154: How Israel broke pan-Arabism, and what that means for Iran, with Dan Schueftan

Haviv Rettig Gur (0:05)

Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Ask Haviv Anything. Dan Schueftan's The Rise and Fall of the Pan-Arab Struggle Against Israel, The Yom Kippur War as its Beginning of the End, is a book published by the prestigious Israeli think tank INSS, the Institute for National Security Studies, in Tel Aviv in November 2024

And this book tells the story of an Israel that faced a regional project in the 1950s, 60s and 70s whose ambitions extended way beyond the battlefield and which really drove a great many of the Arab-Israeli wars of the period. In Dan's account, Nasser offered an answer to Arab weakness, to Arab humiliation, and the answer was unity under Egyptian leadership, a pan-Arab idea, as it would come to be called, that would restore Arab power, Arab dignity, and international influence. The struggle against Israel became a crucible and a test for that promise. It was the mechanism by which the Arabs would achieve that great unity that would solve their great historical problem in the modern age. Israel's deepest concern at the time was the possibility that one leader could mobilize the enormous resources of the region, and unify those resources against Israel. Even if Israel were to succeed and survive under those conditions, the struggle itself might consume all of the resources a country actually needs to build a successful society, a flourishing, prosperous nation. So breaking that alignment, that unified front of Pan-Arabism behind Nasser became the most important strategic imperative of Israel of that period. And if everything I just said sounds like it, it remarkably echoes what Israel faces today, then yes, that's why we're doing this. That's why Dan is here. I'm very pleased that he's here and we're going to pick apart this book. We're gonna look at that moment and we're gonna talk about how Israel dealt with that period, what happened on the Egyptian side and the lessons that we might learn for this moment. You will come away understanding the lens of experience through which Israelis, especially Israeli leaders and Israeli military planners, interpret the great regional trends, the changes, the standoff they find themselves in now vis-a-vis Iran. When you know what the Israelis think they're seeing, you begin to understand the regional dynamic. Dan is, as any listeners to this podcast, viewers of this podcast will know, Dan is an Israeli academic. He's head of the International Graduate Program in National Security at the University of Haifa. He lectures at the university's School of Political Sciences. He's taught at the IDF's National Security College and the Army's Command and Staff College. He was an advisor to Israel's National Security Council and to former prime ministers, Yitzhak Rabin, Ariel Sharon. He's the author of several books on the contemporary Middle East, on its history. He is sometimes controversial. He is always interesting. He knows of what he speaks.

Before we get into that conversation, which I'm very excited about, I want to tell you that this episode is sponsored by David Allouche and dedicated to his friend Jake Marlow, whose Hebrew name was Yaakov Avraham ben Moshe. Jake was a talented musician who was murdered on October 7, 2023, almost exactly three years ago as we record, while rescuing partygoers at the Nova Festival where he had been working as a security guard. This episode is also dedicated to Eden Yerushalmi and the five other hostages murdered alongside her in August 2024, and to all the Tzadikim, the righteous who were murdered on October 7, 2023

It is also a tribute to the memory of Israel's fallen soldiers and to the courage of the roaring lions of the IDF and the IAF, the Israeli Air Force in their battle against evil. David Allouche, thank you so much for this very apt and beautiful dedication.

Let's get into it. Dan, how are you?

Dan Schueftan (4:14)

I'm fine, thank you. I think to what we can do today, is deal with the deep frustration that not only Israelis, but people all over Western civilization have with a conflict in the Middle East that seems to be never-ending. In other words, we've been in it for 100 years.

Sensible people who know what's going on in the Middle East don't expect it to go away very soon in the next generation or the generation after that. We will have to deal with it. And it's extremely frustrating. And then simple-minded Israelis, or some simple-minded Israelis say, well, we need to have one war that ends all wars. We do something, we break them, we destroy them, and then everything is over. So let's have a complete victory. And simple-minded Europeans or Americans rocketed and say, let's have a peace that ends everything. Let's do something where both sides realize that war is a bad thing, and peace is a good thing, and let's have a Palestinian state, or let's have a solution, and then everything will be over. And I think that this historic study demonstrates that on the one hand, this is illusionary. In other words, even when you win the war of 1967 so decisively, this was not actually a major victory in terminating the all-Arab struggle against Israel. It took many years after that. And on the other hand, this illusion that if you just, you know, you withdraw from the Gaza Strip, you leave it alone, and then of course these people would want to build a state and to give their children a better future. All of this is completely illusionary.