Pod Save the World - Israel on the Brink

Episode Date: May 5, 2023

Ben and Tommy are joined by Max Fisher for a special episode on the roots of the judicial crisis in Israel that has brought millions of protestors out into the streets and still threatens to tear the country apart. They dig into the unresolved constitutional questions from Israel’s founding, why Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu is a uniquely dangerous figure, and how the US-Israel relationship has pushed Israel to the far-right. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome back to Pod Save the World. I'm Tommy Vitor. I'm Ben Rhodes. Max Fisher. Back in the studio. The three of us for a special bonus episode of Pod Save the World to talk about a very special topic, the roots of the judicial crisis in Israel that has led to massive protests, societal upheaval, and a lot of hand-wringing in this studio, I will say. So the quick backstory on what's happening is Prime Minister B.B. Netanyahu

is trying to jam through changes to Israel's judicial system that would essentially strip away its independence and allow the coalition running the government to control judicial appointments and give the Knesset Israel's parliament the power to override Supreme Court rulings that fine laws passed by the Knesset unconstitutional. For reasons, we'll explain in a second that is a massive change in Israel's system. But today we just want to step back a bit and not necessarily talk about the headlines of the day, but examine some of the deeper structural forces that got Israel to the brink of this crisis. Those structural forces include unresolved questions about the founding identity of Israel, Prime Minister Bibian and Yahoo himself and

sort of how he's a singular individual in the country's history. And then the U.S. Israel relationship. So, Max, over to you. Nothing thought about this conversation at all. Yeah, right. Yeah, it's easy stuff. Yeah, yeah. Riff a little, we'll put it out. Yeah, yeah. Just a bonus episode, yeah. I mean, I'm glad we're talking because I know it's It's something that we all think about a lot. We like see each other in the hallways and talk about this. It's like the future of Israeli democracy. I think it's like a really live question and like the future of the Palestinians and the future of the relationship.

It's like a really live question that I think like really demands a lot of scrutiny right now. And so like to me, everything that is happening right now, this big threat to Israeli democracy all traces back to this unanswered question from the country's founding in 1948, which is are we a democracy or are we a state of enforcement? for one group in particular. And the country's founders were very aware of this tension. They knew that the democratic world was as a system happening, just then waking up this idea that you can't be a democracy for one group because a democracy for one group will inevitably become a dictatorship of the majority, probably just a dictatorship.

But Israel's founders felt they weren't ready to answer that question of what kind of country are we just yet, partly because there was this large population of non-jubleness. of Palestinians within Israel. So they never really finished constructing a government. I mean, Israel has no constitution. There's no bill of rights. There are no formal checks and balances

because the convention that formed in 1948 to write that constitution couldn't decide how to define who is an Israeli citizen. What is the Israeli state? What are our basic rights? So that convention just converted itself into the Knesset, that legislature, which is still like basically the entire government.

And it's out of that gap where the state was supposed to be that the Israeli Supreme Court, which is at the center of all this, rose up. And it became the main check on the power of the legislature, also gradually defined those basic rights that had never been set by a constitution. So it became like the main vehicle for advancing the version of Israel that is built on individual rights, liberal institutions and the like. But this unresolved question of whether Israel is firstly a democracy or firstly a state

for one group was still there. And it got heightened in 1967, of course, when Israel conquered the way. West Bank and Gaza, territories that were supposed to be Palestine. And it's forgotten now, but there was this moment that I think is really important where the country's founding leader, David Ben Gurin, came out of retirement when that happened and said, you have to give these territories up or it will put such a pressure on that contradiction of Israeli democracy that it will destroy it. And I think he was right, but it was actually this like slightly different but related contradiction that has put the Supreme Court at the center of what's happening now. And it starts

in the 1990s when the courts began asserting more protections for individual rights, chiefly for women and LGBT people. And this is just for Israelis. It's not touching Palestinian rights. But it angers right-wing religious Israelis who feel the court is pushing the country too far away from the traditionalist Jewish identity that they want. And that starts this. Very familiar story for us Americans here. Right.

Yeah. I think this all sounds really great. Or like 20 other countries around the world. Yeah. Yeah, it reminds me of your book a lot. And it starts this movement to take away the court's power altogether. And in doing so to say, we've decided what kind of country we want to be. We're for one group first and we are Democratic second.

And that movement against the courts really takes off in the 2010s when the Netanyahu government wants to roll back a bunch of basic rights in the name of national security, things like ban foreign NGOs, deport some rights workers. The courts stop him from going further. and that is when the big nationalist, often secular right, joins with the smaller religious right and saying, we need to do the court, we need to make the prime minister all powerful. And that was precisely what Netanyahu was trying to do in March into a protest stop him because Israelis know that this court is the foundation of their democracy in a way that it's not in other systems. But at the same time that Israelis will fight to keep their democracy, they have still not really collectively decided what kind of country they want to be. I just reconcile this contradiction that's built into their founding. And you see this in polls. When asked explicitly whether Israel should be Democratic first or Jewish first, Israelis used to say both.

But now they mostly say it has to be one or the other. And the people who say it should be Jewish first, outnumber the people who say it should be democratic first by like two to one. And that to me is kind of the core of all this. And I believe that until Israelis are able to resolve that question, which is also going to mean addressing the actual. occupation, there's always going to be another crisis in waiting like this. Yeah, that's like very well laid out. And I mean, I agree with everything you said, Max. I think, so I'm here to kind of make the case that BB has been singularly important to this drift away from democracy.

And the Israeli public opinion is both representative of like 25 years of BB-Nanyo politics as much as it is impacting it. And here's how I'd describe it. I mean, I really like how you brought Bangurion into this because, you know, part of what it happened since Israel's founding is that periodically, yes, the founding generation was balancing this identity as a democracy along with this identity as a Jewish state. And by the way, there used to be almost like a socialist identity too, right? Yeah, very much so. The ideology of the kibbutz.

