 Delos is keeping the world company today. We're going to talk about psychology and whether it can explain the Israel-Amos war, because we do need some explanations. And for this discussion, we have Gene Rosenfeld, emeritus, history, religion, terrorism out of UCLA. And we have Tim Apichela. He joins us from somewhere far away, and he is our co-host. Thank you much for being here, both of you. So Gene, can you give us a scope and depth of this discussion? We're talking about psychology here today, and psychology is always a little scary. Yes, and psychology is a word that also covers ideology and religion. So let's keep that in mind. And what Nafiz Hamid from Kings College in the UK has written is extremely insightful and based on his cognitive science background. We're finding out that a lot of the explanation for human behavior in the field of religion and violence and also altruism, by the way, has to do with certain ways in which human beings respond to a particular situation, a particular set of circumstances, that a person with good values, what we consider good values, can do bad things because of this. And the field of social psychology has some famous experiments about this that I'm studying. And Hamid also has done some cognitive science on this too. So what he's saying basically is that what's happening in the minds of Palestinians and Israelis is what is keeping them at war and apart. And he has certain observations from the science end of things that also accord with my field history of religions, which is based on anthropology. So we have come together with quantitative and qualitative analysis to underscore some things that would really impact negotiations if we knew these things and we actually took them into consideration. Basically, what he's saying is that each side has absolutist moral values. And that leads them, in essence, to undercut the human aspect of the other side. Dehumanization is something that occurs. What he calls parochial altruism, where you look at your side and say, we're all good. And you look at the other side and you say they're all bad. We have that in this country too, Jean. In what? In this country, America. It operates in human behavior. These are based on observations and experiments having to do with basic human behavior in different sets of circumstances. When you extract the principles and conclusions from these experiments and apply them to conflict situations on the world stage, they explain a lot and inform you as to how you can go about resolving conflict. That's the end object of all of this science is to be able to resolve conflict. So what has happened is there are competitive, we know there are competing narratives. There are also competitive notions of victimhood. For the Israelis, it goes back to pogroms and holocausts, which was activated by what Hamas did. The memories were activated. And that intensifies the psychology and attitudes of the people. On the Palestinian side, it's the Nakba, the having to flee Jerusalem and flee the part that is now Israel. That's what's happening in Gaza. They're having to flee their homes in Gaza. So that reactivates and intensifies their moral absolutes, their narratives. What happens when you sit down with other parties like Qatar or Egypt or the United States, Hamas to try to resolve these issues is that states like the United States and Qatar and Egypt all look at it from a utilitarian point of view, not a religious or ideological point of view. They look at it and they say, well, we'll give you more money if you do this and so, or we'll reward you this way. What that makes the parties to the dispute feel is not listened to. They get very angry and disgusted. They don't want to hear this. So how do you resolve it if they're both dug into their sides and it has to do with the feeling of collective victimhood and not being heard? You do that by offering symbolic concessions. What is a symbolic concession? It is the Palestinians saying to Israel, okay, we understand your feelings about the Holocaust. We understand what happened to you. We acknowledge that. And for the Israelis to say the Palestinians, we have empathy for what happened to you in 1948 when you fled your homes and now you can't come back. That's the way you start. You address feelings first and then you work out the actual details. That is the essence of Hamid's article and it bears incorporation into any negotiation having to do with ideological conflict. Wow, okay, okay. That's the stage. Tim, your thoughts about that? Is that a valid way to proceed? Yeah, I agree 100% with Jean because you are not going to resolve a 100-year conflict, or a thousand-year conflict, thousands of years conflict until you get to the feelings of both agree parties. And I think a part of that is the acknowledgement that one party has to acknowledge for the other side. And that is they have a shared humanity. I don't even know if you want to call it Maslow's hierarchy of needs, that they have children to raise, they have families to raise, they have the need for security and safety, they have the need for financial well-being and the