Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Israeli Independence - with Dr. Tal Becker

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

HOUSEKEEPING NOTE: The first "Call Me Back" Live Event will take place on Monday June 3 at 6:00 pm at the Comedy Cellar in New York City. At the event -- which will ultimately be posted as an episode -- we will be talking to Michael Rapaport about the crisis of antisemitism in America and what it means for Israel and for American Jews. Partial proceeds for the event will go to Lev Echad ("One Heart"), an Israeli non-profit organization that has been doing indispensable work, especially since 10/07. To RSVP, please go to comedycellar.com, click the lineups button on the top left and select June 3. (There will also be an opportunity for audience questions and discussion following the formal conversation, and an extended smaller private event afterwards for those interested.) TODAY'S EPISODE: As Independence Day was winding down in Israel, I sat down for a conversation with Tal Becker in Jerusalem to discuss the deep uncertainty in Israeli society: we don’t know when or if the hostages will return home, we don’t when or if Hamas will be defeated, or even when or if the 100,000 displaced Israelis will return to their homes in the South and in the North. We don't know if a war with Hezbollah is next, and we certainly don’t know if and what could be a long term solution for the Palestinian conflict with Israel or Iran’s conflict with Israel. Dr. Tal Becker serves as a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and was the former Legal Adviser of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is a veteran member of successive Israeli peace negotiation teams and, most recently, represented Israel before the International Court of Justice and played an instrumental role in negotiating and drafting the historic peace and normalization agreements (the "Abraham Accords"). Dr. Becker earned his doctorate from Columbia University in New York City, and is the recipient of numerous scholarly awards, including the Rabin Peace Prize, and the Guggenheim Prize for best international law book for his book "Terrorism and the State".

In a way, Zionism or Israel is the refusal to be a victim. It is the idea that victimhood is not a virtue, it's a condition. It is the desire to emerge from it. And our goal in the discourse with Palestinians in particular is not to have this zero-sum contest of who is more of a victim and who is more of a villain, but to figure out how we both emerge from this without our victimhood as an essential part of

our identity. It's 8 a.m. on Wednesday, May 15th here in New York City. It's 3 p.m. on May 15th in Israel, the first day after Israel's Independence Day that followed Memorial Day, Memorial Day and Independence Day like no other. We will get to today's episode in a moment, but before we do, two housekeeping notes. First, I am announcing the first Call Me Back live event. Very much looking forward to this. I'll be talking at this live event to Michael Rappaport about the crisis of anti-Semitism in America and what it means for Israel and for American Jews. Michael's own story, his own post-October 7th story, is quite riveting and we'll be diving

into that as well. The event is on June 3rd at 6 p.m. in New York City at the Comedy Cellar. That's June 3rd, 6 p.m. in New York City at the Comedy Cellar. Our friends over at the Comedy Cellar who have been champions for our podcast have been enthusiastic about hosting a live event there. I hope you're able to come and join us. There's a small number of VIP tickets in addition to the regular tickets, which are available for people who want to stay after the event and ask Michael and me some additional questions. And we may have another special guest from the Call Me Back cast, if you will, in the program. Proceeds for the event will go to Lev Echad, which is an amazing organization in Israel that has been doing extraordinary work,

filling a lot of the holes and gaps in the civilian side of support for Israel post-October 7th. I encourage you to look up this organization, Lev Echad, which means in Hebrew, it means one heart. To RSVP for the event, please go to ComedySeller.com. That's one word, ComedySeller.com. That's one word, comedyseller.com, and click on the lineups button on the top left and select June 3rd. My second housekeeping note relates to news out of Israel today with regard to Defense Minister Gallant very publicly speaking out against Prime Minister Netanyahu and the government's plans, or what he says, lack of plan for post-war Gaza. We will have a lengthy discussion about Minister Gallant's move today in an episode we'll be dropping in the days ahead. Now on to today's discussion. As Independence Day

was winding down in Israel, I sat down for a conversation with Tal Becker in Jerusalem. Tal is someone I've been wanting to have on the podcast for some time. I speak to him with some regularity, but obviously because of the role he has had in the Israeli government, he has not been able to come on the podcast. But we are pleased that he agreed now that he's out of government. We are pleased that he is making his maiden voyage in the pod sphere over here at Call Me Back. We discuss a lot of issues, but we are focused on this deep uncertainty in Israeli society that we are all watching right now

and that Israelis are living. What do I mean by uncertainty? Well, we don't know when or if the Israeli hostages will return home. We don't know when or if the Israeli hostages will return home. We don't know when or if Hamas will be defeated, or even when or if the 100,000 displaced Israelis will return to their homes in southern Israel and in northern Israel. We don't know if a war with Hezbollah is next, or if it is, when. And we certainly don't know if and what could be a long-term solution for

the Palestinian conflict with Israel, or more importantly, Iran's conflict with Israel, which is being waged through proxies and in recent weeks directly. We often talk about the seven war fronts that Israel is facing, but there are actually even a greater number of uncertainties than there are war fronts, and we will explore some of those uncertainties with Tal as well. Just a little background on Tal, or Dr. Tal Becker. He serves as a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, and he was the former legal advisor of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Tal is a veteran member of successive Israeli peace negotiation teams and most recently represented Israel before the International Court of Justice. That's probably where you

