The Dispatch Podcast - A Year Since Oct 7: The Future of the War (pt. 2) | Interview: Dan Senor

Episode Date: October 7, 2024

Jamie Weinstein is joined by Dan Senor—author of The Genius of Israel and host of the Call Me Back podcast—to discuss the future of governance in Gaza, what the death of Hezbollah leadership means for Israel and Iran, and why he remains optimistic for Israel’s future. Listen to the first part of this special episode here. The Agenda: —Dan on the day of October 7 —The state of Israel’s economy —Israel’s evolving military strategy —Israeli startups —Success against Hezbollah —Iran’s nuclear program —The role of the U.S. and the Biden administration —Trust in Israeli leadership —The remaining hostages —Gaza’s future 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

Save when you fuel up for your next road trip. Get up to 7 cents per liter in value every time you fill up at Petro Canada. That's 3 cents per liter in instant savings plus 20% more points when you link an eligible RBC card to your Petro points. Find out more at RBC.com slash Petro-dash Canada. Conditions apply. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Jamie Weinstein.

I've now bringing you part two of our October 7th commemoration. This part, we already had the part one with the roundtable with dispatchers on October 7th of the day and what that feeling was like. Now, I want to bring you a discussion of one year later where Israel stands in the world with Dan Signore, the author of Startup Nation and the host of the Call Me Back podcast. As I mentioned before, the Call Me Back podcast has become the go-to destination for everything that is happening since October 7th with bringing on the smartest minds, and we are fortunate to glean both Dan Seniors' wisdom about where Israel is in the world, but also the wisdom that he has gleaned from all the people that he has brought on

call me back podcast. I don't think you're going to want to miss this part two discussion of our October 7th commemoration. So without further ado, I give you Mr. Dan Siener. Welcome to the dispatch podcast. Great to be with you, Jamie. Thanks for having me. Of course, Dan, Dan, And we're recording this on Friday so the listeners know. And it's really an honor to have you on this commemoration episode a year since October 7 terror attacks, not just because you're able to share your wisdom and where you things are and where things are going,

but your Call Me Back podcast has, last year especially, the smartest voices on this subject. So we're really synthesizing your wisdom through informed by the smartest voices out there on really all aspects of what is going on in the Middle East. And though I'm going to try to focus on forward-looking and where we are. I want to start by asking you, where were you on October 7th? What were you doing when you kind of heard what was going on and when you fully understood

what was going on, what went through your mind? The night of Friday, October 6th, after Shabbat dinner, I was winding down. It was late at night our time, Israel, as you know, seven hours ahead at that time of year. And I just glanced, which was I stupidly should not have done. And I glanced at my phone as I was going to sleep and it was early morning Israel time when I did that. And I started to see chats from Israeli friends and family more talking with one another. Like I was just a, I was just an observer because I'm on a lot of group chats. And they were talking about some kind of infiltration from Gaza over the border, over this Israel's border with Gaza. And I was thinking, oh, this is terrible, but it's just read at the time like one of these skirmishes that we've seen.

you know, that there are quite common. Nothing on the scale of, say, the 2014 Gaza war, which was a major war with Hamas, more like summer of, you know, spring of 2021 or, sorry, spring of, yeah, spring of 21 or summer of 22. It read like one of those. And so I thought, I just went to bed expecting that. I woke up the next morning. And then I started to see when I woke up the next morning, which by that time was early afternoon Israel time. And I started on Saturday morning. I looked again. And then I, and then it looked much worse than I, had thought. It felt like war. Again, but the wars I was used to that I was a custom to post-2014 were short wars. My wife woke up shortly after her, and I said Israel's a war. And again,

I thought it was true that Israel was a war, but I had no idea of sense for the scale of it. And I'm watching one more news come out. And instinctively, I didn't intellectualize this, but I, so I have one of my, two of my sisters and my mother all live in Israel. And my sister, who lives in Jerusalem, is very observant, modern Orthodox Jew. She and I, for as long as we've lived in separate homes, I don't think we've ever communicated on the phone, on a Shabbat or on a Jewish holiday, ever. I mean, really, I was thinking about this after.

I don't think we've ever, I just don't think to call her. She obviously wouldn't call me. And, again, there's never been a reason for us to communicate on a telephone on a holiday or on a Shabbat. And I just called her. And it was Saturday morning my time. It was early afternoon of her time. And she answered the phone.

Now, when she answered the phone, that said everything. I knew that she was answering the phone, there was something big happening or she wouldn't answer the phone. And she proceeded to tell me what she knew what was going on. And she told me that she was at synagogue that morning. Keep in mind, it was Shabbat and it was Simchat Torah. And she told me that in the middle of the service,

the sirens are going off and they and the those leading the service made the decision to end the service which is just unheard of of all places especially in the Jewish state they ended the service early and they were all going to scatter to their safe rooms or bomb shelters but before they did that they decided to say a blessing the blessing for the state of Israel and a blessing for the idea of soldiers because they knew at that point something big was happening then they scattered and she was running home, and she told me on her way home, she saw in Jerusalem, she lives in the Baca area, which is a pretty, on the more religious end of the spectrum, not ultra-Orthodox by any stretch, but it's more religious. So when you're in the Baca neighborhood, you never see people,

much like I would never think to call my sister on the phone on a Saturday. You never see people in cars in Baca on a Saturday. And she said the image, as she was going back to her home, of men with Yarmakas driving their cars. And these were men who were reporting for reserve duty. They'd been called up. And she said that was just so jarring in all her years living in Jerusalem. She couldn't remember the last time she saw men with yarmikas on a Saturday morning driving. So you add all that up. And this, you know, I was two years old during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. I was a college student during the 1991 Gulf War where Saddam Hussein was launching rockets. You know, those are events when you talk to Israelis that felt obviously dramatically different,

like this time is different. This is the next time, I mean, obviously don't have no recollection of it in 73. I do vividly remember watching it in 91. I don't think I've ever felt that sense of this time is different. And I felt it like I did on October 7th. And after those stories that my sister told me, and as I was gathering the news, it felt like we were seeing something in Israel that I had never really seen in my adult lifetime and that Israel had not experienced really since, you know, in something like 50 years.

As a Jew in America, as a Jew in the world, we were talking on the panel, which is also part of our October 7th commemoration. I personally, for the first time in my life, seeing something I never thought really could happen on that part of the border, the fence being 100% effective, no IDF soldiers and just terrorists ravaging that area. I felt unsafe for the first time almost as a Jew in America and a Jew in the world in a weird way. I wonder, did you, did your experience as a Jew in America, as a Jew in the world, change or seeing that in any way? For the first time in my life, yes. And I, in the days after October 7th, in addition to worrying about my friends and family in Israel, this question you're focusing on this as a Jew in America is the one I felt in the most visceral way. I'm the son of a Holocaust survivor. I've grown up with stories of the Shoah.

You know, my entire life, some of my earliest childhood memories are sitting around the table and just hearing the stories between my mother and her siblings who survived. We've been back to Kushat, Czlovakia, which is where my mother survived, where the Nazis chased her family out of. We've been back there twice now once.

My wife and I took her and once with my kids and my siblings and their kids, a big family trip, as recently, just a little over, a little over a year ago, a year ago this past summer. And I will tell you, Jamie, I've never, so I'm so aware of anti-Semitism and the impact that's had very directly on my family's life and history. I've never, ever felt insecure anywhere I've lived in North America. I've lived in Canada. I've lived all over the United States. I just, it's just never even occurred to me that I could feel physically insecure.

