On October 6th of last year there was a long-standing ceasefire in place between Israel and Hamas. On October 7th, Hamas launched a massive war against Israel. Israel responded to this war that Hamas launched. Wars are violent. In all wars, civilians tragically get killed in the crossfire. What is unique about this war is how Hamas has used violence against civilians – Israeli civilians and Palestinian civilians — as core to its war-fighting strategy. What is unique to this war is how Hamas has built a 300-plus mile tunnel system underground to protect Hamas leadership and fighters while it set up its own civilian population to suffer. What is also unique about this war is the lengths the IDF has gone to telegraph so many of its operations so Palestinian civilians can re-locate in advance of those operations.

This is the reality of this war. And, yet, the Biden administration has supported Israel in this war from Day 1. Israel articulated its objectives in this war. The Biden administration made clear it supported Israel in pursuit of those objectives.

Since October 7, we have heard from more and more friends in Israel who came of age — politically — in the 1990s. Some of these friends were key political figures on the Israeli Left and were committed to working on a two-state solution as the final resolution to achieve regional peace.

Dr. Einat Wilf joins us to discuss the sobering of many of these figures and what it means for Israel’s future. Einat also discusses an essay she penned for Sapir journal about the tendency of activists in other countries to project their political debates on Israel — something happening today — however disconnected from Israel those debates may be. Her essay is called “How Not to Think About the Conflict” and it can be found here: https://sapirjournal.org/social-justice/2021/04/how-not-to-think-about-the-conflict/

As Ramadan begins, many analysts are speculating on what this means for Israel’s coming military operation in Rafah. There is a threat from Hamas to deter a Rafah operation. There is a threat from the Biden administration seemingly designed to encourage Israeli’s War Cabinet to re-think the operation. Are these real threats? How does Israel evaluate these threats? This is what we unpack in our weekly check-in with Haviv Rettig Gur.

Then we discuss whether President Biden is beginning a turn against Israel. Is it real or is it performative? Is there a difference? What are the implications?

Micah Goodman is on the speed-dial of a number of Israeli political leaders – from right to left, but especially on the center-left and the center-right. He is a polymath, a podcaster and one of Israel’s most influential public intellectuals, having written books ranging from biblical lessons for the modern age to Israel’s geopolitics. One book in particular, had an outsized impact in terms of its framing of the conundrum that Israel has been in with the Palestinians since 1967. That book is called Catch-67: The Left, the Right, and the Legacy of the Six-Day War, Not only have all of his books been bestsellers in Israel, he essentially created a new genre; books that bring core texts of Jewish thought to a general, secular audience. But Micah has a new book, which he wrote in a four-month sprint following October 7.

His new book is called ‘The Eighth Day’, in which Micah tries to understand the implications of the nation’s trauma and what it means for the other ‘day after’ (not the ‘day after’ in Gaza, but the ‘day after’ inside Israel). What does this moment mean for Israelis? How will 10/07 re-shape Israeli society…and its politics?This is the first interview Micah has done about his new book, which will be published (in Hebrew) at the end of March.

Will there be a negotiated pause in fighting in advance of Ramadan, or will the IDF move against the remaining Hamas battalions in Rafah?

At the same time, what to make of the new external and internal pressures on Israel? Externally, there is mounting pressure on Israel regarding delivery of humanitarian aid, and increasing internal pressure — specifically on Prime Minister Netanyahu — relating to how he’ll hold his Government together in the midst of a new debate about exemptions of Haredim from military service.

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For more than 30 years of ‘on again-off again’ peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, many Israelis, and certainly most interested observers in the West, looked to the 1967 Six-Day War as the root cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. If only we could reverse the results of that defensive war in which Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza, the problem would be solved, so the narrative goes. And this served as the basis for all peace talks and agreements that have taken place since.

Last week, Prime Minister Netanyahu released to his cabinet what could be interpreted as a first sketch, an early blueprint, or a statement of principles for post-war Gaza planning. At the same time, and much more newsworthy, it appears that there is some progress on the negotiations to return more Israeli hostages.

