Pod Save the World - Bye bye Bibi!

Episode Date: June 16, 2021

Tommy and Ben discuss President Biden’s first foreign trip and meeting with Vladimir Putin, the end of Bibi Netanyahu’s 15 year hold on power, a Twitter ban in Nigeria, a breakthrough in the fight against dengue fever, why Kim Jong-Un is railing against K-Pop and more. Then writer Yair Rosenberg joins Tommy for a deep-dive on Israel’s new coalition government.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsavetheworld. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Ponce with the world. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Ben Rhodes all the way live from his childhood bedroom. But this time as a New York Times bestseller, again, congratulations. I got to thank all the world those out there. Thanks so much. It's been, I mean, it feels like this book came out about a year ago, but it's only been a couple weeks. We clocked in at number three on the combined New York Times bestsellers. I'm a little pissed that O'Reilly was a spot ahead of you. I think there's still time for the world those to remedy that. I was going to say, look, if people thought we were harping too much on Bill O'Reilly, like came in right after him, he was number two, killing the mob. Congrats to Clint Smith for, you know, taking out the king there, taking the first slot. But yeah, we were just behind Bill O'Rey.

We got time. We got time. Also, at the end of the show today, we're going to have an excerpt from Ben's audiobook. So stick around for that at the end of the show. Also, yeah, Ben, I'm so glad you mentioned Clint Smith's book. how the word is passed. It was number one on the list. Just a thought for listeners. So Juneteenth is coming up on June 19th. There's a chapter in Clint's book where he goes to Galveston, Texas, where Juneteenth originated. He participates in this Juneteenth ceremony. It's really like one of the most moving parts of the book. It helped me better understand the holiday itself. So I highly,

highly recommend it. And also just like credit to him. He's part of the GER Media family and just like an unbelievably good guy. I love talking to him a couple of years. Honored to be behind that guy. Not happy to be behind Billerollie. But hey, I can complain. Yes. Well, look, next time that list comes out, O'Reilly's me way behind both of you. We have an amazing show today, Ben. We have Joe Biden's first foreign trip.

And what the media wants us to believe is a huge showdown with Vladimir Putin. So we'll learn about that. We get to say, bye-bye, BB Netanyahu. That makes my heart grow two sizes. There's already a new prime minister in government in Israel. We have threats against K-pop, some great news about efforts to eradicate a horrible disease. and then we'll end by having some fun, by making fun of two of the biggest assholes

on the international stage. We'll make the world dose here wait to see who it is. And then I talked with Yaira Rosenberg from Tablet Magazine. He's going to help all of us understand who is in this new Israeli government, what it means for the U.S., what it means for the Palestinian people. He's just the nicest guy, so smart,

knows everything about what's going on, and it really helped me. One quick plug, Ben, in addition to everyone who needs to buy your book if they haven't already. This week on POTSate the People Dore and the crew talk all about the history and the importance of Juneteenth. Pod Save the People is a fantastic show every week. It is essential listening this week.

So subscribe and listen to Pod Save the People wherever get your podcasts. Ben, Joe Biden is abroad as we speak on his first foreign trip. That is, it's been exciting to watch. Bringing back some fun memories of how brutal those things are. I mean, they were my favorite part of the job as hard as they were. And so I have to admit, like it was it was kind of like I haven't felt much FOMO this entire time. But it's great to see like America with a bunch of decent people who were trying to do the right thing, representing them on the world stage. So it's been good to watch and it's brought back all kinds of memories. Yeah. And the reception was as good as you thought it would be. So Biden had meetings with the G7

leaders in the UK. He hung out with Queen Elizabeth at Windsor Castle. He went to Brussels to meet with the NATO alliance and European Union leadership, and he had a one-on-one with President Erdogan of Turkey. We record this on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday, Biden is going to meet with Vladimir Putin. So Ben, I think we maybe just take this in reverse chronological order and start with this Putin meeting in Geneva. It was interesting to me at Biden's press conference yesterday, where he said that all these NATO leaders he talked to were actually happy that he's meeting with Putin. I think the conventional wisdom going in was maybe they'd be upset. The last time a U.S. President met with Putin was in 2018, which is the disaster in Helsinki that we all remember with Donald

Trump. So the U.S. media is just completely obsessed with this meeting. The first three questions at Biden's post-Natal press conference were about the Putin meeting. All of them were multiple parts. So I guess you could call it six questions. Time magazine put Biden and Putin on the cover, which would have been a huge deal in 1998. The issues they'll talk about are obviously important, like hacking, Ukraine, arms control. The question, I guess, is like, Like, what can you reasonably expect him to accomplish in a meeting? The Biden team is lowering expectations, including in your very excellent interview with John Feiner last week.

Like, what do you think is the best case outcome for the meeting? And then, like, I don't know, how do you build on it afterwards? I mean, we talked to Feiner last week about just, first of all, why are they having a meeting? And I think their judgment coming in was probably that, you know, Russia had done a whole bunch of shit to us. The solar winds attack, the interference in our election. They detained Navalny. That's not to us, but that's something we don't like. And then Biden had done a whole bunch of sanctions and response. And I think they wanted the meeting to kind of test whether they could just stop this spiral where it felt like we were on the precipice of like ever escalating

cyber wars and trading sanctions and the rest of it. I think unfortunately, like even since they announced the meeting, Putin's pretty much indicated that. he's not going to change. You had the Belarus airliner diverted, which the Russians were clearly involved in. You've had more ransomware attacks, you know, reportedly from within Russia. You've had Putin doing media tours where he, like, you know, echoes right-wing talking points about Joe Biden being old and January 6 being like a hang at the Capitol. So I think, like, look, the best case scenario is that there's a symbolic value in the American

president being seen to kind of stand up to Vladimir Putin and deliver a bunch of tough messages on a bunch of stuff. It kind of puts the final period on the America's backstage for the Biden foreign policy. I think there are some areas where they might, you know, want to at least explore can we make some progress? They want to keep a border open into Syria to provide humanitarian aid to refugees and displaced people there. And the Russians can block that. They want to start some kind of discussion around arms control and nuclear weapons that kind of fell by the wayside under Trump. They very much want to enlist the Russians into some discussion about nations being responsible for stopping ransomware and cyber attacks from within their borders.

Putin is obviously going to resist that, but they want to at least get a dialogue going. They want the Russians to be constructive in trying to get back into the Iran nuclear deal. So there's stuff where, like, they could come out of this with some cooperation. But like it's not, I mean, it's not going to change the fundamental negative orientation of U.S. Russian relations. It's not going to change Vladimir Putin's behavior after 20 years. I mean, part of what's difficult about all this media hype is that, you know, it like it sets up that this is going to be some sea change when it's not. It's going to be, you know, a chance for these two guys to sit face to face and tell each other what they think and hopefully, you know, prevent worse. outcomes. But I don't think you're going to see some dramatic breakthrough or some dramatic, you know,

fight. It's not going to be like a punch up at the summit, you know. So I think even though we're taping this before, I think we have a pretty good idea where it's headed. Yeah, I think you're right. And also, like reinvigorating the NATO alliance is going to be, you know, maybe the most important part of Biden's approach to Russia. I saw, you know, the narrative going into some of these NATO meetings was that maybe a bunch of countries were pissed off about Biden's decision to pull all U.S. out of Afghanistan in September. I didn't see a ton of that in the post summit covered, to be honest. Like you said earlier, like Biden clearly benefited from the contrast with Trump, who went into the last summit calling NATO obsolete. You refused to mention Article 5 in his

first NATO speech, which is like the crux of the entire thing. He berated the, yeah, it's the whole deal. He prurated them about defense spending, right? So the two major storylines I saw coming out of NATO were one, NATO's first real recognition that China's military. military and cyber capabilities now pose a threat. And two, there was briefly some confusion about whether Ukraine had been formally admitted into NATO. That was wrong. Biden made clear in his press conference that, no, nothing had changed. Ukraine still needs to meet a bunch of criteria around like corruption and rule of law and professionalizing its military before they can be admitted. Ukrainian president, President Zelensky expressed some, I think, fair frustration at that

process and said he just like wants a guess or no. So, Ben, two questions. One, how significant do you think this China piece is, like China being mentioned in this NATO communique. And then two, given the fact that Russia and Ukraine are like literally in a low grade war as we speak and have been for years, does the international community really think it's a good idea to admit Ukraine into NATO right now if we are going to affirm Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which says an attack on one is an attack on all? Yeah. I mean, look, first of all, like the sequencing of this is very intentional, right? Like go to the UK. You're meeting with like the core beating heart of the democratic world, and then you're going to NATO and meeting

with like the bigger security lines of the democratic world. And then with all this backup, you're going to go in and deliver these messages to Putin. On the Ukraine thing, so people know the background, Ukraine and Georgia were offered what's called membership action plans during the Bush administration. And this was even then seen as quite provocative, you know, three Baltic republics, Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia that had been a part of the former Soviet had already come into NATO. And these were two countries that, you know, we're clearly going to be provocative in terms of extending this invite vis-vis

