Israel's "Radical" move to the political center — and lessons for the rest of us
One theme of these 2020s is the polarization ripping through the US and other democracies around the world. Every day there’s a new story. Is there any way out of it?
Dr. Micah Goodman thinks so. He’s been studying the Israeli model of consensus as an antidote to polarization.
Micah is on speed-dial of several of the leaders of Israel’s new centrist coalition government. This Government is like nothing else in Israel’s history…or anywhere else for that matter. It consists of 8 political parties that span the extremes of the ideological spectrum. In fact, this Government would not have been formed without the kingmaker role of a Muslim Arab Israeli political party in Israel’s parliament.
Micah is a polymath, having written books ranging from biblical lessons for the modern age to Israel’s geopolitics. Not only have all of his books been bestsellers in Israel, he essentially created a new genre; books that bring core texts of Jewish thought to a general, secular audience.
He is a founder of immersive programs fostering personal growth and group identity for young adults at a formative stage in their lives. The organization is called Beit Prat, and Micah is its president.
Micah is also a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel.
Transcript
DISCLAIMER: THIS TRANSCRIPT HAS BEEN CREATED USING AI TECHNOLOGY AND MAY NOT REFLECT 100% ACCURACY.
[00:00:00] We're not as divided as our politics suggest. So I think that line of Obama in 2004 does not describe America. America is as divided as its politics suggests. Ironically, that line describes Israel today. So this is a grand experiment in politics.
A chorus of observers are worried that the U. S. has become so polarized that we've Entered a new level of insanity. It's a phenomenon that's not unique to the U. S. It's happening to democracies all across the globe. It's certainly a theme of these 2020s. Every day there's a new story, or at least it seems so.
I don't need to spell them all out for listeners of this podcast. You follow the news. The question is, is there any way out of it? Well, Dr. Micah Goodman thinks we can get out of [00:01:00] it. I called him up at his place in Jerusalem where he's been thinking a lot about the Israeli model of consensus as an antidote to polarization and what we overhear.
can learn from it. Now, Micah is on the speed dial of several of the leaders of Israel's new centrist coalition government. This government is important to follow. It's like nothing else in Israel's history or anywhere else for that matter. Regardless of what one thinks of the government, it is kind of extraordinary that it consists of eight political parties that span the extremes of the ideological spectrum and everything in between.
In fact, the government would not have been formed without the kingmaker role of a Muslim Arabic party. Get this, a Muslim Arabic party in Israel's parliament was essential to bring the government together. How about that, Amnesty International? Mika is a polymath, having written books ranging from biblical lessons for the modern age to Israel's geopolitics.
Not only [00:02:00] have all of his books been bestsellers in Israel, but he essentially created a new genre. Books that bring core texts of Jewish thought. to a general secular audience. He is also, or maybe foremost, a founder of Immersive Programs, fostering personal growth and group identity for young adults in Israel at a formative age in their lives.
The organization is called Beit Prat, and Micah is its president. He is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel, and among the most recent books that I mentioned as bestsellers are Catch 67, The Left, The Right, and The Legacy of the Six Day War. And most recently, The Wandering Jew. Not The Wandering Jew, The Wondering Jew.
Israel and the Search for Jewish Identity. I highly recommend both books. He's also host of one of the most popular podcasts in Israel. So what can we learn from Israel's radical turn to the political center? This is Call Me Back.[00:03:00]
Pleased to welcome My friend Mika Goodman who joins us from Jerusalem. Mika, good to see you. Hi, Dan. It's great to see you. Is it still snowy Jerusalem? No, no, it's a little bit wintry, a little bit cold, a little bit rainy, but it's not snowy anymore. But it can like swing between, you know, winter Jerusalem and balmy Jerusalem.
Exactly. In like a heartbeat. Exactly. Okay, so Mika, um, there's a lot, uh, to talk about. Uh, with you today, and the reason we wanted you on is because it does feel like we're living through increasingly insane times here in the U. S. and around the world, increasingly polarized times, just when you thought it couldn't get more polar polarized and when you thought it couldn't get more crazy, uh, and you have polarized.
Carved out a little niche for yourself in Israel for making the case for the center [00:04:00] holding in politics and in debate and in secular religious divides and a whole range of fronts and so I'm interested in the substance of it and the and the whether or not there's like a methodology for how you think about it and I want to start with the Current Israeli government and what's going actually on in Israeli politics, which could be a case study for what you're What you're arguing for as a, as a model and, and I, I just want to preface this by saying you're sort of like what, what is interesting about how you approach these debates is you try to look at them from every side you like client is in your books.
It's the case in catch 27. It's the case in the wandering Jew, where you, where you, you almost embody the perspective of people at different moments who viscerally. And stridently in some cases disagree with each other. You're like the, you know, like the way Eddie Murphy and the nutty professor, he plays like seven different characters.
So at every given moment, he's got to embody these. These different characters, sometimes in [00:05:00] the same scene. That's who you are. Mika, you are like the nutty professor of, of, of Israeli ideas and political discourse. So with that, tell us what is happening now in Israeli politics. So seven months ago, a new government was formed in Israel, and it's a very exciting and interesting government, because it's the most diverse government Israel has ever had.
Now, Dan, it's possible. It's one of the most diverse governments in the world today. We have on the right people like Ayelet and Dan, these are hardcore right wingers. And on the left, we have Mitzan Horowitz and Merav Michaeli. These are hardcore left wingers. We have settlers. Now, just, just for context, just, just so our listeners understand.
So take Ayelet Shaked, because can you just describe? How she came up, what part of Israeli politics she came up through? So, I mean, we have people from the, like, let's call it the settler religious rights and the Islamic movement, the Islamists. They're both sitting in the same government. Now, the [00:06:00] reason why this is so, um, this is shocking because we're living in a world where people can't work together.
