One Year Since October 7th - with Tal Becker

As we have just passed the grim one-year anniversary of 10/07, we continue our dedicated series in which we take a longer horizon perspective, asking one guest each week to look back at this past year and the year ahead. If you are listening to this episode on a podcast app, please note that this episode was filmed in a studio and is also available in video form on our YouTube channel. 

 For the fifth installment of this special series, we sat down with Dr. Tal Becker, who serves as Vice President and Senior Faculty of the Kogod Research Center at Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. Tal was the former Legal Adviser of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is a veteran member of successive Israeli peace negotiation teams and, most recently, represented Israel before the International Court of Justice and played an instrumental role in negotiating and drafting the historic peace and normalization agreements (the "Abraham Accords"). Tal earned his doctorate from Columbia University in New York City, and is the recipient of numerous scholarly awards, including the Rabin Peace Prize, and the Guggenheim Prize for best international law book for his book "Terrorism and the State".

Finally, we have received a number of requests for recommendations of organizations in Israel to donate to around this one-year anniversary of 10/07. There are so many organizations doing important work to help Israelis rebuild from the events of the last year — and the ongoing war. This list is by no means comprehensive. It is simply an opportunity to highlight four groups whose work has moved us and who deserve additional support (we will add additional recommendations in the days ahead):

 -IDF Widows & Orphans Organization (IDFWO), an Israeli non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the spouses and children of Israel's fallen heroes. They provide emotional care, financial assistance, educational opportunities, and a community for those affected most by Israel’s wars. — https://www.idfwo.org/en/

 -Since October 8, Hezbollah has fired thousands of rockets, anti-tank missiles, and explosive UAVs at Israeli civilian and military targets in the north. As worries mount, Rambam Medical Center has cared for the wounded and prepared for war. This 1,100-bed medical center in Haifa has transferred its critical medical care to an underground emergency hospital. Rambam’s underground hospital – capable of housing 8,000 people — will play a critical role going forward in treating wounded soldiers and civilians; protecting and caring for the needs of medical staff and their families; and protecting and caring for the residents of Israel’s Northern Region. — https://aforam.org/ 

 -Leket Israel, Israel's largest food rescue operation, is committed to leading the safe, effective and efficient collection and distribution of surplus nutritious food in Israel to those who need it. To pick just one inspiring example: since October 7th, Leket has committed itself to providing healthy food to the 250,000 displaced Israelis, many of whom have been residing in hotels for the last year. Leket has installed produce stands in hotels across Israel, providing evacuees with a consistent supply of fresh fruit and vegetables, free of charge, which Leket purchases from struggling Israeli growers. — https://www.leket.org/en/ 

 -Kav L'noar's therapy services have provided essential psychological support to communities in the South directly impacted by the war and the October 7th massacre. Their therapeutic interventions are tailored to address the unique emotional and psychological challenges faced by individuals affected by the war, empowering survivors to navigate the aftermath, rebuild resilience, and foster a sense of collective strength. — https://www.kavlnoar.org/israelatwar

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Full Transcript

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

TB: We have to work especially hard to not allow Iran's narrative and Hezbollah's narrative to tell a story as if the only thing that we are focused on is ourselves, or as Ehud Barak used to say, a villa in the jungle. But let's create a few more villas because it's very, very hard to generate momentum and energy just behind a message of, we are going to live by the sword and that's all there is. Now, again, we have to do this in a non-naive fashion. There are real, unbelievably difficult challenges. But it's not impossible that in a few years' time, we will look back on this moment and say, we had to confront the enemies of peace in order to create this much better Middle East.

DS: It's 2:30 PM on Wednesday, September 25th here in New York City. It is 9:30 PM on Wednesday, September 25th in Israel. I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast my longtime friend Tal Becker, who's the senior fellow and vice president at the Shalom Hartman Institute. And he was the longtime legal advisor to Israel's Foreign Ministry and has performed a number of functions in that role, some of which we'll touch on. Tal, thanks for being here. 

TB: Good to be with you, Dan.

DS: Yeah, good to have you back. Tal, as I have mentioned to you, this is part of a series, a special series we've been doing in the lead up and immediate aftermath of the very grim one-year anniversary of October 7th. We are, I guess, looking back at what has happened in Israel and the Jewish people and for the Jewish people over the past year. But we're also trying to look forward. And I know you have spent a lot of time thinking about the look forward part, the growth out of this national trauma that Israel has experienced both on October 7th and over the past year. Can you just talk, to start out a little bit about how you think about looking forward from something that is all consuming? Because the thing about trauma is when it's ongoing, whether it's a personal trauma or in this case, a national trauma, its grip doesn't let go of you. And so how do you think about digging out? 