Russia. I don't need to tell you that because since those membership action plans are offered, Russia has invaded and occupied parts of both of those countries. Clearly, like an animating force of everything about Vladimir Putin has basically been these two countries are not going to go into NATO. And I think that the awkward truth here, no matter how much you care about, about Ukrainian sovereignty and we should and Ukraine's ability to choose its own relationships is Article 5 says an attack on one is an attack on all and you have to mean it.

You know, suddenly you're taking in countries where, you know, you're not sure if you'd go to war to defend them. The whole purpose of the alliance collapses. And let's face it, do Americans want to go into World War III? I mean, Russia's in Ukraine right now. The logic of them being a NATO is that we would go to war with Russia because they're there. And so this is the awkward dance that Biden has to act like we're still open to this. But I think commonsensically, people know, like, this is not happening anytime soon, you know.

But you don't want to kind of totally withdraw it because you don't want to look like you're caving to the Russians. But you also don't want Zelensky to be out there saying, oh, yeah, it's all done. We're coming in the NATO. So we've got to be careful about this. It's a difficult balancing act. The China thing, look, I think it was important that the G7 China was on the agenda. I think at NATO, it's important for them to kind of be noting it as they kind of did in the communique as something that the alliance is going to have to think about.

But like, I'm a little wary of like saying to NATO, okay, now like we're out Afghanistan. We're dealing with the Russians over here. But now we're going to like get ready for the next conflict with China. then. Let's take one step at a time here. Like, we've got to get out of Afghanistan. We've got to fortify Europe and Eastern European security in the face of Russia. We're going to think about cyber challenges. You've got to think about the Mediterranean and the Eugene where there's a lot of activity related to kind of terrorism. And so introducing China is something that is discussed at NATO summons. I think it makes sense. But the idea that NATO is going to be

patrolling the South China Sea here, like, let's let's calm down there too. You know, so. I think what the Biden team is trying to do is shape the agenda for all these institutions going forward. These are going to be things that we need to talk about. And I think that's right. I wouldn't over crank the China piece. Yeah, I think that's well put. So we'll close with the G7. So on Monday's POTSave America, we talked a bit about the frustration from activists that G7 countries didn't do more to commit to helping developing countries get COVID vaccines and, you know, do more on climate change, specifically hastening the transition away from coal-fired power plants.

So, you know, given the urgency of both those problems, I think it's obviously fair to want more. I bet Biden's team agrees and they're really focused, you know, when it comes to climate on that big next climate change summit in November. Ben, like, I think Brexit was hanging over the entire summit. Biden and apparently President Macron of France pushed Boris Johnson really hard on issues around Brexit and Northern Ireland. The UK itself is struggling to reopen because of an uptick in COVID cases. Again, like the change in tone really did help. gloss over, I think, a lot of the substantive challenges. But what did you make of the G7? Like success, failure, TBD? So I thought the most interesting thing is I mentioned this when Biden gave

his speech to Congress when he shifted to foreign policy, like he didn't mention terrorism for a while. I was struck by just the agenda of the G7 was a totally different agenda than anyone we've seen before. The agenda was COVID. It was climate change. It was China. It was democracy. It was anti-corrupt. all these things that we've been talking about on this podcast for a few years, that is now what the agenda is for the world's democracies. And that is important and new to have the U.S. kind of emphasizing that set of issues. I mean, we obviously did some of this in the Obama years. But, I mean, you really didn't see the Middle East and terrorism front and center

and the ways that that has been the case in the past. I think that's good. And that's a space to watch. That means the U.S. and all these multilateral institutions is kind of going to be focused on a post post 9-11 foreign policy for really the first time. I think on the scale, the ambition, like people are right to push. I think on each one, part of this is its early days. I think on climate, the Europeans are like, well, what are you guys really going to do, you Americans? Like we have, I mean, we're back, you know, as we keep saying and hearing. But like, what is our

bill going to be that passes through Congress? Like the biggest thing America can do to reduce our emissions in the near term is past the most ambitious climate bill possible. And, you know, it's not clear whether that stuff is going to get sacrificed on the altar of bipartisanship. You know, so I think it's just going to take until that summit in Glasgow later in the year before we know kind of how ambitious the U.S. can be with our target, which is part of how we get other nations to be more ambitious. I do think the Biden team is going to have to deliver. They've raised a lot of expectations.

And we're going to lead the fight against vaccine inequity. against climate change and kind of promoting a like a global foreign policy for the middle class, like minimum taxation. A lot of these things are commitments without, you know, the substance behind them yet. That's to be expected when it's June of your first year in office. But I mean, they've kind of set the report card for themselves. Like, are they going to be able to elevate the ambition on climate? Are they going to be able to elevate the ambition in getting rid of coal? They can be able to elevate the global minimum tax. And we'll see. And I mean, we should be rooting for that. Yeah, totally rooting for it. It was good to see that, you know, I think Pew Research did a poll

of 12 foreign countries. And in some of them, you know, America's favorability was up by as much as 30 points. But the flip side of that was majorities, and I think all of the countries surveyed, or at least most of them expressed concern about the state of America's democracy itself. So no surprise there as to why. Ben, This is old news now, but did you see the story about the cicadas swarming the engine of the press charter and delaying their departure time? I did. I did.

That press charter is the subject of more drama. It's so cursed. Yeah, it was cursed on our first foreign trip. Wasn't it grounded for days by a malfunction or something? Yes. So just so everyone knows, like a lot of the foreign trips, right, you have reporters on Air Force One. That's the pool. It's a smaller group.

Then the White House charter is a separate plane to take the rest of the press corps, like, ahead. I was often manifested on that plane, and it means you get up at god-awful times. You land hours and hours early and just, like, sit there and wait. And, you know, sometimes it can work out in your favor. Like that time you just mentioned, Ben, the plane broke down and we got stuck in Istanbul for, like, an extra day. So I got to do Hia Sofia, the Blue Moss, like all the cool things. Another time we had to kill, I think, 10 hours at the W Hotel in Bali, while you guys. we're all still at the summit at the end of a long swing.

So it cuts both ways. I'm going to do a very quick explainer to me on something in your way else, which is why all these questions at the press conferences are so annoyingly the same, right? Because like you said, it's like three or four questions in a row. It's the same question about Putin. And it's because they often call on the TV reporters, all of whom want to be seen on television asking like, do you think he's a killer?