But put that aside. But at critical moments, they, and usually often laid. in their careers in an interesting way, they would break in the favor of the democracy. Yeah, that's true. So if you think about it, you mentioned Ben-Gurion, Rabin obviously making this military leader and hero, making this really hard turn towards peace before he's assassinated. Shremont Perez obviously got there pretty early. But even, you know, Ariel Sharon, who's an interesting guy to contrast with Beebe,

the hardest ass in Israeli history in some ways, being this guy who's like, you know what, we got to pull out of Gaza, pull up stakes, give up this land in part because we have to accept it to be a democracy in a Jewish state. And that's what Netanyahu's never been willing to do. And I think you have to understand, Bibi, his political scent kind of takes off in that moment after the Oslo Court, right, where Rabin has kind of laid down the marker, we're going to do this. It feels like the momentum's moving that direction. Bibi is a part of a really kind of virulent anti-Rabin anti-Oslo campaign. Rabin is assassinated,

and I'm not going to go as far as some people say and kind of laying some of that at Bibi's feet, but he was no doubt a part of the criticism, right? Yeah, you could. A little bit. You could if you wanted to. But remind listeners who don't know maybe what the Oslo process was.

So, you know, the Oslo process basically sets the outlines for two-state solution between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And so in mirroring the kind of mutual recognition agreements have been made with Egypt and Jordan, And the Palestinians formally recognized Israel, which they had not yet done.

The Israelis recognized the Palestinian Authority is like the governing authority of the Palestinians. And they made all sorts of agreements to facilitate kind of more autonomy of Palestinians, but also a lot of security control for the Israelis. And they punted on what we call the final status issues, right? What's the capital? It drew some capital for both. What are the borders? What are the long-term security arrangements?

What happens to Palestinian refugees? Now, so Bibi kind of, you know, he gets elected. Rabin gets assassinated. Shimon Perez kind of flames out. He's just not as good to the politician. B.B. defeats him. His first 10 years, you know, we see some of what we got familiar with later, didn't get along with the American president kind of backsliding on Oslo.

But it's really when Bibi comes back to power in 2009 that I think that he becomes a real accelerant in liberalism in Israel. And the way I try to think about this is it's not unlike what we. seen with other authoritarian populist and ethno nationalist populist, Trump, you know, Orban, Bolsonaro. It starts as rhetoric and performance. Right. But over time, the rhetoric and performance in the political style and the political kind of

pugilism actually becomes substantive. And this is like my core argument because I remember going to Israel with Obama for Shimon Peres' funeral in 2016. And I was lamenting that Shimon Peres had this huge legacy for his. Israel, right, helping to literally build the country and its scientific and military base and probably it's a nuclear weapon. But what's Bibi's legacy? You know, oh, yeah, I get to be prime minister forever.

And Obama said, well, his legacy, he destroyed the Israeli left. But actually bigger than that, if you step back, you know, he comes in and what does he do? Well, he defends settlements at the same time that that enterprise is growing and that enterprise is making a Palestinian state less and less possible. And the same time that settlers are beginning to strip themselves in different ways, like violence against Palestinians. And so suddenly, like, the substantive embrace of some settlers over time kind of begins to have a real substantive impact on the map itself and on the nature of Israeli society. You know, he mowed these words about a two-state solution, but by the end, he's just against it, basically. But importantly, like his conspiracy theories about NGOs. At first, they were kind of, you know, we've joked about them, like the State Department funding, like Israelis and Palestinians playing.

basketball. He's blaming his political interference in the election. But lo and behold, like, then that become restrictive laws being introduced against NGOs, or he really stressed Jewish identity over democracy and his rhetoric. And yeah, nationality laws start to show up. And suddenly maybe you can get your citizenship revoked. And he crossed certain taboos and third rails at Israelis, they didn't used to like to talk about the fact that it actually is already a multi-ethnic state without even, say, the occupied Palestinians. There are a lot of Arabs in Israel. Well, when BB comes out on Election Day in 2016 and starts talking about the Arabs are voting in droves, as if they're foreigners, as if they're not Israelis, that was a seismic moment. It's like,

well, okay, we're now on the other end of, you know, of somebody saying this and normalizing this. And then we start to see laws that create second classes of citizenship. His coziness with the media. You know, he always was kind of cozy with like the guy who owned the newspaper or whatever, but then it starts to become like actual corruption. Like if you don't report what I want, you might lose your license, right? And so over time, we're seeing rhetoric become laws, become like settled political questions. And the frustration he said over time with these really legal systems, same way. It started like it does here, like activist judges suck. You know, he uses the same kind of rhetoric. And now we're like looking to defang the Supreme Court. So I think

He's one of those guys who's kind of, he's fooled a lot of people over the years because he didn't come out at the beginning and say, I would like to transition Israel to a not a democracy like Orban did on Hungary. But the effect of everything he's done and unleashed has brought us there. And once you get to contrast him again with the founding generation, once you get a leader who's willing to put his own political interest over, over anything, that's what accelerated this devolution in Israeli democracy. And Tommy, I kind of leads to the question. we're going to talk about because the two points I'd say to tee up the U.S. relationship piece is this identity question, first of all, is very uncomfortable because I don't know how it's for you, Max. In my house, this was a settled question, right? Israel was a democracy, and we were super proud of it as a Jewish state, but we were more proud because they had built this democracy. And so I think a lot of American Jews just take it as more settled than the poll you cited for

