Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - Israel's "Radical" move to the political center — and lessons for the rest of us

Episode Date: February 11, 2022

You can order Micah's books here: Catch-67: The Left, the Right, and the Legacy of the Six-Day War:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/catch-67-micah-goodman/1128089735 The Wondering Jew: Israel and the Search for Jewish Identity: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-wondering-jew-micah-goodman/1136574622

we're not as divided as our politics suggest. So I think that line of Obama in 2004 does not describe America. America is as divided as its politics suggests. Ironically, that line describes Israel today. So this is a grand experiment in politics. The chorus of observers are worried that the U.S. has become so polarized that we've entered a new level of insanity. It's a phenomenon that's not unique to the U.S. It's happening to democracies all across the globe. It's certainly a theme of these 2020s.

Every day there's a new story, or at least it seems so. I don't need to spell them all out for listeners of this podcast. You follow the news. The question is, is there any way out of it? Well, Dr. Mika Goodman thinks we can get out of it. I called him up at his place in Jerusalem, where he's been thinking a lot about the Israeli model of consensus as an antidote to polarization and what we over here can learn from it. Now, Mika is on the speed dial of several of the leaders of Israel's new centrist coalition government. This government is important to follow.

It's like nothing else in Israel's history, or anywhere else for that matter. Regardless of what one thinks of the government, it is kind of extraordinary that it consists of eight political parties that span the extremes of the ideological spectrum and everything in between. In fact, the government would not have been formed without the kingmaker role of a Muslim-Arabic party. Get this, a Muslim-Arabic party in Israel's parliament was essential to bring the government together. How about that, Amnesty International? Mika is a polymath, having written books ranging from biblical lessons for the modern age to Israel's geopolitics. Not only have all of his books been bestsellers in Israel, but he essentially created a new genre, books that bring core texts of Jewish thought to a general secular audience. He is also, or maybe foremost,

a founder of immersive programs fostering personal growth and group identity for young adults in Israel at a formative age in their lives. The organization is called Beit Prat, and Mika is its president. He is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel, and among the most recent books that I mentioned as bestsellers are Catch 67, The Left, the Right, and the Legacy of the Six-Day War, and most recently, The Wandering Jew, not The Wandering Jew, The Wandering Jew, Israel and the Search for Jewish Identity. I highly recommend both books. He's also host of one of the most popular podcasts in Israel.

So what can we learn from Israel's radical turn to the political center? This is Call Me Back. And I am pleased to welcome my friend Mika Goodman, who joins us from Jerusalem. Mika, good to see you. Hi, Dan. It's great to see you. Is it still snowy, Jerusalem? No, no.

It's a little bit wintery, a little bit cold, a little bit rainy, but it's not snowy anymore. But it can swing between winter Jerusalem and balmy Jerusalem. Exactly. In a heartbeat. Exactly. In like a heartbeat. Exactly. Okay. So Mika, there's a lot to talk about with you today. And the reason we wanted you on is because it does feel like we're living through increasingly insane times here in the US and around the world, increasingly polarized times, just when you thought it couldn't get more polarized and when you thought it couldn't get more crazy.

And you have carved out a little niche for yourself in Israel for making the case for the center holding in politics and in debate and in secular religious divides and a whole range of fronts. And so I'm interested in the substance of it and the whether or not there's like a methodology for how you think about it. And I want to start with the current Israeli government and what's going actually on in Israeli politics, which could be a case study for what you're arguing for as a model. And I just want to preface this by saying you're sort of like— what is interesting about how you approach these debates is you try to look at them from every side. You like—this is in your books.

It's the case in Catch-27. where you almost embody the perspective of people at different moments who viscerally and stridently, in some cases, disagree with each other. You're like the way Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor, he plays like seven different characters. So at every given moment, he's got to embody these different characters, sometimes in the same scene. That's who you are. Mika, you are like the nutty professor of Israeli ideas and political discourse. So with that, tell us what is happening now in Israeli politics. So seven months ago, a new government was formed in Israel, and it's a very exciting and interesting government, because it's the most diverse government Israel has ever had. Now, Dan, it's possible it's one of the most diverse governments

in the world today. We have on the right people like Ayelet Shaked and Ze'ev Elkin, and Dan, these are hardcore right-wingers. And on the left, we have Nitzan Horowitz and Merav Michele. These are hardcore left-wingers. We have settlers. Now, just for context, just so our listeners understand. So take Ayelet Shaked. Can you just describe how she came up, what part of Israeli politics she came up with? So, I mean, we have people from the, let's call it the settler religious rights and the Islamic movement, the Islamists. They're both sitting in the same government.

Now, the reason why this is so, this is shocking because we're living in a world where people can't work together. Both sides of the aisle can't work together. Now imagine that, I don't think, imagine Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren sitting in the same government solving problems together. Can you imagine that? That's what we're having in Israel now on steroids. That's the situation in Israel now. And you would expect that such a diverse government of people so ideologically so far apart, that could only create a paralyzed government where the right stretches us to the right, the left takes us to the left, and the government is paralyzed. And the amazing news is, Dan, that this government is not paralyzed. Actually, this government liberated Israel

from political paralysis. This government is getting real stuff done, like budget, solving problems. It's not easy, but I would say the alchemy of this moment in Israeli political history is we have an extremely diverse government and it's not a paralyzed government. And we have to ask, what's the secret sauce of this government?

