran Church enjoys certain tax advantages against other faiths in Denmark.
Douthat: I would say that —
Stephens: It is uniquely aimed at one ethno-state that happens to be the Jewish state.
And if you are a Jew whose life story is about a mother in hiding in the Holocaust, and a grandfather who fled the pogrom in Kishinev, you have the right to cock a skeptical eyebrow and say: Why us?
Douthat: So, one, I agree. I think that there is what you might call a persistent excess in the way the case against Israel is prosecuted — especially on the left, sometimes on the right — that is hard to explain without talking about antisemitism as this constant temptation. If you watch internet culture play itself out, it is fascinating in a morbid way that the pull of: You’ve gone through four levels of disillusionment, and the fifth level of disillusionment, you’re going to blame the Jews — there is some eternal recurrence of that tendency.
All I’m saying is that there is also a tendency where arguments about Israel and Palestine are connected to arguments about American history and American identity. I agree, nobody’s protesting the existence of Iceland, but plenty of people are invested in the idea that France or the U.K. or Europe, broadly, should become a multiethnic, multireligious society. And — again, I’m describing people on the left — they see their view of some binational future for Israel as part of that. I think there is a continuum here that runs from antisemitism in excess through other arguments in left-wing politics.
Stephens: That’s fair and true.
Douthat: Which is why, in an age when the left is a very important part of Western culture and American culture, I worry about the darker pull — the extent to which there is this inherent pull toward overt or tacit antisemitism in these debates. And I just feel like that pull has clearly gotten stronger because of the Gaza war.
Stephens: No, it happened before the Gaza war. And the best evidence of this was that the protests — the accusations — that Israel is committing genocide happened on Oct. 8, and the Israelis were still clearing out Hamas from their own territory. It’s not as if suddenly this terrible Gaza war happened, and the left said: Oh geez, these people are terrible, look at what they’re doing. All of the feelings, the entire architecture of opprobrium and hatred was in place on Oct. 6, so that these people would celebrate on Oct. 8.
And one of the most shocking experiences to me as a Jew was going on the Eighth of October to a protest that had been hastily arranged, in which the expression on people’s faces in the wake of this unbelievable massacre was euphoria. So, when people say: well, this is the result of the war in Gaza — I’m sorry, but that just doesn’t explain the letter from however many Harvard organizations putting the blame entirely on these Israelis. It doesn’t explain the protests in Sydney calling on them to “F the Jews.” This hatred was there.
It is true that people are against ethno-states in theory, but you have to ask: why is Israel the object of an obsessive hatred? And it’s not because it’s American taxpayers, because you’re seeing the same kind of protests and the same kind of hatred in Melbourne and Sydney and any number of other places I’ve visited that contribute nothing to Israel’s defense.
Douthat: Yeah. I think it’s partially — and I want to say again that I agree with you, but I’m looking for points of tension here.
Yes, I think that what you saw on American college campuses, in the immediate Oct. 8, 9 and 10 reaction to Hamas’s attacks, can really only be explained in terms of a left that has marinated so deeply in critiques of Israel as to be functionally antisemitic and is unable to see Jews as human beings.
But I also think, as someone who has watched left-wing politics and progressive debates play out in the context of other issues, that there is a way in which that is connected to critiques of American history. The idea would be, for instance, that Israel’s a settler colonial state, and so is America.
But American settler colonialism is unfortunately settled. You can’t have a viable left-wing politics that undoes the American project, so Israel becomes this displaced zone of anti-Americanism. I think that’s part of the story too.
Stephens: All of this goes to a kind of naïveté and ignorance that bleeds into functional antisemitism.
I was in Australia about a year ago and gave a talk at a public library there where some young person stood up and asked me about the suggestion that Israel was a settler colonialist state and how awful that is.
Of course, Australia, with the exception of the Aboriginal peoples, is entirely a settler colonial state. Canada is basically a settler colonial state. Many states in the world are. Mexico, where I grew up, is largely a settler colonial state, speaking a language that was not native or Indigenous to the area up until 1519.
So the entire ideology, which has a surface plausibility, as my old colleague, Holman Jenkins says, vanishes in the presence of thought.
But the second problem —
Douthat: But surely some of the people in that Australian audience would have nodded along and said: Oh, it is terrible that Australia is a settler colonialist state.
Stephens: Yes, but they will not, they will not nod along to the follow-on suggestion, which is: Go back to Blimey. Right? They won’t say: Oh, my name is MacDougall from the Clan MacDougall. I think I’m going to move my family, in penance for generations of settler colonialism, out.