recognize his name, and I think you'll recognize his voice. Tal representing Israel at the Hague was broadcast all across Israel. He's become a household name of sorts inside Israel for this role he played. And anyone following events there at the ICJ, anywhere in the world, saw Tal in action. It was quite impressive. He also played an instrumental role in negotiating and drafting the historic Abraham Accords, the peace and normalization agreements between Israel and a number of states in the Arab world, and he earned his doctorate from Columbia University in New York, which is also pretty interesting. He's the recipient of numerous scholarly awards,

including the Rabin Peace Prize and the Guggenheim Prize for the Best International Law Book. That's for his book called Terrorism and the State, which we will link to. I would say that Tal is one of the most thoughtful observers, not only a practitioner of policy and law in Israel on behalf of a number of governments, but he's also one of the most thoughtful observers of Israeli society. Dr. Tal Becker on Israeli independence. This is Call Me Back. And I am pleased to welcome to this podcast for the first time my longtime friend, teacher, thought partner of sorts, Tal Becker, who is a senior fellow at the Hartman Institute and former legal advisor to the Foreign Ministry of Israel. Tal, from Jerusalem, thank you for being here. Dan, good to be with you.

Tal, I'm speaking to you as you are wrapping up Israel's Independence Day, Yom Ha'atzmaut, and this really is, as I said in the last episode of this podcast, this is a truly like no other, because during this Independence Day, it's just a reminder, a stark reminder that there's a lot at stake for Israel's future, not just for Israel, but for Jews all over the world. But I want to talk about what we all, those living in Israel, those who care about Israel, those who feel a connection to Israel, what we should be celebrating, what we should be hopeful about, and of course, what unavoidably as Jews should worry us. Now, Daniel Hartman, who you work closely with at the Hartman Institute, quoted you in his podcast earlier this week saying something about Independence Day

of last year, and he quoted you saying, and I quote here, one day a year, I want to celebrate Israel without complicating it. Seems like a pretty simple wish. Every other day, we have to talk about Israel in incredibly complex ways, but you don't get that break this Independence Day. There were, I guess the most powerful metaphor for me was there was this image, there were these two, I mentioned this to you in our conversation offline, there were two Independence Day celebrations. And both were pretty unprecedented. This year's official celebration of the lighting of the torch, which is normally a very exciting, joyful, hopeful, meaningful event for Israelis on Independence Day was instead pre-taped and broadcast later on. It did not have a live audience. It created a highly produced televised

event that seemed very sterile from what I watched of it. And at the same time, this was happening while 100,000 plus or minus, 100,000 people gathered at Hostage Square in Tel Aviv. There was a live event, which was the inverted version of the lighting of the torch event. And this was called the dousing of the torch ceremony. So instead of the lighting of the torch ceremony, which was one half of the split screen, there was the dousing of the torch ceremony, which protested the government. It called for an immediate hostage deal. So I know you didn't want Independence Day to be complicated, but Tal, it is. So using that image as an opening question and topic for our conversation, what are your thoughts based on what I'm describing here?

Yeah, well, I mean, my hope last year and my hope every year is that we get to have that one day a year of an uncomplicated celebration of just the miracle of Israel. But I think, you know, Daniel and you were right to say that this year it's pretty impossible for it not to be complicated. I think for lots of us, for me certainly, it was a pretty subdued affair. It's hard to imagine a celebration when you have the hostages in mind. And in a way, those two ceremonies were a bit of a metaphor for the pain we're in. Yom HaZikaron, the Day of Remembrance, kind of bled into Yom HaTzmaaut, in a way we usually have this transition. You know, in some ways it's a little hard to have Yom Ha'atzmaut because we're all still in October 7th.

It's been one long day. It's felt for me like one long day that overshadows everything. There's still a lot to celebrate, a lot to be appreciative of, but we also have the weight of our anxiety, of having to defend ourselves, of the threats we face. So it's going to be complicated. There's a sense that October 7th will change Israeli society in profound ways and change the course Israel was on on October 6th, but that can be interpreted in many ways. What does that idea mean to you,

that sense that Israel has changed profoundly as a result of October 7th, both the good and the not good? Yeah, so I want to take a few minutes maybe to just think about what we mean when we talk about the trauma of October 7th. I mean, I'm sure it's different for different people. Maybe I'll speak personally a little as well. I mean, in a way, when we think about the October 7th. I mean, I'm sure it's different for different people. Maybe I'll speak personally a little as well. I mean, in a way, when we think about the October 7th experience, it was a pogrom-like experience, almost an enactment of what it was like to be a Jew in a world without Israel, but that happened in Israel. And one of my other colleagues at the Hartman Institute, Yehuda Kurtzer, has this idea about the Israel of our imagination. Every one of us has an Israel that we imagine.

We have an Israel that is a question we have as Jews that Israel is the answer for. And in some ways, October 7th shattered or shook that in all different ways. I think there are assumptions that American Jews had that were shaken, but assumptions that Israeli Jews had about Israel that were shaken. And one of the big questions, at least for me on those first days, and here I want to say it wasn't just the October 7th, it was also October 8th and 9th around the world.

