On 2 March, Pamela Paresky spoke with Dr Dan Schueftan, a leading Israeli political scientist and national security expert who has advised multiple Israeli prime ministers.

They discuss Israel’s resilience after October 7, the necessity of defeating Hamas, and the shifting alliances reshaping the Middle East. Schueftan critiques the influence of ideological extremism on Western democracies and urges a return to pragmatic, civic-minded liberalism.

The conversation also touches on leadership, minority rights, immigration in Europe, and the need for meaningful—not symbolic—social progress.

I. Israel is Winning

Pamela Paresky: What’s happened over the last seventeen or eighteen months? Where are we now?

Dan Schueftan: Well, now we know we’ve won the war. I always believed we would, but I didn’t know it would be this decisive. I’m delighted to say we’ve practically won. Yes, there’s still more to come—there will be pain, and Israel will be hurt again. But if you look at the big picture, it's more positive than I expected.

PP: That might surprise people—given the devastation in Gaza, that not all the hostages are back, and Hamas still holds power. How can you say Israel has won?

DS: Because I agree with what my grandmother used to say: it’s better to be rich, healthy, and young than old, sick, and poor. Sure, things aren’t perfect—but the real question is whether, overall, we are winning. If you understand what this war is about, I believe we are winning in a very major way.

Let me explain. This war is about whether civilised people can defend themselves against barbarians—even when those barbarians hide behind their own civilians. And many on the liberal side argue: “If defending ourselves means harming people who aren’t personally guilty, we can’t do it.” That’s exactly what the barbarians are counting on. Their main weapon is our values.

So, we need to demonstrate—and we have demonstrated—that we can defeat barbarism without losing our moral compass. That we can be like Sparta toward our enemies, while remaining like Athens among ourselves and with others who are civil and can be negotiated with.

Now, this has become much harder in the last forty to fifty years, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Why? Because after that collapse, the West assumed liberalism had won, and we could afford to tie not just one, but both hands behind our backs.

Liberals used to believe that you fight with one hand tied so as not to become like your enemy. But progressives went further—they said you shouldn’t be allowed to fight at all, especially if your enemy has darker skin. If your enemy is black or brown, then he must be right, and you must be wrong. It’s one of the most racist attitudes I can imagine: If you’re white, you’re guilty; if you’re not, you’re innocent.

And it excuses barbarism. “Well,” they say, “he suffered from slavery or colonialism, so his behaviour is understandable.” This thinking ignores that it was white people who ended slavery, which had been a global norm. And colonialism? That’s just a new name for something that has defined most of human history: the strong seeking to dominate the weak. What changed was that we decided to stop.

So this distorted, sick, progressive ideology has weakened us and strengthened our enemies.

And then there’s technology. Today, a bunch of primitive tribes in Yemen can launch ballistic missiles. Think about that: thirty or forty years ago, only superpowers had that kind of weapon. Now you can buy off-the-shelf tech, modify a toy, and turn it into a precision-guided munition.

This means we, the stronger side, are denied two critical tools:

1. The ability to ignore the enemy—to say, “this is unpleasant, but not an existential threat.”
2. The ability to destroy the enemy’s capacity to hit us back. Even if we destroy most of their capabilities, what remains can still strike at our population centres.

And this is only getting worse. With advances in biotechnology, enemies could soon produce dangerous pathogens in their kitchens and wage biological warfare. That means we can’t ignore them. We can’t fully destroy them. So the question becomes: can we fight them successfully?

Hamas believed it could win—not because it was stronger, but because Gaza had become the most fortified place in history. Fortified not just with missiles and tunnels, but with CNN, The New York Times, the BBC, the courts in The Hague, Amnesty International—every institution dominated by the autocratic, dictatorial, or barbarian-majority world.

These institutions undermine democracy while pretending to defend it. When countries like Libya, Syria, North Korea, and Venezuela define “human rights” at the UN, the result is absurd.

So Hamas gained power through media, international courts, and ideological corruption. We, on the other hand, became weaker because progressives prostituted liberalism.

Let me step back and make a broader point: the worst enemy of something good is the pursuit of something perfect in the same direction.

You can’t have democracy or human rights without nationalism. Why? Because solidarity—beyond family or tribe—only works at the national level. People say, “I’ll sacrifice something for someone else, because in the long run it benefits all of us.” Nationalism is necessary.

