'The Sunnis can smell blood'
Dr. Mordechai Kedar, the highly non-conformist and spirited Middle East scholar, is interviewed on the opportunities that are currently developing in Syria, the potentially ensuing Sunni wave, and the enemy country Qatar.
Nadav Shragai
Israel Hayom
Dec 18, 2024
However, the way to reach them passed via Turkey and a flight connection from Istanbul. Kedar, who has often lambasted the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in his articles, was told that it might be wiser for him to avoid getting involved in such adventurous activity that might lead to him being arrested there. So, he eventually decided to give up on the idea.
A few days before the rebels defeated the Assad regime and the masses toppled his statues across Damascus and Homs, once again, Kedar received messages from the rebel organizations. The first one, from Muhammad A, one of the members of the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, who, among others, wrote to him as follows: "We shall build a relationship of friendship, love, and brotherhood with our brothers and sisters in Israel and shall be a role model for all the regional states."
The second one was from Fahad al-Masri, a member of the Syrian National Salvation Front and one of the rebel leaders currently in France. Al-Masri wrote to Kedar, saying that he believes that the Israeli flag will soon be flying over the Iranian embassy in Damascus and Beirut.
Dr. Mordechai Kedar
Kedar passed on these positive overtures to the political and security establishment in Israel, and only a few days later, he gazed in wonder, just like all of us, at the lightning fall of the Assad regime and the ensuing flight of its soldiers. Did Israel play a part in the rebels' victory? Kedar says that he does not know, but states that the rebels launched their offensive on the day following the ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon, and that "it is clear that the routing of Hezbollah, the rebels' biggest enemy, considerably helped them."
Kedar is 72 years old, a reserve lieutenant colonel who served for 25 years in IDF military intelligence, for many years in the now famous Unit 8200, which used to be called Unit 848, back in the day. The feeling of disaster that overwhelmed us all on October 7, 2023, he recalls from another October, that of Yom Kippur 1973. "We already knew that war was about to break out on the night between Thursday and Friday [the war eventually erupted on Shabbat]. I was on duty, and the intelligence material we saw left no room for any doubt. We showed the materials to the commanding officer and he decided to shift operations to a war mode. That was 30 hours before the Yom Kippur War actually broke out." But, just like October 7, 2023, fifty years later, "The information got stuck on its way to the top. The unit commander, Yoel ben-Porat, gathered all the soldiers together and wept. He said that had he known that the information would get stuck, he would have driven himself to the then prime minister, Golda Meir, and brought her the material."
"The Sunnis can smell blood"
Kedar, a Middle East scholar who caught the public's attention in a series of staunchly patriotic appearances on the Qatari Al-Jazeera network, where he aggressively challenged his interviewers on the current path of Islam and the conduct of the Palestinian leadership, is now closely monitoring the developments in Syria.
Q: Over a decade ago, the current leader of the rebels, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, in conjunction with others, founded a branch of ISIL in Syria as well as Jabhat al-Nusra, a branch of Al-Qaida in Syria. He was even in contact with Bin Laden's number two. In 2013, the US offered a bounty of 10 million dollars for him. This does not exactly dovetail with the spirit of moderation and reconciliation in the messages that you have been receiving.
"You are absolutely right, and so we really need to wait and judge the developments based on the reality of the situation and their actions. At least from al-Julani's initial announcements, he appears to be trying to portray an image of a new and legitimate Syrian leader. He has asked his men not to fire in the air so as not to injure anybody. He has also asked them to refrain from burning down government ministries as these offices are 'the property of the Syrian people.' He has left Assad's government intact, cognizant of the fact that the state and its civil institutions – sewage, electricity, the health system, and hospitals – need to continue to function. So far, he has behaved in a relatively rational manner. On the other hand, there have already been incidents of rebels abducting women, murdering and abusing supporters of the fallen regime, and they even destroyed a church. Their actions will either draw them closer or distance them. We must be ready for any eventuality."
Q: You and other experts have described the recent events in Syria as another heavy blow to Iran, which has now lost an additional hub of power and influence, mainly the channel for supplying arms and munitions to Hezbollah. What should Israel do now? Should it "strike while the iron is hot" in order to further weaken Iran, or perhaps the non-interventionist approach of "sitting idly by" is currently the correct way?
