Call me Back LIVE in NYC - with Nadav Eyal and Amit Segal

You are listening to an art media podcast.

If you have values, they're going to cost you something.

Democracies that appreciate life, they're going to pay a heavy price for that, more than dictatorships.

That's the truth.

In this villa in the jungle, there is a promise.

That's the Israeli contract.

It says you're going to live here in the Middle East.

It's going to be very difficult for you, and people are gonna try and kill you all the time.

But within this house, it's all for one and one fall.

If we fail on that,

what's left of us?

This is not ideals versus powerful realism.

It is to preserve the essence of Israel in order to win.

What if the price of releasing these hostages is having Hamas being able to kidnap more hostages in the future.

Imagine a chess game in which you must kill the king, but your opponent needs only to take your pawn.

Each and every pawn they take makes them win the game.

Checkmate.

They took the pawn, checkmate.

They took the bishop, checkmate.

They took 251 pawns, checkmate.

That was the deal that was offered to Israel.

How would we act next time if there are more hostages?

It's 3.45 p.m.

on Sunday, October 26th here in New York City.

It's 9.45 p.m.

on Sunday, October 26th in Israel, where Israelis are beginning a new week.

On Saturday, U.S.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio departed Israel after a two-day trip that directly followed visits by Vice President Vance, Special Envoy Steve Witcoff, and Jared Kushner.

Rubio toured the U.S.-led Center for Overseeing the Gaza ceasefire in Kiryat Ghat, where he told reporters that the U.S.

is seeking support from its allies in building an international stabilization force for Gaza.

Rubio also emphasized America's commitment to seeing the bodies of all deceased hostages returned to Israel, an obligation under the ceasefire deal that Hamas continues to break, as it claims it cannot locate the remaining 13 bodies.

On Saturday, an Egyptian team entered the Gaza Strip with engineering vehicles to assist Hamas in locating the bodies it cannot find.

The same day, President Trump issued a warning to Hamas via Truth Social accusing the terror group of intentionally withholding some bodies despite knowing where all of them are.

Meanwhile, at Sunday's cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Netanyahu responded to accusations that Israeli policy, vis-à-vis the future of Gaza, is being dictated by Washington.

He dismissed these claims as, quote, ridiculous, and he stressed that Israel remains in control of its own security and whether certain international forces are, quote, unacceptable options to govern Gaza.

In other news, also on Sunday, President Trump made an unexpected stop in Qatar on his way to Malaysia for a summit of Southeastern Asian nations.

During the brief stop, the president met with Qatar's emir and prime minister minister and revealed that Qatar would send peacekeeping troops to Gaza if they were needed.

Now on to today's episode.

This past Thursday, I was joined by Arc Media contributors Nadavael and Amit Segel for a live in-person Call-MeBack conversation at the Striker Center in New York City.

It was an event that we just put together with six days' notice, and yet it was an incredible turnout and a very moving evening.

There were some 1,400 people in attendance, and we really got to see the vibrance and the strength of the Call Me Back community and have a very rich conversation.

It turned into a conversation that I don't think we expected.

I think everyone watching it live felt that way.

We got into issues that I don't think we would have ever gotten into during the course of the war over the past two years.

But now that we can breathe again a little, These kinds of conversations, I think, are the ones that we'll be having increasingly, and we certainly did the other night.

I hope you'll be able to hear that in this conversation too because today's episode is the recording of that conversation.

It's 8.40 p.m.

on Thursday, October 23rd here in New York City.

It is 3.40 a.m.

On Friday, October 24th in Israel as Israelis transition to a new day.

And when I looked at that time, Amit, 3.40 a.m., you landed this morning from Israel at 5.50 a.m.

Right.

And you've been going non-stop.

Yes.

Right.

No breaks.

So it really is 3.40 a.m.

Exactly for you right now, not just here in New York.

So, first of all, welcome everyone.

Thank you for being here.

This is tremendous, all of you being here.

I will say that when Ilon Benatar and I had the idea seven days ago that we should maybe do a live podcast because we were originally going to hold a small book party for Amit.

His book just came out.

For those of you who haven't read his book, you should read his book.

And if you become a Inside Calling Back subscriber, you get a free copy of the book.

Little promo there.

When Amit was coming to town, we were going to do a book party for Amit.

We'll do a small, we said, we'll do a small book party for him.

And I thought, you know what?

There's so much interest post-deal.

People want to hear what's going on.

Maybe we should do a live event.

And we reached out to the folks at Strike, and they're like, no way.

They're like,

months in advance.

We booked these events months in advance.

I said, well, let us just put out the bat signal on the podcast.

And we did six days' notice.

So it is quite extraordinary that everybody's here.

And I have to say, 1,400 Jews.

Wow.

Or SDL will say it in a week from now if Mamdani is elected, an illegal gathering.

Yeah.

See, the Israelis are already starting with Mamdani jokes.

I wasn't going to go there.

You went there.

Okay.

So we have a lot to get into with Amit and Nadav.

You all know Amit Segel and Nadavael well.

Amit with Israel Ayom and Channel 12 News.

Nadav with Yodiot Akronot.

Both of them are contributors to Arc Media and Call Me Back.

They are two of the most astute journalists I know in Israel.

In fact, Hugh Hewitt was interviewing Nadav the other day on his radio show and he referred to Nadav as the Dan Balls of Israeli journalism.

And then Nadav said to me today, who's Dan Balls?

But anyways, because Hugh Hewitt...

By the way, I'm not retiring.

Yeah, Dan Balls just retired.

And he had to pretend during the radio show that he knew who Dan Balls was as Hugh was giving him this very nice compliment.

Okay, so we've gotten a lot of questions from subscribers to Inside Call Me Back, and we are going to ask a couple of them.

Actually, this one question that we got, I thought was the perfect way to open the conversation.

And I'm just going to weave in other questions as we go along.

I'll start with you, I guess, Nadav.

This is Jeff from New York.

By the way, is Jeff from New York here?

Jeff from New York?

Oh, that's Jeff.

Jeff from New York wrote us, a number of people returned recently from the dungeons of Gaza where they were in a complete media blackout for two years.

If you had to summarize the events of the past two years to a hostage whose last news update was October 6th, 2023, how would you do so?

Wow.

That's one hell of a question.

