Is This War With Lebanon Different? (with Matti Friedman)

Matti Friedman: Great to be here.

Matti Friedman: One of the first things I learned upon becoming a soldier in the Israeli Army in the summer of 1997 is that the Army speaks a very different language than the language of ordinary people. And that’s true of any army. So, if you go into the U.S. Army, you’re going to find yourself speaking of a highly technical language, which has a lot of acronyms like KIA [killed in action] and uses a lot of numbers and letters and a language that’s basically impenetrable to civilians.

And, in the Israeli Army, I had the additional challenge of everything being in Hebrew, which was a relatively new language to me at the time. I’d been in Israel for about two years by that time. And I became a radio man, which meant that I had to speak the language of the Israeli military radio frequencies–which isn’t exactly a code language because it’s not a secret, but it uses a completely different set of words to mean ordinary things.

For example, ‘casualties’ on the Israeli military frequencies–the code word for casualties is ‘flowers’. So, in Hebrew, the word for casualties or wounded people is [foreign language 00:02:58]. And, in the Army on the radio you would say [foreign language 00:03:02]–flowers. So, if you’re in a sticky situation in the Army and you have to report that you have casualties, you would say, ‘I have flowers.’ And, you would request urgently the arrival of a ‘thistle’, [foreign language 00:03:14], which means helicopter.

And a civilian listening to any of this would be completely baffled by it.

And, I thought a lot about why the Army uses a language that makes things incomprehensible; and particularly when it isn’t secret.

So, my first assumption was that this was a secret code that the enemy wasn’t supposed to understand. But then I realized it wasn’t actually secret. It was just a different language for soldiers to speak.

I realized that it was meant to put some distance between the soldiers and what they had to describe.

And, the example I just gave is a good one. It’s very hard to say, ‘Listen, I’m standing here next to my friend, Yitzhak, who lost a leg.’ It’s much easier to say, ‘I have flowers. I need a thistle.’ It distances you from the events you’re describing.

In the American military the same thing is done, but the language is very technical. So, it sounds like income tax forms or something: ‘Have a KIA.’ I need some kind of acronym involving letters and numbers. And, it’s doing the same thing. You’re not actually saying what you’re seeing or what you’re doing.

And, that’s why I chose the title. The title is meant to access that strange language that we spoke in Lebanon. Because if a civilian had listened to the military frequencies in South Lebanon in the 1990s–which is when I was there–you would have thought we were describing some kind of garden.

And, the outposts in Lebanon were for these pretty grim fire bases, which were earthen embankments around a central courtyard with machine guns ringing the base and mortars and every nasty weapon known to men. They all had names that sound like bed-and-breakfast names. So, the outpost where I served was called Outpost Pumpkin. In Hebrew [foreign language 00:04:52]. And, in our sector you had Outpost Red Pepper, and Outpost Citrus, and outpost cypress, and outpost basil, which–these very pretty agricultural or floral names that concealed this very ugly military reality.

So, that was a big part of my experience in Lebanon, the gap between this beautiful language that we used to describe what we were doing and what we were actually doing. And, I tried to access that with the name of the book, which is Pumpkinflowers, which, if you understand the radio code, means people who are wounded at Outpost Pumpkin, but which on first glance sounds like it could be a gardening guide of some kind.

Matti Friedman: Sure. I think a description of what we were doing in Lebanon in the late 1990s actually is very helpful in understanding what’s going on now, because in Lebanon there’s this cyclical reality which repeats itself. And, the reality is that Lebanon is a state that cannot control its own territory.

So, the power vacuum in Lebanon, particularly in South Lebanon close to Israel, is exploited by other groups who have different plans, not necessarily in the interest of the State of Lebanon, which has always been really too weak to control itself. It’s a very chaotic place.

So, in the late 1970s, the group that took over the border area was the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization], and they started launching attacks against Israeli territory that eventually pull Israel into this invasion of Lebanon in 1982. It’s meant to be a relatively short operation to push the PLO back from the border.

