On March 23 Tucker Carlson posted a 90-minute interview he conducted with senior Israeli opposition figure, former Knesset leader Avrum Burg. At the time of this writing, the interview has nearly one million views and has drawn the attention of the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which writes, “Burg’s appearance is perhaps the most significant representation from the Israeli left on Carlson’s show, which has become a foundational platform for right-wing critics of U.S.-Israel policy and the Israeli government…. Burg, 71, served as Knesset speaker from 1999 to 2003 and previously headed the Jewish Agency and World Zionist Organization. Once a senior figure in Israel’s Labor Party, he has become one of Israel’s most prominent dissidents, frequently warning that the country’s political leadership is eroding democratic norms and Jewish ethics.”
“I listened to you very carefully the last couple weeks and the way you try to conceive the Israeli strategy,” Burg told Carlson, stressing that Israel is in fact lacking a strategy. “I envy you that you believe we have something like that.” Carlson laughed.
Berg stressed that there is a difference between the American approach to war and the Israeli, the American being that there is supposed to be a positive outcome for both sides at the end, whereas the Israeli approach is a zero-sum game, winner takes all. Burg is very insightful about the Israeli mindset: both paranoia that the world is hostile and everyone wants to destroy Israel, and delusional that people have a sense that Israel, while nominally a tiny nation, is actually a superpower and capable of defeating nations many times its size.
“We’re in the middle of a transformation of the world order. Maybe we don’t share the same vision of what it should be,” he told Carlson, “but we’re in the middle of a transformation.”