You know? And so they're repeating these questions in ways that is super annoying, given how much other stuff there's to talk about, But that said, as frustrated as I would be by the dominance of the Putin coverage if I was in the White House, if you put a big old Putin summit at the end of your trip, you're going to get a lot of people asking these questions. Yeah, that's exactly right. All right. We are going to shift gears to our friend Bebeenhani Yahoo. I'm a little upset to see, Ben, that there is just a breaking news alert that Israel is launching airstrikes into Gaza, according to Palestinian security sources.

so maybe we'll be able to track that as we go here, but that's very bad news. But let's stick to the good news. So at long last, Bibi Den Yahoo is no longer the prime minister of Israel. He was prime minister for 15 years, including the last 12 in a row. Now he's just another racist, corrupt, authoritarian member of parliament. And that's a good thing. On Sunday night, the Knesset voted in the new government by a single vote, 60 to 59. It was so close that one lawmaker had to leave her hospital bed vote and then go back to the hospital.

Netanyahu supporters decided to go out in the most obnoxious, childish way possible. They heckled the new prime minister and Fali Bennett during his speech. Netanyahu himself delivered a speech where he pledged to, quote, lead you in a daily battle against this bad and dangerous left-wing government and bring it down. End quote, he also bragged about giving the finger to the United States, saying the Biden administration asked me not to make our disagreements on the Iran nuclear deal public. With all due respect to President Biden, I refused. He then compared returning to the Iran nuclear deal.

to the decision by FDR not to bomb the train tracks that led to Auschwitz in 1944. Just a truly disgusting and offensive comparison and one that makes me just pissed off all over again at the big brains in Washington who say the United States can't ever criticize B.B. Netanyahu publicly when he's like comparing the JCPOA to the Holocaust. Anyway, Ben, I know I shouldn't gloat because this coalition. That's some loud, intense diplomacy there. That's some loud. I will try not to gloat.

I'm already gloating. This thing's fragile. Beebe is like the monster at the end of a horror movie. He comes back. But like any parting thoughts, any parting words for Mr. Nanyahu. And we'll talk much more about the new government coalition in my interview with Yaira Rosenberg. So stick around for that. I mean, the takeaways that offer that I think are slightly different than what I've said before about this creep. You know, one, vigilance is required like he's still there in the same way that Trump is still there, like in the same way that he's become even more radicalized. on the way out, just like Trump did, with all of his batchet crazy allegations and offensive remarks. Number two, like, I think it's interesting, you know, looking at the full scale and breadth of this

opposition, it made me realize, like, this is a tactic we're seeing in more and more countries. Like in Hungary, you know, which I obviously write about in my book, like the entire opposition put this big umbrella over them, you know, from a former far right party to the Socialist Party to some kind of centrist parties. Yeah. Because they're like, you know what? We all agree we have to get rid of this guy. And then we can fight it out amongst ourselves.

And I think that's a very healthy tactic. And it's necessary. It's by the way, the same thing kind of the Democratic Party did here. It's not like. AOC endorsing Joe Biden. Yeah, exactly, right? So I think lesson to be learned, right, remain vigilant, but unifies an opposition to get rid of the corrupt autocrat.

I'll be watching, like, whether he's convicted. I mean, I think that like part of the hope of this new government is it like, Bibi can actually be convicted of all the crimes he's been indicted for. And then that might more permanently settle things in terms of his role in Israeli politics. I think the Republican Party's kind of full blending together with Bibiism and the Lekud Party. And Israel was like fully completed for me when I saw like Nikki Haley like tweeting out photos with like that nut job evangelical preacher guy, John Hagee and B.B calling him prime minister, Nanyahu, no longer Prime Minister in his residence, which he, I don't know how he's still, like, hanging out in the Prime Minister's residence.

Yeah. So, like, the Republican Party's embrace of this. Again, this is garbage. The guy on the way at the door bragged about bashing the Democratic president who was very careful to say he would never criticize BB publicly. Like, we, like, let's just, let's be able to criticize a government that does things that we disagree at the times. And if these reports about Gaza are true, I mean, the sign that.

Nothing really changed for the Palestinians. And you even saw this new government approve a far right, like protest march through Jerusalem, not really protest, kind of a like an incitement march, basically. So, you know, Hamas had said they would respond to that. Hopefully, cool, heads prevailed. Hopefully the need to have consensus in this government moderates it to some extent. But yes, let's enjoy Bibi Nanyahu being gone, recognized that a lot of people worked very hard against long odds to accomplish. at least that. And then we can enjoy that and then hope Israelis take the next step. Yeah, agreed. And Yair had, you know, look, a not at all naive, but like hopeful take on,

on how things could get better, how you could see more Arab participation in politics, a more moderate coalition than what anything you'd see under than Yahoo. So we'll see, and obviously we'll be tracking this news. But now, let's turn to Nigeria. Because on June 4th, the Nigerian Ministry of Information announced that the government had suspended Twitter operations in the country after Twitter froze Nigerian president Muhammadu Buhari's account and deleted one of his tweets that was interpreted by many as a threat of genocide against an ethnic group. That seems like a very good reason to delete a tweet. Twitter has been an important tool for activists in Nigeria who want to raise awareness about issues like police brutality. They want to organize protests. They want to

connect with each other. So this suspension is really a big deal for them. And they could now be prosecuted if they, you know, use a VPN and find some way to tweet, which many of them are doing. Because our former president is a selfish arsonist, he decided to weigh in on this matter on his sad little website. And he congratulated Nigeria for banning Twitter. He also encouraged other countries to ban Twitter and Facebook for, quote, not allowing free and open speech. All voices should be heard. Then if irony wasn't dead, I would point out the irony of a ban on social media for not allowing free speech. But alas, irony has been dead since 20s 16, so I will not. So Trump also called these two American companies, Facebook and Twitter

evil. He said he might have banned them too, except, quote, Zuckerberg kept calling me and coming to the White House for dinner, telling me how great I was. 2024, question mark. Anyway, Ben, that I believe. That I believe. That I do believe to. That I totally. So two questions for you. Do you think this kind of ban is tenable in Nigeria? And like, what's the impact do you think of a former president of the United States, cheerleading, a crackdown on free speech and activists like this. Well, I think what's most dangerous to take the second one is that, you know, Trump and these guys like who rail against Twitter, and we saw Modi kind of harassing Twitter and Facebook as well, they don't do it because they think they're getting a raw deal.

They do it because they know they're getting the best deal possible, which is guys like Trump and Modi you can flood Twitter with their trolls and disinformation, and then charge that you're stifling free speech if you remove something that is promoting an insurrection in this country or a genocide in Nigeria. Why about cancel culture? They're not doing that because they actually believe free speech is being constrained. They're doing that to intimidate these platforms from taking any stand against the kind of authoritarian garbage and disinformation flood that runs across these platforms. And so I think Trump contributing to that kind of global normalization of the idea that

the authoritarians get to choose what free speech is and the platforms have to accept that reality and the rest of us just have to live in a world in which, you know, a whole swath of society is being like, you know, spoon-fed, mainlined garbage. like that's bad. I think Nigeria taking this step too. It's not, you know, Nigeria's the biggest country in Africa. It's kind of a bellwether. So part of what you worry about is both discourse in Nigeria,

but also other countries kind of following suit. At the end of the day, though, and this is something we'll have to pull the threat on, you know, over the course of the year, Tommy, on this podcast. Like, these platforms are going to have to make choices at a certain point. Like, are they actually going to police certain types of content on their platforms, in which case they probably will be. kicked out of certain countries. Or are they going to kind of allow their platforms to be manipulated

like this? And I have to say, like, at the end of the day, at some point, they're going to have to get to a place where they lose some market access because they're actually trying to do the right that. I would also hope that, you know, taking away Twitter in a massive country like Nigeria with a huge discourse, create some pressures from within Nigeria for them to restore Twitter. Because, like, that can't be a particularly popular thing either. So, like, some of these battles are going to be fought within countries. Some of these battles are going to be fought between the platforms and governments. But I think the basic principle has to be, we are for free and open debate, but there's certain kinds of incitement and certain kinds of disinformation that has clearly

been incredibly corrosive to democracy everywhere into like a healthy functioning society's everywhere. And I'd rather see the platforms start to take that on than just kind of fold whenever they get brushed back by an authoritarian or a kind of quasi-authoritarian, in this case, leader. Yeah, I mean, especially something that was viewed as a threat of genocide against an ethnic group. I mean, we saw what happened when that kind of content was allowed to stay up in Myanmar. There were literally devastating consequences. Many people died, really horrible outcomes. Okay, some exciting news for you, Ben, some very rare, very good disease-related news for you.

after a year of pandemic. So scientists in Indonesia, they figured out a way to drastically reduce the transmission of dengue fever by infecting mosquitoes with a bacteria that then prevents the mosquitoes from getting infected by the dengue virus. I will not pretend for one second to understand how this works, but the results of a trial in the city in Indonesia reduced the incidence of dengue among humans by 77 percent, such as enormous success. The World Health Organization describes dengue fever as one of the top ten threats

to global health, and it infects an estimated 390 million people every year. There's also evidence that this method could work against the Zika virus. It could work against yellow fever. So it truly could be game changer and turn the mosquito from like a lethal human killing machine to just like an annoying pain in the ass when there's one in your room. So just great, great news. Yeah. And look, dengue fever sucks.