How is it possible that our equivalent of Elizabeth Warren and our equivalent of Ted Cruz can actually sit together, work together, find solutions together, agree, compromise, and move things forward. Let me just pause just because I just want to make sure people understand this. So Netanyahu's Likud party had in one form or another been leading the government for how many years? At least 12 years. And then in the last election, he was not able to form a government. And that meant that, meaning he couldn't form a coalition government, he couldn't get to 61 seats in Israel's parliament in the Knesset, which you need.

There's 120 seats, so you need a minimum of 61 seats in order to be able to form a majority government. And so it went to these other parties to come together and form a coalition, but the only way they could get to 61 was to cobble together these disparate parties something like seven parties in total is that right we have we have in here like hardcore right hardcore left very religious very secular and uh religious right and islamist like it's an impossible coalition and they put it together and then seven months later, it's pretty stable. You have a lot of arguments, but it's not paralyzed. It's solving problems. And in some sense, and you started, Dan was saying, we're living in a very polarized world.

America is so polarized. And like you said, just when you thought it can't get worse, it's getting worse. But America is not alone. Brazil is extremely polarized. Holland is polarized. Italy is polarized not alone. Brazil is extremely polarized. Holland is polarized. Italy is polarized. England. Canada. Countries are polarized. And in a polarized world, Israel has a diverse government. And so this is a grand experiment in politics. And Prime Minister Bennett had an interesting point he made in his first speech in the UN.

He said there's not one pandemic, there's two pandemics. There's a biological pandemic and there's a political pandemic. The biological pandemic is COVID, the political pandemic is polarization. And Israel is trying to lead the world, by the way, on both fronts, trying to create the knowledge that the world could imitate on both fronts. I don't know if we're successful when it's coming to COVID. I think it seems like we're pretty successful when it's coming to politics. We're trying to show that in a polarized world, both sides of the aisle can not only work together, they can also solve problems together. That's the grand experiment in politics that's

taking place in Israel today. And I think there is a reason why Israel could make the impossible possible and pull this off, this grand experiment in politics today. Because Israeli polarization is kind of different in its nature than American polarization. Explain. Polarization has, I think, always has two pieces. There is an ideological component and there is an emotional component to polarization. The ideological is like this. The left is component to polarization. The ideological is like this. The left is becoming more left, the right is becoming more right, and the gap between

them is growing. That's polarization. But there is also an emotional component where the right despises the left and the left despises the right. And now what's on the rise is both. The right is becoming more extreme. The left is more extreme. The center is kind of like vanishing and the gulf between the right and left is growing. That's one piece. The second piece is that the right despises the left

more than despised the left in the past. The left hates the right more than hated the right in the past. So like the emotional gap and the ideological gap always rise together. Here's what's weird and interesting and paradoxical in Israel. In Israel, while the emotional gap is still alive, the ideological gap is not alive anymore. This is a rare, interesting moment in Israeli history where the right and the

left agree on most issues. So the paradox of Israeli politics is this following. We hate each other like we always did in the past, but we agree with each other like we've never agreed with each other in the past. So in that sense- So Mika, so if the whole world and the rest of the world, if the ideological divide is deepening and people are becoming

farther and farther apart and more dug in, that's what I mean by deepening, and you're actually, it's not that Israel is less worse, you're saying the opposite is happening in Israel. It's not that Israel is doing incrementally better, it's that the whole world is moving one direction and actually the ideological divide on most issues is actually closing. Exactly. Israel is moving the other side, like we're going against the currents of history, where in Israel, the right and left are agreeing with each other like they've never agreed before. When you look at our politics, like Likud, the right-wing party and Yesh Ati,

the more like central left party, they're like hating each other and yelling at each other and cursing each other in politics, but right-wingers and left-wingers in Israel, they're very similar and they agree on most issues. So the paradox of Israeli politics is the following. If in America politics is polarized because the country is polarized. In Israel, the politics is polarized while the country is not polarized. So in America, the division in politics reflects a divided country. In Israel, the division in politics is actually masking, it's hiding the fact that the country isn't that divided. Dan, remember in 2004 in the DNC and Barack Obama's famous speech?

Remember that speech? There's no red states, no blue states, only the United States. Remember that speech? He has a line there. Yeah, he was wrong. Yeah, he has a line there where he says, we're not as divided as our politics suggest. So I think that line of Obama in 2004 does not describe America. America is as divided as its politics suggests. Ironically,

that line describes Israel today. Division between parties is strong. The division between Israelis is weak, where we are not as divided as our politics suggests. And I think this moment in Israeli political history, where this government is created, this diverse government, we could pull this off in Israel because it's the first attempt in Israel to make politics reflect the country. That right-wingers and left-wingers in the government can work together because right-wingers and left-wingers in Israel actually agree with each other like we've never agreed before. That was obviously not always the case,

that Israeli left-wingers and Israeli right-wingers agree with each other on most things. So just explain the before, meaning what was life like in political debates before Israeli left-wingers and right-wingers, according to you, agreed with each other? And then I want to get to what changed it, what catalyzed the emerging consensus. Okay. So there were three major issues that used to divide Israel. One of the economics issue, the classic capitalism versus socialism issue. And that was a very, very big argument. I would say that was the defining argument of Israeli politics throughout the first 20 years of Israel's existence. Israel was governed by socialists led by Ben-Gurion, and they believed that, you know, we could create in Israel this very society based on equality, egalitarianism,

