Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - A conversation with Yonit Levi & Jonathan Freedland

Episode Date: November 18, 2023

In this episode -- which we recorded just after the historic rally in Washington, DC and as we approached the sixth Shabbat since October 7th -- I have a wide-ranging conversation with Yoni Levi in Tel Aviv and Jonathan Freedland in London. Yonit and Jonathan are co-hosts of the popular podcast, UnHoly, which you can find here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unholy-two-jews-on-the-news/id1548441108 This episode is a sharecast, in which we are dropping the conversation in each of our respective podcast feeds ("Call Me Back" & "UnHoly"). The episode begins with Yonit and Jonathan interviewing me, and then I interview them at the end. It's a spirited discussion. Yonit Levi has been anchoring television news broadcasts in Israel for over 20 years. She is the lead anchor of Israel’s top primetime news programme on Channel 2, Israel’s highest rated TV channel. Throughout her career, Yonit has interviewed numerous world leaders, including Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. Jonathan Freedland is a columnist for the Guardian newspaper and the host of the Guardian's Politics Weekly America podcast. He also presents BBC Radio 4's The Long View and is the author of the award-winning "The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World," along with several thrillers under the pseudonym Sam Bourne.

Israel and the United States are going to have to deal with Iran in a much different way than they have been dealing with Iran, which makes the relationship with the United States, it was already important. I think some Israeli leaders were a little loose with the importance of that relationship in recent years. That is over. The U.S.-Israel relationship is everything. And the U.S. and Israel have to be so synced up. But it really feels to me like it's the U.S. and Israel right now versus the world in ways that I've never seen before. On this sixth Shabbat since the October 7th massacre, we are doing something a little

different on our podcast. We are doing a share cast, which is where I have a conversation with hosts of another podcast, and we share that conversation on their feed and ours. That conversation is with Yonit Levy and Jonathan Friedland. They are the co-hosts of the Unholy podcast. I'll put just a little bit of background on Yonit and Jonathan before I explain what we did in this conversation and why it was so important for me to do. Yonit Levy is a fixture in Israeli journalism. She lives in Tel Aviv. She's been anchoring television news broadcasts in Israel for over 20 years. She's the lead anchor of Israel's top primetime news program on Channel 2,

which is Israel's highest rated television station. She's interviewed leaders from around the world, including a number of current and former U.S. presidents, President Biden, President Obama, President George W. Bush, President Clinton, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. And she's traveled all over the world, including some hot spots in the Middle East covering wars, natural disasters, and political crises. Jonathan Friedland is a columnist for The Guardian

newspaper. He lives in London, and he's the host of The Guardian's Politics Weekly America podcast. He's also a presenter on BBC Radio 4's The Long View, and he's the author of an award-winning book, which I recommend. It's actually now out in paperback. It's called The Escape Artist, The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World. That's a nonfiction book that Jonathan wrote, but he's also the author of several thrillers under a pseudonym. Now, the Unholy Podcast, just to give you some context here,

we all have podcasts that we like, we dip in and out of them, but there are some podcasts that we listen to religiously. The Unholy Podcast is part of my weekly podcast diet. I never miss an episode. Don't always agree with Yonit and Jonathan or their guests, but I generally don't miss an episode. And that was especially so during 2023, during the depths of division inside Israel over the judicial reform debates. I'd like to tell Yonit and Jonathan that they were like part of my surround sound.

And when Saul and I were working on The Genius of Israel, and we were integrating certain aspects from the judicial reform debates into the book, we actually relied on a couple of their episodes that helped shape some of our thinking. So Yonit Jonathan and I decided to have a big conversation that would run on the Unholy podcast feed and would run on the Call Me Back podcast feed. Now, the discussion is structured as an interview of Yonit and Jonathan interviewing me. The doorway into the conversation was about our new book, The Genius of Israel, which is where we wound up talking a lot about Israeli resilience, especially October 7th and

the building blocks of Israeli resilience, which we write about in our book. But then we wound up getting into a bunch of other topics. We talked about the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship, which was especially timely when we spoke because I spoke to them from Washington, D.C. just after being at the historic rally on the Mall. We talked about Israel's changing security doctrine in the region, in the Middle East. We talked about President Biden's rock-solid support for Israel during this difficult time and what the implications would be for President Biden's reelection campaign. We talked about Israel-Diaspora relations. And at the end of the conversation, I turned the table on them. Instead of them interviewing me

the whole time, I actually interviewed them for a little bit, got into some issues we may disagree on. And I focused in on one particular episode that was highly rated that had a big impact on me. It's called War Therapy. I highly recommend all their episodes, but especially that one. And Yonit asked me one question that has really stuck with me since we recorded this conversation. She asked me if October 7th revealed the failure of Startup Nation, meaning had Israel become overly dependent on tech innovation in all aspects of Israel, especially in its security. We touched on that topic, but now it's prompted me to dedicate an entire episode to it. So I have a lot of thoughts on it.

I will be returning to that specific topic as well as some of the other topics we get into. Anyways, it's a wide ranging conversation. I think you'll enjoy it. Yonit and Jonathan are always contrarian, provocative, illuminating. And dare I say, during these very dark times, they are both always very spirited, and we had a spirited conversation. So from Tel Aviv, London, and me in Washington, D.C., here's my conversation with Yonit Levy and Jonathan Friedman. This is Call Me Back. Dan Sienor was foreign policy advisor to Mitt Romney, a former Pentagon official based in Baghdad and at the U.S. Central Command in Qatar, studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He's also a host of a popular podcast, which I really like, Call Me Back. He's the co-author of the bestselling book from 2009, Startup Nation, The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle. And his new

book is The Genius of Israel, The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World. Dan, welcome to Unholy. We're so glad to talk to you. Yonit and Jonathan, I'm a huge fan of the podcast. You've been like the surround sound for some pretty dark periods in 2023 for me, and you're also the surround sound while when Saul and I were writing this most recent book. So it's, it's great to be with you and be able to do some, you know, commiserating, some reflecting, hopefully. Yeah, I mean, look, your book, I told you this when we talked, it's, I think the only comforting thing I've read in, in almost six weeks. And I want to pick up, I have to tell you, look, this book was on my desk at

