Why Aren’t Israelis Alarmed by Global Isolation?- with Amit Segal

You are listening to an art media podcast.

In Netanyahu's opinion, what we call the world is a very narrow piece of land stretching from Congress to the White House.

So, for Netanyahu, when he was asked about the public opinion in the United States and worldwide, he said, yes, it was worse before.

So, what he explains himself is as follows: that Israel always suffers a temporary decrease in the public opinion in the United States during wars.

And once the wars end, there is a recovery.

So, as long as we have President Trump and as long as we know that the war is gonna end one day, we're all set.

It's 8 a.m.

on Sunday, August 24th here in New York City.

It is 3 p.m.

on Sunday, August 24th in Israel, where Israelis are beginning a new week.

Last night, Saturday, tens of thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv's hostage square, urging the government to end the war and bring the remaining hostages home.

This comes a week after Hamas announced it had approved a ceasefire proposal, which Israeli officials have reportedly been reviewing.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that he had issued instructions for negotiations to be held for the release of all hostages, but it was unclear whether this statement marked any significant developments regarding the proposal Hamas agreed to a few days before.

Meanwhile, the IDF continues to prepare to execute the government's plan to conquer Gaza City with 60,000 reservists called back again ahead of the operation.

Also on Saturday, Benny Gantz, the National Unity Party chair, called on Prime Minister Netanyahu, opposition leader Yair Lapid, and Yisrael Beitainu chairman Abigur Lieberman to form a, quote, government for redeeming the hostages and for equality in the war's burden, close quote.

The proposal would see opposition parties join the coalition to advance the release of hostages as well as legislation that addresses ultra-Orthodox enlistment in the IDF while preparing for elections in the spring.

As the government weighs whether to move forward with the takeover of Gaza City or secure a hostage ceasefire deal, Israel's international standing appears to be in freefall.

Over the past few weeks, as we've talked about in recent episodes, many governments, including those of Britain, France, Canada, and Australia, and others, have announced plans to recognize a Palestinian state.

This comes amid global pressure on Israel about charges of mass starvation in Gaza.

On Friday, an internationally recognized set of standards for determining food insecurity, a set of standards largely created and administered by NGOs and UN bodies called the IPC, which it's a mouthful here.

It's called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.

But the IPC was applied for the first time to declare a famine has struck North Gaza.

Israel quickly denied that charge, and that in and of itself is a subject we will be getting into in future episodes.

But the question for today's conversation is, what is actually Israel's strategy in response to all of this?

The sense that the walls are closing in?

Is there an actual strategy?

Do Israelis recognize the severity of their isolation?

Or are they seemingly insulated from it?

Or do they think they're insulated from it?

Should they be alarmed?

I know I am.

Well, joining us to try and answer these questions is Arc Media contributor Amit Sego.

Amit, how are you?

I'm fine.

How are you, Dan?

I'm all right, despite the parade of horribles I just listed off, and there are actually many more.

So let me just start by ticking off a few of these developments from the past few weeks.

Outside of the U.S., it seems like you're an outlier of a Western government if you have not declared that you will recognize a Palestinian state at the UN's Assembly in September.

The famine narrative has advanced, as I just cited, and it's just reported as fact.

Like, it's not even, you read the press coverage, it's just not really even disputed.

And of course, what I worry about is this could be laying the groundwork for a genocide case, either the existing genocide case at the ICC, which could be bolstered by accusations of orchestrated famine, or

in other venues and in other fora.

European countries, including Germany, have talked about halting arms sales to Israel.

We just had in the U.S.

a couple of weeks ago, the majority of Democratic U.S.

senators voting for a resolution calling for the cutoff of arms.

to sale of arms, distribution of arms to Israel.

It's something you've mentioned to me.

The Israeli government, in recent weeks, I guess in advance of the August holidays, where a lot of Israelis travel, basically provided guidance to Israelis on how, when traveling abroad, not to in any way identify themselves, to give off their Israeliness.

And as you pointed out, you can't imagine another government from another country having to tell their citizens: when you travel abroad, do everything you can to hide who you are and where you came from.