And on October 8th, Brett Stevens came over to our apartment and he, we were recording a podcast. And he came over to my apartment. And he came over to my apartment late that afternoon from, he went to a rally in Times Square, organized by some progressive group attacking Israel. He went to go cover this rally, this protest on October 8th. And he came to our apartment after, and he was telling us about it. And I was like, that can't be right. What, you mean they're protesting Israel?

Like, it just, what, that doesn't, that didn't compute that they would be attacking Israel just after Jews had been slaughtered in the, for the, you know, worst day of Jewish slaughter in history since, in a single day since the Holocaust. Then the next day, October 9th, my kids go to a Jewish day school. That day school was a couple blocks away from our apartment in New York. And I remember walking to the day school, walking by, because I walked by it on the way to work. And there were NYPD cars in front of the school. and just lined up. So it was the first time I can remember my kids have been going there

their whole lives. It's the first time I can remember ever the idea of just the NYPD being concerned about this school. And it's not just a school. A lot of Jewish, I mean, it's a prominent Jewish institution

in a prominent, in a central part of Manhattan. So this concern, and it hit me then that for the foreseeable future, my children who've lived a charmed life in this bubble of the upper west side of Manhattan

suddenly had to be aware of things that I never thought they would need to be aware of. So now it's normal for them. Often many days during the week, they go to school. They're NYPD cars lined up out front. Like they, you know, they're just used to going to school with police cars in front of their school. You know, the conversations we've had to have our kids with our kids about safety, you know, they're not self-conscious at all about their Jewish identity. They're, they're just part of their community.

It's part of their lives. They don't wear yarmacas outside of school, but a lot of their friends wear yarmacas outside of school. they wear, you know, Jewish, again, David, necklace. I mean, they don't even think, they just don't think about it. They ride public transportation. They're on the subways. They roam around the city. As I said, a very charmed life.

Suddenly you have to have conversations with your kids that they now have to be about wear of things that I never thought I would have to, I honestly never thought we'd have to have those conversations with their kids. And so, to your question, it is the first time I've ever felt this way. And I don't think it's going away. Well, let's talk about where we are now, a year later. And I do think maybe you'll inform us that a lot of these conversations are going to be different than it might have been two weeks or a month ago.

But just broadly, before we delve into the details, how would you describe Israel's position one year after October 7th, militarily, economically, diplomatically? Let me start with militarily, because I think that more than anything drives the other two. I think that Israel has stabilized. it's security situation in the South with Gaza. Stabilized meaning it's virtually impossible for another October 7th to happen coming from Gaza, which keep in mind was one of the goals. Make sure this never happens again, one of the military goals in so many words.

I mean, they have different ways of defining it, but that's the gist of it. Make sure this place can never do that again. Unless Israel does something substantially different than it's doing now, that place will never be able to do that again from, Gaza. So Israel has, you know, if you think of the, of Hamas as the equivalent of, I mean, again, I hate the characterization of Hamas as a, it's a terrorist organization, quote unquote, like as though it's some rag tag militia or something. It is not. Like Hezbollah, actually, which we'll get to in a moment, Hamas was, not is, but was, the equivalent of a light

infantry army of a sovereign state. That's, that's how one has to think about it. And it was organized as such, 24 to 26 battalions, depending on how you can. count a couple of battalions. Battalions are organized based on different geographies of the Gaza Strip. They have real chains of command. They have a leadership structure. It's like, by the way, that's why I have not liked the characterization of what Israel's fighting is a counterinsurgency.

It's not a counterinsurgency. Well, we dealt with in Iraq after the regime fell in Iraq, that was a counterinsurgency because an insurgency came out of the rubble of the government falling, of the regime falling. In Gaza, Hamas is the regime. So it's not a counterinsurgency. Israel is effectively fighting a sovereign state's army. Again, it's not recognized as a sovereign state, but in terms of how it's organized. What Israel is done, I think, with great effect, although it's taken time, longer than it should have, Israel has broken almost all of these brigades. When I say broken, meaning it's not to say that every fighter in those brigades is dead or captured,

but it means its organizational structure is broken. There's no chain of command anymore. So now it is fighting much more of like what I, you know, a rag tag militia, but it took time. Most of its leaders are, have been wiped out, including some that are really hard to get. Sinwar, we don't know his, the architect of the sort of the bin Laden of October 7th is, we don't know his situation right now. He's gone in communicato. But it's safe to say one way or the other he's on the run. And Israel now has options in Gaza, meaning it's effectively occupying. It's a temporary occupation, obviously, but it's effectively occupying.

it's responsible right now for the military and the civilian administrative affairs in Gaza. And now it's got to decide, is it going to work with some other moderate, you know, some kind of moderate Palestinian force that could take over the administrative responsibilities in Gaza? Is it going to rely on a third party Arab state to play a role in that? I mean, it's figuring that out now. It's complicated. But at a minimum, it has a handle on the security situation in Gaza. So that's been impressive. And when I say it took too long, if you think of what needed to be done to make it happen, one of the things it needed to do was to get as far as south as it could, because a lot of the decision-making infrastructure of Hamas was farther south,

from the central of Gaza all the way down to Rafa, to the border with Gaza, to border with Egypt, and it took, Israel was held up for a variety of reasons that included some hold-ups in internal Israeli decision-making pressure from the Biden administration. I think a lot of what they have accomplished, they could have accomplished a lot sooner. But be that as it may, it's there now and it's things are basically secure in the south which allows it to focus on the north in the north uh Israel has it has exceeded all my expectations i expected the north i mean we we've all said that the north the hesbalah the threat from israel's north from southern lebanon uh was a threat hezbollah also the equivalent of a light infantry army just just bigger better trained bit more

battlefield tested and this is this is an army that had 10 times the the munitions and rocket capabilities of Hamas. This is an army that has 10 times of personnel. And it has what Hamas did not have, which is it spent basically from 2012 on fighting in Syria because they were deployed to Syria by Iran to protect the regime of Bashar Assad. Hezbollah was really battlefield tested.

And so I was terrified of what a war between the IDF and Hezboa would look like. And we can get into this, but I think Israel has completely punctured those fears by what it has accomplished so far. And so I think for the first time, the war in Gaza, Israel learned a lot with time in fighting, but it ultimately has more or less prevailed. It was a model for a long time. The fight up north is not a model. Israel, once it decided to make a move, has moved aggressively. It had some capabilities that many of us didn't know it had. It also learned a lot, I think, from the

