- I'm left picturing
Inspector Clouseau.
- It is a little bit.
- I spend a good
deal of time puzzling
with the question
of the Middle East.
How do we find peace.
And in my own life,
how do I find peace
in relationship and the home.
It seems there are
parallels there.
There is a great writer
in the Middle East, Oz,
that wrote a small book
called "Help Us To Divorce."
And it seems that in all
five regions of the world,
that you described,
managing differences is
at the core of the
reaction that's going on.
Can you speak to that?
- Well, you're
referring to Amos Oz
who's a brilliant
Israeli writer,
probably the greatest living
Israeli novelist now, I guess.
I was interviewing him once
and he said something to
me that was so profound.
He said "Here's the
difference between Americans
"and the rest of humanity."
And he said, "You Americans
believe that dialogue,
"that breaking bread together,
"will help you
overcome differences."
Most of the rest of the
world, we know that--
It's not that we don't
understand each other,
that's the problem.
It's that we do
understand each other.
And that talking
actually highlights
irreconcilable differences.
Which comes to, it's a cynical
or depressing kind of view.
But, using the Middle East,
using the Israeli-Palestinian
dispute as an example,
are there Palestinians and
Israelis who are living
on the same plane of
reality absorption
and can figure out a way
to have a divorce built
around real estate?
Yes.
Are there people
who, if you put them
in the same room and said,
"No, just have a meal together
"and you'll figure this out,"
would end up trying
to stab each other
with the butter knives?
Yeah, because they believe that
in their view of perfection,
perfection doesn't
allow for the existence
of the other person.
And you're not
going to change it.
The American civic
religion is solutionism.
There's a problem, and
every problem comes
with a solution.
That's why, in my
humble opinion,
this is the greatest
nation on earth,
because we just fix things.
We just, we just tackle them.
We always get, you know--
It's bumpy and we make
terrible mistakes,
but we're on a
constant trajectory
towards something better.
It doesn't always work that way.
To come back to
your original point,
divorce, amicable
divorce, or sort of just
an enforcable divorce, in a
lot of parts of the world is--
It's not idealistic.
It's not we shall overcome.
I tend to think that the
Israelis and the Palestinians
need a divorce for
50 or 100 years.
And they need to
heal, get healed.
And then who knows
what the Middle East
would look like in 150 years?
God knows.
But it's not a
great, grand vision,
but I think divorce is sometimes
the best thing you
could hope for.
- Good.
Ma'am.
- Kind of an unformed
question, but just wondering--
- [Jeff] I have unformed answers
(laughter)
- Good.
What women in the Muslim world,
or that are going into ISIS--
Are they just so
put down and not...
What's happening with
the women aspect of,
that could help with this?
And then, just a second part.
Do you have any clue
of what Obama will want
to focus on when
he's not a president?
- Women in ISIS is one of
the strangest phenomenons.
I don't know enough about it,
except to know that
it's teenagers.
Teenagers are very
impressionable.
They're sold a certain
thing through social media.
There's a romance
associated with going
to ISIS territory and
becoming part of this Jihad.
- You're talking about
women in the Middle East
becoming part of ISIS?
Or, like the young,
even young Americans?
- I'm talking young
Brits, young French,
who are going.
On the broader question,
and this is, by the way--
You ask a very
important question
because the President has
his view very profoundly.
And I quote him in
the story as saying--
And this is why he's
become somewhat fatalistic
about the Middle East.
He says, "Any society,"
and here I think he's
thinking about Saudi Arabia,
but this goes much
broader than Saudi Arabia.
"Any society in which
half of your population
"is disenfranchised
and marginalized
"will never be a
successful society."
And his perspective,
I don't know
if you consider this a
feministic perspective
or just a realistic perspective.
His perspective is, until
half of your brain power
in a society is actually used,
and until women are given
the opportunity to rise,
you're always going to have
a dysfunctional society.
And this is why, going to this
kind of ruthless pragmatism,
he knows that there are
things that America can do.
America can try to
stop the Chinese navy
from interfering with
Filipino shipping, right?
That's something that
a president can do.
He knows that a president cannot
make Saudi Arabia
treat women better.
And so, you kind of
put that on the side,
and you assume that,
over generations,
if history has this direction,
then it'll move
in that direction.
But I think the biggest
issue in the Middle East is--
The single biggest
issue is ultimately
the treatment of women.
Until you actually
solve that in a way
that makes it resemble more--
It doesn't have to resemble
every aspect of our life, here,
but then you're just
going to have dysfunction.
- Doesn't that seem to
be an issue on which
even the two parties in America,
which can't agree on whether
the sun is up or down,
could agree on?
Isn't there some
sense, here, that,
if we could affect
the plight of women
in the Middle East, not just
in ISIS, but more broadly
where rights are not what
they are in this country,
that we should be
doing something?
- I think we are.
I mean, you see
this on the margins.
- [Host] It's not a
controversial issue.
- No, no, it's not.
It's certainly not
controversial, I don't think.
Yes, there is misogyny in
portions of America, obviously,
but it's not misogyny of
the sort of, you know,
"We're gonna whip you if
you go out of your house
"without a male escort"
level of misogyny.
- This is one of those
sort of feel-good exporting
of democratic values, or the
values of a democratic society.
- But, it's a slow process,
and you can't force
cultural change on people.
You know, as Americans,
I think this is something
that's very American.
We believe that, basically,
for all of the problems
that we have, we believe
that we have a pretty
good thing going here.
A lot of things need
fixing, but this is a--
We look at other people
around the world,
and sort of scratch
our heads and go,
"Why would you live like that,
"when you could live like this?"