the newsroom for a few days. And of course, it's a newsroom. So a lot of people are coming and going. And they looked at the title. And of course, the word resilience, and we'll get to that, very important, I think has become more and more important since you wrote the book. But they kind of had this sad smile when they saw the title, The Genius of Israel. And that feeling for a lot of Israelis that after what happened on October 7th, I mean, when we were hit so badly, walk me through that notion. Help me feel better if you can, Dan. Help me feel better about that notion, the genius. Right, because Israel feels anything but genius these days. Is that your point after October 7th? Yeah. But a couple of things. One,

the book was never about the Israeli government. It was never about the genius of Israeli government. And I would really be curious about anyone who thought to write a book about the genius of Israeli government. It's about the, it's about Israeli society. When we wrote this book, we started writing it before the judicial reform fight of 2023. And we wrote it because, and I could tell you how we wound up finding it, but we start to see all this data and social science and epidemiology and just a whole range of social trends that the whole world was, the Western world, the democratic Western affluent world was moving in a pretty bad direction on just about every metric, right? So the world, the Western world is experiencing a demographic collapse. Populations are shrinking and aging. Israel's population is young and growing. And when I point this out to

people, they always say, aha, it's just the religious Jews. It's just the Haredi Jews. And I point out, no, no, no. In Israel, actually secular Jews have three, four, I know some who have five children in like the heart of, you know, North Tel Aviv, people who work in tech, people who work in television, who have shows on Netflix, have three, four children. And I always point out with one spouse, just one spouse. And you look at the loneliness epidemic, you keep hearing in the United States about this unbelievable epidemic of people just leading these atomized lives and feeling depressed and lonely. There's the deaths of despair, which is about a 20 plus year running crisis in the US where these staggering numbers of Americans, and not just Americans, the same thing's happening in the UK and elsewhere that are dying from substance abuse, drug abuse, alcohol, suicide. And then the worst one you'll

need is, and I say this as the father of two teenagers, the CDC came out with a report a few months ago while we were finishing writing the book about a mental health crisis, which we knew about, a teen mental health crisis, which we knew about. And then this term I never thought I would actually see as a thing, which is teen suicide. There's a teen suicide crisis now in the United States where teens are taking their lives in record numbers or attempting to take their lives. And I mean, I can go through every one of these data points and there are more. And in every one of them, the Western affluent world is moving in one direction, and Israel is moving the other direction. As I mentioned, Israel is young and growing. Israelis are having lots of children. Israel's life expectancy is higher than most of Europe,

the US, than all of its wealthy neighbors in the Persian Gulf who have access to gobs of money and medical care. There's no loneliness epidemic in Israel. It's got the highest, the lowest rates of deaths of despair in the OECD. It's got the lowest teen suicide rate in the OECD. I mean, I can go on and on with this. So it was striking to us that, and it wasn't because Israel lacked in political polarization. I mean, as we know. So, so like a friend of mine, Derek Thompson, who writes for, for the Atlantic, wrote this piece when the CDC report came out saying he's, he talked to all these psychologists in the US and was asking them, you know, what's the reason for this teen mental health crisis? States today are exposed to constant horrendous news stories about climate change. They're exposed to constant bad news about gun violence in the United States, particularly school shootings. They are exposed to the worst political polarization as it's characterized since 2016. And they're scrolling all the time. They just have access to social media. So what do you expect?

And I thought to myself, okay, so Israeli kids are exposed to the same news about climate change. It's not like it's unique to the United States, the hysteria around it, gun violence. I mean, you want to talk about young people who know what it's like to experience violence. I don't need to tell you guys this, but Israeli young people, I think have more exposure to it on a per capita basis than like, probably an absolute basis than most parts of the world. Israelis are totally exposed to political polarization and Israeli kids have plenty of screen time, shall we say. So it just didn't add up to us. It didn't make sense why – like the conventional explanations for why Israel was such a socially – much more of a socially healthy place didn't make sense to us.

And so Saul and I decided to try to understand why, and we were working on it. We started working on it before the pandemic. We worked on it during the pandemic, and we were working on it into 2023, and then the judicial reform crisis happened. Our publisher started raising questions like, are you sure this is the right time to come out with a book about the health of Israeli society? Because we were really, it was also about the solidarity of Israeli society. And they're like, isn't there like a cold civil war going on in Israel right now? And we said, look, we believe that political polarization is a huge problem everywhere in the West right now. I mean, we've all witnessed what's happened

in the United States. Jonathan can speak to quite authoritatively about what's been going on in the UK. You see it in most of Europe. I mean, political polarization is a huge problem. Israel's not immune to it. But what we argued is that Israel has these societal shock absorbers,

these building blocks, this infrastructure that even though things can get really bad, the country doesn't spin apart. And we want to explain why. And that to us is the genius of Israel, that all these other countries are susceptible to it. And Israel seems that just when it's about to go over a cliff, just about to go over the edge, it doesn't. And I keep coming back to the United States has strong governing institutions, but what we're realizing here in the US is we have a weak society.

And I think Israel has the opposite. It has very weak governing institutions, but it has a very strong society. And so that's the genius of Israel. My mother hates the title, by the way, who lives in Jerusalem, because she says, you're putting too much of an emphasis on Jewish brainpower.

And that's never worked out for us when we put a spotlight on Jewish brainpower. And I would tell her, this is not about brainpower. That's the point. It's about the genius of how a society comes out that apparently, and I'm going to stress apparently, is overshadowed by events, by news events. made in the week since the 7th of October an argument that not only do the things that you've just set out still stand after the 7th of October, but in a way, they help explain some of the stuff that's happened inside Israel since the 7th of October. And, you know, I've been there and made some artful arguments of why a book that apparently has been upended by events still stands. But I think actually there is a logic, a powerful logic to the case you make.

So just unpack for us the, as it were, post-7th of October argument for, that indicates why the trends, the phenomena that you've set out in the book actually help us understand what's happened inside Israel since. Yeah, and let me answer by first, and I know you both have seen this firsthand, but just a couple of images that we've been moved by. One, you will recall Yom Kippur, which seems like a million years ago now, 2023, but was just a few weeks ago. The big issue in the Israeli press was how this fight broke out in the streets of Tel Aviv between secular and Orthodox, ultra-Orthodox Jews over whether or not there could be a mechitza in public space, Israeli press was how this fight broke out in the streets of Tel Aviv between secular and orthodox,

ultra-orthodox Jews over whether or not there could be a mechitza in public space at a Yom Kippur service. That's the barrier that separates men and women during religious services, we should explain. And there was a governing, you know, according to a government order, court order, you couldn't put up a mechitza, but the orthodox Jews who were running the service still put up the mechitza and then the secular Jews got were running the service still put up the mechitza, and then the secular Jews got in their faces. And not a physical fight, but basically an in-your-face argument broke out at a Yom Kippur service, and the Israeli press was reporting, this just shows the lows, the depths of our division. This is how bad it is that at a Yom Kippur service, the holiest day of the year, they're in each other's faces.

