Ask Haviv Anything - 152: Is Israeli society tearing itself apart? With Micah Goodman

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

To support our work, please consider joining our Patreon community (https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything), Substack (https://havivgur.substack.com/), or Buy Me a Coffee (https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur).We have merch! Find our awesome new mug and hat at https://shop.askhavivanything.com.And be sure to check us out on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/haviv.rettig.gur/) and TikTok (https://www.tiktok.com/@haviv.rettig.gur).--Most Israelis agree on almost everything that matters. So why does it feel like the country is coming apart?Two weeks before election day, Dr. Micah Goodman returns with two stories about Israel that contradict each other and are both true.We look at two Israels: the one held together by sacrifice and solidarity, the one consumed by grievance, fear, and political loyalty – and the millions of Israelis who live in both mental worlds simultaneously. And we ask a harder question: How much of our division is real and how much is cultivated by leaders whose power depends on it?A conversation about Israel’s hidden consensus, its failing politics, and the peace Israelis need to make with one another.--This episode is sponsored by the Tikvah’s Millstone Scholars program. A unique program designed for those middle-school years when young people begin deciding what they believe and who they want to become.For parents and grandparents wondering what comes after the bar or bat mitzvah, Millstone offers substantive, serious learning. This isn’t more Hebrew school; it’s a selective national honors program for seventh- and eighth-graders. Students meet weekly in small cohorts to study Jewish civilization, modern Israel, and the Jewish ideas that inspired America. Through primary sources and guided, seminar discussion, they develop the confidence to become proud Jews, proud Americans, and future leaders.Millstone offers in-person and online cohorts across thirty cities. Classes begin the week of October 18. You can learn more and apply at https://tikvah.org/haviv.--If you like what we do here, please consider joining our Patreon community at https://www.patreon.com/c/AskHavivAnything or our Substack at https://havivgur.substack.com/. You can also Buy Me a Coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/havivrettiggur. It helps us keep the lights on. On Patreon and Substack, you can also ask the questions that guide the topics we cover on the podcast, join our great discussions where listeners share news and valuable resources, and take part in our monthly livestreams where Haviv answers your questions live.If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at [e-mail]⁠.Musical intro by Adam Ben Amitai.

Hi, everybody. Welcome to a new episode of Ask Havid Anything. It is a pleasure to welcome back to the podcast. A friend of the podcast, my friend, teacher, prominent Israeli public intellectual, Mika Goodman, who has been here before. We've talked about many different subjects. Mika has written seven nonfiction books on subjects ranging from Jewish philosophy, the philosophy of technology, political philosophy. Mika hosts a podcast called Miflegate the Machshavot or The Party of Ideas with Efrat Shapira Rosenberg, a podcast produced by Beit Abit Haid in Jerusalem. The podcast is in Hebrew. It's aimed at an Israeli audience. And ahead of the election, they are actually launching a series of English language episodes that will go out on YouTube called The Thinkers, the Ideas Behind Israeli Politics. Be sure to check that out. And that's also going to be the topic of our discussion today in the run-up to the election. What are the big ideas or social trends or tensions that underlie these elections?

We're now in the home stretch of the campaign. By the time this episode publishes, it's probably going to be about two weeks to Election Day. So it's an opportunity to take a moment out of the campaigning, the thinking about the politics, the dramas of the Middle East, the dramas of this moment and the three years of war, and try to understand the much larger picture. Before we get into it, I want to tell you that this episode is sponsored by the Tikva Milestone Scholars Program. It's a unique program. It's designed for the middle school years when young people begin deciding what they believe, who they want to become. For parents and grandparents wondering what comes after the Bar Mitzvah or the Bach Mitzvah, Milestone offers substantive serious learning. It's not Hebrew school.

It's a selective national honors program for seventh and eighth graders. students meet weekly in small cohorts to study Jewish civilization, modern Israel, and the Jewish ideas that inspired America. Through primary sources and guided seminar discussion, they develop the confidence to become proud Jews, proud Americans, and future leaders. Millstone offers in-person and online cohorts across 30 cities. Classes begin the week of October 18. You can learn more and apply at tikva.org slash chaviv. that's Tikva, T-I-K-V-A-H-R-G-S-H-R-G-L-H-R-H-R-H-RG-H-RG-H-L-H-RG-L-H-RG-V-H-I-L-L-H-I-H-L-ROW. I happen to know for a fact that Mika himself has taught in Tikva educational programming.

I can't recommend the organization enough and the program enough. Also, folks, if you like what we do here, join our Patreon, subscribe to our substack. Those communities, they keep the lights on, and you also get to take part in conversations in asking the questions, the guide the topics we talk about. That happens over there. You are also part of monthly live streams, where I answer your questions live. Join us at patreon.com slash ask chaviv-anything or chavivgur. Dot substack.com. Those links are in the show notes. Let's get into it. Mika, how are you?

I'm really glad to be your chaviv. It's really great to have you. I want to dive right into this conversation. We've been batting some ideas back and forth. I mean, we sometimes bat ideas back and forth just for fun because we're nerds. But mainly, there's a lot happening to Israelis. And there's a tremendous amount of worry and anxiety in Israeli society that I don't know that we really fully understand about ourselves. We don't quite know what's happening to us, around us. You have suggested two narratives about this election. One narrative is about consensus. A new consensus has emerged. And another narrative is about how this election really is framed around some very profound divides. So there is a new political consensus and really deep divides. Let's start with the first narrative. We feel Israelis a solidarity, a consensus on the basic reality in which we live, and that should favor a more unified politics, more social cohesion. Walk us through the new consensus that you see in Israeli society.

These are not just two narratives about the elections. You have two narratives about Israel. And if you think Talmudically, they're both true. There's two stories about Israel. they're opposite stories and we're somehow both true. They capture the paradox of Israel. But the elections are a great window to look through this window

and to try to understand what's really happening in Israel. So the consensus narrative has many aspects. I want to focus on one, on the policy aspect. On the possibility that there's an invisible consendos in Israel as we're talking. And this invisible consensus has everything to do with the collapse of what Israelis call The Concepcia.

Khalif, I'm sure you spoke about the Concepcia many times here on your show, right? Absolutely. And also explain to Israelis that when you explain to foreigners that when in Hebrew you want something to sound fancy, you use the English word. That's called Ivrit Sophisticativit. Exactly. But the conceptia is the idea that the enemies are contained and deterred and, you know, war doesn't have to come. I want to offer different friend.

