Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - "Silver Linings" in Israel's crisis? with Yaakov Katz

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Yaakov Katz – Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Post and a former advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett – returns to our podcast. Earlier, Yaakov Katz served as The Jerusalem Post’s military reporter and defense analyst. He is the author of "Shadow Strike: Inside Israel's Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power" and co-author of two books: "Weapon Wizards - How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower" and "Israel vs. Iran - The Shadow War" "Shadow Strike: Inside Israel's Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power" – shorturl.at/adioS "Weapon Wizards - How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower" - shorturl.at/fhIJ3

And I went to a bunch of these protests to watch and see who are the people who are coming. These are mostly, almost exclusively, secular Israelis. These are the people who come from Tel Aviv, Herzliya, Ramat HaSharon, Hoda HaSharon. These are people who are middle to upper class. And these are the people who we were told for years now. These are these Tel Avivians who are disconnecting from Israel, are becoming post-Zionists, are more interested in high-tech and traveling overseas and getting a second passport from a European embassy than about

fighting for Israel. Well, here we have them fighting for Israel. They're reclaiming our symbol, the Israeli flag. They're out on the streets. They're not post-Zionists. These are people who either never left Zionism or have refound their Zionism. And I think that this movement, whether you agree with them as protesters or you don't, there's something inspiring of watching so many people fight for their country. And I wonder, how will we channel this power that we now have in this country? Will it just be wasted on a couple of new politicians? Or can we change the narrative? Can we tell a new story of what our raison d'etre is to be here in Israel? What is our purpose as a country?

Why do we exist? There is a patriotic awakening in Israel right now. We need to make the most of it. That is the title of a column by Yaakov Katz, frequent guest on the Call Me Back podcast and editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post. It's actually the title of his last column as editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post.

He'll continue serving as editor-in-chief for the near Post. He'll continue serving as editor-in-chief for the near future, but he's made the decision to step down. He'll continue writing for the Jerusalem Post, but he's starting a new project that will preclude him from running the paper day-to-day in the long run. But this column that he writes, which we talk about today, we actually had this conversation when he was in the midst of writing it, are about the silver linings he sees in the midst of this judicial reform chaos we've been witnessing in Israel over the last few months. From Yaakov's perspective, it's not all bad news. There are some encouraging signs about the future of Israel, the future of Zionism, the future of the Jewish state.

As regular listeners of our podcast know, before becoming editor-in-chief at the Jerusalem Post, Yaakov served as the paper's military reporter and defense analyst. He's the author of a terrific book called Shadow Strike, Inside Israel's Secret Mission to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power, and co-author of two books, Weapon Wizards, How Israel Became a High-Tech Military Superpower, which I had reviewed way back for the Wall Street Journal, and also Israel vs. Iran, The Shadow War. Yaakov also previously served as a top advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. So as a journalist, an author, and a former political and policy advisor to a former Israeli leader, Yaakov has a lot of perspective on what's happening right now in Israel and where it's going.

Finding silver linings in the judicial reform chaos. This is Call Me Back. And I'm pleased to welcome back to the podcast my longtime friend Yaakov Katz, editor-in-chief of the Jerusalem Post, prolific writer, author, definitely a friend of the podcast. Folks often want to hear what Yaakov thinks when we're discussing affairs of state as it relates to Israel. And so, Yaakov, thanks for joining us late in the night over there in Jerusalem after what has been a pretty intense few days. Always a pleasure to be with you, Dan. All right, Yaakov, I got a lot I want to unpack with you, but before we start, or before we start unpacking, just give me a sense of where things are now, middle of the week following an intense weekend of the defense minister being fired or mostly fired, but may not be now at this point formally fired.

The prime minister announcing that he will pause the legislative process on his judicial reforms, some seeming bubbling up of tension between the Biden administration and the Netanyahu government. Where are things from where you stand? Well, you know, from the big picture in the issue of Netanyahu and his coalition still moving ahead with the judicial reform, that seems to have been moved away or back and is put on hold at least until the Knesset resumes its sessions after the Passover holiday, which would be the end of April, beginning of May. And then they will reignite this legislation and this legislative process. Now, what that did was it basically also kind of took the air out of the protests, the protests that we're seeing about 300,000 Israelis. Remarkable, Dan, right? 300,000 Israelis almost on a weekly basis. Some would even say more. But if we go with the 300,000 number, just to kind of give our listeners some perspective and

