AI transcript
0:00:03 “An experimental procedure that is giving culture.”
0:00:06 “To get a heart transplant from a genetically modified pig.”
0:00:10 There’s over 100,000 people on the organ transplant waitlist.
0:00:15 And some scientists think the answer might be pigs.
0:00:20 “Nobody in the world knew how a human would react to a pig heart, right?
0:00:26 But next day when we asked him, you know, how are you feeling, he said, ‘Oink, oink.'”
0:00:31 “This week on Unexplainable, are pig hearts really the answer?”
0:00:36 “Follow Unexplainable for new episodes every Wednesday.”
0:00:42 Hey, I’m John Glenn Hill, host of a brand new show from Vox called Explain It To Me.
0:00:45 This week, the ethical murkiness of zoos.
0:00:51 “Do we as humans feel like we deserve to just be able to walk around and see these animals?
0:00:52 Maybe we don’t deserve that.
0:00:56 Maybe there’s just some animals we don’t get to see.”
0:00:58 To zoo or not to zoo?
0:01:00 That’s this week on Explain It To Me.
0:01:03 Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:13 Will the VP debate move the needle in what’s shaping up to be a neck and neck election?
0:01:16 You never know in advance what will be the thing that matters and the thing that doesn’t
0:01:17 matter.
0:01:25 But Donald Trump will be almost 80, and J.D. Vance will be one cheeseburger away from
0:01:27 the presidency should they win.
0:01:33 I’m Preet Bharara, and this week, The Atlantic magazine’s David Frum joins me on my podcast
0:01:36 Stay Tuned With Preet to break down what happened at the debate.
0:01:38 The episode is out now.
0:01:48 Search and follow Stay Tuned With Preet wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:49 Welcome to Raging Moderates.
0:01:51 I’m Scott Galloway.
0:01:52 And I’m Jessica Tarlev.
0:01:54 Today, we have a special episode.
0:01:55 We’re going to focus on Israel.
0:02:01 We have an interview with, I would call him a friend and a colleague of Fox or Jess.
0:02:03 She spends a lot of time on Fox, doesn’t she?
0:02:05 We’re talking about Dan Sienor.
0:02:06 Yeah, he does.
0:02:08 We love having him on our air.
0:02:12 He makes all of us a lot smarter and a lot more thoughtful, no matter where you fall
0:02:14 politically about thinking about Israel.
0:02:19 Okay, let’s bring in Dan to help us understand what’s going on in the Middle East.
0:02:25 Dan is an expert on politics in the Middle East and actually works at Elliott, a large
0:02:26 hedge fund.
0:02:29 Dan, where does this podcast find you?
0:02:30 New York City.
0:02:31 Upper West Side of Manhattan.
0:02:32 That’s right.
0:02:36 I saw an Instagram of you at a Jets game with your wife.
0:02:42 It was date night and I’m grateful that I am married to a woman who will go to New York
0:02:47 Jets games with me as you can appreciate Scott as my boys get older and older.
0:02:52 I’m imagining the world when they’re no longer under a roof and my company at Jets games
0:02:53 will be my spouse.
0:02:56 And the fact that she’s a willing participant is a beautiful thing.
0:02:57 She’s a better woman than I.
0:02:58 I know.
0:03:01 I’m not a fan and I will not go to a Jets game.
0:03:05 I was trying to imagine the response I would get suggesting for date night we go to a Jets
0:03:06 game.
0:03:10 Tell your husband that if he’s an orphan during any Jets game.
0:03:11 Oh, you want to take him?
0:03:12 We’ll take him.
0:03:13 We will take him.
0:03:14 We take orphans all the time.
0:03:17 Actually Jets Nation has a lot of orphans.
0:03:18 So we…
0:03:19 I heard that about you people.
0:03:20 Yeah, yeah.
0:03:22 So we are happy to take those wandering Jets fans.
0:03:23 Okay.
0:03:28 So for those of you who don’t know, Dan has sort of been our go-to on all things Israel.
0:03:33 I see the pager and the wonky-talky operation as the most precise anti-terrorism operation
0:03:35 in history.
0:03:39 And I would just like to get your view on that event and then subsequently what you
0:03:44 think is going on in the last two days, Israel’s, I don’t know what you would call it, more
0:03:48 aggressive stance or if you would want to call it preemptive, I don’t know, escalation,
0:03:51 whatever term you want to, whatever you want to use, but I’d love to just get your thoughts
0:03:54 on the state of play around the most recent events.
0:03:55 Yeah.
0:04:03 So Hezbollah, which as many of your listeners know is a proxy army of Iran that is in southern
0:04:11 Lebanon and it has been waging warfare against Israel for decades.
0:04:15 And in 2000, Israel had a presence in southern Lebanon.
0:04:19 In 2000, Israel left southern Lebanon.
0:04:23 And so there’s been no Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.
0:04:28 There’s been no territorial dispute about the Israeli-Lebanese border.
0:04:33 And yet this fighting force, Hezbollah, which is calling it a terrorist organization or
0:04:35 terrorist proxy doesn’t really capture it.
0:04:40 It’s like a light infantry army of a sovereign nation and they’re sitting on about 200,000
0:04:44 rockets, many of which are precision guided.
0:04:49 And they have just been bombing Israel on and off over the last couple decades, which
0:04:55 culminated in a war in 2006 when Hezbollah kidnapped three Israelis.
0:04:59 And things had been quiet for certain periods.
0:05:02 And then October 7th happened on an Israel-Southern border.
0:05:08 And on October 8th, before Israel even responded to the Hamas attack, Hezbollah joined the
0:05:09 fight.
0:05:16 And the bombing from Hezbollah in Israel’s northern communities has been unrelenting.
0:05:20 Israel’s had to evacuate tens of thousands, something like 70,000 to 80,000 Israelis
0:05:25 from the northern part of the country who haven’t lived there since October 8th, since
0:05:27 the bombing from Hezbollah began.
0:05:34 And so you have a whole part of Israel’s northern communities that are just, they become ghost
0:05:35 towns.
0:05:39 People, places like Kiryat Shmona and Matula towns I’ve been to are just, it’s totally
0:05:42 depressing how these towns are empty and these people are scattered.
0:05:45 They’re internally displaced in their own country.
0:05:51 And so where we are now is Israel is in the midst of basically what looks like a seven
0:05:52 front war.
0:05:56 We tend to focus for obvious reasons on Israel’s war with Hamas, but that’s just one of the
0:05:58 fronts.
0:06:02 And the war with Hezbollah is heating up.
0:06:07 It turns out that one of the reasons the war in Gaza has been so hard is because Hamas
0:06:11 basically operated on an analog level.
0:06:15 They were very good about having no electronic communications, which has made a the detection
0:06:21 of what Hamas was trying to do and be fighting with Hamas very hard.
0:06:23 Hezbollah and Iran are different.
0:06:30 They are much higher tech and they communicate a lot on semi-conventional devices.
0:06:35 And so Israel is actually much more capable and effective in fighting Hezbollah.
0:06:39 I think they would be if they wind themselves up in a war with Iran.
0:06:46 And in order to force Hezbollah to make some decisions at a minimum to de-escalate from
0:06:53 their fighting on Israel’s northern border, they had to ramp up their own operations.
0:06:55 They’ve mostly been in defensive posture.
0:06:58 Israel now they’ve pivoted to an offensive posture.
0:07:03 And what you’re referring to, Scott, which was the activating the pagers and the walkie-talkies,
0:07:10 I think that was a precursor to a much more formal and conventional war.
0:07:12 I think you’re seeing some of that right now.
0:07:18 Israel is now through its air force bombing parts of southern Lebanon, and they want to
0:07:23 give Hezbollah an opportunity to withdraw from Israel’s border and get about 10 kilometers
0:07:25 north of Israel’s border.
0:07:29 If Hezbollah won’t do that, then I think you may get a ground invasion.
0:07:31 And so, and I think you’re exactly right.
0:07:35 I think there have been two reveals here over the last few weeks.
0:07:42 The first reveal is what you said, which is Israel did not, you know, if it had to go
0:07:46 after a lot of terrorists and terrorist operatives and commanders in Hezbollah, it could have
0:07:51 just bombed whole towns and villages to do that, and there would have been a lot of collateral
0:07:52 damage.
0:07:58 Instead, Israel had a multiyear, I think close to 15 years in the making of this, of putting
0:08:03 the capabilities in place to do the walkie-talkie and pager attack, to hit the people that wanted
0:08:08 to do, hit with real precision and minimizing civilian casualties.
0:08:12 So all the blowback against Israel right now for what it did is like a reveal, because
0:08:16 what the blowback is saying, the criticism of Israel is saying is, you can’t respond
0:08:17 at all.
0:08:21 It used to be Israel can’t respond if there’s a risk of collateral damage, which is holding
0:08:26 Israel to a standard that no other country is held to in warfare, especially defensive
0:08:27 war.
0:08:33 And now when Israel hits back with precision against the terrorists, that’s somehow not
0:08:35 allowed either.
0:08:42 And the other reveal is, I obviously am very supportive of Israel’s response to Hamas.
0:08:48 At the same time, I recognize there are some Palestinians, some moderate Palestinians,
0:08:53 that believe there’s a legitimate territorial dispute.
0:08:56 I think the more moderate forces want to figure out a way to resolve that territorial dispute
0:09:01 between Israel and the Palestinians, the way Hamas is approaching it is not a serious
0:09:05 or a moderate way of approaching that issue.
0:09:08 But you could argue there’s a territorial dispute.
0:09:11 With Hezbollah, there is no territorial dispute.
0:09:17 Hezbollah itself is not saying, if we can just have our own path to self-determination,
0:09:21 if we can just have this piece of territory, they’re not claiming there’s any piece of
0:09:23 territory in dispute.
0:09:27 They are quite clear that the only objective is annihilation.
0:09:30 That is there of Israel and of the Jewish state.
0:09:32 That is their raison d’etre.
0:09:39 And so I think while this next front is going to be very hard for everyone, I do think for
0:09:42 the reasons you’re saying and that I’m outlining, it’s starting to reveal what’s really going
0:09:43 on here.
0:09:49 You mentioned the term ground invasion, and I just wanted to pick up on that.
0:09:52 Do you think that that’s definitely going to happen?
0:09:55 What kind of timeline are we operating on?
0:10:00 And if you say that this is something that could have been planned over a decade, what
0:10:06 was the impetus for doing it right this particular moment or last week?
0:10:11 So I think that the, when I say what I think was planned a decade, if not a decade and
0:10:17 a half, was in the works, was just developing the communications capability.
0:10:26 So those pagers, Israel’s coming up with the plan to sell Hezbollah, the pagers, Israel.
0:10:31 And you know, on this particular note in terms of what Israel did, I want to be clear.
0:10:33 These are, this is all I’ve heard secondhand.
0:10:37 So the IDF or the Israeli intelligence community have not confirmed these details.
0:10:43 But my understanding is it was years in the making to get Hezbollah, the pagers, develop
0:10:47 the capabilities that Israel demonstrated, what we think Israel demonstrated over the
0:10:49 last week.
0:10:54 So that was very long in the making with the understanding that Hezbollah has been a constant
0:10:55 threat for Israel.
0:11:02 And if Israel is ever in a situation where it has to fight a war against Hezbollah, it
0:11:09 would be important to destabilize the leadership of Hezbollah and destabilize the commanders
0:11:14 that would be commanding the Hezbollah forces into Israel, it would be effective to destabilize
0:11:16 them in advance of a war.
0:11:22 Now the analogy I can give you is the 1967 Six Day War, which Israel was surrounded in
0:11:27 numerous countries, the pointy end of the spear were Egypt and Syria, but there were
0:11:30 many other countries that joined the war against Israel.
0:11:38 On the eve of the Six Day War, Israel effectively took out the air forces, if you will, of Egypt
0:11:43 and Syria, which made Israel’s ability to fight the war much more effective.
0:11:44 I think there’s a comparison here.
0:11:50 I think taking out the leadership through these devices and making them distrustful
0:11:54 of how they can communicate, we’re finding that right now, that there’s now all this
0:12:00 confusion about how they communicate with each other was a step before the war Israel
0:12:02 knew it was going to have to fight.
0:12:07 Now my only caveat to that is, when I say to my Israeli friends, as I did recently this
0:12:09 morning, does this mean the war is on?
0:12:11 Like is the war with Hezbollah on?
0:12:17 If you go on any Israeli press site right now, you will see Israel bombing southern Lebanon.
0:12:20 They say, “No, the war has been going on since October 8th.”
0:12:26 Hezbollah started bombing Israel on October 8th, so we are now finally responding.
0:12:33 And so the communications, the pager attack, was the step right before the formal operation
0:12:40 to strengthen Israel’s capabilities as they went in on the regular operation.
0:12:41 What is the objective?
0:12:48 The objective is, I’ll just make it really simple, after the 2006 Lebanon War, the UN
0:12:52 stepped in and the Lebanese Armed Forces stepped in, because keep in mind, this is not a war
0:12:53 against Lebanon.
0:12:56 Hezbollah is occupying parts of Lebanon.
0:12:59 Hezbollah is not the government of Lebanon.
0:13:05 And the Lebanese Armed Forces and UNIFIL, these UN peacekeeping forces, agreed to create
0:13:12 a buffer zone between Israel’s border with Lebanon and what’s called the Latani River,
0:13:14 which is really just like a stream.
0:13:17 And that buffer zone is called 25 kilometers.
