Episode 95: The idea that broke the Middle East, with Dr. Micah Goodman

Hi everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Ask a Be Anything. Dr. Michal Goudman is here.

A good friend, one of Israel's preeminent public intellectuals, the author of seven best-selling

books on politics, on religion, and a host himself of a podcast, an amazing podcast, a

Miflegetta Makhshavot. I can just listen to many of the episodes. I've actually start them

in a pocket cast so that I can keep them with me in case I have to refer to them again.

Put out by Beethoven in Jerusalem, Michal is a teacher of a great many Israelis, including myself.

I don't know if you remember this, Michal, but you were my Ram-Bam professor, my professor,

of my monodies, at Hebrew University. And so it's exciting and thrilling to have you. We're in

the middle of a great war. We've actually our recording was delayed a little bit because

missile sirens went off. I'm very excited to get into the conversation about what this moment

means. And because this is Michal's great expertise, which he does better than just about any

Israeli I've ever met, we're going to talk about the big ideas behind the events that are happening

here right now. I want to tell you first this episode was sponsored by Glenn Bergenfield.

Thank you so much, Glenn, for this sponsorship. He asked to dedicate the episode in his words to

my quirky and loving wife Sarah, who has studied our past, considered the present, met my family,

and is converting anyway. Welcome, Sarah.

Mazel Tovan, welcome home. And Glenn also asked me to read, and I'm grateful to you, Havi,

for your clarity, your relentless curiosity, and your generosity of spirit in these hard times.

Glenn, thank you. It is an honor to have a dedication like that. I also want to invite you all to

join our Patreon. It's how we keep the lights on. You get involved in our community. It's become

this incredible community of discussions. The questions asked there, guide the topics we talk

about on the podcast, and you get to join our monthly live streams where I answer your questions

live for as long as it takes the last one was three and a half hours. And we had a great time.

That's at www.patrion.com slash as Havive. Anything the link is in the show notes. Michal, how are you?

I'm very excited, very interested, very worried. This is a very strange time. We have family members

who came in from Tel Aviv to live with us for a little bit because they don't have a proper

bombshell there. And in Bicemish, yesterday, a missile penetrated the bombshell there, a ballistic

missile sent from Iran, detonated. We don't quite yet know who died, how they died, some inside,

some outside, but at least nine dead, many wounded, everybody is scared. And also, everybody is

together. There is the same togetherness, the same that we fell for two and a half years now,

the last Iran war. It's a strange time to be Israeli. We are in war. Havive, what you say is

different than the togetherness we had in October 8th. We were very much together in October 8th.

But it was together that came from understanding how much the great failure and that we got hit.

And now there's a sentiment in Israel that we're together, but not because of our failure,

because of our success. Not because we're got hit, this was because we are now, we are truly

hitting back. We're hitting back the source of October 7th. I think it's a different sense of

togetherness. When you say it's a transformed Israel. On October 8th, we learned how much we misunderstood.

Our environment, our enemy, the nature of the enemy. I remember thinking that, I remember thinking

on top of all the other thoughts and all the other feelings, and we knew people who were taken

hostage on October 7th. But I remember thinking what the hell is wrong with them as a civilization,

as a society, why are they doing this? And then beginning to really try to map out, you know,

Hamas is willing to have Gaza destroyed. It's willing to have, and his beloved, therefore,

we have to assume is willing to have Lebanon destroyed. That makes them vastly dangerous because

that makes them undeterrable. This war is driven by the realization, not the Hamas would kill all of

us. We already knew that, but that Hamas would kill all of its own. And that makes them undeterrable

and therefore massively more dangerous. We didn't know any of that. Today, I completely agree with

you. We're two and a half years in. Now we know our strength, or maybe it's more accurate to say,

we know just how pathetically we can incompetent. The Mukhauma, the great resistance front,

really is. It can never really build anything. So I want to just get into this launch this, by asking,

I guess what I would like is to know why. There's something deeper here. And I want to say it as

bluntly and crudely and rudely as possible so that we get to the core of it.

What the hell is going on in the Muslim world? I don't mean Indonesia. The Muslim world is a big

place. It's a word that describes vastly radically different societies. The Muslim world that we

interact with and know and recognize. Some of it is an absolute jewel of a society. The Amaradis

are no longer merely an extraction economy. They're massively invested in AI and technology.

And in fact, shot down like 140 Iranian missiles, something no other Middle Eastern country can do

except Israel. There are differences. There are vast differences. But so much of it is broken, so much

of it is failed. What is going on? Why do we face enemies? Put it this way. Who collapsed?

Who have so little to their names who can show no accomplishment? This regime has done nothing

for Iran except demolishism within. And it can't even and and all of that in order to one day destroy

the great affront to Islam called Zionism. Well, it can't it can't hold a candle to Zionism. Their

Air Force didn't even take off against our Air Force. They're pathetic. They're losers. They're the

most just demolished weak thing that is that we've ever encountered. And all it took was first to

touch them. This is something the struggle we said about us. We are the spiders web. You just touch

it and it collapses. Well, now we touch them and they fell apart completely. There's no there there.

How did these societies? Iran is a deeply competent society for centuries. How did these societies

fall so far? We remember the days where we used to learn Maimonides in Hebrew University.

You refer to that distinctly remember. I remember I remember specific lessons. I

people don't know, but you're also a very fun, exciting, charismatic teacher. I also learned

about teaching from you. Thank you. So we were learning Rambam back then. You must have heard me

mentioning Rambam's teachers. Oh, Muslim. There were all Muslim Arabs speaking Muslims. You know

why they were Arabs speaking Muslims? Because Islam was most advanced civilization in the Middle Ages.

Abu Nazareth Farabi. Ibn Sina. These great titans of there were interpreters of Greek philosophy

and they were innovators in philosophy. And then and you had and he had Ibn Baja. And these were all

and Rambam when he writes the guide that perplexed in Arabic. You know why I write it in Arabic?