context, that's about two and a half percent of our population. That would be like eight million Americans taking to the streets on a weekly basis for three months straight. It's unimaginable. Every Saturday night, every Saturday night. And what was most striking about the last protest, I guess that was on Sunday night, is that was spontaneous. That wasn't organized. That was spontaneous. Right. There'd been a rhythm where every Saturday night after Shabbat, there were these protests going back to early January. But what was unique about Sunday night, it wasn't part of the regular rhythm. People just literally, the prime minister announced he was firing Galant,

the defense minister, and then WhatsApp messages started going out, and people started just chatting. And within minutes, you had tens of thousands of people on the streets of tel aviv and jerusalem it was it's astonishing i mean what they've been able to do which is the whole other question is is you know bring to life this amazing movement whether you agree with these people or you don't uh who are protesting but it's really it's i mean you can't you you see israelis who are just not indifferent today. Israelis are, care deeply about what's happening to the country. But where the reforms are now, so they've been put on hold. There was already one round of talks that were

held and hosted by President Herzog at his home, where you had sides for, you had the side of Likud, you had the side of the main opposition parties, Yesishatid, led by for example, the override bill, which was one of the key pieces of legislation that the coalition wanted, which is that if the court strikes down a law, the Knesset can re-legislate it with a simple majority. Okay, they wanted a simple majority, maybe agree to five more, six more, 10 more Knesset members. I mean, you know, those are little details, but some of that would be enough to ease the concerns when it comes to judicial appointments, right? The coalition wanted exclusive majority on the appointments committee. Maybe they could agree and say, you know what, we'll have the majority of people, but we'll always have to

have buy-in from at least one member of the opposition or one judge. In other words, there's a lot they could do that would be seen as giving in and making a concession and easing the fears that a lot of people here have. So I just want to take apart these issues just for a moment before we get into our other topics. On the reforms, it seemed to me, as an observer, that the least objectionable of these reforms was figuring out a way to address the selection of judges. From an American perspective, and most democracies around the world, elected officials, politicians, have the primary role in selecting the judiciary. It doesn't mean that the judiciary can't be independent. In many cases, these are lifetime appointments, and once they're in, they can't be pressured or removed. So their connection

or their fealty, if you will, to their loyalty to the politicians that appointed them, other than perhaps ideological alignment, is pretty tenuous. And so the elected government choosing, selecting judges is pretty standard. And trying to address that and make that more the norm in Israel, again, seemed to me from afar like the least objectionable. The most controversial, which actually defined most of the press coverage when this whole reform process started in the first few weeks going back kind of january 4th immediately after january 4th was the override clause what you just described that seemed to too many people abroad and it and it and it shaped a lot of the press coverage was this wait a minute so the so the government if it doesn't like it a court decision can just vote with a one-seat majority to overturn a court ruling.

That seemed – and you even had political leaders from the American right making that point publicly. You saw the comments by former U.S. Ambassador David Friedman and others raising this point. Now, the override clause, my understanding, was not a priority of Prime Minister Netanyahu's or Yariv Levin's or Simcha Rothman or some of the other players. The override clause was a priority for the Haredi parties, for the ultra-Orthodox parties. And it was sort of slid in at the last minute as the judicial plan was being compiled. And if that is true, it's ironic that it's that provision that wound up becoming so definitional. So what do we know about the override clause? And do you think either what you're describing is the likely path,

if anything gets passed, that it is seriously amended or is it just dropped altogether? You know, you're looking at it, and I agree to an extent, you're looking at it from a U.S. perspective. And from the U.S. perspective, you're right. The political class appointing Supreme Court justices is the norm in places like the United States. hold on, we elect Knesset members to make life and death decisions for Israelis because they're appointed as ministers and they serve in the security cabinet and they decide if we go to war, don't go to war. If they call up reserves, they don't call up reserves. And we draw the line at selecting 15 people to sit on the Supreme Court bench. I don't understand why people are such up in arms over that. But that is the thrust, I would say, of the main opposition. When it comes to the override clause, which, like you said, accurately got a lot of attention outside of Israel, here, the origins of it was the ultra-Orthodox, who their main interest

was the IDF draft bill, right? As you recall, we went to our first election at the end of 2018 because Avigdor Lieberman, the head of Yisrael Beiteinu, was defense minister, resigned because there was no agreement on an IDF draft bill. And the court kept on delaying, also making a decision, because basically the default is every 18-year-old gets drafted into the IDF. The ultra-Orthodox don't want that. So there's been these ongoing negotiations for years. The court's hearing is still pending. A court decision is still pending.