And so we've been through periods where Israel has been under intense isolation before,

but I know to me at least this feels different.

I know many in the diaspora feel that this is different.

So I just want to just start.

What is Israel's strategy for dealing with all of this?

And does it even have a strategy?

Aaron Ross Powell, it depends what is the battlefield.

When it comes to diplomacy, Israel has the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

When it comes to the U.S., Israel has Ron Dermer.

And when it comes to the public opinion, there, Israel, I think, has no answer.

But I would like to generally frame the discussion because it reminds me more and more over the last few weeks the opening sentence of Tell of Two Cities by Dickens.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

If you follow the U.S.

administration, it's the best Israel-American relationship.

They just bombed Iran after we asked them.

President Trump allows Israel to annex whatever it wants, to occupy any area it wants in Gaza City.

Immigration or emigration is on the table in Gaza, sovereignty, et cetera, et cetera.

However, a year ago exactly, Israel enjoyed a very good reputation in the United States, in the public opinion, whereas the administration was quite hostile.

So things just, you know, it's exactly the other way around.

So to put it, generally speaking, we now have a proof that the longer the wars are, the worse the situation of Israel is.

It's as simple as that.

And since it's Israel's longest war in its history, and we've had many wars, it shows deterioration.

We experienced then over the last few months the discussion about why Israel needs short wars.

And usually if I would have been asked this question before October 7th, I would say because of ammunition, because of the army.

But I would say now that we know that the most severe shortage is the shortage of legitimacy.

And the longer the war, the tougher the problems.

Now, when you ask someone to speak about Israel, all they have in mind is Gaza.

I would like to give you an example.

In 2019, Israel hosted the Eurovision.

It was an amazing show.

I think it was the best Eurovision so far.

And Israel back then was a state of tourism.

If you walked in London or Paris, you could see ads of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv's world cities, etc.

Nowadays, Israel is Gaza, famine, starvation, etc.

However, I would offer to take it with a grain of salt because in 2019 the Eurovision was almost cancelled because Hamas fired rockets.

So the very idea in Israel is that once you finish with the problem of Hamas once and for all, it would solve your problems for many, many years of recovery.

I mean, basically what you're saying is two things.

One, Israel's strategy for dealing with growing isolation is the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress, and they're solid on that front.

A,

B, this is just a function of wartime, and this happens to be a long war, so it feels worse than normal because there's a direct correlation, I think, what you're saying, between the length of the war and how long this isolation endures.

And once the war is over, the isolation will be gone.

I think you're right.

In previous wars, Israel has felt this intense isolation.

What feels different, at least to me, this time, is the mainstreaming of that sentiment.

That's what's different.

If you go back, I mean, you can go back to the 48 War of Independence, which I wasn't alive for, but I've studied and read about, there's a whole lot of arms embargo, right, on Israel.

You go, you know, in other wars, 67, the Sinai War in 56, the sense that Eisenhower basically told Israel to cut it out and pressured Israel in a way that would be impossible to imagine today.

You go to Osirak, the Israeli operation against the nuclear facility in Iraq, where the Reagan administration halted arms sales to Israel for about six months in a way that felt, shocking at the time.

Israel was under enormous pressure during the First Lebanon War.

The polling was horrendous for Israel.

So there have been periods where things have been bad.

Right.

And yet, in most of those periods, it felt that this was a function of governments, elites, elite institutions that were pressuring Israel.

And the sense I have this time, what feels different, the sense of the walls closing in, is it's not just elites.

It's not just opinion columnists.

It's not just NGOs, it's not just governments.

There's a mainstreaming in many Western societies of these vitriolic criticisms of Israel and this seemingly very well-coordinated campaign to delegitimize Israel.

And so I guess let me just have you respond to that.

In that sense, it's not just the length of the war.

Something else is going on.

Yeah, so I would say it's a combination of three things.

One, first and foremost is the fact that every time Israel fights in populated areas, in urban areas, it suffers a heavy damage.