0:13:21 And the idea was, if Hezbollah is not anywhere in that area between Israel’s border and the
0:13:27 Latani River, it will be harder for Hezbollah to wreak havoc in Israel because there’s just
0:13:28 a big buffer.
0:13:35 But the parties that were supposed to secure that buffer zone were UNIFIL, the UN peacekeepers,
0:13:36 and the Lebanese Armed Forces.
0:13:41 They both have basically scattered since 2006.
0:13:42 Hezbollah’s back in there.
0:13:44 There is no buffer zone anymore.
0:13:49 So Israel’s saying, at a minimum, we need to reestablish a buffer zone here.
0:13:54 Get Hezbollah right off our border from breathing down our throats and move their 200,000 rockets
0:14:03 and rocket launchers and all their capabilities back if we have a shot at bringing some peace
0:14:08 and quiet to our border and avoiding full-out regional war.
0:14:12 And I think what Israel’s communicating both to the White House, what Israel’s communicating
0:14:16 to other players in the region, we are doing what we’re doing now.
0:14:17 This looks like war.
0:14:21 It is war, but it is to head off a full-on regional war.
0:14:23 So, I’m curious.
0:14:26 I thought of you this morning on the way back from Madrid.
0:14:30 I opened the New York Times, and the lead article is a guest essay by a gentleman named
0:14:31 Michael Walzer.
0:14:34 And I just want to read you an excerpt and get your response.
0:14:39 “Yes, the devices most probably were being used by Hezbollah operatives for military
0:14:40 purposes.
0:14:44 This might make them a legitimate target in the continuous cross-border battles between
0:14:46 Israel and Hezbollah.
0:14:53 But the attacks, which likely killed at least 37 people and wounded thousands of others,
0:14:57 came when the operatives were not operating.
0:15:05 They had not been mobilized, they were not engaged, rather, they were at home with their
0:15:11 families, sitting in cafes, shopping in food markets, seeing civilians who were randomly
0:15:15 killed and among civilians who were randomly killed and injured.
0:15:21 Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the attacks, but is widely believed to
0:15:22 be behind them.
0:15:27 If these allegations are true, it is important for friends of Israel to say this was not
0:15:28 right.
0:15:30 Your response?”
0:15:37 My friend Dara Horn wrote this book a few years ago, which I’ve been thinking a lot
0:15:41 about books as we approach the one-year anniversary of October 7th.
0:15:45 I’ve been thinking, I get approached a lot by people who say, “I want to learn more
0:15:50 about how October 7th happened, what led to October 7th, the history of Israel, the
0:15:53 history of anti-Semitism, the history of the Jewish people.”
0:15:54 I get that.
0:15:55 And I’ve been thinking about books to recommend to people.
0:16:01 And this woman, Dara Horn, wrote this book called “People Love Dead Jews.”
0:16:10 And her point is if you strip away many of the criticisms of Israel and what Israel does,
0:16:17 what you often hear is a version of Israel has a right to defend itself, but don’t defend
0:16:19 yourself too much is basically what they’re saying.
0:16:24 They don’t say that, but that’s what they mean, meaning we have empathy.
0:16:28 We sympathize for suffering Jews.
0:16:35 As long as Jews are being slaughtered, they are David and not Goliath, and we want to
0:16:36 be with David.
0:16:44 But the moment Israel strikes back to defend itself, suddenly all those deaths that were
0:16:52 averted by Israel striking back are forgotten, and Israel is somehow viewed as the aggressor.
0:16:59 So to bring back this piece that you’re referring to here, Scott, or that you’re quoting from,
0:17:05 what he’s basically saying is it would only be okay for Israel to activate their pager
0:17:11 attack once those Hezbollah operatives are actually pulling the trigger, once they’re
0:17:16 actually loading the rocket into the rocket launcher and launching it into Tel Aviv.
0:17:18 That’s when it’s okay for Israel to strike.
0:17:23 But the reality is at that point it’s probably too late, because if the Hezbollah operative
0:17:26 is sitting there with the rocket launcher and he activates a rocket, that rocket’s probably
0:17:31 gone and it’s probably landing somewhere in the center of Israel and slaughtering a lot
0:17:32 of people.
0:17:37 So right in the center of Israel, you remember this attack against this Druze village that
0:17:42 killed 12 children on a soccer field in northern Israel a few weeks ago.
0:17:48 On Friday, Israel conducted an attack, an operation against a meeting of the leadership
0:17:50 of the Rod Juan force.
0:17:54 The Rod Juan is the most elite fighting force of Hezbollah, and the senior officers were
0:17:59 having a meeting because they were planning an October 7th-like attack in the Upper Galilee
0:18:00 in northern Israel.
0:18:03 They were planning to do another version of October 7th in the north.
0:18:06 So what was Israel supposed to do?
0:18:10 Should Israel have waited for them to actually be gone to launch that attack?
0:18:15 Or when they have intelligence that the meeting is happening, should they actually take these
0:18:17 guys out before the attack happens?
0:18:23 My bet is if they do it the way they did it, fewer Israelis will be killed for sure, and
0:18:26 fewer Lebanese civilians will be killed as well.
0:18:30 So none of this stuff is pretty.
0:18:37 None of it is elegant, none of it is purely clinical in terms of its execution.
0:18:44 But if you want to make a judgment on how you reduce the possibility or the numbers of
0:18:49 Israeli civilian casualties, and in this case Lebanese civilian casualties, Israel preemptively
0:18:55 striking the terrorists who are planning to attack Israel just before the attack begins
0:18:59 rather than during the attack is probably the best way to do it.
0:19:05 I wanted to jump off of that point and ask you about the role that Bibi Netanyahu plays
0:19:10 in all of this, especially in the perception of the attack here, I think that the piece
0:19:14 that Scott just quoted from, if Netanyahu wasn’t the head of the government, that piece
0:19:16 might not exist in the same way.
0:19:21 He’s someone who’s unpopular here with American Jews, and he’s unpopular in Israel with the
0:19:24 Jews and the Arab population that live there.
0:19:28 So what is Bibi’s role in all of this?
0:19:31 Look, Bibi is a complicated figure.
0:19:33 I’ve known him for a long time.
0:19:38 I have been in touch with him since the war began, including with some of the other leaders,
0:19:43 including those who served in the war cabinet with him who are real political enemies of
0:19:49 his in the best possible way, a political enemy in the best possible way, meaning not
0:19:52 actually like belligerence of one another.
0:20:01 I think Netanyahu personally is there’s been a major breakdown in trust inside Israel.
0:20:05 I’ll leave what Jews outside of Israel think of him because I think it’s just less relevant.
0:20:07 They don’t get a vote for him.
0:20:12 Their children are not serving the army that’s being led by him or commanded by him.
0:20:16 So I focus on Israelis because he’s very unpopular with Israeli Jews.
0:20:21 And I think there’s been a breakdown in trust for a variety of reasons.
0:20:27 We could point to some of the characters in his own government today that I think do a
0:20:30 lot to discredit Israel and the international scene.
0:20:37 I think some of what his government did in this debate over judicial reform in 2023 did
0:20:41 a lot of damage to his government in the eyes of the Israeli public.
0:20:44 But I also think he’s been in office for a very long time.
0:20:46 He was elected in 1996.
0:20:49 He left office in ’99.
0:20:56 He then got elected again, 2008, formed a government in 2009, was in office until 2022,
0:21:00 then came back into office in the beginning of 2023.
0:21:06 You think about leaders in any Western-style democracy that have stayed in office, remained
0:21:07 in office for a very long time.
0:21:08 I think the public, it’s very tired of them.
0:21:12 Think of Margaret Thatcher, someone I admire of.
0:21:16 Even she left with a sense that she had stayed too long.
0:21:22 Then when you add to it that under Netanyahu’s watch, October 7th happened.
0:21:27 Even before you get into any of the current issues, you can understand why people are
0:21:34 exhausted, exhausted with his government, exhausted with his leadership, and wanting a change.
0:21:43 I think though, Jessica, that people often mistake a lack of trust in Netanyahu for lack
0:21:47 of confidence in his government strategy in the war.
0:21:51 I think they’re tired of him, and they do not trust him.
0:21:57 Yet, when you look at what he articulates as the objectives in the war, what you look
0:22:01 at in terms of what he’s doing right now in the North, there’s broad public support
0:22:03 for it.
0:22:08 Even when he had a war cabinet before it dissolved, as I said, there are members of
0:22:12 his war cabinet who are very hostile to him politically, and yet they were in agreement.
0:22:18 They had over 90 votes in the war cabinet when it existed, and over 90% of the votes
0:22:19 were unanimous.
0:22:24 By and large, I think that people are tired of him.
0:22:28 There’s a trust issue with him, but the overall strategy in what Israel needs to do in fighting
0:22:32 this multi-front war, I think there’s wide support for it.
0:22:38 Now, again, it’s a huge problem to have a leader in wartime who people don’t trust,
0:22:41 and I don’t know how sustainable it is.
0:22:47 I think he’s going to be, but I don’t think it’s a problem with the overall strategy.
0:22:52 Yeah, Dan, I think you’re being generous with that in Yahoo.
0:22:56 I want to acknowledge that we don’t get a vote, and sovereign nations get to pick their
0:22:57 own leader.
0:23:02 My fear is somewhat abroad looking at the situation is you have an individual who kind
0:23:08 of cut a deal with the far right to save his own political ass, put these wild extremist
0:23:15 bigots in the Knesset, in exchange for this kind of implicit promise, yeah, I’m further
0:23:22 right, you may not like my government, but I’ll keep you safe, and he didn’t.
0:23:27 My second reaction during the Gaza envelope and the Kibitz there, the first was horror.
0:23:30 The second was how the fuck did they let this happen?
0:23:36 You have a huge field, some motion sensor detectors, I just can’t figure out how helicopter
0:23:41 gunships were not deployed within seven to 10 minutes from someone who said you may not
0:23:44 like my politics, but I’ll keep you safe.
0:23:50 Then the fear is that this guy knows that if he calls for an election, he’s out of office,
0:23:53 and there’s a reckoning coming, perhaps even jail for him, and that he has a motivation
0:23:59 to create a forever war, hoping that at some point they rally around him from a nationalist
0:24:02 standpoint, and he doesn’t end up in jail.
0:24:10 This is just the worst of all worlds for Jews abroad, who see us having gone from David
0:24:17 to Goliath, and a guy in power that seems to be very politically motivated to the point
0:24:23 of kind of a diabolical fear that this guy is going to make decisions solely on how do
0:24:29 I extend a war, whether it makes sense or not, to say my own ass, your thoughts.
0:24:31 Yeah.
0:24:39 You had me for most of that riff except for the last part, and the reason I part ways
0:24:43 with you, Scott, on the last part is the following.
0:24:52 I do not believe Netanyahu is prolonging the war to avoid jail time, which is the gist
0:24:54 of what you’re saying.
0:25:00 I actually think these cases against him are not going anywhere.
0:25:06 I think if there’s only one actually of the cases, the three cases that I think has legs,
0:25:11 and even that he has the capacity to appeal it, and no matter what happens, whether he’s
0:25:17 in power, whether he’s not, the legal process is going to go on for a long time.
0:25:19 He is not a young man.
0:25:23 The idea that even if he’s out of power, that the Israeli judicial system is going to send
0:25:27 him to jail in his what, his 80s, I mean, I just, the whole thing, the idea that he’s
0:25:34 being motivated by fighting a war so he can stay in power to avoid a legal process, I
0:25:37 just think it’s, I don’t buy it.
0:25:39 I think, I think Netanyahu.
0:25:41 Why wouldn’t you call for elections?
0:25:45 Because he doesn’t want to lose, because he’s an ambitious politician.
0:25:51 I’ve worked with a lot of politicians over the years, and I will tell you that my sense
0:25:59 with most of them, not all of them, but most of them have some combination of a real sense
0:26:01 of public spiritedness.
0:26:08 They want to be public servants, they are serious minded about it, and complete like
0:26:11 megalomania bordering on narcissism.
0:26:14 I mean, how else, I mean, many people who can’t think they could be the leader of the
0:26:19 free world, take people run for president, they tend to have an elevated sense of themselves.
0:26:23 And it’s usually some combination of both, and it’s like, that’s okay.
0:26:31 And so, I think Netanyahu, I know he believes that he’s got this like Churchillian complex,
0:26:38 that he is like going to be the person to dig Israel out of this, you know, in Israel’s
0:26:43 historical sense is like a World War II existential threat.
0:26:46 And so, I think, and he wants to protect his legacy, by the way.
0:26:50 I also think he feels for the reasons you said that this happened on his watch, which
0:26:56 is a catastrophe, and he wants to, he doesn’t want that to be how he goes out.
0:27:00 He wants to be the one that this happened on his watch, and he turned things around and
0:27:01 secured things.
0:27:06 And, you know, not only was the man who negotiated the Abraham Accords and got Israel normalization
0:27:10 in parts of the Sunni Gulf, but expanded it, and he’s the one who got normalization with
0:27:11 Saudi Arabia.
0:27:16 I mean, he wants to, he’s the one who neutralized Iran, the threat of Iran.
0:27:20 I mean, he’s got these grand visions of what his legacy could be, and he wants to stick
0:27:23 around to be able to execute on them.
0:27:29 I don’t, like, I think that’s a normal, I think there’s a lot of politicians who fall
0:27:30 into that category.
0:27:32 I don’t think it’s all about his own survival.
