Call Me Back - with Dan Senor - The Zionist Opposition - with Yair Lapid

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Watch the conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/OrSnIuzd-FcTo contact us, sign up for updates, and access transcripts, visit: https://arkmedia.org/Dan on X: https://x.com/dansenorDan on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dansenorArk Media on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arkmediaorg In the immediate aftermath of October 7, 2023, many Israelis expected a political reckoning. Yet, no clear alternative to Netanyahu has emerged. While there is no shortage of politicians who oppose him, the power of those on the center and the left seems stymied at best. We invited the leader of the official opposition in Israel’s Knesset to the podcast to discuss what he and his party stand for, whether the center of gravity of Israel’s politics has shifted, and why Israel’s political opposition does not appear to be a major force today. Yair Lapid is a former journalist and the founder and leader of Israel’s centrist Yesh Atid party. Since entering politics in 2013, Lapid has served as Israel’s Finance Minister, Foreign Minister, and for a brief time, Prime Minister. He is now Leader of the Opposition.   CREDITS:ILAN BENATAR - Producer & EditorMARTIN HUERGO - Sound EditorYARDENA SCHWARTZ - Executive Editor, Ark MediaGABE SILVERSTEIN - ResearchYUVAL SEMO - Music Composer

My father was a child in the Budapest ghetto in the basement. And, you know, my father had this Burmese in the ghetto. His mother called him and she said, you don't remember this, but today's your Burmese. Dad is not going to come because my grandfather was murdered in the mount house in concentration camp. And she said, I cannot bake a cake. They lived out of mostly the meat of dead horses they found on the

street. And she said, there's only one thing I can do. And she pulls out a very small bottle of Chanel 5, which is the perfume elegant ladies used to use. And she broke it on the floor. And for a second there, there was in the basement the smell of flowers and spring. And she said, at least it's not going to stink in my son's pomitra. So I'm looking at my daughter and I'm telling myself, now what? My life is just this road between those two basements. And ever since this morning, my only goal is to get out of the basement. Emotionally, spiritually, this is the society we wanted to build in this country,

is the society that says no to living in basements. It's 1230 p.m. on Sunday, March 9th here in New York City. It is 630 p.m. on Sunday, March 9th in Israel. In the immediate aftermath of October 7th, 2023, many Israelis expected a political reckoning for the failures of its government going back a number of years, but especially on October 7, the greatest catastrophe in Israeli history. For the past 17 months, political polls in Israel have consistently shown that a majority of Israelis believe that the Netanyahu-led government should take responsibility for those failures. And yet, despite all of that no strong

alternative to Netanyahu or the political right for that matter has emerged from that opposition. While there is no shortage of politicians and people who oppose Netanyahu the ability of those on the center and the left seemed to be stymied at best. In the brief time that Netanyahu was the leader of Israel's opposition under the leader of Israel's opposition under the government of Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid. He did all he could to ensure that the government was short lived. Today, a number of Israelis that I speak to wonder where the opposition has gone.

And so we wanted to ask the leader of that opposition, Yair Lapid, what does the Zionist opposition stand for? And why has it been slow to be able to create an event that could replace this government? Yair Lapid joins us today from Tel Aviv. Yair, good to be with you. Hi, Dan, is it okay if we start by me disagreeing completely with everything you've just said?

Of course, go ahead. Okay, so what is really happening is that the government is glued to its seats by desperation. In every poll in the last 17 months, if there is an election in Israel, they will lose in an avalanche. So this is why they're saying, we'll do everything in our power, and they have in Israel, they will lose in an avalanche. So this is why they're saying we'll do everything in our power and they have the power, they have the votes in Knesset to make sure there will be no election. Now, the fact of the matter is if there'll be an election, the majority of those people will be out of politics. And you're right, this is because

the people of Israel are blaming them for what happened on October 7th and since. Now, on the other hand, if there is no opposition, how come they are losing in every poll? There's always a gap between the political arena and the way real people in real life feel. There are two things I will have to disagree with. You said when Netanyahu was the leader of the opposition and I was prime minister, that he did everything in his power.