I would have told that hostage, you have seen on your flesh and with your own eyes the barbarity and that invasion of Hamas to Israel, this mass murder.

And I don't need to tell you anything about that.

You'll know much better than me what has happened to Israel on October 7.

But what you don't know is that Israel, though divided today as it was on October 6th, and this is the truth, Israel rose to that moment.

The Israeli society rose to that moment.

Civil society recruited itself, enlisted itself.

The Israeli Defense Forces managed to do what many people thought was impossible.

And that axis of terror that has led to that day of October 7 is not in existence anymore.

It's been crushed.

The leader of Hezbollah is dead.

The chief of staff of the Iranian army is dead.

Iran's nuclear program has been destroyed.

The entire axis has collapsed.

In Syria, Bashar al-Assad, who allowed those reinforcements to Hezbollah, he's gone.

He's now playing PlayStation in Moscow.

And I would have told that hostage, there were many, many conflicts along the way.

And there is something that maybe could have breakened even through that media blackout.

And that is the amazing approach of the Israeli public.

Who during war, sometimes the same people who would serve 200 or 300 days in a reserve service, they would come back home, they would take down their army clothes, and they would go to the nearest square in order to show their solidarity and their demand that all the hostages will be back home.

And President Trump's interview, he says something incredible there.

He says, you could have imagined, and I'm paraphrasing, they would sacrifice the hostages.

And they didn't.

They didn't.

And to that hostage, I would say, Israeli political class, I have no good news for you about these recent two years.

But there is so much hope and so much optimism as to everything else that has happened in the Israeli society in the last two years.

And this is the reason why you're returning back home and it's really your home.

And people have been waiting for you for so long.

Amir,

I would tell this hostage that the war that began in the most awful way with Toyota cars driving to the fields of the Kibbutzim near Gaza ended with a B-2

bombing Ford.

That the attempt to attack the Western civilization, especially the Jewish state, failed, and it failed big time.

And I would like to give as an example the fact that in June 21st, B-2s attacked the Iranian nuclear facility in Fordo,

but the one that began fighting this axis of evil was a singer-songwriter from Israel on October 7th.

His name was Anil Shapira.

And I think he's a hero that the entire world should remember.

Because this guy,

this guy who went to a de Nova party, by the way, there is a very famous singer in Israel that said that Anil Shapira would become in five years a very famous singer in Israel.

But he decided to defend his friends in the shelter near the Nova Party.

There were 30 Israelis.

I think he knew only two or three out of them.

But he stood at the entrance to the shelter and threw back eight hand grenades till the ninth hand grenade or an RPG missile killed him.

But he saved the lives of something like 15 Israelis.

Some of them came back in this hostage deal.

So perhaps the picture for them was the back, the shoulders of Aneir Shapira protecting them.

And it ended with the strongest army on earth protecting the state of Israel.

And I would like, I hope it's okay, to ask the mother of Haniru Shapira Shira to stand up.

The Shapirs are with us tonight, which we learned about three hours ago.

They're very low-key, and they registered for this event because they were in town.

Shira, can you maybe just spend a minute or two telling us, I know Amit referenced Honor's plans, hopes for a life and a career in in music.

Your family is working on a project now in the spirit of his dreams.

And maybe just spend a minute or two telling us what you're working on.

Thank you.

As you said, I wasn't planning on standing here tonight.

Many, many, many of you maybe heard about Anir as a hero and the grenades and saving people.

But

we talk about Anir as an artist, as a musician, as a man of principles, of values, of believing in the good of people.

And for him, the way that he decided to give his life in order to save lives is exactly the same way that he chose to live his life.

And in order to continue his vision of connecting people through creativity, through music, We founded the Anir Shapiro Foundation

and we think now the Israel society, as you said, is still divided and what we need now is to build bridges and to connect

and the way to do it is through music, through creativity.

It's a soft tool.

but it is so powerful.

And

the vision of Anir that he wanted to make it happen and he can't anymore

but the spirit and the vision of him we continue we're going to establish in Israel ongoing programs expressing and taking a stand taking responsibility through the words and through music and a huge stage in the center of Jerusalem to celebrate life and love and as Anil said searching for love this is a way to make the vision come true thank you thank you Shira

I guess you guys just described what you would have tried to explain to a hostage that returned we should also acknowledge as you know Shira's story speaks to many hostages are not returning We're still obviously waiting for those remaining hostages to return, those that were killed and and are still in Gaza.

Nadav, what has surprised you the most over the past two years?

I ask guests on the podcast, not you guys, because you guys are on all the time, but when I ever have a new guest on, I say, what has surprised you the most in the last two years?

I've never actually really asked you that or you.

So I don't mean to spring this on you, but what has surprised you the most?

The weakness of the forces that stood against us, against Israelis across the region, compared to the way that they were portrayed by the international arena, by politicians around the world, and also the way that we ourselves as Israelis thought about these forces.

It turned out after

all our phobias and all our fears that when we needed to rise to the occasion and fight those who actually deliberately on the record want to destroy and kill us all, we were very able to do that.

And I think that was extremely surprising, not in the sense that I thought that Israel can't make it.

I was absolutely certain Israel will make it and will succeed and will win this.

What surprised me was

that Israel managed to do this

with, I don't want to say relative ease, but it managed to do that surprisingly well.

And this is due to those false promises made by the Ayatollahs and the rest of the axis of terror, the axis of resistance.

They thought that they are building a wall of fire around Israel and that Israel will crumble, as Nasrallah once said, as a spider's web.

It will simply collapse into itself.

And it turned out that it was these authoritarian and theocratic fundamentalist forces that collapsed into themselves, faced with Israel and almost Israel alone.

The only country that really stood by Israel was the United States.

The only country that was willing to truly assist the Israelis from day one and more so when President Trump, of course, was elected to office, was the United States.

And of course, the U.S.

is the most powerful nation on earth.

And even that, I found that absolutely astonishing that we have let these people dictate the Middle East, create so much suffer and harm around the Middle East without confronting them.

It's such a failure of the United Nations and the international community.

Just imagine what would have happened, Dan, if Israel would have captured those plans to October 7, would have come to the international community, would have come to the United States, and would have said, we know that they intend to invade.

We know that they have the intention of genocide or mass murder in Israel.