South, from its fighting in Gaza that has informed their decision-making. And so I think that has had the effect of what that is triggered. The success with Hezbollah has given Israel confidence in dealing with the Houthis and other proxies in the region. And most importantly, it's given them self-confidence in dealing with Iran, which is, as Nafali Bennett has said on my podcast. And you know, he says it's elsewhere too. It's the head of the octopus. Unless you deal with the head of the octopus, you're not dealing with it. And for the first time, the head of the octopus seems to be very concerned. So I think for the first time since October 7th, Israel is very much on offense and has a, if you think of, I haven't used this analogy before, but I'll use it now. If you think

of what happened on October 7th is a version of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel completely surprised. I think it was worse than the 73 Yom Kippur War, but let's just say it's the closest analogy in Israel's military history. The war it's fighting now is, feels like a 1967 moment, which is, which is Israel is not waiting for events to react to. It is preemptively now throwing the enemy off balance. And that very much is like, you know, the, if you think of, if you look at the eve of the 1967 war, the six-day war, where Israel decided to preemptively take out the air forces of Israel's Arab enemies in the region, and then fight the war that it was very successful in fighting, you can think of maybe the pager attack is like the equivalent of Israel preemptively taking

out the air forces of hitting the Egyptian Air Force, the Syrian Air Force. Now, in the 67 war, Israel could have stopped right there and said, all right, we've taken up these air forces. We've done, you know, we've done enough. And now let's just, and that would have been a huge mistake. The key, the important developments of the 60 war is what followed that, that Israel pressed its advantage. There were some who were concerned that Israel was going to have to did the page attack, say, okay, we've destabilized them. We're done. And that too would have been a mistake. And what you're seeing now is Israel saying, no, no, now that we've destabilize them. We've got to start making big moves. They're making big moves. And I think for the

first time, what you're seeing is a morale change not only within Israel, because I think Israeli society has been stuck and traumatized for obvious reasons since October 7th. For the first time, I think you're seeing a morale boost within Israeli society is a result of the success they're having in the North and beyond. And I think you're seeing a changing of relations between the Arab state, specifically the Sunni Gulf and Israel, which the Sunni Gulf, while they don't like Hamas and they were happy to see Israel wipe out Hamas, it was hard for them, certainly with the quote unquote proverbial Arab Street to watch what was happening to Palestinians caught in the crossfire in Gaza. There is no love lost between these Sunni Gulf states and Hezbollah and between

these Sunni Gulf states and Iran. These Sunni Gulf states are terrified of Hezbollah and Iran. The Sunni Gulf states are terrified of Hezbollah and Iran, and to see Israel's resourcefulness, ingenuity, creativity, and just pure strength has the whole mood of the Sunni Gulf towards Israel has just done a 180 since over the last few weeks. And I'm seeing it. I'm hearing it with officials I'm talking to in the Gulf. I'm hearing it from CENTCOM officials who work with the Gulf states and Israel, USCOM. And so I think Israel has this military strength to your question has now created geopolitical and diplomatic capital that Israel didn't have before the most recent round of before these last few weeks. And then economically, there are two ways to look at it.

And at some point, I'm going to have to, I want to do a deep dive on this on my podcast and maybe some other venues on the economic situation. On the one hand, Israel's getting hit with downgrades, credit rating downgrades, moody's. I mean, there's, you can read the reports. On the other, and all that is true. And the, the economic toll. on Israel is considerable and a lot of institutions are moving capital out of Israel. And obviously the tourism industry is all but dormant and which is a big hit to Israel on the one hand. On the other hand, give me the opportunity today. I would bet on the future of Israeli entrepreneurs and startups any day of the week. I am personally actually. I've seen a

number of interesting companies that I'm getting behind because what you are seeing now, if you think about all the different areas of tech where Israel's flourished, one of them that has not been the beneficiary of Israel's incredible talent pool is defense tech. And the two laboratories of defense tech today in the world are Ukraine and now Israel. And you have all these talented people who are building defense tech companies or starting to work in defense tech companies. And I actually think there's going to be a boom in this area and others as a result of this war. Well, I want to get in a little bit to all of that.

including towards the end, what you just mentioned there, which will be a question for you about whether we could see a supercharged startup nation as a result of this. But I want to go back to the pager attack. And can I just say one other thing on that point? I should mention this. And I hate saying this because I don't want to jinx it. But there are over, there are about 450 multinationals, multinational companies that have set up shop in Israel basically since over the last 15 to 20 years. And these are companies. Every major tech company, global tech company, has an R&D or innovation center in Israel, even non-tech companies, Procter & Gamble, Mercedes-Benz, Walmart, Coca-Cola, like you ask why those kinds of companies would be setting up innovation

tech centers in Israel because they do have major problems to solve. If you're Coca-Cola, you're thinking about the future of water. If you're Mercedes-Benz, you're thinking about the future of the automobile as a communications device. All the innovation is happening on the tech side in automobiles. If you're thinking of Procter & Gamble, it's the future of AI, and its impact on how product placement products are positioned in the supply chain issues. I can go on and on and on. All these companies are set up in Israel. They now employ a lot of Israelis. Not a single one has shut down operations since October 7th. So you would have thought that it would be understandable, by the way, if a lot of them did. None of them have. So that's also a sign that they are seeing

this incredible talent that's being further tested by this war and the fact that they're hanging in there is a sign that they're betting on the resilience of Israeli tech entrepreneurs that we're seeing. I want to get into that a little bit later, but I want to go back to the pager attack and propose maybe an alternative to the 1967, six-day war. And to me, it was in Tebby. It was something that didn't anyone think was possible, something that raised the spirit of the country. After in Tebby, I think it was Shimon Perez at Yoni Netanyahu's funeral said it was a it was a the result of it raised the spines of all the Jews in the world it's almost the antithesis of October 7th restoring what people thought Israel uh security capabilities were

you mentioned you didn't think did you know have you talked you've talked to all kind of the smartest people did anyone imagine that being a potential that capability of Israel what they accomplished in specifically the pagers yours the walkie talkies the next day uh and then the the destruction of Nisarala, all within 10 days. So the way I would think about it is Israel, so based on officials, I've spoken to both current and former, Israel had these three, three capabilities. Okay, so one capability was the pagers, which very few people in the security establishment knew about. It was a, it was an asset of the Mossad. The Mossad had been building this capability for years, years. Keep in mind, in Israel, the director of the Mossad reports directly to the prime minister,

not to the defense minister. So there have been many defense ministers and his Israel over the years that had no idea that this pager capability was available. The only people in the upper ranks that knew about it were the Mossad director and the prime minister. So that was one capability. Now keep in mind with that capability, I spoke to someone who was, I'll be careful, but just someone who's very involved in the development of that capability over the years, he said even while they were building it, and I just want to be clear, this is not someone who told me about it prior to the world learning about the capability. So it's not like I had any advanced notice of it.

But he told me as impressive as it was, you only know if it's going to work when you actually decide to use it. It's not like one of these capabilities that you can like test and say, oh, we'll try it a little bit and then if it works, we'll go big. It's like the moment you only get one shot at using it.

And when that one shot happens, you learn if it works or not. So he said, we didn't know. You know, there's a thousand things with an operation as complex as that that could go wrong. And you just don't know until you try to use it. So that's what's one capability.

The other capability was they had been for years mapping out all these sites in Lebanon, particularly southern Lebanon, but also in the Dachia area around Beirut, where these rocket and missile inventories are being held and where the launchers were. So there's a team within Israel that has been systematically mapping out. A lot of it's done through 8200, which is this elite unit in the IDF, similar to our NSA. and that's its own story, 9,900, which is the satellite imaging unit. There are a couple of very impressive units that, again, this is its own story about how they had been mapping for years and years and years, trying to understand where all these

targets were so that if Israel ever had to do, like what it's done over the last couple weeks, which is to flip a switch and start hitting what they've hit now, like 50% of these capabilities, they'd be able to do it. So that was a second capability. And the third capability was taking out Nassarala, which they have had the capability to do in the past. Now, they have tried, from what I understand, to do in the past and have failed. Apparently, it was tried, so I'm told, but I don't know a certainty in the 2006 Lebanon War.

