Did Israel Win? - with Micah Goodman

Speaker 1 You are listening to an art media podcast.

Speaker 1 If the process of normalization starts in the Middle East, if the Middle East accepts Israel, I think it will make it much easier for the friends of Israel to come back and become friends in Israel in the West.

Speaker 1 What the process of normalization does is saying to reach the success, we paid currency with our legitimacy. And then normalization is leveraging the success in order to bring back that currency.

Speaker 1 So normalization is the missing piece to declare real victory.

Speaker 2 It's 1.30 p.m. on Sunday, November 16th here in New York City.
It is 8.30 p.m. on Sunday, November 16th in Israel as Israelis wind down their day.

Speaker 2 Today, Sunday, the Israeli government took the decision to establish a commission of inquiry into the failures surrounding the October 7th massacre.

Speaker 2 According to Hebrew media reports, the commission will not be an independent state-run commission of inquiry.

Speaker 2 Its mandate will be determined by cabinet ministers, prompting backlash from opposition figures.

Speaker 2 This topic, the role of the commission of inquiry, how independent it actually is, the history of commissions of inquiry in Israel and the role they've played after wars is something we will be exploring in a future episode.

Speaker 2 Also today, IDF Chief of Staff Ayel Zamir toured the Gaza Strip where he stated that the IDF must be prepared for a rapid transition into a broad offensive in which Israel would conquer more territory beyond the yellow line if needed.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, Israel and the U.S.

Speaker 2 are preparing for the United Nations Security Council to meet tomorrow, Monday, to vote on a resolution that would endorse President Trump's Gaza peace plan, which includes the establishment of an international stabilization force to oversee Gaza for the time being.

Speaker 2 Notably, the plan also envisions a potential pathway to a Palestinian state, which many Israeli leaders across the political spectrum, from right to left, have continued to state their opposition to.

Speaker 2 Also, over the past week, a surge in extremist settler violence in the West Bank has attracted the attention of leaders in Israel and also abroad.

Speaker 2 The attacks have mainly targeted Palestinian communities, with some rioters even going after Israeli soldiers.

Speaker 2 Prime Minister Netanyahu told the cabinet on Sunday that Israel will, quote, take very forceful action against the riots. Now on to today's episode.

Speaker 2 For about a month, Israelis have lived through an all-too-rare stretch of relatively few sirens, at least by Israel standards.

Speaker 2 As the Gaza ceasefire holds, we now have an opportunity to reflect, perhaps a little more clearly, on the outcome of the war. What does it actually mean?

Speaker 2 To what extent can Israel claim the past two years in Gaza a victory? Joining me to guide us through this conversation is Mika Goodman. Dr.

Speaker 2 Mikah Goodman is the author of seven best-selling books and the co-host of Miflechet Hamak Shavut, which is a podcast in Hebrew which he co-hosts with Efrat Shapira Rosenberg.

Speaker 2 Before today's conversation, a quick word from the sponsor of this episode.

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Speaker 2 I'm pleased to welcome back to the podcast, Mika Goodman.

Speaker 1 Mika, good to see you. Hi, Dan.
Good to see you. Okay, Mika, we have a lot to cover.
I want to just start by asking a question of you that I asked of Yonatan Adiri last week.

Speaker 1 If you ask everyday Israelis if they think Israel has won the war, what kind of answer would you get? So I think the answer is, which war are we talking about? Because there's two wars. Okay.

Speaker 1 There's the war in the narrow sense, Israel versus Hamas.

Speaker 1 And there's the war in the broader sense, Israel versus Iran and its ecosystem, its octopus, its proxies. And I think you'll get two different answers.

Speaker 1 If it's Israel versus Hamas, I think you'll get more ambivalent answers. Because on the one hand, yes, we dismantled their offensive weapons and their leadership.

Speaker 1 But on the other hand, they're still alive and they're still there. So regarding Hamas, you'll get ambivalent answers regarding that war.

Speaker 1 Regarding the wider war with Iran and its proxies, I think it's commonly understood that Israel was extremely successful.

Speaker 1 So that we win the war, the question, which war are we talking about, the broader war or the more narrow war versus Hamas?