And then you fast forward to the weekend of October 7th when almost every chic, hip, radically secular, very treif restaurant in Tel Aviv were having their kitchens koshered to comply with Jewish dietary laws. These are restaurants that serve anything but kosher food in normal times. We're kasharing their kitchens so they could provide food to soldiers in the army. I mean, that just gives you a contrast.

Obviously, you've seen the big part of 2023 in the judicial reform fight was about the role of the Haredi, the ultra-Orthodox Jews. Should they serve in the army? Should they not? How will the court weigh in? And now there's stories of Haredi, ultra-Orthodox Jews, inundating the IDF, you know, trying to enlist in the army. I know the numbers are low, but the baseline is low. And the fact that there's a surge is revealing. I'm hearing stories from friends of mine who are in impromptu makeshift

army bases, which are obviously slapped together in no time to accommodate all these reservists. And then it's quite uncomfortable. And an ultra-Orthodox Haredi yeshiva nearby, the students volunteer to empty out the dorm rooms at the yeshiva to let the soldiers use it. You're just, I mean, these images are very powerful. I mean, you guys know the Brothers in Arms and the tech community were at the nucleus of the protests in 2023. The morning of October 7th, by 10 a.m. that morning, 20 of the leaders of this movement basically got together and said, okay, we've built this infrastructure

over the last nine months to take on the government, and now we're going to lock arms with the government in this fight. We interviewed Gigi Levy-Weiss, who I think you know, and other leaders in the venture community who they were like instantly reaching out to the Ministry of Defense saying, you're calling up hundreds of thousands of people. There's no way the supply lines and the supply chains will keep up. This is the biggest reserve mobilization one could imagine. 360,000 troops is like bigger than the standing armies of the UK and France combined. And the supplies are just not going to keep up. So this movement that had been a war effectively, as I said, a cold civil war with the government, was now taking on whole functions of the government. And I'm trying to chronicle a lot of this now because it's just, it's unbelievable stuff. You

don't, you wouldn't see this, I'm telling you, you don't see this in like any other society. I can go on and on with these images about how powerful it is, just the flip. So to Jonathan, to your question, I think there are a few pieces of infrastructure in Israeli society, these, what we call these societal shock absorbers, that A, prevent the country from ever really spinning apart, and B, in a crisis, guarantees the country bounces back. One, which is just there's nothing like it anywhere else in the Western world, the role that national service plays in the country. And even though not everyone participates in it. Most people do. And people say, well, if most Haredim don't, most ultra-Orthodox don't participate in it, it's a pretty, you know, homogeneous group of people. But it's not.

It's people from the left and right who are serving the army. It is people who are secular and religious, even if they're not ultra-Orthodox. It's people, Jews from the East, from North Africa, and Jews from the West, who are all of them serving together. I've seen footage, moving footage, from the hull of a tank or from these armored personnel carriers since October 7th, where you see sitting around in these vehicles Jews on a Friday afternoon bringing in the Shabbat. I mean, it's very powerful.

I've seen these images on social media where they're training and they're getting ready to go into Gaza and these Jews are bringing in Shabbat in a military vehicle. And they're from all walks of Israeli Jewish life. I mean, you see an Israeli with a tattoo and a ponytail and they're singing Shalom Aleichem with an Israeli who's wearing a yarmulke. And it doesn't happen overnight. The fact that most Israelis give a formative part of their lives, 18, 19, 20, 21, to this national service program, mandatory national service,

it doesn't just mean that they develop great skills, which is what we wrote about in Startup Nation. It gives them great skills. There's a reason why so many of these people come out of the military. As Eric Schmidt from Google told us at the time, he said, you take the average Israeli 25-year-old and you put them up against their peers anywhere in the world. Any day of the week, Google will hire the Israeli because at 25, you just don't have young, these people at that

age anywhere else in the world who have that kind of leadership experience and management experience. That's what we wrote about in Startup Nation. What we didn't write about in Startup Nation is that, which we write about in this book, is that you also have people from all walks of Israeli life. So it's very hard to think of someone as the other when you've spent this meaningful time with them. Mika Goodman, who features prominently in our book, you all know is a prominent public intellectual,

he said he'll never forget after Trump was elected in the United States, he told me. And he went to go meet with some academics in the West. It was at some conference at Harvard or somewhere. And they're his peers. They were like the Mika Goodman equivalents of Harvard. And they're meeting and it's just after November, 2016. And they said, you know, I met a Trump voter.

And this is how they think. And I read a study about a Trump voter. And this is what they think. And as though they were talking about people in a lab or something, an experiment. And he was jostled. And he said, you're talking about your fellow citizens, right? Like these are your fellow... And he just said, Mika says, I have people who I've served with in the army who are still my friends, I still do reserve duty with.

As much as I viciously disagree with them politically, I would never think, I've never talked about them as though there's some foreign element in my society. And so I think the army does that. And I think the national service, what it also does in Israel is it gets people at a very young age thinking about their role in society as part of some kind of communal obligation, some kind of, that they're part of some kind of national project. In the West, certainly in the United States, I see it now with, like I said, I have teenagers. You watch the way these kids are groomed to make it in life and how they apply to colleges

and the admissions process. And it's all me, me, me. What are your grades? What are your SAT scores? It's all about individual excellence. And there's no incentives in the system to judge merit based on how you perform as part of a team, part of a community, part of a group, part of a country. And in Israel, you may be talented and be competitive for some of

the best units in the army. But if you are singly, you know, they're obviously there are exceptions, but if you're singularly focused on your own personal ambition, it's unlikely you're going to make it in any of those settings. And so the whole incentive structure, and I think it starts at a young age. It starts, you know, we talked about gibboush, this Hebrew word for which there's no great English translation. But I think it starts at a, it's about thinking about the group, living as sort of engaged in group bonding with people you're close to or part of your community. It starts at a young age. It starts in the Scouts movement, which is a big deal in Israel. It's not as big a deal in the West. And then it, you know, continues into the army and beyond. The incentives are to think of yourself as part of a community

