Ask Haviv Anything - Episode 27: Music amidst trauma - a conversation on life in a war with Aya Korem and Adam Ben Amitai

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

There are many ways to process and manage painful and difficult times. After the massacre of October 7 and the multi-front war that ensued, many Israelis turned to music, and often to the powerful ballads and melodies of singer-songwriter duo (and married couple) Aya Korem and Adam Ben Amitai.Aya and Adam join us in a special song-laden episode to take a look back at 21 months of pain, resilience, solidarity and, in the end, also hope.This episode was sponsored by Bennett and Robin Greenspan of Houston, Texas, who believe in Israel's centrality and importance for the Jewish world.They chose to dedicate this episode to Edut710en.org, a grassroots, volunteer-driven initiative established in the wake of October 7 to listen to, document, preserve, share and amplify the voices of survivors, first responders, and entire communities who experienced Hamas’s brutal attack firsthand. Over 1,600 testimonies have already been recorded to this date—many of them accessible at www.edut710.org.We hope you like our new musical intro, written just for us by the incomparable Adam Ben Amitai.Please join me on Patreon to support this project: ⁠ www.patreon.com/AskHavivAnything⁠. If you would like to sponsor an episode, please email us at ⁠[e-mail]⁠.A podcast by Haviv Rettig Gur

Hello, everybody. Welcome to an extraordinary episode of Ask Haviv Anything. We are probably, possibly, hopefully, toward the end of the war, of the long war, the 21-month war in Gaza, started by October 7. We are recording ahead of Netanyahu's trip to Washington, in which President Donald Trump has already said. The Israelis have agreed to a 60-day ceasefire that will get out 8 to 10 living hostages, and which is roughly half of the number of living hostages still in Gaza, and hopefully be a first step toward a final conclusion of the war under American parameters that talk about Hamas's leadership leaving Gaza and Hamas being disarmed and other forces coming in

and beginning the whole question of law and order and rebuilding. So we're looking at, you know, for the first time we can imagine that end. It's an end that doesn't have Hamas in power in Gaza, which is, of course, the fundamental Israeli war goal, and nobody has any idea if Hamas will agree to it, if levers of influence over Qatar will work. We don't know. We are in the same fog that everyone else is in, but it is possible, more than it has ever been in the past, that we are toward the end. and Rechel and I, who if you're a regular watch or listener of this podcast, you know, is the executive producer and my wife and boss have decided to take a little bit of a break from the usual kinds of conversations that we have about this war, about, I would say, history and try something utterly and completely different that is totally new to us. So if you don't like it, that's okay. It's important to spice things up.

We have invited our very, very good friends, Ayakoram and Adam Ben Amitai, who are two of the most remarkable politicians. Everyone I ever talk about is, this is the thing, I can't get off that groove, who are two of the most remarkable musicians Israel has today and have produced some of the most important music. and I would even say culturally iconic texts of this moment of how Israelis feel. There's a residential building in the city of Batyam near Tel Aviv that took a hit from an Iranian missile. And there was damage and families have to deal with it and figure out how to rebuild and their lives have been changed. And there was a homemade banner hung up on the porch of the building. of one of the apartments that read Manishar Rakaava, what remains only love,

which is one of the truly classic love ballads of Aya and Adam that are the vocabulary for Israelis talking about these moments and how we deal with these difficult times. Since the start of the war, Ayah and Adam have also created some of the ballads of this war, some of the voices of pain, of hope, they put out a new album. And we're going to hear some of that singing today,

some of those actual songs and some of the things that they have contributed to how Israelis think and feel in these difficult times. And that's why I have a new background. We're in a studio in Tel Aviv. And I hope that this is something that we can do more of. And I'm really, really excited to get started. Before we do, I have to tell you that this episode is sponsored. by sponsors who have dedicated it to something really truly valuable, and I want to thank them for that.