To help us understand what’s going with both tracks, our guest today is NADAV EYAL, who returns to the podcast. He is a columnist for Yediot. Eyal has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news. One of Israel’s leading journalists, Eyal was a winner of the Sokolov Prize, Israel’s most prestigious journalism award. Eyal has been covering Middle-Eastern and international politics for the last two decades for Israeli radio, print and television news. He received a master’s degree from the London School of Economics and a law degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Every day we see news accounts “reported” by reputable journalists. There is typically one frame in the post-10/07 War: ‘Gazan Palestinians are the victims of Israel.’ How does this happen? How do journalists actually operate in Gaza and around the world? And is this a window into what had Hamas figured out long before 10/07 — that the forces of barbarism could manipulate the intentional press reaction to their massacre of 10/07?

That is why we wanted to sit down with Matti Friedman, who is one of the most thoughtful writers when it comes to all matters related to Israel, the broader Middle East, and also trends in the world of journalism. He is a monthly writer for Tablet Magazine and a regular contributor to The Atlantic. His newest book is called “Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai.” Before that he published “Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel,” and before that “Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story of a Forgotten War.” Matti’s army service included tours in Lebanon. His work as a reporter has taken him from Israel to Lebanon, Morocco, Moscow, the Caucasus, and Washington, DC. He is a former Associated Press correspondent and essayist for the New York Times opinion section.

On Sunday, Israel’s cabinet unanimously issued a statement rejecting efforts by the international community to force immediate recognition of a Palestinian State, especially so soon after 10/07. This was following an extensive article in the Washington Post last week that revealed plans — according to background sources — for Washington, the EU, and Arab capitals to accelerate the path to recognition of a Palestinian state.

Quoting from the Washington Post article: “The elephant in the planning room is Israel, and whether its government will acquiesce to much of what is being discussed: the withdrawal of many, if not all, settler communities on the West Bank; a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem; the reconstruction of Gaza; and security and governance arrangements for a combined West Bank and Gaza.”

While there has been a lot of resentment inside Israel towards its political and security leadership, Israeli society has stepped up in ways sometimes impossible for me to describe. So, when I was in Israel, I asked Wendy Singer to join me for a conversation about what most Israelis are seeing and experiencing at the grassroots level, day-to-day, that we may not see.

Wendy Singer is an advisor to several Israeli high-tech start-ups, including Re-Milk — https://www.remilk.com/
Wendy was the executive director of Start-Up Nation Central since its founding in 2013 — https://startupnationcentral.org/
Previously, she was the director of AIPAC’s Israel office for 16 years and served in AIPAC’s Washington office before immigrating to Israel in 1994. Earlier in her career, Wendy was a foreign policy advisor in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives.

Are we witnessing a dramatic change in the Biden administration’s approach to Israel’s defensive war against Hamas? Are these changes just rhetorical to mollify either US domestic political constituencies or Middle East regional actors (or both)? Or do they represent meaningful policy changes?

Should Israeli leaders be concerned that the US-Israel relationship is entering a new phase?

Today we look back at the history of Palestinian violence against the Jews in Israel (and in the pre-state Yishuv) — from the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1917 through the myriad efforts to establish a Palestinian Arab State alongside a Jewish State in the 1930s and the 40s. In our discussion today, we follow this pattern all the way through the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, and now today. Each time a war or wave of terror is launched, and Israel perseveres, the Palestinian leadership tries to dictate the terms of what comes next, as though they were the victors in this defensive war, rather than the aggressors and the defeated.

Why? And are we seeing that same mindset play out right now? Did Hamas actually think it would defeat Israel with this attack, and Israel would fold to its demands, or possibly even just disappear?

Haviv Rettig Gur of the TIMES OF ISRAEL returns for his weekly check-in from Israel.

There has been a recent flurry of statements coming out of London, Washington, Brussels and the UN about the need to move on the recognition (or establishment) of a Palestinian state. Some have even argued for bypassing discussions about conceptualization, timelines, and milestones, and instead proceed straight to implementation. The EU’s Foreign Minister, Josep Borrell, has said, “I don’t think we should talk about the Middle East peace process anymore. We should start talking specifically about the two-state-solution implementation process.”

