The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - One Year Since 10/7 with Dan Senor

Episode Date: October 8, 2024

Dan Senor is a columnist, writer, and political adviser. He is co-author of the book Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle and The Genius of Israel. He is host of the podcast Call Me Back. 

of the world-famous Comedy Cellar on Sirius XM 99 Raw Comedy, also available as a podcast. And on YouTube, this is Dan Natterman, here with Noam Vorman, the owner of the Comedy Cellar. Perry L. Ashenbrand joins us. And we have with us in studio a returning guest, Dan Senor, a columnist, writer, and political advisor, co-author of the book Startup Nation, the story of Israel's economic miracle and the genius of Israel. And he is the host of the podcast, Call Me Back. Welcome, Dan. Thank you, guys.

Good to be with you on a otherwise pretty dark day. Yeah, so let's just say today is October 7th, the one-year anniversary. We're pretty honored to have you here today, and I'm happy to be able to speak to you here today because you've risen, I mean you're a known person, but you've risen as one of the most important Dan, maybe the most important voice

or forum for reasonable thoughtful, soulful Jewish opinions, like Chaviv Retik Gor and your own opinions and the various people that you've presented. So I'm honored to have you here today. Thank you. I will say I'm honored to be here for two reasons.

One, the first time we met was a conversation I had at this table. The first time I was with all three of you, actually. It was soon after October 7th. I mean, it was like a month after October 7th. Yeah. And then since then, we've done two events, live events at the Comedy Cellar, which have been fascinating to me

because it reminded me in the post-October 7th world how much how much Jews I mean not that we need reminders but Jews feel alone and any opportunity they're given to particularly diaspora Jews any opportunity they're given to be together and build a sense of community around content so there was real content in those conversations we held downstairs but but there's also a sense of people were together and So there was real content in those conversations we held downstairs. But there was also a sense that people were together. And the togetherness was as important as the content. And so I'm just grateful for you to create that, to have created that venue and the forum for that

because I think it was very meaningful to people. Oh, of course. I'm happy to do that. So what are you feeling today on your anniversary? What's at the top of your head? It's sort of paradoxical because the last few weeks have been extraordinary where you have felt, many of us have felt for the first time

really since October 7th, Israel is truly on offense, that Israel is truly making things happen and dealing with the threats that surround it. When we say there are 60,000 to 70,000 Israelis in northern Israel with no line of sight into how they're going to return to their homes because these communities have been completely evacuated and they're refugees inside Israel, something that's never happened before in all of Israel's history, by the way, where the borders actually shrink and people become internal refugees. And then the actions Israel has engaged in in southern Lebanon against Hezbollah, suddenly you start to paint a picture, you can paint a picture of what it looks like from a

security standpoint for Israelis to be able to return back to their homes in these communities in the north. One of the great losses of October 7th, I think, was the loss of the perception of Israel as this very creative, very resourceful, and mighty military and intelligence juggernaut. And there was that perception in the region. I think that was a big reason for why so many countries in the Sunni countries and the Sunni Gulf wanted to normalize with Israel, because there was that perception that Israel was a source of strength, and therefore a country that others wanted to, they want to piggyback onto that strength. And one of the big risks of October 7th is it left the impression that Israel was a paper tiger, that suddenly Israel was not that impressive. And I think that much of the criticism of Israel in the region was not catalyzed by, but certainly was accompanied by the sense that Israel was not all that, was not all that strong. And then, sure enough, in the last few weeks, we've seen how strong Israel is and how Israel can be.

I think they've restored the sense that they are an intelligence and military juggernaut. And suddenly now all these Sunni Gulf nations are back in the business of wanting to normalize with Israel if they haven't already. And they're far less critical of Israel. So that's what the last few weeks have been like. And the paradoxical part is then you arrive at October 7th. And you're just reminded it's October 7th and you're reminded that this was this day that was the worst single day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust and and you just cannot believe what has happened and that this happened and then you're also

reminded as I am today when I get notices like I do for my kid's school, Jewish day school, telling me safety precautions they have to take today in their neighborhood on the Upper West Side because of fears of protests. And you sit to think, no, fears of protests against people who were attacked. Not fear of protests against people who attacked, but fear of protests against people who were attacked. And you're reminded, as I am, that on October 8th, 30 student organizations at Harvard University issued a joint statement blaming Israel. Israel's to be held entirely responsible, and I quote, for what happened on October 7th. You think about a professor at Cornell University who's now back on the job,

who on October 8th or 9th said he was exhilarated by what Hamas did to the Jews. And, I mean, we can go on and on and on. It's worth if you have other things at the top of your head because now's the time to go on and on a little bit. Just the whole notion that it was a thing to tear down posters of women and children and elderly people who were being held hostage in the dungeons of Gaza, that that was a thing.

There's a video I just saw today, two videos, I've seen a lot, but two I'll just mention. One is of some guy in London walking by a memorial for the victims of October 7th. And he's just walking by and he looks like a reasonable, I mean, if you see him in any other context, he looks like a reasonable middle class, upper middle class, totally normal. He looks, I hate to use the word, i'll use it totally civilized and he doesn't realize he's being filmed and he just goes and he literally destroys this memorial it's in a park he just breaks it down tears up the hostage posters just destroys the whole thing and then a video i just posted on twitter on Twitter less than an hour ago.

Columbia University, Jewish students at Columbia University having a ceremony to remember those who were lost, and they are being outnumbered and shouted out and effectively overrun by, I don't even want to call them anti-Israel, they're so much more vile than just saying they're anti-Israel, although that would be vile enough, but protesters that are celebrating October 7th as a day of resistance, and they go out and populate to shout down and basically suffocate these Jews who are, Jewish students are just minding their own business, wanting to have a memorial ceremony, not making a political statement, not making a geopolitical statement. They just want to remember people they know or people they feel some connection to who were slaughtered. And the language that's being used by these other students who are protesting them and trying to drown them out is the exact same language that Hamas used on October 7th.

So it's not like these students are saying, it's terrible what happened on October 7th, but there needs to be a ceasefire. It's terrible what happened on October 7th, but Israel's response was disproportionate, even if I think that's absurd. They're not even saying that. They're using language of resistance,

from the river to the sea, globalized the Intifada, burn down, bomb Tel Aviv. I mean, this is the language they're using. They're using the language of Hamas here in New York City at an elite education institution as a way to antagonize Jewish students minding their own business and just dealing with despair. And so, you know, I wasn't alive on December 7th, 1942, on the one-year anniversary of Pearl Harbor. I was around and here on September 11th, 2002, on the one-year anniversary of 9-11. I don't remember any protest attacking the victims of September 11th, ever. I mean, we have a ceremony.

