The Dispatch Podcast - A Year Since Oct 7: Israel After the Massacre (Part 1) | Roundtable

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Jonah, Adaam, and Charlotte join Jamie for the first half of a two-part series commemorating the horrific October 7 attacks on the Israeli people. Charlotte provides a first-hand account from her reporting in Israel over the past year; Adaam, a native Israeli, offers insight into the psychological ramifications of the event; and Jonah explains what this moment means for American Jews and the resurgence of antisemitism in politics. The Agenda: —Charlotte's reporting in TMD about October 7 —Reflections from a year ago —Psychological ramifications —What is Benjamin Netanyahu’s role now? —Media reactions and public perception —Life in Israel currently Show Notes: —Jonah and Adaam's October 8 podcast following the attacks —Bill Buckley's In Search of Anti-Semitism —Dispatch Faith remembering October 7 The Dispatch Podcast is a production of The Dispatch, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a non-partisan, conservative perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including members-only newsletters, bonus podcast episodes, and weekly livestreams—click here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And ask your family eye care professional for SLOR Stellist lenses at your child's next visit. Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein. Today we have two parts of the dispatch podcast as a special commemoration of the October 7th terror attacks, which were just one year ago today. Part one is a panel discussion with dispatchers, including Adam, the editorial director of the dispatch who is himself Israeli, Jonah and Charlotte, who is on the ground. It has been on the ground. It has been on the ground since October 7th covering the events in Israel, discussing what happened that day and remembering the attacks and what they pretend perhaps for the future. In part two, we have a discussion with Dan Cynor, the author of books like Startup Nation and the host of the

Call Me Back podcast, which has become since October 7th, kind of the go-to resource for what is going on in the region, where he brings on the smartest people in Israel and beyond to discuss the war, Israeli society, and much more. In this discussion, we discuss where Israel stands today, what the future may pretend for Israel, both in terms of Israeli society, in the military conflict that Israel continues to fight and has fought over the last year. Both of these are must-listens. So without further ado, I give you first, part one, the roundtable discussion on the day of October 7. Adam, Jonah and Charlotte, thank you for joining this discussion. I think actually this panel brings together three different interesting perspectives,

all worthwhile to hear from kind of different parts of how you would feel on that day. So I kind of just want to start with initial thoughts. Charlotte, you were on the ground, I believe, on October 7th in Israel. Can you just tell me how it unfolded that day and what were your initial thoughts? And when you realized the scope of what occurred, how that fell? Yeah, I was not on the ground in the south, but I was in Tel Aviv. I woke up that morning when Hamas started firing rockets at Central Israel around 6 a.m. I'd moved to Israel about a month prior to report for the dispatch.

So it took me a minute to even kind of process what I was hearing with the air raid siren and then go into the stairwell of my apartment building. I knew that a Hamas rocket attack was unexpected in the security establishment of Israel. I had spoken to a lot of people about potential threats from the West Bank, from the north with Hezbollah. Overall, the prevailing belief in Israel was that Hamas was deterred. So the rockets in itself were pretty surprising. But really, we didn't start to realize the magnitude of the attack until the reports of the ground. attack started to trickle in. And that's when we realized it was different than the 2021 Gaza War,

for example, which was mostly just cross-border rocket fire. I think a lot of Israelis look at the moment when they saw Hamas fighters in Stereot on a pickup truck in a traffic circle. It's kind of the moment that people saw, okay, this is something completely different. And of course, we didn't even really have a sense of just how many people had been killed or kidnapped until days later. Adam, you are Israeli, family in Israel. What was your reaction, initial reaction to the initial reports, and then when you realized the full scope of what occurred? So I think it's true the way Charlotte is putting it, that this is something that we couldn't really have anticipated and yet fully anticipated at the same time. I think I mentioned this to Jonah when

we spoke on the remnant, basically the day of October 7th, that this is kind of the worst case scenario that every Israeli goes to bed with imagining this kind of invasion, imagining the brutality that will be unleashed on Israeli civilians in the case where Israel's own defenses fail. And at the same time, we either, you might, either by means of emotional, psychological repression or by delusion, either way, not great qualities, we've convinced ourselves that it is also impossible. So at the same time, we were sure that we are safe and knew that we are absolutely not. And this is what happens when the wall falls. So when we started hearing the reports about, and I was in New York at the time, reports were trickling to me around

2 a.m., I ignored the rocket barrage because that it's, yeah, it's been two years since the last one, so okay, it's about time. But when we started hearing about actual Hamas commander forces, the Nukba infiltrating, not one or two terrorists infiltrating the Kibbutzim, but dozens, hundreds entering, and that there has been no ability to withstand that invasion. something, I think, clicked in the mind of every Israeli who grew up in the Second Intifada, who had this paranoia already embedded, realizing that this is it. This is the thing we've been terrified of. And we have completely failed to hold it.