And, as we know, it gets incredibly complicated, and Israel gets stuck in Lebanon for 18 years and only withdraws in 2000, at the very end of my own military service.

And, if that sounds a lot like Iraq or Afghanistan to American ears where you have a specific threat, you have a mission that seems simple, it seems limited in time; and then you go in and it becomes something incredibly complicated. And, within a few years you’re fighting enemies that you weren’t even aware of when you first went in: this is a very similar situation. In fact, I think in many ways it was the prototype of the wars of the 21st century.

But, that’s what happens: Israel goes in to fight the PLO. The PLO is essentially defeated, fades away; and then is replaced by a different enemy, which ends up being a more potent enemy, which is Hezbollah. Which is this Shia militia, at first quite small and raggedy, eventually one of the most formidable military forces in the Middle East.

It’s an arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards using the Shia minority in Lebanon to fight against Israel. And, Hezbollah gains in power as the years of the Israeli occupation continue, until the year 2000 when Israel basically says, ‘We’re losing more soldiers than this is worth.’ The idea was to be in South Lebanon to create a buffer to protect the Israeli border. And, we had a strip of land in South Lebanon with these outposts–Outpost Pumpkin being one of them. And, we were losing a lot of soldiers in the outposts. In the convoys going to the outposts we’re getting hit with this hit-and-run warfare, which now seems very familiar, which at the time was quite new. Roadside bombs, rocket attacks. Suicide bombing is pioneered in the Middle East by Hezbollah.

So, South Lebanon really turns out to be a laboratory for the warfare of the 21st century. Of course, we didn’t understand that at the time. And, in 2000, Israel blows up all of the outposts in Lebanon and pulls out, hoping that that will bring quiet to the border. And that hope, as we know, turns out to be unrealistic.

Matti Friedman: I think this is also a question that really answers some American questions through an Israeli lens.

My favorite review of Pumpkinflowers when it came out was written by an American military officer who said it was the best book he ever read about Iraq. And, what he meant is that the Israeli experience in Lebanon really foreshadows everything that happens to the United States in the Middle East after 9/11.

So, Israel goes in with this great confidence in the ability of its military to solve this problem. The PLO, which is the enemy in 1982, is a far less significant force than the Israeli military. And Israel says, ‘Okay, we’re going to go in and we’re going to solve this problem militarily.’

And then, it turns out that being stronger militarily doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to win, because the enemy won’t fight in the way you want them to fight. They’re going to use every tactic that will work in their own interests, of course. And, the fact that you have nuclear weapons and fighter planes and warships–it doesn’t matter if the battle is being fought in the alleyways of refugee camps or in the bushes of South Lebanon using hit-and-run tactics and psychological warfare and suicide bombers.

So, Israel learns that. Israel is much stronger than Hezbollah, but eventually Israel gives up after 18 years and says, ‘This is not worth it,’ and leaves. And, the Arab world and the broader Islamic world sees this happen in 2000 and interprets it–I think rightly to some extent–as a victory. Proof that you might not be able to beat Israel directly on the battlefield; but if you wear down a western society with casualties and if you psych them out with propaganda warfare with the use of video, which Hezbollah pioneers–they start filming their attacks and broadcasting them. That seems completely obvious to us now in 2024, but they were among the first to do it. They realized that if you can get your own propaganda videos shown on the enemy’s TV stations, you will erode the morale of the enemy. And, that actually happens in Israel. And, we can talk about a specific incident where I think it really starts happening, which happens at our outpost, at Outpost Pumpkin, in 1994.

But, this package of tactics–the ones I mentioned: side bombs, suicide attacks, rockets, psychological warfare–it really defeats Israel. Or, it brings Israel to the point where the maintenance of the war is no longer in Israel’s interest. And Israel pulls out in 2000. And then a year later, 9/11 [Sep. 11, 2001] happens and the United States is drawn into this series of wars in the Middle East, and the same tactics and the same kind of strategies are applied against the Americans. The time span is eerily similar. The 18-year time span in Lebanon is echoed in many ways–not to the minute–but it’s very similar to the time span that we see in Iraq and Afghanistan, where of course the Americans are much stronger than anything that can be fielded in Iraq or Afghanistan. But, ultimately America is worn down and leaves.

