Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - COMING HOME - with Yossi Klein Halevi & Wendy Singer

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

Watch Call me Back on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CallMeBackPodcast To contact us, sign up for updates, and access transcripts, visit: https://arkmedia.org/ Dan on X: https://x.com/dansenor Dan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dansenor On Sunday evening in Israel, after 471 days in captivity, three hostages — Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher  — were released from Gaza and returned home to Israel, as a ceasefire in Gaza went into effect.  There has been speculation as to why this deal was agreed upon now, and about whether January 19th effectively marked the end of the Gaza war. And more than anything, there is palpable anxiety about the fate of the remaining hostages.  To take in this moment and unpack these questions about what comes next, we are joined by Yossi Klein Halevi and Wendy Singer. Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Yossi has written a number of books, including his latest, "Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor," which was a New York Times bestseller. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Times of Israel. He is co-host of "For Heaven's Sake" podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/for-heavens-sake/id1522222281 Yossi Klein Halevi's books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001IXOA04 Wendy Singer was the professional founder of Start-Up Nation Central (SNC), where she served as Executive Director for nine years. Wendy currently serves as a strategic advisor to select Israeli start-ups and NGOs, including the National Library of Israel. Before joining Israel’s tech scene, she spent sixteen years as Head of AIPAC’s Israel office. Wendy is a board member of the Shalom Hartman Institute; and a Trustee of the Russell Berrie Foundation. 

Lula! I managed to tell her how much I love her and hold her hand for a few seconds. There's no words to describe what I'm feeling right now. What is this? What is this? Yes, yes, yes. After 471 days of war, a ceasefire is now in place in Gaza, and the first three hostages to be freed in this phase of the deal have now come out. Romy, Emily, and Doron are in Israel. They are going to begin the long journey of recovery.

The big question though is whether phase one of the deal, this six-week ceasefire, will be followed by phase two, a permanent end to the war, the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from Gaza, and all hostages finally coming home. It's 12 o'clock p.m. on Sunday, January 19th here in New York City. It is 7 o'clock p.m. on Sunday, January 19th in Israel as a ceasefire and hostage deal has come into effect this morning. And Israelis embraced the first hostages to come through from Gaza.

Romy Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher, three young women who were taken hostage to Gaza 471 days ago on October 7th, 2023. than 71 days ago on October 7th, 2023. I know that Jews in Israel, but also all over the world have been glued to screens watching these images today. And one message that just came across my screen was that Romy, Emily and Doron are all with their mothers right now. This is a complicated moment filled with joy and agony, relief and fury, courage and dread.

A lot of speculation has been driving a lot of the conversations in recent days and emotions about why this deal was agreed upon now whether or not January 19th will effectively mark the end of the Gaza War and What the fallout would be of that or maybe it is not the end of the war and what that means and More than anything today. There's a lot of anxiety I think about the fate of the rest of the hostages. And that my impression is palpable in Israel today and to help us get a sense for the mood in Israel today. We are joined by two call me back regulars from Jerusalem, Yossi Klein Halevi and Wendy Singer, both with the Shalom Hartman Institute. Yossi, in addition to being at the Hartman Institute, is the host of the For Heaven's

Sake podcast, of which I am a regular listener and devotee and is a prolific writer and author of numerous books, many of which have shaped my thinking and I think a lot of the thinking of our listeners. Wendy, as I said, is also, she's on the board of the Hartman Institute. She's on the board of the Russell Berry foundation, and she's an advisor to a number of Israeli startups and also the national library of Israel. I should also say Wendy in full disclosure, as many of our listeners know,

is also not just a figurative member of the call me back family, but literally a member of the call me back family, because she is my sister. I was waiting for that. Yeah, sorry. You'll see. Sorry. You know, I, I, I feel I've sort of buried the lead anyways, you'll see Wendy. Thank you for being here. It's great to be back with you.

Good to be here, Dan. Wendy, I want to start with you. You have been with us at certain moments. I mean, I speak to you almost daily, but you've been with the Call Me Back community at certain key moments, highs and lows over the past year. Plus I'm thinking specifically about when I think you were last on, which was after the six hostages were executed late summer, 2024, and what the mood was like specifically around the community of Hirsch Goldberg, Poland in your

community in Jerusalem, and you can often provide like a snapshot for me and for us. So for those who have not been glued to the live broadcast all day, can you describe what you've been seeing, what you've been feeling when Romy and Emily and Daron came back home, and also the hours that led up to this moment. I was thinking a lot about how I would kind of capture the essence of the mood in the street, let's call it. And even though this is a terribly imperfect deal, there is a sense that in order for the country and the people to move forward, it's a deal that has to happen.