You know, that strange but familiar alchemy of kind of exhilaration in some pockets that we saw together with denial, right? You're also kind of, you know, those voices we heard, I'm not sure how representative they are, but they're still glad that it happened, but also saying it didn't happen somehow at the same time. And obviously the selective outrage kind of on steroids, all those things are very familiar to anyone with a kind of Jewish history running through their veins. And what it raised a question for me was, has anything fundamentally changed in the Jewish

predicament? You know, I was raised and we were taught that Israel fundamentally changed the trajectory of Jewish history. And in those days, there was a feeling that, is that really true? Or are we just living the constant patterns of Jewish history that at times Jews are accepted and at times Jews are accepted and at times they're hated? And, you know, if you were born in the early 15th century in Spain, maybe you thought Jewish life was going to be okay. And then if you were born in the late 15th century in

the Spanish Inquisition, and what matters really isn't that Israel exists, that we have independence. What matters is just this basic question of what point on the arc of Jewish history you were born on, and that shapes your story of Jewish identity, and we happen to be shaped at a point of transition. And it took me a while to kind of shake that feeling that this is just the Jewish story repeating itself, and all the more painful because it's repeating itself in Israel, in that place where we finally imagined we were emerging from that history. And for me, kind of three big things changed that feeling. The first was this incredible sense of awakening in civil society

and solidarity within Israeli society, but also around the Jewish world, that kind of came together in an incredible way that said, we're here for each other, we're here to confront this. If you think about the pogroms throughout Jewish history, and these kind of events, sadly, I think, and I'm generalizing, but I still think it's fair to say, the Jewish response in those situations was, you know, either to succumb or to flee or to assimilate. And this was a very different response. This was to stand up. And I think that that's critical.

A second thing, and you, Dan, and Saul have written about this in both books, actually, the Israeli spirit of confronting the impossible with just this idea that we just have to do it. Ben-Gurion famously said, you know, what was it that to be a realist in Israel, you have to believe in miracles, right? Yeah, you have to believe in miracles, yeah. It reminds me of this, there's this scene in Dumb and Dumber,

this is going to age me, with Jim Carrey, where he's trying to figure out whether he has a chance with this very beautiful woman. And it's a very awkward moment. And she eventually says to him, you know, what's my chances? He asks. And she says, oh, it's one in a million. So you're saying there's a chance. I've got a chance, right? I do feel compelled to note that this is the first time a guest on the Call Me Back podcast

has made a reference to Dumb and Dumber. So I just think you're already breaking new ground, even though it's your maiden voyage. You should put it in the show notes, the clip maybe. It's relevant because it speaks to the kind of indomitable spirit that looks at things that are impossible, but necessary, and says, we're going to do it anyway. And that was a spirit of 48 and a spirit of 67. And it certainly exists now. I think one of the hardest things at the moment is that the social media dynamic is distorting the lens quite a lot. It's really hard to know. Like, I think the dynamic on college campuses distorts the lens. We just had the Eurovision, which kind of told a story

in terms of the way the popular vote read that maybe, you know, we have more friends than we think, and at least more understanding and sympathy for our situation. By the way, Todd, I feel compelled to say not just the Eurovision vote, although I do think that was representative too. There's now public polling coming out in the u.s so there was a poll that just came out last week that polled young people young voters basically college age i don't know if you saw a college age voters over a sample size of over 2 000 and it asked students to rank issues of greatest importance and the war in gaza ranked last yeah i saw that it's something like high single digits or like it was like 8%

or something, you know, so there's health care, there's the environment, there's student, whatever, pick your issue. It was the lowest ranked issue among young voters. And then a new poll, New York Times, Sienna poll came out earlier this week, and it asked voters who voted for Biden in 2020, if they had decided to vote against Biden in 2024, what was the reason? And again, the percentage was tiny who were flipping their vote based on what's happening in the Middle East. So I do think the volume of what's happening on these campuses is very loud, and therefore, it's like the shiny object. It's what everyone looks at. But I do think as we learn more and more, we're going to realize it's very unrepresentative

of where most of the country and perhaps most of the world is. Yeah, I think we need some humility in being able to measure the scope of this and the cause of it. The answer to the question of, is this really happening? In other words, is there hostility to the very idea of Jewish self-determination? Is there anti-Semitism in a way that should concern us? The answer is yes, but the deeper answer is there always has been that. What has mattered is whether it's marginal or whether it's more accepted,

whether it has legitimacy or whether it has momentum or not. And it does feel like we're moving to an era where what used to be morally indefensible, even just a few years ago, is becoming more socially acceptable to say. But that doesn't mean that it hasn't always been there. We just need to wake up to the challenge of knowing how to respond. How do you think October 7th will change the character of Israeli society? Leaving aside your sense that for the first time Jews, at least Jews in Israel, have nowhere to go. So they're staying and they have to fight this war and they have to win this war, whatever

that means. But that's all Israel externally focused. In terms of Israel internally, how do you think Israeli society will be shaken up or not in the near to medium term as a result of October 7th? Well, there are a number of, I think, big questions. I think it's right of, you know, we're so focused now on our physical security. But I've always felt that, you know, there's this kind of false dichotomy between those Israeli and Jews in general who focus on the security of the body, and those who focus on the security of the soul. You know, we have to remember that we have the state we need in order to build the society that we want, right? In order to build a place where Jews feel like they can thrive,

where Jewish values and ideas thrive. I often say that we have a sovereign state, but we don't always have a sovereign state of mind. We sometimes have an Israeli society where every tribe in Israel wants to drag the entire country to be a reflection of its image. And a sovereign state of mind means a commitment to building an Israeli society, I think, where each tribe feels like it belongs. So in addition to the challenge we're going to face and continue to face and which we are, you know, absolutely

committed to of defending ourselves. There's also a deep internal conversation about whether we can cultivate a kind of Israeli consciousness where victory doesn't mean your tribe wins. Victory kind of means that every tribe belongs and we have that kind of of sensibility. In a way, the Jewish people are about 3,500 years old. For a big chunk of that history, we have tried to answer three big questions. The first is, how will we be safe? The second is, how will we be normal? In other words, will we be accepted? And the third is, how will we be exceptional? How do words, will we be accepted? And the third is, how will we be exceptional, right? How do we bring our values, our tradition, our ideas to making a unique contribution? And, you know, different Jews have different answers to that question, and different