I've never had it, but I know a bunch of people who have, including people who got it on White House trips. that we took to places like Southeast Asia, it really messes you up. It can really slow you down. It can really sap your energy. And that leads to the point that like, not only is this great for health, but in some nations, it's like a productivity issue. Yeah, it's a really economic issue. Yeah. It's an economic issue because like there's such crippling dengue fever. And that is such an impact on people's capacity. If you're talking about like an agricultural economy or, you know, like people having to put in a hard day's work, like when they just, they can't with dengue fever.

And it also shows like, I hope that one of the things that comes, as we're looking at the G7 and pumping money into pandemic preparedness, just investing globally in health security, which is something we began doing in the Obama administration. But like, we should be finding ways, even as we're arguing about like the origins of COVID, like to be working with health organization, working with groups of other countries, investing in ways to cure these diseases. Because the positive impact, not just in lives saved, but economic. and productivity and quality of life. The upside is so high. And I think what we've seen, look at our own vaccine effort, like just surging some resources to get to that vaccine, like got it much faster than people thought. Like if we put that kind of concerted effort and resourcing globally into fighting a whole range of these diseases, like a lot of good can come out of that effort. Yes, yes.

Imagine if we had another two, three, four years until we had a vaccine. I can't even imagine it. It's too awful. Super quick update. So last week, Ben and I talked about the election that was happening in Peru. It was a socialist first-time candidate against this corrupt right-wing former like first lady candidate. So with nearly all the results in, Pedro Castillo, the socialist candidate has won. So congrats to him. Congrats to the people of Peru. Be very hard governing choices come next, but just wanted to give everybody a quick update on that one. Yeah. And it'd be fascinating to see like someone elected on a pretty far,

that platform in basically a 50-50 country. And his initial comments, he's kind of tried to thread the needle, like saying reassuring things, like, I'm not going to upend the entire system while also saying he's going to transform Peru. And so be interesting to watch how he does, you know. But it's, again, further sign of the thing, things moving left down there. And also, you know, watch how democracy, you know, how resilient democracy is improved going forward to.

Yes. Okay. This is a little worse news. Kim Jong-un is coming for pop culture again. This fucking pisses me off so much. Yeah. This time it's K-pop. I know, man. So look, first of all, K-pop is powerful, so he better watch his ass. But Kim Jong-un, he called it a vicious cancer. He said it's corrupting the entire hairstyles and speeches and behavior of young North Koreans. The New York Times reported that in recent months, Kim is ranted about South Korean movies and music, like almost every day. Last year, North Korea passed a law that could get you five to 15 years in a forced labor camp if you're caught with like South Korean media videos, you know, thumb drives with shows on it, whatever. Ben, here's my question for you. He sounds a little scared here. Do the scorpions need to record a song in Korean? Are we like a K-pop wind of change away from reunifying the peninsula? I mean, look, it goes to show, right? like the what he knows is that you know people Koreans love k-pop i'm sure that includes north

Koreans as well as south Koreans and like the you know it's always i've always believed that in these circumstances of like just diametrically opposed political systems and and foreign policy like the the biggest vulnerability is often cultural because people are like looking at kop and they're like well that looks like a pretty good deal over there yeah what's what is the society and political model that allowed them to create that you know um and it's not about nuclear weapons it's not about america it's just about like hey these are other Koreans like doing this incredible thing that is totally changing global culture that i want to be a part of right yeah and and you would think that yeah that would

make kim young and a little nervous because if you've seen the north korean kind of film industry you know like like kim young on a horseback let's just say that's not going to hit it with the demo no as well as like btases no it's not yeah like jokes aside i mean the fact that people are willing to risk 15 years in a forced labor camp to watch a movie is a real indication of the power of art and culture. It's also an interesting story, I think, about the degree to which a totalitarian state can control what its public consumes in 2021, right? Like, China is trying to do this through these incredibly high-tech means North Korea is going old school and they're just trying to ban stuff. But this New York Times piece, it noted that a lot of North Korean propaganda described South

Korea as like a hellhole full of people begging on the streets, like searching for food. Yeah. But if you watch these like South Korean, I guess soap opera type things, like North Koreans were learning about how people in South Korea were going on diets to get in shape at a time when there was a famine in the North. So it really does like puncture the whole system. Yeah. No, when I was in government, I heard like I was constantly trying to figure out like what

can we learn more about what the hell is happening in North Korea. And one of the things I learned, Tommy, is like these DVDs would get smuggled. into North Korea of these South Korean soap operas. Again, not by us. I'm not saying, like, just, you know, because people want the content. And the thing that blew people's minds is like, look at these nice apartments

they're living in. Like, soul looks like that. They just, it wasn't that they were that into soap operas, that they were like, they've been told about how much more impoverished that South Koreans were than them. And they just see these people in like nice apartments. And if you take it to K-pop,

I mean, you're seeing people like happy, like expressing themselves like freely in every way, shape, or form. If it's a video, like you're seeing them like out in the club or something. Yeah, dancing. And yeah, like to me, this is like the longer term vulnerability to the North Koreans. Now, the Chinese are trying to like perfect some capacity to have certain culture get in and to be so sophisticated they can block certain things. But given the proximity of South Korea to North Korea,

given the fact that K-pop is kind of the number one global music phenomenon, I think he's going to have a hard time keeping that out. Yeah, good luck with that, pal. I don't think it's going to work. So two last stories, I promise to, you know, we're going to spend a little time dunking on assholes. So we've talked about Jair Bolsonaro before the president of Brazil. He's an idiot.

He's a right-wing authoritarian. So for some reason, he decided to board a plane to greet some of his supporters. Now, it turns out the people that liked him were sitting up front in first class in the more expensive area. but the folks in back and coach were not quite as happy to see President Bolsonaro. Here's what it sounded like. I mean, like, you know, this guy, like all these fucking guys like Bolsonaro who put themselves out as like these populace, the man of the people, like bullshit. You know, like, you know, you've got like, yeah, you're the man of some people who are assholes and then some rich people who like, you know, you take care of because you're corrupt.

But like most people feel like the people in coach did. Like, get the fuck off the plane, man. Like, you screw things up here. I wish we had the video. Obviously, it's a podcast. We can't. One woman was literally flipping him the bird and yelling, get out Bolsonaro,

Genocidal Maniac. Like, nobody's pulling punches anymore. They're not scared of this guy. No. No, it's the thing. And Brazilians, like, don't mess with Brazilians. Like, no. They're, uh, it's, uh, it's an intense, uh, political culture.

