Defining Victory - with Micah Goodman

You are listening to an art media podcast.

If BB leads normalization, it splits the right, the pragmatic right joins with the center, the central left, and we have a new coalition for normalization.

What this means is that the only way to create a new architecture for the region is to create a new architecture for Israeli politics.

This has to come together.

Right now, it's divided right versus left, not the mainstream versus the fringes.

It's 6.30 p.m.

on Sunday, August 10th here in New York City.

It is 1.30 a.m.

on Monday, August 11th in Israel.

as Israelis turned to a new day.

On Sunday evening, Prime Minister Netanyahu held a press conference in Jerusalem, actually two press conferences, one in English and one in Hebrew, where he outlined the government's plans to move forward with the Gaza war.

This, of course, follows last week's cabinet approval of a plan for the IDF to take over Gaza City, where roughly 1 million Palestinians, half the entire Gazan population, reside.

The plan would be to move the civilian population from Gaza City to Al-Mawasi in southern Gaza, which is next to Rafah, so the IDF can fight Hamas and hopefully remove Hamas from Gaza city.

During Netanyahu's press conference, he laid out five principles for concluding the war.

One, that Hamas be disarmed.

Two, that all hostages be released.

Three, that Gaza be demilitarized.

Four, that Israel will have overriding security control of the Gaza Strip.

And five, that Gaza will be ruled by a non-Israeli peaceful administration.

On this last point, Netanyahu announced that Israel has identified several candidates for a quote transitional authority that could govern the Gaza Strip once the war concludes.

Netanyahu told reporters that the conquest of Gaza City is not an indication of plans for a permanent occupation of the Gaza Strip, but rather the best and fastest way to end the war.

He also took apart widespread accusations that Israel is responsible for starvation in Gaza, accusing Hamas of responsibility for any hunger among Gazan civilians and condemning international media for buying and parroting Hamas's propaganda.

With all this news unfolding, Saturday night saw more large protests in cities across Israel calling for a hostage deal and ceasefire agreement.

Obviously, governments from Jerusalem to Washington to Doha lay the blame at Hamas for the collapse of negotiations on July 24th.

But protesters argue whatever possibility there is going forward for a deal, however challenging, will be even harder with an expansion of the war in Gaza.

And they also argue the expanded war could have fatal implications for the remaining hostages.

There is also concern over the toll the Gaza City operation will take on reservists, IDF reservists, many of whom have been serving in the war on and off for almost two years.

IDF officials are not yet clear on how many troops will be needed for the Gaza city operation, but there will certainly be many reservists called up as the plan proceeds in its implementation.

We will, of course, follow any developments on this topic closely and be sure to keep you up to speed on what unfolds.

Today's episode is a conversation we taped last week with Dr.

Mika Goodman, where we discussed the difference as Mika sees it between winning the war in Gaza and winning the regional war.

Is it possible that Israel will need to modify its definition of victory in Gaza in order to emerge victorious in the larger reshaping of the geopolitics of the Middle East?

This question is especially timely given the international backlash Israel has received, only heightened now by the government's decision to have the IDF take over Gaza City.

Mika is a co-host of the popular Israeli podcast, Mifleget Hamach Shavot, produced by Beit Avichai.

Oh, and one housekeeping note before we start the conversation, Arc Media is looking to hire an experienced media production manager to join our growing team.

Please follow the link in the show notes to learn more about the requirements for this role in the event that you or anyone you know would be interested and would be a good fit.

And now, Mika Goodman on defining victory.

This is Call Me Back.

And I'm pleased to welcome back to this podcast, Mika Goodman, who joins us from Israel.

Mika, good to see you.

Hi, Dan.

How's it going?

You know, it's

not easy.

Yes.

Complicated.

Yeah, that's a good way.

That's the simplest and most diplomatic way to put it.

What I wanted to talk to you about was a topic that hasn't gotten much attention.

It's like you have these very intense periods, like the 12-day war against Iran.

I think it was one of the most important developments.

Leave Israel aside.