relationships that are near and dear to them are near and dear to both sides. So there has to be an acknowledgement of shared humanity that one side is not the evil monster that propaganda tends to paint them as. And then I think also a central part of this is the act of contrition. And that is to say, maybe you're not empathetic, but at least is it possible to be sympathetic to the grievances of both sides, one side to the other. Can you have a shared sympathy? Empathy is tough because you have to dive deeper into what empathy is. But then there's the act of contrition to say, yes, we acknowledge that your grievances are valid and you have gone through pain, a lot of pain. And that needs to happen on both sides. And before that happens, you're really not going to get anywhere with negotiations because both parties are aggrieved and they're hurt. And it's not just one individual that's hurt, but it's an entire population. And then the magic of religion is the central tenet of all religions, or most religions, and that is the act of forgiveness. It may be conditional forgiveness, but it's essential to move the negotiations forward. And without conditional forgiveness, I don't care what you talk about. I don't think it's going to hold. Okay. Looks like this is two on one, or one on two. Because I like to mention a few things, Golda Maier said you can't negotiate with someone who is sworn to kill you. And so in order to sit at this idyllic table that you guys are both describing, one of the parties has to stop saying he wants to kill us. And that is deeply ingrained. Talk about psychology. Those kids are raised before they can speak to say, let's kill all the Jews from the river to sea and all that. Today there was an article mentioned before the show by Brett Stevens in the New York Times. And he talked about the relevance of the tunnels. And in fact, the Hamas approach to all this. I can't imagine the Hamas, by the way, agreeing not to kill the Jews, and sitting down and being contrite in some way. But Stevens concluded with a really remarkable statement. He said, the fault for every death in this war is on Hamas. And he gave you a complete analysis of that. So the question is, how do you deal with a situation, and I'm not asking you, I'm just raising it rhetorically, how do you deal with a situation where one party is clearly at fault for atrocities that are unforgivable? Can they be excused? Can we forget? Can we forget the Holocaust? Never again, and yet we have again. So I suggest to you that the human condition is flawed. I suggest to you that the way to resolution in all through human history has been through conflict. That's war. And then ultimately, the fellow, the country that prevails, that has the power. And power is an important way to achieve peace. Or maybe it's a result of achieving peace. In any way, I think you need an enloco parentis figure at this table, this hypothetical table of negotiation. Enloco parentis like the United Nations, which has failed, so forget about that, like the United States, which used to be the city on the hill back when, but it has failed in that regard. And I'm not sure that it can be enloco parentis. Who can be enloco parentis? Can religion be enloco parentis? Can it provide the moral compass? I'm not sure that the religions of today are the same. They were 50 years ago, or even 20. Islam is not really held up as a religion of peace. And the terrorists justify their actions and atrocities by Allah, which is in the Quran. So I'm not sure that you can have the negotiation you guys are talking about with due consideration of all the psychological points. It ain't going to work, not practical. Go ahead, Jean, respond to me. Okay, let's go back to some of our very first discussions when this happened on October 7. When I believe I made the point that you have a two-track way to approach Hamas, one is negotiation, the other is war. They have to happen at the same time. Because what happens on the battlefield determines what happens in the negotiations. So that's from the perspective of realism. You also have to frame the war correctly. What conflict does this resemble and how were those conflicts resolved? We're talking about the conflicts that are most like what's happening today in Gaza took place internally in South Africa under apartheid and the resolution of apartheid. And also between the UK and Ireland over many, many years where terrorism and bombings were involved. Those types of conflicts ended with negotiations and reconciliation, particularly in South Africa, where you had a reconciliation committee. You had both sides adhering to moral absolutes as you do here. Both sides had to agree not to punish one another for their attitudes and ideas. We're talking about the people now. We're not talking about the governments. We're not talking about Hamas per se and Hamid is talking about Palestinians here on the West Bank too. And inside Israel, there are many that feel great deal of empathy and sympathy with their cone prayers. So you start with the intractability of moral absolutes and you work from there recognizing that