Okay. Last segment. This one is just a little bit of a loss in translation. So I think Podtave the World listeners, know that Mike Pompeo was a terrible Secretary of State, but they may not know that he is also just embarrassingly bad on Twitter. So today he tweeted the following, calling all unapologetic Americans to join me and become a pipe hitter, P-I-P-E-H-I-T-T-T-E. Most of the worlds who responded to his tweet seemed to think that was a very surprising reference to crack. Is that a 420? Was that a

420? Yeah, I don't know what he's talking about. Mike Pompeo seems to think it means, proud to be an American. I don't know, Ben, maybe the solution is Mike needs to log off and go away and just not be part of our political system ever again. I don't know. That's an idea. I just, at some point, somebody somewhere is going to have to explain to me the appeal of this man to anybody. I mean, he's clearly, like, he's like nails on a chalkboard difficult to physically look at and listen to because he's so smug and arrogant in all of his presentation. This is a man who's so arrogant that like his is like formal slogan for the state department was like swagger you know yes um which not exactly like quiet and intense diplomacy you know no like it's also not exactly like

kind of the ethos of the foreign service right um no and but also like he's he's like we've talked about this but like where is the constituency who are the pipe hitters who are the pompeo who are the pompeo pipe hitters. Like, who are they? Like, describe to me who is like standing Mike Pompeo. I mean, like maybe the staff at the, at FDD, like the, like the foreign funded anti-Iran deal think tank crowd in D.C. Like, if that's your whole constituency for running for president of United States, like, good luck taking that out for a swing. But apparently, you know, like the pipe hitters, like, you know, will bother chance. I just would love to have just get my hands on the email chain of the approval process. It's like, yeah, yeah, Mike, tweet out the pipe hitter thing. That's a,

that's a real winner. Okay, when we come back, we will have my interview with Yaira Rosenberg. We're going to talk about the new Israeli coalition, what it means for U.S. Israeli relations, what it means to the Palestinian people. So stick around for that. I am so excited to welcome to the show, Yair Rosenberg. He is a senior writer at Tablet Magazine. He covers the intersection of politics, culture, and religion. He also is a fantastic substack that you should check out. It's Yair. dot substack.com. Yair is a very hot name right now.

Yai, I are you should all learn about it. It's having a renaissance. But it's just a great site. It's a fantastic resource. And he's one of the people I turn to when I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on in Israeli politics. So, Yair, thanks so much for doing the show.

My pleasure. So, Yair, like, I feel like I DM you frequently. We've been talking for years now, often about B.B. Netanyahu. He's no longer the prime minister. I think that is, look, objectively great news for me, for the Israeli people, in my opinion, for the U.S., I think for the world. You know, there's a lot of questions about how this coalition that replaced him will work. There's some concern that the new prime minister, Naftali Bennett, is just as right wing as BB Netanyahu on key issues. He said some really abhorrent things about the Palestinian people in the past.

he has been a leader of the settler movement. He's been opposed to a two-state solution. Given that context and sort of given the broader coalition that's now in place, how do you think people should be thinking about the basic political orientation of this new government as a whole? Yeah. So to answer that, we've got to take a quick step back, just to understand how we even got here, which is that, you know, Israel, people may remember, had, you know, what, four elections in two years. And this was the result of Israel having two different conflicting things going on.

One was an anti-Nittaniahu majority in terms of the voting public. But then none of the anti-Metaniā majority could actually agree on anything else other than the fact that they wanted Netanyahu gone. So they had all these anti-Nittanyahu parties that disagreed on everything from socialism to capitalism, LGBT rights, right to the Palestinians. And so you had an election after election where Netanyahu didn't have enough people to create a new government. but the opposition couldn't get its act together to create their own. And what changed is that Yadir Lapid, the Israeli opposition leader this time around,

but not in previous rounds, managed to actually get everyone together and on the same page and form some sort of crazy coalition, left, right center, settlers, Arabs, socialists, capitalists, they're all in it. And basically just in order to push Netanyahu out of office and put a new government into office. But of course, now, as you said, you end up with this government that's quite Frankensteinian. it doesn't seem to agree on anything other than Netanyahu and Nathina has gone. And in order to make it work, in order to sort of get some right-wing parties to join this coalition, along with everybody else, the center and the left of the Arabs,

Lapid, even though he had the most seats in the coalition, had to give the first two years of the prime ministership out of four to enough Taliban, right? This guy who's a former head of the umbrella settler body in Israel, who is a doctrinaire right-wing nationalist, religious nationalist, someone who has advocated for a very long time annexing, say, 60% of the West Bank. And that was in order to basically create the coalition in the first place. But they basically put in a whole bunch of rules to basically make it impossible for Bennett to actually do most of the things that he would have done if he was prime minister

with actually the power state that Netanyahu had. So basically, both Bennett and Lapid have vetoes on everything in the coalition. So literally nothing can get done unless they both agree. So obviously, no annexation of the West Bank is going to happen. and Bennett has acknowledged this. He says, we're going to have to defer a lot of our dreams to just focus on governing about the things that people agree upon.

And at the same time, you're unlikely to see dramatic steps on, say, a two-state solution because Bennett's probably going to say, I don't want to see that either. And so what you're starting to see from this government, at least on this front, on the Palestinian front, is discussions of ways to sort of shrink the points of friction with the Palestinians,

ways to sort of shrink the points of friction with the Biden administration, with Democrats in, you know, and generally with the international, community with the Europeans, right, saying that Netanyahu pursued a very confrontational policy on all of these fronts. And we're going to start taking into account the input that other actors give us. We're not always going to agree, but we're going to try to end up somewhere else. And we're going to try. So you're not going to see some sort of, I mean, never say never with

the Middle East. I don't want to have a sound bite where I look like a total idiot. But, you know, it seems unlikely that in the next, you know, four years, you're going to see some match of dramatic shifts. But what you won't see is also the sorts of things that Vibu is playing with, with just say, like, we're going to annex the West Bank, which is he toyed with for quite some time. Yeah, so that's sort of the very, very small nutshell, but there's so much more of the one could discuss about this coalition. Well, yeah, look, I have a lot more questions. And also, you know, sound bites where you look like a total idiot are my bread and butter,

so please don't insult them on this show. So you mentioned, like, three of these power brokers, right? There's Nautali Bennett. There's Yair Lepid. And then there's Monsour Abbas. You talked a bit about Bennett. So who is Yairaer Lapid? And why have you called him, like, the real power broker in this coalition?

Yeah. So, Yaila P got 17 seats in the most recent Israeli election. Bennett got seven, right? That's a very big difference. Not only that, Yer Lapid basically ran the entire electoral strategy for the anti-BBB block. He went out and did this very weird thing where he said, we have enough seats. My party is going to do well enough in the election, right? If you want to vote for other left-wing parties or center parties or center-right parties

that are anti-Netaniao, please do that. Don't try to make my party bigger because that actually won't help, right? we need to get all these other parties into the Knesset. If they got two seats, they wouldn't admit it in, right? The Arab party that's in the Knesset just barely got in, the one that's in the new government. And Lapid basically came up with that. He masterminded that. And it succeeded.