Who is the enemy of a patriot? A hyper-patriot. A fascist. Just like too much nationalism kills nationalism, too much liberalism kills liberalism.

If, in a war, we say: “Let’s try to reduce civilian casualties, even on the enemy side”—yes, that’s a good liberal instinct. But if we say: “The moment civilians are harmed, we must stop”—then we hand victory to the barbarians. Because they want civilians to be harmed—it’s their shield and their strategy.

If that’s our rule, then Western civilisation is finished.

In Gaza, Israel understood: If we don’t respond forcefully, we’ll spark a regional war. Arab leaders—those who aren’t radicals and are willing to accept Israel—will lose public support. The message will be: “You can rape Jewish women, decapitate civilians, burn babies, and get away with it.”

The only way moderate Arab governments can withstand public pressure is to point to Gaza and say, “Do you want that in Cairo or Amman?” That’s their defence.

So to preserve even relative Middle Eastern stability—which is rare—we had to defeat Hamas decisively. We’re not finished yet. We’re still waiting for more hostages to be released and for Hamas’s military capacity to be fully dismantled. But we have won.

And we’ve won on three levels:

1. Regionally
2. Internationally
3. Domestically (hopefully)

Let me describe each of these.

In the Middle East, our position is stronger than ever. Most Arab states not only accept Israel’s existence—they’ve realised they need Israel. Why? Because their enemies are the same as ours: Iran, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the strategic ignorance of the United States.

The US is much more powerful, but Israel is more dependable. America might elect a president like [Barack] Obama, who sides with enemies over allies. But Israel doesn’t have that luxury. We fight because we have no choice—and we’ve shown we can fight. We can defeat Hamas. And we will.

Hezbollah, once a strategic threat with no clear Israeli response, is now just a serious nuisance. A problem, yes—but before this war, we had no answer to it.

Then, against American advice, Israel dropped 84 tonnes of bombs on Beirut in seconds. That’s how you deal with barbarians. They go after our people—we go after their sanctuaries. They must understand: They can run, but they can't hide—not behind the UN, not behind the BBC, not behind CNN.

We’ve severely damaged Hezbollah. We’ve also shown how vulnerable Iran is. We destroyed key parts of its air defences. When they threw everything they had at us—ballistic missiles, drones, cruise missiles—the result was unpleasant but barely consequential.

Iran is weaker now. Its proxies have been hammered. And Arab states saw that Israel could do this without losing US support.

What Saudi Arabia and the UAE want is this: good relations with Washington, but without having to follow Washington’s strategic advice—because that advice is consistently wrong.

When Biden took office, he removed the Houthis from the terror list, gave them humanitarian aid, and pressured Saudi Arabia and the UAE to ease up. His administration thought, “If an alligator attacks you, give it a banana.”

But what happened? The Houthis attacked US, Israeli, and British ships. They disrupted fifteen percent of global trade in the Red Sea. They starved Egypt of Suez Canal income. Egypt now only survives on tourism (which is low) and the Suez Canal (which is blocked).

So the Saudis and Emiratis want to keep ties with America—but ignore its strategic guidance.

PP: So what is it about Washington’s advice that misses the mark so completely?

II. What the West Gets Wrong About the Middle East

DS: Americans have a profound misunderstanding of radicalism. They think a radical is someone who didn’t get what he wanted legitimately, so he turned to extremism. And if you just give him humanitarian aid, he’ll change. I’ve often said that Americans believe every Saddam Hussein has a little Thomas Jefferson trapped inside, just waiting to emerge—he just had a rough childhood. So they say, “Let’s help him.” It’s absurd.

You have barbarians in Gaza? Then give them humanitarian aid. Help Hamas in Gaza. That’s exactly what the Americans did. The one area where we capitulated to the Americans was their obsession with giving Gaza more humanitarian aid than it could even absorb. Naturally, Hamas takes control of it. This strengthens Hamas, enables them to dictate the terms, and then demands that we stop the war when it suits them.

So again, the Americans have the best of intentions—but the worst advice.

There are, of course, different kinds of Americans—ideally ones born outside the US, like Henry Kissinger. Or Americans whom Americans themselves don’t like, like Richard Nixon. The issue isn’t whether someone is likeable, like Obama, or unpalatable, like Nixon. Nixon was a great American president when it came to foreign policy. Obama was the worst—because he strengthened America’s enemies and undermined its allies.