What is the conceptia? What is the pattern of things? the way of thinking that collapsed in October 7th, and on that ruins, we have a broad new consensus that could be the base for a new architecture for Israeli politics. So in 2005, Israel left Gaza, and there was a massive majority for unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. And we uprooted, I think, 9,000 fire on the Javido from their homes,

we evacuated the communities, and we left Gaza, and we told ourselves our story, we'll still be protected from Gaza. We don't have to be military presence territorially in Gaza to be protected from Gaza. Now, some people said, well, you know, it's very hard to maintain top intelligence about Gaza. If we're not there, if we're not present there because the Schenbett built a very effective network of human informers. Now, ever since we were in there, it was very hard for the Sheenbet to maintain that human intelligence network. that we had there.

But we told ourselves a story that even though that we have much less human informers in Gaza, we still know everything that's going on in Gaza. We could see Gaza because we have the best technology.

We have A200 and we have cyber and we have the cameras and we're in all their systems and they can't move without us noticing saying they can't whisper without us listening. They can't move without us seeing. So, and then October, so the concept was that technology compensates for territory. And as you know, on October 7th, the surprise, right, but we were shocked and were still shocked by not only that we didn't know anything, we didn't, like, I hear you speak many times, we didn't know about 600 kilometers of tunnels.

We didn't know that was going on. It's not only that we didn't know what their plans were. We didn't know. We were in the dark. But what's more troubling is that we didn't see and we thought that we see. We were in the dark and we thought we were in the light. We thought that we could see. We thought that we knew.

And, okay, so this is an important strategic awakening for Israelis. Maybe technology doesn't compensate for territory. It's like we bought our own myth that we are the startup nation and we have technological superiority. and when our enemies believe that myth, that's good. It creates deterrence. When we believe our old myths, that leads to strategic mistakes. Technology can't compensate for everything. Now, obviously, as you know, as I'm sure all our viewers and listeners know,

there's a broad consensus in Israel, a territorial withdrawal from anywhere. Not in Gaza, not Judea, Samaria, the West Bank, is not in the car as in the foreseeable future. That's not a right-wing position. That's not a centrist position. that's a central left position. The only difference between right reeners in central left is sounds like this.

If you're a yesh-at-tide voter from Odeen, you say, I'm for a territorial withdrawal and a Palestinian state maybe 50 years from now. It's beyond the foreseeable future. And if you're a Likutnik from Be'ercheva, you're saying never. So, you see, when the disagreement

relocated, and it's now about the far future, the present has emptied from a serious political policy disagreement. But that's only one, but then something else happens. And that was, while we were believing in the myth of technology that compensates for territory, we also believed something else. Our military has a shrunken size. I personally, when I was in a reconnaissance unit of tanks and my tank, brigade in when I was in Miloim, the first one I went, I was, I belonged to. They shut it down. So I moved

to another one. After a few years, they closed that one also. And they moved to another one. And they closed that one also. And then they didn't want me anywhere because, dude, you're being pounded, everything. And that was a process that the army went through. It was shrinking in size. And it was the idea that we don't really need a lot of soldiers. I mean, not these kind of like tanks, and infantry with guns and boots is primitive. The next war is all about

special units at Air Force and cyber attacks and robots on high tech. And this idea that because of technology, size of the army, doesn't matter anymore, was captured famously by Ehud Barak when he said,

We need a cava, catan, and chaka. a small and smart army. When he said smart, he means high-tech, futuristic army. And I think this was all by the Zyde guys. This is like Donald Rumsfeld.

You need special units with accurate missiles and good air force, and all the rest is less important. And how did we know that that was a guiding thought throughout, many years when our army was shrinking in size, that guiding fight shaped the debate about the Kharedim, the Old Orthodox, not serving. Now, Israelis never liked the fact. Mainstream Israelis, majority of Israelis, never liked the fact that they don't serve. But the arguments were always, it's not fair.

It was about equality. What in Hebrew is called Shivion Banete. You could, how do you translate it? Like equality in... Equality in the burden. Burden sharing. Yeah. It's not fair.

We serve. We don't serve. Why? Okay. But here's an argument that was never made. We need you. We can't protect our country without you. We don't have enough soldiers.

It was never an argument of national security. It was always in the family of it's not fair. And then October 7th happens. And we have to fight. A new kind of an army. In Hebrew, it's called Tsva terror. We used to have the idea that there's terror. terrorism and there's there's army with brigades and and and and

platooms and chain of command but Hamas and Chisbalah is a combination of two it's an army of terrorism so I think I'm trying to try to translate sabatirot which means it's an army you mean you mean strategically you're not you're not it's not a an epithet you're not saying that army that's terrorism oh no I mean it's like anti-Israel people do to the idea of you mean strategically is a different sort of army to an army you would think of as an army that's um yeah This new kind of an army.

Because it engages in guerrilla, because it is protected by civilians, because it will dig 600 kilometers of tunnels. An irregular army protect civilians. This kind of an army is protected by civilians. We have to fight that kind of an army. All your high-tech advantage, when you have to go into the tunnels, we have to fight, it turns out you have to have a lot of soldiers. That's the thing. And if you have to find these kind of armies on a few fronts like, he's about. and Hamas, plus Iran, plus the Khouti, plus, oh my God, we don't have enough soldiers.

And how did we solve that fact we didn't have enough soldiers? Let's recycle the same soldiers again and again. And now, you know, the, like, I met a neighbor of mine a few, like a week ago. And her husband is now in Lebanon. And he's serving for 100 days. And like, it's like the war is like officially over, right? So now it's just Bittachon Shotep, how do you say? That's just, um, but as Bitachon Shoteph is ongoing routine security.

But of course, the war is over, but Chzbollah isn't defeated. Not only that cannot be defeated. It's embedded in civilian population. There is no amount of, there's nothing that will make Hamas put down its weapons in Gaza. That's definitional to what Hamas is. No matter the destruction to Gaza, which it views as a strategic advantage. Diddle Chisbala for Lebanon. Frankly, diddle the Ayatollah,

Ayatollahs for Iran. How do you deal with an enemy in that sense is undeterable, hides behind the civilians. That is its strategic, everything. That is its strategic concept. It has no other strategy. And that's a kind of war that requires a tremendous amount of soldiers on a border, standing guard, because the enemy will only ever come for you. Yeah, even after the intense part of the war, you still have routine reserve duty. And we always had that. But when I was serving in Midloin, we used to serve 30 days a year. year. And Khabi, that sucked. We do. It sucked. And we didn't stop complaining. And every time a high-ranked commander would come, we would complain like there's no tomorrow. It's not fair.