And, that makes Lebanon in the 1990s, which is the subject of this book, and my own very small experiences in one corner of this war, which is in itself a little war–it makes them interesting as the first war of the 21st century.

I think that we thought Lebanon was actually the last war of the 20th century. That’s how we interpreted it because the peace process was happening and Clinton was the President and things seemed to really be going in the right direction. And, we thought there were some little details that needed to be wrapped up, and we would soon be living lives of peace and liberty across the Middle East. And, we thought Lebanon was just kind of the end of something. But it wasn’t. It was the beginning of something. It was the new way of war. And, the only people who were there to see it were these very young Israeli kids like me. I was 19 when I went into the Army, and of course we didn’t know what we were seeing. And, all this is apparent, but only in retrospect.

Matti Friedman: I arrived in South Lebanon at the very beginning of 1998 on an Israeli military convoy. Pumpkin was north of the Israeli border. We had to drive for about half an hour–40 minutes or so–in this very heavy convoy. And then we arrived on this hilltop.

And, I remember jumping out. When I arrived there for the first time I had this heavy radio on my back, and I jumped out of the truck and landed in a puddle. Because it was winter, which here is the rainy season, and everything was muddy. I raised my head and looked out at this landscape, which was one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen. I mean, it was green, because in the winter everything here is green. And, there were different shades of green, because you had the green of the slopes and the green of the olive orchards. And there was a river running near the outpost.

We saw the white peak of Mount Hermon, which was visible from the outpost. One of the highest–we call it a mountain. I don’t know if it would really qualify for people living in the American West or in the Alps or anything, but we call it Mount Hermon, and it has a snowy peak. So, it was this incredible, dramatic landscape.

And, the drama of the landscape was heightened by the danger because we were told immediately upon landing that every stone there could be a concealed bomb, and there could be a Hezbollah fighter hiding behind every bush. And that, of course, made it more exciting. And, our vision was sharpened by the chance that anything could happen at any given moment. So, I still remember more than anything else the beauty of the landscape.

And, there were these picturesque villages nestled on the slopes. And, as you were describing, it’s not an urban landscape. It’s very much a rural landscape with villages. Outpost Pumpkins sat on this hill opposite a fairly sizable Shia town. The Shia, I guess I should say for listeners who might not be familiar, the Shia are a big part of the Islamic world, but a smaller part than the majority of Muslims who are Sunni. And, there’s an old rivalry between the Shia and the Sunni. In Lebanon, the Shia are the biggest religious group. There are many different religious groups in Lebanon. The Shia are the biggest of those groups, but they’re not a majority of the Lebanese. They’re the biggest minority in Lebanon. And, they’re the group that produces Hezbollah. So, they’re the group with which Israel is concerned in the years of the security zone in South Lebanon.

And, the outpost looked out over this Shia town, which was basically a Hezbollah stronghold; and they would come out of the town at night and fire rockets at the outpost, or they would shoot mortars sometimes from inside the town or from the outskirts of the town at the outpost.And they would come up the wadis–up the dry riverbeds–from the town, and they would plant bombs for our convoys and for the different military vehicles that were moving around near the outpost.

So, I still remember the landscape in part because I spent so much time staring at it. Most of what we did at the outpost was guard duty, which involved standing in these fortified positions just looking out at South Lebanon. Which is really not something you do very often. Often, usually you’re going somewhere or working on something in some way. And, we were just standing there. And, we had no cell phones: there were no smartphones at the time. To the best of my memory, there was no computer at Outpost Pumpkin. It was almost like a World War I level military outpost. It was guys with machine guns standing in a trench, looking out, waiting for the enemy. And I can close my eyes and I can still see the landscape because I spent so much time just looking at it, waiting for something to happen.

