The Ezra Klein Show - The Israeli Right’s Plan to Carve Up Gaza

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

Israeli forces still occupy half of Gaza. In the cease-fire deal, Israel agreed to fully withdraw its presence there once Hamas fully demilitarized. But Amit Segal thinks that’s unlikely to happen anytime soon. Instead, he believes Gaza will end up divided. So what does that really mean? What are the implications?Segal is the chief political analyst for Channel 12 News in Israel and is known to be quite close to the Netanyahu government. He writes the newsletter It’s Noon in Israel and is the author of the book “A Call at 4 a.m.: Thirteen Prime Ministers and the Crucial Decisions That Shaped Israeli Politics,” which was recently published in English.In this conversation, he talks about why most Israelis don’t see the cease-fire as the end of the war between Israel and Hamas and how this conflict is mapping onto Israeli politics — both at present and as the country looks toward its next elections.This episode contains strong language.Book Recommendations:The Accidental President by A. J. BaimeAn Unfinished Love Story by Doris Kearns GoodwinMessiah in Sde Boker by Hagai SegalThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [e-mail] can find the transcript and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.htmlThis episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Jack McCordick. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Marie Cascione, Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu, Kristin Lin, Emma Kehlbeck, Marina King and Jan Kobal. Original music by Pat McCusker and Aman Sahota. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Transcript editing by Naomi Noury. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

I don't know. We're a few weeks into the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. It's a deal that has already been troubled by violence, but so far it is holding. If you're listening to that deal being talked about in the U.S., you're hearing it spoken about one way. So this long and difficult war has now ended. You know, some people say 3,000 years, some people say 500 years, whatever it is. It's the granddaddy of them all. But when I read the Israeli press, I'm hearing and seeing something very different.

In America, the dominant position on the Israeli-Palestin conflict is still a belief, a hope in the two-state solution. And Israel is just not. Israeli politics is well to the right of where America admits it is, where America even, I think, often realizes it is. One of my intentions in the way we have covered this conflict since October 7th is to not present either in Israel, or a Palestinian politics that is different from the one that actually exists. And so I wanted to talk to someone about this deal who represented more the way the Israeli government

and the forms of politics that are in power in Israel see it. Amid Segal is the chief political analyst for Channel 12 in Israel. He is a political columnist there. He is the author of the newsletter, It's Noon in Israel, and of a new book recently published in English, A Call at 4 a.m. 13 prime ministers and the crucial decisions that shaped Israeli politics. He's known to be quite close to the Netanyahu government,

and I think speaks with strong sourcing among both them and quite a bit of their opposition. Segal, as well, to my right, there are things I think you'll hear him say that many people listening to this will not like, but in order to understand this conflict, you have to take seriously where the Israeli public actually is on it and how the government that is in power in Israel, and the coalition that might take power in Israel, see it.

As always, my email, Ezraqlindshow at nyatimes.com. I'm Mietzegel. Welcome to the show. Hi, I want to start with the state of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas. How do you understand what was agreed to? Well, it was something quite minor. I'm quite skeptical about the chance of having peace, the biggest piece in 3,000 years or something like this. I think it was a ceasefire based on a prisoner swap deal, and this is it. Now, it's not something small in terms of the hostages, and it was a huge question and the warfare,

but it does not end the war between Israel and Hamas. It's like pressing the pause button when Israel still controls 53% of Gaza Strip and Hamas is in 47%. And there is a plan, pledge, you name it, by President Trump to actually unroot Hamas one way or the other. Now, Israel is quite skeptical about, I don't know, Hamas just decide to demilitarize themselves, but let's give peace of chance. How did Netanyahu sell it to his own coalition? Well, I guess he doesn't mention the term total victory anymore, but he says we got the hostages back, which 80%, 90% of the public wanted, and we actually stay in Gaza Strip and we don't withdraw from Gaza as long as Hamas is not demilitarized and dismantled. So it's like saying there were three goals for the war, releasing all the hostages, check, dismantling Hamas as an army, check, the militarizing Gaza strip and removing Hamas from Gaza, it has not happened yet, but unlike all the offers made by the Biden administration and by many Arab countries, the war does not end when Israel is out of Gaza and Hamas is still there. It's where Israel is still in Gaza

and there is an agreement that Israel will be there as long as Hamas is not the military rights. So Israel is still in half of Gaza and we got all the hostages and this is the most important thing. Hamas was not alone in this war. Qatar supported it and Turkey supported it and the fact that Qatar and Turkey, Egypt and Jordan

and even the Palestinian Authority are agreeing to a plan according to which Hamas is to be demilitarized means something which didn't exist before. There has been a lot of focus in American coverage of the deal on what gets called phase two, which is this demilitarized Hamas and the possibilities of international operations and a new Gaza. And you wrote that there is a view that Israel's unstated goal is to avoid moving forward with the next complicated and mostly fantastical phase. Arab soldiers policing Hamas with the heavy price of IDF withdrawals from the Gaza Strip, as well as a future, however unlikely, return of the Palestinian authority to the area.

If Israel's unstated goal is to not move forward to the form of settlement or peace envisioned in that deal, what is the goal? Everyone would wish that Hamas would be demitized by outsourcing. No one wants Israeli soldiers to die at a pace of two a week or five, a week in order to have a mission that can be done otherwise. It's just the pessimism about the option that Hamas would see, I don't know, two Emirati battalions and all of a sudden would give each and every Kalachnik of rifle, for instance. So it's about what I call in the Middle East cautious pessimism. So from the highest possible American sources, I spoke to this week,

they don't think it's feasible. What they do see is a future in which, in five years from now, Now, in the area controlled by Israel, behind what we call now the yellow line, there would be a new Raffach. The yellow line in Gaza. In Gaza, yeah, not the green line in the way. Exactly. The Israeli line, okay, it's the Israeli controlled area. In this area, there would be a recovery. Rafah would be rebuilt as a city funded by the Emirates with the radicalized education system and under Israel's security.

supervision. So what you said is that you now envision a two-state solution, but it is a two-state solution inside the Gaza Strip. Right. What do you mean by that? I mean that since I don't believe in the idea that Hamas is something that took over Gaza out of the will of two million Palestinians, innocent Palestinians, I don't see any way in which Hamas can be unrooted from Gaza. As long as there are in Gaza, young males between the age of 17 to 35, And as many Kalashnikov as one can see, more than meets the eye, there will be Hamas in Gaza. And therefore, the only way to actually create something else

is in the 53% that Israel controls militarily. And then if you build there, the new Rafah, an Emirati-funded, Saudi-funded, I hope not Qatar-funded, city, in which people have no weapons, and there is an efficient police force, no tunnels, no Kalachnikov, no hatred, then you can see a future. This would be the moderate Gaza.