It was intended for a Jewish crowd, but he thought there isn't any real serious Jew that can

understand his book that doesn't understand Arabic because that's the language of the best intellectuals

when we're in the 12th century. That was Muslim Arabs back then. And they were the best in

philosophy, in poetry, in science, in math. They were the great civilization. When we were looking

at Europe, at the barbarians, to Christians in Europe, they saw nothing, nothing is going to happen

from that from what later would be called Western civilization. Nothing will happen from there.

And then something happened. The Muslim world starts going down. The Western world starts going up.

And this reaches its peak, obviously, in World War I. World War I was the moment where Western forces

that French the British put an end to the Ottoman Empire and made it clear. History has dramatically

changed. And this advanced civilization went into a process of deterioration and decline.

And many asked what happened? What went wrong? Now, Qavi was interesting. So if you ask this

incompetent Islam that we're fighting with today, where was this born? It was born out of an attempt

to give an answer. What went wrong? So after World War I, there were actually two powerful answers

to this question. It was given by Mustafa Kemal, by Atatul, by the founding father of modern Turkey.

And he said, you know what went wrong? You know what put us down? You know why we're weak?

You know why we're not modern and powerful? Why we were defeated? We were weak because of Islam.

Islam is the problem. Now, when he said Islam is a problem, it doesn't mean that we're

stripping Allah as a problem. He means making Islam political makes a society weak. And by the way,

he's right, the Ottoman Empire was very weakened because of the power of some of Muslim practices

like they shut themselves down from the Gutenberg revolution for a while. They stayed behind and

Europeans that were advanced bought them down. But there was another answer given in the 1920s.

And that was the answer of Hassan Elbana, the founding father of the Muslim brotherhood of the

Iqwan. And Hassan Elbana, his answer is, you know why we lost? You know why we're weak? It's not

because that we are so politically Muslim is because we are not Muslim. It's because we're too

Western. We got weak ever since we disconnected ourselves from Islam. That made us weak. So you

have too answer to the question, what went wrong? Musta Fakamal, we have to become modern,

Western and secular and Hassan Elbana. We have to reject the West and go back to origins.

Now, Hassan Elbana later on sighed Qutobendis, founding thinkers of the Muslim brotherhood,

they have a theory. And here's their theory in Nachel, what made Muslim countries weak,

were saying they weren't Muslim enough. There are thought as like this, real Islam, original Islam

is political Islam. Meaning Islam is not a religion that regulates your relationship with God.

You pray five times a day, you fast one month a year, you go to Hajj, you know, to

to your pilgrimage once a lifetime. It's not just about, it's not an individual

relationship between a person and God. It's not the Protestant religion. That's not what it is.

Islam, if it's not political, it's not Islam at all. It's the system that you govern society with.

That is Pshat Qohan, that is the both basic understanding of the Qohan. So Hassan Elbana says,

what happened to us inside Qutobendis, that Islam was distorted and it became an individualistic

religion? Well, we know whose religion individualism is the religion of the West. That's the big idea

that the West bought the world individualism. And the West infected our minds with this gene

of individualism and distorted Islam from a collective understanding of Islam to a

private understanding of Islam, leading us to separate synagogues, not search from state,

a mosque from state. And Islam being shrunk to the size of the mosque when it comes to legislation,

Islam that has nothing to say. So in very, very broad strokes, I think this is what Islamism is.

It's trying to say that Islam is the answer. Islam is not the problem, Islam is the solution.

Just like you have communism, fascism, capitalism, liberalism, you have Islamism,

this is how we're going to solve society's problems. And then they have to ask, hey,

if Islam is a collective religion, why is it that we're experiencing it as an individual religion?

Because the West distorted Islam. Why did the West distort Islam? Because the West understands

the power of Islam. And it knows that when Islam like in Muhammad's times is a collective religion,

it could conquer the world like it did actually in the past. So here's, so it's kind of

a conspiracy theory. The West distorted Islam or to protect itself in Islam.

What today is the main vehicle of the West to contaminate Islam and to weaken Islam?

That's dangerous. America. America leads the West. Yeah. And the tool they use in the Middle East

to push a distorted understanding of reality, to push individualism to push all these ideas

that are distorting Islam, it's Israel. Oh, and by the way, how did they make that case?

I'm sorry, how did they make the case that it's Israel? We talked on this podcast about some

thinkers who said Israel is Zionism is the weakest thing to push Islam back. The most urgent and

immediate demonstration of Islamic weakness. And therefore, the first signal of Islam returning

to itself is the defeat of Israel. That's what places Israel front and center. But this thing

about America being the great Satan, because its culture is dominant, because of globalization,

because it threatens Islamic morality, because America's culture is so freaking loud, nobody can

ignore it. Every culture on earth responds to American culture. What are you going to do?

And America's, by the way, are totally unaware of this. Like they don't know they're producing

all of this. They invent the internet, the airplane, the car, and they don't realize that the whole

world is being shaped in their image without anybody really having a say because it's all happening

by Mark. How is Israel an enemy? And the Muslim Brotherhood talking about Israel constantly as the

little Satan of the Iran, specifically talks about Israel as the little Satan. We didn't do that.

Most of the Jews who came to Israel, 95% of the Jews who found that Israel live in Israel

are specifically not the Jews who made it into America in the 20th century. They're the Jews who

couldn't make it in. They're the desperate refugees. How is Yemeni Jews and Polish Jews

responsible for America's cultural infiltration that brought Islam low as a cultural force?

Well, for three reasons. One, in the Muslim Brotherhood rhetoric, there's a lot of anti-Semitism.

Actually, the full narrative actually is that it's that the West distorted Islam, but the Jews

are hypnotizing the West. So the Jews control the West that uses Israel to contaminate Islam.

So there's the anti-Semitism. There's a very powerful, especially in Syed Kutub. By the way,

Ali Khamenei translating his Syed Kutub into Persian, like this is all one ecosystem.