Now, at first, we didn't know the scope of the horror. I remember, I think, at the time of recording the Remnant episode on October 7th, we were discussing maybe 300 dead and 50 people taken hostage. So that's the scale that we imagined. But the moment we heard that the border failed, that there is no resistance from the IDF and that the forces unleashed from Gaza are real military. and not merely a lone wolf terrorist, I think we all realize that this is going to be gruesome because those are not targeted military tactical attacks. Those are death squads that have just been able to cross the border.

So at that point, we were all just waiting to hear just how bloody, how horrible it is. And I think at the same time, like I said, all Israelis just clicked with the understanding that this changes everything. Because now that we have crossed that rubicon of the horror that we've been repressing in our nightmares since the Second Intifada, now that this has actually happened, we are turning a page on what Israel looks like, how Israel responds to her enemies, and what does it even mean to exist in the new power balance of the Middle East? Juna, I think you have a similar background to me, correct me if I'm wrong.

I have one Jewish parent, one non-Jewish parent. but deeply identified with Israel, identified, being Jewish, traveled to Israel extensively throughout my life, followed its wars. What was your reaction when you fully understood what occurred in Israel? Yeah, so similar backgrounds. I was raised Jewish. My dad insisted on it, so I was bar mitzvahed, but my mom insisted that we hang a sign that says Santa knows we're Jewish on the Christmas train.

So, me too. I was similarly raised, but we had, we celebrated Christmas and other things. I don't know if you did as well, but kind of somewhat similar. I mean, we didn't call it a Hanukkah Bush, but that was sort of the spirit of it. And so, like, it was a Saturday, right? And so, like, I cannot begin to tell you how reluctant I am to follow the news on Saturday mornings. But I started getting on Twitter. I started getting text messages from friends.

I don't know when it on and I started texting or when he started putting stuff in Slack. but that was, it was pretty clear pretty early that this was serious, but I don't think anyone really had a sense of how serious it was. And so when I started following it, at first I started following it as a sort of with my conservative pro-Israel pundit hat on, and I was hate watching MSNBC, you know, and watching sort of Ali Valshi, you know, trying to both sides a pogrom in real time, and I will put it this way, it annoyed to me. And then it made me very, very, very cross. To me, it was, I kind of like the way Adam put it about how it was a totally surprise and also totally expected in a sort of Schroederer's cat kind of way.

right? It's sort of like everyone knows. We've been talking about it since we were little kids that there's going to be a big earthquake in California one day. But when there is a big earthquake, everyone's going to be really shocked by it. Right. And I think, similarly, I think there's going to be a debt crisis. I mean, there are lots of these things that we are very predictable. We just don't know the timeline on. And what made this especially different was the way I kind of thought about it was, is it's one of these things that if you were to describe it in advance as an abstract thing to people. And then you were going to, to me,

I don't want to make light of this or make this a partisan thing, but it's a little analogous to the Trump stuff. You know, if you were going to describe some people's reactions to the Trump things in 2014, you say, okay, here's what's going to happen. This guy's going to do this. He's going to say that, all that kind of stuff.

And here's how you're going to respond to it. They'll get very, very angry with you for doubting their commitment to principle and their opposition to bad character. Similarly, if you described to many of the people who were celebratory of what was happening on 10-7 as it was unfolding, and certainly in the days and weeks after, you said, okay, here's what's going to happen. A bunch of people are going to invade Israel from the South.

They're going to rape and murder a bunch of people at a concert. They're going to kill children in front of their parents, parents in front of their children. They're going to kidnap all of these people. and you are either going to defend it or do this sort of anti-anti-hamas thing. They would say, how dare you? Of course, I would be against that. And so for me, the horror of it, as palpable and as terrible as it was, one of the things that was much more lasting for me was the sense in which there were

just a lot of people out there who are safe and comfortable in the Western world, who claim to want peace and be supportive of Israel, but also want a two-state solution and all this kind of stuff, who, for reasons of group think in tribal solidarity and popular frontism and a bunch of other things, felt it was necessary to take the side or make apologies for or minimize what would be utterly recognizable in the abstract as unadulterated evil.