And the other Gaza would be the Gaza that lies in ruins in Gaza City and the refugee camps in central Gaza. When I've heard this vision, it seems extraordinarily, putting aside a lot of questions about it, very hard to administer. Right. Is there movement between the people in the two Gaza's you're describing here?

Just think about, it's not exactly the same. East Berlin and West Berlin before the wall in 1961 you could actually move through but if you want to go to the so-called Israeli side or the American side I would call it okay American Emirati side

you have to go without your weapon and without being part of Hamas but once you are there you're going to run security vetting on people somehow yes exactly

And then I guess that then the market forces would actually determine the future of Gaza because where do you want to live in the ruins of Gaza where no one pays for recovery and rebuilding, et cetera, or in the new Gaza, heavily funded more not democratic, but more Western than the other. There is a future for Gaza. You also say in that, that quite I read, that Israeli society does not want to go to the point where the Palestinian Authority is ruling it. Gaza. After 32 years of having failed attempts to faster the Palestinian Authority as a partner for peace, I would say that 92% of the Israeli public does not believe in the idea

of the Palestinian Authority. Because as long as its education system poisons the minds of generation after generation of young Palestinians for anti-Semitism, hatred, towards a Jew's anti-Western sentiment, people don't see any option of prosperity and peace and the Middle East with this Palestinian Authority. By the way, Israel is not the only one to have a strong disbelief in this option. The Emirates and the Saudis, too, do not really believe in this. That's why they want a reformed Palestinian Authority. But to be honest, I think that a Palestinian Authority that does not educate its youngsters, its pupils for hatred, and does not pay for slay is not a Palestinian Authority.

I don't see it happening in this generation or two to come. I think it's fair to say that most of the players in the region, and at this point the United States have not been confident in the Palestinian Authority. I was actually surprised to see in Trump's plan an end state in which the Palestinian Authority was believed to be the sort of final governing regime. But if you don't believe in that, if Israelis don't believe, believe in that, then is there any assumed future in which there's Palestinians of determination, or is this really forever under Israeli control? Okay, so I think you can identify

two streams within the Israeli right wing. One, a Smotrich and Ben-Gavir do not believe in a Palestinian state, even the Palestinians were to be Americans or Swedish, okay? This is the part of the right wing that said we want annexation, we want settlements in Gaza's trip, and we want mass emigration. I don't think that the vast majority of Israel is there. The vast majority or the lion's shelf, even the right wing, believes in Netanyahu and Dermerer perception that says, we actually have given three symbolic concessions

to President Trump. A future for a reformed Palestinian authority, a future participation of this reformed Palestinian authority inside Gaza, And more important than this, the image in the future of a reformed, united West Bank and Gaza altogether. Now, Israel opposed it for many, many years under Netanyahu. What's the difference? The difference now is that according to Netanyahu and Dermer, if it's going to be reunited. Ron Dermar his very close aid.

Yeah, exactly. The joke says in Israel that Netanyahu is the closest person to Ron Dermer. So anyway, now it's not that the West Bank is going to take over Gaza, but that a reform, demilitarized, de-radicalized Gaza is going to take over Judean Samaria because according to the Emirati plan, for instance, it's not only that they are about to change the education system in Gaza, but in Ramallah as well, I live 20 minutes from schools in which children are taught that you should kill as many Zionist pigs as possible, for instance.

You can't have peace with generation after generation taught on these principles. So you described the ceasefire deal as giving a number of symbolic concessions to the Trump administration. And they're based on these benchmarks, right? So they could be more or less symbolic, depending on how things play out. Do you think the understanding of this deal is the same for the Trump administration and for the Netanyahu government? Do you think they're aligned on what it will mean for benchmarks to be met or not? met or do you think that there is a possibility of divergence in one way or the other on the two sides? You know, usually in diplomacy, you have debates behind closed doors and, you know, in the news

conference, you try to actually marginalize it. Here it's exactly the other way around. In order to sell the plan for the Arab world, Trump speaks mainly about ending the war rather than eliminating Hamas. However, the main advantage of this plan is that President Trump articulated for at least five or six times since the ceasefire has begun, that between the two goals of the plan, ending the war and eliminating Hamas, he prefers eliminating Hamas. That's why he keeps saying that if Hamas does not demilitarize, Israel would crush him if I only give the word, as Trump said. And that's why I'm quite confident that the number one strategic asset of this ceasefire plan, that Hamas can no longer.

rule Gaza is there to stay. And as long as Trump is the president, I don't see, to be honest, any option in which this Hamas presence gets legitimacy. You're putting a lot of weight in this conversation and your vision here. I remember this was actually true the last time we spoke to. On the power a reconstructed education system could have for the future of how Palestinians see Israelis, I think that creates two questions. One is why you believe it is the education system as opposed to sort of lived experience, checkpoints, that kind of thing.

Obviously, in Gaza, huge numbers of people have now lost relatives, lost friends, seen their homes destroyed. Perhaps it was a bad idea to massacre juice. It was a bad idea to massacre juice. We're not disagreeing on that. And it was an immoral idea, right? Not just a strategically bad idea. But it's a lot of work for an education system to do. So that's one thing.

But also, how is this work done? I know you're thinking of it being based on what's been done in the UAE. Maybe it's overseen by the UAE. but what is being imagined here? Okay, so it's not only education. It's not only the pupils, but it's both the media. I'll give an example. Al Jazeera.

If you watch Al Jazeera, all of a sudden you see the winds change. I suspect that this is the Qatari gift for this wedding between Israel and President Trump, that Hamas would no longer have this media branch named Al Jazeera to fuel hatred all over the Middle East. So it's media. it's education, I would compare it not to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but to Japan following World War II or Germany. However, it is not the case. Why? Because there was only one Japanese state. The Middle East is still full with Arabic speaker, Muslim countries that hate Israel. So even if you live in reformed Gaza and educated on Western values, you can still follow influencers on TikTok that hate Israel.