So I think that that makes Israel a little bit more. It makes the argument that the Israel is the

there's a name for like a small knife in Arabic. It's the knife that the West uses in order to

in order to destroy this version of Islam, but also it's Israel in the Middle East

it blocks the ability of creating one caliph, one caliphite. Just by its very existence,

just the fact that the Jews are controlling, walk, sacred Muslim land. And

Haram al Sharif al-Aqsa, sacred Muslim sites, temple now. Just the fact that the Jews are in

control of that, which is itself, like you mentioned before, a historic humiliation, that the

humiliating humiliated people, like that's how they're described, are now in control of sacred

Muslim land. All that is turning, all that is the vehicle that the West is using in order to

inject it to contaminate the Middle East with these ideas in the end to store to Islam.

Now there's a cyclical, which means we have to be powerful again, to be powerful again, we have to

see Islam as something political. We have to collectivize Islam. And when we do that,

it'll be powerful and we can destroy the West, destroy Israel and destroy the West. But

until we don't destroy Israel and destroy the West, we'll always be under their influence and

won't be able to collectivize Islam. So it's like the cyclical, so they're always moving between

what happens first? Do we restore original Islam in order to fight the West or we destroy the West

in Israel in order to restore original Islam? I think this is a tension we have within the

of the of the of the of the Muslim brotherhood. So yeah, two options, two answers to this question

what happened to us? Answer one, in Muslim brotherhood, we have to return to the purity of Islam,

to the original Islam, the Islam of the conquering generations after Muhammad when we were all

unified as this collective, the Ummah, the great nation of Islam. Answer two, and that's

fundamentally a political Islam. Answer two, secular, modern, democratic, Turkey. Answer two seems

to have failed. And answer one seems to be on the warpath taking over everything in the Middle

East. And I should just say not demonstrating the capacity to build coherent competent societies,

witness Iran, witness Egypt, witness every place the Muslim brotherhood ever touches,

or these ideas, even in their Shi'i version, what has been done to Lebanon, et cetera. So

the Ijwan one, the culture war of the last century, and the Ijwan also destroyed the Middle East.

Well, let's see, let's see history still has a story to tell, let's see where where it is taking us

because the Ijwan one, where did the Ijwan take us? Ijwan is, it's a very specific political instinct

and it sounds like this, all our problems are because of someone else. All our problems are

because of the West in Israel. And in 1979 in Ayatollah, how many takes over Iran, that's

his narrative. All our problems are because of the great Satan, the small Satan, and all and

therefore, all our problems are internal division because of American Israel, our economic problems,

American Israel. People are frustrated in Iran, it's because of America and Israel.

Which this is, this is as Ruth Rice puts this version, this is the politics of blame.

It's a very specific version of politics. Now, this helped them out very much at the beginning.

If we see how this way of thinking played out in the foundational years of the Islamic Republic

in Iran, this was actually, it actually gave them something very powerful and that is the narrative

for the revolution. It wasn't there where against the Shah. The Shah is just a representation

of America. This is a war against the Satan, against America, which means that even after we

overthrew the Shah, the revolution is not over. Because the Shah is one representative of America

contaminating the region, Israel the second one, so as long as Israel is alive and kicking,

the revolution isn't over. Which means that the destruction of Israel is not the policy,

it's an identity, it's not what they do, it's who they are, it's the core of the revolution.

Now, this narrative gives them a lot of energy because you know what the greatest problem

for any revolution is, Havif? Success. There were scenes that could happen to revolution,

it's successful. And then you lose all the energy of the revolution. Now you have to start,

you know, taking out the garbage. Now you have to start running a country, boring. And for many

revolutionary movements, it's very hard. That transition is very hard. Thank God we had the,

we had the we've been going on that managed to manage that transition from being the revolution

to start managing the country and laundry, you know, and taking out the garden and dealing with

the routine. But the Iranians don't have to make that transition because the revolution is not over

because even after its success, we still didn't succeed. There's still Israel. So Israel is guarding

by its very existence, the spirit of the revolution. So we gave, so Israel's giving a lot of energy

to these Islamic republics, so, so, and when every time you have a problem, it's not an internal

problem, it's an external problem, it's Israel and America, it's, and therefore the solution is

Mark Baram Rikom, Mark Barisrael, that's the submission. How do you solve a problem?

Death to death to America. That's a policy. That's a, you solve your, if they're, if they're the

or sources of all your problems, it's a solution to, to not having to then adopt domestic policies

that are functioning. That's our function. Exactly. Now what's, so what's the reason? Now what,

when we see, but you ask how is it that we touch it? And it collapses because what we're seen

in front of our eyes is the product of the politics of blame. Because when you blame everyone else

figure problems, you look like Iran today, but they don't have enough energy, water, I don't know,

how many ways of inflation do they have? So you ask, okay, what happened to Iran? And I think this

is a very important lesson because the politics of blame is seductive today in the West also,

we just blame each other for our problems. But the, the seduction, there was this great book

that everybody used to read once from good to great by something Collins. Remember that book?

Jay, I heard about it. Yeah, it's a business book. Yeah. It's a business book. It's a business

book. So a good friend of mine, Rabbi Westy, Gordon Schwartz, always teaching me like, this is a very

good book. And it's a book about different companies that manage to go from good to greats.

I think they became like one of the five hundred most powerful countries companies

and then stayed there for 10 years. It's one thing to make it up and then go down. It's about

the thing to make it up to the top five hundred whatever and stay there for 10 years. So the book

examines where the qualities of the leadership of people that manage to carry companies up there

and stay there. And where the qualities is that they own their problems. Now this is very deep

because it's very hard for us to be honest enough to own our own problems because if I have

any problem, an emotional problem, a problem my family and my society and my country,

our immediate instincts is to deny them or to downplay them or to delay, you know, to procrastinate.

