The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Yossi Klein Halevi: Israel on the brink of civil war?

Episode Date: July 27, 2023

Chaos is unfolding on the streets of Israel as protesters face off against riot police and water cannons. Millions of Israelis are expressing their anger and frustration at the right wing coalition government - led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - for a series of judicial reforms that they argue will dismantle the country’s liberal institutions and its ability to function as a thriving democracy. On this Munk Dialogue, we’re joined by one of the government’s fiercest and most outspoken critics. Yossi Klein Halevi is a best-selling author, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, and a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.   The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/ Senior Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Editor: Kieran LynchBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When you're a journalist and people don't trust you, it's always your fault. These people need to be represented. They are Canadian. They deserve to have a voice and a seat at the table. It is time to go back to the office, and the time is now. Russia had reasons to be concerned. They had reasons to be fearful. We're at an absolute turning point in reproduction. This is the problem with realism. They just treat all countries the same. They don't distinguish between dictatorships and democracies. Hi, Monk listeners. Roger Griffiths here.

and moderator, welcome to this, our continuing conversations called the monk dialogues. These are in-depth questions and answers with some of the world's sharpest minds and brightest thinkers. On each monk dialogue, we go deep into the big issues, ideas that are transforming our world and shaping our future. Well, protests have overtaken the streets of Israel, millions of citizens expressing their anger and frustration at a right-wing coalition government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for its judicial revolution, a series of reforms that many fear could fatally undermine the country's liberal institutions and civil rights, moving Israel away from its status as a thriving democratic society.

On this monk dialogue, we're joined by one of the government's fiercest and most outspoken critics. Yossi Klein-Halevi is a best-selling author, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, and a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Yossi, welcome to the Monk Dialogues. Thank you, Rod. Good to be with you. So much to talk with you about the events in Israel over the past few months, the past few weeks, the past few days have simply been monumental. The most recent development is the passage through the Knesset of legislation to curtail the ability of the Supreme Court to hold your

parliament, your government to account through the so-called reasonableness clause, talk to us about where Israel finds itself now. After this week's key decisions that seem to herald the beginnings of a judicial revolution in your country, one that could have profound impacts for your democracy, for civil rights, for Israel's status in the world. I want you. I want you. You your sense right now of what's happening on the ground, what is the state of play? Well, the mood here in the camp that I belong to, which is the broad Israeli liberal constituency, and by liberal, I mean liberal in an Israeli sense, not perhaps in a North American sense, in that liberal means what it used to mean. It includes everyone from right of

center to center to left of center. And it is a broad consensus that upholds democracy as not only the right of the majority to power and to manipulate the system as it sees fit. It's not only winner take all, but that democracy is a delicate dance between majority rights and minority rights. That's the basic position of the liberal camp. And it's, It is not the position of this government. And so the mood in my camp today is very grim, is very fearful for the future. We've just lost our first round, our first major defeat in seven months of struggle with this government. And we know that it's just the beginning.

This government is not out for judicial reform. its goal is to fundamentally transform Israeli society. Why do you think, based on the protests at a scale that are just, I think, hugely admirable in terms of what they say about the vitality of Israeli democracy, why do you think that those protests have not had more of an impact on this government, on its decision-making, and were you surprised, frankly, that the coalition led by Le Kud and Benjamin Netanyahu did what they did on Monday and rammed this legislation through, again,

to strip the Supreme Court of a key mechanism, a key power that it had traditionally used to ensure some accountability, some sense of fairness in Israeli society about the respect of balance of power and the rights that citizens can and should enjoy. Well, look at the men. makeup of this coalition. You essentially have three constituencies being represented there. There is the far right, which until this government was a marginal force in Israeli society,

today it is substantially empowered. A process similar to what has happened in much of Western Europe has belatedly happened in Israel. And it happened largely because Prime Minister Netanyahu who legitimized the far right as a coalition partner, which in the past, we could leaders, the Likud as the mainstream conservative party, always shun. Netanyahu, for his own political purposes, brought the far right into the heart of government. The second part of this coalition are the ultra-Orthodox. The ultra-Orthodox are interested in one thing, which is preserving the power of their separatist state within a state. The ultra-Orthodox effectively are a kind of an autonomous community. They are exempt from military service, which of course is