It was one of the most important developments in global geopolitics since World War II.

And I know it was very important inside Israel.

And yet, since then, we haven't been hearing that much.

You know, there was some news like right after big debates.

Was Fordo taken out?

Was it not taken out?

Is the nuclear program still alive?

And then everything just seemed to wither.

And I think the jury is still out on the degree to which it will reshape the geopolitics of the region.

There's no question it will reshape it.

The question is to what degree.

But militarily, the power structure has definitely shifted.

So how do you you assess the moment we're in as it relates to the outcome of the war against Iran?

So, I don't think it's over.

I don't know if it's in the beginning or the middle of the beginning of the end, but this is not over.

We're all focused on Gaza and we forget that we're in the middle of something very big of Iran.

And because I think the best way to think about Iran now, as a result of the very successful 12-day campaign, their capabilities went down, but their will to injure Israel went up.

Now, when the Persian Empire has so much will and this burning level of motivation to attack Israel, their capabilities went down, but the will is up.

So that's why we're in a very fragile moment because we attacked them, but it's the same regime.

And while the Iran issue is far from being over, we are now have our reputation being destroyed in Gaza.

So while the Iran thing is not finished yet, our reputation seems like it is.

When you speak to Israelis, throughout the past year and 10 months, Israelis didn't care much about a reputation in the West.

It didn't care too much.

And this week you see Israelis saying to themselves, oh my God, this matters.

This crisis of our reputation is serious.

And you're seeing that beyond just the political class and the media.

You're seeing this is the conversation happening among regular Israelis.

Yeah.

Now, there's something about Israelis that we don't care about what people think about us.

And what I just said is wrong.

I want to correct that.

Israelis do care about the reputation.

But you see, Israelis have two reputations to protect.

We have a reputation in the Middle East.

We have a reputation in the West.

And in the Middle East, we want the jihadi forces of the Middle East to fear us.

That's the idea of deterrence.

In the West, we want to be liked.

We want to be loved.

Now, Dan, which is a more important emotion, fear or love?

If you are an Israeli, so which emotion will enable you to sleep better at night, knowing that you're feared in the Middle East or knowing that you're liked or loved in the West?

Israelis chose fear over love.

It chose in the past year and 10 months to build its reputation in the Middle East as a country that's forceful, maybe brutal, a little bit crazy, unpredictable.

That's how you scare the jihadi forces in the Middle East from attacking you.

But while you are building your reputation in the Middle East, you're destroying your reputation in the West because there is a zero-sum game between fear and love.

Remind you, Dan, in October 8th, the Middle East didn't fear us.

We lost all our deterrence.

And everything we needed to do to restore the fear of the Middle East eroded the love of the West.

And everything we wouldn't have done in order to protect the love of the West would have kept the fear of the Middle East low.

We have two reputations to take care of, not one, and they contradict each other.

And now the fact that we neglected a reputation in the West came back to bite us.

The war against Iran was fought not only by Israel, but also by the U.S.

In terms of the impact of the victory on Israeli politics, the fact that Israel partnered with the U.S.

and advanced a major setback for Iran.

What's been the impact domestically in Israel, politically?

Obviously, the campaign in Iran was backed by all Israelis.

There was no polarization regarding the campaign in Iran as opposed to the United States.

Where in the United States, America joined the war, took the American right and divided it into two camps between the isolationist camps, you know, the Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannons of the world,

and Donald Trump, which I wouldn't say he's a neocon.

And he's not, it wasn't like the evangelical Christian trying to promote some big messianic vision or the neocon thinking that America has to lead the world and show the way for other nations.

The way I understand Trump's involvement in this war, the strike of America, was he is an isolationist, but he's also a businessman.

And the ethos of a business person is that you try to detect opportunities, and the person that could detect opportunities, other people can profit from it.

He thought Israel presented Trump with a great opportunity.

So I would say he joined the war in order to end the war, which is classical, which is the difference between the pragmatist and the person that's very ideological.

I think that's where the divide in the American right was between Trump and the isolationists.