That's why I'm more cautious, but when I see in the UAE and Saudi Arabia how it succeeded, I'm more optimistic. Now, yes, the ruins in Gaza might be a bad service for living side by side with harmony, in harmony with the Israelis, but it can have exactly the other effect. I'll give an example. I visited Ramallah a few weeks ago in the biggest mall. If I send you the pictures, you won't believe it's in Ramallah. You would say to me, you would tell me it's in Abu Dhabi or in, I don't know. Cincinnati. It's better than every mall I saw in Israel. I walked there with Yarmulka, no one told me anything. And Ramallah was a city that, I don't know, 20 years ago, soldiers were

lynched there. So things change, and you can change them more rapidly as long as you recognize the problem. Is there a view eventually, even just a pragmatic view on the second, you know, non-Messian extreme of Israeli society, that in the long run, and the West Bank should have self-determination of some sort from Palestinian government. The government should be Palestinian, even if it is not today's PA, today's Hamas, or is the view that either it will be in Israeli control, right? We've moved back to occupation, or that it will be under some kind of Arab consortium, or I've seen people talk about the Jordanians, or obviously you're talking about the UAE and they're a big player in this, that there is some other alternative. 50 years from now, five years from now? Let's say 10 years from now.

Okay. So here is the main debate between the Israeli median voter and the center left in the U.S. The center left in the U.S. says we should try and give Palestinians a state because that's how people are used to live. And Israelis say, we gave them a state. Gaza was a state. This was the outcome. Because when Israel evacuated the settlements in 2005, unilaterally, it actually abandoned Gaza. And Israelis were under the impression that if you build a big wall, you can forget about Gaza.

And the outcome was horrifying for Israelis. The Palestinian Authority was something like 60% state, right? It failed in the second Intifada with 1,200 casualties over five years. And when we gave them a state, in Gaza, we got 1,200 casualty. in five hours. So that's why Israelis don't even want to talk about it now. If you speak about 10 years from now, I guess we'll see something closer to,

you know what, I feel easier to speak about 20 years from now because this is the time frame for raising a new generation. I would say that you'll have 60, 70% statehood with reformed entity. I don't want to call it the Palestinian Authority, but something like this, living really side-by-side in peace with Israel.

And a Palestinian would say none of these things were anywhere close to a state. They did not have control of their own borders. They could not leave and come at will. It will never be 100% of the state. There was a siege, function of the borders and barring different goods coming in now, which is partially why you got the tunnels in Gaza.

But in the West Bank, too, you have checkpoints. You have a tremendous amount of Israeli control over daily life. I've been through it. It's striking and visually apparent the moment you step foot in it. And they would say that the reason you have this ongoing conflict is that the conflict for the Palestinians is ongoing. That in none of these 60%, 50% states that you're describing, was there anything like genuine self-determination, freedom? And that in that condition, there will never be any kind of stability.

I refuse to call it a cycle of violence because it bases the idea is that we do something, they revenge and vice versa. It's not the case. There was a wide agreement in Israel towards a two-state solution. But what we have to unrule to the conclusion from October 7th, the only reason it didn't happen in the West Bank is because the IDF is still there.

The support, I think we spoke about it in Jerusalem a year and a half ago. The level of support for the October 7th massacre in the West Bank was even higher than in Gaza Street because they were not to pay the price of, you know, bombing, etc. So we should be very very, cautious before we give anything. I mean, the last attempt to have a real piece, you know,

not a cold piece, but a piece between like Germany in France. That was the perception in the 90s. You know, this multi-culte era following the fall of the Berlin Wall, New Middle East, Paris and Rabin are in office, the center left controls. Michael Jackson is in, has a concert in Tel Aviv. That was the sentiment. I lived in a settlement. And even in this settlement, far from the eye, okay, far in the right, we, we could feel. feel the winds of change, okay? And it collapsed here, not because of Israelis, but because they didn't want peace.

And as long as we don't take care of the idea that the Palestinian image is not of a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel, but of from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free. I believe when they say it. I don't think it's just a slogan, just in a campaign ad.

As long as we don't change, change it, we're not going to see peace in, as we describe it. So the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that Arab governments strongly oppose the idea of dividing Gaza, arguing it could lead to a zone of permanent Israeli control inside the enclave. I mean, that seems more or less what we're talking about, permanent Israeli control inside the enclave. But in that world, the journal reported, they're unlikely to commit troops to police the enclave on those terms. Do you think Israel's going to face a choice between the involvement that you and others are hoping for

from the UAE and from others, Saudis, and having the level of control, involvement, security presence that you're describing. To be honest, I don't think any of the actors know what is going to happen. No one knew about Berlin that is going to be divided into two cities. No one. By the way, two days before the world was built, it's a reality created, but what, you know, like Cheryl,

in Sherlock Holmes stories, when once you rule out every possible that doesn't make sense, the last one is here to stand. And I don't see Hamas demilitarizes itself. I don't think

the IDF would soon invade Gaza again with full engines and five divisions. And hence, I think the only option is what I described. I don't think this is, it's perfect.

I just try to, Envision what's going to happen in five years from now. No, I appreciate the realism you're offering on that from the Israeli perspective. One reason I think that the two-state solution language caught my eye is that this feels more in a way like the West Bank solution for Gaza. Exactly. And, you know, in this case, the role the PA is being played by the UAE and some sort of Arab consortium. But that sets up this other set of dynamics, which we're seeing play out with incredible force and violence in the West Bank right now, which is that there is a lot of pressure,

particularly over time in Israeli society, for expansion, for annexation, for settlements to be returned to Gaza. That this is not a situation where what Israeli society wants is Palestinians living in a thriving Israel-slash-U-A-E-controlled. Gaza, please. I'm not sure.

Listen, I come from the most ideological settlement in Judean Samaria, and yet I allow myself to say that the vast majority of Israel when they speak about right-wing ideas, they don't think about annexation or about settlements in Gaza Strip. Being a right-winger in Israel

or being hawkish means that you think the only solution to protect Israelis is neither speeches by a U.S. president nor three international treaties, but by Israeli soldiers with boots on the ground where it's needed. So this is why Oslo Accord the collision between the leftist idea of the Oslo Accords

and the right-wing idea of annexation actually led to the outcome you have just described in Judean Samaria and the West Bank, which is an Israeli permanent security presence in areas, in Palestinian areas, but no annexation. It's not a coincidence. So this is going to be the same outcome in Gaza, in my opinion. A heavy security presence with no other presence.