TB: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting that I think the word you hear the most is trauma. And there's so much trauma to go around. You know, there's Palestinian trauma. We need to acknowledge Israeli trauma. I think diaspora Jewish trauma is also there. There's a definition of trauma that I saw that really struck me, which is that trauma is a severe challenge to the way you understand reality and your place in it. Right? So you had a set of assumptions about the way the world works and the way you operate within that reality and they all of a sudden don't fit anymore. And I think you're right that it's natural when you go through a trauma to in a way want to recreate the thing that was shattered. You do look backwards to a certain extent. And I think Israeli society has very understandably been really preoccupied with reasserting that which was lost on October 7th, which is essentially that sense of security, that sense of deterrence, you know, given especially what's happening in Lebanon at the moment. That's really understandable. You know, let me give one little illustration of this. I'm really struck by the slogan with respect to the hostages, which is, bring them home. Because you might think that the slogan we would use is let them go, right? To say to Hamas, who are the takers of these hostages, let them go. It's interesting why it's bring them home. Obviously, we have an immense responsibility to bring them home, but it's a very Jewish move. And that is the move to give yourself agency, to reclaim agency for a people that has very often felt that it didn't have agency. And Israel, I think the story of Israel, was as the great giver of Jewish agency. And so bring them home as a way of reclaiming that. There's a famous passage in the Talmud about why the Second Temple was destroyed. And the rabbis give all different explanations. It was destroyed because of baseless hatred. It was destroyed because the rabbis were too strict, the laws were too strict. Well, we know why the Second Temple was destroyed. The Romans destroyed the Second Temple. But the Jewish move is to say, well, what can I do about it? 

DS: Or how did we facilitate a context that allowed the Romans to do what they did? Which is interesting, there's a lot of debate in Israel is what did Israel do to facilitate a context that enabled Hamas to do…

TB: And to a certain extent, that's healthy and necessary, but it also distorts the lens a bit because I think you're right that trauma has the risk of putting you in a place where you're desperately grasping to reclaim something you've lost rather than imagine forward what it is you want to create. How do we emerge from this moment stronger, more resilient? Maybe we need to adapt our story a little bit. I think that what that has done is make most of the conversation in Israel around October 7th focused on preventing Hamas, Hezbollah and others from ever having the capability to threaten us. And that's obviously necessary. But I think what it lacks is the question of what do we build afterwards, right? Where are we moving from here? And I think that's the bigger challenge. How do you kind of grow from it, not just try to recreate what you lost? I think the execution of those six hostages had a kind of similar kind of devastating effect on the psyche in that way, because there was this kind of hope, and we saw, for example, the Polin-Goldberg family speak so painfully about this, this kind of confidence that they are coming home, which is also a way of saying things are going to go back to the way they were. Right? And I think Israeli society took that execution of the six hostages. It was like another mode of things aren't going back where they were. Now, I want to say there's something healthy about that because Iran was the same threat on October 6th that it was on October 8th. Hezbollah and Hamas were the same threat on October 6th as they were on October 8th. What I think was, maybe not in national security circles, but broadly in the Jewish world, there was a little bit of denial. We kind of talked about it, but we didn't really internalize it. I do think that there's something in the process of overcoming trauma that has to do with just having a more sober understanding of your reality that in a way, as tragic and horrific as everything we've been through is, we are not yet the Jews that can exhale. I often think about Israel, as the promise of Israel, is you get to exhale as a Jew. That involved a little bit of a distortion of our reality, which I think to a certain extent we see with clearer eyes now. What we're seeing, though, with very clear eyes are the threats. What I think the trauma is doing a little bit is making it more difficult to see the opportunities.

DS: So we had Yossi Klein Halevi on, as I mentioned, your colleague at Hartman. He argued that the founding of the state through October 6th, call it, that story of Israel and the Jewish people was the post-Holocaust story, the post-Shoah story, meaning Israel means no Holocaust ever again. And that story died on October 7th, because even if it wasn't a successful genocidal attempt by Hamas, it was a genocidal attempt. And the Jewish state that was supposed to protect against genocidal attempts was invisible on October 7th. So it was like at least on that weekend, it was as though there were no Jewish state, which gives lie to the post-Holocaust story. If that story really is over, what's the new story?