Both sides of the aisle can't work together. Now imagine, Dan, I don't think, imagine Ted Cruz and Elizabeth Warren, sitting in the same government, solving problems together. Can you imagine that? That's what we're having in Israel now on steroids. That's the situation in Israel now, and you would expect that such a diverse government of people so, you know, ideologically so far apart, that could only create a paralyzed government, where the right stretches us to the right, the left takes us to the left.
And the government is paralyzed and the amazing news is then that this government is not paralyzed. Actually, this government liberated Israel from political paralysis. This government is getting real stuff done, like budget, solving problems. It's not easy, but the, I would say the alchemy. [00:07:00] of this moment in Israeli political history is we have an extremely diverse government and it's not a paralyzed government.
And we have to ask, what's the secret sauce of this government? How is it possible that our equivalent of Elizabeth Warren and our equivalent of Ted Cruz can actually sit together, work together, find Solutions together agree compromise and get more things for it Let me just apologize because I just want to make sure people understand this So natan yahoo's likud party had in one form or another been been leading the government for how many years?
12 at least 12 years and then In the last election, he was not able to form a government and, and that, and that meant that, meaning he couldn't form a coalition government, he couldn't get to 61, he didn't, he couldn't get to 61 seats in Israel's parliament, in the Knesset, which you need, there's 100, 120 seats, so you need a minimum of 61 seats in order to be able to form a majority government, and so it went to these [00:08:00] other parties to come together and form a coalition, but the only way they could was to cobble together these disparate parties, something like seven parties in total, is that right?
Yeah, we have, we have in here like, hardcore right, hardcore left, very religious, very secular, and um, religious right and Islamist, like it's an impossible coalition. And they put it together, and then, seven months later, it's pretty stable, you have a lot of arguments, but it's not paralyzed. It's solving problems and in some sense and you started Dan was saying we're living in a very polarized world America is so polarized and like you said just when you thought it can't get worse.
It's getting worse But America is not alone. Brazil is extremely polarized Holland is polarized Italy is polarized England England is Canada Countries are polarized, and in a polarized world, Israel has a diverse government. And so this is a grand experiment in politics. [00:09:00] And Prime Minister Bennett had an interesting point he made in his first speech in the UN.
He said there's not one pandemic, there's two pandemics. There's a biological pandemic. And there's a political pandemic. The biological pandemic is COVID. The political pandemic is polarization. And Israel is trying to lead the world, by the way, in both fronts, trying to create the knowledge that the world could imitate in both fronts.
I don't know if we're successful when it's coming to COVID. I think we, it seems like we're pretty successful when it's coming to politics. We're trying to show that a polarized world, both sides of the aisle, can not only work together, they can also solve problems together. That's the grand experiment in politics that's taking place in Israel today.
And I think there is a reason why Israel could make the impossible possible and pull this off. This grand experiment in politics today, because Israeli polarization is kind of different in its nature than American polarization. Polarization has, I think, two, always has two pieces. There's an [00:10:00] ideological component and there is an emotional component to polarization.
The ideological is like this. The left is becoming more left. The right is becoming more right and the gap between them is growing. That's polarization. There is a, but there is also an emotional component where the right despises the left and the left despise the right. And now what's on the rise is both.
The right is becoming more extreme. The left is more extreme. The center is kind of like vanishing. And the gulf between the right and left is growing. That's one piece. The second piece is that the right despises the left more than despised left in the past. The left hates the right more than hated the right in the past.
So like, like the emotional gap and the ideological gap always rise together. Here's what's weird and interesting and paradoxical in Israel. In Israel, while the emotional gap is still alive. The ideological gap is not alive anymore. This is a rare, interesting moment in Israeli [00:11:00] history, where the right and the left agree on most issues.
So the paradox of Israeli politics is this following. We hate each other like we always did in the past, but we agree with each other like we've never agreed with each other in the past. So in that sense, so, so Mika, so, so if the whole world and the rest of the world, if the ideological divide is, is deepening, and, and people are becoming farther and farther apart, and more dug in, that's what I mean by deepening.
And you're, you're actually, it's not that Israel is less worse, you're saying the opposite is happening in Israel. It's not that Israel's doing incrementally better, it's that the whole world is moving one direction, and actually the ideological divide on most issues Exactly. Israel is on the um, is moving the other side, like it's like way against, against the currents of history, where in Israel, the right and left are agreeing with each [00:12:00] other like they've never agreed before.
When you look at our politics, like Likud, the right wing party, and Yesh Ati, the more like center left party, they're like hating each other and yelling at each other and cursing each other in politics. Right wingers and left wingers in Israel. They're very similar, and they agree on most issues. So the paradox of Israeli politics is the following.
If in America, politics is polarized because the country is polarized, in Israel, the politics is polarized while the country is not polarized. So in America, the division in politics reflects a divided country. In Israel, the division in politics It's actually masking, it's hiding the fact that the country isn't that divided.
Dan, remember in 2004 in the DNC, in Barack Obama's famous speech, remember that speech? There's no red states, no blue states, only the United States. Remember that speech? He has a line there. Yeah, he, he, he was wrong. Yeah, he has a line there where he says, we're not as divided as our politics suggest. So I think that line [00:13:00] of Obama in 2004 does not describe America.
America is as divided as its politics suggests. Ironically, that line describes Israel today. The division between parties is strong. The difference, the division between Israelis is weak, where we are not as divided as our politics suggests. And I think this moment in Israeli political history where this government is created, this diverse government, we could pull this off in Israel because it's the first attempt in Israel to make politics.
reflect the country. That right wingers and left wingers in the government can work together because right wingers and left wingers in Israel actually agree with each other like we've never agreed before. That was obviously not always the case, that Israeli left wingers and Israeli right wingers agree with each other on most things.
So just explain the before, meaning what what was life like in political debates before Israeli left wingers and right wingers, [00:14:00] according to you, agreed with each other. And then I want to get to what was, what, what changed it, what catalyzed the, the emerging consensus. Okay. So there were three major issues that used to divide Israel.