Today, in the Arab world, it’s no longer just about accepting Israel’s existence—they actually need Israel. And I can’t imagine a better position for us. Before this war, Israel was a regional power in terms of military capability, economic strength, and technological superiority. But we didn’t have the political leverage to manoeuvre effectively between forces in the Middle East. Now we do.

We are now far better placed in the region, and the chances of a regional war erupting are lower than ever before.

So in the regional sense, we’ve already won the war. Our task now is to maintain that. That’s what we’re doing—maintenance. And as I’ve said before: Don’t wait for minor threats to grow into major ones. Be preventive. Act before it’s too late.

That’s what we’re doing now in Lebanon, despite the ceasefire. That’s what we’re doing in the West Bank, where terrorism is rising. And inevitably, that’s what we’ll have to do in Gaza when the barbarians return—because they will return.

The idea that you can “educate” or change them from the outside is delusional. If they want to change, they must change their culture—but they have no desire to. The Palestinian public strongly supported what was done on 7 October. They may not like the consequences, but they would have loved to see it succeed. Their heroes remain those who kill Jews.

So we have a lot of work ahead. If we revert to our old containment strategy, we’ll lose everything we’ve gained. But if we maintain our posture, then regionally, we’re in a very, very strong position.

Internationally, we’re also in a good position—largely not through our own efforts, but we’ve benefited from changes around us. What’s happening in Europe—and to some extent in the United States—is that progressives are losing ground.

They’re not bad people—they’re just foolish. They don’t understand that too much of a good thing can become a disaster. Oxygen is essential, but too much oxygen can kill you. Loving children is good—but taken to an extreme, you get paedophilia.

This belief that there’s no limit to how much of a good thing is good reflects an immature mindset. These people haven’t had their Bar Mitzvah yet—they’re adolescents. And I’m not only talking about students in American universities. Many faculty members are adolescents who wouldn’t survive outside the university.

Of course, not all—there are excellent scholars in the social sciences too. But this adolescent attitude is now being defeated.

First in Europe, after the calamity Angela Merkel brought in 2015 by letting in millions of migrants. That decision severely undermined the quality of life in Europe, and the inevitable reaction was a swing to the right—unfortunately including the far right.

Progressives and fascists are, in a sense, twin brothers. When people flee fascism and are foolish, they run to progressivism. When they flee progressivism and are foolish, they run to the extreme right.

But now, at least, the total control that progressives held over liberals is breaking. My issue was never with the progressives per se—they were never in power, aside from Obama. The problem was that they influenced the good guys: the liberals.

Liberals thought that to be good liberals, they had to listen to the progressives. But no. If you want to be a good liberal, stop listening to progressives.

Few people will guess who said what I consider the wisest statement ever made about politics: “Power corrupts. Weakness corrupts absolutely.” It turns Lord Acton on his head. The man who said it? Adlai Stevenson—the archetypal liberal. My kind of liberal.

He’s the kind of person who understood: yes, tie one hand behind your back in war, but not both.

In Europe, the progressives have lost. Some good liberals lost with them, and that’s unfortunate—but they lost because they followed the progressives.

Israel is a combination of nationalism and liberalism. We call it a “Jewish and democratic state.” If you want this model to succeed, you should be pleased with the changes happening in Europe. Yes, things may have swung too far to the right, but the process will bring it back to the centre.

And the centre is where all good things happen. I often say I’m a radical centrist—a member of the “extreme centre.”

In America, the congressional hearings about antisemitism in Harvard and other Ivy League universities have exposed the rot. And let me put it this way: Sending your child to Gaza is dangerous. But sending your child to Harvard is, in a way, more dangerous—because they might come back analytically stunted and morally twisted.

We need to weaken progressivism and strengthen liberalism. People will trust liberals if they can be flexible when possible and tough when necessary. That’s the kind of leadership people vote for.

So, on a global level, particularly in the West, we are winning. Again, much of it is not our doing—immigration crises, cultural failures—but 7 October reinforced the shift. When people saw “Queers for Palestine” or “Climate Activists for Hamas,” they realised: Something’s gone very wrong.

Domestically, I’m hopeful. The ugliness of certain elements within Israeli politics has now been exposed. In this government, there are two deeply problematic groups: the fascists and the ultra-Orthodox parasites. Both have now been unmasked.