We just had it every year down at Ground Zero. It's not – you wouldn't even fathom it. It's unfathomable. Like, you would never even say, well, was there a protest? It's just not even discussed. There are no protests that are celebrating the death and destruction of the 3,000 Americans who were slaughtered on September 11th. You can't even put it in a frame.

You couldn't even imagine it. And yet this is normal for the Jews. And imagine the uproar if there were. Right. Absolutely. And one of the tragically distinctive features of anti-semitism through the centuries and through the millennia is anti-semitism and vilification of the jews typically does not follow jewish weakness sorry typically does not follow

jewish strength it almost always follows jewish. It's when the Jews are punched that that's when the vilification comes. And that's exactly, and I didn't see it at the time. I didn't, like on October 7th and October 8th and October 9th, I didn't see it coming. Like I didn't, I sort of start to see the protest. It didn't occur to me this is the way it always goes. That somehow when the jews are are attacked it is like there's a there's almost like a bat signal that goes out that whatever anti-semitism was below

the surface should feel comfortable coming out and coming out strong and now is the time to unleash on those we choose it's it's happened every it happened, you know, if you go back to Spain, you know, what culminated with the Spanish Inquisition, you certainly see that in the pogroms, you see it in most of Eastern and Central Europe, as the Nazis made their way through. The local attacks against Jews typically followed much bigger attacks against the Jews, and so it wasn't like people had sympathy for the Jews after they were attacked. It was like, now is our time to strike. And I remember after October 7th,

you guys may remember this, when Bono was performing, I think, at the Sphere. U2 was performing at the Sphere, and he gave this moving tribute about the victims of the Nova Music Festival. And I remember thinking, oh, this is, you know, like, there's outrage. There's going to be outrage directed at those who massacred Jews. This is, keep in mind, before

Israel even responded, and that was an outlier. That was short-lived. That was what turned out to be much more prevalent, was the outrage was at the Jews for objecting to being massacred. And so when I say my feelings are sort of in conflict with one another, on the one hand, I feel this tremendous sense of awe. We're in the month of Jewish holidays we're in right now. I'll talk about awe. We're a tremendous sense of awe at what Israel has accomplished these last few weeks, and at the same time, a tremendous sense of sadness,

not only because of the shattering of Israel and Israeli society that we're memorializing today, but also the degree to which so many people we all thought we knew are basically okay with it. Not saying they support it, but they're okay with it. Meaning they're okay with it. Meaning they're not willing to stick their neck out to say anything. There's very little expression of empathy directed at Jews who are feeling, who are just sad today.

And I do think we're at an end of a, and I'm not the first person to use this phrase, but we're at the end of a golden era of jewish life in america maybe maybe there'll be a resurgence of something great for jews in america but for jews as they've known life in america over the last call it century is uh half century is it it feels changed i'm not convinced that it's all anti-Semitism. They're the anti-Semites. They're the Israel haters.

There's also people that just hate the West, hate what they regard as white colonialism. I think that's a fair percentage of what's going on. I know people that are fiercely anti-Israel, but that are, in my experience, not anti-Semitic at all, including Jews. So then you may be right, but then why not in the celebration of what Al-Qaeda did to us on 9-11?

Because if they think we're the colonialists, Americans are the colonialists too, then what al-Qaeda did against America would have been an expression of resistance much like Hamas did to Israel. Well, I think they know that won't be tolerated. Okay, well, then that's very revealing. Right?

Then it's okay to punch the Jews. And I also call bullshit on that. 9-11 2001 was a long time ago. These trends weren't as stark but I don't know.

I worry that, by the way, I use the phrase, the golden age of American Jewelry. I think two years ago I was worried about what was coming. We're losing this battle somehow. It brings to mind this whole other issue of social media and censorship and people like us who always value the marketplace of ideas. Anti-Semitism does not – the fight against anti-Semitism does not seem to be prevailing in the marketplace of ideas as we would have fantasized that it would. Maybe we have just haven't gotten our act together as advocates for ourselves yet.

But I feel like it's even gotten worse out there. The arguments, which I think are so powerful on behalf of Israel, and I'll say sometimes they're presented in a way which is a little tone-deaf, meaning that if you are someone who is on the other end in some way emotionally hurting because of your involvement in people who are being killed, some of the ways that we speak...

Meaning the Palestinians being killed? Yes, yes. But then why... It doesn't explain why there was this explosion of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment before Israel even responded to them. I'm not addressing it. I'm saying that sometimes the arguments that I hear made by advocates for Israel, I can imagine how they fall on deaf ears because the immediate thing that comes to mind is, yeah, I'm sure. What about all my people who died, right? And of course, we'd like them to say, well, that's different, but people are not capable of

that. But we are losing somehow in the marketplace of ideas. Recently, Glenn Lowry, of all people, a friend of mine, I hope I'm talking about it, came out praising Ta-Nehisi Coates' book. Including the sections on Israel? Yes. I mean, yes. He didn't get specific. He hasn't gotten specific yet, but yes. And he's a deep thinker, you know. So somehow we're not getting through to people.

And it's very demoralizing. And if you imagine... Well, maybe i'll ask you this question i mean yeah to say we're not getting through is an understatement i mean the adl just came out with data today or yesterday since october 7th 2023 until the 2023, through the end of September 2024, there have been 10,000, 10,000 incidents of anti-Semitism in the United States that fall into one of three categories, violence against Jews,

vandalism against Jewish properties, or verbal expression, oral expression of anti-Semitism. It's the highest level of anti-Semitism recorded in any year since the ADL began recording anti-Semitic incidents, going back to 1979. It's a multifold, like 200% increase over the same period during the year before. So to say we're not getting across,

that's, I disagree with the premise, meaning it's, there's a sense that if we only educate people and better inform them, they will see what kind of siege we're under and be empathetic. I don't buy it. I don't buy that it's just an education process. Because to say it's an education process is to say it's an intellectual process.

