The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Dan Senor on Israel's State of Affairs

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Dan Senor is a geopolitical expert best-selling author of “Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle" and "The Genius of Israel." He is a longtime expert in policymaking, politics and business in the Middle East and has written numerous articles in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post, The Weekly Standard and TIME. He hosts a podcast called Call Me Back.

Don't be nervous. Are we on? Yeah. Are we live? No. No. Welcome to Live from the Table, the official podcast for the world famous comedy seller. You can hear us on Sirius XM on the comedy channel and wherever podcasts are listened

to. Shit, I messed up. I got her nervous. Let the record show, Natterman's not here this week. And Pariel is doing the introduction. And you made me nervous. Okay. I'm here with Noam Dwarman, the owner of the world famous comedy cellar. And drum roll, please.

The guest of honor. Come on. And our new favorite guest, Mr. Dan Senor, who is a geopolitical expert and bestselling author. And his podcast is called Call Me Back. And let the record also show that I have been producing this show for probably about five or six years and hundreds if not thousands of episodes.

And the last episode that we taped with you is the only episode my husband has ever listened to. Is that true? Yes. Seriously? Yes yes did you have to ask him well i just told him that it was you because my my wife will not listen to any of my podcasts oh yeah and people say to her all the time oh i love dan's latest conversation with this one or that one did you what did you think and she says do you think i honestly

podcast she says i listen to him jabber all day long. And I got a little bit of downtime. I'm walking the dogs. I put in the earbuds. You think I'm going to use that downtime to listen to more of his mishigas? That's exactly what Guy says. Before we start, you know, I had someone else, a friend of mine, is trying to choose a theme music for a podcast.

And I said, you know what? You should listen to Senor's podcast theme music because it's very, very good. It's very simple. It's just an arpeggio. But it's because you don't get to hear much of a theme for a podcast. The fact that it kind of loops is very, very effective.

Is there a backstory to that music? Not. My producer, Alon Benatar, who's an Israeli living in New York City, who's a very talented editor and producer, he came up with the music. He was pitching me. He came up. He said, we got this option. We got this option.

He worked with some musical person, and they came up with this. And I said, sounds fine. And then he does it. So I don't really. And it stuck. So we've had it now. People are very used to it. And we've talked at times, should we switch it up?

But we'll probably face a mutiny. I think it's quite good. Why? Because it's very, very recognizable. It's not generic vis-a-vis what other people have. Yeah. And like I said, sometimes you have a great song. That would work in a movie credit when you can actually have it develop.

Right. But you only have like five, ten seconds. But it's not true for most podcast theme music. It's always very short. Yes. But they often choose something which would work better if they could play more of it. I see. I see.

But this is, I don't know, every time I notice every podcast theme, I'm a musician. I'm like, this motherfucker actually somehow lucked on a really good theme. Do you listen to Bill Simmons' podcast? No. No. Is that a good theme? It's a great podcast,

but he always plays Pearl Jam and I always think it's not enough. I want to hear more of the song. They give you a little taste of it and then there's not enough time. Next question. Can I ask one more?

Sure. You referred to me as this podcast's new favorite yes yeah who was the old favorite norman finkelstein don't enrage me or me don't enrage me or her husband my my favorite guests have been uh john height like john height um who else have been John Haidt. Like John Haidt? Who else have been a favorite guest? Michael Moynihan.

I like Moynihan. I actually did like having Norman Finkelstein on. I know. I was with you last time you had him. I mean, I was on just after you had him. And she can't. But that's for a different reason. I can't stand him.

I'm with you. I'm with you, Perry. I'm with you. And next question before we get into this because i just want to understand do you see yourself in this podcast as um serving israel first or journalism first or you see no conflict between the two wow that's a great question well let me start by saying i'm not a journalist so i don't see the podcast as a as a journalistic platform i see the podcast as a journalistic platform. I see the podcast as me having conversations with people in my network who I think are interesting and have insights into areas of the world I care about. Before October 7th, some of the episodes dealt with Israel. Since October 7th, I've only dealt with Israel except for one episode. But basically every single episode multiple times a week is about Israel

and the Middle East with my network inside Israel or around the world who care about that part of the world. And we're having conversations, and I'm letting listeners listen in on the conversation. So it's not about journalism and conflict. It's about trying to understand what's going on there. I'll tell you a story. I was in – I won't say where.

I was meeting with a senior official from the Saudi government late last year. And let's just say he's closely affiliated with Mohammed bin Salman. And he says, and he's citing the episodes of Call Me Back. I listen to this episode and that episode, and he's asking me questions and this and that. And finally I said to him, I said, I'm flattered that you're listening to our podcast, but why on earth are you listening to my podcast? I wouldn't have had the kingdom of Saudi Arabia as a target audience. Yeah.

And he said, it's the only podcast that I can listen to where I feel like I'm getting a sense for the conversation happening inside Israel. In other words, there's a sense for the conversation happening inside Israel. In other words, there's a lot of Israel broadcasting to the world. There's a lot of people arguing about Israel over in the West. But actually, we over here don't get a lot, meaning outside of Israel, don't get a lot of opportunities to hear the conversation happening between Israelis. So I have Israelis who are very supportive of Israeli government policy. I have Israelis who are very critical of Israeli government policy. I have Israelis who are somewhere in between. It's the conversation

inside Israel. So it's not about journalism or not journalism. Those are the conversations I'm interested in. Those are conversations I'm having regardless. So I hit record and let people listen in on it. The only thing I think I've never heard on your podcast, I don't know if it exists, is a pro-Netanyahu journalist. There seems to be... I've had Netanyahu. Yes, I want to get that later. I want to get to that. There seems to be a Netanyahu derangement syndrome in Israel where absolutely nothing the man can do, no matter what it is, is right. And that can't be true. First of all, it's certainly not true, because if you look at what happened before October 7th, he was prime minister for the negotiation of the Abraham Accords.

So that wasn't so bad. The first major opening of Israel into the Arab Middle East since really Camp Day, you know, since I mean, you could argue about the Jordanian agreement in the 90s. But the first biggie was Egypt and Israel in the late 70s and early 80s. Let's just add to that that he thought this was possible while the smart people belittled him for it. Well, he was saying for decades that the way to get Arab-Israeli peace is outside in, not inside out, meaning many observers, the smart people, as you say, were saying forever that the way you get peace between Arabs and Israelis is to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Once you solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you can solve the Israeli-Arab conflict. Once you solve the Israeli-Arab conflict, you have stability in the region. First of all, everything I just said is wrong, right?