TB: Yeah, so I mean, I love Yossi. He's a good colleague. I think that simplifies it a little because there was May ‘67 and June’ 67. May ‘67 on the eve of the Six Day War was a moment of deep existential fear, and Yom Kippur and other moments, I think, in Israel's history where the precariousness of this post-Holocaust era was felt. We kind of put it back in the background, maybe not quite with this pogrom-like feel that October 7th had. In a way, I think that the way in which the post-Holocaust era resonates with me is this. We had a period of a few decades where you were too close to the Holocaust to be openly antisemitic in the Western world without paying a certain price. Unless you were having dinner with Kanye West or something, you probably thought twice about it, and something has been unleashed in that respect. It's a hard question what the new story is, right? I think we're still kind of grappling with that a little bit. But for me, I think it's a recognition that we are a work in progress. We haven't yet come to the promised land. And I think that Zionism kind of offers you a way of thinking about Israel as if it's the end of the story, right? We have solved the problems of the Jewish people, right? And I think that, you know, one of my other colleagues at Hartman, Yehuda Kurtzer, says that Judaism has a thing which he calls the problem of arrival. We never think we've arrived, right? We're always, you know, Shimon Peres, I think you wrote about it in your book, talks about how one of our greatest exports is dissatisfaction. And that is actually an unbelievable treasure which you lose if you think you've arrived, right? And maybe part of the story and even part of the opportunity is a deeper recognition that we haven't yet arrived, that the task of not just Jews being able to exhale, but the task of peace, coexistence, thriving, is still a work in progress. And we have to be very aware of the enemies of that, as well as potential allies.

DS: You know, what you're saying very much resonates with me as a diaspora Jew. Because here, I think many diaspora Jews believed they were incredibly influential. 

TB: They had arrived. 

DS: They had arrived. Yes and no. They had arrived and yet they still felt a little insecure, even though buildings were named after them at every major university campus and hospital wings were named after them and they were at the top of so many industries. And yet… so I think what October 7th did was if they had any question about whether or not they had arrived or not, it answered that question. And so it's paradoxical because on the one hand, they had enormous influence and on the other hand, they had not arrived. So where does this story go for the diaspora?

TB: I think the post-Holocaust era was a moment where I think North American Jews, but also Jews, particularly in the Western diaspora, you know, Canada, Australia and elsewhere, felt broadly that they could be proud Jews and proud members of the societies in which they lived at the same time. And that's a very rare thing for the Jewish experience because even for most of Jewish history, diaspora Jewry, even if times were good, you had to dilute your Jewish identity in order to be able to be part of it. Someone once told me that I saw that the four words that make America exceptional, there are four words that make America exceptional, which is, Ocean, Ocean, Canada, Mexico, right? Because the geography helps a great deal. 

DS: It sure does.

TB: But I think for a lot of Jews, America is probably the best example of this, what made America exceptional, for example, wasn't a word, but a hyphen, that you got to say Jewish-American, right? Italian-American. In other words, this was a country that celebrated difference, didn't just tolerate difference. And I think that was expressed in other parts of the Western world, at least. And the trauma of diaspora Jews is different to the trauma of Israeli Jews. The trauma of diaspora Jews was that they were convinced that if they were contributors to the societies in which they lived, were champions of the rights of other citizens in America in particular, this beautiful idea of tikkun olam, of repairing the world, of being advocates for the rights of others as a core Jewish idea, which I think, you know, diaspora Jewry has a lot of credit of lifting the volume up on that in the Jewish tradition. I think there was this thought that we as Jews would be indirect beneficiaries of creating a society that was pluralistic, where the vulnerable and the minorities were seen, and therefore we would thrive. And you touched about the insecurity, which is very interesting, because with all the goodness that comes with that, there is an interesting tactic there, perhaps, that I'd like to suggest, that sometimes maybe you don't want to be too outspoken about your own rights. So you stand on the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement. You stand on the forefront of the rights of others. You contribute, you make a building, you contribute to the arts, and indirectly you'll benefit from it. Yes? And that operating system and that great value system, I think for a lot of Jews feels like it broke down where it didn't happen. In my mind here, you do see a real opportunity for growth. And I'm not suggesting for a moment to abandon that very strong sentiment of being advocates for pluralism and so on and advocates for the rights of others. But it's a moment for Jews also to be advocates for their own rights. And in this way, I think the fight against antisemitism has become aligned with the fight against anti-Americanism. Because what is antisemitism or the fight against antisemitism, but the fight against, you know, the idea that difference shouldn't be respected. That big American idea, which you feel is kind of under assault from different directions at the moment. And there's one other aspect, I think, that is really powerful at this moment for diaspora Jews in particular, especially those diaspora Jews of the more liberal side who made that battle for the rights of other and for the vulnerable, which is a big part of our tradition, so central to their Jewish identity. There is a little bit of a dark side of that. I hope I'm not… you know, it's pretty obnoxious for an Israeli to be saying this, but I'll say it anyway. When your Jewish identity is too consumed with it being about others, you can sometimes lose the commitment to knowing yourself deeply, to Jewish literacy and so on. If my Jewish identity, if the beating heart of my identity is others, what do I need to know about myself? And I think you are seeing in a lot of the diaspora Jewish world now a kind of, in my view, a healthy turning inwards. People who want to ask, how do I serve my community? People who want to deepen their Jewish identity, right? Not at the expense of fighting for others, but in a calibration that I think might be healthier. And in a way, doing that would actually be the arrival of diaspora Jews in a truer way to being full citizens within their society, because it's no longer just about this kind of indirect approach. No, I'm a Jewish-American or a Jewish-Australian or whatever. And as a result, I am entitled to the very things on campus, for example, that I have been advocating for others. 