We need now to act against Iran, against Hezbollah, and against Hamas in Gaza.

What would they have told Israel?

They would have said that Israel is completely crazy, that it's mad, that it's on a genocidal pursuit.

They would have said, some of these people exactly what they were saying today after October 7th.

And I find this absolutely mind-blowing, that we are still hearing these kind of echo chambers, this kind of fear of confronting radicals and fanatics.

They are the scourge.

They are the curse of our region.

And by the way, not only our region.

And if you fight them with resolve, if you fight them when your back is to the wall, you eventually are destined, at least for a democracy like Israel, together with the United States, to win.

I couldn't agree more.

I would like just to add two things.

One is that the war that was orchestrated by Iran and operated by the commander of the southern front named Ichesinwar

was meant to exhaust every power Israel had.

It was planned to be the war that Israel never wanted to have.

A very long war, two years,

a war that exhausted almost every possible sort of ammunition, a war that exhausted every sort of legitimacy to Israel, a war that consisted of seven frontiers.

However, Israel was not meant to fight such a long war.

It didn't have enough reservists, enough soldiers.

And the idea was that Israel would just collapse.

It would have to actually get a ceasefire way sooner.

And the fact that Israel fought this very specific war and won it, not a six-day war or an 18-day war like Yom Kippur War, but two long years and it survived.

And the life expectancy in Israel during the war hit a national record 84.1 years

and that the number of average children per family rose from three to three point one over those two years.

And the fact that the investments in Israeli high-tech industry went up, this is the best surprise.

Now it came with a heavy price.

You can see the injured soldiers in the streets.

But at the end of the day, our enemies will have to go back to square one and think about a better option to try to defend the fit Israel.

And yet, we made it.

What I have been most surprised by,

I'm not as surprised by it now, because I've sort of become numb to it, but what I was most surprised as an American was,

you know, this line that my friend Rabbi David Ingber says that on October 7th, Israel was at war, but we here in the diaspora suddenly found that we were under attack.

We're used to seeing Israel at war, but we were not used to being under attack here.

And I naively thought that the outrage of the world would be directed at those trying to slaughter Jews.

I didn't expect the outright rage of the world to be directed at Jews for objecting to being slaughtered.

But the more extreme stuff, and Amit, you and I were were talking about this earlier today, the more extreme stuff we see, I'm not picking on the folks at Columbia here, but the more extreme stuff that we saw, for instance, at Columbia's campus and elsewhere, that's the stuff I've become numb to.

It's become like a, like, almost like a caricature of itself.

But what really started to hit me in year or two, and including the last few months, including even today, is what I would call not the extreme stuff, but the kind of casual, intelligent anti-Semitism from people I would otherwise find very reasonable, very well-educated, very moderate.

Like, I'll give you an example.

Like, I hear things like when you point out that a kosher restaurant is vandalized or people working at a kosher restaurant are violently attacked.

And you're in these threads with friends, not Jewish friends, and you're like chatting about it, and you're trying to get them to be aware of what's happening.

And they don't defend what happened.

Obviously, they don't defend violence against Jews.

But they make comments like, well, you know, the Israeli government is like, you know, really screwing this up so you can understand people are angry.

I don't agree with what they're doing, but as though

we all need to be held responsible.

The only analogy I can think of would be like in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, if a Russian-owned restaurant were attacked because people were angry about Russia's war against Ukraine, a Russian restaurant here.

And people would say, well, you know, Putin, you know, this is a Russian restaurant.

And like, look what Putin's doing in Ukraine.

So you can understand, as though anyone would hold people responsible, whether it's even justified to say that the government's policies are worthy of that kind of backlash.

But the idea that just the sense that it's okay, and that is something new.

I honestly, I've never experienced that in my lifetime.

Are you guys dialed into that?

Where you are, not obviously in Israel, but dialed into what people here are feeling?

I came to understand it only following October 7th, but I have to say something.

If you ask Israelis today, Israelis, have you ever felt anti-Semitism?

You know, I lived in London for a year and a half, and I read reports about anti-Semitism in London.

It was following the who remembers which military operation in Gaza.

And unfortunately, no one ever treated me badly.

So I felt quite, I don't know, I mean, it was hard to get back home and to admit that everything was great in London.

And luckily, on the last night, I was...

You need to explain, Amit, that journalists were looking for trouble, right?

Exactly.

It was somehow frustrating not to encounter anti-Semitism.

And I felt quite angry at the Brits for not hating me enough.

And over the last night, someone yelled at me, you stinky Jew, and I thought, oh, lucky day, I can come back home with my story.

However, if you ask Israelis, do you encounter anti-Semitism?

They would say no.

But the very same thing that you describe in New York is what happened on October 7th.

Because the most brutal fact about October 7th was the following.

We got used to the term a shocking murder, right?

For instance, when an entire family, the Fogel family, was massacred, including a 10-month-old baby, we said this is a shocking murder, right?

But every murder is shocking.

If you say that there is a shocking murder, what you really say is that there are

not shocking.

And we, the Israelis, got used to Many murders, many anti-Semitic murders.

For instance, killing Israeli citizens from rockets by Hamas or Khizbalah, we got used to pay a yearly cost of something like five, six casualties from rockets, which were deliberate attempts to kill as many Jews as possible.

Or, for instance, when there were suicide bombers or shooting in the roads.

And all of a sudden, we saw that each and every murder is shocking because the only

thing that prevented us from being killed was the IDF.

And we saw what happened when for six hours and one minute there weren't enough Israeli soldiers so we got the impression of anti-Semitism and I think it's the same phenomenon whether it is a nukhba terrorist coming from Gaza or this Western guy saying yes I mean I don't have anything against the Jews but against only against the idea of a Jewish statehood and I think the Jews should not be here and they should not be there because they are colonialists so where should they be I would say to this that I think that there is a very important distinction between Jewish communities and the diaspora in between Israelis.

And we made that distinction on one of the episodes, Dan.

We Israelis, mainly Israeli Jews, are a majority group.

So we grew up, of course, with the stories sometimes of our grandparents, my grandfather, who lost his entire family, his wife and his child that were murdered in the Holocaust.

But we are a majority group.

We are not a minority.

And Jews around the world, in every other place, are a minority group.