And the way that I describe it is that there's going to be some relief, a slice of joy for the families who get their loved ones back, and rivers of pain in the next 42 days. Because we have to remember the number is 33. 33 families are going to get their loved ones back. As we sit here we don't know of the 33 beyond the fact that the majority are said to be alive. We don't know which ones are alive and which ones are coming back in coffins. So there's this sense that there's going to be some profound relief and an ocean of sadness and pain in the coming days. I was at the rally last night in Jerusalem,

which has been a weekly affair ever since October 7th. And on other Saturday nights, the mood was more boisterous. There's been a lot of anger. It's been almost like a chaotic show of love for the hostages and the families. And last night, I can't even describe, Dan, how it was both heavy and hopeful. It was purposeful. It was quiet. When the song was sung at the very end, right before Hatikva, they decided to sing the song

Lou Yahee, which is one of the Israeli old classics from Naomi Schemer, which is Let It Be. And the whole, some thousands of people that were there were singing Let It Be, and you could have heard a pin drop. Someone sent us a clip from the rally in Tel Aviv for the hostages last night, singing a different song, tens of thousands of people, and you could have heard a pin drop. And I felt like there was such a profound respect for the

moment that we're in. And the message of the speakers last night was, a lot of us disagree about a lot of aspects of this deal, but we have to remember that the families of the hostages are one at this moment and we need to get them all back. Wendy, in addition to the scene at the square, the hostages square, which I think many of our listeners have been to in Tel Aviv, you've been sending me these videos and describing these almost these impromptu scenes that aren't, don't seem to be part of any kind of central, organized effort of the family's formal infrastructure, the hostage family's formal infrastructure. They're just almost like on street corners, you're seeing these, I don't want to call

them demonstrations, but you know what I'm talking about. They're not. They're not demonstrations. It's someone from the hostage family's forum shows up with a megaphone at a street corner at 1115 on a Friday morning and reads out all the names. And at the one in Ramat Dena, which is a neighborhood of Jerusalem, I'm told that more than 50 people gather every Friday morning to hear the names read. At our synagogue, there was a custom developed of reading every single name at a certain

point in the reading of the Torah on Shabbat morning. And there's something about speaking the names of every single one of these 98 hostages that gives a sense of purpose, prayer, hope, I would add desperation. You hear it wherever you go. So if you're not walking by a place where the names are being read, you see the posters on every street corner, in every store window, at the supermarket, at your place of work, and the banners on the highways. I mean, one of the ones that really got me

was Hirsch Goldberg Poland. There's a picture of him on the highway coming into Jerusalem and it says, it was too late for me, but we can still save them. And that's what you see when you drive into Jerusalem. It is literally everywhere. You see, obviously, every Israeli is experiencing a version of what Wendy's describing, because in a country as small as Israel, everyone's in some way connected to it. The comparison I often make is, imagine today with the close to 100 hostages, although fewer obviously now, in Gaza, as a percentage of Israel's population would be the equivalent of 3,500 Americans being held hostage by terrorist organization 3,500 Americans 471 days which means two thanksgivings

not one it's everyone in America as big as this country is would feel some kind of connection to one of these hostages or their story and And so that's what's going on in Israel, on the one hand. On the other hand, there are some Israelis that have a little more distance from it than others. Speaking for those Israelis who aren't like in it, that don't have someone, you know, in their family or from their workplace or from their neighborhood who is in captivity or was in captivity, but it's just, I don't want to say going about their lives, but is not in a deeply visceral and personal sense. When you spend time with those kinds of Israelis, how do you think the kind of broader public is experiencing this?

Well, there is a divide here, but it isn't the divide that you're suggesting. It isn't an emotional divide between those who are directly impacted and those who aren't. I'll give you one example, a poster that really touched me, on the facade of an assisted living facility in Jerusalem. Big banner with the photographs of all the elderly hostages. And it says they are all our grandparents. And I think that that's very typical. I don't think there's any emotional hyperbole in that statement. It's not a slogan. It actually is a precise description of how most Israelis feel. They're all our grandparents. They're all our children. They're all our spouses.