Speaker 1 Okay, in terms of the mirror image on the Palestinian side, both on the outcome and also looking back at the strategic decision to open war with Israel on October 7th, how do you imagine things look from the Palestinian side?

Speaker 1 So when it comes to the Palestinian perspective, the Hamas perspective is a part of a larger perspective of Jabit al-Muqawama, of the front of resistance or axis of resistance.

Speaker 1 If we look at the evolution of the attempts of the enemies of Israel to destroy Israel, to end the projects called Zionism. So there's three stages and Hamas in this war was stage three.

Speaker 1 Now, stage one, the common understanding was of the different forces in the Middle East that by building strong standing armies and attacking Israel simultaneously, we can destroy Israel. That was 48.

Speaker 1 That was 67. That was 73.
That was a strategy. That's how they thought they could destroy Israel and their own self-understanding.
This is going to work.

Speaker 1 Israel will be destroyed if we simultaneously attack them with our conventional armies. Well, stage one failed.

Speaker 1 After 73, probably after 67, more and more Arab countries understood that you can't defeat Israel. And the first country to really lead the way was Egypt.

Speaker 1 which they decided, well, if you can't beat them, join them, make peace with them. By the way, this was all a prediction of Zaev Zhabutinski back in 1923.

Speaker 1 He wrote a famous essay called Kira Barzel, I guess, Iron Raw, where he predicts that there will be peace one day.

Speaker 1 But peace will happen when the enemies of Israel will see Israel as an irreversible fact.

Speaker 1 And once there's an internalization that Zionism is irreversible, that you can't end a project called Israel, then they'll decide, well, if we can't beat them, we'll join them and make peace with them.

Speaker 1 Or just learn to live with them. And learn to live with them.
So Anu al-Sadat making peace with Israel in 1979 was a fulfillment of the prediction of Zevja Butinsky from 1923.

Speaker 1 But not all the enemies of Israel learned that lesson. Some said something else.
If we fail defeating Israel using our armies, maybe it's not that Israel is undefeatable.

Speaker 1 Maybe it's our strategy is not effective. Let's find a different strategy.
A different strategy started emerging.

Speaker 1 It was actually started beforehand, but in the 80s, it became more dominant, which is terrorism. We won't defeat Israel by conquering Israel with our armies.
We'll defeat Israel through attrition.

Speaker 1 What terrorism does? Attacking civilians and then hiding among civilians. Immoral offense, immoral defense.
And then Israel will break down. It won't have the will to stand a long war of attrition.

Speaker 1 And the peak of that attempt was obviously the second Intifada, where over 1,100 Israelis were murdered when buses were exploding in the horrible days of the Second Intifada.

Speaker 1 And the Second Intifada ended with Sahomat Megin, I think you say, defensive shield,

Speaker 1 where the two titans of Israeli politics, Shimon Peres and Arik Sharon, Shimon Peres, the titan of the left, Arik Sharon of the right, unite and break the second Intifada in Operation Chomat Megin.

Speaker 1 By the way, also the six-day war was was up by a national UAD government. Israel does very well when it could join forces.
So the Second Tifada was put down. Arafadain also helped.

Speaker 1 The fence also helped. All this together put down the Second Tifada, and it became clear Israel is not going to break under a wave of terrorism.

Speaker 1 So the first two strategies failed. Conquering Israel with armies failed.
Destroying Israel through terrorism failed. Now comes stage number three.
And this is what we started facing in this war.

Speaker 1 Stage number three is a combination of the first two stages. Stage one armies, stage two terrorism, stage three a combination of the two, creating an army of terrorists.

Speaker 1 Now, Hamas was an army, had battalions, chain of command, the ability to cooperate, an intelligence arm. It was two divisions of light infantry.
Khezballa was an army.

Speaker 1 It has all the advantages of an army, but it was an army of terrorism. Now, the difference between a regular army and an army of terrorism is that an irregular army protects civilians.

Speaker 1 An army of terrorism is protected by civilians. So strategy number three was a very impressive startup, immoral, vicious, but could have been effective.

Speaker 1 Now Qasem Suleimani added to that another element, and that is not only to build army of terrorists, but to create a network of those kind of armies.

Speaker 1 And then one day to press a button and they'll all attack Israel simultaneously and put an end to Israel. So from their perspective, let's think about about what October 7th could have looked like.