And so you have the leftist socialist merits party in and you have the center left labor party in. And you have Mansour Abbas's Ram Arab party in and all of these smaller parties that made it possible to build this component coalition. And he's the one who negotiated it. I mean, Bennett didn't sit down and like try to get all these people to sign on paper and figure out what everybody needed to be able to sign on to something. That was Lapid's job. And quite frankly, every time something big comes up that this coalition is going to do, Lapid is going to have to do the same thing again. He's going to have to go and canvas everybody

and try to get everybody on the same page and do this all over again. It's a very tough job. I wrote that when he was first starting at the beginning of May, he got the mandate to try to form a government. I said, if Lapid manages to solve the Rubik's Cube of Israeli politics, it will be one the most remarkable feats in Israeli political history and the beginning of his problems, right? Because now the, now the hard work begins, right? How do you actually get these people to productively govern? Now, there are things they can do. They can pass a budget, right, with the compromises that one does in budget regaling. Netanyahu couldn't do that. In fact, that's what brought down his government. They will be able to make reforms on things like

religion and state, because although there's a lot of distinctions between these different parties, there are no ultra-Orthodox religious parties, Jewish religious parties in this coalition for the first time in quite some time. And that will enable the government to liberalize things like kosher certification. It liberalized things like who can pray at the Western Wall. This is not as big a deal, perhaps, to the general listener here, but to American Jews, it has been a very big goal to be able to have, for example, an egalitarian prayer space where men and women can pray together at the Western Wall, rather than a men's section and a women's section,

and that's just your choices. And the ultra-Orthodox religious parties kept that status quo in place, and Netanyahu gave it to them. And this new coalition will reform a bunch of things on religion and state. It will reform things on the budget. It will do some other things that couldn't be done because of who Netanyahu was sort of in league with in his own coalition. It also will, as we referenced earlier, it will be able to have a more productive relationship with, potentially with an American administration, including a democratic administration. Because although they, for example, disagree with the Iran deal, they have absolutely no desire to blow up the U.S.

relationship over it. They want to sort of be a constructive player at the table and say, okay, can we try to like make the deal a little bit better from our, by our lights, right? We recognize that this is basically a fait of complete, right? And since this is going to happen, right, can we try to make it work better for everyone, including us? Which is, of course, what Obama wanted to do with Netanyahu, but Netanyahu did not want to do. But both Lapin and Bennett. Yes, famously so. I mean, and it's like, whereas Lapid and Bennett, that's what they want to do. Now, BB, as we may discuss, wants to sort assault the earth and make that hard for that to happen.

Yeah, I want to ask you about that. Yeah. Like, I, too, was hopeful to see Yair Lapid say that he really wants to revive Israel's relationship with the Democratic Party, which, you know, speaks to sort of the history of the U.S. Israeli relationship, which has been more bipartisan. Before we get into Bibi, trying to burn the house down on the way out, Monsour Abbas, the leader of the Rahm Islamist Party, he tells us about his background in how he ended up a part of this coalition.

He seems to be an incredibly savvy political actor. Yeah, so it's very interesting. And also, you know, quite frankly, it's one of those sort of media failures where basically I hope, and I assume this is happening now, every international paper is prepping a giant profile on Matsura Bas. because this is an Arab politician in Israel, who is now about to become the most powerful. He is now, the most powerful Arab politician in Israeli history. And he did it by making a sort of audacious bet, which was that he was going to run explicitly on the platform of we will actually be part of in some way the next Israeli government.

And that could be, he said, it could be right wing. He was coy about it. It could be right wing, could be left wing. The point is who offers us the most? And in the past, the way it worked with Israel's Arab parties is that they were non-Zionist or anti-Zionists. and the Israeli Jewish parties were Zionists, meaning believe in the Jewish state, whereas these other parties are either not going to affirm a Jewish state or actively against it.

And they all basically had this estrangement of convenience, where the Zionists didn't want to serve with the non-Zionist Arab parties, and the non-Zionist Arab parties didn't want to serve with the Zionist parties. And it worked out somewhat well for everybody to sort of posture this way the entire time. But, you know, the people who lost, of course, were Israel's Arab citizens who didn't have representation in Israeli coalitions. Right. And Abbas said, I'm going to try something different.

I'm going to say that I will join. People actually thought what he would do is he would support a government for outside the coalition, which means he would sometimes give them their votes to keep them in power, but he wouldn't be part of the coalition. He then, he and Lapid then surprised everyone and actually for the first time brought the party into the coalition, which is something that's never happened in Israeli politics before. And in exchange, Abbas secured a bunch of guarantees, a lot of funding for the Arab community

in Israel, those citizens who go by. Arab Israeli, some go by Palestinian citizens of Israel. There are different terms that they accept. He ensured the freezing of certain laws that were basically used to demolish unauthorized construction by Arabs in various parts of Israel that basically were basically being, you know, enforced mostly against Arab communities and not necessarily against Jewish communities. And he got them to freeze that law for years. And hopefully he wants to reform it. We'll see if that happens. So different things like that. But the idea is, is that for the first time, there is an Arab player in Israeli politics, somebody who is on the night in news,

who is speaking for that community, and also someone who is delivering for that community explicitly. And this can have some real reverberations in the future in Israeli politics, because if you look at the history of turnout in Israel, the Arab turnout traditionally lags behind the overall general population turnout, which is mostly Jewish. And that makes perfect sense, because if you don't think your party's actually going to serve in a coalition, it's not that big a deal to vote. It's more of a protest thing. Right. Right. But a lot people turned out to vote for Mansour Abbas. And a lot of people, a lot of Arabs polled in Israel now say they actually want their politicians to play ball and serve in Israeli governments.

And if they start seeing that happening and they start getting deliverables from a democratic system, well, then more of them may turn out. And then you might start to see the percentage of Arab votes tick up towards the percentage of the Jewish votes. And that creates more seats in the Knesset. It's literally a mathematical thing. There are many more people voting. More seats exist now that are being supported by people who are more, towards a centrist or left-wing alliance, or towards a right-wing alliance that is willing to take seriously the needs of the Arab community in Israel. And so that's like the high stakes that Matsurabas is playing with. Right now, he looks like he's really, he's achieved it. I should give you

some a little bit of background. Where does this guy come from? So he's the head of this party called Ram, which is one of several Arab parties in Israel. It's a conservative religious party in order to make some of the compromises he did to get into the coalition. He actually had to consult with a religious counsel to get approval for things. This is like one of these only in Israel thinks. They're also Jewish, ultra-Orthodox religious parties to do a similar thing. And they gave him their blessing to do things like this. He comes out of something called the Islamic movement, which in Israel, which is what it sounds like, which is a religious movement that spreads Islam. But it has basically a division between a northern branch and a southern branch. The northern branch has been entangled

with various different factions that are associated with terrorism and Hamas, right? But the southern branch is much more conciliatory and seeks change and reform within the democratic process. They condemn Holocaust denial. They support a two-state solution. And Matsura-Abas comes out of that stream. And that's basically the role that he's been playing now what he's been like part of this coalition. He's been speaking out against, you know, sort of racism in Israeli society and bigotry and saying things that don't bring us together are things that we shouldn't be doing, which actually dovetails a lot with the sort of things that Lapid is saying. So you can see how they in the end got along. One of the interesting things

Abbas said was that he was courted by Netanyahu. Netanyahu offered him the move. also to try to get him into his coalition. It didn't work for two reasons. One was that the racist party that Netanyahu also midwife did the Knesset, turned to Netanyahu and said, no, no, no, what part of the, you know, our manifesto did you not understand? We are racist. We will not sit with an Arab party in the government.

So Netanyahu couldn't get them both to sit there. But the second reason was that Abbas said, yeah, I think Netanyahu offered me a little more than the coalition, the current coalition. But I didn't believe you'd give it to me, whereas these guys I trust. Right. I think these guys will actually deliver. And Lapidon knows that he has to deliver, I think, for the Arab community in Israel if he wants to maintain this alliance. Yeah, hoisted by your own petard, Bibi.

Well, look, that future prospect you described there of a more diverse, more representative government is really an exciting one. But let's talk about Bibi. So there was this vote on Sunday. You know, Ben and I talked a bit about it earlier. It was unbelievably acrimonious. You had members of parliament who were Netanyahu allies booing Neftali Bennett, Yair, Lepernet, Yair Lepid ended up not giving a speech because he said he didn't want to embarrass his 86-year-old mother who had traveled down for this event. You know, people were getting ejected from the room.

It was a mess. And then Bibi Netanyahu gave this speech where he just sort of like burned down the place, talked about all the times he gave the middle finger at the United States and told American president specifically Barack Obama to go fuck himself, which to me reinforced all the reasons. I think that American president should be willing to criticize Netanyahu, but I digress. But so Netanyahu's not going anywhere, right? He's still a member of parliament. He's going to try to clause way back into power. What did you make of this scene and this closing message about like sticking it to the Americans and blah, blah, blah. I mean, is that an effective message in Israeli politics?