controlled, companies controlled by the government. There were some voices like Begin and other, which were saying, this is wrong. We have to go through the process of liberation of the economy and privatization. And that battle, big governments, small governments, that ideological battle started weakening in the 70s. And it was weakening because that debate was replaced with a new debate. The second generation, the new debate that replaced that debate, and that debate became less and less important, less and less dividing Israel, the new debate that replaced it was about land and peace. In 1967, Israel found by the end of the war,

the West Bank, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza was now in the hands of Israel. And there was a big debate, what are we doing with this land? The right was saying, let's of Israel. And there was a big debate. What are we doing with this land? The right was saying, let's settle it. The left was saying, let's leave this land and trade this land for peace. That was a very heated debate. And that used to be the debate that divided Israel. The debate that replaced a question, big government, small government

was bigger country, smaller country. That was the new debate. And then now that debate of land and peace and settlements and all that kind of like lost its energy. And it's lost its energy because most Israelis started agreeing, they start agreeing on something very paradoxical. And here's, I want to just articulate a broad Israeli consensus. and it's a complicated consensus. It's something like this. Most Israelis don't buy the messianic narrative that building settlements in Judea and Samaria will bring the Messiah and redemption. At the same time, most Israelis don't buy an alternative messianic narrative that if Israel leaves the West Bank,

we'll heal the Middle East and there'll be two liberal democracies living in peace, peacefully, side by side. These two messianic myths, the myth of land and the myth of peace, most Israelis don't believe them anymore. They don't buy them anymore. What do they buy?

They're not buying the two utopias. They're buying two different apocalyptic scenarios. And here's one scenario that most Israelis agree with. But before you get to your apocalyptic scenarios, not that I want to deprive our listeners of apocalyptic scenarios, but do you believe that most settlers, most people living in the West Bank or in settlements in the West Bank have come to that view that you just articulated? Yes, 100%. That they've kind of let go? No, 100%. First of all, if you want to really

discuss the sociology of settlers, when you're thinking about settlers, you close your eyes and you see people with a knitted kippah, like carrying a gun probably, and a hilltop. Well, actually a third of the settlers are secular and they don't have that messianic ideology. Another third are ultra-Orthodox, which means they're not even Zionistic. It's complicated. They don't have a messianic ideology. The third that's left, most people that they live in the West Bank for not ideological reasons. Actually, ideological settlers are a minority among the settlers. That's just a fact. And even among them, the messianic ideology is not as strong's not as strong as it was before it's weakening so yes i do believe that that uh the messianic ideology is not dominant in israel and it's not even

dominant among the settler pop the settlement population it's more complicated than that okay okay fine so now so now get to the the apocalyptic scenario that both sides can agree so here here's the thing mokes isis think that if israel leaves the west bank we're risking our national security risking it big time and here's how the scenario looks like israel israel in 2005 left the gaza strip after he left the gaza strip so it took about a year and a half hamas took over the gaza strip i won't go into all the details and the lives of israelis living living roughly 10 miles from Gaza became very miserable, very miserable. But they have rockets on their heads, on their towns, in the villages, periodically. Now, just again, I want to provide context for our listeners. So 2005,

Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. It wasn't in the context of a peace agreement. Israel basically said to the Palestinian leadership and to the broader Arab world and to Europe and the UN and, you know, all the various players around the world who claim to have an interest in this or are concerned about this, you know, we're out of Gaza. We're done. The Palestinians can take Gaza. We're going to just do something that I don't think there's any historical precedent for, which is Israel sent in its own soldiers under the leadership of a right-wing prime minister, Ariel Sharon, very controversial prime minister, sent in the IDF to forcibly remove Israeli citizens living in the Gaza Strip and uproot settlements from the Gaza

Strip that were inhabited by Israeli citizens and basically move them to the other side of the border with Gaza and say, you're done with Gaza and we're done with Gaza. So it's almost more unprecedented and almost staggering when you consider it than you describe it. And there was an argument back then, Dan, that this will end violence because the only reason why Palestinians

in Gaza are violent towards Israel is because we're present in their land. We'll leave the land so violence will end. What happened leave the land. So violence will end. What happened was the opposite. Okay, so now get into it. So Hamas takes over.

A terrorist organization takes over Gaza. And anyone that's living roughly 10 miles from Gaza, which is roughly 50,000 Israelis, their towns get shelled periodically. And their life is filledlled periodically, and their lives are filled with terror, with anxiety. So Israel looks at what happened in Gaza, and Israelis say the following, if Israel leaves the West Bank, so there is a certain probability that what happened in Gaza will happen in the West Bank. Just here's the thing, Dan, in the periphery of the west bank 10 miles away from the west bank we don't have 50 000 israelis we have 5 million israelis actually 70 percent of israeli population

culture economy is in the periphery of the west bank so if the west bank will look like gaza so jerusalem will look like sderot sderot is the town next to God that's being bombed periodically. So it's what you say, that might not be a good idea to repeat the pilot we did in Gaza in the West Bank and making the life of 5 million Israelis look like the life of 50,000 Israelis in the periphery of Gaza. That's like one example of why Israelis are afraid of leaving the West Bank. And they see it as kind of like a national security apocalypse that might happen if we leave the West Bank. And I think that's a scenario. There's other scenarios, by the way.