me, and they think, what do you mean this is a question? And so in a weird way, they were less alarmist about BB because they thought, well, he can't really destroy Israel's democracy because it's, you know, it's kind of written in stone. So that's one issue. But the other issue is the extent to which Americans like to hear like whatever shred of an inkling of something BB says it sounds reasonable, they grab onto and they ignore all the rest of it, you know. Like I don't know how many, he gave one half-ass speech about a potential two-state solution in some completely impossible future in like 2009. And I can't tell you how many times I heard you know, as he was killing yet another peace process, well, remember, he took that courageous

step in 2009. It's like, uh, no. Yeah. He's an interesting guy because, you know, Bebe Niahu's brother was killed, the only Israeli commando killed in this daring rescue operation in Uganda, in like the 60s. And I think that relationship helped him rise to fame and rise to power. And then I thought the way you laid it out was really interesting in that all his sort of darkest rhetoric becomes policy and sort of corruption spirals. And he creates all these political and legal problems for himself that he has to solve or has to, that he tries to solve by attacking further and further to the right. And getting more power. Yes. You can see this judicial coup, as Aretz calls it, as a process to help his coalition pass a law that will make it so he has a

get out of jail free card and can't be prosecuted for these laws. Or this judicial coup is an effort to forge a coalition with right-wing forces in Israel that previously were seen as completely out of bounds, essentially were viewed as terrorists. But now he needs them as part of his coalition. And so he's willing to go to these really dark places and defang the courts to, in essence, to do the policy bidding of some of these far-right groups. Can I say one other thing on just, because it leads to the U.S. piece too. And a weird way he's done that to like, and now I'm just going forward to APEC? because like their their defenses of Israel and their attacks on Israel's critics have kind of mirrored, you know, the increasingly pugilistic, you know, like politics

of Bebe in a way. Like it's part of what you're saying is like he's kind of just been this gravitational pull towards, but over time that gravitational pull like fundamentally changes the character of the organizations to the point that now AACPAC, is doing something you never did before, which is it has a super PAC that's like literally trying to take out Democrats. Democrats, liberal Democrats. Yeah. Well, Ben, let me ask you about something you said, because I think that it's a really important point you made that Netanyahu has, he started out just opportunistically exploiting these kind of fissures and unanswered questions in Israeli society.

And then that ends up becoming reality because he's so effective at widening those divisions, which of course is something you see in like one country after another where you see these right-wing populace, where there's not, they don't have like a master playbook for like, here's how I'm going to bring about dictatorship, but it's just like they take step after step. And then they weaken themselves and they paint themselves into a corner like Netanyahu has. I think the question that I wrestle with is, is it too late to untangle that, to roll that back? You know, it, it feels too late on the Palestinian issue in a lot of ways. Just like there's a territorial problem now, like with the extent of settlements. And,

In terms of Israeli democracy, I think, you know, part of what he's done, this is Obama's point about destroying the Israeli left, is they've not had a leader come along in a long time who's made really, really made the alternative case, you know. Yeah. They've had, you know, Yar-Lapid kind of tried to, they all tacked to the center and the center has moved to the right, you know? Exactly. Like we've seen this. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah. We've seen this story, right? And I'm not saying they have to be some kind of left-wing progressive, but we have just not seen a charismatic, compelling Israeli political figure really challenged this narrative of kind of, like, we don't care if we have to become more authoritarian so long as, you know, we are, like the Jewish state, kind of challenge that identity points and, like, really make the case for why it's better for Israel to be a democracy and Jewish state. I mean, I know people would

say they had, you know, Buzerazag at times did and Zippy Living in Times. But like, nobody, he's really been in the weight class of BB on that question. And that may be the only thing that could reverse it. Max, to your point, though, I mean, one challenge for these really left is I imagine the people, the types of people who are moving to Israel, right? And the demographics, he's being born in Israel. Right. It's not, look, I don't know this for sure.

I'm not looking at data right now, but I hear less about these sort of socialist vision on the kibbutz than you hear about like hard line rabbis in Brooklyn moving to Israel to live on settlements. Right. Well, let me read some statistics. Because I think it's both like where's where's the pro piece left. I think it's both a demand side and a supply side. The problem.

Yes. Yes. Well said. 62% of Israeli Jews identify as right wing. But if you ask Israeli Jews who are between the ages of 18 and 24, it is 73%. Wow. So just like right wing. It's getting much more right wing.

Kind of runs counter to what that looks like. Right. And even if you talk to this is really interesting poll that the Israeli democracy. Institute does where they they kind of test like revealed preference around democracy versus Jewish identity where they say do you think everyone who is an Israeli citizen or just Israeli Jews who are like three quarters of the population should be involved in big national decisions and if you ask about security policy 80% of Israeli Jews say that only Jews should be allowed to set those policies you know what's so ironic about this max is like if there's this kind of trust in the kind of

securitized part of the state. But the people who've raised their voices in the most alarmist tones for the last decade or more have been those guys, the security guys, you know, the people in the military or in the shin bat warning about a two-state solution disappearing, right? I mean, it's kind of interesting. Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah. And they were really trusted institution. Yeah. And like also has been really vocal on the Supreme Court stuff, which is, is, is a both heartening and is also like it's a little worrying when the military is the one getting involved as the like vanguard of democracy. Absolutely. Absolutely. It's never great when you're like, barely ends well. Yay, army. Rarely ends well. Yeah. The question of what will reverse it as an interim because they've tried, if you think about what's been, they've tried a lot of different things, right? So they did try a kind of military.

Benny Gantz was the product of, right, a bunch of military guys sent you getting together and me like the politicians are not working and standing up to B.B. So who's the best guy to kind of be the front of a new movement? That's Benny Gans. Then they, that didn't work. Lepid was kind of this like the telegenic, you know, new Israel, like entrepreneurial. And he's like the face of that, like the centrist business leader, or he's not a business, but personality who's going to stand up. That doesn't work. Then they tried like everything.