Another way to describe it that you've used in other columns and interviews is that the Israeli goal is Lebanonization. Exactly. What is Lebanonization? Ah, okay. In the past, Lebanonization meant something really bad. Israeli military presence, when you suffer from ruby traps or terrorist attacks and you bleed two, three soldiers a week or a month. Following the war, Lebanonization means something way more positive, that you have a ceasefire, but this is ceasefire is really kept. and you enforce it with a heavy fire when needed.

When Hezbollah tries to rearm itself, Israel attacks. Since the ceasefire, almost a year ago, 11 months, I think, Israel attacked more than a thousand times, and Hezbollah didn't even dare to attack back even once because they are deterred. So this is the, I think this is what Israel is want from Gaza. Now, when you have a very, very big perimeter, you know that this imminent threat no longer exists.

And then you can attack from the air once you see, I don't know, a tunnel being built, for instance. When I was in Israel a year ago, June, I was talking to people who lived on the border with Lebanon. And at that time, they were furious. They felt completely unsafe. They would say, look, I can see Hezbollah from my house. Since then, obviously, Israel has functionally destroyed Hezbollah. I mean, it's not gone as an entity, but the threat it poses as significantly. Israel's most significant victory since the 1967 war.

But the reason I ask about it is because as of, you know, not very long ago, many Israelis seem to me to feel that the Lebanonization strategy had been a failure. And there had been a lot of... The first Lebanonization. Great. So you mean the Lebanonization of like the last year? Yes. The early period Lebanonization meant is that your enemy is one inch from your border.

with command of divisions, and you trust the legitimacy or the international border being sacred. The new Lebanonization says that you have outposts, military outposts, and you attack when needed. That's what I meant. So this is when you talk about Lebanon as it actually exists, when you talk about Gaza, as it is coming to exist, when you talk about the West Bank as it currently exists,

the theory of the Israeli mainstream, you call it the right, but it seems to me to be center, is that there is no security without actual constant boots on the ground presence, surveillance, like there is no trusting an agreement, there is no pulling back that either you are there and you can see it and you have operational control of it or you are not safe. And that the lesson Israeli society is taken from October 7th and also, I suspect, from attacks on Iran, on Hezbollah and Syria, is that the one thing it can trust in is its own military strength.

Exactly. And it came exactly when President Trump talked about Greenland. Now, I know President Trump is not going to invade Greenland, right? But he's talking points about annexing Greenland or taking over the Panama Canal, I think articulated something that Israelis can understand. It's not imperialism. It's that international borders used to be sacred, but it's no longer the case. And when you see Russia invades Ukraine and you're,

multiply it by 1,000 because Hamas and Chisbalah and Iran are not even Russia. They're way more monstrous. You can trust only international guarantees or borders, and you have to be wherever there is a danger. This is the main lesson from October 7th. Trump's view of power, of strength, of geopolitics, of treaties of all of it, is very different than Republicans and Democrats who preceded him. But you just got something I'd be interested to hear you reflect moron, which is how does Trumpism the rise of right-wing populist parties in many other countries, particularly in Europe, how is that affected Israeli politics, its sense of what is possible, what is desirable?

So when I go back to 2016, following a Super Tuesday in March 2016, when Trump actually took over the Republican Party, Netanyahu told his staff, be like Trump, he repeated those three words, be like Trump. And then Netanyahu shifted from the TV Netanyahu to the Facebook Netanyahu, okay? From Netanyahu, the elder statesman, think about, I don't know, not Ronald Reagan, but even more boring than this. George Bush, something like this, he turned into Donald Trump. Now, he's no Donald Trump. He's way more educated. He got better English, but it changed. And in my opinion, this is why, in an absurd way, the right wing in Israel, or the power

of the populist right, the radical right wing in Israel, is way smaller than in the U.S., the U.S., the U.K., France, and Germany. Why? Because you still have the founding father of the right. Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu is two at the price of one. He's both the elder statesman that gets the agreement of the U.S. to attack Iran. and for an annexation of the Golan Heights and the recognition of Jerusalem.

And at the very same time, he is the Netanyahu that speaks viciously about the left. So once Netanyahu resigns, you'll see a spike, in my opinion, in the representation of the far right in Israel. I don't know how many people are aware of the fact that both Smotrich and Ben-Givir combined got only 10% of the popular vote in Israel. 10% just compare it to the reform party in the UK these days. So Trump's, I think, most significant foreign policy success of his first room was the Abraham Accords. And that's based on Netanyahu and him and Kushner and others, realizing, and this comes from some of the Gulf states too, that there is a transactional relationship that is possible with surrounding Arab states. absent any change in Israel's relationship with the Palestinians. Exactly.

And I think somewhat to the surprise of many, the Abram Accords hold through this whole period. So you recently wrote that Ron Dhrmer, Israel's minister of strategic affairs, a person who counts in Netanyahu's among his closest states, believes the chances of Israel signing peace agreements with Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and even Syria have now increased. There's a belief there that they're now with the ceasefire

on the cusp of an expansion of the Abram Accords. Why? Okay, so there is a gigantic fight over the last two years, which is rarely spoken. The main idea behind October 7th, behind killing as many Jews as possible, was to stop the normalization process, the Abraham Accords, from happening. It was 12 days before Saudi Arabia was to sign a peace treaty with Israel. The due date was October 19, 2023. Now, the whole idea of the Abraham Accords were based on denying the liberal.

liberal idea that the way to have Israel involved in the Middle East with normalization, this way goes through Ramallah, the Palestinian capital city. Many, many Arab countries refused to base their commercial relationship, their even relationship with the United States on the idea that a very old unelected dictator named Abbas is going to actually set the terms of the entire regime. And that was the idea behind the peace agreement between Israel and the Emirates, which is, in my opinion, the most important development in Israel's history, save only the Six Day War in 1967. And that's why I, as a right-winger, I wrote against annexation of the settlements a few weeks ago, because what I heard from my friends in the UAE is that it would be too much on their plate to digest. This is one thing.