We have lives. We're living. We have families. We have careers. 30 days. This new generation has to serve. You see, 100, 100 is the new 30. Like, this is not the war. This is just routine. So she tells me her husband is in Lebanon for 100 days. And he's an accountant in Modin. Like he's 34 and he has three kids and a wife and accountant in Modin. And he didn't sign up for this. It's not like he's, I want to be a fighter. He's just doing it because we don't have enough soldiers.

What happens if God forbid, and this is where it's going, the reservists, that whole infrastructure collapses, because she tells me next year he's not going back, over my dead body. And she's not the only wife saying that. And, Kaviv, you know these people, they are patriotic. They'll die for our country. But they won't say 400 days because someone else doesn't feel like it. So here is the thing. We made two mistakes because of the concept that we thought that technology compensates

precise. We thought technology compensates for size so we don't need territory to protect our yeshuvim, our kibbutzim, our communities. And we thought that we don't, that technology compensates to the size of the army. So we don't need the Khadidim. Those were, this is now broadly accepted by Israelis.

The myth of technology collapsed. We need concrete, real land and real people. We need land. And that's why this is the new consensus. Israelis are in the foreseeable future against a territorial withdrawal. And they are all for

the whole idea the all for recruiting the ultra-Orthodox and it's not about fairness anymore, it's about national security and to say and this double these two

conclusions that come from the collapse of one myth, the myth that technology compensates for concrete size this creates the potential of a new political architecture and here's why in Israel

we have only one swing state okay let's think about Ohio I don't know if this is in a if this is Michigan okay we have only one swing state

that could go both ways fucking sociologically the center right the center right of the Israelis that prioritized national security over anything else all other issues don't really matter

they're very hawkish there have a lot of suspicions towards the Middle East not a lot of sentiments to anything else the center right they're not about building settlements

will redeem Israel and they're not about pieces around the corner they're about okay so this group the center right Israel they were once told a story that the center left

the center left is promoting a policy that will risk Israel's national security because they believed and that's what that was true but they believed the center left was for a withdrawal

from a central left essential territory that protects Israel, right? To D. and Samaria, the West Bank. Okay, we have to stop that. In order to prevent that, the only way mathematically, if the political math works, is that we build a coalition with the oath of the Orthodox. We don't like that.

It sucks. They don't serve. It's not fair. Politics is politics. It's a sum of our compromises. In order to prevent the territorial withdrawal, meaning to neutralize the center-left, we have to build a coalition with the Haridi. That math used to make sense.

After the collapse of the two, after the collapse of the myth of technology with its two implications, well, the central left is against Terry Thel-Bitzro. They're not dangerous anymore. But by the way, a coalition with the Haridim that guarantees that we will never have a large enough army to protect Israel,

that does endanger Israel. So that math creates a whole new political architecture for Israel. That political architecture would be an architecture that reflects politically the invisible consensus that already creates. We need land, we need people, the center left is not threatening,

coalition with the Khadim is. So it's like... The need for this right-wing alliance, which is so profoundly divided on so many profound substantive issues and issues of fundamental life. I mean, the centrously couped voter and has much more in common with the opposition, with the bulk of the opposition voter than they do with the Kharedim in their daily life. And yet, that's not reflected in Israeli politics. That's not how they work. That's not where their loyalties lie. That's not how they vote. That's not how they talk. So I completely agree with you. 80% of Israelis all agree on the nature of the situation right now. Palestinian society, and this is in polls, sometimes they will favor two states, sometimes they will oppose two states, sometimes they will favor PA rule somewhere, rather than Hamas rule somewhere.

But overall, if you ask the simple question of what do we do with the Jews, you will get, shocking levels of, get rid of all of them, you will get levels that, you know, when an Israeli politician speaks the way the ordinary Palestinian speaks in a poll that is called genocidal. And therefore, there isn't really any profound divide on the security question in Israel. It's not like Eisencoat knows how to hand them a Palestinian state or wants to. And yet, none of that unity of mind and none of the huge gaps within the right-wing religious coalition are ever borne out. That's not what our politics look like.

They don't look like the unity you just described. What is the second part of the narrative? The fantasy of this unity, the fantasy of just as you know, the fantasy of this unity is called Brita Michelin. The covenant of the Israelis that serve. And to re-de-divate Israel differently, not right versus left, people that serve versus those who don't. That was an idea that was accumulating a lot power.

I thought power and popularity post-October 7th. It had its moments. By the way, it's also a very, it's at its core Zionism. Because when you say, and I'm using Zionism the way you think about Zionism, it's all it is, it's about saving Jews from destruction. It's a rescue plan. And Zionism was the understanding that what won't protect Israel is not praying to God and saying Psalms, that's not a rescue plan.

and trusting the non-Jews to protect us, giving them the power, they will protect us, that's also not a rescue plan, right? So Israelis are like, oh, we leave Judea Samaria, the West Bank, and now we have international, the international committee will guarantee our security. That sounds familiar. Or if we let the Haradim not serve,

they won't have a large enough army to protect Israel. Oh, but they're studying Torah. Right? and their studying of Torah that will protect Israel. These are both exilic attitudes. We have the only force that could protect ourselves is ourself. It's not the steady Torah of the Khadradiqadim, and it's not a guarantee of the international community.

There's a withdrawal from the West, from Judea, Saneh, the West Bank. So these are, and whoever agrees on that, and that's that, that foreign, that four of Zionism, is the base of Brita Michotteim of a powerful consensus that we have in Israel? And now, dear question, the tragedy, maybe the politics

does not reflect that consensus yet. I think it will one day, by the way, but we're not there yet because there's another story. And the gulh, because this imaginary glue, Zionism, service, policy that creates this new block

that really exists is what breaks the glue, that's right off of you. How does it feel, it feel like to be in the BB coalition? And how does it feel like to be the anti-Beebyby coalition?

Right? Somehow the personality of Netanyahu breaks us into these two blocks. So, the pro-Beebibis coalition has a few groups in it. Now, one group is the group that see themselves as the inheritors of the original Likud. And another are

many of the Mizrahi-Misrael, like the people that immigrated here from Middle Eastern countries. And another group is the religious Zionist, the Nidipas, and that's the core. And there's others, but so an important, a prominent piece in the self-awareness of, let's say, of the first coups. The people that are the inheritors of like the original aliqu. They have memories, very painful memories from, let's say, doing the War of Independence. I think it was in the first Hefakadish, the first ceasefire of the War of Independence, the Revisi.

the disciples of Zerzabutinsky, a founding father of the Israeli right, they've managed to bring a boat from France filled with immigrants and guns from France to Israel. They named it after the pen name of Zerbutinsky. Shabutinsky was a genius. He spoke and wrote like 10 languages.