And as Brett Stevens, I think, very eloquently put in the New York Times over the weekend, bigotry is not an intellectual failing. It's a moral failing. So it's not about teaching young people about history. There's like a moral breakdown when it comes to the Jews. Now, maybe broader than the Jews. It could be Western civilization as we know it, which I do think there's something to that. But right here, right now, for some reason, very smart people, right?

These are people who are running our top universities. These are students at our top universities. They are people who lead some of the most important nonprofit organizations, cultural institutions, public policy advocacy organizations, heads of state in certain countries. For some reason, these people take what was once morally indefensible and say, it's not only socially acceptable to say, it's actually a badge of honor. It's a badge of pride.

It's actually, you are more an accepted part of what we call civil society or elite society, if you represent those abhorrent views, I think that there's something much more going on here than if we just educate people a little better. Well, I was saying the education doesn't seem to be working, but, you know, there was, I mean, it's some of everything. There was a kind of, what do you people say?

A cordon sanitaire, is that what you say? When the gatekeepers of social, is that the expression? It's not an expression I'm familiar with, but okay. He speaks French. A cordon sanitaire is like a line, like a quarantine, you know, where a line to guard, prevent disease from coming. The old system of gatekeepers in media in some way kept a lid on the ubiquitous open expression of anti-Semitism. And now, like my 9, 10, 11-year-old children, who knows what they're seeing on TikTok.

And they're vulnerable to the most – the arguments that the most naive people are vulnerable to that just look like dramatic heartstring arguments. They're not capable of any context. They see starving children or what looks like starving children or children dying, whatever. And they say our people are awful and their friends say that. What I'm going to ask you is, what do you see a year from now, two years from now, in terms of... I have a better sense of what I see in Israel. Yeah. I mean, in terms of America, but you can answer either way. there will be some short to near-term path, short to medium-term path for some Palestinian-led or Arab-led civil administration of Gaza with Israel in partnership with others,

providing security, certainly being responsible for security at Israel's southern border with Gaza, also providing security between Gaza and Egypt, Sinai, and obviously not allowing Israel having total authority over Gaza and airspace. So I would say it's sovereignty minus. It's not total sovereignty, but there will be some. I don't think Israel is going to be running Gaza in one, two years. The north could be very interesting. The Lebanon, I mean, Hezbollah could be, if not wiped out, considerably destabilized to the point that it just doesn't have the influence it had, not only in Lebanon, but also as a threat to Israel. And Iran could be seriously set back. I think this is the moment

for Israel to strike, to do something big against Iran, and I know they're considering it. So I think we are seeing potentially an upending of the status quo in the Middle East writ large in ways that we couldn't have imagined. I mean, it could be the biggest upending of the region since Egypt's peace treaty with Israel back in the late 70s and 1980 so that's um that's encouraging in terms of here in the u.s i'm less encouraged uh the near term near to medium term i just don't see there being as much of a cost as there should be for those who traffic in some of this, the most anti-Semitic canards and vile that you could possibly imagine. There's just not a cost for it.

If anything, there is some cultural reward for it. And I don't, you know, now maybe, I mean, if I wanted to be, if you force me to be optimistic um i do think more and more jews in america today are being much more thoughtful about what it means to be a jew yes it can't be a passive experience the way it was for many jews i'm jewish i was born jewish you know my kids are you know like people just kind of went through the motions. They dipped in and out, chose what they liked, discarded what they didn't like, led this beautiful blend of an assimilated American life

with a little bit of Judaism sprinkled in. And I think there are more and more Jews who are thinking differently about what it means to be a Jew, what the obligations are, what the joys are, what the rituals are, what the community's about, what it means to have literate Jews, to raise literate Jews. And I'm seeing it. I'm seeing more and more people contemplating,

maybe I should send my kids to a Jewish day school. Maybe I should send my kids to a Jewish summer camp. Maybe I should give them a sense of Jewish community. My son went on a trip this summer, a volunteer, post-October 7th volunteer trip in Israel, teenager, with all teenagers. Half the kids were Israeli, half the kids were Americans. Most of the American kids were not kids who were from across the country,

American Jewish kids, who were not very involved with any real organized Jewish community in the cities they came from. So, and they were choosing to spend part of their summer this way. So maybe we will see more and more Jews being much more thoughtful and proactive about leading Jewish lives and not just taking it for granted. Do you see any movement in the other direction? People saying it's not worth it to be Jewish because of all this crap. So they're going in the other direction. Yes.

So I do think there are some. Yes. So there are some Jews who are already living passively and they're just in the other direction. Yes, so I do think there are some, yes, so there are some Jews who are already living passively, and they're just going to live more passively. They're just going to be like, what do I need this for? And I mean, I don't think they're going to leave Judaism entirely, but I speak to some Jewish students who are in campuses, who weren't raised with a strong connection to Judaism, and they see all this craziness on campus and the sense to drive Jews underground, and they sort of this craziness on campus, and they, in the sense,

to drive Jews underground, and they sort of say, okay, so I'll be driven underground. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna go to the Hillel. I'm not gonna go to the Chabad. I'm not gonna, I'm not, I'm just gonna engage in a completely different part of campus life. And so they're choosing to, but these were kids who were already probably pretty disconnected. They're just becoming more disconnected. What I'm struck by is you're seeing a lot of kids who also kids who are disconnected who are deciding they need to be more connected. What about people like Noam's kids who are half and could kind of go either way?

Well, I mean, I don't know what will happen with them. I had them converted when they were babies. I don't know if that'll take. My daughter asked me if I would buy her a Jewish star, which was a very emotional moment for me until I found out maybe she had a crush on a Jewish boy in class. But either way, I'll take it, right?

Right. You know, there's this concept I've been thinking about. I'm very pessimistic. And there's this concept of the Overton window, but I always imagine it more in this situation as an undertow like you get in the water because you you know you kind of care about the palestinian suffering and the undertow carries you out to anti-semitism and positions you could have never imagined you would have taken if i had told ken roth that jackass was on this

show so all right ken everything's everything disproportionate how about if i could hand deliver a bomb to every single person in hezbollah and they would and and then i could set them up a package just to you had ken roth on this show no yeah you should watch it it was was he here uh in person hold up so i said how about if i could just hand deliver and wait Wait, how recent was this? About eight months ago. Oh, so it was before this pager attack. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Before the pager attack. Oh, but now you're saying, if I could ask him.

