 So, first of all, good afternoon, everybody. It's an absolute pleasure to be here. After I'm introduced every once in a while, I always feel that I have to add onto the bio a little bit more. I don't know if there are any Israelis right now. Usually there are a couple Israelis who are studying here every year, and usually they don't sound like the way I do, and I stand up and I talk, and I was just introduced as an Israeli colonel, and I sound more American than most people sitting here. So my parents are American. They immigrated to Israel 44 years ago. I've lived in Israel for most of my life. I know I sound American through and through Israeli, and what I did in most of my adult life, certainly my first career, is I served like many of you in the military. In Israel, we don't have the distinct distinction between the different services. It's true that in Israel, too, the Air Force is a nice friendly other branch, but certainly between the Navy and the Army, and in Israel, the Army is quite dominant just because of size, but we have a very close-knit type of military. And what I want to talk about right now is in the present-day conflicts, there's a whole aspect of the conflict itself which has to do with perception. And when I talk about perception, I'm talking about all of the people, and I always wonder what it means when I say the people, I'll try and define that pretty soon, but I am going to use last summer's conflict, which I could put up here right now and talk about with three different names, meaning in Israel we would call it Operation Protective Edge. That's the term that we use throughout the summer. When you come to Israel, any Israeli speaker will come and talk about defensive edge, and that's all they'll say, and people who haven't heard Protective Edge, the term of it, have no idea what you're talking about because it's the code name that was used in Israel for the events of the summer. In the world, in the good place, it was called Israel's War in Gaza or on Gaza, depending on the perspective of what it was being presented. And in mainly the Arab-Muslim speaking community, it would be called in different terms, and I'm going to explore that in a moment. And what I'd like to try and present is a little bit about the implications in today's modern war on the fighting, on the issue of there being three different versions of a war while it's happening, what that does to the people, and I'll talk again, as I said, about the people, about their capability to keep on fighting, and if both sides think that they're right, the other side is wrong, and what they're viewing is through a very different framing, it has impact also on the military capabilities. And I want to start here with the Israeli perception, because the bottom line of the Israeli perception is about the words and the terms that I've put up here, that what happened last summer was about defense, and I want to put that term up there. When we talk, and I like using a lot of sport ideas, but when you talk about sports and you say, you know, now what you have to do is defense, and right at the end of the game, I don't know about you, but I did watch the game in the past one, so I'm happy, I'm sorry if there are other people here who think otherwise, but you know how in those final minutes we were like, okay, defense work and defense worked, because that was all about defense. In Israel, the events of last summer were all about defense. When I say all about defense, it means that for the bulk of Israelis, the events of what both the IDF, the Israel Defense Forces were doing, what in general the decision making process was about, was about Israel defending its citizens against Hamas terrorism. But I'm talking right now about a frame, and what I want to present for you briefly right now is the Israeli frame, which is the way that most Israelis understand the events of last summer, and as a result of that, it has to do with the enormous gap in perception with the international community who framed it differently, and as a result of that difference in framing, we have a lot of the problems and perception as they go on, like work and I'm going to start. For Israelis, the events of the summer of 2014, if you have to have a starting point, they started in the summer of 2005, because in the summer of 2005, it's already 10 years ago, it'll be 10 years this summer, Israel made a policy decision, which is a combined security, but it was at the end of the day absolute policy at the top level of Israel, it was approved by the Israeli parliament to exit every inch of the Gaza Strip. And I put up here that map to remind us, and we drove down right now Nancy and I from Boston, and it took us a couple hours to drive from the city of Tel Aviv, which is more or less where I live, to the Gaza Strip is a 45 minute drive, just two hours to get, and we weren't driving that slow, yes there was snow, but we drove from Boston to Newport, and from Boston pretty much I think before we hit the city line of Massachusetts is the distance between the city of Tel Aviv and the Gaza Strip, the entire length of the Gaza Strip is only, I mean it's 45 miles when we talk about that, but we're talking about a very, sorry, 45 kilometers, it's less than that in miles, and you're looking inside an area which is very condensed, and in that area until 2005 Israel had a series of settlements that had been established there, mainly in the 1980s, and Israel as a decision made by Israelis, up and uprooted, there are all sorts of different terms for the events that happened at that time, the official name was disengagement, we removed all of the Israeli settlements, you can see the blue block on the southern side, there are a few independent places in the middle, and then on the northern edge, 18 settlements were removed by Israel in the summer of 2005, it was in and around 8,000 residents, as happens in these encasions, in addition to the 8,000 residents, there were another 2,000 to 2,500 people who opposed the policy, so they went in there to be part of the removal, so like 10,000 people were removed, but we removed it. From the Israeli point of view, it was like, look, we're upping and leaving, we are now not in the Gaza Strip, we are now outside, you said you wanted us out, we've left, that's the starting point when it comes to the way Israelis look at the Gaza Strip, because two years after Israel left, and the truth is that immediately after Israel left, in the first two weeks Israel chose as a policy to knock down all of the private homes, because it was said there at the time, you know, like it was my home for 20, 25, 30 years, we don't want somebody else living there, but Israel left all of the public structures standing, meaning anything that was a school, all of the agriculture, let alone all of that, all of the different public, a community center, etc., all of those were left standing, and in the initial two weeks after Israel left, in September 2005, they were all burnt down, including all of the top agriculture that was left there, so I put in that aside as we looked at that and said, two years after that, and this has been the policy or really the challenge for the last seven years, the Hamas took over the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority, I'm not here now to give a history lesson on why that happened, okay, that's a whole different issue which continues with us, but from the Israeli point of view, the picture that you can see there is of the Hamas military arm, all call it terrorist arm, which are the brigades, which are the arm of their terrorist activity, standing inside the office of the president of the Palestinian Authority, when they did what I suppose we could call a coup d'etat, it's not an independent state, it's an autonomous area, but they took it over from the Palestinian Authority, and since 2007, the State of Israel has been on the outside of all of the Gaza Strip because we left it, and the ruler inside the Gaza Strip from 2007 has been the Hamas, and I'm not a legal expert, I come in from the side of policy, policy orientation, it's the side that I work in, and at that time I was the government spokesperson, and I was the international media advisor to the prime minister, I sat in all of the meetings when they had to decide what are we going to do with this right now, and Israel invented a term that doesn't exist in legal terms, and it exists to this day, the Israeli cabinet defined the Gaza Strip as a hostile entity. It's not about