Jews put different emphasis on those three. You'll have the safety Jews, for whom the essence of Israel is about safety. And that's the question that Israel is the answer to, right? And you'll have Jews who kind of think, you know, no, the essence of Israel is that we return to history and we're part of the family of nations and we're not isolated. And I can go about my business about being a Jew without being singled out or treated differently. And then there are others who, you know, you know, Natan Sharansky famously said, you can't, you can't take the chosen people and put them in the Holy Land and ask them to be normal. And the idea there is to, to kind of imagine how

Israel is exceptional in every way. And I think it's different for American Jews, but for Israeli Jews, for a long time, I think Israel was seen as the answer to all three questions. It is how will we be safe. It is how we will be normal. And it is how we will be exceptional. Now, people had different definitions of what exceptional is. The religious Zionists have one definition of what exceptional means. And I think, you know, on the left in Israel, they have a different idea of exceptional. But these were the issues. And what I think, and I want to be humble about this, because, you know, maybe I've lived here for almost 30 years now, but I haven't

developed that Israeli trait of speaking with absolute confidence about things you can't know. So, but my sense is that we might be shifting from this idea that Israel is the solution to the idea that Israel is the place where we work these issues, where we try to make us safe, where we try to make us normal, where we try to make us exceptional. We can't be complacent. It hasn't been achieved. It is a daily effort. It is a constant effort. And for that to work, we need a consciousness that is about much more committed to our unity and what brings us together and much less to our differences. Before October 7th, you know, 2023 was a pretty tumultuous year.

Do you view that as, I don't want to call it just judicial reform because it wound up being so much more than judicial reform or representative of so much more than judicial reform, including these different tribes that you're describing? I'll be generous and say working things out, working through these issues, which is a positive take on what happened in 2023 but but I guess that's my question do you think that was what was happening were you worried about the place cracking up and splitting apart or did you think 2023 before October 7th was about Israel in a very messy and very contentious and and at times very ugly way working these issues out between these different tribes and between

these different groups that you just laid out? Those who want to be exceptional, those who just want to be normal, those who want to be security-minded? I grew up in Australia, so I don't have the Middle Eastern temperament running through my veins. It takes me a little bit more to get agitated than maybe most. And I felt that the public sphere in Israel is sometimes, when you look at it from a distance, it looks like the debris that has been left behind after every tribe tried to pull the country in its direction, right? But as that process was going forward, I think, you know, I hope maybe it's naive to say, but I think what we're trying to envisage is what does a liberal democracy in the Middle

East look like? What does a Middle Eastern liberal democracy look like? And it might probably will not look like in the end of the day, what liberal democracies look elsewhere. We're in a very difficult region. But we also have a society that many members of that society are more conservative in terms of values like family and loyalty and faith. And I think that we were struggling in the very Israeli way with what it is to have a judicial system that reflects the complexity of Israeli society. You know,

obviously, with a deep commitment to the rule of law on the one hand, but also a reflection of the values and the diversity within Israeli society itself. I remember speaking to an audience just before Sukkot, just before October 7th, basically, and they asked me what I thought would happen with the judicial reform. And I said, well, the most likely thing, if you judge by Israeli history, is that that crisis will be displaced by another crisis, right? That's the usual dynamic. I had no idea that it would be quite intense a crisis as we're facing. And I go back to this idea, Dan, that I said to you about having a sovereign state of mind. I think we need to cultivate within our society people who value the need for us to have enough space for everyone to feel that they belong over the agenda of their own vision of what the truth requires. And within every tribe, it's possible to identify that

sentiment. It's difficult in the dynamics of Israeli politics to incentivize that sentiment. But I think there is a shift. You know, I think that there are a lot of people within Israel today who do feel that the divisions between us are one of the threats that we need to confront. And I think it's a lot less popular today in Israel to be divisive. And I hope we can sustain that, but it is one of the challenges. Do you think October 7th, then, I often wonder, did it put a Band-Aid on the wound of 2023? And at some point, Israel's gonna have to return to those wounds and those debates that were expressed in 2023? Or did it remind Israelis that they can't afford to be divided, which is what Saul and I often discuss. It's what we talked about in our book is that we

talked, that Israel's faced crises. We chronicle in The Genius of Israel, going back to the 50s, as you know, you read an early draft of the manuscript. We chronicle how in every decade, whether it's the 50s or with the debate over reparations, whether it was the debate over the Lebanon War in the 80s, whether it was the aftermath of the Rabin assassination in the 90s, we show that there are these moments where it looks like Israel's coming apart. And people over here in the West don't remember those moments, partly because I don't think they were all chronicled on social media. But there were really divisive moments in Israeli history. And then Israel bounces back. And it's not clear to me how and why Israel has always bounced back. Is it that

they're reminded that their biggest vulnerability is internal division, and that is October 7th like a wake-up call, and that tragically, October 7th may be the antidote to the division we saw in Israel prior to October 7th? Or is it what you just said, which is that was 2023 was 2023's crisis, and we're now on to the new crisis, and we're going to be consumed with this new crisis, and the next crisis won't be going back to 2023 in thearsinai. He gives this thing that this was the one time that we're of one heart and one mind. And I think we, in a way, we offer a vision that isn't about unity or agreement about vision. What makes you Jewish in my mind, what makes you Israeli is that you're part of the same moral conversation. You have a stake in what the story of Jewishness is about, what the story of Israel is about,