And I think that's one of the things that has fueled a lot of polarization on the topic of Israel in the country. I think it's one of the things that, you know, getting to sort of the ramifications of all this, that sense among very liberal, secular, westernized Jews in America that holy crap,

there are these people and these institutions that have no moral clarity about this kind of stuff. I think that's going to have a very long tale, culturally, psychologically, politically, in the United States, and to me, it's one of those remarkable things other than the, you know, the obvious evil and brutality of it all. I think I actually want to take that question to you, Jamie. I think there are the way I talk about this with friends, we always see two different

traumas in this event. I hate the word trauma, but two two different moments of psychological shattering. And the first was on October 7th and was the total failure. of the Israeli state to protect its civilians. And I think that's something that we're still grappling with and trying to explain to ourselves. Just as a reminder, people in real time as their towns were being invaded, they were calling the news channels.

They were calling journalists while they were being besieged and murdered because they weren't able to reach any law enforcement. They weren't able to reach anybody to save them. So they were literally calling TV channels to ask for help. So that moment will, Israeli society will be reckoning with four years to come. But the day after, October 8th is the second moment of shattering. And that is what Jonah is talking about. And I think that is the realization of just how lacking in moral clarity so many people seem to be

where they would go on the streets protesting about Israel's culpability in its own pogrom. And I mean, I was surprised to see. you, Jamie, take a very strong position on it publicly because it's not like you have a very, or at least in recent years, you haven't been particularly eager to engage in Twitter wars or in fulminating combat. But that did bring a lot of the, a lot of rage from you. And I just want to hear how October 8th impacted your view of the media of American politics. Well, you know, I think it shattered a lot. I couldn't imagine that type of attack happening in Israel. It's kind of the scariest thing you could think of, roving bands of terrorists without any IDF in sight doing

what they want at will. And that border, that southern border, you know, had been that fence they're 100% effective since they built it on the Gaza Strip. So it kind of shattered. I couldn't believe that occurred here. And to what you're saying, what was most surprising is it shattered my own safety in America in some sense. The idea of Jewish safety in America, I never really had a moment of fear for myself as a Jew in America. And what's strange is, why would the greatest attack since the Holocaust in Israel make me fear for self in America, which has been previously safe for me? And I know there's anti-Semitism everywhere, but I never felt under threat in America. And it's to your point is that almost immediately after the greatest attack on Jews since the Holocaust,

you see not solidarity with Israel. There was that in many quarters, but a greater outpouring of attacks against Israel and siding with the other side immediately. I mean, the calls against I mean, if you go back and look when people were saying Israel's committing genocide, it wasn't, you know, two months later, it was like within a week they were accusing Israel of genocide after being attacked. You know, that was shattering, which, you know, I have on my notes here, and I would be interested in everyone's perspective, particularly Jonah, because I think, you know, I remember growing up, my dad would tell me, my dad was much, he was 50 years older than me. He passed away about a decade ago. But, but, so he grew up in

the 40s. And he remembered going to Hebrew school and people calling him a Christ killer and throwing stones at him. But I never saw any of that experience. In the Atlantic, Franklin 4 wrote a piece shortly after September, October 7th, the Golden Age, of American Jews is ending anti-Semitism on the right and left threatens to bring to a close an unprecedented period of safety and prosperity to Jewish Jews in America. I wonder for everyone, particularly Jonah, who kind of grew up in the same age, what do you make of that? Do you find that thesis compelling? And why do you think the greatest attack on Jews since the Holocaust in Israel would cause this bubble of Jewish safety in America to end? It doesn't really make sense to me.

me, at least on paper. Very similar experience. My dad had a couple stories of very mild anti-Semitism experiences. He couldn't believe it when his best friend in college said to him, you know, don't Jew me about this. He's like, what? You know, that kind of thing, right? Of course, the Irish and the Italians and the Jews in the Bronx gave each other crap, but that's more like West Side Story kind of nostalgia than anything like anti-Semitism. My own experience with antisemitism has basically mostly been online and in print from, you know, being a guy with an extremely Jewish name at National Review and that annoying certain people. I think the part of the problem is that this happened, you know, it's a little like the Hemingway bankruptcy thing,

right? It was gradual and then sudden, right? So there have been these arguments not necessarily sub rosa, but no one paid much attention to them, the post-colonial oppressor oppressed stuff. going on all over the place. We've witnessed intellectually the supplanting of class-based leftism for identity politics, intersectional, you know, leftism. That is the ruling paradigm. And I think that the anti-Israel movement benefited from the rise to prominence of this oppressor repressed ideology stuff, that when given a prompting, it kicked into overdrive very quickly.