It's sponsored by Bennett and Robin Greenspan of Houston, Texas, who are strong supporters of Israel. They recognize Israel's centrality and vitality to the Jewish world, and they asked us to say that they are also proud to sponsor this episode and this podcast, because its insights make understanding the Middle East, our situation a little bit easier. Thank you for that. and the episode is dedicated to Edut 710-E-N, E-D-U-T-710-N.org, a grassroots volunteer-driven initiative established in the wake of October 7 to listen to, to document, to preserve, to share, to amplify the voices of survivors, first responders, and entire communities who experienced Hamas' brutal attack firsthand.

With deep care and the highest ethical standards, edut, which is the Hebrew word for testimony, and it's hundreds of volunteers work to protect and elevate these voices for generations to come. Over 1600 testimonies have already been collected and recorded to this date. Many of them are accessible at www.eduth7.org. Thank you so much, and I am going to hand the baton over to my wife and ally, Rachel, to start our conversation. Thank you. And thank you so much to Ayan

Adam for being here with us. Perhaps you didn't mention, but like us, Adam and I are a couple, a family, and you can talk about how the ups and downs of being creative as a couple. But first, I think it's most important to start back, to go back to the beginning, right, to where it all began. We're now for the first time we're beginning to see the end of the war. And it's an opportunity to remember October 7th, right, where we all were when it all saw. started. And you, Ayah, and Adam, you do a large part of your career. And one of the many ways that I had the opportunity to discover your work was through translations of Leonard Cohen. And Leonard Cohen, who obviously a Jewish audience will know as the great Canadian performer. But here in Israel,

we know him as the performer who came after the 1973 war and sing to soldiers in the Sinai. And after October 7th, Aya, who was the great translator into Hebrew, an adapter of Leonard Cohen's songs for our generation, to some extent, became Leonard Cohen, right? As you took upon, you too took upon yourselves to travel the country in those first terrifying days, and to offer solace and an entertainment, and to lift the spirits of the soldiers of all of us in those first terrifying days. So take us back to October 7th and that first experience. I remember waking up from the sirens in Tel Aviv. And after the initial shock, I went on Twitter and started reading and I slowly but surely started to understand this is different. This is not a regular

siren. This is not a regular event that we and our kids are unfortunately. unfortunately, used to. And I told Adam, I think I want to go. I think I want to go to my parents' house. They live in the north of Israel. And he didn't really understand why. And I didn't really had the words to explain myself. Always slow to understand. That's true. But we took the kids and we drove there. And all throughout that day, the resolution and understanding of what has actually happened actually dawned on me and I just only at the evening of that day really understood what happened yeah that's true I mean Ia I took some time to to really we we all we were in shock and it took time to grasp what was going on for me it took way too long because we were kind of sadly used to these kind of situations I mean it just happened two years before

or three years before you hear a siren, something's going on. But this was obviously a whole different thing. And I took the job for the first day of being the guy who says, well, you know, we've been through it. It's not that horrible. It's not that big of a deal trying to kind of lie to everybody around me to try and calm things down, which obviously never helps. And I was like, do you not see the news? And so we went to Ayah's parents and tried to, because it's safer there and far.

And I think at the morning, like on October 8th, it was already kind of, okay, where are we going to perform? That was, we got up. And all the musicians were already thinking and doing it and just thinking, okay, where's the nearest bass? or whatever group of people hiding in a shelter that we can go and kind of do our things. And just understand, this isn't something you're called by the army or by the state or asked to do things, right? This is just spontaneous. You woke up. We're used to, we're used to it because I think for us, it's not only something we can do to contribute. It keeps us busy.

So I'm always not only happy to do it for other people. I'm happy to do it for myself as well. And we drove up north because in the seventh, nobody knew what was going to happen. So it's better to be in a disclosed place in a faraway place. And then in the 8th or the 9th of October, I started making some phone calls and writing online, who wants a concert? Because we can get a guitar and come. And people started reaching out and saying, yeah, please, please do, please come.

We need some music right now. That's it. Everybody mobilized all of a sudden. Yeah. A whole society. Yeah. So every story is different, but every story is a little bit similar in that way. We found ourselves doing the same things in previous wars and operations, but this was different

because the way we felt about it, I think. Yeah. We had no guitar. We just, I mean, we heard the sirens packed a few things. I'm sorry, there's a situation that would lead Adam Benamintai to leave home without a guitar. Actually, you must be surprised. Because I won't let you? No, it's like, yeah, this thing, whatever.

