Lex Fridman: uncertainty

Transcript context

…That’s Probably the best place to start. So what we did is we made a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and then Israel and Bahrain. Then we did a deal with Israel and Sudan, then Israel and Kosovo, Israel and Morocco, where basically countries that didn’t recognize each other before ended up recognize each other, all of these were Muslim majority countries, and getting them to integrate with Israel was a very big thing. The traditional thinking had always been was that Muslim Arab countries would not make peace with Israel until the Israeli-Palestinian issue was solved. And what we were able to do is separate the issues and then make these connections, which are leading to amazing interaction between Jews and Muslims. So when I think about, obviously you have national security, you have emotional benefits from these things. But the single biggest benefit that I’ve seen from the Accords is that if you were an Arab or a Muslim and you were willing to say positive things about Israel or the Jews before this came out, you had been viciously attacked by the media or the hordes of influencers or the extremists in these different countries. What this did was it brought out into the public the fact that Jews and Muslims can be together and they can be respectful, they can have meals together, and that the cultures can live together in peace. So just to linger on this, it’s like a once subtle and in another sense, transformative. So normalization means you’re allowed to travel from one place together. That has a kind of ripple effect of that you can now start talking in a little bit more accepting way. You can start integrating, traveling, communicating, doing business with, socializing. So the cultures mix, conversations mix, all of this. And this kind of has a ripple effect on the basic connection between these previously disparate worlds. I don’t know if there’s a nice way to kind of make clear why these agreements have such a transformative effect, especially in the long term. I would say the simplest form is it’s just a mindset, and it’s almost like you’re taught all your life, “We’re enemies, or we can’t be friends with that tribe on the other side of the fence.” And then one day the leaders get up and say, “No, it’s okay now.” And there was never an issue between the people. The people were just taught different things and they were separated from each other. But again, one of the things that I respect about the work you do is you believe in the power of conversation and the power of human interaction. And these issues and gaps between us feel so big when we think about them, when we’re told about them, when we read about them. But when we go and sit with each other, all of a sudden we realize maybe we have a lot more in common than we have that divides us. For me, what I’ve seen about it that’s made the biggest difference is I’ve seen people who wouldn’t have the ability to be together, be together, and that’s now forming a nucleus of togetherness, which is a restoration. So you think about the modern Middle East from post Holocaust to now, again, in 1948, after that War of Independence, you had Jews living in Baghdad and Cairo. Then they became so anti-Jewish that they then expelled all of the Jews from all of these capitals of those cities. So you think about the Jewish history in Baghdad. I mean, I think that Talmud was written in Baghdad. It was a place where, in Babylon, where the Jewish people thrived, I think in 570 BCE, when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, he took about 10,000 Jews back with him to Babylon because he thought it’d be good for his economy. And during that place, the Jews actually flourished and had a good life there. So for a 1,000 years before the second World War, the Jews and the Muslims lived very peacefully together. So people say that what we’re doing now is an aberration. I actually think it’s not an aberration. I think it’s actually a return to the time where people can live together culturally. And so this is the beginning of the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and it’s the beginning of togetherness, which again, you think about how much war, how much provocation, how much terrorism has been made in the name of religious conflict. This is, I think, the start of the process of religious respect and understanding.…

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