And you add in the sort of protest, cosplay, culture of American campuses. And plus bad actors from abroad. I mean, like, you know, people were bad. And from at home, you know, I mean, like, the spontaneous ownership of very expensive tents on campuses by hundreds of people all over the country was not an accident, right? So it's a confluence of different things that came to a head.

But I'm very much of the view that, like, if you take the DEI logic, you know, the extreme version of the DEI logic seriously, then Jews pose a real problem for it. Because if any, if disproportionate problems are proof of bigotry, because the system's rigged, then disproportionate success is a proof the system's rigged too. And that is very quick to lead to all sorts of classic anti-Semitic tropes.

If the system's rigged for the benefit of the few and Jews disproportionately succeed in a meritocracy or a free market or whatever, then aha, guess who's rigging the system? And I think that that kind of logic scales in all sorts of ways to the UN and to the global scene, Israel's disproportionate success as being a prosperous democracy in a neighborhood that lacks prosperity and lacks democracy, feeds the same sort of connect-the-dots nonsense. And so I think it was it was bad timing given where the intellectual left-wing ferment was on American campuses and elsewhere. It was also bad timing, given the prominence that a bunch of more traditionally horrible anti-Semites on the right were, you know, the resurgence of the sort of classic sort of neo-Nazi stuff being sort of one foot in the popular front of the new right was inconvenient as well.

And so it's sort of an overdetermined thing. and just the utter lack of courage by the vast majority of people who don't subscribe to either point of view, but are not willing to, particularly at these elite institutions, it very much reminds me of like the guns on campus crisis at Cornell University in 1969, where all the vital central liberals were like, we cannot, we cannot give into violent intimidation and death threats and all that kind of stuff. And then they gave into violent intimidation and death threats, right? Clinton Rossiter, I think there's a plausible case committed suicide because of his

capitulation to all of that. And we saw these institutions that are supposed to be incredibly principled about tolerance and all these kinds of things fail utterly in their mission precisely because Jews do not fit the actual intellectual ideological paradigm at those places. And that was very telling and very scary for all. a lot of secular Jews who really thought they were part of the, you know, of that coalition and of, of, on that team. And then all of a sudden they find out that you can go to some sort of reeducation therapy

or be expelled or suspended for saying men can't get pregnant. But it's complicated. And we got to hear both sides when someone says gas the Jews. And that freaked out a lot of people. I want to remind that the gas the Jews thing was not merely. children of the campus phenomenon, but it was, that specific cry was heard around the world in many protests by people of varying ages. And I always worry that too much is attributed strictly to the over intellectualization and the internally contradictory or the doom spiral

of post-colonial thinking and not to a much simpler ideology that has just taken root. And That's fair. And also, and also Iran and these countries seeding this stuff, you know, Russia and Iran should pay for people to promote this stuff. And then they get, and I think social media helps create the sense that it's a movement. And you also have a huge Arab and Muslim diaspora that has brought with it a lot of it. It's an overdetermined phenomenon. I agree. I didn't mean to leave out all. I do want to before we go to Charlotte to flip back to see how this entire whole. played out in Israel over the past year, just to stay on the question of the Aspera Jews, how do we deal with the question that has been asked for, I mean, for years, but really has been over-indulged over the past year of really figuring out

if the threat, the risk, is it really towards Jews, or is it about quote-unquote Zionism? Is it about Israeli? Israelis, is it about Western culture? What does it mean when people hold a sign that shows the swastika and the Star of David? Does that mean that they're anti-Semitic? Is that mean that they associate the state of Israel with the new oppressors?

