From Rocket Attacks to Exploding Pagers: Michael Oren on Escalating Tensions Between Israel and Hezbollah

People of the Pod

In this episode of People of the Pod, Ambassador Michael Oren dives into Israel's escalating conflict with Hezbollah, which has turned Israel’s northern border into a war zone and caused 60,000 to remain displaced from their homes. Oren emphasizes Israel’s need to defend itself on multiple fronts, including threats from Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran, warning of the risk of all-out war. He also discusses the formation of the Israel Advocacy Group (IAG) to bolster Israel's media and diplomatic efforts and shares how his vision for Israel’s future, as outlined in 2048: The Rejuvenated State, remains critical post-conflict.

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Transcript of Interview with Michael Oren:

Manya Brachear Pashman:

Michael Oren served as Israel's ambassador to the United States between 2009 and 2013. As ambassador, he was instrumental in securing US support for Israel's defense and upholding Israel's right to security. His current role isn't all that much different.

After October 7, he launched the Israel Advocacy Group (IAG), which has worked to strengthen diplomatic relations for the Jewish state and support Israelis during wartime. Ambassador Oren is with us now to explain the challenge Israelis are now facing. Ambassador Oren, welcome to People of the Pod.

Michael Oren:

Good to be with you, Manya.

Manya Brachear Pashman:

Ambassador, you are touring the US with residents of Northern Israel who've been displaced by near daily attacks from Hezbollah terrorists across the border with Lebanon. As we speak, Israel is conducting a military operation in Beirut. Can you tell us what is happening and why?

Michael Oren:

Okay, let me begin by saying that Israel has not taken credit from the pager and walkie talkie attacks Has not. And so we want to avoid that type of symmetry, because on one hand, Hezbollah is very proud of the fact that they're firing hundreds of rockets and hundreds of explosive drones at civilians in Israel. Literally. Israel's not taking that credit. Okay.

So let's begin with this. October 8, a day after the horrendous Hamas assault on southern Israel. Hezbollah, out of a vowed desire to show solidarity with Hamas, opened fire on Northern Israel. To date, about 10,000 rockets, explosive domes, have been fired at Galilee. It began along the immediate border, some 18 communities along the immediate border, but it creeped downward. Creeped downward now where rockets are falling along the Sea of Galilee, which is in southern Galilee, and moving its way toward Haifa, nd the suburbs of Haifa, moving westward.

100,000 Israelis have been rendered homeless. 10s of 1000s of acres of farmland, forest land have been incinerated. 1000s of houses have been destroyed, and dozens of people have been wounded and killed, as well. Civilians, as well as military. The entire North has been transformed into a war zone. Cities that you know, like Kiryat Shmona, Metula, are ghost towns today.

One of the members of our delegation, Her home was rocketed in Metula yesterday. Is the 215th home destroyed by Hezbollah in that once beautiful, beautiful town of Metula. So that's the objective situation. Is it an utterly, utterly unprovoked attack on the land and the people of Israel. And Israel, of course, has to defend itself.

The great complaint among the people of the north, it is that the state has not done enough to defend the people of the north. And so any actions now taken, including last night, where Israeli warplanes were attacking Hezbollah emplacements and targets, not just in southern Lebanon, but throughout Lebanon, is very much welcomed by the people of the north. So they have yet to see how the state intends to return them and store them to their homes.

I'll just add one more point that is widely misunderstood in this country. There's a notion that somehow, if a ceasefire is attained with Hamas in Gaza, which is highly, highly unlikely, but if it is attained, then Hassan Nasrallah, the head of Hezbollah, said, he too will accept a ceasefire, but a ceasefire will restore the status quo of October 6. And Israelis simply won't go back to their homes if the situation that obtained on October 6 where Hezbollah was exactly on the opposite side of the fence, no one's going back to communities that are opposite side of the fence, because now we know what terrorists can do to Israelis on the other side of that fence, our side of the fence.

So there is really no alternative but to drive Hezbollah back. It's to drive them back beyond the Litani River, which meanders opposite our northern border, between 13 and 20 kilometers. There's a diplomatic initiative by American Special Envoy Amos Hochstein to try to convince Hezbollah to retroactively implement Resolution 1701, of the Security Council. It's from 200. They called on his Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River. Hezbollah never accepted it. Hezbollah violates it daily, flagrantly. I wish Mr. Hochstein all the best of luck. I don't know what leverage he can bring to bear to convince Hezbollah to implement 1701 but barring that, Israel will have absolutely no choice to push Hezbollah back physically from that fence.

Manya Brachear Pashman:

In fact, returning residents home, to their homes in northern Israel has become a war goal. The cabinet has just announced this week, right?

Michael Oren:

Well, it's about time. It's about 11 months too late.

Manya Brachear Pashman:

So I guess, what does that mean? Does that mean that this conflict with Hezbollah or Lebanon could escalate?