And the ultra-Orthodox want to make sure that they have the ability to override whatever decision the court would make. That's their personal interest to take care of their personal constituents. For Netanyahu, though, at the end of the day, this is all about who the Supreme Court justices are. And the reason is because of his personal circumstances. In my opinion, what he wants to try to do is make sure that he has on the court people who will be sympathetic to him if his trial makes its way to the Supreme Court, which is likely to happen. If he's convicted

now in the district court, which is hearing the trial on charges of fraud, bribery, breach of trust, if he gets convicted in any of that and he decides to take it to the Supreme Court, he wants to make sure that he has those judges there. And there's a couple appointments coming up. At the end of this year, I think it's September, October, Supreme Court President Esther Chayut will be stepping down because in Israel, you end your term at the age of 70. There will be another two justices shortly after who will also be stepping down. So you're going to have two to three appointments fairly quickly, one after the other, including a new president, which is the judge who decides and determines who are going to

be when there's a case. They determine who are the justices who sit on that case. They determine the size of the panel. It's not like in America where it's all nine. Here, it could be three, it could be five, it could be nine, it could be 10. So these are all very important aspects of the reform for Netanyahu personally. Many folks on the right have commented to me in Israel that they're supportive or at least somewhat sympathetic to the judicial reforms. Many in the center believe that there needs to have been some kind of reform that the Supreme Court had gotten out of control, the courts generally, in terms of the power it had arrogated for itself, the judiciary. Can you just spend a minute explaining that, how that happened and what happened and why it had kind of gotten out of control? Look, the court over years had taken for itself, I think we could call it an exaggerated level of authority and the ability to really

interfere and intervene in matters that probably it shouldn't have, right? There's the famous two words in Hebrew that go, hakol shafit, everything can be educated. And that was a saying by the former Supreme Court President Aaron Barak, who served in that position in the 1990s to the 2000s. And he was very influential. And basically, he took a number of basic laws. Remember, Israel does not have a constitution, but over the years has passed several laws with a little elevated status called basic laws. And he took these laws and he kind of compiled through them something of a constitution or a charter that the court would work with. And it would kind of be the court's compass of how it operates. And he used that to interfere in diplomatic decisions, in security decisions. I mean, most recently we can look at, for example,

the decision to disqualify Aryeh Derry, the leader of the Shas party, from serving as a minister, right? So here was a guy who had 400,000 votes in the most recent election, was a two-time convicted felon, is a disgrace that he's even appointed as a minister. So to be clear, he's the leader of the Shah's party, which is a Sephardic ultra-Orthodox party, major player. And Derry himself and the party he leads has been a major player in coalition governments of both Labor and Likud going back decades. And a close ally of Netanyahu. Right.

Right. Okay. And so he, I don't think he should have been a minister, two-time convicted felon, but 400,000 people voted for him. When the government was presented to the Knesset, the Knesset has to vote to affirm. 64 Knesset members voted to confirm his appointment. And then the court comes and says, well, it was an unreasonable decision. So you have a lot of people who look at that and they say, with all due respect to the 10

Supreme Court justices who heard that case, who are you to tell 400,000 people plus 64 Knesset members that what we decided was unreasonable? And that's just one recent example, but there's other cases that have come up over the years where the court has just been – has created a feeling among certain sectors of society, particularly the right, particularly the ultra-Orthodox, particularly the settler movement, that they are against them. Now, there's another issue here, Dan, and that is the diversity of the court. We cannot ignore the fact that we are in 2023 and we live in a country where half of the people are Ashkenazi and half of the people are Sephardim, come from Middle Eastern, North African countries. So the latter, the Sephardim come from North Africa, from the Arab world, from Arab countries, from the Arab Middle East. And they are not part of the European mostly originated elite that had run the country for the first 30 plus years. Yeah.

So how is it then, you have a lot of judges, you have a lot of lawyers and legal experts who are of Sephardic descent. How is it then in a Supreme Court of 15 justices, only one in 2023 is of Sephardic descent. Now, I could go back 30, 40 years ago, and you could say, but Yaakov, then, you know, they came later than the European Jews. They didn't come educated necessarily. You could have a Jew came from Vienna or Berlin who already was a judge or a lawyer, and people who came from Morocco or Egypt or Syria or Libya, they weren't.