There are others who argue that even though they have had that capability, the reason they haven't actually executed upon it just because they viewed Nassarala as a demonic leader, but rational, and that he was a rational actor and that they, there was, and he was risk averse, and there were reasons why they didn't want to necessarily take him out. Those are the three capabilities. The pagers destabilize a large number of fighters, senior level fighters. in the organization, the missiles and rockets and launchers know where all those are in case you ever have to hit them. And the third is getting Nessarala. The fact that all three of those were hit sequentially, right, first the Pagers, then the rockets, hitting the rocket launchers

and the, and the munitions soon after, and then Nessarala, boom, boom. The fact that they hit all three of those and they were all executed upon masterfully and seemingly seamlessly, was a surprise to almost everyone I've spoken to. They thought if we get one of these right, it's huge. If we get two of these right, wow. Three of them, all three of them, that I think has given them the self-confidence now to go deal with Iran because they just feel like

they just have this tremendous momentum. And again, these things are hard to know if you got it right until you actually try it. The last one, which I just didn't know about, was the, what Israel's been doing over the last few weeks, and certainly it sounds like over the last few months, is it has been sending its commandos into southern Lebanon to take out the infrastructure, the tunnels, the, so there was basically the equivalent of, of the capabilities of, the Hezbollah had the equivalent of capabilities that Hamas had to execute October 7. So they had been planning their

own October 7th from the north that was supposed to hit the Upper Galilee. And those towns were really unprotected up there in the north. And it's a real blessing, miracle that Hezbole didn't try to do its own October 7th when Hamas was doing its own October 7th because I think Israel could have been really, really squeezed. But Israel now has been taking out those capabilities too. So taking out those Hezbollah capabilities. So, you know, I, like I said, I knew bits and pieces of some of these capabilities. I certainly didn't know about the pagers. I'd known about some of the other capabilities not the totality of them and everyone I've spoken to

who's looking at it retroactive retrospectively says again we knew we had these capabilities at our disposal we just didn't expect all of them to work all at once. If the capability of Hezbollah a month ago was

100% what would you say it is now? Well look based on I mean I guess there's a there's two ways to look at it. One is just a mathematical question, and the other is a psychological question. On the mathematical front, I would say Hamat Hezbole right now, this is just a crude estimate, is about half, it has about half the

capabilities it had a month ago. And so that is to say, if you just look at the number of people, Israel's wiping out personnel-wise, and you look at the munitions and launchers that Israel's wiping out. It sounds like, based on estimates, about half of what it was. before this period that you're talking about. Psychologically, though, I mean, there are two decisions any leader has to make in wartime. One is, what do we have the capabilities to do?

And then what do we feel comfortable doing? What do we feel comfortable doing given the risk of what the response may be from our enemy? I think the psychological impact is far more than 50%. Now, is it 100%? Probably not.

You never want to say 100%. But it's not as low as 50%, because now what Israeli intelligence is learning, is, and I'm hearing the secondhand, obviously, but based on what I'm hearing from sources I talk to or of my guests on my podcast, the sources they're talking to, what they're picking up is both in the leadership of Hezbollah

or what's left of the leadership of Hezbollah and certainly in the leadership of Tehran, they never anticipated some of these capabilities Israel has. And now, so they've been really surprised and they don't want any more surprises. So anything they do to Israel now, know it could be met with surprises that they are not thinking about. Now, one former senior official said to me, I said to him, how could Israel be so on it with the north and with Iran? Because,

you know, even with Iran, there was the hit it against Henea in the heart of Tehran. That was also just like extraordinary from an intelligence standpoint. I said, how could Israel have been so on it then and been so not on it in the south, in Gaza, with Hamas? And he said, you need to understand that one of the big advantages, it's counterintuitive, and I had never thought of it this way, one of the big advantages Hamas had relative to Hezbo and relative to Iran is it's a very primitive society in Gaza, and Hamas is very primitive, which means they, either out of lack of resources or intense discipline, have stayed off of electronic communications. They do not communicate through signal communications. In fact, right up to the attack, the night of October

seventh, from what I've heard, they, Hamas was going door to door to, to, like at midnight, to start pulling out fighters to join, to get ready for October. These are people who had been training, but they didn't know when the attack was going to be. And they were like going door to door saying, okay, we're on. So they weren't sending out a blast on pagers. They weren't sending a blast on cell phones, meaning a communication, a bat signal. They were, they were literally knocking on doors. Nothing was done on, on telephones or on communications devices.

And so that primitive, you know, ingredient or theme throughout the Ghazan society made it very hard for Israel to understand what was going on. He said, Lebanon and Hezbollah are quite advanced. And Iran is certainly advanced as a society, which means they are extremely dependent on electronic devices, which gave Israel the advantage. And Israel's visibility into what was going on in both in Hezbollah and in Iran. was just a whole other level. So they have visibility into everything or a lot of things. And now Tehran and Hezbollah are realizing that, and they are apparently freaked out. So that's the psychological part.

It's like almost doesn't matter what capabilities it has. If it's completely freaked out about what else Israel has in store and it has Israel, you know, Israel has them guessing, that can't even put a data, a statistical, like, estimate on what impact that has, because it's people just questioning themselves in ways that they probably weren't before the last few weeks. So now in response to the killing of Nasrallah, what Israel has done to Hezbollah and what you mentioned before, the killing of Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyah in a remarkable attack, maybe it was a couple months ago in Tehran. Iran launched nearly 200 missiles into Israel. The reports at the time were that they were largely ineffective.

There was a Washington Post story that it may have hit some military bases. I wonder if you have insight on that. Did those missiles hit anything significant that they intended to hit, that the Iran showed they were capable of hitting places that Israel didn't think they could directly hit? I think, so I don't have total clarity, visibility yet, but before when I'm hearing, it is worrisome that Israeli military bases may have been hit. It doesn't sound like anything sensitive was hit, but that said, in a small country, like Israel is, where they don't have a lot of options in terms of where to disperse their military bases. I mean, the Kirya, the defense ministry and head of military operations, and Israel's right in the heart of Tel Aviv. It's like

you bounce from skyscrapers and tech, you know, startup clusters right into, it would be like the Pentagon being, you know, right in the center of Manhattan. And so there aren't a lot of places to disperse. So that those places, I mean, the Kirio wasn't hit, but other, it sounds like other bases may have been hit that they've been hit is bad. Obviously, Israel had advanced warning, so it could move people and critical resources out of there. But so, so good that no one was hit and Israel had advance warning and that their, their

advanced capabilities, radar capability, surveillance enabled them to, to know something was coming and can relocate people. bad that Iran was able to make contact with military bases, potentially, and B, that it was willing to. I mean, that's the part that I think people misunderstand is that people say, I mean, some of these, oh, Iran had to respond symbolically. It's the same thing in April. Oh, Iran only did 300 projectiles. They effectively gave advance warning because some of these projectiles take a long time to travel

and gave Israel in the U.S. and all these countries to turn on this multilateral defense. system and multi-level defense system, so nothing could really penetrate, and everything's good. Israel hit, Iran hit back, and it's, you know, and it's bring the temperature down, de-escalate. And I, and I have said nonsense in April, and I said nonsense last week. If five, 10 percent of what Iran launches breaks through, the damage to Israel is extraordinary. In April, by the way, they tried to hit, you know, where 8200, we talked about this unit, short of time, and 8200, where it's located. It was clear that was one of the targets of Iran's. And the 8200 unit, like Israel's Air Force, like the Mossad, like a couple of other units, are the most elite, you know, valued

areas of personnel of Israel's security system. If any of those people had been killed, it would have been dire for Israel. And so I don't buy this, you know, it was never intended to really break through. Well, that leads to. to what I think is a very important three-part question. To me, the missile attack from Iran made obvious, which was already obvious, you can't allow the regime in Tehran to get nuclear weapons. My question to you is, does Israel have the capability from what you know to take out Iran's nuclear program, or at least set it back a long, long time? If it does, should that be the response to what happened, will it be the response to what occurred? So I'm just going to say