And this is one of those intimate moments that really do define Israel as a family. But that's only one part of the story. There is a divide here. And the divide isn't over the relief that people feel or the emotions that people feel seeing the three young women returning home but over the price. And I have never experienced any hostage release in 40 plus years that I'm living here that has caused this much divisiveness and bitterness. There have been demonstrations against the deal, which as someone who supports the deal, I understand people who oppose the deal.

I can understand people having the shamelessness to actually go out and block traffic and say, stop the deal, because the consequence, the meaning of that is that these three young women would not have come home. And so there's a lot of bitterness in the society that we didn't have before. And I don't know how that's going to play out, but we really have to face that. And this is different. This is a very different moment. And there's bitterness on both sides. There's a lot of bitterness among the people who've been campaigning for the release of the hostages,

feeling that the government could have had this same deal six months ago. And whether that's true or not, or whether it's justified or not to blame the government. That's there. You feel it. You hear it. And so it's very disorienting in Israel today. There's also, you know, Wendy spoke about the anxiety. And the anxiety is, well, is this hostage deal really going to play out until the end? Will this government really see it through, even if that means ending the war in Gaza? Now, we know Netanyahu is already committed to his far-right partners, to Smutrich in particular, that when these 42-day period ends of the first phase, he intends to go back to war, which means only one thing, the hostage exchange ends. And

there's a new poster that I saw tonight on the way over here in Jerusalem, brand new poster in response to today, to this deal, which has pictures of those who are not included in the first phase and says, don't leave us behind. And that's a clear political message. And this is something new in the hostage discussion. Wendy, you and I spoke earlier today. You read me a message you received on WhatsApp from your friend Esther Abramowitz, who's head of Hillel Birthright in Israel. And in 2002, she was on the Hebrew University campus,

Mount Scopus, Haritzofim, and there's this famous cafeteria there, which I actually know well because I ate lunch there every single day. Frank Sinatra. Right, the Frank Sinatra cafeteria. Yeah, the Frank Sinatra cafeteria. When Americans think of a college,

like think of the quad, like think of like a place, like the meeting place where students hang out, the Frank Sinatra cafeteria on the Mount Scopus campus is the closest thing, you know, in American terms to like the hangout area. And there was a terrorist attack in 2002, suicide bombing at the Frank Sinatra cafeteria, and there were nine deaths, well over a hundred, I think wounded, but nine were murdered.

Five of whom, by the way, were Americans who were studying there. And your friend Esther was there, I guess she was right next door when it happened and she lost three of her close friends. And she wrote you a note today and I'm gonna read it. You tried reading it to me earlier, but you got very emotional when you were reading it.

And I asked you if you could read it on the podcast, but you said it would be too hard So I'm gonna read it the message to you was the terrorists from the Hebrew you bombing are being released I can't breathe we will hold each other up and the hostages will come home So Wendy I think about the ages of your daughters and think they could have easily been at the Nova Festival So there's it's hard not to think about your personal situation or the people you know or the people in your life being affected on either side of what Yossi was talking

about, either like get my kid home, damn it, or this isn't right. Like what Esther's saying, there's something not right about this. There's something so messed up about this that this guy who slaughtered three of my friends is being released. So how are you taking all this in?

I think the key line is we're going to hold each other up and the hostages are going to come home. It's almost like in that one three-line text, she's explaining that there's no choice, that this has to happen. And the best frame that I've heard yet in the last 15 months of this war that captures what was in Esther's text is a kind of a cultural icon named Yair Agmon, who wrote this powerful book called One Day in October. And Yair Agmon spoke at a Memorial Day ceremony in Jerusalem at Beit Avi Chai. And he basically said, we are a country in the middle of trauma.

