Bibi’s message vs Bibi the messenger - with Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal
In recent days, there has been intensifying debate inside Israel over whether the security concerns raised by Prime Minister Netanyahu (regarding the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border) are legitimate or just sand being thrown in the gears of the hostage negotiations?
Are there actual substantive objections to the concerns the Prime Minister is raising, or are the concerns really just with Netanyahu himself? Is the problem the message? Or the messenger?
We are joined by:
Amit Segal. He is the chief political correspondent and analyst for Channel 12 News, and for Yediot Ahronot, the country’s largest circulation newspaper.
NADAV EYAL who is a columnist for Yediiot. Eyal is one of Israel’s leading journalists. Eyal has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news.
Amit and Nadav often debate in Hebrew on Israeli television…this is the first time they are debating like this in English, and they wound up debating a number of other – more raw – issues that cut to some of the divisions in Israeli society today over the war. I learned a lot from both of them.
Register for the September 24th Call me Back Live at the Streicker Center in New York with special guest Amir Tibon: https://streicker.nyc/events/tibon-senor
Full Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
AS: We are facing the next decade in which Israel's future will be decided. It's the ultimate fight against the Iranian axis. This is just the beginning. Hamas is the beginning, Hezbollah is next, and Iran is the final stage. And if we end up infighting about Netanyahu from both sides, we won't defeat Iran. We might defeat the other camp in Israel, but will fail as a state.
NE: I totally agree and I second that. This is why I think that we need here to have a leadership that can do this. And it's not about personas. It's about, first and foremost, in uniting the public.
DS: It's 11:30 PM on Wednesday, September 4th here in New York City. It's 6:30 AM on Thursday, September 5th in Israel as Israelis start their day. The day during which six Israeli families will continue to sit shiva for their loved ones slaughtered by Hamas just days ago. In recent days there has been intensifying debate inside Israel over whether the security concerns raised by Prime Minister Netanyahu if Israel were to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border are legitimate concerns or whether they're just sand being thrown in the gears of the hostage negotiations, sand being thrown under pressure from hard right members of Netanyahu's government. So what's going on here? Are there actual substantive objections to the concerns the prime minister is raising or are the concerns being raised really just with Netanyahu himself? In other words, is the problem Netanyahu's message or Netanyahu as the messenger? To help us unpack all of this, we’re joined by Amit Segal. He's the chief political correspondent and analyst for Channel 12 News and for Yedioth Ahronoth, the country's largest circulation newspaper. And Nadav Eyal, who is a columnist for Yedioth. Nadav has been covering Middle Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news. Amit and Nadav often debate in Hebrew on Israeli television. This is the first time they are debating like this in English. And they also wound up debating a number of other more raw issues that cut to some of the divisions in Israeli society today over the war and where to go from here. I learned a lot from both of them. Before we move on to the conversation with Amit and Nadav, one housekeeping note. On the evening of September 24th, we'll be holding our live Call Me Back event at the Streicker Center in New York City. Joining us as our guest at the event will be Amir Tibon, the Haaretz journalist who will be releasing his book that day about his experience, his harrowing experience, on October 7th and also what has happened since and where Israel goes from here. We will provide a link to the event in the show notes. Please register or just search online for ‘Stryker Center Senor and Tibon.’ Now on to our conversation. Amit Segal and Nadav Eyal on Bibi's message versus Bibi the messenger. This is Call Me Back. And I am pleased to welcome back to this podcast, Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal. Thanks for being here.
NE: Thanks for having us.
AS: Thanks, Dan.
DS: You two are no strangers to one another and you two have debated Israeli politics for many years in Israeli media, not so much, I don't think, in English language media. So I'm very much looking forward to hearing what each of you has to say about this particular, I guess a couple days ago was, I would say, a raw moment, but as we were just discussing offline, it's quickly transitioning from a raw moment to a pretty heated moment in the intra-Israeli debate. And I have a feeling the conversation we'll have will reflect that to some degree. I think things got hotter following Prime Minister Netanyahu's press conference two nights ago about the Philadelphi Corridor and him making the case for why it was so essential. You two are well acquainted. Let's just jump right into it. Earlier this week, we had Haviv Rettig Gur on the podcast and we discussed the merits of Netanyahu's decision to insert the Philadelphi Corridor clause into the hostage deal negotiations. And I just want to start, just to frame the conversation, I just want to start by playing something Haviv said towards the end of our previous episode. So Ilan, can you just play some sound here?
HRG: Most Israelis want a deal. We have old polls that show levels reaching 70% in some cases of Israelis who just don't say they trust Netanyahu. They don't believe what he says and they don't trust his intentions. And now he's trying to ask Israelis to sacrifice and do very painful, very difficult things and he has a trust deficit that's making that very, very difficult to do. And if his argument is correct, then that trust deficit is tragic. And if his argument is incorrect or not actually honest, then the trust deficit is fully justified and doubly tragic.
DS: So, Amit and Nadav, what Haviv was saying, that was towards the end of our conversation, is that the argument in and of itself, the prime minister is making, is a sound argument to make, and we'll get into it. But the question he's raising relates to whether or not Netanyahu is the best messenger. The fact that there's a debate about what his intentions are presents its own challenges. It presents its own challenges inside Israel, and I think it presents its own challenges outside of Israel, in terms of Israel's engagement with the outside world and specifically with the US, which Israel is so dependent on these days. So I wanted to ask each of you to make an argument about Netanyahu's intentions behind the Philadelphi clause. Was it inserted for security reasons, legitimate security reasons? And I think there are very strong merits just exposing my own bias. Or for political reasons and political survival reasons? Amit, let's start with you.
AS: Usually when it comes to politicians, to leaders, it's always a mix of both politics and policy, and we can never really differentiate between the two ingredients. And I would agree that many Israelis doubt whether Netanyahu is taking decisions only based on policy and his beliefs about what should make Israel great again, especially after five consecutive election campaigns, and especially while focusing on the most ‘bigger than life’ figure in Israeli politics over the last two generations. Yet, I think it's bigger than Netanyahu and I think it's bigger than the Philadelphii corridor. It's bigger than Netanyahu because it's not only him who possesses this view that the first paramount target of this war is to defeat Hamas, even at the expense of some hostages. And it's bigger than the Philadelphi Corridor because what we see now in the negotiations is not only about this corridor. It's very convenient for Netanyahu to make it very simplistic, but it's about the crucial question. What is more important out of those two targets? Releasing all the hostages or eliminating Hamas? And what do we do as Israelis when those two targets collide?
DS: Nadav?