One of the economics issue, the classic capitalism versus socialism issue. And that was a very, very big argument. I would say that was the defining argument of Israeli politics throughout the first 20 years of Israel's existence. Israel was governed by socialists. led by Ben Gurion, and they believed that, you know, we could create in Israel this very, uh, society based on equality, egalitarianism, controlled, companies controlled by the governments.
There were some voices like Begin and others were saying, this is wrong. We have to go through the process of liberation of the economy and privatization. That was a, and that battle, big government, small governments, that ideological battle started weakening in the seventies. And it was weakening because that debate [00:15:00] was replaced with a new debate.
The second generation, the new debate that replaced that debate, and that debate became less and less important, less and less dividing Israel. The new debate that replaced it was about land and peace. In 1967, Israel found, by the end of the war, The West Bank, Judea, Samaria, and Gaza was now in the hands of Israel.
And there was a big debate, what are we doing with this land? The right was saying, let's settle it. The left was saying, let's leave this land and trade this land for peace. That was a very heated debate. And that used to be the debate that divided Israel. The debate that replaced a question, big government, small government was bigger country, smaller country.
That was the new debate. And then now that debate of land and peace and settlements and all that kind of like lost its energy and it's lost its energy. Because most Israelis started agreeing, they started agreeing on something very paradoxical. And here is, I want to just [00:16:00] articulate a broad Israeli consensus, and it's very complicated, it's a complicated consensus.
It's something like this, most Israelis don't buy the messianic narrative that building settlements And Judea and Samaria will bring the Messiah and redemption. At the same time, most Israelis don't buy an alternative messianic narrative that if Israel leaves the West Bank, we'll have, we'll heal the Middle East and there'll be two liberal democracies living in peace, peacefully, side by side.
These two messianic myths, the myth of land and the myth of peace, most Israelis don't believe in it. They don't buy them anymore. What do they buy? They're not buying the two utopias, they're buying two different, uh, apocalyptic scenarios. And here's one scenario that Moses and Williams agree with. But before, before you get to your, your apocalyptic scenarios, Not that I want to, not that I want to [00:17:00] deprive our listeners of apocalyptic scenarios, but But do you believe that most settlers, most people living in the West Bank or in settlements in the West Bank have come to that view that you just articulated?
Yes, a hundred percent. That they've kind of let go? No, first of all, if you want to really discuss the sociology of settlers, when you're thinking about settlers, you close your eyes and you see people with a knitted kippah, like carrying a gun probably, and a hilltop. Well, actually a third of the settlers are secular.
And they don't have that, that, I, Messianic ideology. Another third are ultra Orthodox, which means they're not even Zionistic. It's complicated. They don't have a Messianic ideology. The third it's left most people that they live in the West Bank for, um, not ideological reasons. Actually, ideological settlers are a minority among.
The settlers. That's just a fact. And even among them, the [00:18:00] messianic ideology is not strong. It's not as strong as it was before. It's weakening. So yes, I do believe that, that, uh, the messianic ideology is not dominant in Israel and it's not even dominant among the settler, the settlement population. It's more complicated than that.
Okay. Okay, fine. So now, so now get to the, the apocalyptic scenario that. Both sides can agree. So here, here's the thing. Mox Israelis think that if Israel leaves the West Bank, we're, we're risking our national security, risking it big time. And here's how the scenario looks like. Israel, Israel in 2005 left the Gaza Strip after he left the Gaza Strip.
So it took about a year and a half. Hamas took over the Gaza Strip. I won't go into all the details and the lives of Israelis living roughly 10 miles from Gaza became very miserable, very miserable, but they have rockets on their heads, on their towns, in the villages. Periodically. Now, just, just, just again, just, just, just, I want to provide context for our listeners.
So 2005, Israel unilaterally [00:19:00] withdrew from Gaza. It wasn't in the context of a peace agreement. It, Israel basically said to the Palestinian leadership and to the broader Arab world and to Europe and the UN and, you know, all the various players around the world who, who claim to have an interest in this or are concerned about this, you know, we're out of Gaza.
We're done. The Palestinians can take Gaza, we're gonna just do something that I don't think there's any historical precedent for, which is Israel sent in its own soldiers, under the leadership of a right wing prime minister, Ariel Sharon, very controversial prime minister, sent in the IDF to forcibly remove Israeli citizens living in the Gaza Strip and uproot settlements from the Gaza Strip that were inhabited by Israeli citizens and and basically move them to the other side of Of the border with Gaza and and say you're done with Gaza and [00:20:00] we're done with so It was it was it's almost more It's, it's, it's more unprecedented and almost like staggering when you consider it than, than you, that's right, than you describe.
And there was an, and there was an argument back then, Dan, that this will end violence because the only reason why Palestinians in Gaza are violent towards of Israel, towards Israel is because, uh, we are, we're present in their land. We'll leave the land. So violence will end. What happened was the opposite.
A very Okay, so now So Hamas takes over, a terrorist organization takes over Gaza and starts and, uh, the, and anyone that's living roughly 10 miles from Gaza, which is roughly 50, 000 Israelis, their towns get shelled periodically and their life is filled with terror, with anxiety. So Israel looks at what happened in Gaza.
And Israelis say the following, if Israel leaves the West Bank, so there is a certain probability that what happened in Gaza will happen in the West Bank. [00:21:00] Just here's the thing, Dan, in the periphery of the West Bank, 10 miles away from the West Bank, we don't have 50, 000 Israelis, we have 5 million Israelis.
Actually 70 percent of Israeli population, culture, economy is in the periphery of the West Bank. So if the West Bank will look like Gaza, So Jerusalem will look like Sderot. Sderot is the town next to God that's being bombed periodically. So Israelis say, that might not be a good idea to repeat the pilot we did in Gaza in the West Bank and making the life of 5 million Israelis look like the life of 50, 000 Israelis in the periphery of Gaza.