They're like, okay, we'll grab Bennett, you know, we'll grab our own Jewish nationalist. and we'll have Benny Gans and we'll have Lepid so we've got like the military and we've got like the kind of Tel Aviv, you know, broadcasting types and we've got, you know, young more liberal entrepreneurs and then we've got like

Natali Bennett Neo Lib potluck who just hates like he's an ever BBier, you know, just hates Bibi, right? And that like didn't hold, you know? And to your point, how much of that is

because Bibi Nanyahu is shaped Israeli politics for for so long? How much of that is the demographics of Israel changing, like between not just people moving there, but the people who have more kids over the last 20 years tend to be, you know, have some more conservative. How much of that is the U.S. enabling all this and not like doing anything to arrest it? That's the tough question, right? Well, let's get into this U.S. piece.

I want to talk about sort of the official sort of Washington to Israel relationship. But first I had a cultural question for you guys because you may or may not have noticed, but I'm a bit of a wasp. These founding identity of Israel questions weren't happening in my dinner table. Goldemeyer wasn't like an extra presence that you're doing on the wall. I think if you could name seven Israeli political parties,

you get some points. Thank you, thank you. So I've been reading this great book. It's called Our American Israel by Amy Kaplan. She's a scholar. She does this deep dive into cultural ties between the U.S. and Israel and sort of the founding narratives of both countries.

It's interesting because like the short version is that both countries want to tell a story about themselves as throwing off the yoke of their colonial rulers, in both cases, the British, and being these underdogs while ignoring conversations about indigenous communities that were displaced in that process, right? They want half of that story to be highlighted the other half, not. Kaplan also highlights the fact that the sort of collective American ego was so damaged in the 60s by the lack of clarity or moral victory in Vietnam, or any victory in Vietnam, that when Israel kept pulling off these incredible daring military victories like the Six Day War. It was seen

as like what we aspire to be. That's interesting. Yeah. And she also highlights the influence of the book in film Exodus, which I think the film came out in 1960. It portrays in Israel's founding as basically like a frontier Western founded by like the most sort of handsome, telegenic people you could find like Paul Newman sort of the lead. And I just wondered, did you watch Exodus? Did you read the book? Did you hear about these narratives at the dinner table? We, so culturally in my, there was kind of an understanding in my family, because we were not particularly religious. And not just kind of by the time it got to me, like even my like full-on synagogue every Saturday, you know, relatives were not religious. You're like my mom's, you know,

parents kind of thing. And one, there was this kind of weird guilt. Like, you know, we came here. you know, to New York and, you know, we're living on in Manhattan and they're out fighting against the Palestinian, you know, they're out like building this country and, you know, facing down air fat. I think deep in the heart of every, like, particularly like American Jews who came of age in the early years of Israel when it wasn't like this, you know, was like, well, they're over there fighting, you know, we were just over here, you know, trying to make it in the U.S. So that was part of the culture of it.

Then there was definitely like a massive heroic narrative around both the, military victories and these political leaders, just giants, like Ben-Garion and Goldemeyer and Rabin and all these people, they were like, you know, you knew about them as much as you knew about like American presidents in some ways. But then, you know, like there was always like also like a discomfort about the Palestinian piece of it, you know, because I think people understood the unfairness. But there was kind of like these other events that moved in the other direction, like the aggression 73, the Munich Olympics. You know, I remember being very aware of that in my household. They kind of discredited. It does seem like the, the view of Israel's military,

Abdon Flood, right? I think during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, there was a lot of condemnation of the Israeli military, although when the sort of Palestinian leadership was seen as embracing terrorism, I think that revolted most America. It started to turn, you know. And the other thing that happened over the course of my, you know, we're of Athengal by the, the same age, right? So we're growing up in the 80s and 90s. The awareness and methodical and necessary, entirely necessary, commemoration of the Holocaust actually kind of grows in some ways, right? Like, I felt like my awareness of that event and its centrality to kind of human history actually grew.

Through in the 80s. Yeah, and then you get, by the time you get to Schindler's list, like, that wasn't happening in the 60s. They weren't, they were not making. Carter commissioned the Holocaust Museum. the Holocaust Museum, right? They weren't making Schindler's list or opening Holocaust museums in the 60s, and that also, it associated Israel with that event in a way it always has been, but like it kind of refreshed that piece. It was the never again. Which is, I'll talk about later why that's a complicated piece of business, but like, yeah, you know, the way in which the Holocaust commemoration interacted with this issue is in American Jewish. Jewish thought is interesting. So there's a story that I think about a lot from my family that I think represents for me the kind of shift that's been happening more recently in American Jews' attitudes

towards Israel. In 2014, my sister and I took our dad to Israel. My sister had worked a little bit in the West Bank on water issues, so he both felt very strongly about it. And my dad, like, most Jews of his generation were just like, these reallys are the good guys, like, they're us, but like stronger and better and like, you know, the Palestinians are the bad guys. And he talked about growing up, you know, they were passing a cup around at synagogue to raise money for IDF uniforms. Where was that? In New Jersey. And the cabots. You used to send money to the kibbutzs and stuff like that.

Right, right, right, right. Yeah. So this was like his association and what he expected to see there. He said, okay, we're going to take it to Israel because he'd been asking to go for years. But we're going to start by going to, you know, Bethlehem and we're going to go to Hebron. and Hebron for people who don't know is just like it's ground zero for the occupation. It's a divided city where half of it is controlled by a very small number of very extreme Israeli settlers. And the other half is a large number of Palestinians who live under really horrible conditions. And our dad came away from it, just completely reversing himself, just saying this is unsustainable, this is crazy what's happening. I can't believe this.