Matti Friedman: At the very end of October 1994, there’s an incident at Pumpkin, which we were told about when we arrived because it was a way of scaring us. Our commanders wanted to make sure that we wouldn’t fall asleep because of the routine–because we’re exhausted, because most of the time nothing happened. And they told us this story about something that happened at the end of October 1994, which was a sleepy Saturday morning at the outpost. Very little had happened at the outpost up until that point. And there was an attack by Hezbollah against the outpost. And, fighters came up the hill, reached the outpost. The garrison was quite small and was in complete disarray. And, the Hezbollah guys get up on the embankments of the outpost and they kill a soldier and they throw grenades into the outpost.

But, that actually wasn’t what was important about the attack. What was important is that they came with a video camera. And, this is 1994, so this is before anyone really realizes what a media war looks like. The movie Wag the Dog, if you remember, which has some really interesting points about the Gulf War and the dawn of video as a weapon of war. And, this is all happening in the early 1990s, so it’s right around that time. And, people hadn’t quite figured out exactly what it meant.

So, the Hezbollah guys understood much better than the Israeli Army did, that it doesn’t matter if you capture the outpost or not. It’s not Iwo Jima. You don’t actually have to capture the island in order to take that famous picture of the Marines with the flag. You can just take the picture, and release it, and use it to kind of get your supporters excited and to wear down the morale of the enemy. And, that’s exactly what happens.

They come up with a video camera. One of the Hezbollah guys gets up on top of the outpost and plants the flag. He plants the Hezbollah flag in this very dramatic moment–very reminiscent of Iwo Jima–and then they run away. So, they don’t capture the outpost. They don’t even try to capture the outpost. Very little happens in military terms other than the death of a soldier. And that’s tragic, but not a major strategic change for the Israeli Army and South Lebanon.

But, the same day they broadcast the video. And, in the video it looks like an incredible victory. It’s really dramatic. You see the Hezbollah fighters advancing toward the outpost, and you see the explosions, and there’s martial music, and then it culminates in the planting of the flag.

It’s worth saying in 2024: This is before reality TV. It’s hard to even imagine. This is before social media.

So, the whole idea of using video in this way–this is before the ISIS [Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] videos and this is before everything, basically. And, this is one of the first examples of a terror organization using video in order to cause morale damage to the enemy and in order to agenda more support for itself. And it works beautifully. It’s a huge event. We called it the ‘Flag Incident at Outpost Pumpkin.’

In late October 1994, I wrote an article about it a few years ago for Tablet, which is called “The Birth of the Terror Selfie.” And it’s about the understanding by Hezbollah–again, light years ahead of Israel and America–that if you have images and if you have video, that it can be used to balance the gap in power between a small and scrappy enemy and a seemingly powerful enemy.

And, of course, the same tactics were employed against Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan and in many other conflicts. But, one of the first times that it really worked was at our outpost on that Saturday morning in 1994.

Matti Friedman: So, my last tour at the Pumpkin ended–must have been at the very end of 1999, if I’m remembering correctly. And then, a few months later in the spring of 2000, it’s my company–I wasn’t there at the time–but, it was my company that blows up Outpost Pumpkin on the night of the Israeli withdrawal.

So, Ehud Barak, who is a left-leaning army general, is elected Prime Minister in 1999. And one of his campaign promises is that within a year he will pull the Army out of Lebanon, because the security zone in Lebanon has become very unpopular for the Israeli public. There are high casualties. There was a big helicopter crash in 1997 that killed 73 soldiers on the way two outposts in Lebanon. One of them was Outpost Pumpkin. And, there are ambushes.

And, the Israeli public is very sensitive to casualties. And I guess that’s also worth saying because this is a very small country and it’s mandatory military service. So, the deaths of soldiers here are felt very acutely, as they are now. And the numbers then were much smaller–smaller than they are now. But, in a way it doesn’t matter because the psychological impact of the death of a single soldier can be equivalent to the death of many soldiers if you have a photograph of the soldier on the front page of the newspaper.