NE: I agree with Amit that this is the discussion and I think that the tragedy that Haviv was pointing to is that Netanyahu is simply not being frank. And this is what Amit just said with the public about these targets. I heard this from a father of a hostage in Gaza. He told me if Netanyahu would come to us and say, look, I think that defeating Hamas is more important at this stage than getting your daughters and sons back home. At least he's honest with us. But this is not what he's saying. What Netanyahu has been doing in recent months, again and again, and he's not convincing the Israeli public, according to every poll I've seen, including a poll just published this evening in Israel, what he's been doing is taking Rafah and saying this is crucial. He just had a press conference in which he was asked, didn't you say before Rafah that we're inches away from absolute victory? And that was months ago. Netanyahu said that was his answer. I meant we're inches from entering Rafah and without Rafah, we won't have an absolute victory. And now he's using the Philadelphi corridor. And now there is another problem. What does it mean to defeat Hamas? If we kill Sinwar, Dan, tomorrow morning, did we defeat Hamas? How will a defeat like that, an absolute victory, will look like? Don't we need to have a different government in the Gaza Strip to say that it was achieved? What does it mean when Amit, who's a senior columnist in my newspaper besides working for Channel 12, publishes that the prime minister, and he has excellent sources, believe me, means to stay in the Gaza Strip for years on end. Well, the prime minister himself is not saying this to the Israeli public. And you know, this is the same prime minister that time and time again, when his political agenda served this, changed his positions. And Amit and me can talk about this for hours on end. There's not going to be any daylight between us. You know, this is the prime minister who said, no, we need to stop Oslo. Then he accepted Oslo and handed to Yasser Arafat Hebron and said, Arafat is my friend. This is the prime minister who said, there's not going to be a Palestinian state. Then in 2009 said, there is going to be a Palestinian state. Now he's saying there isn't going to be a Palestinian state. This is a prime minister who has refused to say, you know, an aim of the war is to return the people from the north back to their houses and has just said in a press conference that one aim of the war is to return the people back to their houses while rejecting and postponing a demand by the former chiefs of staff, Gantz and Eisenkot to make this the goal of the war, I can continue on going. So the question here is, where does Netanyahu's basic political interests stop and the country's interests begin? Because there's always a tension there, right? So on this spectrum, where does Netanyahu put the interests of the country? And the answer, they are always aligned for him with his own personal interests. And I think Amit would say, this is always the case with politicians, but I ask myself, is it to this extreme as with Netanyahu?
DS: Before I let Amit respond, I just want you to consider one question that I've been wrestling with, which is Israel has learned a lot by being in Rafah. Israel has learned a lot, maybe a lot that Israel didn't know. I mean I didn't know about these 180 tunnels between the Sinai and Gaza before Israel was in Rafah. It may explain why Egypt was so resistant to Israel being in Rafah. I mean, there are probably many reasons, not the least of which is Egypt didn't want the world to know what was going on, this smuggling, institutionalized industrial scale smuggling operation and the infrastructure for it that existed between Egypt and Gaza. So could it be that the Israeli government and specifically Netanyahu has learned a lot since they were in Rafah that may have led them to expand the scope of how they define success?
AS: Yes, but we have to deal with the question of politics and policy. So first of all, I would like to add to what Nadav said, even to differ that contrary to the public perception that–
NE: I wouldn't imagine you would defer with me, Ami.
DS: Can you, Nadav, just respond to that question about whether or not Israel, Israel's learning a lot as it's fighting this war. And one of the things, it wasn't allowed basically by the international community and specifically the US to go into Rafah for a long time. It finally goes in and when it goes in, it learns a lot. Is that a reasonable explanation for why, leaving aside Netanyahu's political motivations. It’s just the Israeli military is a learning organism. It's a learning body. It's going through these operations. It's learning a lot it didn't know. It goes into Rafah. It learns a lot at the border that it didn't know.
NE: So first of all, it's not an argument made by the prime minister. And the reason that he didn't make the argument is because the entire defense apparatus in Israel is saying, we basically knew that this is what we're going to find there. And they wanted to go into Rafah. And they wanted to go into the Philadelphi Corridor. And it was the prime minister, according to them, that postponed it. And it was the same prime minister that when the IDF came after October 7th and said, we need to basically take over effectively the Gaza Strip, it's the same prime minister who said, I don't know about going into the Gaza Strip because we will have thousands of dead IDF soldiers. And you have here a real problem that I'm sure that Amit is going to talk about. The entire defense apparatus is saying, look, you know, don't blow up the deal over Philadelphi. And they're giving explanations why. But Dan to your question, nobody's saying we didn't learn anything. We're not going to implement this. One of the implementations that they're suggesting is they're saying the only way to prevent smuggling to the Gaza Strip is A, to control the Rafah crossing, which Israel already achieved in the negotiations, that Hamas will not control the Rafah crossing. And secondly, to have some sort of mechanism on the Egyptian side supervised by the United States. We can go into the fine technical details, which I'm sure Amit is very acquainted with.
DS: Okay. So Amit.
AS: First of all, the political pressure on Netanyahu is not coming only from the right. It's something that is important to mention. The political pressure exerted on the prime minister for months is, was, at least double-sided. It's coming from Smotrich and Ben-Gvir who told him, if you would sign a hostage deal, we will resign. And it came from Gantz and Eisenkot who told him for a few months, if you don't sign the hostage deal, we would resign. So political pressure is not something which is basically negative if it is to promote ideas that in your opinion would save Israel. And obviously both Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, Gantz and Eisenkot believed that their own opinion would save Israel. Now it's not about, and let's put it off the table. It's not that if you are against this very specific hostage deal, you are a cruel man who doesn't give a shit about the lives of hostages, that you are a murderer as we saw in the signs in Tel Aviv in the protest. I would like to add something about it later. It's just that you believe that on the axis that stretches from the target of bringing back all the hostages and the other side that is eliminating Hamas, it depends where you are. You are just closer to eliminating Hamas. And it's not because you have something personal against this terrorist organization. It's because you want to prevent a second October 7th in five or seven or nine years. And if you are against withdrawal from the Philadelphi corridor, it's not that it's like the Western Wall for you. No, it's because you are quite hesitant in believing that once you leave it, you can return to it under huge, enormous international pressure. So it's about the very idea how we save as many lives of Israelis as possible. And everyone who asks himself, what is the percentage of political considerations taken by Netanyahu, must ask themselves, what is the percentage of political considerations made by his opponents? Maybe if he refuses this hostage deal in order to keep his coalition alive, maybe they want this hostage deal in order for this coalition to fall. Maybe this is the reason. The leaders of this protest, or at least some of them, who demand now a hostage deal against Netanyahu, they are the same who protested against him a year ago against the judicial reform, two years ago for the criminal and against Netanyahu, and four years ago against the COVID restrictions put by the Netanyahu government. So there is something politicized from both sides, in my opinion.
NE: I think it's not the same because it is the job, the position and the oath taken by the prime minister to consider state first. And it is the job of the opposition to topple the prime minister.
AS: At any cost, even in the middle of a war?
NE: I don't think that drawing any parallel between the person in power who is the prime minister of the State of Israel and between demonstrators in the street will be a good way to go.
DS: Well, what about between the prime minister and the official opposition? So let's just take Yair Lapid.
NE: Yair Lapid has said to the prime minister on the record, and I believe him. And you know what? I think Amit also believes him, that he will not topple the government and he will give it a safety net if Smotrich and Ben-Gvir leave the government as a result of a hostage deal.