the way you're going to get a concession is not only on the battlefield, but also in recognition of the full dignity and humanity of the other side. You have to stop the dehumanization process while you're in negotiation across the table. That's number one, because it's the dehumanization which excuses the atrocities that more always rises to the level of atrocity of each side. And one way or another, bringing this factor, their ideology, religion, moral absolutism, parochial altruism factors into the negotiations will make the negotiations more effective because right now there have been negotiations all along and there's been war all along. But what's on the table isn't there yet because each side is adhering to an absolutist perspective. But if we look at history and the examples that I've cited, we've seen there are other ways to do this and what Hamid is doing as a basic scientist and what I am doing also as a basic social scientist is trying to point the way in which certain principles can get us further along the road to resolution. I agree that there's a lot of Israelis that are sympathetic and there are polls and there are interviews all over Israel where you can see that the people are kindly. I don't think you can find the same kind of reaction and sympathy when those polls and interviews done on the West Bank doesn't come out the same way. Also, I want to mention before I let Tim loose on this, I want to mention that when we talk about negotiation, at least when I think of negotiation, I think of a table. I think of the parties sitting at a table and looking deeply into the eyes of the authorized people, people who represent the warring factions. Then I think the psychology plays a big role, but first you've got to get them to the table. I don't think the Israelis are going to be so quick to meet with Hamas, the killers of the children, the holders of hostages and the like all this time. I don't think the parties are going to get to a table. If they got to a table, it might be better. Some of these psychological tools, as you say, could be useful. Before that, we have to look at who's winning the war to get to the table. In the first ceasefire, I guess the perception was the Israelis were really beating Hamas up pretty well, and so Hamas came to a kind of proverbial table, but right now there is no table. People, they are suspicious of the proxies who are at the table, if there is a table, and all the vectors that are affecting the communication, if you will, between the parties. Tim, you are our esteemed co-host. Why don't you see if you can come down on one side or the other of this discussion? On one side or the other, that's not going to happen, but I'll tell you one thing. You look at the Irish and the United Kingdom conflict in Belfast, and what really made some enroads into eventual negotiations was a groundswell of mothers who have lost their sons and daughters in the bombings and the shootings for decades in Belfast, and those mothers locked arms with the opposing side of mothers, because both sides agreed to a mutual curl of damage that has taken place on their families and their communities, and it was nothing more embarrassing to see a parade of mothers locked arms with, quote, unquote, the enemy to embarrass the government to say, if we can do it, why can't you? And so with through a ground up disgust of war and carnage and damage and a demand to say, enough is enough, we've lost enough, the past be damned, we have to start from the president and try to move forward to end this conflict, to stop the carnage, to start the collateral damage, and I think sometimes that happens in conflicts. I'm looking at Russia and Chechnya, the mothers of the slain soldiers, the many soldiers killed in Chechnya rose up and they protested to say, enough is enough, we can't change the past, we can't bring our sons and daughters back, but we can do one thing and that is to move forward and to at least have a ceasefire of hostilities and try to live with one another, although there may be borders and walls and militaries on each side of the wall, but at least we can stop the carnage. And I think to Gene's point that it's going to take place on a human level versus a tit for tat negotiations across a wooden table. Well, you know, you kind of make my point, this is a war of attrition in both cases and that means you have to have plenty of war before you get to a negotiated result in Ireland or any war that's been going on for years. It goes to my theory about the stock market, which I've told you before. The stock market goes up until it gets tired of going up. This is the fatigue theory and when it gets tired of going up, it comes down and when it's tired of being down, it comes up again. And it's attrition on both ends of that. And every example that you cited, Tim, is a war that went on for some time and the mothers got sick of it. But these negotiations don't happen right away. And my question to you, Gene, is in the article that you are referring to, is there talk about the timeline, about attrition, about fatigue before you get to an appropriate environment