Adam is famously a very great guitar collector and player. Yeah, but so we didn't, we didn't pack the guitar because, you know, kids, things, let's go. and then we booked, right? Someone called and say, hey, you want to come and play for us. We didn't have a guitar, so we just, I wrote on Twitter, this is where we are.

Please bring us a guitar. And people said, I have a guitar. So we drove by, got this dude's guitar and went to play something. I'm going to say, Rahel, I would have lent him my guitar just to hear it play. Just to hear what my guitar can do. So we want to kick off with, a first song and it's maybe you're most powerful that sad. Everybody prepare. This is going to be sad.

Tell us about it. I started translating Lenin Cohn songs around 2017 or 2018. Just because I had a writer's crisis and I couldn't write new songs. So I did what I love to do always, which is translation. and Leonard Cohen is my biggest hero and my idol. He's part of my DNA. I think he's part of Israeli DNA because people here are not only fans of his music. They are so grateful for his love and support during times of war. And we started doing this show of translations of Cohen back then. and then

I found myself trying to translate Who by Fire, the famous song, who Cohen wrote after he visited the Yom Kippoo War and went back home and wrote this

inspired by the piut of Yom Kippo Untanate Tockef, which is a wonderful, beautiful, horrible hymn about the many, many ways a person can live this world, basically.

And it's a beautiful piute for Yom Kippur, and this was the inspiration for Who by Fire. And I started translating and working on the song. And then I asked myself, why isn't there a mashup of both songs? The most popular melody to this peyote in Israel is written by Yai Rozen Blume as a gift to the members of Kibbutz Betashita. After the Yom Kippur War, they had a memorial service. in the kibbutz and he gave the music for the kibbutz as a gift. So this whole thing is just so powerful in so many ways. The Yom Kippur War is a big thing at our house.

My dad was a soldier and fought the Yom Kippur War in Ramat Aguulan. And we decided I asked Adam to join me in this work because he's the only one I know who can make these two songs work as beautiful together as they do. Kibutzbeta Shita had the highest percentage per capita of losses in 1973. Okay. And then after October 7th, I remember you telling me that you actually, one of your first performances of Who by Fire, right, was the soldiers who requested it in a performance at the gates of Bailey,

the site of one of the worst massacres of October 7th. So share with us. I remember this person who booked us asking this song, and I was just bewildered. Are you sure? This is the song you want to listen to right now? These were soldiers who were about to go into Aza. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Let me just explain. Aya has some of the great pop hits of Israeli history, and a lot of soldiers wanted those. the song. The sad song of Leonard Cohen and they just had to deal with it. But we were there

standing on, you know, just grass and pine leaves and pine cones and and performing in front of these soldiers and they were sitting on these army beds in front of us. These were the chairs

they were sitting on. And exactly 50 years before Leonard Cohen before us performed to soldiers in the Sinai, and we were there outside of the kibbutzbe'eri. Singing this song of all songs was something we will probably never, ever, ever, ever forget. and he'll come in

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Kaviv and I processed the war, the trauma, the incredible bravery, the privilege of being part of a nation where everybody pitched in, right, overnight. Overnight, this whole people, this whole country came together from one of our most divisive moments. to a moment of an incredible strength. And Kaviv and I process this war through words, right? Talking to Israelis, talking to Jews, talking to anybody would listen, and telling the world and ourselves, our story, that we are strong, that we are capable,

that we are mourning, but that we will overcome this trauma. And you perhaps process the same trauma through music, through words, And one of the, maybe the most beautiful things that I saw, especially on this question of how do we talk about, how do we process the war, was the album that you put out during the war, describing to some extent your experiences. I remember there was one song talking about the laundry lines, right? The laundry is still hanging in the kibbutzim, right, that no one had collected after attack a handprint on a sofa are longing for the hostages that are gone. our pity and our pain for our soldiers, who are our children, who are also stuck in this tragic and impossible situation. And you called it Lechisid and Guelahem Sheikh Yashal.