AS: I just have a recommendation. If you're in Israel and there is a skyscraper and fire breaks out. And Lapid promises you, you can jump, I have a safety net. Don't.
NE: OK. So Amit is saying he's not going to get you a safety net. But this is his public statement. And by the way, by making this public statement to his public, knowing that if he doesn't give the safety net, there's not going to be a deal. Now, the second thing that I find odd about what Amit just said is that the people leading the protest right now are the families. And to say that their interests. Now, I know, Amit, that you said some of them. But you also said some of them were in the demonstrations against COVID restrictions. And you know my positions there. I was very pro-COVID restrictions. And I don't think that it's the same kind of camp. And I think that what's leading the protest right now, and by the way, these are much more limited protests, our families, these are the people who are being arrested, sometimes trampled by police horses by mistake or not so by mistake, are being arrested. I'm talking about a mother of a soldier who's held captive in Gaza. And I think that these scenes for the Israeli society are terrible, heart-wrenching. And I think that what Dan opened this discussion with is a crucial question. We can argue about Philadelphi, and we can argue about Netanyahu's achievements or failures during the war. But I think we can agree on one thing. The first goal of a leader during war is to have some unity. Not 100%, not 90%, but some sort of unity with the goals of the war and moving forward. Now, after a year, after October 7th, Mr. Netanyahu didn't achieve this fundamental goal. You know, it goes to his own speeches of Netanyahu, it goes to Churchill. You need to have some sort of unity. And maybe it's because of the opposition. I don't think so, but maybe that's the case. I don't want to say you had one job, but you had one important job, which is for the Israeli society not to collapse in a rift during war. And right now this path looks pretty bad.
AS: Yes, and it comes back, way back even to the 90s of the last century of the last millennium. But during the last year, would you agree that in order to keep unity, it takes two to tango? And maybe, maybe it was not a good idea for the head of the opposition, Lapid, to define his government as the blood government and as ‘cabinet of death.’
DS: Just for our listeners, this is the language Yair Lapid, who's the official leader of the opposition, has been using to describe the Netanyahu government, a government of death, a government that has blood on its hands, a government that's willing to expend or risk the lives of hostages. I just want our listeners to understand what you're referring to.
AS: Here's the thing. This is a heart -wrenching debate, and I think we should really respect both sides of the argument. The fact that someone wants to get all the hostages back doesn't mean, in my opinion, that he wants Hamas to win and that he is in alliance with Sinwar. And at the very same time, if I oppose this deal or if Netanyahu opposes, or Ben-Gvir, or Smotrich, or anyone else, this hostage deal, it doesn't mean that they are murderers. And the attempt to make your opponents look like monsters is something that is, this is the real pain in the Israeli society. And yes, Netanyahu is a politician and yes, he takes political considerations, but the debate is way bigger than Netanyahu and the war is way bigger than a Philadelphi crossing. The only question in my opinion is as follows. In 2011, Israel released in exchange for Gilad Shalit, a soldier that was kidnapped into Gaza. It paid with more than a thousand terrorists, including Yahya Sinwar, the current leader of Hamas. The cost was crazy. The lives of hundreds of Israelis. Now I remember myself in 2011 facing the same accusations from the other side, that if you are against it, it means you want to kill Gilad, that we are heartless.
DS: Amit, just for our listeners, were you against the 2011 deal?
AS: Yes, and Netanyahu lectured me when he signed this deal that it won't be as risky as I think.
NE: Netanyahu was the Prime Minister who made that call.
AS: Now we all know it was a grave mistake because it paved the way for more hostages. It made this kidnapping tool from a tactical weapon to a strategic one. Now we don't have one hostage, but 101. Now, if you were to say those arguments 13 years ago, you would be blamed for the same thing. Now, Ehud Olmert said that those protests, Ehud Olmert was the prime minister.
DS: So yeah, Ehud Olmert was prime minister when Shalit was kidnapped before Netanyahu returned to power late 2008, early 2009. And Omert was presented with a similar, not identical, but with a similar exchange for Shalit and he rejected it.
AS: Exactly.
DS: Yeah, Tzipi Livni, who was on our podcast, who was foreign minister in Omert's government, talked about that. That they had rejected the deal because they were horrified by the people that Hamas was demanding be released from Israeli prisons.
AS: Exactly. And now it's even more riskier than that. It's not only murderers with blood on their hands that are to be released and fuel this terror machine of Hamas in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Judea and Samaria, but it's about keeping Hamas in power in the Gaza Strip. This is the real debate. Now, I can fully understand those who claim that for Israelis and Jews, especially the value of life and bringing our hostages back is rooted in the Bible, even in our ancient books. But one must understand that when people oppose it, it is because they fear of lives of future Israelis. Maybe it's my sister, your brother, maybe it's myself or you, we don't know. And we have to take those decisions, very harsh ones, under these assumptions.
NE: Yeah. The silver lining with Netanyahu's decisions is always if it's good for him politically and then he presents this as something that is fantastic for the country. He can make something that is incredibly important, even more underlined, like for instance, the Iranian issue, which he preached for as the prime issue for Israel for more than a decade. And just yesterday or the day before, he said in the press conference that the Philadelphi route will determine all of our future then, everything of Israel's future. This is a quote by Netanyahu. People can check it out. You know, I find this absolutely amazing. And I think that first of all, Amit is more honest than Netanyahu because he's having an actual debate. He's saying, you know, this could lead to more people who die. This is about whether or not we're winning against Hamas. It's not about the Philadelphi Corridor route, which everybody knows.
AS: It's not only, it's not only about it.
NE: Okay, but everybody knows that it's a pretext from, you know, technical reasons that I can really to the point answer to, which you can hear every general that ever dealt with this issue talk about, but we can argue about, you can find other generals.
AS: Is the sentence, every general thinks so, something that should convince me following October 7th?
NE: I don't think that every general thinks so, but I think that this argument is as valid as people who say, you know, I'm not going to go to physicians or to doctors because I know that some of them fail and they malpractice. It's the same argument. I think I would go with professionals every day of the week and not go with the types of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich. And this is the point that I want to make to your point, Amit. Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are seeing this as an opportunity to return to the Gaza Strip, to remain in the Gaza Strip. And this is part of a viewpoint that I understand and respect, although I am in a terrible disagreement with, talking about Eretz Yisrael Hashlema, the whole land of Israel, and they want to have new settlements there. This is not me analyzing Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. This is what they're saying. So to say that their resistance to this deal is only based on their desire to bring more hostages back home or security is simply misrepresenting what they are saying on the record.