universal for Jewish Israelis, for the Druze minority. And the ultra-Orthodox, for the most part, do not participate in the army. They are largely outside of the productive economy, the young men sit and study in Yeshiva and religious seminaries. And we cover, we, the mainstream Israeli taxpayer, cover the, we subsidize this community. And so the ultra-Orthodox are really interested in, in essentially. one thing which is preserving their power. And finally, you have the Likud. Now, the Likud, until the last couple of years, was a normative conservative party. Under Netanyahu, and this coincides

with Netanyahu's legal problems. As soon as he found himself in trouble with the courts, he became a vociferous opponent of the judicial system, whereas in the past, he was always an ardent champion of the system. And so Netanyahu, for his own cynical reasons, has transformed the Lecold from a normative conservative party into an anti-democratic populist party. So when you look at these three elements that make up this government,

this is the most homogeneous right-wing coalition we've ever had in Israel. This is a coalition of right-wing, more right-wing, and extreme right. And I have never felt before that any Israeli government from any part of a political spectrum was morally illegitimate. I have voted for parties across the spectrum. I voted for Yitzhak Rabin on the left. I voted for Netanyahu in the post.

And so for me, there was never a question of the legitimacy of a government. This government, for me, is morally illegitimate. And I say that not only because of the makeup. the extreme makeup of this government, but because this is the first government in Israel's history to try to fundamentally remake Israeli identity, Israeli democracy, the Jewishness of the state. This is a government that is effectively declaring war on half the population, and we've never, we've never experienced anything like this. Well, let's go to this crisis of legitimacy, because I think a lot of people, and I sense

you're part of this group are very worried about what could come next, that these protests are not simply a manifestation of anger at the proposed changes to the basic law, to how the Supreme Court interacts with the legislature, its powers. They're getting it something deeper, which, as you said, is a feeling of disenfranchisement on the part of the more secular, progressive, technologically savvy, economically dynamic, what, Yossi, would you say majority in Israel? Yeah, the polls consistently show every poll in the last few months

has shown that a majority, even a strong majority of Israelis, oppose the judicial revolution. A slight majority of Likud voters of Netanyahu's own party opposed the judicial revolution. One thing that I would just like to clarify, which is that the protest movement, which I'm deeply a part of, is not coming primarily from the Israeli left, but the center. This is an eruption of patriotism. And the symbol of the protest movement is the Israeli flag. Now, that's, you know, I come from the U.S. And I grew up in the 1960s when protesters were burning the American flag.

And even today, if you'll have an anti-Trump demonstration, you're not going to have thousands of American flags flying in the streets. The flag has been appropriated by the American right. And I think that that's a part of the tragedy of the American political debate today. But in Israel, that has not happened. The protest movement is no less patriotic than the right. And in fact, what we're saying to this government is you're the ones who are betraying the Zionist ethos. We are reclaiming patriotism for dissent. And you pointed out something very important here, which is the movement is being generated by that part of Israeli society.

that is responsible for the Israeli economic miracle. The high-tech sector is funding the demonstrations. The high-tech sector is front and center of the protests. And the scientists, the doctors, we just had a 24-hour strike of doctors to protest the judicial revolution. And so this is coming from that part of Israeli society that is responsible for the Israeli miracle, the Israeli success story.

And what worries me is that the more the government targets the startup, what we call startup nation, that part of Israel that has really overseen the economic success story. The more the government accuses the protesters of treason, of being anarchists, the more they risk alienating that part of the Israeli public, that the country most needs. And so there's something deeply, deeply worrying about this moment on many levels. This is not only a threat to Israeli democracy. For me, this is primarily a threat to the Israeli success story.