That's like one example of why Israelis are afraid of leaving. The West Bank and they see it as kind of like a national security apocalypse that might happen if we leave the West Bank. Okay, and I think that's a scenario. There's other scenarios, by the way, but the scenario that many Israelis buy and we say, and [00:22:00] not in low probability will be a serious national security risk.
But at the same time, Dan. At the same time, many Israelis think that if we stay in the West Bank, and we keep our civilian and military presence in the West Bank, Israel might deteriorate to a different kind of an apocalypse. And that's the apocalypse of Israel controlling the lives of 2. 6 million Palestinians, and eventually Those 2.
6 billion Palestinians will like be like an integral part of Israel and Israel will lose our Jewish majority, our national majority. Now, Zionism is all about creating a safe home for the Jewish people. Now, in order for it to be safe Jewish home, the Jewish people, we have to have two things. We have to have Secure borders, and we have to have a clear, massive Jewish majority in Israel.
And here's kind of like a broad consensus in Israel, and [00:23:00] it's very paradoxical. If we stay in the West Bank, we're risking our national majority. If we leave the West Bank, We're risking our national security. We're screwed. If we stay in the West bank, we're screwed and we leave now. This brought this paradox is agreed among most Israelis.
So this is, I know when I said we were enjoying an invisible consensus, it's a paradoxical consensus where most Israelis feel like we should not control the lives of Palestinians. Therefore. Leave the West Bank, but we shouldn't be threatened by Palestinian militants. Therefore, we should stay in the West Bank.
That's the catch. That's the confusion that captures, I think, the psyche of most Israelis. I want to challenge this because you've, you've, until intellectualized quite persuasively why, why Israeli politics was sort of, was kind of stuck, [00:24:00] stuck in a way that, that could predict. Produce this kind of the center to emerge in, in a governing coalition, because as you, you know, like both sides were sort of stuck and kind of agreed with the other side, you know, to varying degrees.
And then that, that created this opportunity for, for, for the center. My counter to that is Israeli politics really hasn't been that polarized for a long time. The person who was polarizing fairly or not. Was Benjamin Netanyahu, whether you agree with that character, whether you think that characterization is fair or not, that, that almost anecdotally, almost every Israeli I know has, has, and had a very strong reaction to Netanyahu.
They either loved him and were willing to walk on hot coals for him, or they loathed him and, you know, thought he should be thrown out of office, if not worse, and. Again, I'm not getting into the merits of either, [00:25:00] of either side. I'm just saying, once Netanyahu is removed from the political scene, even temporarily, it just, the polarization just plummets because he's a polarizing figure.
His positions actually weren't polarizing, right? You look at the policies of this government. I would argue, in some respects, the policies of this current government is even more hardline operationally, right? Netanyahu basically had a policy that he would only respond to attacks from Hamas and Gaza when they actually hit Israelis.
Israeli citizens, Israeli homes. It seems to me that this government's policy is a click further, which is we will respond any time rockets are fired. We're not just waiting for Israelis to get hit. If they shoot, we respond. Uh, you know, this government's policy on settlements is softer or directionally different than Netanyahu's, maybe a little stronger.
So in, in, in the direction of, of, of more sympathetic to the, to the settler [00:26:00] movement, again, I'm, I'm simplifying here. It just seems that the, the, the policies haven't really changed. If anything, they may have become a little more hard line in ways that very well may be appropriate. The difference is a personality is gone.
So I'll tell you I think israel israel is not as polarized roughly ever since 2010 Maybe 2012 where the left completely started Stop believing in peace. The right stop believing in the messianic value of land. Both sides stopped selling us a utopia, and both sides started, replaced the utopia with an apocalypse.
The right stopped saying, if we sell the West Bank, the Messiah will come. Saying if we leave the West Bank, it will be a catastrophe. And the left did the same thing. It stopped saying, if we leave the West Bank, we'll have peace. It's saying, if we'll stay in the West Bank, well, there'll be a catastrophe.
And when both sides started selling the catastrophe, the new center was born because we were persuaded by both catastrophes. [00:27:00] And that's when polarization started melting. But Antonio had a role here. Just by being there, he blocked the melting of the polarization because the arguing about the issue is where it was replaced.
By an argument about the person. So he moved from two ideology ideologies, clashing to two cults of Netanyahu clashing, Netanyahu haters, and then Netanyahu admires, and now with Ni. So Netanyahu just his very presence. He's such a, you know, his, his personality was a magnet to almost all our political discussions and our political energy.
Now, netan being removed. Yeah, he, he's, he's, he's other worldly in terms of. If you look at figures, leaders around the world, I mean, he, he's, his ability to dominate. Yes. Any conversation. So it's like was extraordinary. I mean, so it's like you asked, well, if we stopped arguing about the West Bank, about the future of the West Bank, if we start agreeing on this paradox, so why didn't we, why do we continue arguing and hating each other?
Well, [00:28:00] because Netanyahu, like a person replaced the issue. We used to argue about the issue. Now we start arguing about it. Person now. Netanyahu being slowly, you know, slowly and gradually removed means we're back to the issues and we discover, hey, we actually. agree on most issues. It's a big question. Now that we agree that we're kind of confused and paralyzed and facing this catch when it comes to the West Bank, how do we deal with that?
I think we have to find, we're starting to, we're searching for a sophisticated, sophisticated way to deal with this. That's a whole different conversation. But now this is why this kind of a government could be formed. Because when Issues divided Israel, so these parties, right wingers and left wingers, couldn't work with each other.
But when issues are not dividing Israel anymore, so the different brands, the different sides of Israeli politics could actually work with [00:29:00] each other. So this government is the first attempt of Israeli politics to tap into the invisible new. Israeli consensus. I want to try another theory. Alright, no problem.
Let's say it's not about Bibi being in the frame or outside, external to the frame. I remember going on a hike with you in your neighborhood a few years ago outside of Jerusalem. And you, I vividly remember, Two, two points you made in the conversation. You were gonna, you're gonna regret going on that hike with me because I'm gonna bring both up in this conversation.