Speaker 1 What would have happened? And I'm sure almost all the viewers and listeners to call me back probably did this in their head. I know every Israeli did this in their head.

Speaker 1 Imagine the following scenario.

Speaker 1 What would have happened if during those eight, 10 hours on October 7th, when the Israeli military was in shock and not functioning and not even knowing what's going on?

Speaker 1 And the terrorists could go into Nir Oz, do all the sadistic things in Nir Oz and leave without the army even reaching there.

Speaker 1 If during that window, if Khizbara would have attacked full-blown from the north, what would have happened?

Speaker 1 And add to that, if we're attacked from the south and the north, accurate ballistic missiles landing on strategic sites in Israel, what would have happened?

Speaker 1 With not lower probability, Palestinians from Judea, Samaria, West Bank, would say, hey, if Israel is going down, we have to be in the right side of history. They might have joined also.

Speaker 1 The militant part of Israeli Arabs could have joined also.

Speaker 1 We would find ourselves where we're attacking from the south, north, strategic missiles hitting all over Israel and strategic sites, increasing the chaos, and an uprise from within.

Speaker 1 I would say with not low probability, that could have meant the destruction of Israel.

Speaker 1 Which means the fact that we could have this scenario, they missed out on that, but it means that they actually developed a winning strategy.

Speaker 1 Strategy number one, armies didn't work, terrorism didn't work, combining them with a network effect that could have worked.

Speaker 1 And isn't that amazing and terrifying to figure out that Sadat was wrong in 79? The idea that, oh, Israel is irreversible. No, your strategy was wrong.

Speaker 1 And finally, Qasem Suleimani and others developed the winning strategy. So I think in light of that, we have to think about this war.

Speaker 1 We didn't know, or military didn't know, that strategy number three and the evolution of the attempt to destroy Israel was very effective and it could have worked. Why didn't it work? Because

Speaker 1 they didn't attack us together. Because their strategy was based on the assumption that they are very united and that they could cooperate.

Speaker 1 And Sinwal starting the war without being coordinated with the rest of them was a lack of cooperation. Chasanas

Speaker 1 not joining full-blown all in on October 7th, that is lack of cooperation.

Speaker 1 And if we take this one step further, in their vision of Jabat al-Muqawama, the front of resistance, was that if we attacked them together, we could defeat them and get to al-Aqza and like fulfill our vision.

Speaker 1 But if you think about this war, Sin will have this idea that I'll attack them and everybody will join us. And Israel will be in a multi-front war where they're fighting full-blown in many fronts.

Speaker 1 And if you think about it, that's exactly what happened, but different than the way death and Sinoar imagined it. We fought them one by one.

Speaker 1 When we did Hamas, Khezballa didn't come all in to save Hamas. When we did Khezballa, Iran didn't come to save Khezballa.

Speaker 1 And then finally, when we did Iran, Khizbalah didn't come to save Iran, which means they had the right strategy. But they weren't unified enough to implement their strategy.

Speaker 1 Which takes me to another part of their strategy. Yehi Sinwar and Muhammad Def, and actually this is the concept of the entire structure of the axis of resistance.
They made not one bet, but two bets.

Speaker 1 They bet on their unity, but they also bet on our division. They saw us fighting and weakening, and they thought that if they hit us, we'll collapse into our own divisions.

Speaker 1 By the way, you interviewed Ronen Bergman, and he actually described why they recorded the atrocities because they thought that will break us. That's what they thought.

Speaker 1 I have always been shocked by the extent to which Hamas documented everything and broadcast everything. I always thought that was a strategic error.

Speaker 1 And as Ronen's reporting shows, based on all the materials that the IDF and the intelligence community have uncovered, that the documenting and broadcasting was the strategy that they thought would serve many purposes, not the least of which is break Israelis and almost like freeze them, like deer in the headlights, like just like they cannot believe what's happening.

Speaker 1 Then Hamas and its allies could just continue the advance. They thought that broadcasting that will do two things.
It will implement their double strategy.

Speaker 1 It will excite the enemies of Israel to unite. Look, they're breaking down.
And it will also send a shockwave into Israeli society and collapse into our own contradictions.

