'I think it was a mistake to suggest an embargo of weapons on the state of Israel'

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00:00Yehud, what do you make of this geopolitical fallout?

00:02First of all, I know it will not make me very popular in some circles in Israel, but I have

00:07to say I like President Macron, and I think he is, and I don't think that he is the enemy

00:14of the state of Israel, and he has manifested it throughout this last year in many occasions.

00:22Personally, I think that it was a mistake to suggest an embargo of weapons to the state

00:30of Israel at a time that 200 ballistic missiles are shot at us, that hundreds of rockets are

00:37shot at us from Lebanon by the Hezbollah, and Hamas continues its war, and we need to

00:47somehow fight it through.

00:50What I think, and I have suggested, and by the way, I don't like the rhetoric of Benjamin

00:59Netanyahu.

01:00It is well known.

01:01I'm not his supporter, to put it mildly.

01:04I think he's arrogant, he's outrageous, and nothing to do with France or with the president

01:10of France.

01:11We want Netanyahu to go home as soon as possible, and the sooner, the better for Israel.

01:17Well, let me quote you, Ehud, on a recent interview you gave a month ago.

01:20You said this, you said, what makes a great leader is the ability when the time comes

01:24to do the opposite of what you've ever promised to do.

01:28This needs to be done now, you say.

01:29You went on to say Netanyahu is not Churchill, he's not Roosevelt, he's not even Neville

01:34Chamberlain.

01:35Tell me what you mean by that, and what do you think Churchill would do now, faced with

01:39this situation?

01:40Well, he would have done long ago.

01:44What he would have done would have prevented the 7th of October.

01:49This is the greatest failure of Netanyahu, the greatest failure, greatest failure in

01:54the history of the state of Israel.

01:56And as some people say, you know, your colleague Tom Friedman at the New York Times called

02:01him the worst leader in the history of Jewish people.

02:05He was the prime minister.

02:06He flirted with Hamas.

02:08He believed that if he can buy Hamas with money and physical assistance, and they will

02:15somehow acquiesce and they will not attack the state of Israel.

02:19This was a major monumental mistake of judgment by the prime minister of Israel, and he can't

02:26forgive himself for doing it, so he's blaming the whole world.

02:30So this is Netanyahu.

02:32He pretends to be Churchill.

02:34He's not Churchill.

02:35Churchill would have prevented the October long before it would actually take place.

02:41And the same is Roosevelt.

02:43But Bibi Netanyahu, unfortunately, thinks that he is not just Churchill, that he is

02:46Churchill and Roosevelt.

02:49And I say that he's not even Chamberlain.

02:52But what I think is very important, by the way, in this context that we talk, I think

02:58that the war in the north can be concluded, there can be a compromise.

03:06And I presented it to the French government as well as to the American government, a plan

03:13that I have drafted with experts of intelligence and knowledgeable about the history of the

03:20region there that can bring an end to this and an agreement of some sort between us and

03:27the Lebanese government.

03:28Yeah.

03:29And the French government will be very active in dealing with it.

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