Many Likud voters no longer want to be associated with the far right or the ultra-Orthodox, who don’t work, don’t serve in the army, and drain the economy. If their demographic share continues to grow, Israel risks becoming a kind of Jewish Yemen—primitive, backward, and repellent.

But I think—hope—that Israel is gravitating back toward the centre. In truth, despite what party leaders want people to believe, there’s very little difference between what’s left of the Left and the moderate Right in Israel.

The progressives committed electoral suicide—they barely exist in Israeli politics anymore. The mainstream of the Left and Right agree on most issues: economics, security, foreign policy. Even judicial reform will likely end in a compromise close to what the President proposed.

So I’m hopeful.

One thing is clear: Israeli society has shown remarkable resilience. This war is the most difficult kind imaginable. We’ve faced seven different fronts. We’ve been condemned by much of the Western public. It’s a long war. Civilians have been displaced. Whole regions evacuated.

And yet, the pressure on the government isn’t “end the war”—it’s “why haven’t you done enough?” People in the north ask: “Why is the border not secure?” So yes, we’ve taken a lot of pain—but we’re ready to keep going, because we want things to improve.

PP: Is it the same in the south?

DS: Yes. There’s debate, of course—can we get the hostages back and destroy Hamas, or do we have to sacrifice the hostage issue to destroy Hamas?

But the basic agreement is this: Hamas must be destroyed. They won’t change. The idea that you can approach the Palestinians and say, “Let’s all live happily ever after,” is fantasy. These are people who have spent a century trying to kill us. They’ve never seriously worked to improve the lives of their own children.

Very few Israelis believe peace is possible any time soon. You have a tiny cult around the newspaper Haaretz—why not? But it’s politically insignificant. They committed electoral suicide.

PP: We’re speaking the day after the first part of the ceasefire ended.

DS: Yes—post-war.

But don’t get bogged down in the day-to-day. Look at the broader picture. Despite lacking a functioning government, Israeli society has shown incredible strength. I’d say Israeli society is the eighth wonder of the world.

Imagine the Brits enduring the Blitz without Churchill. It wouldn’t have worked. No other country could endure a long war and still maintain deep social solidarity.

Despite an overburdened reserve army, people continue showing up for service. Their businesses and families suffer, but they keep coming. Morale is high. There’s no collapse in discipline or motivation—just the opposite.

Even though this government functions poorly, and many Likud voters don’t trust the Prime Minister, society itself is strong. In that sense, we’ve already won—also domestically.

Politically, I think we’ll win too. We have about eighty members in the Knesset who are neither ultra-Orthodox parasites nor fascists, nor members of the Arab parties that align with our enemies. That’s 80 out of 120.

Can individual Arabs, ultra-Orthodox, and religious Jews be part of government? Of course. But the Zionist mainstream—those who want a Jewish and democratic state—hold the majority.

What’s malfunctioning in Israel is politics, not society. We don’t have a torn society. That’s what you have in America. I joked recently with American friends in Congress that maybe you need a two-state solution: one Democratic state and one Republican state.

Our society is united. Our political class is broken—but that’s politics. And when you’re fighting for your life, as we are, you can still be united despite political dysfunction.

So overall, we’re in a much better position than before the war—better than ever before, in fact.

Is it tough? Yes. Can we handle tough? Also yes.

Compared to the challenges of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, today’s challenges are higher—but our capacity to meet them is much higher. Israel is a robust democracy, a strong state. And we are no longer being pushed around—even by the Americans, though we still need them.

We were also lucky. The war began under the Democrats and is concluding under the Republicans. Had it started under the Republicans, the Democrats—heavily influenced by progressives—might have tried to delegitimise it. But with people like [Joe] Biden, [Nancy] Pelosi, [Chuck] Schumer, and so on, we had American support.

Now, as we wind the war down, we have [Donald] Trump—and that’s good too. The radical Arabs fear him. And the Arab leaders who are our partners actually like him. So it’s fortunate we started the war with the Democrats and ended it with the Republicans.

PP: You said Israel is not being pushed around by the US. But what about the most recent UN vote on Ukraine? What do you make of that?

DS: Look, the UN doesn’t matter. If I have to choose between a good relationship with Trump and casting the “right” vote at the UN, it’s no contest.