Speaker 1 So they made two bets. They bet on their unity and on our division.
They got the first bet wrong.

Speaker 1 Now, the second bet is more complicated because Israel was polarized before the war and it was polarized during the war.

Speaker 1 The polarization before the war was the center left saying to the right, your way, the government will lead us to a catastrophe.

Speaker 1 And the right was saying, no, the protest movement will lead us to a catastrophe after october 7th happened polarization changes the protest movement says the government led us to catastrophe government supporters say the protest movement led us to catastrophe so polarization grew as a result of october 7th and yet here's the paradox of israel during the past two years while israelis were highly divided regarding the government they were highly united regarding the war, which means you have critical mass of Israelis that were willing to not only support a war, but also fight in a war, sacrifice in the war, and many times die in a war, led by a government that they don't trust.

Speaker 1 Israelis managed to hold on to this tension for two whole years. And by the way, what's even more interesting was also that when the war ended, it didn't break the unity.

Speaker 1 So it means that the center left supported the war even though they didn't support the government. And the right supported ending the war even though it goes against their ideology.

Speaker 1 Because their ideology was this war has to lead to transfer and and settlement of Gaza.

Speaker 1 So both sides managed to overcome their instincts, the ideological instinct of the right and the political instinct of the left, and to maintain solidarity.

Speaker 1 So if you think about it this way, they made two bets, the enemies of Israel. They bet on their unity and our division.
They got both bets wrong. So as a result, did Israel win?

Speaker 1 That has to do with the future, with normalization. Maybe we'll discuss that.
But did the Axis lose? I think they lost.

Speaker 1 And they lost not because they didn't have the right strategy, but they didn't have enough unity to implement that strategy.

Speaker 1 By the way, in the War of Independence in 1948, in that war, I grew up like every Israeli that the war was about, the few versus the many.

Speaker 1 And actually, what historians show today is that maybe that's not exactly true, because at almost any given battle, the Israelis had the advantage in numbers. Now, why is that?

Speaker 1 It was because in the attack on Jerusalem, Ben-Gurion took troops from from the south, from the north, from everywhere, concentrated in Jerusalem, and created an advantage over the Arabs in Jerusalem.

Speaker 1 And then in other battles, we took soldiers from the south and from Jerusalem to the north, and the Arabs couldn't do that.

Speaker 1 So because we were unified in a strategic sense, even though we didn't outnumber them, when it comes to comparing the standing armies, we outnumbered them in every battle.

Speaker 1 So the War of Independence wasn't the few defeating the many. It was the people that could cooperate defeating those that couldn't cooperate.

Speaker 1 And I think this war is a replication of the logic of the success of the Atzma'ut war. Okay, let's take a break to hear a word from our sponsor.

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Speaker 1 Okay, so why is the axis of resistance, having lost the war, not considered like indisputably an Israeli win? I think for three reasons.

Speaker 1 We're left with three strategic problems, and the sum of these problems cracks our ability to honestly declare an absolute victory, which I think is a childish category to begin with.

Speaker 1 We should think about a good enough victory, But there's three problems. Problem number one is obviously Hamas is still standing.
Gaza is a problem and Gaza might be a problem that grows.

Speaker 1 And I know there is a 20-point plan and maybe an international force will dismantle Hamas. I'm laughing because many Israelis are skeptical regarding that possibility.

Speaker 1 And in Israel, there is a saying that in the Middle East,

Speaker 1 which means that everything that seems temporary is permanent.

Speaker 1 If we have a temporary arrangement now in Gaza, that might be permanent and it's not that it might suck Israel into attrition war with Hamas.

Speaker 1 It might not, but that's one problem, but that's the least of our problems. Problem number two

Speaker 1 is Qatar and Turkey. Now, this is very weird.
This is a very paradoxical result of the war.

Speaker 1 Islamist ideology, if it's the Muslim Brotherhood or the Islamic Republic of Iran, they share an understanding, a very specific brand of Islamist ideology that has like three components.

Speaker 1 All the problems of the Middle East and the Muslim world come from the West. There's also conspiracy elements added to it.

Speaker 1 Like if you ask like Sayed Qutub, like one of the theologians of Islamism, is that behind the West are the Jews.