But one thing you told me was this was shortly after Trump got elected. And you, you were telling me some story about, uh, some peers of yours in the academic world in the U. S. that you were having a conversation with, and they were talking about The Trump voter. They're like, I understand. I read about the Trump voter and the Trump voter, this and the Trump voter that.
And I, and [00:30:00] I, I met a Trump voter. I spoke to a Trump voter and he told me as though the Trump voter were like, was like in a lab, like, like was a species in a lab to be studied. It was, it was, it was the quintessence of the other. It almost, and you were flabbergasted by this. And you were saying. I can't imagine ever talking about a fellow citizen no matter how much I disagree with him on politics as As like this this this category this category to study as opposed to a fellow citizen So explain, explain that phenomenon because I think that's, that reality of Israeli life in terms of how people view fellow citizens, they don't put them in demographic categories, they're fellow citizens, is the real shock absorber against polarization.
Yes, the question is, how do we create, like, I think, I think Israel, Israelis don't know this. They're so much healthier than Americans. They don't know [00:31:00] this because they feel like they're so screwed up because we see Israel with, you know, we're trapped in Israel. But when you compare polarization in Israel to polarization in other places, like in America, you realize Israel is healthier.
One of the reasons it's healthier is because our life cycle is different in Israel are in America. I think in the hearts of your life cycle, you have the college experience and in Israel, college is not that important in Israel. The military is very important. Now, not all Israelis go to the military, but like the most, but mainstream Israelis, yes.
Go to the military and they have a very different experience than than, um, Americans, American Jews going to college. And it's the following, like, um, it changes your high school experience in America in high school, you before college and this really before the military, by the way, it means that Israelis don't invest.
They're not very good in high school, but they're not very obedient. They don't do their homework, not afraid of college because of the other military. But it also means you have a different [00:32:00] post. experience in Israel. It's post military and America's post college. And if you think about like, I, for many, many Israelis, myself also military is where you serve with all brands of Israelis, all types, all kinds, and you become very friendly with all.
And, and in that sense, you can't, this is not true for all types of military experience, but you don't develop an elitist attitude because you're not speaking about other Israelis. You're best friends with different kinds of Israelis from different parts of society. You're very, very close with them. And, and where, where the, uh, your, your income or your education is not very important when you're serving in the same company, the same platoon together.
And there's an experience that many, many Israelis go through. And that's one. And by the way, there's also another very important difference. The military makes people, and I know this is against the stereotype of the military, very open [00:33:00] minded. Very open minded. And you would think, hey, the military, it's tough and there's obedience.
You think it's a closed atmosphere, therefore it closes your mind. Paradoxically, the military experience opens people's minds. And that is, and you would expect, um, coliseum the opposite, right? You're going to college, you're seeing the world, you're reading all these texts, you're meeting all these people, it will open your mind.
Because it's an open environment, it'll open your mind. Not always, but many times, people leave college with very strong convictions, strong identities, strong opinions about people with other world views. And the military experience is the opposite. And now the reason why the military experience is opposite, you come out with the military with Weaker opinions, you're less, much less certainty.
You don't have strong opinions about right wingers, about left wingers, much less certainty, much more open minded. And I think the reason is the military experience is first of all, very much, you know, you meet all brands, all kinds of people. You [00:34:00] serve people with different political worldviews, different religious worldviews, and you see them as human beings.
As people, you love them, you admire them, you're sympathetic towards them. If you're a right winger, you experience strong sympathy towards left wingers and vice versa. And you leave the army where you know that people are much more complicated and much more rich than their world views. And there's also a second reason for that, is that the military experience is also so intense that you barely remember who you were.
When you, when you enter the army after you've left the army. Let's say I was a strong right winger on the other side I'm like, I don't know if I'm a right winger anymore. I was an ardent left winger. On the other side I'm like, I'm not really sure I'm a left winger anymore. The military shakes you and the other side You forget who you were when you entered which means there's a moment after military where your mind is very open I think it's not always true.
College has the opposite impact. You leave college with strong opinions, strong convictions, and many times strong opinions about people with other convictions. So I think [00:35:00] I would say the difference, one of the reasons why Israel is less polarized in America is because of the sociological and emotional impact of the military on our minds, as opposed to the college experience on the minds of new, of the new generation of, um.
I also think the sense that most, for most Israelis not serving in the military is not an option. I mean, it's not an option by law, but it's also not an option by choice that people want to serve. And whether you're the son of a, of a tech billionaire. In Tel Aviv, or you're the son of a, of a public school teacher or a cab driver from, you know, Haifa or Hadera, you all could be serving in the same combat unit putting your lives on the line.
That's right. Which, which pops, which breaks down bubbles. And you'll become best friends. You'll become best friends. Right. So it's not, it's not, and, and, and that changes everything. It changes the way you see the world, it changes your life. Now, this is not always true, [00:36:00] Dan. Some, there are some elite units, but you still have early with elite people.
That's not always true, but for critical mass of Israelis, what you've described is a living reality and that critical mass is injecting a lot of health into Israel, which is one of the reasons why Israel is not as polarized as America. Um, so in the U S another source of. Maybe, I don't know if it's a source or it's a, or a byproduct of polarization is, is, is the war on excellence.
The debate about excellence and merit and achievement and who is, who is really responsible for one's success. You know, we, we had, we had Bret Stephens, uh, on a couple weeks ago and he was making the point that when people look at someone like me or you and they say, oh, you're successful, it's never your, One's own accomplishments and hard work and and and grit or whatever that contributed your success It was your circumstances and America is structurally divided because certain [00:37:00] people just don't have access and are not shaped by the circumstances There's other people so therefore there's no such thing as real accomplishment or self earned accomplishment And, uh, Adrian Wooldridge, with The Economist, uh, magazine, wrote this book called The Aristocracy of Talent, How Meritocracy Made the Modern World.