That's the best technique to deal with dealing with them. But the worst form of not dealing with

your problems is blaming someone else for your problems. And every time and the greatest and

that what happens now, what happens when you own your problems, then you start winning because

then you start developing problem solving mentality. That's when you become creative. That's when

the best comes out of people where you don't own your problems. That starts rings out the worst.

But blaming someone else for your problems, that's a guarantee that you're in decline.

Ruth Weiss observed once. Ruth Weiss, she writes a lot of the anti-Semitism.

That every time a society becomes anti-Semitic, you know that society is going down. Do you know why?

Because it's the politics of blame. It's a society that's losing its winners instinct. It's not

owning its problems anymore. Now in the middle, now we know that historically,

that societies that became anti-Semitic, stopped owning their problems and they started deteriorating.

And in the Middle East, we see that societies that are not owning their problems because

they're blaming Israel for all their problems become very, very weak societies. By the way,

I know MBS is a thing and it's an enigma and you probably understand, I don't know where he's going

and you probably have a lot of theories about this. But there's one good thing I want to say that

this guy, he's owning Saudi Arabia's problems. He wants to make Saudi Arabia great. He has a plan,

will it work or not work. And how do you know that he's owning Saudi Arabia's problems? He's a leader

that doesn't blame Israel for Saudi's problems. They have their own problems. He's not in that narrative

and that's why he has at least the potential to succeed. The Emirates are not playing that game.

And that's why they have, they actually are succeeding and who is obsessive playing the politics of blame

Iran. And this is where Iran today. It's a testimony. This is a lesson because by the way,

I just want to make a very short footnote. The mind virus of political polarization,

where people in Argentina and Brazil and in Israel and America and in different countries in

Europe believe that their country is divide into two camps and every camp has a narrative that

all our problems are because of the other side. This is how the mind virus of politics of

blame is infecting our societies. Not by blaming people outside our societies, but by blaming people

with inner societies. And this is something, and when we're looking at Iran, we should see,

this is how this ends. This is how thinking that when you blame someone for your problems,

you're understanding your problems and believing that your solution to your problems is weakening

the people on the other side. This is how this is how it ends. It doesn't look good.

Politics of blame weakened society. And this is an unintended consequence of an attempt to give

an answer to what went wrong. Why did we lose World War One? Why was Islam that was on the top

is now on the bottom? Oh, I know it right wrong. It's not any cultural problems within Islam,

within our Arab culture. No, no, we're not going to even investigate. No, the problem is the West.

The West is stored at Islam. And that is why Islam is weak. If we'll defeat the West,

Islam will be strong. It became. And so this whole Muslim brotherhood narrative,

adopting the theologian version of the politics of blame had made Islam,

made these, and made these societies very weak. What happens now? We've shown the weakness.

You can't avoid the weakness and the devastation in Gaza. What did Khamas do? What was Khamas

willing to tolerate? Khamas said in in 600 kilometers of underground tunnels, the most

comprehensive bomb shelter system in the history of war and didn't let a single cousin child

into it for two and a half years. What do these groups reap on their own societies?

Khamas is unfixable. Khamas is unfixable. The regime is unfixable in Iran. But the thing is,

Khazbullah is unfixable. It's unfixable. Erdogan is part of a party, the AKP party,

that is Muslim brotherhood in its origins. And it's ideological origins at the very least.

And you follow the theologians who literally go from the Arab world to belong to the Muslim

brotherhood world to Turkey and begin to have these conversations with Turkish Islamist organizations.

It's a big complicated history, but it's basically ideologically Muslim brotherhood is Turkey

on its way down. I don't know if Turkey is, I don't know if Turkey is completely all bought into

to Muslim brother. I think they're, but my table is interesting about Turkey because Turkey came

from Mustafa Khamas. It came from a communist. Yeah. It came from the alternative answer. It came from

what went wrong was political Islam. I have to make Islam individual, personal, every personal

individually could worship God. But as a collective, we're going secular and Western. And here's

the interesting thing. The history of Iran is a display of both answers. This is how the history

of Iran plays out in 1920s. Reza Khan Reza Shah takes over Iran. In 1925, he places the Qajar

dynasty and he found the Palhavid dynasty. And Reza, Reza Shah, and then his son, Mohamed Reza Shah,

they're together reforming Iran in the exact same way that Atat Tulk was reforming Turkey.

Not as radical, but he was their inspiration. And the industrialization, the westernization,

the taking the hijab off women, all this, all this was Turkey was Turkey was imitated by Iran.

And when Iran was going through that process of separation of smog from states of in different

and different levels, Iran was really becoming a powerful country. Iran under the white revolution

led by Mohamed Reza Shah was attempt to westernize and industrialize Iran. It was a very successful

revolution. They were at their economically, they were at their peak by 1977. And he is a

interesting thing. In the narrative of Mohamed Reza Shah by making Iran Western, they're not turning

their backs to their roots. They have this narrative. They have this narrative that

they're past of the Persian Empire. That the Persian Empire is the source of all everything

that's great in western civilization. Human rights comes from Polish, from Cyrus, from Kursh.

Different ideas we have in Christianity come from the Zoroastrian religion. They have this idea

they were the original Aureans. And now in Europe, everybody thinks in the 1930s, people were

excited that they are Aureans. They have this idea that they are the source of civilization.