That was the case in the first Intifada in 1987, when the image was of an Israeli tank versus a Palestinian

child with stones.

It was like David and Goliath, but the other way around.

This is the case now.

That was the case on the first Lebanon war.

It's not the case, for instance, when Israel fought Iran in June.

And it wasn't the case when Israel attacked Hezbollah with the the Pagers and the Waki-Takis.

So this is one thing.

It's very, very hard to have highly covered in the TikTok era, a war against the terrorist organization who hides behind the population.

So this is one thing.

The second is, of course, the Qatari money,

which takes over the United States and the vast areas of the elites in Europe.

And the third thing, in my opinion, is the grave mistake of having a far-right coalition in Israel.

Because I allow myself to think that unless Ben Gavir and Smotrich were part of the coalition, with all those things that Ben Gavir said and the Minister of Heritage and many, many figures in the Israeli cabinet, the damage would not be as big as this.

Because you have hard times to explain people that Israel does not commit genocide when the way it is translated from a far-right Hebrew to an international English sounds like genocide.

I can explain you for hours why the Minister of Heritage is a marginal figure that no one knows in Israel and has nothing to do with the war.

And that when he says to wipe Gaza, he doesn't mean the population, but it doesn't really matter.

So this is the combination.

So just for our listeners to understand what you're talking about.

So the Minister of Heritage, which is an obscure position in the government and certainly has zero responsibility in any of the major functions of government, especially in war-making policy and strategy.

What did he say?

That we should wipe Gaza off the map or something like this.

So he made this statement and there was all this blowback.

And I think even the Prime Minister at the time or the Prime Minister's office put out a statement criticizing him and saying he has no role in our policymaking.

So these comments get pulled out, you know, and then they're used as a way to kind of indict Israel, either, you know, literally or figuratively.

It makes it easier because, for instance, by the way, there were criminal investigations of the ICC and other areas against Prime Minister Olmer and Livni, who were not part of the far-right, to say the least.

This was in the Second Lebanon War, previous war.

20 years ago, yes, yes, 15 years ago.

Yeah.

But it was not as easy as today.

I see how fast things happen.

And I would like to add another thing, that the opposition in Israel has an important part in it.

Why?

Because exactly like Bengevir and other ministers don't take into account how things are heard worldwide and they speak to their constituency, to their base, political base, the same applies for the opposition.

Now, when Yair Golan, the head of the Israeli Democrat Party, says that Israel is killing babies as a hobby, he doesn't understand that he would necessarily get 2,000 quotes on Google News an hour later, because when the former deputy IDF chief of staff says this, it sounds to the world like Israel pleads guilty, that Israel does kill babies.

Now, Yair Golan says this, not because he thinks this, because he wants to tap up Netanyahu's government, but he doesn't take into account he and the former defense minister Yalon and other senior figures within the Israeli political arena, former Prime Minister Eudolmirth, that no one cares if they are part of the opposition now.

For the international community, it's like the ultimate proof that Israel is a war criminal.

Okay, I want to come back to what you said about the Minister of Heritage, who I agree with you is an obscure figure.

And I make this point all the time.

I mean, that the international press, the people I'm debating, are focusing on obscure figures.

And then they come come back and they say, really?

Well, is the Ministry of Finance an obscure figure?

Bitsalos Motrich?

Is Idamar Bengvir an obscure figure who has a serious role in the government as it relates to at least internal security, not war-making strategy?

And certainly their votes are relevant when it comes to decisions about ceasefires and hostage deals.

So how do you respond to that?

They're not nobodies.

They're not nobodies, but decisions that are made in Israel are taken by the prime minister.

The prime minister and Deirmir, those are the only two important figures within the Israeli administration.

I know it sounds quite weird, but the Israeli Prime Minister is stronger than the American President.

Once you get it's very hard to get a majority, but once you got it, once you got the sixty-one votes in the Knesset and you paid all the parties that

you wanted to be part of your coalition, you take all the major decisions when it comes to security, to war and peace.