Yes, including things that we're looking back at and we are doubtful if they're legal. For example, the two Knesset members that have been part of our coalition and decided all of a sudden to vote against the coalition are now ministers in Netanyahu's government, which is illegal. Now, a lot of people want me to do the same, to go to a back alley, to make dark offers in dark rooms and, you know, to be there Netanyahu. I refuse. I don't think that the two alternatives that the Israeli

people need to have is one government that is corrupt to the bone and another one who wants to be corrupt to the bone but doesn't succeed. A real alternative means, yes, we are not like them, we don't want to be like them. We saw where does it lead us as people, as a society. I want to create a healthy community in Israel. Being an alternative means you're not going to do some of the things they have done. And on top of this, there's another thing. There was in the last year and a half a war, and you are not doing the same things you're doing in wartime that you do in peacetime. Meaning our soldiers, those young lions are in Gaza, in Lebanon, in the West Bank, in

Syria, fighting for our lives. So you have to limit yourself in terms of the political vocabulary you're going to use, even though people would blame you for not being ruthless enough for politics. In those little groups in Gaza who are fighting as we speak, there is somebody from the right and somebody from the left and a Lapid supporter and a Bennett supporter and a Netanyahu supporter, but they are fighting together as units, as one, and we don't want to tell them that the Israeli political arena is trying to separate them. We are separated enough as it is.

Okay, but I do think there's something else going on here, I think, which is the entire Israeli political spectrum has moved to the right. So if you were right before October 7th, you are very right now. If you were center before October 7th, you've probably moved center right. If you were left before October 7th, you've also moved center right. If you were left before October 7th,

you've also moved probably more to the center, or perhaps the center right. And therefore, I do wonder whether or not anyone in the opposition, maybe with the exception of Yair Golan, who we just had on the podcast, I do wonder whether anyone outside of government is articulating a vision for where Israel goes with this war, not just

this war with Hamas, but the Seven Front War, that is really concretely different from where the Netanyahu government is going. I'm not talking about the details and I'm not talking about the tactics, but from a big picture perspective, does the Netanyahu-led government see the threats arrayed against Israel in a way that is much different than you do? I don't know about moving to the right or to the left. I think all the definitions of right and left are gone since October 7. We are more motivated by fear and pain. I do not think that fear and pain are good political leaders. There will always be politicians who will try to exploit on fear and pain. And part of our job is to say, we understand, but we think there must be a smarter way of handling things.

And this goes to your question. Right now, we've been fighting for a year and four, five, six months without an endgame, without a goal. Now war is not a goal. War is a tool. War is a mean. And the Netanyahu government didn't articulate, not to itself and not to anyone else, what is the better future they're trying to create because they have no clue.

And this is probably why they're now saying we will vote for the opposition when the election will take place We think for example that Egypt should run Gaza for the next 15 years. And of course we are saying we want to do Everything in our power to push forward what is known as the normalization with the Saudis Which is even a bigger thing which is creating a regional coalition And we understand that part of this is going to have a Palestinian component. We want to be able to influence this. We want to, we're not going to just give in on our security. We do remember that they were serving candies in Ramallah on October 7th.

And therefore we have a lot to be worried about. And the incitement in the textbooks of the Palestinian Authority is still unbearable. Still I think we at least have a vision of separation from the Palestinians within, I don't know, the next decade. It's not going to happen tomorrow, five years from now, six years from now, but we need to make sure we're not taking steps that will prevent this from happening forever. Because I think even if we believe that there is no such thing as the end of conflict, even running this conflict or handling this conflict will be better off doing this through the reality of separation from the Palestinians, not trying to live with them forever, not

let alone annexing them and being in charge of five million Palestinians who hate us. So there is a vision. There's another flaw to this, which is domestic issues. What kind of country we want to be, what kind of a democracy we want to be. How are we going to balance between those very contradicting terms, Judaism and democracy? I mean, we've been saying we want to be a Jewish democratic state, but there's an inherent contradiction within those two terms that needs to be handled in what I've mentioned