rather than just thinking about your own individual excellence. Well, I mean, there will be questions about the fact that at the end of the day, it's not indicative of the fact that we're a normal country, right? I mean, the fact that you're under an existential threat and this is what you have to do, there has to be a conscription army. But I kind of want to ask you, Dan, because maybe it's an unfair question. Startup Nation is your coinage. And, you know, on October 7th, Startup Nation lost. I mean, we have to say that, or at least it failed miserably. I mean, not the high tech surveillance or the intelligence or the $3 billion fence at the border. None of that could stop 3000 terrorists. And the feeling in this country right now is that not only did Startup Nation not save

us, maybe in a way it was our Achilles heel. We kind of fell in love with that idea that technology can save us, high tech can save us. And we kind of forgot or wanted to forget the fact that we are in a very tough neighborhood. And there are people here that would kill us if they got a chance and they did get a chance and they did do it. I mean, wasn't that in a way something that we maybe fell in love with? I know it's an unfair question to ask. It's not an unfair question. Look, at the end of the day, technology is a tool. It's not a strategy. It's a tool that can augment a strategy, but it's not a substitute for a strategy. And I think there is something to what you're saying, that Israel fell in love with, or the IDF, the security apparatus, fell in love with all the bells and whistles of it being a high-tech superpower, which is great until your enemy

plans an invasion of your country analog. It appears that, we don't know, obviously we'll learn a lot once this war is over, but it appears that this war was planned to evade, to elude all of the bells and whistles and the kind of whiz-bang of Israeli tech. So look, why did the Sunni Gulf get so drawn to Israel? It's not because they were lovers of Zion, right? It's not because they were, they were, they had suddenly decided, you know, they, they wanted to be part of our, of our communal experience. Um, it's, it's, they were attracted to Israeli strength. And, and I would hear this all the time from leaders in the Gulf, all the time. They were, they were dazzled by what they perceived as Israel's military and intelligence capabilities,

which they thought were indispensable to their own defense of the Gulf, the Sunni Gulf's own defense against Iran. And so they wanted to piggyback onto Israel's capabilities. They were dazzled by Israel's being an economic regional superpower and a global technology superpower. And so I think they were impressed with that. Israeli leaders got drunk with it, with how attractive that was. This worries me, Yonit, more than anything, because I, you know, people debate, is this the worst invasion Israel's had to experience since this time or that time? And the comparison is often made to the Yom Kippur War. It's just like the Yom Kippur War.

I disagree. I actually think October 7th was worse than the Yom Kippur War. I agree with you. Because Yom Kippur War was obviously awful. Israel bounced back. And the first two weeks were horrendous, but Israel ultimately bounced back and it got into a military position where if it wanted to, it could have basically taken Cairo and Damascus. It didn't, but it could have. And those countries, armies,

Syria's and Egypt's, were exposed to be paper tigers in the end. And there were obviously a lot of casualties during the Yom Kippur War, but not a lot of civilian casualties. It wasn't like those armies were running, wreaking havoc on Israeli towns and cities. And what worries me for the first time in Israel's history is its military was revealed to be a paper tiger. And that if a ragtag group, and I know it was more sophisticated than a ragtag group, but just the optics of these guys with motorcycles and pickup trucks and just storming the border and penetrating what the Sunni Gulf thought was a juggernaut exposed Israel. And that they could stay in the country for 48 hours or 36 hours when they were still fighting the IDF in the south for 20 towns and take over 200 Israelis over the border. And some of them were going back and forth, like they'd go and then they'd come back like, hey, it's like an open party. The degree to which it exposed Israel as

having huge vulnerabilities is a massive problem that Israel needs to repair, and it needs to repair quickly. They need to send a message to the Sunni Gulf, we got this, it was a hiccup, there's a bunch of reasons why it happened, it won't happen again, and watch us, watch us bounce back. And I think if they don't do that, I really worry about Israel's role in the region and the world, because so much of Israel's strength over the last number of years is not because Israel is perceived as vulnerable. So much of its growth economically, diplomatically, the channels have opened diplomatically,

and geopolitically is a function of the fact that it was viewed as a country on the rise, not a country on its back foot. Yeah. So let's just get you to put on your foreign policy advisor hat. I know you did that for Mitt Romney. You only mentioned you were an official at the Pentagon. So what would be the policy remedy, the prescription for a couple of the things you've addressed?

So one would be this point about restoring deterrence. I mean, I don't know whether you think the current Israeli military operation does that, or actually if it just shows that it's having to react to having lost the power of deterrence on the 7th of October. But how do you restore that so that those countries who admired its strength do so again? That's one thing. But larger than that would be, you said that, you know, the mistake was that tech is to confuse tech with being a strategy when really it's just a tool. Okay, so let's put on that great startup nation brain collectively and say, what is the big strategy for, you know, not just the day after, but for the years and decades after

that can deal with the fact that, you know, you've sketched out a country that's amazingly resilient and on all these sociological indicators is doing better than everyone else, but has one big problem, which is in its own neighbourhood where it has to kind of fight for its life and fight for its place and has hostile neighbors all around it. So what's the kind of, you know, genius of Israel answer to that? I don't think there's such a thing as restoring deterrence with Gaza, because that's effectively what Israel tried to do since 2005, really 2007, when Hamas took over,

which was a containment strategy. It was, I mean, they never would want to say it this way, but effectively what they, obviously, this was a lot of the Netanyahu years, but it wasn't just the Netanyahu years. It was, you know, Naftali Bennett said that he was more or less involved. I'm not blaming any, I'm just saying this was consistent through a number of governments and a number of configurations.