DS: This has been a phenomenon in the diaspora community, particularly here in the US, of this conscious, seemingly conscious decision by a whole generation of Jews, if not more than a whole, you know, one generation or a large number of them, to say we're going to withdraw from all the features of Jewish particularism: ritual, literacy, to some degree, community, distinctive community. And we will say our Judaism is being expressed by, as you said, helping all these other communities and helping all these other people. So we're not going to be Jewishly engaged the way you're talking about now. But yet we're going to think of ourselves as Jewishly engaged, but talk about it as this expression in something that, I mean, has very little to do with Judaism. 

TB: Well, I mean, first of all, that idea that in a way Jewish particularism is about universalism, our commitment to the other is inherent to our particularism, is a really important idea. And I think that diaspora Jewry has really contributed in that way. It does also have to do with the process of assimilation, right? It has to do with a previous part for instance of the North American experience, where in order to belong, you had to work on the Sabbath, for example, or do different things to show that you were part of the community. And it's so much easier to belong when there isn't friction, when you align completely, what your identity is about with what the broader collective is about. And Judaism presents this tension between that particularism and universalism that's very interesting. And I think it's a moment to recalibrate it. Not every Jewish idea or Jewish value has to align perfectly with the outside environment in order to be valuable. It doesn't have to necessarily. And that, in a way, that's the very American idea in the first place, that celebration of diversity, including the friction, including the disagreement. And sometimes you do… you know, I often get some American Jews say, you know, why is Israel's public diplomacy so bad? We can talk about that if you like, whether it's true or not, a lot of people think it is. But I sometimes feel like what they're asking me is, why are you making it hard for me to explain Israel to my friends? Because I don't want there to be any difficulty, right? I want to be accepted in my circle, and you're making it harder for me. Now, we have an obligation to a certain extent not to make it hard in my view, to do better. But just to go back to the Israel story in terms of where we maybe think about moving from here. I think one thing that's been lost in the very understandable and necessary need to reassert our security and our deterrence is a big part of what this war is about, actually. And what this war is about is preventing the enemies of peace from dictating the future of the Middle East, which means that we have to be asking ourselves not just how are we confronting our enemies, but what are we building? And I really do think that this war at some level is about peace, is about what we build, not just what we defeat. Now, what does that mean in practice? And it's very hard for a traumatized society to begin this kind of dialogue. But what do we need to do in order for Iran's agenda not to shape the Middle East? Obviously, there's a lot of defense and strategy that's part of it. But you know, last time I was on the podcast, I think I cited Dumb and Dumber, right? So this time I'm going to mention Seinfeld because I think it's kind of relevant. There's this great scene in the coffee shop where George is complaining that every instinct he has is wrong. And Elaine notices that a woman at the counter looked at George and she tells him, you know, why don't you go up and say hello to her? And George says, bald men who are unemployed and live with their parents don't go up to strange women in coffee shops, to which Jerry responds, well, if every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite of every instinct you have must be right. And I think that's not a bad little metric for thinking about how do we create a dynamic where Iran is not dictating the story of the Middle East in terms of the ideas of the Middle East. I think a lot, a lot of the Muslim world, the Sunni Muslim world doesn't want to live in Iran's Middle East or in Hamas's Middle East or in Hezbollah's Middle East. The challenge is articulating an alternative vision to Iran's vision. Iran wants to tell a story that we are in a zero sum conflict. Jews and Muslims, Israelis and Palestinians. we are not in a zero sum conflict. We, for example, we are not in a conflict with Lebanon. We would like the people of Lebanon to thrive and live in peace and prosper. We are not in a conflict with the people of Iran. On the contrary, I think we have a lot of respect for the people of Iran and the Persian civilization. Ultimately, I don't believe we are in a fundamental conflict with the Palestinian people in the sense that we would like both Jews and Palestinians to be able to realize their right to self-determination. They don't have a right to kill us. They don't have a right to deny our right to self-determination. Just speaking in that way, just framing it in that way, not falling into the trap of telling Iran's story, but telling a different story is a really critical part of this. And there are a lot of aspects to it. Normalization is one aspect. What is normalization? Normalization is helping to articulate a version of Islam that does not view Jews as infidels and doesn't see a Jewish state as somehow something that is an abomination in the Middle East. But on the contrary, it's something that Islam can come to terms with. I think Iran wants to present a version of Israel to the world and those allies as if we are brutal, as if we lack empathy. That's another thing this war has been about, whether you can survive in the Middle East without being brutal. It's one of the reasons why, despite Hamas's total disdain for life and for the law, we can never be absolved of our obligation to life and to the law, including Palestinian life. It's very, very hard in wartime to show empathy. I don't know of any society at the time of war that excelled at demonstrating empathy for the other side. But I think we have to work especially hard to not allow the enemies of peace to tell a story as if the only thing that we are focused on is ourselves. If the situation for Palestinians, the average Palestinian civilian, is bad, it's unlikely that it's going to be wonderful for Israel. Now, again, we have to do this in a non-naive fashion. There are real, unbelievably difficult challenges in moving towards that future, but marking it as our objective, signaling, doing the opposite of what Iran is trying to do, what the enemies of peace are trying to do, signaling that for us, the goal is to prevent the enemies of peace from denying coexistence between Jews and Muslims, between Palestinians and Israelis, I think is a move away from that trauma, which is let's recreate the story that we're, you know, as Ehud Barak used to say, a villa in the jungle. But let's create a few more villas. Let's push away the brush of the jungle further for others as well. 