One of them was Italian. And Italian, he called himself Altalena, which I think means for some reason, a sea saw. And this boat named Altalena was, now this is, okay, what really happened with the Altalena is so complicated because every historian had a different take.

We're on a sheer view, is how do the Likunikim, what's the narrative of the Israeli revisionist right? And so this boat makes us to the north of Tel Aviv, it gets messy there. In Kvalvitkin, Began gets on the boat, and the boat goes all the way to tell up to the center of Tel Aviv. And then David Ben-Grian gives a scandalous order.

And that is Bomb the Boat. And they do with the Bomb the Boat. And I hope I'm not making an historic mistake here. I think 16 Jews on that boat. Immigrants from Europe died. Bacon was on the boat also, by the way. I don't think that stopped then-Korean from shooting the boat. There's a lot of context here.

We're not going into context. You want to share it. Oh, by the way, David Benachem Began, heroically gave it order not to shoot back. Let me, can we add just two sentences of context? The guns are meant for the Israelis besieged in Jerusalem, and those are all from the right-wing militias under Began and a little bit also Lehi. And the new army had been established by the new state,

but it was almost nearly entirely Haganah, the socialist militia. And that was basically the new army. And Ben-Gurian basically felt that either we have a state, with a single army or we don't have a state. Because if you have different militias in the state and they're politically affiliated militias, you won't have a state. And so the guns can come in, but only to the new IDF. And Began's feeling isn't just, hey, we smuggled it.

It belongs to our guys. It's our guys are in the single most desperate position in the entire war. They could get wiped out. It's militarily simply true. And also it's Jerusalem. So it's critical in other ways, in spiritual ways and in identity. anyways. So these are two men who deeply believe that in Jewish unity, in Jewish statehood, and that the other one is actually trying to prevent the future of Jewish unity, because,

one, he's using his left wing much bigger militia to define the state as his own, and that's what Begian believes, and Mungarian believes, this guy's going to keep militias outside of the idea if there's not going to be a monopoly on power, and we're not going to have a real state. So that's where that fire order comes from, but it is nevertheless Jews firing on Jews in the middle of the Great War of the 1948 war. And for the Began people also, it comes on top of painful, other painful memories where throughout World War II, people from Ben Gurian's camp were hunting down people from Began's camp and handing them over to the British. That's also true. That also has context. Right.

to rein in their attacks on the British in the periods when the government Vengarian led were you be right. So there's a lot of pain. There's a lot of pain there. And for this part of there, every time the left, the elites play a dirty trick on the right, they're shooting at our boat again. It always comes back to the Al Khaled. Okay, that's one group.

Another group are the, we'll do this very quickly, obviously. The other group are the Mizraim, the Sfaradim, the people immigrate, the, I think there to the majority of Israelis, I think. And the people who came to Israel from Khali, from Kurdistan, from Iraq, from Baghdad, from Egypt, from Morocco, in the 50s. And I'm sure

your viewers and your listeners probably heard this, that I think within three or four years, Israel has to more than double its size. That would be like the United States of America within four years, absorbing a wave of immigration of how many of 350 million?

350 million people. Is that possible? And this is a third world country, not abundant America, third world country. And different people told Ben-Gro, don't do it. It's economically impossible. And Ben-Grew was like, yeah, it's economically impossible, but we were born for this, and this is what Israel is for, and we're going to make it possible. And anyway, there was an extremely successful, but mistakes were made. They did discriminate against the Jews that came from Muslim countries,

from Arab-speaking countries and symbolically, and the most painful memory is that they located them in like refugee camps called Mahabharot in the Negev and in other places

and in their memories when they tried to find a job they couldn't get a job because they're from Morocco and not from Poland and the Yemenites famously they cut down their payas and they tried to transform them

they patronize their culture they discriminated against the economically. So these are very powerful and painful memories that that group has. I'm moving very briefly to another group.

The religious Zionists. The center of this narrative and the religious Zionists is the 2005 2005 disengager from Gaza where how many, I think, 17 communities were uprooted right

and 9,000 9,500 Jews were uprooted from their home, and the settler project was the pride of the religious Zionism. That was their project, their baby, their movement. They were attached, it was their identity. And when they went out to protest in the streets and blocking streets to stop, to practice their democratic right to protest and stop

the disengagement, the heat natkut from Gaza. So, now here there's very famous stories. I don't even know if they're true. It doesn't matter. We're talking about the narrative. 14-year-old girls were thrown into jail without a right to seal boyer, without due process. And then, to quote, Amit Sega, or the most important representatives of this narrative,

we call the Supreme Court. hadcashar to baguats and half one not had in a nobody was home

no one was home because when it's our human rights they're not taken as seriously

so you have these three so so and all these three groups they're the Nataliao camp and when they see

and here's how Netanyahu gets elected the the Israeli elites This is not a myth. Have an allergic reaction to Netanyahu.

Mainstream media is allergic to BB. The academia can't stand BB. There is an allergic reaction, Netanyahu. And there's three core cases directed against them. All the anti-BeeBee energy is what activates the pro-Beebibing camp. This is, Bibi has the alchemy, the political alchemy of Bibi is turning the energy. is turning the anti-Bibi campaign into the campaign

that activates his base and gets him elected. That's the alchemy of Netanyahu and that's, okay, so that's one form of politics. Now, Kaviv, if we run a visit, how does it feel to be an anti-Beebbi and the protest, like the Kaplan protestors, how does that feel from within?

Well, if the language of the pro-Bee-Bee camp is the language of frustration, You screwed me there and you screwed me there and you crushed me there and I'm angry. A lot of frustration, a lot of grievance, maybe that's the word I'm looking for. Grievance, the more dominant emotion in the center-left anti-Beeb-Camp is not grievance, it's anxiety. And I want to tap into that anxiety, I think that is how it feels. They wake up one morning and they see this government, which is the sum of all of their nightmares. A combination of racism,

Ittemal Benkville, you know, Mayor Kahana, by the way, it is racism, fundamentalism and the academic in the sense of negation of modernity, the Chavadim, and the corruption of the Likud. Like it's seen as really, really corrupt. And that Trinity, fundamentalism, racism, and corruption, okay, so that's the sum of all your nightmares.

And then they look at the demographic trends. who's having a lot of kids, who's having less kids. And demography is destiny. And I forget the numbers, you probably know them. Like by 2016, 45% of Israel will be ultra-Orthodox. And another 35% will be messianic religious Zionists. I'm making it up. I'm not making it.