This idea that Israel basically made the decision that it could effectively learn to live with Hamas and they would have an operational, very practical relationship. Yes, there'd be skirmishes from time to time. Hamas would fire a bunch of rockets. Israel would fire back from the air. Things would get hot for a couple of weeks and then they'd quiet down. There'd be a ceasefire and that would be the end of it. And undergirding this was the belief, mistaken belief, by the way, I believe this too

from afar, that at the end of the day, Hamas felt some semblance of responsibility to govern, that they weren't just a death cult, that they weren't just some messianic organization that was trying to implement the exact words of its own charter, that it actually wanted to run the Gaza Strip. And so that's over. The idea that you could have a deterrence capability set up with that, a piece of territory that could be occupied by an organization like Hamas, which is not just a threat to Israel's population in the south, but a couple hours, two, three hours away from some of the largest population and economic centers of the country. I mean, it's just unsustainable. So the idea of containment with Hamas or another

version of Hamas in the south, that's over. I'll come back to that in a moment. It also means that Israel cannot just learn to live with Hezbollah in the north. I mean, you cannot, what October 7th exposed is you cannot have two genocidal organizations sworn to your destruction on your northern border and your southern border simultaneously, who in some way, shape, or form are coordinating with one another and who have massive capabilities. Hezbollah in the north has 10 times the capabilities and manpower as Hamas did in the south. Like a country the size of Israel, the size of the state of New Jersey just cannot live with that. And then finally, if we believe, which I do, that Iran is the center of all of this, Israel effectively has a containment policy with Iran. If we, God forbid, Iran were to take direct,

very direct action against Israel, and we were to look back the way we're looking back at after Hamas took very direct action at Israel, and we'd be saying, well, it was effectively a containment strategy. Sure, Israel would send in resources to take out scientists, nuclear scientists, and they would launch cyber attacks, Stuxnet, and they would, Israel was doing stuff, but at the end of the day, they were kind of managing Iran. I think the mindset has to change on that. So now I'm laying out for you, Jonathan, a very ambitious agenda. And I just – so I want to caveat it by saying I think the worldview and the doctrine of the Israeli security establishment was completely upended on October 7th. And to some degree, again, I'm not a participant.

I'm not a practitioner. I'm an observer. But even for me, how I think about it, it was upended. And Israel has to complete the idea that learning to live with one Hamas or version of Hamas in the south, learning to live with Hezbollah in the north, learning to live with Iran, which is arming and training and coordinating and organizing all of this, while Iran is just a, skip, and a jump away from having a nuclear weapons capability. This is unsustainable. There's no containment strategy that works with this setup. And oh, by the way, with China and Russia now coming into the region, China especially,

here Israel spent years thinking it was warming relations with Beijing. And now we see where China, who wants to take much more of an active role and has assets in the region that it never had before, it's unsustainable for Israel. and now we see where China, who wants to take much more of an active role and has assets in the region that it never had before. It's unsustainable for Israel. And so Israel, I think what it's doing to Hamas is eventually going to have to do to Hezbollah. And I think Israel and the United States are going to have to deal with Iran in a much different way than they have been dealing with Iran, which makes the relationship with the United States, it was already important.

I think some Israeli leaders were a little loose with the importance of that relationship in recent years. That is over. The U.S.-Israel relationship is everything. And the U.S. and Israel have to be so synced up. And I'm not saying they weren't synced up, but we're just in a whole new world. But it really feels to me like it's the U.S. and Israel right now versus the world in ways that I've never seen before. I mean, that's very interesting. And by the way, I think it's the one thing that Israelis really

found heartwarming in this whole terrible time that we're going through. But there is mounting criticism against Israel in the United States. How long can the Biden administration keep this up, this unwavering support? It's an election year. I mean, how long can this continue, do you think? So let me say, as you both made clear, I don't look for ways to heap praise on the Biden administration, but I have been quite impressed with how President Biden and his team have handled things since October 7th, and it bears mentioning.

I hope it continues. I think it will. Again, as I've said repeatedly in the U.S. on television, if you would have told me on October 6th that there's going to be a major attack against Israel the next day, and within days, the commander-in-chief of the most powerful army in the world, the most powerful military in the world, would be on a plane to Israel, meeting with Israel's war cabinet, standing shoulder to shoulder, deploying the assets that the Biden administration has deployed, military assets in the region. I know that it's caught up in congressional finger pointing right now, but I think eventually Congress will pass a 14 plus billion dollar package and deploying extraordinary assets, already deploying a lot of supplies to Israel. It's quite impressive. And the statements coming out of the administration, more or less, that is to say, there are some things coming out of the administration that I don't like. But even just in recent days, if you look at Matt Miller, the State Department spokesman,

he's taking on reporters. I mean, the transcript is worth reading the transcript. It's I just posted some of the exchanges on Twitter. Here he is saying, you know, the press in the State Department briefing room are pressing him on what's happening at these hospitals in Gaza. And he's saying, doesn't Hamas have some responsibility here? Hamas is choosing to set up their their their command centers in hospitals, underneath hospitals? I mean, you know the arguments, but to see the State Department spokesman make these arguments and really lay them out in a way that I could just tell he was genuinely annoyed that this is a serious conversation based on how Hamas is operating and the questions are all about Israel's

behavior in this operation. And then he gets right into all the issue about the fuel and whether or not Hamas is hoarding fuel rather than giving it to the hospitals, whether or not these hospitals are being told to turn away Israeli fuel. And two weeks ago, when both John Kirby at the White House and Matt Miller at the State Department, both, it was clearly synchronized. I've been involved in those joint briefings where all the spokesmen for all the agencies go out with the same statement at the same time. They clearly prepped this. They all started to take apart the notion that Hamas, that the Gaza health ministry is a credible independent source on casualties. And they both did it from the podium in the White House briefing room. So it's very impressive. I think

President Biden, because I know some in his administration are not thrilled with this, with the approach he's taking. And my understanding is President Biden, because I know some in his administration are not thrilled with this, with the approach he's taking. And my understanding is President Biden himself feels strongly about it. This is him personally, and he intends to stick with it. And even just in recent days, he was asked, what about the ceasefire? When will there be a ceasefire? He explicitly said there will be no ceasefire, which is just incredible. He didn't dance. So the question is 2024. That's the question. And there are two sources of political liability for the president heading into a reelection campaign on this issue. One is the progressive left. And does Biden worry about an unenthusiastic or depressed base

that could hurt him very much in a close reelection. Sure, he should be concerned about that. No president wants to go into a reelect with their base unenthusiastic. I would venture to say that his base will be just fine no matter what, especially considering who President Biden is likely to be running against in the general election. I don't think his base will need reasons to be jolted with caffeine. I think they'll be motivated. The sub-issue of that is the Arab community, specifically in Michigan, which people point to all the time. I worked in Michigan politics. I worked for a senator. I actually worked for a Lebanese American senator, Spence Abraham. This is a million years ago in the 1990s.

The Arab community in Dearborn, Michigan is a strong community. It's one of the largest Arab communities outside the Middle East anywhere. And I'm not taking anything away from them, but it represents something like less than 1% of the electorate in Michigan. If Joe Biden is running so close that that vote is the deciding difference in Michigan. If Joe Biden is running so close that that vote is the deciding difference in Michigan, he's going to lose the election regardless because that just means he's losing in so many other places. So I cannot imagine that's a factor.