Yeah, if I could have asked him years ago, would that be before? Years ago, he might have said, well, yeah, that sounds, if you could be that pinpoint about delivering bombs. First of all, we have, I'm pretty sure, he's Amnesty International, right? He was. Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch. I'm pretty sure they were critical of the International, right? He was. Human Rights Watch. Human Rights Watch. Yeah.

I'm pretty sure they were critical of the. Of course, everybody was. Right. Who would have thought that someday they'd find themselves not only objecting to Israel's bombing of women and children in Gaza, but they'd find themselves screaming war crime if Israel hand delivers a bomb to each of the actual terrorists. No, that's not okay either. And when you wake up and you see that, you say, well, as you said,

this is beyond the guardrails of any kind of rational argument. I'll do you one better. And I agree with what you said. Is there one better? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to outdo your... You're going to outdo hand-delivering jobs?

Yeah. I bring the goods when i come to you know to the podcast um i do not agree with those who argue if only there were a diplomatic track that gave palestinians their own path to self-determination that that you know we'd see substantially less violence i I think we're beyond that. So I don't agree with that. But if people have those views, I can generally take them in good faith. Like they're saying, look, if there's a two-state solution, then people's own level of desperation goes down. And when people are less desperate, they do less desperate

things. It's not an illogical position. Right, right. That's what I mean. So I can engage that. That, to me, is a serious conversation. Again, I don't agree with it, but I can engage it. But then I say, so what? Okay, so that's the Palestinians.

What about Hezbollah? What does Hezbollah want? Really? I mean, there's no territorial dispute. Listen, they're not Sunni. They're not Palestinians. their land is not occupied. Exactly. And they're Shiites who normally hate the Sunnis.

And they are responsible for the slaughter and torture, the most brutal slaughtering and torturing of hundreds of thousands of Sunni Muslims in Syria. So these are the same people that were slaughtering Sunni Muslims in Syria. Which nobody ever complained about, by the way. Crickets. Silence. And then they bomb Israel, and suddenly they're working on behalf of some righteous cause. And so when I say, what does Hezbollah want?

What does Iran want? Let me say one thing. So this brings us to Iran, and this is where certain people also lose my respect. So fine, if you believe the things that Dan is saying and you believe in a two-state solution, you cannot deny that a Palestinian state on the West Bank will be a danger to Israel so long as Iran is a powerful regime that is looking to make the government of that new state its proxy and have missiles coming. So you can't have it both ways. And yet the same people who fantasize about this Palestinian state and the diplomatic

solution are against Israel taking out Iran. But as I said, I'm just repeating myself, but if you're fair-minded, you realize so long as Iran exists, everything else is precluded. We can't ever have a Palestinian state with an aggressive Iran, right? I think what they would respond to you is they would say, well, Hezbollah and Iran are attacking Israel on behalf of the Palestinians. I think that's what somebody would respond. So then the question becomes, suppose there is a Palestinian state living side by side with the Jewish state.

Will that be enough to mollify Hezbollah? No, but they think that... By the way, it won't even be enough to mollify Hamas. I mean, Hamas said they do not want a two-state solution. I'm just saying with the people right now railing against Israel, how they would respond to it, no, I'm just... No, I'll read you from... Go ahead, I'll read you from the Hezbollah chart.

All they keep saying is they want to get rid of Israel. Right. We're the ones who are trying to, like, tease... Not only are they saying it, but... So let me read you from the Hezbollah position paper, as it Israel. Right. We're the ones who are trying to like tease. Not only are they saying it, but. So let me read you from the Hezbollah position paper, as it were. Okay. Our primary assumption in our fight against Israel

states that the Zionist entity is aggressive from its inception and built on lands wrested from their owners at the expense of the rights of Muslim people, therefore are struggleable and only when the entity is obliterated. We recognize no treaty with it, no ceasefire,

no peace agreements, whether separate or consolidated, and it just continues from there. So that's in their own words. They don't give a shit about settlements on the West Bank. It's Israel, all of it. Right. From the river to the sea. It says from the river to the sea.

That's the correct answer, but I'm just saying what... Yeah, but the people I'm referring to, the Glenn Greenwalds, the people who are maybe treacherous in their own way, but we would expect to have not so lack of shame that they would just embrace a ridiculous argument. They embrace ridiculous arguments because somehow there's no cost to that anymore. So can I. You know what I'm saying? And that's very profound somehow there's no cost to that anymore. That's very profound. There's no cost anymore. It's more than there's no cost.

That the value of striking out against the Jews and the Jewish state is higher than any pushback they may get. It's that they're rewarded for it. Captured.

There are tenured professors at Harvard pushback they may get. It's that they're rewarded for it. That's right. Captured. Yeah. I mean, there are tenured professors at Harvard who are now marching with the Hezbollah flag. I mean, Hezbollah, which by the way, to your earlier point, not only has slaughtered Jews, but it has slaughtered more Americans than any other terrorist organization.

Hassan Nasrallah is, I was with senior officials from CENTCOM, U.S. CENTCOM, a week ago, who said the three terrorists most responsible for American bloodshed are Osama bin Laden, Qasem Soleimani, former head of the IRGC, Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Hassan Nasrallah, right? Hundreds of Americans have been killed by Hezbollah, both attacks in Iraq and obviously the April and October bombings in Beirut in 83. Israel just took this guy out. And Muslims.

And Muslims, right, right. But nobody says anything about that. Do you think, I mean, there's been some talk about celebrations among Lebanese Christians and among Syrians after the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah. That's real. I don't get the sense that. And among Sunni Muslims. I'm telling you.

Okay. I've gotten more messages on WhatsApp from friends of mine in sunni muslim countries both officials and regular people who i know who've reached out saying look we may have had our issues with what israel was doing with you know in gaza what israel's doing now against hezbollah is the greatest thing in the world they're sending memes around in arabic mocking yeah they are they are they Yeah, they are celebrating it, which makes these idiot, to bring it back here, these idiot protesters and students in this country

seem even more, like they're even more absurd than one would think. And we already thought they were pretty absurd. They're even more absurd because much of the Arab Middle East is celebrating what Israel's doing in the north. Can we give ourselves permission to fantasize that somehow in the face of all this death and tragedy, that the pendulum in that part of the world might actually swing towards moderation as we would normally expect it in other peoples? In America, when the war doesn't work out, we swing towards peace.