The numbers are very stark. The average ultra-Orthodox woman is around six kids. The average religious Zionists is around four. The average secular Israeli is just over two. Replacement, but not a lot more than replacement. Like two and a half. So they look at the fusion, they say, okay, there's like 60% of Haredim, 30%. And then there's like seven liberal secular Israelis, not 7%.

Seven. And some coffee at the last coffee house of Tel Aviv before the lights go out. And they're like, oh my God. We're speaking about images, political imagery, folks. We're not literally saying this is what we believe. we're trying to describe the imagery of what other people are thinking. Wise or panic attack. So we look at this government and they're saying,

oh my God, this is not a bump in the road and soon things will go back to things as normal. This government, that's the future. That's where we're going. That will be the new normal. So in 2023, judicial before all the whole, when Israel was clashing within itself,

it was the moments where all the demons were unleashed, the frustrations of the right and the anxiety of the left started clashing. But if we think about this closely, the frustration, the grievance of the right, it comes from the past, all the way from the Eltona. The anxiety of the left is directed at the future. And I'm not saying that there's not no anxiety in the right and no frustration and no grievance and the left, but the dominant emotions Israel is today where the anxiety of the left is clashing with the

grievance of the right. Now this is where I described now, these emotions might be stronger than the invisible consensus regarding policy. Because the invisible consensus regarding policy means a new infrastructure for Israel, not the

two camps, a camverse camp. It's something else. It's a centrist mainstream Israelis versus other small groups in the periphery that's reorganizing Israeli politics. But what's sustaining Israeli politics is a camp versus camp. It's the camp that has a panic attack directed at the future and a camp that has all these grievances coming from the past

and now they're clashing. And Khaled even want to add another layer to this analysis. And that's the American layer. And that is when we're seeing how this problem in Israel Israel is also a part of a political climate crisis. Like there's a climate crisis, which is global, and there's a political climate crisis. And just like it's hard to speak about weather in Tel Avid

without understanding Elinio, which is a global phenomenon, which for the same reason it's hot in Tel Aviv, there's floods in Peru and heat waves in North America. It's all... Also, you can't understand Israeli politics without understanding the political climate crisis

that Western civilization is going through. And there's a certain structure of polarization which is repeating itself around the world, but it's an American structure. I'll try to give it you in a nutshell.

If you ask Trump supporters, I'm talking about like Steve Bannon, I'm listening to this podcast, and trying to figure out this pattern of thinking, who's in control who's in control the left

the left is governing America Hollywood is left academia is left what he's called the administrative state they're all progressive elitists globalists the part of the judicial system the Silicon Valley

obviously all this the deep state is left the deep state is stronger than this state therefore us working class Americans we are controlled by the left you ask anti-trumpists who's in control what are you talking about

not only that Trump is in power he's a dictator no constitution no checks no balances he goes to a war without us in Congress what are you talking about there's no bureaucracy nothing can stop them he's crazy these the right is in control

the right they're kings right though the protest, no king. Trump is a king. This is an epistemic crisis, Chaviv. Where the right is living in America, where in their mind the left is in power. And the left is living in a different America, where the right is in power.

We used to argue about the question, who needs to be in power? Now in an epistemic crisis, we're arguing about who is in power and are living in different Americas, but with a shared attitude. We're all the weak side, were all victims.

Kaviv, that sounds familiar to Israelis, right? We have the same epistemic crisis in Israel. If you ask a BB supporter,

you've interviewed, I really enjoyed your interview with Gaddi Top. You ask Gaddi. Gaddi, the BB camp, the BB camp. You ask Godi, yes,

Godi, yes. Who's running Israel? Now, you would say, BB's prime minister for 70 years, I think, or 80 years, I forgot. since the ball for a declaration.

That's right. Like, my girls kind of forgot there was a Bennett moment. Like, it was always BB. They don't know a reality where it's not BB. So you think, of course, you ask the BB supporters, you know he's in control? The left is to control of the Academia and mainstream press. And especially what's most important in Israel, because of the structure of our democracy, is the legal system in the Supreme Court.

And they call all the shots. and they're using the power against us. And by the way, there's a lot of truth on that. I'm not saying that's not true. I'm just saying this is a very, it's a very, it's a very powerful narrative. And we? We the right mirrors that they couldn't gain? We are persecuted by these elites.

Look what they did to Beebe. Look at the court cases. You're asking anti-BeeBeeBee? Bibi's in control. The right is in control. They're dictators. They're crushing us. There's nothing they could stop us.

There's no constitution. There's no checks. There's no balances. They're going while. They're going crazy. We're in an epistemic crisis. Every camp lives in an Israel. We're in their mind.

The other camp is in control. And they have a shared attitude. We're all victims. We're all weak. So you have, in that sense, I share the two narratives of Israel. The second narrative where grievance,

where grievance classes with anxiety. That's the Israeli version of an American structure pattern. It's, it's, it's, it's, is it just inherent to the nature of information today? Is it a function of social media, of the algorithms of the, of the mobility of society so people move to like-minded areas and never actually meet people from the other side? That's kind of polarization that we're seeing in France and Britain and Canada and America and Israel. I mean, is it just, is it just that, this epistemic divide despite the fact that Israelis now functionally 80% of them agree? on what they themselves claim to be,

the four top issues that are, they prioritize for state policy. Is it just that? These are, yeah. Israel isn't a paradox, because the forces that are dividing us are not Israeli. They're global.

We're in an information, where the information technology is creating a very same pattern of polarization in Brazil, in Spain, in Poland, in Israel, in America. It's like, These are global or maybe, like, I want to say, like, they're American-style polarization.

The forces are dividing us. Israel are not uniquely Israeli. The forces that are uniting us are uniquely Israeli. The Brita Mechartin, the covenant of the people that Serp, that's uniquely Israeli. Why do you think it'll win out? What makes you convince that that sense of solidarity and that sense of shared interpretation of the world, which most Israelis do share? Most Israelis overall, almost all Israeli Jews.

I mean, the overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews and probably half of Israeli Arabs, give or take, depending on how you read polls and it's really complicated, but huge numbers of Israeli Arabs. All of that spectrum shares a sense of what the world actually looks like and what needs to happen. And you think that that will triumph over these forces? I have to tell you, if you watch the news, if you listen to the Prime Minister, if you listen to the opposition leaders, if you listen to the entirety of their Knesset list, you will not think the solidarity would win. Why do you think the solidarity will win? First of all, because that's why I want the belief. That's a very good reason. But I'm also speaking long term, because I think, what is victory?