0:27:35 I don’t think he’s conducting the war for the sake of his own survival.
0:27:42 And secondly, what he’s actually doing in Gaza, what he’s actually doing in the north,
0:27:43 is supported by most Israelis.
0:27:46 In fact, he’s been a calming presence.
0:27:49 So at least in the north, by the way, I’m critical of him for this.
0:27:52 I think he should have dealt with the north sooner.
0:27:54 He did not want to deal with the north.
0:27:59 After October 7th, his defense minister, Yov Galant, was arguing for Israel to go conduct
0:28:03 a pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah immediately, because Hezbollah, Galant was right, was going
0:28:07 to join the war anyways, Netanyahu argued against it.
0:28:09 He was arguing for restraint.
0:28:13 I don’t think he’s been like some inflammatory force in Israeli politics in the middle of
0:28:17 the war fighting, in ways that are completely out of sync with where most of the Israeli
0:28:20 public is on the war fighting strategy.
0:28:24 And I don’t think whatever he’s doing is just motivated by political survival to keep
0:28:25 himself out of jail.
0:28:30 Do I think that he’s the best spokesman in the international community?
0:28:31 Absolutely not.
0:28:33 At least not right now.
0:28:42 We’ll be right back.
0:28:46 When Kamala Harris and Donald Trump met on the debate stage, it was obvious that these
0:28:48 were two very different people.
0:28:51 But J.D. Vance and Tim Walls actually have a lot in common.
0:28:53 They’re both white men from the Midwest.
0:28:56 They’re both family men, and they were both in the service.
0:28:59 But they disagree on what it means to be a man.
0:29:13 Today explained, every weekday, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:29:17 This week on Prophogy Markets, we speak with Lena Kahn, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission.
0:29:22 We discuss ongoing antitrust cases, how to measure consumer harm, and her take on monopolies
0:29:24 in big tech.
0:29:30 We went through a 20-year period where the Big Five technology companies, Apple, Facebook,
0:29:37 Google, Microsoft, and Amazon collectively made over 800 acquisitions, and not a single
0:29:39 one of which was challenged at the time.
0:29:44 And now there are lawsuits kind of retroactively identifying that some of those were missed
0:29:50 opportunities and failing to stop those deals had a really negative impact on the market.
0:30:00 We can find that conversation and many others exclusively on the Prophogy Markets podcast.
0:30:07 What does victory look like, if possible, and are we close to it, whether that’s through
0:30:12 a U.S. brokered ceasefire deal or something that’s going on that we might not be aware
0:30:13 of?
0:30:18 I do not think there’s going to be a ceasefire deal anytime soon, unfortunately.
0:30:25 I do not think Hamas is serious about a ceasefire deal.
0:30:30 John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council, the Biden administration’s
0:30:36 National Security Council, was on the Sunday shows saying that Hamas is not serious about
0:30:37 it.
0:30:41 I was meeting with a senior administration official two weeks ago who’s very involved
0:30:51 with the hostage negotiations, and he basically laid out 10 issues that are holding up a deal,
0:30:56 and nine of them were all centered around Hamas just not being serious about it.
0:31:01 So I don’t see how it, and this is heartbreaking for me because for all the obvious reasons,
0:31:04 not the least of which is I know many of these hostage families personally.
0:31:10 I know two of the families that had loved ones among the six that were executed just
0:31:11 a few weeks ago.
0:31:15 And by the way, three of those families, three of those hostages who have the six who were
0:31:20 executed were on a list that Israel and Hamas were negotiating over about being released
0:31:22 in the first phase of a deal if it were to happen.
0:31:23 I do not think there’s a deal.
0:31:26 The U.S. doesn’t think there’s going to be a deal.
0:31:31 And so how this ends, I think it ends with Israel has killed or captured most of the
0:31:33 leadership of Hamas.
0:31:36 It would be very good if they were able to kill or capture Sinwar.
0:31:40 I think it would give Israel a basis to say this war is over.
0:31:43 It’s sort of like Israel’s bin Laden.
0:31:46 I think they’re close to getting him.
0:31:51 And then the question is, do they have a plan, and they are working on one, to get someone
0:31:55 else in control of Gaza who can govern it?
0:31:57 Obviously, you want Palestinians to govern it.
0:32:01 I think some of the governance and some of the security will have to be provided by a
0:32:02 third party Arab country.
0:32:05 There are a number of governments that are talking about playing a role.
0:32:07 The one that’s been most visible is the UAE.
0:32:09 Here’s the catch.
0:32:13 It’s very unlikely you can get Palestinians to step forward and play a role if they believe
0:32:15 that Hamas can return to power.
0:32:22 It’s just that Hamas has made a name for itself in Gaza for retribution against anyone that’s
0:32:26 seeming to cooperate with Israel or cooperate with moderate Arabs.
0:32:31 And the Palestinian population, those who could be responsible actors, need to know
0:32:34 that Hamas is gone and is not coming back.
0:32:38 And I think Israel’s getting close to that, but it’s not there yet.
0:32:44 A, B, there needs to be an understanding that whatever replaces Hamas and Gaza, Israel,
0:32:47 unless it can find a third party to do this, but I don’t think they’ll be able to, Israel
0:32:51 will be responsible for security of its own border, security of the border between Gaza
0:32:57 and Egypt, and that there will be no sovereign airspace above Gaza.
0:33:07 And so, if all the relevant parties, a moderate Palestinian leadership can emerge and third
0:33:12 party Arab countries can get involved, and Israel can all agree to what I just described,
0:33:19 I think you will have some kind of end to the conflict, quote, unquote.
0:33:24 I don’t think the conflict will ever fully end, but some kind of cessation.
0:33:26 With a hostage return.
0:33:30 Not willing, but I don’t know, to be honest, and I hate talking about this.
0:33:31 This is the problem, right?
0:33:34 So let’s just say, you know, the government, the Netanyahu just said over the last few
0:33:38 days, they think over half of the, you know, some 100 hostages are alive.
0:33:39 Okay.
0:33:44 So, there’s another theory that half of those hostages are somewhere around Sinwar, Yahya
0:33:45 Sinwar.
0:33:47 The other half are scattered.
0:33:51 In a formal end of the war, who knows where all these people are?
0:33:53 Ideally, there is some formal handover.
0:34:00 I’m not convinced that anyone is in a position in Gaza right now to find all these hostages.
0:34:01 I’m talking about Palestinians.
0:34:05 I’m talking about Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the other big terror group there.
0:34:08 I don’t think anyone is in a position to find all these hostages and be able to hand
0:34:09 them over.
0:34:14 I hate to be so grim, but I’m just, right.
0:34:18 Just as we wrap up here, Dan, a thesis, I’d like you to respond to it.
0:34:23 We have a tenancy in the U.S. to want to assign something to the left or to the right.
0:34:26 You know, it’s anti-Semitism coming from the far left as it coming from the far right.
0:34:33 My thesis would be that the answer is yes, and I’ll just cite AOC’s recent comments that
0:34:37 essentially she’s argued that the detonations are a war crime.
0:34:41 She condemned the attacks of October the 7th, but didn’t call them a war crime, and then
0:34:46 cited an article in the Geneva Conventions and conveniently skipped over the fact that
0:34:50 there’s actually an amendment protocol that says booby traps can be lawful if the devices
0:34:55 are being used for military purposes like Hezbollah’s communications.
0:35:01 And then on the right, as represented by President Trump, Trump suggested that if he lost the
0:35:04 election, Jewish voters would be partially to blame.
0:35:08 He stated that the Jewish people would have a lot to do with the loss, a comment that Jewish
0:35:13 organizations and political figures have condemned as reminiscent of historical anti-Semitic
0:35:14 scapegoating.
0:35:19 Sometimes as if the far left and the far right come together around anti-Semitism.
0:35:26 And I see real echoes of early 30s Germany in the United States, and people accuse me
0:35:28 of being an alarmist and a catastrophist.
0:35:34 One, do you see the same echoes or hear the same echoes I hear, and what are your thoughts
0:35:37 about anti-Semitism converging?
0:35:40 It seems to be the one thing the far left and the far right can agree on.
0:35:45 Yeah, so among the reasons anti-Semitism is called the oldest hatred is because it manages
0:35:49 to survive and thrive no matter what environment it’s in.
0:35:58 So, you know, the fascists called Jews, you know, they weren’t pure enough, they weren’t
0:36:05 white enough, the communists called the Jews money-grubbing, you know, cosmopolitan elites
0:36:10 like whoever’s in charge, whatever the dynamic, if you just look throughout history, the Jews
0:36:19 are always, it’s like they’re like this shape-shifting targets of blame for whatever the ills are
0:36:23 going on in any political moment or any political environment.
0:36:28 And yes, the extreme left and the extreme right historically often meet up on targeting
0:36:30 the Jews one way or the other.
0:36:39 I will tell you that today, Scott, while I worry about anti-Semitism on both extremes,
0:36:49 I, from a policy standpoint, when I think of what is going to result in more Jews being
0:36:55 killed in the near future, I hate to put it in those terms, but I will, I worry much more
0:37:02 today that could change about the policies of the extreme left because they actually
0:37:04 have policy implications.
0:37:08 If you look at, you know, some of the stuff coming from Trump or some people around them,
0:37:10 I said, okay, so what’s the policy they would pursue?
0:37:12 What’s the actual policy?
0:37:13 Tell me the policy.
0:37:19 Maybe I can’t think of it or maybe I’m not being clever enough, but the policies from
0:37:21 the extreme left, they’re very clear.
0:37:28 They are very, I mean, they want to suspend arms to Israel so Israel can, it no longer
0:37:30 has the capacity to defend itself.
0:37:37 They do not want to prosecute those waging basically pogroms against Jews in major cities
0:37:39 and in American college campuses today.
0:37:46 They want to tolerate low level anti-Semitism and those are the actual policies.
0:37:49 Look at what’s, I mean, look at what’s happening on college campuses and look at what’s happening
0:37:54 in terms of the debate around for, about how the US should stand or not stand by Israel
0:37:56 as it fights for its own existence.
0:38:03 If either of those goes in the wrong direction, I mean, in the first six months of this year,
0:38:11 according to the ADO, anti-Semitic violence and other incidents has gone up 70% relative
0:38:13 to the year before, okay?
0:38:20 There’s actual violence against Jews all across the US, all across the UK where you are right
0:38:22 now in many other countries around the world.
0:38:29 And I worry is when I look at my political leaders, right, like I say, what are you doing
0:38:30 about that?
0:38:35 I look at governors and mayors and say, and district attorneys and say, what are prosecutors
0:38:37 doing about those crimes?
0:38:39 What’s law enforcement doing about those crimes?
0:38:44 And I’m very worried about the message that is being instructed to them by the left in
0:38:50 the United States and I guess the UK and elsewhere that pull back that, you know, the Jews don’t
0:38:54 need the protections that the rest of us are enjoying.
0:39:00 And so I, like I said, I take your point about the extremes on both ends, but right now
0:39:06 we are seeing the real policy implications of what it means to pull back from protecting
0:39:10 against anti-Semitism and the policies of many on the left.
0:39:13 And I hope leaders on the left confront it.
0:39:17 I think it’s a huge opportunity, political opportunity for them to truly confront it.
0:39:20 Do you think Kamala has done a decent job at doing that?
0:39:24 Because I understand, I mean, Rashida Tlaib presidency would be the end of the world
0:39:25 for Jews.
0:39:31 But I’ve felt that Kamala has spoken very strongly in support of Israel as well as her
0:39:32 husband has.
0:39:33 Her husband’s not in a policy making role.
0:39:38 So some of the sentiments coming from Doug M off are perfectly nice, but it’s not clear
0:39:41 to me that he has any influence on policy.
0:39:49 What Kamala Harris repeatedly says is Israel has a right to defend itself and how Israel
0:39:51 defends itself matters.
0:39:55 Well, of course, how Israel defends itself matters.
0:40:01 But I think what most reasonable people looking at this without a, without a, you know, a
0:40:08 hint of bias would say Israel has sought to defend itself in the most responsible way
0:40:17 any modern Western small L liberal country could and would be expected to do.
0:40:22 So saying how Israel defends itself matters, as though you’re like, you’re, you’re like,
0:40:27 you know, nodding to the criticisms that Israel’s response has been disproportionate or people
0:40:32 have suffered as a result of the nature of Israel’s response, I think feeds this narrative
0:40:35 that Israel is overshooting in its response.
0:40:41 I think that’s dangerous, A, B, I, you know, Harris has repeatedly said, including in recent
0:40:47 days that when she hears those college students protesting against Israel, she hears them.
0:40:48 She wants them to know her words.
0:40:53 She wants them to know that they have been heard.
0:40:55 I do not think that is the appropriate response.
0:40:56 That is going to encourage them.
0:40:58 It is not going to discourage them.
0:41:03 I want to see a Democratic leader, whether it’s Kamala Harris or someone else, confront
0:41:10 the base of their party, much like Bill Clinton did in another era, confronted the base of
0:41:11 his own party.
0:41:15 I think on this issue, Harris has not confronted the base.
0:41:18 She has, she has legitimized it.
0:41:21 She has said that they have a point of view, they have a legitimate point of view and they
0:41:22 need to be heard.
0:41:27 And I, I, you know, I, I, by the way, I say this as a Jewish American, like, I, I not
0:41:31 only find that offensive, but I think there are many non-Jews who see what’s going on
0:41:36 on this debate over Israel as a proxy for a broader breakdown in order in our society.