Hamas, they took the whole Gaza Strip and said, what are we supposed to do now with the people in there, they're a hostile entity, because we still have relations with the Palestinian Authority and the West Bank, what do we do with the Gaza Strip, they're a hostile entity, and Israel started from 2007, the events happened in June of 2007, with a very clear cut policy of isolation of the Hamas government, of closing off the Hamas government in every way possible, I'm going to say here, it's going to be afterwards out, it has not been a successful policy, I'm not here right now to say what succeeded and what not, but that was the policy at the time with the idea that we need to make sure that the Palestinian Authority that is willing to have dialogue with Israel as opposed to the Hamas, which calls for the destruction of Israel, they have to have distinct different policies, we will embrace the Palestinian Authority both on an economic level, on a negotiation level, try and go forward, and at the same time we will sideline the Hamas and the Gaza Strip, hasn't happened until now, but that was the basic idea of the policy, and as we've watched over the last seven years, on the military front Israel has watched how the Hamas in the Gaza Strip, because they have a land border with Egypt, they have built a strategic capability based on different types of artillery rockets, with the idea for the Hamas in that sense that they would be able to reach deep into Israel and mainly engage on perception warfare, you know, I'm the mother of three kids, my three kids, my husband's still in the military, my three kids know the Hamas strategic capabilities, when the Hamas have rockets like these, they have them out there not to hide them, they're not quiet about them, oh Contreras, the opposite, they want you to know that they're out there, now I'm going to give a different type of example which is a really horrific one, but there's no question that ISIL want to show you all of the headaches, because they want to scare you, that's their aim, that's the terrorist aim, is to scare the other side and you subdue entire populations, and there's no question that these strategic capabilities that Hamas have accumulated over the years, mainly through smuggling tunnels from Egypt into Israel, are part of perception warfare, and Israel heard it, Israel heard it, and over the last seven years, and the third occasion was last summer, Hamas have engaged in violent confrontation with Israel using these strategic capabilities that have gone up every time, it's a question of the range, it's a question of the accuracy of these different capabilities, but when I look at them from a military point of view, what they are offering me, if I can put it in those terms, is an aerial arm, okay, it's the equivalent of having airborne capability, okay, yes, it's ground surface to surface missiles, but the idea is that it's coming from the Israeli point of view, from the air, interestingly enough, the Israeli arm that intercepts these missiles, the iron dome batteries that, with the help of the United States, jointly with the United States, paid for by the United States, ideas from Israel, but the iron dome batteries are in Israel in the air defense core, they're not in the ground defense core, they're in the air defense core, and in that sense, having these type of missiles in the summer from the Israeli point of view, this summer was about initially Hamas yet again for the third time, engaging with their air dimension, and Hamas in their perspective thought that what they're going to do is they're going to scare me, and they're going to scare my kids, and they're going to make sure that people stay at home, essentially what you want to do in perception warfare also, is that not that they're going to be killing so many Israelis, okay, but that they're going to make Israelis change the way that they live, they're going to make Israelis stay at home, not go to the stores, I mean I've just seen all of New England closed down because of snow, that's one kind of thing that can happen in Israel during the summer, many small businesses were heavily hurt because of rockets, because really, and I'm going to give the most ridiculous kind of thing that some of the women here may understand me, but really I'm going to go get a pedicure and there's going to be a siren, I'm not going to go to that because, and you talk about little petty businesses, do you really want the siren to be going off when you're at the hairdresser on the one hand, you're in the supermarket, that's something you can understand, but you're trying on jeans, it's not the sort of thing that you go and do, so it impacts small businesses, and here it's not, it's about the perspective because actually Israelis acted very responsibly, but when you look at these rocket ranges, what they were firing this summer for the first time consistently took in around two-thirds of the population, certainly the greater Tel Aviv area, including the Jerusalem area, where I live in the greater Tel Aviv area in the 50 days of the rocket exchange, or not exchange, but in the rocket firing against Israel where I live, there were 79 sirens in 50 days, and I just live in the greater Tel Aviv area, and I say that because that's an impact where, you know, you don't hear the beginning of it, you know what you're supposed to do, it's perception warfare, but into the first week of these summer events the Hamas added in a C dimension. Now, what I suddenly show it as an air in a C dimension, I'm talking about regular warfare, I'm not talking about terror dimension, I'm not talking just about a terror organization that knows how to fire rockets, the photos that they themselves put out, and that Israel also put out afterwards from some of those C events that happened. They sent out on the sixth day of the rocket exchange that air dimension, they sent out in three different occasions C fully equipped, I mean can I call them navy seals, I'm kind of scared about calling in those terms, but they had the state of the art Iranian equipment coming underwater with guns coming in to attack, and suddenly that dimension the state of Israel is a state that has a very long sea border, if they can infiltrate from the sea into the state of Israel and they arrived on Israeli soil, they were killed on Israeli soil that already gives you a perception that it's not just the rockets from above iron dome intercepting and I know what to do, suddenly it's that openness that anybody who lives anywhere near the sea you could have this type of invasion coming in and that's even harder, but the change that happened for Israelis this summer was the land dimension and I can say the land dimension or the underground dimension and that was the dimension of the tunnels the tunnels ladies and gentlemen were not new, in June 2006, a month before the second Lebanon war, a month before Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed an additional eight soldiers on the Israeli Lebanese border, a month before that in June 2006 Hamas had kidnapped through a tunnel the soldier Gilad Shalit, the one who was held in captivity in the Gaza Strip for five years and he was released in exchange for 1,124 Hamas and women terrorists in October of 2011, I say that here up front, the United States of America does not negotiate with terrorists, we do, it has to do with the whole different ethos of Israel, an unwritten contract between Israeli moms and the fact that there's the draft that says you draft our kids, we'll send our kids, we will draft them and we'll happily set happily, we'll send them to the draft, you make sure that everybody comes home, dead or alive and it's a whole different aspect but I come back to the issue of the tunnels themselves because what happened after seven days of fighting was the first event where suddenly Israelis sitting at home wherever they were said, look what's coming out from underground and in the perception warfare from that event seven days into the air dimension, a few days into the sea dimension for the bulk of Israelis this summer is about the tunnels, for the bulk of Israelis it was about defense because those are offensive tunnels, those are tunnels that were dug under the ground into Israeli territory, the three kibbutzim that you're seeing in the distances between the Gaza Strip and them, I mean I go to them all the time, I've lost my sense of time but I think that today is Wednesday and on today's Wednesday, I've been here since Saturday, on