The UN has one central agency responsible for handling all refugees globally, but Palestinian refugees have their own UN agency, UNRWA. Why? The number of Palestinian refugees has increased from 360,000 in 1948 to to 5.9 million today. And those Palestinian refugees or descendants of refugees that have citizenship in other countries maintain their refugee status, according to the UN. What’s going on here? The U.S. Government and a number of other governments just suspended funding for UNRWA based on learning that a number of its Gaza-based employees had been helping Hamas, including in the 10/07 massacre.

On our weekly check-in with Haviv Rettig Gur, we discuss the history of UNRWA and the role it plays in the Gaza operating system.

Al Jazeera is constantly blasting a steady stream of stories and images to the Arab world about ‘tens of thousands of Palestinians dead,’ according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. Condemnations against Israel are issued all over the place, with charges of Israeli genocide leveled on U.S. college campuses to the International Court of Justice. And, yet, those Sunni Arab countries that have already integrated with Israel have not reversed course, and those countries not yet integrated (i.e. Saudi Arabia), seem to be pushing ahead.

The Sunni Gulf seems to have ambitions that necessitate continued and deeper cooperation with Israel. The question, though, is what do we make of the Saudi requirement for some kind of Palestinian state, however defined? What would it take for Israel to meet that requirement (or check the box) for the Saudis? And how far will the Sunni Gulf go in working with Israel to pacify Gaza?

In today’s weekly check-in with Haviv Rettig Gur from the Times of Israel, we discuss intensifying debates within Israel over the leadership of the government, how to reconcile seemingly irreconcilable war aims as Israel transitions to a new phase in the war, is there an actual disagreement on concrete policy objectives between different members of the War Council, and what to make of the growing protest movement.

If you are in London on Monday, January 22, Haviv and Dan will be in conversation at 7:30 pm at JW3. Details here: https://www.jw3.org.uk/genius-israel#

Will we look back at the past few decades in America as the Jewish ‘golden age’? And is this ‘golden age’ now over? Did October 7th mark the end? Or should the signs have been obvious years ago?

John Podhoretz recently wrote a long essay for Commentary Magazine describing how we got here. He writes: “Several seemingly unconnected arguments and controversies in the United States that had been carefully cultivated over the past couple of decades sprang into full flower on October 8 and thereafter. The weapons were ideas that had flowed for a quarter century from university graduate programs to activist groups to K–12 education and then began to reach millions through online mailing lists, listservs, and social-media entertainment services.”

Having recently passed the 100 day-mark of Hamas’s massacre against Israel, two events in recent weeks occurred that should have occurred some time ago. The New York Times published a major investigative piece on the details and the scale of Hamas’s use of sexual assault in its warfare against Israeli women. And, in recent days, Pramila Patte — the U.N. special representative on sexual violence in conflict — has finally agreed to come to Israel to lead an investigation of what Hamas did on October 7.

In this episode, we are joined by Shari Mendes (who was quoted in the New York Times investigation and also spoke at the U.N. on Hamas and sexual violence). Shari is an immigrant to Israel who has raised four children in Israel. She is an architect, the founder of an innovative non-profit in Israel to help cancer patients, and an IDF army reservist who serves in the unit responsible for preparing the bodies of female IDF soldiers through all the steps in advance of burial. Shari has seen firsthand what the world seems to want to ignore. In our conversation, she shares some of her observations, as well as her broader take on Israeli society as we pass the 100-day mark.

This past weekend, Israelis marked 100 days since the Hamas massacre — and 100 days that 136 hostages, of all ages, still remain captive in unimaginable conditions.

We resume our weekly conversation with Haviv Rettig Gur of THE TIMES OF ISRAEL to discuss where the war goes from here. Does it end? Can it end? How? And what has Israel learned about how to proceed?

In recent days, two big stories have gotten a lot bigger. The U.S. and U.K. have launched air and missile strikes against Houthi targets in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen on Thursday and today, marking a significant response after the U.S. Government warned that this Iran-backed (and Iran armed, trained, and financed) militant/terrorist group would be held responsible for its attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. But how did the Houthis — rather than Hezbollah — find themselves as the primary Iran-backed proxy responding to the Hamas-Israel war? And what does U.S. and U.K. action against them tell us about this war? Is it widening?

At the same time, Israel finds itself at the International Court of Justice, having to defend itself againt the charge of committing genocide against the Palestinians, because of Israel’s response to Hamas’s attempted genocide.