0:41:41 And they would like to see a Democratic leader, whether it’s Kamala Harris or someone else,
0:41:42 confront it head-on.
0:41:45 And it makes me nervous that she won’t.
0:41:48 Nancy Norr is one of the go-to experts when it comes to Israel and the broader Middle
0:41:49 East.
0:41:52 He’s a former advisor to the U.S. government, worked closely on foreign policy during the
0:41:56 Iraq war, co-authored Startup Nation, which is all about Israel’s tech and innovation
0:42:00 boom, as well as last year’s The Genius of Israel, the surprising resilience of a divided
0:42:02 nation in a turbulent world.
0:42:07 Today, he’s known for breaking down the region’s complex issues on his podcast, “Call Me Back,”
0:42:11 and he’s a frequent commentator on how these conflicts are shaping U.S. politics.
0:42:14 Thanks for your time down.
0:42:15 Thank you guys.
0:42:16 Appreciate it.
0:42:18 Thank you so much.
0:42:22 Stay with us.
0:42:26 Jess, what did you think?
0:42:27 I’m glad we did it.
0:42:32 I don’t necessarily agree with everything, but that was my expectation coming from a
0:42:35 different political background as Dan.
0:42:41 But it’s such a privilege to be able to talk to someone who’s so fluid in every aspect
0:42:45 of the conflict and can actually tell you about all seven fronts that the war is being
0:42:48 conducted on.
0:42:52 What I appreciated the most, I guess, is the realism about BV.
0:42:58 I tend to think more like you do about him and the people that I’m close to in Israel
0:43:03 feel the same, but that dichotomy between the thousands in the streets protesting and what
0:43:07 Dan was saying, that people are actually broadly supportive of how he’s fighting this war with
0:43:11 something that really stuck out to me and something I want to dig into further.
0:43:12 What about you?
0:43:14 I’m just an enormous fan of Dan.
0:43:17 I become friends with him over this issue.
0:43:21 This issue was kind of a catalyst for us to reengage after 25 years, and I just think
0:43:22 a lot of him.
0:43:28 I’m actually quite worried that, and this is some of my bias here, that I have a lot
0:43:29 of friends who are Jewish.
0:43:34 I was in a Jewish fraternity at UCLA, and I would describe most of them as center left.
0:43:39 I feel as if they become, for a lot of women, bodily autonomy because become a one issue
0:43:42 thing like they could never support Trump.
0:43:45 For a lot of my Jewish friends who are center left, I worry it’s taken them center right,
0:43:51 and they become one issue voters, and they see Trump as being more resolute, even if
0:43:56 it’s like a lot of bluster and nonsensical, whereas some of the rhetoric coming out of
0:44:02 the far left that Vice President Harris hasn’t condemned, the notion that she’s been a little
0:44:09 bit too empathetic and understanding of what are seen as pretty just blatantly by Jews,
0:44:15 anti-Semitic activities on campus, that it’s going to cost us some moderate Jewish voters
0:44:18 in, I don’t know if it’s Philadelphia or Arizona.
0:44:19 I was kind of curious.
0:44:22 I wanted to do some analysis on where they’re, I mean, we’re 2% of the population, so I’m
0:44:27 not sure we matter, but I guess we do, you know, every vote counts if it’s going to hurt
0:44:28 us.
0:44:29 What are your thoughts?
0:44:35 My expectation is that it’s electorally not going to hurt us, and we talked about this
0:44:40 in the reverse as well with the kind of pro-Palestinian vote, I mean, these are very small voting
0:44:46 blocks, but small but mighty, and I hate to, you know, to go there, but Jews give a lot
0:44:52 of money during political cycles, and APAC is extremely powerful, and we’ve seen the
0:44:56 implications of that in primaries around the country, like Cory Bush is not going to be
0:45:01 on the ballot come November, because of the impact of APAC.
0:45:07 You know, I totally see what you’re saying, and I felt that too, my friends who, for instance,
0:45:13 were not Fox News viewers, and now it’s all that they watch, that they are not interested
0:45:19 in hearing any equivocating about how Israel is prosecuting, I don’t want to say prosecuting
0:45:25 this war, but working to bring back innocents that were stolen and avenge the death of over
0:45:31 a thousand murderers, and they say Fox is the network that is talking about this in terms
0:45:37 that resonate with me, but the big problem, well, I have many problems with how Donald
0:45:42 Trump speaks about this issue and how he feels about it beyond the, you know, the dual loyalty
0:45:48 issues and saying it’s going to be our fault, but Donald Trump never talks about a two-state
0:45:49 solution.
0:45:55 He never talks about what peace could look like, or really giving a rat’s ass about what
0:45:57 happens to the Palestinian people.
0:46:01 I understand Hamas terrorist organization needs to be eradicated, but there are going
0:46:09 to be people left over there, and the broad majority of Jews here and abroad support some
0:46:13 sort of two-state solution and a rolling back of the settlements that you mentioned when
0:46:18 you were talking about what BB has been doing in kowtowing to the far right.
0:46:22 And I think that that is something that does keep a lot of American Jews centered around
0:46:29 the Democratic Party, plus, to me at least, being Jewish is about being a Zionist and
0:46:36 a proud Zionist and caring about Israel and its future, but also caring about other underrepresented
0:46:44 and other groups that have experienced trauma and slavery, et cetera, and that we’re part
0:46:51 of a coalition of underdogs, and that’s something that is only represented on the Democratic
0:46:57 Left, to me, and makes the Republican Party a complete non-starter, even if sometimes
0:47:04 I really appreciate how unequivocal they are about abuse of these protests or abuse of
0:47:05 the First Amendment.
0:47:08 You know, they just come out and they say, “This is straight up anti-Semitism.”
0:47:14 Yeah, I worry that, I think that’s a thoughtful nuance to you, that’s where I end up.
0:47:21 I end up that, I think Harris and Biden, or Biden and Harris, were actually, have been
0:47:26 more supportive of Israel than any nation in the world, that within moments or hours,
0:47:30 within hours of the attacks of October the 7th, more than words, they deployed two carrier
0:47:37 strike forces and basically told all the other nations, Iran on its proxies, Iran on
0:47:41 its proxies, to basically sit down, that if you’re hoping for it to instigate a multi-front
0:47:47 war here, think twice, because we’ve deployed the firepower of England and France in the
0:47:49 Mediterranean and we’re ready to use it.
0:47:53 So I think actually they’ve been, the reality is, I think they’ve been very supportive of
0:47:54 Israel.
0:47:59 Now, we’ve got a hope, and I do think Vice President Harris and her team at the convention
0:48:04 were very smart to bring up the parents of-
0:48:05 Hershey’s parents.
0:48:07 Yeah, Hershey’s parents, and it was very powerful.
0:48:09 And the bottom line is, there were just more, quite frankly, there were just more Jews on
0:48:18 stage at the TNC than there were at the RNC, but having said that, I worry that some of
0:48:23 the stuff that’s come out of the far left, I worry there’s this zeitgeist or perception
0:48:30 of a zeitgeist on the left, that they conflate the struggles of the Palestinian people and
0:48:36 the residents of Gaza with the civil rights movement, and their go-to is to assume that
0:48:39 rich white people are likely to be oppressors and there’s no one richer and wider than
0:48:41 Jews.
0:48:47 And I’ve been just flummoxed at some of the rhetoric that has come out of the far left.
0:48:52 And not only the far left and the Democratic Party, that kind of the institutions outside
0:48:58 of the Democratic Party that represent liberalism or the far left would be my industry, academic
0:49:01 institutions, and their inability to condemn this.
0:49:06 Even today, I’m advising the Regents of the University of California, and they are reticent
0:49:11 to suspend or expel students for things that if blacks or gays were on the other side of
0:49:14 this rhetoric, I think would be out the same day.
0:49:15 It wouldn’t even be a conversation.
0:49:16 Yeah.
0:49:17 Pack your things and go.
0:49:18 You’re out.
0:49:19 You’re out.
0:49:22 And if you’re not out in 24 hours, we’re arresting you.
0:49:28 My fear is that the Democratic Party has become so focused on representing people they see
0:49:35 as oppressed that there’s this knee-jerk reaction to stereotype and unwittingly become very bigoted
0:49:41 towards Jews, and that a lot of Jews feel very much unseen and even threatened right
0:49:44 now by the Democratic Party.
0:49:49 That perception is our reality right now, and I’m not sure that Harris has done enough
0:49:52 to counter that reality.
0:49:53 I think that’s right.
0:50:00 I think if we had had more time with Dan, I wanted to talk to him about how he feels
0:50:02 in terms of his own personal vulnerability.
0:50:07 He was on Dana Perino, my colleague on the Fives podcast after 10/7.
0:50:11 He said he had never felt personally vulnerable before, and now he does.
0:50:16 I have a very good friend who told me that he doesn’t let his sons wear their yamakas
0:50:17 on the subway anymore.
0:50:22 They wear baseball caps instead, something that he never envisioned could be the reality
0:50:23 here.
0:50:29 And I think that your point is well taken about what’s going on, obviously, on the far
0:50:34 left, but that it becomes the sheen over all of our conversations, like Governor Whitmer
0:50:38 was on one of the Sunday shows, and Rashid Shalib had made a comment, and Jake Tapper
0:50:45 wants Governor Whitmer to respond to this, and it eats up all of the space because we
0:50:47 don’t have a clear answer.
0:50:51 There is no Democratic clear line.
0:50:52 This is anti-Semitism.
0:50:53 This isn’t anti-Semitism.
0:50:55 This is what Zionism is.
0:50:57 This isn’t what Zionism is.
0:51:04 It allows a conflation of such important issues that people can then hide behind.
0:51:10 I see a darker people that are having a bad time, and I see a lighter people that appear
0:51:14 to be in a position of power, and I did think that it was pretty masterful of BV when he
0:51:20 came to address Congress, that he brought soldiers who were Arabs with him to show the
0:51:22 world that Israel is a melting pot.
0:51:24 This is not.
0:51:26 People with lily white skin.
0:51:31 These are Middle Easterners fighting for their existence.
0:51:37 What you said, I addressed the Goldman Sachs Israel, I know what they call it, team conference
0:51:42 here in London, and there were probably a dozen people in Yarmulke’s, and I went down
0:51:44 the elevator with probably five of them, and they all in unison when they were getting
0:51:50 off the elevators, put on hats, and they said, “You can’t be on the tube in London with
0:51:52 Yarmulke.”
0:51:54 I don’t think they were being alarmist.
0:51:58 They just seemed like fairly reasonable guys, and I thought, “Jesus, that’s where I don’t
0:52:02 know that much about your religious beliefs, just as a Jew, I know you’re Jewish, do you
0:52:03 feel threatened?
0:52:07 Do you feel like I haven’t been in America in the last two years?
0:52:13 Do you feel like anti-Semitism fervor has gotten to a point where Jews are, regardless
0:52:16 if it’s legitimate or not, if they perceive a threat, it’s real?
0:52:19 Do you think Jews perceive a real threat?”
0:52:21 Definitely.
0:52:25 Almost everybody, and that’s across the denominational scale that I interact with from the most
0:52:30 reformed Jews, which is my background, New York City Jewish kids who thought we were
0:52:31 in the majority.
0:52:35 I showed up at college and I was like, “Where are all these Christians coming from?”
0:52:41 I thought we ran the place to my friends who are in the Orthodox community and feel that
0:52:48 their way of life is being severely inhibited, not just from getting on the subway, but wanting
0:52:52 armed guards outside of schools and temples.
0:52:56 I think a lot about when I first came to London to go to London School of Economics,
0:53:00 and my grandmother, who had fled Hitler, she was originally from Vienna, they went to Paris,
0:53:06 and then managed to get out of there before he took over.
0:53:08 She told me, “You’re going to London, there’s a lot of anti-Semitism.”
0:53:10 I said, “Nanny, you’re crazy.”
0:53:11 That’s not a thing.
0:53:15 One of the first things that happened at the LSE Student Union is that they voted to
0:53:22 abolish the state of Israel, and I begrudgingly called her, and I said, “I guess you were
0:53:28 right that this is a thing, and I’ve lived cocooned, bubbled, whatever it is.”
0:53:31 If someone had asked me on October 6th what the state of anti-Semitism was in the U.S.,
0:53:34 I would have said it doesn’t exist.
0:53:35 I was totally naive to it.
0:53:37 I just didn’t even-
0:53:40 Like Tree of Life synagogue shooting was just a complete aberration.
0:53:41 Yeah.
0:53:46 Crazy, crazy, insane person, and my friends who were saying anti-Semitism is always in
0:53:47 the reeds, always waiting.
0:53:48 I thought, “You’re just being paranoid.”
0:53:52 I understand you’re paranoia, but that has primarily been starch from our society, and
0:54:01 I was flummoxed and wrong and didn’t have a grandmother to call, but yeah, I absolutely
0:54:02 hear you.
0:54:06 All right, Jess, we will see you next week.
0:54:07 Thanks everybody for tuning in.
0:54:08 Bye.
0:54:09 Bye.
0:54:10 Bye.
0:54:10 Bye.
0:54:11 Bye.
0:54:14 (upbeat music)
0:54:16 (upbeat music)
0:00:06 “To get a heart transplant from a genetically modified pig.”
0:00:10 There’s over 100,000 people on the organ transplant waitlist.
0:00:15 And some scientists think the answer might be pigs.
0:00:20 “Nobody in the world knew how a human would react to a pig heart, right?