DS: You referenced earlier what we talked earlier about the story Israel tells itself and the story Jews tell themselves about Israel. And you referenced earlier also how Jews tell its story to the world, specifically public diplomacy. How do you think about how Israel has told its story since October 7th to the world?

TB: Well, first of all, I think it's part of the trauma that we have been very, very focused on ourselves and on the hostages and on our soldiers. There are a couple of dynamics here that have made it difficult, I think, to tell the story effectively. The first is a fundamental one, almost in my view, in the Israeli DNA. Israel is a country essentially established by people who were abandoned by the world. You know, Ben-Gurion famously said that it doesn't matter what the world said. He used a different term. It matters what the Jews do. And it's an idea that we can no longer have our fate in the hands of others. So something in the DNA of the story of Israel tells you that strategic communications are not the game changer, right? It's not about if I explain myself well, there will be sympathy. It's just about what I do. I don't know if that's a good excuse.

DS: It's a version of Golda Meir's, I think she said something, rather a bad headline than a good eulogy.

TB: Yeah. But I think it's more than that, in the sense that it's part of the ethos, that what matters is what we do, not how well we explain ourselves. There's a second component of this, which I think is equally critical. And that is that we want the West to love us, but we want the Middle East to fear us, especially our enemies to fear us. Right? It's not easy in this environment to differentiate your messages. But if I ask what I want Nasrallah to think about us, so I want him to think that we are a dog frothing at the mouth, that he cannot predict our next move. We're not doing a bad job at that at the moment. In national security circles, when you're thinking about your messages to your enemies and your friends, you'll sometimes prioritize your message to your enemy because they're the ones who can cause you harm. And it's not always easy to calibrate that well. And I think that's also been part of it. That doesn't mean we couldn't do better. And the politics of doing better isn't easier either because the messages that a lot of the people in the world want to hear are not necessarily the messages that the Israeli public wants to hear. That too is associated with the tragedy and the trauma and the emergency of the situation. How do we get our hostages out is a more urgent thing for Israelis to hear than how are we getting humanitarian aid in, for example, even if we are getting humanitarian aid in with all the difficulties associated in that. So I think there's been a set of challenges that are almost systemic to this, but I also think there could have been, there are rooms for improvement as there always is.

DS: I mean, I think there's room for improvement at the tactical level. I think there are things that could be done, but at the big strategic level, I think the challenges you're describing and the tensions between them are hard to overcome. Should Israel respond more quickly to explain why they hit this hospital and what… tactically, I think there's a lot of room for improvement. But the big strategic challenges I'm coming to believe are, I don't want say they're insurmountable, but they're real challenges. I want to talk about the Palestinians. We've had a lot of thinkers on this in these series of conversations and a lot of high impact public intellectuals, but not actual practitioners of diplomacy. And specifically, I can't think of anyone who's had as long a run as you have had in trying to practice the art of diplomacy with the Palestinians on behalf of the State of Israel. But the go-to always as it relates to a real permanent accommodation with the Palestinians involves this term, the two-state solution. And you have, as I said, worked extensively on it. Here we are today, basically one year out from October 7th. And there are some in some corners talking about a two-state solution. And I hear that increasingly all over the place, except for one place, which is in Israel. Is the hope for this… and I'm asking this to someone who's got a lot of hours invested in the two-state solution. 

TB: I’ve got a lot.

DS: Let's call them sunk costs, perhaps. Is it dead?