And there's tragedy and there's trauma. And he explained the difference. Tragedy is when you're told that your father has cancer. It's not curable, he has six months to live, and you go about doing everything that you need to do to be around your father, to support him wrapping up his affairs and his relationships. You honor him, you get him the best medical care, and after this happened to him actually, after six or eight or nine months, you lose your father, and you go through a period of mourning and grieving, and then this thing that happened to

you is tragic, but it's a story, and with time, you heal. And trauma, he explained by contrast, is something that is a trauma that's unresolved. It's a gaping wound that we have this commitment to Israeli civilians to take care of them, to have their backs, and then we're completely powerless when 250 are kidnapped one fine day into the Gaza Strip. And so what Ya'ir Aghmon was saying is that in order for us to move from trauma to get to the P in PTSD,

is that we need to resolve the hostages. That trajectory just has to be altered. And that's what this deal is doing, and that's what I believe Esther was saying in her own way. Dan, there's a kind of a social contract here. Look, you and I, we grew up on the whole value of never again, right? After the Holocaust, the state of Israel was founded and it was never again would Jews be placed in a situation where they are powerless, where they are defenseless,

where they're tortured, where they're raped? And guess what? They're an hour's drive away from where we're living our lives. So what does that mean, never again? How can we be in a situation where we are so powerless, there's no agency here? We can't even get the Red Cross to go in and verify whether they're alive or dead. Can't get the Red Cross to go in and verify whether they need medication or whether they need their arms sewn back

on. So something about the premise of the Israel story is threatened by having these hostages not coming back. You see, how have you personally been absorbing all of this? Yeah, I think, Wendy, you put it really beautifully. And so long as the hostages are still effectively in October 7th, the rest of us are in October 7th too. And you know the world has basically moved on. It moved on pretty quickly after October 7th and for us it's still October 7th. I think there are many reasons for that and

Wendy, you touched on I think one of the essential reasons is this deep sense of failure that we have failed in our national mission of reversing Jewish history. And the most tangible proof of that, the ongoing failure, is the tragedy of the hostages. We're a nation that sent commandos halfway across Africa, 1976, to rescue 100 Israelis held hostage. The Entebbe operation, yeah. And Wendy, just as you said a moment ago, they're an hour away. In fact, they're five minutes away from the IDF in many cases. We know, we know they're right there. And in some cases, we

actually know exactly where they are and we can't get to them because we're afraid that their captors will murder them as soldiers get closer. So this sense of helplessness is such an un-Israeli experience. And the way that that's played out for me is that for the first months, I was not able to look at the posters on the street with the pictures of the hostages. And you know, it's very poignant because the slogan is, look at them in the eye. That's what it says. And my response was, no, I can't.

I can't because I would just break down and I had to function. And so this is hanging over the Israeli story in a way that no other tragedy that I can think of in the history of this country. That's a big statement because we've really been through a lot here. I can't think of another trauma that goes deeper and that cuts to the heart of what it means to be an Israeli as this and just to come full circle with what I was saying earlier the fact that we're not united on the need to prioritize the hostages above all other considerations no matter how important just adds to the

trauma it's tearing us apart. But with that, the polling, I'm told, is that 70% of the public supported a deal. Yes. Yes. So you have about 20 or 25% hardcore opposition, but in Israel, that's not negligible. And it comes mostly from the religious Zionist community, not exclusively. But that's the heart of the opposition. And so there are overlapping layers here of schism, of unease. And I understand them.

You know, Dan, I really understand the anger on the other side. But the fact that we're talking about freeing hostages and there's another side is, for me, as an Israeli is unbearable. Well, Saul, Wendy, again, connecting all the dots, Wendy's husband is Saul. Saul, as many of our listeners knows, the co-author of both of our books about Israel,

sent me a note about the competing ethoses, Israeli ethoses. One ethos is we don't leave any Israeli on the battlefield. Israel will move literally heaven and earth to get an Israeli back home from captivity. And Israel will also, another ethos, have, to use your word, Wendy, agency, have agency over its security, that Israel will not leave its security in other people's hands.

And this deal puts those two ethos is in tension with one another because to get the hostages back, it seems that if you're a parent of a soldier who was killed fighting Hamas to protect Israel and you were told that your loved one died in service of defending the country with 1900 or whatever the exact number is Palestinian prisoners being released, who if history is any predictor of the future, subset of them will do terrible things against Jews, much like Yechis Sinwar was released in the 2011 hostage exchange and Israel got October 7th. If you're a parent of someone who killed in Gaza an Israeli soldier, you're like, well, what was that for? What did we accomplish? So, you know, I think that that's right. All of those reservations are right, but they're missing

to my mind two essential points. The first is that the goal of this war, the goals of this war, The first is that the goal of this war, or the goals of this war, were to break the Iranian siege on Israel's borders from Gaza through Lebanon through Syria. And that goal has been achieved. The second goal was to restore Israeli deterrence. That goal, it seems to me, has been partly achieved, not completely, where we're still getting missiles fired at us from Yemen. So clearly, we haven't succeeded in completely deterring our enemies. But we're certainly in a much stronger position than we were at the beginning of this war. And I think that that is part of the reason why