before as a healthy community. We need to rebuild as a healthy community. Bringing back the hostages is stage one for any rebuilding of the Israeli society, but there's so much more to be done. And right now, the Netanyahu government doesn't have a vision. You don't have new visions after 20 years in power. You're just trying to maintain... Everybody talks about Machiavelli's prince, and nobody actually read it, or they read

it 35 years ago and don't remember. Basically what Machiavelli is saying is the purpose of the government is to stay in power and apparently Netanyahu was a devoted reader. I want to come back specifically to the Palestinian issue and also your plan, your proposed plan for Egypt running Gaza. So those are contemporary issues I want to get to, but before I do, I ask all of our first time guests this question, which is, can you take us back to October 7th for you? Where you were when you were learning

about these developments, these catastrophic developments, and what were you thinking? Like what was going through your head? I will start two weeks beforehand. On September 20, I just came out from a security briefing with Netanyahu. We do this monthly. It's the law here.

You mean it's law that the leader, the formal head of the opposition must be briefed monthly by the prime minister on the security situation just generally? Yes. Okay. It's a monthly briefing. So I went to the briefing and I was horrified by what I heard. So I spent three days reading in the Foreign and Security Committee,

all the intelligence materials, and then I told them, I'm going to have a press conference. I will not forgive myself unless I will warn the people of Israel that something terrible is going to happen So we did the press conference and I said to the limit of you know Scratching the surface of telling people things they should not know but basically I said listen Something horrible is going to happen to us. The government has neglected its first duty, which is Making sure we are safe Security situation is at its worst and nobody cares. So I wasn't surprised. October 7th, 6.30

in the morning, I wake up from sirens in my home in Tel Aviv and my first thought is Yael. Yael is my daughter. She's a young woman with special needs. She's autistic. She doesn't speak. And therefore, when something radical is happening, it is very hard to explain to her what is happening. So I'm going to her room and I wake her up. She's upset and I'm taking her down to the basement, which is both my study and the shelter. The Mamad, like your shelter to protect where you're supposed to go when there's sirens, potential missile attacks. Yeah, and of course my wife comes with us and I have security outside my house, so they

come in and they're with us in the shelter. There were three of them. And then there's sirens and explosions and you can hear the whistling of rockets and then they crash. I don't remember being scared, but I was alert, I assume is the word, and phone calls come in all the time. So it's the military secretary of the prime minister that's calling me and said, well, we have to meet later on today.

I said, yes, tell the prime minister I will meet him and we scheduled it for 4.30. And I got quite a few phone calls from parents who called me out of desperation, didn't know how to call. They said, we lost connection with our children. Some of them never got the connection back. These are kids who went to the Nova party and other places. I have another phone call.

I have a Knesset member, the one who lives in Sderot, behind the police station that was occupied by Hamas. So she's calling me and she's whispering. She says, yeah, yeah, yeah, we have terrorists outside our house. They're shooting, they're shooting, and she has a daughter in Kfar Aza, in the one of the kibbutzim that was invaded.

And I'm telling her, stay with me on the phone, let's talk about it. And at one point or another, I'm looking around stay with me on the phone let's talk about and at one point or another I'm looking around me and my daughter is gone so I'm going up to the kitchen the security says you cannot leave the shelter I said I don't care I'm going up to the kitchen I find her she had her headphones on like we are not right now and I even though they were on I could hear because she was playing in maximum volume the same song over and over again. Funny enough it was it's a small world after all you know they're doing in

Disney parks so she's disconnecting so all I want is to hug her but autistics people do not like hugs so I'm just holding her hands because I don't want her to bang her own head and I'm'm saying, I say, yeah, Lee, we have to go down. We have to go down. We have to go down. And by then the security came up with me. So now I feel like I'm risking their life and it takes time and we're going down.