Friday and on Thursday I was in both Kfar Azad and Akhaloz, you see that the distances themselves, it's a mile and less than a mile because that's in meters from the border itself, the length and the distance of the tunnels themselves into Israeli territory, it was like if you can dig that you can go anywhere the tunnels became the essence of Israel's defense, those are offensive tunnels we need to defend against, now we could all have a debate afterwards on what you do militarily about the tunnels, that's a whole different issue, I want to talk for a moment about the perspective because for Israelis these tunnels are the justification for taking out the tunnels and the only ways to take out the tunnels are to go to where they start and look at where they start they start on the other side inside crowded dense urban poor populated areas, the tunnels go from a building out into fields, most of the exit areas inside Israel and as of now because just last week on last Thursday Israel blew up an additional portion of a tunnel that they had discovered at the time, during the war itself during the summer, sorry not the war the conflict itself during the 50 days of fighting Israel blew up 16 different tunnels that led from the Gaza Strip into the vicinity of all of these different, these are urban communities these are not military bases and they also visually saw the influx of the Hamas fighters coming in with state of the art weapons and again I say perception, it means that for Israelis this summer was about defense against the bad guys, about defense about those who are firing rockets, who are attacking from the sea, who are coming out from within these tunnels, just think about the perspective itself it gives a really strong backbone to the decision makers to the military, to the people who are fighting there was enormous agreement inside Israeli society that this needed to be taken care of I now give you a different version of this summer because when you talk about the tunnels themselves identified and this is a different approach just to show you the distances because the entire length and width of the Gaza Strip is very small so that you have the city of Gaza, you have the it's a portion of a refugee camp but also a neighborhood of Gaza Shajaiyah and Shajaiyah was overwhelmingly destroyed and the distances into the fields and into these urban, when I say urban, small rural communities mainly agricultural communities inside Israel when you look at that land dimension it was like we know why we're fighting and it's a very strong element in perspective if you know why you're fighting and this is one of the aspects that this summer in Israel for the first time in many years Israelis thought that they got it they looked at these tunnels they understood the perspective and they understood that this is what needed to be done and when they looked at the tunnel itself and the tunnel of terror that whole idea of digging it from inside the Gaza Strip into the Israeli territory coming up on the Israeli side I want to be clear when they came out on the Israeli side they were looking for soldiers that's nice they didn't come up next to any military bases they were coming up next to all of these different communities and they were looking for soldiers for them the prize is kidnapping a soldier the whole idea is that one soldier kidnapped like Gilad Shalit can be the equivalent of releasing an enormous amount of terrorists that are inside Israeli jails but this dimension is the one that all Israelis looked at and change their perspective on why we needed to fight and why you need to fight can be incredibly important in these times and as a result when Israelis looked at the Israeli response at taking care of the tunnels and they looked at these aerial photos they saw something different than the rest of the world because in a moment I'm going to talk about the perspective of the rest of the world for Israelis looking at that damage inside Shadjia was looking at the military capability to a destroy the tunnels and B, try and get to the source of the rocket firing into Israel and the source of that rocket firing was always coming from dense urban communities and from Israel's point of view it was like you continue the air dimension excuse me for putting it in these terms your problem we are going to counter attack at the rockets that are firing at us and we are going to try to get to the source of the tunnels that are inside Israel and I show this because this is the Israeli perspective and when I look at it I look at it and I see two different things just look at it the United Nations damage assessment map and I want to take you on a very different story and when I take it on that very different story I want to talk about 2005 disengagement Israel leaving the Gaza Strip 2007 the Hamas taking over the Gaza Strip and you arrive at an incredibly different perspective of the international community on the way Israel engages military and otherwise with the Gaza Strip on a different perspective and right now I'm talking about the international perspective not about the perspective of the Gazans I'll get to that in a moment but the international perspective which overwhelmingly viewed and framed the events of Israel's response not as Israel against Hamas Israel against Hamas tunnel terrors Israel against the Hamas air capability sea capability or land underground capability but rather Israel as I said at the best it was called Israel's war in Gaza and usually it was called Israel's war on Gaza meaning what Israel is trying to do is to destroy Gaza just think about the different perspective the viewpoint of the 50 days of fighting when I look at it from the international perspective and almost from day one was one which focused from the viewpoint of the victim let's have a whole hypothetical question or moral question or ethical question on who's the victim Israel is not a victim I stand here and I say we are a country we've been 67 years old almost we have grown and built ourselves and with enormous arrival with an economy we're not a victim when you focus on a war from victimhood and not on the military reasons on the policy reasons for the violence on the sources of it you're just focusing on it from the victim point of view you come out with a very different perspective which impacts everybody in the 50 days of this summer from day one in the years before that it was a little bit less than that but in this summer it was very much so the focus of the international media was on the victim the collective punishment when you looked at it the response that was given was one where Israel talked in terms of security defense Hamas terrorism and the international community was using terms where I look at these and I say wait a second aren't you the one who wants to be on the side of justice aren't you the one who wants to be on the right side as opposed to the right side you can't just be neutral you have to be on the side of the oppressed the framing itself is the framing of the victim and there's no question whatsoever that Palestinians certainly within the Gaza Strip are victims albeit of their own leadership it doesn't leave any space for a response especially a military response which includes the type of events that happen this summer and in this case when you look at those terms themselves I ask myself also as an Israeli if I'm the good guy aren't I supposed to be on the side of justice but it's not just about justice it's about who's human okay if I was anybody in Western Europe in Europe in the United States in Canada in really you don't need to be Muslim this isn't about being Muslim this isn't about standing up you just need to be human meaning the people who are on the right side are the ones who are human and you have to be on the wrong side it makes you inhumane and one of the biggest challenges of this framing that has happened this summer and continues because for me this summer is just a bigger event than what happened in 2009 and what happened in 2012 it was very very small but in 2009 and in the summer of 2006 when Israel was battling against Hezbollah in Lebanon the same type of issue in framing where the Israelis are not just the bad guy the terms and the words that are used are the terms of justice right human and Israel is injustice oppressor inhumane and the focus of the inhumane Israeli because in this case if you're standing up for Gaza you're human meaning if you're not you're inhumane was the Israeli soldier and not just