How do we adjudicate that? I think, you know, the Venn diagram exists. There might be some people who do certain things like that, who aren't anti-Semitic, but it's a pretty large crossover. You mean, maybe take it on a case-by-case basis, but I think generally those who are saying anti-Zionists, you know, they're anti-Zionists, they're saying this right of Israel doesn't exist. You know, you go back to Bill Buckley's the case for anti-Semitism. I think his argument with Papi-Cannon was on a personal level. Against, yeah, sorry.

That would be very different. As a 20-year National Review guy, I thought it's kind of important. I mean, I think his argument against Bill Buckley was on a personal level, Bill Buckley, I think a lot of Jews would say it was very nice, but broadly his ideology was, you know, what he was saying crossed over into anti-Semitism. So, you know, people that are going around saying, anti-Zionists, maybe on a personal level, if you had coffee with them, are very nice. But, but broadly what they're espousing, I think crosses over into anti-Semitism. And just one story. I mean, I remember being in Italy, maybe 20-some years ago, right after I graduated high

school, I think, on a family trip. And we had a guide. And he was very nice. Somehow it came to Israel. And, you know, he said, they're just like Nazis. And I said, well, how are they like Nazis? They go, they've killed people. I go, well, I don't know if that's like what the, the attribute that made people Nazis, Nazis, I guess everybody. I mean, you know, it was almost when it came to Israel because it's a Jewish state, he wants to, he wants to ascribe Nazism to something all states do in defense of themselves. You know that Hitler loved dogs. Yes. I mean, there's an element there that almost is mania that that was anti-Jewish in his mind, even though on a personal level, very friendly, but on a broader level, he had this animus that seemed to be directed towards

Israel, but, you know, why would the only Jewish state, be the state you describe Nazism to somebody who, to a state that does things that every state would do in defense of themselves? Yeah, I would have been, I would have been a lot more patient to some of the, arguments that this is not really about what it seems if on October 8th the outpouring was so unequivocally pro-Israel. Even if the statement was Israel should restrain itself from responding to Gaza because of the ultimate disproportionality of force between the IDF and Hamas and Israel should show, should be the bigger player or whatever, at minimum showing consideration to the fact that it suffered a horrific pogrom and it should be treated

as a tragedy on an international level. Charlotte, how all this discourse, did that even make a dent in Israeli psyche or did the Israelis just flip the war switch on and did not give a rat's ass about diaspora Jews? I would say it definitely reached people here and it was also covered pretty extensively in Hebrew media, these massive protests in the United States. against Israel's right to defend itself. And I think on some level it was demoralizing, but I think on another level this last year of war in Israel has kind of been about dealing with the immediate threats to the country, Hamas, and now Hezbollah. And I think Israel's never been particularly interested in or adept at fighting the war of public opinion.

To me, it feels like it's focusing on the threats on its border, and that's definitely what dominates most of the public consciousness. Sure, I went back and read your first dispatch for the morning dispatch, and incidentally, it's interesting that you talk about the rockets being fired from Lebanon already, which, you know, seems now as a conversation like, you know, why is Israel going into, right after October 7th, just like a lot of people were already calling genocide, Hezbollah was already firing rockets. I'm kind of intrigued since you've been there this entire time. What is life like October 6th versus the post-October 8th world in Israel? One important thing to understand is just how

divided Israeli society was in the lead up to October 7th. Throughout the first half of 2023, there were massive protests over the government's efforts to reform or overhaul. According to some people, the judiciary, some of the biggest protests and the biggest feeling of division that Israel's felt in its history. So I think what October 7th did, at least for a little while, is kind of unify Israelis by reminding them of that external threat. Unfortunately, a lot of that unity came from what Adon mentioned, which was the absence of an Israeli state. A lot of civil society kind of came together and fulfilled basic functions of the state. like compiling list of people who were missing after October 7th and trying to field donations

to get equipment to soldiers. So I think some of that unity has faded, but you can kind of still see signs of it. I think one of the biggest lasting impacts of the last year is Israelis now are much more willing to kind of take risks in order to degrade threats on their border. One of the most remarkable things about Israeli society, being a citizen soldier society, is that despite all these massive risks that we knew about, or they knew about, I think they're the fourth or fifth happiest people in the world by rankings. You go to Tel Aviv, it's one most vibrant, vibrant places. Has that changed? Has it come back? I mean, if you go to Tel Aviv now, do you go out and, you know, despite, you know, wars going on on many different fronts, you still might find people on the beaches or in the, in the bars? I think there's been some rebound. I think kind of letting Israel become this war zone where people, don't go out, don't enjoy life, would be giving Hamas what it wanted when it attacked on October 7th. But at the same time, a lot of Israelis are still living on October 7th in a sense that

