On this week’s Haaretz Podcast, host Allison Kaplan Sommer holds a wide-ranging conversation with Israel’s former deputy national security adviser, Chuck Freilich.
A senior researcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Freilich discusses the numerous troubling issues arising from Israel’s conflict with Hamas. He says that in the “hot atmosphere” following October 7, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government set problematic goals when it declared its intention to destroy Hamas as a military organization and topple it in Gaza.
“It doesn’t look like we’re going to achieve those goals,” Freilich says. Therefore, while “torn,” he believes “we have to bite very hard and make very painful concessions” and prioritize the goal of getting Israel’s hostages back alive as soon as possible.
A deal to bring the hostages back “will mean thousands of Hamas terrorists being released. And we know that a lot of them will go back and conduct terrorist operations in the future,” Freilich admits.
But, he says, “This is the price one pays for the decision-making failures that led to October 7. It’s ugly.”
An Israeli mobile artillery unit fires a shell from northern Israel toward Lebanon earlier this month.Credit: Leo Correa /AP
On the podcast, Freilich also discusses his concerns that “this conflict, especially if it continues, and certainly if it expands to Lebanon, could actually cause U.S. President Joe Biden to lose the elections in November.”
The deterioration in the relationship between Biden, “a remarkable friend to Israel,” and Netanyahu, and the loss of U.S. support, is what he fears may ultimately be the most dangerous consequence of this war.
“I think our relationship with the United States is an existential one,” he says, “and the war with Hamas shows we are far more dependent on the U.S. than we ever knew.”