AS: I would like to emphasize one thing. We have a new debate, but it's a very old route that we are driving at. Kidnapping hostages is an ancient weapon which utilizes modern social media tools for maximum impact. This is why it is so cruel. I mean, just imagine it's a horror theater where the evil producer, Yahya Sinwar, Hamas, is behind the curtains. He kidnapped the hostage, but then he leaves for behind the curtains, and we the audience gradually begin to think that it's our government's responsibility and therefore if the government doesn't release those hostages at any cost, they are the murderers. This is it. It's like a reality from hell. This is why Israel, which in the past refused to even negotiate with terrorists in Munich 1972, in Entebbe 1976, in Sabena 1972, and paid at the lives of 48 Israelis in military operations to release hostages. This is the very same Israel that now, half of it, believes that we should end the war without defeating Hamas in exchange for hostages.
NE: Amit, nobody says in the Israeli sphere that we should end the war. 50, 60, 70% of Israelis want to get a hostage deal that is an interim hostage deal. The argument for the deal is not, we need to get the hostages back even if it's the end of the war and we don't beat Hamas. This is the argument against getting the hostages. The argument is by the Defense Minister of the State of Israel and the chief of staff and the head of the Shabak and the head of the Mossad that was nominated by Bibi and–
AS: But Nadav, you have to agree with me that you said that Netanyahu should be as explicit as I were a few minutes ago when I said what the purposes are. Perhaps the leaders of opposition should be as explicit as you expected from Netanyahu and say that yes, it is gonna bring the war to an end because this is the risk.
NE: I agree, but what they're saying is, and remember the first deal? Do you remember, Amit remembers this very well, Smotrich did not vote against the first deal, but Ben-Gvir did. And the argument that we heard, including from some military analysts that I know very well, is that after the first deal, Dan, we're not going to get back to the war. That was their worry, because the world would pressure us.
DS: The argument was that even if it's a short pause, once there's the pause, Israel won't resume to war fighting. And in those meetings, the security cabinet, they had to persuade those on the hard right, they would in fact go back.
NE: And what happened is we surprised Sinwar. We returned to the war when he started to falter on the deal and he didn't return our female hostages. It was an incredibly difficult decision. You know, some people are really critical of that decision, that when he said, you know, Sinwar and Hamas said at a certain point at the end of those two and a half weeks, were willing to do something else.
DS: Right, they agreed to release the female hostages and then at the 11th hour when the first phase was being implemented, they didn't return all the female hostages and they said, well, we'll return some other hostages. And then the government said, no, you're violating the deal.
AS: We actually prove what I claim. I was for the first deal because I thought it's a calculated risk. But now I think, and many Israelis think that now it's an uncalculated risk that it might lead Israel to lose the war.
NE: By the way, it's interesting that you use the term calculated risk. know why? Because Yahya Sinwar, just to explain the relations between Netanyahu and the previous Gilad Shalit deal, it is Yahya Sinwar who sent a note from his Israeli prison cell where he was serving time to the Israeli prime minister, a note that Netanyahu got. And it said, take a calculated risk. And then Netanyahu accepted that deal. And as we know, and I agree with Amit, and it was our mistake. I'm saying it was my mistake, as a writer, although I am not a decision maker, that we thought that the Shalit deal was the deal that this country needed to take. And when I say we, I mean 80% of the public, including the Likud and the prime minister and everyone else. And it's true that Amit, and also by the way, some senior writers that are recognized as lefties like Raviv Drucker or Ben Caspit opposed the deal. So it's not only about right and left. And I agree with Amit that we should do this discussion on the merits. But what I am saying, and this is how you open up that, is that it is impossible to have a discussion on the merit when the messenger keeps on changing his views according to recent polls and according to his coalition needs. And I think it's a tragedy that we are at this point. But I also want to say that we can return to the war. And I am sure, I am certain, as someone who knows the Israeli society, that if we have a deal now, it's going to be an interim deal. 18 to 25 people are going to return alive. I hope so. And, Dan, Israel is going to hunt down Yahya Sinwar and the leadership of Hamas, and never stop. No Israeli government, including the Netanyahu government or the Yair Lapid government, will ever stop. There is not going to be a Hamas regime in the Gaza Strip. And I am certain of that as a person who wrote at the beginning of the war and still believes that, that we need to continue this war until the last bunker of the last Hamas stronghold is annihilated. And I'm talking about Hamas military because Hamas is a grassroots political movement, it is not going to evaporate.
AS: If I had a time machine and I could see that you're right and we are back in the war and everything, you know, full engines ahead, I would have signed the deal. The fear is that it won't be possible because if we are going to a ceasefire now under those circumstances, you'll have this war to resume two weeks prior to the election in the US or two weeks after when no one needs the Jewish vote or something. And it's very, very risky. This is one thing. And the second, I hope that we at least agree on one thing, that the moral distortion here is that Hamas is murdering innocent people and some are calling Netanyahu a murderer. It's not just a distortion. It's a very, very dangerous one because if the result of murdering in cold blood six hostages actually paves the way to more concessions from Israel, then why not kill more? I mean, we are, we give incentives to Hamas to kill more Israelis because he knows that the outcome would be protests against the Israeli leadership. And I would say that even if the leader was Ehud Olmert or Nadav Eyal or Dan or myself. Even if you think that your prime minister should do more, you should really think about whether your protest helps the hostages or risks them. And in my opinion, and I hate to say that because I think that 95% of the people who participated in the protests are zealous Zionists who want the hostages back, but the outcome is that they endanger the hostages. You should take a look at the telegram channels of Hamas and Hezbollah. They are so happy with this. They say thousands of settlers stormed the streets of Tel Aviv in order for Netanyahu to fall.
DS: I spent yesterday, a big chunk of yesterday on American television trying to defend Israel, trying to put in context the trauma that Israel is going through. I felt like it was October 8th all over again, like the day after when everything's sinking in. That's what the last few days have felt, even for Jews here in the diaspora like me. So I go on television and I'm doing these interviews and not all of them and I don't want to pick on every interviewer, but you would think from the American press coverage and you would think from the questions I was getting that Israel was basically, the Israeli government was basically responsible for the murder of these six Israelis and that this government could have stopped it and it made a deliberate decision not to stop it. It is so absurd the way many of these questions are being framed. And by the way, I'm using my own experiences. It's not just my, the press coverage everywhere. It was insanity, Nadav. And when I and others push back and say, do remember that Hamas killed these, murdered these six Israelis. You do remember that Hamas started this war. You do remember that this whole thing could end in a heartbeat if Hamas agrees to release all the hostages and not govern Gaza anymore. Like you do get all that. And the problem is the press here says, well, we're not quoting ourselves. We're quoting the Israeli protest movement. We're quoting the Israeli opposition movement. So they're citing exactly what you're describing, what was happening on the Israeli streets. Now, far be it from me to begrudge any Israeli to exercise their right to protest their own government. But what feels to me different this time from judicial reform, which regardless of what one thinks about the merits of the judicial reform and then the reaction to the judicial reform, there was a logic to the protest movement on judicial reform because A, Netanyahu had agency, he was binary, right? Either he chose to move forward with judicial reform or he didn't. And the protest movement argued, we're going to put so much pressure on Netanyahu and the hope that he can make, he was the ‘sole decider,’ quote unquote, he could decide to shut it down. Here, A, he's not the sole decider of anything. He's one input in whether or not there's a hostage deal. But the perception that the protest movement now is conveying to the West is it's all on Netanyahu. And whatever happens going forward with the hostage negotiations is all on Netanyahu. In fact, the President of the United States even alluded to that. And the logical extension then is, well, if it's all on Netanyahu, then Netanyahu could have saved these lives of these six murdered. I just don't think, see how anyone in their right mind, no matter where their political loyalties are and their partisan loyalties are inside Israel thinks this is reflecting well on Israel's national cause in the world.