And they have sensibilities and sensitivities to language, to discrimination, to hate, that we don't have.

Our ancestors didn't want us to have those sensibilities.

This is the reason why they decided to join the Zionist project.

In that regard, there is something very difficult with the existence of Jewish communities around the world right now.

Jewish communities around the world do not have the IDF.

They need to support themselves through the governments, through the societies in which we live.

Given how much the term genocide and apartheid state and other words similar in that category have been normalized, And I know the ICJ directs it solely at Israel's prime minister and Israel's former defense minister, but once you start normalizing a term like genocide, and then, like, I know a lot of Israelis that live in New York City that work in tech companies here in New York City.

Now, they're worried because they're like, yeah, I went back and served after October 7th, right?

There were Miloems, there were call-ups.

I got on a plane, I flew back, I fought in Gaza.

Now I'm back in New York.

I am an instrument of the genocide.

We're about to

probably the city elect a mayor that, you know talks openly about Israeli genocide and That sense that Israelis are like protected in Israel but Israelis have also become quite global over the last couple decades and Do you hear that conversation happening where Israelis are like am I safe around the world?

Of course.

I just saw this interview with Mamdani in which he was asked about whether or not he supports the disarmament of Hamas and the way that he dodged did you see that the way he dodged the question I don't want to say I couldn't believe it because I could believe it.

He's against having guns in the United States, but he has no problem with Hamas having guns.

By the way, that was, you know, Amid does that.

He steals my tweets.

So he's for gun control, but not when it comes to Jews in Israel.

The challenge of the Israeli state is a huge challenge.

It needs to keep its checks and balances, its self-criticism, its heritage of skepticism that comes from a long Jewish tradition.

It needs to look deep into its soul.

It needs to ask questions as to Gaza.

It cannot live only within the spheres of self-justification or of Hasbara.

And this is, by the way, the reason, Dan, that Israel did not become the sort of an Arab republic of the 1960s that talks very high praises about itself, then loses the next war, because it kept to these principles.

And at the same time, it's constantly being blamed and indicted in an anti-Semitic way from the outside.

It's very difficult for you to look inside of you when you are constantly attacked unjustly.

And this is a challenge no other country needs to face like Israel needs to face.

And you mentioned genocide, but it's not only about genocide.

I studied in the LSC more than 15 years ago, and I remember lessons, classes about Israel as a settler colony.

And Israel is not a settler colony.

But this notion of settler colonialism, that's historically, it's an important notion.

It could be effective when you study history, has been expanded exclusively for the Israelis.

Although the Jews are indigenous to Erzi Israel.

And then ethnic cleansing.

You remember that they said that if Palestinians in Gaza, in northern Gaza, are evacuated, because the IDF is saying we're going to attack there, this is ethnic cleansing.

So people like me said on your show, Dan, it's only ethnic cleansing if Israel is not going to allow them to return.

But if they are returning as part of a deal, it's not ethnic cleansing, right?

So they were over to the next stage, and the next stage is, of course, genocide.

So no genocide was opened in an event like October 7th.

And I can give other examples and arguments as to that.

But they are doing this constantly.

Every historical notion is used and is an indictment against the state of Israel.

And in the meantime, we in Israel need to keep our democracy, need to keep our free press, need to self-criticize, need, by the way, to indict and to investigate suspicions for war crimes.

We need to do that too.

I was recently asked by a New York Times correspondent about exactly the point that you just made it.

That was today's conversation?

Lately.

I was asked.

Can I preview it?

Can I preview it?

No, no, no, no, no.

All right, fine.

We'll hear about it.

So I was asked, why hasn't the Israeli press covered enough the suffering in Gaza?

And the question was

that why did the Israeli press covered only 20% of the suffering in Gaza?

So I replied, and I said that I feel quite okay about covering only 20%

because I know that the New York Times covered 200% of the suffering in Gaza,

including putting on the first page a child that allegedly was starved by Israel but happened to be ill with cystic fibrosis and the New York Times never bothered to apologize on the first page, but on a marginal Twitter account in hours that everybody sleeps safe in Israel.

So this is one thing.

But it's more interesting than this, because New York Times is just one example.

There is a disproportionate coverage of the war.

And I don't want to speak about Nigeria, etc., because this is not the thing.

But just think that the glorious democracy of the United Kingdom, they invent a new party every 150 years.

Okay?

The last party to be established was, save the UKIP.

The reform party was, I think, the Liberal Party in 1900.

There is a new party in the United Kingdom represented in Parliament of five Knesset members that deal only with one thing, Gaza.

So there are parts in the United Kingdom that elect people.

I think this is the first time in history in which a party is elected on the basis of what's happening in another country.

I mean, really, explicitly.

I mean, they're.

Explicitly.

They have nothing to do with the academy.

Neither taxation nor representation, domestic issues, only Gaza.

Now, there is something more than merely high interest in foreign policy than than this.

It's not about Gaza, it's about the Jews.

And how do I know this?

Because when Hamas executed 100 Gazans,

I saw Mehdi Khassan writing on Twitter after two days that it's a shame that they killed them without a due legal process.

Even if they collaborated with Israel.

And I just wondered...

All the lip service about Hamas being a terrorist organization.

So what if they collaborate with Israel?

The collaboration to smuggle a humanitarian and to reduce the prices.

Wow.

What a crime.

So it's not about Hamas, it's about the Jews.

That's my point.

But would you, do you think it's a fair criticism that, at least in, call it the first 12 to 18 months of the war, if you follow the domestic Israeli press coverage, predominantly on Israeli television news,

There was very little coverage of the human catastrophe in Gaza.

We're going to now see really what Gaza looks like.

And this was a story that many Israelis, other than those that were serving in Gaza, that many Israelis, I'm not saying they, in the recesses of their imagination, they didn't know about or imagine, but that they weren't seeing every day.

Yes.

Because first of all, October 7th changed something dramatic in Israeli coverage.

For the first time, you could see bodies of Israelis live on television or almost live on television.

It never happened before because of the scale of the horrors.

And Israelis didn't have a bandwidth for another suffering, especially the suffering of your enemy.

This is one thing.

But I have to say that it had interesting, peculiar outcomes.

Because, for instance, one of the reasons for Israelis being angry at their government and their army for lack of achievements is because they didn't see what really happened in Gaza.