Michael Oren:

Oh, I would expect it would escalate. Yes, and that we have to prepare it for any scenario, including an all out war. Now, an all out war is no small thing. It's a war that's many times more severe than that, with Hamas in the South. First of all, Hezbollah is one of the largest military forces anywhere, not just in the Middle East. It's got upwards of 170,000 rockets hidden under villages, under hundreds of villages. It has a fighting force of terrorists that's three, four times that of Hamas. It has cyber capabilities. And it's not just Hezbollah. It's the Shiite militias that are backed by Iran and in Iraq and Syria, the Huthi rebels in Yemen. We know that they can fire Israel well. And there's Iran itself. Iran, which, on April 14, launched 315 rockets at Israel.

So the IDF estimate for rocket fire per day in any war with Hezbollah could reach as much as 10,000 rockets a day. And that will overwhelm our multi-tiered anti-missile system. We will require assistance from the United States, and even then, it will be quite a challenge.

Manya Brachear Pashman:

As you mentioned, this is all happening simultaneously with the war against Hamas in Gaza. Yes, Houthis also are firing rockets, one of which, I think at least one reached, or almost reached, central Israel just this past week. And I mean, how many fronts is Israel fighting on right now? And could this escalate? Could, though, that number of fronts grow even more?

Michael Oren:

Well, right now we're at about seven fronts, according to the defense Minister's calculation. So what is it? It the North. It is the south. It is the Huthis, very much to the south, but are capable of firing into Tel Aviv. It is the Judean Samaria, the West Bank front, which is very severe indeed.

So that's just sort of the bottom line of the fronts we're firing. We're also fighting a front against Iran, more distantly, against the Shiite and militias in Iraq and Syria. So a multi, multiple front war. And make no mistake about it, this is an existential struggle for the State of Israel.

Manya Brachear Pashman:

And you said that returning to October 6 or what the status was on October 6 is now not acceptable. I mean, was there a short window of time where that was, what the wish and the hope was? And that has shifted.?

Michael Oren:

I think it was lost on October 7. So if you were to go to Metula on October 6, you could stick your hand through the fence, and I wouldn't recommend you do this. You could stick your hand through the fence, and you would touch Hezbollah. They're right there. And the people of Matula and other communities along that border simply won't go back under those circumstances. And you can understand why.

I don't know if you have young children, I don't think you put your children in a house that's looking at Hezbollah across from a fence. Now we know what terrorists can do to Israeli families, civilians, women, babies, who are on the other side of the fence. And a fence is no guarantee against any assault.

The people from the north also believe that there are still tunnels under that fence that we haven't discovered all of the Hezbollah tunnels. There are people in our delegation from the north who believe that Hezbollah still has tunnels that have not been detected under that fence, because Hamas digs tunnels in sand, Hezbollah digs tunnels in rock, and they're deeper and harder to detect.

Manya Brachear Pashman:

You said that you wondered, if I have small children, I do. I have two small children. We go to well, they're not. They're getting less small by the day. But it made me think of a column that you wrote back in March for The Forward about how Jews are cursed to be a lonely people.

And I actually gave a speech to our synagogue congregation just last week, talking about how I was so grateful to be part of a congregation on October 6, celebrating Simchat Torah when I woke up on October 7, because otherwise I would have felt and my children would have felt so alone. And I am curious where you were on October 7, and how you have combated that loneliness, that lonely feeling.

Michael Oren:

Hm. Well, I had an unusual experience. On October 5, I was giving a speech in Dallas, Texas, and the speech was interesting, because at the end of my remarks, I told the audience that I believe that Israel would soon be going to war. And everyone gasped, and I'd actually been briefing foreign diplomatic personnel about this for about two weeks.

And the reason I thought Israel was going to war was because of the divisions within Israeli society, the divisions within American societies, that Iranians were following very, very closely. But the most important point was that the United States was trying to broker a peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and as part of that deal, Saudi Arabia was going to get nuclear power.

And my line was that if anybody thought that the Iranians would sit quietly while the Saudis got nuclear power, they were kidding themselves, and the Iranians would start a war. All right, I had other information, but that was the major thrust. So two days later, I was coming back to Israel. I was stopping off at my mother's house in New Jersey, woke up to the messages you never want to receive on your cell phone, which is, are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay? And learned about this.

Now for many years through the generosity of the Singer Foundation. Whenever there's a national emergency, I'm immediately put on television. So starting on the morning of October 7, I was on CNN, MSNBC throughout the day, called some friends in ElAl and got myself on the first flight out of Newark that night, and landed in a war zone the next morning and went immediately to work.

So around a small kitchen table in my house, a group of volunteers together formed an emergency NGO called the Israel Advocacy Group, because what can I say, the state wasn't doing a particularly excellent job in defending itself in the media and other forums. And what began as a small sort of a ma and pa operation around the kitchen table has now become the Israel advocacy group, IAG, dealing with international media, mainstream, non mainstream, and with track two diplomacy.