NE: I don't think it reflects well, Dan, and I'm not going to defend every stupid thing that protesters are saying in the streets. And I really think that we shouldn't deal and spend so much time about protests when we have policy decisions.
DS: But that's all that's being covered over here.
NE: Yeah, well, you know, Israel cannot make its decisions because US TV hosts don't understand the full context of things or how it appears in the West. This is a point, by the way, made again and again by the prime minister, by Prime Minister Netanyahu for his entire career. And I don't want to sugarcoat this. The entire negotiating team of Israel thinks that the prime minister is postponing a deal or doesn't want to deal because of political reasons and that we could have already had a deal. This is what the negotiating team is telling the Israeli press. They're telling this to foreign press. Amit knows about this. You have ministers in the government who, if you would hear what they're saying about the prime minister and about his intentions, Dan, you don't know the half of it. And they think that this is the case, that he needed to decide between his government and his coalition and between the lives of the hostages. And he made that call. Now, these opinions are not made by protesters or by families with this painful experience of wanting to get their sons and daughters back home. These remarks are made by people in the corridors of power and negotiations in the international community. So some people would say, well, this is impossible. This is not how a country should run. You know, if this negotiating team is briefing like that, they should either leave their jobs or be fired. You know, but this is again, this is talking about the symptom. Here is the problem. When you are fighting or negotiating with a dictator psychopath like you are, and when you are dealing with a totalitarian fundamentalist, murderous, ethnic cleansing, genocidal organization like Hamas, the first thing you need to do is you need to have an understanding within your people that we are sharing these goals together. And you're always going to have these people marching in the streets, even in World War II, saying crazy stuff. But you know that you have 80% of the public. And let me give you an example that is not usually given. Ehud Barak goes to Camp David. Amit remembers this well. I was already a political reporter. He tries to negotiate with Yasser Arafat. It's Bill Clinton convening them. He's offering him half of Jerusalem, dividing Jerusalem. Then, Ehud Barak comes off the plane and he makes a speech, a speech for which he was attacked by the Israeli hardcore left, in which he says, we have tried everything and we have failed. They have chosen this path. And Ehud Barak, although he's a divisive figure, in that speech, managed to get an understanding in the Israeli public. And he's still blamed by this, by the hardcore left in Israel, that there is no partner. He made the argument, there in that speech Dan, that there is no partner. And people believed him because he went to Camp David. And another example is Ariel Sharon when he came into power. He was, you know, despised by parts of the public. People didn't trust him. So he said, constraint his power at the beginning of his reign, he didn't immediately approach a full blown Defensive Shield operation in the West Bank. Why? Because he wanted to unite the public. Netanyahu is simply not willing to do so. And because of that, you know, you'll see these kinds of demonstrations because it's the families who are leading them. I know these people, you know, it's the families who are saying these things. It's the families who are refusing to take calls or to meet the prime minister.
AS: Depends which.
NE: It depends on which, but most of them, it's the people leading the protests is the headquarters of the hostages. And that's the majority of the families. Now, if you're a media persona in Israel, are you supposed to say to the families, oh guys, you don't understand. The US is saying that he's postponing a deal. The negotiating team is saying he's postponing a deal. We didn't hear about Philadelphi much three or four weeks ago. Now it's the core and the essence of the Jewish existence in the Middle East. You know, it’s also good for his coalition. You have Ben-Gvir and Smotrich threatening to leave his coalition if he goes for a deal and now suddenly he doesn't want a deal after he authorized President Biden to say that this is his deal. So they don't believe him. So what are we supposed to do? You cannot orchestrate a society, a democracy, and dictators will always use liberal societies and people having disagreements in order to make arguments. And I am definitely not going to defend people who say that they were murdered by Netanyahu. They were murdered by Hamas. Hamas is the enemy. In order to win against Hamas, you need to have a certain amount of societal consolidation.
AS: To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters is beginning to look like a nail. That's exactly the thing. They are Israeli citizens. We cannot protest under the headquarters of Yahya Sinwar, or over the headquarters of Yahya Sinwar in this case. So the easiest way is to think that the solutions for each and every problem, it's a very Western liberal perception, lies only in our hands. We have to face the grim fact that it does not depend merely on us, Israelis, us, the Israeli prime minister, the Israeli cabinet. Unfortunately, yes, Nadav is right. There are senior generals, senior officers, senior ministers, or a senior minister who believes in this, but they are wrong in my opinion. The fact that even the White House understood that it is in the hands of Hamas. Now, Netanyahu is willing to pay today a much heavier price than he was willing to pay 10 months ago. Each and every Israeli is willing to pay more price. 10 months ago, we agreed to only one day of pause, humanitarian pause, in exchange for 10 hostages. Now it's seven days for one hostage, not necessarily a live one. And yes, most of the families are anti-Netanyahu and wouldn't take calls from him. But we have to bear in mind that first and foremost, most of them were kidnapped from kibbutzim. So in the first, the tragedy is that since we have had 250 hostages, we have hostages from the left in the kibbutzim, from the right wing, from Sderot, we have families of soldiers, have Bedouin families, et cetera. So I wouldn't use the way, and I wouldn't judge hostage families. I mean, they are allowed to say whatever they want. But in my opinion, it's a bit weird to quote only those families, while we have families of hostages from settlements who say exactly the opposite. But then the Israeli media covers them as the lunatic families from the West Bank, not as the voice of moral of hostages. So I would suggest to take this policy in analyzing the situation. We should let hostage families do everything, say everything, but we should judge the situation as if we are in the prime minister's office, not in the streets.
DS: Okay. You guys are getting to a core topic that I wanted to address. It's the hardest topic and I dance around it for obvious reasons. I tiptoe around it for obvious reasons on this podcast over the last 11 months, which is, if you think of two of the war aims, one defeat Hamas and two return all the hostages, and those have been articulated as not one is subordinate to the other, that they are in parallel, they are of equal importance. The question, I guess, for each of you is, are they actually in tension with one another? In other words, is the country not having an honest debate?
