Is The Problem In Israel Rooted in 1967 or 1948?

When I was in Israel a few weeks ago, a number of the Israelis I interviewed marveled at how quickly things had gone back to normal in Israel, Post-Corona. One of those guests, Yonatan Sagiv - the novelist - told me that we’ll know we’re back to normal when Israelis have to resume dealing with their pre-pandemic problems. Well, over these past 10 days, one conflict lit right back up in a tragic way - Israel’s off-again, on-again war with Hamas. So that’s what we’re going to discuss in this episode.

Now, I know that this is not the kind of topic we typically cover on this podcast. But it’s an issue I care a lot about, and so I want to use this conversation to try to shed some light to what is a very heated issue.

There’s a ton of noise over here in the West about what just happened between Gaza and Israel - plenty of hot takes, with very little discussion about the history and context. There’s nobody better to help us unpack what just happened than Dr. Daniel Gordis, who I've known for over 20 years.

Danny Gordis moved to Israel in 1998, and raised three kids in Israel. Danny is one of the most thoughtful observers of Israeli life and Israeli history. He is Senior Vice President and the Koret Distinguished Fellow at Shalem College, a liberal arts college in Israel that he co-founded.

Hours before the ceasefire, we sat down with Dr. Daniel Gordis in Jerusalem with this core question: did the Gaza War of 2021 remind us that the conflict is not over the 1967 borders, but rather it’s 1948, Israel’s founding.

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Transcript

DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.

[00:00:00] I actually think that Hamas is going to lose on this front. I think they're not going to be successful in radicalizing Israeli Arabs. Obviously, if they are, then this is an entirely different ballgame.

I'm Dan Senor.

When I was in Israel a few weeks ago, a number of the Israelis I interviewed marveled at how quickly things had gone back to normal in Israel post corona. One of those guests, Yonatan Sagiv, the novelist, you may recall, told me that we'll know we're back to normal when Israelis have to resume dealing with their pre pandemic problems.

Well, over these past 10 days, one conflict lit right back up in a tragic way. Israel's off again, on again war with Hamas. So that's what we're going to discuss in [00:01:00] this episode. Now, I know this is not the kind of topic we typically cover on this podcast, but it's an issue I care a lot about, and so I want to use this conversation to try to shed some light on what is a very heated issue.

There's a ton of noise over here in the West about what just happened between Gaza and Israel. Plenty of hot takes with very little discussion about the history and context. There's nobody better to help us unpack what just happened, including the bigger picture, than Dr. Daniel Gordas, who I've known for over 20 years.

Danny Gordas moved to Israel in 1998 and raised three children in Israel. He's one of the most thoughtful observers of Israeli life and Israeli history. He's Senior Vice President and the Corrett Distinguished Fellow at Shalem College, which is a liberal arts college in Israel that he co founded. Danny is also a columnist for Bloomberg View, and he's the author of more than ten books.

I'm not going to rattle off all the titles, but here are three I highly, highly [00:02:00] recommend. His History of the State of Israel, which is titled Israel, A Concise History of a Nation Reborn. His biography of Prime Minister Menachem Begin, called Begin, The Battle for Israel's Soul. And more recently, and very timely given the debate in this country about Israel, it's called We Stand Divided.

The rift between American Jews and Israel. Now, hours before the ceasefire, we sat down with Danny in Jerusalem with this core question. Did the Gaza War of 2021 remind us that the conflict is not over the 1967 borders, but rather it's about 1948, Israel's founding?

And I'm pleased to welcome my good friend Daniel Gordas to this conversation. Hey, Dan. Hi, Dan. Good to see you. Good to see you. I, so you are in Bacha right now in Jerusalem, which is [00:03:00] one of my favorite neighborhoods in Jerusalem. It also happens to be where my sister, brother in law, nieces, and mother all live.

Uh, I know it well. I've been to, I've been to your home, uh, for Shabbat dinner where you're, where you're sitting right now. You're, you've had three, three kids who, you do have three kids, all of whom have served in the army. You do have Uh, a lot, and they have a lot of friends who I'm sure are, are still in.

You have a lot of, uh, friends of your own whose kids are serving, and you obviously at any moment have had to deal with, you know, these, um, rockets landing, not primarily in Jerusalem, but throughout Israel. Can you just describe, with all that in mind, your life as an Israeli? Before we get into the substance, just what it's been like.

Well, it's been very different for different kinds of Israelis who live in different places. Uh, those cities that have been under Barrage attacks of missiles have really been living in a hell for 10 or 11 days. Now, [00:04:00] uh, there's been a thousand or so rockets that have been shot at or near Ashkelon today.

The Israeli press pointed to the obvious fact that many people in Israel don't even have the option of running to a shelter. So for example, Ashkelon, which has 160, 000 residents, 60, 000 don't have access to protected spaces. My son lives about. It's about 20 minutes from here in Jerusalem, and the only protected space in their building is the stairwell.

We live in a much newer apartment, it's about 20 years old or 23 years old, by which point code called for these highly reinforced, steel reinforced cement rooms with metal doors and metal braces on the window. So we did actually Make sure that that metal window covering, which we haven't touched in a very long time, got greased and we could open it up and move it if we had to.

So there's a certain level of, of worry here in Jerusalem, but in places like Ashkelon and Ashdod and all of the places [00:05:00] around Gaza, it's not worry, it's dread. And I've spoken to many people who have literally spent night after night in the bomb shelter, people who are trying to comfort their kids after waking them up when the siren goes off.

It's been, it's been horrible for them. I mean, we're actually, um, much more fortunate here in Jerusalem. There are things that we're not doing. Uh, there was a Jewish holiday of Shavuot a few nights ago, and it's pretty traditional in Jerusalem to go walking all over the city from one class to another, one lecture to another.

Uh, and my wife made it exceedingly clear. She didn't want me going outside. She didn't want me being caught outside if there was going to be a siren. Just for our listeners who don't understand. So, so basically over Shavuot, At nighttime, there's these all night classes, so it's a tradition to study through the night, and Jerusalem, being in Jerusalem during Shavuot is like one of my favorite places to be in the world because you just have this unbelievable diversity of study on a range of topics, All through the night, 3 a.

m., 4 a. m., 5 [00:06:00] a. m., and you just have these, you have Israelis walking the streets going from class to class to class, and it's very vibrant, not just what's happening in the class, but just on the streets all through the night. So that's what you're describing as a high point, and I think coming out of COVID, people were looking forward to that.

Right, and that happened. There were classes, but there wasn't anything like the traffic that you would normally see on the sidewalk, and ironically, what you did get this year were emails from your synagogue saying, if you have a valid gun license and a gun, please bring it to synagogue. On, uh, Shavuot and then Shabbat, uh, because in addition to the conflict with Gaza, obviously there is a very sad rupture inside Israel.

And there's some worry about violence between Jews and Arabs actually spreading, which I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit later. Can you also just describe the, because I was in Israel, uh, around Yom Ha'atzmaut for a few days, and we did an episode on the, on the post corona energy and, and vibrance [00:07:00] of Israel coming out of the pandemic.

And, and now, and you've written about this, and now You know, it's gone from, everyone's got to be on Zoom because of the pandemic, and then there was this burst of energy post pandemic, because Israel's been so successful on the vaccination front, and now it's back to Zoom effectively. Uh, because of the war, a lot has gone back to zoom.