We had him on as well on the podcast to talk about this, what a disaster it will be if there is a successful war on merit. And I told him, and I don't think we got into it on the podcast, maybe at the end, but I know we talked about it after the recording, sort of in the virtual green room, if you will, and I said to him, you know, in Israel, Israelis, young Israelis get recruited for some of these elite technology units, right, 8200, uh, you know, Talpiot, we can go on 9900, and these, and these Units are like the MIT and the Stanford version of Israeli military life, and they become like a direct conveyor [00:38:00] belt to high paying, wealth accumulating, highly influential jobs at some of the most powerful.
Tech companies in Israel and often some of the most powerful tech companies in the world and yet there's not a debate in Israel I don't think about the fairness of who gets to serve in those units and not and and there's not Resentment about this classmate that got recruited to serve in that elite unit Whereas this other classmate did not first of all is my characterization, correct?
And second of all, why doesn't that sense of resentment? Exist at the at the at the fever pitch that it exists in the United States, right? Okay, so I think it does exist, but it's not. It's not so loud and and brutal like you're experiencing now in the United States. But if I understand what you're experiencing, what you're experiencing United States, but there is.
There is a common complaint in Israel that those [00:39:00] elite units of the military are drawing mainly Ashkenazi Israelis as opposed to Sephardi so just just for our listeners explain explain difference quickly. So, okay. So here's here's here's how in Israel I'm talking about talking about the Israelis that go to the military which are almost all them Not not all but mainly Jewish and not old for orthodox.
So it's it's I would say it's seven We're talking about 70 percent of Israelis Roughly and, um, but among the 70 percent of Israelis, there's Israelis that are descendants of immigrants from Europe. Which we call Ashkenazi Israelis, and they're descendants of people that came from Arab speaking countries, Muslim countries, which we call Mizrahi, or Sephardi.
Now, by the way, it's roughly 50 50. It's roughly 50 50. 50 percent of Israelis are Middle Eastern, people that came from, to Israel from Morocco, from Kurdistan, from Iraq, from, from Syria, from Egypt. from Libya, from Tunisia, like, [00:40:00] so 50 percent of Israelis are Middle Eastern and roughly 50 percent are European.
And there's always an attempt in Israel to turn those two, uh, groups of Israelis and to like, you know, different political identities and to do the good old American thing of identity politics. But in Israel, it's like. Ashkenazi, European Israel versus Sephardi, uh, uh, uh, Middle Eastern Israelis. Now, the reason why it doesn't work that well, first of all, interestingly enough, in America, uh, identity politics comes more from the left and in Israel, the people that play that card are on the right.
That's one irony we have in Israel. The identity politics is coming from the right. By the way, Bibi Netanyahu in his last years in politics, he was playing the identity politics game. Yeah, he was saying the Middle Eastern Israelis are all voting for me and all the European Israelis are against me. He was trying to play that game, [00:41:00] one tribe versus the other tribe.
But it's not, it exists and we see it like. For example, who gets to go to the elite units, but it's weak for two reasons. One, when it comes to the military, the military is doing everything it can to recruit the best from all groups in Israel to the elites units and also realize it has to do a better job in doing that.
That's one, but two, most Israelis don't buy the European versus Middle Eastern versions of Israelis as our dominant characteristic of our identity. First of all, because few generations. Like, like so many Israelis are the sons and daughters of parents, which are both European and Middle Eastern. We marry each other all the time in Israel.
These groups are not really, you know, are not separate groups. We live with each other. We marry each other. Therefore, the differences are, the differences used to be great and they're getting smaller and smaller throughout time. And that is because [00:42:00] Israelis, their most, their more dominant identity is not if I'm European or Middle Eastern is that I'm Israeli, I am Jewish.
So identity is something that for most Israelis, not all Israelis, not all Israelis are Zionists and not all Israelis are Jewish. But for most Israelis, identity is not what divides us, it's what unites us. So even though we have some of that here. It's not the main issue. It's not what divides us. That's not to say that there aren't important divides in Israel.
It's not between right and left. It's not between European and Middle Eastern. It's between Zionist and ultra Orthodox on the one side, and between mainstream Israelis, which are Jewish. And 20 percent of Israelis that are Arab, and they don't, most of them don't go to the military. Those are the problems we have.
They're not, it's not between the hardcore 70 percent of Israelis, which are Zionists, Jewish, serve in the military. There are attempts to divide that group [00:43:00] into two subgroups, but those attempts are not very successful. So, are there lessons in terms of your methodology for how you think about bringing down tension?
So, my method of bringing down polarization is Talmudic in the following sense. When people ask, like, what's the Jewish canonical text, they think it's the Bible, the Hebrew Bible. That's true, but it's not completely true. The even more important text is the Talmud. That's, the Talmud is the text that shaped Jewish traditions, Jewish culture throughout the generations.
Now, what is the Talmud? The Talmud is an argument. It's the only ancient text, which is a canonization of an argument. So one rabbi has one opinion, the other rabbi has another opinion. The first rabbi gives his arguments why he thinks he's right. The other guy's wrong. The other rabbi says why he's right.
The other guy's wrong. And that's it. That's the Talmud. It's an argument. It's a sacred argument. [00:44:00] Now, here's the interesting thing, Dan, the argument, the Talmud that barely has conclusions. It only has debates became a sacred text. What does it mean? It's a sacred text. It means that Jewish scholars throughout all generations were studying the Talmud.
So they're studying a debate. They're studying an argument. And the way Jews are expected to study Talmud is the following. They're supposed to study a Talmud, not alone, but with a partner. It's called a chavruta, a learning partner. And Jewish culture expects both sides, both, you know, you're studying Talmud with your friend, and Jewish culture expects you to argue with your friend.
with your learning partner, with your chavuta, about the meaning of the Talmud. Now, what does this create? This creates a culture where you realize that every argument has both sides. And when the Talmud trains your mind, it's the following to end. [00:45:00] Oh, and by the way, the kind of heroes that the Talmud admires are not the people.