Lee, he helped me. My wife helps me, of course. So in a way, my focus was on this. So I was there for a while. Television was on and Lee,ihi is looking at television. She looks at me, she looks horrified and she says, 40 people were killed. And I said, Lihi, it's way more than 40 people. Images are coming through television, stories are coming through the phone.

One of the reporters called me, I don't remember whom exactly, and I said to him, maybe because of my own background, being the son of a Holocaust survivor, I said, you know, this is the worst day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust. Which it was. Which it was. He answered like I have a flair for the dramatics,

but listen, I'm just looking at this basement. My father was a child in the Budapest ghetto in the basement. And the fact that nobody came for years there in the basement waiting for the Russians to rescue them or to free Budapest. And then you're back at it. And then I'm back at it. And you know, my father had this Burmese in the ghetto. His mother called him and she said, he didn't remember he has a Bramitsva.

And she said to him, she said, you don't remember this, but today is your Bramitsva. Dad is not going to come because my grandfather was murdered in the mount house in concentration camp. And she said, I cannot bake a cake. They lived out of mostly the meat of dead horses they found on the street. And she said, there's only one thing I can do. And she pulls out a very small bottle of Chanel 5, which is the perfume elegant ladies,

pre-war world used to use. And she broke it on the floor. And for a second there, there was in the basement, the smell of flowers and spring. And she said, at least it's not going to stink in my son's pomitsa. So I'm looking at my daughter and I'm telling myself, now what? My life is just this road between those two basements. And ever since this morning, my only goal is to get out of the basement, emotionally, spiritually.

This is, again, a healthy society. The society we wanted to build in this country is the society that says no to living in basements. So, this is the way the day... This is the way you were processing the day. And then later in the day, you met with the prime minister? Yeah, I met at 4.30 with the prime minister. I said, listen, we have to have an emergency government, get rid of Bingvion and Smotrich and all those people who just want us to kill and be killed forever. And we will create the two big parties of Israel and an emergency party. I will bring the rest of the centrists, center-right, center-left, opposition parties, because we have to deal with it together." And he said,

no. He said, I'm not getting rid of Benkvin Smoltich. If you want to join them, join them. I said, listen, I'm not going to argue with you. I'm going to have a press conference and I'm going to offer this and it's up to you from now on. And I had, I think at 6.30, I had a press conference and I said, I think we have to have an emergency government. The people of Israel must unite now. All differences should be put aside. And I'm calling upon the prime minister to do this. And he never returned to me.

And four or five days later, Gans has decided, Benny Ganses decided to join the government with Ben Gver and Smutrich. And I think seven or eight months later, they left the government saying, well, maybe Lapid was right. This couldn't have been the real answer to what the country needed. Why couldn't you have joined with Ben Gver and Smutrich in the government? I mean, I know you think it was suboptimal for all the reasons you lay out,

but you probably still could have contributed in a meaningful way. When Menachem Begin joined Levyevskol's government when the Six-Day War began, my understanding is it wasn't conditional. I'll join the government if it was, we're at war, this is an existential threat to our country, I'm gonna stand shoulder to shoulder with you,

and we're gonna get to work. A part of what is fundamentally wrong with the current government is the fact that it is legitimizing Jewish fascism. Jewish fascism shouldn't be legitimized. And besides, at the time, Ben-Gurri, for example, is in charge not only of the entire police,

but also of the army units, of the police working with the army. So he's going to run this entire force, military force, and Smutic is going to run the Israeli economy during wartime and we will not have a say on this. It's, I mean, I've been in and out government since 2013. There is a way of handling things, especially during crisis. These people are not the right people to lead the people of Israel in time of war, in time of sore. Look at the way they're preventing now the return of the hostages, the hostage deal.

