Hn_Zoom_Interview_With_Pankaj_Mishra_Speaker_View_10-18-22

ETVBHARAT

1/10/2025

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Transcript

00:00Israeli politicians. So this is the condition. This is the state we are in right now. So every

00:04institution today, every major institution today is under attack if that institution is not

00:13sufficiently supportive of the state of Israel. So, you know, these are the questions I want to

00:18answer which perplex a lot of people. Right, right. Absolutely. I also, you know,

00:26read in your book that Israel's, you know, Western allies or its supporters,

00:33they have turned out to be among its worst enemies. I understand right now Israel has

00:40massive support, even though it has been continuing on with this, with these war crimes

00:47for the last nearly two years now. It still has friends there. But when you talk about

00:53that those friends have turned out to be its worst enemies, you know,

00:57if I use the words that you use, ushering their war deeper into hallucination.

01:03Do you think Israel is really isolated or it would be isolated and it would find itself vulnerable?

01:10Israel is a deeply, is in a deeply vulnerable position. I mean, just because, you know,

01:15you can set off major explosions in Lebanon, you can flatten large parts of Gaza,

01:24you can, you know, destroy ports in Yemen, you can destroy the Syrian Navy. That doesn't mean that

01:34you're, you know, safe and guaranteed a stable future as a nation state. Quite the contrary.

01:43You are, in a way, exposing yourself to weakness and continued warfare over an extremely long

01:52period. And no nation state, no modern nation state can survive a period of continuous warfare.

02:00What is going to happen to the economy? Have we looked at the state of the Israeli economy?

02:05The fact that some of the most talented people in Israel are either leaving or have left or have

02:12plans to leave the country and to move to places where it's, you know, much easier to set up a

02:18business, much easier to, you know, do whatever they're doing in Israel at this point. It's a

02:26very basic fact, you know, of human history that a small country, no matter how well it fights its

02:36battles, cannot continuously antagonize its neighbors, cannot continuously violate the laws

02:44of, you know, war, continuously wage war, essentially, you know, you don't actually

02:52have the money to do it. And I think, you know, questions are already being raised in the United

02:57States, including, including by, you know, the people who are now about to assume power in the

03:05United States. Why are we giving billions of dollars to a small country far away from us,

03:12which doesn't really serve our interests? Just yesterday, Donald Trump tweeted a video of someone

03:20saying Netanyahu has been leading America into unnecessary wars in the Middle East. Now,

03:26why is he doing that? Why is Trump tweeting a video like that? Because that thinking

03:30is growing amongst large numbers of Americans who are beginning to ask questions, not just about

03:35American money going to Ukraine, but also to Israel and saying, where is the money to invest

03:41in healthcare in the United States? Where is the money to, you know, achieve better fire prevention

03:48or disaster prevention efforts in California and elsewhere? So when people say, we don't have the

03:54money to do this, we don't have the money to do that. People are asking, you know, how come you

03:59have the money to send to Israel? So I do think in the long term, or even in the short term,

04:05the support Israel enjoys is going to be severely compromised. So I think that's what I mean that

04:15the existence that any nation state is entitled to, and Israel is entitled to live in peace

04:21and stability like every other nation state, but I think it has deliberately turned its back on

04:28that prospect, and has decided to live by the sword. And we know that, you know, you really

04:34cannot live by the sword anymore. Not that it was ever possible, but it's even less possible

04:41in an intricately interdependent world where trade and, you know, flows of goods and capital

04:50are so important.

04:53Right. We understand, you know, at the same time, Israel is getting a lot of support.

Hn_Zoom_Interview_With_Pankaj_Mishra_Speaker_View_10-18-22

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