Now, apart from the military operation, the best Israeli answer to October 7th would be to expand the Abraham Accords, thus proving that strategically speaking, not even morally speaking, but strategically speaking, October 7th was a failure. And that's why, in my opinion, Israel's effort should be based on expanding the peace agreements with Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, and Syria. and from what I hear, there is an option that the agreement with Syria would be more than merely a security agreement. What are these agreements now based on? I mean, I think this is partially what I'm trying to draw out, that for a very long time, the relationship between Israel and his neighbors was understood to be ideological isn't quite the right word. Right. But based on an assessment of the moral and ethical condition of Israel's relationship with the Palestinians. And there's been a move towards these bilateral agreements that are much more transactional. Because, in my opinion, the Emirates signed a peace treaty with Israel because they no longer saw the Middle East as a battlefield of Jews versus Muslims,

but of radicals versus moderates or if you want a Shia versus Sunni and the Jewish states that was the main idea behind it but even in these countries there has been a huge amount of anger over the devastation and the death toll in Gaza

so what are the chits being traded back and forth so here's the thing because there was a change following October 7th prior to October 7th all the Saudis wanted was I'll put it in an undiplomatic way a lip service regarding the Palestinian question, okay?

Now, prior to October 7th, the Saudis wanted something quite vague that even Smotrich and Ben Giverr would green light. Following October 7th, they nonetheless wanted a bit more. Now, I don't know what this more is. I suspect that the idea of the Palestinian Authority somehow symbolically, hypothetically,

being involved in Gaza Strip would be part of the agreement was that Saudi Arabia would base the normalization on this idea. So this would be the Palestinian ingredient of the normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel. But my mistake, as a commentator, was that prior to October 7th, I thought that Netanyahu's main achievement

was that he choked the idea of Palestinian statehood. I still think that there is not going to be a Palestinian state in our lifetime. But following October 7th, there is a presence to this idea. One of the things going the other direction, though, is Israel has become such a capable developer of technology and weaponry and then highly technological weaponry in particular, that it seems to become a kind of, I don't want to call it soft power, I want to call it medium power, that is at the base of many of these agreements, both that Israel is part of your security umbrella. and it's a way station also to a close relationship with America, particularly under Donald Trump,

but even in Europe where a tremendous amount of public opinion and state-level opinion has turned against Israel. Israel as a seller of weaponry to Europe. Germany puts an armed embargo on Israel, but buys, decided to buy missiles in two billion euros. So something is happening there that has become a kind of... bargaining chip are more than almost like a foundation, it seems to me, of how Israel understands it is going to maintain relationships without substantial change amidst Palestinians. And this is a very

sort of Trumpist transactional world. Although I'm not a big fan of the idea of Israel being first the mistress of the Middle East and now the mistress of Europe. Can you say what that means? That is to say that we are not married to, I don't know, Saudi Arabia or the Emirates, but we meet at night when no one sees. The relationships are all clandest. Exactly. Now, here is the dangerous idea behind it in Europe because I think Netanyahu failed to understand the depth of the international crisis Israel has gone through because he knew more than you and me know about the real relationships, okay? Because he knew how many European countries beg for Israeli technology and weapons. But when it comes to soft power, soft power is based on the idea. that your brand is very strong. And with Israel, it was exactly the other way around, that while Israel turned almost to be a prior state,

consumption of Israeli technology and weapons went up. And that's why I think Israel should invest more in its branding, if you want to... I think it's more than branding, but that does open up that question, which is that my read of Israel's geopolitics right now, is it is thriving where the relationships are transactional. And it is suffering where the relationships are more values-based. And that's beginning to include America.

So we just had a New York Times-Syenne poll, which for the first time since our polling is asked this question, going back to 1998, you had more Americans sympathizing with the Palestinians than the Israelis. Now, the poll is very narrow. I think it was something like 35-34. But you look at the age split in that poll. And Americans over 65, 47% are more sympathetic to the Israelis and 26% to the Palestinians.

Between 18 and 29, 61% are more sympathetic to the Palestinians and 19% to the Israelis. And I think there's a tendency to say it's just a leftist thing. But Megan Kelly, the right-wing commentator, she has told Tucker Carlson that everybody under 30 is against Israel. Tell me how your understanding this. I mean, but what's going on in America also, It's like Europe, other places, the numbers are much worse even than that for Israel.

How do you see this? To be honest, it's too early to call. I don't know if it's something generational, something that's going to change with time. You know, years past, you leave university, the heavily funded by Qatar University, and you understand the situation more. One thing. Second, the war. Today, the world is focused on suffering. the more you suffer, the more sympathy you get. Now, remember October 8th

when the Eiffel Tower, the Empire State Building, Brannel Mugate were lit with a blue and white flag. And to be honest, the image that frightened me the most as an Israeli wasn't the horror pictures from Sederot and the Kibbutzim, but to see Eiffel Tower lit with blue and white because I said, wow, we look so miserable that even in France we get legitimacy. Okay?

Now, we won the world. We decisively won the world. I can explain you for hours why abducting the Bibas family and murdering them with bare hands is not something that you can compare to the death of Palestinian children from Israel bombardments. However, I'm fully aware of the fact that the images are so strong that I can't convince millions and millions of TikTok followers. And that's why I think the most dramatic thing for Israel is, first and foremost, to end the war and to move to a new face of normalization, peace, having Israel either mentioned positively on the press

or even better not mentioned at all. You see that Netanyahu went for a few podcasts and all of a sudden you could see that Netanyahu, I mean, he didn't really control the medium, right, for the first time. He went on the Nelk Boys, which is a sort of, I don't know how to describe it, a Manosphere podcast that Trump has been on many times. They got so much backlash from their own listeners. that they needed to apologize.

And one of them said he was told that having Netanyahu on is like having a modern-day Hitler on and he went on to say he thought that was a good point. I mean, that's a right-wing coded in this country. That's something different happening.