any Israeli soldier but the Israeli military focus and when you look at me right now and as you see me the way Israeli military are presented in the world are usually with helmets and when you show a military person with a helmet on the one thing you don't see are the eyes what can be more inhumane than somebody without eyes and the depiction of the Israeli military is going to be I would take you back to remember the IDF how do we present ourselves I have to go backwards because I need to show you this to emphasize it right now okay how do the Israeli military present the Israeli soldier no eyes right I look at this and I see a pilot because they're not allowed to show pilots faces in Israel it's all it's a security breach so that's the only way you can show a pilot and I look at that and I go wow look at the pilot now look at it through the eyes of somebody who knows that if you in perspective are looking at human is those who stand up for Gaza and the Israelis are inhuman and what could be more inhuman than somebody who doesn't have any eyes who has a mask on and part of the way Israel depicts itself for its own strength because we don't expose pilots and pilots faces but we wanted to show the strength of the military and what IDF military what the IDF in this case the air force does is to defend against Hamas terrorism but what we're showing the nonverbal depiction of what we're showing erase the words okay and just show this together with the words of inhuman and you suddenly realize that we in that sense show ourselves in a way which steps into a very different perception makes it even more challenging when I continue with that aspect of the framing itself Israel throughout our years that this is including last summer too we never show the victims when I say victims I mean victims on the Israeli side we very much try as much as possible never to show on the Israeli side and you could show destruction and stuff but you don't show people we've had a whole discussion and dilemma inside Israel especially during the four years of the Second Intifada when we had thousand one thousand four hundred and fifty Israeli citizens were killed during that time period do you show a the victims be the families of the victims do you interview them is that part of the discourse or do you let them live their life and not go and step into their world and here I get to the third version of the summer events which is joint once upon a time I used to call it the Palestinian then I used to call it the Palestinian Arab I say sadly right now it's Palestinian Arab Muslim it's gotten a lot broader and I'm talking both within the media all of the different types of media sources social media traditional media newspaper radio let alone the mainly the visuals that you can get nowadays in any of them where first of all you show the victim now when you're focusing on a war and what you're showing is the victim it's a whole different depiction again I'm not saying this is good or bad or right or wrong I'm talking about the challenges that we have right now if I as an Israeli to strengthen myself show for Israelis a military pilot with no face what I'm showing for the victim is the monster I'm making it even worse if to this audience what I'm showing all of the time are babies killed victims etc I am showing them constantly the reason that Israel is the monster there's no there's no dialogue and there's certainly no way of bridging that type of gap and when you look at the terms themselves of this summer and the way that it's presented in this case it's taking a series of very clear cut world leaders all of them the ones that think of who they go out and talk into and focusing in that sense not on the Gaza Strip but now on Palestine this is different aspects that have come out over the last few years that were coming out this summer all of the time because it's more or less all of the different arguments that have come out you look at these different arguments that are brought up here in free Palestine and this summer and this is for the first time it didn't happen in the events of the summer of 2006 it didn't happen to that extent in 2009 or 2012 and this summer there was no separation whatsoever between Israeli policy Israeli free Palestine what Israel is trying to do and here I'll give that framing that has to do with the Gaza Strip and yes I'm leaving this up here on purpose to a large degree because it's part of the challenges that we have in that Palestinian Arab Muslim frame Israel is an expansionistic colonial Zionist entity that what it wants to do is expand and that means that it was established in certain borders and it expanded them in the first war of 1948 and then it expanded it again in 1956 and then an aberration gave that back expanded it again in 1967 Israel is the one in this framework that initiated certainly the 1948 war the 1956 war the 1967 war and 1973 was just those countries trying to get their own land back so that Israel is a militaristic expansionistic country usually it goes hand in hand with the map and the map shows the greater Middle East in between the Euphrates and Tigris and the Nile and talks about the fact that Israel's flag which is ludicrous but it's shown worldwide with the two blue stripes or the Nile and the Euphrates and Tigris and that Israel is supposed to be between the two different ones and I say that because in this type of a dialogue what happens is when Israel like in the Gaza Strip Israel initiates not only is Israel expansionistic and wants to conquer in addition it wants to destroy Palestine and it wants to do so through a military campaign there's an added type to it which I brought here somebody right from Boston because the last element that has to do with that is the fact that when it's used against victims it's not war it's murder and the different framing that we have nowadays where Israel has to stand up and Israeli soldiers are perceived as being murderers that the war itself is one which is perceived as being Israel against victims who have no strength brought out this summer a type of violence in its own way mainly in Europe it wasn't as much it was very subdued in the United States compared to what happened in Europe this year what happened in France in Holland in some areas of Germany where essentially they were standing up and saying any action Israel takes in the Gaza Strip there is no separation Hamas terrorism there is no separation it's about Israel murdering in this sense Gazans with the aim of at the end conquering I didn't want to leave that one so I left instead a more visual pretty one right but when you look at this one just look at those words because that combination of words are all about perception it's what you know if I stop right now people and that's what I mean about the people the people who go out both and demonstrate but especially the people who sit and watch nowadays regular news who in social media hear the different type of news when they hear Israel and the combination of Gaza these are the terms that come up now you look at all of these terms and in none of them do you have any kind of a policy or military justification which allows for Israel being in defense security defending against all of the terms that you're talking about here are the terms from the side of both the victims which are absolutely victims and that gap is one which when it comes to military warfare nowadays I'm on a team inside Israel where what we're trying to do much more is to understand the implications of the way we talk about a war while it's happening happening about violence while it's happening in the way that projects outside because on the one hand you're trying to get your people to stand up to stand strong to give you backing to be able to give your soldiers the backing that they need and that backing that you're giving your soldiers that you're saying in Hebrew for your own domestic consumption is shown and used on the flip side of you attacking the victim ignoring the victim to a large degree which is one of the main things that happened inside Israel is that in day-to-day life in Israel in the 50 days of fighting against Hamas and the Gaza Strip Israelis had news 24-7 on all the TV channels and usually for around two minutes in the 24 hours of a day they would show the Gaza side because for Israel it was about defense it was about incoming air incoming sea incoming land that's the story we were told and those gaps are gaps that afterwards make it very difficult for people