0:00:26 But next day when we asked him, you know, how are you feeling, he said, ‘Oink, oink.'”
0:00:31 “This week on Unexplainable, are pig hearts really the answer?”
0:00:36 “Follow Unexplainable for new episodes every Wednesday.”
0:00:42 Hey, I’m John Glenn Hill, host of a brand new show from Vox called Explain It To Me.
0:00:45 This week, the ethical murkiness of zoos.
0:00:51 “Do we as humans feel like we deserve to just be able to walk around and see these animals?
0:00:52 Maybe we don’t deserve that.
0:00:56 Maybe there’s just some animals we don’t get to see.”
0:00:58 To zoo or not to zoo?
0:01:00 That’s this week on Explain It To Me.
0:01:03 Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:13 Will the VP debate move the needle in what’s shaping up to be a neck and neck election?
0:01:16 You never know in advance what will be the thing that matters and the thing that doesn’t
0:01:17 matter.
0:01:25 But Donald Trump will be almost 80, and J.D. Vance will be one cheeseburger away from
0:01:27 the presidency should they win.
0:01:33 I’m Preet Bharara, and this week, The Atlantic magazine’s David Frum joins me on my podcast
0:01:36 Stay Tuned With Preet to break down what happened at the debate.
0:01:38 The episode is out now.
0:01:48 Search and follow Stay Tuned With Preet wherever you get your podcasts.
0:01:49 Welcome to Raging Moderates.
0:01:51 I’m Scott Galloway.
0:01:52 And I’m Jessica Tarlev.
0:01:54 Today, we have a special episode.
0:01:55 We’re going to focus on Israel.
0:02:01 We have an interview with, I would call him a friend and a colleague of Fox or Jess.
0:02:03 She spends a lot of time on Fox, doesn’t she?
0:02:05 We’re talking about Dan Sienor.
0:02:06 Yeah, he does.
0:02:08 We love having him on our air.
0:02:12 He makes all of us a lot smarter and a lot more thoughtful, no matter where you fall
0:02:14 politically about thinking about Israel.
0:02:19 Okay, let’s bring in Dan to help us understand what’s going on in the Middle East.
0:02:25 Dan is an expert on politics in the Middle East and actually works at Elliott, a large
0:02:26 hedge fund.
0:02:29 Dan, where does this podcast find you?
0:02:30 New York City.
0:02:31 Upper West Side of Manhattan.
0:02:32 That’s right.
0:02:36 I saw an Instagram of you at a Jets game with your wife.
0:02:42 It was date night and I’m grateful that I am married to a woman who will go to New York
0:02:47 Jets games with me as you can appreciate Scott as my boys get older and older.
0:02:52 I’m imagining the world when they’re no longer under a roof and my company at Jets games
0:02:53 will be my spouse.
0:02:56 And the fact that she’s a willing participant is a beautiful thing.
0:02:57 She’s a better woman than I.
0:02:58 I know.
0:03:01 I’m not a fan and I will not go to a Jets game.
0:03:05 I was trying to imagine the response I would get suggesting for date night we go to a Jets
0:03:06 game.
0:03:10 Tell your husband that if he’s an orphan during any Jets game.
0:03:11 Oh, you want to take him?
0:03:12 We’ll take him.
0:03:13 We will take him.
0:03:14 We take orphans all the time.
0:03:17 Actually Jets Nation has a lot of orphans.
0:03:18 So we…
0:03:19 I heard that about you people.
0:03:20 Yeah, yeah.
0:03:22 So we are happy to take those wandering Jets fans.
0:03:23 Okay.
0:03:28 So for those of you who don’t know, Dan has sort of been our go-to on all things Israel.
0:03:33 I see the pager and the wonky-talky operation as the most precise anti-terrorism operation
0:03:35 in history.
0:03:39 And I would just like to get your view on that event and then subsequently what you
0:03:44 think is going on in the last two days, Israel’s, I don’t know what you would call it, more
0:03:48 aggressive stance or if you would want to call it preemptive, I don’t know, escalation,
0:03:51 whatever term you want to, whatever you want to use, but I’d love to just get your thoughts
0:03:54 on the state of play around the most recent events.
0:03:55 Yeah.
0:04:03 So Hezbollah, which as many of your listeners know is a proxy army of Iran that is in southern
0:04:11 Lebanon and it has been waging warfare against Israel for decades.
0:04:15 And in 2000, Israel had a presence in southern Lebanon.
0:04:19 In 2000, Israel left southern Lebanon.
0:04:23 And so there’s been no Israeli forces in southern Lebanon.
0:04:28 There’s been no territorial dispute about the Israeli-Lebanese border.
0:04:33 And yet this fighting force, Hezbollah, which is calling it a terrorist organization or
0:04:35 terrorist proxy doesn’t really capture it.
0:04:40 It’s like a light infantry army of a sovereign nation and they’re sitting on about 200,000
0:04:44 rockets, many of which are precision guided.
0:04:49 And they have just been bombing Israel on and off over the last couple decades, which
0:04:55 culminated in a war in 2006 when Hezbollah kidnapped three Israelis.
0:04:59 And things had been quiet for certain periods.
0:05:02 And then October 7th happened on an Israel-Southern border.
0:05:08 And on October 8th, before Israel even responded to the Hamas attack, Hezbollah joined the
0:05:09 fight.
0:05:16 And the bombing from Hezbollah in Israel’s northern communities has been unrelenting.
0:05:20 Israel’s had to evacuate tens of thousands, something like 70,000 to 80,000 Israelis
0:05:25 from the northern part of the country who haven’t lived there since October 8th, since
0:05:27 the bombing from Hezbollah began.
0:05:34 And so you have a whole part of Israel’s northern communities that are just, they become ghost
0:05:35 towns.
0:05:39 People, places like Kiryat Shmona and Matula towns I’ve been to are just, it’s totally
0:05:42 depressing how these towns are empty and these people are scattered.
0:05:45 They’re internally displaced in their own country.
0:05:51 And so where we are now is Israel is in the midst of basically what looks like a seven
0:05:52 front war.
0:05:56 We tend to focus for obvious reasons on Israel’s war with Hamas, but that’s just one of the
0:05:58 fronts.
0:06:02 And the war with Hezbollah is heating up.
0:06:07 It turns out that one of the reasons the war in Gaza has been so hard is because Hamas
0:06:11 basically operated on an analog level.
0:06:15 They were very good about having no electronic communications, which has made a the detection
0:06:21 of what Hamas was trying to do and be fighting with Hamas very hard.
0:06:23 Hezbollah and Iran are different.
0:06:30 They are much higher tech and they communicate a lot on semi-conventional devices.
0:06:35 And so Israel is actually much more capable and effective in fighting Hezbollah.
0:06:39 I think they would be if they wind themselves up in a war with Iran.
0:06:46 And in order to force Hezbollah to make some decisions at a minimum to de-escalate from
0:06:53 their fighting on Israel’s northern border, they had to ramp up their own operations.
0:06:55 They’ve mostly been in defensive posture.
0:06:58 Israel now they’ve pivoted to an offensive posture.
0:07:03 And what you’re referring to, Scott, which was the activating the pagers and the walkie-talkies,
0:07:10 I think that was a precursor to a much more formal and conventional war.
0:07:12 I think you’re seeing some of that right now.
0:07:18 Israel is now through its air force bombing parts of southern Lebanon, and they want to
0:07:23 give Hezbollah an opportunity to withdraw from Israel’s border and get about 10 kilometers
0:07:25 north of Israel’s border.
0:07:29 If Hezbollah won’t do that, then I think you may get a ground invasion.
0:07:31 And so, and I think you’re exactly right.
0:07:35 I think there have been two reveals here over the last few weeks.
0:07:42 The first reveal is what you said, which is Israel did not, you know, if it had to go
0:07:46 after a lot of terrorists and terrorist operatives and commanders in Hezbollah, it could have
0:07:51 just bombed whole towns and villages to do that, and there would have been a lot of collateral
0:07:52 damage.
0:07:58 Instead, Israel had a multiyear, I think close to 15 years in the making of this, of putting
0:08:03 the capabilities in place to do the walkie-talkie and pager attack, to hit the people that wanted
0:08:08 to do, hit with real precision and minimizing civilian casualties.
0:08:12 So all the blowback against Israel right now for what it did is like a reveal, because
0:08:16 what the blowback is saying, the criticism of Israel is saying is, you can’t respond
0:08:17 at all.
0:08:21 It used to be Israel can’t respond if there’s a risk of collateral damage, which is holding
0:08:26 Israel to a standard that no other country is held to in warfare, especially defensive
0:08:27 war.
0:08:33 And now when Israel hits back with precision against the terrorists, that’s somehow not
0:08:35 allowed either.
0:08:42 And the other reveal is, I obviously am very supportive of Israel’s response to Hamas.
0:08:48 At the same time, I recognize there are some Palestinians, some moderate Palestinians,
0:08:53 that believe there’s a legitimate territorial dispute.
0:08:56 I think the more moderate forces want to figure out a way to resolve that territorial dispute
0:09:01 between Israel and the Palestinians, the way Hamas is approaching it is not a serious
0:09:05 or a moderate way of approaching that issue.
0:09:08 But you could argue there’s a territorial dispute.
0:09:11 With Hezbollah, there is no territorial dispute.
0:09:17 Hezbollah itself is not saying, if we can just have our own path to self-determination,
0:09:21 if we can just have this piece of territory, they’re not claiming there’s any piece of
0:09:23 territory in dispute.
0:09:27 They are quite clear that the only objective is annihilation.
0:09:30 That is there of Israel and of the Jewish state.
0:09:32 That is their raison d’etre.
0:09:39 And so I think while this next front is going to be very hard for everyone, I do think for
0:09:42 the reasons you’re saying and that I’m outlining, it’s starting to reveal what’s really going
0:09:43 on here.
0:09:49 You mentioned the term ground invasion, and I just wanted to pick up on that.
0:09:52 Do you think that that’s definitely going to happen?
0:09:55 What kind of timeline are we operating on?
0:10:00 And if you say that this is something that could have been planned over a decade, what
0:10:06 was the impetus for doing it right this particular moment or last week?
0:10:11 So I think that the, when I say what I think was planned a decade, if not a decade and
0:10:17 a half, was in the works, was just developing the communications capability.
0:10:26 So those pagers, Israel’s coming up with the plan to sell Hezbollah, the pagers, Israel.
0:10:31 And you know, on this particular note in terms of what Israel did, I want to be clear.
0:10:33 These are, this is all I’ve heard secondhand.
0:10:37 So the IDF or the Israeli intelligence community have not confirmed these details.
0:10:43 But my understanding is it was years in the making to get Hezbollah, the pagers, develop
0:10:47 the capabilities that Israel demonstrated, what we think Israel demonstrated over the
0:10:49 last week.
0:10:54 So that was very long in the making with the understanding that Hezbollah has been a constant
0:10:55 threat for Israel.
0:11:02 And if Israel is ever in a situation where it has to fight a war against Hezbollah, it
0:11:09 would be important to destabilize the leadership of Hezbollah and destabilize the commanders
0:11:14 that would be commanding the Hezbollah forces into Israel, it would be effective to destabilize
0:11:16 them in advance of a war.
0:11:22 Now the analogy I can give you is the 1967 Six Day War, which Israel was surrounded in
0:11:27 numerous countries, the pointy end of the spear were Egypt and Syria, but there were
0:11:30 many other countries that joined the war against Israel.
0:11:38 On the eve of the Six Day War, Israel effectively took out the air forces, if you will, of Egypt
0:11:43 and Syria, which made Israel’s ability to fight the war much more effective.
0:11:44 I think there’s a comparison here.
0:11:50 I think taking out the leadership through these devices and making them distrustful
0:11:54 of how they can communicate, we’re finding that right now, that there’s now all this
0:12:00 confusion about how they communicate with each other was a step before the war Israel
0:12:02 knew it was going to have to fight.
0:12:07 Now my only caveat to that is, when I say to my Israeli friends, as I did recently this
0:12:09 morning, does this mean the war is on?
0:12:11 Like is the war with Hezbollah on?
0:12:17 If you go on any Israeli press site right now, you will see Israel bombing southern Lebanon.
0:12:20 They say, “No, the war has been going on since October 8th.”
0:12:26 Hezbollah started bombing Israel on October 8th, so we are now finally responding.
0:12:33 And so the communications, the pager attack, was the step right before the formal operation
0:12:40 to strengthen Israel’s capabilities as they went in on the regular operation.
0:12:41 What is the objective?
0:12:48 The objective is, I’ll just make it really simple, after the 2006 Lebanon War, the UN
0:12:52 stepped in and the Lebanese Armed Forces stepped in, because keep in mind, this is not a war
0:12:53 against Lebanon.
0:12:56 Hezbollah is occupying parts of Lebanon.
0:12:59 Hezbollah is not the government of Lebanon.
0:13:05 And the Lebanese Armed Forces and UNIFIL, these UN peacekeeping forces, agreed to create
0:13:12 a buffer zone between Israel’s border with Lebanon and what’s called the Latani River,
0:13:14 which is really just like a stream.
0:13:17 And that buffer zone is called 25 kilometers.
0:13:21 And the idea was, if Hezbollah is not anywhere in that area between Israel’s border and the
0:13:27 Latani River, it will be harder for Hezbollah to wreak havoc in Israel because there’s just
0:13:28 a big buffer.