That remains to be seen. I don't actually think that particular message is. I do think, yeah, that's something that's really important to underscore that, again, as we've been saying over and over, Israel, unlike America, is a, parliamentary democracy. That's why you have to, like when Nita Niao loses, he doesn't just go away, right? He becomes the leader of the opposition. And that's a, you know, a very powerful bully puppet in its own right. He is a political leader now still in Israel. He is just a different political leader, you know, when foreign dignitaries come, they're going to visit him too. And just like,

you know, you to understand the current coalition, it's a parliamentary democracy. It's a coalition. And so you can look at the guy who's in the front like Bennett, but you really got to look at all the people behind it, right? And those are like center and left wing ministers. And that tells you what Bennett's freedom of action is. But to return to Netanyahu, he definitely was trying to salt the earth between the American government and the new Israeli government, because it would actually be quite bad for him if they started getting along better, because he said that what's necessary is the sort of partisan, caustic approach that he's taken. And that I did this because it was necessary for social security and its survival and so on. And if it turns out,

that that's not true, right? And it turns out that these countries can get along and they can compromise a little bit, right? And the sky does not fall, right? That's a real, you know, rebuke to bibism. And so he doesn't want that to happen. Something else that I wonder if we'll see him try to do is also see him try to assault the earth between the new government and the Republican party, which has been very closely identified with me now, particularly during the Trump years. And they're seeing their guy go out of power. And so what does he, you know, what message does he send to them? Does he say, well, you know, you need to support Israel no matter what government is in power and you should work with this current government? Or does Netanyahu say, well, you know,

they're going to be gone soon. I'll figure out a way to topple this government. It's pretty fractious already. And then I'll be back. Right. So, you know, they're kind of pretenders. Don't really pay attention to them. And again, being pro-Bee is being pro-Israel, right? That sort of message. Right. And it's going to be interesting to see which of those messages resonates more, whether it's being pro-Israel means being pro-who's in power and who the late Israelis have chosen, versus being pro-Israel as being pro-Bibi, which of those Republican stakeholders choose. And we've seen both, but we've seen some Republicans already start congratulating the new government and saying we look forward to working with you. And then we'll see people like Matt Gets tweeting

that, you know, this whole government is just united by Bibi Hade and they're going to, you know, persecute Netanyahu, but he's going to be back because they don't have anything holding them together, which is something we should probably talk about, right? Well, it's going to stick around with all this fracture stuff. Right. So we're going to see that break, I think, in the Republican Party. It'll be interested to see how it's takes out. Yeah, Matt Matt case is probably should worry about his own prosecution and not alleged that this government is going to try to railroad Netanyahu. There are all these corruption cases against B.B. Netanyahu. And by the way, like on this broader point of like trying to drive a wedge

between the U.S. and Israel, I was struck by Netanyahu's tone as compared to Yair Lapid. I mean, I do think that like Republicans and Democrats are, when they talk about the U.S. commitment to Israel, they really do mean the country and they don't mean to the man B.B. Netanyahu. unless you're currently living at Mara Lago. But I don't know. This is not a bet I would take if I were Netanyahu, but I digress. So the corruption cases, B.B, you know, he tried to pass all these legislation to protect himself from prosecution.

It seemed like maybe one of the reasons he was clinging to power so desperately. Does his ouster from the prime ministership change the process or the timeline for any of these cases at all? Like, how does that all work? Yeah. So Israel has an independent judiciary, the cases of the system. and basically there is nothing that anyone's going to do to affect it. It's going to move at the pace is going to move.

There's a tremendous amount of documentation because there are multiple cases. There's like years and years of investigative materials. And Bibi has very good lawyers who are vetting everything and squeezing it within an inch of its life. So this thing can drag out for years, which is also part of Netanyahu's book because he's like, okay, so this is a setback for me. But if I can get this government to fall, I can always come back into power and then we're back to where. And so this is far from his perspective, and I don't think he's wrong. this is far from over. And it's also why, if you look, Mithanao did a lot to sort of de-legitimize this government and attack its bona fides. But in the end, he handed over power. He did not

try to, you know, January 6th. He was asked walking out of parliament the other, after Bennett was sworn in by a reporter, right, will there be a peaceful transfer of power? Will you meet with Bennett? And he, like, looked at this guy and he said, no, there's going to be a revolution, right? And then he just stopped. He's like, what an idiotic. question. They just walked away. Right? And it's like, it's like, really like, he's like, I'm not trying to like burn this country down.

But that's because, of course, Netanyahu wants to rule the country, right? He doesn't want to destroy it. And this is a difference. This is, there are many analogies one can make. And I've made the fight between, say, someone like Trump and Netanyahu, American politics, Israeli politics. But, you know, Netanyahu in the end, this is the difference between Trump, you know, a man-child narcissist who cares about no one but himself.

And Nathanielo, like many other right-wing populace, who has a vision for his country and a definition of success that he's actually, working towards. And that makes him so much more of a formidable politician in various ways. And so Netanyahu still plans to come back and to pursue that vision. And he sees this as a setback. But he doesn't see this as the end. And he's running, you know, the opposition right now. And he's going to try to pick apart this coalition hit every pressure point that he possibly can and try to make a collapse as soon as he can make it collapse. Because in parliamentary democracies, if you can't put together 61 seats to keep your government in power right in the case of Israel,

which has 120 seats in parliament, right? You can no longer govern. And then we're back to elections again. And then Netanyahu can try to win one. Yeah, yeah. Well, so right before we started recording, you know, I saw these videos of far right Israelis marching through East Jerusalem and this annual parade that had been delayed. Some of them were chanting death to Arabs.

Some of them were chanting the villages should be burned. I mean, again, this thing was supposed to happen last month, but it got pushed because of the tense situation in Sheikh Jara and then, you know, because Hamas rocket fire. But like, clearly this parade, this kind of language is incitement, you know, it's incitement happening in the light of day with journalists filming it and the police aren't shutting it down. There's real concern about another flare up of tensions like we saw in Sheikh Jara or more rocket fire from Hamas. I mean, look, I don't think you or I have all that much hope that a Nafali Bennett-led government is going to lead to states or Palestinian state, even though as much as we

hope it would. But do you have any hope that this new administration is willing or able to try to keep a lid on this kind of activity and make day-to-day life better for the Palestinian people? Because I think that goal just gets lost in these conversations. And look, that's on me for asking you a million questions about the U.S.-Israeli relationship. But, like, that is the backdrop behind all the tensions we saw last month and the fighting and the death toll and something I think we all would love to prevent. Yeah.

It's not something that goes away just because people are no longer shooting rockets or dropping bombs from airplanes. And it's important to continue to think about that and to focus on it. And hopefully the Biden administration, that's something that now they realize they can engage upon with the new government. Yeah. So when you see something like that march, I think it's really instructive to look at it because this is a march that was supposed to happen and that didn't happen, but they

purposely rescheduled it and they basically ended up doing it right when this new government came in. They chanted racist chance. not everyone there. It's just important, right? Of course, right, there are a variety of people at this march, but there are always racist at this march. And the organizers, not only tolerate them, they basically look the other way, if not sympathize with them. And it was really awful to see how many young kids were chanting this stuff. You know, I mean, it's horrible to see a 15-year-old boy chanting death to Arabs. It's just, you know, it's depressing. And so you have this sort of thing going on. And it's purposely happening right now. And they're also holding up signs that say, Naktali Bennett is a traitor, right? This guy who was a right-wing politician. until two minutes ago. And what it is is people ask, how can you have that? And at the exact same time, just install the first Israeli government with an Arab party in it, right? As though, you know, and people say that seems like a contradiction. But of course, it's not. And I think it should be understandable to us in America why it's not, which is that whenever you have a push

towards more integration, you are absolutely going to have a racist backlash. And those two things go together. And these people wanted to have their march. And they weren't going to let it be but's bone, and especially after this new government came in, and especially after Naftali Bennett decided, right, who they thought was their guy, said, I'm going to make a government with Arabs in it, right? So now they feel betrayed, right? And they feel like that people are, you know, that the stars are lining against them. And so they get that much louder, right? And they get that much angrier. And I think we're going to see more of this sort of back and forth. And part of it is going to make someone like Nafthali Bennett have to choose,

right? He's going to look at this and say, you know, are you with Mansour Abbas and the people in your coalition, right, who built this thing together that is built. If you look at their speeches, they really said, we want to build this on trust, on sort of the things that Netanyahu basically trashed during this time on, like, trying to find consensus and healing in unity in the Israeli society as best we can, right? That just can't be reconciled with what you see in the streets today, right? You couldn't do it. And in the end of Talibaba Bennett's going to have to think, right, who am I, like, which side of those people am I on?