for, you know, humankind, human empathetic negotiation? Okay, let's talk about attrition. No, this article doesn't address that because it has a very specific purpose. I'm sure he could address it. He's got extensive creative academic work behind him. But let's go to another analogy that I have used before in studying the battle of Okinawa. The Battle of Okinawa was the last battle against Japan in the Pacific War. It was extremely, it was extremely sanguineous. There was huge casualty rate, particularly on the Japanese side, civilians and army and children. And it was taking place after Japan's major cities had all been bombed to rebel, basically. And the way in which that, quote, war of attrition was heading was toward a military solution. And what was the military solution? After 82 days in Okinawa, the atom bombs were dropped. So it seems to me that if you're being geopolitically realistic, you have to look beyond a military solution in the modern age. Or you're going to wind up with a wider war and a longer war. I don't think if this war goes on too long, it's going to be confined to Israel. And there already are major initiatives right now on the part of other interested parties, as well as Israel, to come to a negotiated solution. That's why we're talking about it today. That's what we're heading toward, if we don't want something that we don't want at all. Well, you know, but you're making an assumption that at the end of the day, people are rational. And I don't, if you look around at all these players, I really don't think they're rational. I thought Brett Stevens' article in The Times today was a rational kind of analysis of how the Israelis feel. And not inconsistent with, you know, the fellow we love to hate, you know, Netanyahu. But let me throw one more thing in the pile here, Tim. And it's the notion of anticipating a result. Because what Gene's talking about is, hey, if you guys don't come to the table and be kind to each other, we're going to have a much worse situation. You know, it's looking into the ghost of Christmas future. And when you go in litigation, you go before a settlement judge, and the best settlement judge in my time was Ron Moon, bless his memory, he was wonderful. And he would say he would call you in alone. This is the same thing in arbitration and mediation. He would call you in alone and he'd say, hey, don't you understand, you're going to lose. You're going to lose this case. You're going to go to trial and they're going to slam you. And then, of course, he would go to the other guy and alone in his chambers and he would say something similar. Here are the weaknesses of your case. This is what's going to happen to you. We don't have Ron Moon here. He would be an interesting character. You're describing evaluative mediation where someone's a subject expert, ex-judge, and he does exactly as what you just said. He discourages you thinking that your case is a slam dunk. And by the time he's done with you, you're now left to wonder whether or not you're going to get out of this thing alive or not. Exactly. That's my point. And don't we need that? I'm asking you both. Don't we need that for this to work? We need it in local parentis, somebody who is respected by both sides, who is credible, who is rational, a fair witness person who can speak to both sides and say, come on, you guys. I'm going to be parental here. I'm going to be, what's it, Robert? I'm going to talk about fair witness. Somebody who's not bias in any way. And you really need that from a practical point of view to get the people to the table and to have them get rational. Your thoughts? Well, what ultimately stopped the arms race between the United States and Russia? What was it? It was an acknowledgement that mutual destruction is inevitable, that on nuclear winter, there's no such thing as a limited nuclear war, that all parties lose. And it's not just the United States and Russia, but the entire world loses. And so over time, that acknowledgement, I think, started to take root. And if there's an acknowledgement, as you suggest, that there's future consequences, a future consequence that could be avoided, and the consequence is mutual destruction, complete mutual destruction, then there's a pathway, an alternate pathway, to say, here's an alternative that we can explore, that we can resolve a conflict and reduce our nuclear arms and try to cooperate with one another at a better level. It wasn't just out of the blue that Russia and the United States came up with these nuclear accords. So I like the analogy of Dickens' Christmas past or Christmas future. Are these the things that will happen? Or are these the things that may happen? I don't want to be biased about this, Jane, but I am. How can you tell millions of people who believe it's better to be a martyr? It's better to have their children die in a conflict around whether to kill all the Jews. How can you bring them to the table? It's very hard, even for a guy like Ron Moon, to have influence over them because they are interested in something which is self-destructive. And how do you get them off self-destruction? Jane, I'm