Speaker 1 And later on, it was developed that Israel is the vehicle of the West to distort the Middle East. So it's very anti-Israel, anti-Semitic, and anti-Western.
This ideology had patrons and proxies.

Speaker 1 The proxies, Chizbalach, Hamas, they are the armies of terrorists fighting for this ideology. It also has patrons, especially Qatar.
The result of this war is weird.

Speaker 1 Israel smashed the proxies of this ideology, but the result is that it strengthened the patrons of this ideology. So that's where we are now.

Speaker 1 Is Hamas, is Qatar in Turkey a strategic threat tomorrow morning? No.

Speaker 1 Could it evolve into a strategic threat? Yes.

Speaker 1 I want to measure this, which means we've just dismantled an existential immediate threat, right? But now we have a new threat.

Speaker 1 We eliminated an immediate strategic threat, and now we have to deal with a long-term evolving threat.

Speaker 1 But finally, the third price of this success of breaking the axis of resistance is the isolation of Israel and the world. And this is, I think, our largest problem,

Speaker 1 because we needed international legitimacy. And I think we discussed this, that if breaking the axis of resistance is the destination of the war, the war is a car.

Speaker 1 So legitimacy, international legitimacy is the gasoline, is the fuel. And the question of the whole war was, will we run out of fuel before we get to the destination?

Speaker 1 And I think we got to the destination, we broke the axis of resistance, but now there's no more fuel in the tank. Now there's no more legitimacy.
And we've lost so many of our friends.

Speaker 1 Our enemies in the West, the ones that were rallying against us on October 8th, we didn't have to begin with. But if we look at America, this war discovered two things about America.

Speaker 1 First of all, we discovered how dependent we are in America. We would have run out of ammunition pretty quickly without America, which means we are dependent existentially on America.

Speaker 1 That's one thing we discovered. And one thing that this war created is that our support in America is definitely not guaranteed.
The Democratic Party seems like it's not with us.

Speaker 1 And I know that you think the Republican Party is with us and the Tucker Carlsons are a minority, but we have to agree that it's a growing voice and it has momentum.

Speaker 1 So if we realize how dependent we are in America and on American support, I think there's three scenarios in the next few years that could happen.

Speaker 1 I don't know how to give probability to every one of them.

Speaker 1 Scenario number one is that America goes into chaos, that there is some constitutional breakdown, that the next elections won't be seen as legitimate.

Speaker 1 If America goes into chaos, Israel loses America because America is not functioning. Option number two, you have like a Mamdani or a Tucker Carlson or someone doesn't like Israel leading America.

Speaker 1 And option number three, we get another, I don't know, Joe Biden or another, whatever, Nikki Haley.

Speaker 1 But the fact that I would say if you add up probabilities, there might be high probability that America won't stay with Israel, either either because america doesn't function or because it doesn't support israel which means if we're dependent on america and we can't count on america israel is in a very weak position today existentially which brings you to the paradox our strongest moment is our weakest moment So it's hard to declare victory when you achieved victory, but the price of the victory turns you very weak.

Speaker 1 So first of all, it's an interesting question. When has victory been so clear and indisputable for Israel and actually celebrated not only by Israel, but admired by many actors around the world?

Speaker 1 You probably have to go back to the Six-Day War. And yet, the Six-Day War, the whole world was rallying.

Speaker 1 That was the moment that attracted the world to Israel and began the strategic relationship between the United States and Israel. And this is the war that has the opposite impact of the Six-Day War.

Speaker 1 It's pushing the world away from Israel. So we became very strong in the Middle East and very weak position in Western civilization.

Speaker 1 There's one thing Israel can do in order to turn this victory into a real victory, and that is normalization. Normalization with Saudi Arabia.
Yeah, Lebanon might be in the mix.

Speaker 1 Syria might be in the mix.

Speaker 1 Saudi Indonesia. So we're talking about, in the end of this war, we see the West breaking ties with Israel and in the Middle East starting to create ties with Israel.

Speaker 1 Now, this is first of all a very paradoxical moment because I think we were both growing up in a world where Israel was not legitimate in the Middle East and very legitimate in the West.

Speaker 1 Now, something's happening. We're becoming less and less legitimate in the West, and we might go into a process where we're more and more legitimate in the Middle East.