But the scenario that many Israelis buy, and we say, and not in low probability, will be a serious national security risk. But at the same time, Dan, the same time, many Israelis think that if we stay in the West Bank and we keep our civilian and military presence in the West Bank, Israel might deteriorate to a different kind of an apocalypse. And that's the apocalypse of Israel controlling the lives of 2.6 billion Palestinians. And eventually, those 2.6 billion Palestinians will be an integral part of Israel. And Israel will lose our Jewish majority, our national majority. Now, Zionism is all about creating a safe home for the Jewish people. Now, in order for it to be a safe Jewish home for the Jewish people, we have to have two things. We have to have secure borders, and we have to have a clear,

massive Jewish majority in Israel. And here's kind of like a broad consensus in Israel. It's very paradoxical. If we stay in the West Bank, we're risking our national majority. If we leave the West Bank, we're risking our national security. We're screwed if we stay in the West Bank. We're screwed if we leave. Now, this paradox is agreed among most Israelis. So this is, I know, when I said we're enjoying an invisible consensus, it's a paradoxical consensus, where most Israelis feel like we should not control the lives of Palestinians,

therefore leave the West Bank, but we shouldn't be threatened by Palestinian militants, therefore we should stay in the West Bank. That's the catch. That's the confusion that captures, I think, the psyche of most Israelis. in a way that could produce this kind of center to emerge in a governing coalition, because both sides were sort of stuck and kind of agreed with the other side to varying degrees, and then that created this opportunity for the center. My counter to that is Israeli politics really hasn't been that polarized for a long time. The person who was polarizing, fairly or not, was Benjamin Netanyahu. Whether you agree with that characterization,

whether you think that characterization is fair or not, that almost anecdotally, almost every Israeli I know has and had a very strong reaction to Netanyahu. They either loved him and were willing to walk on hot coals for him, or they loathed him and thought he should be thrown out of office, if not worse. And again, I'm not getting into the merits of either side. I'm just saying once Netanyahu is removed from the political scene, even temporarily, the polarization just plummets because he's a polarizing figure. His positions actually weren't polarizing, right? You look at the policies of this government, I would argue, in some respects, the policies of this current government is even more hardline operationally, right?

Netanyahu basically had a policy that he would only respond to attacks from Hamas and Gaza when they actually hit Israelis, Israeli citizens, Israeli homes. It seems to me that this government's policy is a click further, which is we will respond anytime rockets are fired. We're not just waiting for Israelis to get hit. If they shoot, we respond. This government's policy on settlements is not softer or directionally different than Netanyahu's, maybe a little stronger, so in the direction of more sympathetic to the settler movement. Again, I'm simplifying here, but it just seems that the policies haven't really changed.

If anything, they may have become a little more hardline in ways that very well may be appropriate. The difference is a personality is gone. Israel is not as polarized roughly ever since 2010, maybe 2012, where the left completely stopped believing in peace. The right stopped believing in the messianic value of land. Both sides stopped selling us a utopia, and both sides replaced the utopia with an apocalypse. The right stopped saying, if we sell the West Bank, the Messiah will come. It's saying, if we leave the West Bank, there'll be a catastrophe. And the left did the same thing. It stopped saying, if we leave the West Bank, we'll have peace.

It's saying, if we stay in the West Bank, there'll be a catastrophe. And when both sides started selling the catastrophe, the new center was born because we were persuaded by both catastrophes, and that's when polarization started melting. But Netanyahu had a role here. Just by being there, he blocked the melting of the polarization. Because the arguing about the issues was replaced by an argument about the person. So he moved from two ideologies clashing to two cults of Netanyahu clashing. The Netanyahu haters and the Netanyahu admirers. And now with Netanyahu, just his very presence, he's such a, you know, his personality was a magnet to almost all our political discussions and our political energy.

Now, Netanyahu being removed. Yeah, he's otherworldly in terms of, if you look at figures, leaders around the world, I mean, his ability to dominate yes any conversation so it's like was extraordinary so it's like you asked well if we stopped arguing about the west about the future of the west bank and we started agreeing on this paradox so why didn't we why did we continue arguing and hating each other well because netanyahu like a person replaced the issue we used to argument about the issue. Now we start arguing about a person. Now, Netanyahu being slowly, you know, slowly and gradually removed

means we're back to the issues. And we discover, hey, we actually agree on most issues. It's a big question. Now that we agree that we're kind of confused and paralyzed and facing this catch when it comes to the West Bank, how do we deal with that? I think we have to find, we're starting to, we're searching for a sophisticated way to deal with this. That's a whole different conversation. But now this is why this kind of a government could be formed. Because when issues divided Israel, so these parties, right-wingers and left-wingers couldn't work with each other.

But when issues are not dividing Israel anymore, so the different brands of the different sides of Israeli politics could actually work with each other. So this government is the first attempt of Israeli politics to tap into the invisible new Israeli consensus. I want to try another theory. All right, no problem. Let's say it's not about Bibi being in the frame or external to the frame. I remember going on a hike with you in your neighborhood a few years ago outside of Jerusalem,

and you, I vividly remember two points you made in the conversation. You're going to regret going on that hike with me because I'm going to bring both up in this conversation. But one thing you told me was this was shortly after Trump got elected, and you were telling me some story about some peers of yours in the academic world in the U.S. that you were having a conversation with, and they were talking about the Trump voter. They're like, I understand. I read about the Trump voter and the Trump voter this and the Trump voter that, and I met a Trump voter.