It's about pragmatism, like an pragmatic approach to isolationism and a very purist, idealistic approach to isolationism.

It's very possible, and I'm wondering if you agree with this analysis, when America joined the war to finish off Fordu and the other two sites, it's very possible there was a deal or an understanding between Trump and Bibi and America and Israel.

And that is, we join this war, you know, we do for do, but then Israel has to finish the war with Gaza and move towards normalization.

You think this is probable there is an understanding between Bibi and Trump?

Well, let me rewind the tape a little bit because I disagreed with a couple of things you said.

Okay.

I think that the fixation of some in the American press and the Israeli press that there was this divide within the American right was completely off.

There were some loud voices on the American right that were oppositional to the U.S.

getting involved in the war against Iran.

But they were not reflective at all of where the actual American right is.

It's like separating the signal from the noise.

The noise was Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tom Massey.

That's high volume noise.

But the signal, the facts, are grounded in the following.

One, politicians that are actually elected by Republican voters.

Other than Tom Massey in the House and Rand Paul in the Senate, and I guess Marjorie Taylor Greene in the House, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single House or Senate Republican that was not only not opposed to the U.S.

getting involved, but was encouraging the Trump administration to get involved.

And the second thing is, if you look at the polling data, Republicans were polled before the war against Iran, during the war against Iran, and after the war.

And Republican voters, the people who actually vote in primaries, turn out in elections, were overwhelmingly supportive of military action against Iran.

So, I mean, this is just a world we live in now, where if you have a few outside voices, you tend to think that represents the consensus in a particular political environment.

It almost reminds me of the conversations I'm having over here with friends of mine who don't really understand Israeli politics.

So you would think that every Israeli is represented by Ben Verin Smoltrich if you follow the American press.

It's not to say these people don't have influence over the broad direction, but there's a sense that these very fringy politicians represent the Israeli mainstream.

Before the war, when Trump was still negotiating within that 60-day period, when Trump was still negotiating with Iran, 52 Republican senators sent a letter, and then that was followed up by a letter from the House where I think almost all House Republicans signed a letter.

But the 52 Republican senators signed a letter to President Trump telling him directionally where he was going was wrong.

and that negotiating with Iran and that there should be zero enrichment.

I can't tell you the last time, or I can't tell you at all since Trump was elected, when 52 Republican senators came together to fire a very public warning shot against Trump.

There are 53 Republican senators, which means every Republican senator except one was willing for the first time to publicly tell President Trump you're headed in the wrong direction.

That's not a divide.

Okay, you're criticizing something that me and my partner Fracha Pierre Rosenberg said in our podcast in Israel.

We said, if there is a deal between Bibi and Trump, saying Trump, America joins the war with Iran, and then Bibi goes with Trump to end the war with Gaza and normalization.

So the first part divided the American right, and you're saying that's just a narrative.

The second part, ending the war in Gaza and normalization, will divide the Israeli right.

And here I'm arguing this is not a narrative.

Normalization will split the Israeli right.

And this is where things get interesting because usually peace initiatives create a schism between right and left, right?

Like think about the Clinton Accords or the whole Camp David process.

So the two-state solution in the 90s.

The two-state solution in the 90s.

There was two camps, the pro-peace camp, the withdrawal camp, and there were high levels of ideological polarization.

And that was the last time right and left had an ideological debate.

There are no more real ideological debates among between right and left.

It's about the personality of Netanyahu, not about the two-state solution.

We move from the politics of ideology to the politics of identity.

But the process of normalization in Saudi Arabia is a peace process does not divide right and left.

It divides right and right.

And if the train is going to that direction, that's what we're going to be seeing.

So how do you think Netanyahu and Trump will leverage their political wins from this war?

No, so the question is, will they leverage it in order to end the war with Gaza and to go to normalization with Saudi Arabia?

For Israelis, this is turning the war into a massive victory.

for two reasons.

One, what is really normalization about?

It's about building a regional architecture, architecture, pro-Western, with Israel and Saudi Arabia in the heart of it.

And this is an anti-Iranian architecture.