So it sounds quite weird, but Bengalir functions more as an opposition within the coalition rather than someone who really takes the decisions.

But to your point, once you get the 61 seats, I think at least the perception over here is that Ben Gir and Smoltrich and others, they could actually break the majority.

Yeah, politically they can, but practically the right wing punishes leaders who actually topple right-wing governments.

So Bengavir doesn't really have a lot of distance to go to when it comes to politically.

But I fully agree with you.

Bengavir is not a marginal figure.

And it was a grave mistake, in my opinion, to actually having a narrow far-right coalition in times of war.

By the way, I think it's wrong most of the times.

The differences in Israel are way smaller than between the left and the right in the United States.

So a national unity government would be way better for Israel, especially in times of war.

Now, it's easy to point at these right-wing figures and say they're doing a lot of damage to Israel internationally.

Again, I think the actual impact of their rhetoric is, you know, overstated.

They don't make matters easier, but I think the campaign against Israel would be going full steam ahead, regardless, because all you have to look at, Amit, is the ICC campaign and charges against Israel.

Who do they go after?

Nathan Yahoo and Yoav Galant.

Yoav Galant is now like one of the saviors.

He's one of the enlightened ones, according to those who want the war to end.

And yet he is being accused of war crimes and genocide.

And I think this is the grave mistake of the opposition in Israel.

Because once Netanyahu loses the election, if he loses the election in 2026, and Lapid, Bennett, Yair Golan, and Lieberman take office, they will find themselves in the very same problem like Netanyahu, but without the excuse of Netanyahu.

Then Yair Golan would have to explain that Israel doesn't kill babies for habit.

Now, it won't be that easy for them to...

Well, let's stand on that.

So say if Yair Golan is in the government, it's a coalition government.

Say he's defense minister.

He has some prominent role, you're saying the international community will then say, Minister Golan, you're now in a position of power.

When you were in the opposition, you said Israel was killing babies for a hobby.

Do you still stand by that position?

The problem is that we have an internal debate, but the audience is international because everything that happens in Israel is covered and gets huge amounts of tension.

But of course, it would have happened anyway in a two-year war.

Now, here's the thing, in my opinion, and if we want to take a deep look into this problem we have to get into Netanyahu's head.

Take us, take us into his head.

Yes.

Okay so the audience who's under the age of 50 and didn't have the opportunity to watch younger Netanyahu performs on NBC, CNN, ABC, etc.

He was brilliant in speaking to the American public over the heads of the presidents and senators, etc.

Now it's the other way around.

Netanyahu actually hides behind Trump's back from the American public opinion.

What happened?

So first of all, maybe Netanyahu became older.

He's now 76.

He's not that young anymore.

He's not in the TikTok era, etc.

But there is something deeper than this, in my opinion.

In Netanyahu's opinion, and in Dermer's opinion, what we call the world is a very narrow piece of land stretching from the Capitol Hill to Pennsylvania Avenue 1600, from the Senate, from Congress to the White House.

Now, it's true that when you have a hostile Democrat president, you still have the Capitol Hill most of the time, the Republican one.

So, Fernetan Yao, when he was asked last week, I wrote about it in my newsletter,

when he was asked about the public opinion in the United States and worldwide, he said, yes, it was worse before.

So I asked him when.

I expected to get an answer like you said in 1948, 1956, 1973.

He said last year.

Why?

Because last year President Biden actually held an effective arm embargo on Israel and he was against Israel entering Rafah.

So for Netanyahu, once he has President Trump, he has a veto right in the UN.

So he doesn't care.

He actually is control-zing the international community.

And in the European Union, he has Hungary and the Czech Republic.

So

everything is fine.

Now, if it was someone else rather than Netanyahu, I would say that he doesn't care about posterity, about the next generation.

But since I know that Netanyahu is the son of an historian, so he cares about what people would say in 20 years from now, he doesn't want to be remembered as someone that under his watch the public opinion in the US turned against Israel.

So what he explains himself is as follows: that Israel always suffers a temporary decrease in the public opinion in the United States during wars.