I spoke to a Trump voter, and he told me as though the Trump voter was like in a lab, like was a species in a lab to be studied. It was the quintessence of the other. And you were flabbergasted by this. And you were saying, I can't imagine ever talking about a fellow citizen, no matter how much I disagree with him on politics, as like this category, this category to study, as opposed to a fellow citizen. So explain that phenomenon, because I think that's that reality of Israeli life in terms of how people view fellow citizens, they don't put them in demographic categories. They're fellow citizens is the real shock absorber against polarization, not agreement on ideas. Yes, the question, how do we create – like I think Israel – Israelis don't know this.

They're so much healthier than Americans. They don't know this because they feel like they're so screwed up because we see Israel with, you know, we're trapped in Israel. But when you compare polarization in Israel to polarization in other places, like in America, you realize Israel is healthier. And I think one of the reasons it's healthier is because our life cycle is different. In Israel, in America, I think in the heart of your life cycle, you have the college experience. And in Israel, college is not that important. In Israel, the military is very important. Now, not all Israelis go to the military,

but mainstream Israelis go to the military and they have a very different experience than Americans, American Jews going to college. And it's the following. Like, it changes your high school experience. In America, in high school school you're before college. In Israel you're before the military. By the way it means that Israelis don't invest,

they're not very good in high school. They're not very obedient, they don't do their homework, not afraid of college because of the other side you have military. But it also means you have a different post experience. In Israel it's post military and in America it's post college. And if you think about like for many many Israelis, post experience in israel it's post military and america's post college and if you think about like for many many israelis myself also military is where you

serve with all brands of israeliness all types all kinds and you become very friendly with all and and in that sense you can, this is not true for all types of military experience, but you don't develop an elitist attitude because you're not speaking about other Israelis. You're best friends with different kinds of Israelis from different parts of society. You're very, very close with them. And where your income or your education is not very important when you're serving in the same company, in the same platoon together. And this is an experience that many, many Israelis go through. And by the way, there's also another very important difference. The military makes people, and I know this is against the stereotype of the military, very open-minded. Very open-minded. And you would think, hey, the military, it's tough and there's obedience.

You think it's a closed atmosphere, therefore closes your mind. Paradoxically, the military experience opens people's minds. And that is, and you would expect college to be the opposite, right? You're going to college, you're seeing the world, you're reading all these texts, you're meeting all these people. It will open your mind. Because it's an open environment, it will open your mind. Not always, but many times, people leave college with very strong convictions, strong identities, strong opinions about people with other worldviews. And the military experience is the opposite. And now the reason why the military experience is opposite,

you come out with the military with weaker opinions. You're less, much less certainty. You don't have strong opinions about right-wingers, about left-wingers. Much less certainty, much more open-minded. And I think the reason is the military experience is, first of all, very much, you know, you meet all kinds of people. You serve people with different political worldviews, different religious worldviews. And you see them as human beings, as people. you love them, you admire them, you're sympathetic towards them. If you're a right-winger, you experience strong sympathy towards left-wingers and vice versa. And you leave the army where you know that people are much more complicated and

much more rich than their worldviews. And there's also a second reason for that, is that the military experience is also so intense that you barely remember who you were when you entered the army after you've left the army. Let's say I was a strong right winger. On the other side, I'm like, I don't know if I'm a right winger anymore. I was an ardent left winger. On the other side, I'm like, I'm not really sure I'm a left winger anymore. The military shakes you. On the other side, you forget who you were when you entered, which means there's a moment after military where your mind is very open. I think it's not always true. College has the opposite impact. You leave college with strong opinions, strong convictions, and many times strong opinions about people with other convictions. So I think I would say the difference, one of the reasons why Israel is less polarized than America is because of the sociological and emotional impact of the military on our minds, as opposed in the military is not an option.

I mean, it's not an option by law, but it's also not an option by choice that people want to serve. And whether you're the son of a tech billionaire in Tel Aviv or you're the son of a public school teacher or a cab driver from Haifa or Hadera, you all could be serving in the same combat unit, putting your lives on the line. That's right.

Which pops, which breaks down bubbles. You'll become best friends. Right. So it's not, and that changes everything. It changes the way you see the world. It changes your life. Now, this is not always true, Dan. Some, there are some elite units, but you still have early elite people.

That's not always true. But for critical mass of Israelis, what you've described is a living reality. And that critical mass is injecting a lot of health into Israel, which is one of the reasons why Israel is not as polarized as America. So in the U.S., another source of maybe, I don't know if it's a source or a byproduct of polarization, is the war on excellence. The debate about excellence and merit and achievement and grit or whatever that contributed to your success. It was your circumstances. And America is structurally divided because certain people just don't have access and are not shaped by the circumstances as other people. So therefore, there's no such thing as real accomplishment or self-earned accomplishment. And Adrian Wooldridge with The Economist magazine wrote this book called The Aristocracy of Talent, How Meritocracy Made the Modern World. We had him on as well on the podcast to talk about this, what a disaster it will be if there is a successful war on merit. And I told him, and I don't think we got into it

on the podcast, maybe at the end, but I know we talked about it after the recording, sort of in the virtual green room, if you will. And I said to him, you know, in Israel, Israelis, young Israelis get recruited for some of these elite technology units, right? 8,200, you know, Taupiot. We can go on 9,900. And these units are like the MIT and the Stanford version of Israeli military life, and they become like a direct conveyor belt to high-paying, wealth-accumulating, highly influential jobs at some of the most powerful

tech companies in Israel and often some of the most powerful tech companies in the world. And yet, there's not a debate in Israel, I don't think, about the fairness of who gets to serve in those units and not. And there's not resentment about this classmate that got recruited to serve in that elite unit, whereas this other classmate did not. First of all, is my characterization correct? And second of all, why doesn't that sense of resentment exist at the fever pitch that it exists in the United States right now? Okay. So I think it does exist, but it's not so loud and brutal like you're experiencing it now in the United States. But if I understand what you're experiencing

in the United States. But there is a common complaint in Israel that those elite units of the military are drawing mainly Ashkenazi Israelis as opposed to Sephardi. So just for our listeners, explain the difference quickly. So here's how, in Israel, I'm talking about the Israelis that go to the military, which are almost all of them, not all, but mainly Jewish and not ultra-Orthodox.