Victory is not that, I think, one camp defeats the other camp, but the whole structure of two camps, which is artificial, it's not real, is defeated, and you have a new political architecture on the other side. And sadly, I thought this will happen after October 7th. And here we are strapped in two camps and we're asking who's going to win the camp of BB's a dick theory is crushing us and there's no future. We have a panic attack. The left has been squaring us for a 70, whatever years.

And they're still in control and we have to really take power this time. These two narratives, which is the Israeli version of American polarization, that's winning today. I agree with you. I agree with you. After the Yom Kippa War, Yom Kippa War, Israel went through a massive earthquake, right? And that earthquake, in the end, transformed Israel. But it took a while for the transform Israel.

Like we had Yom Kippo in 73. We had elections in 74, and the elections of 74 weren't, they didn't reshuffle everything. We didn't have a new political structure out in 74. The earthquake of 73 only materialized into a new structure of politics in 77. When you had a powerful centrist party called Dasch

that changed the entire political structure in Israel and enables Began to take power and to create something new. I think now, I mean, I know the math, the past is not always, is not a, the past is not always a great map for the future. but it's the only map we have. It's not an accurate map, but it's all we have.

Right now, if we use the past as a map for the future, now we're in 74. These are the elections right after the war. Israelis didn't inhale this yet, but I'll tell you how it looks like we're in the hells. When the Israelis that fought this war and saved Israel, that's a different Israel with a different vibe than the Israelis are currently leading Israel.

It's a different Israel. And Israelis say there's Israel shall Mata and Israel shall Mala. There's Israel from the bottom and Israel from the top. And Israel from the top is dysfunctional, lazy, right? Correct sometimes. Think about what happened with the Dubai air. So you have the classic story of two Israelis, right? You have the Israel that screwed up, right?

The whole, the intelligence community. Just to clarify, there are very clear laws that a special citizen. Security Division and the Transportation Ministry is supposed to approve pilots coming in. This guy was not allowed to fly in Oman, his country of birth, because he was radicalizing online and that was known to authorities and he was still approved. Then I've been to Israel and not been this terrorist who tried to bring it down. So there's an institutional deep failure that this person was allowed to be the co-pilot of a flight from Dubai coming in to Israel. And that is something that has been very widely debated, you know, in primetime Israeli news.

And while we have this tremendous failure of the systems from the top, we have this amazing heroic stories of Israelis coming from the bottom and saving the day. Now that image is such an Israeli image. That's the story of October 7th. This is the story that Israelis believe. There's two Israelis. Now the story of polarization, we're in two camps and there's grievances and the other, a story that is told by Israel from the top. The story of Israel that's filled with solidarity

and it's not lazy, it's altruistic, and it's not, um, his thinking is not trapped in systems, but it's innovative. That's the Israel from the bottom, Midouim Israel, startup Israel, entrepreneurial Israel, uh, uh, volunteer Israel, that's the Israel. Will we have a, now Israel's in a juncture, will everything that's not healthy on top trickle down to the bottom or will what's healthy in the bottom make it up to the top?

So my optimism is based on Israel's Shulmatah and that's only 77. Israel from the bottom. Israel from the bottom Israel, the Israelis that fought this war, Israelis that sacrificed everything, Israelis that serve together and realize that these, they're brothers and sisters

that serve with them, they're the ones carrying Israel. real on their shoulders and we shouldn't be divided by false myths. So in other words, you share the rights elite versus popular versus the people kind of framing, but not in a way that serves the right. The very divisiveness is an elite project. You say, you feel, you argue, analyze, and in fact the solidarity is bottom up. And in the end, the solidarity will therefore.

outlast. This is, by the way, a great truth of many political systems, but also of Jewish history, the Maccabees faced the Hellenizing Jews, and the Maccabees, one of their great sources of of power is that ordinary peasant Jews were more conservative, very horrified at the desecration of the temple, and would join the guerrilla forces of the Maccabees. That is true against Rome. That is true over the course of Jewish history. That is one of the great strengths is the solidarity from the bottom of the soldiers willing to show up. If a member of my family who is currently on the Syrian border served 435 days, his willingness to show up is the story of Israeli strength, not, you know, the politics of BB and Israel, Katz, and

Gallant, right, hating each other and trying outmaneuver each other and maybe deciding some more decisions based on their hatred of each other. It is him willing to show up. And that strength, you think also in domestic politics is ultimately going to be the story of Israel rather than the politics. I don't want to sound naive. I want to, there's, Jonathan Sachs has a distinction which is optimism and hope. And optimism is a prediction. You think things will be better.

Hope is when you add to the calculation that things will be better, your ability to influence that. And I do see a lot of agency around me, among young Israelis. I see a lot of agency. So it's not optimism. It's not naive optimism.

It's, I also believe that in order for something to happen, you have to believe that it could happen. And sadly, I don't, I don't see this new Israel, this new architecture materializing for this round in these elections. Sadly, the second story, the story which is an American story, concretized and having its own Israeli flavor, is now winning the day.

But there is another story. There's a new consensus in Israel, there's solidarity in Israel, that's all so real. Now, it's possible that, you know, this new information environment blocks any possibility for things to change. Let me lay out why I find a lot of this

very frustrating conversation, not your analysis, which I think is right, but the way Israelis sort of feel a little bit lost and a little bit confused about why they're both deeply connected and have solidarity and also deeply divided. I have a belief that's slowly coming into focus that this is, that what divides us is a lot less honest and authentic and real

than what unites us. This is my hyper-optimistic, but very angry take. I have never felt at home in either political camp. I've never felt loyalty to the left. I've never felt loyalty to the right. The thing that creeps me out about Bibi is how loyal they are to him. This used to worry me on the left,

on the question of the peace process. Like, what if it doesn't work? What do we do then? And there was no capacity to even have that conversation. And now I say things like, look at the two specific detailed things, BB is screwing up, and I get just a torrent of people writing me, you have BB derangement syndrome, Raghab, they call it, right? You have all these, these pathologies that are preventing you from understanding how great a mani is. And I'm like,

okay, let's imagine I'm totally pathological, but what about those two specific problems that I'm identifying that you will agree with me if we take this three sentences forward. So can we just get to those three sentences and we set aside all the pathologies and you just tell me what you think about the actual errors that I have identified and I'm asking about. And I see these inability, these political identifications and loyalties as creating an inability to have a real conversation. And it bothers me because Bibi works for me. I'm the citizen. He's the elected leader. I don't work for him. Like he's not a king. You know what I mean? Like the social contract is that I, as the citizen, am above him and I need, I demand answers.