First of all, what the Abraham Accords demonstrated is you can start getting Israeli-Arab peace without dealing with the Palestinian issue. And if at some point the Palestinian leadership will realize the train is leaving the station, the Arab world wants to normalize with Israel, and the Palestinians can choose to be part of it or not, A. B, the idea that even if you do solve the Israeli-Arab conflict, that you get stability in the Middle East is preposterous, right? Bashar Assad is not gassing hundreds of thousands and slaughtering hundreds of thousands of his citizens in Syria. And you don't have a refugee crisis out of Syria, the biggest refugee crisis in history, 15, 20 million people that have left since around 2014, 2015. That has nothing to do with Israel. We can just go down the list of countries that have total internal chaos that have nothing to do with Israel. But the smarts that argue that, Netanyahu for years had been arguing that you do not need an Israeli-Palestinian resolution in order to get

Israeli-Arab peace. I mean, he's not saying you shouldn't pursue Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolution. It's just a matter of what the sequencing is. I would also say since October 7th, and we can get to where responsibility lies for October 7th, but since October 7th, we had this unbelievable attack from Iran on Israel. We had 300 projectiles launched at Israel. In response, you had the most extraordinary multinational defense of Israel. You had Israel, you had Jordan, you had Saudi Arabia. It looks like the Emirates. You had France, you had the, you had Saudi Arabia, it looks like the Emirates, you had France, you had the U.S., you had the U.K., all participating in the defense of Israel. And then this Israeli response, which was also quite impressive. Does Netanyahu not deserve

credit for orchestrating all of that? Again, I'm not saying the man is blameless. I am simply saying the sense that he cannot do anything right is preposterous. There's an internal debate, in fact, I'm interviewing in the next couple days a gentleman by the name of Amos Harrell, who's one of the... He writes for Har Arts. Yeah, Har Arts, yeah. Very critical

of Netanyahu, but he basically... He's one of the most seasoned military journalists in Israel, and he thinks all this pressure on Netanyahu about day after plan, why no day after plan, there's some truth to it. That's part of the story. But it's also, most of that criticism is coming from the security establishment. And the security establishment, to some degree, wants to deflect from the responsibility that they bear for what happened on October 7th.

Again, I'm not here to point fingers. This is not some commission of inquiry. I'm just saying there's a lot of areas of responsibility, and I think Netanyahu clearly deserves some responsibility, but the idea that this is just a one-sided issue in the intra-Israel debate is absurd. No, and let the listeners know, I don't know very much of anything about Israeli politics. I'm not a partisan Israeli by any means. And I'm sure that any – how long has he been prime minister?

16 years? So he was prime minister – he was first elected, actually, in 1996. And then he was prime minister until 1999. Then he lost his reelection campaign to Ehud Barak. So he was prime minister until 1999 then he lost his re-election campaign to hud barak she was prime minister for about three years and then it was thought he could be done and then he mounted a comeback in 2008 and formed his government his next government late 2008 early 2009 and was basically prime minister until 2022 and then 2022 he was not prime minister and then early 23 he was he became prime minister until 2022. And then in 2022, he was not prime minister. And then in early 23, he became prime minister again.

So about 13 and a half of the last 17 years, he was prime minister. And then obviously the three years. If anybody— But the longest serving. He's the longest serving Israeli prime minister. If anybody's been prime minister that long, I'm sure there's a host of things that he did wrong. So I'm not taking a position pro-Netanyahu, but it seems to me his worldview, his general worldview that I've

been aware of all these years, that the Palestinians wouldn't make peace until they felt they had no choice, that we can make peace with the Arab nations, including Saudi Arabia. these seem to be borne out by events. He had a much, all those things I agree with you, he had a much bigger insight that I only came to appreciate in the last few years. He basically argued that the Arab world would not want to normalize relations with Israel as long as, so long as Israel looked weak. So there's a tendency that Israel can't be too aggressive. to normalize relations with Israel so long as Israel looked weak. So there's a tendency that Israel can't be too aggressive.

Israel needs to soften its style, soften its tone, and only then will the Arab world feel less threatened by Israel and agree to make peace and normalize with Israel. And he argued something entirely different, that the best shot for the Arab world to pursue normalization with Israel is if Israel looked strong. So if you look at the last couple of decades, basically from the early 2000s on,

Israel is a regional economic superpower, a global technology superpower, and was perceived and is, October 7th notwithstanding, a military and intelligence juggernaut in the region. So the strongest in every area, economically the strongest, technologically the strongest, meaning it's an innovation superpower, which was the focus of my first book, and then a military and intelligence, you know, kind of thoroughbred. And he calculated that if we are strong geopolitically and economically and technologically, all these Arab countries are going to want to normalize with us.

Because if they see Israel as a source of strength, they will want to piggyback onto that strength. Because the truth is, Israel and most of the Sunni Arab world have shared interests. A, pushing back against extreme Muslim jihadi-ism, like the Muslim Brotherhood, that has historically posed a threat to these Gulf countries, to the governments, which is basically a cousin of Hamas, and then the threat from Iran. So they share these interests, plus these Arab countries, these Gulf Arab countries want to modernize. They want to modernize their economies. MBS has these goals he's laid out, the 2030 goals, like the year 2030, that he seeks to achieve.

I've had Saudi officials tell me he doesn't believe he can achieve those goals unless he normalizes with Israel. He thinks Israel is a Silicon Valley that's a few-hour flight away rather than a 17-hour flight to the Bay Area. So if countries view Israel as strong geopolitically, economically, and militarily, they will want to partner with Israel. That was a key insight, by the way. Yeah, it's a psychological insight. True or false, by the way, and then I have another question. Saudi Arabia is horny for this deal with Israel, even more so. It's okay. I read that in a Kissinger book. Even more so because of October 7th, not less. When they saw what Hamas was capable of doing to Israel, it made it even more urgent for them to make a deal with Israel.

Well, look, I mean, the facts bear out. Saudi Arabia, many, many assumed Saudi Arabia would pull back from wanting to normalize with Israel after October 7th. They have done the opposite. The Saudi ambassador to the UK gave an interview within a couple weeks of October 7th on the BBC where he was asked, well, so I assume your efforts at normalization are over.

He said, no, no, no, we're still pursuing normalization. And the BBC interviewer was like, I'm sorry. Why were they bought otherwise? And you can see the interviewer's face. Wait, are you serious? He goes, yeah, we're going full steam ahead. And so, yeah, they're pursuing it. And, in fact, all this talk now that the Saudis are insisting on a path towards Palestinian statehood in the context of an Israeli-Saudi normalization, I'm skeptical.

I do not think that's coming from Riyadh. I think that's coming from Washington, D.C. I think that's coming from the Biden administration. I think the Biden administration wants to see a Palestinian state as part of normalization. I'm skeptical. I do not think that's coming from Riyadh. I think that's coming from Washington, D.C. I think that's coming from the Biden administration. I think the Biden administration wants to see a Palestinian state as part of normalization. I don't think the Saudis are opposed to it, but it's not something they're insisting upon. It's Washington that is telling the Saudis. So many things. I want to get to everything because everything you say makes me think of three other things. So just to save the record that Netanyahu does have legal troubles. Netanyahu does understand that the longer in the future the election comes,

the more of a chance he has to pull a rabbit out of a hat and stay in power. I disagree. You disagree that— I disagree that—I think that Netanyahu wants to stay in power. I don't think his legal problems are what his motivation is. No, I was saying two different things. Okay. That the further away from October 7th he stands again in an election, the more likely

people are to have gotten over it. Well, it gives him, it gives, he hopes, I don't think he's right, but the Israeli public will have some distance, the electorate will have some real distance from the actual trauma of October 7th, A. And B, he believes he will be at his best on leading the country through the recovery post-October 7th, remains to be seen. And that if he has time to prove that he's capable of that, that will also help him electorally. So for both those reasons, he needs time. Now, back to Saudi Arabia. It always seemed to me that if Saudi Arabia felt they wanted to have a close relationship with Israel because of the threat of jihadi, Muslim brotherhood, the threat of all that stuff to all the regimes, all the Sunni regimes, then why did anybody think that October 7th would

make them less likely to want to make that deal? What was their rationale? So why, in other words, if- Why did everybody get that wrong? It seemed to me immediately obvious. So if I was Saudi Arabia, I'd say, oh shit, we really need this deal with Israel. Look what they're capable of. This could happen at home. That's, yes. The flip side to that is if Israel responded strongly, which they did after October 7th, that there would be so much international attention on the human catastrophe in Gaza facing the Palestinian civilians,

which has happened, and that that would make it harder for any Arab government to have warmer relations with Israel at a time that Israel is being characterized, as we're seeing before the International Criminal Court, being responsible for crimes against humanity, or as others have said, genocide. So what Arab country is going to be able to stand before the Arab street in their country and say, we're going to normalize with this country that's waging war crimes against humanity, quote unquote? Well, that might be true, right? That may be why they want to be able to say,

even if it's pretextual, Israel has agreed to get on this path. Yeah, but perhaps, but I think that was the calculation. So I believe Hamas wanted... Look, let me start with this. Israel and Saudi were close to normalization before October 7th.