and that engagement and disagreement itself is a feature, not a bug of who we are as a people. So I think that the question is not whether we have these disagreements and even to some point crisis. The question is how we navigate them and whether we are looking for victories over each other or an understanding that there needs to be, you know, almost in the tradition of the Talmud itself where you have

to hold the view you disagree with and give it legitimacy and teach it through time and create space for it and have it kind of feed into even what the majority does. You know, you don't dismiss it completely. And I think that the need, the acknowledgement of the need for that has grown within Israeli society. Well, is it sustainable? I don't know. But it's something really worth investing in. Because again, the focus we have right now is on affecting the capabilities of Hamas to threaten us and our enemies to threaten us. But we as a society, we need to be in the aspiration business. Any people is as great as its next aspiration. And the success of the military effort here is a necessary

but not sufficient condition. We have to pivot from that, both externally, what is the vision we're offering for the region, and internally, what are the lessons we're going to learn as a society not to overcome our differences? Because I think that's kind of a false god, this idea that we're going to reach consensus. It's just not a Jewish thing, right?

Famously, the Jewish tradition says, you know, which means an argument for the sake of heaven is destined to endure. And I just love the idea that what we're saying by that is that the highest aspiration we have is not to resolve our arguments. It's to have really good ones so that they last forever, right? So that kind of feature of Israeli society and of Jewish identity,

I think, is critical. And we need to be spending as much time as we are on the military and diplomatic challenges as we do on how we pivot to articulate aspirations and plan towards them moving forward. Tal, if you were to be asked the question, what is this war really about from a broader regional perspective? If you were asked this by an Israeli, and then if you're asked that question, say, by a Saudi or a Bahraini or an Emirati, parenthetically, this podcast has a reasonably large audience, this is much to my surprise, in the Persian Gulf and more broadly in the Arab world, but especially in the Gulf, in some of the Gulf countries. So if you were asked by them, what's this war really about? Tell me what your answer would be for the Israeli and for the Saudi. The first is, I think part of it would be the same answer. And maybe for my friends in the Gulf,

it would have a little addition to it. I think what this war is about, for me, from the outset, has been pretty clear. This war is about preventing Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas, and that axis of resistance, from succeeding in their goal to deny the possibility of establishing a Middle East based on coexistence, mutual respect, prosperity, stability, and so on. It's quite clear that what we have in essence is a competition

between the vision that the Abraham Accords offers for the region and the vision of complete rejection of Israel and its existence and coexistence that the death cult of Hamas offers and the regime in Iran offers. I had the privilege of working a lot on the Abraham Accords, and I think that the essence of the Abraham Accords, beyond everything else, is a shift away from the argument about who the land belongs to, to the understanding that we all belong to the land. We are all children of the Middle East. We all have a responsibility for shaping its future. We are in a zero-sum contest with Hamas and with Iran and with Hezbollah, because what

we're trying to offer is an alternate vision of Jewish-Muslim coexistence and also with a responsibility on Israel to understand that we have an obligation to push for, as much as it's going to be a long effort, a generational effort, maybe however long it takes, to push for living together with our neighbors with whom we share this land. The stakes couldn't be higher in that respect because what's at issue, so much attention is on the military component right now. But we all know that the military component is the first step

of a much bigger effort, and that is to articulate and realize a vision of the Middle East that is different. That's what this war is about. I hear, I hear this, this criticism, that you, you can't kill an idea. Have you heard that when we say about targeting Hamas, you can't kill an idea. So the first thing is, you know, it's a questionable thing, whether you can or cannot kill an idea. But my point is that, that in terms of military action, And I think history shows that ideas become popular and far less popular and marginal over time. The issue is right now, the military component

is not about affecting ideas, it's about affecting capabilities. We are trying to deny Hamas the capability to threaten us now and to threaten us in the future. But that's one component of a much bigger effort, which is to offer and give momentum to an alternative set of ideas. Now, in the Middle East, you never completely, adversaries don't completely disappear, but they have more momentum or less momentum. We can't be naive about the idea that we're going to, you know, disappear the rejectionism, at least in the narrow term, but we can offer an alternative to it.

What is at the essence of that, I think, from what this war is about, is to say there is another way to imagine this Middle East, and it's prosperous, and it's stable, and it respects difference. And this touches on your other point in terms of to the Gulf. I have felt sometimes that what Israel represents fundamentally to the Arab and Muslim world is whether the Arab and Muslim world can accept difference amongst it. In a way, that's what Jews have represented throughout history, right? Jews in any society have always been the metric of whether that society can tolerate difference. And you had, like, for instance, in Christian Europe, you had, like, the Christian societies going to their Jewish minority and saying to them, listen, we've found the truth. We know what you need to be. And the Jewish community basically saying, you know,

we're going to do our own thing. Thanks you very much. And at that moment, that society was tested. Its morality was tested. In the same way, Israel's existence tests whether the Arab and Muslim world can embrace difference within them. And I think, you know, the UAE in particular, the Emirates, have a real philosophy and approach about this. When you think about Israel from a historical perspective, what is Israel? It's not, I mean, in the regional context.