What we did to Iran was only phase one.

This is phase two, and that is victory.

The whole plan of Iran, led by Qasem Suleimani, was to build the rings of fire around Israel, to surround Israel with armies of terrorists.

And when Israel is isolated, weakened, eventually to press the button and then have them all attack Israel simultaneously and destroy Israel.

And it was a very effective plan.

In the weeks after October 7th, when we woke up, we realized, oh my God, that could have worked.

Now, what Israel did in the past year and 10 months, it took that axis and one by one dismantled it.

And now Israel is not surrounded with an axis of proxies that could isolate it, weaken it, and destroy it.

But stage two

is to build a regional architecture that will isolate Iran.

that will weaken Iran.

And therefore, what normalization really is, is to do to Iran what Iran did to Israel.

It completes what Israelis call the Vinarfoch, you know, the Purim story, where everything became upside down, is for us to do to Iran exactly what Iran did to us.

That's a strategic flip.

And the second strategic flip is that, I think I shared this with you one time, this metaphor that if the war is a car and victory is a destination, your oil tank is international legitimacy.

And the big question is, will you run out of legitimacy before you make it to the destination?

I think, by the way, the fact this international crisis happens now, we're lucky it didn't happen six months ago, a year ago, before Hafach, before Lebanon, before the Pagers, before Nasralah, before Iran, seems like when we almost made it to the area of the destination.

The problem is we ran out of legitimacy.

Now, what is normalization?

It's the return of legitimacy.

Because if we normalize with Saudi Arabia and possibly with Muslim countries, like maybe hopefully Indonesia.

So try to think about the world that that creates.

I grew up in a world where Israel was legitimate in the West and not legitimate in the Middle East.

Are we now creating a new world where Israel is legitimate in the Middle East and not legitimate in the West?

Probably what would happen is the process of hyper-legitimization in the Muslim world will soften the process of delegitimization in the Western world.

So we need normalization like oxygen.

This is what completes the victory over Iran, and it shrinks the price that we paid for the victory over Iran, the price in legitimacy.

Now, there isn't one Israeli that won't see the power of normalization, how this is the victory, and how this leads to victory over Iran and to shrink the price we paid for that victory in our eroding legitimacy.

That's it.

That's how it looks like.

So, why could this divide the right?

It's all good.

Well, it could divide the Israeli right not because of the rewards of normalization, but because of the price of normalization.

Now, we don't know what the price of normalization is going to be, but we could guess, right?

The currency Israel have to pay for normalization will be Palestinian currency.

Now, there will be a rhetorical element to it.

Somebody will have to say the P word, Palestinian state.

Now, just saying that word is a big deal in the Israeli right.

Just saying that word.

You say a credible pathway to statehood.

And even if everybody knows it's not going to happen now and the conditions are impossible, you said the word, the ideological part of the Israeli right will cancel you.

But there is a pragmatic arm to the Israeli right.

And it's going to ask different questions.

It won't be only sensitive to what kind of word you said.

It will ask two questions.

One, does normalization mean a military withdrawal from the West Bank of Judea and Samaria?

And I think the answer is no.

Definitely not in the foreseeable future, a military withdrawal.

Does it mean a massive evacuation of settlements, which could be a real blow to Israeli coherence and solidarity?

The answer is no, which means if the price for normalization is saying a word and making real actions on the ground to show that you're serious, but actions on the ground that do not contain evacuation of settlements and do not contain any security risks are the kind of concessions that the pragmatic part of the right could accept.

The ideological can't.

The pragmatic part asks the question is, okay, is the reward larger than the price?

That's the pragmatic question.

The ideological branch doesn't ask, is the reward larger than the price?

There's a taboo.

You don't say the word.

You don't talk about it.

You avoid it.

And this goes deeper into the structure of the Israeli right.

There's two types of camps in the Israeli right.

There's ideology and there's identity.

Now, many people on the right believe, by the way, that by building communities where the ancient biblical events took place, like in Judea and Samaria.

So you're connecting our present to our past.

our life to the Bible.