There's no question. We know that. And Hamas wanted to jam that up, and Iran wanted to jam that up. And so they calculated that if they could provoke a huge phase of bloodshed between Israelis and Palestinians, at a minimum, what it would do is slow it down. It has slowed it down. It hasn't killed it, but it has slowed it down. You think Iran knew about the attack before it happened? I don't know, but I don't care. For years, Iran had been training, has been training Hamas.

They have been arming Hamas. They've been funding Hamas. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have been in and out of Gaza. They have been, you know, like there are Hamas officials whose job it is to stay close to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. There's Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps senior generals whose job it is to coordinate closely with Hamas and Hezbollah. So what the exact details of what they knew, they knew that they were training Hamas to wage war against Israel. Did they know it was that date, that time, how it was going to be done?

I don't know. They're complicit. I've heard it said twice, once by Yuval Noah Harari on, I think, Sam Harris' podcast, and one by Tom Friedman, that this Saudi deal that was almost signed was supposed to have something in it for the Palestinians that Mahmoud Abbas was supposedly on board with. Do you know what that was? I mean, you've heard that.

I've heard this. I don't know exactly what it was. Friedman doesn't know what it was. But yes, there was there was going to be a sweetener in there for the Palestinians. It was not going to be statehood, but it was going to be, you know, it was going to be something. I mean, even by the way, when when way, when the U.S. and Israel were pushing through the Abraham Accords,

there were all sorts of sweeteners for the Palestinians, which they rejected, but there were definitely incentives for them to get on board with it. Do you think they want a state? I think they want one state, not two states. That's the problem. They want a state not side by side with Israel, but they want a state in place of Israel. When I say they, obviously that's loaded. But if you look at polling, all the public polling we have available today,

overwhelming 70 to 80 percent of Palestinians in Gaza support what Hamas did on October 7th. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank has still not condemned what Hamas did on October 7th. Their whole infrastructure in their government still indoctrinates young Palestinians to seek out death and destruction of Israelis, of Jews, create financial incentives for them to do so. So I think the whole culture, the Palestinian culture, around coexistence with the Jewish people and with an Israeli state is non-existent. Could that change? Could reformers come to power? Could there be a successor to Hamas or to the Palestinian Authority that has a different worldview? Perhaps. But right now, I think the whole focus of Palestinian national self-determination is focused on it existing in place of Israel.

If you listen to Khaled Michelle, who's one of the leaders of Hamas, he was in Turkey about three months ago, and he gave an interview. And he was asked about a two-state solution. What if the Palestinians are given a state? And he said, no, no, no, one state. One state, not two state, one state. And we will be – and he said, and I quote here, we will be – we, the Palestinian state, will be all the way from, he didn't just say from the river to the sea, so from east to west. He said from Rosh HaNikra, which is in the north, to Eilat, so north to south, east to west, north to south. I mean, they'll have the whole thing. I interviewed on my podcast a woman named Maya, there's this woman named Yarden, who was a hostage who was released late last year, Roman, Yarden Roman.

I interviewed Maya Roman, who's her cousin, and I interviewed her on the six-month anniversary. Now, Maya Roman has a relative who was released in the last hostage deal, and she's another relative, Carmel, who's still over there in Gaza being held hostage. And she said that her cousin, Yarden, described the conversation she would have with the guards that were assigned to guard her in captivity. And she would ask them, what is your vision for what happens to Israel? You know what? And they would say, look, we're going to build a caliphate there. They were very matter of fact. By the way, she said they were not unintelligent. She said that one of them had a law degree. I mean, these were not dumb people, and they articulated very clearly their vision, which was, as I said, a caliphate in the whole area, from Gaza all the way through Israel. It was one state. It was a caliphate. And he made some

comment, Jews can live there under us in the caliphate, but make no mistake about it, it's a caliphate. So, I mean, we can have these academic discussions about the prospect of a two-state solution, and I'm perfectly prepared to do that, but we should also just be honest that, like, the language they use is not even subtle. The language they use is not about, I mean, you even watch the language on the campus protest. There's no language about peaceful coexistence, two states living side by side. It's about – it's a one-state solution. But at some point, this implicates the competence of our leadership in Washington. I'd had this thought before that if I was a stable Palestinian living on the West Bank, no matter how much I hated the indignities and the humiliations of living in the occupied territories,

it would be clear to me that the day we have a state, whatever I have now is going to be lost in a civil war. There's going to be bloodshed immediately. And as a practical person, I would say, no, I prefer the status quo as bad as it is to what is inevitably going to happen if we get our own state. So I feel I would understand between the rock and that hard place. That's not a pleasant thing, but that's what I think I would conclude. But somehow Washington thinks it can ram this two-state solution down, not only the mouths of the one-staters, but of the people who might actually be interested in two states if they could actually rely on a stable Palestinian state.

But even they are probably scared of two states, in my opinion. So what is Washington up to here? If you look at the history of the Palestinian movement, as we'll call it that, from, you know, the, I call it early through the mid-20th century all the way to today, every opportunity, and we can go through every opportunity, the Peel Commission, 20th century, all the way to today. Every opportunity. I mean, we can go through every opportunity. The Peel Commission, the UN Partition Plan. I mean, we could just go.

And even post-Oslo. I'm giving you periods before Israel was even founded. Back then, they said they were rejectionists. Now they claim they are. No, no, but they were given the opportunity. There will be a Palestinian Arab state, and there will be a Jewish state. I mean, in the original plan for partition, it had Jerusalem as basically an internationalized city.

Jerusalem, no one was going to get Jerusalem. I mean, these were some of the most generous terms for the Palestinian Arabs living in the Arab world. Fair, fair, fair terms. I don't like the word generous, but fair. Fair, fair terms, fine. And then you, so that's pre-1948. Then you fast forward to, as you said, the Oslo process. And then you go post-Oslo.

You go to 2000 Camp David negotiations between Ahud Barak and Yasser Arafat and Bill Clinton. And then you go to 2008 and what Omer, Prime Minister Omer tried to do. And we can just go on and on and on. 2014, Obama had this whole – and Abbas wouldn't even respond. Right. People don't talk about that.

So at some point, like you have to ask the question, so is Israel just negotiating with itself? Is Washington just negotiating with itself. I mean, if the Palestinian leadership is not actually playing ball at any time, in any serious way, what kind of negotiation is Israel having? Now, there's one question that I have this regular guest on my podcast, this guy, Haviv Retikur, who's a very thoughtful guy. And he has repeatedly made this point to me since October 7th. The one thing Israel can't control, Israel can control a lot of things in terms of what it does

in its dealings with the Palestinians. The one thing Israel cannot control is the narrative the Palestinian leadership teaches to the Palestinian people. That's the one thing Israel just can't, you know, and the narrative they consistently teach, whether it's the one thing Israel just can't, you know, and the narrative they consistently teach, whether it's the period I'm talking about, about going back to the 1920s, or the partition plan in the 40s, whatever, pick your period, or the Oslo process, or the second Intifada. The narrative that is always being taught by the leadership to the

Palestinian people is at some point we, the Palestinians, will chase the Jews out of this land. As though, A, they were never there in the first place. They are, you know, settler colonialists. And B, that they have somewhere else to go. And in a sense, what Haviv argues in my podcast all the time is Israel's secret weapon is the reality. They have nowhere to go, right? Think about who populates most of Israel today. They are refugees from Eastern Europe. So are they going to go back to Poland and take back their homes and take back their communities? They're refugees from Iraq and Iran and Yemen and Egypt.