they're still thinking about the people who died that day and who are still held captive in Hamas. It's definitely an enduring trauma in that sense. Yeah, I think we'd be remiss if we don't mention there's still hostages in Gaza as we speak a year later. Joan, how do you think October 7th will be remembered. I mean, if we're talking a decade from now and talking October 7th, do we know yet? Or, you know, does it depend on the outcome of Israel's wars? Or do you think there's a clear way we will remember it a decade from now? I think the facts will be remembered as the facts, right? In the same way that the assassination of Gavreau-Princip, you know, that launched World War I, the facts of the assassination are remembered as the facts of the assassination.

Well, that's a big assumption based on the trend of revisionism that we're already facing. Yeah, well, fair, fair. But I'm some faith that, like, the broad outlines, Hamas launched an attack. A lot of people were killed and raped and kidnapped and those kinds of facts. As Danesikotz put it, Hamas broke out of Gaza, consequently, a thousand Israelis died. Yes, but Taanahisi Coates is not an honest chronicle of facts. And I'm going to just leave it there. I have this big theory about how, you know, the present can change the future, but the present can also change the past, right?

And so the example I often use is like during the height of the war on terror stuff after 9-11, 1917, which for most of my childhood and in young adult life was the most significant, arguably the one of the significant dates of the 20th century, really kind of started to fade into the background. Cold War was over. And all of a sudden, like 1922, which I think is the year that the Salafas took over Mecca and Saudi Arabia and all that, or you could say maybe the year that FDR worked out the deal with the Saudis, those kinds of dates all of a sudden became much more important. Right. So like the present actually changes our views of the past in all sorts of ways. If this, and I think there are a lot of steps between here and there, but like if in 10 years people look back and say, you know, this is what led to the downfall of the Mullahs in Iran. People look at it as like a tragic event that led maybe to a good thing. If it launches a wider regional war where lots of people die, I just think, I don't know. I mean, I honestly, I don't know how it's going to be written because, you know, in the way that our old friend Charles Crowdhammer used to say decline is a choice, the significance

of October 7th is a choice too. How does this? Israel respond to it? How do the regional powers respond to it? How do two different, very soon, two different American administrations respond to it and the events that unfolded from it remains to be seen. I mean, Joe Biden respond to it a bunch of different ways already. And we're dealing with those consequences. So I think the hopeful scenario is it leads to something like what we were talking about, what I was bringing up about, you know, regime change, hopefully regime change from within in Iran, and reproachman and ultimately acceptance of Israel's existence in the region.

But that's something that requires a lot of legwork between now and that conclusion, and a lot of things can go really bad before that happens. Charlotte, let me just free frame it as we close soon. Formatively, I don't know if this is your first reporting experience or foreign reporting experience, But certainly early on in your journalism life, how will covering something as traumatic as this, do you think that, will that carry on? Do you imagine the staying with you as being something impactful for you that you covered? Or how do you think this formative experience covering something so traumatic will stay with you as a writer and a journalist? I mean, I was in the South, actually, earlier this week. And a year later, you can still kind of see, you can still definitely see the destruction that happened that day. And certainly when I came to Israel over a year ago now, it's not something I expected to cover. Actually, I came here hoping to report a lot about Saudi Arabia normalization and kind of the overall integration of Israel into the region. It was a more hopeful path. October 7th just completely changed the dynamics of the region. So it changed the dynamics of my reporting and the kind of stories I was pursuing.

But yeah, definitely it's a war like this is something that kind of sticks with you. And I know a lot of people started their careers reporting on Iraq and the Syrian Civil War. But yeah, I think if anything, this is maybe a more transformative moment for the Middle East. So it'll be interesting to continue to cover it and see where it comes from goes from here. No, I want to just make sure that we end on a grimmer note to your question that you addressed to Jonah about how will this be remembered. I want to suggest how it might be remembered, at least in Israel. I think I have a lot less optimism than Jonah that even the facts will transcend, let alone memory of the event ever existing with our ever shrinking. attention spans, but within Israel, it will certainly be remembered, but I'm afraid that it will