And by doing that, you're activating the ancient biblical prophecies, the messianic prophecies.

So that's one branch, and that's the branch that's going to say no to any Palestinian currency you're paying for normalization.

But there's another branch on the Israeli right, and it's there not because of ideology, but because of identity.

Now, this branch thinks about life, and this might sound familiar, that there's the Israeli elites have been discriminating against us, and they've been mocking us, and they've been disempowering us for years.

And now, those elites control what's called the deep state.

And by attacking the deep state, we are liberating ourselves from the control of those elites.

This is a different narrative.

It's not the messianic narrative.

It's an identity narrative.

And Bibi Netanyahu is the symbol of the people being attacked by the elites.

Those people that they're on the right because they support Bib.

It's an identity thing.

It's not a messianic ideology thing.

When it comes to national security, they have a tendency to be more pragmatic, not ideological, which means if Bibi decides on normalization, the identity part of the right will go with Bibi.

The ideological right, the messianic right, will go against Bib.

And that is why normalization will split the Israeli right.

So that really is a new politics in Israel.

For many on the right, probably a majority on the right, Bibi is the only person they would trust, taking them into normalization and all the consequences from the right's perspective of normalization.

Bibi's the only one they would trust.

And then there's this ideological segment of the right that it doesn't matter whether it's BB or Kahana

or whomever.

That's right.

Now, pragmatic right will ask strategically, is there a security risk?

If there's not, we're open to think about this.

Is the reward of normalization bigger than the ideological price?

But the ideologues, there's no price and reward.

There is a taboo and it's out.

And here's an interesting fact.

If BB leads normalization, it splits the right.

The pragmatic right, the identity right, joins with the center, the center left, and we have a new coalition for normalization.

What this means is that the only way to create a new architecture for the region is to create a new architecture for Israeli politics.

This has to come together.

There is no new architecture for the Middle East without a new architecture for Israeli politics.

Right now, it's divided right versus left, not the mainstream versus the fringes.

We have to reorganize Israeli architecture.

And here's a fact.

I don't know if Bibi wants to do this, but if he does this, he's the only person that can do this.

It's very possible he's the only person.

I'll tell you why.

Because if a prime minister from the non-BB camp tries to lead normalization, he unites the right against normalization.

Meaning, so not just a non-BB figure, but a figure not from the right would try to do it.

Not for anyone, you know, that's not Likud, right?

I don't know if it's Lieberman, Bennett, Gantz, Lapid.

I don't know who it is.

They unite the right against it.

If they lead normalization, it unites the right.

But if if Bibi leads to normalization, it splits the right.

That's the difference.

These are two facts which are impossible to argue with, but the question is, what do we do with them?

Hard fact number one, it's very probable that only BB could lead to normalization because only he could split the right and we organize Israeli architecture.

Fact number two, Bibi's government can't do this.

So Bibi's government will fight normalization while Bibi is the only person that could deliver normalization.

And what do we do with these two hard facts?

But that sounds contradictory.

I know it's not, but just I think it's important to explain.

Because the center left are on board already, right?

So when you split the right, you create a massive majority for normalization.

Now, how do I know that there is a potential of that division in the right?

Because it already happened, Dan.

In 2020, when Donald Trump presented his plan from peace to prosperity, or better known, the deal of the century, right?

Where Jared Kushner, when they put together that plan.

That was a plan that, as opposed to Clinton's plans, did not create a schism between right and left, but between messianic right and pragmatic right.

We had a glimpse into the dormant schism within the Israeli right.

And the Trump plan did that because the Trump plan did not ask evacuation of settlements, and it did not ask that Israel doesn't have military freedom of movement around the West Bank.

So the two basic needs of the right were satisfied, but ideologically, it wasn't pure because it meant there's places you can't build settlements.

The concessions of the deal of the century were not strategic, they were ideological.

If that's a good hint to what we're going to be seeing in the future, what you'll be seeing in normalization, if it's led by Netanyahu, they're right being split into two, which means that we're not only be building a new regional architecture, there'll be a new architecture for Israeli politics.