we can allow ourselves to do a deal which, in the first months of this war, maybe the first year, I was deeply opposed. We have to destroy Hamas. That is a strategic necessity. If we don't restore our deterrence—and I said this to you a few months ago, one of the times I was on the show. Before we had actually succeeded in turning the war around, and we really did. The turning point was in Lebanon and not in Gaza. I was very hesitant about this kind of deal. Now I feel that there's a strategic necessity to maintaining Israeli sense of solidarity. We've lost in the last months as the hostage situation has deteriorated, more and more

Israelis have become bitterly disillusioned. That bitterness is being turned against the government, that the government isn't doing everything it can to rescue the hostages. That will have long-term consequences if it isn't doing everything it can to rescue the hostages, that will have long-term consequences if it isn't dealt with. Many, many young people feel this isn't the same Israel that they grew up on. The ethos, you talked about an ethos, that is central. And maintaining that ethos is essential to holding our national solidarity together. The other point here is that what we're all feeling today is a sense of defeat.

When you see Hamas terrorists and thousands of Gazans celebrating in the streets, we're all feeling this is not the way we envisioned this war would end. When we set out on October 8th to undo October 7th, this was not the scenario. And so there's a sense of shame. And what we're really facing today is that in some sense we lost on October 7th. And it's not only the massacre. The moment Hamas seized 250 Israeli hostages, there was no way we were going to have, as Netanyahu likes to put it, a complete victory, total victory. It's an illusion, not when they're

holding 250 Israelis. And today, we're forced to look ourselves in the mirror and say, you know what, there is no total victory. And that's devastating for us. Most Israelis nevertheless are willing to pay the prices. You said 70% of Israelis support this deal. And all of us who support this deal know full well what the price is that we're paying. The only thing I think you put your finger on seminal points here, the only thing where I would do a small pushback because there is no Kodak moment like Sinwar had what was it in 2014 after another one of our operations in Gaza that isn't happening and the fact that the price that we're paying in terms of the number of terrorists prisoners with blood on their hands are

being released and yet the geopolitical picture of Israel in the Middle East today. That's what allows us to do this. That's the backdrop that allows us to do this. And I don't think we disagree on this, but all these victory pictures that it just sits in our throats on the one hand, but we also know that the only way to get our people back and to keep this commitment is to make a deal with the devil. And any deal with Hamas is excruciating for all the reasons that you laid out. You know, I do think that when this is over, Israeli society is going to need to ask itself some very difficult questions, which is,

do we really keep playing the game of the terrorists every time they seize hostages that we give in? The reason that I think it's premature why we can't do it now is because the state, the government, and the army betrayed these people. It betrayed their trust. These people were not taken hostage the way, for example, Gilad Shalit was in an act of, there was a certain negligence on his part. And other hostages, there was the Tannenbaum hostage who insanely went to Lebanon for a business deal and was taken hostage. These were people who were dragged out of their homes because the army failed to do its job and the government

failed to do its job. We betrayed them once. The state cannot betray them again. And so we have a moral debt to bring these people back at a terrible price. But again, when this is over, we really need to ask ourselves, do we want to continue being so vulnerable? Because this is our weakest point and they're going to keep doing this to us. And so I agree, I agree with those on the right, Dan, who say that this has to end, but it has to end after we get these people home. So I'm just going to flip that and it was something that really stuck with me when Nadav Eyal spoke on Call Me Back a couple days ago on your episode about the hostages.

me back a couple days ago on your episode about the hostages, he talked about how the fact that Israel is making these sacrifices is a point of strength and not a point of weakness. And he's talking, he's referring to the fabric of society. And I think that your book, The Genius of Israel, is all about that fabric of society. I will agree with you, it is being tested. And it is going to be tested, barely and powerfully in the next 42 days. I want to talk about those next 42 days. The hostage families movement is not monolithic. There are obviously those families, like the families of Rummy, Emily and Daron that are breathing for the first time in 471 days today.