Am I on Ukraine’s side? Yes. Do I think Trump’s Ukraine policy is deeply misguided? Yes. I hope he’ll be pressured to prove he’s not Putin’s puppet—and take a tougher stance.

There are aspects of Trump’s disruption that I liked. But on Ukraine, I think he’s making a serious mistake. Hopefully the end result won’t be as bad as it looks now.

But as for the UN—I’d vote with Attila the Hun. It doesn’t matter. Everyone, including so-called “good guys,” votes against Israel constantly.

Even Obama abstained on an anti-Israel resolution during his lame-duck period. So if voting differently on Ukraine is the price we have to pay, I’d pay it.

And frankly, if I were [Volodymyr] Zelensky, I would have handled things differently yesterday—even though I support his cause. Sometimes, you have to be smart.

III. The Hostage Dilemma

PP: So, back to the domestic front. The situation we’re in right now vis-à-vis Gaza is quite uncertain. Just today... what’s the latest? Where exactly are we?

DS: Are you sure you want to discuss the latest? I mean, that’s what journalists do. I will, if you want. But why waste time?

PP: The reason to cover it briefly is to situate people in what’s happening now, so they understand the context of what you’re saying.

DS: Fair enough. But there’s a painful dilemma here. The instinct to say “bring them home now” is entirely understandable. The Israeli government wants to do that too. But if that happens while allowing Hamas to rebuild, the long-term cost will be enormous.

For example, if the barrier between Gaza and Egypt is removed before there is a viable alternative to Israeli oversight, there will be a major influx of arms. And many people can be recruited, because that’s what much of the Palestinian national identity has become—killing Jews. Not every single person, but enough of them to be dangerous.

PP: So Hamas would rebuild.

DS: Yes, and then reoccupying Gaza would result in very high casualties. Many Israelis would be killed. So on one hand, we want to rescue the hostages. On the other, allowing Hamas to re-establish itself militarily would mean enormous future losses.

We’ve already made a major concession by allowing nearly a million people to return to northern Gaza. This makes it harder to single out terrorists without harming civilians. We’ve also released many terrorists—people who will almost certainly plan the next attacks.

This war won’t end in this generation, or the next. So the real question is: Can we allow Hamas to rebuild to the point that life along the Gaza border becomes impossible?

The easiest, most emotional answer is to look at the suffering and say it should override everything else. That’s understandable—

PP:—especially if you’re the relative of a hostage.

DS: Of course. But if our national leaders consider only that perspective, I’d be even more worried than I am now. When the Americans urged us to stop the war over a year ago to facilitate hostage releases, the result would have been catastrophic. Hezbollah would remain in its current threatening position. Iran, too. And Israel would have lost the war—failed to deter our enemies—and made future wars more likely.

If you follow only your emotions, you should be a poet. But if you want to lead, you have to combine emotions with strategic thinking. These are decisions made in hell.

[David] Ben-Gurion and [Chaim] Weizmann once asked the British to bomb concentration camps. That would have meant killing Jews. If I were flying a British Lancaster or an American B-17 and had to drop bombs that would kill tens of thousands of Jews to save millions—yes, I would do it.

Maybe I’d later put a bullet in my head. Maybe. But I’d still do it, because saving millions is the priority.

And that’s what we do when we send our children to the army. We place them in harm’s way to protect civilians. That’s what we failed to do on October 7. These are impossible choices.

PP: A major issue with this generation is that many can’t handle moral complexity. Everything is black and white. X number of people dead? Bad. That’s it.

DS: We shouldn’t be too hard on this generation. Look at how bravely young Israelis are fighting. My issue is with the generation outside of Israel—those putting pressure on Israel—who’ve never had to make real-life decisions.

They learn from TikTok, or from dumb university professors. And yes, there are smart professors. But the dumb ones are more seductive. They say things that make people feel good about themselves, which is what many of them want: to feel virtuous without taking responsibility.

Responsibility is foreign to them. My issue isn’t with young Israelis, or even with all young people elsewhere, but with those who chant “climate for Palestine” or “queers for Hamas” and so on.

They don’t even consider the bigger picture. They’re in love with themselves. They want to impress the people around them, who are just as clueless. You know what my greatest privilege is? I can ignore them. They don’t challenge me. The moment I hear them speak, I stop listening. Because they live in La La Land. And La La Land is fine for a holiday—not for living.