"I believe that this event will see Iran withdrawing further into itself. Iran has abandoned its proxies – Hamas, Hezbollah, and Assad. The glue that has held the Shi'ite alliance together is now disintegrating, and the Sunnis can smell blood. The Sunnis are about to open a can of worms. I sense that Iraq, too, might disavow the Iranian presence there in the not-too-distant future, and we could even witness the fall of the Houthis in Yemen. The events in Syria have provided a real boost to the Sunnis everywhere, encouraging them to get organized against the Iranian presence. This ripple effect might even have an impact inside Iran too, mainly due to the social media operating there and the ensuing potential for division."
Q: What is our place in the picture that you are portraying?
"Together with others, we need to encourage the minorities in Iran to rise up against the Persian hegemony, both the religious leadership under the mullahs and also the secular leadership dating back to the period of the Shah of Iran (Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi). "In practice," claims Kedar, "there is no Iranian people. There are Persians and other large groups, such as Baluchis, Arabs, Kurds, Azeris, and Turkmen, alongside an additional 40 or so smaller groups. In reality, there is no such thing as the Iranian people, and for years, there have been a large number of separatist groups who have been trying to dismantle the Iranian state. We should attempt to encourage a similar process to that of the deconstruction of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, and the Former Soviet Union, which were divided on an ethnic basis. I believe that in Iran today, at least 80 out of the 90 million people there are over the moon about what has been happening in Syria, as this is a blow to the Iranian government and its plans to spread out over the entire Middle East. We need to encourage the minorities to rebel against the Persian hegemony."
Q: You have ignored the nuclear program?
"No, I haven't ignored it. Over the last few decades, we have engaged in technical, military, and diplomatic action, and rightly so, against the nuclear project, and it is important that we continue to do so. We can't afford to take our foot off the gas for a moment or shift our attention from what is going on there, but we have done nothing to try and dismantle Iran from the inside, even though this is possible."
Women walk past an anti-Israel billboard covering the facade of a building in Tehran on October 26, 2024
Q: Isn't it a bit presumptuous to say, "dismantle Iran from the inside"?
"How can I possibly know if I don't even try to imagine it? Last March, I published an article in the Jerusalem Post estimating that one day, Iran will disintegrate and be divided up on an ethnic basis. Two days later, Kanaani, the spokesperson of Iran's Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian [who was killed in a helicopter crash in May], tweeted in his name, mentioning me by name, and claiming that I don't understand anything about Iran: 'Iran, according to him, is united, its people closely-knit and nothing will break the strong bond binding them together.' That was sufficient for me to understand that I had touched on a raw nerve, something genuine and fragile."
Q: Is there room for Israeli intervention also in the new Syria, which is taking shape before our very eyes?
"The answer is yes, but everything should be done with the utmost caution. The events there of gigantic proportions are opening up opportunities for us. We already have excellent ties with the Druze in southern Syria, and they are not hiding this fact. Major General (res.) Uzi Dayan used to bring delegations from there to Israel. There are more Druze on the southern and eastern slopes of Mt. Hermon. The village of Khader, for example, as well as an additional six villages. I assume that Israel has ties with them and will be in contact with them. The Kurds too, with whom we had links in the past, are also a group with good potential."
Turkey has been supporting the rebels and is behind them. That doesn't sound very promising. We have exchanged radical Alawites for Sunni jihadis, who are backed by a megalomaniac in the form of Erdogan, who provides refuge for Hamas, who talks in favor of Hamas, from his land Hamas mastermind terrorist attacks carried out in Israel, who has sworn to revive the days of the Ottoman Empire and restore its pride of place in those countries where it once ruled. Only last July, he made a clear threat to invade Israel. Is this where things are headed?
"The fact that Erdogan has profited from the situation does not necessarily mean that we have lost. It depends on what form of government will be established there. If it is an Islamist government "à la Erdogan" – then he will cast himself in the role of the founding father, their godfather, if you like. He will manage them, at least from an ideological perspective, and they will take the Islamist side. But at least initially, the rebels' conduct appears to be more rational, making an outward display of apparent liberalism, affording a place for all the various groups, ethnicities, and factions in Syria and accepting them. Will Erdogan adopt this approach, too? I simply do not know. Again – it is too early to estimate. In the immediate future, the rebels will certainly be busy focusing on themselves and establishing their government in an attempt to buy legitimacy both domestically and internationally. As far as the more distant future is concerned – only time will tell."