going to do something that may make you a little mad, but I have to point out that the attitude and argument that you're making in this discussion validates the experiments on which Amidst and other social psychologists' ideas and my own history of religions field have basically put forth on human nature. And that is to have a moral absolutist position. That one side is better than the other side. Now, just for theoretical purposes, set that on the shelf. Okay? And look upon the other as fully human and just as capable of good and evil as you are, except that you could do what that person did that you hate and that that person could also be as good as you are. That's the big mind change that has to take place because whether or not you acknowledge it, the symbolic, religious, irrational, non-rational aspect of this conflict is what's driving it. That's what Hamid is saying. And that's what the Milgram and Zimbardo found out in their examinations and experiments in the 20th century on why good people do bad things and what underlies conflict and violence. We have to learn from the laboratory and then we have to figure out creative ways to bring those conclusions about human nature into the real world where there is conflict and the parties are all talking to one another and talking past one another. They're saying A, B, C, D, and first, then you can go on to putting down your specific points. First, you have to have an attitude arranged. Well, I'm just realistic. And no, no, I believe that if you went to Israel, you'd find a lot of people that would absolutely agree to sit down and put their their bias aside. Even the Holocaust put it aside, at least for this discussion. That's the practical humane approach. If you went to the West Bank, you wouldn't get that. That wouldn't happen. So it is asymmetrical here. And I'm not sure that you can work with that. How do you get both people, both sides on the same page? Because one side, what would you have done from a moral point of view, a practical point of view, a point of view of avoiding conflict on October 7th when it came with atrocities? Would you have said, Hey, that's okay. We're turning the other cheek. No problem. Oh, let's sit down and work out your problems. I don't think that would have happened or could have happened or should have happened. I have to point out that the hardest part of what I have done over the last 20 or 30 years is talking to people about what I do and to convince them that it's realistic. It's not idealistic. It's not sympathetic to the bad guys. And the hardest part is to make the point that, like it or not, what we have learned is that people behave the same way in the same set of circumstances, no matter how good or bad they think the other guy is or they are. And so it's we're talking about human beings who are in negotiation on the part of the parties that are in conflict. They're individuals who are talking to one another. The head of the Mossad, the head of our CIA are talking to one another. These are the guys we have to convince. These are the guys that we have to show these experiments to. And somehow that has to filter into the discussion. We're not talking about all of the Palestinians or all of Hamas or all of the Israelis or all of Netanyahu or Smotrik or anybody else. We're talking about the individuals whose mission is to get this thing going because I'll give you another example of stalemate. And that is North Korea. We fought a Korean war. We have a truce. That truce has been in place since 1952, I believe. And because it's never been resolved, we now have a nuclear state hostile who's decided that they are still in a hostile situation with South Korea and thereby us also. So you don't just have mutual assured destruction of Hiroshima on one side or the reconciliation of South Africa on the other side. You have the stalemate of North Korea as well. So there are big dogs in this hunt that we need to confront and deal with. And if the lab scientists and the the little academics like me can throw some light on that as to how we talk to one another, basically. So much the better. Let's give it a try. All right, Tim. See what you can do with that. Okay. Let me roll on down the road here with it. You know, I'm going to quote, I'm going to use some of the some of the discussion points from Dr. Joseph Campbell. You guys probably remember him from the PBS series, The Power of Myth. He was a professor at Sarah Lawrence College. That's my view. And guess what? What he said is that when religions acknowledge, regardless of what the religion is, no matter, you know, is the acknowledgement of the divine creator. And when you acknowledge that each individual has an element or a spark of the creator within them, then it's awfully, awfully hard to say my religion is better than yours. You drape that spark of divinity within the individual. You drape it with the religion of your environment, the religion of your choice. But when you get to the core building block of what religion is, is the acknowledgement of the creator and the creator within us. And so you start from that and you work