Are they going to go back to those places and say, I know you kicked us out in the early 50s, but we're back. We're back. We want to repopulate the place. They have nowhere to go. This is their homeland. It is where they lived for thousands of years, where the Jewish people had presence for thousands of years. They returned, and they have nowhere to go. And the Palestinian leadership consistently is telling

the Palestinian people, if we just push harder, if we just terrorize them more, if we just engage in the most ghoulish, unfathomable violence, we will subject the Jewish people here to the worst psychological torture, that they'll finally say, okay, we're done, we'll leave, we'll go where? They have nowhere else to go. And so like Israel's looking at the Palestinian leadership and say, we can do a lot. We can negotiate. We can give you land. They pulled out of Gaza. They gave them Gaza.

We can provide resources, economic resources for you to develop these. But we can't make you change the narrative that you teach your children. And the narrative today, here we are, what is it? May 21st. The narrative today on May 21st, 2024 hasn't changed in a century. All right, let's get back to Netanyahu. Do you believe he wants a two-state solution and just doesn't feel it's possible?

Or do you believe he actually wants Israel to keep these territories forever? Neither. Neither. Yeah. I do not think he wants Israel to occupy these territories forever. And in fact, even though he voted against Israeli disengagement from Gaza in the early 2000s, I think he was perfectly content with Israel not running Gaza. No Israeli government wanted to run Gaza. So he didn't want an Israeli presence in

Gaza. And I think he's perfectly content to have civilian governance in the West Bank be run by the Palestinians. What he is opposed to is sovereignty for an Arab country that could overnight become a terror state and be sitting on Israel's border. That's what he's opposed to. So until he sees real reform within the Palestinian movement that would let him believe that like. You know. Countries make decisions, right? What's the difference between the path that the Emiratis in the UAE have made about what they want for their country versus, you know, the Yemen's leadership about what you know, in terms of their vision for Yemen?

I mean, these are paths that countries take. Some countries pursue a country that develop a country along the lines that turns into basically a dysfunctional, civil war-torn terror state, and some are in the direction of the UAE, which is this flourishing, I mean, it's not without its complications, but a flourishing modern economy, Western-oriented in many respects, or at least integrated into the West. These are countries and leadership teams make decisions about the path they want to be on. I just think no leader in their right mind could say,

wow, this country, this land here is populated and led by people who want to turn this territory into a version of the Yemen model or the Taliban. Let's call it the Taliban. But we're going to give them statehood and sovereignty. And oh, by the way, it's two kilometers from our southern borders, two kilometers from population centers in our south. And they're going to have a military. And they're going to have an air force. And they're going to have an airport. And they're going to have sovereignty over airspace. And they're going to. It's just Netanyahu, not Netanyahu. No leader in the right mind would agree to that. So I think what he is comfortable with in the interim is if they want to govern their own society from a civil and civilian standpoint, fine.

But they're not going to get all the accoutrements of sovereignty that could pose a security risk to Israel. You know, it's such a powerful argument. And we spend so much time, you know, as a Jewish community, focusing on anti-Semitism in the last few months, and rightfully so because of expose the anti-Semitism much more clearly if people would be saying these things in light of ubiquitous facts and arguments that we all understood. Like, most of these kids protesting really have no idea, and it's easy to understand how ridiculous it would be for Israelis to want to turn over their fate to a Palestinian state. Now, they don't understand that, and this is a problem within the Jewish community,

too. Anyway, do you have a by the way it's it's so preposterous i mean do these students if they were you know protest here so we're right near nyu okay right now right so these students protesting in it who have been protesting nyu if al-qaeda which is basically what whatas is or ISIS, if they were in Staten Island and they were in control of Staten Island and they had just killed tens of thousands of Americans, slaughtered, and they had taken hostage thousands. I'm doing a proportionate to U.S. population.

Yeah, yeah. Taken hostage thousands of Americans, of Manhattanites, and dug tunnels, dungeons under Staten Island, and all these innocent Manhattanites enslaved in Staten Island. Would they be sitting here protesting, saying, no, no, no, it's not fair to them, it's not fair to the poor people of Staten Island? They would be like, do whatever you got to do to make this place secure, to get our citizens free.

I mean, it's just it's practical. But they when you live eight or seven or nine thousand miles away from a conflict zone, it's very and you don't have skin in the game. These kids protesting don't have any skin in the game. By the way, I I never thought I would defend the anti-Vietnam War protesters from the 60s, but compared to these kids, the kids protesting in 1968 had skin in the game. Yeah, they're being drafted and going off to die. 56,000 Americans were killed in the Vietnam War. So they had skin in the game. And by the way, their protesting was not, I mean, there were some exceptions, some more extreme exceptions. But by and large, their protesting was not an expression of solidarity with the Viet Cong. Their protesting was against American involvement in the region and against Americans being drafted.

So this is – these kids here don't have skin in the game, and they're openly expressing solidarity with an organization that is a terror organization that has terrorized Israelis and Americans. And it's a very easy thing for them to do. And Palestinians. Exactly. And Palestinians. By the way, Yechiel Sinwar, who's the architect of October 7th, made his name for murdering Palestinians, not for murdering Israelis. He was serving multiple life sentences in Israeli prison for murdering Palestinians. And so you can sit over here and it's like it's a very nice way to protest

because you have no skin in the game. It's something happening far away. It doesn't really affect you in their minds. Go live a life like a few kilometers away from the Gaza border and ask yourself, would you still hold the same views? They don't know anything. They don't even know something as basic as the fact that Jordan attacked Israel and that's how the territories became occupied. They don't know the most basic facts. And that's our failure. They should know these are not hard facts. I think I've had conversations with vehement anti-Israel people.

And when I started laying out some basic facts, you could see them like, oh, shit. Like, this is not what I thought it was. I didn't know. I only knew what my friends told me. Netanyahu's criticized for not having a day after plan. So far, I have not heard anybody come up with a day after plan which is pretty glaring and conspicuous nobody has a day after plan yeah so um i mean i benny gantz on saturday night gave a speech where he talked about some combination um of u.s and uh who was it? It was the U.S., Palestinian, and European forces

or officials that will stabilize Gaza. I'm thinking, what does that look like? That is like a smorgasbord of who's... The question for Israelis is, when Hamas reconstitutes itself, which if we are not careful, they will, when Hamas reconstitutes itself, which if we are not careful, they will, when Hamas reconstitutes itself, who will kill them? That's what Israelis want to know because they try to—

That's a good way to put it. Yeah. Who will kill them? Tell me who will kill Hamas. The nucleus of Hamas right now is mostly in Rafah but in other parts of Gaza too, and that nucleus will try—it's a nucleus of what could be a Hamas 2.0. They will try to reconst's a nucleus of what could be a Hamas 2.0. They will try to reconstitute themselves after Israel leaves.