to understand the differences both in the way the world perceives it and certainly in the way that the Gazans perceive it over the last 10 years the wars that Israel have fought are much more about the perceptions than about the actual results in the sense that we in this conflict of the 50 days of the summer successfully think about this stopped an enormous amount of the incoming rockets because of Iron Dome in one aspect okay we basically denied Hamas what they thought was going to be a real victory from the air because of Iron Dome they expected to have a type of situation where they were going to have the incoming rockets and Israel would be and nothing happened by the way in the conspiracy in a whole different aspect of it which in Arabic the conspiracy the Muamara which there's a whole aspect that has to do with perception about conspiracy they for the first two weeks thought that we were lying meaning when we said that we were intercepting when we said in Israel that there were no casualties from the rockets they thought that we were hiding it that it couldn't be that all of these rockets coming in were not doing the damage expected at the second stage in that sense when they tried the C attack and that also was intercepted and it was presented in that sense of Israel defending itself for Israel trying to stop that and the third aspect which was the aspect that they managed most and again I'm looking at all the different terms that you can see up here right now and you see the combination of all of these different negative terms for Israelis the gap between this depiction depiction of the events in the summer and the way Israelis view the enormous communal and I have a smile in that sense it was absolutely the best of Israeli society and military and in backing and the gap here is absolutely enormous and what do we do in the end result was this summer a success or not and I'll end on the last note from this summer and it started right as the events themselves started I mean pretty much at the end of June but mainly from the beginning of July one of Israel's main incomes is tourism and tourism is not from the United States of America tourism is from Russia from Europe from Germany from all sorts of different countries and we have winter tourism because we don't get this kind of snow even though it's actually supposed to snow today but in certain areas but it's we're a summer country in general and from this summer from the events where the international community were overwhelmingly going outside in these terms we have seen an absolute drop in incoming tourism from Europe from Europe in general from Germany specifically from Scandinavia overwhelmingly and that means that the impact on perception of the events of a war have national security in the sense of also the economy implications way beyond the 50 days of fighting themselves and inside Israel these are aspects where if there's a terrorist attack any given day do you want to tell the world there's been a terrorist attack and then no tourists are going to come or do you want to not say that and then nobody gets the idea of what Israel is defending itself against and these are always going to be national security dilemmas on that balance between the economy and income and people coming in and between the perception that Israel is a dangerous place and you can't visit there so I talked about a lot of different things I kind of wandered around as I did so I'm happy to take any kind of questions that you'd like on this or anything else both within I'm leaving this one up because to me it's part of the difference in perceptions I think that nowadays the aspect of perception warfare is dominant on the ISIL front and it's a perspective which is not just talking about it on the media it impacts the military operations both as they take place and in their aftermath so that would be my presentation as of right now please feel free to ask whatever you'd like okay here I am please Yes ma'am I was wondering how does Israel see the Islamic State and the security security concerns that you have in them and is there any link between them and Hamas or any other organizations that I'm sure you're aware of the fact that we have elections on March 17th and there's no question whatsoever that different views exist inside Israel about the question that you've asked and some of them also are different responses that relate to different it's not just a platform it's different almost ideological approaches to the events in our area and I say that upfront because there are two very different approaches to ISIL to ISIL and Hamas to the Islamic State I use the term ISIL and not ISIS I'm not sure how much everybody is aware of the difference but because in Arabic Da'ash the last shi is Isham and Isham the translation is Levant which is also Syria but it's not I do the ISIL which is the Islamic State Iraq and Levant and not Islamic State of Iraq and Syria so I go back to ISIL the entire Middle East right now on Israel's border is in turmoil Lebanon to our north is a failed state it has not had a functioning government pretty much for the last five years really for the last 20 years it still exists as a state but it is a failed state it doesn't function Israel's northeastern border with Syria on the other side is the worst civil war you know it's funny funny not funny but there are actually worse civil wars we just don't seem to care about them as much you know in the heart of Africa but let's go back to Syria for the moment 200,000 people over the last two years really who have been killed according to the United Nations latest numbers 3.8 million refugees who have left Syria according to the United Nation numbers 12 million people who have left their homes all of this over the last three years and we have a border with Syria and the events that have happened in Syria right now there are four different type of categories of who's fighting whom in Syria none of them want to sign a state okay all four agree probably the only thing they agree on is that Israel is bad but the events that have happened in Syria in Egypt and all of the countries surrounding Israel are not about Israel the turmoil in the Middle East is not about Israel and the biggest policy issue when it comes to that is so what do you do and the Israeli policy of the last two years I say of this government because we're about to go to elections again has been this is not about us if we depict with intelligence capability anything that could be used to threaten against us we feel free to take action but we have not taken responsibility for that action until now according to the international press over the last three years Israel has preempted seven times in Syria and Lebanon mainly against armed transfers according to the international press of arms that were being transferred Iran, Syria, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah between that Troika of Iran, Hezbollah and Syria inside both Syria and in Iran all of that was true until four weeks ago you may have noticed that four weeks ago a rather more trying to think of the terms for it me and my cynicism right a more public event seemed to happen and the reason I say public is because the United Nations announced that they had seen Israel launch from a UAV into the vehicle on the Golan Heights which meant that Israel never claimed responsibility but the United Nations personnel said that they saw it happen and it happened right on the Israeli-Syrian border on the Syrian side where an Iranian general and the son of Imad Murnia Jihad Murnia and an additional five Hezbollah operators were killed on the Golan Heights on the Syrian side and I say that because that's already taking more action but we don't want this to be about us right? it isn't about us and when we take action you run the problem of Bashar Assad saying it's about us and the Iranian saying it's about us and everybody else saying it's about us and that's we don't this isn't about us but I have to tell you Jihad Murnia and an Iranian general being six kilometers from the Israeli border on the Syrian side is not about the Syrian civil war I'm not in the service right now I have no idea what the information was before I say that the son of Imad Murnia Imad Murnia was the top number two Hezbollah operative who ended his life on this planet in February 2008 at the heart of Damascus according to the Washington Post of the last two weeks it was a joint Israeli U.S. operation in February 2008 at the time