And, you know, even walking around like the beautiful parts of Tel Aviv. He was seeing the kind of occupation projected onto it. And the Gaza War broke out like two weeks later. So it ended up being a very fateful trip. And like obviously most American Jews are not going to have on and seeing it firsthand. But I think that year in particular and a lot of what has happened since in the occupation of the West Bank and especially conflicts in Gaza, I feel like a lot of Jews, and I think you see this in polls, are starting to really change how they see Israel and are not seeing as it as an extension of themselves. or their identity or their values anymore. So that's a fascinating sort of cultural window into the conversation.

Let's talk about politics, sort of official Washington to Israeli government. So these days, I think most observers feel like there is very little to debate. Or more recently, there's some debate. But for the last couple decades, there has been a little debate in Washington about the U.S. Israel relationship. To the extent there was debate, it was usually politicians sort of jockeying to one-up each other to declare their support for Israel, to be more pro-Israel. Here's a couple of rhetorical examples.

The connection between the Israeli people and the American people is bone deep. Let Beebe know that we are with you, we are with Israel 100%. Israel and America are connected now and forever. Israel is a true friend. It is our greatest ally in the region. I stand with Israel because of everything. our shared values, which are so fundamental to the founding of both our nations. Our nation's friendship with Israel is not negotiable.

So that was Biden, Trump, Pelosi, Obama, Vice President Harris, and Mitch McConnell. But that, you know, completely united opinion wasn't always the case. And the big picture question I want to ask you guys during this section is to what extent is America's shift to total and complete unquestioned support for Israel and Israeli policies in a lot of cases contributed to the crisis we see today. So first a quick bit of history. The U.S. was the first country to recognize Israel as a state in 1948, as you mentioned Max. And for many years, many decades, really, the U.S. Israeli relationship was kind of normal with ups and downs based on events and interests. For example, in 1956 and 57, President Eisenhower put enormous

pressure on Israel to withdraw its troops from Egypt after Israeli troops occupied the Sinai Peninsula. The U.S. even joined a U.N. resolution condemning the occupying the occupying. and privately threatened sanctions and to cut off private assistance to Israel. And it's just, as someone who worked in government during the Obama administration, it's unimaginable that any president would do that today. But again, in 1981, after Israel brahmed an Iraqi nuclear reactor, President Reagan suspended delivery of fighter jets to Israel and the U.S. again voted in support of the UN Security Council. Resolution condemning that strike, President George H.W. Bush threatened to withhold

loan guarantees from Israel until the Israeli government assured him that those funds wouldn't go towards building Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories. And listen to Bush's former secretary of state Jim Baker, venting his frustrations about the Israeli government's failure to constructively engage in peace talks. Here's a clip. It's going to take some really good faith, affirmative effort on the part of our good friends in Israel. And if we don't get it, And if we can't get it quickly, I have to tell you, Mr. Levine, that everybody over there should know that the telephone number is 1-202-456-14-14. When you're serious about peace, call us. So that sounds a little less bone-deep than Biden's take.

So the question is, what change and when? Max, do you have a theory? I actually do. I think that this history, the bone-deep history is way shallower than people think or that we recite to each other. I think it really, it starts, I think, very superficially with Bill Clinton, who has this idea that turned out to be, I think, really wrong that in order to get the Israelis to go along with the two-state solution and to go along with Oslo, you have to just like hug them really closely and just give them whatever they want and make them feel really secure and really calm. To Dennis Roster. Right, yeah. Quite literally. Right, right. Yeah.

And Martin Indic had this line about hug BB close. Yeah, yeah. You know, B.B. Nanyahu. And then, of course, he just pocketed all that. And I think it becomes cultural and does become a little bit deeper with George W. Bush. Yes. And September 11 and the second Intifada, which is the, you know, uprising and very violent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians in the early 2000s.

That I think leads to this view among a lot of Americans that were, you know, fighting the same fight and we're like two countries that are like minded. And when you talk to like Israeli political scientists, they will say like that is actually really when it starts. So it's, I think it's so much more recent. I do too. I mean, just just to add to what you said, George H.W. Bush was obviously famously hard on the Israeli government. You heard those clips. Bill Clinton then got 80% of the Jewish vote in the next election and 78% in his reelect. So I imagine that sends some warning flags up in Republican political headquarters to be like, oh, shit, we got to get, you know, some of these votes back or else we're going to keep losing. I also think, you know, to your point,

after 9-11, the Israelis understood terrorism in our minds as well as we did, right? So it would securitized that relationship. But there was also the rise of the evangelical right. Yeah, this is where I was going to go. Yeah, go. Yeah, no. So, because Baker's a fascinating exampleist, right? So Baker also famously, literally, to connect it back to Nanyahu, he barred Nanyahu from the State Department. He was so, like, uh... That's so incredible. He was so sick of this kind of like mid-level or, you know, upper diplomat, like, kind of. messing around our politics. He's like he barred from the State Department. If you fast forwarded 20 years, Jim Baker is controversial in the Republican Party in part because he's seen as having

this legacy in Israel. Jim Baker, who literally delivered multiple White House to the Republican Party is far less popular in the Republican Party today than Bia now is, right, the man that he once part of the state parliament. And I think part of that is that the evangelical movement at some point in 9-11 may have had something to do with this and, you know, but, but, but, but Like, somehow Israel just became more important. And I'm not, this is a culture I don't know much about. But it's undeniable that Republicans used to be the party where there's a little bit more internal debate about Israel. Now with the evangelical movement and the securitization of the Republican Party from now, what you were saying, Max, that's like a perfect storm of just uniformity of support for Republicans, for Israel.