what I know from public sources is that Israel has the capacity on its own to do serious damage to Iran's nuclear program. There are two areas of Iran's nuclear program, just to simplify it. There's what's above ground and what's below ground. Most of it is above ground, not below ground. It sounds like Israel has considerable wherewithal to do serious damage to what's above ground. The question is what, what is below ground and can Israel do that on its own? You know, I've heard varying estimates of what Israel can do to what's below ground without help of the United States. Now, with the United States, there's a lot it can do. Without the United States, it's open to debate. And I want to clarify, when you say without, without the U.S.,

do you mean in terms of the extension of the leash that the U.S. gives Israel or in terms of actual capabilities? So there are two things the U.S. can. do. The U.S. can make sure Israel has the resources to do what it needs to do. Make sure it has the weapons, make sure it has the aircraft capabilities to do what it needs to do. So we don't wind up in the situation where the United States, sort of like what they did last spring, where they said we're holding back these weapons, we're holding back the supply of these capabilities. So full support. So that's one area. The other area, though, which I think is more important, is does the U.S. want to be directly involved? Directly involved, not just supplying

Israel, but actually partnering with Israel and potentially the Saudis and playing a direct role. And certainly if the U.S. plays a direct role, I think they could really shut down Iran's nuclear program. But short of that, to me, it's how much Israel wants to try to delay the program. So right now, according to the Director of National Intelligence in the U.S., report that came out probably two months ago. It was startling, actually, this report. It was that they basically argued, your listeners can go just Google, Director of National Intelligence, Iran report. For the first time, they, at least declassified a report that warned that for the first time, the director of the intelligence community in the U.S. has no indication that Iran has halted

its program. Usually there have been signs that there have been halts to the program or it was slowing. For the first time, they don't see those signs. So they're just warning. Our conclusion is Iran could have turned on the program. And if Iran can turn on the program, left, you know, without, you know, left unimpeded, the warning is within one to two weeks, it can have some kind of nuclear, nuclear capability or nuclear weapons capability. The question is, so what can Israel do, I think sometimes we ask the question, can Israel stop the Iranian nuclear program?

The answer is, I don't know. But what everyone I speak to gives me the confidence, gives me confidence about is that Israel can dramatically, dramatically slow it down. So if it goes from one to two weeks to break out, can they slow it down to one to two months? Can they slow it down to one to two years? I mean, those are huge wins as far as I'm concerned. If Israel can do... Do you know, I mean, the difference between, I mean, do the people that you talk to say it's, they can slow it down one to two months or one to two years? I mean, those are also big gaps. They're big gaps depending on the capabilities Israel's willing to deploy. So then it's, it's what's Israel willing to do. But do you think

Israel could if they have the capability to do one. Yes. Yes. I mean, that's what I'm being told by very senior. And what would be the reason not to do the one to two years? What would it? That's a great question. The reason to do it to not do it is one of twofold, one of threefold, actually. One is fear of the response. Now, before the last few weeks, the fear of response was Hezbollah. So Hezbollah was the loaded gun sitting on the table that Iran had. and you would talk to Israeli officials and they would say, we fear that the moment we try to do something big

against Iran, the deterrent that Iran has against Israel trying to take out Iran's nuclear program is it has, Hezbollah on its northern border that could unleash 200,000 rockets. Some of them are precision guided, right hit in the central of Israel, hit critical infrastructure in Israel.

I mean, the damage it could do, most Israelis and Israeli officials were very concerned about this, deterrent that Iran had developed, which is called Hezbollah. Israel's view on that deterrent is, I don't want to say it's zero, but back to our earlier point, it's severely, severely diminished. So the fear of response from Hezbollah, way down. The risk of a regional war. Like, does Iran do something that suddenly Israel is in the middle of this regional war that it's not ready for? When I talk to Israeli officials, I say, we're already in a regional war.

What is this risk of a region? In whose mind is Israel not in a regional war right now? has seven battlefronts. Who's on their side that's not on their side? I mean, who's not, I mean, I think Iraq, some militia groups in Iraq just shot at... And the Houthis. And whatever's left of Hamas and Ghaz in the West Bank. Right.

So, right. And not only that, since this comes back to the Sunni Gulf, which is very important here. When I think why the Abraham Accords happened, when I think about why Saudi normalization was on path before October 7th, It was largely in part, not because all those countries had become Zionists. It's not because they felt some sense of charitable mindset towards Israel.

They saw Israel as this country of strength. It was a winner. It was on the move technologically. It was on the move economically. And it was a military and intelligence juggernaut. That, the risk to me, the big risk of October 7th in terms of Israel's geopolitical postures, Israel suddenly looked like a paper tiger in the region. Oh, you're not all that.

We thought you were all that. We were wrong. I think what the last few weeks has done is it's a reminder. reminded the region, oh, Israel is all that. And I think now, since those countries live in fear, those Sunni Gulf countries live in fear of Iran, that Israel has demonstrated these capabilities it has, and it's demonstrated that it's willing to use them, I suddenly am, I'm just seeing it in real time, the Gulf suddenly wanting to piggyback onto Israel's strength. I was speaking with senior officials from U.S. Central Command recently who have in one room at Central Command,

They have generals from the IDF and they have generals from all these Arab countries that are in the theater of the kind of the Middle East theater, all working together. He says like the chemistry between these military leaders was always very productive. But since over the last few weeks, it's whole other level because these other generals from these other Arab countries are in awe of Israel. And so I think this is the moment that, like I said, Israel's already in a regional war and it's never going to have more allies in the region. in dealing with Iran than it has now. So the third reason not to do it, like I said, one is fear of Hezbollah, that's gone. Two is risk of a regional war. Israel's in the middle of a regional war. Three, the relationship with the United States. And it goes without saying Israel's relationship with the United States is its most important relationship in the world,

in its history. I don't need to tell your audience that. And as much as I'm critical of President Biden, what he did in the weeks after October 7th was just a reminder of the power of that relationship, the military assets that he deployed to the region were extremely important. The bear hug he gave to Israel was extremely important. And so Israel's relationship of the United States is extremely important. And if the U.S. tells Israel, to quote Joe Biden, don't, if the U.S. tells Israel don't hit Iran's nuclear capabilities, which it seems, according to leaks, what Biden has said in recent days, that will give Israel pause, to a degree, to a degree.

Israel, when I say Israel's learned a lot over the last year, one of the things it's learned is, while it has to stay locked arm with the, you know, synced up with the U.S. and constant communication with the U.S., the advice that the U.S. gives Israel is not always the best advice. The U.S. trying to compare what Israel is dealing with as America's response to 9-11 and Iraq and Afghanistan was just not, it was like apples and oranges for reasons we can get into. The U.S. warned Israel that it would face 10 times the casualties approximately that Israel has faced in fighting that war after October 7th. The warning that Israel that the U.S.

gave to Israel about why, that it couldn't do Rafa, that it should not do Rafa, that it couldn't move a civilian population out of Rafa. Israel moved about a million people out of Rafa in 10 days once it decided to do it, that the U.S. warned Israel not to respond to the April 13th attack from Iran. Those same U.S. officials, by the way, now tell Israeli officials, we were wrong in warning you not to do it. What Israel did, the nature of the operation it did was something the U.S. couldn't have imagined being so effective in terms of Israel's response.