For grace and redemption drives straight, right? What could be a better title? Tell us a little bit about that, about how you came to this album, what you wrote, what you wanted to tell everybody. well we're always working on new stuff and new songs there's always like what's the next next thing and i think just like two three months into the war it was obvious that whatever it is we were working on it's gonna it doesn't matter now it's like it's not interesting and relevant yeah we don't want to we don't want to sing it yeah who cares about whatever that was yeah there's and

And we need to do something that speaks about what is happening to us all. And I think that's like a privilege to be able to speak or do things that kind of matter, not just to us, but that we know that everybody is going through. So it was obvious that it's going to be an album about the war. So let's just start with the cover art, the title. The cover art is the words for grace and redemption drive straight on a street. sign with the street. Is that a real sign? Is that photoshopped? What is that and what does it mean?

It's a sweet but sad story because the sign was something I encountered before the war. It's a real sign. It's a real sign out of, it's a real sign in the Yircon Cemetery. Because at the Yircon Cemetery, there are places, burial places that are called one is grace, one is redemption. And the people who are arriving to a funeral or a memorial, they want to know

where is the actual grave they're looking for. So I saw the sign, I was mesmerized by it, and I took a picture. And then when we started working on this album, it was so obvious that this is the name of the album before any actual songs were written. So what is that album about?

What is it like to put out an album now that's about the war that's about so many different experiences. We had this idea that the album is going to be built like a kind of like a therapy session. One would,

like, kind of like a conversation where it starts with just laying out the most dramatic, horrible memory. Yeah. Just the heart of the issue you're trying to...

This is what happened. Yeah. The first. song is just this very like almost cold depiction of just the fact of what happened and it's kind of cold and distant because you're not even able to process it. It's just a song it's called gray concrete road and it describes a house in the kibbutz where everything is left untouched after the Hamas terrorist came and kidnapped everyone from the house. And a good friend of mine who served in reserves after the seventh came to this house to clean it up.

So the owners of the house would be able to come back to it and not see anything too horrible. That was his job. He volunteered to this job and this is what he did. did. And I remember him calling me the night after he did it. He just needed someone to talk to. And he just described everything. And I asked for him for his permission to write everything he said. And then asked his permission to turn it into a song. And Adam wrote beautiful music to it. It's just, it's like a documentary. And this is the place the album starts in. It's, there's a song titled Shalom Sister, which means hello and goodbye.

342 days. We don't have to explain that too much. Lachdor Aba to return home is one of my favorites from it. Express there was not just the experience of the Kibu Tseem, but it's also the experience of the hostages and how much really there were songs there for them and how much we whisked them. And there were songs there for the soldiers, for their loss of innocence in the, this horrible war, right? It was kind of the story of everyone,

not just the first moments, but the whole 21 months, right? Everyone who is scarred, everyone who has suffered, everyone who has triumphed, everyone who has tried, right? I told Adam when we were working on this album, which was a huge privilege for us, because it meant we can go inside the studio, close the door, and then only be with everything that's beautiful.

and just shut everything out and be consumed with music and everything that's good and beautiful in this world. And I remember we talked about the fact that every other album we put out was about the way we are feeling. Let's say I'm writing a love song. That's about how I'm feeling at the moment. But this is the first album we are writing and completely. posing for people who are feeling the exact same thing that we're feeling in the exact same time. And that's just so powerful for us as artists, trying to encapsulate that. The only thing I think giving us strength and power in these last 21 months is the fact that we are in this together. And you feel that as an artist as well.

So I'm going to just deploy the prerogative of the podcast host and ask for Lachzor Abaita from that album to come home where the first verse reads along the path behind the house at the edge of a worn out hill. The scent of oil on my hands, eucalyptus in my hair. After all these years together, in the end I was left with myself. The streets are empty in the evening, but you're always in them. On the On the

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It's already late Almost tomorrow I want to come home Thank you so much I guess we're We're starting to Wind down here There's an aspect of your

lives that I think is really interesting to talk about the experience of this very strange period in Israeli history. You're both parents, which makes sense because you're married and their kids that you share. And you live in Yafo, in Jaffa, in a town that is Arab Jewish. It's part of the Tel Aviv municipality. And your kids go to a joint Arab Jewish school. and you are big and long-time believers in coexistence and have a deep concern for the future for Israel's minorities. I hesitate to use the word. You might even be considered a little bit toward the left of the political spectrum.