Let's play that out a little bit.

Israel has to go to elections by October of 2026, which in one sense feels like a long way off, but we're going to blink.

You know, it's not that long.

We'll lay off, especially because you got to allow for about three months before the election.

So like a lot has to happen before then.

Do you imagine Netanyahu going to elections and saying, I'm running on normalization with Saudi Arabia?

I'm the only one that can deliver normalization.

And then he goes for elections and then he forms, if he's able to form a coalition, he forms a coalition that looks different from the coalition he has today that represents the kind of partnership between these different factions within Israeli politics that you're prescribing here.

It's very hard to see how Bibi calculates the large strategic needs of Israel with his own selfish political needs.

Every Israeli has a different read of Bibi, but I'm saying it's possible.

But in order to pull that off, he has to do a few things.

One, he has to end the war with Hamas, to end the war with Hamas, in order to make space for normalization for that to be even possible.

Then to start moving to that direction and go to elections.

Then say to Israelis, okay, I always told you, vote for me because I'll be able to defeat Iran.

Now Bibi can be coming in Shimon Peres.

Vote for me for a new Middle East.

But I think the real argument is this is what it means to defeat Iran.

Meaning we're so used to left-wing rhetoric saying concessions are worth it because it will lead to peace.

I think Bibi's argument will be concessions are worth it because it will lead to victory.

It's concessions for victory, not for peace.

It's what we'll do with the Palestinians won't lead to peace with the Palestinians, which most Israelis don't think that real peace is possible.

These concessions will lead to victory over Iran.

It will lead to us building an architecture that will effectively do to Iran what Iran did to us.

And by doing that, we will buy back all the legitimacy that we lost while we were dismantling the evil access that Iran built around us.

And, you know, what determines what actually happens are very, very small events that become, you know, blown out of proportion.

But strategically, I think that's where Bibi would like to go.

Okay.

It's widely accepted that Sinoar launched the October 7th attack to derail normalization with Saudi Arabia in whatever form form it was coming.

And obviously it was coming in a different form before October 7th, as we understand it, based on public statements from Saudi officials, Israeli officials.

If that process renews, would Israelis see that as the ultimate victory then of this war against Hamas?

Because how do you say the war with Hamas is over?

You're saying, look, Israel needs to tidy up this war with Hamas.

It's not so simple.

If Hamas, by the way, all the incentives for Hamas right now is to do the opposite because they're getting rewarded with recognition of a Palestinian state.

They're getting rewarded with this delegitimization campaign being thrown into overdrive by the international community by Hamas not ending the war.

So A, how does Israel tidy up the war in this environment?

And B, if there is normalization, is that what Israelis can point to?

It's like they tried to stop us from normalization.

Hamas, we got normalization because we defeated Hamas.

Israel is today in a position where we have in Gaza only bad options.

To continue the war means we're going against the will of the world and the will of most Israelis.

And after that, that I don't want to talk about this too much, but our army is very, very tired.

By the way, and Israel doesn't know how to win wars that the nation is not united behind.

We don't know how to do that.

Look at Lebanon 1 in 82.

That was a war that the nation was divided.

We were divided regarding that war, and it was very not successful.

When we destroyed the second and Tifad, the Iron Wall, that was the two icons of Israel, the two titans, Shimon Peres and Ari Sharon, the icon of the right, Arik Sharon, and the icon on the left

got together and we defeated the Second Intifada.

The six-day war, by the way, was won by a national unity government.

You're right, Leviège, Coleman and Akambegen.

Right.

That's right.

So we know when broad coalitions, when the people are united behind wars, we do well.

And when we're not united, we don't do that well.

Right now, the war has enjoyed massive consensus until this point.

If this war continues, we're going against the will of the world and we're divided and the army is very, very tight.

This is not a good idea.

On the other hand, to end the war without a deal is also a catastrophe so we have bad options so there is the ayal zamir option who's the idf chief of staff our chief of staff our ramat kal

and if i understand him correctly if i do so it's saying okay we end the war without hamas handing over their weapons Hamas doesn't govern Gaza, but it's still there with its weapons.