Interestingly enough, by the way, we went to zoom for two days last week at Shalem College, where I work and teach. And when we sent out the email telling students that because of safety issues and so on and so forth, we're going to be on zoom for two days. We got a couple of really riled up emails from students who basically said.

What are you talking about? I mean, the whole point of this country is that nobody else gets to tell us how we're going to live. That's why we have a sovereign state and going to zoom after a year and whatever of being on zoom because people are firing rockets is effectively to give them a moral victory or a morale victory, and you shouldn't have done it now.

I still think that when [00:08:00] you run an institution, you have an obligation to be careful and mindful that people are coming from all over the country to teach and to go to class. So I don't really think we made a mistake, but I was struck by the spirit of that, those emails, which basically said, we're not afraid.

We refuse to be put back in zoom. We refuse unless we're actually in a city where rockets are falling to be shut down. Um, I have dinner plans with a friend tonight, downtown Jerusalem, and what's going to be a very crowded restaurant, which you can do here because. Everything's fully open and everybody's back to normal on the COVID front.

And I'm quite certain that if the siren goes off, there's not going to be enough. Shared protected space for everybody in the restaurant. It's just, people are, are not willing unless you're in Rehovot or Be'er Sheva today, which is getting pounded, right? Even as we speak in Southern Israel and obviously the cities along the Gaza border, which are getting impounded for 10 days, most Israelis are keeping a very stiff upper lip and trying to go about their business because that's the business of the state.

The business of [00:09:00] the state is the Jewish people. thriving and flourishing and living to its fullest and trying not to let these kinds of sad things impact us. Okay, so now Iwe have a lot of subjects I want to cover with you. I want to start with the basics. How did this latest war start? It didn't just start with, you know, following the press over here, you'd think it started with skirmishes in East Jerusalem.

A land, a real estate dispute, uh, issues at the, uh, at the Temple Mount, just lift the lens for us and, and explain where this conflict fits into what's been going on more broadly and, and how we got here. So the conflict with Hamas in Gaza. Uh, is a longstanding, a very longstanding issue. Israel pulled out of Gaza.

Israel captured Gaza during the 1967 Six Day War, along with the Golan Heights, which it still has and has annexed, [00:10:00] along with the West Bank, some of which is under Israeli control, some of which is now under Palestinian control, uh, and the Gaza Strip, which when Israel signed a peace treaty with Egypt, Egypt did not want back, uh, after in 1978, 79, Egypt didn't want it because it was just, uh, going to be trouble for them.

Now, Israel controlled Gaza and had a lot of people living, a lot of Jewish people living in Gaza until Ariel Sharon in 2005 decided that the price was too high. There were too many Israelis coming back from Gaza in body bags, whether they were people who had gone to work for the day, electricians fixing lights or whatever the case may be, or soldiers who were patrolling there, or people living there.

There were just too many people getting killed and Sharon and what was then a very controversial decision, but he was from the right. So it went down a little bit easier with the right, although still. Many people see him as an archenemy of the values of the right to this day, even though he's died.

Sharon pulled out. At that point, Gazans essentially elected Hamas. The election process Okay, hold on, before we get to [00:11:00] that. So, so 2005 Ariel Sharun makes a decision to withdraw from Gaza. Can you just explain briefly what that actually means? Appro, approximately how many Jewish settlers, about 8,000 settlers were living.

What it meant to pull out of Gaza in 2005 was to uproot thousands of people. About 8,000 Israelis were living in Townsend. You hear the word settler. You sometimes kind of imagine. a caravan or a Winnebago or whatever it is, and a bunch of teenage kids with M 16s running around. These were, these were towns.

I mean, I went to them on numerous occasions. They had little malls, and they had synagogues, and they had swimming pools, and they had schools, and they had neighborhoods. They also had cemeteries, by the way, where they buried their parents and their grandparents, as people who lived there for decades passed away through the normal course of human life.

So to pull out of Gaza meant to force those 8, 000 people into Israel. There's a lot of controversy inside Israel about how they were And whether or not they were actually given [00:12:00] compensatory housing the way that they should have, there's people on And it really was like the IDF going into Gaza and literally going door to door to make sure people left.

So you had an Israeli prime minister basically directing the Israeli army to, if necessary, forcibly relocate Israeli citizens from their homes. Right, it was actually a tragic week in Israel and an extraordinary week in Israel. I mean, I think about it now, it's 15, 16 years ago, but I can still remember vividly the pictures on Israeli television of Israeli soldiers, many of them women, on purpose, because they thought people would be less likely to resist women.

It was in the summer, it was exceedingly hot, walking around giving people Giving people water bottles, explaining to them that they had to leave their homes, watching the people who'd raised children and maybe grandchildren in those homes, weep. The soldiers embracing these people, they might've been on the left personally, they might've been on the right personally, but you didn't have to have a political position of [00:13:00] one sort or another.

To be broken hearted. I mean, I just, I, I, I think about that, uh, I just, you know, it's, it, it, it's painful all over again, but yes, we went house to house, door to door, a few people resisted, not violently, but they just sat down and they said they weren't going to move, and then soldiers had to come in and carry them out.

Uh, some people tried to destroy their own homes. At the end of the day, Israel made a decision to destroy all of the homes and all of the public buildings, but at the end of the day, Israel, at tremendous expense of human. I mean, bringing these people in and, and so on and so forth, uh, made a decision to, to get all of these people out of, out of Gaza.

Uh, at that point, Gazans basically had a sovereign territory. What, what was your impression in terms of what the Israeli leadership had hoped would happen? Therefore, so Israel's out of Gaza, right? Gazans have been saying they wanted Israel out of Gaza. Sharon pulls Israelis out of Gaza. And then so. So what did he think what was [00:14:00] the hope that was was gonna happen in Gaza?

Well, that's one of the big questions to this day I mean when we get hit by a rocket fire from Gaza as we do now a lot of Israelis ask What was Ariel Sharon thinking now Cheryl's defenders? Obviously, he's no longer alive, but Sharon's defenders say He had a plan. Obviously, he had been a general. He'd been a succeeding, a very successful general.

He was one of the people who single handedly turned the course of the war in the 1973 Yom Kippur War in the Sinai. He actually disobeyed specific commands not to cross the Suez Canal and did cross the Suez Canal, and in retrospect was given great credit for really having saved the day in the South.

During that very difficult war, on the other hand, he was also held accountable for the tragedy in Sabra and Shatila when, uh, Christian phalangists murdered hundreds of Muslims, but Israeli soldiers had surrounded the camps and presumably either knew about it or heard of it and didn't do anything to intervene.

Another. highly controversial moment in Israel's history, which many [00:15:00] Israelis still look on as a kind of a badge of shame, and specifically for Sharon as a badge of shame. But he eventually, through a complicated career, uh, became prime minister, and he decided, uh, in 2005, as we said, to pull Israel out. And when things go on like they're going on this week, people wonder, well, what was Sharon thinking?

What people think Sharon was thinking then, uh, is that number one, if Israel had to, Uh, it would use tremendous force to stop them from doing anything we didn't want them to do. The other thing was we hoped that they would actually choose a pathway forward that would not be a dictatorship, that would be a democracy, that would recognize the reality of Israel as a country that's not going to go away and make their peace with it and come to some sort of an agreement.

And I think one of the pieces that's getting entirely lost in all of the vitriol on the internet and on social media and the news coverage this year is that the Hamas charter. To this day is committed to wiping out the state of israel This is not about sheikh jarrah or which we'll talk about or uh, okay, but hold on.