be remembered as the day in which the Israeli soul truly darkened, and that not by the malevolence of the Netanyahu regime, but by the necessity of the moment, I think the fact that we still have, who knows how many hostages still alive in Gaza, civilians who are in cellars, in trenches, in tunnels, hidden, possibly tortured, possibly worse. And this is not the only thing that we as Israelis think about constantly, where two years ago, we would have thought of ourselves as the people who will empty out our prisons in order to get one soldier back, we are now basically accepting the fact that these people, these civilians kidnapped from a music festival, from their homes, children, elderly might languish underneath the

rubbles of Gaza. I think that in itself is already such a profound change in how it's Israelis understand themselves. I asked a friend who was going out in the weekly protest against Netanyahu, accusing Netanyahu for having blood on his hands for not doing more to release the hostages. And I asked him, what more did you expect Netanyahu to do? It does not, there's no real indication that Hamas is sincere about trying to get the deal on their end. it's not clear that we should do, we should exit Philadelphia strategically, whatever.

The terms of the deal are not obviously sensical for Israel to accept even for such a cost. And he says, like, I agree with everything you said. Strategically, it might be a horrible deal. But I can't allow ourselves to become the people who are just allow our own brethren to die in captivity. We need to show that we are not that, that we are the Israel that we believe ourselves to be. And I thought that was heartbreaking because I understand the sentiment that he was expressing, but I, as again, I think I mentioned that already on October 7th, when we talked to Jonah, I just don't think Israel can be that anymore.

Adam, could I just maybe end on a positive note? I think there's an alternative way that we may remember, one of the ways we remember it, or one of the consequences of it. I believe you're going to supercharge, and it's great we have Dan C. Nor as part of this extended episode, I think you're going to supercharge the startup society. Because if another generation of Israelis who were kind of forced to engage in this awful conflict, have to be innovative in a way to fight, you know, enemies on many different fronts, while the world in many cases turn against them, and they will ultimately, hopefully be victorious, go back.

to society, become more, be more adult-like, be more innovative, and create an even more innovative Israeli society than we've seen before. At least that's what I think. I think you're going to have a whole new generation of innovators in Israel. Just an experiencing a booming wireless communications technology. I see what you did there. Thank you. Exactly. Yes. We're going to bring back the Pagers, too. But in this dark time, I'm actually optimistic for the Israel that emerges from it. But maybe I am always tend towards optimism.

Yeah, I just, I mean, to push back a little on that as well, you can still be, have an idealistic and proud and very humane self-conception of yourself as a people, right, of the Israeli people, of the Jewish people, and not live up to the standard of trading thousands of murderers. for the remains of one soldier or whatever. You know, those kinds of deals, there's a, I don't mean, I don't mean this in a disrespectful way, but there's a real luxury and a kind of virtue signaling luxury involved in saying that if we don't live up to that ideal, we're not a good and righteous people, right? That is a stand, you know, we talk, I spent a lot of time talking about the unfair double standards imposed on Israel by its enemies. There are some unfair, crazy double standards imposed on Israel by its friends and by Israelis themselves. And the idea that all of a sudden,

it's a binary choice, you are a dark and evil people, or you willingly trade living terrorists who've murdered 10x Israelis for one soldier or the remains of one soldier or any of that kind of stuff that those are your choices, I kind of reject. Like, America's done a lot of bad things in its history. Some of them were necessary evils. Some were just evils. I still think this is a good and decent country. Israel has done some things that I'm sure get five Jews in a room. You'll get 10 people complaining about them. That doesn't necessarily mean they're bad people and the souls of turn dark. I want to clarify that my, when I talk about the darkening of the souls, I don't mean in the Yom Kippur sense as something that we need to atone for, answer to

God for. I mean that this is the self-conception that allows most Israeli society to commit the generational sacrifice of sending your kids to the military and not just as a matter of symbolic service, but knowing that your children might die. A lot of the A big piece of the social contract that Israelis have with the state is that radical commitment to the lives of the children that are being sent to either live right across from murderers or into enemy lines, across enemy lines. And what I worry, that showing that we have reached the point where this commitment is no longer sustainable. could change the way that Israelis are willing to put themselves out there

to change the logic of solidarity and potentially make a lot of Israelis less committed to the whole project. Fair enough. I mean, that's real. Which arguably is also the entire design of Hamas. Right. And certainly