TB: So first of all, I'm allergic to the term solution in foreign policy. Countries are not math problems. They don't have solutions. There's a wonderful American trait, I think, and I really do think it's wonderful, which is to think that every problem has a solution. And if you haven't solved it, it's because you haven't worked hard enough. So just throw more people and more hours at the thing and you're going to solve it. Let's start by the rationale behind what you might call the two-state framework. The rationale is that this is a conflict between two peoples who want a place on the planet to call their own, who want to be able to cultivate their identity, their national identity, in dignity, in security and in respect. Now, what the one staters miss, for example, when they talk about it, is that collective dimension of the conflict. Fundamentally, I think most Jews and most Palestinians think of this conflict in those collective terms. So there's a rationale behind that model. It's so interesting that, you know, there were years there where it became difficult to talk about this as Israel as the national homeland for the Jewish people, right? And Palestine being in the future the national homeland for the Palestinian people. You could only use the word two states. You couldn't talk about Jewish. But that was the essence, right? The essence is Jewish self-determination and Palestinian Arab self-determination. And that was, you know, from the Peel Commission in 1937, the way it was crafted. And I think the rationale remains true in that sense. But the challenge, of course, is we do not know how to create a Palestinian state that won't be a failed state or a terrorist state fundamentally. 

DS: You believe that now, having clocked as many hours as you have working on these issues, or have you always felt that way? Like, is that born of your experience having tried everything? Or not tried everything, tried many things in fairness? Maybe we haven't exhausted everything. Or did you always, as you were working through these issues…

TB: So, Dan, I believe in something which I call the permanent possibility of the presently unimaginable, right? Which basically means that I... 

DS: Just rolls right off the tongue. 

TB: Right? The permanent possibility of the presently unimaginable. In other words, I don't think that there's a degree you get at a university into how to do this. And we've exhausted every option. So therefore we have the arrogance to say we haven't. What we do know is that what we tried did not succeed, right? One maybe knows how to draft the words. You can think about mechanisms, but do we know really how to prevent, for instance, an effort by the enemies of peace, by Iran and others, even after a peace agreement, to flood a territory with weapons and then for it to be a state which is a threat to you? Do you know how to prevent terror groups from thriving because the security forces you established don't feel comfortable confronting their compatriots in a million and one other scenarios? There is one aspect of this which I think that Israeli sentiment in the Israeli public is very strong. Is it seriously thought that after October 7th, we're going to somehow reward the atrocities of October 7th with a response about Palestinian statehood? It seems, I think for a lot of Israelis, that would seem a gift to terrorism and to Hamas that is unthinkable. But the issue is deeper than that. The issue is in practice, how does one do this without ensuring the demilitarization and deradicalization of a Palestinian entity? Now, I want to be clear. I don't think that means that we can't mark a goal, an endpoint that we are aspiring to. I personally think that peace is one of our highest aspirations, and we need to be in the business of talking about it. The Jews belong in this part of the world and Palestinians belong in this part of the world. And both do deserve that. And we can think about the space between catastrophe and messianic peace. There's a lot in between about what we can do to improve things, to improve economy, to improve welfare, to have life be better for more people. In the end, that's what foreign policy is usually about. It's not about solutions, just about more prosperity, more peace, and more dignity, more security for more people more of the time. And that part of that, and a critical part of that, is the security dimension, is taking away the capabilities of our enemies. But the other part of that is the hope and aspiration dimension, is the alternative narrative, is demonstrating that we're not just committed to taking away the capacities of our enemies to destroy the hopes for peace, we're also committed to building something without being silly about it and pollyannaish about it, without thinking that somehow all of a sudden goodwill is going to emerge in such a dangerous part of the world. So I think we do need to talk about the prospects of a positive future and not just the threats we face and how we need to confront them, even if the horizon for that is long. And normalization is part of that. And yes, imagining again how Israeli Jews and Palestinians talk to each other and think, how do we move to a better place.

DS: On this topic of a potential agreement someday, somehow between Israelis and Palestinians, there's obviously been a lot of emphasis in recent years about an outside-in strategy, which is Israel working with Sunni Arab countries, specifically the Sunni Gulf, in trying to normalize Israel in the region and then hoping that Palestinians don't let history pass them by. How do you think about that in terms of the gains that Israel has made in the region and normalizing with Sunni Arab countries? And how, despite the chaos and instability and toxicity of the past year, the normalizations that were launched before October 7th have basically held? 