And then Republicans figure something out. They particularly figure out in their bomb years, which is that this is a good issue to divide Democrats on. Because they understand that in the democratic psyche, we share a lot of identity with Israel, you know, like most, almost all members of Congress are Jewish or Democrats and their liberals. But we also, our values tend to make us sympathize the Palestinians. And so that dynamic kind of pulls support for Israel to the right. And it also makes it harder for anybody to step out of line. And as someone had to write those speeches you're playing, like I'm deeply familiar. with how the language.

Well, I want to ask you about that, because I was talking with Jeremy Benamy, who had a J-Stree. And we talked about Obama's Cairo speech, which, for those who don't know, it was his famous speech, Obama delivered in June of 2009. It was an attempt to reset relations with the Muslim world after the Iraq war and post-9-11, you know, war on terror, hysteria. Here's a clip. America's strong bonds with Israel are well-known.

This bond is unbreakable. It is based upon cultural and historical ties and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied. Meaning the Holocaust, obviously. And as Ben, I was wondering if you remembered where that unbreakable formulation came from because, you know, maybe it had become sort of pat at that point. But I guess saying that to that room or to that audience does sort of say to them, like, hey, I'm reaching out to all of you. but like this relationship is still a special tier, right? And you're never going to hit that level. Oh, man.

It's a fascinating story. So, I mean, first of all, there were always suspicions of Obama that he wasn't sufficiently pro-Israel despite having a relatively conventional record on Israel. You know, like came out of the Jewish community in Chicago in a lot of ways, voted pretty, you know, mainstream on things in Congress. And I always thought, I'm just going to name this. like there was something kind of racialized about it, you know, like, oh, the black guy's going to sympathize more of the Palestinians, you know, which is kind of a tell, right, that you're not

treating the Palestinians, you're treating the Palestinians. The Palestinians are treated in the same way that the blacks have been treated in this country. Well, interesting there was sort of like Black Panther solidarity with the Palestinian cause very early on. And it was sort of seen as part of this like Che Guevara, Cuba, like sort of anti-colonial zeitgeist, which I don't know. And that's who like, culturally cool. And you'll remember from 2008, right? would go after like Rashid Khalidi because he was kind of like a scholar that came out of that movement or Edward Saeed, you know, people that Obama had expressed admiration for. But anyway, to get to Cairo, I think everybody knew going into that speech that he was going to be, you know,

trying to reset a conversation with Muslim audiences. And so there was great concern that would he like throw Israel into the bus and played into these fears that Obama was this kind of quiet radical. Actually, we started to do, so the ask, one of the main asks, a member from APAC before that speech because they came in and said what they wanted to hear in the speech, like that actually happens, was that Obama demand that the Muslim world recognize Israel and recognized it as a Jewish state, which was a super interesting ask because, you know, to get into the weeds, that's basically asking the Muslim world to renounce the right of return for Palestinians. That's not how they framed it. And the rights of Palestinians in Israel.

Today. So we didn't go there. But what we can do is state what Obama thought was the truth, which, you know, culturally, like for a lot of reasons, we had this bond that's bigger than me, essentially. It's its bond between our countries. And that's going to be a tough message to that audience. By the way, to fast forward, he then talked very specifically about the occupation in ways that American president never had. And so there was plenty in it, you know, for that audience. But the interesting one was a Holocaust because part of that speech was.

supposed to be like hard truths, telling hard truths. So we were trying to call out Holocaust denial. And after the tragic history, he then has some language condemning Holocaust denial, got a tremendously negative reaction from Israel. Huh. Why? Because rooting Israel and the Holocaust undermines the idea that this is the historical moment of the Jewish people. It's fascinating, Max, right? And I got a lot of angry phone calls. So what is this Holocaust stuff? I'm like, wait, I thought you'd like that. You know, like, it's very surprising.

And it actually, usually go hand in hands. No, but this is, it was such an interesting moment to you because it lifted the hood on the difference

between like a secular American Jewish mindset. Right. It is like, well, of course Israel's history is in part rooted in the Holocaust. Obviously, it dates back to ancient times, but like, you know,

it was founded right after the Holocaust and that, you know, the mass migrations and the, and the world feeling like, you know, we have to get behind this. Well, it's a break from Israel's own secular Zionist founders.

I mean, even the ones before the Holocaust, Holocaust, who saw it as a creation of this like 19th century world. You have to have like a homeland for Jews that is rooted in modernity and that like pick this place where Jews had been before. But the, I mean, to your point, the idea that it is a like continuous 3,000 year homeland, which is often further to mean that like, therefore the West Bank should be ours. Exactly. Right. Yeah. It's something that is like kind of out of step with a lot of their own national founders. It is. And so this is that that represents a movement to the right of the rhetoric.

And there really was like a people will take everything I see out of context. But like, not plain. Is this a sensitive issue? But the point is that like people watch your language on this stuff very carefully. And they will let you know if they don't hear unbreakable bond or bone deep, they will complain to you that they didn't hear it. But at the same time that that's happening, right, you have a situation where like Israeli politics is moving to the right. So what is expected of American politicians in terms of the rhetoric is also moving to the right. And there was another thing that happened in Obama's first year, Tommy.

You remember Obama met with a bunch of Jewish leaders, and they got into a very brief dispute that ended up being this thing that dogged us for eight years about whether the U.S. could ever show any daylight from Israel. And Obama said, sometimes it's actually useful to Israel if the U.S. has a little daylight because we have some credibility as an independent voice. And actually the position in that room and then became something that was hung around Obama. I don't know if you remember these debates on me, like, I can't believe Obama ever said there should be daylight. The idea that we would never have daylight with another country in anything. You don't outsource your decision making to another country. It is, sure, but you live through it on the, I mean, we don't have to unpack each of these, but the flotilla, the Goldstone Report. There's always something where it's like, don't show daylight.