Following the Qatari money
But it is not only Turkey. In recent years, Qatar has been bankrolling Turkey. Qatar is Hamas, and Hamas is Qatar. Qatar is a declared Muslim Brotherhood state, which supports terrorism. Kedar confirms this and defines Qatar as "an enemy state. I wrote this 12 years ago already." "One day," he recounts, "Hillary Clinton said: 'Our Qatari friends say that Hamas is an organization that operates via peaceful methods.' She clearly had not done her homework. She had evidently skipped the first lesson in political science, as in the first lesson, you learn that when you want to understand and get to know the spirit of a particular organization or state – you first need to take a look at their emblem or logo. If it is a peace-loving organization – you will see a dove there. If it is a religious Christian organization – a cross. When you inspect the emblem of the Muslim Brotherhood, and Qatar is the 'Muslim Brotherhood' – you will find two curved swords, which cannot be used for anything other than beheading people."
A Palestinian wears a Hamas flag during clashes with Israeli police following the demolition of the family home of Palestinian terrorist Uday Tamimi, in Shuafat refugee camp in east Jerusalem, Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2023
"In the previous decade, Saudi Arabia sought to impose a blockade on Qatar and to invade it. The Americans stopped Riyadh from doing so. If only they were to do this now. If only somebody would take action now to replace the government there, expel the ruling family from Qatar, the Al-Thani clan, and spare the world their evil. Don't worry, though. Iran will help them, if at all, to the same extent that it helped Sinwar, Nasrallah, and Assad when they got into trouble."
Q: What is the secret of Qatar's power, as we might now be identifying its influence on our northern border after years of its impact on events along our southern border?
"Money, a whole lot of money. Qatar buys organizations and people for money. So does the US. Now we, too, are dependent on it for the fate of the hostages."
Q: But even before there were hostages, we still had a strong link to Qatar. Both the US, which has a large military base there and we too – via the financial aid that the Qataris sent to Gaza.
"Yes, we have just mentioned the word money. Israel, too, became addicted to the Qatari money. The dollars that the Qataris sent to Gaza helped the Israeli economy. 80-85 percent of the Qatari money was used by the residents of Gaza to purchase commodities from us, from the Israeli market – fruit and vegetables, pasta, flour and meat. You simply have no idea how many thousands of Israeli families earned their livelihood from the Qatari money. Thus, even during the rounds of violence between Israel and Gaza, the Qatari money that found its way into Gazan hands was used to buy Israeli goods on the Israeli market: the Qatari money supported the livelihood of our farmers no less than it helped the Gazans, as they were able to make a living from the purchasing power of the Gazan population, which was based on the Qatari money."
Q: Today, when it is already common knowledge that the Qatari money was also used for building tunnels and fortifications, as well as the development of weapons and rockets – why are we reluctant to cut that Gordian knot?
Kedar stops here for a moment; he takes a deep breath and begins to talk about the hostages. "Qatar is still playing a role that might have some benefit in promoting the release of the hostages." He talks painfully of their fate but also soberly: "Hamas will not release all of them. The hostages are their life insurance policy. That is the reason why, to date, they have yet to provide Israel with a complete list of names of all of them. In any deal, they will seek to keep hold of a certain number of hostages. Even after a deal, they will definitely suddenly discover some additional hostages, holed up somewhere or other, with some other organization or local clan, hostages of whom they really 'had no idea.' They have absolutely no intention of returning them all."
Skyline of Doha, Qatar
Q: What you are really saying is that the fate of some of the hostages has been sealed to remain or even die in captivity?
"They will try to keep alive whomever they can. I do not know for how long. Again, they have no intention of releasing them all, just some of them."
Q: So, what can Israel do about this?