They are the source of western civilization, which means that when they become western,

that turning their back to themselves, they're returning to themselves to the best greatest

version of themselves, the pre-Islamic version of Iran, the Persian Empire. So that was a powerful

narrative that they had going for them. And then whole many comes around and he breaks that down

and replaces it with Islam is not the problem Islam is the solution the west is not the solution

the west is a problem he reverses it and brings Iran down. So we have here Iran is actually a

laboratory of two ideas. The Mustafa Kamal idea and the Hassan Elbana idea both played out in Iran

between 1925 and 2026 exactly a century of this experiment roughly 50-50 to experience

into ideas. The tragedy of Iran by the way is that they've never learned how do you make something

hybrid they always play the either or game either your secular or your religious either you are

connected to the pre-Muslim civilization yes or anything that's before Muhammad is Jahlia

is arrogance is ignorance is we're rejecting it and our life begins from Muhammad they couldn't

combine these two foundational ideas. I want to I want to get into the combination question the

hybrid question it's absolutely fascinating but just looking at the map of the Middle East

I'm and taking your framing of it which makes a lot a lot of sense to me the most of the Kamal

answer is the only path to prosperity strength competences of society happiness but the Muslim

brotherhood will win every battle every culture war because they have going for them call for

authenticity a rejection of westernism a romanticized past whatever it is they have the power

in the culture war but they will only destroy because they're revolutionaries and all times

permanently and forever are we doomed to never ending cycles of self-destruction through the adoption

of this radicalized political Islam or or or is there a you know Bernard Lewis once spoke to exactly

this where he said Iran and Turkey are going in opposite directions he said this 20 years ago

is an unbelievable but he's or even more um Turkey is Islamizing Iran is secularizing liberalizing

opening up and it's going to take a long time but you will see them pass each other um is that

the story is the is the I don't know I think they're showing itself to be destructive

and therefore nobody's gonna choose the last time the Middle East had one powerful charismatic

organizing idea was pan Arabism led by Jamal Abdin Natsil and that was an exciting idea that's

could unite them at least and it was an idea that was supposed to eradicate Israel it's blocking the

Middle East from uniting under and what will unite the Middle East is not to share religion but a

shared language culture Arabism and that idea gave a lot of charisma to the Arab countries and

led in the end to the six-day war the Gipurkasa is a teacher that teaches the theology of Islamism

to the Israeli uh secret forces um he's a very and he's a he's a very interesting he's a very

interesting um think thinker on these issues and he said that in the six-day war Israel didn't only

defeat three armies that's the kinetic victory where we destroy the Egyptian armies air force

in two or three hours that's the kinetic victory it also defeated an idea the idea of pan Arabism

lost its charisma after the six-day war this idea was defeated and then the Arab world had two

options either we go on the idea that okay every Arab nation state needs to succeed and prosper

on its own no more pan Arabism and that is the root of Egypt because 1979 wasn't just

that we're going with America with Israel it's also doing it on our own a separate piece treaty

with Israel that was the end of pan Arabism but 79 is not only the end of pan Arabism from once

70 on is also the Islamic revolution in Iran saying there is another

alternative to pan Arabism and that is pan Islamism pan Islamism now here's a big big question

in the history of ideas this is a great question to ask we don't know go or I'll answer it with

our I know or not yes okay well what we we don't know we while we're recording this we don't

know how this war ends but if this war ends like we want it and need it to ends will will so will

this war do to pan Islamism what the six-day war did to pan Arabism that is an open question meaning

is a swore not only a story in the history of armies and power but also an event in the history

of ideas will it pave room and will that pave the way for like the type of Islam promoting by the

Emirates by this by MBS well that I have to think that yes this particular idea that we're

more with is an idea with very specific political predictions and consequences and if it crashes

and burns if it does the opposite of what it claims that it will do which is lead the great Muslim

vanguard and return into history of a great and conquering Islam if it literally can't defeat

the Jews never mind the great Satan that's three orders of magnitude more powerful than the Jews

then it then it's wrong doesn't it contain within itself its own disproof are the politics of

blame capable is the human capacity for excuse making capable of weathering the unbelievable failure

of the Iranian regime not in war with Israel but not just in war with Israel I mean even to

deliver water to Iranians I mean can they weather this how could this not be the fall of this idea

now this now the leadership of this idea made a prediction that in the Shiite in the Shiite world

there's this idea but also in the Jewish tradition is that every sacred text has the external

meaning and the internal secret meaning we have that also right there is the shots and then there

is the deeper hidden layers of the text also the Shias do that there is the Zahir the Zahir is like

the external meaning of things and there is the Batin the internal the secretive and never let

the illusion of externalities seduce your mind so when Hassan Nasrallah in May 2000 gave it famous

speech in Binshabid and he said that that's a village in South Lebanon yeah and this was after

the army are the IDF left South Lebanon the offers a theological interpretation of the ritual of

IDF in South Lebanon and he says that Israel has the strongest army in the Middle East

but it's weaker than cobwebs what does he mean he means that on the level of Zahir on the

external explicit level we have the air force and we have nuclear bombs were so but in the Batin

that is the Israeli society is weak the culture is weak western individuals and make societies weak

and vice versa he's bala it seems like militarily kinetically they're not that strong

but their spirit is strong so that double layer theory is what is what enabled the

make the prediction that Israel is going there going up and Israel is going down

October 7th put this whole theory to test and you're and you ask okay we understand that they

thought that their religion is making them strong their religion that narrative that blames the west

and Israel for their problems is actually what makes them weak but I think it's fair to ask

if I don't know if we have time for this is to ask okay they misunderstood their own power

they thought Islam is their solution thinking of Islam politically and blaming others for their

problems is their problem is what made them what they thought will make them strong is making them

weak but I think there's room maybe to ask the alternate whether they get wrong about they

thought Israel is so weak they thought that this society is going to break down once we had

you say they'll touch it and Israel will collapse that's right and all their allies in the west

keep saying that's it Israel is done they're looking around and you're like Israel is less done than

it used to be I'm not sure you it does and shot and the secret meanings of things is a wonderful

way to attack a text because the text is never going to attack you back I'm not sure if it's a

great way to deal with history because in the grand strategic map I mean what Israel is so much

more powerful I want to say a reason I think Israel so much more powerful and precisely the

ways that Israel thought it wasn't and then send the ball back to your court why if they failed

never mind to misunderstand themselves never mind to create an Islam that can only this version of

Islam undermine themselves and weaken themselves and turn them into what Iran has become