0:13:35 But the parties that were supposed to secure that buffer zone were UNIFIL, the UN peacekeepers,
0:13:36 and the Lebanese Armed Forces.
0:13:41 They both have basically scattered since 2006.
0:13:42 Hezbollah’s back in there.
0:13:44 There is no buffer zone anymore.
0:13:49 So Israel’s saying, at a minimum, we need to reestablish a buffer zone here.
0:13:54 Get Hezbollah right off our border from breathing down our throats and move their 200,000 rockets
0:14:03 and rocket launchers and all their capabilities back if we have a shot at bringing some peace
0:14:08 and quiet to our border and avoiding full-out regional war.
0:14:12 And I think what Israel’s communicating both to the White House, what Israel’s communicating
0:14:16 to other players in the region, we are doing what we’re doing now.
0:14:17 This looks like war.
0:14:21 It is war, but it is to head off a full-on regional war.
0:14:23 So, I’m curious.
0:14:26 I thought of you this morning on the way back from Madrid.
0:14:30 I opened the New York Times, and the lead article is a guest essay by a gentleman named
0:14:31 Michael Walzer.
0:14:34 And I just want to read you an excerpt and get your response.
0:14:39 “Yes, the devices most probably were being used by Hezbollah operatives for military
0:14:40 purposes.
0:14:44 This might make them a legitimate target in the continuous cross-border battles between
0:14:46 Israel and Hezbollah.
0:14:53 But the attacks, which likely killed at least 37 people and wounded thousands of others,
0:14:57 came when the operatives were not operating.
0:15:05 They had not been mobilized, they were not engaged, rather, they were at home with their
0:15:11 families, sitting in cafes, shopping in food markets, seeing civilians who were randomly
0:15:15 killed and among civilians who were randomly killed and injured.
0:15:21 Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for the attacks, but is widely believed to
0:15:22 be behind them.
0:15:27 If these allegations are true, it is important for friends of Israel to say this was not
0:15:28 right.
0:15:30 Your response?”
0:15:37 My friend Dara Horn wrote this book a few years ago, which I’ve been thinking a lot
0:15:41 about books as we approach the one-year anniversary of October 7th.
0:15:45 I’ve been thinking, I get approached a lot by people who say, “I want to learn more
0:15:50 about how October 7th happened, what led to October 7th, the history of Israel, the
0:15:53 history of anti-Semitism, the history of the Jewish people.”
0:15:54 I get that.
0:15:55 And I’ve been thinking about books to recommend to people.
0:16:01 And this woman, Dara Horn, wrote this book called “People Love Dead Jews.”
0:16:10 And her point is if you strip away many of the criticisms of Israel and what Israel does,
0:16:17 what you often hear is a version of Israel has a right to defend itself, but don’t defend
0:16:19 yourself too much is basically what they’re saying.
0:16:24 They don’t say that, but that’s what they mean, meaning we have empathy.
0:16:28 We sympathize for suffering Jews.
0:16:35 As long as Jews are being slaughtered, they are David and not Goliath, and we want to
0:16:36 be with David.
0:16:44 But the moment Israel strikes back to defend itself, suddenly all those deaths that were
0:16:52 averted by Israel striking back are forgotten, and Israel is somehow viewed as the aggressor.
0:16:59 So to bring back this piece that you’re referring to here, Scott, or that you’re quoting from,
0:17:05 what he’s basically saying is it would only be okay for Israel to activate their pager
0:17:11 attack once those Hezbollah operatives are actually pulling the trigger, once they’re
0:17:16 actually loading the rocket into the rocket launcher and launching it into Tel Aviv.
0:17:18 That’s when it’s okay for Israel to strike.
0:17:23 But the reality is at that point it’s probably too late, because if the Hezbollah operative
0:17:26 is sitting there with the rocket launcher and he activates a rocket, that rocket’s probably
0:17:31 gone and it’s probably landing somewhere in the center of Israel and slaughtering a lot
0:17:32 of people.
0:17:37 So right in the center of Israel, you remember this attack against this Druze village that
0:17:42 killed 12 children on a soccer field in northern Israel a few weeks ago.
0:17:48 On Friday, Israel conducted an attack, an operation against a meeting of the leadership
0:17:50 of the Rod Juan force.
0:17:54 The Rod Juan is the most elite fighting force of Hezbollah, and the senior officers were
0:17:59 having a meeting because they were planning an October 7th-like attack in the Upper Galilee
0:18:00 in northern Israel.
0:18:03 They were planning to do another version of October 7th in the north.
0:18:06 So what was Israel supposed to do?
0:18:10 Should Israel have waited for them to actually be gone to launch that attack?
0:18:15 Or when they have intelligence that the meeting is happening, should they actually take these
0:18:17 guys out before the attack happens?
0:18:23 My bet is if they do it the way they did it, fewer Israelis will be killed for sure, and
0:18:26 fewer Lebanese civilians will be killed as well.
0:18:30 So none of this stuff is pretty.
0:18:37 None of it is elegant, none of it is purely clinical in terms of its execution.
0:18:44 But if you want to make a judgment on how you reduce the possibility or the numbers of
0:18:49 Israeli civilian casualties, and in this case Lebanese civilian casualties, Israel preemptively
0:18:55 striking the terrorists who are planning to attack Israel just before the attack begins
0:18:59 rather than during the attack is probably the best way to do it.
0:19:05 I wanted to jump off of that point and ask you about the role that Bibi Netanyahu plays
0:19:10 in all of this, especially in the perception of the attack here, I think that the piece
0:19:14 that Scott just quoted from, if Netanyahu wasn’t the head of the government, that piece
0:19:16 might not exist in the same way.
0:19:21 He’s someone who’s unpopular here with American Jews, and he’s unpopular in Israel with the
0:19:24 Jews and the Arab population that live there.
0:19:28 So what is Bibi’s role in all of this?
0:19:31 Look, Bibi is a complicated figure.
0:19:33 I’ve known him for a long time.
0:19:38 I have been in touch with him since the war began, including with some of the other leaders,
0:19:43 including those who served in the war cabinet with him who are real political enemies of
0:19:49 his in the best possible way, a political enemy in the best possible way, meaning not
0:19:52 actually like belligerence of one another.
0:20:01 I think Netanyahu personally is there’s been a major breakdown in trust inside Israel.
0:20:05 I’ll leave what Jews outside of Israel think of him because I think it’s just less relevant.
0:20:07 They don’t get a vote for him.
0:20:12 Their children are not serving the army that’s being led by him or commanded by him.
0:20:16 So I focus on Israelis because he’s very unpopular with Israeli Jews.
0:20:21 And I think there’s been a breakdown in trust for a variety of reasons.
0:20:27 We could point to some of the characters in his own government today that I think do a
0:20:30 lot to discredit Israel and the international scene.
0:20:37 I think some of what his government did in this debate over judicial reform in 2023 did
0:20:41 a lot of damage to his government in the eyes of the Israeli public.
0:20:44 But I also think he’s been in office for a very long time.
0:20:46 He was elected in 1996.
0:20:49 He left office in ’99.
0:20:56 He then got elected again, 2008, formed a government in 2009, was in office until 2022,
0:21:00 then came back into office in the beginning of 2023.
0:21:06 You think about leaders in any Western-style democracy that have stayed in office, remained
0:21:07 in office for a very long time.
0:21:08 I think the public, it’s very tired of them.
0:21:12 Think of Margaret Thatcher, someone I admire of.
0:21:16 Even she left with a sense that she had stayed too long.
0:21:22 Then when you add to it that under Netanyahu’s watch, October 7th happened.
0:21:27 Even before you get into any of the current issues, you can understand why people are
0:21:34 exhausted, exhausted with his government, exhausted with his leadership, and wanting a change.
0:21:43 I think though, Jessica, that people often mistake a lack of trust in Netanyahu for lack
0:21:47 of confidence in his government strategy in the war.
0:21:51 I think they’re tired of him, and they do not trust him.
0:21:57 Yet, when you look at what he articulates as the objectives in the war, what you look
0:22:01 at in terms of what he’s doing right now in the North, there’s broad public support
0:22:03 for it.
0:22:08 Even when he had a war cabinet before it dissolved, as I said, there are members of
0:22:12 his war cabinet who are very hostile to him politically, and yet they were in agreement.
0:22:18 They had over 90 votes in the war cabinet when it existed, and over 90% of the votes
0:22:19 were unanimous.
0:22:24 By and large, I think that people are tired of him.
0:22:28 There’s a trust issue with him, but the overall strategy in what Israel needs to do in fighting
0:22:32 this multi-front war, I think there’s wide support for it.
0:22:38 Now, again, it’s a huge problem to have a leader in wartime who people don’t trust,
0:22:41 and I don’t know how sustainable it is.
0:22:47 I think he’s going to be, but I don’t think it’s a problem with the overall strategy.
0:22:52 Yeah, Dan, I think you’re being generous with that in Yahoo.
0:22:56 I want to acknowledge that we don’t get a vote, and sovereign nations get to pick their
0:22:57 own leader.
0:23:02 My fear is somewhat abroad looking at the situation is you have an individual who kind
0:23:08 of cut a deal with the far right to save his own political ass, put these wild extremist
0:23:15 bigots in the Knesset, in exchange for this kind of implicit promise, yeah, I’m further
0:23:22 right, you may not like my government, but I’ll keep you safe, and he didn’t.
0:23:27 My second reaction during the Gaza envelope and the Kibitz there, the first was horror.
0:23:30 The second was how the fuck did they let this happen?
0:23:36 You have a huge field, some motion sensor detectors, I just can’t figure out how helicopter
0:23:41 gunships were not deployed within seven to 10 minutes from someone who said you may not
0:23:44 like my politics, but I’ll keep you safe.
0:23:50 Then the fear is that this guy knows that if he calls for an election, he’s out of office,
0:23:53 and there’s a reckoning coming, perhaps even jail for him, and that he has a motivation
0:23:59 to create a forever war, hoping that at some point they rally around him from a nationalist
0:24:02 standpoint, and he doesn’t end up in jail.
0:24:10 This is just the worst of all worlds for Jews abroad, who see us having gone from David
0:24:17 to Goliath, and a guy in power that seems to be very politically motivated to the point
0:24:23 of kind of a diabolical fear that this guy is going to make decisions solely on how do
0:24:29 I extend a war, whether it makes sense or not, to say my own ass, your thoughts.
0:24:31 Yeah.
0:24:39 You had me for most of that riff except for the last part, and the reason I part ways
0:24:43 with you, Scott, on the last part is the following.
0:24:52 I do not believe Netanyahu is prolonging the war to avoid jail time, which is the gist
0:24:54 of what you’re saying.
0:25:00 I actually think these cases against him are not going anywhere.
0:25:06 I think if there’s only one actually of the cases, the three cases that I think has legs,
0:25:11 and even that he has the capacity to appeal it, and no matter what happens, whether he’s
0:25:17 in power, whether he’s not, the legal process is going to go on for a long time.
0:25:19 He is not a young man.
0:25:23 The idea that even if he’s out of power, that the Israeli judicial system is going to send
0:25:27 him to jail in his what, his 80s, I mean, I just, the whole thing, the idea that he’s
0:25:34 being motivated by fighting a war so he can stay in power to avoid a legal process, I
0:25:37 just think it’s, I don’t buy it.
0:25:39 I think, I think Netanyahu.
0:25:41 Why wouldn’t you call for elections?
0:25:45 Because he doesn’t want to lose, because he’s an ambitious politician.
0:25:51 I’ve worked with a lot of politicians over the years, and I will tell you that my sense
0:25:59 with most of them, not all of them, but most of them have some combination of a real sense
0:26:01 of public spiritedness.
0:26:08 They want to be public servants, they are serious minded about it, and complete like
0:26:11 megalomania bordering on narcissism.
0:26:14 I mean, how else, I mean, many people who can’t think they could be the leader of the
0:26:19 free world, take people run for president, they tend to have an elevated sense of themselves.
0:26:23 And it’s usually some combination of both, and it’s like, that’s okay.
0:26:31 And so, I think Netanyahu, I know he believes that he’s got this like Churchillian complex,
0:26:38 that he is like going to be the person to dig Israel out of this, you know, in Israel’s
0:26:43 historical sense is like a World War II existential threat.
0:26:46 And so, I think, and he wants to protect his legacy, by the way.
0:26:50 I also think he feels for the reasons you said that this happened on his watch, which
0:26:56 is a catastrophe, and he wants to, he doesn’t want that to be how he goes out.
0:27:00 He wants to be the one that this happened on his watch, and he turned things around and
0:27:01 secured things.
0:27:06 And, you know, not only was the man who negotiated the Abraham Accords and got Israel normalization
0:27:10 in parts of the Sunni Gulf, but expanded it, and he’s the one who got normalization with
0:27:11 Saudi Arabia.
0:27:16 I mean, he wants to, he’s the one who neutralized Iran, the threat of Iran.
0:27:20 I mean, he’s got these grand visions of what his legacy could be, and he wants to stick
0:27:23 around to be able to execute on them.
0:27:29 I don’t, like, I think that’s a normal, I think there’s a lot of politicians who fall
0:27:30 into that category.
0:27:32 I don’t think it’s all about his own survival.
0:27:35 I don’t think he’s conducting the war for the sake of his own survival.
0:27:42 And secondly, what he’s actually doing in Gaza, what he’s actually doing in the north,
0:27:43 is supported by most Israelis.
0:27:46 In fact, he’s been a calming presence.