Saying out loud, well, this is not the most important thing. The most important thing is the continuation of the war and the purpose of the war is the war. So I didn't want to be and I don't want to be just the camouflage for the global community that this is a functional saying government when it's not. Immediately after October 7th the government outlined its objectives in the war to destroy Hamas and to get the hostages back and that means destroy Hamas militarily, and it means destroy Hamas' governing capabilities, prevent it ever from being able to reassert

any kind of control over Gaza again. Destroy Hamas, hostage is back. Do you think both of those goals are achievable? Destroying Hamas is gonna take a lot of time. They have moved quite rapidly from a semi-military organization to a guerrilla army, and fighting guerrilla is always long. So I completely agree to the fact that this is a goal for Israel to eliminate Hamas, to destroy its military capabilities, and to find an alternative governing body to Gaza because

you know annexing Gaza is no option. But the return of the hostages is just way more urgent because they are dying there because we have a duty to them because there's no way for the Israeli society to heal unless there will be a proof that Israel has done everything in its power, including concessions we don't like and we do not, in order to bring them back home. Do you think there's any lesson from the 2011 hostage deal in which Israel released 1,027 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli prisons for one hostage. Some of those prisoners included Yechia Sinwar and his lieutenants who were

serving multiple life sentences, who returned to Gaza, rose within the ranks of Hamas and lived to plot and orchestrate October 7th. There is the sense that when you do these kinds of lobsided deals, A, you guarantee there will be more violence against Jews, because violent people, which we now know with genocidal ambitions and who are quite capable in terms of executing those genocidal ambitions, get released from Israeli prisons and they get to work in Gaza or the West Bank, wherever they go. And B, you just create that incentive system because the message you send to Hamas and other enemies of Israel is stealing Israelis' works. And it shouldn't be lost on anyone

that there was one Gilad Shalit that was returned in 2011 only for, on October 7th, 250 plus Israeli hostages taken. The message is do more of this because it works. I was against the Shalit deal. You were? Yeah, I was. One of the very few voices within the Israeli public area, I wasn't at the time.

Yeah, you weren't in government. I wasn't in government. Right. I was. Did you come out publicly? Yes. Well, let's stay on that for a second because how did you, I mean, I want to use your own language

that you just articulated quite movingly that Israel can't leave anyone behind so there was an opportunity to get Gila Jalit back and This is apples and oranges is a soldier or he was a soldier. He's alive. Of course. He was one man he wasn't neglected there wasn't the disappearance of The government and the army at the same time when he was taking hostage, and the price was too high. But going back to what you have asked, there's no shortage of people who want to kill Jews because they're Jews.

There's no shortage of homicidal maniacs on the other side of the border. It is up to us to prevent the murder of Jews, and this is why the state of Israel was established. Because nobody came for the rescue to my dad on the Budapest ghetto, so now we have an Israeli army and an Israeli free state. And I keep telling people, listen, if you think about the fight

against terror against Hamas against Hezbollah against Hezbollah, there's always three things there's motive there is capabilities and there's chance the motive is always the same and has been here in Israel in the last 140 years in the history of Judaism for the last 3,000 years they want to kill Jews because the hatred that is ancient and theabolic. The capabilities that we saw on October 7th, it's not like they were using ballistic missiles. These were guys with trucks and Toyota trucks and Kalachnikovs, AK-47s. So the one thing that was left was chance. They looked at

the Israeli society, they looked at the Israeli government, they looked at the Israeli army and they said this is our chance. So the government's duty is to make sure there will be no chance ever again. But this doesn't contradict the fact that the motive and the capabilities are going to be there whether you release a lot of prisoners or not. Yes, we will have to release a lot of prisoners. Yes, those prisoners want to kill more Jews and it's our duty to prevent this from happening by killing them. But we have a greater duty and the state of Israel will not heal unless the hostages are back home.