And that's what worries me so much about this government of the ultra-right. the religious fundamentalists and the corrupt politicians. So what happens, though, Yossi, if you have a majority not so silent anymore, who have demonstrably been unable to influence and affect the government, at least in this first step of their judicial reform, the removal of a reasonableness capacity clause in the Supreme Court that it's, been used traditionally, I think only less than a dozen times, to rein in legislative decisions by the Knesset. But what happens if you've lost this fight? We know that there are other

planks to this, as you call it, judicial revolution. So the ability of the majority of the Knesset to change the basic law, new powers to appoint judges to remove and reappoint, you know, officials like the Attorney General and others who, I guess, in a North American sense, would be kind of bureaucrats and not politicians. I mean, this is just stage one, Yossi. So what's the danger here if this government moves forward with stage two, three, and four? And this majority of Israelis, despite the principled protest, despite the civic energy, the remarkable civic energy that this is releasing in your country, continues to lose.

and the government continues not to listen. What happens? Well, this is, in some ways, this is an anomalous moment. Because if you look at the pattern over the last half a year, since this government came to power and the protest movement emerged, we managed to push back every threat to the independence of the Supreme Court until now. For example, the government initially intended to pass an override clause, which would have effectively allowed the government to veto any Supreme Court decision, which would have meant

effectively the end of Israel as a democracy. Because in Israel, we only have one House of Parliament, which means that the Prime Minister controls the Parliament and is effectively the Parliament. And the only break that we have, we don't have a constitution, the only break on runaway power on the part of the government is a strong Supreme Court. Now, it's true that the Israeli Supreme Court is especially activists. And there is rule for reform here. The critics are not entirely wrong. The problem is that in the absence of a constitution, in the absence of a system of checks and and balances that other countries take for granted, we desperately need an interventions court. There are other reasons why I feel strongly that we need an activist court. And that is, there are certain structural challenges built into Israeli reality that are strains on our democracy.

For example, the ongoing security situation. Israel faces the kinds of security threats that very few of any countries, any other democracies face. And that's been true from the moment of our birth. We are constantly balancing security needs with democratic norms. So we need a strong court to ensure that we don't allow the understandable temptation of, say, the military.

to come up with quick fixes that will harm Palestinian civilians, for itself, but will supposedly strengthen Israeli democracy. I need a strong court to make sure that we maintain some basic commitment to democratic norms despite our overwhelming security needs. And so what has happened in the last months is that the government retreated over and over again. This time, the government pushed through what is probably the least dangerous of the judicial revolution, the least dangerous component of the judicial revolution. I still think that this is an outrage. But we took a stand saying there can be no

transformation of the judicial system without negotiations between the government and the opposition, and there were negotiations happening under the auspices of President Herzog, and the government essentially violated the most basic rules of the negotiations and led to the end of the attempt to negotiate a compromise. What I'm really trying to say is that we've proven the strength and the resilience of the protest movement. We have forced to, the government to back down time and again. This time the government pushed this particular clause through, but we are just beginning. And what the government, the government continually underestimates our resolve. And the reason that I believe we're going to prevail is because

for us, for the liberal camp, preserving an independent court is an existential issue for Israel. It's a question of Israel's long-term viability as a modern, successful state, as a member of the Democratic Club of Nations. If we lose an independent judiciary and we become a kind of Hungary or Poland or Turkey, then we will lose the edge that has allowed us to prevail against a hostile region for 75 years. And that's what we're fighting for. And because we have that existential fear on our side, I believe that we're not going to give up until we succeed in stopping this government. Yeah, I think this is a fascinating point that the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state resides in no small part because you are a nation where the rule of law exists, where there is, and it is internationally, your court and your institutions are recognized internationally to be those of a peer jurisdiction of fellow democracies like Canada, the United States, and elsewhere.

So if all of that is in danger, what does that mean for the legitimacy of Israel? And I think, again, it is very important to remind listeners, because it seems so bizarre that not only do you not have a constitution, you don't have a bill of rights, a charter of rights and freedoms, there is no codification of, your basic rights as a citizen vis-a-vis the state, other than what the Supreme Court or the Knesset decide? And I would gladly weaken the court and weaken its ability to intervene in government decisions, provided that this was part of a much larger transformation that would include a constitution, that would include some form of Bill of Rights, that would build in other checks and balances,