So track two diplomacy is what we're doing in Washington now by bringing the delegations to the hill. We've had meetings on the hill with both parties, both houses, and today we're in the White House. So we've gone to the White House twice with these delegations. That's tracked two diplomacy and so it's a big undertaking.

So my way of dealing with the loneliness is certainly joining with other people, especially young people, who are committed to defending Israel in every possible form. I'm very blessed because I'm a member of a community in Jaffa, a kehilla, which is just wonderful and, of course, the family, the family, the family. Tammy, my, my beloved and children and grandchildren, 6.5 and counting.

Manya Brachear Pashman:

You are heading up this Israel advocacy group that's post October 7. But before October 7, you had started a think tank. I don't know if you would call it an advocacy group. I've been calling it a think tank. Called Israel 2048. You also wrote a book titled 2048: The Rejuvenated State.

It was published in one single volume in English, Hebrew and Arabic, very, very symbolically. And I'm curious if this vision that you laid out for the next century of the Jewish state, is it stalled by all of this?

Michael Oren:

So first of all, 2048 it was a project that grew out of my time in Knesset, and I was the deputy in the prime minister's office, and sort of realizing that Israel is so bogged down in its daily crises, little do we know what a daily crisis was, that we never really think about our future. And the goal was to envision the Jewish state on its 100th birthday. Our 100th birthday would be 2048, and how can we assure a second successful century? What changes had to be made in the State of Israel? And they're pretty big, far reaching changes.

And it began as a discussion group online. We had a 2048 seminar at the Hartman Institute with Natan Sharansky for about a year, then covid hit and retreated to the room and wrote this book. It's an 80 page manifesto that covers 22 aspects of Israeli society. Its educational policy, social policy, health policy, foreign policy, America-Israel diaspora relations, of course, the US relations and the peace process.

Certainly the largest section on the peace process and our relationship with Israeli Arabs, the Haredi issue, the ultra orthodox issue, the Bedouin issue. It's all in 80 quick pages. And the idea of the book was to sort of to spur conversation, especially among young people within Israel and in the United States elsewhere in the diaspora. In the way Zionist thinkers used to think about the future Jewish state, starting in the 1880s up to the 1940s. Huge literature on what this Jewish state was going to look like. And we seem to have lost the ability to have that sort of broad discussion about our future. And it was going very, very well, the discussion.

It was not a think tank. It was actually an anti think tank. I didn't want to produce any papers. I just wanted to have discussions. When the war broke out. Looking back at this book now, it is actually a better seller now than it was before the war, because many of the problems that were revealed by the war were anticipated by the book. And it's actually more crucial now than ever before.

You know, Manya, I’m often asked, What wars does this war most resemble? Is it the 67 war where we were surrounded by enemies, the 73 war, when we were surprised by our enemies? But truly, the war that most resembles this one is the War of Independence, where we are fighting on multiple fronts, in our neighborhoods, in our communities, and everybody's in the army. And the tremendous, tremendous cost.

So really, we're in a second Israel war of independence. And that's the bad news. The good news is we get to rebuild afterward the way we rebuilt post 1948. I don't know any other manifesto that sets out the goals that we have to strive if we're going to have a successful Second War of Independence. Certainly, we have to address the Haredi issue. That's not sustainable.

We have to address the Bedouin issue, you know, the IDF secured the release of one of the hostages several weeks ago, a Bedouin gentleman. It was an extraordinary event, definitely praiseworthy, but that Bedouin had two wives, and had settled illegally on state land, and that sort of it was indicative of the type of problems we face with a Bedouin that no one's addressing.

But it's also our education system. How can we proceed and a road to some type of better relationship with the Palestinians? How can we maintain unity within Israel, within the Jewish world? Everything from the Kotel to teaching math on a high school level in a Haredi school.

Manya Brachear Pashman:

How dismaying that there are so many wars to choose from for comparison. But I, but I appreciate the one that you the analogy that you've made and the hope that that carries with it. So, Ambassador Oren, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.

Michael Oren:

Thank you. Let me say Shana Tova.

Manya Brachear Pashman:

Shana Tova.

Michael Oren:

I also want to give a special thank you to the American Jewish Committee. Yesterday morning, we through the office under the aegis of the the AJC, our delegation of displaced northerners met with about 20 representatives of the diplomatic community here in Washington, including the German ambassador, the Czech ambassador, the Slovakian ambassador, diplomats from Spain, Italy, and for the first time, this diplomatic community was able to hear firsthand what it is to live under daily Hezbollah rocket and drone fire, to be displaced from their homes, and it was extremely important. We're very, very grateful to AJC.

Manya Brachear Pashman:

Ambassador Oren, thank you so much for joining us.

Michael Oren:

Thank you.

Manya Brachear Pashman:

If you missed last week's episode, be sure to tune in for my conversation with two proud Jewish Paralympians on how sports can unite athletes amid antisemitism, which surfaced during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.