Also, I mean, there's also the Osirac example where-Ossarac example, exactly, the Reagan administration. During the Gulf War, was it General David Ivy, was thanked by Dick Cheney showing a picture of the bombed-out nuclear Osirac. because if they did not do that, Saddam would have had nuclear weapons. And 2007, when Omar was prime minister, Israel's attack against the Syrian nuclear reactor, the Bush administration was against it. Now, they didn't stand in Israel's way, but they said, we are not going to participate.

So to your point, right there, Israel has a long history, not just in the last year, of listening to the U.S., staying synced up and communicating with the U.S., but saying on certain issues, we part ways. But do you think there's any chance that, Amy, I know. Joe Biden came out the other day and said, don't attack nuclear reactors. Is there any chance that is subterfuge that behind the scenes he would help Israel attack a nuclear reactor? And let me, before you answer that, a corollary, you mentioned the UAE. In the past, I've heard that the UAE might turn off its radars if Israel was using, sorry, Saudi Arabia using its airspace to attack

the Iranian nuclear facilities. There was reports that they just told the Iranian foreign minister that they want neutrality. Do you buy that? So it's hard to know what these governments are saying. My first reaction when I heard Biden saying, don't hit the nuclear capabilities, was even if that's the U.S. position, why on Earth telegraph it? Unless telegraphing, it was the point. I mean, for all we know, the U.S. is cooperating with Israel and they want to throw off the Iranians and think that the U.S. is holding them back.

It's hard to know based on public statements from any of these countries, what is what is real and what is calculated. The Israeli hit against the Houthis recently in Yemen. If you just think of the airspace, Israel's had to travel. It is farther, actually, where they hit, then Israel would have to travel to get to Iran. So these countries know Israel has a lot of capabilities to go far and wide. Whether or not these countries want to stymie Israel,

I'm, again, I'm skeptical. I think a lot of these governments, the region think that Israel is is demonstrating tremendous advantage and they want to like help them press that advantage. The wildcard to me is the U.S. And I, and I just don't know whether or not what's really going on. We won't know, I think, for a little bit. You think it's possible that that behind the scenes, because the U.S. did say severe consequences. I mean, obviously sometimes that turns out to be true severe consequences. Sometimes they define it differently. But do you think there is a possibility that there's coordination behind the scenes over the response like this? I absolutely

think it's possible. And I also think that Israel, in a sense, is in a very tough position now for the following reason. Because Israel's on the move, if Iran were ever going to decide to go race for a nuclear bomb, now would be the time to do it. If they think, oh, my God, you know, Israel, God knows what Israel's up to. The only advantage we're going to get now is Israel wakes up one day saying that Iran has reached breakout phase to its nuclear weapons capability. So I think, therefore, the Israeli leadership is calculating, if we don't do it now, we really lose, we really lose the plot here because there's nothing more dangerous, from Israel's perspective, there's nothing more dangerous than a country that is close, although not there, but close to a nuclear capability that feels weak and hunted down. I mean, that's the kind of country, government, a regime that would say this is the time to make a move. And I think that's a major factor in the decision making of Israel's leadership.

I think below all this, Dan, is, and no one gets too enthusiastic because a lot could go wrong. But a year after October 7th, you see the potential of degraded Hamas, severely, degraded Hezbollah severely. Iran's nuclear program attacked and set back, which lays the groundwork to a Saudi deal after Israel shows strength. My question to you is, if I asked this question a month ago, I think it would be a very different answer, at least in my mind. How do we assess Bebe, Benjamin Netanyahu, one year after October 7th? Before I answer that question, I just want to put a fine point on what you're saying. If anyone in the region would have thought that Sinwar activating this attack on October 7th,

that there would be a line you could draw, not a straight line, but there's a line one could draw from Sinwar activating the October 7th massacre to Hezbollah being taken off the chessboard, Iran's nuclear program being severely set back, the Iranian regime under siege to the point that it looks like a fraction of itself, it went from being this hegemonic power in the region to what, to potentially nothing. You just couldn't have imagined it, right? Like Sinwar, if Sinwar had not done October 7th, everything, you know, Hezbollah would have been perceived to be in as strong as it could and had to turn against Israel. Iran would have been seen, it would have been Iran that was on the march, Iran building, you know, so that all of this

could have been set back. What activated it? What activated was Sinwar. I mean, Hamas. So that's kind of like an amazing thing. So your question is about BB. Yeah, I'm on very, very mixed views here. Full disclosure, I've known Netanyahu for a long time, personally. I think he, and I'm happy to get to us. I think in his career he has accomplished a lot. I'm not sure the Abraham Accords and the path to normalization with the Sunni Gulf would have happened without him. It may have happened eventually, but I think he accelerated things in ways we can get into. I think a lot of what has happened in Israel's tech economy, not catalyzed by him, but he engaged in both his finance minister and then as prime minister in certain programs that I think created the conditions for the

tech economy to flourish. And I think he was prescient all the way back during the Oslo Accords about the unworkability of a Palestinian state, at least with the various actors that were in leadership roles among the Palestinians, that how unworkable it was. And even friends of mine on my left on the left concede in Israel concede that he may have been right. He was writing about this. You know, if you go back and read his book, A Place Among the Nations, which you wrote in the early 90s. I mean, it really lays out many of the things that are just obvious now, but they weren't obvious at the time. The two challenges with Netanyahu is, are one that he's just been in office for a long time, on and off, but in office for a long time. And I think even under the best of circumstances,

electorates become exhausted. And this is more of a function of what happens in parliamentary systems where people can serve without term limits for a long time. Leaders, whether it's, you know, Margaret Thatcher or, I mean, just very successful leaders can wear out their welcome. That's before you throw in a major existential attack on a country that happened under this prime minister's watch, which I just think, regardless of how effective he is in the response to it, I just think it's hard for a population to get over. And then if you look at the government, he's formed some of the characters in the government, more related to issues before October 7th, the judicial reformed debates and whatnot, but some of these characters in this government, then this government

having to fight a war where something like a third of the decision makers in that government don't have never served in the military and they represent parts of Israeli society that don't serve in the military while the country's in this long war, really long war, long as war since it's war of independence. I just think there's a breakdown in trust. So Israelis on the one hand, when you lay out what Natanyahu has been doing in this war, both in the South and the north, and you look at the goals he's trying to pursue, when you take, take the personalities out of it and you just describe the policies. Most Israelis I speak to agree with what he's doing and what this government is doing, more or less. When you insert his

name, there's resistance to the idea that he should continue to serve. And I just think there's a trust issue with him that I think is hard to overcome. Again, any electorate having a trust issue with its politician is one thing. But a trust issue while your sons and daughters and parents and siblings are fighting in a war, in a war. If you have a trust issue with the prime minister, I think that's very hard to overcome. I do think, though, my, my criticism of Netanyahu in the war is different than most people's. I think it was a mistake to be so differential to the U.S. months ago in the months leading up to a decision on Rafa, I think Israel lost a lot of time during those three months, while Israel was sort of waiting on deciding what to do about Rafa.

but I think in recent weeks, and this is based on, even friends I speak to in Israel, journalists I speak to who are very critical of Nathjahou, they all acknowledge what he's been doing the last few weeks and how he's been running these series of events. And it's not just him, obviously, it's Yov Galant, who's a critical player, his defense minister, but that he, you know, for all his flaws, he has been extremely effective. We painted an optimistic picture of if things go right, what the Middle East could look like. Is there an optimistic, or at least partly optimistic, because of, already the best case scenario is lost because so many hostages have been killed. Is there an

optimistic view where the remaining hostages get out? How how can Israel get the remaining is there is there a solution to that? So I was going to mention the hostages a minute ago and I'm glad you brought it up. I um for all the success of the last few weeks in the north I've been thinking a lot about the hostage families and their loved ones in the south because attention has really shifted from their, from their, you know, from the pain that they are living with. And just because there's success in the North doesn't mean they're living with any less pain. There's still, you know, 101 hostages. The estimates are half, maybe more than half, God willing, are alive.