Israel's democracy okay individualism will call it is the great source of its military power I

don't know why this is hard to get through the thick skull of the Islamist theologian the fact

that an Israeli brigadier general must sit down with the mothers of the soldiers who died under his

command means that he arms those soldiers better trains those soldiers better and cares more the

the fact that I will send my kids to a military where they will might probably have to fight a war

this is not the Belgian military why am I willing to send my kids to a military that's going

into a war and the answer is because everyone else's kids are now in that military protecting

like it it's a circle of solidarity well you know what you need to have a circle of solidarity

in which everyone's kids protect everyone and therefore that's the only legitimate reason

to actually send your kids into harm's way because you don't send your kids to defend a state the

state exists to defend the kids the only way it's legitimate for everyone to be rowing in the

same direction as sending kids into harm's way is if every single person in the country is rowing

this and the only way you get that solidarity is democracy the fact that we know that the country

is together the fact that we know that this war is real the fact that we know that it isn't a

dictator's whim and Israelis know it and you can see every opposition leader in Israel today is

talking about how there's only one Israel at this moment there'll be 15 Israel's 10 minutes for

now but right now there's only one that is democracy all the liberal stuff that they think is our

weakness oh look at them they care so much for let we love death they love life so they're

going to follow the first sign of trouble that is our power lebanon hates as well out today

and Israelis love their armed forces and that's the difference of democracy so I think they

might have miscalculated on this one why don't they understand I still want to understand the

miscalculation because they're not dumb these are very serious people custom swine money was very

serious custom swine was Ali Hamina and they were they had an understanding of really there was

based on something a philosopher of history named even haldoon from the 14th century very far that

history mo there's a few forces that are pushing history forward and one is or is it what gives

societies armies countries power so first you have their military capabilities

you know they're their technologies their weapons and the second thing is the will of the fighters

now what happens if you're now but what's more important this strength of your capabilities

this of your capabilities or of your of your willpower what's more important so even haggleon says

will all these defeats capability if you have a battle between one society that's that's a

sentence or high and will and low on capability first another society that's high on capability but

low and will who will win the society that's high that's high and will and low on capability you

you always you speak a lot about the the the battle against against the French and Algeria

who have the capabilities the French won every battle and lost the war exactly why because will

defeats capability because the French killed like a million Algerians you know the number at the

500,000 at least at least five and they stayed fighting the FLN killed how many French 20,000

and the same thing American Vietnam the same thing Soviet Union and Algeria and this is even

halooon the 14th century says a sabia whoever has a sabia unity will strength will defeat the people

that their advantage is capability and heavy that is what Ali Haminei's thoughts

himself in 2015 when he said that Zionism has 25 more years maximum that is what Hassan Hassan

has said that we have the strongest army but we could in cobwebs strong meaning we're strong

in a capability cobwebs being weak in will why because liberalism democracy materialism weakens

your will to fight so why aren't we weak why do we go to fight okay so actually Israel is a very

unique country because in some sense nasa line Haminei were right with true societies which are

individualistic societies individualism creates abundance and wealth and innovation all this

creates high high tech armies but the same individual is individualism that makes you high on

capabilities usually individuals and means we're all in this for ourselves so your low one will

you're not willing to sacrifice your low on tolerance for soldiers dying your low on tolerance

for damage to your economy and this war we've seen in this so you would think that there's like a

law of history but there's a zero someday machine will and capability because if you're high on will

and means your materialistic capitalistic and the sorry high on capability it means you have an

individualistic society that that that that either there's terrorism and ambition and innovation

it creates the best weapons but no one's willing to fight or you're a middle eastern hamula your

middle eastern plan plan and you're very high on will but very low on capability you know what is

real sort of this war that we broke that historic zero some game that we were very I mean to say

that we were high on will we know all our close friends sacrificed everything in this war

fun day one until today the heroic fighting of Israelis the altruism of the Israeli civilians

we saw a society very high on will and when it comes to capabilities we see mind blowing

capabilities Israel broke the zero some game because you're in capability do you know why

why me because this would be the secret to everything this is what Europe is suffering from

never mind your own capability comes from individualism individual leads to ambition and innovation

and that leads to abundance and the high capabilities that comes from individualism will

willingness to sacrifice comes from collectivism the sense that you belong to something greater than

yourself usually countries which are very collectivists like in the Middle East or not do not promote

individualism and in the west where you promote individualism people don't have that same sense of

belonging to a collective Israel manages to do both and that's why Israel has was so successful

throughout this war we have the sacrifice of our soldiers and the high tech of our weapons and

this is what happens when you combine collectivism and individualism if this ends the way we

need it and want it to end we will ask what won this war it was the Israeli formula that won this war

if we get to this moment it's that hybrid idea that you're a Jewish democracy Jewish means you

belong to a grand story that gives you meaning in democracy means that every individual has its

rights and with everything that comes and the culture that comes with democracy Israel at its

best is hybrid Israel at its best is a western country with the will of a Middle Eastern clan

it's because we're not really western and we're not Middle Eastern we're hybrid we're not we're

and most is really a highly patriotic and highly liberal simultaneously this hybridity

let's assume that it isn't absolutely totally unique to Israeli cultural DNA or to Jewish cultural

DNA what is it where does it come from how do you turn this unbelievable superpower that seems to

solve a great many of the problems of the west Israelis are happy according to all kinds of weird

international polling on happiness around the world yeah way beyond their GDP per capita way beyond

their right they have more kids than anybody else in the developed world they're deeply tribal deeply

collectivist and yet also deeply liberal and can have all this high-tech innovation and can

incentivize all that stuff what is that secret sauce and how do you turn it into a best practice

that frankly I would like to export to the Arab world real quick because the Arab world doesn't

want to give up its collectivism I don't want it to if it turns from in the Arab world into the

social and psychological and emotional and identitarian wasteland frankly of so much of the west