Hezbollah immediately accused Israel Imad Murnia was directly responsible for the attack against the Marines in Lebanon in 1982 and in a series of attacks against Israeli targets and Jewish targets worldwide he was their top Hezbollah operative and Imad Murnia died mysteriously from a car bomb at the heart of Damascus February 2008 Jihad Murnia is his father's son and he was not on the Golan heights to fight Hezbollah's war against all of the other Sunni whatever okay and when you have intelligence that tells you that you have a Jihad Murnia on the Golan Heights the decision-making process states very clearly what he's doing up there is against Israel let's stop it okay you know when you do so that there's going to be a response do you do it you're inside naval war college have a discussion those are dilemmas in Israel day in day out you know that the highest ranking Hamas operative Ahmad Jabari you know where he is you can take him out you know that if you do so they're going to respond with rockets do you do it if you don't do it you won't get that chance again is it worth it isn't it worth it I'm talking about two events that happened in the last four years and I could give you a long list of events like that and I say that because Israel has no interest in any way in engaging ISIL but ISIL the Levant includes Israel that's why I say ISIL not ISIS because there's a Saronius way when you say it as the Islamic state in Iraq and Syria as if it ends on the border with Israel Lebanon Jordan when you say ISIL you know that that includes Lebanon Jordan and Israel and Palestine okay it includes all of that number two the affiliations of the different organizations I call them organizations these terror fronts both in Egypt and Sinai on the Israeli border and Hezbollah in Lebanon let alone inside Syria because Jordan is out there trying to fight them all and that's our borders the affiliation has been such that for example the ISIL operatives who have affiliated themselves with ISIL in the Sinai desert on the Israeli border they're first and foremost fighting the Egyptian Sunnis because the Egyptian Sunnis are too moderate for them I never thought in my lifetime that I would call the Muslim Brotherhood an Egypt moderate but okay who knew right they're too moderate for them and every once in a while they see the Israeli flag and to a large degree it's the red flag in front of the bull they can't see the star of day to David on the Israel flag and not fire against it so we have sporadic attacks now from Egypt into Israel that we never had in the 35 years of our peace treaty with Egypt how do you contend with all of that is that constant policy parameter because in Israel right now there are those who say the issue is ISIL the issue is ISIL ISIL has its connections with Hamas with all of these different organizations around having said that Hamas is not ISIL Hamas was established as a branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood in 1985 or 86 it is it's not part of Egypt because it was the Palestine branch of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood that's what it was established as and it started as let's get more people engaged through the religion with the idea that they wanted they want a religious Islamic state but that's not the same exactly because that doesn't mean that they want a solifist version of you know seventh century version of an Islamic state the prime minister of Israel has been very clear ISIL is Hamas Hamas is ISIL there are a lot of other voices inside Israel who do a distinction in that and that distinction is one that will bring about different policies okay and I state that clearly it's one of the issues on the table on our March 17th elections on how we engage with that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been prime minister now for six years straight we don't have the same system you have Martin we don't put in a note I mean I know you don't exactly here but at the end you do we don't vote for the prime minister in Israel we vote for a party and when I say we vote for a party you're voting for a whole party list most of you will know some of the names of the heads of the party but you won't know the additional 25, 30, 35 names behind that that are going to become the members of parliament that out of those come the government and I say that because I have great admiration for Prime Minister Netanyahu and his consistency when it comes to the Iranian issue in Israeli politics people go back and forth on all sorts of issues and I can state clearly as one who follows it that's part of what I do I'm on the media front but not just on that he in the last six years in every public occasion we'll talk about the Iranian threat it is his main policy issue and that's part of what's on the table now is it ISIL Hamas is it Iran what he's done right now is he said ISIL is Hamas Iran is the main issue but here there's a contradiction in that sense because if ISIL is Hamas and you're against Hamas which means ISIL and you're against Iran Iran is fighting ISIL that makes it a little bit more complicated not for the Prime Minister right now he's very clear that for him the last of the stable in its own way stable nation state called nation Muslim states in the Middle East called Iran because look at it Lebanon's a failed state Syria is in total chaos Egypt is in the middle of a counter-counter-revolution Libya is in the middle of chaos Algeria has a military dictatorship the exceptions are kind of like Morocco Jordan and Saudi Arabia but I don't want to talk about them right now what that means when it comes to Iran is that they are 75 million strong nation state very hard hit by sanctions but nation state with a quest for nuclear capability a state that three weeks ago or four weeks ago when they accused Israel directly of killing an Iranian general they said that they would respond that they would retaliate anywhere anytime but even before that they have constantly over the last 10 years called for the annihilation of the they don't call us Israel they don't call us the Jewish state we're the Zionist entity they differentiate the bad ones are the colonial Zionists and the Prime Minister has been consistent can we preempt would we preempt as a whole different issue as I say his consistency has been I as the Prime Minister of Israel cannot be the Prime Minister of Israel and allow Iran to have nuclear capability now does that mean that he as the Prime Minister with the security cabinet he can't do it on his own have a security cabinet that would take military action the question is it's certainly something that has been on the table and is not off the table yet that's part of the dilemma inside Israel right now again if I put it together with the issues of the March 17th election the odd part is that our March 17th elections are about the economy okay because they're about the economy but it's both about gaps between rich and poor housing jobs okay but it's about the balance how much do you give to security and how much do you give to everything else how much you give to security also has to do an Iranian event you may know how it starts you do not know how it ends and I say you may know how it starts as we all know you don't know you just know what you plan you don't know how the execution of that plan would be Israel for the last seven years Martin has been actively training to preempt an Iran will that training be put to test it's not over yet it's still the main issue I don't think I don't think I honestly don't think that he can do such an event right now because he doesn't have a full security cabinet that would be wild to me if in the upcoming seven weeks he would take that that type of a decision but in the upcoming year it's going to be on the table it goes by windows of opportunity by the way you can't do that in any weather at all time there are certain windows of time that you do so so did I answer more or less please please in conflict there have been for the last 20 years and they haven't changed six issues that need to be resolved and I'll give you the list of the six okay and these issues were written into the declaration of principles between Israel and the PLO in 1993 in the initial document which kind of framed where we would go with that then these six issues have not changed in the last 21 years almost 22 okay we're in 1993 to 2015 and the six issues are the following borders sovereignty security settlements okay those are four Jerusalem and refugees