If peace doesn't work, swing towards peace. For 100 years in that part of the world, no amount of disaster, no amount of backfire of plans gone awry, no humiliation, no routing has seemed to make the pendulum swing in a rational way towards a different alternative. Maybe it did. We don't even know to this day whether Arafat was serious or he wasn't serious.

Well, I think you do see it in parts of the Middle East. So Sadat's decision to fly to Israel in 1977 and stand before Israel's Knesset, Israel's parliament, and saying, I want peace. I recognize Israel's right to exist. I want a diplomatic solution with Israel. Now, that followed Israel's shocking turnaround of events in the 1973 Yom Kippur War and Israel bouncing back and defeating basically Egypt and Syria

and the other countries they were facing in the 1973 war. And then Entebbe in 1976, when Israel engineered this daring mission to rescue Israeli and Jewish hostages in Uganda. There was just a series of events where Sadat finally said, enough, we've tried everything. You know that Sadat actually, from what I've read, I kind of learned this from Norman Finkelstein, by the way. Oh, God. No, that Sadat actually, when he first took power, was already thinking about peace with Israel. And nobody took him seriously, including Kissinger. They just assumed it was a ruse of some kind, which finally led him to the 73 War.

But Sadat was a great man. That's just the bottom line. In Saudi Arabia, you have Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince, who I understand is controversial. But he has made a decision to de-radicalize Saudi society. And he's done it to great effect over the last number of years and basically put Saudi Arabia on a path, however jammed up it's gotten,

but put Saudi Arabia on a path to normalization with Israel. So you do have, and obviously the Emiratis and the Bahrainis, that, by the way, the ultimate test of the normalized relations between those Gulf countries and Israel was this past year. And the fact that this past year has happened the way it happened, and you still have the UAE ambassador in Tel Aviv. You still have the Bahraini ambassador in Tel Aviv. There's still trade between these two countries.

There's still tourism between these two countries. They've held. I actually think much of the region is moving in the right direction, with the exception, obviously, of Iran, who's trying to stymie the progress in the right direction, with the exception, obviously, of Iran, who's trying to stymie the progress in the region, and then the Palestinians and parts of Palestinian society. That's probably why they unleashed October 7th, because they saw the normalization, they saw the normalizing of relations,

and they were trying to inflame the region in a regional war, which, by the way, they've been successful at. The Palestinians, who, in my experience, are the most cosmopolitan people and educated people and nice people, you know, you would think that maybe after all this, whether they think it's a, how bitter they think the pill is,

they say, listen, we just got to get realistic here. It's not going to happen for us. And let's sit down and try to make a deal. Can we talk about Iran for one second? We're going a little circuitous, but it's something I've been thinking about. If I'm Iran right now, and they seem to be, as of October 7, 2024, seem to be kind of exposed as a paper tiger, I would think in just a common sense way, well, I've be kind of exposed as a paper tiger. I would think in just a common sense way,

well, I've been holding off on going nuclear. I'm going nuclear right now because that's all I have. My big fear is that they're going to race to a bomb now. They've been caught naked. And they had relied

on Hezbollah as a deterrent against Israel from hitting Iran's nuclear program. That the theory was, and I used to hear this in Israeli security circles all the time, that, well, we have to be careful if we take action against Iran because they have 200,000 rockets staring down us via Hezbollah. They have the best trained terrorist organization in the region in Hezbollah. They have, you know, 10 times the manpower of Hamas in Hezbollah. So we've got to be damn careful about what we do with Iran because we have this Hezbollah breathing down our throat. Now Israel is systematically, I don't know, temporarily paralyzing, if not outright removing,

this threat that is Hezbollah. So Iran is naked. And if I'm Iran, now I race to a nuclear bomb. And I think they were already doing it before. We got a report from the Director of National Intelligence about eight weeks ago that said there were signs that Iran had removed the pause from their program. So I think it was already in the works,

and I think this will accelerate things. Would they be crazy enough to use it, knowing that it ensures their own destruction? I don't know, but you can't, trying to war game that out is, you know, it's... Well, let me answer that sort of, I mean, what happened to the Palestinians in Gaza

is on the order of what happened to the Japanese when the Hiroshima bomb dropped. They were ready to do that. You know, I mean, it's just, it's a sloppy analogy. The point is that Sinwar did not care that, well, if we do this, we might lose, you know, 50 or 100,000 people. He'd be happy about it. So the normal rules of deterrence cannot be relied on with Iran. I think they probably wouldn't use it. I mean, Iran of deterrence cannot be relied on with Iran. I think they

probably wouldn't use it. I mean, Iran is a messianic regime. It's very hard to game out what a messianic regime will do. With the Soviet Union during the Cold War, as much as the Soviet Union was the evil empire, we also believed there were rational actors leading the Soviet Union. And even then, we don't really trust they wouldn't use it, right? Right, right, right. So then you take, now, are there some rational actors

in the leadership circles in Iran? Probably. Are there also some revolutionaries and messianic thinkers who have a sin noir mindset? Probably. There's another issue there. Ever since I saw that, I've talked about it all the time, Chernobyl, that HBO series Chernobyl,

and gave a little glimpse of what a totalitarian, incompetent regime looks like, just the fact that Iran would have an atom bomb, just the accidental risk is beyond anything the world ought to be able to tolerate. I can just imagine the circuit breakers with duct tape on them so they don't trip and nobody wants to blow the whistle because the boss you know it's look at all the miscues during the cuban

missile crisis during the cuban missile crisis there were so many miscues and those miscues could have resulted in nuclear war imagine all the miscues that could happen with iran after chernobyl they had soviet scientists lying to Gorbachev about how bad it was. They said, no, it's only 100 rengen. And then it only came out later, well, the Geiger counters

only go to 100. This is true. So can you imagine in Iran, the Soviets at least are smart people. I mean, not that the Iranians are not smart, but the Soviets are sane, right?

Right. So we can't have that. And once Iran has it, everyone has it. So I hope they do it. Can they do it? I mean, you know, you talk, they're debunkers with these installations in them. I mean, is it?

I think it's very hard. I think there are basically two locations, two major locations in Iran where the nuclear capabilities exist. One of those locations is heavily fortified underground. One of those locations is above ground. I think Israel has no problem doing the above ground operations. The question is, can it do the below ground operations? Some Israelis I speak to said yes.