On the other hand, so take the risk of the base and the Arab Muslim vote in Michigan off the table. On the other hand, independent voters will matter a lot. President Biden has a real hard time with independent voters right now. You watch what's going on in the streets these days in the United States, in major cities. You watch what's going on in our college campuses. It is so disorienting for me as a Jew. It's an incredibly – I've never felt vulnerable in the United States ever.

I've never felt vulnerable as a Jew. I'm a son of a Holocaust survivor. I've raised with these stories. My mother was always telling me I had a million reasons to feel vulnerable. I mean it's in the water in my home. I mean growing up, I know the story. I've internalized it. But I never actually walked out the door and felt vulnerable.

This is the first time in my life that I've actually ever felt vulnerable as a Jew. But what's striking to me is how many other people I know who aren't Jewish that are watching what's going on and they're freaked out. And these are not partisan Democrats and partisan Republicans. They're not political professionals. They're just regular people. They are classic swing voters who can go either way. And they are looking at this craziness. Now, they were already starting to feel it, the kind of intersectionality and the powerless

versus the powerful frame that was playing out on schools and colleges. But the anti-Semitism piece has just reached, taken this whole thing to a fever pitch. And it's, I think if President Biden has a sister soldier moment and stands against that, I'm not here to give him political advice because there are plenty of people running for president who I'd rather be president than Joe Biden. However, I do think if he has the equivalent of Bill Clinton and a sister soldier moment, taking that on, particularly now, it will not only resonate with many Jewish voters. I think

it will resonate with many non-Jewish voters in the center who see what's going on in response. I mean, again, they will say, we thought the outrage, I've heard my non-Jewish friends say this, we thought the out, and these aren't politically conservative people. They were just, they say, we thought the outrage would be directed at the people who did to Israel on October 7th, the barbarism of what was done to Israel on October 7th. We thought the outrage would be directed at them. It turns out the outrage is directed at Jews for being, for objecting to being slaughtered. That's where the outrage is being directed. They find it so disorienting and it is a, it is like a proxy for them that things in the U.S. are kind of coming undone. And if Joe Biden can seem to be taking that on and therefore in a sense, taking on his own, I, you know, again, I'm not here to give him

political advice, but I think it would be a pretty good political strategy to reach the center. This may have to be our closing question to you on the Jewish community in America. And the picture you paint there is one that has a sort of shared feeling. You know, you're describing a feeling across the board. I'm just wondering, I've seen those pictures of people marching in or doing a demonstration in Grand Central Station, Jewish Voice for Peace. You've got a lot of Jews on campus. I'm talking younger Jews mirroring in a way the divide that's in the Democratic Party between Joe Biden, the old guy who loves Israel, and the younger ones who are agitating in another direction. Isn't that being mirrored a bit

even inside the American Jewish community where younger Jews are not actually completely on the script that you've just voiced? They are instead among those who are saying, yeah, yeah, 7th October, terrible, but right now our focus is on Gaza, the hospitals, and so on, and who are among those calling for Joe Biden to put a restraining hand on the wheel held by Netanyahu and Israel. So I think the young Jews who you're referring to are, represent a tiny, tiny percentage of the electorate, of the electorate. And I'm talking about just within the jewish community yeah yeah yeah yeah sorry that's not electorally i you've answered the electoral point i'm just thinking what's the future of the jewish community here is there as much unity behind israel as you're in a way suggesting i okay so i think that that segment small. I think it's really small. What I've been struck by is the number of very assimilated, very – in most cases pretty secular Jews in the U.S. who were very moderate at most, many of them very left, not hard left, but kind of center left, who have been completely radicalized by the world's reaction to October

7th. So yes, there are some on the way extreme, and I really would in the Jewish community, there are some of the way extreme who represent Jewish voices for peace. But again, I think it represents a minuscule percentage where you're seeing the real action is I think the center to kind of center left Jews who were horrified by the Trump years. And they were viewed themselves as, as, you know, very partisan Democrats, very, this is a group that was very critical of Israel during the depths of the Netanyahu years, the, you know, with the judicial reform fight, and that group, I think, has has come back. And so you're seeing a lot of solidarity across the political spectrum, except for the way fight. And that group, I think, has come back. And so you're seeing a lot of solidarity

across the political spectrum, except for the way extreme. But again, I think that represents a tiny percentage. And I just think it's important to, and I know you're seeing a lot of this, Jonathan, in the UK, but what is so shocking to so many people, not just me, but I think people on the center left, religiously and politically in the Jewish world,

is it used to be be before October 7th, if people wanted to be critical of Israel, they bent over backwards to make clear that it was criticism of Israel, but they're still, you know, I'm talking about non-Jews now, but they're not, this is not an anti-Semitic focus. This is not an anti-Semitic lens. It's distinctive from their views about the Jews and the Jewish role in America, Jewish life in America. And I just think the open association with symbols and history and horrors of a previous era that would,

you'd normally feel would stigmatize you. People are now more and more embracing the stigma. So I'll give you an example. We just had in recent days the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, which, you know, 1938, the organized vandalism and destruction of Jewish properties, Jewish-owned businesses in Germany, which was really early signs of what was to come. This was a thing in the U.S. and in Canada on the 85th anniversary. So, you know, Heather Reisman, for instance, who's the CEO of Indigo,

which is the largest book chain in – who's Jewish, largest book chain in Canada. It's like the Barnes & Noble of Canada. On the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, they vandalized her stores and put red blood, red paint all over the place and put up signs calling her not CEO, but CGO, Chief Genocidal Officer. There are businesses in New York City that have been vandalized. There's businesses in Europe that have been... You would think, oh, hey, we shouldn't do this this week because this week is the anniversary of Kristallnacht. We don't want to be associated with the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