Yeah, yeah. And look, there's sort of this unbreakable formulation ultimately is backed by Obama, at least, with a 10-year, $38 billion security assistance guarantee that I think speaks to the holiest. Holocaust narrative of never again and making sure that Israel has got this quality of military edge. And over, there was a CRS report, Congressional Research Service report from February 2020 that totaled up the assistance in the U.S. has provided Israel with 150 billion in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding since its founding. So it's a ton of cash. So here's the big question, Max. To what extent do you think the U.S. owns some of the kind of political twists and turns in Israel that led. them to the brink of this judicial coup? I think it's a, I think that's a really important question for figuring out what should America do towards Israel right now. And also what should America do

towards countries that are maybe going down a similar path? Like there are real lessons here for how do we think about America's relationship to India, for example, which is like really, you know, different contexts, but like following a similar path. I think that if you look, if you go a little further back in the 90s, I think there's a lot of ownership in the 2000s. I think there's a ton of ownership, especially as Israel is pushing so far to the right during the second Intifada. My kind of contrarian take on this, but which I do come to through reporting and talking to a lot of security analysts and political analysts, is that while it would be the right thing to do for the United States to say this is no longer going to be unconditional, we are now going to

condition this on democracy and on rights for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, whether that means a two-state solution or a one-state solution, I don't think that America has that much leverage anymore. If you talk to military analysts, they will say, you know, for a long time, Israel depended on American weapons, but all those capabilities are indigenous now, which they did very deliberately so that they would not suffer militarily if the U.S. one day caught off aid. economically, the military aid used to be equivalent to 10% of their GDP. Now it's equivalent to about 1% of their GDP, so it's not as much of a hit. And political analysts will tell you that Israeli politicians used to pay a big price domestically

for being seen as not having the Americans on board. And that was Netanyahu's big asset. He was like, he gets the Americans, he can talk to them. And now Israeli voters don't really care as much about that because they kind of think, like, America just doesn't matter for us as much anymore. and they very carefully cultivated a lot of other allies, which has been this very deliberate diplomatic campaign they have, called the other friends,

to, like, bring in other countries that can be allies for them to offset their reliance on the U.S. So I think that there was a window when we had a lot of leverage that could have forced things in a better direction, but I think that window might have closed. What about the diplomatic shield, Max? You know, you focus on the security systems. That's probably the biggest one.

Yeah. The Security Council veto. Yeah. The UN Security Council will occasionally have resolutions condemning Israel for bombing Gaza, for the occupation of Palestinians, things like that. And the United States has basically a policy of down the line vetoing anything, which does an enormous amount to shield Israel from international consequences. And the UK and France, which formerly participated in that veto, have basically backed away from it in the last 10 years or so. And it's now just the U.S. that is the one saying the U.S. We're not going to protect Israel at the Union. And it extends to the ICC, the International Criminal Court, and all these other pieces of the international system.

Right, right, right. Then, Max, I think, raises a really interesting question, which is, why is it the United States will move heaven and earth and send hundreds of billions of dollars to countries like Ukraine or Taiwan that are being invaded to protect those democracies? But seemingly doesn't have a lot to say when the world's biggest democracy, India, or. the democracy in Israel are doing things to harm themselves? Well, yeah, I mean, I think this is such a big question. We may have to do another bonus episode on this. This has been really interesting. Like, the obvious starting point is we care about democracy when our geopolitical interests

suit it and not when they don't, right? I mean, that's the hard. Like, you know, these are the politicians. The only time they talk about democracy. And this is part of my, you know, challenge, frankly, to like even the Ann Applebaum kind of view of, you know, it's Venezuela, Iran, Russia. it's easy to oppose autocracy in this country

India, Israel are harder and Turkey even has been hard for us because they're in NATO that's the problem I think the corollary to that problem is

in the Cold War we supported all kinds of right-wing dictators and then but the end goal was democracy right like the end goal

was open society capitalism and kind of democracy so that when we were achieving our objective in the 80s, we started abandoning support for all those right-wing dictators, and they all collapsed, basically, almost every one of them. And then you have this Democratic tie in the 90s. We've never lived through a period of where, like, there's a democratic recession among our

allies like this before. It's a new, it's a new thing for Americans to deal with. And we haven't found the tools. I focus on the diplomatic show because I think in some ways you can suggest that there are certain security interests that, you know, are like that when states get involved, it's more complicated than to be completely values-based. But what you say and how you vote and how you, you know, what you emphasize in the national community, that is in your control. And that's what, like, a Modi, you know,

bringing Modi into this is useful. It's very different in some ways because Modi's obviously not dependent on us for, you know, billions of dollars of security systems in the way Israel is. But like he thinks that like at the end of the day, we need him somehow more than we, you know, he needs us or something, and so therefore we'll never criticize him and we'll do nothing. I think we have to kind of, the first step is to not self-censor. I'd just like to see us try that on these issues with Israel a little bit more.

And this is where we got in a bit of a different place than the administration on the quiet, intense diplomacy, right. So part of it's just, like, I'd like it to us to found a legitimate voice and to at least name this discomfort, instead of standing up and saying, you know, the platitudes about Israel being the only democracy in the Middle East and we share all these values. without like saying, and we're both struggling with them. It's not just Israel, right? So to me, that's the biggest thing.