Speaker 1 But my assumption is that if the process of normalization starts in the Middle East, if the Middle East accepts Israel, I think it will make it much easier for the friends of Israel to come back and become friends in Israel in the West.

Speaker 1 What the process of normalization does is saying to reach the success, we paid currency with our legitimacy. And then normalization is leveraging the success in order to bring back that currency.

Speaker 1 So normalization is the missing piece to declare real victory.

Speaker 1 There are many analysts arguing that Turkey has replaced Iran as the most important geopolitical power in the region right now, other than Israel, and that's adversarial. to Israel.

Speaker 1 And there's a lot of questions and ambiguity about what Qatar's future is in the region. So where do Turkey and Qatar fit into all of this? Israel went to a war and paid the price for success.

Speaker 1 And then Qatar and Turkey are enjoying the fruits of success.

Speaker 1 That's what happened, which is also why normalization is important, because normalization is to create an axis of the Sunni forces that are not supporters of Islamist ideologies, that actually see the Muslim Brotherhood not as their allies, but as their enemies.

Speaker 1 That's Saudi, that's the Emirates, that's Egypt.

Speaker 1 So it's hard to exaggerate how important normalization is in minimizing the price of victory and therefore guaranteeing the sustainability of the victory.

Speaker 1 What are the biggest challenges for the path to normalization? From the Israeli perspective, normalization has a price.

Speaker 1 And the price is not the foundation of a Palestinian state, evacuation of communities and settlements, and a withdrawal of the Israeli military from Judea and Samaria, from the West Bank.

Speaker 1 That's not the price for normalization. The price is not a territorial withdrawal, but a rhetoric rhetoric withdrawal, which has a lot of meaning.

Speaker 1 People on the pragmatic right might say, well, if we get paid in cash, normalization with all the strategic benefits of normalization, and the currency we pay is saying the P-word, Palestinian state, but saying it will be formed only if it can recognize Israel and has equal rights for gay people and secular people and Christian people and all that, I think many Israelis will say, okay, that's a good deal for us.

Speaker 1 But that is the perspective of pragmatic Israelis, even pragmatic right-wing Israelis.

Speaker 1 For ideological right-wingers, just saying the word Palestinian state, just being in that conversation is an abomination. It's a violation of everything that's sacred to them.
So what does this mean?

Speaker 1 This means that when it comes to normalization, it exposes something, and we spoke about this a little bit in our last conversation.

Speaker 1 It exposes the real ideological schism in Israel is not between right and left. It's between right and right.
It's between the pragmatic right and the ideological right.

Speaker 1 That's what the schism is, which also means something else, that the political divide in Israel and the ideological divide in Israel are not aligned.

Speaker 1 The political division is between do you like BB or you hate BB? Let's call that right and left, even though it's not the right categories.

Speaker 1 But the ideological division is: are you a pragmatic or are you ideological?

Speaker 1 So, for normalization, we have to have the Israeli dividing lines being aligned.

Speaker 1 We need the political division to be exactly where the ideological division is, and then a new coalition can be formed, the coalition coalition of normalization which means bibi has to divorce himself from the far right not easy and the center left has to overcome its allergic reaction to the presence of netanyahu not very easy they have to come to a recognition that our problem is not with netanyahu the person but with netanyahu's government and coalition those are the two things that have to happen in order to create the coalition of normalization mika i agree with your analysis I say this as an outsider, and I just find what you're saying, what those on the center left need to do, totally implausible.

Speaker 1 The levels of not in a million years can this guy be back in office, that mindset, I just think is implacable. So we have a problem here with pragmatism.

Speaker 1 Pragmatism lost its charisma ever since social media. It's understanding that politics is about compromise.
It's about trade-offs. You have to ask, what I gain, is it more or less than what I give?

Speaker 1 It's pragmatism lost its charisma. And just like the far right says, well, I can't say the Palestinian word and I can't go in.
State, you mean? Yes. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And even though it means that it might save Israel from international isolation, which is a strategic threat to Israel, and that's without forming a Palestinian state.

Speaker 1 So a pragmatic right-winger might be able to see that, but ideologues can't. On the left, well, isn't a coalition with BB much better than the coalition of BB? Can't you see that?