I think until there's some resolution with those hostages getting home, whichever ones are alive, I think it's very hard. Israel can have success geopolitically. It can have success in the region. It can have success on the security front. But the scar of that many Israelis who've lived in the dungeons of Gaza for now over a year

and the number of them that have been slaughtered, I don't know how you get over that. Can Israel move on? I mean, yeah, it will. It will have to. it's moved on from other major traumas in the history of its country and in the history of the Jewish people. But the state failed on October 7th. The state was effectively absent on October 7th. And there'll be commissions of inquiry to better understand how that happened and who

was responsible. But the, you know, Yossi Klein-Halevi said on my podcast something, the public intellectual who I think you know, he said something that really stuck with me. He said that we're now living in the, for the first time we're entering a new phase, which is the post-holocaust phase of Israel, meaning the post-holocaust phase, the period from the founding of the state till October 7th, 23, was an understanding that the Holocaust would never happen again because there was a Jewish state. It would, you know, that state would face setbacks, that state would fight wars, but there was, but something fundamentally had changed. And the, and the, the, the, the, what makes the despair of October 7th is the sense that, wait a minute, we were never supposed to have pogroms in our

own country again. Israelis said that, that's not, in the Jewish state, there were never going to be pogroms in the Jewish state. And there was, there were pogroms on, in the Jewish state on October 7th. So it was like, it was, it was, it was, it was a window into what it's like when there are a high concentration of Jews living in one place without the infrastructure of a state without a security capability and military. And, you know, how Israelis get out of that. And so the reminder of it is that these hostages are still there just and kilometers away. It's not like they're another part of the world. They're like just steps away from Israel. And it seems like there's nothing Israel can do about it. And by the way, I do not believe and have never believed that

Sinwar or the leadership of Hamas were serious about some kind of deal that gets all those hostages home. And by the way, U.S. officials are now of this view too. And they've been of this view for the last couple months, folks in the Biden administration who I'm in touch with who are very involved with the hostage negotiations. They do not believe Natanyahu is the hold up on the hostage negotiations. They get frustrated with Natanyahu for a variety of reasons, but they believe that Sinwar and Hamas are not serious about a deal. And they never really have been serious about a deal. And so I don't know what Israel does with that. What to the sources that you talk to and what you believe will Gaza look like post this? I mean, in the West Bank,

for that matter, what would the territories controlled by Palestinians look like after this war is over? Who controls certainly the Gaza? Best case scenario is some combination of responsible actors that can be recruited from the Palestinian Authority, which dominates, as you know, in the West Bank, runs civilian affairs in the West Bank, and some third-party Arab country. Most likely the Emirates are the ones that the Emirates are talked about as engaged in serious conversations. What you could have in Gaza is Israel still responsible for security, obviously on its own border with Gaza. Israel responsible for security on the border between Gaza and Egypt and Israel obviously responsible for security in airspace above Gaza

and Gaza not allowed to have any kind of airport or anything. So basically it's sovereignty minus, if you think about it. It's all the accoutrements and attributes of a sovereign state minus security. Israel is responsible for security. And then within Gaza, civilian affairs are administered by some Palestinian administrative agency or government or or a third party or country or like I said some combination of both if there's a third party Arab country they could also play a role in securing at least part of the Gaza Strip as well inside the Gaza Strip that to me is like the it's hard in a long term horizon who knows

near term and medium term what I the picture I just painted is realistically you know the best case scenario and then that is to say is what I don't want to be responsible for governing these people's lives. Israel can never again, or no time soon, allow another security force from another country or the Palestinians themselves be responsible for their security. Again, as you know, you're talking about a population, civilian population of Israel that is my, like, I just interviewed Amir Tibon for my podcast. And he, a journalist for, for, um, uh, Auret, who was, who was living on Kibbutz Nahaloz on October 7th, uh, most bombarded, one of the most bombarded Kibbutzim in Israel, both on October 7th and going

back to the 2014 Israel Gaza War, less than a mile, less than a mile away from the fence. So you have large civilian populations of Israelis who live so close to this place. And I just think never again can Israel say we are outsourcing responsibility of security to anybody else for that. So if Israel can figure out a way to supervise the security and man the security and let another party, whether it's Palestinian or an Arab country, handle civilian affairs, that's probably the best case scenario. And it's not great. It's not a great scenario. But I don't, I don't know what else you, I don't know what else you do. Let me close on an economic question.

You talked a little bit about it earlier. You're obviously authored Startup Nation. To me, I see Israelis who always, always had to be more mature because of going into the military. now even have to be more mature in this moment after October 7 seeing what happened as a real society having to fight a war at the same time and then innovating during that war to create some of the most remarkable

operations that the world has ever seen there might be movies done on some of these where you might have a super true on one hand you could... By the way I got to tell you Jimmy the guys who created Fowder are close personal friends of mine Avi Isikarov and Lior Roz

were friends of them for years and they're in the writing room right now, like as we're recording this, or in the writing room working on season five of Fowda. And they've been telling me, the biggest challenge they have is they can't keep up with real-time events. So they're trying to come up with stuff that would work in a TV series. And they're like, wait a minute, the stuff that's actually happening is more fantastical and science fiction like than we could ever think of. Like, if we wrote this stuff in the writing room, you know, folks in Netflix would be saying, no, no, no, no, that's too much.

That's not believable. So you're exactly right. So on one hand, you have the potential of what you might call a supercharged startup nation, even more innovative. On the other hand, the risk, can you speak to, you know, in where you fall on this, the risk of a generation of people not wanting to, you know, have to fight for their lives like they did in the last year, deciding to move to Silicon Valley or out of, out of Israel where their skills can be used in a perhaps safer environment. You know, which direction do you believe it's going to go. So the dark scenario is Israelis look at the combination of 2023 and 2024. I'll just paint it. I'll paint the picture. 2023 was a year before October 7th

of incredible division and Israelis seeming at each other's throats and a real breakdown along the lines of, for simplicity's sake, secular, productive, urban Israeli life, versus ultra-Orthodox, Bahraidi, non-serving in the military, non-serving in the modern not participating or contributing to the modern economy, religious life. And the breakdown between these two communities, the division between these two communities was stark and many Israelis, the productive, the productive Israelis, the ones contributing to the economy. And we're just going to pick up and leave and say, what do I need this for? Why should have my children fighting and serving in the army when a growing chunk of Israeli society is not even serving at all?