Whereas, the suggestion to Israelis is: go move somewhere. Well, where? Poland, where you were massacred? Russia, where you were oppressed? Iraq, from which you were expelled? Those thoughts don’t really trouble these people.
The other issue — and I mentioned this to this person who asked the question — I said: what’s Hanukkah? Hanukkah and any number of Jewish religious commemorations or occasions are memories of the Jewish fight against colonial oppressors of antiquity: Babylonians, Romans, Greeks and then, following them, Byzantines, Seleucids, Mamluks, Ottomans and finally the British. The British are still upset about the Jewish revolt and uprising, some of which involved terrorism against British colonialism.
Zionism is the oldest continuous anticolonial struggle in history, and Israel is probably the single most successful post-colonial state in the world. So even if you accept the terms of settler colonialism, the people making that argument have it exactly backward.
Douthat: Don’t you think, though, that there is a way in which the American affinity for Israel is an affinity of Americans who in the past saw themselves as settlers, and that that was a good thing? That the idea of making the desert bloom, building a new society, and so on, is part of the American commonality with Israel? And of course, America can say: We’re anticolonialists too. We had the Boston Tea Party, we kicked out the British. But these things are very complicated.
I think Americans ——
Stephens: Sure, at the end of the day, when ——
Douthat: Like, in 1955, being a settler society was — in American rhetoric — considered a good thing. Right?
Stephens: Right. That’s part of the truth. I don’t think it’s the whole truth.
Look, the earliest pilgrims came to America seeing themselves as establishing a kind of new Jerusalem. I mean, the echoes in early American religious history to the idea of constructing a new society based on radically ethical precepts also explains the long history of Philosemitism.
Then there’s a third factor beyond the two that we’ve mentioned, which is that America saw in Israel a reliable ally against mutual enemies who were calling for death to the great Satan, death to the little Satan. Whether they’re in Tehran or Gaza City or Beirut, the same people who are blowing up American barracks or are blowing up Jewish cultural centers.
So all of this explains why the relationship between America and Israel is a fairly profound one that isn’t going to be washed away because some wing of Park Slope decided to vote for Zohran Mamdani.
Douthat: So you’ve mentioned a couple times Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee for mayor in New York. In his campaign, I think there was an effort to use some of his anti-Israel positions against him. It didn’t succeed. But what does he represent to you?
Stephens: A combination of unseriousness and an underlying ugliness of his flat-out refusal to condemn the expression “Globalize the Intifada.” I think it was extremely telling that he wouldn’t do so, and that he does so under the alleged banner of free speech. Progressives are never shy about condemning speech they view as racist or hateful, but an exception is carved out in the case of “Globalize the Intifada,” which worries me and I think worries a huge number of New York Jews who don’t want a mayor who, irrespective of his foreign policy views, can’t see the implicit hatefulness of an expression that is, in practice, a call for violence and terrorism.
Douthat: But most of the people who voted for Mamdani are presumably not motivated by “Globalize the Intifada” perspectives. Right?
Stephens: Right, sure. And the worrying aspect of it is that Mamdani’s views on this issue weren’t deal breakers for those voters. But it should have been a deal breaker for most morally sensible voters that Mamdani takes this particular position.
Just as for me, when people ask me: Do I regret voting for Kamala Harris last November? My answer is: No, because Jan. 6 was a deal breaker for me. So even if I agree with Trump on, I don’t know, tax policy or even on what he did with respect to Iran, that stopped me, and that’s why I voted the way I did.
It wasn’t something that was going to stop other New York Mamdani voters, that he effectively sanctions a phrase — or doesn’t object to a phrase — which, in practice, involves the murder of Jews.
Douthat: I guess, though, that is an example of the kind of shift that I worry about being encouraged by the unpopularity of the Gaza war — the civilian toll and so on. Again, the people who vote for Mamdani for cost-of-living reasons and forgive — or ignore — things like, “Globalize the Intifada,” are not embracing antisemitism. But they are, in a context of increasing unpopularity of Israel, downgrading the issue.
Stephens: Yeah.
Douthat: I guess I’m just interested in what you might call concentric circles. That there is a circle of critique of Israel shading into anti-Zionism shading into antisemitism. And I feel like there is a wider circle of people who go back and forth, who were on Israel’s side immediately after the Hamas attacks, but who are also right now, in opinion polls, not big fans of the war in Gaza.
I guess the question I’m getting around to here is: Do you think — this is maybe a strange way to put it — but do you think Israel has obligations to the Jewish diaspora?