But they do, and they
have their reasons.
I spent a lot of time
in Afghanistan in
the Taliban years.
You'd kind of look
around, and you'd go,
"You know, it doesn't
have to be this way."
But there are certain
people who like it that way.
But it doesn't mean
that you stop working.
Again, you can't do this stuff
on four-year
presidential cycles.
These are generational problems.
- Or even eight-years.
I think what you said about
Israel is interesting.
Or some of the other things.
You've got a limited
amount of time,
and you look at
the list of things
that you have on your
plate, and you go,
"I could affect some of these,
"and I can't affect
others of these.
"I'm just going
to have to pick."
- Right, right.
The cultural stuff,
the religious stuff is
much harder to
move in a quick way
than some of the--
- [Host] Realistically,
it's going to be
lower down the list.
- Well, Michele Obama is
going around educating.
- That's huge.
But don't expect--
We're also Americans, so
we expect instant results
and instant gratification.
Should we be bringing
Muslim women here,
for education?
Yeah, in huge numbers.
Should they go home a
little bit unsettled
about the conditions at home?
Yeah.
Will that encourage
people to bring more girls
into education?
Over time, yeah, I hope.
- But will the world be fixed
by this well-meaning effort?
If at all, it's going
to take a long time.
- No, no, see you have
a short-term problem
of ISIS and a long-term problem
of fixing this stuff.
- We'll get one more.
- Okay, one very quick
comment and then a question.
You all spoke about the
fact that the Arab Spring
kind of showed Obama
that Israel and Palestine
don't actually
matter all that much.
And the comment is that,
I think it's interesting.
My father's actually Lebanese.
One of his defenses
for Bashar al-Assad,
at least in the early days
in the Syrian civil war was,
he's the only one who
will stand up to Israel.
I think a lot of people still
say that in the Arab world.
Assad was, apparently,
had paid some activist
to rush the Israeli border
in order to distract
from his war, at one point.
That's just a comment.
Related to that, I think
with the Arab Spring
and the rise of ISIS
and all of this,
a lot of attention
has been drawn away
from Israel-Palestine.
Currently, you know,
there's this rash
of stabbings and more
and more brinkmanship
between the Israelis
and Palestinians
that is really kind of rising
into the Third Entifada
or something like that.
The biggest wave of violence
we've seen in recent years.
Just the other day,
there was this instant
where an Israeli soldier
shot a wounded Palestinian.
on the ground.
That's just going to
lead to more incitement.
So do you see a more hot
war developing there,
that could have some
large consequences
because we're not
paying attention to it?
- Right, right.
Let me be clear.
I think that solving the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
is important for the
sake of that conflict.
And you're also right
that if it got worse,
the spill-over
could be enormous.
But, compared to raw death toll,
or sort of raw
instability measures,
Syria is probably the
greatest cataclysm,
one of the great cataclysms
since World War II
at this point.
By the way, your first
point is very interesting.
4,000 Palestinians
have been killed
by the Assad regime
since this war started.
4,000.
- [Man at the Mic]
And how many Syrians?
- Maybe half a million.
And no one seems to
care about the fact
that Assad is
slaughtering Palestinians.
It's a very interesting
sort of hierarchy of--
There's outrage when X kills Y,
but not when Y kills Z.
It's a very strange thing.
On your broader point, yeah,
I'd have to agree with you.
I think American presidents
are always tempted
to try to fix that problem.
Because it is one of our
civilizational super stories.
Right? Bringing the
children of Abraham
back together again is a huge--
You don't get that same
kind of poetic justice
out of fixing Nagorno-Karabakh,
or something, right?
There's no romance to it.
I would have to say that
your analysis is correct.
If it gets worse,
just because we tend
to pay more attention
to it anyway,
we would have to intervene
in a more direct way.
And, I tend to think, this is--
Again, I didn't come
here to defend Obama,
but I think Obama
understands something
that both Netanyahu,
to a great degree,
and also Abbas, that
you really don't get.
That the status quo
is not sustainable.
You can't just keep going
down this road forever
without having really,
really bad effects.
So what Obama's been
trying, unsuccessfully,
to do is push,
particularly Netanyahu,
but also Abbas to sort
of say, figure this out
while there's still
time, before you hit
some level of
catastrophic violence
that you're referring to.
- And then on top of that, if
I can make one more comment.
If there's the risk
of the war spilling
into Lebanon, that actually
could be much worse
this time compared to 2006.
For people that don't
know the geography,
Syria, basically, hugs Lebanon.
So people have nowhere
to go besides Syria,
which isn't--
- So you're actually right.
The big nightmare is one big war
that stretches from
Iraq all the way
through Syria, Jordan, Lebanon
and then down into
Israel and even Gaza.
And, of course, the Sinai is
under the control of ISIS.
You could imagine a
conflagration like that,
where it's one chess game,
but on eight different levels.
It's sort of a 3D chess board.
That is a nightmare.
This is where the
critique, by the way,
of the President can come in.
Is that, only the
U.S. has the power
to shape Middle Eastern reality,
and you didn't do
enough to shape it
before it became a catalysm.
- And that is or is not
a legitimate observation?
- I think it's a
legitimate observation.
It's not a solvable question,
because he'll say,
"No, you're wrong,
"and here's why."
And I'll say, "No, I'm
right, and here's why."
But we're all playing in theory.
- Steve is telling
me we've got to stop.
We have a hard out today.
Jeff Goldberg was
great to give us some
of his time while
he was in town.
Hopefully we'll get him back.
(applause)
- Thank you very much.
I had a great time.
(applause)