And I'm carrying and I'm working my tail off to contribute to the economy to subsidize this other part of the economy, this other part of not the economy, the other part of the population that's not contributing. Like, what do I need this for? I'll go to Silicon Valley. And so that risk of that division, then you go into October 7th where you have some Israelis, and I know many who've been serving. on and off for last, you know, for about nine months, basically, on and off in reserves, leaving their businesses to flounder, creating enormous tensions in their personal and their family lives. And, and they just say, you know, I'm out. And of course, if you rewind the tape to before October 7th, the peak of the judicial reform debate in 2023, there were

large numbers of some of the most elite officers and members of Israelis, Israel's armed forces, especially its Air Force, saying, we will not serve. We are so outraged. We are so outraged. with the government's policy on judicial reform, we will not serve. And that was also the, you know, like the nuclear option, if you will, the doom, you know, the doomsday scenario for Israeli society. If it's most elite military people, professionals were declaring they wouldn't serve. And so you could just see more of that. Israelis get worn out.

They think the government is incompetent. They think that the government doesn't, this is the modern contributing members of Israeli society contributing to its economy. The government doesn't represent us. This is unfair. We're subsidizing big parts of a population that don't contribute. It's our children that are getting killed or critically, severely wounded. We're out.

We're leaving. This is like, why is this equation good for us? At the time, around October 7th, there are many in Israel who are saying, well, why doesn't the Qaraydi population start serving? Well, it's not so easy. You don't take this population that has never served, and then all of a sudden, the middle of the war, try to integrate them into the security services and hope that they play an important role. That's not a total distraction and a headache for those running the IDF. They're not going to join the Sayyret within three months.

Right. The flip side is, a year in, had they started to train some of these, some from that part of the population, for more administrative jobs and not combat, not Sayat-McDahl. Maktal, not, you know, Shmon, whatever. They're not, they're not serving in those units. They're actually doing, they're just taking pressure off the other, you know, pressure off Israelis by, by filling in those jobs. Would that have helped? Probably would have had a symbolic, would have sent a symbolic message?

Absolutely. And with a year's time, they probably could have started to do that. So, okay, so it wasn't really done over the past year. Could it start, could they start doing it the next year or two? Probably, and I think that's a big test, because even if they just start doing it, even if it doesn't have immediate practical impact, it could have symbolic and psychological and morale impact for the rest of Israeli society. But just to bring in the pessimism, the fact that it didn't happen shows that the forces that are preventing that kind of integration, that are preventing the kind of grand compromise that can actually help Israeli society to reach the next stage of its success are not there. Like the, well, I would say the government in power is not incentivized to cut that deal. But then you get into the question of how long is this government going to be in power?

And I'm not here to say this government should go or not go. I'm just saying this government, I mean, there are certainly points over the next year and a half to two years where you could see this government falling or not being able to run, you know, not being able to win another election. So you have to be a little imaginative, although not too imaginative to try to imagine, to try to envision what a future government could look like. And would that be a government that's not dependent on the political power provided by the Qarredi party?

If you imagine a future government with actors like Nafthali Bennett and Navigdor Lieberman and, you know, Benny Gans, and who knows what a future government looks like that isn't dependent numerically. We basically have, having had, what, five, six election cycles in the past three years, we have a pretty good idea of the divisions in Israeli society and the way that the war may impact each of them. And when we talk about the danger of people quitting from the Israeli project, we know what part of the population that specifically would affect

and how that would also further change potentially the politics. So given everything we'd know, do you think there is the math, there is a math to create a government that is not dependent on the Haredi that actually does strive to redefine the social contract of Israel, where everybody is integrated and everybody is, you know, sharing the burden, as Israeli say. So I think there are two things that have changed. One is, I think a large segment of the Israeli left has moved to the right. So the fault lines in the Israeli political spectrum pre-October 7th are not going to be what they were post-October 7th. For instance, I know many secular leftists in Israel who now say I would vote

from enough Tully Bennett. I would vote for Avigdor Lieberman, where they would never have before. So the ability, so I think there's suddenly going to be parts of the Israeli left that now contribute to a government of the center right. I can't tell you exactly how, but that just was never in the math before. A, B, it's not clear to me that the Qaridi parties went, right now they're not faced with a real threat. They're very comfortable in this government. Suddenly, when the they realize that they're going to have to really compete for power in a future Israeli government. Who knows if they're all going to vote and speak and organize their communities as a monolith? I think you could start to see.

When we're researching our book, A Genius of Israel, we started to see, we wrote a couple chapters, we already start to see the early signs of some division within the Qaradi community about how integrated or not integrated they should be. And then, and then I think judicial reform took that to another level where they're starting. start to be some splintering. And I think October 7th could, it's not like they're all going to flip, but you don't need them all to flip. Even if you start seeing small breaks and then also you're seeing big breaks on the left, I think you're going to see new, I think you can start to imagine new political coalitions that you could never have imagined before this past year.

Ethan Bronner, who's currently with Bloomberg News, used to be with the New York Times. He wrote a review of our most recent book, The Genius of Israel, which was about, the book is about Israeli resilience. It came out totally coincidentally around October 7th. We'd written it before October 7th, but a lot of what we write about is about how Israelis, about Israeli resilience. And Ethan Brunner wrote a review of the book in the New York Times. And he just said, The Genius of Israel as a title is probably the worst time title for a book about a country, given what Israel's been through. And he said, it's very hard to see if Israelis can get out of the worst period you could imagine, meaning 2023 and 2024. And he said, and yet if he wrote

in the New York Times review, if Israel does manage to pull, so it's actually intended to be a pretty tough review, but he said, if Israelis managed to dig out of this, that this book, our book, would explain how they did it. And I do feel that we are seeing that. So what do I mean by that? If you look at all the success that you and I talked about the beginning of this conversation, Jamie, about the operations in southern Lebanon, about the pager attack, the military, the taking out Nisarela, who did all those things? The exact same people. Really, I mean, you drill down, as I've done, you look at the exact units that were involved in the IDF and the Air Force, they were the units that were threatening to go on strike.

2023, Amit Segal, who's a friend of mine, and he's been on, been on my podcast a couple of times. Back in 2020, during the peak of judicial reform, Amit Segal was saying, those people are threatening to strike, they should just quit. They should quit the Air Force entirely. If they're threatening to, threatening to strike, that is such a disaster step they're taking, they should just leave altogether. Thank God those people chose not to leave.

They stuck with it, because those are the people. we depended on these last few weeks during some of these daring air operations. What I'm saying is even with all this hell, even with all this shit that Israelis have been dealing with the last couple of years, people haven't given up. They haven't left. Some have. You can find anecdotally small numbers of people who are leaving and saying we're going to move out. We're going to move out for a period of time. And a period of time turns into a long time. And then you have many examples of brain drain. But by and large, certainly in the month of October, 2023, the Israeli population increased, something like 6 to 8%.

You never see. A country in war usually doesn't have a population increase as the war is starting, which means Israelis were racing to get back to Israel to serve. Israelis are still serving, even though they're frustrated with the government. They're still serving with a sense of pride and the sense that they're protecting their home, what they think is their home. And I painted the dark scenario. I think generally speaking, most Israelis, not all.

And the press will focus on the small number of Israelis that are leaving. or bailing. But the reality is most Israelis, who Israel needs to survive as a success nation, not just a startup nation, but like a 360 success nation, they're sticking with the project. They're sticking with the Israeli national project. So I remain cautiously optimistic. I will tell you, I'm more worried about the U.S. than I am about Israel. I'm more worried about Jewish life in the U.S. than I am about Jewish life in Israel. I think Israelis are going to be okay. I think the U.S. Jewish population, the diaspora, is jostled. And I don't know how that gets fixed. And I'm very worried about that.

Israelis, I think they're frustrated and yet they're more or less sticking with it. Dan, senior, on that note, thank you for your wonderful insight one year after October 7th. And thank you for joining to this match podcast. Thanks. Enjoy it. You know,