That can make the point that they are right, but it's people that could somehow escape their own skin, see the world from someone else's eyes, from their opponent's eyes, and make their argument beg better than them. Those are the kind of people that the Talmud admires. My methodology, Dan is a Talmudic methodology.
It's saying the following, let's try like the Talmud canonized both sides. Both sides of every argument, so I try to do in my books, and this is what I'm trying to do in order to offer a methodology that heals Israeli polarization, is be Talmudic about it, saying, let's not, let's not ask why the right is right and the left is wrong, or why the left is right and the right is wrong.
Let's ask something else. Why is, what's brilliant about the arguments of the Israeli right? And what's brilliant about the arguments of the Israeli left? Why is it? That, that [00:46:00] secularism is deep and important and true. And why is it that religious way of living life is deep, important, true, and brilliant?
That's Talmudic. To see the best of every argument. To give every argument it's best argument. It's, it's, it's, it's best, best light. So that's, I think, what I'm trying to do in my methodology is taking the ancient Jewish Talmudic methodology and apply it. On modern Israeli politics, on modern Israeli debates, and just to show, because I think that the, and here's, and here's maybe the, I would say, maybe the lesson, maybe for polarization also in America, and it's the following.
How do we respond to difference? If you're a right winger, how do you respond to a left wing argument? So emotionally speaking, we can always respond with anxiety. What I'm offering is to respond with curiosity, and here's why. Curiosity and anxiety are both a response to the same thing, [00:47:00] to difference. When you see something you're not used to, it could be a person, it could be a scene, it could be an argument, an ideology.
Let's say you're a capitalist and you suddenly meet a socialist, like a Marxist. You can respond with anxiety. Why? Because it's so different! And anything that's different is scary, but you can also respond with curiosity. Why? Cause it's so different and everything that's different is interesting. So healing polarization is not about replacing hate with love.
It's about replacing anxiety with curiosity as the instinct you use to respond to difference. It's about transforming how we respond to difference. Imagine liberal Democrats. With, I don't, they don't need to think that Republicans, that right wingers, that conservatives got it right. They have to realize that they're interesting.
It's interesting, and why is it interesting? Because they think differently than us. So actually a polarized world, Dan, is a world that lost its [00:48:00] curiosity. And to heal a polarized world is not to replace hate with love. It's about replacing anxiety with curiosity. And that's what the Talmud knew how to do way back then.
Less than 2, 000 years ago, the Talmud was about every argument. Not all arguments are true, but every argument is interesting. So what I'm trying to do in Israel is trying to map out all the arguments and showing the left that the right is extremely interesting and showing to the right that the left is fascinating.
That's what I'm trying to do in Israel and that's, I think, the antidote to polarization is Curiosity and curiosity is because it's the healthier in response to otherness, to difference, much healthier than anxiety, because anxiety always leads to aggression and curiosity leads to conversation. Okay. So I want to just, uh, I I'll at some point, we don't have to do it today.
I, I'm gonna bring you back on, 'cause I wanna have a separate conversation about your most recent book, the Wandering Jew, because that's a whole [00:49:00] other version of what you're talking about, exactly what you're talking about right now. But, but applied to, as you said, it's applied to religion, not, not this political.
Uh, debate. So look, I wanted to, because that's, I think that's a, an important conversation. I don't want to shoehorn it in. Um, what I do want to, uh, just address with you before we wrap is one, I just, I think I'd be doing, uh, I, I would be remiss if I didn't have you at least even briefly spell out what your proposed solution is for what seems to be the most intractable.
political debate, Israel at least, has gotten itself in with the rest of the world, maybe not inside Israel, which is how to resolve the Israeli Palestinian conflict. And you, you are one of the few thinkers who's put forward, in Israel that I know, who's put forward a solution that, or proposed solution, that reflects where the Israeli center is.
So you described how the Israeli center kind of Those within the center left and the center right all kind of agree with one another. [00:50:00] But now you've taken that energy, that energy of agreement, if there's such a thing, um, and, and tried to channel it into a path forward. What's your path? Okay, so it's, it's what we call shrinking.
I'm talking about shrinking the conflict. Yeah, shrinking the conflict. So the three important things to understand in order to understand shrinking the conflict. One, let's normalize The way we think about this problem, almost all problems we think about the following way. We can't solve them. It doesn't mean we ignore them all.
But when it comes to the conflict, there's two options. Either we try to solve it, end it, heal the conflict, end the conflict, solve the conflict. If we can't do that. We just ignore it, do nothing about it. Now, think about Dan, do we think about, do we, do we think that way about car accidents? Like, do we ever hear someone say we have to end car accidents?
Oh, and if you can't, let's just not do anything about it. Do we think that way about COVID? I think New Zealand tried to end COVID. It didn't really work. But if you can't end COVID, do we just ignore COVID? Like, we don't think about [00:51:00] problems that way. When it comes to the conflict. All over the world, everyone that thinks about the conflict is trapped in a false dichotomy.
Either you're in the, let's end the conflict camp, or we can't end it so there's nothing we can do about it camp. Right? Which is called managing the conflict. Keep things the way they are. Shrinking the conflict is like, when it comes to COVID, we only, we ask one question. How do we shrink the amount of COVID?
When it comes to crime, we ask, how do we shrink the amount of crime? When it comes to crack sense, we ask, how do we shrink the amount of crack sense? Let's, when it comes to the conflict, let's treat this problem like we treat any other problem. How let's shrink the conflict. From an Israeli point of view, this is what it means.
It means what are the steps that we take that dramatically increase the amount of Palestinian self governance without decreasing the amount of Israeli security. And all this without a peace treaty, without a, you know, a handshake of the white house law of a lawn without a Nobel prize, not the big bang, not the grand solution, but real steps on the [00:52:00] ground that increase Palestinian self governance without decreasing Israeli security.
Now, steps like now, here's the thing Palestinians already are already enjoying. a certain amount of self governance in the West Bank. It's far from being enough. Okay. And, and there are real steps on the ground that could increase Palestinian self governance and those steps will not, will not threaten Israeli security.