Stephens: Yes, of course it does.
Douthat: In terms of thinking about how its policies and its public presentation affect Jewish life in the United States?
Stephens: Sure, of course it does. By the way, an old Jewish saw — the classic Jewish telegram — is: Start worrying, more to follow. I mean, it’s in our DNA that we’re always concerned about the implications of everything.
It would be lovely if Israel had more effective spokespeople, if these exceptionally awful characters Ben-Gvir and Smotrich were not part of the cabinet, but the fundamental obligation that Israel has to the diaspora is to be a safe haven for Jews, because the long course of Jewish history is that even the societies where we appear to be most at home, most integrated, most at ease, will ultimately turn on us.
I always think that in 1922, the greatest philosopher in Germany was Edmund Husserl, the greatest scientist in Germany was Albert Einstein, and the greatest statesman in Germany was Walter Rathenau — three Jews. And within 11 years, that was a regime run by the National Socialists, by Adolf Hitler.
And so, Israel’s fundamental obligation to the Jews is not to simply be a vanity project so that diaspora Jews can go around and say: Look, Israel’s making great strides in desalinization or water conservation. The point is to be a place where endangered Jewish communities know they can go and have a margin of safety behind a Jewish army that they simply don’t have in France or present-day South Africa or other communities.
What worries me too is that, God forbid, we may come to a place in 40 years — I don’t think it’s going to happen, but it might — where Jewish communities in the United States feel the same sense of isolation, danger and hatred that, say, Jewish communities in France do today or have for the last 15 or 20 years.
Again, it would be wonderful if Israel had better P.R., but the P.R. is less important than being a state where Jewish life is going to be secure in a way that historically we know it’s never secure anywhere else.
Douthat: Yeah, I guess I’m just trying to — I’m not Jewish. So I don’t have that kind of historical consciousness. I do have an American historical consciousness, though, where I feel like we are in or walking through a scenario where the Israel that you describe — Israel as refuge, Israel as powerful country that can defend its own interests and its own people — comes out of this period strong. I think that’s totally a much more plausible endgame than anyone would have imagined two years ago. It’s a testament to the success of the Israeli military, maybe diplomatic success soon as well.
But we also walk out in the United States with a Democratic Party that’s more hostile to Israel than it’s ever been, a Republican Party that includes a vocal anti-Israel block, and a culture in which antisemitism is more mainstream than before.
Stephens: Yeah.
Douthat: I feel like those things are connected. So I just worry about the effect on the United States and on my Jewish friends in the United States. And I’m worried that there is a tradeoff here, where Israel — if you’re in the Israeli government and you’re saying: We’re making ourselves more secure than ever before. Meanwhile, without the best possible outcome in Gaza, you get a different climate here.
Stephens: So, obviously I think about this, and I think everything you are saying is fair and plausible.
Let’s imagine a scenario in which, in November of 2023, after the first cease-fire, which led to the release of a bulk of hostages, Israel had then agreed to a full-time, long-term cease-fire. At that point, I think there were maybe 10,000 estimated dead in Gaza — not the numbers that we have today. But Hezbollah would’ve remained entrenched in Lebanon. Iran would have good reason to think that the massacre of Jews on Oct. 7 was a strategic gamble that had paid off for them. The left here in the West would still be accusing Israel of being a genocidal apartheid state that should be boycotted and divested from. On balance, if Israel had done what reasonable people think would have been a moderate course, it would emerge — not only Israel, but the Jews — would emerge in a much worse place than they are now.
I think you can bid for the world’s love, but you can also bid for the world’s respect. And what Israel has won — at very high cost to all parties, but what it is won — I think, is a measure of respect that in the longer term, serves the interest of Jews in Israel and the diaspora better than the alternative scenario I painted, which is some calibrated, but ultimately feckless response that would have left things pretty much as they had been before.
Douthat: Bret Stephens, thank you so much for joining me.
Stephens: It’s a pleasure.
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This episode of “Interesting Times” was produced by Katherine Sullivan, Andrea Betanzos, Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Elisa Gutierrez. It was edited by Jordana Hochman. Mixing and engineering by Sophia Lanman. Cinematography by Marina King. Video editing by Arpita Aneja and Steph Khoury. Original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Video directed by Jonah M. Kessel. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.
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Ross Douthat has been an Opinion columnist for The Times since 2009. He is also the host of the Opinion podcast “Interesting Times.” He is the author, most recently, of “Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious.” @DouthatNYT • Facebook
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