TB: So first, I think it's an interesting failure of Iran to try to puncture the Abraham Accords and the general, even the Saudi interest, in normalization. They failed at that. And that's really interesting. I think the normalization process is absolutely critical. Because what is it at its essence? At its essence, it's the articulation of an authentic Islamic view that is an alternative to Iran's vision of that zero sum contest that I described. And you can see how that acts as a kind of legitimizing force for a potential future Palestinian figure. I tell this story that I was walking in Abu Dhabi a year or so ago and I was walking down the street and I noticed that I didn't feel emotional. The previous times that I had been in Abu Dhabi, I felt emotional. Why? Because I had a role, a privilege of playing a role in us being able to fly to Abu Dhabi. By the way, just to say, my grandparents had a chocolate factory in Australia and the chocolate served on Emirates Airlines, Alpha Chocolates, this is not a plug for Alpha Chocolates, but the chocolate served on the flights is from my grandparents’ chocolate factory. So the Beckers have a little bit of a stake in this and it's a bit emotional. But this particular time I was walking down the street and I didn't feel emotional. And then and then I got emotional about not feeling emotional. Because I understood that that's kind of the point. The point is to normalize normalization. The point is to create a reality where it's unremarkable that Jews and Muslims, that Israelis and Palestinians, share this place. I describe the Abraham Accords as the movement away from the argument about who the land belongs to, to the understanding that we all belong to the land, right? And in an environment where that is the dominant story, where Iran's narrative and Hezbollah's narrative, which is condemning us all, condemning Muslims, condemning Palestinians to just endless suffering and conflict, it is the absolute antithesis of that American idea we spoke about of celebrating difference, but it is the antithesis of any hope for the Middle East. In an atmosphere where that is the dominant story, I think you can at least hope, again, I don't want to be naive, I've been burnt in that sense, that both Jews and Palestinians can embrace that idea as well. And we can be, we can allow ourselves some magnanimity. Because at the moment of trauma and conflict, that's one of the hardest things to do, that kind of opening up. And it's so understandable at this moment, given the threats we face. And again, the kinetic part of this is critical, right? Making sure that we don't face or diminish those threats, degrade them, and so on. But so is the other part, the opening up part and offering the alternative. And so normalization, in my view, is an absolute critical component. And to say something maybe that's not popular in some circles, it is its own contribution to the Palestinian issue. It isn't just, you know, there's a lot of discussion about, you know, let's have a breakthrough with the Saudis that has a Palestinian component, yes? So that's possible or not possible depending on a whole bunch of factors. But let's not lose sight of the fact that a breakthrough with Saudi Arabia is its own contribution to the general goal of coexistence. That will help the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic as well. And I think that we shouldn't lose sight of that.

DS: Assuming this war ends, there's a day that it ends. I'm skeptical of that, that there'll be one day where we say the war is over, because I think the Gaza, Hamas war against Israel is one front of a multi-front regional war. There's many wars, there's many fronts. It's not going to be… it's not that binary. That said, just in the spirit of trying to get a conversation focused on what to prioritize going forward, pick the number two, three things that you hope Israel prioritizes when this war, if this war ends? 

TB: Yeah. So first, to your point, you know, it's always a good question to ask what does the enemies of peace want? I think they do want that war to continue in that way. And to be honest, there's always some level of conflict. So I think you're not wrong in that sense, but there is intensity that's bigger and smaller. There's what is shaping the momentum. There's what else is going on. All of that is relevant. Three things. Number one is unity. In other words, Israeli society understands that while healthy disagreement is part of the Jewish people's character and a democracy, it is a national security threat to be at each other's throats. And we've got too many fish to fry here for our tribal differences to be bigger than our shared national objectives. And I think there is a moment now in Israeli society where leaders who talk about who they can work with, not who they can't work with, have more appeal because I think it's intuitively understood in a big chunk of the Israeli public that we need to move in that direction. And we need to be much more tender with each other, another kind of tenderness. Number two is, in my view, just a real serious strategic outlook in terms of that combination of factors that is required to, on the one hand, push back, degrade, defeat, delegitimize the enemies of peace, and empower other forces in the region. It includes how we talk either to a Trump or a Harris administration about how critical this is to US national security interests, not just to our own. Iran is helping us there with its alliance with China and Russia and North Korea and so on. It's not a difficult case to make, but we need to be able to speak to others, not just to ourselves about that. And strategy here is, you know, the US puts it in an all of government approach. It's an all of society approach. There are so many components to it. We can't limit it to the military. It's strategic communications. It's peacebuilding. It's a million and one different... It's economy. It's a whole host of things. And getting more strategic, I think, is critical. And the third thing, at the risk of sounding kind of strange in this moment that so many of us are living in this moment, this is about peace. We need to be in the business of aspirations. We need to give a direction, not just to ourselves, but to those around us about what we are hoping for. Because it's very, very hard to generate momentum and energy just behind a message of we are going to live by the sword and that's all there is. I remain of the view that it's not inevitable, nothing is inevitable, but it's not impossible that in a few years time we will look back on this moment and say we had to confront the enemies of peace in order to create this much better Middle East. And by the way, we were never going to get there without confronting the enemies of peace. They were never going to take it lying down that we would make progress with the Saudis and that there was always going to be that effort to spoil in one form or another. And I think if we don't discount the possibility that in a few years time, we will analyze this moment through that lens, that it was a necessary part of building it. If we don't discount the possibility, we may be able actually to build towards that possibility and reverse backwards from it. Right? And ask ourselves, what would we need to do to make the idea that Jews belong in the Middle East an idea that is acceptable in the Muslim world and the idea that Palestinians belong as long as they're not in the business of trying to destroy. You know, I mean, I'm not saying that we should be silly about it, but Palestinians have rights that we are sensitive to and aware of, that that is something that Israeli-Jewish society can embrace without feeling that it's being naive or endangering itself. And maybe we can reverse engineer, not just from seeing the strategic dangers, but also seeing the strategic opportunity. 