I'm sorry for saying it's so mean I apologize to westerners but you can handle it this is a

discussion between middle easterners you can handle the insults um how do they adopt the other

side how does each side take on this weird syncretism that israel is found let's take your rean

as a test case they tried both they tried chamelism under the pahavid dynasty and they tried

the politics of blame under humane and hamine and i can misle miser and um

um what they couldn't do is combine the two and by the way

there were thoughts of how you combine the two the idea of the islamic republic is trying

to be hybrid the islamic means a theocracy republic is a republic is like a western idea

it relates with democracy but it didn't never worked they never managed to become like

because one of those was a lie republic was already a lie the republic was a mask now here's a theory

I have for one thousand three hundred years Persians were Zoroastrian now as mechs mechs rebert

taught us religion has a tendency to shape the way you think even after you stop believing in it

right next rebert house a theory that capital of the spirit of capitalism comes from a certain

branch of Protestantism for you understand religion you understand society iranians were

one thousand three hundred years Zoroastrian before they became muslin the Zoroastrian religion

is a religion that tells you a story that the world is a battlefield between two gods

uhu ramazda the god of light the god of goodness the god of harmony and angra manu or another

name he has as a hariman it's the god of darkness the god of evil the god of this harmony

and they created this world as a battlefield the genie's two gods and guess what our role is

chavif to join the good god in the battle against the bad god and redemption is when the bad

god evaporates and a hu ramazda governs the world what does it do to you to live in such a binary

religion for one thousand three hundred years it's good versus evil right versus wrong it's it's a

religion that trains our mind to the habit of binary thinking so that there's a prophecy within

the book of azea that addresses this theology now this is a prophet within the book of azea that

was living in a time of sirus and he admire sirus he calls sirus mishia qawmar shem

qawmar adonai le mishichole kourish kourish is a mishia the founding father of the acumenian dynasty

of the Persian kingdom is a mishia in difficult terms because he was the one that enabled the people

of visual to return to zion and to build the second temple and in the prophets it's a term of

kingship so he but he is v king rather than he is v king and he's admired but the bible has the

ability to admire a person while rejecting his theology something many of us lost to like the

person even even though you don't like his theology and so the bible admire sirus while

is rejecting his dualism and this is how it rejects his dualism ania donai ve'en od there's one

god not to not referring obviously to the zionara of the religion he says jocer or uvorichoshech

ose shalom uvorira ania donai osechol ele

so this is the translation just for listeners who don't know the hebra the god is the creator of light

and the creator of darkness darkness the creator of peace and the creator of evil this is what it says

here god is the creator of evil ania donai osechol ele god made all of that so this prophet is

standing in front of sirus and saying you believe in a good god that is fighting the bad god

we believe in one god that is the god of the good and the god of the bad you become what you admire

right people that admire athletes there's high there's high chances that they go jogging at night

people that admire intellectuals they probably read books people that grow up in admiring the

wrong people yes people that admire people just for the sake of their famous they not become

narcissistic right you know when you admire the god that's fighting evil you become binary you

become as either good or bad but if you admire the god as the god of good and evil maybe that

trains your mind to be more holistic the monotheistic religion at its best supposed to train

your mind to see not not to play the either or game and this is this is the the channels that

israel somehow somehow managed it doesn't mean we'll continue to manage not to play the either or

game yes are you collectivists or individuals well we're trying to be both is it easy no are you

a Jewish country or a democratic party well we're trying to be both is it easy god knows that so

many people say it's so hard let's be only democracy or only a Jewish country but but because we

see that combining combining opposite elements is so challenging they want to give up but when we

look at the benefits of this combination the game changing their game changing maybe it's worthwhile

managing this impossible tension because yes because individualism and collectivism is this

combination is what's missing in the Middle East not enough individualism is what's missing in the

West not enough collectivism not enough community family and meaning let me let me suggest one

way that could be part of our path to this strange syncretism that gives us this strange super

power we Jews are not quite a religion we're not quite an idea we don't have an ism it's called

Judaism just because that's english that's not because of Jews we are inventing this one in

nine that word was invented in the 19th century right the word Judaism yeah um

rhombom wasn't been believing Judaism right we are a people and if I came to rhombom and I said

to him I don't believe in God he would say to me oh my God a Jew doesn't believe in God how could

you not believe in God you're a Jew I don't know why he would speak in Mel Brooks English but I'm

saying he would say of course you're a Jew which is why it's bad that you don't believe in God

because you're not believing in God doesn't remove your Jewishness because Jewishness is not the

religion according to the halacha itself according to the religion you are not a religion according to

the religion you are a people the content of being part of this thing called Jew is is a

peoplehood is is a nation ethnicity these are very recent words even if nation is a very old

recent word it's much more recent than whatever the heck a Jew is and so because we are also another

kind of syncretism which is this religion and this and this tribe because we combine both of those

we don't we're not trapped in either so you can join Jewishness and you can convert but then

your your blood also begin to look at Judaism and you begin to notice it in Christian terms or in

Muslim terms and you begin to realize it's pretty short on dogmas it's pretty short on dogmas and

you know I say this a lot because this is a real difference between Judaism and the other

monotheistic religions what happens after you die in Judaism not some very vague metaphor nobody

ever wants to get into what actually happens after you die you'd think that's a big deal and it

turns out it's not a big deal there's at least 13 different options in the Talmud they never really

seal the deal they never actually tell us and there's six kinds of mystical reincarnation ideas

still in a traditional bookshelf not modern day California just in like Zahar Kabbalah there's

all these things there's all this stuff all over the place and in the end the answer is the Talmud

doesn't decide the Talmud doesn't care it deeply cares how you layer to fill in it deeply cares how

you give to the poor it tells you answers to the great debates on those questions it doesn't give

us answers on the great dogmatic debates about God about afterlife about stuff like that that's

just not what Judaism is about it doesn't think it's about that there are no socialists in Israel

there were 60 years ago they very quickly stopped being anything ideological and just started running

the place maybe Jews don't have ideologies they they go off to communism they go off to whatever

they had Judas Butler thinks she is today they go off to these places but they don't bring them

in what is the ideology underlying hooray de Judaism so what you're saying Khaweev is that the

ability of Israelis the elasticity of Israelis to be very individualistic in the start of

nation and the ambition and innovation and very collectivist and we're all fighters and and

willing to sacrifice I mean and all that that ability comes from the fact that they never turns

into a rigid identity you're trapped in or collectivism was never turned into communism fascism

but it was never turned into something rigid the fact that we are weak in ideologies enables us

not to become what we think not wait for hunger yeah humble and therefore we could do these cut

these cut these type of a very of combinations now is it fair to say Judaism tells us teaches us

it is not for you to know what happens after you die that's not your place call down

the interesting thing is in the tana there is no life after death there's no life after death

