On Israel with Ben Caspit, an Al-Monitor podcast

Ben Caspit hosts this week Col. (res.) Ofer Haruvi. After 20 years as a pilot in Israel’s air force, Haruvi co-founded FlightOps, a startup which develops operation systems for drones. Haruvi argues that Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are changing modern battlefields. "Each conflict, we see more and more UAVs. Their performance is getting better, they are more integrated into military operations, and therefore their impact on the battlefield is more significant and visible. No military operations today are conducted without UAVs. What we also see now, is that less-sophisticated armies also using them, and even irregular organizations and paramilitary groups." Haruvi notes that drones are now used for most missions. In the past, armies used them mostly for intelligence-collection. Now, however, drones are becoming weapon systems on their own. 

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Dr. Alon Liel, former Director General of Israel’s Foreign Ministry and former Israeli ambassador to Ankara. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy just finished addressing the Israeli parliament via Zoom, calling on the Jewish state to help his country. Liel says he was surprised to see that Zelenskyy’s speech indicated that Ukraine and Israel have very different impressions over the role Jerusalem has been playing so far in this conflict. "Zelensky attacked the Israeli neutrality, Israeli attempts to mediate [vis-à-vis Russia], he attacked Israel for not helping Ukraine militarily, and he attacked Israel for not joining the economic sanctions…During these past three weeks, [Israel] had the impression that Ukraine wants us to mediate. That they had asked us to do so. Also, we did not hear until now a direct request for us to supply them with weapons."

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Ben Caspit hosts this week former Knesset member Ksenia Svetlova, who grew up in Russia and later made Israel her home. Noting that she still feels shock at the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Svetlova said she keeps herself busy by helping people to evacuate and by writing about what is happening. "I think this policy of Israel of sitting on both chairs, not taking sides, is not justified. It was not justified in 2014 [with the Russian annexation of Crimea], and it is not justified now, when there are many thousands of Jews, millions of Ukrainians, who are being murdered in their homes, while sitting in shelters, or while trying to evacuate," she says. 

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Israel's most prominent high-tech entrepreneur, former Knesset member Erel Margalit. Reacting on the current Ukraine crisis, Margalit warns that the dictatorial camp is also carrying out cyber attacks, which is why Israel must be a resolute partner to other free democracies fighting in this field, "especially as Israel is the second-strongest country in the world in cyber security warfare." While Margalit understands the Israeli need for coordinating with Russia in the Middle East, he is convinced that "every young Israeli who lives in a democracy, who cherishes the democracy, who wants to see people protected, needs to speak up, and the government needs to stop playing game and speak up clearly again the aggression of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin."

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Yaki Dayan, Israel’s former Consul General in Los Angeles and an expert on Israel-US relations. Dayan comments on reports about Prime Minister Naftali Bennett talking Sunday with Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone, offering for Israel to mediate the conflict. "Bennett truly believes he can negotiate, because he got the phone call from [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky. Zelensky wants to see the negotiations taking place outside of the zones of influence of Russia. Having said that, I do not think Putin would accept Bennett’s offer, because he does not want negotiations. He wants to see the white flag waved."

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Lt. Col. (res.) Jonathan D. Halevi, who currently serves as senior Middle East researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Commenting on the unprecedented decision by the head of the Islamic Ra’am party Mansour Abbas last May to join the ruling coalition, Halevi says that from Abbas’ perspective, this decision legitimizes Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. "Analyzing Abbas’ statements over the last decade, one can see he is guided by two principles, pragmatism and Islamism," says Halevi. Abbas had said very clearly, even after joining the coalition, that he bases his political agenda on Islam. Inspired by Prophet Muhammed, Abbas, he argues, also strived to create an alliance with the Jews.

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Ben Caspit hosts this week Anat Ben David, a specialist in communication and professor at the Open University of Israel. Talking about the internal-Israel Pegasus scandal, Ben David says that "cyber-attack tools like NSO’s Pegasus software are in fact unconventional weapons. Their use deeply undermines a large number of human rights, and no state authority should be allowed to use them against its citizens in democratic regimes, or in any regimes for that matter." For her, what is most worrisome in this affair is the prevailing sentiment within Israeli society that the use of Pegasus by police should be condemned only if carried out without a prior court order. She believes that police should not be allowed to use these tools, which endanger democracies and violate human rights.  

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Brig. Gen. (res.) Assaf Orion. The senior research fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) explains that the US is not responding strongly to attacks against the Emirates by Iran and its proxies. It does not make them pay. "And so, Iran and its proxies feel empowered and notch up their aggression. This situation brings the other countries in the region to seek other ways to mitigate the threat. The first way would be diplomacy and decreasing the conflict, but also building up military forces and enhancing military cooperation with others. Israel’s capabilities are very relevant in these fields. It is perceived as an important asset in the game of regional security."

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with Gen. (ret.) Ephraim Sneh, a geopolitical expert and former minister. While the current government did change some of its approach to the Palestinians, it is not really presenting any new policies on the issue, argues Sneh. Only one third of the coalition is against the two-state solution. The rest are in favor of it. Still, the government had not prevented provocative settlement attempts in the West Bank. These include enlarging settlements around Jerusalem in order to separate the city from the area that is supposed to be a Palestinian state. "Meeting senior Palestinian Authority official Hussein al-Sheikh and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas [the way Foreign Minister Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz did] is not enough in order to rectify the policies of the former government," he says, noting this by itself will not prevent the situation from deteriorating into an ethnic conflict. 

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Ben Caspit speaks this week with veteran attorney Amit Becher about the possibility of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signing a plea bargain in order to escape prison time. The chairman of the Tel Aviv District of the Israeli Bar Association argues that even though Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit leaves office at the end of the month, Netanyahu still has enough time to reach such a deal. "If Netanyahu agrees to the conditions proposed, the technical/legal part could be wrapped up quickly. It is not a complex agreement," he says. Having said that, he notes that in the broader sense, this could prove to be much more complicated. "You must take into account the personality of the defendant Netanyahu, as well the necessity to agree on very specific wordings in which the former premier pleads guilty to some of the charges," says Becher. 

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