Other Israelis I speak to say yes, but. And the yes, but is, but we need cooperation with the United States to get it done. You know, I don't... Also, there's a known, unknown here in the Rumsfeld term, is that after seeing how infiltrated Hezbollah was by Israeli intelligence,

it wouldn't shock me that Israel has much more access to what's going on in Iran than we've understood. These are not like Israeli Eli Coens. These are Iranians that are on the— Who knows? Who knows? Well, you saw what happened when Israel took out Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. I mean, imagine that.

They go right into the heart of Tehran, right into the government, kind of VIP, exclusive, foreign dignitary, protected section of Tehran. And they take out one of the leaders of Hamas. That's amazing. In this surgical operation. That could not have been done without Israel being very well connected and sourced inside Tehran. And by the way, that was hours after Hania

had been with the supreme leader of Iran, which means, imagine from Iran's perspective, from the Iranian leadership's perspective, Israel could have gotten really close to the supreme leader. But they're saying that about Hezbollah in Lebanon also, that there's no way Israel would have succeeded in that precise and that successful of an operation without people who have been working alongside of them, right? That's exactly right. No, Israel's intelligence capabilities in these places

far exceed what anybody had thought. The best is the former president of, what's his name, former president of Iran. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yeah, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yeah, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Thank you. I forgot, you know, such a long time ago. Ahmadinejad just said that when he was president,

there was a unit in Iran whose job it was to target Mossad agents. So they were gathering the names of the Mossad agents and would try to target them. The only problem was, it turns out, the head of the unit was a Mossad agent. I saw that. I just said that.

And I didn't know whether it was true or not. And I don't know if it's true either. But it gives you a sense, even if it's not true, of the level of paranoia that they must have now. I had joked that Hezbollah will be seriously worried about putting the next person in charge and actually be a Mossad agent.

Right. No, but not a joke. I know. I made a video about it. It's hysterical. Somebody inside there is an Israeli agent. But again, these are Iranians working with Israel or these are Israelis

undercover? Both. It could be both. It has to be both. We don't know and we don't want to know. Let's go back now. And we're not going to know. Right. So what's the point of speculating both. We don't know and we don't want to know. All right, let's go back now. And we're not going to know. Right. So what's the point of speculating? And it's in everybody's interest for us not to know.

What is our report card for Benjamin Netanyahu after a year? And say whatever you want, but don't leave out the issue of whether or not he was affected in his decisions about the hostages by his own political ambitions. So obviously, everyone in the political and security leadership owns the day of October 7th. I mean, no matter how you slice and dice it, and I've heard arguments from the security establishment, why the political leadership made mistakes, never heard arguments from the political establishment, why the security establishment failed to, you know, ring the, you know, alert everyone above them about what was, what they were seeing and hearing. We don't know the answer to any of these questions, the answer to any of these questions. We'll learn them. There'll be a commission of inquiry,

much like there was after the Yom Kippur War, and we'll get a better understanding. But obviously, Netanyahu was the prime minister, and he was prime minister when this happened. So one way or the other, he owns it. He owns enormous responsibility. What he's done since October 7th, I think most of what he's done in terms of the military and strategic steps Israel has taken, there's been broad consensus for it, to the point that through most of this time, there was a war cabinet that included some of Netanyahu's

most bitter political enemies, and there were over 90 votes in the war cabinet, and the votes were unanimous. There was no, you know, right now, just these last few days, there's an op-ed by Benny Gantz in the New York Times making the case for why Israel has to deal with Iran. When Israel was being told by the Biden administration not to go into Rafah, Benny Gantz, again, Netanyahu's bitter political opponent, was in D.C. meeting with the Biden-Harris administration telling them Israel has to go into Rafah. So if Netanyahu has made mistakes, these aren't mistakes that are his alone there's broad

support for them among the security leadership uh then where i am most critical of netanyahu is not what he has done on the military security strategic side although i do think he waited too long before going into rafa i think the israel lost and that again that wasn't just him but israel was under enormous pressure from the U.S. to not go into Rafah. I think Israel lost about three months, three critical months before it went into Rafah. I think if they had gone sooner, it would have been helpful,

and that was a decision of the government's. But there's a real breakdown in trust in Israeli society right now, and they just poll after poll after poll shows, and the views are hard to interpret the polling because they say, you know, contradictory things. But there is just a general sense that people don't trust Netanyahu. It's hard to have a prime minister in wartime who people don't trust, even if you think from time to time he's doing the right thing. Like most Israelis

seem to think that Netanyahu has been prosecuting this war in the north quite effectively. Do I think he's making decisions based on his own legal issues? No. I think those legal issues are the case, the legal, we can go through them, but the legal cases against Netanyahu are not very robust. I think that that is not what he lives in fear of. He's an ambitious politician, and ambitious politicians want to survive politically, and they want to protect their legacies. And that was true when Margaret Thatcher was driven out of office after serving for too long. It's obviously true of Winston Churchill after World War II, even, where people celebrated his success in World War II, but then the public turned on him. I think he's, Netanyahu is, you know, cares about his legacy and he wants to protect it and he wants to win this war, how he sees. So what was the breaking point between him and Gallant when they seemed to have a falling

out that somehow revolved around the hostages and whether or not they could retake the Philadelphia quarter or not if they made some concessions. Yeah, so the debate between, again, as I understand it, the debate between Netanyahu and Gallant was Netanyahu had said that we cannot agree to any deal that has Israel permanently or even semi-permanently leaving the Philadelphia corridor because it flakes or something right Philadelphia corridor is where a hostages could be taken out of Gaza into the Sinai into Egypt leadership of Hamas could escape uh Hamas could get supplies from that's where most of a lot of their supplies had come through through the Philadelphia corridor so Netanyahu said we can't give up the Philadelphia corridor. And this then got turned in the press to, ah, Netanyahu stuck to the Philadelphia corridor,

and this is why a deal won't get done, and therefore he's being too hardline, or he's just looking for red herrings to kind of kill a deal. Now, I was with a senior official in the U.S. administration, the Biden administration, about a month ago, and he argued, and he's a senior official in the U.S. administration, the Biden administration, about a month ago. And he argued, and he's a key player on the hostage negotiation team for the U.S. He argued that he was asked this question in this meeting. He said, is Netanyahu holding up a deal? He said, listen, he says, there's probably about 10 issues that are holding up a deal. The Philadelphia corridor is one of them.