NE: I truly believe that there could be a point in which Israelis will need to make a decision between the two war aims, but we have not come to that point. And we're talking about an interim deal. And we're talking about something that has several phases that can reduce substantially the number of hostages. And I want to say something about the hostages because one of the things that this government has managed to do is to make this an entire political debate, not a humanitarian issue, not an issue of Jewish morality, not an issue about Israeli solidarity. These people are alive. They have suffered more than any Jew since the Holocaust. They are Holocaust survivors who are there in the tunnels with these murderous psychopaths, torturing them. We know what's happening there and we have a chance to get some of them out. We are the most powerful country militarily in the region. We have our entire defense establishment basically begging the government, go for the deal now. We're saying to you, we can be within three hours back in the Philadelphia corridor. This entire discussion has become so public that indeed it is jeopardizing Israeli interests in this deal because Israel doesn't want to say everything. I'll just give one speculation. For instance, that after the US elections, definitely if Donald Trump is going to be the president, Israel would renew the war and will go again after Hamas, but even if it's not going to be Donald Trump. So the point here about this issue is that you can get some of them and maybe, maybe Dan, you're right that at a certain point, these interests will collide, and Amit is right, that you need to think as a decision maker about the future of Israel, about every Israeli citizen. But we have not come to this point. But I'm certain that we have come to this specific point. If Netanyahu goes for a deal now and everybody knows this, his government will collapse. The coalition will collapse. And according to every poll, not since October, since March, he will lose power. Now, everyone who's listening to us needs to make his own judgment, and I'm not going to make this judgment as a journalist, whether or not this is the prime reason that Netanyahu is taking his decisions or whether it is because he is thinking purely about the interests of the State of Israel and the hostages. And now I think that the hostages do take precedence over regular politics because it's a different issue. And I don't think that the other side is cruel about this, but I think we need to be frank about this discussion. And if Netanyahu would have come and said what you just said, then I think we would have had an honest discussion. And I think Amit is much closer to having an honest discussion than the prime minister who is trying to, to an extent, mislead the public in the way that he's tackling this.
AS: So two things. First, I don't think that Netanyahu's coalition is going to collapse if he signs this very specific deal. He made many efforts to fix it. For instance, that the terrorists would be expelled to Turkey or Qatar, et cetera. And if Ben-Gvir leaves, which I doubt by the way, I guess Gidon Sa'ar would join. So I think Netanyahu has a coalition. But we forgot to mention one fact. That there wasn't a deal even before Israel conquered the Philadelphi Corridor, which proves almost mathematically that this was not the case. And second, that even if Israel is willing to withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor now, even as we speak, we still don't have a deal. Because at the end of the day, what Yahya Sinwar really wants is to end this war when he's still standing and when Hamas is still standing. And that's why we can have our opinion on Netanyahu, whether we admire him or hate him, but it doesn't really matter. It's not us. I know it's very, very hard for Westerners, for Israelis, Americans to understand. It is not us. We are against a murderous terrorist organization that killed six Israelis in cold blood, that killed 1600 Israelis over the last 11 months. And it is not us. It's just not us. And it is not the Philadelphi Corridor, and it's not Netanyahu. We should have this in mind.
DS: The IDF chief of staff said earlier today, and I'm quoting here, the translation from Hebrew, the hostages that we'd bring home will live for decades. The terrorists who'd be released in a deal will be killed by the IDF shortly thereafter, close quote. So clearly there's this divide between the security apparatus or at least many in the security apparatus and Netanyahu over specifically the Philadelphi clause. Why should or shouldn't the Israeli public believe Gallant and the security apparatus that they can retake the Philadelphi Corridor within hours or days. Nadav, you say that they've presented myriad ways they could make sure Philadelphi doesn't spiral out of control again and that they could re-engage there if they needed to. We haven't heard those proposals. So what's your reaction?
NE: I think these technical issues are really important because Netanyahu did make the argument that Philadelphi is so important for Israel's future. And I think, again, this is a point that Amit made that this discussion should actually be made and answered, not because Netanyahu was wrong in the past or didn't want to go into Philadelphi, and now he does, you know, his argument. And the answer to that is as follows. If you really want to solve the smuggling issue, you need to do this from the Egyptian side. It has a lot to do with the Camp David Accords. I'm talking about the peace agreement with Egypt, which is really a strategic asset to the State of Israel, the unity with the United States, the alliance with the United States. And then you have the cornerstone of Israel's Middle East policy right now, that it still has peace with these moderate countries. It's a huge success of the Netanyahu government, by the way, you know, of previous governments. So the Egyptians are simply not willing for this to happen at this point for a long stretch of time of the idea of controlling there. They're saying that's breaking the Camp David agreements. Maybe they'll be able to negotiate, compromise, bend on this. And then there are issues that are related to technicalities. These smuggling routes, tunnels underneath Philadelphi, they're not on the route. The way that they go out is not on the route itself. So it runs more into a territory that is Palestinian. And then the fact that you're there doesn't necessarily mean that you can prevent these specific tunnels. And you need to have works there done on 14 kilometers long route deep down. And you need to have some agreement with the Egyptians who are on the other side of the border, just meters away. And you need to defend the entire route. Now, Netanyahu himself right now, Dan, is suggesting, and this is where it stands, at the end of the ceasefire right now, we will have five outposts spread on a 14-kilometer line route. And nobody thinks that technically this would be a great help. And most of the material that entered the Gaza Strip came from Rafah. And with Rafah, Israel and the United States already won. And another thing, you know, most of the money and the dollars and the ammunition, they didn't come through Philadelphi. Most of the money came, you know, from Qatar approved by the Israeli government and by the Netanyahu government. First of all, I'm not sure that Netanyahu is not going to go for a deal. I don't know if he's going to go for a deal.
AS: I think he wants the deal.
NE: Yeah, I think so too, by the way.
AS: You know what, when I hear Nadav. I think that at the end of the day, when we take out of the equation Netanyahu and Netanyahu's history, and all the bad blood between the camps in Israel, it's about the question whether we believe that Israel has really changed since October 7th or not. Nadav believes that following October 7th, Israel will never allow again for a terrorist organization to turn into a terrorist army or a terrorist division. And therefore he's not as worried as me that we will actually help or give Hamas to gain ground again. And I'm still worried. And you know why? Because I still see the same faces on television or former generals who say in low voice, trust me, everything is going to be okay, as they said when we left Gaza and evacuated settlements, as they said when we left Lebanon in 2000, as they say every time when they want Israel to withdraw following an American demand. And I'm worried because I still see this plague rooted in the Israeli body, in the Israeli soul that doesn't see the risk as it is, that doesn't see the grim picture. And I'm really horrified by the fact that we'll leave Gaza again only for six weeks, which will turn into six months. And then we'll promise ourselves that when the first rocket will be fired, we will destroy Gaza. But this rocket, you know, will fall on a lazy news day and we'll do nothing. And then there will be another one and another one. And we have to act because there is no other chance. And the time is now, in my opinion, this is the debate between us.