I agree. So I think there was a damage, a permanent damage. I still think it's smaller than people think. Now, it's elastic. The public opinion is elastic, especially when it comes to Israel

and the Palestinians, it's not abortions or weapons or, I don't know, Trump, it's something that you can change your mind on. People tend to forget that following Yom Kippur War, Israel's rating fell both in the States and Europe, following the oil embargo, et cetera, and that Israel's positioning in the States was very low following the first Lebanon war in 1982, the very same picture of a very long war in highly populated Palestinian areas. So I think it can change, but we can.

can't base, and this is something more dramatic, we can no longer base our relationship with the United States on the values of the 20th century, because even evangelicals, the new generation, doesn't see Israel through the lenses of a biblical happening, but through the lenses of social justice, exactly like the African-American community used to see the Jews as, you know, Moses coming from slavery in Egypt, and over the last few decades, it's a lot of, it's a lot of see Israel as a white colonialist power. So there's a lot to work on. So something bigger than that seems like it has changed to me.

And I feel like I have a good sense of U.S. politics. Yes. And it's not just the polling. It's what is considered conceivable in politics around Israel. And right now we're in New York City. Zora and Mamdani is likely to become very likely to become the next mayor. His views on Israel that would have made you absolutely. unelectable. I think in almost anywhere in the country, but particularly in New York City, a very

Jewish city, just a couple of years ago. And it's not just that he is going to win the election, most likely. It is that what he is showing a lot of other Democrats is that they can express something closer to where their politics than Israel have actually gone, right? Andrew Como tried very hard to weaponize Israel against him completely failed. Eric Adams was running on the combat anti-Semitism or and anti-Semitism ballot line completely failed. In the most Jewish city on Earth. In the most Jewish city on Earth. And so, or at least a city with the most Jews on Earth.

Exactly. That shifts things. And one reason I think it shifts things, one thing that it is getting at is we're talking about how this is happening on the right. But Netanyahu really, over the past 15-ish years, 20 years, threw in with the right and began to choose to polarize Israel and America, right? going around Barack Obama to the Republican Congress. Israel had a bit of an interenium with Joe Biden,

who was a much older generation of Democrat and had an older Democratic generation's views on Israel personally. It's one of the issues where Biden was, quite, I think, to the right of his own administration on how a lot of his staff would have liked to approach this issue. Israel seems to be betting a lot on continued Republican dominance, presence in America. that if you imagine the next generation of Democrats being in power here

and Israel needing American support in a time of conflict and crisis, it seems to me it's going to look very, very, very different, both because of the views, but also because I don't think American Democrats anymore believe that they have to be more pro-Israel than they actually are. Two years ago, before the war, I met with the IDF chief of staff back then, and he told me when they are to buy air jets, jet fighters, its life expectancy is 40 years, 4-0. And he said that when we decide which fighter jet to buy,

you take into account that in the next 40 years, 10 terms, there is going to be a U.S. president that would put an armed embargo on Israel. That's what he said in 2023. Now, I think you and me would agree, you know, I would agree that had Kamala Harris got elected and Israel invaded Gaza City, we would have already seen it, right?

So yes, it's there. I think that the question of whether... I think we were on the cusp of that already happening. That's a good point. Exactly. And then again, it's a chicken and end question. I don't think Netanyahu is to be blamed for the fact that Israel became a partisan issue because each and every topic in the U.S., including the weather, became partisan.

So maybe, maybe he should... Well, he made choices. I watched this happen in 2015, particularly in the Obama administration. But tell me something. When Obama got elected for the first time, I remember people say that he doesn't have the sympathy for Israel in his kishkes, in his guts, right? By the way, Obama got elected before Netanyahu came back to office.

And when Obama and Netanyahu met for the first time, Obama told him not even one brick in the West Bank. And he appeased the Iranian regime. So I fully agree. It takes to Tutango. But I think it was inevitable. But Nanyan made a series of strategic decisions. because he did not want to take pressure,

or at least he wanted to see if Obama was really capable of bringing pressure on him. Look, I'm an American Jew. I have more Israel and my Kishkes, so to speak. Okay. But I think Israel would have been better off if they had listened to Obama on settlements. Now, I recognize that you and I have a different view on this.

Like you. But even in the last two years, there's been a rapidity of settlement construction in the West Bank that outpaces the last, I think, 20 years. More than ever. More than ever. So there is a world in which Israel made a strategic political decision to say, well, we want to make sure that the democratic side of the aisle in the U.S. feels, Kinchapir feels we're taking into account some of their concerns, and we're going to hold ourselves back on certain things for that reason. Israel decided not to do that. And in many ways, like kind of spat on their face, Biden ended up humiliated. I think there were real decisions here on the Israeli side, and particularly that Netanyahu said, and you could have imagined it playing out

differently with different prime ministers. But West Bank is easy. How about Iran? Do you see any scenario in which Obama Biden... If the West Bank is easy, why didn't Israel do it? No, it's easy to speak about it. But the differences between democratic administrations and Israel is not between democratic administrations and Netanyahu. Because each and every Israeli saw Iran as the biggest threat to the Jewish existence since the Holocaust. Now, we know that Obama and Biden and didn't consider for a second to attack Fordow, for instance, or even to allow Israel to attack. And I guess Kamala Harris wouldn't either.

So it's not only the easy Palestinian questions. It's something really bigger than this. President Obama came to office and he appeased enemies and pissed off friends. I think it is almost axiomatic that Democrats have a different view of what creates security than the Republicans do, yeah. Prime Minister Netanyahu, I understand it's addictive stuff to inhale the Trump administration, because you have the most pro-Israeli approach, because his enemies is yours. I know it's addictive, but maybe this problem is to be fixed with a different prime minister and a different president. I think when I look forward into the future of this. And when I try to put together the two parts of this conversation we've been having,

you have Israel pursuing a lot of settlement building and control of the West Bank. There's been a lot more violence. you have the indefinite reoccupation of much of Gaza. You combine that then with these poll numbers, these changes in support here. And it's not just like Israel can wait for the war to end. It is setting itself up in a structural position where the effort is going to be,

and possibly quite successfully, to make it into apartheid South Africa, right? And that that is the strategy. And also the risk it has opened up for itself by maintaining so much control in both places. How do you think about that? The main difference between Israel and South Africa is that African-American

or the black community in South Africa didn't try to massacre each and every white. It wasn't the case there. And here we speak about South Africa, but let's imagine that the clerks signed an agreement with Nelson Mandela only to find out that Nelson Mandela, Yasser Arafat, actually initiated a second

in defada, a war against, against the whites killing 1,200 of them and sending suicide bombers to Cape Town and Johannesville. I understand the argument that it's a different situation. What I'm saying is that the international view that you have, you know, roughly 7 million Palestinians without any self-determination. No, they have. They have a civil one. They got more than they have now and they decided that it's more important for them. They decided twice, both in the West Bank and in Gaza, that it's more important for them to kill as many Jews as possible than to get more independence. That's the thing that we, Westerners, fail to understand that. Why, I keep asking myself, why did the security establishment fail on October 6th to understand that this attack is imminent? And my response, I mean, I can speak to you for hours about, you know, those SIM cards and alerts, etc.