And when they try to do that, no matter who's in charge here, tell us who will kill them. This phantom Arab multinational force is going to kill them? Really? By the way, do we think that these Arab countries—people talk to the Arabs— are going to send in a peacekeeping force? Really? By the way, do we think that these Arab countries, people talk to the Arabs, are going to send in a peacekeeping force? Really? Are they going to risk the lives of the citizens of Egypt or Saudi or the UAE to combat Hamas? And what happens when that force is there? If it is there, I'm skeptical that it will. And Israel sees a threat emerging. They see rocket launchers being built. They see terror cells being organized. They see new battalions of hamas being um uh trained and israel says okay we we see it okay peacekeeping force go go get them

go go take them out and they say well we we don't think the threat's that bad we want to wait a little bit israel's like we don't wait a little bit after october 7th we we see the threat we extinguish it and then there's a disagreement. You think Israel's going to sit there negotiating with some third-party security force? But, Dan, there's only one country that's going to risk fighting an insurgency there, and that's Israel. Right. So that means it has to be an Israeli occupation. So I don't think it has to be an Israeli occupation, but I do think it is going to be an insurgency for a while. This is not just a few months. This hope that the Biden administration had that it'll just take a

few months and we can just... I think Israel is going to have a security presence in Gaza for a while. Now, there's a difference between that and full-on occupation. Full-on occupation is they're there, they're there all the time, they're responsible for local governance. Israel doesn't want anything to do with that. They don't want to be responsible for local governance. If these other countries want to come and be responsible for governance, great. But Israel's saying, we will be responsible for security at the Israeli-Gaza border, we will be responsible for security at the Gaza-Egyptian border, and we will have responsible for the airspace, and we will have the flexibility and the right and the autonomy to come in and out

as need be, sort of like what Israel has in the West Bank. Israel basically, since it left Gaza, has not really been able to go in and out of Gaza easily. They can go in and out of the West Bank when they see a threat. Even though the Palestinian Authority has responsibility for local governance, Israel can go in and out of the West Bank whenever it wants. It has not had that posture between 2005 and 2023. It will now. So no matter who's in charge there, Israel has to have the ability to do kind of very focused, targeted operations.

But who can be in charge? Well, there are a few options. I'm not saying they're acceptable to me. I'm just saying these are the options that are being speculated. If you were prime minister, what would you— No, no, no. I'll tell you where the debate is, right, the debate within Israel. Some argue that a version of the palestinian authority could have responsibility for governance there uh others argue that some subset of these

arab countries they won't do it i don't think can start developing there's some local tribes local community leaders in in the palestinian community in gaza they could start building up where i agree with netanyahu is all these ideas, and we can explore even their other ideas too, they're all pointless until Hamas is gone. I mean, it's all academic. It's purely speculative. They all start with the same step, which is getting rid of Hamas.

Because they are all dependent on Palestinians stepping forward and saying, I take ownership. I want to build this place. I want to rebuild this place. I want to do it responsibly. I'm a moderate. And it's not clear that any Palestinian of any stature will stick their neck out so long as they believe there's a chance that Hamas will return.

And right now, Hamas has done a pretty good job of projecting the perception in Gaza that they're going to be back. And the world has helped them. The International Criminal Court has helped them. The UN has helped them. Europe and at times the U.S. administration has helped them. The U.S. campuses has helped them. Helped them project, like the pressure's mounting on Israel, not on Hamas.

We'll be back. And so long as the perception is that Hamas will be back, no Palestinian. Again, remember, Yehe Sinwar, what he was famous for, the way he rose through the ranks within Hamas, was he was the butcher of Palestinians, not Israelis. He was the guy that any time he suspected a Palestinian was quote-unquote collaborating with Israel, they were dead in the most visible and humiliating and torturous way. So most

Palestinians are like, they don't want to get on the wrong side of that. I don't blame them. And so until Hamas is dealt a decisive defeat, all these debates about the day after, to me, are interesting. They're interesting. They're definitely interesting. But purely purely speculative this reminds me also tom friedman he's such an expert don't get me started on tom friedman i'm going to and friend but i but i really have been frustrated

but i just wonder if i was alone in a room with him say okay tom you're speaking in riddles tell me concrete what you think should happen because nothing you have these lines but none of them actually ever go to a logical conclusion i can understand it's like this would be nice and that would be nice and riad or riad or rafa whatever that means oh my god that one drove me crazy but he's not a stupid person no he's a good writer is he is he in denial what is going on is being like, how does a smart person not force himself to follow it to a conclusion? Tom has basically had the same criticism of Israel for about 40, a little over 40 years. It hasn't changed.

Insert different characters, insert different prime ministers. On one of the episodes of my podcast, I read columns that Friedman had written in the mid to late 90s when Israel had to launch a military operation into southern Lebanon. And Shimon Peres, the architect of the new Middle East, the architect of the Oslo, of course, was prime minister at the time. It was after Rabin had been assassinated. And you read that column and you see what Friedman says about Peres and the Israelis. The most left-wing prime minister Israel has ever had. Totally. And who's done more other than Rabin for taking risks for a two-state solution than any leaders in Israeli history.

He was a great man, actually. Absolutely. And I knew him, and I was quite fond of him. And he was a huge champion and help on our first book on Startup Nation. He's a wonderful person. I'm close with his son, Chemi Peres, who's a very successful venture capitalist in Israel. If you look at what Friedman wrote about Peres in the 90s,

you could take out the name Shimon Peres and put in the name Benjamin Netanyahu. You could take out South Lebanon and you could put in Gaza. And it's the same piece. It's the same piece. And Tom Friedman has been writing the same piece for decades. So he tries to make this now about Netanyahu and that this is Netanyahu's war. These are Netanyahu's choices.

First of all, I don't agree with that. I think that this is Israel's war. Netanyahu's war, and these are Netanyahu's choices. First of all, I don't agree with that. I think that this is Israel's war. Netanyahu happens to be prime minister. Most of the country supports the war cabinet's objectives, even though Netanyahu's unpopular. But he has the sense that, like, Friedman personifies the whole thing to Netanyahu, makes it all about Netanyahu.

And if you just remove Netanyahu... So this riff, he did what you're referring to. Rafa or Riyadh? Netanyahu, makes it all about Netanyahu. And if you just remove Netanyahu, so this riff he did what you're referring to, Rafah or Riyadh, Netanyahu has to choose. Israel either goes to Rafah or goes to Riyadh and gets normalization, but it can't have both. First of all, it's not true, right? Riyadh wants Israel to defeat Hamas. And Israel cannot defeat Hamas without going into Rafah.

Now, Riyadh and Washington may have views about how Israel does Rafah, but Riyadh is not telling the Israelis don't go into Rafah. And so he creates these false choices. The other thing he says in that same column, which made me crazy, is he kept saying he understands why Israel wants revenge. We understand why Israelis are vengeful after what happened on October 7th, but they need to restrain their feelings of vengefulness for the sake of some sort of more constructive outcome.

As though the only motivation of Israelis is vengeance, which is preposterous. At no time in that column does he acknowledge that leave aside the understandable feeling of vengeance, the primary motivation of Israel is restoring security, making sure that another October 7th never happens again. By the way, there are tens of thousands of Israelis who aren't living in their homes right now.