And once the wars end, there is a recovery.

So as long as we have President Trump and as long as we know that the war is going to end one day, we're all set.

You know, it's interesting as this comparison to last year because

one could make the argument that Biden's support for Israel after October 7th, however uneven it was, and however it was often, you know, one step forward, two steps back.

On balance, the trajectory was made by the president to stand with Israel under enormous pressure from the left.

So, to have a Democratic president be the one who is resisting the international isolation campaign versus the Trump administration, one could argue, I mean, it's just an interesting that he didn't see any value in that.

One could make the case that there was even more value in having a Democratic president standing with Israel.

Okay, so it touches the other point.

President Biden supported Israel when it was the weak side of the conflict, which was a rare incident in the history of the Middle East.

Because if Israel is going to be weaker for longer than one week, it's not going to exist.

So there was one day, one morning on October 7th in which Israel suffered heavy losses and lost a battle.

And the outcome was devastating.

And that's why the Israeli flag was the Empire Stealthy Building, the Bandenburg Gate, and the Eiffel Tower were lit in the blue and white colours.

However, I think Netanyahu's perception is based on a 19th century diplomacy and policy that says that we are not in the business of soft power and image.

We are in the business of hard power.

And since Israel is now a regional superpower, the only superpower after defeating Iran, it necessarily means that Israel's international positioning went up and not down.

Now, it's counterintuitive because we then, we speak the language of soft power, of, I don't know, sports events, of Israeli youngsters entering parks in Europe or banned from entrance, etc.

You're referring to just this thing that happened in France last week, right?

Right.

Where 150 was it Israelis or

Israeli youth.

There was some organized like summer program and they were going to like an abusement park or something in France and the owner of the park wouldn't let them in because they were Israeli.

So that's what you're referring to.

Okay, so Netanyahu says, for instance, that many countries in Europe that deliberately or in publicly speak against Israel and threat to recognize a Palestinian state behind closed doors, they want more and more Israeli ammunition and technology due to the new percentage of the defense out of the GDP.

5%, I think.

5% of GDP has to be spent to be a member of NATO, to be part of the NATO Defense Pact.

So it's quite interesting because there was a phrase in Israel for many, many years that Israel is the mistress of the Middle East.

Many Sunni countries want to negotiate with Israel behind closed doors.

For instance, the king of Jordan, Hussein, visited Israel many times prior to the signing of the peace agreement in 1993, Saudi Arabia, Emirates, etc.

So now, according to this description by Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel becomes the mistress of Europe.

We have a lot of technology that we sell to Germany, Slovenia, and Serbia and the United Kingdom and France, etc.

However, this is behind closed doors.

So here is a question.

Where is the real world?

Is it behind closed doors or is it in public?

Now, maybe I am a millennial, but unlike Netanyahu, I think my humble opinion is that today it's very, very important.

We're not in the 80s anymore.

We can't have our policy only in secret.

That's my opinion.

But here comes the third ingredient that shows that the picture is more complicated.

And I want to take you to the Eurovision song contest.

Now, there are people who like Eurovision because they like the song.

Talk about soft power.

Exactly.

Okay.

Eurovision.

So, this is the European Song Contest.

So, there are people who like the songs, there are people who like the costumes.

I like the Eurovision because of the electoral system that it offers.

Half of the points are given by the judiciary in each country and half by the public.

Now, Israel came number 12 with the judiciary, with the elites, and number one with the popular vote.

So it says something.

And I think what it says is that there is a big part of the population in Europe that doesn't share the values of their governments.

You see that according to the polls, something dramatic is happening as we speak.

In France, Austria, United Kingdom, and Germany, and Spain, I think, the far right, the populist right, is leading the polls for for the first time in Europe's history.

So there is a sentiment in Israel that says it's not that Europe is against us.

It's the European left which is against us.

So we have to wait patiently till the populist right takes the continent.

Okay, let's talk about playing the long game.

There are major institutional decisions being made in Europe.