How dare you? I just ruined it all for you. And yet you have gone through this time. like everyone else on left, on right, not just with a sense of unity and sharing of this experience with everyone from deep across, you know, religious boundaries and I would even say ethnic boundaries and political divides. But I've really been a voice for that kind of unity in this time. And I didn't, I mean, I meant it to be a little bit funny, but not really, because you really are very. very much in that world. Your kids are learning Arabic in school with Arab friends in their class.

And that's not normal. Very few Arab families send their kids to schools with Jewish kids. Very few Jewish families send their kids to the language divide. There's a whole separate Arabic language school system and Hebrew language school system. And if anyone suggests, you know, dismantling them and unifying everybody, then everybody screams racism because the right to have your kids grow in that separate, distinct culture is part of what it means in Israel to be. having your on holiday. Right. So you really are part of, I would even hesitate to say it, and I don't want to impose this on you, but almost a movement to say, no, actually we need much more shared life. And you see what's happening in Gaza, two Gazans. And you see a lot more of this discourse than just what we can talk about right now, because right now we're talking about the Israeli experience. I just want to just put that out there. What has this been like for you? And what has this been like for you as, parents. And what has this been like for you? I would say the most extreme moment of this war,

just because I happen to, we happen to be friends and I happen to also follow your social media. So I also happened to know that the 12-day war with Iran caught you in London. And then you had to get home. Yeah. And flights and the airport was closed. We had to swim. You had to swim. And so from that perspective of parents, from the perspective of people who care across many divides,

I don't know if more intensely, but more actionably than most people. What have these 21 months been? And tell us that cool story about the whole train to a boat, to a plane, to a boat, kind of getting home in the middle of a war. What was that like? I think, first of all, raising our kids in Jaffa is a very unique experience. And for me, it's something that I can't really imagine my life. without now that I've experienced it it seems strange to live in a town that's only

Jewish or a town that's only Arab which is many of the places I'm used to I grew up in Nazareth so I think you get to see the whole picture which is really unique because there were a few months in this war that my brother was a soldier in Gaza and I have friends that have relatives, relatives that live in Gaza. Their actual cousins live in Gaza. And it doesn't get more complicated than that. But I think that the majority of people who live in Jaffa

are people who want to find a way to live together. And they go to extreme lengths to put the effort and to be considerate of one another because there's no one, absolutely no one who understand our Jews need to stay in the place where we belong to, then the Arabs who actually live here together with us. They feel the same connection to this land and this is their only home. And when you live together, you get a chance to see it. And it's basic, simplicity of facts of life. And these are time that our kids get to be kids together,

if you take out the parts of the sirens and running to the shelter. And they get to be kids together with Arab children. And for the parents, it's just keeping it all, you know, very simple for them. and it's a kind of effort that we can unify around no matter what the differences are in politics. As the Gaza war is happening, the Arab families, the parents and the Jewish parents, you're all on WhatsApp, right?

Yeah. Because every class has to have six WhatsApp. And you're trying to communicate with people whose cousins are Gazans fleeing the Israeli, essentially war, the war effort. and that's a thing where everyone's just focused on the kids, taking care of the kids together.

You don't want to talk politics. It doesn't come up. At a time like this, it's too painful. I don't think it's just not wanting to talk about the painful subjects so we don't fight. It's also because everybody kind of gets it the same way. There's no huge divide. I don't feel anyway that there's like this huge elephant in the room that you can. can speak about, everybody knows what's going on and kind of agrees that that's what I feel in Jaffa.

I mean, no one wants no one to suffer and everybody wants Hamas out. So I don't feel like it's even this, how is it possible for you all to get along? That's actually possible. We're all like, it doesn't matter you're Jewish or Arab if you have your heads. relatively speaking screwed up, screw, how do you say? Screwed on, right?