So, every few days or weeks, there would be the photograph of a soldier killed in Lebanon. And, because it’s just one or two soldiers each time, you can absorb the human tragedy in a way that it’s much harder to do with a hundred soldiers or 200 soldiers. So, the casualties in Lebanon were felt very acutely and people basically wanted to finish it up.

And in the 1990s, Israelis had the idea that we could withdraw our way to a peaceful resolution to the conflict. A lot of Israelis supported different territorial withdrawals. Of course, we were withdrawing from cities in the West Bank throughout the 1990s. Ultimately we withdraw from Gaza. And, that was supported by a majority of Israelis.

And, the Lebanon withdrawal was part of that idea: that, if our enemies want land–and we interpreted Hezbollah’s demand as being a demand for South Lebanon, which was legitimately being occupied by Israel–that demand was interpreted as legitimate, even though of course Israelis saw Hezbollah as an enemy. But, there was no question that the Army was occupying South Lebanon.

And, the interpretation of their demand was that if we give them South Lebanon, then they won’t have any more demands, and the border will be quiet. And, that’s a misunderstanding of Hezbollah. And, it’s a misunderstanding of the Middle East. But it was a prevalent one in Israel at the time.

And, that’s how we get the withdrawal in the spring of 2000, which Israelis interpret as being a good move. To this day, I think most people would say it was a good move. Although the events of the past year have once again raised the question of whether or not it was a wise decision, based on everything we’ve seen in South Lebanon since the spring of 2000.

Matti Friedman: I remember, writing the book–it’s small–

Matti Friedman: I remember writing the book and trying to figure out how many of us there had been. I think there were probably, say, 60 soldiers, all told. A small platoon or two of infantry, two tank crews, some cooks, some logistics guys, a mortar crew. It probably worked out to about 60 soldiers in my estimation. I mean, in the whole security zone at any given time there were probably a thousand Israeli soldiers.

We had an allied force that served alongside us–that was also part of the very complicated picture in South Lebanon–which was that we were working with a local force called the South Lebanon Army, which was allied with Israel. In practice it was a proxy militia, more or less working for Israel. And, it was made up of Christians from South Lebanon, Druze from South Lebanon, and even Shia from South Lebanon, even though our enemies were Shia. But, there were Shia fighters fighting alongside Israel. And that was part of it. So, some of the outposts in South Lebanon were actually manned by Lebanese fighters.

And just as a parenthetical aside, I had a reminder of this wrinkle in the story called the SLA–the South Lebanon Army–yesterday, because a rocket hit the town of Nahariya yesterday, which is the northernmost town on the Israeli Mediterranean coast that hasn’t been evacuated. And, it happens to be where my parents live. So, I follow events in Nahariya very closely. Nahariya is getting hammered by rockets every day–rockets and these small drones that Hezbollah has been firing.

And yesterday too, civilians were killed in Nahariya, and one of them was a member of the South Lebanon Army. He was a Lebanese guy who had fought alongside the Israelis and who escaped Israel after the withdrawal in 2000, which is true of several thousand SLA fighters. And, he’d been living in Israel ever since. But, his whole life has been defined by this war against Hezbollah. And yesterday a Hezbollah rocket killed him.

So, I was reminded of that part of the story which I address in Pumpkinflowers, but really deserves more attention, I think, than I gave it.

Matti Friedman: When we were in the Army, when the public pressure for withdrawal started to build, there was a protest movement that is calling for the Army to pull out of Lebanon. And it’s run by mothers–which is also a very Israeli phenomenon. I think it was called The Four Mothers. That was the name of the protest movement. And, it was run by the mothers of combat soldiers. And, they were calling on the Army to pull out and the government to pull out the Army, saying we’re losing people for no reason. If we pull out of South Lebanon, then the war in South Lebanon will be over, which is the way a lot of people were thinking in the 1990s. And, I thought that was true. So–or–I should back up. I thought that was true after I got out of the Army. When I was in the Army, I thought as most of the other soldiers did: that mothers should not be making military decisions.