Okay, fine. But we're 2023. You look at 75 years of the Supreme Court, 72 justices, only 11 of Sephardic descent. That does not bode well for a, or that doesn't tell a good story if you're trying to say I'm a court that represents all of Israel. That doesn't tell a good story if you're trying to say I'm a court that represents all of Israel. That doesn't. So there was real distress and a real feeling of disenfranchisement by significant sectors of this country. And that's where this reform came from, I think.

Now, the issue is – and I'm sorry to tie it back to Bibi though, to Netanyahu, but there have been people who have been trying to push this for years because of the real disenfranchisement. Netanyahu has for all ways, forever, rejected any attempt to change the courts. So what happened now? We get back to what we mentioned before, his personal circumstances. So you have this kind of perfect storm of people who really do feel disenfranchisement. Reform is really needed. Look, I think, for example, just my personal opinion, reform is desperately needed. We need reform. What they tried to do, though, they went too far. So I would like to see a lot of these laws passed, but just a little different, right? And, you know,

I want to see an override bill, not And, you know, I want to see an override bill, not with the simple majority. I want to see changes to the judicial appointments, but I don't want to see it that they just have exclusive authority, right? So, or majority. I want to see changes, but that make Israel's democracy stronger. And I think most people agree. By the way, the great success of this whole three months to an extent, one of the great successes is that probably all of Israel today agrees that we need judicial reform, which wasn't the case three months ago. Including the people protesting, the hundreds of thousands of people protesting?

I have no doubt that the vast majority of those people believe, and polls show this. There are polls taken in Israel. Most people in this country agree that changes are needed. By the way, listen to Yair Lapid. You listen to Benny Gantz. Everyone in the opposition is willing to make changes. And even President Herzog, when he rolled out his compromise plan a couple weeks ago, it included some dramatic changes to the status quo of the way things are now.

Herzog can't be accused of being someone who comes from the right or is a Netanyahu supporter. He's the former head of labor. He's a left-wing politician. But everyone recognizes that we have to change this current situation. I guess what I'm not following is if it was so life and death for Netanyahu in the way that you characterize it, not, you know, in terms of his legal situation. Why did he, to quote Anshul Pfeffer in one of his columns in Haaretz, why did he seem bored by the topic? topic. When you hear Bibi talk about Iran or you hear him talk about the prospect of normalizing with Saudi Arabia and ending with and formally ending the Israeli conflict, which he talked about on this podcast before he formed his government, you can just see the energy and the creativity and the focus in his... When you're talking to him and you

can hear it in his voice it's like what he wakes up every day to work on and judicial reform just didn't seem to be a subject that he was waking up every day to focus on and as fever said that listening to bb answer questions about judicial reform was like listening to him answer perfunctory questions about the palestinians or the palestinian peace process he was bored by it Look, Anshul's a good friend and I have great respect for him, but I have to disagree with him on this because Netanyahu, the flip side would be, why did he let the country get ripped apart for three months? He saw what was happening. He saw how IDF reservists were saying, we don't feel like we could serve. You know, Dan, there was that moment a few weeks ago where 37 out of 40 reservists from the 69th squadron of

the Air Force, these are pilots who fly in F-15Is and one of Israel's most advanced long range combat aircraft. And they came and said, we don't feel that we can continue to serve. And then there was one Likud minister who said they're cowards and narcissists. There was another Likud minister from the same party as Netanyahu who literally said to them, go to hell. Now, I know these people. These are the people, because I wrote a book about these guys. These are the people who on September 5th, 2007, were told, because they had no clue what they were doing. They were told in the afternoon, you guys are going to get into your cockpits just after midnight, fly to northeastern Syria and destroy a nuclear reactor that was being

built for Bashar al-Assad by North Korea. And they did that without hesitation in a mission that defies imagination and neutralized the threat that could have been of existential nature to the state of Israel. To call them cowards? So, you know, Netanyahu allowed this whole thing to happen. He allowed for these 300,000 people to take to the streets. He allowed for the country to be in a state of paralysis for Joe Biden, who you can't say is not a friend of the state of Israel, to make the comments that he made this week and to say, no, I will not be inviting the prime minister of Israel in the near term. Dan, you know American politics better than I do. Presidents do not talk that way about an Israeli prime minister.