so that we wouldn't need the imbalance of an overly interventionist court. The critics are right on that point, but they're wrong when they simply disregard the wider context that necessitates an interventionist court. And why, Yossi, what's the history there? Why was there, I mean, Israel isn't a particularly old democracy. It's a modern democracy. Why was there never an attempt to move to a written constitution, to have some version of the Bill of Rights or some codification of the human natural rights of Israeli citizens vis-a-vis the state? So we have a series of basic laws that the Knesset passed in the 1990s, which do function as a kind of of,

of Bill of Rights, except for the fact that the Knesset can vote to overturn any one of those, any one of those laws with a simple majority. So that it's not a strong system. And one of the miracles of Israeli democracy is that we've managed to thrive. Our democratic institutions have only grown over the years. Even though the structure is, itself is so thin. And there were attempts or intentions on the part of the founders of the state to begin a process that would create a constitution. And it never happened. I suspect for two reasons. One is that in Israel, there's always some new emergency. And there's very little, if any, long-term planning here.

Israel is a society that lives on improvisation. I think that one of the reasons why we are a startup high-tech nation is because the nature of high-tech is to improvise and that really draws on the strengths of the Israeli character. But the weakness of a society that lives on improvisation is that you don't plan ahead. You're always lurching from one emergency to the next. And I would say that the hidden blessing of this traumatic crisis that we're going through

is that we are finally being forced to look at some profound structural imbalances in Israeli society. We're finally asking ourselves some very hard questions. What do we mean by a Jewish state? What do we mean by a democratic state? And what is the relationship between those two identities? where this government, the answer is very simple. Israel is a Jewish state, that's what matters, and democracy is a kind of a, almost an afterthought.

For the liberal camp, Israel as a Jewish state, as the continuity of 4,000 years of Jewish history, Jewish civilization, as the custodian of the safety of the Jewish people around the world, that's one non-negotiable component of our identity. But the other equally important non-negotiable component of Israelisness is our commitment to decency, to creating a fair society, to striving for a fair society. And not that we're there, but the commitment under very difficult circumstances, under relentless security threats, to nevertheless keep holding ourselves to a higher standard, to aspire to democratic norms. That's what this government is threatening. And so for me, the good news of this moment is that it has galvanized liberal Israel, which until now has really been kind of amorphous and allowing the other side to determine the national agenda.

That's over. Liberal Israelis today are no less passionate, no less angry, no less committed than than the settlers, that the ultra-Orthodox, than any other segment in Israeli society. And that's going to create, as it already has, a great deal of social conflict, but that's unavoidable if we're going to try to preserve Israel as a democracy. I've heard it described as Israel is now confronting the incredible lightness of its being. Basically, as you say, there isn't that wrapper. around of Israeli democracy that exists in a lot of other pure nations.

Another point I want to have you touch on, because it's a big part of how this debate has been characterized. There is an argument that this debate has a sectarian undertone, that there are a battle going on here for the commanding heights of the state between those. members who formed the state of Israel, who primarily came from Europe, the Akadashki Jewish community, who have been dominant in a lot of Israelis elite institutions in the economy and elsewhere for decades now. And that there's a kind of almost Trump-like resurgence here of not simply an ideological, right-wing ideological group of settlers, ultra-Ordealogical.

Orthodox members of the Lakud Party. But that group as a whole represents members of the Israeli Jewish community who are not the Ashkenazi Jews. They are primarily from the Middle East. They feel possibly over decades that they have been discriminated against, looked down upon. And this is a kind of a revenge, again, in a very Trump-like way. a revenge of this group against their overlords and masters, and they're just tired of it. They're tired of the status quo of the Tel Aviv worldview, and they want something else. Look, there's no question that Netanyahu is trying to frame this conflict in internal ethnic