And of course, when we were in these outposts, we had to believe that our presence meant something. That we were defending the country. When you’re a soldier, you can’t really have the kind of political complexity you can allow yourself when you’re a civilian. Things have to be quite clear.

So, we would stand in this outpost; we would look into Lebanon. We were the northernmost Israelis. We were the last Israelis before the enemy. And, we would look behind us–we would look down toward Israel and far away across the hills of South Lebanon; we would see the lights of Metula, which is the northernmost town in Israel. And, we would be reminded that we were defending the country with our bodies. And that was very clear to us at the time. And, the thought of withdrawing sounded crazy to us because if we weren’t in Lebanon, then the terrorists will be on the fence. They’ll be attacking Metula from a few yards away. We have to be a buffer between the Israeli towns and Hezbollah.

As time went on and I got out of the Army and I started thinking about things differently, I thought that the mothers were right. That the protesters were right. That, the presence in South Lebanon was the problem, not the solution. And that if we weren’t in South Lebanon, then the war would be solved. And, I think that’s a very Western way of thinking, which was reflected in the way many of us were thinking about the West Bank as well: which is the Palestinians want a State alongside Israel. I think that’s a legitimate desire on their part. If we give them territory, they will build something great on that territory, and we’ll all be able to move on to a more equitable and prosperous future.

And that makes a lot of sense, if you come from a place like Canada, which is where I’m from.

And you look at subsequent events in the Middle East, and you really have to wonder. I mean, we pull out of South Lebanon and that’s not interpreted as a move toward peace. It’s not interpreted as a magnanimous move. It’s interpreted as weakness. And the enemy sees it as an opportunity to hit you harder.

And, within months of the withdrawal in the spring of 2000, Hezbollah attacks over the border, kills a bunch of soldiers, kidnaps two of them. They ultimately turn out to be dead. But, that happens in the fall of 2000.

And then, there’s another war in 2006 that’s also precipitated by a Hezbollah attack along the border–attacks that would not have been possible had the Army been in the security zone.

And of course, Israel pulls out of Gaza, thinking that this will be an opportunity for the Palestinians to build something great in Gaza without the Israeli occupation. And instead Hamas takes over Gaza and attacks us harder from Gaza. Rocket-fire from Gaza goes way up after the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

So none of this follows the plan that Western or liberal people had in their head throughout the 1990s.

So, my own thinking on this–as a Western person who is basically, you know, left-leaning or somewhat of liberal sympathies–my own thinking on this has changed quite dramatically over the past 20 years and even over the past 13 months of the current war.

Matti Friedman: I recently had an opportunity to rethink all of this–both my military service and my return to Lebanon. Because, as you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, there’s a new audiobook of this out, which I read a month or two ago. So, I actually sat with the book for the first time in many years and read it out loud for this new audiobook. And, I was thinking about my younger self–the much younger version of myself who was in uniform and ends up in this very complicated war that seemed simple to me at first and got increasingly complicated the longer I spent in it. And then, my return to Lebanon in 2002. So, about two and a half years after the Israeli withdrawal, after my own company blew up Outpost Pumpkin, and we thought this was all over.

I found myself still preoccupied with what had happened and I was having a really hard time just understanding why we had been there and what Lebanon was and why no one seemed to remember it.

And then, I decided that the way to kind of complete the circle or come full circle would be to go back to Lebanon as a tourist. In fact, when we’d been soldiers in Lebanon, we used to joke about coming back as tourists because it was so beautiful. So, we would say, ‘We’re going to come back here one day when there’s peace,’ and ‘We’re going to hike in the mountains of South Lebanon,’ and ‘We’re going to float on inner tubes down the Litani River.’

These were just jokes. I don’t think anyone really took it seriously–except me, because I’m Canadian. I have a Canadian passport and I can go to Lebanon. As a Canadian you can visit Lebanon–which is impossible for Israelis. For Israelis viewing Lebanon, it might as well be the moon. There’s no way to visit Lebanon. Just as Israelis look at most of the Middle East, and it’s completely off limits. So, the idea of crossing that border was not realistic for anyone in my platoon except for me. And, the idea wouldn’t leave me alone.

