'I Have No Idea How This Ends. I've Never Seen It So Broken.'

January 19, 2024

Guests: Thomas Friedman

Thomas L. Friedman is a New York Times columnist and foreign-affairs reporter; his book From Beirut to Jerusalem won the 1989 National Book Award, and he has won three Pulitzer Prizes, including one for his reporting from Israel.

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About this episode

Klein speaks with columnist Thomas Friedman about the Gaza war, 100 days after October 7. Friedman describes Gaza as 'Hobbesian' — over 24,000 dead, nearly two million displaced, about half of all buildings damaged or destroyed — and says Israel's response has gone well past proportionality, with no political objective for the morning after. They discuss the danger of a wider regional war: Israel faces four nonstate fronts, and a Hezbollah conflict with precision rockets could cripple the Israeli economy and draw in the US and Iran. Friedman argues Hamas traded Gazan lives for a public-relations coup, that Netanyahu 'doesn't want to win, wants to be winning' to avoid a corruption trial, and that Israel urgently needs a legitimate Palestinian partner to secure Gaza, build a regional coalition, and unlock Saudi normalization. He calls for a ceasefire and hostage deal.

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