They have their loved ones home. And then there are other families that their loved ones are on the list for this first phase, but 42 days is a long time. And they don't know what the next 42 days will bring. Some of them don't know if their loved ones who name may be on the list are alive or dead. Some are wondering my loved ones, not on the first phase, but you know, maybe there, my loved one's not on the first phase, but you know, maybe they'll be in the second phase or the third phase, but they don't know. What's

their perspective on today? So you really actually need to parse it out into different categories. First of all, let's just start with, there's 33 that will be, God willing, coming out in the next 42 days. We're told that the majority are alive. We don't know what that means. What does majority are alive mean? Is it 17 are alive or is it 27 are alive? So that's a big kind of black cloud of uncertainty.

Call that category one, where these 33 families have no idea what condition their loved ones are coming out in, in the next 42 days. For example, in that first category of the 33, nine are over the age of 80. Have they survived over a year in these airless underground tunnels? Some examples, because I always believe in the power of speaking their names, Oded Lifshitz, Gadi Moses, and Hirut Nimrodhi. And there's another one, there's a 20-year-old guy named Tamir Nimrodhi, who was 18 when he was abducted. And three of his comrades were murdered on October 7th, and the other three were taken hostage. They have no idea whether he's coming back dead or alive. Category one. Category two, the

hostages that are coming back, they don't know the fate of their families. One example is this Keith Siegel from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He's 64 years old. His wife Aviva was released in the first release last October, and he has no idea whether she's alive. One of the stories that just pierces me is the Sharabi brothers. Eli Sharabi and his brother Yossi Sharabi. Yossi Sharabi's wife and daughters were keeping a journal of everything that was happening in their lives in Israel, so that when Yossi would be released, they would be able to present him with this journal of what had happened in Israel the time he was gone. So Yossi's been murdered in captivity.

Eli Sharabi doesn't know if his family is alive or not. His relatives were murdered on October 7th. So his wife and children were murdered on October 7th. He's been in Gaza since October 7th. He's coming back, God willing, assuming he comes back in subsequent weeks. And he's going to come back possibly to learn of this news. Correct. Third category are the ones who will not live to see their loved ones come back alive.

We know Hirsch Goldberg-Polin and Rachel and John are really in our heart and soul on a day like this. And the same thing with the family of Carmel Gott. It's like what Rachel calls the beautiful six, meaning the six that were murdered on that fateful day at the end of August. And then seven or eight days right before that, there was another five who were also murdered in captivity whose bodies came back and have been buried. So that's three categories. There's another category of families that are fighting till the ends of the earth to

get bodies back. And that's where you talk about the neutras, Ronan and Orna, neutra, their son, Omer, Ruby and Chagit-chen, I know you're in touch with them, about their son, Itai-chen. And there's a whole school that says that you can't really do the mourning and the whole process of grieving and healing until you have the body back. And I heard someone say today that there's also a whole thing that with parents that you never really believe that your child is dead, there's always going to be this shadow of doubt until you have their body back. And I'll add a fifth category, which is the 65 families of the ones that are not included

in this first phase. They are left in Never Never Land, and they are just going on, you know, a wing and a prayer that it will get to be their turn and that we will bring them all back. You know, the one incomprehensible aspect of this deal, I was just listening to you going through the categories, and I can't understand why we didn't draw the line here, is to say there will be no deal until we know for certain that we're getting back live human beings. And this is the time. And with all of the pain involved, I understand the parents, but with all of the pain involved, we don't give terrorists an exchange

for bodies. That should be a basic principle. Now, I burial is, it goes very deep in Jewish tradition. This should be where we draw the line. And so if there's any aspect of this deal that I find really incomprehensible, it's the question of the bodies. You see, I want to not that I disagree with you or agree with you. I just want to push back because I've had this conversation with a couple of families who know that their child is dead in Gaza. And as one put it to me, Gaza will be rebuilt at some point, who knows how long it'll be, but Gaza in some way won't look like it looks today.

And I don't want my son buried underneath a skyscraper in Gaza City. I understand all of that, but I can't get closure and I can't get healing. All right. I understand that my son is buried in a, in a, in a Jewish cemetery inside Israel. We're releasing terrorists who we know or, or have a reasonable assumption that they will go back to work. Go back to work, meaning killing Jews. Killing Jews. And God forbid, there will be people who will die because of this deal.