I want to ask you about how you balance your role as leader of the opposition inside Israel, which among other things, your job is to hold the government accountable, which means obviously being very critical of the government and your role as a voice for Israel on the international scene. And as a strong supporter of Israel, as an American, when I have been on television defending Israel during, on American television, during various flashpoints since October 7th, and I defend decisions Israel is making, I deal with a situation where the anchors of these shows that are interviewing me will say well

Do you see what other Israeli politicians are saying about Israel's decision-making? Do you see what do you see these protests in the streets? Do you see like they agree with us not with you is what these television anchors who are Interrogating me say I just think for a lot of Jews like me in the diaspora and I think the United States is in the UK It's Canada. It's Australia. it's all over the place, feel that striking this balance for Israeli politicians that may not be supportive of this government for the long run is understandable, but also their role in making the case for Israel at war and Israel under siege is equally, if not more important. Yeah, well, listen, there's no textbook.

What do you do as an opposition leader? When I came into politics, creating a party of the Israeli center, of the Israeli middle class, of people who are saying, we are not happy with the way this country is spreading its resources or we want to support liberal values. Nobody has prepared me or anyone else to the moment in which we're gonna have the worst day for the Jews since the Holocaust on one hand, but we will have to present at least some aspiration

to unity to the world. So there's no way for me, I mean, nobody has ever given me the textbook for this. So what we're trying to do is to make sure people understand you can be critical of the government while being fully supportive of the people of Israel and the state of Israel. A few and a half weeks ago, I was in AIPAC.

So I was the keynote speaker. This is at the AIPAC conference in DC. That's where you're referring to, where you and I got together. Yes. There was one thing I said that I had no clue that people are gonna be responsive of or react to is I said, listen, I know you have some problems with elements, extreme elements within

the Israeli government, but I want to remind you, you can love the state of Israel, even if you don't like the government of Israel, you can love the people of Israel, even if you don't like the government. And it was amazing. It was the longest standing ovation in the speech. You could feel the relief. Listen, when Minister Ami Ha'elial is saying we should nuke Gaza with the two million people who are living there, no one in his right mind is supposed to support this. And when somebody is asking you about this in international media, I don't want to blubber and I don't want to say something that will be elusive enough for people to understand I'm against it while not being critical of the government of Israel. I'm against

it, period. And the fact, for example, that the Israeli government has failed to say on every screen on the Western sphere that we are sorry for every child who died in Gaza because children are not supposed to die on grown-ups' walls. And then again, this doesn't mean you're going to use all kinds of humanitarian sayings or phrases in order to prevent us from defending ourselves. Doesn't mean I cannot do it. So yes, Israel cannot allow itself to have a nuclear Iran. Yes, we're going to fight Hamas till the last one of them is gone, no matter how long this

will take. So on that note, how would you assess the way Israel and the IDF have conducted this war? If you're asked on an international platform, if you're subjected to criticism of how Israel has conducted this war, how do you respond? I tell them, we've been fighting against a horrible terror organization that is using its own people as human shields. They're using the elderly, the babies, the children, the women as human shields. And we are doing our best to avoid hurting the innocent, but this is war. And if you take the statistics, talking about France, Israel is hurting less people for such a dense populated area than any other army in the history of wars.

If you make the comparison for, I don't know, Mosul, the fight against ISIS in Mosul, you see the difference in numbers. We're doing our best, but are we expected not to be engaged in the war against those people and just wait, sitting on our hands, waiting for them to kill us again because they have the ability to manipulate public opinion in the West against us? No. Yes, we are fighting for our lives. And when you're fighting for your life, there will be Dresden in Germany, there will be Mosul and there will be Gaza.

Now, I refuse to apologize for protecting ourselves. Yet again, one of the problems is the fact that the Israeli government, for populist reasons, is refusing to acknowledge the pain of innocent people who are being hurt. I do not. So, and I think it's the right answer, I think it's the Jewish answer,

to say every child who was killed there, and to say it and to mean it. Every child who was killed there and to say it and to mean it every child who was killed there I feel for but if I have to choose between our children and their children I will do whatever is necessary to protect our children. I've heard you say a version of this the Palestinians have agency in all of this Israel can't want peace with the Palestinians more than the Palestinians want peace. I guess, how has your thinking on that evolved? I'm curious what your thinking was during the second Intifada, when Israel offers under