It's not first and foremost the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. First and foremost, the ability to come to terms with the fact that there is Jews with self-determination, Jews not just with difference, by the way, but Jews with power, right? That's even harder to accept, I think, throughout history. And that that is reconcilable with Islam. And here I want to push on us as well and say what Israel challenges the Arab and Muslim world to do is accept difference amongst it.

Israel needs to acknowledge that there is difference amongst us. There are citizens of Israel who are not Jews and do not share our story. And there are Palestinians who we need to figure out how to give expression to their belonging. We can't do it naively. It's not a suicide pact. We can't be naive. But our vigilance against threats shouldn't be such that it consumes also our ability to have hope and our ability to imagine an alternative. There will always be those threats, but part of dealing with those threats is also articulating alternatives. And that's what the Abraham Accords process offers. Tal, our friend, our mutual friend, Aviv Retigur,

he and I had a conversation a few weeks ago. It was probably actually a couple months ago. It was after the Economist magazine published that cover piece, Israel Alone, with the beat up Israeli flag blowing in the wind all alone. And we had a debate, is Israel alone? And Haviv argued that Israel may be alone, but it'll be fine. It's okay. I argued, actually, that despite all the pressure, Israel was not alone. And we had a little bit of a debate about it. And I think we have continued to return to that debate from time to time.

Standing here today, as Independence Day winds down, I put the question to you. I guess I'll put two questions to you. One, is Israel alone? And can it be alone? Can it afford to be alone? Yeah, you know, that concept of we are a nation that dwells alone, which is from the Book of Numbers, right? It's a prophecy of one of the non-Jewish prophets belong. I've often thought that you can divide Jews in Israeli society between those who think that the concept of dwelling alone is a blessing, is a curse,

or is our destiny that we can't avoid, right? What do we mean when we say we're alone, right? What does that concept mean? I think that there are lots of people around the world and certainly in the region who share our strategic objectives here. What you're trying to do is have more security, more prosperity, more peace for more people, more of the time. It's only afterwards that you kind of give it a doctrine and you label, you know, that you solved it or whatever. The strategic vision that defeating Hamas is offering is a vision of more prosperity, more peace, more security for more people more of the time. And I think that's widely shared. And the concern and anxiety across the world about the dangers of radical Islam, Islamic terrorism, of anti-Semitism, I think is there.

So I don't think we're alone. I think there's a lot of political pressure. And I think it's part of our interest to do both things. We have to defend ourselves. There are red lines we can't cross, but we also have to make an effort. There's this great definition of diplomacy that I love, which is diplomacy is the art of letting other people get your way. And we need to think carefully about how to demonstrate that the pursuit of our interests is in line also with the pursuit of other interests. We need to persuade.

We need to listen. There is one thing maybe, Dan, that I think to kind of be maybe a bit provocative and say we do represent certain ideas that put us in opposition to some forces in the world, especially in the West, that are worth noting, right? And we know, and I'm sure you've spoken about on different podcasts, the way elements of the progressive left, especially, kind of divide the world into oppressor and oppressed, victim and who has power, who's the victim. The power is unjust, the victim is necessarily just. And it's been in the real difficulty of seeing Israelis as victims as part of this story. You know, in a way, Zionism or Israel is the refusal to be a victim. It is the idea that victimhood is not a virtue, it's a condition. And I think this is true for North American Jews as well, have said in response to victimhood and discrimination

is the desire to emerge from it. Now, for some of us, it's very hard. Victimhood is part of our identity. It's part of our energy when we engage often in what's called the oppression Olympics, where we try to compete, you know, who is more of a victim, but we should be very proud of the fact that as a people that has been through so much, we have succeeded, we're still vulnerable, we're still threatened, but we have, we are a success story that in a way made the trauma of October 7th all the more powerful, right? And our goal, I think, in the discourse with Palestinians in particular, is not to have this zero-sum contest of who is more of a victim and who is more of a villain,

but to figure out how we both emerge from this without our victimhood as an essential part of our identity. And the second idea that is pretty unpopular, even more unpopular, is that I think that Israel in a way stands for the idea that power is not a vice. Power is a responsibility. It's nice to be moral even if you're powerless, it's just not very important. And the Jewish tradition basically sees power as something that is necessary in order to do good. You need to use power well and wisely. When you can, you need to use it compassionately. having power, Jews having the ability to defend themselves might just be one of the most just outcomes in human history. And again, we have a real obligation in the way we use that power.

This is another thing that the war is about. You know, the war, you know, we are dealing with an enemy that the word evil really applies to. And they have complete disregard for life and for the law, but that does not absolve us of our obligation to the law. That doesn't absolve us of our obligation for empathy. On the contrary, in a way, that's what this war is about. We need to demonstrate that it's possible to wield power justly, even in the brutality of the Middle East, again, without being naive, knowing fully well the reprehensible strategy that Hamas is adopting. So what I want to kind of point out is that this stage of Jewish history that we're in does have, in my view,

a pretty clear articulation of our attitude towards looking at victimhood as something you glorify and looking at power as something you should be allergic to. We do stand against those ideas. Power is dangerous, but it's necessary and must be used well to do good. And victimhood is something you try to emerge from, not you try to cling to. It's not like an American Idol where in order to get the microphone, it's almost like you have to tell a story,

my limbs were amputated, I'm an orphan, and only then will the judges let you sing, right? As if you have to make the claim for victimhood in order to be able to speak. And I think that that's really destructive. And we as Jews also need to avoid that tendency, as difficult as it is and as threatened as we are. You know, I don't know if you remember this.