Jewish terms. There's also no question that Mizrahim certainly in the first decades of the state were discriminated against. Their culture was maligned, ignored. Israel was ruled in those years by a socialist secular labor establishment that made almost every mistake possible. But for the last 45 years, Israel has been governed primarily by the right, by the Likud. Netanyahu has been in power for more than 15 years. And to continue harping on the indignities that the first and second generation of Mizrahim were subjected to in Israel is demagogic. Now, that's not to say that all the problems. have been solved, there still is significant underrepresentation of Mizrahim in academia,

in high tech, in other parts of the economy. It's not true in politics anymore. It's certainly not true in culture. It's not true in the army. In very significant areas of Israeli life and power, Mizrahim have finally belatedly taken their rightful place in the front ranks. But what is happening here, really, is an attempt to revive and to tear open wounds that were beginning to heal. And if you look at the rates of marriage between Ashkenazim and Mizrahim, that's one barometer of the gradual success story that has been unfolding here. Now, again, I don't want to overstate that because there still is an open wound,

and those grievances are real. But this government has done everything it can to exaggerate them and to do so in the most vulgar and hateful way. Friendly reminder to our Monk Debates supporters and curators, right now on our website, www.com. you can access a high-definition video version of the entire main stage. Monk Debate on Artificial Intelligence, which took place recently at Roy Thompson Hall. Simply log on to the website using your membership credentials.

Go to the page for the Artificial Intelligence Debate. You'll see a big red arrow there. Click on it, and you've got 90 minutes of in-depth insight and analysis of artificial intelligence. If you are not already a supporter or a curator and you'd like to get access to on-demand versions of not just the artificial intelligence debate, but our 10-plus year archive of debates, dialogues, and conversations do that right now by becoming a monk debate supporter or curator. We'll also throw in advanced ticketing privileges to all of our in-person debates and other great perks and privileges. Again, you can do that right now on our website, Triple W. Moncdebates.com. Now back to our program. Another aspect of this evolving crisis that I want you to weigh in on is the increasing

reports that not simply hundreds, not possibly thousands, but potentially tens of thousands of Israeli reservists, now potentially withholding their services to the IDF on the basis that they perceive, as you've framed it earlier, this conversation, that there is a legitimacy crisis that has engulfed the state, and that this violates, if not the terms, the spirit of their service, their national service. How important is this? And could this really be a forcing mechanism, Yossi, to constrain the government and moving forward with other aspects of its judicial revolution? Well, this is the nuclear weapon. And I'm very afraid of this weapon because of its implications for Israeli security.

We could find ourselves in a regional war at any moment, a war against Iran and its proxies. Chisbalah on our northern borders, Syria, Hamas on our southern border. And we have something like 200,000 missiles and rockets that are pointed at Israel's population. centers. And so to be using this weapon, terrifies me. On the other hand, as you point out, this, if there is any pressure point that's likely to force the government to back down, this is it. It is a very dangerous weapon to pull out of the arsenal because that means that other aggrieved groups can then resort to this at any time. And the consent, The census in Israel until now has been we don't touch the army. The army is beyond the political

debate. Where I understand those reservists who are refusing to volunteer, and note my language, reservists who are refusing to volunteer, we're not speaking about the standing army, we're not speaking about conscripts, we're speaking about people in their 30s and 40s who volunteering to be part of the reserves. You can leave the reserves at any time. And so what they're saying is that our social contract has been violated by an anti-democratic government. We signed up to defend a state that is Jewish and democratic. We did not sign up to defend a dictatorship. And while I'm desperately worried about the consequences of using this weapon. No one, certainly not this government,

has the right to tell volunteers in the reserves that they don't have the right to rescind their relationship with the army. That's part of the democratic process as well. You see, it sounds like you're worried that things are starting to break, that norms and just long-standing agreements that had been reached between the state and citizens, between citizens and Israel, between different ethnic and religious groups, that all of this is kind of up in the air at this moment, and that, as you say, once you break some of these things, it becomes very hard to put them back together again, doesn't it?

It does. It does. And that's the fear of so many of us on both sides of this issue. And what I find so incomprehensible about this government is you see what you're doing to Israeli society. Let's assume that the government is right and my camp is behaving with recklessness. My camp is breaking the rules. But you see where your actions are leading. At what point do you ask yourself, is it worth it? is it worth transforming the judicial system, given the harm that the process is doing,

to the most essential elements of Israeli society? You know, if you think about the position of liberal Israelis for a moment, we put up with an awful lot in this country, beginning with an overbearing religious establishment that intrude, in the private lives of Israelis that tells us where we can marry, how to marry, how to travel on the Sabbath. There's no public transportation on the Sabbath. There's a very intrusive religious establishment.