Screwed down, right? Good euphemism. People I found, in our neighborhood, pretty kind of have the same take on the situation, which is a very different take from the take that I...

Which is a dramatic thing to say, because from the Jewish side, it means a real focus on Palestinians, and from the Arab side, it also means a sense that really Hamas is not the future of Gaza. So both sides are much closer

to the other side than what you would think if you would watch the news. Right. It's like, yeah, no one wants no one to suffer and everybody wants Hamas out and...

Tell us the story of coming back from London in the middle of a war. I got to say, you know, very few missiles hit the Jerusalem area. A lot of missiles hit Tel Aviv, the Tel Aviv metropolitan area. and you live in the heart of it. And that must have been terrifying.

We reached out and said, you know, send the kids to us, but they were at their grandparents and were friends and all that. But, I mean, I was terrified. So you then started this mission of getting back at all costs. What was that? Yeah. I mean, it was the same. And now that I think of it, it's the same kind of structure,

like what we talked about on the day of the 7th of October, because, like, the morning the war started, I was like, this is horrible. What's going on? She always knows if it's wrong. Yeah. And I was like, how come on it's worth being from that? Come on.

Don't make a big deal of it. Adam. I don't want to stay in London and book us tickets to Les Miserables. I was like, are you crazy? No, okay. So the thing is we were... Wait, and this is while your children are in Tel Aviv. Okay, so we...

I have to say, no. No. I would also have done that. No. So the situation was this. I booked us a flight to London for my birthday. It's a surprise. We were three days just having a good time.

And our parents took care of the kids. And then the work broke out. And I was like, okay, so you're telling me we can't go home. And our kids are with my parents. And they can't do anything about it. So let's see a show. Yeah. It's like, is this my dream come true right now?

Anaya said, geopolitics are not going to keep me away. The whole collective armies of the world. For Adam's defense, I have to say this is a conversation we had before the first missile hit Tel Aviv. And this is like when we don't really have a clear understanding of what's about to happen. We know that Israel attacked in Iran, which is huge, but nobody knows what's next. And the moment the first missile hit, that was like, oh, this is a whole different thing. And I basically did what everyone who has kids in Israel did at the same time, which is go on five different Facebook groups of skippers and captains of boats and five WhatsApp groups and started to look for someone who could. take us from Cyprus to Israel, which is a thing that people did around the seventh.

It's so funny to think about people trying to get back to a war zone and paying so much money and putting up so much effort, just trying to get back to a war zone. Yeah. It's Israeli. Yeah. It's Israeli. It wasn't just you. What were the number?

60,000 people? More. 70,000 people? I mean, and even those months. might be low, right? Of people just streaming back towards the ballistic missiles, right? No flights. Right, no flights. In the marina in Cyprus, kind of boarding the boat, and people were trying to find spots just walking around the marina and asking skippers, can you take me to Israel? And the captains were so lovely. They were Israeli people, just trying to

help others and saying, I'm so sorry, I'm already booked. I'm already booked. Please talk to my friend. Just people walking around trying to get home to where all the missiles are falling. But yeah. I want to wind down with a question that we have to ask after all the drama and the pathos and the sadness. And it's been, it's been a couple of years now. Those are some strange years. Maybe now it's the time to end with the hope, right? So, exactly. So, you know, most of your music is fun and it's funny.

And it's about having uncomfortable conversations with your mother and going on dates and taking too much time to put on makeup. I'm sorry to do this in public. You guys are fun and funny. And the special kind of funny that's kind of sarcastic and a little bit mean, which is like really like fun, funny, not like. And you nevertheless can produce these anthems of resilience and hope. I want to end with the story that we started with, which is this apartment in Batyam. We have no idea who these people are. But this photograph of an apartment of Batyam hit by an Iranian missile where they put up this huge banner that's drawn by hand that says, what remains only love, which is your most famous love song that you will tell us a little bit

about where it comes from and then we'll hear it and that'll sing us out. Well, two of our best friends got married. So they had a big wedding and we wanted to give them something special. Plus we're musicians. So money wasn't. To your poor. Yeah. Right. So we hope to give in this. Right. Writing them a song might kind of get us off the hook with the check. It didn't work, but we did write the song. And I wrote the lyrics. I composed the melody.