To ensure that the hostages don't die, that to my mind is a reasonable exchange because we don't know for certain that these terrorists are going to kill. The assumption is they will, but certainly when the equation is saving of someone who is in direct danger, whose life is in danger, against the possibility of someone being killed, you save that person. But that criterion doesn't apply to, should not apply, to retrieving bodies. You don't pay for a body with a terrorist who may well return to murdering Jews. That, for me the red line and with all of the pain I would say that to the families directly. I feel that strongly about it.

You see in 15 days Israel is supposed to and Hamas are supposed to begin negotiations for the implementation of the second phase of the deal even though at that point it will barely be halfway through the implementation of this phase of the deal. From afar, and I say this as someone who's not where you are, from afar, I have been skeptical about the viability of the negotiations for that second phase. For many of the reasons you're articulating

and the costs for Israel, again, I don't have a view on it, I'm just saying, it's hard for me to imagine it. And then over the last few days, I've seen started to see the sense of triumphalism from Hamas, which I didn't think through. I thought through a little bit, but not to the extent that we're seeing now with all these terrorists and mass murderers returning to Gaza or returning to the West bank and being treated like heroes. And, and suddenly even in the hostage hostage exchange video today, you

suddenly see the Kassam Brigade terrorists with their green headbands and then the military gear. And you realize Hamas is still there and Hamas is, is maybe not as organized as it once was, but it's, but it's still there and we're going to start hearing speeches. You heard the spokesman of, for Hamas the other day say we are winning because of this deal, we are winning. We are back.

He said there will be more October 7th. We would do October 7th all over again. We will do October 7th again. And basically over the last few months, we haven't seen that. So the only deeply offensive rhetoric against Israel has been like at the UN or has been on college campuses, like these, these idiot students that take over Hamilton hall at Columbia university, or that's where you see it. So they're almost like posing.

They're like posers, but then suddenly you see Hamas and you see Hamas back And so I know Wendy said 70 75 percent of Israelis support the deal and support continuing negotiating but I think that is before we see what I'm describing now and I will tell you like I won't say this person's name, but a very credentialed left-of-center influential thought leader in Israel, Israeli, said to me the other day, who he is invested in this deal as anyone in this for it and has been making the case for it. And he says, and now I'm seeing all these Hamas spokespeople basically say, and they their work begins again or they're, you know,

and he says, he says, I will be against the second phase. This person said to me, I, I mean, I was like stunned that he said this to me, that this is what they're going to do. Forget, we can't handle this. Maybe before October 7th, we could have stomach that those kinds of visuals like back in 2011 and previous hostage exchanges.

But after October 7th, after what we've been through, almost 800 Israeli casualties since October 7th. it's unbearable. It's unbearable. But, um, I think that there are going to be two emotional pulls on Israeli society in the coming weeks, opposite emotional pulls. The first is what you've laid out and that's going to be sinking in and those images will torment you and you'll be, you'll laid out, and that's going to be sinking in, and those images will torment us.

The other side is we're going to start hearing stories from family members, from friends, if not directly, from the released hostages themselves, about what they've been enduring. And that is going to torment Israeli society no less. And so the question is, what will tear you apart more? What will drive you to a certain conclusion? And I think that despite everything, the stories that we're going to be hearing will be so horrific, so unbearable, that the majority of Israelis that support this deal today are going to take another deep breath and support the continuation of the deal. The question is, will the Netanyahu government go for another deal? I don't believe

that they will. I think that Netanyahu is already committed to his far-right partners that he's going to resume the war on day 43, which means there will be no second and third phase unless Trump decides to bully Netanyahu again. We all know the only reason that Netanyahu gave into And that's, and look, we all know the only reason that Netanyahu gave into this deal to begin with was because of Trump. And so a lot of Israelis are going to be praying for Trump's well-being in the coming weeks.

Can I ask you each, just in closing, this is, today feels different than November of 23. How would you compare dealing with today is today feels different than November of 23. How would you compare dealing with today and the days ahead to that period in 2023 during the first hostage release? Well, first of all, the price we paid in November 23 was much smaller and it seemed bearable to the Israeli public. And to be clear it

was only a pause of eight days of fighting so there wasn't a sense that Hamas was going to get the upper hand in that eight days and there was only three Palestinian prisoners released for every Israeli hostage which the ratio is is much much higher. Right right and as far as I remember, there weren't arch terrorists in the way that they are now. So there's that. There's also the sense, as we've been speaking about, that the Israeli public is deeply divided over this deal and over continuing the deal. And so along with this great relief that those of us who support this deal feel, there's this tremendous sense of anxiety.