We just, on What's Your Number, another original podcast from Arc Media, which focuses on the Israeli economy, they just had an episode, which maybe we'll link to in the show notes, the most recent episode about just what is actually happening with the BDS campaign.

It was largely focused on Europe and these institutions.

And beneath the surface, there are major decisions being made by a whole range of European academic institutions, research institutions that is quite shocking.

And then, if this is a term that most of our listeners will not have heard, I'm sure many in Israel haven't, which is the Horizon Europe program, which is a RD program run by the EU that issues grants to members of the EU, to various institutions.

And Israel is actually an associated country within this EU program.

I think it's one of the only non-EU countries that's part of it.

So the whole program for the period 2021 to 2027 has a budget of something like 100 billion euros.

Right.

And Israel is a beneficiary of it, right?

The Weizmann Institute of Science, the Tel Aviv University, the Technion.

I mean, that's extremely important to the Israeli research ecosystem.

And I don't know exactly when this current period extends, but it's not indefinite.

Like it's relatively soon, in which case, the EU is going to have to make a decision about whether or not to reissue Israel's status as a member of this program.

And the idea that Israel is going to sit back and wait, well, don't worry, because a bunch of right-wing governments will eventually be in power in the EU, and then they'll take over programs like this and we'll be fine, to me, is.

crazy.

You're right.

Because this whole program could end for Israel soon.

And it is one of the biggest sources for R ⁇ D funding for Israel.

You're right.

And I would like to add that Israel has not always been part of Horizon 2020.

Israel joined the project only, I think, 20 years ago.

So it wasn't always the case.

We are part of Asia.

We are not part of Europe.

So it doesn't necessarily mean that we will always be part of Europe when it comes to science, etc.

So one thing is that Israel is commodity to trade for this.

So it's not a lost cause.

But yes, and I would like to explain why many Israelis are not as horrified as you by this chance of Israel losing Horizon 2020, for instance.

The reason is because for many, many years, Israelis were lectured by their center-left opposition leaders that a tsunami is going to happen when it comes to Israel's diplomacy and international standing.

In 2011, for many, many months, the then Defense Minister Ehud Barak and the then leader of opposition Tipi Levni said that a tsunami is coming, that we are going to have a recognition of Palestinian state and to be kicked off from Europe, etc.

And it didn't happen.

So for many Israelis, it's yet another warning of a tsunami, but maybe now the tsunami is coming.

That's the reason why you in New York City are very worried, more worried than many of Israelis.

Well, let's stay on that, because I am struck by how little this topic, this conversation we're having right now, comes up when I talk to average regular Israelis.

What comes up is: is there going to be a hostage deal?

Is there not?

Is my son, or nephew, or brother, or spouse going to be called up from Ilawim for reserve duty as Israel goes into the Gaza city or not?

How outrageous is it that the Haredim, the ultra-Orthodox, are not serving?

These are the questions I hear from regular Israelis.

The conversation we're having right now, I never hear.

Why?

You hear it more than in the past, but less than, because till it happens, it's foreign news.

I'll give an example.

Israelis started to feel the burden of the war when a Yemenite missile, Houthi missile, hit Ben-Gurion airport, and all the international air carriers suspended their activity in Israel in April, I think.

So, this is one thing.

That was the case, for instance, with Hezbollah gaining more and more power in Lebanon for many, many years.

We knew everything, but no one cared about it because before the first missile, it was something that happened far, far away from here.

Israelis care about Israel, the United States, and their activities in Europe.

I mean, flights, football, soccer, and sports.

That's the thing, give or take.

Yeah, and Eurovision.

Eurovision, yeah.

So this is it.

Now, we have a very interesting debate following the reports about those youngsters banned from entering an amusement park in Paris or hit in the Netherlands or are not allowed to enter a football match, etc.

So, this is where most Israelis meet the situation.

It can happen very fast when it comes to Horizon 2020 or

when a hostile anti-Israeli U.S.

president is elected if it happens in 2029.

Which is entirely possible.

27 Democratic senators signed a petition to actually have an arms embargo on Israel, which is unprecedented.

That more than half of the.