What can we do?

We bring our brothers and sisters home.

We end the war.

And many Israelis will feel like that means Hamas won and we surrendered.

Many Israelis will feel that way for good reasons, by the way.

Because in this war and in the Middle East, the bar for victory for Israel is much higher than the bar for the Palestinians.

Our bar from the very beginning, this was the narrative.

If we have to defeat, destroy Hamas in order to declare victory, all Hamas has to do to declare victory is not to be destroyed.

So their bar is much lower.

And if this war ends, they have their arms.

So the narrative would be that they won.

And that would be horrible for our deterrents.

And that is the reason why Israelis feel like if we continue the war, we lose.

And if there is a deal to end the war, it will be considered the Middle East as a loss.

So we're in a very bad situation.

Now, how do you get out of this bad situation?

In the Talmud, there's this interesting idea by a rabbi called Resh Lakish.

I won't go now into a Talmudic discourse, but we like to think that the past creates the future, but maybe it's the other way around.

The future defines the past.

So it's about what happens after the war is over that will define whether the victory or a loss.

Now, if after the war we go to normalization, so we'll say that, okay, while it seems like there was a loss in Gaza, but that story, it's a small story inside a much larger story, a story of victory over the Islamic Republic of Iran.

So the best way to shape the narrative of victory is to locate what we do in Gaza inside a larger narrative of victory.

And if there will be normalization and if we have the real victory over the Islamic Republic, I think we could live with the narrative that the fact that we lost in Gaza, we lost a battle to win the war, to win the broader war against Iran.

I think it's messy.

It's not perfect, but we have only bad options.

So our best way is to locate the loss inside a larger narrative of victory.

You know, you said something a moment ago.

You said, we end the war, we declare the war is over, we meet all these conditions, and among them is we get our hostages back.

You know, I'm increasingly asking this question of our guests.

I used to ask it offline.

Now I just ask in the context of the podcast.

Why will Hamas be incentivized to give back all the hostages, to return all the hostages?

I know they probably won't give us all the hostages back.

But I think we have a double moral duty.

One, to bring everyone we can.

If we can bring back out of the 20, 16, we have to bring back 16, whatever we can.

I'm saying the 20 because the urgency is for our brothers.

They're suffering.

They're as we're talking.

They're in the Shoah now, not in 1945.

And it's our duty to bring them all back as quickly as we can.

The people that are dead, we should bring them back also, but there's not a sense of urgency.

They're not suffering as we're talking.

Will we be able to bring back all the 20?

I don't know.

If Hamas will believe that this is what will really, really end the war, maybe that's possible.

Since I think, by the way, that in the future we have to attack Hamas after this is over.

I mean, I think in order to dismantle Hamas, we have to have a partner.

And the partner is the future version of ourselves.

We ourselves cannot dismantle Hamas.

We can't.

We meet this catch, we have bad options.

But I think if we're partnering with our future self, then we could dismantle Hamas.

What the left got wrong in the 80s and 90s that it spoke about peace now.

And the only peace that's possible is not the peace that comes now.

I think what the right, the Benvir right, is getting wrong if they speak about victory now.

The only victory that's possible is the victory that comes later.

If we make a deal now, go to normalization, but never forget that Hamas will be dismantled.

But it will be a partnership between who we are in the present and who we are in the future.

And by the way, that's very Middle Eastern.

In the Middle East, people believe in patience.

It's very Western to want achievements now.

It's very Middle Eastern.

In Islam, there's this idea of sabir, that God is with the people that have patience.

Sabir.

And we have to adopt, we have to be a little bit more Middle Eastern in order to defeat Hamas.

To understand this, we're not going to get everything now.

But what we don't get now, it could be diluted in a larger narrative of victory over the Islamic Republic.

When you say the future version of Israel, do you mean the future, this political architecture that you're talking about that is different than the one in power now?

Like, what do you mean by the future version of yourselves?