Speaker 1 But the problem is that being pure and being right becomes more important than being effective and doing what's right for Israeli history. Now, I think now this is so rational.

Speaker 1 And what you're discussing is that the problem is that people aren't rational. I want to stay on this, Mika.
Love him or hate him. And I know we have listeners on this podcast in both categories.

Speaker 1 We have people who love BB and we listen to us regularly. We have people who hate BB.

Speaker 1 But regardless of whether you love him or hate him, I think you can't argue with the fact that he's one of the most clever and effective geopolitical strategists, at least among Israel's leadership.

Speaker 1 Whether you're a fan of Bibi or you're hostile to Bibi, you want to know how he's thinking about this, right? He, in many respects, could be instrumental to normalization.

Speaker 1 So if he were like inputting all this information that you've provided in this conversation, he thinks, therefore, what?

Speaker 1 So I think this is my guess is that this is how Bibi is thinking about this. Bibi wants two things, two L's, by the way.
He wants liberty and he wants legacy.

Speaker 1 Now, when I say liberty, I don't mean Jon Stuart Mill, the value of human liberty. I mean liberty.
I mean not to be in jail, liberty. That's what I mean.
He wants liberty and he wants legacy.

Speaker 1 Legacy is creating a cycle around Iran. It's to do to Iran what Qasem Suleimani, what Iran did to Israel.
That means bringing back the legitimacy that we lost.

Speaker 1 The whole normalization move is his legacy. I would say if we have normalization, we could declare absolute victory.

Speaker 1 Okay, the problem is that the government that could try to get him his liberty and the government of his legacy are not the same government.

Speaker 1 The government of legacy is a government where he divorces himself from the far right, builds the alliance of the Israelis that serve the Israelis. They're pragmatic.

Speaker 1 The Israelis are hybrid, both very national and very liberal.

Speaker 1 That mainstream Israeli. And if he could build that coalition, he has a legacy.

Speaker 1 Problem is, that coalition won't play around around with the court system and the judicial system and legislate laws or appoint people that will get him out of his problems. You know who will do that?

Speaker 1 Bengvir Smotrich, the current coalition. So the problem is that Bibi has two needs, two L's, liberty and legacy, but different coalitions.
So how does he maneuver this?

Speaker 1 Maybe, I don't know, now I'm just guessing. Maybe this is what President Trump is trying to do for him.
Help him get out of his problems now.

Speaker 1 What Smotris and Benfir don't understand is once he's out of his problems, he doesn't need them anymore. He throws them under the bus, goes to the center-center-left, and builds the legacy coalition.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of ifs here, because will the center-left want him, like you described? There is an allergic reaction not to the coalition of Netanyahu, but to the personality of Netanyahu.

Speaker 1 Sadly, my guess is if Bibi has to choose between personal needs and the needs of the nation, I think Bibi has a tendency to make the wrong choice.

Speaker 1 But will he be able, with with his talents and gifts to try to get both? He'll try and we'll see what happens. It's going to be very interesting.
Mika, we'll leave it there. Thank you for this.

Speaker 1 Thank you. I know you're on the road.

Speaker 2 So safe travels.

Speaker 1 Shabbat shalom. Shabbat shalom.
And I'll see you at the GA. See ya.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 Inside Call Me Back is where Nadavayal, Amit, Segel, and I respond to challenging questions from listeners and have the conversations that typically occur after the cameras stop rolling.

Speaker 2 To subscribe, 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.

Speaker 2 Arc Media's executive producer is Adam James Levin-Aretti. Sound and video editing by Martin Huergo and Marianne Khalis Burgos.
Our director of operations, Maya Rockoff. Research by Gabe Silverstein.

Speaker 2 Our music was composed by Yuval Semo. Until next time, I'm your host, Dan Senor.

Speaker 2 By now, you've heard the stories how one birthright trip changes everything, not just for individual participants, but for their families, their communities, and the wider Jewish world.

Speaker 2 Imagine more and more young Jews experiencing birthright and emerging as proud Jewish leaders, confident in who they are with a deep, lasting connection to Israel.

Speaker 2 That's how we help build the strong, bright Jewish future we all want to see. In 25 years, birthright has made a lasting impact on the entire Jewish world.

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