Hold on. Hold on. So [00:16:00] so So, for, for years, Palestinian leaders and leaders in the Arab world and leaders in the international community had been saying, if Israel just gets, that the, the obstacle to, to real socioeconomic development in the Palestinian territories is the Israeli occupation. Remove the Israeli occupation and these will thrive, these societies will thrive.

And so Israel said, okay, we're out of Gaza. And that was 2005, and there was optimism, hopefulness, maybe naive, that these societies would develop like Israel had been lectured would happen if they left. And then what happened, because you're talking about Hamas charter, but first can you just explain how, how Hamas and Gaza became synonymous?

Hamas basically won an election. It's not, it's, it's much more complicated and it's too detailed for us to go into right now, but essentially the way the election [00:17:00] worked out with different parties getting, splitting things up, Hamas was able to take control of Gaza through what appeared to be on the surface, at least a, uh, a democratic process.

Now there wasn't. Very much about the democratic aftermath. In other words, after Hamas was elected and took over and turned it, of course, into a complete dictatorship, a military dictatorship, it not only attacked Israel as it's doing today and as it did in 2014 and as it did in 2012 and so on and so forth, it also attacked members of Fatah and members of Fatah knew in Gaza, uh, that if they were known as, as being supporters of.

The Palestinian Authority, which was situated mostly on the West Bank, they were literally going to get taken up to the 16th floor of a building and just dropped off. Uh, it was one of Hamas's most notorious ways of showing that they were not going to tolerate any disobedience. Um, it's been a tragic And Fatah, Fatah was, was the PLO, it was the power center in, in Palestinian politics that, that you're saying Hamas Correct.

And right now it's more or [00:18:00] less the power base, even though the names have all changed, it's more or less the power base of Mahmoud Abbas on the West Bank. And there had been a kind of a tug of war between Hamas and Fatah, the Palestinian Authority, whatever you want to call it, over who was going to control, who was going to have power in Gaza and who was going to have power in the West Bank.

Now today we assume, as a matter of nature, that of course Hamas is in power in Gaza and of course the Palestinian Authority is in power in the West Bank. But it was very clear to the Palestinian Authority at one point that they were going to control both. That these were two halves of an emerging Palestinian state.

And it was only in 2005 when Hamas took control. That the Palestinian authority was effectively evicted from Gaza, not only as a political force, but as live human beings, they simply killed them time after time after time again. And anybody in Gaza today who has any sympathy for the Palestinian authority or any wish that the Palestinian authority might take over, uh, would be very foolish to say that out loud would be absurdly foolish to say it on social media.

Cause [00:19:00] they'll end up dead. So, Palestinians essentially elected themselves a dictatorship, elected themselves, by the way, a dictatorship that has siphoned off billions of dollars of aid from the international community and Israel and so on and so forth, to build all these tunnels that Israel is bombing now and that Israel has bombed over the course of decades.

The year is people say, Oh, Israel's bottoming the tunnels. We can have a conversation about that separately, but what people need to remember is how many millions and millions and millions of dollars have been spent digging these tunnels. They're not, they're not rickety little tunnels in Israel. They're called the Metro at the Palestinian Metro, which they.

Could zip around between, between different parts of cities, between cities, occasionally, of course, also into Israel because that was part of their means of, of attacking Israel. Israel's technology has improved dramatically since the 2014 war with Hamas. So we've been able to prevent any Hamas incursions from tunnels into Israel, which is an extraordinarily important technological accomplishment.

Uh, but if Palestinians had taken that money [00:20:00] and built schools and built hospitals, uh, they would have been able to build a very, very different kind of society. Uh, but the decision to funnel all of that money into the digging of tunnels and the building of armaments at the cost of virtually every other socially progressive idea in Hamas, in Gaza, uh, that gets very little international attention, of course.

And now, just come back to the charter. So the Hamas charter says The Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel. Plain and simple. You can find it online. Anybody can find it online in a variety of languages. It calls for the destruction of Israel. So when you ask, let's go to the question of, so how did this thing start now?

Why are we at war with Gaza in 2021? We're at war in Gaza. The war didn't start now. The war is ongoing. In other words, Hamas is ongoing preparing for what it says is going to be the liberation of all of Palestine between the river and the sea. Uh, sometimes it flares up and sometimes it doesn't flare up.

But if a person has a chronic disease that's potentially lethal, they always [00:21:00] have the disease. There's just ups and downs in terms of how they have to fight it. It's a terrible analogy, but perhaps it's, it's useful in this case. It exploded in 2012. It exploded in 2014 and now it's exploded once again in 2021.

And the question is why? Now there are obviously many factors that go into that background factors. Some people think is that as long as Donald Trump was the president, the United States, Israel was going to have carte blanche. To do whatever it needed to do to Gaza and therefore Gazans understood. It would be a very bad idea to attack Israel while there was a Trump presidency.

It should be said by the way, that those people who assumed that Joe Biden, uh, would not come to Israel's defense have been surprised. He has been quite strong about Israel's defense in so far. I mean, we'll see what happens over the course of time. And he has a definite block of the democratic party that he can't ignore, which is much more hostile to Israel.

Uh, but if you, I was just at the fruit market earlier before our. Before our conversation, just picking up some stuff for dinner. And, you know, the checkout guy said to me, you know, that guy, Biden, he's actually doing better [00:22:00] than we thought. Um, so Israelis are actually kind of, um. Uh, surprised pleasantly and BB has been doing his share and complimenting Biden and thanking Biden when it was always the conversation about the BB Trump bro man.

So I think BB's handled this smartly. Biden I think has risen to the occasion. Uh, but so some people say that this was never going to happen as long as Trump was president. There may be some truth to that. There may be not. Who knows? But more particularly, what's, what's been happening since? Well, one thing that happened was, of course, the Abraham Accords.

The Abraham Accords was essentially another indication That the Arab world had basically said to the Palestinians, you know what? We're not waiting for you anymore. You have chosen to make your whole basis of life conflict with the state of Israel. The world has moved on. Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel.

Egypt before that signed a peace treaty with Israel. Saudi Arabia is even cozying up to Israel in certain kinds of security ways because of the shared threat of Iran. And we first Bahrain and the UAE and then Sudan and Morocco in different kinds of ways, we're just not waiting for you anymore. And so [00:23:00] the Palestinians began to understand that they were becoming marginalized in the Arab world.

Then to make things even quote unquote worse, Israeli Arabs liberated to a certain extent by the recognition that the Arab world was making its peace with Israel and wanted serious engagement with Israel. Israeli Arabs actually began to participate in the Israeli political process more than they ever had.

Uh, and until last week we were Just centimeters away from having a coalition in which Bibi Netanyahu was not going to be the prime minister and it looked like there was going to be a rotation between Naftali Bennett, who's of the right but was tired of Netanyahu, and Lapid, who was very much a centrist, who was also anti Netanyahu, and Gideon Sa'ar, who was also anti Netanyahu, and they were all going to get together.

And formerly, Sa'ar also formerly. Correct. And they were all going to get together, but the election was so close in Israel that it was actually This very, the handful of seats of the Ra'am Arab party, which is distinctly not only not Zionist obviously, [00:24:00] but it's actually distinctly anti Zionist in its platform.

Uh, but Mansour Abbas, not to be confused with Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, but Mansour Abbas, who's this Israeli Arab politician, uh, decided that he was going to throw his support, uh, behind this. Censorist right party and get rid of Bibi. And to be clear, there's been no Israeli government in history formed by An Arab, an Israeli formed with an Israeli Arab party as part of the coalition.