And his refusal to give answers, what frustrates me is that my fellow bosses of him, which is to say my fellow citizens, don't similarly demand those answers. So I also, you know, socially over the course of my life, I'm just going to do a little bit of a rant. I apologize. Socially, I kind of am on the right. My friends are mostly right wing. My colleagues, I went to Hebrew University and I learned Machhevdi Israel, Jewish philosophy,

which is a, you know, conservative, more religiously tended. If you go to study at Hebrew University, Jewish philosophy, you usually are less secular, and usually are slightly more conservative. But the right feels broken in that way. And culturally, I don't find myself there just because of those politics of loyalty, those politics of a camp. And I've spent years complaining about the left's myopia, about the fact that it has no vision for the country.

Peace process collapsed. Now what? And there's nothing. There's no explanation for how the peace process collapsed. You can't go now to the democrat team or to, you know, minutes or labor, or even yesheteid. Yeshathid, they're more hawkish. They do have explanation. But you can go to the proper left of Israel and say, what the heck was

the second intifada about? How do we actually pull out of anywhere like you want? And there's no answers. They don't say. They'll say things like, you can't lose hope in the possibility of peace. That's adorable. That's for CNN. That is not an answer to my question, which is how.

Because we actually live here. We actually need the answer to how. So I have no loyalty to these camps. My loyalty is to country. I have no loyalty to party. I'm not interested in party. And from that position, okay, I look at these narratives. And one side I believe and one side I don't believe.

I believe the anxiety of the left. Because I can't get answers to the question of checks and balances on the right. Not from Gaddi Taub, not from Moshe Koppel, people I respect, people I read and listen to. and when I want to dig in and get the answer, but what checks executive power? I get more talk about the court. I've wanted to weaken the Israeli Supreme Court for 20 years. I can make that case.

I can make a case that nobody will be able to do. Every left winger concedes the point that I've ever argued with on the question of the court. And so let's weaken the court. We have to. What are the checks in the system because they aren't there? And if you're going to be the minority in Israel, like you said, this is the anxiety, demographics is destiny.

the checks in the constitutional system to make sure that Shas, because minorities have overwhelming power, massively overrepresented in terms of policy power in a government where the big party is dependent on the little party for a coalition, Shas will be able to decide the forced by law public religiosity of the city of Tel Aviv and its secular inhabitants. And if you're a secular person looking 20 years ahead and saying what prevents that, And nobody on the right is willing to even acknowledge that if they're going to shape a constitutional order, they actually need to give an answer to what will be a limit on their power, then one side is not being honest in this conversation. And that side is the right. And then I actually went and dug into over the last few years because of Isha' bin Chaim and his claim of First Israel and Second Israel, right? He's this journalist who has a PhD in Shas, and I think in the literature,

the religious literature of Ovadiyosif, yeah. And a really thoughtful, serious guy until he kind of turned into this propagandist who has started to talk about how there's a first Israel, which is this Ashkenazi wealthy, and the second Israel, which are the Mizrahi downtrodden. And now that the Mizrahi are coming up to the top, the Ashkenazim are asking, you know, who moved my cheese? has all these like imageries, imaginaries about this shift. And then you go to the data and you discover it's almost entirely a fiction. Ashkenazi men in Israel have a salary gap of about 20 points

to Mizrahi men. That's the wage gap between Ashkenazi and Zrahi men until you add in education. When you correct for education, it shrinks to zero. It's like three. It's almost nothing. Also, part of the reason that the gap is decreasing is that we don't know who's who anymore. More and more Israelis are intermarried. To the point where it doesn't really, I believe, I genuinely have come to believe. The right wing's targets, right, who is the Ashkenazi superclass? Well, I come with a politics of grievance to the Attorney General's office, to the Supreme Court, coding it as Ashkenazi supremacy. I come to these institutions with the grievance politics.

they can't respond with grievance politics. I think it's fake. I don't think a single ecudnik actually cares about the Altalena, and we all have to listen to members of Knesset at the podium in the Knesset and in their press releases talk about how the Altelena was this terribly defining moment of, it was, by the way, a tremendously defining moment in the 1940s. And it might have even been a little bit important in the 1950s. And it said something about Began's commitment to unity and democracy.

And going forward, and by the way, Ben-Guriam was right, not in Al-Talena shooting, but to demand a single army. And everybody there had a good point, and they found a path that wasn't a civil war, which many new nations do devolve into civil war, and Israel didn't. And so there was this tremendous thing that when he has nothing to do with Dudu Am Salin of Likud,

being the minister for the government in charge of the government corporations and appointing all of his friends throughout the government corporations, even if they're not qualified, and calling it a great victory for Mizrahi equality. And so, yes, I have come to believe that these narratives no longer are real. They are only political narratives and they only serve to hold on to power. And that's it. What if your final point, or my reading of your final point, the solidarity is real and bottom up and lived?

I had a gdud, I was kicked out of it, I don't know, five years ago, but they took all the older people everyone above 37 and pushed them all out because they didn't need that many soldiers. It's so offensive. They did it to me also. It's so offensive. And I was like, wait, am I 37? Holy crap. But that happened.

But in that gud, in that battalion, was every Israeli, every kind. And I don't, not even Jewish, Bedouin, and Mizrahi and Jews from India and Jews from America and Jews from Yemen, every kind of Israeli was there, and we were equals. And the high-tech guy was the Yemeni guy. And we even had an Ashkenazi leftist who's opposed to the occupation, but we had a couple of times where we had to serve in the West Bank, and he refused to carry a gun, and the battalion commander let him be the cook. So he would cook for everybody, but wouldn't patrol.

But he was there. He wanted to be there. That would solve the problem for another Israeli who wouldn't be there. And he went off and voted, you know, far left, and was never not an honest and remarkable guy. So every kind of Israeli was there. That is the truth of Israeli society. But, and this is the key, we are led by people who need the country divided, need us to hate each other, will build political narratives that it is about holding onto power.

They themselves don't believe it. The guy running to replace Netanyahu is a, was born in Tveria to a Moroccan family, grew up in Eilat, one of the poorest towns in Israel, certainly when he was growing up in it, and rose up the ranks of the army to become chief of staff. He is the story of Mizrahi equality. And the guy running to represent the great Mizrachi underclass, second Israel, finally taking its rightful place in power, is a wealthy, Ashkenazi millionaire who belongs to the Ashkenazi elite that founded the state. And it's just all fake. None of it's real. I truly, I don't believe it anymore. What you're expressing now is to quote you, is very angry and because of that optimistic.