There was a map yesterday showing that 62% of the buildings in Gaza were reduced to ruins in this war.

62% in the entire Gaza Strip.

I think the Israeli media should cover more what is going on in Gaza.

And unfortunately, I think there are going to be chances to improve our coverage because I don't see a peace of once in 3,000 years as someone predicted.

Okay, I want to come back to that.

I want to ask what was probably the most uncomfortable question of this evening, which is what the lesson that Israel's enemies today, I mean, I take your point, Nadav, that Israel's enemies were vanquished in this war.

That's one way to look at it.

I could also argue that Israel's enemies learned a lot from this war.

And one of the things they learned was the value of capturing Israeli hostages.

And in 2011, famous, infamous hostage exchange for Gilad Shalit, 1,027 prisoners from Israeli prisons, Palestinian prisoners were released, including Yechis Sinwar and others like him.

And we know from these hostage exchanges, we know two things.

One, that Israel releases people who want to slaughter Jews and know how to slaughter Jews and are effective at slaughtering Jews and it lets them right back into their communities from which they came and where they organized mass slaughter of Jews.

And it sends a message that if you capture Israelis, you get a lot.

So both of those lessons, I know that we played this audio at the beginning of tonight that Alan edited where you have Tal Becker saying, you know, we often say, our enemies say our biggest weakness is we love life.

And that quote he gave, which was, we interviewed him like the day after the hostages were returned, or maybe it was the day the hostages returned most recently.

And he said, you know, today we're reminded that we love life and it's our greatest strength.

But it's this back and forth, this greatest strength and maybe its greatest weakness.

And don't you think the enemies of Israel took away the value of taking Israeli hostages is not only can you extract enormous concessions from Israel, but you can bring a wrecking ball to Israeli society, a wrecking ball.

What we watched and what you celebrated describing what was going on in hostage square and elsewhere, and I feel the same way, I've been very moved by it and inspired by it, and yet at the same time, we now know that exact scene you were describing was a tool for Hamas in these negotiations over the last two years.

I wouldn't describe it as a tool for Hamas.

What we saw was a society doing the only thing that a democratic society can do faced with a crisis of hostages across the border together with a huge mistrust and a very divided political society towards the government.

This is just the fact that it was absolutely the case.

It was absolutely obvious to anyone who knew Israeli society that it's going to lead that down that route.

But I don't want to dodge your question, Dan, and I'm going to answer you.

in a very straightforward way.

This is a huge problem for Israel.

The fact that we love life and that we appreciate life more than those who aspire or hold to this cult of death called Hamas and Islamic Jihad and all the rest doesn't mean that we shouldn't be thinking long and hard about our security doctrine and about how we handle ourselves.

And I'm going to give you a recipe.

And here's the recipe.

In all the cases in which Israelis were taken hostage, in all the cases, that was the result of having a fundamentalist organization across your border building their regime.

Whether it's Hezbollah and the beginning of the Second Lebanon War back in 2006, whether it's Gilad Shalit and the abduction of Gilad Shalit, or now

more than 250 Israelis, including dozens and dozens of children and women and people over 80, that were taken to the dungeons of Hamas.

And here's the recipe: Israel should never allow, and this is a consensus in Israel.

Amit and I disagree on many, many things.

But in front of American audience, we do it politely because we say not in front of the children.

In Hebrew, in Hebrew, it's like cat fights.

But in English, we are very polite, and my humble opinion, and I beg to differ.

Don't believe it.

I'll try to live up to this during this conversation.

I got to tell you something.

There's someone here I won't single out, but an educator at my kids' school who I bumped into, who's Israeli, who's since moved back to Israel.

I bumped into her Columbus Circle yesterday.

I didn't know she was in town.

And I said, you should come to this event.

I told her who was coming, that Nadav and Amit was coming.

She goes, Amit.

She goes, you know, I really like him on your podcast.

And I said, yeah, she goes, but I used to really not like him on Channel 12 in Israel.

But on your podcast, he's so thoughtful and he's so, you know.

It's something about the variation of English that allows me to speak more moderately.

Yeah.

It's an important point.

You cannot allow genocidal organizations to build regimes on your borders.

They're going to abduct people and they're going to take them away.

And then they're going to negotiate.

And the Israeli society is going to be moved by these families.

And now, after saying that, here's something important.

Solidarity is something you pay a price for.

And if you have principles, if you have values, they're gonna cost you something.

Democracies and countries that appreciate life, they're gonna pay a heavy price for that, more than dictatorships.

That's the truth.

If you're not paying anything for it, that means that it's not a principle for you.

Now I don't wanna pay that price anymore, ever again.

And the way to do that is to make sure that Hamas does not control Gaza and can do this again

and that Hezbollah does not control southern Lebanon or Lebanon and we need to fight for that and we need by fighting for that it's not only about using our military it's using our wits it's using regional alliances it's building look at what the United States and this Trump administration and Morgan Ortegas and others are doing with Lebanon, squeezing their way into the possibility of historic change in the Middle East in which Hezbollah is going to be disarmed.

And all of us in this room are waiting for that moment to happen.

Only today, the president of Lebanon said, if I'm not mistaken, in three months he recommitted to that.

We need to make sure that this is the case, and it's going to be detrimental to the future of our kids.

Yes, but let's not ignore the anomaly in which Israel handles its hostage situation.

It's an anomaly both in terms of the international community, because there isn't a single country on earth that does the same.

There are 2,000 Ukrainian hostage children sent to Russia to be re-educated, and no one in Ukraine thinks that it's a reason to get to a deal with Ukraine.

One thing.

Second, it's an anomaly even compared to Israel itself.

In 1976, Israel sent special forces, including the Prime Minister's brother, Yoni Netanyahu, to Entebe in order to release 48 Israelis, 104 Israelis, sorry, in exchange for 52 terrorists.

Today, we would release 100 and say keep the change.

What changed in Israel?

I started writing a PhD about it, but I was too...

If you didn't finish the PhD, it doesn't count.

I know.

As a theme.

No, but I'll tell you why.

I was afraid.

I was afraid.

Afraid it wasn't a good idea.

You see, he now is more the Hebrew-speaking Nadab.

But I was worried about the conclusions.