In the days after October 7th, there was this video that went viral of Bono from U2, was performing at the Sphere venue in Las Vegas. And he talked about the victims of the Nova Music Festival in quite moving terms. And he dedicated a song to the victims and the survivors of the Nova Music Festival. And like I said, it was very moving. And every Jew I know basically sent it to me. I mean, meaning it was circulating because everyone felt like, wow, same things about Israel once Israel actually responds to what was done at this Nova Music Festival? And so it is that distinction between how the world deals with Jews as victims versus with Jews with power. Yeah. And again, we shouldn't, and I feel this about America too, like there are elements in America that seem to

apologize for American power. And America's power has been a force for great good in the world. Doesn't mean America hasn't done mistakes and doesn't use its power in ways that it probably regrets. But the idea that power itself is something that you should distance yourself from is an idea that you do not give yourself the capacity to have agency, to be a force for good in the world. We need to use that power to defeat the enemies of peace, but we want to defeat the enemies of peace because we want peace, because we want to create the conditions to enable something healthier to grow and to create momentum behind that. Tal, I want to ask you about Israeli sense of independence as it's shaped by other actors in

the region, because some would argue that Israel doesn't get the only vote on how independent Israel is. And I remember a little over a decade ago, it was in 2012. So I've been, just for our listeners, I've not only have I stayed in touch with Tal over a long number of years, but when I bring delegations to Israel or bring political leaders from the U.S. over to Israel or business leaders, Tal is one of the people I often want to get them in front of. And I'm not the only person who does this, for reasons you could probably appreciate in listening to this conversation, when I want people to understand and learn about Israel. You said something in a trip I took with a senior official from the United States in 2012, where you described the peace process, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process as, and I'm

going to quote here, you said, because I've quoted it before, if not dead, it's in a comatose. Again, that was 2012, and I think you were saying that a number of times in and around then. So that was over a decade ago. How would you describe the prospects for some kind of peace process? What's your outlook? So one of my strongest experiences having the privilege of being involved in negotiations for so many years is that this is a dialogue between two traumatized people. On the Palestinian side, the way in which a sense of victimhood is so central to Palestinian identity, I've sometimes felt that imagining yourself at peace with Israel is an act of redefining Palestinian identity. And I think on the Israeli Jewish side,

given how often this lack of acceptance of our legitimacy gets reinforced, the feeling that it's possible to emerge from that is also a big leap. The reason why I say that is because when people say peace process, they kind of imagine getting back into the negotiation room or something like that. And for me, you know, I've been one of those negotiators and I've come to the conclusion that we are, we're self-important people, but not important people. In other words, negotiators can only achieve that which their societies allow them to achieve and that whether their societies are at the place where they can make that move. Now, it feels like we're pretty far from that at the moment, given the trauma that we're

in and the tragedy that we're in. I like to say that there's no university you can go to to get a degree in which peace is possible. And I don't like the way people speak with things about being inevitable or not. It's a funny thing about change that people think change is impossible before it happens and then inevitable after it happens. I don't know what the conditions are. I don't rule out the fact, for example, that in five years' time or in a few years' time, we are in a Middle East where not just Hamas and Hezbollah

and Iran have been set back, but there is a broad normalization agenda between Israel and Muslim and Arab states in a way that the idea that Jews are infidels, the idea that Islam and the Jewish states cannot coexist, has become kind of authentic and understood. And that will help Palestinians also get there. So I don't want to rule it out. What I'm saying is that we need to invest a lot in the societal process. So if what you mean by peace process is negotiations or something like that, that does feel far away. I don't have the arrogance to think that we know what we need to invest to have a society shift its mindset. Maybe I'll give one example from the Abraham Accords that I think is really relevant here. For most of my career,

essentially, I felt the Arab states said to Palestinians, you go ahead and negotiate with those Israelis. We're going to hang back a little bit. We want stability. We want cooperation. You're going to need to make some concessions. We'll probably condemn you for those concessions, but just know that behind our condemnations, we're supporting what you're doing. And in a way, that model essentially asked Palestinians to be the pioneers, to be the legitimizers of Israel for the Arab world. And what happens when you reverse the order? What happens when it's Arab states articulating and realizing a vision where the fact that there is Jewish self-determination alongside in the Arab world

is authentic, is accepted, is not controversial. I think you create conditions where it becomes more possible to imagine a different kind of future. Now, the road to that could be very long, and I don't want to be naive about it, but I don't think we can afford not to work on it. There's in Tehillim in Psalms, it says, which means seek peace and pursue it. Interestingly, it doesn't say seek peace and achieve it, right? And I've always thought that the reason for that is that don't be so arrogant as to think you know how to achieve peace.

There are too many variables you don't control. It's not on your shoulders alone, right? This kind of very simplistic narrative that, you know, this is the peace missing to achieve an outcome I've always been a bit resistant to. But it is always our obligation to pursue it. And pursuing it leads to very important outcomes. Pursuing it, by the way, means confronting the enemies of it. It means denying Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran the

capabilities to threaten it. It means pushing back on the ideas of resistance and anti-Semitism and rejectionism. But it also means looking at how to build it. Are we at a moment where we can make things better? We are always at a moment where we can make things better or make things worse. And that is the beauty. Maybe it's, you know, it's something we should be celebrating on Yom Ha'atzmaut and especially on this Yom Ha'atzmaut is that we have agency to be part of making things better. And that, despite all the challenges, you know, I think to myself, as I was pushing myself today to kind of have a better Yom Ha'atzma'ut, I just thought this very basic thought that pretty much any Jew