It just doesn't happen. In the bad years of Obama, we didn't have comments of public of that nature. Okay, I see you're moving your head back and forth. No, because I had this conversation the other day with John Podhoretz on his commentary magazine podcast, and he made the point that if this were Obama, he was grateful that Biden was president right now instead of Obama, because he said if this were Obama, that Biden has been basically pretty restrained, and if this were Obama, he'd be doing daily civics lessons to the Israeli people about the importance of their democracy in a

way that would be insufferable. So I'm not, in any event, I take your point. It's a bad moment. And you see the economy, you see the shekel drop crashing, you see just all these things that are happening. And Netanyahu could have tried to do something to change this, but he didn't. So I would argue that he actually cares deeply about this. And the fact is, the only time what finally pushed him to stop the legislation was the fact that after he fired and sacked Yoav Galant, the defense minister, and that spontaneous demonstration that you mentioned, after that happened, he recognized he can't let this go on. And he had to pull back. And thankfully, he did. And where do you think his, Prime Minister Netanyahu's position right now is within the right, within his coalition? How strong is he within his own coalition government,

and generally speaking, with the rank and file of the right within his coalition? How strong is he within his own coalition government and generally speaking with the rank and file of the right? I think everyone within his party, at least, wanted this also to be delayed. They were not happy with the way this was moving ahead, and they realized they were fearful, within Likud at least, that they're going to pay a political price if there's going to be a new election and that this could really be damaging to their political future. His coalition partners, Bitzal Smatrich from the Religious Scientist Party, Itamar Ben-Gvir from the Jewish Power Party, and the ultra-Orthodox parties, they wanted this judicial reform more.

And as we saw the other day, Ben-Gvir put a gun on the table and said to Netanyahu, if you stop, I'm going to pull out of the coalition. So Netanyahu basically gave him the authority to establish a national guard that would be under his jurisdiction and authority, not under the police. So basically, Ben-Gvir, this man who we've all been concerned about because of his background, is now getting something of a private militia in Israel. Yeah, although I'll believe it when I see it. mean i mean uh true yeah i mean i mean for one i think

this idea from what i understand originated with naftali bennett during the during the when there were jewish arab violence in towns like lod back in i guess it was 2021 spring of 2021 around the gaza war and bennett talked about this kind of like uh reserves for police force so that was Sounds like Lod back in, I guess it was 2021, spring of 2021, around the Gaza war. And Bennett talked about this kind of like reserves for police force. So that was the original concept. Ben-Vir is now taking that idea and wants it and wants it under his supervision. And, okay, so Netanyahu says he can have it. Now, good luck doing the capacity building and building it out.

And it's years in the making. And who knows if Ben-Gurion is even going to – I mean, you know, so it sounds like it was a concession. Netanyahu is the king of making promises and somehow finding a way to make them disappear over time. This is true. Okay. So, I mean, I guess this flare-up with the U.S. over the last couple of days, quote unquote, flare up. It seems to me. So I've spoken to officials in the U.S. and and kind of sort of understand. Not that I sympathize, but I sort of understand why they felt they needed to speak out.

Although President Biden's own statement sounds like it was not orchestrated. It was just him speaking out in his voice was just sort of off the cuff and not planned. But one can make the argument that it's in Prime Minister Netanyahu's interest right now to have a little bit of escalation with President Biden as well, because in the eyes of the right, he may have seemed to have folded I mean the rank and file the base right not not not the actual elected members of the liquid party but the but the base the grassroots of the party the best grassroots of the right that he has folded he blinked and showing that he's not going to be pushed around by by President Biden the way someone like year Lapid would in his framing um is is not bad for him at this moment yeah but he is kind of caving into what biden has asked him to do right biden from the beginning spoke about a need for a broad consensus and that's basically what's happening right now in these negotiations is an attempt to reach a consensus i i think that what netanyahu did in you know i i long long thought that the most left wing member of this coalition, a lot of people said it's going to be Netanyahu.

I said, no, it's actually going to be Joe Biden, even though he's not a member of the coalition. But he's the guy that Netanyahu will always be able to look to and say, Joe, save me from the guys on the right, because all Biden has to do is put his foot down in a big way. And that could be the excuse that Netanyahu needs to say, OK, I can't build settlements. I can't legalize outposts. I can't move forward with judicial reforms. It took Biden some time to do that. But I think that this was definitely instrumental in getting Netanyahu to back off a bit. But also keep in mind, Dan, you know, again, you know, this U.S.-Israel history just as well, if not better than I do. Prime Minister Netanyahu is now three months plus into his tenure as Israel's prime minister,

right, in this term. He has yet to be invited to the United States. That's pretty, that's remarkable, right? If you go back to 09, shortly after he came into office, he went off to the US in 2012, again, reelected. He went 2013, sorry, he went back to, he went to the US and then Obama even came to Israel. You have trips that are usually quick succession to an election and to the formation of a government. He's not getting that. He's not being invited to the U.S. He's not being invited to the Emirates, which he really wanted to go visit also. That's because more about the Palestinian issue. It's things aren't going so great for him at the moment. I would make the argument if he's going to come to Washington, it's better to wait until the end of Ramadan.