your way up. And you work your way up. As I suggested at the early part of this program is that everyone has their their need for family and the care family and security. And then you work your way up of acknowledgement of past transgressions against one another. And then you go to the act of contrition, limited contrition, but conditional contrition, but contrition. And then that's where sympathy and empathy come to play. And then ultimately, hopefully, the acknowledgement that there's mutual destruction for both sides. And then let's let's get on hand with a limited forgiveness. Then we can go to negotiate since a point by point of what we trade to settle this conflict. I can imagine just calling Kim Jong-un and say, Hey, come on, stop that. Think it'll work. Think it'll work. You don't do it like that. You don't do it like that. You go, you send Dennis Rodman, you have a cup of cocktails, and you talk about life, religion and the pursuit of happiness. That's how you start the conversation. Well, we're almost out of time, but Gene, I want to ask you if you could give us some actual steps, okay? Pick any controversy, any conflict. Israel Hamas would be a good way to start. What's the first step forward? The first step forward is to acknowledge that you're heading in the wrong direction and that you both want to find a different way out. And then to ask the other individual, how do you think we can get out of this? And then saying this is how we think we can get out of this. And there won't be agreement. And then the next thing to do is to acknowledge the suffering on the other side. Do you acknowledge they're suffering? Yes. You historically for 75, 80 years have suffered this trauma, and we historically for 135 years have suffered our trauma. And we acknowledge the fact that you're human and that you have dignity and vice versa. Now, just the mere factor of these acknowledgments in the work that Hamid has done has made the parties more likely to listen to one another and to make concessions. Whereas, if they sit down at the table and they just talk about, well, zero-sum game, this is what we want and under only those conditions, and we'll pay you for this or we'll punish you for that, that makes both parties harden, get disgusted and angry. These, dealing with the emotional reality of the situation, where you are, and putting aside what you call the material points or what he calls the material points, just initially will soften the both parties to the point where they can discuss the details better. If you have a big argument with your partner in life, how do you reconcile that argument by acknowledging first off that both sides have a point and both sides are feeling hurt or angry or upset, and they have good reason to do so? In other words, talking not down to that person or treating that person like an object, so it's the same stuff in bigger conflicts. Well, it's a change-up. It's a question of how to get there. It's a change-up. You're talking about, wait, wait, I got a new idea. Let me express the new idea, and this is an idea which you may like, or at least you won't hate as much as before. But who does it? Does Tony Blinken get on the phone? Does Netanyahu get on the phone? Does the third party? Is Qatar involved? Is Egypt involved or Jordan or Turkey involved? Who actually opens the olive branch? All of these parties are involved right now, and they're talking to one another in very complicated fashion. I mean, like I said, the two heads of Assad and CIA are talking to one another. Blinken's talking to Netanyahu. Egypt is talking to Qatar. I don't know the details, but it is not terribly organized, but it's more organized than what's happening on the ground. So leave that to the parties. If they adopt the conclusions that are well-founded and replicated, have been replicated for years in terms of how people operate in violent situations, if they can accept the basic findings of that incorporated into how they negotiate with one another no matter who's talking to whom, you're going to get a little bit further along. The alternatives are not great. We here certainly agree, and by the way, I want to be clear. I am not angry with you or anything you say. I could never ever be angry with you or anything you say. But Tim, why don't you summarize and try to wrap around this and explain to our viewers where we have gotten today? Well, Jay, I agree wholeheartedly with Gene that if you're going to resolve a conflict, you can't do a position-based conflict. You have to use an interest-based format of negotiation, and that is acknowledging the humanity. It's acknowledging the grievance. It's acknowledging the reconciliation. It's all the things that you do, as Gene suggested, or stated that you do with your spouse or your significant other. You don't begin to resolve the matter without doing that first. And so I have to run, but Gene has my vote. Sorry, Jay, and I'll leave it at that. We're going to close the show. Thank you both very much, and I will all be calling Netanyahu Senwar and explaining this, and maybe they'll take our calls. Thank you very much, you guys.