Because you're saying our divisions are not organic divisions. They're artificial and are constructed from the top. I do think it only works because they're pressing on buttons that actually exist. I think they do exist. I think they're weak. I think here's the way to think about the difference between real Israel and real America is that if you ask, I think it was Thomas Friedman wrote this piece in the New York Times in Trump's first term. And he said, I hate Trump because Trump is making me stupid.

He bought real estate in my brain and anything I think about, I always think about Trump. I was reading that when I was thinking, hey, that's Israelis with BB. But actually, actually, if you ask Trump supporters, what's your vision for America, you'll get a certain vision? If you ask Trump haters, what's your vision for America? You'll get a different vision. These are two Americas. In Israel, we have the epistemic crisis, but not a vision crisis. We're living in different Israel's, urine control, no woman control.

But you ask BB supporters. Not all of them. critical mass of them. What's your vision for Israel? Yes, BB haters. Not almost all there. What's your vision for Israel? You look at the same Israel.

So in America, the argument about Trump is actually a reflection of an ideological clash. In Israel, the argument that BB doesn't reflect an ideological clash, it masks,

it hides the end of the ideological clash. The real polarization is not between mainstream Israeli. It's not between right and left. It's seen mainstream Israeli and other groups.

The racists from here, the post-sionists from here, the Chardiddee, there's the Israelis that serve or more similar to each other than they are to other groups. You'll help Barack Obama. Can I end with Obama? In 2004, remember his famous speech in the DNC where no, there's no blue states, no red states, only the United States. I think he wasn't even a senator. But that speech made in presidents.

And in that speech, he has this line where he says, we are not as divided as our politics suggests. Now, I think that line of Obama does not describe America. I think, I might be wrong. I think America is as divided as its politics suggests. If you love Trump, that's one America. If you hate Trump, it's a different America. You are as divided as your politics suggests.

That line captures Israel. We are not as divided as our politics suggests. And sadly, sadly, so far, the story that's winning is the political story. But the political story, where two camps divided by this epistemic crisis, is not a reflection of Israel. It's a distortion of Israel. We have to break the structure. How do we break the structure?

After the Yankee-Poo War, we made peace with Egypt, right? Yeah. After this war, we have to make peace. But it's not the Israeli-Arab peace treaty. It's the Israeli-Israeli peace treaty. Now, how does a peace treaty look like? It reflects the Israeli consensus. As you know, most Israelis think that the judicial system needs to be corrected and fixed.

Not that way, not radically. There is a consensus, but how it could. Let's do that. We agree regarding the Khadim. So let's recruit them. I mean, we can argue how, the Bennett way, No, but all these things demand trust. They all demand trust.

So I think trust only comes from the bottom. I need to trust that you are not a crazy psychopath. So show me that you're not a crazy psychopath. So these things come from the bottom. What about the Peace Now movement? I'm a peacenik. I'm for Peace Now. I don't think there's peace now with the herbs.

Mogulis Abides don't. But peace now is between Israelis. There is an invisible consensus. How do we turn that into a visible consensus? We're not as divided as our politics suggest. How does that happen? I don't think this, this can't happen in election season. But it can't happen after election season.

Don't we, do we need a new political system that incentivizes unity, that pushes away from a politics of endless crisis? That doesn't, you know, Netanyahu now talking about in the three weeks before an election, saying there's a lot, a lot of, there's war coming, people are about to attack us, I can smell it in the air. And everyone, right? right winger and left winger, baby voters on my street saying, yeah, no, obviously he's lying for the campaign. Come on. You know, you know, what they say about Trump, don't take him literally,

but do take him seriously, right? But it's this never-ending politics of crisis, never-ending politics of, and what it, by the way, ends up doing, not that many Israelis agree with Ben-Gvill, but Netanyahu's dependence on Ben-Ville means that Ben-Ville runs massive amounts of policy that most Israelis, even most coalition voters, don't agree on. And so it ends up functionally being the very radical politics that you and I know is not actually public opinion. So how do we build a system where the incentive is the mainstream, rather than the incentive is the radicals?

I don't know. I just know the answer. I know that what you just said, that's the question. And because Israel is different than America, different many countries, where we are polarized emotionally, but we're not polarized ideologically. In different countries, when you're polarized, ideologically, you're polarized emotionally.

Israelis are, there's the emotional polarization, without ideological polarization among the Israelis at Serb, among mainstream Israelis. That paradox, where Israel is polarized like any other country, but also breaks records of solidarity as opposed to other countries, these Israeli paradoxes, this is the material to work with. These paradoxes, I am not very optimistic. about the short term.

I am more optimistic about the long term. Besides AI, AI will come and destroy the long term walls. We've done that, yeah. The question is how unified we will be in the post-apocalyptic wingsland. Micha, this whole conversation felt like a walk through my depression. So thank you. No, look, it's a time of... Depression that comes from the fact that you actually believe in Israel.

You know, when the Iranians come to destroy Israel, I'm extremely confident, I'm extremely calm, I feel strong, I feel capable, I felt that way, long before I knew the Israeli Air Force could literally overfly Iran at will. This feels deeper and real and more visceral, this, this battle between brothers that cannot heal. And, you know, it feels almost as though parents, so to speak, the political leadership egging on. on the strife is the betrayal. Is the betrayal. There's so many serious right-wing policy arguments that need to be aired, some of them need to be followed, that are rich and serious and legitimate part of the conversation. But the defining of the movement on the strife, the left is a little bit of a sad case.

I mean, it couldn't take political advantage of October 7 is how incompetent the left is politically and in terms of building a movement, center left, whatever you want to call it. But so we have this just dilapidated weak political leadership whose one trick is to set us against each other to hold on to whatever shreds of power they have while they don't actually run the place all that well. That is what the election really feels like it's about to most Israelis, the sense of falling apart internally. I think we walk through it a lot.

I think I learned a lot. I think people have learned a lot. But it's still just sitting there, you know, just sitting on our show. shoulder weighing us down, and we are not served well by a leadership that sustains it, that lives off of it. The good news about this pessimism is that we're probably wrong. Just because the world is so complicated and we'll probably always make it our predictions raw.

Amen. Thanks, Michan. Thanks for coming on. And, oh, all Israelis listening, go vote. I don't care who you vote for. Go vote. I do care a little bit, but you've got to go vote, no matter what. Even if I disagree with you, make sure to go vote.