The other nine are all Hamas. Every single one of them is Hamas coming up with these last-minute changes to this and that. He says, do you honestly think if the Philadelphia Corridor were the only issue that we wouldn't pressure Israel to change? The problem is, it's just one of many issues,

and most of the issues are on Hamas' side. And even when we disagree with Israel, we think Israel is operating basically in good faith, that they're at the table as a reasonable partner. It would be nice to have an American president who went in front of a microphone, if that's the truth, and said it. Right. It's crazy to me.

I mean, Hamas, this individual told the story where he said they were bouncing between Doha and Cairo negotiating for the release of the hostages in a temporary ceasefire. And they had a list of the hostages by name that would be released in the first phase of this deal. And so the names were on the list. I mean, Hirsch Goldberg Poland was one of the names on the list. Carmel Gott, these are people, families I know, Carmel Gott was on the list. These families knew that their loved ones were on a list

that was being negotiated at in real time. When Rachel Goldberg at Hirsch's funeral said, we could taste a deal, that it was, she used the term crunchy. It was like so real, it was crunchy. That's what she's referring to, I think. And then those six hostages get executed so you have people whose names are on a list that are being negotiated for release and then they get

executed and this u.s official said you know i honestly thought after that happened that the hamas negotiators would convey we we feel terrible, we're sorry. Some guards who were guarding those hostages got trigger happy. They got a little freaked out. Things got out of control. This was not a decision that came down from our command. We didn't intend, we're trying to negotiate. We're trying to negotiate in good faith.

He said, no, they didn't convey any of that. To the contrary, they released Hamas propaganda videos with those six hostages speaking to the camera designed to torment their families and torment Israeli society. He said, this is what we're dealing with. We are not operating with an organization in good faith. We're not dealing with an organization that's operating in good faith. And so we could quibble with things Netanyahu has done, certainly. It's worth doing. Like I said, I would quibble with some things. But the idea

that there's no ceasefire or no hostage deal because of Netanyahu's legal issues, legal concerns, I just think sounds preposterous. I know you have to be out in two minutes. All right. So your friends with Bret Stephens, because he wrote some pretty tough anti-Netanyahu columns. And then he defended Netanyahu in the Philadelphia corridor. Has he softened at all? You speak to him? Well, so it's interesting. So he had written some tough pieces on Netanyahu,

and then he wrote a piece about six weeks ago where he said Netanyahu is completely right on the Philadelphia corridor. Yeah. And he said people who are critical of Netanyahu, meaning present company included, meaning himself, have to concede that Netanyahu is right on this issue. I'll add one other point. So I'm close to a lot.

Brett's a good guy. He's terrific. He's a very close friend. I just was texting with him today, actually. He wrote this terrific essay over the weekend on anti-Semitism. It's very worthwhile. I was commenting to him about it. I'm close to a number of the hostage families.

Obviously, one cannot imagine. You just can't even, you know, what they're going through. It's just, it's impossible. So you can't judge or second guess anything they do the before the things heated up in the north there were these massive protests going on in israel with these slogans bring them home seal the deal as though there's a deal waiting to be sealed and nothing yahoo just has to agree to the deal and then again this goes what i'm saying now goes beyond the hostage families forum.

It was big parts of the country were joining these protests. If I'm Sinwar and I'm looking at that, I think everything's going great because the Israeli public is not blaming me, Sinwar. They're blaming their own prime minister. If I'm Sinwar, I look at this and say, and the U.S. government, this is great. The U.S. government is also watching Israelis blame Netanyahu.

The American media, the international media, I would go on Israeli television weeks ago, and I would make these points about the breakdown in the hostage negotiations, and they'd say, but Dan, the Israeli public is saying these things about Netanyahu. So I think that the Israeli public, and again, I'm not blaming them.

I just want to make an analytical point because I understand their frustration. But the whole slogan, bring them home, what does it bring them home? That means that somehow it's just up to the Israeli government to bring them home? It's set them free. It's not bring them home. And all this pressure on one political leader as though he's the key, he's the linchpin, when at the same time, the U.S. government interlocutors don't believe Hamas is serious about negotiating.

So even if Netanyahu overnight said, I'm done, here's the deal, I'm ready to go, it's unlikely there would be a deal to be had. I'm sorry, there are also four American citizens sitting in these tunnels for a year. It's insane. And that those names are not household names in America. Think about when we knew Brittany Griner. A hundred percent.

We knew Evan in Russia. I mean, again, Gershkovich. I think that was great, by the way. I think it's terrific. Agreed. But somehow, when it's I mean, again, Gershkovich, I think that was great, by the way. I think it's terrific. But somehow when it's American Jews being held. It's very difficult to defend the incompetence of the American government over the last year in terms of them not understanding that every time they show daylight between them and Israel,

all sin war said it's working. Right. It's working. And that's you can't allow that yeah so so even last week keep doing what i'm doing if biden said that israel shouldn't shouldn't hit israel's nuclear facilities like even if he believes that why telegraph that what message is that and then i don't know if you saw the clips from harris's interview on 60 minutes which i guess is i saw that little word salad about netanyahu and she gets, do you think you've lost influence around Netanyahu?

What do you think of Netanyahu? As opposed to saying, Iran is a threat to the United States. Let's leave Israel aside for a moment. Iran is a threat to the United States. So when Iran supports Houthis disrupting civilian ships and vessels going through the Red Sea and does real damage to international trade. That's a problem for the United States. When Iran is building a nuclear bomb so it can have hegemony over a very strategically important region of the world

for the United States, that's a problem for the United States. So let me tell you why Iran is, when Iran supports terrorist organizations around the world that slaughter Americans, that's a problem for the United States. That's the message that should be conveyed. No daylight. Israel and the U.S. shoulder to shoulder. That is ultimately the best deterrent. I mean, on the other hand, thank God it wasn't Obama, but I agree with you. And I don't want to talk about the election.

Thank God. But I've got but I agree with you. And I don't want to talk about the election. Thank God. But I've got one last question. Thank Hashem. Of all the issues, I'm ready to go toe-to-toe with anybody and anything they say about Israel from Herzl to today, except the settlements. When they bring up the settlements, I want to climb under the table. Call me when it's over.

