'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.