DS: The speed with which things can change... I mean, on the one hand, I always tell people who visit Israel for the first time, I say, you've got to completely readjust how you think about space when you're in Israel, geography. And you have to completely readjust how you think about time because the time spans that Israelis and their neighbors talk about conflicts and disputes is just… you can't compare it to anything in an American or even a European context. At the same time, 1973 Yom Kippur war, talk about a trauma for Israel, as you said earlier, and Israel appears at least at one point in that war to be a paper tiger in the Middle East and the self-image of Israel as this triumphant victor after the Six Day War comes crashing down on the war fronts of the Yom Kippur War. And then who would have thought in 1977 Anwar Sadat would fly to Israel, stand before Israel's parliament and say, I want peace. I recognize Israel’s right to exist. Could you have had that without the Yom Kippur War? So in a sense, it's a version of what you're saying.

TB:  This is what you… I don't know if you liked it or you didn't like it, but that's what I mean by the permanent possibility of the presently unimaginable. That has been a feature of Jewish history and certainly a feature of Israeli history that you looked at this moment and you were sure it couldn't spin and it spun. Right? And if you don't discount it, you can actually create conditions for it. You mentioned space is a big problem. I remember I think when President Bush flew, when Ariel Sharron took him on a helicopter, he famously said we have parking lots in Texas bigger than this or something like that. And you're absolutely right about that dynamic. One other thing maybe I want to say in relation to the challenge and the opportunity that I think is important. When you try to simplify, let's take the Iranian regime strategy with respect to Israel, when you try to just break it down to a simple thing, I think it is either Israel defends itself and then it's labeled a pariah or it doesn't defend itself and able to advance their horrific agenda. And that is by this unbearable, reprehensible tactic that is not a tactic, it's a strategy. It's kind of the essence of Hamas's strategy of using civilians in that way. By the way, one of the reasons why Israel's compliance with the law is so important, because what we're demonstrating is we are not like Hamas. It's almost as if Sinwar is offering Palestinian civilian death as an offering to Allah, as a kind of gift to Allah. It's his demonstration of his devotion, right? In a really sick and problematic way. And our ability to not be like that is critical. And it is very, very difficult in the reality of warfare. And this plays a particular role, this pariah stuff, I think plays a particular role in the international arena, right? Because Iran doesn't get to label us a pariah. It's not doing that great itself in terms of its reputation. And it requires the kind of cooperation, complicity, maybe useful idiots sometimes who play that role as well. And sometimes, also, voices in Israel that in my view are illiberal or not sensitive enough to these issues can put fuel on the fire. And one of the challenges we have at the moment I think relates particularly to some of the UN bodies. Because for too many in the world, when you say the UN says x, you are saying a body with authority, legitimacy and credibility has determined x, yeah? How exactly did it earn that credibility and legitimacy and authority? If it's the parts of the UN that have been regurgitating the statistics of a genocidal terrorist organization as if they are the facts on the ground, then why are they given that legitimacy? If it's essentially the non-democratic human rights violators who are shaping the agenda and the outcome, why are we giving it? And this is, I think, a fundamental challenge to the West, not just to Israel, because these are institutions that were established to advance rule of law and democracy. And they have turned to be the facilitators, very often, of the violators of those. And so part of the effort, and this is why I talk about a strategy right across the board effort, part of the effort is getting serious about not allowing the hijacking of international institutions by those that are trying to undermine the very values that those institutions were established to achieve in the first place. That is also part of confronting Iran. That's also part of creating a dynamic in which genuine peace and coexistence that sees Jews as having a right to self-determination alongside Palestinians that sees the idea that Jews have security as a legitimate thing that stands alongside the idea that Palestinians have a way to see to their future and so on. And so there are a lot of different aspects to pushing back on it. 

DS: Tal, we'll leave it there. Thank you for this.