And many of them are from the communities in the south, in southern Israel, that go up against the Gaza border. You've got to persuade those Israelis that it's safe enough to head back south. You are not going to persuade them of that until you can tell them security has been restored. Hamas is gone. That is a very rational discussion the Israeli political leadership is having with the Israeli people, right? We can't encourage you to move back to your homes until we tell you that the monsters who tried to massacre you on October 7th are gone. That is a rational discussion. Friedman is making it sound like these bloodthirsty Israelis just

want revenge, which is offensive. I've made this point many times already, but I think there's something psychological where people don't actually think Israel is a real country in the sense that it has the right to the decisions that every real country has. So if a huge part of England had to be cleared out for whatever reason until further notice, the world would understand, oh, England's going to go flatten those people because they don't have to abandon towns for whatever. But

somehow Israel should abandon towns. And, you know, per capita, you're talking about places the size of Cincinnati or San Diego, tremendous number of people. No other country, even if not a single person died. America is not abandoning Cincinnati for anybody's lives. We're just not going to. But let's kick it up above Tom Friedman. All right, Tom Friedman is just a journalist. How do you explain people like Gantz and Gallant making arguments about a day after,

which somehow can't wrap your mind around? So it's politics. There's a lot. We have a few minutes. Yeah, if you don't't mind staying i'd like to hear it yeah all right so let me start with this gonz so so for our listeners for your listeners there's a war cabinet i mean i know you guys know this but yeah tell the listeners okay so there's a war cabinet um that that is a multi-party war cabinet, meaning it's not just the Likud party, which is Netanyahu's party, that's in the war cabinet.

The war cabinet consists of three voting members, and this war cabinet was set up after October 7th. By October 10th, the war cabinet was formed, and it consists of Netanyahu, Benny Gantz, who's the leader of a party called National Unity, National Unity Party, which is outside of Netanyahu's governing coalition. So he was in the opposition. He joined the government after October 7th. So it's and there's another politician, former IDF chief of staff as well, Gadi Eisenkot.

Who lost his son. Lost his son and his nephew. It's important. Yeah, we'll come back his son and his nephew. It's important. Yeah, we'll come back to that because I think it's extremely important. Gadi Eizenkot and Benny Gantz are part of the National Unity Party. They joined the war cabinet. So it's Bibi, Gantz, and Yoav Galant, who's the defense minister of the Likud party.

They're the voting members of the war cabinet. And then there are observers, the formal members of the war cabinet, which is Ron Dermer, who's the Minister of Strategic Affairs, close confidant of Netanyahu's. And Gadi Azenkat's an observer. And then Aryeh Derry, who's another politician from the Shah's party, controversial figure. And so this war cabinet basically agreed together on objectives for the war, which was eliminate Hamas, eliminate the capabilities that Hamas has, which basically means demilitarize Gaza, and get the hostages back. Those were the goals. They have pursued those goals, and even to this day, they are all locked arms in pursuit of those goals. Where there has been some division, and that division has only really erupted in the last few weeks,

I think it was simmering, but it's only erupted in the last few weeks, is over a debate about what the day after, what we were talking about before. This debate we were having before, what's the plan for the day after? But it wasn't a debate about whether or not Israel goes into Rafah. I mean, Gantz himself, when he went to Washington two and a half months ago, and the Biden administration was hammering Gantz about Rafah, and he had this fantastic formulation. He said, asking us to go into Gaza and supporting us to go into Gaza. It's important the administration supported Israel's warring. And then asking us to stop short of Rafah is like

asking the fire department to go to a house that's burning down and put out 80% of the fire and then leave. When you know that because of that 20%, the fire department's going to have to come back at some point. And so you asking us not to go to Rafah is like that 20% of the fire

that's still burning the house and asking the fire department to leave. So this is Benny Gantz. So again, on the goals of eliminating Hamas, getting the hostages back, getting rid, demilitarizing Gaza, all these parties are unified. Where they disagree and where these disagreements have been simmering is about the day after. What is Netanyahu's vision for what happens in Gaza after the war? And some in the war cabinet are concerned

that because Netanyahu doesn't have a plan, Israel's on a path towards one of two things. One is the Palestinian Authority being put in charge, which nobody supports, but that's silly because Netanyahu doesn't support that either. Or that basically means it's going to be an occupation of Gaza.

And that's unacceptable to the other war cabinet members. Although I don't believe Netanyahu wants an occupation of Gaza. And that's unacceptable to the other war cabinet members. Although I don't believe Netanyahu wants an occupation of Gaza. Now, their criticism of him is because he's under pressure from hard right elements within his own government, these names you hear, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Bacelo Smoltrich, hard right members, who want occupation of Gaza, they think he's being restrained by them.

I do think he has cross pressures from them, from the right. But I don't think that's why he doesn't have a day after plan. I think he doesn't have a day after plan primarily because Hamas isn't defeated. It's hard to develop a plan that's just not purely academic. But they want a plan. And the administration, the Biden administration, has been pressuring them. So it's a little bit of intra-Israeli politics, some external politics impacting intra-Isi it still doesn't make i mean i hear what you're saying none of it's it just doesn't make sense to me these guys know each other they sit in a room together this subject comes up

what do they say to each other i mean you mean you're trying to visualize this yeah i'm trying to say how they're saying public things yeah does gantz have an idea somebody somebody's got to have an idea that you can say netanyahu you're only doing this because you're afraid of uh you're you're these these right-wing extremists otherwise you'd be doing what well so they would argue i'm not putting words in their mouth but they generally you know they would, they would argue, articulate something, Mr. Prime Minister. Why don't they say what they think he should articulate? I agree with you.

I agree with you. Because they don't know what they think he should articulate. Or they have such high level, you know, unimplementable plans that they're just, they don't, that you can't, you can't like hold them to account because they're so abstract. I guess it's very difficult to say out loud and to even wrap your, to accept that some problems at certain points have no solutions. You are, have you heard me say this before? No, I've said this. She knows I've said this. I, I, this is the hardest.

This is the hardest conclusion. I'm not saying I'm rock solid on, but I have increasingly migrated towards, which is maybe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is just a tragic relationship for which we cannot, we've been trying for over 100 years. We still can't find a resolution.

And I hate to think it'll be another 100 years, but it might be. I don't know. I hope it won't be. I spent a lot of my life concerned about Israel, worried about Israel, and so I think these issues through and I try to constantly think about it. And we thought we were close.

Right, but maybe this conflict for the... You know what's interesting? I worked in the U.S. government. I've always been struck – and I'm a student of U.S. policymaking, foreign policymaking, a student meaning amateur student. I mean I read about and study in my spare time, which I have less of these days, American approach to foreign policy, which is in most cases quite impressive and certainly unique in the world. And thank God that the U.S. foreign policy, U.S. foreign policy and U.S. military power fills the vacuum. But there is a tendency, and I saw this in Iraq when I worked in Iraq for

the Bush administration. Americans always want a plan, a seven-step plan. We're going to do this and that, turnkey, and then boom, and here's the playbook, and let's go. And it's a very American mindset, right? We've built the most amazing country on the planet, in no small part because of this can-do, every time I see a nail, we're the hammer, we're going to get to work, this is what we do. And sometimes in other parts of the world people don't operate

that way and they they you know it's like that old line that the taliban used to say to to the american forces in afghanistan uh you americans may have clocks but we have time you know clever yeah like you guys you guys have your clocks and your plans and your timelines and your milestones. We have time. They were right. They were right. They waited us out. And 20 years later, we left with our tails between our legs.

Not them. And they're back in power. They had time. They have patience. And they're not in such a rush to solve this problem. So, again, I actually believe, for most of Israel's history, most Israelis have wanted to solve this problem. So again, I actually believe for most of Israel's history, most Israelis have wanted to solve this problem, or at least since 1967. Most Israelis, and certainly since 1987, after the first intifada, most Israelis have wanted to solve this problem.