in the history of our people would trade their place with us. They would say, you think those are problems? Wake up. We have, for all the challenges we have, we are living at a moment of Jewish history where we have voice, the capacity to defend ourselves, we have allies that we need to work with, and we have a capacity to make things better. We don't necessarily have a capacity to bring the Messiah. That's not necessarily in our hands, but we do have the

capacity to make things better, and our independence is an absolutely integral part of that. And that's worth celebrating, almost especially now. Yeah, so nowhere in your formulation there is the absence of enemies. It assumes there will be enemies, and then it's really a function of our ability to deal with enemies. Yes. I think in the Middle East, victory very often means that you get to set the agenda more than your adversaries, that you have the momentum and they're trying to spoil your agenda, not you trying to spoil their agenda. And they become marginalized and they have less appeal. We are at a moment where what's morally indefensible is becoming socially acceptable.

And that requires courage because what I see, at least in parts of the West, in parts of the rest of the world, is that it's taking more and more courage to say obvious things. Like the Jewish people also have a right to self-determination alongside the Palestinian people, right? Like this attempt to portray Israel as a kind of white colonial thing, to present that as a serious argument, to push against that, is all of a sudden in some circles taking courage. And what we need to do is reduce the courage required to say those obvious things. And that is an effort that we need to do in the Middle East

where the agenda of, where the agenda of Iran and the agenda of our enemies should be seen for what it is, which is essentially condemning all of us to constant death and the celebration of death and of violence and of zero-sumness, where there is no acceptance for difference. And those ideas need to be presented as outrageous and hostile to all of us, to Palestinians, to Muslims, to Jews, to anyone who wants to live here in prosperity. They need to be pushed to the side. If I can, Dan, I'll just add one point to this because there's a acceptable in their circle.

He gives an example of a focus group he did a while ago with Saudi men, obviously before some of the key changes in Saudi Arabia, asking them, do they believe their wives should be able to drive. And 85% of the men in the focus group said, I believe my wife should be able to drive, but none of my friends think that their wives should be able to drive. And what he describes, and I hope I'm not butchering his thesis, but he basically says that the way movements happen, the way changes and shifts happen, involves what he calls norm entrepreneurs. And norm entrepreneurs are people who have the courage to articulate an idea that a lot of people feel, but think that it is unpopular to express. And those norm entrepreneurs, people with charisma, have that courage. And then it has a kind of cascading effect. People with slightly

less courage are then able to join, and then people with less courage are able to join, and you create this kind of whoosh factor, right? That's in a way how like the Me Too movement happened. Did anyone think sexual harassment in the workplace was okay? But it did take courageous women to give expression to us us and then slightly less courageous people could follow and so on. Why do I say this? Because the dynamic at the moment, it can work in positive or negative directions, right? You get to say things that a few years ago were totally unacceptable.

And in doing that, you unleash, you mainstream, you marginal, you take from the margins to the mainstream, things that should not be there. And the same is true in the other direction. A person thinking, do I give sympathy for Israeli victims, not just for Palestinian victims, shouldn't be asking the question, what is the cost to my social status if I do such a thing. And the way to fight that is to have the norm entrepreneurs or the people who have voice. You know, you had, I think, Scott Galloway on recently, if I'm not mistaken. So that's an example of a kind of voice that gives courage to other voices, in my view, right? I've seen it. I've seen a number of people respond to his episode, inspired to speak out and inspired to get engaged in ways they say they wouldn't have, but they found his case actually quite

persuasive. And the same is true in the Middle East. In the Middle East, the more people speak with courage, and I mean both about the Jewish right to self-determination, but also about Palestinian belonging and Palestinian rights. We need to be able to, you know, as I said, again, it's not a suicide pact. It's not about agreeing to the Palestinian sense of belonging in a way that means that the Jewish people don't have a right to live and thrive. But we do need to be able to articulate these views in order to create that cascading effect in a positive direction.

And we're at a moment where the cascading effect could go in the other direction if we don't keep showing. And this is one of the reasons why I'm a big fan of your podcast is because it is giving voice to things that need to be said. Wow. Thank you, Tal. We'll leave it there on one condition, which is that you agree to come back soon because there's a bunch of other topics I want to hit with you that we don't have time to get to today, and each one could make their own episode, And I didn't want to, um, I didn't want to shoe on them all into this conversation. Uh, so let's, let's hope this is the beginning of a series of conversations and I'm, I'm grateful. I'm grateful for your friendship. I'm grateful for your service in government, which hopefully we can talk about at some point and your thought leadership, which

I think our, uh, our listeners badly need. I badly need, particularly on this day. So thank you. It was a pleasure to talk to you. And I do want to just want to end on the note that we, for all our challenges and all the pain, this is a Yom Ha'atzmaut where it's maybe especially appropriate to appreciate what we have achieved, to appreciate what people have sacrificed in order for us to be there, and to recognize that we have achieved, to appreciate what people have sacrificed in order for us to be there, and to recognize that we have the capacity today that Jews were denied for generations, to defend themselves, to give expression to their values, and to imagine a better future and fight for it. Wonderful. Like I said, badly needed inspiration. Thank you, Tal. Thank you.

That's our show for today. To keep up with Tal Becker, you can follow him at the Shalom Hartman Institute, and we'll link to his book in our show notes. Call Me Back is produced and edited by Ilan Benatar. Our media manager is Rebecca Strom. Additional editing by Martin Huérgo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.