And that anxiety, ironically, is aimed at our own government now, even more than toward Hamas. The anxiety and anger over this government's anticipated sabotaging of the next stages of the deal is going to create tremendous, tremendous disunity. After the six hostages were murdered, we had the largest demonstration in Israel's history. There was something, there were close to half a million people in Tel Aviv demonstrating that week, demanding an unconditional deal, end the war, and bring the hostages home. And by the way, I'll just add one point, and I know we're supposed to sum up, but one point

that I think is really worth noting, which is there haven't been any demonstrations in Israel against the legitimacy of this war. No demonstrations, not from the left. No one is demonstrating to stop the war because it's immoral. Israelis go into the streets to demand an end to the war for only one reason. Saving the hostages should be the priority, even over the necessary and justified goal of destroying Hamas. And I think that really needs to be explained to an American audience.

Yossi, I will, before we wrap, ask you one question that I know is highly speculative and it's dependent, as Wendy said, on so many variables and so many different actors in this horror show. But standing here today, almost like as it's a timestamp of its own and recognizing that it is capturing your perspective in a moment in time that could change. Do you think right now, knowing what you know, watching what you're watching,

that January 19th will go down as the day that the war ended? My sense is that it will go down as the day that the effectiveness of the war ended. And the government may try to renew the fighting, but for a majority of Israelis, the war is over. And the truth is, in some sense, it ended for many Israelis with the ceasefire in Lebanon. That was already the moment when Israelis started to feel for the first time that this war might have exhausted itself. And the problem then with the government trying to resume the fighting is that it will not have a united country this time around. And one thing we've learned in the history of our wars is that we win when we're united and we lose when we're not united.

We lost one war in Israel's history. That was the Lebanon War of 1982. That was a major defeat for Israel. That was the first war in which Israel was deeply divided and there were massive demonstrations against the war then. And I'm afraid that if the government tries to renew this war, it will trigger an anti-war movement, which will be profoundly destructive for this country. And so we really need to make sure that the next phases of this hostage deal happen and this government doesn't take us into a war that we're not going to win. But you know, see, the other thing that we can't forget is the sheer fatigue of the troops. It's becoming a bigger and bigger story. I mean, at the beginning of the war, we had

120% turnout of the reservists. Many of them are not showing up. They're starting to show up much less. And just quick, you know, random data points. We have a nephew, Amiram, he's got three little kids. He has a full-time job. His wife has a full-time job. So I just texted, how many years have you served in the last year? He said, 284.

And how many years has your wife served in Miluim 100? She's at Sheba Hospital tonight, Anat. And you times that by tens of thousands. And you start to have a situation where on a team of 18 in a given unit, if nine are showing up out of 18, you start to have a real problem. So I'm adding that to your point.

So let's put it this way then to sum up. The war that began on October 7th is coming to an end, but the next war with Hamas is pending. That's not a very upbeat way to end this conversation. Well, that's the reality, you know, and more than that, and this is something we've talked about in the past, Dan, the final confrontation with Iran is looming. And so it's not over, but this phase, this phase of the war is effectively over. Well, I think the only way to somehow end this on an upbeat note is we cannot say enough about the support of the United States, the outgoing administration, the incoming administration,

and just the layer upon layer upon layer of policy negotiating, financial resources, the support that we have had, the support that we're going to need moving into the next phase. We just can't thank the US Congress enough. And with all the bickering that we've had, really, the foundation has been so strong and I think most Israelis know that. Experience that and acknowledge it. Yeah, so Dan How's that? That's it was a little bit of a stretch, but you know, we'll take it here. Call me back, you know We're grasping here, but we'll take them. You'll see clientelev Iwedi singer. Thank you both as always and You know the line I hear all the time. I feel like for the first time I can breathe.

That's the term I hear obviously today. So here's to many days ahead of breathing. Yes. To good news. Good to be with you then. Thanks guys. That's our show for today. You can head to our website, arkmedia.org. That's A-R-K, arkmedia.org, to sign up for updates, get in touch with us, and access transcripts, all of which have been hyperlinked to resources that we hope will enrich your

understanding of the topics covered in the episodes on this podcast. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Alain Benatar. Additional editing by Martin Huérgaux. Rebecca Strom is our operations director. Research by Stav Slama and Gabe Silverstein. Until next time, I'm your host Dan C. Noy.