When given the opportunity to deal with a real party on the other side who is serious about peace, Israelis have demonstrated they will make enormous concessions. My gosh, Camp David accords with Egypt. And when you think about that, right, Israel gave up the Sinai. They gave up territory that was three times the size of Israel to get a peace agreement with Egypt. And when the Israelis thought that Sadat and the Egyptians weren't serious

about a peace treaty, in fact, there was a poll taken at one point in 1979 in Israel, where Israelis were asked, do you think there will be a peace agreement with Egypt? Would you support a peace agreement? Overwhelming majority of Israelis said no. No. Sadat flies to Ben-Gurion Airport. He comes to the Israeli Knesset, stands before Israel's parliament, and says, I am serious about peace. I want peace. I will recognize Israel's right to exist. I will recognize Israeli sovereignty.

Poll taken days later, boom, completely flipped. Overwhelming majority of Israelis say do a deal. Jordan, in the 1990s, Jordan says we want a peace agreement. Israelis go for it. I can give you example. My point is Israelis have demonstrated when there's when there's a real path, they will take risks. I just think right now and certainly after October 7th. So I tell you, I've told the story before. She knows that my father was one of his American, but he was born in Israel. He was very skeptical of Sadat against the really against the treaty because he didn't trust him.

And then I remember exactly where I was. We were watching Sadat come to speak to the Knesset, and my father burst out in tears. Were you living here or there? We were living here. But he burst out in tears. He said he means it. I mean, he means it. Isn't that amazing?

And immediately he switched. Immediately. Because it was never about not wanting peace. What Israeli wouldn't want peace? It was not wanting to put yourself in a dangerous situation. By the way, I'll tell you one more story about that. The sincerity of what Sadat did. With that exact moment that moved your father.

My friend, Mayor Soloveitchik, Rabbi Mayor Soloveitchik, who's an Orthodox rabbi here in New York City, and he's, like me, he's a big Begin fan. We're both, we're not the only ones who are sort of an Avmanach Begin. When Sadat was flying to Israel, he was flying on a Saturday. And before he flew, Begin called him and said, President Sadat, I appreciate that you want to come to Israel, but can you please make sure you land after sundown? Because I want to meet you at the airport and greet you, and I can't do that on Shabbat. And Sadat agreed and changed his plans so Begin could meet him after Shabbat. So there were these little details that get lost to history, but at the time, those little notes

broke through, and that came back to the sincerity that he means it. And by the way, people on the right, you know, Jimmy Carter is such a kind of villain and a laughingstock. He doesn't get enough credit. I read at one time, many years years ago about Carter's involvement in Camp David. He really pulled it out. He played an important role. However, he wouldn't let them leave. He told stories. But before that, before Camp David, when there was back channels going on and Carter was trying to, you know, and Brzezinski and they were trying to make things happen. It was ultimately Bagan and Carter's channels directly with each

other that accelerated it. But yes, Carter does deserve credit. Two quick things. So I went to this dialogue conference this weekend. You know what that is? It's one of these things where different people who have ideas go and they... Dialogue? Yeah. Out west? Yeah, in Tucson. My wife was there.

Oh, yeah? I didn't know you were there. Yeah, I was there. Is this your first time going? My first time going, yeah. I've been a bunch of times. And I actually, I was very nervous, and I didn't think I belonged there. I don't know. But I actually ended up having a very good time. It's great.

But I had one, you're not allowed to say who you spoke to. But I had an argument. You're allowed to say what you're talking about, I think. So I had an argument with somebody who we both know about the following, and I wonder where you come down. I feel like since they're probably, Israel will probably be occupying these territories 20 years from now. And the demographics of the United States

will be all the younger people. Wait, you think Israel will be occupying Gaza? West Bank and Gaza, or West Bank. 20 years from now? You were talking about 100 years. Yeah, 100 years. 10 years from now. Yeah.

I feel like this is going to lead to a very, very uncomfortable situation, psychological situation, for Jews in America, because they live on the left. And more and more, the Jews are going to become, Israel is going to become to be seen as the modern-day version of South Africa. And we all remember how South Africans were embarrassed to say who they were in the 80s. And I feel like this is going to put pressure on many Jews who are not Orthodox to separate themselves from Israel and in some way from their own people.

Do you fear that? Does that reverberate with you? So first of all, that image terrifies me. Yes. And there are many aspects to it that terrify me, not the least of which is you are describing a Jewish people who have no connection to Judaism and Jewish life and Jewish peoplehood, that they would get so spooked out by criticisms of Israel

that they suddenly basically go in hiding, is what you're saying, as far as the Jewish identity is concerned. They'll go underground. In some way, underground maybe. By the way, I think that is the agenda of the... I'm Jewish, but I'm one of the good ones. I'm not, they will... We're the good ones.

Yeah, but I know that. But listen, peer pressure is huge. It usually wins. You know Jewish history better than I do, but this is what happened in previous generations of Jewish history where they began to put their, who they were, their peculiarities at an arm's distance in order to be better accepted by the social justice cool kids. I think that right now what you're seeing is people vying for social clout and i think that what i've seen with and i've always been much

further to the left than you um is actually a real pushback against that that all of these super artsy liberal gay jews who have always been super left-wing which is where i've always lived have been like wait a, this narrative is bullshit. And we are not, the Holocaust wasn't that far behind us. Well, if the Democratic Party does not continue to be pro-Israel, which I think is very likely, Jews will either have to leave the Democratic Party or they will buckle to the vibe of the Democratic Party. That's what they're doing, though. We'll see.

There's another layer to this, which is I'm raising my kids in a very Jewishly engaged home, in a very Jewishly engaged traditions and rituals and community, and leave aside the political debates about Israel, which is what you're talking about, that the political debates about Israel will be so toxic that it'll be uncomfortable. And many Jews will weigh that against the other benefits of Judaism and say it's not worth it. Like, this is a stigma, and I'm not getting over here, this is a stigma, and over here, the good stuff, this is the bad stuff, the stigma, the quote-unquote stigma, and here's the bad stuff, and I'm not getting enough of the, sorry, I'm not getting the good stuff

to make, enough of the good stuff to make the bad stuff worth it. And that's what scares me, is that there are so fewer fewer and fewer jews today that are enjoying the the the joy of judaism yes the the joying the rituals enjoying the holidays that's why enjoying the family time together yes enjoying the becoming literate jews raising their children engage in judaism giving my children derive so much joy from our jewish family time together from the jewish community they're part of from the connection they have have to Jews around the world, including in Israel, from their connection to the Jewish state. Most of it is joy.

The headaches, the argument, the debate, the stigma at times is eclipsed by the joy and the sense of ownership and responsibility and continuity that they feel and intergenerational continuity. And so shame on us if we fail to teach that and pass that along. Shame on us, absolutely. I'm so cynical it would not shock me to hear the Reformed Synagogue of America embrace the idea that Israel's committing genocide.

I think they are so yearning to be accepted and liked by the people on the left. You know what makes me cringe? You know this term tikkun olam? Yes. Tikkun olam, which, you know, repair the world under God. Jewish commandment to repair the God, repair the world. There are many interpretations of how that should be applied.