It's the opposite. It's – there's no stigma. That's just open embrace of it religiously not on the right. I'm not saying they're embracing the right. They just know they want – they are very scared about the extreme left. And I think in that sense you're seeing this groundswell of solidarity in the Jewish world. Look, I'm just coming from this – I mean I'm coming to you guys literally minutes after this rally in Washington. So the current counts were something like over 200,000 Jews or 200,000 people showing up. Now we'll get the exact numbers, but I'd be hard pressed to find pre-October 7th the reason that 200,000 Jews in the United States

with five days notice. I mean, it's not like they've been planning this for months. They planned this last, they announced it last week. I mean, my kid's school, notice went out to the parents late last week saying, we're going, we're taking 500 kids to Washington, washington dc and we're schlepping from new york which is you know five hour bus ride each way and there are people here from california and there are people here from dallas and there jewish communities from boston from people flew here from canada i don't think you would have

gotten that solidarity jonathan at any other time i don't think you would have gotten this kind of solidarity even if any other time. I don't think you would have gotten this kind of solidarity, even if there are some fringe elements that are still critical of Israel. But enough about me. I want to ask you guys a question about the Unholy podcast, which I say I have relied on your banter, not only between the two of you, but between the two of you and your fantastic guests. I will tell you that there were a couple of guests in particular that when Saul and I were working on this book, we very much relied on those interviews to focus our thinking. So I'm grateful for that. But, but the therapy session you guys had with each other, the guest list,

the guest list episode of Unholy, all right? The rare guest list episode of Unholy. All right. The rare guest list episode of Unholy. I was actually kind of stunned by because, and I don't want to make you guys feel uncomfortable, but, you know, you guys already made each other, I think, uncomfortable in that episode. So I feel like going there. Quite. Yeah. No, I was struck by it because, I mean, for those of you who haven't heard i encourage my

listeners to listen to unholy podcasts every week but in particular there's one titled with the it's what's titled therapy or what is it war therapy war therapy that's it war therapy thank you war therapy it's a great title where you guys have no guest and you guys kind of have it out and it's clear that there was some tension between the two of you post-October 7th. And what I was struck by is that since before October 7th, I have plenty of friends who, let's just say, we have complicated relationships with one another as it relates to Israel. And these include Jews, non-Jews and Jews. And I'm perfectly happy to engage and indulge and hopefully educate and illuminate. And I think, oh, I'm just a few inches away from persuading them about this or that. But since October 7th, I've had very little time for it.

I just like, I kind of feel like I can't, if you don't get this, I just don't want to talk about it. I'm not even sure we can hang out. Like I just, it want to talk about it. I'm not even sure we can hang out. Like I, I just, it's, it's become that personal. And I felt listening to you two, like, wow,

they, they're kind of, they're in that mode. They're in that zone and they're deciding to have it out and they're deciding to have it out in front of their tens of thousands of listeners. So I guess my question is, did you guys plan for that? Like, did you say this is getting uncomfortable? So let's make it more uncomfortable by having this conversation.

Like, what was the genesis? I'm genuinely curious. So I was a bit, what should we say, miffed at Jonathan. That could have been, that came out a little bit in our regular weekly conversations about what was going on since the war. And I decided to ask him, I wanted to do something that is so completely contrary to anything I've ever done in my life, which, as I said, on the episode is usually just to bottle everything up and never talk about it again. To do the opposite and say, let's try and have this real honest conversation because I think we can handle it

because we're friends and we can do this. And Jonathan's idea was let's just record it without our team and think if we want to even air this. And I think that it took a few days to decide that we do, right? And did you do it without your team? Yes. Yes.

I mean, that was my sort of suggestion because I felt we would have a completely honest conversation if it really was a conversation, just two people, rather than feeling like we're recording this for a podcast. So we actually had the real conversation. My thought was do that first, then we'll listen back to it and think whether we want anyone else to hear it. But that was, I think, why it was so truthful because we weren't doing it as a performance.

It was actually a real conversation and the decision to allow other people in was secondary to making sure it was real the interesting thing to me has been the response to it i mean it has had we've never had a response like it i don't think you need have we i mean just the just the volume of it the intensity of it and the thing that keeps coming back is people saying, the two of you were the voices in my head. You were saying the arguments that were going through my head anyway, that there were people had their own, as one person put it to me, they had their own inner Yonit and inner Johnny kind of thing that had been slugging this out for weeks. But it was something very helpful, even, I dare say, therapeutic about hearing it out loud. But what do you think, Yolanda?

No, I mean, I just, the only thing is, I mean, we've been having this conversation, Israel and diaspora, for three years, and it kind of felt like what has happened made it very real and just forced us to have this conversation, really. So one question for each of you on this and for my our my listeners who would not have heard this i'll just spell out like one one of the disagreements and i don't want to put words in your mouth jonathan i've full disclosure i found myself agreeing much more with you on it than i did with you so i just want to put that out there because we're continuing the therapy. I might have guessed that actually. But I will say you said this out loud,

and I know some friends, people I know feel this way, but you said it out loud. They haven't said it to me directly. You basically said, yes, I know what Hamas did to Israel was horrific. And of course I know that Israel has to now respond in a major way. Again, I'm just characterizing, summarizing. But the way they respond is making things worse. And I so disagree with that, because I feel that the fact that the world was reacting to October 7th by attacking Israel before Israel had actually even responded was so shocking to me. But I was also wondering, were you representing how you felt, or is that

the sense in the UK? Because that's not the sense in the US. And I guess, is that the sense in the UK? Because that's not the sense in the US. And I guess, is that a thing in the UK? First in the Jewish community, and then more generally, I guess it is more generally, but was that your voice? Or was you also representing a voice? I'm not sure which bit you're focusing on, but just on the on the setup of the question, when you say the world was against Israel on October 7th, there were definitely groups on the far left and others marching on the streets who were unsympathetic to Israel on October 7th. And that was shocking and horrible for Jews in particular. I don't think you can say the world was against Israel on October 7th.