Those are steps that most Israelis can agree on. Let's just do them tomorrow morning, not dependent on peace, not dependent on ending the conflict. Just do it because we can do this, do it. And the reason why these steps do reflect the broad Israeli consensus is here's two things Israelis want. We don't want to control the lives of Palestinians.
We don't want to be in a position where we're threatened by Palestinians. And when we think about the game of all or nothing, we're paralyzed. We're thinking about just shrieking the conflict. There are steps that liberate us from this paralysis, that increase Palestinian self governance and don't decrease Israeli security.
[00:53:00] Um, there's like the main steps about, about building a system that enables Palestinian freedom of movement. Complete freedom of mode for Palestinians that's achievable, liberating Palestinian economy. So the Palestinian economy will not be controlled by Israel and freedom to expand and build their villages, their towns, their homes, the freedom to build, the freedom to move, the freedom to prosper.
Those are free freedoms that Israel can create for Palestinians without peace, without ending the conflict. And here's a paradox, if moving on the ground. Changing circumstances on the ground depends on peace. Peace that's not coming means no movement on the ground. We're so used to people saying that the myth of settlements is freezing the status quo.
That's true. But also the myth of peace is freezing the status quo. If we're willing, like most Israelis are, to give up the myth of land and the myth of peace. We could break this false dichotomy and start shrieking the conflict [00:54:00] tomorrow morning, not waiting for peace, not waiting for Palestinians and Mandela to work now.
And most ways we agree on steps that don't risk their security. So that's I think that's a tell. I mean, shrieking the conflict is important because It's the only way forward for Israelis that are paralyzed by the caps that I described before. Like if we feel like we can't leave the West Bank and we can't stay in the West Bank, so we're paralyzed, this is a way to break paralysis and move forward.
And I think most Israelis, and by the way, also many Palestinians realize that we should stop playing the all or nothing game because I'm going to stop. We're stuck with nothing, and find real ways to move forward on the grounds. Okay. Before we, before we wrap, last point, and I know we'll do a separate conversation on, on your most recent book, A Wandering Jew, but there's one point in that book, which is an important piece of wisdom that relates specifically, I think, to Reducing polarization, which is your concept of a digital [00:55:00] free Saturn.
And I think that's relevant to everybody. Jews, non Jews, so just, let's wrap by you giving us some wisdom here. So, Rabbi, I mean, all of us who had wisdom, but this particular, okay, so Rabbi Jonathan Zaks has a very interesting point that political polarization is a societal equivalent of climate change. I just think about that line, political polarization as a societal equivalent of climate change.
So we have two big problems in the world today. Planet Earth burning up and political conversations burning up now, really, like I say, if planet Earth burns up a little bit more, maybe planet Earth won't be able to inhabit humanity. If our political debates heat up a little bit more, our democracies won't survive.
So if global warming is threatening planet earth, political polarization is threatening our democracies. The interesting analogy between these two is they're both unintended consequences of a technological [00:56:00] revolution. The industrial revolution that happened roughly 250 years ago had an unintended consequence, which is global warming.
The digital revolution that only started like roughly 20 years ago also has an unintended consequence, which is Political polarization. So, um, so everybody's asking today, how do we save planet earth from global warming from climate change? So a way to think about that question is how do we protect planet earth from the unintended consequences of the industrial revolution?
I think we should ask the same question about the digital revolution. How do we protect our minds and democracies from the unintended consequences of the digital revolution? Like what's the equivalent of a green movement when it comes to democracy, when it comes protecting not earth from the industrial revolution, but democracy from the digital revolution?
How does that look like? Which means we can only protect our politics or democracy. If we heal our relationship with technology now, a digital Sabbath, yes, which is [00:57:00] the point you would probably take me to is. A beginning of an answer of how do we meet ourselves and meet each other not through screens, but face to face And creating now, this is an idea by um, sherry turkle from mit.
She says We should all have at least an hour a day with no smartphones And a day a week with no smartphones and maybe even a week a year with no smartphones We should meet ourselves and meet each other not in a way that's mediated by technology when technology Tries to connect us. Many times it divides us.
But if we try to meet each other, not through technology, maybe I see you, I don't see a right wing. I just see you. I see your personality. I don't see a left winger. I see your qualities, your sense of humor. People are more than there are politics. But when we meet through screens, we're we shrink ourselves into the size of our politic and we shrink each other the size of our political worldviews.
So the, so the idea of, um, [00:58:00] so again, when it comes to Sabbath and as a Jew. There's also a false dichotomy. Either you observe all the laws of Sabbath, or you don't have a Sabbath. Also here, we need to shrink the conflict. I mean, we could have partial Sabbath. And in a digital world, a day where we, um, right.
You might not observe all the laws of Sabbath, but many Israelis say, yes, but I shut down my smartphone in Sabbath. Sabbath is a day where my attention is present where I am and with the people that I am with. So that's taking an ancient tradition. Judaism Sabbath to try to heal modern problems, polarization, um, distraction, and trying and trying to live in a world where we enjoy the blessings of technology, but not be controlled by technology, maybe ancient traditions.
Could turn into solutions to very contemporary problems. All right, Mika, that means that the next time we have this conversation, I don't want to do it through, uh, a screen like we're doing it now. [00:59:00] It'll have to be when I'm, uh, next in Jerusalem. We'll do it in person. It'll, it'll be our own, uh, digital Sabbath.
I'm looking forward towards that.
That's our show for today. To read more on Mika Goodman or read any of his Pieces, you can do that at the Shalom Hartman website, which is hartman, H A R T M A N dot org dot I L. You can also purchase the English translations of his books at your favorite independent bookseller at barnesandnoble. com or that other e commerce site.
I think they're calling it Amazon, and I've gotten many requests to stop making that comment. I'm not sure I'm ready to give it up, so just go to Barnes and Noble. Call Me Back is produced by Ilan Benatar. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.[01:00:00]