So I would say we're talking about 70% of Israelis, roughly. And, but among these 70% of Israelis, there's Israelis that are descendants of immigrants from Europe, which we call Ashkenazi Israelis. And they're descendants of people that came from Arab speaking countries, Muslim countries,

which we call Mizrahi or Sephardi. Now, by the way, it's roughly 50, 50. It's roughly 50, 50. 50% of Israelis are Middle Eastern, people that came to Israel from Morocco, from Kurdistan, from Iraq, from Syria, from Egypt, from Libya, from Tunisia. Like, so 50% of Israelis are Middle Eastern

and roughly 50% are European. And there's always an attempt in Israel to turn those two groups of Israelis into like, you know, different political identities, and to do the good old American thing of identity politics. But in Israel, it's like Ashkenazi, European Israel versus Sephardi, Middle Eastern Israelis. And the reason why it doesn't work that well, first of all, interestingly enough, in America, identity politics comes more from the left. And in Israel, the people that play that card are on the right. That's one irony we have in Israel. Identity politics is coming from the right.

By the way, Bibi Netanyahu in his last years in politics, he was playing the identity politics game. Yeah, he was saying the Middle Eastern Israelis are all voting for me and all the European Israelis are against me. He was trying to play that game, one tribe versus the other tribe. But it's not, it exists.

And we see it like, for example, who gets to go to the elite units? But it's weak for two reasons. One, when it comes to the military, the military is doing everything it can to recruit the best from all groups in Israel to the elites units. And also realize it has to do a better job in doing that. That's one. But two, most Israelis don't buy the European versus Middle Eastern versions of Israelis as our dominant characteristic of our identity. First of all, because few generations into like, like so many Israelis are the sons and daughters of parents, which are both European and Middle Eastern. We marry each other all

the time in Israel. These groups are not separate groups. We live with each other. We marry each other. Therefore, the differences used to be great, and they're getting smaller and smaller throughout time. And that is because Israelis, their more dominant identity is not if I'm European or Middle Eastern,

is that I'm Israeli, I am Jewish. So identity is something that for most Israelis, not all Israelis, not all Israelis are Zionists, and not all Israelis are Jewish. But for most Israelis, identity is not what divides us, it's what unites us. So even though we have some of that here, it's not the main issue. It's not what divides us. That's not to say that there aren't important divides in Israel. It's not between right and left. It's not between European and Middle Eastern. It's between Zionists and ultra Orthodox on the one side and between mainstream Israelis, which are Jewish, and 20% of Israelis that are Arab, and most of them don't go to the

military. Those are the problems we have. It's not between the hardcore 70% of Israelis, which are Zionists, Jewish, serve in the military. There are attempts to divide that group into two subgroups, but those attempts are not very successful. So are there lessons in terms of your methodology for how you think about bringing down tension? So my method of bringing down polarization is Talmudic in the following sense. When people ask like, what's the Jewish canonical text, they think it's the Bible, the Hebrew Bible. That's true, but it's not completely true. The even more important text is the Talmud. The Talmud is the text that shaped Jewish tradition and Jewish culture throughout the

generations. Now, what is the Talmud? The Talmud is an argument. It's the only ancient text, which is a canonization of an argument. So one rabbi has one opinion. The other rabbi has another opinion. The first rabbi gives his arguments, why he thinks he's right. The other guy's wrong. The other rabbi says why he's right. The other guy's wrong. And that's it. That's the Talmud. It's an argument. It's a sacred argument. Now here's the interesting thing, Dan. The argument, the Talmud that barely has conclusions, it only has debates, became a sacred text. What does it mean it's a sacred text? It means that Jewish scholars throughout all generations

were studying the Talmud. So they're studying a debate. They're studying an argument. And the way Jews were expected to study Talmud is the following. They're supposed to study a Talmud, not alone, but with a partner. It's called a chevruta, a learning partner. And Jewish culture expects both sides,

both, you know, you're studying Talmud with your friend, and Jewish culture expects you to argue with your friend, with your learning partner, with your chavuta about the meaning of the Talmud. Now, what does this create? This creates a culture where you realize that every argument has both sides. And when the Talmud trains your mind, it's the following. Oh, and by the way, the kind of heroes that the Talmud admires are not the people that can make the point that they are right, but it's people that can somehow escape their own skin, see the world from someone else's eyes,

from their opponent's eyes, and make their argument better than them. Those are the kind of people that the Talmud admires. My methodology, Dan, is a Talmudic methodology. It's saying the following. Let's try, like the Talmud canonized both sides, both sides of every argument. So what I try to do in my books, and this is what I'm trying to do in order to offer a methodology that heals Israeli polarization, is be Talmudic about it, saying, let's not ask why the right is right and the left is wrong, or why the left is right and the right is wrong.