So, I went to Hebrew University the fall after the withdrawal, which is also the fall after my own discharge. And, I went to study Middle Eastern Studies, and I took every Lebanon course that I could take, and I studied Arabic. In the fall of 2002 I took my Canadian passport, flew back to Canada, and then from Canada, flew to Lebanon. And, spent about two weeks in Lebanon as a tourist–as a Canadian tourist. And, I was in Beirut and I was in northern Lebanon in the area of Tripoli. I was in the Christian stronghold in Mount Lebanon. I was in the Hezbollah stronghold of Baalbek, which is currently in the news. It’s where a lot of the Hezbollah headquarters and camps are located, and also many other things like a beautiful Roman ruin of an incredible temple.

And, lastly, and most importantly, I went back to South Lebanon. But this time I came from the North. I wasn’t traveling on an Israeli military convoy from the South: I was coming in a minivan taxi from the North. And I explored South Lebanon for a few days and actually managed to get back to Outpost Pumpkin–which was the goal of the trip, to get back to the ruins of the outpost, which had been blown up two and a half years earlier by my friends. And, I did.

And, it was quite an experience. To this day it was one of the defining experiences of my life. It didn’t do what I expected it to do. So, my ideas about completing the circle and seeing Lebanon through civilian eyes and maybe coming away with some optimism–none of that materialized. But, I did learn a lot; and a lot of it is in Pumpkinflowers.

Matti Friedman: One of the most striking things about my visit to Lebanon was the realization that it was a version of Israel. So, I spent time in Beirut. And, this is 2002, so this is a while ago already; but the Beirut that I saw was very similar to Tel Aviv. So, you have the beach and you have mini-skirts and cell phones and sunglasses, and then you cross the street and then suddenly all the women are wearing long black robes and there are pictures of bearded clerics on the walls. And then you cross the street again and then you’re back in some liberal part of town with bookstores, which is a lot like Tel Aviv. And, you know, the driving is terrible. The food is great. This combination between–it’s a bit Western, it’s a bit Middle Eastern. You’ve got the Islamic world pressing in on you, you’ve got your eyes looking west toward Greece and Cyprus. And, the people were very similar. It really, really felt very familiar. And, since then that’s really stayed with me.

When I was traveling in South Lebanon you can actually see the continuation of the rail line that we have in Northern Israel because the rail line used to run up the coast through Haifa–through my parents’ town, Nahariya–all the way up to Beirut; and much of the rail line is still there. So, the tunnel that crosses the border has been blocked, but it wouldn’t be too difficult, engineering-wise, to open the tunnel and have a rail line going to Beirut and that would make a lot of sense. As you say, these are two very similar countries, mercantile societies that could do a lot of business with each other both economically and culturally. It’s really tragic that that has not happened.

And, the last thing I’ll say about that is that the idea that Lebanon is an alternate Israel has really stayed with me and really came to mind in the year of social unrest that we experienced before October 7th. Because, Lebanon for me isn’t just a neighboring country, and it’s not just a threat–although of course it is both of those things. Lebanon is an alternative future for Israel. Lebanon is what happens if you can’t hold your country together. If you don’t have a strong enough story to bind your citizens to each other. If you don’t have a shared narrative. If you don’t have people committed to the state. If you have people more committed to their ethnic groups or to their clans or to their families than they are to the state, then your state will collapse as Lebanon has functionally collapsed.

Lebanon is essentially a failed state where the military force is not the Lebanese Army: It’s Hezbollah, which is run by the Iranians. And there, but for fortune, for Israel, if we’re not careful, that’s what’s going to happen.

And, I had the chance to speak at the protests against the judicial reform before October 7th, and that’s what I said. I said, ‘The future that we have to be worried about is the one that we can see north of our border.’ Because, if you understand that Lebanon is similar to Israel, that’s not just a reason for hope. It’s a reason for caution. [More to come, 40:45]