This was going to be major history. This became a big issue for Hamas because now look at it from their side, their perspective on their role in the Arab world. The Arab world has now embraced Israel more and more UAE, Bahrain, as we said, Morocco, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, and different kinds of ways. Israeli Arabs are actually now going to be the king makers inside Israeli politics, which is a kind of a.

Uh, question mark about Israel being an apartheid state when the Arabs are about to determine who's going to [00:25:00] be Israel's prime minister, effectively. And this was basically a disaster for Hamas, which saw the Palestinians getting more and more marginalized. And by the way, it's also, it's also, as you wrote in your, in your, one of your recent blog posts, the idea that Israeli Arabs are going to Be the linchpin, the kingmakers in forming a government, uh, really?

Israel's an apartheid state, and the idea that Israeli politics has become so polarized when, in fact, Israel's on the cusp of having, as you just said, a truly centrist or government of the center. Israel has a very powerful political center. And, um, it was actually gonna, it looked like be able to unseat Netanyahu as of two weeks ago.

That would have been the smart money. And, um, we would have had a very different outcome had Hamas not gotten it. Now, what else is Hamas trying to do? Hamas is also battling the Palestinian authority and the Palestinian authority is run by Mahmoud Abbas. Who's in his eighties, who was in the 16th year of a four year term, he was elected in January of 2005 for four years, never had elections since then [00:26:00] threatened or promised to have them in may end up backing off.

He made up an excuse basically that Israel was not allowing East Jerusalem Arabs to vote in the Palestinian Authority elections. It's a complicated story. So he ended the elections. Not everybody here, at least on the Palestinian side, had a vested interest In something happening in the region, Abbas wanted to take the spotlight off of his having canceled Palestinian elections.

Hamas wanted to become relevant again and seeing that Abbas was on the defensive thought, wow, what if we were able actually now to become the spokespeople, not only for Gaza, but for the Palestinians in the region? Wouldn't that be a step forward for us? Now, other factors played to their advantage. One of them was that the vagaries of the calendar, um, the Jewish calendar and the Muslim calendar are both lunar calendars, but they work in different.

systems. Uh, so is the Jewish calendar has leap years that the Muslim calendar [00:27:00] doesn't have leap years. But in this particular year, totally coincidentally, the celebration of Jerusalem Day, which is the anniversary of the unification of Jerusalem, um, is came at exactly the same time that the end of Ramadan and the three day holiday of is an exceedingly sacred part of the Muslim calendar.

Came to be Jerusalem day in Israel is actually taken on a kind of a nationalistic, not nationalist, but nationalistic aura and people march around the city with flags. It's become somewhat distasteful to the Israeli left and the Israeli center, which see the kids mostly on the right kind of thumbing their noses at Palestinians by carrying flags in the eastern part of the city on Jerusalem Day.

I'm one of those people who actually thinks it's been overdone and it's just distasteful and it, there's, there's plenty to celebrate about the unification of Jerusalem, but you don't have to go to East Jerusalem to celebrate the unification of Jerusalem. You can celebrate it [00:28:00] plenty well on the West side, but that's another conversation altogether.

Couple with that, the fact that Israel had taken a choice outside the Damascus gate to put, um, metal detectors because there was some worry about violence during the month of Ramadan and Palestinians saw that as an infringement of their sovereignty. And then there was rock hurling from the Temple Mount onto the lower area of the Temple Mount, which of course is the Western Wall, which is a sacred site for Jews and very heavily armed Israelis, Israeli police and security forces ended up going onto the Temple Mount, which is always a kind of a very, very Ignitable situation.

And in this particular case actually went into the Al Aqsa mosque and there was footage of that that was taken. Obviously everybody with a cell phone these days has a camera, uh, and that was quickly uploaded to social media, mostly on the Palestinian side. And what you had here was a kind of a perfect storm of the Muslim calendar, the Jewish calendar, Abbas being weak, Hamas needing a way or [00:29:00] wanting a way to get back in and Hamas.

Which of course is nowhere near, Gaza's nowhere near Jerusalem. Hamas announced last Monday If you do not get your troops off the Temple Mount by 6 p. m We are going to attack. Now, they understood of course full well That that was not an order that any Israeli prime minister left or right would be able to abide We're not gonna let Hamas tell us what we can do with our troops on the Temple Mount and sure enough Of course Israel did not Take its troops off of the Temple Mount, but none of us really thought that Hamas was serious.

And as I wrote in a recent blog post, I was actually out on my bike. It's crazily enough, perhaps, uh, even in an Arab village of Bait Zafafa, when I heard the siren go off and I thought to myself, really? They were serious about it? I never thought about that for a second. Then I heard the booms. They, I mean, they actually fired at Jerusalem.

They didn't hit anything serious, but, uh, they actually fired. First time they've ever done that. First time they've Ever, ever done that though. They actually fired, they fired at Jerusalem in 2014. Also, uh, the air raid sirens went [00:30:00] off in 2014 as well, but it was a pretty gutsy move on their part. It was definitely a spark.

Uh, and then I hear, I think both sides here had underestimated the ferociousness. with which the other side would respond. Very often, there's a kind of a tit for tat, and it goes on for a couple of days, and then it dies down. Uh, but Israel never believed that Hamas would fire missiles at Jerusalem, which is just kind of an unthinkable thing in the unspoken rules of the game, and I use that word with sadness, but it is a game in the sense that everybody kind of knows the rules, and you sort of know how the game's gonna unfold, and Hamas is gonna fire missiles, and Israel's gonna bomb Hamas, and it'll go on for a while.

And then Hamas will ask for a ceasefire and Israel will eventually, when it thinks it's done enough mopping up, accept the ceasefire. And then after the ceasefire, Hamas will fire again a little bit. Watch, that'll happen again in the next few days. Everybody should make a point of noting that there will be firing after the ceasefire, because that's just part of the dance.

And then Israel will fire back. Right, because Hamas wants to say it got the left. Right, and [00:31:00] Israel may or may not fire back a little bit. And then it dies down. Uh, but Hamas did not imagine that Israel would hit it as hard as it did. Israel keeps what's called a bank of targets and it usually works up the ladder of seriousness of targets.

First, it tries to take out mobile launchers and that'll take out more infrastructure. Uh, and then eventually it'll try to hit, which it actually didn't very much in 2014, try to hit more serious commanders, senior commanders of Hamas. And Israel basically said, we're not playing that game this time. We're going.

For a whole array, a whole battery of different kinds of, uh, of, of targets. And when that happened, of course, Hamas also upped its game and its theory was that Iron Dome, which sends a single rocket to intercept each, a single projectile to intercept each rocket could be easily overwhelmed if they fired dozens and dozens of rockets almost at the same time towards individual.

Towards individual, uh, uh, individuals, Israeli cities. Now, they were right. I mean, you actually can overwhelm Iron Dome. Having said that, Iron Dome has [00:32:00] also been dramatically improved in recent years. And it performed admirably. Hamas is fired, as you and I are speaking now, over 4, 000 rockets at Israel. And about 12 or 13 Israelis have been killed, some of them Israeli Arabs, actually, but, and I don't want in any way, God forbid, to discount the tragedy that those families are all feeling and their lives have been altered forever.