And it's a majority, a majority of the Democrats in the Senate.

Which was the most pro-Israeli party in the United States till 20 years ago?

Not more than this.

Okay.

One argument I've heard from some Israeli friends, and I don't think this is fair, by the way, but I just want to put it out there and have you respond to it.

You hear this argument that Israelis, one of the reasons they're so disconnected from the isolation, the real isolation, the structural isolation that we're talking about, is because they are not seeing the images in Gaza that the rest of the world is.

That Israelis are insulated, you know, blinded from seeing what's actually going on in Gaza.

And if they actually saw what the rest of the world was seeing, they'd be more tuned into, wait a minute, this could be really bad for us and our role in the world.

Yes.

How do you respond to that?

First of all, do you think Israelis really know what's going on in Gaza?

Yes, they absolutely know.

Why?

How?

Because we know how wars look like, and it's 50 minutes from here, and we know what happens when you speak about 60,000 casualties, even if one-third is terrorists, and even if it's, and it is the lowest proportion of innocents per soldiers in the modern history of wars in populated areas.

Okay, so I use that statistic too, Amit?

But that doesn't humanize the human catastrophe that has gazed.

Obviously, Hamas deserves all the blame for it, but I'm just saying the images of that catastrophe.

Here's the thing.

In 2014, the Pillar of Defense...

So this was another war against hamas big war yeah the television showed what's going on in gaza israeli television israeli television channel 12 and israelis didn't want to look at it now following october 7th the sentiment of the israeli broadcasters and editors was not only the history from 2014 but there was no room for another human pain following all the atrocities of october 7th so it took a lot of time till it was legitimate again to show the footage.

Now, I think we should show it, but we should show it with a grain of salt.

For instance, that we, unlike New York Times and Haaretz, won't show children who are starving to death without telling the audience that they suffer from cystic fibrosis and other genetic diseases.

So I think we must show this on my Telegram channel.

I always show what is going on in Gaza because I think people need to know it and they want to know it.

Yeah, I would also say that in an era of social media, this is the most covered war in the era of social media.

I mean, imagine if you had TikTok during the Vietnam War.

The Vietnam War was like the most covered war by the press internationally.

And I would say this is the next most covered war in modern history.

Only this time it's covered all on social media.

And I just think Israelis have tremendous access to social media and they're seeing TikTok too.

And also, unlike other countries that fight wars, average Israelis have loved ones that are in Gaza.

So they're actually hearing what's going on in Gaza.

So I kind of push back on that point myself.

Before you go, Amit, I know you got to run.

Very quickly, when Israelis hear there's mass famine in Gaza, like as I said at the beginning, it's conventional wisdom.

It's just it's been mainstreamed.

Right.

Do they just roll their eyes and say it's not true?

It's another blood libel?

Do they say, oh my gosh, why isn't our government pushing back on this?

By the way, I was stunned on Friday when this news was coming out.

I knew the IPC declaration was coming.

The Israeli government knew the IPC declaration was coming.

They tweeted.

They tweeted a response.

It was ridiculous.

There was no real robust response.

Right.

From the government, and even from regular, when I just spoke to Israelis on Friday, I was almost telling them about it.

Like they didn't even really know.

They were so, yeah.

Right.

So, what is that?

Oh, there is an old Israeli song named The Entire World Is Against Us.

And the next sentence is, Never mind, we shall overcome.

It's a very nice song from the 60s or 70s.

And there is another saying by the former prime minister David Ben-Gurion, the founding father of Israel, saying, Um shmum, the UN is nothing.

I don't know how to translate it.

It's better in Hebrew.

That's the thing.

And second, I think the vast majority of Israelis were worried about the so-called starvation, not because they felt it's true, but because of the outcomes on Israel's standing in the world.

So yes, there are many Israelis that say, no matter whether they are right or wrong, this war is bad.

The marginal cost exceeds or outnumbers the marginal revenue, so we must stop the war.

By the way, there are are senior ministers who believe in it.