of Iran and the late Nasrallah. Well, what you lose in the, what you lose in the powerful carrot, utopian idealistic motivations, you might compensate for with the sense of the peril of survival, right? I mean, that's also a good motivation and might get you through this period. I don't know, but like, remember that the thing that I'm most concerned with here is not Israel's general strategy or Israel's position as a good or bad state in the eyes of history, in the eyes of God,

in the eyes of whatever benchmark you might put against it, but rather in the psyche of Israelis who were fed the idea of sanctifying life above all else. And I think that this is the linchpin of the Israeli identity, at least of the generation that I'm a part of and my surroundings. I understand that this story that we tell ourselves about ourselves has been critical for the willingness and capacity of Israelis to commit to sacrifice and to be the country that has survived under existential panic and threat for 70 odd years.

I don't know that you can just remove, that piece of it, even though it is essential, even though it has been shattered by necessity and the wickedness of our enemies, I don't know that you can get the same strength of identity. Jonah was mentioning that America is still a good country despite its dark spots, which I totally agree with. However, for many people, those dark spots have clearly been enough to make them question some of the story they told themselves about themselves. as Americans. And sometimes those narratives, whether they're rational or not, if you lose a key feature of them, if you lose some of that core jewel of faith that you have about

and you realize that that no longer obtains, you start questioning the whole project. You start questioning your whole identity. So let me, two things. I'm not Israeli. So I mean, that's the caveat here. But I don't see what Israel is facing. It's different. It's in scale. difference in hostages, but similar to what Israel has faced throughout its existence is very difficult decisions, life and death's decisions within a region where that wants to be destroyed, trying to prioritize life. And I feel like Israel has faced these dark decisions all the time throughout its history. This is different in terms of hostages, but war and peace, living and

fighting with the citizens on the front lines. I think where maybe this might add a wrinkle to what we're discussing here is the issue has been maybe in Israel, is that in other times they trusted the leader to make these decisions. They trusted the prime minister with someone who was going to make these difficult decisions one way or another, but he was going to be honest broker to do it in the best of Israeli society is that there's a lack of trust in Netanyahu to make those decisions and that he may be making the decisions that he does not to come to a hostage deal. Again, we're not even sure both of us if he can, but maybe some Israelis see it, he's choosing not to make a hostage deal for his own personal benefit, whether that's political or legal

or otherwise. And that may, is it possible that's the difference that there's no, that they don't trust the person making these difficult calls. That's a very interesting point. And that's, I suppose, the element of BB derangement syndrome that was alluding to. I do think that it is a distorting effect. I do think that there's a lot less slack given to Netanyahu by half the country. And arguably, justifiably, because Netanyahu has done nothing but trying to antagonize the part of the country that is not his direct supporters.

Netanyahu's entire career of brilliant political survival has relied heavily on heightening the internal polemics and partisanship in Israel. So the fact that half the country feels antagonized from Netanyahu is a virtuous or viceful cycle between the latent hate of the left of Netanyahu, which was true already when he ran the first time for primorship in, was it 98, I think, but was certainly exacerbated and extended by Netanyahu's political strategy. And exacerbated by the current government, which many would agree is one of, as a government is one of our most degrading, irresponsible and I would even say lacking in civic responsibility government that we've ever had in

Israel. So maybe, I mean, again, I go back to maybe what you're saying, and I could, maybe it's only part of it, is that they don't trust the figure making these very difficult decisions. I think that's partially right. But I think as I see it, on October 7th, I said to many people, Hamas is already one. and I meant that Hamas has put us in an impossible condition. And this is what I mean by the necessity to abandon that aspect of, the noble aspect of sanctifying life to the extent that we were doing before.

Hamas made it impossible. Hamas created a Sophie's choice. And the Sophie's choice between hostages and war between victory and life was basically between who we need. to be in order to survive and who we want to be in the best version of the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. And Hamas made it impossible to sustain both. I just think that that's been the history of Israel is having to fight these things that no other country has to deal with and maintains human rights and values in a very difficult

situation, but they're faced sometimes with these. I am a big proponent of contradictions. I am a prophet and a proselytizer of cognitive dissonance, so I can accept that we may yet overcome and discover a whole new set of internal contradictions to argue about. But I guess we'll see. With that, Adam, Jonah, and Charlotte, thank you for joining this commemoration of October 7. Thank you. Thank you.