Uh, but you have to also recognize that from a defensive point of view, uh, Iron Dome has been phenomenally. successful and that a country could fire 4, 000 missiles at another target, which is basically just over the border and over 10 days only killed 14 people. I don't know what the count is today because there's been more firing.

Uh, it's an extraordinary accomplishment on Israel's part. And I should just say as an, and, and can I, can I just, on that point, because there's been, there's been this bizarre criticism of Iron Dome over here in the U S in some corners, as though it's somehow [00:33:00] unfair. That Israel has the Iron Dome and, and, uh, Gaza doesn't have the Iron Dome.

It's, uh, and one of the, one of the best lines I, I read is Yair Rosenberg from Tablet who said that Gaza does have the Iron Dome. Their Iron Dome is, don't fire rockets at Israel. If you don't fire rockets at Israel, there will be no, there will be no, you know, war, war in Gaza. This is your choice. You know, it's not, that's the simplest, um, simplest, uh, Iron Dome for, for Gaza.

But If Israel didn't have the Iron Dome, this is I think a point that's lost on many people over here in the West, if Israel didn't have the Iron Dome, they'd have to go obliterate Gaza. They couldn't, if Gaza fired 4, 000 rockets, and most of them got through versus almost none of them getting through.

The, the speed with which Israel would have to go in and, and, and, you know, pummel Gaza, I mean, and talk, you know, [00:34:00] we've talked about 200 casualties, 200 plus casualties in Gaza, which we can break that down, you would have thousands of casualties. You would have thousands of casualties and you'd have hundreds of Israeli dead too.

There is no Israeli stomach, by the way, even on the right. You're hearing almost no calls on the Israeli right, even on the hard right, you know, go in, do a land invasion, take Gaza back. Uh, because that puts us right back at 2005 where a right wing prime minister like Ariel Sharon said. It's enough. Let's get out of here because, um, it's just too high a cost.

You there's no point taking Gaza if you don't know what to do with it afterwards and Israel, Israel doesn't really doesn't know what to do with it afterwards and certainly doesn't want to own it. Um, and so that's why there's been very little call, but that's a thousand percent correct. If, if the hospitals were being hit.

And Israelis were dying by the dozens, God forbid, uh, Israel would have no choice, both because of political pressure, but also because of defensive pressure, uh, to go into Gaza. So ironically, Iron Dome, uh, which has according to some American interpreters made for an unlevel playing [00:35:00] field, uh, which is, as you point out, Completely absurd.

Like it would only quote unquote be a fair fight. If equal numbers of people were dying on both sides. Uh, it's just, I mean, that's absurd. It's like saying America couldn't have attacked, you know, Germany in, in the second world war because it killed more Germany Germans on German soil than the Germans killed Americans on American soil.

So by definition it wasn't a fair fight, but that's of course, It's entirely ludicrous, and anybody who knows anything about the history of the Second World War knows that it's not only militarily ludicrous, it's morally preposterous, and it's morally baseless, and it's actually, that kind of a claim is actually evil.

And it, the claim that they're making about Iron Dome today is actually not a smidgen different. Then the claim that I just made about Germans and Americans. It's exactly the same claim, and it's just ludicrous, but there's a lot of very smart people in Congress and outside who actually buy that claim.

It's crazy. Uh, so that's where we are now. I mean, it's beginning to sort of maybe die down. There's whispering about [00:36:00] possibly a ceasefire tomorrow and Friday, although Be'er Sheva which is a sort of the capital of Israel's south, a mid sized city in Israel's south. Uh, when we began our conversation, at least when I got off the internet, uh, was under a huge barrage.

So it's not clear exactly when this ceasefire is going to come, but it is going to come. And what, where does Iran fit in to all this? What is Yeah. What is the Iran connection to Hamas and Gaza? There's two major terrorist groups in Gaza. One of them is Hamas, and one of them is Islamic Jihad. So Islamic Jihad is really a branch of Iran, more or less.

And I would say that Hamas is kind of an affiliate of Iran. Iran doesn't really control Hamas directly, but Hamas does not want to end up on the wrong side of Iran. Iran is Is involved directly and indirectly in all kinds of ways of funding all of these things. Um, and Iran, of course, looms very large in the north with Hezbollah, which is much more powerful than Hamas.

Uh, and Hezbollah has much more, many more rockets, much more accurate rockets, more powerful rockets, [00:37:00] and Israelis know that. There is some chance that at one point Hezbollah is gonna is going to just let forth now What what Hezbollah understands is it gets one chance to do that Because Israel will and a general after general has said this chief of staff after chief of staff has said this Israelis on the right And Israelis on the left.

I'll say this it will we will obliterate Southern Lebanon and then the difference between Southern Lebanon and and and and Gaza is that once we do that We just give southern Lebanon, we don't want to, we don't have to invade it and keep it. You just get, you say Lebanon, it's now yours. You should have actually kept Hezbollah out and you would have had a sovereign state, which you don't really anymore.

Here's your chance to try again. So far Hezbollah stayed out of this one. Most Israelis who are in the know tend to think. That since there's really only one shot with Hezbollah, Iran is keeping it as backup in case Israel tries to attack its nuclear facilities. In other words, when Israel makes the calculation, do we go in and try to attack?

It's not only an issue of how far beneath the ground are these and do we have bunker busters and [00:38:00] how much damage can we really do and how many years would it take them to rebuild and all of that, but how much do we want to suffer on the home front from the thousands of rockets? That Hezbollah would unleash, but obviously there's some very smart people thinking about that.

So far, Iran has not been an active player in this, but both Islamic Jihad, which is a direct, uh, body controlled by Iran and Hamas, which wants very much to stay on Hamas, on Iran's good side. This Iran is stoking the flames here to be sure, and Iran loves it when Hamas now assumes responsibility for Jerusalem and riles up parts of the Arab world.

I just want to say something about the Arab world also. It's really worth noting what many people have not paid attention to, which is that not only have Egypt Or Jordan not recalled their ambassadors or called Israel ambassador in for a talking to, uh, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain haven't done that either.

I mean, the ink is almost still wet on these agreements and they would be much more comfortable if this. I [00:39:00] don't know if you've heard this, but the Emirati foreign minister on the record talked about concern for the lives of everyone, of Palestinians. And Israel. Which would have been unthinkable not that long ago.

Right. Right. And I'll also just, there was some interesting reporting in Globes, the, the Israeli business newspaper, uh, in which they quote a, a senior UAE official, because in the context of the Abraham Accords, the, the UAE and these other, some of these other Sunni Gulf countries had offered all these infrastructure projects for Gaza as part of their normalization with Israel.

They were also going to do development in Gaza. And and here's a quote in from globes from a uae senior uae official We are still ready and willing to promote civil projects in cooperation with the palestinian authority And under un management in gaza, but our necessary condition [00:40:00] is calm If hamas does not commit to keep complete calm It is dooming the residents of the gaza strip to a life of suffering Its leaders must understand that their policies are first and foremost Hurting the people of Gaza.

This is a UAE official, post Abraham Accords, basically lecturing the Hamas leadership that you're on your own if you pursue this path. So, now let's look at, assuming there's a ceasefire soon, uh, which is always a dangerous assumption to make, but we'll make it. Where does Hamas stand after that ceasefire?

Where, where have they, what successes have they had, and where have they been set back? It's complicated, and I think it's a little bit too early to know. Uh, militarily, of course, they are going to get their, their pounded. They've lost a huge portion of their [00:41:00] arsenal. I don't think we know yet what portion of it.