But at the end of the day, they fail to understand that there are people who have a lose-lose policy. we know win-win policy this is good for all we know win-lose policy like in Russia versus Ukraine that Russia tries to take something, it's evil but it's digestible

we fail to understand a lose-lose situation in which I know I'm going to suffer I know my people are going to die I know Gaza is going to line ruins at the end of this war yet I want to kill as many Jews and Israel is possible I think many I don't want to speak for

God knows Hamas but I think that another way of saying and why this does not seem stable to me, the situation you've described, is that, I mean, they felt accurately, like they were losing. And that, you know, we talked about, you said, like, look, this is not a cycle of violence. It's, you know, it's one side creating. I've had many Palestinians on the show. I've talked to many of them in our reporting, you know, to them, the violence is every day.

It is ongoing. It is ceaseless. In Gaza and in the West Bank, right? They understand the condition they are living in as a condition of structural violence. And I don't disagree with them on that. And the thing that is going to create the ongoing pressure, if you combine an international community that is less sympathetic to Israel, but Israel having much more control over these two places,

I agree that it has many differences from the South African situation. But it is... The image. You speak about the image. I mean, I'm speaking about both the image and the reality. Okay. The people are going, the idea that forever you will just have a situation where you have seven million-ish people, five, okay.

Well, I'm including, actually, Arabs in Israel who have a different situation than... They get full citizenship, the votes for the department. People debate this in different ways. I don't mean to go into it too much. That that seems like it is a situation in which Israel is going to have a lot of trouble in the long term with not just international standing, but eventually questions like sanctions and other things. Yes. I came to the conclusion following October 7th that Israel's number one problem is the Palestinian one. I thought before that it's the Iranian one.

it's not. However, I cannot, in order to get legitimacy, giving a license for people who see me, treat me as an evil enemy that should be eliminated in each and every way. That's the main thing. So I think we should wait patiently for a new generation to come. I think that the most urgent mission of our generation, both in the U.S. and in Israel, in the UAE, is to base the education system I mean, the Palestinian Authority, not on hatred, but on Western values, on moderate Islam. I know it can succeed. How? Because this is exactly what happened in the UAE and in Saudi Arabia.

And they changed the minds of Muslims in both countries. You see a decline in the levels of anti-Semitism. And since I'm no racist, I don't think that Islam is about killing as many Jews as possible and hating as many Americans as possible and cheering and give candies in the streets when 9-11s, a disaster happened, as it happened in Gaza. And I think it takes time. It takes time. It takes, I would say, 20 years.

In 20 years from now, if we start today, you'll see a major change in both what you call the West Bank, Jude and Samaria, and in Gaza Street. I think the question that many people want to see change in Israel have here is whether or not if Israel sees its politics collapsing in other countries, right? You have, after President Trump, a Democrat went office, and there's a recognition that Europe is now accepted Palestinian statehood in some abstracted way and a sense that Israel cannot maintain support here with the politics it has had.

I could see that going one of two ways. I could see that going under certain leaders and under certain conditions towards trying to create some space for the international opinion to express itself and a change in Israeli policy. I could see it in Israel becoming more inwardly. looking more focused on weapons development, trying to be less reliant on others. I mean, there was an interesting quote I thought from Netanyahu where he said

that Israel is going to have to adapt to international isolation become an Athens and a super Sparta. In terms of weapon acquiring, yes. So tell me about, I'm sure people in Israel are thinking about this somewhat, given how aggressive and total the international anger has been. What are those two paths?

I don't see any chance that Israelis are going to change their mind regarding Palestinian statehood because it's not about diplomacy. It's not about public opinion. It's about fear. People saw what happened on October 7th that they will not be willing to give an opportunity for these five minutes from their home in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, 10 minutes the most. This is one thing.

When it comes to cooperation, I think there is room for a party that would say Okay, we are quite tired. We want to rest a few years. We will be prepared. Our soldiers would guard everything, but we want to breathe some air, international air, economic air, et cetera. And that's the next, I think the next government would see a significant ingredient, as I just described. There will be either in October, 26, or sometime before then, if this government falls elections. Israelic politics isn't structured the way U.S. politics are. Here, we're used to thinking in terms of two parties that battle it out. There, it's two coalitions of different parties. Walk me through the anti-Nat-Nat-Niao coalition that's developed. It looks like it would be led by Nafthali Bennett, who traditionally in Israeli politics was understood on Netanyahu's right in terms of security, in terms of security, certainly at an earlier point, was harshly critical of how open,

Net and Yahoo at least claimed to be to a two-state solution, for instance. Exactly. You have Benny Gantz, who in November of 2023, I think, was widely considered to be a plausible next prime minister for Israel. Now his blue and white coalition is under the threshold for representation. Yes. Avigdor Lieberman, who is a quite far right-wing defense minister in 2018. Yeah, Yir Lepid, right, who is one of the more centrist figure. Yes.

Yer Golan, who represents the left in Israel and is inside this coalition, too. Eight percent of the popular vote is. How would that group govern? Where would they differ? It won't. My 10-year-old child asks me, why don't you vote for the center left? I told him because they are leftists. So he said, what is a leftist?

So I had hard times to explain to him because 20 years ago, it was, he's for evacuating the settlement where your grandfather lives. Okay? Nowadays, no one really offers seriously to evacuate settlements. So what is the watershed line? in Israel these days. Is it a center left? Okay.

Naftali Bennett is the center left? Exactly. Now, here's the thing. Who is this awful monstrous left that is going to try to defeat Netanyahu according to the right wing? It's Naphtali Bennett, the former CEO of the Yesha Council,

the settlement movement. Avigdor Lieberman, a settler himself, who once said that Israel should hang each and every of the Arab Knesset members, like in Norenberg. Okay? And Benny Gans, who is not, I mean, calling him a leftist is not, I mean, I don't think leftists would claim him.