0:27:49 So at least in the north, by the way, I’m critical of him for this.
0:27:52 I think he should have dealt with the north sooner.
0:27:54 He did not want to deal with the north.
0:27:59 After October 7th, his defense minister, Yov Galant, was arguing for Israel to go conduct
0:28:03 a pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah immediately, because Hezbollah, Galant was right, was going
0:28:07 to join the war anyways, Netanyahu argued against it.
0:28:09 He was arguing for restraint.
0:28:13 I don’t think he’s been like some inflammatory force in Israeli politics in the middle of
0:28:17 the war fighting, in ways that are completely out of sync with where most of the Israeli
0:28:20 public is on the war fighting strategy.
0:28:24 And I don’t think whatever he’s doing is just motivated by political survival to keep
0:28:25 himself out of jail.
0:28:30 Do I think that he’s the best spokesman in the international community?
0:28:31 Absolutely not.
0:28:33 At least not right now.
0:28:42 We’ll be right back.
0:28:46 When Kamala Harris and Donald Trump met on the debate stage, it was obvious that these
0:28:48 were two very different people.
0:28:51 But J.D. Vance and Tim Walls actually have a lot in common.
0:28:53 They’re both white men from the Midwest.
0:28:56 They’re both family men, and they were both in the service.
0:28:59 But they disagree on what it means to be a man.
0:29:13 Today explained, every weekday, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:29:17 This week on Prophogy Markets, we speak with Lena Kahn, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission.
0:29:22 We discuss ongoing antitrust cases, how to measure consumer harm, and her take on monopolies
0:29:24 in big tech.
0:29:30 We went through a 20-year period where the Big Five technology companies, Apple, Facebook,
0:29:37 Google, Microsoft, and Amazon collectively made over 800 acquisitions, and not a single
0:29:39 one of which was challenged at the time.
0:29:44 And now there are lawsuits kind of retroactively identifying that some of those were missed
0:29:50 opportunities and failing to stop those deals had a really negative impact on the market.
0:30:00 We can find that conversation and many others exclusively on the Prophogy Markets podcast.
0:30:07 What does victory look like, if possible, and are we close to it, whether that’s through
0:30:12 a U.S. brokered ceasefire deal or something that’s going on that we might not be aware
0:30:13 of?
0:30:18 I do not think there’s going to be a ceasefire deal anytime soon, unfortunately.
0:30:25 I do not think Hamas is serious about a ceasefire deal.
0:30:30 John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council, the Biden administration’s
0:30:36 National Security Council, was on the Sunday shows saying that Hamas is not serious about
0:30:37 it.
0:30:41 I was meeting with a senior administration official two weeks ago who’s very involved
0:30:51 with the hostage negotiations, and he basically laid out 10 issues that are holding up a deal,
0:30:56 and nine of them were all centered around Hamas just not being serious about it.
0:31:01 So I don’t see how it, and this is heartbreaking for me because for all the obvious reasons,
0:31:04 not the least of which is I know many of these hostage families personally.
0:31:10 I know two of the families that had loved ones among the six that were executed just
0:31:11 a few weeks ago.
0:31:15 And by the way, three of those families, three of those hostages who have the six who were
0:31:20 executed were on a list that Israel and Hamas were negotiating over about being released
0:31:22 in the first phase of a deal if it were to happen.
0:31:23 I do not think there’s a deal.
0:31:26 The U.S. doesn’t think there’s going to be a deal.
0:31:31 And so how this ends, I think it ends with Israel has killed or captured most of the
0:31:33 leadership of Hamas.
0:31:36 It would be very good if they were able to kill or capture Sinwar.
0:31:40 I think it would give Israel a basis to say this war is over.
0:31:43 It’s sort of like Israel’s bin Laden.
0:31:46 I think they’re close to getting him.
0:31:51 And then the question is, do they have a plan, and they are working on one, to get someone
0:31:55 else in control of Gaza who can govern it?
0:31:57 Obviously, you want Palestinians to govern it.
0:32:01 I think some of the governance and some of the security will have to be provided by a
0:32:02 third party Arab country.
0:32:05 There are a number of governments that are talking about playing a role.
0:32:07 The one that’s been most visible is the UAE.
0:32:09 Here’s the catch.
0:32:13 It’s very unlikely you can get Palestinians to step forward and play a role if they believe
0:32:15 that Hamas can return to power.
0:32:22 It’s just that Hamas has made a name for itself in Gaza for retribution against anyone that’s
0:32:26 seeming to cooperate with Israel or cooperate with moderate Arabs.
0:32:31 And the Palestinian population, those who could be responsible actors, need to know
0:32:34 that Hamas is gone and is not coming back.
0:32:38 And I think Israel’s getting close to that, but it’s not there yet.
0:32:44 A, B, there needs to be an understanding that whatever replaces Hamas and Gaza, Israel,
0:32:47 unless it can find a third party to do this, but I don’t think they’ll be able to, Israel
0:32:51 will be responsible for security of its own border, security of the border between Gaza
0:32:57 and Egypt, and that there will be no sovereign airspace above Gaza.
0:33:07 And so, if all the relevant parties, a moderate Palestinian leadership can emerge and third
0:33:12 party Arab countries can get involved, and Israel can all agree to what I just described,
0:33:19 I think you will have some kind of end to the conflict, quote, unquote.
0:33:24 I don’t think the conflict will ever fully end, but some kind of cessation.
0:33:26 With a hostage return.
0:33:30 Not willing, but I don’t know, to be honest, and I hate talking about this.
0:33:31 This is the problem, right?
0:33:34 So let’s just say, you know, the government, the Netanyahu just said over the last few
0:33:38 days, they think over half of the, you know, some 100 hostages are alive.
0:33:39 Okay.
0:33:44 So, there’s another theory that half of those hostages are somewhere around Sinwar, Yahya
0:33:45 Sinwar.
0:33:47 The other half are scattered.
0:33:51 In a formal end of the war, who knows where all these people are?
0:33:53 Ideally, there is some formal handover.
0:34:00 I’m not convinced that anyone is in a position in Gaza right now to find all these hostages.
0:34:01 I’m talking about Palestinians.
0:34:05 I’m talking about Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the other big terror group there.
0:34:08 I don’t think anyone is in a position to find all these hostages and be able to hand
0:34:09 them over.
0:34:14 I hate to be so grim, but I’m just, right.
0:34:18 Just as we wrap up here, Dan, a thesis, I’d like you to respond to it.
0:34:23 We have a tenancy in the U.S. to want to assign something to the left or to the right.
0:34:26 You know, it’s anti-Semitism coming from the far left as it coming from the far right.
0:34:33 My thesis would be that the answer is yes, and I’ll just cite AOC’s recent comments that
0:34:37 essentially she’s argued that the detonations are a war crime.
0:34:41 She condemned the attacks of October the 7th, but didn’t call them a war crime, and then
0:34:46 cited an article in the Geneva Conventions and conveniently skipped over the fact that
0:34:50 there’s actually an amendment protocol that says booby traps can be lawful if the devices
0:34:55 are being used for military purposes like Hezbollah’s communications.
0:35:01 And then on the right, as represented by President Trump, Trump suggested that if he lost the
0:35:04 election, Jewish voters would be partially to blame.
0:35:08 He stated that the Jewish people would have a lot to do with the loss, a comment that Jewish
0:35:13 organizations and political figures have condemned as reminiscent of historical anti-Semitic
0:35:14 scapegoating.
0:35:19 Sometimes as if the far left and the far right come together around anti-Semitism.
0:35:26 And I see real echoes of early 30s Germany in the United States, and people accuse me
0:35:28 of being an alarmist and a catastrophist.
0:35:34 One, do you see the same echoes or hear the same echoes I hear, and what are your thoughts
0:35:37 about anti-Semitism converging?
0:35:40 It seems to be the one thing the far left and the far right can agree on.
0:35:45 Yeah, so among the reasons anti-Semitism is called the oldest hatred is because it manages
0:35:49 to survive and thrive no matter what environment it’s in.
0:35:58 So, you know, the fascists called Jews, you know, they weren’t pure enough, they weren’t
0:36:05 white enough, the communists called the Jews money-grubbing, you know, cosmopolitan elites
0:36:10 like whoever’s in charge, whatever the dynamic, if you just look throughout history, the Jews
0:36:19 are always, it’s like they’re like this shape-shifting targets of blame for whatever the ills are
0:36:23 going on in any political moment or any political environment.
0:36:28 And yes, the extreme left and the extreme right historically often meet up on targeting
0:36:30 the Jews one way or the other.
0:36:39 I will tell you that today, Scott, while I worry about anti-Semitism on both extremes,
0:36:49 I, from a policy standpoint, when I think of what is going to result in more Jews being
0:36:55 killed in the near future, I hate to put it in those terms, but I will, I worry much more
0:37:02 today that could change about the policies of the extreme left because they actually
0:37:04 have policy implications.
0:37:08 If you look at, you know, some of the stuff coming from Trump or some people around them,
0:37:10 I said, okay, so what’s the policy they would pursue?
0:37:12 What’s the actual policy?
0:37:13 Tell me the policy.
0:37:19 Maybe I can’t think of it or maybe I’m not being clever enough, but the policies from
0:37:21 the extreme left, they’re very clear.
0:37:28 They are very, I mean, they want to suspend arms to Israel so Israel can, it no longer
0:37:30 has the capacity to defend itself.
0:37:37 They do not want to prosecute those waging basically pogroms against Jews in major cities
0:37:39 and in American college campuses today.
0:37:46 They want to tolerate low level anti-Semitism and those are the actual policies.
0:37:49 Look at what’s, I mean, look at what’s happening on college campuses and look at what’s happening
0:37:54 in terms of the debate around for, about how the US should stand or not stand by Israel
0:37:56 as it fights for its own existence.
0:38:03 If either of those goes in the wrong direction, I mean, in the first six months of this year,
0:38:11 according to the ADO, anti-Semitic violence and other incidents has gone up 70% relative
0:38:13 to the year before, okay?
0:38:20 There’s actual violence against Jews all across the US, all across the UK where you are right
0:38:22 now in many other countries around the world.
0:38:29 And I worry is when I look at my political leaders, right, like I say, what are you doing
0:38:30 about that?
0:38:35 I look at governors and mayors and say, and district attorneys and say, what are prosecutors
0:38:37 doing about those crimes?
0:38:39 What’s law enforcement doing about those crimes?
0:38:44 And I’m very worried about the message that is being instructed to them by the left in
0:38:50 the United States and I guess the UK and elsewhere that pull back that, you know, the Jews don’t
0:38:54 need the protections that the rest of us are enjoying.
0:39:00 And so I, like I said, I take your point about the extremes on both ends, but right now
0:39:06 we are seeing the real policy implications of what it means to pull back from protecting
0:39:10 against anti-Semitism and the policies of many on the left.
0:39:13 And I hope leaders on the left confront it.
0:39:17 I think it’s a huge opportunity, political opportunity for them to truly confront it.
0:39:20 Do you think Kamala has done a decent job at doing that?
0:39:24 Because I understand, I mean, Rashida Tlaib presidency would be the end of the world
0:39:25 for Jews.
0:39:31 But I’ve felt that Kamala has spoken very strongly in support of Israel as well as her
0:39:32 husband has.
0:39:33 Her husband’s not in a policy making role.
0:39:38 So some of the sentiments coming from Doug M off are perfectly nice, but it’s not clear
0:39:41 to me that he has any influence on policy.
0:39:49 What Kamala Harris repeatedly says is Israel has a right to defend itself and how Israel
0:39:51 defends itself matters.
0:39:55 Well, of course, how Israel defends itself matters.
0:40:01 But I think what most reasonable people looking at this without a, without a, you know, a
0:40:08 hint of bias would say Israel has sought to defend itself in the most responsible way
0:40:17 any modern Western small L liberal country could and would be expected to do.
0:40:22 So saying how Israel defends itself matters, as though you’re like, you’re, you’re like,
0:40:27 you know, nodding to the criticisms that Israel’s response has been disproportionate or people
0:40:32 have suffered as a result of the nature of Israel’s response, I think feeds this narrative
0:40:35 that Israel is overshooting in its response.
0:40:41 I think that’s dangerous, A, B, I, you know, Harris has repeatedly said, including in recent
0:40:47 days that when she hears those college students protesting against Israel, she hears them.
0:40:48 She wants them to know her words.
0:40:53 She wants them to know that they have been heard.
0:40:55 I do not think that is the appropriate response.
0:40:56 That is going to encourage them.
0:40:58 It is not going to discourage them.
0:41:03 I want to see a Democratic leader, whether it’s Kamala Harris or someone else, confront
0:41:10 the base of their party, much like Bill Clinton did in another era, confronted the base of
0:41:11 his own party.
0:41:15 I think on this issue, Harris has not confronted the base.
0:41:18 She has, she has legitimized it.
0:41:21 She has said that they have a point of view, they have a legitimate point of view and they
0:41:22 need to be heard.
0:41:27 And I, I, you know, I, I, by the way, I say this as a Jewish American, like, I, I not
0:41:31 only find that offensive, but I think there are many non-Jews who see what’s going on
0:41:36 on this debate over Israel as a proxy for a broader breakdown in order in our society.
0:41:41 And they would like to see a Democratic leader, whether it’s Kamala Harris or someone else,
0:41:42 confront it head-on.
0:41:45 And it makes me nervous that she won’t.