And as someone who does care about Israel, I think they're wrong. You know, if I'm going to bet that I can like ultimately somehow risk the U.S. relationship because I'm making agreements with like the Gulf Arabs and we were getting along pretty well with Putin there for a while and, you know, maybe we, you know, the Indians like by our defense equipment, like, given the history of the Jewish people, that's, I'd much rather bet on America. And so I actually worried that they're making a miscalculation, because I think you're right, Max, that their judgment is, oh, we actually don't need this as much. But I don't know, man, it's like, it's a better insurance policy to me than thinking you can cobble together some

other semi-autocratic friends. Well, I feel like this gets back to this, like, core question, because the countries they're choosing to partner with are not Europe. Right, right. It's, it tends to be the like right wing populist, ethno-nationalist. And it's like a microcosm of the same choice. Do you partner with the ethno-nationalists who love you because you're being really horrible to minorities in your country, or do you partner with the big liberal democracy that expects you to have a liberal secular state, but also has a vision of that, at least in the U.S., works pretty well for Jews.

Yeah. Yeah, I, the self-centering frustrates me to no end. I mean, I rewatched in preparation for recording this episode and just to like drive. up my blood pressure, Bibi Niyahou's speech, I think 2015 to the U.S. Congress announcing his opposition to the Iran nuclear agreement. And when you juxtapose that with calls to or scolding of Obama for suggesting there might, in fact, be times when there's daylight between the United States and Israel on policies and saying, I mean, imagine if, imagine if Joe Biden went to the Knesset and delivered a speech about the Israeli judicial system.

Maybe you should. I would love it. Now, they, Their response would be like, those are internal affairs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We would never come to you. But like, you know what, the Iran nuclear agreement and, you know, preventing the Iranians from getting a nuke matters to all of us equally, I would argue. And where that issue was in American politics at the time was. For sure. It was like an identity politics.

Central. Right. Central. So just to close us out here, Max, you got an idea for us on how to secure the future of Israel's democracy. I honestly, I know that's like, let me give you my like 3,000 word answer. So I actually think that in some ways it is deceptively simple, which I think they have to solve the occupation. I think that the occupation puts so much pressure on all of these questions, at the securitization of the state, the pressure that it puts on identity versus democracy. I think that it is the thing that makes this so unsustainable.

And that's not an easy thing to just snap your fingers and solve. They did withdraw from Gaza not so long ago, so it's at least theoretically possible. But I think until that is solved, this is going to keep coming back. But I think if they can figure that out, which countries have figured out harder problems than this, then I think you could have Israeli democracy prosper for a long time. Any of the take? I'm glad you said that, Max, because like, and to tie back to like what you said at the beginning about your dad, I had much like less vivid experience. But I remember when we went to Israel in 2013, I was in a motorcade. So this is not like out walking around.

But we drove through the security barrier, right? And so for people who know, there's what's been described as a security barrier that's been built in basically the 21st century. And it's been, you know, it's described as security barrier or a fence, you know. It's a big debate over what the color ocean. When you actually drive through it, it's a prison wall. It's what it looks like. It is a giant, giant, very, very thick wall. Like 50 feet in some places, right?

Yeah, it's enormous in some places. And I remember even in a presidential motorway, we had to drive through it. And I remember just being incredibly uncomfortable driving through that wall. And then getting on the other side and the standard of living dropped hundreds of percent, you know, when you're in Palestinian, Bethlehem. And this is like the richest, this is where there's tourism. And you can't live on the other side of that wall and not be impacted by that. You know, and the securitization and the rationalization around the occupation, I think is a cousin of everything we've been talking about or something. sibling. I guess I'd end as my speechwriter, which I don't normally, but like the reality is,

like the reality is that this can change if Israelis, enough of Israelis wanted to change, you know, and they really can change things. Like, they have tremendous agency. It's, it is still a democracy where they elect their leaders. And, and Max, your point, part of what's so troubling is we all see the writing on the wall in the polls that it looks like actually it's kind of 60-40 for this direction. but we've seen that kind of politics change and pendulum's swing back. And frankly, we've seen Jewish people do far more extraordinary things in, you know, in just Israel's history. So, you know, to me, it's as simple as that. And insofar as the U.S. can play any kind of constructive role in that, that's important. I think enabling Israel's, all the things Israel have been doing is not been

helpful. So, yeah, it's just a question. People have to think. think that they have agency on this. And that includes in this country. There's a, there's a pretty focused effort to make people think that, that all these questions are just settled or it's not worth engaging in any conversation about it. Or it's too complicated. Or it's too complicated to understand, right? Or like you'll get the shit kicked out of you online if you say the wrong word. Like we will. Yeah, like you will for this. Right. To take your own political great. Yeah. No, I think that's exactly right. I mean, well said both of you. And, you know, just to close us out, I mean, do you think from a, from a U.S. perspective, I think it's fair to say

that going from Obama to President Biden is a bit of a step back in terms of more of a traditional no daylight US Israel policy. And I'm sure that probably frustrates some people out there. But there is also, I think, a growing coalition of progressives on the left who are willing to say,

we're willing to have rational debates about the U.S. Israeli relationship. And to say, no, absolutely not. The U.S. should not allow U.S. aid to Israel to be used to annex the West Bank, that it's obviously not what is intended to do. And so, you know, I think listening to those voices propping up organizations like J Street that are taking a more thoughtful approach to the relationship than say APEC has, is important and I think will benefit everybody.

Totally. All right. We solved it. We solved it. Look at that. Good for us. 1984 to April 26 is when we recorded this. Check.

All right. Well, thanks everyone for listening. If you like these deeper dive issues, Tell us some more topics you want to hear about because we like doing them. Yeah. We've got some good ones already. That's all we got. Talk soon.

Thanks, guys. Potsave the World is a C crooked media production. Our executive producers are me, Tommy Vitor, Ben Rhodes, and Michael Martinez. Our producer is Haley Muse. Our associate producer is Ashley Mizzuo. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick, Kyle Seguin, Charlotte Landis, and Veselis Futopoulos are our sound engineers. Thanks to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, D.B. Bradford, and Milo Kim,

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