Let's ask something else. What's brilliant about the arguments of the Israeli right? And what's brilliant about the arguments of the Israeli left? Why is it that secularism is deep and important and true? And why is it that religious way of living life is deep, important, true, and brilliant? That's Talmudic. To see the best of every argument. To give every argument its best argument.

Its best light. So that's, I think, what I'm trying to do in my methodology is taking the ancient Jewish Talmudic methodology and apply it on modern Israeli politics, on modern Israeli debates. And just to show, because I think, and here's maybe the, I would say, maybe the lesson maybe for polarization also in America. And it's the following.

How do we respond to difference? If you're a right-winger, how do you respond to a left-wing argument? So emotionally speaking, we can always respond with anxiety. What I'm offering is to respond with curiosity, and here's why. Curiosity and anxiety are both a response to the same thing, to difference. When you see something you're not used to, it could be a person, it could be an argument, an ideology. Let's say you're a capitalist and you suddenly meet a socialist,

like a Marxist. You can respond with anxiety. Why? Because it's so different. And anything that's different is scary. But you could also respond with curiosity. Why? Because it's so different. And everything that's different is interesting. So healing polarization is not about replacing hate with love. It's about replacing anxiety with curiosity as the instinct you use to respond to difference. It's about transforming how we respond to difference. Imagine liberal Democrats, they don't need to think that Republicans, that right-wingers, that conservatives got it right. They have to realize that they're interesting. It's interesting. And why is it interesting? Because they think differently than us. So actually a polarized world, Dan, is a world that lost its curiosity. And to heal a polarized

world is not to replace hate with love. It's about replacing anxiety with curiosity. And that's what the Talmud knew how to do way back then. Less than 2000 years ago, the Talmud was about every argument, not all arguments are true, but every argument is interesting. So what I'm trying to do in Israel

is trying to map out all the arguments and showing the left that the right is extremely interesting and showing the right that the left is fascinating. That's what I'm trying to do in Israel. And that's, I think, the antidote to polarization is curiosity. And curiosity is because it's the healthier response to otherness, to difference, much healthier than anxiety, because anxiety always leads to aggression, and curiosity leads to conversation. Okay, so I want to just, at some point, we don't have to do it today, I'm going to bring you back on, because I want to have a separate conversation about your most recent book,

The Wandering Jew, because that's a whole other version of what you're talking about, exactly what you're talking about right now, but applied to, as you said, it's applied to religion, not this political debate. So I wanted to, because I think that's an important conversation I don't want to shoehorn it in. What I do want to just address with you before we wrap is, one, I just, I think I'd be doing, I would be remiss if I didn't have you at least even briefly spell out what your proposed solution is for what seems to be the most intractable political debate Israel at least has gotten itself in with the rest of the world, maybe not inside Israel, which is how to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And you are one of the few thinkers who's put forward in Israel that I know, who's put forward a solution that, or proposed solution, that reflects where the Israeli center is. So you described how the Israeli center kind of, those within the center left and the center

right all kind of agree with one another. And now you've taken that energy, that energy of agreement, if there's such a thing, and tried to channel it into a path forward. What's your path? Okay, so it's what we call shrinking. And I'm talking about shrinking the conflict. Yeah, shrinking the conflict. So there are three important things to understand in order to understand shrinking the conflict. One, let's normalize the way we think about this problem.

Almost all problems, we think about the following way. We can't solve them. It doesn't mean we ignore them. But when it comes to the conflict, there's two options. Either we try to solve it, end it, heal the conflict, end the conflict, solve the conflict. If we can't do that, we just ignore it, do nothing about it. Now, think about, Dan, do we think that way about car accidents?

Like, do we ever hear someone say we have to end car accidents? Oh, and if you can't, let's just not do anything about it. Do we think that way about COVID? I think New Zealand tried to end COVID. It didn't really work. But if you can't end COVID, do we just ignore COVID? Like, we don't think about problems that way. When it comes to the conflict, all over the world, everyone that thinks about the conflict is trapped in

a false dichotomy. Either you're in the let's end the conflict camp, or we can't end it. So there's nothing we can do about it camp, right, which is called managing the conflict, keep things where they are. Shrinking the conflict is like when it comes to COVID, we only we ask one question, how do we shrink the amount of COVID? When it comes to crime, we ask how to shrink the amount of crime becomes the crack since we ask how do we shrink the carc COVID? When it comes to crime, we ask how do we shrink the amount of crime? When it comes to crack sense, we ask how do we shrink the amount of crack sense? When it comes to the conflict, let's treat this problem like we treat any other problem.

How let's shrink the conflict. From an Israeli point of view, this is what it means. It means what are the steps that we take that dramatically increase the amount of Palestinian self-governance without decreasing the amount of Israeli security? And all this without a peace treaty, without a handshake of the White House lawn, without a Nobel Prize. Not the big bang, not the grand solution, but real steps on the ground that increase Palestinian self-governance without decreasing Israeli security. Now, steps like now. Here's the thing. Palestinians are already enjoying a certain amount of self-governance in the West Bank.

It's far from being enough. Okay. And there are real steps on the ground that could increase Palestinian self-governance. And those steps will not will not threaten Israeli security. Those are steps that most Israelis can agree on. Let's just do them tomorrow morning, not dependent on peace, not dependent on ending the conflict. Just do it because we can do it. And the reason why these steps do reflect the broad Israeli consensus is here's two things Israelis want. We don't want to control the lives of Palestinians. We don't want to be in a position where we're threatened by Palestinians. And when we think about the game of all or nothing, we're paralyzed.