Let's get through this period because if there's violence that flares up in Israel while he's in Washington, all he wants to do in Washington is talk about Iran and talk about Saudi Arabia. And if he's in Washington, he's having to talk about, you know, explain Ben-Gvir's latest statement that is inflaming a situation, a phase of Ramadan era, of Ramadan period violence. It's just like a total mess and a distraction. So, you know, I'm not advising him, but I would think that kind of waiting until the spring or early summer is probably a better window. But in any event, all right, now let me ask you about something we have not talked about or two people we have not really talked about. How do you think Yair Lapid comes out of this? And how do you think Benny Gantz comes out of this?

So let me start with Benny Gantz for a moment. Benny Gantz was the guy who was Mr. Dialogue from the beginning, called for talks and a compromise and even picked up the phone and called Netanyahu at his own initiative early on in this process. Lapid, on the other hand, much more militant, going to a lot of the protests, calling to keep them going, to escalate, saying, I won't talk unless there's a 60-day freeze, really climbing up a high tree, setting really high demands. Gantz, with, you know, the classic, if people who know Benny Gantz, just a good guy, a nice guy, right? Not to say that Lapid's not a nice guy, but Gantz kind of gives off that really, I'm just, you know, one of the chevre, one of the

guys, and, you know, just wants to do the right thing. That's always been his problem, by the way, that's also his weak spot. That's how he fell into a government with Netanyahu in 2020 during Corona after promising not to sit with him. And then Netanyahu cheated him out of it. And then we went to another election. That's long history. Gantz, though, is gaining from this. He took away a poll taken just a couple of days ago. He took away a few seats from Yair Lapid. And actually in the question, when put up against Netanyahu, who is more suitable to be prime minister? Gantz beat Netanyahu by a few percentage points, which is very interesting, right? Very, very interesting.

Lapid, more militant, more the face of the protests, very strong, is polling high. Some polls show him at 26, 27 seats, just one or two below Likud. So he's gained from this as well. When it comes to him up against Netanyahu in terms of the suitability for prime minister compatibility, he still does not beat out Netanyahu necessarily like Gantz does. But the polls also show that the likely coalition, if we were to go to an election today, tomorrow, or sometime soon, that Lapid would be able to form a coalition. So Lapid had an interest to an extent, as did Gantz, of keeping this going because this was a great, this protest got them a lot of public support in moving forward and trying to create a movement that can potentially bring down the coalition. Although it seems to me that Gantz has more options going forward,

because he's someone, unlike Lapid, he's someone who could sit in a government of the center-right or the center-left. So he could become a player. Correct. Yeah. Gantz has that ability, and he's more flexible in that sense. Gantz could potentially even join this coalition. Right. I mean, you know, he could come in and replace Ben-Gvir. He's a former Likud member, hawkish, definitely on the Palestinian issue, a very conservative lawmaker. He's different than Lapid. Lapid's also – this is a whole other discussion, Dan. I think we've spoken about this in the past, but there's no real left today in Israel. It's much more of a center that we have. And Lapid also could be fluid, but he has made this promise he would never sit with Netanyahu. So that's kind of what got him. He's stuck in that box still. But look, the day after Netanyahu, everything's open, right? Everything's possible. Okay.

Now I want to talk about the good news. So you said to me in a conversation offline that you see silver linings in this moment, two in particular. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because let me tell you, where I sit, I mean, there's been a lot of despair and a lot of lamenting and a lot of hysteria. So sprinkle in some hope and optimism.

Well, before I do, I want to say that I share that despair. I've been living in Israel for 30 years. I was here in the 90s going to high school when buses were blowing up just a couple of streets over. I was here as a reporter already during the second Intifada covering those bus bombings. I was in Gaza when Israelis were just literally physically removed from their homes, which I thought was – we shouldn't have been there. But that was painful to watch. And I covered the Lebanon war, right? So I've seen terrible moments in this country. But nothing was as depressing as what we've had here over the last three months.