Ahud Barak a more generous deal to the Palestinians than has ever been offered. Basically offered them the West Bank, Gaza, and most of East Jerusalem as its capital. And Arafat walks out of the deal, This is according to President Clinton at Camp David and it's followed by some 140 terrorist attacks against Jews. To this day, I think Jews in Israel and around the world still don't understand what was happening. Like what was that about? You know, Israel made this generous offer and then it was met with this response. And so I guess when you say the Palestinians have agency here, how far back does your thinking go on that? Is that a post October 7th revelation

or is that something you have been feeling for some time? First of all, it goes back way before October 7th. I had breakfast in 2013 or the beginning of 14, I had breakfast in Jerusalem with at the time, Secretary of State John Kerry. I was in the Israeli negotiating team with the Palestinians. We came up with what was known later on as the Kerry framework.

That Tzipi Livni and myself, we have pushed Netanyahu to agree to it. And then President Abbas went to Washington, sat in the White House opposite President Obama and said, No way, Jose. So what I was telling at the time, Secretary Kerry, and this applies for these days as well, is that I'm still a supporter of at least maintaining the possibility of the two-state solution. But we have to understand this needs the Palestinian state or wannabe state needs to be a peace-loving one Can the Palestinians promise us that if they will have their own state it will be a peaceful

Peace-loving fighting terror state or it's just gonna become another terror base as it happened in Gaza One of the things people tend to forget about Gaza is that we left. We left Gaza in 2005. You know what? We left them with 3,000 greenhouses for them to start to build an economy for themselves. And they demolished the greenhouses and built training camps for Hamas and the Islamic jihad. And a year later, when we left, the Palestinian Authority was there, and a year later later they have elected Hamas on the only free election in Gaza ever. By the way, if you poll the Palestinian society today, in every poll made by the Palestinians, Hamas is still winning. So here's where the center stands. Okay, unlike

the left, we don't believe that signing a piece of paper will solve all the problems and will bring us to the end of conflict. This doesn't work this way, not everywhere, especially not in the Middle East. Unlike the Israeli right, we do not believe that there's a possibility of maintaining the conflict, as they call it, forever and ever. These are five million people who hate us. We'll be better off separating from them. But we have to separate from them in a way that will promise us the one most important thing,

which is the security of the Israeli people. But the burden of proof is on the Palestinians to be the peacekeeping, non-violent country if they want to ever become a country. One thing I've been struck by, I've been doing, conducting interviews since October 7th with a number of Israeli officials and current officials, past officials, journalists, and there's this sense that the threat from Hamas that unleashed itself on October 7th

had been building for years and years and years. It didn't happen overnight. And some of the fiercest critics of the government that is in power and was in power and still is in power on October 7th were in positions of power during those years and years. They were senior military officials. They were senior government officials. You yourself said, you know, in the 2014 Gaza Hamas war with Israel, you were the finance minister. You've since been foreign minister and prime minister. Did you see this?

I mean, I know you said from those security briefings in 2023, close to October 7th, you were alarmed, which I get, but this thing was years in the making. You don't build hundreds of miles of tunnels overnight. You don't train what is the equivalent of a light infantry army of a sovereign state with 25, 26 battalions overnight. This stuff doesn't happen overnight. You don't train what is the equivalent of a light infantry army of a sovereign state with 25, 26 battalions overnight. This stuff doesn't happen overnight. There was something big happening over a long period of time, some of which you were serving in various governments. What you do when you run a country or when you're a government, what you do is you manage the risks.

Hezbollah, even today, is a much bigger terror organization than Hamas and a much bigger threat. Iran is a much bigger threat than any country around us, including Syria, Lebanon, et cetera. So what you do is you make decisions according to a situation. The problem, as I said, there was always the same motive. There was always the capabilities and there was the chance.