I'll tell you what was the main danger to Israel, because Nadab spoke about solidarity and about having the right conclusion, of course, that we should not, we should never allow yet again Hezbollah and Hamas rearm near our borders.

But here's the question.

What happens if the price for bringing back the hostages is Hamas staying on our borders?

Because that was the deal that was offered throughout the war and this is what's so different in this deal that you get both the hostages and you stay inside Gaza and you have an American pledge to dismantle Hamas but what if

the price of releasing these hostages is having Hamas being able to kidnap more hostages in the future imagine a chess game in which you must kill the king, but your opponent needs only to take your pawn.

Each and every pawn they take makes them win the game.

Checkmate.

They took the pawn, checkmate.

They took the bishop, checkmate.

They took 251 pawns, checkmate.

That was the deal that was offered to Israel.

Now for the first time I saw a deterioration.

I really appreciate and admire people that put the yellow ribbon.

I couldn't.

Because I knew that this noble sign that Nadav and millions of Israelis wore, and I was criticized for being the only analyst on Channel 12 for not having the yellow ribbon.

But I thought that this noble sign of having solidarity and sympathy with our brothers would be used by Hamas to get away with October 7th.

And I thought, I know it's impossible in a Western democracy to act as if you don't care about your brothers.

But if we could do it, they would be back home way before and in a lower price.

Now, here's the thing about this war.

Israel was offered,

we paid heavy prices as you described for releasing our hostages, for getting back our hostages.

But for the first time, this price was not tactical but strategic.

For the first time in the world's history, a country was asked, almost forced, to end a war in order to get its hostages back.

when its enemy is still on its feet.

And this is why I opposed ending the war, even when people blamed this opinion for hating the hostages and ignoring them and neglecting them and killing them.

This is the main thing that we have to bear in mind for the next war.

Not how do we prevent hostage taking, of course, this is the security conclusion for this, how we prevent them.

But the second thing, more important, is

how would we act next time if there are more hostages?

Because I'll give you an example, one last example.

There was a tunnel in Khan Yunes in which El-Khanab Bukhbut, a hostage, was held.

Everyone wants El-Khanab back home.

And I deliberately mention his name.

But from this very tunnel, because the IDF didn't attack the tunnel, there were terrorists who came from there killing 12 Israeli soldiers throughout the war.

This is the moral dilemma.

Now take it, multiply it by a thousand.

And this is the dilemma we encounter when we are asked to stop a war will Hamas still rules Gaza for our hostages.

There's a lot to unpack here.

Okay.

I'm definitely going to do it.

You have to do it succinctly because we've got a few more minutes and I got a couple more things.

First of all, Amit, I definitely do not recommend you writing the PhD.

I'm speaking candidly.

First of all, for the Israeli Defense Forces, the problem of the hostages in Gaza was not a problem about solidarity.

It was a tactical problem.

And the reason they wanted the hostages back home is exactly for them to take care of these tunnels.

Only a person, and I'm sure you did that, Amid, because I did that, only a person who traveled to Gaza during the war, who spoke with the troops, was in the headquarters of the divisions, would have seen the screens that I have seen that have prevented the IDF at a certain point from attacking most of the parts in which the Hamas headquarters were there because they had hostages.

Now, why did they do that?

Because all of these generals are wide-eyed, open liberals, they don't want to destroy the enemy, or they don't understand the threat.

The Israeli government ordered the IDF, and this is not a PR thing.

When you order your army, it's a legal thing.

They ordered the IDF to do two things, to make sure that Hamas is not destroyed.

The destruction of Hamas was never at the goals of this war.

The government was very careful not to write there the destruction of Hamas because they understood at the beginning of the war that it will never be destroyed as an organization.

Because it's unfortunately for Palestinians, by the way, but more unfortunately for us, it's a grassroots movement.

The goals were to make sure that Hamas doesn't have that military threat over Israel.

It doesn't have governance in Gaza.

Number one, number two, to get back to hostages.

At a certain point, the IDF told the cabinet, the Israeli cabinet, the chief of staff told the Israeli cabinet, I think Amit reported that too.

If you want me to do this and that, please make another decision and take out the hostage issue out of the goals of the war.

Now, Now, I don't want to sugarcoat this.

He said that because he thought it was important, the hostage issue, because the idea felt committed to the hostages.

So it was absolutely the case that, as Amit, as you said, you cannot choreograph a democratic society that has dozens and dozens and dozens of parents and kids who are waiting for their loved ones.

You need to change the character of the region around you and to have a strong security doctrine to make sure it doesn't happen again.

We live in a very difficult neighborhood.

It's a villa in the jungle, as Eud Barak says.

In this villa in the jungle, there is a promise.

That's the Israeli contract.

It's a very painful contract.

It says you're going to live here in the Middle East.

It's going to be very difficult for you.

And people are going to try and kill you all the time.

But within this house,

truly it's all for one and one fall.

If we fail on that,

if we fail on that, what's left of us?

If we happen to behave

like every other nation, what does it mean about what we secure?

Now that again, because I am not pushing away your argument realistically.

That doesn't mean that we need to be stupid about this.

It means that we need to be very realistic about this.

But what I am saying is that this is not ideals versus powerful realism.

It is the most realist thing to preserve the essence of Israel.

Your values count in order to win.

Or to put it less heroically, it's paying for a commodity with credit card.

with 12 payments, but you don't know what the payment would be.

You get the commodity now, you get the sacred commodity, the hostages, but you don't know what the price would be.

You know it's gonna be very high.

No one knew when Shalit was released that October 7th is going to happen.

And it could have been prevented, but we paid the price of 25 Israelis on the Shalit deal even prior to October 7th.

Terrorist activities made by released terrorists from the Shalit deal.

All I'm saying is that solidarity is very important, but we should not always mix it with refusal to acknowledge the price that you might pay in the future.

Okay, we just have a few minutes left.

This could be its own.

This should be, by the way, an episode, this entire conversation.

But we are recording.

We are recording.

This will be an episode.

You did push record when you begin this, right?

Dan?

Okay, just making sure because of these people came and it should be as subscribers only.

Subscribers only.

Maybe we can ask those who are not premium subscribers to leave and we'll keep going.

Exactly.

Okay, I want to just bring us to where we are and where we're going, and I want to hit three topics quickly.