Call me when it's over. What do we say? What can be done? It's damaging. It is damaging. And as far as I understand the issue, and I'm no expert on it, we have a lot of dirty hands in this issue, and it needs to stop. What's your take on all that, and why is it going on? So a couple things.

One, so I don't support all the work that's being done on the settlement front, although I do think there's a distinction between – so there's two kinds of settlement growth. There's settlements that are existing settlements that have been recognized, that they will be part of Israel in any future deal. They're presumed under any deal they would stay part of it. And then there's growth within those settlements. There's population growth.

There's construction growth. There's housing growth. Okay, but it's not new land. It's just growth. It's population size increase. Then there are new settlements entirely. Now, there are some new settlements that are considered— And awful behavior of settlers.

Yeah. Although that's a minority. In fairness, I mean, I'm not condoning the behavior of awful settlers, but I don't want to – Is it exaggerated? It's exaggerated. I mean, meaning it's used to cast dispersions against everyone in the settlement movement. There are some very moderate members of the settlement movement. Again, may not agree with them politically, may not agree with them ideologically, but they're not, you know, they're not like acting like, you know,

vigilantes going after Palestinians. Some have and some are, and they need to be punished, but they're- Are they being punished? Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah. But they're not, but they do not represent it. They're not like, they don't represent a big wide swath

of the settlement movement. I'm not here as a defender of the settlement movement. I'm simply saying there was resistance to acceptance of the Jewish state long before the settlement movement was doing the things that make you uncomfortable. So if the only issue is the settlements, that could be resolved overnight. If the Israeli public knew, wait a minute, we have a real path to normalization with the Palestinians? Will they leave peacefully side by side with the Jewish state?

And we just got to deal with our settlement issue? Look what Israel did in 2004 and 2005. They withdrew all their settlements from Gaza. They unilaterally withdrew from Gaza. They sent the IDF to go door to door into settlements, pulling Israeli Jews out of their homes, leaving behind beautiful properties, beautiful settlements, beautiful greenhouses out of their homes, leaving behind beautiful properties, beautiful settlements, beautiful greenhouses, all these things, said it's yours, all because they wanted normalization.

When Israel is given an opportunity towards normalization, they will take extraordinary steps, including confronting the settlement movement. You know, I agree with you, but as an emotional PR thing, they pack a wallop. I mean, look at George Floyd. George Floyd was one guy. There were probably 10 people killed a year. And the entire world

came out because of George. So it doesn't have to be rational. It's an emotional impact. But here's the point. 1995-96, there was a huge problem in Lebanon, huge problem with Hezbollah.

Shimon Peres, the ultimate peacemaker, right? He was prime minister at the time. He authorized bombing of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Go back and read the press back then about Shimon. There's no more major and oppositional figure to the settlement movement than Shimon Peres. But when Shimon Peres wanted to do something about Israeli security,

they might as well have called him Jabotinsky, okay? Go read the Tom Friedman column. I quoted one of them in my podcast. I read this column that Friedman wrote about Peres. You could have taken out Peres's name and put in Netanyahu's in this entire column, and it was 1996. And in fact, he blamed Perez

for doing what he was doing against Hezbollah, that he was politically motivated, that he was doing it because he was worried about his next election. You look at Ariel Sharon and the things people said about Ariel Sharon, even though he was pulling out of Gaza. I mean, I can go on.

Example after example, Tzipi Livni and Hud Omer, what they did in the second Lebanon war, that people talked about them as though they were war criminals. They did more. And Omer, I thought mistakenly, Omer offered more to the Palestinians than I think was ever even implementable. The Palestinians walked away. So at some point, you've just got to ask the big question, is there a Palestinian leadership that is willing to live side by side with the Jewish state? That's the question, not whether or not, because the consensus position in Israel had been

that there can and should be a two-state solution, so much so that Israel is willing to try everything. They tried the Oslo peace process. That didn't work. They tried the Camp David peace process in 2000. They tried the Omeritz process, 2006 to 2008. Then they tried disengagement from Gaza. Okay, we can't reach a settlement, so we'll just pull out entirely. They try approach after approach. Kerry tried various things. Kerry tried, right.

They can't get anywhere. So after all of those steps Israel takes, Bill Clinton said Israel offered, he said, Ahud Barak, he said Ahud Barak went, offered things, made concessions that were, and Arafat walked away. So if the Palestinians keep walking away and walking

away and walking away, and then the response is, well, the settlements. It's not about the settlements. By the way, Israel's willing to give up the settlements. So it's just, it's By the way, Israel's willing to give up the settlements. Yes. So it's just, it's a shiny object. It's distracting. But you just have to get to the core question. Why isn't there a deal? Has there ever been a counteroffer of any kind

to any of these proposals? Like, here's what we will accept. 2000 and 2008, both with Clinton and the Kerry process that Noam just referenced, there was no counteroffer. They just walked away. Obama complained. Abbas wouldn't even answer. Abbas didn't even answer Obama. All right, Dan.

Again, of all the people to have on this date, it was beyond my wildest dreams to have you here. Thank you. I mean, everybody listens to your podcast. Everybody. It's like when somebody dies in the comedy world, everybody comes to the comedy cellar table. It's like that's it. And your podcast is the one commonality that everybody interested in this issue

listens to your podcast. Well, what I hope I've accomplished with it, and I appreciate it, is I'm trying in the podcast to present the dilemmas and the challenges Israel faces as it navigates this incredibly complicated terrain it's in. And that's all I'm trying to do is just present what Israel's thinking. And the way I try to present what Israel's thinking

is by bringing on voices, usually Israelis, who often have different points of view, and let people listen to how Israelis are wrestling with these dilemmas. And it was the only way I knew how to present Israel's story to the world. I didn't expect that there would be so much interest in that internal Israeli discussion. Is it, is it chauvinistic to say we don't hear the same kind of soul searching, a spectrum of opinions by people on the other side of the issue?

It's not, it's a fact. It's a fact. You just do not. You don't. By the way, I heard the remix, the remix of the theme song.

I just started to listen. Today? Today, yeah. That was started to listen to it today. That was just, Alon did that. That was awesome. But it was just for this one episode because it was October 7th. It was great. I was like, ah, these guys really got their shit together here.

They're even taking care of the music. All right. Dan Cedar, everybody. Thank you, guys. Thank you very much.