"I have no idea what we can do to contend with such a difficult situation. I can only say that had Israel said from the outset that, as far as it is concerned, all the hostages are dead until proven to be alive and until they are in our hands. Had Israel said from the outset that there would be no negotiations whatsoever, and had it continued to wage war until it had got rid of Hamas, and that, as far as it is concerned, all the hostages were dead – then there would have been a chance that we might know much more about them today, and that we would have managed to release many more of them. But the state lacked the courage to behave in this manner, to behave as is customary in the Middle East. In practice, we should have been communicating the message that we are not interested in 'the goods' and that we are going to kill and eliminate Hamas under whatever circumstances. Only that way would the price have dropped. Only that way would they have come running after us to seal a hostage deal and not the other way round."
Q: You understand that this is not realistic... We are not such a state. You listen to the families of the hostages and see their influence.
"Yes, I do understand that it might be less realistic, but that is what we should have done, for the sake of the hostages and their families. It is something that needs to be said."
A black sheep in the academic world
Among those set to profit from the new order in Syria and across the Middle East, which is currently being re-molded in front of our very eyes, Kedar lists the citizens of Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the government of Yemen, Erdogan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Among the losers – Iran, former President Barack Obama, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris – "I intentionally listed Obama first as he invested heavily in the Iranians and Hezbollah" – Hamas, the PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad), the Houthis in Yemen, the Shi'ite militias in Iraq and Russia.
Q: Kedar is a controversial figure who is not well-liked by the security establishment and the academic world in Israel, as he often tends not to toe the line.
"They constantly have a bone to pick with me, mainly as on a number of occasions, they get a rude awakening when reality sets in, and it transpires that my assessments have actually materialized. During the period of the Oslo Accords, I was still serving as an intelligence officer in Unit 8200, and I saw just how those people who were prepared to dance to the tunes that the government wanted to hear were promoted and invited to take part in discussions, while those who voiced skepticism were sidelined."
"Several years ago, I had a meeting with a senior officer in the IDF Military Intelligence Directorate's Research Division. He claimed that Hamas is a 'rational actor.' I asked him: What is a rational actor? He explained that a rational actor is one who wants what is good for its population; it seeks development, health, a robust economy, livelihood, and good work. More or less, what we want too. I told him: The chance that one bright morning you will wake up to the completely opposite situation is at least one hundred percent, as those guys are jihadis. Everything they are doing is a deception, so that you should think like that. He was very angry at me. I said to him: This is how they are leading you up the garden path. What a shame that I was right."
Kedar wrote his PhD dissertation, which he then turned into a book entitled "Asad in Search of Legitimacy," on Syria under Hafiz al-Assad (Bashar's father). "The question arose among academic scholars as to just how popular Assad was among the masses. In 1985, while recovering from a heart attack, people lifted up his car on their shoulders, while he was still sitting inside, clapping and cheering him. I claimed that this was all a show. All that both Assad the father and his son ever did was an attempt to generate legitimacy for themselves, when it is now clear to all and sundry, that all their actions were as far from legitimacy as you can get."
"Even the date on which the Yom Kippur War erupted, October 6, which was also Hafiz al-Assad's birthday, was connected to this. His officers wanted to give him a gift, after he was accused of allowing the Golan Heights to fall into Israeli hands. They knew just how much the loss of the Golan Heights hurt him. I believe that the date of his death too, June 10, the day the Golan Heights fell into Israel's hands, was also connected to this. Yes, he was clearly very ill at the time, but it is no coincidence that his illness overcame him and caused his death on that day of all days. Many people regarded Assad as a man who succeeded in having stabilized his country. That is how he managed to buy legitimacy for himself. I bitterly disagreed with them... I also disagreed with my esteemed mentor, Prof. Eyal Zisser, who was close in his interpretation to this assessment."
Kedar knows that he is hardly the flavor of the month in the academic establishment: "I speak about the truth of the situation that many scholars simply cannot afford to say out loud, as then they would not be promoted, their articles would not be published, and they would not be invited to attend conferences. As a retired IDF career officer, I was unfettered by any financial shackles and thus free to tell the truth. I wasn't dependent on the academic world. Some of them regarded me as a dangerous individual who refuses to kowtow to the progressive agenda. The Forum for Regional Thinking was established after somebody there said, at the beginning of the intifada, that it is not right to leave the fate of academic commentary on the Middle East exclusively in the hands of Motti Kedar and Guy Bechor. I cannot blame some of my learned colleagues. Some of them belong among the 'unknown righteous.' Their promotion and economic welfare depend on the academic establishment. After they retire, perhaps some of them will come out of the closet."