borders are easy you draw a line okay I swear to God it's that easy nobody's going to like the line but the line that you define is part of the way that you perceive it is it the 1947 line or the 1949 line is it the 1967 line is it the line of the security barrier you draw a line sovereignty and security are balancing opposites and they're the biggest challenge the more sovereign Palestine will be the less secure Israel will ever feel the more secure Israel feels the less the less sovereign Palestine is and I'll just give you the example to the people sitting in the room so they're sovereign do they have an air force I'll talk to you afterwards about the distances so they're sovereign do they have an army if they don't have an army are they really sovereign have you really resolved the conflict okay enormous challenges on that balance on that one over the years there have been consistent agreements between the two sides those have never been the ones that have stuck the negotiation process meaning on borders sovereignty and security there's certain frameworks that both sides understand and the give and take and all of this within a realm of absolute mistrust both sides totally don't trust the other side which by the way is not really a problem because in the legal world you sign contracts all of the time based on the idea of no trust so that's not the issue okay it's uh and the fourth is settlements settlements are a direct result of one, two and three you define the borders you define the sovereignty security and then you look at what you do with the settlements and I have to tell you that on that one from the Israeli perspective not from the not from the Palestinian I don't want to say from the rest of the world but certainly from the Israeli perspective the only issue that Israel has actively physically taken an action in the last 10 years was to remove 18 settlements and 8,000 people this isn't a hypothetical we did it 10 years ago and we did it voluntarily and they didn't want to leave so when you look at that that to me as I say I absolutely think it's one of the six issues but it is not the issue the balancing act of security and sovereignty are much more challenging and the truth is that it's the two last ones that are the breakers because for Israel Jerusalem is an ethos okay that's my capital that you don't recognize no matter where you are from the world inside this room because the 161 countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel do not recognize our capital as Jerusalem including the United States of America okay Jerusalem and refugees which Palestinians would call the right of return it's an ethos you can't go back on the right of return but if you don't compromise on the right of return there is no compromise so in that sense as I say it I think that there's no question whatsoever that if I was Palestinian I too would highlight the settlements because the whole coining of colonial colonialism humanism all of it is also based and you have a physical aspect that you can show which are the settlements okay so that that to me is a savvy negotiating media aspect focus on the settlements they're there they're very ideological you go interview them they're not the people who want to arrive at a compromise but neither did the people who live in the Gaza Strip who were removed in 2005 they did not want to leave and yet they were up to removed please you're welcome thank you for your talk thank you Peter you've given us a snapshot of the summer and some of the tactics and how it's been framed I'd like to ask you to step back to those strategic or even grand strategic problems yeah so so my question is 67 years lasting through all these conflicts and wars in the constant what is your judgment about the sustainability of this effort you mentioned your children you've got three and they're going to inherit this in some long time is there another 67 years in less than some break in this semi-equivalent Ken Israel sustained this almost garrison state you've got me as always Peter gives the questions that make me stop and pause did that for a whole week in Israel okay the short answer is yes the long answer is Israel like any other country has great diversity this summer I saw my country from a Charles Dickens point of view it was the best of the times and it was the worst of the times and I say that because for the bulk of Israelis this summer it was the first time certainly in 10 years but even 15 years since the second Intifada started where I saw Israelis in our terms they got it they looked at it and said it's not about this as I said it's about the tunnels Hamas terror what are you supposed to do what else can we do in that question and it gave a lot of strength to that backbone of acting responsibly of being there for each other of that unwritten contract that I'm talking about of Israelis who were drafted into the military and I as a mother willingly not even willingly I tell them go because I'm not willingly I tell them go be drafted go into the fighting units because there is that sense that this is the place we need to be and I'll add into it the events that happened in Europe this summer the events that happened in France over the last six weeks the events that happened in Belgium before that that have been happening in the UK I mean pretty much what's been happening in the last 8-10 months have only reinforced to a large degree for many Israelis that we may not be perfect but we're the haven but there's a growing gap in the rhetoric and when I say a growing gap in the rhetoric it's not necessarily on the issue of arriving at a resolution one of the biggest challenges right now inside the Israeli left wing rhetoric the ones who say Jewish state Jewish nation state we're not at a religious state right Jewish nation state alongside Palestine is that been there done that did the negotiations couldn't get there and it's only worse now but and here I state clearly for that left center wing Israeli because it's not the right wing Israeli in that sense Palestine is not going to go anywhere the numbers themselves even if they stay steady doesn't matter if they grow even if they stay steady that's enough okay and one of the interesting aspects of the political debate right now on the eve of the elections has been on this issue alone where you have parties on the right wing side who say no Palestine no two state resolution and that's being attacked right now from within in that sense it's kind of like guys you know you can ignore it as much as you want it's not going to go anywhere but I have to tell you for most Israelis right now I say this sadly it's another 67 years it's not about to be resolved from the Israeli point of view it's not going to be resolved because of the other side I have this debate with Israelis all the time like you know you don't make and again not not about my opinion but about the debate itself you don't make a resolution with a friend you can have a resolution with an enemy you sign if you at the end of the day again if you arrive at parameters that both sides can agree on this isn't about peace this isn't about bonfire kumbaya we all love each other but that doesn't make it any easier and I'll add into that a question that I was actually asked by some students yesterday when I was Skyping was it yesterday the day before snow has not done well with my present speaking on campuses but one of the students said so Mahmoud Abbas Abu Mazan the Palestinian president who's also the chair of the PLO who's also the head of the Fatah party you know he's 78 what about the next generation and Peter the next generation of Palestinian leaders are much more militant and anti-Israel doesn't make it any easier okay in any way about the compromise and here I say you know I live in a country that has lots of warts and pimples and problems and challenges show me the country that doesn't at the end we have built a country and built jobs and built an economy and built housing and we thrive Israelis inside Israel don't view the conflict as being the center thing I said that it's about the economy but it's about that balance between security and economy because many Israelis are saying security and everything else many Israelis are saying right now you can't give all the budget to security because if we don't have quality of life good education housing etc then we're not going to want to live here anyways so it goes both ways I feel like I'm supposed to okay please ma'am thank you very much thank you