NE: To an extent it is. I wouldn't phrase, you know, the way you phrase what I believe in exactly the same way. But I do think that something material has changed in the Israeli psyche. And it is at least my position that Israel cannot allow a pseudo-terrorist state on its borders. And this was my position on October 7th. It's my position today. And it's also my position that something will be lost for Israel's national security not if we don't get a deal, because you're absolutely right, Amit. It's not only up to us. It's a point I'm making again and again in every article. It takes two to tango and two to have a deal like that. And I'm not sure that Sinwar wants this. And sometimes I am sure, and I said this, Dan, many times on your show, that maybe Sinwar wants this regional escalation and he doesn't want a deal. And he wants to see the Israeli society torn from within. I'm only certain one thing. In order to win this war and change to an extent the face of the Middle East and have a more secure area and get the northern people back to their homes, we need to have some sort of conviction with Israelis that everything was attempted. This is so crucial, that people will believe that the government has done everything. And so that this principle of Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh Bazeh, of solidarity, of, you know, this is a difficult neighborhood and sometimes it's a very challenging life in the Middle East, but we're in it together. And I think that this is something that is being roped from us right now. And I think that it is the position of leadership, not of demonstrators in the street, to make sure that it never happens. Because if we lose this, if we lose this and we will lose parts of the Israeli society, I'm not sure we'll be able to win the next wars. So all I'm saying is, you go for it as the prime minister. This is the advice you're getting from your military brass, right? Go for it. Say we need to do everything that is reasonable. And if we see a risk to Israel, we can always renew the war, and it is a great victory of these negotiations. And I complimented the prime minister for getting that during the negotiations on this show that Israel can renew the war and make a rapprochement to the Israeli public. Talk with them, with the people who you don't agree with, and convince them that you are doing everything you can. And according to polls, he's just not succeeding with that. And I know that everybody thinks that it's all about somehow getting Netanyahu out of power. At least with me, it's not the case. I would rather him right now have a deal that we can trust, get the hostages back and maybe end the war in the North than having new elections. And I think that most Israelis will answer every poll like that. Get the hostages back.
DS: Amit, Defense Minister Gallant, who's been very hawkish in terms of his approach to the war from the immediate days after October 7th, even he is sounding from what we understand from reports like Nadav arguing the point that Nadav is making. So what's going on there?
AS: Between Gallant and Netanyahu?
DS: Yeah.
AS: I think the debate between them, the hatred between them, endangers Israel's security. I can't find a similar example in the history of Israel and not many in the history of the modern world in which the prime minister and the defense minister hated each other that desperately, blamed each other in acting against the interests of their own country. And the tragedy is that Netanyahu cannot fire Gallant because last time he tried to do this, hundreds of thousands of Israelis stormed the streets and Gallant doesn't want to leave because he knows it would be the end of his career. It's a tragedy. And when you add up to this equation, the fact that the IDF chief of staff who was in charge of this disaster, is still nominating senior officers and commanders in the army, you have a very grim picture of the leadership of Israel.
DS: And Nadav, one reporting question. I'm seeing reports that today, Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, who's been a guest on this podcast several times, has said that it's not inconceivable that Israel could leave the Philadelphi Corridor in the second phase of a hostage deal. What do you know about that?
NE: I think that there is still a possibility I want to believe. Since I know how the recent maps sent by Israel to the mediators look like, it looks like a huge thing. But again, if you're talking about five outposts in the end and the other side is saying zero, we can meet in the middle, right? This is the position of Israel. The position of Israel is five outposts after three weeks. So I think that Netanyahu is trying to make his case politically here. I agree with the meat that the coalition might survive. I said earlier that everybody knows that it will crumble because these are the public statements of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir and I stand corrected. It's true that he might survive this. Certainly, if they understand that in three weeks after we get 20 souls back, that the war can renew. I think that if he makes this assurance and one of the stories I published Dan is that the US is willing to give Netanyahu a letter that he wanted and demanded, Amit also wrote about that, that has some sort of an assurance as to the interpretation of Israel returning to the war. I think that victory, absolute victory, will never be achieved until we have a different civil regime or rule of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip or another, maybe an Israeli rule. I don't know. But we need to have a different government ruling the Gaza Strip. But I think that we still have a way to go before making the big, biggest decisions between the war aims and everything. And there is maybe a strategic chance here to get something together and again, save these people and return. And yes, to an extent, I'm more optimistic. And this is a differentiation between right and left in Israel. Basically, that's true. Since the 1990s, the center left in Israel has been more optimistic. Right wingers have been much more cautious and sometimes more pessimistic about the future and about the risks that Israel can take. And that's always a difference. And I acknowledge that difference. And I also respect the way that Amit structured the discussion in a way that I think is much more honest and straightforward than the way that it is being presented by the government. You know that during that discussion of cabinet in which they decided they're not going to leave Philadelphi, there were two– it was published by Amit's channel today, there were two clauses for the decision. The first one was staying in Philadelphi and Gallant was furious about that. He blew up in the room. You know, he was surprised by this. He thought that it's going to blow up the deal. He was furious. And the second clause was, we're giving leverage to our negotiating team to reach a deal. And these are clauses that the prime minister suggested to vote on in the cabinet. But then Ben-Gvir and Smotrich said, no way. We're not allowing them any leverage to reach a deal. And they took it out of the vote and they were left only with Philadelphi. This is by, I think, Yaron Avraham tonight at Channel 12. You know, this doesn't give the trust that the Israeli public need in order to say, yeah, my leaders are doing their best right now to get a deal and to secure Israel's military interests in the Gaza Strip and fight against Hamas.
AS: We have a deeper argument. A year ago, exactly to the date I sat with Nadav on the stage of the Rabin Center, marking 30 years to the Oslo Accords, the accords that actually established the Palestinian Authority. And September 2023 was an era in which the Palestinian question was maybe number 10 or 12 on the Israeli agenda. No one really spoke about it. And we had our arguments and we recalled memories from the age when I was 12, Nadav was I think 14 maybe. We were, I don't know, politics-holic or how do you say it? But we felt, I think, the ground shaking underneath. I think we both recognized that this question is going to be back on the table. And I didn't expect it to explode in this way. I thought Abu Abbas might die and then the West Bank, Judea and Samaria will explode, but no one saw it coming from Gaza, especially not the Israeli army and the Israeli leadership. But at the end of the day, it's not a coincidence and it's not about Bibi. It's about right versus left and about the return of the old watershed line of Israeli politics. When it comes to the Palestinian question and the most dramatic question to the future of Israel: how you function with three and a half million Palestinians between the river and the sea without Palestine being free and Israel not existing. This is the question. At the end of the day, this is it. So now we deal with Gaza, but Judea and Samaria are soon to come. And Nadav has his own perception and I have mine. And I suspect that some of our debate is just a conversion of the old coin into the new one. But maybe I'm wrong.
DS: I want to ask you one final question, each of you, just coming back to the opening question, which is where we quoted from Haviv, the question he was raising, which really was about whether not Netanyahu is, regardless of one thinks of his message, whether or not he's the right messenger for this moment. And I'll ask each of you a different version of the question. So I'll start with you, Nadav. Could you be sympathetic with Netanyahu's message? And in fact, your problem is that he's the one articulating the message and he's the one trying to advance the message and you have a trust issue with him or you seriously question his motives, on the substance, the core, not getting into all the details, but on the core substance of issues he's elevating, there's something to the arguments he's elevating. You may say he's the wrong person to do it for the reasons I said, but on the substance, there's something to what he's advancing.