When we think about just shrieking the conflict, there are steps that liberate us from this paralysis, that increase Palestinian self-governance and don't decrease Israeli security. There's like the main steps about building a system that enables Palestinian freedom of movement, complete freedom of movement for Palestinians. That's achievable. Liberating Palestinian economy so the Palestinian economy will not be controlled by Israel.

And freedom to expand and build their villages, their towns, their homes. The freedom to build, the freedom to move, the freedom to prosper. Those are free freedoms that Israel can create for Palestinians without peace, without ending the conflict. And here's a paradox. If moving on the ground, changing circumstances on the ground depends on peace, peace that's not coming means no movement on the ground. We're so used to people saying that the myth of settlements is freezing the status quo. That's true. But also the myth of peace is freezing the status quo. If we're willing, like most Israelis are, to give up the myth of land and the myth of peace, we could break this false dichotomy and start treating the conflict tomorrow morning,

not waiting for peace, not waiting for Palestine,ian nelson mandela to work now and most ways we agree on steps that don't risk their security so that's i think that's a tell i mean shrinking the conflict is important because it's the only way forward for israelis that are paralyzed by the cats that i described before like if we feel like we can't leave the west bank and we can't stay in the west bank so we're. This is a way to break paralysis and move forward. And I think most Israelis, and by the way, also many Palestinians realize that we should stop playing the all or nothing game because then we're stuck with nothing and find real ways to move forward on the grounds. Okay. Before we wrap, last point, and I know we'll do a separate conversation on on your

most recent book of wandering jew but there's one point in that book which is an important piece of wisdom that relates specifically i think to reducing polarization which is your concept of a digital free saturn and i think that's relevant to everybody jew Jews, non-Jews. So just let's wrap by you giving us some wisdom here. Okay. So Rabbi... I mean, all of us had wisdom, but this particular one. Okay. So Rabbi Jonathan Zaks has a very interesting point that political polarization is a societal equivalent of climate change. Now just think about that line. Political polarization is a societal equivalent of climate change. Now just think about that line. Political polarization is a societal equivalent of climate change. So we have two big problems in the world today. Planet Earth burning

up and political conversations burning up now. Really, like I say, if planet Earth burns up a little bit more, maybe planet Earth won't be able to inhabit humanity. If our political debates heat up a little bit more, our democracies won't survive. So if global warming is threatening planet Earth, political polarization is threatening our democracies. The interesting analogy between these two is they're both unintended consequences of a technological revolution. The Industrial Revolution that happened roughly 250 years ago had an unintended consequence, which is global warming. The digital revolution that only started like roughly 20 years ago also has an unintended consequence, which is political polarization. So everybody's asking today, how do we save planet earth from global warming from climate change?

So a way to think about that question is how do we protect planet earth from the unintended consequences of the industrial revolution? I think we should ask the same question about the digital revolution. How do we protect our minds and democracies from the unintended consequences of the digital revolution? Like what's the equivalent of the green movement when it comes to democracy, when it comes to protecting not earth from the industrial revolution, but democracy from the digital revolution? How does that look like? Which means we can only protect our politics, our democracy, if we heal our relationship with technology. Now, a digital Sabbath, yes,

which is the point you were trying to take me to, is a beginning of an answer of how do we meet ourselves and meet each other not through screens but face to face and creating now this is an idea by sherry turkle from mit she says we should all have at least an hour a day with no smartphones and a day a week with no smartphones and maybe even a week a year with no smartphones and a day a week with no smartphones and maybe even a week a year with no smartphones. We should meet ourselves and meet each other not in a way that's mediated by technology. When technology tries to connect us, many times it divides us. But if we try to meet each other not through technology, maybe I see you. I don't see your right wing. I just see you. I see your personality. I don't see a left wing, I see your qualities,

your sense of humor. People are more than their politics. But when we meet through screens, we shrink ourselves into the size of our political, and we shrink each other, the size of our political worldviews. So the idea of, so again, when it comes to Sabbath, and as a Jew, there's also a false dichotomy.

Either you observe all the laws of Sabbath or you don't have a Sabbath. Also here, we need to shrink the conflict. I mean, we could have partial Sabbath. And in a digital world, a day where we, right, you might not observe all the laws of Sabbath, but many Israelis say, "'Yes, but I shut down my smartphone in Sabbath.

"'Sabbath is the day where my attention is present, where I am, and with the people that I am with. So that's taking an ancient tradition, Judaism Sabbath, to try to heal modern problems, polarization, distraction, and trying to live in a world where we enjoy the blessings of technology, but not be controlled by technology, maybe ancient traditions could turn into solutions to very contemporary problems. All right, Mika, that means that the next time we have this conversation, I don't want to do it through a screen like we're doing it now. It'll have to be when I'm next in Jerusalem. We'll do it in person. It'll be our own digital Sabbath. I'm looking forward to it. That's our show for today.

To read more on Mika Goodman or read any of his pieces, you can do that at the Shalom Hartman website, which is hartman.org.il. You can also purchase the English translations of his books at your favorite independent bookseller at barnesandnoble.com or that other e-commerce site. I think they're calling it Amazon, and I've gotten many requests to stop making that comment. I'm not sure I'm ready to give it up. So just go to Barnes & Noble. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senel.