The one thing that we were not prepared for is a government that gets all the signals and doesn't seem to care. When I was prime minister, every morning starts the same way. Okay, I wake up at 6.30, I'm going to the office, they bring me my first coffee. Where's the first coffee? Enter the military secretary and tells me what is going on on the borders of Israel, which is the immediate threat. Because when you are the prime minister of the Jewish state, the first thing you have to make sure is that the Jewish people are protected. So he's saying, this is what what happening with the border in Gaza,

this is what happening in the border of Egypt, which we have a peace agreement with, this is what happening in the border of Jordan, etc. etc. And you go into details with him about each and every border because this is the job. They just published some of the investigations they did within the army and they said there was a chance in September 22, Sinuah felt that he's ready to the same kind of invasion and gave it up. The reason he gave it up, there was a government in Israel at the time that was really alarmed and alert and ready. The one thing that happened is even though he was warned so many times, the judicial

reform or revolution is weakening the Israeli society. And even though everybody was saying that this government is not preoccupied with the right things, that's dealing with tearing apart the Israeli society instead of making sure the Israeli security is as alert as it should be, is the reason they attacked. So yes, Hamas was a threat two years before, five years before, ten years before, but they could have done it on October 7th because of negligence by the army. This was a toxic combination between the wrong government and complacent army that has neglected its duty and a tragic misunderstanding

by some of the security intelligence bodies reading the material that was mounting on the tables. So everybody is to be blamed. Everybody who was there at the moment should go home. I don't wanna say in shame, but at least take the responsibility opposite the Israeli people and the families of the people who were killed. Okay, Yair, I know you've got to wrap. Before we do, I often ask our guests to end with

some glimmer of hope. What are you hopeful about? Because I know your job as leader of the opposition is to be critical, very critical. And so tell me something you're hopeful for. Okay, I'll give you the historic perspective, because this was embodied into the conversation. My grandfather died in a concentration camp, naked in the snow, killed for being Jewish. My father was a child in the Budapest ghetto in 1948. He made Aliyah to Israel in a shaky boat, came to a very, very small country, only 600,000 Jews, less people than what lives now in Jerusalem. Okay? My children grew up in the start-up nation with the biggest, smartest, strongest military in the Middle East, with friends, with deep relations, with connection and relation,

family relations with the diaspora, we are doing better. The thing is, we don't wake up in the morning and doing historical perspectives because this is not how we work as humans. But basically, if you look at the situation of the Jewish people in the last 80 years, we have built something here in Israel. In 80 years, less than, I'm starting,

my starting point is dad in the ghetto and to right now. So in 80 years, less than a lifetime of one man or a woman, my mom is 90 years old. We have built something incredible. And come rain or come shine, this thing is going to exist. And it's going to exist because of what we share, not what separates us. And what we share is a very weird kind of smart and a national Jewish ability to revive, and an unbelievable, incredible ability to come from whatever ashes. incredible ability to come from whatever ashes.

Viktor Frankl said, Viktor Frankl, the famous Holocaust psychiatrist in Walter, he said, the circumstances we cannot control. The one thing we can control is us within the circumstances. If I look at what happened in Israel in the last year and a half, it is unbelievable. With the worst possible government, with vicious, cruelest enemies in the world, we have revived as people, holding each other, working with each other, believing in each other, in a way no other nation

in history was able to pull. And these forces are there and what we need to do now is A, communicate this to our brothers and sisters in the diaspora because they feel for us but they have to feel the good stuff as well. And then make this into a change in this country that is possible, probable, and will happen. All right. That is enough with the doom and gloom. That's a good place to end. Yer Lapid, thank you for taking the time.

Good to be with you as always. And I look forward to being in touch soon. Talk to you soon. Thank you, Dan. It was a pleasure. That's our show for today. If you or your organization are interested in sponsoring Call Me Back, we'd love to hear from you.

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Call Me Back is produced and edited by Alain Benatar. Additional editing by Martin Huérgaux. Archimedia's executive editor is Yardena Schwartz. Research by Gabe Silverstein. Our music was composed by Yuval Semmo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Sinor.