IV. A Crisis of Democracy

PP: There’s a new development in the north with the Druze right now. Say a little bit about that.

DS: Look, we’ve always had the fantasy of having the Druze in Lebanon and Syria on our side—because the Druze in Israel are the best allies the Jewish people could have.

I once said in a lecture, because someone really made me angry, “This is a state for Jews and Druze.” And it is. These people are committed to the defence of Israel. They accept that we are a nation state of the Jewish people, and there’s no problem with that. They’re very committed to their brothers in Lebanon and Syria.

When we occupied Lebanon, we tried to make it work. We couldn’t. I think we made mistakes in how we handled it back then.

Now, we’re doing something similar—partly because Druze in senior positions in the Israeli army have urged us to. We see every reason to support them. I don’t know how long it will last, but if we can help defend them from radical Sunni militias, we should.

We don’t know what Bashar al-Assad [Ahmed al-Sharaa—Editor’s Note] will bring to Syria. It doesn’t look good, even if he tries to make it look good. I’m not optimistic. But as long as the Druze feel threatened—

PP:—and we can help, we should help. We shouldn’t occupy Syria or the Jabal al-Druze region, but we should support them if we can. And if one day they no longer feel endangered, we don’t need to be involved.

Right now there’s one particular village, Khader, which is Druze and wants our assistance and support. I’m delighted to give it to them. If we can help, we should—as long as they’re under threat and want our help. Not, God forbid, to occupy part of Syria.

DS: Exactly. One of the core tenets of Jewish culture—whether ideological, religious, or social—is loyalty to the country in which Jews live. So if the Druze in Syria don’t want to be annexed or independent, and the future Syrian state allows them some kind of local autonomy—or at least refrains from persecuting them—that’s fine.

If they adopt a “live and let live” approach and don’t want to be associated with us, so be it. But as long as they do want our protection and we can offer it without occupation, I support it.

PP: At present, Syria is a divided country. There are the Kurds, the Druze, and then, in a completely different category, the Alawites—who used to be the persecutors of the rest. But right now the Druze need and want our protection. Same with the Kurds. Why not help them?

And if Sunni Arabs were under persecution and asked for our help—and we could give it without occupation—I’d support that too. We’ve helped Jordan before. We’ve saved Jordan’s existence more than once—not because we wanted to occupy Amman, but because having a friendly neighbour is much better than a hostile one.

DS: Of course. And it’s not just about minorities. The Sunnis in Syria are the majority. During the civil war, the villages along the Golan Heights received humanitarian aid from us. We treated them in our hospitals. Many—perhaps most—were Sunni Arabs.

We also supported Lebanese communities in the south for years. That was associated with Israel’s occupation of South Lebanon, which I opposed. The motivation was security, but I thought staying there was a bad idea. In 2000, when [Ehud] Barak decided to withdraw, I supported it.

But would I support helping people in Syria today if it were accepted by whoever’s in control? Yes. If they wanted help and we could give it—why not?

PP: Right. We don’t want people being attacked by radicals anywhere.

DS: Exactly. That’s the humanitarian angle. But having friendly relations with people along our borders is also a strategic consideration. The two are intertwined—so why not?

PP: What’s something people in the West aren’t thinking about that they should be right now—something we haven’t talked about?

DS: There are many things. We’re facing a crisis throughout Western civilisation—a crisis of democracy. It’s not just in Israel. Look at Europe, the US—everywhere. And part of the reason is the same as I’ve said earlier: progressivism.

Take transparency. Is it good? Yes. Is total transparency good? No. Today, governments are so transparent that people no longer speak to the issue—they speak to the record. They don’t ask, “What’s right?” They ask, “What sounds right?”

“Stop the war”—that sounds good. No more deaths. But what if someone had said that in 1943 to the Allies? Yes, it might have saved thousands then—but it would’ve condemned millions later.

We’re obsessed with appearances. Everything is recorded. And if you say something that sounds bad, it gets clipped, shared, and suddenly you lose influence. And someone dumber replaces you. And believe me—there’s no rock bottom for stupidity. You can always go deeper.

So now, people in power often do something they know is counterproductive—just to keep someone even dumber from replacing them. That’s where we are. Everyone’s catering to the dumbest voices—and the dumbest voices live on social media.