Many, not all, many on the left in the Jewish world over the last couple of decades have turned tikkun olam into some sort of commandment to social justice, right? I'm fighting climate change. That's tikkun olam. I'm fighting, you know, harsh criminal sentencing in our judicial system. That's tikkun olam. I'm fighting for, I don't know, gender pay equity. That's tikkun olam. By the way, some of these causes may be worthy, I'm not saying, but many Jews, more secular, more assimilated, have interpreted these causes as some sort of expression of Judaism. And then October 7th happens. And they look around, and I have many friends who feel this way.

By the way, I had her on my podcast, so I can use her as an example. Sheryl Sandberg, right? Sheryl Sandberg was on my podcast a few episodes ago, and she, former COO of Facebook, Meta, she's immersed herself quite powerfully in the whole issue of how sexual violence has been used as a tool, a weapon of war, and the war against the Jews in October 7th. And she says, she said on my podcast, she and I've had conversations, she woke up after October 7th and said, wait,

I've been involved with all these causes that have nothing to do with Israel. And just as a good, liberal, assimilated American, and I wake up one day and I look to my, liberal, assimilated American. And I wake up one day, and I look all around me, and I'm all alone. All these people I've been working with on their causes, or what I thought were our shared causes, don't have my back now. And I think a lot of Jews are awakening to this idea that this whole idea of tikkun olam is my Judaism, and my Judaism connects me with all these people, are learning that it's BS. That these other groups and these other, you know, allied, you know, coalition members that we believed had our back because we were working

with them on other causes was nonsense. They don't have our back. And if you want a little piece of history, and I'll leave your listeners with this, I highly recommend the book called The Pity of It All, which is a book written by a Jewish historian named Amos Alon, who's a great writer, historian, and it's about Jewish-German life from basically the late 1700s to 1933. And it is chilling, because he captures in that book, right up through the peak of, you know, right up to right before Hitler takes power, how the Jews of Germany felt assimilated and established and integrated. And we are locked arms with our fellow German citizens of all religious and stripes. And we're just part of we're part of their society. We're all one society.

And the moment things turned, they really turned. And those German Jews looked around and said, wait a minute. We thought we were valued members of the society. We thought we all had all these shared causes, and we're making all these important contributions. And they realized they were alone. Douglas Murray, you guys know Douglas Murray? Of course.

I know him. So I was with him a couple weeks ago at the speech he gave at the Manhattan Institute. Fantastic speech. Listeners can look it up on YouTube. And he said something that it's like sometimes you hear a line and it like crystallizes how you feel. You wish you had thought about it. I wish I was eloquent. He does that a lot.

He says something and you're like, that. That is exactly how I feel. But he says, some moments in history, there are these events that are like a flash, like a flame goes up in the sky, and they illuminate everything and everyone around you. And then in that flash, you can look to your left and look to your right, and you see where everybody stands. And he says October 7th was one of those flashes where it was just like a flash, and in that moment, you see where everybody stands,

and not where everyone stands generally, but also where everyone stands relative to you. And I think there were a lot of Jews who were looking around after October 7th saying, I thought we were shared causes. I thought we were friends. I thought I had your back and you had mine. And now I realize I'm alone.

So many of the Jews, I mean, many, many, many of them, even to some extent, with all due respect, Periel, when I first met her, are not even convinced in their heart of hearts that their cause is just. They don't know the basic arguments. They don't know. Well, that's it.

So that's on us. Yeah, that's their parents and that's their grandparents. That's the community. I blame us 100%. Totally. But we need that. It has to be our priority. I took my wife and I took our children to Israel over Pesach.

I only blame us. Right. Just to be clear. I don't blame the outside world. It's us. So we took our children to Israel over Pesach. I only blame us, just to be clear. I don't blame the outside world. It's us. So we took our children to Israel over Pesach, over Passover. It was a few weeks ago. There's a third time I'd been to Israel since October 7th. It was my wife's second time, my kids' first time since October 7th. And last summer, just to give you a comparison,

last summer we went with my mother, who's in her mid-80s and lives in Jerusalem. She's a Holocaust survivor. She's from Kosice, which is a small town in Slovakia. We went with her and my extended family, about 15 of us, cousins, aunts, uncles. We went to her hometown with her, and then we went to Auschwitz. We went to Krakow in Poland, and then we went to Auschwitz, where her father was killed. So here's my son. My sons are teenagers, and they are with their grandmother in Auschwitz where their great-grandfather was killed. And then you fast-forward to October 7th, and then you fast-forward to a few weeks ago when I'm in Israel with my kids, and we take them down to the Gaza envelope.

We take them to southern Israel. We go to the Nova Music site. We go to kibbutz near Oz. They see a lot. And that night I'm walking with my kids in Tel Aviv. And I say, all right, you know what it is. You guys have teenagers? Do you have teenagers?

I have 12. Okay. So, you know, when they get to this age where they don't say much, they don't talk a lot now you're like pulling out of them you know like so i wait i don't press them throughout the day what their observations were whether late that night we're coming home from dinner we're walking along the beach in tel aviv i said hey guys what was your reaction to today because they had seen some pretty horrible stuff that day and my older son son said, my 16-year-old said,

you know, I know this is going to sound weird to say what I'm about to say. He said, but remember we went to Auschwitz with Safda? That's what they call their grandmother, which is Hebrew for grandmother, with Safda. I said, yeah. He said, I found today going to those communities in southern Israel harder than going to Auschwitz. A 16-year-old boy says that. And I said, why?

And he said, because I just always assumed Auschwitz and the Holocaust and the Shoah and all of the terribleness that it represented was something that happened in another time in history. And when you think about it, my son has been leading a pretty charmed life, right? He was born after September 11th. And then like these last couple of decades have been like a great time to be a Jew in America. And he says, and then I see that it's not just something that happened in another time in history, in another lifetime that could be like kind of sealed up and put in another place. It happened seven months ago. And I thought to myself, wow, shame on me that like he

could have gone through life had there not been October 7th thinking thinking, you know, like not... And my kids are about as connected to Judaism as you can find. So I think the burden is on us, Noam. I think the burden is on us to give these kids a sense of connection, a sense of perspective, and a sense of history. And if we fail, you get this catastrophe that you're watching, this slow-motion train wreck of these idiotic students on U.S. college campuses. You know, when there's an injustice to the black community,

every, the best and brightest of the black community speaks up, the best politicians. Where's Chuck Schumer? Where's Gerald Nadler? There's a number of them, and Bernie Sanders. Yeah, Bernie Sanders. But if I was, you know, people, this is not the important issue to most people. They do look at how the important Jewish people respond. They say, well, if he's not defending it,

why would anybody? How is it different from those German Jews I'm talking about in the pity of it all? I think we've seen who the important Jewish people are. I think they've risen from places that you wouldn't have expected them to. I think that not everybody can scream from the rooftops. I think that each of us has a moral and ethical responsibility to do what we are capable of. And that suddenly, like, look at Michael Rappaport, for example. I think that it's like, oh, my God, wow, who would have thought that? And I think that there are a lot of those people internationally, actually, who have risen to make those loud. We'll see.

There's another dynamic, which is Trump. Also, we have another show. It's so important. I think it works backwards. It's so important for people that Trump lose. They're very reluctant to say anything which would be seen as a criticism of Biden

because that would work. I think that some prominent Jews may be keeping quiet simply because they don't want people to vote. If you really believe that, then I guess we should vote for Trump. I think that's going on. I don't think that's – I think it's a convenient excuse. Well, sir, I will see – That's great.

Call Me Back is doing a live podcast at the Comedy Cellar on June 3rd. It's already sold out, everybody. You're too late. We'll have to do another one. Okay, thank you. Thanks, guys. Thank you.