Three, three, quick, quick.

I won't say this is like rapid fire, but as close to rapid fire as possible.

You guys can't do rapid fire, but I'll try.

Okay, tell me what Gaza looks like in the next few months.

I'll start with you, Nadav.

What does Gaza look like?

Like, you don't have to get into every specific policy issue and every part of the 20-point plan, but right now the IDF is in 53% of Gaza.

There's talk about the Turks coming in, the Turks not coming in, Qatar coming in, Egypt coming in, maybe other third-party countries coming in.

You know, there's all these, we're watching these images of these Palestinians getting butchered by Hamas, as Amit talked about earlier.

We're hearing about these different clans that are emerging, different power centers.

It's going to be a mess.

And now the question is.

What does that mean, a mess?

It means that we don't know yet.

The power struggle within Gaza.

We don't know yet what would be exactly this international security force that is supposed to come in.

And according to the 21 points by the White House, even if Hamas does not live up to its obligations according to the agreement, Israel, at least in principle, is supposed to withdraw from these areas and give them to that ISF, that international force.

And this is something that the Israeli defense apparatus, I know that a lot of listeners are very worried about me saying apparatus all the time.

We get this comment all the time.

But the Israeli defense officials are extremely worried about that, and they are worried about Turkish influence, Qatari influence.

And right now, you asked me, Dan, what's going to happen in Gaza?

Right now, Hamas controls 50% of Gaza.

We didn't see them still marching in the streets because they don't want to get President Trump too agitated.

And when they'll do their marches and declare their victories victories over 50% of a completely destroyed territory, they might not do that with their weapons, with their Kalachnikovs, in order not to get the Americans too pissed off.

But right now, they are in control.

And the challenge here, and that's a huge challenge for Israel, and not only for Israel, by the way, for the UAE, for moderate countries around the region, to Saudi Arabia and others, is how do you make sure that Hamas is losing its influence within Gaza without resorting necessarily to the resumption of the war.

Because what we're getting, the vibe that we're getting right now from the White House and from Washington, is that this right now is completely out of the question.

Okay, so there are the most senior figures in the United States, the most senior figures, do not see

the new Gaza idea as feasible.

And they don't think that an Israeli invasion with five divisions is feasible as well.

So, what they have in mind is the two-state solution, but not in between the river and the sea, but inside Gaza.

You'll have something, in my opinion, similar to Berlin following World War II, the first years.

You'll have East Gaza and West Gaza.

East Gaza would lie in ruins, like today, 47% of

the territory and 85% of the population.

No recovery because the Israeli quid pro quo is recovery for disarmament and demilitarization and it's not going to happen, as Nadav

said.

And the East Gaza would be a Emirati-funded, Israeli-controlled territory in which the conditions would be way better.

The education system would not poison the minds of young Palestinians.

And this is the number one issue, in my opinion, if you want to create a better Gaza.

I don't think we should speak about Gaza in terms of five years from now, but 20, because it takes a village to raise a monster like Hamas, and it takes a generation to eradicate it.

And in order to do it, you need a new education system, you need a new city, and you need an area with no Kalashnikovs and no Hamas.

Okay, but hold on.

I mean, I want to.

So, who?

The rapid fire, by the way, is going great.

Who is

who is gathering those Kalashnikovs?

Who's gathering the RPG launchers?

Who's dealing?

Someone from the IDF told me the place is full of unexploded ordnance.

The tunnel system, who's going to...

Apparently the IDF does not want to go into the tunnels.

Like who is

that's like messy, messy work?

I'm quite skeptical that what the IDF hardly did over two years with five divisions will be done by two battalions, two Emirati battalions.

I don't think it's going to happen.

I think what we'll see in a few years from now is a diffusion.

The market forces will work because if you're a Gazan, at the end of the day, even if you're a Hamas supporter, and I think 80% of Gaza support Hamas, still at the end of the day, you can choose between an Emirati modern city and

ruins controlled by Hamas.

What would you choose?

Okay.

In terms of choices, let's talk, and we're going to keep this short, Israeli politics.

There has to be an election in Israel by October of 26.

Presumably, it'll occur sometime before then.

I think it'll be much before then.

But, you know, a year from now, Benjamin Netanyahu will still be Prime Minister?

That's a softball, right?

So a year from now, we'll have an election anyway, right, in the next year, and we'll know the answer.

According to the polls right now, the Prime Minister is growing stronger, specifically after the end of the war.

He still doesn't have a coalition.

I suspect that the longer he drags this, the longer that Hamas keeps a grip to some sort of power in the Gaza Strip, be very problematic for him to explain what has just happened in the war.

And my sense is that his trouble is going to be from home with the right, with a hardcore ideological right.

They're calling this deal Oslo too.

They're not only calling that, look at the amount of dreams that have been shattered for the Israeli far right.

They dreamt that this

placement.

Look, there was truly an attack from.

It's true, there was a disengagement in 2005.

Hamas took control of the territory.

They used it two decades later to attack Israel, to have their massive, mass merger.

They dreamt to at least have two settlements there in the territory occupied in Gaza.

That's not going going to happen.

They wanted to have some sort of a displacement of Palestinians, what they called a migration, a voluntary migration, whatever you want to call it.

That's off the table too.

There is no annexation in the West Bank.

President Trump has just told Time magazine that if Israel does that, the United States is not going to support Israel anymore.

He just said that plainly.

So that's off the table too.

And now, to add an insult, Hamas might actually be even in that small enclave.

So for now, if I would have been advising Netanyahu, I would have told him, run,

run for an election right now, because this might not do any better.

Now, I'm not advising the Prime Minister.

I just want to say that.

I know that people who listening to the podcast sometimes maybe think I do, but

no, you make it clear that you don't.

Just follow you on Twitter.

We know you're not advising the Prime Minister.

Okay, but what I do want to say about that is that burying the career of this prime minister, who has won more elections than any other leader in any elected democracy, is a gross mistake, anyway.

He's an extremely good politician.

I, of course, as an Israeli, would have wanted him to be as good as a state leader or in statecraft as he is in winning campaigns.

But that's a different story.

I'm going to leave it to you.

So, Nadaba is basically saying that this deal is a ticking time bomb, and it's in Netanyahu's political interest to go to elections before

boom.