We've taken out some of their commanders. I don't think we know yet fully what the impact of that is. We've clearly destroyed many kilometers of tunnels. Uh, that for them is a huge blow. And there are obviously some Gazans who will understand that Hamas brought this on them. They're not. They're not stupid.

Uh, they're not going to go out and protest because they'll end up dead, but they do understand that this is Hamas's only real purpose in life is to attack the state of Israel, but militarily there have taken, they'll have taken a huge hit. They, I think, uh, are going to be surprised at the degree of resilience and unity that this has brought out in Israel.

It's really extraordinary. The resilience, if you go on Israeli Hebrew social media, which I was on a lot earlier today, you'll see all these posts from people. It says things like this. I live in Ashdod or I live in Ashkelon or I live in Be'er Sheva and we've been in bomb shelters for days and I've lost my [00:42:00] business and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Bibi, don't stop this until the work is done. We can stand this. We can, we can hold out. Don't stop this because of us. Uh, you have people all over the country, now there's, of course, we'll talk about this in a bit. There's a, there's a huge issue between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs, which is frightening and tragic.

Okay. So let's talk a little bit about the relationship between Israeli Jews. And what this, you've written about this in your blog post, this blog series that you were launching and didn't intend to be writing about a conflict, and now you're writing about a conflict. Um, what, what has this latest war revealed?

Or maybe put a spotlight on what many people knew was going on, but You know had hadn't come into sharp relief Well again as we did with Gaza you have to kind of go back in history a little bit to understand the underlying Complexities and then ask what triggered things [00:43:00] now So just very very quickly to understand I think people may not realize that Israeli Arabs And Palestinians, so to speak, on the other side of the border in the West Bank, other side of the green line in the West Bank, are people who live in very different circumstances.

Israeli Arabs are Israeli citizens in every single possible way. They have access to health care. They're all anybody who wanted to be at least is vaccinated against COVID. They vote in elections when they want to. They're Israeli citizens every possible way. But they understand what many people In the West now, don't, which is that who's an Israeli Arab.

And who's a Palestinian on the West Bank or in Gaza or in southern Lebanon or Syria or Jordan or wherever is really an accident of history. So let's use the following metaphor, which sounds like a radical oversimplification, but it can actually be literally true. It's Haifa in 1948. Haifa is a relatively Jewish and [00:44:00] Arab city in 1948.

But the war is violent and Arabs are worried that the rumors that the Jews are winning might be actually true. And many of them decide, you know what? Let's get out of here. We'll come back when the war is over. And so two families, again, I'm being somewhat metaphoric here, but it actually could be very real.

Two families get in their cars to go flee the violence and wait it out. Uh, one family gets in the car and the car starts and they drive either to what's now Lebanon or Syria or the West Bank or, or the Gaza Strip. They went in all different kinds of directions and they are now refugees. In the sense that they're not, they're not citizens of a state.

Some of them have been made citizens in Jordan, but by the, for the most part, they're, they're not citizens of a state. They certainly don't have the quality of life that Israelis do and so on and so forth, but there's another family next door in 1948 who gets in the car to flee and their car won't start.

They're stuck, and they survived the war, and now they're Israeli citizens. Their children can go to Hebrew University, their grandchildren can go to Haifa [00:45:00] University, Tel Aviv University, first class, world class health care, uh, democracy, and so on and so forth. And just, just to stay on that point, if you look at the most recent, you know, the pandemic, the coronavirus, one of the great stories coming out of Israel is this amazing Israeli health care system is, you know, largely populated by These Israeli Arabs that you're describing, who've, who've, you know, come of age and been educated in Israeli medical schools and they're major players in the Israeli medical profession, I know from my connections to and work with the Israeli creative arts scene, the television, uh, you know, the creative, the, the, uh, TV and film scene, Israeli Arabs are thriving there, flourishing, you know, launching careers internationally from there.

Again, I'm not, this is not to sugarcoat, you know, or kind of dance around the difficulties, but I do want, like, just to explain that some have made the point that, that Arabs living in Israel as citizens, in terms of standard of living, [00:46:00] leaving aside the politics, they're, they're, you know, living some of the, you know, highest standard of living in the Arab world.

That's right. But by the same token, we also have to acknowledge that just when one says African Americans, you're talking about many different kinds of people with many different socioeconomic statuses and many different political views and so on and so forth. And the same thing is true if you spoke about Hispanic Americans or anything of the sort.

That's true among Israeli Arabs also. It's very different. Uh, to be in Haifa, uh, than it is to be in the northern part of the Galilee than it is to be in the South. The Bedouins are different from the Muslims and, uh, the other Muslims it's, so it's complicated, but yeah, I mean, they do have at least potentially access to really first world life and they've made tremendous progress, but the issue for Israeli Arabs.

And I hear this all the time. You know, people say, well, well, don't they understand how good they have it? So what are they getting all worked up about? I mean, they, they, they, as we said, they have a pretty good life, don't they? Well, it's not so simple. First of all, there's a tremendous amount [00:47:00] of emotional complexity and moral complexity for them that comes with their having all of these rights when the people whose car did start their Grandchildren or great grandchildren now live really much more horrific lives.

And there's a tremendous amount of guilt. Israeli Arabs, for a long time now, have been calling themselves Israeli Palestinians, to make it clear we're part of the same people. And they're actually technically, of course, 100 percent correct. In many Arab villages, life is not as simple for Arabs as it is in Haifa.

So, for example, there's been a huge crime wave. And by crime, I don't mean petty crime or robberies. I mean murder. There's been a very high murder rate. In Israel, the Arab cities and guns are rife in the Arab community. Uh, and there's been a wave of murders, both, uh, wonders for what's called family honor when, uh, a father, this is sounds like an exaggeration, but it's tragically not a father will tell his son to kill the sister, the father's daughter, because she's reputed [00:48:00] to have, uh, you know.

Had sex outside of marriage or something like that. Um, there has, there's still tragically a bit of that that goes on even inside the Israeli Arab community. Now, of course it's prosecuted here. It's not like it is in the West Bank or in Gaza where it's effectively permitted. It's prosecuted in Israel, but that doesn't help the dead woman.

Um, there have been lots of murders of Arab. Among Arab gangs and so on and so forth. And in the last several months, you've heard the Arab community calling out and saying, help us. We want more enforcement. Now someone could say, well, why is there not more enforcement? And that's also very complicated because Arabs are typically.

Often reticent to cooperate with the Israeli prosecutorial and judicial system. And so there's a sense we want to help, but we can't help because you won't testify. Maybe you won't testify because you're afraid for your life. This is one of those never ending circles that you kind of don't know where to interrupt.

Bibi is actually fairly popular, relatively speaking, among Israeli Arabs, which many people in the West will [00:49:00] find unthinkable, right? I mean, how could Bibi, the right, the right wing prime minister, possibly be, uh, popular among Israeli Arabs because they make an analogy, right? Bibi is Trump and Israeli Arabs are African Americans.

And how could they possibly, uh, favor him? Well, first of all, Israeli Arabs see themselves instinctively as having much more in common with the more traditional parts of Israeli Jewish society. They're much more focused on the nuclear family. Um, the LGBTQ. Uh issue is much less accepted among israeli arabs than among israeli jews to put it very mildly But it's also less accepted among the right wing and religious communities in israel Uh than it is among the liberal tel aviv left quite obviously just like you have, you know in the christian community in america uh, they They just, the way in which people dress, the way in which people treat their elders.