And like, if I had to guess, and, you know, this is one of those sound bites, then I may look like an idiot. I think he actually, for both personal reasons and also self-interest, and is more realized that he is on the side of, you know, these people are not my people. In part because there's nothing he could possibly do at this point to win their votes. That's the self-interest are. Right. These people hate his guts.

They were chanting, racist chance while, you know, holding signs about how bad he is. He's never going to win them back, right? But also because in a very unusual, like an odd way, and this is a much longer a conversation about Nathali Bennett, who is a man of many contradictions, Nathali Bennett wants to be a conciliator when he was the head of the Settler Council. for a short period of time. One of the reasons he eventually lost that job is he went and showed up at Israel's 2011 social justice protests that were against inequality and tycoons and the high cost of living. This was a left-wing movement. And he showed up because he wanted to be in dialogue with those people.

When Israel had protests against police abuse of the Ethiopian Jewish-Israeli community, which has some parallels to some Black Lives Matter activism in America, Bennett, again, was like the right-wing member who showed up to start. He wants to bring these people together, but the question is, does his conciliatory approach include the Arab community? And so far, his government does. So does that also include his broader political approach? And there are ways to be, and there have been in Israeli history, right-wing Israeli leaders and right-wing Israelis, like the outgoing president, Rubin Rivlin, right, who embrace the

Israeli-Arab community within a right-wing framework, right? That could be a more like, we want to have some sort of confederation with the Palestinians in the future. There are different approaches that are different from the two-state solution, for example, that see both populations living equally. And Bennett's going to be faced with this choice. And the question will become, which will he choose? Of course, after two years, then we have Lapid. And we know which way he chooses. And so, yeah, so that's the next four years.

Yeah. Well, this is why I like talking with you because, look, I think in Washington and around this set of issues in general, I think cynicism is often thought of as being smart or savvy. but, you know, there is this potential silver lining. There is a reason to be hopeful here about a better future for Palestinians and Israeli people after Netanyahu is gone. So thank you for doing the show. Everyone check out yair.substack.com. Follow him on Twitter, Tablet Magazine. What else we want to plug here?

That sounds like it. You know, my hope is that now that Yaila is an international figure, people will finally learn how to pronounce my name. We can all work on that. But at least spelling it is started. How do they get it wrong? Do they call you year? I mean, to be fair, it looks like air. So I become gear, right?

If I ever started a podcast, fresh year is right off. Ooh, fresh year. That's great. Trademark that would just encourage all the wrong things. Everyone will then mispronounce it forever. But, you know, we have a vested interest in, in Yat-Ear's who are not Yat-Ear Netanyahu. Don't Google him. Being the predominant Yat-Ear out there.

So the Yat-Year rankings have gone, you know, have been adjusted. in our favor for now. Well, congrats on that. And thank you again for doing the show. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks again, Dyer for joining the show. Ben, after this little chit-chat of ours,

we're going to hear an excerpt from your audiobook. So that is exciting. I would also love to know you're in New York. You got big plans? You're going to go to the museum. You do something fun? Well, first of all, on the book, I would do want to say, like, I recorded it.

I read it. And mainly because the main feedback I got, I didn't read my first book. and the main feedback I got from WorldO's mainly when I was on like book tour on my first book was like, hey man, like, who's this actor reading your book? You know, like, which is a pretty good point. It's like I'm a podcaster. I should at least be able to do that book.

Okay, fair. Which I enjoyed doing. And this book, this gives you a little flavor of kind of the travel ethos of the book. It's an excerpt from the very beginning. But yeah, New York, I mean, I'm going to catch up with my parents. But like, it just opened here today, just like it did in California. So, like, I'm thinking of going to a Mets game. Like, I'll be hitting all the hot playground spots in Central Park with my kids.

Like, definitely hit up, like, a couple of museums, see some friends I haven't seen in a while. It's going to feel like a normal life in New York City. So Springsteen is the first one back. You know, he has his Broadway show. Like, stuff is coming back here. It's super exciting to see, like, you know, New York, which was once the epicenter of this whole pandemic. is now like, it feels almost normal. That's cool.

Well, have fun there. Good to see you. And we'll talk to you guys next week. Cool. Thanks, guys. See you. Potsave the World is a crooked media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez.

Our producer is Jordan Waller. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seiglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Yale Freed, and Phoebe Bradford, who film and share our episodes as videos each week. I walked aimlessly around the sprawling city of Yangon. a blanket of heavy heat over me, buying knock-off Nikes for a few bucks to make it easier on my feet.

I went to a pagoda and sat staring at a Buddha, waiting to feel something. I walked into a U.S. government-funded library where I'd been a guest of honor a couple of years before. Now, anonymous to young Burmese buried in books and screens. Then I conducted workshops in the capital city of Napier-Dah to help the Myanmar negotiating team prepare. sharing lessons I'd learned while negotiating reconciliation between the United States and Cuba.

The civilians took earnest, copious notes. The stern-faced military men and drab green uniforms wrote nothing down. Afterward, I joined a meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, dissident turned state counselor, at her residence. For the first time in my several meetings with her, we were asked to take off our shoes inside the Buddhist home. a reminder of the Burmese Buddhist nationalism that had become more predominant in recent years.

Within a matter of months, the Burmese military that had once imprisoned Suu Kyi would pursue a campaign of ethnic cleansing against a Muslim minority, the Rohingya. A million people were driven into neighboring Bangladesh. Through it all, Suu Kyi would remain silent. People wondered at her fall, from Nobel Peace Laureate of the early 90s to international pariah.

But it made a certain kind of sad sense to me, a survivor from a country on the periphery of power in the world. She once surfed the wave of democracy that accompanied the end of the Cold War. She rocketed to international attention in 1989, the year that the Berlin Wall came down, by leading a democratic movement protesting the military government. By 2017, she was doing what she felt she needed to do to survive in a world where nationalism ran amok,

her own journey, from democracy icon to tacit collaborator and brutality fueled by Buddhist nationalism and rampant anti-Rohinja disinformation on Facebook, didn't cut against the currents of history. It drifted in the wake of events in the wider world. In April 2017, I went to Milan with Barack Obama, He was there to speak about climate change, a few weeks after Donald Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement.

The rhythm of the trip felt familiar, a private plane, a block of hotel rooms, secret service agents. But the plane was a fraction the size of Air Force One. There were only a handful of hotel rooms and agents. And unlike the crush of responsibilities that used to follow me, I had very little to do. I accompanied Obama on a private tour of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings. peering down at bold lines that improbably anticipated the machines of the future.

Helicopters and missiles, the machinery of war that we'd presided over for eight years. Dusty volumes, hundreds of years old, line the walls of the library. From human creations like this, the Renaissance had emerged, paving the way for the pursuit of scientific inquiry and cultivation of a more enlightened Western civilization, that now felt under assault. Back at the hotel, throngs of Italians waited outside Obama's hotel.

I told him that he remained the most popular politician in the world. No, he corrected me. I'm one of the biggest celebrities in the world now. He didn't mean it as a good thing. Progressive change relegated to cultural celebrity.