People who should never be read now have reach. They say outrageous or funny things—and suddenly they have influence. It used to be that a beauty pageant winner would say “world peace,” and we all knew she wasn’t chosen for her intellect. But now, influencers are taken seriously.

PP: And they’re followed not because what they say is wise, but because it’s attractive or entertaining. Sometimes wisdom and popularity overlap—but rarely.

DS: Exactly. So we need to set limits on transparency.

Should everything be transparent? Would you want full transparency in your bedroom? In the toilet? In every government discussion? People should be able to raise ideas, then admit later they were wrong. But if it’s all recorded, and being wrong gets you cancelled, you won’t get serious thinking.

Cameras in parliament? No. It turns parliament into a circus. Cameras in courtrooms? Also a circus. Yes, legal proceedings should be open to the public—but not performative. Cameras make the judge who looks best into the one who wins public favour.

We need to readjust democracy. Name one democratic leader today who’s truly great. People said it about Merkel—but she made two major mistakes: with Russian gas and with immigration.

The only major democratic leader I see is [Narendra] Modi in India. But even that’s not the kind of democracy I’d want in Israel or the US. In the West, we wouldn’t elect a [Theodor] Roosevelt or Churchill today. They might have said something “problematic,” or hired the wrong cleaner, or looked bad in one video—and that would be the end.

PP: And that works to the advantage of the extremes.

DS: Exactly. The extreme Left and Right thrive. So if there’s one thing Western civilisation must do, it’s recalibrate. We’ve done it before—we’ve adapted to universal suffrage, to television. We’ve learned to distrust journalists, which I think is healthy. Journalism today is prostituted to the point where most journalists are pushing an agenda. They no longer even try to understand reality—they just preach to their echo chambers.

We need to change that. We’ve taken good ideas and pushed them too far in some areas, not far enough in others.

Take women’s equality—we’ve come far, but not far enough. But DEI? That’s a catastrophe. If Trump came into office and the only thing he did was dismantle DEI, that would be a major success.

We need to advance women’s equality—carefully, sustainably. I’m the father of three daughters who are all smarter than me. So I have a vested interest in this. But it has to be done when we have enough good candidates—otherwise it backfires.

A hundred years ago, I wouldn’t have supported today’s level of gender equality—because men weren’t ready. You need men to understand that equality benefits them, too. Once that happens, it’s sustainable.

PP: But Israel already had a female prime minister.

DS: Sure. But that’s easy. India had Indira Gandhi, but does that mean India has gender equality? No. I want women everywhere—and I want them in those positions when they’re qualified. And in most areas, they are. I want to go further. But I want it done in a way that is digestible.

I’m a strategist, not an operational thinker. Operational thinkers ask, “What’s the problem? What’s the solution?” Strategic thinkers ask, “What’s the long-term picture, and how do we improve it sustainably?”

Will we ever have total equality? No. But we can seek it. And we must seek it in a way that doesn’t spark a backlash. Revolution leads to counter-revolution. But gradual change builds consensus.

You don’t need to convince everyone—but you do need to convince the mainstream.

PP: So have we gone too far with transparency, with populist influence?

DS: Yes. Can we still fix it in a sustainable way? Yes. But today, politics requires people who can spend two hours swimming through slime before breakfast. That’s who survives.

We need decent people in politics. So yes, I’m a radical centrist.

PP: But you also sound radically optimistic—more than one might expect, given your talk of unsolvable problems.

DS: I’m optimistic because I can live with unsolvable problems. And I can live with not solving them—just improving them dramatically. That’s human progress—not in the progressive sense, but in our ability, since the Renaissance, to say “live and let live.”

That doesn’t mean I like what you do. It means as long as you don’t threaten me, I’ll let you live your way.

I’m optimistic because I’ve seen democracy and pluralism defeat Nazism. I’ve seen them defeat Soviet Communism. And look at India—1.4 billion people, a functioning democracy despite the caste system.

Singapore went from a backwater in 1965 to a global success. South Korea, too. Zionism transformed the Jewish people. We stopped waiting for the Messiah and built a state.

So not being optimistic is just not recognising reality.

PP: Is there anything I didn’t ask that I should have?

DS: What more can I do for you that I haven’t? That’s usually what I want people to ask.

PP: Thank you very much.