And vice versa. Okay. So it's about identity. First and foremost, what I believe is that the more religious you are, the more you tend to vote for the right wing. That's the real, the debate over the judicial reform was not about the judicial reform, but about whether Israel is more Jewish. than democratic or more democratic than Jewish. And the right wing here is the Netanyahu coalition. Exactly.

Now, it's a, you know, it's quite a miracle that the leader of the so-called religious, Jewish, Sephardic, relatively lower-class camp in Israel, is this secular atheist millionaire, the son of a professor from Jerusalem. You know, we're acquainted with these peculiarities in American politics at this point. By the way, it's not peculiarity because the politics of identities is not something that I believe in. I think it's a walk way of describing things and that people don't vote for someone like them. If you have a bird, you'll vote for someone with the bird.

It's ridiculous. You vote for someone that you believe would represent your values the most. So this is the watershed line. And that's why, that's why, in my opinion, the ultra-Orthodox parties who are not part of the right wing at all, they are anti-settlement, anti-annacation,

are a basic part of Netanyahu's coalition. because it's about Judaism. But I would like to offer something else. We moved in 2020 from one generation, the security generation, towards the identity generation. And that's exactly the point where Israel went through five consecutive election campaigns. Why?

It's like the summer league in the NBA, okay? Where you still try to get accustomed to your new basketball team. But it takes time because you used to be for the Chicago Bulls and now you are for the New York Knicks. What was the dividing identity line that created it? It's just religious identity as a way you see it? The religious one. And I'll give you an example, okay?

A Viktor Leberman, in terms of security, he's the most hawkish figure in Israel. His voters are former USSR immigrants who are more hockish than Ben-Gever. But when you talk about domestic issues, about civil society issues, they are more secular than Yair Golan and Yair Lepid. That's why a Victor Libyan moved from the so-called right wing to the so-called left, although he is not leftist because it's not the left we use to know. The same applies for Naftali Bennett. In terms of security, yes, is for annexation.

He's allegedly more hawkish than Netanyahu. But when it comes to civil society things, et cetera, and domestic issues, he's the leader of the moderate small yamulka voters. Small yamaka voters are good line. who believe in, for instance, public transportation during Saturdays, during Shabbat. This is the main change. Let's speak about the last coalition to defeat Netanyahu in 2021. It was called the Coalition of Change.

But when you try to really analyze where the change is, you couldn't find the change in the policy towards Gaza, which was the same. In the policy towards Iran, which was the same. In the policy towards settlements, which was exactly the same. Even in terms of economy, it wasn't a social justice coalition, but even more hockish, more capitalist, the Netanyahu's right-wing coalition. So the main change was changing the living address of Sarah Netanyahu, Prime Minister, Netanyahu's wife. So there was no change. And that's why you see Israel's political system reshapes itself.

If you are American, hoping for change in terms of. Policy, you'll get quite disappointed. Towards the Palestinians. Towards the Palestinians, towards Gaza. I would say even more than this, that a coalition controlled by Bennett, Liberman, Yergo, Lanyarpe, et cetera, would never be able to sign this Trump ceasefire plan

because the right wingers would kill them. Netanyahu would say this is a surrender to Hamas. And do you think there's a good shot that Netanyahu just survives the next election? Yes, but I have to explain something about Israeli politics. In the U.S., when you have Trump versus Harris, one of them must win, right? Because someone has to get 270 votes on the electoral college. In Israel, you can either win, lose, or having the election undecided.

Why? Because in Israel, you have Arab parties that traditionally do not take part in coalitions. There was one exception four years ago, but it was under the COVID crisis, which was a domestic issue. as long as Israel has its a complicated strategic relationship with the Muslim world I don't see any coalition formed on the basis of an

Arab non-Zionist or sometimes anti-Zionist party hence if they get at least 10 seats out of the 120 so if you get 61 seats you want the election right if you're a baby you won the election 61 out of 120 out majority but if you get 50

you didn't win the election but you didn't lose it either because you blocked the center left changed block from forming a coalition. According to each and every poll following the deal, reaching Gaza, Netanyahu got 51, at least.

Netanyahu lost the outright majority. But as a result of October 12th ceasefire and Iran being defeated and Hezbollah being defeated, Netanyahu secured himself from not losing the election, for the time being, of course. Time and again, he outnumbers his opponents, and it's too early to call, but I would say that something dramatic would have to happen

in order for Netanyahu to directly lose the next election. Do you think his government will stand until October 26th? No, but, I mean, the last coalition to survive a full term in Israel was in 1988. I know it sounds weird for Americans, but in Israel there are no fixed terms. So Netanyahu succeeded in the mission that most of the governments failed to reach the fourth year, the final year of his term. And it's amazing.

No one believed it, including Netanyahu himself, the day after October 7th. And then always our final question. What are three books you'd recommend to the audience? Yeah. So I'll recommend two English books and two books in English and one in Hebrew. The first is the accidental president about President Truman's first four months by A.J. Baim, I think. great book. The second is not exactly a book about

presidents, but a book about the history of how to write history of president. It's an unfinished love story by Doris Goodman. Doris Kern's good one, yeah. Exactly. But yeah, good news because, yes, she was married to President Johnson and President Kennedy's a special advisor.

And it's a brilliant book about how to write about history. And the third is a book in Hebrew, and it's a book written by my father. It's called the Messiah in Sdebokr. It's about David Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion was the founding father of Israel, a mixture of George Washington and, I don't know, Thomas Jefferson.

And he was considered a very secular leftist leader at the time, but my father reveals how deep inside he was very Jewish and how the right wing should fall in love with him in retrospect. and if you want to understand Israel, so it's better for you to study Hebrew, to learn Hebrew as fast as possible and read it. I mean Segal. Thank you very much. Thank you so much.

This episode of Isaklancho is produced by Jack McCordick, fact-checking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Mary Marge Locker. Our senior audio engineer is Jeff Gelb, with additional mixing by Isaac Jones. Our executive producer is Claire Gordon. The show's production team also includes Annie Galvin, Marie Cassione, Roland Hu, Marina King, Kristen Lynn, Emmett Kelbeck, and Jan Kobel. Original music by Amun Zahuta and Pat McCusker. Audience Strategy by Christine Samaluski and Shannon Busta. The director of New York Times-pending audio is Annie Rose Strasser.

Thank you.