There's something that the traditional Muslim community has very much in common with the traditional Jewish community and the traditional Jewish community, even though Bibi [00:50:00] himself is not religious, the traditional community sees Bibi as an ally. And ironically, therefore Israeli Arabs have seen Bibi as an ally in certain ways.

As well. And what's also very much not known is that Bibi has actually invested a tremendous amount of money in infrastructure in Israeli Arab towns, which is not a sly, not a sly move to try to get them to vote for him. He understands that Israeli Arabs feeling committed to the Jewish state and committed to the state of Israel and feeling comfortable there is absolutely critical for the survivability of.

of Israel as a democracy and perhaps as a state. Now, what happened? So, first of all, you have these underlying tensions. You have misgivings among Israeli Arabs. Yes, we're participating in the political system and we may actually become the king makers now for this coalition between Bennett and Lapid, but are we really comfortable doing that?

Are we really? Saying we are satisfied with our status in Israeli society. Are we really willing to turn our backs on [00:51:00] literally our cousins, not our figurative cousins, but our actual cousins, uh, in the West bank and in the Gaza strip. Uh, this is very complicated for them. Then you see what they perceived again, what they perceived as an assault on El Aqsa by Israeli troops.

And that's a trigger for Arabs of no matter. Muslims of no matter what nationality, what political stripe or whatever. And obviously long held simmering anger and hatred. And again, it's not most of them. It's not most of the Jews and it's not most of the Arabs. It was extremists on both sides, but horribly, really horribly, um, violence broke out in Lod.

Uh, Arabs attacked Jews. I mean, viciously attacked, and in cases, opened fire, and burned a synagogue, and, and looted stores, and destroyed businesses. And in one case, you know, pulled a guy out of, pulled a guy in, basically beat him almost to death. I think he's recovering in the hospital, but it was touch and go for a while.

But in Jaffa, in Jaffa, the exact opposite [00:52:00] happened. And in Bat Yam, the opposite happened, and so forth. And there was a case in Bat Yam where Israeli Jews pulled an Arab taxi driver out of his car. And beat him almost to death. Uh, the police have been stretched very, very thin. There's also political reasons that there hasn't been really a real chief of police in Israel for a couple of years.

So there's a sense that the police were very slow to get, get with the program here. Um, and so what you have is, is looting in all different kinds of cities, fear on both sides. Uh, we have students who live in Lod who were not willing to get out of their apartments for several days because there was literally gunfire aimed at them.

Thankfully. Very few people actually, nobody killed from that and very few people hurt, but it's scary to walk out of your apartment building and seeing, by the way, your erstwhile neighbors. And it's also important to point out that many young Israeli Jews, especially, uh, have moved to places like Jaffa and Lod.

Jaffa has become very trendy, uh, and Lod has become a place where people move precisely because there was a tremendous focus on [00:53:00] coexistence. So I can tell you that from our students who I've spoken to recently, who moved to Lod for that exact reason. I mean, housing is cheap. It's near Tel Aviv, so it's convenient, but housing is much cheaper, but they were also very proud to be part of a city that was really working to build coexistence between Israeli Jews and Arabs and to see.

The violence and the hatred, uh, and really the, the, the anger that had clearly been seething on both sides, each in different cities in different ways is really, really tragic. And I think for, as Israelis are now beginning to think that a ceasefire is probably not that far off. Gaza is going to be Gaza and Hamas is going to be Hamas.

And even the army is saying, you know, if we get five years of quiet, it was worth it. We're not going to get 10 years and hopefully we'll get more than three years. Nobody imagines that Hamas has been vanquished. As I said before, we know the dance, we'll dance the dance again. It's horrible. It's tragic, but it doesn't change anything.

What this last week and a half ago has changed [00:54:00] is, uh, Israelis. profound awareness that there is a deeper tear in this society than we had wanted to acknowledge. Then we knew it wasn't that we knew it and tried to sweep it under the rug. We thought things were really getting much better. Now you can understand in retrospect.

Why they weren't, but to be faced with it, to be faced with the violence, to be faced with the hatred, to know Israeli Jews who are afraid to go out of their house, to know Muslim Arabs in East Jerusalem who are afraid to go out of their houses. We have a huge issue here. The bad side is of course what I've just said.

If there is any silver lining in this, and it's a thin one, it is that I think Uh, the issue of coexistence in Israel is going to get much more attention and it's not an issue of money. This is not a problem that you can throw money at. We can and have been improving the, the, the life of Israeli Arabs, although unemployment among young Israeli Arab men is still high, largely because of education [00:55:00] levels and so on and so forth.

But money is not the issue here. We are going to have to. We are going to have to face the reality that Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews to tell two entirely different stories about what this country is. And both of those stories are true. And to do them both very quickly. The Israeli Jewish story is our people was exiled from here in 70 CE and we were all over the diaspora and whether it was in Europe or North Africa, there were years of glory, but there were also horrible years of displacement and of genocide and of forced dispersion.

And in the late 1800s and early 1900s, a political movement called Zionism was created. Jews started to move on mass back to our ancestral homeland. And now 2021 we have built a first world country that is a It's achieved far beyond what anybody in 1948 could ever have imagined or even dared hope for.

That's all a hundred percent [00:56:00] true. Israeli Arabs say we were here. We were the dominant culture. There was a handful of Jews here, nothing more. We lived under the Ottomans. It wasn't perfect, but it was our homeland. And it was an Arab Muslim country because of events that had nothing to do with us. Jews started to move here first by the hundreds and then the thousands and then the tens of thousands and then the hundreds of thousands.

And now by the millions, of course, some of it's natural birth. Uh, and we no longer. are the dominant culture here. A state has been formed with the internet, the support of the international community, but it's a Jewish state. It's an avowedly Jewish state. And yes, we know that we're better off than Arabs in the West Bank.

We know that we're better off than, than Arabs in Gaza or anywhere else, practically. We know that our children can go to medical school and we know that there's always an Arab judge on the Supreme Court. Uh, typically it's been a Christian, not a Muslim, but nonetheless, we understand. That things here are much better than they are in other places.

But we don't, we feel that we lost what we had. Our ancestral homeland is still our [00:57:00] ancestral homeland. And this is now a Jewish state in which we have tremendous rights, but we are by definition going to be second class citizens in a state that defines itself as a Jewish state. That narrative is actually, I think, uncontestable.

There's not a single sentence in there that I think anyone could argue with. They're both entirely true. They are both passionately held, and on some deep seated level, they are either impossible or very difficult to weave together. And I think that most Israeli Jews probably don't understand fully that Palestinian Israeli narrative.

They don't really get the story. And we're going to have to do a lot of education, and we're going to have to do a lot of bridge building, and we're going to have to do a lot Of learning to get to know the other and trying to improve and trying to understand. And with all of that said and done, there are still going to be two peoples inhabiting this country who have very different dreams.

of what this country could and should [00:58:00] be. People like me and people like your sister Dan and your nieces and Israelis who were born here. We're here because we want this to be a Jewish state. The educational system in the elementary schools, whether it's secular or religious, is still distinctly Jewish.

The calendar is Jewish. The army has deep Jewish content to it. Life here is filtered through with Jewishness. Everybody chooses to live it out in their own way, but it's a distinctly Jewish state, where, by the way, the Jewish people determines its own destiny. And when Jews in France see people not being prosecuted for the brutal murder of a Jewish woman and the excuses that he had smoked a joint, uh, and therefore he can't be held responsible, French people and Jewish French people understand exactly what's going on there.