I'm not saying that it says that there's no life after death but the tana is I'm interested in it

besides one verse in the nir which is kubian in one story with Sha'ul the tana I mean as opposed

like Egyptian ancient texts it described exactly what happens after death and the voyage after death

the tana is like we want to tell a story what happens after death is beyond the curiosity of

this book epistemological humility okay so and the Talmud preserves the losing argument in every

debate across dozens and dozens of tractates 60,000 pages it preserves the losing side of every

debate you know what that is intellectual humility and rambam saying I'm gonna now write

the missionatora this codex of the answers to all the great questions of Jewish law

was was was castigated was criticized massively for doing because don't speak that way about the

rambam okay no I'm speaking because you're here I'm saying something you're meant to correct me

okay but yeah you're being where do you come off now this is the nishalagadon the great

eagle the rambam the greatest rabbi from Moses to Moses there arose no rabbi like Moses

this Moses my monides in the great thinker and scholar and philosopher of the Jewish bookshelf

the great everybody responds to him and has to live in the world that he created this man

Jews at the time said where do you come off thinking you can seal the gates of interpretation

of Jewish law and tell us what the answers are that is a culture that is only about epistemological

humility we don't know God's mind we don't know God's story I think what you're doing here

is that you're connecting between the hubris of understanding and therefore there's no

isms in Israel and there and the in capability of and being trapped in binary thinking if you are

an ism I'm a socialist I'm a individualist I have answers I have and then my mind is trapped

in one identity right and then I'm forced okay if I'm an individualist so collectivism is bad

if my collectivist in visualism is bad Israelis do not turn ideas into identities because we

skeptical about ideas to belong to to begin with and that you're saying comes from our Jewish

tradition training your mind never to take any idea way to see because no ism is sacred because

no it's not because God is one so not there is no idea is sacred it's God we can't know it and if

there's no absolute truth and that's not what we don't fall into binary at our own

solutions or Israel is a laboratory we see what happens when people don't fall into binary thinking

they could be collectivist like a clan in the middle east and hyper individualist startup

nation like like a Silicon Valley but in Silicon Valley people don't do me doing no and then

and in middle eastern clans they don't do startups every campus professor in the west who knows

exactly what history is it's perfect total teleological arc is an idiot who is doing anti-Judiya

that's very interesting so and therefore we don't have humble epistemologies to problems enables you

not to fall into binary thinking and that's and that could and that could lead to the environment

that creates that where messy combination of individualism and collectivism which is exactly

what haminae and asrahla can't understand they thought oh they're western which means they're

individualistic which means that they're weak on will which means we'll hit them and they'll

collapse that realize there were more collectivists than they are that they're willing to fight

and the fact that we're so individualist doesn't mean that we're weak on collectivism we managed to

it is railiness managed to put this thing together where deeply religious more religious according

to polls than iranians deeply religious deeply westernized deeply collectivist profoundly liberal

the conservative right-wingly couped former security officer in the defense services speaker

of the knesset is a married gay man i don't know what the hell that is but that is israeli by the way

no israeli thinks that's weird i mean that's just what that's him i don't know well you you

talk to me talk to him i'm not governed by isms and i can walk into your ism look at it and say

maybe maybe not maybe not and by the way if not you're saying yourself out for disappointment i can

say to every ism in christian them and in islam and in communism and in secularism jews don't have

isms they have problems solving right because this world was made by a god and we put us in here to

figure it out and fix it and and defend it judy ism was never an ism and a jewish polity and a

jewish society a jewish political community is humble intellectually just because you know

where the Persians have that dichotomy vision of the universe built into their cultural DNA

we have the i have no idea what the truth is i can't know what the truth is that's what god means

therefore problem solving is all that's left maybe that's the answer that's the best practice

every time somebody says in ism shut the door on them don't let that ism into your house it'll

break your house because no ism can encapsulate the complexity of reality or

within that ism there's a spark of truth don't be trapped in the ism but take from the ism

the spark of truth collectivism when you're trapped in it it brings the worst out of you

but if you take from collectivism that the sense of belonging to a story greater than you

individualism when your individualism leads to egoism leads to loneliness leads to break down

of families but the fact that individualism leads leads to where the west is today doesn't mean

we can't be hyper individualists we don't we're not trapped in ideas we take from ideas

we take from ideas and i think and that's that's the idea of not being trapped in now Iranian thinking

is binary thinking i like this when i in this war when i had the opportunity to speak to a

reservist and everything i said that we will win Iran if we won't become if we won't become

Iran thinking like Iran is being either your islamiyat or Iran yet either you are you are the

Turkish model or the or the or the iqwan model either or playing the either or a game

and they have a hard time putting things together is reality is the put this together and this is

why israel is now on top of Iran and not the other way around Mika in your classes you would always

tell a student who is brave enough to answer a question or ask a question

keep going keep going i think it's also what just happened here

um mika one of my great teachers thank you so much for joining me uh i we reached absolutely

no conclusion except that we have some better questions to ask a Iranian society and maybe maybe

tiny is a little bit the whole point there is intellectual humility we have a little bit of advice

from this unbelievable success story for anybody interested in hearing it

have you had so much time just what we did here together was fun and interesting

and um let's do this more yeah thank you for joining me thank you