I'm so not ma'am but okay it's like Mary it's like Israel there is no such equivalent but okay thank you your answer to that question seemingly said to me that the status quo is what Israel has to live with for the next 67 years so I'll make a couple assumptions to get to my question Hamas as a political organization the military wing that wants to destroy Israel was voted into power by their people so my assumption is the Palestinians in Gaza want to destroy Israel seemingly the international community supports a Palestinian state which inevitably in my view would lead to a larger war in Israel and maybe the destruction of Israel so my concern because your your argument in the talk was so effective I absolutely agree there's a perception issue and the Palestinians the Hamas is winning in the international community my opinion they're winning that irrespective I don't think that the status quo can continue for another 67 years if they continue to win the perception issue I think the passion of the international community will repeatedly call for a Palestinian state so my question specifically is is there another alternative Caroline Glick I'm not sure if you know or if she wrote a book about the one state solution seemingly in where Israel is the only state where Jewish Christians and Muslims are living together there's somewhat a piece of piece of peaceful living in the Arab world that may be a better option than the two state solution or is there something else out there okay Caroline Glick has a very strong political agenda an opinion in this case I would say that I very much disagree with her thesis but I'll put that one aside for the moment because it goes back not just to the perception okay I don't know where any of you basically background where you're from okay but right now we're going to have elections and in these elections the Arab citizens of Israel are calling themselves Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship that are voting and I think Caroline Glick sees them that way that's the way they see themselves am I supposed to tell them who they are perception let alone an identity and self-identity is not something that I define for you it's something that's defined within and I don't think Hamas is winning the perception war I think the Palestinians are there's a difference between Hamas and the Palestinians the view of Hamas itself is quite a negative one they're viewed in the terrorist organization from the second Intifada from their willingness to sacrifice their children that's actually viewed in a very negative way worldwide and there's a difference between Hamas, Hamas leadership and Hamas on different levels it isn't one-dimensional just like nothing is one-dimensional well you know what ISIL is pretty one-dimensional from my point of view and then I say to myself just like I don't think anything is one-dimensional well maybe ISIL is Hamas is not there are different voices within Hamas now none of them think that Israel should exist okay but there are other voices within the Palestinian community one of the biggest challenges of Israel's say something which is of Israel's not successful policy in the sense that it didn't work the way Israel thought as one Israel said let's separate our policy with the Gaza Strip and Hamas from our policy to the West Bank where you have the Palestinian Authority was let's show that the Palestinian Authority and the West Bank is sustainable they have an economy they can build themselves and we'll show them the difference from Hamas led Gaza Strip and that didn't succeed but although it didn't succeed it's one of the only reasons right now we do not have a Third Intifada in the West Bank because the Palestinians of the West Bank have something to lose they have rebuilt an economy with all of the challenges that they have they're not a first world economy like Israel is but they're also not at the depths of poverty that the Gaza Strip is there's a difference between them when you have something to lose you don't stand up always in fight I don't think of any situation in which the Palestinians including the Hamas think that Zionism and Herzl were a good idea for them that does not mean you can't arrive at a resolution where there are going to be spoilers in the worst possible way physical violent type of spoilers on either side and the question is what does each side do with the spoilers and Hamas can take care of that too I mean in that sense if they would see it as within their own idea they're not going to want and revere Zionism Jewish nationalism for the bulk of Palestinians didn't from their point of view do any good that doesn't mean I absolutely support the idea of Zionism and Jewish nationalism even more so in 2015 but to impose on them to be either second class citizens because that's the idea one state solution right now means that either the Jews have laws that are only good for the Jews and not for everybody else or else you have an equal number of people already now in the land between the sea and the Jordan River and you can't resolve that by one state it's either not going to be Jewish or not going to be democratic which to me is inconceivable I think that there are additional ways they're just as hard none of them are easy there was an easy solution they would have done it not 21 years ago I mean the Palestinians for the first 40 years of the existence thought not only were they against the Zionist idea they thought they could destroy us militarily they may still want to do so but they can't because we're strong so does that mean we don't arrive at a resolution because they want to destroy us but they can't no I stay strong you can arrive at a resolution you can try and build another generation if you don't you're giving up straight up and saying you're just going to be on the sword for the rest of your life and by the way what I'm saying right now is part of the dilemma in Israel many in Israel say we're going to live on the sword no reason to try again and there are many who say I mean that's part of our elections as I said there are different aspects because at the end most a lot of it is about the economy because living on your sword is incredibly expensive and it impacts your society and Israelis are looking at it and going really is that the only way could there be another one and again the other one is not about kumbaya peace and sitting around a bonfire it's about openly compromising taking a leap of trust that I can't think of right now but doing so in a way where you have parameters that say and if it fails we're strong not weakening our basic self and I think that one of the things that I that I admire about Israelis is that we think outside the box 76 percent of our exports are high-tech inventions we don't make it they make it in China but we invent it we think outside the box that's what we basically export to the world and I want to hope that that innovative Israeli spirit that is brought to the world so many high-tech biotech agritek communication tech etc I mean we're up out out there we'll also be able to bring out a different way to approach it with the parameters that I've talked about it's not changing the people you know there was a Israeli Prime Minister who said you have to change the people and then you can arrive at a resolution you can't change the people and now the question is does that mean that you can't arrive at a resolution and basically there are those who say you can't and there are those who say let's try and I don't know what's better okay you can't then why try if you try you can fail one of the things in the Israeli high-tech world is that the first time you try you fail the second time you try you fail the fifth time is when most Israeli entrepreneurs succeed I would say that with the Palestinians until now we've really tried twice okay and they failed and we can talk afterwards about why it failed so we can say all right we're not going to try again because of security but the problem isn't going to go away okay they're not going to just sit there and become and that includes both the Israeli citizens the Arab citizens of Israel as I said they're running right now on a joint platform and they're calling it Palestinian is Palestinians who have Israeli citizenship they're not calling themselves Arab Israelis they don't see themselves as part of the Jewish symbols of the Jewish nation state it's a challenging world that we live in but I do believe that we can do so so really go go study do other things