0:41:48 Nancy Norr is one of the go-to experts when it comes to Israel and the broader Middle
0:41:49 East.
0:41:52 He’s a former advisor to the U.S. government, worked closely on foreign policy during the
0:41:56 Iraq war, co-authored Startup Nation, which is all about Israel’s tech and innovation
0:42:00 boom, as well as last year’s The Genius of Israel, the surprising resilience of a divided
0:42:02 nation in a turbulent world.
0:42:07 Today, he’s known for breaking down the region’s complex issues on his podcast, “Call Me Back,”
0:42:11 and he’s a frequent commentator on how these conflicts are shaping U.S. politics.
0:42:14 Thanks for your time down.
0:42:15 Thank you guys.
0:42:16 Appreciate it.
0:42:18 Thank you so much.
0:42:22 Stay with us.
0:42:26 Jess, what did you think?
0:42:27 I’m glad we did it.
0:42:32 I don’t necessarily agree with everything, but that was my expectation coming from a
0:42:35 different political background as Dan.
0:42:41 But it’s such a privilege to be able to talk to someone who’s so fluid in every aspect
0:42:45 of the conflict and can actually tell you about all seven fronts that the war is being
0:42:48 conducted on.
0:42:52 What I appreciated the most, I guess, is the realism about BV.
0:42:58 I tend to think more like you do about him and the people that I’m close to in Israel
0:43:03 feel the same, but that dichotomy between the thousands in the streets protesting and what
0:43:07 Dan was saying, that people are actually broadly supportive of how he’s fighting this war with
0:43:11 something that really stuck out to me and something I want to dig into further.
0:43:12 What about you?
0:43:14 I’m just an enormous fan of Dan.
0:43:17 I become friends with him over this issue.
0:43:21 This issue was kind of a catalyst for us to reengage after 25 years, and I just think
0:43:22 a lot of him.
0:43:28 I’m actually quite worried that, and this is some of my bias here, that I have a lot
0:43:29 of friends who are Jewish.
0:43:34 I was in a Jewish fraternity at UCLA, and I would describe most of them as center left.
0:43:39 I feel as if they become, for a lot of women, bodily autonomy because become a one issue
0:43:42 thing like they could never support Trump.
0:43:45 For a lot of my Jewish friends who are center left, I worry it’s taken them center right,
0:43:51 and they become one issue voters, and they see Trump as being more resolute, even if
0:43:56 it’s like a lot of bluster and nonsensical, whereas some of the rhetoric coming out of
0:44:02 the far left that Vice President Harris hasn’t condemned, the notion that she’s been a little
0:44:09 bit too empathetic and understanding of what are seen as pretty just blatantly by Jews,
0:44:15 anti-Semitic activities on campus, that it’s going to cost us some moderate Jewish voters
0:44:18 in, I don’t know if it’s Philadelphia or Arizona.
0:44:19 I was kind of curious.
0:44:22 I wanted to do some analysis on where they’re, I mean, we’re 2% of the population, so I’m
0:44:27 not sure we matter, but I guess we do, you know, every vote counts if it’s going to hurt
0:44:28 us.
0:44:29 What are your thoughts?
0:44:35 My expectation is that it’s electorally not going to hurt us, and we talked about this
0:44:40 in the reverse as well with the kind of pro-Palestinian vote, I mean, these are very small voting
0:44:46 blocks, but small but mighty, and I hate to, you know, to go there, but Jews give a lot
0:44:52 of money during political cycles, and APAC is extremely powerful, and we’ve seen the
0:44:56 implications of that in primaries around the country, like Cory Bush is not going to be
0:45:01 on the ballot come November, because of the impact of APAC.
0:45:07 You know, I totally see what you’re saying, and I felt that too, my friends who, for instance,
0:45:13 were not Fox News viewers, and now it’s all that they watch, that they are not interested
0:45:19 in hearing any equivocating about how Israel is prosecuting, I don’t want to say prosecuting
0:45:25 this war, but working to bring back innocents that were stolen and avenge the death of over
0:45:31 a thousand murderers, and they say Fox is the network that is talking about this in terms
0:45:37 that resonate with me, but the big problem, well, I have many problems with how Donald
0:45:42 Trump speaks about this issue and how he feels about it beyond the, you know, the dual loyalty
0:45:48 issues and saying it’s going to be our fault, but Donald Trump never talks about a two-state
0:45:49 solution.
0:45:55 He never talks about what peace could look like, or really giving a rat’s ass about what
0:45:57 happens to the Palestinian people.
0:46:01 I understand Hamas terrorist organization needs to be eradicated, but there are going
0:46:09 to be people left over there, and the broad majority of Jews here and abroad support some
0:46:13 sort of two-state solution and a rolling back of the settlements that you mentioned when
0:46:18 you were talking about what BB has been doing in kowtowing to the far right.
0:46:22 And I think that that is something that does keep a lot of American Jews centered around
0:46:29 the Democratic Party, plus, to me at least, being Jewish is about being a Zionist and
0:46:36 a proud Zionist and caring about Israel and its future, but also caring about other underrepresented
0:46:44 and other groups that have experienced trauma and slavery, et cetera, and that we’re part
0:46:51 of a coalition of underdogs, and that’s something that is only represented on the Democratic
0:46:57 Left, to me, and makes the Republican Party a complete non-starter, even if sometimes
0:47:04 I really appreciate how unequivocal they are about abuse of these protests or abuse of
0:47:05 the First Amendment.
0:47:08 You know, they just come out and they say, “This is straight up anti-Semitism.”
0:47:14 Yeah, I worry that, I think that’s a thoughtful nuance to you, that’s where I end up.
0:47:21 I end up that, I think Harris and Biden, or Biden and Harris, were actually, have been
0:47:26 more supportive of Israel than any nation in the world, that within moments or hours,
0:47:30 within hours of the attacks of October the 7th, more than words, they deployed two carrier
0:47:37 strike forces and basically told all the other nations, Iran on its proxies, Iran on
0:47:41 its proxies, to basically sit down, that if you’re hoping for it to instigate a multi-front
0:47:47 war here, think twice, because we’ve deployed the firepower of England and France in the
0:47:49 Mediterranean and we’re ready to use it.
0:47:53 So I think actually they’ve been, the reality is, I think they’ve been very supportive of
0:47:54 Israel.
0:47:59 Now, we’ve got a hope, and I do think Vice President Harris and her team at the convention
0:48:04 were very smart to bring up the parents of-
0:48:05 Hershey’s parents.
0:48:07 Yeah, Hershey’s parents, and it was very powerful.
0:48:09 And the bottom line is, there were just more, quite frankly, there were just more Jews on
0:48:18 stage at the TNC than there were at the RNC, but having said that, I worry that some of
0:48:23 the stuff that’s come out of the far left, I worry there’s this zeitgeist or perception
0:48:30 of a zeitgeist on the left, that they conflate the struggles of the Palestinian people and
0:48:36 the residents of Gaza with the civil rights movement, and their go-to is to assume that
0:48:39 rich white people are likely to be oppressors and there’s no one richer and wider than
0:48:41 Jews.
0:48:47 And I’ve been just flummoxed at some of the rhetoric that has come out of the far left.
0:48:52 And not only the far left and the Democratic Party, that kind of the institutions outside
0:48:58 of the Democratic Party that represent liberalism or the far left would be my industry, academic
0:49:01 institutions, and their inability to condemn this.
0:49:06 Even today, I’m advising the Regents of the University of California, and they are reticent
0:49:11 to suspend or expel students for things that if blacks or gays were on the other side of
0:49:14 this rhetoric, I think would be out the same day.
0:49:15 It wouldn’t even be a conversation.
0:49:16 Yeah.
0:49:17 Pack your things and go.
0:49:18 You’re out.
0:49:19 You’re out.
0:49:22 And if you’re not out in 24 hours, we’re arresting you.
0:49:28 My fear is that the Democratic Party has become so focused on representing people they see
0:49:35 as oppressed that there’s this knee-jerk reaction to stereotype and unwittingly become very bigoted
0:49:41 towards Jews, and that a lot of Jews feel very much unseen and even threatened right
0:49:44 now by the Democratic Party.
0:49:49 That perception is our reality right now, and I’m not sure that Harris has done enough
0:49:52 to counter that reality.
0:49:53 I think that’s right.
0:50:00 I think if we had had more time with Dan, I wanted to talk to him about how he feels
0:50:02 in terms of his own personal vulnerability.
0:50:07 He was on Dana Perino, my colleague on the Fives podcast after 10/7.
0:50:11 He said he had never felt personally vulnerable before, and now he does.
0:50:16 I have a very good friend who told me that he doesn’t let his sons wear their yamakas
0:50:17 on the subway anymore.
0:50:22 They wear baseball caps instead, something that he never envisioned could be the reality
0:50:23 here.
0:50:29 And I think that your point is well taken about what’s going on, obviously, on the far
0:50:34 left, but that it becomes the sheen over all of our conversations, like Governor Whitmer
0:50:38 was on one of the Sunday shows, and Rashid Shalib had made a comment, and Jake Tapper
0:50:45 wants Governor Whitmer to respond to this, and it eats up all of the space because we
0:50:47 don’t have a clear answer.
0:50:51 There is no Democratic clear line.
0:50:52 This is anti-Semitism.
0:50:53 This isn’t anti-Semitism.
0:50:55 This is what Zionism is.
0:50:57 This isn’t what Zionism is.
0:51:04 It allows a conflation of such important issues that people can then hide behind.
0:51:10 I see a darker people that are having a bad time, and I see a lighter people that appear
0:51:14 to be in a position of power, and I did think that it was pretty masterful of BV when he
0:51:20 came to address Congress, that he brought soldiers who were Arabs with him to show the
0:51:22 world that Israel is a melting pot.
0:51:24 This is not.
0:51:26 People with lily white skin.
0:51:31 These are Middle Easterners fighting for their existence.
0:51:37 What you said, I addressed the Goldman Sachs Israel, I know what they call it, team conference
0:51:42 here in London, and there were probably a dozen people in Yarmulke’s, and I went down
0:51:44 the elevator with probably five of them, and they all in unison when they were getting
0:51:50 off the elevators, put on hats, and they said, “You can’t be on the tube in London with
0:51:52 Yarmulke.”
0:51:54 I don’t think they were being alarmist.
0:51:58 They just seemed like fairly reasonable guys, and I thought, “Jesus, that’s where I don’t
0:52:02 know that much about your religious beliefs, just as a Jew, I know you’re Jewish, do you
0:52:03 feel threatened?
0:52:07 Do you feel like I haven’t been in America in the last two years?
0:52:13 Do you feel like anti-Semitism fervor has gotten to a point where Jews are, regardless
0:52:16 if it’s legitimate or not, if they perceive a threat, it’s real?
0:52:19 Do you think Jews perceive a real threat?”
0:52:21 Definitely.
0:52:25 Almost everybody, and that’s across the denominational scale that I interact with from the most
0:52:30 reformed Jews, which is my background, New York City Jewish kids who thought we were
0:52:31 in the majority.
0:52:35 I showed up at college and I was like, “Where are all these Christians coming from?”
0:52:41 I thought we ran the place to my friends who are in the Orthodox community and feel that
0:52:48 their way of life is being severely inhibited, not just from getting on the subway, but wanting
0:52:52 armed guards outside of schools and temples.
0:52:56 I think a lot about when I first came to London to go to London School of Economics,
0:53:00 and my grandmother, who had fled Hitler, she was originally from Vienna, they went to Paris,
0:53:06 and then managed to get out of there before he took over.
0:53:08 She told me, “You’re going to London, there’s a lot of anti-Semitism.”
0:53:10 I said, “Nanny, you’re crazy.”
0:53:11 That’s not a thing.
0:53:15 One of the first things that happened at the LSE Student Union is that they voted to
0:53:22 abolish the state of Israel, and I begrudgingly called her, and I said, “I guess you were
0:53:28 right that this is a thing, and I’ve lived cocooned, bubbled, whatever it is.”
0:53:31 If someone had asked me on October 6th what the state of anti-Semitism was in the U.S.,
0:53:34 I would have said it doesn’t exist.
0:53:35 I was totally naive to it.
0:53:37 I just didn’t even-
0:53:40 Like Tree of Life synagogue shooting was just a complete aberration.
0:53:41 Yeah.
0:53:46 Crazy, crazy, insane person, and my friends who were saying anti-Semitism is always in
0:53:47 the reeds, always waiting.
0:53:48 I thought, “You’re just being paranoid.”
0:53:52 I understand you’re paranoia, but that has primarily been starch from our society, and
0:54:01 I was flummoxed and wrong and didn’t have a grandmother to call, but yeah, I absolutely
0:54:02 hear you.
0:54:06 All right, Jess, we will see you next week.
0:54:07 Thanks everybody for tuning in.
0:54:08 Bye.
0:54:09 Bye.
0:54:10 Bye.
0:54:10 Bye.
0:54:11 Bye.
0:54:14 (upbeat music)
0:54:16 (upbeat music)
Scott and Jessica chat with Dan Senor, a leading expert on Israel and the Middle East. They discuss the latest escalations between Israel and Hezbollah, the strategic consequences of recent developments, and the potential for a broader conflict. Dan also shares his insights on the role of U.S. diplomacy in the region and reflects on the one-year anniversary of the October 7th Hamas attacks.
Follow Jessica Tarlov, @JessicaTarlov.
Follow Prof G, @profgalloway.
Follow Dan Senor, @dansenor
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