A journey to the left – and back
Kedar, an observant Jew who proudly wears a kippa, was born in Tel Aviv in 1952, four years after the establishment of the State of Israel. His original family name was Kupershmidt. His parents came from Poland before the Holocaust. His father was a metal worker, and his mother was a housewife. He studied at the Meiron Elementary School and the Zeitlin High School. It was here that he met "the eminent German-Jewish 'Yekke' teacher, who taught Middle East studies, the only non-religious teacher among the staff, who had a tremendous influence on me." Inspired by this teacher, Kedar went on to choose the subject that would shape his entire life.
Following his discharge from the army, he actually opted to join the religious, left-wing dovish organization Netivot Shalom. "I was deeply disappointed with Begin and Sharon's leadership during the First Lebanon War. It was only later that I came to understand that the movement and its sister organizations on the left were actually making peace something more difficult to reach and weakening us."
In 1996, following the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, he went to visit Yasser Arafat with some friends. "I was apparently the only Jewish person in the room who understood Arabic. I heard him say, 'Those idiots who have come here.' He treated us like a bunch of fools." In 2022, he sustained a moderate injury to his leg during the attack of the first female suicide bomber, Wafa Idris, at the Jaffa Street attack in Jerusalem. His academic home was and still is Bar-Ilan University. Once, during an interview he gave to the B'Sheva weekly Hebrew newspaper, he said that one of his innermost, heartfelt dreams is to be a secret advisor to Donald Trump on Middle East affairs.
Were he to meet Trump today, he would probably repeat to him some of the fierce criticism of the Palestinian Authority that he told us during this interview: "It was born out of sin, its entire life is based on transgression and all its activities against Israel are no more than iniquity. Its plan is to annihilate the State of Israel, and one of the many items of proof of that is the maps that it publishes, maps of the land from 'the river to the sea.' Palestine with no trace of Israel."
Q: What should we do then?
"We should dismantle the Palestinian Authority and set up on its ruins across Judea and Samaria seven emirates in the seven Arab cities of Judea and Samaria."
Kedar first published his seven emirates plan more than a decade ago. It is based on clan rule, "the only proven method that works in the Middle East." This is something that the academic world really does not like, he explains. It is not politically correct to talk about clans nowadays, or the fact that 80% of the murder cases in Israel are due to clashes between clans, or the fact that the government in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia – are all based on the rule of clans. In Hebron, there are five clans or extended families – the Ja'abri, Abu Sneineh, Qawasmeh, Natsheh, and Tamimi clans. In Nablus – the al-Masri, Tukan, and Shak'ah clans. In Ramallah – the Barghouti, Tawil, and Abu-'Ayn clans. In Jericho – the Erekat family. In Tulkarm – the al-Karmi clan. Local government should also be established in Jenin and Qalqiliya. The idea is to establish a form of 'emirate' in each of these cities with a constitution, an economic basis, and an autonomous legal system. Then, both Israel and the Arab world will ensure the industrialization and welfare of these local emirates. The specific interests and relations with Israel will be determined by the local government alone, and the same applies to water, electricity, and trade agreements."
Kedar proposes annexing the smaller Palestinian villages to Israel and applying Israeli sovereignty to them. "This accounts for no more than 15 percent of the population. They do not represent a demographic threat. Israel will remain in the rural areas forever. UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency) will be dismantled, and the treatment of the refugees will be handed over to the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). "For this," he complains, "the progressive agenda of the academic establishment has been constantly at me. Today, many more people now understand that we must remain there in order to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state with territorial contiguity and the resulting constant threat of terrorism, which we are already experiencing today."
In the 'New Middle East' that is currently taking shape at this very moment, Kedar maps out the sequence of events that have already taken place and what perhaps is to come: "It began with Hamas, then progressed to Lebanon, Hezbollah, Syria, and could apparently continue to Iraq and then further inland into Iran itself, to whose eventual dissolution, we too here in Israel, can certainly contribute."
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