Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Israel is a fragile state

 Karim Bitar, a professor of international relations affiliated with several universities and think tanks, interviewed former trader and book author Nassim Taleb about the Hamas-Israel war. 

OLJ / Interview by Karim Bitar, 02 January 2024 13:37

KB: Just 48 hours after the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, you sent me a message predicting that this war might turn out badly for Israel, because current circumstances are radically different from those of 20 years ago. You told me that Hamas had planned and led to a reaction from Israel which would quickly get international public opinions to change, after the initial fear and solidarity with Israel. You mentioned in particular, as factors that would drive this change, the presence of millions of people on social networks, even in the West, who sympathize with Palestinian suffering. And you told me a few days later that the two major trends on a global scale, two sometimes contradictory trends, the one that aspires to more freedom and the one that aspires to more equality, while often in conflict, were both working to the disadvantage of Israel. I was intrigued by these messages because you are one of the few who predicted the global economic crisis of 2008 and warned us, in the early days, about the spread of COVID. Can you clarify your thoughts on the war in Gaza and its impact on Israel?

NT: Let's not take sides and examine the situation from an empirical [and predictive] point of view. I'm not into current affairs; my profession is risk analysis and mostly concerns the fragility of systems. The world is moving from a traditional, hierarchical and vertical system towards a networked horizontal system, spontaneously, at all levels. This phenomenon is accelerated by globalization. The press used to be vertical, in the sense that you and I passively watched the TV set and received whatever information the system wanted to give us. We could not contribute to the debate. As I explained in 'Skin in the Game,' thanks to social networks, the relationship is now more symmetrical; each of us both gives and receives information.

Indeed, disintermediation and social networks have enabled the emergence of what has been called 'citizen journalism.'
And this radically changes the balance of power. In the past, information was controlled by restricting its main agents, namely journalists. It must be remembered that media professionals in the Western world are extremely fragile professionally; losing their job could lead to being excluded from the job market. For instance, a decade ago, writing a favorable article about Noam Chomsky, who was blacklisted — or rather, 'graylisted' — was a career killer. In today's world, there are more than a billion 'journalists.' This horizontality, the fact that we can no longer control information, is very bad news for Israel. Why? Because of the narrative. The story as curated by Israelis is now in competition with other narratives. Even the most censored platforms, like Meta, may ban some pro-Palestinian expressions, but people can circumvent this by playing with words and symbols. They can use euphemisms. In addition, as I explained in Antifragile, under conditions similar to today's, banning certain books makes them even more intriguing.

And on top of this trend towards more freedoms, there is an even more powerful phenomenon: The social justice accelerating treadmill. That is, the increase in dissatisfaction along with the realization of initial aims for equality. Historically, when groups begin to demand their rights, the more rights we give them, the more rights they will ask for, and claims will accelerate on the way to perfect equality. Things went downhill in France after the King finally acceded to the initial request for a constitutional monarchy. For instance, today, we have never been closer to equality between men and women, yet we have never had more voicing of discontent. So until the Palestinians become perfectly equal to the Israelis, they will complain and the conflict will get worse. This is Israel's great problem. Its structure is quite anachronistic.

Here you join the great New York Jewish historian Tony Judt, who said that Israel has become an anachronism. He recalled that when the Zionist idea was born in 1897, colonialism was in fashion. But when Israel came into being in 1948, colonialism was already out of fashion. His article caused controversy.

Exactly, it's like my friend Bernard Avishai who was whacked, so to speak, 30 years ago because he said that Israel was an immigration agency that later failed to become a real State.

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