I remember singing this song. One of our first concerts after the 7th of October was in a unit. There's a special unit in the IDF that's basically the responsibility is to. to go to the families of wounded and killed soldiers and tell them the news. They're the people who are knocking on the door at 4 a.m. And this is the unit that was unfortunately so busy in these first few weeks after the 7th. And they asked for a concert and we went there and gave one. And we tried to keep it light and fun because these people, you know, they deal with the absolute worst.

And you had like young soldiers who are just in charge of the logistics. And you have the older ones, 40 and 50 years old volunteers, that they're in charge of the actual delivering of the news. And we sang them this song. and it was just so, so, so special for us, knowing that we are there with them and we can't help in any other way. This is the only way we know how. So we sing this song and they sing with us

and it's so, so special. What's fun about the song, I'm just going to give a tiny bit translation bit bit just before it starts. The song is about all kinds of things going wrong, but what's left only love. an old horse, end of the race. The last go around, I would once go and sing when the city was small,

and I've already seen fall, people falling apart. We knew to continue carry on, but we were young then. You know, everything is sick, everything breaks, everything errs, everything comes to an end. Only love. That's the only thing that's left when everything else breaks down. Just a O,

just a O, All All Cholette All T'A All

Nygm Rack Ava O Yava Koehawe Like, Enae Mestt Mestekyll

Ryeinstein Chah Rattion That the Lail Laida Who Lola And And, also at you in the

room, sometimes you're You're You're You're It's aft When I'm

M. What I'm She? Just a Ava Kava All a All roper

All chiv All s'em All stamen, All over Heron, the kaffa The first You'd have You'd have

Shear When the Sheer Sheer You've She'll take People Noshri

We know To continue To help But We're We're We're Not

Ava There's no Cava All all's all mucbile and

may have from mishkal Aba Lach always you should come

and sometimes it's just just a just over just over There

no Dava I think all over, all tohe. Rakeava. Oh, yava. Raka. Rekava.

There's no love language, Rakhava, is debating government policy. Oh, rakava. All cholef. All nishbaugh. All toad. All toad. I think our love language, Rakhail, is debating government policy.

There sounds so much better. It's so much better. It's good that we don't share ours, right? In public. Yes. It's much better that way. I wanted to end just, first of all, thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time and for sharing something that we love so much.

Thank you for having us. Chauvee and I grew up as important to say. I think your first hits were when we were soldiers, right? We're all about the same age. We promised ourselves. we wouldn't like just fan over them. We did. But it's,

but it's now it's gratitude. We can do it now. We're going to do about it now. Right. They're stuck. We can edit it out afterwards. And, and we're,

I guess we're all about the same age, right? We're all in our early to mid-40s. Early 20s. Early 20s. And that means that we are in essence, children of the second intifada, right? We came of age during the bus bombings. And everything that we have known,

has been the peace doesn't work, right? The peace negotiations end in just in rivers of blood. We've been in an endless conflict. Maybe at first the soldiers, then as adults, then as parents, trying to eke out normality in a non-normal world. And now for the first time that I can remember, right,

since maybe I was 11, when Rabin was assassinated, for the first time there's talk, perhaps not of peace, but of expanding the Abraham Accords of a world, right, where we could travel, we could go to vacation in Lebanon, we could see the archaeological wonders of Iran. Maybe the Middle East that we were born to is not the Middle East, right, that we will leave our children. Maybe it'll be something that is more open. This is a loaded word, but maybe it only a place of cooperation, right? A place of stability, a place of prosperity.

and maybe that stands on the horizon and that tentative optimism, right, as we come out of this most difficult period. Our mission is to open that window that transforms Israelis from cartoons and somebody else's morality play into real people and all their complexity. This will probably be the first episode

of Ask Aviv anything that I'm not going to listen to. You don't listen to your own play? No way, no. Thank you for joining us. And thank you to the Patreon community, which helps us do what we do. Feel free to join patreon.com slash askoviv anything. And we'll see you in the next episode.