Yes, but it's a tactical question now when we know that the elections are going to be held in 2026.

So it was a great question in 2023 when everyone, including Netanyahu, thought that his fall is imminent.

And it's not the case anymore.

So it's more about tactical questions of when to have a comfortable election date.

I would suggest in August when all the leftists are abroad,

but

and we take vacations in the Kinnerets, right?

In the Sea of Galilee.

But that gets closer and closer in all seriousness to the third anniversary of October 7th.

Exactly.

But that's the reason why it will be earlier.

Oh, as far as Nathaniel is concerned, he has no responsibility as to October 7 anyway.

Then I don't know why you made that remark.

No, but he doesn't want to.

By the third year,

it's going to be everybody's else's responsibility.

Exactly.

So he doesn't want to harm the left, who's responsible for October 7th.

But seriously, here's the thing.

In Israel, in order to win an election, your bloc needs to have 61 seats out of 120, right?

This is easy.

But you can survive with 50.

Why?

Because the Arab parties, some non-Zionists and some anti-Zionists, that blame Israel for committing genocide will not be part of the next coalition.

And therefore, if you get 50 and they get 10, it means that your rivals don't have 61.

Now,

each and every poll over the last two weeks following the end of the war in Gaza indicates that Netanyahu reached the magic number of 50, 51 to 66.

I think personally that Netanyahu has more than 50% chance to get the 50 seats.

But who knows?

I mean...

But then you could probably wind up in some kind of coalition rotation government.

Or a unity government, which I suspect that this is the desired outcome for Israel.

I truly believe from my Kishkas, kishkas, as you say in New York, you know the joke that one New Yorker, Jewish New Yorker asks his friend, how do you say in Hebrew, tikunolam?

So how do you say kishke in Hebrew?

I feel this is the remedy Israel needs.

I think Israel needs a unity government, enough with the narrow governments.

It didn't help Israel.

Okay, so that's a note I want to end on because I did want to spend a very quick moment talking about Amit's excellent book called The 4 a.m.

Call, which is the single best English language primer on Israeli politics.

It goes back in profiles, 13 Israeli prime ministers.

It explains Israeli politics.

Anyone who's traveling to Israel and trying to understand Israeli politics, and they try to project onto Israeli politics our own political system, which never works.

Amit's book explains why that's not possible.

You can order the book.

You can, if you're an Inside Call Me Back subscriber, you will get a signed copy, signed copy for free.

Amit signed hundreds of copies today.

You can just scan the QR code to do that.

But, Amit, I want to ask you, because the two prime ministers in the book that you celebrate the most, and I was surprised knowing you, that these were the two prime ministers that are your heroes, were Yitzhak Shamir

and Levi Eshkol.

Right.

And I think that, you know, relates exactly to the point you were just making a moment ago, that Israelis are rooting for a unity government.

So why were they your favorite prime ministers?

Okay, so first of all the three terms that do not exist in Hebrew and in Israeli politics are accountability.

There is no Hebrew word for accountability.

I suspect that Eliezer Baniuda, the founding father of modern Hebrew, said, nah, there is no point in investing this word.

No one is going to use it.

The second is constituency.

We don't have constituencies in Israel.

And fixed terms.

Hence, Israeli prime ministers always believe they will be here forever because they can always run and run run and rerun and rerun again, and it always ends up with a tragedy.

Sharon got the stroke, and Rabin got assassinated, and Paris lost the election, and so did Barak.

And Olmert was indicted and sent to jail.

And Ben-Gurion wanted to come back, and no one wanted him anymore.

The joke in Israel was that the Messiah, what's the difference between Ben-Gurion and the Messiah?

The Messiah never comes, and Ben-Gurion never goes.

But Eshkol and Shamir, that lost, I mean, Eshkol died in office and Shamir lost the election They had mission impossible Eshko succeeded David Ben-Gurion the founding father of Israel the legend and Eshkol stammered and he was not very charismatic and same applied for Shamir that followed the footsteps of Ben-Nachem Begin the legendary leader of the right wing but what these two uncharismatic grey leaders did was to have a unity government.

And these unity governments reduced the tensions in Israel, brought the success.

But just Eshko unity government during the Six-Day War with his enemy, with Menachem,

that led to the success of the Six-Day War.

And Shamil, I mean, hated Paris and vice versa, joined forces with him to take a unity, a huge unity government that took Israel out of Lebanon, out of a 400% inflation a month to have Israel recover.

And he could could have built a coalition with Kahana, but he didn't.

And Perez could have tried to form a coalition with the non-Zionist Arab parties, but he didn't.

And the joint forces.

And the lessons are clear.

So, honestly, I'm not just saying this because he's sitting here.

It's an excellent book, and I encourage you to read it for those of you who don't have it already.

I want to thank both of these gentlemen for being here and for this conversation.

I will say

One of the things we've tried to do on our podcast is try to be a place where you can come for some narration.

Like we try to narrate to the extent that we can with voices from Israel that are trying to explain to the world the challenges and the dilemmas that Israelis are dealing with as they were confronted with the most impossible dilemmas and challenges, really truly problems from hell.

I mean, you listen to the discussion they just had, which we didn't plan

for to talk about tonight, but just the debate about the hostages.

That is a problem from hell.

And we've just tried to provide these conversations throughout this period.

And I have learned so much from the both of you.

And I just want to thank you for what we do every week on the podcast and for being here tonight.

We would like to thank you.

And

Dan,

I don't think that

all the people in the room know that it's not your day job.

Yeah.

And you've been, you've dedicated yourself to this podcast together with your producer, with Ilana, to do something which is truly exceptional.

And we get a lot of feedback, both Amit and myself, from communities around the world, not only people stopping us in the street here in New York.

So Dan, thank you so much, not only for giving us this opportunity, but also it's a sort of a thank you for people who have been invested with their time, with their emotions as to what's happening thousands of miles away in Israel.

Israelis are not very big on saying, Todaraba, thank you very much, but I think that this is very important.

You were there when Israelis felt that they are most lonely.

And thank you for that.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone.

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 Nadaviyal, Amit, Segel, and I respond to challenging questions from listeners and have the conversations that typically occur after the cameras stop rolling.

To subscribe, please follow the link in the show notes or you can go to arcmedia.org.

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

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