They are not brave enough to say it out loud with their name, but yes.

Okay.

In last week's Inside Call Me Back, so this is our, as you know, the members-only conversation, Nadava and I spoke about the fact that Israelis are a majority society living only amongst themselves, which is a different experience than diaspora Jews that are a minority.

And that Israeli Jews, they have no one else they have to explain themselves to.

They don't have to justify themselves to anyone.

In the diaspora, we're constantly, diaspora Jews are constantly making the case for Israel, making the case for Jewish life, for Jewish community, for concerns about rising anti-Semitism to, because we're a minority.

In Israel, you don't have to explain it to anybody.

And so they don't.

And they don't develop that muscle tissue that we have over here about constantly making the case, constantly arguing.

And I guess my question is, that may have been, you know, a problem for Israelis in the past, but they could, as you said, they could overcome.

Are you not concerned that this could become an existential risk for Israel, that Israelis just don't have the muscle tissue to make their case?

Okay, so there is a solution in Israel for this.

The Environment Protection Ministry suffered from a loss of budgets and no one cared about it, so they changed the name for the Security of the Environment Ministry.

Okay, because once you have security in Israel, it rebrands it as a matter of life and death.

Same applies for firefighters.

In Israel, they were considered, they were called the fire officers and they changed it to fire warriors.

And all of a sudden they got more budget.

So I would like to offer the Minister of Foreign Affairs to change the name for the Minister of Security Foreign Affairs and that he would get more money.

For instance, the war's cost was 300 billion shekels, almost 100 billion dollars.

I don't think there was even one billion dollars invested in propaganda, in inviting delegations of policymakers and social media influencers, etc.

Now, by the way, it changes now, but not fast enough.

I don't think many, many people invest the time, for instance, in Van Jones, who's one of the loudest voice in the United States for Israel, within the African-American community.

And this is only one example.

So this is what should be done.

More money, more efforts.

I'm just going to say, before I let you go, I know we have a lot of Israeli listeners.

And Israelis tend to, I think, roll their eyes at this conversation that we're having now.

And I would just say, and they'd say, oh, this is some, you know, arrest warrants against some Israeli politicians, Netanyahu, Galant, they're never going to be enforced.

Where I'm sitting right now, I meet in New York City, we are about, I think, sadly, tragically, about to elect a mayor that has openly said, just almost casually, that if he is mayor, he would instruct the NYPD to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu when he's in New York, which he has to be with regularity, UN General Assembly, other meetings, for the war crimes, quote-unquote war war crimes that the ICC has pursued, that he would enforce and implement the arrest warrant.

Now, you could say, oh, Netanyahu is just a politician, and maybe he's a politician who's not going to be around for that long.

But I just want to tell my Israeli friends listening and the Israeli audience, the campaign against Israel is intense, it's robust, and it's sophisticated.

And it's not a huge leap to go from

the caricature of the architect of the war in their construct, which is Netanyahu, to the soldiers, to the officers in the IDF, many of whom live in New York City, by the way, who I know many Israelis live in New York City.

They went back to Israel to do reserve duty in Gaza, came back to New York City.

They will be the implementers of the quote-unquote genocide, of the mass starvation.

So this is a very dangerous game with concrete implications for not just Israeli politicians, but everyday Israelis who don't think about this stuff.

And I just can't be more emphatic that they need to think about it.

By the way, this is going to be interesting time when Imam Daniel is elected.

The mayor of the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel, New York City, is going to be led by a mayor who has these views.

It's quite unnerving.

Who sympathizes with October 7th attackers, yes.

Yeah.

And with that optimistic note.

Yeah, really.

That was, I try to end on a hopeful note.

This, you really brought it down.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Talk to you soon.

That's our show for today.

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Inside Call Me Back is where Nadaviel, Amit, Segel, and I respond to challenging questions from listeners and have the conversations that typically occur after the cameras stop rolling.

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Call Me Back is produced and edited by Elon Benatar.

Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin Aretti.

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Research by Gabe Silverstein.

Our music was composed by Yuval Semo.

Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.