NE: Sometimes I don't understand what's the substance. Is the substance Philadelphi or is the substance Rafah? Is the substance the end of the war? Is the substance an absolute victory? I don't understand the substance. And the reason I don't understand it is not because I'm not listening, it's because the persona presenting the argument is constantly changing and shifting its mind somehow, occasionally by mistake, according to its personal political affiliations. It's a matter of trust. And I don't think, Dan, really seriously, it's a discussion about Netanyahu. Netanyahu brought the Abraham Accords. Netanyahu has a lot of credit in Israeli history. Again, I return to the beginning of our conversation. It is the prime condition in winning a war to recruit your national advantages and resources to do so. And the prime national resource you have is your public, primarily in Israel with the reserve service. It's just a matter of the test of the result. And, you know, people can blame protesters in the streets or the leaders of the opposition. Netanyahu was never in favor of Harry Truman's ‘The Buck Stops Here.’ Netanyahu is more Don Draper's advice. If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation. What really happened this week was that the Israeli military apparatus warned that if we don't get a deal quickly after its proposal on May 27th, hostages are going to die. Because of military pressure, because of Hamas shooting them, because of starvation, we don't know why, but they warned that this is going to happen. Then Netanyahu basically said, you know, I'm going to blow up the deal about these issues because they mean a lot to Israel and I think this is crucial. Then hostages died. That's bad news for you as a politician. And then he went on the attack and now everybody's talking about Philadelphi. Everybody's talking about Netanyahu and that's what he does. It's all political. And what I want to do is to talk about the issues. Does it or does it not risk Israel's security in the long run? Can we actually let go of Philadelphi? Will we be able to renew the war? How do we actually defeat Hamas? If we reject the deal Dan, because of Philadelphi and because of the good arguments made by Netanyahu, how do we solve the issue in the North with dozens of thousands of people who are not returning to the hazard? Does it mean that we go to war with Hezbollah? Because Hezbollah is going to cease fire if we have a ceasefire in the South. So give me some sort of perspective to the future. That's my answer to your question.
AS: Winston Churchill once said that we should never miss the opportunity to exploit a decent crisis. I beg to ourselves not to use this crisis as yet another weapon in the fight over Bibi's next term. It's way bigger than Netanyahu. By the way, that's exactly what led us to October 7th, because half of the Israeli public just let Netanyahu do what he did in Gaza and foster Hamas and pay with him because he is Bibi and we won't fight Bibi and he's right. And the other half didn't let him do what is necessary because they wouldn't let Netanyahu do what it takes because they wanted to topple him. So it's much bigger than this. We are facing the next decade in which Israel's future will be decided. It's the ultimate fight against the Iranian axis. This is just the beginning. Hamas is the beginning, Hezbollah is next, and Iran is the final stage. And if we end up infighting about Netanyahu from both sides, we won't defeat Iran. We might defeat the other camp in Israel, but will fail as a state.
NE: I totally agree and I second that. This is why I think that we need here to have a leadership that can do this. And it's not about personas. It's about, first and foremost, in uniting the public around goals of war.
DS: I just want to close, I know I said I was going to close, but just, Nadav, you did seem to concede that some in the political opposition are not behaving responsibly either. And I take your point that there's a higher threshold of responsibility for who is the actual prime minister rather than those in the opposition. But then again in wartime, you know, Begin and Levi Eshkol, in the Six Day War, there's a history in Israel of the opposition behaving responsibly. I know you think that Netanyahu has not covered himself in glory in how he has led Israel in war. Do you see anything in the leadership of the political opposition where you say that they've covered themselves in glory, so they are ready to step up and unite the country, given the rhetoric that they've been deploying.
NE: Well, first of all, since October 7th, Netanyahu has almost, some polls he did win in terms of contest of leadership, but generally he has lost most polls in contest of personal leadership since October 7th. And he has lost them to Naftali Bennett. And before Bennett, now he's losing it to Bennett.
DS: But Bennett's not the leader of the opposition.
NE: But Bennett, to the point that Amit made, Bennett is much more right wing than Netanyahu and he didn't let go of Hebron, he didn't hug with Yasser Arafat and say that he's his friend. So it's not about right and left completely, you know. And to your question, I think that one of the things that has happened in Israel is that Israel has forgotten that indeed, as Amit said, there are issues that are bigger than specific personas. So I think, you know, sometimes it seems, only this person can lead the country. I think Israel is bigger than that. And I think that there are several people in the political arena today, from right and left, that can lead the country as prime ministers and can rise to the moment. I think Benny Gantz, who was a chief of staff who joined two Netanyahu governments because of national responsibility, he was betrayed by Netanyahu in the first time that he joined because Netanyahu didn't fulfill their rotation agreement, I think Benny Gantz, and he's definitely not a lefty, he's a very centrist politician. That's an example. Gadi Eisenkot, who's a former chief of staff who lost his son in this war. Can he not rise to the occasion? And I think he can. Yair Lapid is the chairman of the opposition. In the beginning of the war, he sounded the most mainstream element. He didn't want to join the government, that's true, but he was very mainstream. He didn't participate at the beginning of any demonstrations for months on end. And he was the prime minister of Israel. Bennett was the prime minister of Israel, both of them only for, you know–
DS: Meaning former, meaning they'd served previous to Netanyahu, yeah.
NE: So I think that, yeah, they can rise to the occasion. If you're asking me if Netanyahu is the only person in town.
DS: No, no, no, that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking–
NE: Am I impressed by them? Am I impressed? I think that all of the people that I just mentioned can be responsible prime ministers and can make the gravest and most terrible of mistakes. Really seriously. But I do think that they have the capabilities and the expertise. Now, everything is a gamble. it's also, you know, Napoleon once said you need generals with luck, right? So Netanyahu had a lot of luck during his reign as a prime minister, you know, in terms of escalations and everything. And since October 7th, it doesn't look like that. And also it's about how he's running the show, I think. And because these issues are bigger, yeah, the answer to your question is there are people who can serve there. Whether or not they'll be better than Netanyahu, you know, we need to wait and see.
DS: Gentlemen, I just want to wrap by saying that, Nadav, I will not let you off the hook for the fact that Amit quoted Churchill in the same exchange that you quoted Don Draper.
AS: I would prefer to quote Don Draper.
DS: So we had Draper and Churchill. I would venture to say not only is this the first Call Me Back episode where those two men were quoted in the same exchange, but I'd say it's the first podcast ever in the history of podcasting that that has been accomplished. I appreciate you both for a spirited discussion about a difficult set of topics. And I know it's late where you are, so I will let you go to sleep. Thanks, guys.
AS: Thank you so much.
NE: Thank you so much.
AS: Good night, thank you Nadav.
NE: Bye-bye.