At the same time, we are dealing with a 50-year occupation of the Palestinians. We are ruling over another people. and we go to the army, we serve in the army, we've been loyal citizens, we do guard duty at settlements that many of us believe shouldn't be there. And the reason that we've put up with this for all these years is too full. First of all, because on the Palestinian issue, most Israelis agree that there is no safe way for the foreseeable future for Israel. to extricate itself from the West Bank. If we were to leave the West Bank tomorrow and create a Palestinian state there, it would almost certainly turn into another Gaza. And it would be ruled by

Hamas and we would have a terror state five minutes from Tel Aviv. So most Israelis take a deep breath, most Israelis in my camp who support a two-state solution. We take a deep breath and we say, okay, this is the reality. We live in the real world. This is the Middle East. This is a really hard. place, and we have to defend the country. But then when you take away the oxygen of liberal Israel, and for us, the oxygen is the Supreme Court, what we're left with is defending what we regard ultimately as indefensible. And this is what's dangerous. Israel is a very delicate ecosystem, a social ecosystem of many competing ideologies. And what makes the society work is that there is room.

Room has been created for all of these competing ideologies. But the moment that one part of the society attempts to deprive the other part of society of what it regards as essential to its way of life, that's when you threaten the cohesiveness of Israel. And that's what we're looking. That's what this government is doing. Profound and important answer. Final question about Benjamin Netanyahu. He has dominated, as you've mentioned, Israeli politics for a generation or more. He's been involved in decisions big and small, consequential, inconsequential. He has had a impact on the modern Jewish democratic state in Israel, like. few other politicians in your history, how much of all of this do you think comes down to one man

and his hold on the country? Maybe you might say now his hostage taking of Israel. Is he really the fulcrum, the figure that we need to watch to understand where this all goes next? For some extent, yes, in that if Netanyahu were no longer prime minister, you would have, in all likelihood, a substantial coalition ranging from center to right that would exclude the far right, the ultra-nationalists. their presence at the heart of power is an anomaly that Netanyahu's political needs has made possible. The reason you don't have a coalition today of the Likud and the center is because the center did try to sit in government with Netanyahu, and Netanyahu violated every one of his commitments. No one trusts him. No one will sit with him outside of the right.

And so in order to remove the ultra-right from government, you need to enter, Israeli politics needs to enter the post-Netanyahu era. Once that happens, I believe we can begin the process of healing Israeli society. And you see, it sounds like maybe a process that could lead to some really important reforms in Israel. I mean, do you sense that a constitution, a bill of rights, some more substantial overhaul, of the social contract, as dark as things are now, that potentially you and I having this conversation a couple of years into the future, could things possibly be in a much different

and dare we be hopeful a much better place? Look, Israel is one of the most radically fluid societies anywhere. I've lived here for 40 years, and I've been on the Israeli- roller coaster, the highs, the lows. And change tends to happen here abruptly. A massive wave of new immigration, a war, an economic breakthrough, a diplomatic breakthrough, peace with parts of the Arab world. There are so many variables here. And so what I've learned is really never to say never in Israel. And anything and everything. is possible. Now, that's a very frightening statement at the moment, because if anything is possible,

then so are the darkest scenarios. And we're living through something of that. But I believe that this can be the breakdown that leads to a breakthrough in forcing us to frame a constitution, to think more deeply about strengthening our fragile institutions and to think as a collective, what is Israelisness? What is our national identity? What is this extraordinary place that we've created out of 100 Jewish communities from around the world? Who are we? What do we want to be?

And in a way, you know, this is our 70, 50 years a nation. And it's about time that we grew up and started asking those questions. I like that idea. Break down to break through. Well, we're going to continue to watch this fast developing story. Yossi Klein-Halevi, thank you so much for coming on the program today, sharing your wisdom and insights with our listeners. It was greatly appreciated. I so much enjoyed our conversation.

Thank you again. I did as well. Thanks so much for having me. That wraps up today's dialogue. I want to thank our guest, Yossi Klein-Halevi, from joining us from Israel. He certainly gave me a lot to think about. Would love your reflections and ideas on what you've just heard. Please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com.

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