I mean, Joe Biden wasn't, Rishi Sunak wasn't, Macron wasn't. So, but definitely there were people who went on the street saying victory to the resistance, and that was chilling. But it was a loud, vocal, indefensible minority, I think. I don't think it's the world. And I think in a way, the fact that you said it is what a lot of Jews feel at the moment. Oh my God, there's a placard I've just seen on Twitter, the world hates us. And I, you know, I'm talking now purely diaspora. I'm not talking now about Israel. Yeah. But there is a real state of angst in my own community in Britain that I, on a pitch that I haven't seen before, but it's partly taking what is real and saying that group there is there for

everyone. And that's the move that I'm trying to counsel against. There are anti-Semites out there. What they're saying is real, dangerous, and horrific, but it's not the world. And we've got to try and disaggregate, you know, what is some people and what is everyone. And then now six weeks later, then of course people are reacting to the death toll and the casualties that they're seeing. There was a UN vote pretty early that was extremely lopsided. When I go back and think about the early UN votes on the Russia-Ukraine war, where the world was actually more divided than it was over Hamas' invasion of Israel. That there actually were more people, more countries opposed to what Russia did than there were countries that were willing to vote against Hamas. I mean, that UN vote didn't even mention Hamas. It was like Hamas didn't even exist and they were calling for a ceasefire. So that was pretty soon

after October 7th. In fairness, it wasn't on October 7th, but it was pretty close. That, other than the US and I guess theK., it felt that Israel was pretty alone. It was basically Israel, the U.S., and sort of the U.K. and a few other countries that aren't that significant geopolitically against the world. And so that is not just paranoia. It feels pretty lonely. I don't think Israel's – the amount of – number of fuel trucks it provides or the number of thousands of people that it moves through humanitarian corridors is the dial that will determine whether or not the world – I guess that's my fundamental problem is that it's – my view is Israel needs to win and it needs to do what it needs to do to win. And Israel, as every country that has had to deal with a genocidal enemy, whether it was the U.S. in World War II, whether it was the U.S. dealing with ISIS when it flattened Mosul, I mean, it flattened Mosul in 2016 with very little regard for civilian casualties. Again, you can turn the dial, but it just doesn't seem to me that the U.S. or that Israel is going to be able to mollify international reaction based on how it conducts this war.

It should do everything it can to minimize civilian casualties. But at the end of the day, the world is going to react the way it is reacting, regardless of what Israel does. And I guess I'm just struck that you don't, you think the world can be kind of, the international opinion can be managed. You know, I think a lot of this plays out in our conversation. I don't completely disagree with you, Dan. But I also appreciate the fact that, you know, what was very hard for, because we have a lot of listeners in Israel and a lot of listeners outside Israel, I think it was harder for Israeli listeners, and it's hard for us because we're still in a mourning period, to hear what the rest of the world is, you know, I can understand when Jonathan is saying,

look, I open television every night, and these are the pictures that I'm seeing of the destruction in Gaza. And it does somehow formulate public opinion. I can understand that. It makes me, you know, it can upset me and I can talk about that, but that is the reality that we also need to calculate in what we're doing. This is not, sadly, the world is not going to give Israel nine months

like it gave the United States and Mosul. Nobody, you know, that's not going to happen here and we need to somehow, I'm channeling my inner Jonathan here, but we need to somehow take that into consideration too. And I think that played out in the conversation that we had. in Israel as a journalist, but you're also a participant in all this. And I think this is something people don't understand often about Israeli journalism is that obviously there's a fierce commitment to an independent press, and yet Israeli journalists also live in the trauma. They participate in the trauma.

They have loved ones serving they have often loved ones who are victims of of of a massacre like october 7th is there another model like is that you look at like is there another country in the world that has anything like this i'm trying to think like journalists after september 11th in the united states how they thought of their role because i listened to you and again i agreed with most of what you were saying, but you also have to cover the hell out of this story. And you felt both like you, it sounds to me like you're trying to strike a balance between covering the hell out of the story, but also feeling very protective of this place and very protective of this country that was under siege, and that's your country and your people.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think we've ever felt like we have felt in these past six weeks, definitely not in my lifetime, this, you know, this real danger and this real existential threat like it felt in the first couple of weeks. And there's no handbook, there's no journalism handbook for my network how to deal with it. And what you obviously handbook, there's no journalism handbook for my network, how to deal with it. And what you obviously know, because you know so much about Israel is that the main networks in this country morph into 24 hour news channels. So I've been on air for, you know, many hours of every day, trying to process this and trying to also send the message to Israelis, the sort of message of resilience and throughout all of this

horror and all of what has happened to report about it, but also, you know, be as composed as possible. And really, I think it's important to also do that, to say, we'll be okay. Like the resilience that you're talking about in your book, we will be okay. We're going to go through a dark tunnel, but we'll be okay. And I think that's important to somehow carry that as well as this sort of understated, you know, conversation, subtext of it. Do you, this resilience and this hopefulness is too strong a word. Again, I just came from this rally in Washington where you see these family members, parents of hostages who spoke. And I know you see this all the time.

It's just every time I see it, it's just it's gut wrenching. Do you see the hopefulness? I mean, you're covering Israeli life now post October 7th. I see the rays of light inside the darkness. I do. I do with what we talked about, with the civil society, with people mobilizing, with everyone organized, with everyone caring, everyone being part of it in some way. Yes, that is some source of optimism, for sure. And the rest is pretty dark.

What about the Israeli Arab community? So one thing that went viral over here was this interview with lucy arash uh or not interview monologue she gave this statement which is very powerful basically saying i stand with israel i don't stand with hamas israel is my country you've had mansour boss the you know head of the rom party basically try to kick out a member of his own party because she from the kineset because she was questioning the beheadings. And you have in Jaffa this Arab-Jewish civil volunteer, civilian security committee volunteer base that's been built. Is there something going on? A poll just came out from the Israeli Democracy Institute

that shows record-level sense of solidarity among Israelis, including Israeli Arabs feeling a sense of solidarity among Israelis, including Israeli Arabs, feeling a sense of solidarity with Israel. By the way, I've been talking about this all over American television the last couple weeks, and I sometimes am careful because I don't want to overshoot. And then we get an equivalent of like May 21 again where there's fighting between Arabs and Jews. I'm worried about that.

And yet I'm also hopeful that there's something going on. Is there something going on? I think that it's an amazing thing that one of our fears in the first couple of days was, will we see something like in the Operation Guardian of the Walls in 2021, parts of the Arab community, you know, in some sort of skirmish with the Jewish communities here in intermixed cities? We didn't see that, quite the opposite. You mentioned Mansour Abbas, head of the United Arab Party, talking about condemning this, a lot of sort of cooperation between the Arab community and Jewish community. I actually think that it's a source of optimism as well, what we're seeing here, for sure. All right.

So we will, instead of this being a typical Jewish conversation that ends with only rays of darkness, we will end with... A little bit of optimism. Look at us. We managed to get there. Dan, thank you so much, really, for this conversation. Thanks, guys. It was great. Thank you, Dan. That's our show for today. To keep up with Yonit Levy and Jonathan Friedland, you can find them both on X. That's at Levy, Yonit, L-E-V-I, and also at Friedland. And of course, you can find the Unholy Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. I highly recommend you subscribe if you want to stay current on events in Israel.

Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.