But the one question they don't have to ask themselves is, will I have a place to go? They can come here. And you were talking about Baca earlier. You walk around Baca on a Shabbat afternoon, a [00:59:00] Saturday afternoon, and you will hear tons of French now. Um, more sometimes than English in certain parts of Baca.

That's a statement about this is still a country devoted to The bringing together of the four corners of the earth, as our liturgy puts it, uh, the Jews from all over people, most Jews, most Jews in Israel are not prepared to make this what's commonly called in the lingo, a country of all of its citizens, meaning just a plain old democracy, uh, without any ethnic attachment to the Jewishness of the country.

We're just not willing to do that. Do we understand that there's a tension between that and its democratic nature? Of course we do. Now, as long as Israeli Jews are something like 75 percent of the population, which we are, thankfully, we can have the Jewishness of the state and its complete democratic functioning, but we understand that it's It's a real tension.

Uh, so we have a tremendous amount of work to do here. I think if people, uh, are worried about anything this week, it's [01:00:00] not Hamas. As I said before, we know it will be through it. It's terrible for both sides, but it'll happen again. Uh, we're really worried about the fiber and the fabric of the country and can we heal this?

And that's going to take profoundly insightful leadership. It's going to take education on both sides, opportunities for both sides and a lot of good luck. So just before we. Uh, move off that topic, uh, Danny, I understand your point about the fabric of Israeli society and what, what the Israeli Arab issue represents, presents as a challenge, but what about the geopolitical implications, because I think Israeli geopolitical strategists have always thought about the threat from the south or southwest, from Hamas and Gaza, the threat from the north, Hezbollah, and obviously the various regional threats.

The internal threat has not been much As much of a focus, what does that mean now from a, from a geopolitical standpoint, the Israeli Arab issue? Right, Hamas has really tried to open up [01:01:00] two other fronts, I think it's safe to say. One of them is they were trying to get something going on the West Bank by having West Bank Arabs begin to throw rocks, attack soldiers, attack settlers, and so on and so forth.

There was a few days where that became an issue. It seems, thankfully, to have died down. So hopefully, uh, more sober minds will Lead the way on the West Bank and Israel, by the way, arrested some Hamas leaders on the West Bank to try to put a stop to the stoking of the flames there. But there is some concern that Hamas could have newfound popularity on the West Bank.

One of the reasons, by the way, that Abbas wanted to cancel the election was because he had very good intel, which suggested that Hamas was going to win. And so Israel actually, ironically, was probably pleased to have him cancel the election because the last thing we need is Hamas, both on the West Bank and on the Gaza Strip.

Um, so they tried to get that going in Gaza. Hopefully it's put down for now, but it's, it's a longstanding issue that Israel has to face. And then, of course, Hamas was [01:02:00] hoping to radicalize Israeli Arabs. My view is that it's going to fail. My view is that Israeli Arabs are going to embrace the opportunities that this country represents because this country is going to embrace them in a way that it hasn't done sufficiently explicitly, uh, long enough.

It's just not been a conversation. And I think. Now it will be, uh, so I actually think that Hamas is going to lose on this front. I think they're not going to be successful in radicalizing Israeli Arabs. Obviously, if they are, then this is an entirely different ballgame. And the geopolitical implications of this are that the way people look at Israel's are going to look at it as two societies bundled up into one government and one territory, but in which it's really two very, very different groups.

I think that that's not going to happen. I pray that that's not going to happen. Uh, but that's clearly what Hamas is, is trying to do. Okay. From your, uh, from your lips to God's ears, uh, I hope you're right. I think you're right. Uh, but, uh, either way, this has been a terrific [01:03:00] conversation. Very educational.

Uh, I feel like we could go on for hours. We'll probably have to have you come back. Uh, sorry for going longer than I said we'd go, but we had a lot of territory to cover. So, Daniel Gordis, thank you very much. And one thing for our listeners, if they want to subscribe to your blog, I get your blog in my email.

Where, how do people? get your blog? Uh, it's easy, danielgordos. substack. com. Ah, perfect. All right. Um, all right. So I highly recommend subscribing to Dan's blog and they're, they're, and just, just 30 seconds on this new blog, this new series you were starting, what you were intending to focus on, which I guess you'll come back to.

Yeah, I will come back to it. My sense is that, Everybody thinks about Israel in terms of the conflict, especially American Jews also on the left or on the right. It doesn't matter It's every conversation about Israel almost except maybe for schtisel these days But um every conversation about israel is basically about palestinians hamas [01:04:00] gaza Annexation occupation those are all critically important issues But how much do you know about america if you talk about the war of independence war of 1812?

Civil War, First World War, Second World War, Korean War, Vietnam War, Afghanistan War. I mean, those are all really important issues in America, but you understand nothing about America from talking about those wars, or at least very little. And what I was hoping to do in this blog, and I definitely will, uh, through Articles that I'll put out on the public part and the articles and podcasts that I'll do specifically for the subscriber part Is to try to bring people behind the scenes of what are israelis thinking about and wondering about and working on and what's israeli society?

Really all about what's really going on? And, um, I think there's a lot to talk about. And I think that one of the things that we've talked about the ways in which Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews need to think differently, we have got to get, especially in the United States, the American Jewish community to stop thinking about Israel in terms of the conflict.

It really doesn't matter if they're on the right or on the left, if they're religious or they're not religious. It doesn't make any [01:05:00] difference. Israel's not a conflict. Israel is a country in which the Jewish people flourishes like it can nowhere else. on planet earth. It's a country in which things that one couldn't have imagined not that long ago, including, I mentioned this little kind of with a wink before, but Israel is producing entertainment, much of which is very serious.

Uh, Fauda, by the way, for example, is not just good guys and bad guys. What's interesting about Fauda is Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys? And the implicit question in Fauda is to survive in this jungle. Do we have to become the jungle? That's what makes Fauda really so interesting. But there's music, there's theater, there's a tremendous amount of literature.

There are profound conversations happening between the religious and the secular. There are synagogues that are coming up. That, that particular, that distinctly and intentionally attract both religious and non religious that are built on the liturgies of the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim, the North Africans and the Europeans who always used to worship separately because liturgies are different.

There's a tremendous amount of [01:06:00] incredible stuff happening here, even beyond startup nation about which, you know, more than a little bit. Um, there's a tremendous amount of stuff happening technologically, but also culturally and intellectually. The purpose of this blog, both in its podcasts and in its written part, is to try to expose people to that.

So hopefully the next time American Jews, after this dies down, and sit around and talk about Israel at their table, it will have nothing to do with the conflict and everything to do with the flourishing of the Jewish people. That happens here, as it, by definition, can happen nowhere else. I can't wait for this, to start getting these posts.

So, I will, I will, uh, I will inhale them. Thank you very much, Danny. Good to see you. Good to see you, too. Thanks for the opportunity.

That's our show for today. If you want to follow Danny Gordas work, you can follow him on Twitter, at Daniel Gordas. At Daniel, and then G O R D I S. And be [01:07:00] sure to follow his Bloomberg Opinion column and subscribe to his newsletter on Substack. He's starting this newsletter where he had one focus, as we talked about today, and because of the war, he's taken a slightly different focus, but it's all very illuminating and thought provoking.

So, be sure to read his newsletter. And if you have questions or ideas for future episodes, tweet at me, at Dan Senor. Today's episode is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.