The feeling that we're ripping ourselves apart, that we are doing this to ourselves, that the whole world is watching us. And what the Jewish state of Israel has to say is that we will do the job for you. What you all wanted, we'll do for you. It was terrible. But the silver linings, I think, Dan, are two. The first is we have to recognize the fact that Israel today is a superpower, right? For three primary reasons. Our economy, you look at 2022, 6.5% growth. Our GDP per capita, 50-something thousand, number 30 or 31 on the ranking of countries. Projected growth for 2023, just below 3%. Inflation, half of what it is in the United States. So that could all change. And especially because of the judicial reform, there's warnings, but we're doing okay. We have energy independence today,

which is amazing. Who would have imagined a few years ago that we would be, we, Israel, would be exporting gas to Egypt and Jordan? Who would have imagined that few years ago that we, Israel, would be exporting gas to Egypt and Jordan? Who would have imagined that we'd have 1,000 BCM, billion cubic meters of gas, that we can access? We need only 40 to 50 a year. We can provide the world with gas, and the world wants it. Europe is coming here, and that's what they want from Israel. And we know what energy independence means today, especially when thinking about Russia and Ukraine, how valuable it is.

And then there's our military might. We're powerful. I mean, there's no look around us. We have lots of threats, but none of them can destroy Israel. No one can conquer territory in Israel. There's no conventional military that threatens Israel. Yes, Iran looms on the horizon and it's bad and has to be dealt with, but they're not yet at the bomb.

And even if they were to start racing and we would have to do something, I'm confident that we are strong enough to deal with that threat. And I would add at a time that the U.S. has been gradually through three administrations, through Obama, Trump and Biden, has been reducing its presence in the Middle East. The indispensability of the U.S.-Israel security relationship is even more valuable. I mean, the U.S.-Israel alliance becomes even more valuable in conventional military areas and also cyber capabilities. I mean, Israel really is the most important player in the Middle East for the United States. And you see it. I mean, just look at the exercises that have been taking player in the Middle East for the United States. And you see it. I mean, just look at the exercises that have been taking place in the last year. This recent one, Juniper Oak, with thousands of soldiers and aircraft sent common to Israel. It's incredible.

And I think what this all tells me is I look at the arc of history of Israel over 75 years. We literally, for the first 50 years, pretty much, we were fighting for survival, right? I mean, it was a battle. It was almost a daily battle. And we just wanted to see if we're going to make it through the day, from the War of Independence, through the Six-Day War, and the Yom Kippur War, and the Lebanon War, and this First Intifada, and the Second Intifada, and the Yom Kippur war and the Lebanon war and this first intifada and the second intifada and the second Lebanon war. I mean, it was constantly this fight. But when you're strong, as we are now, and we've been pretty much over the last 20 years, we now have the ability to think about, so how should we appoint our Supreme Court justices? Because when you're fighting and

you're not sure you're going to survive and make it through the day, you're not caring so much about how you appoint a Supreme Court justice. So I think the silver lining here is that this is a testament of the fact that Israel today is in a good place. It can think about things that when it's fighting for survival, it can't think about. So that should give us some context. It's hard to talk to someone about their cholesterol level when they're in the middle of a knife fight. Correct. Well said.

Israel's not in a knife fight anymore, or at least not now. So it's like, let's talk about our democracy. Let's talk about our judicial—let's talk about our cholesterol. Right. These are issues that now we can actually talk about, right? The second silver lining that I see is I look at the protesters. And I went to a bunch of these protests to watch and see who are the people who are coming. And, you know, a lot of the people, you look at Tel Aviv where you have the big protests, you know, where it's almost 200,000 people on those Saturday night gatherings and demonstrations.

These are mostly, almost exclusively secular Israelis, a lot of Ashkenazim. These are the people who come from that area of the center of the country, Tel Aviv, Herzliya, Ramat Hasharon, Hoda Hasharon. These are people who are middle to upper class, and they're out there protesting. And these are the people who we were told for years now, these are these Tel Avivians who are disconnecting from Israel, are becoming post-Zionists, are more interested in high-tech and traveling overseas and getting a second passport from a European embassy than about fighting for Israel. Well, here we have them fighting for Israel. They're reclaiming our symbol, the Israeli flag. They're out on the streets. They're not post-Zionists. These are people who either never left Zionism or have refound their Zionism. And I think that this movement,

whether you agree with them as protesters or you don't, there's something inspiring of watching so many people fight for their country. And I wonder, how will we channel this power that we now have in this country? Will it just be wasted on a couple of new politicians? Or can we change the narrative? Can we tell a new story of what our raison d'etre is to be here in Israel? What is our purpose as a country? Why do we exist? You know, this will touch home for you a bit, Dan.