I think that today we can't dismantle Hamas completely because we can't continue the war and we can't stop.

Okay, we're in that situation.

But the future version of ourselves will be able to attack Iran because of three reasons.

One, once our hostages aren't there and after our army has recovered, by the way, I trust Hamas.

I trust Hamas won't give us one reason, but 17 reasons to attack them.

That's something I do trust Hamas.

Right now, going into war, Israel is divided.

The future war is will be united.

That's one.

And two, right now, our ability to dismantle Hamas is limited because of the hostages.

Think about one troubling fact, Dan.

That if Nasalah had with him in his bunker, eight hostages, he would have been alive now, right?

I'm sure.

Which means that if the hostages aren't there, it's much more easier to dismantle Hamas.

And three, we could use in the future the advantage of a surprise attack, which we don't have that option now.

So, without the hostages, Israel united in a surprise attack, that version of ourselves will be able to do the job.

We can't do it.

We have our hostages.

We're divided, and there's no element of surprise.

We just can't do it.

We have to accept the boundaries of our power and take this limited victory or this loss and drown it inside the larger narrative of the real victory over the Islamic Republic.

Okay, before we wrap, I just got to say, because a version of what you're saying, I hear a lot in the public discourse in Israel.

It's so Israeli, by the way.

It's so Israeli to have a debate very publicly about how it will secretly trick Hamas as though Hamas is not consuming the same public discourse, the same media.

You know, as we've often heard, the most loyal viewer of Channel 12's nightly news was Yech Hazinwar, including after October 7th.

He was following everything.

So, again, I hear this all the time.

We'll end the war.

Hamas will think it's over.

They'll definitely violate whatever agreement we have.

And we'll have a basis upon which to go back in, and we'll get them then.

And all those conditions you just laid out, the hostages, it makes it hard.

Now they have this and they have that.

So won't they think that through before they make concessions that could take away the insurance policy that they now have?

Probably.

Probably.

This is probably one of the reasons why I won't get back all the hostages.

I hope I'm wrong.

God, I hope I'm wrong.

I'm hoping to bring all the hostages in the deal.

I hope I'm wrong.

So do I.

But it's not like we have to choose the good option.

We have to choose a bad option.

Right.

And we have to ask what's out of all the bad options.

Like we're in a tragic situation.

We're in a tragedy in Gaza.

We have only bad options.

And a tragedy is a situation where you know you'll choose something bad.

And the only reason you're going to do something bad is because the bad thing that you choose is better than the bad options that you didn't choose.

By the way, the world has a hard time understanding Israel.

They think we're in a binary situation.

We're choosing bad over good.

And they're judging us as if it's a binary situation when it's a tragic situation.

We're always choosing bad over bad.

And that's one of the reasons why Israelis feel very misunderstood.

You're always blaming us as if we did something bad.

The alternative was good.

Dude, we have only bad options.

And by the way, it was designed as a tragedy by Hamas, by building an army that doesn't protect civilians, but is protected by civilians.

And that's designing this tragedy.

And we're in this tragedy.

And now we have to choose between bad options.

What's the option?

That I would say has two criteria.

One, it's not as bad as the alternative.

And two, in light of the Talmudic understanding, in the future, we could do something that will transform the past into one more step, the journey towards a larger victory.

That's what we could do.

So that's what we should do.

All right, Mika, we will leave it there.

Thank you, as always, for your insight and your time.

And I'm sure we'll be talking again soon.

All right.

Shabbat shalom.

Shabbat shalom.

That's our show for today.

If you value the Call Me Back podcast and you want to support our mission, please subscribe to our weekly members-only show, Inside Call Me Back.

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

Please follow the link in the show notes or you can go to arcmedia.org.

That's A-R-Kmedia.org.

Call Me Back is produced and edited by Elon Benatar.

ArcMedia's executive producer is Adam James Levin Aretti.

Sound and video editing by Martin Huergo and Mariangelez-Burgos.

Our director of operations is Maya Rockoff.

Research by Gabe Silverstein.

Our music was composed by Yuval Semo.

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