In the beginning, when we were founded as a state, we were founded as a safe haven for Jews, right? That's what Israel was supposed to be. Save Jews after Holocaust, et cetera. And for many years, that's what we were. Even into the 90s, when you had a million, early 90s, when a million Jews from the former Soviet Union came here. And then we didn't need to be a safe haven anymore. So we became the startup nation, right? Referring to your book. And that became the story that we told everybody. But the question is now, what is our purpose as a country, right? And what are we telling ourselves and why are we here? And I think that this is a moment that we can actually use this movement to talk about these issues, to talk about identity, to talk about purpose.

Before I let you go, and I don't want to rain on your green shoots. I don't want to dilute your silver linings. about the precedent that was set by military reservists conditioning their service their training their participation in their in their the commitments they had made uh in the as it relates to the security of the state on the outcomes of political debates first of all we should be worried yes without a without a doubt. Right. What this precedent sets, it means that let's go, let's jump fast. Let's fast forward 20 years from now, 30 years from now. One day, there's a great, there's a Nelson Mandela and the Palestinian Authority. And excuse me, we're making peace. And Israel's pulling out of settlements, which I don't

think will ever happen, but let's say it does. And you have soldiers who say, no, we're not going to do it. We're not going to do it because remember those guys back in 2023 who took to the streets and said we're not going to serve? So we're not going to do it now either. That precedent has now been set, and it can be used by the right, just by the left. But I will say one thing about reservists, and I think this is important. A soldier who's serving in his or her mandatory compulsory service, that's something that I think we cannot accept definitely, any refusal of orders. Okay, just hold on, hold on. This is important for our listeners because I was hearing this when all this was happening.

They're like, can you believe these soldiers are refusing to serve? And I was like, well, hold on. You draw a distinction between the standing army. Correct. And the reservists are technically volunteers. I mean, they're volunteers, more or less, most of them. And they were basically saying, we're pulling back from our voluntary commitment,

which is different than a soldier who's in their kind of standing army, 18 to 21 or 18 to 22-year-old phase of their life that are required to serve. Yeah, when you're in the standing army, you have to follow orders. When you're a reservist, you're living your life. Do you have to come once a week as a pilot to fly and risk your life to bomb somewhere in Syria? If you think that the government that's sending you is a government that doesn't represent you or is going in a bad direction, now, I think it's wrong. But I can understand why these people say, I'm not going to volunteer for that service. That's not something I'm willing to do anymore. I think the bigger the problem was that it started with the reservists. It was starting to seep into the standing army. And that's what I was hearing from IDF commanders who were very concerned that what will happen

next time they want to take the Golani Brigade off to some operation somewhere and the soldiers say, well, we're not going into battle in Gaza for that guy Netanyahu anymore. That would be the end of Israel, right? So, you know, the chain of command, the sanctity of our military is, we depend on that. And this is a dangerous precedent, but I can also understand their distress and where their pain comes from. And I can only hope, Dan, that these talks that are taking place right now, I hope and pray that they're able to find a compromise and we can put this behind us. But the real work, and this is what people need to remember, the real work of healing Israel, because this rift, this divide is still there. It didn't just pop out 12 weeks ago.

The bigger context is we had four years with five elections, right? That's constant mudslinging, constantly me telling you, you're bad, your guy's bad, my guy's good, being pitted against one another. This is still the atmosphere. We have to find a way to bridge this big, wide wedge and divide that still exists here. From your lips to God's ears, Yaakov, we'll leave it there. Thank you for taking the time in what I know is an endless loop of incredibly hectic news cycles for you at the Jerusalem Post and in your life, so I really do appreciate your spending some time with us, and I'll probably be calling you soon to have you back on, because I feel like we are not at the end of

this story. We're not even at the beginning of the end. So I hope you'll indulge us and come back on. Always. All right. Thank you. Thank you. That's our show for today. To keep up with Yaakov's work, you can still find him on Twitter, at Yaakov Katz, that's Y-A-A-K-O-V-K-A-T-Z. And you can continue to find his work at the Jerusalem Post, that's jpost.com. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar.

Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.